(About cheese)

These days, I find that if I want to talk with someone about cheese I have to start the conversation myself. This is odd, as what else would people want to talk about besides cheese? It feels strange having to shoulder the burden of opening conversations (about cheese) entirely on my own, but funnily enough, I find few people have much interest in talking at length (about cheese). As every person skilled in the art of conversation ought to know, cheese is a remarkable subject, which is why I am remarking on it right now; but it is also a delicious one. And, best of all, it is not an easy subject to exhaust: if you eat a cheese, it will eventually disappear; but you can keep on eating the conversation forever: it is the cut-and-come again puddin' of conversation.

Thankfully, you, good people of the internet, have highly developed concentration skills and are able to talk about cheese at great length, too, which is why I feel quite happy to announce to you that I made a slip-coat cheese the other day. This is an announcement I have made a number of times to a number of parties. "I am going to make a slip-coat cheese", I said to the Baron, who was inexplicably at that time still sleeping. "I am making a slip-coat cheese", I said to the lady at the shops, who was at that moment unfortunately distracted by another customer who scandalously actually wanted to buy things. "I made a slip-coat cheese", I said to my mother on the phone, though whether I called her to announce that fact or whether she called me to let me make my glorious announcement who can tell.

At this point in the cheese-based conversation, I was usually surprised by the polite lack of interest of the person being spoken to about cheese. "Just what is a slip-coat cheese", is the question I'm sure they would have asked if they were going to ask a question, but of course I told them anyway: a slip-coat cheese is an old type of English cheese, made from lightly pressed curds and wrapped and rewrapped in cheesecloth several times a day for about a week, until it doesn't stick to the cheesecloth anymore (it "slips" the "coat", in other words); at this point it will be ready. I found a recipe in an old book of recipes (Martha Washington's cookbook, no less), and the notes directed me to several similar recipes in Digby. So between the two of them, I was quite able to develop a workable modern version.

Now I know you're all fascinated by this, so just to make things more interesting, I'll give you the recipe:
2 litres milk, 400 mls cream, 1 tablespoon culture, 1/3 teaspoon rennet dissolved in 1/4 cup non-chlorinated water.
1. Milk milk and cream, heat to about 30 degrees celsius. (Don't worry about being too accurate because I wasn't).
2. Add culture, stir for a minute or so. Keep milk at 30 degrees celsius for an hour. (Stick the mixture in a pot and stick the pot in a sink or larger pot of water that you can keep replenishing to keep the temperature constant. This is more gentle than using a direct heat source like a heat pad; water disperses the heat).
3. Add rennet, stir for a minute or so. Keep milk at 30 degrees for an hour (using method in 2, above).
4. By this time the milk should have clabbered (curdled). Scoop the curds out into a cheesecloth bag and hang to drain for a few hours.
5. Line a cheese mould (or any old plastic pot with holes poked in it so long as it is strong enough to hold the curds) with cheesecloth. Stick the curds in, fold the cloth over the top, put a lid of a jam jar or some shit like that on top, and stick a weight on top of that. Maybe the rest of the jam (still in the jam jar obviously). I dunno, turn the cheese over after a couple of hours if you like to give it a nice shape.
6. Take the cheese out of the mould, rewrap it in a clean cheesecloth, and put it on a board to drain and dry. Keep on turning the cheese and changing the cloth three or four times every day, and when the cheese is ready and has formed a rind on the outside, it will slip out of the cloth without sticking. 

Wasn't that interesting post about cheese interesting? Gee it's great talking about cheese.

A little talk

Every year the Dan O'Connell Saturday poetry readings have a Dead Poets Day where, for once, poets read poems by others, poets who have gone before. The event this year was last Saturday. Because poetry is all about breaking the rules and I'm a rebel man I can do what I want I actually wrote something for the occasion. Not even a poem: a speech.... 

A little talk about Death

Thank you for coming to Dead Poets Day at the Dan. Some of the best poets are dead: there ought to be more of them. Wait. Dead Poets will live on the open stage at the Dan, but only for five minutes. You will have your chance to be temporarily dead in front of a temporarily dead audience who may also be poets. I think that's right. If you enjoy death, you might enjoy poets too, however I would not want to mistakenly suggest that I am making light of the situation and anyway many of the temporarily poetical have later gone to have successful careers as dead people so that's all right I think. Other themes that will feature today: malnutrition, suicide, tuberculosis, and cancer. If you are a fan of these things you may also be a fan of our readers, who have many other talents. Will we all get together in the break and possibly attempt to maybe raise a zombie poet who will hypothetically gorge on the metaphors, rhymes and brains of those of us who have the decency to be politely dead? That will be something fun to look forward to or maybe not. This is going to be a great day, but please don't die. Now A___* is going to kill me and then I will hand the mic over and then the day will begin hooray. Thank you for my time.

*A___ - Dan MC on Saturday.

Dufflepuds and jiggery pokery: review of Voyage of the Dawn Treader

So last night I finally got to watch Voyage of the Dawn Treader, several years after I bought the DVD and several more after it was released in cinemas. I'm a bit of a C. S. Lewis nut really so it's surprising that I've taken this long to watch it, but perhaps not so surprising that I found the film all wrong.

Now I can understand that the director and writers like to take a bit of liberty with the plot of the books to make them filmable. In Prince Caspian actually I think this all worked superbly - it was a war movie, with many of the key battles being fought by animals: there's nothing more thrilling than seeing an army consisting of leopards and hawks besieging the castle of an enemy by night. Another thing entirely happened in Voyage though; things seem to be going okay when Eustace and Edmund and Lucy are plonked unceremoniously into a Narnian ocean. Eustace is agreeably disagreeable, when they are rescued Edmund suggests "maybe you could throw him back in", and there's a minotaur on board. What? That's not in the book. But anyway, minotaur schminotaur; his inclusion on the boat is not particularly significant to the plot either way, apart from making Eustace faint right at the beginning.

And then they get to the Lone Islands and things start going screwy. Not only do they have to deal with slave holders, but apparently a killer fog right out of John Carpenter. By the time Caspian and Scrubb and the Pevensies win the island back two completely useless characters, for very little reason other than eliciting our sympathies, are forced with a little effort on the scriptwriter's part into the plot and onto the Dawn Treader. Like the minotaur they play a part of very little significance after in the plot, so you wonder why the scriptwriters went to the time and effort in the first place.

Then it's on to the Island of the Dufflepuds (Eustace's transformation into a dragon is reserved for later) and another extraneous plot element is introduced; some jiggery pokery nonsense about the killer fog coming from a Black Island and the seven swords of the seven lost lords being lain on a table being the only way to stop the Black Island from doing whatever it is doing. There's very little explanation and very little reason for this, again, apart from giving the plot more of a generic Hollywood kid's adventure feel.

It's all very strange to me; why lay down a new plot on top of a book that already has a perfectly good plot? Instead of going in search of seven lost lords, Caspian and his mates all of a sudden find themselves picking up the swords, one by one, so they can go on to stop the power of this Black Island. What I really love about the original book is the unfolding sense of discovery, enchantment, and desire - the battles with the slavers and the threat of the Dufflepuds is quickly dispensed with in the first third of Lewis' book, to be replaced by a journey into the unknown; the search for the lost Lords gives it purpose but doesn't detract from (rather, it adds to) the mystery and enchantment. And why, above all, have this stuff about the magical swords - putting a kind of Deus Ex Machina into the plot of a film which already has Deus Ex Machina all over it?

There is, thankfully, a lot of stuff the film does do well: Eustace is a great character and we get a lot of opportunities to see how horrible he is. His transformation into dragon and finally back into boy is good. (It is however much better in the book: when Eustace becomes boy again, Aslan repeatedly leaps upon him and tears the dragon skin off him in an incredibly vivid and visceral scene that demonstrates Lewis's allegory about sin and redemption excellently). Lucy's temptation by the beauty spell (and guilt, and retribution by Aslan) is also good. Several other plot points from the book are dragged together, though they are done so quite skilfully. It all makes you wonder, though: why did they bother with all that magic sword mumbo jumbo? Why fiddle with a perfectly good plot to make it into a slightly less good plot?

Bibliographopaloozamania

For my sins, today, I was flung into the world of the Chicago Manual of Style, their referencing system and academic bibliographies (is there any other sort?). Academic bibliographies throw up all sorts of wonders: the occasional little pile up of quote marks, with the title of a referenced work referencing the quote of another work - or the author of a non-referenced work being referenced due to a reference to them in a referenced work (if that makes sense), making you wonder whether to reference them or if there are already too many references (yes). The best bits, of course, are where the author of the work that the bibliography is attached to gracefully descends from their authorial heights to reference themselves, in the third person, in the same bibliography: don't we all want to do that, really?

