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Saturday, June 30, 2007

'During this brief lull in combat'.... or: Group Blog Update

During this brief lull in combat, I am able to hastility type this post from my position underneath my desk, while my Heckler & Koch MP-40, still warm from its recent exercise, rests upon my knee.

Diary entry from 28 June 2007:

"Things are going well. Too well, I thought warily, as another round of small arms fire began, interrupted only by the chilling crump-crump-crump of penetrative avocado grenades (don't ask) hitting the exterior of the small medieval castle on the Dalmation Coast where my forces have sought respite. The floor is littered with the corpses of spotted dogs and I must say I like it that way. It seems festive somehow and celebratory without insulting the memory of those who have already paid the highest price for the righteous cause of the establishment of the world's 12 millionth group blog (but perhaps the best yet)."

Looking back on those words now, how foolish they seem, how stinking with the unworthy innoncence of an earlier time. I am almost ashamed to read them. War is indeed hell and blogging is war-like hell. I wish I could smell something other than the burst pustules on the end of my typing fingers. How they mock me!

* * *

Just kidding! Everything is going swell. It's a big-fat love-fest; everyone is sitting around on velour cushions, peeling grapes and french-kissing each others' schnauzers.

Group blog, fresh with fresh new name should freshen the intertubes shortly and what a breath of fresh air it will be! Team members or occasional contributors still welcome. Must provide own prosethetic knee-joint.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Ideas for names of the new group blog

Your comments are welcome unless I disagree with them and then they become a problem.

‘Funny’ ‘rhymes’
Chimp on the Barbie
Open Heart Perjury
Bait and Twitch (or Berate and Twitch)
Scrote Couture
Ringing in the Brain
Babies with Rabies
Venereal Unease

Maybe too long for a name, maybe a tag?
Satellite images of fat men crying while eating
Too many dwarves, not enough donkeys (is the reason why 27% of all orgies fail)
Are you there, God? It’s me, Satan.
Us 1, Taste 0.
Not as good as a kick in the teeth
light & tangy post-industrial effluent

Other Stuff I quite like and not just because I thought of it
Crushed Trachea Quarterly
Cream Pus
The hills have knees
The Karma trading scheme
Unisex disabled parenting room
Aardvark Slurry
Foamy Residue
Sticky & Slippery
Who would Jesus do?

Things people not me have suggested and I am now putting up here in some vague and offensively hollow gesture towards democracy
Hello, Dali
Susan Shocks
Globulous Infesticules
Your karma ran over my dogma (18000 hits on google – just sayin’)
Acronyms are A-OK
Bubonic Plagiarism

Names I've thought of that my wife likes
(ouch!)

Friday, June 22, 2007

State of the blog report

Well, planning for the new group blog is going swimmingly. Lots of hugging and positivity -- no decisions whatsoever.

The upshot is: the beast seems to have legs (which all good beasts need). Me, jo-blogs, tim von sterne and tim, er, tim will be the principal dudes with occasional throw-ins from the like of pub-man or mick or the mysterious beermonkey.

Original blogs (including this one) will seemingly remain with material to be cross-posted on the new site. Or something.

But first we need a name -- something, funny, punchy, rude, erudite, wacky, kitsch, cutting edge and sexy. Suggestions welcome. Also welcome are suggestions as to good existing names that we might subtly feed upon like angry dwarven parasites.

Any others takers? I'm looking at you, Petstarr,

Monday, June 18, 2007

Ending it all…it’s all too hard to go on

[Update: can all the exciting people who want to be part of a brighter, gentler tomorrow please email me on whale-sushi [at] wizardof.id.au ?]

Gosh, what a dramatic title! Almost sounds as if I’m going to top myself. Which I’m not.

Except maybe in blog terms. I’m going through one of those down phases about blogging. Actually the down phases are a little too frequent to be called phases. I’m all trough and no plateau.

Here’s why: as even casual readers know, I’m a highly talented, lazy and immensely self-regarding twat who craves the constant applause of anyone who will look. (Partly I’m lazy, partly I’m working on the great inner north Canberran novel (which I think has already been written by Francesca Rendle-Short)). But here’s the vicious circle: when I don’t get the applause, I don’t blog. When I don’t blog, I don’t get the applause.

