[CH] Funny hotsauce qoute
J.B Cattley (jbc@mpx.com.au)
Tue, 10 Feb 1998 20:48:50 +1100
I was reading Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age' the other day, (sort of
cyberpunk... sort of. Read this book!) and came across the following
passage:
The steak sandwiches arrived at the beginning of this bit of exposition.
Hackworth began messing about with condiments, as if he could belittle the
importance of this conversation by paying equal attention to having just the
right goodies on his sandwich. He fussed with his pickle for a while, then
began mining the bottles of obscure sauces arrayed in the centre of the
table, like a sommelier appraising a wine cellar.
"I had been mugged in the Leased Territories," Hackworth said absently, "and
Lieutenant Chang recovered my hat, somewhat later, from a ruffian." He had
fixed his gaze, for no special reason, on a tall bottle with a paper label
printed in an ancient crabbed typeface. "McWhirter’s Original Condiment" was
written large, and every-thing else was too small to read. The neck of the
bottle was also festooned with black-and-white reproductions of ancient
medals awarded by pre-Enlightenment European monarchs at exhibitions in
places like Riga. Just a bit of violent shaking and thwacking ejected a few
spurts of the ochre slurry from the pore-size orifice at the top of the
bottle, which was guarded by a quarter-inch encrustation. Most of it hit his
plate, and some impacted on his sandwich.
<snip>
Hackworth took a bite of his sandwich, correctly anticipating that the meat
would be gristly and that he would have plenty of time to think about his
situation while his molars subdued it. He did have plenty of time, as it
turned out; but as frequently happened to him in these situations, he could
not bring his mind to bear on the subject at hand. All he could think about
was the taste of the sauce. If the manifest of ingredi-ents on the bottle
had been legible, it would have read something like this:
Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger,
tomato puree, axle grease, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove
cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings,
muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and
nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activated
charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, single-malt
whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid,
bituminous coal, fallout, printer's ink, laundry starch, drain cleaner, blue
chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings.
He could not help smiling at his own complete haplessness, both now and on
the night in question. "I will concede that my recent trips to the Leased
Territories have not left me disposed to make any more."…
This took me three attempts to read the first time I came across it… Mind
you, it was 4 in the morning.