Okay, if
you had met this French Poodle driving a golf cart and wearing designer shades,
wouldn’t you think his name was Pierre? I was a
bit taken aback when Suzanne took this suave gent’s photo and said his name was
“Sam”. (At least he wasn't riding in a Smart Car...)
Speaking
of names, we spied this guy (Varanus komodoensis) at Animal Kingdom the other day... I have always
wanted to visit his island home in Indonesia, because I love Indonesian food,
especially nasi goreng. But if I
were to visit Komodo National Park in Indonesia, I might be on the menu for
this beastie, the Komodo Dragon, Lizard, or Monitor. He has several names, but all
of them mean “Bad Dude”. Komodos are omnivorous; that means they will eat
anything and everything, although they prefer carrion. (Yum!) This smaller komodo
is only about 7 feet long and weighs a mere 130 lbs. Komodos have been known to
attack visiting tourists, and to dig up human graves for a late night snack (oh, Yuck!),
leading the locals to put boulders atop their gravesites. (What kind of
upbringing did these lizards get to prefer carrion to meatloaf, I wonder?)
Speaking
of food... as I mentioned previously, nasi goreng, not carrion, is one of my favorites. It has been
called the national dish of Indonesia, but is also a Malaysian staple. It is often
eaten for breakfast, and is basically leftover rice from the previous night’s
dinner, with just about anything added, but chicken, pork, eggs, pepper, shallot,
tomato, soy sauce, and chili are the most common additives. It is usually very, very spicy compared to Chinese fried rice. You can find nasi goreng in private homes, restaurants or street vendors’
stalls.
Word for
the Day: menhir, n. a large single upright stone, erected by prehistoric people
and thought to have been used for astronomical observations, found in the
British Isles and northern France [Mid-19th C. Directly or via French from
Breton maen-hir,
literally “long stone,” from men “stone” (source
of English dolmen) + hir “long”. (I know at least one person with his/her
mind not on astronomy will have another interpretation of this image, but please
remember that this is a family blog.)
As we were
driving the other day, My Lovely, Sensitive, Compassionate Bride noted a great
bumper sticker on the back of a pick-me-up truck loaded with fishing rods that
read, “Fish Fear Me”. I asked
her if she would order me one, and she smiled wickedly as she asked, “Are you
sure “Fish Laugh At Me” wouldn’t
be more appropriate?” I didn’t speak to her for an hour after that snide
remark. 
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