Think thing

Is thinking over
Overthinking?

Is thinking over thinking
Over thinking thinking?

Is overthinking overthinking
Thinking over thinking over?

Is overthinking ever thinking?
Is thinking ever over?
Or is this just overthinking thinking?
Is this think thing over?
Over.

An overstated understatement poem

An overstated understatement poem
or possibly
An understated overstatement poem

The overstated underpants

Were much too undersized

To cover over much at all

Or leave it in disguise,

And what they didn't cover over

Was less than you might wonder

Hence the underwhelming underpants

They only half sat under.

A pleasant post about my chickens

We have new chickens. Have I mentioned that? We have new chickens, two glossy black-emerald feathered Australorps; their names are Shirley and Esme - or, because they're barely distinguishable, and they're always together anyway, perhaps we should refer to them by the one name: Shirleyandesme? Esandshirl?

But yeah. Pertinent points: New. Chickens. They're due to take up their laying duties soon, but in the meantime they're working on their other talent (and what a talent it is), escape. Their principal method is to fly over the back fence when I'm in the room at the other end of the house; there is also a subsidiary method, but we'll get to that soon.

Once they're out and over, a simple five point manoeuvre is employed on my part.

1. Open the back gate to go out after them.
2. Close the back gate again because the other chickens have heard it and come running, excited by the possibility of getting some oval time.
3. Going round the side of the house and scattering some seed to distract those chickens.
4. Opening the back gate and slipping out while the chickens are distracted.
5. Closing the same back gate and holding it shut with a pole stuck in the ground.
6. Walking the Australorps (wherever they are) back to the gate.
7. Opening the gate and somehow attempting to keep the other chickens in (they have ceased being distracted by the food and are now distracted even more from their previous distraction by the oval, which is really just one gigantic food bowl)
8. Running after the Australorps again, wherever they have got to, and walking them back through the gate.
9. Walking the other chickens back in through the gate again.
10. Somehow making sure that the Australorps don't get out while the other chickens are getting in, shutting the gate, and going back to the other end of the house waiting for the whole exercise to be repeated.

As you will have worked out - probably at about point seven of my simple five point plan - it's all pretty tricky, and I'm not sure whether I'm fully practised in the finer details yet. Strangely enough, the Australorps only seem to do this escape trick once a day; the rest of the time they work out other tactics for escape around the garden, which I discovered the other day when I was trying to walk them back into their house before it was dark because I had to go into the city. First of all they refused to be walked to that corner of the garden where their house was, and kept turning around and dashing back to another corner, then when I got them near their house they veered away repeatedly, then they ran to the other corner of the garden and split up into two so I had to choose which one to chase and by the time I'd got that one cornered and almost into the house the other one would be far away and I'd have to let that one escape while I ran after the other one, then infuriatingly they ran around a tree in pointless circles so that I wasn't walking them anywhere and they weren't walking me anywhere; I became quite outraged, I spluttered, I blustered, I waved my arms in the air, I swore like a maniac, basically I was having a great time; and still the Australorps weren't in their house! So I gave up and left them there.

That's about all I wanted to say today about my chickens.

Sodomy by electric eel and the exciting world of customer service

A while ago I was standing around La Trobe University waiting for the Baron to call (I didn't have any credit on my phone) and walking around in ever more erratic figures looking for the right building to disappear into. I was quite confused, a little bit puzzled, and completely lost. After a little while I happened to bump into a woman who, with solicitous concern for my welfare, must have noticed that this tall messy bearded person walking in eccentric polygons all over the courtyard, looking lost, probably was lost. She asked the natural question: "Are you lost?"

To which my natural reply was, naturally: "NO THANK YOU QUITE ALL RIGHT GOOD BYE THANK YOU!" And walked very quickly in the opposite direction where I could be lost in peace.

I have a thing. My thing is this: people helping me: I hate it.

Quite why it is that I should be so terrified of the helpful prospect of helpful people helping me when I need help, I do not know. But almost every other day (I am, as you can imagine, one of the most helpless individuals on the planet when plonked out of my familiar environment) I run into more examples of this. I'm even worse than normal when people approach me in shops and asking, "Can I help you?" (Why do they seem to do this more in some stores than others?) Their use of the word "help" somehow makes the situation even more excruciating, and, I am ashamed to say, my response to their pleasant offer to assist me in order to facilitate a commercial exchange of money is often met with a curt response on my part, more or less along the same lines I have described above: loud denial accompanied by the speaker walking in the opposite direction. (Ask the Baron. She's been there when it's happened.)

Tip to all shop assistants who want to sell something to me: next time you approach me, why not say: "Can I tip a vat of liquid elephant manure over your head?" I might even say "Yes". Then you might just be able to sell me whatever you like. (Other useful variants to this line may include: "May I poke Ottoman sabres through your heart?" "Would you like to be sodomised by this electric eel?")

Worst of all, for some reason, is when it happens in the chemist. Of all terrifying, awful, and frankly rather embarrassing situations, standing around in the chemist and suddenly being approached by a pleasant person tenderly inquiring if I might need some help is just the pits. Really, I could be coughing up blood, have two legs rotting off with gangrene, my arms lying limp, bloodied, and useless at my side, and my head lolling at a quaint angle suggesting a very painful broken bone, and if somebody were to approach me in that situation asking if I needed help, then I am really not sure whether my answer would be "Yes" or not. I might very well deploy my standard defence, yelp out my predictable denial, and walk - well, crawl, perhaps - very quickly in the opposite direction before the dreaded help could arrive. It's my thing, you see. Help: I do not like it.

