An appreciation

A character is the representation of a person in a narrative or dramatic work of art (such as a novel, play, or film). Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr (χαρακτήρ) through its Latin transcription character, the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration... the sense of "a part played by an actor" developed. Character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theatre or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person." Since the end of the 18th century, the phrase "in character" has been used to describe an effective impersonation by an actor. Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practised by actors or writers, has been called characterisation. - Wiki

Well, there are some who say that we identify with characters by sympathising with the situations that they find themselves in. There are others who say that characters can represent people we want to be like, or people we don't want to be like. Many maintain that fictional characters resemble people in the real world.

But I don't know about all of that when you consider the character of Krang, (from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Universe) a large pink pulsating brain with eyes and tentacles, sitting, manipulating a control board, in a hollow chamber in the chest of what appears to be a mindless human slave. I have never known any pinkly pulsating tentacled brains personally, and I don't think I know anybody who does; I do not particularly sympathise with the plight of pinkly pulsating tentacled brains; and I don't particularly want to be a pinkly pulsating tentacled brain. It seems to me that the theory of character can only take you so far, and doesn't quite manage to encompass creatures like Krang.

I've been thinking about Krang for a while. I don't know why. Possibly he has a natural charisma. Anyway, what actual function did Krang serve in the TMNT cartoon show? As far as I can remember, he didn't actually do anything. Krang just kind of harrangued Shredder to go after the turtles, and that was it. In Turtles Forever - by far the best Turtle movie - his principle function seems to be to stand around and looked scared every time Shredder does something evil. Sure, Krang is evil too, but he's evil in a placid and domesticated way, and you get the sense that he really doesn't care much about taking over the world. He just kind of blobbles around, pulsating pinkly, and occasionally squalling at Shredder to do something for him.

Oh Krang. It's been so long since you left our television screens. Why don't you ever call?

Is it wrong to be talking this way to a pinkly pulsating tentacled brain who is, by the way, evil?

Excremental success!

Top of the New York Times bestseller list!

Secrets of the Gordon Ramsay Swearing Code

"Fucking cunty bollock shit turd steaming pile of wee." These are just some of the famous swear words from the famous swearing mouth of professional sweary and part-time cook, Gordon Ramsay. Now you might want to just take them at face value, mightn't you?

Well according to a professed Professor* at an alleged university, there's more to the ever-eloquent Ramsay's words than just swearing.

"We just applied a simple formula to the swear words," says Professor Gribble McGrubble, "And found that Ramsay had encoded secret, non-swearing messages in his swear words."

McGrubbles goes on to explain: "The secretive secrets included within the amazingly offensive and puerile swear words uttered by Gordon Ramsay include such astounding revelations as, 'I am fond of grey cats', 'I'll just pop the kettle on so we can all have some tea', 'I would like to wear a hat today, but I am uncertain as to whether I should put on my red one or my green one', 'perhaps I should take my umbrella, it looks a little cloudy out', and 'Civilisation will end in 2059 due to the five-day Guatemalan war'."

But that's not all! You can apply the secrets of Gordon Ramsay's swearing to your own professional and love life, as analysis of passages of unredeemable filth by Gordon Ramsay turns up such unlikely messages as, 'Now is the time to indulge in new relationships', 'the stock market will fall five points in two days from now', and 'a rabid ox will devour your testicles this afternoon, so put your relationship and work plans on hold'.

And who could afford not to take heed of such advice as, 'wear the blue coat, it suits you', 'the package should arrive in the post tomorrow, at seven pm', and 'in the year of the serpent blue fire will rain down on the sunlit lands and a strong emperor will emerge after a famine of eight moons', such as can be found in the fantastically offensive string of four letter words proceeding from Gordon Ramsay's mouth? No-one, that's who!

Secrets of the Gordon Ramsay Swearing Code! Are you thinking of buying it? Are you fucking nuts?!?? Available in all bad bookstores!

*Professed Professors are the most professional Professors of them all.

Apply the timeless wisdom of Gordon Ramsay's disgusting swearing to your life for instant SUCCESS!

Flopposition

Man, the Liberals under Malcolm Turnbull seem to be having so many leadership fights these days that by the time I've got to the end of this sentence Tony Abbott will be leading the party. Obviously, the Liberals must unite under the leadership of Kevin Andrews if they are to have any hope of having Joe Hockey fight Kevin Rudd in the next election. Turnbull's return to the leadership following the failed Hockey experiment may have seemed unlikely at the time, but it is vital that the Liberals put this pointless bickering aside if their leader Peter Dutton, and his deputy, Sophie Mirabella, want to start landing some punches and convincing the electorate that the Mirabella-for-PM push has real force. Why the party eventually settled up Wilson Tuckey as their eventual head we'll never know, but it really is important for all Australians that the Opposition Leader Peter Costello and his shadow cabinet begin to do their job and applying critical scrutiny to the policies of the government, and give the Louise Markus leadership the strength to get the job done.

