Putting the mental in sentimental

You know that nagging, niggling feeling of anxiety you get when you leave the house and all of a sudden you discover you're not quite sure if you left the oven on?

This evening, coming home on the train, I was thinking about some souffles I cooked, in a flat that I stayed in, before I moved in to another flat, before I moved in to this house, three years ago. And all of a sudden, I thought, 'hmm, wonder if I turned the oven off.' Funnily enough I couldn't remember anything about that at all, and a familiar nagging, niggling feeling of anxiety started up.

It's nice to have a nagging, niggling feeling of anxiety three years after you would be expected to have a nagging, niggling feeling of anxiety about something. So much less responsibility involved.

UPDATE! - Poem!

It is nice to remember
What you had forgot
Some 20 years after
You can do not-a-lot.

It is fine to drift back
To that fatal day
Now you are thousands (and thousands)
Of miles away.

It is sweet to hark back,
To fondly recall
Now that all you can do
Is one half of stuff all.

It is calming to think back
And not feel regret,
Though I'm free and you're not,
My darling Annette.

And in case you're wondering who Annette is, she's a person who had the bad luck to rhyme with 'regret'.

Tips for adding magic and mystery to your life

Want to make your house look like the steaming forests of Samarkand or Ind to add a little magic and mystery to your life? How about

1) BURNING THE TOAST
Yes, the carboniferous fumes floating poetically upwards from the toaster in the morning sunbeams will make your house seem full of enchantment and wonder - exactly the sort of enchantment and wonder that tourists will be looking for in Samarkand and Ind at this time of the year!

As an added touch, try and have some chickens poking around through the smoky atmosphere and stabbing at random things with their beaks, making your steaming forest seem positively Jurassic.

2) RUNNING A REALLY BLOODY HOT BATH AND CLOSING THE DOORS AND WINDOWS
Right to the top. Not only will it create a crapload of steam, but if it overflows, it'll be as if you're wading through the sort of swamp that, in a slightly different context (that context being the actual forests of Samarkand and Ind) extremely rich tourists would pay extremely large amounts of money for the partaking thereof. Try and have a banana palm sitting in a pot next to the bath, too. It'll add that little extra touch of authenticity.

I seem to remember in all the movies about the forests of Samarkand and Ind, they always seem to have a kookaburra laughing in the background too, so you could try getting a kookaburra. On second thoughts, that might be a little impractical in a bathroom context.

How your kitchen could look with the simple addition of a little burnt toast!

The intellectual capacity of chickens

Chickens have very intellectual capacities. Right now, our three chooks are out in the garden, sorting and scratching, digging and delving, furrowing and ferreting for ideas. What they generally find are worms, not ideas, but this suits them pretty well. Worms usually do taste better than ideas, unless the idea in question is pink and wriggling and eats dirt. This, however, is not the kind of idea that you generally find in orthodox publications of the sciences or humanities.

Chickens have been, quite unfairly, maligned by some people as being mindless. This is not true: chickens are extremely thoughtful, some might even say philosophical. Barely a moment goes by when they are not pondering and puzzling over the most obvious questions. Actually they have no time to get on to the more complicated questions as they put so much energy into the obvious ones. Should I eat this? Can I eat that? What is there to eat? These are the grand cerebral conundra that perplex the cogitations of your average backyard chicken as it makes its way through the empyrean on its humble question for knowledge. The answer to all these questions is, of course, yes, and the chicken sets out to find this out in an empirical fashion, pecking away at the problem with its beak. Eventually the problem disappears, although the chicken may not feel quite satisfied that it has found the answer yet, so it will set about at another problem straightaway. It is probably a good thing no chicken has as yet decided to unriddle the enigmas of Einsteinian relativity, as there is no telling what a little pecking could do to them.

The basic phoneme of discourse amongst chickens is the cluck. Actually it is the only unit of discourse amongst chickens, pretty much, so as you can imagine they work hard on each of their clucks, so that they end up with a wide variety suitable for all situations and walks of life. There are at least two:

THE CURIOUS CLUCK: Uttered by a chicken in the garden as they contemplate whether they should eat something.

THE FURTIVE CLUCK: Same as a curious cluck, except coming from the kitchen as the chicken contemplates what they should eat first.

Diligent scholars of the chicken-mind should take any and every opportunity of scrutinising your average chicken (don't worry, they're all pretty average) as it meditates its way hither and reasons its way thither. It is an instructive and edifying experience to see the chicken-mind at work, and indeed, as they think about this and that you can virtually script their thoughts.

SITUATION
Two chickens stand in front of an open door. They look at each other. They look at the door. They utter several curious clucks.

FIRST CHICKEN: (Thinks) That open! In go?

SECOND CHICKEN: (Thinks) That open! In go?

FIRST CHICKEN: (Going in) Can I eat this? (Utters furtive cluck)

SECOND CHICKEN: (Going in) What should I eat? (Utters furtive cluck)

A PERSON moves in the way of the chickens as they are coming in. The chickens look at one another in panic.

FIRST CHICKEN: (Thinks) Big thing in way! What do?

SECOND CHICKEN: (Thinks) Can I eat this? (Pecks at human foot experimentally)

PERSON: (Jiggles foot about to get chickens to move out)

FIRST CHICKEN: (Thinks) I eat concrete slab out instead? (Curious cluck)

SECOND CHICKEN: (Thinks) Yum, concrete slab. (Both move outside)

PERSON, who has meanwhile been uttering all kinds of different incomprehensible words closes the door and retires inside so it can utter incomprehensible words in peace.

Here is a picture the Baron took a little while ago of two of our chickens searching for the reason to life, the universe, and everything. What they have found is a piano instead, which is not very worm like at all. So I guess they're a little disappointed.

Although, of course, you can never tell with chickens. There's always something they're not telling you.

Magical modern miracle!

IN WHAT IS SEEN BY MANY AS A MODERN-DAY MIRACLE, a smiley face believed to represent the face of the Virgin Mary has appeared on a sheet of paper in a Melbourne home.

The Holy Emoticon, which is believed to consist of a colon, an en dash, and a close parenthesis, was found in the home of the Splutch family, in Epping, in Melbourne's outer north. "It stopped me right in my tracks," says Mrs Splutch. "I had to pull my husband over and ask, 'is that what I think it is'?"

Crude artistic representation of what the smiley face of Our Lady of the Parenthesis looked like.

However, this amazing Smiley Face miracle was soon to create a storm of controversy around the world, with papers in several countries soon claiming that the Sacred Smiley represented Buddha, Moses, or even Mary's little sister, Priscillina.

"These people are trying to discredit this modern-day miracle, and it's just not on," complains Father Grump, at the local Catholic Church. "They'd better be careful, or one day they'll see a Frowny Face of the Holy Mother appear on their toast, and then they'll be sorry!"

The miraculous smiley face has been sold to a Las Vegas casino for an undisclosed sum of money, believed to be in the tens of thousands.

Related: the European newspaper that published a smiley face representation of the Prophet Mohamed - and the protests that followed.

Slightly amusing and half interesting things that happen around our house that may kind of unamuse and sort of disinterest you

Bea was walking carefully along the fence when the little plastic frog thing on it FELL DOWN! She straightaway became SO excited that - SHE JUMPED DOWN AFTER IT!

And then, when she came inside to get food, she ran in so fast that SHE THUMPED THE SIDE OF MY SHOE and even then SHE DIDN'T STOP!

Meanwhile, Agatha the chicken was sitting in the corner of the garden ruffling the dust through her feathers. Then it started raining and the dust turned to mud - BUT SHE KEPT ON DOING IT ANYWAY!

Harriet was sitting on one side of the tree. Then Bea crept round the other side and JUMPED on her when she WASN'T LOOKING!

Plus, once, I swept up a whole pile of dust and cat hair from the living room. BUT HARRIET CAME ALONG AND SAT DOWN ON IT!

Another time, I went to sit down at the table. But I couldn't pull the chair out - it was too heavy - because BEA WAS SITTING ON IT!

This morning all three chickens laid eggs, and the eggs were ALL SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER!

OUR HOUSE IS SO UNBELIEVABLE, YOU JUST WON'T BELIEVE IT!

