Growing meat...

Meat grown in laboratory in world first.

Interesting.

Presumably one could experiment with taste and type?

Now I want to go to La Paz...

I was web-browsing for photos of places, as I like to do, and came across this interesting photo by Tom Robinson labelled Llama foetuses. Witches market, Sucre, Bolivia.

How odd, thought I. Especially since I am currently reading Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett, about the witches of Lancre, and not a llama foetus among them. (As far as I know.) Then I did a double take. Witches' market? Here and now? Really? So I looked it up.

And sure enough. This description says casually:

...The most prominent product available in the Witches' Market are dried llama fetuses, which are fairly large and moderately disturbing to the foreign visitor. These are always buried in the foundations of new constructions or businesses as a cha'lla (offering) to the goddess Pachamama.

I find the second sentence more remarkable than the first. National Geographic has an article on it all. (I love this world!)

Some of the sites have photos which look as if they are from Harry Potter or Discworld itself. And it reminds me of some shops I went to in New Orleans.

Another tourist website has a handy tip: "If you stick a cigarette in your frog's mouth, your chances of striking it rich will increase." Who knew?

My Christmas tree...

I waited. I made myself wait until December to put up my Christmas tree. Someone discarded a strong of lights in the laundry room a few weeks ago, so I put them on the tree, and put the tree on the glass-topped table right in front of the window. There's an angel on the harp, red and gold beads on my artificial tree, and red IKEA stars on my Supernatural picture screen. (Before it was a Supernatural picture screen, it had pictures of the plays I'd seen in Stratford. Before that, Lord of the Rings.)

And I have a snowglobe with a silver bird.

I love decorating for Christmas.