Chiaology

“Ch-ch-ch-chia!”
-Advertising Jingle for the Chia Pet®

Well, Toads and Toadettes,

The Toad has been lurking the corridors of stately Toad Hall in customary fez and smoking jacket contemplating mockeries of the year past. “Smug and Self-Satisfied,” game to mind. This is not a law firm, bunky. It’s a good feeling in the satire business. “Smugness and Self-Satisfaction” (“S&S” to those in the biz). These make for the unhealthy glow that follows a good bout of knocking off others who aspire to the same goal. But you know, boys and girls, there’s only so much S&S to go round and the Toad ain’t sharing. He doesn’t have to. He’s the Barking Toad.® Rawk.*

So, with a veritable treasure house of S&S laid up, the Toad found himself in a reverie accented with mild gloating over how Easterners handle a little snow. Hey, don’t like it, move to Florida, maybe the greater Orlando area, pally. There’s maybe a snow job going on there, but the hot air keeps it mostly under control, if you get my "drift." Rawk, rawk, rawk.* (Sometimes the Toad even amazes himself!)

The Toad was just getting to another shaker of The Last Word cocktails-the ideal drink for the amphibious satirist-when he was surprised by his back-up singers, the Toadelles. This sequined band of musical mayhem makers toured with the Toad back in his R&B (rawk* and bark) days. Twila Toad, Tonetta Toad, Tondelao Toad and, of course, Tina Toad had stopped in to see what the Amphibious One might want for Christmas and to catch up on the holiday drinking. After firing up the big blender, we settled in on the lily pads to ponder presents.

What do you get for the Toad who has everything? No cilices for the Toad, pally, and the electronics are superb in stately Toad Hall.  Maybe it is the Chia Pet®, that “brand of collectible animal figurines originated by the San Francisco, California-based company Joseph Enterprises Inc.”

Chia Pets are traditional Mexican animal-shaped clay figures covered with "chia", a vegetable sprout resembling the particular animal’s fur or, in the case of human figures, their body hair. (Sounds like the Toad's late uncle Vito, but only on the back and shoulders. Rawk!*) These babies work, if you can call it that, by applying moistened seeds of Salvia hispanica, the sprout-like plant from whose common name the Chia Pet gets its name, to the grooved terra cotta figurine body. After three to five days of filling and refilling the Chia Pet with water as well as discarding water that has accumulated in the provided drip tray, the seeds sprout, having formed a gelatinous coat that adheres to the Chia Pet's body. At this point, little effort is required to maintain the plant covering of the Chia Pet.

Several Chia Pet animals currently are available, including a turtle, pig, puppy, kitten, frog, and hippopotamus. Sculpted Chia heads and licensed Pets based on popular cartoon characters like Garfield, Scooby Doo, Looney Tunes, Shrek, The Simpsons, Spongebob, and most recently the Chia Obama. (Now there’s a scary image.) There are, though, no Chia Toads, a glaring deficiency which probably resulted in their subsequent decline in popularity has relegated these objects to fad status. In case you were wondering, the catch phrase sung in the TV commercial as the plant grows in time lapse is “Ch-ch-ch-chia!”

Wow, Toads and Toadettes! It’s a pet, it’s a plant, and it’s a work of art all in one. And you don’t have to be involved after an initial small and mildly distasteful effort. It may even be a theological metaphor. You were waiting to see there this would go, weren’t you bunky? Well, have another Last Word and just wait for it. Rawk*

On the Odd Religious Behavior Front, (between St. Michel and Ypres), the Toad has taken a few shots lately at some guys who are trying to decide what they are in a religious sense. It seems as though they lost their identity faster than Uma Thurman in a Quentin Tarrantino film. That’s a cultural reference, bunky, look it up. Of course, that presupposes they ever had an identity in the first place. Rawk.*

After all, what do you do when you need to announce that your "worldview" has run the gamut from paganism, broad evangelicalism, foaming-at-the-mouth rabid Calvinism, Anglicanism, to Roman Catholicism of the Opus Dei (Latin for “fanatical cult”) sort? Hmmmmm. There’s more identities there than Sybil. How do you spell "confused"?

