Just because I can #19

One for my fellow Full Metal fans.

Just because I can #18

So it's fresh, is it?

As I open my newly purchased packet of roma tomatoes, I find most of them are fine (if by fine one means largely flavourless), and one is squished on the bottom, a bit slimy, and franky smells funny. I find myself, a strict unbeliever, almost praying for the day the tomatoes in my garden come to be ripe.

I wouldn't be griping at the moment, but for the fact this sort of thing is happening all the time. Supermarkets are pushing the 'fresh food' button in their advertising more and more, but I'll be damned if it is! Pre-packed stuff is an obvious no-no, and I think I have finally learnt my lesson. If you can't see and poke every inch of your carrots and spuds, don't buy the buggers! They make sure you can't see much, with their orange packets, and when you open them up, almost a third of your potatoes are either green or developing slimy patches. Carrots have black bits or slimy ends. And don't get me started on meat!

So far, touch wood, I've had a reasonable run with poultry (what I get's usually marinated, so let it hide the multitude of sins - I don't want to know about them), but mince and steaks have been dreadful. They look lovely and fresh and red on the outside... inside, brown. I don't just mean the red-brown that some delightful physical law insists the bits of meat touching each other must become. I mean something more in the order of chocolate brown, often accompanied by a peculiar smell. Then there's cream, that must be a spin-off from specialty cheese, with its blue veins and various other interesting colours.

I'm tired of having to return stuff I've just bought. There's no one special culprit - all the supermarkets I've tried buying these things from are guilty of it. So let this be an advertisement for butchers and green grocers everywhere - your shit is waaaay better (and often cheaper). As for the supermarkets, I ask you, is there an uprising now of nostalgia for the days when a butcher would cart his rabbits into town, washing the maggots off before he sold them? Let's see real fresh stuff get back into our shops!

By request

Thought for the day #17

French, the language of love? Sounds more like coughing up hairballs, to me.

These are the parts we throw away

Is it just me, or is anyone else freaked out by the way products are advertised these days? I don't just mean the abominable spelling (which makes me want to take to all their shit with a big fat red pen). What I refer to is the way products are sold now on the basis of what they do *not* contain. Less fat, less sugar, less salt, gluten free, etc. What each of these means, respectively, is this:

Less fat = 80% sugar (which shall be conveniently converted to fat by your own body)

Less sugar = contains phenylalynine or however you spell it (which happens to be a carcinogen, and as a fringe benefit, is likely to give you the trots if you have too much of it)

Less salt = probably a bunch of msg (which can cause headaches, dizziness and various other unpleasant side effects)

Gluten free = contains mostly starch and very little actual food (gluten free items are often also egg free, milk free, yeast free, etc. as though being allergic to gluten makes you intollerant to any and all things humans are meant to consume)

Frankly, though it's nice to know something has no added sugar (like my fruit juice - it's horrible sweetened), I'm a bit more concerned with what *is* in the product. I've heard tell in recent times of a plan to put fluride in bottled water. For crap's sake, don't we drink bottled water to avoid consuming the poisonous additives they stick in our tap water? Next they'll bloody chlorinate it and you could happily (and hygenically) fill a swimming pool with your Picadilly. And to be sure, they'll have a dripper system to add the shit to your gutters and make unadulterated rain water unavailable too.

[end rant]

...So how was your day?

Viva la crappy economy

I'm going to take a moment here to be small minded and selfish. All this kerfuffle about the fall of the economy isn't exactly bringing me to tears. I don't feel we're going to fall too much further, and we've been far worse off before without the country falling down around our ears. What it means in the immediate, is that we'll be pretty much back to where we were when I was a penniless student (instead of a penniless employee). The AUD wasn't looking too good then, either. Then the economy became (*cough*) 'good', and the shitty bit of money I had increased noticably, though buying me about half of what the lesser amount had bought me before. I've spent many a year with a half-empty belly since Howard got (*cough*) 'elected'.

The drop in economy is bad for bigwigs. People are poor - horribly poor. Horribly poor people don't buy things. Businesses have to look at that and think 'wow, people don't want to buy our shit with the 492% mark-up on it... I wonder why'. Then they think 'oh yeah, a loaf of bread is $5 these days, and all our customers only have $1.50 in their pockets'. The follow up from that is 'fine, I guess we'll have to make do with a 278% mark-up until these f***ers start bringing more money with them'. Long story short, a shitty economy is better for poor people. Okay, unemployment goes up, but how many people are getting by on 12 hours a week, shared with whatever they can get from Centrelink? Where they're concerned, you're financially better off being completely unemployed. (In my case, I long since decided living on sod all hours a week, though nigh impossible, beats ten shades of shit out of reporting every work hour, job applied for and bowel movement to Centrelink.)

So far what we have seen is a drop in the cost of fuel and housing, two things which have been so far out of reach of people like me it isn't funny. My pathetic fuel budget hasn't been swallowed up half way through the week since our economy stopped being 'good'. People in the same shitty job as me are overjoyed that they have a prayer of buying houses. Screw big business. Viva la crappy economy!