So posting declines in frequency, making whale sushi one of these semi-dead blogs that people stop visting because it smells of decay and hospital grade domestos. For God’s sake, people, all I ever wanted was fame, riches and to have to peel the chicks off with a spatula…

You know what I think the answer is? A group blog. (Radical, yes!) A blog for a small group of funny but insecure bloggers to write stuff occasionally but the hellish curse of having to produce frequent quality content would not fall upon one set of pasty white underdeveloped shoulders alone.

So – any takers?

Remember, if whale sushi falls, then where will tens of misdirected google searchers go every week?

Thursday, June 14, 2007

The questions that need asking

Just suppose you had a stroke and collapsed alone on your living room floor. And just suppose as you lay paralysed from the neck down that you were able to sustain yourself by tonguing moisture from your wooden floorboards thanks to a leaking ceiling. And also suppose your cat, lets call him Haskell Moxley for argument's sake, is also trapped inside with you and is relying on that same dripping ceiling.

How many days would need to pass before Haskell began, tentatively, experimentally at first, to nibble at your bare calves?

Some cats I swear it would only be a matter of hours.

Friday, June 08, 2007

The contents page of your character

I had a dream but now I can’t remember it

Martin Luther King famously had a dream but then he had to tell every about it. Don’t you hate those people.

It’s all: ‘I had a dream. Daryl Somers was trying to sell me a women’s prison in Lithgow while William Shakespeare was eating Kentucky Fried Chicken.’ Yadda yadda, oh my fascinating subconscious. It’s go-and-refill-your-drink time at parties.

I find King’s speech somewhat depressing.

‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’

The content of my character? Do you even know what the content of my character is? It’s weak, small-minded and petty. Cheap and vicious. I certainly don’t want that to be the criterion for how people treat me. The colour of my skin, the amount of money in my wallet (sometimes) – these are all much simpler as far as I’m concerned.

And King’s speech must have been rough on those four little children. They probably wanted to coast through life on the coat tails of a revered (black-skinned) father. But oh no, no nepotism for them – it’s content of the character time. Thanks Dad, thanks for nothing.

Also who knew that Dr King anticipated Baywatch?

‘Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!’

You see what I’m saying? Small-minded. Petty.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Let slip the dogs of negligence….

I was just about to cross the last main road before home the other night (Limestone Ave for Canberrans and those who would love them) when I saw this guy on the other side with two small dogs – Jack Russell terriers, I think. I stopped to wait for the considerable volume of traffic only to see the two little dogs bolt across the road towards me.

‘Oh God those dogs nearly got hit,’ I thought, what an idiot. What an idiot I was, assuming that they would make it across. Assuming that bad things just don’t suddenly happen within a metre of me.

One dog crossed but the slower one… Bam! Yeeeelp! It was knocked by the bumper bar of a 4-wheel drive that hadn’t slowed down at all. It rolled into the gutter and lay there, twisted, unmoving, staring up at me with huge eyes. The other dog now barked excitedly while the owner simply watched from the other side; because the traffic had not let up he was unable to cross. He seemed curiously calm, waiting patiently for the break in traffic.

He was eventually able to cross and walked right past the hit dog to the second dog and put the leish he was carrying on it. I looked down at the struck dog and saw that it was alive and that it had now got up, still in the road, and was walking in a very awkward fashion. I assumed several of its bones were broken. I was worried it might be hit again so I stepped onto the road and picked it up, holding it carefully under the rib cage. Amazingly there was no blood and the dog did not seem to be in pain. I put it down next the other dog and their owner. He was still very calm, talking to the dogs as if they were fetching slippers.

I’ve felt this before, rarely. When you’re in what ought to be an emergency or extreme situation, and yet everything is banal, ordinary, unremarkable. I felt like I ought to be angry and yet the moment was so dull.

‘Mate, try using a leish next time,’ I said, in my best manful chiding tone and crossed the road, looking back at the injured dog which watched me as the man put its leish on too. He had mumbled something, shrugged, in response to my mild telling off.

And then I was around the corner and they were out of sight.

I recounted this sorry to some friends over dinner. One, a female colleague, laughed out loud that I had been so 'insensitive' to a man who ‘was probably suffering from shock at the injury to his pet’. But I didn’t see it that way. I just saw a thoughtless man whose stupidity and negligence had allowed an innocent animal to be injured, possibly seriously, or even killed. I owed him no consideration.