humour

Hello From Planet Innuendo

/ Diane Henders / 21 Comments

Apparently Mercury was retrograde from June 7 to July 1, which astrologers say is supposed to cause general chaos.  I don’t know much about astrology, but if there’s a planet that governs accidental double entendres, it’s definitely exerting its influence this week.

Friday night I was sitting in the pub with the usual suspects, regaling the crew with tales of our recent search for a good used RV.  I had only one requirement:  a queen-size bed with some space around it.  I didn’t care about the kitchen or living area or anything else.  Just the bed.

(Those of you with dirty minds are getting ahead of me… oh, never mind; whatever you’re thinking, you’re probably right.)

Anyway, we found a trailer Hubby really liked, with a nice big living space and kitchen, only seven years old, yadda, yadda.  But the bedroom was designed for a double bed.  The current owners had put in a queen mattress, but that left only a few inches between it and the wall.  You could still squeeze in, but only if you had skinny legs.  Grrr.

Now back to the pub scene…

Fuelled by some very tasty beer, I was expounding upon the idiocy of the designer who planned the layout of a huge trailer without allowing for a queen-size bed.

“Goddammit,” I ranted.  “It’s a thirty-one-foot trailer, for shit’s sake!  It’s not like the guy who designed it didn’t have any space to work with!  I can’t believe he couldn’t give me just six more inches in the bedroom!”

My rant was completely derailed when my buddy Chris burst out laughing.  “You want six more inches in the bedroom?” he sputtered.  “That sounds like a blog post.  But I want credit!”

So here you go, Chris – this is your five minutes of fame.

After we dried our tears of laughter, the conversation wandered as it usually does and we got talking about cars and buying gas and the oddball sensor in my car that requires the gas cap to be cranked around several times after it’s tightened to prevent the ‘check engine’ light from coming on.

My friend Swamp Butt spoke up:  “Our new car doesn’t have a gas cap at all.  It’s so easy to fuel up.  You just stick it in, pull it out, and you’re done!”

More raucous laughter ensued.

But Planet Innuendo still wasn’t finished with me.  The Calgary Stampede is on now, so everything around here is western-themed.  And wouldn’t you know it; the patron saint of dirty minds blessed me with another gift this weekend:  a completely serious ad from a staid and reputable company, exhorting me to “Celebrate the cowboy in you.”

I might have let that pass if not for the fact that I’d just finished reading an article about how all the health clinics brace for the annual surge in syphilis cases during Stampede.  Save a horse; ride a cowboy!  Give the gift that keeps on giving!  Yaaa-hooo!!!

Needless to say, I laughed myself silly(er).

Did anybody else notice the effects of Planet Innuendo this week, or was it just me?

P.S.  The word ‘innuendo’ always gives me a childish snicker, too.  It sounds like the Godfather describing a sex act:  “In-U-end-o”…

* * *

Speaking of celebrations, I’m celebrating the upcoming release of Spy Now, Pay Later by giving away two signed paperback copies!  If you’d like to enter to win one, here’s the contest link:  https://blog.dianehenders.com/do-you-know-me/book-8-giveaway/.

Look for the first e-book versions of Spy Now, Pay Later at Smashwords and Amazon on July 17.  As usual, Kobo, Nook, and Apple versions will show up later than Smashwords and Amazon… but my distributor promises me they’ve improved their system and it should only be a few days instead of a few weeks.  Time will tell, but regardless, I’ll email notifications to everybody who’s signed up on my new book notification list.

Canadian, Eh?

/ Diane Henders / 37 Comments

Yesterday was Canada Day, so just for fun I’m going to ‘speak Canadian’:

Canada Day is one of our favourite times to celebrate!  We had a nice hot day yesterday, so we could finally take off our tuques1 and kick back in the shade with some Freezies2, which was a nice change after the long winter.

Contrary to popular belief we don’t actually live in igloos year-round, but if the hydro3 goes off in the winter we’re hooped4.  All we can do then is huddle in our houses and hope for a chinook5.  So we love summer!

And Canada Day is a great excuse to break out the hooch6 of your choice, whether it’s a mickey7 of screech8 , a forty-pounder9 of ta-kill-ya10, or a two-four11 of beer.  But we don’t want to look like a bunch of hosers12 lying around in our gitch13 collecting pogey14 and building our Molson muscles15, so most of us settle for a poverty pack16 when we’re celebrating.  And that saves us a hangover as well as some loonies17 and toonies18, so it’s a win-win.

