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:
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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!

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.

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 ....

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)

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.
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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)