Sither That Wedge

Also Entitled: My Career in Romantic Briefs, (or should that be the other way around?)

Recently I attempted to take up a career in Romantic Poetry. There hasn't been a market for this sort of thing for 200 odd years, so with my typically incisive business acumen, I figured now would be just as bad a time as any to get in on it.
I sat down at my desk with a few quires of paper, a pen, my neighbour's fob watch, and a tumbler full of hock and soda water, without the hock. Soon I had written these lines:

There's a linnet
On the spinet
And an ostrich
In it.

I thought that was pretty good going, so I stopped there and inhaled my tumblerful of soda water, without the water. Then I went on:

In a minute
I'll play a minuet.

That seemed to me to be getting a little tedious, so I hastily contrived to turn it into an ode in which the spinet flew away and built a nest in a briar-bush, and the linnet was taken away to be turned into candlesticks. (As for the minute and the minuet, they could have one another, as far as I was concerned.)
Then I started again.

The Throstlecock sate upon the hedge
Besides the little purling rill.

This was rather trying stuff, and I pretty much had to mix myself a glass of Pymms-coloured cordial. (To get the timbre right, I added a firkinful of brown sugar). Following this, I wrote:

The Cockling Throst, it throsted into the night;
The hedge is hurling still.

I paused to wipe the sweat off my brow, and immediately enclosed a copy of this electrifying quatrain in a letter addressed to 'Sir Joseph Addison, The Spectator', asking for his standard publication fee of 1 pound, 10 shillings. (I still have not heard back from him.)

After a little more thought, I set myself the simple task of writing an ode, in 172 stanzas, to the Pipit (or to the Peewit, Tit, Booby, Wren, Starling, Finch, Pigeon, or Sparrow, if the Pipit wasn't available). I then intended to divide the ode up into as many sonnets as possible and sell them at a reduced price in the Queen Victoria Markets. There follows an excerpted passage, which just coincidentally happens to be all I got around to writing. (Excerpts have seldom been more generous.) I call it, provisionally,

Lines Written Upon My First Viewing Of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey in Coburg Library

Naught on this earth is like unto the Pipit
To make my heart be full of joy and mirth,
Except it be the Peewit, Starling, Finch, Emu, Kiwi, Wren, or Peacock,
And creatures of a lesser girth.

Yea! There is in thee, o Pipit,
A hint of the sublime
That doth inhabit the eternal world,
And liv'st, in short (or should that be long?) for all time!
And doth presumably exceed
This, my poor rhyme.

Following this, I decided to give up my writing career in romantic poetry and take up a career in conceptual art, with an emphasis on the conceptual. From now on, you'll find me walking up and down Collins Street in the centre of Melbourne, wearing a shirt that says 'Jesus Is My Friend!' in an ironic fashion.

Good Film See - You Look Look Now!

American films are funny things, aren't they? It used to be full of guys like Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant swanning around smoky cocktail bars, muttering pleasantries to one another with implicit threats. By the 1980s or so it had turned into characters making explicit threats in order to make implicit threats, and in the 90s the implicit threats were made by the characters breaking chairs over one another's back. A clear evolutionary line can therefore be traced from Humphrey Bogart muttering pleasantries to Cary Grant, and some guy breaking a chair over another's back. But it still makes you feel a little nostalgic for the old days.

Which is why it was nice tonight to see a film with a little more sophistication than most of the current Hollywood crop. The Good German stars Cate Blanchett, George Clooney, and Toby Maguire. Just to make myself clear, you do get to see people break chairs over George Clooney's back. They also punch him in the face, kick him in the guts, beat him about the head with sticks, throw him onto the floor, and shoot at him. But all this is a mere entertainment; there's nothing implicit in any of this. It's good, clean, gratuitous violence, and made even better by the fact that it's happening to George Clooney.

The rest of the film is quite fun, too, with a labyrinthine plot involving a murder investigation, a lost Nazi, several unscrupulous Berlin whores, a number of references to Casablanca, historical references to the de-Nazification of Germany following the 2nd World War, and apparently Jack Thompson's in there too.

