It occurred to me recently that it has been a long time since penguins were honoured with a mention in my blog. This is despite a stream of angry, indeed near hysterical, letters from various penguin awareness groups and, for some reason, the Burgess Meredith fanclub. My reason is that there is only so much you can write about penguins; small, cold, sealion fodder. That's pretty much it.
Nevertheless in an attempt to seem responsive to the needs of my readership (and because half of the hits on my blog seem to originate in Antarctica) I decided to see if there was anything of interest on the penguin front that I could write about. With this in mind I googled the term "penguin news". The result wasn't quite what I was expecting.
Did you know The Penguin News is the name of a newspaper. Specifically it is the name of the local newspaper of the Falkland Islands. Why? I don't know. I personally would have thought "The Sheep Worriers Gazette" would have been more appropriate but apparently the Penguin News got the nod.
For those who are unaware the Falkland Islands can best be described as "a couple of desolate, remote, sheep riddled islands in a southern ocean that aren't New Zealand". Despite their isolation the Falklands are by no means cut off from civilisation with such modern conveniences as houses, fire and a local newspaper having recently made their appearance to the general approval of all. The Penguin News tends to the islanders requirements in the last of these areas. It also gained some international notoriety recently when it semi inadvertently referred to Argentina's president Christina Kirchner as a bitch.
Diplomatic incidents aside the Penguin News keeps a slightly jaundiced eye on the dealings of the local government and reports on matters of great interest to the community such as who's got a new boat (admittedly somewhat more relevant in an island community than would otherwise be the case). There does not, however, appear to be sufficient penguin related news to justify the masthead. It's just another media lie.
The Penguin News comes out once a week on Fridays which means if World War 3 started on a Saturday its entirely likely it would be over before the Falkland Islanders got to hear about it, although they might notice a rise in the number of mutant fish. In the meantime the Penguin News busies itself with articles on fishing, tourism and unfortunately titled jpegs while waiting for the Argentine economy to get so bad that they launch another invasion. Hopefully they won't do it on a Saturday.
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