This is great. I don’t have to put any effort at all into creating a clever opening for this story. I just have to scribble one little word and you’ll all start jumping around like kids on Christmas morning. Fasten your seat belts, children. Here it comes.

Bacon!

Now we just wait for the Pavlovian sizzle of excitement to subside. This could take a while.

“The frying of bacon,” says comedian Jim Gaffigan, “sounds like applause.”

Does it ever. If any one person, place or thing is bigger than bacon right now, I’ve not come across it. Books have been written about it. Websites are dedicated to the coveted strips of meat. Bacon has its own Facebook fan page and more than 5 million people have signed up.

“Bacon,” said Lewiston’s Dana Field, “is heaven.”

“Bacon is meat candy,” opines Tracy Clark Gosselin of Lisbon. “Do not get between me and bacon. It would not be pretty.”

Bacon is a rock star, as big as Elvis.

And frankly, I don’t get it. As one who can take or leave the stuff, I half suspect the government is slipping some highly addictive substance into our processed meat to better control the minds of the populace.

There are less paranoid theories afloat.

“Bacon is gaining in popularity,” suggests the popular MrBaconPants.com, “because it’s the symbol of the anti-health culture. Every day we are told not to eat this or that because it will make us ‘unhealthy.’ Well, there are people out there that don’t care as much about health and just want to eat good food. The same people that love bacon are the same people that use real butter on their toast.”

True dat. And as gluttonous Americans, we also like our salt and fat, as CNN points out. In fact, we like it in the same way addicts like street junk.

“A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods (bacon anyone?) affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin,” according to the report. “When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction, the study found.”

Bacon is no flash in the pan – the CNN report goes back to 2010. Bacon has only become more popular since, picking up steam by way of social networks like Twitter and Facebook. In fact, the weird popularity of the shriveled meat actually rankles some who loved it before it became the Fonzie of foods.

“I have loved bacon long before it became cool,” says Lori Hallett LaBelle of Auburn. “I ALWAYS have a pound of bacon in the freezer, because bacon cravings appear out of nowhere for me. Bacon is one of my obsessions, true story!”

Why ask why?

Search for a reason all you want. The people who put food on their own tables by serving meals to others don’t really care. Bacon is big, so if you’re running a restaurant, you better have some on the menu.

“The bacon craze,” says Nicholas P. Benoit, owner of Benoit’s Bakery and Wine Cellar in Lisbon, “yes, it’s sweeping the world and we have been making our maple bacon twist doughnut since we opened a year ago. We also have a number of other decedent deserts that have bacon.”

Since bacon has never been a high-brow kind of food, you have to get sneaky about it. Put bacon where you would least expect it and people will come. It’s bacon, after all.

“We do a peanut butter bacon bit truffle,” Benoit says. “We have done, in the past, a pumpkin bacon cinnamon roll. We let our head pastry chef implement the bacon. We don’t want to over use it. Our latest creation is a BLT on a honey-dipped doughnut.”

At the Italian Bakery in Lewiston, they’ve whipped up a maple bacon long john, a doughnut shell with maple glaze and strips of the crispy meat. As they mulled ways to introduce more bacon into their menu, owner Lisa Chouinard thought it might be difficult. Her husband, Tim, did not.

“He said you can put bacon on a tire and it will still taste good,” Lisa says.

At Forage on Lisbon Street, they exploit the awesome power of bacon on two fronts. You can eat it downstairs in the cafe or go up one flight to the Downtown & Handmade Vintage shop, where you can wear your beloved meat.

How so, you ask? Take a gander at some of the merchandise out there. In just a brief search, at the shop and elsewhere, we found bacon band-aids, bacon socks for both men and women, bacon air fresheners, bacon mints (to hide the scent of less salubrious foods), bacon gum balls, bacon tattoos (no, really), bacon toothpicks (you still get the same great taste while prying out slivers of bacon), bacon lollipops and bacon balms.

