How to eat pancakes forever.

Dear Lacksadaisy,

I'm having trouble with getting my jam to set. My husband complains every time a batch comes out slightly foamy or runny. Any advice?

Judy.

Dear Judy, 
Thank you for your question, it's been a while since I've been called upon to solve the great quandaries and conundrums of modern living and jam production.  I've gone through my stock footage and found some beautiful photos of jam to kick us off for 2015. 

Picture #1. Bad jam. Scummy jam.
Possibly isn't even jam, but some kind of seeded chutney. 

Picture #2: Good jam.
(This is also what jam looks like on top of a water container.)

Judes, two words: human slavery. Because at one point, probably in the 1850's or some other point in history when people ate butter like cheese and drank beer like water, slaves probably made jam; and also to many people marriage is a form of slavery. So I think I've probably already helped you enough, but I'll continue on.

I recently had the privilege of enjoying the Qantas club lounge (bear with me, this relates to both jammy fruits and slavery). Ooooooh did I love myself SICK! Incidentally I also made myself sick because I ate more food in a one hour period than I ate over a two week time span. Judy, I experienced a level of prestige that gave me free insight into why capitalism is so friggen wonderful and in every way perfect. One word: freepancakes. Even though the pancake machine at the qantas lounge produced a pancake that my nan could make if she mixed some of her puree'd "savoury dinner" from the nursing home with some dirt, antibiotics, a bit of corn starch and then microwaved them in a plastic egg ring, I LOVED those pancakes and let me tell you why; Because no one else, in the entire airport (other than the people in the business lounge), got pancakes for freesies. Hahaha Bloody Suckers!!!!! 

The other thing I enjoy about business lounges is that everyone acts so casual and aloof, like they are meant to be there and not excited at all, like "Oh, what? Another business lounge with free things. My life is really hard"; as if they were ordained by a holy ordinance of high-fashion to be there. There are only a few of us sparkly eyed buffet whores who see all of the free food and proceed to pump rasberry coulis into our carry on bag for 'ron. Those people are so wealthy that they can actually say 'no' to free food and exhibit a high level of tasteful restraint. 'No' to free pancakes. 'No' to the coulis. Because nothing says "I'm rich" like saying 'no' to coulis (which does NOT travel well). It also gave me the momentary realisation that perhaps I was better than everyone else in the entire world. I may have been in that lounge on a free guest pass, that my friends gave to me and their uncle gave to them, but at that moment I thought: 

"Well everyone else in the entire world is not here are they? Perhaps some kind of divine being knows that I am better than everyone else and that I am the chosen one, the King Arthur of pancakes and I'm simply the sort of person who deserves free pancakes and everyone else must be too stupid to figure out how to get the free pancakes."  

The same goes for being rich in general. Not only do you get to be rich, but you get free samples, a sense of rich persons pancake-entitlement, free bank accounts, if you're really rich and famous you get free clothes, free hotel shampoo and, lets face it, free money. I know I've said all of this before in my blog, but It really pays to be rich in this world and it made me wonder: How do I get richer?

Before I could answer that question I started to become a little paranoid about the other rich people in the lounge eating all the free pancakes. What if the machine ran out because there was such a rush on pancakes? I want those pancakes!! What if they couldn't come and refill it before I had to leave for my flight? What pancakes would I leave my children and my childrens children when they visit the Qantas lounges on their free passes?!!! 

So then I said to Gerald, the man edging towards the pancake machine:

Me: I think the pancake machine is broken.

Gerald: Oh, I'll let someone know.

Me: ooh.... oh, I already have

Gerald: Look, there's someone else using it, they must have fixed it already.

Me: No, that pancake is poison. 

Gerald: I think it looks alright.

Me: No, it's a bad one for sure. Terrible. You and he should never eat any pancakes from here again.

Gerald: (laughing) you know in the corporate world your behaviour would be considered anti-competitive.

Me: Your face is anti-competitive Gerald.

Gerald: My name is not Gerald.

Me: Don't eat the pancakes. 

As the man I called Gerald walked away I got back to thinking about my new found power and wealth and what I could do to maintain it and grow it and always be rich, at least until I boarded my plane. This was a tricky one. Could I outsource some of my thinking to India and get them to think for me? Maybe I could buy a whole person to help me out. A manservant, if you will, to ferry my things about the airport until I was forced to return to my life in economy class. 

So I turned to Siri, who often does my thinking for me: "Siri ,How much to buy a human"? 

Siri said: " Let me check on that..."

Bloody Siri. 

I'm off to Istanbul soon, so I started my Google search in that part of the world. Maybe I could buy a woman-servant there since I'm on a budget and men seem to be more expensive than women. According to Google alls I needed was between 4 and 400 camels. Then I realised that I, too, am a woman. What if the Turkish slave-trading-pimp-trafficker attempts to trade ME for my own woman-servant!

