Driving, it's a hit and hit affair

Maria has a perfectly fine post up about driving lessons with her mother. She chose wisely; I remember driving lessons with my father, mostly consisting of him saying to me "Go. Good. Now stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stoooop!" (Somehow, I usually contrived to follow his instructions without being assisted by an outside object, like a tree. I can't imagine why I don't do much driving anymore.)

Anyway, it's not people who have the worst of driving lessons, it's crash test dummies. By chance, I happen to have recently been in correspondence with a family of crash test dummies about their driving experiences, and I present to you now the results of this correspondence. I have made some minor amendments to make it more readable. I hope you like it.

NICE DRIVING, DUMMY!

The sun was shining brightly as Julia Dummy made her way from her house to the car where her father was waiting in the driver's seat. Julia had just taken her Crash Test Dummy Driver's Licence Learner's test the other day, with only one answer wrong. But as her father drove off, she couldn't help but feel a little nervous.

Finally, they reached a wide an empty block, where her father pulled up and stopped. He got out and walked to the other side of the vehicle while Julia Dummy slid over to the driver's seat. Her hands gripped tightly on the wheel and trembled slightly as she turned the engine on, just as her father had shown her. The engine revved with frightening force.

"Now," said her father, hopping in the other side, "For starters, drive into that wall over there."
Julia Dummy placed the car in first gear, and began to drive forward, staring determinedly at the wall. The car crept forward for a few steps, then suddenly -

"Wait! WAIT! Stop!" cried her father. "What are you doing?"
"Driving into the wall," said Julia, puzzled.
"At that speed? You might hit the wall, but even if you do, you won't do any damage at all!"
Her father banged his plastic hand on the dashboard to make a point. "You're not a HOON, Julia Dummy!"

Julia thought immediately of those hoon crash test dummies who drove late at night in the parking lots. She saw them sometimes when she helped her parents out with late-night shopping. They would drive at incredibly slow speeds, shouting and hollering like maniacs, exhilarated by the lack of danger. Sometimes they would even drive their cars away from one another for distances, like humans, only to turn aside at the last moment so as to make the smallest of crashes. She bit her plastic lips together as she thought about it. No. She didn't want to be like that. She didn't ever want to be like them.

Julia Dummy ignited the engine and the car started rolling forward. She turned the car up to first, second and then third gear, coasting along towards the wall now at a rapid pace. Then, kicking the engine into fourth, she sped along, and was about to change into fifth gear, when -

CRASH!

- the car crunched to a halt and parts of the window screen fell about the Dummies as the car slammed with extraordinary force into the wall. Mr Dummy was thrown right out of his seat, and Julia flopped forwards and back and forwards again before remembering to turn the engine off.

"Hmm," said her father after a few moments, picking up his head from the floor, dusting a few shards of glass off, and screwing it back on, "Nice hit. Almost dead on centre!"
"I was so afraid I'd miss!" said Julia, trying not to sound a little triumphant.
"Now," said her father, turning his head this way and that to make sure it was in place, "How about backing up and to the right and into that tree behind us?"
Julia craned her head out the window and looked in the rear view mirror, and then looked back to see where the tree was. Reverse gear was complicated, but she knew she had to try to get this right. She put the car into reverse, began to turn to the right, and accelerated, keeping her eye on the mirror. A wave of fear hit her and she thought, "Oh, my God! I've missed the tree, I've missed the tree!" But -

THUD!

There was a sudden grinding of gears, and the engine roared terribly. The car suddenly wasn't going anywhere any more. Julia shut off the engine as her father got out. In a moment, she walked around to the back of the car, too.
She had hit the tree, but not in the centre. It grazed the far left of the car, denting it slightly, and once branch just managing to take out a light. But if she had turned any further, she might have missed it!

"I think you probably need a bit more practice in driving into things in reverse," said her father. "But that's okay. We can do some more later."

As they walked back to the car, Julia Dummy wondered fearfully what might have happened if she had missed the tree. It was horrible; maybe she would have gone on and on and not hit anything! She wished she didn't get so worried about driving.

"There are some big rocks and a public toilet over there," said her father. "Let's practice hitting them for a bit! This time we'll try a few turns - but not at slow speeds, you're not experienced enough for that. Fifth gear!"

Over the next half-hour, Julia Dummy and her father turned at high speeds into rocks and trees, sped into public monuments and facilities, slammed into walls and houses, and collided with horrifying force into hills. Then they decided to wind things up with a bit of parking, and for the next ten minutes, Julia Dummy worked on her skills in bumping into cars behind her and in front of her. ("It's a bit tricky, but you'll learn soon enough," said Mr Dummy consolingly.) Then, just when it looked like things were done, they saw in the distance Mr and Mrs Jones - a family of crash test dummies who were neighbours, obviously out for a little morning smash.

"Hmm," said Mr Dummy. "Why don't we drive into them and say hello?"

Feeling that she could handle this quite easily, Julia Dummy kicked the car into fifth gear, and accelerated at two hundred kilometres an hour towards the Joneses! Her confidence was growing now. She thought she was getting the hang of this driving business. After all, there was always something to run into, wasn't there?
As they drew nearer, the Joneses car continued to putt putt along at the same pace. Julia was puzzled. It was almost as if they didn't want a collision to happen, and were just out for a Sunday drive. Closer they came, and a small anxiety grew in Julia's mind. She had been counting on them swerving towards her. She had driven in a wide arc to allow this sort of thing to happen.

"OH MY GOD!" shouted Julia Dummy, the truth dawning on her. "THEY'RE LOOKING THE OTHER WAY! THEY'RE GOING TO MISS US, DAD!"
"TURN, TURN!" shouted her father, frightened now. "YOU CAN STILL HIT THEM!"

They weren't far away now. Julia saw that old Mr Jones - he had been a crash test dummy for the army at one time, so he could be forgiven for being a little forgetful now - turn his head and spy the Dummies speeding towards him. He joyfully kicked his car into high gear, and sped towards them and an inevitable -

CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!

It was certainly one of the best crashes Julia Dummy had been in for a long time. Not only did her father fly out of his seat, allowing him to shout, "Fancy bumping into YOU!" at old Mr and Mrs Jones, but both cars immediately exploded nicely. The four of them - Mr and Mrs Jones, Mr Dummy and Julia - looked at the smouldering wrecks of the cars in satisfaction.
"Wonderful hit, Julia!" shouted Mr Dummy. "You've written our cars both off! You're a natural driver!"
"Come on, dears," said Mrs Jones. "There's a train leaving soon that's due to be derailed at our street. Let's catch that..."

***

That night, Mr Dummy brought ice-cream for the whole family to celebrate Julia Dummy's wonderful crash. Driving was a funny business, thought Julia as she ate her ice cream. But not that hard, once you learned how to hit things. Not that hard at all...

Move along here, nothing to see

ET's home phone.

Sunday ptoery

Ye Auld Ballade Concerning Tim's Aulde Collection of Verbigeration, and Literature from Alle and Sondry Landes.

I had a little stack of books,
A stack of books had I.
I had a little stack of books,
A pretty little stack of books,
So little was this stack of books,
It reached into the sky.

It was more beautiful and eloquent
Than the famous tower of Babel:
More beautiful, more eloquent,
And even more unstable.

Occasionally a tome would topple down
Upon a visitor,
A little tome would topple down,
A set of tomes would topple down,
A tonne of tomes would topple down,
And bury my inquisitor.

It was more beautiful and eloquent
Than the famous tower of Babel:
More beautiful, more eloquent,
And even more unstable.

Flatmate came and saw this stack
With ever flashing eye;
"Tim, you need to shelf this stack,
To shelf this ever-climbing stack,
To shelf this climbing stack of books,
Before it falls on you or I!"

It was more beautiful and eloquent
Than the famous tower of Babel:
More beautiful, more eloquent,
And even more unstable.