Funnily enough, the very first reference that I had to file away in the bibliography was a real puzzler. It almost drove me insane, and I'm still not sure I tackled it in the correct way. It posed a very particular problem:

How, precisely, does one go about referencing a defunct UK law in the Chicago referencing system? The law in question was a very important law, and led to a very significant circumstance that was mentioned in the work to which the bibliography was appended. It really ought to be mentioned. But how?

Pondering on this, I got a little crazy. Then I got frightened: would I be able to even get past the first reference? Then I got an itchy head. Then I got distracted by a picture of a cat on facebook. Then I got the handy idea of asking everyone else about it. Then I got distracted by all the answers or should that be then I got answered by all the distractions that people came up with. Then I got down a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style, edition 14, that,bizarrely, happened to be on my desk (no, I don't know how it got there, either). Then I got up and got a biscuit. Then I got back in my chair and checked my email. Then I decided: I would reference it in any damn way that I felt like.

But how exactly did I feel like referencing a law again? Not very much, thank you. In the end, I opted for writing the name of the law down in the bibliography, somewhere in the middle. I think I mentioned 'parliament' too, to note that that is where it originated from and give it a lovely sense of variety, adding a homely touch to an otherwise plain computer screen. You're welcome.

Then I got up and got five more biscuits. Gosh, doing bibliographies is hard work.

Highbrow eyebrows

Peter Hitchens, brother of the late lamented Christopher Hitchens, has the most fantastic eyebrows. Look at them! Twin hedgerows on the forehead of destiny.

But with great eyebrows comes great responsibility. Can Hitchens really say he has used his eyebrows for good? Heaven help us all if he deploys his fluff in the service of evil.

Here is a picture of former Australian Prime Minister, Bob Menzies, using his eyebrows to devastating effect. We see here a furrow in combination with a lifting of one eyebrow in order to persuade some unnamed minor American official of the splendour of the Australian Commonwealth.

How can we ever have doubted that nice Mr Menzies? In contrast, here is Peter Hitchens weakly attempting to lift a flaccid eyebrow but completely failing in the attempt.

NOT GOOD ENOUGH, HITCHENS. Either learn to use your eyebrows properly, or they will be taken and donated to someone who truly recognises their potential. Use them or lose them, Hitchens. Use them or lose them.

William Shakespeare, Alexander Waugh, hot gay sex, and time machines

"Researching a new book on Shakespeare's sonnets", writes Alexander Waugh (him, the one who came after Auberon (you know, the one who came after Evelyn)) "I stumbled upon an astonishing piece of hitherto unnoticed evidence.... suffice to say that William Covell... revealed in words not especially ambiguous by Elizabethan standards that 'Shakespeare' was a nom de plume used by the courtier poet Edward de Vere". He goes on: ".... almost every intelligent educated person concedes, at very least, that there is a genuine authorship problem".

Crikey! Putting aside the merest hint of the whisper of a likelihood of a possibility that Waugh may just be cranking up a tired old historical theory in order to up sales for his latest book, just what is the "unnoticed evidence" in "words not especially ambiguous", that is, "by Elizabethan standards" that he's referring to? Possibly this:

William Covell’s epistle appended to *Polimanteia, or the meanes lawfull and unlawfull to judge of the fall of a Commonwealth, against the frivolous and foolish conjectures of this age* (1595) which offers a printed marginal note containing “Sweet Shakspeare” near the text “Oxford thou maist extoll thy courte-deare-verse” which of course means Shakespeare is Oxford via an anagram for “courte-deare-verse”.

Er, right ho then. But before we acclaim De Vere as the author of all that play stuff and sonnet stuff and other stuff, the author of that blog post points out that "courte-deare-verse" anagrammatises not only to "our de Vere - a secret", but also many other phrases.

Anyway, after reading this piece by Waugh, I had a little toddle around the sites myself. Like Greg Hunt, I only use the finest evidence Wikipedia has to offer, and it certainly had something to offer in this instance. Shakespeare died in 1616. De Vere, the poor sausage, carked it some 12 years before, in 1604. And turns out that several of Shakespeare's plays - including King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest - were written, according to dating by scholars, after 1604. So to write all those plays on the sly, De Vere had to either rise from the grave before putting pen to paper again, or pop into the time machine a month or so before his scheduled death, go forward a couple of years, and write them. Which puts rather a dent in the the "authorship question" that Waugh is trying to fire up, don't you think?

Then again, a fun alternative little theory that Alexander Waugh might like to entertain is that Shakespeare had hot gay sex with Edward de Vere, wrote about it at length in his sonnets, and had this William Covell chap hint at it as a shared secret in his book. What do you reckon? Such a lubricious detail might help to sell a few copies of the latest work from the Waugh clan too....

Considered reflections on the occurrence of Spring Racing Carnival

Or, a grown up nursery rhyme

Horsey worsey horsey worsey horsey worsey gallopatrot

Drink a shandy drink a brandy get quite randy

Horsey worsey gallopatrot

Snog your partner pash your cash smooch your hooch and drink a lot

Horsey worsey horsey worsey horsey worsey gallopatrot

Champagne bubbles boyfriend troubles grumble rumble fumble fall apart -

Horsey worsey gallopatrot

Evening over spew all over so hungover

Horsey worsey horsey worsey horsey worsey gallopatrot

Gallopatrot gallopatrot gallopatrot

Stop. 

Bier ist hier

"You know, Tim", the Baron said to me the other day, "You might have made enough beer for now".

The funny thing is, around that time I'd just started feeling rather lonely after having bottled some of the brews that had been in my study for the past few months. You can get into personal relationships with your brews, indeed at some point you'll start to wonder if the brews aren't looking over your shoulder as you type, or if they're feeling a bit standoffish today because they haven't been blooping as rapidly as they were yesterday, or if they haven't been shouting at you all the morning because they want to go out into the fields and play cricket. Don't tell me other brewers don't feel the same way.

I have to admit "too much" isn't what I habitually think about my brews. I'm too busy thinking about "what will I make next" or "when will I make some more" or "we don't have enough of that one left". Taking a shower a day or so after the Baron mentioned the (supposedly) immoderate amount of beer, I puzzled over this as I looked over the bottles of dark juniper porter and wondered whether I should refrigerate the rest. Clambering over a few bottles of herbal altbier, I absent-mindedly clanged the shower door into the bottles of Scottish light with floral tagetes aroma as I retrieved the towel from where it had been hanging over the beetroot beer bottles and continued to ponder this idea. Could there possibly be too much beer in the house? Is "too much beer" even a sentence that makes any sense?

 No wonder the Baron is a Doctor of Professorism, or some such, at university, because that suggestion of hers was a real poser. The more I thought about it, the less it made sense. I thought about it as I scrubbed my teeth that night, narrowly avoiding stubbing my toe on the box of rosemary porter. I thought about it as I dodged around the spruce beer balancing on top of the box of mead that I'd bottled a few days prior (which box I'd squeezed in between the door, and the bottles of wheat beer and peppercorn ale, about ten bottles apiece). It is true that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find space in the house for the bottles of beer, but I can't really build a bigger house now, can I? (Or can I? I haven't thought much about that possibility yet....)

I suppose thinking about whether I have too much beer is a little like the 'how long is a piece of string' question. We can never know, really; it may indeed be one of those fundamental universal conundrums, like the square root of two, or how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

Anyway; this summer I expect there'll be a few combustions amongst the bottles anyway, as the yeast becomes more agitated in the summer heat, so that'll help to keep the numbers down. And, in that case, I'd better redouble my efforts to keep household supplies high).

Something something GIRAFFE

There is a meme that's been going around facebook for a few years: a picture of a goat with the caption 'share this goat for no reason'. It just illustrates the depravity and perversity of the facebook generation. Goats need no reason. Goats are their own reason. Why even bother suggesting that you should share a goat for no reason in order to come up with a reason to share the goat? Just share the bloody goat. We all need more goats in our lives: there ought to be no explanation or reason or non-reason reason given. I have seen a reason, and it is goat.

Now all of a sudden a new meme is circulating about; people are being told to answer a riddle and if they get the riddle wrong, they are told, they are to change their profile picture to that of a giraffe. As if they need an excuse to post a giraffe. As if the giraffe cares anything about excuses. The giraffe is the honey badger of the animal kingdom (he is even more honey badger than the honey badger): he just doesn't give a shit.