No celebration is complete without food, and the unhealthier it is, the better it tastes!  Whether it’s burgers or Eggs Benny, your Canada Day fare can always be improved by adding peameal bacon19.  And if you’re really looking for a way to harden your arteries, nothing fills the bill like poutine20.  Donairs21 are a good choice if you’d like to spice things up a bit, but dieters could eat fiddleheads22 instead if the season is right.

Let’s not forget dessert!  Canada Day is a great time to break out the gooey and delicious Nanaimo bars23.  And speaking of sweet treats, be careful if you get a loaded beavertail24 – it’s hard to eat them tidily, and if the toppings fall off onto your Arborite25, it’s into the garburator26 with them… and that’s just sad.

There are always lots of Canada Day celebrations to attend, but our favourite is the fireworks.  We don’t go very often because we don’t like fighting the crowds, but we felt like keeners27 this year so we decided to go.  We thought we might be able to deke28 into a parkade29 and walk to where we could see them, but that didn’t work out.  When we discovered we’d have to go to a golf course and fight the crowds after all, we bailed at the last minute and went to bed instead.

Guess we’re just getting old, eh30?

 

  1. Tuque – a knitted cap (called a watch cap in other places).
  2. Freezie – a brightly coloured frozen treat in a clear plastic sleeve.
  3. Hydro – everybody else calls this ‘electricity’ or ‘power’.
  4. Hooped – screwed.
  5. Chinook – a warm dry wind.
  6. Hooch (also hootch) – booze.
  7. Mickey – a 375 ml bottle of liquor, often conveniently curved to fit in a pocket.
  8. Screech – Traditionally, cheap, high-alcohol booze from Newfoundland, often moonshine.  Now also a brand name for rum.
  9. Forty-pounder – a 40 ounce bottle of liquor
  10. Ta-kill-ya – tequila
  11. Two-four – a 24-pack of beer.
  12. Hoser – a drunken oaf, but the term isn’t too derogatory – it’s kind of like calling somebody a goofball.
  13. Gitch (also gotch or gonch) – underwear of any kind, men’s or women’s. (Where I grew up, gitch was women’s underwear and gotch or gonch was men’s).
  14. Pogey – unemployment benefits.
  15. Molson muscle – beer belly.
  16. Poverty pack – a six-pack of beer.
  17. Loonie – a one-dollar coin.
  18. Toonie – a two-dollar coin.
  19. Peameal bacon (Also back bacon or Canadian bacon) – cured boneless pork loin, originally rolled in ground yellow peas, but now rolled in cornmeal, though the name ‘peameal’ has stuck.
  20. Poutine – french fries sprinkled with curds of new cheese and covered with hot gravy-like sauce.
  21. Donair – spiced meat wrapped in a pita with lettuce, tomato, onion, and sauce (I like sweet sauce best, yum!).
  22. Fiddleheads – baby ferns.
  23. Nanaimo bar – a chocolatey dessert square with vanilla filling (traditional), but there are lots of other flavoured variations.
  24. Beavertails – a deep-fried pastry topped with various forms of yumminess.
  25. Arborite – a brand name for plastic laminate. The name is often used instead of the words ‘plastic laminate’, like ‘Formica’.
  26. Garburator – a garbage-disposal unit that fits in the sink drain and grinds food finely enough to be washed down the drain.
  27. Keener – someone who is overly eager. Can also be a derogatory term meaning ‘suck-up’, depending on the usage.
  28. Deke – dodge or make a sharp turn. Also ‘deke out’ – to fake or feint successfully: “I deked him out”.
  29. Parkade – parking garage.
  30. Eh – the quintessential Canadian interjection. Turns a statement into a rhetorical question that assumes the other person agrees.

How many of these Canadianisms did you recognize?  What oddball words do you use in your neck of the woods?

* * *

Woohoo!  I’ve finished the final edits for Book 8:  Spy Now, Pay Later, and it’s off to final proofreading!  I’ll let you know as soon as there’s a release date on the horizon, but for now I’ll just say “Coming VERY SOON”. 😀

 

Weapons Of Ass Destruction

/ Diane Henders / 33 Comments

So, this morning I was thinking about toilet paper.  (Never mind what I was doing at the time.)  And it occurred to me that toilet paper is the keystone to civilized behaviour in the western hemisphere.

