THIS next line REDIRECTS PEOPLE AUTOMATICALLY FROM THIS BLOGGER BLOG TO ROBSKEE.COM wherever it is hosted --put in bit--

08 November, 2006

Canine Conscription

Today’s Odd Spot in The Age:

The German Army has called up a dead dog for national service. Helga Koehlke, 53, of Rostock, received an official army letter demanding that her pet Pekingese Tommy Jakob, who died almost blind in 2002, report for a military medical examination with his ID card and a pair of swimming shorts.

07 November, 2006

World's Hardest Sudoku

As reported today in The Age (thanks KJ) the world's hardest Sudoku has been uploaded to a players' forum on sudoku.com.

The puzzle -- known as "AI Escargot" or "AI Etana (Snail)" -- was created by Arto Inkala and it looks a little something like this:

Here's a blank Sudoku grid you can copy the puzzle onto if you're inclined to have a go at it.

Enjoy!

05 November, 2006

Annual diary anguish

The buying-of-next-year's-diary time is once again upon us and, as some of you may know, I usually go through much anguish as I review how this last year's diary has performed and as I try to predict which -- if any -- of my diary-based needs will change in the year to come.

No real anguish this year. I'm still happy with the Collins Sterling week-to-an-opening (A5) that has been my companion for two years running.
I was tempted by the new Moleskine offering (the large weekly planner)


but at three times the price and lacking Australian public holiday and other useful local information it doesn't quite beat the Collins Sterling, even with its uber cachet.



04 November, 2006

A quick game

If you still have time to waste after perusing the pussies, you may want to accept the hand-eye coordination challenge posed by this simple but highly addictive game (Click on the Union Jack in the lower left corner to see the instructions in English). Be warned: if you are someone who spends hours playing Solitaire or Minesweeper, Double Jeu is pretty much guaranteed to wipe out out whole chunks of your day, even though most games won't last longer than 20 seconds.

At first.

Uberpets: stuff on my cat .com

My attention has been drawn to stuffonmycat.com (thanks J + K), where you can see gems like these.



19 October, 2006

The next big (cartoon) thing

The Cartoon Network is calling for cartoon ideas and characters which they can turn into world premiere animated short films.

I nominate Dümmerth (powered by BARNABY).

Submissions forms are available HERE.

What say you, BARNABY??

18 October, 2006

Capsule Endoscopy

You know those miniature video camera capsules you can swallow to examine the inside of your gut as they travel through? Sounds much more pleasant than drinking barium or having a barium enema, right?

This article in eMJA -- Initial experience with capsule endoscopy at a major referral hospital -- describes the process:

Patients fasted from midnight, and in the morning swallowed the capsule endoscope with a glass of water mixed with simethicone (1mL), which helps eradicate small bubbles in the small bowel. After 8 hours, patients returned to have the recording equipment removed.

They don't elaborate further. One can only imagine . . .

Dog Bog Blog Post from Marrickvillia

If people aren't going to clean up after their dogs, doing THIS is the next best thing:

Political Poo Art (from Meredith's MARRICKVILLIA blog).

17 October, 2006

Heads up

Monarch cake shop (Acland Street, St Kilda) now sells its famous chocolate kugelhopf by the slice. The plum cake too.

That is all.

Marysville & the Yarra Valley

We've just spent the weekend poking our noses around Marysville, Buxton, Healesville and all places Yarra Valley. I could be wrong but I think it's my first trip beyond the city limits in about 6 months and I'm so happy to be well enough at the moment to do a small jaunt like this one.

We stayed just out of Marysville at a cottage within burbling distance of the river, along the road to Steavensons Falls.

I'd almost forgotten how lusciously earthy the world can smell; the real world of fern tendrils, humus, understorey and wet bark.

