Raisin d'être

I just love typos.

Not 500 Words

If anyone's over here looking for a 500 Words assignment for next week I'm afraid my mind is still recovering from my vacation and is a total blank where writing is concerned.
I'll restart the 500 Words thing next Friday, but in the meantime …

I've been seriously neglecting my series on eating the weirdest, ickiest and most dangerous things I can find and now, thanks to Katie smuggling the things into the country I have the opportunity of ingesting probably the most disgusting and soul-destroying alleged foodstuff the planet has ever known.

This is not an experiment I feel safe conducting on my own so I've invited Phil over to join me.

Laydees and gentlemen, I give you - all the way from the USA …
That most awesomely destructive Weapon of Mass Obesity:
The Hostess Twinkie!

Ewwwwww!

If anyone feels like making one at home, here are the ingredients:
ENRICHED BLEACHED WHEAT FLOUR [ FLOUR, REDUCED IRON (what the fuck is "reduced iron"? Rust?), 'B' VITAMINS (NIACIN, THIAMINE MONONITRATE (B1), RIBOFLAVIN (B2), FOLIC ACID], SUGAR, WATER, CORN SYRUP, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE AND/OR ANIMAL SHORTENING (Animal Shortening? Is that when they cut the legs off?) (SOYBEAN, COTTONSEED AND/OR CANOLA OIL, BEEF FAT … Mmmmmmm … Beef Fat! Just what you're looking for in a dessert; slap it over your lemon sorbet. Yum), WHOLE EGGS, DEXTROSE, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: MODIFIED CORN STARCH, GLUCOSE, LEAVENINGS (SODIUM ACID PYROPHOSPHATE (isn't that an explosive?), BAKING SODA, MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE), SWEET DAIRY WHEY, SOY PROTEIN ISOLATE, CALCIUM AND SODIUM CASEINATE, SOY FLOUR, SALT, MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, POLYSORBATE 60, SOY LECITHIN, CORNSTARCH, CELLULOSE GUM, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOURS, SORBIC ACID (TO RETAIN FRESHNESS), YELLOW 5, RED 40.

Holy fucking crap! That's wholly fucking crap!

Combine all that stuff together in a big factory and you get these: sticky little sausagey cylinders of corn syrup and chemicals.

Well … Here goes nothing!

Katie well and truly threw down the gauntlet earlier this summer by eating a (brace yourselves) deep-fried Twinkie on a stick (GACK), so, as we big brave boys cannot let the girls have all the glory, open wide and let's eat Twinkie!

Gimme an "I"
Gimme a "C"
Gimme a "K"
Gimme a "Y"

Phil's actual verdict was "Ooh! They're quite nice!"

Sheesh! The sugar rush is going to kill me!

Gah! And pthah!

The awful, sickly-sweet taste of factory syrup and nasty chemicals. These things are truly gross!

They're kinda like chewing the foam rubber padding out of a cheap sofa that's been marinaded in corn syrup for a few years and then left to rot in a chemical dump.
Plus there's enough preservatives in there to ensure my corpse won't rot for decades after I'm dead. Though it may spontaneously combust from all the chemicals.

I'm writing this an hour or so after eating my Twinkie, having since flushed my tastebuds clean with green tea and then had a vigorous minty tooth-brushing session, but STILL all I can taste is sticky sickly sweetness.
EUGH!
Plus I now have a kind of chemical burn at the back of my throat.
ACK!

So far in this series we've eaten such things as whalemeat, wasabi chocolate, soy sauce flavoured Kit-Kat and tamarind poo, but Twinkies are easily the worst culinary experience I've endured to date.

Of course if anyone knows anything grosser I can put in my mouth, please send along a sample.

Parisien People

WTF Lundi

We spotted this charming fellow in a shop selling … er … cake decorations just off Quai de Valmy. Little wonder Minne Mouse looks so happy.

Click on him to make him bigger. Go on … you know you want to.

Relaxing In The Tuileries

Relaxing In The Tuileries can be tricky if you just can't get comfortable.

Though this guy seems nicely relaxed.

And Katie of course is quite at home here.


Apologies for not visiting anyone's blogs for a while but given the choice of Katie's company and that of the computer, Blogville's going to lose out until she's safely back in Berkeley next week.

Home Again (Doh)!

Well, we're back in rainy England and about to head off into Norwich to try to find sone decent baguettes (not much chance there) …

… and a decent breakfast (ditto).
More later.

Yay Paris!

Enjoying myself way too much to blog. Yadda yadda …

Bonjour!

Yay!
Bonjour from gloriously sunny Paris.
Katie and I are just back from coffee and croissants and about to head out and about. It's fabulous walking weather so we'll wander down to the river and the Tuileries and take it from there.

I'd post photos only I have far better things to do with my time so you'll have to wait until we get home.

A plus tard!

Yay!

Right. I'm off!

I don't expect I'll feel much like blogging while I'm in Paris with Katie but you never know.

While I'm away, Robyn will be very kindly taking over 500 Words, so pop across to her blog on Thursday for links to this week's stories.

Next week's sentence will be posted on Friday as usual.

