Dozy dizzy daisy

If I was any more dazed today I'd be a daisy.

Coffee sandwiches, gingerbags, and teabread

Last night I reminded the Baron to remind me in the morning to take coffee, sandwiches, gingerbread and teabags to work.

This morning I reminded myself to remind the Baron to remind me to take coffee, sandwiches, gingerbread and teabags to work.

So I did, and so she did, and I have the coffee sandwiches, gingerbags and teabread all ready. But if I hadn't remembered to get her to remember to make me remember, imagine how bad things could have been.

Yes, the coffee sandwiches will be delicious, and no, you can't have any, thanksverymuch.

Non-sequiturs from my life

I couldn't get any coffee grounds from the cafe, which will be disappointing to the mushrooms. I showed others the apple, which is pleasing for Harriet. I did not eat the fig. Dad got stuck in his pajamas, but the Mormons had special underwear, and Joseph Gordon Levitt shouted penis thanks to the manic pixie dream girl. Soul Food is in Collingwood, but that's tomorrow.

Light verse

1. Poem 1) went on a diet.

2. Poem 2) went on a date.

3. Poem 3) didn’t go anywhere or do anything, she just stayed at home with her cats and her book and her chocolate fudge pudding -

She was happy about her weight.

Blog post number something or other

Twenty blog posts in March. Twenty blog posts in February. And twenty blog posts in January, too. I seem to have fallen into a nice rhythm this year with my blog posting, for some inexplicable reason.

Scrutinising the available datum within a mathematical/analytical frame of reference, I think we can deduce that the amount of blog posts I have produced in March, February, and January of this year is more than the amount of blog posts that I have produced in some other months when there were less blog posts than in March, February, and January; but it is less than the amount of blog posts I have produced in months when I have written more than 20 blog posts a month. If I apply myself, in this month I will also be able to produce more than the amount of blog posts I have written in some previous months but less than the amount of blog posts I have written in other previous months, too. It might be hard work, but I can do it.

I wonder if I've started unconsciously setting myself quotas, so that if I reach the 20 blog post mark I somehow, mysteriously, don't want to do any more. Maybe the same thing will happen this month (this is the seventh post, I've only got 13 to go)? Maybe I should take up a numerical scheme to number each blog post to help me remember? But then, what if I should accidentally come up with an idea for an extra lot of blog posts after I reach my monthly quota, and accidentally continue posting in this month?

These are questions, all right. Very questionable questions indeed.

This has been blog post number something or other from Tim.

Where did I go wrong?

You know, in lots of ways this being a cat-human thing is really good. I mean, for instance, right at the moment Bea is curled up on the chair at the corner of the room. This anecdote about a cat curled up on a chair really doesn't go anywhere, (not anywhere further than the chair in the corner of the room) but there you go. I might go over and give her a pat in second.

But not once, in all the time we've had these cats, have they bought in a rare or endangered species of bird. It's extremely irritating, because for years I'd been hearing about cats hunting and catching endangered species of birds (or bilbies, I'm not fussy) and bringing them home as presents for their humans. But they haven't brought home anything! Seriously, the biggest thing these cats hunt is apples. Have I done something wrong? Should I be training them every night with flashcards of extremely exotic birds looking particularly delicious? What?

Proposals for television shows

This is your death!
After the corpse is dramatically taken from its grave and animated with the spirit of its departed owner, it is confronted in a dramatic fashion with all the people who have made its death possible, and/or been with it during the course of its death. There is the relative who failed to notice its debt problems, the criminal who first fired the gun, the doctor who removed the bullet but failed to stem the flow of blood in time, and the police lieutenant who failed to apprehend the murderer just minutes before they committed the murder. All participants in the show look extremely awkward and anxious about their presence on the show, and the corpse looks suitably pissed off and bitter about the whole affair. (Also, quite possibly, it looks pissed off and bitter about the maggots writhing through its skull). This half-hour program is a sure-fire hit, and will make audiences feel bad about themselves for weeks afterwards!

Stirring team anthems written for vegetables #997

We are the turnips my friend
We'll keep on growin' till the end
We are the turnips
We are the turnips
No time for beetroots
'Cos we are the turnips
Of the world!


Sample turnips

Apposite opposition proposition

What if, instead of having an Opposition, the Australian Parliament had an apposition?

(The Barons verdict on hearing this excellent proposition of mine: 'I'm not sure how that would work'. And, you know, I think it makes it sound even more appealing to me, because when I consider the current government-opposition arrangement, I'm not sure how that works either, or even if it does work.)

Someone tell the Nazguls to stop sniffing paint cans

You probably know that I don't like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I especially don't like that bit in the second book, The Two Towers that bit where it really drags because they're just going to Mordor going to Mordor going to Mordor, you know? That's right, the bit I don't like in the second book is all of it, and a little bit more. (Open up The Return of the King and they're still at it, trudging through another set of dreary chapters).

And you know what I think they need in Lord of the Rings? A good train. That's right, some decent public transport infrastructure would really spruce things up. Imagine if all Frodo had to do would be to catch the 10.45 to Mordor, how that would speed things up! Granted there'd be a few stops along the way, various elves and Nazguls to pick up, I suppose, but it'd just be like the Craigieburn train. Nothing a few ticket inspectors couldn't sort out.

Now I know Tolkien's dead, and wouldn't have ever agreed to a train in his book even if he was alive, and I know Frodo's already thrown the ring into Mount Gloom or Mount Doom or whatever they call it, but it's never too late to agitate for a good high-speed rail project, is it? Especially something as vital to national enhancement as the Mordor-Middle-Earth express. All aboooooooooooard!

Modest and reasonable

A modest and reasonable poem about a subject that people are always modest and reasonable about.

The Ultimate Absolute Complete and Utterly Final Global Warming Poem

Gaia dying
Gaia dying
Planet frying
Koalas sighing
Kittens crying
Kittens crying
Gillard lying
Abbott denying
Bob Brown trying
Cities drowning
Forests drying
Sparks flying
Bush bushfiring
Kittens crying
KITTENS CRYING
Oil men buying buying buying
Obama DEFYING
Children WHYing?
KITTENS CRYING
KITTENS CRYING
Evidence solidifying
Climate scientists verifying
Flannery testifying
Abbott lying
Gillard denying
Bob Brown trying
Bob Brown TRYING
Bob Brown tiring
Shoppers shopping
This guy ‘hi-ing’
That guy ‘hi-ing’
Everyone DYING
People DYING
Penguins DYING
Polar bears DYING
Extremely rare bilbies DYING
Whales DYING
Fairies DYING
T-shirts DYEING
Hair DYEING
CAPTAIN PLANET FLYING
Captain Planet dying
Solar power men firing
Oil men hiring hiring hiring
Future prospects – terrifying!
Ocean rises – horrifying!
Gaia dying
Gaia dying
Planet frying
Koalas sighing
Kittens crying
KITTENS CRYING!

A most distinct distinction

"Anuresis is inability to urinate; enuresis is incontinence."

There’s many a learned paper
And many a graduate thesis
That’s writ to distinguish in plain simple English
Anuresis
and enuresis.

O it’s woe to those who confuddle
Diarrhoea and diaeresis
What hope have they indeed in their hour of need
To tell
anuresis
from enuresis?

O send for a doctor of letters
To deliver a stern exegesis
To ease their infection with a syntactic dissection
Of anuresis
And enuresis.

But the trouble for others is double
Yea, the trouble for others increases
It’s as though they are cursed, and it gets worse and worse
If they actually have
anuresis
Or enuresis.

My anarcho-communal-freegan-groovy-man-biodynamic-self-composting-kind-to-animals-socialist day

I have had a very anarcho-communal-freegan-groovy-man-biodynamic-self-composting-kind-to-animals-socialist day today. Well, I suppose it's arguable that I often do, but today really was an exceptionally anarcho-communal-freegan-groovy-man-biodynamic-self-composting-kind-to-animals-socialist day. By the way, much as I like the term 'anarcho-communal-freegan-groovy-man-biodynamic-self-composting-kind-to-animals-socialist', it is a bit unwieldy, so for future purposes I'll use the equally accurate, but significantly shorter epithet, 'hippy'. Whatever, dudes.

After lounging around for most of the morning because, like, I had a headache, man, I made vegan (hippy!) biscuits. I put a bunch of them in a box, and got a couple of my zines (hippy!), and set off to the train station (hippy!) and caught the next train in to Thornbury.