Other things very much enjoyed were:

  • The wonderfully confusing sensation on my outstretched and upturned bare arm of a rosella's needle-sharp claws while its soft, plump, downy belly nestled just inches away as it pecked sunflower seeds from my palm
  • Salivating upon seeing burlap sacks of raw coffee, a digitally controlled hot air coffee roaster and a Synesso espresso machine at Cellar Door in Healesville
  • Mountain Ash smoked trout from Buxton (coming from someone who generally doesn't like seafood, this says a lot)
  • Bruno's sculpture garden, gallery and workshop in Marysville
  • The cherry tart from Marysville Patisserie
  • Wandering around the waterfall
  • Shitake chilli paste from Australian Harvest Fine Foods (especially combined with the semi-matured goaty goodness of Yarra Valley Dairy's chevre)
  • Feeling my brain and body go limp with relaxation after the first spa bath in, well, a very long time
  • The smoked smallgoods from a virtuoso butcher in Healesville
  • Seeing J have a work-free weekend of relaxation, enough to shift into the sort of headspace where it's perfectly OK to bring home a bucket of Persian Fetta in olive oil and spices.
Most people return with photos of the places they've visited. We return with produce.

04 October, 2006

Winners!

Winners!!!

You buh-yewty!

(You know who you are)

Can you hear that . . . ? It's the sound glory makes as you bask in it.

30 September, 2006

The things people say

It's pet peeve time again.

It may start with the use of unnecessary and increasingly annoying phrases like "at the end of the day" and "in relation to", but please let's be clear about where this sort of thing leads.

Today's copy of The Age carried a story by Brendan Nicholson about the status of David Hicks and other Guantanamo Bay inmates. In it he quotes US ambassador Robert McCallum, whom he interviewed for the story:

At least 12 previously detained enemy combatants have reappeared on the battlefield and that has been confirmed by normal forensic evidence which could include, but would not necessarily conclude, DNA testing, photographs, medical records, things of that nature that allow forensic scientists to identify individuals . . .

Well, I'm open to learning new turns of phrase. At least that one was understandable. Can't really say the same about his next pronouncement:

There has not been to my knowledge any dispute that some of the individuals who have been adjudged to be no longer a risk to the United States, and have been released, have then been either apprehended and detained again or have been killed and then identified.

It could just be my simple mind . . . . Did anyone else need to draw a flow chart to extract the meaning from that sentence?

And finally:

Therefore it is indisputable, and I don't think anyone disputes it, that Mr Hicks qualifies as an enemy combatant.

To my mind, not only does this qualify Mr McCallum as unique among diplomats, I'd go so far as to say there's no-one else like him.

22 September, 2006

BBC Sudo-Q Quiz Show

A number of readers have connections in the UK so I thought I'd post this call for contestants from the BBC for a new quiz show called Sudo-Q:

Are you a fan of SUDOKU?

Do you enjoy general knowledge quizzes?

If you answered yes and are lively and outgoing then we want to hear from you.

The BBC are looking for teams of two people to compete in SUDO-Q - a fun and exciting quiz show presented by Eamonn Holmes If you are interested in taking part and are over 18 please contact

* phone: 09011 110 849(calls cost 25p)
* email: sudoku@bbc.co.uk

18 September, 2006

Uberpet of the moment: Toby


D says:

Here is my poor orphan dogger, Toby. Formerly a salty, seafaring pup from San Remo, he's now adjusting to a grittier, urban life of keeping it real on the mean streets of Yarraville.

17 September, 2006

Uberpet of the moment: Wilbur


Wilbur lives on mommamia's flickr photostream

04 September, 2006

World Championship Sudoku

For those of you with a Sudoku fetish or addiction, here is a copy of the world Sudoku championship final puzzle--courtesy of thetimes.co.uk


The winning time for this puzzle was 15 minutes. Why not have a crack at it and post your time as a comment.

25 August, 2006

Moving forward

Language like this (from a job advert on seek.com) threatens to numb my brain; that is, when it's not short-circuiting it entirely:
You will be researching the development and implementation of a range of social policy issues to create strategies for moving forward.
To this I say:

Going forward, we are strongly committed to ensuring enhancement in relation to written and verbal communication skills by limiting recent innovative approaches to expression -- currently extensively in evidence -- that have a negative impact upon language usage.

