Get sloshed with Jane Austen!

People who make it their business to poke into the private correspondence and novels of long dead (or sometimes, if they're lucky, very much alive) writers all agree: Jane Austen liked beer. Jane Austen liked spruce beer in particular, which is a type of beer you make from boiling the tips from a spruce tree in water or beer wort or some type of wine must, and then adding yeast. (Just like any other beer or wine, basically, but with added spruce.) "It is you, however, in this instance, that have the little children, and I that have the great cask, for we are brewing spruce beer again" writes Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra. Note the "again". So she brewed it all the time. And "the great cask". Not sure how much a cask is, but I'm sure it's lots. Geeze, Austen must have gargled the stuff down every minute of the day. And plus some character gives some other character a recipe for spruce beer in some book or other that she wrote, which is clearly extraordinary evidence in favour of my general argument that Jane Austen was an absolute alco who played fast and loose with the juice of the spruce.

Sounds like fun. So I decided to make some spruce beer myself; I used a variation of the recipe given on the Jane Austen Centre website. That recipe was itself taken from the British Army (and a very similar recipe is given by others, for instance, Benjamin Franklin). The Baron and I harvested fresh spruce tips from my mother-in-law's tree in Bright, and fresh molasses, er, jars from the shelves of a nearby IGA, and I modified the recipe down for 1 gallon (between 4 and 5 litres) rather than 5 gallons.

JANE AUSTEN STYLE SPRUCE BEER
INGREDIENTS
550 ml Molasses
1 tablespoon grated ginger root
1 tablespoon Northern Brewer hops
1 teaspoon Goldings hops
About 60/70 grams spruce tips
Ale yeast, about 1 tsp

METHOD
1. Bring about 8 litres of water to a boil, add the NB hops (preferably in a hop bag), the spruce tips, and the grated ginger root. (It will boil down over the hour to the 4ish litres or so you want)
2. Add  the Goldings hops at the end of the boil. Stir in the molasses. Bring down the temperature of the water to 20 degrees (I do this by immersing it in a tub of cold water, preferably in a sink with a leaky plug so the water runs out as it warms up) (Alternatively you could just leave it to cool overnight).
3. Make a yeast starter - put the yeast in a clean jar with some lukewarm fresh water (I use tank water so as not to worry the yeast with additives in tap water). When the beer wort temperature is 20 degrees to 16 degrees celsius, add the yeast to the bottom of a fermenter and pour the wort in on top of it.
4. Put in a 20 degree room and leave to ferment for a week or so.

So that was that, but not to be outdone, I also made a second batch of spruce beer, this time a proper ale, made from barley and wheat. Lightly hopped, with some added bitterness from the spruce. Again, similar proportions - I made about 4 litres of spruce beer:

SPRUCE WITBIER
INGREDIENTS
500 grams ale malt
100 grams amber malt
400 grams wheat malt
spruce tips
1/3 tablespoon Hallertau hops
1 tsp wheat beer yeast

METHOD
1. Chuck the grains in a blender and crack them all open, and then mash them in a little bit of water at 68 degrees celsius for an hour and a half to get the sweet malt out. When done, drain the wort from the grains and wash them with 77 degree water until you have about 8/9 litres of wort.
2. Bring the wort to a boil. Add the spruce and the Hallertau hops. Again it'll boil down a bit over the hour. If I was doing this again today I'd probably add another hit of hops right at the end to get a bit of that nice hoppy aroma. A teaspoon of Saaz, maybe, though I'm open to suggestions as to other good witbier hops.
3. Bring the wort to a temp at or below 20 degree celsius (as above), make a yeast starter (as above), and pour the yeast into the bottom of your fermenter before pouring the wort in after it. Pop a bubbelator on the top and let them get to know one another.
4. Leave in a 20 degree room for a week or so!

The results? I bottled the molasses spruce beer the other day and did a taste test then and pulled a face. I called the Baron over and gave her a taste, and she pulled exactly the same face I did. I wrote in my beer diary: 'Ewgh'. Which word, if you pronounce properly, will make you pull exactly the same face that the Baron and I did. What the hell, Jane Austen? What. The. Hell. This spruce beer. It tastes DISGUSTING. Pretty much like you'd expect molasses - with the sweetness taken out - to taste. So we put those bottles aside to, er, mature for a while. We could quite possibly leave them to mature for a very long time indeed....

Today, however, I bottled the spruce witbier and did another taste test there. Better: much better. The spruce added a funny kind of sour fruitiness to the beer (spruce tips are high in vitamin C), and seemed to balance out the hops quite well. And the taste of fermented malt, I have to admit, is so much better than the taste of fermented molasses. So, you know, maybe Austen didn't use molasses at all - or if she did she used a better quality molasses - or something. But still. I find it hard to get over the shock of molasses spruce beer.....

I conclude this scholarly analysis of the significance of spruce beer in the art and literature of Jane Austen by offering a picture of the author herself.

Who would have guessed she'd be such a dipsomaniac, eh?

The great outdoors

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness were wealth enow.

- Omar Khayyam

A jug of wine,
A chardonnay on ice,
A loaf of bread,
A freshly-baked artisan sourdough from the finest providore, plus pre-prepared filet mignon, a vegetarian option, brie, camembert, some new fermented sauerkraut, fresh cultured butter, a variety of dips, an icecream maker, a pricey but portable barbecue, a fridge, a generator, a tent for four with suitable insulation, bedding, a small radio and portable television, DVDs to keep the kids entertained, fishing rods, a frozen trout for when you get sick of fishing, pink fluffy slippers, and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness were wealth enow EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK A COW! 

- Omar Khayyam, ever-so-slightly updated.

The Sting from the Black Lagoon

Some people like to collect stamps, some prefer the gathering of signatures; many like to amass volumes of football cards, pressed flowers, shelves of their favourite authors, or posters of their favourite band. Personally, I collect bee stings. Stings on the hand, stings on the foot, stings on the ankle, stings on just about every bit of the anatomy you can possibly imagine. Want a sting? I've got stings aplenty. I file them in alphabetical order in a match box and show them to visitors and neighbours every morning.

Seems every day I go outside I collect another bee sting. Not all bee stings are the same, I've discovered; many will only hurt momentarily (though leave a lingering itchiness on your skin). One or two will throb for days on end and make you question the very meaning of existence. And some, well, some will turn you into a terrifying Mr Hyde who will terrify small children and old ladies and cause everyone else to smile awkwardly and anxiously when meeting you and for the rest of the time you are in their company, look like they're trying not to keep looking at you but looking at you anyway because you are just so fascinatingly horrible. You know the ones.

Bee stings! Oh yeah. I've had them!

1) Ankle bee stings. These ones hardly hurt at all. When we were working on the hive the other week, two snuck in between a wrinkle in my socks and my pants, and got me. While the effort was appreciated, unfortunately these failed to sting much at all. 5/10.

2) Wrist bee sting. In this one, the bees displayed impressive tenacity, waiting at some obscure point on my bee suit until I'd come inside and started to remove it, at which point they stung. This sting, too, failed to impress, and was quickly forgotten about. 5/10.

3) Beard stings. For weeks after working on a hive, the bees will be alert to any human working outside, and will deploy their most effective psychological tactic - flying in very rapid circles around a person's face and making them move very quickly on. This will continue essentially until the person has run back inside. Sometimes, of course, the person doesn't go inside fast enough, and the bees will just fling themselves at your face and get lost in your beard, and for another minute furiously buzz in a terrifying fashion near your ear. I've had, I think, three stings in this way? While psychologically incredibly effective - the anticipation, like in Hamlet, can be incredibly drawn out - the stings don't hurt much at all. (Side note, though: this is why beekeepers should grow a beard if they can) 7/10.

4) Sting on the tip of my finger I got once when trying to brush a bee out of my beard. This one hurt like buggery. The blood rushed to the tip of my finger and had nowhere else to go, making my finger throb for days on end. I could hardly even type anything out on the computer. Combining the psychological anticipation of the beard sting with a final surprise, this sting in the tail really has a sting in the tale. HAHAHA! Oh yeah, not funny at all. But still: this was a really impressive trick by the bees, and I haven't forgotten about it ever since. 8/10.

5) Sting on the nose. To do this, the bee actually flew INTO MY NOSE, which is horrible. Just imagine how squicked out you get when flies fling themselves by accident into your nose or your mouth; well, combine that squickiness with the realisation that the small insect in your olfactory organ may actually be going to sting you IN THE MIDDLE OF ONE OF YOUR BREATHING CANALS. But actually, the bee just put its head in my nose so they could sting me on the outside and it didn't hurt at all so while this sting combined fear and disgust with incredible effectiveness, I didn't mind it at all in the end. 7/10.

6) Sting on the forehead. When I was out in the garden near the hive one sunny afternoon just watching them go in and out. This one didn't seem to matter at all, at first; a dull throb in the forehead which quickly seemed to dissipate. However, after dinner, my face was feeling a little hot and I went to wash it and noticed my eyes were looking very strange. By the time I went to bed the skin around my eyes had bulged noticeably; in the morning there was so much bulging around, over and under my eyes that I could hardly open them at all. For the whole of the day after my eyes had narrowed to two little slits that I peered out of while lurching, zombie like, from place to place. Children burst into tears at my horripilating visage. Adults fleed from my gruesome presence. This was the sting that really delivered! 10/10

UPDATE! - Photo taken by the Baron after I got stung on the forehead.

