we've had the bodyline series,

last year we had the paki ball-tampering-sulk-and-forfeit series, now it looks like we've got the jellybean series. and england have been involved in all of them. they seem to have all the fun.

from azimov to zarathustra

tonight's episode of "the simpsons" (a spoof of the filler show "24") was brilliant. "excellent," as mr burns would say.

if speed dating

doesn't work, i guess you can always try speed groping.

cat stevens

changed his name to yousef islam. madness. as a name "toilet duck" has more dignity.

better than boost

the "fire fighter nudie" (@ nudie.com.au) is currently my favourite drink. it's the 29 raspberries what makes it.

a life of incessant thrills (as usual)

tried my first tangello today. not bad. juicy. actually i've never met a citrus i didn't like.

if the world

desperately needs the distraction of celebrities and film stars to get it through the day, i'd much rather attention was given to knut here (show-stopper at the berlin zoo) than some under-nourished, bel-air bubblehead.

pennies for pensées

it has been politely pointed out (many times) that the only thing holding back "foundfoundfound" are the posted items: viz. the expressed opinions of the author. so i'm thinking of outsourcing the writing duties to bangalore or bombay. does a penny a post sound about right?

nothing in "pride and prejudice"

is more true to life than the miss bingley sisters. nasty, spiteful, fashionable, and gossipy. were they around today they would, i'm sure, be working quite comfortably in human resources.

more?

i think i had one too many california rolls.

sex and the city

the samanthas of this world are witheringly boring. yawn.

who needs an alarm clock?

when first thing in the morning the cat shoves its nose in your ear and purrs as loudly as it can.

such a little thing

it doesn't take much to get booted off the "guardian" blog pages. in my case all it took was the innocuous remark: "emily davison was bonkers". (well, how else would describe someone who walks in front of traffic?) it's mutually satisfactory. i'm amused. and they get to feel superior. win-win.

herro!

another favourite hollywood villain.

mozz on madonna

"i wouldn't be surprised if she made that african boy (she adopted) into a coat and wore him… for 15 minutes, and then threw it away." wonderful.

by my calculation

if i liquidized all my assets and moved to manhattan i could probably live like ratso rizzo (from "midnight cowboy") for a week at least. until then i'll just have to make do with jazz, espresso coffee, the "new yorker", and woody allen. alas.

another cassandra

alot of the (few) readers of this blog are canadian. that means they are anywhere up to 17 hours behind me. so if you're curious about the future, or want to know what tomorrow is like, just ask. i've already seen it. (for the record, it's nothing much. i suggest you stay in bed.)

surely, it's preferable to seeing an haruspex.

if nothing happens

when you push the button, keep pushing it continuously until something does. it's how everyone else does it.

in the slow lane

i tried typing a message one-handed. terribly laborious. there's no way i'm chopping one of my hands off now.

life is too short

for bad coffee.

i wonder how harmonic

the experience of using eharmony is? maybe they should re-name it efrenzy? or edismal?

i thought

"harry potter and the philosopher's stone" was about an old academic with kidney problems. apparently not.

would the thief

who stole england's summer please return it in time for the start of play in the first test at lords.

amy wong in "futurama"

picks up a guy while out clubbing, and tells leela: "i'm just going to the back seat of armando's car—for coffee".

who do you think you are kidding, johnny arab?

we don't want to fight but by jingo if we do,
we've got the nukes, we've got the 'planes, we've got the money too!

we are incessantly told

there are 120,000 new blogs born every day, but never how many old ones die.

ruby keeler in "dames"

"i'm free, white, and twenty-one. i love to dance, and i'm going to dance!"

lucky star?

i think it's funny that madonna is not just making songs for girls, but also for the daughters of those girls who comprised her first audience. like an inter-generational groove godmother.

the last cavalier in a sea of tiresome roundheads

what larks! boris johnson (former editor of "the spectator", truth-teller about liverpool, and all round funny chap) is throwing his bicycle clips into the ring as a candidate for mayor of london. for londoners the choice could not be more stark. ken livingstone, the self-styled castro of england, or the jaunty debonair boris. as bette davis said in "all about eve": "hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride". things is looking up.

