Apparently haiku have to be about nature to be properly considered haiku. What about natural numbers? I’m pretty sure they count. Yeah - they totally count.
Will Type For Food
Sunday, November 17, 2024
S E V E N
Wednesday, October 09, 2024
Refraining refrains
'Please refrain' is a refrain that only those in certain professions are pleased to use. 'Please refrain from talking with your mouth open while you are eating' is a refrain that mother is likely to refrain from. 'Are you going to have another pot, or are you going to refrain?' is a refrain that a mate drinking with you at the pub will be refraining from. No, it is only those in the customer services who are pleased to ask you to 'please refrain', 'please refrain from smoking in the entrance'; 'children will please refrain from running at the shops': thus goes the refrain.
To quote the pleasing refrain.
The question therefore is, would the framers of the 'please refrain' refrain like to reframe their refrain of 'refrain', in order to better reform the audience of the refrain, or do they, instead, wish to retrain the audience so that 'please refrain' becomes a pleasingly common refrain? The answer is clearly obvious to all: which is why I have no idea what it is.
But I want to make this last point absolutely clear: whatever customer service you are in, please refrain from pleasing customers in the doorway, okay? This is not the sort of neighbourhood for that behaviour, not at all.
Thursday, October 03, 2024
Sounding a bum note
Hello. Here is a poem about bottoms.
Monday, September 23, 2024
I like numbers. You can count on them.
Monday, July 22, 2024
Shallot compare thee to a summer's day
Since you haven't asked, let me tell you anyway. Let me tell you all about what I've been thinking. I've been thinking about shallots, that's what. You might think that's a lot to take in, but it's not: it's shallot. A crucial difference, that.
Besides, that's the thing about shallots, that's the important point: they're not a lot, they're a little. They're a little tasty, a little sweet, and, most importantly, a little onion. Which they're not. (In other words, they are not what they are. (That's why they're called 'shallots', not 'onions': do you follow me?))
Okay. So, shallots have a rich and storied history, none of which I will go into today. Instead, let us quote from Wikipedia:
The shallot is a cultivar group of the onion. Until 2010, the (French red) shallot was classified as a separate species, Allium ascalonicum.
Great!
The taxon was synonymized with Allium cepa (the common onion) in 2010, as the difference was too small to justify a separate species.
So it seems that shallots are not only too small to be an onion, but they are too small to be not.
(Pedants might object that it is not the shallot that is small in the last case, it is the difference. But what is the difference between a difference, anyway? It's very small, that's what it is.)
Here is a poem I wrote about shallots:
There's a lot to shallots,
There's a lot but there's not -
There's a lot to a little, you see:
No, you mustn't belittle
The littlest little -
To be little is something to be.
Readers will notice with what care and restraint I have avoided ending the poem with 'fiddle diddle diddle diddle dee'. It is important to finely tune one's poetic craft that way. Just as there is a lot to the little that is shallots, so there is a lot to the little that is poetry, in that you start with a lot, and you take out a little, and you take out a little more, and a little more, and a little more, and you end up taking out a lot with with a little left over, in order to say a lot with a little. Or sometimes, you try to say a little with a little, or sometimes, to those with a purer artistic temperament, you end up using a little and saying even less. Presumably the purest poem of all is one in which all meaning and words are taken out, with nothing left over, but that has already been written by someone or other so to write it out again would be plagiarism. I certainly had a lot to say about shallots in this poem, and avoided saying it altogether, so this is what you got.
But I suppose there are some things a lot about shallots. You can grow a lot of them. You can like them a lot. And you can grow shallots in a lot, and an allotted lot withal, so you could, if you chose, grow a lot of shallots in a lot of allotted lots. That's not a lot, but it's something. That's not a lot, even if it literally is. It's a little lot, which is just about as much as anyone could ask for.
In addition, here is a shallot that I found the other day.
