Do I self-classify, or do others, sometimes more importantly, label me ?

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24 November

@theagentapsley I struggle with the idea of man-flu. There are the genuinely ill, the walking wounded (as I currently am) and drama queens.
— Sarah Parkin (@SarahParkin1) November 23, 2012

@sarahparkin1 That may be true, but who can rightly allocate anyone else to any such category ? And is that the root of -isms... ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 23, 2012

@theagentapsley surely more true of some -isms than others? I trust people to self-classify as a rule- though maybe not the drama queens.
— Sarah Parkin (@SarahParkin1) November 24, 2012

So, taking up that idea of self-classification, what about where someone else doesn't let me be what I choose or am ? :

1. I am descended from a couple who immigrated from Trinidad and Tobago at a time when the UK encouraged them to come here (albeit to drive buses or collect fares on them), but they were my grandparents, my parents were born here, and so was I. Yet those who stir up hatred and talk about 'repatriation' try to deny me two things: being - whatever that is - as British as they are, and relatedly the fact that this is my home country and culture, too.

2. I have a mental-health condition. Let's say that it's unipolar depression, and so I am prone to my mood going low, or that I have other conditions that fluctuate and which, when they are at their worst, mean that, if I can function at all, I can barely do so. If I have, before I learnt by experience, shared that I have such a condition, people may not actually say 'But there's nothing wrong with you', but you can see it in their face, in their eyes, because they see you when you are functioning. Worse, they are people with power to see you when you cannot function, and who think that you aren't trying, are pretending. And the same can be the experience of those with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), who can be taken for being drunk (so hurtfully) when there is lack of balance or control.

3. I identify as being female, and dress accordingly, but do not want to change my physical gender. Often enough, without reference to me, I'd be called a man in a dress, and people would make all sorts of assumptions.

4. In my local supermarket, in the throng around the reduced items, a female member of staff is talking loudly to her colleagues, saying 'All men always...'. By being a man, I am included in her extreme generalization, because:

All men always do X
I am a man

Therefore I always do X


And that is the pattern for much of this - lumping people into together because of one characteristic that they may (or are assumed) to share, and ascribing to them all (or most of them) some behaviour or other characteristic, ignoring who they are, or what they have to say about it: all benefit claimants are scroungers, for example...


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Every Veran helps! (2)

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18 March

No one passing by - even if they didn't eat meat - could have failed to notice the huge pieces of sirloin* that my nearest Veran had on offer - I didn't notice what they weighed, but these were shrink wrapped and sizeable, and were individually priced at at least £30.

Now I may have seen a piece of such a size in the window of that rare thing, a butcher's shop, but never in a supermarket (or whatever we are encouraged to call them). And, now that I think of it, they all bore (as did some other items in a display close by) red labels with the words 'From the Butcher' on them in white lettering. Which is making what distinction?

What am I supposed to believe to be the origin of the rest of the meat (and poultry)? Yes, I know that it has been hygienically sealed into its packaging, with the unavoidable admixture of sulphites, and I even know where much of that is done in this region (as I have visited the premises), but can I take it that this large lump of steak has been treated any differently?

Or is it telling me that it has not had a prior life in a freezer, but has made its way just from field to abattoir to butcher to shelf? In effect, boasting of freshness when, one might infer, other products have been stored in the meantime?

OK, I'm not going to dwell on the comparison, but, when a cattery offered for a pet's living area (i.e. not its run) to be heated for an extra, say, £1.20, it was wisely - and, it must be said, repeatedly - asked as an effectively rhetorical question how one would know whether she (for she was a she) had received the benefit for which one had paid extra. Another supermarket answers the question, as applying to the taste and qualify of food, with the slogan Taste the difference...

With freezing, I hazard that it has an effect on the fibres in meat (and poultry or fish, for that matter), which could have a bearing on how chewy it is. I suppose so, because I know that it is said that (even with blanching) some fruit or vegetables do not freeze well, which I take to mean that one would be less keen or less able (e.g. disintegration) to eat them than before the freezing.

