In Memori... um?

For years I had been remembering a non-existent line of poetry from Tennyson's In Memoriam. It struck me as being rather good, but then again I suppose non-existent lines of poetry that you remember often do.

O sorrow, live with me and be my friend. 

Along the way, I'd somehow managed to turn Tennyson's iambic quatrameter into an iambic pentameter - nice work if you can get it. Also, while googling around yesterday, I discovered that I'd made this non-existent lines of poetry from three unrelated lines:

O sorrow, wilt thou live with me - Tennyson, In Memoriam.

There was a man whom Sorrow called his friend - Yeats, The Sad Shepherd

Come live with me and be my love -  Marlowe, Passionate Shepherd to his Love

Remembering poetry is often like that with me. Poems I really love stick with me and I can quote parts of them years later, but the words change in my head so that, when I quote them to you, I might just be quoting something no-one has ever heard before. I've been quoting and requoting Yeats' An Irish Airman Foresees his Death, but I can't ever remember what adjective he uses in line eight.

No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them luckier than before.

Or

No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.

Bartleby tells me it's the second version, but what would he know? He might be remembering the wrong word for the right line, too. Anyway, nowadays I find myself omitting whole couplets, or shifting around the order of the couplets inexplicably so the lovely climax

A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

Might appear right at the start if I'm not careful.

Meanwhile, poems of my own that I've written, never bothered to print out, but remembered, seem to be constantly shifting around in my head so I'm not sure I trust myself with them anymore.

I'd give you more examples of non-existent lines that I can't remember, but that's just the problem. I can't remember what they are. Still, I suppose there is one consolation; the best example I could come up with is from Tennyson's In Memoriam, which is an excellent poem to remember non-existent lines from. No, no, I meant that as a compliment....!

Blog post written entirely without vowels

Hmmm. Mmmm? Mmmm.

Grrrrr! (Hmmm? Pffffffft!)

(H: Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr)

1. Brrrrrrr!
2. Shhhhhhhhhh!
3. Rrrrrrrrsssssssssssssppp!

Mmn?

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Birds in words

Those haunting coots and hern.

The cuckoos from Midwich.

.

The lark that so conveniently rhymes with hark.

All those short depressing swallows.

Those cantankerous penguins.

The pelican, the phoenix and turtledove.

A Grecian chorus.

A whole parlement of foules.

Getting chased by ravening tigers has got to be good for your health

The dreaded work health check thing is today. I hate it and I haven't even gone to it yet. It's like a school exam in which every possible answer you can give is wrong. However, in order to make things more interesting, I've had a bowl full of cereal, two cups of plunger coffee, two slices of toast (one jam, one honey), another two cups of coffee just before coming in to work, and two biscuits. Knowing about this work health lark the cafe proprietor thoughtfully added an extra biscuit to my order for free. Bugger and blast, though - they're all finished now.

I'm not looking forward to this. Can you take sick leave from your work health check? Does anyone know? Are they going to be angry at me for having coffee? What if I worked it off by getting chased around the office by ravening tigers for half an hour or so? That would be good for my health wouldn't it? What to do, what to do...

An elegant solution is proposed to the Chaplains in School controversy

Growing up isn't easy. Everyday in school, kids have a difficult time, struggling with problems such as bullying, exclusion, and their own self-esteem. But in times of crisis, who can they turn to?

Will Type For Food would like to propose a new CHAPS IN SCHOOL PROGRAM. Here's how it would work. It would be just like the Chaplains In School program, except instead of having a minister for a church give advice to kids, that advice would be given by eccentric pipe-smoking fops in tweed.

The lessons from this valuable CHAPS IN SCHOOL PROGRAM would stay with children for life.

***

SAMPLE SCENARIO:
Chap is sitting in plush velveteen armchair wreathed in ruminative pipes of steam, occasionally rustling a racing form guide in front of him, when in walks a young girl, about seven or eight years old. 

YOUNG GIRL: Um, Mr Chap... I was wondering if I could ask you a question?

CHAP: (Drifts a languid hand in the air by way of lazily saying, go ahead)


YOUNG GIRL: Well... you see... I was just wondering... is there a God?

