Foreign Cuntry

Anyone who’s read a few of these posts has figured out by now that I like to use bad words from time to time. I’ve heard it said that swearing is a sign of a limited vocabulary. This is clearly complete bollocks. The non-swearer has a huge range of words at his or her disposal. I, by comparison, have that same range of words plus all my favorites such as fuck, shit, wank, twat and prick. Hurray!

I’ve noticed many differences in swearing as I’ve traveled between the US and UK. For a start, there’s much more swearing on British TV. You can now hear “fuck” quite often on broadcast TV, and it’s only sometimes bleeped. In the US they don’t even say “goddam” or “hell” most of the time, both of which are not even considered mildly rude by Brits. When it comes to swearing, US network television is for pussies. Last year I came to the UK and was surprised to find that the last taboo, “cunt”, was now on TV, albeit tastefully bleeped so you could only hear the “c---“.

This is a word that sits at the top of the bad word tree in both the US and UK. In both places it’s seldom used by women. However it has quite different meanings and usages in each country. I don’t mean that it literally means something different – it’s always a pussy. (Unlike “fanny” which means “ass” in the US but “pussy” in the UK. This can get you in trouble in both places if you’re not careful.) No, although the biological meaning is the same, the “rude” meaning is not.

Cunt in the US seems to be just an extra-bad version of “bitch” and is invariably applied to women, as in “I can’t believe she did that, she is such a cunt”. In the UK, cunt is a very versatile general purpose insult and is almost always applied to men, as in “Did you see the clothes he was wearing? What a cunt!” In fact, in the UK the word has many uses, from the mildly humorous between friends (“Hurry up you dozy cunt, we’re going to be late for the game”) to the outright aggressive (“You looking at me, cunt? I’ll fucking have you…”). You will notice that in each case the recipient of the insult, be it a friend, a dickhead or a punching bag, would be a man. The opportunities for such a versatile word are endless, and its taboo nature means that it’s rarely overused!

There seems to be a real shortage of quality bad words in the States. A couple of my personal favorites, wanker and bollocks, just get a puzzled reaction in the American Midwest. You end up having to explain them. There’s little usage of bugger and twat in daily conversation, and insufficient compounding of words to make exciting new insults (like “cockmuncher”). And don’t get me started about the complete absence of “bloody hell”. Still, my adopted country did give us “ass-clown” which is a good low-grade insult.

I’m sure a lot of people gave up reading this as soon as they read the rude words. For anyone still reading, I’m tired and I have to get up early for a flight, so I’m going to sign off now. Have a nice fucking day!


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Charcoal Underpants

I'm not sure whether it was the three-bean salad that formed part of yesterday's lunch, or maybe the banana protein shake consumed after the gym session. I'm sure the visit to the curry house last night didn't help. Perhaps it was a combination of the three - I'm not sure - but I just about farted my arse off last night. By strange coincidence I was reading today about special underwear that you can now buy to protect innocent bystanders from the effects of your anus gas.

Apparently a company called Under-Tec makes a range of airtight underwear with a replaceable carbon filter positioned behind your arsehole to eliminate any smell. An odd product, it seems to me - are there really large numbers of potential customers with such frequent, uncontrolled and poisonous eruptions of arse gas that they would pay $25 for a pair of odor-control skivvies? The article mentions several medical conditions that could cause excessive and embarrassing flatulence; I am prepared to accept that some people might be ashamed of their anal emissions but I wonder how much benefit these pants will really provide.

Let's face it, a fart is largely about sound - the smell usually only manifests itself if you're in an enclosed space and have no opportunity to blame it on someone else (e.g. your office just before the pretty new graduate trainee girl walks in to ask you something). Most people though, on hearing a fart, will instinctively assume it will smell, and will tend to move away stealthily (or, in some cases, hastily). If you happen to be wearing carbon filter pants and you rip one off, people's reaction is going to be about the same. (Unless you carry a sign saying "I'm wearing odor control pants" but that rather defeats the object of avoiding embarrassment.)

Anyway, in the right company a well delivered fart is practically considered conversation. I have a cousin-in-law (if that's what you call it) who could practically do impersonations with his arse. This guy (let's call him Bill, because that's his real name) could light his farts as well. I remember one Christmas, after too much rich food, engaging in a fart-lighting competition with him. He won, with a six-inch blue flame, but I considered myself lucky just to escape without serious burns to the scrotum.

So if you have a bowel disorder I don't think carbon filter underwear is a real solution to the problem of unwanted rectal explosions. People aren't going to hang around you long enough to discover whether you smell or not. Don't worry though - with a bit of work on your technique you could be the toast of the office Christmas party with your fart-lighting display. See if you can get that new graduate trainee to be your match holder...



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Vacuum Sex Death

I'm now back in the UK for the weekend (actually in Wales), and there's nothing I like better than to walk to the pub and sit with a pint of beer, reading the newspaper. Thirty minutes of stories will serve to remind me why I'm not coming back here to live. The weather is amazing - sunshine and blue skies; this is officially the warmest April on record. So I set off up the hill to the pub in the hot sun, in pleasant contemplation of a fine pint of Red Dragon. One mile later I arrived to find the fucking pub was shut. So I walked back down the hill and read the paper with a diet coke instead. Not the same.

