when people say existential

they usually mean ontological, but are too dumb to know the difference. not much in life is existential. except "dancing with the stars". and being caught in traffic.

angela merkel

is a colossal disappointment. and a menace.

life imitates cartoon

the fellow most likely to be the next prime minister of oz looks almost exactly like danger mouse's hamster sidekick, penfold. but so far, to my great chagrin, he hasn't exclaimed "crumbs!" in a press conference yet. maybe one day?

london

looks nothing like its picture-postcardy depictions in the richard curtis movies "four weddings", "notting hill", "love actually" and the "bridget jones" scrapes.

is the moon

really made of wensleydale?

every january

i vow i'm going to drive up to the dandenongs and pick loads and loads of blueberries, raspberries and blackberries, which i'll then freeze for year round pancake and smoothie-making purposes. and, of course, i never do.

not quite a world

more of a sideshow, actually. though one operated without the usual chicanery.

teenage girls

have so much to answer for. especially "big brother". i suppose that's just an inkling of how gruesome life would be in a gynocracy. yes?

I've been on the phone with palace staff all day

being passed from one equerry to another. inexplicably my name wasn't included on the list of queen's birthday honours. the queen, i'm told, is shocked. her majesty's really quite distraught about it. nevermind. just make sure next year it's a baronetcy or better.

how banal

those clintons are! bernstein's book pronounced dead before arrival (at bookstores). ennuyeuse.

elgar is everywhere

or so it seems. (2007 is his centennial year.) anyway, it's fine by me. i seldom hum classical music to myself, but when i do it is invariably elgar's cello concerto. so sonorous.

get lost peggy guggenheim

the best place to get cards in melbourne is from the gift shop attached to the national gallery. but that's not possible now. the whole place is being remodeled to make way for a travelling guggenheim exhibition. just the usual collection of post-cezanne junk. and not nearly so much fun as mrs jarley's waxworks. so the gift shop is out of action. what a bore. apologies to all for the sub-standard cards i've been sending.

inside a marshmallow

love the fog.

my favourite tv host

i love it when he wears tweed and acts supercilious.

my favourite hollywood star

slow learners

it is usual practice for the european union to take opposition serenely in its stride. when a country rejects an e.u. treaty or proviso brussels simply makes them vote again. and again. until a "yes" is finally registered. democracy, after all, is a terrible nuisance.

however this happy state of affairs was upset in 2005 when france and holland pooh-poohed the long, illiterate european constitution. this was itself surprising. as it usually falls to england (with the support of poland) to defend the democratic principle in what is a very "do as i say" polity.

is constitutional government like consensual sex? does no mean no? apparently not. because the apparatchiks in brussels are prepared to carry on as if nothing happened.

i guess afterward, as it's zipping up its pants and leaving, brussels can say "it was all a misundertanding" or "europe doesn't know what it wants". and knowing europeans they'll probably lie back and meekly take it.

that sort of thing wouldn't wash here. or in america. we like to have a say about whom we sleep with.

at the movies

tired of hearing people extolling "strong women" in the movies as if this were the ultimate accolade.

isn't.

what we'd like to see are dramatically interesting characters. that obviously means a combination of strength and weakness. in "all about eve" the strong character, anne bancroft (eve), is much less interesting than the frail characters played by bette davis (margot channing) and george sanders. complexity's the thing.

acting isn't wrestling. it's not a test of strength.

books i'm currently cheating on (with other books)

henry fielding, "tom jones".
charles dickens, "the mystery of edwin drood".
henri barbusse, "under fire".
alan bennett, "untold stories".
lord chesterfield, "letters".
dashiell hammett, "the thin man".
gustave flaubert, "sentimental education".
roy jenkins, "gladstone".
john henry newman, "plain and parochial sermons".
richard j. evans, "the third reich in power".
saki, "the chronicles of clovis".
and about a million journal/magazine articles.

fact

the zoo
smells
like poo.

she knows

or i think she does.

if i mentioned "fascination fledgeby" barely any of my friends & acquaintances would have the foggiest. it's a sad state of affairs. i know. though the ignorance is reciprocated. if they asked me who the star of "grey's anatomy" is, and who she's shagged, i'd likewise be lost for words.

still, thanks for knowing. they don't know what they're missing.

numismatic nomenclatura

in oz we have brightly coloured plastic money. like toy money. (also when we want to send a message to someone we spell it out first on the fridge with magnetic letters, take a picture with our camera-phones, and sms it to its destination.) just as americans call $10 a "sawbuck", we've likewise given our currency notes pet names—in this case derived from their colours. so for the benefit of tourists, who may be bewildered:

$5/$10 (fiver/tenner)
$20 (lobster)
$50 (pineapple)
$100 (gremlin)

fun, what?

old england, new england

years from now, after the aliens have colonised us, they may amuse themselves by writing the history of england. when they do they'll have no difficulty identifying the signal event in english history. it won't be the norman invasion, or the arrival of st. augustine, or the unfortunate signing of the mäastricht treaty. no. it will be the advent of jade goody. there is england before jade, and england after jade. she forms a perfectly clean break between the two. even now the two countries are almost unrecognisable.

a very english sense of humour

"stevenage will in a short time become world-famous". (lewis silkin, minister for nothing in paricular).

not a counter-tenor, i hope

my taxi driver claimed to be an out of work opera singer.

and then he goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid

the "new yorker" is swell. but there's one thing that grates. the obeisance it makes to liberal pieties. like joe e brown says in "some like it hot": nobody's perfect.

this week anthony lane spoiled an appreciative essay on hergé, the author of the tintin escapades, with some humbuggery about racism in "tintin in the congo". phooey! the congo episode is not racist. but it is poorly drawn. and rather lacking in drama. it just isn't up to the typical tintin standard. the series only really gets going in the third issue, "tintin in america".

