Working-class interlude

My father, he worked in t'bog.
My mother, she worked in t'pit.
My son, he's an apprenticed plumber -
He works in t'shit.

Prepare to enter the temple of poorly-thought-out plot devices doom!

You know, all my life, I'd been longing to see a film where a guy is pursued by an army of sword-waving Thuggees up the side of a sheer mountain cliff on a rickety old bridge that has been cut in half right over the top of a thundering torrent full of ravenous crocodiles, and also with the forces of the British Raj thundering up the other side of the mountain to rescue him by shooting down the sword-waving Thuggees and not to mention as well the arrow-shooting Thuggees on the opposite cliff, but only if that guy is being attacked from right above him by a powerful priest of Kali who is attempting to rip his heart out by means of an eldritch magical spell uttered in an ancient Indian dialect. Just for the novelty value.

Well tonight, I realised that I'd already seen that film. And loved it; it had long been one of my favourite films as a kid: it was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Only tonight I couldn't really see the point of all that sword-waving-arrow-firing-spell-chanting-hungry-crocodilian activity. It really did seem like a lot of superfluous detail at once. Get a camera, shoot an action movie, and confront a hero with a sword-waving enemy: there you've got danger, thrills, terror, and adventure, in one handy shot. Then confront that hero with a hundred sword-waving enemies, and you don't have more danger, thrills, terror, and adventure: you compound the ridiculousness without increasing the enjoyment.

And the whole last quarter of Temple of Doom is like that, concluding with a chase scene that is not only incredible, but interminable. What was Spielberg thinking?

It's not all bad though. I still love the lurid, fabulous, and gorgeous scene-setting that leads up to the proto-comic-book chase scene. There is a great set piece right at the start of the film, with a Cole Porter song being sung in a combination of Chinese, French, and English, and Chinese dancers. The central idea - of a kind of descent into, and escape from, hell - is strong. The banquet scene (with live snakes being devoured by gigantic turbaned guards, and grotesque, grilled, gargantuan beetles, and chilled monkey brains) still works (I think it's that scene that really stuck in my memory from my childhood, a kind of Babette's feast for little-boys-who-like-eating.)

Yes, but were my snorts ripped? Were my buckles swashed? Were my spills chilled and thrilled? Oh, all right then, yes. I just wish the film had been shorter. Only half an hour or so.

Issue two!

My house, 10.00 PM - 11.00 PM, Tuesday night:

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

staple staple staple

DONE!

So... who wants a copy?

PS! Here is a picture of Beatrice and the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. The essay is 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' by Mary Wollstonecraft. If you buy a copy of my zine you will not get Beatrice or the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. These pictures are just added as extras.

They'll be big twits, too

Contemplating getting a Twitter account and then only posting two twits, and then getting compliments from everyone on what a nice pair of twits I have.

No, it's still not worth it.

Wonders of Australian geography!

The Not-so-great Artesian Basin

Let's have a little torque

You must be of some distinction,
Have a certain savoir faire,
Be quite fine in your refinement
With a knowledgeable air -
To argue heatedly
On types of anti-freeze,
To have RPM and RPH
Roll off like ABC's,
And most especially,
To talk of torque with ease -
And to know the difference twixt
A VB and V6,
Carbohydrates, carburettor -
And Grand Prix and grand pricks.

In memory of the unremembered

I had an idea for a blog post, but I forgot it. It would have been a really good blog post, too. I don't think I'm exaggerating too much to say that it would have been the single most hilarious blog post you ever read. But it would have been sad, also, and you would have looked at it, and nodded to yourself, and thought how poignant and transient everything in life is. It would have been a thoughtful blog post, whatever it was going to be about, but it would also have been a wonderfully light-hearted, whimsical and quirky take on life. Even though you may not have noticed it at the time*. All in all, I think it's safe to say that you would have been impressed by that blog post, perhaps not while you were reading the blog post, but later. If I remember what the idea was, I'll be sure to let you know.

Instead, you're stuck with this blog post, which is nothing much really. I mean, this is the sort of blog post that, if you wrote it, you wouldn't let other people know about it. It's a up-to-not-much blog post. It's a nothing-impressive-as-such blog post. I mean, it's a bit of a blip, really, as blog posts go. It is pretty dull, though not, unfortunately, so dull as to be one of the dullest blog posts in the world featuring on the dullest blog in the world, which are all really, excessively dull to such a superlative extent that it they are, in their own way, little art forms of dullness, and therefore, ironically, quite entertaining and perfect in their own way. No, this blog post is more your ordinary, mediocre form of dullness, which is just dully dull, in a dulling way. Sorry.

So this is just a post about the post that I didn't write, written to distract your attention from the post that I did write, but didn't write about, which was this post.

*I mean, it may have involved a pun like 'If you make a Swiss roll by pushing it off the hill, do you do the same thing with sausages'? But it would have stated this pun in such an exquisitely delicate way, with such perfect comic timing, that you would have been rolling** in the aisles, which in this case would probably have been your chair, with laughter. You really should regret my not writing that post.

**I'm not sure if you would have been 'rolling in the aisles' like sausages or Swiss people. But that's hardly the point, is it?

Word word word word word word picture

We were putting the finishing touches to another zine last night, the Baron and I. Or rather, the Baron was putting the finishing touches to the zine, while I looked on. The zine was the second issue of Badger's Dozen, and here's how the proceedings, er, proceeded:

- We put a number of Badger pictures in the opening editorial, which was called 'Badgertorial', just to make the point that this was written by a Badger.

- We illustrated a nice poem by nice Michael Reynolds. The poem contains a passing reference to nuns. So we put a picture of a nun in it.

- A short story by Eddy Burger called Light Is Evil was illustrated with a picture of an evil light-globe. I mean, it had fangs and everything (the light globe, not the story). And because there was space left over at the end of the second page, I drew a picture of a leaf, and gave it the title Portrait of the leaf as a slightly younger leaf, and stuck it in.

- A series of mock-DVD reviews by Tim about a television detective were illustrated by a duck. We gave the duck sunglasses and a pipe, which made it a detective duck. Oh, and the article concluded with a picture of Badger watching the television.

This illustrating thing is quite a lark, isn't it? So much so, that next issue of Badger's Dozen I'm toying with the idea of including a picture-that-caption competition - just like a caption-that-picture competition, but in reverse, so I'll include a caption, and you have to think of a witty picture to go with it. Something like:

"Yes!"
"Oh, tea again?"
"Rudolph, sitzen!"
"Ding!"

Train trip haiku

No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No. No. N... wait.

Yes! This one's our stop!

Never underestimate misunderestimation

I was late for the bus, but the bus I was late for was even later.

Never underestimate misunderestimation.

If people were like cats

SCENE:
Marguerite is sitting in the chair reading the paper. The door on the opposite side of the room opens and Geoffrey enters.

GEOFFREY: (Walks to the middle of the room and throws his hands up into the air.) Ooooohhhhhahhhhahhhoooh! Ahhhhhhoooohhhhhahhhhh! (Walks out of the room again)

(Marguerite continues reading her paper.)

SCENE:
Rodney, Rufus, and Sydney are sitting around a swish board room deep in a heated discussion about productivity, efficiency dividends, and so on. The door to the board room opens and Murgatroyd enters, with a large, dead rat in her hands.

MURGATROYD: (Carrying the rat up to Rufus and laying it down on the table in front of him.) Morning, Ruf. (Leaves.)

(Rufus bats at the rat with his hand. It spins across the desk to Rodney. Rodney begins to throw it up with one hand and attempts to catch the rat with his mouth. He and Rufus bat it back and forth between one another. Suddenly Sydney springs on the rat, etc etc)

Coming up: if cats were like dogs! If dogs were like anaerobic bacteria! And if mildew was like mould! The possibilities are endless, really!

