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Sickening for SPAM: a dining dilemma…

06/10/2013

1.  Continuing an edibles theme this week and entering a contentious arena:

to SPAM or not to SPAM?

2.  That Hormel tinned treat – gourmet delicacy-4-some – became septegenarian last decade & is enjoying a come-back in these austerity times.  Get ALL the facts from Wiki…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(food)

3. SPAM does sometimes wend its meaty way into my recycled-black-plasti-crate ‘larder’ when it’s ‘on’ BOGOF special at my local supermarket…

(for the non-shopaholically-inclined, see Glossary Category Part 2 re ‘bogof’)

4.  I recently encountered someone using Marmite (the veggie-if-not-vegan savoury sandwich filler and toast topper) as a verb, as in you either marmite something or you don’t. So it is too with SPiced hAM: supposedly love it or loathe it…

Spam Poem, July 99

5. Not-quite-dissed (but bombed) during the Poetry Slam performance at Ways With Words literary festival of 1999, in Dartington’s Great Hall, my rendition of the mid-Nineties-composed ‘Sickening for SPAM’ was, ironically, immortalised by festival artist, Sue Kendall…

http://www.wayswithwords.co.uk/

Hopefully the proem will express the mélange of my emotions on this aforementioned contentious & meaty issue…

Sickening for SPAM

My dad was in advertising
when he went to work on an egg.
To beat the foetal nausea
my mum guzzled SPAM.
(Sperm’n’eggs coalesce.
Ergo SPAM’n’coal cravings.)
Thus was “healthy appetite”
graffiti’d on my genes.

As a special Sixties treat
Sunday’s roast was the
clove-studded tin-shaped
gammon-substitute.
Yummers! they said, swooning
over the dinky winding key
that unlocked all that
succulent SPAM goodness.

Going on Cornish holidays:
cornflakes at 6 am, then
on-the-road in-a-layby
9 o’clock SPAMwiches
(white sliced with crusts on)
and Camp coffee in a Thermos.
If you’re going to be carsick
have your bathing cap
at the ready.

By the time Monty Python
had gone “Spam’n’eggs,
Spam’n’chips, Spam’n’Spam”,
we’d gone upmarket
caravanning in France.
But first, our mum went
down market, bottom-ranking
SPAM-substitute “Mozart”
in her bag-on-wheels.
SpamJigsawFrontOh! Je vais vomir
with pommes de frites

Living près de l’English Riviera
The S.A.D. – and sometimes
nauseating – grockels now
come to us, craving sun.
On May Day they’ve thrown up
all caution to the deceptive wind
and turned Spam-flesh-pink with
white halter’n’straps striping.

Retaining my tofu-pallid
complexion, I day-trip into
no-man’s-land: surfing
the world-wide-web for
haikus on SPAM.
Cybernetic reams of
puke-up-pink and
gag-along-greasy
seventeen syllable offerings.

SpamJigsawBackToday, we take these
vacant vacations,
sitting right-at-home
with the gnawing fear
of being ‘spammed’:
for virus-spawning
advertising to spew
all over our microchips…
Quel horreur!
“error…error…error…”
grafitti’d on our screens.

©  Luc(e) Raesmith

And for those who dare…

http://web.mit.edu/jync/www/spam/

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The food, the fad & the fussy…

29/09/2013
GelatoGusto

gorgeous gastro ice cream parlour offerings at Gelato Gusto
in the North Laine, Brighton

Since munching on such healthy edibles as just-picked tomatoes, sun-dried apple slices, raw carrot and courgette slices and dried mulberries at the BUC allotment last Monday lunchtime, my eating habits this week took a helter=skelter trajectory…

Monday afternoon saw me heading off to be a solidarity presence at the 23rd September Bi-visibility Day celebration in an artisan ice cream parlour. The bi-folk were somewhat invisibly tucked away in the back room (their pink&purplish clothing camouflaging the ice cream tubs) as I tucked into my all-day-breakfast ice cream experience – a cone with double scoop: smokey bacon and maple syrup waffle and African berry coulis yoghurt flavours… Yum!

https://en-gb.facebook.com/pages/GelatoGusto

A Trans* Alliance meeting, teatime on Wednesday afternoon, required chocolate digestive biscuit (just-the-one) as the tea was ‘too wet without one’ – and the T* talk a tad dry…

By Friday, I was indulging the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning in aid of Macmillan cancer nursing: a cappuccino alongside my friend’s home=baked iced ginger cake was a modest-ish elevenses on that morning; but Friday evening through to Saturday tea time (prepping for and attending Queer in Brighton photography workshop) witnessed me quality-control-testing WBCM’s samples of white chocolate cheesecake, carrot and pineapple cake, pound cake, 2 varieties of chocolate brownie, coffee and walnut cake  – plus my own=baked malted sesame flapjack… Eek!