And so I went and got a shelf,
I got it from IKEA.
I got a lovely little shelf,
Got it with my hard-earned wealth,
Put it together by myself,
With screws sourced from South Korea.

It was more beautiful and eloquent
Than the famous tower of Babel:
More beautiful, more eloquent,
And even more unstable.

I had a little bookshelf,
A bookshelf had I.
I put my books upon a shelf,
I put them all upon a shelf,
I piled them all upon the shelf
That I had made on the fly.

It was more beautiful and eloquent
Than the famous tower of Babel:
More beautiful, more eloquent,
And even more unstable.

And it would crack, and it would growl,
Like "noises in a swound"
Yea, my little bookshelf crack'd and growl'd
And roared and howl'd
And snarled quite loud
Whene'er it saw the moon.

It was more beautiful and eloquent
Than the famous tower of Babel:
More beautiful, more eloquent,
And even more unstable.

And then one morning while I slept,
Ere the rising of the sun,
The bookshelves slowly tumbled down
The books and bookshelves tumbled down
The whole contraption rumbled down,
Just - (I suppose) - for fun.

It was more beautiful and eloquent
Than the famous tower of Babel:
More beautiful, more eloquent,
And even more unstable.

I have a little stack of books,
A stack of books have I.
I have a little stack of books,
A pretty little stack of books,
So little is this stack of books,
It reaches into the sky.

It is more beautiful and eloquent
Than the famous tower of Babel:
More beautiful, more eloquent,
And even more unstable.

Here concludes Ye Auld Ballade Concerning Tim's Aulde Collection of Verbigeration, and Literature from Alle and Sondry Landes.

It's important to note this

I wasn't even sure that Buffalo Bills existed any more, but this morning, I saw one of them slowly melting into the pavement on Murray Road, Preston. Just thought I'd tell you that.

Hour without power

Now, I know a lot of you have been criticising Earth Hour, but not me. This afternoon, I look forward to putting my energy activities forward or back an hour so as not to make a difference, and during Earth Hour, performing a beautiful and symbolic activity that may or may not actually make the problem of climate change actually worse. There may be those who criticise my performing of beautiful and symbolic activities and my putting forward or back of energy intensive activities in such a way as may make the problem of climate change actually worse, but to those cynics, I say this: what better way of drawing attention to the problem of climate change (that may or may not exist) than performing activities which may very well make it worse?

Think about that, sceptics, before you are so quick to criticise!

Hanging Chads (in some cases literally)

... In other news, tomorrow, Zimbabwe goes to the polls. But there are increasing concerns amongst dictators the world over that this sham election in Zimbabwe could make a mockery of the so-called democracy run by Robert Mugabe. Dictators are feeling less hopeful than ever about the increase in hope amongst Zimbabweans, and report increased feelings of pessimism about the decreased feelings of pessimism expressed by the Zimbabwean public.

"If something is not done soon, Zimbabwe could at length decay into a working economy, with roads, schools, hospitals and justice for all. And nobody wants to see that happen. Nobody important, that is." says one dictator.

Others a more hardline. "This sham election has no place in a modern dictatorship!" says one dictator. "How can we be rightly expected to make a mockery of justice and the rule of law if justice and the rule of law have a chance of making a mockery out of us?"

However, it is thought that with a little hard work at the rigged polls, Mugabe can snuff out the light at the end of the tunnel and be returned to illegitimate power with an increase in his non-votes.

Avert your eyes!

Today in the mail, not only did my flatmate get a personal love letter from Mick Malthouse (imploring him in the most ardent tones to rejoin the Black and White for another year*), but TWO parcels from myself, stacked full of books. I highly recommend posting letters and parcels of random gifts to yourself; not only do you get the fun of opening it, but you just know that you're going to get yourself what you've always wanted.

Also, today I dug up, out of a small bag of clothes that I had recovered from Newcastle, this!



The WillTypeForFood autumn clothing range is not coming to a city near you**, in a wide range of colours, limited, but not in a restrictive fashion to black, white, black and white, black with white lettering, white lettering with black background, and blacky-white.



This exclusive (limited to ONE!) range will remain unsold to all comers, and is guaranteed to shock no one and break no new ground in the style stakes!

*It might have concluded by promising him a personal date, but I must admit I didn't read that far. Also, I doubt that even Collingwood would go that far...

** Unless you're in Melbourne, in which case, tough bikkies.

Talk is cheap

If money were made out of sentences, not only could we coin a phrase, we could phrase a coin. Think about that, economists!

The family that plays together...

Family scrabble: a way to stay sane while staying with the parents in the Land of No Internet, or (more likely, this) a way to stay insane?

While I was in Raymond Terrace, I played several games of scrabble, mostly with Mum, but at various intervals, joined by my brother and my father. My high point was playing all my seven letters to get the word NERDIER, achieving the bonus 50 points. That was in the first game - my low points all came after.

After a detailed scrutiny of the styles and temperaments of my opponents, I have a few observations to make regarding their likelihood as Scrabble players:

MOTHER: Clever with words (makes puns like calling magazine 'The Spectator' the 'Speckled Potato'), but surprisingly, this wit doesn't always make it onto the board. Has a shocking ability to make you feel guilty when you play three seven-letter bingoes on the board in quick succession in one game, and not even complaining about it.

LITTLE BROTHER: Cunning. Only plays one game, but quickly reveals a propensity to store up all his high-scoring letters for the high-scoring squares, and reading the dictionary when it comes turn for his move. It begins when he asks if there is such a word as BANDO. When told that the word BANDO does not exist, that the world BANDO has never existed, and that if he was thinking of playing the word BANDO, then he'd probably better think about playing a different word to BANDO, because BANDO, being a non-existent word, cannot be played. It is at this point that he asks us (again) if the word BANDO exists, causing us to turn in frustration to the dictionary - which, as it turns out, is the only such publication that definitively lists this as a word.

FATHER: Has a shockingly extensive and accurate (to the point of being pedantic) knowledge of the English language combined with an extremely whimsical approach to their use in word games. For instance, once, when playing a variant of scrabble, he used the word GUNARM. When challenged on the existence of this word, he replied,

'Gunarm. If I were a shooter, this'- (waving his arm around in the air with a look of self-satisfied innocence on his face) - 'this would be my Gunarm!'

The first word he deploys in this game - for a horribly low score of seven points - is LEAT.
He explains (rightly) that it is a measurement relating to water, and that it might be 'archaic, and not used anymore.' He gets a similarly low score with his next move, TINEA, and assuming that we will continue to doubt his verbigerating abilities, begins to lecture us on that, too, before we cut him off pre-emptively. (Despite his undoubted verbal prowess, he gets the lowest score on the board.)

MYSELF: Shocking personality. Takes note of all the eccentricities of other family members so as to use them in evidence later.

I'm not sure if I could recommend family scrabble, if not for the fact that 'the family that plays together stays together.' However, playing scrabble with family members is probably better than playing scrabble with members of The Family. In that version of the game, your brother keeps aiming a gun at your head, and you really don't want to beat the Godfather, even if you have all the best letters. Trust me on this.

Excitement!

Hello from Raymond Terrace, just outside of Newcastle! 

I didn't think they had the internet here, but I found it tucked away in an old dusty box in a corner room of my parent's house. My next project is to find God in the same manner. It might take a while... 

It might sound a little unexciting, but let me tell you, nothing could be farther from the truth. For instance, this afternoon just after dinner, Dad wanted a brussel sprout and I wanted a potato. Just when it looked like we were going to have to get up and go to the kitchen and get another brussel sprout and potato from the kitchen, Mum gave us her brussel sprout and potato. Then Dad ate Mum's brussel sprout and I ate Mum's potato. Boy, that was exciting! And I've got even more exciting stories to come! Um... 

