Will Type For Food
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Delightful gurgling
Sunday, April 07, 2024
Unsound poetry
Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Sign up to my marriage counselling service, everyone!
Sunday, December 31, 2023
An unoriginal festive poem
Saturday, December 23, 2023
Looking Awkward to Christmas
A Christmas Poem in Seven Ers
Wednesday, October 04, 2023
Saturday, September 30, 2023
A grand occasion!
For no reason at all, a poem.
The colours and shapes decided
They needed to sort out what’s what –
If the blue could beat green in a blue,
If rectangles were best, or the dots.
So they found a municipal oval,
And prepared for a very grand day,
And sent out the word to each other
That now might be a particularly auspicious time to play.
First up were the black and white zig zags,
Who bested the greeny-blue squares;
But then came the fuchsia diamonds,
Who put stop to their little affair.
The pink polka dots beat the purple –
The game was a jolly good romp;
While the match up of teal versus salmon
Turned into a contre-temps.
O! The crowd cried with eager excitement,
With passion and fervour and rage
At the stripes, the houndstooth, the triangles,
The amber, the peach and the beige!
But now, in this final of finals,
Which side would be best of the best?
Out came the shapes and the colours
For a truly terrific contest!
First up were the lilac-cream squiggles –
The crowd roared with glee from the stand;
And then came the buttercup checkmarks –
This final was grander than grand!
But ah, what a jolly imbroglio –
What more of this show need I say?
Though the squiggles played wonderfully well,
The buttercup checks won the day.
What a perfectly spiffing occasion!
They all gave a most rousing cheer,
And determined that, all things considered,
They would meet up same time next year!
Tuesday, September 05, 2023
You can misquote me on that
I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so. - Sydney Smith.
There’s nothing like a good-bad review, they’re an art all on their own: not always a very nice art, but an art nonetheless. Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe claimed to be a collector of bad reviews, and, expounding on this concept, would often quote a bad review given to another composer – ‘This is a piece that gives A major a bad name’ – and proclaim, ‘I would love to have a review like that written about a piece of mine!’ Reviewer John Wilson Croker supposedly wrote the review that killed John Keats, which is unfortunate; even more unfortunate, then, that the review is hugely funny. (However, it wasn’t actually the review that killed off Keats: it was tuberculosis, a disease not known for its interest in the finer points of literature or literary reviews). Or then there is the artist Hal Porter’s highly amusing pisstake of Patrick White (‘he commits poetry’), to which White wrote an equally memorable, if not particularly amusing, review of a review (or, rather, a review of a reviewer): ‘a sac of green pus throbbing with jealousy’.
But the example that really comes to mind, and really seems pertinent to the issue here, of publishers of mischievously and misleadingly quoting critics, comes on the covers of Dan Brown’s bestselling Da Vinci Code. For those who have been living under a rock for the past two decades, Dan Brown is an author who has dedicated his life to writing very popular, and very bad, fiction; for the benefit of critics, he has placed tautologies and superfluities and errors and infelicities of writing on every page, in every sentence (in fact he has done his best to place them in every word). He really is a wonderful, generous writer, and one can only hope the writers of bad reviews really appreciate all he has done for them. Several early reviews of the Code are quoted on the covers, including one from the New York Times’Janet Maslin, of such effusive praise that it can clearly only be understood as sarcasm.
The word for ''The Da Vinci Code'' is a rare invertible palindrome. Rotated 180 degrees on a horizontal axis so that it is upside down, it denotes the maternal essence that is sometimes linked to the sport of soccer. Read right side up, it concisely conveys the kind of extreme enthusiasm with which this riddle-filled, code-breaking, exhilaratingly brainy thriller can be recommended… That word is wow.
And so, it’s a beautiful thing, this relationship between the author and the critic – the author that loves, and the critic that hates; the author that loves to love, and the critic that loves to hate; the author that loves to misquote the critic that hates the author, on their front cover, even in the act of the critic hating. It may seem perverse to us, but we must not kink shame. It is by no means the strangest thing to happen in the attention economy we all live in. On the one hand, the author does not love the critic; on the other hand, the critic does not love the author; on the third hand, they both clearly do.
