Tall Poppies

Wishing to avoid all internet filters and the attention of international authorities and domestic police services, we here at the Joe Chip Laboratories  make it clear from the start that we are not in any way advocating, suggesting or even disussing the consumption of opium.  In centuries gone by, Professor Chip was a Romantic Poet, and if he could only remember he would tell you what his views were then, but be reassured, like Tony Abbott(1), Joe says No – to everything (not that anyone ever asks).

No, a tall poppy is not opium, and while one of the purposes of this site is to serve as a radical, trendsetting source of  gourmet insights, neither is it something to be eaten.  It is something to be mowed down and placed in a compost pile (2), where it may serve some use at last.

In Australia, we do not have  a thing known as “Tall Poppy Syndrome”.  Or we do, but it is not what we are led to believe it is.  One of the lies we tell ourselves here is that we live in a very egalitarian society, which is supposed to be a good thing.  However, it is seen as having a “dark side”.  The dark side is that we do not like anyone to succeed.  If anyone tries to climb out of the bucket, the other crabs allegedly drag the climbing crab back down.  (There is an assumption that we live in a bucket, and that someone is about to cook us all – James Packer, perhaps, though he has lost a lot of weight lately – I don’t think he’d cook us, but I have no doubt that he would use us a fuel for one of his super yachts.  The smallness of the Australian bucket is why every Australian worth their salt – by their own estimation – had to flee to take up residence in the dankness of England – Clive James, Germaine Greer, Clive James … at least Jeffrey Smart, oh he of blessed brush, had the smarts to take up residence in Rome instead of London.)  Apparently all Australians are poppies (I always knew I was a bit of a dope), but we only like poppies that grow to the same height as the rest of us (see, we’re not racist, we’re heightist, that’s why we pick on Vietnamese immigrants, if only they would grow taller and fit it).  Any time a fatuous celebrity is caught out misbehaving or comes in for a bit of well earned criticism, they play the Tall Poppy Syndrome card, that they are somehow better than the masses and the masses are trying to cut them down to size.

No, its just that in the past, we tended not to give free passes to the famous.  We held them to the same account as we held others.  TPS only existed in the mouths of their publicists.  I see that the latest revised edition of the DSM correctly includes TPS as a delusion of the slightly famed that they are somehow better than other people and must never be criticised, but if they are, the criticism can only reflect a failure of the critic.  The only cure is as indicated above, a good cutting down to size and a period of lying in a pile of rotting vegetation, to restore one to a proper state of mind.

Never eat a Tall Poppy, they taste disgusting and you never know what you might catch.

 

Happy new year scientists!

 

Footnotes:

(1) Mr Abbott is the leader of the Opposition in the Australian Parliament.  He is commonly referred to as Dr No, because he wears speedos and says no a lot.  If you are of a certain leaning, you are supposed to hate him, as Joe Chip Sr does.  While I dislike many of his positions, I cannot find it in myself to hate him.  I think he is a bit of a lost soul.

(2) described by Joe Chip Sr as “a rat’s smorgasbord”.

Recycling

Forgive me please, I have tried.  I try to be good.  I want to save the planet, the trees, the whales.  I believe in conservation, I really do.  I am a nice shade of light green.  However, no matter how hard I try, I cannot eat recycled food.  If food has already been digested by someone else, I just can’t eat it.  I know it’s the future, I know it is necessary, but I cannot do it.

 

What is wrong with me?  Does this make me a bad person?

Hair

Hair don’t taste like chicken,

except for chicken hair, which is very rare,

because chickens grow feathers most everywhere.

.

Useless reptilian descendants,

scratching round, pecking the ground,

you’re just the dinosaur’s genetic burial mound.

.

Pointless hairless, flightless birds,

can’t feed your children with lactation,

have you absolutely no mammalian aspiration?

.

Eek eek.

Baby.

Balloon Animals

Those of you who have been subscribing to the analytical reports of the Chip Laboratories since ancient times know of our well founded efforts to ethicise (ha! take that, dictionary) omnivorism.  We are trying folks, we really are.  We have put all of this week’s grant money into considering balloon animals.

Some of you maybe scoffing, as you associate these creatures with parlour games and carnivals.  However, I am not talking about simple domesticated balloon animals.   I am talking about great sweeping herds of massive fortean creatures, blocking the sun on their nomadic trek as passenger pigeons once did sweeping across America.  And no, there would be no reliance on foul, poisonous oxygen.  These are great helium or methane filled beasts, nodding and swaying as they are blown by the currents of wind, just as giant jelly fish are swept across oceans.  Picture them now in your mind, see them billowing and filling the sky.  Tremendous storms of them.  The wondrous sight of them as they rail against the elements, indeed as they rail against their own ridiculous existence.  Observing them as over time they are pitted by hail, scarred by lightning.  And the wonder of them is that their pseudo life is no life at all, it is a mere impersonation.  Brave balloon bound hunters shall pursue them without ethical quandary, intrepid mountaineers shall stalk them to their winter homes, small children and we here at the laboratory shall wonder at them.