CHAP: (Loud spluttering is heard behind the smoke, followed by the sounds of the chap frantically wrestling with his pipe for several moments before his bewhiskered face shoots from out of the clouds of steam and fog.) I say, that's a bally odd question, who the devil put you up to it, my good child?

YOUNG GIRL: It's just... my mum says one thing and my dad says another...

CHAP: Well, taking one difficulty with another, weighing up one probability with another, I jolly well have to say that this is the most confounding dem quandary that any of you young suppers at the font of knowledge have ever had the temerity to ask me! I say.... (taking off his glasses and peering at the student)... do you like motorcars? Eh? Well I jolly well say it's time for you to start learning how to drive. Let's go for a jolly jaunt through the Elysian fields while I nut this one out...  

***

Yes, it's clear that the Will Type For Food CHAPS IN SCHOOL PROGRAM would help children to answer many of their deepest questions, including: when is the right time to have brandy*, when should a gentleman shave**, and what is the right age to give a child their first pipe***? It cannot be rolled out across the nation soon enough.

*Answer: always. 
**Answer: never.
***Answer: sometimes.

Putting the wham into whimsy

These are hard times we live in. Hard times, full of difficult situations like the global financial crisis, the situation in Greece, the troubles in the US, and the Kardashian family. But with the Fairfax papers undergoing a crisis that could eventually see them being either changed entirely, or closed forever, what trusted source can you turn to for all your journalism?

Thankfully, in these hard times, there is one publication you can rely on. Badger's Dozen. In these tough times, you need tough whimsy, and when you need tough whimsy, Badger is your man. (Or Badger.)

Here's just a small sample of the tough whimsy you'll get in the latest issue of Badger's Dozen:

- Alternative Olympic Coverage (who will win the toilet roll pole vaulting triathlon?) 

-  Non-offensive jokes about New Zealand. Sample joke: 
Q: What is the definition of an Aucklander? 
A: Person who lives in an exciting modern urban hub with many progressive industries, and is the thriving centre of international trade.

- Beard poems!

- Works by Anthony Riddell, Janet Jackson, and zine legend John Bangsund. 

- For the leisure seeker: a travel guide to taking the rubbish out!

Here's just a few quotes from satisfied customers. Their names have been omitted in order to protect their possible non-existence:

"A z... what? Zeen?"
"I have ten copies of them and some day I may even read them!"
"Cluck." 
"Works by who? Poems by who? Published by you? Who are you, anyway?"
"Meow?"

You know what to do. Here's my email and paypal address. Badger's Dozen 11 is not only worth $3, but it's a cheap $3. All across the world, people are crying out:
"MAKE MINE BADGER!"

Badger's Dozen: Tough Whimsy for Tough Times.

The ancient history at the bottom of my beer keg

Cast your mind far back into the wastes of time, readers. No, not last Monday when you took the rubbish bin out, further than that! At least, ten years, in fact, when you may well recall the show Bush Tucker Man on ABC television. Cheerful ex-army guy pootling around the sunburnt country, plains with their sweeping qualities, mountain ranges that were suitably rugged, and so on, plucking leaves and berries off various native plants and turning them into various unlikely soups and broths. So popular was this show, in fact, that a parody turned up on D-Generation - I can't remember the name, but perhaps it was "Bush Tucker Bloke". The Bloke would wander around some paddock, probably just behind his house, and reach into a bush producing - voila! - a McDonald's hamburger. Later, feeling thirsty, he'd go down to the river, and put his hand into some rocks bringing out - ta da! - a can of Fosters Beer.

Delving now, as I am, into the ancient mysteries of cheese-brewing-beer-crafting, etc, I'm occasionally tempted into similar theoretical exercises in gastronomical history. When did cave men go on the hunt for the first six pack? Where did they find the gorgonzola before supermarkets, or refrigerators, or milking had been invented? And what about yeast, when it was still wild and uncultivated, how on earth did they explain all those little wild and uncultivated plastic sachets lying around, and when did they work out that you had to put it into the flour to make it go?

