As you'll see on asap right now, snakes are our theme of the weekend. Our own JAIME HOLGUIN traveled down to Sweetwater, Texas, near his old stomping grounds of New Mexico, to chronicle an unusual but lucrative activity known as the World's Largest Rattlesnake Roundup.

Jaime being Jaime, he did it mostly with video and accompanying music, and the result is not only entertaining, though entertaining it is. It's also a glimpse into a subculture most of us never see. Which is great -- if you like snakes.

Jaime does. He calls them "fascinating creatures: sleek, sexy, deadly and always at the ready to attack." And if you don't like snakes, well, frankly, you might want to move on.

Says Jaime:

"Growing up in the Southwest, I'd heard about rattlesnake roundups, but never got the chance to attend one. I guess it wasn't high on my priority list. I'd seen them up close, after all, thanks to a neighbor who used to go out in the desert to catch them. He used to keep them as pets in large aquariums."

When Jaime went, he followed a promise from organizers of thousands of pounds of rattlesnakes. "Boy, did they deliver: 13,552 pounds, to be exact. It was pretty awesome. In one pit, they were piled up ankle-deep."

Then there were the recipes. You might not think rattlesnake's appetizing. I don't, and I eat just about anything. But our brave Jaime tasted it -- fried rattlesnake, to be exact -- so you don't have to. "I had to say yes," he says. "For the record, it doesn't taste like chicken. It's actually rather bland. Some hot sauce would've come in handy."

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Some new features are coming your way, part of our continuing efforts to make asap more relevant to its readers and stick to our mission to provide some of the most unusual and compelling multimedia journalism that The Associated Press' journalists around the world can offer:

--Beginning next month, we'll be debuting a regular column of new and noteworthy music, complete with downloads. Matthew Perpetua, the founder of Fluxblog and an accomplished MP3 blogger, will be our point man. We don't think you'll be disappointed.

--J.M. Hirsch, an AP journalist who writes frequently about food, joins us next week for a regular column that explores the foodways of the 21st century. Expect J.M. to range from health issues to the politics of food to some just plain fun and wacky pieces about the things we put in our stomachs.

--By popular demand, our weekly feature "Incoming!" is going to twice a week. Seems people like random bits of culture pulled from the matter stream. Go figure. Here's asap's Arts and Entertainment Editor Caryn Brooks on the matter: "Imagine that you were paid to troll the Internet, your inbox and the entire Associated Press global news network for bits of telling cultural ephemera. Lucky us! We do! There are 26 asap staffers committed to Incoming! Our mission? Intercepting the cultural missiles aimed at the asap desk each week."

"Incoming!" will now appear on Tuesdays and Fridays.

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Ted Anthony is the editor of asap.

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