goats

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!

Getting The Goat

/ Diane Henders / 41 Comments

I’m on the road again this week, and one of my stops was my old stomping grounds in Calgary.  I don’t miss the city at all, but I sure have missed my wonderful friends.  We all got together for dinner, and after catching up with the last eight months of everyone’s lives the conversation turned to more general topics.

That is to say, the moral tone of the conversation plummeted like a rock pitched into a cesspool.

I was the unwitting instigator.  But really; it wasn’t my fault.  Much.

“So my friends were looking for a goat…” Jill began.

“Wait, what did you say?” I inquired.

“They were looking for a boat that was big enough to fit everybody into.”

“Oh!  I thought you said ‘goat’!”

Laughter ensued.  Then Mike, the usual shit-disturber, spoke up.  “Now every time you say ‘boat’ I’m going to think ‘goat’.”

Jill went on in the misguided hope that she might be allowed to finish her story.  “…so anyway, they wanted a boat and they were looking for a slip for it…”

The table erupted in bawdy speculation.

“A slip for the goat?  I didn’t know you could buy lingerie for goats.”

“Well, obviously it was a seductive goat if it would let all those people into it.”

“How many people can get into a goat, anyway?”

“Depends on how, um… accommodating… the goat is.”

I can’t remember whether Jill ever actually finished her story.  We were all convulsed with laughter, and the other patrons of the restaurant were eyeing us with expressions ranging from disapproval to envy.  (Or maybe it was all disapproval – I was laughing too hard to be certain.)  Oddly enough, the waiter seemed reluctant to return to our table after that.

We finally settled down, and Judy threw a pointed glance a Mike.  “You can dress him up but you can’t take him anywhere.”

Mike and I exchanged a glance at our T-shirts and jeans, and I countered, “You can’t even dress us up.”

I thought about suggesting that maybe next time Mike could throw on a sport goat over his T-shirt, but I decided it was time to put that topic out to pasture.  After all, people can only stand so many ba-a-a-ad jokes.

I parted from my friends reluctantly, with another warm and funny memory filed away.  And from now on a single word, either spoken or texted, will be capable of inducing paroxysms of laughter:  “Goat!”

Anybody else have a word or phrase that never fails to make your buddies guffaw?

P.S. I’m travelling again today so I’ll be checking in to respond to comments later in the day.  ‘Talk’ to you then!

Evil Eyes

/ Diane Henders / 27 Comments

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my mouth keeps me in trouble.  I’d like to pretend it’s only my mouth that’s the problem, but now my eyes are getting into the act, too.

It started innocently enough.  One day I was out for a walk when I spotted a poster advertising “CREEPFEST”.

At the time, I questioned the necessity for a festival dedicated to creeps when pretty much any ride on the C-Train qualifies as a creepfest, but, hey, what do I know?  And anyway, I live a sheltered life.  It might have been a film festival for horror movies or something.  Later, I discovered it was actually advertising “CREEKFEST”, a family fun day down at our local Fish Creek Park.

Honest mistake.

But it got worse.  I was skimming a document online when my eyeballs snagged on the phrase “making goats is the first step toward success…”

Excuse me?

Success in what, exactly?  And do I really want to achieve the kind of success that requires me (or anyone for that matter) to screw goats as a first step?

When I re-read it, I discovered to my relief that the word in question was “goals”, not “goats”.  But apparently, making goats was indeed the first step… down a sad and sordid path.  It was only the beginning of the mutiny currently being staged by my evil eyes.

I misread a quotation:  “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes all the way to the boner”.  Granted, the original quote wasn’t exactly inspirational even when read correctly, but that extra ‘r’ on the end just didn’t help the situation at all.

I misread a friend’s tweet:  “Think I’ll take up lap-dancing”. I was halfway through a bottle of brain bleach before I realized the tweet actually read “Think I’ll take up tap-dancing”.

Which, frankly, was disturbing enough, but it didn’t actually warrant a brain cleanse.

Even my favourite recipe website wasn’t safe.  I glanced at a recipe I’d printed, and misread the header as “cocksucker” instead of “cooks.com”.  You’d think that’d be a bit of a stretch, but the “-om” was covered by another sheet of paper, so the only letters visible were “cooks.c”.  And the ‘c’ and ‘o’ are quite similar in their header font.

But still.  Come on, eyeballs, gimme a break here.

If one wanted to get all persnickety about this, one might argue that there’s nothing at all wrong with my eyes, and that the problem actually originates a couple of inches behind my eyeballs.

Our theoretical persnickety commentator might also add that if one has a more-than-passing familiarity with words like ‘boner’ and ‘lap-dancing’ and ‘cocksucker’, one can’t reasonably feign shock and outrage at reading them, whether or not they’re in appropriate context (if there is actually an “appropriate” context for those particular words).

And if those were the only words I’d misread, I’d have to concede the point.

But making goats?

Nope.  I’ll admit to being slightly warped, but I’m not that twisted.

Maybe it’s time for reading glasses.