[Sca-cooks] Okay, it's "Very Stupid Question" time...

[Dragon]

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:
>Hullo, the list!
>
>I've been tossing and turning all night with a knotty philosophical
>question, and I figured the collective foodies from all over the world
>as represented on this list have a better chance of helping me out
>than any other gathering of 300 people I could choose...
>
>Okay. Bear in mind I warned you this was a stupid question...
>
>The deal is, I was reading an account on a blog connected with The
>Fortean Times magazine. Charles Fort was an American archivist and
>researcher who spent much of his career debunking, whenever possible,
>reports of paranormal phenomena, and even more vigorously assailing
>bad science of the type that dismisses accounts of said phemonena
>without even reading them... he was a skeptic in the truest sense of
>the word, in that he gave no more, and no less, credence to statements
>beginning with the words, "Scientists say that...", than he did to
>statements like, "I was Bigfoot's love slave," if both are presented
>without proper supporting evidence. His writings are full of accounts
>of mental telepathy, teleportation, The Hollow Earth Theory, lots of
>stuff about Atlantis, rains of toads, frogs, fish and even beef, not
>because he was promoting the alleged reality of such things, but
>because they provided a test for exposing lazy and sloppy science.  As
>silly and as entertaining as Fort's work can be, along with various
>Fortean topics such as the snippet to follow, it's a pretty good tool
>for disciplining the mind. Of course, there are also some people who
>follow all this very closely because, as they will explain at any
>opportunity, they are in fact alien abductees, or Bigfoot's love
>slave, or whatever, who are perhaps missing the point, but it's all
>pretty entertaining, anyway.
>
>Well, there's this guy posting to the Fortean Times website that he
>was sitting with his family of five, watching the news on television,
>immediately after having finished a dinner of "pork chips, mashed
>potatoes, and peas", apparently having left the uneaten food on the
>dining table in the next room. He says for no known reason, all five
>people suddenly found it necessary to turn their heads and look behind
>themselves into the dining room, at which point a pork chip flew off a
>plate, struck the refrigerator in the adjoining kitchen, and slid down
>to the floor.
>
>Now I, of course, being a true skeptic myself, immediately began
>asking questions about this. The more I thought about it, the greater
>the possibilities that presented themselves. My mind became a seething
>mass of questions, ideas, and hypotheses, yearning for additional
>data, tantalized by this brief account. I just know there'll be no
>sleep for me tonight unless some points are clarified.
>
>So here's what I really, really need to know -- the most tantalizing
>question of the many that this topic raises:
>
>What is a pork chip?
>
>I tried Google, and most of the hits simply appeared to be typos (i.e.
>recipes and other references to pork chops), but the poster used the
>term three or four times, so it seems likely that he really intended
>to call them that. Could this be an example of some sort of regional
>cuisine, or some dialect I'm not familiar with? I am assuming they are
>no relation to buffalo chips.
>
>Has anyone, of the great multitude of worthy and knowledgeable list
>subscribers, ever dined on pork chips, flying _or_ stationary?
>
>My REM-sleep thanks you all for any information...
>
>Adamantius
---------------- End original message. ---------------------

I think the explanation is quite mundane...

Note the proximity of the letter "i" to the letter "o" on the 
standard keyboard. Combine that with the predilection of some people 
to not proofread their writing and the "pork chip" has been invented.

:-)

The only other explanation I have would be something like cracklins, 
which as I am sure I don't have to elaborate are the much tastier 
(and massively bad but oh so delicious) fried pork equivalent of potato chips.

Dragon

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  Venimus, Saltavimus, Bibimus (et naribus canium capti sumus)
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