Subj : EatingDrinking+BeingMerr To : James Bradley From : Miles Maxted Date : Tue Apr 26 2005 09:14 am G'morning James, JB> We seem to have Purple Loostrife [sp?] and West Nile Virus. JB> After that, the lack of humidity seems to be a rather JB> effective barrier. (Not being an ecologist, mind you.) All true - this morning's paper has a big articles warning of tropAsian Tiger mossies and Chilean fire ants as unwanted invaders... JB> Just two problems there: A) I tend towards JB> *antidisestablishmentariarianistic* thinking, and B) Sounds JB> like work! Not at all - the lines above above qualify you nicely - your new NZ p.a's will sort out the `work'... JB> Don't get me wrong. I imbibe, but I garnered a crash course on the drug JB> when a family member had his fill. And I aint talkin' for the JB> night! Family instilled enjoyment and moderation, so I have only become seriously drunk twice that I can recall; my birthday quoffing takes me to a physical fullness limit beyond which there's no possible enjoyment ... and I do like slurping bubbly wine ... JB> Moiry [sp?] is the native population, but only suspected of JB> being in existence for less than a millennium? They're termed `Maori', and they turned right from the human migration that populated the early Americas, and took over eastern China. Linguistic and DNA studies have them peopling Taiwan before taking to the seas to follow earlier migrations to the Phillines and the Indonesian Islands, their prowess at long- distance canoeing then populating the Melanesian/Polynesian/Hawaiian islands about 1500 years ago - as far as Easter and Pitcairn Islands; their sweet potato (the kumara) was picked up off the South America coast. The first Maori settlers reached NZ 750 years ago, making it the last major land mass to be humanised. The first European settlers joined them in 1792 - 208 years ago... and between them, the newcomers have transformed the place into a pleasant memory of their imagined home-lands.... JB> So far, only one female Prime Minister, and she adopted JB> the position only to be promptly voted out. Nudge-nudge...> Sadly, we're on our second - and this one's an ex-lecturer in political `science' who's out to prove all her theories on how it really should be - by winning a third term in office. Consequently, we breathe, eat and live `PC'... MM> It is claimed that most of the gear came with the dungeons... it MM> certainly features a lot of hand-forged iron that's well-worn and MM> etched with rust... JB> All castles housed at least one smithy plus a few JB> apprentices, so they might have well been unique JB> implements. The chore - I would imagine - would be keeping JB> them in the confines of the crypt for any length of time. Difficult to imagine some light-fingered SM freak pocketing their Iron Maiden, hand-bagging a rack or half-inching an oubliette ! Especially when Security have a frightening variety of immediately administratible punishing devices just begging for public demonstration... MM> Hey, this is the land of too-much-plenty - its hard to maintain a MM> slim profile here... JB> Coming from the land of *much-too-plenty*; I can relate. I'm on the Board of a local Intermediate School here (a Junior High) which hosted a visit from an American school last term; I was ready to meet some really solid teacher/parents - but not to see some 30 12yr-olds already waddling ponderously as they circumnavigated the school grounds ... sadly, such obesity is slowly becoming a way of life here, too, and the medics are forecasting a drop in the population's ages of death if something is not done about it... Nil desparandum ! The bubbles in the wine keep me afloat... :-)) ___ MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.45 --- Maximus/2 3.01 * Origin: === Maxie BBS. Ak, NZ +64 9 444-0989 === (3:772/1) .