Bye now!

Time unmemorial

As I packed my bag full of clothes, books, notepads, papers, pens, a watch, a toothbrush, a newspaper, a magazine, and a handkerchief, I had a nagging suspicion that I'd forgotten to remember something. Forgetting to remember something is much worse than remembering to forget something; after all, when you remember to forget something, you get to plan your absent-mindedness in advance, to pre-emptively select any small accidents of memories you have for best effect. For instance, if you are going on a visit to friends, than it's much better to remember to forget to take that box of chocolates so that you can enjoy it after the visit on your own. If, on the other hand, you just forget to remember the box of chocolates, you'll only be reminded of what you have forgotten once its too late.

Of course, there are problems with remembering to forget things as well as forgetting to remember things: that is, you may forget to remember to forget the something you had aimed to remember to remember to forget. On the other hand, sometimes you remember the something you had forgotten to remember before it is too late (though in some cases you may simply choose to remember to forget this thing anyway, for convenience sake.)

And also, as one gets older, and looks back in one's past with sentiment and nostalgia, there may be more and more incidences that one can choose to remember to forget, if they don't forget to remember it first. That time the girl you had a crush on in school caught you picking your nose, for instance. Or that time you caught her picking her nose. Yes, we truly have a thousand golden happy memories in our lifetime that we may wish to repress.

Tomorrow, I'm taking off for a five day trip to Newcastle. Who knows what I may remember to forget, and what I may simply forget to remember? I certainly look forward to finding out...

That certainly was an entertaining denouement I never saw

I walked out halfway through a play the other day. A good one, too. Hey, I didn't feel like watching it. You might have a go at me for this, but really, if you can't walk out halfway through a play, then you are only getting half the value of it. What else do you pay for those tickets if not to have the privilege to walk out halfway through the show, often in the middle of a quite crucial scene? Not seeing half a play is the only way to get the full sense of it.

There are those who prefer not to walk out halfway through a show, or turn off halfway through a television program, or stop reading halfway through a book. That's fine for them, but I would just put this question to them: what crucial scenes might you miss out on if you you did choose to stop watching or listening or reading halfway through? Well, we really did get to miss out on them, and how much better it feels! Once, when I was watching Trainspotting with some friends, I dozed off halfway through, and woke up for the final scenes. I don't think I really missed out on too much, really, and I'll always remember not having that experience for the rest of my life.

I'd take this principle much further: pretty much the main problem with many of the timeless pieces of art like the Sistine Chapel ceiling, or the Mona Lisa, or the many fine paintings by Tintoretto, is that you can't walk out halfway through them at all, because they're timeless and all that. It's quite an oversight on the part of the painters, I feel.

And, after all, if a play seems like it might be a good thing before we have seen it, it must seem even better after we haven't seen it! It's logical, really, or even if it isn't logical, it should be.
And that is that.

Events of world-shattering import

My time has come!

The Brock Hunter

Or, give us this day our daily Scott:

An otter-hunt the next day, and a badger-baiting the day after,
consumed the time merrily. - I hope our traveller will not sink in the reader's
estimation, sportsman though he may be, when I inform him, that on this last
occasion, after young Pepper had lost a forefoot, and Mustard the second had
been nearly throttled, he begged, as a particular and personal favour of
Mr. Dinmont, that the poor badger, who had made so gallant a defence, should be
permitted to retire to his earth without farther molestation.

The farmer, who would probably have treated this request with supreme
contempt had it come from any other person, was contented, in Brown's case, to
express the utter extremity of his wonder. - "Weel," he said, "that's queer
aneugh! - But since ye take his part, deil a tyke shall meddle wi' him mair in
my day - we'll e'en mark him, and ca' him the Captain's brock - and I'm sure I'm
glad I can do onything to oblige you - but, Lord save us, to care about a
brock!"

Don't mock the brock, or the brock will shock you!

Things that are out of place

A stadium full of overweight people in a small house.

One person, three nostrils.

A boredom festival featuring fox terriers or fedoras.

Cows in space.

A rhyme in a book by T S Eliot.

Three words, four full stops.

Wings on a violin.

A brass band at a Carmelite nunnery.

Cats whiskers on a man.

A man's beard on the rose bush.

He means what he says and he says what he means

"Sophia, as you well know, followed me to India. She was as innocent as gay; but, unfortunately for us both, as gay as innocent." - Walter Scott, Guy Mannering

I rather think that the old meaning of the word 'gay' is holding up rather well along with the new meaning, since jokes like this still present themselves as obvious. And there are just too many examples of the old meaning of 'gay' in centuries of literature for it to be entirely subsumed in the new word.

*Does his best to look wise and knowledgeable and goes back to puffing ruminatively on his pipe full of soap bubbles.*

Have some Trauma, Norma!

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(Please note: this website is not responsible for any social embarassment and/or estrangement from family members that may occur.)

To see the world in a grain of ism

I noticed in this Club Troppo comments thread Nabs have a bit of a go at the 'isms' of history:

The lesson we should take away from this is never trust anyone advocating anything that ends in “ism”. However anything ending in “y” seems to be good so far.

He even offers a happy little list of things ending in y. To that end, I'd like to propose a list of my own, dispensing with some 'isms' and proposing new names, (some ending in 'y', others ending in random happy sounds):

Feminism Being feministy (alt: Feministing!)

Socialist Socialistical!

Capitalism Capitalatitude!

Progressivism Progressicality!

Nationalism Nice National-type-feelings

Positivism Positively Positive Positiveness!

Negativism Negativicality!

Libertarianism Libertariads!

Paradox of the day!

The world's laziest blogger has just updated her blog!

PS - VOTE FOR RED!

A review of some of the recent weather we have had

Well, despite the official closure of summer, yesterday saw Melbourne indulge in a particularly rumbustious performance of the 'hot, dry day'. As everyone knows, the 'hot dry day' genre is a particular favourite in most parts of Australia, often coming with a number of optional extras:

- Offensive winds

- Apartments and houses that heat up to near oven-temperatures

- Fires/bushfires

While performances in these three categories seemed to be somewhat lacking, it is nevertheless true that the day offered a little of all three: there was a slight hot breeze, and the temperature indoors seemed to gradually rise and rise until it was little different from the temperature out-of-doors. Also, walking along Moreland Road yesterday evening, I noticed smoke in the air, and, as the old adage indicates, 'where there's smoke, there's fire.' Also, despite the somewhat lacklustre and laid-back performance of this particular 'hot, dry day', the programme for upcoming weather events in the area seems to indicate that more are on the way.

With a little effort, I'm sure Melbourne and environs may still, indeed, be able to achieve the full combination of horrendous temperatures, winds, fires, and overheated apartments, that have resulted in other classic performances in the 'hot, dry day' genre, such as 'That really bloody hot day we had back in December', 'That fucking bloody heatwave that seemed to go on and on in January', and 'that bullcrap 40-degree day we had back a while ago, when was it, I don't want to remember'.

Although it's obvious the Melbourne weather was going for the surprise factor by waiting until the end of summer before springing a row of 'hot, dry days' on us, it is not a pleasant surprise; and like a rock musician who doesn't know how to play in 4/4 time, the timing of the Melbourne weather is more than a little suspect. In addition, 'hot, dry days' aren't actually that pleasant, in and of themselves. Quite the opposite, really. I personally find myself more than looking forward to future performances in the 'mid-autumn chill, two jumper day', 'grey and mizzling', 'blue skies but freezing', and 'winter showers' genres that the Melbourne weather undoubtedly will be offering us in the months to come.

However, I am willing, provisionally, to say that yesterday was certainly a joyous rendition of the 'hot, dry day' genre, making up for an otherwise relatively pleasant summer. For that, I give it a tentative

ONE-AND-A-HALF STARS OUT OF FIVE

Do you have any anecdotes to back up your evidence?

