So, I bought some hair today. Just because I could.

Do you like this?:

No…how about this?:

Or maybe this?

Honestly, I kinda like this:

Which do you prefer?

This is a Ford Focus. And now you know why the “focus”. (Click on the picture to enlarge it to see what I’m talking about.)

Live from the deck of the Lady Washington… yes… under sail… and yes, for those of you whom care about this sort of thing, the very same ship on which Johnny Depp trod in Pirates of the Carribean (oooh…shiver me pegs… I’m walking where Johnny Depp walked… although no offense…I find being here with my husband more exciting..
Anyway, here are some preliminary pictures: ..

Have you heard about the Grapple (pronounced, they say, “Grape-L”, although every time I see that I think of a vintner’s mailing list). The Grapple is, I’d heard, a hybridized apple crossed with a grape (“Must have been a pretty big grape, haw haw,” I can hear the redneck contingent saying).

Intrigued – in that morbid, can’t tear your eyes away from an accident sort of way – I just had to try the Grapple just to see what it was like.

So, seeing a 4-pack of Grapples at the store, I bought them. I was – curious. As i opened the package, the smell hit me first. It smelled like… a cross between, hmmm, grape Kool-aid and Grape Crush. With maybe a little bit of grape cough syrup thrown in.

The point was, this was not a grape smell that came from nature.

Then we actually looked at the ingredients.

“Apples, Natural & Artificial Grape Flavor”

Aaaah.

Or, more to the point, ewwwww.

Still, I’d bought the things, and so we had to try them. Once we got past the smell.

And, in fact, the smell was all there was.

“Do you actually taste any grape?” asked our son.

“No, do you?”

“No.”

The smell – artificial at that – seemed to be all there was that was even remotely grape-like about these poor, abused Fuji apples.

So how do they do whatever it is they do? (And for the sake of all that is holy, why do they do it??)

Says the Grapple site, “This Patent Pending process is complex and the ingredient mix primarily includes concentrated grape flavor and pure water. All ingredients are USDA and FDA approved and the process has been licensed by the Washington State Department of Agriculture. There is nothing but flavor being infused into the Fuji apple. The apple takes on no additional sugars or calories. They are not genetically altered in any way.
The apple is as healthy as ever but now has the new exciting grape flavor.”

Best as I can tell, and I see nothing to refute it above, they have sprayed otherwise perfectly nice apples with a mixture of grape flavour and artifical grape flavour.

Final analysis?

Don’t bother.

Unless, of course, you’re morbidly curious.

The Grapple, from the Evil Orchard of Dr. Moreau:

I’m not exactly sure why yet, but for some reason I find this..interesting:

“A research group found that people only became lactose-tolerant within the last couple thousand years. The group found that as humans evolved they grew tolerant to milk. Dr Mark Thomas of the University College London said, “This is probably the single most advantageous gene trait in humans in the last 30,000 years.” ”

The report goes on to say that “Mainz University scientists in Germany and the UCL team studied the DNA of Neolithic skeletons from 5480BC to 5000BC. They found that lactase, an enzyme which breaks down lactose — one of the main sugars milk contains, was absent from the DNA. Only later did humans begin to develop the enzyme. Thomas said, “The ability to drink milk is the most advantageous trait that’s evolved in Europeans in the recent past.” ”

So this is news?

The world is agog today with news that researchers in Africa have observed chimpanzees fashioning spears, and using the weapons to hunt and kill food.

Particularly interesting were these observations, reported in the Washington Post:

“The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females — the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps — tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.”

However, perhaps less welcome was this description of exactly how these female use their “creative problem solving”. Describing how the female used the spear against a sleeping bushbaby, one researcher said:

“It was really alarming how forceful it was,” adding that it reminded her of the murderous shower scene in the Alfred Hitchcock movie “Psycho.” “It was kind of scary.”

‘Nuff said.

I don’t know about you, but I found it striking to see not one …not two …but three Mercedes ..in a row …all queued up at the Starbucks drive-thru.
I’m sure there’s a great caption in here somewhere… got any suggestions?