It’s odd how I can go for weeks or months without running across anything particularly funny on the internet, and then suddenly I get inundated by snicker-inducing goodies:
I was browsing Amazon for Christmas gift ideas, and I didn’t realize some vendors have such a tenuous grasp on reality (and good taste). Check out this “Lovely silhouette art for baby nursery”:
Um, guys… it’s a panda waving handguns. In what world is this ‘lovely’ or in any way appropriate for a baby nursery? Although if this is how parents are decorating their nurseries these days, it does explain a few things.
So I abandoned the Amazon vendors to their delusions and went to catch up on my blog reading instead. And within minutes I ran across the word ‘spatchcock’.
If (like me) this is the first time you’ve encountered that word, I know what you’re thinking. I can practically see your thought-bubble from here.
You’re thinking, “There goes Diane down another dodgy research rabbit-hole that leads to a kinky sex website.”
I’d act all indignant about that; but there’s not much point since we all know it’s happened before and it’ll probably happen again. But I swear, this time I wasn’t reading anything dodgy at all – it was a cooking blog.
There was no definition or explanation; only a note that you could “spatchcock the chicken” if you wanted.
Well.
I’ve lived for over five decades, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never wanted to do anything that sounded like that to a chicken. Or to any living thing, for that matter (with the possible exception of a couple of guys I’ve known).
I did a Google search for ‘spatchcock’, braced for who-knew-what perversion. And I found it immediately: Jamie Oliver spatchcocking a chicken.
I’d love to say that it was as lewd as it sounds; but sadly, it only means ‘to butterfly’ – to remove the chicken’s spine so the carcass can be flattened for cooking. I’m not sure why they didn’t just say that in the first place, but it’s nice to know there are cooks out there who share my childish appreciation for salacious-sounding words.
Apparently the internet was on a roll, because after serving up panda pranks and chicken chuckles, it rounded out the amusing animals with a plastered possum that broke into a liquor store and went on a bender, a scofflaw squirrel that got charged with criminal mischief and was released on bail, and some hostile hagfish that slimed a car so badly it looked like a remake of a Ghostbusters movie.
But ‘spatchcock’ is my most prized discovery of the week. I don’t find words that are new to me very often, and I consider it a serious lapse of my professional puerility that I’d never heard of a word with such great comic potential.
’Cause now I’m imagining a new verbal expression of shock: “Well, spatchcock my ass and call me a chicken!”
Gotta work that into a book somehow…
P.S. Just a bonus to this week’s bounty of beasts: Yesterday I saw two women walking across the Canadian Tire parking lot in Parksville. One was walking a large dog on a leash. The other also held a leash… attached to a goat. They were going for a walk. To Canadian Tire, apparently. Now I have yet another reason to laugh uncontrollably at the word GOAT!
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It just seems funny to me that you think it’s funny! It’s a standard word in regular usage here so I guess I’m just not getting the joke.
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That is funny! I guess it’s like a lot of words we use in everyday conversation – they sound perfectly normal to us, but they’re hilarious to someone who’s never heard them before. Then again, I find a lot of commonly-used words funny, too: https://blog.dianehenders.com/2015/02/11/funny-as-a-turnip/. I guess I’ve just got a warped sense of humour…
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Probably the quickest I have read a blog to learn just exactly what was happening…..what an opener and what a word…which truly seems wasted with it’s actual description….it could be used more appropriately to describe so many other things…again…such a waste!! LOL
I am a visual thinker (big surprise) and the goat walker gave me quite a few minutes of laughter!!
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You’re right, that word is totally wasted on its true definition! And I’m glad you got a laugh over the goat – I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. But it truly was a goat, and it had gathered quite a crowd of admirers by the time I left. I wonder what I’ll see next week…?
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Where does one start to respond? Well first I have to stop howling with laughter. Loved the line of being pretty sure you never wanted to anything that sounded like that to a chicken or any other living thing. Please tell me you got a photo of the goat walker. If not even that vision will have me giggling for a very long time.
