Bananas

Today I popped into a little shop I sometimes visit on my way home from work on Tuesdays. It is the kind of shop that is hard to classify. It has costume jewellery and accessories. It has kitchenware, but usually kind of novelty kitchenware, the sort of kitchenware you'd have if you wanted a nice looking kitchen but didn't actually cook. It has baby accessories. It has chocolate, and cosmetics. It has stationary, but not usually very useful stationary. It is a fascinating little shop, and sometimes I buy something cheap there, like a notebook with a silly picture on it that will amuse my students when I am waving it around and being strict with them.

Anyway, while I was looking around tonight (it was a fly-by window shop to see if they had anything new and interesting), in the beauty products and cosmetics section I spotted something labelled, "CELLULITE PANTS."

I almost stopped to see what "cellulite pants" were, but hesitated. Then I carried on. I realized I did not actually want to know. In fact, I thought, I already had too much information. I did not want to know that something called "cellulite pants" even EXISTED in the world.

But now I can't stop wondering about it. What ARE cellulite pants? I am fairly sure they are not pants made out of cellulite (eek!), but I cannot imagine what they actually are. I don't REALLY want to Google them.

But talking about cellulite, here in Japan it seems that most women are, most of the time, on a diet. The latest fad is the banana diet, which was apparently on TV recently. According to whoever dreamed up this particular diet (probably a banana importer), if you eat two bananas for breakfast every morning, you will lose weight. The rest of the time you can eat what you like.

That, at least, is the version of the banana diet I heard from the loopy professor yesterday, when I was bemoaning the fact that all our local supermarkets seemed to have run out of bananas at the same time. I did not know that bananas were being snapped up by dieters. I always thought bananas were full of energy. That's how they work for me – they give me energy when I don't have time to eat properly. Bananas and yoghurt are my staple food at lunchtime when I'm working. If I have time for nothing else, at least I will have energy for the rest of the afternoon. Banana energy keeps going and going. I assumed they were full of calories, and it never occurred to me that they could be considered a diet food.

But on Sunday afternoon there were no bananas left at the supermarkets for my Monday lunch. Instead I had to have a couple of convenience store onigiri. They did not work nearly as well, and I ran out of energy halfway through the afternoon. I blame those stupid banana dieters, who I see have even made the news overseas.

How bloody annoying of them! Why don't they just get some cellulite pants, and leave my lunch alone? I'm sure they are just as effective.

Crunch

Today as I was cycling to the supermarket I had to stop because a local idiot driving a SUV was trying to park in the typically tiny parking space in front of his house. The road is very narrow, and to park he had to use up the entire road while he was maneuvering.

I waited patiently, and was rewarded for my patience by the sound of a very loud CRUNCH! as he carefully backed straight into the low concrete wall alongside his house. This action had left enough room for me to go around his ridiculously large and inappropriate vehicle, and as I cycled off he inched forward to extricate himself, stopped, then backed and did it again.

Made my day, that did.

It's the silly season

At dinner on Thursday evening after work, in an Indian restaurant next to the university, we talked about work, as usual. I had been testing students again, and was feeling rather discouraged. We all were. It's that end of semester.

I told my colleagues about my plan to have my students writing lines next year. One of them came up with a more creative idea.

"Electrified chairs!" he said. "We would have little buttons on our podium, and whenever we heard one of the offending mistakes we would hit the button. They'd learn REALLY FAST, I reckon. It wouldn't need to be a big zap."

One of the guys started acting out how this might work.

"I went to shopping," he said, woodenly, and leaped out of his seat. "AARRGH!"

A couple of others joined in.

"What do you like music?" one asked. "ERK!"

"How many families do you have? OOOOH!"

A group of students wandered into the restaurant, and stared in amazement as respectable, middle-aged teachers erupted from chairs screaming and clutching their bottoms. After watching for a few seconds they walked out again, and I don't think it was only because there was only one small table free.

I think they were worried that the curry might be too hot for them.

van Graffiti

On Sunday, as The Man and I were cycling to the supermarket, I asked a question that had popped into my head for no particular reason:

"Why did Holland have so many great artists, do you think? It's not that big a country."

The Man replied,

"It's because they had so many walls."

Flip

¿ʎuunɟ ʞoo1 noʎ ʇɐɥʇ ǝʞı1 pɐǝɥ ɹnoʎ ʇsıʍʇ noʎ uǝɥʍ ʇɐɥʇ ʍouʞ noʎ pıp

I am a silly person

I've been reading a lightweight mystery passed on to me by a friend, and came across this sentence:

Her breath came in ragged pants.

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that sentence. Only a silly person would laugh.