You know I’m right.  All you have to do is walk into a public washroom that’s out of toilet paper, and you realize how superficial our veneer of civilization really is.

I know lots of countries get along just fine without TP, but I want to be there to see the expression on the first westerner who finds nothing but a pitcher of water in the bathroom instead of a cottony-soft roll.  Or, hell, I’ll settle for seeing their faces while they watch this video.

You know what bothers me most about this?  Water might be “very-very clean”, but it’s also very-very wet.  And there’s nothing to dry off with… except maybe the hand towel… if there is one… not that I’d want to touch it…

Yep, toilet paper rules the modern western world.  All our technological toys are as nothing next to it.  People may profess utter dependence on their electronic devices, but would you rather be caught without your technology or without toilet paper?  I’m thinking that sleek new iPhone isn’t very absorbent.

Centuries ago, people used whatever was at hand.  Apparently wealthy Romans used silk or goose necks.  (I presume the necks were no longer attached to the geese.  I’ve been around geese enough to know you don’t wanna let those suckers anywhere near your tender bits.)

Grass, leaves, and pine cones worked for indigenous people, though I assume their elders passed down critical wisdom like ‘leaves of three, let it be’ and ‘use the pine cone with the direction of the scales unless you need a hemorrhoidectomy’.

In earlier America, corn cobs were a common choice.  Apparently they were quite comfortable when fresh, but after they dried they became weapons of ass destruction.  No wonder everyone heaved a sigh of relief when Sears and Eaton’s started printing their mail-order catalogues.

Today, toilet paper engineers are the unsung heroes of the western world.  These amazing folks create a product that’s strong enough to withstand zealous scrubbing of regions better left undescribed, yet designed to fall to pieces seconds after contacting water so your toilet doesn’t plug.  Soft enough to prevent abrasion, yet not so soft as to leave Klingons circling Uranus.

And it’s not just the engineers who should be lauded.  Then there’s the next step:  convincing consumers to buy.  First the marketing geniuses have to come up with umpteen ways to say ‘our product wipes your ass best’ while avoiding any scatological reference whatsoever.

Then they create ads inexplicably featuring fluffy kittens and cartoon bears.  Those commercials bring out the worst in me.  Every time I see them, I think of the joke about the bear and the bunny taking a dump side by side in the forest.  The bear turns to the bunny and says, “Do you have a problem with shit sticking to your fur?”.  The bunny says, “No”, and the bear says, “Good!”, grabs the bunny and wipes his ass with it.

I can just see the tagline:  “Soft as a bunny, strong as a bear”.

And now you know what it’s like to live inside my brain.

Sorry about that…

* * *

I’m driving 800 miles again today so I won’t be able to respond to comments until tomorrow.  “Talk” to you then! 🙂

Chair Demons

/ Diane Henders / 49 Comments

I’d like to think it’s not just me. Doesn’t everybody harbour a few items in their home which, when considered out of context (which is to say, ‘by any sane human being’), are just a little… um… creepy?

Some things are intentionally creepy, and that’s okay. For instance, I love this candle-holding sculpture my sister gave me years ago: As the candle flickers, its eyes glow and seem to follow you around the room.

Totally creepy, but in a good way.

Totally creepy, but in a good way.

In the ‘that’s odd’ category of creepy, I also own a stuffed beaver.  *insert the revolting double entendre of your choice here*

No, really, it’s a child’s toy. I’m not sure I’d want to meet the twisted toymaker who one day looked up from his designs of cute, cuddly bunnies and bears and thought, “We need beavers!”

…Okay, I realize most guys have that revelation at some point in their life, but this guy followed it to its logical conclusion: “Everybody needs beavers!” And here’s the result:

He’s cuddly-soft, and his name is Bob. Don’t ask.

He’s cuddly-soft, and his name is Bob. Don’t ask.

Moving on up the ‘disturbing’ scale, I also own two rubber chickens that reside in the planter in my living room. Well, to be technically accurate, one’s rubber and the other is silicone, which is even grosser than rubber because it’s all wobbly and floppy.

