The Great Halloween Chocolate-athon

It happens twice per year ... there's no way to avoid it ... it's heaven for kids and natural born skinnies; it's hell for diabetics, dieters and health food store proprietors.

It's the Biennial Chocolate Olympics.

Now, in March or April these Olympics seem to be obsessed with rabbits, hatchling chickens and eggs ... which is perfectly understandable, when you remember that the festival of Easter started life as (!) Eostar, one of the high points of the (!!) pagan calendar, and the year's biggest, brightest, bestest (!!!) bonking tournament.

Yes: Eostar was a fertility festival ... hence the chocolate bunnies and eggs and chicks. Comparatively late in the scale of human evolution was Eostar was morphed into Easter by the early Church, which slightly renamed it. (They just weren't trying ... they could have called it Holy Hoppazoozitztide, and sworn to people it was a word that came straight from heaven, via the Ark of the Covenant, which had been stumbled over just the week before by the emperor's special operative in Judeah, Indianus Jonos, who was actually looking for the wreck of this really big, fat boat, and got a bum steer from a secondhand camel dealer who sold him the wrong map.)

In fact, Easter remained a bonking bonanza; only its name changed ... the church even allowed its very date to be set by the phases of the moon ... still true today, which is why Easter floats around like a cork in a bathtub.

And even now, 1683 years (calculators come in handy) after the Council of Nicea, where the new church's sacred days were fixed (hey, you've seen The Da Vinci Code, right?) Western Civilization is still bunny-happy, and egg-centric, and chick-obsessed, when the floating date of Holy Hoppazoozitztide -- whoops, Easter -- comes around again.

Only, we've translated the whole fertility cult into CHOCOLATE. Fertility ... sex ... procreation (if you're not bloody careful; if you're not contentedly gay; if you're not a person happily blessed with the DINK or MINK mindset) ... means the start of new life.

For the record: rabbits + eggs + chicks = sex = procreation = new life = chocolate.

Now, this explains one of the Biennial Chocolate Olympics ... or at least it explains the symbology, though I'm damned if I personally see the connection between a Mars Bar or a packet of Maltesers, and standing in the checkout line at Big W (Walmart in the US), behind an unfortunate young woman paying huge bucks for a 132-pack of Huggies ... though, I admit, the connection has been firmly established during the last several generations. It all looks a little bit weird to me, but then, what the hey, we're all human. Well, most of us are, anyway.

However, our civilization has more of this Big Fun in store. The second of the Biennial Chocolate Olympics takes place almost exactly six months later, at another renamed pagan festival: the whole place goes ballistic at Halloween, and -- whether or not you're diabetic, a dieter, or the proprietor of a health store -- you're wading up to your navel in chocolate. Again.

Halloween was last night (Here's my post: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/halloween-memories.html), and this morning we still have a pile of chocolate left over after the trick-or-treaters finished. Now, the whole Halloween celebration has become a matter of costume parties and scary movies on DVD, while a few of the adults are out "trick of beering."

As I mentioned yesterday, for those folks of the pagan persuasion, it's Samhaine ... a time where no one minds if you have a big party (pagans really know how to party), but the festival is really about communicating with your deceased loved ones -- and dodging those people whom you really got barking-mad in this life, and they're dead now, and probably just as mad with you.

In other words: dead people + Samhaine = death = chocolate.

Right. Start of life = chocolate. End of life = chocolate. A pattern emerges.

Well, so long as the equations balance, I suppose. They're probably reciprocal anyway, so it could also be shown that

L=D/C+x

Where L is the number of years you've Lived to date, D = the number of your relatives who have passed away (Died), C = the average volume of Chocolate consumed by yourself without the assistance of family members or trick-or-treaters, and "x" is the amount, expressed in eith pounds or kilos, of weight you personally gain at each of these Biennial Chocolate Olympics.

There, now the whole thing makes a great deal more sense, doesn't it?

Chocolate is life, so "just do it," and if you do it often enough, the words "Death by Chocolate" will assume a whole new gravity.