Thoughts after attending the book launch of Miscellaneous Voices

1. Finally I got to meet Miscellaneous!

2. Disappointingly, book launches don't seem to involve any rockets. I had a mental picture of a book launch being like a rocket launch.

3. A vegan status is apparently not like a facebook status. Who knew?

4. Live reading of blog posts is a strange idea, but I did toss up the idea with Solid Gold Creativity and her friends of ad-libbing a new blog post on stage.

5. Free wine!

(That last one is not actually a coherent thought, which is rather appropriate, really.)

Link.

On the relephance of elephants

For some reason I keep on writing nonsense verse and nonsense stories that include elephants. I have no idea why. One could hardly imagine a creature that is less nonsensical than the elephant. The elephant is hugely significant. Or, at least, hugely huge, which is much the same thing.

A significant elephant.

Here is an elephant, and you can just see for yourself how significant it is. You wouldn't even think of doing ridiculous things with it, like swinging on that conveniently dangly trunk, or batting at those nicely floppy ears. You'd get pulverised beneath the elephantine feet of this elephantine elephant. That would be a pretty significant event in your life, all right.

People also make fun of penguins. This is outrageous and wrong. Here is a penguin:

An important penguin

Penguins are important. Penguins are so important that they are actually born with dinner jackets on. In the case of this important penguin (a very important penguin indeed, with the name of 'The Jackass Penguin'), he happens to have been born with his dinner jacket on, and his dinner spilled down his dinner jacket. That displays excellent foresight.

And then of course there is the frog:

The frog

On this point, I think Hillaire Belloc puts it best:

Be kind and tender to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As "Slimy skin," or "Polly-wog,"
Or likewise "Ugly James,"
Or "Gap-a-grin," or "Toad-gone-wrong,"
Or "Bill Bandy-knees":
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.
No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
Who keep a frog (and, by the way,
They are extremely rare).

Precisely.

The day the day off took the day off

Well this afternoon I walked into work and found that not only was K sick, but R was unwell, F was poorly, E was fine, but taking the day off anyway, RB had already finished, and RF was in the process of finishing, for the day.

In short, the entire alphabet except for T seemed to be either sick, unwell, taking the day off, or just about to leave for the day. Leaving a grand total of, er, me, to do all the work as it came in, in my typically unproductive fashion.

Thankfully, the work seemed to be taking the day off too, and as a consequence I have spent a good deal of the past six hours doing nothing, in an unproductive and inefficient fashion.

Exciting. Yes.

Abjectification

Dearest reader, I have been remiss, but, even worse, I have been sadly neglectful of my duties to you. I have failed to tell you about an upcoming event, upcoming in a few days, that is. Even worse, I forgot to tell you about an upcoming event that is so upcoming that it has already happened. That's two things I haven't told you about, so I'll do it now, taking the second first, and the first second. (I hope that didn't make sense.)

1) On Tuesday, I went to a poetry slam with the theme '7'. It was hosted by Ben Pobjie, in the absence of regular host the Crazy Elf. I won it, too - though that victory of mine was more based around the fact that -

a) There were only three performers.
b) One of the judges was my brother.

So yeah, it was a fun event anyway. Ben did a great job of compering an event with an audience of only ten people (three of who were poets). The audience of ten people did a great job of staying an audience of ten people. And my bro Lachlan did a great job at complete and unmitigated bias (I knew it would come in handy eventually). And, um, you're all invited... *

2) On Wednesday upcoming, I'll be attending a book launch. What sort of a book launch, you ask? Oh, only the launching of this book, which I totally happen to be in. (Forgot to tell you about that, too. (And I got my copy in the mail a few weeks ago, and forgot to mention that, in addition. (Thanks Karen!))) You can come too!

So yeah. Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!

Not that I'm going to make a big deal out of it, though.

*Though if you can't come for some reason come to a slam that has already happened, come along to next month's one! First Tuesday of next month, at the Alchemist Bar in Fitzroy!

Octapus!

Sticky Institute have a very good monthly newsletter. You can judge for yourself just how good it is from its title - 'Sporadic Correspondence from the Institute' - the regular updates 'From our Santiago correspondent', 'from our Perth correspondent', and the formatting (lots of '>' and '<' symbols, and frequent use of courier font). The other day I received my sporadic correspondence and scrolled down to the reviews, because I'd given them a copy of my zine to review recently. Sure enough, there was a review, but it wasn't exactly the sort that I'd been hoping for.

OLLIE THE OCTAPUS
Tim Train
(timhtrain@yahoo.com.au)
$2

This was kinda stupid. It's a comic about an octopus trying to become a porn
star written in an attempted kinda Dr Seuss style. It's pretty harmless, but there's a lot of jarring repetition and poorly worded blabber that make for a fairly tedious read. And the jokes along the way, nor the overall story make up for it. The author needs to tighten up the writing and get more succinct.

-MATT FORD

Do you remember when you were a kid and you’d read books like Spot and Cat in the Hat and they’d all use that rhyming way of talking which when you were a kid made the books really fun to listen to but now that you’ve gone through puberty you just find annoying and patronising? And they’d use made up words like “doctorpus’ and ‘schloop’ so everything would rhyme? Now that you’ve been taken back to childhood and you realise how irritating that way of writing is, you’ll understand why I do not like this zine. The story of the octopus with a disability who dreams of being in a porno is, frankly, lame. This zine is trying to achieve that whole kids story in an adult form, much like what I imagine Madonna’s first foray into children’s story writing would have been like and, to a futher extent, how I feel about Alice In Wonderland being made into a fashion trend, namely regarding it’s influence on women’s lingerie.

Either way, we all have bad zine moments. I can’t say whether this zine could have been good if it was formatted differently, but all I know is that I don’t really like it. I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them, Sam I Am.

I'm not sure whether the entire review was written by Matt Ford and some strange mistake happened in the editing, or whether there was a second anonymous reviewer. Strangely enough they had almost nothing to say about the element that I thought might attract the most criticism - my crappy, faux-naive illustrations.

One of my old music lecturers, a fairly well-known Aussie composer, used to say that he collected bad reviews, and would fondly quote a review of one of his colleague's piano concertos: 'This is the sort of piece that gives A major a bad name.' I think that's a good idea, and so I'll be duly adding this to my growing list of questionable reviews, quoted on facebook:

"I'm not sure if I'm old enough to read this, or you're old enough to be writing this" - Baron Alexis of Prestonvillia

"It has a split infinitive." - Prestigious Editor

"Also, aren't octopuses molluscs, not crustaceans?" - The Same Prestigious Editor

"Um, thanks. It may not get reviewed." - Person at Sticky on receiving free zine copy

"... TWO dollars?" - work person

Well, I kind-of-sort-of-may-have asked the Baron if I could put that first one in, but the rest are genuine.

I do like a good fnargle

A post about zines. If you have the time, you should read the whole thing, but I have summarised it here:

fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle ‘complete disregard for what a zine actually is’, fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle What I call a zine – the photocopied, cut ‘n’ pasted thing with typed and handwritten stories that are generally about everyday life – is fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle. As Anna Poletti rightly points out in her thesis-cum-book Intimate Ephemera fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle idea of ‘the creative’ is a symptom of a wider cultural malaise fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle fnargle.

Over 3000 words, and so many of those 3000 words being devoted to what a zine is! Why do people spend so much time fretting over the definition for a zine, citing thesis and doctoral research and deep cultural roots, wondering whether a publication is really underground, talking about what it means politicially, and so on? (Sometimes bloggers do this, too.)

I just want to make my zines and write my blog. All those other questions seem secondary.

