Sado-masochist love letter

M.,

Just thinking about you makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a pencil. Repeatedly.

Please come home so I may indulge in this mutually pleasurable and satisfying activity all night. Bring another pencil! You can do it too!

With Love, F.

Excitement plus

Today, just for larks, I took the washing off the line. There was no particular reason for me to do this; the washing had been on the line for about a week, getting almost dry in the odd day of sunshine, then getting wet again in the rain, then gradually drying out again, although still being just moist enough to make you wonder whether you should leave it up for another day. Anyway, today, in a radical break with this state of affairs, I took it down. I just thought you'd all like to know that.

In other exciting news, I put my tie on to take a ride on the train. I know: I could have just worn the tie around the house. But I decided to take it onto the train instead. The excitement, as you can see, never ends around here.

Tory dinner party

For years we have been told that technology was making us richer, but we eat less and drink less than we did 100 years ago, so where is the improvement. I remember when nearly everyone had three cooked meals a day and a substantial tea with cakes and scones and butter and jam. Perhaps people lived less long, but at least there was some purpose in their lives.
Auberon Waugh, The Way of the World

Over the past few weeks I have been reading the - gloriously misanthropic, wickedly funny - ramblings of Auberon Waugh. That passage reminded me of that grand old tradition of English Tories eating great amounts of food with pleasure...

There was a boy. His name was Jim. 
His friends were very good to him. 
They gave him tea, and cakes, and jam, 
And slices of delicious jam.... 

Hillaire Belloc, Jim

'... Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the human frame requires...'
With that, the Wretched Child expires. 

Hillaire Belloc, Henry King

My forthcoming work in five volumes, `The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature,' is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful whether I shall live to finish it.

G. K. Chesterton, Cheese 

Ascetic Mr. Lewis' - !!! I ask you! He put away three pints in a very short session we had this morning, and said he was 'going short for Lent.'"  

J. R. R. Tolkien on C. S. Lewis

There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

C. S. Lewis

(Indeed, I once read that when Waugh visited Australia he dined on a koala. But that story is probably too good to be true, rather than too true to be good.)

How now Chow chow

The other day I was in the backyard looking over my neighbour's fence. Now I know what you're thinking, but I look over my neighbour's fence all the time, so I have lots of experience in these matters, and also they're hardly ever in the backyard anyway, and besides, I was looking for my cat. Who hasn't stood in their backyard looking over their neighbour's fence for their cat from time to time? Not to mention occasionally when I'm looking over the neighbour's fence for my cat I'm able to permanently borrow a lemon from the neighbour's tree. It all sounds perfectly fine to me.

Anyway, I was standing there looking over my neighbour's fence for my cat, which is a perfectly legitimate and fine activity, because you have to keep an eye on what you cat is doing, especially if your cat is in the neighbour's backyard, and I can't believe we're still talking about it, and all of a sudden I found a small dog looking back at me. It seemed as surprised as I was: two small eyes peered out of a cloud of fur. It was obviously so affronted it even forgot to bark. Even better: it was a Chow Chow.

The dog was also there when I looked over my neighbour's fence later. And the day after, when I looked over the fence again, it was still there. In fact, the presence of this canine backyard dog seemed to necessitate a lot of looking over my neighbour's fence, even when my cat was inside: it's important to assure yourself of the presence of the neighbour's dog in the neighbour's backyard, after all. For its part, the dog got over its initial bout of muteness and began to gruffly greet my presence in the familiar stentorian tones of its kind. In fact on some occasions I found that I'd just be standing around in the backyard, nowhere near the fence, which I was certainly not looking over, which I'll admit is unusual, and the dog would remind me of its presence by barking for no apparent reason.

The next logical step to take after all this is obviously to stop looking over your neighbour's fence at the neighbour's backyard, and place yourself in your neighbour's backyard instead, not by climbing over the fence, obviously, which would be rude (unless you are a cat), but by simply walking round to the neighbour's house and asking if you could see the dog, which is much more polite (unless you are a cat.) So I did. It was excellent. And the dog wasn't bad either.

I'm not sure if there's a moral to this post, but I like to think that in the process of writing it, I've become a more compassionate and understanding person and have made universal peace and harmony that much more possible. Look, basically I think what I'm saying is this: it's okay if you look over your neighbour's fence for your cat and instead of your cat you see in your neighbour's backyard your neighbour's dog, and you go round to your neighbour's house and get them to let you into the backyard to see the dog. We've all been there. Metaphorically, if not actually, because that could get quite crowded. (Not sure about my cat though. She might be over there at the moment. I'd better go and check...)

A half-witted Mother's Day poem

I kinda sort of half-forgot

Until the day was halfway done

Here's half a box of Safeway chocs - 

Regards, your half-arsed son.

Sky Whale!

