Roaches for Brooches

With the slogan "It's not a pest if it's pinned to your chest" www.roachbrooch.com wows us with celebrity fakes. Although there is such a thing as the Giant Madagascar Hissing Cockroach Brooch.

Blach Chandelier sells them for USD$80
This is the sales pitch:
"A little information on our little friends. These insects come in varied patterns and are decorated with the finest Austrian Swarovski crystal. Each roach takes about an hour of painstaking work to achieve his final magical glory. All roaches are male to ensure sterility, and come complete with a leash set. This consists of a gorgeous pin you attach to your clothing with a chain that clasps to the cockroach's carapace to keep him from running amok. The lifespan of these animals is approximately one year if housed and fed properly. This is not a guarantee, it is an estimate. Roaches love fresh bananas and must have access to fresh water at all times, a very damp paper towel or cotton ball will do the trick. Dehydration is the main cause of death. Keep him in a little terrarium in the dark and he will love you and be very responsive to your touch. Roaches are shipped overnight in a box and can be kept in this box for up to 4 days without food or water while you secure him more hospitable accommodations."

Personally, I don't think the "hang a 'roach around your neck" craze will catch on, but it may have it's advantages....

Cheese Dreams

Well, we all "know" that eating cheese just before bed gives you crazy dreams, but, how true is it, really? The British Cheese Board (they aim to increase the consumption of British cheeses) did a small (200 participant) survey to debunk the cheese-nightmare link but what they found was that different cheeses have different effects. Here are the results:

Red Leicester for nostalgic dreams– over 60% of participants eating this cheese revisited their schooldays, or long-lost childhood friends, or previous family homes and hometowns.

Stilton - for vivid or crazy dreams, – particularly if you are female. (85% of female Stilton eaters had some of the most bizarre dreams of the whole study). Highlights included talking soft toys, lifts that move sideways, a vegetarian crocodile upset because it could not eat children, dinner party guests being traded for camels, soldiers fighting with each other with kittens instead of guns and a party in a lunatic asylum.

British Brie for a good sleep in general. Very nice dreams for females, such as Jamie Oliver cooking dinner in their kitchens, or relaxing on a sunny beach. Rather odd, obscure dreams for males, such as driving against a battleship, or having a drunken conversation with a dog.

Lancashire for dreams about work. – but only 30% of these involved the participants’ real-life occupations.

Cheddar -to dream about celebrities: Jordan, Gazza, Ally McCoist, Ashley from Coronation Street, the cast of Emmerdale and Johnny Depp.

Cheshire for a mostly dreamless relaxing sleep .

More info of course can be found at www.cheeseboard.co.uk

Annelidan "Twigs"

Don't step on a twig on a rainy day,
Or you might find the twig won't stay,
On the ground,
It's stuck to your shoe now, you'll
Tread it round.

I made this little ditty one day when I was going on a long walk in the rain and this being a rainy day I thought this would be rather appropriate. The night had been blustery and the wind had been gustery the worms had fled the rising damp and camoflaged themselves amongst the twigs. Hence my warning to be careful next time you go to step on a twig, make sure it really is a twig or you'll be traipsing dead annelid around on your shoe all day.

Insect observations

Arborio rice bears a striking resemblace to maggots.

The fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) -faithful friend of geneticists, shares nearly 60% of human genes (that makes it 10% more human than a banana) although each cell contains only 13,601 genes, whereas human cells, by contrast, are thought to have more 70,000 genes.

Huhu grubs taste like freshly picked asparagus -to me anyway. Alot of people say they taste like peanuts, which is what I said of fresh-picked asparagus the very first time I tried it. I guess the connection would be that both plants taste quite earthy from having been grown in the ground whilst the grubs have fattened up on decaying wood matter and such like. Mmmm delicious.

Cupcake Armageddon & such

A whizz-by of the "information" the net dragged onto my screen, sometime between the hours of 2030 to 0230 last night.

From the Australian Museum online, I learned about the Killer Rat-Kangaroo's tooth (how the second premolar is not shed like usual but instead swivels 90 degrees to buttress the Fang tooth) and how the Giant Panda grows a sixth digit from it's wrist to act as a second thumb.

Took a look at A Thought From My Head, and wrote something lame.

From the Free Dictionary (I recommend it. Well, I would, it's not my homepage for nothing) I read about and saw examples of Trompe l'oeil (pronounced: "Trum ploy" it is French for "Trick the Eye")

I dazzled my tastebuds with the literary offerings at cheesenet (the internet's cheese information resource since 1995, apparently)

Stopped by at some random blog: Eyre Affairs

And another blog: How We Met.blogspot.com the story of Matt and Rachel.

Gmail, to check my emails -4 mailing list type things from faceless corporations better than nothing but yay! no spam.

A few pages of Mike Didonato's at MikeDidonato.com
Of note, the MSPaint competitions including: robots in playgrounds, matador and angry purple hippos and cupcake armageddon! Go on, Google it - you know you want to.