Art criticism

A visit to the Bright regional art gallery the other day yielded the following observations:

1. Paintings of a number of disembodied heads of horses and dogs, making everyone wonder what happened to the disem-headed horses' and dogs' bodies;

2. Sightings of a number of paintings involving flower fairies, magical forest creatures living in mushrooms, and the like;

3. An observation that virtually all of the paintings at the exhibition could be improved by the simple addition of an extra element, say, an elephant;

4. A decision that the single painting of an elephant could be improved by the addition of a gigantic floating carrot;

5. A meditation on what the dear little puppies who featured in several paintings got up to in their spare time (sniffing other dear little puppy's bums, perhaps, or devouring gigantic slabs of flesh from slaughtered animals) and wondering why the dear little puppies were never pictured doing any of these things;

6. A decision that virtually all of the paintings present could also be improved by the addition of a gigantic flying robot dinosaur.

Well, no, I was the only one who decided that last one. Still, as a great man once said, 'I don't know about art, but I do know about gigantic flying robot dinosaurs, and they're bloody terrifying!'

Water way to run a station

ABC Coffs, Wednesday Breakfast program: Fiona Poole speaks to Ray Seaward about the difference between a storm and a flood. Seriously!

Sorry to be such a drip, but they just sound like a big bunch of wets.

We wish you a merry pilchard

I like that story in Luke where Jesus wanders back to the disciples after he's been resurrected, and while they're looking on quite gobsmacked, he asks them if they've got something to eat, whereupon they bring out a fish. It makes sense. The man's just died and been resurrected. Of course he's going to want some food in his stomach.

So technically speaking, this would make Easter the season of fish, not chocolate: a time to send family members and friends little packages of pilchards. A time for kids to go on herring hunts, and work colleagues to gather around bowls packed to the brim with snappers. A time for families all over the world to savour the simple flavours of jellied eels and kippers.

I can't for the life of me figure out why things didn't turn out this way.

Anyway, this fish festival the Baron and Harriet and Bea and I will be driving up to Bright for a couple of days. So I probably won't be updating for a while. (Or then again, maybe I will anyway.) I hope you all have a good Easter, folks. In the meantime, I leave you all with this inspiring and appropriate Biblical quotation:

On Salt
Salt is good; but if the salt becomes unsalty, with what will you make it salty again?
Mark 9:50.

Timeless wisdom. Just timeless. And still so deeply, deeply relevant to our present day predicament. See y'all later!

The methods in the method in my madness

"You don't actually have a system for buying Easter eggs, do you," observed the Baron, as I spread out this year's array of chocolates on the day-bed*. I had begun to tentatively arrange them into groups to be apportioned out to members of the family, in order of merit and esteem. One loves all members of one's family equally, obviously, but when it comes to giving out chocolate, one has to be very particular: chocolate is just too important.

I cracked open a packet of eggs that looked like they might not be an important part of any particular group - or perhaps weren't a particular part of any important group - and took one out for myself and gave another to the Baron, and we continued to contemplate the task at hand.

She was wrong, of course. I actually do have a system for buying Easter eggs. Even better: I have several systems for buying Easter eggs. Each of these systems comes into operation at different parts of the year and/or day, depending on the proximity to Easter. The systems operate together in complex but predictable ways, just like Chaos theory, and in the end, chocolate is apportioned out fairly to all members of the family. Probably. Here is an approximate diagrammatical representation of the process. So you can clearly see that the Baron's observation, while shrewd, was unjust.

In February, for instance, I often think forward to Easter. My February system is called Thinking That It Might Be A Good Idea To Buy Chocolate For Everyone In Advance But Then Forgetting All About It. It's a good system, insofar as systems go, and it certainly takes very little trouble in its implementation and ordering. In March, a different system comes into operation. It's known as Hmmm, It's Easter Next Month, I'd Really Better Start Buying Something For Everyone. This system is a little different to the first, as it actually involves me going into the supermarket, looking at the options available, perhaps buying a little chocolate, but then deciding that that chocolate is not appropriate** for anyone in particular, and then eating it. By the time late March rolls around, a new system comes into operation, a particularly difficult one to implement and practice. It's called Denial, and involves doing several other complicated things in order to put out of one's mind the complicated task of buying chocolate for other members of the family.

Several other systems come into operation between Denial and the day on which I actually hop into the supermarket and start buying chocolate for others, too numerous to mention, so let's just skip right over them. Once I am actually in the supermarket, I begin a system of buying known as Buying Chocolate Fairly For Everyone, which lasts for an aisle or two. Then I segue smoothly to a purchasing system known as Buying Chocolate Fairly For Everyone Else Who I Forgot To Include In That Other Bit Of Buying Chocolate That I Just Did. This is closely followed by the system known Oh Crap Now Everyone's Getting Something Different And That's Just Not Fair, which is immediately followed by I'll Just Get a Bloody Big Bunch Of This Stuff Over Here And Fuss Over The Details Later, perhaps interrupted by an intermediate system which I like to call Ooh, That Chocolate-Thing Looks Pretty, or possibly CHOCOLATE! I MUST HAVE SOME! GIVE IT ME NOW! NONONO I WANTS IT FOR ME!. At this point, it all gets rather complicated (more complicated), with several sub-routines and supplementary systems and minor functions coming into play, including:

a) More Chocolate

b) If No-one Else Wants This I Suppose I Can Finish It Off For Them

c) What The Hell Is That? I Just Want Normal Old Easter Eggs.

d) More More Chocolate

e) Getting A Little Bit More Stuff Just In Case

f) More More Chocolate More

So you can see, it all works out in the end, more or less. Or at least, I end up with more chocolate rather than less chocolate, which is much the same thing.

So... what are your systems of buying chocolate?

*You may note that normally one spreads sheets on day-beds, but during Easter one spreads chocolate out on them instead. This is for religious reasons. I have no idea what those reasons are. Religion is mysterious that way.

** Although it's possible that the phrase 'chocolate is not appropriate' verges on the oxymoronical.

Hold your nose

IT was something of a shock to read Piers Akerman in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph this week outlining how Kevin Rudd helped devise a “rancid turd” strategy in the 1995 Queensland state election to demonise the Coalition on health.

It was even more of a shock when he revealed that Wayne Sanderson, an ABC journalist at the time, claimed this was told to him by a “senior campaign official” within the ALP.

I can reveal without a shadow of doubt the identity of that official. It is someone I have known and trusted for years. As George Bush senior once said: “I am that man.”

At the time, I was press secretary to then Queensland health minister Jim Elder, so while I had a pretty busy election in that role, I was well down the pecking order of campaign officials. Still, Sanderson wouldn’t be the first journalist to paint his sources as being more important than they actually are.
It wasn't Kevin, it was me - Andrew Fraser, The Australian

There are a number of questions that could be asked about this remarkable article. For instance, what was George Bush senior doing acting as a senior campaign official for the ALP in 1995 in the first place? He may have been a little disappointed after losing the 1992 election to Bill Clinton, but that was no reason for him to take up a job as a minor public official in a relatively unimportant nation halfway across the world with little to do with the international situation at large. And why does Fraser claim that George Bush is less important than Sanderson makes him out to be? I mean, he was - and, for I'd imagine, still is - the ex-President of the USA. That's pretty bloody important! And, above all, why did Piers Akerman want to claim the 'rancid turd' strategy was devised by Kevin Rudd when he overlooked such an obvious scoop (ie, Republican ex-President of the US being an official in the ALP)?

It really makes you wonder at the state of political reporting in our state and national newspapers, doesn't it.

(via Catallaxy)

Patrick White, demon hunter

At last famous Australian Patrick White may be recognised for his services in demon hunting, battling war-hardened monsters in an apocalyptic landscape, and literature, after making it onto the Booker-prize shortlist.