And if, in years time, we should all look back and observe that all these leadership fights were started over a dispute about the CPRS legislation, a useless scheme which will do nothing about global warming, which may not be happening anyway, then we would be be absolutely right. And where has that ever got anybody?

The cat diet, based on my observations of Harriet and Beatrice, with approximate times of consumption

4.30 AM - My toes.

7.30 AM - One another's heads.

10.00 AM - Canned native animal. Preferably the one that the other cat is eating.

1.00 PM - The front page of my latest New Yorker magazine. [NOTE: Only if it's a good cover though.]

8.30 PM - My dinner.

10.30 PM - A toy hamster, taken out to the water bowl, dipped in, and then taken into the bedroom and dumped on the bed for nocturnal snacks.

11.30 PM - My toes.

That's about it I think. As you can see, it contains all five major cat food groups, ie, meaty stuff, stuff the other cat is eating, stuff the other person is eating, stuff the other person is reading, and the other person and/or the other cat.

Underpantoum

(For Mitzi).

Some like their knickers pink,
Some like their knickers frilly;
Some like them extra extra slinky,
Even though it's chilly.

Some like their knickers frilly,
With small embroidered flowers,
And even though it's chilly,
They'll wear them out all hours,

With small embroidered flowers
(Depending on their tastes).
They'll wear them out all hours
In quite revealing lace.

Depending on their tastes,
Some men wear women's bras,
In quite revealing lace,
While driving in their cars.

Some men wear women's bras,
Others just wear stockings
While driving in their cars -
It's really not that shocking

That some men just wear stockings.
You'll come round to it slowly,
It's really not that shocking:
The Mormons think them holy -

You'll come round to it slowly.
Some like them extra extra slinky
(The Mormons think them holy).
Some like their knickers pink.

Hallowed hyphens, Batman!

Someone once told me that when you use a phrase so that it becomes an adjective, or descriptor, for the word that follows after it, then you have to join the words of that phrase up with hyphens. So ‘half-hearted hack’, ‘two-way street’, ‘wide-armed generosity’, and so on.

But I ran into an interesting (well, interesting to me, at least) problem today – what happens when the phrase that is used as a descriptor is itself rather large? Is it obligatory to join all the words in the phrase together with hyphens? ‘The-grass-is-always-greener-on-the-other-side attitude’? A ‘you-have-to-get-up-pretty-early-in-the-morning-in-order-to-beat-this-little-black-duck mindset’? Just how long could such descriptors become?

'She had an a-jug-of-bread-a-loaf-of-wine-and-thou-
beside-me-singing-in-the-wilderness-
and-wilderness-were-wealth-enow philosophy.'

Also, what if the phrase that became a descriptor to the following word itself contained words that were hyphenated? Do you have to double hyphenate it?

'She had an I’ll-get-you-if-it’s-the-last-thing-I-do-you-two-timing-bastard look on her face.'

Then again, I guess not, because the pre-existent hyphen in 'two-timing' signifies that the words have already been joined together, brought into a relationship, and function as one unit. Also, it would look pretty bloody silly. And you wouldn't want to be too two-timing on two-timing, now, would you?

Just when I thought I couldn't find a Freudian slip my size

I know of nobody who sticks up for his state more than Mike Rann.

I refer your attention to the above comment by Kevin Rudd on South Australian Premier Mike Rann, following allegations that Rann may have had an affair with a friend. Dr Cat found it. You've all read it? Good.

Now, it's important to bare, I mean, bear in mind that it's a good thing to have a Premier like Mike Rann stick up, I mean, stand up, oops, I mean, be firm, that is, it's good to find a hard man like Rann, that is, it's hard to find a good man like Rann, er, it's difficult to find a good man like Rann who will remain rigid, that is, um, remain there for the people of South Australia. It doesn't matter whether the polls go down on him, er, I mean, whether he goes down on the poles, whoops, whether his pole goes down, ha ha ha, what the polls do, what's important is that Rann has people there rooting for him, er no, Rann is there, rooting for people, um, rooting with people, no, wait, what's important is that Rann gets support through this trying ordeal.

Questions will inevitably be raised about the saucy stories, silly me, the source of the stories, and whether they were the result of opposition members getting in bed with television sources, oh ha ha ha, I mean, whether they were the result of one being seduced by... oh, what I mean is, people might question the source.

Nevertheless, this whole story must be stripped bare, er, must be obscene and served, that is, must be seen and observed by many independent sources, and it is only once we have got to the bottom, that is, once we have underclothed, no, underpanted, no, understood everything that we will be able to come to a final verdict. So we must all be sensuous, um, sensual, no, I mean, sensible, and tit down and stry, er, sit down and try to listen. Only then will we know if the story is utter bollocks, no, I mean utter pants, er, ha ha ha, that is, utter rubbish. After all, we must not burn our bras, that is, burn our bridges, or the public will be absolutely buggered, NO!, I mean, rooted, NONONO!, I mean, stuffed.