Chopper comes a cropper

'ear 'ear!
Ears 'ere!
'ere's is ears
Wot e 'ad ere!
'e 'ad 'is ears ere 'ere,
Now 'eres 'is ears 'ere,
'ere! 'ere!
'is ears are ere!
'ear 'ear!

The art of conversation in a car

Ours is a progressive age, and there's nothing we love to do more in our progressive age than to progress towards thing in cars. The car is swift, shiny, sleek, full of whizz-bang items of gadgetry for making the car go whizz-bang into things, and able to go round and round and round the country for hours on end in search of gay little cafes and jolly tourist traps and picturesque beauty spots, which spots and traps and cafes the drivers and passengers of the cars like to stop at for half an hour or so for rest or refreshment or postcards before driving off again into the countryside for hours and hours and hours. Horses, which we used to travel around on, being possessed of high intelligence and acumen, and otherwise being noble and conservative creatures, would generally object to such acts of circumlocution or rhodomontade, and so had to be disposed of in this progressive age, which is one reason why we find ourselves in the unfortunate place we do. Though not for very long because the progressive car generally progresses very fast away from whatever place we find ourselves in almost before we are in it.

And since we are in a swift shiny sleek whizz-bang progressive age and find ourselves in a swift shiny sleek whizz-bang progressive car, what is it like to be in a car? It is hot. It is humid. It is so cramped that you end up putting your arm into someone else's leg space and your leg into someone else's head space. Someone is crying. And someone sitting behind the wheel is very, very angry and quite possibly shaking their first at someone in another progressive car progressing in another direction against a red light. But the car has disadvantages, too: you cannot ride on the back of a car, shouting valiantly, waving a claymore* in the air, while the car gallops down into an army of Redcoats which you are about to do battle with. No, while we are in the car, it seems we will all have to learn to get along, and put to use the arts of etiquette and conversation and wit. However it seems we have left most of those arts behind, along with the horse, in that more staid and conservative age before the car. This is unfortunate.

Ideally, for a car conversation, you will need one of all the following people:

1) Someone to get into a political argument with.
2) Someone to attempt to start a game of Eye Spy in an attempt to distract from the increasingly tense and heated argument.
3) Someone to get bored with the game of Eye Spy and attempt to start up a joke competition.
4) Someone to shout and say Eye Spy started first and why do you always have to ruin everything and that's not fair.
5) Someone to tell everyone else to keep quiet because someone else is trying to sleep.
6) Someone else trying to sleep over the noise of someone else telling everyone to keep quiet.
7) Someone to urgently try to keep the peace between everyone, who are all arguing over the top of one another now.
8) Someone to ask "are we there yet" every one kilometre on a thousand kilometre journey.
9) Someone to loudly announce "I'm bored" everytime someone else attempts to start up a conversation.
10) Someone to querulously whine "but I want to go to the toooooooooooilet" one minute after the car has whizzed past the last toilet for three hundred and forty three kilometres.
11) Someone to quietly weep in the corner.
12) Someone to suddenly get incredibly hungry in the other corner.
13) Someone to apologetically vomit all everyone else.
14) Someone to shamelessly steal and retell the jokes that someone else has told an hour ago.
15) Someone to go rummaging for food to keep everyone else distracted, except maybe the person who has just vomited.
16) Someone to suddenly query three quarters of the way through the trip just where we are all going.** 

Of course, the typical car has only six to eight seats, so several people will have to take responsibility for multiple roles. (And bear in mind this list is very limited).

Often in the car you end up having to amuse yourself. When I was a kid I tried numerous tactics. After being told a number of times by parents to 'shut up', I would loudly announce to my brother, 'Hey Lachlan, let's have a shutting up competition'. 'Okay!' he'd say, fully expecting my reply: 'I lose!' Fun the first thousand times you try it, not so amusing after that. At other times, I'd take part in games of Eye Spy which I would (cleverly, I thought) undermine by providing obtuse answers when it was my turn to play: 'B' for 'Blueness'. 'E' for 'Existence'. 'I' for 'Ineffable Feelings of Ennui and Angst on Suddenly Discovering the Pointlessness of the Car Journey'. No-one else seemed to really appreciate my Eye Spy interventions, but really: how many times can you go with 'T' for 'Tree', 'G' for 'Grass', 'C' for 'Cow' and 'R' for 'Road' before the game suddenly becomes utterly tedious and meaningless?

Speaking of tedious and meaningless, let us turn now to the writings of Dr Samuel Johnson. No - no, I don't mean he was tedious and meaningless, just that he wrote entertainingly about that very subject quite frequently. 'I took a short journey into the country in a stage coach', he writes:

On the day of our departure, in the twilight of the morning, I ascended the vehicle, with three men and two women my fellow travellers. It was easy to observe the affected elevation of mien with which every one entered, and the supercilious civility with which they paid their compliments to each other. When the first ceremony was dispatched, we sat silent for a long time, all employed in collecting importance into our faces, and endeavouring to strike reverence and submission into our companions. 

It is hard to imagine this happening on a modern car trip, and not even on a modern train or bus trip (though that is in some ways similar to the experience of travelling in a stage coach with strangers). But what follows is all too familiar:

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say..... At last a corpulent gentleman, who had equipped himself for this expedition with a scarlet surtout, and a large hat with a broad lace, drew out his watch, looked on it in silence, and then held it dangling at his finger. This was, I suppose, understood by all the company as an invitation to ask the time of day; bu no body appeared to heed his overture: and his desire to be talking so far overcame his resentment, that he let us know of his own accord it was past five, and that in two hours we should be at breakfast.

The whole essay is surpassingly excellent and worth the time to read in whole. However, like passenger number 14 in the car trip, stealing the jokes of another, I have set out on this article telling my own story, and ended up telling Dr Johnson's story instead, and so here the journey will end.

*I should admit that I am not at all certain what a claymore is, but I feel quite strongly that it is something that ought to be flourished savagely in the air. 

** Hopefully person number 16 is not the driver.

Now then, now, then

Now and then one hears from people who want to live in the now. This is all very perplexing, not simply because it seems odd that these people should want to be living in "the now" rather than in "the present", but also because, now and then, one wonders why they want to live in the now rather than in the then, or now and then in the now-then, or even now and then in the soon. 

Often, one is tempted to further speculations: if it is possible to live in the now, what about living in the soon-to-be-now, or the just-after-now? Can one perhaps contrive to live in the day after the now, or two and three quarter seconds before the now, or even on the now or above the now or through the now? Is it perhaps getting a bit too crowded, now, there in the now, with all these people wanting to live in the now and none of them wanting to live before the now or after the now? What's so good about the now anyway, whatever it is and whenever that whatever it is, is (or was)?

Indeed so many people have been living for so long in the now that I wonder if they're not getting sick of the now right about, ahem, now. After living in the now, then, and the now, now, why don't they give it a switch and try living in the then, now, and the soon, then?

And every now and then one might be tempted to quote that famous poem:

Every now and then I get a little bit lonely and you're never coming round, 
Turn around.


Such deep words. Such deep, mysterious words that speak to the very core of our being.

Ponderous reflections

While in Bright we took a drive up to Mount Beauty, a place whose name caused me to reflect ponderously on the inevitable gap between signified and signifier. I'm not sure whether the locals gave the place this name because they wanted it to become that way, or because they thought it already was that way, or simply because they thought other people would be attracted by the title. But, for the record, this is Mount Beauty, the town: a strip of shops, a scatter of houses, and a sizeable body of water named "Regulation Pondage", surrounded by a few trees, some of which are now stumps, and another of which is mostly Mistletoe. "You could write a blog post about it", I got told. Yes, I could indeed.

In a way, driving to Mount Beauty is a little like making lemon delicious pudding. It may be nice. It may be pleasant. It may have lemons. It may have the minimum amount of concrete and asphalt and brick to make civic engineers happy (we're talking about Mount Beauty, now, not the pudding). But will it taste any better if you put cream on top of it (back to talking about the pudding). But will the lemon delicious pudding actually be "delicious"? What if, in your anxiety to live up to the rigorous standards implied in the very name, you actually fluff the making of the pudding, and a more accurate name for the cooking results turns out to be "lemon not-so-delicious pudding"? Or "lemon slightly-retchworthy pudding?"

Same deal, really, as when I made what was, apparently, "the best cheese", allegedly, "in the world", so called. We cut it up when we were on holidays in Bright. It tasted nice. It tasted pleasant. It didn't particularly taste of lemons or concrete or asphalt or brick, but there you go. But "best"? "In the world"? Really? And was I wracked with anxiety on making the cheese in case it turned out badly? (No, I think I was quite chipper, really).

And as for Bright! Well, what can I say? Sometimes it wasn't so Bright at all. Sometimes it was even positively umber-looking. I was shocked! Appalled! And even pleased.

Gluttony meets guilt meets a tasty tasty Taco

There's nothing like guilt, dread, fear, shame, pain, paranoia, avarice, ambition, lust, gluttony and stupidity to really get humans excited, which is why we've become the successful and fun-loving species we are today. A quick trip down the shops will confirm this for you, for there you see the greedy selling the pointless to the gullible for marked-up prices, sometimes with extra chocolate.

