Six-Legged Lunch at Six Flags

Scott Hardie | September 27, 2006
Would you eat a live cockroach not to have to stand in line for roller coasters during your visit(s) to an amusement park? (link)

I wonder if PETA has a reaction to this.

Kris Weberg | September 27, 2006
I can't wait until the first anaphylactic shock death puts a rapid end to this one.

No, correction, I'd prefer not to wait for that. Let's see if this can end before that happens.

John E Gunter | September 27, 2006
From what I heard on the radio, MJ Morning show, PETA has made a big ruckus over this.

Scott Hardie | September 29, 2006
That's odd. I went to PETA's site to look it up, and they seem to argue that it's wrong to "frighten" the cockroaches, without using the word "kill." (link) If I'm misreading the article's title and it's using "Frightening" as an adjective to describe the cockroaches, then it's still strange not to read "kill" or "death" in the press release. Or perhaps it's just my false expectations that PETA would use such words without hesitation.

Amy Austin | September 29, 2006
Oh, just hell-fucking-no on that one.

If PETA has a problem with this, then I never heard them make a stink about Fear Factor. I always said that if I were on the show and *ANY* challenge involving these creatures arose, then I'd be doing "the walk of shame"... GROSS!

John E Gunter | September 29, 2006
I have to chuckly at the frightening comment. I understand why they're using it, but it brings up visions of me starting to walk into a room at night and wondering, is it ok to turn on the light or will I frighten some cockroach!

Better be careful, I'll get PETA after me!

I do personally feel that they're going a little bit to far with this, but hey, guess they gotta have a cause.

Amy Austin | September 29, 2006
I guaran-damn-tee that the only way that roach would be more frightened than I would is if he doesn't have a QUICK escape route... because PETA or no, I will kill that bitch dedder 'n ded.
(That's right -- I said "DED!")

Actually, I always prefer having E to do it whenever possible (that's man work), because having to do it myself always gets my heart rate climbing nigh what I would expect in an emergency crash landing. But hey... sometimes a girl's gotta' do the man work.

John E Gunter | September 29, 2006
Actually, I always prefer having E to do it whenever possible (that's man work), because having to do it myself always gets my heart rate climbing nigh what I would expect in an emergency crash landing. But hey... sometimes a girl's gotta' do the man work.

Don't feel bad Amy, my wife considers it man work too! Same with cleaning up after the dogs and cat!

Tony Peters | October 5, 2006
What I find funny, is that given the number of nasty jobs that I know Amy did while in the navy. Her squeemishness over "La Coocaracha" is rather amusing...it's just a bug...

Killing them is easy...as for eating them no thanks I was served a roach mixxed in with a side order of bacon at a bistro in LaJolla one sunday morning....I walked out on my bill and never ate there again...they closed within the year anyway to be replaced by a very good mexican place

John E Gunter | October 6, 2006
Well, as gross as it sounds, you have to deal with vermin whenever you've got uncovered food around. Hell, you can make that covered food as well. Coocaracha's are known to eat the glue on paper bags for goodness sake, so...

But I understand everyone's issues with having bugs in their food. If I find that kind of foreign matter in my food, I let the waiter know, with the idea that whatever part of the meal is removed from my bill, unless they give me a hard time, at which point, I'm not going to pay for the whole meal. Reason I say that is, I don't eat at places that would have a high bug count.

To get that kind of investation means the place is dirty and you can tell by visual inspection. So the occasional bug will get me to tell them I'm not paying for that part of the meal, ie the entree. But, I know my will to survive is high enough that if I were looking at starvation or eating bugs, I'd be eating bugs! It wouldn't be easy, and I probably would take a while to get used to it, but I've had to clean up rotting animal bodies, and eating bugs is a whole lot more pleasant! Trust me!

Aaron Shurtleff | October 6, 2006
I don't see what the problem is here... :P

Seriously, though, I wouldn't voluntarily eat a cockroach for this, but I also have enough patience to wait through a line to ride a roller coaster. I would like to think that they monitor the dietary intake of the cockroaches up for grabs (like they do with all of the bugs you could conceivably eat on purpose, like crickets and mealworms, etc.), because if the cockroach is eating "good" things, and has been its whole life, disease should not be an issue. Anaphylactic shock...now that's another issue entirely!

I've eaten at places that could nicely be called shitholes, and you do get the occasional friend with your meal. I get more flies than anything else, personally, although I did find a roach stuck in the butter at a semi-fancy restaurant once. I think the higher the class of the place, the better response you'l get to your concerns. Of course, repeated finding of bugs would mean let's stop going there, as it should, I don't care how good the food is!

