30 November 1996

Uniformly Cylindrical Salmon

I bought 200 grams of salmon for 39 pennies. I used to be baffled by how anyone could make any money selling salmon so cheaply after shipping it halfway around the world, but after a while I stopped thinking about it. What still fascinates me, though, is the way the salmon is fit into the can.

No two cans are the same; they have from two to four pieces of salmon wedged in them. Each can is a puzzle solved, but who solved it? Child laborers? A computer? Child laborers using computers? Beats me. Somehow somewhere schools of fish from the Pacific Ocean now lie motionless in the uniformly cylindrical briny darkness at my local grocery store.