2559. Blue murder

Axel considered variety to be the spice of life. His first three murders were done with a poisonous point of his umbrella. After that he moved onto severing heads with a machete.

Now he was seeking something new; something original and exciting.

He posted a question on social media: What’s a creative way to do a murder? The response was overwhelming. There were hundreds of suggestions. Axel made a list. That should keep him going for quite some time. And there was no need to do the same thing twice, let alone three times.

Meanwhile his wife, Alice, asked on the same media if anyone had a fail-safe recipe for chocolate brownies?  Chocolate? Brownies? Alice was banned from social media. She should realize that you can’t get away with blue murder.

2401. A reflection on the Easter Bunny

Rabbits come in all colours and sizes. A lot depends whether or not people intend to eat them.

The sad fact is that if people intend to keep a rabbit as a pet most prefer a white rabbit. Does not the magician pull a white rabbit out of the hat? Does not little Felicity want a white baby bunny for a pet?

This is systemic racism at its worst. People will tolerate a black rabbit if it’s all there is available. Brown ones are wild, out-of-control, under-developed rabbits that should be exterminated and eaten provided they don’t have a disease, which is not an uncommon condition among feral brown rabbits. Patchy rabbits look like they can’t make up their minds. But fluffy white rabbits… oh! ah! oh!

Strangely however, chocolate Easter bunnies are almost inevitably made of dark chocolate. They are too dark to be considered to be brown. They are closer to black than brown. And they lay dark-coloured eggs. Some of these black eggs have white centres – which is an insidious plot by the white eggs to invade the space of the black eggs.

Look at the chocolate Easter Bunny. It is usually hollow. There is nothing inside. Nothing speaks louder than this extraordinary proclamation of chocolate rabbits having no brains. Or no heart.

Now watch the white middleclass bigot get stuck into the Easter Bunny. First they strip it of its beautiful shiny clothing. Then they might descend into breaking off its ears. I know of one white systemic racist who hit their black Easter bunny with a hammer while his children oohed and aahed their approval. It broke into a dozen little pieces.

There is only one solution to all this systemic racism: ban Easter altogether. There is no need to have a whole season devoted to this exultation of white bunnies and the extermination of chocolate ones by redneck hillbillies. Those who disagree should be condemned to eating hot cross buns for the rest of their lives.

1942. Mousy Cameron’s cake

Cameron’s personality could be described only as timid. In fact, years ago when he was at school, his nickname was “Mousy”, with his little spectacles resting on his little pointed nose.

These days he lived alone in a small apartment. Things were nice enough. He was content enough. His greatest interest was to attend theatre productions by the local amateur theatre society. Of course he never auditioned for a part; nor did he volunteer to help backstage or whatever. His way of supporting them was to attend the productions and to laugh and cry and applaud heartily, whatever the occasion called for.

One evening the organizers were raffling a cake. The evening was dedicated to productions of plays by youth. The cake raffle was to help one of the youth teams travel to a neighbouring town to stage a performance. It was a worthy cause, and Cameron took a generous number of tickets. He’d never won a thing in his life, but a donation is a donation!

He won! He couldn’t believe it! It was a simple joy, but it brought him great pleasure! A chocolate cake! He would enjoy a slice each evening for the coming week.

As he left the theatre a young guy from the local high school grabbed Cameron’s cake out of Cameron’s hands. Teenage boys began passing the cake to one another like it was a football. Ha! Ha! It was fun – that was all. Cameron stood there all timid and mousy. He said, “Please could I have my cake?”

One of the youths threw the cake and it smashed into a concrete wall.

Cameron went home. It was just a cake.

1914. Award 23: The Aqueduct Plugger Award

Just when I was beginning to doubt the existence of any sort of Higher Being, The Dumbest Blog Ever nominated me for The Adequate Blogger Award. Thank you Dumbest Blogger – it is indeed a thrill. This exemplary award was created by James of James Proclaims. Thank you, James. James not only has interesting postings but he makes pithy and/or sharp-eyed comments here and there. James thinks that answering the questions of this award is “really just a box ticking exercise”. Well James, get yourself a coffee and make yourself comfortable, because I’m about to tick (check) a few boxes regarding The Dumbest Blogger’s complex queries about the meaning of life.

