'Tea Party' used to be a phrase with such positive connotations...

Recently, I've been drinking more tea than I used to. At least, I'm fairly sure there was a time when I drank less than a million billion cups of tea a day. I only really started drinking the hot stuff while working in a tea shop with Meattrain and Vegatrain. You might be thinking that the three of us living together while also working in a tea shop together would make us the quaintest share house in the world, but you're probably only thinking that if you've stumbled across this page by accident and have never actually met any of us. Most people, when asked to recall the first time they visited our old house (which I believe has now been demolished?), will tell you a story that will almost definitely involve one of the boys throwing kitchen knives at a target. Just the other day I found myself asking Vegatrain why exactly it was that he set Meattrain's bookcase on fire that one time (it was because Meattrain had been using a deoderant can and lighter to throw him some flames). I have done my best to train them out of it, but pyromaniacs will be pyromaniacs. The best I can do is encourage them to throw wine around instead.

But back to tea.

I've been drinking a lot of tea lately. I have both a wonderful selection of teas and a wonderful selection of tea pots available to me. I've been drinking it for the taste, for warmth, for relaxation and even as an attempt to prevent myself from flying into a fit of murderous rage. Although my choice of crockery for that last one may have been a tad counter-productive:

Exhibit A

I've also learned a lot about the various types of tea. One thing in particular I have learned is that man, oh man, do I want a slice of the chamomile teabag industry. What a sweet, sweet pot that must be. You see, what a lot of people who buy chamomile in teabags don't realise is that for the price they would gladly pay for a cup of the stuff in a cafe, or for a small box of pre-packaged chamomile teabags, you could buy a whole pillow-case full of loose chamomile. All you need to do is whack a bit of string on that bitch and you can sell it for an utterly insane profit. Genius.

I've had a think about this and I'm pretty sure there are two reasons why you can get away with this type of nonsense. First, because most people don't know about it. The second reason is because amongst the people who drink a lot of herbal teas and chamomile and the like, you find quite a lot of a certain type of person. For argument's sake, let's just call them 'hippies'. You see, hippies are used to paying exorbitant prices for organic produce. And often, there are good reasons for those prices. But sometimes, I think it's just because the sellers of those products have realised what they can get away with. There is no easier way to sell someone anything than by agreeing with their politics. 

Customer: Bit pricey for a bag of leaves, innit?

Me: That's just because of the new tax you have to pay for not killing puppies. This flippin' government, I tells ya.

Customer: Damn straight! Here, have all my money. Keep up the good work!

There you go, you've just completed Marketing 101. And don't go thinking I'm having a crack at hippies because I'm anti-environment or some rubbish. As you probably know, I'm a vegetarian. In fact, I'm so dedicated to recycling that when I make a typing error, I'll only delete the letters I can't reuse for the phrase I was trying to write. It just feels so wasteful to delete perfectly good letters like that.

-Smackie Onassis


P.S. I hope you've been enjoying the updates from this blog's newly appointed 'Future Reporter', your friendly neighbourhood Vegatrain.

Important News Bulletin: Insect Overlords

Have you ever worried that some kind of oversized insect race is going to take over the planet?

I'm going to go out on a limb, dear reader, and assume that you have. Because of course you have.

If you do happen to be one of the few people who have never had this concern, you're probably sitting at your computer, smirking. Oversized insects, you might be chuckling to yourself, what kind of stupid moron would believe that?

Well skeptics, I sure hope your microwave has a 'words' setting because you are about to be eating a certain few choice utterances.

Look at that beast. That's a moth. That thing that's covering it? A CD stacker dealie thing. I don't know what those things are supposed to be called, but the point is: that is a moth with a wingspan the size of a CD.

Let me tell you what happened here.

Vegatrain and I were sitting in the courtyard, minding our own business. Suddenly, we heard a frenzied flapping sound coming from the branches of the tree above us. At first, we ignored it. We're pretty used to the wildlife that frequents our courtyard, from the infamous Senator Mousington to the dreaded Drill Sergeant Jack Hornet.

But the flapping continued, getting more and more rabid and distracting.

"There's a bird caught in that branch," I said, squinting to see as far as I could into the tree.

It was dark and I had lost my glasses yet again, but I could just make out the movement of a pair of wings, fluttering around in clear distress. Worried that an innocent bird might be hurt, Vegatrain got up to see if he could find an appropriate tool for trying to free it.

It's a good thing he got up when he did.

Mere moments after he moved away from his seat, the creature in the tree suddenly plummeted to the table, inches from where Vegatrain had been sitting. It landed with a thud and lay motionsless, assumed by both of us to be dead.

Cautiously, we went to examine the body.