I cooked it and turned it into a tiny onion tart, and here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon of olive oil
1 shallot
A splash of white wine
Puff pastry
Method:
Cut the puff pastry to the side of a small pan. Turn the oven on to 180 degrees celsius. Cut the shallot into pieces and fry it over medium heat for a few minutes until it browns nicely on all sides.
Add the white wine to the pan and let it reduce a bit.
Pop the puff pastry over the top of the shallot, and fold it in under the edges. Put the whole pan in the oven and leave it in there until the puff pastry rises and turns golden brown, about 20 minutes.
Invert the shallot tart over a board or plate and serve.
But enough talking about poetry and recipes and what not, we were talking about shallots. This is the end of my talk about shallots.
Wednesday, June 12, 2024
Preconstructed recipe post
Now I don't want to make you all jealous, but today I made some bread. Or, to put it in a more technically accurate way, today I measured out the ingredients that will have by tomorrow become bread definitely.
Here is the bread which I will have certainly by tomorrow made without a shadow of a doubt.
Drooling yet?
Now admittedly I suppose it is possible that someone else will put the bread together tonight and tomorrow, but it really matters not. Please to admire the bread which will obviously by tomorrow absolutely have been definitely made by someone or other clearly.
The Future really is Perfect, isn't it.
Wednesday, May 29, 2024
That’s very romance
Saturday, May 18, 2024
Culture corner
Have some drama, you uncultured swine!
Thursday, May 16, 2024
A magical mysterium tour
Russian composer Alexander Scriabin was something else. Look at this description of his planned work, 'Mysterium':
"Mysterium is an unfinished musical work by composer Alexander Scriabin. He started working on the composition in 1903, but left it incomplete when he died in 1915. Scriabin planned that the work would be synesthetic, exploiting the senses of smell and touch as well as hearing. He wrote that
"There will not be a single spectator. All will be participants. The work requires special people, special artists and a completely new culture. The cast of performers includes an orchestra, a large mixed choir, an instrument with visual effects, dancers, a procession, incense, and rhythmic textural articulation. The cathedral in which it will take place will not be of one single type of stone but will continually change with the atmosphere and motion of the Mysterium. This will be done with the aid of mists and lights, which will modify the architectural contours."Scriabin intended the performance to be in the foothills of the Himalayas in India, a week-long event that would be followed by the end of the world and the replacement of the human race with "nobler beings"."
And the more descriptions you read about Scriabin's plan, the crazier/better it sounds:
"Bells suspended from clouds would summon spectators. Sunrises would be preludes and sunsets codas. Flames would erupt in shafts of light and sheets of fire. Perfumes appropriate to the music would change and pervade the air. "
(Certain small-minded pedants might ask: just how do you suspend a bell from a cloud? These intellectual tardigrades should be treated with the contempt they deserve.)
And: "Thousands of participants, clad in white robes, would intone his melismatic mantras with the fervor of the dervishes, expending every bit of their available energy in the service of his artistic idealism."
And: "Scriabin thought... that he would die of ecstasy when it finished playing."
According to the books, Scriabin actually died of blood poisoning. But clearly that's nonsense. He obviously died from nothing more than the modesty of his ambitions, and the 'Mysterium', in all its glory, is waiting for a purer vessel to bring its terrifying awesomeness to earth.
You can hear
Scriabin's 'Prefaratory Action' for the 'Mysterium' on YouTube, over 40 minutes
long, in its full bonkers glory.
PS Please to admire Scriabin's majestic curled 19th century moustache. It's so admirable that, like, I admire it.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Delightful gurgling
Sunday, April 07, 2024
Unsound poetry
Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Sign up to my marriage counselling service, everyone!
Sunday, December 31, 2023
An unoriginal festive poem
Saturday, December 23, 2023
Looking Awkward to Christmas
A Christmas Poem in Seven Ers
Wednesday, October 04, 2023
Saturday, September 30, 2023
A grand occasion!
For no reason at all, a poem.
The colours and shapes decided
They needed to sort out what’s what –
If the blue could beat green in a blue,
If rectangles were best, or the dots.
So they found a municipal oval,
And prepared for a very grand day,
And sent out the word to each other
That now might be a particularly auspicious time to play.
