Randomness Corner: Europe is running out of butter, panic to ensue.

Soon to be a mythical thing to tell your grandchildren about.

Grandmothers in the remote, bucolic countrysides and elitist chefs at fine dining establishments across Europe are sharing a similar panic this week.

A report from the Federation des Entrepreneurs de la Boulangerie (that's French for bakery somethingoranother) says global demand for butter has skyrocketed, while supply in Europe has dipped, creating a butter shortage crisis.

"Butter shortages appear to be a real threat by the end of the year," said the Baking Homeboys, noting that brioche buns, tarts, and croissants might see prices drastically increased. That's right. That sound you just heard was a grown Parisian man crying in the streets. The daily habit of smoking filterless cigarettes and having a croissant at the corner cafe will cease to exist possibly. The French economy will single-handedly be more crippled than during World War II.

Remember the good ol' days when butter was in abundance and on crystal trays.

The European Commission's Milk Observatory (a real thing, I promise) claims that butter stockpiles in Europe have dropped 98% in the past year, all while Europeans have increased their annual intake of butter by a half-pound in the past half-decade. Saturated fat in stick form has never been as alluring.

Meanwhile, Peder Tuborgh, the CEO of U.K dairy megapower Arla, recently told the BBC that there might not be enough milk and cream come Christmas.

First the French are taken out on croissants, and now the Brits won't have custards and puddings come Christmas. Thank God the Germans are alcoholics and only focus on beer. If they had a butter and milk fetish like the rest of Europe, the entire European continent might crumble soon.

The never-ending library.

Through the use of mirrors and architectural design, the Yangzhou Zhongshuge library in Yangzhou, China, creates a mirage of never-ending reading space. It's hypnotic, relaxing, and unique.

Kind of like your local library if it had a budget and, you know...tried.

Images of Winnie the Pooh are banned in China...again.

Xi Jinping looks to see who else he can blacklist.

You would think being compared to a portly, soft-spoken, kindly little bear that has a jones for honey would be a good thing. You're lovable! You're adorable! You're sweet and hugable!

Not by Chinese standards.

It seems China's citizens have routinely taken to comparing their president, Xi Jinping, to the classic children's book character, often sharing Winnie the Pooh images on their country's social media platforms. This hasn't made the communist government happy. Photos like the following are what have irked the powers that be:

#winniethepooh has been wiped off from China's internet, because of this 2013 photo. #censorship (via @FT) pic.twitter.com/3LlN7T4FCZ

— Ajit Ranade (@ajit_ranade) July 17, 2017

As a result, all photos of Winnie the Pooh have been blacklisted on China's social media sites, like Sina Weibo and WeChat. This is potentially because the 19th Communist Party Congress is being held later this year, so politicians want to be shown only in the best light.

If Winnie the Pooh isn't a comparison of being in the best light, I'm not sure what is. At least Pooh wears a shirt. By comparison, Tigger and Eeyore are entirely naked. Xi Jinping should feel flattered at this point.

Chairman Mao Zedong is a popular guy on the literary circuit.

I'm always happy to go on a tangent about literature, but my thoughts aren't terribly desired by the masses. By comparison, even though the founding father of modern China has been dead for forty years, he's as popular as ever on the literary front.

While Chairman Mao is best known as a revolutionary and politician (and lover of snappy looking gray suits), he was also a poet in his spare time, as well as a lover of classical Chinese literature and the poetry of others.

Late in life, with his health deteriorating and his eyesight failing, Mao asked for a professor to visit and read various poetry and literature to him. Di Lu began visiting him to do just that--but asked the chairman to write out notes to her regarding his thoughts, as she had trouble understanding the Chairman.

The notes were saved. Fast forward forty years, and those scribbles and reflections on literature were auctioned off. According to the BBC, Sotheby's in London sold the notes this week for $910,000. The estimated selling price going in? $78,000-$105,000.

Now, see, slip me a $5 spot and you could save yourself a fortune.

College librarian stole $17 million in paintings--replaced them with his own fakes.

Somehow this story flew under the radar in America.

A college librarian in China stole $17 million in paintings, 143 in total, over the course of nearly a decade, while replacing the works with his own forgeries. Xiao Yuan told a Chinese court he had a perfectly good reason for all this: Everyone was doing it.

