The Tofu Chinchilla

Tofu is not real. It is not animal, vegetable or mineral. Ask a vegan what it is an they may launch into a spiel about regurgitated soy curd and maybe add a potted history about its invention in Ancient China - (co-incidentally at around the time water-torture was at its peak) – and will, without a doubt, mention the white stuff’s talent for imitation.


“You can use it as a substitute for anything!” they cry. “Tofu bacon, tofu chocolate, tofu wedding cakes! You need never eat real food again! The possibilities are endless!’ Carry this frightening truth to its logical conclusion, and one can ultimately see a whole world made out of tofu – tofu housing estates, tofu trains, tofu zoos containing, yes, you guessed it – tofu chinchillas. To some Extreme Vegans out there, this is a Utopian Vision.


However – to quote a critic whose name I don’t remember that I studied in my English Theory and Criticism module at Uni,(arg, gnash, post-traumatic stress disorder etc) ‘If a text can mean anything, it ultimately means nothing’. Substitute the word text for the word tofu, and you have the general thrust of my argument. Tofu has no meaning, no identity, no soul. It is culinary existentialism.


My second point : My good friend Eleanor (shoe queen of Coventry, cat collector and regular feature) believes that white food does not count as food, as white is not a colour. This somewhat shaky theory was coined after a few glasses of Red, while we were desperately looking around for excuses to open the second tub of Ben and Jerry's Vanilla, but, as she is now a doctor, I believe we must go by what she says and further add to our list of reasons why Tofu - being as white as the day is long - Isn't Real.

Chinchillas, on the other hand, are very real, and make delightful pets.




REALITY!








ILLUSION.

The Importance of Imprisonment

 

There are various kinds of imprisonment. There's the literal kind (Borstal, wormwood scrubs etc) that I have never seen the inside of, but perhaps should have done after the TK Maxx theft episode. As far as I'm aware, they are important because they keep my friend Lyndsey's husband in gainful employment, give the news something to complain about the overcrowding of (besides Britain itself), provide young men with a place to learn meditation and handicrafts. They also inspire excellent films like The Great Escape and Shawshank Redemption.

Metaphorical prisons, on the other hand, I have had more experience with. These are the types of prisons religion warn you against, the types which this world is, tragically, littered with. Dodgy marriages, sub-prime mortgages, old people's homes. The stuff of life, in fact. Perhaps that's it - life is about jumping between a series of prisons which one either chooses to stay in or chooses to struggle free from, even if that means one is eventually led back to the prison with marriage counselling, new contracts with bank managers, or nurses in scrubs saying, come back inside now, time for Horlicks.

Perhaps that's it. The importance of imprisonment is that it gives us an opportunity for a startling, firey, all-guns-blazing attempts at escape. *Turns face to the sky and feels the rain*

The Last thing that made me laugh out loud.

All my laughs nowadays tend to come from forwarded emails of the ‘look! It’s a cross-eyed kowala’/why doorknobs are better than men’ variety; or from my drunken flatmate Sara loveably repeating herself.

The last big laugh I had was at an email from a friend called Nick who works across the water in Liverpool University library. We drop each other lines occasionally to pass the time, letting each other know the contents of our sandwiches, the number of squirrels we spot on the way to work (record – five) and what we can see from our respective helpdesks (dropped USB sticks/Bent-over young ladies’ thongs/suspicious looking clockwork devices). The other day we were having a debate about the relative merits of the Friends’ bunch, after having agreed that Ross was by far the best.

My opinions were thus:

Chandler: funny up until he got with Monica.

Joey: funny until he got so stupid he should have been institutionalized.

Monica : funny with a turkey on her head ONLY.

Rachel: never funny.

Phoebe: funny when you are a thirteen year old girl, and somehow utterly unfunny afterwards. Until she does that body-pop at Chandler.

Nick responded with :

Joey – 1 IQ point away from being a sex offender.

Chandler – Not half as funny as he and the audience thinks he is.

Monica – Neurotic, unfunny misanthrope.

Rachel – Not funny but seems like a good enough sort.

Phoebe – Not funny and completely stupid for picking Mike the character with no characteristics over Hank Azaria.


This made me laugh heartily and sparked an office-wide debate.

Nick really is rather amusing. Once, I asked him what the 'Super Bowl' sports event in America was all about, and he told me that Super Bowl was in actual fact a misprint, and it was really called The Superb Owl. 

Love Your Local Library. Funny People Dwell Within.

 

Ask this lady the one about the blonde

and the Texan Trucker

People who own multiple cats

People can never stop at just the one tattoo. First off,  it’s a little Chinese symbol on the hip, then a dragon on the neck, and before long one decides it would be a nice idea to go leopard-print. For some people with a fairly common mutant gene, the same is true of cats. These people begin with an innocent little Tigger, and soon enough their houses, fridges and cupboards are entirely populated by all the loneliest looking moppets from the shelter, curtains are threadbare and visitors are greeted with the phrase ‘mind the litter tray’.

Steering clear of the old cliché about mad old ladies, the people I know who go for the feline-collecting option tend to be sane young women:

My friend Jodie has Cleo, the cat who was bright enough to build a Honda advert-style assault course to open a cupboard door and get to her cat biscuits, and Benjy, who is daft enough to get into a fight with his own tail and lose.

