The title of this post, in addition to being the thought that I know is uppermost in all your minds right now, was the subject line of an e-mail that arrived in my e-mail in-box at 3:14 p.m. PDT yesterday afternoon. Just looking at that subject line brightened me up instantly. It was from Clara Stevenson, a name I didn’t recognize, but because it was a female name, I got doubly brightened up. I opened the e-mail with eager anticipation. And read this:
Hi!
I really enjoyed reading through your collection of resources on https://www.nocleansinging.com/2011/08/04/thats-metal-but-its-not-music-no-43-the-blue-fucking-angels/. I became interested in chef careers after I was assigned to do research on the field, specifically about the average compensation range for chefs and pastry chefs.
After my research was finished, I ended up producing a graph to better visualize the average chef’s salary: http://www.pastryschools.net/career-and-salary. I thought I might pass along the graph, as it would fit in well with your resources. Adding a link to your website would greatly benefit both your readers and your site.
Best,
Clara Stevenson clara@pastryschools.net
Uh huh. I immediately replied to Clara, as follows: (after the jump . . .)
Hey Clara,
Thank you very fucking much for writing. I’m so glad you love our humble site and that you enjoyed reading through the resources in my post about The Blue Fucking Angels. I nearly shit myself with joy.
But to be brutally honest, which is the only kind of honest we know how to be at NO CLEAN SINGING, my head got a little scrambled when you started talking about chefs and pastry chefs. I mean, this is a motherfucking metal site, and I’m not talkin’ about stainless steel mixing bowls and cake pans. I gotta tell you, I had a bit of a suspicion, just a little tiny one, that you might have sent that loving e-mail without actually looking at our site. Because, y’know, it’s just not obvious to me what Thy Catafalque and Mitochondrion and Semen Howitzer have to do with apple tarts and molecular gastronomy.
But then I took a peak at your link, and I got the connection. So damned obvious, really. And you’re right. It fits our resources. Like when you wrote that “the world of pastry involves a high amount of dedication, stamina, and precision.” I mean, that’s just so true of NCS!! We’re all about the dedication, the stamina, and the precision. We can sling the bullshit hour after hour, sunrise to sundown, and never falter or stumble or get tired, because we nap a lot.
And like when you wrote on your site that “A career in pastry can lead to many different positions, all of which can be rewarding for those who love desserts and baking”? That’s just nail-on-the-head true of metal blogging. I know it’s just a matter of time before blogging away about death fucking metal is going to lead me right into a career of making pies and wholesome nutritious bread. I mean, that’s what all trve metalheads yearn for, amirite? Fuckin’ A.
And when you described the work of a pastry chef, it was like someone had finally captured in eloquent language just what we do here: “Standing most of the day near hot ovens and stoves, the work of a pastry chef entails long work hours, intense (and often repetitive) physical labor and demanding schedules of 40 or more hours a week. Additionally, bakers who work in small bakeries have to work at night or extremely early in the morning so that their baked goods are fresh when customers buy them.” I mean, seriously, the jobs are almost identical!
Pastry chefs stand near hot stoves and ovens all day, and metal bloggers sit on their rapidly spreading asses near hot computers all day doing lots of intense labor, like listening to metal and banging out stupid shit on our keyboards. Okay, I know it’s not exactly physical labor, but it is repetitive, and I stay up late at night and get up at the ass-crack of dawn so all our shit is fresh for our customers.
And finally, when you wrote about pastry chefs being “in particularly high demand, with their specialized skills allowing them to take in upwards of $60,000 per year,” you could have been writing about us! Except for the part about the high demand and the $60K per year. I mean, it’s easier to milk a boar hog than to squeeze any money out of metal. Seriously. A career in metal is just a short step away from being a homeless person. But we most definitely have got specialized skills. I’ll write you again when I’ve figured out what they are.
So yeah, I’m happy to add your link to our site because it has already greatly benefitted me and I know it will benefit our readers. Can you send me a recipe for Twinkies and Ding Dong’s?
Gotta go now. I feel an overpowering urge to bake.
