Hi Class Litraycha

Over the past couple of days, I've been playing a storytelling game on the Vibewire website with some of the other readers. The rules are: 1) Keep it simple 2) Post as many times as you like, but wait for another person to post something before you post again.

Here are the results so far. See if you can guess which additions are mine; I've posted four times. The different posts have been separated out in bold and italics so it's easier to make out, and I'll give the answer later in comments.

Walking down the street last Tuesday, I was stopped dead in my tracks. It was not the fact that I had left the iron on at home - although I certainly had; indeed, I could smell my ironing board burning from here - it was the fact that I had run into my ex-boyfriend, Shaun. Shaun, as blunt as usual, sniffed the air and said, "You've left the bloody iron on the ironing board again, haven't you."
"No I haven't Shaun, you great patronising twat," I said, pretending not to notice the drop-dead-gorgeous hussy holding his hand.
Shaun, however, knew me too well, and could see my eyes flitting (I thought subtly) between him and the blonde. "It's not what you think," he said. "We've accidentally super-glued our hands together."
He was wearing the shirt I bought him for Christmas. It still had that brown crumpled stain next to the arm pit where I'd left the iron too long one morning when he distracted me by dragging me back to bed.
I screamed, "Well why were your hands touching in the first place?"

He opened his mouth, then closed it again, then left it open like a man who had seen a herd of wild elephants stampeding in his direction - and lucky for him, he actually had. Or unlucky for him, as the case may be, since his blonde companion was too busy gazing at her own reflection in a puddle of water to heed Shaun's panicked screams of "Stampede!!"
The hussy flicked the bangs out of her eyes and evened up the lipstick on the left side of her mouth with an ostentatious poke of a gigantic, scarlet little fingernail. Shaun heaved, but the hussy's narcissism knew know bounds and the elephants hit before she even had time to look up. With a spittering and a spattering, a pittering and a pattering, a dithering and a dathering (and other such self-indulgent descriptors), the hussy's limbs went flying through the air to the shock of everybody, not the least of whom was Shaun and myself. By the time the stampede had passed, I calmly surveyed the scene of carnage; legs at one end of the street, head rolling down the other; and her left hand lay languidly at my feet, with Shaun still firmly attached on to it, glaring angrily up at me.
"You're in big trouble now," Shaun said to me. "You've just witnessed the death of somebody extremely important. So important that importance is not sufficient to describe her. That's how important she was. Boy was she important."
"Are you implying that I had something to do with the sudden proliferation of African wildlife in this inner suburban Australian street?" I asked incredulously, putting my hands in my pockets and nervously fingering my elephant whistle.
Shaun glared at me. He was well aware that instigating random stampedes was a passionate hobby of mine. While trekking in Thailand in the summer of '69, Shaun had slipped a crab into my back pocket. I squeaked, startling a herd of elephants nearby who turned and charged at us. It was so exhilarating I can't help but carry a whistle with me everywhere I go just in case the chance arises again.
Shaun grabbed my fidgeting left hand and pressed it frimly against my thigh. "If I find you have that bloody whistle in your pocket, my dear, you know what I'll do.' And I knew all too well what Shaun would do. The same thing he did every time I caused an elephant stampede. The same thing he did all those years ago in Thailand. The same thing he would always do when I incited to riot huge herds of African wild-life. He would burst into a spontaneous rendition of "Hakuna Matata".

In conclusion, there are several morals to be drawn from this story:

1) Communism is so very, very wrong;

I stopped myself. I was using an outmoded literary device. Morals? Who was I trying to be - fucking Aesop? I held my poststructuralist head high. I would let the reader decide what to draw from his/her/its own reading of the work. And so I went right on back to contmeplating Shaun and his unfortunate habit of singing 'Hakuna Matata' after stampedes. It was a supremely unfortunate habit, not only due to the god-awful song itself, but also because rather than pacifying the elephants, Shaun's rendition of "Hakuna Matata" seemed to further inflame their ire. Knowing what was coming, I scaled the closest tree, which, in another stroke of bad luck, was already occupied by a gaggle of National Party politicians holding a conference.
"We didn't descend from these, Goddammit!" said the one in the tuxedo and the gas mask. "Intelligent design for president twenty-ought-seven!."
I shook my head. Where, oh where, had everything gone so wrong today? I looked at Shaun. He looked at me. I could control myself no longer: I threw my arms around him and said the only thing I could. "Communism is so very, very wrong."
He cried. I cried. We laughed! It was so beautiful, in this crazy, whacky modern world to find something we agreed upon.

And then the dam burst.

So ... which are mine?

From Ogblog to Wogblog - a History of Blogging

Hey, look at the funny person! Ha ha! You're reading a blog! What a geek!

There. Now we've got rid of everyone else, it's just you and me, dear reader, and I can get to the point of this post. Did you know that blogging has a long and fascinating history that goes right back to the stone age? That's right! And you can read all about it here in:

AN AUTHENTIC, WILDLY INACCURATE AND UNDOUBTEDLY TRUE HISTORY OF BLOGGING

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20,000 BC
The first recorded blog of history is carved on to a cave wall by a guy named Og one afternoon after hunting Woolly Mammoths. Although it is extremely slow (have you ever tried using a hyperlink made out of stone?) a post he does linking to the Lascaux cave paintings proves to be wildly popular.

10,000 BC
Writing is invented, which proves to be very useful for bloggers. Previously to this, they have expressed themselves in the occasional monosyllabic grunt and/or crude pictographic representations.

7,000 BC
Instapundit begins blogging. Ancient Sumerian blogger Akh-Ngakh calls him a 'fresh new face' on the blogging scene.

6.400 BC
An anonymous Egyptian blogger writes the first ever post comparing George Bush, the President of America, to Adolf Hitler. Since none of the nouns in this sentence made any sense at the time - even when written in hieroglyphic notation - the Pharaoh at the time decides to have his head cut off.

4.300 BC
Some crazy dude called Moses escapes into the desert and starts a blog, later to be published in scroll form. It features the occasional guest post by another crazy dude who lives in a burning bush and calls himself God. Moses later admits that it was all a joke, and that God didn't really write all those posts, in fact, he could hardly read, let alone write. But no one believes him.

2.500 BC
Slowly, the secrets of tagging leak out of the HTML mines in Eastern Europe. Bloggers learn how to use bold <b> tags, italic tags <i> and underline tags <u> for the first time. (It's not until much later that the dreaded secret of the strike tag <strike> is made known to the general public.)

1,200 BC
A little known group of warbloggers calling themselves the 'Ancient Geeks' manage to infiltrate the computer systems of a group of opposing bloggers using the first ever Trojan Horse. This gives rise to the popular saying, 'Beware of Geeks bearing Gifts.'

50 AD
Ancient Roman Emperor Nerdo holds regular blogging festivals where left-wing subversives are put in the arena with right-wing death beasts. They prove to be wildly popular.

1000 AD
The arts of tapestry and embroidery continue to be developed, and in this format the first pioneering experiments in flash animation are undertaken. The Bayeaux tapestry proves to be a particularly popular animation - much more so than the lesser known tapestry, The Simpsons.

1500 AD
The renaissance happens and everyone forgets to notice it because of some cute kitten pictures being circulated at the time by a photoshopping blogger known as Michaelangelo.

1590AD
Shakespeare uses the phrases LOL, OMG, ROTF, LMFAO, and BBQ in a play. Half of his audience don't know WTF he's talking about. The other half a puritans who don't know WTF he's talking about, but want to ban it anyway.

1750 AD
Charles Babbage invents the first ever computer - or 'difference engine' - and bloggers wonder what took him all this time. The difference engine, which is powered by 20 wild horses, doesn't work, so Babbage goes off and tries to invent a cheese slicer powered by otters. It fails, and he becomes a broken and destitute man.

1790 AD
America institutes a nation-wide communication system known as 'the pony express' which means that bloggers are able to post with unprecedented speed. (The pony express proves to be much more popular than the previous postal system, the 'ocelot express', which failed, primarily due to a lack of ocelots.

1820 AD
Some other guy tries to invent a computer, this time, powered by steam. It doesn't work. Bloggers tap their fingers and think, this is just getting ridiculous.

1940 AD
Yet another guy called Alan Turing tries to invent the computer and actually succeeds. He is so surprised by this that he kills himself.
Bloggers just shrug their shoulders and go on as they've always done.

Splutter

Well, I've had a chat with Dr Symantec and he's given me some pretty good advice about my computer. Unfortunately, I can't take him to Symantec's surgery, since it's very expensive, but there's a very good clinician around the corner called Dr AVG, and he's just had a session with my computer last night. It's early days yet, but I think the patient will make a recovery.

I'm very worried, I must admit - it's only been a few months since I found this computer slaving away in a sweatshop - but we get along so well. It would be terrible to think of him in the grotty paws of some RMIT hippy or TAFE student.

A Post About Marmosets

Marmosets are small monkeys that live in trees and use their scent glands for communications. There are several species of marmoset, ranging from the Common Marmoset to Wiedd's black tufted ear marmoset.

Here is a recording of the common marmosets cry.


