58.0°,
Partly Cloudy Delicious hors d’oeuvres, a chip off the old block
Please don’t tell me we are what we eat, because that would mean a guy I read about is actually a USB storage device. He was in the process of using a flash drive to steal information from an ATM when the cops broke in. He swallowed the device and had to give it up the hard way at the insistence of police.
But that isn’t as disgusting as the man who wrote an essay in Time magazine last week detailing his travels in the wilds of some far-flung undeveloped country. He said that, deep in the jungle, he sat down with village elders and was offered the local beverage, as a tribute and honor. He was told the drink was made of juice and human saliva. His gag reflex went into overdrive. Nevertheless, he refused to refuse.
Perhaps poison darts or large pointed spears were involved, I don’t know. But he drank it down to the last drop, with the locals beaming their approval. He said he tried to think about all the girls he had French kissed as inspiration. Somehow — I don’t know — kissing and drinking spit from a bowl in the jungle don’t compute for me.
Some years ago, my parents threw a cocktail party at their place in Florida. Believe me, my mom doesn’t stint in the hors d’oeuvres department. There were plenty of egg rolls and pigs and blankets to go around. Nevertheless, one man took my dad aside to ask where they had bought the delicious chips he was shoveling in by the handful. Awkward moment. My dad had bought the wood “chips” at a florist. The guy was eating the table decorations.
Contestants on reality shows regularly and voluntarily consume living, squirming bugs and reptiles and still-warm animal innards for 15 minutes of TV fame. (Note to future historians: This was the beginning of the end of civilization as we knew it.)
The weirdest thing I ever ate was a chocolate-covered grasshopper, which pretty much tasted like a Nestle Crunch. Very nice, indeed. Of course, all of us have unknowingly eaten vast numbers of unmentionable parts of insects, varieties of toxic agents and heaven knows what else in the food we regularly buy and eat from supermarkets and restaurants.