So, just finished the autobiography of G. K. Chesterton.

You can find a number of pictures of Chesterton on the web. He trained at art school, which helps to explain the poses he strikes for so many of his pictures. His face itself is a work of art: a moustache, a minuscule pair of spectacles, carefully unkempt hair, and a permanent scowl all bunched up together in the one ball. No, really - he did it on purpose. As he got older, you get the sense that Chesterton turned more and more perfectly spherical, until in the end, he was almost a perfect globe, punctuated at points by limbs and a head. In one of my favourite pictures, he holds a hand at his side - it's actually seated in a chair arm, but he seems to be patting his rump, emphasising his own sphericalness.

People write autobiographies for all sorts of reasons. They do it to tell the story of their life; or to put certain little-known facts about their life on record; or to commemorate their parents, relatives, and friends; or to record their part in great public affairs; or to confess their crimes and sins; or just to lie about their own life, either for glory or out of compulsion; or to correct or change the accounts about themselves that are read in newspapers and magazines; or to describe parts of their intellectual or social development; or simply as an excuse to collect together some of their earlier writings and anecdotes in a new form; or to present some sort of idealised version about their own country, family, or self; and so on. Chesterton, typically, writes his autobiography for all of the above reasons, and many others, and does it all at once.

He really can't help himself; a simple story becomes a shepherd's pie of ideas, all mixed in haphazardly together. So, in the course of a tale about an encounter with Winston Churchill (say) Chesterton might make a diversion to talk about the nature of public speakers, before becoming distracted by the issue of faith and politics, while taking his time in order to tell us a childhood reminiscence that led to his eventual conversion to Catholicism, and wind up his conversation with a few general observations disguised as paradoxes. Political tracts collide with personal, romantic observations, interleaved at points with poetic quotations. He begins the first chapter by telling, more or less at random, family anecdotes that circulated before his birth; in subsequent chapters he tells entertaining stories about school days, relates his life in journalism, discusses his travels overseas, makes a tribute to his friend Hillaire Belloc, and winds it all up with a rambling theological discourse apparently about how nice daffodils are.

Name-dropping is rampant. I've already mentioned Churchill and Belloc, but we also meet in these pages George Bernard Shaw (who he maintained an ongoing literary feud with), William Butler Yeats (apparently), Edmund Clerihew Bentley (inventor of the Clerihew, obviously), Edmund Gosse, H G Wells, and many, many others. But it must be said that Chesterton does this whole thing so well, more or less because he has such an extraordinary talent for fanciful names:

My sister in law was contributing to a Sunday paper in serial form one of those bravely, not to say brazenly, romantic romances... the villain on whom the tale revolved was represented as a theatrical producer on a colossal scale like that of Cochran or Reinhardt. He was represented as doing various unscrupulous things, as is the humble duty of a bad man in what is only meant to be a good story... But let us suppose, for the sake of argument or narrative, that his name in the story was Arthur Mandeville. Now it so happened that there floated about somewhere ... a private individual whose name actually was Arthur Mandeville... This man brought an action for heavy damages against the paper, on the ground for a malicious and vindictive blasting of his private reputation; and he won it.

Chesterton takes this small anecdote from his journalistic life, extends it, and begins to wonder about the possible consequences, asking whether authors would not in future have to rely upon numbers instead of actual names, or his own preferred means of avoiding the legal consequences: '... equipping all the characters with names so extraordinary that it was practically impossible that they could be the real names of any real people anywhere; and by way of illustration I wrote a moving love-scene between Bunchusa Blutterspangle and Splitcat Chintzibobs.'
Entertaining as all these anecdotes were, I began to have my doubts about their veracity rather early in the book; they were more or less confirmed by a later tale told by Chesterton, about a debate raging in the letters page of the newspapers over racial purity and the universal brotherhood of man, in which there appears letters by H G Wells, the 'White Man of Bexley', a 'real negro... who signed his letter, "Black Man"', a 'Brown Man', and a termination to the debate being brought, apparently, by a letter for which he remembers 'almost every word; for it was short and simple and touching in its appeal to larger and more tolerant ideals.'

The letter, in part:

Sir, May I express my regret that you should continue a correspondence which causes considerable pain to many innocent persons, who, by no fault of their own, but by the iron laws of nature, inherit a complexion uncommon among their fellow-creatures and attractive only to the elite.... Yours faithfully, Mauve Man with Green Spots.

It's not that I'm saying Chesterton is making this up (although it does bear remarkable similarities to an opening passage from The Napoleon of Notting Hill). It's just that Chesterton has a superb disdain of mere facts. You'd find this attitude rather confirmed by later tales he tells, for instance, those about H G Wells, 'who used, even in those days, to make irreverent darts and dashes through the sombre house and the sacred garden and drop notes to me over the garden wall.' (Incidentally, he keeps promising, when raising the subject of Wells, to say 'more later', and then seeming to forget the subject altogether, for no other reason, it seems, than that he suddenly finds another subject interesting. And a very good reason that is, too.)

But then, occasionally, you find yourself pulled up in your skepticism by a fact which is actually, factually true, such as his tale about his friend Maurice Baring, who apparently was fond of repeating the line "I like the sound of breaking glass". We don't have much reason for doubting this, as Hillaire Belloc said in one of his poems -

Like many of the upper class
He liked the sound of breaking glass.

And then adds in an addendum, which is the best place to add such things,

A line I stole - with subtle daring
From Wing Commander Maurice Baring.

I had originally suspected that Wing Commander Maurice Baring had been invented by Belloc specifically for the purposes of that excellent rhyme, just as I had thought that Chesterton had been making all his anecdotes up. But there you go; I was wrong on both counts.

Other characteristics of the book worth noting are the typical Chestertonian paradoxes -

'On almost every occasion when I have met somebody, I have met somebody else. That is, I have met a private man who was oddly different from the public man.'

'Meredith was not only full of life, but he was full of lives.'

'Those who now think too little of the Allied Cause are those who once thought too much of it.'
(And so on.)

The best, most grandly poetic gestures are often saved for the ends of chapters, or key points therein, to emphasise overarching themes. During a meeting with some Germans at some point prior to the first world war, he says 'and there rose up like an enormous shadow over that drinking hall the shadow of things to be.' (To take just one example.)

I certainly had a lot of fun with this little autobiography, and since I began this post by noting how I'd finished the book, I might as well finish it by showing how the book starts: it's neatly illustrative of the clever, witty way Chesterton has of subverting your expectations and letting you look at the old anew. The first chapter, by the way, is titled ' Hearsay Evidence':

Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment of private judgment, I am firmly of opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated the ridge. I do not allege any significance in the relation of the two buildings; and I indignantly deny that the church was chosen because it needed the whole water-power of West London to turn me into a Christian.

Because you had to be told

Harsh realities.



Cold hard truths.



Existential horrors.



The daily grind.

Sign I May Be Reading Blogs a Little Bit Too Much (#2)

I'm reading Chesterton's autobiography at the moment. Half an hour ago I decided to read a few more chapters.

"Hmm", I thought to myself. "I wonder how long it will take the book to boot up?"

(Also, sometimes, when I'm reading books, I get the urge to cut and paste sections of the text like I'm using a computer program)

Pub untrivia

Pub untrivia: serious questions about important subjects.

What is the day of your death?

Is suicide ever justifiable?

Does God exist?

What is the value of Pi, to a million and one decimal places?

What are the relative economic benefits of capitalism as opposed to communism?

Vivisection: yes or no?

List the 20 highest causes, in descending order, of lung cancer in today's society.

Do we really have other things to fear than fear itself, and if so, what are they? All of them?

Is this a true statement: "Give me liberty, or give me death!" Remember to give adequate reasons for your response.

Is death preferrable to another season of Big Brother?

