A NIGHT OF VERSING

Tonight, in some parts of the world, a large steaming object is carried in accompanied by screechy music. It is carved up and served, with two indigestible side dishes, and copious draughts of whisky are used to wash it down. Or at least past the tonsils. More screechy music. Recitation of doggerel. Scratchy woolen skirts. Burns Night.
Coincidentally this year it's on a Saturday.

This is happening nowhere within at least ten blocks of me, and somehow I do not miss it.
I have previously made haggis, and consequently I do not ever eat it.
But I fully stand behind the perverts what do.
I am there in spirit.

There is NO vegan version of haggis. Without the organs of a deceased animal, it cannot exist. Made with substitions it is entirely pointless. It is like steak tartare made with tofu.

Have you considered some nice white folks soybean curd, perhaps stuffed with alfalfa sprouts before you fry it mahogany brown, to go along with your unspeakable music?

SCOTLAND

It has been well over a decade or more since I participated in a Burns Night celebration.
It was before cell-phones were so common, so there is no visual evidence anywhere. No photos, no videos, and no recordings of my screechy voice reciting mangy Scottish git doggerel in a Glaswegian snarl. The witnesses are all unreliable in any case.
They were not sentient or aware of their surroundings when I left.

Seeing as I never memorized Burns' alleged poetry, I recited some German verse instead.

Im düstern auge keine träne,
Sie sitzen am webstuhl und fletschen die zähne:
Deutschland, wir weben dein leichentuch,
Wir weben hinein den dreifachen fluch ...

Followed by 'Surabaya Johnny' which has always been one of my favourite lieder, along with the 'Bilbao Song'. And as I cannot sing worth diddly squat, I recited these as somber odes. Auf Deutsch.

Look, I wasn't vested in Burns crappy poetizing that evening, I had spent an entire day making an unspeakable horror of the Scots "cuisine" repertoire involving muck and sheepsguts, vapours, heat, lungs, and chopped bloody bits. This didn't inspire an appreciation of smelly tattooed savages with blue bottoms and ginger beards.
Or noise produced by squeezing an angry cat held in the armpit.

Happy Burns Night.



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