I rather had an idea of writing a satirical, maybe dark humor cookbook on How to Cook your Children. So basically made up recipes for eating children. So, I just wanted to know. Would this be considered offensive? Would this be going to far? Would this be to far? Would this break taboos? Could anyone laugh at the idea?
You're about 300 years late on the taboo-breaking front...Jonathan Swift wrote a fairly widely read and well known satirical pamphlet in the eighteenth century encouraging British people to eat their children to solve problems of over-population and famine.
Most definitely... but then you could offend someone by saying there is a fly on the wall. Depends who the audience is really. For some it would be, while others would find it amusing and hillarious. Just look at the Dead Baby Jokes. Some find them completely disgusting and some find them hillarious(well I am sure they find them disgusting too) Uh... see above? Probably, but then taboos are like rules. Meant to be broken If being on the Internet has taught me anything its this: There is nothing out there that someone, somewhere, wont find funny.
What would the set-up be? Like, stories with misbehaving children followed by recipes, or...? This sounds like the sort of thing I'd flip through.
It would be split into two kinds of sections. Just like they split baked goods from regular food in a normal recipe book. "Because your child will always have two faces" You have recipes for Naughty Children Deserve a Marinating or if you're feeling like something sweet Good Children Deserve a Pastry.
I tend not to be terribly fond of children so I have little in the way of ethical issues, might find it funny, but generally find today's children too fatty and my wife has been after me to watch my cholesterol.
LOL its fantastic has the potential of being funny or a really gruesone horror Would you be aiming it at children or adults who have them? Its similar in idea to Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids. There is a recipe for cooking children in CS Lewis Silver Chair, there is also one for Marshwiggles
With all the perverts out there you would have to be careful, and could have trouble finding a publisher. Personally, I must say it does border on the sick and disturbed.
I can't be the only parent that threatens to roast em when they are a handful. Its precisely because I am a parent I like the idea - especially after 3 days of my middle one being trapped indoors because of weather
Unless the book is REALLY funny, and underneath shows a deep affection for children (affection, NOT culinary appreciation!), I think this is doomed to failure. Consider Simon Bond's bestseller 101 Uses for a Dead Cat. The reason this book succeeded was because underlying the sick humor is an appreciation of cats and their quirky ways. Your book is likely to be considered, if you'll excuse the term, in bad taste at best. To overcome that, it will have to be a real knee-slapper that engages the funnybone of harried but loving parents.
I agree with Cog. If you intend to interest a publisher, then it needs some form of warmth for children, besides the oven, and not just read like a "mommy, mommy" joke. Though I should add, the actual affection should be genuine; otherwise it'll be obvious it was only thrown in for good measure. At least you won't be at want for puns //R
yup!... to the max... ditto... same question?... ditto the ditto... for all but those who practice cannibalism... this mom of 7, grandmom of 19 [at last count] sure can't! that said, some people laugh at all kinds of awful stuff... just like they love to watch people being maimed and killed in real life, or in fiction... doing what you propose would be a new low to me, however...
It could work well as satire (as Swift did), but I really don't see it working well in any other case.
I think it is funny... though I am fond of dead baby jokes and stuff like that. I am not a bad person, and do not plan on eating any babies, but if it was funny, I would read it. Just throwing it out there... pigs have the mental capacities of a 3-year-old human. So...we are basicly eattin' baby bacon anyway. (Not really. I'm fankin my bacon.) I did not mean to offend anyone. Obviously if you wish to eat pork, my can. And I am obviously not a baby eater, if I wont even eat a piggy.
Thank you everyone. Cogito, I do agree. But I think I have the perfect formula to make it funny. It's going to be ah nomilicious
aside from what i see as the total tastelessness of such a thing [yes, double entendre intended], that title makes no sense semantically... and does no one but me see the parallel to serling's 'to serve man' twilight zone episode?
I just think it has the potential of being really funny, bit Hanzel and Gretel, Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids, Horrible Histories etc Fact is done right children would probably enjoy reading it my experience was teaching children history was much easier when i included the nasty bits. And as I said there is a recipe for the Human Child in the Chornicles of Narnia and I am sure many other books, the Wolf tried to ate two little pigs and then the third turned him into wolf soup etc traditionally stories would have included more grit and gore
It was the first thing I thought of, forgot to mention it. I love that episode. I was really little when I first saw that episode, and did not see the ending coming at all. I love the twilight zone.
And so what of it is a cross between the guy who said we should eat our children during the potato famine and the Twilight Zone. They are my inspirations. Of course you're going to see the similarities. "A good composer[writer,painter,etc.] does not imitate; he steals." -Igor Stravinsky
Personally, I like kids and I don't like sick humor, so I wouldn't buy it. But that's the issue, isn't it? Finding an audience, I mean. It will offend some but not others; those it offends simply aren't the target audience. (Or maybe they are ...) You can't please all of the people all of the time.