However, my attention was caught by a short item about a 48 year old church organist who was discovered dead inside a giant plastic bag attached to a vacuum cleaner. Apparently he was naked, with his hands and feet bound in some sort of "bizarre sexual act gone wrong". The vacuum cleaner was still running when the body was found. The coroner recorded an open verdict. Still, at least the body was vacuum-packed for extra freshness.

Now I don't know about you, but this story certainly raised a couple of questions for me. Firstly, why was this only a two inch item? The big story on the page was about some old Russian cellist who died - given a choice between that and hearing more about the dead organist I know which I would choose! And what happened to investigative journalism? Shouldn't some reporter have been up there trying to figure out how he tied his own hands and feet and then got into a plastic bag with a vacuum cleaner attached, sealed it and died? What sort of vacuum cleaner was it? A Dyson? That would explain why the filter didn't block with his jism. This story should have been a two-page spread, with photos of the vacuum cleaner and diagrams showing how he did it.

The second question is "what kind of pleasure does some sad fucker get out of this?" I know people's ideas of sexual attraction vary, and I'm prepared to accept that there's a lot of weirdos out there (step forward all you plushies and furries) but how do you get off in a plastic bag with no air? With your hands tied it's not even as if you can "intervene manually" in your own enjoyment. I know about auto-erotic strangulation and the donkey punch so it's not as though I'm naive, but I still have to ask "why the fuck would you do it?"

The only answer I can think of is "for the sheer pleasure of imagining the expression on the vicar's face when he reads out the news of my death next Sunday". Bit of a drastic step to take though. I guess he was no longer getting enough pleasure from his organ...



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Packing It In

I’m now three days into this trip and, since I’ve stayed somewhere different every night, I’m fed up with packing and repacking my bag. I had to check a bag for this trip, which I hate to do – airlines employ a high proportion of feckless imbeciles and thieving criminals in their baggage handling departments, so it’s a pleasant surprise when your bag arrives at the same place you do, especially if it’s at about the same time. Of course, having been treated with the utmost respect and care, it will look like two hippopotamus mated on it, and then one of them took a shit on it, but that’s life.

In order to avoid checking a bag you have to get pretty good at packing light. This isn’t too hard to do if you’re doing nothing but business meetings – take one shirt and one set of underwear, multiply by number of days and add in a spare suit and a two ties (in case you drop soup down the first one). If you want to go to the gym (always a good idea) you can add basic workout gear (no lycra – I don’t care how flat it packs). The problems start when you have mixed itineraries that involve combinations of formal business meetings, business casual activities, workouts and casual outdoor stuff. Now no matter how much you try and cut it down you either don’t have the right gear for the occasion or you have to check that bag. Feeling lucky?

Just remember the following:

• Black shoes can go with lots of stuff. Just don’t pack anything that doesn’t go with them. Why do you need two pairs of shoes? Are you a woman? (If the answer is “yes” you can skip the rest of this – your bag is already a lost cause.)
  
• Gifts on the way home take up lots of space. Don’t bring chocolates for people in the office – they probably hate you anyway.
  
• Never travel with just the trousers you have on. This is fate’s cue to seat you next to the baby with colic that just sucked down a pint of milk, or the old woman who’s holding her tomato juice in shaking hands. Or you’ll get served by the flight attendant who tilts the tray so the gravy goes in your lap. (In economy class? Don’t worry – nine micro pretzels won’t leave a stain.)
  
• Stuff only has to “sort of” match. People cut you some slack when you’re on the road. Unless you’re going for an interview, but if this is the case you probably should look somewhere else for advice, genius.
  
• When you go down for breakfast in the hotel, wear last night’s shirt and change it back in your room before you go out. This way you don’t look like a twat when you spill eggs and hot sauce down yourself. This is especially true if you have vital meetings and no extra shirts. People with food stains on themselves cannot be taken seriously.
  
• If you check a bag, black bags always look the same on the airport carousel and yours could be hard to spot. However this is no excuse for tying a bright orange ribbon on the handle. Prick. Since everyone else is tying dumb shit on their bag, just look for the only one that doesn’t look like it belongs to Bozo the Clown.

Of course, no-one who reads this site gives a fuck about how to pack for a business trip, and anyone who really wanted advice on packing for business travel would hardly come here to find it. However, I did once have a (female) colleague whose bag got torn up in transit and all her clothes came down onto the carousel one item at a time (a bra was first – no kidding). This means that no matter whether you’re traveling for business or pleasure your choice of underwear could be revealed for the whole world to see. So if you’re planning to wear white, be sure to wipe properly – no one wants to see that in the airport.



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Side Effects

I’m in the airport lounge and the TV is on. It’s showing Ellen Degeneres, and I think this is to get you used to the idea that dying wouldn’t be such a bad thing before you get on the plane. (I say “plane” – what I really mean is “cigar shaped coffin”.) They just had some vacuous game so two women could compete for a trip to another show – one of them won, but they gave the prize to both of them. This is the “self-esteem” generation – women reared on the notion that there are no losers, only winners, and nothing their little darlings do is ever their fault. Blame the manufacturer, blame society, blame the television. Blah! Whine! Blah!