The Pygmy Marmoset.

Once I knew a guy who thought he was a marmoset. He set up house in the rose bush outside and everytime his wife came out to speak to him he would fart in her face. Eventually they took him to see the psychiatrist, who eventually convinced the guy by means of hypnotic suggestion to work his way up. One week the guy would believe he was an African Anteater, the next week he would be an Alsatian, and the week after that he would be a fully grown male Gibbon. Eventually, he reached the stage where he believed he was a human again, and things might have stayed that way, too. But he just couldn't help himself, and he kept on working himself up through the species, becoming an Arabian Stallion, a rhinoceros, and then a giraffe.

Don't you believe this story? Frankly, I don't either. It sounds like a load of old hogwash. But this guy did believe it, which is why nowadays he spends his days roaming the backyard chewing the leaves of the tops of his shrubberies.

If you are curious - and let's face it, who isn't - here is a website about marmosets.

Cough Cough

My computer has a virus. It just lies around in bed all day, spluttering, sneezing, and complaining. I've tried feeding it cough syrup, drinks of lemon and honey, and I've even rubbed its chest with Vics Vaporub, but though it makes the keys rather slippery, it doesn't seem to be getting any better. I must admit, I'm a little worried about it.

Do you think I should take it to see the doctor, or is there anything I can do to make it better?

Lay Off the Laudanum, Old Son

Have you read anything by Captain Marryat lately? Of course you haven't. Oh, when it comes to post-enlightenment English literature, it's all "Wordsworth this" and "Dickens that", but when it comes to the REALLY important people, like Marryat or Fielding, everyone goes silent. I blame Coleridge. That laudanum swilling swine got all the publicity.

The book I'm reading at the moment is Frank Mildmay by Marryat. It was his first book, and it doesn't look too promising. Every chapter begins with a quotation from puritans like Milton (a guy who wrote essays justifying divorce in order to be able to sleep around). Normally, Marryat is excellent at introductions. Take his introduction to Mr Midshipman Easy.

"Mr Nicodemus Easy was a gentleman, and in very easy circumstances."

He carries on for a whole chapter in this way. Well, it amused me.
But Marryat can be serious as well. Later in the book, Mr Easy and a doctor contract a wet nurse for Mr Easy's son, the hero of the novel, Jack Easy. Her name is Sarah, and she has given birth to an illegitimate baby who died soon afterwards. When the doctor asks her about this, she replies,

"Yes I did, sir. But it was such a little one."

Has anything simpler or sadder ever been written?

Marryat's heroes tend to be young men born into well-off families who go to sea and learn some of the realities off life, and mix with different classes of people, before returning to the shore and reclaiming their property. The book usually ends with a gunfight or fisticuffs between the hero and some presumptuous servants. Basic slapstick humour, really.

Odd characters appear. In Peter Simple, the hero becomes friends with a cunning Irishman called Frank, and the pair have to escape from France during a time of war and return to their vessel. In Mr Midshipman Easy, Jack Easy becomes friends with an escaped slave called Mephistopheles, or Mesty, for short.

Mesty, who was once an African prince, likes Jack because he is full of the doctrine of "equality" and "rights". In the end, Mesty accepts his position as Jack's servant a little too easily. The reasons he gives are a mixture of pragmatism and standard Tory doctrine about "accepting ones place in society".
But at least Marryat was able to talk about slaves, something the romantic poets never did. James Hogg* once even wrote a few words in support of slavery.

Anyway, here's a passage from the third chapter of Frank Mildmay, where the young hero needs to get to the ship, and two women agree to take him there:

"She LAYS under the OBELISK," said the elder woman, who appeared to be about forty years of age; "and we will take your honour off for a shilling." I agreed to this, both for the novelty of the thing, as well as on account of my natural gallantry and love of female society. The elder woman was mistress of her profession, handling her scull (oar) with great dexterity; but Sally, the younger one, who was her daughter, was still in her noviciate. She was pretty, cleanly dressed, had on white stockings, and sported a neat foot and ankle.
"Take care, Sally," said her mother; "keep stroke, or you will catch a crab."
"Never fear, mother," said the confident Sally; and at the same momnt, as if the very caution against the accident was the cause of it, the blade of her scull did not dip into the water. The oar meeting no resistance, its loom, or handle, came back upon the bosom of the unfortunate Sally, tipped her backwards - up went her heels in the air, and down fell her head into the bottom of the boat.
As she was pulling the stroke oar, her feet almost came in contact with the rosette of my cocked hat. "There now, Sally," said the wary mother; "I told you how it would be - I knew you would catch a crab!"
Sally quickly recovered herself, blushed a little, and resumed her occupation.
"That's what we calls catching a crab in our country," said the woman. I replied that I thought it was a very pretty amusement; and I asked Sally to try and catch another; but she declined; and, by this time, we had reached the side of the ship. Having paid my naiads, I took hold of the man-rope, as I was instructed by them, and mounted the side.

Yes - I think I will enjoy this, after all.

*You haven't heard of James Hogg? You haven't heard of THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD? Shame on you!

Today Is The Third-and-a-halfth Day for the Rest Of Your Week

Well, it's my birthday today. My mother is going to be surprised, let me tell you that. I hope she's alright. It must have been hard enough for her to give birth to me as a baby, but now I'm 28 years old ... I think I'd better give her a call to make sure.
I wasn't even going to tell anybody about it, but several people have already let the secret out.

Now, I'm not sure what to think because, on the one hand, I am older today than I have ever been before, but on the other, today is the first day for the rest of my life. Certainly today will be a day just like any other day, but then again, I've got to seize the day, to live in the now, until the now slips into the then. I've got to be careful about this and plan for tomorrow, but then again, tomorrow never comes. Or does it?

Today and today and today
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.

Shakespeare had it right, the old bastard - and even if he didn't write this, he should have. Today is a trap because, every new day we wake up in is today, and all the joys that tomorrow promises become the mindless reality of today. It's like Groundhogs Day, except there's no way out, there's no escape from this gaping void of nothingness, this endless succession of TODAYS, no escape at all, except for ...

Would you excuse me while I just nip into the next room and blow my brains out?

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BANG!

Ah, that's better. There's nothing like Ending It All to Make You Feel Like New. Anyway, happy birthday to me and all that. Here's a story I wrote last night. It's for Gem, because even though she stole my birthday, she was nice about it. Bless you, one and all. Now I just have to go and sweep up the shattered fragments of my brain in the other room ...

---

He was born too early and she was born too late. They arrived on the same day, and there things might have ended if they had died on that day as well. But stories are rarely this simple and life never is.
They were total strangers to one another, as people who have never met or spoken often are. Nevertheless, it chanced that one day they happened to run into one another at a cafe, and formed a mutual bond of difference.
He was German and she was French, so they compromised and communicated in Mongolian. Neither of them could speak a word of this language, so they found that this was one thing which they could agree upon. They began to tell one another details of their separate lives, which they were both very pleased to discover they had.
He explained that he had been born into a Mannheim firm of Lion Tamers, and had run away with a troupe of travelling accountants to see the world and perform daring financial transactions for multinational businesses. She happily talked about her fulfilling career as a music therapist to abused pachyderms. They were both happy to discover that they shared nothing in common, and therefore agreed to stay in touch and see if they would grow older at the same rate, or whether it was just a coincidence.

The year passed slowly. Spring sprang and then Summer came and it turned into Sprung. Autumn shoved Summer out of the way and stayed there for three months. Then Winter fell with a thud that caused everyone to wake up with a horrible start. He realised that he had promised to give her a call but had forgotten her number. She remembered his phone number but that she forgot why she was going to call. So she went round to his house and knocked on the door.
So the years passed in this manner, and time progressed as well. She began to have her twenty third birthday over and over again. He began to save his days using the local banks 'Daylight Savings' account, until he had plenty of extra hours. So both of them lived for a very, very long time.

As bad luck would have it, they died on the same day as well. It is impossible to tell whether they were the same age when they died, or if she beat him in the end, since neither were able to talk to me. All I know is, he was so forgetful that he didn't turn up for his own death, and that she insisted that it be put off for later, since she was visiting family at the time. In the end, Death had to go round to their houses, sit down with them, and explain in a calm, reasonable voice that they had to come with him; if they weren't able to come to their funerals, who else would he get, at this late hour? They all agreed that it would be terribly inconvenient. And, in the end, Death didn't seem to be that big. (A bit chubby around the stomach area, yes, but that was only to be expected when you had been around for an eternity, like Death had.)
Now, where was I? I've no idea. I could go on for ages, and I probably will, but look at that!

It's

THE END.

So you won't hear anything more out of me.

My Brief But Dazzling Future Career in Australian Television

Not many people know it, but in a few years time, I will be a has-been, a piece of human detritus, chewn up and spat out of the ravening maw that is the Australian television industry. No, really. It will all start next month, at a party in some house in Brunswick or another, when I run into a television producer and tell him about my quirky yet whimsical, violent yet compelling idea for Australian television. Three days later, I will be called by him, out of the blue, and offered the opportunity to become producer for the show.

