Glob-a-log

As anyone who ever reads a paper or watches the news knows, things are heating up in the American presidential elections.

In other words, few people need any reminders that there are all kinds of snake oil merchants out there who spend their entire lives trying to sell us various forms of shit. As one news story from last festive season showed, some of them do this in a more literal manner than most:

A unique Christmas gift, Indian rhino poop, is available on ebay.com, worth $600 at time of posting. Each specimen of rhino dung has been properly dried and sealed in an attractive container featuring the name of the rhino species that produced it.

You can bid on Greater One-Horned (Indian) Rhino dung at this listing, or visit one of our other three listings to bid on poop from Black Rhinos, White Rhinos, or the incredibly rare Sumatran Rhinos.

There’s a theory quite popular in advertising circles that it is not really the product you try to sell but the packaging.

Which is probably even more true in politics than in other commercial endeavours. In American politics you have this famous ‘Would you invite him over for the barbecue?‘ litmus test of presidential desirability. On the whole, it is rather unlikely that anyone would choose to apply such an irrational test when shopping for tampons.

Back to the slightly less despicable world of traditional commerce though – and back to the topic of packaging.

A good friend of mine is quite besotted with the glamorous football player David Beckham. An otherwise quite sensible woman, she will start to drool whenever his name is mentioned.

This is obviously why the advertising industry loves to work with the beautiful people who inhabit the planet Fame – and, on the whole, this strategy works well enough.

Sometimes though, these things can go wrong, when the product you’d like to sell ends up looking as a very inferior bit of packaging, while the selling celeb becomes the sadly absent bit of filling.

As a for instance of this, even my Beckham-besotted friend might think twice before buying the following product:

When he’s not posing in just his undies, he’s usually wearing custom-made football boots. But David Beckham has a secret fetish for slippers, says his rapper pal Snoop Dogg - who spilled the beans to us during a chat at his swanky pad. We can reveal the unlikely duo are set to launch their own range of the fogeyish footwear.

David’s love of the comfy house shoes started when Snoop sent him a pair of his own Sensual Seduction ones for Christmas. Snoop told us: “I got him a pair as a present, and he took a picture and sent it back to me, and I was like, ‘They look cool!’

“We are talking about making a slipper together. So when I stop rapping and he stops football we can kick back and slip on a house shoe.”

A lovely image, truly.

Still, some things are even harder to sell than the idea of an honest politician or a Snoop/Beck slipper party.

Though you have to admire the Slovenian Health Ministry spokeswoman Vivijan Potocnik for trying:

A Slovenian woman who found a mouse foot in a jar of pickles was shocked to be told it was “completely normal”. Lenka Komparova contacted the Health Ministry as she prepared to sue the company producing the food.

Instead of supporting her claim for compensation, officials said she should see the mouse foot as a “special additive”.

Ministry spokeswoman Vivijan Potocnik said: “It is completely normal in big factories to have mice wandering around, and yes, every now and then they get caught amongst the machines and do get bottled, seasoned, preserved and even make it in one piece to consumers.

“Although not very pleasant to see, however, they pose no health threat at all. During the preservation process even traces of any salmonella bacteria are eliminated in food. A mice-foot therefore could be classified as a special additive to the pickles.”

So, Hillary and Obama have buried the hatchet again but not before reminding us that political campaigns will always be dirty, especially when the good ole race card gets played.

Both camps have been quite active raising the ghost of Martin Luther King. I’m not sure the good reverend had that kind of party politics in mind when he made that ‘I have a dream’ speech.

Still, whatever he was thinking about, it probably wasn’t golf:

The GOLF CHANNEL regrets the poorly chosen remarks made by Kelly Tilghman on a recent broadcast and, again, extends our apologies to anyone who was offended. There is simply no place on our network for offensive language like this. While we believe that Kelly’s choice of words was inadvertent and that she did not intend them in an offensive manner, the words were hurtful and grossly inappropriate. Consequently, we have decided to suspend Kelly for two weeks, effective immediately.

‘What’s that all about?’ you might well ask.