The team that answers most questions gets a $50 Woolworths shopping voucher!

Shakespeare I ain't...

"The room was in between one room and another room, in that innocuous way that some rooms have." - me

The conservative in railway cabin 4A

(This post is dedicated to Charles Murton, who died of cancer last year and was a modern-day conservative with a love of public transport. He blogged at www.diogeneslamp.net, a site now taken over by the ubiquitous spam merchants.)

It was early evening when my journey began. The train was full, but not yet uncomfortably full, of people going home.... There was the charm, as we went on, of running out into evening sunlight, but still in a deep gully - as if the train were swimming in earth instead of sailing on it like a real train or worming beneath it like a real tube. There was the charm of sudden silence at stations that I had never heard of, and where we seemed to stop for a long time. There was the novelty of being in that kind of carriage without a crowd and without artificial light. But I need not try to enumerate all the ingredients. The point is that all these things between them built up for me a degree of happiness which I must not try to assess because, if I did, you would think I was exaggerating.

- C S Lewis, Hedonics.

What Puritanic element there was in this forgotten society must certainly be allowed for as part of the picture. It was mostly, among my people, a rather illogical disapproval of certain forms of luxury and expenditure. Their tables would groan under far grander dinners than many aristocrats eat to-day. But they had, for instance, a fixed feeling that there was something rather raffish about taking a cab. It was probably connected with their sensitive pride about not aping the aristocracy. I can remember my grandfather, when he was nearly eighty and able to afford any number of cabs, standing in the pouring rain while seven or eight crowded omnibuses went by; and afterwards whispering to my father (in a hushed voice lest the blasphemy be heard by the young): "If three more omnibuses had gone by, upon my soul I think I should have taken a cab." In the matter of driving about in cabs, I cannot claim to have kept the family escutcheon unspotted, or to have lived up to the high standard of my sires. But in the matter of their motive for not doing so, I am disposed to defend them, or at least to say that they are much misunderstood. They were the last descendants of Mrs. Gilpin, who told the chaise to stop a few doors from her house, lest the neighbours should think her proud. I am not sure she was not a healthier person than the smart lady who will be seen in anybody's Rolls Royce, lest the neighbours should think her humble.

- G K Chesterton, Autobiography

I number it among my blessings that my father had no car, while yet most of my friends had, and sometimes took me for a drive. this meant that all these distant objects could be visited just enough to clothe them with memories and not impossible desires, while yet they remained ordinarily as inaccessible as the Moon. The deadly power of rushing about wherever I pleased had not been given me. I measured distances by the standard of man, man walking on his two feet, not by the standard of the internal combustion engine. I had not been allowed to deflower the very idea of distance; in return I possessed "infinite riches" in what would have been to motorists "a little room."

... The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. In a sense. I was going up Headlington Hill on the top of a bus...

- C S Lewis, Surprised by Joy

Another eponymous engine, Tootle, was rebuked for running off the rails and playing. There was possibly a political message here, though whether of Left or Right it was hard to be sure. There were also happy little stories of Scuffy the Tug-Boat, The Magic Bus and The Flying Postman. These, unlike some of the more trivial books about fairies and elves, had conflict, danger and pathos, but all came right in the end.

- Hal G P Colebatch, Quadrant

Even more important than being drunk, however, is having the right car. You have to get a car that handles really well. This is extremely important, and there's a lot of debate on this subject --- about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car; some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car. You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind. You can also park without looking, and can use the trunk as an ice chest. Another thing about a rented car is that it's an all-terrain vehicle. Mud, snow, water, woods --- you can take a rented car anywhere. True, you can't always get it back, but that's not your problem, is it?

P J O'Rourke, How to DRIVE FAST on DRUGS while getting your WING-WANG SQUEEZED and not SPILL YOUR DRINK

SEE ALSO: Erasmus' horse, and Boris Johnson's bicycle

NEXT! in this exciting series - Trotskyists and flower-arranging!

State of the notion speech

Heard on radio last night:

"The state and territory Labor Parties..."

Kind of obvious, really.

Inappropriate job applications

Well, if you've been listening to commercial or ABC radio stations in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Darwin, Hobart, Canberra, or Brisbane, or anywhere else across Australia, or even if you've been reading the paper, you might have heard the news that Chiko Roll - that most disgusting of all Australian snack foods - is looking for a new model.

For those who are enlightened enough to be unenlightened about this subject, here's what Wikipedia has to say about Chiko:

The Chiko Roll or CHIKO Roll is an Australian savoury snack developed by Francis McEnroe, a boilermaker from Bendigo ... Since the 1940s, Chiko rolls have been advertised by an iconic "girl on a motorbike" (also known as the "Chicko Roll Chick"[citation needed]) theme. The girl is usually photographed straddling a large motorcycle, holding the Chiko roll near her crotch in a phallic gesture. The accompanying slogan is "Couldn't you go a Chiko Roll?".

Naturally, I have decided to do the right thing, and bravely volunteer myself for this position:

Dear Chiko Roll makers,

I would like to apply for the position of Chiko Roll girl. I am a 30 year old heterosexual male with stubble. I have not had any previous modelling experience. I have only ever eaten one Chiko Roll. I cannot ride a motorcycle. In addition to this, I have skills in computing and writing, and a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from Sydney University.

However, I believe I can learn on the job.

Yours,
Tim 'Next Chiko Roll Girl' Train.

With an application like that, how can I fail? Here's hoping my qualifications don't disqualify me for this important job.

Your malaprop is apropos, sir...

I really have to curb my habit of making basic mistakes in blog comments.* It can lead to no end of trouble...

On Orange Juice Snobbery:
Weeeeeeell, I suppose it would boost sales to have a Fedora that pays plays tennis, but really! Why would anyone want to?

On the Cartoon Church:
“And the earth was without form and void… and God said “let there be by a gradual process of natural selection involving the combing combining of organic elements, that will lead over the course of time to the evolution of plants and animals… LIFE!”

And on LIP:
My guess is ‘ass’ would have been one of those words Americans started spelling differently, and it was formalised around the beginning of the 20th century as part of the changes that happened under Teddy Roosevelt’s watch. (He was apparently a fan of a linguistician who advocated ’spelling reform’.)

(See Wikipedia for why that last one is wrong.)

*Or, as some people would have it, I really have to curb my habit of making basic mistakes in blog comments. It can lead to no end of trouble ... at work. Or at all.

Criticising a grain of dust on the Mona Lisa's nose

I went to see Tartuffe last night, and while it was generally speaking alright, it was also All Wrong. Or, to put it another way, the production was finely acted, with an excellent set design, decent music and sound effects, and clever casting, and I came away from the whole thing sniffing and harrumphing fit to burst. Of course, with me, you have to remember that I like arguing and criticising so much that if I ever see the Mona Lisa in France, I'll probably end up talking about the grain of dust on her nose that ruins the whole effect. Still...

Like most modern adaptations of plays by the great dramatists (Moliere shares this position with Shakespeare), it was set in an entirely different period and place to the one which Moliere himself would have envisaged for his play (ie, the actual period and place he was writing in - seventeenth century France). Basically, I'm an outrageous pedant, so this is just the sort of thing that gets stuck in my craw (whatever a craw is). Why can't we ever have a Shakespearean play set in Shakespearean times? I'd probably go to the lengths of criticising Shakespeare himself for not being Shakespearean enough in a production he puts on of his own plays. You might argue with this, saying that Shakespeare himself probably didn't have any set rules for costumes and sets in his plays, but really! I ask you! He certainly had no excuse for doing so.

