List of 5 Bright-eyed Franken-Foods

The gravitas of GMO's (genetically modified organisms) stealthily infiltrating the food we consume has become a societal cause de jour. Irrespective of your ethical, moral or gastronomic stance on GMO's they are a ubiquitous topic of the 24 hour news cycle. Members on the cornucopia of social media outlets quibble ad nauseam about GMO's effects and the nefarious ways corporations deliberately mislead the public about the evils of GMO's. Grassroots advocacy groups and even militant eco-facists harangue the content vapid 24hour news organizations with their causality spin on the declining health of the world, which they allege is the handiwork of GMO's.

On the other end of the pundit spectrum are the lobbyists, the naysayers and the pernicious Public Relations machines, who on the GMO' industry's behalf, vehemently deny any causality between the world's declining health and GMO's. These Public Relations firms are the marketing organs of a robust and thriving propaganda body which has been honing its public deception techniques for over 100 years. All of these handmaidens of corporate perception marketing, as well as those groups who oppose the proliferation of GMO's, are equally vociferous.

Some might say that either of these pro or con groups are blinded to the deeper contextual meaning of GMO's. If the definition of GMO's is seen as a continuum from a proto-historical period through to the present, then the feud between the parties could take on vastly different proportions.

In the Pulitzer Price winning book; Guns, Gems and Steel, author and academic Jared Mason Diamond examined the forces behind the rise of civilizations throughout history. He detailed the components which allowed for some civilizations to flourish and evolve into nation states and, conversely, portrayed the shortfalls of those civilizations which remained in arrested development. According to Diamond, a keystone to the continued evolution of civilizations into nation states was the successful manipulation of food stuffs. These food stuffs, or staples, are categorized in the book as being maize, wheat and rice. The manipulation of these food stuffs, in addition to available meat (protein sources) and environmental situations, which occurred over thousands of years, is the linchpin in the development and evolution of these civilizations.

The irony is that the pervasive hate ethos which Monsanto receives can be contrasted to the early modern and proto-historical realities. There are antique GMO's we gleefully and naively still eat today.

Cucumbers
These modified cucumbers were first developed in Dutch greenhouses. Seedless cucumbers were also serendipitously endowed with the nomenclature of being burpless. The low levels of cucurbitacins, compounds which cause the fruit to taste bitter and inhibit digestion, were removed during the process of cultivating the seedless-ness.

Carrots
It is naturally occurring on a color spectrum ranging from off-white to a mat purple. The hue was changed to the adoring florescent orange sometime during the 16th and 17th centuries. Although apocryphal, carrot lore has it t hat the color was changed to honor the Low Countries' King: The King of Orange.

Bananas
Initially bananas were as scarce in the world market as salt and pepper had been in the middle ages. In the early 1800's the 7th Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish, received a shipment of bananas from the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Cavendish was able to cultivate this hardy strain of banana which spawned the commercially viable bananas. These bananas were essentially cloned from one source: the 'Cavendish' cultivar. At the end of the 19^th century a new variety took root in the tropics in order to supply the increasing banana consumption of America and Europe: the Big Mike banana. The Big Mike had a major advantage over the Cavendish Banana in that its peel was significantly thicker which reduced bruising during shipping. The Big Mike was supplanted by the Cavendish in the late 1920's because it proved to be a hardier variety than the Big Mike. A soil disease, known as Panama Disease or “fusarium wilt”, had decimated the Big Mike crops. Panama Disease was less virulent against the Cavendish crops which motivated the banana plantations to return to the first banana Franken- Food.

