Jackass

When you think of things of great wealth one of the last things you would think off would be a donkey. Many a time as I strode through the pouring rain to make it through to a one on one with the goalkeeper only to have my boot catch the muddy turf and fall flat on my face. DONKEY! DONKEY! DONKEY! they would chant as I lay there, the mud hiding the tears on my cheeks. It hard to imagine that they are making a reference to, maybe the fact that the donkey was once responsible for the wealth of the Egyptians due to it being the means for transport of precious metals carried from Africa by donkeys? Or maybe it was them parodying my twisting silky dribbling referring to the donkeys carrying silk along the 'Silk Road' from Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean, but I feel they were using it in the vain of the derogatory slant it has become. But fear not donkey lovers as the worth of donkeys is again to rise....

DONKEY CHEESE

It has taken the throne as the worlds most expensive cheese. I have touched on this before in the usual roundabout way here, but there is a new king in town and that king is 'Pule'. Pule comes from the Serbian word for 'foal'. Cue donkey fact....In the desert environment a donkey is able to hear the call of another donkey 60 miles away, they have far larger ears than horses.

But back to the cheese... This donkeys cheese comes in at a whopping £1000/kg. But whats so special about these donkeys I hear you say? Nothing really it is just that there is a terrible yield from donkey milk due to the very low percentage of fat and protein available. No wonder the coachman in Pinochio set up Pleasure Island. But surely everyone is a winner, you get to play pool, drink, smoke, fight, gamble and then when you have made enough of a 'jackass' of yourself you turn into a donkey and produce some of the most expensive cheese in the world. This is basically a metaphor for my life....

Another reason for why the cheese may cost so much is the danger that surrounds the milking of the donkeys. Due to there cautious and untrusting nature they are forever bucking their legs and this would be hazardous during milking as they would be forever kicking off their milking clusters. This could lead too many pathogens such as escherichia coli and salmonella getting into the milk through fecal contamination. ie Pony crap....

Death By Cheese....

"McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed

There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head"

Financial crisis isn't the only thing that Ireland has in common with the Greeks, they also have some exceptional mythology. An underrated mythology if you will. Its got everything a good myth needs. Deceit, seductive ladies, death, moider! Like a good Saturday night in Galway.

Mr Shane MacGowan references an old tale of woe for Cú Chulainn. Trouble began for poor Cu Chulainn before he was even born. His mother was called Deichtineand she was the daughter of the King of Ulster. She was out with her father one night in search of a wondrous flock of beautiful birds. A snowstorm ensues and they take refuse at a near by house. The lady of the house goes into labour that evening and Deichtineand helps to birth that child and just like a 50s horror film there is a crash of lightening that preempts a mare in the stables giving birth to 2 colts.

A joyous evening for everyone, as the storm rages on outside. As dawn was breaking and everyone resurfacing with megalithic hangovers only for the parents of the new born to have disappeared so Deichtineand mothered that child unfortunelty only for the child to fall sick and die.

The god Lug appears to her and tells her he was their host that night, and that he has put his child in her womb, who is to be called Sétanta. Her pregnancy is a scandal as she is betrothed to Sulatam mac Róich, and the Ulstermen suspect Conchobar of being the father, so she aborts the child and goes to her husband's bed "virgin-whole". She then conceives a son whom she names Sétanta. Later changes his name after killing a dog. Jeremy Kyle eat your heart out.

And what a stunner he was not only was he a head turner his beauty could melt snow. I'm sure he would have had no problems with the ladies. He could walk up to the tallest and blondest girl, he would say....

It is the Greek mythology though that ties this all into cheese this very eve. Queen Maeve of Connaught meet an untimely demise at the hands of some hard curd. She was slain by her own nephew. She was bathing in the waters of Lough Ree when after hours of practice killed her by firing Tanag though a sling shot. Tanag being a hard pressed cheese. What a way to go.

