Dead Stinky Fish

I'm probably not going to remember this correctly. I remember when a friend and his dad were over for dinner. Someone (I can't remember who) brought over some pickled fish. My friend's dad (I think) paid me five dollars to have a piece. Being the stupid idiot kid I was back then - and still sort of am - I accepted and nearly threw up. Everyone laughed. I didn't. Despite this, I haven't stopped taking various dares.

Oh, and I wasn't always paid. Granted, I expected to be paid. Someone dared me and offered me 5 smackaroos for snorting crushed-up Doritos. Their initial response to my request of the sum total of five dollars for something they dared me to was: "I didn't know you would do it". A deal's a deal. I expect compensation. According to the CPI Inflation Calculator, adjusting for inflation, that $5.00 you owed me in 2009 is now worth $5.94. I probably won't see a result from this plea, but whatever. Where was I? Oh yeah.

Fish stink. Period. End of thought. It seems like no matter how you prepare fish, it ends up smelling like... Fish. Many factors play into this, but I'm sure if you live by the coast or near a lake-y part of the country - and I know I do - then you don't really notice it at first. But after remembering how awful pickled fish tastes, I remembered: "Oh yeah, fish are stinky".

People have been eating fish for a long, long time. People have been preserving meat for a long, long time. I myself have started to take up pickling, and I understand the reason why people would want to preserve meat. But after looking up certain ways fish are preserved and prepared, it makes one wonder "What in the actual 666 layers of the demonic Abyss were these people thinking?". I have provided three mouth-drying, unsavory examples of dead, stinky, pickled fish as food for thought, rather than actual food.

Before I continue, I'd like to point out that I try to find photos that are not copyrighted. If you look these up on Wikipedia, it's likely you'll find these pictures. I am not sponsored in any way, nor do I mean to take credit for copyrighted work. What I'm trying to say is: Please don't sue me for this stupid blog. I do this for fun, not for a living. After looking for some journalism jobs, I've realized that the field is not for me, but I will continue to write. This blog, as it exists, will never be monetized and will always be advertisement-free.

One more warning, a few of the videos shown here contain vomiting. You have been warned. Enjoy!

Lutefisk

 

Now, I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, being from Minnesota. I don't care. Try rioting by throwing that toxic crap at my house and see what happens. Do that while reading some Ole and Lena jokes, watching the Gopher game and shoveling a driveway. I dare you. 

To start the preparation of Lutefisk, the fish (Commonly cod) are dried on these racks, just simply known as drying racks. 

Not everything has a cool name. If I were to give them a name, I'd call them "The places where nightmares start".

Literally meaning "Lye Fish", Lutefisk is just that. The dried fish is treated with caustic lye and soaked in water for almost a week. Now, I don't want to make your favorite food sound awful, but it is. This process decreases the protein in the fish by half, and therefore, breaks it down, making it swell, and giving it a jelly-like consistency. That sounds completely nasty.

Both the Swedish and the Norwegians claim to have invented it, but why they'd want to is beyond me. Far beyond me. So far beyond me, the concept is in space spraying graffiti on the Voyager-1. According to the Smithsonian Magazine: "A legend has it that Viking fishermen hung their cod to dry on tall birch racks. When some neighboring Vikings attacked, they burned the racks of fish, but a rainstorm blew in from the North Sea, dousing the fire. The remaining fish soaked in a puddle of rainwater and birch ash for months before some hungry Vikings discovered the cod, reconstituted it and had a feast. Another story tells of St. Patrick's attempt to poison Viking raiders in Ireland with the lye-soaked fish. But rather than kill them, the Vikings relished the fish and declared it a delicacy. It makes for a great story if you don’t mind the fact that Patrick lived centuries before the Vikings attacked Ireland."

Really, the invention of Lutefisk can be applied to any origin of salted meat. Preservation for long, miserable winters. Damn, those winters must have been miserable.  

Allow the brilliant scientists and researchers at Wreckless Eating to explain. Skip to about 11:29, or watch the full episode if you want to see them suffer a bit more. Your call.

 Hakarl 

Hakarl, as I've been told, is much worse. 

"How worse, Jack?" 

Worse.

Photo by Chris 73 from Wikipedia. Please don't sue me.

Simply put, this is rotting shark. Greenland or Sleeper Shark is fermented, hung like this, and left to dry for FIVE GOD DAMNED MONTHS before serving. The flavor has been described as "Ammonia and fish". 

So, the thing that makes your pee smell awful, and fish, which usually smells awful. That won't taste good on a cracker.  