Patrick White, demon hunter

However, the writer who helped vanquish the fiendish Satanic hordes before they overran our world and turned it into another hell dimension of unending torment and horror will face stiff competition, with previous Booker winners including zombie slayers, captains of interdimensional war zeppelins, and experts in the necromantic arts.

John Banville, lion tamer

John Banville, who won the Booker in 2005 for his expertise in lion-taming, confirms that winning the prize will not be easy for White. "I was known all over the world for my lion-taming abilities, rescuing at least one orphanage of blind children from a pack of rabid tigers, panthers, leopards, or assorted large cats using only my bare hands, every day. But still, I was uncertain if this would be enough for me to wrest the prize off my opponents."

So who are the other competitors for the Booker prize? Here we give a short run down of the finalists.

NINA BAWDEN

Nina Bawden, CBE, led the entire planet in the 1960s in an armed uprising against the Gigantic Spider Incursion. She successfully prevented the entire European continent from being turned into a gigantic spider-harvesting facility, with the spawn being implanted in the living bodies of humans by willing slaves, and finally cornered all of the massed spider hordes in a remote township in Essex before burning them all to the ground. She now gives talks around the world about 'How I Conquered the Giant Spiders, and You Can Too!'

MARY RENAULT

Brilliant international code-breaker Mary Renault successfully averted a worldwide catastrophe by cracking a fiendishly complex series of codes found on a succession of tablets unearthed from a recent Sumerian dig while being pursued through the catacombs of Paris by a corrupt albino police chief, who also happened to be a sexist. On ten separate occasions. Then she retired.

SHIRLEY HAZZARD

Shirley Hazzard, famous rally car driver, led a secret double life as a glamorous-but-slightly-untrustworthy devil-may-care known only as 'The Bandit'. However, Hazzard proved to be a bandit with a heart of gold, successfully thwarting the plans of hundreds of notorious criminals and their low-life companions for smuggling gold, diamonds, cocaine, heroin, gold cocaine, diamond heroin, or ancient mystical Aztec talismans with magical but mysterious properties in, out, under, over, or around the US. Even though she lived in the UK at the time.

JG FARRELL

Bounty hunter J G Farrell confronted an army of super-destructive androids from the other side of the galaxy on a war-torn, blood-strewn, fog-covered clifftop on several occasions. Altough offers by the androids were tempting to Farrell at times, he concluded each offer by blowing them to absolute fucking smithereens, because hey. He lives his own life, but ain't no way he's giving it over to no bloody android. Now, he teaches tai chi to schoolchildren.

MURIEL SPARK

Muriel Spark's advanced skills in ju jitsu were put to good use early one morning in the mid-1960s when she rescued the good people of an small Cornish fishing village from being swallowed by a titanic gelatinous blob. She later turned the blob into a tasty trifle, and was good enough to provide the recipe to the Ladies Home Journal later that month.

Accidental haiku

A person can safely go through their whole lives without accidentally uttering a limerick. Ninety nine per cent of the time, they can avoid the possibility of saying something that just happens to be a rhyming couplet. Spontaneous outbursts of completely new epic verse and odes are well-nigh impossible. But what about accidental haiku? We're probably doing them all the time.

Oh bugger. I think
I forgot to pack my snack
Today. I'm hungry.

It would take an exceptional effort of will and determination to avoid uttering accidental haiku.

Would you like herbal?
I'll just pop the kettle on.
It'll be ready soon.

Most of the time we don't count the syllables in our sentences as we're saying them. Accidental haiku could be happening all over the place, and we don't even know about it. That wouldn't stop the critics, though. 'Derivative', they would say to you, with little encouragement. 'That haiku was a worn-out example of a tired poetic genre', they could say. 'Unoriginal, and not particularly expressive of the struggles of the working classes.'

That jumper looks nice
On you. You should wear that one
To work today, love.

The more you know about poetry, the worse it gets. You could cut accidental haiku out of your life, but what's to stop you suddenly bursting out with a six word fiction, an accidental aphorism, or a mini-saga?

Nope. Bugger. Damn. Nope, still doesn’t work. I’ll turn it this way… little bit more… little bit more. OUCH! No, no, I’m all right. Hmmm. Let me just look at it from this… nope, no use. I can’t screw it from here. Hmmm.

Why don’t we just call the plumber?

Even the most doctorly doctor of literature may not be able to help it if, from time to time, they utter a rare verse form originating in Scandinavia involving 79 words, 33 syllables, and three rhyming verbs.

One of these days, it's even possible that a politician may accidentally utter something that is meaningful. It's becoming less and less likely that they'll do it on purpose, after all.

Four gigantic poems

Or big, biggier, biggiest

First gigantic poem
This poem is long.
This poem is wrong.

Second gigantic poem
This poem is longer.
This poem is wronger.

Third gigantic poem
This poem isn't the longest
Because if 'wronger' isn't a word, then neither is 'wrongest'.

Fourth gigantic poem
The pimple
On the nipple
On the tit
Of the nit
On the rear
Of the ear
Of the flea
On the fly
On the pants
Of the ants
On the mouse
In the house
Was relatively unaffected by the billion megaton atomic blast, though everything was blown to absolute smithereens.

I have a very nice ticket

I have a very nice ticket. It is a yearly Metcard ticket, with which I have been able to travel all over the city, on tram and train and bus, for as much as my little heart desires. My yearly Metcard ticket is useful, nice and bright and sparkly, or at least it used to be. I have had my yearly Metcard ticket for one year.

So, this morning I walked from Preston heights to Preston Station, without my useful, nice and bright and sparkly yearly Metcard ticket. (They haven't found a way yet to invent walking tickets. I'm sure they're working on it.) I walked up to the counter and asked to buy a new useful, nice and bright and sparkly yearly Metcard ticket. Simple, right?

Couldn't buy a yearly because apparently train stations aren't selling them any more. Friendly MetMan dude behind the counter told me to buy a myki* because I can't get booked on trams and buses if that's all I had. Couldn't buy a myki because the machine they had in the corner wasn't selling them yet. Tried to get a daily off the ticket machine. Couldn't buy a daily off the ticket machine because it ate $20 and gave me nothing back - no change, no ticket. Eventually wangled one - a ticket, I mean, not any money - off the patient and friendly MetMan dude at the counter. Couldn't get my money back because the people who do the machines are an entirely different company.

I wonder if there is a moral, a message, a fundamental truth to be drawn from all this wangling with tickets and public awareness campaigns and pricing and companies and contracts that the benevolent commissars in State Government are overseeing with the introduction of this new myki ticketing system? It's all very confusing to me, but I believe there is a message that we can deduce from it: and that message is 'elephant'.

In the meantime, I still have my nice but a little-bit-dirty-and-growing-less-useful-every-day yearly Metcard still with me. I think I might frame it and hang it up on the wall.

*Myki, as non-Melbournians may have heard, is the new nice and bright and sparkly ticketing system that they're bringing in to replace Metcard. The principle difference, so far, seems to be that this new nice and bright and sparkly ticketing system doesn't work.

I have just made a zine about an octopus

I have just made a new zine about an octopus. I took a few copies of my zine about an octopus in to the the pub the other day to give to some friends. What I hadn't been counting on was the fact that two out of three of the friends were editors. The following conversation ensued:

E: (Opening up the zine, reading the first two pages) Hmmm, octopi.

TIM: Oh, did I get the plural wrong? ... I'd just like to point out in advance that there's a stray apostrophe in the back half.

E: (Turning over the pages) There's also a split infinitive.

TIM: (Squints at the pages and tries to look as if he knows exactly what that means.) Er, yeah.

E: Also, aren't octopuses molluscs, not crustaceans?