Sarah, my cousin, has Alan, Louise and Cordelia. These cats, I believe, were purchased to make up for the loss of a labrador called Bennie, and even with such awesome names, do not quite fill his great, lolloping paw prints. (I could tell you about Bennie’s gay affair with my Uncle’s Sheepdog Flash one Boxing Day in the middle of a sitting room where an innocent game of ‘The King of the Golden Castle’ was taking place, but that’s another – albeit worthy – blog topic altogether).

Finally, there’s Eleanor, who you may recall as being the Shoe Queen of Coventry from blog 1. She had three little kitties growing up and often rebuffs my attempts to make her see a cat’s true, selfish, Machiavellian nature with a tale of how her favourite moggie was once loving enough to lick away her tears when she was a sobbing teenager (I did not have the heart to say he was probably thirsty).

This cat is not your friend.

These people are sane, at least, until they start trying to communicate with the little rascals, when they sort of melt into a lip-wobbling, tongue-clicking, finger-rubbing jelly-people. I have no idea who first stated that this odd charade was the best way to communicate with the little devils, but as far as I can see they are just as disinterested in their owners when they are treated this way as when I brush them aside with the back of my hand whilst keeping my eyes fixed on the X-Factor.   

Conclusion: Multiple cat owners are, as the cliche goes, eccentric. Not because they are old and single, but because they chose such monstrous creatures as pets. Their eccentricity can thus be measured on a scale of

one cat (loveably squiffy) to ten cats (certifiable).

That’s how Helen…. Cs it.

Cuddly Toys.... friend or foe?

 

Okay okay, nothing interesting happened today either. New idea: Dear Victor gives me one topic a day to talk about. Today, he's handed me Cuddly Toys: Friend or Foe?

Answer: Friend. I would love to introduce you to the collection of stuffed animals I haven't had the heart to throw away, now forming a kind of committee at the bottom of my wardrobe at home, but don't think that would exactly be cutting edge blogging. Okay, okay, if you're that desperate to meet them: There's Old Bear - he's twenty five. slightly younger than me, but about 608 in stuffed bear years. He's seen a lot. Go to him with your dilemmas and he will give you solutions in a voice similar to that of Mr Miyagi. Then there's Jethro the Giraffe, picked up from a trip to London zoo many years ago, and Elmo, who likes to dress up:
 
Business Elmo


Elmo Hepburn


...and many bit part players who were won at raffles, given as gifts etc. I am proud to say I have never thrown away a cuddly toy in my life, no matter how ugly, soppy or unwanted. To throw away a cuddly toy is akin to burning a book in the sacriledge stakes.

When one disposes of cuddly toys, one ultimately disposes of people

There are only four instances when they might be considered foe:

In Toy Story 3
When stuffed with razor blades
When they are plush versions of nasty cartoon characters eg. Cartman/Stuey. No-one wants to snuggle up to homicidal babies when trying to sleep.
When possessed.

A more trying question next time please, Victor.

Hmmmm..... what to blog about? (And how Helen Met Victor)

I was instructed, by my who-the-heck-are-you friend on Facebook (we all have one) to start blogging. I picked him up on a feminist page, after he posted a comment of the ‘what you getting your collective knickers in a twist about, biatches?’ ilk, and was branded a troll by the radicals on there, and shunned forevermore into the netherworld of chauvinism. Feeling for the poor fellow, who did, in actual fact, ask a fairly straightforward question, I took him under my wing and attempted to untangle his misconceptions – (equality does not necessarily mean being treated the same, we aren't anti-men just pro-women etc etc) and since then we have developed a mutually curious Facebook friendship. enjoying my status updates, he suggested I started blogging, and gave me the following 4 topics to choose from:

Depression, a leprechaun’s guide,

Women and Shoes, wtf

Librarianship.

Coffee shops – what went wrong?



The first, straight off, is a no-no. As I understand the little fellows, Leprachauns are, perhaps, God’s happiest creatures, all rainbows and pots of gold and leaping over patches of mud with joyful abandon. Why bring them down with talk of disturbed sleeping patterns, loss of interest in hobbies and declining personal care standards? One can almost hear their little sorrowful cries: ‘To be sure, things aren’t that bad, surely no?’


A leprechaun's guide to depression: what good could come of it?


Women and shoes.
 He suggested this, perhaps expecting a rant of the ‘Why do women love shoes so much, they’re mental’ variety, but, to a small extent, I am one of those women. Perhaps not to the extent of my good friend Eleanor, but I can get excited by a pair of green, faux suede hush-puppy pumps. I once loved a pair of shoes so much I nonchalantly re-priced them to my own liking in TK Maxx, paid, and suffered a month of sleepless nights and loss of appetite as a result (sorry to any Leprachauns reading this).

Librarianship
I work in a library. I am writing this in my office in the library, having run out of things to do, and being somewhat afraid of the existentialist angst an hour of shelving books can lead me into. I have never been tempted to take the long and arduous road into professionalism, but I have plenty to say on binding, spining, book repairs, looking for lost journals and the technologisation of the modern library, if any of you are interested – what’s that? No? you’d rather listen to a fishing match on the radio? Very Well.

Coffee shops – what went wrong?
Lack of fair trade coffee. Too much froth in cappuccinos. Apathetic Barristas. Prices. The fact that chocolate sprinkle stencils are not in use across the board. The pictures on every wall of Italians laughing their heads off while drinking their espressos, making me feel as if I am underperforming by drinking mine like a background figure in a Hopper painting. There, no further comment necessary.