The Cheeseblog

Three lovely hits from the country of Niue! Welcome, supple readers from an island I had never heard of until today.

Having a website is teaching me all the geography I was determined not to learn in school. I like to imagine why people from Estonia are clicking here (I like to pretend it’s not that they are spammmmmmmers, thanks) and hope that those peoples’ days were lifted or shaped a little by what they found.

Oh, sweet humidity
I sing this song to thee
Please enter the air
And curl my hair
Help me to breathe
Moisten my chair
Give me the strength
To order pizza
Humidity.

Who likes Nickelback, raise your hand? Hello, at the back?

Oh, the songs speak to you? And you like the way they really rock it out? And Chad Kroeger is dreamy? Did you know he likes to drink Corona and Jack & Coke?

One of my goals for the near future is to make Cranky Kroeger laugh a little. I don’t care if he laughs at my dry nose, my wet coat, or my freakishly huge toes. Anyone who can pen lyrics like “I like your pants around your feet/I like the dirt that’s on your knees/I like the way you’re saying please/when you’re looking up at me/you’re like my favourite damn disease” needs to lighten up. I want to see him all tickly and rolling on the floor, unable to control his giggles. We all deserve to feel that feeling sometime.

One person found this page by entering “how can a guy like me keep cheese fresh” into the search engine of his choice. He must have been very disappointed.

It is November so this morning I went looking for my tape of The Black Rider, a Tom Waits album that contains, among other things, a brilliant song called “November.”

We moved to this house 15 months ago and have not listened to a tape in that time. I figured that retrieving the cassette in question would be an arduous task, at best, so I made a double pot of coffee and left the catt with instructions to call for help if I wasn’t back dangling a string in his face within two hours.

Dusty and sticky, the box with the cassette tapes also contained: a Tintin book (in French), a small stuffed crab (won at the PNE several years ago,) a telephone cord, a box of floppy disks from my old computer; the one that ran “8 in 1,” and lots of crumpled and stained photos.

I found the Tom Waits tape quickly. A minor miracle. I put it aside and dug through the rest of the box. The tapes were stacked neatly in rows. Mostly they were mixed tapes, with the occasional Pink Floyd and Nina Simone thrown in.

The thing that I love the most about mixed tapes is finding the ones I’ve forgotten about. There are the ones I made a couple years ago when I got a job that required me to drive at 6:30 am and a car that had a tape player (may they both rest in peace). They are called things like; “The best driving to Richmond tape ever!” and “Early morning kickass mix!”

There is a tape I made for my husband, back when he was just my friend – an “education in Led Zeppelin” that I’m sure he never listened to and which I taped for him from tapes because I never did (and still don’t) own any Zeppelin on CD.

There is one I vaguely remember making, called “Drunken Sober Mix.” There is Madonna, Chumbawamba and way too much Sinatra on that one. It made me feel dizzy so I turned it off.

Two annoying things about mixed tapes when they’re tossed randomly into a box:

1. trying to remember what the songs are on the tapes without cases (but then this usually ends in delight, see below)

2. a list of songs written on an orphan tape case and the list KICKS ASS and you remember making it/listening to it for the first time, but the tape that matches it is nowhere to be found.

The tape I am currently listening to has no case. It is called “Spring Spring Spring” on side one and “Spring Spring Spring Side 2!” on side two. It appears to have been made almost exclusively from CDs that belonged to a former roommate, The Third Prince.

Here, for posterity and in approximate order of appearance, is the track list for “Spring Spring Spring.” Enjoy.