Sugar Beets
Cane sugar, like it's predecessors salt, Tyrian purple and pepper, was in high demand and limited supply; usually at exorbitantly inflated prices. Fredrick II , the King of Prussia, in the mid-eighteenth century vowed that his kingdom would develop a substitute for cane sugar. This surrogate would be gained by extracting sugar from sugar beets. Fredrick II financed an intensive scientific program devoted to experimentation aimed at developing processes for sugar extraction. The beet which was selected and modified was 'Weiße Schlesische Zuckerrübe', which means white Silesian sugar beet. Due to the fact that France was unable to receive sugar because of British sea blockades during the Napoleonic Wars, the Emperor Napoleon inaugurated schools dedicated to the study of beets and beet sugar. This was the birth of the nascent sugar beet industry which flourished at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

Onions
The bane of nearly anyone who cooks with onions is the uncontrollable sobbing after cutting into the fleshy veggie. In 2007 New Zealand and Japanese researchers came to the 2nd World Onion Congress in The Netherlands with a remarkable breakthrough in onion technology: The Tearless Onion. The science behind the Franken-Onion is a gene-silencing technology known as RNAi. The dubious good new is that no foreign proteins have been fused with the onion which research indicates will allow for a hardier strain. The questionable bad new is that the onion won't be in anyone's kitchen for at least another 5 years.

List of 5 Patron Saints of the Strange

A world full of gods. That was the interwoven reality in which Christianity of antiquity found itself. The Romans, the Greeks, the Druids, the Persians, the “Barbarians” they all had their respective pantheons. Gods of these pantheons ran the gamut from the mundane house hold variety to the specialty gods of the sacred cults of the oracles. The evolution, export and spread of early Christianity was to be dictated by these parameters. Making a switch to monotheism was going to prove to be a hard sell.

It has been documented that without the clout and persuasion of an aristocratic class among the Roman subjects who had converted to Christianity, the movement might not have succeeded in it's nascent form. These vested noblemen were also outstanding marketeers. They grasped that a synergistic and gradual shift to monotheism would be much easier than a drastic 1-80. Moreover, the Romans were steeped in ancestor worship and had a culture anchor in reliving tales of history. The abandonment of hundreds of years venerating many gods was not a concept in their collective wheelhouse.

So, the Christians of early antiquity kept the many gods but slowly altered their intrinsic meaning. The Saints were not gods but rather a group of more pious Christians than the rest of the believers. They were to become middlemen, sin brokers, and divine mediators. What was the rational? Why employ a Saint as a go between? To answer that we draw on the comparison with polytheism's many gods concept and their significance with the mundane; Jesus, the Ghost and God are just too damn busy. Don't bother the Godhead if you can use a Saint. It's akin to using a 1^st line call center-customer service-help desk instead of getting patched through to the Chief Technical Officer.

Potential Catholic saints were scrutinized on the merits of their wonders before their canonization as a bona fide Saint. If the Pontiff is swayed by the empirically fuzzy proof then the dead person enters an undefined period of beatification. The beatification marks a cooling off period whereby more “proofs” of exceptional earthly divinity are gathered and filed away. Once enough evidence has been amassed the reigning Pope can cast off the beatification and officially canonize the Saint “in waiting”.

Catholic saints are believed to fly about, to have stigmata's, heal the infirm and occasionally imbue their clothing with mystical holy powers. Their place of birth and/or death are transformed by the believers into shrines of devotion. These shrines are the locale where yearly pilgrimages terminate and relics are bought and placed to insure the sanctity of the pilgrim and the shrine. Some are the patron of lost items or travelers or children or good health. The List of 5 Saints of the Strange has a few WTF's in store.

St Monica

Era: Circa 331-387 A.D.

Patron Saint of: Alcoholics

Feast Day: August 27

Reason for patronage: Betrothed to a pagan man of her parents choosing. He proved to be philander and alcoholic until his conversion years later after copious amounts of dedicated prayer by St. Monica.

Fun Fact: Monica of Hippo was the mother of St. Augustine of Hippo.

St Isidore of Seville

Era: Circa 560-636

Patron Saint of: Internet

Feast Day: April 4

Reason for patronage: He was an astute learner and prolific author who published books grammar, astronomy, geography, history, and biography as well as theology. He has the acclaim of orchestrating the conversion the barbarian Visigoths.

Fun Fact: He was born into a saintly dynasty. His two brothers, Leander and Fulgentius, and one of his sisters, Florentina, are venerated saints in Spain.

