Pissmas

It was probably a bad sign that the only Christmas carol I enjoyed this season was Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl singing "Fairytale of New York". But when I was sitting at work on me tod on Monday morning, the carols on the ABC were just wearing me down. There are only so many damned silver bells one can cope with.

I'm not sure whether it was related, but Christmas dinner got off to a bad start this year. I think it was because before it was cooked, it looked like a vacuum-sealed arse. I mean really, doesn't this look like something you'd see pressed up against the passenger window of a Torana?

After last year's debacle, I'd lost the taste for turkey. The wings are always singed, the legs are usually over-cooked and no-one really likes cranberry sauce because it tastes like strawberry jam. I'd blocked out the full horror and was just left with a little voice in my subconscious that kept whispering, "Chicken's nice. Cool chicken."

"Mmmm," I thought, "Boned chicken stuffed with yummy gear like bits of cured pig and bread." (Not, of course, remembering that I'd done the bits of cured pig and bread thing last year when I cooked Big Bird.)

The butcher (yes, yes, the same bloody butcher as last year - I never learn!) said that he only had chooks that were about 2.4kg before boning. This boning had absolutely nothing to do with Eddie McGuire or any other Channel Nine exectuive. I should also point out that I'm bad with spacial things. I failed all forms of mathematics and 2.4kg really doesn't have much meaning for me. According to the vet's scales, Mr Furpants weighs just under 7kg, so 2.4kg can't be that much. Pffft.

So I wandered down to the butcher to collect two boned chickens on Pissmas Eve. Fark, it was like deja poultry! I dragged the mass of flesh home and rearranged the fridge to accommodate it without actually looking into the bag. As you do. There are other things to do on Pissmas Eve - drinking, for one.

Pissmas morning, I dragged out the mass of chook again in preparation for stuffing and found it was actually a vacuum-packed bum. Chicken my arse - it was more like pressed ham. But I busted the chicken/bum out of the heavy-duty cling-wrap and set to. Usually, a boned chicken is quite easy to deal with, but for some reason, this butcher had been far, far too thorough. In fact, by the time I'd jammed it full of stuffing and tried to reshape it, it looked something like a Size 00 Wondersuit full of mince that had been mauled by a shark. Or perhaps just a headless, plucked penguin. Take your pick.

Me (phone, Mama Cap): "Gaaaahhhh!!! What do I do with it NOW?!"
Mama Cap: "Shove the stuffing in. Roll it up. It'll be fine."
Me: "Gaaaaahhhhh! I tried! It looks like a dead baby!"
Mama Cap: "Oh GOD. Not again."
Me: "And I'm out of disposable surgical gloves. You know I don't like to touch meat if I can help it. Do you have any?"
Mama Cap: "Yes, I'll bring gloves. What time are we having lunch again?"
Me: "An hour after you get here, I guess. Stephanie Alexander says it takes 45 minutes to an hour to roast a boned, stuffed chicken."
Mama Cap: "Didn't you decide last year she didn't know what she was talking about?"
Me: "Er, ye-e-ess..."

Why, in the name of Ford I didn't reread last year's Pissmas poultry post to refresh my memory before I started cooking this year, I'll never know. Obviously I'd just blocked out the full horror. Stephanie Alexander has now reached the top of my 'To Kill. Slowly' list. How that woman has sold so many cooking bibles is beyond me - none of her recipes work. Ever. I swear she leaves out ingredients and changes cooking times so that nothing goes right and you end up thinking, "Well, I guess I'm crap and Stephanie is just fantastic. Oh well. It wouldn't have been the recipe!"
Anyway, while I was waiting for Mama Cap and Big Sis to arrive to rescue the meaty section of Pissmas dinner (I can cook vegies - it's just animals that aren't minced or stewed that I can't deal with), I started making yummy little nibbly things. Said nibbly things were supposed to be slices of baguette with cream cheese, smoked salmon and Spanish onion with cracked black pepper. And it would have gone quite smoothly had I not seen this when I opened the cream cheese:

That's just wrong. Really, what the hell is it? A face with a very long nose? Very small, lop-sided boobs? I don't know, but by the time I'd seen that and the bum chickens, I was pretty much gone. Bloke had to bring me a stiff drink to calm me down. But then Bloke has also picked up the nasty habit of saying, "Speak up, O toothless one!" every time someone farts, which just kills me every time. He got it from one of his Saffie pals. ~snort~ Toothless one. ~snicker~

Anyway, the chicken was fine in the end, despite me thinking it was cooked when it was still largely raw. We (I) just had another (large) drink and then we (everyone else) had some more salmon and cream cheese thingies and everything was great. Actually, it was. No-one got smacked at the dinner table. The crackers contained the usual shite like a keyring with a picture of a retarded kid squeezing a cat, a manicure set and a small box of cardboard dominoes rather than a dead mouse, which is always a bonus. The pudding was (probably) lovely, since Mama Cap made it, but I despise Christmas pudding, so I can't really say. And Mr Furpants didn't bring back any half-dead rats while we were all sitting outside enjoying the twilight.

