Bulstrode Whitelocke

Bulstrode Whitelocke was a chap around during the English Civil Wars. And doesn't he have a splendid name! Oddly, he seems to have been a moderating influence at the time, but I just think his name is excellent - it combines both verb and noun together into one, handy package. And it makes for great quotes! I've been thinking some up this morning:

Into the mouth of hell Bulstrode!

Boldly Bulstrode and well!

Bulstrode his horse, Bulstrode it into town!

There's a Bulstrode in the china shop!

What a load of Bulstrode dust!

As you can see, my mind has been moving on weighty matters lately.

A post that makes less sense than I do

I was going to write a review of all the books that I've been reading, but I'm too busy reading the books I'm reading to write anything much about their writing. 

I will say, though, that the books I have finished have excellent beginnings, the ones I've only begun have exciting endings, and the ones that I'm in the middle of are even better. 

(Come to think of it, though, one of these days I might write a personal review of the book that I am writing, the book that I am writing consisting of reviews of other books that I have written, just so I can read about my writing habits instead of writing about my reading habits, for once. That may not make sense. Neither do I.)

Bawhacky Ogaffama!

WASHINGTON, THURSDAY - Controversy erupted over a misplaced apostrophe in a presidential speech by the head of the known world yesterday, when President Barack Obama greeted Peterkin Punctilio, head of the 'Mid-Western Americans for Appropriate Apostrophisation Society'.

"Hi," said the President, shaking Mr Punctilio's hand. "Hows' it doing?"

Mr Punctilio heard the misplaced apostrophe but didn't immediately correct the President on it. "I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing!" he said. "I mean, clearly, this misplaced apostrophe casts doubt on the President's alleged skill at making speeches, foreign policy, health care, his ability to handle the economy, jobs, defence, and everything else."

The debate over the misplaced Presidential apostrophe has rapidly spread to all four corners of the media world, with Fox News, the New York Post, and bloggers left right and centre debating the president's fitness to lead. Whilst some have maintained that Mr Punctilio had misheard the apostrophe, others argue that the misplaced apostrophe calls into question the President's fitness to lead.

However, mainstream media agrees, Obama is a far more skilled speaker than former President, George W Bush, who once infamously misplaced two apostrophes in the course of two sentences, while speaking in a rare form of ancient Swahili sign language to leaders at an African summit, causing the entire world to rise in outrage at his outrageous mistake (which very few of them could understand.)

Horrible, ugly, and with poor lighting

Life isn't all beer and skittles and canned prunes and boxed chocolate products. Thankfully, there are people in this world who remain committed to inspiring fear, paranoia, suspicion, mutual mistrust, and loathing in us. These people are largely in government, or are friends with people in government ('we are working closely with the government to ensure that...' is usually how they put it.) And if private companies can use advertising to sell their products and cheer us all up in the process, then governments and their friends can use advertising just as effectively to darken our day, and remind us that there is a grey cloud behind every silver lining.

Work! It's a dangerous minefield of amputations and acid baths and near-death accidents. That is the clear message that I take away from one campaign they're currently running on the trams and in the movie theatres. Not content with merely saying 'be careful', the people who designed this particular ad campaign picked the most dour-faced actors, put them in the grimmest scenes, and shrouded them in the gloomiest atmosphere. Gritty realism aint the half of it: these ads are lurid, Gothic, and virtually swimming with foetid vapours and noxious gases. Quite possibly, someone should turn on the lights. The actors, meanwhile, have the most horrid things happen to them. One young man presents us with his handless arm (where'd that go?). Another girl gets her fingers chopped off (ouch!). Another woman presents her acid-drenched face to us (eeeeh!) The collective message we get from these ads is: something horrible happened to these people, and now their life is horrible! You wouldn't want to have a horrible life like an armless person, would you? TOO BAD!

Cigarettes! They cause you to have really quite ugly internal organs! Cigarette packets now come swathed in bizarre pictures of the exposed insides of the sick, sick nicotine addicts who still keep up with the habit. They don't show you what a non-smokers lung looks like - every bit as bloody, palpitating, slimy, with polyps waving to and fro in the alien internal gases that our body produces every day. Message: smoking is ugly and makes people who smoke it ugly too! Stay away from these ugly people! Ugh!