The proliferation of giraffe pictures is a fine thing, a noble thing, a sign of the advancement of civilisation and the progress of the humanities and science. But there need be no excuse for the giraffe; rather, we should all make it our own responsibility to independently muse on the wonder and majesty of giraffes by sharing a giraffe picture of our own free will. That is the glory of liberty: being able to post a picture of a giraffe whenever you like.

You're welcome.

Today's post brought to you by Tim's increasingly desperate attempts to avoid doing the tax

When Mum used to order me to clean my room (or, worse, do it for me) I used to strenuously object. Amongst other things, cleaning has a terrible way of preventing you finding things, I would argue. That's the point of mess: you know where everything is. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight now, I have to admit that, no - sometimes mess really doesn't make it easier to find things (unless those things are on top). 

Today's subject, however, is not mess. It is filing. It would be misleading to state that I do not have a filing system. I'm not quite sure how this erroneous impression took hold, but although I work at home and you might expect me to be lax regarding filing and the ordering of crucial documentation, you would be wrong. I don't just have one filing system, I have twenty.

The papers are first ordered by Dewey decimal system, and then four of the most common alphabetical orders (reverse, forward, upside-down and inside out) are applied. At this point, the papers are subjected to a meticulous audit from my accounting staff (I work alone, so that would be me) before being handed over to my secretarial department (me again) and selected out for artisanal purposes (I like to do origami with some sheets of paper and write horizontal villanelles or aleotoric shopping lists on them). After this, it is merely a matter of throwing them around the desk for a short period lasting a couple of months to a year until they resemble the Mandelbrot set as seen by a person on LSD, and then I enter the final stage of filing, which is roughly in the accordance to the Code of Hammurabai, although with some alterations according to the Mongolian, Latvian, and Cimmerian style guides. A quick sprinkling of dust, bread crumbs, various sugary substances, a Cheezel and a Burger Ring scattered here and there, and you have my concise, simple, and easy-to-understand filing system. You're welcome.

So anyway, filing. Bears a superficial resemblance to messiness and complete lack of order, but of course is anything but. It's possible I might switch to a new twenty systems of filing in the following financial year, although I'm not sure - my filing is in a state of continuous alteration and improvement anyway. I like to think it's more organic that way. Still wouldn't make it easier to find things, of course. But you can't have everything.

The most boring poetry genre in the world

Infotainment poetry about tax. Could this be the most boring genre in the world? Maybe I should hire myself out as a court poet to Gina Rinehart?

Should mining have higher taxation

That is indexed in line with inflation? 

Would it be an inhibition

To jobs, competition,

Or would it help build up our nation? 

The answer it comes as we tot up the sums - 

Fiddle dee diddle dee dum.

How should the tax then be designed? 

With government programs in mind? 

Is spending our purpose? 

Should we save for a surplus,

Can the tax once begun be refined? 

We'll figure it out on our fingers and thumbs - 

Fiddle dee diddle dee dum. 

There should, of course, be compensation

How much? (Needs clarification). 

We'll do a few audits

To show how we'll afford it

Then draw up all due legislation. 

Like pigeons they'll flock as we spread out the crumbs - 

Fiddle dee diddle dee dum. 

But if free flow of money is right,

Perhaps tax, if at all, should be slight? 

A business, productive

Will prove quite seductive

For those who'd onsell bentonite. 

We furrow our brows with 'ahs' and with 'ums' - 

Fiddle dee diddle dee dum. 

If little taxation is best,

We'll sit back and hope they'll invest;

The money will flow,

Our nation will grow

With our thanks to the mines in the West. 

So we go with the flow with a 'ho' and a 'hum' - 

Fiddle dee diddle dee dum. 

Things I still have no idea about after writing this poem about tax: 'indexing to inflation', 'bentonite', 'tax'.

A disappointing poem

(Disreputable rapscallions might point out that all poems are 'disappointing'. Well, maybe. But this is just a sub-genre of poetry I'm experimenting with, on the basis that, if poetry is about making an audience feel an emotion, well I might as well start off trying to disappoint people. Because I usually find it's pretty hard to go wrong in that respect.)

Dawn. First light.
Soft, gentle beams.
Into the room
The future gleams.
A chance to put
The past behind
To put the last day
Out of mind
To wake from sleep
Afreshed, anew,
Except if like me you have insomnia in which case everything feels like shit really and why would sleep get rid of any of my problems anyway plus fuck you.

If you'd like to be disappointed further, why not pop along to the House of Bricks Gallery in Collingwood this Wednesday, where I'll be one of the poetry features?

Suitless

I was in the middle of Mel's excellent book the other day when I came across a passage about the manifold significance of the male suit. 

The Man in Black.... personifies American paranoia over the misuse of government power. His authoritative yet anonymous black suit, white shirt, narrow black tie and sunglasses attract no attention.... .... In the Matrix films, the Man in Black is Agent Smith, the computer-generated guardian of a virtual world designed to subdue humanity.... In the film The Adjustment Bureau (2011) he belongs to a celestial bureaucracy policing pre-ordained destinies...

Reading this, I soon realised that for most of my working life, I have been in offices where hardly anybody wears a suit*. In my old job in North Melbourne one chap decided to wear a tie to work just because it was so unusual and keep doing so until someone commented on it. In some offices people haven't been wearing ties for a long, long time; indeed, it seems to me the suspicion with which a wage slave might have formerly regarded a man in a crisply-cut suit and tie could be transferring to another sort altogether: the managerial sorts who wear smart-casual in a strangely affected manner. (I'm not sure what they're affecting. That's why it's so strange). I was reminded, indeed, of the following passage in, of all places, a television review:

.... Normally, when it’s a competition between fusty, sclerotic Old Europe and go-ahead, can-do America I’m with the US all the way. Not on this occasion, however. I particularly warmed to a character so ludicrously Gallic and Grande Ecole I’m surprised they didn’t film him with a napkin over his head devouring an ortolan. His name was Jean-Noël Jeanneney, former director of the French National Library. 

Jeanneney was not impressed when the young men from Google approached him. He could tell they were not habituated to wearing ties, he said, and had clearly only put one on because such, they believed, was the European way. Worse, they made the fatal mistake of attempting to curry favour with a gift: they had brought him one of those thermos mugs that keeps your hot drinks warm on train journeys. He had resolved then and there to have nothing to do with Google and its infernal project....

 Perhaps, in his current incarnation at least, the Man in Black has had his day. Soon the only people to wear ties when knocking on your door will be harmless obsessives like Mormons. However, it occurs to me now that if two young men dressed neatly in smart-casual come knocking at your door on the weekend, you should probably run and hide: only door-to-door atheists could be so tasteless...

*People talk about 'the suitless office'. Can it be long before they start talking about 'the pantless office'?

Get sloshed with Jane Austen!

People who make it their business to poke into the private correspondence and novels of long dead (or sometimes, if they're lucky, very much alive) writers all agree: Jane Austen liked beer. Jane Austen liked spruce beer in particular, which is a type of beer you make from boiling the tips from a spruce tree in water or beer wort or some type of wine must, and then adding yeast. (Just like any other beer or wine, basically, but with added spruce.) "It is you, however, in this instance, that have the little children, and I that have the great cask, for we are brewing spruce beer again" writes Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra. Note the "again". So she brewed it all the time. And "the great cask". Not sure how much a cask is, but I'm sure it's lots. Geeze, Austen must have gargled the stuff down every minute of the day. And plus some character gives some other character a recipe for spruce beer in some book or other that she wrote, which is clearly extraordinary evidence in favour of my general argument that Jane Austen was an absolute alco who played fast and loose with the juice of the spruce.

Sounds like fun. So I decided to make some spruce beer myself; I used a variation of the recipe given on the Jane Austen Centre website. That recipe was itself taken from the British Army (and a very similar recipe is given by others, for instance, Benjamin Franklin). The Baron and I harvested fresh spruce tips from my mother-in-law's tree in Bright, and fresh molasses, er, jars from the shelves of a nearby IGA, and I modified the recipe down for 1 gallon (between 4 and 5 litres) rather than 5 gallons.

JANE AUSTEN STYLE SPRUCE BEER
INGREDIENTS
550 ml Molasses
1 tablespoon grated ginger root
1 tablespoon Northern Brewer hops
1 teaspoon Goldings hops
About 60/70 grams spruce tips
Ale yeast, about 1 tsp

METHOD
1. Bring about 8 litres of water to a boil, add the NB hops (preferably in a hop bag), the spruce tips, and the grated ginger root. (It will boil down over the hour to the 4ish litres or so you want)
2. Add  the Goldings hops at the end of the boil. Stir in the molasses. Bring down the temperature of the water to 20 degrees (I do this by immersing it in a tub of cold water, preferably in a sink with a leaky plug so the water runs out as it warms up) (Alternatively you could just leave it to cool overnight).
3. Make a yeast starter - put the yeast in a clean jar with some lukewarm fresh water (I use tank water so as not to worry the yeast with additives in tap water). When the beer wort temperature is 20 degrees to 16 degrees celsius, add the yeast to the bottom of a fermenter and pour the wort in on top of it.
4. Put in a 20 degree room and leave to ferment for a week or so.

