Offended? I'll give you offended!

I'll tell you what I get offended by. Those incredibly rude people who stand still on the right-hand side of the escalator. They get in the way of all those people who want to try a spot of 'run in the opposite direction to that way in which the escalator is going'.

This has been brought to you by Tim, advocate of the 'Rigidly Enforce Rules of Etiquette In Those Situations In Which The Ridiculous Whims of One Person Are Inconvenienced by the Normal Behaviour of Many Others' school of thought.

UPDATE! - Elevators are also good for playing 'corners' on. I'm not quite sure how yet, I haven't worked that one out. In the meantime, next time you're on an elevator, improvise.

Untied Nations

THE United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth’s first contact for any aliens that may come visiting.

- UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens (thanks Caz!)

I've noticed a bit of commentary about this news story in the last few days. However, I'm slightly surprised that no-one has mentioned the obvious point yet: who knows if the United Nations really does exist?

I for one am still a skeptic when it comes to the question of the UN. No firm evidence has come in either way. While the existence of the UN remains a tantalising possibility, giving hope and meaning to tens of millions of people (or maybe just tens) whose lives would otherwise be spiritually impoverished, where is the clear, factual, undeniable proof?

I accept that there are many, many people out there who have based their entire careers around the existence of the UN. There have been thousands of so-called demonstrations of the UN's existence, in documentations of meetings, photographs of members, and news stories about apparent 'leaders' of the 'UN' who express 'deep concern' about a number of events in the world. And yet, if such an organisation really exists, why does it never seem to make anything happen? And why is the documentation of UN meetings so difficult to understand? What makes the goals of this supposed organisation so nebulous, and how come the public statements attributed to them so full of bland generalisations? Wouldn't it be simpler if we argued that the 'United Nations' isn't really the 'United Nations' at all, but just a group of old men and women meeting in buildings around the world and saying a number of important sounding, but meaningless, things in order to get attention and feel better about themselves?

And yet, it is true, there is a genuine mystery out there about the existence of the UN. The reasons these people keep on meeting up, given their failure to achieve lasting world peace or an end to world poverty, is very mysterious indeed, after all.

But in the end we must be practical about this: what will happen if the aliens do attempt to make contact with the UN and find that they don't exist after all? Like God attempting to contact Moses and instead getting his annoying little brother Nigel, that would be pretty annoying for all concerned, and could possibly end up in devastation for the entire human race.

Perhaps one day members of the UN will make contact with the rest of us, and a new age of enlightenment and civilisation and peace will dawn, but until then, I'm afraid I will have to remain a skeptic.

Ban Ki-Moon: is he the head of a hypothetical organisation known as the UN, or does he lead a pointless life following meaningless rules and uttering nonsensical statements in the service of an organisation that does not actually exist? No-one can really know for sure.

S-O-O-T-H-I-N-G

A soothing poem in capital letters

SOFT AND LOW, SWEET AND LOW
HOW SOFTLY DOES THE RIVER FLOW
INTO THE DARK AND RESTFUL NIGHT,
IT BURBLES IN ITS CALMING FLIGHT.
O! HARK! AND LISTEN, LOVE, TO HEAR
THOSE SOOTHING SOUNDS FALL ON YOUR EAR!

What the cool kids do for fun

You wouldn't believe the amount of pleasure I get from typing a sentence, and using a well-placed comma in the middle of it. Hyphens, colons, single quotation marks, double quotation marks, and parentheses are equally satisfying: but the frisson of pleasure I get upon using a semi-colon, in an appropriate fashion, in the midst of a series of clauses is so unbelievable, that if I told you, you wouldn't believe it. (And nor, possibly, would I). I have been known to spend minutes, and sometimes hours, putting commas, hyphens, and colons into a poem, merely to take them out again later and replace them with something else. As Oscar Wilde once said:

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

It's what the cool kids do for fun, after all.

