DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
Some of the exhibits on show at the Disgusting Food Museum. PICTURE: Via Disgusting Food Museum website.
• Thailand’s infamously smelly durian fruit, roasted guinea pigs from Peru and the Australian delicacy, Vegemite, are among items going on show at Sweden’s new Disgusting Food Museum. The Malmo-based museum features samples of 80 specially selected foods from around the world to which people can have a particularly visceral reaction. The museum’s website says while disgust is “one of the six fundamental human emotions”, the foods that cause it are not and it explores the idea of whether changing our ideas of disgust could “help us embrace the environmentally sustainable foods of the future”. Other foods in the display include fermented herring from Sweden (known locally as surströmming), aged shark from Iceland (hakarl) and maggot-infested cheese from Sardinia (casu marzu). Anyone hungry?
• Described as a “symbol of growing inequality” or simply “bizarre“, the new social media craze sweeping China involves people posting pictures of themselves lying face down on the ground (as though they’ve just fallen over, often out of a luxury car), surrounded by luxury items like bags, make-up, cameras, mobile phones, and even great wads of cash (all of which have apparently spilled from their hands in the fall). Dubbed the “flaunt your wealth” or “falling stars” challenge, the trend is said to have been sparked when a Russian DJ posted a picture of himself pretending to fall out of a private jet. It has, of course, been mocked by people replicating the poses with items from their own, rather less wealth-saturated, everyday life. And some workers in China who have depicted themselves surrounded by the tools of their trade have apparently earned applause from state owned media in China for showing the pride they take in what they do.
• That’s one way to move to a new premises. Some 250 people formed a human chain to help a bookshop owner transfer thousands of books to a new premises located down the street. Southampton’s October Books reportedly decided to move after an increase in rent and used a crowd-funding campaign and loans to buy a former bank down the road. Volunteers then gathered last Sunday to transfer more than 2,000 books to the new location with Clare Diaper, who works at the shop, saying it was a “tremendous show of support”.
