Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Teddy Bear
The British TV adventurer, Bear Grylls, has said he would order his son to eat him if they were stranded in the jungle without food. For this statement alone, he should be banished from the rainforests of the world and forced to live on milk and cookies for the rest of his life. A self-described “survival expert” who cannot find food in the jungle is a worthless humbug. We gorillas think of our habitat as a giant salad with plenty of protein snacks available if you don’t mind putting wriggly things in your mouth.
One has to pity his son, of course. I don’t know how old he is, but the thought that he might one day have to chomp on his daddy’s carcass must be giving him nightmares. I dare say it’s also ruined his appetite. A big-headed TV personality like Grylls no doubt believes that his flesh is tasty, but its flavour is probably no better than porcupine or wart hog. If he’s really serious about the whole thing, he ought to cut a piece of meat from his rump and try it himself. Don’t ask your child to eat something you wouldn’t touch yourself.
Now cannibalism is a dark dietary practice from man’s primeval past, so far removed from the experience of modern humans that one rarely finds it discussed. My friend Harry Hutton, the roving English teacher, explored the topic in one of his early blog posts by posing the following question:
You are trapped on a desert island with the Spice Girls. Food and rum have run out. You are weak from hunger and there is no hope of rescue. Which Spice Girl would you eat first? (Scroll down to vote).
As a vegetarian gorilla I abstained from the vote on principle. My favourite Spice Girl is Ginger, and she’s certainly the one I’d prefer to nibble if someone put a gun to my head. But eating her flesh would be out of the question. The problem with polls of this sort is that they involve a moral paradox. The Spice Girl you’d most like to bite should the last one you’d actually want to devour if you’re not utterly devoid of sentiment in confronting such dilemmas.
Scenes involving cannibalism are mercifully rare in the movies. The only example I can think of is the ending of a film called The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Helen Mirren’s lover has been murdered by the gangster who owns her, so she takes revenge by forcing him to eat her lover’s body, expertly cooked by a gourmet chef. As the gangster feels the vomit rising in his throat, she encourages him to sample the dish by saying:
“Try the cock – it’s a delicacy. And you know where it’s been.”
There should have been a warning before the closing credits that this remark was facetious and not based on culinary research. A man’s todger contains no muscle tissue and doesn’t even qualify as offal. You’d be a fool to try it.
Labels: Bear Grylls, cannibals, Ginger Spice, Helen Mirren, Spice Girls, todger
Monday, October 08, 2012
Would you eat this woman?
Her name is Clarissa 'The Fat Lady' and you don’t have to answer my question. I pose it purely because Brian May, the guitarist and ex-Queen, has advocated tucking into her flesh. Not because he thinks she’s tasty, I should hasten to add. His gastronomic advice was a response to her suggestion than humans should eat badgers, a species for which his affection is unbounded. I suppose he thinks people who’ve eaten Clarissa would have little appetite left for furry woodland creatures. She’s certainly got enough meat on her, although one fears it may be on the tough side.
Much as I admire Brian’s passion for the cause, I do have reservations about his tactics. Frankly, I don’t think telling people to eat fat ladies will gain much traction. The heyday of human cannibalism is long past. Names like Sawney Bean and Malietoa Uilamatu will echo through history as reminders of a golden age when men chopped up their enemies and put them into cooking pots. The humans of today have far weaker stomachs than those man-eating titans. Few will even consider eating each other unless they’re close to starvation.
I’m not convinced that championing the rights of badgers is good tactics either. From what I’ve heard, they are bad-tempered varmints who will happily make a meal of any critter that crosses their path. He who lives by the fang shall die by the fang. Why not campaign on behalf of cows and sheep instead? All they do is eat grass and look stupid. No one ever died from getting a stupid look.
