Wednesday, November 26, 2003. 8:35PM
Now, the other day, see, me old man was in Bangladesh, and I guess maybe he had some spare currency at the airport or something, because he brought me back a packet of M&M's. Now, there's been a few other log things I've wanted to follow up on for a while now, so I guess I'll work through them a little bit now. Firstly, let's see if the M&M colours are any different in Bangladesh than they are here.
The ingredients read thusly: Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa, milk, cocoa butter, lactose, milk fat, emulsifier (soy lecithin), salt, artificial flavors),sugar, wheat starch, glucose syrup, stabilizer (gum acacia), colours (titanium dioxide, allura red, sunset yellow FCF, tartrazine (C.I. 19140), brilliant blue FCF), thickener (dextrin), peanuts. For Malaysia: contains permitted colours, flavors and emulsifiers.
These are our ingredients: Milk Chocolate 68% (Sugar, Milk Solids, Cocoa Mass, Cocoa Butter, Vegetable Fat, Emulsifier (Soy Lecithin), Salt, Favors), Sugar, Wheat Starch, Wheat Glucose Syrup, Vegetable Gum (414), Colours (171, 129, 102, 110, 133, 162, 132), Thickener (Dextrin) milk chocolate contains a minimum 29% cocoa solids and a minimum 24% milk solids. MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF PEANUTS.
Now, I guess we must have more stringent laws or something, because it lists the percentage of chocolate (I'd have thought it'd be higher than that in M&M's, personally). The chocolate seems to be a bit different too... we use milk solids, cocoa mass, and vegetable fat as opposed to their cocoa, milk, lactose, and milk fat. I wonder if that's just different ways of saying the same thing. Or maybe their plant is less sophisticated so they use less processed ingredients. I can only speculate. I looked up vegetable gum 414, and I turns out to be acacia, so I guess the deference on the packets is just semantics. Same goes for the wheat glucose, I guess. Funnily enough, when I first put Vegetable Gum 414 into a search engine, it came up with a pharmacy site, which had a facility for searching their product database based on key ingredients. Guess what came up? Ansell Lubricant 100G Strawberry. Ha. Sexual lubricant is in M&M's. That's not really very funny. Here I am degrading the most thoughtful and mature article I every wrote with jokes about sexual healing. Now, it seems that they've listed the full colour names, rather than just the index numbers on the Bangladeshi packet, so let's throw them back into the old engine and see what comes out. 171, 219, 110, 102, 133. Hmm. Well yes, that's pretty much the same. Only thing is that our old friends 162 and 132 don't seem to be in this one.
Well, I don't know. I don't seem to have proved anything. It seems that M&M's in Bangladesh are more or less the same as in Australia (M&M are Halal, by the way, as certified by the Halal Certification Authority). I don't know what they mean about the Malaysian ones having permitted colours, maybe their laws are different or something. The only really interesting thing is the subtle and needless differences in the packaging. Like they way the ingredients are worded. And I copied the case of the letters exactly too, and you'll notice that the Australian one has capital letters at the start of almost every word, where as there is scarcely a capital letter in sight in the Bangladeshi version. You'd think that M&M's would have some kind of generic template for their wrappers world wide.
And no, they don't have purple.
- - -
Now, as a follow up to the last entry, one of our thoughtful readers sent me a link to a bunch of Daria fan fiction - short stories, mostly, written by fans of the show, and putting characters from the show into different situations. My favorite of these was Passion Club, which sees Quinn's best friend, Sandi reveal her secret lesbian tendencies, and Quinn embrace this new found activity with some gusto, and many steamy adjectives. Sure gave me a hard on. You can find it here.
Now, the reason I bring it up, is because, as some small recompenses for the shit fake cartoon porn of last time, I give you this, still shit, but in this narrator's humble opinion, slightly better cartoon porn. Look! She's holding a giant black rubber cock! Can't go wrong with black rubber cock!
I promise that's the last one unless someone sends me some kind of response.
- - -
Now, this other one is going back a little way. Back to May 14 (Happy Birthday Lindsay). Here is a link. Now, in one paragraph in that log I was talking about a girl dancing, and how wonderous it was. I don't think I put it so articulately back then, but basically, what I was getting at was this:
Looking on she sings the songs, the words she knows, the tune
she hums. But oh how it feels so real, Lying here with no one near.
Only you and you can't hear me, when I say softly, slowly, hold me closer tiny
dancer. Count the headlights on the highway
Lay me down in sheets of linen, you had a busy day today
This is a part of an Elton John song, and... well... personally, I don't know what he's talking about. Just these few lines, however, sing to me about these women - these women with the power of the dance. You see, I've found another one. The first girl you may remember, was dancing on a bar in a club where I was attending a party, and every man in the room was watching her. Watching and wanting. Well, this time it was at a concert. Standing room only. Quite a crush. Just after the second set began, I found myself all on my own in a crowd of people (it was deliberate. Certain experiences are better in confined spaces with strangers). I was watching this girl dance a bit in front of me and to one side. She was a tiny dancer. Like the other girl, she was only small, and maybe walking down the street wouldn't have been all that attractive, however, when she dances... oh how she dances... slowly I forced the guy next to me out of the way so I was right behind her. It was a tight squeeze, so we were touching quite a lot. I remember that she had tied her jumper around her waste so that I couldn't touch her arse. Oh as she danced in front of me. Hold me closer, tiny dancer. Hold me, hold me tight.
