I Would Advise Vegetarians Look Away at This Point

A nice perk I enjoy at work is being able to borrow any DVDs I want. Hockey season aside, Susan and I do not watch TV at all, but we do love watching movies and TV shows on DVD, so it is a perk I appreciate. We have a long list of movies we want to see, compiled from trailers, recommendations, our knowledge of what's coming to the cinema, or things that are causing a buzz.

One movie we had on our list was Cooking with Stella, so when it was traded in at the store recently I pounced on it to bring home and watch that evening. Unfortunately it was rather disappointing, but there are always worse ways we could have wiled away a couple of hours. I returned the DVD to the store the following day, and brought up Amazon on the store computer to ascertain a price we should sell it at. We tend to use Amazon as a guide as it is usually the cheapest online source for most titles, then we price our stuff at around 60% of the cheapest available new copies.

Not changing the catch-all category of 'All,' I typed "cooking with" into the Amazon search box and a whole load of options appeared in the resultant drop-down. However, the search result appearing at the very top made my jaw drop in amazement, shock, and not a little disgust. So, taken from the very page that, ahem, came up when I typed in my search, here is screenshot proof of my findings:

It is a small image, but you should be able to make out "cooking with semen." Yes, that is correct: semen. Not cooking with wine, vegetables, chicken, confidence, or any other of the hundreds of possible options, but semen.

Now, you know how search engines work, right? Without getting too technical - which I happily could as I know all about search engine algorithms and whatnot - it goes without saying search results are ranked by popularity. That much should be obvious, eh? For example, when typing merely 'f' into Google, 'Facebook' appears straight away, as you would expect. So, this means that the highest number of searches on Amazon for "cooking with" was "cooking with semen." To this fact, I have no idea what to say. It is just extraordinary. All I can conclude from this information is that either someone has somehow manipulated the results, which seems highly unlikely and, even for giggles, kind of pointless, or else it is a truly sick, sick world, people.

Once I had recovered from my shock, however, curiosity took over and I decided to follow the "cooking with semen" link. What I found was as, if not more, amazing than the result itself. I found a book entitled Natural Harvest: A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes, for which I strongly urge you to read the book description and, especially, customer reviews. Trust me, you'll bust a gut. And possibly vomit, depending on how broadminded you may be. Then, how could I forget, there is also the epic tome, Semenology: The Semen Bartender's Handbook. Again, you really, really should read the reviews.

So, a whole new world opened up for me as a result of innocently borrowing that crap DVD - a world of cum cooking and baby batter beverage creation, should I wish to explore it further. And I thought I was a man of the world, but it seems not. Wow, what odd creatures we humans are...

As I search today I see that "cooking with semen" has slipped down to # 5 in the search rankings. Poor show, semen! Amusingly, though, "cooking with booze" and, what the hell, "cooking with coolio" have entered the top 10! Hurrah! There is still no sign of wine, vegetables, chicken or confidence, but proudly shitt... er, sitting at the top of the pile today, however, is "cooking with pooh." I hope to hell that's the real book that now dominates the searches on Amazon, and not a spelling mistake. Not that, all things considered, I would too surprised if it was!
   

I Want to Play!

For some time now I've been thinking I should engage myself with some kind of sporting activity in order to get a little fitter. The all-action sport of Curling has been the favourite in my mind until, just this morning, I discovered Bubble Football. Surely the world's silliest new sport, it apparently emerged last year from Norway, and as this video illustrates, appears to be the greatest fun ever. How anyone playing manages to keep from laughing themselves insensible during a game I can only imagine!   

Our Cherries Bombed

Moving into a house with a yard containing three apple trees and a cherry tree was very exciting. From the off we envisioned harvesting all the fruit to make into pies, jam and whatnot, as well as spreading some love by sharing our bountiful crop with friends.

Having moved in early April we experienced the joy of witnessing the trees blossom before the serious business of creating fruit started in earnest. Over the last few weeks we've been eagerly watching little green buds swell into small apples, and watching cherries in our huge tree darken and turn lovely and shiny. After nightmare infestations of tent caterpillars in the spring, as gardening novices we had no idea what to expect of this year's yield, so were pleasantly surprised and happy to witness fruit happily growing on the branches. From the elevated vantage point of our deck, the cherry tree looked particularly abundant.

The apples are still developing, but tonight we finally had some time available to pick the cherries at the time it looked most like they should be picked. They were deep red and looking very juicy. First, however, we went onto YouTube to see exactly how it should be done: cut them down individually with secateurs, high up the stalk so as to delay the ripening process. Then, in expectation of a bulging sack of cherries, we also researched the various ways in which they can be used and/or preserved. Excited, we donned our gardening gloves, grabbed the ladder, a container, and the secateurs.