In Bright (which I actually happen to be in at the moment, though shhhh, don't tell anybody) you will find the dentists stationed right next to the lolly shop, a strategy so obvious that I need not belabour the fact by pointing it out apart from right here, which I suppose really is belabouring okay I'll stop now. Similarly, in our own suburb of Lalor, the local restaurant (the only local restaurant), the resonantly-named Taco Bill, is placed right next to a gym, an arrangement of commerce and convenience so remarkable that I wouldn't be surprised if the respective managers didn't congratulate one another every night at close of business: gluttony complements guilt, just as chili sauce complements a tasty, tasty Taco.

Down where my parents live, in Raymond Terrace, the commercial store owners seem to be a tad more confused about the mutually beneficial operations of the respective vices. Not only does the town have two McDonald's (which seems a little overambitious, apart from anything else), they have two generous and sizeable shopping centres, stationed right across from one another, and consisting of much the same sort of business. (Basically, they've both got a Woolies in them and that's about it). It's avarice competing with avarice, and I'm really not quite sure how it's all going to end. And I suppose you could say the same thing about this blog post, except I suppose we all know where that is going to

Quoth the raven, "Steve Waugh!"

Amongst its many other benefits, Lalor is quite possibly the national capital for astroturf. I've never seen so many fake lawns in my life since I moved out here*; sometimes there's even moss growing on the fake lawns or oxalis weeds pushing their way up through it, proving that nature and fake nature can live in perfect peace and harmony.

So when I saw a Collingwood poetry event described today as 'grassroots' I was immediately moved to raise the possibility of an alternative, astroturf poetry event out here in Lalor. Said event could be held in the pristine plastic back garden of a local intellectual, with grounds festooned with polymer posies and cheap outdoor tables brought at Bunnings sitting here and there, decorated with baskets full of plastic fruit (such as you can sometimes get at St Vinnies) and other like oddments.

And what sort of poetry to read? Really, what could be better or more suitable than to celebrate the achievements of Andrew Slattery and other plagiarists? Of course, poets would be quite free to make their own original plagiarisms (if that is possible); I myself have undertaken to write one poem suitable for the occasion. It is a cento work in collage format in a pseudo-Ossian manner that subtly references the work of Shakespeare, Lear, the dictionary, the Baron, and even myself in a free-flowing and liberal manner. In other words, I filched from all over the place. Here it is:

The zigguratic edifice,
With xenomorphic glee
All in a hot and copper sky -
To be or not to be.

Stately, plump, Buck Rogers dived
Across the stormy sea
"Thus I refute him, sir!" he cried:
A, B, C, D, E, F, G.

"And hast thou slain the Nabakov,
Four score years ago?"
With jubilating cries he wept -
"Hello goodbye hello!"

"Half a league, full fathom five,
Will you ride my sleigh?"
Quick was the little Maid's reply -
"Toorali oorali ay".

A damsel with a dulcimer,
Then hailed the Grand Old Duke.
Her words are burned into my soul:
"I am your father, Luke!"

And so you find me, knight at arms,
A maiden for to woo,
Give me Kit Kat, or give me death -
Goob goob ga choo!

UPDATE! - I was thinking of making it a competition for folks to identify all the references. But there's so much in there that I'm not sure where they all came from. I may even have accidentally referenced poems that I never knew about in the first place. I so wish some poetry detective would come along and find it out so I don't have to. Knock yourself out, Ira Lightman.

 *This is really true though I should clarify: I don't think I've ever seen astroturf prior to moving out to Lalor, and now I've moved out here, I've seen, oh, two or three lawns of the stuff. Plus we sat behind a guy at the cafe once who was talking about putting it on the nature strip in front of his house.

Bee stalkers

Barely a day after opening up the hive, and there's bee stalkers everywhere. Bees looming out the back door looking in, bees busily patrolling the backgarden to make sure we don't try anymore nonsense on them, and even bees out the front.

I was just in the front garden frisking and frollicking in the sunlight and bouncing around in the oxalis and smelling the flowers, as you do, when one of the bee stalkers came across me. "Oy, oy, mate, you know that's not allowed!" it said. Or at least performed the bee equivalent of that. It walked me, very swiftly and deliberate, back to the door, and made sure I shut it once I had got back in, too.

So I walked into my study to get back to work (sometimes, you see, I take little breaks from work to do some frisking and frollicking in the garden) and I found a stalker bee there, too - it had come in through the open window. Blimming heck! I went to get a glass jar to catch it in but when I returned it had, well, buzzed off.

After closing the back window I successfully distracted myself from work again, and wandered out into the back garden to make sure everything was ship shape. Two more bee stalkers swiftly walked me back into the house; I barely had time to check on the chickens.

They're no doubt marching back and forth in front of the back door at the moment. Later I think I'll go and make a cup of coffee and look at them looking at me looking at them. Maybe I'll try and get into a conversation with them. Don't like my chances though.

The sting in the tail and the tale in the sting

Bees, as we all know, like to do nothing better than to bustle to and fro in the fields providing appropriate parables for industriousness and hard work for philosophers, alight on flowers here and there in order to facilitate poets with images of suitable meaningfulness and delight, and perform balletic dances on the front of their hive in order to make boffins and scientists scratch their beards and frown and go 'hmmm'. (Since this is a Non-Sexist blog, of course I include all the lady scientists in that description as well, though where they get their beards from I do not know. Perhaps they borrow someone else's beard when they want to frown and go 'hmmm'.)

The same is true of our bees, who have been doing all three of the above with laudable vigour and enthusiasm, although it's true that they don't have many philosophers or scientists to observe their activity, and as for poets, they've only got me. Still, for the past few weeks I've been frequently observing them in front of their hive going back and forth on their daily work. In the morning, when the day gets warm enough, they like to shoot forth from their hive to wherever it is they feel like (maybe somewhere where they can find a philosopher or scientist). By noon they keep on doing this, only more so - they'll seem to erupt from their hive entrance. In the afternoon they arrive back, in dribs and drabs, circling slowly back into their hive: they are usually rather tardy in coming back because, I think, they are so easily distracted. I never seem to see a bee go back in a perfect straight line; instead they bob and weave and occasionally alight on a nearby twig. Even when they get to the hive, they can take their time, walking back and forth a few times, doing that weird 'walking up the side of a wall' act that insects perform so insouciantly in front of us. And in the evening they still loiter about on the hive entrance, taking the air and bumping into one another and chatting with one another by dancing. Just exactly what they say, I'm not sure  (unlike the character in that Primo Levi short story who learns how to dance back to the bees and thus has long discussions with them) but I like to think they exchange ribald puns and salacious gossip about the queen,  pick one another up on minor grammatical errors and items of punctuations ('posed as an apostrophe the other day') and maybe discuss awkward parenting moments they've had with the larvae.

Anyway, it's been all very amicable and comradely in the past few weeks, though things have rather changed as of this morning. We took the hive apart to give them another box on the bottom, room for them to lay more brood and put in more honeycomb as spring and summer flowers really came into bloom. We'd done a little work on the hive a bit over a month ago and the bees had been quite compliant, even complacent about us being there - mostly they just buzzed around us. Today, however, they really seemed cranky; the Baron was stung three times and I was stung once. And this afternoon, instead of idly meandering back to their hive to take in the sights and perhaps engage in a spot of gossip on a nearby blossom, a small cadre of cantankerous bees have been insistently hovering around outside our kitchen window and front door.

At least they've got their new box. However, for the next few weeks I probably won't be hanging around their hive and stroking my beard and saying 'hmmm'. I know for a fact that when they're angry they like nothing more than to fling themselves amidst a beard, make furious noises to scare that beard off, and (if you are so foolish to) reach up to brush them out of said beard, sting you instantly on the tip of your finger, which for some reason hurts like buggery.

Hopefully in a few weeks they will have resumed their normal amicable ways around us. 

Meanwhile...

MEANWHILE, AT AN OPEN MIC SOMEWHERE IN MELBOURNE...
Next up is Next Up, who we heard previously perform right after Right After. Previously will perform just before Next Up, although come to think of it Just Before was sadly unable to make it today. Speaking of which, here's Sadly Unable To Make It Today, who I'll put in right after Previously, but just before Next Up, prior to Earlier Today. So, Previously Sadly Unable To Make It Today Next Up Earlier Today, that's how we'll do things. But just before Previously, we'll take a short break, so Earlier Today Right After Sadly Unable To Make It Today Previously Next Up, talk amongst yourselves. We'll be right back.

A disquisition concerning lab rats

Ah, lab rats! Aren't they wonderful? Everyday I see a new story about how lab rats have proved (although not really) something new (although not particularly) about human (although more about rat) nature. Just yesterday I saw a story about how in one experiment, lab rats that lived in an open and happy environment were less likely to become addicted to drugs than lab rats that lived in a caged environment, and today I saw a story about how if given a chance lab rats would totally release other lab rats from cages, so I suppose that's not every day but it's two days in a row so it's certainly getting there.

Is there any half-arsed theory about human nature that some limited experiment on lab rats can't sort of prove if you have enough lab rats to do the experiment on? I suggest we experiment on lab rats to find out the answer, which is undoubtedly 'true', or possibly 'maybe', but especially if you don't think about it. I'm not exactly sure how to set that experiment up, but here is a picture of a lab rat.

The end.

UPDATE! -  Graphs! Graphs are almost as good as lab rats at proving anything about everything or everything about anything, although they don't have twitchy little pink noses and wiggly little furry ears, so that's a point that counts against them. But still. Graphs are great at proving stuff, aren't they, much better than scientific proof, which can only prove somethings sometimes and even then only to a limited extent, which is just kind of annoying. To prove how great graphs are, let's do an experiment with lab rats, or maybe graphs, or lab rats running on graphs. It would definitely work.