There's a statue you might know about on a pedestal outside of the St Kilda Town Hall. A naked guy, lolling about in the tentacles of a gigantic hydra-snake monster, while one snake-tentacle reaches up a into the sky and grabs a war plane. It's big, it's messy, it's weird as hell, and it's bloody ugly. It's Richard Stringer's Monument for a Public Building, and just about everyone who mentions it on the net seems to be puzzled: personally, I reckon as soon as Stringer got the commission, he just decided to stick it to the man (not particularly caring who the man was) and make something as weird and offensive as possible. It doesn't make much sense in the context either - hip and happening and with-it artists like to do stuff about the horrors of war, but attaching said horrors-of-war sculpture, in the '90s, to a local government building, is just bizarre.

Let us move on, then, from Richard Stringer's brainfart to the immense and bloated Sky Whale, which was commissioned to celebrate Canberra's centennary. Tim Blair doesn't like it, and so far as his criticisms go he is perfectly right: it's big, it's ugly, it is a "bloated, gaseous, multi-breasted monster feeding those who dwell in its poisonous shadow while leeching off the rest of us", and therefore "The perfect symbol of our capital city". He notes further how, in order to build the beast which has been constructed to celebrate the centennary of the Australian capital city, they had to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to England. I've got to admit the jokes just write themselves: "It's full of hot air", "It's monstrous", "It's all puffed up".

But, on the other hand, I kind of like it. It's totally out there; it's completely weird and undeniably bizarre: I can certainly understand the fastidious distaste many of the Canberra citizens might have when having this vast airborne breast-turtle looming over them in the sky while they try to sip on their lattes. But turning the whole thing into a gigantic balloon is rather clever - it recalls the days when hot-air balloons were cutting-edge science and a grand public spectacle. Just what is a hot-air balloon supposed to look like, anyway? Who is to say that the Montgolfier brothers didn't get it exactly wrong when they decorated their balloons? You might just as well prettify a balloon so it looks like a gargantuan biological freak. I admit, it appeals to my science fiction tastes and my enjoyment of weirdness; and you have to admit, the weirdness is very very well done. Plus, I like the implication of a backstory (where the hell did the Sky Whale come from? What do its parents look like?)

Poor old public artists can't ever get it right, really. If they make something abstract or minimalist or according to the conventions of this or that twentieth-century school, they'll get viciously attacked. Don't understand it, what's the point of it, it's ugly, who paid them for this? If they make something that's completely naturalistic and old-school, like a statue of a general or a horse, we'll still attack them, and if we don't, they'll attack themselves: unoriginal, derivative, what's the point in repeating something that's already been done anyway, etc. Sometimes an artist hits on a gimmick that people might like without thinking too much about it, and never does anything different: John Kelly and his endless, endless cows, for instance. For the Sydney Festival this year, they got in a gigantic bloody rubber duck, which was funny, see, because rubber ducks are small, right, and they're normally in bathtubs, yeah, but this gigantic rubber duck was.... and you don't have to think about the idea much more before you realise that there isn't anything else to think about: there isn't really anything else to a giant rubber duck than the fact that it writes its own headlines.

But this huge and bloated and ugly and bizarre and weird Sky Whale has a bit more to it. Really. You can't say it isn't well crafted; the technological difficulties alone in putting it together and floating it must have been immense. As for what it looks like - well, whatever it is that it looks like, I'm sure it looks like it in an amazingly accurate way. If ever a real Sky Whale with massive mammaries hoves into view, I'm sure it'll have no difficulty in recognising another of its kind.

But then again also of course not to mention, lots of public money, could have been spent on, what is the point of it, why couldn't they spend on, not very nice when I'm having a cup of coffee at my favourite cafe, and so on. We'll always be suspicious about taxpayer's money - our money - being spent on public art: but it will be spent; that's not going to change at any point in the future. No need to blame that on one particular artwork, especially poor old Sky Whale here.

Besides: maybe the Sky Whale could recoup its costs over time by being an entertaining show ride for kiddies.

Home cheesemaking at home for beermakers (explained)

Yesterday I busied myself at home inventing a method for ageing a Gruyere cheese by strapping it to your foot, and for fermenting a Scottish porter by dangling a Nubian warrior's oxters in the fresh wort overnight, or all three at once. My methods are infallible, even though you may quibble with my techniques: you see, it's all to do with harnessing the many natural flora and fauna and yeast and stuff that exist in the world around us, which is why my homebrew tastes like armpits from darkest Africa, and my cheese tastes like you just licked a sock. 

Anyway, as I was busily fermenting my cheese and fomenting my beer away along with all my plans and stratagems and schemes, what should happen to fall under my gaze but the following sentences:

... Attractive wine labels, going beyond information about the variety or the producer, are used to entice unsophisticated or new consumers. This is one of the primary methods by which the wine sector sells its products in a highly-competitive domestic and export market.
Marketing Mag, Plain Packaging for Tobacco: wine branding down the gurgler?

And so, the battle over plain packaging of cigarettes having been won (for now), the health lobby moves on to another front. (Link via Catallaxy.)