First up were the black and white zig zags,
Who bested the greeny-blue squares;
But then came the fuchsia diamonds,
Who put stop to their little affair.
The pink polka dots beat the purple –
The game was a jolly good romp;
While the match up of teal versus salmon
Turned into a contre-temps.
O! The crowd cried with eager excitement,
With passion and fervour and rage
At the stripes, the houndstooth, the triangles,
The amber, the peach and the beige!
But now, in this final of finals,
Which side would be best of the best?
Out came the shapes and the colours
For a truly terrific contest!
First up were the lilac-cream squiggles –
The crowd roared with glee from the stand;
And then came the buttercup checkmarks –
This final was grander than grand!
But ah, what a jolly imbroglio –
What more of this show need I say?
Though the squiggles played wonderfully well,
The buttercup checks won the day.
What a perfectly spiffing occasion!
They all gave a most rousing cheer,
And determined that, all things considered,
They would meet up same time next year!
Tuesday, September 05, 2023
You can misquote me on that
I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so. - Sydney Smith.
There’s nothing like a good-bad review, they’re an art all on their own: not always a very nice art, but an art nonetheless. Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe claimed to be a collector of bad reviews, and, expounding on this concept, would often quote a bad review given to another composer – ‘This is a piece that gives A major a bad name’ – and proclaim, ‘I would love to have a review like that written about a piece of mine!’ Reviewer John Wilson Croker supposedly wrote the review that killed John Keats, which is unfortunate; even more unfortunate, then, that the review is hugely funny. (However, it wasn’t actually the review that killed off Keats: it was tuberculosis, a disease not known for its interest in the finer points of literature or literary reviews). Or then there is the artist Hal Porter’s highly amusing pisstake of Patrick White (‘he commits poetry’), to which White wrote an equally memorable, if not particularly amusing, review of a review (or, rather, a review of a reviewer): ‘a sac of green pus throbbing with jealousy’.
But the example that really comes to mind, and really seems pertinent to the issue here, of publishers of mischievously and misleadingly quoting critics, comes on the covers of Dan Brown’s bestselling Da Vinci Code. For those who have been living under a rock for the past two decades, Dan Brown is an author who has dedicated his life to writing very popular, and very bad, fiction; for the benefit of critics, he has placed tautologies and superfluities and errors and infelicities of writing on every page, in every sentence (in fact he has done his best to place them in every word). He really is a wonderful, generous writer, and one can only hope the writers of bad reviews really appreciate all he has done for them. Several early reviews of the Code are quoted on the covers, including one from the New York Times’Janet Maslin, of such effusive praise that it can clearly only be understood as sarcasm.
The word for ''The Da Vinci Code'' is a rare invertible palindrome. Rotated 180 degrees on a horizontal axis so that it is upside down, it denotes the maternal essence that is sometimes linked to the sport of soccer. Read right side up, it concisely conveys the kind of extreme enthusiasm with which this riddle-filled, code-breaking, exhilaratingly brainy thriller can be recommended… That word is wow.
And so, it’s a beautiful thing, this relationship between the author and the critic – the author that loves, and the critic that hates; the author that loves to love, and the critic that loves to hate; the author that loves to misquote the critic that hates the author, on their front cover, even in the act of the critic hating. It may seem perverse to us, but we must not kink shame. It is by no means the strangest thing to happen in the attention economy we all live in. On the one hand, the author does not love the critic; on the other hand, the critic does not love the author; on the third hand, they both clearly do.
Now, as a publisher (which you either are or you aren’t), when it comes to misquoting a critic in your book blurb (which you should never do), just how should you go about it? Personally, I recommend blatantly. That way, there is a simple and winning honesty to your dishonesty that will make you seem winsome and charming. However, there are other ways the publishers like to go about it. Passages are excerpted willy nilly, at large and at small, taken from the one paragraph of praise in a lengthy, excoriating essay; or, when even that isn’t possible, taken from the sentences at either end of the column that could, in certain lights, be seen, or be interpreted as being seen, as praiseworthy. Random words can even be taken from wildly different geographies of the column, and then cobbled together, in a delightfully avaricious homage to Dadaist collage technique.