Naturally, I couldn't follow any of it, but the music was rather good, I rather enjoyed myself, and in the end, I walked out saying, 'Gosh! If I wrote a list of the best and worst films that I've seen this year, that will certainly be one of them!'

The Good German: I have no idea what it was about, but a few people die, the dialogue is impeccable, the characters are interesting, and occasionally they start breaking chairs over one another's backs, especially if one of the anothers is George Clooney. Four Stars from me, Margaret.

In Which Nothing Is Said, And Great Deal Isn't Implied

This is the cover of Quadrant Magazine for this month!

It's the magazine of choice for Right-Wing Death Metrosexuals! Check out the covers of some previous issues of Quadrant...

Apparently, there was a time when Quadrant used to have actual cover-art, pictures, cartoons, and illustrations. Now the best thing to look forward to visually are the headings to the articles (In bold! And sometimes in CAPITALS!) and the columns (and very nice columns they are too).
Interestingly, just recently, Quadrant seem to have been trying to get in on the fashion racket. See the evidence here: and note the sunglasses!

Whatever, I still like the magazine. Against my better judgment - (not that I have a better judgment, so perhaps I should say against my least-worst judgment) - I found myself discussing the merits of conservative writers over on Alexis' blog the other day. I should have recommended* Quadrant then: it is always a joy to read, with the literature edited by Les Murray, regular poetry reviews, thoughtful essays, and the requisite 'cranky old bastard' rants by former Melbourne University Press publisher Peter Ryan.

Just while I've got this thing on**, look what I got in the mail on Wednesday...

"One Touch Of Venus", by S J Perelman (with lyrics by Ogden Nash). This book is ridiculously rare - I had to hit abebooks to find copies of it. It combines a libretto by a favourite humourist with songs by a favourite poet, and it's a handsome publication to boot. They turned it into a movie, with Ava Gardner playing the part of Venus (a statue that comes to life), but apparently it wasn't very good. Well, it's a handsomely written play, and it has one of Ogden Nash's best songs in it:

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

And there's more where that came from!

Music was written by Kurt Weill, though it's not included in this publication. Methinks I might have to do some more browsing of the internet. Be warned, folks: I could be slowly evolving into an Antiquarian. I'm popping off now to grow a beard and start smoking a pipe while leafing through many a volume of forgotten lore, or Viz Magazine, whatever I can get my hands on first. Cheerio!

UPDATE! - Well, what won't we talk about today, then?

*Hah! As if I know what I'm talking about!

** Photoblogging? Sheesh, how low can this blog go?

A Serious Case Of Conceptual Pornography Art

Spencer Tunick is an artist who takes pictures of naked people. I saw an interview with the guy on Rove Live once. It went something like this.

ROVE: In the studio with me today, I have Spencer Tunick. Spencer, what do you do?

SPENCER: I take photographs of naked people.

ROVE: Why do you take photographs of naked people?

SPENCER: I am a conceptual artist.

And that was it. He clearly didn't go in much for introspective personal analysis. And he didn't really have any explanation, just a punchline: 'I am a conceptual artist'.

I still don't know why he's not taking pictures for Playboy. What's the difference between taking pictures of naked people and selling them as porn, and taking pictures of naked people and selling them as conceptual art?

And it's not as if nakedness is so revolutionary now anyway: ancient Greek artists were taking pictures of naked people, only they used up more chisels and blocks of marble. Tunick pretty much does the same thing, only more so - instead of having one naked person, he'll throw naked people all over the place. People crowd up to be the naked people in his photographs of naked people.
There's a documentary about Spencer Tunick on television at the moment, and I just saw one naked woman in Melbourne break down. "That was the most beautiful experience I had in my life!" she sobs (collapsing in the arms of the HIV positive 'Health Supervisor' for the whole event). A few moments earlier she had been telling us how wonderfully calming the whole thing was.
Spencer waddles through all this with a compulsive grin on his face, the grin of a man who thinks he is doing something naughty but has forgotten what.