It's sweet, I thought, it really is, that the health lobby should care about my health so much that they should try to start a ban on the labelling of a product that I don't buy because they want to stop me drinking it even though I make at home anyway because they are worried about the effects of the alcohol in it which all things considered is probably the least of their worries if they came round and tasted some of my concoctions anyway.

But it got me thinking about those many popular products on the marketplace at the moment that people might soon decide to make at home....

Goon 
Ever popular with students, this top seller is best described as yak's piss in a foil bag. Following the advent of plain packaging, students can easily and affordably brew their own goon at home, by pissing in some aluminium foil and then tying it up with some string.
FERMENTATION TIME: Half a day until all your buddies come round.

Rotgut
There's nothing quite like hanging out under the bridge and swilling out of a dirty bottle of unnamed spirits and waking up 50 years later with a splitting headache underneath a pile of newspapers realising that today is the first day for the rest of your life. But that's the sort of experience you're likely to enjoy with good old Rotgut, whatever it is. The ingredients of the recipe are closely guarded, but you can replicate its effects easily enough by placing a metal fermentation bucket over your head, getting someone to bang it about with a hammer a couple of times, and then falling unconscious underneath the nearest table. Don't forget to have a swig of vinegar before you do, though, just to give yourself the full Rotgut effect.
FERMENTATION TIME: Kind of depends whether you mean for you or the beer.

Schoolbag surprise
Here's one for the cheesemakers. Every parent of school children knows the joy of finding, at the bottom of their kid's school bag, the remains of last weeks/months/years Vegemite and cheese sandwich, a brilliant concoction of yeast and bacterium and Penicillium and who knows what else. Now, you can replicate this surprise at home by just pouring some old milk into your kids pocket, plugging up the gaps with a bit of bread, and sending them out to play in the garden. Okay, the results won't be exactly the same, but every cheese is different.
FOR MORE ADVANCED CHEESEMAKERS: Try doing the same with unpasteurised milk or sour cream for added zest. 

With a little ingenuity, creativity, and self-belief, you can have just as much fun at home recreating these old classic recipes, without the dread hand of the nanny state interfering in your life! Go to it, folks!

(Blog post typed up on my wireless Gorgonzola and routed through my dandelion merlot to the internet)

Tim Worldwide Body Language Expert Blog

WELCOME TO TIM WORLDWIDE BODY LANGUAGE EXPERT BLOG! TIM IS WORLDWIDE BODY LANGUAGE EXPERT IN ALL THE LANDS!



HERE WE SEE MAN DEMONSTRATE MASTERY OF SITUATION BY MANFULLY BESTRIDING CHAIR! MAN IS SO POTENT THAT NO CHAIR CAN STOP HIS POWERFUL LEG!

Alternative explanation:

HERE WE SEE MAN WHO HAS FORGOTTEN HOW TO PULL CHAIR OUT FROM TABLE TO BE ABLE TO SIT DOWN! IT IS MOST PITIFUL STORY OF MAN WHO CANNOT SIT PROPERLY!

(Via Most Excellent and Auspicious Blog of Hoyden)

Important acronyms explained

Now it's time for me to explain once and for all the acronyms for many important infrastructural projects and governmental organisations. So here we go.

 NBN - A lot of people have criticised the NBN, but personally I won't hear a word of it. The Northern Bee Network is a vital piece of infrastructure for our backyard, as the honey in the kitchen and the mead in my study will attest.

CCTV - Although many people consider this technology to be a little too invasive for them, I just think the Chicken-Cat Television in our own backyard to be just great. Whether it's chickens nicking into the house when I've got my back turned, or cats nicking out of the house when I've got my other back turned, or chickens chasing the cats around the garden, they give me hours of entertainment. So enough of your criticisms!

DFAT -  More controversy! But personally, I think the Department of Fudge and Alcoholic Tipples is absolutely vital for the household economy, not to mention national security. Thanks to their round-the-clock devotion to their core tasks of fudge consumption and alcoholic tipples, they've been able to ward off many threats, such as.... such as.... and.... plus.... well, anyway, fudge and alcohol tastes nice end of story.

ABC - This organisation is quite old now, going on three years! But despite its venerable status, it still divides people into critics and supporters. However, the consensus remains that the Ale Brew Consumption unit is going from strength to strength at the moment, and is vital for the ongoing processes of household continuance.

BBC - Last but not least: this is considered to be a little bit too exotic for the purposes of some. However, the Bureau of Bacteria and Cheese has had some noted successes in the past few months, in both the Bacterial and the Cheese sense of 'success'. Whats more, the BBC and the ABC, serving similar purposes, have been able to really, er, lend their services to one another with astounding, and sometimes even edible, results.

My grumble ambition

Ambitions for middle age

To work upon my wrinkles

To not be almost dead

To grow an ash-grey-charcoal

Cloud upon my head.

