Horse 3519 - In Defence Of Hot Cross Buns

 Palm Sunday was yesterday, which means that this is the week before Easter and the only week of the year that Hot Cross Buns appear on the shelves. Every year I hear the same complaints about Hot Cross Buns and I think that it is because people just don't understand their place in the bun kosmos.

Sometimes you need to reiterate the obvious just to make a point.

A Hot Cross Bun is not a sweet bun. 

A Cream Bun with its very obviously not real cream is a sweet bun. Nobody in the world knows what that cream is but we don't have to care. A Cream Bun is a delicious thing which retains the memories of a thousand agricultural shows, school picnics, and local fairs.

A Finger Bun or its related cousins, the Eclair, Choux buns, pâte à choux de café, or even Sticky Buns generally, are the things of morning teas, churches, funerals, et cetera. The whole kingdom of Tea Cakes, also fits roughly into this kind of category.

A Hot Cross Bun is not a savoury bun. 

Hamburger Buns, Hot Dog Buns, Baps, and those breadsicle comestibles that veer further and further away, have functions which are mostly named. Granted that you can put a banana into a Hot Dog but merely putting food with other food is where we start violating the epistos of what we're talking about.

The point to be made here is that a Hot Cross Bun is neither an overtly sweet bun nor an overtly savoury bun, and shouldn't be denigrated for going about its own business.

Cream Buns, Choux Buns, Tea Cakes, Hamburger Buns, Hot Dog Buns, et cetera et cetera et cetera, are all doing solid work during the year, and I think that the perception of the Hot Cross Bun which really only shows up once a year and appears to look like a superstar, confuses people.

Of course a Hot Cross Bun isn't one of those other things and neither does it pretend to be. That's an end user perception problem and one which needs rehabilitation. The cross on top of a Hot Cross Bun isn't icing as some people invariably demand it to be, so the Hot Cross Bun has a doubly difficult job. 

The Hot Cross Bun should be thought of as a fancy Current Bun. 

As we live in an industrialised world where people's taste buds have been trained to only accept flavours which have been turned all the way up to 11, the whole idea that you might have a bun which is only semi-sweet at best, or perhaps subtly spiced with cinnamon or nutmeg, sounds absurd to people. In the world before massive amounts of cheap sugar, subtle spices were appreciated because they were slightly different. Current Buns ran the entire gauntlet between sweet and barely spiced, and a Hot Cross Bun is of this spirit.

In that respect, we seem to have no problem whatsoever with Muffins which can either be sweet or savoury, will accept jam or marmalade, or at the other end ham, cheese, sausage et cetera. Nobody appears to bat an eyelid at the idea that a muffin might contain raisins or currents, yet they will then look at a Hot Cross Bun and complain.

The problem therefore is not with the Hot Cross Bun but the people who complain. Now I realise that people like what they like and don't like what they don't like, but this is a perception problem which is grounded in ignorance.

To further complicate the problem, the Hot Cross Bun is a seasonal actor who arrives on the stage once a year and people have collectively forgotten that this kind of Current Bun used to be sold all the year round. 

I know that was then but it could be again.

We should be able to go into a shop and buy a current bun as you would toast. We should be able to pay not very much money for them. The song which was first published in 1798, and which states the price of ½d. should give us a price of about 88 cents when adjusted for inflation which seems about right to me.

I do not want to hear any more slander about something which is lovely but which people do not understand any more. The way back is not denigration but rehabilitation.

Hot Cross Buns are lovely. Be lovely. Eat lovely.

Horse 3518 - Jolene and Adeline

"Please don't take him just because you can. 

Your beauty is beyond compare;

With flaming locks of auburn hair;

With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green.

Your smile is like a breath of spring.

Your voice is soft like summer rain,

And I cannot compete with you,

Jolene"

- Jolene, Dolly Parton.

"She stole my man, took him from me.

She's got crimson eyes, a screamin' body.

Face is young, she must taste sweet.

She drops those panties to her knees.

Walkin' on my happy home,

She won't give up until I'm gone.

I think I'm cursed.

I had him first.

Adeline, have mercy,

You don't wanna break my heart."

