Giraffe steak and whale beer

 

My husband has an iPad which he mainly uses to watch the evening news. This routine has now been jeopardized by an unknown force as recently the reception has been repeatedly disrupted. In the middle of a news story the picture of the news anchor or news related footage is replaced by a scene from what appears to be a Russian film. It is always the same scene, a woman with a bandana is driving along on a tractor while a suitor hangs on the side of the machine and sings a Russian ballad. He sort of swings from side to side, singing into the woman’s left and right ear. The lyrics are in the line of: tralalalalala.

My husband has yet to phone the television station to see if this is a problem others are experiencing or if this has something to do with him alone.. I think he is working on the wording of this inquiry.

 

This is the paper-band around the bottle of the whale beer 

Not that there is much in the news. We have had one of those never-ending story type of news which revolves around beer made from whale. I am not certain how it began, what happened in the middle or even how it ended. If it ended. I think there was more whale beer news on just yesterday. What I did partake was that a brewery began producing beer using meal produced from whales. Enter whale beer. This raised some bristles, by the anti-whaling movement and also by health officials that said the beer was not produces using paragraph 568 of section seven of volume 15 of European Union Guidelines EEU-VR5-XX-5768922-aOP regarding production of whale beer. What happened next was a whole lot of unclear hoopla in which the whale brewery refused to pour down the beer. Somehow a minister got involved and by waving his magic wand the whole bureaucratic mess regarding the guidelines went away. This go-away-bothersome-health-rule procedure was probably described in Annex Q of these same guidelines. So now you can buy whale beer in Iceland. We regularly get news about how many liters have been sold. I am going to try to secure some to bring to Crimefest in the spring. It is selling like hotcakes after all of this negative exposure. Go figure.

Other news with less staying power involved a bomb threat phone call to one of the Icelandic airlines. Only passengers in rows 1-15 had managed to disembark when it became clear that it was a hoax, made by a 13 old boy. Case solved.

 

 

I really can’t leave this news recap without mentioning that very odd giraffe story from Denmark earlier in the week. It was pretty sad for the poor giraffe but life is sad, like the zookeeper interviewed mentioned. He actually said something akin to this being a zoo with real animals and real problems, not a Disney movie. All well and fine. What I did not understand at all was why they chose to shoot the animal, chop it up and throw the pieces to the lions in front of busloads of small schoolchildren. Shipped in especially for this purpose. No matter how hard I try to understand what that was about I cannot.

Actually there could be something in this – zoo animal beer anyone?

Yrsa - Wednesday