At any rate, one thing is absolutely and utterly clear: Rann is screwed.

Coming sooner. Or later.

WARNING: the following preview should not be seen by small children, the elderly, and adults. Everyone else can see it, though.

2012, as brought to you by acclaimed movie director Roland Emmerich, and the Melbourne Public Transport System

(SCENE: Inner city Melbourne, Bourke Street in the process of being flooded by a titanic wall of sea water. As it rushes past Myer, a smartly-dressed metrosexual emerges out of the building, and is immediately swept away in the swirling waters. He screams!)

(A PANICKED AND HYSTERICAL MOB rushes up towards Russell Street.)

PANICKED AND HYSTERICAL MOB: OMG! WTF! Shriek! Yawp! Help! Eeeeeeeeee! (etc).

SCARED MAN: If only there weren't so many restrictions on traffic on inner-city Melbourne Streets, we could just break open these cars and drive out of town!

HORROR-STRUCK WOMAN: We've only got one choice! We've got to catch the tram!

(To appropriate music - Thus Spake Zarathustra, or The Ride of the Valkyries, or possibly both, at the same time - the 86 Tram lumbers up the hill.)

PANICKED AND HYSTERICAL MOB: Eeeee! Awk! Wait for me! Yargh!

(Everyone rushes onto the tram)

SCARED MAN: But... it's only going as far as Clifton Hill! We're going to have to do a changeover!

HORROR-STRUCK WOMAN: THERE'S NO OTHER CHOICE!

***

(SCENE: The tram is lumbering around the Gertrude Street/Smith Street corner, with a herd of slavering dinosaurs nipping at its wheels. All of a sudden, it grinds to a halt).

SCARED MAN: What... what the hell's going on?

HORROR-STRUCK WOMAN: That old woman with a shopping cart full of bricks has to get someone to help her shopping cart on the tram!

SCARED MAN: But... there's no time! We'll all be eaten!

HORROR-STRUCK WOMAN: (As a tyrannosaurus pops its head in through the window and nibbles on her hat)
BUT THE TRAM DRIVER HAS AN OBLIGATION TO STOP FOR EVERYONE - THERE'S NO OTHER CHOICE!

PANICKED AND HYSTERICAL MOB: Arrrrrrrgh! Heeeeeeeeeeeeeelp! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

***

Other scenes include: The bit where they have to wait even though a huge gaping hole in the ground is about to open up underneath the tram because the people in the tram behind have to change over because of a brake defect, the bit where the tram driver waits in Northcote for two minutes in order to stay on the timetable, and the suspensful bit where the ticket inspectors get on and not everyone has their ticket in order!

The tram! Coming sooner, or later, to a city street near you!

Twite verse

Brevity is the soul of twit, or, etymological reflections on the advent of Twitter

It can happen in a moment,
It can happen overnight,
You can lie awake in bed
While your mind is in full flight,
You can sit and scratch your head
While you think of posts to write,
And as you think you wonder
If they're 'tweets' or 'twits' or twite.
Yes you have the Twitter itch,
The Twitter Twitter Twitch.

Perhaps you've wondered if the
Plural form of 'twitterer'
Is 'twitterers' or 'twats'.
Are twats just online nitterers?
If author-types can write
And publish stuff called 'literature',
Then what's to stop your site
From being 'twitterature?
Yes you have the Twitter itch,
The Twitter Twitter Twitch.

Have you littered lots of letters,
Have you 'atwitterated'?
Do you ever tweet-repeat
To say you've 'retwitterated'?
If you read a saucy tweet,
Do you get quite 'twittilated'?
Have you never tweet-deleted?
Are your tweets 'obtwitterated'?
Then you have the Twitter itch,
The Twitter Twitter Twitch.

And: if you find some sparkles
In the bathroom by the litter
Do you hesitate a moment
Before you twitter on the glitter by the little kitty litter near the shitter?
And I wonder if you wonder
If it is a glitter-litter-shitter-twitter,
A litter-glitter-shitter-tweet,
Or a glitter-double-shitter-twitter?
For you have the Twitter itch,
The Twitter Twitter Twitch.

Mixed metaphors of the obvious

Having an ache in the part of your body between your shoulders and head is a pain in the neck.

You just went to the blood bank? Your blood's worth bottling.

Cold banana smoothies are cool bananas!

So what are these diced pieces of animal innards, then, chopped liver?

If you're up a stream full of ordure in a boat which is lacking a means of transport while you are constructing a specific part of the halter for a creature of the family Anatidae, with a number of chefs in your boat cooking soup, then you're in a bloody shit load of trouble.