Well, there’s this golf commentator, called Kelly Tilghman and she and a fellow presenter, Nick Faldo, were talking about Tiger Woods. You know the kind of stuff: hoe formidable and unbeatable Woods is, etcetera. The usual boring blather.

Alas, then Tilghman forgot herself - or, at least, forgot about the fact that we now live in a time in which the politically correct Puritans rule.

So, what she subsequently said caused the usual ruckus - in real life (or well, real life…: on TV and in the papers) and on the internet.

This is what happened:

Faldo and Tilghman were discussing young players who could challenge the world’s No. 1 player toward the end of Friday’s broadcast at Kapalua when Faldo suggested that “to take Tiger on, maybe they should just gang up for a while.”

“Lynch him in a back alley,” Tilghman replied.

Not a very clever thing to say, I admit. I’m not sure though that this one remark somehow turns her into the poster girl for the KKK.

Which didn’t stop the usual suspects from trying to form a lynching mob of their own. Enter the reverend Al Sharpton, one of the more famous ambulance chasing civil rights activists:

“If I got on this show and said I wanted to put some Jewish-American in a gas chamber, I don’t care what context I said it in, the entire Jewish community would have the right to say I should be put off this show or my radio show if I said it there,” Sharpton told CNN. “Or if I said I wanted to see a woman raped. This is an insult to all blacks. Lynching is not murder in general; it is not assault in general. It is a specific racial term.”

Tiger Woods, by the way, has already responded to this through his agent:

Woods’ agent at IMG, said it was a non-issue and considered the matter “case closed.”

“Tiger and Kelly are friends, and Tiger has a great deal of respect for Kelly,” Steinberg said Tuesday night in a statement released by Golf Channel. “Regardless of the choice of words used, we know unequivocally that there was no ill-intent in her comments.”

That won’t stop the circus though, of course. When the race card gets played it stays played - and that’s the saddest part of this story. Not the stupid and yes, insensitive joke made by someone on TV but the unrelenting righteousness of those professional zealots who so love their wounds, or worse, their centre stage position, that they can’t stop picking the scabs: a sight only slightly less sickening than the ugly nonsense spewed by the hateful vermin who deny the existence of these wounds at all.

So, Obama and Hillary, take care: don’t try to make these particular ghosts part of your political caravan. For if you do, both of your campaigns will suffer, your party will suffer and politics in general will yet again - and rightly so - be seen as a game only fit for the most cynical types of profiteers, hypocrites and vultures.

Some dreams can turn into nightmares all too easily.

This from the ‘Tourism Malaysia’ site:

Malaysia is a land of ready smiles and incredible variety. The rich diversity of experiences and contrasts beckons the worldly traveler, from city-lovers to adventure-seekers and much, much more. Here, in this land of friendly and fascinating people, you can get a taste of all of Asia in a single destination.

First for something completely different though. Today I read a story in the paper which reminded me of an older newspaper article. I’ll give you that older one first:

Doctors desperately tried to re-attach a man’s penis after he burst into a crowded London restaurant on Sunday, dropped his trousers, and hacked his own organ off in front of horrified diners.

The man, thought to be Polish, ran into the Zizzi Italian restaurant on The Strand at about 9pm on Sunday night, when it was crowded with people who had been watching the London Marathon earlier in the day.

Sales rep Stuart McMahon, who was eating at the restaurant with his girlfriend, told the Sun: ‘This guy came running in then charged into the kitchen, got a massive knife and started waving it about.

‘Everyone was screaming and running out as he jumped on a table, dropped his trousers and popped his penis out.

‘Then he cut it off. I couldn’t believe it.’

Now, we’ll come back to the subject of ‘Bring your on meat to the barbecue’ later but first: What is it with Malaysians and penis envy?

I mean, yes, the guy in question was being a dick but still…:

A woman who almost entirely severed her husband’s penis with a knife has been sentenced to six months in prison.

Umidah Setu, an Indonesian living in Malaysia, pleaded guilty in court on Tuesday in the southern city of Johor Bahru to voluntarily causing hurt, local newspapers reported.