Anyway, it wasn’t Ellen that caught my attention – people with a brain already know her show is shit, no surprise there. It was the commercials, specifically a drug commercial for a product called Humira. I don’t know what it does, because I don’t care enough to watch closely, but it seems to make old people smile more. What got me was the gigantic list of side effects that came with it. The commercial was about ten seconds of “Humira will make your life better” followed by thirty seconds of “by the way, this is how Humira could fuck you up”.

Most of the drug commercials are the same, and it occurs to me that the trade-off between benefits and downsides is getting more tenuous with all these new drugs. I’m guessing that if they had had commercials in the old days they would have been something like: “Try the new polio vaccine – you won’t end up dead, or a cripple. Side-effects include – well – nothing really.” Now you have “Try this new drug to stop your legs twitching in your sleep. Side effects include itching, dry mouth, hallucinations, sterility and cancer.”

My favorite is the anti-depression medication. “Are you felling a bit depressed? Try this drug. Side effects include constipation, diarrhea and sexual problems.” And you thought you were depressed before you took it! Isn’t it a bit unfair that the side effects are constipation and diarrhea? One minute you’re necking figs to open up your sphincter, the next you’re staggering bug-eyed to the toilet and crop-spraying the porcelain. But you’ll be doing it with a smile on your face.

The one I can’t figure out is Zellnorm. What the fuck is it supposed to do? All I see is images of women with wiggly black lines on their bellies, smiling a lot. Everyone in drug commercials smiles a lot, just like everyone on the Ellen show. I’m thinking that should come with warnings as well: Watch the Ellen show and feel good about yourself. Side effects include squealing, applause without reason, mental retardation and, unfortunately, not sterility.



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Belgian Dinner

It's time to go to Belgium again. I leave Tuesday and fly overnight, arriving early Wednesday morning. This makes Wednesday a really long day in the office and, just to round it off, it will end with a dinner. Belgians like their food, but instead of expressing that love in quantity (like we do here) they prefer to use time as a measure. Dinner typically lasts four fucking hours.

The first thing you notice is that service is truly a foreign concept here. There will be two waitresses to serve at least twenty tables. They're not operating on tips so there's little incentive for them not to treat you like excreta. You start with a drink - I always order diet coke (or coke light, as they call it) because it's American and it annoys them. After about fifteen minutes the waitress returns with a glass the size of a urine sample cup (you know - the one that you fill will one spurt) containing diet coke and one solitary ice cube. It's gone in one swallow, but so has the waitress and you can forget about getting a refill for about an hour. You think I'm exaggerating? Bloody well try it!

I'm not saying I miss the waitress coming up three milliseconds after I sit down and saying "my name is Tiffany, I'll be your server tonight, can I get you guys anything to drink?" but I really like the man-sized drink I get a minute later, full of ice, and the constant free refills.

There are at least four courses in a Belgian dinner, but don't worry about putting on weight. Here's how the evening goes:

1. Amuse bouche. Something tiny to nibble. You didn't order this, but tough shit - it means they don't have to bring you anything for another hour. This chair has no cushion - not a good sign.
2. Appetizer. Looks like someone sneezed on a shrimp. Takes about an hour to arrive. I'm bored shitless already. Starting to get uncomfortable on this chair.
3. Main course. Something really filling like, perhaps, breast of sparrow. Served with three miniature vegetables and a splash of cream sauce that makes it look like someone wanked off over it. Losing feeling in my legs.
4. Tiny sorbet. To cleanse the palate. Is this a joke? Can't they get a sodding move on?
5. Dessert. Recipe includes chocolate. Tastes excellent, but is the size of a large ice cube. Would be OK if they brought you thirty of them. Where's that fucking waitress? I'm tired and I just want to get the fuck out of here.
6. Coffee. Another thirty minutes. They bring tiny biscuits with it. I eat most of them before my colleagues overcome their politeness and reach for a second one. Just bring the fucking check, OK? What do you mean you don't take American Express? Motherfucker!

I've heard it said that Belgian food is excellent, and in many places it is. In fact one of my top three best ever dinners was here (the other two in Holland and Mexico City, by the way). But there's a lot of unimpressive stuff too. Steak is risky - a lot of times I want to ask for the animal's death cerificate because I'm convinced it says "Died peacefully in sleep of old age." The quality of the restaurant is usually inversely proportional to the length of the menu. In the good places there's no menu; the chef just comes out and tells you what he's thinking of cooking for you tonight, and if there's anything you don't fancy he'll suggest something else.

Still, it doesn't really matter on the first night of the trip - I'll have been awake for more than thirty hours by dinner time and absolutely nothing is worth spending four hours sitting down for by then. Big Mac anyone?



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Radio Days

Like a lot of people, I listen to the radio in my car. I have the six best stations I can find preselected - mostly rock music, but one talk station that takes a break from politics for this funny show just about the time I drive home. However, I hate commercials and I have the attention span of a fruit fly, so I will switch between stations every time a crap song comes on, or they go to a commercial break. I sometimes listen to Bob and Tom in the morning but they've started doing something that pisses me off to the point that I'll switch off completely - you wait for all the shit commercials (refinance your loan, get a great deal on a new car, come to McDonalds for a breakfast McTurd) and finally they take you back to the studio. At that point one of the cast starts into this unbelievably dull monologue about why you should buy a Pajamagram, or go to the fucking Vermont Teddy Bear company. Yes, it's another commercial.