Unfortunately many of the indigenous cheeses from Ireland have been lost over time. They had a Fraisce Grotha which translates as compression of curds. This would have been a fresh cheese. There are others to many a few Millsen, Gruth, That and Mulchan. But what they really strived at was butter, which would be buried in the bogs. Whether this was to preserve or to make it rancid is unclear.


Looks good. As traditional as an Irish wedding or a horse riding thorough a council estate....

Teller of Untruths, Your Trousers Have Combusted

It's 12:36 PM on a leafy suburb of any given generic city. All to be heard are the fleeting cars on the duel carriage way nearby. Then a bell echoes around. Starting in the marble corridors and making its way to the cochlea of a child. It is now time for the sacred ritual that is kids lunchtime. The yard is full. Groups of boys and girls scream, running around with not a care in the world. But then one boy tries to exaggerate a tale of his to gain some playground respect. But hes pushed it too far. The dreaded chant bellows out creating a silence and all eyes gaze upon him....

"LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!"

But what does this mean? Why are his pants on fire? Is it literal or maybe just a good rhyme? Well legend has it, it originates from the fact that lying is considered an immoral act that is punishable by spanking. Henceforth one who lies bottom will be hit causing his or her pants to be on fire.

And well we all know who are the biggest liars and contradictors of the lot? Not the poor school child trying to navigate the social maze of primary school, but the GOVERNMENT!!!

They need to get their stories straight....

Here is an article from the NY Times about the government scaremongering about fat and then pushing cheese sales.

Now neither of these are necessarily bad things. But they need to put their message across differently. People shouldn't just be worrying about their fat intake, but looking at their all round health. Be active, eat healthily, have some sense, instead of frightening people about fat they should be encouraging educating ourselves so we can make informed decisions not just be told eat less of this and more of the other.

Cheese does have quite a high fat content, but its has its advantages being calcium rich. But were not expected to eat 100g at a time. Its not going to kill you unless you have one of these a day....

Then it would be goodbye friend...

Dead or Alive

Zombies. The walking DEAD. The living DEAD. The unDEAD. But are they really dead??

Well the idea of a zombie originates from Haiti and a young man by the name of Wade Davis was fascinated by the tales of voodoo. He had read stories of zombies and their link with voodoo, which told of the people being controlled as laborers by a powerful sorcerers or bokors. In the 80s he presented a pharmacological case that could explain zombie like states. So the bokor would introduce 2 chemicals to the victim. Straight to the blood, usually via a wound. Assumably this is where the grotesque name of the modern pop culture zombie comes from. First he we add a toxin "coup de poudre" the main component being tetrodotoxin which is found in the flesh of puffer fish, fugu, which when not prepared correctly can be deadly as popularised by a certain Mr. Homer J. Simpson, well he wasn't a friend to the salad....

Together which another drug these powders were said to induce a death-like state in which the victim's will would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor. Then they would be reanimated after being buried. Thus breaking up through the soil comes the iconic zombie. But is it immortal now or is it just a corpse?

This point can be transferred to other debates. The one we'll choose is the philosophical hot pot that is cheese of course. So what is cheese. It is one of life's great conundrum. Is the cheese the immortal embodiment of milk? Or is it a corpse vessel that is the Tumuli of the milk? The opposing sides of the argument go as such....

The late great American author Clifton Fadiman argued...

"A cheese may disappoint.
It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated.
Yet it remains, cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality"

Where as a certain James Joyce disagreed with him...

"A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk."

NO, NO, NO, NO......... Yes..........

Homeopathy Apathy?

You wake up. Look out the window. Grey. You go to the bathroom and see a pale version of your former self staring back at you. You haven't been abusing your body with the usual concoction of cheap booze and expensive second hand smoking. But you still have this throbbing in the deep of your throat. So what do you do, straight and grab the Covonia?

