the first in what may be a series of unfunny pieces rejected by the New Yorker's Shouts and Murmurs column:

''Quality journalism is not cheap…The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels, but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news web sites”
- Rupert Murdoch




Dear Mr Rupert Murdoch,
I wish to offer my views on the August 25, 2010 edition of your e-newspaper, which, as I am your paying customer, you will no doubt be interested to hear.
As you yourself have pointed out, quality journalism is not cheap. Having calculated my $25 annual subscription as costing upward of 6.84 cents a day, I would expect a better service from you than I can obtain elsewhere for free.
Therefore, some points:
First: there is far too much violence in your electronic publication. I am not paying to read endless descriptions of beheadings, ritual canings, invasions of small nations by slightly less small nations, general exploding of ordinance, etc. I find these reports somewhat distressing, and I would expect your service to reduce their occurrence to a more manageable frequency, say one a fortnight. That should be sufficient.
Second: not enough goldfish. I could find only one brief report today concerning the Sixteenth National Championship of Goldfish Scooping in Japan. As a confirmed goldfish fancier, and, again, your paying customer, I would expect at least a feature article on the winner along with profiles of leading competitors, their tactics for scooping up fish, their training regimes, breeds of fish used and so on, in addition to the somewhat cursory video you have provided. I can recommend a well-qualified Japanese-speaking piscatory reporter if you are in need of a stringer. You have a whole year until next August, which you could devote to setting up a proper Japanese Goldfish Bureau to cover the Seventeenth National Championship of Goldfish Scooping, and it is my view that this is the kind of innovation which will have subscribers flocking to your service. What, after all, is the Internet for if not top-notch journalism on events of compelling global interest such as this?
Third: Sex. As I’m sure a businessman of your stature will understand, you are operating in a very competitive market when you venture on the Internet, and I’m sorry to have to inform you that I could get better, and dare I say more personalised, content from a camgirl in India than is currently being provided by your web sites, and far cheaper too. If you value my business, you will attend to this aspect of your service without delay. I understand that you are coming from behind on this part of your online offering, but surely the owner of the London Sun can find some pretty girls somewhere? Again, if you need help, I can direct you to a number of sites operating in this area which I believe are highly profitable, some of which are even legal in some states of America. As you so perspicaciously point out, good content does not have to be free; people are willing to pay for the quality stuff.
Fourth: Where, I would like to know, is the curling? You call that sports coverage?
Fifth: International politics. Please, no. I invite you to go online and look around. Do you see anyone blogging about the proceedings of the Economic and Financial Committee (EFC) Sub-Committee on EU Government Bills and Bonds Markets, let alone tweeting on the topic of the stormy love life of its chairman, Jens Thomsen, Deputy Governor of the Danish Central Bank? Thought not. Replace this segment with some Brangelina gossip and trust me, no one will miss the politics.
After all, Mr Murdoch, the customer (that’s me…unless someone else has signed up to your e-newspaper since last week) is always right. Right?

and Sedaris went to lunch at Lake House...

I can't believe this is only the SECOND googld result for "eu subcommittee boring".

surely it should be #1?

dog cloning:

"I think 99 percent of the time people should get their pets from shelters," he told AFP.

"But can we agree though that one percent of the time if you have a one in a million dog and you have the money to pay for it, you should be able to go to either a breeder or a clone."

....this man can clone a large mammal, but seems to lose out a bit on the maths front....

sorry, did I miss something? it's June 4, 2009 and the Chinese Government is complaining about how Chinese students are treated in Australia?

surely today is Chinese-authorities-should-jut-shut-up-day?

just to demonstrate that pathetic fandom still exists after 40...I have to blog this...Tim Minchin called me a genius!
yes, he may have meant it in a slightly sarcastic way...but all the same...

I bought tickets to his Comedy Festival shows way back in November last year. this was so early that I scored front row, centre, seats. Then disaster struck: we tried about six babysitters and couldn't find ANYONE to sit with our kid for a lousy 3 hours. I then tried about six friends: no one was free to come with me. I then stood outside the Forum trying to GIVE the ticket away, but there were not people who were there alone, or none who would admit to it.

so I went in and sat down with an empty seat beside me.

sure enough, after Tim bounced onstage and did the opening number, he looked down.

"Where's that person?" he demanded. The girl on the other side of the empty seat shifted uncomfortably. I thought of a couple of things to say but they were very lame things, so kept my mouth shut.

"That is the ONE SEAT that should have someone in it," he said. it was in fact the very middle of the row, right in front of the mike.

so I shifted. I moved across from my seat into my husband's empty seat, thus filling the ONE SEAT and leaving mine empty.

hence the comment: "you're something of a genius aren't you" and on with the show.

omg he noticed me! etc. it was almost worth the $28 I blew on the ticket, plus the embarrassment, to be called a genius by Tim.

maproom blog

maproom blog

brochure for mapping confernce I've just missed...not that I would have gone I guess, but interesting mob

am I the only one thinking that thermal imaging of whale trails might be a little too useful to the Japanese whalers if they get hold of the technology?

poetry lost and found...

birdman eating uses pages from old books to put under the iron pans it serves its eggs in...I thought the poem Andrew had a few weeks back was lovely, in an oldfashioned melancholy way, but the grease got to it and now the actual words have gone from my mind.

