Yay! I got my Christmas shopping done today.
In order to get Mom's gift, I had to venture to Lee Valley Tools. Lee Valley tends to sell mostly hardware, gardening tools, and various woodworking supplies. But this is no Home Depot. No, Lee Valley sells the fancy-shmancy Martha-Stewart-Living kind of hardware, gardening tools, and various woodworking supplies. They've also got all kinds of neat gadgets, and I will admit that today, I was very tempted to get some of their old-fashioned tin Christmas tree ornaments.
But their stores always struck me as being very odd. Firstly, there's pretty much no stock on the shelves. Rather than a store, they have what could best be described as a showroom. They have a limited amount of their stock on display, and everything has a catalogue number on it. They've got stations set up all over the place where their catalogue is on display, along with all kinds of order forms for you.
What you do is, you wander throughout the store, leaf through the catalogues, and fill out your order form. When you've got your order placed, you take it to the friendly person at the customer service desk, and the person will disappear into the back room and get your stuff. The person will then show it to you so you can confirm that it's what you want, and then the person will stick your stuff on a conveyer belt, where it'll be taken down to the cash registers, where the cashier will ring you up.
It's very odd when you're not used to it.
And then, I had to go out and indulge. I went browsing through Zeller's where I bought myself some of McFarlane Toys's absolutly beautiful Corpse Bride action figures.
That was a bit of a mistake, though. Here, in my room, I am officially out of room to mount action figures. I need to get my job in radio, because I need my own house, so I can put all my action figures in their own room.
Let's see here....
Beef=cow
Pork=chicken
Mutton=lamb
Venison=deer
Australus=???
So, a growing industry in Australia is kangaroo ranching. Tourists are always asking to try some kangaroo meat, so they finally started butchering kangaroos and serving them up.
Problem is though, people are still kind of attached to kangaroos, and seem them as being a very cute animal. To see "kangaroo meat" on the menu just turns them off. So, Australia's Food Companion International decided to invent a word with the definition "kangaroo meat." After interviewing 2700 people over 41 countries, they came up with "australus."
Even though they sponsored the search, the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia currently has no plans to start using the word.
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