Pictures and Words

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for slightly over 72 hours, two plates of meat have been sitting in a cage in my back yard.

The ants go marching one by one, hoorah, hoorah.

Still no idea who was responsible for Brisbane’s greatest prank. My number one lead was commenter (and real-life friend) “RIUM+”, because of two other pranks he has played on me since I started this site:

1. For the first few days, my referral logs were telling me that I was getting a lot of traffic from people searching for “digimon porn” – I actually didn’t realise this was a prank until he owned up to it. (I’ve had some pretty strange search terms lead to my sites)
2. For the first few days, my referral logs were telling me that I was getting a lot of traffic from http://snurl.com/9c0ot (link completely safe for work. There is no digimon porn at the other end of that link.)

As you can see, RIUM+ is a prankster of the highest degree. He was the first person to spring to mind when I saw the StinkyCage’s latest additions, but in a comment left yesterday, he states:

I am impressed at the quality of this prank, and wish I had thought of it. Sadly, I’m not responsible. :p

I’d assume he was lying in order to divert suspicion from himself, but he fully confessed to the referral log pranks, so I’m more inclined to believe him.

I also received this suspicious comment from a good friend of mine, Chrissie (you may know her from The Puppet Master, in which she played “Tamara”)

I think “Haywoods” was intentional, to fit with the French theme

This hadn’t actually occurred to me, and I suppose it’s possible. I didn’t notice until I was typing the menu out that “kangaroo” had been spelled “kangourou”, which mahe me laugh. Chrissie’s comment could almost be considered a confession, except shortly after, I received a Facebook message from her:

DAMMIT someone stole my idea!! Seriously, kudos to your prankster. I am very impressed.

Again – a clever ploy to throw me off the scent? I wouldn’t put it past her…

A few people suggested to me that it was, in fact, my housemate Cannibal Kate who was responsible, and I’d be suspicious of her myself, except that she was at work all day, and when she got home, we spent the rest of the day hanging out. It’s possible that she sneaked around the back when she returned home, and hid the extras then, except she says that she didn’t, and she tends not to lie about that kind of stuff. (or commit elaborate pranks)

At this point, I’m completely stumped. I’m not sure if even I want to know who the prankster is; if the mystery is almost as beautiful as the prank itself.

In other news, I’ve had a number of people inform me what “jambon en boite” translates to. “Katydidinoz”, who was raised in Canada, where they speak a lot of French, tells us that:

‘Jambon en boite’ roughly translates to ‘ham in a box’ which is probably as close as the French are ever gonna get to SPAM

Dan Beeston, who is married to a beautiful French lady, informs us that:

Your friends seem to have just as much free time as you do. Also, ‘en Boite’ is French for ‘in a box’. Just like my favourite wine. Chateau la boite.

And most informatively, over at the livejournal mirror, “suyongli” writes:

I should tell you that “jambon en boîte” means “ham in a can”.

(I don’t know where you live.)

Oh, and if you’re wondering why BabelFish gave you “ham limps about it”, “en” can mean “in”, but can also mean “of it, about it”, depending on whether it’s acting as a preposition or as a pronoun. “Boîte” means box or can, but the verb “boiter” (without the circumflex) means “to limp”. So the missing accent led BabelFish to read it as [noun] [pronoun] [verb] rather than [noun] [preposition] [noun].

A French grammar lesson that I’m sure your readers appreciate.

I think we can all agree that the StinkyPete project is teaching us more than we ever, ever expected. I did actually notice the little triangle above the i, but had no idea how to type it, and didn’t really expect it to make a difference.

And finally, Communications Officer Bernhard (who you may remember from StinkyPete 1.0) writes to say:

From what I can see, the plate of green stuff contains both baby cos lettuce and beetroot leaves, two of the main ingredients in mesclun, which is a common form of mixed lettuce.

I did not know that! My vegetable recognition goes as far as “peas”, “brocolli”, and “bacon”. I literally only saw a squash for the first time a few nights ago. A squash is a strange-looking vegetable indeed.

Thanks to everyone for your informative comments! I think I’ll happily leave “knowing things” to everyone else, and get back to what I do best – taking photos of plates of meat!

As you can see, the black "what on earth is this for, anyway?" packet is starting to look quite unpleasant.

I was out all day, so today’s “daytime” photos were taken by my housemate, Cannibal Kate. She discovered her new role (“official weather-person”) this morning, when she checked the website, and has agreed to treat this noble duty with respect.

