Track of the Week

‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’ Purchasers in Denial

There still remain what can only be referred to as ‘heretics’, who believe ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’ is butter. But it’s quite possible that their numbers are on the wane. Because we know that there is likely a tipping point about to be reached where the general populace will be more inclined to believe it’s not butter.

Somewhere, some time, some place (in summer would be nice because the flow of some this, some that would be ruined if it had happened in Autumn e.g. somewhere, some time some place in Autumn, some body…) somebody created a material that tasted very much like butter. All the signs were there that it was butter; the molecules were strangely almost identical. It tasted so similar on toast (using the same type of toast as a control).

Then a difference was found at last after an exhaustive investigation rather like that looking at the human genome looking for a slight difference in genetic codes type of thing. The code was cracked. But, one thing troubled. We know what it is, or rather what it isn’t, said the researchers, but try telling people it’s not butter. A completely different ball game. The marketing people involved would have said we don’t care let’s just get it out there. It’s too good an opportunity to miss. If we don’t sell it the Russians will. The wary researchers said hold on a minute, what happens further down the line when people start accepting this is not butter? I’ll tell you what will happen: you will have a people no longer able to suspend their belief. Do you not even remember what happened with the Millennium Bug? Do you not learn from history? The world faced a complete meltdown, an Armageddon situation, all because the computer engineers didn’t think ahead, how they might count up to 2000 or something. But they went ahead anyway. They didn’t say let’s not bother developing the computer (a.k.a. the ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not A Box With Buttons On It You Can Press To Perform Various Algorithms’) because we’re going to have problems in the future. And it very nearly spelt dnager for dyslexics.

The Margarine Millennium Bug can be solved. And it will be solved. It will be consigned to the history books and rebranded as ‘I Was Slightly Off Message But I Can Now Believe It’s Not Butter, Let’s Draw A Line Under It, Lessons Have Been Learnt, Let’s Move On’, perhaps sold in bigger cartons so you could fit the title. So you would have a very big carton, say a vat, dwarfing its contents. They could talk to crisp (potato chips) packagers who have perfected this art already.

McDonalds – I’m Lovin’ Shit

Up until recently it has been infernally frustrating getting your microwave oven to slow cook. Things like a slow-cooked stew. They’re simply programmed to cook too fast. But the wifi modem is set to change all that. The wifi modem always looked a better bet than the conventional modem (the one noted for going ‘ooh-ee-ding-dong-ding-dong’ when it was firing up) because it can provide a cable-less internet connection to your computer. Instead, it does it by pumping out a very weak microwave signal. So what you can do is leave your wifi modem switched on all day and your stew next to it. Come back from work that evening and you’ve a slow micro-waved delicacy.

Some people rue the erosion of a culture of honest, conventional cooking. But they can compromise. By slow-cooking ready meals. Here the microwave chef can feel a bit more involved – setting the oven clock to a very short time, letting it cook, then ‘ding’, putting it back again and repeating the process about 300 times so his Mini Chicken Tikka Massala Pizza Bites from Iceland ready meal heats up very gradually. The only slight drawback is the constant pinging that can be mistaken for a reversing vehicle backing up what would seem an unusual distance, but without the voice sounding: ‘Vehicle reversing’.

The slow cook is about the only thing McDonalds, the fast food outlet, has not quite addressed (although it is looking into introducing the McHangi (see video clip below)).

They’ve done just about everything else outside their remit, like salads, and now they’re offering a selection of coffees. Not generally well known, this development. But overhearing a customer asking for a ‘Tall, Skinny’, unaware of this new venture, a fellow-queuer might well guess McDonalds had ventured into the coffee market. Familiar with the shape of the typical diner they certainly wouldn’t dream McDonalds had expanded into the area of dating agencies.

And how about chitterlings? Chitterlings are pig intestines, though they need to be washed very carefully in preparation, otherwise faeces may linger. Either McDonalds acts diligently or it changes its slogan to what most of us had already thought might be more appropriate – “I’m Lovin’ Shit”.

Track of the Week

IKEA, I Saw, I Conquered

Big game hunters were the carpet fitters of yore. Before the kind of retailers we have now that suggest to the astronomically-interested that there exists a parallel universe dedicated to carpets like ‘World of Carpets’; and before Allied Carpets, even.