As for the critics, they, too, can generously prepare their columns for misquoting, anticipating this strange, unethical-yet-earnest tribute to their own literary efforts paid by publishers. They can provide neat little paragraphs of grossly hyperbolic praise for critics, maybe even put them in a little box so the publishers may notice them better, like an attractive and inviting fenced public garden. They can cultivate exaggerated, esoteric and archaic terms of deliberately ambiguous phraseology and euphemism, so as to sound like praise but leave some reason for doubt. They can even engage in their own elaborate literary and cryptic exercise, by writing a paragraph in commendation of the book that, nevertheless, encodes incredibly rude messages about the author and/or publishers (in accordance with Gwen Harwood’s notorious ‘FUCK ALL EDITORS’ sonnet). There can hardly be any exercise more literary than this, writing about a subject without writing about it. Writers hardly ever write about what they are writing about. That’s how you can tell they really mean it.
On the whole, the practice of taking quotes from critics and deliberately misquoting them for the sake of book sales is wrong, and cannot be condoned; but it will certainly happen anyway, because critics are critics, and publishers are publishers, and their aims and wishes are so very different. The results, also, are so frequently entertaining and of such literary interest that we should probably encourage them anyway. So even though you shouldn’t do it, you should. I suppose I am conflicted about this matter after all, which is a great relief, I will not have to tear myself to shreds in the ferocity of my self-agreement, I am calm, I am at peace, I am at two with myself at last. Isn’t it beautiful how literature can do that?
Tuesday, August 08, 2023
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells
Someone rang our phone the other day. What kind of a monster does that? Rings you - when you are at home, expecting - what? Some kind of answer? What barbarians we have become.
Admittedly, there was a time when we all used to answer the phone when it rang. Remember that? We used to spring towards the phone when it rang. We used to be afraid of *not* answering the phone. Afraid of what, I'm not sure. But there's nothing like a traditional phone bell to make you feel alarmed, anxious and afraid. I remember hearing Barry Humphries on the radio once talking about one of his early shows, in which the theatre goers sat in a darkened auditorium while the actors played the sound of a phone at them, Clearly, he was an evil man.
Obviously, I didn't answer the phone. I stood outside the room where it was ringing and, in some horror, watched it ring until it stopped, as any sensible person would do - all while experiencing that peculiar form of nostalgia for a period when that sound used to fill us with fear and dread and anxiety on the regular. It is an extremely interesting type of nostalgia that I recommend to nobody.
But what a time we live in! We are advanced so far as a society, technologically and culturally, that a person on the other side of the city, the other side of the country, or the other side of the world, can call you with the press of a few buttons, and you can decide to not pick up the phone probably. Unless you really feel like it which you don't just at the moment maybe. That's progress for you.
Who knew what a great revolution Alexander Graham-Bell was unleashing with his invention of the telephone? It was the fourth-greatest invention of the telecommunications era, allowing us all to keep in touch with one another, which led to the third-greatest, second-greatest, and first-greatest inventions of the telecommunications era, the snooze button, the silent button, and the off button, allowing us all to keep out of touch with one another. Technology is full of marvels.
But, you know, you're welcome to call again later when I feel like talking possibly.
Tuesday, July 11, 2023
I said what I said
Sunday, May 14, 2023
Mthoer’s Yda Pmoe
THE POEM
Today your child is a messTomorrow I expect to all intents and purposes that they will be a pile of cess
Happy Mother’s Day I guess.
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Car people
I call this poem CAR PEOPLE because I am and it isn't.
Though beholden to a Holden,I am fonder of a Honda,
Make Elantra be my mantra
Anyday;
In Accord with an Accord,
I could roll well with a Rolls,
Or - OMG - an MG
Anyway;
But I can but afford a Ford
And that way I'll have to stay.
