THE GURGLING COD

Three meats of the apocalypse

This snap, from the good people at TTL, gets more disturbing the longer you consider it.

Is it a giant lobster and chicken hanging out with a regular-sized cow? Is it a really small cow, and regular-sized lobster and chicken? Moreover, why are they such good friends. If they are above water, how does the lobster breathe, or perhaps the lobster has dragged chicken and cow to a watery grave? Do they know where the truck is going? In any event, it's just another Guiteau Monday.

A plague on both their clam shacks

Slow out of the box, what with the crushing of the spirits of youth and all, but never too late for a Guiteau Monday. First, an out-of-court settlement in the Case of the Purloined Clam Shack Concept. There really seems to be no winning with this one. It's pretty clear that Ed McFarland ripped off a lot of ideas from Rebecca Charles, but also clear that the lawsuit is without merit, as its own assertion of "plagiarism" indicates. According to Eater "Charles sued McFarland last summer for plagiarizing her restaurant concept," but it is not clear to me how one can plagiarize a restaurant concept. A restaurant concept can be original in a particular case, but in general, there is not the presumption of an original idea, executed by an author, that one has in, say, novels. As something that can be plagiarized, "restaurant concept" seems about like a lawsuit claiming that someone has plagiarized your "lifestyle." (Peter O'Toole, but I digress.) 

Further, it is not even clear to me that plagiarism, qua plagiarism is illegal per se. If I claim authorship of a work in the public domain, say, Moby-Dick, I am a jackass, and might lose my job, depending on what it is but what law have I broken?

Unfortch, it seems like the one had the deeper pockets than the other, and there's a settlement, rather than a conversation. To make matters worse, recognizing the groundless nature of the suit puts one in the position of rooting for the underdog, who clearly ripped off his former boss in a tacky, but not illegal, way. However, it's hard to imagine rustling up a legal defense fund for this case.

And to make matters worse, the butterfly wreath. A sixty-nine dollar juggernaut of mumsyness from the good folks at W-S!

You know what to to with this

Blogging can kill you. This article has all of the logical rigor of that guy who gets sampled in Mylo's "Destroy Rock and Roll" calling for the hellfire of eternal damnation to descend on Herbie Hancock and Huey Lewis and the News. Hate the player, not the game, seems a propos here, if player means "high pressure job with long hours" and game means "the Internet." Back when Ann Landers was alive, the Internet was wrecking marriages, and now it's moved on to killing people. And last week, I swear the Internet's dog took a shit on my lawn! I never got much traction with Clog for "corporate blog," but it seems worth pointing out that a website with  links and content that are updated now and again by someone has about as much to do with working on Denton's farm, or equivalent, as flyfishing along the Ottaqueechee has to do with working in a fish cannery. Like Noni says, please fuck me ever so gently with the shiny new Stihl MS260 pictured below.

Achtung, Baby

Zoe Williams comes through and grabs the coveted Guiteau Monday tag with a blistering takedown of food culture, ca. 2008. To  wit:

Just take one example in this week's news - medics are, apparently, worried about "drunkorexics", which is to say people (generally young women) who offset the calories they imbibe through booze by not eating during the day. Now, people with eating disorders frequently suffer from other addictions - among them, to alcohol - but that has been common knowledge for decades. There is no new evidence here at all; a story like this is simply an example of this persistent urge we have to pathologise our relationship with food.

Obesity only ever comes in "epidemics". "Orexia", I believe, will soon be an umbrella term for any life-threatening disease that only exists in the imaginations of cultural pundits. It will be very annoying for actual anorexics, but they will be too busy not eating to notice. We aggrandise simple things - greed on the one hand, dieting or even plain calorie-counting on the other - because we cannot otherwise justify the feverish seriousness with which we approach this straightforward business.

The whole thing, is pretty much like this, reminding me simultaneously of the noise a grenade makes in the old school Apple 2e version of Castle Wolfenstein, and when Rakim slams it when it's done and makes sure it's broke.

A bullshit sundae

With so much to celebrate, a shame to roll out the Guiteau Monday category, but now and again the effedupness of something warrants a post, even if it impinges on crucial porch time. Gus Rancatore, owner of Toscanini's Ice Cream, or someone on his behalf, has started a website to raise money to "save"  his business, which was seized for tax delinquency. It is good ice cream, but it is a business, rather than, say a shelter for battered women, a school, or free health clinic. Supporting local businesses means exchanging money for goods and services that they provide, not giving them money when they fuck up their taxes. I'd be sad to see it go, but Cristina's Ice Cream  is an easy walk.

Hey Paula! Do you have Prince Albert in a Can? No? Just exploited workers? Kay, thanks, bye.

And now that you are firmly in the Christmas Spirit, build on that warm glow with one of the few opportunities to work for social justice and make prank calls -- simultaneously. The good folks at Justice at Smithfield have set today as the day to give ol' Paula Deen a jingle and ask her why she continues to pimp for an outfit that reads The Jungle like a how to manual:

Today is International Human Rights Day, and Justice@Smithfield supporters plan to commemorate by drawing attention to human rights abuses at Smithfield's Tar Heel Plant. Working conditions at the plant rank among the most brutal in the United States, and, in years past, were even profiled by the international watchdog Human Rights Watch.

As many of you know, television chef Paula Deen has become the paid public spokeswoman for the company. This holiday season, you'll be seeing her face turn up on pork products at your local supermarket, many of which originate from the plant in Tar Heel. With such high visibility and influence within the company, we believe that Paula is in a unique position to steer the company toward a more humane path. But we need your help!

Today: Monday, December 10
Contact Paula
Ask Her to Be a Human Rights Leader for Smithfield!                    

Call Her Up at her Savannah Restaurant:
(912) 233-2600                 

Or Use the Email Contact Form on Her Website

                    

That's one press release The Cod is proud to cut and paste. Oh, and beetubs, the restaurant sucks, evidently.

Spoke too soon

Turns out I got your Guiteau right here. In this round of the Neal Pollack Rodeo, I lasted about 1.7 seconds. On the Epilog, TSteel comes with the PHC more regularly than many, but with the expanded roster of authors, clicking on the Epilog is like playing Russian roulette with a revolver loaded with insufferable twee. I'd rather eat at a restaurant that referred to itself as "funky" than read the prose of someone who refers to his spouse as a "hipster housewife." Shit, I'd hang out in a sauna eating durians with Kim Jong-Il, Scott Boras, Henry  Kissinger, Paula Deen, and Larry Barnett, if it meant avoiding a reading from one of Pollack's books taking place in the next room.

Cooking with Ron Mexico!

It appears that getting a bite at his wine bar is no longer in the cards for Michael Vick, as Wachovia wants its money back.  But at least ol' #7 can fix a snack for himself at home -- at least until someone comes up with the 4.5 mil for his crib, which includes the kitchen pictured below. Safe to say that Vick did not spend a lot of time studying interior design at VaTech. The virtual tour is here, but it is a neurological  challenge on several levels.

Guiteau Monday*

I was all ready to post up on the Indian summer pasta I improvised last night, and the fancy knife I did it with. But then I check my bookmarks and see that two of the most irritating forces in my world have converged: a) Duke University and b) Molecular Gastronomy, forming like a big old Voltron of pissing the Cod off. I literally could not bear to read the article, but if there are readers made of sterner stuff than the Cod, this space would welcome confirmation of my intuition about the article.

*Guiteau Monday will be a new feature here -- Charles Guiteau, you will remember, shot Garfield.

Update: The Gurgling Cod has a long-standing policy of ignoring competitive eating, which we will bend long enough to say: Grits? 21 pounds? That's just awful.