So that was that, but not to be outdone, I also made a second batch of spruce beer, this time a proper ale, made from barley and wheat. Lightly hopped, with some added bitterness from the spruce. Again, similar proportions - I made about 4 litres of spruce beer:

SPRUCE WITBIER
INGREDIENTS
500 grams ale malt
100 grams amber malt
400 grams wheat malt
spruce tips
1/3 tablespoon Hallertau hops
1 tsp wheat beer yeast

METHOD
1. Chuck the grains in a blender and crack them all open, and then mash them in a little bit of water at 68 degrees celsius for an hour and a half to get the sweet malt out. When done, drain the wort from the grains and wash them with 77 degree water until you have about 8/9 litres of wort.
2. Bring the wort to a boil. Add the spruce and the Hallertau hops. Again it'll boil down a bit over the hour. If I was doing this again today I'd probably add another hit of hops right at the end to get a bit of that nice hoppy aroma. A teaspoon of Saaz, maybe, though I'm open to suggestions as to other good witbier hops.
3. Bring the wort to a temp at or below 20 degree celsius (as above), make a yeast starter (as above), and pour the yeast into the bottom of your fermenter before pouring the wort in after it. Pop a bubbelator on the top and let them get to know one another.
4. Leave in a 20 degree room for a week or so!

The results? I bottled the molasses spruce beer the other day and did a taste test then and pulled a face. I called the Baron over and gave her a taste, and she pulled exactly the same face I did. I wrote in my beer diary: 'Ewgh'. Which word, if you pronounce properly, will make you pull exactly the same face that the Baron and I did. What the hell, Jane Austen? What. The. Hell. This spruce beer. It tastes DISGUSTING. Pretty much like you'd expect molasses - with the sweetness taken out - to taste. So we put those bottles aside to, er, mature for a while. We could quite possibly leave them to mature for a very long time indeed....

Today, however, I bottled the spruce witbier and did another taste test there. Better: much better. The spruce added a funny kind of sour fruitiness to the beer (spruce tips are high in vitamin C), and seemed to balance out the hops quite well. And the taste of fermented malt, I have to admit, is so much better than the taste of fermented molasses. So, you know, maybe Austen didn't use molasses at all - or if she did she used a better quality molasses - or something. But still. I find it hard to get over the shock of molasses spruce beer.....

I conclude this scholarly analysis of the significance of spruce beer in the art and literature of Jane Austen by offering a picture of the author herself.

Who would have guessed she'd be such a dipsomaniac, eh?

The great outdoors

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness were wealth enow.

- Omar Khayyam

A jug of wine,
A chardonnay on ice,
A loaf of bread,
A freshly-baked artisan sourdough from the finest providore, plus pre-prepared filet mignon, a vegetarian option, brie, camembert, some new fermented sauerkraut, fresh cultured butter, a variety of dips, an icecream maker, a pricey but portable barbecue, a fridge, a generator, a tent for four with suitable insulation, bedding, a small radio and portable television, DVDs to keep the kids entertained, fishing rods, a frozen trout for when you get sick of fishing, pink fluffy slippers, and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness were wealth enow EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK A COW! 

- Omar Khayyam, ever-so-slightly updated.

The Sting from the Black Lagoon

Some people like to collect stamps, some prefer the gathering of signatures; many like to amass volumes of football cards, pressed flowers, shelves of their favourite authors, or posters of their favourite band. Personally, I collect bee stings. Stings on the hand, stings on the foot, stings on the ankle, stings on just about every bit of the anatomy you can possibly imagine. Want a sting? I've got stings aplenty. I file them in alphabetical order in a match box and show them to visitors and neighbours every morning.

Seems every day I go outside I collect another bee sting. Not all bee stings are the same, I've discovered; many will only hurt momentarily (though leave a lingering itchiness on your skin). One or two will throb for days on end and make you question the very meaning of existence. And some, well, some will turn you into a terrifying Mr Hyde who will terrify small children and old ladies and cause everyone else to smile awkwardly and anxiously when meeting you and for the rest of the time you are in their company, look like they're trying not to keep looking at you but looking at you anyway because you are just so fascinatingly horrible. You know the ones.

Bee stings! Oh yeah. I've had them!

1) Ankle bee stings. These ones hardly hurt at all. When we were working on the hive the other week, two snuck in between a wrinkle in my socks and my pants, and got me. While the effort was appreciated, unfortunately these failed to sting much at all. 5/10.

2) Wrist bee sting. In this one, the bees displayed impressive tenacity, waiting at some obscure point on my bee suit until I'd come inside and started to remove it, at which point they stung. This sting, too, failed to impress, and was quickly forgotten about. 5/10.

3) Beard stings. For weeks after working on a hive, the bees will be alert to any human working outside, and will deploy their most effective psychological tactic - flying in very rapid circles around a person's face and making them move very quickly on. This will continue essentially until the person has run back inside. Sometimes, of course, the person doesn't go inside fast enough, and the bees will just fling themselves at your face and get lost in your beard, and for another minute furiously buzz in a terrifying fashion near your ear. I've had, I think, three stings in this way? While psychologically incredibly effective - the anticipation, like in Hamlet, can be incredibly drawn out - the stings don't hurt much at all. (Side note, though: this is why beekeepers should grow a beard if they can) 7/10.

4) Sting on the tip of my finger I got once when trying to brush a bee out of my beard. This one hurt like buggery. The blood rushed to the tip of my finger and had nowhere else to go, making my finger throb for days on end. I could hardly even type anything out on the computer. Combining the psychological anticipation of the beard sting with a final surprise, this sting in the tail really has a sting in the tale. HAHAHA! Oh yeah, not funny at all. But still: this was a really impressive trick by the bees, and I haven't forgotten about it ever since. 8/10.

5) Sting on the nose. To do this, the bee actually flew INTO MY NOSE, which is horrible. Just imagine how squicked out you get when flies fling themselves by accident into your nose or your mouth; well, combine that squickiness with the realisation that the small insect in your olfactory organ may actually be going to sting you IN THE MIDDLE OF ONE OF YOUR BREATHING CANALS. But actually, the bee just put its head in my nose so they could sting me on the outside and it didn't hurt at all so while this sting combined fear and disgust with incredible effectiveness, I didn't mind it at all in the end. 7/10.

6) Sting on the forehead. When I was out in the garden near the hive one sunny afternoon just watching them go in and out. This one didn't seem to matter at all, at first; a dull throb in the forehead which quickly seemed to dissipate. However, after dinner, my face was feeling a little hot and I went to wash it and noticed my eyes were looking very strange. By the time I went to bed the skin around my eyes had bulged noticeably; in the morning there was so much bulging around, over and under my eyes that I could hardly open them at all. For the whole of the day after my eyes had narrowed to two little slits that I peered out of while lurching, zombie like, from place to place. Children burst into tears at my horripilating visage. Adults fleed from my gruesome presence. This was the sting that really delivered! 10/10

UPDATE! - Photo taken by the Baron after I got stung on the forehead.

Chopper comes a cropper

'ear 'ear!
Ears 'ere!
'ere's is ears
Wot e 'ad ere!
'e 'ad 'is ears ere 'ere,
Now 'eres 'is ears 'ere,
'ere! 'ere!
'is ears are ere!
'ear 'ear!

The art of conversation in a car

Ours is a progressive age, and there's nothing we love to do more in our progressive age than to progress towards thing in cars. The car is swift, shiny, sleek, full of whizz-bang items of gadgetry for making the car go whizz-bang into things, and able to go round and round and round the country for hours on end in search of gay little cafes and jolly tourist traps and picturesque beauty spots, which spots and traps and cafes the drivers and passengers of the cars like to stop at for half an hour or so for rest or refreshment or postcards before driving off again into the countryside for hours and hours and hours. Horses, which we used to travel around on, being possessed of high intelligence and acumen, and otherwise being noble and conservative creatures, would generally object to such acts of circumlocution or rhodomontade, and so had to be disposed of in this progressive age, which is one reason why we find ourselves in the unfortunate place we do. Though not for very long because the progressive car generally progresses very fast away from whatever place we find ourselves in almost before we are in it.

