Scullionhood - Does Fiction Lie?
This post is dedicated to Navah Wolfe, because at least she'll appreciate it.
The answer is a resounding No! In the army, one member of our company is daily offered to the volcano that is the kitchen, and He leaves the rest of us soldiers alone, providing us with bounty three times daily. You cannot escape it, and you must bear your sacrifice in silence, for it is for the good of the tribe.
Being a kitchen scullion is exactly the way it is described in all the sci-fi/fantasy novels I have read, with two exceptions: they don't hit you, and the cooking spoons are not wooden, but metal. However, you can count on the fact that you will scrub pots until your hands are raw and puffy, you will get scalded, and you will steal pastries (i.e., beurekas) when the cooks are not looking. The cooks will shout at you, and the head cook will generally be on the fattish side of life, while nobody will remember your name. When a ranking officer comes in, the cook will dance to a different tune entirely, the Obsequious Servant in E major (though that Israeli edge is never fully tamed -- they act like friends, for there is no true nobility). You eat first, and rush to find free time squeezed in between meals.
Of course, there are exceptions, like the brigade's kitchen second team of cooks (every week switches off groups, or teams, since cooking meals all day for a week is a draining, intense experience, even with scullions doing all the drudge work; cooks have the best work:vaction ratios, 1 week On, 1 week Off). They were funny, nice, and humane. I learned their names, and they remembered mine. However, this is, in part, because the head cook used to be a tank driver. It seems that in Gaza he had gunned the tank engine for no other reason than to blow a gigantuous cloud of black smoke into the faces of his/our Brigadier General and his superior, an even more self-important general. Our hero got his sorry self immediately chucked from combat duty, and now he's so corporeal that he couldn't get inside a tank unless they built one around him. [I asked him if it was worth it, and he said "absolutely!" with an impish grin. Tsk tsk...]
But in general, I reference my loyal fans to the tens if not hundreds of quality fantasy literature to discover more poetic descriptions of the slavery of kitchen duty. At least for us, it's only one day a month.
The answer is a resounding No! In the army, one member of our company is daily offered to the volcano that is the kitchen, and He leaves the rest of us soldiers alone, providing us with bounty three times daily. You cannot escape it, and you must bear your sacrifice in silence, for it is for the good of the tribe.
Being a kitchen scullion is exactly the way it is described in all the sci-fi/fantasy novels I have read, with two exceptions: they don't hit you, and the cooking spoons are not wooden, but metal. However, you can count on the fact that you will scrub pots until your hands are raw and puffy, you will get scalded, and you will steal pastries (i.e., beurekas) when the cooks are not looking. The cooks will shout at you, and the head cook will generally be on the fattish side of life, while nobody will remember your name. When a ranking officer comes in, the cook will dance to a different tune entirely, the Obsequious Servant in E major (though that Israeli edge is never fully tamed -- they act like friends, for there is no true nobility). You eat first, and rush to find free time squeezed in between meals.
Of course, there are exceptions, like the brigade's kitchen second team of cooks (every week switches off groups, or teams, since cooking meals all day for a week is a draining, intense experience, even with scullions doing all the drudge work; cooks have the best work:vaction ratios, 1 week On, 1 week Off). They were funny, nice, and humane. I learned their names, and they remembered mine. However, this is, in part, because the head cook used to be a tank driver. It seems that in Gaza he had gunned the tank engine for no other reason than to blow a gigantuous cloud of black smoke into the faces of his/our Brigadier General and his superior, an even more self-important general. Our hero got his sorry self immediately chucked from combat duty, and now he's so corporeal that he couldn't get inside a tank unless they built one around him. [I asked him if it was worth it, and he said "absolutely!" with an impish grin. Tsk tsk...]
But in general, I reference my loyal fans to the tens if not hundreds of quality fantasy literature to discover more poetic descriptions of the slavery of kitchen duty. At least for us, it's only one day a month.
posted by Shlome at 10:06 PM
1 Comments:
you know, i started reading this hoping for some debate on the platonic vs aristotilian views on fiction. instead, i get fat chefs and human sacrifice? how about you talk about that next?
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