FOOL!!! Look at how the cheap advertising has lured you into this rash self harming decision. What is wrong with the good old homoeopathic remedies of days gone by? Sure people used to live to the tender age of 56 back then. If its good enough for them its good enough for me!

Homoeopathy has been kicking around since 1796 when a German by the name Samuel Hahnemann put foreward the idea to treat ill patients with a diluted sustance that would give the ill effects to a healthy patient. Hmmmm maybe a home remedy might be better for that sore throat then....

So the pain of the sore throat has you paralyised. You cant bare to venture out in the grey surely there must be something in the house you can use to you own advantage. So you pull open the fridge and its there staring straight at you in all its cheeesy glory. Cottage cheese!

Yes for many a year people have been using this to clear a sore throat. So here how it goes down. You make a cottage cheese poultice. You do this by getting some cottage cheese spreading it on a cloth and heating it with a hair dyer. Then wrap this cloth around your throat. Leave for 3-4hrs and hey presto sore throat is gone. Or is it??? Id prefer a we gurle in the bathroom...

Cracking Up

Last night I ventured into the depths of the past for a gig in Sheffield. It was in a venue called skate central. I thought, oh a nice we throw back to times of yore, bubblegum, slush puppies and hotdawgs, old LED scoreboard, the blood of a grazed knee on the floor, but essentially now converted into a music venue.

But when I arrived and entered up the marble stairs a pair of skates were thrust apont me. Several nerve calming drinks later and I can say I could imagine myself to be as smooth as these boys....

Even to glide like this guy would have been acceptable....

But no doubt this is who I was aspiring to be....

Mother Goose

"Old Mother Goose,

When she wanted to wander,
Would ride through the air
On a very fine gander.

Jack's mother came in,

And caught the goose soon,

And mounting its back,

Flew up to the moon"

Ma, mum, mother dearest, mama, mummy, mom. Whatever the name the beast remains the same. The bond from mother to son is one of the strongest history has seen. It is a theme explored from as far back as ancient Greek mythology. However due to a certain Mr Freud naming a complex, relating to a child's unconscious desire for his mother and resentment or jealously of his father, after Oedipus, people believe that Oedipus felt this bond also. When in fact Oedipus' parents, Jocasta and Laius, never intended to encounter their son. After hearing from the Oracle that their first born male would kill his father and marry the mother they did what any parents would do. They bound him by the ankles and asked a servant to dispose of him.

Of course the servant couldn't carry this through and off loaded him to a shepherd in a near by town. Life is good for Oedipus until a drunk tells him that his "da" ain't his da. So he goes to his local Oracle who doesn't tell him who his real father is but informs him of the prophecy.

Afraid of fulfilling the prophecy he runs away to the nearest town, which just happens to be his birth place Thebes. On his journey he comes to a point where 3 roads meet and encounters a Chariot driven by, unbeknown to him, his birth father, King Laius. So in a fit of road rage Oedipus slays his dad over who has right of the road. Don't tell me you wouldn't have done the same.

Continuing on towards Thebes he came in contact with Sphinx, who would stop all those who traveled to Thebes and ask them a riddle.

"What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?"

Oedipus answered correctly. Can you? The Sphinx is astounded and inexplicably kills itself, freeing Thebes. In turn this earns him the recently widowed Jocasta's hand in marriage, completing the prophecy. The rest is your usually Monday night soap affair. Mythical kings eh?

There is an old Spanish proverb that reads:

"An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy"

If this be true then this New Yorker is worth a few Monasteries. Daniel Angerer has posted up a recipe for breast milk cheese. Unsettlingly called Mommy's milk cheese. It was interesting to see that the same rules and procedure still apply. Interesting to note that it would have different tastes depending on the diet of his wife at the time. This is surely a new market. With the limited types of feed you can give to a goat/cow/sheep it can be hard to find new unique tastes, but with the female they have a multitude of options to alter the taste of the milk. and inturn the taste of the cheese. Do women ever cease to amaze?