After looking up and down High Street for a certain record shop, I finally gave in and knocked on the door of a local anarcho-communal-garden-hang-out type place (VERY hippy!) and asked them - no, they didn't know, but they let me use their computer (hippy!). After finding out I headed down a few blocks to Thornbury Records (hippy! in a nice way) and dropped off several zines (hippy!) there.

Then, I caught a tram to Fitzroy (hippy!) and left another zine (hippy!) and the biscuits (hippy!) for a fellow poet (and hippy!) who was due to come into the cafe later today. There I met the Baron wearing a blue psychedelic floral skirt bought for 50 cents at the Rozelle Market in 2002 (hello, hippy!) and we made our way to CERES, the community environment park (hippy!*) where the Baron promptly frolicked among the lemon verbena (hippy!) and I went and bought a latte with biodynamic milk (hippy!), a soy chai latte (very hippy!), and two slices of vegan banana bread (totally, spaced-out, over-the-moon hippy!)

After a short walk around the park (more opportunity for frolicking, hippy! style, amongst the foliage) it was a short trip back to our commune (hippy!), with me discussing an idea I had for a Biodynamic Self-composting Zine workshop (for real - hippy!, hippy!, and more hippy!). Once we had reached home the Baron aerated the compost (hippy!) while I chopped wood (well... sort of hippy!).

So there's at least 20 counts of hippiness in all of that, I reckon, and to make up for it all now, I'm going to be totally selfish and capitalist and shit:

1) Yes, you've guessed it. I've got a new zine (hippy! okay, that's enough of that) out. Worth $3, which $3 will cover postage costs, if you want a copy. Let me know via email** if you're interested. It's got stuff by me, a bunch of other Melbourne poets, and the famous Nottlesby, amongst others.

2) Thornbury Records. Good shit, man. Lots of, you know, LPs and stuff. Also, they stock some of my zines! So if you're in that neighbourhood you can just go there and buy it from them.

3) Sticky Institute. The zine centre for all of Melbourne. They've stocked a number of my zines in the past and they've got this one too - if you're passing through you can grab one from them. They're open Wednesday to Saturday, afternoons.

*TOTALLY hippy. Check it out, they even have a basket-weaving workshop.

**timhtrain at yahoo.com.au

Forgot to do what I wasn't going to do

Forgot it was Earth Hour last night. So instead of not turning my lights off when I was supposed to and feeling cranky about it, I instead left the lights on when I was not supposed to and felt apathetic about it.

Is it possible to be retroactively guilty about not doing something you never would have done anyway, but forgot about before you didn't do it, do you suppose?

UPDATE! - Suggested replacement activities for Earth Hour for those who don't care about it, but who miss out on all the feelings of self-satisfied virtue/guilt you have when turning out the lights:

COLIN FIRTH HOUR - Hour spent ogling pictures of one's favourite film star on the net, while feeling naughty about it

GIRTH HOUR - Hour in which you stop dieting on whatever diet you're dieting on, and instead order in a gigantic bloody cake, and guts out on it.

Smashulosity: a Friday meditation

If I were one of those people responsible for driving around in titanic and cavernous trucks – and I don’t see why I couldn’t be – and pulling those big trucks up into dirty back alleys between warehouses, and throwing behemothian objects into the caverns of those aforesaid cavernous trucks, then you know what? I’d choose a job where I got to throw the most gigantic, metallic objects possible, that would clank and rattle and roll around in the back of those trucks. And also with little bits of glass and screens and other things that would satisfyingly break into thousands of satisfying little pieces, and make extremely satisfactory tinkling noises, every which way. Yes, I definitely would judge each of the objects I threw by the thuds and the clumps and the clunks and the smashes they were likely to make, and angle each throw for maximum thuddage and clumping and clunklishness and smashulosity.

And one more thing: I definitely, definitely would choose to do such a job in a back alley immediately right behind a building where people were listening to bits of audio. And attempting to accurately make textual transcripts of those little bits of audio. And I would wait right until the moment when they were attempting to decipher the most difficult paragraphs in the most poorly recorded audio, and then I would joyously and triumphantly heave those behemothian objects into the back of my cavernous truck. And continue doing so for the next half hour.

If I were one of those people, that is definitely how I would go about doing things.

Attention facebook users!

Clothes need buttons so we can close them up and not go around with things hanging out that shouldn't be hanging out, and so does the internet. Need buttons, I mean. Just look at Facebook - if it didn't have a 'Like' button, all manner of bizarre and strange and crazy and obscene things would come falling out of it. Also, when you click the 'Like' button on Facebook, you leave a tiny, indelible mark on the internet, so that when, millennia from now, people will rediscover the internet, they will be able to see that you liked, (or possibly did not, but wanted to give an indication to the contrary) a tiny thing on the internet that was probably insignificant in the greater scheme of things. This is clearly an invaluable social service.

But why stop at the 'Like' button? Why not have a 'Dislike' button? Why not a 'Nervous and Anxious' button? There is a whole spectrum of social interrelationships and personal emotions that Facebook is neglecting. This post, hopefully, will go a small way to rectifying this.























Obviously, the buttons don't do anything. Making them actually do something would be to advance to a level of expertise that is far, far beyond my capabilities. What, I gave you buttons, don't you ever stop asking for more more more?

Unfunny Unfair

Fun fairs for pessimists

Dreariment park - another name for an Unfunny Unfair. Opposite of amusement park.

Gloomy-go-square - what you ride on at the Unfunny Unfair.

House of horror - they don't have these. The whole Unfunny Unfair is the House of horror.

Violet Grumble - show food that you eat while riding on the Gloomy-go-square.

Show bags - These are what you come out of the Unfunny Unfair with. They're under your eyes.

The Liberace clerihews

Liberace

Never wore Versace
He had a thing
For other bling.

Liberace
Part artsy part fartsy
More retro than metro
More other than hetero.

Liberace
Sometimes spoke archly
Now and then played a waltz
And was schmaltz to a faultz.

Liberace
Played Vivace
Each ostinato
Marked Moderato.

HEY LOOK AT ME I’M A SHIRT I’M A SHIRT I’M A

Today at work I will be sitting quietly in a loud shirt.

UPDATE! - Next week, I might try wearing shorts for a long time, sitting loudly in a quiet shirt, or sitting quietly while NOT wearing any loud shirt at all. I will just be naked and loud. We’ll see how that turns out.

All this and less

Michael Reynolds took this photo of, well, me and a friend on facebook commented that this was 'a poet's expressive face'. Expressive! I thought. I wonder what it's expressing? 'The cat sat on the mat' or something like that? Or possibly 'isn't it funny weather we seem to be having lately?' No idea what the mouth's doing either.

You can see all this, and less, of this expressive face on radio tomorrow (Thursday), with me in interview with Santo Cazzati on 3CR, 9am, 855 on the AM dial, or webstreamed live at www.3cr.org.au. If you're really desperate to see as little of my face as possible for as long as conceivable, I'll be on air for half an hour, reading several poems.

Aphorism about a certain author

He was in several minds about several issues. But he couldn't make any of his minds up about any of them.

Groundbreaking ideas for new 24 hour businesses

Devon 11
This would be designed to cater to the wide and growing market for Devon sausage across Australia. With a Devon 11 on every street corner of towns and cities, you need never go without a Devon again! All varieties of it will be found on the shelves, including Devon, Fritz, German Sausage, Polony, Luncheon Meat, Belgium, Rokeby Roast, or Rubber Meat. Other, more exotic treats will also be available, such as Devon sandwich - with or without sauce. Also, the possibility of Devon slushies and other Devon-based drinks could be examined, as well as a range of brand-name instore icecreams - (working name, 'Devonly Delights').

ABC Booze 24
This cut price retail liquor outlet would service two distinct needs in the community - the need for pissed bastards to get pissed, and the need for pompous gits to be pompous. By joining the alcohol service in one company - the much-loved dear old 'Auntie' ABC - we can hopefully achieve a sustainable and profitable business model that adds to the ABC's growing retail arm. Plenty of pissed bastards would use the business, and plenty of ABC commenters/reporters pompous gits would feel free to comment on the pissed bastards getting pissed. A number of exciting cut-price deals and cross-sponsorship opportunities are possible (Q&A drinking game - 50 per cent off wine for every half hour of Jon Faine endured by a listener - occasional live shows in which ABC pompous gits get to hector random pissed bastards or soon-to-be pissed bastards buying liquor in store - seasonal half-price liquor sales giving ABC pompous gits opportunity to rant and rave about need for price controls, etc).

