Month: August 2024

A Question Of Taste

Food & Drink

Here’s a story which made me scratch my head:

She proceeds to tear apart the battered fish and dip it into tartare sauce, and then grabs a handful of chips.

So far, so good.  The baffling thing?

Returning to the fish, Bella continues to eat with her fingers.

…which left her Brit readers appalled.

Bella’s unconventional approach of eating fish with her fingers took social media by storm, sparking debate among netizens. One observer posted: “I’ve never seen someone eat fish and chips with their hands.”

I’m sorry?  Eating F&C with a knife and fork is like eating pizza or a hot dog with a knife and fork;  you can do it, but why?  (As my old Zulu buddy Sipho Tshabalala once put it:  “How can you taste the food when you don’t touch it?”  And he’s quite right.)

Americans may be forgiven for not knowing this, by the way, because Over Here one buys fish and chips at a restaurant and eats it sitting at a table, where eating with one’s fingers is generally frowned upon.

But in the true British Empire fashion, fish & chips is street food.  You buy it through a chippy’s window on the street, it comes wrapped in paper (once newspaper, alas no more), and you eat it on the run, so to speak, holding the steaming bag of F&C in one hand while pulling it apart and stuffing it in your face with the other.  (This polystyrene thing, as in the above picture, is yet another clear pointer to the fall of civilization as far as I’m concerned.)

And it tastes fucking wonderful.  (My mouth is watering as I write this.)  Yeah, your hands end up all greasy (as do your lips) from the oil and vinegar — but that’s all part of the experience.

This modern obsession with cleanliness is stupid, by the way, and no more so than when consuming one of the great food dishes of the world.

News Roundup

Bad News

For my non-Murkin Readers, it’s pronounced “knee-high”.  And speaking of getting your knees up:


...and if you don’t know who Liz Jones is, you’re so much the better for it.

As for the Usual Suspects:


…

Still on those assholes:


...hey, if it worked for their prophet… besides, you need to go younger and younger to get ’em while they’re still fresh — especially in Iran, it seems.

Let’s hear it from Global Warming Climate Cooling Change©:


...wait:  you mean only allowing harvesting or plowing on Tuesdays and Thursdays could affect crop yields?  Who knew?

And in parallel stupidity:


...let’s give this one a try.  Born with a penis:  man.  If not, a woman.  Then there’s always that XX/XY chromosome test thing, as a fallback.

Time for that EVERYBODY PANIC!!! thing:


...and:


...both come courtesy of the Daily Mail, of course.

In Election News:


…

And in Health News:



...and at the risk of sounding old-fashioned an’ stuff, this never used to happen when doctors kept actual paper files on their patients.

Time for a new department, Totalititarian Chronicles:


...getting a little ahead of ourselves, are we?

And in link-free 

 

And returning to the “knees-up” theme from the top:

...of course she does, she’s Roller Girl:

 

 

 

And that’s it for the news.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

From some tart or other:

“I know he’s proud of me and what we have together, but no one else needs to hear that we sometimes do it five times a night and that my searing orgasms can go on for 15 minutes at a time.”

…which is why you shared your story with The Sun newspaper, right?

Checking Out The Options

Friends and Family

From a Concerned Reader (anonymous, for obvious reasons):

It seems our crazy Western governments are intent upon starting one or more wars.  If one has a teenage grandson and wanted to resettle him somewhere in the world to avoid his participation in one of these conflicts, do you have an opinion as to where he might go?

I have to tell y’all, that is a really good question.

I’m leaving aside the old-time “draft-dodger” discussion, because it’s clear that this is not a Vietnam-era situation where everybody knew that our kids were being sent off to die for a country which was eventually going to fall into enemy hands anyway.  (In other words, don’t go there in Comments.)

A lot depends on the grandson, of course.  Does he speak Spanish?  (In that case, places like Panama and Dominica are decent choices.)  Ditto any other foreign languages, which open up areas like Southeast Asia — Thailand especially seems to be becoming a destination of choice.

It also depends how much you’re willing to pay for this resettlement, as several countries offer one the opportunity to purchase residency or citizenship (CBI, it’s called), so if you have the spondulicks, there’s that.

However, I also think one could consider staying at home, so to speak, but simply going to a place where one would be outside the risk of any foreign entanglements:  the Coast Guard or a local police department, for example.

Comments on the topic are of course welcome.