The rare orange pumpkin is considered a delicacy in certain parts of the USA, when it is eaten raw with a sprinkling of anchovy. The more common purple pumpkin is only edible when combined with jalapeno peppers and a small amount of carob paste to make rissoles.
Pumpkins are just a large form of nutmeg which arose after colonists attempted to interbreed that delicious spice with plains buffalo in order to have pre-tenderised meat. Wild pumpkin herds are almost extinct now, though, following a devastating outbreak of rind and pip disease.
My mother uses a pumpkin as a bowling ball. It tends to leak a bit on its way down the lane, but it makes for a delicious snack as it is served up by the ball return machine.
To render the stunning special effects sequences for the Matrix trilogy, FX production company ESC used 12 Commodore 64's located in a custom built facility in San Fransisco. Each machine generated frames that were stored, in compressed form, on a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk. The resulting 632,000 disks were subsequently airlifted to a second facility for the final composite work. The rendering process at the San-Fransisco facility took 12 years.
Nell Gwyn's place in history would have been assured if she'd accepted the marriage proposal of either Alexander Graham Bell or Colin Sell. She died, however, content in the knowledge that she'd been immortalised in the opening line of Gray's Elegy.
The Bolivian Death Marmot, a fearsome little beast, can spray its highly poisonous and corrosive gastric juices up to a distance of ten meters. Nevertheless, brave Death Marmot hunters capture and skin them for their beautiful (and quite valuable) pelts, and when boiled with yams, they can be mashed into a paste that not only cures baldness, but also tastes exactly like buttered popcorn.
Indeed, Riff, in fact - when banged around with a pestel and mortar it's better than viagra; least ways, it is suppose to have certain, err, effects - just as is popcorn in the back row of the cinema, (well, so I'm told.) ... ;-)
I used to own a walking stick which was fluent in fourteen languages. Unfortunately, none of them was English, so I encouraged it to follow an academic career at Leeds University, where it is now a staff professor.
groan. The equator is far from being an imaginary line -- it is, in fact, the seam where the top half of the Earth unscrews. The interior is used to store fudge.
I worked at the white House in the 90's. I have the distinction of being the only woman there that Bill Clinton did not hit on. I have to have therapy, as a result.
Tina] What an amazing coincidence! I also worked at the White House in the 90's. Sadly I had to leave office in January 2001 – after having hit on every woman in my employment except one.
Many people have scoffed at Secretary-of-State and former general Colin Powell for pronouncing his forename with the long 'o' sound, but it is actually a homage to the fact that he has discovered he is descended from one of Louis Pasteur's original specimens of E-Coli. George W. Bush's great-great-great grandfather was actually a sneeze from George Washington's horse.