an advent request

if anyone has a larger version of viz's "map of the shittish isles", could they please blogpost it? i'd love to see the details.

annals of publishing

it's 20 years since the publication of australia's best-selling book "how to hypnotize chooks". pretty much sums up intellectual life in oz.

naming rights

when my nephew, zoom, was still unhatched—in the egg, as it were—i made a couple of helpful unsolicited suggestions about his future christian name. naturally my advice was disdained, as advice always is (no matter who offers it). nevermind. these were my suggestions:

"bort". my favourite. from "the simpsons". and the one i lobbied hardest for.

"tuk-tuk". pronounced took-took. the thai three-wheeled vehicle pictured. i like the sound of it. funny.

"theodore hypothalamus". again for the euphony. also i keep hearing the word hypothalamus on the show "house". i like it. it's better than "apple" anyway.

just picked up the latest copy

of my "pipe and slippers weekly" magazine. flicking through the "where's my dinner, love?" section, i noticed this advertisement featuring the happy couple. so helpful, ads.

excessive use of euphemism

one of the masters at geelong grammar school (for english readers the equivalent of rugby or harrow) has been sent down for, what lawyers style, "visual capture of the genital region". or, in literate english, upskirting one of the female students.

i recall something similar in evelyn waugh's "decline and fall". says the porter to a fellow delated for gross indecency: "i expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. that's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour."

but in the case of the geelong grammarian, he's already a schoolteacher. is there any place lower for him to fall? advertising? the media?

bears in the 'burbs

read a hand-wringing article in the "new york times" magazine (is there any other kind?) concerning the problem of canadian bears straying into human habitats. as the article says, deterrence doesn't always work. hence the occasional need to shoot them. i disagree.

now i'm especially fond of some canadians, but facts are facts. there are quite a lot more canadians than bears. so if there's any shooting to be done, they should shoot the canadians and spare the bears. common sense, innit?

this one (pictured) is hiding from mormons buzzing his front doorbell. when the coast is clear he'll saunter back in and finish watching that episode of "futurama" he taped last night.

what could possibly be better?

christmas cherry tree

in a last-ditch attempt to deter ravenous parrots from eating all this year's cherries, i've decorated the tree with light-refracting cds. seems to be working. they're obviously not music lovers. not sure what to do about the possums, though. everyone, it seems, likes cherries. and nectarines.

"rancorous, coiffeured old sow"

is it only me? or do others notice an impressive likeness between hillary clinton and sybil fawlty? both demonstrate the same "governess" manner toward their errant husbands; the same frosty efficiency at work; the same excruciatingly banal private personalites. "oh, i know, i know". and the preposterous hair, of course. and yet who wouldn't relish seeing the dramatics of "fawlty towers" reprised for 4 years in the oval office, albeit with the "little pirhana fish" in charge this time? we'll know soon enough, i expect.

my advice today is

should you happen to see a "talking elmo", be sure to punch it in the head. (i'm sure the thing that does its voice is a castrato.) here endeth the lesson.

small kindnesses

one of the admirable things about people in oz is that they don't name their sons "geoffrey".

please please please

somebody rip out elmo's larynx.

clemency

following the american custom of the prez pardoning a turkey at thanksgiving, i'm likewise going to spare my egg (still uneaten since easter). rather a sporting gesture, i think. as it was the only egg i got. wonder if it will hatch?

through the looking-glass (we remain)

the other day "the times" reported that a quorum of britain's best bookworms (john carey, et al) had come to the naff decision that the book most expressive of britishness—by which i hope they mean englishness—is orwell's "nineteen eighty-four". among the others mentioned were freud's "civilization and its discontents" or "interpretation of dreams" (no.2), kafka's "the trial", and the ikea catalogue.* such idiocy.

yet another committee meeting gone awry. i love "1984", have read it half a dozen times, but it is not expressive of the quintessence of england. nor is freud. nor is kafka. all are expressions of the continental mind. totalitarianism (generally, and as described in "1984") is a european enjoyment—you can see a mild form of it in the operations of the european union today. england isn't like that. as dickens' mr podsnap says "centralisation? never! not english."

as to my own list, when rounding up the usual suspects, it's hard to limit oneself to five choices. nevertheless here are my five books which best evoke englishness:

1. morrissey, lyrics and interviews (there never has been anything or anyone more intensely english, more often, than mozz).
2. alan bennett, "talking heads" (the first six episodes)
3. kenneth grahame "the wind in the willows" (the trial scene is perfect)
4. the collected poems of larkin or betjeman (according to taste)
5. frank richards "greyfriars" sagas starring billy bunter

honourable mentions to: p. g. wodehouse, graham greene's "brighton rock", jane austen, the foreign office stories of laurence durrell, orwell's "collected essays", "the book of common prayer", delaney's "a taste of honey", waugh's "decline and fall", dickens (especially the "pickwick papers" which wanders all over the high and low of english society), and many more besides.