The basic mystery, of course, is how did people get into drinking and eating stuff that, frankly, tastes just a little bit wrong and a little bit off? Especially, how did they get into tasting it before they even knew how to age it or ferment it or brew it correctly, so that it probably tasted really wrong and even more off? Were their choices that limited (it's either this or rock salad again tonight)? Lots of people nowadays would probably go for the rock salad.

As it turns out, the official explanations for the development of all these food stuffs is rather unreliable. Strachan in his book on brewing suggests that bread happened when someone was preparing a bread dough and some yeast which just happened to be walking by jumped in to have a little party. Well yes, that does have at least the virtue of simplicity. Not so much for this boffin here, by the name Shellhammer, who begins his rant with the waftily grandiose statement 'about 10,000 years ago, hunter gatherers were collecting wild barley....' They were collecting it 'as a source of nutrition', which they then place in 'some sort of collection device'. (How do you say 'source of nutrition' and 'collection device' in early human?) Then they get sick of the gathering and go off on a hunt instead, and while they're away, it rains, creating the familiar mash of barley grains used to get malt. Then it rains even more. Then yeast (which was always wandering about the ancient world causing trouble for people) jumps into the dough. Likely? About as likely as an Amish person winning Tatslotto.

This piece on the origins of yoghurt and milk drinking contains similar notional theorising about speculative probabilities, with a chap by the name of Thomas happily waffling at length about 'selective pressures for lactase persistence' that cause 'lactase persistence to evolve in Africa'. So, apparently, people kept on drinking and eating this stuff that made them sick and died for a couple of hundred years until they developed an immunity to it. 

I know, I know, I'm not a scientist and these things had to happen somehow and these explanation does sound reasonably simple. But how about the sort the ancients might have favoured? "A god came to earth and showed me how to do it." It's even simpler than all of these other stories.

Though why the Gods of Beer-making created the yeast in those little plastic packets, I'll never know.

Reasons for and against

Beatrice the cat just wandered up and made clear that she wanted to sit in my lap.

Now, let's see:
REASONS TO NOT LET BEATRICE SIT IN MY LAP
- I've just put some cornbread in the oven.

REASONS TO LET BEATRICE SIT IN MY LAP
- The washing has just finished and needs to be put out.
- There are dirty plates that need to be washed also.
- I need to clean the benches in the kitchen.

Hello, Beatrice!

Destruction! Devastation! And low low prices!

"I have had a variety of unpleasant experiences with my fellow shoppers at the supermarket", writes Lip Magazine's Ms Manners.

... ranging from an unnecessary sigh when I asked the guy crouching in front of the shelves if he would mind letting me pass with my trolley, all the way through to a confrontation with a mother who was determined that she should be served first at the deli (even though my ticket was before hers) as it was her son who fixed the ticketing machine. All of these experiences could have been avoided if we all followed some simple form of supermarket etiquette.

This suggestion is excellent; however, I cannot help being a little disappointed by the tips that follow. ('Forming a queue', and saying 'excuse me' when you wish to slip past people on the aisle, for instance.) All very well - but in this age of rapacious supermarket capitalism, will this really do the trick? I think not.

Taking 'offence is the best form of defence' as my leitmotif, I would like to offer my own humble tips for supermarket etiquette.

- Challenge your fellow customers to a duel using French baguettes. Also, those large salamis they sell in the deli section make excellent, mace-like objects. If you tie a dragonfruit onto the end of them with dental floss (health aisle) you will even get the spikes on the end.

- Large wheels of cheese are virtually unstoppable once they get going, so roll them under the shopping trolleys of your enemies fellow customers.

- Other good things for rolling - apples, oranges, cabbages.

- If they start getting close take some detergent from the 'cleaning' aisle and squirt it on the floor behind you to make them slip up.

- Now I'm not suggesting arson or anything like that, but bicarbonate of soda can be found in the cooking aisle. And coke in the drinks aisle. Now, if you put these two together...

- Use shopping trolleys as a makeshift horse to beat a swift getaway.

- Durians. They stink. Biological warfare, anyone?

- Rolling pin (cooking aisle), baking tin (cooking aisle again), chestnuts (fruit aisle). What could this make but... THE PERFECT CATAPULT? Basically, you have to do this.

