BOBBY BURNS' GARBAGE

Tomorrow night is when many people in the English-speaking world outside the British Isles will be eating a dish of compost, in celebration of Scotland's most celebrated poet. No, not Ewan McTeagle, or William McGonagall, both beloved by thoughtful types, but Robert Burns, who wrote shitty doggerel in gibberish.

The dish that will be served is Haggis. Sheep offal mixed with oatmeal and pumpkin pie spices, boiled for several hours in a nominally cleaned sheep's stomach, served with a puree of boiled tubers, and a waste of whisky.

[A Scottish dish that consists of the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep minced with suet, onions, oatmeal, and seasonings, boiled in the stomach of the animal.]

In lieu of what they could be eating. A good French Ragout or fricassee.
Or modern Britain's two national dishes: Chicken Tikka and Vindaloo.
Both of which are much devoured by drunken Scotsmen, btw.


Some of my friends will engage in this custom, performed with grim cheer every January 25th., in a rather ridiculous ritual with like-minded types.
Boiled sheep guts. Speeches. Bagpipe "music". Whisky.

Several will be wearing scratchy woolen skirts.

And, heaven forfend, there may be recitation.

I begrudge them their very queer festivity.


Primarily because I am a sour and disapproving sort, but also because I hate quaint dialect usage and bad verse. The vulgarity and pretentiousness of the event get on my nerves, much like little children putting on a play, bagpipe music is best outdoors in any case, and I have made haggis.

Anyone who has ever made haggis is disgusted, or should be, and will gladly chuck Burns Night for solitary drunkenness and a corndog.


Almost anything can be made passably edible by hotsauce (Sriracha), but it is doubtful that Haggis will be improved.

It would be a waste of hotsauce.




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