A lovely poem I wish I'd written.

No Time

BY BILLY COLLINS

In a rush this weekday morning,

I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery

where my parents are buried

side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite.

Then, all day, I think of him rising up

to give me that look

of knowing disapproval

while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.

Source: Poetry (December 2000).

I guess not...

Spotted in the foyer of a hospital. I guess they think everything is just fine the way it is.

(For Facebook Notes readers: this post is redirected from my 'head vs desk' blog at headvsdesk.blogspot.com)

No such thing as a new idea?

Not sure where this came from originally, but it requires no further words from me.


(Thanks KS for the link.)

Typical teenagers

Before I get shot down for the title of this post, I want to emphasise that I don't think all teenagers are "typical". Or to be more accurate, I don't think any teenagers are "typical". So to anyone who hopes to take offense at the title of this post, I urge you to look up the meaning of the word "irony".

Having said that, this video is very funny.

So little time...

Sometimes I feel like this guy, especially when it comes to punctuation. Just call me Captain Grammatical...


(Thanks to my excellent cousin Clansi, for sending my this via xkcd.com.)

Twitlit (Parte the seconde)

Anthony Eaton is a very funny chap. After several days of no Twitlit (classics retold in 140 characters or less) he came up with four in as many minutes.

• Moby Dick: Call me Ishmael. It might be just me, but I think the Captain's kinda mad. I don't see how this voyage can end well...
• The Caine Mutiny: Call me Keith. It might be just me, but I think the Captain's kinda mad. I don't see how this voyage can end well...
• Heart of Darkness: Call me Marlow. It might be just me, but I think Kurtz is kinda mad. I don't see how this voyage can end well...
• Into White Silence: Call me Downes. It might be just me, but I think the Captain is kinda mad. I don't see how this voyage can end well...
  

Wikifish by Babelpedia

You know how sometimes when you're really tired, you'll be reading something on Wikipedia and you have to look twice, and you think, Wait, that's so badly worded that it must be my tired eyes playing tricks? But then you look again and it's not that - it really is that badly worded. Then you realise that it's because this is part of an article about a place mainly populated by people who don't speak English at all, but do speak Spanish very well, so they've written the article in Spanish, then used some kind of online translator to turn it into ... something. Thus:

• Park of May In May

of 1910 when commemorating itself the centenary of the rebolución of May, is inagurado is green space, from comes its name there. Be lung of the city is in the intersection of the streets Reconciled Liberating General San Martín and the Heras, has infantile games, an artificial lake with an island, fish and aquatic birds, a velodrome, kartódromo and sentenares of statues between the outstanding are the one of General San Martín, the one of Federico Cantoni (governor of the province) and the one of the monument to the sport..

This is from the Wikipedia article for San Juan, Argentina, and the whole piece isn't like this - it's just parts of the Urban Aspect section.

I'm quite fascinated by the infantile games in particular. Poking fun at one another, kicking sand in faces, smacking and pinching, showing off, that sort of thing. Usually when I'm Wiki'ing I'll fix little errors that I find, which is, of course, what we're all supposed to do. But in this case I seriously don't know where to start.

(Oh, and please, before anyone gets all snooty, I'm not being Anglocentric and making fun of Spanish-speaking people, OK? I do respect their language, cultures, dialects, customs and regional idiosyncrasies in all their rich diversity. This just stuck me as a little amusing. Sheesh!)

A two-part joke about Buddhism

Part 1.
The Dalai Lama goes to a street vendor to buy a hot-dog. When the vendor asks what he'd like, the Dalai Lama replies, 'Make me one with everything.'

Part 2.
The Dalai Lama receives his hot-dog, and the vendor tells him that it costs five dollars. When the Dalai Lama hands over a twenty dollar note, the vendor pockets it. The Dalai Lama stands there with his hand out, looking confused.
'What?' the vendor asks.
'Where's my change?' the Dalai Lama enquires.
'I thought you'd know - all change must come from within.'

Thank you very much - I'm here 'til Thursday. Tip generously - Nancy's a real trooper, and her sister's quite ill.

You killed my father...

Nothing much to say. Just a picture, borrowed from roflrazzi.com:

Book promotion

No words necessary.

The Chaser's War on Humourless Gits

I was sitting back enjoying my usual Wednesday night date with Auntie (that's the ABC, in case you're wondering) and having a grand old giggle with those naughty boys from The Chaser's War on Everything. Then it happened - one of the funniest things I think I've ever heard. Now, I have an uncomfortable relationship with musical comedy. Basically, it has to be really good to make me enjoy it. Most musical parodies leave me very cold, and even the smallest amount of corn will turn me off.

But then this happened. (Follow the links to 'Eulogy Song'. Warning - very coarse language.)

Short version: it's one of the funniest bits of satirical, bad-taste musical comedy I've ever heard. The basic premise is that even the most revolting characters in public life are deified after their passing. Steve Irwin, Stan Zemanek (who didn't mind kicking people when they were down himself), Peter Brock, Kerry Packer, even the Untouchable Princess Diana get a run. Unlike Don Bradman, who also earns a mention, much to our PM's outrage.

OK, the song is rude, crude, disgustingly irreverent, and (I think) very funny. But considering the stink that has broken out, you'd think that the Australian talk-back audience hadn't even so much as tittered at a bad taste joke in their entire lives.

My personal favourite is Stuart McLean's snarly and poorly disguised opinion piece in the "news"paper The Daily Telegraph. In his "article", he demonstrates either a complete misread of the video the rest of us saw, or a nasty case of factual distortion, when he claims: The comedy crew were forced to halt Hanson when he began to launch into a verse about former Home and Away star and wife of Rove McManus, Belinda Emmett who died of cancer in November last year.

No, Stuart, they weren't forced to halt Hanson. They pretended to halt Hanson, who clearly never even had a Belinda Emmett verse to sing. Perhaps we can assume that Stuart McLean wasn't in fact disgusted by the song, but was rather forced by his senior ed to pretend to be outraged.

Interestingly, all the news polls about this 'issue' tell us that 2/3 of people who cared enough to contribute to those polls actually thought we should get over ourselves. I suspect (judging by the radio talkback I've heard on the matter) that a fair proportion of the remaining 1/3 haven't even heard the song in question.

PS: I've just found another Daily Telegraph blog article where one of their 'journalists', Garth Montgomery, says: But The Chaser’s bravado crumbled as Hanson started a verse that was about to go for Belinda Emmett. This in an article where he talks about Stan Zemanek's brain 'tuma' and Kerry Packer being a kidney 'theif'.

Oh dear. Where do they find these people?

PPS: After reading my above appraisal of his article, Garth Montgomery has since 'ammended' (sic) his original post, claiming that 'tuma' and 'theif' were just typos. Theif I can believe, but tuma? Is it just me, or shouldn't at least running a spell-checker over an article be fairly standard practice for a journalist from a major paper? Yeah, I would have thought so too.

humongous phallus forest

Yes, that's right. A spam email that landed in my Inbox this morning from a person rejoicing in the name Lupe Worley had the following subject line: have a humongous phallus Forest. Erm... no thanks.