Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Asiatic delicacy
Have you heard of a country called Kyrgyzstan? When I asked the manager of the safari camp, he said it was the fairy-tale kingdom where Aladdin and Ali Baba fought a duel for the hand of Princess Pashmima Sugerbuns. Apparently it was air-to-air combat on flying carpets, but he can’t remember who won. After borrowing his Bazooka Joe Pocket Atlas, however, I discovered it was a real country caught in a sandwich between China and Uzbekistan.
The cause of my Kyrgizzy curiosity is a news story about a British man who got deported from the country for likening its national dish to a horse’s penis. The word “penis” is rarely spoken by British men, so he probably used some other colloquial term. Whatever the nomenclature, the Kyrgyzians were scandalised and outraged by his remark. A strike was called at his place of work and the country’s leading chef denounced the impertinent Englishman as an upstart and a calumniator. After toying with the idea of prosecuting him for “insulting national dignity”, the government decided to expel him. It is rumoured that British diplomats in Kyrgyzstan have started wearing kaftans to make their nationality less conspicuous. Some are expected to grow wispy beards.
Now, the picture above shows the Kyrgyzstani national dish, which appears to be some kind of sausage. Whether it resembles a horse’s appendage I cannot say, but it seems to have roughly the same dimensions as that of a zebra. Were the Kyrgyzians justified in feeling so slighted? If you ask me, it depends on what a horse’s dick actually tastes like (after being cooked and seasoned in the appropriate manner). If it’s as unappetising as it sounds, they would be entitled to take umbrage at anyone comparing it to their native hot dog. But for all we know, it may be a gourmet dish that tastes better than the finest Bratwurst. They should have done some basic research before getting in a tizzy about the first offhand description of their national cuisine.
Maybe Zac Efron could teach the Kyrgyzians how to take a joke. The 28-year-old actor has been telling everyone that his mother gave him a packet of penis-shaped pasta for Christmas:
“You know your mom's on point when she puts this in your stocking!” exclaimed Zac, greatly amused.
Personally I’m not convinced it’s as funny as Zac makes out, and it makes you wonder about the kind of relationship he has with his mother. Did she laugh at little Zac’s todger when he was a boy? He must have forgiven her if she did, and maybe it helped him shrug off the giggles of his girlfriends in later life.
The only remaining question is whether Zac will eat the pasta. It’s quite difficult to get the cooking time right if the size and shape are unusual. He should also carefully consider what kind of sauce would be suitable. I would favour a tomato-based sauce rather than a creamy one on this occasion. And mince would be preferable to meatballs.
Labels: horses, todger, Zac Efron, zebra
Friday, January 27, 2012
Zebra attack
A woman from Texas has become a celebrity after getting bitten by a hungry zebra. After TV footage of her misadventure was shown at the safari guesthouse, I’m sorry to say that a young lady from Oklahoma asked me to bite her:
“Oh c’mon, GB!” she pleaded. “Just one lil’ ol’ hickey on the side a mah neck. Momma’s waiting to get it on the camcorder.”
(Her mother was a woman of generous proportions, standing a few feet away with her legs wide apart and the camera to her eye. I did not admonish her for being a willing accomplice in her daughter’s outlandish project. We live in a peculiar age.)
“By God, I won’t do it!” I thundered. “I don’t want millions of You Tube viewers deriding me as a crazy ape!”
“No one’s gonna think you’re crazy, GB, they’ll just reckon you’re a mite over-affectionate. Doncha wanna know what I taste like? Fellas tell me I taste real good.”
“We gorillas are vegetarian, Miss, didn’t they teach you that at school?”
“They sure didn’t teach us gorillas were spoilsports at school,” she huffed. “Guess I’ll have to ask a chimp or summin.”
I said nothing to this. A chimpanzee would probably dine on her like a vampire, but sometimes it’s better to let humans learn from their mistakes.