- Camouflage and trickery is an essential component of modern war. So don’t forget to use bananas (can be made to look like real guns), and strawberry jam or tomato sauce (excellent fake blood).

- Tip out all the blubbering bags of tofu from the vegetarian aisle into a huge mass on the floor, and use them to form a gigantic Tofumonster. With any luck, some of that tofu will be made from genetically modified soy, and the Tofumonster will come to terrifying life and wobble in a menacing fashion down the aisle at your foes fellow customers.

- Prisoners fellow customers (why do I keep doing that?)can be held under those large wooden crates they put the fruit on. Use the watermelons and rockmelons as weights to ensure they can’t get out again.

Happy shopping, everyone!

Supermarket shopping in happier, simpler times.

The media disaster, and also Fairfax

Troubled times for the Australian media, with dramatic job losses from Fairfax, and a fight over board seats leading to Paul Kelly appearing on Sky television looking very serious and important in order to deliver his opinion on the matter. It's a concern in this day and age that Paul Kelly is still allowed to appear in public looking serious and important in order to deliver his opinion on matters. Some say that it's time for the government to step in and make legislative changes in order to prevent it from happening in the future, while others say that it's up to the media themselves to be responsible and not allow Paul Kelly to appear in public looking serious and important in order to deliver his opinion on matters. A decade ago, I remember sitting in a flat in Annandale watching the television with a friend when Paul Kelly appeared looking very serious and important and delivering his opinion on matters. My friend snickered audibly and said, 'Train, let's hope we never end up like that.' It was good advice, but unfortunately Paul Kelly pretty much stayed that way for the next ten years, and shows every sign of continuing to look serious and important in order to deliver his opinion on matters for many many years into the future. Well, he's perfectly welcome to do it in front of his mirror at home, is all I can say. Just please, Paul - spare the rest of us. It's time to stop inflicting us with your looks of serious import and important seriousness.

***

Turning away from this ongoing disaster to much more cheerful matters, we can now look at the implosion of Fairfax. The company has been in the habit of delivering five free copies of their local Melbourne rag, The Age, to a cafe near my work every morning, which, when I first learned about it, struck me as being a rather unsustainable practice. Pretty much anyone with half a brain in their heads can have seen their current troubles coming from miles away, which is perhaps why the current Fairfax board didn't. Several of the Greens made one of those completely meaningless statements politicians like to do today, saying that it was important to protect the independence of the media, which is why they proposed a law in order to stop the Fairfax board making editorial decisions. In order to protect the independence of the media, politicians have to interfere with the media, apparently. Ben Eltham, writing in New Matilda, came to the conclusion that in order to protect same, the government should pay Fairfax money ('modest... $100 million a year'). One of the problems Fairfax has had, of course, has been various multi-media news sources directly funded by the government - ABC, SBS, and The Conversation among them. So the solution to a problem partially created by the distribution of public money is the distribution of more public money. So apparently the way to preserve Fairfax's independence is government interference, followed by dependence on the same government. Figure that one out.

***

Meanwhile, Fairfax's coverage of Fairfax's ongoing demise has been positively surreal, with a report by Fairfax reporters on a letter sent by Fairfax reporters to the incoming management of the Fairfax board, Fairfax reporters reporting on strikes by Fairfax reporters, and plenty of factual Fairfax front pages on the grim days ahead for the newspaper company.

***

In the unlikely event of Tim Blair taking over a prominent Fairfax editorship, I suggested a brand name change yesterday: TIMBLAIRFAX. In the same spirit I've been tossing a few other brand name ideas around:

UNFAIRFAX

DECLININGSHAREFAX

YOUJUSTDONTCAREFAX

HEYBROTHERHAVEYOUGOTANYCHANGESPAREFAX

CUDDLYTEDDYBEARFAX.

What was the name of that song again that that person was in?

When I get older

(And older

And older

And older

And older

And older)

Losin’ my hair

(And my teeth

And my eyesight

And my hearin’

And my coordination

And my keys where did I put that again

And my memory)

Will you still be sendin’ me a valentine

(Fan mail

Offer of marriage

Court case

More fan mail

More more fan mail

Even more fan mail)

Birthday greetings, bottle of

(Alcohol-reduced

Medically-approved)

wine?

