Spring sprung here briefly and the man from Pizzeria Grado erected his wooden outdoor area in the street in preparation for the throngs of smokers who will appear as soon as the weather gets warm.
I saw him in the street the other day and told him that the food in his restaurant was terrific but that it was almost impossible for us to go in there because of the smoke. He shrugged. Why would he care? His job is to make money - not make non-smokers comfortable.
There are four staff and they all smoke. There are also always another two or three people who are friends and relatives of the staff – and they all smoke. The staff and hangers on have a big table next to the front door and they all sit there and smoke.
Most of the customers smoke. It is a situation that – as they say – is untenable for people like us who are allergic to smoke.
But we still occasionally get Pizzas to take away and they are quite good. I have finally worked out how to get a Pepperoni Pizza with extra Pepperoni and no crappy sloppy peppers on top. This was a major breakthrough.
A month or so ago I ate a frozen Pizza that I bought from Spar. This Pizza was made by Dr Oetker. This was the first frozen Pizza I have ever eaten and it was excellent. (I did of course heat it first). Dr Oetker and his family have been doing this since 1891 and I must say that they have nailed it!
To celebrate the imminent arrival of Spring I am erecting a new cat net. This is a more sophisticated structure than the existing one – which is simply a net stuck to the sides of the balcony with Gaffer tape – a most unseemly approach to an engineering problem. And indeed impossible without Gaffer tape which – it is my firm belief – is the world’s most useful item.
The inventor should certainly have been given the Nobel Prize for something (there is unlikely to be one for ‘sticking’). There are not too many jobs that cannot be enhanced with Gaffer tape. Ask Lenny!
I was inspired to do something more sophisticated by looking at William’s outdoor architectural achievements so am constructing an elaborate frame with plastic pipes. This will be a much more stable and presentable outcome than the existing contraption that looks like a web spun by a spider on Smack.
Cate has had a first look and says it is ‘Hideous’ – and – on the Hideousity Scale of 1-10 – is a Gold Plated 10. The was the result I expected and indeed when I was building the frame today with Sissi I said to her – ‘Cate will hate this – she will give it a 10’.
Sissi helped me by playing with the tape measure when I was trying to measure the pipes, stealing small but important items and hiding them under the stairs, batting the screws all over the floor and biting my hands when I was trying to use the screwdriver.
I was going to address a serious issue today but was overtaken by events. Now I know you have all heard of Cameltoe. These are a bit hard to describe so I refer you – as always – to the higher authority on these matters:
It will suffice to say that it is a strange world in which we live where people identify and quantify these random acts of nature. But – we have always had Cameltoes – I remember that Marilyn Monroe had the occasional Cameltoes – but what did we call the phenomenon then?
But – there is worse to come – I now give you Moose Knuckles
Who coined that term? The person is a genius. (It is from the 2005 Film The Weather Man).
The other thing I stumbled across is simply so preposterous that I cannot describe it. But it does perfectly encapsulate the world of fluff and nonsense that so many people inhabit. Try
vajazzling.
And finally - Cinnabon has reached the Bezirks of Wien. What can I say?
Two trivial but interesting aspects of the network of wires on top of my rose pergola [display] may have caught your attention: first, my use of coiled stainless-steel wire enclosed in a transparent plastic sheath; and second, the fixation of the ends of the wire segments by means of small metallic nuts and bolts. Such a network would of course be unharmed by Vienna's notorious cigarette and pizza-oven pollution, but I have a feeling that the use of this construction approach in a feline context would provide most self-respecting cats with the urge to become trapeze artists.
ReplyDeleteYou may be interested to know that those wooden areas on the street have a special name, Schanigarten:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schanigarten
I have the impression that, for an ordinary bloke, it's not easy to find work in the vajazzling field. Besides, if you want to do a good job, the raw materials are bloody costly. I've found that vacrilicpainting (using tubes of acrilic colors, often applied with the bare fingers) and good old-fashioned vaspraypainting (using aerosol cans) produce spectacular results at a vastly less expensive level. For a beginner who wants to get a feeling for this kind of artistic activity, elementary vamayonnaising and vaketchupping (using everyday products in tubes and plastic bottles, sold in supermarkets) are good for a start.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard for me to imagine any circumstance in which a man, any man, would look at a woman's cootch and say "hey girl, why don't you glue some rhinestones to that?"
ReplyDeleteUnless, of course, he were gay, in which case he wouldn't be looking at that in the first place.
Thanks, as ever, for the education.
I’m more than appreciative for the information, to date, only the Cameltoe has come to my attention. One mustn’t neglect the more recent innovations in language. I won’t type the other words here, adding Cameltoe to my spell-check is enough work for one day.
ReplyDeleteOne of these days, I'll remember (maybe) that "acrylic" is spelt with a "y".
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether Kristin's use of "cootch" was deliberate, or whether she meant to write "crotch". In any case, I declare that "cootch" is a great word, which we must retain in our dictionaries, absolutely. It sounds so ootchy-cootchy in an exciting way. Ah, if only I had mastered all this stuff, and all this language, back in my stallion days. I see myself peering at a chick and suggesting, with a Bogart gleam in my eyes: "Hey girl, why don't you bring your cootch up to my place, and I'll glue some stardust on it?"
ReplyDeleteTalking about cool language, I hope that everybody has seen the fabulous video about the Chk Chk Boom girl at King's Cross. In a dumb-but-wannabe-famous style, she's more dinkum Aussie than a boxing kangaroo (which you can also find these days, if you're interested, on the web).
Why do these girls call the mons their vagina?
ReplyDeleteWhatever they call it, gluing rhinestones to it is repugnant. Call me an old fart, but how shallow and vain can these girls get?
And I thought bleaching the bunghole was the height of stupidity...
Camel Toe. Moose knuckle. Elk Elbow. The sad thing is that it happens so often that we had to come up with NAMES for all of them.
ReplyDeleteAnd Vajazzling? I blame Lady GaGa.
I was going to make a few comments but 'bleaching the bunghole' stopped me in my tracks.
ReplyDelete