MY CHEESE IS GONE!

A mind is a terrible thing. And often, it is your own worst enemy.
Fortunately the little bastard is easily distracted.........

For instance:

On the way out of the building for a smoke, I overheard two other smokers on their way in. One of them was saying "and then you do it with cream and butter and bacon".

Damn, girl, the only thing missing is cheese.



WHERE'S THE CHEESE?

Several years ago there was a Taiwanese soap opera which I thoroughly enjoyed. The story involved a handsome professional, his suicidal former wife, the beautiful new wife, a Shanghainese ex-mistress, his darling little daughter, and his daughter's amah, who only spoke Taiwanese Hokkien.

Except for whatever the amah said, the series was in Mandarin. Pretty decent Mandarin, too.
Even the Shanghainese bint spoke understandably (normally those people sound like exploding soda water siphons).

Every episode included at least one tantrum, several weepy moments, and scenes of utter heart-rending drama in which the little girl yanked the tears from the viewing-audience with brute force.
The amah was stellar too, especially when she wailed and hiccoughed, kvetching and shraiing in that language no one else in the series spoke but which all of them miraculously understood.
Come to think of it, all the females wept beautifully - rich, dramatic, sobbing from the gut, crying, lamenting and accusing at the top of their lungs. Misery, heart-ache, and spoiled pouty dejection on an epic scale.
It was utterly delightful. I've always appreciated over-acting.

Savage Kitten, who is my erstwhile significant other and still a darn good friend as well as my house mate, speaks English and Toishanese. Her Toishanese is worse than my Cantonese. She does not speak any Mandarin or Hokkien at all.

She can't stand pouting females, and she absolutely hates weepy bitches.
Hong Kong, mainland, or Taiwan television bores her. Unless they show lots of food.
Whenever we watched Chinese soap-operas, she would invent her own dialogue in different voices.

The one episode of this Taiwanese weep-and-scream fest that she saw, she decided that the cause of all the distress was that there was NO cheese - that lack explained everything.



IL N'Y A PAS DE FROMAGE!

In the first scene, the ex-wife tearfully bids farewell to her daughter, as shown in remembered flashback. Everyone cries buckets.

VOICE-ONE: Oh woe, my cheese is missing!!!
VOICE-TWO: Mom, how could you, that was the BEST Cheese EVER, we are undone!!! Waaaah!!!
VOICE-THREE: Oh stop wailing about the cheese, bitch, now you're making me cry.
VOICE-ONE: You're heartless, you lactose intolerant beast! It was Edam!

All three females start screaming hysterically, while remembering the cheese.

Shortly afterwards Savage Kitten went into the kitchen to fix herself a snack.

Several scenes later, the handsome professional is in the very modern kitchen of his luxuriously appointed house, explaining something to the amah that involves the rice cooker. The amah is stubborn and angry. The child, standing next to the amah, is pouting. Everyone is tense.

VOICE-ONE: You never should've put the cheese in here, moron, you've RUINED this expensive appliance!
VOICE-TWO: Stupid man, it was made in Japan! Remember what they did in World War Two? Those bandy-legged goblins, they DESERVE cheese up their cookers!
VOICE-THREE: Waaaah, I want some cheese, waaaah!
VOICE-ONE: Well you can't have any, you sickening little brat - miss Stupid here shoved it up some Japanese businessman's exhaust pipe! All of it! Pound pound pound!
VOICE TWO: Ementhaler! Gouda! Stilton!
VOICE THREE: Waaaah!

Both females start howling, the man looks fed-up.

During the commercials that followed, Savage Kitten went to the store to get some chips.

In the final scene, there's a view of the handsome professional's mansion during a typhoon, with rain slamming the building in nearly horizontal sheets, gusts whipping the trees. It is night. Cut to the living room, where the man, his daughter, the beautiful new wife, and the amah, are closely clustered with their arms around each other in the darkness, as the storm buffets the house.
The two women and the little girl are emotional.

