Spot the genetic variation!

Originally uploaded by cce_photography.


Throughout Longwood Gardens there are beautifully arranged plants, meticulously maintained and arduously perfect. This is one of the reasons the little spot of red on this tulip delighted me so much. Here, after strolling through an acre or two of perfect, snow-white tulips and other arrangements constrained to uniformity, here was a rebel! Go, little tulip, go! I admit, after I took the picture, I looked around for the maniacal garden gnomes to come remove the offending petals or even the whole tulip in the name of returning the garden to its intended perfection. After all, this tulip is clearly the bastard offspring of a forbidden romance!

In other news, the gods hate me today in so many ways… But luckily, it’s Friday. I will perform the appropriate sleep-worship tonight and everything will be better in the morning.

So, those of you familiar with exotic coffee or Jon’s blog may be familiar with Kopi Luwak coffee. For the uninitiated or just intentionally innocent, this coffee bean is harvested after it’s been pre-processed through a luwak. Luwaks are little weasel-cat creatures that hang out in Indonesia snarfing down coffee cherries right from the bush. They’re pretty darned cute. The luwaks are also coffee snobs and apparently only eat the finest, most perfectly ripe coffee cherries. The coffee beans then go through the luwaks and is discarded for silly humans to collect. The silly humans do indeed collect the luwak droppings, dry them, clean the beans and roast the coffee beans. Silly humans.

So where am I going with this?

Well, the other night I was wandering around the Outlands in World of Warcraft when a friendly NPC gave me the following quest: A Rare Bean

The point of the quest?

“To the west you will find dung heaps left behind by the wildlife of Nagrand. You must search the dung for the digested remnants of the Nagrand caracoli. From this bean I am able to make a tablet that will aid you in your battle against the restless forces of nature.”

Yep, wander around the zone, look for rather large piles of poop, and right-click on them to “search” for the digested caricoli bean. As a reward you receive processed caracoli beans that allow you to breathe under water for 30 minutes. Pretty useful since after doing this quest you’ll want to wash your hands for a long time. There were many grossed-out comments about this quest in my guild’s chat channel this week. This amuses me since this game routinely has us carry around heads, hands, ears and other sundry body parts for quests. A little poo-quest and they’re all “ick! this is disgusting!” Silly boys.

longwood gardens, tulips, kopi luwak, world of warcraft, photographs, photography, garden gnomes