Expect a ludicrous amount of Katie and Dive Do Paris photoposts when I get back.

Sorry I've not visited more this past week but I've been stupidly busy at work at the same time as getting everything ready for my first vacation in fourteen years.

Toodle Pip!

Oh, a quick PS:
Apologies, but I've had to switch on the stupid word verification thingie; I got in to the office this morning to find 54 Chinese spam comments that needed weeding out.
Twats!

TTFN

Supper … Splat!

Don't you just love it when that happens?
I've always hated those word verification things, but this week Blogger threw two actual words at me. Yay!

"Supper" at Vanda's …

… and a quite wonderful "Splat!" over at Todd's.

500 Words XIII - This Week's Sentence

Heads up.
It's time for this week's sentence.

This one's in honour of Vanda, in apology for my own adoration of Russian writers; it's from the only Russian writer she likes, the splendid Mikhail Bulgakov, and is taken from his incomparably anarchic and magical 'The Master And Margarita'.

The sentence is:
"Witchcraft once started, as we all know, is virtually unstoppable."

You know the rules. You know your places. Go to it!

500 Words XII - Story Time

Boy, howdy! Never tell your boss you're off on leave in a week. I have had a crap-mountain bigger than Everest dumped on me this week, which is why I've not been around on your (or even my own) blogs.

As it's Thursday, however, I get to spend a day working from home so I can at least enjoy reading this week's 500 Words stories. Yay!

The sentence for the week - in honour of Katie being in Paris - was taken from Victor Hugo's 'Les Misérables'.

It was:
'Between the walls of the two yards there was a dark and narrow street, the Rue de Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which seemed to be exactly what he was looking for.'

The rules you know and if you don't you're on the wrong blog.

Katherine's 'The Secret of Señhora Sete'

Oh, golly!
Weemen scare me enough already, but now Señhora Sete has me cowering behind the sofa.
Brr! What a gloriously dreadful creation.
Wonderful writing, terrible coffee and a secret you really, really don't want to discover. Hee hee.

Todd's 'Heist'

Hoorah for Todd's mind! Sheesh, it must be like living in a Terry Gilliam movie spending the day with thoughts like those.
Ah, "the sweet, toasted aroma of their theft."
With only a few deft strokes of his imagination Todd conjures up a complete world, fraught with dangers and delights.

Vanda's 'Paris Noir'

Woohoo! You know how much I love noir.
Fabulous, atmospheric fun from Vanda this week.
"The street was dark with something more than the night …"
Yay!
I loved this, every last word, and it left me gagging for more.

Dive's 'Two Sous'

Dive's been spending too much time with his head buried in Victor Hugo's masterwork. Not that anybody could ever spend too much time in there.

WTF Monday

500 Words XII - This Week's Sentence

Katie flies off from San Francisco to Paris today (bon voyage, honey), where I'll be joining her in a little over a week.
To divert myself from fussing and packing, this week's sentence is taken from the ultimate Parisian novel, that most comforting of winter comfort-books, Victor Hugo's sublime masterpiece, 'Les Misérables'.

The more established Blogville residents will know that as the nights draw in, Old Dive loves nothing more than to sit in my big old reading chair and wallow all winter in the delights of Dickens and the Big Russians (autumn's hardly started and I've already finished War and Peace, The Master And Margarita and a handful of Dickens), so to get myself in the mood for Paris I shall be losing myself in A Tale Of Two Cities and of course, Les Misérables.

This is the book that gave me one of my all-time favourite quotes, one that Katie and I shall be putting to good use in Paris: "To err is human; to stroll, Parisian."

However, this week's sentence is: 'Between the walls of the two yards there was a dark and narrow street, the Rue de Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which seemed to be exactly what he was looking for.'

The rules are here.
Enjoy!

500 Words XI - Story Time

What a splendid crop of stories we have for your coffee time edification this week.
This week’s sentence was of course taken from Edith Wharton’s ‘The Age of Innocence’.

It was:
‘“Tell me what you do all day,” he said, crossing his arms under his tilted-back head, and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle.’

Without further ado, let's launch into the stories:

Vanda's 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien'

Yay for racy, pacy romance and more in Paris! A fabulously frisky tale from Vanda this week.
Of course the fact that I'll soon be packing my suitcase to meet Katie in Paris for a romantic autumn break has no connection whatever with why I like this story so much.
Oh, no.
Not at all.
Er …

Katherine's 'Randomly Speaking'

Two - count 'em - TWO 500 Words sentences in one story this week from Katherine as she plays catch-up in spectacular fashion.
Brilliant, beautifully written and laugh-out-loud funny.
Yay!

Todd's 'Sterling'

Boy howdy, I wish I had Todd's imagination. I get totally lost in his stories and this is a pure delight.
I want so much to go sailing with Captain Sterling and to explore his weird world. I do hope he makes a comeback appearance in future stories.
Awesome!

Dive's 'Lunch'

Not content with last week's bromance, this week finds Dive at a gay pick-up in Central park.
Sheesh!
Let's hope he gets back to shooting people next week. This is worrying.

Any other stories will get added as they come in.
Next week's sentence tomorrow (as soon as I've figured out what it will be).