Nosh-Sothoth

March 21, 2007 6:20 AM

I understand The Elder Ones are quite tasty on saltines with a dash of Tabasco.
posted by sourwookie (89 comments total)

In Russia, the canned fish eat you! Probably.
posted by MrMustard at 6:27 AM on March 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

I didn't scream at Tubgirl, Goatse, Toenail Hands, or any of the others, but I screamed at this.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:31 AM on March 21, 2007

Um, those don't look like fish teeth.
posted by Pastabagel at 6:32 AM on March 21, 2007

"Nosh-Sothoth" made me smile.
posted by DU at 6:33 AM on March 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

I knew there was a reason I don't eat tinned fish.
posted by jasperella at 6:34 AM on March 21, 2007

Dead link, or is it just me?
posted by Meatbomb at 6:36 AM on March 21, 2007

Sweet jesus.
posted by CRM114 at 6:37 AM on March 21, 2007

Oh gods oh gods oh gods. I habitually shop at the local Russian grocery stores, and eat at a Russian cafe near my office. I'm sure I'll continue to do so, but I don't think I'm ever going to buy anything in a can.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:38 AM on March 21, 2007

Like one of the commenters on the site, I think it's a fake.
posted by malaprohibita at 6:39 AM on March 21, 2007

Um, those don't look like fish teeth.
posted by Pastabagel

Some of the warm-water herrings are known for "well-developed", "dog-like" teeth....don't know about the Atlantic herring. Agreed that this makes it look like "Something out of a Steven King novel" herring. If I regain my appetite by lunchtime, I'll be skipping the tuna melt.
posted by availablelight at 6:40 AM on March 21, 2007

Ya looks fake to me. If not, why would the photog not pull out the whole whatzit for closer inspection?
posted by Mister_A at 6:41 AM on March 21, 2007

I don't think it's fake. From a link in the comments.

Things in a can should never EVER have teeth ever.
Ever.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 6:43 AM on March 21, 2007

Yeah, it's left-over wolf herring or salmon heads canned by mistake. Whoops.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 6:45 AM on March 21, 2007

When the Russians came for Tsathoggua,
I remained silent;
I was not a formless spawn.

When they locked up Cyäegha,
I remained silent;
I was not a Nagäae.

When they came for Cthulhu,
I did not speak out;
I was not a star spawn.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

~ Pastor Hastur Niemöller
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:46 AM on March 21, 2007 [27 favorites]

"...why would the photog not pull out the whole whatzit for closer inspection?"

I wouldn't touch that thing.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:47 AM on March 21, 2007

Some of the warm-water herrings are known for "well-developed", "dog-like" teeth....don't know about the Atlantic herring. Agreed that this makes it look like "Something out of a Steven King novel" herring. If I regain my appetite by lunchtime, I'll be skipping the tuna melt.
posted by availablelight at 9:40 AM on March 21

Thanks, availablelight. I honestly did not know that. And now I am horrified.
posted by Pastabagel at 6:50 AM on March 21, 2007

"Yo niggaz. Can you speak English please. This is the internet, not Russia."
posted by empath at 6:52 AM on March 21, 2007 [4 favorites]

If there ever was an appropriate time for the hackneyed "I just threw up in my mouth a little", this would be it.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:54 AM on March 21, 2007

Yuck-o-rama.
posted by tadellin at 6:56 AM on March 21, 2007

The pages on "Creepy Playgrounds" and "Silent Hill in St Petersburg" are also good.

Someone in Russia has an acute sense for the gothic.
posted by WPW at 6:57 AM on March 21, 2007

OK, so it's vertigo from the Grand Canyon post and now night sweats. Thanks.
posted by Sk4n at 6:57 AM on March 21, 2007

LOL pastor Hastur. Just don't say that out loud, mmm-kay?
posted by Mister_A at 6:57 AM on March 21, 2007

"Yo ......... Can you speak English please. This is the internet, not Russia."

Just curious... we needed to read that again here on the blue because why????

I hate the casual use of the various forms of that word. It degrades all of us....

/derail
posted by HuronBob at 6:58 AM on March 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

I wish it were LOLOMG hyperbole: this post makes me wish there was an "un-favorite" feature that would allow me to remove something from my sightline forever. Until this gets off the front page, I'll be reminded that I just looked at a seemingly-real photograph of a Cthulhu-in-a-can.
posted by pineapple at 6:59 AM on March 21, 2007

Goodness in every bite.
posted by Elmore at 7:00 AM on March 21, 2007

See. That's why I get all my mail order "companions" from Malaysia.
posted by SinisterPurpose at 7:02 AM on March 21, 2007

I hate the casual use of the various forms of that word. It degrades all of us....

