Let the Portuguese make your wine and the Spanish make your sausage and you will have no desires in life for finer things
Nae haggis pal.
Let Italians make yer chips and Turks make yer kebabs, and yer made.
om nom nom
Reminds me of when I ate the poison kebab. I only have two real memorable experiences with kebab, all other times have been mundane or not memorable for kebab reasons (I am excluding for example the time I was eating kebab and one friend called me with concerns that this girl was trying to spike his drinks and chased him around with a knife). The first is a very simple one, I had met some new friends and they asked me a very important question, and the question was simple: DO I LIKE SPICE.
I affirmed with my soul, I do not like the spice, I LOVE THE SPICE. Of course the first thing we did thereupon was enter the spice hut, the demesne of deadly fire, the calamitous brimstone bastion of magma. The experience was summed up succinctly here:
My credentials as a spice partaker were heavily on the line. He spoke in Urdu to the doner kebab chef, the words 'very very very very extra spicy' were muttered amidst a string of untranslateable curses. A fiver was exchanged, one twenty returned. A sprite in hand and banter in the land I awaited spice. We talked of many things, showing off injuries and making many philosophical inquiries upon the nature of cow and bull milk. The spice arrived, greasy chips and asbestos-red doner kebab looking innocent enough to my nose. To my right, a chicken tikka masala had arrived alongside my spice; the orange flooded the plate like the river ganges in monsoon season, the brave man eating it maintained it was fucking delicious. By the time this observation was made I had downed the salt tinged chips and three pieces of lamb. It was not spicy. Emboldened I wolfed down piece after piece over good converse on the cheap lighting and dingy flooring; on the wall a poster declaring that the ignorant never listened to Allah even though reckoning was close. More lamb found its way in my gullet, and it was horrendously delicious. Finally the critical mass was hit and I felt the Vietnam war spice my palette. For a brief moment physical functions ceased and animal instincts kicked in, physically forcing me to hesitate in my consumption of this caustic poison... Delicious poison. On my face no hint of spice betrayed the battle of wills going on within, my credentials as spice man ting rested on filling my hunger with this inglorious kebab.
Then suddenly there was only silence. The great inferno was gone. I took advantage of this nirvanan spice victory and devoured the last lamb, briefly alternating with the chicken to recover. Crafty deployment of chocolate orange and ketchup was utilized to speed recovery for the final assault. When at last I had finished I was fulfilled, but so cold. Goodbyes were made and we set off on four cardinal directions with the spirits of the damned dynsenterious casualties of the lands from Portugal to Malaysia within. Definitely in my top 10 for most spicy spice I have had. Considered a proposition from one of my older Asian friends for a can't handle the spice but cautioned him; there would be no winners in our battles of spice, only death.
I have grown wiser from such experiences, knowing that to enjoy spice one must learn temperance or else perish. The poison kebab was of no such especial spice calibre, not noticeably spicy by my taste palette anyways. It was poison in other ways. I remember clearly, it was in East end I wandered and found some dingy kebab shop I couldn't for the life of me find today, it was as if this mystical den had appeared ex nihilo to ensnare me with the wicked poison. I enjoyed a thick, meaty kebab with battered onions and salted souls, Beelzebub turned his nose in disgust when such devils recommended this be made the staple of Hades. All in all it was delicious, spiced protein substance dressed in red ketchup, it failed to put me off kebab (days since last kebab: 1), though it certainly made me more careful of their sourcing. I inquired for the kebab, unwisely ignoring that it was simply "meat kebab", tucking into the mystery protein that had lost its poor identity long ago. I was no stranger to mystery meats, delicious ones have often born anonymity before, though not usually in such a glamorous form heavily basted and covered in obscuring jalapenos and depressed onion. It served the job of filling me, though I made what could be construed as a regrettable life choice in choosing this as my filling.
In the immediate aftermath I felt quite unwell, then I felt unwell, then very unwell. This was not a rebellion of the bowels which I was once terribly acquainted with, nor was it a horrendous bout of biological warfare played upon me by foul amoebas. For a full day and a half I was out of commission, completely catatonic in a delirious haze of near death, I slept unnaturally long for what neared two days comatose. Curious dreams of marching through deserts in search of liquid relief, amongst other more disastrous, ruinous visions, whose contents I cannot recall except to recall that they possessed such an ominous, foreboding sense of Armageddon to them, these dreams haunted me like the chemically burned memories of that tasteful kebab. What forests did I walk that turned to such sand, what thirst was felt when I sought to drink my chilled fill and met only with dust?! What ancient and bizarre rooms had I unlocked in the house of my mind, assailed as it was by a poorly chosen lunch?
It would come to be a mere 12 miles journey that nonetheless had great impact on me throughout the week. For when at last I awoke from this stupor my sense of balance was all awry, it was as if gravity refused to have a centre and I was lost in a maelstrom of forces conspiring to wrench my ears from my head and my head from my shoulders and my feet from the ground. Hydration from copious tea having failed to save me I adorned myself in clothing and set forth on a feverous march early in the morning, destination unknown, prior commitments forgotten, myself forgotten in time, lost to the wreckage wrought upon me by the deadly enticing kebab. Ere I walked onwards following the guiding path of the River Thames seeing such sights along the way, real or semi-lucid perhaps, on an overcast day with sunlight's rays passing through and a wondrous breeze buffeting through the city of old London, the cold biting to my core and sharpening my senses. Street performers worked their craft, merchants sold their wares, one friend called me as I was eating raspberries and crisps from Sainsburies asking what I was doing, I simply replied I was walking this off. Passing under bridges and through conversations with vagrant homeless men and past the tourists who themselves were passing by, I witnessed a waking city as men and women in their smart suits and pleated shirts went about their business or conversed stressed on riverside conferences within glass walls, or of the hipster activists who stood by attempting to hug one another in the throng of the busy workers who went about their day desperately trying to get work done with minimal social contact, what a bizarre existence all is! Eventually I made it to the open grass and concrete at Battersea and my pace slowed, hit by the wind, and I began to feel at balance once more. I could see the weather turning, the signs of rolling rains approaching, and figured it was best to return and rest having successfully refreshed.
Now I only eat meat that has names
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14843619 times)