#sausagefest

termagants & trulls peeved at omission from first xi for miles franklin lit. prize. looks like adam's rib has gone septic.

whither horse/harness racing?

the perquisite of sad, impecunious old men & assorted desperates.

bless 'em

wot enjoy "jane eyre" for what it is—a romance; not for what it isn't—a dreary political manifesto.

brighton rock

is a lurid, penny dreadful version of catholic theology.

media street

loud harrumphing over bowlderized ita buttrose biopic. meh. who wants to see a kneeling ita tootling on kerry's trumpet?

in news

greens leader bob brown's tasmanian cottage for sale. think the less said about brown's cottaging activities the better.

essendon fc

western suburbs bogans who mistakenly think they've bluffed their way into the middle class.

dash it

just spilled some of my sunny boy on new crystal cylinders windcheater.

the lesson of "happy days"

when nerds try to assume attitude of cool, results are abysmal. watch & learn milhouse maher, tim gossage jr.

spare a thought for the far east

our dimbulb p.m. flies off to rasp the ears of asian leaders with her sylvania waters manner of utterance.

uncrowned king of frankston,

dermott, is pleased to consider himself melbourne's own triple h. but he's only one-and-a-half h. two h tops.

question for science

does cycling make women chunky (as widely reputed), or are the women in q. chunky in the first place? hmm.

as i said to the demographer

you can't throw me out of the middle class. i subscribe to the "new yorker".

nevermind the ladder

footer teams should be divided into vertebrates (sydney, geelong) and invertebrates (freo, port, richmond &c.).

if chrissy whosis

wins chintzy gold logie, will she be the ultimate "biggest loser" winner?

brisbane getting over cyclone yowee

but adelaide still struggling with self-sealing envelopes.

wish dennis cometti

would refer to steele sidebottom as "iron cheeks".

our dopey prime minister

forced to dodge some dirty cottagers before giving monologue at sydney institute.

can't imagine

a more un-english thing than "action for happiness"

can the sydney slits

go all the way in the netball this year?

is mark allen

the ted mcginley of 1116 sen?

nato attack on libya

all well & good, but shouldn't they deal with the enemy in oldham and luton first?

the english contempt for food

can be summed up in two words: brown sauce.

in adelaide

they're raving about the commodore 64 computer which was introduced to them last week, to general astonishment and wonder.

people come in all shapes & sizes

but mostly, it seems, fat.

evening on endor

roasting ewoks over an open fire.

in the future

the world will be controlled by julius the monkey.

woody allen's 2 superb questions

why are we here? and why is it so terrible?

bing!

i'd buy insurance from this man.

saving grace

for every daft and depressing thing the beeb does—employing the gross and grosser chris moyles and graham norton, overpaying its 'talent', fawning to the euroweenies in brussels—it also does the odd marvelous thing, like restoring kenneth clark's "civilization" series in high definition. well done, you fellows.

avuncular advice

i told my nephew if he wants to blend in he should get as fat as he can as fast as he can. nothing else will do.

one and a half cheers

the pre-publicity for sebastian faulks' new book and bbc2 series "faulks on fiction" has been in the manner of german troops massing on the russian border in 1941 prior to operation barbarossa: steady and clamorous.

faulks kicked off hostilities with three portraits in the "telegraph" on jeeves, fagin, and becky sharp. good choices, what?

the jeeves piece was perfect; concise and exact, the tone just right. score: a hit.

the attempt to essay becky sharp was awkwardly done. faulks insisted on calling her a hero, in the masculine sense, which isn't quite the thing. sharp is tricky, though. too tricky for her creator, thackeray, at any rate. faulks' mistake is to see sharp as an admirable character, like tom jones. she isn't. she's selfish, immoral and opportunistic. though she's certainly the best thing in the novel by a long way. score: a technical draw.

unfortunately things come unstuck with fagin, whom faulks also wants to excuse from moral censure. it won't do. fagin is the worst of villains. a corrupter of youth who deploys an ingratiatingly mannered politeness to ensnare oliver into a life of depravity. there's a good reason dante's design of hell accords a worse fate for frauds, conspirators and corruptors than thieves or murderers. score: a miss.

let's hope the series makes it way to oz. (we had to wait almost 2 years for the "extras" christmas special, and we're still waiting for "fantabulosa").