The metamorphosis of me into cranky old man continues apace, as you may have observed. It's getting so bad, honestly, that soon I'll be getting outraged at the directions on the back of soup packets: "Boil water and mix in soup". "Well that's just bloody presumptuous, isn't it!"

So, anyway, that's my thing about help. So now that you know about it, I wonder if you might.... NO THANK YOU QUITE ALL RIGHT THANK YOU GOOD BYE GOING IN OPPOSITE DIRECTION THANK YOU NOW GOOD BYE NO!

Your life looks like the wreck of the Hesperus!

In the last week, we've had several interstate visitors round, which is lovely, but this morning we've finally had the chance to put the house back in order again.

I started things off by spilling fejoia wine onto the floorboards (although, come to think of it, 'spilling' implies an accidental occurrence; perhaps it would be better to say 'tipping'). I continued in this way by boiling a large pot of water on the stove, and then walking into another room while it repeatedly splashed all over the place.

Meanwhile, I wandered up and down the kitchen in filthy shoes until it was thoroughly muddied up: good. In the bedroom, I patted the cats until copious amounts of fur where whirling and flying through the air, and thoughtfully spread out dark blankets to capture and show off the furs at their best. I took several dirty cheesecloths and muslin bags which I'd used for sparging and infusing beer with hop flavour, and dumped them in bowls of water, before taking them out and flinging them idly into the laundry*; I pulled several clothes out of my cupboard and left them lying on the floor just because I wasn't sure I was living down to my usual standards of filthiness; and I left some old socks that I'd been wearing around the house for the past few days to hang up in some dark cupboard spaces, just to mature.

I'm almost done now. But later, I might leave the door open and be 'surprised' by the chickens coming inside, wait until they've scattered the cat food everywhere and left several fertile fecund messages under the table, and then fill a bucket full of mud and use it to mop up the kitchen some more. Just to add to the general hygienic atmosphere. Ah, home sweet home.

*'...before taking them out and flinging them idly into the laundry' - obviously I am referring here to both the cheesecloths and bowls of water.'

It's a high likelihood, and it squeaks

Over the past few days, I have come to the conclusion that it's just possible, verging on highly likely, that we have mice in our compost bin out here in Lalor. Nothing is certain in life, of course, not to mention balance of probabilistics, statistics, heuristics, and what not, but I really do think we have mice.

A number of signs seem to have been pointing to this. For one thing, for the past few weeks, when we've been letting the cats out for exercise, that exercise has consisted in them sitting on the cold ground in front of the compost. For three hours at a stretch. That, then, is one sign pointing to the likelihood of mice.* Another sign: odd holes appeared here and there in the compost; that seems to raise the evidence of mouseular existence from a definite maybe to an absolute possibility. And there's a third thing, too: the other day, when I went out and opened up the compost bin lid, about eight mice ran around the compost bin in great confusion before disappearing down those holes. Call me simple, if you like, but that would seem to be an almost definitive indicator of the high probability of the continuance of life of a rodent kind at close quarters with the own human, feline, chookish, and apiarian life forms existence in or around our house.

I jest, of course; because the other day, when we turned over the compost bin for good (the cats and chickens were ebullient; some of the other life forms, less so), the high likelihood of rodents existing near the house suddenly turned into a high likelihood of rodents existing within the house. The cats suddenly became dramatically less interested in going outside at all; all of a sudden their favoured activity seems to be to sit on the kitchen bench and stare with an intense moodiness at the stove. Nothing that Fabio doesn't do in his spare time, I'm sure, but more curious activity for our cats to get up to. Such intense moody staring is occasionally punctuated by a sudden clattering of jars, usually while we're on the other room.

Guys, maybe it's just me. But I think it may be the case that we could possibly have mice in the house.

*Nor should I forget to point out that time, about four weeks ago, that Beatrice spent all night romping and pouncing and frisking about in the rosemary, before coming back to bed apparently highly satisfied with her endeavours, perfuming the whole room with a pleasant herbal odour.

Pastie-faced people unite

In accordance with the traditional ways of my people (half-arsed city-dwellers of a pastie complexion), I have deleted the name of the now-dead lead singer of Yothu Yindi from my blog, in spite of the fact that I never posted it in the first place. Some may object to this, saying that I am just doing this because I want to seem sensitive about the death of someone without doing much at all, but my reply is simply this: it's convenient. And so, in the words of a famous poet whose name escapes me right at the moment,

Lest we forget remember.

DC WTF in UK

David Cameron has held crisis talks at Downing Street after being told of allegations of a sensational love affair which has potentially significant political implications for him.

For legal reasons, The Mail on Sunday cannot disclose the identities of the people involved or any details of the relationship – even its duration – other than that they are middle-aged figures.

The affair has now concluded. But this newspaper can report that when aides told Mr Cameron the identities of the alleged lovers he was ‘stunned’, and, according to sources, ‘immediately realised the importance of the story’....