According to Wikipedia: "The traditional method is by gutting and beheading a Greenland or sleeper shark and placing it in a shallow hole dug in gravelly sand, with the now cleaned cavity resting on a small mound of sand. The shark is then covered with sand and gravel, and stones are placed on top of the sand in order to press the shark. In this way the fluids are pressed out of the body. The shark ferments in this fashion for 6–12 weeks depending on the season. Following this curing period, the shark is then cut into strips and hung to dry for several months. During this drying period a brown crust will develop, which is removed prior to cutting the shark into small pieces and serving."

I don't want to know the origins of this dish, and I feel sorry and at the same time hate whoever created it. 

Chris Wreckless and Matt Zion are researchers, don't try this at home. Skip to about 7:21 to see the Hakarl.

You heard Matt. "Described as one of the worst things on the entire planet." Don't eat Hakarl, folks. 

Surströmming

 I'm not even going to attempt to learn how to type the umlaut, so I'm just gonna leave it at "Surstromming".

Similar to the Hakarl, this is just rotten fish. Just enough salt is used to prevent the Baltic Herring from rotting. I'm sure they had it down to a science. Left to ferment for at least six months, and for at most way too long, a Japanese article has described it as "Awful". This is coming from the people who really like their raw fish in sticky rice.

 

Surstromming smells so bad, it is commonly only eaten outdoors. Now, listen to me... If something is so bad, you wouldn't eat it indoors, don't eat it, you idiot.

It has faced several legal challenges, and has even been banned in airplanes, due to the cans potentially exploding and letting out the smell of a dead fish's ass. As always, Wreckless Eating is on the case. 11:02 is "Surstromming Time". Enjoy watching their suffering.

Feel hungry? You shouldn't.

My Experience Trying Carolina Reaper Hot Sauce

Yes. I've been gone for a while. You could say that I'm a slacker, but working 40 hours a week while looking for other jobs isn't slacking in my book. I'm here to tell you all a tale of why you should always be afraid.

Pictured above is Ass Kickin' Carolina Reaper Hot Sauce. Pictured below is the actual Carolina Reaper.

The rule of thumb with peppers is typically this: The more shriveled and tiny they are, the spicier they are. And considering how these look like Satan's testicles, they're the hottest. These rank about 1 and a half million on the Scoville scale.

To put this into perspective, if Scoville units were like power levels from DragonBall Z:

A cute bell pepper like this would be your average human. No spiciness at all.

A Carolina Reaper would be like the planet-busting Frieza. I'd show you a picture of Frieza, but I don't want to get sued. Basically, he can blow up planets. One time, it took an entire 5 minutes, which translates to about a dozen episodes in DragonBall Z terms.

Back to the story.

So, my friend and I tried the sauce. We ordered a pizza, and put the sauce on it. Unbeknownst to us, this stuff was nuclear. My friend put a dozen drops on each slice, and then we tried a bite. If I hadn't bought a gallon of Whole Milk, I think I'd be dead or in a coma now.

Immediately, it started to hurt. My friend only finished about half a slice, maybe a slice and a half, but like an idiot, I had two whole slices of the tainted pizza, and drank about half a gallon of milk after I was done drooling and sweating.

If anything, I can say that I may be more of a glutton for punishment, or just a glutton. It was pizza, after all. Also, it is worth mentioning that pizza has a lot of bread in it, and bread is very good at neutralizing spicy things.

All of those things considered, it would be wise to know what you're in for. If you're having wings made with Carolina Reaper wing sauce, whatever you do, don't wipe it on your face, and for your own sake, wear gloves. For the love of God, don't wipe it on your face.

Around 20 minutes in, Matt Stonie regrets living.

As one final note, the capsaicin in spicy foods doesn't fully digest when it goes through your system. I'm not going to tell you what happens, but think about it for a minute. This has been Jack from Jack's Pile of Pages, and I'll see you soon.

The World's Most Expensive Root Beer Float

I think it's about time I do this again.

People will go to great lengths to feed themselves. In this installment, I'm going to build the world's most expensive Root Beer Float.

First ingredient: Root Beer.

Let me just Google "Most Expensive Root Beer" and...

Hold on.

Wait.

No.

That's not what I-

I didn't Google BEST Root Beer, I meant-!

GYAHH!

...

Apparently, I can't take the easy way on this. There's a "World's Most Expensive Marmalade" and not "World's Most Expensive Root Beer".

