Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Fine, fat, fake sausages

Today's word of the day is a horrifying, terrifying, happifying bedshitter of a beast: "pseudo-sausage." At the moment, Google can find this word on 54 websites, and I guess that number just went up to 55.

Sausage is a scary enough concept by itself. Scientists searching for a unified theory of everything in the universe might want to give sausage some thought--is there anything that couldn't conceivably have a greasy future as sausage? Perhaps what unites all living beings is the chance--sometimes far-fetched but never 0%--that we could end up as sausage someday.

The word "pseudo-sausage" seems to have gotten a big boost from Joan Rivers, who said the following in an ad for PETA that shows up on several web pages: "This year, you can pig out at Passover--you can put some pork on your fork, and it's kosher! I'm not talking about eating a dead pig--I'm talking about fakin' bacon, pseudo-sausage, pigless pork chops, and the wave of wonderful new mock meats in supermarkets everywhere.'

As pigs everywhere sigh in relief, the rest of the universe must be shuddering: when you take a type of food that already could be made of absolutely anything, and then remove the one ingredient that could most often be counted on (pork), what does that leave us with? An existential, gastrointestinal nightmare or just a nummy, not-quite-meaty breakfast? Only my proctologist knows for sure.

No comments: