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At roughly 9’o clock on Saturday morning my peaceful slumber was rudely awakened by my door bell. As I answered the intercom a voice on the other side mumbled “Delivery”. My patio’s lounge set has arrived! My excitement soon turned into revulsion as felt something wet under my foot. As my eyes hesitantly wondered down I noticed I was standing in a small pool of blood, precisely something I yearn for on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. Mortified I turned around to discover the whole area from my study to my lounge covered with the evidence of a struggle. Damn, another murder! With the delivery men waiting for me to let them in, I had to swallow my disgust, wipe the still warm blood of my foot, go outside and let them in pretending not to possibly be hiding a dead avian body under my coffee table or being Norman Bates’ mother.
After the delivery men finished unloading our furniture I headed back inside the house of horror to go and inspect the extent of the massacre and search for the corps. It looked like a feather pillow exploded in my lounge, aesthetically very unappealing and the fact that I am allergic to feathers also didn’t help much to improve the situation. Quite annoyed I called our cats but they pretended to be temporarily hard of hearing probably because they could tell from my voice daddy wasn’t amused. After I finished cleaning up the murder scene one thing troubled me. I couldn’t find the body. I searched high and low and nothing, not even a beak or a toe nail. The only reasonable deduction that could be made was that whoever killed John Dove also ate him!!!
Not knowing who the culprit was all of them would now have to be dewormed and another creative exercise of let’s hide the medication in your food and pretend I didn’t while you stare at me with those “do you think I am stupid, I saw you spike my food” looks! Promptly followed by “If you don’t eat it I will have to force open your mouth and shove a tablet down your throat” and ending with screaming and scratching. A full hour passed before my little fur balls decided to crawl out of their respective hiding places pretending like nothing had happened and all four being the pinnacle of innocence and good behaviour. With their hearing now miraculously restored they marched straight to the fridge demanding a tasty bowl of milk to wash down their pigeon Carpaccio breakfast.
Apart from being a competent bird, lizard and mice assassin who kill for sport and not necessity our little one now also is reaching maturity. She is almost 6 months old and hormones are starting to kick in signalling it’s time to get her spayed. The first time I noticed something was up was last week. Lying on the sofa watching television she climbed onto my leg and started to hump it. This is not normal behaviour for a female cat and hubby even jokingly commented that maybe she’s a lesbian. At first I thought it was funny, even cute but when it happened again the next evening it wasn’t funny anymore. You see, every time I would move my leg she’d make faint cat sex noises, bite into my leg and her innocent demeanour soon turned a tad slutty and I was starting to feel violated. It was decided there and then that an urgent appointment must be made at the vet before she discovers tom cats and gets knocked up or god forbid falls in love with my leg.
Our baby is scheduled to go to the vet tomorrow. It breaks my heart to think that she will have to spend the night there alone, in a cage, scared, hungry and confused, wondering whether she’s being punished for killing that damn pigeon. Our new vet is very sympathetic and it was explained that our kitten had to spend the night there to make sure that she doesn’t eat anything before the operation on Wednesday morning. Our baby loves her food and this will be real torture for her, something I am sure she will remember for years to come and ensure hubby and I will be punished every opportunity she gets. Knowing her, I am also convinced that she will milk this vet experience for all it’s worth, playing on our guilty conscience having us comply with every demand for bowls of milk and countless other treats as we did with all the others.Till next time.
Kathy Griffin does the Bible Belt
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Mastering the Art of French Cooking is the Kamasutra of Food Porn. It’s more like an instruction manual than a cookbook and is almost 700 pages thick. Just looking at it makes me nervous. So when the time came to actually attempt one of the recipes, I did so with great caution. You see most of the recipes runs over multiple pages and involve multiple steps which if done incorrectly will lead to certain disaster resulting in Julia Child’s soul becoming unsettled and her coming back and haunting your kitchen or beating you with a meat tenderizer. So there is definite pressure to get it right the first time!
Julia Child once famously said “If you can read you can cook”, however she failed to mention in order to be able to cook other essential skills must also be acquired – the ability to multitask, perfect time management and being able to stay calm under pressure. As I thumbed my way through the Julia Instruction Manual of Food I was searching for a recipe that I thought would be relatively simple, maybe a little bit challenging and would leave me sane once the cooking was finished. After much deliberation and 2 hours later I finally committed to attempting her Boeuf À la Monde (Beef Braised in Red Wine) pages 309 to 312.
After carefully studying the recipe and making sure I understood exactly what was needed, hubby and I headed to the supermarket as some crucial ingredients was absent from our pantry – mainly copious amounts of alcohol! You see almost all of Julia’s recipes contains alcohol, if it’s not wine, it’s brandy, port or whiskey or all of the aforementioned. For this recipe I needed to buy 2 bottles of red wine (1 for cooking and 1 for drinking) and a bottle of brandy (for cooking, maybe drinking if I screw things up). An ingredient I have never used before and that was essential was allspice berries – not something readily available in South African supermarkets, but I finally track some down in a Chinese mini-supermarket. With a prime cut of pot-roast rump, wine, brandy, allspice berries, vegetables and a new casserole dish we headed home.
