roundup

I have a load of open tabs. So:

1. Love's Fowl is an opera, in Italian, inspired by the Chicken Little story but going far beyond it. It sounds unbearably twee, but this year's This American Life collection of Poultry Stories - actually 2003's on repeat - played sections and translated them. They are dry, witty, everything that turns something really high quality but offbeat into the good sort of cult.

2. Actually, that This American Life episode also starts with an amazing story about two sisters and a duck puppet, and follows it with two episodes of the brilliant Chickenman. TAL is about the best thing, and this was a crackerjack episode. Here's more Chickenman. I wish I'd listened to this before I invented Cricketbat (see a couple of posts lower down).

3. Via Light Reading: a story about bees producing red honey because they had been eating vats of sugar dyed with the same dye used for Maraschino cherries. The honey was horrible.

4. Via Marbury: great story about super high-tech cyber-terrorism taking down Iranian nuclear facilities.

5. I'm doing Literary Death Match next week. I have to represent a holiday. Unless I hear of something better, I am going to represent Bhutan's Blessed Rainy Day when you bathe outdoors to get rid of bad deeds, obstructions and defilements, and then you have porridge.