Daily Mail, No 10 rocked by secret love affair

CAMERON STUNNED BY REVELATIONS 

London, Sunday - British Prime Minister David Cameron is reportedly 'stunned' and 'alarmed' at revelations that people actually have sex.

The news about the flagrant sex-having habits of the British populace and the world at large has rocked the Tory cabinet, causing Cameron to immediately hold crisis meetings and release a generic photo to the media of him looking generically stunned.

 

Generic photograph of the generic Prime Minister looking generically stunned for the Daily Mail.

Further disclosures that 'sex actually is how babies happen', including Cameron's own children, meaning the British Prime Minister may have actually engaged in the activity himself, shocked him still more, causing him to demand a report into the unfolding disaster and commission a study into the report and hold crisis meetings on the study into the report at the same time as the other crisis meetings he was already holding.

'Oh, dude', the British Prime Minister is reported as saying. 'It's just too much!'

Teapot song update

I'm a little teapot 

Short and stout 

Here is my handle 

Here is my spout 

When I get all steamed up 

Then I shout 

The most horrifying anti-semitic slogans imaginable which are frankly unrepeatable on the internet because I want to stop the spread of hate. 

(From that story we've all heard already...

JC Penney isn't anything like Hitler. But its Michael Graves Stainless Steel Tea Kettle is. The fact that its profile looks eerily like the Fuhrer's mien caused a stir online Tuesday, forcing the company to deny that it had any intention of introducing dictator silhouettes to its small appliances line.

JC Penney's 'Hitler Tea Kettle' Sold Out in Hours Because This Is the Internet)

Fungus amungus

This has been a good year for fungus at Lalor Enterprises Inc. There is fungus growing in the loungeroom, on the washing line, and in my study, and I even meant for that last one to happen. (We'll get to that in a moment.) The fungal colony in the loungeroom is having a little party, unfortunately, at the expense of the bacterial colony I had previously nurtured into bloom on top of some fresh, mid-to-late autumn cheese. The washing line fungus opportunistically grew on a cheesecloth I had previously used for sparging ale wort, and while I admired its resilience and parsimonious commitment to economic efficiencies in this time of financial crisis, I popped it in the washing machine straight away so I could hopefully get rid of it.

But as for my study and the fungus in it, however - that was entirely deliberate. (The fungus at least; I don't know how the study got there, though.) I found myself enummerating all the colonies in my study to Mum on the weekend: the ginger beer plant, the three boxes of pearl oyster mushrooms, the box of Portobello mushroom spores, another box of mushroom spores (the name of which escapes me at the moment), a fermenting English brown ale, a Fejoia wine, and a mead. I think that's about all. (At the time I spoke to Mum I was also proud to be able to mention the little jar of cheese culture (then significantly less cultured than it is now) sitting by the heater. That one was bacterial, though, so it didn't count).

Beer fungus, wine fungus, mushroom fungus. That's quite a lot of fungus. Some day hopefully I'll be able to train the fungus to do rudimentary household tasks like cleaning the dishes or scrubbing the floor, but that's in the future. I have to work on my fermentation and culturing techniques between now and then. In the meantime, I'm pretty pleased with the little colony I have around me at the moment. Fungus anyone?

Office, from open-plan to no plan

I had thought, before I started working at home, that my biggest problem would be procrastination - because, you know, in the old place of employ, there was always the possibilty of someone looming up behind my back and finding me involved in an unprofitable and unproductive activity. Now here, enclosed in my study, typing away at the computer, I find there's no-one here to loom up behind my back except me: and the effect just isn't the same. As it turns out, procrastination isn't a problem at all: I get to procrastinate more than ever!

No, the problem is not so much the wasting of time by putting off doing important things; it's more the delegation of unimportant tasks so as to more pleasantly fill up my entire day with distractions and meaningless activities. I would never have thought I needed a timetable to help me have a special time for playing Scrabble on Facebook, or baking biscuits, or just sitting around staring aimlessly at the wall while patting the cat on my lap, but that seems to be the inevitable conclusion that I am being led towards.

Just the other day, I successfully avoided doing work by mixing a bread, brewing a wort for an ale on the stove, patting Harriet the cat, going back to sparge the grains off the wort and putting the brew onto the show to boil, kneading the bread, and returning to the computer to post an item on Facebook about how I was avoiding doing work. Things were all going quite well, when I found that while I was posting on Facebook, the brew on the stove had boiled over just a bit, and when I had fixed that I found that I had to clean the bench after kneading the bread on it, because I wanted to have a clean kitchen when I cooled the beer down. Meanwhile, there were comments on Facebook! This being by far the least important thing to think about at that time, I decided to spend the next fifteen minutes concentrating on that.

Things were even worse in the afternoon. You see, by that time I'd got the beer in the demijohn, put the bread in the oven and taken it out, the cats had both drifted off to sleep, and the conversation on Facebook had even dwindled to a halt: I found myself doing work. I know. I'm still shaking now.

So you see, my initial problem of procrastination in the old workplace has turned into a new problem - procrastination distracting me from my other procrastination. Perhaps some serious delegation is in order. Timetables? Sticky notes? I'm just not sure how I'm going to get out of this one.

Sado-masochist love letter

M.,

Just thinking about you makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a pencil. Repeatedly.

