mens rea

those who pooh-pooh the immanence of evil have obviously never watched "hannah montana".

a grub in troub

barry humphries has always said in extenuation of his characters' excesses that les patterson—or to use the full honorific, dr sir leslie colin patterson, mbe—is a mild version of the typical australian parliamentarian. (amazingly, some australians pretend to be offended by this.)

this week humphries has been vindicated by shenanigans out west. troy buswell, leader of her majesty's opposition in western oz, has just lowered himself fully into the soup. buswell is in troub for bra-snapping women in his office and sniffing the chair of a female staffer immediately after she left it.

buswell is obviously not well.

a heap of broken images

the way educators (tertiary and secondary) have dismantled and then abandoned the canon has been one of the most impressive feats of military strategy since erwin rommel retook el alamein (against superior forces). this strategy may have been improvised on the fly but it has been brilliant nonetheless.

how to destroy the west's incomparable cultural inheritance in 5 easy steps:

1. criticize the canon for not being inclusive enough.
2. adulterate it with inferior "steerage class" literature reflecting the new diversity.
3. further adulterate the syllabus with tv shows and movies.
4. eliminate all qualitative judgments.
5. admit the triviality of the subject and abandon it altogether.

unfortunately the problem with this otherwise winning strategy is that it produces too many people incapable of recognising literate jokes when they encounter them; in woody allen films, for instance: "when it comes to women i'm the winner of the august strindberg award". it also greatly reduces one's ability to insult others in very sophisticated ways, as joseph epstein did in this morning's edition of the "wall street journal": "i have always considered the clintons as little more than a branch of william faulkner's snopes family, in their cases snopeses who have given high sat scores a bad name". these are important "life skills".

it is simply negligent of educators to graduate students who aren't equipped to appreciate jokes they must "process" when watching "the simpsons". really, what else is education for? parents have a right to be upset.

circadian rhythms

or, as i prefer to call it, the grasmere divide. it describes two types of people: wordsworths and coleridges. wordsworths are early risers, of haleful habits, who (alas) tend to be of earnest (if not slightly pious) disposition. coleridges are unreliable, indulgers in opiates, inveterate stayers-up-late, sleepers-in, and of dissolute habits generally.

because i like to get up early i realise, to my chagrin, that i'm a wordsworth. this is not good. wordsworths are bores. coleridges are much better company: being more frivolous, better talkers, and entertaining carousers.

whether it's due to asperger's or simple selfishness i prefer to be up by six, when the world is unpeopled (like the london pictured in "composed upon westminster bridge") and the lemon-scented gums (pictured) are at their most fragrant; running on the beach and listening to classic fm; before the air is soupy with diesel fumes and the hub-bub of commerce has been turned up to "eleven".

evenings are good. but mornings are better.

nevermind world peace,

bring back blue smarties!

the foul english breakfast

with the exception of marmelade and the made-for-tv glamour of nigella lawson's kitchen concoctions, english food is indisputably disgusting. it is nowhere more disgusting than the muck known as "the full english breakfast". (one's mind drifts back to the opening of "withnail and i" when marwood takes breakfast in a camden town "caff": all "news of the world", bad teeth, and frying eggs swimming in rancid oil.)

and yet i'm openly glad the english keep eating as they do. that despite the bullying of government and the medical profession, the cajoling of rick stein and nigella, and the swearing of gordon ramsay, i'm glad the english remain as wedded to bad food as they were when orwell, in sisyphean fashion, wrote his famous essay "in defence of english cooking". after all, one of the things which makes the english so immemorially english is their stoic consumption of dreadful food.

so i was especially glad to see that some english schoolchildren had thwarted the new "healthy foods" régime in school tuckshops by smuggling in the contraband junkfood: fizzy drink, chips, chocolate bars and the like (see story here). echoes of harriet tubman's underground railroad, the relief of mafeking, and the famous "turkey twizzler revolt" against jamie oliver in east end comprehensives.

it's heartening to see that despite the unremitting attempts to turn them into europeans the english remain, at the table anyway, thoroughly podsnappingly english. it is greatly to their credit, as it says in "pinafore".

kagan 1, fukuyama 0

of all the articles, in all the foreign policy journals, in all the world, none was as dumb as francis fukuyama's announcement that we have reached "the end of history" and the final triumph of western liberal democracy. all quite presumptuous and wrong.

unlike coca-cola, the kind of liberal social order fukuyama has in mind has never been much liked around the world. it only ever existed among a tiny handful of western nations (and post-ww2 japan). it is grudgingly admitted in qualified form in asia and south america, is non-existent in africa, and is violently repudiated in the middle east.

robert kagan's new book "the return of history and the end of dreams" (clumsy title) is much closer to the mark. kagan describes the world as it really is: authoritarian, increasingly protectionist, and minatory.