Yipee!

The Dumbest Blogger’s Stupid Questions:

1. Do you like birds?

I am a bird freak – just chickens and ducks. The ducks will have to wait another time because I want to tell you about my Faverolles. Faverolles are a breed of chicken that have an extra toe on each foot. The males have gallant beards and the females have gorgeous ear muffs. They are the quintessence of what the carol Twelve Days of Christmas sings of on the third day when the gift was “Three French Hens”. Faverolles are French! I don’t have them for eggs or meat. I have them for style.

Incidentally, even one bird is a Faverolles – it still has the S on the end. Isn’t that classy? Sort of like a double small “f” starting a surname. Here is a photo of a couple of French Ladies – they are definitely a class act of ffaverolles.

Below is a photo of my rooster who was once King of the Fowl Yard. He looks vicious, but Faverolles have the loveliest of characters. So if you have little kids and you want a couple of pet chickens, get Faverolles. They are child friendly and won’t attack and claw and peck like other beastly breeds. They are a large breed although apparently there is a bantam variety. I’ve never seen the bantam variety so don’t know if they’re as child-friendly as the larger Faverolles.

This particular rooster teamed up with the dog. Every day together they would patrol the garden. No other member of the poultry establishment was allowed over the fence to scratch about. A stray hen would be chased by dog and rooster back to safer ground. The dog and the rooster were inseparable for about three years. The best of friends!

One day an up-and-coming young rooster challenged this big rooster to a fight. The big rooster came off second best. He was no longer in charge of the harem. Mortified he came into the garden to patrol with the dog, and the dog bit the big rooster’s head off.

2. What is your favourite movie?

My favourite movie is Babette’s Feast. If you haven’t seen it don’t expect an action-packed experience. It’s a couple of hours about a woman cooking dinner.

The lead character in this marvelous 1987 film is Stéphane Audran. (The film got an Oscar – if you think that’s important). It’s a brilliant movie.

I have seen this movie twice which is twice more than I have seen The Lord of the Rings. I have also seen The Dam Busters twice – back in the late 1950s – but it’s not as good as Babette’s Feast. As you can see, I’m not that big on going to the pictures. I’ve made three or four attempts to watch Gone with the Wind, the last time being just the other day after they threatened to ban it. The video began and I awoke from a deep sleep on the sofa three hours later and everyone else had gone to bed.

3. When was the last time you used a pencil?

Gosh! It must be years. These days they have medication.

When I was a kid, before the Internet and before TV, my first cousin Bert Worsnop and me (we were the same age) collected coloured pencils. You registered somewhere, and every now and again you’d get some coloured pencils in the mail. Each was a different shade. I think there was something like 180 different shades in the collection. They were fantastic. Of course they were so precious that we kept them in a cabinet and took them out simply to look at but never use.

4. What would you do for a Klondike bar?

My maternal grandmother’s brother, Uncle Herbert (Charles Herbert Lightoller – the highest in command saved off the Titanic!) joined the gold rush in Canada’s Klondike in his earlier days. No doubt it was hard work, and he unquestionably would have killed for a Klondike Bar to quench his thirst up there in that wilderness.

Charles Herbert Lightoller

To get a modern Klondike bar I would have to buy a ticket to North America because I’m not sure that they have them where I live. My passport died years ago, so no Klondike bar for me unless a Klondike bar gets mailed over. We have Eskimo Pies – although the name has recently been changed I believe to something less systemically racist.

Incidentally, I have a letter (in my possession) from Great Uncle Herbert written to my grandmother in which he says “Imagine Doreen expecting her fifth. It must be something in the weather”. That fifth was me! So I was almost famous (of Titanic fame) even before I was born.

I took my mother to see the Titanic movie and all she said at the end was “All that money and he wasn’t the slightest bit like Uncle Herbert.” (She also insisted – family tradition – that the captain of Titanic was drunk).