The body is now crying out for 5-a-Day fruit & vegetable nourishment. So, this Sunday morning, in preparation, I whipped-up a little ‘harvest fest’ fotovideo of non-sugar/non-fat greengrocery and allotment comestibles to wet my taste bud neurones’ appetites…

Tomorrow: celery and pepper casserole, here we come (but perhaps fewer ‘good works’ this week)…

[ Soundtrack:  ‘The G, the B & the U’ courtesy Hugo Montenegro ]

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Retro Diary Enquiry: 21&22 September 2005

22/09/2013

RothkoDiary2005From the bargain-for-a-pound Taschen Rothko diary:

This post sees me comparing a Wednesday & Thursday in September 2005 to the just-happening Saturday & Sunday of this month, 2013.  There are some links and recurring themes in my life with the 8 year difference.  The enquiry as usual is the Trans* journey clues from then versus now…

Wednesday & Thursday, 2005

21&22Diary05PicFollowing a year ‘out’ – from part-time paid employment – on an Arts Access-to-Higher-Education course, I am attending a Return-2-Work course based on crafts on the Wednesday: I struggle with the social relations with co-trainees; I get rebellious painting a colour wheel (for the umpteenth time…)

In the evening, I help my sister by bathing and putting-to-bed my beloved niece – who has disabilities from cerebral palsy. Sibling and self watch comfort TV: Hamish Macbeth [as link below] …

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0595606/?ref_=fn_ep_tt_20

Mood: “very low”

On Thursday, sign up for Italian class – which will clash with a textile class/group. Manage domesticity: this week boiling handkerchiefs, making flapjacks, cleaning top-of-the-fridge; visit the Citizens Advice Bureau (issue not mentioned – but gets completed whatever-it-was)…

Do some part-time twice-weekly volunteering work at Creative Recycling Scrapstore: it’s quiet after tidying & sweeping so do current Spanish class homework…

Go out in the evening to arts cinema and cafe: see 2004 Uruguayan film, ‘Whisky’ [as link below] on my own (as two buddies don’t show)…

www.imdb.com/title/tt0331370/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1

Mood: “low to OK”

Mid-September Weekend, 2013

T*BSelfPortrait18.9Saturday: enjoy part-time twice-monthly volunteering work at Community Garden; take along flapjacks to sell to raise funds on this ‘Big Dig’ food-growing-celebratory day; (enjoy too my just-vaccuumed-after-months carpet: managed domesticity on Friday)…

Sort mobile phone fotos for ‘Queer in Brighton’ project after comfort iPlayer viewing: interview  with and retro footage of #1 crooner (Sir) Tom Jones…

Sunday: manage days’ worth of washing up (no space nor time to boil the waiting bag-of-hankies); photograph self-portrait watercolour pencil drawing – rebelliously ‘scribbled’ when skiving during the Queer Conference mid-week – featuring own-Trans*/Aspie-language exploration…

‘Perform’ weekly self-obligatory “qwe’re arT” blog blag space-filling…

Mood: “OK to OKish” 

Enquiry Conclusions:

2005 continues the ‘semi-denial&demi-decade’: 6-years-of-‘Noughties’-period where I try hardest, in spite of bi-2-A-sexual-leanings and andro-self-awareness, to be the social and heterosexual cis-female that I am clearly not (includes trying to learn Italian to impress manfriend: disastrously confusing on top of the Spanish being learned to replace Samba-playing for which I’ve become too ‘disabled’) – and become twice literally-suicidal-surviving…

2013 continues the transitioning ‘Teenies’ (taking ‘T’ [testosterone in gel form] begins in January 2010).  Language creation is now for me: currently busting the myth of the LGBT communal acronym… Rebellion is even more stroppy in 2nd teenager-pubertyhood…