Just curious, how do you feel about its use in the movie, Blazing Saddles?
posted by kalessin at 7:05 AM on March 21, 2007

In Soviet Russia, canned fish eat you!
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:06 AM on March 21, 2007

Shit, that was the first damn comment...

*slinks away in shame*
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:06 AM on March 21, 2007 [3 favorites]

Man, we sue if there's a measly human finger in our can of chili.*



* "We" in the above statement refers to the citizens of the United States of America (USA). The above statement is not meant to construe that all USA citizens are overly litigious. The above statement is also not meant to be Americentric. Terminal Verbosity (the commenter) is aware that not all USA citizens are quick to cause suit for supposedly minor infractions and the that citizens of other nations are also capable of causing suit for supposedly minor infractions. The above comment is a work of snark. Names, places and incidents implied above are used snarkishly and any resemblance to actual persons, places or incidents is entirely coincidental. The above statement is the opinion of the commenter and does not reflect the opinion of MetaFilter^tm or its affiliates.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 7:30 AM on March 21, 2007 [3 favorites]

It just looks like part of a fish head. Why so alarmed?
posted by of strange foe at 7:33 AM on March 21, 2007

Miskatonic Ewwww.
posted by sourwookie at 7:40 AM on March 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

Because people are scared of food that looks like it might be part of an animal.
posted by asok at 7:43 AM on March 21, 2007 [5 favorites]

Imagine my chagrin when my tin of toothy fish parts contained nothing but chunked tuna.
posted by sonofslim at 7:44 AM on March 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh my god. I hope that hasn't put me right off canned fish. But it probably has.
posted by OmieWise at 7:50 AM on March 21, 2007

Because people are shocked to realize they aren't actually eating what they thought they were?

Because you can chip your tooth on a fish tooth?

Because sharp teeth are the great archetype for the great, untamed wilderness that lurks outside the city gates, waiting to dash our fragile dreams of civilization with the stark realization of our own mortality and insignificance in the universe?
posted by noble_rot at 7:50 AM on March 21, 2007

Why does the can seem to contain over 50% goo? I find that more ick-inducing than the head. Even without the jaws of death there, this tin would be extra gross. I'm sure the jaws are real, but I'm having a hard time believing this wasn't staged.
posted by Skyriss at 7:50 AM on March 21, 2007

I think we killed it?
posted by Richard Daly at 7:52 AM on March 21, 2007

By which I mean, I can't look at the nasty fishy parts. I guess I should consider myself fortunate.
posted by Richard Daly at 7:53 AM on March 21, 2007

ewwwwwww.

Terminal Verbosity i so want to steal this disclaimer and tack it on the end of my comments like a sigline.
posted by lonefrontranger at 7:58 AM on March 21, 2007

Fake or not, it looks yummy!
posted by Vindaloo at 8:09 AM on March 21, 2007

You consume Atlantic Herring. You are feeling mildly nauseated.
posted by weston at 8:11 AM on March 21, 2007 [6 favorites]

Admittedly I could be overly sensitive, because I have a phobia about fishy creatures*,

but seriously?: "It just looks like part of a fish head. Why so alarmed?"

What kind of huge, barbed, snaggly, protuberant teeth are garden-variety in the fish heads in your neck of the woods?

* and really, MeFi is no place for me to hang out.
posted by pineapple at 8:14 AM on March 21, 2007

tuna dentata
posted by growli at 8:21 AM on March 21, 2007 [5 favorites]

It looks like it could a pike or gar, but those are fresh water fish...
posted by Mister_A at 8:22 AM on March 21, 2007

That is fucking GROSS.
posted by nathancaswell at 8:23 AM on March 21, 2007

[climbs up on the high horse of vegetarianism, looks down bewildered at omnivorous habits]
posted by algreer at 8:28 AM on March 21, 2007

algreer, EXACTLY.
posted by nathancaswell at 8:35 AM on March 21, 2007

I, for one, am going to eat as much fucking herring as possible.

It's clear to me that given the chance, they would return the favor.
posted by Freen at 8:47 AM on March 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

What the Hell?!? It's no wonder Russian children turn to the bottle.
posted by miss lynnster at 8:59 AM on March 21, 2007

Dear AskMe:

The contents of my can of herring look like the jaws of the creature from Alien. Is it safe to eat?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:06 AM on March 21, 2007

Server not found? =(
posted by beerbajay at 9:16 AM on March 21, 2007

dead link.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 9:22 AM on March 21, 2007

Someone please help me! This site will not load for me, and I want to see the freaky toothy canned fish. Any alternative link?
posted by Meatbomb at 9:30 AM on March 21, 2007

I went to the trouble of babel fishing the Russian comments in an attempt to better understand this phenomenon. You're welcome.

