My brilliant gardening career

It is true, as some have been saying, that I have taken up gardening. It cannot be denied that, on the occasional afternoon, or evening, I can be seen pottering around little patches of lawn digging holes here and filling holes up over there. As the Baron can vouch, we have even indulged in a little spot of thistle pilfering as a team activity, in order to supplement the already impressive weed collection we have in our backyard.

I know that many of you may find this partaking in the sport of soil sifting rather quixotic on my part. 'Tim', you may ask, 'what on earth do you know about gardening? Do you have any idea what you are growing?' I admit the consequences of many botanical endeavours can be dangerous, deadly even: what is a dear little green bud in the loam one morning may be a man sized, carnivorous, mobile triffid the next. Will a whippersnipper be enough to keep their rabid bloodlust at bay? Who can tell.

But quite aside from that, I can give a full and confident list of all the contents of our growing garden. It will of course be different to the Baron's list, but that is neither here nor there: why, there is
that thing
and this thing
and those things
and those other things
and all those other things
and the other things that are even more other than the other things
and the other other things that are even more other other than the other other things
and that stuff (it's really nice, that stuff is)
and those bits.

Just this morning, the Baron and I were planting a thing, a very particular thing. They were bearded things. Well, that's what they were called anyway, though I couldn't even see any beards - not even a little moustache. Maybe we should start them off with moustache toupees, to give them a sense of confidence?

But anyway, I should say I have a very definite plan for this garden, an alphabetical plan. Each plant will be named and categorised under its letter of the alphabet. Like, l for 'leafy things' and g for 'grassy things' and r for 'rosy things' (like, I dunno, roses), and f for 'fruity things', and b for 'big things'. I had trouble thinking up stuff for other letters - even 'a', but eventually I decided that 'assorted stuff' would do it.

As all gardeners know, it is pleasant, on long summer days, to lie in the shade of the leafy things, with one's arms in the fresh grassy stuff, while a cool breeze blows through the flowery objects and carries various smelly sensations to your nose, and to look over at the shadows cast on the ground by the big and leafy things as the wind sends their leafy bits rustling hither and thither, thither and hither. Occasionally, one might even reach over to the fruity things and pluck off some... fruit, and admire the soon-to-be bearded things as they twirl their youthful moustaches in the long golden sunlight, and you see pollen from the flowery stuff drift through the air, and you sigh.

A famous person once said: "Man's first home was a garden, and as his garden is his castle, that is where the heart is." Now who could possibly disagree with - or even understand - that? Quite right.

Great parlour games of our Tim

As was the style of the Tim.

Men and women of Australia - it's Tim!

I read it in the Tims.

The Tims, they are a changing.

A Tim to give birth, a Tim to die, a Tim to plant, and a Tim to uproot what is planted.

What's the Tim?

The Tim Machine!

If I could turn back Tim.

If you're lost if you're waiting I will find you, Tim after Tim.

Not at this Tim of life.

We've had a great Tim.

***

In another version of this game, you also substitute the word 'underpants' for some other word in these phrases, eg, 'Men and women of Australia - underpants Tim!' 'If underpants could turn back Tim.' etc.

Three reviews

Bed of Roses
The interesting thing about this new ABC television show is you can subtract all the specific details from the description, such as names, plot details, scenery, costumes, and everything else, and still you end up with a reasonable description of the show. I only came in watching this show halfway, but this description still shapes up reasonably well:

1) Dramatic scene, emotional conflict.
2) Startling emotional resolution
3) Whacky scene, involving lovable characters
4) Heartfelt guitar music
5) More emotional conflict.
6) More whackiness.
7) Plot driving towards resolution.
8) Emotional revelation involving Characters Talking About Their Problems And Learning A Little About One Another And Most Especially Themselves.
9) Whackily whacky joke underscoring the main plot point that drives plot towards resolution.
10) Emotional resolution + whacky scene involving lovable characters
11) Emotional resolution + lovable characters + heartfelt guitar music
12) Concluding whacky joke further underscoring the resolution of plot that has just been resolved in the previous scene!
13) Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

The Proprietor of Inappropriate Lemonade Stands
I got this zine at Sticky. It's hilarious, and simple: so simple that I find if I attempt a description at all, I ruin the joke. So my review for this is pretty much like the review for Bed of Roses, except even more general and non-specific in nature.

1) I couldn't read some of the words on page 2, but still got the joke, so that was all right.
2) There is a funny joke peripheral to the main joke on page 12
3) Not sure I get the context on page 18
4) Page 19 sort of passed me by as well, but it was still nice
5) There might have been a line or two out of place as well, I'm not sure, but on the whole, what a great zine.

Cool baths on hot days
I am into cool baths on hot days. I am so into cool baths on hot days that I got into one yesterday. I am not so into them as to still being in the cool bath that I got into on the previous hot day, being yesterday, and indeed if I were to get into that cool bath now, it would be like getting into a bloody freezing bath on a soon-to-be hot day, which would not be quite the same thing, but my general point still holds. Cool baths on hot days, like hot baths on cool days, or green leaves on red strawberries, go pretty well with one another, I find. In a world full of inappropriate things, like Australian heatwaves, they are entirely appropriate. You should get into cool baths on hot days too.

When the internet goes bung, call the washing machine man

Sometimes when I turn the tap on and someone else is on the phone in the other room, I think, 'oh, hang on. Will this interrupt the supply to the telephone?', for some reason acting on the supposition that telephones run on water.

Then again, the other day, when the washing machine stuffed up, I called the repair man. And then, when I was speaking to him, the phone stuffed up too. Perhaps I'm on to something after all...

Congratulations! It's a David Koch!

Apparently hospitals have been banning fathers from filming the birth of their child. And apparently David Koch from Sunrise says 'you just shouldn't have cameras down there'. This just shows why you should never start a sentence with 'apparently David Koch from Sunrise says...'

But it does seem to me to be a rather strange activity for a father to get involved in, going around filming the birth of his children. Because after he's made sure he's got the zoom right, and the focus just so, and the position of the camera correct, and is reasonable certain that he's got it stable, and has moved to get out of the way of this doctor, and has adjusted the knobs so that he still gets a reasonable picture because of the lights, and has moved to get out of the way of that doctor, and has pressed this and twirled that and fiddled with whathaveyou, and ducked around the nurse, and adjusted still more things, what's he going to do? More ducking and weaving and adjusting and twirling and twiddling, presumably - so that by the time his child is born he will have a definite, specific and imperishable memory of the event. He'll be able to say to his child, years after, 'yes, I was there when you were born - it was the most magical moment of my life!' And I suppose he was there - in a sense. He can pretty much skip the bit where he tells his child about it, though - he'll probably have to, and anyway, it will be much easier to simply direct them to youtube, or a DVD, or something like that.