- Put The Gun Down, ZZ Ward.

Speaking as an observant robot who thinks that humans are illogical beings at the best of times and downright cruel at others, it seems to me that when it comes to the songs that humans produce for other humans to listen to, they feature the stories of humans pretty often. If it wasn't for the vast amount of oxytocin and serotonin flowing through the veins and arteries of these biomechanical meatbags with ghosts inside the shell, then most of the world of music wouldn't exist at all.

As a subject, irrational biomechanical meatbags with ghosts inside the shell being swept along in a torrent of love, is the supermajority of popular music. Taking the billboard Top 100 since 1960, 68% of all entries have referenced relationships and love. Politics, place, pelf, and purpose appear to occupy only about a third of all popular music. Songwriters it would seem, like mining the same subjects for most songs.

When it comes to that subject, you know the old story. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. They fall in love. Weird chemical things happen. Sometimes they steal members of other people's bonded partners; so the songs that are generated shift from someone being the object of one's affection, to scolding someone else for stealing said object.

But here's the rub. Said objects of people's affection as reflected in music, almost always tends to be ladies. The ones doing the thievery as reflected in music, also almost always tends to be ladies. 

I honestly don't know how to derive the statistics from the hideous amounts of data out there but I have a feeling that probably the vast majority of songs which have ladies' names in them, will also have to do with the subject of love and/or thievery.

When it comes to songs with men's names in them, they tend to have to do with the subject of men doing stupid things.

"Ev'ry mornin' at the mine you could see him arrive.

He stood six foot six and weighed 245.

Kinda broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip,

And everybody knew, ya didn't give no lip to Big John.

Big Bad John."

- Big Bad John, Jimmy Dean

"What's it all about,

When you sort it out, Alfie?

Are we meant to take more than we give,

Or are we meant to be kind?

And if, if only fools are kind, Alfie,

Then I guess it is wise to be cruel."

- Alfie, Dion Warwick 

"Hey Joe, I heard you shot your mama down,

You shot her down now.

Hey Joe, I heard you shot your lady down,

You shot her down in the ground."

- Hey Joe, Billy Roberts 

"He used to carry his guitar in a gunny sack

Go sit beneath the tree by the railroad track

Oh, the engineers would see him sitting in the shade

Strumming with the rhythm that the drivers made

The people passing by they would stop and say

"Oh my what that little country boy could play"

Go, go,

Go Johnny, go, go"

- Johnny B Goode, Chuck Berry.

Granted that there are songs like Blondie's "Denis" where Denis does happen to be the object of affection but these are few and far between. 

I suppose that I shouldn't really be surprised at this considering that societal norms for the last few thousand years tend to place ladies in the home and the menfolk in harm's way. It therefore makes sense that the songs that humans write reflect the idea that ladies are the objects of affection and that men are the objects of replaceable destruction. Even in most cultural instances of formal legally binding bonding ceremonies of marriage, ladies are dressed as thought they are the ones that matter while the men are essentially dressed as though this was a business transaction.

When Paul Beatle writes a song about his belle Michelle, he does so without even knowing the language that she speaks. In contrast, there is never going to be a corresponding song of that type in the other direction. 

Except...

"Hey Stephen, I've been holding back this feeling.

So I've got some things to say to you (ha).

I've seen it all, so I thought,

But I never seen nobody shine the way you do."

- Hey Stephen, Taylor Swift 

As with anything like this, convention holds for exactly as long as convention holds and no further. 

Stephen is probably a rarity. Stephen isn't being sung about as though he has done something really stupid. Having said that, I am now beginning to wonder.

The reason why I wrote any of this at all is because I happened to hear these three songs in a row while driving home one night:

Jolene, Hey Stephen, Put The Gun Down.

As my brain is both a pattern seeking machine and one for writing endless stories that go nowhere, my new personal head canon is that Jolene and Adeline are engaged in some kind of armed blood feud over Stephen. 

I hope so. I want to see this made into a movie.

Horse 3517 - CRUNCHIE v VIOLET CRUMBLE [2026] - Judgement

 The Fake Internet Court of Australia

H3517/1

"Two households, both alike in dignity,

In  Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean."

