It's a funny old world...
"What could be tastier for lunch than a whole pig's head, yellow teeth
and all, cooked for twelve hours in our blend of thirty herbs and
spices, and served piping hot with piglet-shaped dumplings as a
garnish, and noodles hanging out of the earholes and nostrils?" asked
Shen Qing, as he welcomed Western reporters to his Baked Pig Face
restaurant at Beijing airport. "And if you want side dish, why not
try some delicious roast ox penis, and wash it down with a mug of
frothy beer laced with pig blood?"
In an attempt to counter the recent invasion of Beijing by McDonald's
and Kentucky Fried Chicken, Shen Qing has opened seven Baked Pig Face
restaurants in the capital during the past year, all serving the same
meal.
"Look at my happy customers, each hunched over a steaming plate of
hog's head, split in half and laid side-down on a platter.
Connoisseurs eat just about every part of the head - cheeks, eyes,
snout, lips, tongue, brains, and squeak. The brains are the most
nourishing part of the dish, you know, because they make you
smarter."
"We sell more than five thousand pig faces each month, you know, and
business is booming. Look at my waitresses, all wearing caps with the
Pig Face logo on it, and helping customers to roll their little
pancakes around the meat. The herbs we use to cook the meat cut
through the grease and aid digestion, you know. It's all very
scientific. Remember, we Chinese invented gunpowder and movable type,
you know, then saw you foreigners steal the ideas and claim them as
your own, but never again. I have already patented this dish, you
know, so now you can only sell it if you buy a franchise, you know."
- The Globe and Mail [Toronto], 15/5/99. (Spotter: Wallace Brown)
"KLM Royal Dutch Airlines offers its most sincere apologies to animal
lovers and to all those offended by recent events," said KLM
spokesman Joessef Eddiei in an unprecedented public statement. "We
made a grave ethical mistake when we threw four hundred and forty
live Chinese squirrels into a shredding machine, and we deserve
criticism from the public and from animal rights groups. However, we
had little choice, because they had been shipped illegally to
Schiphol airport from China, and arrived without proper
documentation. And it may sound strange, but dropping the squirrels
into a commercial poultry shredder was actually the most humane way
to destroy them. They felt no more pain than you or I would, were we
thrown into a shredder."
- Brisbane Courier Mail, 17/4/99. (Spotter: Norm Reynolds)
"The police were called to Whangarei Ward at the Aged Care Centre in
Kaikohe because a fight had broken out," Senior Sergeant Maurice
Loveridge told a New Zealand court, "and when they arrived, they
could see that the two elderly accused men had just been involved in
an almighty punch up." Both were covered in blood, their clothes were
torn, one had a broken nose and half his hair ripped out, and the
other one had a broken arm and a hypodermic needle stuck into his
penis. Furniture and equipment had been smashed flat, beds had been
overturned, and the other patients on the ward were all terrified.
"However, the fight took place in a ward full of elderly Alzheimer's
patients, and it has gradually become clear that nobody can remember
what happened, or who was responsible. One patient keeps repeating
the phrase 'we ought to have more manure,' but frankly that gives us
no clue. The two accused men do not recognise each other, nor do the
other patients, and the ones who initially reported the incident to
us had forgotten that there even was a fight by the time we tried to
question them. Therefore, because nobody can now recall the incident,
the Police Prosecution Department has reluctantly decided to withdraw
the case against both men."
- Southland Times [New Zealand], 25/2/99. (Spotter: Paul Bigland)
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