Neighbours alerted by screams rushed the man, named in local reports as Qumarodin Bajuri, an Indonesian contract worker, to hospital on Saturday.

Umidah, who is in her late 40s and has two children from her 17-year marriage, said she had taken action after her husband criticised her lack of sexual skills compared to his second wife.

Mind you, it’s not just Malaysian women who are good at playing chop sticks. Sometimes, their husbands beat them to it.

All in the name of love, of course:

A Malaysian man is recovering after he had his penis reattached at Universiti Sains Malaysia Hospital over the weekend.

According to his eldest son the wound was self-inflicted, shortly after his wife confronted him about text messages she discovered from another woman on his cell phone.

A shouting match ensued, and resulted in him claiming that he would prove his faithfulness to her. After hearing him screaming in pain, he emerged bleeding, at which point his wife took him to the hospital.

Anyway, I told you I’d come back to food related issues and so I will.

In America the religious right is always in for a crusade. Whether it is the war on terror, the war on drugs or the war on promiscuity.

Not that they are actually winning any of them but they still love beating the drums and fighting one doomed campaign after the other.

Well, everyone needs a hobby, I suppose.

Still, the people behind all the advertisements warning against the dangers of taking drugs and having extramarital sex could do worse than hire a certain Malaysian guy from the town of Sitiawan.

If his tale won’t convince people that taking drugs can be a risky business, nothing ever will.

Plus, he’d make an excellent poster boy for any sexual abstinence campaign as well, since he won’t be having any sex before marriage - or after, for that matter.

Anyway, you’ve heard of the ‘munchies’? That urge to stuff your face with anything that’s even remotely edible, when you’ve been smoking dope?

This guy had a bad case of it:

A Malaysian man sliced off his own penis, then fried and ate it after taking hallucinatory pills that caused him to hear voices urging him to mutilate himself, police said.

The 34-year-old claimed he only realised what he had done when he saw blood oozing from his crotch, said a police spokesman in the town of Sitiawan, 300 kilometres north of Kuala Lumpur.

The man had taken hallucinatory pills before sleeping on Friday and awoke hearing voices telling him to chop off his penis and devour it, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

He was hospitalised in a stable condition, the national news agency Bernama reported.

The man had recently been released from a drug rehabilitation centre.

It is the time of year that people obsess about their weight even more than at any other given time - if they are not starving, dying of AIDS or ‘living’ in refugee camps in the various charming bits of Hell we also call mother Earth.

Anyway, people do go on about the subject - some in a more intelligent manner than others. One cannot, for instance, find much wrong with the following quote:

I don’t know who is to blame. The issue of obesity is complex and is absolutely one our society is facing, there’s no denial about that, but if you break it down I think there’s an education piece: how can we better communicate to individuals the importance of a balanced diet and taking care of themselves?

Then there’s a lifestyle element: there’s fewer green spaces and kids are sat home playing computer games on the TV when in the past they’d have been burning off energy outside.

Nothing much wrong, that is, until one learns that the one pontificating in this manner is a mister Steve Easterbrook, who is the UK CEO for the McDonald’s franchise…

Which is a bit like George Bush blaming certain types of video games for all the violent deaths in Iraq.

Enough about hypocritical little oiks like mister Easterbrook - or the whole very boring and very Western topic of weight.

Well, almost enough.

For I can’t leave you without sharing the following quote. It’s from a column by AA Gill. One of his colleagues has written a book about losing weight.

Gill was not impressed, to say the least…:

So, here is my broken resolution, and a final word on size and food. Pay attention. All diets work. When I taught cooking, people used to say that recipes didn’t work. Well, all recipes work, if you know how to cook. The Kama Sutra works, if you know how to shag. It’s not diets that fail, it’s you, you miserable, spineless, sticky-fingered fridge magnet. All diets come down to the same sentence: more in than out, you get fat; more out than in, you get thin. It’s not rocket science, it’s bicycle science.

