Blue Blob

WordPress asks me this today:

Topic #125:

1) Stand up 2) Turn to your right 3) Count objects you see, and stop at #3. 4)Write about whatever item #3 is.

OK, if you insist…

The Blue Blob!

What can I say about this? When we first moved here, Tim stuck lots of postcards and photos on the wall behind the monitor to cheer up the space, which was nice. Then he realised the blue tack was making nasty stains on the wall, so he took them all down.

This is presumably the blob he made from all the blue tack removed from them.

I preferred the pictures to the nasty spots which currently adorn the wall behind the monitor!

Ewww! Marks from blue tack and the failed attempt to remedy them 😦

I already blogged about those though…

So, a blob of used blue tack, all squished and slightly grubby, a little fluffy in places. Blue tack is funny stuff. Not hilarious, usually, but weird. Have you ever played with it? I have done, as a kid. Squishing it and pulling it, making things out of it, rolling it into long thin worms. If you pull it apart over and over again it can look sort of furry.

What else can be said about a blob of stuff?

Why is it blue?

OK so there’s a clue in the name, but which came first? Did they make some sticky stuff and it happened to be blue so they called it that? Or did they put blue dye in it to give it a brand identity?

I’ve seen white stuff that’s similar.

Ah, here’s the answer, ain’t the internet grand? 🙂

“Blu Tack was originally white during the concept stage, but fears raised in consumer research about the new tack being mistaken by children for sweets that led to the tack becoming blue.” From the Blu Tack website (which is really slow to load!)

Seriously?! And kids won’t eat it blue? I suppose the blue Smarties were controversial… Not a mistake they’d make more than once though, and apparently it is not harmful if eaten, although probably not a good idea, can’t do much to help digestive transit.

According to Wikipedia, that marvellous if not academically rigorous site, “Blu Tack is also known as “Zorkai” in north eastern areas of Canada.” I wonder why? Does it mean something, or it is a random weird word?

“In Iceland it is known as “kennaratyggjó” which translates as “teacher’s chewing gum.”” Even more bizarre! I love Icelandic 😀

Wikipedia provides this image, which I cannot resist posting here and will thus be the first time I am using an image not my own, but it is mad! 😀

Blu Tack under scanning electron microscope by Featheredtar

But this is way weirder – an artist sculpted a giant spider out of just blu tack!!! That knocks my childhood worms into a cocked hat… (yeah, the worms I made from blu tack as a kid, not tapeworms or roundworms or any of those sorts of things, which as far I know I never had!)

And apparently it is not designed to use on brick walls. So best not to do that then.

Well, who’d a thunk I’d get 542 words out of a blob of used blue tack? 🙂 and I found this blog post far more interesting than I expected! I hope you did too 😀