Apparently Spencer describes himself as a serious conceptual artist, though it's possible this guy hasn't had a new concept for a long time. I think he should take up a job selling ads for Hustler magazine.

Just conceptually, of course.

Mummy, when I grow up, I want to take pictures of naked people but it won't be porn.

UPDATE!
Spencer Tunick quotes:

"It has to be me... they don't have to be technically good shots..."

"It's certainly exciting to be in the show with a lot of these artists. It's great!"

"I think the Brazilians are getting too close to my photographs."

Post Made For The Purposes Of A Pun

Alimentary, my dear Watson.

Honest Spam

'World Wide Lootery'? If you say so.

Off Topic

Yes. Yes it is. So if you're going to comment, try and keep it on topic, okay?

Stuff Wot I Have Read

What ho, got a couple of potboilers on the backburner and all that. Here's just a few of them...

The Railway Children, Edith Nisbet
Edith Nisbet is great; I read some of her stories about the Bastables a couple of years ago and loved them. She typically writes realistic stories about England at the turn of the century, from the perspective of children, with a bit of bluestocking rhetoric thrown in as well, if that makes sense. In some of her books (Five Children and It, for instance) she'll throw in some weird gnome or fairy, which kind of stuffs up the realism a bit, but still makes it interesting.
I like 'The Railway Children', though; it's the story of a family whose father is taken away to London, and probably imprisoned, for mysterious political reasons. As a result the family have to go and live in the countryside, where the rent is cheaper, supported by their mother, who spends her time sending off poems, stories, and articles to various quarterlies. (Occasionally she sends off letters to Members of Parliament and Secretaries of Societies and what-not, too). Let's quote a bit of it, shall we? Oh, do lets!

Mother, all this time, was very busy with her writing. She used to send off a good many long blue envelopes with stories in them - and large envelopes of different sizes and colours used to come to her. Sometimes she would sigh when she opened them and say:
'Another story come home to roost. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!' and then the children would be very sorry.
But sometimes she would wave the envelope in the air and say:
'Hooray, hooray. Here's a sensible Editor. He's taken my story and this is the proof of it.'
At first the children thought 'the proof' meant the letter the sensible Editor had written, but they presently got to know that the proof was long slips of paper with the story printed on them.
Whenever an Editor was sensible there were buns for tea.
One day Peter was goingg down to the village to get buns to celebrate the sensibleness of the Editor of the Children's Globe, when he met the Station Master...

I say, how perfectly ripping!

Serious Concerns, Wendy Cope
I picked this up in Readings a couple of weeks ago and started leafing through it. The first poem that I read was 'The Uncertainty of the Poet' - it's a parody of a painting of the same name by Chirico:

I am a poet
I am very fond of bananas.

I am bananas.
I am very fond of a poet.

I am a poet of bananas.
I am very fond ...

The second poem I read was even better. Cope's verse is typically light, the tone hovering somewhere between Pam Ayres and Ogden Nash, but she makes some serious points, about life and relationships and stuff (apparently the book was written at an unhappy period in her life.) What can I say, I enjoy it.

Oh, alright then, let's quote one more Cope poem, the one from which the book gets the title:

Write to amuse? What an appalling suggestion!
I write to make people anxious and miserable and to worsen their indigestion.

War of the Wing-Men, Poul Anderson
I couldn't resist the title.

The Legends of Lennie Lower
I read some of these on the plane flight over to the US, but to tell you the truth, a bit of this humour is on the nose. Lower is the author of the classic Aussie novel 'Here's Luck', a tale about the anarchistic life led by a father and son in suburban Sydney during the onset of the depression. It's narrated with drunken eloquence by noted toper Stanley Gudgeon (the father) and ends with their house being burnt down.
I was sort of expecting more of the same when I picked up this book, a collection of comic newspaper articles written by Lower. The best of the articles here are packed full of hilarious puns and Lower's typically anarchistic humour; some of the nonsensical fairy stories, for instance, are great. But then, Lower also has the occasional habit of making appallingly un-PC jokes about, for instance, men hitting their wives. It's a real head-scratcher, this book - by turns quite funny, and occasionally quite awful. I just don't know what to think of Lower.