Public transport poetry: the perils of genre

I tried to read the
Haiku at the station, but
My train was leav

Meaningless domestic scene

Having put the puddings in the oven last night, I retired to bed to do pointless things on the computer for a bit. The following conversation ensued:

BARON: Are you in bed?

TIM: Yes.

BARON: Have you made it?

TIM: No, it's still in the oven.

BARON: ...?!???!?

Now, having told you that meaningless snippet of information, I need to go out onto the oval so I can run the bath.

Hey, let's have a talk about intranational geopolitical relations!

A common theme on this blog is other people talking about things they have no idea about, me talking about those things too, and me realising that I have no idea what those people were talking about either. Therefore, my usual conclusion is that I have no idea what I'm talking about most of the time; and most other people probably don't either. This is going to be another one of those posts.

The theme for today's post, which I will progressively obscure, confuse, and get befuddled about, is ASEAN. I know what that is: it's the Association of South East Asian Nations, duh. I can't say I've ever paid much attention to it, which is why until quite recently I had no idea that there was ever such a thing as an AADCP, let alone an AADCP2, an AANZFTA, an AANZFTA JCC, or for that matter

ADCG
AEEMTRC
AEGCD
AFDM
AFOC
ANEX
ARDCMR
ASNET-RECED
ASTNET
AUNQUANET
BAAIC
CCCA
EAWG
IAECC
QASAF

and so on down to

ZOPFAN.

Now the big list where I found all those is over here, but I can't say I care to read it, so I don't have any idea what any of those things are.* Probably most of the members of ASEAN don't have any idea most of the time what those things are, either. In fact, I have to wonder just how, exactly, any of these things can be said to exist either. Just what, exactly, distinguishes AIJV (the ASEAN Industrial Joint Venture) from a bunch of random people in a room together scoffing a bunch of scones? And what is the point of having a JAGEF, a NECTEC, or a SEAFDEC? Does ASEAN just keep these things in the back of the shed to roll out ever 57 years or so when they see a need for them? They seem very much to be possible organisations defined on the basis of other notional entities which exist as a side effect of other hypothetical enterprises which arise due to further speculative groupings: I feel much more certain about the existence of Higgs Boson particles than I do about these things.

At the same time I kind of love the grand bureaucratic flourishes of this language. I love the fact that Joint Consultative Committees, and related sub-committees, can be conjured into existence, complete with chairpersons and secretaries and assistant secretaries. It seems redolent of grandly aristocratic societies, the sort where people go about talking in the following manner:

ASSISTANT SECRETARY: Hail to thee, August Chairperson. May blessings rain down upon thee and all thy targets for the following quarter be exceeded. I bring thee greetings from the far west of this inter-regional nexus within which we reside, and observe thy benevolent presence with all due OHIM protocols.

CHAIRPERSON: It is well said, Assistant Secretary.

Both take a ritual sip from the ritual cup of ritual chamomile tea, and take a ritual bite out of the very-ritual-indeed lamington.

CHAIRPERSON: Pray, what news do you bring from your region?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY: Chairperson, it is grave: the efficiency in cross-border trade objectives that we set in the first quarter are in danger of not being met, and the Elder Career Representative from the Senior Persons Sub Committee - that worthy valetudinarian who hath her offices in the Far East - has similar tidings, I fear.

CHAIRPERSON: And what counsel hast thou?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY: Chairperson, we must act now... etc etc

It is, indeed, a great pity that people do not go around talking in this fashion most of the time; it would make a great deal more sense than what they do say. Maybe that's what all those bureaucrats have been practicing for, talking the way they do. Well it's about time they finished practicing and started doing, ASAP PDQ, that's all I can say, or people will start WTFing all over the place.

*And I don't think I'd be any more enlightened if I spent time reading the whole list either.

Rupert and the case of the protogynous diurnally synchronous dichogamy

Not that I particularly like the pile-on on all the Murdoch papers and Rupert Murdoch at the moment - not that I'm paying much attention to it apart from seeing it in all the blogs, through all the papers, and on all the television screens - not that I suppose it matters - not that I suppose you care (unless you do) - but this quote, originally by Bolt, though I got it from you, Steve, is a bit bizarre:

The incident [the pie in the face] was a reminder to the committee that bad things can happen - like lax security - to the most august of institutions.

I just looked up 'august' to double-check its meaning. 'Dignified and imposing', says Macquarie, 'calling forth the utmost respect, majestic' (well, I wouldn't go that far), and 'venerable'. Yep, you've got that right - Rupert's an old codger all right, virtually doddering. But hang on, I thought, when reading this: he's an 'institution'? I wouldn't go that far, but if he is, oughtn't we to float him on the share market, organise a Rupert committee, paint him up a bit, set him in stone and perhaps laminate some of his parts so that they don't cause us any trouble?

But then again, it just occurred to me before doing this post, they probably meant the British Parliament. Oh. Right then. Not much reason for what I've just written then.

This just in from the Baron, then: did you know the flowering pattern of avocados is an example of protogynous diurnally synchronous dichogamy? No, I didn't, and you certainly didn't either.

Implementing productivity goals

Normally in the morning I like to potter around for a bit, writing up a little something on the computer, make some coffee, prepare a sandwich, and get in a chapter or two of the book I'm reading before going off to work. If I don't fit in one or two activities into the morning then it really doesn't feel that productive.

This morning, after a few perfunctory attempts at doing, you know, stuff, I completely gave up on it and flopped back into bed, and was shortly joined by a cat. Bea stalked up and down over a couple of stomachs, and popped herself neatly onto the pillow next to my head. Consequently, the last half hour before I betook myself off to work filled itself up quite easily and nicely with activities consisting of

- Patting Bea.
- Stroking Bea.
- Tickling Bea behind the ears.
- Opening up the blankets to let Bea in and out.

It was an amazingly productive morning. It felt far more productive than my usual morning activities, and I think I'll take it as instruction for my future ways. Tomorrow, I might focus on growing my beard a little. The day after, I'll compare Harriet's eyelashes with Bea's eyelashes to see whose is longer. Now that's the way to get things done.

The epitome of epicurianism

Entrees
tuna, marinated in a sweet sauce, on a rich bed of flavoursome croutons, swirled together with a delectable compote.

Mains
Minced steak, rare, tenderly soaking on a platter of local mini-puddings - a popular favourite!

Breakfasts
A five grain muesli, delicately mixed in other crunchy seeds, lightly flavoured with seasonal spices for an intensely satisfying gastronomic experience.

Though as a matter of fact, the entree was cat food dumped onto a bunch of other cat food that had previously been mixed in with another bunch of cat food; the main was cat food plopped on top of more cat food; and the third was chook food, chook food, and even more chook food. So in each of these cases the animals just gobbled up the bits they liked and left the rest. Oh, and the chooks did a couple of turds in their five-grain muesli just to make everything quite clear.

An open letter to the Universe

Dear Universe, just a little request. Would you be able to stop holding other events on Saturday afternoons, 2-5? That's when I have the Dan O'Connell poetry readings to go to, you see.

Universe, I know you can do this. Saturdays being on the weekend, naturally, they're quite popular, but there are lots of other times on the weekend, apart from Saturday afternoons, 2-5! There's the Saturday evening, for instance, a very nice and excellent time to be holding other events in general. Saturday morning is pretty good too; I personally recommend it - a fine time, full of a feeling of adventure and heartiness, and it would seem to be a perfectly splendid candidate for a couple of events.

Or, how about this, Universe: you could hold more events in the evenings of the week as well! I'm sure you could space them out nicely. Tuesday nights seem pretty good. Wednesday evenings, well, for some reason that seems to be pretty full up already, but I think you could slot a few more events in there already. Why slot events in that Saturday afternoon timeslot, after all, when you've got 6 other lovely days to consider?

Universe, you've done a lot for us to be grateful for in the eternity of past and future time and the vast endlessness of space. You've bought us wonderful things, such as pi to an infinite number of decimal spaces, the beauty of mountain ranges as the soft evening sunset falls upon them, the sublimity of stars, the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and stories about unicorns. They're great, really.

But if you could avoid holding events on a Saturday afternoon that are not the Dan O'Connell Poetry readings I'd be most grateful.

