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Monthly Archives: December 2011

Something Rotten

Another Thursday Next book.  There are two books left that I haven’t read.  Well, two that are already published.  There’s one that’s slated to be published in 2012.

Also, I’ve decided I’m just going to go with  SPOILER WARNING and that’s it.  Now I can actually write about the book I read instead of trying to make the post sound like the blurb on the jacket of the book.

Now then, Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde.

So, Thursday is now a mother and in dire need a vacation.  You might recall that her entering into Bookworld was supposed to be a vacation, or really maternity leave, but instead she ended up battling the corruption inside Bookworld itself and even ended up becoming the head of Jurisfiction, which is like SpecOps 27 but inside books.  You actually may not recall this because I don’t think I ever mentioned it, but that’s what happened.  And now she’s ready for a vacation.  What do you do when you need a vacation from Bookworld?  Apparently, if you’re real and not a character, you go back to the real world.

The thing is, Thursday’s husband is still eradicated, so she had to fight to get him back.  Hamlet is having something of a crisis, so she had to babysit him in the real world.  The Jurisfiction agents Thursday left in charge still need a bit of hand holding.  Friday, Thursday’s child, is in his terrible twos and childcare is hard to be found.  Benevolent (but not really) Corporation has gone wild and declared themselves a religion.  And then there’s the problem of Yorrick Kaine, leader of the Whig party.  Yes, the Whig party.  Turns out, he’s fictional but has somehow managed to be right at the cusp of dictatorship of alternate reality 80’s England.  So interesting how that works.  And of course, the fate of the world depends on a championship croquet match.

Thursday does not know how to take vacations.

Well-marbled USians

This article was from awhile ago but I’m feeling uninspired and I pulled the most inspiring topic I had in the idea pool.  Maybe not so much as inspiring as ridiculous.  Anyway…

If you didn’t read the article, the author, Larry Doyle, wrote a tongue-in-cheek warning about our blooming world population and how it’s taxing our limited resources.  He makes some some interesting suggestions about what we should do about it; the most interesting (to me) is how he says that as the world population grows, it provides more incentive for man-eating aliens to attack us and eat us.  He then mentions that Americans (or USians, as I prefer) would probably be the most appetizing as they are well-marbled.  Well…that’s the part I have some issue with.  Note that I don’t take issue that we may be procreating ourselves to death by alien attack and consumption, but that he says that USians are well-marbled.

Marbling refers to meat that contains some intramuscular fat.  Marbling happens in cattle because they’re fed a lot of grains.  Cows aren’t really made to eat grains.  They’re supposed to eat grass.  But I digress.

So, I don’t think USians are well-marbled.  I don’t think USians would make very good steaks.  There may be some marbling, as we do eat a lot of grains, but mostly in the form of high fructose corn syrup.  At any rate, I would argue that actually USians would provide the man-eating aliens something more like fatback or pork belly or bacon.  You’ve seen those USians with the large percentage of abdominal fat.  That fat isn’t contained within muscle.  It’s just a ring of fat.  Around your middle.  At best, I think USians would be providing the aliens with things like salt pork, which I guess would be more like salt human, or something.

That brings up another issue.  Cows prepared for consumption are called beef.  Pigs prepared for consumption are called pork or ham or bacon…why do pigs have so many different names?  Anyway, if aliens are preparing humans for consumption, what are they called?  Chicken is still called chicken.  Actually, all poultry seem to retain their names even after they’re prepared for consumption.  Sheep don’t though.  They become mutton.  It occurs to me that you could have a roast lamb or roast pig.  It must be that if you can serve the whole animal, it retains its name even after being prepared for consumption. Erm…got distracted.  But, if aliens aren’t eating a whole human, what is a human prepared for consumption called?

And if you’re wondering if USians would be providing anything else besides the human equivalent of salt pork, fatback, bacon, etc, I think they would.  Livers that aren’t scarred by cirrhosis could be harvested for fois gras.  I would suggest that aliens could eat ribs, but I’m not sure how much meat are on ribs.  I know there’s the saying that some meals can be so hearty that they stick to your ribs, but do aliens want to eat all these previously consumed meals on their ribs?  Anyway, if nothing else, the aliens could make USians into soylent green.