SILENCE OF THE HAMS - an ultra-realist piece of fiction about the Australian film industry, with a cast to die for.

Nicole Kidman - played by Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow - played by Carlotta
Bill Hunter - played by Paul Hogan
Paul Hogan - played by Rove McManus

Basically, it will be just like any other Australian film. It will be about the struggles of a community of twenty-something young actors who suddenly find themselves hunted by a serial-killer. The premiere episode will end with the ritual death of Nicole Kidman (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) on a funeral pire, as a sacrifice to the God Ereshkigal.
The following episode will be exactly the same in plot to the first. The show will run for a record 32 series, and become a staple of the Australian television industry.

Or something like that. Actually, I haven't thought about it that much. Anyway, the killer turns out to be Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, or John Howard, or somebody.
Then, suddenly, without reason, the show will be dropped and I will be cut off from the television industry. Disillusioned and angry, I will take to drink, and become a bitter, wretched old man living in a hovel on the edge of the Simpson desert with the help of an Australian Film Industry grant, taking pot-shots at British tourists as they drive past.
I've got it all planned out.

Anti-censorship

David and I have our political disagreements, and that's putting it mildly. He calls me a fascist, I call him a communist. But he is hilariously funny, a brilliant writer, and very kind - basically, he's just a delicate little flower who has never been allowed to bare his fragile, child-like spirit before the harsh, cruel world.
He's been silent in the past couple of weeks, at least as far as blogging goes. But now I can see that it's all worth it, for he has been producing a work of genius, a novel - his third.

Well, I know it's unorthodox for a fascist like me, but I'm going to do every I can to make sure that his writing doesn't get suppressed. Go read the fragments of his novel just posted on his blog - they'll make you think, they'll make you laugh, they'll make you cry. And when you're done, join me, and we will march on his home in Greensborough and drag his fragile child-like spirit out into the harsh light of day and get him published. Because talent like this can't just be wasted.

Who Said I'm Not Sensitive?

Ralph Vaughan Williams and his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis makes me cry. In a good way. Life is beautiful. I fucking love you guys.

That is all.

Absolutely no FREE BEERWhatsoever

... although for YOU, dear reader, we can always make an exception, if you come to the Melbourne Grogblogging ...

The Nine Other Muses

The Nine Other Muses: A Modern Pantheon

Since the subject of The Muses came up in a recent discussion, I've decided to find out who the Muses for the modern day are.

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Abstemia
Abstemia is the muse of diet books and food guides and health pamphlets. She is usually depicted as a thin, spectre-like girl in wispy gowns, carrying with her small black diaries in which she records the details of her daily dietary activities.
Worshippers of Abstemia hold a feast day in her honour every year, during which they sit around the table and discuss dietary matters and cholesterol intake.
Once, it is said that one girl worshipped Abstemia with such zeal that her figure shrunk and shrunk and shrunk until there was almost nothing of her at all. Her family weighed her on the scale when, with a sudden ping, she vanished.

Falliope
Falliope is the muse of motherhood, and books and poems about motherhood. Artistically, she is depicted in the Centrelink queue, waiting for her single mother pension cheque to come in. More recently, pictures of Falliope show her clasping a bottle of pills in one hand and a pregnancy test in the other.

Clito
Clito is the muse of free expression, free love, free verse, free money from the government, and free drinks, too, if she has anything to say about it. She is often depicted in the lascivious grasp of another man/woman/thing, and usually wears nothing at all. She couldn't be bothered writing poetry, because she is usually doing it.

Tranette
Tranette, the muse of transgender and sex changes, is regarded by many as an impostor amongst the muses, as a kind of 'Tranny come lately', if you will. However, her supporters are eager to point out the existence of her aunty, Tiresias.
Tranette wears fishnet stockings, and is worshipped at the karaoke machine.

Mepoormeme
Mepoormeme is the muse of self-confession, self-obsession, self-examination, self-masturbation, and autobiography. Her most devoted worshippers are the hordes of beret-wearing poseurs who flock to Melbourne's poetry bars and clubs and read out delicate and touching poems about their feelings.
Mepoormeme carries a mirror with her at all times, and a nymph flies after her to record all her thoughts as she speaks them into a livejournal or a blog.

Feministia
No one is exactly sure what Feministia is the muse of, but she's pretty impressive. She is depicted in many different ways, sometimes wearing bluestockings, and sometimes a tight black vinyl dominatrix outfit, complete with whip and spurs. Her supporters are mostly women, and they write books with titles like 'The Female Eunuch' and 'I Blame the Patriarchy'.
However, many men are secretly in love with her as well, but will not admit to it in public.

Polymania
Polymania is the muse of craziness, looniness, and all forms of insanity. She is depicted wearing a straitjacket or, sometimes, dancing about on the city streets with foam coming out of her mouth.
In order to best appreciate the virtues of Polymania, it is often necessary to stimulate yourself chemically, and in excessive amounts. This may not always have predictable results, but the goddess will appreciate it.
Other acceptable forms of worship include shutting yourself up in the cupboard and reading book after book of realist fiction, or trying to understand James Joyce.

Herpe
Herpe, the muse of ill-health, sickness, or even depression, is depicted in art wearing a patients gown or in bed. She has inspired many works of self-misery by countless lily-skinned artistes who would rather lie around in bed than work.
Her company is best avoided, for your own health, so she is most often seen in company with Abstemia.

Obscenia
The best of the bunch, Obscenia is the muse of swearing, shouting, cursing, criticising, and generally saying things that will annoy the most amount of people as possible. If you ask Obscenia a question about yourself, she has the habit of telling you something that
a) Will be very true
b) Will be something you don't want to hear at all.
Obscenia wears trousers, and is often depicted artistically on the toilet. She can be found in company with her niece, Uranal, and her nephew, Colon.

A Dialogue Between Person and Bed

A Dialogue Between Person and Bed, in the manner of Plato.

Person:
I love you. You are so large and warm and comfortable. I want to lie down in you now.

Bed:
I hate you, you great lumpy, sweating, steaming mass of flesh. Who do you think you are, to come and slip yourself between my sheets and thrash around all night?

Person:
It's so wonderful, after a long, hard day working, eating, and performing various human activities, to come and slip myself into your rectangular embrace.

Bed:
Urgh!! I shudder everytme you waft into the room. If I had a mouth*, I would tell you that YOU STINK. You perspire towards me, then slip yourself into my lily-white sheets, then proceed to propel your way through your dreams by a serious of burps, yawns, and farts. By the time the night is done, I feel less like a bed, and more like a stagnant fen. I hate you.

Person:
You are so accommodating! Not only can you be my place of repose, but whenever she is here, you become a scene of sport, an athletic arena, a circus, an epic stage of history! Oh! And when that is complete, and we like back, you are so gentle with us ...

Bed:
Her? NOT HER!!! As if your lumps and farts and thrashing around are not enough to deal with, I sometimes have to deal with HER as well! Fuck! And not only do you both start exuding pheromones left, right and cdentre, but the way you two flail about - it's as if you want to knock the stuffing out of me!
Is that it? You want to KILL me?

Person:
Truly, bed, you are one of the finest, most elegant, most beautiful things to grace this earth.

Bed:
Do you know what my fantasy is? The secret desire that I dream about? It is that an albino elephant would suddenly and inexplicably storm through the house, smashing you through the floor, before ravishing me and carrying me off to the forests of Mandalay.
But it's never going to happen, is it, because - I'm just a BED, and YOU MADE ME THIS WAY!

Person:
I love you.

Bed:
I hate you.

*But I don't, because I was made that way. And whose fault is that? YOURS - you fucking bastard!

When Blogging Goes Wrong

That's right - there's a new grogblogging coming up, in two weeks time!


Grogblogging: the sordid reality*

So please, come to the next grogblogging in two weeks time. If not for yourself - do it for poor kitty here.

UPDATE - Looks like we picked the WORST DATE all year for a grogblogging - AFL Grand Final night! I think the blame for this lays fairly and squarely at my feet. I mean, I'm a bloke, aren't I supposed to know everything about sports, right? RIGHT!
Anyway, we've decided to hold the thing on the previous evening - Friday the 23rd. The poster and link on this blog have been amended thusly!

*No cats were hurt in the making of this post.

An Unspirational Story

FERNANDOS: An Unspirational Story

(Which may or may not have similarities to the story of a certain Melbourne food chain)

This is Mr Rolando Fernando - leader of a national chain of overcooked chicken stores!

But things were not always this way. Once, a long time ago, Rolando was working as a kitchenhand for Greasy Jakes One Stop Eatery in Essendon.
"Rolando, do this!" one person would shout.
"Rolando, do that!" another would yell.
"Rolando, do something else entirely!" a third would order.
It was all enough to make a young boy turn to crime. But not Rolando! For he had enterprise on his mind!

"If only," mused Rolando to himself, "I could start up a chain of stores, based on our traditional Portuguese recipe of overcooked chicken. Combined with high prices and overspicey sauces, it would be a winner!"

