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When you were growing up, did you call it "pop", "soda", or even "coke"? See how you compare with other folks at Caltech's Pop vs. Soda Page.

The Pledge of Zappa.

by Adam Thornton, from the LINUX-390 listserv, as part of a discussion about whether Outback Steakhouses are really Australian (they're not)

Adam's Field Guide to Australian Cuisine

Step One: Identify the Thing You Wish to Eat. Realize it's deathly toxic and if it so much as breathes in your general direction you will die miserably and painfully. Drink a beer to cope with your nervousness.

Note: this applies to both flora and fauna. And yes, Australian flora are perfectly capable of stalking you, injecting you with some hideous toxin, and then devouring you.

Step Two: Attempt to kill the thing you wish to eat. Preferably from a very long way away, with ranged weapons. If it figures out where the hail of missile fire is coming from, run away very quickly before it can poison you, &c. This will be long and thirsty work, especially since Australia is a land where it never rains and the temperature never dips below 140F. So drink a couple more beers.

Step Three: Retrieve the Body. Note that you will not be the only one who thinks consuming this thing is a good idea, so you'll basically have to repeat Step Two a bunch of times, except that you can't run away, because then you'd be abandoning your kill. Between the sweating and the peeing yourself in terror because of the sheer ferocity of the other predators, you will be losing a lot of fluid, so drink more beer.

Step Four: Remove the Poison Sacs/Venom Glands/Toxic whatevers from the creature. Of course, if so much as a drop gets on you, or so much as a whiff of vapor reaches you, it's hideous, painful death. This step usually requires a Level Five Hazmat Facility. This is *really* nervewracking, thus: beer.

Step Five: Grill, for a long time, over open flame. Heat tends to break down toxins. This will, duh, be quite hot. So you should drink some beer.

Step Six: Eat. While you're waiting to find out if you've killed yourself hideously and painfully, drink some more beer.

Remember in The Road Warrior, where Max eats a can of dogfood, and then gives the empty can to his dog? You thought that was a post-apocalyptic thing? Nah. That's just the way Australians eat, because it's so much safer than trying to eat anything that naturally occurs there.

Have you been a bad boy? Watch out for the karma ghosts!
Thanks to ZM/Herb, a Radio Paradise listener.

Waiting on the Lawn for Moteaux, Auguste Boudoir, circa 2002. This début de siècle composition pays direct homage to late 20th and early 21st century "naturalist artifice" artistes. Boudoir created this painting as a result of a misunderstanding with his mistress - she thought he said "Meet me at John's" when he of course meant "on the lawn".

The image presents itself on many levels, from the overly literal (boredom) to the allegorical (boredom). The hinted omission of the right front tyre is a direct reference to Boudoir's leftist politics, as is the empty chair on the right.
photo from JrzyTmta's garden cam