When I consider the case of Dads filming their partners in labour, I conceive a high and wistful longing for the old days when they would sit on a comfortable chair in a waiting room chewing their fingers and performing unconscious origami on their hats. They seem to me to be just as present as a dad with a camera on their shoulders: they've certainly entered into the spirit of the occasion more. Maybe it's just me, but I feel that filming dramatic events like births or deaths or the rather eventful in-betweens doesn't really add anything to the savour of life: who wants details? It's always the hardest to remember the high points and low points in our life in detail. Electricity bills, bank loans, and tax forms are full of details, but you wouldn't want to get excited about them. In fact, the only exciting events we can talk about in lots of detail are usually ones that we were never at in the first place. I can remember quite a few details about the Second World War, for instance: how about you?

Contra fathers who film their children being born, and contra the age we live in in general, and contra Parishiltonpamelaandersonsharonosbourneshanewarne and the rest of the living-perpetually-on-camera generation, life is not a performance, birth is not merely a drama for the camera, love is not a theatrical show for the internet. The Trojans did not wait for nine years and then get killed by the Greeks just so Homer could finish his damn poem, and Christ did not learn his lines from a crappy script written by Mel Gibson 2000 years later. Events do not wait around to get recorded before eventuating, and life, in spite of appearances, is not about appearances.

Though maybe, in the mind of a certain minor Australian celebrity of the early 21st century, some 50 years ago, a new mother was congratulated with the words, 'Congratulations, Mr Koch! You've just given birth to a bespectacled, balding, slightly tubby television personality with an expertise in accounting who will present a top-rating Channel Seven current affairs and commentary program! You must be so proud!' You just never know.

The travails of the furry fraternity

It's hard being a cat. When the humans are in and you are in you just want to be let out. When the humans go out and keep you in you just want to go out. When the humans let you out and then go out, you just want to be let in. And when the humans stay in and you are out, they spend all the time getting you back in again. I mean, really, not only do the humans change their mind all the time, but they keep on putting you in just the place you don't want to end up.

All in all, when you consider things, it makes you wish you weren't a cat. Oh, wait - you aren't.

Hadn't you better stop eating that mouse then?

Tiddleywinks death match

If you took the Top Ten composers of all time, and matched them against the Top Ten chess players of all time, who would be the better team in a death match of Tiddleywinks? An important question, but I don't think you'll see The Guardian have a go at answering that any time soon.

Another existential insect

Whatsetty grub - an insect that raises profoundly deep and meaningful questions about space, time, the universe, God, death, the beginning of everything, the end of everything else, and just what on earth this little grub is, exactly, and how on earth it got into your garden.

(Add it to the list.)

The sayings of snails

It's so crowded here, it's like the lettuce leaf on a Friday!

What are you, a midge or a mollusc?

As smooth as my spawn's egg-sac!

It's either mud or it's dud.

A slime in grime saves time.

The sewer is where the heart is.

The early bird catches the worm - and YOU!

Beware of cats, hens, and French mens.

A slurp in a burp saves urp.

His, hers, or hermaphrodites?

Is that a pseudo-pseudopodae?

All's well in the shell.

Better ooze than osmose!

You've got to eat hard to stay behind.

A slug in snail's clothing.

A gloop in a glop or a glop in a gloop?

If you were any faster, you'd be a turtle!

Last one in's a pickled sea cucumber!

Bob's your uncle, and your auntie.

I am what the cat dragged in.

When the shoe falls, danger calls!

At the end of every rainbow lies a cabbage.

Turning under a new leaf.

The mildew's always mouldier on the other side.

You're the man-woman of my dreams!

It's not easy to be oozy.

McCracken Wakes!

McCracken is a wild, wiry haired, crazy bearded poet who can be found almost everyday on Brunswick Street offering to declaim his poems to passers-by. Apparently he hands out ads for the Rose Street markets or something like that. When he does get an opportunity to read a poem to someone, he shouts at them instead. It's just his way of reading. Anyway, after you've been going to poetry readings for a while, like I have, you'll probably hear about how McCracken was one of the first poetry reading MCs from someone or other (maybe even from McCracken himself). You can see footage of him here - don't mistake him for the other bearded weirdo who happens to go by my name - on one of the latest programs of Red Lobster.

He gave some rather enjoyable readings at the Dan last week. Sometime between now and then I decided to write this (with obvious help from Tennyson, and after another suggestion by poet JM). I don't know... I kind of think it captures something about him....

Below the thunders of the city street,
In some abysmal crevice of the bar,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
McCracken sleepeth: far off, sounds of car
Make music to his snores: around him swell
Shadows of poets, painters, drongos, drunks,
Old musos, madmen, socialists and punks,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell.
Some soothe his sleep with rhyming lullabies
Upon the stage, while some rehearse free verse:
There hath he lain for ages and will lie,
Battening upon Doritos in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep,
And rising, men and angels both shall curse:

MCCRACKEN WAKES! MORE BEER! shall be his cry.

He's a Barbie man in a Barbie world

Ken, Ken, confused amongst men,
Though made without parts he still has a heart
As a he he's not quite more hermaphrodite,
Sometimes a man and sometimes a tran,
Dressed in more dresses than you ever could guess,
Is being made of plastic so fantastic at all?
More doll than role model, still, that's all right
An idol? An icon? Androgynite.

Following his successes

Following his successes as a Golden Globe host, Ricky Gervais plans to move on to bigger and better things, and will next year host the inaugural Quambatook film festival.

Reports are he plans to 'mercilessly satirise' the vanities and pretensions of the people who make up the Quambatook film industry, with jokes focusing on material such as the time one guy came home from work a little drunk, and the habit a guy (the same guy, actually) has of picking his ear in public.

Pieces and bits

The small boy deep inside of me is positively fascinated by all the goings on, diggings up, driving round about, and excavations happening outside the nearby train station. On going there this morning, I noticed a whole load of dirt from who-knows-where lying around on what had previously been the carpark, a steam shovel acting like the mechanical equivalent of a broom and making high-pitched scraping noises on the concrete while it scraped this dust up, and another truck just driving up and down with a gigantic yellow... thing on it, which yellow thing would later doubtless be used for certain very definite and mysterious purposes. God knows what they're doing, but it looks to me very much like they're digging holes in one part of the ground, and dumping the dirt on other parts. I love it. Maybe if the council paid them enough money they'd stay there and do it forever.