Speaking of our Halloween -- we did not watch either Chocolat or Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. We watched Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Sleepy Hollow. Anyone notice how Halloween seems to be a kind of Johnny Depp Fest? Or is it a Tim Burton Fest? Well, either one. Those two seem to go together like caramel and fudge...



These are two good Halloween movies, if you're looking for blood by the bucket-fulls and heads getting whacked off in every direction. If you're looking for the best haunted house story, I recommend THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE; and if you're just looking for something to really creep you out, well, you could do worse than tune into any political broadcast issuing from the general vicinity of the USA. Shivers.

The US "goes to the polls" in about 100 hours, and like many people around this planet, I shall be holding my breath.

To folks on the other side of the dateline: Happy Halloween!

Cheers,
MK

Do Aussies really eat this stuff?!

Parked to your left is an image borrowed from AOL Health ... the credit is hereby acknowledged, but someone, somewhere is probably going to file a hopping-mad law suit, though not at AOL! Regular readers might recall, a few days ago I was talking about "culture misappropriation," and this, to your left, is just about the worst case of it I've ever seen...

In answer to the reader's question, "Do Aussies really eat this KRAPP?!!" (emphasis is the readers ... but heartily encored by yours truly), the answer is a resounding --

What?!!!!

This little beauty is described by AOL Health in the following terms: "Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing ; 2,900 calories 182 g fat 240 g carbs; Even if you split these "starters" with three friends, you'll have downed a dinner's worth of calories before your meal arrives."

Aussie What? Where? When? Okay, here's a little bit of clarification: Outback Steakhouse is NOT an Australian restaurant. There is no such restaurant down here. End of statement. Period. Even if there was an Outback Steakhouse down here, it would serve Australian-style food, or at least the Aussie "takes" on US meals.

So, don't be duped: Outback Steakhouse is an American restaurant, serving American food. (I mean, jeez, there isn't a smidgen of Vegemite, a lime Kool-ade, a Chicko Roll, a meat pie, a pasty, a lamington, a bit of damper, or a carbonized lamb chop anywhere in the building! Just joking, people. But, really.)

Fries, in the Antipodes, are known as CHIPS, for a start. They come on the side with battered, fried fish, as a rule, but will also be served with roast chicken, or burgers.

I had never seen cheese sauce poured over CHIPS before I went to the States in the late 90s. (In those days, nachos, tacos, and Mexican food as a species were virtually unknown here; even now, there's an Aussie spin on Mexican food in Antipodean restaurants ... it tends to be low fat, with human-sized portions, and they make the chili verde with green capsicums (known to North Americans as bell peppers).

And that's the other thing: even if they smothered CHIPS (okay, I'll stop being cute now) in cheese and ranch dressing down here (which they don't), the portion size would be about one fifth of what you'll see in the States.

So ... no, sorry to disillusion you. When you eat at Outback Steakhouse, you're not eating Aussie, and if the food gives you a cardiac arrest, you won't be able to blame it on the Aussies. ("Well, I don't know what could have gone wrong -- they eat this stuff downunder. Don't they?" No, sir, they don't.)

Which begs the question, what DO they eat downunder?!

Ethnic cuisine is very popular. Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Japanese, Indonesian, Indian. There's a couple of mid-eastern eateries. Italian and Greek are great favorites. You also get "combo" restaurants, like A Taste of Asia. And the "family" restaurants, which tend to be "all you can eat" places, like Charlie's and Fresh Choice. Charlie's is a chain; Fresh Choice might be local, not sure. There's a Mexican chain, Montezuma's ... but the food has an Aussie accent. There's a lot less fat, the portions are human-sized -- and, alas, some of the ingredients are not authentic. Tomatillas are very had to get down here. And if you've ever had a Margarita made with lemon juice ...! Fast food comes in loads of varieties, with fish and chips being the favorite across the board (again, human sized portions). The local fish are butterfish, gar, snook, flake, hoki (blue grenadier), hake, whiting, and so on. There's also KFC, Red Rooster and Pizza Hutt all fighting for market share ... the Aussie KFC is significantly different from the US variety (!), and the pizzas down here are SMALL by comparison with US pizzas. What we know as a family pizza is, apparently, known as a "personal" pizza up yonder. Red Rooster is not the same as the US Red Robin. They do chicken only. Subway is very popular, too; then you're onto things like Itami, if you want fast-food takeaway sushi, and Wok-in-a-Box, for takeaway Asian. There's also great places to get genuine Yiros ... then, a vast assortment of patisseries -- German, French, Italian, Australian, Swiss. lastly, there's McDonald's, and Hungry Jack's (ie, Burger King), if you're desperate for junk ... and even there, the menu is suspiciously Aussie and noticeably healthy, with fruit salad, green salad, yogurt and what have you, on the menu...