More earth hour poems

1.

I think that I shall never see
After that tragic and avoidable incident during during Earth Hour when I fell down the stairwell, which had the effect of permanently blinding me.

2.
Roses are beige
Violets are beige
And everything else
Is even more beige
The newsprint is beige
And so is this page
Beige words and beige paper
Oh wait - it’s The Age.

Names of acclaim

What a lot of Gladyses there were born in the early part of the 20th century! They're mostly gone now, but the Nation of Gladys was once, like the Nation of the Celts, thriving, strong, proud, and indomitable, and very fond of a cup of tea and a biscuit (I'm talking about Gladys now, not the Celts) and repelling the detested Roman invaders (back to the Celts now). Everyone knows someone who knows someone who knew a Gladys, I'd wager, and how important it is to know that someone who knew someone who knew them! Well, not that important.

Gladys: the very name seems to signify a certain middle-class respectability, doesn't it? It is redolent of long summer afternoons in cottages in Camberwell or Concorde, of rose gardens, of lawns pruned with nail scissors*, while somewhere in the background the radio is on, probably playing the cricket commentary. The radio with cricket commentary is most likely intended to created a distraction; for meanwhile, Gladys is pottering about somewhere purloining the cuttings of her neighbour Doris's garden (or Doreen's or Eileen's or Iris's or Esme's or Edna's or Janet's or Sheila's) and putting them into a little brown paper bag so she can grow it out back later. But let's not focus on that. The point is, Gladys was Gladys, and the Queen was the Queen, and Mr Menzies was Prime Minister, and all were reliable elements of the community.

It seems strange to think of Gladys as a child, but a child she undoubtedly was. All 10,000 of her, running about different parts of Australia in little frocks while her parents proclaimed at regular intervals, 'Gladys, don't do that', 'Gladys, you've got your dress all dirty', 'Gladys, don't eat that', 'Gladys, don't stick your finger up that, he doesn't like it', and so on. But so it was, and so it is. The child is the father of the man, as Wordsworth said, and what a man Gladys turned out to be. I don't know why Wordsworth thought Gladys was a man, but I suppose he meant it, otherwise why would he have said that?

What happened to Gladys? Well, after she grew up and stopped putting her finger up this, and getting that dirty, and taking cuttings out of Sheila's garden, she raised a little family of her own, and Gladys gave birth to Sally, and Sally gave birth to Mary, and Mary gave birth to Crystal Honeychild Fairydew Weatherbottom, and by then we'd all reached the 70s, which gave birth to the present day. And what a lamentable circumstance that turned out to be (or will have turned out to be when it has finished being the present day, I mean).

We could do with a few more Gladyses now, I think.

*"lawns pruned with nail scissors" - I suppose to extend this we could reason that Gladys also cut her nails with lawnmowers. I don't have a Gladys on hand to verify this, but it certainly seems likely.

Aren't you glad to see Gladys's gladiolus?

An earth hour poem

Given you have the hour with the lights off, Australian Poetry invites you to light a candle and write poetry! Please get in touch with us after the event (via our website) submitting the poetry you wrote during the hour. We encourage you not to submit anything you have written previous to this time/date. We genuinely only want the work you write between 8:30pm and 9.30pm on March 26th. It would be interesting if the poetry reflected, in some way, the experience of having no electric light to write by.

For obvious reasons I will not be submitting this to the Earth Hour poems page on the Australian Poetry website.

The light is off I cannot see
The thingo where I write my verse
The whatsit I just stumbled on
That made me curse.

The light is off I cannot see
The bump I just got on my head
When I fell down or if it’s black
Or brown or blue or red.

The light is off I cannot see
The phone number for my GP
Where is the switch the clock what is
The time – I cannot see.

The light is off I cannot see
The pad I write on, what I write –
Pineapple gallivant green dog –
GOD SOMEONE PLEASE TURN ON THE LIGHT.

Fine dining for giants

Welcome to George the Giants, the most popular restaurant for giants in the north of Melbourne. We have a wide variety of people to eat on the menu today, from Amelia to Zachary, and meals that range from exquisite epicurean feasts to more simple, homely treats.

ENTREE
Pam & biscuits
Pam & eggs
Pam omelette
Pam sandwiches
Melted Lees on toast
Tomato soup, with added Tom
Fish & chaps (very popular with the kiddies!)
Fresh fingers (kids love this one too!)

MAINS
Pamburger
The standard BLT - Bob, Larry & Tim. With or without sauce.
Bolognese, with sauce
The United Plates of America
Eggs, with Benedict
or without eggs, just plain Benedict.
A selection of Brain Marie
Alexander the Late
Eric the Dead
Harry Connick, Former
King Henry the Previous
Caesar, and salad
or without salad
Fried Tuck
George Bush the Prior
George Bush the Latter

DESSERTS
Sue berry pie
or just Sue without the berries.
Homme Alaska
Nork pie
Spotted Dick, Mick, Rick, or Vic
or just have Dick, Mick, Rick or Vic without the spots
Pavlova, first name Anna
Chocolate Bud cake
Men, with gingerbread
or without gingerbread.

WARNING: If you have an allergy, please be advised, some meals may contain traces of Geoff.

Stare into the vortex of horror

Stare! Stare! Stare aghast into the vortex of horror, zine makers and zine sellers of Australia! For soon, the metamorphosis will be complete and we will become haggling anarchist twits from Portland, Oregon.



On the plus side, this inevitable future of horror and despair does have Steve Buscemi in it, so it's not all bad.

Celebrity, sort of

I heard from a guy who spoke to a guy who knows a guy who implied to a guy who strongly hinted to a guy who demonstrated to a guy who hypothesised to a guy who argued persuasively to a guy who noted to a guy who sent an email to a guy who spoke to a guy who says you're a dick.

But it's okay, I heard from another guy who sent a memo to a guy who dispatched to a guy who posted to a guy who put up a facebook message that was read by a guy who read out a story to that effect on a worldwide television broadcasting station to a whole bunch of other guys who spread the rumour to another guy who chatted to another guy who said, no you're not, you're a cock.

So now I know what they know and you know it too.

Celebrity, public

Who is James Franco? What is Justin Bieber? How on earth does a River Phoenix (or vice versa)? What on earth are all you people talking about, in the same way that you have been talking about it for the past century?

Is the definition of a celebrity someone or something that everyone else knows about, but I don't?

Another one for the fictionary

internettled - 1) getting seriously pissed off with someone on a blog, forum, twitter, or other internet site, and/or 2) getting into a huge argument with same person on a blog, forum, twitter, or other internet site.

Serious Concerns about Making Cocoa in my Prehistory of Mind

It is strange the tricks the mind will play on you from time to time. For instance, I have a book which I quite like, Wendy Cope's Serious Concerns - or perhaps I should say that I had this book. Because I certainly can't find it now.

I can remember quite vividly the last moment I held this book in my hand. I was going rummaging around the bookshelves, you see, for a number of poetry books. At the time I was looking for the other book by Cope I have, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis - a lovely book with a lovely title, I think you'll agree. Here's what Cope had to say about it (from memory (though obviously my memory isn't the best, as I'll go on to demonstrate)):

I thought of the name in a dream
And some sort of record seemed vital
The poem isn't up to much
But I love the title.

I flung books here and there, occasionally shouting out like a maniac, 'where is Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis? Where is Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis?' After about a half an hour of this modest archaeological exercise, I had uncovered several poetry books by Komninos, Geoff Lemon's Sunblind, a book of poems by Brian Aldiss called A Prehistory of Mind, the Book of Bellerive, a William Blake anthology, and more. Then, on an unimportant shelf on an irrelevant part of the bookshelf, I found Wendy Cope's Serious Concerns. I gave a small cry of joy, because it was, after all, a book which I quite like (I think I said that before), and turned over a few poems. It was good to be holding it again.

Then there are a few moments that I cannot recall - after which I returned to the search for Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis. And I did, eventually, find it, and took it triumphantly over the pile that I had amassed to reunite it with the other Wendy Cope book, the one which I quite like, Serious Concerns. But, as you may guess, and as I recall, by this time I had lost Serious Concerns. It happened, you see, in those moments that I cannot recall.