In itself, that might argue for the meat to be tenderized by being frozen, but I do not think that it is so simple or that the thawed product would respond to being cooked in the same way as before - and ideal cooking temepratures and durations are a whole other kettle of fish!


End-notes

* By the way, who does believe that story of a joint of beef being knighted?


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57 alleged varieties

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9 February

If one of the breweries whose beer / ale you like started telling you that they once produced - but no longer produce - fifty-seven of anything, would you not, perhaps, feel short-changed by their range of six (or eight) in these modern times*?

And maybe fifty-seven doesn't just relate to soup, but to alphabetti spaghetti** (can you imagine such an abomination in Italy? though, if it did have real European currency, for some countries, such as Greece, a factory would have to produce the stuff in their own alphabet) - or was that a product of Crosse and Blackwell's***? - and baked beans, but I had always associated the claim with soup.

So how many soups are in the H---z range, and maybe I cannot rely on what the local Veran happens to stock - there must be a www.h---z.com to tell me...

Well, it's .co.uk, and clicking on soups takes me straight to Arsebook, which then offers general information and the circuity of a link back to .co.uk - such web-sites, which aren't any more navigable than many a river, are just not looking at for me to find evidence, not even of these (former) possible soups:

* Tobacco and Coriander

* Cream of Mouse

* Lamb and Beetroot (sure some Polish influence there!)

* Smoked Halibut and Rye

* Dust and Cobweb


In fact, I shall start a - wholly notional - series of detective novels called The Apsley Papers, with a suitably enticing range of 57 sub-titles, and list them all on your favourite retailing site(s):

The Apsley Papers: Remains found in a Gravel-Pit

The Apsley Papers: Killed by a Strontium Nitrate Spoon

The Apsley Papers: Impact of a Club


Then, I just wait for the orders to roll in, and produce copies to meet them - all very supply-and-demand led, all very last minute!


End-notes

* Oh, Chaplin again! A well-known pinko, of course, as the committee told us - see more here.

** Why do I not remember seriously making words with that stuff, not even not rude ones?

*** If they ever existed.


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Veran's odd approach to chicken (2)

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23 August

For the record (though somehow we are already in summer, following the last Futile Bulletin):

* They are chicken nuggets - devotees can doubtless explain what they have (or lack) that distinguishes them from 'dippers' (and the like)

* Strictly as a layman, and never having considered the question before, how a disc-shaped item can be a 'nugget' now escapes me, but perhaps it is too late to challenge this convention

* I have looked at a packet: below the stated 23 appears 'APPROX.' - which prevents me complaining, because, when I opened it, there were 28

* If it had been 53, maybe I'd have more of an argument about surface-area, and whether it would mean a disproportionate amount more (or less) coating

* At any rate, all of this aside, the packet is sold by mass - its contents are 450g, however many or few of these alleged nuggets there are

* And, quite frankly, the only thing of which they taste is the coating!

* Unless I should take some delight in the visual appearance of the chicken (in a sandwich between one side and the other), the only sensation (they make no noise, and let's pass over the cooking smell) is of something that is hot and can be chewed, coupled with the crisp[i]ness of the outside

* Perhaps those devotees can tell me that this is all bound up in the usual expectations of the word 'nuggets', so more fool me...


PS The packet that the nuggets came in* not only shows that they can be beautifully served by tipping them into a deep white ceramic bowl (cunningly accompanied, in a matching ramekin, by what only looks like a portion of strawberry mousse caked in that quick-setting gel so beloved of those, such as my mother, who used to render bought sponge flans fruit laden with something highly processed from a tin), but assure me that the largely bland product has been 'made with 100% chicken breast'.

Damn, could have sworn it was (a) turkey!


* At around 1mm in thickness (designed, doubtless, to keep in that gorgeous chicken flavour that I so signally failed to detect - or, probably, to stop the 23 items cascading all over Veran's freezers so often), the packets have a much higher specification than the free shopping bags (which are so keen to biodegrade - and earn green credibility - that they have started before you come to use them), but then these terms 'supply side' and 'demand side' do have a meaning.

