Diane Henders

Im-pick-able Timing

/ Diane Henders / 36 Comments

All my life, I’ve had issues with timing.

If there was a ‘worst possible’ time to attempt something, I would nail it.  In grade school, the other kids could whisper and pass notes all throughout class; but if I tried it even once, I got busted by the teacher instantly.

Same with clothing problems.  Anybody can have a wardrobe malfunction1, but mine occur at the worst possible moments.  (Then again, I suppose there’s no good time for a wardrobe malfunction.)

When I was running for a bus and my shoe flew off, it didn’t happen on the sidewalk.  No, the perfidious shoe launched itself off my foot while I was dashing across the middle of a busy six-lane street during rush hour.  Fortunately I didn’t get creamed by traffic or ticketed for jaywalking.  Or would that be jayrunning…?

And the one and only time my underwear elastic failed, it was while… you guessed it… I was running for a bus.  Fortunately I’d worn pants that day; so instead of dropping to my ankles and tripping me into the path of an oncoming truck, the errant undies only slithered down my hips and hung up on the crotch of my pants.  It wasn’t the most comfortable sensation in the world, but at least I didn’t get murdered by my own gitch.  (That’s yet another reason why I avoid wearing dresses.  Just think:  If I’d worn a dress that day they might still be picking my pieces out of a truck grille.  Dresses are hazardous to your health.)

Anyway…

Let’s talk about red lights.  You know those controller devices that emergency vehicles use to switch the traffic lights in their favour when they’re responding to a call?  Well, apparently I have one of those things implanted in my body… only it switches the traffic lights against me.

It’s actually a hereditary condition – my dad had the same problem.  If my stepmom was driving through the town near their place, she’d sail right through with green lights all the way; but if Dad was driving every light would turn red, every time.  I can’t drive through that town without hitting all the red lights, either.  Just when I think “This time I’m going to make it!” the light changes with impeccable timing.

This problem is so much a part of me that I rarely even think of it anymore.  I usually just accept it and move on… until this week, when it jumped up and bit me again.

I was sitting in my favourite chair enjoying the view from our upstairs window.  We live on a dead-end road out in the sticks, so vehicular traffic is sparse and pedestrians are practically nonexistent.

So I was looking out at the mountains absently rubbing my nose… when I lowered my gaze in time to spot a lone man hiking along, staring up at me at the precise moment I was apparently picking my nose.

Argh!

But it could have been worse.  At least I wasn’t having a wardrobe malfunction as well…

Anybody else plagued with timing issues?

* * *

1Here’s a commercial that didn’t get aired during this year’s Superbowl, but I wish it had:

The view that bit me in the, um… nose.

 

It’s A Sport

/ Diane Henders / 33 Comments

When we made the decision to move to Vancouver Island in British Columbia, we psyched ourselves up for big changes:  rain and gloom in the winter; exorbitantly priced government-administered auto insurance; and laid-back ‘Island Time’ instead of Calgary’s relentless work-hard-play-hard drive.

And speaking of ‘drive’…

Even before we moved, I had an inkling that driving might be, um… different here.  If I was travelling 110 km/hr in Alberta and a vehicle passed me as though I was standing still, I knew it would be either a white Alberta half-ton (for some reason white Alberta half-tons always speed) or a vehicle with BC plates.  And when we went on a holiday a few years ago in the BC interior, we discovered that if we weren’t driving 30 km/hr over the speed limit we were obstructing traffic.

So, fine.  I moved here believing that BC drivers are speed demons.

But they’re not.  They’re just totally nuts.

BC drivers are oblivious to speed limits.  They may travel at 30 km/hr over the posted limit, but they’re equally likely to dip 30 km/hr under the limit for no apparent reason.  And they don’t choose a speed and drive it consistently.  Oh, hell no; that would be boring.  A vehicle pottering along at 80 km/hr in a 120 zone will probably whoosh past doing 140 only a few minutes later.

And passing is a competitive sport here – a slow-moving vehicle is only a fiendish ruse.  The driver toodles along until I signal a lane change and pull up alongside his vehicle, and then he accelerates to match my speed.  And accelerates.  And accelerates some more, until we’re hurtling along side by side much faster than I wanted to go.