TIM: You're probably right. But 'mollusc' doesn't rhyme with 'sensational'. 'Crustacean-al' does, though!

I suppose it's better than being completely and utterly worshipped by your readers. That's just annoying when that happens.

Marcus Clarke updated

Underemployed at last!

Reverse couplet

Poems proper writing of instead
I'll stand a couplet on its head.

UPDATE! - Another reverse couplet, about...

Now you give I, that than worse
A couple coupling in reverse.

Lame superheros #2

Superevil Man
Granted super powers of evil at birth far beyond the powers of evil granted to any normal man. Now, Superevil Man has vowed to use his powers of evil - for good!

IN A PREVIOUS EPISODE: Superevil Man destroys a small third world country while saving the life of the UN ambassador's child!

(Meanwhile, in a previously previous episode...)

On misquoting

There is an art, or, rather, a knack to misquoting. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the book and miss.
Douglas Adams

A short story, containing nothing much about something in particular, ending somewhere in particular, and going nowhere much

One fine morning that happened to be this fine morning, the Baron and myself found ourselves in the Preston shopping centre. We weren't in the shopping centre for any particular reason, we just found ourselves pulled to it, like a minor planetary body pulled towards a gigantic quasar black hole at the centre of the galaxy. Anyway, since we were in the shopping centre, we decided to do a little shopping, just for the fun of it.

We didn't of course do shopping for anything ordinary, like detergent, pasta, bread, or vegetables. The strategy that we followed was, instead, to move towards the strangest, most exotic and curious looking fruit in the entire shopping centre, and buy that instead. We found in one box a little spiky thing, a bit smaller than a tennis ball and coloured brownish red. The sign said that it was a 'Rambutan', but I would never have been able to place that name to that little red-brown spiky thing, or vice versa, if asked. We duly put one - just one, mind - of these things into our shopping cart and trundled off to the checkout counter.

The chap at the checkout was even more perplexed than I was by the spiky-tennis-ball-thing in the bottom of our cart. And his checkout chap machine was even more so. If I couldn't place a shape to the name 'Rambutan', he could barely place a name to the shape, either, or for that matter a name to the name (he called it 'Rembuntan'.) He called for assistance. His computer called for assistance. The people that he called to for assistance called other people for assistance. I toddled over to the fruit aisle where we'd got it from, found the price, and came back to find that someone had already got the price. The sole Rambutan was duly loaded into our bag, and we emerged blinking into the daylight, triumphant in the knowledge that we had won our Rambutan. Whatever, in fact, it was.

Now all that remains is to eat it. I'm a little worried about this bit actually. Maybe we should have a Rambutan party, and cut up the little-red-spiky-tennis-ball thing into little bits, and share them out to everyone at the party. Or maybe we could turn it into a stew. A little red, spiky, tennis-ball flavoured stew. I'm open to suggestions.

This has been one in a series of blog posts about fruit!

Onomatopoeic words which don't exist, but should

Splinch

ferg-alerg-alerg-alerg-alerg-alerg-blatch

gimp-glimp

blowtch

gloopoupipflertch

whuf

plenk

tomp-tomp

floop

glosh

plung

gamp-gamp-bimp-bimp

plicka-placka

taddertidderblum.

Tim's graveyard of one-liners

Recorded here for posterity:

"If they were any more pensive, they'd be a pencil."

"Preposterous blosterous."

"That's not an alarm clock. That's an alarming clock."

"Those dishes need to be done."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
"Whatever."
"Defeated by my awesome powers of Socratic argument!"

Living on the Pledge

You know, people are always saying to me, 'Tim, how do you keep your furs so soft and white and fluffy?' Well no they aren't. But they do ask Bea the same question. Now, I can reveal her secret.

She uses Pledge. Just a scoopful of Pledge washing powder, once a week, and it's amazing what it will do to your fur. Out now in all good stores!

Racist biscuits!

Today, I made some Evil Jingoistic Celebration of Our Participation in the Global Military-Industrial Complex Hegemony Biscuits. You know, Evil Jingoistic Celebration of Our Participation in the Global Military-Industrial Complex Hegemony Biscuits, just like your mother or grandmother made? Of course, you can also call them Anzac biscuits - either way is fine with me. Anyway, they're pretty bloody fantastic.

I should just note, at this juncture, that if others suggest that I made biscuits today to get out of other, more disagreeable tasks, like vacuuming, or taking the washing off the line, or doing the dishes, they would be making vile slander and slanderous calumniations, and they would also be right. Evil Jingoistic Celebration of Our Participation in the Global Military-Industrial Complex Hegemony Biscuits are good that way.

Typically, you make Evil Jingoistic Celebration of Our Participation in the Global Military-Industrial Complex Hegemony Biscuits if you want to participate in brash and vulgar expressions of Australian nationalism by affirming the use of international violence against other nations. As an added bonus, they're pretty tasty, too. Other ways of doing this would be by getting an Australian flag tattoo, hanging Australian flags in your window, purchasing iconic Pro Hart paintings of iconic kangaroos doing iconic things like boxing, and singing all the words to the Australian National Anthem, especially the verses that no-one else sings. But Evil Jingoistic Celebration of Our Participation in the Global Military-Industrial Complex Hegemony Biscuits are by far the tastiest of all these methods*.

You can find the recipe for these biscuits all over the internet, at horribly racist websites like Aussie Info, Taste.com.au, Bestrecipes.com.au, or ABC. It doesn't look like some of those websites are horribly racist, ostensibly, until you remember that they're telling you how to cook Evil Jingoistic Celebration of Our Participation in the Global Military-Industrial Complex Hegemony Biscuits. So that's a relief. Basically, it involves quantities of rolled oats, sugar, coconut, and flour mixed in together, and added to some golden syrup, melted butter, boiled water, and bicarbonate of soda. That's pretty racist, all right.

I suppose one of these days I should give up on cooking Evil Jingoistic Celebration of Our Participation in the Global Military-Industrial Complex Hegemony Biscuits, racism being wrong and all that. But I don't know. I mean, it's not as if Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has apologised to the world for the creation of the Evil Jingoistic Celebration of Our Participation in the Global Military-Industrial Complex Hegemony Biscuit recipe, is it? No. No it is not.

Mmm, tasty tasty racism.

*Hypothetically speaking, I suppose if Pro Hart ever cooked a bunch of biscuits in the shape of iconic boxing kangaroos, and those biscuits turned out to be tasty, that would be pretty patriotic too, but they still wouldn't be as tasty as Evil Jingoistic Celebration of Our Participation in the Global Military-Industrial Complex Hegemony AKA Anzac Biscuits.

Excitement city!

Jehova's Witnesses just came round and gave me a copy of the Watchtower. In exchange I gave them one of my zines. As they left, I actually realised what was in the zine, and started wishing I'd given them something else instead. Oh well. Happy reading, JWs!

BONUS OFFENCE SPECIAL FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO TAKE OFFENCE: There's an article in the latest Watchtower about an African Rasta guy who converted to Jehova's Witnesses and stopped discriminating against white people. Knock yourself out, guys.

The alarm cat

The alarm cat is just as good as waking you up as the alarm clock, except it does it by brutally attacking your toes instead of savagely attacking your ears. Indeed, as the normal person has eight more toes than they have ears, the alarm cat is arguably even better than the alarm clock, as it has more obvious opportunities for attack.*

NOTE: you cannot set an alarm time for the alarm cat, so it will probably wake you much earlier or later than you wanted to be awoken. Don't worry, it will almost definitely be earlier.

(Good morning, everyone...)

*Some professionals in the field of waking up suggest it might be time to develop other methods of waking people up, not involving people being brutally attacked by alarms, cats, ninjas, samurais, etc, but so far all the 'gentle, loving, and comfortable' waking up methods seem to have the opposite effect to which they were intended.