Friday, March 17, 2023
Old MacDonald had a farm, AI AI O
Hello and here is a poem called HEY CHATBOT, WRITE A POEM IN THE STYLE OF AN AI WRITING IN THE STYLE OF A PERSON WRITING IN THE STYLE OF AN AI WRITING IN THE STYLE OF A PERSON WRITING IN THE STYLE OF AN AI WRITING IN THE STYLE OF A PERSON WRITING IN THE STYLE OF AN AI ABOUT LOVE thanks.
Monday, March 13, 2023
As the blind man said, I see
I like to see the Siamangs at the zoo. Especially when I see one Siamang see another Siamang.
Because then, I see a Siamang among the Siamangs see a Siamang among the Siamangs, and sometimes that Siamang among the Siamangs sees the other Siamang among the Siamangs seeing it.
Do you see?
Monday, December 19, 2022
Obligatory Festive Versifications
Christmas Chris was in a fix:
Betwixt the Christmas wine and beer,
The Christmas special egg nog mix,
The Christmas soon and Christmas here,
He’d had his fill of Christmas cheer,
And in a Christmas daze he fell
Into a torpid Christmas blear,
Out of his Christmas All is Well,
From Christmas Heaven into CHRISTMAS HELL.
Christmas Hell was full fantastic
With Christmas crap and Christmas Kringle,
Christmas wrapping, Christmas plastic,
Christmas bells and Christmas dingle,
Endless Christmas jingle jingle
Jingles echoed down the floors;
Upside down in every ingle,
Christmas trees grew down in scores.
The ruler of this land was SATAN CLAWS.
With Christmas fangs in Christmas jaws,
And Christmas eyes of festive red,
And Christmas slaver in his maws,
And Christmas horns upon his head,
No Christmas laugh from he – instead,
A booming, roaring “O HO HO”,
Came forth to cheer the Christmas dead,
A snarling, growling “O NO NO”,
And “NOW YOU’RE HERE, YOU’LL NEVER GO GO GO!”
It was a happy Christmas realm –
Here Christmas could not be denied,
Here Christmas glitz could overwhelm;
Christmas Chris’s eyes were wide
As Satan Claws came to his side.
“O Christmas Chris, your dream is found –
Be welcome to my land,” he cried.
“From Christmas treat to treat you’ll bound
In Christmas Hell, it’s CHRISTMAS ALL YEAR ROUND.”
Chris saw it all, he knew the score,
Sang from the Christmas hymn sheet smartly,
Christmas shopping at each store,
Joining in the Christmas party –
For Christmas Chris was Christmas tarty.
But something somehow held him back,
His Christmas cheer was less than hearty,
His Christmas spirit somewhat slack –
In Christmas Hell there was a lack of… lack.
But for one hundred years and more,
He joined the great extravaganza,
Shopped at Christmas shops galore,
Sang forwards, backwards every stanza
By Carey, Buble, Mario Lanza,
Binged on pudding til he burst,
Then binged again, a binge bonanza,
In Christmas crackers was immersed:
His Christmas spirits sank: it was the worst.
So lowly grew his joie de vivre,
Through Christmas Hell they raised alarms –
Was Christmas Chris an unbeliever,
Immune to all the Christmas charms
Of Christmas Hell? The Christmas balms
Of Christmas food and Christmas dishes?
How dare he suffer any qualms
About a Christmas so propitious,
Christmas delectable, divine, delicious!
Now Satan Claws grew quite irate
At Christmas Chris’s melancholy,
And came his inmate to berate:
“Now what’s all this, you Yuletide Wally?
Do I detect a lack of jolly?
A scorning of my Christmas cherry?
Less ‘Fa la la’ and ‘Boughs of holly’
Than we would wish? No Christmas merry?
For here in Christmas Hell, ‘tis Christmas very –
Here, All is More, and Nothing, Less:
All oversugared, overiced,
Christmas excess upon excess!
Our Christmas food is overspiced,
Our Christmas gifts are overpriced;
To not partake, our only crime;
Our only lack is Christmas CHRIST –
Here, Christmas reason, Christmas rhyme;
Here, only Christmas til the end of time.”
