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Monday, March 24, 2008

Pass the Ketchup

Yesterday a fire destroyed the Cargill beef processing plant in Booneville, Arkansas. This morning the fire is still smoldering.

The plant made upwards of 500,000 ground beef patties a day.

Can you imagine the smell? Mmmmmm, this morning the whole town smells like char grilled burgers.


Sorry for the folks who lost jobs and fortunately nobody was injured, but it just hit me as, uh, tasty.

17 comments:

  1. Did you hear about the hemp factory that burned down in Plainville, ND? It was quite a story, but the news reporters were too paranoid to air it.

    Ba dum dum. ;)

    (Yes yes, the science doesn't track with the claim. This is fiction, people. Although Jim's tasty story is probably actually true.)

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  2. And a tractor-trailer load of pickles and onions just overturned avoiding one of the fire-trucks.

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  3. Mmmm... have you ever driven by a french fry factory when they're actually doing the frying? The air for miles around is saturated with the smell.

    I prefer my burgers done medium.

    Tangential thought, brought on by my idiot older son. Almost nothing smells worse than burnt microwave popcorn. But do you think he'd listen to the *instructions*?

    It's cold with my windows and doors open.

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  4. Yeah, we did the burned popcorn thing last night.

    My wife bought the half-sized bags by accident. My son just can't seem to get the concept of 1/2 power.

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  5. Burned coffee is right up there with the popcorn stench. Yuk.

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  6. the smell of burned coffe, yeah, one of the things I really don't miss about the Navy.

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  7. The Jolly Rancher company used to make their candy in the same town where I grew up. When the wind was blowing in the right direction, you could always tell what flavor was in the vat.

    Hmm...grape.

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  8. In other news, every dog in Logan County, Arkansas appears to have made a beeline for the county seat. Fences were leapt, chains snapped, leashes broken, and two volunteers at the county pound were injured when a slavering, inhuman tide of fur managed to escape their cages and made a break for freedom.

    Authorities are investigating potential causes for the massive canine disturbance.

    * * *

    Oh, and here's something I just learned: apparently Booneville was (practically) the birthplace of Dizzy and Daffy Dean. I don't know squat about baseball, but Bud Abbott mentioned them as examples of baseball players with funny nicknames before going on to tell Lou Costello that he had a new job managing a baseball team and his first baseman was nicknamed Who.

    Because knowledge is power!

    (Actually, I'm not sure what power I get from such useless knowledge. I don't know... THIRD BASE!)

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  9. Well done, please.

    I bet they didn't have a hard time getting the volunteer firemen to go there. Free burgers for everybody!

    Although nothing beats living near a bread bakery. U of A (me alma mater) was downwind from the Nickles bakery/factory. On certain nights, mm mm. Could get practically drunk from just sniffing the wind.

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  10. Well, I've never lived downwind from a bakery, but...

    When I was stationed on Iceland, I was assigned to the Naval Security Group Detachment, which was near Keflavik about 1/2 a mile from the Icelandic Whaling Station. In the summer, the Icelanders would pull the big whale carcasses up on the skidways and flense them. Tons of blubber would wash into the cracks and crevasses around the concrete ways and rot in the sun. We were usually downwind and the smell was unbelievable. Rotten whale fat, sucked in by the air handlers and concentrated on the watch floor.

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  11. Okay, see, I've never actually smelled rotting whale, but I'd be surprised if it smelled like fresh bread. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and jump to the conclusion that rotting whale is the exact opposite of fresh bread. Granted, this may reflect my own biases. Until this moment, the concepts "rotting whale" and "fresh bread" (technically it's "mmmm--fresh bread") had never occupied the same memory address in my brain.

    There is a Merita Bread factory in Charlotte, NC, that magically transforms a vile stretch of I85--the smell of fresh-baked bread is sometimes sufficient to overpower the reek of exhaust and diesel, filling your car with the smell of a kitchen. And probably some kind of upper respirtory disease caused by bleached flour and preservatives, but why go negative? Fresh-baked bread (even mass produced factory bread) is nummy goodness, and I'll brook no disagreement on this matter--it will be pistols at dawn. (And since I don't know how to use a gun, you'll be wracked with guilt for shooting a moron--your triumph will last seconds, mine for the remainder of your restless, shameful life.)

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  12. your triumph will last seconds, mine for the remainder of your restless, shameful life.

    I dunno, Eric, shooting a lawyer, there's got to be some long lasting satisfaction in that ;)

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  13. It hasn't made Dick Cheney look any happier, has it?

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  14. I always thought he looked smugly self satisfied. Just saying.

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  15. That's because he's embalmed that way.

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  16. or that's the best 'human' costume the evil lizard alien overlords could come up with?

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