World Book Night 2013: A final fail and a call to arms

Yes folks. As I type this, you have just under six hours to enter the free draw. If you want to be in with a chance of winning a great book posted to you anywhere in the world, then email us immediately (if not sooner) at juliesgems@gmx.com - you never know, you may even bag yourself loads of other goodies too, including some official Julie's Gems bookmarks, featuring quotes from the great lady herself!

As a sweetener, here is one final outtake from our pitiful attempts at making a promotional clip for this draw (made in association with World Book Night 2013)...






There you go. All done and dusted.
We will post the results of the draw on Thursday.

The epitome of 'sickly sweet'

Humans are weird.
I know about the whaling industry. I know that certain cultures enjoy eating whale meat. I also know that the blubber is used for cosmetic purposes. What I  didn't  realise was that there was another whale product used in the cosmetic industry. Now, if you read the title above, then you've probably got an uneasy feeling what I might be referring to.
Yep. Whale vomit. Apparently, it's quite the thing for providing a nice, gentle scent to a perfume.

Great gobs of whale sick. Lovely.

Feeling nauseous yet?
Here's something else to tickle your gag reflex. Not only is cetacean puke (allegedly) nice to spray on your lady's face, it's also pretty damn expensive too. With a nickname of 'floating gold', you can imagine how much people are willing to pay for such a seemingly wondrous thing.
How fortunate, then, that Ken Wilman's dog has a good nose.

Having unearthed what they both thought to be a rock, they soon realised was something completely different. Here's the story.
When we were reading about this, me and Julie were both bemused at the lengths people will go to for vanity's sake. And then we found out that Mr Wilman had been offered 50,000 Euros for his find by a French company.
Really? How much??
And of course, it set Julie to thinking...

Blech... Please never bring that up... I mean, raise the topic again.

Laughing in Luxemburg

My apologies. There should have been a Gem for those of you that visited this site yesterday. However, due to a nasty headache, I didn't even switch the computer on, let alone do any blogging... Anyhow, onwards and upwards! Well, over to mainland Europe, that is.

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You know, I have no idea why this Gem came about. I was sat at the computer, not doing much of anything, and Julie came in on her way to bed. As always, I had a pad just to the side of me, and this turned out to be a nice bit of foresight on my part. In the space of a few minutes, I had jotted down a brace and a half of Gems. In fact, looking at them now, only one makes any kind of connection in my memories. In fact, as I look around the room now, I can't see anything at all that may have triggered them. Nor - I hasten to add, was I looking on the internet at anything pertinent to these Gems.
Here's the first one.

See what I mean? I haven't heard of AOL in years, let alone used anything of theirs. I don't even know the last time I saw one of those damn discs that used to be everywhere you went. I suppose they're all pretty much landfill now.
Whatever - it's a good Gem, isn't it? Well - as long as you know of Luxemburg, that is. It's a tiny country, wedged in between France Belgium and Germany.

You see it? Right near the bottom? Yes, just where it says 'Luxemburg', well done, no need to be snide...
However small Luxemburg may be, it's a country that many Brits of a certain age will know well, mainly for the classic Radio Luxemburg. Ahh, the memories...

Tomorrow: the second reference-free Gem. You may want to drop by; it has to do with sex...

A wandering accent or a wandering country?

Yes, it's another geographically themed Gem.

To be honest, I could probably fill reams with all such Gems; Julie's grasp of Geography, distance and spatial awareness is comparable to (ex-US president) Bill Clinton's sense of fidelity and sexual restraint. Even basic knowledge, such as the names an locations of the continents are sometimes a mystery.

It's certainly a mystery to me. My wife is actually really rather intelligent and has a job with a certain amount of responsibility which requires deep and flexible thought. We'll have lengthy discussions, not all of which devolve into mud-slinging about our admittedly disparate musical tastes.
And then she'll go and spoil it all by coming out with something like this:

Now, normally, I will counter this with a pithy quip. This time, the best is could manage was a blank stare and, "......... no." To her credit, though, Julie did realise what she'd said and laughed about it.

Once again, I'm not going to give the answer, let's see which of you out there can resist the urge to Google and tell me in the comments below what the country really is.
Also, another Facebook fans-only bonus feature available. Come on in - the water's nice and warm.

French confusing in the UK

Well, I'm going to have to attempt some sort of explanation here, I think.
Quite often, Julie's Gems have a twisted sort of internal logic and such is the case here. The first sentence is clear enough; my wife is confessing a near-total lack of knowledge of French persons.
Now, the second sentence...
....
....
....
Nope. I got nothing apart from a whole bunch of Paradox wrapped up in a pretty layer of Bafflement. With a bow.

(not me, by the way)

(although I had the same baffled look)