The Blog

   Pre-Christmas Cheer...

Between the email implosion of last week and my blog no longer updating, it's been a bad time for my tech. Let me sort these things out, and then we can move on. In the meantime, a story from Reuters:

Mistletoe theft threatens kissing crisis
An outbreak of opportunistic mistletoe rustling is threatening a Christmas kissing crisis, according to British environmental experts.

The Wildlife Trusts - a partnership of 47 British wildlife organisations - says over-harvesting of the plant means it is becoming increasingly rare.

The plant only grows in the wild and is mainly found on old apple trees.

"Mistletoe is being taken in increasingly large quantities from orchards, hedgerows and ancient trees to be sold at markets to Christmas shoppers," The Wildlife Trusts said.

"There are cases of mistletoe rustling, and once the whole plant has been removed from its host tree it won't grow back."

The parasitic green plant with white berries has been associated with fertility since the time of the ancient Druids.

Kissing under the mistletoe has long been a Christmas party tradition.

I love the last line, where it explains the whole point of the mistletoe thing. It's a badly-written article, for that should have been stated at the beginning so that people understand what the headline was getting at, but still. I think it's great that they felt it was necessary to explain such a tradition. After all, I've never seen mistletoe, and if it wasn't for much indoctrination at all early age I would have no idea why I should care about mistletoe as anything other than another endangered species. But they had to explain it, which reminds me of why I think (true) multiculturalism is great.

And in other news, I'm fine despite the riots. People are plebs, and certainly behaving like them at the moment.

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