The whole point of commercials is to pay for the airtime, right? The station airs programs that attract listeners and sells commercial time to companies who want to sell stuff to listeners. So what does the fucking commercial in the program itself pay for? It's free money for the program maker, isn't it? It's getting to the point where I would almost consider investing in satellite radio, just to avoid the commercials.

I tried satellite radio a few times in Detroit when it came in a rental car. Maybe it's me, but I spent all my time going up and down the stations trying to find something worth listening to. (This is not easy on I-94. They have potholes that you could hide a body in.) It reminded me of moving to the States and getting cable. Sixty channels! Game on! After two weeks I realised that I had fifty five channels of pure crap and five local channels that I could get for free. I could get more channels, of course, so long as I was prepared to sell a kidney to pay my cable bill.

So I'm not sold on satellite radio yet. Howard Stern is over there now, but I don't know that I see the attraction. You see, much of his show seems to involve getting strippers into the studio and having them show their boobs. And here's the really salient point: it's radio. You can't enjoy boobs on the radio. Having someone talk about getting them out doesn't really do it for me.

As a last resort there's always NPR, but even they spend half their time telling you all the foundations that make their programs possible (and people like you, of course). They might as well just have the commercials and drop the pretence. Besides, if I start listening to NPR, it's only a matter of time before I'm buying a Buick and complaining about the rock music.



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Old Friends

I just got in touch with an old friend from school who I haven't seen in nearly 20 years. I found him on Friends Reunited, a British version of Classmates where you can search for people you went to school with. We've exchanged two e-mails and it's now at that critical stage where we have to determine if there's any fucking point to continuing. I've been down this road before - various classmates from the past, mostly from when I was about 16 or 17, have got in touch in recent years and it usually takes two e-mails before the correspondence drops dead.

My theory is that the first e-mail is all "Hey, how are you doing? Haven't seen you in 20 years!" and the second is "This is what I'm up to these days, how about you?" The third e-mail begs the question "What the fuck do we possibly have to talk about now?" I don't think it helps that, as a guy, I don't do much keeping in touch with people at the best of times. I mean, if I did, I wouldn't have gone 20 years without talking to these people, right? So round about the third e-mail you are confronted with the awkward reality that you just acquired a pen-pal with whom you have nothing in common (and with whom, in fact you never had much in common, beyond sharing a school). Plus you have a ton of other stuff to do and little appetite for meaningless chit-chat with strangers. So the e-mails stop.

The other possibility, of course, is that I'm such a boring wanker that people just stop writing to me.

Whatever the reason, there's no doubt that the age of correspondence is dead. People don't know what to write about; they get so out of the habit of writing at all that it's impossible to fill the e-mail with anything worth reading. I'm sure some people solve this problem by talking about themselves and their families, and generally pissing people off with how successful they've been. I'm sometimes tempted to make up something along the lines of:

"Wow, I've been busy since we last met! I'm the CEO of a major private equity firm and just bought my first personal jet. My wife is a twenty three year-old nyphomaniac who enjoys threeways with a girlfriend in the hot tub at one of our many mansions. And I have a twelve inch dick."

On the other hand, once you realize that the second e-mail will probably be the last, you could have a bit of fun:

"Well, I'm currently serving 25 to life for killing and dismembering my wife. It could have been the needle but my attorney plea bargained it down. I have a really nice cell, with a view of the exercise yard, and sometimes you can look out and see people getting shivved! I'm saving my cigarettes to buy my own prison bitch, so if you could send me some it would be much appreciated."

I don't know whether other people get more out of these contacts from the past - maybe I'm missing something. I'm going to give this latest one a chance since he was a really good mate back in the day, but I don't hold out much hope. It's hard work trying to be upbeat but not smug, humorous but not irritating, and neither lame nor dull.

I did think about sending him to this site, but that would practically guarantee the end of further communication. I guess I'd better go and work on my prison letter some more...



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Camp Jokes

As a kid in England I did something that a lot of boys did growing up. No, not that - I joined the Scouts. Actually I joined the Cub Scouts first, until I turned eleven, when I got to move up to proper Scouts and wear long trousers. Scouts wasn't bad - we played dangerous games, tied knots, saluted a lot and, most importantly, we got to go to camps.

Every Spring we'd go off to Tappington Hall Farm and camp in a field for about four days. We pitched tents, dug holes, built fires and cooked sausages in the rain. It was good wholesome fun, apart from the vicious hazing rituals (called "christening") visited upon those making their first camp. In theory we developed strong character, discipline and useful outdoor skills. Whatever the reality of that, we definitely spent considerable time swapping dirty jokes. These were the kind of kid jokes that don't seem funny now but which had us rolling out of the tent at the age of eleven. A typical example would be:

A man was traveling and needed a place to stay the night. He reached a remote farmhouse and knocked at the door. When the farmer answered the man asked "Have you got a room I could rent for the night?" The farmer thought for a bit and replied "Well, I don't have a spare room but you could share with my daughter. Understand, though, if you get up to any funny business I'll make you sorry you stopped here." The man went up to the room and, well, the daughter was beautiful. He couldn't resist, so he fucked her. The next morning the farmer comes into his room and drags him out of bed, down the stairs and out the back, into a small shed, where there is a workbench bolted to the floor. There he pulls out the man's dick and sticks it in a vice, tightens it up and breaks off the handle. He then reaches up to a shelf and takes down a rusty saw. The man screams "You're not going to cut it off are you?" "No" replies the farmer, handing him the saw, "but you are, because I'm going to set fire to the shed."