***

Now that the Christmas/New Year holidays have wound up, and I have got back to work, I find that I am able to start writing and thinking creatively again. It's the same every year. There is nothing so stimulating and inspiring, I find, as having a paid job to do which you can be distracted from. Don't tell anybody I work with, though - especially if any of you readers out there actually are people I work with.

***

Soothing sounds of the morning:

pad-pad-pad-pad-pad-pad-jingle-pad-pad-pad-jingle-pad-pad-pad-pad

THUMPBANGYSLAM!

... pad-pad-pad-pad-pad-pad-jingle-pad-pad-pad-jingle-pad-pad-pad-pad...

and Harriet the cat, having deposited another purloined apple upon the floor by the bed, softly toddles out the door again in search of further wholesome activities.

***

Some spoonerist doggerel I wrote on the weekend...

Gullard is dill
Pudd is a roo
John Key is a Hunt
And Tarack is boo.

A poem about me

(Dedicated humbly to me)

I was talking behind my back
To the stranger who stood in the glass
Which is almost but not quite as hard as
Kicking yourself in the arse.

'You're not half of the man that I am,'
I said, 'Though you go by my name.'
He nodded and grinned ruefully
And said, 'But you're just the same.'

I stood watching him in the mirror
As I talked to him over my back
A perilous, complex manoeuvre,
But easy once you have the knack.

'You're not quite as tall as your height,'
He said, 'And I'm smarter than you.'
With both eyes I looked in his left one,
And simply said, 'me too.'

I finished with mutual compliments,
He smiled and said, 'touche'.
Having each fought ourselves to a draw,
We agreed we'd both won on the day.

I was talking behind my back
To the stranger I happen to be -
What a beautiful bastard he is,
That frustrating lovely me.

Flosophy

"Physicists! Why do they get to have all the fun? With their whizz-bang particle accelerators that spend all their time whizzing particles around and banging them into others? Why can't philosophers have a bit of fun? Why doesn't someone ever think of the philosophers, hmm?

I know - why can't philosophers have a... a... a... concept accelerator, which deploys all the tools of modern technology and whizz-bang stuff to, you know, whizz concepts and thoughts and notions and ideas and whims and smoosh them all into one another to form a gigantic ball of conceptual smooshiness, whereupon they would EXPLODE and, you know, do whatever ideas do then.

You might argue that this is exactly what the grey mushy matter in our heads known as a 'brain' does, but no! I want a concept accelerator that is as big as a particle accelerator! I want a titanic grey mushy organic thing that spans continents, and accelerates the largest thoughts in the world around at the speed of light! THAT would be cool. The physicists wouldn't look so smug then."

This is what I said to the roomful of philosophers standing around at the party with all their thoughts and their latest developments in epistomological conceptualisms and their -ishs and their -itions and their -isms and whatever. Whereupon the roomful of philosophers stared blankly at me for a few awkward seconds before going back to talking about what they were talking about before, and I turned my attention to the plateful of uneaten chips.

Inverted band names

Woollen Dirigible

The Static Mineral Objects

The Non-Gender-Specific Automatics

The Arachnids

The Patriarchs of Non-Creativity

AC/BC

Wooden Floozy

The Intact Vegetables

Gray Frederick

The Concrete Aboveground

Televisualbottom

The Land Ladies

Resurrecting Pollyanna

Lukewarm Spanner

The Me

(Thank you, The Celibate Rifles)

Three sort-of reviews

I've been meaning to do a review of some friends' works on this blog for a while, but it's hard to separate their works from their personality. So I ended up doing a couple of biographical-reviews. Here they are anyway...

Bruce Gillespie
Bruce seems to know almost everyone, have read almost everything written by almost everyone, and self-publishes several zines with contributions written by almost all of these people. BRG is more personal, Steam Engine Time and SF Commentary are pure, unadultered SF fanzine. (There may be more - I still have no idea in what order they come out, if any, and if Bruce told me I'd probably forget anyway).

Bruce's opinions and interests are vocal, passionate, many and varied, and invariably entertaining. As might be expected, he is full of information and stories about the Melbourne SF community in the early days, and how fanzines used to be produced. (Prior to the proliferation of printing and photocopying software, zines were produced on tools such as the mimeograph machine.) I remember recently hearing an anecdote about a book falling into Bruce's hands from amongst his copious bookshelves, and him reading the title and saying in a wondering voice, "I haven't read this!" I can well believe it. You can find copies of his fanzines at efanzines.com. Highly recommended.

Bill Wright
Every second month, Bill co-publishes, with Dick Jenssen (Dittmar), Interstellar Ramjet Scoop. It is a joy to behold, sporting a fantastic design on the cover by Dittmar, accompanied by notes in the zine about the cover (which may mention anything from string theory to dinosaurs to alternative dimensions in time and space - my favourite Dittmar cover is one from last year showing a dinosaur coughing up a furball, or the dinosaurian equivalent of a furball). Topics covered in IRS range from the geeky to the cheeky; in a recent issue Dittmar discussed 'dinosaur computers' - the early 1950s computers which were housed in gigantic warehouses, one of which Dittmar worked on. There is a regular section on clerihews, as well as the usual fannish letters.

At the bottom of every cover of IRS is a small photograph of Bill with lightbeams emerging from around his head, which for whatever reason makes me think of 1950s Scientology artwork. Bill, who I assume grew up reading copies of Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy from around that time, is undoubtedly aware of this pictoral reference and is wonderful company. His eyes light up when he discusses tax laws or accounting procedures, a subject which will forever be beyond me, but is also not averse to simple punning. IRS reflects these interests, and - like Bruce's zines, can be found archived on that weird and wonderful site, efanzines.com.

Komninos
At some point in the 1970s or '80s - I've no idea when exactly - Komninos gave up a career in the sciences to take to the road and write and read poetry. Bad for science, maybe, but definitely good for poetry. Ever since he's been leading the life of a poet, with occasional non-poetry related activities on the side, occasionally taking to the road to read his poems. He's probably read in more pubs than most people have ever drunk in. Some of his books include Komninos, and the various Komninos Manifestos, and reading through some of them now I just can't help thinking of the politics of the 1980s and 90s - stuff like

it's great to be mates with a koori
to know a gay man or two.
to have five lesbians for dinner,
and to cook them a vegetable stew.