St Fiacre

Era: Died Circa 670

Patron Saint of: Sexually Transmitted Disease and Hemorrhoids

Feast Day: September 1

Reason for patronage: Little is known about him prior to his trip and establishment of a hospice in France. He carried and yielded a large staff which he used to plow otherwise fallow ground. The same staff was used to poke and prod the infirm back to health at the hospice.

Fun Fact: He was an unabashed misogynist and refuse to aid woman and even forbid them from entering the hospice, hermitage and chapel.

St Lidwin

Era: 1380-1433

Patron Saint of: Ice Skaters

Feast Day: April 14

Reason for patronage: At age 15 while ice skating, she fell and broke her ribs. From that day forward she became progressively more paralyzed. She acquired the divine talent of healing and was known to cure disease in and around her home town of Scheidam, the Netherlands.

Fun Fact: Documents purport that she shed skin, bones and her entrails all of which were kept by her parents in a vase. The vase supposedly emitted a sweet aroma.

St Guy of Anderlecht

Era: Circa 950 - 1012

Patron Saint of: Outhouses

Feast Day: September 12

Reason for patronage: An austere, pious and hardworking unlettered man he invested in maritime trade. The ship sank carrying the good. He saw this as a sign of his sinful avarice. He subsequently gave away his possessions and went on a penance pilgrimage first to Jerusalem then to Rome. Along the return journey to Anderlecht he died.

Fun Fact: He is also invoked as the patron saint against epilepsy, against rabies, and against mad dogs.

Who Let the Cat out of the Bag?

Pig in a Poke

 

     Idioms, sayings, turn of phrase or maxim no matter what you call it these are clearly the rare spices which season a language and make the otherwise dry syntax go down smooth as honey. Some idioms are difficult to pin down to a specific historical and cultural time frame. We rely on the first instance when the idiom was found in print in order to date its inception into the common lexicon. 


     Of course this isn't the first usage but it is the first documented in a primary source. The Brothers Grimm didn't suddenly happen upon German Faerie tales in the 19^th century. Those tales had been told for eons and the Brothers Grimm had the foresight to preserve them for generations to come. The specific idiom, “pig in a poke” is one which is extremely difficult to fit into a specific time of origin. We know that is was a common phrase in Medieval Europe. The idiom is derived from, by modern standards of grifting, a rather primitive medieval con. Meat was scarce and expensive commodity in the middle ages so the chance of snagging a cheap savory piglet at the market was pounced on immediately. The con artist never missed his mark and realized that the weight and feel of a presumably shaved cat or puppy would go unnoticed by a famished rube. Despite being a last resort meal (dog and cat meat by no means the meat of choice), “pet food” was sometimes begrudgingly eaten. The Dutch have a colorful and historically interesting phrase which probably casts light on the state of urban malnutrition during the middle ages. The Dutch euphemistically refer to cats as “Dakhaas” or “roof hare” in English. Back to the trickery. The “con” was orchestrated by a “grifter” out of a “Monty Store” probably in cahoots with a “shill” who boisterously lured the “marks” out of the crowd to step closer and have a look at the wares. The conman sold the “pet” to the gullible rube who thought he was buying a juicy piglet but in actuality got stuck with a cat or perhaps a hare instead. Undoubtedly, the con couldn't be sustained all day so some kind of exit strategy was employed to either disperse the crowd or make a speedy retreat when the money was sufficient enough to split; called a “blow off” in the con and hustle pidgin of thieves. The idiom gives rise to another idiom “letting the cat out of the bag” in English. Letting the cat out of the bag alludes to the “Tell” which is the act of exposing the con by showing its dubious contents. 


     A curious observation is that while most European languages have an nearly verbatim equivalent to the idiom “a cat in the bag” a few languages reference a different animal entirely. For example, English uses a pig (poque being a French loan word meaning pocket or bag), Czech uses hare, Estonian use piglet, Eire uses pig, Finnish uses pig and Swedish also uses pig. This is interesting not only because I can geek out for hours on the evolution of European semantics, but also because of the geographic locations of countries as well as their similar philology. Why does Czech have a hare in the sack while Slovakian puts a cat in the sack? Enjoy your brain worm.