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Sadly, I didn’t get a photo of the goat. I was driving out of the parking lot at the time and I didn’t think the other drivers would appreciate me slamming on the brakes in the middle of the road for a photo op. I think I need a dash cam. Who knows what other oddities I might capture…? 😉
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Oh yes please to a dash cam. You seem to come across the most amazing things. I shall just have to imagine the goat on a leash. Wowza.
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It certainly made me look twice. And then once more, for good measure!
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Okay, you captured my attention with “salacious” and “professional puerility” but this post has all the makings of the Probably Inappropriate Cookbook with recipes for spatchcocked chicken, plastered possum, scofflaw squirrel and hostile hagfish. How you prepare the goat (or the gun-toting panda) I leave up to you.
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Aha, the recipe book is a marvelous idea! I could include my (fortunately) never-duplicated Aged Cioppino, too.
And my answer to ‘how to prepare the gun-toting panda’ would be ‘cautiously, wearing a bulletproof vest’.
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Recipe for Gun-toting Pan-fried Panda:
1. Attach bullet-proof vest.
2. Approach panda cautiously…
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Can’t be too careful with these exotic cuisines. 😉
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Brings a whole new meaning to ‘getting your shots.’
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You sound just like me. I do so love the internet, especially since I’m such an old broad that I used to have to go to the library to satisfy my curiosity.
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I still shudder over memories of the Encyclopedia Britannica in umpteen volumes. There was SO much information in there; it was SO painful to find; and none of it ever seemed relevant to what I was actually researching. I love the internet’s data riches! The only challenge is determining which is accurate information and which is well-disguised bullshit… but on the bright side, that process does tend to foster critical thinking. 😉
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I was such a hound for the written word that I would pore over the ‘basic’ set of World Book Encyclopedias that my parents managed to spring for when I was a young ‘un. I rarely actually used them for formal research (mostly because I hated school bad enough that I did only the bare minimum of work to barely squeal by), but I loved to read. When the weather was bad enough that I couldn’t ride my bike to the county library (fortunately, we lived in the county seat), I’d re-read the books I’d already checked out again until I’d almost memorized them, then I’d grab a World Book volume at random, open it up anywhere, and dive in. Today, we call that surfing the internet.
Until this moment, I’ve never once thought about surfing an encyclopedia. Remember, you heard it here first.
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Yes indeed! I used to surf the dictionary as a kid. Still do, on occasion – one of my prized possessions is a giant dictionary about 3″ thick. It’s great fun to browse for words I don’t know (yet).
And I’m right there with you about reading a book until you’ve memorized parts of it. My brother and sister and I used to quote our favourite passages from books back and forth – still do, when we get together sometimes. It’s amazing how sponge-like young minds are – we’d effortlessly retain whole paragraphs. These days I’m lucky to remember my own name…
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I ran into this word a couple of years ago on a frugal living blog which also has cooking tips on it, but NEVAH has it had the treatment it deserves . . . until your post, followed by the comments . . . I can’t come up with anything of my own to say because I am laughing too hard!
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Glad you got a belly laugh! I’d never heard the term before, and it made my day – I don’t get to discover new words very often; and especially not words that seem expressly designed to generate jokes. 🙂
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We did that to our Thanksgiving turkey again this year. It was done in 45 minutes, but I felt like having a cigarette afterwards.
I kept thinking the wife was saying sasquatched.
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“…felt like having a cigarette afterwards” – bahahaha!!! And I dunno; sasquatching sounds equally unpleasant for the turkey…
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Just clicked on the Jamie Oliver article. Brazilian spatchcock? One wonders if that’s anything like Brazilian wax…? Or perhaps not. History will decide.
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Right? It’s the perfect comic setup! I could go on and on…
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“Gee, honey, this turkey has the smoothest skin I’ve ever seen! But why do I get a definite hint of birthday candles?”
Tag, you’re it! 🙂
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…and why are the grill-marks shaped like a G-string…?
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And the ones on the turkey, now that you mention it!
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Bahahaha!!!
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Now I’m imagining Mr. Bean’s turkey wearing women’s underwear:
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Thanks a freaking lump, sista! It’s finals weak, and now I’ve got Mr. Bean stuck in my head!