Cheers,
TimT

Saturday scandal!

OUTSOURCED CALL-RECEPTION SCANDAL!
People have been outsourcing the job of receiving calls from outsourced call centres to outsourced reception centres, studies reveal.

The outsourced call receivers specialise in saying, 'no, not interested', and hanging up the phone which immediately rings with a call from another outsourced call centre, and these reception centres have been springing up all over India, the Phillipines, and China. However, concerns have been raised that some outsourced call centres also operate underground outsourced reception centres, in order to call through to themselves and meet their quotas.

Facts about this clandestine call-reception business are difficult to find, but it is believed that call centres full of people calling through to themselves merely in order to hang up on themselves so they can call themselves again are springing up all over China, the Phillipines, and India.

A helpful diagram.

However, concerns about the outsourcing of call reception jobs have sprung up amongst a number of unions representing call reception workers that have themselves sprung up since the breaking of this story five minutes ago.

"Isn't it high time we kept call reception jobs in Australia? This five minutes has been going for too long" says one union representative.

"If anyone is going to call themselves and receive calls from themselves merely in order to hang up on themselves so they can call themselves again, it should be Australian workers," says another representative of the representative union which began representing Australian workers five minutes ago.

Outsourced Call-Reception Centres could not be contacted for this story as they were too busy receiving outsourced calls from themselves and hanging up on themselves.

Things to do, no. 10,111

Start up a band making music for, by, and about little furry animals that live in holes in the ground. Call it The Ol' Time Brock'n'Mole Band.

Ocular observations on my peregrinations around the city

On the train going through the city loop the other day I noticed what appeared to be gigantic gleaming golden flies crawling all over a tall building on the other side of the Yarra. They were still there, yesterday: a whole family of them.

Now, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of a company, exactly, would approve of this project. Were they fooled into it, perhaps? And if they agreed to an infestation of gigantic gleaming golden flies, would they next, perhaps, sign up to an opulent elephant turd carved out of pure ruby? This, or other disturbing possibilities, gave me further pause for thought.

But most of all I wondered just what the hell it was doing there in the first place. Because, you know, as much as I enjoy looking at surrealist paintings, I don't exactly want to live in them.

The Sultry Vixen of Temptation in the Stately Pleasure Dome

Most mornings I take a couple of pieces of fruit (say an apple and mandarin) and a bit of lunch into work, whence I proceed to the ergonomically-designed chair (which shall henceforth be known as the Stately Pleasure Dome). At this point we all sit down and eye one another warily.

The mandarin is quickly demolished. The apple is summarily dismissed. At this point in the proceedings it is, maybe, thirty minutes into my day at work. Then, a subtle battle of wills begins with the Sultry Vixen of Temptation (the lunch) sitting on the desk. I look at it. It looks at me. I say to myself, 'no, wait for a while, or you'll have nothing to eat for the next four hours'. The Sultry Vixen of Temptation lasciviously licks its lips, winks its eyes, sways its hips, and before I know it, I have eaten it.

Last week the Sultry Vixen of Temptation was a peanut butter and currant sandwich. Yesterday it was a plastic container of grey mushroomy-sauce and cold pasta. Today, well, who knows what it will be? All I can say is, it's getting a little annoying having to face up to a Sultry Vixen of Temptation like a peanut butter and currant sandwich, because the inevitable moment in which they win me over and I stuff them into my gob seems a little ignominious.

So maybe I'll start taking some chocolate cake into work instead. That would seem to lead to a much more satisfying outcome.

Conversation 2.0

The Ambassadorial Delegation is visiting from Sydney. You know that word, 'conversation'? Well we don't worry about any of that stuff. Instead, we just sit around the table, with all our laptops out, typing busily away.

True, mistakes are made sometimes, such as when I went to poke D. on the facebook wall and I accidentally poked him in real life, or when I meant to tell everyone that we should eat breakfast now, but I just ended up sending them a group email instead. But in general, everyone seems to be getting along very well indeed. I suppose if I really want to emphasise an argument I'm making at any point, I can type REALLY LOUDLY, but there doesn't seem to be much call for that at the moment.

The communications revolution, what with all these mobile phones, and iPads, and dingles, and dongles, and computers, and internet, is really marvellous, isn't it? True, it may all end up in tears - I'll be on facebook chat with the Baron, but she'll be playing Scrabble with K., who will be concentrating on Skyping with someone else entirely, while D. pokes me repeatedly in the eye - I mean, Facebook wall - in the meantime.

In conclusion, here is a digitalised computerised whizz bang picture of a buttered crumpet, which I suppose I should eat at some point. The crumpet, I mean, not the digitalised computerised whizz bang picture.

Headlines I'd like to see

MAN QUOTES HIMSELF, ACCIDENTALLY FABRICATES QUOTE, LANDS HIMSELF IN LEGAL HOT WATER

Ethical dilemma

Scientists invent genetically-modified solar-powered cigarette in order to assist people who are giving up smoking with taxpayer money.

a) Should we be paying for this?

b) What if it was a racist lesbian nuclear-powered chocolate cake instead of a genetically-modified solar-powered cigarette?

Beneath the sink sits a bag full of scrabble tiles

There are some who would ask, what is the use of having a bag full of scrabble tiles beneath the sink, next to the washing detergent, steel wool, brushes, and sinkly paraphernalia. But I would ask those people in return: what is the use of not having a bag full of scrabble tiles beneath the sink, hey? Hmmmn? Tell me that!

O thou that tellest good tidings of Zine

'Zine' or 'zeen'? I've recently seen both spellings of the word used to signify 'a magazine, especially one about an alternative subculture' or 'a low-tech magazine... reproduced on the computer, often with a very personal style' (thanks, Macquarie), and my feelings on the matter have gone from utter ignorance to complete ambiguity. Sounds like the perfect subject for a blog post, then - so long as I mention the fact that I have a new zine out, the latest edition of Badger's Dozen, and you can get a copy off me for not very much.

As you of course know, the term 'zine', short for 'fanzine' dates back to 1965, and that's all that Etymology Online, I mean, you, have to say on the matter. Then again, apparently the alternative spelling 'zeen' has been around since the '90s, and is preferred by some parties because it more closely reflects the way the word is pronounced. Then again, what's that got to do with it? Some of my favourite words have nothing to do with the way they're pronounced. By the way, you can get my bright and shiny new zine off me at pay-pal - I'm at timhtrain at yahoo.com.au, and $3 can get a copy of the zine mailed to your door. Ahem.

In the end, does it really matter which way it's spelled? Hell, yes. And possibly, no. As you are probably aware, I'm fascinated with the grammar and syntactical rules associated with words that don't exist except in books, or may never even have existed in books, words that are made up on the spot - and, of course, words that have been around for a few decades but never really been known by a large amount of people, and so consequently have never been formalised and listed in dictionaries until fairly recently. Is 'Bilbo Baggins' really the correct way of spelling that name in English? And what do Hobbits have to do with my little zine about badgers anyway, which has lots of nice poetry and lovely pictures and a new Nottlesby article and you can get off me for, etc etc, providing your address. Good point. Me neither.

So, lastly, and also in conclusion, 'zine', or 'zeen'? Good question. How about option c) - 'feuilleton'?

PS Buy my zine!

A very festive festival to you all

Hey, it's End of the Financial Year, everyone! (Or at least it was a few days ago, which is as close to timely as you're likely to get on this blog.) End of Financial Year is basically one of the most important dates in the year, a time of joy and happiness and love and Powerpoint presentations. It's like Christmas, except with less present-giving and being with families, and more taxes and tax penalties for people who don't pay up.

Everyone celebrates the End of the Financial Year in their own special way, of course, but all over the country, the grand event will be marked with parties, celebratory dinners (without food, of course), and boardroom meetings in which everyone looks at a pie chart for an hour and makes incomprehensible noises at one another. You may or may not be familiar with this old End of Financial Year carol:

(To the tune of Good King Wenceslas)
Dividends, E-O-F-Y,
Targets, growth, EBITDA!
Fiscal outlook for next year
Looking good, blah-blah-blah!
Charts equations Powerpoint,
Bar graphs excel spreadsheets
Something something something something
Something something so-oooooo-ooooome-thing!