Late one night, after coming home from work, Rolando happened to run into his uncle Tony playing poker with his friends.
"Get out of the room, Rolando!" shouted Tony. "The men are having an important discussion!"
"Uncle!" said Rolando. "There is something I wanted to ask you!"
"Well?" smirked Tony. "What is it?"
"I was hoping to start a business!" said Rolando. "And I was wondering if you could lend me some money?"
"Don't be foolish, boy!" yelled Tony. "Only smart men like myself are allowed to start a business! Foolish boys like you should not even bother!"
"But Uncle!" pleaded Rolando, "I had the best idea! I wanted to start a restaurant chain, using our nonna's recipe for Overcooked Chicken!"
"Stupid boy!" replied Tony. "No one would want to eat that!"
"Aha! But I plan to disguise the Overcooked Chicken with Extremely Spicy sauces!"
"Not good enough!"
"And then," went on Rolando, "I will distract their attention with our High, High prices!"
"Fine words, boy!" snapped Tony. "But there are far too many restaurants in town as it is!"
"That is why," concluded Rolando, "I plan to open up my restaurant in a part of town that doesn't have any restaurants. That way, when people pass by, they will say, 'Oh Well. There's No Where Else To Go'. And they will flock to Fernandos Overcooked Chicken Store in the thousands!"

Tony looked to his mates then back at Rolando. Clearly, they were dealing with one smart cookie here.

One month later, Rolando had gathered all the money together, and opened up his restaurant in an obscure corner of Melbourne, on Gluph Street, which was empty, except for a parking lot at one end and a rubbish dump at the other. Rolando sat quietly behind the counter. His hands shook just a little. Would his crazy concept work?

Things were quiet for an hour. Then along came the Jones family. They were looking for somewhere to eat.
"Hey, there's a restaurant!" shouted Mr. Jones.
"But do we want to go there?" said Mrs Jones. "I heard some members of the mafia set it up."
"I want to go to the chocolate shop!" whined Billy.
"Be quiet, Billy!" snapped his sister Jilly.
"Well," concluded Mr Jones, "There's No Where Else To Go!"
And with that, they entered the store.
Rolando smiled quietly to himself. He knew his restaurant was going to work, after all ...



Over the coming weeks, Fernandos became a bustling hub. It became known all over the city that the "Best Overcooked Chicken Can Be Found At FERNANDOS!"
Rolando - or Mr Fernando, as he had become known - overheard many conversations in his restaurant.
"This burger is not bad!"
"This chicken bad, but it is not terrible!"
"These prices are extremely expensive."
"WATER! WATER! SOMEBODY GET ME SOME WATER!"
And sometimes, when the people really got grumpy and started to complain, Mr. Fernando would simply say to them with a shrug, "But - there's NO WHERE ELSE TO GO!"
"Oh well," the customer would reply. "He's got us there!"
And go right on eating.

Weeks turned into months. Months turned into years. Fernandos Overcooked Chicken Store grew and turned into a chain of Overcooked Chicken Stores, right across the city. It was consistently rated one of the best overcooked chicken stores around in the Melbourne Age and the Herald Sun. As time went by, other restaurants grew up around the store.
But Mr Fernando was not worried! He knew that, although the customers now had other places to go, they would still come to Fernandos. "After all," he reasoned, "We've Always Been Here! And where else could they find the Best Overcooked Chicken in town?"

And he was right. Night after night, customers would walk up and down the street, looking from the French restaurant specialising in chocolate-coated snails, to the Indian cafe specialising in boiled tofu, before settling on Fernandos.
"After all," they would say as they entered the store, "They've Always Been Here."

Mr. Fernando was a happy man. He had a large and happy family of his own, who he one day hoped to hand on his city-wide chain of Overcooked Chicken stores to. And it was all because, one evening, as a kitchenhand, he had had a good idea for a business venture.



One morning, Mr Fernando marched out to the front of his store carrying a large sign which he had had prepared for him the previous day. His wife and children, curious about the sign, followed him out. Proudly, Mr. Fernando nailed the new sign up over the old one: "Fernandos: Because We've Always Been Here!" (And truth be told, it was growing a bit tatty, anyway.)

The new sign read:

FERNANDOS:

At Least We're Not McDonalds!

And it was true, too.

THE END

I Blame John Howard

Australians are less secure and more fearful than ever before under John Howard's leadership.

Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report finds most people are satisfied with the economic gains made since the Prime Minister's election, and that they enjoy their work, are proud of their families, and feel confident and optimistic about the future.

We are becoming selfish ...

They are also more willing to forgo income to pay for major state services than at any time in the previous two decades.

John Howard is dragging us back into the 1950s.

"We need to go back to the 1960s to find a stronger mood for social spending," the report says.

Intolerance is rising:

More than 80 per cent of the 4000 Australians who responded to the survey support choice on abortion and increasing numbers are willing to accept same-sex couples as families.

And it's all John Howard's fault. John Howard, you bastard.

UPDATE: And I shouldn't forget to mention our rejection of multiculturalism:

Support for higher immigration has more than doubled since 1995 (from 11 per cent to 26 per cent in 2003). 57 per cent of Australians now want the immigration program to stay the same size or increase. Not since the 1960s has immigration been so well supported by the Australian public.

Our increasing job insecurity:

Fourteen years of economic growth have left Australians feeling secure in their jobs. Just 13 per cent fear losing their job in the next year. But half the Australians surveyed thought it would be 'Not easy at all' to find a job as good as their current one.

And our withdrawal from community activities:

Almost all Australians are a member of at least one voluntary organisation (86 per cent). Consumer and automobile associations are at the top of the list with 54 per cent membership, followed by sporting groups (45 per cent), financial cooperatives (29 per cent) and religious groups (24 per cent).

Fascist right-wing death beast nazis from around the nation will be rejoicing at this news. Why, John Howard, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY???

Life: The Limitation of Art

Although you wouldn't know it, I'm not only an extremely mediocre blogger and writer, but I am also a cultural critic. That's right! And here's a little piece of cultural criticism that I've had published just recently!

---

I'm here today to talk to you about art, which is a very important thing. In fact, art is so important that it has changed the world in many profound ways.

A lot of people may scoff and say, 'Art? Ha! Art is just a representation of life!' But they're only half right. Consider a recent historical example: the invention of the colour TV. Many people believe that this seminal cultural development had no effect on the world whatsoever. They believe that life went on after this invention just as it had done before. In fact, before the invention of the colour television, the whole world was in black and white. That's right. People lived in black and white houses, on black and white streets. Every morning the women would put on black and white dresses and black and white hats, and go and sit in black and white gardens and eat black and white cakes. It got very dull after a while, and if someone hadn't invented the colour television, I don't know what they would have done.

Apparently, it happened when an old lady called Mavis was pottering around in her black and white azalea garden. Her grandson was fiddling with a film camera and her home video set, when he discovered the secret of colour TV. In a flash, the whole world changed. It was as if God had walked in the room and switched on the light. Mavis was violently assaulted on all sides by riots of colour: gold, green, and red marching in murderous rows into her eyes. It was all too much for her. She promptly had a heart attack and died.

With the introduction of technicolour, many other revolutionary changes in society followed. The dull 50s gave way to the swinging 60s, where people did all sorts of colourful things, like have cheap and degrading group sex or do fun things like divorce one another. Others liked nothing better than to drop tabs of acid and watch the world explode in pretty colours all about them. Pretty soon, the old world of black and white didn't look so bad. But they couldn't go back.
So although now, the colour television may seem to be a simple representational device, we now know that it changed the world, simply and irrevocably. And a good thing, too - after all, what use would a colour television be in a world of black-and-white?

***

The first pieces of art, as we now know, were simple pictographic representations on cave walls or on pieces of stone. It follows logically that primitive man lived on cave walls and pieces of stone too. This type of existence may seem to us a bit silly, not to mention two-dimensional, but let's remember that this is primitive man we're talking about here.

Now we come to the Classical era, which occurred with the invention of statues. And along with the invention of statues, the third dimension was discovered. Suddenly, man had a whole new dimension to do things in, and he spread all over the world, and did many great things like build buildings, destroy Carthage, make aqueducts, and discover democracy.
But it must have been rather boring as well. Scientific research informs us that statues are unable to move. As we now know, this indicates that a typical day for the Classical Man went something like the following:

MORNING: Strike a dramatic pose while wearing a toga.

DAY: Continue to wear your toga while resolutely holding your pose.

AFTERNOON: Stare off stoically into the distance and hold pose strikingly, perhaps cursing the Gods for your fate.

NIGHT: Strike pose, wear toga, stare stoically, etc etc.

And so on. This caused quite a bit of confusion in classical times since, in effect, it was impossible to tell people from statues. Of course, people have pink or brown skin, and statues are grey, but remember that this was in a time before colour television was invented, and nobody knew the difference. This led to quite a bit of confusion, and people were often mistaken for statues.[1] Sometimes they were even mistaken themselves, and to this day you will see statues wandering about the streets in the mistaken belief that they are humans.[2]
This confusion may have been the origin of Martin Luther's famous phrase, "Here I stand: I can do no other." After all, for Classical people, this really was true.

