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

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Fri Apr 18 09:24:12 PDT 2008


On Apr 18, 2008, at 11:37 AM, Susan Fox wrote:

> Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:
>> 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",... <snippage>
>> 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?
> It's a typo.  Go back to sleep.

Hmmmmm... I confess I'm not fully convinced of this. The guy would  
have had to make the same typo, and no others that I could spot,  
several times. Possibly a typo backed by some obscure neurological  
disorder?

But see, now, this is terribly un-Fortean of you. We're not supposed  
to dismiss nonsense out of hand until we have completely established  
that it is nonsense by due process ;-).

Of course, when my eldest brother was little, he went with my father  
to the Prospect Park Zoo one Sunday in early November of approximately  
1949 (at the time they lived in Brooklyn). There was a large, reddish- 
brown bird with a large, fanlike tail assembly. It was in a cage  
marked, "Silver Pheasant. Habitat -- China".

Another kid and his father were watching this bird.

"What's that, Pop?"

"It's a Silver Pheasant from China."

"It looks," says the kid, "like a turkey to me."

"Well, it says so right there: it's a Chinese Silver Pheasant."

"Gobble gobble," says the bird.

"Well, it looks like a turkey to me, and it just said 'gobble gobble'."

"I don't care what it said. It's a Chinese Silver Pheasant."

"Where's the silver? It still looks like a turkey to me, and  
Thanksgiving is a couple of weeks from now, and it said, 'gobble  
gobble', just like a turkey."

"Listen -- it's a Chinese Silver Pheasant, and if I hear one more peep  
outta you, you're gonna get a rap inna mouth!"

The moral of our story, of course, being that it _could_ be a typo. Or  
it could be a Chinese Silver Pheasant. Or a turkey. Or something. What  
was the question again?

> Although this might qualify as pork chips, mighty tasty too in congee:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rousong


I've seen it in the markets. We like ground pork and chopped thousand- 
year eggs in our jook...

In conclusion, I must say, in my best John Cleese voice (although I do  
Stephen Fry much better), "Does rousong fly? No? Well, it's scarcely a  
replacement then, is it?"

Adamantius

P.S.: In answer to those who will undoubtedly go looking on the Web  
for pictures of Silver Pheasants, it appears that the male Silver  
Pheasant is indeed a silvery white, but in other respects could be  
said to vaguely resemble a turkey. However, the female is brown, but  
isn't shaped much like a turkey. Ah, those Fortean phenomena are  
everywhere!




"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter




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