The Pilgrim's Regress, C S Lewis
An odd allegory about the Christian life by C S Lewis. The title suggests a parody of John Bunyan's classic renaissance English text, but it's not really a parody; it's a serious allegory in its own right. Some writers have a way of writing characters that resemble people in your own life; Lewis has a way of creating allegorical figures (Mr Sensible, Mr Vertue, Mr Enlightenment) that resemble specific philosophical and ethical flaws. This book is pretty interesting - it seems to start out as a comedy, and ends up reading like a medieval text.

Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker
The New Yorker published some of the best - Nabakov, Thurber, E B White, S J Perelman, John Updike - but it's amazing how simple some of these stories are. Entertaining stuff. Unfortunately, my book has the habit of making a 'Screech!' noise when the pages rub together, which twists every stomach in the vicinity of the book into knots.

I'm off now to eat a bowl of freshly picked grovels with a runcible spoon and vorpal sword. Any reflections on these books, reader? What are you reading?

An Explanation of un-Australianess.

Right then.

An un-Australian is a person who is not necessarily non-Australian, but is definitely a little bit anti-Australian.

Being non-Australian is definitely un-Australian, but being un-Australian does not necessarily make you non-Australian. Indeed, with the increasing amount of un-Australians in Australia these days, it seems that it un-Australianess is fast becoming a pre-requisite for Australianess.

Furthermore, there are some pro-Australians (called pro-pro-Australians) who argue that un-Australians should all be non-Australians. But there are also a larger group of pro-Australians (Relatively-pro-Australians) who maintain that un-Australians do not have to be non-Australians, although they would prefer if they became less un-Australians.

It gets a little complicated, though, because some un-Australians are prone on occasion to act like pro-Australians, and some pro-Australians are occasionally fond of acting in an un-Australian fashion. This leads to the phenomenon of un-pro-Australians, and pro-un-Australians. And let's not even get into the subject of non-un-Australians, who are either non-Australians who are also anti-Australian, or un-Australians who have left the country, depending on who you ask.

Once a day, all the un-Australians gather in a room together, look at a big picture of John Howard they have on the wall, and weep.

Do you understand now? Good. Neither do I.

Now run along and do something good and healthy, like playing Grand Theft Auto on your X-boxes, boys and girls.

A Cultural Evening

Recently I enjoyed an evening of entertainment and culture as I undertook to view the film Jackass as it screened on late night television.

Fig 1

It is a simple film, yet deceptive in its simplicity, as it masks a number of enduring cultural themes: familiar relations, friendship and comraderie, the relationship between man and nature,
and running into hard objects at very fast speeds. Occasionally they fall on hard objects at fast speeds too, or get hit with hard objects, insert hard objects into their body, or... but let's not get bogged down in petty details.

In one scene, the beauty and fragility of the American wild is evinced as one of the merry pranksters puts a fully-grown crocodile into his parents house. And yet, the scene is heartfelt, too: the jolly jape is is merely carried out in order to get his mother to say 'fuck' for the purposes of the film. Thus the great and noble tradition of the family in culture ('Little House on the Prairie', 'Tom Sawyer', 'The Simpsons') is continued.
In another touching family scene, another of the chaps bursts into the toilet while his rather corpulent father squats upon the john, screaming and shouting. He then removes the shirt from the back of his pater familias, who continues to squat there in a Buddha-like position. After some moments, a thought occurs to the old fellow, and he calls to his wife: "I think the boy is finally losing it."