Da-da-da-da-da da da da!

Every time Leonard and Harriet look at one another, I hear the music from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Then a tumbleweed blows across the screen, and I know we're really in trouble - because where the hell did that tumbleweed come from, not to mention the screen?

Also, the other day I saw two magpies fighting one another, and all of a sudden this music started up in the background...

Craptitude

Why is it that now, years after I first saw the films, and even more years after they first went to air, that I find myself met with a sudden urge to write about how horribly, awfully, terribly bad the Matrix Trilogy really was?

The films were bad, after all. But perhaps it is only now that we can really appreciate their badness - for they have a badness that reaches across the years, that only seems to deepen and be enriched by the interval of time, a badness that has an immediacy and a force now that is even greater than when they were first released. Of course it is easy to feel apathetic about a film that has not been released yet - at the start of the last century, the entire world felt apathetic about greats of the cinema such as Citizen Kane, and The 39 Steps. But it is only truly, wretchedly bad films that are able to inspire ever greater bouts of apathy following their release: such are the Matrix films.

Many of the smaller filmic elements were uniquely bad, of course, possessing their own special quality of indefinable crapness, alternately disappointing or boring or sickening you according to their own particular metric. The murky, pond-scum green wash in which the entire trilogy seemed to have been shot, for instance - who thought that up? Is this really what they use for mood lighting these days? Or the presence of Keanu Reeves, who somehow spends most of the time being upstaged by Carrie-Anne Moss's boots.

But what really elevates these films beyond the individual badness of their elements - connects all these individual badnesses, if you like - is the plot. It begins as something merely unoriginal (guy finds out that the entire life he's been living is a hallucination), but rapidly becomes completely implausible (humans are used by robots as an energy source - WTF? - to power the Matrix - WTFF? - which is used, principally, it seems, to keep humans in check so they can continue to provide power to the Matrix, in a neverending chain of circular unreasonableness), before becoming utterly ludicrous (for no particular reason at all Neo, the guy who discovers his entire life has been a hallucination in the first film, gains messianic powers and is packed off to defeat the robots).

What horrible, horrible films they were. Naturally, they made an absolute motza at the cinemas. None of which, thank God, was contributed by myself.

There are some things which remain unchanged by time, things which "age shall not weary nor the years condemn." Cheese will always get mould on it. Socks will always grow extra holes. Trains will always continue to run late, no matter how many upgrades a train station gets. And the Matrix will only continue to be bad, no matter how many times we revisit the films over the years. These truths are eternal, and should fill us with a great, warm wave of reassurance and gratitude.

Eat your greens

Ways to encourage people to eat their vegetables: a dietary table

Vegetable	Orthodox method of persuasion	Tim's method of persuasion
Carrots	"The carrot gets its characteristic and bright orange colour from β-carotene, which is metabolised into vitamin A in humans... Carrots are also rich in dietary fibre, antioxidants, and minerals. Lack of Vitamin A can cause poor vision... Ethnomedically, the roots are used to treat digestive problems, intestinal parasites, and tonsillitis or constipation."	Just look at their nobbly little limbs and arms and legs! It's like eating a freakin' goblin baby! Hey, bet you it screams when you cook it, too. DIE, HORRIFYING GOBLIN SPAWN OF THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH, DIE!
Beetroots	"Beetroots are rich in the nutrient betaine, which is important for cardiovascular health. It functions by acting with other nutrients to reduce the concentration of homocysteine, a homologue of the naturally occurring amino acid cysteine, which can be harmful to blood vessels and thus contribute to the development of heart disease, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease.... Beetroot juice has been shown to lower blood pressure and thus help prevent cardiovascular problems."	Eat your beetroots or you skin won't turn purple, kids! What have you got against purple skin, anyway? Are you RACIST, or something?
Potatoes	"The potato contains vitamins and minerals that have been identified as vital to human nutrition."	I personally hunted and killed this savage beast of the vegetable kingdom, and held it down and throttled the last beath out of its throat with my own bare hands. Don't mention it.
Couscous	"Couscous is made from wheat... [with] "12.2 grams of dietary fiber, and 3.6 mg of iron (20% of the daily requirement)."	So freaking awesome. It's like eating dirt, man. It's dirt you can eat!
Spinach	"Spinach is considered to be a rich source of iron.... Spinach has a high nutritional value and is extremely rich in antioxidants..."	Eat this pestilential vegetable! Devour it! Do not cease until the last corpse of spinach has ceased to pollute our plates with its filth, and we can once more be free from the menace it has cast upon the world!

Under Ringwood, by Dylan Hommus

Well yesterday, I caught a tram that stopped before it should have, hopped into another tram that was far more crowded than a tram should be, hopped off at a station where a train did not arrive that should have arrived, caught another train to Flinders Street (late), jumped on another train after that that stopped at Blackburn instead of Ringwood, caught a bus replacement to Ringwood, got on the train at Ringwood, and arrived at my destination - Fern Tree Gully exactly one hour later than I should have.

