From:: sajit@ai.mit.edu (Satyajit Rao)
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 11:28:49 -0400
To: gsl@ai.mit.edu
Subject: Is food really about food?

The fact that food is an expression of Italian Neo-Realistic starch is
often lost upon the average graduate student. Today's GSL is designed
to remind you of this.

You will begin your meal with a salad which at first appears aimless,
but as you focus more on the Romaine lettuce the point becomes
clearer. Was Spinelli trying to say that all life was represented here
in this lettuce, with the red tomatoes an unbearable reminder of
mortality? If so, where is the celery? Is the omission deliberate? At
the media lab the salad consists solely of celery, but then they are
extremists. They want to point out the absurdity of all research.
Be that as it may. One lovely touch at today's GSL is the baked
beluga caviar. In one masterful stroke we omitted the caviar leaving
the rest of the baked dish to speak for itself. This is reminiscent of
the boneless chicken at Stefanis which ironically is chicken filled
with extra bones, as if to say that life may not quite turn out as you
expect it to. The baked dish is delicious and not at all didactic,
True there is a pervasive Marxist quality to it, but this is hidden by
the oregano.

For dessert we have ice-cream. The Italian communists believe in
stripping away the frivolous, superficial effect of the cream thus
reducing the dessert to your basic block of ice, which passes under
the name of gelato. We however, do not subscribe to this point of
view.

See you all at 12:15 when we can remind ourselves of the true meaning of food.

brought to you by,
			Liana, Mike, Jon, Andras, Lilla, and Sajit