Them's Good Eatin'

I didn't make this up.

I have a special treat for you today that came to me through a couple of sources who will remain anonymous for business reasons. A man named Marty Highton is selling the trademark of a name and logo you've almost certainly heard of. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Shakespeare's Choice Gourmet Pasties.

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Huh? What do you mean you haven't heard of it? Have you been living under a rock? Marty says it's, "The most recognizable trademark in the Western World," so you must be totally ignorant and uncultured.

Truth be told, the man selling this trademark first registered the name with California's copyright office in mid-2007. He advertised the sale through a thick, photocopied packet he sent around to various big food corporations. While pasties are an actual food, there is no such product as "Shakespeare's Choice." There is only a name and logo. According to the packet, Mr. Highton started in business preserving butterflies, and he used to know Johnny Cash, which is why his totally awesome sketch of William Shakespeare is worth seven million dollars.

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Yep, forget about using lawyers and sales representatives to sell your brand, the way to make it in corporate America is through eBay auctions!

One of Marty's brilliant sales tactics is to claim that Shakespeare "endorsed" pasties in his plays (you know, since most of the world would know something like that). He includes quotes from The Merry Wives of Windsor, All's Well That Ends Well, and The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus. The first quote, “Wife, bid these gentlemen welcome. Come we have a hot venison pasty to dinner: come gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness,” isn't too bad, except that the play is all about mean-spirited people tricking each other for financial gain and their own amusement. The second quote reads, "I will confess what I know without constraint: If ye pinch me like a pasty, I can say no more." Parolles, the character who says this line, has been captured and is about to be interrogated. He's basically stating that he will give the desired information. "Pinch me like a pasty," actually refers to torture.

My personal favorite, though, is the last quote, "And make two pasties of your shameful heads." It doesn't make too much sense by itself, so let's put it in context:

Hark, wretches! how I mean to martyr you.
This one hand yet is left to cut your throats,
Whilst that lavinia 'tween your stumps doth hold
The Basin that receives your guilty blood.
You know your mother means to feast with me,
And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad:
Hark, Villains! I will grind your bones to dust
And with your blood make a paste,
And of the paste a coffin I will rear
And make two pasties of your shameful heads...

The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus
Act V, Scene II, lines 181-190

Well there you have it, ladies and gentlemen! For the scant price of seven million dollars, you can own Shakespeare's Choice Gourmet Pasties, the creepiest food in existence! I can just imagine the ads:

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