I have since been over all the bookshelves in the house several times - this all happened about four weeks ago. I have not been able to find Serious Concerns again. I have no idea what I did in those unrecalled moments. Did I think the Wendy Cope book was a steak, and return it absent-mindedly to the freezer? Did I go and waggle it triumphantly in the Baron's face and then place it confuddledly in her pile of library books? Did I go and hide it behind the fridge, where I could be certain no-one would find it? Did I eat it in a moment of passion?

What I am saying is, these moments that I cannot recall are of Serious Concern.

Rong and write

I read and like Tim Blair's blog. He's a good writer and even when he makes a point that you disagree with he is interesting and thought-provoking anyway. But sometimes - as in this piece about a Sydney Greens candidate - his criticism is, well...

Naturally, De Brierley is a writer.

"Writing wrongs: wrong writer is writer, right-wing writer writes" just isn't a very good gotcha. Although as a tongue twister, I've got to admit, it has plenty of potential.

How to spell 'hmm' in seventeen syllables

There are some things I quite like about my job. These things usually are completely unrelated to things customers and clients might be interested in, problems like the correct way of spelling words that have been made up on the spot by Doctor Seuss, or finding the name of a back street in an obscure country town, ideally in the most unimportant and uninhabited state or territory possible. There's something about the obscurity, pointlessness, and absurdity of these tasks that delights me.

Then there are the other things, such as, for example, the Personwhogoesontheradioeventhoughtheydon'tknowwhatthey'retalkingaboutandbeginstotalkaboutit-anyway - at great length. Oh, I'm sure you know who I'm talking about; every place in the world has a few examples. Those Personswhogoontheradioetc are pretty bloody annoying, I have to say.

But they can have unexpected uses.

Awkward Answers To Radio Questions - a haiku sequence

1)
Well, you know, sort of,
I gather that, actually,
You know, you see, no.

2)
Yes, you see, the thing
Is, as you know, um, sort of...
Pardon me, er, no.

3)
Of course, actually,
Obviously, as it is,
I don't really know.

4)
As I was saying,
You know, without a doubt....
What were you asking?

5)
(Pauses for sixteen syllables)
Hmmmm....

6)
That's a really good
Question. I'll read that report
And get back to you.

7)
Ah, well, ooh, ha ha,
Um, hmm, er, let's see, you know,
Ah... ah... ah... well... no.

8)
Oh, sorry. I've run
Out of time. Lovely to
Be on your program.

Eye see

I was reading the paper today - all right, all right, I was reading the MX today - and they had captioned one of their pictures with 'While not everyone needs glasses to see better, some think they need them to look better'.

Now I don't know about seeing better or looking better. But you definitely need glasses for one thing - and that's thinking better. It's a well-known fact, established by people who actually do wear glasses, that this wearing of glasses helps them to think. Just look at me - well, okay, maybe you can't see me, but that's all right, it's not because you don't have glasses on, it's because I'm on the net. But then, I don't have glasses on either. And is there any evidence of me thinking? Precious little.

Now just look at the Baron (again, don't worry if you can't see her, she's right over there). She has two pairs of glasses. AND she teaches at university. I think that just proves my point - or at least, that's what I would think if I had glasses, but I don't, so I didn't think it, it just seemed pretty obvious that that's what it was.

It also occurred to me as I read the MX that if Apple ever invented a pair of electronic glasses they would be called iGlasses. Now there's an original name.

Yes. Yes, that will have to do for now.

If they're uncontacted, how about spectacles?

Following a link from David, I came across this article about the Last Uncontacted People in the World.

'Last' is a relatively, well, relative word in this context. Why do big international magazines always seem to pop up, every now and then, with an article on the last uncontacted people in the world? How uncontacted does a tribe have to be before they're included in these magazine articles on uncontacted people?

Such is the frequency with which 'last' uncontacted tribes pop up in these articles, one suspects the big international magazines of storing them away for future use, cramming them back in the forests for another three decades before recontacting the last uncontacted people in the world, again. But, you know, 'latest previously contacted tribe to be recontacted' doesn't exactly have the same attention-grabbing quality, I suppose. Or 'previously known tribe of people continue to exist in a relatively normal fashion' - who'd want to read that on their paper? One expects one's remote tribes to be precious, endangered, and all that. Certainly not continuing to live their lives as usual. That's just damned rude.

It'd be bloody annoying to be a member of one of the latest uncontacted tribes, though. Bloody hell, it's a magazine team again, better bring out the shrunken heads of the editors just to make a good show...

Meow

Deep night. Wind high.
Two AM - or three.
Rain rain rushing by -
Deep night. Wind high.
Somewhere - a cat's cry
Sharp and keen and free.
Deep night. Wind high.
Two AM - or three.

I sat up in bed and recited a version of this a couple of nights ago and was very pleased with myself for having written it while still in bed, only to find on penning it down in the morning that I had made a rather obvious rhyming mistake (using the word 'high' to rhyme with itself).

Dictionary of words that scrabble doesn't accept but should

ew 1. expression of disgust

guster 1. An expression of familiarity for a wind. "Oh, it's a guster blowing outside again."

jaunter 1. One who is jaunty. 2. One who is ostentatious about being jaunty.

zot 1. to dart quickly into a position 2. nip, slip, into a place

ziner 1. One who makes zines.

Question for the day

Why watch gastroporn when you can just watch porn? It's much simpler.

With single minded pedantry, waging a war against the entirety of the world in general

Is there any technology more irritating than iTunes, the iPod, the iPad, the iPhone, the iBook, and the various other devices that start with 'i'? Not only are they supremely confusing devices that leave me utterly confuddled when I wonder what they are for, but their names give the 'i', the symbol of narcissism, pride of place, and their spelling is incorrect. I don't care so much about the first bit - I have very little idea about quite a lot really, and it doesn't bother me. What does a cloud do when it's not raining? I have no idea, but at least its name is spelled correctly.

But anyway, back to

iTunes
iPod
iPad
iPhone
iBook

The capital letter isn't where it's supposed to be, there is no space between the 'i' and the next word, and what, exactly, is the difference between all these things anyway?

"The iPad is a tablet computer designed, developed and marketed by Apple primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content."

But

"An iPhone functions as a video camera, camera phone with text messaging and visual voicemail, a portable media player, and an Internet client with e-mail, web browsing, and both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity."

So they're completely different and unique and also share almost all their completely different and unique functions with one another, AND their name is a spelling mistake and they appear to have no purpose. Apart from that, I suppose, they're wonderful.

And, God help us, in the UK they actually have released a newspaper just called 'i'. Apparently they want to get that single letter of the alphabet declared a spelling mistake, and banish it from the language forever. Maybe it's part of a subtle war against egotism after all?

Doubtful, say I.

UPDATE! -
There's even some examples of non-existent contraptions with nonsensical purposes that we could talk about here. For instance, a wigwam for a goose's bridle. It doesn't exist, and I have no idea what specific part in plays in the bridling of the goose. But I'm damn sure it's spelled correctly - it's even in the dictionary:

wigwam2
// (say 'wigwom)
phrase a wigwam for a goose's bridle, Colloquial a jocular name given to an object or activity which one is unable or unwilling to identify. [modification of obsolete whim-wham, with reference to something totally fanciful, that is, a decoration for a goose's bridle]

A rather civilised song

I am a modest teapot
Petite and polite.
With appetising apothegms,
I aim to delight.
When my aqua vitae agitates
I humbly petition
"I say, old chaps, would it be frightfully bothersome for you if you were to incline me on a slight angle, allowing my waters to run out,
Thereby easing my condition?"

Here I sit! I can do no other! Except possibly stand, or lie down...

I don't want to talk about it.

I don't want to talk about it so much that I don't want to talk about why I don't want to talk about it.

I don't want to talk about it so hard that whenever I think about it, which I don't because I don't want to think about it, I don't want to talk about it even more than I don't want to think about it.

I don't want to talk about it so greatly that it doesn't even exist, and I still don't want to talk about it.

I still don't want to talk about it so greatly that even though it is so wildly and fantastically contradictory that it would require several unfactual things to be factual before it was even remotely possible in the most alternate of alternate dimensions that you can think of, that's how much I still don't want to talk about it.

I still don't want to talk about it so much that even though I don't think about this thing that doesn't exist anyway and would only exist if several bizarrely unlikely contradictions were bizarrely resolved by several unfactual things suddenly becoming factual, I still don't want to talk about it more and more, that's how much I don't want to talk about it.