But the rubber one makes up for its deficiency in the gross-out department, because:

  1. Its gaping beak is disturbingly reminiscent of a blow-up doll; and
  2. It squawks when squeezed – a horrible half-strangled wail like bagpipes possessed by the spirit of an evil piper who died in the throes of an asthma attack.
creepy chickens

I’m not sure which bothers me more, the gaping beak of the big one or the flaccid-phallus appearance of the little one…

 

But the top ‘Creepy and Disturbing’ award goes to our dining room furniture. You’d think it would be pretty difficult to make shudder-worthy dining chairs. And I’m not talking about physical discomfort.

No, I’m talking about the kind of creep factor that sends a shiver down your spine and makes you question whether you really want to turn your back on the item in question. I mean, seriously, what sick and deranged mind thought it would be a good idea to carve this on the back of a dining-room chair?

Would you turn your back on this?

Would you turn your back on this?

It looks like one of the minor demons from hell, perched at exactly the right height to chew a crippling chunk out of your spinal cord with its fiendishly gaping mouth. Then once you’re incapacitated, who knows what it might do?

This dining-room set belonged to my husband’s grandparents, and as far as I know they lived healthy, normal lives unmolested by denizens of the Pit… but these chairs give me the shivers anyway. I’ve lived with them for over a decade by convincing myself that, like gargoyles, they’re fierce guardians of our home. If anybody ever threatens us, look out! The chair demons will get them!

But that only works if I don’t think about it too much…

Anybody else harbouring satanic furniture or other creepy items?

* * *

Woohoo!  I’ve finished the draft for Book 8, and it’ll be off to my beta readers / editors this week!

Snow Fun

/ Diane Henders / 25 Comments

For those who weren’t privy to my whining on Facebook this weekend, we just had a foot of snow:

may snow

Eight inches after the first twelve hours. Drinks on the deck are postponed until further notice.

It’s depressing to get snow in May, but it’s not unheard-of here in Calgary.  And I’d rather have it now than in the middle of August… which has also happened:

I built this guy on August 20, 1992.

I built this guy on August 20, 1992.

Aside from griping of epic proportions, Calgarians have more or less ignored the snow and gotten on with life.  After all, we know it’ll probably snow again in a couple of weeks – it’s practically a tradition to get snow on the May long weekend.  But it’s okay, because snowbanks are a great place to keep your beer nice and frosty while you’re camping.

(Yes, we’re Canadian.  We push our lawn chairs into the snowbanks and sit around the campfire drinking cold beer on the long weekend regardless of the weather.)

The funny part is that the snow was preceded by rain, and it was the rain that totally messed people up.  You’d think it had never rained before.  Drivers bumbled through red lights, turned from the wrong lane, inexplicably slowed to a crawl in the middle of the road, and generally made me wish for a crate of Zombie Bullets and a Gatling gun.  I don’t know what it is about rain that makes Calgary drivers so painfully stupid, but my best guess is that IQ points are water-soluble.  Lucky it doesn’t rain very often here.

Someone once said, “Marriage is all about give and take:  Give blame; take credit”, so I blamed Hubby for the snow.

In the first place, he fired up the motorcycle a few weeks ago, which is a sure-fire way to make it snow.  Then he started talking about outdoor archery tournaments, and our fate was sealed.

I did my best to trick the weather into thinking it was okay to warm up:  I left my snow tires on the car and the snow shovels by the back door.  But it wasn’t enough.  Hubby’s bad juju trumped my feeble efforts.

Interestingly, the only time Hubby ever has bad luck with weather is here at home.  When we’re travelling, he’s a good-luck charm.  We often visit Vancouver Island in the middle of winter, and its coastal winter climate dictates rain, rain, and more rain.  But any time we’ve gone, the weather turns nice as soon as we get there.

We even went to Tofino in the middle of December:  prime storm-watching time.  But not for us.  It was raining a bit when we got there in the late afternoon.  The next morning the sun came out, wispy clouds floated across a blue, blue sky, and the rufous hummingbirds came out to dance a ballet on the sunbeams.  It was Disney as far as the eye could see.

“Storm-watching” at Tofino.

“Storm-watching” at Tofino.

And speaking of Disney, yesterday I discovered the true culprit behind our dump of snow.  Apparently the morning of the big snowfall, one of my employees’ little granddaughters stared out at the white-coated world before turning wide eyes up to her mother.

