Human Centipede and The Meat's Ends
(this blog post isn't what you think its about)
We're not an entirely vegan household. Vegan Lawyer Girlfriend is obviously. Since I do all the grocery shopping and all the cooking, out of practical necessity, the majority of our meals are either entirely vegan or vegan with sometimes a chicken breast or turkey sausage on the side; there's no way I'm buying two of everything. Except for cheese (vegan cheese still needs improvement), lunch meat for the boy and I, and whatever I put on the side on rare occasions, everything else is vegan: butter, milk, all ingredients.
So when VLGF goes away, as she did recently, the boy and I get to indulge a bit in our old carnivorous ways. No pork of course** but a giant roast on clearance or a turkey isn't out of the question.
At the grocery store deli counters you used to be able to buy the bits and sorts left over – you know, the heel or butt of the salami, or that two slices they took off to make your order 400g exactly. While most deli meat might run you $2-3 per 100g, the “ends” were like $0.99 / 100g. Which fit my frugal budget perfectly and I used to get the bits 'n ends all the time for my sandwiches. (and it was always a treat. Literal “mystery meat”. Sometimes it was macaroni and cheese loaf (meh) and sometimes it was prosciutto (score!))
Here in Canada, when mandatory nutritional labeling came in a decade or so ago, all the big grocery stores stopped selling the ends; while the nutritional labels for each meat were printed automatically by the scale, they have no way of knowing what meats were in THIS bag of ends. So they just stopped doing it to not run afoul of the inspectors.
Recently I've been trying to boycott Loblaws brand stores (because fuck those guys), so that means no more Valu-Mart right around the corner.
We do have a great Farmer's Market in town – 3 actually. And several Farm Boys; but they're all as pricey if not more expensive than Loblaws. But there is Central Fresh Mart. Its not easy to get to sometimes but everytime I go I forget how good it is. Their meat department is phenominal.
So anyway, I'm in Central the other day and I see THEY have the deli meat ends so I'm like fuck yes and I buy some. The boy and I are making our sandwiches this morning and I finished one package of ends and said something like “oh, its the End of Meat” (I think John Scalzi's End of All Things popped into my head). And then we started joking about They're Made of Meat, which is an old Terry Bisson short story (which has been adapted several times).
“I think it works better as The Ends of Meat or The End of Meat” said the boy. “hrmm. maybe The Meat's Ends”.
“The Meat's Ends. heh... the Ends Justify the Meats.”
“oo!” said he, “The Meat's Ends: Its about the people in the human centipede just trying to get by after the events of the movie***. Like how do they take the bus? Would they need a handicapped parking pass? How do they stand in line at the DMV? What would their coworkers say about them behind their back in the office? Look, its just 3 ordinary people sewn together mouth to anus trying to make their way in the world.” and then we fell about laughing for 10 minutes straight.
Ok maybe it seemed funnier this morning.
** – the agreement is VLGF looks the other way on meat in the house so long as its not pork or veal. And no fish (she had to clean the fish cleaning hut at her family's camp, it was traumatizing). We're slowly reducing our animal usage, we only have meat maybe 1 out of 5 meals now.
*** yeah I know two of them die.