Sunday, July 26, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Roast Day
It's Roast Day tomorrow. Jess and I are having the Grevilles over and I'm cooking a roast. But not just any roast, a Roast Day roast.
Allow me to elaborate.
Roast Day roast, by definition, is a roast that defines and occupies the entire day. Roast Day begins, as it falls on a Saturday, at a very leisurely noon-ish. I'll start a fire in a washing-machine drum in the backyard (to set the scene, the fence around my backyard is two-metre tall rusty corrugated iron with barbed wire atop, the back wall is a patchwork of varyingly-aged steel plating and the whole thing looks like a post-apocalyptic stronghold, a place from which to weather a zombie outbreak, but today - my friends - we roast!). In the drum goes a huge, cast-iron camp oven and in the camp-oven goes a 3kg shoulder of lamb. Beers are opened and the fire is watched for a few hours. Then some chicken breast fillets are tossed in, the fire angried up, and a half-dozen more beers are downed over the next few hours. Shit-talking commences. An accoustic guitar may come out. Laughter is free and boozy cheer surrounds, mixed with the smell of the lamb that's now been pressure-cooking in its juices for a good five hours. When the arse of the lump of lamb (now already deliciously tender and alive with aroma) is starting to caramelise in its own juices, it gets lifed up and a half kilo of spuds go in to both cook in lamb/chicken juices and form a scaffold for the meat to steam without touching the pot and risking burning). Another hour later, the sun has set, everyone is nicely sozzled and start at devouring a six-hour-roasted piece of pure fucking bliss.
The world may be a terrifying place, and life speeds by at a terrifying pace, but on Roast Day we slow down and enjoy. Because the next Roast Day might be a fortnight away.
Allow me to elaborate.
Roast Day roast, by definition, is a roast that defines and occupies the entire day. Roast Day begins, as it falls on a Saturday, at a very leisurely noon-ish. I'll start a fire in a washing-machine drum in the backyard (to set the scene, the fence around my backyard is two-metre tall rusty corrugated iron with barbed wire atop, the back wall is a patchwork of varyingly-aged steel plating and the whole thing looks like a post-apocalyptic stronghold, a place from which to weather a zombie outbreak, but today - my friends - we roast!). In the drum goes a huge, cast-iron camp oven and in the camp-oven goes a 3kg shoulder of lamb. Beers are opened and the fire is watched for a few hours. Then some chicken breast fillets are tossed in, the fire angried up, and a half-dozen more beers are downed over the next few hours. Shit-talking commences. An accoustic guitar may come out. Laughter is free and boozy cheer surrounds, mixed with the smell of the lamb that's now been pressure-cooking in its juices for a good five hours. When the arse of the lump of lamb (now already deliciously tender and alive with aroma) is starting to caramelise in its own juices, it gets lifed up and a half kilo of spuds go in to both cook in lamb/chicken juices and form a scaffold for the meat to steam without touching the pot and risking burning). Another hour later, the sun has set, everyone is nicely sozzled and start at devouring a six-hour-roasted piece of pure fucking bliss.
The world may be a terrifying place, and life speeds by at a terrifying pace, but on Roast Day we slow down and enjoy. Because the next Roast Day might be a fortnight away.
Science Time
So in the most noble of gentlemanly pursuits (besides ravaging the female house staff, firing an over-powered rifle into heritage-listed walls and sampling Holst from a Laserphone - a gramophone with a laser in it ), namely that of SCIENCE, I am handing over to my peers the results of my research. My SCIENCE research.
The most explosive compound in all creation is none other than red barrel paint. This startling conclusion, from a long career of video games, most specifically of the First Person Shooter persuasion, but creeping nefariously into any genre, is that the pigment used to colour a 44-gallon drum to any shade of red is bewilderingly volatile.
Now, if you've played any video game at all, you will surely and instinctively know that shooting a red barrel with any manner of projectile will cause it to explode. Since the bitmap graphic days this truism has been hammered into the psyche of every gamer of every level of the Mohs scare of core-hardness. Even your dear mother, having only played Tetris, will know on her first foray into Half-Life that shooting a red barrel requires a radius of safety. It simply goes without saying. Even in settings purportedly more realistic than others, such as the fake-acronym S.T.A.L.K.E.R (realism makes the monsters scarier, yo), you will find any cylindrical crimson container will detonate when disturbed as if it is filled with a gunpowder suspension in nitroglycerine. In short, it will go fucking BANG!
But regardless of setting and what possible purpose the container could have, the same degree of volatility is apparent. A shootout in a meat packing plant where the only reasonable explanation for the barrel is to house pig offcuts too foul for even dogfood, it will still go fucking BANG!
The only logical conclusion is the paint used to colour the barrels red. Which only leads to further questions.
Where is the red paint made? What insane level of Occupational Health and Safety Code of Practice could cover a facility responsible for the production of such a substance.
Why is there yet to be a video game gun battle scenario located in said facility.
But most direly important -
What the fuck would happen if you shot a red barrel filled with red barrel paint?
I propose, as did early opponents of atomic weapons research, that the resulting explosion would be sufficient to spark a chain reaction igniting all the oxygen in the entire atmosphere and irrevocably end all life on Earth.
So lets not do that, unless of course it is done in the hallowed cause of SCIENCE.
The most explosive compound in all creation is none other than red barrel paint. This startling conclusion, from a long career of video games, most specifically of the First Person Shooter persuasion, but creeping nefariously into any genre, is that the pigment used to colour a 44-gallon drum to any shade of red is bewilderingly volatile.
Now, if you've played any video game at all, you will surely and instinctively know that shooting a red barrel with any manner of projectile will cause it to explode. Since the bitmap graphic days this truism has been hammered into the psyche of every gamer of every level of the Mohs scare of core-hardness. Even your dear mother, having only played Tetris, will know on her first foray into Half-Life that shooting a red barrel requires a radius of safety. It simply goes without saying. Even in settings purportedly more realistic than others, such as the fake-acronym S.T.A.L.K.E.R (realism makes the monsters scarier, yo), you will find any cylindrical crimson container will detonate when disturbed as if it is filled with a gunpowder suspension in nitroglycerine. In short, it will go fucking BANG!
But regardless of setting and what possible purpose the container could have, the same degree of volatility is apparent. A shootout in a meat packing plant where the only reasonable explanation for the barrel is to house pig offcuts too foul for even dogfood, it will still go fucking BANG!
The only logical conclusion is the paint used to colour the barrels red. Which only leads to further questions.
Where is the red paint made? What insane level of Occupational Health and Safety Code of Practice could cover a facility responsible for the production of such a substance.
Why is there yet to be a video game gun battle scenario located in said facility.
But most direly important -
What the fuck would happen if you shot a red barrel filled with red barrel paint?
I propose, as did early opponents of atomic weapons research, that the resulting explosion would be sufficient to spark a chain reaction igniting all the oxygen in the entire atmosphere and irrevocably end all life on Earth.
So lets not do that, unless of course it is done in the hallowed cause of SCIENCE.
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