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STOP PRESS - Google® reveals the truth about Veran!

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23 January

A certain synergy in how this theme, and that of Resident Evil (2002), are coming together...

Find more, and meet the Sorceress of Shadows, at:

http://www.zeldawiki.org/Veran


All that we need is Awld Worrisome Thompson's involvement (Treatment for Worrall Thompson) to make our joy complete!


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Veran's odd approach to chicken (1)

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23 January

So it seems to me - and, no (following Every Veran helps), I am not always shopping there, just that there is nowhere else (near) to do so after midnight on a Sunday night!

I have bought a pack (in fact, two packs) of chicken nuggets (or pieces, or dippers - some agglutinations, at any rate, in breadcrumbs of fragments left over from whatever gruesome process of 'waste not, want not' our modern food ('food'?) nowadays goes through), and that is just my point:

For I am boldly told that I am purchasing exactly twenty-three of these chicken bites, when I could have sworn that twenty-four was more usual.

At the same time, most bottles of beer (in Veran) are up tenpence (to £1.99, and may be 550ml, or just 500ml - in either case, not a full pint), and the cat, thinking herself addicted to milk with a special formulation for her kind, may have to forgo it, as, even with the better way of buying it (as a three, rather than individual little bottles), it is still 20% more in price than a fortnight ago.

And yet shoppers will, maybe, prove easily spooked by other things than price - being told that my frozen pack of baby kievs contains 15 may seem fine, whereas 19 (one short of a favoured multiple of 10) might not: I stress that I have not seen that product advertised in that quantity, but it does not inconceivable, when I have just bought one short of two dozen of these nuggets (well, with both backs, 46).

Will the packs of sausage rolls (to cook from frozen) be following suit? - or have they already done so? And if enough consumers do react badly to odd numbers (or certain ones), as against even ones, why would that be?

Is some bias or prejudice built into our numerological world-view, as, surely, even the roulette tables ask us to bet on the difference? And an odd whole number, when squared (or cubed), stubbornly preserves its oddness...


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Every Veran helps! (1)

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20 January

Anyone who has ever used so-called predictive text (that terminology probably calls for a whole posting of its own) on a Nokia® phone will know that the software is programmed to know the name 'Nokia', but not the name that comes out as 'Veran', which, if you will ever be writing a text-message to say that you have called in to one of its shops and is anything needed, you will have to spell and save - but nothing will alter the fact that the first option always comes up as Veran*.

Well, my local Veran, in a sign prominently stuck on the self-service machine such that it impeded the scanner, proudly announced to-night that, between midnight and 6.00 a.m., I could use the machine - and, if I didn't want to, they would open a till! (I can see that being a really popular request - from the point of view of how it would be received, that is...)

The point was that not a single till was then operating, it was well before midnight, and so I was disenfranchised from this marvellous offer of having a human being serve me. The slogan 'Every little helps' may well have disappeared (it only ever was a little, and it helped damn all), so perhaps the new one is 'Lump it or leave'.

Plus whatever happened to their much-vaunted 'Value' range, whose products I realize, all of a sudden, that I don't recall seeing for a long time - were they so choked with toxic ingredients that you could buy a kilo of Value peanuts for something of the order of sixty-nine pence, but, within a week of finishing them, you'd have ingested such a high dose that planning a funeral would be in order?


* And I know well enough why that is - some geek's supposition, in setting it up, that, just as I am more likely to be writing 'Dear Nun' than greeting my own mother, I want to write about the verandah to the recipient of my message, not concerning a well-known chain of supermarkets.

(I've not tried the key-combination, but, as a message to Anna always comes up as 'Dear Bomb', for all that I know the phone is programmed with supposedly useful things like 'dacha', 'veldt', 'lebensraum', 'samovar', etc., etc.)


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