Will you still need me

Will you still feed me

(Will you remember to give me the white pills in the morning and the green pills in the evening and none of the blue pills except every Wednesday)

When I’m

64

65

66

67

68

69

70?

Happy birthday, Paul.

For my next trick, I will turn a sonata into a sultana

".... something something something something conceptualise something something..." said the Baron, her fingers idly drifting across our piano keys.

Looking at the piano, my own mind idly drifting, I thought, "how do you type conceptualise on the piano again?" I tried to figure it out but for some reason it wouldn't work.

How do you type conceptualise on the piano? I still can't remember.

Aphorism which just popped into my head but which I will probably never get an opportunity to use before I forget all about it so have decided to thoughtfully place here

All that titters is not told.

Locations for new poetry readings

On the green hill in the park in Thomastown that has the 19th century bluestone Lutheran church. Preference given to poems written in Edmund Spencer's time or before.

Deep in the catacombs of one of Melbourne's underground toilets. Readers could make dramatic use of individual chambers for their set.

In the cloak room of the Astor Theatre. Possibly even their toilet.

In my bathtub.No hint of impropriety about it though. Wouldn't want people getting the wrong idea.

In training for the International Long Distance Mixed Metaphor Endurance Competition

The straw that broke the back of the camel trying to fit through the eye of the needle in the haystack while casting out the mote in the eye of the needle of his brother while not casting out the beam from his own frying pan into the fire because it was too busy thinking the pot calling the kettle black was racist.

***

It’s not everyone’s storm in a cup of tea but what it all boils down to is that any port in a storm will do for plenty of fish in the sea rather than just shooting them in the barrel which is full of monkeys anyway, which lets the cat out of the bag about the elephant in the room, which is deserting the tea cup like rats from a sinking gravy train.

***

How long is a piece of string if it is as straight as the crow flies in the sky that’s as high as the eye of the elephant in the room in the plain on Spain that the rain falls on during the rainy day that we are saving up something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue for, and can someone stop the angels dancing on the head of the needle so we can put the string through it’s eye in the haystack before the camel tries and breaks it back with the aforementioned straw?

Amazing origami designs!

You may already be familiar with the origami crane -

pull its neck to make its wings flap.

And then there's the origami frog -

tap on its back to make it hop. 

And now, there's the origami NBN truck: put it in your office to promote an infrastructure project that might sometime in the next decade be more or less finished although some of the technology may be obsolete by that time and many Australians won't want or need it anyway at the cost of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.  Hoorah!

By an odd coincidence, I've recently invented an origami design of my own. It's rather complex, and involves a series of multi-dimensional inverse-valley-mountain folds that you'll need a black belt in Ju Jitsu to complete. It's an origami rock.

STEP 1:

1. Begin with a square of paper 

and scrunch it up in your fist.

2. The completed rock.

You can roll it out across Australia, just like the NBN!

(Thanks, Tim).

The blightings on the wall

Something struck me yesterday when I was in the toilet at the pub. Thankfully it was a thought, because it does not bear thinking about what sort of thing would strike you in the toilet at the pub if the thing that strikes you is not a thought. Anyway, I was thinking about the occasional 'because it's good for you' government-sponsored health advertisement you see in bars and pubs around the city. (Because if you can read it in proximity to the occasional dirty limericks you get on dunny walls at pubs, then you've really got to believe it.)

So, I thought, why doesn't the Health Department at the government get into the business of writing dirty limericks, toilet wall poems, and the like? Clearly-printed, neat, bureaucratically-produced saucy limericks about sexually-transmissible diseases, that sort of thing?

There'd be the standard warnings about the importance of contraception:

If you have unprotected sex, you'll probably get rabies,

Or any number of other diseases, such as lower-class babies.

If it's by the government, it wouldn't be the same without anti-smoking propaganda:

Regret regret

The cigarette

The cigarette

 Regret regret

The cigarette

Upset upset

Upset upset

The cigarette

Dead yet dead yet

The cigarette

The cigarette

Dead yet dead yet.

