Dinner Date

Glasses clang on the cheap wooden table,

that rocks to and fro as if the presence of water has unlocked

it’s its own nautical aspirations.

We both rattled the chopsticks in our hands,

the grating together adds heat to their core and to our bellies;

we’re ready for the first course to come.

As the waitress waddles over to us, we both begin to rise in our seats,

the smell of the food has already called us to attention

and beckoned us to be ready.

She places it down adjacent to our small plates.

Much, much, too small.

What are they trying to do in this place?

Make me feel ridiculous?

It doesn’t work. No, I’ve parried that jab.

I’ll take the first dish, the salt and pepper chicken wings

and munch on them with my bare hands.

We never needed those irksome chopsticks –

they’ll only slow two wai guo ren like us down.

The table moves faster as we power through the appetisers,

the water is flowing and overflowing;

it’s also been joined by two half pints of golden lager.

It’s cold.

Normally these would be perfect for a summer’s day.

Today, or, tonight in here, though – it quickly heats.

We’re both gulping the water and the warming beer,

and the table feels like with one more push of the

rapid rocking which it’s maintaining,

it will turn into a spinning top.

It will send our food flying. A real mess.

It would all be a shame,

to see such care and precision in the kitchen wasted

because of a dumb-ass table.

Non-Picky Diner

Hungry, ravenous.

Right now I’d eat anything

You put down for me.

Sum total of parts; the ‘inside’ doesn’t matter (alone)

The inside of this dry.

There is not a drop of juice.

It’s plump and firm from the outside in,

but it is a sorry excuse.

This does not mean, that it’s not a fruit.

Of that, I’m fairly certain.

For if our essence was all that mattered,

then the show is over; close the curtains.

We should look at each holistically.

Folk must discover what they’re consuming.

Don’t let all the attributes blend into one,

or that will be love’s undoing.

the weirdest love poem I have ever written (ft. pork scratchin’s)

We’re a pork scratchin’ couple. A real pork scratchin’ couple. 

Crack open that bag, man. Bust out the pork. 

Snap that jaw on the turtle shell ridges of dried hog skin. 

Doesn’t matter how much hair, well, except that one time. It looked like Bigfoot’s knuckle. 

It’s not just about pork though, or love for it. 

Nothing get between us and those scratchin’s. Everyone is on the outside of that packet of love. 

I am a pork scratching. She is a pork scratching. I’m in love with the po-po. 

She got me hooked on her pork (scratchin’). Nothing better. Absolute filth to admit it. 

She’s the special one, as above. The only -G there. There at the end for me. 

Bottomless sack of wet pork scratchin’. 

Pork scratchin’ fam-il-ee. 

growing your own food isn’t poverty tourism (or too bourgeois)

I don’t know how long humans have been growing vegetables. I gut instinct tells me that we always have, as long as we’ve been homo sapiens anyway. To be honest, this sounds like one of these things that has perhaps been used to taxonomise us under the homo sapiens sub-heading; “must commit to agriculture as a means of sustenance”-, or something to that affect. How-ever and why-ever we started doing it, all I can say is that I’m getting giddy with a green thumb of my own. I’m quite excited for this summer. 

But how? Why? What could I possibly be doing this summer horticulturally? Well, for one I am growing fruits and vegetables, and not just flowers. I think there is an element of minimalism to this. Gritty, hardworking, something-for-something-like practicality. I like fresh flowers for aesthetic and fragantful purposes but when facing the option of growing something, I feel like it should be something I can eat. It’s not that I’m needing to cut down of expenses (I certainly should be) or that I just love the taste of home-grown foods, as if there is something in the fertilizer which just makes it exquisite. 

No, I’m doing it for fun. At the same time though, it just feels like it would be fun to also make something I can eat or give away. I’m almost engaged in actively dressing up as a yeoman from a bygone age and just vacationing in the lifestyle. I’m just like Lucy Worsley, but without making insurability a staple of my whole personality. All this discussion doesn’t just bring memories and comparisons to incredibly annoying, license-fee-wasting broadcasters of banality; it also brings up memories of Jarvis Cocker’s selectively affluent girl from Greece in Common People, and poverty porn and tourism which seems incredibly rife in the modern day. 