At Christmas there's generally an attitude that everyone has to at least try for a little time to be good to one another - 'peace on earth, good will to men', and all that stuff - but we can't be expected to live up to those standards the rest of the time, I mean, come on. At the End of Financial Year, however, the motto is very different: 'peace on earth, good will to me', and the jovial and happy spirit of the season is well expressed in that favourite (and very singable) old carol:

We wish you a productive first quarter
We wish you a productive first quarter
We wish you a productive first quarter
And death to your competitors!

Along with the general feelings of misanthropy and helplessness the season is often associated with a robust sense of paranoia, as we find in the following carol:

You'd better watch out
You'd better not shout
You'd better not cry
I'm telling you why
The taxman is coming to town.
He knows when you've been sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you have paid or not
So PAY UP FOR GOODNESS' SAKE!

The origins of End of Financial Year are shrouded in the mists of time, of course, and no-one knows when or how it started. It has been speculated that primitive accountants in the stone age first celebrated the event every year with the ritual sacrifice of taxpayers to the Sun God. Or something. (The science of accountancy was in a very primitive state back then, you understand). Now, we just sacrifice the taxpayers money to the Sun God, so you can see how much we've advanced.

What a nice and carefree time of year it is!

Thought for the day

Do elephants pick
Their nose with a stick
Because there's so much
Of their nose to pick?

Language is a funny old thing

Thrush, boobs, tits, coots. Four things which are guaranteed to give a little thrill to bird lovers the world over.

They give a thrill to non bird-lovers, too. But for rather different reasons...

A handy definition for a very common occurence

Somnambulance drivers - people who for some reason go about driving ambulances while they sleep until they find an emergency to attend. (Possibly an emergency caused by people who go about driving ambulances while they sleep, etc etc...)

The propriety of impropriety

Worthy of contemplation:

Go the fuck to sleep.

All women really want is a cup of fucking tea.

Considering these two examples yesterday at the airport, and considering the loud profanity I had uttered at quite an early hour in the morning (on dropping a box of asparagus seedlings), I couldn't help but come to the obvious conclusion: the thing is, inappropriate words are appropriate pretty much all the time.

Culture for a Saturday morning

This song adds a sense of terrible yet inexorable conquest to even the most everyday of tasks, whether it's putting a hatbox in a cupboard, taking the compost out, or slipping your feet into a pair of socks to keep them warm. True, it is a little incongruous and perhaps inappropriate playing it while doing simple activities, such as crossing the room to get to the other side, but that can't be helped.



As you can imagine, it's also quite useful to add that sense of terrible yet inexorable conquest to an occasion such as, say, terribly yet inexorably conquering an important European country.

This song, somewhat less so.

A list of holes

1. The hole that I put myself into in the bed. A very warm and comfy one, that.

2. The holes in my clothes, getting so numerous now (the holes) that I'm getting really really confused as to what limb I should put where, when in order to get optimum results out of the clothes.

3. The hole in my stomach when I get up out of bed in the morning, the principal reason of getting out of bed which is to fill up the hole in my stomach with breakfast.

4. The hole in my head that is satisfyingly filled when I read a pleasant sentence from a writer.

We need more doors

Just before or just after reading this article in the New York Times about a guy who'd once come out as being gay coming out as an ex-gay Christian (thanks Steve), I read this story on Catallaxy about a free market economist coming out as a woman after previously being a man (I don't know whether she'd ever come out as a he, but probably she had) - and the fears of a colleague that she was actually going to come out as a socialist. Really, it seems like you can come out about anything to anyone these days - it's gotten to the point where you expect several people you know to come out about something significant or insignificant every week. Just a decade or two after young men and women started coming out about being gay - and barely a few centuries after young women started coming out into society (God knows from where the young women came out from - the card drawer in the deal cabinet, perhaps?) coming out has got to the point that pretty soon, everyone will have come out about everything to everyone else, and they'll all have to go back inside again.

Amidst all these general comings-out, there is at least one thing you come out of that you don't need to make a declaration about. And that is the door. We ought to have more of it, I say.

Yoof-um-ism song

Can you eat a knuckle sandwich,
Mountain oysters on the side,
Can you drink some liquid courage,
Will it keep you warm inside,
Have you ever spied a camels toe
With your eyes shut wide,
Have you met a pig with wings,
Has it given you a ride,
Is there much pie in the sky,
Is it in the Good Food Guide?
Have you ever laughed your arse off
While sitting in a chair,
Can you put it on again and
Have you got another spare,
And if you have to break a leg,
Do you ever break a pair?
Have the French sent you a letter,
Have you mail from a snail,
Has the cat left you a message,
Have you heard the Pony Tail?
Have you slapped the turkey back,
Does the monkey spank you too,
If you've ever chased a cock,
Does the cock chase after you,
Have you water in the closet
For the turtle's head to view,
Are there knuckles to your moose,
Are they pink or are they blue,
Who was it took the piss,
Where did they take it too,
If you give the goose a bridle,
Will any wigwam do?
Is this song as longer, wider, higher
Than a piece of string,
Is a tonne of feathers higher
When time is on the wing,
Is it like a chocolate jellyfish
Painting square a lilac ring?

Or is it like a broken pencil,
Pointless?

On a certain splurg

While we're on the very specific subject of things, I drank a milk thing this evening. You know, one of those splurgs of coloured milk that they put in rectangular pieces of cardboard and sell at train stations and 7/11s and the like.

As splurgs of coloured milk go it wasn't bad, but what really struck me about it was the labelling. I would have been happy with just the name, you know, FUNKY BANANA (disclosure: the name of the product was not FUNKY BANANA) and the ingredients on it, but oh no. Not this package. It insisted on having the name, and the ingredients, and a description of the ingredients on it as well. It said something like this:

BANANA-FLAVOURED milk with REAL BANANA taste

Of course it's that combination of 'banana-flavoured' and 'real banana' that puzzles, so I turned to the ingredients and found

Milk
Banana concentrate (four per cent)
Sugar
Banana flavouring
Random stuff
Things

(Disclosure in addition to the disclosure above: the ingredients did not say 'random stuff' and 'things' on them. They were more specific than that.)

A couple of things about this: 'banana' to 'banana concentrate' probably stands in pretty much the same relation as 'a breakfast table' stands to 'a breakfast table chopped up into little pieces and put through the wood mulcher and then packed into a little box and put in the bin at work'. And if they had so much faith in this 'banana concentrate' then why'd they chuck it in with the 'banana flavouring' as well? (Not that I have anything against fake banana flavour, though. Some of my favourite bananas are fake bananas. Fake bananas taste real good.)

Anyway, what kind of person do you have to be to keep on coming up with ideas for new brands of banana-flavoured milk that, strangely, taste very similar to the brands of banana-flavoured milk that preceded them? Can you just imagine a milk-company CEO storming into his executive meeting and shouting, 'For too long, customers have had to put up with this inferior brand of banana-flavoured milk, the one where they have to shake the carton before opening it. WE HAVE TO INVENT A BANANA-FLAVOURED MILK THAT CUSTOMERS DON'T HAVE TO SHAKE. Oh, and tell customers how good it is on the packaging. WE'LL MAKE A KILLING ON THE MARKET!' I mean, it's never going to cause the revolution, is it?

And then I stopped thinking about it and drank the rest of my splurg of coloured milk before catching the train.

Yeah, that thing

You know that thing where an old friend you haven't spoken to for ages rings up and asks you how things are and even though lots of big things have happened to you between now and when you spoke to them last, those big things happened so long ago that they don't seem like new big things anymore, and you can't specifically remember them off the top of your head, and so you um and you aw and you ah and you end up talking about how nothing much has happened, really? And then you ask them how they are and they pause uncomfortably and they aw and they ah and they um and so on, and this goes on for ten minutes, before you actually remember one of the big things that you did, and because you don't want to make a big thing of the big thing you just throw it out casually, and sound awkward before telling it, and sound embarrassed after it, and make a bit of a joke out of the whole thing, just to not make a big thing out of the big thing? And so you just go back to the umming and awing? Yeah, that thing. That's a really weird thing, isn't it?