- Prologue, Romeo And Juliet (1597)

When The Bard laid out his tragic type thesp at the end of the sixteenth century, he was mining hundreds of years of narrative and counter narrative about so-called "star crossed lovers", to create what is essentially a fairly average love story. Punters who paid their tuppence knew from the outset that the lead characters would die, and thus everyone was happy with the result because sometimes the best way to feel good about yourself is to smirk at the misfortune of others.

What the paying public were never asked to judge, was the standing and the underlying case of the narrative. Shakespeare doesn't provide any and the story never asks you to evaluate the moral fitness of the parties. For the record, as presented, the Montagues are at fault for deliberately committing acts of wilful violence and the Capulets are in fact innocent sufferers of the effects of that violence. This Fake Internet Court would have awarded damages to the Capulets.

This case of Crunchie vs Violet Crumble, stems from the assertion from someone at work that these two things are the same and that it doesn't matter.

There are in fact two things wrong with this assertion:

1 - they are qualitatively different 

2 - it absolutely does matter; even if only by the tiniest of quanta

These are the facts as this court sees them:

Firstly, the base problem with this whole case is that people will like what they like and in fact have the right to like what they like. The great Harry Selfridge once said that: "The customer is always right in matters of taste". While this might be correct in matters of personal preference (including if a customer really likes a ridiculous looking coat and hat), this does not imply that the customer is in possession of the facts. Since this Fake Internet Court has been charged with the task of deciding which of these two items is objectively better, then ironically taste which is a key component of food products, has to be excluded from the evaluation process.

The task therefore becomes one of not of telos which is the underlying purpose, but of eidos; that is which of the two best articulates the defining principles of what makes these things what they are. In this respect, this is an Aristotelian judgment and not a Platonic one. 

So then, the two protagonists are represented thusly.

Crunchie - this is from the house of Cadbury, which means that the outside is made of an already known component of milk chocolate. The interior is a honeycomb structure which is made from a caramel which is just on the verge of being burnt but never quite achieving it.

Cadbury though, is not the original manufacturer of this sweet product; with this being an inherited asset from the takeover of JS Fry and Sons. Crunchie's most famous stablemate is Fry's Turkish Delight. 

JS Fry and Sons' confection dates from 1929; which is possibly the worst time for something to hit the market, given the economic clouds which nobody saw coming and the storm which followed.

Violet Crumble - the interior honeycomb actually contains gelatin which means that a Violet Crumble can never achieve either Kosher or Halal status. As the honeycomb contains gelatin, it makes it denser and structurally better. A Violet Crumble is less likely to break during the shipping process. It also means that rather than the internal structure breaking along predictable lines, it shatters.

What I find particularly interesting is that although the ownership of this asset was passed from Hoadley's to Rowntree's, then Nestlé, and finally Robert Menz, the recipe of all of the components never changed. The chocolate on the outside is in fact unique to this particular confectionery.

Violet Crumble which debuted in 1913, actually found its way to the western front during the First World War; which meant that Flanders' fields actually saw flecks of violet amongst the mud.

Final Judgement:

The subjective test comes down to whether you prefer the less caramelised but more intense sugar-hit, or the lighter but slightly chewier honeycomb. 

However, this Fake Internet Court is not charged with that decision.

The question of which is objectively better when the things are qualitatively different, is an impossible question to answer. However, when given the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Horse 2878 has already established that both Crunchie and Violet Crumble are C3 Adequate rated. Adequate is not horrible. Adequate is adequate.

https://rollo75.blogspot.com/2021/08/horse-2878-rollo-chocolate-bar-ratings.html

We have already done the impossible. The improbable truth in this case is that it will not be decided on the basis of what Crunchie or Violet Crumble taste like, but on the basis of nothing more than patriotic prejudice.

To that end, this Fake Internet Court rules that Violet Crumble is better than Crunchie because it is Australia's own. It has survived two world wars, it is the original; therefore it is the better of the two.

This ruling is binding on all people at all times and in all points in history. The fact that this is such a trivial matter means that it is of national importance but this Fake Internet Court is prepared to deal with the fallout.