I don't want to talk about it so much that I don't know what I'm talking about when I say I don't want to talk about it.

SO WHY THE HELL ARE WE TALKING ABOUT IT!???????!???

I just don't want to talk about it.

Smoking loudly on a moving zine fair

Don't travel without a valid ticket. Don't put your feet on the seats. Don't drink alcohol. Don't smoke. Don't jump on or off of a moving vehicle.

Geeze, they won't let you have any fun on the train now, (I said to the kid as he was reading out the big sticker with all those rules and stuff on it on the train yesterday.) Back in my day, you could smoke and drink on the train with an invalid ticket while jumping off a moving vehicle at the same time as picking your nose, and nobody would even COMPLAIN about it. And the more moving the vehicle was the better. So what if you lost an arm in the process? That would make the whole thing even more moving. (Okay, by this time I'm pretty sure I wasn't saying this to the kid, but I was certainly thinking it loudly).

These days, of course, it's all going to hell in a handbasket. You can't do anything, not even the things that you think you can do, like smoking alcohol or jumping on and off a moving cigarette, or picking your nose with an invalid ticket. There'll always be some Negative Nanny-state Nelly no-no-ing the whole thing, and you'll get done for being racist, or something. (Don't worry, by this time the train had gone past Clifton Hill and the kid and his mother had gotten off. I'm pretty sure it wasn't my loud thinking that did it.)

What was I thinking loudly on the train for anyway? I was coming back from the zine fair, that's why. I didn't tell you about the zine fair? That's right, but I certainly meant to have told you, and invited you to it. So I might as well do it now. (Back in my day, you could invite people to events that were back in my day, anyway). Come to the zine fair that has already happened, people, and meet me and a whole bunch of other people and buy some zines! Not only can I say it will have been an exciting event to have attended in the past, but having been there myself I can only add that it certainly lived up to some expectations. So do come along yesterday and help to have made it the thing of beauty that it certainly was (or possibly will be)!

All right. You can all go back to thinking loudly about smoking a moving vehicle, or something like that. This has been another blog post by Tim.

How to fit France and Germany into the borders of a small antipodean town

Paco had a link to this Power Line post, discussing an amusing series of New York Times corrections to previous articles, about an island that does not exist, a species of fictional sparrows that are native to that island, which have become subject to the depredations of certain goats living on that same island - not to mention another correction regarding the possibility of cows falling out of the sky.

I suppose the appropriate reaction to these articles is to call for greater responsibility to truth in journalism, more commitment to research, and all that stuff. But I would go the other way. I love newspaper errors, I love the stuff ups they make, and I love the way they can seriously discuss events that do not happen on islands and nations which they have accidentally just willed into existence.

The best (that is, the worst) and most (which is, the least) reliable stories come in newspapers or magazines reporting on stories in different countries, because traditionally they haven't had to worry about any research at all. (Or maybe research has nothing to do with it: during the 1982 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony, Australians once omitted a whole state, the island of Tasmania, from our own map.) However, in recent reporting on Cyclone Yasi, UK paper The Daily Mail - they're quite a big deal, I hear, over in the UK - not only placed Tasmania back on the map, but inadvertently created a new Australian state, Capricornia, which surprised everyone involved. Meanwhile, in a surfeit of generosity, US channel CNN shifted the whole, vast state of Queensland inside the borders of Tasmania. To achieve this feat, they merely squeezed Queensland - which has an area larger than France and Germany combined - into the borders of tiny Queenstown, which had at last count a population of 5119 people. Queenstown, presumably, got all that left over space up the top of Australia in the meantime.

It's fabulous, the way you can redefine the borders of the world with a few taps on the keyboard and a bit of jiggery pokery with a map. There are classic examples, too, like the time the good Dr Dalrymple accidentally turned the Australian opposition leader into a convict - and more, too, I'm sure, that's just all I can think of at the moment.

Anyway, maybe we should all get together and read over the Austrian Notional Anthem to celebrate. As they traditionally say in this country when taking leave of one another, 'g'day folks! I've got to Chiko Roll now, see you round like a falafel!'

UPDATE! - A friend on Facebook, referring to events in Egypt, just said, 'Today we are all Egyptians'.

It must be hard for Egyptians, with their population of 79 million, to suddenly and unexpectedly be elevated to a population of around 10 billion, what with all the troubles they've been having, but I'm sure they'll get used to it somehow. I don't know how we'll pop the entire terrestrial globe into the Nile Delta region, but I suppose with a little effort we can get it in there.

Satellite image of Australia. Do you know how long it took us to paint all that stuff on? So show some respect, people!

Chap off the old block

Have you noticed your lips lately becoming

1. Dry?

2. Cracked?

3. Sore?

4. Taking long walks along the city street while you are not looking, with a Spectator in one hand (even though they don't have hands), an umbrella in the other, a hat on their heads (though they don't have heads either, obviously) before jumping into a ramshackle little jalopy and going for a jolly drive through the countryside, and popping into a delightful little rural pub and chatting until the wee hours with a whole bunch of other lips that have been doing the same thing?

5. Flaking?

Well you may be suffering from CHAPPED LIPS. Don't worry, it happens to lots of people.

Don't even bother treating them, just go along for the ride. You might meet some great lips! And some of the people might be alright as well.

Remark remark remark comma remark remark comma remark full stop

Mod Dance Company will debut with a national tour this year, and remarkably, has formed without any public funding. - ABC News

It's remarkable how remarkable this remarkable fact is, so remarkable that the ABC had to remark on it! And not only did they remark on it, but they also remarked on their remarks, making the fact all the more remarkable. All in all, this remarkable fact was remarked on twice, which is worthy of remark.

I wonder however if I should tell the ABC about the poem that I just wrote without public funding, or the blog post that I am in the process of writing, without public funding. I'm pretty certain they would find it remarkable (even if they didn't remark on it) but they might also be a bit worried. For one thing, they might have to remark on their remarks, and remark on my remarks about their remarks on their previous remarks, which would be very remarkable indeed. For another thing, I'm sure they'll be concerned, and probably befuddled, by all these things happening without public funding - after all, how can such things conceivably happen? They are truly remarkable!

I think I'll just leave a few commas out of this post, and go and get some arts funding and maybe a few laws and minor regulations passed through parliament just so I can put them in. That'll reassure the ABC. Maybe even give them something else to remark about!

Thing

Although the designs for the new fun fair were considered bold and innovative by a number of leading architectural critics, the gigantic Ferris Square never really took off with the public.

The Merry-Go-Triangle was a bit of a disappointment as well.

The ruthless Darwinian struggle for existence and the question of seating on trains

Turning now to the ruthless Darwinian struggle for existence, I was on the train today. (And, if I can just observe, less stories begin that way than you might think).

The ruthless Darwinian struggle for existence in kinder, gentler times.

Seats on the typical Melbourne train, as you might be aware, face one another in rows of two, and sometimes three, chairs per side. There is so little space between the two facing rows that the legs of one typical Melbourne train traveller on one seat will quickly become entangled with the legs of another typical Melbourne train traveller on the facing seat. (And, if these typical travellers are anything like some of the typical travellers I've known, perhaps that's not the only thing that's going to become entangled. Typical.) This is clearly because, over time, the people who manage the trains want to weed out the milksop train travellers of today, and breed a new superior race of Melbournian train travellers far, far titchier than we have ever seen before - it all goes back to the ruthless Darwinian struggle for existence, you see.

So, anyway. Me. On the train. Since I was only getting off two stops later, I made for an empty set of three-seaters facing one another, and plonked myself down on the outer seat, facing forward. And who should get on but another passenger - Passenger B, let's call them - who seated herself ON THE INNER SEAT ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE.

Now typically, you see, passengers on trains - or trams - will arrange themselves in diagonal lines upon the seating so as to optimise their own personal space, and to decorously avoid getting their limbs entangled with the limbs of the person who faces them (unless, of course, they are one of those typically typical passengers that I mentioned before). So, for instance, a typical facing set of three seats with three people will see the people arrange themselves in a V, one person at each extremity of the letter. However, Passenger B had already violated this simple, strategic arrangement in the seating code, for a V was no longer possible. A passenger getting on could either

a) work their way into the seats and sit down facing her, thus getting into entanglement-of-limbs issues as mentioned before.
b) Sit down next to her, thus violating her personal space
c) Sit down next to me, see above.
d) Sit down opposite me, thus getting into entanglement-of-limbs issues, again.