To our surprise (and horror), it wasn't a bird. It was a moth. A moth the size of a bird. And not a small bird either.

We put the first thing we could find that would fit on top of it, as caution generally seems like the best option when dealing with creatures that are clearly not of this world. But at least it was motionless. Dead. We were looking forward to palming it off to Meattrain for some hardcore dissection action.

But then, in a twist straight out of the opening scene of a B-grade monster movie, it came back to life.

It started flapping its wings. Just a bit at first, enough to let us know that it had woken up. But soon it came to realise that it had been trapped. Captured. Like a wild pokemon. It was not cool with that. It had forcefully freed itself from the tree, only to be captured by man. It flapped harder, becoming more and more agitated. At one point, I was sure it was going to blow the case right away. I kept my distance, watching it.

"Do we... do we kill it?" I asked.

And yes, maybe we should have killed it. Unfortunately for the world at large, we are both vegetarians and as such, are pussies when it comes to killing things. Especially when those things look like they could fight back.

So we let it go. Took it out the front of the house and released it back into the wild. Maybe we'll never know why it was so big, or how many of these creatures there are. Maybe it will breed with another insect, a spider for example, to create a race of creatures even more horrifying. Maybe those creatures will take over our government. Let's hope they at least have a decent tertiary education policy.

Maybe it's a coincidence that it turned up in the courtyard of our house, which also happens to be the residence of a certain (mad?) scientist, who just so happens to have a radiation licence and access to substances that most people will likely never even see.

Maybe we'll never know.

-Smackie Onassis

Snakes On An Everything

I actually haven't seen Snakes On A Plane. It's not that I wasn't interested. It's just that I saw a lot of the meme action leading up to it and by the time the movie came out, I felt like I'd pretty much seen it already.

To be honest, the idea of snakes on a plane isn't the most bone-chilling plane scenario I can think of. I quite like snakes. Even when I was a kid, trips to the Reptile Park were the highlight of any holiday period. Personally, I've always found the idea of Outbreak of Gastroenteritis On A Plane to be a whole lot more terrifying. What would you do?? There's only those two tiny little cubes of bathroom space for the whole plane. There would be bodily emissions going everywhere. And not in a good way.

ANYWAY. Snakes.

Liking snakes in Australia is probably not the most intuitive thing. If you see a snake in your backyard, you're not really supposed to want to touch it. You're basically supposed to get as far away from it as possible, because that bitch can and will straight up murder you and then slither home to laugh about it with its little snake friends.

One of the best news stories I can remember happening in my home town took place in our local David Jones. It was unfortunately timed; the store was located on a strip of mall where all the shops were closing down and being replaced by crackheads dragging their girlfriends along the ground by their hair. The council had this big campaign to try and encourage people back into the CBD. I remember writing a bunch of letters to the editor trying to explain how putting more meter parking on the street (without any parking garage options apart from the David Jones carpark) while at the same time talking about cutting the public transport options really isn't the best way to attract people to any given area. Unfortunately, it is against the law for a local council to do anything that falls under the categories of 'logical' or 'productive' so the CBD was in pretty bad shape.

It was around this time that they had to temporarily shut down the David Jones unexpectedly one day. Because there was a brown snake hanging out (literally) in the automatic door. Just dangling there, setting off the sensors, preventing anyone who wanted to continue living from shopping for perfumes and such. In the end they had to get animal control in to remove it, where they discovered that a family of the bastards was living in the roof. Not the best for business.

But still, I love snakes. The venomous ones aren't so much my favourites, but that doesn't mean I can't have a soft spot for the ones who don't do all the killing. My old friend, who I have referred to in this blog as 'Binny' on the insistence of my housemates, had a snake in his care for some time. It wasn't his; his old housemate had absconded to Queensland for a job, but had left a great majority of his things in Binny's house. Including his pet snake, Precious.

I loved that snake. I can't count the number of times Binny and I came home drunk and decided to get the snake out to play. I also can't count the number of times I said that to people who asked what I'd done the night before and then refused to believe that it wasn't an innuendo.

Precious did bite me once. Apparently she was a bit temperamental that day. When I reached into the tank, she reared up and fanged me. I showed off that wound for as long as it lasted.

"Oh what's that? Oh, just a snake bite. Venomous? Well technically yes, but I'm so naturally hardcore that I already have venom running through my veins instead of blood and it doesn't have any effect on me."*

Precious was not venomous. Sadly, I am not really that hardcore. I am not even a little bit hardcore. But Meattrain, if you will recall, is made of nothing but steel and brawn and testosterone. He is part Dr House, part Indiana Jones, part guy from one of those CSI shows that I have never watched and thus cannot efficiently reference. As part of his big fancy job, he had to do a component of 'snake awareness' training, which turned out to have nothing to do with how to pick your hookers in Bangkok, as I first assumed.

