I was working at a former job I had years ago when someone told me the Albatross Soup riddle. It’s not the oldest riddle but it’s old, and please don’t think that I won’t unfortunately spoil the answer here in order to explain something about experience. It might not be what you think, though.
Actually, I can’t imagine how anyone could successfully guess this riddle. It was a bit of a slow shift (for a busy place in general), so I spent just a little time on it, and could barely think of anything to guess about it or wonder as an entry point to guessing. It’s about a man who walks into a restaurant and orders a bowl of Albatross Soup from the menu. Upon tasting it, he becomes very upset, and goes home to kill himself. What happened?
And if you’re being told this riddle it’s rather obvious you’ve just been told what happened, and the question is why. In most morbid riddles the question is actually how the trouble happened. This one’s why. Whatever.
Weirdest thing, guys. He had tasted the albatross soup and realized that an earlier time he’d been served albatross soup by a companion long ago must’ve not been albatross soup after all, and concludes it must’ve been his missing friend, who had died, because it’s probably worthwhile to tell you now, they were all shipwrecked at the time.
My coworker had to just spell this out for me directly. I did not solve the riddle. I was a little busy and distracted, and I had to ask if they’d been saved from the shipwreck. Well of course they had. And cannibalism is a real horror, and of course that’s what sits with you.
(I’ll take a moment now to explain that cannibalism is a topic I revile in general. I especially hate when people claim that it’s culturally relative, or describe it as a “practice”, as if travelling ethnographers were never told stories of abnormal psychology and local criminal types, when of course that’s sometimes half of what someone would probably think to talk about if asked about a place, its local stories, etc. That cuts across cultures. I think it’s very odd and probably inaccurate to think that cannibals are often a commonplace part of a community, though in fact the decent people may have to run them out of town differently depending on how the locale works and what structures make it up. I’m sure it’s very rude to think that it’s normal anywhere. The risk ends up being that one becomes blasé about such things due to the misinformation, or even believes such an attitude to be some type of enlightened, and at that point something’s gone wrong. Be more tender, be more thoughtful, please. All that’s not part of the riddle, and constitutes a digression, but I think it’s right to cover if the topic comes up.)
Anyway, there’s a hidden response some people may have had in the very early days of this riddle: Well, maybe it wasn’t an albatross the first time. Maybe it was a pelican.
They’re somewhat similar marine birds, but a pelican claims to be much like a man, and may in fact have a very similar hormonal profile to humans. This could’ve at times caused confusion for various reasons, though I won’t harp on why. Apparently, it was more likely for a sailor to give the hidden response if they had been four times around the entire world by ship, and I have to suppose this was due to encountering a wider range of companions, exposing them to more stories.
I think this might explain the riddle of why this strange riddle exists.
──── by Lync Dalton ────
PLEASE DONATE TO WEIRDO CAMP. Do you enjoy and/or enrich yourself with Weirdo Camp and its unique, original content? Please send a donation via Paypal (see site sidebar) or to $alchemylynx on Cash App.
Want the coolest tax deduction in the world? Donate to Terra Thesis Institute.