An ode to Newtown

Bit of fun over at Tim's with the announcement that Clover Moore is looking to pay an official Sydney poet. So far we've seen Betjeman send ups, a couple of limericks, a modern version of Mackellar, and a bunch of (well - two) poems by me. This is my second:

A non-rhyming poem about Newtown

Newtown! Newtown!
What a wonderful... spot.
Where house prices are high
And the students are ... too.

A place of perfection,
An upper-class slum
You can wax philosophique
While scratching your... head.

Newtown! Newtown!
With bookshops and the Dendy!
Where the bars are all funky
And the cafes are expensive.

Where everything's easy,
And free, and okay,
And that guy at the nightclub
Is probably going to bloody punch you in the bloody face if you bloody look at him like that again, he bloody swears!

Newtown! Newtown!
What a wonderful... spot!
Where house prices are high,
And the students are... too.

Unslam

The best poetry slams I ever went to were run by Crazy Elf. He'd encourage people to insult poets, say things like 'love the poet, hate the poem', and usually end the shows with him getting pelted by a Ninja (who shall here be referred to as The Ninja, because, well, she is). It was just so validating as a poet to be insulted - at most other poetry events I had known to then, the typical response people gave to poems was 'interesting' and 'meaningful'. And besides, I figured, if a roomful of drunk people who were predisposed to say you sucked could be won over, you wouldn't be doing too badly.

But I've been to a few other poetry slams, and heard of even more. There've been slams in town halls, and slams in libraries, and 'exhibition slams', and slams for school students, and sort-of slam events like the various Poetry Idol competitions that they run each year. Slam, slam, slam, all over the country. Which is kind of why I was pleased to see this on Wikipedia the other day:

...I hated it. And it made me really uncomfortable and... it was very much like a sporting event, and I was interested in poetry in large part because it was like the antithesis of sports.... [I]t seemed to me like a very macho, masculine form of poetry and not at all what I was interested in.

So I went to the slam poetry page on Wikipedia, and found another bunch of critics, and then I went to slam founder Marc Smith's page, and saw that even he had been critical of slams, as they have become. I also found this quote:

The very word 'poetry' repels people. Why is that? Because of what schools have done to it. The slam gives it back to the people.... We need people to talk poetry to each other.

And that's just it, isn't it? Poetry slams have gone from being a reaction against poetry taught in schools, and a reaction against the establishment, to something that happens in schools, and something funded by, and endorsed by, the establishment. Oh, I value the people that I've met at slams all right, and have enjoyed most of the ones I've been to - but the transition of slam poetry from being a fresh and exciting movement to something less than that has been quite rapid, really.

I'd still go to Elf's slams, though.

Terrifying true tales of encounters with wildlife

Just the other week, I was lying on the couch minding my own business, when a FEARSOME MINIATURE LION leapt at me and savagely CURLED up in my lap, ROARING in a subdued but TERRIFYING fashion while I attempted to subdue it by offering it a back massage.

The lion in the wild - nature photography taken by the Baron.

But that's not all. My brother came round on Monday, and he was accompanied by a HORRIFYING BLACK WOLF, with WHITE PAWS. This wolf proceeded to TEAR UP TREES WITH ITS BARE JAWS, and HURL them about before running up to me looking exceedingly THREATENING and DANGEROUS. I then attempted to distract the wolf by hurling the trees back into the park repeatedly, but it didn't work - THE WOLF KEPT BRINGING THEM BACK!

And it gets worse. Our backyard has been colonised by GROTESQUE DINOSAUR LIKE REPTILES, with DAGGERS INSTEAD OF MOUTHS, and WINGS IN THE MANNER OF PTERODACTYLS, only somewhat FLUFFIER. And over the past couple of days they have retreated to their FOUL REPTILIAN DEN occasionally and lain several MONSTROUS CALCITE OBJECTS, which over time may hatch into something even MORE monstrous. We are attempting to subdue this process as best we can, by storing the eggs in safe keeping. In the fridge.

YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO CAREFUL!

The conclusion I have drawn from the long weekend

One must try not to eat all of the pear and rhubarb crumble before one adds it to the oven. Or adds the pears to it. Or rhubarb. It's just not the thing to do.

On the pleasures and dangers of naked bike riding

(For Randall, who may be attending)

We mingle and sing
And we go ding-a-ling
As we slide and glide past
I ride past with my thing;

And I sing as I wing
Tra la la I'm the king
My whole body tingles
As I fly with my thing;

Not a thing can go wrong
As I pedal along
And go hammer-and-tongs,
Just me and my thing;

But if I should angle
The wrong way and dangle
Right into the chains
And make my bike prang,

Yes, if I get tangled,
I could get very mangled
I'd be strung out and wrung out
And hung out to dry,

Yes, if I should prang
I should shout Sturm und Drang,
And hang on in pain
To what's left of my thing....

But not a thing can go wrong
And I go ding-a-ling
As we slide and glide past
I ride past with my thing...

Answers for aspiring concert pianists

Q: Franz Liszt wrote some of the most difficult and complicated music in the world, music that many great pianists have been unable to master. How can I play his music?

A: On the CD.

Q: How do you spell Tschaikovsky?

A: Exactly the same way you pronounce it, with a great deal of difficulty.

Q: Is it actually possible to play Chopin's Minute Waltz in a minute?

A: For you, he meant one note every minute.

Q: Triple time, or common time?

A: Only in the European football leagues. Here we have quarter time.

Book suggestion

A handbook for veganism titled The Life of Pie. Pack it with as many lurid, blood-spattered details as possible, following the complete production of a pie from beginning to finish. Then get people in pie shops to sell it for you.

UPDATE! - Also, a movie suggestion. Tofu Panda, the harrowing tale of a Panda Bear who overcomes the scorn of his family and friends, and gives up the rapacious bamboo food industry in favour of a more ethical diet based on that blubbery white stuff wot they sell in the supermarkets.

Pink psychological horror

I went to the zine fair on Saturday, and the guy I was sitting next to at the zine fair on Saturday was selling a book that he called "dark psychological horror". I couldn't help but think: "as opposed to what? Pink psychological horror?"

PINK PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR

Yesterday, Marcie came home from the work and found that the painters had painted her bathroom in entirely the wrong shade of pink. It clashed with the toilet so violently!

And the horror and despair of that terrifying incident remains with her until this very day.

Musical notations for life

agitato



blearioso - the blurry quality of life in general after one has drunk lots of alcohol.

blurto - suddenly saying something embarassing

blurto blurtissimo - extremely embarassing.

colorectura - manner of speaking after an enema.

groan colour - the sound quality of a groan, moan, whine, whinge, or grizzle that distinguishes it from other groans, moans, whines, whinges, or grizzles.

grumposo - stomping about in a grumpy manner.

grumposo ma non troppo - grumpy stomping, but in a placid and contented way.

molto agitato



muddleato - not being sure what to say about something, while you are saying it.

mumbleato - speaking inaudibly.

hmphoso a soso - making non committal noises.

shizzicato/shizzicati - sounds punctuating a conversation while one is on the toilet.

tumpani - playing melodies on someone's stomach.

xbfjqwflgggggggavotte – the curious dance the cat performs on the computer when you are typing an important email up, putting in a whole string of meaningless letters into the email.

xbfjqwflgggggggantarella – the frustrated dance you perform when, after typing those letters into the important email, the cat concludes proceedings by somehow sending the email off into the ether.

Too late to be too late

Today, I finally got around to pulling the washing out of the washing machine, one day after it had been washed. I got around to it because my memory finally got around to remembering about it, twenty four hours after it was supposed to remember about it. This convenient lapse in the memory of my memory meant that I began putting the washing out on the day that the weather decided to put off the sun for another three months or so, thus ensuring that the washing would, in turn, do its best to delay any drying out that might previously have been planned for it - on, say, the day I happened to put it in the washing machine.

So it was that all the procrastinations performed by the various parties came together to form a beautiful procrastinatory whole, and it was a beautiful thing to see.

And so, with a self-satisfied smirk, the poet lays down his pen, having set down another epigram to irritate posterity

Poetry is the complicated art of saying simple things.

