writing

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”. 😀

 

Farewell To A Faithful Friend

/ Diane Henders / 41 Comments

I’m about to get maudlin over a vehicle, so if you’d rather have some chuckles today, why not go and check out my very first official blog post, Bad Hotel Karma?  I’ll be back to my usual silliness next week.

* * *

Yesterday I said goodbye to a faithful friend:  a battered 1983 Ford half-ton.  Even though I’d been its official owner for over ten years, I still called it ‘Dad’s truck’.

It’s the truck he drove from Manitoba to Halifax to visit me in 1988.  At a miserable time in my life, he drove nearly 10,000 km (6,000 miles) round trip, and we took a long weekend to drive around Cape Breton Island, just him and me.

It was a leisurely trip, pulling in to explore every tiny “point of interest” beside the highway and stopping frequently to snap photos.  That was before Dad began to suffer from the increasingly debilitating effects of the lung enzyme deficiency that would slowly steal his breath, and eventually his life.  I didn’t spare a thought for the truck at the time; it was just a vehicle that took us where we wanted to go.

Dad at Sydney, on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

Dad at Sydney, on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, 1988

Dad used that truck to haul my piano from Manitoba to my apartment in Calgary in 1989.  In 1998, he used it to trailer my 1953 Chevy from Manitoba to Calgary.  In 2001, I officially ‘bought’ the truck.

I was going through a tough time financially, but Dad wasn’t well enough to drive anymore so the truck had to be sold… and I needed a truck.  When I asked if I could buy it, he agreed.  But when I went to write the cheque, he eyed me with his usual gentle gravity and said, “Now isn’t really a good time for this, is it?  We’ll do it later.”

The truck came to Calgary in the middle of summer, 800 miles in temperatures hovering around 37 degrees Celsius (98 Fahrenheit).  It had no air conditioning, and I was sick with a horrible head cold.  We crept across the prairies, stopping in every little town for Popsicles and cold water.  The truck performed faultlessly.  Me?  Not so much.

I tried to pay Dad for the truck, several times.  At last, I arrived on his doorstep with the cheque already written.  And he smiled and said, “Well, I’ve done some deals with the other kids, too, so we’ll just call it even.”  The cheque was torn up and the issue was closed.  That was my Dad.

By then the truck was twenty years old, but it never let me down.  It hauled furniture and pre-fab outhouses and garbage and tools.  Its capped box served as an impromptu storage shed, and I slept in it many times while camping.  Whenever friends needed to haul something, they knew they could come and borrow it.

The truck lived a hard life.  Parked on the street, its side mirror was smashed by vandals and it got egged and spray-painted.  Other drivers ran into it, five different times.  Sometimes they slid down our treacherous hill on winter ice and only stopped when they hit the truck.  Sometimes they backed into the side of it, apparently unable to see a bright red, twenty-foot long vehicle in their rear-view mirror.

But despite their incompetence as drivers, those people restored my faith in humanity.  I never found a dent in the truck that wasn’t accounted for.  Nobody discounted it as an old junker and drove away without reporting their accident.  Each time, our doorbell would ring and some contrite person would apologize profusely for hitting the truck.

Each time, I told them not to worry about it.  They’d have enough trouble and expense repairing their own vehicle, and they didn’t need the additional cost of an insurance claim.  Dad gave me the truck out of the goodness of his heart.  The least I could do was pass it on.

The truck endured the ravages of age and rust and injury, the years and impacts damaging its body but not its tough engine.  It developed a cantankerous carburetor that I referred to as my anti-theft device.  To start the truck, you had to open the hood, remove the air cleaner, and manually close the sticky choke plate.  Then back into the truck to pump the gas for about 30 seconds, after which you could turn the key while still pumping the gas vigorously.  But as long as you followed the protocol it never failed to start, even in the dead of winter.

That same cantankerous carburetor required three quick pumps of the gas when starting in first gear.  Just a little extra jolt of fuel, or it would stall.  The brake drums were out of round, causing a slight surging effect, and the left-turn signal didn’t work unless you knew you had to pull the signal lever slightly outward and toward you.  Then it worked just fine.