“But I love Christmas – that I do!”
Cried Christmas Chris in his frustration,
“I always have – you know it’s true!
But can’t you find accommodation
In Christmas hell for moderation?
My Christmas wish today is strange:
This Christmas needs alleviation,
Some Not Christmas for a change.
Is this a Christmas gift you could arrange?”
“A heresy! A heresy!”
Satan Claws in anger cried –
“I must call up the clerisy,
My Christmas will won’t be defied!”
In fury, bulging hugely wide,
Like some Christmas-Daemon-Shiva,
He sprouted arms from every side:
A KRAMPUS army, in a fever,
Raging, “Let us smite the unbeliever!”
In confusion and in terror,
Christmas Chris fled from the horde,
All screaming, “Purge the Christmas error!
He spurns our Christmas Hell accord!
We’ll scourge him for our Christmas Lord –
He’s made a list, and checked it twice,
And now we’ll sort with axe and sword
Who is naughty, who is nice!
Now Chris shall be our CHRISTMAS SACRIFICE!”
All through the Christmas Hell they raced,
All through the hollow Christmas halls,
As after Christmas Chris they chased;
A bleak infinitude of malls
That thundered with their Christmas calls
For “CHRISTMAS BLOOD!” And “CHRISTMAS ROAST!” –
Ears ringing with their yowls and squalls,
Chris fell before the braying host,
And blackness overcame him. He was toast.
***
Through ouch and sore and hurt and ache,
Blood dully thumping in his head,
And stale smells of Christmas cake,
Undead, not dead, alert, in bed,
Wakes Christmas Chris. A vision, red,
Then was it all a demon drinker’s dreaming?
Now through the blank hungover day,
The ruins of the Christmas feast,
Chris makes his shuffle-stumble way.
And did he beat the Christmas beast?
Is he from Christmas Hell released?
The image still before his eyes,
Of Christmas Hell and its deceased,
Flames and flickers, fades and dies;
“Thank Christ that’s over then”, Chris sighs.
END
Tim, your links stink, you fink!
- John Bangsund's Threepenny Planet
- Broken Biro
- Poetry 24
- Superlative scribbles
- Kirstyn McD!
- Rorrim a tsomla almost a mirror
- More Sterne
- Sterne
- Cam the man from the Dan.
- Too hot to Raaaaaaandallllllll!
- Erin's Excellently Everlasting Effervescements!
- Slammy Infamy
- Hail Paco!
- Baron Blandwagon, purveyor of cyberbunnies, hawker of Roger Corman, and Misruler of the Multiverse
- The Bolta. Aiyeeeeee!!!!!
- Bad Apple Audrey
- The cartoon church
- Sir Martinkus
- A Zemblanian abroad and at home
- A hodge podge of hotzeplotz
- THE SLAMMA!
- Jottlesby's nottings, or should that be Nottlesby's jottings?
- The Snarking of the Hunt
- Jazzy Hands
- David of Metal City
- David the Barista
- The Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony
- Be an Opinion Dominion Minion!
- Mel...
- ... and Fel
- His brilliant career - from whale sushi to crumbed prawn
- Jo Blogs
- Yet another Tim
- Croucherisms...
- Was two peas, now three peas
- Desciopolous!
- ... Still Life - now with extra rotating cats!
- Erin...
- An Amazingly Awesome Australian Ampersand!
- Blink and you'll miss 'er
- Red in the land of the tigers!
- Wire of Vibe
- Chase him, ladies, he's in the cavalry!
- The Non-palindromical Editrix in Germanium
- Old Sterne
- Gempiricalisations
- TonyT
- The briefs...
- ... and the brieflets
- The Purple Blog
- Blairville, lair of all that is wicked and perfidious
- The enticingly acronymical CSH
- EXTREEEEEEEME WYNTER!
- Mark of California
- Jellyfish
- Silent Speaking
- Lexicon the Mexican