“Mommy!” she exclaimed, “My frost magic must have leaked out while I was sleeping!”

So now I know who’s to blame, but she’s so darn cute I’d feel like an ogre if I did.  And that’s snow fun.

* * *

P.S. If you want to connect on Facebook, the link is over in the right-hand column of the page.  I promise I don’t usually whine… but you’ll be subjected to whatever silliness falls out of my head.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Baby, Duck!

/ Diane Henders / 49 Comments

This weekend I was treated to a blast from the past.  We invited friends over for dinner, and one couple arrived bearing a bottle of Baby Duck.

For those unfamiliar with Baby Duck, it’s a ‘wine’ that was introduced to Canada in the early 1970s:  fizzy grape juice with lots of sugar, some alcohol, and a generous dollop of successful marketing.  Oenophiles may recoil in horror, but the truth is Baby Duck was part of the formative drinking years of an entire generation.

The friend who brought it this weekend confessed that she drank Baby Duck for the first/last time at a party long ago where she singlehandedly polished off one and a half bottles… and has never drunk it again.

So many people had their first disastrous drinking experience with Baby Duck that the name became a bit of a joke.  As the victims fled for the bathroom, stomachs heaving, a sardonic cheer would go up from the rest of the revelers as they scattered to provide a clear path:  “Baby, duck!”

My very  first drinking experience was as a young teenager, maybe fourteen or fifteen.  One day our family departed the sticks and went to the Big City for a family visit, and my city cousin took me out for Chinese food.

Imagine the importance of this event in the life of a backward young hick!  I’d never had Chinese food.  And my almost-grown-up cousin (she had a driver’s license and a car…!) was taking me out, just the two of us, like adults.  And when we got to the restaurant, she casually ordered us each a Singapore Sling!  (Even though we were both too young to drink I guess we looked close enough – we didn’t get asked for ID.  Times were simpler then.)

My parents had both come from non-drinking households, but they figured the safest way to protect their kids from dangerous rebellion was to introduce the concept of responsible drinking.  So they had already explained the concepts of alcohol and intoxication, and every now and then they drank a glass of wine with dinner while we were growing up.  They didn’t make a big deal of it, but we understood that alcohol was an adult thing.

So I was wildly excited by the grown-up meal… and I was afraid I’d get drunk and embarrass myself.  I still recall how yummy the almond chicken was, and I still recall wondering if I was drunk yet because I didn’t feel any different after one cocktail that was probably mostly fruit juice.

Needless to say when I went off to university a few years later I discovered that you’re not actually drunk until you’ve consumed seven Zombies (three kinds of rum, apricot brandy, and fruit juice) a couple of Brown Cows (Kahlua and cream) and then topped it off with a couple of warm beers that nobody else dared to drink.  (Gee, I wonder why…?)

I’ve been blessed with a cast-iron stomach and a lightning-fast metabolism, so that night I staggered home laughing all the way and fell into the dreamless slumber of the just and the intoxicated.  My drinking buddy at the time wasn’t so lucky – she spent the entire night talking to Ralph on the great white telephone and silently cursing my oblivious snores.

I think she’s forgiven me after more than three decades, but she’ll never forget.

Anybody else remember their first drinking experience?  Or prefer to forget it?

Brain Salad

/ Diane Henders / 34 Comments

(I promise this isn’t another post about zombies, despite the title.)

So… occasionally I make Tilt Soup.  It never tastes the same twice, and the recipe is as follows:  ‘Tilt the fridge and whatever falls out goes into the soup’.  Much to Hubby’s relief, I exercise restraint with that recipe.  I’ve never actually served soup containing pickles, jam, and leftover pizza… but the potential is there.

In the same vein, there’s a mental condition called ‘word salad’, where people are capable of intelligible speech but their words come out in an incoherent jumble.  As you may have guessed by now, today’s post is brain salad – a conglomeration of oddments that have been collecting in my mental filters for some time now.

For example:  One night I had an extremely vivid dream in which I was running an online dating service for lonely single monkeys.  I have no idea what the hell I’d eaten or drunk that would generate that level of weirdness, but the dream begs all kinds of questions such as, “How would that even work?” and “For the love of God, WHY?”

And while I’m on the topic of ‘why’, here’s something else I wonder about:  Why are ‘panties’ plural, but ‘bra’ is singular?