In truth, I wonder whether pop stars do more harm than good for the causes they support. Look at that fellow Sting. He was supposed to be saving the rainforest at one time, but soon got side-tracked into tantric sex and other fatuous pastimes. As a result, people began to see the rainforest as one of his fads rather than an entity worthy of salvation. And why the hell does he call himself 'Sting' anyway? There's nothing cool about a painful prick that shoots out of a bee's arse.
Admittedly Brian May is a cut above Sting, having acquired a first degree in astrophysics and a PhD in guitar-string maintenance. The man is clearly an intellectual, and we surely have him to thank for words like ‘Gallileo’, ‘Figaro’ and ‘Fandango’ appearing in 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. Yet all this erudition doesn’t make him an expert on badgers, ecology or the eating of fat ladies.
The only way of getting accurate information on zoological topics is to consult an unsentimental naturalist who writes down what he sees in his notebook. The role model I have in mind is Dr George Murray Levick, a member of Captain Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. He observed the mating habits of penguins and was shocked by the orgy of debauchery, necrophilia and buggery he witnessed. That didn’t stop him writing it all down though. Never become an animal’s advocate until you know all its dirty secrets.
Labels: badgers, Brian May, cannibals, Fat Lady, penguins
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Barking up the wrong tree
How disappointing to hear that an American Mom got sent to the loony bin for impersonating her 15-year-old daughter. This continual blurring of the line between madness and eccentricity will cast a blight over human society. All the 34-year-old woman did was go back to school so she could become a cheerleader. There’s nothing remotely potty about that and I can’t see how she was inconveniencing anyone. On the contrary, I bet her bodily gyrations inspired the beefy footballers far more than the usual girlie whirling. In a heavy contact sport you need the curvy flesh of a mature woman to encourage the home team to get stuck in.
I never call anyone mad unless their urges have a self-destructive edge. A good example of a real nutter was that German fellow who agreed to let a cannibal eat him. After dining together on his severed penis (no more than an appetiser, one would assume), the cannibal killed him and feasted on his body. So apart from the penis hors d’oeuvre, the victim was plainly unable to enjoy whatever pleasure there was in the act. That put the seal on his condition as far as I was concerned. A lunatic in his right mind would have demanded that the cannibal eat him alive.
People often assume that the tyrants of human history were mad, but I reckon this was rarely the case. A lot of them, like Caligula, were just plain bad, and a few others had some physical illness that made them act strangely. Take King George III of England for example. He’s known as the mad king, but he actually had a rare disease that turned his urine blue. I know for a fact that passing blue water makes humans cantankerous, because I once had dealings with an old gypsy woman who briefly suffered from this condition. She was a prickly character from the start to be honest, but once her piss turned blue she started cackling like a demented witch. Fortunately I managed to resolve my differences with her peacefully.
If you enjoy listening to poppycock, the most entertaining mental disorder is paranoia. I remember sitting alone in Dr Whipsnade’s lounge when I was joined by his houseguest, an antique dealer by trade.
“Rainy weather,” I said, making polite conversation.
“I like the rain,” he replied, “it gives me the chance to stock up on fresh water.”
“Isn’t your house connected to the mains supply?” I asked.
He then gave me a vehement sermon on the dangers of drinking tap water. He said that it was doped with chemicals to make men infertile and women insatiable. This allowed select breeding males, most of them freemasons, to impregnate women at their leisure and populate the next generation with their offspring. “Have you ever seen a freemason drink tap water?” he asked rhetorically. “They all buy the bottled stuff from Tesco.”
I thought it best not to argue with him. These delusional types have a rebuttal for every critique and I didn’t want him to accuse me of being a freemason.
“I am both fascinated and disturbed by your discourse,” I said truthfully. “If you don’t mind, I would now like to watch a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon on TV.”
“If you’re turning on that contraption I’m off to the conservatory,” he said. “People who watch television don’t realise that the television is also watching them.”
This assertion made me feel like Foghorn Leghorn – that rooster was always dealing with creatures crazier than himself.
Labels: cannibals, cheerleaders, Foghorn Leghorn, madness