How the capitalist pig was a badger really, and something to do with hamsters and weasels as well

Look at this badger! Isn't he happy! He's happy because it's spring! And he's on a spring! And.... um.... anyway, this is on the cover of his latest zine, Badger's Dozen 4. Which is another reason why he's happy, because he's very pleased with it. It has plenty of fun things in it! Like cranky penguins! Sleazy weasels! Dangerous hamsters! And a boring Victorian gentleman! Do you want a copy of this zine? You can pay his secretary (which is me) three dollars on paypal, not forgetting of course to include an address and contact details - (it's linked to my email, timhtrain at yahoo.com.au. I have no idea how they do this. Good vibes, or something?)

To conclude in the manner of all capitalist pigs: oink oink! Wallow wallow! Buy buy!

UPDATE! - You can also get copies at Sticky Institute, in Melbourne!

I'll take miscellaneous

When I took my trip over to the US a couple of years back I found that I was asked two types of questions, over and over. The first was: "Why did you come here?" or "what are you doing over here?" The second was: "Oh my God, are you English?" Or: "Oh my God, are you British?" And, a few times: "Oh my God! Are you Irish?" And on one occasion, I remember, the two questions merged, resulting in the following memorable conversation. It happened while I was standing in a queue for theatre tickets in New York:

WOMAN: Oh my God, are you English? What did you come over here for, you have such wonderful theatre over there!

ME: No, I'm Australian actually.

WOMAN: Oh. I see.

ME: No, no, we have theatre in Australia too! It's a recent invention!

And that was the end of the conversation, and the relationship, too, for that matter.

The reason why I mention this all now is owing to the discussion about a side issue raised in the course of a political post by one of my favourite US bloggers, Paco - because in attempting an Australian accent (in the title) Paco may have unintentionally come up with something far closer to 19th century cockney. It is, I think, an example of a curious linguistic effect caused by the long separation of the US and the UK from one another, and Australia from both. We share the same language, pronounce the same language differently, and hear our different pronunciations of the same language differently again. "Two countries divided by a common language" doesn't quite cover it anymore, especially when you throw into the mix other Anglosphere countries such as New Zealand and South Africa and Canada.

The thing is, as I discovered, being in possession of an accent that sounds like an Australian accent to Australian ears is entirely different to being in possession of an accent that sounds like an Australian accent to American ears. And, for that matter, an accent that sounds like an English accent to English ears may not be the same thing as an accent that sounds like an English accent to American ears, or an accent that sounds like an English accent to Australian ears; and while a US listener may be able to perfectly identify where a US accent comes from, a listener from Australia may not even be able to tell with any certainty whether it comes from Canada or Texas.

Certainly not me. I might be an Australian but I can't even remember sometimes whether I'm supposed to say 'napkin' or 'serviette'; I don't know anymore whether you say 'prawn' or 'shrimp'; and I sure as hell don't understand what the difference is between a 'state' and a 'territory'. Give me a few more years and I'll start calling utes 'lorries' and get confused about that, too. When it comes to identifying US accents, hey, I'll have a go at identifying them, but you won't get me much further than saying 'it's from the north' or 'it's from the south' or 'um, is he/she from New York?'

But remember, this is all coming from a person, me, who probably thinks that Idaho is a city in Florida, Ulysses S. Grant got his middle name because his parents were admirers of Harry S. Truman, Harrison Ford is one of the presidents of the US, that Abraham Lincoln settled Salt Lake City before being shot by Edward Kennedy, that Teddy Roosevelt wrote the bill of independence after winning the civil war against General Custer at Lexington Green, and that there are 57 US states, including South Carolina, North Carolina, West Carolina, and Nor-nor-east Virginia. Just as you, a person from the US (except those of you who are not) probably think (unless you do not) that Sydney is the capital city of Australia, that Canberra is the name of the island separate to the mainland, that Tasmania is the name for a type of insanity developed by overseas travellers isolated in the Australian outback, that Julia Gillard is Australia's first elected woman president, or that Melbourne is the capital city of the eastern state of Victoria (okay, that last one is just too ridiculous to believe).

