What’s the theme then me wonders as I prepare to find out…Sinful, ooh I can do that I’ll just take a pic of meself…no getting bored with that, I know…no… can’t do that either (damn safety filter!) bugger, how do I convey sinful and get around the safety filter on flickr…umm….ta da! (methinks I might just get away with it)
I’ve nothing to say!
Don’t ask me what happened this month, but I felt more inspired than I have in some time. And so it was that thoughts raced ’bout my noodle, but instead of reacting immediately to them I jotted them down. This way I wouldn’t forget them, but gave them a chance to rattle about for a while and see how I felt about them later. Good thing too. As some of my original ideas were rubbish. Too easy. Too traditional. Too naked.
Anywho….
Part I:
Okay. Feet. Grass. Um…. and that’s it. Sinful? Really? Yes. Well… yes, but you have to see it from my perspective. See, I grew up in Florida and in Florida there are two predominant types of grass by which folk’s lawns are seeded/sodded: St. Augustine and Bahia. Let me be frank: While St. Augustine grass can make for a very handsome lawn, neither are at all nice to sit upon, walk upon or in any other activity that involves skin-on-grass contact. Bahia is, for a lack of a better word, shit. It’s ugly. It doesn’t offer effective ground cover. Or think of it this way…. how good could a grass be if it can be described this way, “It prefers sandy soils and is tolerant of shade. It is also fairly hardy, tolerating salty conditions and drought extremely well.” When was the last time you saw anything that was drought tolerant and grew well in sand that was attractive? I thought as much.
And while St. Augustine grass can grow into a super looking lawn it is incredibly scratchy to skin. The blades feel as if they are serrated and to make matters worse their primary root system actually grows above ground. As such, when you walk across it barefooted you inevitably find yourself walking upon the course root growth.
Since moving to more northern climes I have discovered the luxury that is the grass seen above: tall fescue and Kentucky blue. Soft as a baby’s bottom. Deep greens and blues. It’s the sort of graas that damn near begs one to strip naked and roll around on it. And it’s like a sinful bit of heaven to have it sprout around your feet.
Shall we move on to Part II? Why of course we should!
Once again you’re probably scratching your head (or some other part of your body…. I don’t really want to know) and saying to yourself “Tape? Has he completely lost his mind?” The short answer is “No”, but the longer answer is “Of course, but I’m feeling much better now.”
So why is blank cassette tape sinful? Have you ever bought blank TDK MA-XG Metal Type IV tape? If not you have no idea how sinful it really is.
Around 1988 through 1990 I purchased a number of these blank tapes as I very much enjoyed creating my own mixed tapes. My tape deck included built-in dbx encoding and decoding and as such I felt it necessary to purchase the best tape I could. At that time this particular model of TDK was, in my opinion, the best there was by a fairly large margin. The case was made of transparent, high-quality plastic. There were stainless steel rollers instead of curved bits of plastic casing. The internal bracing was aluminum (aluminium for those of you across the pond). These things were built to last. Period.
But the cost of this sort of high quality cassette mechanism AND high quality tape was USD10.00 for a pack of two. In 1990 dollars. That would be about GBP6.00 back then. And the cost today when adjusted for inflation? USD17.00 (I don’t have a figure based upon the British inflation rate over time). To be frank, that was a sinful amount of money to a guy in his mid-20′s making very few dollars each week. But I couldn’t pass up the quality of the cassette or the quality of the tape as both were so high I wound up using my mixed tapes to dub to TDK SA tapes for my friends. The quality of sound was still so good my friends assumed I had hand-crafted each tape for them individually.
If only they knew the sinful truth.
(a couple of asides… the title of the tape is “Turn That Crap Down”. Named such as it was a common refrain from my parents when I lived at home and would often have the stereo turned up too loudly. Also, the investment in dollars must have been worthwhile as 20-years later these tapes still sound perfect.)
As we all know (or, at least, I presume we all know) pork comes from pigs.
Now in the Islamic world the eating of pork is considered “haram”. Basically, the opposite of “halal”.
Haram essentially means “forbidden”. A taboo, sort of thing. Not to be done. Could be considered, I suppose, the Muslim equivalent of a sin.
In fact, the consumption of anything from a pig is, so I’m given to understand, haram.
Bacon also comes from pigs.
Now excuse me whilst I get back to eating my bacon sarnies before they get cold.
