Hamming it Up

I'd just like to mention that I made bacon sandwiches today, and cooking bacon is actually harder than it looks. Firstly, you've no idea how hard it is to get a pig at short notice. (Some people would just buy the bacon, but this smacks of amateurism to me. If I've never cooked something before, I like to do it properly.) The next problem I had was getting the meat off the pig...

Once the pig and I had wrestled for a while, complete with dramatic crash through plate glass window, something became clear to me. Neither of us were going to win. I pictured myself and this unholy swine engaged in everlasting combat: two mighty titans, forever in conflict until the trumpet sounded for the day of judgement. Two behemoths, locked in a war that knew neither end nor victor: an image to be passed through myth and folk memory, to be passed down in the oral traditions of far distant cultures.

This would not do: I wanted to be a man who lived for the moment, not the ages. I wanted a glorious legacy of deeds I had done, not the fight I would be forever embroiled in. I wanted a life, to live, die, laugh and love: a time for greivances and sorrow, and a time for happiness and victory.

Also, it was nearly lunchtime, I ought to get this bacon done, and my bladder was kind of full.

It was clear we needed a compromise. After all, conflict creates no real endings, and is ultimately futile: or, as the poet said:
"War. (huuuh. Yeah.)
What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing."

And so the pig and I entered diplomatic relations. I'll admit, as propositions go, "I want to eat some of your flesh and have nothing to offer you, oh combat pig" isn't a great one. In fact, his response was less than enthusiastic. Great. I'd not only found the world's first pig that could talk, but the world's first pig that was trained in debating.

The issue was that he insisted that he ought to have some human flesh as recompense, and, well, I rather like my flesh, thank you. The man who fortunately rang at this point to clean the windows probably rather liked his, too, but it's amazing how quickly you can tie up and gag an errant window cleaner with porcine might on your side. I granted the pig use of my kitchen and culinary facilities, and he soon left after I took a good sized chunk of flesh from his side. Apparently window cleaner tastes good. Anyway, he promised to keep in touch, and wandered away over the horizon. Lovely bloke.

His flesh was cooking nicely in the frying pan, and looked fairly ready. In fact, I was about to serve it up when something important struck me: bacon isn't just any flesh off the pig. Bacon is smoked.

I don't know if you've ever tried rolling meat up in cigarette papers, but it's harder than it looks. It's also tricky to light and trickier to keep burning. And it smells... as if you've set a pig on fire. Also, I have the majority of a window cleaner to dispose of...

I'm not going to say this bacon sandwich has been an unqualified success, but we live and learn. Anyway, that's the bacon out the way.

Now to get my hunting gear on. I have a loaf of bread to catch.

Dire Warnings.

You know when you hear someone say something and you immediately know that everything is going to go terribly wrong?

So, I have this friend. And unlike most sentences which begin "I have this friend", they aren't pregnant, and this isn't a veiled way of me asking advice. No, seriously, I'm not pregnant. At all. No matter what you might hear. No name is given here, to protect the anonymity of the living and the dignity of the dead.

Anyway, my friend is a very nice person who I'd happily trust with a highly valuable camel, but has one terrible flaw. As terrible flaws go, it's not overly dramatic. They're not addicted to gambling, they've never shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, and I'm fairly sure they haven't got a heroin habit (by which I mean injecting nasty substances rather than wearing a cape and preventing supercrime. That wouldn't be a flaw, that'd just be awesome.) The flaw they do have is cooking.

Now, lots of people are just bad cooks. They cook food that tastes disgusting, or that is badly burnt, or, in extreme cases, makes restaurant critics spontaneously combust upon just smelling it. My friend, however, is not just a bad cook. They're a destructive and unpredictable cook. The food is good, when it survives unharmed, but the preparation process... Cooks cheese on toast? Kitchen accidentally set on fire, if only temporarily. There are some who say that they once managed to make a whole chicken just disappear from an oven after accidentally invoking black magic instead of preparing a marinade. I read the webcomic Questionable Content, (which is really very good, despite what I'm about to say) and back right at the very beginning, one of the characters managed to burn down their house while making toast. I used to assume it was just a badly done plot device by an inexperienced writer to get the character in question to move in with the lead.

Then I met my friend, and suddenly I'm not so sure.

But, moving on, the event which I mentioned earlier, which is so utterly terrifying?

My friend plans to cook bear shaped biscuits.

Biscuits. Shaped like bears.

I'm sure you can see where this is going. My friend is the sort of person who lives in an increasingly whacky fifties sitcom. My friend is the only person I know who could possibly end up accidentally in a gay pride march. My friend is going to make biscuits shaped like bears.

At some point or other, they will gain a soul, accidentally, in the cooking process. Tiny bearlike biscuits, beating their fists with rage on the oven door to be let out. Biscuits that bite back, launching themselves on their attackers and savaging them in a generally ursine way. Tiny biscuits with all the pent up rage and malevolent evil that lurks in a bear's black heart. With the possible exception of Paddington.

It's going to be like a heavy metal album cover telling the story of the gingerbread man. So be prepared, internet. Be prepared for a day of bears.