Cake-alicious!
What's a birthday without cake? It's just people sadly
gathered around with no clue what to do.
By Orin
So our 21st birthday is around the corner and since RS is going to be legal for a lot of things, we need to celebrate. To rejoice on this momentous occasion with an ever hungry team, we need cake. Lots of it. While dreaming of stuffing our mouths with these delicious creations, our curious minds propelled us to Google what weird flavours and shapes there might be. Don't blame us, we really are just curious.
Who cares for chocolate, strawberry or good old vanilla these days? Hot pepper flavoured cakes are all the rage. Maybe these flavours are for those with strong taste buds and even stronger digestive systems, but they do make us wonder about the future of the sweet creamy piece of heaven. Among the most eccentric cake flavours, coca-cola or peanut butter and jelly is making us a bit curious, but thinking of spaghetti, salted biscuit or tomato soup flavoured cakes for our birthday makes us want to take a bite out of a raw korolla.
It is not just flavours though. Crazy has hit the shapes and sizes as well. Everyone wants to put a superlative after everything and mighty cakes have not been spared. There's the 'world's largest cake', 'longest cake', 'largest ice cream cake, 'largest strawberry cake' and so on. Pretty much anything you can think of. On the other hand, we have the most bizarre shapes fathomable.
It starts from a 200 pound cake in the shape of a gigantic octopus. Then you pretty much insert a real life fish tank in the cake, with fishes in them. Then you get a Kill Bill inspired cake to leave at the teacher's doorstep before the term exam. Or you order a cake shaped as your bride (exact height and weight) for your wedding, because nothing says love like cutting a person open and eating the insides with 1500 of the closest friends and family. You want to do all these just because you can. If you succeed, you enter the internet's hall of fame.
While we are drooling in our sleep thinking of red velvet cake with double chocolate layers and crystallised strawberries, there are people are making tofu cakes for mother's day and salad dressing ones made in the shapes of their favourite piece of furniture on their anniversaries. Just goes to show the diversity of people in this lovely world: so many colours, shapes and sizes. Almost like a rainbow cake.
Starstruck
By Shaer Reaz
This week, as we celebrate the birthday of Rising Stars, we thought we'd make a list of all things awesome with “Star” in them.
The Death Star: We skipped one of the most obvious choices, Star Wars, instead picking the coolest object in the series, besides Darth Vader's helmet. The Death Star was a planet size spaceship built to destroy planets and crush anyone who opposed the Empire and its dark lords. Commissioned by Darth Vader himself, the Death Star's builders were moronic idiots who thought it would somehow be a good idea to leave a massive weak point in the ship's otherwise indestructible exterior, and allow it to be reached by a conveniently located vent. Despite the weakness, the Death Star was hella cool and looked like a plant sized dented ping-pong ball. Thumbs up.
Starship Troopers: A cult movie based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 sci-fi book, Starship Troopers was better remembered than the book, but the film's divergence from the major underlying themes of the book makes the book a lot better. Some view the movie as a crass interpretation of a book with quite a bit of deep thought, but it wasn't half bad. In fact, it had Denise Richards fighting giant alien bugs. Done deal.
All-Star converses: They were massive till just a year back. Everyone cool had a pair of converses. They came in various colours and patterns and would suit every occasion. They also served as great paint holding surfaces, being made of canvas and all. Some, in an effort to stand out from the crowd, painted their converses with custom colours and graphic work. Suddenly everyone stopped wearing them. Let's hope they make a comeback, in louder and more vibrant colours.
Star Kabab: Kacchi biriyani, morog polao, khashir leg roast, faluda, firni, borhani, even their tea is beautiful. With Star Kabab locations scattered all across Dhaka, Star Kabab is truly legendary for their traditional food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snack, if you can get to a Star Kabab, you can get what you want. The Dhanmondi Road 2 Star is the biggest and most family friendly, while the one on Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue is a frequent haunt for the night owls, staying open way past midnight. Whichever Star location you choose, you'll get the same standard of awesome food.
Mitsubishi Starion: No one knows much about this gem of the 80's Japanese muscle car. The Starion was years ahead of its time, with a turbocharged and electronically fuel injected four cylinder engine. It paved the way and let the world know of the oncoming domination of the cheap Japanese sports car. It had pop up headlights and was one of the best lookers in the angular 80's sports car category. Shame no one bought any. (P.S. It was almost not called Starion, or Star of the Orion. Rumour has it that it was originally supposed to be called Stallion, but the Japanese messed up in the process. We're gla, since we can include it on this list).
Starstruck: Epic song by Rainbow. And the title of this piece.
Toyota Starlet: C'mon, everyone knows this one, right? Everyone's favourite small car, the Toyota Corolla's sister. Except for the Starlet GT Turbo and the Starlet Glanza V, which are fire breathing hair chested midgets capable of keeping pace with some of the best performance cars out there.
Stargazer: Another epic song by Rainbow.
Arwen Evenstar: Lord of the Rings and Tolkien fans rejoice, here we have Aragorn's beautiful half-elven wife Arwen. She gave up her immortality for the love of her life, and helped (at least in the movie adaptations) Aragorn reclaim his throne. In the movies she also saved Frodo Baggins from the Black Riders like the badass elf she is. She's also played by Liv Tyler in the movies, which is a definite plus.
We've touched on everything from movies to books to shoes to cars, but there is still a little bit left. Newspapers. And if you don't mind a little self-plugging, that'd be us.
