Lost Transmissions: Food
Created | Updated Dec 4, 2011
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Entry: Food.
The Encyclopedia Gastronomica defines food as "A sequence of organic compounds combined to give chemical energy to living beings." This is dry, accurate and excruciatingly dull.
The DingoRibs company defines food as "Sexy, sticky, gooey and A$1.99" which in every important respect is completely wrong.
Nooom Bronsk-Jo’honson’s definition, and let’s face it he should know, is "The art of pleasure from finding complements, sensations and combinations of the fabulous produce of the universe that will put a smile on everybody’s face" failing, naturally, to mention that any meal actually prepared by him would cost the prospective diner somewhere in the region of A$10,000.
Food for a hitchhiker does not require such lofty definitions. Stuck on the outer rim after missing the last bus home most hitchhikers will agree that food must be hot, extra-large and free, the contents of the actual meal being entirely optional.
There are several basic food groups to consider, salad – anything green that doesn’t try to eat you first, meat – anything that walks about under its own steam that doesn’t try to eat you first, and bread – anything you can use to wrap up the first two that will stop them from eating you first.
Then there is the important matter of sauce. Most food that hitchhikers have access to will be either well past its prime, unhygenically cooked or probably toxic. A good bottle of sauce is therefore essential.
Recommendations vary.
Some prefer the mouth numbing effects of HotRedPow, a well-known disinfectant made from the evil smelling spice plants of Yawlin Alpha. Some speak fondly of the mildly hallucinogenic LaLa Chutney that removes any panic resulting from seeing what you are actually eating. Others, a minority, simply elect to have their taste buds removed and have done with it, but this is seen by the hardened hitchhiker community as cheating.
The solution according to "Hitchhiker’s Mothers Weekly" is to pack your own lunch and wash your hands afterwards, but considering that the print run of this magazine is precisely one, and is published by a Mrs Iril Yollick who spends her days worrying where her son is and if he’ll be home for tea, nobody pays this much attention.
However, the success of DingoRibs inadvertently provided a solution. With the dingo now largely extinct a new way had to be found to dispose of old food. The solution was the Nanohopper, a machine with a bucket on top that would turn any organic waste into a simple chewy bar that contained all the essential compounds for organic life, or anything else you set the dial to.
Hitchhikers fell on the technology with gusto and soon there was a thriving trade in fiendishly clever techno-gizmos that could re-program the Nanohoppers in unimagined ways.
The problem came when Nif Dink, an irritating know-it-all, media darling and the official "last person you'd invite to anything ever" who had been curiously absent from the galactic scene after a particularly unsuccessful attempt to mingle at a cheese and wine party with a bottle of Chateau Moebius, reappeared looking youthful and vigorous without his familiar ear hair and bad teeth.
He claimed he had altered a Nanohopper to recycle him into a perfect version of himself and he was now, effectively, immortal. But, after many experiments with the device and some quite unnecessary deaths, it became apparent he was lying.
Later some astronomical plastic surgery receipts were unearthed in the bins outside Dink’s house and he vanished under a cloud of shame and hasn’t been seen since, so at least some good came out of this disaster.
Entry Ends.
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