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Hello and welcome to the This is Genius Tuesday show, featuring your comments as well as:
Obligatory tour of ousted world leader's cool stuff in Ukraine. And yes he has bears.
The sound of 6,000 horns a hornin'
And a Dingo eat my mango.
But first to Ukraine, where, having fled to the Southern city of Balaklava and beyond,
the riches of ousted President Viktor Yanukovich have been laid bare for the entertainment
of the masses. In what's become something of a revolutionary
christmas tradition after Gadaffi, Saddam Hussein and others were toppled, protesters
have taken the opportunity to relax in the once very exclusive presidential residences,
taking the opportunity to enjoy the President's private zoo where the state bears are kept
and, as bears are wont to do, don't particularly care about the revolution as long as at some
point they get to eat SOMEONE. They also took the opportunity to tour the
presidential garage and having a fight, in a bout of road rage that reminds us that,
although these are pro-European demonstrators, their Russian dash cam footage heritage runs
deep. So what have we learned about Yanukovich's
taste? Well the garage, which looks a bit like a cowshed, contains some very expensive
black bulls. The streets of Kiev may run red but the president definitely prefers a more
understated, subtle colour for his collection of massive flip off trucks.
Meanwhile, the zoo looks like a run down garden centre from the outside and a Disneyland-esque
wet dream on the inside. A log cabin fulfills any Hansel and Gretel esque fantasies one
might have, whilst wild boar and game birds wander around in case you run out of demonstrators
to shoot. And when it comes to the main presidential
winter residence, we can only assume the turret on the end is mostly used for Frankenstein
esque scientific experiments, the lake feeding the shark tank which political enemies can
be dropped into via a trap door in the presidential office.
It's not clear what's going to happen to all of the President's cool stuff now that he
doesn't need it any more, we'd like to think it'll be opened to the public as a tourist
attraction. Ot it'll be swooped up by the next President and locked away again for the
nation's mega rich and froeign dignitaries to get their jollies over. Probably mostly
that.
And now it's time for your comments. And in our piece on Google's project Tango 3D scanning
smartphone, Tau Rotlich-tiegel wrote: "awww, how cute, a baby matrix". Congratulations,
you won a little giggle from me!
And in last week's Tuesday show when I said the Swiss Air Force might be rubbish but the
army would still kill you a bit, Luke Dudley wrote: "Kill you a bit!?" What bit would they
leave alive?"
The gooey chocolatey centre, obviously!
Now to some of the other stories we liked from the last week. And to Bolivia where,
if you've ever wondered what the sound of one hand clapping sounds like, you're in for
a treat, because this is the sound of 12,000 hands doing just about everything they can
to make a noise.
One musician sounds good, right? Four musicians together have made some of the greatest rock
and pop music of all time, fifty in an orchestra can melt your soul into buttery goosebumps...
So 6,000 must sound ruddy incredible, right?
Nope!
This is the annual Oruro band festival in Bolivia. And if you stand far enough away,
you can sort of make out a tune.
To be fair, it can't be easy to control 100 orchestras worth of musicians at once, enthusiasm
seemingly the aim of the game from everyone involved. To be fair, it's probably an awesome
spectacle. But I'll stick to the classic one guitar, one bas, one drummer combo.
And finally to Australia where a giant mango has gone missing. No, seriously. This is like,
national news there. But then they have a sign so it's clearly a pretty important mango.
The giant, ten-metre high, seven tonne mango vanished on Sunday night from the tourist
information centre in Bowen, North Queensland. Tourism chairman Paul McLaughlin explained
the story in more detail.
SOT.
He also had this to say, which should help us understand the gravity of the situation.
SOT
Yup, there's definitely no giant mango. The fruit's been in situ since 2002, and cost
90,000 Australian Dollars. That's really more or less all there is to say about it. The
big mango's gone missing. Keep an eye out for it. It's big. Looks a bit like a mango.
Don't eat it.
That's it for this week, pelase do check back every day where we'll be bringing you updates
on mango gate as they come in. We won't, a top five on thursday, science on Friday, blah
blah. There's no Tuesday show next week though, boo. Not unless you ask really nicely and
even then probably not.