· CHILDREN, dully for its - these are che etta, A?

· Humpback?

· Moder, erase this all, cache blunts...

· aha piZDeTs what TO of o_0

· These are fish, but is not that that you thought.

· blyad', and to reach from the jar and to photograph normally in no way? hand curves? 4 here scha away from Barbi foot I detach, I will push into the jar with the sprats and or I will begin - "and!!!!!!!!!!! the boughs of!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and that? is shorter - pizdezh and provocation...
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 9:33 AM on March 21, 2007

I was just now able to access that page, and about all I can say is: ecccchhhhhh.

I sure hope that's not representative of what the Russian people have to endure at the supermarket - I mean, didn't the twentieth century fuck them quite soundly enough already?
posted by adamgreenfield at 10:06 AM on March 21, 2007

I am so happy that I never, ever eat anything that lived its life in water! Y'all can keep your caviar and lobster, too.
posted by trip and a half at 10:24 AM on March 21, 2007

People eat fish, Grogan. Fish don't eat people.
posted by brundlefly at 10:26 AM on March 21, 2007

You guys obviously wouldn't consider fish head soup a delicacy then. *sigh*
posted by of strange foe at 10:32 AM on March 21, 2007

Does the Russian translate as "Crunchy Frog"?
posted by mosk at 10:51 AM on March 21, 2007

The contents of my can of herring look like the jaws of the creature from Alien. Is it safe to eat?

Do not eat if one of the following conditions apply:

a) The can should have been refrigerated at all times and was left out.

b) You made it into a sandwich, which you then forgot to take with you and it has been sitting on a counter drenched in mayonnaise for hours.

c) It attempts to bite you back.
posted by gomichild at 10:55 AM on March 21, 2007

Fish Heads.
Eat them up. Yum.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:25 AM on March 21, 2007

Everybody sing along!

(Chorus:) Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads. Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up. Yumm!

In the morning, laughing happy fish heads. In the evening, floating in the soup. (chorus)

Ask a fish head anything you want to. They won't answer, they can't talk. (chorus)

I took a fish head out to see a movie, didn't have to pay to get it in. (chorus)

They can't play baseball, they don't wear sweaters. They're not good dancers, they don't play drums. (chorus)

Roly poly fish heads are never seen drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants with Oriental women. Yeeaahh. (chorus)
posted by miss lynnster at 11:33 AM on March 21, 2007

That's not a fish-head, that's the toy surprise. Collect them all!
posted by The Light Fantastic at 11:58 AM on March 21, 2007

No one ever comments about what a great blog English Russia is. They show things even ordinary Russians aren't aware of--the unvarnished truth, in a country where the truth has been varnished for centuries (long before the Communists).

The operators of English Russia deserve to win a Webby award or something. (Please, don't mention the Bloggies. They suck, imo.)
posted by metasonix at 12:04 PM on March 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

A note from a friend who knows more about fishies than all of us put together:

---
That is not Atlantic Herring, and I think that photo is a set-up. That is the lower jaw of a salmon, the kind (like pink and chum salmon) that are harvested at or just prior to spawning. Sure, canned salmon are common, but the jaw seen there was not canned. When canning, the fish are under heat and pressure, usually cooked in the can. The jaw in the photo, and the meat associated with it, do not show the typical signs of being canned and cooked in the manner the herring would be. So, this was not the result of some drunk factory worker putting a salmon head in the mix, but to me it looks as if someone chopped up a salmon head, put it into an empty herring can, and decided a few photos of it would make a hee-larious international internet sensation. He or she was successful.

Thank you for making my PhD worthwhile.
---
posted by user92371 at 12:05 PM on March 21, 2007 [4 favorites]

So it's not a juvenile Deep One, eh?
posted by Mister_A at 12:14 PM on March 21, 2007

Once you pull out the teeth, the jaw is actually quite tasty.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:35 PM on March 21, 2007

Did anyone else notice that on the Piranha movie poster linked above that John Sayles wrote the screenplay? I had no idea.
posted by malaprohibita at 12:39 PM on March 21, 2007

I actually vaugely remember Elvis Mitchell asking John Sayles about Piranha on that show he used to have on IFC. I don't remember what Sayles had to say about it though.
posted by nathancaswell at 1:06 PM on March 21, 2007

"That is the lower jaw of a salmon"

user92371, thanks for the expert contribution and all, but you can tell your friend that this new is actually far more upsetting to me. I used to like salmon, and now I'm going to picture the gaping toothy maw of an alien beastie every time I sit down at the sushi bar.
posted by pineapple at 1:22 PM on March 21, 2007

"this news", that should be.
posted by pineapple at 1:23 PM on March 21, 2007

The operators of English Russia deserve to win a Webby award or something.