*special note for hannah: katie price's "being jordan" also made the official list. priceless. that's real reading, that is. what an impressive woman she is.

what would pingu do?

when cable (or pay) tv arrived in oz the government regulatory authority passed what it called "anti-siphoning laws", intended to protect programmes of mass interest (like the cricket) from being inveigled away to cable-only stations. well, the safeguards aren't working. my 1 year old nephew, zoom, keeps ringing me up and telling me about a show called "pingu" which, alas, isn't on free-to-air television. so i can't see it. this aint right. it's also not right that a 1 year old has cable and i don't. next year he'll probably be earning more than me, too. memo to the minister for communications: free pingu.

yummers

cumquat marmalade. tangy fun.

fun is better than chic

though not a fan of the french-cuffed shirt, i think i could hop into one more often if i had a set of kombi cuff-links such as these. unless i can find some with the radioactive or bio-hazard symbol?

feathered menace

there's a juvenile magpie outside my window doing r2d2 impersonations. why me?

good plan, but needs more work

forget carbon capture and storage—the process whereby greenhouse gases are harvested and buried hundreds of metres under the sea-bed. they should be capturing 4 wheel-drives and their owners and shoving them deep under the earth's mantle. especially urban cowboys and posh yoga mums freighting junior to and from school. maybe one day?

life imitates incredibles

if you recall in the movie "the incredibles", the malevolent "syndrome" systematically kills off all the superheroes. his motive is envy. now doctors in india are doing the same thing. eight-limbed octopus-girl, lakshmi tatma, has just had 6 of her tentacles lopped off by curmudgeonly doctors; no doubt jealous of the girl's ability to play beethoven's 5th symphony all by herself. now we'll never know if tatma would have gone on to squirt ink or spin webs, catching supervillains in her spare time. the forces of crime-fighting have been dealt a serious blow. boo.

time to melt*

summer hurries on with indecent haste. pushy. the forecast for the next five days: 30°, 31°, 32°, 35°, 38°. i say again: who swiped melbourne's spring?

*title pinched from jello biafra's "lard".

anything but that

the annoying thing about the spring carnival is the endless iteration of racehorses' names on the news. such daft, grating names they give them. they aren't funny or felicitous or in any way well-constructed. they just irk.

whereas if i was filling out a birth certificate for a racehorse (unlikely), i'd choose one of these:

"strange lumps"
"tinkety-tonk"
"sunday tabloid slapper"
"glitterbug"
"stinky cheese"
"not tonight, dear"
"welly top"
"ooh, matron"
"please sir, i feel sick"
"gammon and spinach"
"eurotrash"

nice try

much public relations hoopla this week as the first commercial flight of the the airbus a380 superjumbo arrived in oz. the first class accommodation looks more like a railway berth: it features a separate fold-out bed for two. and, so, it is with the best intentions that singapore airlines has instituted a no-porking policy.

i sympathise. but i'm afraid these well-mannered orientals are in for a shock. most of the people i've talked to have scoffed at the ban. they regard it as a challenge. to see who can be first and possibly get their name in wikipedia. (it wouldn't surprise me if the occasion was webcast, or cheered on by the other passengers.) the singaporeans should know better. western notions of propriety were wiped out in the 1960s.

it's only a matter of time.

yes, there's something distinctly

scaly and cold-blooded about hillary clinton. reminds me of that sci-fi mini-series "the visitors". featured aliens which disguised their reptilian nature beneath a humanoid appearance. wouldn't surprise me if she was one of them. or if bill came out and said being with his wife was like sleeping with a lizard. that hospital bleach voice doesn't help matters much either. and, yet, she looks a shoo-in for president. hmm. i hope she doesn't try to harvest us for food.

what's going on

no golf (good)
no "new yorkers" since september (bad)
bodyclock at war with daylight savings (bad)
just bought lime tree (good)
parrot pooed on my face last night (bad)
watching "extras 2" (good)
hearing hillary's scaly voice (bad)
blueberries half price (good)

strange creature, boycott

"the times" this morning has republished an astonishing 1987 interview between boycs (geoffrey boycott) and psychiatrist dr (ha!) anthony clare. shades of "fawlty towers" where the major tells fawlty "strange creatures, women—i knew one once". don't you think?

clare: in late adolescence, did you think about girls?

boycs: no, who are they? what are they?

clare: what happened to them for you? i mean, did your mother say to you: "geoffrey, stay away from the women?"

boycs: "stay away from the girls," she said. 'they get you in the woods, they get you into trouble."

to be sure, to be sure.

all hallows eve

the conversation went something like this:

relation: "want to go trick-or-treating?"
me: "nope. don't believe in it."
(some further pressure is applied)
me: "do i have to dress up scary-wise?"
relation: "yes."
me: "ok. but only if i can go as midge ure or simon le bon."
relation: "the offer has been rescinded."