Loudspeaker loudspeaker loudspeaker man

There's something about a voice coming from a loudspeaker that always makes you sit up, pay attention, and do as you're told, and by 'you', I mean 'me'. After all, when you're a kid you never get given a loudspeaker to speak out of yourself - your own speaking is plenty loud without it. Being in possession of a loudspeaker is always the special prerogative of teachers, and prison guards, not to mention people who work on public transport, and they are generally a combination of the other two categories anyway.

This all leads me easily and naturally to the subject of Melbourne public transport, which I'm not going to talk about except for in this rest of this post. Because, if there's anywhere that you'll see, by which I mean 'hear', the authority conveyed by the loudspeaker more thoroughly abused than on Melbourne public transport, then I'd like to see (hear) it for myself.

On North Melbourne Train Station, where I get off to go to work, a particular sarcastic chap seems to have control of the loudspeakers, who hectors those who make minor infringements on platform 5 crankily whenever he has the opportunity. Taking the tram to Fitzroy once, a chirpy official announcement about validating your ticket (or something like that) was broadcast through the train, in a cheery Kath and Kim accent. Once, when we were walking along Brunswick Street, the Baron and I even witnessed, to our amazement, a tram driver somehow switch on a loudspeaker operating outside the tram in order to harrumph crankily at the person driving the car slowly in front of him.

Not to mention this, that occasionally when I catch the early morning train in to work, an old dude with a positively ancient voice quite frequently seems to be driving it; and this old chap likes nothing better than to switch on the loudspeakers and have a chat with the whole of the train. He pretty much has a captive audience - sometimes, when we're waiting between stations for the line to clear up, quite literally captive. I've had him several times; last Christmas when we were drawing slowly in to Flinders Street Station, he turned on the loudspeaker and talked about family Christmases, and the joke he would have with his father in law. This Wednesday morning, he switched on the loudspeaker, and began a long and meandering conversation that seemed to be heading nowhere (kind of like catching the trains, in fact), before remarking casually that there were hot air balloons in the sky that could be seen through the window.

It was this last comment that really did me in. I've had people use loudspeakers to tell me to do this, do that, validate this, and go to that; but never have I had them use loudspeakers to chat casually about things like hot air balloons floating around in the sky.

People speaking over the loudspeaker will never seem the same again.

Grumps, waffles, farts, snorts, and harrumphs: assorted notes

Victoria has had laws against swearing since 1966. Recently the Victorian Government has been tinkering with laws regarding how offensive language is going to be punished, but they haven't made any radical changes - swearing was illegal, and still is illegal. But 'Things stay just as they were before' doesn't sell papers, so the papers have all been looking for angles: 'Aussies to be fined for swearing', cries Breitbart, while The Age waffles 'Big fines for those who cry foul'. And to be fair there are questions to be asked on this story - for instance, why it's a story at all. Labor introduced the laws on a two-year trial basis. Could it, y'know, be political bias in the papers?

***

All in all, it would seem to be a pretty effective non-story story -but then papers are full of that sort of stuff. Not only the papers - Geoff's been getting his knickers in a knot saying the Victorian Government has banned swearing, which of course they haven't, and then uses this false premise as an excuse to go on a long political rant, filled with as much swearing as he can get away with (lots, as it turns out.) I strongly disagree with the basis of this essay - you shouldn't ever use an excuse for swearing. Swearing is much too important for that. Swear words deal in concepts ranging from sex to cursing to the body to prayer: you shouldn't ever excuse yourself for talking of those things.

***

Meanwhile, the Great Big New Ban That Isn't Actually New on swearing is also inspiring poetry by cranky young men, and a big protest. But then, just about everything the Victorian Government will do would inspire a big protest - they're the Liberals after all, and, hey, you might as well start ranting and raving now before they actually do stuff too terrible, just to stay ahead of the curve. It might actually end up helping the Liberals stay in, but then, hey, all the better - so much more excuse for ranting and raving.

***

I suppose you haven't been following the story about plain paper packaging on cigarettes, and nor have I. But despite my not following the story my ears did prick up when I heard someone from anti-smoking group ASH talk about this (I heard them when I wasn't listening to a story about plain paper packaging, you understand) -

Health and child protection organisations have urged the Liberal/National Parties to reject tobacco industry threats and support health legislation mandating plain tobacco packs.

And there's that word again -

The call follows threats by the head of British American Tobacco Australia that the country will be flooded by cheap cigarettes if the health policy to reduce tobacco advertising goes ahead.

The threat is apparently they will cut the price on cigarettes! Man, I wish a chocolate company would threaten me right now. Maybe I could get some French creperie's to threaten me, too. That'd be sweeeeeet. Go on, you bastards, I can take it!

***

There's nothing do gooders like better than taking bad jobs off people in developing countries and leaving them with no jobs instead. Even so, I was a little surprised by this ad for Z Energy, a New Zealand petrol company, in which they proudly proclaim they are returning call centre jobs to New Zealand. There are two sorts of people who might have problems with this - the people getting the calls (no-one wants to speak to a call centre), and the people doing the calls (it's a massively horrible job). Z Energy appears to be giving one bunch of New Zealanders a chance to yell and rant and fume, and another bunch of New Zealanders a chance to be yelled and ranted and fumed at. Next up, they might declare a minor civil war. That'd really be the shit, hey?

A confession

Sometimes I eat my sometimes foods all the time.

But why must I remove my comfortable socks?

Life was never meant to be perfect. But why should it be necessary to remove your warm jumper, your cosy jeans, and your comfortable socks in order to get into the warm, cosy, and comfortable bath? Surely a way could be organised so that one's comfortable socks could stay on and stay comfortable while one is in the bath? Those people who specialise in such areas of study (whatever they are) should get onto it.

I stole all the music lyrics

And you can't have them back:

ooh
sha
la
woah
ah
uh-huh
mmm hmm
yeah
whee
well-a
ba-bop
be-bop
doo-bop
whee-bop
shmm
cha-cha
fa-la
la-la
ya
shabbady shabbady shabbady
doop
woop
tickle me fickle me
baby
oh yeah.

Blurst from the past

A blurst from the past. About 15 years ago, to be precise (precisely ambiguous, that is), when I was still a callow stripling in year 11 in high school.

At the time we were studying Bruce Dawe's poem 'Weapons Training', a piece in which a manic military nutter with an authoritarian streak harrangues his troops prior to sending them into battle.

The teacher, a rather fiery and passionate Indian chap, was attempting, unsuccessfully, to get his students, one of them being me, to read out the poem in its entirety. A few bored attempts were made at the first lines, quickly broken off with the usual comments of 'this is so stupid, Sir', and other, less appealing, epithets.

So I volunteered myself to read the piece. Disgusted at my fellow students inane readings, and wanting to give the piece a good go myself, I really let loose and threw myself into the psychotic role with demonic intensity, growling, shouting, barking, snarling, and snapping at the students and teacher gathered in front of me. Several foam-flecked minutes later, I was wiping the spittle from my face, the students were snickering en masse, and the teacher was wiping the tears from his eyes.

It's only recently, when I've started performing poetry around the traps, that I've realised how astonishingly prescient that moment was. I suppose I was bound to get into either poetry - either that, or enrol into the manic military nutter academy and work my way up through the ranks until I got to harrangue troops in a psychotic and/or demonic manner. Are the two things so different, really?

Going down thinging

Just learned last night that four pieces I sent in got rejected from Going Down Swinging. That's okay, apparently they had seven thousand submissions - which means that less than 0.1 per cent of authors submitting would ever have got in anyway! (Authors only being allowed to submit four pieces). No wonder editors usually apply a strict editorial policy of nepotism. No wonder I have a zine. It makes things so much simpler.

Things I have learnt: a continuing list

#979868
Licking the plate is fun, but can be problematic. Especially if you have a beard.

#47
The cat might be winding its way around your legs because it likes you. It might also be doing that because it hopes to trip you up, causing a fatal and irreversible accident which results in you breaking several bones in your body and/or dying. How do you know which it is? Well -

1) Is it happening at the top of a flight of stairs?
a) Yes.
b) No.

2) Is it happening after you have done something the cat dislikes? (Taking them to the vet, etc)
a) Yes.
b) No.

3) Is your cat a psychopath?
a) Yes.
b) No.