A guide to swearing in the suburbs

Swearing is great, and you should do it all the time, especially when you're in the suburbs. You'll find plenty of opportunities to do so: when you are running around furiously trying to catch your chicken so you can put them in the back garden and get them away from the plants growing in the front garden but said chicken refuses to be caught: 'FUCKING DAISY!' When an inanimate object in its inanimate way inanimately stubs your big toe: 'FUCKING DOOR!' When a plate drops onto the floor and shatters: 'FUCK!' When you just kind of want to: 'FUCKING FUCK!'

But one occasion when perhaps it might on consideration be good to hold back on your swearing, for fear of conveying the wrong impression, is when your neighbours are in their backyard, and they have friends in the backyard, and you are in your backyard, and a bag carrying stones falls from the back of a wheelbarrow, and the stones spill out over the ground, and the words immediately leap into your mouth: 'FUCKING STUPID BAG!'

Because, you know, it might convey the wrong impression. Unless, of course, the neighbours happen to look upon you as those sort of neighbours. Which I'm sure they don't.

Memoirs of a quicher

Quiche thrower given good behaviour bond
A New South Wales woman who assaulted a police officer with a quiche has been been given a 12-month good behaviour bond in the Broken Hill Local Court.

Many will still be shocked by this news about the brutal assault of a police officer with a quiche. You may be still thinking, 'how can this have happened'? And 'is there anything we can do?'

Perhaps we will never be able to wipe out quiche-related violence in Australia, but it's a good time to start. We need to institute a thorough quiche buy-back scheme, so that it becomes harder than ever for the wrong quiches to fall into the hands of the right people, or the right quiches to fall into the hands of the wrong people, or the wrong quiches to fall into the right hands of the wrong people at the wrong time or.... oh, you know what I mean.

 In the meantime, we need to ask the hard questions. What can have caused this quiche-related attack? What were the motivations of the attackers? Will they strike again? The answer, I think may be found in one simple word: climate change.

And yes, there will always be the naysayers, those who object to any sort of government intervention whatsoever to stop groups of disturbed young men bearing quiches from attacking again. 'But there have never been any attacks with quiche before!' Well, it just goes to underline the horrifying escalation in quiche-related violence in our neoliberal society, doesn't it? 'But the quiche attacker was a woman!' It's terrible, isn't it, what some young men will resort to these days! 'This is eggsasperating!'

And that, you see, is my point eggsactly.

That thing about things on the thing thing

I just had a conversation with the Baron about things.

BARON: The thing has just finished.

ME: Yes, in order to go out I have to put the things on the thing. 

BARON: We'd probably better put the thing inside. 

ME: Yes, the thing is inside, but in order to put things on the thing I have to take the things off the thing. 

BARON: Oh. 

ME: Yes. 

I have no idea either. This is basically what married life is like.

A little later, we had another conversation:

ME: The things are all on the thing, but I have more things, so I think I will put it on the thing. 

BARON: What? 

ME: I need to put these things (pointing at these things) on the thing (pointing into another room somewhere).

BARON: (In a strained voice) I have no idea what you are talking about. 

At this point, I could only point awkwardly at the things and the thing, as I had done before, and the Baron helpfully said "Oh yes, now I know what you mean."

I wish she'd tell me.

UPDATE! -  Reader competition! Perhaps people reading this post - yes, all one of you - could offer creative suggestions as to what the 'things' and the 'thing' is. The best entry gets a hot date! But not with me though. I'm not sharing my hot dates with anyone.

Variations

For some reason I really like sending up T S Eliot.

I grow old... I grow old

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 

T S Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old

And the nurse says I haven't taken my medication this morning either.

***

I grow old I grow old

And I think I am having a heart

***

I grow old I grow old

I am not wearing any trousers either.

***

I grow old

And tomatoes.

***

I grow I grow

And life says Deepak Chopra is all about growth

Or is that my daughter

Anyway

***

I grow old

Is the train always this late?

***

How come I grow old

But don't shrink anything,

Just shrink

Every day the same

But

Less?

***

I grow old I grow old

Until one day

I don't. 

Forward in being backward

Today I will attempt to be ahead of the eight ball, behind the curve, off the money, under the facts, arrive with a whimper, not a bang, and leave with a clash of thimbles.

Fudge making for sado-masochists

I know what all you sado-masochists are thinking. "My life as a sado-masochist is rich and full! I inflict pain and have pain inflicted on me with others in a fully consenting adult relationship already, so why would I need more help?" But hear me out!

Fudge making involves intense heat, can go wrong in a number of ways, will quite possibly inflict a large amount of pain on yourself, and involves working with high heat for long periods of time. What's more it is extremely time consuming and tedious. Not only that, but if you do it in the right way (by which I mean the wrong way), you will end up with a product that will inflict a great deal of suffering on your teeth and jaw by cracking into shards in your mouth, and possibly gluing it together for good! So let's begin.

To make some fudge, you will simply need some sugar and double cream, a pot to melt the two together in, a stove, and some butter. Obviously the sado-masochist angle will work better if you do all your cooking in your kinky bedroom costume, as when the mixture is close to boiling, it is likely that it will spit hot liquid all over you, and you may well want to maximise the pain involved (TIP! - things become even more dangerous, and therefore desirable, if you are wearing bondage gear), though of course it all depends on how you are feeling on the day.