This graph totally proves I'm right.

Some of the best works I've never written

You will have probably heard about the latest poetry plagiarism scandal, or possibly poetry hoax, poetry homage, or poetry parody, depending on how you look at it. Andrew Slattery, who I had never heard about before, er, hearing about him, is possibly a very good poet, maybe a very bad poet, or just maybe not even a poet at all, depending on how you interpret the poetry he has written, and who he took it from before he wrote it, and why he took it from there in the first place.

How do you tell the difference between poetic plagiarism, poetic parody, poetic hoax, and poetic homage anyway? Plagiarism involves taking the words of another person without permission, while on the other hand parody involves taking the words of another person without permission. Hoax involves you inventing new words and trying to pass those words off as those of another person without their permission, or is that parody I'm talking about again? (And sometimes, instead of just inventing words for another person and giving it to them without permission, you invent a personality for another person and give it to them without permission, too, which seems to be going a bit far.) And homage, well, as far as I can work out, you still take the words of another person without permission, but you do it with love. And is it possible to do a homage to plagiarist, or to plagiarise a parody of a hoax of a homage? What would the result look like?

It occurred to me a few days ago, thinking over all this, that there might be room for a new genre of poetry here: poetry for plagiarism. Or has someone else thought of that already? Even better.

And that's about all I (or possibly someone else, though if so they haven't told me yet) have to say on this matter.

A beekeeper reviews Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee

First up, it is excellent that bees finally find themselves represented in the world of music and the arts.



However, is this short piece of music truly a representation, as it claims, of the 'flight of the bumblebee'? Although I have heard the buzzing of many bees, I cannot truly claim to have heard a bee buzz in this particular rhythmic and melodic combination before. Also, bees don't really buzz in harmony, so what's with the chords?

According to Wikipedia, this music appears in the opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan when a prince is changed into a bumblebee "so he can fly away to visit his father". Although I am aware of the larval stage in the development of a bee, there seems to be no stage at which a human prince transforms into a fully-fledged bumblebee. Yet again, bees are misrepresented, although at least not in such a heinous fashion as in the 1978 film The Swarm. Later in the opera, the bumblebee in question stings two evil sisters on the brow, which, although technically possible (bumblebees, unlike honeybees, are able to sting multiple times) seems highly unlikely, as bees of any sort rarely sting unless first provoked. 

Sadly, this music seems to be a hodge podge of misconception and inaccuracy that does little for the noble cause of the bee. It is highly advisable that Rimsky-Korsakov go back to bee school immediately.

Brainfart

Just imagine if Bill Shorten ever gets to be Prime Minister. In moments of Prime Ministerial crisis, when questioned over aspects of his own policy that he no longer agrees with - or that he will shortly fail to agree with, if he's being especially forward-thinking about it - he could just re-use an old favourite:



"I'm not aware of what I said. But I'm sure I'm right....."

Okay, I'm going back to non-politics related non-topics now.

The hideous scourge of etc etc in today's etc

Confession time: I am a pasta racist. By which I mean, not that I discriminate against you if your parents were tagliatelle, or anything like that. No: it's just that I have a thing about brown pasta. I do not like it. Quite frankly, I find it depressing. To put it bluntly, brown pasta fills me with low expectations. It seems to me, if I may speak truthfully, a wholly inferior pasta.

Quite why I have come to have this low opinion of brown pasta, I do not know. I hold no such opinions about yellow pasta, or green pasta (which I find quite cheery); exotic pastas, such as red pasta, or dinosaur pasta, I have a lot of time for. Nor is this a general prejudice against the colour brown, which on the whole I believe does credit to the colour spectrum. In fact, I have a lot of time for all manner of colours, even when and perhaps especially if those colours turn out not to be so much colours at all, but almost-colours: grey, for instance. Why do people have a problem with this dignified and satisfying timbre, that appears in its many hues on the faces of clouds, in dignified ageing heads of hair, and throughout the heave and swell of the ocean?

So really, I have even less excuse than some for my pasta racism. Why do I hold this shocking pasta prejudice? Should I be sent to a pasta re-education class? Would I feel the same way if I was a brown pasta?

I do not know the answer to any of these questions. All I know is, once I am presented with a bowl of brown pasta, my face falls and I feel vaguely disappointed and slightly let down by the universe without knowing the reason why. This brown pasta prejudice of mine is truly insidious!

Tragedy comedy dramedy infotainment cat hair

From the department of watching the grass grow, listening to the cheese mature, telling entertaining anecdotes about cats sleeping, looking at the bees walking to and fro on the front of their hive, laughing about funny stuff the chickens ate, and watching a cat hair float around the house from one room to another, comes the latest excellent and riveting entertainment, watching the bloops of carbon dioxide go up through the blooper of a demijohn of fermenting beer and, well, blooping into the open air.

This riveting prime time drama, combining elements of burlesque, tragedy, comedy, dramedy, infotainment, soap opera, oratorio, and taking a banana peel out to the worms and gazing in fascination as they bury their way down to the bottom of the worm farm when you open the lid up, makes extraordinarily and enriching viewing for everyone involved, so that's just me then. Bloop! Bloop! Hey, there's another one! Bloop! There's just so much to learn and appreciate and discover, and you really appreciate something new each time you go back to watch it. Bloop! That bubble's taking a while. Bloop! Bloop! I really, really recommend it. Hey, do you want to take over? Well you can't. It's just too tense. Don't worry about me, I'll be here for the next week or so. Bloop!

A proposal for an excellent new sport

What a fine sport quibbling would be, it occurred to me the other day, and of course nothing would have stopped me leaping up there and then to tell you all about it but for the fact that right at that moment the cat settled down on my lap for a nap and stayed there for the next two weeks and I was reduced to chewing on my own beard for nourishment and when she finally got up I had to stumble into the kitchen for a glass of water. But now I'm here! Hurrah!

But quibbling would undoubtedly make an excellent sport, Olympic or otherwise. I'm not sure what it would involve. Something with balls? And nets*? And racquets or bats** of some sort? Anyway, I'll leave that all up to the commentators, as well as the rules and the length and other minor details. I can, however, suggest some of the other moves this excellent sport would have: the 'niggle', of course, an important manouvre that all quibblers would have to learn; the 'haggle' (an advanced sort of 'niggle'? Or vice versa?) The 'finagle' would be something for very advanced practitioners of 'niggling' and 'haggling', probably, whereas the 'persnickety snitch' would be a rather specialised tactic only allowable for certain members of the team - although that all rather depends on if there is going to be a team, which is really an unimportant point except, I suppose, if you aspire to the grand and noble sport of Olympic quibbling, (and you certainly should).

And other important moves - well, there would be the 'wangle', the 'pedantrick', and of course the potentially game-ending 'fussbudget'. No idea what any of these are, but they all sound very grand and inspiring, yes? Really, I can't understand why the game isn't taught to kids at schools now. It would do them so much good.

Okay, I'll go and place myself back underneath the cat again....

*Or, as N. said when I suggested the sport of quibbling to him, 'it would involve the players moving the net'. 
 
**Or maybe racquets that look like apostrophes?

Supernews! Thousands of Australians suddenly wish they'd voted for Parma, not Palmer.

AUSTRALIA, SUNDAY - Thousands of Australians today are slowly dawning to the realisation that they have mistakenly elected Clive Palmer to the Parliament instead of Chicken Parma.

"We didn't realise", said thousands of Australians. "We thought we were expressing our love for a well-known pub delicacy, a bit like people do in Masterchef, but instead we've accidentally elected this incoherent corrupt loon".

Chicken Parma, a well known celebrity which has appeared in barrooms across the nation in the company of pots, pints, schooners, middies, and sometimes a little salad, has repeatedly expressed its disinterest in running for politics. "I'm happy with my job at the moment," says Parma. "That is, providing a satisfying meal to people from all walks of life. I'm just not cut out for politics." However, it has said it is "surprised" but "flattered" by the news that thousands of Australians accidentally voted for it.

Thousands of Australians have today expressed their regret at the unfortunate mistake. "We're sorry," said thousands of Australians. "We won't do it again. Probably."

COMPARE AND CONTRAST
CHICKEN PARMA
- Found in pubs across the nation.
- Tasty and delicious.
- Likes lying on a bed of hot salty chips while being layered with a rich tomato sauce and melted mozzarella cheese.

CLIVE PALMER
- Found in boardrooms across the nation.
- Tasteless and chewy.
- Also likes lying on a bed of hot salty chips while being layered with a rich tomato sauce and melted mozzarella cheese, but only in the privacy of his own bedroom and only if the act is performed by a bikini-clad young woman.

 

Not Chicken Parma. 

This has been another edition of Supernews!

Live election blog!

Hello, and welcome to the Will Type For Food election blog, where we bring you all the glory of democracy as it unfolds across the nation! We'll be speaking to the key players from all sides of politics, that's right, both of them, as the night unfolds! Maybe we'll even chuck in a Green politician to keep you happy! So let's get started!

First, let's cross to Tony Abbott, leader of the opposition, for an interview about how things are proceeding with his party:

LIVE CROSS
.... the waves of necromantic lightning swept across his form as he writhed in voluptuous agony in the dark magics. His whole body experienced intense pain but a demented glare of horrifying glee held in his eyes, and a demonic rictus grin possessed his entire face. The awful yet glorious occult moment of ascension was at hand: all his plans were coming to fruition! Lord Vazgool laughed, laughed with fiendish intensity as he thought with satisfaction on the devastating sacrifices he had wreaked upon the community. He raised the knife for the final.... 