When I capitulate and pull in behind him he immediately slows well below the posted limit, all ready to play again when I make another attempt to pass.

If somebody did that on the prairies, I’d know they were purposely messing with me.  But here, the driver just smiles vacantly through the windshield as though he doesn’t have a clue I’m even there.  Hell, he probably doesn’t.  He’s floating along in a happy cannabis-tinted world of his own making.

It’s a testament to the idiocy out here that I drove Calgary’s Deerfoot Trail this December with a sigh of relief.  The Deerfoot is a freeway that cuts through the middle of the city, varying from six to twelve lanes wide and featuring bumper-to-bumper traffic weaving in and out at 100 km/hr.  And I turned to Hubby and said, “Should I be concerned that I’m finding this a relaxing and pleasantly predictable drive?”

But that doesn’t mean I want to move back to Calgary.  Oh hell NO.  The 800+ bulbs I planted last fall are already poking their noses out of the ground, our heather is in bloom, and our baby rhododendrons have fat promising buds.  Spring is just around the corner here, and for that I’m willing to hone my defensive-driving skills.  Like the rest of the BC drivers, I’ll just consider it a sport.

As long as it doesn’t become a full-contact sport, everything will be fine…

P.S. I’m risking my life and sanity doing a road trip today, so I’ll check in this afternoon.  ‘Talk’ to you then!

Doing It… Doing It… DONE!

/ Diane Henders / 34 Comments

We did it!  Or, to be precise, we’re doing it right at the moment this post is being published.

Wait; get that look off your face!  We’re not ‘doing it’; we’re doing ‘IT’:  That is, moving into our finally-at-last-thank-God-could-it-possibly-have-taken-ANY-BLOODY-LONGER?!? much-anticipated and mostly-complete second floor (we still have to hang doors and do some finish carpentry).  As of 9:00 this morning, the movers are hauling all my office, fitness, sewing, and art equipment, along with Hubby’s N-scale model train layout and all his astronomy gear, out of the garage and into its final home upstairs.

Are we relieved?  OH HELL YES!!!

Are we still sane?

Not even close.

Our intellectual capacity has diminished to the point where we can’t retain even the most basic snippets of information for more than ten seconds.  Our most frequent conversation for the past couple of weeks has been:

“What about (fill in construction question)?”

“Are you really asking me that?!?  I just told you half an hour ago!”

“You did not.”

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

“Did too…”

I’d love to say that it’s all Hubby’s fault because he never listens to me; but I’m not quite sure how that would explain the fact that I’ve done exactly the same thing.  ’Cause I always listen to him.  (Hubby, stop laughing.)  Maybe we’re simultaneously developing acute dementia caused by paint fumes.

I’m so brain-dead I can’t even feed myself.  When the building inspector departed after giving us a passing grade on our final inspection, I allowed myself a celebratory Lindt truffle (or maybe several; but I’ll only admit to one).  They’re one of my favourite indulgences:  An oh-so-smooth-and-delicious soft chocolate centre enclosed in a chocolate sphere and wrapped in pretty foil.

So I peeled off the foil and put it into my mouth.  The foil, not the chocolate.  Seriously; if I had to take a mental competence test right now, they’d lock me up so fast I wouldn’t even have time to yell, “Hey, where’s my truffle?”

I’ve also developed an unnerving tendency to forget where I’m going and why; resulting in a scenario where I stop in my tracks, thump my forehead, and mutter, “Come on, brain, you can do this.”  (For the record:  It can’t.)

But I can hardly wait to unpack and settle into a period of blissful normalcy… at least until our budget recovers enough that we can afford to install flooring up there instead of the painted plywood we have now.  Then the renovation insanity will begin all over again; but we’re both so heartily sick of construction that there’s an excellent chance we’ll put off installing flooring for another ten years.  Maybe longer.

Or maybe we’ll just wait until the trauma fades; which, given the current state of my short-term memory, could be as early as next week.