He recently undertook a series of tests out in the outback which I believe also included driving cars off cliffs. I'm assuming, as with all of these tests, it was considered a pass if he was still alive at the end. The snake test also sounded pretty intense. Basically, my understanding of what happened is they gathered a bunch of Australia's Most Venomous (including one pissed off python they'd simply found on the road on the way to the test) in a small room and threw them at my housemate. They chucked a bunch of snakes at him, and he had to deal with them without dying.

I'm assuming he passed.

-Smackie Onassis

*Disclaimer: this is not true in any way, not by any definition of the word 'true'. Except perhaps where 'true' is defined to mean 'false'.

Bonus Image

Wine Fight

We had a wine fight once.

When I say 'wine fight' you might be thinking that I'm putting a spin on something, that it's goint to be a more boring event that I'm slyly twisting so I can call it a wine fight. Let's be clear: when I say 'we had a wine fight', I mean that Vegatrain, Meattrain and myself once found ourselves in the kitchen at our old house, covered in white wine and flinging more of the stuff around everywhere.

I've thought before that the house the three of us share (with Richard Melons, who keeps himself separate from such shenanigans) isn't really a grown-up's house. The central room is an entertainment centre that consists of three TVs, multiple gaming consoles, a few couches and a big ol' stack of beanbags*. As I have mentioned, the centrepiece is often a top hat that we keep filled with chupa-chups.

But then I realised, this is a grown-up's house. It's just for the type of grown-up every kid wants to be when they're older, rather than the type they actually turn into when they cave to pressure and start being sensible. And that's kind of a good analogy for the way we act most of the time.

Let me explain the wine fight.

To understand how it started, you have to have a basic grip on how much I love bargains. For those of you who don't know, I really like bargains. I like them more than a friend. If I see a really good bargain, I have to cash in on it. If it's something I can't possibly use, I will try and think of someone I can tell about it. I once called Vegatrain's sister-in-law from the shops because there was an amazing special on tuna and she was the only person I knew who eats it. When a bargain is that good, I must at the very least witness someone taking advantage of it. I call it 'Vicarious Bargain Joy'.

I was out searching for some specials when I found a really, really cheap cask of white wine. It even looked like reasonably decent wine, I guess, all things considered. I bought it, thinking I would drink it for sure. Naturally I had one glass and put it away when I realised just how awful it was. It sat on our kitchen table for some time.

Until one fateful day. Meattrain, bored and restless, sat down at the table and poured himself a full stein of the stuff. He proceeded to look at it like a drunk cowboy looks at a racial stereotype and skulled the whole thing in one move. It was pretty impressive.

I'm not sure who made the next move. It was either me or Vegatrain, but it was a long time ago and I don't quite remember. Whoever it was poured a proper glass of wine, looked at it nervously (neither of us can best our housemate in the being-a-man stakes) and promptly threw it all over Meattrain, who was still sitting at the kitchen table. From there, all bets were off. Several litres of wine were thrown, ending up all over the three of us and any surfaces or inanimate kitchen equipment that happened to be in the crossfire.

And no, it didn't feel that great to be covered head to toe in goon. But I have to say, it wasn't nearly as bad as the time the boys stuck a 1.25L Pepsi bottle upside-down in the back of my pants and then unscrewed the lid. Rotten boys.

-Smackie Onassis

*For awhile the beanbags were working as my chair in the study. When we set up the study, we had four desks but only three appropriate chairs so my section of the study became a pile of beanbags in the corner with my lapdesk/laptop combination. However, after a month or so I found a chair under a pile of laundry in my room (seriously) and now I can sit at a desk like a proper person.

P.S. I haven't updated in ages because I've been heaps sick and stuff. But I am feeling better now so it's all good :)

Ride The Meattrain

Today when Meattrain got home from work, he told me that there were three things he did at work today.

1. Read a facebook message I had sent him re: fisting.

2. Read my blog

3. Start his own blog

He was a bit distraught that the name 'Ride The Meat Train' was taken (WHO IS USING THIS NAME? WHO?), but then settled on Let The Meat Cake.

I am glad he has adopted this nickname.

-Smackie Onassis

On The Entertainment Value of Fetish Porn

Most people who know me are probably aware that I totally dig fetishes. I don't get aroused by them, or use them for any kind of sexual purpose at all really, but holy hell, I can't get enough of them. I find them both hysterically funny and intensely fascinating.

