h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A while ago I found myself saying 'Don't knock my Pliny the Elder off the newel post' and found myself startled by the unusualness of it.


Today, I was asked to come up with a design for a beer label. The brewery owner said to me:

'Send me a drawing of Freud holding a hot dog and a glass of red lager.'


(I had to email him this evening saying that there might be a copyright problem: http://www.artnet.com/artists/lotdetailpage.aspx?lot_id=33EBED119058745DDB68E7B5CEFF35F9)


And, also today I was tasked with a mission the description of which I am certain has never been put into text before . . .



Tomorrow I'm going out past Stony Plain to pick up two buckets of pigs' blood to be made into black pudding for U2.



Seriously.



That Irish lot.





My life is more amusingly absurd with each passing day.

It comes in buckets? I've never got on well with black pudding.

Might I ask why Pliny the Elder is on a newel post? Not the most stable spot, surely?

TRiG.

Actually, it comes in pigs first, just like bacon and pork chops.

After the pig gets to the abattoir, the bacon and pork chops and blood are removed from the pig. The bacon and pork chops are put into neat little packages and the blood most often pretty much just gets discarded . . .


unless anhaga shows up in his little truck with exquisite timing and a couple of food-grade buckets (originally used for shipping unpasteurized grape juice for wine making) in which case the blood is carefully placed in the buckets and rushed across town to the Sausage Man.


I am in the habit of an evening to put on the newel post volumes I intend to take downstairs the next morning. On the particular evening in question, I had put a volume of Pliny's Histories in that position and, realizing the precariousness of its situation, I uttered the admonition mentioned.