Don't forget to keep stirring! The sugar crystals will dissolve better if you keep stirring as the mixture gradually rises in temperature. You want to get the mixture to reach a temperature between 115 and 117 Degrees Celsius. How can you tell if it is that temperature? I'm glad you asked! You can use three tests: the thermometer test (the name says it all), the cold plate test (drop some of the liquid on a plate that has been in the refrigerator, and if it forms a soft ball, it is ready), or the finger test (stick your finger in the liquid and if it feels searingly awful, it is ready). Obviously for our purposes we'll be wanting to use the finger test, but again, it all depends what you feel like on the day and if you don't want to do it then that's completely fine and all right. Anyway, it might get a few goes before you get the 'feel' of fudge making, but don't worry, you have ten fingers, and many other body limbs that you can dip into a dangerously hot liquid, so it should be fine.

When it's all done, just stir in the butter, pour the liquid fudge into a pan lined with aluminium foil, and leave to cool. Done!

You will be left with a tray of pleasantly sweet, tasty treats that you and your sado-masochist friends can enjoy eating in your fully consenting adult relationships in your own time. Sounds awful, I know, but you can content yourself by looking forward to the heart attacks and diabetes and other horrible diseases and medical syndromes that eating too much fudge can cause.

Bon appetit!

Fancy foreign bubbles

Just as it is wrong to picture her [Margaret Thatcher] as some autocratic bossyboots, so it is equally mistaken to think of her as so obsessed with free market economics that she would privatise Buckingham Palace if she could... I remember once asking for a Perrier water when she was buying me a snack. She obviously regarded it as treachery to drink a French product and asked why I wanted it. I explained it was because it was naturally fizzy. She replied that the bubbles were artificially added. We then started arguing about whether the bubbles in Perrier were natural or not. I realised that the situation was becoming absurd and the conversation moved on to matters of high policy...

David Willets, Working for Mrs Thatcher

Little did this public servant know, but those bubbles in Perrier were actually crafted in Yorkshire and exported to the Perrier company under a trade deal with the French, where they were later added to the Perrier water. Although we cannot know how history would have turned out, it seems likely to me if the Tories had campaigned strongly on her British Bubbles for British People platform instead of ousting Thatcher, they would still be in government today. Oh wait, they are. Hang on....

Anyway, we need to apply this rigorous approach to beverage-quaffing more often. The froth they put on top of coffees, for instance. Right now, I'm sure there are plenty of Australian small business coffee froth producers who are willing to produce workable, durable, longer-lasting coffee froth ready to be packaged and sent out across the world at reduced rates.

It is clear, Margaret Thatcher made Australia the man it is today.

Questions inspired by a certain television show

"Oh, come on, if you claw your way out of a grave, are you really going to do that?"

"But I thought he liked vampires now, what's he doing with them?"

"What does she want with him anyway?"

"Why doesn't he just turn into a lion?"

"Why isn't he affected? Is it because of the alcohol?"

"Wow, is she developing new powers?"

"How come he's in a trance and still able to do hostage negotiations?" 

"Wait, was this just a dream all the time?"

"Why are they doing that now?"

"Why are we even watching this?"

"Have we got time to watch another one?"

You sure ask the big questions when for some inexplicable reason you find yourself watching another True Blood DVD. 

A Loris named Doris, a Sloth named Roth

I just learned the other day of the existence of a creature known as the Slow Loris. It is just about as reprehensible as it sounds - it is small, slow, and with extremely large eyes, reminiscent of irritating Japanese anime characters or pointless Pokemons. I immediately wondered why there was no Fast Loris - the Fast Loris, you understand, being the quicker, more spritely, less annoying Loris cousin to the aforementioned Slow Loris.

It made me wonder, too, about the Sloth. We always hear about the Sloth, the slothful inhabitant of the trees, whose purpose, it seems, to be hang about on branches not doing particularly much, and not doing it very quickly either. Why does nature give us the Sloth, and not the Industrious, I wonder? Nature is perverse.

Then again, just today I was wondering about the Panther and the Giraffe. What on earth could the opposite to these creatures be? It's easy enough when it comes to Sloths and Lorises. Bloody Nature!

Sassinating

A thing occurred to me just then (well, no, it actually occurred to me this morning) and of course I had to immediately (in a matter of hours) rush to my blog to post about this thing that occurred to me just then (actually this morning).

People in Arkansas. How do they get described when they're in groups? Arkansassians? Arkansassies? Arkansissies? Or even, um, Arkansaurians?

 

An Arkansaurian. 

Thank you for reading this urgent post about a thing.

The Ironic Lady

On the day that the Ironic Lady came to power, few would have guessed the monumental effect she would have on the history of her nation.

"If the honourable Prime Minister's economic policies really work, then perhaps she'd like to sell you London Bridge," proclaimed the leader of the opposition and former Prime Minister about the incoming Prime Minister, the Ironic Lady.

