Just one of the 9,857,929 things we’ve learned this week or last week (or whenever we started this course – last year?) was that being more squirrel can only be a good thing for our creative careers. 

Why? The explanation went something along the lines of, we all need to bury our nuts into the soil more often.

And if you took any meaning from that other than a medium-size, bushy-tailed rodent, of the Scuridae family, burying acorns and other such foods into the ground for the purpose of storing it for when they most need it, that’s on you. Because that is what this whole thing is about.

So: be more squirrel, bury more nuts, and, then, when you actually need them, you’ll have more potential food sources to choose from.

Simple. 

It’s also probably worth explaining at this point, that ‘nuts’ is a metaphor. (Although for some SCA students foraging free food from parks and burying it for the winter might become a genuine option). It’s about for storing useful material for when you need a bit of inspo, or something to make a random connection off of – or perhaps you might even store a totally useful insight that relates to the brief… We can dream.

Anyway, squirreling stuff away is a habit I’ve had for a little while now. From spending megabytes to store fairly useless memes on old laptops, to using Evernote and Notes to stash supposedly useful trivia and other digital tat, it was exciting to hear that my habit might come in useful for the course.

So, what better time to dig up a few digital acorns and reflect a bit on my nut burying habits. 

And to avoid over-sharing, I’m just going to pick a few at random. Let’s see what we’ve got…

The smell of cut grass is really a signal released by grass to warn the rest of the grass of danger 

Grass releases GLVs (green-leaf volatiles) which act as a distress signal, warning surrounding plants, and even undamaged parts of the same plant, of impending danger, priming them for ‘defence’ (… Good luck with that one, grass). These GLVs comprise the warm summery smell of cut grass that we all know and love. Meaning that while we’re getting all teary-eyed sniffing our freshly-mowed lawns, each blade of grass is desperately trying to warn its friends as it’s systematically cut in half, by releasing a smell that ironically only perpetuates it’s own killing. How cute!

A definition for the word Boondoggle:

A boondoggle is a project that is considered a waste of both time and money, yet is often continued due to extraneous policy or political motivations. Cool, good start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boondoggle

The the Brazilian free-tailed bat is the fastest animal without the aid of gravity*

It took the title off the common swift (69mph) a few years ago by clocking a 99.5 mph. Nice.

*I say gravity because the fastest animal in the world records it’s high speed while diving out of the air. If anyone knows it without Googling I’ll buy them a coffee. And if anyone knows the second fastest I’ll buy you 2 coffees.

Al Capone is the reason we have expiration dates on milk bottles. 

After his niece became extremely ill from bad milk, Al lobbied aggressively for expiration dates to be put on milk for the safety of children and pregnant women. Thanks Al.

Reindeer and Caribou are the same species 

The only difference is that Reindeer are nearly all domesticated whereas Caribou are nearly all wild. In other words, a reindeer is just a name for a captive Caribou.

The Opah, or Moonfish, is the only known fully warm-blooded fish 

Discovered as recently as 2015.

This great big list of football facts!

• Neil Warnock has managed the most games in English football
• Eden Hazard has won the most Man of the Match awards in Premier League History
• Italy have recorded the longest unbeaten streak in International football – 37 games
• Clubs from 10 countries have won the European Cup and the Champions League
• Lev Yashin is the only Goalkeeper to ever win the Ballon D’Or
• And the Chelsea vs. Leeds FA Cup Final was the most watched club football match in the UK ever.
• Oh and, Spurs are trash.

This ad idea for Chippy Tea…

And the recent news that you can now buy a can of Artist’s Piss for £500 outside the Tate Modern

Link here: https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/xsrv4m/you_can_now_buy_a_can_of_urine_for_500_next_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 

… Great

So, what have we learned? Well, I can only see one conclusion. That clearly I’m sat on a solid stash of the tastiest acorns out there. A stash that combines information relating to every conceivable useful corner of the internet and the world, with inspirational material that would kickstart even Liz Truss’ mind into a feeble jog.

Future briefs watch out, this squirrel has got some nuts.

@xavierauty