Brutal regards,
Islander
P.S. What do you think of the new Fleshgod Apocalypse album? That shit fuckin owns, don’t it?
EDITOR’S NOTE: The artwork at the top of this post has nothing to do with Clara’s loving e-mail. I just wanted to put up something metal. It’s by a Russian artist who goes by the name Mstibog. He’s got a facebook page here and a blog at this location. He’s the dude who did the awesome art for the latest album by Kartikeya, among others.
45 Responses to ““I LOVE NOCLEANSINGING.COM!””
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Also, about half the chefs I’ve met have been metalheads in one form or another. I assume cooking (and, by extension, baking, even though they’re so fucking different as for one to be Black Sabbath and the other to be Circle of Dead Children) just draws weird ass motherfuckers who like to fuck their mothers in their weird asses.
Speaking of baking, I want takoyaki….better known in Phrospeak as octopus-balls!
I’ve known a few chefs, too, who were metalheads. Well, I think they were actually dishwashers, but that’s close, right? Actually, the one true chef I know pretty well is into rap. It follows that we don’t talk much about music.
Maybe it had something to do with working in a shitty university cafeteria?
Brandon from Across the Sun is by far the best damn cook I have ever met. After a long night of hookah and On Demand pro tennis, we woke at around 5 pm and he made the BEST fucking omelette I’ve ever tasted.
I’m getting hungry just thinking about that. Oh, and somehow I’d never heard Across the Sun’s music before, even though they’re just down the highway, but I just listened to their cover of Separate Ways on their FB bandpage, and they really did it justice (and I’m an old Journey fan).
What’s different about CoDC and Black Sabbath?
I just meant that while they are both clearly part of the heavy metal oeuvre, their stylistic differences are so great as to be nearly incomparable.
I probably didn’t say make that point as well as I’d like to believe I did…
Lol I was just joking. 😀
I got what you meant… they sound nothing alike.
I’m surprised it was the Blue Angels post Clara pointed to, although to be fair, pancake and salmon are both mentioned in the post and/or the comments. I wonder if my impromptu discussion over the use of bleach and bits of food code could be spam fodder as well.
I actually thought, at first, it would be linking to the sperm cooking post…
Good call! I’d forgotten about that post. This is the one, right? Or have I run more than one post about cooking with sperm?
https://www.nocleansinging.com/2010/11/04/thats-metal-but-its-not-music-no-20-2/
That’s the one!
Funny thing: I did a search (using the handy search box, heheheh) for “sperm” it gave me EIGHT results–but not a one of them the post I was actually looking for.
You’re a fucking filthy pervert, filling the intertubes with sperm porn! For shame!
Yeah, the search function on this site is slightly feeble. I had to use google, with “no clean singing”, “sperm”, and “cookbook”, and it came right up. I’m sure lots of people do that search in their spare time.
And I would note that I did not use the word “sperm” even once in this post. Granted, I did use the word “semen”, but that’s only because it’s part of a band name. I can’t help it if readers like you see the word “pastry” and immediately start commenting about sperm.
*Blushes.*
Are all of those results from after you started coming here? Methinks you may have had an effect on Islander adn your fellow commenters. Then again, Islander may have already been a twisted fuck before that…
It’s true, I’ve always been twisted, but before it was like the mysterious, life-transporting spiral of DNA molecules. Since Phro showed up, that all broke apart and now I’m just a mundane twisted fuck.
“-because we nap a lot.” Lol.
I’ve looked into culinary arts, not sure if it’s my thing though since my grandmother told me a good bit of sanitation is involved.
Well, from what I’ve seen of restaurant kitchens, sanitation is really more optional than a strict requirement. And the customers usually have no way to see what you’re really up to back there. Which is the main reason why you want to be sweet as pie to your servers and tip handsomely.
I promise that in all my years of food service I never ONCE intentionally, knowingly, or willingly served poorly prepared food.
Just absolutely shit food though…yah, that was my specialty!
If I ever ran my own restaurant, hats would be mandatory, hair would be pulled back, and everyone would wear one of those masks that surgeons wear over their mouth and nose… cuz when people talk they spit.