The next day, the Ironic Lady sold London Bridge to an antiques dealer in Yorkshire. It was the first of many victories for the Ironic Lady.

Later, when she was confronted by a group of protesters outside number 10, Downing Street, calling for the banning of genetically modified food, she proclaimed, "if genetic modification of food is really that dangerous, then tomorrow London will be attacked by flying pigs."

No-one could have expected the Flying Pig Blitz of 1980, but yet again, it seemed, the Ironic Lady had been proven strangely and unexpectedly right.

Over the years, the influence of the Ironic Lady grew. In the election of 1987, it seemed to some that her power was waning, causing the Opposition Leader of the time saying she was taking a spoon to a knife fight.

As it turned out, later that same day, the Ironic Lady interrupted a knife fight between two young men, and simply by waving her teaspoon around, managed to scare off both the criminals. She had struck again.

It was only after she left office that it was finally revealed that the Ironic Lady was actually a man.

It was quite ironic, really.

Macho man's machinations

There's nothing like a manly afternoon sawing and nailing things in the backyard while wearing a tie. This afternoon I have been doing just such a thing. I just hammered together a vanilla blanc mange with plum sauce with nothing but three old planks of wood and some nails of various sizes. Next, I plan to weld together a few pieces of corrugated iron to create an authentic pre-revolutionary French merkin, before sawing up a couple of old existentialist philosophies and setting them to run out in the backyard with the chickens.

What manly activities do you plan on doing this afternoon, readers?

Ringadingdingthing

Hello dingaling it's me dingaling

Have you time do you mind just to talk won't be long

Pick it up ringading ringading ringading

I'm the voice dingaling on your thing thingaling

Do you own have you thought do you say is my song

Hello dingaling it's me dingaling

Let me ring ringaling all your bells tingaling

Is your bill was it gas have you cash am I wrong

Pick it up ringading ringading ringading

What I bring bringaling with my bring bringaling

Will you switch what about as for me from Taiwan

Hello dingaling it's me dingaling

I've got zap zingaling I've got zwing zingaling

If you stay you will buy I was right all along

Pick it up ringading ringading ringading

All the bells ringaling mingling mingling

All the bells all the calls in the world ringing strong

Hello dingaling it's me dingaling

Pick it up ringading ringading ringading.

My humble fumble bumble grumble

This morning I set off with hope in my heart and a song on my lips, and a little sheaf of papers in my hands to get photocopied and then sent off at the Thomastown Post Office. My hope and joy turned out to be sadly misplaced. In short order (although that turned out to be a rather long short order), I found myself

• Sent from the Thomastown Post Office to the local MPs office to take advantage of their free photocopying,
• Walking from the local MPs office, which, in spite of its free photocopying, was closed, to the Lalor Library,
• Finding a queue for the photocopier at the Lalor Library, which photocopier required details about my library card for me to be able to use it, although I was not, in fact, in possession of a library card,
• Approaching the lady behind the desk at the Lalor Post Office and being told to take my photocopying to the Lalor Library, because they never photocopied documents over 10 pages long, 
• Walking all the way to Office Works at Epping because bugger Lalor Post Office anyway with their 40 cents a page photocopying
• Discovering a notice on the front door of the Office Works at Epping saying that all their self-service photocopiers were out of service. 

 At this point, it occurred to me that today might be a very good day for me to go and buy a racehorse, get that racehorse in a prominent race, and place all my money on some other racehorse, because quite clearly, I was having a terrible run of luck.

PS If you like queues, I would not hesitate to recommend the queue at Epping Post Office to you. It is undoubtedly the best - or at least the longest and most tedious - of all the queues in all the post offices I have been in today. In fact, the queue is so long, that I'm probably still in it now.

Roaratorios and uproars (and twitter)

Across Twitter today, users found new and exciting vectors through which their head might connect with their desk, discovered a hitherto unknown gravitational relationship between their ocular organs and a series of sharp objects generally used for writing or drawing, employed dessert cutlery to gouge out those same ocular organs repeatedly (repeatedly), made major innovations in the theory and practice of literature by deploying upper-case letters for hyperbolic effect, followed hash tags with a series of observations of things that needed to be observed, became outraged by shockingly scandalous disgraceful dramas, dramatically shockingly disgraceful scandalously outrages, or all three of the above, fumed, fulminated, fretted, and generally frowned upon the activities of various other people in the world at large.

In other news, Beatrice the cat is sleeping peacefully on the purple couch. The end.

Victoire!

The 2013 AFL season has drawn to a close after just one round, leaving Richmond Football Club the champions for another year, along with several other exhausted clubs.

The unconventional decision was taken in an unconventional manner by Brendon Gale, the CEO of the Richmond Tigers, making this the best season in thirty years for the underperforming club.

"We've fought long and hard, and sometimes it looked like we wouldn't make it, but in the end I knew our boys had it in them to come out tops," said Gale. "and in the end, we humiliated Carlton, which is all that really matters."