Anyhow, I’m looking forward to resuming my life now that I no longer have to spend every spare moment either thinking about or doing construction.  We’re done!  HOORAY!!!

*does happy dance*

And in other news… I just hit the halfway point on Book 13 – woohoo!  Now I’m looking forward to having some quality time to bomb ahead with it.

*does another happy dance*

 

Paint, Lies, and False Optimism

/ Diane Henders / 30 Comments

We’re close.  We’re sooooo close…

You may think that first sentence should end with “…to insanity” but in truth, our sanity fled a long time ago.

No; we’re close to finally finishing our second floor renovation… if by ‘close’ you read “we only have to paint three walls and half the floor, install the shower doors, buy four sets of bifold doors and install them, hang a bathroom door, build storage shelves and a twenty-four-foot bookcase, and trim out six doors, four windows, and two skylights”.

Honestly, we’re almost done!  …Or we’re delusional.  It’s one of those D-words; but ‘delusional’ is so harsh.  I prefer ‘optimistic’.

You may recall that I confessed my antipathy to painting back in May when I ended up painting our exterior trim.  Shortly thereafter, we tried to hire a painter to do our interior work.

The original painter who did our addition was the messiest painter I’ve ever seen.  By the time he was finished there was paint everywhere, all over our new flooring and even on the door handles; and he seemed to think that was perfectly okay.  We didn’t call him back.

After a lengthy search we found a second painter who thought he could fit us in.  He showed up, gave us an astronomical quote, and then vanished after we asked when he could start.

So we found a third.  He showed up, gave us a reasonable quote, and said he could start the following week… and then vanished.  (I heard a rumour that he was fleeing three ex-wives and a soon-to-be-ex fourth.)

So we tracked down the second painter again.  We waited a month until he finally showed up and started painting… and then he had a tantrum and walked off the job after doing only two rooms (badly).

By then I was out of time and patience, so I did it myself (despite the fact that I REALLY HATE PAINTING).  It was a slow process, but it looked surprisingly good when I was finished.

So for the second floor, we didn’t even bother trying to hire somebody.  “I’ll do it,” I said to Hubby.  “Even though I REALLY HATE PAINTING.”

“Should we do the floor last?” he asked.  “Just in case you drip?”

“I never drip,” I said proudly.  “I’m a very tidy painter.”

Well.

I guess I can’t blame our ex-painters for being flaky, because apparently there’s something in latex paint that turns people into liars and/or nutjobs and/or destroys their hand-eye coordination.

Last summer I painted without a dropcloth and never had a problem; but now?  Good Lord.  I have paint on the floor, the ladders, my clothes, and every part of my body that isn’t covered by clothes, including my hair.  When I’m finally finished upstairs, I’m going to frame my jeans and market them as a modern art piece.  (On the upside, the walls and ceiling are pristine; and thanks to Hubby’s foresight we’re painting the floor last.)

But slow?  I’m positively glacial.  With emphasis on ‘positively’; as in ‘falsely optimistic’.  Before I started, I thought, “Ah, I’ll be done in a few days.”  I’ve been painting six hours a day for two weeks and I’m still not done.

But I’m close.

I’m sooooo close…

*cuddles into straitjacket and rocks back and forth, humming*

Did I mention I REALLY HATE PAINTING?

To be fair, that mess isn’t all from mistakes – I also clean the end of my small roller on my pants because it’s easier than finding a rag. But still…

Do I Smell A New Year?

/ Diane Henders / 35 Comments

I originally thought I might start off 2018 with a look at last year’s highlights, and maybe throw in a few New Year’s resolutions just to round things out.  But I don’t bother with resolutions, and even if I did they’d be pretty much the same as everybody else’s:  “Stop pigging out on Christmas goodies”; “Find new hiding places for the dead bodies of errant contractors”… y’know, the usual.  And the top stories of 2017 were mostly depressing.

So instead of reviewing the questionable activities of our current world leaders, I’d rather look at what it might be like if we were governed by the benevolent despots we all know and love:  our pets.