More interesting things were soon to develop in the world of art, which would have astounding, even revolutionary effects on the world. After all, people tired of the whole 'statue' thing pretty soon. Thankfully, some artists came along one day and invented mosaics, murals, and friezes, in which not one, but a series of images could be represented on the wall of a building. This was a very handy invention, since instead of just standing about all day and getting themselves confused with statues by striking one pose all day long, people could strike several poses in succession. They were also able to communicate with one another by writing messages like 'Sic Gloria Transit Mundi' or ' Gloria in Excelsis Deo' or 'Your Mother Is a Harlot' in speech bubbles above their heads. I mean, it doesn't seem like much to us in the present day, but remember how rich the experience must have seemed to those simple people.

Nowadays, this earlier, halcyon period of existence is almost forgotten. The tradition of living in two-dimensional friezes on the wall lived on for some time – some husbands were especially fond of keeping their wives in this manner, for instance – but eventually that died out, too.

There have been many other important developments in art, especially during the twentieth century. For instance, late one evening in a Belgian cafe, three young painters who had been drinking too much decided to invent surrealism. This changed the world irrevocably. All of a sudden, odd things began to happen to people. Elephants began to spring out of their head and their watches began to melt. Tubas would suddenly, inexplicably catch on fire, and everything started being covered in bugs. Things would suddenly, strangely, dissipate away or change into other things. Pipes were not pipes, windows were not windows, doors were not doors, and you don't want to know what towers were.

It was a good thing for all concerned that surrealism went out of fashion relatively quickly. It's just a pity the same thing could not be said of cubism. This artistic movement, invented by Pablo Picasso, played havoc with everyone's sense of direction and apparently some chap called Einstein even had to invent new laws of physics to explain how everything worked following cubism.[3]

Anyway, that's the end of our little tour of art history. And if you think that art is finished, and that it's thrown everything it can at you - well, I'd be careful if I were you. I know an artist who claims to have developed a form of sculpture in 23 separate dimensions, which travels backwards, not forwards in time.
If I were you, I'd go indoors and draw the curtains - now. You just can't trust art. You never know what it will do to you.

[1] See Plato's dialogue, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Sculpture"

[2] The giveaway is the fact that they're usually more static than most people.

[3] It's probably good that he never survived to see what Abstract Expressionism did to the world.

If Shakespeare

Maybe it's because they had a poetry festival here in Melbourne just recently, or maybe I'm just mad, but I was recently struck with several poetic fits. Here's what I came up with:

If Shakespeare Dropped Acid

If Shakespeare dropped acid with the Rolling Stones
Marianne Faithful would dance with Ophelia's bones
At the bottom of the sea;
Juliet would fly into the Marmalade sky
And Hamlet would step up to the microphone and cry,
"Is this Mick Jagger I see before me?"
If Shakespeare dropped acid with the Rolling Stones.

If Moses drunk soma with William Blake
They'd bake the ten commandments out of chocolate cake
And ask Shiva around for tea;
The LORD would speak out of a flaming fish
And ask for a sample of that tasty dish,
Before changing into a tree,
If Moses drunk soma with William Blake.

If Homer and Sappho got blotto on plonk
And stonkered, they bonked till the sun rose with a thunk
Then the sky would fall into the sea;
And Mighty Zeus would retire and Hera expire
And whole turning world would explode into fire
Before turning into a pea,
If Homer and Sappho got blotto on plonk.

It's meaningless, it's obscure, and it scans badly: the perfect modern poem! But that's not to say that I haven't been working on, er, more traditional efforts. Here's another one I've been writing ...

My Love: a poem by Timothy Huw Train

My Love is like a metaphor
That's sweetly typed in June;
My Love is like a simile
Or like a bag of goon;

My Love is like an elephant
That's wearing a beret
My Love is like a flamingo
That's dancing in the bay;

As fair art thou, my chocolate love
This cask is fairer still
And I will love thee still, my love,
Oh shit. I'm drunk again.

That's all I've been able to come up with so far. Do you like it?

Breaking News: My Blogroll Not Updated

Darlene Taylor is back with a new blog which, oddly enough, is to be found at her old blog address. I think this is a capital idea. This means that all I have to do to update my blogroll is not update my blogroll.

From now on, I encourage all new bloggers to do the same thing. And a hearty welcome, welcome, welcome back to Darlene!

A Letter From a Letter

Because why should Vague have all the fun?

---

Dear you,

Hi! I'm F! You might remember me from such words as 'fraggle', frump', 'fiftieth', 'flange', 'often', 'indefatigable' and 'ineffable'!


Me on my summer holidays. Do you like the way I have my hair?

Now I'm sure it might sound to you like my life is all fun and frivolity, but that's not the case. In fact, lately, I've been wondering - what's the point? Why am I here? Why me? Why am I asking this at all? Why? Why?

I mean, think about it. I'm not like my neighbour E, a show-off if there ever was one. Not only is he the most commonly-used letter in the English language, but he also has a mathematical constant named after him!
And I'm not crude and vulgar, like my sister A. No shame with that girl - she's the first letter in the alphabet, and she'll take all comers!
Then again, I'm not exotic, like that floozy V. (Yeah, I'm talking about you, V. You start the word 'Vanity' for a reason!)
And Q - that Q - yeah, he might be amusing and good for a bit of a laugh. Oh, he appears in all the popular words, like 'Quid' and 'Quack' and 'Squib' and 'Quiddity' and 'Quagmire' and 'Queen' and 'Aquaman'; not to mention 'Quern', 'Quill', 'Quail', 'Quiquaequod' and 'Quaquaversal'. But when you need a useful word, he's nowhere to be seen!

Nope. I'm just an ordinary, boring old letter. Nothing at all important about me. I might get to make a cameo appearance in the occasional, minor preposition. And I've appeared in a few important algebraic equations - I don't mind saying. But really - why should I bother?

There are mornings when I wake up and stare across the vista of the alphabet, wondering ... I look out over the ovular contours of G; across the humps of H, and the egotistic spike of I - right down to the far horizon, where W and Z reside. They glimmer brightly in the distance, beckoning me. And I wonder - are there other letters out there, yet to be discovered?
Are we really alone as letters? Is it just me and 25 others? Or is there an infinity of letters out there to be discovered?
I remember one of you humans once wrote a novel omitting use of the letter E. That seems to me to be a pointless waste of the resources of language. Shouldn't you be out there, breaking new ground, discovering new letters, new resources? If you have new letters, then surely you would be able to put me and my brothers and sisters in new, exciting, exotic combinations of words hitherto unused.

I don't know. I don't even know why I'm writing this. I'm giving up. From now on, I'm resigning my place in the alphabet. I'm sick of being a letter.

From now on, I'm going out into the wide, wide world. I'll see if I can get a job. I'm sure there are plenty of things the letter F can do. Maybe I can work as a tree. Or a walking stick. As you might say, I'm fucking off.

Yours aithully,

F

Borders of Reality

Borders is a fantasy land, a place where dreams meet. It combines, in my mind, two of my favourite things: art and capitalism.
I imagine tweedy-jacketed old men roaming the corridors and plucking leather-coated books from dusty shelves; small ancient ladies thumbing their way through encyclopaedias, peering at the spider-like print through bone-rimmed glasses. And in some far corner, a forty-volume Slovakian translation of Shakespeare collapses on a child and it is only one hundred years later that they dig him out and find that he has become an old man.
And then there are the capitalists; important looking gentlemen in suit and ties and power-suited blonde women, striding purposefully behind desks and shouting words like 'growth' and 'market' and 'bonds' and 'potential' over the phones; customers running through the vertiginous rows of books after that elusive copy of The Wealth of Nations or The Road to Serfdom. Gunfights break out in the magazine stall over the last copy of The Onion or The Spectator. Customers corner staff and demand items; and the cowering staff have no chance but to supply them.

But there is a real Borders, too. I've been there. People sit up one end of the store and sip lattes, while at the other end, people browse lackadaisically through the magazine section.
There are pictures of Che. Apparently, there's a new Che autobiography out. All of Michael Moore's books are there, too.
Lost, my eyes filled with tears, I confronted a staff member.
"Don't you have motivational weekends?" I asked her. "Don't you have team building sessions and group spirit? Please tell me that you follow the law of supply and demand!"
"Oh no," she explained. "All the staff here are quite alternative. We're all from Melbourne Uni, and we're all into art, and stuff."
"But what about your bosses? Your managers? Aren't they capitalists? Aren't they ... American?"
"Oh, no," she said. "I really like my boss. She was a member of the Riot Grrrls."
I didn't know who the Riot Grrrls were, but then, I didn't need to know. Devastated, I left Borders that day. I had thought of them as a haven from the awful alternative subculture that had ingested the rest of Melbourne. But no. They had succumbed too.

They were all a bunch of ... hippies!

Aftermath

Keyboard, meet hand. Hand, meet brain. Brain, meet keyboard. Now let me leave the room while you get to know one another.

GROGBLOGGING: Who was there?
Rachel, Bridie, Aaron, Russell, Robert, Chris, Nick, Burnt Karma lady (I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name!), Ben, John, Bruce, and more.