So, anyway. Tartuffe was set in modern-day Melbourne, in a large expensive Toorak house, with the roles being played variously as a decrepit old Melbourne stockbroker, a GPS school boy, a Jewish-Russian maid, and a falsely-pious Hillsong-style conman (that's Tartuffe.) Like most period dramas plucked out of their own period and set in another, there were a lot of odd or incongruous lines - so you have dumb private schoolboys referring to themselves as, 'the anointed one', modern-day Australian characters making 'ardent' prayers, and frequent vows to 'the King' (not 'The Premier' or 'The Prime Minister' or even 'The Queen'!) This, alongside frequent references to the Gaza Strip and Facebook. (A pretty basic problem in re-setting the play in modern Australia, obviously, is that these jarring, contradictory period references will immediately leap out at their audience in a way that they wouldn't have done if the play was set, oh, maybe a decade ago.)

In my lust for authentically historical and historically authentic dramas, I got thinking afterwards about what the perfect staging of a Moliere play would look like. I decided that not only would such a production be set in the time that Moliere wrote, it would be more realistic than the reality experienced by Moliere himself. Stay with me here: one imagines that the original play would have been accompanied by music on the viols by Lully. Well, not only would this production have viols, but it would be played by the vilest viol players ever to have set foot on this earth - I mean, real freaking ugly ones. The original production would probably have had wigs: well, not only would this production have wigs, but it would have the biggest, shapeliest wigs in all of creation. Maybe with three wigs for each character, (each carved into the shape of some authentic 17th-century French scene, like peasants working joyously in the fields, or a popular Pope, or perhaps a minor war against the English dogs.)

To get the audience into the general feel of authentic 17th-century realism, a chamber pot would be emptied over each of their heads at the start of the production. (The contents would, of course, have been evacuated by a French nobleman from the 1600s, or, if this is not possible, lovingly crafted for the production by a modern-day artisan specialising in the craft of period micturation and evacuation.) And of course, all members of the audience would be lovingly selected throughout an audition process, and prepared for the production by a trial period of famine and/or black plague. (On the other hand, they would be equipped with bricks and rotten apples before the beginning of the show, just to even things up.)

The Palace of Versailles would of course be shipped to Australia for the production. Though I wouldn't be fussy about it; the French could of course keep some of it. As long as I ended up with a hall and a few pools, I'd be happy. All the characters would of course travel about the stage on warhorses, and of course bathe every day in an authentic 17th-century French bath of rose-water, wine, and honey, after which they would roll themselves in a gigantic vat of pomade (placed in the centre of the stage.) And of course, there would be no skimping on the final scene, where Tartuffe is dragged down into hell by the votaries and potentates of Satan. Beelzebub, or, at the very least, Mephistopheles would be recruited into the cast for this role, and instructed on pain of - well, on pain of life to furnish the scene with more than enough sulfur and brimstone.

I suppose you might object that the demons would only work for the price of one soul, and you could be right (though I do think we could get the unions to strike up an agreeable contract with them). But I told you it was a fantasy, didn't I? Of course, failing Lully as a composer, a palace for the set, and the absence of wigs and pomade, the least I reckon the producers could do is not resort to cheap jokes about Facebook, or karaoke song contests.

Anyway - I like where I'm going with this, so I'm off now to petition the Australian Council of the Arts to lend me the billion dollars or so to get this whole thing in the initial stages of production. Huzzah!

Dangling modifier of the day!

There was a man in a fedora that was running down the street!

It's true, it's all true. I saw it. The fedora was just out for its morning jog and the man was along for the ride.

Bad advice, it's better than no advice

NEVER use the zebra crossing. Why would you want to cross a zebra? They might get angry!

UPDATE! - I have had some experience in these matters, you know. In my younger days, I once tried to cross a zebra with a horizontally-striped shirt to breed a race of tartan horses, but it never worked out.

Reflections on the vanity of human wishes

Hello everyone! I like cheezels! How about you?

Well, I came across a website the other day that seemed to be suggesting the makers of cheezels, in order to increase the value of their product, were making the size of the hole in the cheezels bigger.

As marketing strategies go, I've seen worse - but not many. Increasing the size of the hole in the cheezels means, basically, less cheezel. So what's the point? It's like putting another hole in your donut because you like donuts. It's like increasing the size of your glass because you like a glass of beer. It's like decreasing the amount of bang for your buck to get more bang for your buck, basically.

Then I found out that I had misinterpreted what they were saying on the website. They were merely releasing a new range of cheezels instead of increasing the size of the hole. Hmm, silly me...

I still like cheezels!

Doctor Who for the blue-rinse set

- "Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Leela?"

- "I think I am, Doctor. We're going to start PRUNING like we've NEVER PRUNED BEFORE! Isn't that right, K9?"

- "Affirmative, mistress!"

UPDATE! - In previous exciting episodes...

Communist furniture, and other terrors

Che Lounge



Trotskys



Platitudes



Spoonerisms



A tea cup in a storm. Or should that be storming a tea-cup?

Supercilious web quiz of the day!

I noticed that they were advertising something called 'The Dumb Quiz' on Facebook today. Well, thought I to myself, if they can get away with sneering at the intellectual capacity of their readers, then why can't I? That's right!

So here you go. If you want to find out how you rank on the dumb scale ('Cretinous jackanape who is not fit to wipe the little toe of a MENSA member' being the lowest, and 'Lip-curlingly superior intellectual being' being the highest), just answer the following ten questions...

THE AUTHENTICALLY OFFICIAL AND OFFICIALLY AUTHENTIC WILLTYPEFORFOOD DUMB QUIZ

1. What is the opposite of hot?

2. How many buns do you get if you add one bun to three buns?

3. What do you normally open to get in or out of a house?

4. How many legs does a dog normally have?

5. Are there 24 hours in the day?

6. What one-syllable word starting with 'B' rhymes with 'Match'?

7. Is Australia a country town, a city, or a nation?

8. What one-letter word, beginning with 'I', do you sometimes use to refer to yourself?

9. My name is Tim. What is my name?

10. A particle of mass m rests upon a rough horizontal plane with a coeffiecient of kinetic friction mu=1/4 and is connected by light elastic strin, with elastic constant k, to a fixed point, P, in the plane. If the string is just taut find the initial speed, V, that the particle needs if it is projected directly away from P such that it just returns to its inititial position.

HOW YOU SCORED: 1-9 questions right. Bad luck, feller - you are officially DUMB.

10 questions right: CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE SMART!

UPDATE! - This post is entitled 'Supercilious web quiz of the day'. Astute readers will have noticed that this quiz isn't very super, but it is very silious, so hey. At least I got one part right.

Yet another misleading title, I'm afraid

I was reading this here essay about Benjamin Franklin in the New Yorker. It's got a bit about his autobiography here:

Franklin began writing his autobiography. He never finished it; it breaks off in 1758, just after he tells the story of sailing to London.

I didn't think about it then, but it came to me later, that it would be a very unusual autobiography indeed if it was finished. You can hardly write the complete story of your life without including in it an account of your death, and by the time you get around to completing all the details of that, you will have already run out of time.

'Complete autobiography' is one thing. But as misleading titles go, Final Fantasy XII has got to be up there. Well, if that's final, you might say, what happened to Final Fantasies I through to XI? Final Fantasy, in case you didn't know, is a computer game series, which certainly lost credibiliy the minute they released Final Fantasy II. Final? The increasingly-less-final-as-it-goes-on computer game series, more like. (Apparently they're just getting ready to release XIII.)

Douglas Adams was at least good-humoured when he released volumes four and five of 'The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy' trilogy, referring to it as 'increasingly inaccurately named..'. George Lucas, however, was quite possibly being sadistic when he called his first Star Wars film 'Episode 4' and his fourth Star Wars film 'Episode 1'. Perhaps he liked the thought of viewers deciding to watch the final episode, and then proceeding to fight over whether this final episode would be the third (which is the sixth) or the sixth (which is the third). It would be uncharitable, after all, to suggest that he couldn't count.