I'd say: "But I have 400 camels!!!!" 

and then the slave trader/pimp would say:

" ...And now 'I' have 400 camels AND a western woman who has convincingly fake Dior sunglasses so she can pretend to be George Clooneys wife, Amal Alamuddin-Clooney-the-Lawyer, in an elaborate scam to convince George Clooney we have kidnapped his wife and then he'll come here and get us, like in the movie :Taken 1, 2 and 3 and then I will get George Clooney's autograph. "
In spite of Amal being a kick arse human rights lawyer I figured my chances of a trade in Istanbul turning out positively for George, Amal and I were remote. 

I Googled India. In India you only have to pay $50- a month for a maid ( $250- for the fancy ones). If I sold all of my camels I could probably afford an Indian maid for at least 3 months, which would be more than enough time to ferry my bags around the airport while I ate free pancakes. 

I'll have you know Judy, in my quest for slave-purchase I discovered that slaves are soooo much more affordable than we all think. You could probably afford one to make jam for you!! You're welcome already.

According to the chairman, Kevin Bales, of some website called "Free the Slaves" :

"At the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, back in the mid 1800′s, the average cost of a slave in the U.S. was the equivalent of $40 to $50 THOUSAND dollars in today’s money. Today, the average cost of a human being is a mere $90.”

Soooo the cost of a human life, a whole life from start to finish, where cells divide, multiply and then die off, is a three month subscription to foxtel. I don't even get foxtel so the savings I'm making for not even having foxtel has already put me ahead. 

Many economists and other smart people have attempted to quantify and put a value on human life. It seems to be a difficult thing to do, most of the time they try and figure out how much it would cost to insure someone not to die, but really it's about how much it would cost their business if they were to die, so it's all a bit confusing. I bet none of those smart people have ever really made the comparison to a foxtel subscription. Silly.

Another interesting thing is that not only are they affordably but there are actually way more slaves today than ever before in history, pooh you "12 years of slave" movie. Supposedly there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world.

Mr. Bales went on to say:

"Explosive population growth, impoverished communities rocked by conflict, natural disasters, disease epidemics, unprotected by strong rule of law are all factors that push people into slavery. We have a much larger pool of potentially enslavable people in the world today. In the basic notions of supply and demand that has caused a collapse in the price of a human being."

Now Judes, I hear you saying: "those human traffickers should be shot and why haven't you answered my question about my husband and my jam?" I'll get there Judy! I guess the root cause is not because they absolutely adore people trafficking, plus it makes them a stack of money in places where there is none. I'd probably do it too. There was no careers day at school where they had to choose between medicine, accountancy and human trafficking and selling people into slavery (which are two different things BTW, don't be confused and misled by my vague and misinformed blog with my sketchy references and "google searches", one is moving people around for profit another is selling them and earning money from their enslavement).

Perhaps it would be prudent to defer to someone smarter than me to put prolification of human trafficking into more eloquent terms. As someone called Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said: 

"As more men become more educated and women get educated, the value system has to be more enhanced and the respect for human dignity and human life is made better." Thank you for your input Ellen.

Anyhoo, so I had discovered that humans were cheap and if I could find the enough of the right ingredients and a camping stove, I could get pancakes really, really cheaply ALL OF THE TIME!!!! The problem was, Judzie, I didn't have any camels. I needed to get the camels in order to buy the slaves in order to keep eating the pancakes. So I went to the qantas lounge reception said: 

"Look, if you can get me 400 camels, I will give you half of my slaves and 5% of my free pancakes. You can quit your job at the Qantas lounge reception, no longer have to make those pesky flight announcements and deal with f*cktards who try and steal all the rasberry coolie. All that could be yours (and mine) if you just find me some camels." 

The Qantas lounge receptionist's name was Barry. 

Barry said 'No.'  

That was a pretty scummy thing to say Barry. 

That is where my quest ended. 

So you see, Judy, this is my point, I'm pretty sure the human race is made up of scum. Barry is scum. So it stands to reason your husband would be scummy too. I'm scummy, you're scummy, we're all scummy. I'd leave him if I were you and save all your scum free jam for your scummy self.

Oh, and add a half a cup of citrus seeds of your choice to release pectin which helps to set your jam, and don't forget to skim the scum off the top. I hate that frothy white stuff even more than I hate Barry and Gerald and crimes against humanity. By the way Judes, January is human trafficking awareness month.

Here's a link to a fact sheet*: 
 https://freetheslaves.net/

L.

*It's where I did 70% of the research for this blog and since I believe in unbiased, in-depth research I also googled "amal clooney fashion" and finally "george clooney's new teeth" and "how to write a blog about the cost of human life".