The victory in the grand final, which also turned out to be the grand opening, makes this the best year yet for the Tigers, who Gale says "will continue to grow stronger, healthier, and better, ready for the footy season next year."

For some, this year in football, or more accurately three or four days in football, has turned out to be a year of triumph, while for others, it has been a year of loss. The next few months will be a chance for the losing teams, such as Carlton, St Kilda, and the Demons to regroup and think about the opportunities lost. The winners of the finals, such as Richmond and Port Adelaide and the unexpected winners, the Gold Coast Suns, will have given their fans much to celebrate.

However, a little known official from elsewhere in the AFL known as Andrew Demetriou has denied that the season has come to an end, and that the next round in the season will go ahead as planned.

The Book Book

While I'm in a pedantic mood, what's with all these books called 'Bible' that are not the Bible? Things like the Self-Sufficiency Bible for self-sufficient people, and the Sustainability Bible for sustainable people, and the Gardeners Bible for gardeny people. Really. Does this mean that soon we're going to have to call the Bible (which is, I suppose, the Bible for people people) the Bible Bible just to stop everyone getting confused?

And that is my Easter message to you all.

Dissectation

Read about sectarian violence today in some part of the world. But then again I'm always reading about sectarian violence in some part of the world; no-one ever wants to talk about sectarian peace. Simmering sectarian happiness in Victoria today broke out into outright sectarian peace, with sudden attacks of sectarian niceness and sectarian cups of tea. See? Same goes for anything prefaced by ethnic, racial, and so on: who wants to read about a tense situation of ethnic cheeriness rapidly spiralling out of control into outbursts of racial singing before everyone becomes embroiled in all-out sectarian fairy cake parties? Ugh. Sounds sickening. Like a Disney musical. Makes you want to go out and commit unprovoked sectarian violence against someone. So you can see why the media sorts prefer that to the alternative.

In conclusion, the end.

Flop of the pops

(Verse)

You make me lukewarm baby lukewarm

A bit tepid baby

Lukewarm baby lukewarm

(Chorus)

Feelin' just a bit above average temperature but not uncomfortably so

Feelin' just a bit above average temperature but not uncomfortably so...

(Verse)

It's slightly warm in here

Just slightly warm in here

Ev-er so slight I'm gonna make some cheese now

(Chorus)

Feelin' just a bit above average temperature but not uncomfortably so

Feelin' just a bit above average temperature but not uncomfortably so...

(Verse)

Lookin' for some temperate stuff baby this evenin'
Lookin' for some temperate stuff baby tonight...

Lookin' for some temperate stuff baby this evenin'

Lookin' for some temperate stuff baby tonight...

(Fade out)

Film review

This was a film whose theme was issues, and which dealt with the undercover reality beneath the surface truths. The issue-theme developed over the structural organisation of the topical format until it was themed with issues, revealing important subjects over the theme of issues, and important thoughts over the issue of themed subjects. The important importance of the issue of issues was revealed by the revelations which climaxed in the climactic scene, before the plot concluded decisively the narrative, which demonstrated for once and for all that the undercover obvious themes were often hiding the less-evident relevant topics related to the issues. This was a film rich with interpretation, analysis, criticism, and interpretation of the analytical criticisms inherent in previous criticisms of the analytic interpretation. Some of the things explored in this film included: the topic of issues, the issue of themes, the theme of reality, the reality of themes, the analysis of criticism, the criticism of subjective objects, the objective nature of subjective reality, and the format of subjective issue themed structural principles.

I would not hesitate to recommend this ad for Kellogs Cornflakes to anyone.

Big Bang Bleary

Bit of a first today: my first beer bottle explosion, that is!

I was just sitting here at the other end of the house minding my own business (or whoever else's business I happened to have at that point) when a sudden bang and a tinkling of glass went through my eardrums.

I immediately leapt out of my chair and into action and/or my pants. Our cat Beatrice had taken the sensible course and hidden deep underneath the purple couch, which I probably would have done myself if there was any room left over, but I couldn't, so I went into the kitchen to see what happened. Glass all over the floor, beer dripping from the bench, and mess everywhere: a bit like a quiet night in the '80s in one of Tony T's old pubs, then.

Another homebrewing success! Drinks of water all round! 

What didn't happen in politics today, and who wasn't there to make it happen

A poem in honour of the Australian Labor Party, who somehow manage to turn the non-story of Gillard remaining Prime Minister into a complete media disaster for themselves.

The man who wasn't there
The isn't man, he wasn't there,

He wouldn't run, he doesn't care

To be the one who wouldn't win

And ends up writing for the Fin.

He wasn't there a lot today.

I think he hasn't come to stay; 

Perhaps that's why some people say,

'I wish that man would go away.' 

