CRAFTING WITH CAT HAIR: CUTE HANDICRAFTS TO MAKE WITH YOUR CAT
Kaori Tsutaya (Translated by Amy Hirschman, Quirk Books, 2011, ISBN 9781594745256)
Bendy crept upon the moth. He moved his limbs one at a time, between clock ticks, splitting each step into tiny motions. He had to keep calm; if he yielded to the temptation to dash, the bell would jingle on his flea collar and scare the moth away. Three more inches and he could pounce.
“Bzzzzzzzzzzt!” Continue reading
(MPAA, 4 May 2006)
I have it on good authority that the MPAA intend this commercial to discourage movie piracy, rather than, as it appears, to encourage car theft.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU
One marvels that such advertisements make it past their first test screening, let alone into the forefront of a multimillion-dollar crusade against copyright infringement. The average viewer must jump ship at the first premise: Continue reading
DISQUIETING EITHER WAY
A man I met, who works as a butcher, told me that he had just had sex in the meat cooler at his work with a woman from the deli. It disquiets the mind either way. Either it proves true or it doesn’t. If it does, then he belongs to a class of men for whom hanging cattle carcasses and mountainous slabs of raw meat do not constitute a sexual turn off. If it doesn’t, then he belongs to a class of men for whom claiming to have had sex in a meat cooler constitutes braggadocio.
CASTES
This shows the trails of some globules of colour. Several bodies eject them as they move. Each of these bodies belongs to one of four castes according to the colour of the globules it ejects.
WALTER
My brother travelled through Cambodia with a psychopathological German named Walter who always wore yellow and black bike shorts. Walter refused to take his shoes off at sacred sites. At the Killing Fields south of Phnom Penh, Walter rebuked a local tour guide for failing to stand up to the Khmer Rouge.
THE BACKYARD GOAT: AN INTRODUCTORY GUIDE TO KEEPING AND ENJOYING PET GOATS, FROM
FEEDING AND HOUSING TO MAKING YOUR OWN CHEESE
Weaver, Sue (Storey Publishing, LLC, 2011, ISBN 978-1603427906)
Years ago, in the intolerable heat of late December, I found myself stuck in the checkout queue at Coles. Somebody had told the man in front of me that if he drove in from Rosebud, Coles would sell him a whole goat. The preposterousness of the incident gave the employees some much needed respite from the toil of the Christmas season, so in spite of the rush, four of them ministered to him. It made tough going for the caprinophage. However plausible his accusations, four employees stood on hand to deny them.
“But I confirmed it,” he said. Continue reading
THE VIRTUAL FUTURE
Bainbridge, William Sims (Springer, 2011, ISBN 9780857299031)
A few years ago, Colin, Owen and I filmed two cringeworthy little videos as part of a plot to send one of our number to Iceland,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mspRGw00O2U
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmhAqoYgtgQ,
Today, I discovered synopses of the two, running to about three-quarters of a page, in William Bainbridge’s The Virtual Future,
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=WPcSFaXcEd4C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA127#v=onepage&q&f=false
YARE
I wrote this for a flute, percussion instruments and bass. Please forgive the midi instruments. For the sheet music, go to:
For the sound file, go to:
BOOK OF EXODUS
Chapter 21 (Holy Bible, ISBN for example 9780060649234)
Without any warning, my neighbour put three poodles in his yard. He went from none to three in a single black afternoon. After that he paid them little attention. As far as you could tell, they never left the yard. From morning until night they bombarded the neighbourhood with shrill barrages of barking that tore your concentration in two. They’d cease just long enough to let you collect your thoughts back together before shattering them again with the next barrage.
When home, their owner would bawl at them to shut up from behind his screen door. On other evenings, enraged neighbours assumed the role. It seemed like just a matter of time before some neighbour rationalised euthanizing them with poisoned meatballs. Continue reading
WALLETS
I lost my first wallet in 1998. To replace the driver’s license I needed to book an appointment, pose for the replacement photograph and then tram back in to collect it two weeks later.
When I lost the next one in 2001, the delay had lengthened to three weeks. Continue reading
LEAVE IT TO BEAVER
Dir. Norman Tokar Perf. Jerry Mathers and Hugh Beaumont. Gomalco Productions 1957-1963
I hung this jacket on my clothesline in 2006 (photos below). Through that summer, the sun bleached it from black to grey. In autumn it faded to white at the high points, but you could still find some of the original black in the valleys of its folds.
Next spring a colony of weevils built a nest under one of the sleeves. But in summer, a competing colony of earwigs from the collar drove them from the jacket. Continue reading