And since we are in a swift shiny sleek whizz-bang progressive age and find ourselves in a swift shiny sleek whizz-bang progressive car, what is it like to be in a car? It is hot. It is humid. It is so cramped that you end up putting your arm into someone else's leg space and your leg into someone else's head space. Someone is crying. And someone sitting behind the wheel is very, very angry and quite possibly shaking their first at someone in another progressive car progressing in another direction against a red light. But the car has disadvantages, too: you cannot ride on the back of a car, shouting valiantly, waving a claymore* in the air, while the car gallops down into an army of Redcoats which you are about to do battle with. No, while we are in the car, it seems we will all have to learn to get along, and put to use the arts of etiquette and conversation and wit. However it seems we have left most of those arts behind, along with the horse, in that more staid and conservative age before the car. This is unfortunate.

Ideally, for a car conversation, you will need one of all the following people:

1) Someone to get into a political argument with.
2) Someone to attempt to start a game of Eye Spy in an attempt to distract from the increasingly tense and heated argument.
3) Someone to get bored with the game of Eye Spy and attempt to start up a joke competition.
4) Someone to shout and say Eye Spy started first and why do you always have to ruin everything and that's not fair.
5) Someone to tell everyone else to keep quiet because someone else is trying to sleep.
6) Someone else trying to sleep over the noise of someone else telling everyone to keep quiet.
7) Someone to urgently try to keep the peace between everyone, who are all arguing over the top of one another now.
8) Someone to ask "are we there yet" every one kilometre on a thousand kilometre journey.
9) Someone to loudly announce "I'm bored" everytime someone else attempts to start up a conversation.
10) Someone to querulously whine "but I want to go to the toooooooooooilet" one minute after the car has whizzed past the last toilet for three hundred and forty three kilometres.
11) Someone to quietly weep in the corner.
12) Someone to suddenly get incredibly hungry in the other corner.
13) Someone to apologetically vomit all everyone else.
14) Someone to shamelessly steal and retell the jokes that someone else has told an hour ago.
15) Someone to go rummaging for food to keep everyone else distracted, except maybe the person who has just vomited.
16) Someone to suddenly query three quarters of the way through the trip just where we are all going.** 

Of course, the typical car has only six to eight seats, so several people will have to take responsibility for multiple roles. (And bear in mind this list is very limited).

Often in the car you end up having to amuse yourself. When I was a kid I tried numerous tactics. After being told a number of times by parents to 'shut up', I would loudly announce to my brother, 'Hey Lachlan, let's have a shutting up competition'. 'Okay!' he'd say, fully expecting my reply: 'I lose!' Fun the first thousand times you try it, not so amusing after that. At other times, I'd take part in games of Eye Spy which I would (cleverly, I thought) undermine by providing obtuse answers when it was my turn to play: 'B' for 'Blueness'. 'E' for 'Existence'. 'I' for 'Ineffable Feelings of Ennui and Angst on Suddenly Discovering the Pointlessness of the Car Journey'. No-one else seemed to really appreciate my Eye Spy interventions, but really: how many times can you go with 'T' for 'Tree', 'G' for 'Grass', 'C' for 'Cow' and 'R' for 'Road' before the game suddenly becomes utterly tedious and meaningless?

Speaking of tedious and meaningless, let us turn now to the writings of Dr Samuel Johnson. No - no, I don't mean he was tedious and meaningless, just that he wrote entertainingly about that very subject quite frequently. 'I took a short journey into the country in a stage coach', he writes:

On the day of our departure, in the twilight of the morning, I ascended the vehicle, with three men and two women my fellow travellers. It was easy to observe the affected elevation of mien with which every one entered, and the supercilious civility with which they paid their compliments to each other. When the first ceremony was dispatched, we sat silent for a long time, all employed in collecting importance into our faces, and endeavouring to strike reverence and submission into our companions. 

It is hard to imagine this happening on a modern car trip, and not even on a modern train or bus trip (though that is in some ways similar to the experience of travelling in a stage coach with strangers). But what follows is all too familiar:

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say..... At last a corpulent gentleman, who had equipped himself for this expedition with a scarlet surtout, and a large hat with a broad lace, drew out his watch, looked on it in silence, and then held it dangling at his finger. This was, I suppose, understood by all the company as an invitation to ask the time of day; bu no body appeared to heed his overture: and his desire to be talking so far overcame his resentment, that he let us know of his own accord it was past five, and that in two hours we should be at breakfast.

The whole essay is surpassingly excellent and worth the time to read in whole. However, like passenger number 14 in the car trip, stealing the jokes of another, I have set out on this article telling my own story, and ended up telling Dr Johnson's story instead, and so here the journey will end.

*I should admit that I am not at all certain what a claymore is, but I feel quite strongly that it is something that ought to be flourished savagely in the air. 

** Hopefully person number 16 is not the driver.

Now then, now, then

Now and then one hears from people who want to live in the now. This is all very perplexing, not simply because it seems odd that these people should want to be living in "the now" rather than in "the present", but also because, now and then, one wonders why they want to live in the now rather than in the then, or now and then in the now-then, or even now and then in the soon. 

Often, one is tempted to further speculations: if it is possible to live in the now, what about living in the soon-to-be-now, or the just-after-now? Can one perhaps contrive to live in the day after the now, or two and three quarter seconds before the now, or even on the now or above the now or through the now? Is it perhaps getting a bit too crowded, now, there in the now, with all these people wanting to live in the now and none of them wanting to live before the now or after the now? What's so good about the now anyway, whatever it is and whenever that whatever it is, is (or was)?

Indeed so many people have been living for so long in the now that I wonder if they're not getting sick of the now right about, ahem, now. After living in the now, then, and the now, now, why don't they give it a switch and try living in the then, now, and the soon, then?

And every now and then one might be tempted to quote that famous poem:

Every now and then I get a little bit lonely and you're never coming round, 
Turn around.


Such deep words. Such deep, mysterious words that speak to the very core of our being.

Ponderous reflections

While in Bright we took a drive up to Mount Beauty, a place whose name caused me to reflect ponderously on the inevitable gap between signified and signifier. I'm not sure whether the locals gave the place this name because they wanted it to become that way, or because they thought it already was that way, or simply because they thought other people would be attracted by the title. But, for the record, this is Mount Beauty, the town: a strip of shops, a scatter of houses, and a sizeable body of water named "Regulation Pondage", surrounded by a few trees, some of which are now stumps, and another of which is mostly Mistletoe. "You could write a blog post about it", I got told. Yes, I could indeed.

In a way, driving to Mount Beauty is a little like making lemon delicious pudding. It may be nice. It may be pleasant. It may have lemons. It may have the minimum amount of concrete and asphalt and brick to make civic engineers happy (we're talking about Mount Beauty, now, not the pudding). But will it taste any better if you put cream on top of it (back to talking about the pudding). But will the lemon delicious pudding actually be "delicious"? What if, in your anxiety to live up to the rigorous standards implied in the very name, you actually fluff the making of the pudding, and a more accurate name for the cooking results turns out to be "lemon not-so-delicious pudding"? Or "lemon slightly-retchworthy pudding?"

Same deal, really, as when I made what was, apparently, "the best cheese", allegedly, "in the world", so called. We cut it up when we were on holidays in Bright. It tasted nice. It tasted pleasant. It didn't particularly taste of lemons or concrete or asphalt or brick, but there you go. But "best"? "In the world"? Really? And was I wracked with anxiety on making the cheese in case it turned out badly? (No, I think I was quite chipper, really).

And as for Bright! Well, what can I say? Sometimes it wasn't so Bright at all. Sometimes it was even positively umber-looking. I was shocked! Appalled! And even pleased.

Gluttony meets guilt meets a tasty tasty Taco

There's nothing like guilt, dread, fear, shame, pain, paranoia, avarice, ambition, lust, gluttony and stupidity to really get humans excited, which is why we've become the successful and fun-loving species we are today. A quick trip down the shops will confirm this for you, for there you see the greedy selling the pointless to the gullible for marked-up prices, sometimes with extra chocolate.

In Bright (which I actually happen to be in at the moment, though shhhh, don't tell anybody) you will find the dentists stationed right next to the lolly shop, a strategy so obvious that I need not belabour the fact by pointing it out apart from right here, which I suppose really is belabouring okay I'll stop now. Similarly, in our own suburb of Lalor, the local restaurant (the only local restaurant), the resonantly-named Taco Bill, is placed right next to a gym, an arrangement of commerce and convenience so remarkable that I wouldn't be surprised if the respective managers didn't congratulate one another every night at close of business: gluttony complements guilt, just as chili sauce complements a tasty, tasty Taco.

