By Sarah (Pi = 3.1415…) Pye
Staff Writer
I have this strange obsession with Spam. (And with pirates, but this is another story entirely.)
It was not intentional — certainly not as if I woke up one morning and thought, “My life, up to this point, has been entirely devoid of purpose. I have finally found meaning, and I have found it in Spam.”
This would be absurd.
No, the Spam obsession started when I received a can of said product in the mail, from a person I, until then, had considered a friend, but now, quite obviously, am compelled to wonder about the mental stability of.
In its defense, Spam isn’t an entirely detestable food (or, at least, food-like product). Though I’ve never actually, technically, consumed any, others, such as seemingly the entire population of Hawaii, seem to find it delectable. And any meat that claims, right there on the can, to be “fully cooked, ready to eat – cold or hot” can’t be half bad.
(Amazingly, the Spam can also features instructions as to how it can be best prepared in the microwave. Is there nothing this product cannot do?)
So really, the Spam thing wouldn’t be all that bad, if it were just to stop there. The problem (and you more observant readers will already have seen this coming) is that it does not.
Though Spam is the better known of your canned luncheon meats, there is a myriad of other options available, if one knows where to look. And I use the word “one” in the sense that I believe myself to be the only one currently residing on the planet to have made an intense study of the types of meats that can be purchased in canned form.
I have scoured grocery store shelves across the nation — and even, thanks to my current residence in London, the world — to find the best and, dare I say, most bizarre canned meats society has to offer. I have amassed quite a collection.
But not wanting to deprive the world of the canned-meat-related knowledge I have gained in my inexhaustible study, I have made it my humanitarian mission to bring the joys of canned meats to those less fortunate, who may not be quite, well, strange enough to make their own efforts to learn more about this fascinating subject.
Because my first can of Spam came to me by mail, I feel it’s only right for me to continue the practice that gave my life what meaning it has today. Now I, too, am able to send, via the postal system, the joy of products such as canned octopus in sea brine and processed pork brains to friends from coast to coast.
Perhaps consequently, I have few friends.
However, this does not deter me from my mission. I figure, when I run out of people I know, I can just start picking random box numbers at Pepperdine and mailing my little shining cans of happiness there.
In fact, there could be a can of pickled porcupine waiting for you in the mailroom RIGHT NOW!
Now isn’t that a scary thought?
January 23, 2003