Komninos is still going strong, you can hear him read his stuff at Melbourne venues like the Dan or the Brunswick Hotel - the gravelly tones of his voice are unforgettable. His voice is so gravelly that when you hear him read his laneway poem

i am the laneway that no-one walks down unless they have good reason
i am the laneway that no-one ever find themselves in by mistake

you instantly believe him. Shoot him an email and get a few of his books, they're worth it.

Existential insects

Mights - Mites so small that they may not exist at all. Include sand mights, wigwam mights, beard mights, staple mights, and night mights.

May Bee - A stinging insect that could possibly have been a bee (eg "Ow!" "What? Did you get stung by something?" "May Bee...") A special type of Might.
[See also: Would Bee, Should Bee, To Bee or the Not Too Bee]

Its - Like nits, only they really have no point whatsoever.

Gnots - Like gnats, only gnot.

Flowns - A species of flies that exist always in the past tense. They make a point of buzzing around in your ear just a fraction of a fraction of a second before you actually exist to do anything about it, just to irritate you.

Instructions

1) Go to the airport and wave around one of those placards with people's names on it. Because you do not know anybody getting off the plane, simply replace their name with the word 'You'. If you do not like whoever that 'You' happens to be, 'Them'. Look very busy and important.

NOTE: Similar results can be obtained at train station, taxi cab rank, etc, but for full effect, it is best to do it at the airport.

He wrote an elegy

He wrote an elegy that ended up as a eulogy, was mistaken for an allegory, was taken to court as an allegation, and finally gave him an allergy.

Later he gave up elegies and instead took up oology.

You can't believe anyone these days

I watched a pot and it boiled.

Back to worrying and wailing

Hello! I've been away for a while, but I'm back now and ready to get into a blog stoush, or make a small spelling mistake so other people can make a big thing about it, or grumble as if a relatively unimportant political event is the worst thing in the world, or get sworn at by trolls, or fulminate furiously about something a celebrity said that I don't agree with. Yes, Christmas and New Year celebrations, and the designated season of happiness that goes with them, is officially over, and we can all get back to what we like best - being miserable. Here were the official events of the year, as can be seen on any standardised calendar:

JANUARY - Worrying and wailing

FEBRUARY - Dreariments and dolefulness

MARCH - Sombreness and solemnity

APRIL - Gloominess and grimness

MAY - Horror and hellishness

JUNE - Awkwardness and anxiety

JULY - Nervousness and nagging

AUGUST - Darkness and despair

SEPTEMBER - Terror and torment

OCTOBER - Maudlin melancholy

NOVEMBER - Lugubrious lamentations

DECEMBER - HAPPINESS!

Well we can all breathe a big sigh of relief now that's over. On reflection, my proudest moment of the general Christmas celebrations was playing a Scrabble game with several younger rellies in which we all managed to get a swear word on the board. Excellent.

So, how have you all been? Read any depressing newspaper stories lately?

UPDATE! - I know what we can have a fight about! Remember a couple of years ago when Patrick McCauley published an Australia Day poem in The Australian and there was a bit of a stoush on the blogs about it? Well I heard McCauley read it out yesterday in the Edinburgh Gardens - and rather enjoyed it. Horrifying! Go on, start abusing me.

The very long, bewhiskered, sniffly-snuffly nose of the police force

It is a known and established fact that crime-solving in European countries is very different to crime-solving in other parts of the world, and usually involves a dog who subsists on a diet of ham rolls who mostly spends his time cornering shady characters in grimy parks, or grimy characters in shady parks, or grimy parks in shady characters (whichever comes first). The grimy/shady characters usually spend their time kidnapping children or generally leading innocence astray, and it is only thanks to the natural sympathetic qualities of the dog in question that these children are able to be rescued in time. That we know this much is thanks to the many fine television series broadcast from European countries, such as Inspector Rex or Turbo, which have adopted an approach of documentary realism and fidelity to the subject matter, so that their storylines offer a faithful representation of the grim record of crimes and misdemeanours that come out of that continent*. This, as I say is a known and established fact, and ought to be as plain as the nose that has been cut off on the face of your neighbour in order to spite yourself.

But that's not enough - not nearly enough. I have long suspected that we humble Australian viewers are only getting half the story. That is why I would like to propose a follow-up program about European law-and-order, which would of course have a small run of only, oh, twenty years or so. There would be some small differences to the Inspector Rex formula of course. Instead of featuring a big boofy German Shepherd...

... we would get a beautiful, glossy Cocker Spaniel.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the televisual phenomena that is Agent Barkabella! The smartest, sassiest cocker spaniel in the whole Euro-police! She spends her time romping through fields of flowers chasing after felons and villains and felonious villains, with the sunlight shimmering in her glossy black coat. She wouldn't eat ham rolls like Inspector Rex, or anything like that: oh no. She prefers a much more sophisticated fare - fillet mignon, twice a day if you please, Garcon.

I've already got a few scripts lined up:

EPISODE 1

Agent Barkabella uses her feminine wiles to infiltrate a drug-racket by coyly accepting pats on street corners from suspicious hands. After an initial mistake involving a suspicious hand that actually belongs to a kindly old grandfather who owns a tennis shop, she busts the racket** wide open and finishes the day with her customary meal of fillet mignon, borrowed from the plate of a Frenchman passing by.

EPISODE 2

It's an ordinary summer's day in Hungary and Agent Barkabella is enjoying a bit of time off when she sees several men with nefarious-looking stubble doing something suspicious at the local bank. She reports back to the local station, only to meet with ridicule, but after obtaining information from a friend of a friend of a person whose bottom she once sniffed, she uncovers full details of the planned bank heist, and with a posse of poodles is able to stop the heist. Outraged, one of the nefariousy-stubbled men grabs a local dramatic device child who happens to be innocently wandering around the last 15 minutes of the show and takes him as a hostage into a nearby meadow - an especially springy and sunshiny meadow that necessitates a large amount of romping. Agent Barkabella corners the two hiding behind a local daisy, and bares her terrible teeth and the child is set free.