VOICE ONE: Oh no, we're all going to die!
VOICE-TWO: It's your fault, bitch, I told you to cook dinner while we still had electricity! Now there's no rice!
VOICE-THREE: We couldn't have rice anyhow, she ruined the rice-cooker with that cheese!
VOICE-ONE: So why didn't you buy another one, idiot! And if you paid the electric bills once in a while they wouldn't cut us off!
VOICE-TWO: Yeah, but WHO insisted that I get more cheese instead, huh, who? Who?!?!?
VOICE-THREE: Oh shut up about the cheese already! That stuff gives me the runs!
VOICE-FOUR (the daughter): I remember the last time that happened! And we couldn't leave the house then either, it was HORRIBLE!

All three females start weeping copiously, one of them (the amah) flailing about uncontrollably.

VOICE-THREE: The pressure, the pressure, my intestine's gonna give way any moment now, save yourselves, aaaaaaack!VOICE-FOUR: It smells like cheese in here, we're gonna die! Waaaah!

During the ending credits, Savage Kitten happily speculated that all 'northerners' (meaning everyone except the Cantonese) were crazy, talked funny, and didn't know beans about good food. She was scarfing down an entire bag of Bacon Cheddar Fries while she spoke.


Savage Kitten has never had a problem with cheese. She is not lactose intolerant. Loves the stuff.



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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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GRANT PATEL IN HIS OWN WORDS

I am delighted to see that Grant Patel, long both a bane and a blessing to this and other blogs, has decided to open his own site for business.


His personal scribblings can be inspected here:
http://grantpatel.blogspot.com/


The selection offered thus far is eclectic, to say the least.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Twisting your Arab knickers!
Arab female underwear.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Jimmy Boy in Horniman, Fort
A Parsee restaurant in Bombay.

Friday, February 20, 2009
Dutch news, or Palestinian Propaganda?
Well, I moved him to post this....
If its' berry pullao, it must be Britania!
Parsee food at the Britania.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Mumbai Terrorists
Hah! Damned Pakis! - A rant.

Monday, February 16, 2009
She got lace!
An exercise in obsession, in which mr. Patel waxes lyrical about miss Wong's underwear (sorry, Snooky), and demands details which miss Wong refuses to give him.


There is more. Explore at your own risk.
He claims he is unmedicated - And I believe him.

GRANT PATEL, BEYOND ALL BOUNDS

Frequent commenter Grant Patel seems to have gone all loopy. The results, from the point of view of this blogger, speak for themselves, and disclose utter volumes.

The vast majority of my far too few commenters are utterly sane, and very real individuals. Not so the perverse Patel. Who seems, with each passing day, to be in ever fiercer competition with himself for most eccentric statement.

Mr. Patel has bugs up his donkey about several things.


But mostly, it seems, the following four:
CHEESE
PANTIES
PAKISTANIS
SNOOKY WONG
[The last subject mentioned is rumoured to be a petite Chinese-American female. She also comments here, so please, no stalking. It would upset both this blogger, and Mr. Patel, as well as infuriate the subject herself - you really do not want a small Cantonese woman angry at you (trust me on this).]


Mister Grant Patel (Esq. & Perv.) inhabits a unique universe.
I flatter myself that this blog encourages him to occasionally come down to earth, though not, alas, establish a firmer bond with reality.


Grant Patel on the subject of CHEESE:
* "Beautifully hued, like a saffron orange. The precise colour of silk on blonde skin. Yummy and sweet, my precious, yummy and sweet."
* "Do either cheese or teatime snackypoos offend the bollocky Muslims? They can stuff a kipper in it, and pound it sideways, is what they can do."
* "If the Jews desire feta, they should by all means have it."
* "Ooooo, stinky stinky!"

