Bullets

Well, there was going to be a blog about what bullets taste like, and it was going to start with a mock complaint:

Thank you fascists, blocking scientific progress yet again

and a rant about how the local authorities had stopped us testing bullets because of so-called safety concerns, and a whinge about the nanny-state, and how regulation forces bullet tasting underground.  Bullets would turn out to be crunchy and bit peppery, because they add spice to life.

My poor attempts at satire are inappropriate, yet again, in wake of another peace-time massacre.  Its not my country, perhaps not my place to say anything, and what do these few words read by even less people mean in the face of so much suffering.

I live in a country that has many failings.  We are a capitalist, mixed economy, which is muddling along, and has weathered the various incarnations of the GFC pretty well.  If an American was to visit, and of course many do, I doubt that they would feel that we were much in danger of being overtaken by either communists or fascists, or that the populace was particularly oppressed.  We have a good standard of living, low inflation, low unemployment, clean-ish air, and a whole lot of things we could do better.  We also have what they would probably call socialized medicine, and strict gun controls.  Those two things make our lives better, not worse, and are not sending us on the way to being North Korea.  I know its not something I can convince anyone of, but if you lived it, you would see that it was true.  The gun fetish in particular can only be described as weird, to outside observers.

Guns don’t kill people.  Mostly, its the bullets.

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?

Eyes

Never put other people’s eyes in your mouth, you never know where they’ve seen.

…

Hey, I’m a manly man*.  I know its cool to suck on eyeballs and then crunch down and pop them so gunk flows out, but I confess, I just can’t do it.  I can’t eat something that something else has been looking out.  Except perhaps a window.  But that’s for another post.

(However, it is ok to lick the blind.  But not a window blind.  Ironic?  No, just stupid.)

*says me.

Rocks

Someone at the lab remarked just the other day “isn’t it funny how we don’t eat rocks?”.  We do indirectly of course in that plants obtain nutrients from the earth, but we are heartily sick of plants being our middle man.  Person.  Sorry.  Like with that great social evil, photosynthesis.  Our teeth are made of stern stuff here (stainless steel – we have the technology, we can rebuild ourselves – some people get tattoos, we pick a bone every year to have replaced), so we weren’t afraid to chomp down.

We found that a lot of rocks are actually unpleasant to eat.  In our region, there are many sedimentary rocks, so we had a diet based around sandstone.  Its very gritty, isn’t it? Sure, a high fibre content, and like the emu, our stomachs now have lots of little buddies to assist with grinding down the other more ordinary food.  Its just that the little bits hang around in your mouth for days afterward.

Much of the soil we consumed was of little nutritional value.  There was no ice age here to grind down metres of rock and release nutrients and minerals, so while eating, one had the sense of one’s mouth being filled with great eons of time, which is a bit creepy, and the sensation of cold winds sweeping across iceless deserts.  Howling spaces.  Call it Gondwana-mouth.  Some rocks and ores were denied to us completely.  Gina Rinehart owns all the iron ore and has promised it to the Chinese, so we were stuck with sampling rust, which is not the same thing at all.

Perhaps we should have imported a greater variety of rocks to sample.  As a multicultural society, it is not clear to me why newcomers to our great southland have not brought a wide range of rocks from their homelands with them.  This is a subject worthy of greater sociological study.  Our government should be encouraging immigration from more geologically interesting societies.  We are sick of bland anglo-saxon and western european rocks.  Surely there is some ethnic rock out there that tastes like chicken?  Now that would be a scientific discovery.

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!!

Allusion

Tears of a Clown, no longer easily obtained at my local bottle shop, does not taste like chicken.  Other products tested this week which do not taste like chicken include:

• Cup of gall (also, cup of bitter gall)
• Cup of bile
• Vale of tears
• Knuckle thanwich
• Revenge (served hot or cold)
• Heart of my enemy (bloody tough, and bloody)
• Heart in my throat
• Heart of stone (tasted like stone)
• Blood, sweat and tears (lots of crying here in Glossolalia recently, apparently)
• Total war
• War on Terror
• War on drugs
• Class War (separate report is here.)
• War on Poverty (I doubt this has really been tested)
• Ebony and Ivory living together in perfect harmony (tasted like piano and ham)
• None of your beeswax (tasted nothing like beeswax)
• Gigantor (tastes like space age robot)

Unfortunately, separate reports are only available where indicated.

Next time, we shall look at salad.  Doesn’t that sound interesting?

Rat candy

Gentle Readers, today I cheat, but you will see why:

“In 1849, hungry gold miners crossing the Nevada desert noticed some glistening balls of a candy-like substance on a cliff, licked or ate the balls, and discovered them to be sweet-tasting, but then they developed nausea.  Eventually it was realized that the balls were hardened deposits made by small rodents, called packrats … Not being toilet trained, the rats urinate in their nests, and sugar and other substances crystallize from their urine as it dries out … In effect, the hungry gold miners were eating dried rat urine laced with rat feces and rat garbage.”

 – Collapse by Jared Diamond

And this is why wise parents do not give their children rat candy, no matter how much they beg.

O frabjous day!  I knew you would understand.  And in return for your understanding, I have added mymatejoechip’s guide to healthy living part 1, diet, under the heading, “The story so far”.