As the New York Post reports:
________________

[Xiao] told the court in his defense that the practice appeared to be rampant and the handling of such paintings was not secure. He said he noticed fakes already hanging in the gallery on his first day on the job. Later, after he replaced some of the remaining masters with his own fakes, he was surprised when he noticed his fake paintings were being substituted with even more fakes.

“I realized someone else had replaced my paintings with their own because I could clearly discern that their works were terribly bad,” Xiao, 57, told Guangzhou People’s Intermediate Court.
__________________

Pssh. If you're going to create forgeries, Xiao doesn't want you lumping his good name with bad knockoffs. He's a criminal, but not a monster!

'The Hunger Games' is turning into a theme park.

Two parks will open in 2019--one in China, one in Atlanta.

I know when I think of The Hunger Games, it's always with a Chinese and antebellum south bent.

McDonald's Hamburger University is more discerning than Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard.

This sort of story comes out every few years, and it's popped up again.

Nearly five years ago, news came out that Harvard University, with its 5.9% acceptance rate, was easier to get admitted into than McDonald's Hamburger University campus in Shanghai, which accepts fewer than 1% of applicants.

Now, news from London's The Mirror newspaper shares the same 'duh' moment shocking revelation that Hamburger University is also more discerning than Oxford University (18% acceptance rate) and the University of Cambridge (20.8%).

I think we all know the truth that students at Oxford and Cambridge are really just future Burger King employees anyway.




When are we going to come together as a human race and collectively admit that Ronald McDonald is freaky as hell? I don't want him smiling at me. The only people that smile like that want to invite you down to their basement--and my wealth of knowledge of bad Hollywood movies proves that you never come up from the basement once you go down.

The Friday Poem: Advent of Spring, by Du Fu

As another week concludes, we end with a random poem. Famous poets, obscure poets, amateur poets, whatever poets--just a poem to cap off the week.

Like this one:


Advent of Spring,  by Du Fu

The city has fallen: only the hills and rivers remain.
In Spring the streets were green with grass and trees.
Sorrowing over the times, the flowers are weeping.
The birds startled my heart in fear of departing.
The beacon fires were burning for three months,
A letter from home was worth ten thousand pieces of gold.
I scratch the scant hairs on my white head,
And vainly attempt to secure them with a hairpin.





Being a 1,300 year old poem written in a Chinese dialect, there are a number of translations of this (or any) poem by Du Fu. This website has over 50 different interpretations of Advent of Spring alone, showing how varied even literal translations still offer word choice difference in English.

Japanese and Chinese government officials bring up Voldemort in political flap.

He-who-shall-not-be-named is being named all the time in a political flap between rivals Japan and China.

Voldemort, the nemesis of Harry Potter, has had his name invoked twice after Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visited Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted war criminals are honored along with other war dead from World War II. Considering Japan and China were enemies during that war, Chinese officials weren't pleased.

"If militarism is like the haunting Voldemort of Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a kind of horcrux, representing the darkest parts of that nation's soul," wrote China's ambassador to the U.K., Liu Xiaoming, channeling his inner 12-year old boy.

Going tit-for-tat, Japan's ambassador to the U.K., Keiichi Hayashi, matched the nerdgasm political tone.

"There are two paths open to China. One is to seek dialogue, and abide by the rule of law. The other is to play the role of Voldemort in the region by letting loose the evil of an arms race and escalation of tensions," wrote Hayashi.

Of course, all of this is ridiculous unless someone references Dumbledore.

Yao Ming commutes to college, eats a bagged lunch, is an obedient son.

Yao Ming was China's most notable athletic export since...well, ever. But despite crisscrossing the globe as China's most famous basketball player, he's a regular 30-something college student now.

Before he left China as a teenager with the national basketball team, and later joining the NBA, he promised his parents he'd graduate from college after his playing days were over. Eight seasons in America and multiple ankle and knee surgeries later, Yao retired--but began the quest to keep the promise to his parents. As the New York Times reported:

"On class days, Yao Ming, the 7-foot-6 retired N.B.A. center, wakes up at the crack of dawn to beat the Shanghai traffic. Carrying a lunch prepared by his wife, Ye Li, a 6-foot-3 former player in China’s professional league, Mr. Yao drives more than an hour to Jiao Tong University, where he sits through his required courses in the economics and management department. According to one Chinese news report, Mr. Yao would prefer to live in the dorms with his 20-year-old classmates, a move that would save time and energy, “but the beds are too small.”

No word on how Yao is at campus intramural sports, but let's assume he's a natural at mixed league pickup basketball.