On various websites, many of them Not Safe For Work, I’ve found bacon bras, bacon bookmarks, artist depictions of Bacon Land, bacon soap, bacon vodka, bacon ice cream and a nice, bacon cooker-alarm-clock combo.

On April 1, word began to spread that Scope was going to release a bacon-flavored mouthwash. People got excited. Very excited. They were ready to buy cases of the stuff. It turned out to be an April Fool’s joke, but the message got through: Flavor it with bacon, and we will buy it. We don’t really care what it is.

“Bacon is what makes the world go round,” gushes Kelly Briggs of Minot. “I have to get it on my burgers and steak and cheese subs. Bacon doesn’t last very long with me. I’ll eat it all. And going to a breakfast buffet and seeing that HUGE tray of bacon: I just want to bring it back to my table!”

But back to Forage. They’ve been serving up devil’s food cupcakes with cream cheese, maple and bacon frosting. There’s peanut butter, chocolate chip cookies with bacon. Or you can cut out the superfluous ingredient and just go for bacon covered in chocolate. Different strokes for different folks. As long as those strokes include bacon.

When Lewiston restaurant Marche opened up, they catered to the demand for bacon in a big way. How does a sandwich featuring one full pound of the stuff sound? Too good, I thought. I suspected it was apocrypha – an urban legend born out of wishful thinking. But nope. It’s true.

“The Pounder,” says restaurant owner Eric Agren. “It was extremely popular. A BLT, basically, with an insane amount of bacon. Unfortunately protein prices rose such that it was too expensive to offer.”

But Agren still offers the smoky strips of satisfaction. At Fuel,his upscale restaurant across the street from Marche, you can get bacon-dusted fries or roasted oysters topped with leeks and creamed bacon.

Not everyone is so moved

“Bacon’s Nasty,” says Charles Spencer of Auburn. “If you ever saw it being made you would never eat it again. Not to mention how bad it is for your heart.”

By and large, people know it’s bad for them. These are otherwise health-minded folks who jog, lift weights and go to pilates class three nights a week. They eat their veggies and take their vitamins, but when it comes to bacon, you have to keep your hands away from their mouths less you get bit. Bacon seems to be everybody’s weakness.

“Love, love, LOVE bacon,” fawns Sheila Cosgrove Rousseau of Auburn. “Especially with maple syrup on the side. And I also love Kevin Bacon. Who doesn’t like bacon?”

For vegetarians, the allure of bacon is like a cartoon finger of fragrant smoke beckoning them – come eat me, healthy friend. I’m so salty and crisp. For those who have sworn off meat, bacon can melt their willpower like a hot fork melts lard.

“It seems to me that how old you were when you quit plays a part,” says Travis Saucier, who gave up meat recently while his wife has been at it for years. “Nicole quit at 13. The thing she misses most is Arby’s roast beef with horsie sauce. I’m about 99.9 percent meat free and I miss all pig products the most. Pulled pork first, but bacon is high up there.”

At the Downtown & Handmade Vintage shop above Forage, Sheri Withers knows all about the power of bacon to turn vegetarians into meat-craving chow hounds. She went meatless, herself, all through high school. A little later, she seemed to have the lifestyle under control. Until she went into a pizza shop.

“I ended up ordering a bacon-sausage pizza,” Withers says. “I thought: This is the best thing in the world! What is wrong with me?”

What was wrong? Nothing. It just turned out that she was pregnant.

Her son, now 14, went through the same thing. He didn’t care much for the way meat got from the farm to the table, so he went vegetarian.

“Once he discovered bacon,” Withers says, “that was it. No more being a vegetarian. He really likes his pork products now.”

Hard-nosed photographer Amber Waterman isn’t a true vegetarian, but she has a dubious relationship with the magical meat nonetheless.

“I don’t eat pork,” she said. “Pork makes me sick. But I love bacon.”

