Morning email from Owy:

"I just had a brilliant Prentiss McCabe moment where I realised that if the ALP just completely shuts up and says absolutely nothing between now and the next election, there is a chance that people will be sick of hearing about JH and hearing his voice, and a suprising landslide could actually take place, but unlikely."

Book 'em

It's been a long time since I've done a meme. Let's face it, it's been a while since I've done a bloody post. But the Duck has pinged me so here goes:

1. One book you have read more than once
I finished The Handmaid’s Tale a couple of days ago. I’ve been reading quite a lot about women in the central Asian countries lately – mainly Iran and Afghanistan – and I had a really strong urge to read it again. Far out that’s a good book (and one that others doing this meme have mentioned already).

2. One book you would want on a desert island
Impractically, Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion. More usefully for boredom, read the Buddhists. I'd take A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield.

3. One book that made you laugh
Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theatre. I laughed like a drain, particularly at Mickey Sabbath’s imagined obituary “DID NOTHING FOR ISRAEL!”. Heh.

Funnily enough, de Sade’s Justine also made me laugh, and it made my naughty girlfriends laugh too. If I pick up the phone and there’s a voice saying “The extreme heat and constriction of your anus is driving me wild.” I know it’s one of two people. It's stayed funny for about fifteen years. Well, to me at least. Last time I did it was ... this afternoon.

4. One book that made you cry
If I am in a watery mood, the phone book can make me cry. That said, I find non fiction more upsetting than fiction. We Are Iran, a book about Iranian bloggers by Nasrin Alavi made me cry. I didn’t know that in the early days of the revolution the authorities might stop a woman on the street if she was wearing lipstick and slice her lips with razor blades. And a lot worse.

5. One book you wish you had written
I wish I had written The Vivisector, then I could impress all of my blog friends with my matchless insights at our book group.

6. One book you wish had never been written
I picked up (aka "caught") a couple of bookcrossing.com books a couple of weeks ago. I was very excited. The badness of these books is beyond belief. I’m on a promise to Georg to blog about the psychoanalytical biography of Margaret Thatcher (“Chapter 4: On the pot”), so more about that later. Terrible as that book is, it will at least provide a post. The other one I found is Stanley Morgan’s Sky-jacked, and it would test anyone’s commitment to the idea that books should never be burned.

7. One book you are currently reading
I’m reading The Vivisector, for the Patrick White Reading Group. I started early out of fear of being Overtaken By Events, and because the things that bubble to the surface after a little while are often more interesting than first impressions. I’m enjoying it a great deal.

8. One book you have been meaning to read
John Dos Passos’ USA has been staring off the shelf at me for years now. Hello there! One day.

9. One Book That Changed Your Life
You know, I’m not really a dropped out of the sky, life changing revelation type person. I plod along, working out something here, getting some good advice there – always watching, watching. There’s no one book that has “changed my life”, but all the thousands of books I’ve read have helped shape me. I’ll be playing frickin’ kumbaya in a minute at this rate, won’t I?

I'm going to tag Mick, because he tagged me a little while ago for a meme I had already done.

Infrequently asked questions

What do you call women who have had a vaginal birth and believe there is an "Intelligent Designer"?

I mean, really.


Update: perhaps "Mrs Duggar" might be the answer? And if seeing that photo isn't enough, you should know that there have apparently been two more children since then. Which explains why people might mock.

Owen watches the opening episode of Australian Idol 4

Are you online? Can you fucken go to the fucken site?

Can you tell them this shit at the beginning is SHIT? Why are they trying to sell it? We're fucken watchin' it? For fuck's.

I mean, what's with the ad for the show that you're already watching?

No really, you're too kind

A very big thank you to the kind person who arranged to have a nice young man called Ben drop off a dot painting by central desert artist Dick Lechleitner on Saturday.



We were a bit surprised, frankly. Young Ben didn't know the name of whom it was supposed to go to, but was certain he had the address right. The only reason we accepted it was that O's mum and sister both collect aboriginal art, and we suspected his mum might have made a purchase to be disguised as a present from us for her birthday in a few weeks. Not that that's ever happened before, of course. So we called her - but she's got nothing to do with it.

I'm sure the rightful owner will be calling for it soon, but in the meantime it's really quite nice. So ta.

Updated to add: Rats. We got a note from young Ben, and did the decent thing and took it around two streets away. I was starting to really like it, too.

Then as farce ...

I take back all that nastiness about the Howard government and history, what with them doing the First Fleet re-enactments and all now.


Wonder who they'll get to play the Savages?

Up there for thinkin'

People say academics live in Ivory Towers and couldn't tell their arses from their elbows, but it's not ALL like that.

For instance I was heating up my lunch just then in the kitchen* when I spotted an ice cream container on the counter with a note on top. I hoped it was an invitation to make off with homemade cake or something, but it said

MAGPIE DECOY BREAD

Throw far from picnic table
to lure magpies away

Not just clever, but kind and thoughtful too.

* The baby gets hungry very early. I mustn't look pregnant yet (just horribly fat) because people still look askance when I eat lunch early. So it was very nice to be able to say "If you were having lamb shanks braised in red wine and balsamic vinegar on polenta with some gremolata on top you'd want it at half past eleven too."

BUT, she reconsiders the next day - it's dumb to feed the magpies anything! They'll still associate people at the table with getting fed, and try and peck me at lunch. No decoy bread for YOU, little birdy.