Soda Fountain of Knowledge (Kulcha Edition): Snugglepot & Cuddlepie

***Cultural Acclimatization Needed: Read this post first.***


When I was a small child, some of my favorite books featured two little blokes who could not have been dreamed of in any country but Australia.

I'd like to introduce you to Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, the most adorable characters in Australian children's literature*.


(They're the two in the front of the gumleaf-toboggan).

Gumnut** hats? Check.

Nuding it up with adorable blossom-skirted girlfriends? Check.

Riding down a gumtree branch on a gumleaf???!!! Check. They are Gumnut Babies, after all.

Although I admit I didn't remember them being quite so fat, Snugglepot & Cuddlepie are ovary-clenchingly adorable.

I would post a ton more pictures here, but I don't want to mess with copyright & stuff. Here is a pretty good site with some illustrations showing their dread enemy the Banksia Man, an adorable gumleaf house, the kangaroo cab-stand and so on.

The author, May Gibbs, did a fantastic job of weaving real Australiana into her stories.
This page, for instance, shows the Gumnut Babies looking at secondhand houses, which are actually cases which are really constructed by real grubs in Australia. We used to see them hanging off the outside walls of the house sometimes. I think the grubs cast off these cases and make new ones as they get bigger.
This page gets its inspiration from a tree called the scribbly-bark gum (here's a real one I found on Flickr). The scribbles on the bark are made by insect larvae burrowing between the layers of bark, but of course in the book, it's really the Gumnut Babies.

The stories might not carry as many levels of meaning for non-Australians, but they're still absolutely charming. I think it's partly because of the era they're from (the first book was published in 1918), but they still work today - they're just adorable and timeless.


*I won't say they're the most Australian, because even though they're totally Oz, they're no match for Albert the Magic Pudding, who will be the subject of a future post.

**For those of you unfamiliar with gumnuts, they are the hard woody fruit of the eucalyptus tree. They come in a few different shapes & sizes, but they're all sort of like little cups.

Soda Fountain of Knowledge (Language Edition): Snuggling & Cuddling

In preparation for my next post, I need my non-Australian readers to be aware that in Australia, snuggling and cuddling are quite innocent and do not have any sexual connotation*. I make mention of this because in the past I have made a couple of (male) Americans confused and defensive by suggesting that one give the other a cuddle.

You might snuggle up on the couch with a loved one, watching Survivor. All you're doing is lying there nice and close for comfort. No funny business is going on.

I think a cuddle is pretty much the same as a hug except longer and more personal. You would probably only cuddle someone you know very well.

Do my Aussie readers have anything to add to these definitions?


*Unless you are saying it in a meaningful voice with much raising of eyebrows. Context is everything.

Sweet scents.

This post is totally stolen from Gwen. Actually I posted some of it as a comment to her post.

But I liked the idea so much I thought it was worth expanding on. Smell is such an important sense. I read somewhere that the smell receptors in the brain are located close to some bits that have something to do with memory, so smell is actually the most powerful sense in terms of evoking memories, which makes sense if you've ever experienced that thing where you smell a certain scent and it just absolutely transports you somewhere else. And I don't mean in that Mickey-Mouse-traveling-on-a-wisp-of-pie-steam way.

Here are some of my favorite smells:

• Crayola crayons - I could sit there and smell a pack of those babies all day

• Frying bacon, which has nearly caused me to faint while walking past a breakfast café

• Frying onions

• Frying mushrooms

• ... okay, pretty much anything frying

• Coffee (even though I hate the taste)

• Cigar smoke (I don't know, I just like it. Any other things you smoke smell horrible and awful)

• Bonfires, especially in the country, also wood-stove fires

• Eucalyptus leaves

• The beach. That sea air smell that stays on your skin.

• Babies heads (I heard that babies heads give off a natural tranquilizer... Breathe deep. I'm just sayin'.)

• YSL Baby Doll perfume in the pink gem-shaped bottle. It smells like lollies and flowers. It's kind of my signature... I wear that, or Chanel No. 5 if I'm being fancy.


Many of y'all gave your favorite smells list on Gwen's post, so I want to hear your stories about a smell totally evoking a different time & place. Oh yeah and keep it clean you guys!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!

THERE WAS A SLUG ON THE TOILET SEAT!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!

I am beyond squicked out right now. It was *this* close to touching me.

Bleeeeuuuuurgh.

Fun Size Over to You: Calling Miss Manners.

When two gentlemen are introduced, they shake hands.

When a lady and a gentleman are introduced, they might shake hands or they might skip it.

But when two ladies are introduced, is it weird to shake hands? I thought not, but I've been given a few withering-wet-fish-style hands by other ladies* recently and I'm beginning to wonder if it's because we're not supposed to shake hands.

What say you, blogosphere?



*Also, Southern women all have freakishly small soft hands. What's up with that?

Fun Size: Jaywalking.

I'm adding a new category for super short posts:Fun Size.
GET IT???? Like the candy.

Like eighty percent of the people I see jaywalking are severely physically disabled.
It's always some dude in crutches or those fancy arm-sticks* hopping awkwardly across the street, or in a wheelchair or one of those Fat Person Scooters dawdling down the bike lane. These are the people who should be the most careful getting in front of moving vehicles!

Has anyone else noticed this?


*I don't know what they're called but you know what I'm talking about right?

sweet tweets

A new addition to the Soda & Candy family was recently discovered by the Husband: there is a little nest full of adorable baby birds snugly tucked up in the crazily overgrown flowering vine that dominates our back fence.

"Baby birds? I seen one." I hear you snort derisively.

But these baby birds are unlike any you've seen before, because not only do they cheep and chirp, they also tweet.

If you can't be arsed going to their Twitter page, you can follow their status with the handy RSS feed I just added to the top of the right hand column over there. Yes, I am a technological genius.

Perhaps the baby birds will try to make friends with some of you via Twitter, but it might take them a while. They can barely hold their own heads upright, so Twitter is bound to be a bit of a challenge.