Food options are as cosmopolitan as the rest of the community, and incredibly varied. There's a lot less lethality to the local cuisine, and the most telling factor is the portion size. I was stunned by the amount of food they dish up in the States ... but of course the other side to this is, when Americans come down here on vacation they're shocked by the small amount of food they're handed as a portion. (I've seen US tourists get very annoyed and quite, uh, loud, about it. Solution: duh. Buy two or three portions if you want to eat more.)

I other words, there's two sides to every coin, and you get used to it, wherever you land. Eating out in the States, I used to ask for a box, and would wind up with lunch for a couple of days, in the refrigerator, from the leftovers of a restaurant meal. I mean, the solution was simple ... frankly, I can't see why people grumble when you can solve the problem of portion size with a box (or, if you want masses of food, buy two or three portions).

Ah, the joys of international travel!

Rattling the bars

We spent an entrancing, magickal hour (or two; ater the first twenty minutes you go blurry and time elongates strangely) chasing broken links all over the website. It's the least I can do to help, when my webmaster and cover artist (Jade) is already overworked (and underpaid). Chasing broken links across the internet is spectacularly intricate and aggravating way to spend your time. I begin to understand why website builders charge hundreds of bucks for tiny little sites ... because toupees are not cheap, and long before you've got the damned site done, you'll have ripped out what little remained of your hair.

There's an excellent program to help you nail down and swat broken links. Webmasters, take note: it's called XENU LINK SLEUTH, it's about the best thing I've ever seen, and (even better) it's free. It's another one of those programs like IRFANVIEW -- if they weren't free you'd be happy to pay fifteen dollars for them. So if you need to fix a website that's being a little bastard, try this:

Snap Files, on their Freeware for Web authoring page. Xenu Link Sleuth ... and it comes highly recommended.

While I'm on the subject of software, I should point you at the best imaging program I ever discovered. Fast, powerful, versatile and dead easy:

Irfanview (dot com), on the homepage.

Best file viewer, with the best resize filters on the web, plus basket-loads of other stuff. Same as Link Sleuth -- you'd have been happy to pay for it.

One more indispensible freebie, before I quit the computers and start talking about something halfway interesting (like Mexican food). My favorite FTP program.

FTP Commander, right on the download page.

Seriously, if you're looking for a dead-easy, utterly reliable FTP prog that won't cost a nickel, this is it.

Enough with the computers stuff! Did someone say something about Mexican food? That's what's on tonight's menu, because we have the corn chips and the rest of the fixings ... except the guacamole. We discovered we're out (nothing in the freezer) and the price of fresh avocados would make you shudder. They're $3.50 EACH at the local convenience store. Gak. Mind you, not as gak-inspiring as the local jarred 'substance' that pretends to be guacamole, and is labelled 'guacamole' but is about as much like real guacamole as banana custard. There may be come avocado pulp hiding down at the bottom of the jar, but half of what's in there is cream cheese, and some idiot put sugar in the mix.

What sadist would put sugar in guacamole? It's unthinkable.