- this quiz will probably not help you.

Music for displeasure

Everyone wants to be happy, and sometimes the best way to be happy is to read, watch, look at, listen to, or experience sad, sobering, horrible, sombre, depressing, and otherwise troublesome art. Unhappy art can make us very happy indeed. Why this should be is probably one of those profound philosophical problems, and I won't even attempt to answer it today. Instead, I'll just talk about some music that has been depressing me lately, and, hopefully, will depress you too. You're welcome.

Music for a while, Alfred Deller
This CD consists of music written by Henry Purcell, long dead, sung by Alfred Deller, who specialised in music written by long dead people. Deller himself died in 1979, which rounded things off nicely. The basic set up of the CD is this - a maudlin Alfred Deller, singing to a lugubrious harpsichord, with a funereal cello creaking away as well. Deller's pace varies from that of a sprightly turtle to a sombre death rattle, with his tone meanwhile swaying from a sorrowful sighing to a more manly melancholic moaning. Deller is never so vulgar as to allow an emotion such as simple cheerfulness into his interpretations; even well-loved lyrics such as

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die...

are treated with the same gloomy seriousness that a puritan might regard marriage. This is excellent old grouch music, perfect for pepping yourself down after the worst day of your life, or just generally maintaining a mood of desolation and grief, or sometimes just because.


Music composed by: a dead person
Lyrics: various dead people
Performed by: people dead, or soon to be dead
Subjects: death, and other stuff.
Genre: a dead one.

Beatrice bold

Here's a sestina, a ridiculously difficult sort of poem to both write and make sense in. The only other sestina I've successfully written, quite deliberately, lacked all sense and meaning whatsoever, so the fact that there's even a glimmering of meaning in these lines that follow I consider to be quite worthy of remark. (This is a true story, by the way, though some details have been omitted.)

One time in Melbourne the Baron and me
Had a flat and two cats called Harriet and Bea
And we all lived together in Location C
Until one day we moved to a suburb called G
With a frontyard, a backyard, a bush and a tree
And "Oh!" said the Baron, "we'll be happy and free!"

But Bea said to the Baron, "we are trapped! Set us free!"
And she miaowed and she miaowed at the Baron and me,
"For this isn't my flat and that tree's not my tree
And where have you taken us? How can it be?
We must flee we must flee from this suburb called G
For our home is not here - oh why don't you SEE?"

And she pined and she longed for her old flat in C
And the moment the door opened - BOOM! - she sprang free!
And she ran harum-scarum from the suburb called G
From her sister Harriet, the Baron and me
And we called and we hollered we shouted for Bea,
In frontyard in backyard by bush and by tree.

She was not in our bush she was not under our tree
We searched and we searched but we just couldn't see
We drove to spot A we searched suburb B
And could she o would she now she was free
Flee from her sister, the Baron, and me
And flee back to spot C from her new home in G?

The rain fell like tears on the suburb called G,
We had almost despaired when THE NEIGHBOUR'S FIG TREE
That was next to the home owned by the Baron and me
Started shaking and shivering and what did we see
In the leaves but the face of a cat who'd run free,
A wet and cold renegade - WHY YES! IT'S BEA!

Now our home's a cosy nice place in which to be
The cosiest nicest home in all suburb G
Two cats and two humans all happy and free
With a plum and two pear and an orange tree -
And Bea never more pined for the flat in spot C
But stayed put with Harriet, the Baron and me.

Envoi:
The Baron and me and Harriet and Bea
Would love you to see our new home in G
With 21 trees - and two cats roaming free.

The meaning of cleaning

The night before the morning after, which is to say last night and this morning, I had been chatting with L. on Facebook about the general cleanliness of the house. "Don't panic!" she said. "Is there a path?" It was obviously a rather misguided question: for one thing, brooms are able to make excellent paths. For another, I was going to do all the cleaning up the morning after the night before.

Of course, the cats ably assisted with the clean up by a) depositing several poos in the study, and b) leaving a defunct pigeon in the middle of the loungeroom floor. I dealt with the poos by scraping them up, as they appeared, over the course of several days, wrinkling my nose, and holding the bag out before me as I walked to the bin outside. The pigeon was dealt with, similarly, by me stumbling out of bed bleary-eyed and woozy, exclaiming loudly on seeing it lying on the loungeroom floor, putting it in a bag and taking it to some random location outside and then forgetting all about it. I then retired back to the bed to consider matters more thoroughly, with my eyes shut.

Amidst all this hustle and bustle I do vaguely recall one or two other things about the cleaning up. I filled the sink full of hot water and chucked all the dishes in. (Can't remember what happened to them after that though). Various papers and pens and other things were taken up from arbitrary locations and placed away in other arbitrary locations, or sometimes squirreled away for safe keeping under certain arbitrary objects that I had previously been arbitrarily sleeping in.

Harriet contributed to the proceedings by leaping all over the couch and leering off into space like a maniac.

Oh, and, at some arbitrary point I stopped, locked everything up, and wandered off to the catch the bus to the airport where I would meet the Baron.

After my half-hearted effort at cleaning up, there are one or two conclusions I can draw:

1) The more you clean things up, the more you notice smaller things that also need cleaning up, which lead to even smaller things that you might perhaps clean up if you have the patience to.

2) In order to keep up with the cleaning up, you have to effectively do it all the time. In fact you have to do the cleaning up more than all of the time, which is difficult, and somewhat inconvenient.

Oh, and also I would make this observation: what a lot of dust there is in the world. It makes you wonder what the point of all that dust is, doesn't it? Just floating around the house, slowly forming in great grey drifts and gusts, until eventually every person's home fills up with titanic dust dunes, and becomes like the Sahara. Except more grey. And with more mites. It should be due to happen any day now...

Representative cat on couch, not, however, leering like a maniac. (Photo via the Baron)

Ways to make the world a better place

So let me get this straight -

pirates - arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

zombies - urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

cats – purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

cars – whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

dogs – grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

eskimos – brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

philosophers – errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Since the only thing separating all these things seems to a couple of letters, why not omit them entirely? Then they can share the one word between them. Also, it would effectively turn all eskimos into ninjas, which would make the world a much safer place. (Then again zombies would become pirates and pirates zombies, which mightn’t be so safe, but you can’t have everything.)

Rules for being a cat #334

Found water is better than bowl water. Stolen water is better than found water. Forbidden water is best of all, as a matter of fact it is absolutely compulsory.

Therefore drink from the toilet bowl as soon as you have the opportunity. Good kitty.

Would you like your desk with skim, double-shot, or fish eggs?

This morning, I spilled coffee along my desk at work. You might think this would cause some annoyance to my other colleague who shares that desk with me at night. But then again, the coffee spilled was a latte from a place which had been listed as one of the top 100 cafes in Melbourne. So who knows?

This same colleague recently threw out a Very Useful sheet of mine with handy Maori terms on it that I had been keeping at the same desk. True, this sheet looked old and scrappy, but it was Very Useful nonetheless, and it also had numerous coffee stains upon it. Then again, the coffee stains were probably from instant kitchen coffee, so maybe that's why it got thrown out? Hmmm.

Tomorrow morning, I might go and pour Russian black caviar onto the keyboard as an experiment. We'll see how that turns out.

A small victory

Although I had my pants on for work already, I took them off again, went back to bed, and waited until the heater had warmed up my tracksuit pants. Which I just put on.

It was a small but satisfying victory.

Planking makes you go blind, you know

The parental unit will be coming down to Melbourne at the end of the week. I fully expect them to ask me if I know anything about The Planking. Years ago, when I was at uni, I remember them asking me if I listened to The Silverchair. I'm pretty sure they do it on purpose.

If I ever have kids I'm going to do exactly the same thing to them. I'll read up on all the bands and latest internet fads, and find ways of mispronouncing their names. Possibly while carrying a walking stick and poking my progeny with them. Ooh my, it'll be fun. I think I'll go and poke something with a walking stick now just to get into practice.

Puzzling Australian locations

Whereburton

Mightagone

Whengarratta

Err

Whyalong

Which Whyalong

Unundale

Errs Rock

Willingong

Lala

Derrrwin

Blurk

Inspectatoring

Has anyone been reading the Australian Spectator? I still pick up a copy occasionally; the one I got yesterday was a mixture of Very Bad, the Rather Good, and the Extremely Strange.