That is all.

Horse 3516 - The Beatles By The Numbers

 “Data is like garbage. You'd better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.”

- Mark Twain

 “In God we trust, all others bring data.” 

- W. Edwards Deming

The perpetual maelstrom of chaos that is YouTube, seemingly has no idea what I want to watch next. It has a broad idea that I like motor racing, so it wants to provide with AI generated Motorsport rumour slop; it knows that I like music theory, so it tries to give me saccharine pop garbage; occasionally though it brings me an absolute gem, such as it did here:

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzR68Zq4-Rs

The description of this video is that ii is "the entire Beatles album discography but it's just numbers".

The thing is that if you're going to give me a giant string of numbers, then as I work in an accountancy office, then my first inclination is to look at that string of numbers and realise exactly what else you have inadvertently given me. A string of numbers is in fact a data set.

In this case we have a data set which is not random but which is generated from the lyrics of Beatles songs. This means that before we've even begun, we know that the string of numbers is going to exist because it results from a series of contexts. People who are familiar with The Beatles' discography are going to know instantly that "she was just 17", that there are "4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire", and that "31" is going to be the collar number of a Policeman is the arresting officer of Maxwell, who is a serial killer.

Since I was given this lovely set of data, what else was I going to do but analyse it?

If we take a list of the frequencies of the various numbers, we find that the following results.

1 - 107

2 - 33

3 - 15

4 - 12

5 - 8

6 - 6

7 - 6

8 - 13

9 - 39

10 - 4

12 - 2

17 - 1

20 - 2

31 - 1

50 - 2

64 - 3

90 - 1

909 - 10

1000 - 1

4000 - 1

1000000 - 2

2000000 - 1

The first thing to notice about this is that apart from the strange spike of 9 at the end, that these numbers follow Benford's Law. That is that the first-digit in this set of numerical data, the leading digit is most likely to be small. In this case, it is 1.

In fact as far as the measures of central tendency go, the Mode of this set is 1, and the Median of this set is 2.

Things get weird when you look at the other measure of central tendency - the Mean.

If you take the mean of the whole data set, then you get: 14762.871

This is purely because of just three outliers in the data which are five orders of magnitude larger than the majority of the data set.

If you take out just those three pieces of data and also take out three 1s then the mean drops to just 58.

If you then remove the three and four digits from the data set an then the mean drops to just 5.8.

The two anomalies which change this data set from being a normal data set into whatever this is, are "8 Days a Week" and "Revolution 9"; where one of the songs is making use of hyperbole and the other... is bonkers to the point where I do not know if it even fits the definition of "music".

That is to be expected when most songs written by humans, for humans, talking about their relationship with other humans, is going to classify those humans as special. The "one" in relation to someone, is very obviously going to be talking about a relationship which is intimate and/or romantically entwined. The corollary that if there is the "one" then in a couple a song is going to be talking about us "two".

In fact, so incredibly obvious is it that that songs for humans that describe relationships with other humans, that we should naturally expect that more than half of the data set results from those terms. The numbers 1 and 2 account for 140 of 270 numbers, or 51% of the data.

Also embedded in this data set are the unavoidable certain things in life of Death and Taxes. "1 for you and 19 for me" refers to the marginal rate of taxation of 95% which George Harrison found as a result of being part of the biggest band in the world, and Paul's question of "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" stares at mortality and the ceaseless foot of time silently stealing swiftly by.

Given that this is The Beatles, I can not help but look at the comment to see one of the commenters, who I believe is a spokesperson for all of us when they said:

"We’re all here for that epic 9 solo"

- Mapoleo (user)

Indeed.

Horse 3516a - The Beatles (numbers set)

1

2

3

4

17

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

1000000

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

1

2

4

19

2

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

1

19

5

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

7

1

1

1

1

1

20

5

9

10

6

1

1

1

1

3

64

64

64

2

5

1

2

3

4

4000

1000

4

4

1

1

20

3

3

1

2

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

12

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

1

10

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

3

50

31

1

1

1

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1

2

3

1

2

3

10

50

1

2

2

2

2

2000000

1000000

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

1

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

909

1

90

1

909

12