Trepidation of the spheres

This past weekend was W.T.C.C. For the last seven years it has been held in Serbia during the last weekend of August. This year, the festival took place in the village Ozrem. According to the official website, people from "Norway, Finland, Republic of Serpska, Macedonia, Australia, Spain, Austria, Slovenia, the USA, Canada [&] Hungary have entered the competition."

This year's motto: "Something is cooking."

Besides the obvious cooking competition, there's camping, music, and plenty of opportunities to make new friends, all in the great Serbian outdoors. Sounds ballin', eh!

Well, boys, grab a hold of your nutsacks & don't let go.

W.T.C.C. is an acronym for World Testicle Cooking Championship. That's right. They cook TESTICLES.

shish keballs, anyone?

 

 

But don't worry. No one's planning on roasting your gonads. Human testicles are about the only kind of testicles that AREN'T served at the Ball Cup.

The events, which include a welcoming party, a concert featuring the Cooking With Balls Band, a juried competition, & in 2010, an attempt to achieve a world record for most testicle meat (1.5t from 16 different species) on one plate, are clean. Vulgarity, nudity, drinking competitions & Viagra are not permitted.

The rules of the festival are simple: over 65's, AA's & Viagra prohibited; the testing of the specialties' effects (aka aphrodisiac effects) is relegated to an assigned camp; no 'casual' visits to the 'balling' area; & my personal favourite, 'women are allowed everything.'

In addition (& you thought it couldn't get any worse), the entire jury is made up of women (doctor's of veterinary medicine, no less), there is a Ball Cup Camp, a purchasable t-shirt with the caption: 'You're lookin' in a wise man who visited www.ballcup.org'  & a COOKING WITH BALLS cookbook, written by the founder & organizer of the Ball Cup, Ljubomir R. Erović, who said, "The Scots have Scotch, the Swiss have cheese, and we Serbs have balls!"

Balls, indeed!

The website for the W.T.C.C. is pretty cool: http://www.ballcup.org/index.php You should check it out. If only so you know I am not making this up.

Perhaps the best/worst thing about the spirit of the competition is Ljubomir's altruistic dedication to finding an aphrodisiac that will 'conquer the world.' If only it was that easy...

Doesn't this pizza look delectable?

                
...

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away, 
And whisper to their souls to go, 
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."
                    
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys 
To tell the laity our love.
 
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
 
Dull sublunary lovers' love 
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit 
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is, 
Inter-assurèd of the mind, 
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one, 
Though I must go, endure not yet 
A breach, but an expansion, 
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two; 
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show 
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit, 
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun. 

...