beerknobs and broomsticks

Christmas is much the same every year isn't it? Lots of money is spent, lots of food is prepared, an abundance of laughter warms a full household and generally everyone is happy, patient and kind to one another. A day thoroughly enjoyed as much as possible before the new year starts and well ya, that's all I have to say about that.

This Christmas was interesting... A South African family of five, an Aussie and a Swede spending Christmas in a pokey beach town in Argentina. Sunshine, beach, great food, UNO, a football and the two ingredients that made Christmas day - beer and a broomstick...

the art of farting

It seems like there are quite a few online forums (or support groups depending on how you look at it) for people to discuss farts and just how humorous these emitted bouts of gas from the anus are.

Call me adolescent but nothing makes me giggle more than hearing people fart - especially if it is unintentional.  My boyfriend will be the first to tell you that I am quite comfortable with my flatulence and much like most aspects of my life - the louder the better. Luckily for him my unhealthy eating habits mean that my fairly loud farts don’t smell. 

On that note: vegetarians may eat healthy, but their farts stink!

Now, I understand that not everyone will be as comfortable with passing wind as I am so I thought I would share my art to farting guidelines with you to ease out that perfect fart with little or no sound at all!

It’s harder to tighten the anus muscles to hold in the fart when you are sitting which is why work farts can be tricky because you´re already semi spread and ready to rip. My suggestion here is to put your headphones on and act as if you are bopping away to a song. Rock from side to side in your chair gently lifting your butt cheeks. When you feel you can control a slow release mid cheek lift, allow the fart to come out. If it happens to make a noise quickly slam your mouse down and say ¨urg – this mouse has been sticky all day!¨

Dinner table farts are much the same but your surroundings are easier to work with to conceal the sound of the fart. First you must stop eating. Trying to manage eating and farting can be a dangerous affair. Try asking someone at the table a question that you know you will get a long answer to, preferably someone who speaks loudly. This way you can focus on your fart while they talk and their answer to your question will drown out the sound of your fart. Don´t try excusing yourself from the table – that’s just silly.

Shared chairs in movie theatres means that any vibration or movement made is shared with your fellow movie watchers. If you fart everyone enjoys the benefit of a massage. All you need to do here is drop something on the floor in front of you. When you move forward to pick this something up, allow your toosh to slowly shift off of your seat where your bum is free from chair contact. Here, you are in the clear and can proceed with surety that your fart wont vibrate through your chair and disrupt the movie house.

Relieving yourself from gas while standing couldn’t be easier. Drop your hip to one side, tighten your bum, suck and pull it in to get control and then slowly deliver.

Toilet farts are easy to conceal with the simple pull of the flush. It’s the only way to cover up the pre-pee or post-poo farts.

The final yet most common time people need to fart is ´the day after´. Oh man that’s a tough one! You´ve got some action, slept over and then wake up the next day really needing to let one out. In my experience, only one guy was brave enough drop a pong the morning after and lucky for him I found it funny but most people wouldn’t appreciate you scenting their sheets with your stench. In the likely event that I wake up with gas the only way I can really deal with it is to hold it in which gives me stomach pain and I end up doing the walk of shame with a hunch. I have learnt the hard way that the best way to deal with this is to do the following…

• set your alarm clock to play a song to wake you ( I have Bob Marley, Stir it Up)
• don’t dismiss the alarm but rather leave the musical alarm playing
•  get up and take your phone to the bathroom  whilst gently singing along to your alarm
•  once you get into the bathroom, turn on the bathroom taps and increase your volume of your singing
•  finally – release the morning waff!

I´ll end this off with some safe zones for farting:

•          the sea
•          on or around your brother or sister
•          in bed on your own (my favourite place to fart, and call me old fashioned, but if I do it under the covers I am without a doubt going to lift the sheets and rate the rank)

The flamboyantly named but ultimately tasteless, tiny portion of miss matched food recipe to impress people

If you have had the opportunity (or should I say misfortune) of eating out at a fancy restaurant you don’t need me to tell you that their food is always ridiculously over priced for what you get and most of the time not even that tasty. You end up leaving the restaurant with guilt that you have just spent your rent money on dinner AND you are more than likely still starving and end up hitting up some drive through to fill you up.

The focus of this piece is not to rat on the prices of this pretentious food but rather the choice of names and ingredients people use in an effort to impress consumers.

Rule of thumb – the longer the name and the weirder the ingredients the more fancier you will come across.

Entering ´easy starter s´ into Google gave me endless sites to choose from to find a recipe but when looking at the recipes I found; the only thing I could think was ¨what the fuck?!¨ It would probably take me longer to read out the title of the dish than to actually make the thing. The ingredients were just awful AND they were NOT easy! It seems that it’s not about mixing flavours of two food types to get one good combined flavour but rather about taking two completely uncomplimentary food types and hashing them together just for the sake of colour or to let your consumer know ¨yes! We are unique and original and inventive! ¨ (even though we might make you choke on our dish)

Here are some examples:

Cheesey Reuben starter (Betty Crocker) – who is Reuben and who is Betty Crocker? DON’T CARE! Cheesey starter would have sufficed thank you.

Easiest stuffed cherry tomatoes – Easiest? Stuffing things is hard enough but now you want me to stuff something as tiny as a cherry ? Easiest would be stuffing a regular sized tomato actually.

Pink Ham starter ball – just in case you didn’t know, ham is pink, yes.

Chilled cucumber and apple soup – good thing it is chilled because if it was hot it would be horrible! Oh no wait. It still is!

Avocado boats – with a side serving of caramel cars?

South Western Cheesecake – phew! I´m so glad I know the origin of my cheesecake! It´s lovely but could you perhaps also tell me the coordinates?

Soothing sweet potato soup – because if I´m feeling stressed there’s nothing that calms me down more than a bowl of soup!

Lobster claw and potato salad with horse radish and mustard dressing – I´ll have that minus the herd of animals it comes with.

Garden egg salad – eggs freshly picked from the garden!

Gravlax - okay. Simple name but I couldn’t help but think judging the dish purely from the name that this consists of gravel and laxative.

These are just some of the dish names one could expect from a 5 star restaurant - and do they sound appealing to you? Probably not.  Anyway, the choice is yours but remember you get what you pay for and in the case of fancy restaurants you pay per letter of the name of your dish.