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I live to serve. And sometimes to torment. 😉
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Yeah, funny how that works sometimes, huh… 😜
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If “spatchcock the chicken” doesn’t make it into one of your books, your fans will be very disappointed. That’s too perfect to pass by!
I’m with you on the panda poster. Ugh.
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I’m pretty sure it was just an example of keyword padding gone wrong. At least that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself, because I don’t really want to contemplate the alternative.
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Maybe the goat needed new tires. It’s possible the dog bit the tires on the goat’s cart and they needed to get them fixed. It’s possible…
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That’s entirely possible! See, I knew there had to be a logical explanation. It actually took me a few moments to register what I was seeing – before yesterday I would have thought that the chances of seeing a goat on a leash in a shopping centre were been slim to none. Now I know better…
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Or, since the Pontiac Motor Division of General Motors is defunct, one has to take one’s Goat elsewhere for warranty work. Canadian Tire subcontracted it? Who knew? 🙂
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“Goats mounted and balanced here”. OH DEAR!
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Uh, no, boys and girls, this is NOT a petting zoo. Then again…
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…heavy petting?
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Reminds me of a phrase my older son coined. Don’t sweat the petty stuff. And don’t pet the sweaty stuff.
Really, I don’t know where he gets that sort of thing. Or that’s the official version anyway.
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This is hilarious. About 2 weeks ago hubby came home from a weekly men’s group that he attends and said “hey, have you ever heard of ‘spatchcocking?’. I swear, I can’t make this stuff up. Some friends of ours did this to a turkey for Thanksgiving for the first time this year and are swearing by this style of cooking. Whole bird done in 1 1/2 hrs, and they claimed it was the most flavorful and moist bird EVER! Not to mention how much fun it is to tell everyone you spatchcocked a turkey and then wait for the reactions . I gotta try this soon.
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You mean the actual spatchcocking, or the process of dropping the word on an unsuspecting audience…? And what a hilarious coincidence that you’d just heard the word, too.
Actually, spatchcocking does sound like a great way to achieve a fast and juicy bird. (OMG, the possibilities for double entendres are limitless!) Seriously, though, if not for my love of stuffing that’s been saturated with turkey juice, I’d give this method a try, too. Maybe I could do baked stuffing and pour some juices over it afterward… 🙂
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“Hey, Bubba! Be sure to save the spatchcock juice…!”
Is that really something you wanna hear coming from a restaurant kitchen? 🙂
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NOOOOOOOOO….
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Ah, my work here is done. 🙂
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Or, “Well, spatchcock my chicken, and call me a Cockney chef!” And, like Wendy, I, too, am hooked on fonnix. Or something, for sure. Yeah, we’ll just call it fonnix.
And thneaking up on thirty perthent of daft! Er, drapht. Whatever. Thweet, thithta!
Me? All I’ll cop to is I’m getting clother. Further, deponent thayeth not. Jutht thayin’…
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Write on! Clother ith better! And I think you may be onto something with your comment about ‘daft’… although if I’m only 30% daft after all the ups and downs of our construction adventures this year, it’s a small miracle. 😉
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Yeah, daft didn’t seem like much of a typo at that. It’s finals week, so I totally get it. 🤪
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Hang in there!
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It’s easier to just jump on it, seems to do the trick. Also quite possibly how it found its name!
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LOL! I was wondering if ‘spatchcock’ was some derivation from an Old English expression ‘dispatch the cock’. I’m sure your method would be a whole lot faster and safer than messing around with a sharp knife. (Not to mention more fun to watch. Now I’m visualizing special non-slip chicken-stomping boots…)
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Hi Diane—we’re not too old to learn at 5+ decades! What’s missing from the panda is the caption “eats shoots and leaves” which was a great way to demonstrate comma usage (a panda walks into a bar, eats, shoots, and leaves) vs. the answer to his dietary choices. Phun with phonics, etc.! Thanks for teaching me new things.
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Oh, MAN! I can’t believe I missed the opportunity to use that line. Thank you for supplying it – you made my day! That example of comma usage never fails to make me laugh.
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Here’s another one : “let’s eat grandma!”
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LOL! Poor Grandma – she was a tragic victim of poor grammar.
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