The morning WTFF market report

... meanwhile, in other market news, several evil corporations are today in negotiations with the owners of the prestigious Parkinson's Syndrome for rights to the disease. This follows a month of changing fortunes for the world-wide disease market, in which the philanthropical arm of McDonald's specifically devoted to evil also seemed to be finalising a deal between it and the well-known Tourette's label. A spokesman for McDonald's insists that 'our main focus will continue to be providing healthy food to families all over the world'. Also, the troubled Alzheimers family, who have maintained ownership of the Syndrome although its shares have dropped in the marketplace in the past decade, now say they are considering entering into negotiations with government to have the syndrome nationalised. A statement from the Alzheimer's corporation reads: 'We believe that our syndrome could be of great benefit to the Australian Government in an election or two, and we are certain, given their handling of the national health system, that they will be more than capable managers of our syndrome.' Turning to mining now...

Copperfart

Today I am thinking about Copperfart! You remember them:



Ah, nostalgia for inane advertisements first heard in your childhood - and which you have since tried and failed to erase from your memory thus releasing you from their hideous talonlike grasp - is a complex emotion isn't it?

The gobsmacking anonymity of the situation

She was there on the cover of a magazine that sat on the filing cabinet that was next to the desk of a fellow worker yesterday. I recognised her face - it was one of those faces that, once you see it, you realise you have seen it a thousand times in other places accompanied by her name - but I still didn't remember her name. The magazine was one of those magazines that I don't read, but which typically carry on their cover the faces of actors or actresses that you instantly recognise, and carry within their covers the faces of other actors and actresses that you don't recognise, either. Sometimes, they also carry the names of actors and actresses that you remember, but you can't, for the life of you, attach to any particular face. They are then circulated to people all over the world, who read it and enjoy not remembering the names that are not mentioned, and not recognising the faces that are not photographed.

I guess that's what it means to be famous: people you don't recognise, and names you don't remember, appearing in magazines you don't read, full of stories you don't care about: anonymity, ubiquity, enormity.

O anonymous amorphous multinational allegedly sentient entity, I think I am indifferent about you.

UPDATE! - Oh look, the anonymous amorphous multinational allegedly sentient entities had a big awards ceremony, which I didn't watch.

A happy poem with the word 'ebola' in it

The other day I wrote a happy poem with the word 'ebola' in it. Because I could.

A happy poem with the word 'ebola' in it

Throw out coal power - we've got solar!
(Acid Satan knives ebola).
My favourite food crop is canola!
(Urine pimples hell ebola).
I am Spanish, Senor - Hola!
(Mussolini war ebola).
My favourite writer's Emile Zola.
(Mein Kampf genocide ebola)
I like to drive in my Corolla
Round the mountains of Angola
(Horror Nazis crime ebola)
Round the mountains of Angola
Wearing top hats and/or bowlers -
(Diarrhoea spew ebola)
Shackleton, explorer polar -
(Communists dog turds ebola)
Laughing babies in their strollers
(Puppies kittens lambs ebola
Flowers nature sun ebola).

What a nice day for a picnic, let's just climb that ominous looking monster thing over there!

You might be familiar with the 1970s Australian film Picnic at Hanging Rock. I don't need to fill you in on the details, because it doesn't have any, apart from the usual superfluous points about plot, character, music, cinematography, direction, etc, but basically, it's a simple, touching film about a gigantic mountain of rock that eats schoolgirls. Critics are divided on this point, as to why the mountain of rock eats schoolgirls, with some attributing it to malice, while others maintaining it has an allegorical point, but let's just say it gets pretty bloody there towards the end of the film.

Well, yesterday, my brother, the Baron and I found ourselves travelling down towards Hanging Rock area to participate in the Hanging Rock Harvest Picnic. We found that, far from distancing themselves from this rather bloody and gory legacy, the people at Woodend and Hanging Rock were eager to celebrate it. There was even a tree decorated with key scenes from the film, for some reason, under which children were dancing. This itself was passing strange, but more disturbing still, the children were dancing around to songs about the virtues of certain vegetables, while gigantic plastic animals on stage gesticulated at them. I wondered for a while if we'd stumbled on some pagan Children of the Corn, a la Stephen King's admirable bagatelle, but they seemed to refrain from sacrificing us in some primitive and gory ritual to propitiate the gods of the season, whether from whim or due to some elaborate mythological reason, I couldn't quite work out.

A little bit later we toddled off to have a closer look at the killer rock, and I was even more shocked to find that there was a little stone pathway leading all the way up to the top, and stairs, and a hand rail to assist the out-of-breath and infirm. It was as if the people of Woodend actually wanted to make it easier for the rock to eat people! We thought we were all pretty safe, as none of us were schoolgirls (or I know I wasn't, last time I checked, anyway), but it was the principle of the thing.

All very strange. What next, we wondered - the Wolf Creek Solo Walkabout Festival? The Jindabyne Fishing Fiesta? It makes you wonder, doesn't it.

The compromise solution

A ten-year strategy costing millions of pounds to cut the “shameful” number of teenage pregnancies in Britain has failed to make any serious impact... Among plans to be announced today will be more access to long-acting contraception, such as implants and injections, and phone texts to remind girls to use contraceptives...But critics say far more needs to be done to deter young people from having sex, rather than providing them with ever more free condoms and access to the contraceptive pill.
- Ministers admit failure over cutting ‘shameful’ teenage pregnancies, The Times

They're both wrong. I suggest a third solution: educating children to abstain from sex at all times, while continuing to wear condoms. It's called compromise, people!

Popular folk singings of glorious Russian revolution

Popular folk singings of glorious Russian revolution #224:

Nine hundred and ninety nine million nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine enemies of Glorious Russian Revolution on Wall

Nine hundred and ninety nine million nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine enemies of Glorious Russian Revolution on Wall,
Nine hundred and ninety nine million nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine enemies of Glorious Russian Revolution on Wall,
If one of those nine hundred and ninety nine million nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine enemies of Glorious Russian Revolution on Wall should accidentally fall,
And we drop atom bomb on rest of them,
There'll be two enemies of Glorious Russian Revolution on Wall -
(Which really makes you question value of UN peace resolution processes.)

Join in folk singings at next Tuesday Fitzroy event!

Disappoint form

- People who speak a combination of Spanish and Scottish speak Spottish.

- Schizophrenic accountants: they hear invoices in their heads.

- Doing posts in Disappoint Form, it's just like doing them in Point Form, only more depressing.

My life, a series of multiple choice questions with one choice each

1. Should Tim have porridge for breakfast?
a) Yes.

2. Should Tim waste an hour doing nothing important on the internet?
a) Yes.

3. Should Tim do the dishes?
a) None of the above.

4. Should Tim wear his grey jumper, or his other grey jumper?
a) b)

5. Should Tim shave?
a) Yes.

6. Will Tim shave?
a) No.

7. Should Tim have a chocolate bar?
a) Yes.

8. What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?
a) All of the above.

My life as a corporate whore

corporation

// (say kawpuh'rayshuhn)
noun 1. a body, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence irrespective of that of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members.
2. a business enterprise, or group of enterprises.
3. (upper case) British the principal officials of a borough, etc.
4. any group of persons united, or regarded as united, in one body.
5. Colloquial the abdomen, especially when large and prominent. [corporate + -ion]

Macquarie Dictionary

I got involved in a discussion the other day with a bunch of people basically saying that corporations were evil. That's not that surprising, of course - people say that corporations are evil all the time. It's pretty much the done thing to say that corporations are evil, and occasionally it's inevitable that I'll bump into those people in the midst of their saying that corporations are evil.