Why should somebody from the US trust a judgement about their accent coming from me? Why should I necessarily expect their judgements about my accent to be any better - or worse? Is it any wonder that the way I hear how they say what they say, whenever they say it, is vastly different to the way they hear how they say what they say, whenever they say it?
Australian accents sound like English accents to Americans. American accents probably sound Canadian to the English. The Canadians sound just a little bit English to Australians. The English probably think the Canadians sound like a cross between South Africans and New Zealanders. And God knows what the Canadians think of all this. (I assume they're too busy fighting off the hordes of savage caribou to be reading this blog.) And when - dear God - we try and imitate one another we often end up sounding like a parody of a send up of a satire of a second-hand imitation of someone else entirely.

It doesn't help - or perhaps it does - that our national stereotypes abroad are so very very different to those national stereotypes at home. Folks from the US and the UK sometimes seem to think that an ordinary day in the life of an Australian involves swimming through a raging torrent while fighting off starving crocodiles, dodging the attacks of a variety of venomous snakes, jellyfish, marsupials, lizards, and hummingbirds, before arriving at home to have a lamb chop for dinner, with meat pie for dessert. Well none of that is true, except for the crocodiles bit, and most of them are tame now anyway. Given the popularisation on the telly of weirdos and whackos like Crocodile Dundee or the Crocodile Hunter, it's no surprise that nobody recognised me as an Australian when I was holidaying overseas. Quite aside from anything else, where was my knife?

It was ever thus. Some 500-and-a-bit years ago when Christopher Columbus took a trip over the seas and found the Indians over there, he mistook them for, well, Indians. Maybe if he'd carried on to India he would have mistaken the Indians for Egyptians, or Chaldeans, or Sumerians, or Akkadians, or some other, wilder variant of humanity. It is pleasant and, on the whole, rather complimentary to realise that, as an Australian, you are seen by many Americans as some other exotic species of humanity, be it English, Irish, South African, or miscellaneous. To realise that one person from one nation can actually seem like several people from several nations, depending on who they are talking to, makes the world seem wider, more strange, and more wonderful than it has hitherto appeared.

What I am saying - well, I don't know what I am saying, but I guess what I am saying is that, in this atmosphere of mutual misunderestimation, and incomprehensions arising out of failed attempts to clear up past misinterpretations of certain international preconceptions that had arisen previously, an international environment of tolerance and mutual respect has developed. And isn't that nice.

I can’t believe it took me five years to invent this pun.

Popperganda.

Now give me another five years and I might be able to tell you why I felt an urge to share it with you all.

Using it in a sentence

"Prosaic language cannot convey the experience."

*

The axe-wielding maniac had a very prosaic howl.

*

The box that contained the rare blood-sucking butterfly looked very grey and prosaic.

*

The boring poems written by the boring poet were very prosaic.

*

"PAY ATTENTION OLD MAN!" woofed Lassie. "TIMMY O'TOOLE HAS FALLEN DOWN THE WELL, AND ONLY HE KNOWS ABOUT THE SECRET GESTAPO PLANS FOR INVASION!"

"What a prosaic bark you have, Lassie," said Grandfather McGurrity, and patted the pretty dog on its pretty little head.

*

The highly intelligent professor, who had made it her life's work to study the conduits, sewers, and drainage systems of cities and towns all over the world, at various points in human history, the ditch water was not prosaic at all. It was highly poetic, in fact, and caused a deep spiritual yearning to awaken within her soul.

To everyone else, however, the ditch water was very prosaic. The ditch water was, to employ a term, as dull as ditch water. Indeed, to some of them, the ditch water was even more dull than ditch water. You can't get more prosaic than that.

*

The books that were given to the class of very talented music students were rather prosaic. Consequently, when exam time came, they all failed.

*

It was then that the nightingale decided that it was rather prosaic singing the same song, night after night. It entered law school the day after and became a barrister in a top legal firm, and never sang again.

