Chinatown Calculation

"It was a dark and stormy night...."

Sounds like a cliche beginning to a scary Halloween story doesn't it? Well you are wrong because it is not a horror story and it is not a cliche because it really was a dark and stormy night.

I was in Halifax on business many, many years ago and I had arrived very tired and very late and very hungry. I was working for myself at that time and didn't have an expense account so I had to scrounge around for a cheap motel where I could crash for the night and hopefully get a bite to eat.

After checking in to a flea bag motel with no dining room or other amenities to speak of, I asked the charming night clerk where I might get a late night meal. He recommended the local Chinese takeout joint which was just a few blocks away - at this late hour it sounded perfect.

I ordered the super combo platter to go and was assured that everything I needed was in the bag so off I went back to my room to enjoy a late night feast. I unpacked all the little white cardboard boxes and was almost drooling from the smell of sweet and sour chicken balls, fried rice and juicy spare ribs swimming in sauce. I covered everything in plum sauce and extra soya sauce - ready to enjoy this messy, sloppy delight. I was about to commence when I reached into the bag for some cutlery and found.... nothing.

I ripped the bag open and tore open the little bundle of napkins - surely there was something here - a knife, a spoon - a chopstick!? But no. I stared at the delicious morsels swimming in sweet and sour sauce, the fried rice smothered in soya sauce, the chop suey... and started to panic. I called the front desk but no luck, flea bag hotels do not stock extra cutlery for unfortunate guests. What to do...

I was able to snare a few chicken balls with my fingers and the egg rolls were no problem but what about the rice and the noodles? I had to have it all! I looked around the room, in the bathroom, in the night stand.... and then I spied my suitcase. But what were the chances that I had packed some utensils before leaving on my road trip - pretty slim I was afraid. In desperation I opened my shaving kit and there it was.... my salvation - a shiny, new plastic shoe horn. A quick Chinatown calculation told me that my problems were over.

I am not ashamed to admit I ate every bite and never did a meal taste so good. I may have choked a few times as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and burst out laughing, but I guess desperate times call for desperate measures. I still love Chinese food but after my experience on that dark and stormy night I will never be able to enjoy it without a strange association with shoes - and now neither will you. But at least you can be thankful that I didn't title this story "Shoe Horn of Plenty" or even worse - "Chop Shoey".

"SUPER SEX"

I bet that title caught your eye, didn't it. And if not then maybe the cartoon picture did. However, this blog is not about sex or cartoons, but feel free to read on if you like... all will be revealed.

"Cow and Chicken" was a twisted cartoon from the late nineties about a brother and sister, one a cow and the other a chicken; a curious set of siblings if ever there was one and that is all I have to say about that. As it turns out, this blog is actually about soup - so why the cow and chicken? Well, it just so happens that cow and chicken are my favorite soup flavours and I think the picture makes a nice graphic, don't you? And why the sexy title you ask? Well, who would want to read a blog called "Soup"?

What brought this on is that I was enjoying my weekly cup of soup after delivering Meals on Wheels last Sunday when I realized how much I love soup. Especially free soup. You see, after the meals are delivered if there is any hot food left over it is discarded and wasted. I have made it my solemn duty to ensure that this does not happen. Hence my weekly reward of a hot cup of leftover soup, all the more enjoyable now that the weather is turning cooler.

Soup is the ultimate comfort food and it goes with everything. Everyone has their favorite, be it tomato, chicken noodle or an old favorite of mine - Bean with Bacon. And what goes better with a sandwich than a nice bowl of soup?

Soup makes you think of frosty winter days when you have just come in from the cold. You can turn up the heat to warm your outside but nothing warms your insides like a hot bowl of soup. Just putting your face near the bowl to blow on it is therapeutic - and the steam rising warms your face and clears your sinuses. Soup may be good food but it is also good therapy and good medicine. Lipton chicken noodle is the best "medicine" soup for when you have a cold. Who cares about the high salt content - all you want is that steam up your nostrils and that warm feeling in your chest. Ahhh....

Some people have a knack for making soup. I do not have that particular knack and any time I try to make some it always ends up tasting like wet meat. Julie is an excellent soup cook - her beef with barley is not to be missed and is a yearly tradition come Remembrance Day when my brothers and sisters gather after the ceremony. A fitting tribute to my veteran father - a man who loved his soup.

My parents always had a pot of soup on the stove and it was truly a work in progress. Leftovers were just added as they became available so it might have started out as beef or turkey soup but who knows what all ended up in that pot. All I know is that there was always plenty of it, it tasted good and with buttered crackers on the side it made a pretty darn good meal. Not a bad way to stretch a budget either...

So like the punchline goes in that corny joke about the old man who is offered some Super sex, on these chilly autumn days - "I'll have the soup!