Grant Patel on the subject of PANTIES:
* "I needs must retire to fondle my collection of fine laundered panties for solace. So very buggery sad."
* "I, of course, think panties better. So soft. So smooth. So tight. Definition adding, and flattering to any form."
* "But I wear a starched dhoti."
* "ATBOTH's only obsession is probably panties in size 'teenager'."

Grant Patel on the subject of PAKISTANIS:
* "The Brits are becoming all Paki in their sensitivities. It is a shame. What is this world coming to?"
* "Buggery bollocky Pakis, finally halfassedly admitted that they planned the Mumbai massacre. Can't trust those sodding bainchotes."
* "And their camels! Meh, I say, meh! My emotions are numb. Time for a beating party. With cream pies. Oh indeed."
* "Lying like a sawar is second nature to the Pakiwakkis."

Grant Patel on the subject of SNOOKY WONG:
* "Who is this Telmacky daddy-o? Some kind of stalker? A fetishist? A tulmud-whacker? A very hungry teenager who lusts after the presumably hot young bod of the fabulous miss Wong? Girlie, you have a fan! Congratulations! Do we need to advise you on your legal rights vis-à-vis restraining orders? [skip to next comment] Give me a call. Let me speak to you of legal issues. Contracts, and prenupts. Your rights, privileges, and pleasures. Exchange cell-phone numbers, take my card. Lets do lunch."
* "First a gibber-rant about a teenage girlie without panties, then a long diskvisition about tobacco without panties."
* "To me it sounds as of the notorious panty thief ATBOTH needs a span in the military himself. It might do him some good, and keep him from harassing little Chinese girly bloggers."
* "I say take that evil minks off your blogroll. You devote FAR TOO MUCH time to the huggable Cantonese bints. It is a shandah!"


Perhaps the most telling communication from Mr. Patel is the statement he made at the end of January: "I am by no means off my meds. Who told you that?!?!"

Lets just say it was an educated guess. But if you insist the contrary, we shall just have to take your word for it, mister Patel.
Thank you in any case for sharing your marvelous thoughts with us. We are honoured.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================

THE IMPERATIVE OF FETA

Yiftach. Who promised that he would make a burnt offering of the first thing out of his house if he was victorious over the Ammonites. Fetah, imperatively, is yiftach, in my imaginary version of Arabic.
Yiftach - fetah!


That was the thought that stuck in my head during an important conspiracy meeting yesterday. There were seven of us around the table - a librarian, a teacher, a family psychologist, a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, and myself. The fetah connection did not have anything to do with any of them.


The librarian kept pouring shots from a bottle of strong cough medicine into her tea. But she was indeed very ill (refusheleimuh), and should not have been there. Cough cough.
The librarian recounted, with the lawyer chipping in, about a lecture they had recently attended, that left them shaken - two solid hours of vicious lies. Yes, it was a pro-Palestinian lecture, how did you know?
The family psychologist mentioned administrative staff at length. The lawyer discussed various things. I can't remember what, other than the agreement with the teacher, in nuanced and codicilized detail.
The doctor analyzed a spectrum of situations, spoke clarificatorily, elucidated, and made cogent comments.
The accountant made reference to machers at two shuls, and expanded upon exceptions to other things. He and I had earlier compared kippot - he was wearing a plain dark blue (the only clean one he could find in a hurry, despite owning several hundred), I had with me a brightly festive multi-coloured knit jobby perfectly suited for the Gay Pride parade in summer. Very very happy looking!
Our tastes in pipe-tobacco overlap, in mittn drinnen.

None of this has to do with fetah. There is no connection. Fetah was not even mentioned. It is not part of our conspiracy.
So why fetah?

A kaiser roll, and a tub of what LOOKED like cream cheese.

Deceptively. It just looked like it.
Then someone mentioned the phrase 'yitbach al Yahud'.
Hence the connection. Nevertheless, fetah is a very good thing.


Yiftach al Yahud - fetah for all the Jews!


And after that, we shall contentedly smoke our pipes with Latakia mixtures, while wearing our colourfully extroverted kippot.