This conversation between myself and the Sicilian occurred approximately 20 minutes ago on the way back from Brooklyn. Somehow we were talking about these Fear Factor / Survivor type shows where contestants eat maggots and cow testicles and drink curdled milk. We don’t actually watch these programs, mind you, but they are part of the wallpaper, and we took them in somehow.
Verbal Chameleon: How can they eat raw cow testicles and not get sick?
The Sicilian: Man, I don’t know.
VC: I once knew a guy that was living among a tribe in Africa. He was given a piece of an animal’s heart or liver or some other organ in this ceremony; it was ritually important for everyone to eat it. So he did. Now he has Hepatitis or something. Some kind of Hepatitis you can’t get rid of.
TS: Hepatitis? Wow. I wonder if Zombies get that.
VC: Zombies?
TS: Yeah , you know. Zombies.
VC: But–what are Zombies, exactly? Dead people?
TS: Yeah, you know, the walking dead.
VC: Okay.
TS: So, you know, they eat all those livers, kidneys, all kinds of things. I wonder if they get Hepatitis.
VC: But they’re dead! They’re already dead. So what the heck does it matter if they catch a virus??? Anyway, don’t they eat everything? Or are they simply partial to the inner organs?
TS: I don’t know. I also wonder if they ever get enough, or if they just eat and eat and eat.
6 comments ↓
OOh, I like that guy!
Yeah, he gets me thinking about things I would not otherwise consider!
Great article and web site keep up the stupendance work!!
Okay, they’re dead. That doesn’t mean they can’t feel sick, does it? Speaking of food though, I’m often bemused by Australian country peoples’ aversion to eating offal. I get great bargains in meat, by buying things like liver, beef cheeks (indistinguishable from the best stewing steak in a stew, and only costing a couple of dollars a kilo), ox tongue, etc. etc. As a backpacker in Peru I have eaten sheep’s intestines (grilled) at streetside stalls, much to the revulsion of the American touristt I was ‘guiding’, and my old girlfriend Gai who grew up in the country, slaughtering and skinning sheep with nothing more than her teeth and a pocket knife, barfs, whenever I tell her how we loved it when my mother cooked tripe (boiled up lining of a sheep’s stomach, served with white sauce and onions … ). Zombies could survive quite well, I suspect, by just scavenging around the back of butchers’ shops.
PS: I imagine that if cows *did* have testicles their milk would probably be somewhat curdled.
Wrick,
d’Oh! You got me there.
I know you’re right about offal. but count me among the squeamish.
In my defense, I was a vegetarian for 10 years. But I’ve always found tripe in the supermarket especially peculiar-looking: it’s the one with all the holes, eh?
Jessica–
Welcome, and thanks. Looks like Wrick caught my stupen-ness.
We’re all malapropping today, eh?
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