Not to mention Schubert's so-called Unfinished symphony (actually finished after his death by other composers), or the blatant rip-off that was The Neverending Story: as Lionel Hutz says to Homer, "Mr. Simpson, this is the most blatant case of fraudulent advertising since my suit against the film, "The Never-Ending Story"."

Still, it's not all bad. It's probably a relief that The Song That Never Ends actually does end. The rhymes were never that good anyway.

The Tower of Scrabel

So, let me tell you about a game of scrabble I had online yesterday against Alexis. It went something like this: she got a Bingo (seven letter word) in her first move. Then she got another Bingo in her second move, using the X. Then I got stuck with about six vowels to one consonant, and had to exchange tiles. Then Alexis got the Z. Then she got the J. Then she played another bingo. (She also got all the Ss. And both blank tiles.) Then I got the Q and wasn't able to play it because I didn't have any Is or Us in order to make QU or QI words. Then, um, the game ended. There was over a 200 point difference between the two of us.

I don't know whether I'm cut out for scrabble. Maybe I'll take up a safer game, like Patience - with a pack of two cards instead of the usual 52. Then again, considering my luck, they'd probably be the wrong cards anyway... !

Send in the hounds

Look... me and the McDonald's people got this little misunderstanding. See, they're McDonald's... I'm McDowell's. They got the Golden Arches, mine is the Golden Arcs. They got the Big Mac, I got the Big Mick. We both got two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, but their buns have sesame seeds. My buns have no seeds. - Cleo McDowell

Well, as any regular watcher of crime dramas will be able to tell you, they do things differently in Austria. Instead of solving crimes by the usual combination of careful fact checking by dedicated staff, backed up by the latest scientific methodology, they are usually solved by a handsome and dashing midde-aged detective who owns a dog, sometimes backed up by other quirky underlings, including a suspicious looking character who hangs around illegal car clubs, a chubby dude who drives fast, and a glamorous woman who is often underestimated. Yes, I'm referring to the show Kommissar Rex, and anyone who tells me that it doesn't give a realistic overview of crime solving in modern-day Austria is a cad and a liar.

Lately, I've come into possession of hard scientific evidence of a similar system of crime-solving in Italy: a boxed-edition of Turbo, an Italian production about a crime-solving border collie - who, um, solves crimes. I can't think of anything else offhand that's particularly good about this production, but, hey. Dog, solves crimes. Works for me.

To be fair, the first episode has an awesome opening. Turbo and his owner, Luca Sepe, are driving into the countryside on a fishing holiday, when they get called back to the scene of a crime: an evil clown and his accomplice bearing guns are holding up a department store. Sepe catches the clown but is just about to get gunned down by the clown's accomplice, when Turbo impressively rushes forward and hurls himself snarling at the dude, only to get shot himself. Cut to the sound of an ambulance siren (okay, it's probably the police car siren) and an image of Sepe holding Turbo in the seat as they draw into a hospital (all right, it's probably the vet, but be quiet! The dog's in danger here!) Then we cut to Turbo lying in bed, hooked up to some beeping machine, breathing into a respirator, and Sepe leaning over him, whispering, "I love you, Turbo!" *Sniff*. Now, that would melt a heart of stone, that would.

The Turbo shows ran on Italian television in about 2000-2001, and are actually telemovies. This means they're a bit long and in the middle start to go off in all sorts of directions, usually unrelated to dogs or criminals. Being an Italian telemovie, on the other hand, it has a lot of Italians pashing, and even, at one point, a love interest for Turbo. Entertainingly, detective Sepe gets romantically intertwined with the woman whose case he is investigating. (The movie actually ends with a shot of him pashing her in her hospital bed, while Turbo wriggles in between the two and barks at the camera.)

CHECKLIST OF ITEMS SEEN IN THE FIRST TURBO TELEMOVIE:

- Shouty knife-wielding psychopath: check.

- Heroic and hilarious first scene which begins with an angry clown and ends with a dog in a hospital bed: check.

- Gallopy dog shots down dark alleyways: check, but nowhere near enough.

- Pashing Italians: check.

- Lines like: "These canned hams will take your mind off that other dog for the moment.": check.

- Corny 1980's style plastic face mask worn by the villain: check.

- Dog jumping through a glass window to corner a villain and thereby save the day: check.

This show is an obvious rip-off of Kommissar Rex, which ran all over Europe from 1994 to 2004. Since the dawn of time, however, Man has longed to see evil European villains chased down shady alleways by righteous Hounds of Justice. However unoriginally, Turbo fulfills this longing. For that, I give this boxed-set DVD edition a hearty four and a half paw-prints out of five.

Lesson for the day!

LESSON FOR THE DAY: HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A NORMAL BEAGLE PICTURE AND A GRATUITOUS BEAGLE PICTURE

1. THIS is a normal beagle picture.



2. And THIS is a gratuitous beagle picture.



Now, can you see the difference?

Excellent!

(Just thought I'd join in the internetwide gratuitous beagle love.)

Attention, holidaymakers...

When you come back from your holiday, be sure to talk about the 'breezes of force nine pleasantness!' and 'near catastrophic levels of relaxation encountered!' and of 'fun at near national disaster levels!' It makes you sound like more of a bad-arse that way. Or a wanker.

Either way, it'll amuse your friends and/or work colleagues.

Apology of the year!

No, not that one, this one...

The Ottawa Citizen and Southam News wish to apologize for our apology to Mark Steyn, published Oct. 22. In correcting the incorrect statements about Mr. Steyn published Oct. 15, we incorrectly published the incorrect correction. We accept and regret that our original regrets were unacceptable and we apologize to Mr. Steyn for any distress caused by our previous apology.

After all, isn't it often the case in this day and age that we find ourselves having to apologise for our previous apologies, and offer our deep and profound regrets over previously deeply held and profoundly believed regrets? These courageous demonstrations of sorrow over previous courageous demonstrations of sorrow give us all a chance to move on from the deep pain (that our previous moving on from the deep pain it was causing) had caused.

Indeed, there may be some who object to all this apologising over previous apologies: to those people I say, "I could not fail to disagree with you less." And isn't that something we can all disagree upon?

God save our gracious Kingsley!

The Kingsley is dead!* Long live the Kingsley!

*Well, maybe not dead, but infrequently updated.

Important question!

When poets give birth to twins, do they call them couplets?

Romanticism's long-lost half cousin

Billy 'Bingo' Coleridge was the long-lost half cousin of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (He was finally found by that great poet and writer of 'Biographia Literaria' in the London Gentlemen's Club for Old Young Fogeys attempting to take a pinch of snuff with an elephant.)

Here are some of his poems.

Daffodils

This morn I wandered by a spanking stream
And lay my head besides a spanking rill
And had an absolutely spanking dream! -
What ho! - of spanking yellow daffodills!

Each yellow head by dingling yellow head
Nodded to and fro within the prinking breeze -
As if to say, "Good day, old chap, good day," -
This floral dreaming was a spanking wheeze!

Couplets on the Skylark

Oh! Heavenwards I turned my view
To contemplate th'eternal blue -
And hark! So far away, and high -
A creature sported in the sky!
Yea, 'twas a jolly spanking lark
Enjoying larksome birdly larks
In larksome fashion. Larking hither,
Larking larksomely lark-like thither!
Flying midst its larksome perks,
Blithesomely larking in its lurks!
If ever larksome lark there were
It was that laughing lark, good sir!
It wheeled and turned in heavn's airs -
Bereft of spanking worldly cares!

Familiar Faces

Where are they now, the old familiar faces?
Raffles, Cholmondly, Baron Chips; Gloucester, Churchill, Randolph Phipps?
And I haven't seen young Rolmondley since I lost him at the races -
Where are they now, the old familiar faces?

Shortly after finding his long-lost half cousin, Coleridge 'accidentally' misplaced him again in the Manchester Zoo. He later tried to blame the whole event on a person from Porlock.