Please come home so I may indulge in this mutually pleasurable and satisfying activity all night. Bring another pencil! You can do it too!

With Love, F.

Excitement plus

Today, just for larks, I took the washing off the line. There was no particular reason for me to do this; the washing had been on the line for about a week, getting almost dry in the odd day of sunshine, then getting wet again in the rain, then gradually drying out again, although still being just moist enough to make you wonder whether you should leave it up for another day. Anyway, today, in a radical break with this state of affairs, I took it down. I just thought you'd all like to know that.

In other exciting news, I put my tie on to take a ride on the train. I know: I could have just worn the tie around the house. But I decided to take it onto the train instead. The excitement, as you can see, never ends around here.

Tory dinner party

For years we have been told that technology was making us richer, but we eat less and drink less than we did 100 years ago, so where is the improvement. I remember when nearly everyone had three cooked meals a day and a substantial tea with cakes and scones and butter and jam. Perhaps people lived less long, but at least there was some purpose in their lives.
Auberon Waugh, The Way of the World

Over the past few weeks I have been reading the - gloriously misanthropic, wickedly funny - ramblings of Auberon Waugh. That passage reminded me of that grand old tradition of English Tories eating great amounts of food with pleasure...

There was a boy. His name was Jim. 
His friends were very good to him. 
They gave him tea, and cakes, and jam, 
And slices of delicious jam.... 

Hillaire Belloc, Jim

'... Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the human frame requires...'
With that, the Wretched Child expires. 

Hillaire Belloc, Henry King

My forthcoming work in five volumes, `The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature,' is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful whether I shall live to finish it.

G. K. Chesterton, Cheese 

Ascetic Mr. Lewis' - !!! I ask you! He put away three pints in a very short session we had this morning, and said he was 'going short for Lent.'"  

J. R. R. Tolkien on C. S. Lewis

There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

C. S. Lewis

(Indeed, I once read that when Waugh visited Australia he dined on a koala. But that story is probably too good to be true, rather than too true to be good.)

How now Chow chow

The other day I was in the backyard looking over my neighbour's fence. Now I know what you're thinking, but I look over my neighbour's fence all the time, so I have lots of experience in these matters, and also they're hardly ever in the backyard anyway, and besides, I was looking for my cat. Who hasn't stood in their backyard looking over their neighbour's fence for their cat from time to time? Not to mention occasionally when I'm looking over the neighbour's fence for my cat I'm able to permanently borrow a lemon from the neighbour's tree. It all sounds perfectly fine to me.

Anyway, I was standing there looking over my neighbour's fence for my cat, which is a perfectly legitimate and fine activity, because you have to keep an eye on what you cat is doing, especially if your cat is in the neighbour's backyard, and I can't believe we're still talking about it, and all of a sudden I found a small dog looking back at me. It seemed as surprised as I was: two small eyes peered out of a cloud of fur. It was obviously so affronted it even forgot to bark. Even better: it was a Chow Chow.

The dog was also there when I looked over my neighbour's fence later. And the day after, when I looked over the fence again, it was still there. In fact, the presence of this canine backyard dog seemed to necessitate a lot of looking over my neighbour's fence, even when my cat was inside: it's important to assure yourself of the presence of the neighbour's dog in the neighbour's backyard, after all. For its part, the dog got over its initial bout of muteness and began to gruffly greet my presence in the familiar stentorian tones of its kind. In fact on some occasions I found that I'd just be standing around in the backyard, nowhere near the fence, which I was certainly not looking over, which I'll admit is unusual, and the dog would remind me of its presence by barking for no apparent reason.

The next logical step to take after all this is obviously to stop looking over your neighbour's fence at the neighbour's backyard, and place yourself in your neighbour's backyard instead, not by climbing over the fence, obviously, which would be rude (unless you are a cat), but by simply walking round to the neighbour's house and asking if you could see the dog, which is much more polite (unless you are a cat.) So I did. It was excellent. And the dog wasn't bad either.

I'm not sure if there's a moral to this post, but I like to think that in the process of writing it, I've become a more compassionate and understanding person and have made universal peace and harmony that much more possible. Look, basically I think what I'm saying is this: it's okay if you look over your neighbour's fence for your cat and instead of your cat you see in your neighbour's backyard your neighbour's dog, and you go round to your neighbour's house and get them to let you into the backyard to see the dog. We've all been there. Metaphorically, if not actually, because that could get quite crowded. (Not sure about my cat though. She might be over there at the moment. I'd better go and check...)

A half-witted Mother's Day poem

I kinda sort of half-forgot

Until the day was halfway done

Here's half a box of Safeway chocs - 

Regards, your half-arsed son.

Sky Whale!

There's a statue you might know about on a pedestal outside of the St Kilda Town Hall. A naked guy, lolling about in the tentacles of a gigantic hydra-snake monster, while one snake-tentacle reaches up a into the sky and grabs a war plane. It's big, it's messy, it's weird as hell, and it's bloody ugly. It's Richard Stringer's Monument for a Public Building, and just about everyone who mentions it on the net seems to be puzzled: personally, I reckon as soon as Stringer got the commission, he just decided to stick it to the man (not particularly caring who the man was) and make something as weird and offensive as possible. It doesn't make much sense in the context either - hip and happening and with-it artists like to do stuff about the horrors of war, but attaching said horrors-of-war sculpture, in the '90s, to a local government building, is just bizarre.