So, being resourceful, something was whipped up which I called 'mockamole,' because it looks reasonably like guacamole (pulpy and green) and it tastes identical (the seasonings are all the same), and the only thing that's different is the texture. Not having any avocados, and having a moral objection to paying $10.50 for three of them to make tonight's dip, you start off with butter, cream and live oil to simulate the avocado, and 'filler' to firm it up and bulk it out. Breadcrumbs. No kidding. Mash the whole lot together, like you're going to stuff a chook, (translation: that's auussie for 'chicken'), then add the whole raft of Mexican seasonings 'to taste,' plus a few drops of (!) green food coloring. Let it stand for an hour or two, and ... just tactfully fail to notice the texture. The Mexican seasonings, incidentally, are cumin and corriander, onion and garlic, salt and lime juice. Keep whacking them in there till it tastes right ... then add chili flakes if you want it hot. Or not, if you value your tastebuds.

Never knew Keegan could cook, did you?

Last thing, before I go: I'm going to have a short rant. I don't often rant about anything, because it seldom does any good and most people generally stop listening. But this is important enough. I was sent a forward, the body of a story which appeared in the New York Times. I'll link you through to it right here:

Aging and Gay, and Facing Prejudice in Twilight.

Stop reading right here if you don't want to hear Keegan rant. For the brave souls who read on ... I thank you; and consider yourself warned, because there are puffs of smoke coming out of my ears.

I was appalled and disgusted to know that aged heterosexuals can still be cruel and bigoted, at a time of life when a good night's sleep, a tasy dinner provided by someone else, a good movie, a laugh with friends, and a day without pain, have come to weigh one hell of a lot more heavily than anything of a sexual nature. Even at that time of life, when twilight is fast-fading literally into tha last long night, and when most people expect to be called, very soon, to give account of themselves before getting an entry permit to go through the Pearly Gates ... even then, heteros can find it within themselves to be put bloody-minded prejudice ahead of the knapsack of karma they're still packing around -- and still piling trash into. One wonders who is really going to roast over the coals? The person who lead a good life and trusted god, or gods, or whatever creator/creatrix, to know what he or she was bloody doing on the day sundry humans were conceived and BORN gay ... or the person who seems to be looking creator/creatrix squarely in the eyeballs and saying, "Golly, God/Allah/Yahweh/Whatever, you did a nasty booboo, didn't you? You created evil in human form ... and gosh, you do it all the time, how naughty of you, making millions and millions of gay people every year!" The end of a person's life is already difficult enough without an individual having to be punished for being gay, or black, or Jewish, or Asian, or fat, or whatever else doesn't seem to fit the pattern of society's current norm. And the sentence I just wrote encapsulates the gist of the argument: GAY RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS. (Please note the capital letters. I *am* yelling.) Until comparatively recently, a person could be persecuted for being female. Then it was 'open season on anybody not white.' Then anybody not Christian (or Muslim, depending on your geographical location). Persecution of minority groups is one of the last great sins in the world, right up there alongside neglect of kids and the elderly, the wanton rape of the planet, and a half-dozen other crimes against the cosmos itself, none of which seem to have even occurred to anyone (divine or otherwise!) who was ever involved with chiselling a bunch of commandments on a couple of pieces of stone. Human rights are, as yet, a fantasy in many communities around this poor globe. We've come to sighingly (squirmingly) almost accept Pakistan's 'burning brides,' and the 'faceless women' of rural Mayanmar, and the mutilated female children of Mali, as 'cultural things,' which we almost can't (!!) get in there and forcibly change, because then we'd be guilty of cultural assassination. Pardon me while I barf. That line of reasoning will lead you right into the hornets' nest of Nazis claiming their cultural identity as a rationalization to exterminate a whole race. Not good enough, people. Persecution of gays is the last remnant of the mindset which burned old women as witches, threw Jews into the incinerators by the millions, and still, even today, dickers and hesitates to muscle in and do something, anything, by force, in cultures which burn and legally mutilate female human beings. One can only hope this mindset is dying out with the very same aged bigots who are, fading away in their nursing homes, ostracizing their fellow people ... but there's so much hate bound up in the lyrics of a lot of modern music, I'm afraid the hope is shallow.

Sigh. Rant over. Apologies. Some things have to be said.

More tomorrw -- and on happier topics.