(i.e. I hope this trend passes quickly.)

Thirty-six words: only two tensed verbs!

Can you pick them?

24 August, 2006

Udderly amazed

"Moo-Arr! Westcountry cows moo in farmers’ accents!"

I simply can't let this pass without comment.

I have no problem with the fact (asserted by West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers) that
West Country cows are wrapped up in cow coats and they are played classical music to help them relax whilst being milked.
I'm even ok with Glastonbury cheesemaker Lloyd Green's claim:
I spend a lot of time with my Friesians and they definitely moo with a Somerset drawl.
No problem there. Everyone has a right to express their personal observations.

What I find disturbing is Mr Frege Green's leap from anecdotal evidence to proof-by-analogy:
I’ve spoken to the other farmers in the West Country group and they have noticed a similar development in their own herds. I think it works the same as with dogs - the closer a farmer’s bond is with his animals, the easier it is for them to pick up his accent.
Of course! It's much easier to accept the world is flat when you realise it would roll straight off the backs of those turtles if it were round.

- - -

Reuters have reported on this, or you may have seen it on the ABC.

23 August, 2006

Gyuto Monks

The Gyuto Monks of Tibet are concluding their year-long "Good Karma" tour of Australia with a two week residency at the Incinerator Arts complex in Moonee Ponds (Victoria), which finishes this Sunday 27 August. If you live nearby and haven't met the monks on one of their previous trips (or even if you have) I encourage you to head over and take in the vibe. There are usually one or two monks working on the large but intricate sand mandala that, once it is completed, will be swept away and the sand poured into the river (or sea) after a colourful procession on Sunday afternoon.

I attended one of their half-day harmonic throat singing workshops during their residency at Gas Works a few years ago. I found it impossible to produce anything resembling the rumbling harmonic resonances that the three instructor monks managed to make sound like a monastery full of throat-chanting wizards and it didn't really help when one of the monks -- coming over to observe my technique and provide technical advice -- pointed at my throat, shook his head vigorously from side to side, then pointed at my navel, nodded and smiled. In what was surely the most gratuitous bit of translation for the day, the interpreter explained: "Not from here (throat). From HERE! (navel)"

What was I supposed to do with THAT?

Then the monk laughed, eyes a-twinkle.

(Translation: "Muhahahahahahaha!")

I swear for the rest of that day and into the evening every aeroplane flying overhead, every fridge motor running in the background, every truck I could hear driving in the distance sounded like those throat-singing monks.

----------------------------------------

Full details of the last few days of their program can be found HERE. This year's sand mandala will apparently look something like this:

[Image from www.tibet-initiative.de]

19 August, 2006

A writerly turn of phrase

Australian author Gerald Murnane recently described his soon to be published collection of short stories to The Australian's Rosemary Neill:

Barley Patch, he says, resembles the "fungus on a corpse of a book that would have been the biggest and most ambitious I've ever had published".

The complete interview here.


Changes

I've been playing around with the format of this blog and will continue to do so over the coming days. All the content should remain available but the layout may change while you're looking the other way.

18 August, 2006

Gift Ideas

In the past I have drawn your attention to quirky plush toys such as Pee & Poo and the Giant Microbes. Well, it seems there are new varieties of Giant Microbes available, including H.I.V, TB, Polio, Hepatitis C and Mad Cow Disease:



Fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grail may appreciate the Black Knight plush toy with detatchable "flesh wound" limbs . . .


. . . or perhaps the bobble variety for your car (comes with faux arterial spray):

Why stop at one, when you can collect the whole cast: a Knight who says "Ni!" or God or Sir Bors:


Or the Beast of Arrrgghh or a Killer Bunny Rabbit:


These beauties are available from www.thinkgeek.com

01 August, 2006

Anatomy for Beginners

SBS television is currently screening the 4-part series Anatomy for Beginners (SBS Mondays 10.35pm). It makes for amazing viewing, but it's not for the faint-hearted.