My intention was actually not to have an afternoon riding around on the trains. (Not my immediate intention, anyway. I'll tell you about that plan some other time.) I was actually trying to get to a poetry afternoon in the Hut Gallery, on Underwood Road. The only thing to do, once I'd got off at Fern Tree Gully station, was to find the gallery on Underwood Road. And you'd think that would be easy, wouldn't you? I turned for advice to the passenger behind me. Here's how the conversation went:

TIM: Excuse me... do you know where Underwood Road is?

PASSENGER: Isser? (Points to her left) Er, usser? (Points to her right.) Erm pratty shur.

So that's how that conversation went. I followed her first direction, and that turned out to be exactly the wrong one; so I hopped into the bakery and had another incomprehensible discussion with the baker, whose accent was so incredibly heavy that she even heard my questions differently. Allow me to demonstrate:

TIM: Oh hi, excuse me, do you know where Underwood Road is?

TIM, AS HEARD BY BAKER: Hi, excuse me, do you know where Alpine Road is?

To this, the baker immediately responded.

BAKER: Oh yes, sure, we're on it!

And, in my naivety, I translated this as:

BAKER: Oh yes, sure, we're on it!

Maybe I should have bought a bun or something? Anyway, the chap in the Foodworks across the road proved a bit more knowledgeable, and so five minutes later I actually found myself inside the art gallery, barging in at the start, the middle, or the end of some fellow's interminable ramble about working in the countryside. (It's always impossible to tell with interminable rambles. Especially mine. I can't even tell with them.)

It turned out to be a lot of bush poetry, with a good dash of humour thrown in, as well as some tea and jam and scones. Right ho, then! Highlight for me was an old chap called Chris (or possibly some other name entirely) got up, put on incredibly thick glasses, and then held a folder right up to his face, and proceeded to read out his poem in a rather high, Irish-accented voice. The poem had excellent, unpredictable, and often quite creative rhymes, which were unfortunately preceded by lines of somewhat lesser quality. (Stuff like: 'But we our language did refine/When we were around the gender feminine.' I could see that joke coming from a mile away but I didn't quite work out the rhyme - how could you with sentences as screwy as that?) Chris was actually in the middle of reading out a long list of poeticised acronyms, in alphabetical order, when his wife interrupted proceedings by ringing up. Three times. Which cracked everyone up. Other highlights, definitely Holly's poems - for instance, she had a backwards poem full of phrases like 'saw see', and 'pole icy', and so on.

Getting home was pretty much the same as getting to Fern Tree Gully, but in reverse order. I spoke a bit more with Chris on the station, and mentioned my plans for getting there in the morning next time and having lunch: 'Oh, there's not much in Fern Tree Gully', he said. 'If you want to have lunch, and have time, you should go to - Upper Fern Tree Gully. There's much more shops up there.' After having left Fern Tree Gully at six/six thirty, I struggled in through the door at home at ten o'clock.

My goodness me. Is that the time? Where did it all go?

More musica than you

I’ve only just managed to see In Search of Beethoven...It’s definitely for the fans. By which I mean, Beethoven enthusiasts will get immense pleasure from it I thought it might be only for the fans, but Margaret Pomerantz gave it four and half stars, and anyone who thinks the Third Symphony is called Heroica probably isn’t an aficionado (David didn’t even flinch at this: score one for me, Nicholas).

Ah, the Heroica Symphony! Of course, it's nothing compared to Beethoven's later masterpieces, such as the Coral Symphony, the Pasteurised Symphony (my personal favourite), and the Theme from A Clockwork Orange symphony. And of course, Beethoven was a master at chamberpot music as well, with pieces like the Moonlighting Sonata, the Pathetic Sonata (which belies it's name - it is quite glorious), and the Passionfruit Sonata. And who can forget Beethoven's groundbreaking last quartets - each last quartet seemingly more final than the one before it?

It really is a great pity that we do not have more musical literacy classes, for there are children today who would not even recognise the name for Bach's Das Wohltempiert Clavicle, or Handel's Messier. They would not even be able to tell the difference between Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or his later Le Sacre du Printemps! Composers that would have been well known to previous generations, such as Verde, Tagliatelle, Edward Greg, or even Vaughan-Sullivan and Gilbert and Williams may be completely alien to the youth of today.

Our glorious musical heritage is in danger of being almost completely forgotten. Who now has listened to Schubert's Unstarted Symphony, or Pachelbel's wonderful Air on a Canon in an F String, or Benjamin Britten's Brahm's Lullaby? Not to mention the groundbreaking influence that composers such as Wagner and Bartok had on predecessors such as Mozart and Scarlatti.