These days, funnily enough, you only seem to hear about legal drugs being bad for you, but the risky behaviour of illegal drug users would get the occasional look in:

Little needle -

Small disease -

Huge burden on the public health system -

Taxes please.

And of course I suppose you'd occasionally have to put up with a spot of nakedly self-interested political barracking. There's poetry for that, too:

Vote for Gillard vote for Gillard

You'll be full of vim and vigour

Vote for Gillard vote for Gillard

And the parts that you want will get smaller and the parts that you want will get bigger

Vote for Gillard vote for Gillard

You'll eat better every day

Vote for Gillard vote for Gillard

Everything you worry about will just wash away

Vote for Gillard vote for Gillard

Your life will be a ballad sung by Anthony Calleja

Don't vote Abbott don't vote Abbott

You'll get gonorrhea. 

Hey, everyone, I think this thing's a goer. Excuse me while I get the Health Department on the line and work up my application to be the first publicly-sponsored Sycophant Poet Laureate....

Cooking with Tim - hot cross buns!

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Cooking with Tim! In previous shows, we've learned how to make such classics as 'Takeaway Pizza', '7/11 Meat Pie', and '$1 chocolate bar from the shops just down the road'! Today, we're going to learn a very special recipe - home made HOT CROSS BUNS! And we're going to do it in just three steps!

FIRST - You melt some butter and heat some milk up on the stove. This is STEP 1 - HOT.

SECOND - You add in a whole bunch of flour, yeast, sultanas, raisins, sugar, etc. Then you knead it around for a bit. Here's what the results look like; when you see them, you will emit a cry similar to Homer Simpson.

Dough!

Now you will be really angry. You have reached STEP 2 - CROSS.

THIRD - you go to the shop and buy them from the supermarket instead. Congratulations! You have reached STEP 3 - BUNS.

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Cooking with Tim!

UPDATE! -  Of course there is an alternative recipe -

Q: How do you make hot cross buns?
A: Pour boiling water down a rabbit hole.

However, this blog does not endorse cruelty to animals. Also, the buns will be a bit too furry for most people's liking.

To express the difficulty within a certain area of specificity, it is, in a word, nippy

It's cold today! It's so cold that I've been virtually forced to curl my fingers around a cup of hot coffee! I've retreated to the bed, turned the heater on, and wrapped the dressing gown around me. It's still cold! I've even (shudder) gone so far as doing the washing in an attempt to keep my fingers warm - and there was hardly  any washing to do!

If things get any worse I might have to consider retreating to bed while reading Dante's inferno and cooking hot cross buns while doing even more of the non-existent washing up in a bath full of chilli peppers.

The Substitute Handkerchief Review

The Substitute Handkerchief Review(tm)
For those many occasions when you have a cold which causes you to have a runny nose and you leave the house in a rush and forget to take a handkerchief and therefore are in need of something to blow your nose.

House bricks - it all depends. Is the house brick connected to a house? The person owning the house may resent you using it to blow your nose.

Domestic pets - with their lush, warm fur, pets seem inviting to the potential nostril in need of an aero-hygenic treatment. However, the adventurous nose-blower should first ask himself a few questions: is the pet awake or asleep, docile or active, etc? Remember: pets have claws, and often bite.

A muffin - only if it tastes bad. And only after you have tasted it to make sure. Don't get confused here: it would be quite awkward if you first blowed your nose on the muffin, and then tasted it to make sure it tasted bad.

Your shirt - are you wearing it to your office? It could still be fine to blow your nose on it - but it is preferable if your office is under a car, or in the mud on a farm somewhere.

Someone else's shirt - generally, the shirts that people are yet to wear are vastly preferable, as they are much cleaner and less likely to smell.

Toilet paper - only before you use it for other purposes. However, be aware that for some curious reason, many sheets of toilet paper these days are lightly scented with floral essences, presumably because people like having floral-scented bottoms. These may make you sneeze.

A book of modernist poetry - Unfortunately, the field of literary criticism is still unsettled in its view on whether it is suitable to blow your nose on this or not. Best confine your nose-blowing efforts to literary productions such as street directories, bus timetables, etc.