***A WARNING: If you are at all squeamish you may want to stop reading now. This post contains descriptions of human anatomical dissection.***

In each episode, famously weird fedora-wearing German anatomist and cadaver plastinator Gunther von Hagens dissects a fresh human body before a live audience, focusing on a particular bodily system. This week it was the digestive system. You may have seen the promo, with Gunther (or was it his Fedora) explaining to ze kamera how he “vill unravel zis vooman's bauwelz from her maus to her anus."

Boy, did he ever. I think the official SBS info describes the action adequately:

Episode 3, Monday, 31 July – Digestion:

Professor von Hagens dissects a woman in front of a live audience to reveal the digestive system. After slicing off the back of her head so that he can demonstrate from behind the passage of a mouthful of food down the oesophagus, he removes her entire abdominal block from her tongue all the way to her anus and, after dissecting all the organs along the digestive tract, he unravels it to its full length of seven metres.

Apparently these are the first ever televised human dissections and the live studio audience includes prospective body donors to Gunther von Hagens' Institute for Plastination.

The final episode is this coming Monday 7 August, where SBS's summary promises:

The Professor dissects a man and a woman in front of a live audience to reveal their reproductive systems. Following the path of the sperm from his testes, along the vas deferens and out of his penis, von Hagens picks up the journey inside the female dissection specimen where he dissects her uterus and finally demonstrates how a baby passes through a female pelvis.

I've seen two of the three episodes screened so far: one featured a formalin-injected fresh cadaver, the other a totally fresh "wet" cadaver. It makes riveting television if you can tolerate the sight of blood and organs and the squelching sound of wet cartilage, tendon and bone being cut, snipped and yanked. Gunther actually uses something resembling a pair of box-cutters for much of the cartilage and bone work.

Alongside the eccentric Gunther -- who enjoys his flesh cutting work just a little more than most would consider seemly -- is Yorkshire pathologist Professor John Lee. Lee is the straight man. He is Dean Martin to Gunther's Jerry Lewis and provides a running commentary on what we are seeing, occasionally walking over to demonstrate on a live nude model who spends each episode on stage having the circulatory, digestive or reproductive system painstakingly colour-drawn on their bare skin by an artist in real time.

This is visceral, gruesome, stomach-churning television, bordering on prurient, yet I can't look away . . .

24 July, 2006

New Sleepwear

I didn't go in there looking for a replacement for my old Purple Ronnie T-shirt.

There’s no section marked "Novelty Sleepwear" and even if there were I wouldn’t be drawn to it because I consider my Purple Ronnie T-shirt absolutely irreplaceable.

J doesn’t agree, and it’s a funny thing because my reasons for the T-shirt being a unique, irreplaceable thing of wonder happen to correspond exactly with her reasons for it becoming part of next week’s offering to the Rubbish Gods:
  1. It’s well over 10 years old
  2. It used to be a bit too warm to sleep in but the large holes and tears that have developed over the most recent half-decade, plus its overall threadbare nature seem to have sorted out the optimum temperature thing
  3. It is no longer black, but rather a subdued shade of feldgrau-charcoal
  4. It features a poem about farting
Those of you familiar with the Purple Ronnie range of greeting cards or books may understand. For the unenlightened among you it is probably enough to say that Purple Ronnie is a world populated by simple stick figure people, in the early days obsessed with bodily functions, emissions, fluids and orifices, but lately encompassing other less purple themes as well. It is the world as seen, felt, smelled and understood by a somewhat cheeky – yet loveable - child.

You can explore Purple Ronnie at your leisure HERE. For now, here is the poem as it appears on my beloved old T-shirt:
----------------------------------------
A Poem about BOTTOM BURPS

If your bottom burps in public
Try to say in time
“Goodness gracious what a whiff
It doesn’t smell like mine”






Poo-eee

Poo-eee


---------------------------------------------

Perhaps now you understand the raw appeal . . . ?


As I said, I wasn't looking for a replacement - how could you possibly replace THAT - but they were having a storewide sale so my eyes flicked up and down the racks as I walked along, half-looking for shirts and T-shirts (of which I'm generally in need).

