Rooster Testicles

Confession: Sometimes even I have trouble stomaching this stuff... well... of course, I was hungover again.



Taipei, Taiwan

We were looking for the infamous Snake Alley night market in Taibei, when I spotted a tray of gross looking balls. We weren't sure what they were at first, but the thin veins and tight plump shape hinted that they weren't just a stomach or kidney. We asked... Chicken testicles! "Good for the skin," the lady told us. "Good for male strength," the guy told us, motioning to his groin. That's what it all boils down too -- good skin for women, good erections for men.



We ordered a half dozen of these rooster nuts. They're actually impressive in size, for a bird. As much as I loath to admit, they're bigger than mine. Hard to imagine, eh? Wait, let me check again.... Yep! Wow.

Male chickens are called "roosters" in American English, and "cocks" in English English. Cocks don't have a penis. Go figure. So some scientists (but probably not chicken farmers) call their sexual glands "rudimentary copulatory organs." That's nice and polite, but it probably wouldn't work well when your girlfriend is asking you to talk dirty to her.

In case of a rooster or cock attack, here's what to do... and if you like cocks, there's more info on Wikipedia about them.


Dave refuses to eat the rooster testicle ... but after a sip of beer, realizes he has the balls to eat it...

Snake Alley is funny. They've perfected their trade. Between the restaurants selling deer penis, snake blood, and cock balls (these are all aphrodisiacs), there are sex toy shops, massage parlors, hair salons, and if you wander off the main path, red lights. So within one small alley block, you can get your erection and then lose it -- so efficient! Or get a hair cut to go with your glowing skin. Whatever you fancy.



So we ate the rooster testicles. We asked the chef to cook them simple, so we could really check out their natural flavor. She boiled them in water. They're too big to eat in one bite. The flavor is fairly neutral, and would be good in a curry or with hot sauce. Soft white like soft tofu, in a tight skin like a sausage. The center was liquid like an under-cooked egg or a creamy custard. Is that sperm? Chicken jizz?



More on Snake Alley later...

Toilet Food

Taipei, Taiwan (and, unfortunately, other places too).


Two girls, one toilet

This could go under "Stupid Food Products" but it deserves its own post...

There is a restaurant -- a chain of them, heaven help us -- that serves food in toilets. It's called Modern Toilet and it's poopular with teenage girls. I was wandering about Ximending shopping area in Taipei, near the "American Street" (slang term) where they have hip hop clothing shops and b-boy types rock bi-lingual graffiti. Me and my friend Desoto were DJing outside one of these shops one afternoon. After dropping a bit of bhangra funk, I went for a pit stop.


(My t-shirt is here.)

As I was walking -- I'm sure I'm not the first sucker tourist to fall for it -- I saw a sign that said "Modern Toilet" and thought I'd go in to take a piss. I did. But I also nearly vomited as I watched the patrons eating food out of toilets. [disclaimer: I did, as usual, have a hangover]



Seriously guys. What's up with this? I've heard about these places before, and thought it was some wacko gimmick that would pass -- but this place was packed! There was a line out the door. And it's not the only one!



You sit on Western style toilet seats, drink bubble tea out of mini-urinals, and eat desserts out of little squat toilets. Some of the dishes look like sh*t. Intentionally! Girls with Hello Kitty accessories flock here. More. More.



I couldn't do it. I'm the weird meat guy. I've eaten real poop. But eating food out of a toilet -- file under "wrong", not just weird.

Do you get it? Could you eat food out of a toilet? Even if it looks like a turd? Leave a comment.

Stupid Food Products

We were shopping at Shanghai's expat food mecca, City Shop, and in the baking aisle found a food product we find so incredibly stupid, we had to share it with you. This item comes from Australia. It's "White Wings Shaker Pancakes ORIGINAL" in a bottle:



Here's the deal. It's sold in a see-thru plastic bottle, and it's only half-full of the dry mix. You are supposed to fill the rest of the bottle yourself with water, give it a good shake, and pour onto the frying pan for your flapjacks. Yes, it's purposefully sold half-full. What a sad sad waste of resources, and what sad way to encourage inexcusable laziness.

Actually, the product has been around for a while, and ran into a bit of trouble back in 1999, being recalled -- "Defect Details: Potential Contamination With Fizzing Agent Causing The Bottle To Rupture."

Yummy!

Who comes up with product ideas like this, and who lets them get away with it? Worse, who buys this stuff? Suckers!

Extra negative bonus points for being 97% fat free -- it's a pancake dammit!

Share with us your favorite stupid food product finds, in the comments below...

Ant Essence at Shanghai Sex Shop

We recently passed a shop in Shanghai, China that had a poster advertising ant essence. We went in to grab some and found the shop was actually an adult sex toy shop. There are lots of these all over Shanghai. They have fake viagra, exotic condoms, dildos, rubber boobies, blow-up dolls, and other plastic genitalia. Yeah, there's some really weird stuff in there. There's also tons of pills and herbals that purportedly give you impressive erections. It seems everyone wants to give me impressive erections these days -- I get tons of emails about this daily.



I picked up a box of ant essence pills. 58 RMB, but I bargained down to 50 RMB. I will eat them and tell you all about what happens next. (See below)

A few years ago I went to an adult sex toy expo here in Shanghai because I'm a pervert out of curiosity. Duh! Why else go? Anyway, I noticed that almost all of the sex enhancement products aimed at the Chinese domestic market were packaged with full-on American iconography. Blond-haired white couples hugging, wrapped in American flags, or the phallic-looking statue of liberty (don't they know it's a chick?). What would Freud say about the Chinese sex toy marketers and their preference for American imagery? *


Chinese condoms with hot American babes!



Vigorous Divinity Rapid Erection? or Tiger Powerful Five Penis Granule?


One of the pieces of schwag I obtained at the sexpo was from some penile enlargement company -- it was a chart of the world's penis sizes, by country. Korea came in last, and France came in first. The United States came in the middle (no pun intended). Scandinavia, China, and Africa were not included. Japan fared much higher than Korea. I suspect the "study" is a total farce, in fact, if you look at the small print, the data was obtained from random and unconnected non-scientific surveys.


Impotence wrapped in American flag?


Anyway, enough cock talk. Here's more info on edible ants, also known as Polyrachis or Polyrhachis. Interesting fact: "Ants can lift up to 400 times their own weight and pull up to 1700 times their own weight, making them the world champions in terms of strength. Ant contains 8-13 times the protein of milk, chicken, duck, beef, mutton and fish."

If you could only have that strength in bed!

-----------

Update

OK I took a pill, an ant pill. I had it on a nearly empty stomach -- the directions don't say to take with food, just "take 15 minutes before sexual activity." It also says "CONCERN ON MALE. MAN EXPERT." -- whatever that means.

But anyway, about 15 minutes later I had this feeling that I'd been looking at my computer screen too long, the colors were starting to look strange. I went for a walk and everything looked purple-ish, like I was wearing some ultra-violet sunglasses. Really weird, kinda scary. My eyes were not bloodshot, but everything looked purple. So I went to have lunch at Da Marco (best pizza in Shanghai), and the purple vision continued through the meal. It gradually wore off about 3 hours after taking the pill.

During lunch, all the women in the restaurant looked amazing. At one point I was drooling on my pizza, and my date asked if I was ok. "Yes, I think so. Everything still looks purple, and I think I'm getting an erection." Let me just say, it was a good pick-up line.

* (Footnote -- things in China are a bit scary and xenophobic right now, take a look at this.