b r a v e c r e a t u r e s

Sometime back, a mate showed me an episode of South Park called 'Stupid Spoilt Whore Video Playset". This convinced me that it was time to revisit my mild interest in South Park and really watch the thing.

Over the 11 seasons this thing has been running, the authors have gone from mad to worse. Nothing is sacred, no one is safe.

To best protect myself, I am not taking up residence in South Park.

Not my usual literary effort. But Fuck It.

Apparently there is a striking similarity - don't see it myself 

yes yes - laugh all you want Avi. 

Have you ever noticed that Vladamir Putin looks remarkably like Dobby the House Elf?

Oh stop me - floral buckshot. It's Cupid 2007

I do so love flashy ways to tell someone I care - and this is definately going to feature at some point or other. What better way to get the message across than with a romantic tool that is also able to lay down suppressing fire at up to 10 meters distance?

How about a morter launched wedding ring. Actually that would have come in handy for my friend P when he (finally) proposed to O.

When he got down on one knee, she thought he was being a dick - which resulted in him needing to chase her through the snow and tackler her to the ground before he could make his request for life long partnership.

Fortunately she said yes. 

I would suggest that perhaps this is for larger events and if you are planning an intimate romantic moment, I would choose something else. 

Have I ever mentioned my enourmous weakness for Scottish accents?

Its probably because of my childhood clarinet teacher, Mrs Badcrumble - who was Scottish and over 800 years old. Why this relates me to be getting aroused by a gaelic brough† I REALLY can't tell you.

But there you have it. 

† not an Italian bread

Now I was just reminded of this from my days in China.

There is a custom all over the world to take the new expat employee out for lunch on their first day and make them eat truly disgusting local delicacies - all in the name of fun. Using my seafood allergy yet again as a shield, I was fortunately able to dodge the worst of this. This got my new work mates a tad miffed until I started telling stories of truly gross things I had eaten - which of course got them talking about theirs.  

Apparently there is a dish from the Guangdong Provence, just to the north of where we were, which really takes the cake - as it were. It seems there are things the Guangdong will eat that will turn the stomaches of the rest of China - no mean feat for the place that came up with 1000 year old eggs.

The dish is called ' Three Squeak" and it gets its name from the noise it makes.

Take one small mouse, live, in a basket. Grab it with your chopsticks (1 squeak), dunk it in the sauce (2 squeak) and then bite its head off (3 squeak).

Ah the joys of cultural diversity.

No I did not try it, although I have tried a few things that would get me in hot water so I might just leave this  line of thought where it is for now - and simply say of Three Squeak - Apparently it doesn't taste as good as it sounds.

Heard of the the Svalbard International Seed Vault?

Well those cunning Scandanavians are up to some good trying to save biodiversity on the planet. Dubbed the "doomsday vault," it will house samples of every variety of crop seed available in every country in the world. The vault's purpose is safeguard agricultural biodiversity in the event that nuclear war, climate change, a meteor hit or another Earth-shattering event destroys all current plant life in the world or in a particular region.

Thats approaching global warming from the other direction.