Bugs, Rugs, and Thugs with Bombs

I am entirely too fond of that title.

So I had a good dose of NPR this morning. Morning Edition. Sad to say, we're so lazy we don't usually catch it, but I had an appointment, so there I was, sitting in traffic, listening to NPR and feeling all grown up. Har har har.

One of the news stories was about the color red. It was a Valentine's Day thing, I guess. I thought it was interesting to hear about the secrecy that surrounded the making of red dye before synthetic dyes were invented. I usually think of the color purple (not the book) as the color of royalty, but apparently the Sun King himself, Louis XVI, was very fond of red (among other creepy obsessions) and brought it quite into vogue in his days. He had very shapely legs, apparently, and liked to show them off in tight pants, hose, and high-heeled red shoes. Yikes. Do you think Baton Bob is a descendant?

But anyway, the secrecy. The dye came from a cactus-dwelling bug found mostly in Mexico. The workers there would harvest the bugs, dry them out, and then ship them to Europe, where the folks couldn't figure out what the little dried up pod-things (not the sci-fi monsters) were. Plant, animal, mineral? The Mexicans worked hard to keep it a secret so that the Europeans wouldn't come pillaging their way through and take over. Smart.

The interviewer was at a museum looking at some rugs from that era that were basically crushed red velvet, which she commented looked too nice to step on. I find an ironic symbolism in the mental picture of Louis-boy stepping on his crushed red velvet as calmly as he stepped on the crushed red (bloody and broken) peasants. It makes me want to see Les Mis again (although I think I'm way off on time periods, here).

I also listened with interest to an interview from someone on the security council about the state of North Korea's disarmament (is that a word?). Somebody remind me again why we're allowed to have nukes, but everyone else is supposed to disarm? Right, right... because we're benevolent peace-keepers, not invading war-mongerers.

See what a few minutes of NPR will do to a person?
hee hee hee