A pancake that has been cooked ten minutes ago - Large, pliable, and warm without being hot, a pancake makes an almost ideal surface on which to blow your nose if you don't have a hankderchief. Pity that pancakes taste so nice and you've probably already eaten it by then.

A seat on the tram - it really depends where the tram has been and where it's going. Also, make sure you have a ticket or Myki with you.

Should you blow your nose on this ordinary looking house brick? This is one of the many controversies looked at in today's issue of The Substitute Handkerchief Review.

First notes towards a historical study of toilet roll architecture

The origin of toilet roll towers is veiled in the mists of time. When did the first primitive peoples start using the toilet rolls that were left-over once all the paper had been taken off to make rudimentary constructions? What did the first towers, consisting of a mere two or three toilet rolls, signify? Were they a monument to the Gods? A technical experiment? A demonstration of the power of some local ruler? The more we delve into this matters, it seems, the less we know: if we are to accept that the Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs used the power of slave labour to erect their toilet roll pyramids, then how did they get all those slaves into the toilet? Like I said, it is veiled in the mists of time.

Today, toilet roll architecture stretches across the globe, and also into the Baron and Tim's bathroom. Who are the Baron and Tim anyway? What ancient secrets do they have linking them to the time of Sumer, when it is thought the first true toilet roll architectural guilds began? While we may never know for certain who Tim and the Baron are, it seems fairly clear that they live in Lalor and have a sizeable toilet roll tower in their bathroom. It is less clear just who is responsible for it: the Baron says Tim did it. Tim maintains the cats did it. The cats ignore me and lick their tails. Is there something I am not meant to know? During the whole of time I spent with this shy and vulnerable ancient tribe, although impressed by the resilience of their simple tribal ways, I never managed to get to the bottom of this question.

One thing is for certain: if you are thinking of making a toilet roll tower for yourself, make sure you do it away from the front of the toilet, lest someone going into the toilet should accidentally cause the tower to topple by shutting the door. Also, you might find that any cats or tigers that are around the house might like to play with the toilet roll tower. But was that one thing or two things? Alas, that is yet another question that we may never know the answer to in the still-developing science of toilet roll architecture. Let me just repeat three words: veiled, mists, time.

Things that sound like other things

Kafuffle. Means - a spot of bother, a fuss, a trouble.

Sounds like - something deliciously light, fluffy, and crispy that you've just cooked in the oven.

Kafuffle? Mmm, yes - I wouldn't mind one right now. Hang on, I'll make some coffee...

Next train to Sydenglam

Shared the last part of my morning train ride to North Melbourne today with someone's apple core on the seat beside me.

It was truly a propitious occasion to share a seat with such an August Personage.

I hope it had its Myki with it, though.

WTFF News: Tasmania discovered (again)

CANBERRA, TUESDAY - Australia's island state of Tasmania has finally been discovered, again, after a man named Dave was found to have accidentally packed it up in a box and put it at the back of his cupboard.

"It was a complete accident," laughs Dave, 65. "I was just closing my market stall up a few Saturdays ago, as I normally do, and happened to pack Tasmania in as well. What a duffer I've been!"

Thankfully, Australian law authorities were quickly on the case, and started their search for Tasmania only three weeks after the island state went missing. "We didn't notice anything at first," admits Constable Guffrey, of the Federal Police. "But when a couple of tourists to Tasmania from the mainland came back and said they couldn't find anything, then we started to get suspicious."

It was initially thought that the state of Tasmania had been abducted by terrorists, but after several weeks nobody had claimed responsibility.

Tasmania is not the first geographical location to go missing. Previously, the British nation of Wales took a month off to see the sites around the world, and the Newfoundland Islands were briefly lost just after being found by the Portuguese.

The location has been restored to its location by Dave with hearty apologies from the rest of Australia and a promise not to do it again. 

 

Flinders Street Station - one of many sights that you will not see in Tasmania.

The reason for my being late for work today, tomorrow, and every foreseeable day in the future

 

No, that's not a laptop you see there. If it was a laptop, clearly, it would be in my lap. Let's pretend we never saw it. 

The Baron might be late for work, too.