O!  If only we could get some nutrition into their skins!  Some flavour into the rubber.  Some texture into their form.  And find some way to stop giant sea turtles from choking on them in their thousands when they critters deflate and drop into the sea.  Perhaps it is impossible.  But is not the dream as important as any mere actuality?  At least this dream can unite us all, omnivores, carnivores, vegetarians, vegans, fruitarians, lacto-vegetarians, lacto-ovo-vegetarians, pescetarians, pollotarians, and pollo-pescetarians, the dream of the hunt of the giant pseudo-beasts in the sky that can sustain us all without troubling our consciences.

Until then, at least we have salad.

[“Life’s Solution” by Simon Conway Morris, p112 ‘Fortean bladders’]

Ancient Astronauts

Ancient Astronauts,

You taste like Mayans

You forbade the Israelites

eating crispy bacon

You left puzzles lying round

for us to find

Don’t you think that that

was rather unkind?

Your mysteries got us thinking

which interfered with

our time for drinking.

You built the Sphinx

You built Ancient Rome

Then you left us alone

when you returned home.

Ancient Astronaut Dad

do you love me the most?

I’ve made your favourite meal

Canned spaghetti on toast*.

*****

*Coming soon.  With pictures.#

#Don’t build it up too much idiot, its not that good.%

%Neither is this poem.^

^Poem?  You call this a poem.  This is rubbish.  But its Saturday and I had to post something.”

“Well what are you going to post on your poetry blog then>

> ……………..  the same thing?

The portal to all things Joe Chippish is here, just a click away.

Flags

After extensive experimentation in the Chip Laboratory, it has been determined that despite many claims being made about their inherent nature, flags are essentially flavourless.  It is the nature of a flag that it may be likened to a thin bland filo pastry, dependent upon that which it envelops for its flavour.  A flag may be an encasing on a sausage roll, or it may have a fruity filling.  A flag may also be thought of as tofu, useful for soaking up the flavours in a laksa, but otherwise, bleh, what is the point.

A flag may also have other useful qualities.  In Glossolalia, they are often flown from expensive (and unnecessary) utes*, so that upon awakening from a drunken stupor, the driver knows what country they are in.  However, my view is that there should be very little call for a nation’s flag to be flown within the borders of that nation.  Really, the only flags that should be flown are those of other countries, at their embassies for example.  Otherwise, one could just have a piece of material with the word “FLAG” printed on it, because barring some damage to brain, we all know what it is.  The only flags for domestic purposes should be those associated with the things that separate us, not the things that bind us, like flags for sporting teams or service organisations (you know, like Lions will kill Rotary, that sort of thing), or schools or perhaps class (for example, a flag signifying ‘intelligentsia of working class origin’, which can also be signified by lack of a Porsche, I have found).

National flags are excellent for Olympics and in association with killing foreigners, that makes perfect sense, it is the domestic use of national flags that puzzles me.  One’s neighbours may fly flags from their homes to prove their patriotism.  I would prefer it if they paid their taxes and reported all suspicious behaviour to the authorities.  I see politicians adorned with them, sports persons draped in them, young men with them tattooed on their necks.  My favourite is seeing children ignoring them.  It is disrespectful to burn a flag and I do not approve of that, but there are many other things of which I disapprove more.  However, these are my personal opinions and have nothing to do with my expert taste testing laboratories.

Flags taste only of other things.  They can taste of virtue, hope, respect, eagerness and pride.  Sometimes they have crunchy centres that taste of avarice, cowardice and hypocrisy.  In too many of the flags we tasted, all other tastes were overwhelmed by blood.  However, we have determined beyond doubt that a flag can certainly taste like chicken.

(The Joe Chip portal has been updated and can be observed by clicking here.  Please have a look, there is a nice picture of a falcon on a power pole.)

*perhaps you refer to them as pickups or bakkes – the little trucks favoured by persons of trade, and also by other persons who have no need for such a truck.

Salad

Sorry, I see that I have been doing this all wrong.  Don’t say I don’t learn.  I have now read every other food blog and I see what I should be doing.  Lets start again.

I made a salad.

First I took an iceberg lettuce.  I broke it up, washing the fragments, carefully removing slugs and returning them to the wild.  (Tip – don’t use soap.)

 

 

 

 

I sliced some carrots with my knife.  It hurt them more than it hurt me.

I cut up some capsicums.

I sliced some lebanese cucumbers.

I mixed them together.  (Technical term – tossed.)

I threw in some coloured cocktail onions  (mmm, food dye), just for a change.

I made my own dressing with lemon and vinegar and the blood of a third world child*.  (*No I didn’t but I don’t have any of the exotic herbs everyone else refers to and I felt left out.)

I opened a tin of sliced beetroot and served it separately.

I took lots of pictures of my shitty salad but they did not turn out well.  However, that would not stop me adding them if I knew how.

 

I drank half a bottle of vodka later and vomited everywhere*.  That is the picture I really wanted to add.  (*No I didn’t.  I have never drunk vodka again since a fateful night with a very large Russian when I was young and hadn’t learned I was not invincible.  I learned otherwise two hours later.)

Bugger, I didn’t use macaroni.  Everybody else uses macaroni.

Yummo, it was nearly as good as germ sausages, and it tasted just like chicken.  (Must check microbes – see “Aboot”.)

Isn’t the internet wonderful?

********

“your writing isn’t nearly as “creative” as you think it is”

is that better?

Coming soon – spaghetti from a tin – ON TOAST!!