I shit you not, good people. I happened to decant some sugar into my sugar bowl about an hour ago at home and discovered, adorned about the outside of the 1kg packet of Hulett's White Sugar, a drawing of a small sugarbowl called Huley. Bear with me - my story gets better. It says something to the tune of "Hi! I'm Huley, the Sugarbowl!" Huley comes complete with hands, one of which holds a teaspoon, a face, and legs. He stands about an inch tall, because hey, it's only a line drawing on the side of a 1kg bag of sugar. "But I'm no ordinary sugarbowl," he continues. "I live in the warm sunshine of Kwazulu-Natal" - near Durban, in case you were wondering, on the south-east coast of our peculiar country - "in the sugar-cane fields." He goes on at length about what fun it is guarding the sugar-cane, which makes me wonder if perhaps he should get out more. And also I wonder what sort of a guard an animated sugarbowl makes, even if he does have his own tactical assualt spoon. I'm kinda bemused at this stage - just about everything has a mascot, right? Tony the Kellogg's Frosties tiger; the NikNaks man, the little characters on the Fruit Rascals packet, Snap Crackle and Pop of Rice Krispies fame, Coco the CocoPops monkey FrootLoops' Toucan Sam, that amusing bear who advertises toilet paper in England, the dodgy Mr Beaver in the Aquafresh Herbal Toothpaste ads from Germany. But Huley the Sugarbowl is in a class of his own, I reckon. A peculiar choice of a mascot, no doubt about it. And probably inspired by some terrified ad exec for Hulett's sugar who got zoned out on crack the night before and spotted The Little Flying Toaster on DVD in his local Blockbusters. Or perhaps The Magic Pudding, another unique cartoon character. Perhaps Huley's purpose is to encourage kids to read - even though I'm not sure how many kids scour the pantry looking for reading material, and it's not like huley's been on TV or anything. At least, I haven't seen him/her. And, scandalously, Huley is *not* on the packet of Hulett's SunSweet Brown sugar I keep on my desk at the university to sweeten my suicidally strong coffee since I have just checked as I started to type this out. Something to think about, perhaps. Or even better, perhaps not. In other news, just got flashed by a prostitute as I drove up here to feed my kids. She waved as I drove by, then lifted her skirt as I turned to see who was waving at me. Coupled with my recent introduction to Huley, it's all been kinda surreal, really - where's Dali when you need him? -d-