Protesting Pudding?

Honestly, I don’t mean to be crass, I’m just...flabbergasted. (A word I can’t recall ever having typed before!) A couple of days ago, a man burst into a busy central London restaurant and chopped off his own penis with a knife in front of horrified diners

Um, uh. Why????

Obviously, this man has some serious mental issues. He’ll now have physical ones to go with them, though the severed article has been surgically reattached. And, presumably, he’ll now get the help I think we’d all agree he needs. So, that’s disposed of, if you’ll pardon the phrase. But, on hearing about this event, my thoughts went instantly to all those poor diners and waitstaff he’s traumatized—this took place in a popular restaurant just after a marathon, so the dining room was likely even more crowded than usual, and the guy actually climbed up on a table so everyone could see him before he did the deed.

I don’t know what went through his mind, or the minds of his unwilling audience, but I’d be willing to bet that not one entrée was eaten afterwards. (Think of it: Could you eat, after that?) Though I doubt that was his intent. There must, after all, be easier ways to protest meat-eating or what-have-you.

Unintentional or not, I expect it will have at least a slight effect on local dining habits; at least, I doubt many of those diners present will be heading to other restaurants any time soon. Just the thought of being exposed to something like that is enough to make me want to order in—or maybe fast awhile—and I’m all the way on the other side of the Pond! But of course, the reason this got press coverage is that it’s so unheard of; rarity makes for good read-through. The unlikelihood of this happening again should soothe digestions and ease minds.

Unfortunately for my own peace of mind, it so happens that I just this week checked the etymology of the word “pudding,” for reasons that now seem too trivial to explain; normally, as an American, all those horrid puns and jokes like the post heading wouldn’t have occurred to me.
Have to admire the reporters (at the Guardian, no less!) for not indulging. Though, if English EMTs are anything like their brothers here, I’d bet someone made a joke or seven along those lines. Humor’s a defense mechanism, they tell me, and I should think everyone exposed to that man’s insanity—no, that pun wasn’t intentional—would need some defending.

As horrors go, this was relatively minor; nothing like the geographically nearer bloodsheds we've been hearing about recently. Perhaps that’s why my mind stuck on this, as a sort of mental vaccine against the others. But there’s a horribly tasteless appeal to the sort of thing a friend calls “winning the Darwin Award and living to collect.”

And, oh, damn, there’s another pun! Tasteless, indeed.