EPISODE 3

While pausing to bury a bone in a local field, Agent Barkabella is shocked to see two children snatching a bag of toupees off a kindly old grandmother, who has been taking them to the local Orphange for Children With No Hair. She immediately leaps into action (her leap taking her through the window of a nearby store which happens to be in her course) and in a great shattering of glass catches the two children as they are handing the bag over to an older, more suspicious looking gentleman, who flees before she can bark at any other police officers to come and help her. The children are taken back to the police office to speak to Barkabella's owner and station commander, who for some reason seems to be noticeably taller, blonder, more buxom, and possessing of more female hormones since the last episode. On questioning the children Barkabella and her commander discover that the children have been seduced from the course of justice by a local criminal ring, and a sting is soon organised to round up the rest of the criminals. The episode concludes with Barkabella trotting off to the local field and finally burying her bone while the children and her commander stand around her and laugh. Ho ho ho, Barkabella!***

***

I'll be forwarding these and other script details on to some television producers shortly. After all, as I'm sure you will agree, it is high time the contribution of beautiful glossy black cocker spaniels who dine on fillet mignon make to the European police force, and we hear details of the horrifying crimes of toupee theft that take place in that continent.

*Only the names, characters, storylines, soundtrack, script, logical continuity, plausibility, and general air of reality have been changed to protect the innocent.

** The protection racket, I mean, not any tennis rackets that may have been lying around.

***Apparently the first 15 minutes of the show take place in a shopping mall with a meadow and an orphanage and dogs wandering around. What's wrong with that?

Herondipity

There was once a woman who fell in love with a white-banded shrew. She lived with him for two years, but came to find out that he was cheating on her behind her back.

Later, she went out with a wading bird instead .

Once shy, twice bittern.

Great unfinished songs and stories of the world

'twas the night before Christmas

'twas the night before Christmas
And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a rhinoceros
I mean mouse.

No it certainly wasn't rampaging from room to room
Crashing into windows
Turning tables into splinters
Smashing all the cups and saucers
As a rhinoceros would
Like a bull in a china shop,
But we're not talking about the bull,
That was in the next room, sleeping on the sofa,
And the china shop was two doors up,
And we're not talking about that either,
We're talking about the mouse that was not a rhinoceros -
He was as gentle as a lamb in buttercups
Let's just leave the lamb out of it
But, at any rate, the china was put away and therefore safe from its terrible horns or its stampeding hoofs
It was a very strange mouse
In an admittedly increasingly eccentric mutant genetic test laboratory
I mean house.

'twas the night before Christmas
And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Not even the gigantic fire-breathing Tyrannosaurus Rex made out of plaid wool and subsisting entirely on a vegan diet of ethically-slaughtered lettuce leaves, once every Tuesday,
No, even that was asleep.

The stockings were laid by the test tubes of extremely deadly radioactive bacteria with care
Sorry
Pretend you didn't hear that
The Health and Safety Approved stockings were laid by the test tubes of extremely deadly radioactive bacteria with care
For we knew that St Nicholas soon would be there...

These are the last surviving lines of 19th century poem 'The Night Before Christmas', though newspaper illustrations of the time, involving tableaus of pitched battles amongst gigantic broccoli trees, and a depiction of St Nicholas, eyes agape, fleeing through the snow as he is pursued by a ravening pack of carrots, tell more than enough.

Great gift ideas for Christmas

Want to know what to give this Christmas to the person who not only owns everything, but has done everything else, has been everywhere, and knows everyone? Apart from the flu? Well, why not give them the

PRESENCE OF ABSENCE

Yes, that's right, if you present the PRESENCE OF ABSENCE to this person, they will love and adore you forever, having been suffering from the absence of absence for their entire life. This absent present is cheap, easy, and affordable for even those who are strapped of cash, and what's more, a present of the PRESENCE OF ABSENCE can be granted even while you are absent from the presence of the person who is being presented the absence.

NOTE: Absence is best presented unwrapped, but for those who desire, it also comes in cans.

As for the rest of us, we will just have to satisfy ourselves with presents of absinthe. It has its own satisfactions.

Amusing non-hierarchical inclusive participatory activities for the whole communal unit!

ROCK-ROCK-ROCK - A fun and simple version of the game 'Scissors-Paper-Rock', only there are no losers - because there are no winners! Also, anyone can play - not limited to just two players, as was the case with earlier more discriminatory versions of the game.

Deploy this amusing non-hierarchical inclusive participatory activity in your communal unit today!

A Christmas carol for austere times

All together now!

O Christmas tree
O Christmas tree -
How lovely is your branch!
O Christmas tree
O Christmas tree -
It is a quite nice branch!

Your leaf is green -
There's only one -
It looks so lovely in the sun!
O Christmas tree
O Christmas tree -
How lovely is your branch!

The tinsel cost
To much (good grief!)
Instead we'll hang this lettuce leaf!
O Christmas tree
O Christmas tree -
How lovely is your branch!

And yes, by jove, pon my word, and flibbert my gibbert, it's in Badger's Dozen too!

Publicity schmublicity

So anyways, I've got a new zine out - the next issue of Badger's Dozen. I've been putting each copy - there are 40 - together over the last week and a half, basically. "What ho", I thought to myself, "this would be an excellent opportunity to upload the cover and some pictures to the computer using my scanner, and do a blog post based around that."

Only, the scanner doesn't work. "Oh well," I say to myself. "I'll have a look at it when I get home tonight."

So I get home tonight and have a look at it. As far as I can tell, the scanner still doesn't work. "Oh well," I say, "I'll click around in the help menu and see whether I can get it to work that way."

Only, of course, the same problem that seems to be stopping the scanner from scanning seems to be stopping the help menu from, well, helping.

So I click around on the internet and look for help, but whatever help there is seems to be non-existent.

Oh... well.

If you'd seen the picture of the zine, you would have seen that it really was... a zine that had been pictured.

But anyway, it's got this in it, and some of these in it, and this, and poems and stories and cartoons and jokes by a whole bunch of talented folks, including (drum roll, trumpets please) the literary return of Nottlesby, with his rakish anecdotes about life amongst the Deutschlanders. And also a chest of drawers and stuff. Hooray! Publicity, schmublicity - who needs it anyway? (PS, want a copy anyone? Paypal me - timhtrain at yahoo.com.au, $3 Australian with an address supplied, and I'll get you a copy chop chop! Otherwise you can also get one at Sticky while stocks last... probably stocks will last for a while...) In short give me money Merry Christmas thank you bye!

A meeting of great minds

A meeting of great minds, episode #671: When H G Wells met Orson Welles.

(Scene: a street in a US town. Orson Welles is standing on a street corner idly leafing through a newspaper when H G Wells hobbles up to him)

H G WELLS: Welles?

ORSON WELLES: (Looking up) Welles. Wells?

HGW.: Wells. Welles!

OW: Well well, Wells!