And there it was: a simple T-shirt. Prussian blue. It looked a good size, felt well made. I pulled it out from behind the other T-shirts . . .

Damn! It had some printing on the front. That’s an automatic disqualification in my book.

Too bad. . .

Just as I was replacing it on the rack, rejecting it out of hand, something in my brain screamed: “It says WHAT?”

Schlong’s

**KOSHER**

HOT DOGS

[. . image of hot dog in bun . .]

If it isn’t 12 inches it isn’t a SCHLONG


Of course, I simply HAD to have it!


14 July, 2006

It was a dark and stormy night ...

The results of the 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for truly bad opening sentences of (imaginary) novels have been announced. The overall winning entry by Californian Jim Guigli reads:
Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.
Stuart Vasepuru from Edinburgh, Scotland came a close second-place with his homage to Dirty Harry:
"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?"
Other notable entries include these from the "Romance" category:
Despite the vast differences it their ages, ethnicity, and religious upbringing, the sexual chemistry between Roberto and Heather was the most amazing he had ever experienced; and for the entirety of the Labor Day weekend they had sex like monkeys on espresso, not those monkeys in the zoo that fling their feces at you, but more like the monkeys in the wild that have those giant red butts, and access to an espresso machine.
- Dennis Barry
Dothan, AL

He loved her like no other, their romance developing quickly, like the rapid growth of farm swine which grow from 2 to 4 pounds daily until they're fully grown and put to market for slaughter, or like the rapidly growing cells that produce moose antlers until they fall off in early spring, and suddenly Bill sensed the imminent doom of his romance lying in wait.
- Jeremy Perreaux
Sarnia, Ontario

Ramon kissed Juanita hard and fast, his tongue probing her mouth like an urologist's finger searching for a lone polyp on an engorged prostate gland, which reminded Ramon that he needed to get a colonic irrigation to make next week's annual physical more pleasant for both him and his doctor.
-Ted Begley
Lexington KY
And these from the "Purple Prose" category:
Words cannot describe the exquisite loveliness of the brilliant azure sky with its cerulean striations of periwinkle, cornflower, and cyan.
- Mary Barberio
Northville, MI

The steam rose off his sweaty red flannel shirt like cotton candy on a cardboard cone, if cotton candy were transparent in a misty sort of way and didn't actually stick to its cone, but instead rose upwards something like steam rising off a sweaty flannel shirt in the twilight of an early winter Vermont afternoon.
- T. Edward Lavoie
Essex Junction VT

As I watched the sun rise through the wisps of smog like an angry Scandinavian sumo wrestler clad in a gold lamé muumuu, riding an arthritically slow escalator through the smoke of his own cheap panatela to the linens and beddings floor at J C Penneys, I realized that upon the orb's overtopping the horizon, simple geophysics would deal that metaphor a quick and far less painful death than it deserved.
- Dennis Grace
Austin, Texas

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton was the author of Paul Clifford, the novel whose opening line is: "It was a dark and stormy night." Apparently he was the one who first said "the pen is mightier than the sword" and also coined the phrase "the great unwashed."

More about the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest HERE, and the complete 2006 contest results HERE.

13 July, 2006

My Encounter with the PM

It happened last week as I was walking back from a medical appointment along Grattan Street, opposite Melbourne University. I saw a car travelling slowly towards me with its headlights on. At first I thought perhaps a funeral procession (there were another two white sedans in tow, also with lights on). Then I saw the flag on the bonnet.

Is it Bracksy, the Premier?

No cigar.

Then I made out the plates: C-1

Ka-ching! The Prime Miniature himself.

He'’s a front seat passenger. I’'ll give him that much.

As the car approached I took off my sunglasses. Partly so I could see better; mainly because I wanted him to see my eyes. In the space of the next few seconds a stream of images poured through my mind, most of them related to social injustice and disadvantage.

I furrowed my brow and glared.

Well, he refused to meet my gaze, but he did appear to be intensely physically uncomfortable, as if caught in the process of trying to shift his body weight –-- while seat-belted –-- from one haemorrhoid to another. This will ever be a source of comfort to me.