And it’s not genetic. Your embarrassing, waddling mother didn’t pass on blubber, just bovine behaviour. And alcohol. Drink puts on pounds. It’s all sugar. The rises in drinking and size are not unrelated, and if you don’t get drunk, you won’t eat the scratchings, the kebabs, the Mars bar and the three footballers. If you really can’t manage on your own, then the best aid to weight loss is the support of friends. Ask yours to point and laugh at you and call you names in public. They should hold a doughnut in front of your face on a string as you walk down the street.

It doesn’t happen all that often but the Conservative mayor of Mirfield town council, mister Bennett, had me smile:

In response to an apparent request from the Huddersfield-based Ahmidiyya Muslim Association (AMA) to appear before the town’s council to put their case for funding, Bennett emailed the town clerk to say: ‘I am aware Islamic organisations are keen to promote a view that they are peaceful, forward-thinking individuals who wish to integrate into the British way of life.

‘The policy of clothing the feminine population of Dewsbury in black sack-like clothing from head to toe, the occasional trip out to cause mayhem with explosives and the proposal that all those of homosexual persuasion should be killed by shooting or other means is adequate and practical testimony to the level of progress being made in this direction.

Obviously, the mayor immediately got blasted for having sent this e-mail:

The Muslim Council of Britain also condemned the remarks as ‘bigoted and unacceptable, considering his status as a public servant’. And the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) said the remarks were ‘very narrow-minded’ and that Bennett ’should resign or be removed’.

To which I would say, ‘To Hell with them.’

I don’t know mister Bennett. He might well be a racist bigot; he wouldn’t be the first or only one in the British Conservative Party. However, I would be more impressed with these indignant bleatings, if organisations like the Muslim Council (and the Association) of Britain would be as loudly concerned about the many outrages committed by Islamic fanatics in the name of Allah.

When is is the last time these good folks went out on the street to condemn domestic violence against women, the genital mutilation of girls, the outrageous insults and violence against homosexuals, the repellent antics of Holocaust denying anti-Semites…?

Precisely.

It is often claimed that every girl loves a uniform. Whether that is true or not, it is certainly a fact that sex tourism can be big business, including kinky stuff like golden showers.

Still, as the old saying goes, ‘There is a time and a place for everything.’

The Fijian tourist board, however, was not exactly impressed with the actions or timing of a certain Fijian soldier, to put it very mildly:

A Fijian soldier who urinated on a Japanese woman during a flight - sparking outraged headlines in Tokyo - is to blame for a fall in tourism between the two countries, one of Fiji’s leading newspapers has claimed.

The Fiji Times accused the soldier of doing “untold damage” to the country’s image, generating “widespread, negative publicity at a time when we need it the least”.

“Urinating on a tourist on an international flight is a high-profile incident which gains global notoriety,” it wrote.

“It is a brief moment which brings unwanted exposure and deprives the economy of millions of dollars in revenue.”

Unwanted exposure indeed.

Talking of which:

WARSAW, Poland - A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment’s employees.

Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

“I was dumbfounded. I thought I was dreaming,” the husband told the newspaper on Wednesday.

The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

Mind you, in a way the woman had more reason to be pissed off than the husband. While she was renting out her body to make something on the side, he was merely spending the family’s money to get some on the side.

Anyway, if he hadn’t gone to brothels in the first place, he’d never found out and all would have been well in this supply & demand fairytale.

So, the moral of this story should definitely be that, most of the times, it’s much better to keep it in your pants. Which, by the way, is exactly what most art lovers would have advised the following gentleman to do:

An exhibition of drawings, made by masturbating over paper, has prompted an angry outburst from the Clergy.

Controversial performance artist Jordan McKenzie, 40, is exhibiting 55 images he made by ejaculating over canvas and sprinkling carbon over the results to immortalise them.

The results of his handywork, entitled ‘Spent’ are to go on display at the Centre for Recent Drawing in Highbury, north London, for a month.

McKenzie, who intends to create three drawings a week, said: “This is only the first batch of them.

“It is a diary of my ejaculations they are heartfelt and delicate.”

All of this does read like a multiple choice test from Hell, doesn’t it? Or like a question on a highly dubious ‘to do’ list:

On your next day out would you like to

a) be pissed on by a Fijian soldier
b) come upon your wife in some brothel or
c) watch wank art?

