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Wednesday 22 May 2013

Exclusive Interview with the Glass Jar of Moles


The Ministry has obtained an exclusive interview with the one and only Glass Jar of Moles: Grant Museum icon, twitter celebrity and political activist. In order to honor this surely momentous occasion, we have opted to record a short podcast in which we read out the moles replies just for you. Interview hosted by Steve Cross of Museums Showoff and Bright Club fame, mole voices played by The Ministry’s own co-founders Kristin and Terri.

This podcast has it all: Terri doing a Victorian match-girl impression, Kristin doing a Honey Boo Boo impression, moles talking about zombie zoos and their dead willies, Steve laughing with disbelief and embarrassment at having been involved at all.

To listen to the interview follow this link: https://soundcloud.com/songsfromtheshows/glassjarofmoles




You can follow the moles @GlassJarofMoles, Steve can be found @steve_x or @MuseumsShowoff and as always, the Ministry via @curiositytweet

In case you were a bit distracted by the ridiculous accents, here is a transcript of what the moles had to say...

Do you feel that you represent spirit of the Grant Museum?
In the sense that we are a jar of dead pickled moles we feel we completely represent the spirit of the Grant Museum.  Not only do we keep absolutely still during working hours to ensure the museum does not transform from a zoology museum to weird zombie zoo. We also love science, adventure, history and providing experiential learning to humans.


Why do you think you have become so popular on twitter?
Let’s be honest, when moles are alive they are not loved. We are more likely to be panged with a shovel to the head than ever be on a ‘cute’ youtube video. But when we are dead, pickled and in a sweet jar suddenly we are well loved. Its a mystery to us modest moles why we are loved so much, and we do have such great followers. We can only suspect that it is our unusualness, our #molefacts, our cheekiness, our rants and the initial publicity provided by Claire Warwick (@clhw) through her Digital Humanities conferences that draws in so many lovely people.


What do you hope people take away from your twitter musings?
We hope to spread a bit of kindness and silliness, we do this through our love of writing #molepuns and #molefacts. As a mixed jar of moles, promoting equality whether gender, fur colour or position in the jar is important to us. We look at humans and we can’t see the same sort of empathy for others that is present in our equal jar. Often instead we see suffering. We hope that we can set some sort of example that humans should develop equality  amongst themselves and stop being so rotten to each other. Wealth and education would be a good place to start.

How do the moles feel the current government's attitude towards
heritage funding?
As moles we’re not really experts in the area of funding, though we are very sad that other exhibits like us might have to disappear from sight. But more generally we do worry a lot of what this government is doing to British humans. They have an ideological agenda that is causing a lot of suffering, only set to get worse after April. We optimistically hope that this government is just a horrible blip and that with time humans will understand the importance of their wellbeing and bringing the richest and poorest closer together in bringing about their happiness.

If the moles could change one thing about the world what would it be?

Global inequality (or if we can’t have that it would be great to stop Chris mole’s curry habit. It would be nice not to have to jacuzzi in the jar all of the time).


What does the juice that the moles are in taste like?
Day to day the juice tastes like death and sea water. Not pleasant. But of a weekend a close friends help us to fill it with Gin, tonic and lime. Keeps us afloat and happy.

Which Grant Museum objects do you hate and resent having to share space with?
We mostly love all of our pals in the museum, though the stuffed fish are a bit up themselves. Our best friend in the museum is half-faced chimp, he has only half a face, half a brain and no hands. Life is a bit tough for him as his remaining brain often falls out, but we read each other stories and often debate politics.
Oh and we hate all naked mole rats, horrible things they are. Never compare us to them.


How many of you are there?
Official Grant Museum figures say 18. We say 32, plus 4 roaming guests. We have developed one collective twitter consciousness.

What’s the scariest jar in the Grant Museum? #museumfear

Some say the anaconda skeleton, but we just use it as an adventure playground.

What historical figure would you like to bang? ( Terri expects
conflicting answers)
Hm... It is very difficult with our dead willies and dead vaginas to bang anything these days (If you are unsure of what that looks like do visit the Hunterian museum and look for the pickled syphilitic penis). Gross.

In the mole world of history we would love to bang the moles that took important roles in human history. Our favourites include Stalin’s mustache, Lady Godivas foof, and that birthmark that sat on Gorbachev's head.

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