Der Stuff Innenseite
Stranger Than the New $20 Bill
Ramblings From A Kooky Chick
Strange
but true, there's a woman in Salt Lake City, UT who knits sweaters for
penguins. The reason is that the waters that these penguins frolic in
Australia have been subject to oil spills (those bastards!) and when the
toxins get on their feathers, the birds will either get cold, since it's
the air between their feathers that keeps them warm, or when they preen,
they will ingest the oils. Both are very bad for my favorite, feathered
friends.
So this lovely woman from Utah, Linda Parker, enlisted several people in her church to hand knit tiny sweaters for chilly penguins half a world away. Yes, it does seem silly. I have to admit, but Ms. Parker is doing something to help other living creatures that are suffering. And I think that is just wonderful. If I ever manage to get instructions on how to knit sweaters for penguins from Ms. Parker, I'll be sure to print them.
In other penguin-related news, I'm sure the Monstress reading public will be thrilled to know that Peter the Penguin is safe in his home on Robben Island, just off the cost of Cape Town, South Africa. Poor Peter and 20,000 of his feathered friends were rescued from an oil spill, trucked up the coast, treated and released to swim 750 miles to their home, with only their instincts to guide them. Thanks to the power of Mother Nature, the birds made it. Track the penguin's progress at www.uct.ac.za/depts/stats/adu.
I
found a really funny Iron Chef purity test on the Internet a while back.
For those of you who are too pure to even take a purity test, the concept
is that the reader answers a series of questions honestly and the number
of "yes" answers is supposed to be an indication of how "pure" you are.
I'm not going to bore my dear reader with all 51 questions created by
Iron Chef fan extraordinaire, Stephen Charest, but I'll just give you
some of the hilarious highlights.
- When you bring home the groceries each week, do you spill out the contents of your sacks with a dramatic flair and announce, "Tonight's theme is . . . Spam!"
- Do you routinely
save the entrails from whatever fish you are cooking and use them to
make
a. Soup?
b. Garnish for salads?
c. Dessert? (double points if ice cream) - Do you think that dubbing in English spoils the original Iron Chef episodes?
- Have you ever been thrown out of a grocery store for biting into yellow bell peppers?
OK, I won't subject all the Non-Iron Chef fans out there (although I don't know how you can live with yourself) to more of this witty and zany humor, but if you want the rest of the purity test, just write to me and I'll send you a copy or just go to www.ironchef.com, which is a great source of information on all things relating to the show.