Critic critique

The other day, browsing our shelves for a book which I had been reminded of while reading another book which I had taken up in order to distract my attention from a different book which I had been perusing on and off as a distraction from a further book I came across some other book that (and it's okay if you don't follow me, because I don't either) I had purchased years ago and never got around to reading. This book - the last book, the distraction from the distraction used to distract myself from the other distracting distraction - proved to be quite an effective distraction indeed, and I have been reading it on and off ever since. What? Oh, yes. It's The Metropolitan Critic, a collection of the early criticism of Clive James.

"....one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again," said Samuel Johnson of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Well you might say a different thing of any of James' books: they're easy to put down, and easy to take up again. Most of his essays are done with in a few pages, and there is no overall argument; perfect for people like me who are endlessly able to be distracted, really. James is the sort of writer who a lot of people love, and a lot of people love to hate, and, I suppose, I find myself feeling both ways about him. He is a shameless poseur, helplessly vain, sometimes completely untrustworthy. Does he even trust himself? He's even changed his own name. But his ideas, sometimes wrong, are always interesting, and at least he cares about his writing; you get the feeling he spends many long hours agonising over his next spontaneous one-liner. I spent many pleasurable hours myself immersed in perhaps his best work, Cultural Amnesia. It's essentially a collection of essays about people that James' is interested in, although it's only fair to say that there's a complicated argument in there about culture and history and the world wars too; and besides, James' interests are always interesting.

Anyway, this book, The Metropolitan Critic, has stuff from the Times Literary Supplement, and other of the posh papers and journals at the time of writing. James enthuses about e.e. cummings, argues with A. Alvarez, cooks a snoot at Susan Sontag, seems sound on Peter Porter and quibbles entertainingly about A.D. Hope. He also begins haggling with himself; each essay is concluded with a note, about a page or so in length, in which James criticises the critic he was, sometimes patting himself on the back, and often splitting microscopic hairs. This sort of thing can bring out his worst: the obtuse grammarian ('Too many colons and loose 'ands') and the cheap joker ('Can't agree' was an over-colloquial, and hence under-spontaneous, way of saying 'I can't agree'. Wouldn't do it now...') Worse, when he finds one of his arguments (about the once-famous Professor Leavis) lacking, he excuses it in the worst possible way -

When I called his view of history 'enormously complicated', the 'enormously' was the tip-off. I not only didn't really believe it, I thought his view of history was the opposite of complicated - i.e. actively simplistic and misleading. But I didn't yet dare to say what I thought. But I didn't yet dare to say what I thought, partly because not enough people seemed to be thinking it. 

How can we be sure he's not lying now?

This excuse might very well come from a kind of sensitive snobbery James has about the upper echelons of intellectual culture. He doesn't always feel so restricted in his criticism, as his take downs of Alvarez and Sontag show. Or, for that matter, his very funny and completely untrue dismissal of a whole continent, our very own Australia. 'Crazed gangs of taipans have been known to steal cars', he writes, 'and cruise up and down the Pacific Highway, looking for trouble.' Just as Milton Friedman said that the easiest money to spend is other people's money on things for other people, the easiest, (and often the worst) sort of journalism is that written about other people in other countries which your readers will never visit. If he gets away with this one, it's because he is himself an Australian. And his article is funny; very funny.  

I can't help liking Clive James. It's not because of his vanity, or his posing, or his being occasional misleading, but it's not in spite of those things either; they're signs of a deeper personal unease. He gives the impression of being endlessly uncertain about his own identity, just who he is, and where he really comes from, and what he should be doing. As a result he constantly questions himself, and argues with his former arguments, and adopts a position because he hopes, desperately, he'll end up being in the right at last. Sometimes he is, and sometimes he isn't. Basically, though, I think he just wants to be loved - which really is rather lovable. Clive old boy, you're all right.

Let me thoughtfully distract your attention from that pile of crap by pointing out this pile of dirt

Our back garden, an unruly place at the best of times, has lately had two carloads of rocks haphazardly dumped on it, for very good reasons which I will not go into right at the moment. Taking this unruliness and adding a haphazard mess on top of it has only added to its tranquil charms, let me tell you. This is not to mention the regular ravaging of the landscape that occurs every day because of the rampaging descendants of the archeopteryx, our three chooks.

While out back we are in the midst of haphazard unruly mess, out front, we have had a pile of decaying matter, a heap of dirt, and a shitload of, well, shit, neatly placed. That is, some bales of straw, dirt, manure and to be added to the unruly haphazard mess. I had in my naivety thought before today that when such material is home delivered it tends to come in bags or boxes, like, say pizza. Nope. Apparently they just put it on your front driveway.

Soooooo, anyway, apart from these examples of landscaping - shit, dirt, dead grass, unruly haphazard mess - tomorrow my parental unit is dropping in for a visit. Apparently its the custom to make the place clean on such occasions, hey? Hmmmm, ha, yeah, we'll see how that works out....

UPDATE! -  Feel a bit funny about leaving big piles of dirt and poo on the front driveway tonight. What if someone steals them? Just how exactly would you go about stealing two big piles of dirt and poo, anyway?