In Michigan, hats or nets are mandatory for all but servers (anyone not involved in any part of the preparation), a rule pushed for by a third party. No one’s ever gotten anything from a stray hair in their food; the rule is more of a public image issue. Aside from hair restraints, long sleeves are supposed to be worn (body hair) and men wht chest hair (especially a lot of it) are supposed to wear shirts that cover up as much as possible. Addiitonally, the use of “masks” is technically in the rules, but not one that’s easily enforcable and impractical to put into place. To get nitpicky, anyone with a beard or moustache – full grown, trimmed, stubble, whatever – is supposed to wear a “beard restraint”.
Fortunately the health department does allow some flexibility in the application of these rules, depending on the type of establishment and the makeup of its customer base. A bakery, a concession stand and a fast food joint with a limited menu all have different conditions and even though all are supposed to be licensed, they’re not going to be forced to comply with every little thing in the Food Code. The health department actually does use common sense and looks at the needs of each establishment. Of course, be a dick to the inspector and he/she will make you jump through hoops and have to enforce stuff that becomes a pain in the ass.
Lucky Michigan.
As an electrical contractor I’ll say being a dick to the inspector will get you a serious ass-pain in any code enforced environment.
???
Wouldn’t you be both good and appreciate sanitation?
That’s a good question.
Considering I’m OCD I should want things to be clean, and I do; I should also be good at cleaning, when I want to I am. The truth is, I’m not very quick at cleaning things up… washing dishes can last a reeeeeaallly long time; which is why I never try to swap washing dishes for another chore with my mom.
“-because we nap a lot.” Lol.
I want dessert.
With or without sperm?
Fried or chilled?
Pureed or baked in a merengue?
How about pureed in merengue and then fried before being chilled.
That sounds disgusting. In other words, a gourmet’s delight!
flambéed or sautéed?
Damn, flambé sounds outstanding. Anything with flames, particularly when it comes to eating, is like the definition of metal.
so if we combined In Flames with Cannibal Corpse, would that be the most metal thing ever?
I don’t think my brain is big enough to imagine what that would sound like, but it’s a beautiful recipe in theory.
Baking spam is a new one to me… all of my spam mail asks me if I want to “perform like a porn-director”, which I always found confusing, because the director isn’t the one having sex.
I now feel like baking spam. I’ve fried spam before, y’know, for the white-bread and spam sandwich with mayo, the redneck classic. But baking spam sounds good, maybe with a cheez whiz topping, casserole-style.
Don’t forget the instant mashed-taters!
With or without the sperm?
I prefer mine spermless but I don’t begrudge anyone who likes ’em spermed up.
I think we have a new recipe descriptive: To “sperm up”. As in, “Bake in a 360-degree oven for 45 minutes, remove, and sperm up to taste.”
Holy fuck, I don’t know how/why I missed the comments linking to Mstibog in the previous Kartikeya article: That artwork is PHENOMENAL.
It Is metal. I mean like… the best modern metal is an almalgamation of the greatest aspects of previous genres. Thats what this dudes artwork feels like; older barabarian themes mixed with an anime/comic asthetic and the best of western/european designs. This motherfucker needs to get more contracts for album art. The number of the blog dudes had a recent thread lamenting the tacky artork of thr latest ASP record and the “same-ness” of most modern metal album covers in general. This looks like the cure for what ails ’em.
Man, great comments. And obviously, I agree. I’ve been tracking this guy’s sketches and other art posts since I saw what he did for Kartikeya, and all of it is so creatively imagined and ingeniously executed.
Anyone recall the cake from the birthday episode of Metalocalypse…?
I missed that one, and so I had to look it up on dethklok.wiki.com, and found this, which was funny as shit: “Jean-Pierre is indirectly responsible for the death of the Queen of Denmark: having been asked by Nathan to bake a “totally metal” cake for Murderface’s birthday, he took the request literally and made a cake with mercury frosting. Though he warned people not to sample the frosting as it would kill them, the Queen took a taste before he could stop her . . . Almost immediately, she vomits up pieces of her own flesh and died instantly.”
Awesome. Now that’s some trve metal cake-baking right there.