In its stubborn persistence I saw my Dad’s final battle.  The loss of breath, the frequent and increasingly serious illnesses, the wasting and weakening of his once-powerful body.  Labouring against the burden of slow suffocation, his cardiac arrhythmia was so pronounced that when I took his pulse the irregular beat would have done a calypso band proud.  But just like his truck, his indomitable heart wouldn’t quit, and he endured the suffering and indignities with stoicism and quiet humour.

In recent years we didn’t use the truck often, but I kept it insured and registered, and it kept doing what we asked of it, over and over.

Last spring two young girls in a big half-ton backed into the side of it.  Another giant dent; another contrite conversation.  Another round of forgiveness with the gentle admonition to drive more carefully in the future.  Just the way my Dad would have done it.

I could have called the insurance company then and let them write it off; maybe gotten a couple of hundred bucks.  Instead I hung onto the truck, not driving it but keeping it registered and insured and in its place of honour beside our house.

A couple of weeks ago I drove it for the first time since the girls in the half-ton hit it.  It started right up as usual, but its shocks were gone.  It wallowed through undulations in the pavement like a ship in heavy seas, and its steering wandered dangerously.  I wanted to cling to it from sheer sentimentality, but I couldn’t bear to see my poor truck endure more dents, more infirmities.  It was too much like watching Dad face a battle he knew he couldn’t win, bravely waiting for the final blow.

In the end, Dad’s every breath was an agonizing struggle.  Coughing literally tore him apart, causing a massive hernia.  The morning after he underwent surgery to repair it, the surgeon told us he could go home that day.  Mercifully, he did go home later that day, but not to any earthly dwelling.  It was April 1, 2004.  April Fool’s Day.  Go figure.

I knew the truck’s time was up, too.  It wasn’t safe to drive and it wasn’t practical to fix, and I didn’t want to wait for the day when its heroic old engine finally failed.  So I called Donate A Car Canada and yesterday my beloved truck went away for the last time.  The Lung Association won’t get much for it, but I’d like to think Dad would be pleased.

Today there’s an empty spot on our street, and in my heart.

Goodbye, old friend.  I’ll miss you.

truck

Progress…

/ Diane Henders / 34 Comments

A couple of days ago when I was lying helpless in a small dark room with a couple of dozen needles stuck in various parts of my body, I began to reflect on the state of modern medical science.

If you’re thinking that the combination of claustrophobia and needles might not to be conducive to philosophical reflection, you’re right.  The truth is I was trying to distract myself; not only from the pain and psychological discomfort, but also from the galling knowledge that I was paying for the privilege of enduring both.

I’ve been getting acupuncture on my arm in a futile attempt to speed its healing from my latest kickboxing injury.  (I should note that it’s my fault the acupuncture isn’t working as well as it should.  I’ve discovered it tends to be considerably less effective if I spend four or five hours digging dirt and moving heavy rocks immediately afterward.)

No; the acupuncture works well when I behave myself… but it’s ironic that with all of today’s cutting-edge medical science, the most effective treatment for tendonitis is 2,000 years old.  With fancy diagnostic machines and a lot of fiddling around, today’s doctors can tell me exactly which tendons are inflamed… but they still can’t fix them without sticking needles into me.

When I considered it, I realized most physiotherapy is actually a little on the barbaric side:

  • Ice and heat applied alternately to create the maximum possible discomfort.
  • TENS, which is basically electrocuting the sore spot.
  • Massage and active release techniques, which both boil down to ‘find the place that hurts the most and press really hard on it’.
  • And ultrasound, which is like hitting the sore spot with a zillion teensy-weensy invisible hammers. With blue slime as an added bonus.

The truth is we really haven’t even come very far from our Neolithic ancestors 6,000 years ago.  ‘Way back then, they used a technique called ‘trephining’ to drill holes in people’s skulls and let the bad out.  Sometimes the patients even survived.

