Japanese Fish Sticks (Wanna an Iwana) 600 yen a bite
Jimmy: Do you like fishsticks?
Cartman: Yeah.
Jimmy: Do you like putting fishsticks in your mouth?
Cartman: Yeah.
Jimmy: What are you, a gay fish?
You know Kanye West actually got into a snit about the Gay Fish episode of South Park. There are some self declared geniuses that need to get a life. Not me, I got stoned on back pain meds and wrote a six thousand word essay on fish sticks. The concept Wall-o-Text didn’t even begin to cover it. It would have given a New Yorker fact checker a nervous breakdown. Were shoppers in Southampton and South Wales stoned when they picked the bland control product over Herring Savouries? Is Mrs. Paul really having an affair with the Gorton’s Fisherman? What kind of new age thought process thinks it’s a good idea to write a book about business with fish sticks in the title?
There was a whole section on the depredation of the environment by industrial food too. Have a yummy fish stick because the more factory ships there are out on the Grand Banks the more likely that fish sticks are going to be the deluxe menu item you get to impress a date. It’s already happened to Haddock. I can get a lobster cheaper than a haddock dinner locally now. You might not have known it but lobsters were once cheap “tinned” goods until the canneries put them all into cans and there weren’t any more lobsters and only the Vanderbilt’s and J.P. Morgan could afford them. You thought I was joking about that didn’t you. Just wait till Alain Ducasse at the Essex House charges you $320.00 for bâtonnets de poisson
Cutting out the remaining 6,700 words which included a diversion into the fish economy of Rome. (Did you know that Worcestershire sauce is actually a Roman fermented fish sauce recipe that comes to us via a mysterious English noblewoman who traveled in Bengal?) Leaves us with a fundamental question: Who is crazy enough to make homemade fish sticks? Your kids are gonna know that whole grain cereal is not the same as fluffy deep fried batter. It seems to me that it would only lead to a trauma like when I discovered years later what the blancmange Jo brings to Laurie when he was ill in Little Women was. Not only does the little witch get her sister Meg to cook this glop but it turns out that it’s essentially vanilla pudding!
Undoubtedly you think I lost track of fish sticks with that rant about Louisa May Alcott ruining my life. However it was all an elaborate ruse to tell you that the blancmange that Chaucer liked often included finely minced diced haddock making it the mediaeval version of fish sticks. All of this is why dear friends I try never to publish anything I’ve written while stoned.
The staff at Superficial Gallery about to order Fish Sticks and Cookie Dough
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Now that was super cool.. maybe I am on the same wavelength… the fish sticks stand near you Mr. Sangfroid, shake a leg, bear a hand, and share the awesomeness of doughy bouillabaisse.
You should have seen the original. I could have submitted it as a doctoral thesis on Roman History.
This article was fact checked with not one, not two, but THREE foreign language experts.
When asked if he enjoyed Wanna an Iwana Kobayashi Issa said: “I only eat at McDonald’s now. Give me back that filet o fish,Give me that fish
Give me back that filet o fish,Give me that fish”
If you don’t know who Issa is then GOOGLE
I should have asked Juliet what it was in Spanish but that wouldn’t have made sense and Captain America would have commented.
First, it’s about the “fish sticks” depicted above your text: Haven’t I seen that on Iron Chef? 🙂 As for the blog: Too funny! I feel like I may, perhaps, have learned something but I won’t know for sure until I stop laughing: 🙂 My favorite part, I must confess, was the Jo/Laurie bit because I’m such a fan of Ms. Alcott’s. 🙂 And as for fish sticks themselves: They were either Van de Kamp’s or Gorton’s in my house, always served with tartar sauce and ketchup (which, when combined, tastes remarkably like the special sauce on a Big Mac. I haven’t had fish sticks since high school. They lost their appeal when I discovered broiled haddock and baked, stuffed salmon. Nice bit of nostalgia. 🙂
You know I’ve never done the ketchup thing. I think that’s how Jennifer said they made their special salad dressing in North Carolina too.
Oh! And as for the 6,000-word, stoned essay: I think you need to send it to the New Yorker, for sure! 🙂 The image of their fact checkers tackling it gives me the giggles. 🙂
WTF is that big space between the word Rome and that open parenthesis? What are you up to?
I went to get fish sticks out of the oven and when I came back the gap was there.
You should try using back pain narcotics as a writing catalyst, again, sometime. Of course you can always come back later and cut out a few thousand words or so. I guess that’s what an editor is. The sober fellow who makes mince out of whatever it was we couldn’t remember writing.
Making jazz swing in
Seventeen syllables AIN’T
No square poet’s job.
-Etheridge Knight
Those fish sticks look too much like fish :/ Funny blog though (even with the missing . and the space! ;0)
Now you and Acadia are never going to know that one of the markers for the fact it’s warmer are the Roman fish pens carved into bedrock which are permanently flooded now.
Not being a fish lover myself, I had a hard time getting past that lovely image you choose to represent, those well known chopped pressed cut and formed unrecognizable lovely fish sticks we grew up with as kids…you know the fact stuff that actually can be quite palatable. 🙂
sorry but these are UNICORN AND GLITTER MEALS?
“Leaves us with a fundamental question: Who is crazy enough to make homemade fish sticks?”
Aren’t fish sticks the most profitable, industrialized, lowest common denominator, least likely to cause offense version of “Crab Cakes” and “Fish Cakes” that were so lovingly prepared by the fishmonger’s wives when there was nothing more to eat and they had to find a tasty way to serve “that fish” once again and are now held in high regard and sold as very expensive, highly sought after delicacies at Crab Shacks and Fish Shanty’s along the Eastern Seaboard from Maryland to Nova Scotia? (takes a breath and inhales deeply only to continue)
And wouldn’t taking time to make “homemade fish sticks” be like some sort of de-evolution of culinary arts a la “Planet of the Apes”?
Just asking……….
Fish Sticks as we know them originate when the British are trying to find a new market for herring after world war I. When they did a test with “Herring Savouries” the public almost universally liked the bland minced cod control product better. Just thinking about Herring Savouries makes me want to eat cardboard instead but someone smart figured out they had the next big thing and Fish Sticks were born.
Aside from the desperate Mom angle I don’t get homemade junk food in any of it’s permutations myself. What do I know though. I’m jonesing for a Maryland Crab Cake right now.
Who knew? Thanks for the education about the origins of fish sticks.
Having had Herrings for lunch that were over “smoked”, I would have loved a bland fish stick.
Fish sticks for that matter being one of my most favorite of all school lunches, a bit dried from being in the warming oven too long, dipped in Ketchup was the perfect meal.
I suspect that sentence needs to be reversed.
Ketchup was the perfect meal. A fish stick, a bit dried (and thereby hard like a stick) from being in the warming oven too long was the perfect utensil to eat Ketchup with.
I prefer my fish “straight up, with a twist of lemon”!