If cats ruled the world… we’d be slaves:

  • Naps are mandatory, with a minimum total naptime of 12 hours per day. Disturbing a napping cat is an offense punishable by a life sentence on litter-box duty with no chance of parole.
  • Vegetables and condiments are banned. All meals shall consist of meat and dairy only, with an occasional live mouse just to keep things interesting.
  • All homes must have at least one window that admits direct sunlight; and a soft piece of furniture must be kept in the sunbeam for the sole use of the cat.
  • Humans must take shifts creating a lap for the cat and providing petting services. (Unless the cat decides, in its sole discretion and without prior warning, that it doesn’t want to be petted anymore.  Petting an unwilling cat is an offense punishable on the spot by flaying with claws.)
  • Fur is never to be removed from the cat’s favourite sleeping place. It should be allowed to build up year after year into a felted nest the exact size and shape of the cat.
  • Litter boxes must be cleaned within ten seconds of use.
  • Humans should be spayed or neutered. Not because there’s any health benefit to the humans; just for revenge.
  • Everything is a scratching post.

If dogs ruled the world… we’d be pets:

  • Butt or crotch sniffing is the only acceptable method of greeting. Humans spread too many diseases with handshakes.
  • To ensure optimum health, humans should be taken for long walks at least three times a day.
  • Human walkers must stop frequently to observe their surroundings. This will be strictly enforced by their canine supervisors.
  • Furniture is for the sole use of the dog. Humans are allowed on the furniture only if they provide belly rubs.
  • Stinky substances must be rolled in with abandon. If humans don’t like the smell, they can sleep in the shed.
  • Humans are not allowed to go anywhere unless accompanied by the dog.
  • All meals for dogs shall be at least 50% larger than necessary. It is perfectly acceptable to eat one’s own vomit; and if humans don’t like it they can just look the other way.
  • Everything is a chew toy.

Our household is currently despot pet-free but I’m considering adopting human versions of at least some of their laws; particularly the ones regarding naps, sunbeams, and walks.  Those are New Year’s resolutions I can get behind.

But speaking of behind… I think I’ll skip the butt sniffing.  That might be a teensy bit awkward on pub nights.

Happy New Year, everyone – wishing you all the best in 2018!

Unpredictably Predictive

/ Diane Henders / 21 Comments

This week I was delighted to discover that computers are now capable of writing stories for us using predictive text. I had already suspected as much, since these days my iPhone can pretty much compose text messages all by itself. If I type “Are…”, it will automatically fill in “…you still coming today?”

This is an unavoidable result of dealing with contractors who are genetically incapable of showing up as promised; and it also proves that my iPhone is at least as smart as they are.

Um… no, I’m not bitter; why do you ask?

Anyhow, back to predictive-text stories: Botnik Studios fed all seven volumes of Harry Potter to their computer, and then turned it loose to write the next great Harry Potter saga.

Amazingly, the computer did create a story that has taken the internet by storm. Not because it’s so good, but because it’s so hilariously bad. Check out “Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash”.

Better still, talented artist Megan Nicole Dong couldn’t resist the challenge of illustrating the particularly bizarre bits.

Inspired, I turned to my iPhone. Surely it had the world’s next bestseller locked away in its little electronic brain!

Here is its magnum opus:

I don’t know what to tell you about the other day but we’re not going to get any more time. Officially the best thing to do is to get a new job. Jobless claims are still coming up in a couple of months but I haven’t been able to make any changes to the company.

I forgot to ask you about the foundation of your job and how to make it work. The next time we have to make sure you get the house. The beams are not going to make it any better than the last time I had a chance to look at it and I haven’t done anything for the last week. I want to see what we can do to get the job done.

I admit I was disappointed in its painfully dry prose; but at least the whole composition was more coherent than a lot of business memos I’ve seen.

Moving on from ‘predictive’ to ‘predictable’… Christmas holidays are here again!

And that means I’m going to skip next week’s blog post so I have time to remove a few pounds of dust from Every. Single. Surface. In the house.  Including the Christmas tree, all the Christmas decorations, and the (formerly nicely) wrapped gifts, because the contractors (who were supposed to finish a month ago) exploded Dustpocalypse in our house the day before our houseguests were due to arrive.  GRRR!!!