HGW: Well well, Welles!

(Laughter. The two men begin walking along like old friends.)

OW: Well well well well well well well well well well well well well!

HGW: Welles, Wells, Wells, Welles! Well well well well well well well well well!

OW: WELL!

(Laughter, followed by a pause)

HGW: Well?

OW: Weeeeeell...

HGW: (Taking the other's hand) Welles!

OW: (Sharply withdrawing his hand) Well, Wells, well!

HGW: Welles?

OW: Well! Wells, well! Well well well!

HGW: Well! Well! Well!

(In their passion, both men almost topple into a hole in the ground)

HGW: (Starting back, and pulling Welles back too)... well?

OW: ... Well.

(Raucous laughter)

BOTH: Well well well well well well WELL WELL WELL WELL WELL etc...

FIN

Stand by for upcoming episodes of A meeting of great minds, #672, 673, and 674: 'When Yumi met Sumi', 'When Yumi and Sumi met Mimi', and 'The time H G Wells mistook Dame Edith Sitwell for a chair.'

Gellervision

This man is death to spoons.



By training for years, and harnessing the unbelievable powers of his mind, this man has been able to attain the highest summit of human achievement, and bend - even break - spoons at his will. I'd be pretty scared right now. If I was a spoon.

Anyway, I propose a 24 hour channel be devoted to the many achievements of Uri Geller. (Mostly involving spoons). Gellervision, here we come!

I need to know, and I need to know NOW!

When vegans quit smoking, do they sometimes choose to go cold tofurkey?

A vegetable plot

Perhaps you have been wondering why that ASIO spy has been lurking in your vegetable garden. Well now you know.

You are a cat #2

You are a cat, of course, and you are one of the most beautiful creatures in the colossal, eternal entirety of the universe. Bridget Bardot, Claudia Schiffer, and all that lot, have got nothing on you. Supermodels? Stupermodels, more like! Just look at you, fur rippling and glistening in the waves of wind and sunlight. And keep looking at you. Excellent.

Right over there is a patch of mud and lichen and grass. It looks particularly dirty, smelly, and ugly. This would, naturally, be an excellent spot for you (superdupermodel) to go over and roll around in, showing off the entirety of your beauty to the universe in general.

Hey, I've got another one. As you're rolling around luxuriously in that licheny-muddy-grassy bit, you see a cockroach running by. Why not pick it up in your mouth and walk around with it for a bit? You'd never see a supermodel walking around with a cockroach in their mouths, would you? More fool them. Such actions are an enhancement to your natural elegance and should be displayed, again, to the entire universe.

You are a cat #1

You are a cat. Now, don't argue - you are. And, in the manner of all the furry feline fraternity, you are looking for ways to vex, perplex, and generally toy with the minds of the humans who happen to be near you. How about this:

ONE POSSIBLE WAY OF TOYING WITH THE MINDS OF THE HUMANS

Said human is preparing to go to work. They have laid out their underpants upon the chair, and said underpants of said human have been spread out in a rather beguiling fashion, waiting for said human to pick up said underpants and put them on their legs. Go up to said underpants, and sit down right on top of them, in an extremely content, comfortable, and serene manner. Said human will stand there with said legs looking at you (yes, said legs have eyes in them) sitting on said underpants.

Of course, you may well wonder what said human has been doing all this time without said underpants. You may indeed inquire as to whether said human has been wearing anything at all around the house. You may, further, ask if said human is some kind of a weirdo or something.

Do not ask any of these questions. You are a cat, remember - and you have more important duties than asking ridiculous questions. Like sitting on said underpants, and looking extremely content, comfortable, and serene. Yes, I know what you are going to say to that, too.

Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

An ode to the beard

The beard, the beard
Is not to be feared
But rather it ought to be
Lauded, revered,
Applauded, and cheered,
And most rousing speeches
By reverend preachers*
Made to the face on which it's adhered.



'tis true some may find it appalling or weird**
But sensible people will soon be endeared
By a friend or a neighbour who has grown a beard,
And by common acclaim
Those of longstanding fame
With their face in full flower have often appeared -



No you cannot refute,
It's astute being hirsute*** -
You will win wide repute,
And be considered quite cute,
IF YOU LET YOUR FACE BLOOM WITH A BEAUTIFUL BEARD!



UPDATE! - NOTES
*Or widely-loved teachers
With respectable features.

**Sometimes, alas, it is true that a beard
May be sneered
At, mocked at and jeered
At, and oftentimes leered
At by people who ought to know better but don't.

***So make no apology
But BRAVO! Pogonology!
Don't be chairy or lairy
About being hairy, etc.

Thought for food

Hey, just while I've got you, this whole civet poo coffee thing kind of raises expectations, doesn't it? Every time you go in to the cafe you'll want marmoset vomit latte or the squirrel effluvia special or the decaffeinated rhebus monkey gallstone-o-cino or something. I mean, how can the barista keep up with it all? Think about that while you're drinking your morning coffee, and have a nice day.

UPDATE! - Two pooku:

1)
Expensive cafe:
Gastronomic heights attained
Drinking civet poo.

2)
Snot Black? Crappucino?
Farte? Barfogatto?
Place your order now.

Things continue in much the same way they have always done

I got a link, via Cam, to this New Scientist piece about digital poetry. It's one of those pieces that is about new developments in the poetry world, only the new developments that are talked about aren't exactly new, and were mostly developed years ago.

For instance:

“It's hard to pick any quality that is essential to digital poetry, but there is a set of things and interactivity is one"

Anybody who grew up reading Choose Your Own Adventure Books or their antecedents know that this idea has been around for a while. I've made my own modest contributions to 'interactive' poetry here. (And the existence of the html code for that is good evidence that lots of other people have been doing similar things, I don't want to make any claims of originality for myself.)

Oh, also:

If people don't want to read poetry books, maybe the answer is to send them text messages. That is the idea behind Cell Poems, a journal that publishes via text message. It may sound frivolous, but the journal publishes original works by well-known poets and was honoured with the National Book Foundation's 2010 Innovations in Reading award.

When I first came to Melbourne about six years ago I remember they were advertising on television a 'flirty-poem' service, whereby you would text in the message 'FLIRTY' to a certain number and get a poem back - I even had a few sent to my phone because I had the vague idea of doing a review of them (Yeah, right – Ed.*) Mel and the rest of the Is Not Magazine team had a regular text-message story in their publication, too. Just how many times do you have to innovate with an innovation before it stops being innovative anymore?