Forage will hook you up with bacon if you’re jonesing for the stuff. If you’re jonesing but you want to stay off meat, they can take care of that, too. It’s called seitan and it’s basically fake bacon. If it were up to me, we’d call it facon, but nobody listens.

Made of yeast, wheat gluten, various seasonings and hickory smoke, it’s completely vegan but made to look and (sort of) taste like the real thing. It just might be enough to get you through the cravings.

“It’s still got the crunchiness,” Withers says, “and the saltiness.”

Nothing to joke about. But . . .

Gaffigan, the comic, has a whole bit (get it?) about bacon. It’s just good promotion, really – talk about something people love and you’re automatically the most popular guy in the room.

“The only bad thing about bacon is that it makes you thirsty,” Gaffigan quips in his stand-up act. “For more bacon!”

There might be a clue in Gaffigan’s use of bacon to appeal to the masses. Withers believes that at least part of the bacon phenomenon (baconenon?) stems from people simply following the trend – a few people rant about bacon and others feel compelled to join in the frenzy. One dog starts barking and the next thing you known, all the mutts across three neighborhoods are yapping, too.

It happens all the time. Right now, tiny mustaches tattooed along a finger (you hold it over your lip to appear mustachioed) are pretty darn popular. One person tried it, the rest of the world followed and a fad was born.

But can we call bacon a fad? It’s been popular (except among pigs) for a long time and the tide just keeps rising. In the world of culinary desires, bacon is king.

Yet I remain perplexed, and I’m not the only one.

“You can like bacon without talking about it all the time,” says Forage’s Rachel Legendre, who’s apparently heard it all. “I just don’t get it.”

The Bacon Bummer Report

* One slice of bacon is considered a full serving. Most Americans will eat 4 to 6 slices at one time.

* One slice of cooked bacon has 41 calories and three grams of fat, 1 gram of which is saturated fat.

* One slice of bacon has 3 grams of protein and 0 carbohydrates. The proteins present in bacon include all nine of the essential amino acids, making it a complete protein source.

* A single bacon slice has 188 milligrams of sodium, which is 8 percent of the recommended daily allowance. Bacon is generally considered a high-sodium food and is not recommended for individuals on a low-sodium diet.

* Because of its high sodium and saturated fat, bacon is usually considered an unhealthy food. High sodium has been linked to stroke and cardiovascular disease. High saturated fat has been linked to heart disease, cancer and weight gain.

Source: LiveStrong.com

Buckfield resident Phil Meyer’s fool-proof bacon

1. Procure cast-iron skillet. (Other skillets are allowed but will produce inferior results.)

2. Fry slices of bacon (thick cut is highly recommended) on medium-low heat until nearly done.

3. Move each slice as it’s finished to an oven-safe plate placed in a warm oven set at 145 degrees. “Warming” the bacon in the oven will caramelize it a bit, according to Meyer, and it will become more brittle. (This also gives the chef time to cook all the bacon so it can be served warm and family-style to the waiting hungry.)

Note: Meyer is an engineer by trade. His father was a butcher.

The Rules of Bacon, according to Facebook

1. There must always be bacon in the fridge. Always.

2. There does not exist a food that does not go well with bacon.

3. There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who like bacon and those who will be used as fodder in the case of a zombie apocalypse.

4. Even pigs like bacon. Fact.

5. Crispy and chewy are both acceptable ways to cook bacon. Thou shalt not discriminate.

6. Half of the world’s problems can be solved by cooking more bacon.

7. Bacon presents exactly zero health risks. Shut up.

8. If your computer is antiquated and slow, you can feed it bacon through the floppy drive to make it run faster.

9. Meals without bacon are rarely worth eating.

10. When given a Breathalyzer test, the number they give you is your BAC. This is short for “bacon” and is equal to the number of slices you should eat divided by 100.

11. Thou shalt always consume bacon on the Sabbath. And the Mondath and the Tuesdath and the . . .

12. Bacon gets you (extremely popular with the opposite sex).