ask palinode: seafood edition

Who wants the conclusion to the Worst Meal Ever story? You do! Part Two features a dog in a cage, biting red ants and something pink and unidentifiable that may have been fish, but may also have been... I just don't know. Part Two comes tomorrow. Now for a slice of delicious Ask Palinode!


All Ask Palinode questions are generally held in queue, but sometimes a question leaps out at you - no research or consideration necessary. In just a few words, the question bodies forth its own response, growing in its medium like crystals in oversaturated sugar water. This is one of them.

Aaron asks:

What fish will I eat in 2048?

Aaron, that is not the right question. That is, you want to know what kind of fish you will eat in 38 years' time. You do not imagine an individual fish, say a cod named Frank. You imagine a class of fish, a species or a range. Grilled tilapia, you think, licking your lips. Sole in red curry sauce with leeks. Braised mahi-mahi served on a giant clam shell at a raw bar somewhere in the Keys. A trout.

But even that is not the right question.

Better to ask what, what will the fish tell you to eat in 2048? When, in the aftermath of the Marine Wars, the fish emerge from the ocean in their terrible machines to destroy the bulk of humanity and leave a wretched few to slave in the fish flake farms, what meals will be on your plate then?

When you shuffle your broken body back to the barracks and lay your head down on your thin lumpy pillow, will you cast your mind back to the distant days when we sat contented at the center of the food web? Or will your brainwashing be so complete that you will pull your scratchy blanket over your chest and thank the fish gods for granting you another day of life? Will you pray for baleen?

Of course you won't pray for baleen. Baleen is for whales.

I know. You don't want to believe what I have just laid out for you with the vivid descriptions and startling drawings of advanced fish technology, and the whale. You think, They're just fish; they exist to be eaten by humans or placed in little plastic cups, right? But who can plumb the salt depths of the fish mind, or gauge the ambitions of creatures that suspend themselves in watery darkness, staring day by day at the light above, watching the shadows that cross the surface - and hating them?

That's why I recommend a preemptive strike against all fish immediately. We don't want the smoking gun to be one of those machines. We must build massive freezers to store the bodies of our enemies for future consumption. And just to be on the safe side, we should probably kill the Finnish. They're deeee-pressing.

Update: It turns out that Aaron's question is topical. Scientists with their gleaming coats and beakers have determined that fish stocks may vanish by 2048 if humanity maintains its current level of consumption. This is why we must strike now, before the fish catch on and rise from the ocean in their terrible clanking machines.

Update: Via my friend Aaron, I found a video of a prototype fish machine. The end times, why they are already here.

More update: Sample sketches of fish fashion for the holidays.

Tired of the straight talk and plain speech that hides the truth? Untwist yer knotty perplexings with Ask Palinode. Email me at askpalinode @ gmail . com.