5. What is the biggest problem facing the human race at this moment in history?

The artistic world is ruled by rules. Publishes and marketers determine what is good and what is bad. This book won’t sell so it’s bad. AND never start a sentence with an “And”. And you use the passive voice. And… And you should do this. And you should do that. This is the way to paint and write and compose. The artist’s world can’t change the world because it’s hidebound by the world.

Anyone who steps out of the established pattern is a nobody.

It’s like lab technicians claiming to be scientists. They’re not scientists; they’re technicians. They put stuff into beakers according to how they’ve been told.

Einstein played the violin. Newton sat in the apple orchard.

Bring back creative people and stop telling everyone how things should be done! Yeah – the bees are in my bonnet.

Newton, Beethoven, Einstein
If you want to employ a genius you have to put up with the hair

6. If James has 42 pieces of chocolate, and Joe has 37 pieces of chocolate, and both James and Joe give 3 pieces of chocolate to Susan, then what is the moral significance of James having 42 pieces of chocolate to begin with?

Clearly Susan had secretly given James the 42 pieces of chocolate in the first place for “favours received” – possibly one on each occasion. Bad luck, Joe. I doubt whether this snippet of unethical behaviour could be classed as having “moral significance”.

When I went to boarding school (in my teens – we weren’t rich and snobby we just lived too far from a high school so we had to go to a boarding school) a dining table sat eight students: seven plus a “table prefect”. Everyone had their set table and chair. There were about 450 students. The small daily slab of butter was in a dish on each table, undivided and uncut. Turns were taken each day to divide the butter into eight equal parts. The person doing the dividing would get the final piece – just to make sure it was divided evenly. Oh the care taken over a quarter inch butter cube!

James and Joe and Susan and others can stick their chocolate or butter where-ever. Personally, I’m off to grab an Eskimo Pie before they go the way of Gone with the Wind.

The Rules – see Question 5 above!

My Nominees:

Anyone who knows me knows I don’t nominate but I recommend. This is NOT because I’m lazy but because I’m lazy. It’s also NOT because I’m afraid of hurting those who miss out because they haven’t been nominated but because I’m afraid of hurting those who miss out because they haven’t been nominated. If I may – just this once – take the easiest way out and suggest clicking on the icons of those who give this a like. That way you’ll be taken magically to their site where there’s so much to discover!

Thanks for reading and thanks again to The Dumbest Blogger and James Proclaims.

1843. Hearty food

Dean’s doctor told him to start eating healthy. He searched online for healthy foods. There were links to different foods that said “Eat these for a healthy heart”. Dean clicked on them, link after link. It took a good half an hour to download all the pages each with a different healthy food.

The following, in this order, were good for the heart:

Oranges, kale, garlic, red wine, chocolate, sardines, lentils, almonds, pomegranates, blueberries, beets, salmon, turmeric, chia seeds, apples, avocados, eggplant, broccoli, carrots, chicken, chickpeas, coffee, cranberries, figs, flax seeds, red hot chilli peppers, ginger, grapefruit, green tea, kidney beans, kiwi fruit, mackerel, cashew nuts, oatmeal, pears…

Dean tried them all, one after the other, and it made no difference. He was still hungry. Health food doesn’t fill you up.

He finished off with a big slice of cream sponge cake and at last was satisfied.

1461. Sinus problem

Lavinia seemed forever to have a cold. Her nose was endlessly running. She’d use a box of tissues, or half a box at least, every day. She went to see a specialist.

The specialist suggested to Lavinia that she had an allergy. Did she have a cat? A dog? A pet cockatoo? Perhaps she should stop eating bread for a while and see what happens. Perhaps she was allergic to milk, or chocolate, or nuts. After tests, none of these were shown to be the cause of Lavinia’s runny nose.

The specialist did further tests. At last the allergy was discovered! Lavinia was allergic to dust created from dried cockroach poop. To be honest, Lavinia’s house was constantly invaded by cockroaches. Lavinia paid to have her home completely debugged and cleaned. It didn’t work. Lavinia still had a constant cold.

No one had noticed the cockroach that had crawled up and lodged itself deep in Lavinia’s sinuses.