Now, as a publisher (which you either are or you aren’t), when it comes to misquoting a critic in your book blurb (which you should never do), just how should you go about it? Personally, I recommend blatantly. That way, there is a simple and winning honesty to your dishonesty that will make you seem winsome and charming. However, there are other ways the publishers like to go about it. Passages are excerpted willy nilly, at large and at small, taken from the one paragraph of praise in a lengthy, excoriating essay; or, when even that isn’t possible, taken from the sentences at either end of the column that could, in certain lights, be seen, or be interpreted as being seen, as praiseworthy. Random words can even be taken from wildly different geographies of the column, and then cobbled together, in a delightfully avaricious homage to Dadaist collage technique.
As for the critics, they, too, can generously prepare their columns for misquoting, anticipating this strange, unethical-yet-earnest tribute to their own literary efforts paid by publishers. They can provide neat little paragraphs of grossly hyperbolic praise for critics, maybe even put them in a little box so the publishers may notice them better, like an attractive and inviting fenced public garden. They can cultivate exaggerated, esoteric and archaic terms of deliberately ambiguous phraseology and euphemism, so as to sound like praise but leave some reason for doubt. They can even engage in their own elaborate literary and cryptic exercise, by writing a paragraph in commendation of the book that, nevertheless, encodes incredibly rude messages about the author and/or publishers (in accordance with Gwen Harwood’s notorious ‘FUCK ALL EDITORS’ sonnet). There can hardly be any exercise more literary than this, writing about a subject without writing about it. Writers hardly ever write about what they are writing about. That’s how you can tell they really mean it.
On the whole, the practice of taking quotes from critics and deliberately misquoting them for the sake of book sales is wrong, and cannot be condoned; but it will certainly happen anyway, because critics are critics, and publishers are publishers, and their aims and wishes are so very different. The results, also, are so frequently entertaining and of such literary interest that we should probably encourage them anyway. So even though you shouldn’t do it, you should. I suppose I am conflicted about this matter after all, which is a great relief, I will not have to tear myself to shreds in the ferocity of my self-agreement, I am calm, I am at peace, I am at two with myself at last. Isn’t it beautiful how literature can do that?
Tuesday, August 08, 2023
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells
Someone rang our phone the other day. What kind of a monster does that? Rings you - when you are at home, expecting - what? Some kind of answer? What barbarians we have become.
Admittedly, there was a time when we all used to answer the phone when it rang. Remember that? We used to spring towards the phone when it rang. We used to be afraid of *not* answering the phone. Afraid of what, I'm not sure. But there's nothing like a traditional phone bell to make you feel alarmed, anxious and afraid. I remember hearing Barry Humphries on the radio once talking about one of his early shows, in which the theatre goers sat in a darkened auditorium while the actors played the sound of a phone at them, Clearly, he was an evil man.
Obviously, I didn't answer the phone. I stood outside the room where it was ringing and, in some horror, watched it ring until it stopped, as any sensible person would do - all while experiencing that peculiar form of nostalgia for a period when that sound used to fill us with fear and dread and anxiety on the regular. It is an extremely interesting type of nostalgia that I recommend to nobody.
But what a time we live in! We are advanced so far as a society, technologically and culturally, that a person on the other side of the city, the other side of the country, or the other side of the world, can call you with the press of a few buttons, and you can decide to not pick up the phone probably. Unless you really feel like it which you don't just at the moment maybe. That's progress for you.
Who knew what a great revolution Alexander Graham-Bell was unleashing with his invention of the telephone? It was the fourth-greatest invention of the telecommunications era, allowing us all to keep in touch with one another, which led to the third-greatest, second-greatest, and first-greatest inventions of the telecommunications era, the snooze button, the silent button, and the off button, allowing us all to keep out of touch with one another. Technology is full of marvels.
But, you know, you're welcome to call again later when I feel like talking possibly.
Tuesday, July 11, 2023
I said what I said
Sunday, May 14, 2023
Mthoer’s Yda Pmoe
THE POEM
Today your child is a messTomorrow I expect to all intents and purposes that they will be a pile of cess
Happy Mother’s Day I guess.
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Car people
I call this poem CAR PEOPLE because I am and it isn't.
Though beholden to a Holden,I am fonder of a Honda,
Make Elantra be my mantra
Anyday;
In Accord with an Accord,
I could roll well with a Rolls,
Or - OMG - an MG
Anyway;
But I can but afford a Ford
And that way I'll have to stay.