the reporter also makes heavy weather over the jewish villain bohlwinkel in "tintin and the shooting-star". imbecile.

for the record: "tintin and the shooting-star" is my favourite. if only because it happened to be the one i read first as a child. also the giant spiders were a winning touch.

i rather like zbigniew brzezinski

at least, i always read his articles when they crop up in "foreign affairs" and "the national interest". and i like seeing him on pbs. but he has no business schoolmarming (did i just invent a verb?) the bush administration on iraq, or anything else. as head of the nsa under carter ziggy, as i'll call him, presided over the nadir of american power. america went from a superpower to a milquetoast. instead of promising to incinerate iran when american territory* was invaded and u.s. citizens were taken hostage, ziggy-n-jimmy merely wrung their hands and talked forlornly about negotiations. that was the pits. the current situation is a paradise compared to that.

*technically an embassy is considered a part of that country's territory.

richard serra's sculpture

is junk. sculpture has one subject: the human form. that's it.

i'm missing

the fun and hijinks of the "back to basics" phase of english political life. it's time for a major westminster sex scandal. preferably involving someone at cabinet level and of a homosexual nature. that should keep us all amused for a while.

what

a productive day.

i wish

someone would explain to black americans the phrase is pronounced "with you", not "wit choo".

i met a manx man once

he didn't have much of a tail either.

hypothetical

if i managed to free a genie trapped in a gumball machine and was given the obligatory "three selfish wishes" (world peace etc. being unavailable), i would ask for:
1. a segway
2. an inflatable jumping castle
3. the complete new yorker on portable hard drive.

doctor doctor

some people are down on garage sales. but where else are you going to find limited-edition thompson twins coloured vinyl eps? really.

monotremes rock

and i'm glad to say oz has all them. all two of them. still, a monopoly is a monopoly.

my goal

is to never buy anything through ebay. so far so good. though i am tempted by a vintage viewmaster. and some assorted slidewheels.

hands off!

just discovered dreamworks are planning to remake "sherman and mr peabody" cartoon as a feature. somebody please stop them.

wheezy

i think my cat has what americans call "the azzma". can't breathe properly. probably too lazy to use all the alveoli at its disposal. the laziness is staggering.

oh, to be in england

when the day drags
and conversation flags
there's a place i'd rather be:
where the weather's chilly and cloudy
and the people aren't chummy or sunny,
where hope
disappears like smoke
up the chimney
and away over the rooftops...

your candour is most refreshing

india knight (let's hope that's a made-up name), writing in this morning's "times", has this to say about women in the workplace: "the truth is that most women are horrible to work for, in the opinion of most of the women I know who work in offices. men aren’t bitches; women are. men don’t stitch you up; women do."

this isn't my view. but it's still fun to hear it. i like her moxie.

alas

golf was not called off.

the best diet in the world

is a scary lecture from your dentist. you'll never want to eat again.

i agree with emma

karl pilkington is brilliant. or the ultimate idiot-savant.

monkey news

is the funniest thing. ever.

opera

is the green chartreuse of music. a very acquired taste. and yet i have a hopeless weakness for "lascia ch'io pianga" from "rinaldo". rum.

strange but true

i have never used a gameboy, gamecube, playstation or other gaming console. i seem to have left all that stuff behind in the arcades in the '80s. am i missing anything?

fruit: nature's lollies

one of the things i do like, smarty pants, is fruit. in fact one of the advantages of living in oz is being surrounded by an endless variety of cheap fruit (except out of season berries—ouch!). these are ones that feature regularly on the menu (apologies to all those mango admirers).

all berries: rasp, black, blue & straw.
all citrus: grapefruit, limes, lemons, oranges, mandarins.
passionfruit.
bananas.
apples: especially golden delicious.
cherries: red and black.
kiwi.
avocado.
grapes.
rambutan.
nectarine.
peach.
pears.
olives.
purple ("purple is a fruit").

it's terribly unoriginal

but my favourite book is "franny & zooey" by j. d. salinger.

no!

you are not allowed to sprinkle sugar on your grapefruit. absolutely not. treat fruit with respect.

wikipedia is wrong

the entry on my favourite bird, the toucan, says they are mostly frugivorous: fruit-eating. (like me). close but inexact. they actually live on fruit loops.

life is also

a hedgehog. prickly, elusive, and slow-moving.

the song is wrong

life isn't a highway. it's more of a traffic jam.

i can't produce bears

like they do in canada, but today i got to hand feed a kookaburra in the back yard. this doesn't happen very often in the burbs. fun.

a million dollars

doesn't buy you much these days. just this piece of junk. there's only one place fit to house something this awful: the millennium dome. maybe they can relocate the contents of the tate modern there too?

people hoard their joys

and share their sorrows. at least bloggers do.

firefox

blows.

an ice-cube

not an iceberg.

why i like the english

for their eccentricity, of course. notwithstanding this insipid, cardigan-wearing age of occupational health and safety, during last week's bank holiday the english were busy in gloucester chasing a wheel of cheese down a very very very steep hill. at least one person usually breaks a leg or an arm while participating in the annual cheese rolling. and what do you get for risking your life in this bizarre pursuit? well, the winner gets to keep the cheese. what else?

it's not my fault, i swear

in one of those global rankings surveys canada yesterday demoted oz from "friendliest" nation" status. i wonder why? jadedangel, belinda, carrie, nerdgirl, ~angel~ et al—what have you been saying?

yay

lebanese army.

boo

yet another of my favourite online journals has become subscription only. no more free readings of "commentary", "new criterion", "new republic", "atlantic monthly" or "times literary supplement". this makes for one unhappy moocher.