Big game hunters could rustle you up a tiger rug. A bit like a fishmonger, he could gut it for the customer and ask, ‘Do you want me to take the head off?’ But in most cases people would want the head on, and in the vast majority of other cases the big gamer would go out looking for his own carpet rather than selling it on. And not surprisingly – because people weren’t very satisfied with the service. The tiger would hardly ever fit the dimensions of the room and it was difficult to fit the head flush with the skirting board. And to say nothing of the hoovering. These were the days before Dyson, before he thought ‘I’ve got a tiger head to negotiate, sticking up from my carpet, but what if…?’

So, the big game became essentially a self-sufficient interior decorator. The jungle was his IKEA. Take that new hallway, for instance. Needs fitting out. Chop an elephant down at the knee and he’s got himself a brolly stand. (Many an elephant chiropodist could trace back the time they were inspired to take up their trade to any one April, when the wet weather would afford them plenty of opportunity to study the pachyderm Plates of Meat.) ‘Those coats always need a home too, darling’, his missus would urge, while he’s pottering around in the hall. ‘Can’t you do something about it next time you’re hacked off with a gnu?’ And sure enough, off he would go and shoot a gnu or some other horned beast and fashions for himself a perfectly good coat hanger. That hallway is coming along.

It wasn’t all that easy for the upper class big game hunter. His form of home improvements did require a lot of effort. Whereas the working classes were far more fortunate. They never needed hangers because they were always allowed to sleep the multitudinous kids under their coats.

Time of the Month Awards

It’s about time women chose a better time of the month. At the moment they’re a choosing time when they’re feeling at their most rotten. And their most unreasonable. ‘Don’t eat so loudly’, they bark suddenly while you’re only eating something mushy like broccoli; or ‘Take your shoes off while you’re swimming’. Totally irrational.

It’s time for women to recognise that they should stop trying to have the time of the month while they’re having their periods. Valiant to stick with it so long – and we all appreciate what you have done – but it has been, and is likely to continue to be an uphill struggle. For a change, ladies, plan to do nice things at a time of the month of your choosing. Like sitting in a bath with tea lights around it even though you might have put money in the electricity meter. Or eating chocolate. Or going to a spa (though try not to pee in it if you’re using a spa in Buxton because other people have to drink that stuff).

Perhaps the time of the month should be decided at the end of each month, retrospectively, so women can look back and choose their best moment. Like the Champagne Moments in the TV coverage of cricket. The moment might be a good stumping… and it might well be in the cricket as well. Men will be better pleased with this retrospective system too, because women will tell them after the event when their time of the month was. Men can then feel relieved that they missed it until that is they discover that women have a stinking mood at another time of the month.

Track of the Week

Fitness First or Fatness First?

Fitness First, the chain of gymnasiums should get its business concept right and call itself ‘Fatness First’. After all, you’re fat before you start attending.

Fitness First has so far failed to attract a joint venture with Greggs.

They do make it quicker and easier for themselves churning out the promotional material, though. Usually it would depict someone Before and After where the photographer has had to take a shot of a lardy customer, then waited around several months to take another of them buffed up. But Fitness First can ask the photographer to take the Before shot then say, ‘Just keep your finger on the shutter, take another shot now. That’s it. Right, no need to hang around, you can go home now’. The ‘Before and After’ photos are ‘Before and The Same As Before’ photos. Usually the best day’s work a Before and After photographer can get is shooting twins in one sitting, where one has kept himself in trim and the other has blimped.

Should other businesses choose to follow the Fitness First logic, Iceland could rename itself ‘Toxification First’.

Platonic Dogging

A Dogging Licence would be like a cross between a dog licence and a driving licence. Issued to people who plan to drive very seldom except to attend dogging events. Learning a basic level of driving appropriate to their needs, such as reverse parking, the three-point turn… but mostly parking skills. Plus there’d be a requirement to recognise certain signs appropriate to their driving experience like ‘Have you paid and displayed?’

While you’re learning the ropes trying for the standard driving licence, you’re issued with what’s called a Provisional Licence. It allows you, legally, to kangaroo hop and stall at road junctions on the Queen’s highways. A similar thing could be done with the Dogging Licence. A Provisional Dogging Licence would allow you to learn the dogging basics. There wouldn’t be any sex. Just a kind of Platonic dogging, sitting in the back of a car in a carpark for a chat. Perhaps enjoying a flask of tea; more of an introduction to dogging:

‘Peter? There’s a man looking in through the window. What’s he doing? Looks like he’s trying to warm himself up.’