Not feeling very positronic about all this

I got this from Steve, who got it from Nature, who got it from scientists who should have really known better.

To demonstrate special relativity, which says that time slows down for moving objects, the researchers jolted the single atom in their optical clock so that it oscillated at relative speeds of less than 10 metres per second.

Jolting and jiggling atoms, twitching neutrons, wiggling photons, bouncing light waves - don't these scientists ever leave those poor little atoms and quarks and leptons alone? Do they think they have a right to go around batting and banging items of indeterminate mass and velocity all over the place? It's a disgrace. Granted, all these little hadrons and leptons and quarks and positrons and what-not are too small, and in some cases too theoretical, to see, but what if some guy put those little things there for a reason? I know how I'd feel if a particular sub-atomic particle in my possession was being poked and prodded by interfering scientists, and the feeling that I would be feeling would not be a good feeling at all.

And I don't even want to give those theoretical physicists, with their particle accelerators, and hadron colliders (oh! oh! oh! how'd you feel if I collided into YOUR hadron one of these days, bastards!) the privilege of being talked about. Those hooligans of the physicist profession, spending all their days whizzing those teensy-tiny particles, that don't know any better, around at massive speeds, and smashing them into things! It's horrible, I tell you.

Let's face it, one of these days, those scientists will run out of particles to poke and prod and pull and jiggle and jolt and jump and bounce and bang and flick and oscillate and stimulate and tittilate and irritate, and then what will we do? Because we're made out of those particles, probably we'll be oscillating all over the place at various frequencies. And no-one wants that. This day will be billions upon billions of years in the future, of course - so I'd better put the tea on before it happens.

Scientists! Bunch of rapscallions, I tell you!

Proposal for a new AFL team

So after this whole football Grand Penultimate today, with Collingwood being the team everyone loves to hate, and the Saints being the team everyone hates to love, I thought I'd propose a new football team. A team for the times. A team for the mystifying, baffling, pointless, directionless times we all live in. The team that everyone doesn't care about not caring about.

Name of team
North-South-East-Western Globules

Colours
Grey and beige.

Location
Undecided, of course, though maybe Eden-Monaro is the place for them, since that lot are permanently undecided.

Team song
CHORUS: Carn! Carn! The grey and the beige!
Maintain your ineffectual rage!
Fight fight fight! War war war!
And win a devastating draw!

VERSE: Hey, is there anything else on the telly man?
No, I don't care if we are at the stadium, seriously, change channels.

CHORUS: Carn! Carn! etc.

Team food
Cinnamon donuts, with a hole so big that there's no donut left over.

Possible chants
Meh.

Like, you know, whatever.

Huh.

It's never too late!
Equivocate!

Team philosophy
It doesn't matter if you draw or lose, what matters is how indifferently you play the game.

Have you ever...

... typed 'poolitician' into the computer accidentally and been tempted to not change the spelling at all?

UPDATE! - 'Pooet' is a good one too.

For no reason at all

The poys! the poys!

Will they doy
Or will they floy?
We'll find out
Boy and boy.

Either woy
After todoy
Some team will be
So very goy.

How to tell a St from a St.

Don't pray to a St
Just use your ft.
And show some restrt
Don't walk on a St.

You may have no idea what I am talking about. If it's any consolation, I have even less. Thus I consider it a credit to my talent for journalistic research to have produced such eloquent results from such a paucity of material.

Proposed advertising campaigns for somewhat obscure or offputting products

Here is a song I wrote about suet. I can see it spearheading a national ad campaign championing the virtues of this fatty fat that comes from around an animal's loins and kidneys. Now I think I'll just sit back and wait for the ad dollars to roll in...

Making pudding?
Have a cruet?
Want to glue it?
I know
Why not
Try some
Suet!

You won't rue it!
Have some suet!
Do it! Do it! Do it! Suet!

Have you tried it?
I intuit
That the suet
Was quite helpful
Yes I knew it!

You won't rue it!
Have some suet!
Do it! Do it! Do it! Suet!

