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Category Archives: ponderings

Foodball: Football Improved

I think I’ve found a way to make football more interesting.

Collective gasp!  Football?  More interesting??  How is this possible?!  I’m sure all of you now think that I’ve completely lost my mind, both football fans and football unfans alike.

Now, some of you may be thinking that football is already a perfect game and it’s sacrilegious for me to even suggest that the greatest game on earth could possibly be improved upon.  Others of you probably think it’s absolutely ridiculous to think that a game in which grown men violently chase an inflated pigskin around a field could be anything but the epitome of stupidity.  The suggestion that I could even think to improve this game is completely laughable.

Well, yes.  But, you might recall that ridiculousness is a specialty of mine. I can make most anything ridiculous. I enjoy making things ridiculous.  As for being sacrilegious, I don’t particularly think that I am.  Football isn’t a religion, no matter how much you love it.  It’s a sport…that some grown men (and women, but mostly men) play seriously.  They very seriously chase a pigskin around on a field.

Well, I can improve upon this.  This all came about because my friend‘s team recently won the KNFL Championship of Korea.  His team is the Seoul Warriors.  They were playing against the Domino’s Breakers.  Yes.  Domino’s.  Yes, that Domino’s.  Their sponsor is Domino’s Pizza and for some reason, they’re known as the Domino’s Breakers.  The Warriors’ sponsor is Subway.  I don’t know why they aren’t the Subway Warriors.  I think that would be hilarious.  But I digress.

So, my suggestion is that the team’s cheerleaders (the KNFL has cheerleaders, right?) should use those silly t-shirt cannons and shoot their team’s sponsor’s foodstuffs at the opposing team in order to distract them.  See?  How is this not a good idea?  So in the case of the Subway Warriors v. Domino’s Breakers, the field should be littered with sandwiches and pizzas…and cookies and cheesy bread and salads and bread bowl pastas and chips and…well, you get the idea.

Now football, or foodball, would be a big food fight while grown men chase an inflated pigskin around a field.  And during halftime, maybe a Jared can come out and entertain the crowd.  Maybe a whole bunch of Jareds.  Maybe the cheerleaders can be dressed as Jared.  Jared is Subway’s mascot after all.  Domino’s can revive the Noid.  I think the cheerleaders should probably all dress as the sponsors respective mascots.  And then they can take the t-shirt cannons and shoot food onto the field.  Then the players will either try playing football or tackle each other for choice foodstuffs.  Maybe a player can use his opponent’s distraction over a delicious pizza flung his way and run past him unscathed with the inflated pigskin.

I don’t see how this isn’t an improvement over football as played now.  This makes the game so much more interesting.  But…I’m not sure whether or not the players will get severe abdominal cramps from exercising so soon after eating though.  Or whether or not they’ll all just get food coma and pass out on the field.  That might not make for a very interesting game.  Hmm…

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.