when people ask

where i've been i usually say "in rehab. for the last six months. recovering boost juice addict". sure, it was fun at first. but by the end i was having 3 or 4 "all berry bangs" a week and even remembering to take my frequent buyer's card with me. how sad.

cola

is stupid. that includes glugs (it's an oz thing).

did anyone see

that borat lookalike (right) who was running alongside the cyclists on the alpine passes up to tignes last night? it was brave stuff. who knew you could run in that outfit? and not be arrested for gross indecency?

i don't know what's worse

arby's, or the people who eat there.

23 years later

girl finally solves cube.

normal service

has resumed.

sorry

gmail is having a spaz at the moment. instead of opening to my mail page it is taking me to a defunct bbc world page. so i can't read/send mail to/from foundfoundfound.

joy in the morning

the best way to increase the general happiness of the population, especially in the mornings, is for breakfast cereal makers to resume the practice of enclosing toys in their cereal boxes. (it should be guaranteed by the constitution.) else why bother to get up at all? anyway here are a few things i'd like to find at the bottom of my weetbix box:

yo-yos
mood rings
simpsons action figures
a ticket in a win-a-segway competition
apple's iphone.

are you listening kellogs?

toxic waste

the most artificial substance in the world isn't glow in the dark play-doh, or the inside of a twinkie. it's the people who present "entertainment tonight". that orange martian skin.

galileo

is a waste-o money-o.

i think

my pet rock is ill again. he's gone right off his food.

intellectual copyright infringement's big day out

whatever business it does at the box-office, the simpsons movie will be the most pirated dvd of all time. asian economies will probably double their export earnings.

inside the hexagon

although french political culture is unhinged, like something out of "alice in wonderland" (those working in the quai d'orsay and writing for "le monde diplomatique" are, clinically speaking, crazy), watching le tour de france reminds me of a more enduring fact:

france
is
gorgeous.

monet, monet, monet

ok that's enough of the abba joke.

anyone who finds themselves adrift in central london with nothing much to do should buzz over to the royal academy and point their eyes at the "impressionists by the sea" exhibition. so much to admire.

no. we don't envy london its weather, its traffic, or its general squashiness. but we are terribly jealous of its access to high culture. when the world's grown-ups are talking oz usually gets sent to its room. dash it.

the pix featured is courbet's "the sea-arch at etretat" (1869) and, strictly speaking, is not impressionist. for once i'm not complaining.

the readers have their say

the occasional readers of this blog, bless them, are a wonderful, plain-speaking lot. mostly this is what they think of the author:
"demented"
"nasty"
"horrid"
"gross"
"just so wrong"
"snobbish".
there, who says i'm not a good listener?

doctors are spoilsports

last week a girl was born in south africa with 4 legs (for pix see here). unfortunately the humourless medical profession is urging the amputation of the two bonus legs, thereby preventing the emergence of our next crime-fighting superhero: spidergirl or centipede-woman. yes, she may have trouble finding pants to fit, but think of her awesome quadruped powers: the speed she could run, the grapes she could squash. i doubt these doctors have read orwell's "animal farm" adage: "four legs good, two legs bad". maybe this phenom proves (to a sceptical world) that africa is more advanced than we think. because in oz we're still stuck in the old "two legs" paradigm.

two tribes

schopenhauer said "the world is will and idea". maybe. around here though the world is will and sleepers-in: there are those who have the will to get up early and go running and those who haven't, preferring to stay submerged in bed. that's the real difference.

naturally i'm happy alan johnston is now free

but i don't care for the way it was managed. it's a sorry state of affairs when we have to rely on one terrorist organization (hamas) to compel another (the kidnappers). hopeless. the english should have told the terrorists they would incinerate one palestinian village a day until johnston was returned. that's what an air force and a navy is for. alan johnston is our property after all. and no one fucks with the west.

alan johnston is now at liberty to continue filing the usual appeasement pieces for the bbc, much in the same way geoffrey dawson used to do when he edited "the times" in the 1930s. it's something of a tradition over there.

