Transcript of AE 1221 - The Goss: Dog Turds and Veggie Ice Cream

G'day, you mob! Pete here! And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news weather locally down under here in Australia, or non-locally, overseas, in other parts of the world. Okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in the Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at AussiEnglish.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes. The PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising. And that is the quickest way to level up your English.

Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

All righty, Dad. How's it going?

Hey, Pete. It's good to be back. What's the goss? There's a few bits of goss.

Yeah.

Yeah. A few stories you've been sending me over the last few weeks. One's a piece of crap.

One's a piece of crap? Is that the pun or is it?

It's the pun. It's the pun. "Is leaving dog poo in the street really so bad?" Question mark. "The science says it's even worse than you think." How do they know what I think? I could think it's the worst thing ever.

So I think, yeah, the first few lines "Beyond the obvious unsightliness and the likelihood of making unwanted contact with dog poo. There are some other important reasons to pick up after dogs. Here's what you need to know and what the science says about common efforts to deter dogs from pooping on the yard." So what were the main efforts, Dad?

The main efforts or the effects? So salmonella, E.coli, giardia and internal parasites are being spread by dog faeces.

Yeah. Not your first choice. I wonder what kind of parasites. I assume worms.

They'll be worms. Yeah.

Yeah. Hopefully. Just what we used to call grog worms. I don't know why it was grog, but grog worms as in the worms you get- the little ones that come out of your bum.

Yeah. Yeah, well, there are actually. Well, domestic dogs are not going to be a problem, but there are actually some pretty bad ones that you get from farm working dogs because their parasites typically go through pigs and sheep.

Oh God.

They're pretty ugly but..

Do not want. But yeah, so they're trying to cut back on this. It was interesting, though, that I feel like we're already doing pretty well, at least locally here with, with the kinds of amenities that they have for dog walkers. Right. You will see, you know, the little baggie station all over the shop anytime you go to the beach or anything. Yeah, yeah. There's always bins there. Always absolutely horrible to throw anything in because you lift up the top and you're like, "Whoa!"

"This hasn't been cleared for a couple of weeks!"

"This smells like shit!"

Particularly in summer.

That's it. Yeah. This smells like shit. Dog shit. Yeah, it's horrible. But. Yeah. So do you think people are getting better at cleaning up after their dogs, or do you think..

Well, I certainly- better than when I was a child. When I was a child. Well, firstly, dogs just roamed. You know, the idea of keeping your dog on your property was sort of unheard of. That dogs would, you know. Mostly dogs are trained and they're territorial, so they'll sit on their own property, but they'll just walk around the street. So if your dog's walking around the street, you've got no control over where it's doing its business.

Yeah.

And you're not going to be going around cleaning up after something if you don't think you're responsible.

Yeah, I don't know if this is my dog poo, but I'm just going to go around the streets and clean up..

You know, I certainly, I reckon 30 or 40 years ago, if you were walking around and people got a dog that, you know, the best you would see is somebody who would try and sort of kick it under a bush or something. Rather than picking it up.

They would just lay a big banana leaf over the top of it.

Exactly. Yeah. So but now, look, I would estimate, and this is completely unscientific, I reckon 95% of people are walking around with their little baggies and picking up their dog's droppings. And so..

You think it's become much more of a taboo then? Because I think today I was sitting in my bedroom on the computer. I think one day with mum would have been here, the kids were here, so she was probably helping out with them. And this huge dog just came past the window and just dropped a massive log on our front yard. And I was just like- and the person walking the dog was like a seven year old girl. I was like, 'You've got to fucking be kidding me.'

I was just like, I'm going to have to go outside and totally abuse this poor child. No, no. The good thing was, after the dog had finished, because she just fucked off and I was like..

Of course she's going, What's she going to do? She's run down there, jumped on the dog and ridden it down the road.

That's it! I was like, 'You bitch just took. Bolted.' No, but then the, the dad was walking behind her with the bag and came and cleaned it up and I was like..

Yeah, thanks, mate.

