Saturday 5 May 2007

All I am saying is give grass a chance

It has come to my attention that yesterday's ecstasies over grass generated some confusion. To clarify: by "grass", I meant, y'know, grass. This stuff:

I'm especially partial to Queensland blue couch, but also rather keen on that festucca business, and I won't say no to a good sturdy indigenous tussock.

By "grass", I did not mean marijuana, a herb, while we're on the subject, with an utterly disproportionate number of synonyms. Take coriander, one of the best darn herbs there is. How many synonyms does it have? One. Cilantro. Now take marijuana, a.k.a. hashish, hash, cannabis, grass, pot, weed, ganja, puff, blow, blah, blah, blah. Does it taste nice with haloumi and mango? No. It does not.

I've had a couple of brushes this week with the psychotropical. Yesterday, under extreme social juress, I abused a cup of Russian Caravan tea, orally. It's called Russian Caravan because it tastes of Russian caravans. Just the thing to cure a susceptible tea drunkard of prospective addiction. The day before I'd stood in the same room as a man who smelt as though he'd slept in a nest of slightly damp tobacco. I didn't allude to the pong myself, but he began to rhapsodise, unprompted, over his latest Romeo y Julieta. "Cigarettes are a habit," he said, "but cigars are a hobby." As, of course, are lawns.

By the way: snuff? Are people still sniffin'?

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm surprised you have so much of that sort of grass to frolic in, given the water restrictions. You do have very good parks for picnics down there though (possums possibly permitting) and that would give you an opportunity to use one of my favourite inventions.

Russian caravan is perhaps my favourite tea, but I am a tea fiend and beyond redemption. I especially enjoy its smoky taste!

TimT said...

You've got to be careful with that snuff stuff.

You take a snuff and sniff the stuff, and before you know it, you have a snuff tiff with the local snuff rough, and then your sniffing more than enough of the snuff stuff, and then you get dizzy and start to stiff snuffs of the sniff instead of the other way around.

And then you turn into a snuff stiff, which is tough.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Oh, I have splayds! Six. My sister Kirsten gave 'em to me for Christmas. They're very handsome.

Why I'm so excited about the grass just now is that the common or garden variety suburban dust patch has turned in the last few days to luscious verdant jungle. Just add water and stir. It's been raining its pants off.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Sir Tim, they should pay you to pen warnings to the young and impressionable.

I can see the campaign now:

"Snuff: Enough's Enough".

I'm sure it's not entirely wholesome, snuff, but it does seem like a way of consuming your tobaccy without rotting your windbags, no?

TimT said...

I'm as one with the old sailors on this. The only way to enjoy baccy is give it a good working with your olfactory glands. Chew it or leave it.

If I had invented a combined knife and fork, I wouldn't have a choice - I'd call them knorks.

Shelley said...

I'd like to see a snuff come back - pretty little snuff boxes and people explosively sneezing all over the place. What joy!

Shelley said...

Also, what is it with men and knorks?

Anonymous said...

You have Splayds! I've been trying to get various loved ones to give me a set for years, all to no avail (she turns from rose-red to green). I suppose I should just buy myself some, but I'm worried that my picnics will be cursed if I do. Please tell me that you mix up the Pimm's with them!

Since you've drawn my attention to it, I've noticed that the grass in these parts is rather verdant in bits and pieces after all the recent rain too.

I've always found the idea of people imbibing solid matter through their nostrils a little sick-making, but snuff boxes can be nice.

TimT said...

Nails, two words:

Lactic Longings.

Actually, that would make a good novel.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

You could write it space-opera style - "Intergalactic Lactic Longings", subtitled "Star wars, the milky way".

Back to snuff (because my parents may be reading): apparently it comes in a range of flavours, like raspberry, and cinnamon.

Take that, human milk.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Karen, I haven't tried teaming Pimm's and splayds. Pimm's is more a swizzle stick sort of beverage. I have recently been donated some fantastically lurid cocktail coasters, though (photo forthcoming).

Anonymous said...

that picture will hush suspicion. no fear.

Torshy said...

Funny you should be waxing lyrical about grass Lex, because on the weekend I read an excellent article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung about the American fetish for lawns. It began by describing a case where a man shot a young boy for messing up his lawn - thus cofirming German suspicions that the Yanks are gun-toting lunatics. One of the things mentioned in the article, which I thought could be equalled applied to Oz, was that the lawn was at once a symbol for a kind of American suburban conformatism and at he same time totally at odds with the natural environment in the US (at least the parts where they get into lawns). Kind of a nice metaphor for post-colonial identity problems I thought. Oh, and I also thought how much the SMH sucks compared to the SZ. When's the last time you read an atricle with the words lawn and fetish in the SMH? Exactly.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

I was once given a book about eels (unreadable, but mostly because I have an earnest eel phobia), penned by a fellow, Tom Fort, who also wrote _The Grass Is Greener: Our Love Affair With The Lawn_.