As I started arranging all 13 ingredients of the recipe on my kitchen counter I had a mini panic attack. This was not going to be a breeze and it was going to be labour intensive and I was feeling overwhelmed! After several deep breaths and a small prayer I got stuck in. The beef had to marinade for 12 to 24 hours (refrigerated) and if we had any change of eating by 1pm on Sunday I had to get the rump into its boozy marinade within the next 30 minutes. Frantic chopping started, exact measurements made and 45 minutes later the tied-up piece of beef (yes Julia provides meat bondage instruction to) was submerged in its marinade to slowly get inebriated. With the meat safely tucked away in the fridge I successfully completed Phase I of the four phase cooking process, and I was chuffed with myself and celebrated with a glass of red wine.
The next morning at exactly 10am Phase II needed to start – browning the meat. Julia is very particular about this. The meat had to be placed on a drip tray at exactly 9:30am and then towel dried. Once just the right amount of oil (or lard) starts to smoke in your pan the rump must be browned on all sides. This was the first time I actually managed to brown any piece of meat so perfectly, I guess the towel drying did the trick. Then the marinade had to be boiled to reduce it by half and soon Phase II was completed and neither I nor my kitchen was set on fire. Now Phase III could start – cooking. Running 30 minutes behind schedule the meat finally made it to the oven. It had to cook for 3 hours with the meat being turned every 30 minutes. During the 3 hours I paid 14 visits to the oven, 6 to turn the meat and 8 just to stare at the casserole dish and smell the divine smells that were slowly permeating the kitchen.
After an exhausting 3 hours the meat was finally cooked and it shrunk exactly as much as Julia said it would. With the meat cooked I was ready for the fourth and final phase of the recipe – making the gravy (I love gravy, hence my cholesterol problem!) Again I needed more wine to mix the flower with which to thicken the sauce. The gravy took me 35 minutes and it came out lightly thickened as per Julia’s instructions. The gravy also tasted perfect and didn’t require any additional seasoning. At 2:25pm (an hour and twenty five minutes behind schedule) I was ready to serve lunch.
As I took out my best French serving plate and arranged the meat and parsley and garlic potatoes (which I cooked while preparing the gravy) I admired my culinary accomplishment. However, I couldn’t help but think I forgot something. Hmmm, Julia... what is missing? Utterly horrified I realized I completely forgot to cook the braised onions and carrots that were supposed to be the side dish. It being too late to cook it the only thing I could do was quietly apologized to Julia, begged for her forgiveness and serve the braised beef and potatoes on its own and pretend this is how it was meant to be served. As hubby and I took our first bites it was unanimous – we both thought it was freaking divine, like an orgasm on a plate!!! It took me two days to make, but at the end was well worth the effort and stress. I did exactly what Julia told me and the Boeuf À la Monde came out perfectly, minus the forgotten side dish.
I love cooking almost as much as I love eating good food. From now on, once a month Julia Child will pay my kitchen a visit and the aromas and tastes of France will fill my house on a Sunday. As I make my way through Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I know there will be many mini-breakdowns, some crying and loads of dirty dishes but most importantly good food made with love and shared with good friends – all under the critical supervision of Julia Child of course.
The 2nd of August will be the two year anniversary of the tragic death of Michael Causer. During the early hours of 25 July 2008 Michael was brutally assaulted by two other teenagers because he was gay. Michael sustained serious brain injuries and later died in hospital as a result of his injuries at the tender age of 18. This was a senseless act but what makes it worse is that Michael is but one of many who lost their lives due to homophobia. Gay bashings happens every day, every day people are attacked due to their sexual orientation and every day families and friends have to deal with aftermath of the ignorance and intolerance that is homophobia.
Sometimes homophobia’s lethal effects are not directly handed down by gay bashers. Homophobia doesn’t always take the life of a gay soul through assault. Sometimes bullying, teasing and the continued belittling of a person are enough. Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover age 11 hanged himself on 5 April 2009 after suffering months of bullying at school that included daily taunts of being gay. In July 2008 Alex Wildman age 14 committed suicide as homophobic taunts at school and physical abuse by fellow students got too much for him to put up with. In April 2009 a bully publically said to Eric Mohat age 17 “Why don’t you go home and shoot yourself, no one will miss you” and consequently he did! Eric was also frequently called gay, fag, queer and homo, often times in front of teachers who did nothing to stop it. These are just a few tragic examples of something that happen every day, tragic examples of how homophobia kills.