Really, the way things are, it's almost as if, to some people, Beethoven's glorious 10th Symphony didn't even exist. I'm off to listen to it now.

Pleased to meet your acquaintanceship

Short Poem to the person who sent the email to the person who sent the email to the person who sent the email to the person who sent the email to the person who sent the email to the person who sent the email to the person who sent the email to the person who sent the email to the person who sent the email to me.

Dear acquaintance of the acquaintance of an acquaintance of the acquaintance of some acquaintance of an acquaintance of an acquaintance of the acquaintance of some acquaintance of the acquaintance of my acquaintance,
I'm so glad to be writing to you.
And thanks to the relation of your relation of some relation of your relation of the relation of a relation of their relation of some relation of a relation to my relation,
I'm quite sure this note will get through.

I note that the notes of the notes of a note of some notes of note of the notes of your notes that you have been noting to me
Have been getting quite frequent these days,
And it's clear that your friends and their friends and their friends, and their friends' friends and friends' friends, and their circle of friends' friends
Have something important to say.

So as I dispatch this dispatch with dispatch to another dispatcher who will dispatch this dispatch to other dispatchers who will finally dispatch this dispatch with dispatch to yourself,
Inviting your good self to tea,
And inviting your invitees to invite their invitees, and their invitees' invitees and invite other invitees,
Whoever the hell they may be,

I look happily forward to their looking happily forward to others looking happily forward to still others looking happily forward to them looking happily forward to others looking happily forward to you looking happily forward, too,
To meeting me on the night.
And if you're concerned by a concerning concern of concern that may concern others who may be concerned by such concerning concerns,
Then that concern will be slight;

For there's just a jot of a tittle of a small little bit of an almost quite negligible probabilistically uncertain statistically unlikely but possible chance,
That while we are eating our tea,
I may have just invited to my table that night
Nobody other than me.

Thus, I sign off sincerely,
If not very clearly,
Yours ever, dearly,

TimT

Pest control

Train station owners! (Who does own train stations, by the way?) You've scared all the juvenile delinquents away with classical music. But what's to keep your station from being overrun by senile delinquents?

Just buy our recording of The Sound of Happy Children Laughing and play it at times of peak old-person use. The Sound of Happy Children Laughing is a proven deterrent for senile delinquents, inspiring feelings of fear and loathing and horror in their wicked, wrinkled old souls. Yes, with The Sound of Happy Children Laughing, your station need never see another senile delinquent again!

Poem about slurping, and other subjects

At first life was a primal soup
That sucked and slopped and slurped;
Then out of this gobsmacking gloop
There crawled a fish that burped.

A billion species rose and fell
In some amount of time;
They glopped and bubbled up and back
Into the primal slime.

One half of these were vegetables –
They erped out oxygen.
The other half were animals –
They belched out CO2 again.

Though muddy, Mother Nature has
A balance to her parts:
The moral to this story is
You’re breathing in tree farts.

Sleeping cats are better than movies

"Oh look, now she's changed her position a bit!"
"Hooray!"

- Dialogue from The Complete Life of Tim, an improvised script currently being written for a movie to be produced in a few decades.

What else is a meta for?

After having read poetry around the traps for a bit, I still find myself getting attacks of the grumps whenever I hear the title 'performance poet'. It's not that it's an inaccurate summation of what I do when I get up on stage to read, it's just that it seems too specific. Mozart has had his music performed thousands of times, but that doesn't make him a performance musician, does it?

Still, it struck me the other day that maybe I was interpreting these titles in entirely the wrong way. Maybe they something far more obvious:

Emerging Writer
When you are an emerging writer, people keep you in a box during events until its time for you to perform, and they say, 'And now, it's time for our emerging writer', and you emerge from the box, and everyone will applaud.

Concrete Poet
A poet who either writes poems about concrete, or who pours his/her concrete in such a way that poems are formed.

Column Writer
Some kid who scrawls their names on a large Grecian column, standing about in that way that large Grecian columns do.

Underground Writer
Person who lives in a tunnel and writes about it for no real reason at all, apart from the fact that they like it, okay? When they need food, it gets taken to them by the Undertaker, of course. Sometimes, also, they have a pet dog who drools a lot called Underpants.

Bush poet
A person who cuts poems into their topiary for some arcane reason. Another version of the bush poet actually lives in a topiary bush and occasionally throws out some old poem they've written.

Still not sure what 'performance poet' really means (maybe the Tap Dancing Poet knows the answer). But hey - if we can't take literature literally, then where can we take it?

Political machinations

Turning to political news, Kevin Rudd has admitted to running the Australian economy during the holidays out of his backshed with an old diesel engine strung together with a combination of elastic bands, twine, blocks from a dismantled Lego castle, and parts out of the back of his television.

"Although it belched and produced a lot of smoke," laughs Rudd, "We were able to get the Australian economy running in a couple of days with this device, and pretty soon employment was on the rise."