Friday, March 17, 2023
Old MacDonald had a farm, AI AI O
Hello and here is a poem called HEY CHATBOT, WRITE A POEM IN THE STYLE OF AN AI WRITING IN THE STYLE OF A PERSON WRITING IN THE STYLE OF AN AI WRITING IN THE STYLE OF A PERSON WRITING IN THE STYLE OF AN AI WRITING IN THE STYLE OF A PERSON WRITING IN THE STYLE OF AN AI ABOUT LOVE thanks.
Monday, March 13, 2023
As the blind man said, I see
I like to see the Siamangs at the zoo. Especially when I see one Siamang see another Siamang.
Because then, I see a Siamang among the Siamangs see a Siamang among the Siamangs, and sometimes that Siamang among the Siamangs sees the other Siamang among the Siamangs seeing it.
Do you see?
Monday, December 19, 2022
Obligatory Festive Versifications
Christmas Chris was in a fix:
Betwixt the Christmas wine and beer,
The Christmas special egg nog mix,
The Christmas soon and Christmas here,
He’d had his fill of Christmas cheer,
And in a Christmas daze he fell
Into a torpid Christmas blear,
Out of his Christmas All is Well,
From Christmas Heaven into CHRISTMAS HELL.
Christmas Hell was full fantastic
With Christmas crap and Christmas Kringle,
Christmas wrapping, Christmas plastic,
Christmas bells and Christmas dingle,
Endless Christmas jingle jingle
Jingles echoed down the floors;
Upside down in every ingle,
Christmas trees grew down in scores.
The ruler of this land was SATAN CLAWS.
With Christmas fangs in Christmas jaws,
And Christmas eyes of festive red,
And Christmas slaver in his maws,
And Christmas horns upon his head,
No Christmas laugh from he – instead,
A booming, roaring “O HO HO”,
Came forth to cheer the Christmas dead,
A snarling, growling “O NO NO”,
And “NOW YOU’RE HERE, YOU’LL NEVER GO GO GO!”
It was a happy Christmas realm –
Here Christmas could not be denied,
Here Christmas glitz could overwhelm;
Christmas Chris’s eyes were wide
As Satan Claws came to his side.
“O Christmas Chris, your dream is found –
Be welcome to my land,” he cried.
“From Christmas treat to treat you’ll bound
In Christmas Hell, it’s CHRISTMAS ALL YEAR ROUND.”
Chris saw it all, he knew the score,
Sang from the Christmas hymn sheet smartly,
Christmas shopping at each store,
Joining in the Christmas party –
For Christmas Chris was Christmas tarty.
But something somehow held him back,
His Christmas cheer was less than hearty,
His Christmas spirit somewhat slack –
In Christmas Hell there was a lack of… lack.
But for one hundred years and more,
He joined the great extravaganza,
Shopped at Christmas shops galore,
Sang forwards, backwards every stanza
By Carey, Buble, Mario Lanza,
Binged on pudding til he burst,
Then binged again, a binge bonanza,
In Christmas crackers was immersed:
His Christmas spirits sank: it was the worst.
So lowly grew his joie de vivre,
Through Christmas Hell they raised alarms –
Was Christmas Chris an unbeliever,
Immune to all the Christmas charms
Of Christmas Hell? The Christmas balms
Of Christmas food and Christmas dishes?
How dare he suffer any qualms
About a Christmas so propitious,
Christmas delectable, divine, delicious!
Now Satan Claws grew quite irate
At Christmas Chris’s melancholy,
And came his inmate to berate:
“Now what’s all this, you Yuletide Wally?
Do I detect a lack of jolly?
A scorning of my Christmas cherry?
Less ‘Fa la la’ and ‘Boughs of holly’
Than we would wish? No Christmas merry?
For here in Christmas Hell, ‘tis Christmas very –
Here, All is More, and Nothing, Less:
All oversugared, overiced,
Christmas excess upon excess!
Our Christmas food is overspiced,
Our Christmas gifts are overpriced;
To not partake, our only crime;
Our only lack is Christmas CHRIST –
Here, Christmas reason, Christmas rhyme;
Here, only Christmas til the end of time.”
“But I love Christmas – that I do!”
Cried Christmas Chris in his frustration,
“I always have – you know it’s true!
But can’t you find accommodation
In Christmas hell for moderation?
My Christmas wish today is strange:
This Christmas needs alleviation,
Some Not Christmas for a change.
Is this a Christmas gift you could arrange?”