Anyway, while all the stories so far seem to agree on one thing, namely that it is better to keep it in your pants, it must be said that this is not always the best advice - as our last news article of the day quite handsomely shows:

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A man who hid hunting knives in his pants to try to steal them from a western Michigan store tripped while fleeing and stabbed himself in the abdomen, police said.

The suspect was hospitalized after Monday night’s attempted theft from a Meijer Inc. superstore in Grand Rapids and is expected to face a misdemeanor shoplifting charge, police say.

The wounds did not appear to be life-threatening, The Grand Rapids Press reported.

The man had put about $300 worth of hunting knives in his waistband, police told WZZM-TV. Police say he tried to leave the store, but Meijer employees confronted him and a scuffle followed.

The man then fell and was stabbed by the knives he had hidden in his clothing, police said.

Everybody loves a good prison story. From old movies like ‘Colditz’ to modern versions of ‘The Prisoner’, we like these hard luck tales of brutality and the ways that brave and clever men deal with life behind bars.

In fact, while most people in real life tend to grumble about prisons being soft and sentences not nearly harsh enough, when it comes to the world of make-believe, most of us root for those prisoners to beat the system and even hope they escape.

So, let’s start with yet another prison story here - but one with a difference. This one is not about macho thugs or great escapes. It’s…; well, read for yourself. This one is actually quite hard to believe:

A jail was broken into to supply a transvestite lag with women’s clothes, it was revealed yesterday. Officers found knickers, ball gowns and denim skirts in a burglary convict’s cell, along with drugs and mobile phones.

An accomplice on the outside used a ladder to scale the 20ft perimeter wall, making regular break-ins. The hauls were sold to fellow cons at £600 a time – but the contraband was found last Friday after officers were tipped off.

A source at Everthorpe Prison said:

“Officers couldn’t believe their eyes when they found all this women’s clothing – including ball gowns obviously smuggled to order. The racket is believed to have been going for six months.”

Another insider at the 690-inmate jail in Brough, East Yorks, said:

“The accomplice would climb the perimeter wall on a ladder and pull it over to use to climb down. He’d walk across the yard with the ladder, use it to bridge gaps, then climb up to the cell window. The bars had been pulled apart with a crowbar and some sort of dummy grille had been inserted which could be easily removed.”

Talking about criminals with a thing for women’s clothes, here’s another quite remarkable story about a man with a strange kind of hobby, or fixation - or whatever:

Neil and Jane Medley seemed to have it all. Two children, a luxury lifestyle and a Ferrari in the drive. However when she discovered they were facing legal action to evict them from their Yorkshire home, an angry Mrs Medley sold her husband’s personalised number plate MED575.

In revenge Mr Medley, 46, turned his attention to his wife’s wardrobe, a court heard.

She found he had taken one shoe from every pair she owned. About $18,000 worth of clothes had also vanished.

Neighbours alleged they saw Mr Medley carrying clothes to an incinerator.

Oh, and if you think this was rather bizarre, wait till you hear what Mr Medley is doing these days to make a living:

Prosecutor Georgina Coade said Medley, now an insolvency expert, was convicted by magistrates last year of criminal damage to ballgowns, shoes and clothes. He is appealing against the convictions.

I suppose we should be happy enough he didn’t become a marriage councelor.

Of course, not every relationship ends badly. Some of us are lucky enough to find true love. Enough to last us a life time - and then some.

Talk about a love beyond the grave…:

A pet dog missed the family’s dead cat so much that he dug up his grave and brought the body back into the house.

His owners, Robert Bell, 73, and his wife, Mavis, of Wigan, Greater Manchester, woke up the next morning they discovered the dog curled up beside Arthur, the late cat, in his basket.

Oscar, an 18-month-old Lancashire Heeler, had watched Mr Bell dig a grave in the garden and then lower the cat into the hole. Mr Bell said:

“He had managed to climb out through the cat flap in the night, obviously with the intent to get Arthur back. Bearing in mind that Arthur was a huge cat, Oscar must have used all the strength he could muster.

