(or- Why do humans find very bad foods so very tasty??)
Ah, yes! The strangely illicit joy of chowing down dreadful salt-flavoured meat-tinged baked biscuit-y type "nourishment" at the midnight hour, when all the children are in bed asleep and unable to raid the stash of overly-preserved flavouring-enhanced goodies in this foil-esque packaging....
Complete in the knowledge that I will regret this folly in the morning; my tongue will stick to the top of my mouth, my eyes will feel like there are salt fields in them, and my intestines will have gone on strike for better working conditions. The modern human's appetite for tasty-but-terrible food is bizarre, and none of us is immune from preservatives' peculiar charms.
Tofu is an innocent enough food- well, not so much a food as a cry for help. People who voluntarily eat it are REALLY in need of therapy or were a middle sibling that didn't get enough love in their youth. But the anoemic tofu, for all its reported health benefits, pales (as an anoemic food should) into comparison against Arnott's BBQ Shapes- a baked good so filled with additive-awesomeness, preservative-punch and flavouring-fun that you can actually TASTE THE MEAT OFF THE GRILL- all in a biscuit! It's the Vegetarian's Guilty Pleasure to scoff a box of BBQ shapes to get their fill of meat-lust, albeit in placebo form, before saving a poor innocent ferret from becoming the main ingredient of someone's kebab.
Cheezels- or as they are more accurately described, The Rings Of Salted Doom- are best used as packing filler, but one cannot help adore their inherent cheesiness. Burger Rings- a blight on the nutrition of the schoolchild- are so far removed from tasting like Burgers that they should be re-branded as Sulphur Rings instead. But once proffered in a Tupperware bowl at a party, very few mere mortals can resist turning into Burger Gollums at the sight of These Salty Preciouses.
But the TRUE EVIL snack is an aberration so malevolent, so very abhorrent, that I shudder to type its name on these innocent pages. I speak, naturally, of the foulness of Chicken Twisties.
Why does this food even exist? Can it be used as a biological weapon? Was it one of Mengele's experiments in edible form? Is it smallpox in a snack? Chicken is the most vicious of the flavours, the others being cheese and battery acid. But the true horror of these "treats" is their more-ishness!! We sentient beings know they're slowly dissolving our innards, we know they're doing irreversible damage to our kidneys and that the chemicals are probably re-jigging our DNA... but gosh-darnit, WHY do they make our tastebuds zing and synapses fire like nothing else on earth?? "Bring me another packet of Death Lumps!!", we scream foolishly as our teeth waste away under the 28% concrete content of this sodium-chloride atrocity.
And yet for all that, an apple a day just doesn't cut it against these terrors. I would cheerfully munch all day on celery if the chemicals in it aroused me to the same degree as Smith's Cheese & Onion chips. But the don't.
Unless you dip the celery in salt and additive A2270988400....
The Bass Guy
Saturday 4 February 2012
To begin at the beginning...
(or: Why I threw in the towel with that Facebook crap for something a little more bland)
Well, it seemed like a sensible idea at the time. After four years of almost constant abuse I decided that I had had enough of the vagaries of Le Livre du Visage, and it was time to go into social networking rehab for a spell.
For all the supposed wonderment that social networking is meant to infuse into our dull meaningless lives, it sure can make a guy anti-social and hermetic. One's fingers can lash viciously at targets that the tongue would fight shy of- for fear of retaliation and the prospect of public humiliation. It's all too safe to sit in a room spitting bile from the safety of a laptop- and I am more guilty than most of this error. Did it stop me, but? Of course not, what are you, crazy??
One thing that struck me when I made the alacritous decision to announce my departure from Facebook- on Facebook (not my wisest choice)- was how swiftly certain numbers sprang up to declare dismay at such an action. Who do we turn to for news of the freshly dead?, they howled. Who can we depend upon to outrage and offend with irrational taunts?, they declaimed. Who will entertain us with bizarre irreverence?, they whinnied.
You see, it had become my role (self-appointed at first, and then expected by others) to become the court jester of the set, the joker in the pack. I would sully the ether with my ill formed opinion on just about everything on just about everyone's screen. This was tiring for me and tiresome for the rest of the planet. But attention is a very addictive drug, and Attention Must Be Paid to an attention-junkie lest they are reduced to filling their dank days with meaningful activity... like talking to people and getting out of the house to walk in the daylight...
Faeces-book afforded me the opportunity to spout drivel across the globe on any subject I cared to taint. My voice could be heard as a claxon of crap, and best of all I was answerable to nobody! People could be outraged on different continents, but that didn't matter- I was networking socially! My opinions were valid, and would undoubtedly garner support somewhere out there... And if it all got too nasty, I would just say "Hitler!" and end the argument there and then. That's how it works, right?
So why should a blog be any different? It's a different mindset, for a start. As opposed to reacting to the posts of others, you are forced to initiate proceedings. Which makes you think before you type- we can but hope- as there is now true responsibility in that which commit to the ethereal ages. Of course there would be room for rants- more room perhaps- but this brings me to my second point.
Farce-bark appeals as it is immediate. A blog seems to require consideration. If some poor blighted soul posts some bollocks on Fist-beak it is all too easy to post bollocks back, and engage in a battle of witlessness that no one can win. To write a blog entry, it helps to have something to say in the first place. It need not be a great manifesto, but a considered idea is the very least requirement in this arena.