When underneath the tree in search of cherries, we were suddenly somewhat crestfallen. There were a few within reach with the ladder, but many of the cherries that looked so healthy from the deck were soggy or half-munched by birds. Plenty more were entirely rotten on the branch. Stepping back, it seemed the real booty was the crop of cherries teasingly totally out of reach at the very top of the tree unless we were able to employ something like this: 

Nonetheless, undeterred, we ploughed on. "Ooh, there's one!" Susan or I would chirrup enthusiastically upon a sighting, one of us then scuttling up the ladder to snip it down. "Oh, it's rotten," came back the reply, the disappointed harvester hurtling it into the distance in annoyance. This process went on for some time until pretty much every reachable, snippable cherry had been extracted from the tree. Then totally forgetting our reason for being in the yard in the first place we got sidetracked by butchering a gargantuan arc of blackberry thorns that had infiltrated our yard from next door. But the more we chopped away at the prickly bastard the more apparent it became that it was totally entwined as an all-but-impenetrable network in the upper reaches of the cherry tree, so after removing what we could we called it a night, shuffling disconsolately off to head indoors to take stock of our cherry haul.

So, ladies and gentlemen, collapse in awe if you will at our cherry harvest for Summer 2013, presented for your amazement by my good lady wife:

There we have the grand total of 26 cherries. Twenty-effing-six. That's less than the average sparrow consumes for breakfast. It's even less than in a single Mini Cherry Cutie Pie, for crying out screaming loud.

No pies, no jam, no whatnot, no spreading some love by sharing our bountiful crop with friends. No, not in Summer 2013. But, as total novices at this game we have learned plenty of lessons for next year. We have learned, for example, that it matters not how much we love birds, it's not the greatest idea to actively encourage them to visit our yard by hanging a bird feeder... in the cherry tree. That was a big mistake right there.

Oh well, let's see how we get on with the apples.

Jello 'n' Me

Last week was very strange. It was a week when it seemed as if the life of an American punk rock icon and mine were somehow intertwined. This is what happened:

MONDAY JUNE 17
As usual of a morning I sat with my coffee and breakfast having a surf of the news, entertainment sites and music blogs I enjoy each day. It's my routine before ablutions and heading off to work at the music store. One music blog I check in on is called Cover Me. As the name would suggest it is devoted exclusively to cover versions, which I have a fondness for and compile CDs of. One regular Cover Me feature is They Say It's Your Birthday, which "celebrates an artist's special day with other people singing his or her songs." On Monday June 17, 2013, the featured artist was the aforementioned punk rock icon, one Jello Biafra, who turned 55 that day. For better or worse, here are the covers of his songs.

WEDNESDAY JUNE 19
It had been a quiet day at work. Neil and I busied ourselves with the usual jobs in a routine, ho-hum kind of way, until at around 3:00pm a balding, greying middle-aged man dressed head-to-foot in black walked in and caught my attention. With the punk star's image fresh in my mind from two days prior, as he poked about in the 45s rack I thought, 'Wow, that guy really looks like Jello Biafra.' Then when he spoke to me to ask where the Canadian punk records were, I immediately knew it was Jello! Crazy!

What the hell was Jello Biafra doing in l'il ol' Nanaimo? I remember my boss Steve telling me that Jello had been in his store many years before, when it was located in Country Club Mall, buying a bunch of exotica/lounge records, so I asked him what brought him to town. It transpires he has friends in our community, and was here to see them as part of his birthday celebrations. Anyway, we left him to it and he listened to a pile of Japanese surf/60s R 'n' B and other cool records until right up when we closed three hours later, dropping $290 to considerably boost a quiet day's takings.

THURSDAY JUNE 20
A box from our Ottawa supplier J-Mac arrived in the afternoon. As I do with every delivery, I opened it to inspect the contents prior to processing the order. Amongst the LPs were two copies each of Jello's Dead Kennedys' "Bedtime for Democracy" and "Frankenchrist." This may not seem particular unusual - this is a record store, after all - but the fact is we had not had these titles in for the longest time. The latter, in fact, is out of print, so we were lucky to track these copies down at all. All things considered thus far this week, I looked at the records and thought, "Hmmm... what the hell is going on here?!"

SATURDAY JUNE 22
Susan and I (with our friends Art, Carol, Pete and Heidi) attended the awesome Campbell Bay Music Festival on gorgeous Mayne Island on Friday and Saturday. There were hundreds of people there, arriving steadily all day long on both days. The bands were amazing, pretty much keeping my eyes glued to the stage the entire time (Friday included), but for some reason that surely can only be explained by cosmic intervention, at some indeterminate point I suddenly felt compelled to look to where the festival entrance was located a way down the field. And wouldn't you know it, the guy walking through the gate at that precise moment was wearing a Dead Kennedys t-shirt bearing the classic DK logo.

Trust me, chills ran down my spine when I saw this guy. Bear in mind that the Campbell Bay Music Festival is a very folk music-oriented, generally rootsy affair, and despite its DIY ethic is as far removed from political hardcore punk rock as can be imagined. There are lots of hippies and crusties present, and nary a punk in sight. In truth I saw very few band shirts or merchandise of any description, regardless of genre, so this Dead Kennedys t-shirt was something of an anomaly in this situation. Really, if someone was spotted wearing a Belle & Sebastian t-shirt it would have likely been deemed edgy.