This is what passed for Grade A humor in our tent. Well, that and farting, which was a fact of life after four days of sausage and beans, and was guaranteed to get a laugh. Even after all those camps, I still have no idea how to lash two sticks together with a rope. My sausages are always black on one side and pink on the other, and if you're counting on me for first aid I'm afraid you're probably going to die. The humor didn't go away though. I don't think anyone really forgets the jokes they leaned growing up. I remember my very first boss telling me the best camping joke I ever heard:

Boss: "If you woke up in a field, stark naked, with grass stains on your elbows and knees, and a used condom hanging out of your arse, who would you tell?'
Me (after thinking): No-one!
Boss: "Do you want to come camping then?"

If I'd known that one at age eleven I'd have been the funniest boy in the tent.



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Golf is for Arseholes

I got an invite to play golf later this month. For many men this would be an occasion of joy, probably marked by the purchase of a new horrendously colored shirt or stupid shoes. For me it is one more opportunity for pointless public humiliation. The fact is, I wouldn't play at all if it weren't required occasionally for my job. As it is, I play infrequently because I'm crap at it, and of course I'm not going to get any better by playing infrequently.

I'll be playing the Indianwood Country Club, North of Detroit, which is a proper golf course. It has a clubhouse full of wood panelling and furniture taken from castles in England. [Interestingly enough, as a child in England I was often dragged by my parents around cold, dull, stone castles with nothing in them. I assumed they were empty for some good reason, but I discovered last year that it was because all the interesting stuff inside them had been shipped to the States to fill some crappy golf club.]

Indianwood is a club for people who know what they're doing. They obviously assume some measure of competence among their clientele because when you stand on the tee (the bit at the start of the hole where you begin hitting the ball) the fucking grass often doesn't start for about two hundred yards. Instead you are confronted by the sort of dense thistly undergrowth in which you would be hard pressed to locate a small child, never mind a tiny white ball. Now for me, a man who can reliably count on at least seventeen crap shots from the tee in any round, this is just pointless. I might as well just throw the ball in the briar patch and save myself the trouble of trying to hit it. At least if I threw it I might stand a small chance of seeing where it went.

Bear in mind that this is on the old course. Indianwood also has a new course, which is similar, except that in place of the thistles there is water. Lots and lots of water.

In spite of all this I can understand why people would enjoy the occasional game. What I fail to understand is why people feel they have to dress like a wanker just because they're on a golf course. Plaid pants are not a good look. Not ever. Especially not when complemented by shirts in pastel colors and shoes with frilly bits on.

As a wiser person than me once observed, golf is a game played by men with small balls.



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Character Building

Work is good for you. Builds character. Especially when you're a teenager with too much time and not enough money for music, beer and take-away chinese food. I took the plunge at the age of sixteen and applied for a part-time job at the local newsagent. This was a shop down the road that sold cigarettes, candy, newspapers, greetings cards and crappy plastic toys. It also had a small sub-post office, where old people would come every week to collect money that the government would give them in return for not being dead yet.

My hours were 8-12 on Saturday and 9-12 on Sunday. Or something like that. My job was to stand behind the counter and take people's money, plus do refilling of shelves, cleaning and general grunt work whenever the shop was quiet. The store owner was Mr. Collins and he was a shitbag.

We had two cash registers, both of which could do addition, but for some reason we were not allowed to use this function (perhaps because it prevented any other server using it while you were ringing up someone's purchases). This meant that you had to add up everything in your head and then tell the customer to give you that much money. You lived in constant expectation that some wrinkly old bastard would tell you that your number wasn't right - some of them added everything up themselves first and then "tested" you when they came to the counter. It was a miserable, crappy job. I was constantly moving from counter to floor mop to cigarette cupboard, weighing out loose candy, making change and trying not to make it too obvious how much I despised customers.

Collins was about forty, I'd guess. He had a wife with a pinched, sour face who selected all the greetings cards (which were shit, and never sold) and he seemed untroubled by matters of personal hygiene. He also trusted no-one. In the very early morning there would be paper-boys in the shop, picking up papers to deliver before they went to school. Collins didn't trust them not to steal the candy if he went upstairs to the toilet, so if he needed a leak he would piss in an empty 1 litre glass soda bottle in the stockroom behind the counter. We had hundreds of these bottles in crates out the back because customers could return them for a 10p (20 cent) refund. Collins would then place the half-full bottle of piss in one of the crates, where it would be discovered by my friend Steve when he checked all the bottles for returning. Steve had left school and worked for Collins full-time. I'm amazed he didn't kill himself.