And d), as it turned out, is exactly what happened. Another passenger - Passenger N - got on, and headed for the (still fairly empty) set of seats. She quickly surveyed her options - Passenger B, I saw, had meanwhile placed her bags on the seat next to her, shrewdly heading off option b) - and headed for the seat opposite mine. (Option d)).

You win this round, Passenger B, I thought, as I angled my legs crankily outwards, and Passenger N apologetically angled her legs inwards, and the train rattled round the corner and into Spencer Street Station.

A helpful diagram

It has occasionally occurred to me that there is a need for a simple guidebook, full of elegant propositions and rules, entitled 'Body Language in Public Transport', or something like that, analysing and quantifying the various postures and positions it is possible to take on a train or tram in any given circumstance. This guide would provide simple rules and strategies for a number of different situations. (You are on a train packed full, but there are two seats left at opposite ends: what do you do? Where do you sit to optimise leg stretching possibilities? What do you do when you are sitting on an outside seat and a person comes along and meaningfully glares at you - do you move to the inside seat, possibly getting into an entanglement issue, or do you swing out, thus creating a kind of 'door' for this Person Of The Meaningful Glare to go in and get entangled with the other passenger themselves? etc) I can see the potential for such a guidebook to become indispensable for all passengers on the public transport, voyages on which could quickly become as tactical as a fine game of chess amongst grandmasters.

If I had a copy I would definitely give one to Passenger B. As it was, though, I just got off at North Melbourne Station and went to work. Funny, that...

An ode to the bureau of meteorology

Oh Bureau of Meteorology,

To say that you are sublime would not only be ridiculous - it would be a tautology.

Contemperaneous and relevating

Slightly altered poems, for the person who said Romantic poetry was not interesting and relevant enough for modern times

Wee, sleekit, cowrin tim’rous beastie mozzie
O what a panic's in thy breastie Aye how tiny, aye how buzzy
Thou need na start awa sae hastyWhy must ye act like sich a hussy
Wi bickering brattle! And flee my clap
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee By nesting still within my cozzie,
Wi murd'rin pattle! To spite my slap?

"To a Mouse", Robert Burns

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulnessSeason of salt and battered heart attacks…

"To Autumn", John Keats

Young Lochinvar Pam Anderson is come out of the west
Through all the wide border his name is the best… Something something something something something something something breast.

"Lochinvar", Walter Scott

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright!
In the forests X Box of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Quick! Guns out! Fucker, die!

"Tiger", William Blake

Fair fa’ your honest sonsie face
Great chieftain Great CEO o’ the puddin’ burger race
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place
Painch, tripe, or thairm - soft serve and fries
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang’s my arm Large as my thighs!

"Address to a Haggis Big Mac", Robert Burns

My brilliant gardening career

It is true, as some have been saying, that I have taken up gardening. It cannot be denied that, on the occasional afternoon, or evening, I can be seen pottering around little patches of lawn digging holes here and filling holes up over there. As the Baron can vouch, we have even indulged in a little spot of thistle pilfering as a team activity, in order to supplement the already impressive weed collection we have in our backyard.

I know that many of you may find this partaking in the sport of soil sifting rather quixotic on my part. 'Tim', you may ask, 'what on earth do you know about gardening? Do you have any idea what you are growing?' I admit the consequences of many botanical endeavours can be dangerous, deadly even: what is a dear little green bud in the loam one morning may be a man sized, carnivorous, mobile triffid the next. Will a whippersnipper be enough to keep their rabid bloodlust at bay? Who can tell.

But quite aside from that, I can give a full and confident list of all the contents of our growing garden. It will of course be different to the Baron's list, but that is neither here nor there: why, there is
that thing
and this thing
and those things
and those other things
and all those other things
and the other things that are even more other than the other things
and the other other things that are even more other other than the other other things
and that stuff (it's really nice, that stuff is)
and those bits.

Just this morning, the Baron and I were planting a thing, a very particular thing. They were bearded things. Well, that's what they were called anyway, though I couldn't even see any beards - not even a little moustache. Maybe we should start them off with moustache toupees, to give them a sense of confidence?

But anyway, I should say I have a very definite plan for this garden, an alphabetical plan. Each plant will be named and categorised under its letter of the alphabet. Like, l for 'leafy things' and g for 'grassy things' and r for 'rosy things' (like, I dunno, roses), and f for 'fruity things', and b for 'big things'. I had trouble thinking up stuff for other letters - even 'a', but eventually I decided that 'assorted stuff' would do it.

As all gardeners know, it is pleasant, on long summer days, to lie in the shade of the leafy things, with one's arms in the fresh grassy stuff, while a cool breeze blows through the flowery objects and carries various smelly sensations to your nose, and to look over at the shadows cast on the ground by the big and leafy things as the wind sends their leafy bits rustling hither and thither, thither and hither. Occasionally, one might even reach over to the fruity things and pluck off some... fruit, and admire the soon-to-be bearded things as they twirl their youthful moustaches in the long golden sunlight, and you see pollen from the flowery stuff drift through the air, and you sigh.

A famous person once said: "Man's first home was a garden, and as his garden is his castle, that is where the heart is." Now who could possibly disagree with - or even understand - that? Quite right.

Great parlour games of our Tim

As was the style of the Tim.

Men and women of Australia - it's Tim!

I read it in the Tims.

The Tims, they are a changing.

A Tim to give birth, a Tim to die, a Tim to plant, and a Tim to uproot what is planted.

What's the Tim?

The Tim Machine!

If I could turn back Tim.

If you're lost if you're waiting I will find you, Tim after Tim.

Not at this Tim of life.

We've had a great Tim.

***

In another version of this game, you also substitute the word 'underpants' for some other word in these phrases, eg, 'Men and women of Australia - underpants Tim!' 'If underpants could turn back Tim.' etc.

Three reviews

Bed of Roses
The interesting thing about this new ABC television show is you can subtract all the specific details from the description, such as names, plot details, scenery, costumes, and everything else, and still you end up with a reasonable description of the show. I only came in watching this show halfway, but this description still shapes up reasonably well:

1) Dramatic scene, emotional conflict.
2) Startling emotional resolution
3) Whacky scene, involving lovable characters
4) Heartfelt guitar music
5) More emotional conflict.
6) More whackiness.
7) Plot driving towards resolution.
8) Emotional revelation involving Characters Talking About Their Problems And Learning A Little About One Another And Most Especially Themselves.
9) Whackily whacky joke underscoring the main plot point that drives plot towards resolution.
10) Emotional resolution + whacky scene involving lovable characters
11) Emotional resolution + lovable characters + heartfelt guitar music
12) Concluding whacky joke further underscoring the resolution of plot that has just been resolved in the previous scene!
13) Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

The Proprietor of Inappropriate Lemonade Stands
I got this zine at Sticky. It's hilarious, and simple: so simple that I find if I attempt a description at all, I ruin the joke. So my review for this is pretty much like the review for Bed of Roses, except even more general and non-specific in nature.

1) I couldn't read some of the words on page 2, but still got the joke, so that was all right.
2) There is a funny joke peripheral to the main joke on page 12
3) Not sure I get the context on page 18
4) Page 19 sort of passed me by as well, but it was still nice
5) There might have been a line or two out of place as well, I'm not sure, but on the whole, what a great zine.

Cool baths on hot days
I am into cool baths on hot days. I am so into cool baths on hot days that I got into one yesterday. I am not so into them as to still being in the cool bath that I got into on the previous hot day, being yesterday, and indeed if I were to get into that cool bath now, it would be like getting into a bloody freezing bath on a soon-to-be hot day, which would not be quite the same thing, but my general point still holds. Cool baths on hot days, like hot baths on cool days, or green leaves on red strawberries, go pretty well with one another, I find. In a world full of inappropriate things, like Australian heatwaves, they are entirely appropriate. You should get into cool baths on hot days too.

When the internet goes bung, call the washing machine man

Sometimes when I turn the tap on and someone else is on the phone in the other room, I think, 'oh, hang on. Will this interrupt the supply to the telephone?', for some reason acting on the supposition that telephones run on water.

Then again, the other day, when the washing machine stuffed up, I called the repair man. And then, when I was speaking to him, the phone stuffed up too. Perhaps I'm on to something after all...

Congratulations! It's a David Koch!

Apparently hospitals have been banning fathers from filming the birth of their child. And apparently David Koch from Sunrise says 'you just shouldn't have cameras down there'. This just shows why you should never start a sentence with 'apparently David Koch from Sunrise says...'