Er, sorry. We seem to be experiencing a few technical difficulties here. We'll be right back.

UPDATE!- Okay, we seem to have our technical difficulties sorted. Just a problem with a few crossed wires or something like that. Anyway, now, we'll take you right to the Federal Seat of Griffith, held by none other than Kevin Rudd. We'll be speaking to him in just a

LIVE CROSS
Robodroid spun wildly around the room, sensors flashing crazily. Robodroid did not know what went wrong! Robodroid just wanted love! Why did people not like Robodroid? It did not compute. The whole system on the starship did not compute, which is why Robodroid wanted to help them out. Why did not people want Robodroid's help? Another laser ray flashed from Robodroid's arm as one of his captives attempted to run for the door. The prime directive once again flashed across Robodroid's face: ALL WHO OPPOSE ROBODROID MUST BE....

Goodness me, I just don't know what's going on here. Hang on a tick, folks.

UPDATE! - Rightho. Sorted. Let's just cross to  an expert for an expertly expert opinion....

Oh, BLOODY HELL.

An imbibulatory inventory

AKA, beers wot I have brewed this autumn and winter (and also a little bit of stuff from early spring)

(I started writing this list a few days ago as a handy distraction when I had something much more important to do. Funnily enough, instead of finishing the list, or actually doing the more important thing, I ended up getting distracted from my distraction. I couldn't even waste my own time properly!) 

Cider - 7/4/13

Stout with oatmeal and whey - 11/4/13

English brown ale - 22/3/13

Another brown ale with almonds - 1/5/13

Mead - 5/5/13

Porter - 10/5/13

Brown Ale with sultanas - 23/5/13

Brown Ale with almonds and sultanas and some juice from stewed apples - 31/5/13

Fejoia wine - 4/5/13

Ginger Beer - 27/5/13

Chocolate stout - 9/6/13

Rosemary brown ale - 10/6/13

Cinnamon porter - 20/6/13

English pale bitter with pink peppercorns - 30/6/13

Witbier with lemon verbena - 26/6/13

Porter with cinnamon and orange and lemon rind - 4/7/13

Witbier with lemon and tangello peel and coriander (because of my stupidity the coriander turned out to be cumin, but, you know, meh) - 16/7/13

Porter with cinnamon, coriander and juniper - 26/7/13

Altbier with lemon verbena and cretan savoury (it's just a German brown beer) - 4/8/13

Pilsener - 7/8/13

Beetroot bitter - 11/8/13

Witbier with orange, coriander, and nutmeg - 13/8/13

Porter with cinnamon, coriander, carraway and coffee - 20/8/13

Oktoberfest Lager with meadowsweet - 24/8/13

Mead with apple, orange peel, and cloves - 18/8/13 (okay, this was meant to use a wild yeast, but so far it is stubbornly not fermenting. My strategy with it at the moment is to look sternly at it every time I pass it by. I think it'll work eventually.)

Bappir cakes (for Sumerian ale - if I ever get around to making it) - 18/8/13 (These are little cakes of barley and coriander and dates mixed together with a little honey water)

Altbier with rosemary and thyme, and fresh honey added during fermentation - 26/8/13

Porter with pepper and juniper - 30/8/13

Scottish light with lemon verbena and tagetes 5/9/13

This post brought to you A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, and all that numbered stuff as well

Lists, you would think, are simple affairs. For a long time it seemed to me that if you wanted to make a list and separate the items out in that list, you would use letters or numbers. If you ran out of letters - there are only twenty six of them - before you ran out of things to list, you would switch to numbers. If you ran out of numbers before you ran out of things to list, then you would have a problem - but you were not likely to run out of numbers, unless you had an infinity of things to list*, and even then you'd probably run out of time before you ran out of numbers.

When I used to transcribe media items, I'd hear people get confused over simple lists a lot. "Well, there are four things to say about that," one interviewee would say. They would list the first item under a number or letter - "a", or "one", or maybe "firstly". After that it all became a bit of a free-for-all, so an "a" could be followed by a "secondly", or sometimes by a whimsical "firstly", or maybe even by a "b". By the time they got to the third item on the list, they would usually have got so carried away they would forget to list it under a number or letter altogether, and possibly have forgotten the question they were answering in the first place, to say nothing of the forlorn fourth item in the list. With public speaking, it's definitely a good rule to make all your lists no more than three items in length, so it is no wonder James Diaz had such a problem with the first item on Tony Abbott's six point plan for Australia.  On the other hand, some politicians, instead of confusing themselves with their own list, just opt to confuse others: "I'll take the three points in your question," Kevin Rudd said in one press conference, "and answer them in reverse order...."

Anyway, as  I said, I had thought that the itemising of, um, items on lists would be just confined to letters and numbers. Now, as it turns out, with me doing the odd legal transcript here and there, I may have completely underestimated the cataloguing capacities of language. Why have a simple lettered and numbered list when you can catalogue it by clause and sub-clause and capital and lower-case with several nuances in between? "If I may draw your attention to 154A (i) (b) at (2)" murmurs a lawyer unassumingly, only to be picked up by their colleague on a comma that contradicts them at 147BK (iii) IV (ii) - (viii). What these items would be, I do not know: I just made them up. But frighteningly, that's what politicians do with laws all the time: they just make them up....

A while back I tossed the idea back and forth of a robot possessing emotions all neatly categorised in a series of numbered sub-routines, which ended up with this. I still think there's something in that, but then again, I also get excited about the expressive nuances of capital letters.  But it's pretty obvious now, numbers and letters aren't nearly as expressive and nuanced and impressionistic and sensuous as the little curly loops and angular symbols that precede a series of laws. They could be used to express virtually anything, although it must be said, laws are so vast and voluminous that whatever they do express, it could be hidden virtually anywhere in aforesaid vast and voluminous laws. But just imagine what would happen if a practical-minded lawyer got hold of, say, an airport car park: you'd park your car several brackets, nine capitals, four dots and three dashes from the end on floor 5.2.2 and end up wandering in a daze between one close parenthesis and another (a daze is always the best way to appreciate such nuanced and expressively-impressionistic-impressively-expressionistic artworks, I find).

There's very little chance of this glorious thing happening, more's the pity. In the meantime, we will just have to content ourselves with filling out gigantic lists of people we don't like, which we'll get another opportunity to do when presented with the Senate paper on the weekend. As an activity it doesn't quite have the magniloquent grandeur and aesthetic vision of, say, a clause of a sub-division of a division of a little known amendment to an unknown act enacted in 1936. Still, it's getting there.

*Or, possibly, an infinitely infinite infinitude of infinities to list - though Gregor Cantor seems to get a little confusing on this point.

What's a meta phor?

Or, that's a similar simile

 

The evening dark comes now, my love,

As if it were the close of day,

The stars so bright and small appear,

They seem like suns so far away;

The night so very black, my love,

I cannot see you overmuch,

Nor even reach to hold your hand

Except for when we touch.

And still the worlds spin madly on,

As planets whirl through outer space,

We hurry on, we hurry on,

As though we'd win the human race.
The wind howls on, the rain is wet,

Almost as if inclement weather -

O! May we two kiss now, my love,

As humans osculate together?

Thing

THE PEOPLE'S REVOLUTIONARY PARTY AGAINST THE GLOBAL CAPITALIST HEGEMONY OF OPPRESSOR JACKIE-APPEAR-IN-EVERY-GARDENING-MAGAZINE-THAT-EVER-WAS-WRITTEN-AND-EVER-WILL-BE-WRITTEN-OH-DID-YOU-SEE-MY-ARTICLE-IN-BACKYARD-GARDENER-FRENCH IS HEREBY CALLING FOR A BLOODY UPRISING AGAINST THE OPPRESSOR.

FOR FAR TOO LONG WE, THE SUFFERING PEOPLE OF THIS EARTH WHO JUST HAPPEN TO PICK UP A GARDENING MAGAZINE LYING AROUND TO HAVE A LOOK THROUGH WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN WE SEE JACKIE-OH-LOOK-ON-PAGE-FIFTY-FOUR-ANOTHER-QUIET-AND-UNOBTRUSIVE-COLUMN-BY-ME-FRENCH HAVE SUFFERED FROM THIS OPPRESSOR'S TERRIFYING DEVASTATION. IT IS TIME WE ROSE AS ONE BEFORE WE INEVITABLY HAPPEN TO PICK UP YET ANOTHER GARDENING MAGAZINE IN THE TOILET AND LEAF THROUGH IT AND OH LOOK THERE OH NO LOOK AWAY PLEASE TELL ME IT'S NOT YES IT IS BLOODY HELL JACKIE-MODEST-AND-UNASSUMING-PAY-ME-PER-WORD-PLEASE-HEY-DID-YOU-KNOW-I-ALSO-HAVE-WRITTEN-SEVERAL-BESTSELLING-BOOKS-TOO-YOU-CAN-BUY-THEM-IN-ALL-BAD-BOOKSTORES-FRENCH INVARIABLY AND HORRIFYINGLY MAKES HER PRESENCE KNOWN YET AGAIN.