Weather – “it didn’t rain, and it wasn’t too hot”, the official weather-person informs me, “but it looks like it’s going to in the next couple of days.” She also took a photo of the sky – now that’s dedication!

I will not be posting photos of the sky every day.

Stench – 0/10 – I’m as disappointed as you are*. I sniffed right around the cage, like Lassie in search of a well to push a child down, but I couldn’t even detect a hint of a whiff of stench. I blame the lack of rain – the meat seems to smell the most when it’s wet.
Stench radius – 0m

*it is possible that you are some kind of freak, and the discovery that meat in my back yard isn’t emanating a foul stench doesn’t fill you with disappointment. In that (highly unlikely) case, I am much more disappointed than you are.

As you can see, the Mixed Salad is attracting more flies than any of the meats at this point.

“Bonus” “Meats”:

The Mixed Salad is attracting a number of flies. Flies like mesclun, it seems. The jug of gravy has started to congeal, but there’s not yet any interest from insects, which surprises me a little. The (closed) bottle of wine had a few flies hanging out on it, but I think they were just resting there, enjoying the view. Because I was out all day, I forgot to pour a glass of wine or open the tartar sauce, but I’ll definitely do so tomorrow.

Kangaroo Steak:

Toughness – 6/10 - no change.
Popularity – 3/10 – from what I could tell from Cannibal Kate’s photos, there were about the same number of ants and flies during the day today as there were yesterday. They’re black insects on a dark meat though, so it can be a bit tricky to tell.
Appeal – 8/10 – without the smell, the Kangaroo Steak is sort of tempting. Tempting in a “if I were starving to death, sure, I’d cook you and eat you” way. This is an extremely narrow branch of tempting, normally only seen in children’s cartoons, when two characters are stuck on a desert island, and start imagining each other as their favourite foods.

Pork Steak:

Toughness – 8/10 – I was surprised to discover that the Pork Steak had toughened. Considerably. If this trend continues, in a few days time, the Pork Steak might even reach maximm toughness rating: 10/10, only attained by the Kangaroo Steak in StinkyPete 1.0.
Popularity – 1/10 – even less flies again, and I couldn’t see any ants. The Pork Steak was the first meat to be taken in StinkyPete 1.0, but no one seems interested this time around. (admittedly, last time it attracted interest from a mammal, not from insects, but there seemed to be an overlap in taste)
Appeal – 7.5/10 – no change.

Dad’s Bolognaise Sauce:

Toughness – 0.5/10 - it has built up a very slight crust.
Popularity – 3.5/10 – as well as interest from flies, the ants (as you can see from the photo at the top of the page) have been tearing into the bolognaise sause. Interestingly, they only seem to be where I poked a hole with the Poking Stick, in my “toughness tests” from previous days. Perhaps they, too, are put off by the crust.
Appeal – 6/10 – the crust, the ants…the bolognaise sauce is looking less appealing by the day. I’d still eat it, but at this point it would be my last preference.

Fort SPAM:

You may have noticed that I haven’t put a photo of Fort SPAM up today. That is because it looks exactly the same. You can literally go and look at yesterday’s photos and see what I saw tonight. There has been no more interest from insects, either during the day or at night, and both meats feel exactly the same when poked with the Poking Stick. Nothing has changed. Nothing. It’s a little bit eerie, to be honest.

As such, their stats are going to stay exactly the same as yesterday. You could argue that the freakiness of these meats (google tells me that I just made the first ever use of the phrase “the freakiness of these meats” on the internet) would make their appeal rating go down, but I figure that the preservatives they must be pumped full of seem to be working – if I were a starving man, I think I’d want the best preserved meats, no matter how unnatural that preservation is.

I’ll put some comparison photos of Form SPAM up in the next couple of days, so you can see what I mean.

Also, a reminder: still searching for a name for the other plate, the one containing Kangaroo Steak, Pork Steak, and my Dad’s Bolognaise Sauce. Current contenders are “Three Meat Island” and “Team Bolognaise”, but I’m taking suggestions until tomorrow’s update.

Daily Head-shot. Surrounded by wine and silverware, I thought I'd better affect a more distinguished look.

No stench, no flies (at night) – no real problem with keeping my head in the cage long enough to take the photo. I can’t foresee anything preventing me from taking the daily head-in-cage photo for the next few days. It’s all going much more easily than I expected.

Too easily…?

Tomorrow: Daily Check-in