The Lair

Supermarkets go to seemingly elaborate lengths to actually make stuff you buy off them difficult to open. It’s like … the law or something. Some of the more exotic edible purchases I make are bottled. Therefore, it follows that I have a whole range of tools handy to prise the tamper proof, spill proof and 100% proof tops from these bottles. Since this is ol drac we’re talking about here - I can’t always be bothered reminding myself of where I left the can-opener swiss army knife gadget. So I have occasionally resorted to jimmying the aforementioned tamper proof lids with a common or garden kitchen knife. For extra credit, the knife is serrated; which I’m pretty sure is against the Geneva convention. I have yet to jab myself in the eye with this juryrigged bottle opening strategem. A sliced finger, however, is only averted by dumb luck rather than any adroitness on my part.

So shopping for groceries a couple of days ago, I had no qualms in slipping a bottle of confusingly, yet intriguingly named “Sweet Chillie and Garlic - oh, all right, let’s make it sound less like spicy sugarwater by adding a Thai in there somewhere” sauce into my bag. Primary ingredient? Water. Secondary ingredient? Sugar. Somewhere towards the end, just before the preservatives? Yes, chillie. But whatever. It tastes decent and that’s all I cared. Enough with the judgement. I bought it and I poked it in the bag.

Yeah. So tamper proof lid? Not so much. I was wondering why I suddenly smelled something delightfully garlicky, almost like an airfreshener made for a stereotypical French kitchen or something. But meh. I thought nothing of it. As it happens though, I had unknowingly perfected the fine art of garlic and chillie infused apricots, garlic and chillie infused raisins, garlic and chillie infused bamboo shoots and last but not least, a garlic and chillie splattered soy sauce bottle. All I was missing, it seems, was spam. Reproof for the tamper proof lid, basically.

I can live with chillie and garlic on everything. That’s fine. The problem is that two rinses later, the bag still has a whiff of the garlic on it. I’m a fan, but I think the library may have issues with a garlicky smelling Events As Grammatical Objects. So. Err. Repeated squirts of Feb aren’t cutting it either.

domestic crisis of the week - /fin. No real solution, but hey, it’s garlic. Slip a beret on my head and call me French if you like.

In other news, I was recently sent a link to StripCreator; to handroll your own comic strips without the need for tedious artistry. I’ve made a few throwaway comics about the HP7 wanking. I love it since I am marginally less talented at drawing random stick figures on a comic strip panel than I am at composing witty commentary. More fodder for Keen’s rise of the amateur then. We’re all writers, journalists, cameramen, armchair generals, incisive political (t)wits and now, million selling cartoonists. Or not.