WHY MUST WE ENDURE THIS TORMENT ANY LONGER? BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE, WE MUST PREVENT ANY MORE APPEARANCES SUCH AS OCCURRED IN THE LATEST EDITION OF EARTH GARDENER ON PAGE 55 OF JACKIE-HELLO-IT'S-JUST-ME-AGAIN-DID-YOU-KNOW-WHAT-A-LOVELY-TIME-I'M-HAVING-IN-MY-GARDEN-LET-ME-TELL-YOU-ALL-ABOUT-IT-OH-AND-BY-THE-WAY-I-HAVE-A-WOMBAT-HOW-WONDERFUL-CACK-VOMIT-BILE-AM-I-FRENCH BEFORE IT IS TOO OH WAIT DID WE ALREADY SAY THAT YES WE DID SORRY. FRIENDS, BROTHERS, COUNTRYMEN, LET US RISE AS ONE AGAINST THE MENACE OF JACKIE FRENCH AND REPLACE HER WITH THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION! TO ARMS! TO ARMS!

Oh hang on what am I even reading this bloody gardening magazine for????!????!?!?!?

The tumbleweeds of the underbed, and other hairy topics

Perhaps it is because people, collectively, have much less hair than just about any other mammal wandering about that we spend so much time fretting about it, fretting about not having it, fretting about what to do with it, fretting about how to get more of it, or fretting about how much of it we should get rid of even if nature has done most of the job for us already. Witness the eternal debates about underarm hair, leg hair, beards, moustaches, etc, etc.

Since every person on the world seemingly has a position on hair I have a position on hair too. My position is this: I rather like it. I am interested in the fact that we have less of it than almost all other mammals: how did that happen? Shouldn't that mean we are biologically conditioned to think of ourselves as genetic freaks? And the bits of hair that we did keep fascinate me even more: why did we keep them? Did we make a collective decision as a species to keep head hair, and the odd bit of pubic hair after that? Why is it that men have beards and women don't?

I like hair words: oxter, vellus, hirsute, pogonology. I like all sorts of pubic hair, but especially (pardon my vanity) beards: I like the way our body develops these little forests and groves; their presence seems to provide an appropriate balance and variety to the body - some skin here, some hair there. I like the way a beard can hold objects, pens, pencils, even the odd carrot; and I like being able to thoughtfully yet absent-mindedly rub my beard whenever I feel like it. Why do some centuries like beards and others do not? In the Victorian age, men were required to have a beard, full and flowing; in some cases it was compulsory*. Beards were out in the first half of the twentieth century, and then in for a brief period in the sixties and seventies, and then out again until today.

I even like fake hair: wigs and toupees are a wonderful thing, even - and especially - when they are wigs for pubic hair, merkins and the like. I like how the whole of Western Europe, for a period of some hundred years, became crazy about wigs, so that the sight of a person not in a wig would have been regarded as appalling. How did that happen? Was there an original wig model, a person with wig-like hair, that proved inspiring to the several generations of people that came after him? I like the extravagance that accompanied many hairstyles in the 18th and 19th century with, for instance, patriotic Parisian ladies having their head styled up to resemble great naval battles.

Even if hair is a small subject, it is not a subject that is small; you could go on and on about hair, and truthfully, there is not as little of it on our bodies as we might think. Vellus hair is tiny, fine hair that grows all over our bodies, on both men and women, children and adults. There is even, I discovered to my pleasure some time ago, a special hair for newborn babies and foetuses, lanugo hair, which is eventually replaced by vellus.

If there is anything better than hair on the young, it is hair on the old; I like the dignified tonsure that an ageing gentleman who has been slowly growing old gains as he loses his hair. When they led the Tory Party in the UK, both Ian Duncan Smith and William Hague had this tonsure, and I wondered how the British people told them apart. I also like how some people's hair slowly ripens from brown to a gentle grey to white; this is the kind of family that I come from, and indeed, that process is happening as we speak - though principally on my head and beard; my pubic hair doesn't seem to be ripening nearly so quickly. Indeed, the colour of my pubic hair seems to be quite different to the colour of my head hair, and I wonder if this is the same for everyone. Can red heads have red pubic hair? Or blondes have blonde pubic hair (the idea does seem rather strange)?

Animal hair is fascinating, too, and I like comparing notes with the cats about our whiskers. Cats apparently use their whiskers for balance and measuring up distances; I once heard a story about a poor cat who had its whiskers thoughtfully snipped off as part of a an early experiment in hairdressing, and who had to wait months for the same whiskers to grow back before daring to jump again. I am afraid to say that my beard does nothing whatsoever for my balance, although perhaps this was not the case for upright moustache bearers such as Lord Kitchener.

And I like the way hair detaches from one's body eventually, and floats around the house or the world, perhaps minutely altering the composition of some soup or cheese, maybe finding other hairs to mesh and play with until it forms Slut's Wool, the tumbleweeds of the underbed. So you see, there is very little that could be said about hair, but only because there is too much to talk about in any one conversation. Hair. I like it. 


*I read somewhere that the British army regarded the beard as a protection against the inclement weather, and I find from personal experience that this is true: I'm never troubled by my beard on hot days, but it insulates my face wonderfully against water and other liquids.

Melancholy thoughts upon the approaching spring

The sadly inevitable coming of spring would not be half so depressing but for the fact that so many people hereabouts seem to be actually looking forward to it. "Spring is in the air!" "Hooray!" and other dismal epithets abound. The very little winter that we are able to enjoy in Australia is sorrowfully insubstantial, with few showers, no snow, not as many grey clouds as one might reasonably wish for, and it is all over in a pitifully short time. This is bad enough; but the end of winter also heralds the coming blight of summer - bushfires, 40 plus degree days, and doubtless an influx of young sorts rushing hither and yon under the illusory impression that they are happy.

It is unfortunate in the extreme that, although Australia has inherited many good things from the British - a fine language, parliamentary democracy, the sport of cricket, and a certain propensity towards sombre grey-stoned architecture - the British climate is not one of those things. I'm not quite certain how this can have happened, but it seems to me an oversight on the part of our early Colonial Governors; one wishes that our formative Prime Ministers - Deakin, perhaps, or Barton - could have busied themselves with parliamentary statutes limiting the length and extent of our summers, perhaps, or importing English autumn and winter days where appropriate - but sadly, they have not. It is not simply that such a high-minded and forward-thinking approach would have made life here more comfortable; but it would have made it so much more productive. Autumn and winter are excellent seasons for just about all the good things in life that one could wish for: beer and wine brewing and cheese making. They also afford plentiful opportunity for the eating of porridge and pudding and scones and cakes, and for the occasional promenade around the house in a magnificent dressing gown. The seasons are also highly beneficial for domestic felicity: cats become less inclined to go outside, more predisposed to a cuddle, and are on the whole much friendlier with you and with one another. And, for some reason, it seems to make other people much grumpier and more sorrowful, which is also a plus.

It is probably too much to hope for any change to this appalling state of affairs. We could wish for an education about how nice autumn and winter are - there could be frequent readings of Keats ('Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness', etc) for instance - but it is likely thanks to public education that this rot about summer being wonderful, winter being horrible, started. They may not even teach kids about the 10 Major and 99 Minor Disappointments of Life anymore.

So the world is getting worse and we cannot do anything about it: the best we can do is ruefully admire the masses of gloomy clouds that hang in the Melbourne skies while there is still time. It should help to ease the pain, a bit.

Taking literally laterally

I was literally sitting down a few minutes ago when the news that "According to the dictionary, "literally" now also means "figuratively"" hove figuratively into view.

At first, I wasn't sure how to take the news. Now that "literally" literally means "figuratively", does "figuratively" also get to literally mean "literally"? Literally? Does this also mean that "literally" figuratively means "figuratively" and "figuratively" figuratively means "literally", or would that be literally taking a figurative, er, figure of speech too far? Could I even trust the literal seat that I was literally sitting down upon anymore? Just how literally figurative are we supposed to take this figuratively literal equivalence, anyway?

Personally, I literally had ants in my pants, was jumping for joy, and was over the moon about this. But figuratively? Well - I suppose I was quite excited.

Stand by for the Clive James centrespread

I'm confused. Okay, I'm always confused and I'm confused about my confusion even more than that, and while my general state of quizzical befuddlement and bemused confuzzlement varies from day to day, I usually start the day off knowing nothing about anything and end the same day knowing even less. Today, my state of confusion, quizzicality, befuddlement, bemusement, and confuzzlement is directed at the brave activists at Honi Soit, the old student rag at my old alma mater, who apparently simultaneously decided to take a photograph of their vulvas and publish it on the cover and withdraw that same edition. Actually, the details are a little vague, but the decision to publish the cover and then withdraw the same cover was apparently taken by the one person, editor-in-chief Hannah Ryan, which makes it all the more of a head-scratcher when you read this piece, by an unnamed Honi writer, protesting against the censorship that it turns out they have undertaken themselves.

But that's hardly all, indeed, a university student paper getting into trouble, or perhaps getting itself in trouble for not getting into trouble, is hardly news. But the confusion multiples, it grows, it keeps coming in great tidal waves of confusion. What exactly was the cover protesting? Surely not the commodification of women's bodies, because mass producing images of vulvas like this - 18 per cover, hundreds of copies of Honi going to print (and then being pulled (but being put all over the net anyway)) is a perfect example of said commodification. Perhaps the cover has an educational purpose, because as one of the writers says, "Until I saw the uncensored versions of the vaginas, I didn’t even realise myself how different they could be." But to present them in this format, disembodied and impersonal - doesn't this kindasorta encourage the objectification of women? Or are we not worrying about that anymore? Will the cover change anything, help anyone, educate girls and liberate women? Is it actually raising consciousness or just encouraging future students to take their clothes off, take photos of their bits, and publish them? Is that good or bad or neither or either or something else entirely? Just how exactly is today's activism much different from yesterday's exhibitionism or tomorrow's participating in the evil patriarchal capitalist hegemony? And for the sake of gender equality, should we perhaps imagine former editors like Charles Firth, Robert Hughes, or Clive James naked as well? Do we really have to?