Ahh, Pissmas. Does it get any better?

Don't answer that.

Paris the Floor Whore

Meet Paris, our robot vacuum cleaner. Say hi, Paris.

Hey, sexy. You're so hot! Wanna make a home movie with me?
Just buy me a miniature chihuahua...

Oi! Stop it! God, she's such a tart!

Bloke bought her a few weeks back, by mail order. Just like a Russian/Nigerian bride who steals all your money and lets her brothers try to kill you. "But awww!" I hear you say. "Your husband bought you a robot vacuum cleaner! He doesn't want you to have to slave over a hot Hoover every weekend. That's so sweet!"

If only. It's actually Bloke who does the Hoovering in our house. The huge amount of cat wool that blows about the place gives me the very unattractive combination of sneeze and wheeze when I sweep. Well done me for wanting a cat when I was clearly allergic, eh?

Not that cleaning at our place is really Hoovering, of course. We have jarrah flooboards all through the house, with various terracotta tiling in the bathroom and laundry and a couple of tribal-type rugs around the place. It's usually just a matter of sweeping up the kitty fluff, beach sand, grass seeds, purple fluff-balls from kitty's blanket, etc. Sometimes we manage to sweep up enough grey fur to make a spare kitty, but we try not to let him know. Otherwise, he'd get jealous.

Apart from the fact that Bloke doesn't care for sweeping, there's also the small problem that he's... well... a nerd. An extremely talented nerd, but a nerd nontheless - he builds flight simulators. (Yes, obviously he got all the brains in the family. I know that.) But when he saw robot vacuum cleaners, he was rather taken and he and his mate decided they'd each get one. As you do.

From the moment the little tart arrived in the house, I hated her. She's actually called Roomba and she tools about the place on her own, bouncing off couches, skirting boards and door frames, doing her slutty, slutty thing. Bloke set her off when Mr F and I were in the kitchen and she went straight for us, the miserable little bitch! The cat went into feline meltdown and I, luddite that I am, kicked her in the head when she tried to eat the lace of one of my Chucks. She didn't care. She just tooled off in the other direction into the dining room and started licking under the table. Homewrecker!

For a while, she was called Doughy, short for the Doughnut from Mars. But then I pointed out that she was also a bit of a gutter-dwelling skank who went about licking our floors. I mean, really! She sucks up crumbs and cat fur and dropped peas and tiny vestiges of nastiness from the bathroom. I just can't have any respect for her. She just seems to enjoy it too much. Bloke pointed out that she was also vacuous and the name Paris just stuck. We tried to get his mate to name his Britney or Lindsay, but I don't think he went for it.

Anyway, ever since she arrived, Bloke has been visiting the websites of other Roomba-owning nerds. She comes with a remote control, so one of said nerds dressed his up in green and played Frogger across a highway with her. As you do. I've suggested that Bloke teach it how to make his dinner of an evening and then I'll be entirely redundant.

But meanwhile, in other news chez Hack and Bloke, we've had the first ant attack of the summer in the kitchen. I dragged my sorry arse in from some Christmas booze-up or other the other night and found the kitchen swarming with sodding ants. I smacked hell out of three or four dozen of the little bastards, Baygoned a few dozen more and then passed out cold. Only to find them back on Saturday morning, wrapping their laughing gear all over my honey jar. No, that's not a euphemism. Shame on you!

Anyway, I'm not sure why, but I'm just not convinced that having an ant army attacking my kitchen is the funnest-fun-fun way of starting a weekend. Miserable little bastards. But at least when I smashed them into oblivion and their mangled corpses fell on the floor, Paris sucked 'em up.

Pity I can't send her out the back to suck up the arse-end of a mouse that Mr F left on the back lawn as either a warning or a loving gift. Oh well, I guess a vaucous tart can only do so much.

I can't bear it

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Unrelated? I think not.

Sure, kids like the lights, but they think that lead paint chips are edible and green vegetables aren't, so what the hell do they know?

You mark my words - fairy lights are frying the planet.