Or, let’s try the “archdeacon” who has been a “traditional Anglican” after having spent three decades as a Reformed Church minister. This fellow, who discovered his "Anglican identity" in the last couple of years recently announced in public that he’s not able to believe that his ordination by presbyters in the Reformed tradition was invalid or that the hundreds of “Eucharists” that he claims to have “celebrated” for over 30 years were just empty signs. It seems that he sees reordination simply as a “reaffirmation of [his] previous 30 years of ordained ministry.” Wow, bunky! That might not be a problem in your current venue (after all, lack of education, formation, multiple wives, disbarment and other scandales, aren't problematic), but, you might want to plan to be going to one or two remedial classes on that little issue when you get to your new venue. They have a wee bit of different take on the question of those pesky sacraments. Rawk, rawk.*

Maybe it could all work out in a new religious outlook the Toad will call Chiaology. It works this way, boys and girls. We’ll get a hollow clay church building, say in that quaint English familiar style. You can even add the Chia-bishop®, Chia-priest® and even a Chia-deacon®. All of them suitably hollow inside, but not Mexican-made, pally. No foreign goods, here. The Toad only buys American, except for the lawn service, the pool service, the housecleaning service, the car detailing service, and occasional fast food purchases. Rawk.*

And, you don’t have to really worry about that hole inside. Content doesn’t matter to the real practitioner of Chiaology. You can put anything in there or nothing at all. It doesn’t matter, rally. Great shades of Fernando, it just matters that it looks marvelous, pally. That’s Chia-“patrimony”.

Then, you apply the chia seeds—we can even get them in the appropriate liturgical colors from C.M. Almy’s new Botanical Division. We just paste them on there in gelatinous coat—the kind that is formless and wobbles and jiggles until it settles down on whatever Chia shape is underneath.

Now, the bad news-you do have to do a little work. Not much, bunky, not like going to a real seminary or even having a real ordination. But Chiaology does require some up-front effort-you know, read the manual, dump out the water. But it won’t last long. Soon, the sprout-like plant will cover any grooves or marks, and you will feel all warm and comfy-like. Chiaology is sort of like having eight or nine Last Word’s—everything gets hazy and indistinct. You really don’t have to work at it any more, or bother the mind with substance.

You do get only a limited initial number of Chia seeds, though. What happens when the first ones die off and the same ones aren’t available from our good friends at C.M. Almy’s Botanical Division? Well, you can get almost the same salvia hispanica from that bigger supplier. And what if you break your Chia-bishop? You can get almost the same kind, and when that vegetable patina grows out it will almost be the same. And, that’s the way it is, pally. No worry, though, because Chia-patrimony is all on the surface anyway. Just as long as you can sing that familiar, “Ch-ch-ch-chia!” (#437 in the 1940 Chia-Hymnal), you will be just fine. Rawk, rawk, rawk.*

So, the Toad is bunkering in for Christmas. He’ll leave hollow figures on the windowsill, unless it’s a Chia-Obama (as content free as any other Chia-pet). That one will have to have a place right there on the bookshelf in the study next to Joey Escribá’s The Dummy’s Guide to Flagellation, Hank Zwingli’s Big Book of Sacraments and, from the mansion, Hep’s Little Black Book (Hardcover edition).

After attending to sending threat letters (you think a present like a Chia-anything gets a thank you?), the Toad will head out to the trench line where “the Padre” will lay on a nice Christmas Eve service for the Toads and Toadettes standing watch. Afterwards, we’ll gaze out on the star shells bursting over No-Man’s Land and wait for the sweet strains of one of the Huns singing a traditional German carol. Then, tear in the eye, the Toad will drop him like a sack of spuds in his tracks from 100 yards out with a round from the trusty .303 Enfield, and take the chocolate ration off him for good measure. The Hun bastard was probably a practicing Chiaologist to boot! Rawk, rawk, rawk!

Now, religious rancor almost aside, (thats double consonance, pally, be amazed), it’s that part of the column you all wait for: the drink recipe. For Christmas it’s the aptly-named Last Word. When it comes to flavor, Toads and Toadettes, this little ambuscade in a glass lives up to its name. Made with gin, fresh squeezed lime juice, maraschino liqueur and green (of course) Chartreuse. The Last Word is a prohibition-era drink, which originated at the Detroit Athletic Club and had gotten lost until a Seattle bartender Murray Stenson (not a known Chiaologist) discovered it while rifling through old cocktail manuals and long-lost S.P.C.K. publications.

Considered one of America’s top bartenders, Stenson found The Last Word in “Bottoms Up!” (or was that, "Buttocks Up"?) by Ted Saucier, a 1951 bartender’s guide that is so old it was bound together reportedly by packaging tape. Or, maybe it was a gelatinous substance. In any event, here is

The Last Word

1/2 ounce gin
1/2 ounce lime juice
1/2 ounce green Chartreuse
1/2 ounce maraschino liqueur

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.  A few of these, bunky, and you’ll be chasing Chia-pets with the balsamic vinaigrette and a packet of croutons.

Merry Christmas (we don’t say “holiday” here) to all, and to all a Toad night!

Yr. Obed. Serv.

Brigadier Roy Aldous Toad, O.B.E. (Order of the Bufodinae Empire), M.Ch. (Master of Chialogy), D. Phil. (Oxen.), LSMFT
Somewhere Near the Ypres Salient
*The Sound of One Toad Barking