I would find myself on Shite-book almost constantly during every waking hour of my days- it was on my phone, it was on my home computer, and at work. Its immediacy and availability is a worry as it does overtake you once you have three or four ongoing conversations happening in three continents. To the exclusion of virtually everything else around you.
The last straw for me was yet another layout change. I objected to not being given an opt-out to a format I didn't like, and it seemed the perfect opportunity to cut the umbilicus once and for all. Thus I will be going Cold Jerky. The Cancelled Deleted Account for me. No more fake-butt account on the phone, or at work, or anywhere.
And yet the are some souls who are perplexed at the decision to axe it completely-"why not just go dark?" is the common cry. Because, and I have already said this on foce-benk, it is tantamount to telling a crack-head "just have one rock a week, and you'll be fine....". No, he won't- he'll be sucking that pipe as quick as he can get the money from sucking dick to buy a quarry of rock, and he'll be in the same boat all over again.
Those that know me well know I have what could be described as an addict's personality. Why have one beer, when you can have six? Why stay up half an hour on the computer when there's a whole evening to waste? This action of mine is designed to break that cycle.
So what will be the aim of this blog? To share with the interested folk out there who may miss my witterings my curdled thoughts and rancid observations of things out there as I see them- through my occluded occuli. Everything from music to theatre to wallpaper and all points in between- all is fair game, and all will be subject to a more considered appraisal than fink-blerk seems to allow. Sure it's not as sexy to be blogging, but it does feel a damn sight more comfortable....
Until next I bore you rigid, I remain...
Eliot McCann
4/2/2012
Well, it seemed like a sensible idea at the time. After four years of almost constant abuse I decided that I had had enough of the vagaries of Le Livre du Visage, and it was time to go into social networking rehab for a spell.
For all the supposed wonderment that social networking is meant to infuse into our dull meaningless lives, it sure can make a guy anti-social and hermetic. One's fingers can lash viciously at targets that the tongue would fight shy of- for fear of retaliation and the prospect of public humiliation. It's all too safe to sit in a room spitting bile from the safety of a laptop- and I am more guilty than most of this error. Did it stop me, but? Of course not, what are you, crazy??
One thing that struck me when I made the alacritous decision to announce my departure from Facebook- on Facebook (not my wisest choice)- was how swiftly certain numbers sprang up to declare dismay at such an action. Who do we turn to for news of the freshly dead?, they howled. Who can we depend upon to outrage and offend with irrational taunts?, they declaimed. Who will entertain us with bizarre irreverence?, they whinnied.
You see, it had become my role (self-appointed at first, and then expected by others) to become the court jester of the set, the joker in the pack. I would sully the ether with my ill formed opinion on just about everything on just about everyone's screen. This was tiring for me and tiresome for the rest of the planet. But attention is a very addictive drug, and Attention Must Be Paid to an attention-junkie lest they are reduced to filling their dank days with meaningful activity... like talking to people and getting out of the house to walk in the daylight...
Faeces-book afforded me the opportunity to spout drivel across the globe on any subject I cared to taint. My voice could be heard as a claxon of crap, and best of all I was answerable to nobody! People could be outraged on different continents, but that didn't matter- I was networking socially! My opinions were valid, and would undoubtedly garner support somewhere out there... And if it all got too nasty, I would just say "Hitler!" and end the argument there and then. That's how it works, right?
So why should a blog be any different? It's a different mindset, for a start. As opposed to reacting to the posts of others, you are forced to initiate proceedings. Which makes you think before you type- we can but hope- as there is now true responsibility in that which commit to the ethereal ages. Of course there would be room for rants- more room perhaps- but this brings me to my second point.
Farce-bark appeals as it is immediate. A blog seems to require consideration. If some poor blighted soul posts some bollocks on Fist-beak it is all too easy to post bollocks back, and engage in a battle of witlessness that no one can win. To write a blog entry, it helps to have something to say in the first place. It need not be a great manifesto, but a considered idea is the very least requirement in this arena.
I would find myself on Shite-book almost constantly during every waking hour of my days- it was on my phone, it was on my home computer, and at work. Its immediacy and availability is a worry as it does overtake you once you have three or four ongoing conversations happening in three continents. To the exclusion of virtually everything else around you.
The last straw for me was yet another layout change. I objected to not being given an opt-out to a format I didn't like, and it seemed the perfect opportunity to cut the umbilicus once and for all. Thus I will be going Cold Jerky. The Cancelled Deleted Account for me. No more fake-butt account on the phone, or at work, or anywhere.
And yet the are some souls who are perplexed at the decision to axe it completely-"why not just go dark?" is the common cry. Because, and I have already said this on foce-benk, it is tantamount to telling a crack-head "just have one rock a week, and you'll be fine....". No, he won't- he'll be sucking that pipe as quick as he can get the money from sucking dick to buy a quarry of rock, and he'll be in the same boat all over again.
Those that know me well know I have what could be described as an addict's personality. Why have one beer, when you can have six? Why stay up half an hour on the computer when there's a whole evening to waste? This action of mine is designed to break that cycle.
So what will be the aim of this blog? To share with the interested folk out there who may miss my witterings my curdled thoughts and rancid observations of things out there as I see them- through my occluded occuli. Everything from music to theatre to wallpaper and all points in between- all is fair game, and all will be subject to a more considered appraisal than fink-blerk seems to allow. Sure it's not as sexy to be blogging, but it does feel a damn sight more comfortable....
Until next I bore you rigid, I remain...
Eliot McCann
4/2/2012
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