..'God damn right.' Like, there's more poop than grass on my front yard now. What the hell, man? But yeah, it is funny. I feel like the older I've gotten, I've noticed that it's become a massive taboo. And that's, you know, I'm sure all of us have walked a dog where you've forgotten a bag and you've let the dogs had to shit suddenly in the middle of the road or whatever, and you're just like,

'Don't look at me.' Yeah,

The older I get, I'm like, 'Quick, hurry up. Like, you know, we gotta get out of here. Someone's gonna see!' You know,

Someone's going to be sitting in their bedroom looking out the window.

That's it. 'He's shitting on the front yard again!' Like, 'Call the cops!' But yeah, it's interesting. One other thing I've noticed is that you don't find white dog turds everywhere anymore because they've removed the calcium powder or whatever..

And they're not, and the dog dogs aren't eating bones as much.

Yeah. So they used to always be these dried up..

We get that. We get those. You can guarantee a week after our dog's had a bone that. Yeah. The turds in the backyard, that when we're cleaning them up they'll be 'Oh a little brown one' or 'Oh, a hard white one!'

Yeah. That's, that's 50% bone.

It's a- bone fragments.

Yeah. I know. It is pretty insane. I love that. Yeah, you can just give dogs like Banjo a beautiful big- What would it be? Like a femur-.

Cow femur.

Cow femur. And the first thing he does, like, it's fresh out of the Glad wrap. You know, you've unwrapped it, it's clean, and the first thing he does is bury it, right?

Yeah.

Put it in the filth, and you're just like, 'Mate, you just..'

Predigest it.

.. touch anything..

.. bacteria on it that it's predigested.

It's gross. But yeah, so..

Which is part of the reason why the dog poo is a problem. Because dogs' digestive systems..

Burn through everything..

..are ridiculously good but there will be some of these parasites and bacteria and things that survive it. And then they're just sitting there and, yeah, people aren't out handling dog turds on the street.

Well, adults.

Yes, But it's mostly the it's just getting into the water. It gets into the water systems. Now we're not drinking stormwater, but the stormwater goes into the local, local lake or whatever.

And you know how many kids are down there playing and mucking around and.

Yeah, well that's it. Right? So yeah, don't, don't let your dog poo..

Don't let your dog shit in the street.

The thing that shits me at the moment, we've got like, there's an enemy cat. I don't know which one it is, but there's one of these bastard cats in the neighbourhood that keeps coming over to my front yard. And Noah and I made a little- not a flower bed, but a little garden,

.. A little cactus garden and succulents..

Got some succulents in there. And there's, I've left space for these things to grow and grow out horizontally over the top. And I put nice soil down with perlite mixed it in nice and airy, so it drained well and the plants didn't die. But there's a neighbour's cat that keeps coming and digging a hole and laying a massive turd and not burying it. It just leaves it there. It's one thing- I have to go and bury it! Because I'm like, I'm not picking this thing up, but I'm, you know, I'm like, every, every few days I come outside and I'm like, 'He's shat in the garden again!' Like, he's obviously found his favourite spot.

You've made the perfect cat litter tray! The outdoor litter tray.

'The soil moves between my claws so nicely when I'm digging my little hole.' He's just like, you know.

Well, you spread cat litter over it. You know, that was the problem.

I know, I know. But yeah, that's one of those other things that's probably become a taboo in the time that dog, you know, letting your dog poo in the street has. It's just letting pets roam.

Well, I don't know. Geelong City Council were talking about making it illegal to have cats outdoors.

I'd welcome that. I mean, you mean not, not supervised? I imagine that if they're on a leash or something someone's backyard..

Ah yeah. But just, just cats just running around, running around outdoors and there was no pushback against it. So I don't know why they didn't do it.

Because they've done that in Canberra. They had all these suburbs that were no outdoor cat suburbs.

Yeah.

And it was for the sake of the wildlife.

Yeah.

Right. The native wildlife. Like it's one thing, you know, if you could just say cats, you can kill anything that's not native, go to town.

..to town on the mice and the rats.

Yeah, exactly. Unleash the fury.