It's just that I can't take it seriously. At all.

It might be the fact that they're wearing shoes made by a corporation, or jumpers made by a corporation, or hats made by a corporation, or t-shirts with anti-corporate logos on them that are made by a corporation that specialises in anti-corporate logos. They might be carrying food that they've bought from a certain corporation, or drinking drinks that they've purchased from another corporation, or travelling from the location of one corporate outlet to the location of another corporate outlet by the means of a car (built by a corporation), bus (ditto), train (ditto, and run by yet another corporation, ditto), or any number of other dittos that take you from various dittos to various other dittos.

It might also be the fact that they probably have no idea what they're talking about. The term 'corporation' is so generic and loose that it could apply not only to the multinational business from which they got the dittos they were wearing, the dittos they were eating, the dittos they were travelling from and travelling to, the dittos they were travelling in, and the dittos they were dittoing in. It may, indeed, be true that the small business they got their shirts or drinks or food or tickets from was itself part of a larger business, and was therefore merely a corporation selling items from other corporations in order to further its own corporate interests. After all, one of the meanings of corporation could be 'group of people', which could include just about anyone and anything. Maybe, though, all these people had a specific economic and ideological definition in mind when they were talking about 'corporations', and I am ignorant as to their actual level of ignorance. (But I suspect they are just as ignorant as to their own level of ignorance, as well. Most people are. In the broadest terms, I am not only utterly ignorant, but ignorant as to my own level of ignorance, also. You can't get much ignoranter than that. In a world crowding over with infinite things, our own finite minds generally do dwindle to a something that is smaller than insignificance.)

It might have been any of these facts, or the fact that the very conversation that they have about horrible corporations invariably occurs in a context that is facilitated by horrible corporations, and that people who dislike corporations do so most regularly and vocally in mass market magazines forwarded by corporations, in globalised movies and DVDs spread around the world by corporations, on international websites owned by corporations, that are hosted by mass-produced computers bought from other corporations. (This particular conversation that I am thinking about occured courtesy of the facebook corporation).

And in the end, I'm not sure how people with such a Manichean worldview - ordinary folks versus the corporation - go about living their lives. It must be really quite scary, keeping one's mind perpetually on the all-pervasive influence of corporations, which are so all pervading and influential as to include anybody and everybody and everybody else also, as well as small business, large business, all manner of medium-size businesses in between, councils, governments, non-government organisations, and whatever else is left over, and a whole bunch of other stuff as well. If you concede that corporations are horrible and evil, what other conclusion could you logically draw to than an all-encompassing, general, and specific paranoia at the world around you? As you buy your corporate clothes and corporate drinks and corporate DVDs denouncing the influence of corporate corporations, and have your existence brutally perpetuated by corporate oxygen that was breathed out by other corporate bodies, you must be continually worrying about how terrifying it is to have corporations savagely provide you goods and services in exchange for small to medium amounts of money, and for them to in turn use that small to medium amount of money that you give over to them to pay their own staff and make a profit. I mean, now that I come to think about that, it really must be awful. That is, if you look at corporations that way.

Me, I can't really bring myself to be bothered about them. In a world with so many problems, I can't see what the problem is with corporations, especially.

I wonder if this is a problem?

UPDATE! - Let me make a small qualification to the above post. Corporations aren't evil, of course. But Evil Corporations are most definitely evil. It goes without saying, really (which is why I've said it.)

Plot devices that are a little too useful

If you're a child, or a smuggler, and you live in, or have something to do with a large mansion in the English countryside, then you wouldn't think it entirely out of the way to discover, say, a conveniently placed secret passageway behind the fireplace thus allowing you to carry out your heroic or nefarious plans.

But even then, you might think that this sort of thing is getting a bit ridiculous:

They heard him fumbling on the wall, and tapped again, to show him where they were. Suddenly, there came a click, and bright cold light and icy air rushed into their hiding place.
'I always wondered why that great knob was there on the wall,' James said. 'Well laws, miss! To think of your really finding the secret passage!'

Joan Aiken, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

Unfestive

Every now and then, a small amount of people will go and sit on stage and a variable amount of people will go and sit on chairs and watch the first small amount of people sitting on chairs, talking to one another. This will happen for a period ranging from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, and it will usually be located in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, or somewhere else. The event will often begin with the name of the city in which it is occuring, and conclude with the word 'festival'.

There was a time when I used to love going to events where a small amount of people sat on chairs on stage, and I joined a larger amount of people watching the smaller amount of people sitting on chairs. That time was a Wednesday, I think, and it was at the TINA festival in 2003 or 2004. Then I discovered that the small amount of people sitting on chairs on stage very often had little to say for themselves, and the questions that they were answering were almost as bad. Usually, the answers could have been from one to five words long, but the people on stage often preferred not to answer the questions, but instead go on one hundred to five hundred word rants about something else. Sit a person down and ask them "how do you make money from art?" "Can art change the world?" "Should art make use of modern scientific discoveries?" and they would probably say things like "Get paid for it", "Yes", and "I don't care." Sit that person down in amongst a small group of other people, on a stage, with a larger group of people in front of them, and all of a sudden, they'd say something else entirely. Something probably longer, and definitely more boring.

The word 'festival' implies 'festivity', but there isn't much that is festive about a festival these days*. More like compulsive: it's rare to go to a festival event because you actually want to. More likely, you are going to the festival event because your partner wants to; or a friend wants to; or a friend is interested in a person participating in the event but not the event itself; or a friend is interested in another person who is interested in a person who is participating in the event, and wants the company; or a friend of a friend's friend who you are interested in has got free tickets to an event that doesn't sound particularly interesting; or you want to take your mother or your brother or your sister to an event in order to fill out the time while they are visiting you. Festivals operate more by social obligation than honest desire; more by compulsion more than actual interest.

Occasionally, a festival might even feature a celebrity speaker, and that celebrity speaker might draw large crowds, but the event itself will be wholly underwhelming. It will simply prove that celebrities are neither better or worse than other people at sitting down on chairs amongst small groups of people while larger groups of people look at them.

All in all, the experience of modern festivals makes you long for something more simple and primal. Maybe going and jumping up and down full of a stadium of shouty people while scantily clad shiny men kick symbolic objects through metaphorical phallic poles, for instance. Then again, maybe I'll just invent a festival of my own, where random parts of Melbourne will be required by law to go and sit in specific but unrelated locations in front of a small but disparate collection of people for small amounts of time (all to be determined by a game of 'Eeny, Meeny, Minie, Mo' and the telephone book.) It will be called 'The Melbourne Completely and Utterly Pointless and Nonsensical Statistically Insignificant Festival of Ordinariness.'

Come one, come all! I hear they're signing up one of the Daddos!

*By way of comparison, some fringe festival events are pretty festy.

Annoying bottom-faced rat-like mammal on the brink of extinction

BREAKINGNEWSBREAKINGNEWSBREAKINGNEWS
Annoying bottom-faced rat-like mammal on the brink of extinction
World struggles to care
An exceedingly annoying species is on the brink of extinction, and no-one really is too concerned about it, according to reports from the World Wide Foundation for Nature (WWFN).

The species, Scrofulous Flatulus Rattus, colloquially known as the Bum-Faced Rat, commonly habituates garbage dumps, slag heaps, and toxic waste piles, where it may be seen scurrying about looking ugly, and spreading various types of diseases.

"God, what a wretched little turd it is," says Professor Amelia Chen, of Blatherskyte University, reluctant expert in the life-cycle of the Bum-Faced Rat.

Studies performed by the WWFN find that approximately 80% of the world know nothing about the plight of the Bum-Faced Rat, and an even higher percentage - 97% - do not care. But it's not good enough, according to Dr Oswald Cavalini, of the WWFN: "We have to make even more people in the world care even less about the Bum-Faced Rat."