But it does seem to me to be a rather strange activity for a father to get involved in, going around filming the birth of his children. Because after he's made sure he's got the zoom right, and the focus just so, and the position of the camera correct, and is reasonable certain that he's got it stable, and has moved to get out of the way of this doctor, and has adjusted the knobs so that he still gets a reasonable picture because of the lights, and has moved to get out of the way of that doctor, and has pressed this and twirled that and fiddled with whathaveyou, and ducked around the nurse, and adjusted still more things, what's he going to do? More ducking and weaving and adjusting and twirling and twiddling, presumably - so that by the time his child is born he will have a definite, specific and imperishable memory of the event. He'll be able to say to his child, years after, 'yes, I was there when you were born - it was the most magical moment of my life!' And I suppose he was there - in a sense. He can pretty much skip the bit where he tells his child about it, though - he'll probably have to, and anyway, it will be much easier to simply direct them to youtube, or a DVD, or something like that.

When I consider the case of Dads filming their partners in labour, I conceive a high and wistful longing for the old days when they would sit on a comfortable chair in a waiting room chewing their fingers and performing unconscious origami on their hats. They seem to me to be just as present as a dad with a camera on their shoulders: they've certainly entered into the spirit of the occasion more. Maybe it's just me, but I feel that filming dramatic events like births or deaths or the rather eventful in-betweens doesn't really add anything to the savour of life: who wants details? It's always the hardest to remember the high points and low points in our life in detail. Electricity bills, bank loans, and tax forms are full of details, but you wouldn't want to get excited about them. In fact, the only exciting events we can talk about in lots of detail are usually ones that we were never at in the first place. I can remember quite a few details about the Second World War, for instance: how about you?

Contra fathers who film their children being born, and contra the age we live in in general, and contra Parishiltonpamelaandersonsharonosbourneshanewarne and the rest of the living-perpetually-on-camera generation, life is not a performance, birth is not merely a drama for the camera, love is not a theatrical show for the internet. The Trojans did not wait for nine years and then get killed by the Greeks just so Homer could finish his damn poem, and Christ did not learn his lines from a crappy script written by Mel Gibson 2000 years later. Events do not wait around to get recorded before eventuating, and life, in spite of appearances, is not about appearances.

Though maybe, in the mind of a certain minor Australian celebrity of the early 21st century, some 50 years ago, a new mother was congratulated with the words, 'Congratulations, Mr Koch! You've just given birth to a bespectacled, balding, slightly tubby television personality with an expertise in accounting who will present a top-rating Channel Seven current affairs and commentary program! You must be so proud!' You just never know.

The travails of the furry fraternity

It's hard being a cat. When the humans are in and you are in you just want to be let out. When the humans go out and keep you in you just want to go out. When the humans let you out and then go out, you just want to be let in. And when the humans stay in and you are out, they spend all the time getting you back in again. I mean, really, not only do the humans change their mind all the time, but they keep on putting you in just the place you don't want to end up.

All in all, when you consider things, it makes you wish you weren't a cat. Oh, wait - you aren't.

Hadn't you better stop eating that mouse then?

Tiddleywinks death match

If you took the Top Ten composers of all time, and matched them against the Top Ten chess players of all time, who would be the better team in a death match of Tiddleywinks? An important question, but I don't think you'll see The Guardian have a go at answering that any time soon.

Another existential insect

Whatsetty grub - an insect that raises profoundly deep and meaningful questions about space, time, the universe, God, death, the beginning of everything, the end of everything else, and just what on earth this little grub is, exactly, and how on earth it got into your garden.

(Add it to the list.)

The sayings of snails

It's so crowded here, it's like the lettuce leaf on a Friday!

What are you, a midge or a mollusc?

As smooth as my spawn's egg-sac!

It's either mud or it's dud.

A slime in grime saves time.

The sewer is where the heart is.

The early bird catches the worm - and YOU!

Beware of cats, hens, and French mens.

A slurp in a burp saves urp.

His, hers, or hermaphrodites?

Is that a pseudo-pseudopodae?

All's well in the shell.

Better ooze than osmose!

You've got to eat hard to stay behind.

A slug in snail's clothing.

A gloop in a glop or a glop in a gloop?

If you were any faster, you'd be a turtle!

Last one in's a pickled sea cucumber!

Bob's your uncle, and your auntie.

I am what the cat dragged in.

When the shoe falls, danger calls!

At the end of every rainbow lies a cabbage.

Turning under a new leaf.

The mildew's always mouldier on the other side.

You're the man-woman of my dreams!

It's not easy to be oozy.

McCracken Wakes!

McCracken is a wild, wiry haired, crazy bearded poet who can be found almost everyday on Brunswick Street offering to declaim his poems to passers-by. Apparently he hands out ads for the Rose Street markets or something like that. When he does get an opportunity to read a poem to someone, he shouts at them instead. It's just his way of reading. Anyway, after you've been going to poetry readings for a while, like I have, you'll probably hear about how McCracken was one of the first poetry reading MCs from someone or other (maybe even from McCracken himself). You can see footage of him here - don't mistake him for the other bearded weirdo who happens to go by my name - on one of the latest programs of Red Lobster.

He gave some rather enjoyable readings at the Dan last week. Sometime between now and then I decided to write this (with obvious help from Tennyson, and after another suggestion by poet JM). I don't know... I kind of think it captures something about him....

Below the thunders of the city street,
In some abysmal crevice of the bar,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
McCracken sleepeth: far off, sounds of car
Make music to his snores: around him swell
Shadows of poets, painters, drongos, drunks,
Old musos, madmen, socialists and punks,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell.
Some soothe his sleep with rhyming lullabies
Upon the stage, while some rehearse free verse:
There hath he lain for ages and will lie,
Battening upon Doritos in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep,
And rising, men and angels both shall curse:

MCCRACKEN WAKES! MORE BEER! shall be his cry.

He's a Barbie man in a Barbie world

Ken, Ken, confused amongst men,
Though made without parts he still has a heart
As a he he's not quite more hermaphrodite,
Sometimes a man and sometimes a tran,
Dressed in more dresses than you ever could guess,
Is being made of plastic so fantastic at all?
More doll than role model, still, that's all right
An idol? An icon? Androgynite.

Following his successes

Following his successes as a Golden Globe host, Ricky Gervais plans to move on to bigger and better things, and will next year host the inaugural Quambatook film festival.

Reports are he plans to 'mercilessly satirise' the vanities and pretensions of the people who make up the Quambatook film industry, with jokes focusing on material such as the time one guy came home from work a little drunk, and the habit a guy (the same guy, actually) has of picking his ear in public.

Pieces and bits

The small boy deep inside of me is positively fascinated by all the goings on, diggings up, driving round about, and excavations happening outside the nearby train station. On going there this morning, I noticed a whole load of dirt from who-knows-where lying around on what had previously been the carpark, a steam shovel acting like the mechanical equivalent of a broom and making high-pitched scraping noises on the concrete while it scraped this dust up, and another truck just driving up and down with a gigantic yellow... thing on it, which yellow thing would later doubtless be used for certain very definite and mysterious purposes. God knows what they're doing, but it looks to me very much like they're digging holes in one part of the ground, and dumping the dirt on other parts. I love it. Maybe if the council paid them enough money they'd stay there and do it forever.

***

Now that the Christmas/New Year holidays have wound up, and I have got back to work, I find that I am able to start writing and thinking creatively again. It's the same every year. There is nothing so stimulating and inspiring, I find, as having a paid job to do which you can be distracted from. Don't tell anybody I work with, though - especially if any of you readers out there actually are people I work with.

***

Soothing sounds of the morning:

pad-pad-pad-pad-pad-pad-jingle-pad-pad-pad-jingle-pad-pad-pad-pad

THUMPBANGYSLAM!

... pad-pad-pad-pad-pad-pad-jingle-pad-pad-pad-jingle-pad-pad-pad-pad...

and Harriet the cat, having deposited another purloined apple upon the floor by the bed, softly toddles out the door again in search of further wholesome activities.

***

Some spoonerist doggerel I wrote on the weekend...

Gullard is dill
Pudd is a roo
John Key is a Hunt
And Tarack is boo.

A poem about me

(Dedicated humbly to me)

I was talking behind my back
To the stranger who stood in the glass
Which is almost but not quite as hard as
Kicking yourself in the arse.