Let us move on, then, from Richard Stringer's brainfart to the immense and bloated Sky Whale, which was commissioned to celebrate Canberra's centennary. Tim Blair doesn't like it, and so far as his criticisms go he is perfectly right: it's big, it's ugly, it is a "bloated, gaseous, multi-breasted monster feeding those who dwell in its poisonous shadow while leeching off the rest of us", and therefore "The perfect symbol of our capital city". He notes further how, in order to build the beast which has been constructed to celebrate the centennary of the Australian capital city, they had to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to England. I've got to admit the jokes just write themselves: "It's full of hot air", "It's monstrous", "It's all puffed up".

But, on the other hand, I kind of like it. It's totally out there; it's completely weird and undeniably bizarre: I can certainly understand the fastidious distaste many of the Canberra citizens might have when having this vast airborne breast-turtle looming over them in the sky while they try to sip on their lattes. But turning the whole thing into a gigantic balloon is rather clever - it recalls the days when hot-air balloons were cutting-edge science and a grand public spectacle. Just what is a hot-air balloon supposed to look like, anyway? Who is to say that the Montgolfier brothers didn't get it exactly wrong when they decorated their balloons? You might just as well prettify a balloon so it looks like a gargantuan biological freak. I admit, it appeals to my science fiction tastes and my enjoyment of weirdness; and you have to admit, the weirdness is very very well done. Plus, I like the implication of a backstory (where the hell did the Sky Whale come from? What do its parents look like?)

Poor old public artists can't ever get it right, really. If they make something abstract or minimalist or according to the conventions of this or that twentieth-century school, they'll get viciously attacked. Don't understand it, what's the point of it, it's ugly, who paid them for this? If they make something that's completely naturalistic and old-school, like a statue of a general or a horse, we'll still attack them, and if we don't, they'll attack themselves: unoriginal, derivative, what's the point in repeating something that's already been done anyway, etc. Sometimes an artist hits on a gimmick that people might like without thinking too much about it, and never does anything different: John Kelly and his endless, endless cows, for instance. For the Sydney Festival this year, they got in a gigantic bloody rubber duck, which was funny, see, because rubber ducks are small, right, and they're normally in bathtubs, yeah, but this gigantic rubber duck was.... and you don't have to think about the idea much more before you realise that there isn't anything else to think about: there isn't really anything else to a giant rubber duck than the fact that it writes its own headlines.

But this huge and bloated and ugly and bizarre and weird Sky Whale has a bit more to it. Really. You can't say it isn't well crafted; the technological difficulties alone in putting it together and floating it must have been immense. As for what it looks like - well, whatever it is that it looks like, I'm sure it looks like it in an amazingly accurate way. If ever a real Sky Whale with massive mammaries hoves into view, I'm sure it'll have no difficulty in recognising another of its kind.

But then again also of course not to mention, lots of public money, could have been spent on, what is the point of it, why couldn't they spend on, not very nice when I'm having a cup of coffee at my favourite cafe, and so on. We'll always be suspicious about taxpayer's money - our money - being spent on public art: but it will be spent; that's not going to change at any point in the future. No need to blame that on one particular artwork, especially poor old Sky Whale here.

Besides: maybe the Sky Whale could recoup its costs over time by being an entertaining show ride for kiddies.

Home cheesemaking at home for beermakers (explained)

Yesterday I busied myself at home inventing a method for ageing a Gruyere cheese by strapping it to your foot, and for fermenting a Scottish porter by dangling a Nubian warrior's oxters in the fresh wort overnight, or all three at once. My methods are infallible, even though you may quibble with my techniques: you see, it's all to do with harnessing the many natural flora and fauna and yeast and stuff that exist in the world around us, which is why my homebrew tastes like armpits from darkest Africa, and my cheese tastes like you just licked a sock. 

Anyway, as I was busily fermenting my cheese and fomenting my beer away along with all my plans and stratagems and schemes, what should happen to fall under my gaze but the following sentences:

... Attractive wine labels, going beyond information about the variety or the producer, are used to entice unsophisticated or new consumers. This is one of the primary methods by which the wine sector sells its products in a highly-competitive domestic and export market.
Marketing Mag, Plain Packaging for Tobacco: wine branding down the gurgler?

And so, the battle over plain packaging of cigarettes having been won (for now), the health lobby moves on to another front. (Link via Catallaxy.)

It's sweet, I thought, it really is, that the health lobby should care about my health so much that they should try to start a ban on the labelling of a product that I don't buy because they want to stop me drinking it even though I make at home anyway because they are worried about the effects of the alcohol in it which all things considered is probably the least of their worries if they came round and tasted some of my concoctions anyway.

But it got me thinking about those many popular products on the marketplace at the moment that people might soon decide to make at home....

Goon 
Ever popular with students, this top seller is best described as yak's piss in a foil bag. Following the advent of plain packaging, students can easily and affordably brew their own goon at home, by pissing in some aluminium foil and then tying it up with some string.
FERMENTATION TIME: Half a day until all your buddies come round.