Down where my parents live, in Raymond Terrace, the commercial store owners seem to be a tad more confused about the mutually beneficial operations of the respective vices. Not only does the town have two McDonald's (which seems a little overambitious, apart from anything else), they have two generous and sizeable shopping centres, stationed right across from one another, and consisting of much the same sort of business. (Basically, they've both got a Woolies in them and that's about it). It's avarice competing with avarice, and I'm really not quite sure how it's all going to end. And I suppose you could say the same thing about this blog post, except I suppose we all know where that is going to

Quoth the raven, "Steve Waugh!"

Amongst its many other benefits, Lalor is quite possibly the national capital for astroturf. I've never seen so many fake lawns in my life since I moved out here*; sometimes there's even moss growing on the fake lawns or oxalis weeds pushing their way up through it, proving that nature and fake nature can live in perfect peace and harmony.

So when I saw a Collingwood poetry event described today as 'grassroots' I was immediately moved to raise the possibility of an alternative, astroturf poetry event out here in Lalor. Said event could be held in the pristine plastic back garden of a local intellectual, with grounds festooned with polymer posies and cheap outdoor tables brought at Bunnings sitting here and there, decorated with baskets full of plastic fruit (such as you can sometimes get at St Vinnies) and other like oddments.

And what sort of poetry to read? Really, what could be better or more suitable than to celebrate the achievements of Andrew Slattery and other plagiarists? Of course, poets would be quite free to make their own original plagiarisms (if that is possible); I myself have undertaken to write one poem suitable for the occasion. It is a cento work in collage format in a pseudo-Ossian manner that subtly references the work of Shakespeare, Lear, the dictionary, the Baron, and even myself in a free-flowing and liberal manner. In other words, I filched from all over the place. Here it is:

The zigguratic edifice,
With xenomorphic glee
All in a hot and copper sky -
To be or not to be.

Stately, plump, Buck Rogers dived
Across the stormy sea
"Thus I refute him, sir!" he cried:
A, B, C, D, E, F, G.

"And hast thou slain the Nabakov,
Four score years ago?"
With jubilating cries he wept -
"Hello goodbye hello!"

"Half a league, full fathom five,
Will you ride my sleigh?"
Quick was the little Maid's reply -
"Toorali oorali ay".

A damsel with a dulcimer,
Then hailed the Grand Old Duke.
Her words are burned into my soul:
"I am your father, Luke!"

And so you find me, knight at arms,
A maiden for to woo,
Give me Kit Kat, or give me death -
Goob goob ga choo!

UPDATE! - I was thinking of making it a competition for folks to identify all the references. But there's so much in there that I'm not sure where they all came from. I may even have accidentally referenced poems that I never knew about in the first place. I so wish some poetry detective would come along and find it out so I don't have to. Knock yourself out, Ira Lightman.

 *This is really true though I should clarify: I don't think I've ever seen astroturf prior to moving out to Lalor, and now I've moved out here, I've seen, oh, two or three lawns of the stuff. Plus we sat behind a guy at the cafe once who was talking about putting it on the nature strip in front of his house.

Bee stalkers

Barely a day after opening up the hive, and there's bee stalkers everywhere. Bees looming out the back door looking in, bees busily patrolling the backgarden to make sure we don't try anymore nonsense on them, and even bees out the front.

I was just in the front garden frisking and frollicking in the sunlight and bouncing around in the oxalis and smelling the flowers, as you do, when one of the bee stalkers came across me. "Oy, oy, mate, you know that's not allowed!" it said. Or at least performed the bee equivalent of that. It walked me, very swiftly and deliberate, back to the door, and made sure I shut it once I had got back in, too.

So I walked into my study to get back to work (sometimes, you see, I take little breaks from work to do some frisking and frollicking in the garden) and I found a stalker bee there, too - it had come in through the open window. Blimming heck! I went to get a glass jar to catch it in but when I returned it had, well, buzzed off.

After closing the back window I successfully distracted myself from work again, and wandered out into the back garden to make sure everything was ship shape. Two more bee stalkers swiftly walked me back into the house; I barely had time to check on the chickens.

They're no doubt marching back and forth in front of the back door at the moment. Later I think I'll go and make a cup of coffee and look at them looking at me looking at them. Maybe I'll try and get into a conversation with them. Don't like my chances though.

The sting in the tail and the tale in the sting

Bees, as we all know, like to do nothing better than to bustle to and fro in the fields providing appropriate parables for industriousness and hard work for philosophers, alight on flowers here and there in order to facilitate poets with images of suitable meaningfulness and delight, and perform balletic dances on the front of their hive in order to make boffins and scientists scratch their beards and frown and go 'hmmm'. (Since this is a Non-Sexist blog, of course I include all the lady scientists in that description as well, though where they get their beards from I do not know. Perhaps they borrow someone else's beard when they want to frown and go 'hmmm'.)

The same is true of our bees, who have been doing all three of the above with laudable vigour and enthusiasm, although it's true that they don't have many philosophers or scientists to observe their activity, and as for poets, they've only got me. Still, for the past few weeks I've been frequently observing them in front of their hive going back and forth on their daily work. In the morning, when the day gets warm enough, they like to shoot forth from their hive to wherever it is they feel like (maybe somewhere where they can find a philosopher or scientist). By noon they keep on doing this, only more so - they'll seem to erupt from their hive entrance. In the afternoon they arrive back, in dribs and drabs, circling slowly back into their hive: they are usually rather tardy in coming back because, I think, they are so easily distracted. I never seem to see a bee go back in a perfect straight line; instead they bob and weave and occasionally alight on a nearby twig. Even when they get to the hive, they can take their time, walking back and forth a few times, doing that weird 'walking up the side of a wall' act that insects perform so insouciantly in front of us. And in the evening they still loiter about on the hive entrance, taking the air and bumping into one another and chatting with one another by dancing. Just exactly what they say, I'm not sure  (unlike the character in that Primo Levi short story who learns how to dance back to the bees and thus has long discussions with them) but I like to think they exchange ribald puns and salacious gossip about the queen,  pick one another up on minor grammatical errors and items of punctuations ('posed as an apostrophe the other day') and maybe discuss awkward parenting moments they've had with the larvae.

Anyway, it's been all very amicable and comradely in the past few weeks, though things have rather changed as of this morning. We took the hive apart to give them another box on the bottom, room for them to lay more brood and put in more honeycomb as spring and summer flowers really came into bloom. We'd done a little work on the hive a bit over a month ago and the bees had been quite compliant, even complacent about us being there - mostly they just buzzed around us. Today, however, they really seemed cranky; the Baron was stung three times and I was stung once. And this afternoon, instead of idly meandering back to their hive to take in the sights and perhaps engage in a spot of gossip on a nearby blossom, a small cadre of cantankerous bees have been insistently hovering around outside our kitchen window and front door.

At least they've got their new box. However, for the next few weeks I probably won't be hanging around their hive and stroking my beard and saying 'hmmm'. I know for a fact that when they're angry they like nothing more than to fling themselves amidst a beard, make furious noises to scare that beard off, and (if you are so foolish to) reach up to brush them out of said beard, sting you instantly on the tip of your finger, which for some reason hurts like buggery.

Hopefully in a few weeks they will have resumed their normal amicable ways around us. 

Meanwhile...

MEANWHILE, AT AN OPEN MIC SOMEWHERE IN MELBOURNE...
Next up is Next Up, who we heard previously perform right after Right After. Previously will perform just before Next Up, although come to think of it Just Before was sadly unable to make it today. Speaking of which, here's Sadly Unable To Make It Today, who I'll put in right after Previously, but just before Next Up, prior to Earlier Today. So, Previously Sadly Unable To Make It Today Next Up Earlier Today, that's how we'll do things. But just before Previously, we'll take a short break, so Earlier Today Right After Sadly Unable To Make It Today Previously Next Up, talk amongst yourselves. We'll be right back.

A disquisition concerning lab rats

Ah, lab rats! Aren't they wonderful? Everyday I see a new story about how lab rats have proved (although not really) something new (although not particularly) about human (although more about rat) nature. Just yesterday I saw a story about how in one experiment, lab rats that lived in an open and happy environment were less likely to become addicted to drugs than lab rats that lived in a caged environment, and today I saw a story about how if given a chance lab rats would totally release other lab rats from cages, so I suppose that's not every day but it's two days in a row so it's certainly getting there.

Is there any half-arsed theory about human nature that some limited experiment on lab rats can't sort of prove if you have enough lab rats to do the experiment on? I suggest we experiment on lab rats to find out the answer, which is undoubtedly 'true', or possibly 'maybe', but especially if you don't think about it. I'm not exactly sure how to set that experiment up, but here is a picture of a lab rat.