Random Quote
"I had to somehow describe to the German police, in German, about this guy masturbating in the airport."

You want a real report? I don't know, I'm not the person to ask, I was only there at the time. Go read some of the other bloggers. I have a headache. Gah!

Just One Sleep to Beertime

Grogblogging tomorrow night. You are all invited to partake in acts of random drunkenness civility and pleasantness.

You Want the Tooth? You Can't Handle the Tooth!

Tenterfield Council, in New England, will be voting over whether to include fluoride in the water system today.



"I wash my mouth with Hydrochloric Acid!" Tenterfield Youth Representative

Type Like The Wind

Blogging from work. Got a transcript just before that was due over two hours ago. I had to break the typing barrier and actually learn how to type backwards in time.

See you yesterday!

How to be a Workin' Schmo.

Work sucks. Not having work sucks even more. Of all the sucky things in the world, it's the suckiest. I should know: it was out of the frustration of looking for work that this blog started. I spent four years in the Newcastle area, looking for work, but didn't realise until after I left that it was a great place to be a dole bludger in, but a crappy place to be unemployed.

Melbourne isn't so bad, job wise. It just depends what sort of a job you want. If the prospect of serving whining customers and guzzling fat bastards amuses you, you could do worse than take a resume around to some cafe-rich area, like St Kilda or Carlton. And hey, if things get bad there, you can always pour a coffee over the customers head.

On the other hand, you could try an office job. Office jobs suck cos, though you're on the computer all day, you're not allowed to use the net. Then again, office jobs rock, because you can usually USE THE NET ANYWAY and nobody will find out. Forbidden internet is the best internet.

I know a guy - we flatted together, actually - who needed to get a job, so he took his resume around to several St Kilda cafes, and in two days he got a job. And when I first moved to Melbourne, I took my resume around to all the temping agencies I could find. And I got jobs. Okay, most were shit jobs. Most were data entry, of one sort or another. Once, I remember I was typing up comments from a survey of a major Australian company. I found myself typing up some guys suicide letter.

Definitely you should do work that you like. If digging holes is your thing, so be it. If you like building ships, hey, whatever floats your boat. Me, I'd like nothing better than to sit around churning out bilious, foam-flecked rants on this blog and get paid for it. But you've got to be realistic. Who gets paid for churning out bilious, foam-flecked rants? Oh, wait, there's Phillip Adams. Is his position up for grabs...? Some people call Tim Blair the right-wing Philip Adams. Hey, maybe in the future, everyone could be Philip Adams for fifteen minutes ...

When you're working, of course, you've got to keep it all in perspective. Vanessa Perspective would do nicely:

"How am I today? It's 6:30am, I got three hours of sleep, and now I have to deal with you douchebags. I'm gung-ho as fuck."

"I couldn't help but overhear and I just wanted to say that yeah, the skirt makes your ass look fat. Also your face makes your head look stupid."

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to exit the kitchen area before I rip your heart out like an Aztec priest."

Because, after all is said and done - there's nothing wrong with working for a living, but there is something very wrong about living to work.

Lady Luck, Lady Schmuck

Flat hunting today. Why? I've been asking that myself that same question.

I'll post the sorry tale of how this came about another time. I was rather grumpy about the whole thing, but after a few drinks last night, I became somewhat more philosophical.
Anyway, my current predicament can be summed up in one word: life sucks.

Well, that's two words. But you know what I mean.

A Leopard

My brother, who lives in Sydney, is turning into a leopard. He has developed large spots all over his body. Of course, as certain other members of my family would have me believe (I'm looking in YOUR direction, Mum), he is not turning into a leopard at all, he has just got an allergy to penicillin.
They are wrong, of course. In due course, I am sure the transition from man to cat will be complete. I can only hope that a) His wife will accept this metamorphosis and b) That Taronga Zoo has a cage spare for him to rent.

The Worlds in Plurals

People should use plurals more often. I am convinced it is the way to make the world a better place. I mean, it might seem like a silly idea, but consider this:

- A solitary friend would immediately become FRIENDS!

- A dollar would, with the simple addition of an 's', become DOLLARS!

- You could take one book and straight away turn it into several BOOKS!

Of course, the English language would have to be amended. No longer would we write sentences like:

Stacy went down the street to the school where she met her boyfriend, Jack

Instead, we would have to use sentences like this:

The Stacies went down, up, under, over, and through the streets to the schools, TAFES, Unis, and Colleges where they met their boyfriends, husbands, and exes, the Jacks.

A little confusing, but I'm sure we could learn to do it in time.

Indeed, with a liberal use of the letter 's', even fundamental matters of life and death would be changed. Our birth would become our births, and our life would become our lives. With an intelligent use of plurals in this fasion, I'm sure that we could find a way to infinitely prolong our existence, and ...

But wait a minute. There are some other things to consider:

- If you have a wife or husband, they would immediately become WIVES and HUSBANDS.

- You would not merely be a self, you would be several SELVES!

And even worse:

HATE would become HATES, PAIN would become PAINS, SICKNESS (bad enough on its own) would become SICKNESSES, and ... shudder... DEATH would become DEATHS!

No. Perhaps that would not be the way to go. But wait! I have another marvellous idea! What if, instead of needlessly adding things to the world with plurals, we took the things that were wrong away? Let's start with ... say ... the letter 'r':

- REVOLUTIONARIES would become mere 'evolutionaries', and no longer present a threat to the civil order of the world;

- Those tedious things, MORALS, could, by the simple deduction of a letter, become 'moals' - whatever they are.

But then again ...

- Those who DREAD would become - simply - dead;

- BREASTS would become beasts ...

- And - the cruellest irony of all - FRIENDS WOULD BECOME FIENDS!

Hmmm ... perhaps these ideas aren't so good, after all ...

The Chocolate Review

Since there have been a few comments about the matter of chocolates and sweets in the previous post, I thought I would settle this matter once and for all.

FREDDO FROG



What it is
Delicious chocolate that will easily fit in your mouth.

How to eat it
There are a number of theories about this, and in fact, I maintain that there is no 'right' way to eat Freddo, just a number of 'different' ways. Here are a few:

1) Decapitate him with the first neat slice of your teeth and finish him off with your second and third bites.
2) Start at his feet and eat upwards, as if he is 'sinking' into your mouth, at the same time, imagining his froggy cries of anguish as he disappears down your throat. Make him 'cry' before he 'croaks'!
3) Working on alternate sides of his body, take his arms off one by one, then his legs, then his head, leaving a small portion of stomach for last.

The Verdict
Freddo is absolutely and without doubt the best chocolate ever invented.

CARAMELLO KOALA



What it is
A try-hard imitation of Freddo. The Koala is filled with gooey, sickly-sweet caramel as a means of enticing the children and improving on the chocolatey goodness of Freddo.

How to eat it
All children would be prudent to avoid this cheap imitation. Throw it in the bin, or donate it to the Salvation Army, who Know What To Do With Such Things.

The Verdict
People who think you can 'improve' on Freddo by adding caramel to the mix are the same sort of people who think you can 'improve' on the Crown Jewels by painting them with a coat of Larry's Lacquer. They should be shot.

EASTER EGGS



What it is
An egg, made out of chocolate.

How to eat it
Actually, you don't eat it for most of the year. Then, when Easter comes around, you consume vast quantities of it. This might sound greedy. But apparently it says in the Bible somewhere that this is completely fine, or something.

Variants
The 'large egg', actually a hollow chocolate easter egg with maybe a little something inside. (Status: ACCEPTABLE.)
The 'hollow chocolate bunny'. (Status: VERGING ON THE RIDICULOUS.)
The caramel-filled easter egg. (Refer to comments re: Caramello Koala)

The Verdict
A fine seasonal meal.

LIQUORISH



What it is
Black-straps of ... something that you can walk about chewing for ages and ages.

How to eat it
Grasp one end in your teeth, and the other in your hands, hold tight, and pull. Have a tug of war with yourself. A decent liquerish strap will last for hours, perhaps days.

Other things to do with it
You may not be allowed to play with your food, but you can certainly play with your sweets. Liquerish straps are excellent for whipping the other kids, lassoing, tying up the teacher*, and many other activities.

Variants
Liquerish comes in two main types:
1) The Twisty variety
2) The flat, corrugated variety

Both are more than acceptable. Of late, a crude third variant has been introduced, the chocolate covered liquerish strap. This is a vile slur on the good name of liquerish and should be eradicated from the earth.**

Verdict
I want one right now.

VIOLET CRUMBLE



What it is
Chocolate-covered rectangles of golden honeycomb.

How to eat it
There are two commonly accepted ways:
1) 'Peel' the Violet Crumble with your teeth, biting the chocolate away from the sides before chewing the honeycomb within.
2) Eating the Violet Crumble whole.

I favour the 'peeling' method myself.

Variants
Violet Crumble can also come in handy bite-size cubes, excellent for furtive snacks.