The only interesting fact about Collins' disturbing urinary habits was that he chose Corona soda bottles. These had a narrow opening, less than 3/4 inch across, whereas Fanta bottles had at least an inch and a half. We could never figure out why he used the Corona bottles, unless he had a microscopic penis (something that would not have surprised us).

I did that job for more than a year and it definitely taught me some lessons in life. I learned that people are mostly a pain in the arse, and that if you don't pay attention in school you could be working for people like Mr. Collins for the rest of your natural life. But most importantly, I gained an appreciation that serves me well whenever I'm up to my eyes in work: my boss doesn't leave bottles of piss for me to find, and I'm forever grateful.




Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Summer Holiday

Mrs. Bison has raised the subject of summer holidays and asked me to give her some dates that I could commit. It's the middle of April, it's been pissing down for two days and we're expecting snow, so I find it hard to get very excited about the prospect of summer. I know, most normal people would be happy to plan holidays, desperate to lose themselves in a vision of sunshine rather than confront the miserable reality of a seemingly endless winter. I, on the other hand, loathe all aspects of holiday planning. I won't stay in hotels because that's hardly a holiday for me, and I hate wasting even more time in airports, or trusting myself to economy airlines that I just know treat all customers like dogshit.

For me a good holiday involves little planning. When I was eighteen I had a few weeks after finishing school but before starting University, when I was working in a newsagent's shop to earn a bit of money. My friend Del and I decided to go on a camping holiday for a week so I quit my job and he bought a slightly less awful car. He provided the tent and we threw basic provisions in the back of the car and drove down to Kent, in the South of England. Basic provisions mostly consisted of cans of bitter and pale ale.

This was one of the best holidays of my life, for the following reasons:

1. We didn't plan anything beyond having a tent, car and beer, plus a general decision to head South for the coast.
2. We didn't spend much money (although it seemed a lot at the time) and the ratio of fun had to money spent was excellent.
3. If we wanted to stop somewhere an extra night we did. If we wanted fish and chips we ate it. If we didn't feel like getting up, we didn't.
4. We encountered many stupid people and took the piss out of them.
5. We drank many pints of fine Whitbread bitter in country pubs.
6. We did absolutely NO sightseeing.

I'd like to re-create the feeling of that holiday but it wouldn't work now. Del and I lost touch for about 20 years afterwards, and I'm sure he's got a different car now. Maybe even a better tent. The secret at the time was low expectations - all we needed was pub food, beer and the seaside.

Last year we went to South Carolina. It wasn't a bad holiday but the day we spent exploring Charleston in the rain was the epitome of the shit family holidays I swore I would never have when I grew up. There's no fucking reason to go to Charleston, trust me. When we were kids we would go to some inexpensive holiday destination and then spend a week visiting places looking at things. Stately homes, castles, gardens. It frequently bored the living shit out of me. When I go on holiday I want to relax. That means sit around, play games, get up late, be lazy. I certainly don't want a fucking schedule, where I have every day planned out with some wholesome family activity. Mrs. Bison, to her credit, understands this and we can survive most holidays without major domestic upheaval.

Nevertheless, when she says it's holiday time, the visions of Charleston in the rain come flooding back and I'm getting the urge to put some beer in the back of the car and disappear.

Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Chocolate Choice

We've just finished with Easter, which is one of the best seasons of the year for chocolate indulgence. Family members in England send packages of chocolate eggs, chocolate rabbits and, well, just chocolate, which we typically consume before Easter even arrives. We always appreciate these gifts because American chocolate is completely shit.

Now don't get me wrong - I appreciate the many benefits of living in the US (including large houses, sunshine, free parking and gas priced to suit my 5.3 litre V8) and I don't whine on about all the things I miss from home. However, there is no question that American chocolate tastes like crap compared with even basic British chocolate. I have tested this by feeding samples to random Americans and I've never met one who didn't notice the difference. The most popular British chocolate is Cadbury's and I recommend you try it. Don't, however, buy the stuff that's produced in the US - if you read the small print on the package you'll usually see it's made under license by Hersheys. This is a cast iron guarantee of shitness, and the stuff inside is not real Cadbury chocolate. Make sure you buy the imported bars!!

I used to work for Mars, and they had an ongoing battle in the UK with their US counterparts who were always trying to get them to make the M&Ms to the same bitter recipe used there, in the interests of global brand consistency. Never mind that people in the UK hated the taste and weren't stupid enough to buy them twice, especially when confronted with such an array of desirable alternatives (Turkish Delight, Crunchie, Double Decker, Curly Wurly, Fruit & Nut, Aero, to name but a few). The Kit Kat, too, tastes a thousand times better in the UK, where it is a Nestle product, than here, where it's another Hershey abomination.

[By the way, when you work for Mars and introduce yourself to a shopkeeper - "Hi! I'm from Mars" - be prepared for wanky comments such as "Really? Where did you park your spaceship?". Try and laugh like you haven't heard it a hundred times before.]

What amazes me is why Americans put up with Hershey shit. They are smart enough to know good chocolate from bad, and wealthy enough to afford it (not that there's any reason it should cost more). They don't lack for the technology - they put a man on the moon, for fuck's sake. Why not make chocolate that tastes good? I can only assume that the vast majority of consumers have zero exposure to anything better and zero interest in experimenting. "Cadbury? That sounds foreign! Just give me a pound of Hershey brown dog excrement, extra dull, please!"