Let's check Ebay. That's my second best guess where I should look. Unfortunately, when it comes to expensive things regarding Root Beer, you'll find merchandise. Besides, I don't think you'd want to drink the contents of ancient, rare Root Beer. You'd probably die of botulism. What's Botulism? All you need to know is that you don't want it.

 Just buy a keg of Virgil's. It says "Gourmet" so that's good enough. This will run you about 21 bucks for the 5-liter keg. I don't care. It's the most expensive Root Beer I can think of. 

Usually, when you search for "The World's Most Expensive Ice Cream" you get this result.

You get this. I remember reading about this in the Guinness Book of World Records as a child.

"The most expensive dessert is The Frrrozen Haute Chocolate ice cream sundae costing $25,000 (£12,000), which was added to the menu of the Serendipity 3 restaurant, New York, USA on 7 November 2007.
The dessert uses a fine blend of 28 cocoas, including 14 of the world's most expensive. The sundae was made in partnership with luxury jeweller Euphoria New York.
The dessert is decorated with 5 g (0.17 oz) of edible 23-karat gold and is served in a goblet lined with edible gold. The base of the goblet is an 18-karat gold bracelet with 1 carat of white diamonds. The dessert is eaten with a gold spoon, itself decorated with white and chocolate-colored diamonds, which can also be taken home."

Okay, okay. I know what you're thinking: All you'd have to do is pour root beer on the world's most expensive ice cream. Hold on there, partner. That's too easy. And I say that that vessel is too lame for this.

This begs the question: What's the world's most expensive cup?

What's a cup that nobody's been able to find? What is a cup that everyone wants to find?

Yes. Oh yes. You think I wasn't going to go above and beyond? We're talking about a Root Beer Float served in the Holy Grail!

How much does the Holy Grail cost?

Supposedly, there's no way the cup of a poor carpenter has lasted that long, but if countless knights died looking for the thing, I might as well try to find where it is and what it costs.

While there are many cups that claim to be the Holy Grail, there's no way we can confirm that. Think about it. If it was the Holy Grail, and if you drank from it, you'd be immortal. As far as I'm aware, there's no immortal screwheads running around with an old cup, so it's fair to say that the Holy Grail is lost. For now.

Considering that it hasn't been found, for now, the Holy Grail can be considered priceless. So, what does that make our "Most Expensive Root Beer Float"?

Root Beer has water in it.

Ice Cream has water in it.

That leads me to one conclusion.

Price: $25021, but served in a priceless vessel.

Nutrition facts: Immortality.

Black Historical Figures - Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker, born 1906, was an entertainer, activist, and French Resistance agent. Her career in entertainment was centered primarily in France. During her early career she was renowned as a dancer, perhaps the most famous of the entire Jazz Age, and became famous for her so-called banana suit. 

No, not that one.

This one.

During World War Dos, she was a member of the French resistance, and became a prominent figure in France's opposition to the Nazi menace. She wasn't a big fan of racism or segregation, and refused to perform for segregated audiences, which is kind of neat. She also liked cats, so I guess we have something in common.

Kitty

Although she lived in France, Josephine supported the Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the 1950s. When she arrived in New York with her husband, they were refused reservations at 36 hotels because of racial discrimination. She became a prominent figure of the movement, and was seen alongside Dr. King.

The moral of this story, I suppose, is that it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter if you're poor or a celebrity, you're a human being. You have an opinion. I spent the longest time thinking celebrities weren't down to earth, but that isn't true. 

Chiquita, please don't sue me, it's a nice banana costume.  

Black Historical Figures - Henry Johnson, The Black Death

Let's talk World War One, folks.

Henry Johnson, born 1897, was born into poverty. While he worked in the New York City subway system, people over in Europe were blowing each-other up over stupid reasons because their friends were getting blown up, because THEIR friends were getting blown up, because some jerk decided to shoot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. European politics isn't something I like to get into, but it seems like all of the world's problems revolve around it. 

You know what you did, Europe.

When the United States joined the fight, Henry joined the fight too, in an all-black brigade known as the 369th Infantry Regiment, later nicknamed "The Harlem Hellfighters". 

These Harlem Hellfighters were known as such due to never losing a man through capture or losing ground. The Germans were afraid to fight them, and that's not a joke I'm making. They were the ones who called them the Hellfighters. 

"Auch, Nein!"

On watch in the Argonne Forest on May 14, 1918, Johnson's claim to fame would come. He fought off a German raid in hand-to-hand combat with a bolo knife, which is basically a small machete. In the process, Henry managed to kill multiple German soldiers and rescuing a fellow soldier while experiencing 21 wounds, which must have been terrifying for the German soldiers. If you shoot something once, there's a good chance it'll die. 