Most of the rules on the Provisional Dogging Licence will be lifted from the Full and Provisional Driving Licences. Just so you could avoid something like the following situation:

‘You do know sir that you this licence doesn’t permit you to drive on the motorway? The hard shoulder is strictly for breakdowns and restricted use if other lanes have been closed.’

The policeman closes his notebook and pockets his pen.

‘I’ll let it go for now sir, but if you’re partner would like to put away the Battenberg…’ he says straightening up to conclude the business, but just then spotting perhaps another infringement.

‘Hello sir, warming ourselves up were we?’

Track of the Week

Silence of the Organic Lambs

People who say they like people watching either love observing the social condition or they’re cannibals. People who like to watch what they eat. People who spend a lot time following others around are either stalkers or cannibals regarded as ‘fussy eaters’.

Some cannibals are fine (and young).

We have a pretty narrow understanding of cannibals. Things haven’t been so easy for them. Cannibalism has suffered a bit from a lack of role models. And there’s really not much information out there how to get started. You could, for instance, see how you got on biting your own fingernails. But nobody really tells you this stuff.

However, there’s good news for those who have found an ‘in’ because cannibals can now go organic. And that’s because there’s now a number of people they can eat who in turn have been on long-term diets of organic foods themselves. The organic supermarket shoppers. Strictly speaking the cannibal can’t source 100% organic, because people have yet to emerge who have been on a life-long organic diet. Realistically, your cannibal needs to choose who they think might have been the longest adherents – those who are more organic than thou. Might seem a difficult task, but actually potential dinners are quite easy to spot. They’re the ones who don’t hold the door open for you as you enter or exit the shop, or walk through the door not holding it open for the next person leaving you to act like you’re their bloody doorman.

Cannibals can be more discerning in their choice of subject. Of course they can rest assured that anyone up and about and walking around the shop is ‘free range’ (prisoners, of course, they would regard as ‘battery’). And if your Dr Lecter has dietary requirements, he could choose himself a decaffeinated cadaver if he can establish that his meal doesn’t drink coffee. He could pretend to flirt. ‘Do you fancy a coffee?’ he could ask sweetly (trying not to do that off-putting thing he does with his tongue). If the main course says ‘I’m sorry I don’t drink coffee’ or ‘I only drink de-caf’, he can ramp up the grooming by adding: ‘do you fancy coming round for dinner? And if they’ve a gangly physique, Lecter’s got himself a ‘tall, skinny decaf’. On your way, Hannibal. You’ve scored. Don’t forget to pick up a fine Chianti and hold the door open for your acquaintance on the way out.

From Refried Beans to Used Bog Roll

Witness this, a common scene in the Mexican cantina – a man suddenly convulses and spews his food all over the terracotta tiling.

‘Jesus! Jesus! What’s wrong?’ asks his concerned wife.

‘Que?’ asks the man.

‘What’s wrong? – ‘que pasa?’ in our language… well the Spanish language. What happened with our indigenous Aztec language?’

‘That’s another issue, Conchita. Let’s deal with this one first. Waiter? Waiter, take these beans away! They’re undercooked. Tastes like they’ve only been fried once.’

The Mexicans kicked off re-using things with their refried beans. They won’t go anywhere near them if they’ve been fried only once.

Just recently we reached the final frontier of recycling. Supermarkets now stock ‘100% recycled toilet tissue’. An unsavoury thought at first, using someone else’s discarded bog roll. But there’s always some of those reasonably salvageable sheets that people finish off with which aren’t so bad, the bits they use to make doubly sure, just to reassure themselves that there isn’t any more brown to be mustered. Look to recycle from the lavvies of certain personality types, like those averse to risk-taking and you’re retrieving a decent number of perfectly reusable sheets. And then there’s those long rolls you tear to drape over public toilet seats to avoid coming into contact with other people’s sweaty arses. It’s uncertain why some people have sweaty arses but it’s quite evident when one does from the frosted condensation you sometimes see on the toilet seat enamel.

Of course the 100% recycled toilet tissue people do all the recycling and repackaging for you. So, be aware when travelling in certain countries abroad where the product might not be available, that you know what you're doing if you decide to do-it-yourself. In those countries, where the toilets don't flush very well, you are requested to put your used bog roll in a little plastic swing bin next to the bowl. Don't mistake this for the dispenser.