“Then he pulled him into the basket and went to sleep next to him. Arthur’s coat was gleaming white. Oscar had obviously licked him clean. It must have taken him nearly all night.”

Arthur is now reburied in a secure grave. And Oscar has a new playmate, a kitten called Limpet.

Those of you who don’t like stories about animals can go and do something else now. Those of you who don’t like to read about humans are out of luck too, I’m afraid. They will also feature in this column.

Anyway, here goes. First a nice little story from Madagascar:

A rare creature, persecuted and hunted to near-extinction in its native Madagascar, has been born at Bristol Zoo. Two-month-old Raz is only the second aye aye to be born in Britain.

The tiny mammal fits in the palm of his keeper’s hand but will grow to be the world’s biggest nocturnal primate.

The aye aye is a type of lemur that looks like a cross between a mouse and bat and its unusual appearance has led local people in some regions to believe they are ill omens and kill them on sight.

His name is short for Razafindranriatsimaniry - a Malagasy name meaning “son of a Prince or noble man who envies nobody”.

Yes, I can hear the usual homo sap-centered grumblings, ‘Why spend all this time and energy on some batty mouse?’ Well, apart from the fact that these animals have become near-extinct because of human folly, would you rather spend more money on the following type of creature?

Geraldine Magda sat next to the nursing home bed of her dying sister and held her left hand.

Later that day, police in Austin, Minn., found the dead woman’s wedding ring in Magda’s purse, and now Magda finds herself charged with two felonies.

According to police, Magda visited Mary Ulwelling, 58, at the ComforCare Nursing Home in Austin on New Year’s Day, where her terminally ill sister only had a few hours to live.

Other relatives were present and noticed that Ulwelling’s gold wedding ring with diamonds, valued at $2,500, was missing after Magda had visited. Questioned by police, Magda said she sat next to her sister’s bed and held the dying woman’s left hand but denied taking the ring.

With Magda’s consent, police searched her purse and found the ring in a prescription pill container. Magda said she didn’t know how the ring got there. Relatives told police that Magda has previously stolen jewelry from family members.

So, back to the animal world then. Humans are simply too depressingly stupid.

You remember Knut? Yes, that cute little polar bear, hand-reared in a German zoo, because its mother had abandoned it.

Well, maybe because of all the Knut mania following that first intervention, the zoo keepers had announced they would never do such a thing again and rather let nature do its own unsentimental thing.

No idea why really, but now they’ve changed their minds again…:

A German zoo has agreed to hand-rear a polar bear cub because of fears that its mother might harm it.

The decision came after the mother bear, Vera, was filmed carrying her cub in her jaws around her enclosure at Nuremberg Zoo. It also came amid fears that another polar bear at the zoo, Vilma, has eaten her two new-born cubs.

Zookeepers had initially decided not to disturb Vera and Vilma’s cubs, even if the mothers rejected them. But they announced on Tuesday that they would begin bottle-feeding Vera’s cub.

“The safety of the young animal is the first priority,” said deputy zoo director Helmut Maegdefrau.

I know, I know. More press-orchestrated mass hysteria and sentimentality will no doubt follow in the wake of this turn-about - and God knows I agree that humans gathering in the street, led by emotion, never make a pretty sight, whether they are mourning a dead princess or demanding the death sentence for some stupid cartoonists.

Having said that, I rather read about some polar bear cub being hand-reared by its zoo keepers than yet another depressing story about humans.

You know, when you read the following story it’s not hard to understand why David Attenborough and his wildlife documentaries are so popular:

Savarin DeJesus was passed out cold, sleeping off a night of heavy drinking, when her infant daughter tumbled from her bed, prosecutors said yesterday, and met an unusually ghastly death.

A shaking, weeping Ms. DeJesus, 18, was arraigned yesterday in Manhattan Criminal Court on charges of criminally negligent homicide and child endangerment in the death of her 4-month-old baby, Niah Ford. Niah died in an East Harlem homeless shelter last Saturday after falling into a bucket partly filled with water, cleaning solution and Ms. DeJesus’ vomit.