The end.

UPDATE! -  Graphs! Graphs are almost as good as lab rats at proving anything about everything or everything about anything, although they don't have twitchy little pink noses and wiggly little furry ears, so that's a point that counts against them. But still. Graphs are great at proving stuff, aren't they, much better than scientific proof, which can only prove somethings sometimes and even then only to a limited extent, which is just kind of annoying. To prove how great graphs are, let's do an experiment with lab rats, or maybe graphs, or lab rats running on graphs. It would definitely work.

This graph totally proves I'm right.

Some of the best works I've never written

You will have probably heard about the latest poetry plagiarism scandal, or possibly poetry hoax, poetry homage, or poetry parody, depending on how you look at it. Andrew Slattery, who I had never heard about before, er, hearing about him, is possibly a very good poet, maybe a very bad poet, or just maybe not even a poet at all, depending on how you interpret the poetry he has written, and who he took it from before he wrote it, and why he took it from there in the first place.

How do you tell the difference between poetic plagiarism, poetic parody, poetic hoax, and poetic homage anyway? Plagiarism involves taking the words of another person without permission, while on the other hand parody involves taking the words of another person without permission. Hoax involves you inventing new words and trying to pass those words off as those of another person without their permission, or is that parody I'm talking about again? (And sometimes, instead of just inventing words for another person and giving it to them without permission, you invent a personality for another person and give it to them without permission, too, which seems to be going a bit far.) And homage, well, as far as I can work out, you still take the words of another person without permission, but you do it with love. And is it possible to do a homage to plagiarist, or to plagiarise a parody of a hoax of a homage? What would the result look like?

It occurred to me a few days ago, thinking over all this, that there might be room for a new genre of poetry here: poetry for plagiarism. Or has someone else thought of that already? Even better.

And that's about all I (or possibly someone else, though if so they haven't told me yet) have to say on this matter.

A beekeeper reviews Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee

First up, it is excellent that bees finally find themselves represented in the world of music and the arts.



However, is this short piece of music truly a representation, as it claims, of the 'flight of the bumblebee'? Although I have heard the buzzing of many bees, I cannot truly claim to have heard a bee buzz in this particular rhythmic and melodic combination before. Also, bees don't really buzz in harmony, so what's with the chords?

According to Wikipedia, this music appears in the opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan when a prince is changed into a bumblebee "so he can fly away to visit his father". Although I am aware of the larval stage in the development of a bee, there seems to be no stage at which a human prince transforms into a fully-fledged bumblebee. Yet again, bees are misrepresented, although at least not in such a heinous fashion as in the 1978 film The Swarm. Later in the opera, the bumblebee in question stings two evil sisters on the brow, which, although technically possible (bumblebees, unlike honeybees, are able to sting multiple times) seems highly unlikely, as bees of any sort rarely sting unless first provoked. 

Sadly, this music seems to be a hodge podge of misconception and inaccuracy that does little for the noble cause of the bee. It is highly advisable that Rimsky-Korsakov go back to bee school immediately.

Brainfart

Just imagine if Bill Shorten ever gets to be Prime Minister. In moments of Prime Ministerial crisis, when questioned over aspects of his own policy that he no longer agrees with - or that he will shortly fail to agree with, if he's being especially forward-thinking about it - he could just re-use an old favourite:



"I'm not aware of what I said. But I'm sure I'm right....."

Okay, I'm going back to non-politics related non-topics now.

The hideous scourge of etc etc in today's etc

Confession time: I am a pasta racist. By which I mean, not that I discriminate against you if your parents were tagliatelle, or anything like that. No: it's just that I have a thing about brown pasta. I do not like it. Quite frankly, I find it depressing. To put it bluntly, brown pasta fills me with low expectations. It seems to me, if I may speak truthfully, a wholly inferior pasta.

Quite why I have come to have this low opinion of brown pasta, I do not know. I hold no such opinions about yellow pasta, or green pasta (which I find quite cheery); exotic pastas, such as red pasta, or dinosaur pasta, I have a lot of time for. Nor is this a general prejudice against the colour brown, which on the whole I believe does credit to the colour spectrum. In fact, I have a lot of time for all manner of colours, even when and perhaps especially if those colours turn out not to be so much colours at all, but almost-colours: grey, for instance. Why do people have a problem with this dignified and satisfying timbre, that appears in its many hues on the faces of clouds, in dignified ageing heads of hair, and throughout the heave and swell of the ocean?

So really, I have even less excuse than some for my pasta racism. Why do I hold this shocking pasta prejudice? Should I be sent to a pasta re-education class? Would I feel the same way if I was a brown pasta?

I do not know the answer to any of these questions. All I know is, once I am presented with a bowl of brown pasta, my face falls and I feel vaguely disappointed and slightly let down by the universe without knowing the reason why. This brown pasta prejudice of mine is truly insidious!

Tragedy comedy dramedy infotainment cat hair

From the department of watching the grass grow, listening to the cheese mature, telling entertaining anecdotes about cats sleeping, looking at the bees walking to and fro on the front of their hive, laughing about funny stuff the chickens ate, and watching a cat hair float around the house from one room to another, comes the latest excellent and riveting entertainment, watching the bloops of carbon dioxide go up through the blooper of a demijohn of fermenting beer and, well, blooping into the open air.

This riveting prime time drama, combining elements of burlesque, tragedy, comedy, dramedy, infotainment, soap opera, oratorio, and taking a banana peel out to the worms and gazing in fascination as they bury their way down to the bottom of the worm farm when you open the lid up, makes extraordinarily and enriching viewing for everyone involved, so that's just me then. Bloop! Bloop! Hey, there's another one! Bloop! There's just so much to learn and appreciate and discover, and you really appreciate something new each time you go back to watch it. Bloop! That bubble's taking a while. Bloop! Bloop! I really, really recommend it. Hey, do you want to take over? Well you can't. It's just too tense. Don't worry about me, I'll be here for the next week or so. Bloop!

A proposal for an excellent new sport

What a fine sport quibbling would be, it occurred to me the other day, and of course nothing would have stopped me leaping up there and then to tell you all about it but for the fact that right at that moment the cat settled down on my lap for a nap and stayed there for the next two weeks and I was reduced to chewing on my own beard for nourishment and when she finally got up I had to stumble into the kitchen for a glass of water. But now I'm here! Hurrah!

But quibbling would undoubtedly make an excellent sport, Olympic or otherwise. I'm not sure what it would involve. Something with balls? And nets*? And racquets or bats** of some sort? Anyway, I'll leave that all up to the commentators, as well as the rules and the length and other minor details. I can, however, suggest some of the other moves this excellent sport would have: the 'niggle', of course, an important manouvre that all quibblers would have to learn; the 'haggle' (an advanced sort of 'niggle'? Or vice versa?) The 'finagle' would be something for very advanced practitioners of 'niggling' and 'haggling', probably, whereas the 'persnickety snitch' would be a rather specialised tactic only allowable for certain members of the team - although that all rather depends on if there is going to be a team, which is really an unimportant point except, I suppose, if you aspire to the grand and noble sport of Olympic quibbling, (and you certainly should).

And other important moves - well, there would be the 'wangle', the 'pedantrick', and of course the potentially game-ending 'fussbudget'. No idea what any of these are, but they all sound very grand and inspiring, yes? Really, I can't understand why the game isn't taught to kids at schools now. It would do them so much good.

Okay, I'll go and place myself back underneath the cat again....

*Or, as N. said when I suggested the sport of quibbling to him, 'it would involve the players moving the net'. 
 
**Or maybe racquets that look like apostrophes?

Supernews! Thousands of Australians suddenly wish they'd voted for Parma, not Palmer.

AUSTRALIA, SUNDAY - Thousands of Australians today are slowly dawning to the realisation that they have mistakenly elected Clive Palmer to the Parliament instead of Chicken Parma.

"We didn't realise", said thousands of Australians. "We thought we were expressing our love for a well-known pub delicacy, a bit like people do in Masterchef, but instead we've accidentally elected this incoherent corrupt loon".

Chicken Parma, a well known celebrity which has appeared in barrooms across the nation in the company of pots, pints, schooners, middies, and sometimes a little salad, has repeatedly expressed its disinterest in running for politics. "I'm happy with my job at the moment," says Parma. "That is, providing a satisfying meal to people from all walks of life. I'm just not cut out for politics." However, it has said it is "surprised" but "flattered" by the news that thousands of Australians accidentally voted for it.

Thousands of Australians have today expressed their regret at the unfortunate mistake. "We're sorry," said thousands of Australians. "We won't do it again. Probably."