It's all become a bit of a blur to me, what's right and what's wrong and what to publish and what not. I don't know: if anyone needs me, I suppose I'll be forcing myself to google pics of James supine and naked and fleshy in his London flat: you'll be able to tell where I am by the gently tender yet horrified screaming.

The faintest odour of chocolate with a hint of chocolate

The Baron and I just ate a fine vintage of Freddo Frog. Up until this point I hadn't even been aware that Freddo could have a vintage, but then the Baron bit into her chocolate and said "Freddo tastes good today", and I said "but how could it taste any different from any other Freddo?" and bit into my Freddo and THE BARON WAS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.

2013 was a good year for Freddo. Vignerons, or whatever the chocolate equivalent of vignerons is, take note.

A perfectly normal post by a perfectly normal person

This morning I put Barry in the fridge. "There you go, Barry," I said soothingly. "It's all right now." I like to think Barry understood what I was saying, but I'm sentimental like that.

Now I know what you're all thinking, but Barry was two weeks old yesterday. It was high time he went in there. Previously I'd just been keeping little two-week old Barry in my cupboard. What? No, of course I took care of him. I gave him an old towel and all to keep him warm and talked to him soothingly to give him sweet dreams. (Why are you all staring at me like that?)

What? No no no no no no. Barry's not a person. Jeeze. No, Barry is my two week old lager beer, sheesh, I mean, come on people, everyone knows you have to give lager beer a secondary fermentation at 0-3 degrees.

So there you go: Grown Man Keeps Beer In Cupboard, Gives It Towel To Keep It Warm, Tenderly Speaks To It Every Night, and Gives It Name Of Person. Perfectly normal. And besides,it ought to be perfectly clear you don't ferment babies like that.

TRUTH IN LABELLING STUDY: Arnott's Nice biscuits

For today's Truth In Labelling Study, we examine Arnott's Nice biscuits. Are Arnott's Nice biscuits actually nice biscuits at all? If they don't actually taste nice, it would be wrong to continue calling these not-nice biscuits Nice biscuits, as the very name Nice would suggest that a certain niceness would be inherent in the experience of eating them. Why, the biscuits might be downright nasty, which would be the complete antithesis of nice, which would mean that it would be more appropriate to call the biscuits 'Not-Nice biscuits' or 'Yucky biscuits'. On the other hand, what if Nice biscuits are actually delicious, a sublime gastronomic experience that makes your taste buds tingle and causes you to spontaneously enter a rapturous state in which the meaning of life, the universe and everything becomes clear? Then, too, it would be wrong to call these sublimely delicious biscuits Nice biscuits, as although you wouldn't exactly be disappointed, you might be disappointed by the lack of disappointment. So it is quite important that Nice biscuits are actually nice, I think you'll agree.

To test the niceness or not-niceness of Nice biscuits, recently we bought a packet and gave it a taste test. The Nice biscuits were actually not terrible, but not wonderful either, being pleasing without actually being so pleasing that they were biscuits you might actually want to keep on buying all the time. Nice biscuits actually are nice.

STATUS: TRUE.

Next week, we stay in the biscuit world and test Arnott's Scotch Finger biscuits. Are the biscuits actually made out of the fingers of Scotch people? Stay tuned for the next exciting installment!

How to ferment everything from your moustache to the flatulence of a goat to the next-door neighbour's baby

In 1991 Sandor Katz contracted HIV and, looking for a change of life, went to live at a cooperative queer homestead in the woods. He milked goats, made cheese, and did whatever you do to cabbages to make them turn into sauerkraut. At some point between then and now he released the book Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation (which last sits in a big fat satisfying lump on my desk) and became, in other people's words, a 'fermentation revivalist' or 'fermentation guru'.

Though maybe he's just an enthusiast. He's certainly enthusiastic about fermentation; there are copious notes in TAOF about fermenting vegetables, meat, fish, milk, growing mould, and performing various other miraculous acts with the aid of various microorganisms, which microrganisms he is very enthusiastic about indeed. He starts off the book with a paean to bacteria and how we interact with them, and goes on to talk about fermentation in reproduction, fermentation 'as a co-evolutionary force' (whatever co-evolutionary means), not to mention agriculture, waste management, and 'skin-care and aromatherapy'. Look, I skipped most of that stuff; this is the sort of book where you (and by 'you' I mean 'me') skip most of the pages and go to your favourite bits.Who cares about aromatherapy when there are generous chapters devoted to cheese making, wines, and beer?

It's all quite fun and less scientific than it sounds; a lot of passages are devoted to Katz's favourite things to ferment - he likes mead and talks about his friend, plant explorer Frank Cook, who he bonds with 'over our shared passion for mead making'. He explains how he used to crush fruits in his meads to start the fermentation, but stopped 'after my biodynamic farmer friend Jeff Poppen explained the philosophy of fermenting fruit: "It's the essence of the fruit you want, not the substance."' Some of the best stories are from friends and readers of his previous book, like the one from the lady who ferments cider by putting apple juice in a bucket underneath the table and letting wild yeast get into it. Katz also tells a story about a friend who is making a Finnish yoghurt culture, vilii, which culture expands and becomes exceedingly gelatinous when it curdles - his friend pours it into a bowl overnight and when he comes back in the morning, finds that the mixture, has pulled itself entirely out of the brimming bowl onto the bench.

Katz claims, unironically, that 'Meads can possess many powerful and magical botanical qualities' and 'Through fermentation, we can reconnect ourselves to the broader web of life, in spirit and in essence, as well as the physical plane'. I don't know about all that, but that's nothing compared to the book Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers (which has become a kind of brewing classic), quoted in here: 'To do so means reconnecting to the ancient tradition of fermentation - to connect to the thousands of wise women and wise men standing over their brewing vessels in small villages around the world calling on the spirits of fermentation to come to the wort and kindle the fire in it'. (The book also suggests that we use a magical stick in our brew each time as a way of calling on those 'spirits').

And I do like Katz's generous approach and his view that the environment for fermentation should be 'clean, not sterile'; he really likes to encourage bacteria. I especially like the excitement with which he describes the process of microbial alteration that goes on in fermentation, and the relish he takes in the food and drink that results. If you read around in some of the other books about beer making or cheese making you'll find they all talk with such fear of microbial infection; mostly, Katz doesn't worry about that. He suggests leaving cultures out in the open and leaving lids off pots to catch any wild yeast that drifts by, discusses the cultivation of bacterial cultures in sauerkrauts with love and tenderness, and you can just imagine the gusto with which he eats the same bacteria. It's not a book for people who get queasy at the thought of anything that's not pasteurised, homogenised, or sterilised beyond recognition, that's for sure.

Not that I want to use it to encourage you all to cultivate bacterias or microflora as pets, mind. And not that I'm saying I'll do the same. But at the moment I have cheese culture in the freezer, a lager beer fermenting away in the cupboard that I call 'Barry', and four other beers in the study that get tenderly wrapped up in a blankie every night. So, maybe if you are the sort to read a book like this, then....

On the other hand

There's nothing like stopping at the shop counter at the natural food store with a hat in your hand and a bag in your other hand while retrieving the card you used to pay with your other hand and placing the items in your bag with your other hand to make you realise just how useful a third hand would be. Amongst other things, it would excuse the awkward necessity of you having to put your hat on your head while retrieving your card before taking your hat off your head again and putting the items you have just bought in the bag in your other hand before slinging that bag over your back and placing your hat on your head, by which time the queue behind you will have doubled and the awkward smile on the face of you and the shop assistant will have been replaced by awkward glowers of cantankerousness on faces of same.

Then again, there's nothing like stopping to chat on the phone to your mother while you are also involved in an extremely complicated cooking project in which it is extremely necessary to do things exactly in the right way and precisely in the correct order for everything to turn out properly to make you realise that it would not only be efficacious to have a third hand, but it would also be highly desirable to have a second head as well, with which other head you would be able to concentrate not only on talking to your mother but also on the meal you are cooking and make sure everything turns out all right by deftly using the third hand you have discovered whilst at the shops to do whatever stirring, pouring, dividing, separating, and so on, the third hand is required to do.

On the other hand, there's nothing like having a third hand and a second hand to make you look like the undesirable mutation of a freak genetic modification experiment gone wrong. Which might actually be quite fun to look like at the natural food store.

I'm sure you've all felt like this from time to time.

An edifying Sunday evening post

As you may know, I am a supporter of the wearing of ties on the weekend. Unsurprising, then, that I ended up living in Lalor, a suburb where a large proportion of the retired male populace seem to like nothing better than to get dressed up in a nice tweed jacket and a trim hat before catching the train. It seems to me highly likely that these gentlemen, who may also be seen at the shops or playing cards with one another in long, dimly-lit parlours over huge round tables, may indeed have emigrated to Australia for that specific purpose: "come to Australia! The land where you can wear a suit and tie to the train station all you like!" Well, that would do it for me.