Rotgut
There's nothing quite like hanging out under the bridge and swilling out of a dirty bottle of unnamed spirits and waking up 50 years later with a splitting headache underneath a pile of newspapers realising that today is the first day for the rest of your life. But that's the sort of experience you're likely to enjoy with good old Rotgut, whatever it is. The ingredients of the recipe are closely guarded, but you can replicate its effects easily enough by placing a metal fermentation bucket over your head, getting someone to bang it about with a hammer a couple of times, and then falling unconscious underneath the nearest table. Don't forget to have a swig of vinegar before you do, though, just to give yourself the full Rotgut effect.
FERMENTATION TIME: Kind of depends whether you mean for you or the beer.

Schoolbag surprise
Here's one for the cheesemakers. Every parent of school children knows the joy of finding, at the bottom of their kid's school bag, the remains of last weeks/months/years Vegemite and cheese sandwich, a brilliant concoction of yeast and bacterium and Penicillium and who knows what else. Now, you can replicate this surprise at home by just pouring some old milk into your kids pocket, plugging up the gaps with a bit of bread, and sending them out to play in the garden. Okay, the results won't be exactly the same, but every cheese is different.
FOR MORE ADVANCED CHEESEMAKERS: Try doing the same with unpasteurised milk or sour cream for added zest. 

With a little ingenuity, creativity, and self-belief, you can have just as much fun at home recreating these old classic recipes, without the dread hand of the nanny state interfering in your life! Go to it, folks!

(Blog post typed up on my wireless Gorgonzola and routed through my dandelion merlot to the internet)

Tim Worldwide Body Language Expert Blog

WELCOME TO TIM WORLDWIDE BODY LANGUAGE EXPERT BLOG! TIM IS WORLDWIDE BODY LANGUAGE EXPERT IN ALL THE LANDS!



HERE WE SEE MAN DEMONSTRATE MASTERY OF SITUATION BY MANFULLY BESTRIDING CHAIR! MAN IS SO POTENT THAT NO CHAIR CAN STOP HIS POWERFUL LEG!

Alternative explanation:

HERE WE SEE MAN WHO HAS FORGOTTEN HOW TO PULL CHAIR OUT FROM TABLE TO BE ABLE TO SIT DOWN! IT IS MOST PITIFUL STORY OF MAN WHO CANNOT SIT PROPERLY!

(Via Most Excellent and Auspicious Blog of Hoyden)

Important acronyms explained

Now it's time for me to explain once and for all the acronyms for many important infrastructural projects and governmental organisations. So here we go.

 NBN - A lot of people have criticised the NBN, but personally I won't hear a word of it. The Northern Bee Network is a vital piece of infrastructure for our backyard, as the honey in the kitchen and the mead in my study will attest.

CCTV - Although many people consider this technology to be a little too invasive for them, I just think the Chicken-Cat Television in our own backyard to be just great. Whether it's chickens nicking into the house when I've got my back turned, or cats nicking out of the house when I've got my other back turned, or chickens chasing the cats around the garden, they give me hours of entertainment. So enough of your criticisms!

DFAT -  More controversy! But personally, I think the Department of Fudge and Alcoholic Tipples is absolutely vital for the household economy, not to mention national security. Thanks to their round-the-clock devotion to their core tasks of fudge consumption and alcoholic tipples, they've been able to ward off many threats, such as.... such as.... and.... plus.... well, anyway, fudge and alcohol tastes nice end of story.

ABC - This organisation is quite old now, going on three years! But despite its venerable status, it still divides people into critics and supporters. However, the consensus remains that the Ale Brew Consumption unit is going from strength to strength at the moment, and is vital for the ongoing processes of household continuance.

BBC - Last but not least: this is considered to be a little bit too exotic for the purposes of some. However, the Bureau of Bacteria and Cheese has had some noted successes in the past few months, in both the Bacterial and the Cheese sense of 'success'. Whats more, the BBC and the ABC, serving similar purposes, have been able to really, er, lend their services to one another with astounding, and sometimes even edible, results.

My grumble ambition

Ambitions for middle age

To work upon my wrinkles

To not be almost dead

To grow an ash-grey-charcoal

Cloud upon my head.

A guide to swearing in the suburbs

Swearing is great, and you should do it all the time, especially when you're in the suburbs. You'll find plenty of opportunities to do so: when you are running around furiously trying to catch your chicken so you can put them in the back garden and get them away from the plants growing in the front garden but said chicken refuses to be caught: 'FUCKING DAISY!' When an inanimate object in its inanimate way inanimately stubs your big toe: 'FUCKING DOOR!' When a plate drops onto the floor and shatters: 'FUCK!' When you just kind of want to: 'FUCKING FUCK!'

But one occasion when perhaps it might on consideration be good to hold back on your swearing, for fear of conveying the wrong impression, is when your neighbours are in their backyard, and they have friends in the backyard, and you are in your backyard, and a bag carrying stones falls from the back of a wheelbarrow, and the stones spill out over the ground, and the words immediately leap into your mouth: 'FUCKING STUPID BAG!'

Because, you know, it might convey the wrong impression. Unless, of course, the neighbours happen to look upon you as those sort of neighbours. Which I'm sure they don't.

Memoirs of a quicher

Quiche thrower given good behaviour bond
A New South Wales woman who assaulted a police officer with a quiche has been been given a 12-month good behaviour bond in the Broken Hill Local Court.

