I'm an Egghead!

Lady Suzanne and I helped the Easter Bunny this morning fill plastic Easter eggs. In the "old days" we would decorate real hard boiled eggs. Today, that tradition is over (and not easy).

According to tradition, an egg is a symbol of new life and is used at Easter as a symbol of Jesus' resurrection. The outside of an egg looks like a stone and so it is a way to represent the outside view of Jesus' sealed tomb. Inside the egg is the new life of a baby chick ready to break out and so this is a way to represent Jesus' new life as he rose from death.
People would decorate eggs to give to members of their family at Easter as gifts.

Since I don't have any personal decorated eggs to share with you, I thought I would post some images that have been forwarded via email -- they truly are
egg-ceptional

Unfortunately, I don't have the name of the creator(s), but I don't think he or she will mind my passing them along.

Have an eggciting Easter! Sir "The Easter Bowie" of Greenbriar Below, Sir Bowie finding an egg -- many, many years ago!

April Fool's Day Officially Cancelled Yesterday!

Clowns all over the world went to the streets in protest yesterday after they discovered that April Fool's Day had officially been canceled (there one U.S. spelling and one U.K spelling)!

Thankfully, April Fool's is not really celebrated too much in my world; I'm not much of a "play jokes and pranks on people type of guy."

Having said that, I do enjoy a good prank pulled on the public. I mentioned this to Sir D yesterday and he shared this:

"Today's April 1st TV (BBC) efforts were that a) major soap stars were going to be put on a limited number of bank notes....b) that zoo was in trouble for interviewing only people over 6ft 2" to be keepers for their Giraffe enclosure..... and c) that old chestnut...of the AA motor repair guys who come out and fix your cars (AAA in USA ) were being equipped with James Bond like jet packs.

TV News pranks are nothing new. Here are a few from the Top 10 List:

Here’s our list of Top 10 April Fools’ pranks from around the world, much of it inspired by the Museum of Hoaxes website.

ENGLAND: 1957: A BBC news show announced Swiss farmers had grown spaghetti, showing footage of peasants pulling spaghetti down from the trees. Viewers believed it, calling into the BBC to ask how they could enjoy their own spaghetti crop. The BBC replied, “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”

SWEDEN: 1962: The sole television channel in Sweden was still black-and-white, but on April 1 it announced that viewers could easily convert to color. The station's technical expert, Kjell Stensson, said to pull a nylon stocking over the box. Supposedly, thousands of people actually tried.

UNITED STATES: 1992: National Public Radio announced that Richard Nixon, after living nearly two decades in disgraced retirement, was running again for president. His new campaign slogan was, according to NPR, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again."

FRANCE: 1986: A newspaper, the Parisien, reports the Eiffel Tower will be deconstructed and rebuilt in the new Disney World opening in Paris.

ITALY: 1919: Venice woke one April 1 to find horse manure littering the streets, odd since the city of canals had few horses. The British prankster Horace de Vere Cole, who was honeymooning in Venice, had transported a load of manure from the mainland the night before with the help of a gondolier and had then deposited small piles of it throughout the Piazza.

GERMANY: 1915: In the midst of World War I, a French plane flew over the Germans and dropped what appeared to be a huge bomb. Rightfully alarmed, the German soldiers fled. But instead of an explosion, there was a bounce. The Germans crept back to the load and discovered it was a football with a note that read, "April Fool!"

(We can't find any source aside from the Museum of Hoaxes for that last one – if you can shed any light on it, please send us a comment.)

1. IRAQ: 1998: Even in Iraq they celebrate April Fools' Day, calling it Kithbet Neesan, or April Lie. When Saddam Hussein was still in power, an Iraqi newspaper owned by his son, Uday, declared on its front page that President Clinton said ''it was time for lifting the sanctions.'' (The UN had imposed sanctions after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.) Saddam was probably not amused.

And finally, my favorite from this year:

Handout photo obtained on April 1 from the Statens Naturhistoriske Museum shows a mermaid skeleton placed on the rock where Copenhagen's famous 'Little Mermaid' statue habitually sits, as an April Fool joke. The statue is on its way to Shanghai for the World Expo.

Photo: AFP/Newscom

Now come on, that's just brilliant!

Sir Eiwob of Raibneerg

UK Beer News: Putting the ale in Female, and Black lager

This is not an April the 1st joke. It may be, ahem, beerly believable for fans of a pint but it seems men have women to thank for their favourite tipple.

Jane Peyton, an author and historian, says the fairer sex are behind the popularity of beer, and have been involved in its production since brewing began between 7,000 and 9,000 years before Christ.

And in Britain, it was women in their role as homemakers who drove the beverage's popularity as a home brew in the Middle Ages.

Back then, drinking ale was more common than water for most people, even children, because water was often contaminated.

Only over the past 500 years have men started to muscle in on the act, when commercial breweries began to be set up and the product was taken out of the home.

Mrs Peyton said: 'For thousands of years women brewed beer. It was part of the daily diet and therefore part of a woman's domestic chores to produce.

'I can imagine it will come as a shock to many men, but they've got women to thank for their beer.

'It is only in comparatively recent times that men became involved in the brewing process.'
Known as brewsters, women brewed the vast majority of ale drunk in Britain until the 14th century.

In Britain today, only 13 per cent of women choose beer over other drinks, compared with 40 per cent on the Continent.

All this appears in the news on the same day I read that Guinness is trialling a black lager to tap into a growing segment of the lager market.

The drink — simply called Guinness Black Lager — offers consumers a new “refreshing lager” taste in comparison to the distinctive flavour of the traditional dry stout parent brand, as it is brewed like a lager but is made black by malting the barley for longer.

The new product, which is served in 330ml bottles, is being trialled in Northern Ireland, supported by a new advertising and marketing campaign plus in-bar promotions.

“Guinness Black Lager, like all lagers, is characterised by its refreshing taste,” said head of Diageo Northern Ireland, Michael McCann.

“The addition of Guinness expertise, roasted barley and a late hopping imparts a taste that is unique among lagers.”

Sales of black lager are reported to be soaring in the UK, with offerings such as Budvar Dark and Brewdog's Zeitgeist both recording an increase in demand in the past year.

Sir Dayvd ( who as a dark beer drinker, can feel himself being targetted ) of O