Why is it that we have come to have a prejudice against men wearing ties? Personally I have a prejudice against men who do not wear ties: a photograph of a beaming, clean-cut politician* in shirt and suit, but without a tie does not say "fresh!" and "new!" to me. Rather, it bespeaks a certain dishonesty and it looks like the fellow is a little simple minded: if they can't manage a simple piece of neck wear, what else can't they manage?

What could be more edifying than ties? Firstly, there is pleasure in the very act of knotting them; the astute student can devote many hours to learning the tie knots. At the moment, I know two - the  co-half-Windsor and the Balthus - and am learning a third, the Cavendish. My fall-back knot is the co-half-Windsor (Mum taught it to me years ago, and for years I assumed there wasn't any other tie knot); the Balthus has a pleasing name and there is a lovely symmetry to its knotting pattern, with the end knot being superbly fat; qualities which seem to be shared by the Cavendish. I have also tried the Windsor, but - as the Encyclopaedia of Tie Knots informs me - "In the Ian Fleming novels, Bond thinks the Windsor knot is 'the mark of the cad'" and notes that it is chosen by "Huge Chavez, Putin and the Chinese leaders Jiang Zemin and Hu Jiantao": and I didn't feel good about it. Of the other knots, I have also tried the St Andrew, and the Pratt (aka Shelby), (both for their names), while being also attracted to the extreme simplicity of the Oriental and the four-in-hand.Aside from these, I have also learned (and forgotten (and learned again)) the bow tie knot, a skill that frequently finds its way into those lists of 'things every man should know'. Bow ties, I find, are essential wear when you're just popping down to Coles to buy a little something: it's always interesting seeing how the person at the checkout reacts. Other places and times to wear bow ties are to the shopping plaza, or just while going for a walk along the back lanes of your suburb.

Neck ties in general are excellent for wearing around the house (along with the rest of the domestic flaneur outfit, tracky dacks and a mucky dressing gown with a hanky falling out of one pocket), and can sometimes be used to tease the cats. They create a wonderful impression when someone knocks at the door. Or, of course, they can be worn for jolly jaunts into the countryside, or just going on random trips on the train.

As to other questions of tie fashion, I am generally laissez faire. Some people like to tuck away the tapered end of the tie into one's shirt, or attach it onto the little pocket on the back of one's tie; personally, I like to let it flap loose, but to each his own. Patterns are good, but stripey ones generally catch my eye, and I quite like oranges and reds; and of course you just can't go past good old Paisley. I don't think I actually have a spotty tie, but just thinking about patterns now reminds me how years ago, while loitering in a Salvation Army store in a small country town with my parents while on holiday, I spotted a white tie with pink polka dots (or was it the other way around?) and teased Dad saying I'd buy it for him. He eyed it dubiously and said that I'd better bloody well not. He may also have used the word "revolting". Thinking back now, I can't fault his description of the tie in question (it was pretty out there). Even so, I regret not buying that "revolting" specimen: it would be fantastic for when the Mormons come knocking.

*I won't mention any names but let's just say the Greens do this a lot. 

A very forward crossword

"Crosswords won't cut it", announces the SMH. "orgasms are key to a healthy brain".

Well now. Depends on the crossword, dunnit?

 CLUES:
1. Ooh! Sings twice! Saucy!
2. Take a roll in the hay, right?
3. What did the two chaps have behind the milk bar?
4. Ice sex, minus one, is becoming to officials in short.
5. Close draw for pyjamas! 
6. It takes this to tango.
7. A low slip for bed clothes.

Unfortunately I'm too young to know the answers, or I'd tell you them, for sure.

From dunny to din dins, or, there and back again

As you will probably be aware, I have a lot of latest obsessions. Beer, cheese, origami, cheesy origami beer, you name it, I'm obsessed with it. Well my latest latest obsession is toilets - though actually I must admit toilets have been my latest obsession forever. Victorian toilets, Melbourne's underground toilets, a possible business venture taking visitors to Melbourne on tours around Melbourne's best toilets, the toilets in the Astor Movie Theatre, the Sun Picture Theatre, the Windsor Theatre, at Mordialloc Station, and underground on Plenty Road in Preston, the decor and design in said toilets - I've thought about it all at length. I've even periodically thought about launching books or just having roving poetry readings in Melbourne's better toilets, which would be great except half the audience would be shut out.

So I'm rather peeved to see this story (via PWAF), indicating that Sydney has stolen a march on Melbourne in the toilet stakes.

They are seedy and entirely unlovely, redolent of graffiti, urine and filth. But three vacant Sydney toilet blocks may soon be occupied under a plan to turn them into cafes...The City of Sydney has been fielding offers from cafe operators to take over decommissioned public toilets at Taylor Square, Belmore Park near Central Station, and Hickson Road at Millers Point. - The latte lavatories: old toilet blocks facing a cafe makeover

Of course the author gets it quite wrong. The pictured dunnies are entirely respectable, greatly preferable to the stainless steel electrical affairs that city councils use today.

And it's not as if the hosts of these houses of convenience would even have to hide their history. Au contraire; I think they should celebrate it. The cistern could easily be converted into an espresso machine. The metal walls could be polished until they are gleaming and new, and used to hang items of cutlery. The flush chains dangling from the ceiling could be converted into bells to ding when a meal is done. Wall urinals, if any, could be either converted into comfortable seats with the use of a few throw cushions, or receptacles for customer bags. Separate chambers into which people used to retire could be fitted out with a table with a cheery cloth and turned into booths for customers to have quiet conversations. Floor tiles could be polished, happy bouquets of flowers hung from the wall, and it would indeed be a rich cultural experience for all concerned!

Although at some point a customer might actually want to take a piss. No matter: turn them out onto the grassy area with a plastic bag and a '10 per cent off your next purchase' voucher and that problem is easily fixed, too. What a business opportunity these blocks could make!

Supernews! Death causes cancer

EVERYWHERE, MONDAY.
Concerns have been raised amongst the community of concerned people following scientific revelations by scientists that death could be carcinogenic.

The possible link between death and cancer has rocked society. "We thought death was harmless," cried one concerned citizen, "apart from it killing people, of course, which as we all know is just a part of life."

Steps have already been taken to curb the incidence of the powerful cancer-causing phenomenon, with the government making moves to "ban death" or at least redistribute the incidence of death amongst society so that poor people are not adversely affected by the rates of cancer it may cause.

The announcement that death may cause cancer follows similar revelations that cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, animals, oygen, water, books, children, the elderly, stress, and everything are also amongst the list of cancer-causing items. Indeed, since cancer causes death which causes cancer, it is only a matter of time before the shattering discovery that cancer causes cancer is made, further elevating the concerns amongst the community of concerned people and rocking the medical world.

This has been another edition of Supernews!

Rigidly repressing my lack of emotions

Man! Manly! Manly men! I'm fuddy-duddyish enough to think that the word 'man' is not only a simple way to describe one gender but is still a perfectly good word to describe the whole of homo sapiens. Good luck with that argument in today's internet, where the generic term is now even more generic than it used to be: we're all 'people', thank you very much.

But anyway. That aside, it seems you can't go anywhere these days without a man mansplaining man-flu to another manly man while trying hard not to hurt his man-feelings, all of which things are things, even when (in the case of man-flu and man-feelings) they're not really. That doesn't make much sense. Nor does the fact that He-Man, who (as his name would suggest) is a very manly man indeed but in spite of the virile masculinity exerting from his every testosterone-drenched pore, doesn't seem to have any pubic hair at all. What's with that, He-Man?

Speaking of man-flu and man-feelings, I was reading this article the other day about a 'crisis of manhood'. (There can be few greater pleasures in a man's day than reading about a 'crisis', or even better a 'scandal' or, best of all, 'a catastrophe about to engulf us all'; it gives me such a pleasing tingle in my man-pleasure centre.) It seems filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom is finishing off a documentary about "the myths of modern manhood" and is looking for "finishing funds" on Kickstarter. "It shouldn’t need to be said, but here goes once more for old time’s sake: masculinity is a feminist issue", writes Clem Bastow, "The model of masculinity that insists that men are not allowed to feel or show emotion is a patriarchal construct. And isn’t the patriarchy what we all banded together to fight in the first place?"

Speak for yourself, Bastow, I reckon. Personally I like nothing more than a bit of good old fashioned emotional repression, a spot of not-talking-about-my-feelings, and a reviving dose of bottling-it-all-up. Why would I talk about my feelings when I can just let my feelings get on and feel things anyway? It seems much more efficient that way. Plus, I have an inkling that getting someone like me to talk about my feelings would be a fraught exercise at best - like the Catholic kid in the confessional inventing sins as a better exchange for the mundane sins that they have actually committed (and/or completely forgotten about) , I reckon I'd just get an urge to start making stuff up. Of course it's hard to compete, poetically speaking, with the likes of Shelley - "I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed!" - but I'm sure I could work my way up to it.

Talk about my feelings? I've never heard greater nonsense in my life. It seems to me there's an element of prescriptive psychology about all this: filmmaker Newsom, having determined that the lack of emotions that boys are rigidly repressing are wrong, has set out to talk to a bunch of psychologists and sociologists and teachers who think they know what the right emotions are that boys should be experiencing. The end result may not be a society of emotionally articulate men - it may be a society of men acting out emotions to get responses from others.

That's enough out of me. I've got to rigidly repress ten more emotions before dinner, and I've hardly begun on the first one.