These are the most prominent examples at the moment, but there's more. However, I cannot quite buy the message of any of these ad campaigns. They'd have you believe that we are surrounded every day by horrible dangers, that life is just one big Soviet Gulag. Why, I could be typing away at work, and all of a sudden, my arm could be amputated, a huge vat of acid could fall on my head, and a nearby smoker could look at me, causing my internal organs to gush out of my body. 'Why, if only I'd been more careful and avoided evil people who smoke!' I will cry as I fall to the ground and die.

I'm still waiting for it to happen. It sounds kinda fun, actually.

Perhaps having raptures about prunes is excessive

In one of the fantasies I sometimes have about worldwide fame and glory, I picture myself as editor and writer for an intercontinental newspaper specialising in reviews of marmalade jam, and opinion columns about tea bags. It would be so much better than the newspapers we currently have, and who wouldn't want to read a newspaper consisting mainly of items about canned and preserved foods you find on the shop shelf?

I love canned foods most of all, I adore boxed foods even more, and food in a jar sends me completely over the moon.

The other day, for instance, I was in Coles and went into raptures about some prunes. Perhaps having raptures about prunes is excessive, but these particular prunes were in a can; and this particular can had a picture of prunes on the side; and those prunes had stars on them. Prunes! With stars! In one fell swoop, some artistic genius had managed to combine the hygienic goodness of a Mr Sheen product with the essential deliciousness of a prune.

If you can imagine and sympathise with my excitement in that case, then you will doubtless share my ardour over this particular item, which they sell at my local Psarakos Markets - and nowhere else that I know of.

Chocolate mousse, I like at any time. Chocolate mousse in a box, with the instruction 'just add milk', I like even better. But Chocolate mousse in a box, with the title 'Super Mousse'? That, I contend, is a veritable symphony of delights, each delight mounting on the other and mingling in such sweet harmony as has never been heard before. I like Super Mousse so much, that I have taken to evangelising it to other people. I sent a copy in the mail to Mum in Newcastle, and I gave another two boxes to A. at work.

And why is it, by the way, that one always finds the most interesting and exciting brands with the strangest names at European markets? Shouldn't Coles and Woolworths be buying up this stuff like crazy? Just the other day, I happened to find at the Preston markets a box of ground coffee marked with the irresistible name of INTENSO COFFEE! It didn't taste bad either. But really, what a name! When one is preparing a cup of Intenso, I find it is best to stomp around the house, uttering the two words 'Intenso Coffee' in a furious tone. (Imagine you are sentencing someone to death - that's how serious it should sound.*) It should be made in a plunger, naturally: Intenso is too magical to be frothed up in an espresso machine, or diluted with milk: it must be appreciated in its full, grainy, dirty essence.

Anyway, that's some of the stuff that I like. What are your favourite boxed/canned/jarred foods?

*And if there is no-one around to hear you saying this, consider phoning up a relative or loved one so they can hear it on your behalf.

Alchemical transmutations you can do at home

The other day, preparing a cup of Twinings* raspberry tea, I flung the tea bag into the bin on the other side of the kitchen. Naturally, either the tea bag, or the bin, or both, conspired to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the result that the tea bag splotched all over the wall, leaving a massive dripping red stain, the sort that you might expect to see in a Hammer movie, or the like. I made a few desultory attempts to clean it up with the sponge, but, you know....

Coming back to the stain half an hour later, with another sponge, and renewed vigour, I discovered... that the entire stain had turned a bizarre shade - of blue.

Twinings: just what do they put in that stuff?

*I know, but the boxes are pretty.