But anyway, it’s not just the supposedly-original ideas that are silly, it’s the claims too. They quote the Cell Poems website

Our goal is not to shrink attention spans... we hope to present work that has undergone the duress of revision and come out hard-boiled and striking...

and leave you wondering, how can something have undergone ‘duress’ and come out ‘hard-boiled’ and ‘striking’ at the same time? Why trust the literary judgment of someone who comes up with a clumsy mixed metaphor while talking about the importance of literary revision? I’m sure they publish some good material, but holding them up as exemplars of some fantastically original idea is self-defeating.

They also say, twice:

Digital poets and programs free verse from the page

But despite the criticisms, there is no doubt that digital poets are taking a first shot at answering an important question: what will poetry become now it is freed from the printed page?

Which kind of assumes poems have up until now been limited or imprisoned on the page, though they aren't now and haven't ever been - anymore than a Bach cello suite is trapped in Yo-Yo Ma's cello. Just ask blind poets like Milton or Homer, or listen to a few ballads sung by artists like Steeleye Span or Leonard Cohen. Poetry was first a spoken-and-sung art and has continued that way, so a more realistic claim might be that technology has freed poetry from nothing and done nothing in particular to make it new. Though try that headline out on the media: ‘things continue in much the same way they have always done’. It doesn’t sound quite so inspiring, does it?

People have been claiming their art is new and exciting ever since being new and exciting was the new and exciting thing. The western fondness for novelty has been around since the Enlightenment, I’d guess – but with that fondness comes an increasing susceptibility to claims that something is original when it’s actually not. The analogy we use for this nowadays is ‘reinventing the wheel’, but poetry was never a tool like the wheel and wasn’t invented in the first place. So I think a better analogy is a person saying that they’ve invented this marvellous substance called ‘water’ – you can drink it, you can place it in tubs and bathe in it, if you’ve got lots of it you can swim in it, you can even decorate it with sand and put it in front of your house and turn it (your house, I mean, not the water) into a beachside property! Though in fact water has been there all along.

And so has poetry.

*I’ve no idea who that Ed guy is, he pops up from time to time.

People believe in thing they have never heard of

For the first time, we have found less than 50 per cent of Australians think climate change is real.

For the first time! Ever! It is indeed interesting that in the 1970s and '60s, before the term 'climate change' had been invented, high percentages of people nevertheless managed to believe in the phenomenon. But I just don't think that's enough. With a little hard work, and some targeted and imaginative public awareness campaigns, and the spirited participation of the media, perhaps we can get even more people in the past to believe in climate change before those people in the past reach the future, which is the present, and it's too late (or possibly too late to be too early). We might, of course, be tempted to ask ourselves, 'how is it that even less people believe in climate change now, long after the concept has been invented, than then, when nobody had heard in it, but kept on believing in it anyway?' We might, indeed, be tempted to see this as failure of our current approach towards publicising matters relating to climate change. But such temptations should be resisted!

Sadly, however, polling of people of previous generations in relation to the existence of Justin Bieber shows that few people in the past know who he is, and even fewer care. People of the past! Strive to be more like us, right now, which I suppose means then, or whenever it was that you are able to make it!

... Since we began polling climate change in 2008, this is the first time we have seen acceptance of climate change slip under 50 per cent.

Oh. Two years? Hmmm...

(Via Tim)

Three of the worst horrors known to man...

Run! Run for the hills!



Many thanks to Alex for taking this video and uploading it.

Rough and fluff

Sometimes, Harriet the cat walks about, in a dignified and graceful fashion, with floor fluff in her whiskers.

Sometimes, I do too. Just found some then.

Maybe I was playing pouncy-pouncy with fluff on the floor last night, and forgot?

Beginninninninninninninngs and endendendendendendendings

It begins in the morning, when you're having Weeties, or Cheerios, or Choco Ricies at home. You might be listening to the radio play some disco, or you might not. After that, perhaps, you call up Mumsy or Daddy-O, who are a hippy and a yuppy, respectively, and have a chat. You walk up the street and use your Amex to get some Coffex at the cafe with your ex. Or possibly even your ex-ex.

But it's when you see the hipster logging on to Napster by the dumpster that the full horror of the situation hits you....

Narcischism

And Ego's, Ego's, 'e just goes, "I!"

AOKFTWABC!

Searching for an appropriate acronym to describe the Australian political system. The choices so far:

a) FUBAR
b) LOL
c) CBF
d) AWOL
e) ROFL
f) NNEPFML*

Any others?

*Oddly enough, you may not know this one, because I made it up just then. NNEPFML = Not Nearly Enough Penguins For My Liking. I think it works.

Proposals for charity events

Gnuvember - Over the course of November people grow horns and hair and generally start to look more and more like gnus. This is to raise awareness of the plight of wildebeests suffering from clinical depression in today's society.

Ocelbruary - During February, people start to paint themselves all over with spots and live in trees. This is more because spots look rather becoming, but a charity cause can be found, I'm sure.

Wistateruriaday - Every Saturday morning, people go and plant themselves into their garden, like a wisteria, and pour water over their heads, like a wisteria. Then all the wisterias get up and leave the people stuck in the ground and go for a nice walk in the park. This is to raise awareness of the perils of microscopic lichen in our national parks.

Great questions, answered at last

Right, it's time we got things sorted out for once and for all, the only way we can: the democratic way. Votes, please, in comments - I'm using a preferential system of voting, so have your votes from most preferred to least preferred.

1. Does God exist?
a) Yes.
b) No.
c) Elephants!

2. Black holes: what lies beyond?
a) God.
b) Other dimensions ruled over by faster-than-light robots with zap rays.
c) Elephants!

3. 1 + 1 = ?
a) 5.
b) 961.
c) Elephants!

I mean, really. It's time we took this whole thing seriously.

Monsters!

Since it looks like we're going to get a despicably malevolent Coalition Government in Victoria, who will immediately set about doing despicably malevolent things like cutting middle-class taxes and upping the numbers of police, I thought it might be interesting to have a long, nostalgic look back at all the achievements Labor have made for the arts*, in their past 11 years in government. Sadly they don't have any.

In retrospect it seems just about the best thing they did for the arts was have Lynne Kosky as the Arts Minister and the Minister for Transport at the same time. Kosky spent so much time implementing bad policies, giving these bad policies worse publicity, and generally stuffing up the public transport system, that she didn't have any left over to do the same for the arts. Whether this was inspired policy on the part of Bracks, or merely an accidental oversight, we have a lot to be grateful for.