I see this a lot living in the Midwest. Onions are considered adventurous here. Meat. Potatoes. Herhseys. Missionary position. Nothing too risky...

Anyway, you're obviously a discerning type (otherwise you wouldn't be reading this) so even if you ignore all my other suggestions and treat everything else I say as random bollocks, do yourself a favor and try some real, imported British chocolate. You'll never go back!




Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Down At The Gym

I'm off to the gym this morning. One of those large ones that charge a huge amount of money to people who have no hope of ever getting in shape, and who only show up twice before returning to a life of donuts and sloth. I work out four or five times a week, lifting weights and, although I think of myself as "more muscled than average" I don't fall into the group that waxes their chest, goes to a tanning salon and injects steroids in order to develop a look that would get me attention from gay men.

This might seem like pointless information but if you're going to visualize the scene, you need to know that I'm not a spandex-wearing, cardio machine freak or a corpulent blob in ill-fitting jogging bottoms wandering aimlessly from one machine to the next. I like lifting weights - it's relaxing but hard work, in a good way, for someone who doesn't get anything physical out of my day job (apart from carrying bags through airports).

Anyway, the thing about lifting weights is that you get time between sets to look around and notice your fellow gym-users. This is not always a good thing. In addition to the aforementioned fat men looking to accelerate a myocardial infarction there are always lots of wizened and wrinkly fitness women whose look combines excessive tanning and low body fat with the relentless march of time, resulting in the "health-corpse" effect. Like one of those long-interred bodies on CSI, only with less earth adhering and more of an orange color.

There is a sprinkling of obvious steroid users (and probably many more not so obvious) including one with a comical lack of neck, as well as occasional groups of teenage boys desperately trying to close the gap with the older teenage guys that teenage girls inevitably fancy. The interesting characters generally fall into two categories, however - those who wear funny stuff and those who do funny things.

In the former category is Spandex Man, a forty-ish should-know-better guy who wears colorful lycra outfits with matching shoes and visors. He seems to have an endless supply. I like him, partly because he's harmless but mostly because he skipped the tanning bed and has the same pallid looking skin as me. I don't actually talk to him, you understand. Gym etiquette requires that you talk to very few people, generally only after nodding at them in passing for about six months and, maybe, asking them for a spot. Plus he wears lycra and clearly could be a raving poof.

In the interesting characters class the best, generally, are people who don't have any idea what they're doing. You watch them and laugh silently. Or out loud, if you're with a buddy. Now I have the greatest respect for anyone who shows up to the gym, especially the old and fat - good for them, they're trying, and it doesn't matter if you lift bugger-all weight, you're still making the effort. But there's a small group of people who mess about trying to lift too much weight with abysmal form and give the rest of us a laugh. My favorite is Mr. Baggy Shorts. The list of his transgressions is long indeed (including the most comical bicep curls ever seen) but he does this one exercise (and I have no idea what the hell it's supposed to develop) involving sitting on a bench with a small bar in his hands, resting on his knees and then jiggling. Not wrist curls or anything like that. Just jiggling. From the back you'd swear he was frantically pulling himself off, and I challenge anyone to see it and not laugh.

It's now time of year when the January new-arrivals have all given up and the regulars among us get the gym back to ourselves. The only consolation durng January is that you get to see guys go to the bench and load the bar with whatever weight they just saw someone else using. They then unrack it and it drops irrevocably to their chest (or teeth, if they really overdo it) and they have to wait for someone to lift it off them.

Anyway, it's time for me to go now, and I only hope Spandex Man and Mr. Baggy Shorts aren't both in today. I overdid the abdominal workout yesterday and it hurts when I laugh...



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Penis Restaurant

Those of you who read my post about the dog penis soup, and weren't too appalled to return to this site, might want to check out the link below. A BBC correspondent describes his visit to a specialty penis restuarant in Beijing. It seems I got away lightly, with just a little sliced dog penis in a soup...

CLICK HERE

Just Desserts

Last night I had roast pork for dinner, followed by trifle. Not exactly a world-changing event, but to have a real home-made dessert is a rarity these days, even in the Bison household. For the most part we make do with fruit, cookies, ice cream or yoghurts, none of which require any preparation.

It wasn't that way when I was growing up. I remember just about every main meal each day included a dessert, which we would call a pudding. Incidentally, the main meal would be served in the evening. When I was small we had "breakfast, dinner and tea" so the main meal was tea. As I got older we started having "breakfast, lunch and dinner" where dinner was the evening meal. I thought this might be a sign of moving to a higher social class, but it might just have been that when I was young we had our main meal at school during the day, and these were known as "school dinners".

Puddings at home were usually dense, high calorie events, often involving lots of flour, sugar and fat. Steamed syrup puddings, baked apple cakes, apple pies and jam roly poly. We also had home-made sponge cakes, trifle, fruit salad and custard. In spite of this, all of us were thin children, a result of something called "exercise" which is apparently unknown among the lardy, Game Boy playing couch vegetables of today.