Over the following year, the WWFN plan to release a series of pamphlets with titles like Really Cute and Fluffy Creatures that are About to Die, and Examples of Majestic but Sadly Endangered Wildlife That You Should Feel Real Guilty About, in order to highlight the contrast between them and the Bum-Faced Rat.

Sadly, although the Bum-Faced Rat is on the verge of extinction, other horrendous creatures, including the Leprous Vole, the Exceedingly Pustulent Fungus, the Snaggle-Toothed Snag, and the Frankly Hideous Otter, continue to thrive.

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UPDATE! - Boy, you people REALLY don't like pink bunnies. But then, you seem to be quite kindly and affectionate towards the leprous vole...

Superfluous advice column

#99876: How to announce an impending gay marriage to your parents

Just tell them that you've become engaged to a bisexual transgendered vegan polygamous monarchist octopus with homicidal tendencies, and work your way back.

The more things stay the same, the more things stay the same

Some of my facebook friends have been joining this facebook group called 'Stop Medibank Private being put into private hands.' Which confuses me, because I kind of sort of thought that Medibank Private was in private hands. It's all there in the title, see - 'Medibank Private'. Privatising Medibank Private seems to me to be a process somewhat akin to, say, aquifying water, or gassifying air.

About two years ago, I do vaguely recall a radio discussion on this very possibility, that the (then) Howard Government could privatise Medibank Private. The explanation of the economic structure of the Medibank Private organisation, and its history, was sufficiently arcane, elaborate, and confusing that I started wishing for the explanation to be unexplained again. At the end of the discussion, I was actually sure of much less about the whole issue than I was before. It actually sounded like Medibank Private had been created(?)* private, but now the Howard Government was going to privatise it again? Or something?

Then again, in its own crazy way it made a lot of sense. Maybe by that stage the Libs had run out of things to privatise, so by then they decided to go on and re-privatise the things that were already private. So they could start off with Medibank Private, and carry on reprivatising public transport, Qantas, Telstra... As a corrollary, Labor could run campaigns against private assets being put into private hands, and instead argue for taking public assets out of public hands, and putting them in other public hands.

I was actually planning to do another political post tonight about how the MSM misrepresents Tony Abbott - no, really! it does! - but I couldn't be arsed. Night, all.

*Actually, please insert a (?) after every word in my elaborate non-explanation of the previous elaborate non-explanation.

Just a short post to note that...

I'm currently finishing up Ovid's long, unfinished poem, Fasti. It's about the feast days on the Roman calendar, but I'm struggling to call it anything other than Ovid's Festy.

Next thing you know I'll be talking about Homer's Smelliad...

Pome

As I left for somewhere or other from some place or else
With the faint aim of achieving not very much,
I saw a somewhat ambiguous sign
Saying 'Do nothing specific, as such.'

Alcoholics with a poetry problem

I've seen it increasingly in the past few weeks, months, and years. And I have to admit that the problem is, if anything, getting worse. Yes, alcoholics with a poetry problem are seen all over the city, infesting our cafes, bars, and pubs, committing blatant acts of verbalism at tables, on stage, in front of microphones.

Many people in Melbourne will be asking, how has it come to this? How have we let our once-carefree alcoholics turn to these terrible, soul-destroying acts of poeticalness?

I suppose it must have all happened so gradually. An open-mic night here, a night that was supposed to be spent getting wasted on a bucket of ouzo instead turning into a ribald joke-telling session. Before these people knew it, they must have found themselves slurring metaphors and alliteration out in front of an appreciative audience. Sometimes these once-proud alcoholics don't even drink alcohol!

Yes, I know the temptation is always there to read a poem or two, to indulge in a spot of wordplay. But is it worth it, really? The momentary linguistic thrill you get from the pleasing combination of words, the felicitous use of adjectives, the charming and elegant way the poems are structured? Couldn't we be better spending our time drinking booze?

Perhaps it is time for concerted action from the state government: a crackdown from law and order on all practitioners of poetry, higher regulation, limiting the amount of rhymes that can be said in any one venue at any one time - that sort of thing.

I'm toddling off this afternoon to the Dan O'Connell Hotel, and I'm going to steadfastly refuse to indulge in any acts of poetry. Nope. Not one bit... Perhaps you could come, too, and contribute to Melbourne's thriving alcoholic culture. Perhaps I can help to dissuade other alcoholics from indulging in their poetry habit. For just one afternoon. Baby steps, and all that.

The spirit of rock

People who went on the train to the ACDC concert at the Docklands: right on! There were so many of you that you actually seem to have knocked out all the power in the North Melbourne Station for a good ten minutes. Rock'n'roll, dudes!

(I will continue to maintain this theory right until, and after, I am told otherwise.)

Etiquette tips

It is absolutely essential to eat greasy takeaway meals at your desk at work, without napkins, and with only a small plastic fork. But only if you've put on a clean white shirt.

Twittier

Three twits that I might write if I had twitter in reply to stuff that has been written on twitter, but I don't so I won't

Me.

Go to a house without a lawn. Then it's only the carpet you have to mow.

What are you talking about?

Teleprompter for President

RIGHT ON— On Sunday the left went bonkers after they discovered that the TelePrompter-less former Governor Sarah Palin wrote notes on the palm of her left hand for her speech to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville... Today Sarah fired back… She wrote “Hi Mom!” on her palm during her campaign stop with Governor Rick Perry of Texas. - Gateway Pundit

Well, that's all fine and dandy, but if it was announced that Barack Obama's teleprompter had been writing messages on its hand for its mother, would it get so much mass media attention? Hmmmn?

Getting up close with nature

Or, a song for the open road

Splutter by,
Butterfly,
Splutter on my windscreen;
Your stomach and
Your antennae
Slide in a pulpy greenish sheen,

Past my wipers
And my sill
Past the roaches, mozzies, flies,
Into my engine
Through the grill -
And there at last you lie.

Why did you die,
O butterfly,
Were you brave or crazy?
You could have let
My car pass by
But you went kamikaze,

And then into
My lane you flew;
Your fate, beyond prevention -
Just one more in-
-sect victim of
Vehicular momentum.

Domestic tableau

I have spent this morning bustling around the Baronial mansions putting things up and putting them down in other places, wiping grime off things and then wiping it back on again, and twirling the broom around in an effort to hypnotise the cats. Currently, I am building up quite a nice pile of dust in the living room, which is being supervised by Beatrice. When the pile of dust is suitably piley, and suitably located in one spot instead of all over the house, I will go to fetch the dustpan, whereupon Bea will pounce upon the pile, scattering it all over the house again. This is the order of things.

Interestingly, while I was sweeping stuff away from one of those dicky little corners that form between the bookshelf, the table, and the bench, I found a little unopened jar that had been hiding in a far corner of this far corner. It was saffron. I'm not quite sure how to take this: as a reward for my labours, perhaps? Maybe if I continue bustling around the house in this manner with broom and brush and dustpan, I will keep on finding more and more jars of unopened saffron, and I can think of them as prizes. Then again, I might start feeling guilty for having lost so much saffron.

Next time we lose saffron, however, I think we should let the jars break. It increases the sense of drama, and makes the floor taste so much nicer and more exotic, don't you think? I'll make a note of this and let the Baron know.

Bar humbugs

The Baron and I were out last night drinking with the esteemed colleagues. Drinking with the esteemed colleagues for some hours, in fact. At some point, I distinctly remember rambling on at length, for no particular reason, about spurtles. Not only that, but I didn't even have the decency to swear, or shout, or break a chair over one of my esteemed colleagues heads.

Just what kind of monster am I?

Church updates essential smiting danger ratings

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