The medical examiner’s office has not yet determined whether the baby asphyxiated or drowned.

“It sounds like a tragic accident,” said Judge Alexander Jeong, as Ms. DeJesus sat before him, her face buried in her hands. But, the judge added, “there was some responsibility.”

Quite.

So, more animal stories, please.

So, Hillary Clinton won in New Hampshire, Britney Spears lost all custody rights and I’m sure somewhere else some other politician was caught with his trousers down and another celeb made some sex tape.

All very interesting, no doubt, but there’s more to life than sex & politics, or celebs & politics - or, if all of that is still a bit too highbrow for your taste, celebs & celebs.

So, today let’s talk about food.

In a recent Times column Ben Macintyre wrote the following:

The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that cooking and eating represented the very origin of human cultural development: once Homo sapiens could develop co-operative food strategies, and explore different ways of preparing his nourishment, then language could develop, the first dinner-party conversation around the camp fire could begin. Cooking made food more digestible and broke down toxins, but it was also an act of creativity and imagination. It ceased to be merely the necessary means to keep man alive.

I’m sure Lévi-Strauss was absolutely right. Eating to us has become more than fuelling the machine. Which doesn’t mean to say that all of our modern ‘camp fires’ are temples of sophistication, where people show their intimate knowledge of all things philosophical and listen to Chopin, while they eat caviare and drink champagne or designer water.

Still, even the most elitist philosopher (or restaurant critic) would have to admit that the creator of Taiwan’s popular Marton restaurant, has proven himself to be both imaginative and creative:

Themed restaurants are everywhere these days.

There are Rock n’ Roll themed ones, restaurants where you can eat while sitting on beds, and even bars made completely of ice. But Taiwan has taken novelty restaurants to a whole new level. Welcome to Marton, the world’s first toilet themed restaurant! Marton means toilet in Chinese and in this restaurant you literally sit on toilet seats and eat out of miniature toilet shaped bowls (both the Asian squat-style and the traditional Western variety toilets).

The restaurant is the first of its kind and only exists in Taiwan. The creator of the restaurant used to be a street vendor. He sold ice-cream in a special plastic toilet cup holder which he designed himself. He decided to take this idea one step further and so the toilet restaurant was born. The restaurants use ceramic toilet bowls/dishes to serve a range of meals. Food is either served in a flat bowl that resembles a male urinal; larger main meals are served in a toilet bowl.

The creator has now patented the idea and opened up several more branches around Taiwan. The restaurants attract a range of customers but it is especially popular with young people and families with kids. Apparently it’s not all just about novelty value and the restaurant gets many repeat guests. As a result it has introduced a loyalty program so you can collect credit on multiple visits and then receive a big toilet shaped bowl.

‘What will people come up with next?’ they say.

Well, this, for instance:

You know what a bother it is to carry both your MP3 music player and your Taser gun?

And you don’t have to miss a beat.

Yes, and then people say there is no progress.

Still, most of the time the playing ape (aka homo sapiens) behaves in a quite predictable manner. With grown-ups obsessing about colourful shiny things (and beating the crap out of each other) and their offspring doing anything it can to avoid going to school.

Mind you, some of the ways it tries to do the latter can be quite innovative:

MONTERREY, Mexico (AFP) — A 10-year-old Mexican boy glued his hand to his bed to avoid going back to school after the Christmas break, authorities said Monday.

Diego eventually made it school a few hours late.

Still, most of the time people are ruled by cliché. Not that these tired old saws need to make much (or any) sense, of course.

Ever heard the one saying, ‘There’s no accounting for taste’?

Now, there’s a very silly saying for you.

When people are not fighting over land and bright & shiny things, taste is about the most popular thing to fight over.

As a certain chef turned builder found out at a quite impressive personal cost:

A pastry chef chewed off part of a builder’s ear after an argument about reggae, a court has been told.

Jenkins, whose venison roulade won him dinner for two at one of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, decided to swap the “high pressured” environment of the kitchen by working on a building site.