I wonder if I am just another one of these tourists. I doubt it. What would it need for one to be a poverty tourist? Or someone who dabbles and delights in doing things al thrift-sco for a change, once in a while? And as the center point to all of these questions, what is necessarily wrong about this? 

It seems to me best to answer the question starting with this big one at the center. The issue with poverty tourism seems to be that it has an overall dulling effect on how we see poverty. Despite all of the fuss for more engagement and understanding with those in society who most need our help, the actual consequences of this can be grave for our morality, particularly when we are doing this at our own dree will and choosing. 

Can you ever really feel discomfort if you know you can withdraw yourselves from it? I don’t want to draw too much of a comparison, but if you put your hand over a burning candle, the pain sensors will trigger a response which means you’ll instinctively move it away from danger. It could be easy to see that it would be quite difficult to subject oneself to unnecessary suffering when they are determined not to do so. 

From what I’ve just said then, I’m certainly not engaging in poverty tourism. I’m not trying to suffer or do something because I interpret it as a “poor” thing to do. I’m doing it from a genuine sense of enjoyment. Excitement at knowing I can grow something which I can eat, almost as if I am giving back to the planet. To an extent I am giving back, as I am not taking. I have a strange feeling that by doing this myself, giving life to a plant which doesn’t exist yet, and which I can take out again is a completely neutral, and clean. Actually, it’s a gain for the planet – more pollination, vegetation and oxygenation than there was without me doing it. 

It’ll be a good summer once I’ve started and harvested. It’s a new hobby for sure, and I hope it lasts and gives me the satisfaction I’m hoping for. 

“vegan days”, 24/7

I wonder if there is any sense of morality gained through holding “vegan days”, as my partner and I plan to from now on? Or if it’s just a foolish, misdirected sense of pride? 

Let me take it from the top though. So, essentially, I’ve been reading a ton of animal ethics literature. You know what, it’s turned me from a carnist to someone who is a carnist but feels profoundly guilty about it. I eat meat because I’m a speciesist and I like the taste of their flesh. That is disgusting, frankly. I need to change this, and I do not want to harm animals or use them in anyway comparable to slavery or misappropriation. I’ll try to stop eating meat because I have seen the neon lights of their battery barns and know it to be hideously wrong. I am in an environment where meat is readily consumed and the odds are stacked against me making the change, but I do aim to. 

One thing my partner and I have agreed upon is to limit the meat we eat and we have proposed “vegan days”, whereby we stick to vegan diets on selected days of the week. I think this is a relatively common thing, vegi-try-ian or flexi-tarian or something. Not though, a model I am copying for the sake of it. I like to think, far from it. 

However, this is where the debate in my head emerges. What if it’s not enough? What if the fact I am not committed to something more substantial and immediate shows that I’m doing it for the wrong reasons? And even if I am doing it for the right reasons, am I just simply doing it wrong? Is it still immoral to try and “cut down” my meat intake? Maybe there is an immoral equivalency in trying something with the best of intentions and still not completely getting there, and coming up short. 

Perhaps I need to be more drastic. An emergency halt on all animal products into the Wise household. Meat is murder. 

Clear plastic toasters: what are they hiding?

We don’t have clear toasters because we don’t want to see the mess we create.

That’s my hypothesis. I’m not going to dig into it all right now, because I’m distracted from some beautiful (although, ultimately shit) tournament football being broadcast from the UK. Euro ’96. It’s good to get some football, and feel like I’m part of a new, live experience. I’m not, obviously, but it does feel unique – almost like being a time traveller, but to a less celebrated time, perhaps whilst their original self was alive, and seeing a new perspective of it. It’s a shop window for culture. It’s honestly great, and a travesty that this feel has not been replicated before, well, in any way I can remember.