Eat those weeds.

That's it. Yeah, that's it exactly. But they tend to just indiscriminately kill whatever they can.

Exactly.

And so..

Most of the stuff in people's yards, even in suburbia, is native.

Yeah.

Particularly little reptiles and birds.

I always feel like just buying a large mammal trap and putting it in the backyard. And every time I get a cat, just taking it to the pound and being like, 'Oh, someone lost their cat.'

You're entitled to do it.

And I think they have to pay a fee, right? Every time it happens.

Do your block of land.

I just the thing that irritates me because I've got one of these stories where I remember when we first moved to Curlewis. Kel and I moved in at Brompton Street down the road there, and we would go down the street and drive up to or walk up to the supermarket that was around the corner. And I remember driving up one day- it was either driving or walking and someone's cat had been run over and like not just like hit by a car. But the car, or cars, had run over the centre of the cat and it had gone everywhere. There were intestines, all sorts of stuff, all over the road. And I remember thinking. That's fucked up. Like. Like that's someone's pet. That's not just a random animal. So, you know, they're probably going to see it. And then the next day, I think, or later that day, Kel was taking the kids, you know, and they would have been, you know, babies at the time, small children up, up to the supermarket. And she was like, she told me when she got back, 'I was going up there and there were these people all sort of standing around a small kind of like little grave in the front yard.'

'And the kids were crying and the, the woman there was crying and everything.' And I was like, 'Was that in this spot?' And she's like, 'Yeah.' And I'm like, 'Fuck. It was their cat.' And it was right out the front of their house. So the cat had left the house, walked across the road and just gotten squashed. And so that was one of those things where that's another reason that I just don't- I can't imagine my kids coming home from Day-care and finding Peaches squished all over the road, you know. And you're- it's one of those things, Kel was like, 'I feel so bad for them.' And I'm like, 'Fuck that.' You know, like, 'Why were they letting the cat out? Like, God damn it.' You know, it's irresponsible to the cat. It's irresponsible to your children. It's irresponsible to, you know, environment. Yeah. So.

Nobody wins out of this.

I know. Exactly. So, yeah, keep your pets inside, guys. But yeah, that irritated me.

Yes.

So, anything else you want to say about dog poo?

It sort of ran its race, I think.

Do you reckon people are more likely to allow their dogs to shit and walk on the road versus on the beach in Ocean Grove? Or do you think more people on the beach..

I don't know..

Allow them to poo because they can kind of just let it wash away..

Let it ride- oh yeah, the high tide'll take care of that.

Because you always see heaps of shit at the beach.

Yeah, I know. I've seen people picking it. Well, we used to do it. We haven't walked the dog on the beach for a while, but.

Well, Mum does. I don't know. You kind of do the dodgy don't you. And just bolt. You're like everyone's, everyone's on their own..

Do I look like I'm bolting up the beach? This is-.

A snail pack.

This old fat guy with a heart problem running up the beach. This dog's dropping a turd here.

You're on your own, Banjo. You dug your little hole..

Pick it up.

That's it. Cool. All right. Short cuts episode. Yeah. I'm not sure how we can follow that one up.

Can we make it a twofer? Is there anything..

Make it a twofer?..

.. that links well, or should we just.

Ah, here we go!

All right?

Speaking of food, turning veggies into ice cream.

Turning. Turning ice cream into shit!

Exactly. Well, don't feed your dog ice cream.

We can. We can make this a twofer. Two for one.

A two for one.

Two for one. All right. Okay. So the veggie ice cream one.

Yeah. This is a sort of a cool idea that there's these people now who are using rejected vegetables. So stuff that either never gets in the supermarket or is no longer saleable in the supermarket and they're mixing it into commercial ice cream mix.

What blew my mind- before you get into that, it blows my mind that so much gets rejected. That is 100% fine, not even blemished. And it's because it's too small or too big.

Or the wrong shape or-.

Yeah, you'll go in and see all, say, the Granny Smith apples or the avocados or whatever, and they will be within a certain tolerance, right? There's a uniform kind of..