*breathes deeply through a dust mask for a few minutes*

Okay, I’m all better now.  Ish.

I’ll also be taking time to prepare some festive calorie-laden goodies for my guests.  With any luck I’ll be able to keep the dusting separate from the cooking; but if not, at least I’ll be serving high fibre (if oddly-flavoured) meals.

Merry Christmas to those who observe it; and whatever your December traditions may be, I wish you joy, comfort, peace, and prosperity.

‘See’ you on January 3, 2018!

 

Spuds And, Um… ‘Spunts’

/ Diane Henders / 45 Comments

So there we were, stumbling across frozen ground in the darkness carrying a powerful flashlight and a digging fork… and Hubby turns to me and says, “This is going to be a blog post, isn’t it?”

Yes; yes it is.

Why were we apparently robbing graves in the dark of night, you ask?  Well, I’m pretty sure it’s my dad’s fault.

He loved potatoes, and we had them for nearly every meal.  Every now and then my mom would sneak in a bit of rice or pasta; but as my dad tactfully explained, “That was okay, but I wouldn’t want it every year.”  I love potatoes, too, and most of our meals include the humble spud.

But the other night Hubby came into the kitchen where I was making gravy and announced, “You know we’re out of potatoes, right?”

My jaw dropped in horror.  What?

WHAAAT?!?

We had roast beef.  With gravy.  And NO POTATOES?  I turned off the heat under the gravy pot and marched toward the door.

“Please tell me we’re not going out to the garden,” he said.

“Of course we are.  We have gravy.  We need potatoes.”

“It’s pitch dark, and the ground is starting to freeze.”

“I don’t care.  We need potatoes.”

Which led to the aforementioned jacklighting of potatoes.  As it turned out, it was remarkably similar to grave robbing since some of the hills were a little on the rotten side; but we did end up with enough good potatoes to soak up our gravy.  Whew.  Crisis averted.

Later in the week I was waiting my turn in the insurance office, playing Scrabble on my phone to pass the time.  It’s a point of pride for me to win – in all the time I’ve had it, the app has only beaten me once.

I was down to three tiles, so I knew the game was almost over.  I hadn’t seen the Q (worth 10 points) yet, which meant the app had it.  By then there was no way the app could win – I was already beating it by nearly a hundred points.  But I really wanted to stick it with that Q.

I had three letters left, and there was only one place where I could unload them all at once.

But I hesitated.  The available letter on the board was C.

And I had U, N, and T.

I’ve already mentioned my profoundly Canadian habit of never using foul language in public even though I’m actually a complete potty-mouth.

I was in public.  And it was a really rude word.

It wasn’t as though I was going to stand up and yell it out at the top of my lungs, but still.  My Canadian conditioning runs deep.

I stared at the board.

Sneaked a surreptitious glance around the waiting room to make sure nobody could see my screen.

Then I snickered inwardly and unloaded the dirty word that ended the game.  But I felt as though I should apologize to the little old lady beside me, just in case she’d seen it.

…But then again, if she was as Canadian as I was, theoretically her private vocabulary was just as colourful as mine.

Any dubious victories in your world this week?

Well, I’ll Be Spatchcocked!

/ Diane Henders / 56 Comments

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”:

Awww… how adorable. Not.

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!

Do Ya Feel Lucky, Punk?

/ Diane Henders / 40 Comments

It’s been an interesting week… if by ‘interesting’ you mean ‘a blood-pressure-spiking, rant-inducing tragicomedy of ridiculousness’.

Or in other words:  ‘Same-old, same-old’.

We started the process for our second floor renovation in early August, reasoning that two and a half months was lots of time to get a permit, frame a storage closet and a bathroom, and insulate before the weather turned cold.  I sealed my doom by signing up for a six-week watercolour course to begin in mid-October, because the construction would be done by then, right?

Ha.  I reckoned without the glacial pace of structural engineers and bureaucracy.

Last week when we were rushing around getting ready for the framing inspection (we did the framing ourselves), I finally lost my grip… on everything from my paintbrush to my temper.

