Ken Clark - Webtour 97 - 10th January 1996
Now that the last of the Christmas turkey is a fast receding nightmare and the next hedonistic extravaganza of Easter has yet to arrive we can again turn our attention to meat, though as always with the web, it is very easy to go off at tangents!
If the festive season put you off meat for life then try the ‘Changing the face of the earth’ Vegetarian page. This is a rather fundamental attack on meat eating, starting with physiological differences between herbivores and carnivores, though the main difference between Homo Sapiens and other herbivores is ignored: The fact that we have invented cooking to overcome our ‘natural’ herbivore status. The scriptures are also brought in to justify vegetarianism. You are left in no doubt by these zealots that Homo Sapiens is supposed to be a herbivore. They also ignore the fact that as a genus Homo Sapiens is so soft that it even boils its vegetables!
Visit the vegetarian page on http://peg.apc.org/~shelter/vegetarn.html. As for me, "nuts and berries, no thanks".
The Netheads Meat Sense is a much more down to earth page, giving practical consumer advice on how to purchase meat, poultry and fish for less and avoid the schemes employed by the large grocery chains to sell you old outdated or spoiled products.
URL http://www3.imall.com/meat_sense/
The same can not be said for the ‘Alternative sources of meat’ page. The front page says it all with it ghoulish graphic stating "When man is on the menu, The preparation of humans for consumption" (I am not joking). The page is so dead-pan (sic) that you really can’t tell if it is a spoof or not. Not for the squeamish. Next time you are stranded 12,000 feet up in the Andes with no one to talk to but plenty of people to eat, this could just be the resource you need.
Enjoy... http://www.directnet.com/Crash/Purgatory/SexAndFood/Cannibalism.html
You can, of course, do other things with meat like arrange it artistically and photograph it! Photographer Stephanie Ross has followed this route and created a picture story about the adventures of ‘Mr Beefy’, a beefburger with eyes and chicken wings as legs!
Weird. http://www.cais.net/frisch/meatmation/thestory.htm
If you are a reformed meat-eater and wish to atone for your sins, then maybe barbecuing some of your body parts will help.
If so try the firewalking page at the rather cosily named URL of http://heartfire.com/firewalk/homefire.html.
Don’t try this one at home kids!
Swinging violently to another extreme maybe you like your meat to be alive, warm, and... well , cuddly. If so then maybe on-line erotica is for you. Two UK based sites have recently come on-line (sic). Fiesta and Knave are two well established paper publications that have made the transition to the web. Everything you would expect is here including photos of readers wives and the now traditional ‘this is what I had for breakfast’ poses for professional photographers. If you are of this particular bent, then you won’t be for long. Fiesta at http://www.fiesta.org (or should that be .orgy?) and Knave at http://www.knave.com (or maybe .condom).