But that's not all. The gadget-mad Prime Minister recently took plans to the Australian South East Asia Forum (ASEAN) for a new inter-regional body running on goose fat, made mostly from recycled car and bicycle parts and the letters 'A', 'N' and the '&' from an old Remington typewriter. "We demonstrated by having Stephen Smith get in and pedal", says Rudd, his eyes twinkling with amusement as he reminisces. "We had difficulty convincing some of the ASEAN ministers at first, but we've agreed to schedule further talks over the matter. I'm confident we can convince them at a later date as to this plan."

So enthusiastic has the ever-inventive PM been about his gimcrack devices that, sources tell us, Therese Rudd has forced him to move several half-built devices into his cupboard at Parliament House. These include a scheme to patch up the global banking system with sellotape, an apparatus consisting of two and a half table legs and the bottom of an old fan used to deliver better health services to elderly Australians, and a little battery-run doohickey that makes a 'blurping' sound whenever a Coalition politician is concocting a political scheme in the next room.

But some challenges are even beyond our whacky widget-making leader, as Rudd admits to us in the interview. "Once I was at the cafe at parliament house and noticed that their coffee machine was out of order," says Rudd. "Straight away I leapt into action and fused together three matchsticks, coiled a heating element of aluminium wire around them, hooked it into a car battery that I happened to have on myself, and rigged up a series of gears, pullies, and levers with a few handkerchiefs, to service the coffee needs of myself and staff." Unfortunately, the device didn't work - and the PM and his friends ended up - using a plunger in his office!

"I'm still laughing about it now!" laughs Rudd.

Pointless political statement of the day

Kate Jones, Queensland Minister for Climate Change:
"As climate change increases, we know that we'll get more extreme weather events."

1) Climate change doesn't 'increase'. The effects of climate change might increase or decrease, but not climate change itself. I'm not sure whether this statement is tautological or illogical.

2) Queensland would get more extreme weather events in the future anyway. There's no necessary link as suggested here.

3) 'Extreme weather events' is a hopelessly vague term, encompassing any slightly unusual weather occurrence, and there is no way of definitively linking any single weather occurrence to climate change.

4) None of this is 'known'.

One sentence, fourteen words, four errors! I wonder if that's a record?

The fierce ding-a-ling of the Mayoral bicycle bell

London mayor Boris Johnson has rescued a woman who was being attacked by an armed group of young girls, chasing them down the road on his bicycle.

Franny Armstrong called for help as she was surrounded and pushed by the girls, one of whom had an iron bar, in Camden, north London, on Monday night.

The mayor, who was cycling past, stopped and chased the girls down the street, calling them: "Oiks".

Ms Armstrong said: "He was my knight on a shining bicycle."

Ms Armstrong directed the film Age of Stupid and is the founder of the 10:10 campaign, which aims to cut carbon emissions by 10% in 2010.

One fine day Lord Mayor of London Boris Johnson was cycling down the road when all of a sudden he saw a set of bimonthly approval ratings for the Mayoralty in danger of falling.

By coincidence, just at that moment Famous Film Director Franny Armstrong happened to be standing around, being menaced by the inevitable result of the economic disparities in the modern urbanised society. Several of them, in fact.

"Save me!" shrieked Franny.

"What do you think you are doing?" cried Boris, grabbing a bar and swinging it wildly at the opinion polls. "This is just not cricket!" He chased the opinion polls down on his bicycle, snarling with rage.

"Oh Boris! You saved me!" cried Franny, rushing up to him and clasping her hands in a manner that was grateful but completely independent of hegemonic patriarchal values that dominate our society. "If it hadn't been for you, who knows what those inevitable result of the economic disparities in the modern urbanised society would have done?"

"What are you talking about?" frowned Boris.

"Didn't you see them? Those three inevitable result of the economic disparities in the modern urbanised society?"said Franny.

"Oh my God!" cried Boris. "I could have been killed! Help me! Help me Franny!"

And Boris Johnson immediately cycled off to his council chambers, where he swished and swirled his gavel at the opinion polls in peace and solitude, thinking to himself how horrible things could have been.

They call it the omelette plant

India regulator approves first GM vegetable
NEW DELHI — Indian regulators approved on Wednesday the introduction of genetically modified aubergines, potentially making them the first transgenic vegetable to be grown on local farms, a top official told AFP.

The 'omelette plant', which was lain by a duck-billed bottlebrush, is expected to be released commercially soon. It will be sold in the savouries section of the supermarket, alongside other genetically modified products, such as blue-vein-cheese whale sushi, and black dog forest cake pudding. Scientists who were working on the omelette plant are now focusing on their next project, producing a range of cat-faced tortoises to be sold in pet shops alongside tortoishell cats.

