@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 09/03/99 -- Vol. 18, No. 10
Table of Contents
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@lucent.com Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@lucent.com HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@lucent.com HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@lucent.com Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper. All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
Relax, this is my final week on sausaging, the practice of chopping things up finely, forming them, and pretending they were the original item.
I used to throw boomerangs. Boomerangs are an example where you have the sausage issue. I used to get my boomerangs from Australia. They were made of wood and hand-carved. You knew you had a piece of quality in your hand. But then a company with the dignified name Wham-o, best known for making hula-hoops and Frisbees, started making boomerangs out of plastic. I tried a plastic boomerang. They work but they are sausage all the way. The difference is like that of a good steak or a cheap hot dog. They had made it from what was essentially decomposed animal remains rather than from a living, noble tree. They didn't plane it. They vacuum-formed it. It took all the fun out of the sport.
Every day we see more and more creeping sausagism. Consider fish sticks, Tator Tots, fruit rollups, and turkey loaf. And let's not even mention gefilte fish. Please.
Next time you order French fries and get deep-fried mashed potato sticks (as I think happens at a certain unidentified restaurant chain I will simply call _urger _ing) just remember what I told you. Sausaging is just another sacrifice we are being asked to make in our environment. It is one more step away from nature and down the road of an artificial and plastic life.
Primitive man did not have this problem, you know. He took things pretty much as he got them from nature. He might do some chipping to make a tool by forming a stone, but the rock was still a single solid piece.
I suppose the first step in the wrong direction seemed like a good idea at the time. It was probably something like baking bread. I guess they made one big loaf out of stalks of grain. Ancient Egypt may have been the first place to do serious sausaging, but if so they kept it a secret a good long time. We have this image of perfectly cut stones being assembled by huge numbers of people to create pyramids. Modern theories say that might not be what happened at all. The pyramids may have been sausaged. Ground stone mixed with a sort of cement might have made a fluid that was then poured into molds. That would explain why the stones fit together so perfectly. If they were just quickly poured they are not nearly as impressive are they? But doesn't that take a lot of the romance out of the pyramids? Of course it should be remembered that they also invented paper. That was the grinding up of reeds and forming them into flat sheets to make paper. That qualifies as sausaging also, I guess. There is nothing particularly romantic about sausage.
We have to resist this attack on our quality of life. Don't accept a ground-up and form-fitted substitute for something real. And the first step is to realize that things like turkey loaf and Pringles Potato Chips are a degradation in our quality of life. Accept only real products.
Now see, that was an issue you did not even know existed. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards
who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
-- August Strindberg