more permanent, however, is this old sanskrit poem that I saw tattooed in longhand script on the nape of a young man's neck yesterday:


"Look well to this day
For it is life
The very best of life.
In its brief course lie all
The realities and truths of existence,
The joy of growth, the splendour of action,
The glory of power.
For yesterday is but a memory.
And tomorrow is only a vision.
But today well lived
Makes every yesterday a memory of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore to this day.

oooh...an op shop website/blog...linked to maps...nice

Barack Obama's reading list

less blogging, more real writing.
but sometimes it's the small things that drive you to the keyboard.
and after five years of waiting, I'm pleased to be able to record that my jacaranda tree is finally blooming. they're only small blooms, and the purple isn't quite that deep shade that I adore; but they're blooms. now all I have to do is get the lawn underneath to something approximating green and I can have fallen purple blooms on a carpet of green @ Christmas time. bliss...

"This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through
the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body."

that would be this project

yes, on my third attempt, I have managed to push my way past the other developing-writer piglets to get my snout in the trough of government funding.

with the result that I now have to write an, um, book. about representations and mapping of Melbourne. in six months. aargh...no, it's a good thing.

but don't expect me to update this blog much in the meantime...

have new voice recognition software. I think it's still taking longer to take out the typos than to actually type the copy correctly myself. and the typos are sneakier, as they are real words but in the wrong places, whereas typing errors tend to be findable easily by Word.

for example:

shall I compare of the two a summer's day? Thou art for lovely and more temperate rough winds to shake the Darling buds of May and summer's lease has all too short a date some time to hot the eye of heaven shines and often is his call complexion didn't and every fare from fares sometime declined by chance on Asia's changing course on trend that die eternal beauty shall not favour loose possession of that fair though as Nortel death brag about Wanderers in his shade while in internal lines to time now grossed so long as venture live arise can seize along as this and give life to be

just what I need in my life: another blog. I'm hoping this will be the project that has wings, so giving it its own space seemed a good idea.

An invitation to play:

On Sunday mornings, the narrow bike track through the park that connects North Fitzroy, North Carlton and down into Parkville is busy; a contrast to the weekday mornings when I often have to myself, or myself and one or two random dogs with their walkers.

This morning, the first day of spring, there are small packs of wobbly middleaged ladies on bikes; elderly locals shouting at each other in friendly tones as they stroll; couples with massive baby strollers walking two abreast, blocking the path; driven-looking young women jogging with very young babies in custom-made jogging prams. For months it’s been chilly in the early mornings, sometimes even with frost on the grass, but today the air is warm with the promise of a thaw; I’m in bike shorts instead of long track pants, and I only notice after ten minutes that I’ve left my warm gloves off; I don’t need them this morning.

At Lygon Street, where the makers of roads have recently given in to the unspoken pressure of the people’s will and converted a muddy shortcut into a proper bitumen path that carves a more direct line to the pedestrian crossing, I sail across the wide road without having to stop and wait for crawling commuter cars; one of the upsides of weekend mornings. Beyond Lygon Street, the park opens out in a kind of widening triangle as if emboldened by the larger spaces of Princes Park and Royal Park a few hundred metres down the track. And in the middle of this open green space, there is a pool table.

There is also a three-seater vinyl couch in baby-poo yellow, a timber cue stand with four cues and a cue rest, a couple of frames for shaping the balls, a box of billiard * balls and an abandoned game in progress. On the table is another cue, a white cue ball and a few red and coloured balls, the coloured ones with numbers on them. It’s been a while since my pub pool days, but I’m fairly sure this means two different games have been mixed up.

The table is old, with square frames of wood for legs; these probably fold up. The string pockets are dirty-grey and bulging with billiard balls; they look like they might burst. The playing surface is not smooth felt, but a kind of close-weave green hessian. It rained last night, and I imagine that the table is probably damp. I also imagine that the table is heavy, and it would have taken at least four people – young men, I guess – to bring it out here, 30 metres from the nearest house. There are no bottles, cans or other leavings scattered around to give a clue to last night’s activities, but it was Saturday night; a game of pool in the park at midnight must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

Just now, there is no one else on the track. I lie my bike down in the damp grass and pick up the cue on the table. Its tip is missing, but I don’t think to look for another. I line up the pockmarked cue ball with a yellow ball and take a shot at a corner pocket. I miss, put the cue back on the table and continue with my ride.

After I turn for home, down near the zoo, where the bike track runs through the golf course, a group of uncertain Japanese golfers veer about in front of me, walking on the wrong side of the path, though I’m certain that in Japan, as in Australia, the rule is to keep to the left.

I have a tailwind now and climb the hill back into Carlton easily, swiftly. The pool table is still unattended, but someone else has taken a shot; the balls have moved. So I drop my bike again, line up the cue ball and hit the green ball, number *14?, straight into the edge of the table. I’m not having much luck this morning; I could blame the dodgy cue, the unevenly situated table, the chipped cue ball or the wet surface, but I think it’s just me; I never was much good at pool unless I’d had a beer.

I’ve had my turn at the table. So I get back on my bike and continue, saying to the world in general: your shot.