Or an appropriate vegetarian substitute.

Now let me tell you a small story about one of my cats

I dedicate this entire poem to Mitzi G Burger, who was there the whole time.

THE INCOMPLEAT HARRIET

I sing now of a certain cat,
With coat of grey and four white socks,
Oft running round our little flat,
And in and out of every box,
And chewing on the old straw hat,
And even in MILADY’S frocks,

Hight HARRIET. She loves to pace
Alone along the street and then
With sister BEATRICE to chase
The neighbour’s chickens in their pen,
To right around the garden race,
Then through the window home again.

Whereat regaled with cuts of meat
Both sisters then with pleasure dine;
She cleans her coat, and all four feet,
She licks her tail back into line,
And after this she finds a seat,
And with a sigh she does recline.

Alas! Ambition pricks the breast
Of man and beast, of friend and foe.
A home for cats is comfiest -
THIS cat would on adventures go,
And keep her HUMANS from their rest,
The truth of which you soon shall know.

For once when dusk drew down the sky
She heard Adventure’s miaowing call,
And with a soft and swift goodbye
She silent stole into the hall,
With questing heart and roaming eye -
And did not come back home AT ALL!

Unknowing did her HUMANS wait
For HARRIET to homewards come,
Hoping, yearning, praying late
That HARRIET would cease her run -
For what is fun at one to eight
Is not so much at EIGHT TO ONE.

What nervous thoughts her HUMANS nursed
- O how and why and what and where -
They thought their anxious hearts would burst,
They searched the street, they searched the stair,
They hoped the best, they feared the worst -
They could not find her anywhere.

At last the HUMANS homewards drew -
And let us leave them fretting there,
Their brains beset with thoughts of rue,
And hearts bewrayed with woeful care,
While we our heroine pursue
Who vanished has into thin air.

Now just imagine you’re a cat
With things to see and things to do;
You wonder where the action’s at.
A doorway opens – just for you -
The doorway to another flat,
Containing vistas fresh and new…

For this, it can be now disclosed,
Is what occurred to HARRIET;
And though the door behind her closed,
She was on exploration set!
Each object in the flat was nosed -
It was her best adventure yet!

And while her HUMANS wailed and wept
And wondered why she ran away,
Why, HARRIET round the lounge room crept,
And clawed a couch or two in play,
From chair to stool to bench she leapt,
Past pots and pans in bright array.

Her HUMANS’ thoughts were doom and gloom;
They wondered where their cat could be,
But HARRIET went from room to room,
Exploring to the nth degree
The cupboard where was held the broom,
The jars of raisin and split pea,

And not forgetting to survey
The fruit bowl by the table head,
The line of bills laid out to pay
From black and white to in the red -
And finally, in bold assay
She leapt and curled up on the bed.

In restless sleep and sleepless rest
In bed the HUMANS tossed and turned;
In fitful dreams their pillows pressed,
In nervous agonies they burned;
They made their blankets very messed.
They twitched. They woke at thumps. They yearned.

Through bathroom window open wide
Still BEATRICE her sister sought,
On midnight missions went outside,
But bringing back a strict report,
She found, it cannot be denied,
No evidence of sister. Naught.

The Zephyrs blew fresh show’rs of dew,
AURORA painted o’er the skies,
While bright-eyed, shining, silver-hued,
Did dainty HARRIET arise;
And so arose her HUMANS too,
With blinking, blotched and bleary eyes.

Now HARRIET stands behind the door,
And wishes much to be let out -
A game before is now a chore:
While in the streets her HUMANS shout,
They call her name in vain once more
And just when everything’s in doubt -

Who should come up the stairs but – GLEN,
Who spent the night upon the town,
And only came back home just then?
He turned the lock and handle round,
He opened up his door again,
And HARRIET with joyous bound,

With jubilant and joyful sound,
Leapt straight across the hall to home.
A kitten lost! A kitten found!
Her HUMANS sang, made gleeful poems,
And gave her biscuits (half a pound)
And asked her NEVER MORE TO ROAM.

