Sun 17 Dec 2006
In our pre-pre-Christmas show, we cover listener correspondence and news stories, including pavlova making, Japanese breasts, circumcision, scantily-clad road sign holders, chocolate crackles, and languages.
Sun 17 Dec 2006
In our pre-pre-Christmas show, we cover listener correspondence and news stories, including pavlova making, Japanese breasts, circumcision, scantily-clad road sign holders, chocolate crackles, and languages.
December 17th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Everyone should check out circumcision.org.
December 19th, 2006 at 1:18 am
Wow. I guess I should be pleased that our pavlova success rate is 50% since Jana’s is 37.5! Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead, and never make a pavlova again.
Caitlin and I have listened to a few shows in the car, and sometimes she’ll listen on her work computer (scandalous!) but since she’s getting an mp3 player for Christmas, maybe she’ll become a regular listener.
December 19th, 2006 at 3:22 am
Wow, a whole new thing to investigate: the circumcision of Jesus Christ. Wikipedia tells us “it was the first time the Redeemer spilled his blood for mankind”. Excuse me whilst I put my finger down my throat…uuuurgh! That’s better.
Happy Christmas!
December 19th, 2006 at 5:34 am
“Chocolate crackle” is probably an analogue of the American “Rice Krispie treat”, which is made of puffed rice, melted butter, and marshmallow and/or melted chocolate.
Also, diphthongs are when you cram two different vowel sounds into a single syllable. For example, when an Aussie says “no way”, he’s actually saying “N-uh-oo w-ah-ee”. I’m not sure what your caller’s problem is with diphthong-less languages - people in the American South make nearly every syllable into a diphthong and most people think they sound silly.
December 20th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
There’s nothing like curling up by a bonfire and listening to Uncle Adolf give a speech! Ahhh, the good old days.
Tvindy, I can’t believe you’re hating on French. It’s a beautiful language, but it is our other official language up here. Maybe I’m biased.
December 21st, 2006 at 12:07 am
I think French can be quite lovely and so can Italian. It depends on the speaker though. The working class gutteral French one may hear on the streets may easily put one off the language. Some French-Canadian speakers can sound wrong to those who’ve learned a more classical French. (I live not too far from Quebec and am of French Canadian descent.)
Everybody knows German sucks though.
December 21st, 2006 at 7:28 am
Copha is used for general sweet making - not just for chocolate crackles. In my family the favourite copha recipe is cherry ripe slice (check out http://www.recipezaar.com/171988 for a similar recipe) and I seem to remember that great aunt Myrtle’s passionfruit slice used copha as well…sadly her recipe was lost in the great toilet explosion of ‘87.
My American sister-in-law substituted something called kremelta (?sp) to make my home-sick brother some chocolate crackles and he said it was a nice try but they tasted like dog vomit and NOT the crackles he fondly remembered from childhood.
December 22nd, 2006 at 2:06 am
I must know more about the Toilet Explosion!
December 24th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
According to the good people at Kellog’s Australia (see above link), Kremelta and copha are the same thing (see also http://www.recipezaar.com/library/getentry.zsp?id=747); Kremelta is just another brand name.
Perhaps your brother misremembered, and chocolate crackles had tasted like dog vomit to him as a child, too, or there was some other difference in the ingredients used by your sister-in-law (perhaps she accidentally used dog vomit instead of icing sugar).
Merry Christmas, one and all!
January 17th, 2007 at 4:21 am
I am slowly catching up with my podcasts since the Christmas holidays, so Happy belated Holidays.
As for languages an interesting thing with Inuktitut is that that sometimes a single word can be a sentence. For example:
Qanuiliungniarasit? (What are you [plural] going to do?)
Humm … maybe I will call in and give an audio example.
Sam