'You're not half of the man that I am,'
I said, 'Though you go by my name.'
He nodded and grinned ruefully
And said, 'But you're just the same.'

I stood watching him in the mirror
As I talked to him over my back
A perilous, complex manoeuvre,
But easy once you have the knack.

'You're not quite as tall as your height,'
He said, 'And I'm smarter than you.'
With both eyes I looked in his left one,
And simply said, 'me too.'

I finished with mutual compliments,
He smiled and said, 'touche'.
Having each fought ourselves to a draw,
We agreed we'd both won on the day.

I was talking behind my back
To the stranger I happen to be -
What a beautiful bastard he is,
That frustrating lovely me.

Flosophy

"Physicists! Why do they get to have all the fun? With their whizz-bang particle accelerators that spend all their time whizzing particles around and banging them into others? Why can't philosophers have a bit of fun? Why doesn't someone ever think of the philosophers, hmm?

I know - why can't philosophers have a... a... a... concept accelerator, which deploys all the tools of modern technology and whizz-bang stuff to, you know, whizz concepts and thoughts and notions and ideas and whims and smoosh them all into one another to form a gigantic ball of conceptual smooshiness, whereupon they would EXPLODE and, you know, do whatever ideas do then.

You might argue that this is exactly what the grey mushy matter in our heads known as a 'brain' does, but no! I want a concept accelerator that is as big as a particle accelerator! I want a titanic grey mushy organic thing that spans continents, and accelerates the largest thoughts in the world around at the speed of light! THAT would be cool. The physicists wouldn't look so smug then."

This is what I said to the roomful of philosophers standing around at the party with all their thoughts and their latest developments in epistomological conceptualisms and their -ishs and their -itions and their -isms and whatever. Whereupon the roomful of philosophers stared blankly at me for a few awkward seconds before going back to talking about what they were talking about before, and I turned my attention to the plateful of uneaten chips.

Inverted band names

Woollen Dirigible

The Static Mineral Objects

The Non-Gender-Specific Automatics

The Arachnids

The Patriarchs of Non-Creativity

AC/BC

Wooden Floozy

The Intact Vegetables

Gray Frederick

The Concrete Aboveground

Televisualbottom

The Land Ladies

Resurrecting Pollyanna

Lukewarm Spanner

The Me

(Thank you, The Celibate Rifles)

Three sort-of reviews

I've been meaning to do a review of some friends' works on this blog for a while, but it's hard to separate their works from their personality. So I ended up doing a couple of biographical-reviews. Here they are anyway...

Bruce Gillespie
Bruce seems to know almost everyone, have read almost everything written by almost everyone, and self-publishes several zines with contributions written by almost all of these people. BRG is more personal, Steam Engine Time and SF Commentary are pure, unadultered SF fanzine. (There may be more - I still have no idea in what order they come out, if any, and if Bruce told me I'd probably forget anyway).

Bruce's opinions and interests are vocal, passionate, many and varied, and invariably entertaining. As might be expected, he is full of information and stories about the Melbourne SF community in the early days, and how fanzines used to be produced. (Prior to the proliferation of printing and photocopying software, zines were produced on tools such as the mimeograph machine.) I remember recently hearing an anecdote about a book falling into Bruce's hands from amongst his copious bookshelves, and him reading the title and saying in a wondering voice, "I haven't read this!" I can well believe it. You can find copies of his fanzines at efanzines.com. Highly recommended.

Bill Wright
Every second month, Bill co-publishes, with Dick Jenssen (Dittmar), Interstellar Ramjet Scoop. It is a joy to behold, sporting a fantastic design on the cover by Dittmar, accompanied by notes in the zine about the cover (which may mention anything from string theory to dinosaurs to alternative dimensions in time and space - my favourite Dittmar cover is one from last year showing a dinosaur coughing up a furball, or the dinosaurian equivalent of a furball). Topics covered in IRS range from the geeky to the cheeky; in a recent issue Dittmar discussed 'dinosaur computers' - the early 1950s computers which were housed in gigantic warehouses, one of which Dittmar worked on. There is a regular section on clerihews, as well as the usual fannish letters.

At the bottom of every cover of IRS is a small photograph of Bill with lightbeams emerging from around his head, which for whatever reason makes me think of 1950s Scientology artwork. Bill, who I assume grew up reading copies of Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy from around that time, is undoubtedly aware of this pictoral reference and is wonderful company. His eyes light up when he discusses tax laws or accounting procedures, a subject which will forever be beyond me, but is also not averse to simple punning. IRS reflects these interests, and - like Bruce's zines, can be found archived on that weird and wonderful site, efanzines.com.

Komninos
At some point in the 1970s or '80s - I've no idea when exactly - Komninos gave up a career in the sciences to take to the road and write and read poetry. Bad for science, maybe, but definitely good for poetry. Ever since he's been leading the life of a poet, with occasional non-poetry related activities on the side, occasionally taking to the road to read his poems. He's probably read in more pubs than most people have ever drunk in. Some of his books include Komninos, and the various Komninos Manifestos, and reading through some of them now I just can't help thinking of the politics of the 1980s and 90s - stuff like

it's great to be mates with a koori
to know a gay man or two.
to have five lesbians for dinner,
and to cook them a vegetable stew.

Komninos is still going strong, you can hear him read his stuff at Melbourne venues like the Dan or the Brunswick Hotel - the gravelly tones of his voice are unforgettable. His voice is so gravelly that when you hear him read his laneway poem

i am the laneway that no-one walks down unless they have good reason
i am the laneway that no-one ever find themselves in by mistake

you instantly believe him. Shoot him an email and get a few of his books, they're worth it.

Existential insects

Mights - Mites so small that they may not exist at all. Include sand mights, wigwam mights, beard mights, staple mights, and night mights.

May Bee - A stinging insect that could possibly have been a bee (eg "Ow!" "What? Did you get stung by something?" "May Bee...") A special type of Might.
[See also: Would Bee, Should Bee, To Bee or the Not Too Bee]

Its - Like nits, only they really have no point whatsoever.

Gnots - Like gnats, only gnot.

Flowns - A species of flies that exist always in the past tense. They make a point of buzzing around in your ear just a fraction of a fraction of a second before you actually exist to do anything about it, just to irritate you.

Instructions

1) Go to the airport and wave around one of those placards with people's names on it. Because you do not know anybody getting off the plane, simply replace their name with the word 'You'. If you do not like whoever that 'You' happens to be, 'Them'. Look very busy and important.

NOTE: Similar results can be obtained at train station, taxi cab rank, etc, but for full effect, it is best to do it at the airport.

He wrote an elegy

He wrote an elegy that ended up as a eulogy, was mistaken for an allegory, was taken to court as an allegation, and finally gave him an allergy.

Later he gave up elegies and instead took up oology.

You can't believe anyone these days

I watched a pot and it boiled.

Back to worrying and wailing

Hello! I've been away for a while, but I'm back now and ready to get into a blog stoush, or make a small spelling mistake so other people can make a big thing about it, or grumble as if a relatively unimportant political event is the worst thing in the world, or get sworn at by trolls, or fulminate furiously about something a celebrity said that I don't agree with. Yes, Christmas and New Year celebrations, and the designated season of happiness that goes with them, is officially over, and we can all get back to what we like best - being miserable. Here were the official events of the year, as can be seen on any standardised calendar:

JANUARY - Worrying and wailing

FEBRUARY - Dreariments and dolefulness

MARCH - Sombreness and solemnity

APRIL - Gloominess and grimness

MAY - Horror and hellishness

JUNE - Awkwardness and anxiety

JULY - Nervousness and nagging

AUGUST - Darkness and despair

SEPTEMBER - Terror and torment

OCTOBER - Maudlin melancholy

NOVEMBER - Lugubrious lamentations

DECEMBER - HAPPINESS!

Well we can all breathe a big sigh of relief now that's over. On reflection, my proudest moment of the general Christmas celebrations was playing a Scrabble game with several younger rellies in which we all managed to get a swear word on the board. Excellent.

So, how have you all been? Read any depressing newspaper stories lately?

UPDATE! - I know what we can have a fight about! Remember a couple of years ago when Patrick McCauley published an Australia Day poem in The Australian and there was a bit of a stoush on the blogs about it? Well I heard McCauley read it out yesterday in the Edinburgh Gardens - and rather enjoyed it. Horrifying! Go on, start abusing me.