Oh, the avocados are all identical. The only thing is they have sort of- today, 2 to 3 days a week, you know, but they're all the same size, the same shape.

But when you see..

They don't fall off the tree like that..

.. Where they're like, don't squish them. And you're like, 'How am I going to know? I need a test.' Like, I don't want to buy an avocado that I want to have today. And I get home and I touch it and I'm like, 'God damn it, it's going to be ready in about a week'.

Or not! Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So they're taking- This is good. I feel like it's useful because I imagine that at least a few years back and and before that it just went to landfill.

Yeah.

And there were all those stories during Covid too. I think of the avocado growers in particular. I remember they got down to like a dollar each or $0.50 each or something at the supermarket.

Some of them, they were saying it just wasn't worth picking them.

Yeah.

And so they were just rolling straight into the ground.

They just let them rot on the ground. They had tons and tons and tons and it was something like they wouldn't make the money back, that it would cost them to get them to the supermarket chains to sell. And so they were like, there's just no point in even bothering. Throw it in the rubbish. So I remember that blowing my mind. I mean, at least the farmers were keeping it and could, you know, use it as fertiliser and put it back into the chain if you want that way. But yeah, massive waste you would imagine. Yeah. So they're taking vegetable waste.

Yeah, pumpkin ice cream, cauliflower ice cream.

So yeah, because initially I read this and I'm like, okay, are they just like making ice cream from these products? But they're not going to taste anything like these products and they'll just add in flavours on top? Or is it that the ice cream is actually flavoured, cauliflower-flavour or pumpkin-flavour and maybe sweetened or something?

I think probably a bit of both. Yeah. Cauliflower doesn't have much of a flavour.

I was going to say out of the lot, I would probably pick cauliflower. Because it'll taste like nothing.

Whereas- yeah, pumpkin ice cream would be okay. It'd be..

Yeah.

Would you have it savoury or sweet?

Savoury! Yeah. Well you know, you eat it like ice cream but it's a savoury flavour. My favourite flavoured ice cream, I used to buy when I was in Singapore a lot. Because the street vendors were selling ice cream over there.

Jesus, don't tell me it's that smelly fruit.

No.

What's it called again?

No, no.

What's that damn fruit you guys will have to tell me.

Yeah.

I've had a brain fart. I can't remember.

That's all right. You'll remember it. No. Corn, Sweet corn.

Oh, really?

Ice cream. It is to die for!

Durian.

Or durian.

Or durian.

Durian. God damn. That stuff's horrible.

It is. It smells like..

Probably what you guys think of Vegemite. That's my version of Vegemite as a foreigner. That's what ..

.. smells like the Vegemite has already been eaten.

Yeah, It smells like used shoes.

Yeah, it smells like our previous story.

Yeah. Yeah. So I reckon that would be a cool idea. And then the tale of this story is also saying that vegetable boosted plain flour could be next. So actually just putting cauliflower meal as an example into flour.

It's an interesting thought, right? In the future, will we find a way of convincing people to eat objectively worse tasting food that's better for you? Or will we take objectively better food for you and make it just..

Make it taste better? Yeah.

And I think it's probably going to be the latter..

A bit and it depends on what you're doing with it. I know the sort of 'pre-pared'- I hesitate to use the really bad use of the 'pre-prepared'. Because the whole idea of preparing something is that you do it beforehand. But the 'pre-prepared' pizza bases that you buy at the supermarket, we get and you do it the same. You get the cauliflower ones, which are about 40-50% cauliflower meal in them as well as, you know, bread flour.

But they kind of don't taste like anything. Right? It's weird.

No, they don't. But I actually, I actually prefer them to the standard.

Well, they're thinner.

They're thinner. A bit crispier.

Yeah.

A slightly different flavour. You couldn't tell. 'Oh that's got cauliflower in it.'

Nah, you wouldn't even know.

But it's, but you know that's different.

