Saturday, July 24, 2010

Night time flowers, evening roses. Bless this garden that never closes

Researchers at Tokyo University have announced a step forward in the international effort to breed a new race of humans who are smaller than pot-plants, thereby alleviating the various resource crises that threaten to end civilisation as we know it. The latest laboratory subject, only 32 centimeters tall, is not even up to the edge of the flower.

The plant, a Reykjavik Exhibitionist Lily (also known as the Zipper-Malfunction or the Honestly-Officer) is native to Iceland but is grown in many botanical gardens and research institutes around the world in order to have a standard of comparison. When the flower opens it exudes an aroma of fermenting shark meat and rotting sheep's-head in order to attract the midget Icelanders who comprise its natural pollinator.

For many decades the record was held by this 36-centimeter subject, produced by a team at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.






UPDATE: Bonus Infra-red Imagery

You often encounter the claim that the Reykjavik Exhibitionist Lily is an endothermic flower that spreads its attractive aromatic perfumes further afield by warming up its spadix with internal heat. This is a mistake, though an understandable one, as the bishop said to the plainclothes policeman. The confusion occurs when Lost Boys, living underground in a cave or burrow, disguise their chimneys as flower-spikes in order to conceal their whereabouts from the pirates.

Given the smell from the squalor in which they live without a Mother to clean up for them, the Exhibitionist Lily is their obvious choice of floral disguise.

13 comments:

Willy said...

Feed me, Seymour. FEED ME!

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

So one of the resource crises is "not enough pot".

I thought as much.
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tigris said...

EEEEEK!

Substance McGravitas said...

What pisses me off about teeny humans is that they can't hold their liquor and indeed they are frequently injured by the bottles.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

I went out with a midget, I was nuts over her.

Now, where the hell did I put that bottle of Brennivín?

Smut Clyde said...

I was nuts over her
She didn't know what came over her.

that bottle of Brennivín?
I have heard first-hand accounts about the Black Death and I believe I will stick to the Jubileum Akvavit.

Smut Clyde said...

Must credit Colin Kapp for a crucial plot element.

Hamish Mack said...

Except for the introduction of gills into the human frame, which would allow us to live underwater with friendly sea creatures,I am against this sort of human experiments. I think it is reckless and Andrew Breibart has a video which proves it, or soon will have, or might one day have.

Jennifer said...

Looks like ZRM in the infrared.

mikey said...

The entire idea was wrongheaded from the very start, and has yielded only tragedy and sorrow.

Alas, I fell in love with a gorgeous, exotic 33 centimeter beauty, with glowing olive skin and wide dark eyes in which one could see eternity.

Hopelessly smitten, I showed up at her house (actually Barbie's Glam Vacation Cottage) with a wonderful bouquet of flowers from Bernie's Florist and Neighborhood Armory, and when I handed her the flowers she was crippled for life. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a wheelchair for someone that size? The bastards never made one for Barbie...

mikey said...

I suppose we should be grateful she never grew old and infirm and came to need a tiny Zimmer Frame.

It would have required Legos and an Erector Set...

Oh look. Captcha is on veration

Smut Clyde said...

Serious lack of Mobility-Scooter Barbies on the Interdizzle.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Hurray for Random Posts and Recent Comments!???

Barbie Wheelchair
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