I kind of like the site, enough to have it in my RSS reader, but for every exposé of the horrific conditions in the Russian army or wonderful bit of folk art, there's dumb fakery like this a or bit of tedious 'Look at the poor people! Hysterical!' nonsense. I wish they'd stick to the former.

(On an unrelated note, it's interesting how often you see comments from Russians on the site suggesting that it's an anti-Russian propaganda excercise, run from outside Russia - I wish I spoke enough Russian to find out whether those are baseless allegations from kneejerk patriots or if there's something, um, fishy about the place.)
posted by jack_mo at 1:25 PM on March 21, 2007

lol, I sent the link to half of my coworkers, and I can tell when they click the link by the yell from their cubicle.

Gross as hell link, but fucking hilarious.
posted by figment of my conation at 1:28 PM on March 21, 2007

Did anyone else notice that on the Piranha movie poster linked above that John Sayles wrote the screenplay? I had no idea.

Yeah, like a lot of people who went on to be big names, Sayles got his start working for Roger Corman. You'll notice that he also wrote Alligator and The Howling.
posted by brundlefly at 1:50 PM on March 21, 2007

No one ever comments about what a great blog English Russia is. They show things even ordinary Russians aren't aware of--the unvarnished truth, in a country where the truth has been varnished for centuries (long before the Communists).

The operators of English Russia deserve to win a Webby award or something. (Please, don't mention the Bloggies. They suck, imo.)
posted by metasonix at 12:04 PM on March 21 [+] [!]

That's funny, I always comment to say the opposite. They're down now, but they never, ever link to their sources. Or to anything but englishrussia.com. At all. They just copy-paste cool shit from Russian livejournals and forums, hastily babelfish it, and put it on their website with big AdWords blocks on three sides. Fuck that jazz.
posted by blasdelf at 1:58 PM on March 21, 2007

Those kooky Ruskies. I try not to eat any fish that I don't catch.
posted by winks007 at 2:05 PM on March 21, 2007

Beast of the Web?
posted by lekvar at 2:17 PM on March 21, 2007

Damn, I guess they used up their 10 MB/month bandwidth quota. What are they on, Geocities?
posted by rolypolyman at 2:22 PM on March 21, 2007

Seriously though, those pics just made me hungry for seafood (not that that takes much, I'm a seafood junkie)

On my initial skim of the link I figured it was the tentacle of a squid or octopus, both of which are delicious.
posted by lekvar at 2:36 PM on March 21, 2007

The creepy playgrounds series at ER is neat.
posted by mek at 3:08 PM on March 21, 2007

What the fuck was that?
posted by oaf at 3:19 PM on March 21, 2007

See, I thought the tentacle/squid thing too... until I realized upon closer inspection that those weren't tentacles with little suction cup things... those were SHARP POINTY TEETH intact on a disembodied JAWBONE. The sight of which doesn't give me a hankering for yummy seafood, but rather just makes me freak the Hell out & not want tuna for lunch again any time soon.
posted by miss lynnster at 5:00 PM on March 21, 2007

Where is a spork when you need one?
posted by mrmojoflying at 5:34 PM on March 21, 2007

Where is a spork when you need one?
Oakland, apparently.
posted by lekvar at 6:15 PM on March 21, 2007

This reminds me of two things man was not meant to know:

(1) The sheepshead, a North Atlantic fish, has teeth that look human, but possesses multiple rows of them. It eats shellfish and uses the teeth to crunch them up.

Image of sheepshead teeth (you were warned).

(2) Canned salmon contains bones, including vertebrae, that have softened in the cooking process. I have never been able to eat them, despite the calcium being good for you.
posted by bad grammar at 8:12 PM on March 21, 2007

That sheepshead has got the nicest smile.

Eating lovely crunchy salmon bones is one of the best bits of the tin.
posted by wilful at 11:24 PM on March 21, 2007

Aaaaaaaand I have a new ichat icon.

That sheepshead is hilarious more than terrifying or disgusting.
posted by nathancaswell at 8:39 AM on March 22, 2007

Wow, that sheepshead clinched it*, I can no longer can I say "There really isn't anything that I'm afraid of."

My name is Alvy, and I am fucking terrified of fish.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:06 AM on March 22, 2007