anyway, i realize it's been eons since last i sat down to write, but the winter doldrums have set in and my life is not really all that exciting. alright, i did go to china, but this is not a travel blog. and besides, i hate reading about the adventures of others -- they tend to read like one giant itinerary -- so i'd rather not bore you with the copious amounts of bitching i did while hiking the great wall (10k in below freezing weather did not a happy engrish teacher make) or how the chinese government issued one christmas- themed decoration and used it in every storefront to commemorate the holiday or how i now firmly believe that if i try hard enough i can work chairman mao into any joke.
but i digress.
what i really want to talk about are meat sausages. specifically the kind one can find in any korean convenience store and that make me want to both giggle with delight and cringe in disgust.
right? if you live in korea (or many other asian countries, i suspect) then you are familiar with the snack sausage. this is mystery meat at its finest: prepackaged fish/cow/chicken/cheese parts conveniently suctioned into an easy to carry wand of deliciousness. now, i have never actually partaken in a snack sausage as i prefer to keep my consumption of "foods that can be sucked out of plastic" to a minimum. (otter pops do not count as they are not actually food and ARE delicious. what can i say, i've got standards.) anyway, last wednesday an old friend shared this link on facebook and implored me to send a few "meat styli" her way. (btw, that is actually the plural of stylus, i looked it up.)
a meat stylus? in korea? fuckin' ay, what will they think of next? as you can imagine, i was intrigued, so i did a bit of my own research and happened upon this link. see, the iphone just recently made an appearance in the Land of Tax the Shit out of Foreign Goods and has proven to be quite popular. but it's a pain in the ass to remove one's gloves just to make a call/check cyworld/take pictures in coffee shops -- enter the meat stylus. for the price of a candy bar, koreans everywhere can now keep their digits warm, do business AND snack. brilliant!
i needed to see a meat stylus in action, so monday afternoon when koreans everywhere were celebrating the lunar new year, i grabbed my friend jarvis and headed to the family mart. we picked up a snack sausage and set to the business of styli-zation. (oh, that was bad.)
AND... it worked! it really worked. i realize this is incredibly anti-climactic as i have no video to prove the efficacy of the meat stylus, but trust me, it works. and besides, i lost my camera cord in the black hole that is china, (along with my ipod cord and my favorite yellow sunglasses) so even if i filmed it, it would be stuck in my camera forever.
and then i found twenty dollars. (did that make it better?)
