Ink

 

I dream of an ink vampire, draining chinese ideograms, celtic crosses, pictures of dogs, MOM, southern crosses, rebel flags, big boobed naked girls, meaningless epigrams, fanned cards, LOVE, band names, HATE, gothic script, military insignia, stupid lyrics, astrological signs, hula dancers, horned devils, feathered chiefs, bible quotes, affirmations, garish sleeves*.  How it thrives now, after years of sustaining itself only on sailors, convicts, military personnel and bikies#.  It has added hipsters and wannabes, footballers and crickets captains to its food supply.  All the skinny Zooey Deschanels^ of the world, not much blood, but lots of ink.  Spread the disease, so that the hungry may feed on the hipster inksters.  Share the plague, disseminate it throughout the world, so that the hungry hordes may rise up, then descend.  How they scream, the victims when they awake, searching their bodies for their specially chosen design, but finding only a faint outline left.  “Do you know how much that cost me?”  A small child wipes its mouth, hunger sated for the first time.  INK!  MORE!

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*I’m not talking about you.  I know that your (insert description here) tattoo has deep personal significance and relevance.  It is the others.  Keep it to yourself though.

#All personnel here at the lab are required to have a tattoo of Casper the Friendly Ghost, to remind them of the forces they are messing with.

^ bad example?  I only know hipsters from TV ads, and they definitely said “hipster Zooey Deschanel” on channel 10.  There are no hipsters here in Glossolalia, and certainly none in Katingal, where I grew up.

! Have I sufficiently alienated everyone yet?  Some rebel against their upbringing, but I was sufficiently indoctrinated.  Joe Chip Sr always remarked, “Why get a tattoo?  Buy a T shirt, when you get sick of it, buy a new one.  Whaddya gonna do when you get sick of that, buy new skin?  Scribble over it?”  Maybe that’s the next product line here at the lab, new skin for the tattooedly challenged.  I picture a sportsman being interviewed after an event, his torso covered with tiny ink stamps.  The camera zooms in.  It can just make out the writing: ‘Instead of being tattooed, I donated $500 to …’.

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.

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?

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

is that better?

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