School dinners opened up a new world of possibilities, both good and bad. On the good side was Gypsy Tart, which was a sugar/caramel mixture on a pastry base, about a million calories per slice, which tasted - well - perfect. I have never tasted anything like it since, and would kill for the recipe even now. This was balanced out by rice pudding, which looked and smelled like someone had vomited in your bowl. This being school, you didn't have the option of not eating your meal. I remember the first time I encountered rice pudding - I lined up and got my bowl, sat down and spooned some into my mouth. It had the texture and feeling of swallowing back sick, and I consequently ate no more. School dinners were a lottery - you never knew what was coming. Usually it was bland and tolerable but occasionally it would be something vile and inedible. Like rice pudding. Or semolina pudding, which was like sick, but with smaller lumps. Sick in a blender, perhaps. When I got older they started pasting the week's menu on the wall outside the canteen - this meant you could see rice pudding coming, and the dread would build over days.

Consumption of crap food was enforced by "dinner ladies" who would make you sit at your seat all through the lunch break if they thought you hadn't eaten enough of whatever shite they were serving that day. I remember one kindly old dinner lady releasing me from the grip of cold rice pudding so I could play outside in the sun. However, the head dinner lady was an old bag called Mrs. Hayward, with a wrinkled face and a mouth like a cat's arsehole, corroded with bitterness. She it was who had condemned me to sit with my rice pudding all dinner time. Once she sent me back to the table and I turned and stuck my tongue out at her (I was very small - we hadn't learned to flip people off or instruct them to suck our balls then). She made me stand in the corridor until the headmistress came along. When she did, I pretended I had only been licking my lips, and was sent out to play. Mrs. Hayward got to hear of it and came to accuse me of being a little liar. This was true - but only because she was a vile old bitch.

Even when pudding looked good, cruel tricks could be played. There was a certain sponge cake which had chocolate chips in it - this was second only to gypsy tart in the pudding rankings. However, it was indistinguishable from a sponge cake which had no sugar, and contained dead-fly currants instead of chocolate. You could be all ready for sponge cake chocolate delight and instead find yourself with a mouth full of dry, tasteless, currant-bearing wadding. I used to wonder why the school couldn't make good puddings every day - why did we have to eat the bad stuff? Was this some attempt to build character in us by forcing us to endure pudding hardship? Some peculiarly British concept that too much actual pleasure was bad for you? "They like gypsy tart so we'd better balance that out with something unpleasant. Let's do semolina pudding with apricot sauce, and make the little bastards eat it all!"

Now that kids can choose their own meals they are spared the school dinner assault course of lumpy mashed potato, gristly old meat, dried vegetables, warm beetroot, putrid fish and, of course, rice pudding. By the same token, they never know the pure joy of discovering that not only is it gypsy tart for pudding today, but you're getting the corner piece. For a little more excitement in your life, put down the Game Boy and line up for school dinners.




Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Weather I Care Or Not

Last night our local weather guy appeared in a commercial for his network where he promised that we could all rely on Channel 4 for weather coverage during the upcoming bad weather season. He assured us that there would always be someone from their weather staff in the studio, "even if it means staying all night". I know the networks compete for viewers, but setting yourself apart on the basis of your weather coverage is remarkably sad.

It's not as though there's any shortage of weather. All the major networks devote about half their news hour to weather, and all at the same time. Remember, this is when there isn't actually any weather worth talking about - if there's any wind, threat of snow, or (heaven forbid) a storm system brewing, you can expect weather to be the headline story! You'll get weather from every angle, including live cuts to reporters standing on bridges, either holding onto their hats (to signify wind) or gesturing towards the roadway underneath (in case of sleet or snow). Meanwhile the weather people in the studio are grinning in an apoplexy of joy at being able to speculate endlessly about duration/severity/accumulation/wind speed/etc.

More irritating than the repetitive posturing of the "chief meteorologists" is the habit of the networks during any bad weather period to shrink the size of whatever program you're watching and run text underneath to tell you what counties have a thunderstorm warning in effect. Now I can't see my CSI repeat without a telescope, just so some inbred family in Bumfuck County can understand why it's wet when they walk outside to interfere with the goat.

Occasionally it might be nice to know what the weather is going to be tomorrow, so I'll turn on the news. About three stories in they start talking about weather but, and this is just RIDICULOUS, they spend ten minutes talking about what the weather was TODAY. Who fucking cares? It already happened! If a tornado came through it's too late to worry about it now. Meanwhile the prick on the TV is telling me how many inches of rain they recorded at the airport today, showing me pictures from earlier on, telling me how close we got to the record high/low for the day and acting as though anyone could give a single, solitary piece of flying monkey jism about anything he's talking about. Then, just when you think they might get to the point, they say "and later on in this broadcast we'll tell you what the weather holds in store for us tomorrow". Fuck.

Later on, after spending maybe twenty seconds on tomorrow's weather, they get onto the five day forecast, the biggest work of fiction available for free. They don't know - half the time they can't even tell you what tomorrow's going to be like.

I know, having a pop at meteorologists that can't forecast the weather reliably is not exactly cutting edge humor. But how much weather does anyone really need? Maybe they could get together and agree that one station does the weather each week. Then they could find more room for those Family Guy re-runs that I've been waiting for. Now, Stewie Griffin doing the weather would be something worth tuning in to see...





Copyright 2007 Edward Bison