What does this all mean? Why did all this Jello stuff arise in one week? Does Jello perhaps have some part to play in my future, his presence and the inadvertent Cover Me heads-up presenting the first clues...? Is he aware of this? Or do I have some part to play in Jello's future, and everything that happened last week was the universe's way of informing me? Of all people and all musicians, why Jello Biafra? Because Susan is the service advisor at an automotive repair garage, does the DK's song "Trust Your Mechanic" suddenly have some significance for us?

Yeah, what a weird week! Coincidence has played quite a part in my life at times, and in weeks like June 17-22, 2013, such occurrences can really mess with your head. Because coincidence is obviously all this is, but coincidence(s) so extraordinary that it is easy to think there is something more 'designed' at play! Ah, whatever... but in the middle of it all I did get to wish Jello Biafra a belated happy birthday, which is presumably not something I'll get that many more opportunities in life to do!
      

Miserable Moggies

This is simply wonderful. Thanks are due to our dear friends and fellow cat lovers Paul and Catherine Bezooyen for bringing it to our attention.

They Walk Among Us

There have been some 'interesting' customers in the store this week...

Scruffy, but not overly so, one chap walked up to me and said, "Have you detected the eerie silence out there recently?" I replied that I hadn't. "You know, a silence, like the Nazis are coming...?" Thinking this an unusual question, I could only once again respond in the negative. "The animals, like Bigfoot and the werewolves," he continued, "are worried, because now cell phones have cameras we can take photos of them and prove their existence!" In response to this excited pronouncement I could only respond with, "Oh, really?" "Yeah," he said, then, with a dramatic change of tone, "...or maybe I'm tripping?" With this he put his right hand to his forehead, screwed up his face in apparent confusion, then toddled off down the aisle and left the store. Bless.

And secondly, finally, as I am losing the will to live here, let me tell you about the CDR I received from a customer recently. After he asked me if I like The Rolling Stones and I said I did, he gave me this disc, saying it contained a book he'd written about the band. A couple of days ago I inserted it into the computer to take a shufti, and shuddered as I began to scan the content. It contains 185 pages of stream-of-consciousness 'poetry' inspired by the band and, as the introduction explains, written entirely under the influence of absinthe and very strong marijuana. If you are lucky I may reproduce a few lines here in future posts, but I think it is only fair to warn you here and now that it is absolutely mental. Well, the first four pages are.

I wonder what it might be like working for Thrifty's?

UPDATE, Sunday May 26: Amazingly, as he does not come in often, the author of said Rolling Stones tome came into the store yesterday. "Did you read it, Dave?" he asked. "Not yet, because I've just moved house and things have been a bit hectic, but I did take a quick look," I responded, in all honesty. "Well, when you do I'd be interested in your thoughts," he said, "because I think it sits somewhere between a masterpiece and complete gibberish."

Seriously, I couldn't make this up if I tried.

Fate

As happens from time to time, I seem be somewhat preoccupied with thoughts of fate right now, especially concerning the fragility of life. I think the trigger for this occurrence was recently reading about a songwriter (whose name escapes me) planning a concept album, the central theme of which will be a contemplation on the nature of perfectly ordinary, individual human existence. It was borne, he said, of an unshakeable feeling of infinitesimal tininess in the universe, and how mind-blowing and overwhelming a thought it was.

With this on my mind I started thinking about certain news items in a different way. I've had thoughts like this before, but we can become so desensitized to the horrors of the world that it is easy to read about such as scores of people being blown to pieces in Baghdad or Basra, as has happened again this week, without a further thought about it beyond the last sentence. But with the songwriter's intentions floating about my brain, I've been thinking about the fate of those poor people, and in fact anyone simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Those Iraqis got out of bed on those mornings to go about their days like any normal human beings. They probably had plans to shop for food and essential supplies for their families, perhaps meet with friends for idle chatter about who knows what. Going about their business, others going about their own blew them into a million pieces. Alive one second, dead the next, probably feeling nothing. The lights were on, then they were off, and those lives were snuffed out in an instant in the name of sectarianism. Had they not been there, they would have lived, but however way you look at it there would have been great loss of life of people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps it was fate that those particular people's lives had to end that day. There is no cosmic design governing human existence, but if there was... 

This morning I could not stop looking at a couple of particularly extraordinary images of the devastating tornado in Oklahoma. One aerial shot showed a trail of destruction through a swathe of Moore, yet either side of the path of the tornado was untouched. Nature at its most calamitous had followed an obviously random path, yet people and buildings just a relatively short distance from its massive destructive power had remained unharmed and undamaged. The survivors will likely thank their respective gods they were spared, while an entire community will be forever scarred by the randomness of the power of nature.

I used to get lost in these kinds of thoughts, but no longer. However, these kinds of events, whether man-made and driven by "God," as in Iraq, or an "act of God," as in Oklahoma, do get me thinking about how it might all end for me when it does. Will I die a quiet death by natural causes; be claimed by some awful disease or a tragic accident, or will my demise be dramatic and newsworthy like the poor souls the world lost this week to bombs and tornados? What will be my fate?