The Very Bad: John Heard's review of the latest Australian Quarterly by David Malouf. The guy writes like he's been reading all of the best Catholic theologians, and taking their worst lines. It's good to hear from John again - he used to write the blog Dreadnought, but I stopped reading it and then apparently he stopped writing it - but he just doesn't seem to write well for the magazine format.

The Rather Good: notes by Peter Coleman* and Mark Latham. Coleman has been writing for years for Quadrant, where I admit I've found his writing a little dry, but always graceful. In his notes for the Spectator his writing is still dry - dryly witty, that is. They also have the interest of coming from a person with years of experience and knowledge amongst the Australian literati and political set. Latham's column, meanwhile, needs no explanation - as Labor leader Latham displayed a complete lack of morals and good taste, which of course are excellent journalistic qualifications. His column is extremely nasty, and extremely funny.

The Extremely Strange: Cory Bernadi's** Diary. (This is the diary column that is written by a different person for each edition of the Spectator - apparently the best person they could find this week is a policy hack from the Senate.) Even stranger - the article on Don Brash, branding him as 'Thatcher's Kiwi heir', inspiring the cover art for this issue, featuring, I kid you not, Thatcher in iron-plated armour and Union Jack swimming costume, lashing a rabid Don Brash onwards. WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA FOR A COVER? I feel a little ill...

Look, a lot of the pleasure I got out of The Spectator when I bought it regularly was because of its gossipy, insider quality - you had the daughter of the son of someone who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1890 telling amusing and racy stories about things happening in the House of Commons bathroom, for instance. The Australian literati, and the Australian political classes, just can't muster up as much excitement, yet, perhaps because of the relative sizes of Australia and Britain. (The UK has a similar population size though it has much less space in which to spread that population.) Maybe the Australian Spectator still doesn't know what it wants to be - an imitation British magazine for Aussie Tories, or a supplement to the British magazine, or a combination of both, or something completely different?

*That link is to a previous column by Coleman, the current one doesn't seem to be online.

** Links to a boring political website for a boring politician.

What not to do in your garden

I'm quite enjoying doing this gardening blog thing. It's so much easier than, you know, gardening. The rain is helping, too: it rains down in a rainy fashion, making it comfy and warm for me inside, and doing all the watering of the gardening that I'd have to otherwise do, and all I have to do is, well, let's see,

encourage the chickens to eat the broadbeans

get the cats to dig up the spinach

herd the slugs over towards the silverbeet

And we're all sweet. Wait, what - I don't have to do any of those things either? EVEN BETTER.

Here's my latest post.

But enough about me, let's talk about my memoirs

Random stuff happening to me in the next month

- I'll be at a zine luncheon at Soul Food cafe on Saturday, 28 May, so if you're in town, pop in and say hi.

- I'm doing some guest blogging on the Baron's Yates gardening blog while she's in Canada. So far, my helpful updates have included information on plants that eat people, and, well, not much else really.

- Will be performing at the HRAFF slam next week. I wish I could tell you what HRAFF stands for but it's gone right out of my head. Something about human rights? And the word festival is in there as well. Anyway. Come along!

- Oh, and hey, out of the blue I got invited to be part of a Continuum convention panel on zines. Ha! As if I know what I'm talking about. Zine-making, like blogging, to me is pretty much make up the rules as you go along. And then forget all about them a moment later.

But enough about me! This blog is all about you! What's happening to you lately? Don't worry, you can share in the comments.... I promise I won't look at them, I'll just read them.

Very cultured sentence

When the CD playing the music that I was listening to suddenly stopped working, Mahler's Das Lied Von Der Erde suddenly turned into Tim's Das Lied Von Der Merde.

Animals that begin with Q

Little quadrate pebblesnail
Grovelling for diatoms
On the pebbly-water bed
Through your whole life long
Where are the fans and followers
The facebook devotees
Have you no poems or paintings,
No statues and no songs?

What's up with Watts up?

According to Watts Up, this YouTube is the best done animal humour ever. As if. Charlie, the Wonder Dog is by far the best animal humour ever.

Quote this

People talk about how it's important to read a quote in its original context. But what if I just want the quote and not the context? What if the context is crap? What if I can give it a better context? What if the quote works better without the context anyway?

Who wants context anyway? What's so good about context that people always want to hear it? Context is boring. Just give me quotes, all the way, man.

AbitaboutAbbottabad

Didn't know until this afternoon that The Australian had a little poetry thing calling for poems about Abbottabad, ending today. Oh well.

A nun in a habit in Abbottabad,
A habit of rabbit in Abbottabad,
Met up with the abbott who ran off with her habit -
The abbott was bad in Abbottabad.

She ran after the abbott who had stole her habit
To grab it, to nab it, her habit of rabbit,
She tackled the abbott, he shouted 'dagnabbit!'
- The abbott was sad in Abbottabad.

He started to jab it in Abbottabad
To stab at the habit in Abbottabad
'If I can't hab the habit, then no-one shall habit!'
Cried the abbott quite mad in Abbottabad.

So if you're in a habit in Abbottabad,
A habit of rabbit in Abbottabad,
And you meet the abbott, even if it's the sabbat,
Then RUN!, for the abbott's a cad in Abbottabad.

Picky picky

On my Friday lunch break, I picked up Judith Brett's Quarterly essay on John Howard and the Australian Liberal Party, and had it finished later that night. As political pieces go, it wasn't too shabby, but my goodness me it could have done with an edit.

The main game for Keating when he was treasurer was economic.

Who would have guessed?

I invented an aphorism

Nietzsche's philosophy is better than he thinks.

A language described

French, where so many letters are not pronounced, that the last letters are silent, the first letters are mute, and the middle letters are usually left right out. So basically, the language has no words in it whatsoever.

Probably no surprise from the nation that brought you impressionistic art (Monet), impressionistic music (Debussy), and impressionistic dogs (the poodle).

Diplocats

Yesterday it was off with the cats to the place with the nice lady who smiled and stuck metal things in their behinds when they were not looking.

You wouldn't think she'd enjoy it all that much, sticking metal things in the behinds of cats when they're not looking. But apparently she stays there at that place all day and does it. You'd think, indeed, that the nice lady who smiled would rather set some appointments with cats just to roam around the place and eat a few treats. Then she'd be the nice lady who played games and gave treats and smiled and stuck metal things up the cats behinds. No, apparently not.

The cats reacted to this whole experience quite diplomatically, growling and slashing their claws about quite furiously, in the manner of cats who had just had metal things stuck up their behinds, which, as you'll recall, they were.

It makes you wonder, doesn't it. What's it all about?

Anyway, since then they have been recovering from the whole traumatic experience by curling up in a ball and sleeping. They were barely even interested in outside time.

Here is a picture of Bea in happier times on the weekend, celebrating the victory of the Richmond Tigers by posing dramatically in front of some goals.

Conspiracy bonanza

So after the announcement of Bin Laden's death yesterday, I notice there have been a couple of conspiracy theories popping up about whether it was him at all.

Sounds to me like the perfect opportunity to take several conspiracy theories (birtherism, trutherism, and this new Bin Laden deatherism) and join them all together:

Man who does not exist killed by illegitimate President for event which he did not cause...

Post apocalyptic love songs

1.
If you were the last man on earth
And I were the second-last girl
And we were trapped in a room while the robo-drones swooped overhead
And I was slightly deranged
And you were very psychotic
And our union was deemed necessary by the ruling android powers for the safety and stability of the human race on an ongoing basis
And those android powers had guns that were
Bigger
Better
And much more likely to cause damage on a physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, and every other basis whatsoever
Than our own,
Nope,
Sorry mister,
Still wouldn't do it.

2.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
And, thanks to the unpredictable mutations resulting from the horrendous amounts of gamma radiation left behind as a result of the last millennia of intergalactic war,
So are you.

Over there

Well look at that. Here’s a piece I wrote about the AFL and the Royal Wedding, both of which subjects I know you are all intimately involved with. Oh, and it’s in poetry. Obviously the perfect thing to publish on a sporting website, then.