On the other hand, we've also had horrible train poetry, and legal graffiti walls. People are probably too distracted by their MXs to bother with the train poetry, but you've got to wonder who the policy wonk was that came up with the idea of legal graffiti walls. 'Legal' and 'graffiti' are not words you'd want to place in a sentence together, after all. Having a legal graffiti wall is like screwing in an empty bottle into a light socket and then trying to turn it on - it doesn't work that way. The two policies pretty much typify how government has seen the arts in the last few years - give the bastards a wall or two in a public place and they'll be happy.

Then of course there was all that stuff about live music, pubs and clubs, etc. You may remember that Labor decided to deal with crime and alcohol-related violence by making things more difficult for licensed venues, etc. (This was of course in keeping with a general Labor approach of longstanding: if a small minority of people are causing trouble, make things more difficult for everybody. The people causing trouble may or may not stop, but it looks like you're doing something.) All of which may help you to understand the announcement by John Brumby, during the election campaign, of $25 million and an 'Australian Music HQ' for Melbourne. Though I have no idea what an Australian Music HQ is I guess it's something to do with education, which was especially thoughtful of Brumby - providing education for hundreds of talented young people who would not be able to play music anywhere in pubs and clubs which have already been shut down. Oddly most Victorians don't seem to have liked this idea much.

Compared to all this I really don't think the Liberals have done too badly. Ted Baillieu's speculated about Melbourne having a Nuit Blanche Festival where the pubs and clubs and bars and galleries and museums and theatres stay open all night, which is pretty much counter to anything Brumby's come up with - the idea that the arts could involve people partying and having fun! Of course, this would involve getting rid of the restrictions on 24-hour licensed venues. Not that this would be a bad thing.

You've got to give the Liberals and the Nationals time, of course. In a few years they'll come up with some really, nastily horrible stuff, like letting more private hospitals into the state so that less rich people have to use the public system - or something like that. In the meantime I rather like the Coalition policy on the arts. Yes, I actually like the sound of art being about people enjoying themselves and having fun, possibly even making money. I'm sick that way.

*As you will observe the author follows the generally established principle of all opinion writers: began with broad sweeping generalisations and then neatly and elegantly segue to one's own area of interest by means of an unexpected non-sequitur.

Z marks the spot

He always dotted his t’s and crossed his i's, circled his l’s, and capitalised his full stops, and knew all 29 letters of the alphabet. Sadly, when it came to his p’s and q’s, all he could come up with were queasy poos.

When it comes to maths, I've forgotten more than I ever knew

Years ago, I actually studied maths for a while at school and uni. I can't say that I was particularly good at it, but I did rather enjoy it. I found it a wonderfully pointless activity; if someone had pointed out an obvious and simple way to use maths to make breakfast, say, I think I would have been disappointed and given it up immediately.

Not that I was particularly good at it, and I don't remember much of it now anyway- really when I think about maths now it's to remember how much of it I've forgotten. I didn't mind geometry (something about parallel triangles and what happens when AB meets CD via DF and BS but somehow gets confused with LM and PX, causing us all to turn on the telly and watch QA). Calculus was fun (well, I thought the name was fun, and that's all I know about it now), and of course algebra, which was all about saying a + b = a + b was laughably simple (but then so was I). There was integration (not sure), induction (no idea), statistics (nine tenths of the time I have no idea what people were talking about after they said 'nine tenths of the time') and trigonometry (do mathematicians ever run out of triangles? Apparently not). I can tell you a little bit about pi - the ratio of a circles circumference to its diameter, or something like that - and I can tell you a little less about logarithms, which are things that mathematicians use to do something else (I don't know what). To this day, I do know what the square root of two was (and presumably still is) to ten digits, but I can't tell you why.

And then, of course, there is e. I can't really tell you anymore than that, e is just e. I don't know where e comes from, I don't know what you do to get e, I don't know what you do once you get e, I don't know why you would want e in the first place, I certainly don't know what e is equal to. I did know, or at least I think I knew, once. I certainly remember doing a lot of things with it. Maybe even then I didn't care much, really: I just thought e was really cool. Whatever it was, in all its mysterious ineffable numinous intangibility.

So basically this is a blog post about something I once knew a little bit about but know even less about now. They say Socrates, the man who decided that no-one was sure about anything, was the wisest man in the world. Well, when it comes to maths, I think I've forgotten more than I ever knew. Does that make me a genius, or something?

Badvice

Life without alcohol is like a totter without the teeter.

UPDATE! -

Witch doctors invent aeroplane that runs on magical chants. They call it the Mumbo Jumbo Jet.

The F word

You say that I'm flippant,
A frivolous floozy,
A flibberty-gibberty
Fool drinking ouzo,
A featherhead fiend
In frou frou and FCUK
Well FYI friend
I don't give a fire truck.

You say I'm a flop
That I'm full of flapdoodle
A flatulent fathead
Not worth one firkytoodle,
A flabby old fizzer,
A frump Fezziwig -
Well FYI, friend,
You can go get a fig.

You say I'm a failure,
A fibber, a faux,
A Facebook-friend only,
A flea-brain for a foe -
Well FYI friend,
You old so-and-so,
What the frick what the frack
What the fudge would you know?

Variations on a theme by Hillaire Belloc

There was a man. His name was Jim.
Although some people called him Jack.
His parents used to call him Mick,
His aunties sometimes called him Will.
To all his friends his name was Geoff,
Except for those who called him Bob,
And those who knew him best as John
At work they called him Belvedere,
And at the club, his name was Tom.

But no one mourned when he was dead.
The papers thought his name was -
Fred.

A list of made up swear words

Here is a list of made up swear words. Made up swear words are so much more offensive than real ones, don't you think? I've always thought that - well, since this afternoon, at least. Obviously I don't know what they mean, but they must be pretty damn filthy otherwise I would have never bothered making them up. Actually, I don't think anyone knows what they mean - you can't get more offensive than that. You can't say that about most other words, can you? No, you can't.

Festering gruntlenods

Quinching snirtlebums

Case of the squidges

Buttomulous glurpump

Rurpling finnywump

Rampunculian spox-lurchee

Blagulouts

Smunchering

Rutile untling

Irk of the banshwater

Spladgee-toodling

Olmiferous hunchbuggling.

Disgusting. Now never say any of these words ever again.

Blog post written by a certain cat

qawwwwwwwwwwwwGTFFFFFFFFFFV0P-[

Rules to live by

Sometimes free shit is free because it's shit.