Yes, everyone was quite relieved -
How many pats, how many kisses,
How many strokes she then received,
From HUMANS and from BEATRICES -
On count they would not be believed:
How full this day of joy and bliss is!

MORAL:

A moral now can be proposed:
Unerring is a cat’s direction,
But sometimes they are indisposed,
Evading everyone’s detection.
They will come back, it is supposed,
If home's a place of much affection.

(This is a true story. Harriet really did go missing for a night last week, and it turned out that she was in the neighbour's flat. I wasn't there at the time H. first went into the hall, and Mitzi Burger was with us while we went searching the streets in the morning, but essential details are correct.

No animals were harmed in the making of this poem.)

Reasonable and logical

Harriet is quite reasonable and logical. For instance, she has spent the past half hour going outside through the window, deciding that she doesn't want to go outside at all, and then coming inside through the window again. When we concluded that charade by closing the window, she did the only reasonable and logical thing you could do in such circumstances: she lay on the floor with all four legs cocked up in the air. All very reasonable and logical.*

Now if only someone could explain to me the reason and logic behind it.

*Please note, Harriet is a cat. You wouldn't find a person going in and out of the window for no reason at all, would you? And they wouldn't lie on the floor with all four legs cocked up in the air either. No, they'd prefer to do it on the bed.**

**If there is one thing you learn from this blog, it's this: people are not cats.

Attention vegetarians

They serve a lentil-based dessert at the Tibetan Yak restaurant, in High Street, Northcote. Soon your fiendish dreams for world domination will come true and every single food source in the world will be made out of lentils.

UPDATE! -
Q: What's the vegetarian version of a meatlovers pizza?

A: A beet-lovers pizza!

I invented that joke on Wednesday and managed to get a half smile from the half mouth of half of one of the people with me. But maybe that was only because they were being kind and it was my birthday.

UPDATE UPDATE! - Also spotted in Northcote last night, a place selling a 'beef-veggie-burger'. Nice one vegetarians but what's the point if the beef is not made out of lentils? Try harder next time!

Bush poetry, maaaaaate

It's tough to be out bush
Where the tofu shops are rare -
And you can't buy a latte
Though you've looked everywhere.

Yeah, they make us rough and rugged
On the wild open ranges,
Us hobby-farming hippies,
And us gardening tree-changers.

For the bushman's life is hard!
And you cannot buy light beer!
And the cafe closes weekends -
Yeah, it's really mean out here!

And the shops are 50 k's away
You have to go by car -
All that CO2 pollution -
And they ain't got no caviar.

And the timetables for the buses
And the trains are bloody frightful.
Yeah, it's tough to be out bush -
But the scenery's just delightful!

Recorded for posterity, or whatever comes after that...

"Ah. A toy racoon. Ooh. A handbag in the shape of a cassette..."

One liners inspired by Etsy.

UPDATE! - "Ooh! A cupcake in the shape of an acorn."

"Hmmm! A mini-Trilby for budgerigars."

Please add your own in comments.

Whatever floats your boat into a particular port in a storm is my cup of tea

STORM IN A TEACUP
Tumultuous torrents rush down
It boils it broils it bounds
From rim to rim
With waves fierce and grim
While scalding hot steam rises round –

A flood of white horror comes crashing
And clashing and splashing and bashing
Into the molten ocean
With torrid motion
Then a hail of white stones begins dashing…

Go swim in the rivers or seas
While it’s raining and 40 degrees
Go paddling, floating,
Or rafting or boating
But a storm in a teacup is hardly a storm in a teacup to me.

Off your facebook

On Facebook, which is neither a face nor a book, where you make friends with people who are not friends, and attend events that are not events, I recently liked something that I did not like. I would tell you more about it but I don't want to offend any of the friends who are not my friends.

So maybe I'll just go and throw a cow at the Baron instead. Not the Facebook sort either. A real one.