From rinkworks.com/romantic I learned that the single most romantic thing in the universe can be calculated scientifically. It is, simply, a small red candle made out of chocolate and shaped like a teddy bear holding a heart with scribbles all over it that plays a tune when you wind it up. Given at sunset of course!

Sparklesparkle.net for some weird writings and poetry: Al the were-bunny, numb butt blues, ode to cheese, the generic poem, halitosis, deprivation, an impromptu poem, cows, My Darling (an intentionally bad poem), Runny Nose (a parody of Run, by Collective Soul)

TheKingofCake.blogspot.com

Young Ladies Christian Fellowship, I go here almost daily. www.ylcf.org

Ode to Cheese by Arkady Yanishevsky

News from Reuters.com
"Wear nice pants" - police tell women drinkers,
Musicians cash in on head-butt,
Oddly Enough news: Roast pig guest-stars on Bush visit to Germany,
Ripley to challenge China to "Believe It or Not",
It was a long and twisting sentence... Jim Guigli of California was proclaimed winner of the contest, which challenges entrants to submit their worst opening sentence of an imaginary novel,
Chicken lays mystery Allah egg,
Follow that cab... Two Albanian men carrying stolen computers and flat-screen televisions worth $13,000 flagged down a Berlin taxi to transport their loot home but were later arrested after the cab driver called the police.

MaverickPhilosopher.powerblogs.com for some really pedantic English.

Stuffed nautiloids at maxsroom.org/screenshot/

University of MariborFaculty of Education Department of English and American Studies: Welcome to the on-line materials for the first-year English literature course at the Faculty of Education, University of Maribor. Index of poems, figurative language and glossary of terms for starters.

Raspberryworld.com yet another random blog

Slate.com furnished my ever-benumbed brain with: The word we love to hate -Literally, Revenge of the language nerds -beleagured linguists find witty champions in Far From the Madding Gerund, Why Ronaldinho has no last name -how Brazilian soccer players get their names, Does the word cup have a lingua franca? -how to curse out a referee from another country, How to head-butt like a pro -does Zinedine Zidane know how to use his head? and, Pink void -the psychedelic legacy of Syd Barett

Tailrank.com

At Xtra.com I learned that too much water can be fatal, How to get over the winter blues, the six stages of drunkeness, living alone doubles heart disease risk and about some dolphins in a stream.

And thanks to the wonders of he electronic age I got to see for the first time that fateful head-butting incident -you know the one. At video.google.com

A Splutter-gurgle

Today I tried (by accident -not on purpose) to burp, yawn and hiccup all at the same. The result? A series of short, painful rather ungraceful splutter-gurgles. I do not recommend it; not in public at least.

Seeking Solitude

Here is the place I go when I want to 'get away from it all'. Having no garden to speak of (in any practical sense) I've adopted the northern corner of South Hagley Park. There's a table to sit and write at. In the summer the grass is lush and verdant, though now the place appears open and barren. A road runs approximately 100 metres on either side, so it's spacious enough to give freedom but not completely isolated. The pictures show a psuedo-sunset (the real event occured half an hour later, see below).

I was crossing the footbridge when a stranger exclaimed "Oh, look at the sunset! Isn't it wonderful?" I turned and almost blinded myself but agreed that, yes, it certainly was a sight to behold, though it looks more like a forest fire, don't you think?

Armpit Entanglement

My hand was one with my armpit (as it often is when cold) I struggled to extricate it as the alarm sounded four times, five times, six times.... I raised the piece of 2-by-4 above my shoulder, poised to swat that swaggering brown mouse, who had dared to interupt me in the garden shed, as I applied parsley to my forhead, which I "borrowed" from the post office, on my way through from the bank, where I had gone to retrieve a blue plastic and aluminum dining chair propped up against the shelf, which was actually my six-year-old brother in disguise, who had taken cover inside the first shop he came to after running across the road, where I had been nonchalently standing, shortly after disembarking a space shuttle/hover-craft/all terrain vehicle driven by an old pastor who was showing my family the sights of some imaginary city.

But then I managed to revive the sleeping fingers and drag them from their axillial-bedchamber long enough to hit snooze.

Peppermint Tea

Here is a nice, steaming-hot cup of peppermint tea, backlit by my lamp. Just the thing to warm the cockles of my 'eart. No! Wait, thats what I'm trying to cure... They say peppermint tea does wonders in setting to rights an angry stomach (and I'm going lay the blame for that one squarely on the shoulders of the pizza -I know, I know, pizza gets a bad rap in this department, but it tastes so good at the time and just invites more pieces of itself to join the pizza party down in the gut) and I'm about to put that to the test.

And the tea is not the only thing that's steaming; I have my own personal little contrail momentarily hovering about me everywhere I go (my breath, that is). The other day I washed my icicle fingers in cold water and watched in amazement as the vapours emanated from them. It's gonna be a cold winter but I have my peppermint tea, at least for tonight.