Today we do pretty much the same thing for intracranial pressure, only with less screaming thanks to anaesthetics, and a slightly better survival rate thanks to antibiotics.  But we’re still drilling holes in people’s skulls, and we’re still trying to make their sore spots feel better by sticking needles in them.  The more things change, the more they stay the same…

And speaking of relieving intracranial pressure, here’s one thing off my mind:  The cover art is done for Book 8, and it even has a title!  And it’s halfway through the beta-reading process with only one minor revision so far.  Woohoo!

Here it is:

Spy Now Pay Later cover draft

Railroaded into acting as a secret agent, Aydan Kelly only wants to return to her peaceful former existence.  But when trusted co-workers go missing along with a deadly weapon prototype, she’s forced to take over the investigation to protect them from an agent with a personal vendetta. 

And when a violent criminal organization abducts her lover, Aydan discovers exactly how far she’s willing to push the limits of her new role.  The bad guys are about to learn an important lesson:  Don’t piss off a middle-aged bookkeeper. 

So what’s on your mind this week?  Go ahead, let off some pressure!  And… has anybody got a miracle cure for tendonitis besides “Stop doing stupid things and let it heal”?

* * *

I’m on the road today so I won’t be able to respond to comments until tomorrow.  I’ll look forward to “talking” 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?

Zombie Bullets

/ Diane Henders / 40 Comments

Prepare for the impending zombiepocalypse!

Everywhere I turn, I’m reminded that zombies will soon overrun the earth.  In fact, a recent Calgary Herald article reported that an expert has rated Calgary as one of the best places to survive the zombiepocalyse.  Whew, that’s a relief.

I’ve been wondering why zombies are getting so much press lately.  I initially thought it might be because everybody’s tired of vampires, so zombies are the next option in the creepy catalogue.  That makes sense, because zombies are easier to relate to in real life.

I mean, really, what are the chances of seeing a vampire?  They crumble into dust at the slightest touch of daylight and cringe from silver and go up in smoke under holy water.  They’re not really that durable.  (Don’t talk to me about sparkly vampires.  I’m strictly old-school.)

Zombies, on the other hand, are practically indestructible.  Shoot ‘em; hack ‘em up; whatever.  They just pick up the pieces and keep on coming.  According to the ammunition experts at Hornady, you need special ammo for shooting zombies (not to mention a fully-automatic weapon).  No kidding, this is a real product.  I’ve seen it in stores.

But after careful consideration, I think zombies are looming as the next big threat because they’re real and they’re already living among us.

I know that’s a scary thought, but the truth is I encounter dozens of them every day.  Sometimes they’re on foot, but as a general rule they seem to prefer mechanical conveyances.

I’m sure you’ve seen them, too:  hunched in the driver’s seat, their deadened eyes staring straight ahead without any regard for road conditions or traffic.  Occasionally their rigor-mortis grip is locked on the steering wheel, but more often their nerveless hands clutch cell phones or coffee cups, or both at the same time while they drive with their knee (or some other appendage with a life of its own; I’ve always been afraid to look too closely).

Oblivious to the rest of us, they drive through red lights and stop signs, turn left from the far right-hand lane, and weave in and out of traffic deaf to horns and blind to the universal gesture of fellowship and goodwill that frequently accompanies horn-honking.

To combat this menace, I’d like to suggest a new kind of Zombie Bullets.  Like the Hornady product above, they would incorporate the all-important green colouring.  And they’re already available in standard paintball calibres.  Pair them with one of the new fully-automatic paintball guns and a heads-up automatic targeting system installed in our cars, and we’re all set to eradicate the latest zombie menace.

I realize that shooting a zombie’s car with a paint pellet won’t stop the zombie in question, but at least it’ll provide a warning for the rest of us.  When we see a vehicle dripping with green slime, we’ll be able to take evasive action.

And hey, it’d make police officers’ jobs easier, too:  “I’m sorry, sir, your car shows sixty-three distinct zombie-bullet hits.  I’m going to have to write you a ticket for driving without the influence of a brain.”

Ah, if only…