Personally I too have experience the wrath of homophobia. Having been openly gay in High School I too was the victim of bullying, endless taunting and homophobic slurs. It was hurtful, embarrassing and even made me feel ashamed of who and what I was at the time. But, I was lucky – I survived it. The sheer will not to let those bastards win, to let them have power over me and to make me feel less than human because I was gay motivated me to go on and endure it. I also survived two gay bashings (at the age of 17 and then again at 18) which also made me feel ashamed. I was ashamed out of fear. I was ashamed having had to tell my parents I was beaten-up because I was gay and I feared that they would think or even say “That’s what you get for being gay”. Today I know better! All these experiences made me stronger and more determined to make a success of my life and to never again be ashamed of who or what I am. But I am one of the lucky ones.
Why is it that in a modern society antiquated prejudices are still allowed to plague us? Why do children think its ok to bully, assault and kill other children just because they are thought to be or are gay? Why do grown men prowl the streets near gay clubs waiting to pounce on an innocent person and beat the shit out of them? Does this make them feel more mucho, more manly, does it make them feel better about themselves? What does it say about us as a society that we are allowing such travesties to occur?
Every one of us carries with us a responsibility to change the world for the better. I know this sound fantastic, but just sit and think about it for a minute. Homophobia is a social disease spread by people and allowed to exist by people. If people changed their attitudes and consciously fight homophobia it may just be eradicated and it will be done one person at a time. If you hear a person make a homophobic comment do you speak out? If someone says “that is so gay”, do you correct them? If you see a child being bullied do you intervene? If you don’t, ask yourself why, what are you afraid of?
Homophobia is killing our youth, it’s killing our friends, and it’s killing our brother and sisters. Just because you may not be affected by it right this minute should not preclude you from doing something to help stop it. It’s time we take a moment and reach out and help the children on the verge of suicide because they are being bullied, the gay teens struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation who don’t feel safe in their own homes, the homosexuals living in communities and countries that’s intolerant with real threats to their lives. Get involved with your local community centres, donate whatever money you can to foundations or just do the simplest thing possible – talk to each other, be proud of yourself and be proud of our community. Anyone who has ever been affected by homophobia should know better than to be indifferent. It’s been 14 years since I was last gay bashed and I am not ignorant to think that will never happen to me again. There are still far too many with hatred towards gay people that walk the streets and if you and I stay quiet about it the next victim may just be you.
Too many gay people have been taken from us due to homophobia. Heaven is filled with angels who were sent there by the deeds of others with hatred in their hearts. Let’s never forget our brothers and sisters who paid the ultimate price for being who and what they were. Let’s honour their memory by each and every day reaching out, educating and spreading love. It only takes one person to make a difference, let that one person be you.
Till next time
Life Interrupted
Last year July I was requested to get involved in a high profile court case that would grip the imagination of the South African public. Not being one to shy away from an opportunity to learn and grow professionally I accepted the challenge and got stuck in. The court case read like a crime thriller that included Spy Bosses, Drug Trafficking, Money Laundering, Murder and Blackmail. The intrigue was supplemented with Drugs, Lies and a Videotape with shocking revelations and betrayals. During this time my life was taken over by the beast that was this court case. Working 16 hour days, having my face plastered in a few newspapers and news bulletins, I was sometimes accompanied by unsavory characters. This caused my sister to ring me up the one evening very concerned that she was seeing me on the news with a Mafia Boss and was worried that the public would assume I was one of his cronies. She made me laugh as the thought of me looking like a Mafia Boss’s bodyguard was a hilarious prospect.
When we bought our new home, we took a leap of faith. Our old apartment was not yet sold and we faced the prospect of having to pay two bonds. A daunting prospect, to say the least, as we could not really afford both. So after much deliberation hubby and I decided to rent the apartment out in the interim. This is when we encountered The Lies that People Tell. It was a particularly busy time in my life, having just finished up my involvement in the big court case, having just moved into our new house and started with phase I of the renovations and in the midst of changing careers. So at that stage neither hubby nor I had much tolerance for drama or additional stress. Yet the bitch that is drama found us!
In the mean time I have changed employers reminding me of the article I wrote We May be Fruits but we are no Fucking Peaches. Now 3 months later I have settled in quite nicely but still have to finalize my permanent contract there. People at my new job are still exceptionally friendly, which still freaks me out every now and again, but I have come to learn they are not on drugs and it isn’t an episode of the Twilight Zone. They are genuinely nice people and I enjoy their company and am looking forward to a long and prosperous career there.Jason Stuart - Gay Dating
Charges against Paris were later dropped. However, Jennifer paid an admission of guilt fine and have 14 days to leave South Africa or face deportation. We are not likely to see Jennifer in South Africa again (yea like we will miss her!). Paris on the other hand appears to love South Africa, with every other tweet raving about the country.