My novel in progress

I present to you tonight a fragment from my novel in progress. As you will see, it is almost a complete artistic work, with only a few small changes to be made to plot, character, structure, form, style, motivation, description, scenery, technological details, environmental details, social details, miscellaneous details, costume, props, logical consistency, prose, punctuation, the arrangement of chapters (most of them), the inclusion of chapters (all of them), the exclusion of chapters (not enough of them), the meaning, the message, the chosen medium of storytelling, and everything else, before it is ready for publication. I anticipate that it will be a future winner of the Miles Franklin Prize, and will be a work widely acclaimed by critics with such words of praise as 'dull', 'dreary', 'disgusting', 'devastating', 'damning', 'dim-witted', and 'derriere'. I hope you like it as much as they will.

CHAPTER 1: THE ASSIGNATION OF SOULS

The night was dark and stormy that day, as the two of them saddled their horses, and rode in opposite directions together along Route 66, as the train swayed along the tracks and continued into the night. They were both twins to different mothers, but apart from that they were unrelated; and if it were not for the horrifying spider-web of conspiracy that was about to simmer and embroil them in its bloodcurdling, tentacle-like grasp, then they would not have had anything to do with one another.

As she stood at the carriage-window with a cigarette, which she did not smoke, dangling from poised-yet-limp, nervous-yet-calm fingers, she noticed a tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed stranger, with a squat body, a coal-black head, and dark brown eyes standing still and swaying towards her across the rattling carriage. She kept her eyes, which never left the form of this mysterious stranger, firmly fixed on the landscape outside the train; and when he hissed, "Roger has ze cargo ready," into her right ear, she was careful not to move a single muscle of her body in response, but only to nod, and signify assent with her left hand, her right knee, and her left and right big and middle toes.

She had no idea what he meant. But, she realised, she had no idea what any of it meant; no idea what life meant, or did not mean, to anyone. On these cold, snow-swept mountains, as the sun beat down on the plains of the desert with a merciless heat, a heat that blasted the verdant fields of pasture, with the laughing milkmaids, and the mean, crowded, narrow city streets in which she had lived all her life, she realised she had found no answer. No answer to the perpetual 'Why' that life threw in her face, like an instantaneous thunderbolt of blood, in a few cold, precise knife-slices of the hammer.

She took the ancient parchment that he had slipped into her pocket, as he looked directly into her face, with his eyes casually averted; she took it, unfolded it, and carefully read through the message. It was written in Spanish, by a French hand; and she could only speak German: but nevertheless, with the aid of a passing knowledge in semaphore, she was able to translate the whole thing:

THE BARON HAS ESCAPED FROM ALCATRAZ STOP
PROCEED ASSASSINATION PLANS STOP
IT IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL STOP THAT YOU STOP THE WAR STOP
HAVING LOVELY TIME STOP
WISH YOU WERE HERE STOP

She hastily set fire to the message; then, while the flames mounted higher, shredded it, and swallowed them, until they were nothing but red-hot ashes and embers. Finally, she would have her revenge for the devastating murder of her three brothers, who were now living happily in three Tuscan Villas on the white cliffs of Dover. She went back to her carriage, took her crossbow out of its glittering medieval scabbard, and armed it with the twelve silver bullets that had been given to her by the Voodoo High Priest, and also Catholic Archbishop of the Presbyterian Church, and High King of Romania; then, when she had done that, she pulled the cord ordering the street car driver to stop, and spurred her coal-black Palomino stallion into a gallop, and pulled over at a shabby little desert diner on the corner of 49th and 77th Street, Manhattan.

"Get me a coffee," she snarled at the first waiter she came across. "Make it long, and make it black."

Nerbing a voun

We were emailing at work - instead of working at work, because it was more convenient that way - the other day about the verbing of nouns, the habit people had of turning particular nouns into related verbs. Instead of saying 'I am going (verb) to lunch (noun)', according to Macquarie Dictionary, it is now acceptable simply to say 'I lunch (verb)'. Another example that came up was how, during the Olympics, certain comperes and presenters had begun to say 'And now the winners will podium (verb)', instead of, say 'And now the winners will walk (verb) to the podium (noun).'