to do-ishness

the great ocean road half marathon plus 1·9km (23km) in may. pricey though. still, the great thing about this event is the scenery (weather permitting; the dying weeks of autumn can be a bit iffy) and the enjoyment of inconveniencing the locals for whom the road is closed to traffic for half the day. it's like the london congestion tax only the innocent aren't made to suffer. but, good weather or bad, it beats sloughing through bradford or barnsley.

selected for the first eleven

a new biography of palmerston has just been lowered onto the shelves. a good thing that. palmerston is one of my favourite english prime ministers; along with salisbury, pitt the younger, and dizzy. in any cricketing list of the best english prime ministers palmerston is among the first fellows picked; being serious, straightforward, a capable administrator and, most importantly, zealous in the national interest, never permitting the crown to be bullied by third world upstarts. his only drawbacks being that he never declared war on france or scotland (england's eternal enemies).

a list of the best ministers inevitably suggests, ipso facto, the worst. they are: brown (scotch and spendthrift), gladstone (a preaching windbag who badly let the side down in the sudan), chamberlain (weakness abroad is seldom applauded by the english) and, of course, heath (for dragging england into the european union). that last one is a real doozy.

can't remember

the last time i had a kugelhopf.

australia day afterglow

the highlight of the glutinous australia day celebrations was an address from barry humphries—in the person of dr sir colin leslie patterson, cultural attaché to the court of st. james.

here patterson recounts an incident while flying over the country:

"the pom next to me asked me if i could hear a distant thumping. 'what's that rhythmic pounding?' he enquired. i was as mystified as he was. 'could it be a kangaroo is down there?' said the stupid bastard. 'no, mate,' i said. 'it's 22 million australians patting themselves on the back!'"

wonderful stuff.

book of the year

"new yorker" readers, if they're honest, will tell you the bek toon is the first thing they look for in the magazine. in the world of toons there is no one better. it's all in the dialogue.

gleesome

sometimes one's whole day, can be irradiated, made glad, by something as simple as a headline. such was the case when i opened my copy of the "literary review" and found examined the book "the death of french culture". happy thought! hopefully this title connotes a reported fact and not just journalistic prophecy.

any mention of france automatically puts me in mind of england's most bespoke and conspicuous francophile, julian barnes: someone who wears his country's incurable un-frenchness with a permanently pained expression. now barnes is a splendid fellow. a superb essayist and a tolerable novelist. but his francophilia is, put politely, a rum thing. almost indecent.

an excessive fondness for french culture is always discreditable. especially in an englishman.

toby jugs

are vile vile vile.

sylvia plath waited for her black rook

i'm waiting for the kookaburra of invention to laugh outside my window.

have now gone 20 years burger free

excepting one junior burger incident in 1998. feels good.

the "times" asks à propos g20 meeting

wot about rotherham? well, it's obvious. rotherham's finished. let them eat twizzlers.

one of life's simple joys

is to leave a ringing 'phone unanswered.

how depressing

80% of coffee sold in oz is instant. crumbs. that's not coffee, that's toilet duck.

a fellow in the "observer"

says it's time to bury cool britainia. a simple burial won't do it. exorcism required.

nevermind

arms reductions talks. it's time for an international treating banning teen movies.

moved to twitter

username is "ourzippy".

morning rush hour, lower thames street

looks like a bank holiday crowd coming back from brighton.

the pink revolution

malibu stacey impersonator, paris hilton, has buzzed into town with the intention of lifting australia’s spirits by trying on dresses in our high street boutiques. lucky us. the media is doing its bit too, obsequiously following her every move. it’s nice to see deference isn’t dead.

looking back, it seems 20th century philosophy was mostly concerned with the problem of meaning in a disenchanted (i.e. godless) world. to sartre and his gauloises-stained chums the answer was ‘commitment’; usually commitment to an obnoxious political ideology of some kind. any kind. it didn’t matter which. so long as it promised to smash liberal democracy.* above all, it was freedom they despised.

this is where paris hilton’s “pink revolution” comes in. her response to the crisis of life’s meaninglessness is to pull out her bloomingdale’s card and cry “charge it!”. hence melbourne and sydney are just two more stops on her mission to spread the redemptive message of “self-realization through shopping”. she's a postmodern aimee semple mcpherson. sal-vay-shun!

the new year’s looking up already.