And why did I smell gunpowder in the upscale restaurant where I ate a while ago?  I mean, really, the meat was fresh, but it wasn’t that fresh.

And why does my list of blog post ideas contain a draft post titled ‘I Got Mad Skillz’ that is completely blank?  Apparently I once had an idea for a blog post I thought merited that title… but I guess my ‘skillz’ deserted me before I could write it.

The miscellany in my blog file also includes a biker obituary I discovered a while ago and saved because I’d like an obituary like this (except for the ‘younger women’ part):

“Weary of reading obituaries noting someone’s courageous battle with death, Mike wanted it known that he died as a result of being stubborn, refusing to follow doctors’ orders and raising hell for more than six decades. He enjoyed booze, guns, cars and younger women until the day he died. He is survived by Uncle Don and Aunt Cynthia (his favorite); Uncle Dill and Aunt Dot, cousins and nephews, Baba Yaga can kiss his butt.”

I presume Baba Yaga doesn’t refer to the witch of Slavic folklore, so I’d love to know the story behind that one.

And one last thing that made me laugh this week:  You know those website captcha things where you have to interpret numbers and letters that rival Rorschach ink blots in their obscurity?  Well, sometimes they’re not obscure enough to defeat my juvenile sense of humour.  A while ago, I got ‘pness’ and ‘pemile’ in quick succession, generating a flurry of childish snickers.  I entered 8==> in the text box, but apparently that wasn’t what they were looking for…

(Hint:  Rotate that group of characters 90 degrees counterclockwise.  Or clockwise if the Viagra has worn off.)

So that’s it for my brain salad today.  Just like Tilt Soup, if you hold your nose and gulp it down fast, it might not come back on you…

Beef Is A Vegetable

/ Diane Henders / 33 Comments

Yes, it’s true.  Beef is a vegetable, and today I’m going to give you a logical explanation as to why that’s so.

And as a special bonus, I’m going to address the age-old question posed by unhappy students ever since Plato and Aristotle started flapping their gums all those centuries ago:  “When will I ever use these grand principles of logic in real life?”

The answer is ‘frequently’… if you have a devious mind and a burning desire to justify unhealthy nutritional choices.

Hubby and I have both.

Frankly, I was a lot happier when I thought the four basic food groups were sugar, salt, fat, and booze.  But then I went and educated myself about proper nutrition, not realizing how that knowledge would cut into my enjoyment of the all the tastiest treats in life.

On my more cynical days, I figure cutting out all the best yummies won’t actually make me live longer; it’ll just seem like it.  But since my main ambition is to not die of my own stupidity, I generally make an effort to eat well.  And on the days when I don’t feel like doing that, I use logic to justify my poor food choices.

‘Cause, like, y’know, logic is like, all sophisticated and stuff, so that makes me feel smarter when I’m ingesting enough saturated fat to bung my arteries solid.

I’ve already discovered a few useful pre-rationalized vices.  I’m sure just about everybody has seen the one about how chocolate comes from a bean, and beans are vegetables.  And vegetables are healthy and an essential part of good nutrition, therefore it’s necessary to eat chocolate.

Or the one about how grapes are fruit, and wine is made from crushed grapes, therefore wine is just as healthy as fruit juice.

And barley sandwiches are a super-nutritious meal, too.  (For those unfamiliar with barley sandwiches, the main ingredients in beer are barley and yeast, which are essentially the same ingredients as bread…)

If you think that’s a weak argument, never mind – I have a better one.  Beer fights cancer, so it’s actually medicinal.  And I just re-read that article and discovered that they consider a ‘healthy’ intake of beer to be up to two or three units a day for women.  Dammit, I’ve been under-medicated!  Bring on the beer!

But the people who thought up those rationalizations are rank amateurs compared to my husband.  He has actually formulated a logic chain to justify eating gigantic quantities of steak:

Beef is a vegetable.  And vegetables are healthy.

I did point out the food pyramid to him, indicating where there was a clear differentiation between meats and vegetables, but he just shook his head with the patient tolerance of a Zen scholar and proceeded to enlighten me.

“It’s simple,” he explained.  “Cows eat grass.  Grass is a vegetable.  You are what you eat, so beef is a vegetable.”

I couldn’t argue with that even if I wanted to.

Is that the sweet, sweet smell of barbeque?