I wonder whether her envy of the zebra-bitten Texas woman was aggravated by being a native of an adjoining state. In my time in the circus, I became aware of the intense rivalries that exist between neighbouring human tribes. I remember once asking a Welsh clown whether I should financially compensate the ringmaster after accidentally trampling him underfoot.
“Why bother, he’s only an Englishman,” replied the clown. “They usually enjoy that sort of thing.”
It seems that even the Chinese are susceptible to such petty rancour. I was shocked to read about a man from Chongqing whose front door has been glued shut more than 30 times by an anonymous fiend. Had it happened only five or six times, one might have dismissed it as the prank of a practical joker, but gluing a door shut 30 times clearly amounts to a vendetta. Whoever is responsible must be motivated by boundless malice and a peculiar obsession about denying his victim free passage to and from his own property.
“I have no idea who I could have upset so badly,” said Zhou Fen, the hapless householder.
I would advise him to think back to his childhood, and make a list of all the boys he knew from neighbouring villages. It's quite possible that one of them has a grudge which has festered over the years. These things can happen inadvertently from the most trivial incidents. Maybe he humiliated another boy in a game of checkers or laughed at his willy when they were urinating against a wall.
If the mystery remains unsolved, and the door-gluing continues, he could always try appeasing his persecutor by leaving and entering through a window.
Labels: China, door-gluing, hickey, zebra
Monday, March 22, 2010
Shabby Road
The equinox arrives, which means it’s time to write to Paul McCartney. Every year, I invite him to give a concert in the Congo; thus far he has always declined, citing prior engagements. What can I do to tempt the great tunesmith to the jungle this year? Free lessons on the Congolese nose-flute? A year’s supply of Jamba weed reefers? A brightly-plumed parrot that will sit on his shoulder and squawk the lyrics of Hey Jude? Maybe it’s impossible to tempt him with bribes because he’s worried about the reception he’ll get from the chimpanzees. Rumour has it that he used to snub Bubbles during his visits to Neverland. These things can weigh on the conscience of an artist.
Macca, let it be said, is a tremendous friend of the gorilla nation. During his last world tour, he insisted that only vegetarian meals were served to the workmen who put up the fixtures. When it was suggested to him that men who did heavy lifting needed to eat steaks, Paul pointed out that gorillas were plenty brawny on a meat-free diet. How right he was! It’s as easy as walnuts in a condom to acquire a muscular physique on fruit and vegetables. You just have to combine the wholesome fare with a rigorous exercise regime involving tree-climbing, chest-thumping and the spanking of recalcitrant baboons.
He might have also mentioned that eating meat gives you halitosis. Lions may look pretty feisty in wildlife documentaries, but most of their time is spent sprawled on the ground, panting out foul gases that would poison a dung beetle. Fresh vegetables, by contrast, only give you flatulence. In the words of Old Melonhead The Wise, “Tis better to fart like thunder than to have bad breath.”
Paul has recently been in the news for trying to save the famous studio near the famous zebra crossing which he famously walked across barefoot. Miserly EMI Records want to sell the property to a consortium planning to convert it into a plastic surgery clinic. “All you need is a nose job,” as John said to Ringo. I suppose Paul is reluctant to buy it himself after paying his ex-wife £24 million for three years of viper-tongued bliss. But maybe the real problem is excessive nostalgia. The Beatles are gone, and posing for a picture on a zebra crossing in London does nothing to honour their memory. For what great band ever wished to be remembered for disrupting the flow of traffic and increasing the blood pressure of motorists?
Forget about the zebra crossing. If Paul comes to Africa, we’ll give him a real live zebra instead. Ordinarily they’re truculent beasts, but if one of the Beatles is in the vicinity they lie on their backs and giggle like star-struck schoolgirls. Paul’s barefoot march across Abbey Road will seem like a trivial detail of history after he’s ridden bare-arsed on a galloping zebra, tanning his ageing butt-cheeks in the African sun. A picture of Macca mooning the baboons would make a far more exciting album cover than that over-hyped tiptoe on the tarmac.
Labels: mooning, Paul McCartney, vegetarian, zebra