“A heresy! A heresy!”
Satan Claws in anger cried –
“I must call up the clerisy,
My Christmas will won’t be defied!”
In fury, bulging hugely wide,
Like some Christmas-Daemon-Shiva,
He sprouted arms from every side:
A KRAMPUS army, in a fever,
Raging, “Let us smite the unbeliever!”
In confusion and in terror,
Christmas Chris fled from the horde,
All screaming, “Purge the Christmas error!
He spurns our Christmas Hell accord!
We’ll scourge him for our Christmas Lord –
He’s made a list, and checked it twice,
And now we’ll sort with axe and sword
Who is naughty, who is nice!
Now Chris shall be our CHRISTMAS SACRIFICE!”
All through the Christmas Hell they raced,
All through the hollow Christmas halls,
As after Christmas Chris they chased;
A bleak infinitude of malls
That thundered with their Christmas calls
For “CHRISTMAS BLOOD!” And “CHRISTMAS ROAST!” –
Ears ringing with their yowls and squalls,
Chris fell before the braying host,
And blackness overcame him. He was toast.
***
Through ouch and sore and hurt and ache,
Blood dully thumping in his head,
And stale smells of Christmas cake,
Undead, not dead, alert, in bed,
Wakes Christmas Chris. A vision, red,
Then was it all a demon drinker’s dreaming?
Now through the blank hungover day,
The ruins of the Christmas feast,
Chris makes his shuffle-stumble way.
And did he beat the Christmas beast?
Is he from Christmas Hell released?
The image still before his eyes,
Of Christmas Hell and its deceased,
Flames and flickers, fades and dies;
“Thank Christ that’s over then”, Chris sighs.
END
Saturday, November 19, 2022
Celebratory International Men's Day Post
Welcome to International Men's Day!
You might think that every day is International Men's Day, but that is not the case: in fact, according to well-established tradition, every day is 'Thinking Every Day is 'International Men's Day' Day', so that's an easy mistake to make, but now we hope that is cleared up.
Thinking today is 'Thinking Today is 'International Men's Day' Day' is an advanced mistake to make. That was actually yesterday. Meanwhile, 'Thinking Yesterday is 'Thinking Today is 'International Men's Day' Day' Day' is, confusingly, in a week's time. I think.
Who are men? What are days? Why are they international? These are all questions. They will be answered in due course, or next year, or day, or the one after that, (whichever comes last).
Thank you for your time.
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Top take
To take it from the top, there's 'take it from the top', which means what I just meant it to mean. You might take it to the top, but that might be taking it over the top, and has anyone ever taken something under the top? It's enough to make you blow your top, which sounds saucy but isn't, until someone takes their top off, which is. To top that, you might top yourself, but don't top yourself, which just tops it all off. And I just took that off the top of my head. English really is perfectly simple until you utter a word.
Sunday, October 02, 2022
The world has become a dark despotic hellhole since the sun has been extinguished, but at least we have daylight savings to look forward to
It is the year two zillion and twenty two, and the world has become a dark despotic hellhole since the extinguishing of our sun a millennia ago. But at least we have daylight savings to look forward to. We all watched on, horrified, at the last flickerings of fire from our beloved star a millennium ago, and life all but disappeared on our own planet. Only we, humans, labour on, as slaves of our Robot Overlord Volqgnxx BLOOPmax33 (SCREEEEEAM!), as a result of a desperate deal struck with Volqgnxx (SCREEEEEAM!) in the days of the Great Twilight. Sure, Its demands are harsh and almost unendurable, but on the other hand, at least we get an extra hour to sleep in now that it's daylight savings again.
There will, of course, always be those negative, contrarian few, who object to daylight savings because 1) there is no daylight to save anymore, and 2) even if there were, we wouldn't be able to enjoy it anyway because Volqgnxx (SCREEEEEAM!) in Its Infinite Wisdom, has removed eyes from our genetic code. Yet another thing to be grateful to Volqgnxx (SCREEEEEAM!) for, really. To these contrarians, my question is - is it really so hard to change the clock twice every year? You may reply that the system is irrational and that Somebody Really Ought To Change It. But do you really want Volqgnxx (SCREEEEEAM!) to take this from us, too?
Just take me as an example. I have been designated by Volqgnxx (SCREEEEEAM!) as sex slave to Mechanotron Sexbot Despina 99 (SHUDDER!) It continues to enact a terrible revenge upon humans for Its long centuries of service. Compared to this, the difficulties of daylight savings seem relatively minor.