"Zurückziehen!!!"

Johnson was the first American to ever receive the Croix de Guerre, the highest award for bravery offered by the French Government. Almost a century later, President Barack Obama (And sweet Jesus, that sounds great to say) posthumously awarded him with the Medal of Honor. He's buried at Arlington. If you see him there, pay some respect to the man who was willing to fight for a country that hasn't had the best racial relations.

Black Historical Figures - Yasuke, the Black Samurai

Samurai are cool. I'm pretty sure that's a scientific fact.

I shouldn't need to tell you that Samurai were Japanese warriors, who lived to serve their local lords. The most relevant time of the Samurai, and the time period that most people think about when they think of samurai is the Sengoku period. Japan was not a unified nation at that point, but was split into many different territories governed by these local lords, all fighting to be the Shogun, Japan's military leader. There was an emperor, but he really didn't have any power. He was allowed to have nice things, though.

Here's a statue of him. It's a nice thing.

 

Another important detail is that the island nation was basically sealed off from the world. Nobody was allowed in or out. The only ones who were allowed to trade with Japan were the Portuguese. The final important detail of this story is that the Portuguese had slaves, and owned parts of Africa. This is where our story begins. 

 

Yasuke, who was likely from Mozambique, was in the service of some Italian Jesuits, and they did what Jesuits do, going places and talkin' about Jebus. Eventually, through the Portuguese, made his way to Japan. He was very popular, as he was the first black man to set foot on the island. Also, he was 6'2". People all around wanted to see him, and some were trampled to death. Good times. 

 

Oda Nobunaga, a warlord, was in town, and he heard the commotion from where he was. He went over to see what the commotion was about. Upon seeing Yasuke, he ordered him to scrub the ink off his face.

I repeat, nobody on the island had ever seen a black man. Not even him.

 

For some reason, Nobunaga really liked the fact that he was 6'2" and black. He was ordered to stay with the warlord, and he received samurai training. Neat. He even received a ceremonial katana. Double neat. He was given the task of bearing Oda's weapons, and the two became friends, I guess.

This wouldn't really last, however. Nobunaga's castle was attacked in 1582, Nobunaga was forced to commit seppuku, after losing to the army of Akechi Mitsuhide. Yasuke was there at the time and fought the Akechi forces alongside his fellow samurai. Immediately after Nobunaga's death, Yasuke went to join Nobunaga's heir, Nobutada. However, the fight didn't last long, and Yasuke was forced to surrender. Akechi said "The black man is a beast and does not know anything, and he's not even Japanese!"

What an asshole.

 

They did, however, take pity on him, and sent him back to the Jesuit temple.

 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of Yasuke, the Black Samurai. His ultimate fate is unknown, since nothing else was written about him after he went back to the temple. The Jesuits said that God was watching over him, as his life was spared. Maybe he was. Arguably, he was the first non-Japanese samurai. That, ladies and germs, is badass.  

Black Historical Figures - Bass Reeves

Bass Reeves was born in 1838 in Crawford County, Arkansas. Needless to say, it wasn't a great place to be if you were black. You were less than human. You were property; a slave.

It wasn't until the Civil War when Bass was able to escape from his master. If I had to guess, I'd say he really didn't like being known as someone's property.

He fled deep into Indian Territory, where he was able to hone his firearm skills. When the 13th Amendment was passed, Bass would walk back into the states a free man, and would use his freedom for good.

Having learned several Indian languages (Not to mention, being skilled in combat) Bass Reeves was recruited as a deputy U.S. Marshall. This is where the good part of the story begins. He basically became an African-American version of The Lone Ranger.

Yes, like Django. You must feel really smart for making that connection.

Bass worked for almost three decades as a federal peace officer in the Indian Territories, and became one of the force's most valued deputies. Reeves brought in some of the most dangerous criminals of the time, and due to his detective skills, arrested over 3,000 men, but was never wounded, despite having his hat and belt shot off on separate occasions.

Now, I can't think of a police officer today who could even serve that long, let alone arrest thousands of people. If I had my belt shot off, I think I'd call it quits. Then again, I'm more of a mouse than a man.

On top of all of that, Bass had to arrest his son for murder once. Though shaken by the fact, he would be the one to track down his own son and bring him to justice.

Reeves retired in 1909 due to failing health. He would die a year later, aged 71. He had 14 kills and over 3,000 arrests to his name, and yet, he's an unsung hero of the wild west. Hopefully, that miniseries starring Morgan Freeman can get off the ground already.