Well I didn't accept it then and I don't accept it now. I mean, how far is this verbing of nouns going to go? If we take language in the direction it seems to be going, pretty soon we will not 'walk up the street' to 'eat some lunch' and 'have a drink', we will 'street up the street' to 'lunch some lunch' and 'drink a drink', and when we come back to work we will not 'sit in a chair' and 'type on a keyboard', before going to 'catch the train' home, where we will 'watch the television' and then 'go to bed': we will simply come back to work where we will 'chair in a chair' and 'keyboard on a keyboard', and 'train a train' home, where we will 'television the television' for a while before 'bedding to bed'. And while it is true that we have always used the words 'drink' and 'bed' as both noun and verb, and 'lunch' has for some time operated in both capacities, other words have until now remained entirely distinct. We have perfectly good, and separate verbs for all of those actions described above: 'eating' and 'drinking' and 'walking' and 'typing', and so on.

Having obliterated the distinction between verb and noun, and between the act and what is acted upon, will language halt there? I fear not: for as the great juggernaut of language rolls on, pretty soon, single acts will be implied in one single, all-encompasssing word. So instead of 'walking down the street' to 'eat some lunch' and 'have a drink', or even 'streeting the street' to 'lunch on lunch' and 'drink some drink', people will find themselves simply 'streeting'. Pretty soon, the whole vast world of distinctions and separate existences and poetry and singular essences that is implied and touched upon in the English language will have vanished; and instead, we will have nothing more than a small collection of four or five verbnouns to imply this whole vanished world.

Alternatively, language could go in the opposite direction altogether; and whereas before we verbed nouns with aplomb, now we could start nouning verbs. We would not 'eat lunch', we would 'eat eats'; we would not 'sit in a chair', we would 'sit in a sit'. In a great retroreaction we could obliterate the whole other half of language: and that would be not only a tragedy, but a reverse tragedy of the other one.

All this I said, or tried to say, in my emailing at work. Or, rather, I tried to say in the email that I sent at work. Language, Timothy, please!

The dangers of inanimate objects

When will people do something about the dangers of attack and or/homicide committed upon humans by inanimate objects? Why, just in the past few days, I have:

1) Become subject to a savage and unprovoked attack upon my foot by a wall, while I was walking along and minding my own business (my business being in the opposite direction of the wall);

2) Almost been pulled under the desk by the octopus-like coils of cords and tentacles that are attached to the office computer system, perhaps to be strangled and suffocated by said coils;

3) Been brutally elbowed by the sharp-edge of a column;

4) Been shaken off my balance by a street gutter, which happened to be lurking at a level below the street, waiting for me to fall into its devious trap.

Life is full of perils and dangers at the best of times. Murderers lurk, waiting to leap upon us and throttle the very life from our throats; fearsome beasts stalk us in the dark, planning to make us their prey. These are the grim facts of our existence. But even worse are the perils posed to us by inaminate objects: for they entrap us in being exactly what we expect them to be. What could be more surprising than the base at the bottom of the stairway which we step into, expecting our foot to fall upon another stair? Or the lamp post which so smugly and coyly lurks in just the spot it has always lurked, knowing that we are about to lurch into it at any second? These inanimate objects do not even do anything to attack us: no, the danger inheres in the simple fact of their being.

Who will save us from the horrifying and dreadful attacks of inanimate objects?

Definition

Arguing on a blog: Histronics, hypocrisy, and hysteria before bedtime.

Oxford Dictionary, first addition edition

gloomph (a, n) 1. Putting an excessive amount of personal effort into becoming depressed. 2. The effort thus deployed.

eg "He's watching a lot of Buffy lately. He's full of gloomph." "At first she was full of spirits and good cheer. But she put a good deal of gloomph into it, so that after reading Sartre's Nauseau for a fifth time, she took to bed and didn't rise up for days."

Stuff about things, and other very specific examples of current affairs reportage

I vaguely recall reading, some years ago, a little truism that people who read stuff about things in the newspaper were more likely to remember that stuff than people who watched the television. It's a truism that is undoubtedly true, because if I had heard the same thing on television, I might be telling you now that people who read the newspaper remembered more things about stuff than stuff about things. And what I told you wouldn't be telling you much.