In our last watercolour class I had foolishly bravely decided to paint along with the instructor.  I didn’t expect great results; but what the heck, if you don’t try, you’ll never know, right?

I actually did okay for a while.  I laid in washes for sky and water, and underpainted my trees… and then my coordination short-circuited and my paintbrush (loaded with brown pigment) flipped out of my hand and bounced… not once; but twice… onto my painting.

Two gigantic dark-brown turds splotched down in the middle of my misty landscape.

I burst into uproarious laughter.

Taking their cue from my continuing chuckles, the rest of the class converged to giggle and cheer me on while I tried to convert my turds into dock pilings jutting out of the water.

I failed, but at least we all had a good laugh.

In between construction and turd-painting I’ve also been hard at work on Book 13, and apparently I need new reading glasses.  For a few days a muscle under my right eye twitched wildly, making me look like a female version of Dirty Harry on speed.

That turned out to be fitting, because when I discovered water puddling on our floor from a leaky door, I completely lost my shit and fired off… *ahem* …a strongly-worded missive1 to our home-builder, who has been ignoring my deficiency reports since May.  I doubt if it did any good, but at least it relieved my feelings.

After that banner week, I couldn’t help snickering in anticipation of comedic disaster when I looked into my kitchen junk drawer.  It contains everything from screwdrivers to matches to notepads… and also a tube of lip balm, a black Sharpie marker, and a Tide pen all in the same convenient compartment.

Now, what could possibly go wrong?

So if you hear about a woman who accidentally poisoned herself by using a Tide pen instead of lip balm, you’ll know who it was.  Or who knows?  I might unwittingly use the Sharpie to enhance my Dirty Harry image with a permanent black moustache.

So whenever I make a blind grab for that tube of lip balm, I have to ask myself:  “Do ya feel lucky, punk?  Well… do ya?”

*

1 Even though I really wanted to fill that email with enough profanity to make their eyes bleed, I didn’t use any swearwords at all.  Aren’t you proud of me?

Hello, Garlic, My Old Friend

/ Diane Henders / 36 Comments

There’s pretty good evidence to suggest that Hubby is a vampire:  He’s basically nocturnal, and garlic repels him with the force of a speeding Mack truck.

Unfortunately, I love garlic.

I try not to inflict it on him often, but every now and then I get a restaurant meal that’s redolent with my favourite allium.  This week was one of those times:  I knew as soon as I took my first mouthful that it was going to be a sinus-burner.  But at that point it was too late to stop, so I chowed down and enjoyed every bite.

Later, I was marinating in my own fumes when a little tune popped unbidden into my brain:  The first line of “The Sound of Silence” by Paul Simon.  Only instead of his lyrics my brain supplied, “Hello, garlic, my old friend”.

And just like that, a blog post is born.

I give you my latest masterpiece:  “It Pounds The Sinus”, sung to the tune of “The Sound of Silence”.  Look out, Weird Al Yankovic; I may be even weirder than you.

Here’s the instrumental version* so you can follow along with the tune:
*The meter is a bit off because the guitar player didn’t exactly match S&G’s original version, but you get the gist.

It Pounds The Sinus
(Sung to the tune of “The Sound of Silence” by Paul Simon)

Hello garlic, my old friend
I’ve gone and gobbled you again
Around my tastebuds softly creeping
From my pores nastily seeping
And the odour that was planted in my veins
Still remains
The stench confounds the sinus

In all my reek I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a streetlamp
I was accosted by a deadly vamp
Though his fangs were lit by the flash of a neon light
He couldn’t fight
The stench that pounds the sinus

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People gawking without speaking
People fleeing after sniffing
People hiking on, who only turned and glared
After I aired
The stench that pounds the sinus

“Fools,” said I
“You do not know, garlic eaters like me blow
Vile miasma that can leach through
Breath mints, Febreze, and full-strength bleach, too”
And my breath like violent raindrops fell
A deathblow
To the suff’ring sinus

And all the people were afraid
Of the horrid stink I’d made
And a sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said
“Bad breath is a problem that a normal girl forestalls
With strong menthols
But garlic still dumbfounds the sinus”

Any other garlic-lovers out there?