Scootie

Woo Hoo! Passed my motorbike road test. Lock up your daughters!!

Under Where?

Cherokee.... Commander..... Comanche.... Do any of these names ring any bells....? How about Protocol? Nothing? Perhaps the names Robert or Calvin will help. No? Well then, if Mr. Stanfield and Mr. Klein don't give it away then I am sure Hanes, Fruit of the Loom and Jockey will clear things up quite nicely.

By now you should have a clear picture of my topic for this blog - underwear. Men's underwear in general but more specifically my underwear. I am sure some of the brand names mentioned above are familiar to many of you but the lesser known names are from my own personal collection. I have tried many brands over the years but they have mostly fallen by the wayside so to speak - destined to inhabit that portion of the dresser drawer reserved for "emergency only" service.

Why would I pick a topic as delicate as this? Well - they say you should write about what you know and believe me - I know my underwear. What brought this about is that I just "culled" my underwear drawer which is a semi-annual task necessitated by the ravages of daily wear and tear. This culling was needed in order to make room for the two new 6 packs I bought yesterday. There was a big BOGO sale at Zellers so it seemed like a good time to stock up - Fruit of the Loom being the big winner this time. I may be lured away by fashion or discount brands from time to time but inevitably I always return to good old reliable Fruit of the Loom - white, Y-front briefs if you must know.

Underwear, like many of the items in our throw away culture has a finite period of structural effectiveness after which time the functionality begins to diminish exponentially in direct proportion to applied stress. Too technical? OK then, I will put it in plain English for you. Underwear, over a period of time tends to get baggy and saggy and droopy. And if there is one thing I cannot abide - it is droopy underwear. But what to do with underwear that has ceased to function in the capacity for which it was intended?

I don't like waste any more than the next person but I just threw 11 pairs of old underwear in the garbage can and I had no choice. I have a social conscience just like you and believe me - I considered the 3 R's (Reduce Reuse and Recycle). But those guidelines just don't apply in this situation. I certainly can't see how I can reduce my underwear - and Lord knows it has been reused enough. Many things in this world can and should be recycled but not underwear. Do you want to wash your car with my old underwear? Well neither do I....

The best we can do for our aging underwear is to respect it and ensure that it is enjoyed to it's utmost capacity and when the time comes that it has outlived it's usefulness it is OK to just let it go and move on. And isn't that the way we all want to be treated when we end up all saggy and droopy? I think so.

Read all About It!

I love newspapers - I love the look of them and the feel of them and even the smell of them. They are not like a book or a magazine because they are something unique and different and are meant to be read in a different way. Newspapers open up to you, they enfold you and let you get right inside them.

Some people just like to randomly peruse a newspaper and then discard it all over the living room floor (Julie?) but I am pretty disciplined when it comes to the newspaper ritual. I like my newspaper neat and folded and I have to read it the way it was printed - front to back, section by section. If an article starts in section A and is continued in section D - I don't jump ahead, I will have to read the rest of it when I get there.

Some people prefer the sports pages or the editorials or even (God forbid) the obituaries - to each his own. But the comics are the part of the paper I look forward to the most. What kind of a world would it be without Dagwood, Snoopy, Dilbert and Garfield?

Even though I love newspapers I can also see the wastefulness of them in that they use up so many trees to bring us the news that we can easily get on TV or on the internet. And don't forget the huge cost of physically distributing newspapers all over the planet every single day - a monumentally wasteful enterprise! It costs more and more to produce and distribute newspapers so they sell and print more advertising thereby exacerbating the problem. It makes me angry to see so many supplements in the paper every day. That used to be something associated with Christmas shopping but now it is pretty much year round. The newspapers are in trouble and ironically they seem to be contributing to their own demise.

I fear the newspaper as we know it will not be around for much longer. It is a ritual and a comfort that is destined to become a relic of the past. I don't want to see that but I also don't want to see vast resources wasted. Recycling may be part of the answer but I don't think that is enough. I think they have to concentrate on keeping the newspaper focused on what is was intended to do - deliver the news. Of course there has to be some advertising material but that needs to be controlled. However, I am not naive - I know this trend will continue and that newspapers will continue to grow and bloat until they implode and we ultimately we will be forced to read our daily news on a shiny plastic tablet. Probably better for the planet but personally, I will miss that tactile connection that only comes from ink and shredded trees.

So I plan to continue reading newspapers as long as they continue to print them and I hope that is a long time. The day will probably come when they are just a remnant of the past but I hope I am a remnant of the past by that time too. And in case you are wondering what Dagwood is up to these days - have a look....

http://www.blondie.com/strip.php?month=10&year=2010&comic=2010-10-2