Yeah. It's one of those doing that like it's pretty those things that subtracting something from the actual, what you're used to, right. Like, you think white bread. Okay, you have white bread or you have something that's made from flour and you're kind of like it doesn't really have a taste, but it does. And you don't realise it doesn't have a- it does have a taste until you've kind of subtracted it and you use something really bland like cauliflower. I remember having- I think it was when I was first getting into the gym, and I was trying to have those medium chain triglycerides type fats and I had coconut oil. And I started using that as margarine or butter on bread.

And I remember being like, What the fuck? The toast tastes so different now. Like it's- and it doesn't taste like coconut.

Salty?

Yeah. It's just..

Butter and margarine is salty.

Yeah, it just tastes like the bread. But you, all of us. I didn't realise that margarine and butter, you know, had such a strong kind of. I mean, it seems stupid now, but thinking about..

Strong flavour of..

It's strong flavour, that was kind of pairing with the bread to make toast that you had put butter.

I don't know about you, but one one very rarely just pops a piece of bread in the toast. It takes it out and eats it.

Yeah, that's..

You're putting something on it.

Too crispy. Yeah, it's just too. Yeah, It's like having dry biscuits just by themselves, sicko. Although you sit down and eat chips, but yeah, I remember that. And being like, 'Oh, wow.' Okay. So something like margarine, which I thought was, you know, just some sort of bland kind of like you put something on top of the margarine to actually give flavour to the toast or whatever. It's like, no, it actually has a quite significant flavour. And my wife would be like, 'No, Da Pete.' She pretty much just has margarine or butter on everything. Just as is. For, you know, she'd sit there and eat it with a spoon if she could, I think. But.

Well, it sums the same. 'No, I want butter on it', which actually means margarine. He's never actually experienced butter.

Probably not. But yeah. So which would you, you'd be smashing the pumpkin one.

I reckon the pumpkin one would be good. And I'm just trying to think of some other thing that, you know, another flavour. There you go. What would, what would you- give us some feedback here. What would your favourite vegetable-flavoured ice cream be?

I think it's one of those things..

'Cause I've already done sweetcorn, but I know that one's good because I've eaten it.

Is it favourite flavouring that you like it or it's the least offensive?

Well, that's actually the same question. You're just starting at a different end of the spectrum.

I mean, as in like you're actually searching for the flavour versus trying to avoid..

Sweet corn would be like, it's that standard gag about, you know, in those sort of rapid answer 20-question things, of strawberry or chocolate. The answer is vanilla. But for me, for ice cream, it's sweet corn. And people look at you, like 'Idiot!' You know? But yeah, so there is that. I would actively look for sweet corn flavoured ice cream as opposed to going, 'Can I live with spinach flavoured ice cream?'.

What is a, what is a vegetable? Because I'd probably go rhubarb. I imagine that's not a fruit. I'd have rhubarb ice cream over everything.

Pretty much. But, but the thing is that, that's a flavouring in the ice cream because it's- rhubarb has no substance. By the time you cook it, it's just mush. So I don't think you could actually make ice cream out of it.

I imagine you could take just flavouring and just sprinkle it.

Yeah. It's not adding any texture or filler to it. It's. It's like saying, you know, strawberry flavoured ice cream is strawberry flavoured, but you can also put strawberries in it.

So yeah, I don't know, I probably go the cauliflower just because I would be the least offensive.

Cauliflower or pumpkin.

I'd try them all! But if you had broccoli or- no, you know what the worst one would be?

Spinach flavoured?

Brussels sprouts.

I like Brussels sprouts! But I'm not sure Brussels sprouts ice cream would be that great.

Brussels sprouts can fuck right off.

Nah, if you, if you want to try Brussels sprouts, put Vegemite on them.

Ah yeah well that's it. If you put, put anything on them to make them taste better.

I actually love Brussels sprouts.

You could probably put a dog turd on a Brussels sprout and make it taste better than it does by itself.

That sort of wrap that one up then, hasn't it?

Yeah, that was a train wreck. Anyway, thanks for joining us, guys.

And he might actually publish this.

Yeah, no, that's it. This will be a Members-Only episode.

See you guys!

See you!