Other variants:
1) Home Brand Chocolate Honeycomb (Status: CHEAP IMITATION)
2) Crunchie (Status: EXPENSIVE IMITATION. The honeycomb tastes like nothing more than sugared sponge.)
3) Ferrero Rocher (Status: The posh version of Violet Crumble)

Verdict
Stick with the original, and best.***

GOLDEN ROUGH



What it is
A chocolate and coconut wheel.

How to eat it
Never having been an enthusiastic eater of the Golden Rough, I will defer to the experts for suggestions.

Other uses
May double up as a discus!

Verdict
Chocolate and coconuty goodness.

SMARTIES



What it is
Small chocolate disks covered in a hard, but brittle coloured candy.

How to eat it

1) One by one.
2) Take a combination of different coloured Smarties at the same time, relishing the 'cocktail' effect.
3) 'Drink' the smarties from the packet, by tipping it up and emptying it into your mouth. In this way, the Smarties can make a satisfying liquid refreshment while fulfilling your chocolate-cravings, at the same time!
Each of these methods have their merits.

Variants
1) M & Ms - Smarties with letters on them. (Status: ACCEPTABLE)
2) Jaffas - chocolate balls with a red brittle candy coating. (Status: UNACCEPTABLE. The people who eat Jaffas are old enough to be your father, in fact, they probably are your father. Avoid them.)

Other uses
Smarties also make excellent bullets for playground battles, and are therefore an essential item in every schoolkids armoury. ****

Verdict
Excellent things.

* Often while pelting them with chocolate eggs.

** See also 'Liquerish Allsorts', cubes which are made of alternating layers of liquerish and coloured candy. Wonderful.

*** See also Cherry Ripe, Mars Bars, and other common chocolate snacks.

**** Little boys, take note: Smarties may also be tipped down the back of a little girls skirt with great effect. Don't tell them I told you that, though.

A Helpful Letter

Got a letter from Centrelink today:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

- Your Newstart Allowance has been cancelled from 12 July 2005 because we have not received your application for payment form.

- There is still some money you owe to Centrelink. Please call 13 6330 before 16 August 2005 so we can help you with options for repayment.

How nice of them. Next thing you know, you'll have murderers asking your permission before they ... oh, wait. That's happened already...

Corsets in Dorset

"Mr. Darcy stood up and crossed the room, it seemed, for no other reason than to walk back again."*

Yesterday, I saw some of Emma. Now, I may have only come in in the closing scenes, but I counted:

- 1 Dramatic Crossing of The Room
- 4 Thoughtful Wanders Through The Garden
- 2 Sudden Turnings of the Back
- 6 Meaningful Inclinations of The Head (2 to the left, 4 to the right)
- 1 Impassioned Clutching of Anothers Arm
- And a stunning 29 Heaving Bosoms!**

Add this to the English Country Garden-style scenery, and a cloyingly cliched musical score, which seemed to consist of a harpist plucking sylvan chords while a clarinet noodled away over the top and a string orchestra burbled away in the background.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like Jane Austen. And, when I say don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong; I may like Jane Austen, but I am amazingly uninterested in romantic fiction. It's just that Jane Austen takes the piss out of it so perfectly. But, really, what's so interesting about this version of Austen? I half expected the love interest, one John Knightley, to confess to Emma at the end of the film, "Tragically, I was gelded at birth."
It didn't happen.

Anyway, in my version of a Jane Austen, things would happen a bit differently:

- Emma Would Step in a Mud Puddle;
- Fanny Price and Maryanne Dashwood would indulge in indoor Lesbian antics;
- The Lady Catherine De Bourgh would die one day in church when a pipe organ fell on her;
- Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy would JUST HAVE SEX ALREADY;
- Mr Knightley would wake up one morning to find that he had leprosy and his legs had fallen off;
- And Frank Churchill would steal a blunderbuss from the Woodhouses residence, become a highwayman, then later join up with Jonathan Wild.

And the music? I'd have the clarinet, harp, and violin combination replaced with Tuba, cymbals, and bagpipes. Just for fun.

*Just a paraphrase. I don't have my copy of Pride and Prejudice with me, so I can't check the quote. Incidentally, I got that copy at the bottom of a mildewed old box which I found in a back shed at my old flat in Annandale.

**That's at least one more than you'd expect!

A Biscuit Story

There were some biscuits in the kitchen at work today; Milk Arrowroot, Gingersnap, and - yes - Scotch Fingers.

Ah, Scotch Fingers. The Scotch Finger and I go back a long way. Back in my childhood, growing up in Balranald, the packet of Scotch Fingers was brought out only on special occasions, like Christmas, the New Year, or each time a new Prime Minister got voted in. I don't know where they came from, these wonder biscuits - maybe Mum kept them locked in a golden box with her jewellery or something.
There we would sit, at the family table, solemnly ruminating upon our single Scotch Finger, and Mum would tell us The Tale.

"When I worked for the Arnott's factory," she would say, "In the typing pool, Mr. Arnott would come upon the balcony every day to check up on the girls."

That was the tale. Not very exciting, I guess. No blood or guts to speak of; very little violence, and not a hint of sex. But we were simple people, with simple joys.

Nowadays, of course, we have moved on from the Scotch Finger. The Scotch Finger is no longer the King of the Biscuits, nor even the Jack of Biscuits. No, my family are no longer among that Scotch-Finger-Munching, Instant-Coffee-Sipping crowd of country town dwellers. No longer are we forced to subsist upon such meagre rusks. No!

We move amongst a better class of people now. For we have discovered Tim Tams.

An Outrageous Falsehood

I present, for your examination, this site:

ARAS VEBRA IS THE BEST

The best site in the world in all catagories, especially regarding lithuania, pedagogy, interntational projects, party times, snow plows, and how gay Rastenis is.

Now this is an outrageous falsehood. I put it to you, Mr Vebra, that you are not the best, and that you are not, indeed, even the second best. It would even be a far bet to put you in the third best category, although I would quite happily place you in the category of the fourth best.
There are many websites that cover the topic of 'interntational projects', 'party times' and even 'snow plows'. 'Pedagogy', too, is a subject that is well covered, and I am assured that 'Lithuania' is similarly covered.
In short, most of these 'catagories' have already been covered by other websites, and therefore on the grounds of originality alone, I cannot catagorically state that Aras Vebra is the best, even in some of the catagories.

However, this is an interesting post, and this is an entertaining one, even though I do not understand a word of it.
On the gayness of Rastenis I concur. I have never met Rastenis, and I am never likely to meet Rastenis, I am not a particular authority in these matters, but I wholeheartedly and comprehensively agree that Rastenis is gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Nevertheless, I request that you change the name of your website immediately, Mr Vebra, before I declare war on Lithuania. Do it, in the name of peace and internantional relationships. I beg you, Mr Vebra, do it.

Grogbloghogfloglogblog blog

Chris Fryer has been leaving comments in everyone's mail box for months advertising his up and coming Grogblogging, on August 27th (this month). He never seems to have taken me up on my own suggestion - why not hold the Grogblogging in the gutter? It easy to access; it's just outside your house; everybody is welcome to attend; and the owners aren't too particular about what bodily fluids you leave there afterwards. Plus they have regular comedy functions - Gutter Humour, they're called.

Oh well. Maybe next time.

I'll be going to the grogblogging myself; turns out it will be held at Papa Ginos in Carlton. Click here to find out more. Good on Chris for organising the event, anyway.

Notes For A Musical

This is a post for Jelly, who will soon be quitting these shores for an expedition to the United States. I bet she'll be able to guess all the musicals these are from, too.

Notes towards a production entitled ALGEBRA - THE MUSICAL

It Had To Be U
It had to be U, wonderful U,
it had to be U.

Y God, Y?
Y, God, Y? Y today?
I'm all through here - on my way.

I Can Do Anything
I can do anything better than U can,
I can do anything better than U.

A Sailor Went to C
A sailor went to C, C, C
To C what he could C, C, C

T for 2
Picture U upon my knee
Just T for 2
And 2 for T

I Only Have I's for U, Dear
Are the stars out tonight?
I don't know if it's cloudy or bright
'Cause I only have eyes for you, dear

O Me O My!
Oh me, O my, O my, O me, O U!
O me, O my, O U!

A-B-C
A B C,
yeah, talkin' 'bout 1 - 2 - 3,
yeah, A - B - C, 1 - 2 - 3,
baby u and me girl.

The Glasses

I had no idea, until today, what 'emo glasses' were. But I was having a conversation this afternoon with D. and F. when the subject of emo glasses came up. Apparently all the women wear them. As a matter of fact, I googled 'emo glasses' and I came up with a lot of pictures of cute chicks wearing the things. Indeed, you could say that a cute chick feels naked without her emo glasses.

'If you talk to them right,' I was told, 'the cute chicks will take off their emo glasses for you.'
Helpful advice, to be sure. But I'd prefer tricking the chicks to take off their emo glasses for me. Devious person that I am, I'd shout something at the womenfolk like, 'Hey! Look! It's Germaine Greer!'. Then, while they turn in the other direction to look, I would whip their emo glasses from their eyes, leaving them metaphorically, if not actually, naked.

