Today is the thirteenth of the month, which is Ungood Art Day on JSVB. On every monthly thirteenth, I demonstrate some sort of art I've tried to make that started out with the best of intentions but somehow went south.
This Friday the Thirteenth, I'm illustrating a truly bizarre conversation I had a few days ago. My friend Ted and I began to wonder if in the instance where Japan was to be hit with a disaster so severe (God forbid!) that the country ran out of food and everyone was starving, could Godzilla be killed and eaten for food? We reasoned that Big G would probably be somewhere in the spectrum between chicken and alligator, so Japanese barbecue would work for the meaty parts, and you could make soup from the gristly bits. Each portion should be cooked at around 350°F for maybe three to five hours until the internal temperature of the thickest part of the meat reaches at least 180°F. You could marinate the meat in a mix of peanut oil, soy sauce, ginger, garlic and sugar before cooking. Serve with rice and Yubari melon.
So how many people would Godzilla feed? The 1950's version of the monster is around the size of a 15-storey building. Assuming one chicken-sized portion feeds one family for one day... well, that's difficult. There are no chicken-to-Godzilla volume conversions.
However, thanks to the Internet I now know that nearly 20,000 chickens can fit into a school bus. I'll round up. Maybe six school buses can fit into one thin fifteen-storey building, and that building would equal in size to Godzilla. So, 6 x 20,000 = 120,000 chickens: that many people would be fed.
In 1955, there were nearly 90 million Japanese citizens. 120,000 chickens would feed one tenth of one percent of the population. That's not a whole lot, but I imagine it would be better than nothing. The mining town of Yubari, for example, had in the 1950's around 120,000 inhabitants, so slaughtering Godzilla could save that community. Yubari is now famous for its Yubari melon, which is a popular gift to be given at Chūgen, which is a holiday on the lunar calendar for celebrating one's superiors.
Shoot me an e-mail if you ever want to know how you can send me any spare Yubari melons you may have lying around!
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