The Aardvark’s Tongue

The top 5

You voted (we voted too) and based on the items described in Sun-Dried Aardvark-Tongue Swizzle-Sticks these are the favorite five descriptions of products made from endangered species.

• Patagonian-Hedge-Hog Soap-Holder
  • Great for traveling on the high seas.
  • Stops soap from sliding or shifting in the bath.
• Twin-Toucan-Bill Viking-Party-Helmet
  • Holds twice the beer - without the mess of cans.
  • Provides twice the fun - without spilling a drop.
• Yawning-Hippo Stereo-Speakers
  • Forget sleep and rock the jungle.
  • As if carcasses of endangered species weren’t enough to annoy your neighbors, now you can add volume too.
• Box-Turtle Poop-Scoop
  • Offending feces are sealed inside.
  • Can be left where you scoop and no one will be the wiser (at least not immediately).
• Hawksbill-Turtle Bidet with Hyena-Penis Water-Dispenser
  • Sand and sea meld beautifully in this handy bathroom fixture.
  • A must for the modern hunting lodge.

Get full details at the book’s website.

This week’s installment of the free weekly book excerpt features the Spotted-Owl Duster-Sticks.

If you are as finicky about domestic hygiene as we are then you will be happy that you spied these handy Spotted-Owl Duster-Sticks. Tey are a home help rarity that makes household dust an endangered species. Spotted Owls are majestic birds that hail from the forests of the U.S. Pacific Northwest. In areas that have nesting pairs, land-owners are sometimes forced to leave up to 70 acres of land untouched for their habitat. Interestingly, we have found that many ranchers are more than happy to let us discretely harvest the birds to help make way for more economic use of their under utilized forested land. Each duster stick is hand fashioned from an individual bird. By purchasing a Spotted-Owl Duster-Stick, you’re helping keep our forest economy alive.

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To tired to read? Listen to the Podcast.

Time to go to print. The cover has been decided, the book has been edited, all systems go.

Being only able to steal short bursts of time to work on the only progress I have made this week is on the cover. At the suggestion of a publishing expert and the people who will probably print this first run I have redesigned the cover so that it is color (for better stand-out) and has a spine instead of being spiral bound (so that bookstores will want to stock it - apparently they don’t like spiral because to display it face out takes up too much space). So below is the original cover design and the new color version.

Any thoughts?

No rest for the weary. It has been a great day to get caught up on some of the more pressing Aardvark tasks. The key things that need to be finalized for the Sun-Dried Aardvark-Tongue Swizzle-Sticks book are:

• Amend the cover design
• Begin the audio recordings
• Finalize the packaging for the Rooibos Tea

Yes, Rooibos Tea!
Captain Niekerk’s Fine Rooibos Tea features handsomely in the book, so we will be selling it on the website as well. Here is the new logo:

This is Jamie (the illustrator) trying out the posting setup we’ve got running here.

This book has been Bob’s baby for as long as I can remember, and to see finalized page spreads and actually flick through printed mock-ups is terrific. I originally agreed to draw the illustrations a few years back, and fed bunches of drawings to Bob whenever I could sit down and churn a few out. With Bob constantly dealing with consulting clients and me in school, the process was drawn out longer than I had anticipated, but now that the book is about to be published I can confidently look back on it all and say it was worth the wait. There is a lot of twistedly brilliant humor in this book accompanied by some pretty fun drawings. As artist this is definitely one of the more unique projects I’ve worked on. Attempting to bring all of Bob’s warped ideas together and draw up somewhat plausible products was an adventure in itself, and getting to run with a few extra illustrations and help craft new ideas for the catalogue was really rewarding. I can’t wait for everyone to dig into it all once this sucker hits shelves.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have springbok penises to redraw.