It's good to be the Kingsley

Before you criticise the Kingsley, you must first walk in his shoes socks for a day.

A concise summary of my body functions during the course of today

The morning began with a good nose pick. I personally recommend that all mornings begin with a good nose pick, and indeed, there is hardly a morning of mine that does not begin with a good nose pick. However, at some periods of the year (hot days during summer, for instance) it is recommended that this nose picking policy is reconsidered, as a blood nose may be the result. Nevertheless, it is an excellent method that nature has furnished for cleaning out one's nasal passages and airways during the morning, with the tools readily provided (at one's fingertips, as it were).

As I had been sleeping somewhat fitfully, and rolling around a lot, my elbows had been aching from prolonged periods of rest on their sides. However, this ache quickly dissipated as I rose from my bed. I continued to the toilet, where I had the usual satisfactory morning piss.

There was very little to do at work, so I leaned forward on the desk, which again caused a slight ache in my arms. My back ached slightly as well, but let's not go on about it. Once or twice I rose from the seat to get a drink or go to the toilet for another piss. While not bad as pisses go, I was not able to lose myself in the experience as much as I would have at home due to the imminent presence of work colleagues in the bathroom.

In addition, there were several slight ructions in my stomach due to a consolidated programme of food consumption throughout the course of Monday and Tuesday. As a result, my lunch was somewhat light, a milkshake followed by a Cornflake Honeyjoy (disappointing).

Despite a slight wooziness throughout the afternoon, I continued in this manner through to the end of the day, where a walk in the fresh air and a coffee made me feel somewhat better. When I arrived home late in the evening I continued to the toilet to make a poo, which turned out to be slight, but not insignificant. Then I had a shower.

This has been a concise summary of the bodily functions of Timothy H Train during the course of today, Wednesday, 6 February, 2008.

Crush your puny opponents and trod their bones beneath the photocopier!

As you'll probably know, I post on this blog from time to time about the Company I work for. I hope I'm not giving too much away, but this is their logo. Perhaps you might recognise it:

Their aims are innovation, efficiency, service, and eating as many small rodents and/or human babies as possible.

Today, I was lucky enough to be present at the company annual awards ceremony, an 'inspiring 'event where we learnt about many of the 'hard-working', 'committed' and 'creative' efforts put in by our colleagues. Two awards were given out, and by chance I was lucky enough to remember the details of both of the 'thank you' speeches. They are given below.

SPEECH NUMBER ONE
This victory is indeed a sweet and glorious one! I thank the mighty CEO Zorgax* for assisting me in my labours. Tonight, I shall feast upon the blood and skulls of my opponents and their children's children, crushing their bones and hearing the lamentations of their women as I thunder onwards! But I am a just and humble victor: I courtesly invite all you, my underlings, to join me in partaking in the festal cup of victory later this evening at the local blood bank. Actually, don't be surprised if I don't drink too much blood myself: I'm trying to cut back. It's a bit fattening. However, the rich ichor of mine enemies shall flow tonight, nevertheless, and it shall certainly be an enjoyable occasion!

On such an event, only two things really need be said: firstly, I would like to thank one and all of you for voting for me on this occasion, and if you didn't vote for me, NEVER LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN. Secondly, now that I have in my possession the Talisman of Zorgax, all that I need is the Sword of the Black Realms, and ALL POWER SHALL BE MINE! Then - NAUGHT BUT A DRASTIC RISE IN INTEREST RATES AND/OR A BULL MARKET SHALL STOP ME! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

SPEECH NUMBER TWO
Awesome, guys! This is the most awesomely awesome thing to ever happen to me in an this awesome life of mine, full of awesomeness! I most righteously and awesomelly thank you for this awesomeness, and all the awesomelly awesome people within this room!

Awesome guys! Thanks so much!

PS We shall slaughter the Clan of the Photocopier at dawn. Draw your swords, mine supporters, and we will crush these puny rebels, and drink from their skulls! Bwa ha ha ha, and all that.

On the whole, I think, it's a good company, and a good place to be at.

*Names have been altered slightly to protect the guilty.

Unwillingly, a smut meme

Well, just when I thought it was safe to come back onto the internet, I've been tagged with a smut meme. Now, it's not that I'm not grateful or anything, it's just that I'm not bloody grateful. I mean, who writes these bloody things? And can't they let us internet voyeurs go around the internet in peace, reading other people's blogs anonymously and never expecting to be challenged. Gah!

Still, I guess it's one of the difficulties you get on the net from time to time. Faced with this smut meme, I've been considering several options.

1) Lie completely and utterly. (This is a protection from any potential embarassment, and really, does anyone expect anything else from me? Don't answer that.)

2) Tell the truth. (Yeep!)

3) Post an elaborate excuse on my blog as to why I will not do the smut meme while simultaneously not appearing to be timid or a coward. (Nope, can't think of any).

4) Only post the questions to the smut meme, letting my ever-astute readership figure out the answers themselves, as a kind of cooperative experience. (I could post it under the title 'So, tell me about my sexuality', or something. Actually, that could could be kinda fun.)

Or there's always the last one, option 5):

5) Actually do the smut meme.

Oh, all right then. But I'm not tagging anyone for this thingo. (Though it's tempting to tag Nottlesby and Prude.)

1. Chocolate or Whipped Cream:
Yes, please.

2. Leather or PVC:
Depends whether I'm eating chocolate or whipped cream.

3. Outdoor Sex or Indoor Sex:
What's this got to do with... oh, it's one of those questions, is it? Well, both have their virtues, I'm sure.

4. In the Jacuzzi or In Bed:
I'm not even sure what a jacuzzi is. It sounds like a type of carnivorous plant. In bed, thanks.

5. Bad Sex or No Sex:
Chastity, all the way!

6. Dominate or Be Dominated:
No idea.

7. Thigh highs or Bodystocking:
A ludicrous question. I would prefer if the person in question was wearing a few volumes of Wordsworth.

8. Fast or Slow:
Both, and both at the same time, thanks. Especially when it comes to whipped cream.

9. Rough or Gentle:
??????

10. Bite or Suck:
Again, I refer you to 1).

11. Role play or Reality:
All the world's a stage/
And all the men and women merely players.

12. Dirty Talking or Dirty Talking To:
Fuck, no.

13. Edible panties or No Panties:
Bugger off. I prefer chocolate.

14. Spanking paddle or Bare-handed:
What the hell is a spanking paddle?

Actually, please don't answer that.

15. Landing Strip or Kojak:
What kind of freak goes around calling their genitals either of these things? Can you imagine using one of these terms in 'Where do you come from'? ('And babies come out of the Kojak!')

These expressions are hideous. Let us never use them again.

16. Multiple Sessions or One Good Fuck:
If by 'Fuck', you mean 'Readings of the poetry of Yeats', then multiple sessions, please.

17. Moaning or Screaming:
As the occasion suits. But, as some schmuck said, 'Moderation in all things - even this sentence'.

18. Older (Wo)men or Young (Wo)men:
Who are you asking these things, anyway? Don Juan?

19. Threeway or No Way:
Option 3: Go away.

20. Swing or No Swinging:
Don't be an idiot.

Now let us never speak of this meme again.

No, really

Being distracted by a daisy, I did not see the approaching herd of stampeding elephants until it was too late.

Lady Chatterley's Mother

A novel, in three paragraphs.

"Now Constance," said the small woman into the receiver of the telephone, "I don't approve of this affair you are having with the gardener. It's just not the done thing!"

"Oh, all right." said Lady Chatterley over the phone. "But botherations, mother! You never let me have any fun!"

Lady Chatterley's mother took a sip of tea and sighed with satisfaction. She'd been waiting for a whole year to say that. Getting this telephone was the best thing she'd ever done.

THE END