Canned Meat: Selected Anecdotes

Canned meat has been very influential on me and I could talk about it all day, but will limit myself to only 2 of my favorite canned meat recollections:

1. Vienna Sausages - I never liked Vienna sausages and neither did my brother or any of our acquaintences, so when we started having people over to view girly movies (circa 1989 - 1992 or so), we would maintain order with a "Vienna Sausage Clause". If anybody was overly disruptive (I think "disruptive" was defined as interfering with the girly movies, persistant farting, or just generally "preventing other participants from feeling good"), we would force them to eat a vienna sausage as punishment. And if they refused to eat it, they had to leave. We kept a can of vienna sausages sitting on top of the television or VCR at all times as a reminder. And it actually was pretty effective.

2. Chicken of the Sea - When I was living in the Alaskan Bush (pre-internet), entertainment was hard to come by. One thing I would do to amuse myself was write to companies and try to get free coupons. I wrote a letter to Chicken of the Sea and told them there was a chicken feather in my can of tuna and it was probably put in there by a worker on the production line who thought it was a clever play on the "Chicken" part of the product name.

Chicken of the Sea responded by saying it is very unlikely that a worker did that due to their stringent quality control. They gave me two coupons for free cans of tuna though.

When I return to Alaska next month, I'll see if I still have their letter in storage.