Holiday Greetings! (Getting More OT All the Time)

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, Kat Macfarlane <katmac at ...> wrote:
>
> Hey, doesn't goose grease make a fine tonic for beards? Make them all 
> shiny and soft and oleaginous? And smelling sort of...goosy? Know any 
> women who are turned on by goose? <VEG>
> 

I thought goosing women was frowned upon these days?
Not much point in plastering stuff on my beard, I keep it quite short,
usually 1 - 1.5 inches. It's  there because I hate shaving every day;
electric razors gave me a rash and gazing bleary-eyed into the
mirror every morning, cold steel in hand,  seems a terrible waste of
time, effort and blood. So, let it grow  and a 5 min scissor trim every 
3-4 weeks allows extra precious minutes in bed. Adding it up over the 
past 40+ years must have given me months more wallowing in my pit. 
Idleness rules, OK.

> 
> You don't like curry? You don't like chili? You don't like *Szechuan? 
> You don't like Thai? What do you transplanted Brits /eat/ besides geese? 
> Bubble and Squeak? Black pudding? Spotty dick? Haven't you people heard 
> about Globalization? (Sorry, I live on Planet Santa Cruz, which has 
> every kind of restaurant in the world. My theory is that as people 
> arrived in America, they started walking west, and if they didn't stop 
> somewhere else, they eventually arrived at the Pacific Rim, stopped, and 
> opened a restaurant.)
> 

?
Dunno how you got the impression I don't like curries, just the opposite.
Born and bred near Birmingham, it's more or less obligatory, they wean the
kids on it there.
Back when I was much younger and probably even more foolish, competitive
curry consumption was the culmination of a lad's night out in the pub.
Go for the hottest, and see how much you could get down your neck.
UK curries bear little relationship to traditional Indian cuisine, and absolutely
nothing like classical Moghul cuisine (worth searching out, IMO) generally 
being more brutal. Some of the UK curries are unknown in India, but perfect 
for competition, like phal - which is described as stupidly, pointlessly hot, 
and in the guide to curries thus: 
"This particular dish is a UK invention and not found in India (Phall actually
means fruit). This dish is effectively a hotter version of the Vindaloo and 
has been known to be a favourite of inebriated diners." 

Chinese - all right, but I draw the line at chicken's feet.
And I've eaten dog in a Korean rest. and cat in a Chinese, whale in an
Icelandic, bear in a Finnish and horse in a Belgian. 
How much more adventurous do you want me to be?

Wandering the world I've eaten strange stuff in odd places, or sometimes
not eaten it. One time in Ghana the plate had what looked very much
like a slab of human skin plus fat layer and underlying meat as centrepiece
on the plate. I wouldn't have minded, but a tattoo was visible. Never did 
get a straight answer as to what it actually was - a translation difficulty, 
no doubt.

Kneasy