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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 8/20/99 -- Vol. 18, No. 8
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@lucent.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
201-447-3652 for details. The Denver Area Science Fiction
Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.
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1. My friends, I have come to you today to warn you of the threat
of sausaging in our country. It is the purpose of this notice to
call your you attention to the threats to our standard of living.
One must be ever vigilant to protect the life style that we all
enjoy from insidious forces that are creating the future that you
and I will have to live with. In this effort I would like to call
your attention to the terrible threat I call THE SAUSAGING OF
AMERICA.
Now what exactly is sausaging? Well, we deal with a lot of
different products and materials in America. And materials are
taken from nature. But frequently things that are taken from
nature do not come in convenient shapes and sizes. And you live
with that in most cultures. A potato or a cow is what it is and
you live with its shape. But not everybody feels they can leave
well enough alone and we end up with the practice of sausaging.
"Sausaging" is the practice of grinding something up and reforming
it so that it will be more convenient to manage, but one that
Providence may have never intended. And by going against the will
of Providence, we suffer the consequences. Frequently this is
accompanied with a loss of quality and even adulteration. The
primary example of sausaging is, of course, sausage. The original
sausages were lengths of animal intestine knotted at one end,
filled with ground meat, and then knotted at the other end. It is
compressed down and spices are added so that it is like a piece of
spiced meat, but it really is made up mostly of formed ground meat.
It just is not quite the same quality as the original meat and is
probably a little cheaper. But the same principle applies to other
things also.
Why is Salisbury Steak cheaper than Sirloin Steak? Well a Sirloin
Steak is continuous in the mathematical sense. Two points that are
close together on a Sirloin Steak were close together on the
original steer. Two points that are close together on a Salisbury
Steak may not have even come from the same animal. They may not
have come from the same species. One might be a piece of meat and
the other might be garlic. Whatever happened to what God has
brought together let no man (or woman) cast asunder?
I supposed sausaged product is more versatile for the person making
it. But this is anathema. In theory you could have a Salisbury
Steak 60 feet long and 40 feet wide. A Sirloin Steak 60 feet long
and 40 feet wide would require the steer to undergo atomic
mutation. That should tell you something.
While we are looking at the science fictional aspects of sausagism
Frederick Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth wrote in THE SPACE MERCHANTS
about "Chicken Little," a process to make square yards of chicken
meat. We can do that today with sausaging. But is humanity really
ready for pieces of meat that big or are we really biting off more
than we can chew?
More on this biting issue next week. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
-- Aldous Huxley