This is not to say, however, that this movie does not touch upon the stylistic works of other artists. For instance, in the scene 'Monster Truck Disco', the chaps dance to disco music in the back of a truck that is cutting corners at very fast speeds. This scene is at once a tribute to the work of Gloria Gaynor, in that Gloria Gaynor had something to do with disco music. And yet it also references the work of Jean Paul Sartre and his fellow existentialists: for although the chaps are dancing to disco music in the back of a truck driving at very fast speeds, we do not know why they are doing it.
In several other scenes, the thriving cultural influences of Asia are referenced, as the fellows dance semi-naked through the streets of Japan, or roller-skate through the streets of Japan dressed as gigantic pandas (see Fig 1, above.)
There is also a scene where one of the lads rolls through a room full of loaded mouse traps to a gigantic cheese, while dressed in a large mouse suit. Note the significance of production details like costume: in this scene, the large mouse suit is very important, in that it is what the lad is wearing as he rolls through the mouse traps.

And yet, for all this, the movie is unpretentious. Time and again, it returns to the simple joys: seeing the lads put sharks into their underpants, give one another bungie-wedgies, punch and kick one another, get fired at with live ammunition, place firecrackers in their neither regions, put crocodiles on their nipples, and drive at very fast speeds about abandoned parks into gigantic plastic animals.

In years to come, when my grandchildren sit upon my knee and ask me whether I saw Jackass: The Movie, I will squint my eyes, look far back into the past, puff on my pipe reminiscently, and say, "Yes: I saw Jackass: The Movie. Which is to say I was in the room and the television was on at that time. How dare you ask your grandfather questions like that? And did you see my dentures this morning? And have you remembered to sign up for Chairman Rudd's youth rally? You know what the party will do if you don't go. And was it you that put the crocodile in my old folks home bathroom yesterday?"

And we will all laugh.

UPDATE: Just cross-posted this here.

Slam Sham

Toddling off to this event this afternoon. Performance poetry is kind of fun, if you get the right atmosphere happening and there's not too many idiots on stage, so we'll see how it goes. I'm just jotting down some ideas after a poem was suggested to me yesterday - here's what I've got so far:

RACISM IS NAUGHTY
A Poem By Timothy H. Train

1. Orthodox Jews

I like Orthodox Jews,
From their yarmulke to their shoes!
Stuff drinking at the bar,
I prefer Bar Mitzvah -
Yes, I like Orthodox Jews!

I never get the blues
When I'm around Orthodox Jews!
They can talk about the Torah
More, and more, and morer -
Yes of all the people in the world,
It's the chosen people that I choose!
I like Orthodox Jews!

2. Palestinians

Palestinians are funny,
Though suicide bombing is so very, very wrong.
Their beards are long and runny,
Their disposition is generally sunny,
And Yasser Arafat reminds me of the Easter Bunny!
Although suicide bombing is so very, very wrong,
Palestinians are funny!

3. Americans

Really, there is a lot that can be said for the Americans!

4. Amish

Hooray for the Amish!
Some people like Martin,
But I prefer Kingsley Amish!
Hooray for the Amish!

5. Italians

The Italians look especially cute
If you put them in a business suit!

6. North Koreans

I really am quite fond of the North Koreans,
And I don't mind the Japanese either!

Needs more work. Anyway, I'll let you all know later on how the event was.

UPDATE! - Well, the attempted irony in this poem seems to have had a use-by-date of half a day. I think I'll give it a miss this evening and read out one of my better efforts. Cheers folks. Sorry to inflict that nonsense on you.

UPDATE UPDATE! - Right then. Apparently they changed the time, or it was never going to be on, or something. Well, the poster said register by 8pm. And it still does, on their website. God, what a load of bollocks all round.

Dude Food Blogging

My Saturday morning had two notable events, if notable is taken to mean 'I sent a letter off and made some gingerbread', but let's not get all prosaic now, shall we?

This was the letter. The envelope was addressed to 'The Literary Editor, Quadrant Magazine'.

Behind that note you can see parts of the story that I'd been meaning to submit to Quadrant. I'm quite proud of it: it's titled 'Sex and Sclerotica', and my favourite line is:

"Bloom goggled, and, as so often when that happened, his glasses began to film up. He took them off and absent-mindedly began to clean them with the letter of resignation he had kept on his desk for the last 20 years."

Leaving that on the table for the time being, I set about making the gingerbread. I got the recipe from, would you believe it, doing a google search and ending up on the ABC website.