Wesley Willis: It’s Against the Law
Sinead O’Connor: Success Has Made a Failure of our Home
Annie Lennox: Little Bird
The The: Love is Stronger than Death
Some band I don’t remember, asking “If I breathed in for you would you breathe out for me?” Sounds vaguely like Crash Vegas.
The Cure: Just like Heaven
Siouxie and the Banshees: Kiss them For me
Elvis Costello: All this Useless Beauty
Ani DiFranco My IQ
Ashley MacIssac: What an Idiot he is (where is Ashley MacIssac these days?)
Mojo Nixon: Don Henley Must Die

SIDE 2
Soundgarden: Big, Dumb Sex
Moist: Silver (this must have been a joke. I have always hated this song)
Fishbone: Everyday Sunshine (Aw YEAH!!!)
Leonard Cohen:Joan of Arc
Frank Sinatra:Fly me to the Moon (live. mmmm.)
Wesley Willis: Slow cars, Fast cars
Peter Gabriel: In Your Eyes(live. doublemmmmm.)
Paula Cole: This Fire
FABIO: Cinema and another 30 second piece I don’t remember the name of.

A couple of notes about Fabio. Yes, That Fabio. He made an album called Fabio: After Dark. It was several spoken word pieces with themes like “Love” and “Touching”. Fabio intoned and undulated over romantic-style soft porn music (baum chickachicka baum baum). “I like to take my beautiful lady to the cinema, where we can hold hands in the dark. I wonder, will she kiss me? Like that?”
There was one song he actually sang, it went, “When somebody loves somebody [Fabio says: dessssperately], Everything turns out so [natttturally]”

I miss my Fabio tape. I bought it for $1.99 at the dollar store at Kingsgate Mall. Fabio was the surprise at the end of every mixed tape I made. You have a bit of space at the end of each side, but not enough to put in a whole “real” song. 30 second spots fit nicely there. And they scare people.

A gay friend used a ball point pen to change all the “Fabio”s to “Fagio”s. To each his own. I took the tape to a party once and lent it to the host and I have not seen him or it since.

It was good to hear all those voices again.

Happy birthday Silent Queue!

The crow came from Crow City.

Crow City has a crow haiku generator! Let’s all go to Crow City!

He was making falafel for dinner. He doesn’t get much of a chance to cook these days, what with me being at home all the time and he being at work. He likes to cook, a lot.

He’s been thinking all day:
What will I cook? It’s Saturday! What will I cook?

He settled on a box of falafel mix that we’ve had in the cupboard for months. He also fried up some mushrooms and some flank steak and threw in some garlic and onions. It’s a Falafel Fajita kind of thing. Lebanese Tex Mex.

About 10 minutes after he started cooking, I heard, “Whaaa!”

I said, from the next room, “You okay?”

“Whaaa JEsus!”

I said, “So, you okay?” Waited.

“Holy CRAP!”

Imagining a flying insect on his knee or a spatter of oil in the eye, I said, “You gonna live?”

Then I felt a tickle at the back of my throat. My nose began to run. My eyes felt as though sand and cayenne pepper had secretly leapt into a bottle of Visine, just to be mean. I coughed. I never cough.

“These are fucking habaneros for sure!” he shouted. I ran to the kitchen. He was bent double at the sink, clutching at the cool steel of the faucet with both hands, his face beneath the stream of water.

I felt cold. The window was open in the kitchen, but it was more than that. He had found the last hot pepper in the fridge and had added it to his vegetables in the frying pan. I hadn’t thought to warn him.

“Did you use the whole thing?” I said anxiously, my hand hovering over his shoulder. I didn’t want to touch him.

“Hell no! I used half!” He coughed, a rattling sound, and looked at me, his face pale and wet, his eyes watering.

I poured myself a cold glass of water from the jug in the fridge. When I turned back toward the stove, I was overcome by a gust of warm, peppery air. I coughed desperately, dryly.

The catt scratched at the screen door, then turned to plead with me to let him out. His panicked face broke my heart.

“We’ll have to leave here and never come back,” I declared, “We can take the steak and the wraps with us. And the cheese.”

“But my falafel!” he cried. Water spattered from his lips. I felt drops sizzle on my burning flesh.

“No. We can stop for falafel. I’m sorry.”

We cried as we packaged the catt in his speciality carrier and took the cheese and the pickles from the fridge. As we ran down the back alley, I turned and saw flames exploding from the still-open kitchen window. They were orange and took the shape of laughing Mexicans.

“It’s for the best,” he said and took my hand. He had recovered and now I could break down. “It’s for the best,” he repeated and we ran till we could breathe again.