Of course, he may always suffer like this in the vicinity of ACTU headquarters and Trades Hall (just up the road) but I’ had not seen the “"haemorrhoid"” look in the flesh (so to speak) before. I have to say though, the expression is remarkably similar to the one that comes over him these days whenever Peter Costello’'s within knifing distance ....

11 July, 2006

Dümmerth Chronicles #2

In which our hero continues to display a predilection for movement towards the right-hand edge of the page . . .


.... and whose attempts at disguise are undermined by his distinctive profile ....


"Dümmerth" and images copyright Handi Péter (Powered by BARNABY)

10 July, 2006

Überpet of the moment: GROVER



This is Grover - an artist whose preferred medium is claw and tooth on paper. Here we see her posing beside her most recent creation: "Headless gull in rigor"

[Now that the Überpet Parade is taking off, I'm moving it to a Flickr photoset. Each new Überpet will now appear in their own entry here, plus there will be a link to the entire Parade which you can view as a slide show, leave comments etc.]

View the complete (and uncut) Überpet Parade HERE.
.

07 July, 2006

The Dümmerth Chronicles #1

. . . Where we gape in awe as the full repertoire of Dümmerth's striking poses and bodily contortions is teasingly revealed . . .


"Dümmerth" and images copyright Handi Péter (Powered by BARNABY)

26 June, 2006

Not quite a picture, not quite a thousand words

I don't have a digital camera, but I do have pen & ink (and an old scanner). Here's a random peek inside my notebook: it's where I jot down those things--you know those things--and do the occasional doodle.


17 June, 2006

Do we really want to encourage this sort of thing? . . . OMG Yes!



Some of you may already be aware of the Giant Microbes range of plush toys which are available in configurations morphologically identical to Gonorrhoea, Syphilis (at left), Ebola (at right), E. coli and many other microbial nasties.


Well, in the realm of the gross senses (ie those not requiring 50,000X magnification) I was recently pleasantly surprised to come across Pee and Poo.



Pee&Poo97

If your browser is Macromedia Flash capable, take a quick tour here.
And this from their website by way of introduction:
We are Pee & Poo. Escapees from the bathroom, we are entering the world on a journey filled with new adventures. Maybe we can stay with you for a while?
Bring it ON!
*

02 May, 2006

Coffee as a tool of persuasion

Research coming out of Queensland University of Technology (as reported on ABC News Online HERE) suggests you are more likely to come over to my way of thinking if I foist coffee on you while trying to persuade you. Yes, apparently "caffeine increases persuasion through instigating systematic processing of the message", so next time I offer you a special blend doppio ristretto piccolo latte you'd better check the accompanying patter isn't something like: "Look into my eyes, look into my eyes . . . Not around the eyes . . . The eyes . . . The eyes . . . "

Photo credit: Caroline B

26 March, 2006

$3 Million Powerball winner in Jabiru NT


Somebody is probably walking around Kakadu National Park with a three million dollar winning lottery ticket. I suppose it could have been bought by a tourist passing through the small town of Jabiru - where the ticket was sold from the local newsagency - but having lived in and around Jabiru in the 1990s I'd like to think it's someone local. The story in full HERE.

The photo is of a typical sunset at Ubirr - my old backyard - about 40 kms from Jabiru

***UPDATE*** The winner turns out to be a worker at the Ranger Uranium mine, as reported HERE.

.

19 March, 2006

Death by Lego

Someone who shares my bizarre, twisted sense of humour has posted this photoset on Flickr under the title "The Lego Suicides." A warning: some of these images may offend (especially if you can't stand the sight of Lego).

14 March, 2006

In Coffee/Dung News . . .


WITH the stroke of a legislative pen, the Irish Republic intends to shrug off centuries of colonial rule when it abolishes thousands of bizarre laws dating back to the first English invasion. . . . Among those laws about to be consigned to history is . . . the Adulteration Of Coffee Act 1718 (which) made it illegal to debase coffee for profit. Among the substances used by unscrupulous traders to “pad out” the sacks of coffee was ground-up sheep dung. As coffee went out of fashion, a similar law was introduced covering tea — the Adulteration of Tea Act 1776 . . .