But yes, clear toasters. I remember my grandad talking to me about these years ago. I think I’ve seen synthetically pure versions on adverts in countries far away, where it’s given a modern, slick presentation as a necessity because it’s the new culture. They don’t have these in the West; these are us putting our stamp down with these unique design. Why should they be clear, I hear you ask. Well, the idea is that a clear toaster means that you could see the degree of burn your bread received. It could be tailoring bread according to eye instead of arbitrary numbers which everyone respects but no one fully grasps. It’s an invention which could revolutionise the hospitality industry.

Clear toasters could be a thing, surely? Plastic can be clear. I imagine that, yes, it would need to be able to deal with higher temperatures, but surely we can do that? There are hot, clear, plastic things. Would it need to even be plastic anyway? You could have a glass toaster I guess. There’s got to be different grades of plastic anyway; stop trying to give plastic an excuse. It seems like there can’t be any reason not to have them because of material need. I’ve not opened one up and had a waggle around but there seems like there shouldn’t be a reason why we can’t have at least a clear shell on a toaster.

There is a metal compartment inside the toaster. Hmmm. Yes, that could be tricky. I assume the metal keeps the heat in, and is a tidy and more stable element to ensure that electrical things are protected, and there is efficiency in the toasting. If you didn’t have that, I’m going to assume there would be more damage to the toaster itself, particularly if more and a higher heat is required to actually get the job done. All the same, would a little window be too much to ask? Perhaps, I guess, as you’d only be displacing something relevant to the procedure. Maybe it’s not possible after all? Well, cynically speaking, not worth finding a viable solution, a different design, anything.

It’s kind of shat on my initial thesis, I won’t like. But it’s still an interesting thought, yes I’m sure the economic beast means that it’s unlikely for firms to try to radically redesign a kitchen staple like a toaster, and then try to sell it as a modern art masterpiece, or akin to a car or something. Interestingly enough, a quick Amazon search for “clear toaster” brought up this beauty, the BUGATTI “NOUN” Sistema cottura intelligente 04-NOUN. It’s both super car and super expensive, at £1,7004.00, although delivery is free thankfully. Go on, treat yourself.

In fairness, there are some clear toasters but they’re still not what you’d hope to pay if you needed one. No, they’re still costing tens of pounds (UK), whereas you could definitely get one from Tesco for less than £10 alone. Bread toasted to perfection is a luxury I’m afraid. If you can’t afford it, you must play Rye-ssian Roulette with your food. I still feel like there is something modest with the average toaster, a covering up of something we don’t want to see.

After all, all that crap in a toaster accumulates if you don’t empty it, and maybe that’s it. There is a convenience in not having to see shit we don’t want to have to deal with. Perhaps having the choice is a luxury. The choice of taking hold of your destiny and cleaning the tray, and dealing with the residual; if only we could have time or energy or care to deal with this shit. Toast’s colouration and taste are essentially it’s most important qualities. Our oven and microwaves don’t just have windows but lights too, to see the state of the food in situ. These windows also can get messy too though, although it is perhaps easy to clean these with rather conventional means.

Maybe toasters are too complicated to clean. But then, why should that distract what we see? Having crumbs on the inside aren’t going to necessarily distort what we see, and even having an obscured view is better than no view at all. As I was saying, the rationalist argument seems to suggest that there is a greater meaning why we don’t have more clear toasters. I don’t know about that, but it does seem bizarre to me that we persist with an invention which does the job but with clear and regular drawbacks, considering its most basic function. Does it suggest something about us?

I actually had some good toast today, although I remember feeling slightly more shocked that it was so good than accidentally burned or raw. I think it’s weird that we can be so content with something that could be so much better.

This is all a bit tongue-in-cheek but when you think about it, it probably does say something about our psychology. Why don’t we opt for something that could arguably make a small job easier? It seems that to an extent we choose not to because of a small inconvenience. What could this inconvenience be? I don’t know but perhaps there is something about our interaction with mess and keeping tidy. Whatever it is, toasters seem like a statue our culture has created to demonstrate a particular feeling or attitude present amongst us.