PL wrote:

>
> "1. Place an olive on the board and hit it gently with the mallet, a
> hammer, or a rolling pin, so that you can easily remove the stone. Do as
> many as you like. Place your olives in fresh water and change that water
> twice a day for eight days. On the eighth day they should be slightly
> bitter, but not as much as a fresh olive. If they are too bitter for your
> taste, continue to change the water until their taste suits you."
>
>
> --
> Peter Lucas
> Brisbane
> Australia
>
> Pain is your friend, your ally, it will tell you when you are seriously
> injured, it will keep you awake and angry, and remind you to finish the
> job and get the hell home. But you know the best thing about pain?
>
> It lets you know you're not dead yet!


Pain after death is worse than the alive type. When you're alive
your brain controls your pain. When your brain dies, the pain
remains, free to rollick through your decaying body without any help
from your dead brain. Yes, the pain after death is pure, unfettered
by the brain and other control methods such as screaming. But let's
get back to food.

As long as you can eat, you know you're not dead. When you're
dead you become food for worms and things growing above your rotting
corpse. It's funny you mention slitting the olives on each side. The
small green ones I used to get at the arab store were called split
olives. They had the pits in them, but there was a slit on just one
side. I know they came off the pit a lot easier, but were not sloppy
and soft. They were also not massively salty. Why for sure I cannot
say. They had salt, but not overbearing. I have often wondered how
they de-pit olives, or how they did it before the invention of
whatever utensil they use nowadays. I'm talking about getting the pit
out and the olive doesn't look disturbed at all except for a tiny pin
hole on each end. What do they use? I like eating them off the pit
anyway. But I'm still interested to know.

Painfully dying to know,
TJ