An Element of Risk

According to the BBC Breakfast Time news, a poisonous South American spider was discovered today, affixed to a bunch of bananas. One bite from its deadly fangs would apparently have resulted in a slow, agonising death some six hours later. Boringly, though, it didn't get a chance to bite anyone, and has since been sent to Liverpool for analysis. Liverpool being, for whatever reason, the spider-analysis capital of the UK.

Actually, there ought to be more of this sort of thing, as it engenders the sort of survivalist and self-reliance instincts which are sadly missing in today's society. In prehistoric times, for example, whenever the head of the household declared, "I'm just popping down the jungle to get a quick mammoth, dear", there was always a 50:50 chance that the quick mammoth would in fact end up getting him. Or something else, equally hazardous, would. So, cogniscent of this fact, prehistoric man lived live to the full, fully aware that the next shopping trip could be his last.

This is what we have to restore to our lives, in order to give them back their meaning.

In my opinion, supermarkets ought to hire tribes of cannibal pygmies to roam their aisles, armed with poison blowpipes. In addition, they should place venomous plants and animals on their shelves, alongside the conventional wares. Man-eating anacondas should be hidden in the delicatessen section, ready to jump out and constrict their victims. Thus the risk element would be re-introduced to the food gathering process, to the ultimate benefit of both the store and the consumer.

Thereafter, rival stores could start advertising their death rates in order to outdo one another in the danger stakes. So, for instance, Tesco would proudly proclaim, “We had 25 fatalities last week, compared to just 10 in wanky Morrisons!” Accordingly, the real hard men would start shopping in Tesco in order to prove their virility. This would force rivals, such as Morrisons, M&S, and Sainsburys to buy in stocks of black mambas and leopards in an attempt to increase the risk factor.

In time, the hostile supermarket environments would weed out those lesser members of the human species, leaving only the strongest, the fittest, and those of keenest intelligence. Thus the human race as a whole would be improved immeasurably.

In the meantime, it's to be hoped that the spider in Liverpool escapes and performs as per its counterpart in that film Arachnophobia. A few hundred dead Scousers would no doubt cheer everyone up considerably and take our minds off the current recession.