Otherwise: still recycling cotton hankies; still being visually artistic; still only bake flapjacks; still needing advice advocates.  Houseworking on the decline energywise; socialising on the decline Aspergerwise: all positive.  Comfort TV-as-DVDs/Movies still a must…

Mood: cycling-as-ever

More anon: another date, another year…

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How Diplomacy Fails & War Thrives…

15/09/2013

I proffer a proem to illustrate the microcosmic scenario mirroring the macrocosmic dilemma…

With apologies to those who:

have a solvent abuse  habit
are not allowed to marry
have chosen a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle
are challenged by being mute
have only the use of a bath
are offended by stereotyped/clichéd management labels

and  –  wishing peace to those who live in an actual war zone

ShowerHead

A Factory Fracas

Tongues still, eyes steeled, hunching backs
Jill and Liz set records with adhesive –
for power shower top notch thermostats –
glue-raced against the enemy:
Sylvia (over 65; for work she lied) and
Sandra (only 16; witless woman-child).
Glueing signatures now faked;
thermostats cracked, half-baked.
Management comes unstuck: abusive…

With shop floor sanity abated,
our Liz and Jill retaliated:
coded signatures hastily created;
tales of wedding bells and frocks related.
With saveloys warming in the thermostat oven,
they form the bitch-witch shower parts coven.
Nattering fingers, deft tongues, never slack,
yet management stuffed shirts strike back…

All the ladies sent to Coventry.
Jill struck wedding dumb and blue –
amidst the men’s machining din –
now counting endless logo pins: one, two, three
hundred; whilst Liz – for her polymer bond sins –
nicks plastic notches in the new
must-have-even-flow-you-know
superior just-cut shower heads.
Management glowers: white collars seen red…

………

So, when you next anoint your bod (with gel)
for sluicing shower on steel-mount rod,
spare a prayer for the women who
went to glue war just so you could
relish your thermostat guarantee,
flush your sleep-dusty aura well – and clean –
as management fat cats profits glean…

©  Luc(e) Raesmith

 

For explanation of ‘Coventry‘ and ‘saveloys‘: please see Glossary Part II post

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Top Ten Finds – Urban Flotsam: Black …

09/09/2013

The images of my mid-noughties “Jelly Shoe” wall-hanging above show a most unusual beach-side flotsam find: black buoys – or, rather, charcoal-is-the-new-black/grey buoys – by dint of being saltsea-washed…

Now that I am an urban gatherer/street-comber, I offer some Tip Top plastic & rubber collectables / Urban Flotsam:  Black – or, rather, Charcoal –  by way of being chalky-South-Downs ‘limescale-washed’…

Handy Hint:  Always take a trolley &/or recycled bag with you when walking the Brighton&Hove city streets: there’s always jettisoned flotsam for the pickings&takings…

20130908_111051

The Mop Bucket: handy for collecting shower *Epsom-salted ‘greywater’ for lubricating the garden *(plants like minerals)…

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The Balloon: attractive tiptop TinTin images & text merchandising – from a burger bar near you…

20130908_110930

The Accessory Clip Hanger: ideal for the dead-cell-exfoliating-shower scourer…

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The Railtrack Junction: will be very dynamic in some future Flotsamic Creative Recycling Art Piece…

20130908_191948

The Vegetable/Mushrooms Tray:  stackable as a galley-kitchen marmalade+ storage ‘cupboard’…

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The Folding Stool: ideal stand for the smalls laundry in the smallish shower space…

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The Portable&Digital Gadgetry Wires+: suitable for all manner of hanging purposes, artwise or merely artful…

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The Black Placcy Allsorts: yet to be inserted into (SuperHero-themed?) FCRAP (as above)…

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The Socks Hangers Range: already mobilised to beautify a bay-window recess ‘twixt Venetian blinds’ bland-ness…

20130908_193309

The Unrecognisable-But-Unbelievably-Handsome Hanger: next in line for some mobile-motivated FCRAP (to be featured-no-doubt in a future post)…

These 10 Tip Top utilitarian ‘gatherings’ above are offered in homage to – & with gratitude for – the rather wonderful Top Ten ‘Thangs’ blog of Russell Deasley including the very F.A.B. U&F Daleks featured in the blog link below:

http://theverybesttop10.com/2013/07/29/unusual-and-funny-daleks/