Many will still be shocked by this news about the brutal assault of a police officer with a quiche. You may be still thinking, 'how can this have happened'? And 'is there anything we can do?'

Perhaps we will never be able to wipe out quiche-related violence in Australia, but it's a good time to start. We need to institute a thorough quiche buy-back scheme, so that it becomes harder than ever for the wrong quiches to fall into the hands of the right people, or the right quiches to fall into the hands of the wrong people, or the wrong quiches to fall into the right hands of the wrong people at the wrong time or.... oh, you know what I mean.

 In the meantime, we need to ask the hard questions. What can have caused this quiche-related attack? What were the motivations of the attackers? Will they strike again? The answer, I think may be found in one simple word: climate change.

And yes, there will always be the naysayers, those who object to any sort of government intervention whatsoever to stop groups of disturbed young men bearing quiches from attacking again. 'But there have never been any attacks with quiche before!' Well, it just goes to underline the horrifying escalation in quiche-related violence in our neoliberal society, doesn't it? 'But the quiche attacker was a woman!' It's terrible, isn't it, what some young men will resort to these days! 'This is eggsasperating!'

And that, you see, is my point eggsactly.

That thing about things on the thing thing

I just had a conversation with the Baron about things.

BARON: The thing has just finished.

ME: Yes, in order to go out I have to put the things on the thing. 

BARON: We'd probably better put the thing inside. 

ME: Yes, the thing is inside, but in order to put things on the thing I have to take the things off the thing. 

BARON: Oh. 

ME: Yes. 

I have no idea either. This is basically what married life is like.

A little later, we had another conversation:

ME: The things are all on the thing, but I have more things, so I think I will put it on the thing. 

BARON: What? 

ME: I need to put these things (pointing at these things) on the thing (pointing into another room somewhere).

BARON: (In a strained voice) I have no idea what you are talking about. 

At this point, I could only point awkwardly at the things and the thing, as I had done before, and the Baron helpfully said "Oh yes, now I know what you mean."

I wish she'd tell me.

UPDATE! -  Reader competition! Perhaps people reading this post - yes, all one of you - could offer creative suggestions as to what the 'things' and the 'thing' is. The best entry gets a hot date! But not with me though. I'm not sharing my hot dates with anyone.

Variations

For some reason I really like sending up T S Eliot.

I grow old... I grow old

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 

T S Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old I grow old

And the nurse says I haven't taken my medication this morning either.

***

I grow old I grow old

And I think I am having a heart

***

I grow old I grow old

I am not wearing any trousers either.

***

I grow old

And tomatoes.

***

I grow I grow

And life says Deepak Chopra is all about growth

Or is that my daughter

Anyway

***

I grow old

Is the train always this late?

***

How come I grow old

But don't shrink anything,

Just shrink

Every day the same

But

Less?

***

I grow old I grow old

Until one day

I don't. 

Forward in being backward

Today I will attempt to be ahead of the eight ball, behind the curve, off the money, under the facts, arrive with a whimper, not a bang, and leave with a clash of thimbles.

Fudge making for sado-masochists

I know what all you sado-masochists are thinking. "My life as a sado-masochist is rich and full! I inflict pain and have pain inflicted on me with others in a fully consenting adult relationship already, so why would I need more help?" But hear me out!

Fudge making involves intense heat, can go wrong in a number of ways, will quite possibly inflict a large amount of pain on yourself, and involves working with high heat for long periods of time. What's more it is extremely time consuming and tedious. Not only that, but if you do it in the right way (by which I mean the wrong way), you will end up with a product that will inflict a great deal of suffering on your teeth and jaw by cracking into shards in your mouth, and possibly gluing it together for good! So let's begin.

To make some fudge, you will simply need some sugar and double cream, a pot to melt the two together in, a stove, and some butter. Obviously the sado-masochist angle will work better if you do all your cooking in your kinky bedroom costume, as when the mixture is close to boiling, it is likely that it will spit hot liquid all over you, and you may well want to maximise the pain involved (TIP! - things become even more dangerous, and therefore desirable, if you are wearing bondage gear), though of course it all depends on how you are feeling on the day.

Don't forget to keep stirring! The sugar crystals will dissolve better if you keep stirring as the mixture gradually rises in temperature. You want to get the mixture to reach a temperature between 115 and 117 Degrees Celsius. How can you tell if it is that temperature? I'm glad you asked! You can use three tests: the thermometer test (the name says it all), the cold plate test (drop some of the liquid on a plate that has been in the refrigerator, and if it forms a soft ball, it is ready), or the finger test (stick your finger in the liquid and if it feels searingly awful, it is ready). Obviously for our purposes we'll be wanting to use the finger test, but again, it all depends what you feel like on the day and if you don't want to do it then that's completely fine and all right. Anyway, it might get a few goes before you get the 'feel' of fudge making, but don't worry, you have ten fingers, and many other body limbs that you can dip into a dangerously hot liquid, so it should be fine.

When it's all done, just stir in the butter, pour the liquid fudge into a pan lined with aluminium foil, and leave to cool. Done!