I'm about to start a psychology degree by correspondence. While the whole subject of psychology is interesting to me, I'm hoping to eventually do post-graduate research. Specifically in the area of sexual fetishes. Because, man, what even the hell. When someone has a fetish for swallowing another person whole and then inflating to twice their size before pooing them out (This is a real fetish. There are whole forums on the internet dedicated to it.), I just... I mean, just why... how, even? I want to know.

Last night, Meattrain brought up a fetish that he finds particularly funny, the one that involves getting your jollies by cooking and eating someone. Or, alternatively being cooked and eaten yourself. In a simpler time, there might have been one or two cases of these kinds of people ever finding each other and actually carrying out these acts. Then in the first week of the internet, there was ten of them*. I had, of course, heard a lot about this fetish, and followed the legal battles that always ensued when the courts were all "Hey! You murdered that dude and ate him!" and got the strange and unexpected response of "Yeah, but he was totally gagging for it."

Meattrain asked me if I had actually seen any of their porn. I hadn't, because unlike my housemate, I have a soul. However, when he described just how funny it was, I started getting pretty curious. See, it's very hard to make acceptable porn for a fetish that involves cooking and eating another human being. You can't have sex with someone you've just skinned and boiled, I guess. The way these guys have dealt with this is to make soft-core porn that consists of attractive women, trussed up and covered with food. Meattrain described one image he particularly liked where a women was done up to look like a turkey, complete with a banana sticking into her "lady bits". Naturally, his main problem with this image was the fact that you can't put banana with turkey because it would plain old ruin the flavour. He suggested a parsnip instead, although Vegatrain thought a carrot would do the job nicely.

After this discussion, Vegatrain and I went into the courtyard for a tea-break, and I couldn't help mentioning how I excited I was to look up this website. Vegatrain responded by burping loudly, explaining that with my talking about porn he wanted to give the worst possible impression of us to any neighbours who might be listening. I agreed and played it up to the best of my ability.

Smackie: I am sure looking forward to a large serving of porns tonight.

Vegatrain: The women in porn are often looking forward to large servings themselves!

I didn't actually end up looking up those images, as my computer promptly decided it didn't want anything to do with it and refused to let me do anything but listen to twee pop and play pokemon like a good little girl.

But, if you're that curious, I looked it up just now and it is pretty disturbing.

Warning: That link is not safe for work, unless you work in a place called Kannibal Kitchen, which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist at all, so why would you lie like that?

-Smackie Onassis

*not verifiable (i.e. I made that up)

An Article In Favour Of An Ant-Based Radioactive Superhero

I'm going to put it out there: ants are probably the most underrated awesome creatures on the entire planet. Now that Meattrain has a job being a chemistry dude at a uranium mine, we have spent some time discussing how likely it is that he is going to be bitten by some kind of radioactive creature and develop super-powers. We also discussed, if he were to set this up on purpose (“hypothetically”), which would be the coolest creature to give him his powers. Overwhelmingly, everyone seemed to agree that you couldn’t go past the classic, the spider, because those things are pretty hardcore I guess. And it’s true, for sheer murdering prowess, you can’t go past the spider.

“But what about ants?” I suggested, being instantly laughed back into silence. In a world where a spider can kill you in an hour without even getting up from its tiny spider couch, ants don’t seem like leaders in the creepy-crawly kingdom. But come on guys, give them a chance.

There was a friday night a while ago where my good friend Buglustre was at a party. She didn’t really know anyone there and, meanwhile, I was at home reading about ants (and loving it, I assure you). What sort of ended up happening was that I would text her something interesting I had learned about ants, and she would use it as a conversation starter. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very good move. Those people still probably remember her as ‘that weird ant girl’. 

But seriously, how are people not interested in ants? In my opinion, there is just so much potential for a radioactive ant-based superhero that would TOTALLY kick arse. Here is why:

First of all, ants can lift up to twenty times their body weight. That's an obvious superhero advantage. There's the amazing speed as well. If an ant were a dude he would be able to run as fast as a racehorse. Are you listening to this, Meattrain? Can your fancy spiderman run that fast?

But these aren’t the most amazing things about ants. Not even close. Have you EVEN HEARD about the Paraponera, a totally bitchin South American ant? Basically, this ant can hurt you so, so badly, and it is not even radioactive yet. Yet.* 

And, yes, I know about Ant-Man, but that guy was totally not living up to his full potential as an ant representative in the superhero world. As far as I'm aware, he couldn't do much except shrink down to tiny size, which is kind of the opposite of a superpower, really. 'Hey Crime, I am going to thwart you by making myself conveniently sized for you to totally squish me with your shoe'.

Get back to me on that one, Comic Books.

-Smackie Onassis

*For more amazingly hardcore ant facts, consult your local Cracked article, such as this one: http://www.cracked.com/article_15816_the-5-most-horrifying-bugs-in-world.html