RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!Any thoughts who came up with *this* Tradition?SLOVAKIA: Red MondayEaster is a very important celebration both in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, called Velikonoce, or Great Nights. In Slovakia, there is a rather curious tradition on Easter Monday wherein the men go around whipping the ladies and pouring water over them.Throughout the day, groups of men visit their female relatives and friends demanding “treats” which can range from eggs, liquor, chocolate, or a peck on … [Read more...]

I have a deadline looming. I just submitted 20,000 words and have 8 days to finish the rest of my manuscript. 25,000 more words. I am averaging about 10,000 per week. I’m not good at Math, but I’m pretty sure that means that I am running out of time.I called my editor to renegotiate a later deadline today. Can I have another two weeks? No? One Week? Uh…hello? How about an extra couple of days? No go. This sucker has got to be pounded out in time for Valentine’s Day. Which means October … [Read more...]

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Esther Walker, a 48-year-old woman from Cheltenham, Gloucester, England, was just cutting open a tomato from her garden, minding her own business, when she discovered an unplanned pregnancy. A tomato womb carrying a strawberry. Behold, the strawmato. “We’re keeping it in the fridge in case an expert wants to look at it,” she told authorities.This triggers daydreams of other improbable fruit and vegetable hybrids. What would you want? Simpsons fans are clearly rooting for the tomacco, a … [Read more...]

Think that chocolate makes the world go round? Well soon it could make your car go round. It turns out that chocolate waste can be made into fuel. All those deformed, discarded Easter eggs and expired chocolate bars that Cadbury throws out could finally have a home other than the landfill! There are several ways which this could be done. One way is to have bacteria convert the chocolate into burnable hydrogen gas; the other is to turn it into bio-diesel.Feeding chocolate to E. Coli bacteria … [Read more...]

BORN TO BE WILDIn April 2007, Latvia gifted the small Estonian island of Ruhnu with an 88-pound chocolate bear. This symbolic gift was offered to commemorate the Latvia-to-Estonia voyage made by a live bear the previous year. The seventy residents of Ruhnu were mighty surprised by the visiting bear when it floated into town on a chunk of ice. The renegade bear eluded capture and lived as a fugitive in the roughly 8 kilometres of forest that cover the island. A summer celebrity, the bear is … [Read more...]

That Marquis de Sade was a dirty bird.A notorious French rogue and writer who had no qualms about penning his exploits to paper, these days, he's what we'd call a Playa.' Sade was known to have done all sorts of salacious things, not the least of which was combine chocolate with Spanish Fly, a well-known aphrodisiac. In the following tale, the Marquis de Sade describes a typical evening out: “Into the dessert he slipped chocolate pastilles so good that a number of people devoured them...but he … [Read more...]