COMPARE AND CONTRAST
CHICKEN PARMA
- Found in pubs across the nation.
- Tasty and delicious.
- Likes lying on a bed of hot salty chips while being layered with a rich tomato sauce and melted mozzarella cheese.

CLIVE PALMER
- Found in boardrooms across the nation.
- Tasteless and chewy.
- Also likes lying on a bed of hot salty chips while being layered with a rich tomato sauce and melted mozzarella cheese, but only in the privacy of his own bedroom and only if the act is performed by a bikini-clad young woman.

 

Not Chicken Parma. 

This has been another edition of Supernews!

Live election blog!

Hello, and welcome to the Will Type For Food election blog, where we bring you all the glory of democracy as it unfolds across the nation! We'll be speaking to the key players from all sides of politics, that's right, both of them, as the night unfolds! Maybe we'll even chuck in a Green politician to keep you happy! So let's get started!

First, let's cross to Tony Abbott, leader of the opposition, for an interview about how things are proceeding with his party:

LIVE CROSS
.... the waves of necromantic lightning swept across his form as he writhed in voluptuous agony in the dark magics. His whole body experienced intense pain but a demented glare of horrifying glee held in his eyes, and a demonic rictus grin possessed his entire face. The awful yet glorious occult moment of ascension was at hand: all his plans were coming to fruition! Lord Vazgool laughed, laughed with fiendish intensity as he thought with satisfaction on the devastating sacrifices he had wreaked upon the community. He raised the knife for the final.... 

Er, sorry. We seem to be experiencing a few technical difficulties here. We'll be right back.

UPDATE!- Okay, we seem to have our technical difficulties sorted. Just a problem with a few crossed wires or something like that. Anyway, now, we'll take you right to the Federal Seat of Griffith, held by none other than Kevin Rudd. We'll be speaking to him in just a

LIVE CROSS
Robodroid spun wildly around the room, sensors flashing crazily. Robodroid did not know what went wrong! Robodroid just wanted love! Why did people not like Robodroid? It did not compute. The whole system on the starship did not compute, which is why Robodroid wanted to help them out. Why did not people want Robodroid's help? Another laser ray flashed from Robodroid's arm as one of his captives attempted to run for the door. The prime directive once again flashed across Robodroid's face: ALL WHO OPPOSE ROBODROID MUST BE....

Goodness me, I just don't know what's going on here. Hang on a tick, folks.

UPDATE! - Rightho. Sorted. Let's just cross to  an expert for an expertly expert opinion....

Oh, BLOODY HELL.

An imbibulatory inventory

AKA, beers wot I have brewed this autumn and winter (and also a little bit of stuff from early spring)

(I started writing this list a few days ago as a handy distraction when I had something much more important to do. Funnily enough, instead of finishing the list, or actually doing the more important thing, I ended up getting distracted from my distraction. I couldn't even waste my own time properly!) 

Cider - 7/4/13

Stout with oatmeal and whey - 11/4/13

English brown ale - 22/3/13

Another brown ale with almonds - 1/5/13

Mead - 5/5/13

Porter - 10/5/13

Brown Ale with sultanas - 23/5/13

Brown Ale with almonds and sultanas and some juice from stewed apples - 31/5/13

Fejoia wine - 4/5/13

Ginger Beer - 27/5/13

Chocolate stout - 9/6/13

Rosemary brown ale - 10/6/13

Cinnamon porter - 20/6/13

English pale bitter with pink peppercorns - 30/6/13

Witbier with lemon verbena - 26/6/13

Porter with cinnamon and orange and lemon rind - 4/7/13

Witbier with lemon and tangello peel and coriander (because of my stupidity the coriander turned out to be cumin, but, you know, meh) - 16/7/13

Porter with cinnamon, coriander and juniper - 26/7/13

Altbier with lemon verbena and cretan savoury (it's just a German brown beer) - 4/8/13

Pilsener - 7/8/13

Beetroot bitter - 11/8/13

Witbier with orange, coriander, and nutmeg - 13/8/13

Porter with cinnamon, coriander, carraway and coffee - 20/8/13

Oktoberfest Lager with meadowsweet - 24/8/13

Mead with apple, orange peel, and cloves - 18/8/13 (okay, this was meant to use a wild yeast, but so far it is stubbornly not fermenting. My strategy with it at the moment is to look sternly at it every time I pass it by. I think it'll work eventually.)

Bappir cakes (for Sumerian ale - if I ever get around to making it) - 18/8/13 (These are little cakes of barley and coriander and dates mixed together with a little honey water)

Altbier with rosemary and thyme, and fresh honey added during fermentation - 26/8/13

Porter with pepper and juniper - 30/8/13

Scottish light with lemon verbena and tagetes 5/9/13

This post brought to you A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, and all that numbered stuff as well

Lists, you would think, are simple affairs. For a long time it seemed to me that if you wanted to make a list and separate the items out in that list, you would use letters or numbers. If you ran out of letters - there are only twenty six of them - before you ran out of things to list, you would switch to numbers. If you ran out of numbers before you ran out of things to list, then you would have a problem - but you were not likely to run out of numbers, unless you had an infinity of things to list*, and even then you'd probably run out of time before you ran out of numbers.

When I used to transcribe media items, I'd hear people get confused over simple lists a lot. "Well, there are four things to say about that," one interviewee would say. They would list the first item under a number or letter - "a", or "one", or maybe "firstly". After that it all became a bit of a free-for-all, so an "a" could be followed by a "secondly", or sometimes by a whimsical "firstly", or maybe even by a "b". By the time they got to the third item on the list, they would usually have got so carried away they would forget to list it under a number or letter altogether, and possibly have forgotten the question they were answering in the first place, to say nothing of the forlorn fourth item in the list. With public speaking, it's definitely a good rule to make all your lists no more than three items in length, so it is no wonder James Diaz had such a problem with the first item on Tony Abbott's six point plan for Australia.  On the other hand, some politicians, instead of confusing themselves with their own list, just opt to confuse others: "I'll take the three points in your question," Kevin Rudd said in one press conference, "and answer them in reverse order...."

Anyway, as  I said, I had thought that the itemising of, um, items on lists would be just confined to letters and numbers. Now, as it turns out, with me doing the odd legal transcript here and there, I may have completely underestimated the cataloguing capacities of language. Why have a simple lettered and numbered list when you can catalogue it by clause and sub-clause and capital and lower-case with several nuances in between? "If I may draw your attention to 154A (i) (b) at (2)" murmurs a lawyer unassumingly, only to be picked up by their colleague on a comma that contradicts them at 147BK (iii) IV (ii) - (viii). What these items would be, I do not know: I just made them up. But frighteningly, that's what politicians do with laws all the time: they just make them up....

A while back I tossed the idea back and forth of a robot possessing emotions all neatly categorised in a series of numbered sub-routines, which ended up with this. I still think there's something in that, but then again, I also get excited about the expressive nuances of capital letters.  But it's pretty obvious now, numbers and letters aren't nearly as expressive and nuanced and impressionistic and sensuous as the little curly loops and angular symbols that precede a series of laws. They could be used to express virtually anything, although it must be said, laws are so vast and voluminous that whatever they do express, it could be hidden virtually anywhere in aforesaid vast and voluminous laws. But just imagine what would happen if a practical-minded lawyer got hold of, say, an airport car park: you'd park your car several brackets, nine capitals, four dots and three dashes from the end on floor 5.2.2 and end up wandering in a daze between one close parenthesis and another (a daze is always the best way to appreciate such nuanced and expressively-impressionistic-impressively-expressionistic artworks, I find).

There's very little chance of this glorious thing happening, more's the pity. In the meantime, we will just have to content ourselves with filling out gigantic lists of people we don't like, which we'll get another opportunity to do when presented with the Senate paper on the weekend. As an activity it doesn't quite have the magniloquent grandeur and aesthetic vision of, say, a clause of a sub-division of a division of a little known amendment to an unknown act enacted in 1936. Still, it's getting there.

*Or, possibly, an infinitely infinite infinitude of infinities to list - though Gregor Cantor seems to get a little confusing on this point.

What's a meta phor?

Or, that's a similar simile

 

The evening dark comes now, my love,

As if it were the close of day,

The stars so bright and small appear,

They seem like suns so far away;

The night so very black, my love,

I cannot see you overmuch,

Nor even reach to hold your hand

Except for when we touch.

And still the worlds spin madly on,

As planets whirl through outer space,

We hurry on, we hurry on,

As though we'd win the human race.
The wind howls on, the rain is wet,

Almost as if inclement weather -

O! May we two kiss now, my love,

As humans osculate together?