Anyway, all the gratuitous info about my cold is only to introduce what I've been *doing* in my current dragged-out, brain-dead state: revisiting Hack (Nethack), a favorite game from my teenage years that I rediscovered online a couple of years ago. And by now, there's a Wiki that goes along with it. I'm sure some of you have known about this game for years, and also whiled away countless hours as a 15-year-old at it, in that year before the driver's license changed everything (in my case, it made sneaking out of the house with friends for 2am trips to Dunkin' Donuts de rigeur).
Lately, J and I have also been revisiting another fun thing from my past: repeated watchings of Broadcast News. She's got a knack for remembering William Hurt's character's lines, which is nice, since I'm best at Holly Hunter's, with Albert Brooks' a fairly close second. But--as Ann will be happy to hear--we have not gotten up to any related antics, like putting Barbie dolls in Mason jars and labeling them "Paul canned me"! Now we're wondering if there's a Facebook group for BN fans--but I'm too busy procrastinating in other ways to join it, even though several folks have 'invited' me to.
You would think from all this that I'm not doing any schoolwork at all at all--but in fact, I have been working on a new draft of my dissertation proposal, and cold willing, have a meeting about that tomorrow. I've also been reading Hayden White's Metahistory, though I doubt I'll bother with the whole thing.
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Still in atonement for my mis-step into stereotype of a week or so ago, today I happened to run across this.
(Note: This link is definitely NSFMT. That would be Not Safe for Meal Time. You have been warned.)
So maybe I wasn't so far off the mark after all.
I'd eat a squirrel if I weren't pretty sure I'd have an allergic reaction--I *loved* the taste of rabbit...which, alas, gives me the allergic reaction. Drat.
I'm confused, though, John: you weren't far off the mark about squirrels being edible? Or are you making some sort of commentary on English people being rednecks because rednecks eat squirrels (and, by extension, people from the rural South are rednecks and therefore must eat squirrels?)? (I'd watch your back if that's what you mean--I've a few English readers out there! :-)
I don't intend to be silencing you here, John--just trying to figure out what it is you actually do mean.
Incidentally, I think the topic came up when I was writing about Survivorman--and where he was, in the canyons of, I think, Utah, the squirrel he ate was significantly sketchier than what I imagine a grey squirrel running around in Nottingham Forest would be like. The Utah squirrel was scrawny and potentially afflicted with all sorts of ills, including hanta virus and--get this--bubonic plague, both of which are endemic in that area. So in order to eat it safely, he had to char it nearly beyond recognition. Quite the far cry from the cute little pancakes in that article!
What I meant was that maybe I wasn't so far off the mark in suggesting that you could frighten away your own squirrel pests by reminding them that humans have been known to eat squirrels. You could I suppose leave a copy of this Daily Mail article around for them to see, although I don't know if squirrels in New York are smart enough to read. They aren't around here, AFAIK, but New York squirrels may be different.
Sorry to have touched a nerve with an innocent and not obviously well-thought-out attempt at a bit of humor. Truce?
Apology accepted!
I haven't been out in the last couple of days to check on the plants, but I haven't noticed any squirrels hanging out--maybe they're starting to concentrate more on getting ready for the winter than on playing around in my herbs. I certainly hope so, because I too don't think they can read. Otherwise, maybe I should have put little notes on the plants saying, "Feck off, squirrels!"....
How about "Feck off, squirrels, before I feck you into something!"?
I might actually like the taste of squirrel and/or rabbit myself, but I'd probably have to be faked into eating it by having it show up inside a stew or something where I don't know what it is. I think maybe the reason I'm not wild about dark meat chicken or turkey is because the body part that it comes from is too recognizable for what it is, i.e. a body part. Big slabs of meat or even chicken breasts don't seem to have me thinking in that way. But still, that wouldn't explain why I have no qualms about eating big slices of white meat Thanksgiving turkey right after seeing a big bird trussed up on the table. Go figure. Probably I'd have ended up a vegetarian if I hadn't been trained to eat meat at a very young age. Although bacon might have converted me to meat even then, if ever I got a taste of it...
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