Rant 45 / I Can't Believe It's Not Soylent Green!

Many ugly things have pretty names to enhance its attractiveness. Rocky mountain oysters, spam are just a few of such names that exist today. And Soylent Green, of course. What do they sound like to you, if you don't know what they are, exactly?

Rocky mountain oysters... some sort of oyster found in the mountains(omfg)?

Spam is Spam. Everyone knows what Spam is(the pork stuff, not the important emails from your boss).

Soylent Green.. sounds like some sort of biscuit?

Spam is made most parts of the pig, only excluding the ears, scalps, snouts, mucous membranes, sinews, genital systems, udders, intestines and urinary bladder. Which leaves us the "really edible" stuff like the lungs, heart, brains(?) and etc. And ham. Never forget the ham, lest you totally lose the desire for Spam.

Historically, the only part that has never been used in this family of products, is the pigs' penises. Just a little trivia.

Rocky mountain oysters are balls. Bulls' balls. Never a cow's balls cos that'd be a tranny's balls. And that's just so wrong.

Cows. Trannies. Sodomised bulls. And the chain goes on and on.

And Soylent Green! My favourite! It's fictional, but it sure sounds so interesting! It's made of people. The euthanized ones. Though at times I can imagine some would wish otherwise.

Well, there were other Soylents but they were never as popular as the Green version.

But what's wrong with offal? In Singapore alone you can find pigs' offal sold everywhere. It's an important part of the Chinese cuisine. In Hong Kong you can find barbecued cows' offal in the streets too. And they don't taste half bad!

There are worse things than eating these, if you find them distasteful at all in the first place. In the Philippines eggs with half-grown chicks in them are sold in the streets, boiled. Those who like this describe it as a 3-course meal. I can't remember exactly what these 3 courses are exactly except there's the soup and there's the main course. Go figure.

Of course I am interested in what this taste like. It's not like it's still alive. If you find this cruel, just think about what they do in abortions and you'll find this more acceptable. Or fresh seafood, for that matter.

In case you don't know how some types of fresh seafood are cooked, they are thrown into boiling water alive. Not all, just some.

Like certain shellfishes. Imagine the agony it goes through, being in the boiling water and not able to struggle at all.

Insects! That's one distasteful subject if it's seen as food. It's high in protein, no doubt. Thanks but no thanks, but I'll get my proteins from milk.

After all these "gross" stuff, all these boiling/eating things alive discussions, I can tell you for sure that if you think on what you see in those animal documentaries on Discovery or National Geographic Channel, you'd see that many animals in the wild are eaten alive.

Yes, most of them would be dead when they get eaten, but not all hungry animals are patient creatures. Like piranhas. Piranhas are edible, though it must take some guts to do that sort of fishing. You don't truly know what's a "frenzy" till you see them feed.

And after eating piranhas, the natives would save their jaws as cutters which they use for haircuts. Serious. It works.

Or snakes! Yea, snakes eat many things while they're still alive. They paralyze their preys and swallow them whole, which means if the prey doesn't suffocate soon enough, the stomach acids will have to do the rest. Which means a slow and painful death.

But this cruelty doesn't compare to what humans do to their food. How do you think they get sharks' fins? They catch that shark, cut it's fins off and throw it back. Alive. Where it's blood will probably attract other fishes, not excluding fellow sharks. Sharks are known to eat anything, even car tires. Since fishes need their fins to swim properly, it will die.

It will know it's injured and cannot escape other predators. It can struggle but it cannot win. And the other fishes will tear it apart alive, just like the rest of the preys.

Stop eating sharks' fins, if you want to help the world.

Stick with birds' nest, since it only kills humans. The careless ones.

Abalone is a strange food. It is hard to understand why anyone would want to pay hundreds of dollars to eat a big piece of shellfish. The rare ones are expensive only because they are rare, not because they are especially tasty. The reason for anyone to eat these abalones can be anything except for its delicious taste.

Abalones are good if they're boiled in water properly. There's no need to add much, maybe just some oyster sauce. You want to taste the abalone, not the chicken.

In case you don't understand, many restaurants use chicken soup to boil the abalones. But why the heck would you want chicken soup that's been boiled for days to cook the abalone with? And cook for hours? Yea it's definitely the essence of the chicken there, good stuff, but I want to taste the abalone, not the chicken.

It's like eating sushi with a fuckload of wasabi. Or noodles with the whole damned jar of chilli. You are losing the point of eating what you are eating, focusing too much on enhancing its taste to finally appreciate the work of the chef. If I were the chef, I'd feel insulted if you add too much of these "taste-enhancers" into what I cooked. It will mean you find the food unsatisfactory.

I see it as a good idea if you can eat that first bite without adding anything, unless recommended by the chef. This will give you an idea of how good the work is. The salt and pepper are there to improve the taste, and you should not mistake them for the main course.

As always there are people who do that, adding a hell of a lot of stuff to what they eat, mainly because they're there. These people are living in the wrong era. They belong to the post-WWII days when ketchup was a luxury of the rich, and the poor eat bark. Seriously, if you take things only because they're there for the taking, you should go for the recycling industry.

Maybe that's one reason why I really don't like cheaper buffets that are not ala carte. Call me spoilt. Call me sissy. But I don't like to push people, physically or not. I tend to hurt them when I do. It's some sort of a packaged deal. Comes with the "being big".

Reminds me of those times when I have middle-aged people squeeze into queues with me. Like going up buses or trains. I tend to move slowly so that I don't push anyone. I let the ladies go first 'cause they're easier to push down( if need be LOL!). I have a rough idea of what my "slight push" means to other weaker people. Kinda.

A few them have even stared at me and pushed past me to go for the seats! Well, if I have to choose between that and pushing them into the doors/gap, which results in them staring at me (or speak to me), I'll choose letting them push past me. I'm too lazy to rush for seats. I'm sure many of you should have seen people like that. It seems the seats are some sort of holy relic and when they sit down in them they can feel the presence of their gods.

I'm not talking about the really old ones. Those can't push anyway. WEAK!! But they're too old, so they have no choice. And most of the times I give them my seats, purely because I can see I'm the only one crazy enough to do so.

But it's a totally different matter when they demand seats from you while there are empty seats nearby. Once, some old geezer woke me up in the train and pointed at that damned sign. I looked around, stood up, and took the seat in front of me. IN FRONT OF ME!!! WTF MAN! If you're that old, stay home for fuck sakes!

It's precisely for these people that Soylent Green should exist. On one hand, we have old people here who are, sadly, seriously senile and cannot do anything on their own properly. On the other hand, we have starving people in Africa.

Since those old people are this senile, they probably won't know what happens if they die of carbon monoxide poisoning anyway. Or other "more orthodox" forms of euthanasia.

And since the starving people are hungry enough to eat anything, Soylent Green should be fine with them. Let us keep the flour and sugar. They can have the all-rounded food made of the most complex creatures in existence. Yea, see? They'd get the better side of the deal. While we keep only the carbohydrates and sugars, they get all the nutrients they will ever need. I just hope they remove the more disgusting bits first. Like the tumours.

And if they throw in all the bodies of people who have no kins and friends, the U.S should have an unlimited supply of Soylent Green right from the streets. And Iraq too, with that war killing the hundreds of thousands of people. Many of those probably died with their kins and friends anyway, so few living people will recognize them, let alone care about them.

This may seem heartless, but if you can only see for yourself what's happening out there, you will understand that this is not cruel at all.