You will be left with a tray of pleasantly sweet, tasty treats that you and your sado-masochist friends can enjoy eating in your fully consenting adult relationships in your own time. Sounds awful, I know, but you can content yourself by looking forward to the heart attacks and diabetes and other horrible diseases and medical syndromes that eating too much fudge can cause.

Bon appetit!

Fancy foreign bubbles

Just as it is wrong to picture her [Margaret Thatcher] as some autocratic bossyboots, so it is equally mistaken to think of her as so obsessed with free market economics that she would privatise Buckingham Palace if she could... I remember once asking for a Perrier water when she was buying me a snack. She obviously regarded it as treachery to drink a French product and asked why I wanted it. I explained it was because it was naturally fizzy. She replied that the bubbles were artificially added. We then started arguing about whether the bubbles in Perrier were natural or not. I realised that the situation was becoming absurd and the conversation moved on to matters of high policy...

David Willets, Working for Mrs Thatcher

Little did this public servant know, but those bubbles in Perrier were actually crafted in Yorkshire and exported to the Perrier company under a trade deal with the French, where they were later added to the Perrier water. Although we cannot know how history would have turned out, it seems likely to me if the Tories had campaigned strongly on her British Bubbles for British People platform instead of ousting Thatcher, they would still be in government today. Oh wait, they are. Hang on....

Anyway, we need to apply this rigorous approach to beverage-quaffing more often. The froth they put on top of coffees, for instance. Right now, I'm sure there are plenty of Australian small business coffee froth producers who are willing to produce workable, durable, longer-lasting coffee froth ready to be packaged and sent out across the world at reduced rates.

It is clear, Margaret Thatcher made Australia the man it is today.

Questions inspired by a certain television show

"Oh, come on, if you claw your way out of a grave, are you really going to do that?"

"But I thought he liked vampires now, what's he doing with them?"

"What does she want with him anyway?"

"Why doesn't he just turn into a lion?"

"Why isn't he affected? Is it because of the alcohol?"

"Wow, is she developing new powers?"

"How come he's in a trance and still able to do hostage negotiations?" 

"Wait, was this just a dream all the time?"

"Why are they doing that now?"

"Why are we even watching this?"

"Have we got time to watch another one?"

You sure ask the big questions when for some inexplicable reason you find yourself watching another True Blood DVD. 

A Loris named Doris, a Sloth named Roth

I just learned the other day of the existence of a creature known as the Slow Loris. It is just about as reprehensible as it sounds - it is small, slow, and with extremely large eyes, reminiscent of irritating Japanese anime characters or pointless Pokemons. I immediately wondered why there was no Fast Loris - the Fast Loris, you understand, being the quicker, more spritely, less annoying Loris cousin to the aforementioned Slow Loris.

It made me wonder, too, about the Sloth. We always hear about the Sloth, the slothful inhabitant of the trees, whose purpose, it seems, to be hang about on branches not doing particularly much, and not doing it very quickly either. Why does nature give us the Sloth, and not the Industrious, I wonder? Nature is perverse.

Then again, just today I was wondering about the Panther and the Giraffe. What on earth could the opposite to these creatures be? It's easy enough when it comes to Sloths and Lorises. Bloody Nature!

Sassinating

A thing occurred to me just then (well, no, it actually occurred to me this morning) and of course I had to immediately (in a matter of hours) rush to my blog to post about this thing that occurred to me just then (actually this morning).

People in Arkansas. How do they get described when they're in groups? Arkansassians? Arkansassies? Arkansissies? Or even, um, Arkansaurians?

 

An Arkansaurian. 

Thank you for reading this urgent post about a thing.

The Ironic Lady

On the day that the Ironic Lady came to power, few would have guessed the monumental effect she would have on the history of her nation.

"If the honourable Prime Minister's economic policies really work, then perhaps she'd like to sell you London Bridge," proclaimed the leader of the opposition and former Prime Minister about the incoming Prime Minister, the Ironic Lady.

The next day, the Ironic Lady sold London Bridge to an antiques dealer in Yorkshire. It was the first of many victories for the Ironic Lady.

Later, when she was confronted by a group of protesters outside number 10, Downing Street, calling for the banning of genetically modified food, she proclaimed, "if genetic modification of food is really that dangerous, then tomorrow London will be attacked by flying pigs."

No-one could have expected the Flying Pig Blitz of 1980, but yet again, it seemed, the Ironic Lady had been proven strangely and unexpectedly right.

Over the years, the influence of the Ironic Lady grew. In the election of 1987, it seemed to some that her power was waning, causing the Opposition Leader of the time saying she was taking a spoon to a knife fight.

As it turned out, later that same day, the Ironic Lady interrupted a knife fight between two young men, and simply by waving her teaspoon around, managed to scare off both the criminals. She had struck again.

It was only after she left office that it was finally revealed that the Ironic Lady was actually a man.

It was quite ironic, really.

Macho man's machinations

There's nothing like a manly afternoon sawing and nailing things in the backyard while wearing a tie. This afternoon I have been doing just such a thing. I just hammered together a vanilla blanc mange with plum sauce with nothing but three old planks of wood and some nails of various sizes. Next, I plan to weld together a few pieces of corrugated iron to create an authentic pre-revolutionary French merkin, before sawing up a couple of old existentialist philosophies and setting them to run out in the backyard with the chickens.

What manly activities do you plan on doing this afternoon, readers?