And, funny story, I got a call at work last night from my lovely wife. She saw a cockroach (the big palmetto bug type, if you know what I mean) in our kitchen cabinets. I had to spend 1.5 hours clearing out the cabinets, and anything that was open, partly open, kinda open, or it might have been open sometime in the last year got tossed. This is the typical response to cockroaches around my house (thankfully rare!). I remember one time I was on vacation in NJ and my wife saw a roach. She put a paper cup over it, duct taped the cup to the floor, and there it sat for 4 days until I got back home to take care of it. And she called me every day to tell me how gross and nasty it was! :) So yeah, taking care of roaches must be man work! :D

John E Gunter | October 6, 2006
Ha, ha, ha, ha! My wife isn't quite so bad about roaches, but I know where you're coming from Aaron!

Tony Peters | October 6, 2006
My wife would have stepped on the cup, though she probably would have made me clean up and bury the remains of the departed...BTW I don't think y'all understand what I mean...there was a roach cooked into my bacon...and I had already nibbled a bit before I spotted said roach very not cool

John E Gunter | October 9, 2006
Well Tony, you got a little extra protein with that meal!

That would kinda gross me out though! Course, I've gotten a whole lot more squeamish since I've been married to my wife, so...

Aaron Shurtleff | October 9, 2006
Course, I've gotten a whole lot more squeamish since I've been married to my wife, so...

That is so the opposite of what I thought you would say... ;)

John E Gunter | October 9, 2006
When she finds foreign matter in her food or animal mess, she has a quick gag reflex. Mine has gottten a lot closer to what her's is like. Before, about the only kinds of things that would make me gag were oh, say the stench of the rotting Raccoon I had to clean up, but now, it's a whole lot easier for me. Like I said, she's made me more squeamish!

Amy Austin | October 15, 2006
What I find funny, is that given the number of nasty jobs that I know Amy did while in the navy. Her squeemishness over "La Coocaracha" is rather amusing...it's just a bug...

I'm not sure what you presume that I've done during my "time served" that could be nastier than a roach, Tony. I very astutely managed to avoid all but maybe a week's worth of head duty -- could count the number of times I cleaned a toilet on one hand -- during berthing cleaners. And I can promise you that there wouldn't be much on a ship that I'd find grosser than seeing any kind of bugs/vermin... *particularly* the "Coocaracha" variety. Thankfully, I never did. (But I do have *many* horror stories from my homestate of Florida, Land of Bugs You Wish You'd Never Met.) Given a choice between cleaning a toilet and a cucaracha encounter, I'd take the head any day.

John: I understand exactly what you mean about gag contagion... makes me think of the Barf-o-rama in Stand By Me. ;-DDD Gagging is most definitely a trainable thing -- in both directions -- and much easier to slide in the direction of the "weakest link", unfortunately!!!

Scott Hardie | October 15, 2006
Another reflex: Does this make you... you know?

Kris Weberg | October 15, 2006

Tony Peters | October 15, 2006
AMY: I forget you never did mess-crank duty...Heads are bad, some way more than others (like for instance engineering heads) but for something truely foul try a grease trap on a navy galley sink.....total grossness...smell, feel, look you name it.
Gag reflex: if I smell puke or even hear it coming up I get the sympathy reflex. I had a hell flight to Norfolk Va once through LaGuardia on a puddle jumper that had half the passengers (all 6 of us) throw up during the landing approach. I stared out the window and breathed through my shirt for 30 minute until I could get a croisant and a bottle of water during the layover in NY. I don't think I have ever been more queasy and not tossed my cookies then that flight. yuck just writing this makes me queasy thinking about it

John E Gunter | October 16, 2006
Well, being a person who suffers airsickness on landing, I feel for you Tony. I can always tell how good the pilot is by whether I get a reaction or not when we come in to land. That's why I always take a pill before getting on a flight, but that didn't completely help one time on a flight from San Francisco to L.A.

We were one of the last planes to fly out of Frisco before they shut the airport down due to the storm, so when we landed at L.A. we were right in the middle of the damn thing. I'm sure the pilot was doing his best, but I suffered through the whole landing. I didn't hurl, but had the bag ready.

Aaron Shurtleff | October 16, 2006
It might have been the realization you were going to Norfolk... :P My now wife went to college there...*shudder* Not my kind of place!

Tony Peters | October 16, 2006
generally speaking I don't get air/sea-sick. I had soooo much fun laughing at the guys on my ship who got sea-sick. Flying into Ft Lauderdale ahead of a huricane for my uncles funeral last month we were tossing and turning like a C-2 coming into a carrier landing (one of my favorite things since it's blind) every major drop/jump I cheered like a kid on a roller coaster...my mother was not amused.
Norfolk Va. is a sh1thole, my last trip there had but one highlight and that had nothing to do with the place...though the food at the "Jewish Mother" was pretty good and dessert was amazing.