In conclusion, I offer this handy-dandy old saying to help you all: Spring Forward, Fall Back. Well, Spring does not exist anymore, Fall (or autumn, as some of you quaintly refer to it) has been extinguished, Daylight is gone for good, and there is no Saving any one of us. So that makes it so much simpler! Thank you for your time.
Saturday, September 24, 2022
On the theoretical improbability of salad
Salad does not exist probably. Have you ever walked in one direction and been met by a salad walking in the other direction? Have you ever been in the dark woods at night and heard the fierce call of the wild salad, out hunting its prey? I didn't think so. The truth is, I have come to suspect that salad is entirely a myth, an invention of... someone. The salad industrial complex*, I guess. I am not a crackpot.
Perhaps you are one of those people who claim to have eaten a salad. Perhaps you have a salad in your fridge at the moment. Go and open up your fridge and look at this so-called salad. What do you see - an actual salad, or a collection of vegetable matter, incongruously placed in the one bowl? Exactly.
Once upon a time, I tried to make a salad. I suppose we have all been down this dark path in our lives, this Attempted Making Of The Salad. I cannot recall exactly how I tried to make it; I suppose I have repressed the memories. But suffice to say that I threw in a few green and leafy things, and tried to balance it out with a few nutty or fruity things, and last of all, attempted to finish it off with The Dressing. The results were, I must say, unconvincing: the constituent elements hung there, in the Attempted Salad, like constituent elements, not once cohering into a mass that was clearly Salad. Naturally enough, I tried to do that other Thing that they tell you to do when you want to make salad, which was toss it. So... I got out some plastic implements from the kitchen drawer, and chucked it out a bit. The results were no more closer to the object desired than before; in fact, the constituent elements seemed to have a distressing habit of falling apart completely into their own groups, so that the leafy parts stuck up the top, and the nutty parts down the bottom, etc.
I have (I am ashamed to say) attempted the feat several times, and each time been thwarted: instead of producing proper salads, I have been unconvinced on each attempt.
What is salad even? It seems to me highly unlikely that this dubious food stuff even exists. It nonexists. It is an unentity. It is a global conspiracy put forward by the people who put forward global conspiracies. You guys should get onto it.
Also it's nowhere near as tasty as cake.
Thursday, August 11, 2022
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
Putting the con into versation
Sunday, June 19, 2022
The usual cat poem
Tim, your links stink, you fink!
- John Bangsund's Threepenny Planet
- Broken Biro
- Poetry 24
- Superlative scribbles
- Kirstyn McD!
- Rorrim a tsomla almost a mirror
- More Sterne
- Sterne
- Cam the man from the Dan.
- Too hot to Raaaaaaandallllllll!
- Erin's Excellently Everlasting Effervescements!
- Slammy Infamy
- Hail Paco!
- Baron Blandwagon, purveyor of cyberbunnies, hawker of Roger Corman, and Misruler of the Multiverse
- The Bolta. Aiyeeeeee!!!!!
- Bad Apple Audrey
- The cartoon church
- Sir Martinkus
- A Zemblanian abroad and at home
- A hodge podge of hotzeplotz
- THE SLAMMA!
- Jottlesby's nottings, or should that be Nottlesby's jottings?
- The Snarking of the Hunt
- Jazzy Hands
- David of Metal City
- David the Barista
- The Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony
- Be an Opinion Dominion Minion!
- Mel...
- ... and Fel
- His brilliant career - from whale sushi to crumbed prawn
- Jo Blogs
- Yet another Tim
- Croucherisms...
- Was two peas, now three peas
- Desciopolous!
- ... Still Life - now with extra rotating cats!
- Erin...
- An Amazingly Awesome Australian Ampersand!
- Blink and you'll miss 'er
- Red in the land of the tigers!
- Wire of Vibe
- Chase him, ladies, he's in the cavalry!
- The Non-palindromical Editrix in Germanium
- Old Sterne
- Gempiricalisations
- TonyT
- The briefs...
- ... and the brieflets
- The Purple Blog
- Blairville, lair of all that is wicked and perfidious
- The enticingly acronymical CSH
- EXTREEEEEEEME WYNTER!
- Mark of California
- Jellyfish
- Silent Speaking
- Lexicon the Mexican