if the incarnadine twentieth century has taught us anything (and, of course, it hasn't), it is the precariousness of civilization. ideology—the nelson muntz of politics—is back, refreshed, and full of beans. in temper and circumstance we are cosily close to the 1930s.

history isn't over. the world remains, as ever, a work in progress. or, in this case, regress.

the wisdom of alex doonesbury

an 8 year old tells it like it is.

the revenge of malthus

i remember being introduced to the concept of "scarcity" in economics as a 14 year old. but this is really the first time i've seen the phenom in operation. the news nowadays is all about "shortages": fuel (thanks, china), food, water, housing, eligible dates and parking spaces. the only thing there's a surplus of is muslims, and nobody wants those. in a particularly cruel example toy-makers are no longer manufacturing the "horrible gelatinous blob" action-figure from "futurama". now that's really going to hurt.

something borrowed, something made

my two favourite expressions du jour are:

"sour quince log"
indicative, taken from the "who shot mr burns?" episode of "the simpsons"; to describe anything unappetizing or disagreeable, e.g. hilary clinton or that tv show in which meredith tergiversates endlessly between mcstinky and mcsleazy ("grey's anatomy").

"the puck is in the mail"
a variation of "the cheque is in the mail" dodge, employed when one is forgetful or behindhand in some business. originates from the months i have spent waiting for a special ice hockey puck to be shipped from canada.

same shot taken in the sunlight

now what colour is it? carmine?

vermilion?

shiraz? magenta-ish? colours are always a "shot in the dark" (to use a pink pantherism) when one is colourblind. contentious.

anyway, more of autumn showing off.

parthenogenesis

this pumpkin sowed itself & growed itself, spreading vines and tendrils everywhere until it looked like the triffids had invaded (eerily reminiscent of that famous "dr who" episode where an organic creature nearly eats london). i took no part in proceedings. last month it delivered itself of a 10 kilogram junior pumpkin. that's me holding the newborn. there are two others still in gestation. anyone care to adopt?

braceletters

the nike store in melbourne has closed. hold your ho-hums. because this means there are no retailers in melbourne, that i am aware of, which carry lance armstrong's "livestrong" bracelets. i wear these less because i care about cancer (a topic seldom pondered) than for the fact that i admire armstrong himself. i don't admire many sportsmen but he is my second favourite. after roy jones junior, naturally.

that leaves the internet. where i found a biz which will make "livestrong"-type bracelets of one's own choosing: one decides the colour and text. "here's a laugh," as the fellow said when mr pickwick got into a scuffle with a coachman.

very much doubt i'll be bothered to go through with ordering+payment but my preferred design is a glow-in-the-dark bracelet which reads: "do not revive".

some other slogans i considered:

do i have to?
why me?
can i go now?
the answer is no
nothing lasts
not interested
so little time
sorry for nothing
travel doesn't help
sick of rock
and
you smell.

all terrific, i know. but there can only be one winner.

why not?

i seldom find the accomplishments of others terribly inspiring. why should i? jolly good for them but has nowt to do with me. if anything, these egregious achievements are an annoyance. the london marathon, for instance. saw a little of it over the weekend. i quite like the event but don't care for all the cant that goes with it: how "inspiring" it all is. it's just running. that's all.

in one respect though i am impressed. if i lived in london i'd never run. not propitious. too wet, too crowded, too trafficy, too dirty, too awful. takes a lot of moxie to run regularly in england.

anyway if clods like amanda holden, gordon ramsay, and our good friend bozo here (pictured), can run a full marathon then surely anyone—including me—can. so i believe i will. next year. not sure which one yet. still deciding.

the only hitch is that a marathon requires a sustained period of training for at least 6 months. tricky. constancy not my thing. i like to bounce around from running to squash to boxing to sea-splashing according to the season. my fitness fluctuates like the sine wave on a cathode-ray oscilloscope: 3 months of hyper activity followed by 3 months of comparative lassitude (though never descending to hippo-like lethargy). some reprogramming required.

i suppose it will be worth it. if only to feel smug afterwards.

outside

it would appear to be autumn.

the feijoa fight

martial times these. had various skirmishes with the native wildlife over the season's fruits: though i won the passionfruit war, i was wiped out over the cherries after the possums and parrots ambushed me in a classic pincer move. i was also overwhelmed by superior numbers in the nectarine dispute. now the final battle over the feijoa tree is about to commence. intelligence has reported increased possum activity in the feijoa sector. a bad sign.

reign of terror over (for now)

the stupid régime of daylight misappropriations—so much more apt than the casuistic "daylight savings"—is finally over. huzzah! no more artificial boot-black autumn mornings. and as if to celebrate, nature herself, overjoyed to be manumitted, turned the gorgeousness up to "eleven". i made the most of it with a 90 minute run on the beach before brekker.

i wonder what dr who would make of this mucking about with time? maybe he should have a word with our dopey legislators. whatever it is—body parts, or posh watches, or time itself—the real is better than the fake.