Posted on 12/01/2006 2:33:53 PM PST by shrinkermd
We've got to stop feeding rendered animal leftovers to herbivores, period. It's already a pretty well-established vector for prion diseases -- like BSE (mad cow), srapie and kuru. It's a pretty much ideal delivery method to infect livestock, because their immune systems aren't equipped to resist. They aren't built to ingest other animals.
Oooh, fish-heads are a no-go for me.
Especially if they still have their eyes.
Or as they're called in south Georgia and north Florida (probably other places, but I can only speak to those two), possum on the half-shell.
I'm convinced that the word "delicacy" means "nasty stuff we had to eat a long time ago and got used to." That's the only explanation for people eating fish eyeballs, squirrel brains and chitlins. While I appreciate the cultural heritage, dude. This ain't Reconstruction. We've got a little money now, and there are some animals and some parts of the hog we can afford to throw away.
I once swore that I would never eat chicken livers or gizzards again. Someone else challenged me: What if you were starving, and all you had were livers and gizzards? My answer was that I'd have catfish for dinner. Chicken livers are good bait.
Great green gobs of greasy grimey gopher guts,
Mutilated monkey meat,
Itsy bitsy birdie feet,
"Little dirty birdie feet"
French fried eye-balls,
Rolling down a muddy street,
And I forgot my spoon!
"But I brought my straw ..." Slurping noises optional but recommended.
Very good response. Of course, you are correct and based on your statements I am found to be prejudice.
Thanks.
Of course, you are correct and based on your statements I am found to be prejudice.
No shame in that. Everyone has prejudices, and it would be impossible to get through the day without reaching snap judgments every minute. Eliminating prejudice is an impossible, and maybe even counter-productive, goal. The goal should be to recognize it and look past it.
For example, when I meet Asian people, my first instinct is that I expect them to have an accent and limited English skills. I grew up in the '70s, in a city that didn't have many Asians at the time, so most of the Asian kids I met in school were boat people or other recent arrivals, or first-generation Americans. That shaped my expectations.
Having lived and learned, I know that isn't a safe or factual assumption, but it's still there. I've met, worked with and dated Asians who grew up in this country, spoke English at least as well as I do, went to the high school down the road from mine, played in the marching band across the stadium from the one I played in, and whose families had been here about as long as mine, give or take a generation or two. They're every ounce as American as I am. My first-blush assumption isn't factual, but it's still there.
Here's ours:
Gobs and gobs of greasy grimey gopher guts,
Mutilated monkey meat,
Little dirty birdie feet
A one pint can of all-purpose porpoise pus
Floating in pink lemonade!
I am so glad to again be reading threads that offer some information rather than name-calling. I so hope FR takes the turn back to where it was when people exchanged this type of conversation. Thanks for your enlightenment and contribution to FreeRepublic.
Haven't heard that since 1959.
Sorry, but that is already the Registered Trademark of a certain establishment in New Orleans. ;-)
I saw capybara in the swamps in Northern Argentina when I was there. They are huge! Their tracks were the size of my whole hand.
"Longpork" is "polynesian" (rather overbroad statement, there) for human meat.
There are numerous reports of various former cannibalistic islanders, when encountering SPAM for the first time, who consistently reported that SPAM tasted like longpork.
SPAM remains extremely popular in the islands --- in part for this reason, perhaps, or, more likely because, given the islands' remoteness and questionable electricity, potted meat is a necessary part of the diet.
An alternative explanation is that "long pork" got the name because pork is the main meat eaten in the South Pacific, other than seafood, at least. When you ask folks, "what does it taste like," their first reference is going to be to something familiar. Which is why any weird thing Americans eat almost always "tastes like chicken."
SPAM is popular in places where pork is a dietary staple, because it's easy to prepare and, if we can drop our snobbishness long enough to admit it, pretty darn tasty. Not to mention that it's nice and greasy, and if you're used to your pork being dry and tough, that's pretty nice.
Not to digress too far, but cannibalism is a thorny problem for anthropologists. In the 19th century and before, Westerners were pretty well prepared to believe any story about cannibalism wherever they heard it. Problem is, if you're an islander, and you want these pale people with their big shiny spears and their boom-sticks to take out your rivals on the next island, you tell them those folks are cannibals.
Then, in the 20th century, the scholarly pendulum swung the other way. More and more scholars became convinced that cannibalism was never a widespread or long-standing practice anywhere.
It happened, and could happen today, in dire survival circumstances like Albert Packer or the Donner Party or the Uruguayan rugby team. And it's practiced as a terror tactic in wartime, which was proven pretty incontrovertibly at Chaco Canyon; I won't get into the gross details unless someone asks. But as an ordinary part of everyday life, evidence of it is scant and anecdotal.
I've seen video of an African funeral rite, where young people are asked to eat a bit of their recently-deceased ancestor's flesh, to absorb his strength and wisdom. A pinch, no wider than a dime, clearly symbolic and not nutritional. And yet these kids are gagging, choking it down with more discomfort than I ever had eating a brussels sprout. That suggests, at least, that cannibalism is a universal and instinctive taboo, even in cultures where it's been a ritual for centuries.
As far as Polynesian tales of cannibalism go, they're a little dodgy, too. Western explorers used to have the patronizing assumption that "natives" couldn't possibly have the wit or guile to mess with their heads. But it doesn't take an Oxford education to figure out "Oooh! See how wide his eyes got when I joked about us eating our dead? That scares him. We can work with that."
Eat which? If I had to choose between broccoli and iguana, I'd have to ask whether I'd have cheese sauce and how the iguana was marinaded. Even then, it would be a tough call.
I don't know if they're friendly, or if they can be leash-trained, but if so I would love to have a pet capybara. Just to watch folks wig out. And I bet there aren't any zoning rules against it, just because no one thought of it before.
Now, getting one into the country is a whole 'nother matter.
Since they are hunted for food, they're skittish around humans. Best to get a young one.
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