I sifted Self-Raising Flour, cinnamon and ginger together into a bowl before mixing in some brown sugar:

Mmm - lardiferous!

I used margarine instead of butter - I prefer that in cooking. After this was melted on the stove, I mixed in treacle, milk, and an egg:

(Note: just looking at this photograph, I'm gargling in a Homer-like fashion. Just thought I'd throw that detail in.)

I also chucked in some raisins that were lying about the place. Because, you know, I'm a rebel, dude, and I do what I like.
All I had to do after that was mix the ingredients together and throw them in a greased cake-tin. The tin went in a 160 celsius oven for about half an hour. Actually, since the oven is in Fahrenheit, AND the Fahrenheit markings are hard to read, it was pretty much guesswork.

The results! And the best way to eat them (in my opinion)?

Fresh out of the oven with butter and black coffee! (By the way, if Rupert Murdoch is reading - Rupe, hope you notice the subtle product placement I'm doing for your paper. Want to pay me?)

Gingerbread's almost gone now, but you can make some of your own by finding the full recipe here. Enjoy!

The Seven Derangements of Doctor Arturo Quar

There comes a time in every bloggers existence when they whack you with details of their dreams. This is that time for this blogger*. I had the dream this morning; it's a variation on the usual 'running dream' theme that I get - I'm usually running away from somebody, and going through an enormous building that never seems to end.**

The text is largely copied from my comment on Redsaid. The title of this post, by the way, is a title for a book that once occurred to me in a dream. I don't think the book has ever been written (or will ever be written), but it was too good not to re-use.

MY DREAM

Last night I dreamed somebody was chasing me through a major department store. I can't remember why, or what happened, exactly, but there was a lot of falling curtains and breaking chairs and things like that. I got in a lift and got down to the ground floor, but then for some reason I decided to hide out from the felon chasing me on the second floor. This was a floor that only the staff were allowed on, but I thought I could blend in.

When I reached there, everyone looked at me strangely, and I ran into an English lady who looked like she was out of one of those English Department Store movies of the 1950s (I'm sure there's got to be a movie genre that fits that description). She then read out to me something that I had apparently said before:

"NOBODY TOLD ME THAT ALL I'D FIND IN THIS DEPARTMENT STORE IS VIOLENCE, ANARCHY AND DEATH!"

She then told me that I had to go to the re-education department, and I was taken by the store guards (via the lift) presumably to Room 101 to be 're-educated'. (Thankfully, at that moment, I woke up.)

Analyse THAT!

* See Comic Strip Hero's recent battle with her subconscious.

**When I was a kid I also used to dream about walking down the street in my pyjamas or naked. Why does everyone seem to have this dream? And then there was the one where I would be in a car that would drive right up the side of cliffs. Deep, man, deep.

My Charity Is Bigger Than Your Charity

As the world already knows, Angelina Jolie has recently pretended to be 'single' so as to be able to legally adopt another little kiddie from a foreign country, in her quest to buy at least one needy child every time she goes to the supermarket.... Jolie has been quoted as saying: "I will stay at home to help Pax adjust to his new life. I have four children and caring for them is the most important thing for me at the moment. I am very proud and happy to be their mother … Photographs and press coverage will make (Pax) upset. I'm very worried about that. I would like to say I'm sorry for bringing this into Pax's life." - Caz

Maybe she should adopt off the biological child, would probably have a much better childhood that way. - Chazz.

Every day, from all four-corners of Hollywood, children are suffering. Wretched souls have been plucked from out of poverty in deepest Africa or Asia or somewhere like that, and are made to suffer in the cold, harsh glare of the media. And their number is growing every day: as Hollywood celebrities become richer, so their desire to 'save' these children from their happy, primitive existence increases.

How often have you said to yourself: the problem is so big? What can I do to help?

Well, now you can help: by donating to the

SAVE THE CHILDREN FROM CELEBRITIES FUND
(SCFCF)

We are a world-wide fund devoted to rescuing children all over Hollywood from the clutches of their celebrity mothers and fathers. By donating as little as 10 cents a day, you can help to rescue a suffering child and return them to their native country.