I recalled this factoid the other day when I was reading some of the headlines over at the ABC 7.30 Report website. 'Expert warns more tough times ahead for the US' opined one headline - a statement which is true, but which is even worse than that - it's obvious. Or how about this one? 'Young sailor prepares to set sail.' Clearly, the writers for the 7.30 Report had a powerful ability to write things that we would have been able to guess anyway. From reading the transcription of the programs, I might be able to find out the facts of a particular story - but, as anyone could tell you, facts are often the least necessary necessity of the journalistic profession.

If I was going to learn anything new from the news, I might have to go back to the things most unique to the television - the images. Last night, I sat down in front of the ABC news, and did an accurate transcription of the images. Why not? After all, I transcribe words for a living, I had a crack at cat transcription last week, and I even once transcribed the sounds of my flatmate, B. (now former*) at his computer. It would be interesting, I thought, to see what I would learn. And, as it turned out, the thing I was going to learn would be that I would learn things.

STORY ONE
In today's breaking news, a house continued to stay put in the ground today. However, elsewhere, an ambulance urgently rushed to a place right in front of the camera, possibly because an important looking man had his face being attacked by a sea of living microphones. A photograph of a man then appeared, which clearly indicated that it (either the photograph or the man,I'm not sure) was deeply concerned with this outbreak of killer microphones. Then there were several more pictures of a man in sunglasses, a truck that wasn't doing much, some dancing people, and an important man in a tie, who was clearly announcing to everyone the important news that he was wearing a tie.

While it is still not known how widespread the killer microphone pandemic is, it's potential impact on the importance of men wearing important ties could be potentially devastating, especially for all those houses that continue to stay put in the ground in spite of the presence of a camera.

STORY TWO
Turning to international, domestic, political, economical, military, or historical news, several men struck poses in front of the camera with guns. Then there was a picture of a house, with men walking around it. In the next shot, the house was pulled apart by a truck, which would have been of clear concern to all houses standing still for no reason at all. However, the men, now without their guns, talked unconcernedly among themselves, following which the guns struck a pose for the camera on their oown.

I'm not sure what this story was about actually, but clearly it will be of great concern to the people who are greatly concerned by such things. However, the gun fashion parade was of great success and all guns deserve to be congratulated for the part they played.

STORY THREE
This next story appeared to be a power-rock ballad in disguise, since it began with a shot of two people walking barefoot along an empty beach, and continued that way for some time. In breaking developments, lots of people were also standing around in a tent, while an important looking man in glasses was attacked by a large furry microphone. While the plight of important looking men in glasses being sacrificed to savage microphones on deserted beaches by sicko sacrificial death cults remains an ongoing probem in power rock ballads, ships continued to sail about on the harbour in an unconcerned manner.

Shockingly, I was shocked.

STORY FOUR
This news did not fall into the political, entertainment or sports categories - it fell into a whole other category. Kitten news. First, there was a picture of two kittens, then of one kitten, and then of three more kittens. Men and women are clearly different from kittens, and that's what the next two camera shots established. However, the important thing is that kittens like chasing balls of string and sitting in boxes, as the next shot demonstrated. People reacted to these important developments in the kitten community by standing around and talking, and doing various other things. However, despite these positive signs in the world of kittens, reporters still like walking in front of the camera, talking, and opening and closing their hands in a way that they think makes them look authoritative, but makes them look rather nervous and silly, really.

Nevertheless, the important lesson to be taken away from all these unfolding events is that kittens are cute.

STORY FIVE
In late breaking news, there was a shot of rats in cages, and then a picture of a person standing in front of the camera. Then there were pictures of people in front of various torture instruments, like an old man in front of a gigantic meat-grinder, and another old man repeatedly banging his groin into a metal instrument along a straight piece of metal. There were more shots of people, and then another one of a rat, and then another one of dancing old people.

Clearly, old people are being harvested for food by evil rats with gigantic throbbing brains and huge intellects.

***

It was on that positive and uplifting news that we went to the sports and I switched off. It's always best to end with a whacky animal story, I find.

*I mean former flatmate, not former B.