Yes, those cute emo glass wearing chicks would be defenceless before my masculine guile and cunning. If you are a cute emo glass wearing chick, you should be very, very afraid.

Sextra Sensory Perception

He was an empath and she was a telepath. They met in the upper regions of some cosmic nexus of innerspace. He empathed over to her, transmitting thoughts of peace and love, and complimented her on the colour of her aura. She had just had it changed that morning, and radiated feelings of happiness back to him. Their frequencies vibrated resonantly with one another.

"I'm getting in touch with my inner self," she thought towards him.

"I'd like to do that to," he thought back, meaningfully.

From then on, they just seemed to think into one another all the time. It was like fate. Certainly their planets were in alignment. In dreams he saw his Aries on the cusp of her Venus. She meditated to the songs of whales, burning scented candles. She imagined her aromatic odours mingling with his essential oils. Their kundalinis twined around one another.

Then, one evening, in a higher plane of existence, they found themselves alone together. He thought to her how much he loved her spirit. She radiated back that she just adored his subconscious. Suddenly, he decided that enough was enough, and he bared his soul to her. She telepathed back a smile, and showed him her Elektra complex. Then he showed her his penis envy. They stripped back their outer selves to reveal their archetypes.

He massaged her yings and she pulled at his yang. She entered his Oedipus complex and he embraced her centredness. "Oh!" she thought. "Ah!" he vibrated. They spiraled around and around one another, entering higher and higher states of ecstasy. Their twonesses became a oneness until finally, they had achieved the cosmic atonement with The All. She ectoplasmed all over the room. Their spirits shuddering together, they finally achieved nirvana. It felt good.

Afterwards, she channeled her number to him.

Days later, he finally worked up the courage to call.

"Hello?"

"Hello? Yes?"

"Is that Sharon?"

"Yes ...", she said. "Is that Ben?"

He trembled for a moment. It was too amazing.

"Sorry," he yelped. "wrong number!"

He hung up. There was something about the way she spoke. Achieving nirvana together was one thing, but the karma was all wrong. Their Qis just weren't right for one another.

Thought For The Day

Have they made a breakfast cereal out of sultanas, weeties, and melted gruyere cheese yet? Because if they haven't, they should have.

Whacky Amputation Stories!

So apparently ex-New Zealand PM David Lange is recovering in hospital:

Lange is resting comfortably in Auckland's Middlemore Hospital after his medical team used a nerve-blocking technique to remove his lower right leg without full anaesthesia.

He was admitted to hospital over two weeks ago for complications of diabetes.

Lange renowned for his wit, made light of the situation. "He popped up and said: 'Are you sure you've got the right leg?'

I can't begin to tell you how many times this has happened to me. I'm fast asleep, when all of a sudden I wake to find that some desperado doctor is sawing off my leg. 'Have you got the right leg?' is the first question I ask.

Sadly, they usually answer in the negative. They prefer the left.

Alternative Rhymes for Country Music Singers

This is an extremely valid point:

... the current infestation of Austin-based singer-songwriters who continue to employ the overwrought phrase "I'm down on my knees!" and then rhyming it with "please" (but never "cheese") in their trite masterworks ...

Country music singers, please take note. Your lame rhymes and cliched imagery has been brought to our attention. Since your artistic and, indeed, professional integrity may be brought into disrepute, I am willing, as a public service, to suggest a range of alternative rhymes.

LAME RHYME NO. 1.

I'm down on my knees

Instead of:

And begging you, please ...

The following will add a touch of class:

Can't I have some of that gorgonzola cheese?

While there is just a hint of pathos in

AAAAAGH! I'm being attacked by killer bees!

Or then there is the gently whimsical:

I knew I should never have drunk that bloody anti-freeze.

LAME RHYME NO. 2.

Oh, please don't go away

Instead of:

I'm asking you today

Or,

I'm begging you to stay

Or indeed,

Oh honey babe, I pray

Why not:

- I love you even if you're gay?
- I love you even if you're Che?
- I love you even if you do insist on wearing that beret?

Or indeed:

I love your canapes?

LAME RHYME NO. 3

Last year, you broke my heart

Instead of,

Though you said we'd never part

Why not add some interest to your song with an incisive political statement -

When you showed to me your macro-economic chart?

That's enough for the moment. Feel free to add more suggestions in comments ...

Insightful Marty

Marty lays into 'idiotic social conservatives' who have problems with sex in computer games:

... if you haven't played it, don't assume you are an expert on it. Likewise, if you buy it for your kids and are too stupid to figure out that a name like "Grand Theft Auto" and a rating sticker that says "MA15+" (or M17+ if you're in America) is a game NOT aimed at kids, do us all a favour and shut the fuck up.

Tell me about it. Once I had a great idea for a video game which I submitted to the Australian Censorship Bureau. It was going to be called The Savage Breast, and it would have been about a psychopathic, genetically-modified breast that stalked through a hospital of deformed third-world children with a bazooka, blasting anything that moved to the sounds of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Apparently it got rejected because I mispelt something in the proposal.

Actually, that's a lie. But it could easily have been the truth.

UPDATE: Speaking of boobs, it's about time someone thought of this....

The Adventures of Blindman #3

Because I could. So there.

Games That You Should Never Play

There are some games that you should never play with other people, let alone with yourself. Chess is not one of them. As a boy, I spent many days playing chess with myself, thereby becoming the cause of many merry japes amongst my family.

Playing with yourself? they would ask.

Or sometimes, Who's winning?

Of course, I would answer. Why shouldn't a boy be allowed to play with himself once in a while? Is there a law against a boy playing with himself in moderation? And why are you interested, anyway? It's not as if you know me or are related to me, you're just my parents.

And, as those who have played chess with themselves will know, you can learn a lot from the experience. You don't just learn how to win and lose, or draw and draw, simultaneously. Oh, no!

How to win and draw at the same time!

How to win and win at the same time (harder than it seems)

And even, how to lose and lose at the same time

I found the last category the easiest to achieve.

In short, I think that chess is a most instructive game, even when played with other people.

But there are some sports and competitions that are best avoided. Like eating whale burgers at a Greenpeace convention, they may be the cause of social, and possibly even literal, death. Here is a brief list of some of those games ...

---

PLAYING STRIP POKER WITH THE TALIBAN

Those guys never take it well. Oh, it's alright if they're winning. But if they lose. If they lose ...!


PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK IN THE DESERT WITH AN AGOROPHOBIC

This is to be avoided at all times, and in all social situations. I have learned, at great expense to myself and my family, that at some point it will be necessary to call a psychiatrist in. It's just not worth it.


PLAYING TABLE TENNIS WITH COBRAS AS BATS AND WITH BUTTERFLIES AS SHUTTLECOCKS

This would be a particularly idiotic pursuit to indulge in. Not only will it be extremely difficult to hit the butterflies, but the cobras will keep on trying to wriggle out of your hands, bite you, and even eat the butterflies.


PLAYING SOCCER WITH A CUSTARD PIE

You ungrateful sods. What would your mother think, after cooking that custard pie for you?


BLIND MAN'S BLUFF WITH A BLIND MAN

It's just no fun when the other side wins all the time.


PLAYING THIS LITTLE PIGGY WITH CHILDREN WHO HAVE HAD THEIR LIMBS AMPUTATED

Insensitive bastard that you are. You'd have to play the game with the children's teeth, and do you have any idea how ridiculous they'd find that idea?


A GAME OF MURDER IN THE DARK WITH JACK THE RIPPER AND SYDNEY NORTH-SHORE SCHOOLGIRLS

Are you MAD??? Those schoolgirls would tear Jack the Ripper apart!!!


PICTIONARY WITH HITLER AND WOODY ALLEN

As any good history student would know, Hitler never did like parlour games, so it would just be rude to invite him along. If such a difficult social situation were to occur, have a quiet word with Woody Allen, and quickly put the Pictionary set away and go and take out the croquet sticks instead.


SKYDIVING WITH A BRICK PARACHUTE

This is an idea that, as they say, would never get off the ground; but, if you did manage to get it off the ground it would, as they say, go down like a lead balloon. If you want to take up skydiving, consult a professional skydiver, who will undoubtedly advise you that there are much better materials to make your parachute out of, ie: spider web, papier-mache, cow-hide, and such and such.

Until then, stick to skydiving from the top of your grand-piano.


A SPELLING BEE WITH A DYSLEXIC GIRAFFE AND A NEAR-SIGHTED DOVE

Don't be stupid. In the first place, nobody would be able to hear the giraffes answers; in the second place, doves can't speak English, they can only speak Pidgin; and in the third place, how are you going to be able to get the dove and the giraffe in the same room at the same time? The logistics of the whole thing are impossible.


TEACHING A CHILD WITH ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER HOW TO PLAY PATIENCE

Like playing Strip Poker with the Taliban, this is just not on. There are, in fact, whole books of card-games that you should never play: 52 Pickup for People with Broken Backs, Gin Rummy with Alcoholics, or, that perennial non-favourite, 500 For People Who Never Learned How To Count Past Five.


ONE PERSON RUSSIAN ROULETTE

On this subject, few words are best.