Read the full article from timesonline.co.uk

10 March, 2006

Überpet Parade



OK. It begins. The Robskee Blog Űberpet Parade. I will be updating this section with your photos as you send them through. Take the concept laterally if you like and send in pics of pet hates, pet loves . . .


First up we have Izzy and Indi. They live with K and are big personalities. There you can see a photo of K snapped in the middle of a clean & jerk with Indi . . .




Next is Oscar, who belongs to Andrea. This pic was taken the day after Oscar's annual de-furring. Andrea writes:
Love the "How could you?" look, cleverly combined with the "I hate you, I'm never going to speak to you again" look.
Not happy, Jan!






And of course, here's our two. Poor Ziggy: he's working on the misguided assumption it's a simple territorial dispute, while Scout knows it's psychological warfare.






Fresh in from the tropics are these shots of Storm:

















That's F doing Storm's body-painting while Dad J supervises, remarkably
paint-splatter free.






I can't remember who it was that first pointed out: "Dogs have owners, c
ats have staff" . . . How true it is. Here is Frank, in two of her many guises. She has a full-time staff of three:


















.

Housekeeping

Now that I've got this blogging software worked out (more or less) I'll start writing more about what's actually going on in our lives. I’m still a bit wary about blogging, because once you put something online you have little control over where it will end up and you never know what the repercussions will be as it bounces around the internet and comes flying back at you (or others) in the future. Puppy Poo Girl is a sobering case in point.

For this reason and so as not to thrust my friends and family unwittingly into the blogosphere I will refer only minimally to people who are otherwise extremely important in my life, and even then only by pseudonym or initial. For example: my partner J; my friends A, B, C, D; the Prime Minister JH . . . etc.

I will never upload photos of my family or friends to this blog without getting their permission first.

Pets (like this one) are another story.


Uberpets a whole 'nother tale yet again . . .


Why blog?

Why blog?

It's part of my strategy to stay sane in the face of decreasing functional capacity. This year has been the worst since first becoming ill in 2001. I've found it essential to expand my repertoire of home-based pursuits in order to manufacture something resembling a more meaningful existence and to bolster a flagging sense of self-worth eroded by years of disability. Meaningful moments and achievements in which one can take pride . . . the potential for these is bundled in the day-to-day traffic of most relatively healthy and balanced lives. They may be invisible to us and we may take them for granted, but they are normally there.

Being largely housebound, the life challenge shifts from simply uncovering these as latent potentials to in fact creating them mostly from scratch, and this requires you try that little bit harder, precisely when you are least able to do so.

It's a tough one.

Accumulated grief over lost opportunities, abandoned career and other life-plans threaten to overwhelm on a daily basis, so you need to get particularly smart about it.

Ergo the blog.

Apart from its main purpose of (hopefully) keeping me connected (or perhaps re-connecting me) with the people in my life -- sort of popping my head up to say "Hi. Although I can't visit and I'm usually too brain-fogged to keep up my end of a phone conversation, I am thinking of you" -- the very process of composing and refining a post over a few days, of mastering the software and even learning a bit of HTML code are all achievements in which I can take some small measure of pride, allowing me to feel there are aspects of my life I still have the power to drive forward.


In Cow Dung News . . .

I was delighted to learn it's now possible to extract vanilla essence from cow dung (Link). The process takes just one hour and costs half as much as extraction from vanilla beans.

Hmmm . . .

[Insert joke about vanilla smoothies tasting like shit here]

.

Anxiety and Sloth

The obligatory pet photo.

They are the embodiments of Anxiety and Sloth. My constant companions:

Slobbered-on "Scout" Mylickovich and Ziggy "The Id" Stardust.

Can you tell which is which?

Welcome to my world . . .


This is the nerve centre, folks.

The universe continues expanding, evolution proceeds inexorably forward, but here there is calm. Stasis. Time and space for reflection . . .