you're not to talk

unless you're holding the conch.

why do cats

sleep so much?

dinner with jane austen

occasionally a bunch of clever-trousers people will get together for a dinner party. less than occasionally i'll be invited. it's like receiving a wildcard entry to wimbledon. alas, i'm not smart enough to qualify for a place at the table in the usual way. but i am smart-alecky enough to make the the starting line in this elastic, charitable way.

at these 4 or 5 course pow-wows the conversation often reverts to scrimmaging subjects like "who is your favourite jane austen heroine" (it is assumed you've read them all, naturally). for unimpeachable reasons everyone plumps for elizabeth bennet. which isn't the least bit surprising as she's the sassiest of the lot. and she trips off the last page a very rich woman and a safe 100 miles from her mother. so she doesn't really count. much too obvious. the question is really "who is your second favourite austen heroine".

my choice, ahem, is marianne dashwood from "sense and sensibility". unfortunately no one else ever seconds me, or has anything particularly nice to say about "sense and sensibility". and as i was getting rather bored defending my choice i thought it would be amusing (and more persuasive) to put it in rhyme.

fanny price is much too nice.
elinor dashwood is far too good.
emma woodhouse just doesn't arouse.
and i regret
i cannot feel a jot
for poor anne elliott.
no, they won't do.
for me, you see,
marianne is the only one—
she really is a lot of fun.

but why marianne? when she's clearly intended as cautionary example of the (selfish and destructive) effects of an excessively romantic nature? i admit this. she's a self-indulgent girl. but, bless her, her highs are very high, and her lows are desperately low. when she's crushed by love she doesn't put on a stiff upper lip, but mopes about in a disconsolate fashion. she doesn't mind everyone knowing. she doesn't care about appearances. she's moody, and ardent, and never ever boring.

she's brave enough to be openly sad. and that is marvellous.

do us a favour

there have been murmurings that the avaricious dwarf, bernie eccelstone, is intending to take away the toxic chav-fest—known as the australian f1 grand prix—from melbourne. please do so. i'll even sling in a fiver myself for the bidding city.

thank-you, canada

for the two bogart movies from his noir era. just the cheer-upper required before a visit to the oral surgeon.

what happened to

the bbc sports personality of the year? zara something or other. larks about on horseys. is second niece to the third lady-in-waiting to the queen, or something of the sort. pity her name isn't prunella or violet. maybe she's trying on outfits in laura ashley? still, whatever she does, at least she doesn't drive cars or play snooker.

little englanders

are the best englanders of all.

there's a fellow writing in the "telegraph" this morning bemoaning his country as "a nation of prim, mimsy, curtain-twitching, tut-tutting, balcony-peering, small-minded complainers to our local councils and writers of letters to newspapers about split infinitives". he doesn't seem to realise that this is england. the real england. the enlgand of wallace and gromit, miss pross and mr podsnap, who look askance at all things "foreign". bless them.

does

everyone in cheshire have a cat?

ipods

are the most popular form of pain-relief for public transport.

islam

is an old arabic word for evil.

without doubt

mccarthyism is the most over-rated, over-hyped, over-analysed bug-a-boo of 20th century politics.

if a celebrity does it

it must be good.

judith brett

is an ass.

some honesty at last

leafing through the girlie magazine section of the sunday broadsheet it was nice to finally see an article on health-and-fitness which told the truth. usually they get away with any amount of fashionable flim-flam. maybe they've figured out facts can't hurt? or that women are sick of being lied to? anyway, these were the salient points:

1. running isn't injurious.
2. pilates is useless for fitness or weight loss (hallelujah!).
3. yoga doesn't fix bad backs.

though i would have liked to see "you are kidding yourself if you think walking is exercise". but we can't have everything.

it's a start.

a great composition

richard widmark and jean peters lying, deceiving, and generally working the angles on each other in "pick up on south street". and almost no tenderness. how like life.

money isn't everything

it is usually the case that the more a film costs the worse it is.

i said to the waiter

i'm not mchappy with my meal.