*remnants of it still survive today. witness those forlorn little gatherings in berlin and london cheering on hamas against israel, or else bemoaning the introduction of democracy in iraq.

everyone hails it as progress

celebrating the blair/brown era of "classless britain" is this new calendar of "british style".

that'll do nicely.

most amusing christmas gift received so far

one small, 8 months past use-by-date, block of german milk chocolate (with gross raisin filling), with original price tag ($3) attached. wasn't intended as a 'joke' gift either. pure hilarity nonetheless.

top that, napa valley.

bold or brazen?

it could be the most daring programming decision of all time. one of the commercial tv networks has lifted the kooky soap "the bold and the beautiful" from its regular bored-housewife, mid-afternoon slot and parked it in prime time, monday through friday. one naturally fears for the job security of the person who made that decision.

that's a lot of soap suds for melbourne audiences to chew through.

there was an awful moment the other night when the fellow playing the forrester patriach was almost called upon to act (that's him in the obligatory coma). it was a scary moment. would he or wouldn't he? thankfully, at the last minute minute he reverted to type and resisted the impulse. still, it was an unsettling experience. he was seconds away from actually acting. then who knows what might have happened?

brand new baritone

the only advantage of getting a bug (in december, for crissakes) is that i can talk like barry white if i want to. oh, yeah.

cracking film, gromit

typically film and tv 'product' arrives in oz long after it has screened in the northern hemisphere. no one seems to know why. but owing to a rupture in space-time continuum, or a disturbance in the force, or some such, the latest wallace & gromit featurette "a matter of loaf and death" has premiered here in advance of its english broadcast. and it's swell. the sets are superb. it also features a terrific villainess, piella bakewell, who is built on the sturdy lines of 1950s english womanhood. the hairstyle looks to have been lifted from the prim proprietor of the railway teashop in "brief encounter". and just look at that tremendous pair of cankles! grand, eh lad?

bring back mr stokes

terrestrial tv is a wasteland at the moment. actually, it's been that way for some time. ever since the viewer was caught in a gruesome 'reality' pincers move between "survivor" and "big brother". programming hasn't been the same since. i'm inclined to give up on the medium altogether, except for these last 3 vestiges of entertainment:

"the simpsons" (more new episodes please)

"foyles war" (an tea-soaked elegy to bygone english stiff-upper-lipedness and emotional restraint)

"the great houses of britain" (a swell architectural history of england up until pevsner, le corbusier and mies van der rohe cast their evil, darth vaderish influence over the cities).

lovely manchester

the native genius of the english people

a small item appeared in the "times" today (here) describing the horrified impressions of luisa de carvajal on arriving in london in 1605, one year after the composition of the seedy "measure for measure". naturally she was appalled by what she saw—especially the noise, filth, and bad food. but the fun really starts with the "have your say" comments. instead of taking offense "times" readers generally responded in a characteristically english fashion:

"it's dirty and lawless. the food's terrible. glad to see that nothing's changed." (jessica, london)

"yes, yes, but what was london like in 1605?" (slade wallis, retford)

i remember a slow moment during the guardian's over-by-over commentary of the 2003 world cup when the description of play was momentarily abandoned for a discussion of the ugliest conurbation in england. there were dozens of nominations. i think it was reading wot won it. but, crucially, only the english would take pleasure in this kind of amused self-mortification. it's a handy attitude to have. especially if you live in hull.

quite by accident, you understand

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making spells

as we know the proper place to learn the language is on the fridge door, pushing magnetic letters around, just like the infant shakespeare did. it's also where the nephew, zoom, currently two-and-a-half, will soon be deploying letters to form important sentence structures like "nanna smells" and "cabbage is gross".

to kick things off i cleaned out the local "toys r us" of their magnetised alphabets and introduced zoom to these three, high-scrabble-scoring, word concepts. "haruspicy": the divination of future events through the examination of animal entrails. "quadroon": persons of one quarter negro blood. and "dropsy": a disease often mentioned in eighteenth century literature, though sadly now called œdema (where's the fun in that?)

unfortunately the manufacturers are stingy with the vowels so "homunculus" will have to wait. otherwise, avuncular responsibilities discharged.

overheard outside a commercial depilatorium

mother to daughter: "you wait here while mummy gets her minge done".