Tibor's Story My adoptive mother had the biggest breasts in all of Hollywood, and I used to own a Ferrari and several mansions in Italy. Thank you, SCFCF, for freeing me from all this. No, really. Thank you.

With larger donations, we will be able to rescue the biological children of celebrities and return them to simpler, more noble ways of life.

Matik's Story I ate mud pies for breakfast and I will eat mud pies for dinner. Thanks a f*cking lot, SCFCF.

The SCFCF also plans to sterilise large parts of Asia and Africa (and possibly Alabama and Australia, also) in order to ensure that celebrities never again are tempted to 'rescue' children from poverty.

Mbofo's Story No! I don't want to go! I like it here! I like being photographed! I like my mummy! Don't take me back there! My brother works in a sweat shop! Waaaaaaah!

Please. Think of the children.

Sarai's Story I hate it here. You guys really are a bunch of arseholes, you know that?

Craptitude Test

A shit story, but not a story that is shit.

In My Humble Opinions

Maxine McKew is the thinking man's Maxine McKew. Maxine McKew is also the unthinking man's Maxine McKew.

In short, although Maxine McKew may not be all things to all people, she is some things to some people, and that's good enough for you and me (and Maxine).

Thank you.

Celebrity Dog? Give Me Snowy Anyday...

They're advertising a new show on Channel Ten called 'Celebrity Dog School', and judging from the name, it's either a show where celebrities go to get their dogs trained, or where celebrities go to get trained to act like dogs, or where celebrities and their dogs go to get trained to act like one another. It's not clear from the title which. I went to the website to find out, and didn't:

Each week, six Australian celebrities and their dogs are set one obedience task (sit, stay, drop, come etc) and one agility task (over jump, through tunnel, weaving around poles etc). At the end of each week, they’ll then have to perform these tasks in front of their fellow celebrities... and the expert judges!

So if watching a second-rate Australian celebrity and/or their dog sit, stay, drop, come, over jump, through tunnel, weave around poles, and so on, floats your boat, then tune in, I guess. Whatever the hell the show is about, one thing is certain: in the eternal battle of man against dog, dogs have lost another round.

PS Apparently the celebrities and dogs featured on the show are pictured here. It's hard to tell which is which ...

A Possible Solution To Our Energy Woes

SCIENTISTS have created rabbits that glow in the dark.

Geneticists in France produced the bunnies by inserting a gene from a fluorescent jellyfish into a rabbit’s egg.

They are now selling the white bunnies to research laboratories.

I got this story from Harry. It seems to me that these marvellous glow-in-the-dark bunnies would form a wonderful, environmentally-friendly solution to our energy woes, if you don't think so much about the soil erosion or the destruction of native species' habitat, and why on earth should you?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the future: I call it Mr Snuffles.

I think I'm going to get one of these things so I can have a night light to read books by. A strangely irritating, twitchy night-light that hops about everywhere every time I read more than two words, and keeps on eating out of the lettuce bin, true... but a night light, nonetheless. I guess if I really wanted to stop them hopping about, I could shoot them. And you can't do that with a normal night-light, can you? No. No, you can't.

Don't tell the RSPCA I said that, though. Those scoundrels just don't appreciate the torment we cultured types have to go through to read books. It's hard being literate and educated, let me tell you. Honestly, I don't know how Chaucer and Shakespeare wrote their plays without one of these glow-in-the-dark bunnies, I really don't.

The Fable of the Largely Unsatisfying Fable

Once upon a time, there was a hackneyed opening to a story.

The ending wasn't much better.

The end.

Moral: Not really, no.

Another Moral: As you travel along life's highway don't forget to stop and smell the flowers, unless the flowers smell really crap, which they probably do.

Headlines Spotted

Kudos to Bernie Slattery for these two headlines spotted on the Coober Pedy News website!

- Peculiar Knob Excites

- International Women's Day Celebrations