How about an update, Sun Times???

We gnomes generally steer clear of that human abomination called “McDonald’s”. However, once a year we make an exception.

This is that time of year.

This is the time for Shamrock Shakes.

As you can see, the guys and I pooled our pocket change together and split one today. The shakes are HUGE and taller than pretty much all of us.

As we sipped the green sludge, some of the little wise guys started to chatter about  the origin and true meaning of the Shamrock Shake. This chatter provoked an ongoing investigation.

Thanks to Wikipedia, we learned that Shamrock Shakes started making the world (well, at least America, Canada, and Ireland) a better place in 1970. In 1980,  the Shamrock Sundae was introduced.

What was that all about, you ask? It was basically vanilla ice cream topped with a mint green Shamrock syrup. Sadly, the sundae was discontinued after one year due to poor sales. That sucks. I bet it was awesome.

Each time you scarf down a Shamrock Shake, you’re packing on 530 calories, 11 grams of protein, 15 grams of fat, 86 grams of carbs, and 160 mg of sodium. We gnomes are perpetually fat, so we’re not really concerned with nutrition facts though.

The shamrock chatter continued with the wee ones and questions were risen about the various forms of mint. There’s peppermint, spearmint, and probably other kinds of mint that I can’t think of right now.

Do different kinds of mint come from different species of mint leaves? Or do artificial additives contribute to the different varieties of mint taste?

These are questions best left for their very own dedicated blog post.

I leave you with these questions now so I can get back to my portion of the green goo before it melts.

Sluuuuuuuuurp,
Dumbledore the Gnome

According to Samir Vermani, M.D., of the ABC News medical unit, we can get more drunk by using diet soda as a mixer!

COOL! SIGN ME UP!

“Cutting calories with diet soda may seem like a good idea — as long as it’s not at a bar.

A new study released in the journal Alcoholism suggests that cutting alcoholic drinks with diet soda makes them more potent than using their full-calorie counterparts. Specifically, researchers found that mixing alcohol with diet (sugar-free) soft drinks resulted in a higher breath alcohol content than mixing alcohol with a regular (sugar-sweetened) soft drink.

“The results were surprising,” said Cecile A. Marczinski, assistant professor in the department of psychological science at Northern Kentucky University, and one of the lead investigators of the study.

Researchers served one of three beverages: vodka added to a diet drink, vodka added to a regular drink or a regular soft drink with a vodka scent added so that participants would believe it was an alcoholic beverage. They then sat back while the subjects enjoyed their cocktails.

Those participants drinking the vodka-diet drink cocktails had a significantly higher breath alcohol content and had the highest degree of behavioral impairment among the groups, the study found.

“We are talking about significant differences here,” Marczinski said. “Participants who drank diet soda with vodka had blood alcohol contents as high as 18 percent more than when sugar-containing mixers were used.”

The theory behind this is that sugar-containing drinks stimulate the stomach much like a meal does. Having some food in your stomach delays stomach emptying, thus delaying absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream. The result is that drinkers get a less-potent hit of alcohol in their systems after drinking.

“This is why southern European countries have lower rates of alcoholism despite their increased alcohol intake,” said Petros Levounis, director of the Addiction Institute of New York, who was not involved in the study. “They always drink while eating.”

Diet beverages, since they contain no sugar, do not trigger the stomach to delay emptying, allowing alcohol to reach the bloodstream more quickly.

“The choice of what you mix your alcohol with can make a difference,” Marczinski said, adding that there may even be potentially harmful consequences for those who regularly request a diet soda with their spirits.

“In the long run, it’s more harmful for your body to be exposed to a higher alcohol concentration than a few extra calories,” she said.

But not all alcohol experts agree that going diet with your cocktails is all that different. Boris Tabakoff, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, pointed to the fact that study subjects drank the equivalent of three to four drinks over a five-minute period.

“Few if any bars will serve you a drink that strong,” he said. “If you want to chug your alcohol to the point of consuming the equivalent of three to four drinks in five minutes, you should not worry about calories.”

Tabakoff further pointed out that calorie-conscious drinkers might do better simply to limit their alcohol intake, noting that alcohol, too, is packed with calories.”

Copyright © 2013 ABC News Internet Ventures

I may be a doctor, but first and foremost, I am a drunk gnome.

Yours in drunk health,
Dr. A. Chu, M.D., The Gnome

You’ll never believe what I came across in the supermarket checkout line today. A packaged toy proclaiming to “grow” gnomes.

Well let me tell you something. Gnomes do NOT grow from packages. We are born…popped out of vaginas just like you after our gnomish mommies and daddies get it on. This is a total hoax, so don’t you go on a minute believing it.

Although I hated monetarily supporting such a fraudulent manufacturing company, I just HAD to buy one and see what kind of “gnome” would allegedly “grow”. The back of the package said to put the tiny creature into water and it would grow 600 times its size.

600 times!? This doesn’t sound healthy at all! How would you like to get 600 times fatter in just three days?!

Naturally, my curiosity got the better of me. I put the lil’ bugga in some water. The water was contained in a yellow gnome bowl. Naturally.

Three days have now passed…hence my blog post. I covered my eyes as I walked to the kitchen to see what monstrosity lie in the bowl. This is what i found, staring back at me.

It hasn’t moved any and it hasn’t said a word to me. I don’t know what to make of this so-called gnome, but I don’t trust it.

Should I stab it repeatedly? Should I nurse it back to it’s original size? What do you think I should do?!

Tormented in Tinsel Town,
Yankee Doodle The Gnome

Today started out just like every other day. I got up, ate some grits, and combed my beard. I was disrupted from my routine by the sounds of sawing and obscure machinery. It must be the new neighbors, I thought.

The neighbors always seemed a little off.  They moved in last weekend, but this is the first weird noise that I’ve heard downstairs. Not that I’m being racist, but they are from Egypt after all. Even though we’re freezing our balls off, they refuse to wear shoes or shirts. I have no idea how they ever get any service.

I guess I just wanted to make sure everything was okay down there. More than anything I was just curious to see what was going on on the floor below me. They have no windows, but I was able to peek through a tiny mouse hole at the floor board.

This is what I saw. I’m not exactly sure what it is that I saw, but I do know that I saw it.

Medieval torture? Kinky rituals? Ancient mummification?

Your guess is as good as mine. I got the hell out of there as quickly as possible. I figured if I was spotted, I might be next on their table!

I’m submitting a complaint to King Jerry The Gnome today about these new mummy neighbors. This does not feel like  a safe place for gnomes anymore and we were here first!

Still shaking with fear but in a pissed off kinda way,
Dumblebore The Gnome