For some time now, I have been fascinated/enchanted by this image , a T-shirt design available at the Dinosaur Comics store. I can't quite put my finger on why I find it so compelling. Is it the mixture of delight and anxiety on the pork chop's face? The plonkingly obvious statement offered as discovery? The fact that the perfectly mundane word 'meat' becomes, in this context, vaguely disturbing and maybe a little obscene?

I determined to find out more about this image. Working backwards from the T-shirt, I found that the design was prompted by a comic strip in which T-Rex decides to become a children's author. Wikipedia, surprisingly, offered no clues. Google, however, led directly to the origin: Terry Bisson's 1991 sci-fi short story, "They're Made Out of Meat," which more recently has been made into an award-winning short film available at Atom Films and elsewhere. Apparently everyone else in the world found the latter about a year and a half ago, but it was all new stuff for me.

So enjoy the meat!