I drunk therefore I um

Where would we all be without drunk people?
We'd all be completely undrunk.
The world without drunks would be horrible.
The planet would utterly stunk.

A drunk person is just like a philosopher
Except they are somewhat more drunk.
A philosopher thinks more than a drunk person
But a drunk person is better - he thunks.

So lets all be thunkful for drunk people.
Let's all drink a nice glass of plunk.
Let's thunk of the troubles drunks go to
And let's buy one more glass of drunk.

Might read this out at my set at the Dan O'Connell on the weekend. I think I will. Come one, come all!

Hypothetical

You've just learned about a major race taking place in your city. Three dwarfs wearing blackface and high heels will be competing in a round the track race. One dwarf is a neo-Nazi and will be wearing the Q'uran as a paper hat on his head; the second is an fundamentalist Christian and is wearing a skirt made out pages of the Torah; the third dwarf is an Al Qaeda terrorist and will tear pages from the Bible as he races. The three dwarfs will be competing to win, as first prize, a Creole Cream biscuit. Afterwards they will perform a harmonic choral rendition of Al Jolson's 'Mammy' for the eager crowds.

Will you bet on the neo-Nazi Q'uran wearing dwarf, the fundy Christian Torah wearing dwarf, or the Al Qaeda Bible-tearing dwarf?

You've got to be in it to win it!

What Katy Didn't Do Next

So what did you do this weekend? Now there's a damned loaded question if ever I've heard one. I'll tell you what I did: I thought of things that I was going to do, and then went and thought of more things that I was going to do, and then went and thought of a whole bunch of other things that I was going to do, and then forgot the first bunch of things that I was going to do while being distracted by thinking of another bunch of things that I was going to do, and forgetting another bunch of things that I was going to do.

I present, as a case in point, a list. I wrote it on Friday. It's a list of things that I was going to, but so far haven't, written about. I like to write lists of things that I'm going to write about. Not only does it give you a completely pointless sense of accomplishment about things that you haven't done, but you can also neglect to read about them later (another useful way of forgetting about things).

Life 3.0 - a Users Guide

News article from a Wishy Washy person

Abecedarian Poem about typing

Facebook enemies list

There were several other items in that list. And all completely incomplete, I might note. I did get around to writing a rough draft of one of these items, but that might be all I ever do write of it.

It's most distracting to think, don't you think? I've been having thoughts for practically all my life, and I can tell you that as soon as you've thought of one thing, another thing comes along and you're suddenly thinking about that, and it's impossible to hold those two things in your head at once. I don't know how philosophers manage to think so determinedly about one subject over the course of an entire book. How do they stop themselves from being distracted? Maybe they spend most of their time not thinking, and that time they spend not thinking provides them with the lack of distraction they need to write their book.

As for myself, I spend half my day trying to remember the ideas that I had hours ago, and being frustrated because I can't remember them, while in my frustration, other ideas suddenly occur to me, as if they had been lurking in my head, waiting for just this moment to irritate me. Thinking about one thing while all this is going on, well, it's like climbing up a mountainside, while an avalanche is thundering down upon you, and a hurricane is whirling about you, and a vulture is sitting on your head trying to peck out your eyes, and a plane is shooting at you, and you are wearing only your underpants; and you are not only the person climbing up the mountainside, you're the avalanche thundering down as well as the hurricane, the vulture, the aeroplane, the person in the plane, and the underpants.

So please! Tell me what you were going to do this weekend but didn't do this weekend because you thought of other things you were going to do this weekend and caused you to forget those other things you were going to do on the weekend before spending half a day trying to remember what those other things you forgot were (and presumably still are) after you have forgotten them.

Loss loss!

THE leadership of Premier Nathan Rees in NSW will come under renewed pressure after a Newspoll that shows Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell has opened up a clear lead as preferred premier.
Barry O'Farrell overhauls Nathan Rees, The Weekend Australian

New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees has been polled the Australian Premier least likely to succeed at the polls, in an exclusive poll of pollsters polled by other pollsters.

Rees gained a clear lead in this poll, which indicated a clear loss in the polls, over his rivals in the other states, Anna Bligh, and David Bartlett. When asked about his victory in the lack-of-victory stakes, Rees has stated that "Oh, I'm not interested in what the polls on the polls say."

In other exclusive polls on polls news, Newspoll has polled the Roy Morgan poll as the poll most likely to succeed at being the poll least likely to succeed at being the poll most likely to succeed at winning the annual cricket match. However, Gallup poll has disputed these results, instead offering their own interpretation of the pollsters data, saying that Newspoll is the poll least likely to succeed at being the poll least likely to succeed at being the poll least likely to succeed in the monthly pollsters skolling competition. Meanwhile, Gallup poll has just released results revealing it is the poll most likely to release results which are similar to the results from other Gallup polls, making it a clear winner in the polls that are most like themselves stakes.

We will return to these important matters later.