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28th!
Good evening everybody(
What? Seven minutes past midnight and my screen still says “no comment”.
Some good news on the biodiversity front: apparently the Chinese have had some unprecedented success in breeding giant pandas since some bright spark first got the idea of showing them a little panda porn.
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas/
amazing what a bit of porn can achieve.
bam boom
Worst. Ashes. Ever.
Yep. The cricket ain’t gonna match the hype. T’will be a long summer.
Everybody:
It’s seven in the morning (Queensland Natural Sunshine Time) and apart from a few comments (including those on the sex-life of the giant panda), LP-ers have been strangely quiet. Was last night a hard partying night? Did everyone get a good night’s sleep in anticipation of the Last-Ever Great Victorian Election? Is everyone exhausted by all The Ashes excitement?
All I’ve been doing is reading, so maybe I’ll try to start a discussion on books, if nobody minds. It’s all been stuff about the media and ’serious issues’ too.
Did anybody read the new Richard Flanagan novel? It’s a real easy read and I recommend it. Same for the new Kate Crawford book, actually. That’s a good one for anyone struggling with questions of being ‘responsible’. Plus she cites Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity. Quality philosophy IMHO, and much more than just Sartre’s ‘woman’. I think she’s a better philosopher by a fair distance.
I know that the Lucy/Mickler book already got some discussion on LP, so maybe I won’t go there, but I’ve got to recommend it too now that I read it. It’s also an easy read, except perhaps for some of their more tangential passages. The chapter on Miranda Devine is quite amusing.
Anybody else read anything they want to recommend? I’m always hungry for more things to chase up.
I’ve been reading Bettany Hughes’ Helen of Troy which is finally out in paperback.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/04/09/the-face-that-launched-a-thousand-book-sales/
You’re right, Adam, the chapter on Miranda in War on Democracy is a hoot.
Ps - Review of the Kate Crawford book on LP here, in case you missed it:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/11/02/adult-themes/
And I’ve been reading Bret Easton Ellis “Lunar Park” - not what I would call a relaxing read, especially when I’ve been in exam trauma whilst reading it.
Okay so I made some facetious comments about transexuals running the country when Mr Lame Duck walking gets hung up on a hook, but really I’m picking up on some serious unwarrented hostility toward trannies.
Exibit a) The harsh judging of the young attractive red-head in the Vegas dance-off on TV last week and
b) Stuff I can’t post verbatim because its off a private group on Yahoo that details discrimination against transgendered toilet users.
I thought we all were well past all that - and I’d like to see some robust expressions of solidarity and support for all our in-betweenies - our transexual brothers and sisters who not only need all our love and support but truly reciprocate it. Trannies are staunch and so must we be - touch one…touch all!
Jared Diamond’s “Collapse”.
His five factor framework is being played out on the tele everyday.
Like a slow motion train wreck.
Sod books. I’ve just got Guitar Hero II.
Old autobiog of Stormin’ Norman - surprisingly tepid, so far. Before that, finally read The Shipping News, and a ridiculous (but interesting) Marxist fantasy called The Iron Council.
Has anybody read Thirteen Moons yet? Or the new Ian Rankin?
(No spoilers please!)
I re-read Catch-22 on the plane trip to Finland. Hilarious and dark. I’ve been in Europe for three weeks and haven’t seen a properly blue sky the entire time.
I always recommend the Bret Easton Ellis novel ‘Glamourama’.
I’ve been hired to write some ‘funny’ columns for a magazine. In a funk of unfunny inadequacy I did probably the stupidest thing imaginable & collected together & have been reading:
Without Feathers by Woody Allen
The Thurber Carnival
Lifemanship and One-Upmanship by Stephen Potter
A Spaniard in the Works by John Lennon
The Importance of Being Earnest
And the scripts of the first series of Fawlty Towers
Stomach muscles hurt.
In a good way?
Thanks for that Kim, it slipped past me that it had already been given some time here. I’ve just spent the day at a picnic pushing the book on friends! I’m so embarrassed, but those friends who happen to be readers always have to listen to me go on and on about whatever book really impressed me recently.
Thanks everyone for recommendations etc. Tony, I’ve got to admit that I am really curious about ‘The Iron Council’. I like ridiculous and/or marxist texts, but I’m interested in the way that this one seems to also be using a frontier mythology. I think I’ll check it out…
Laura, having to be funny professionally sounds like a kind of horrible nightmare. Deadlines are so rarely inspiring of the smiling and the laughing - unless they get set back again and again, and become totally farcical. Actually, that’s usually just depressing. I think you did the right thing making yourself laugh first.
Hey Laura - grouse. Even though its a daunting brief.
I now have to be funny for a living and it scares me shitless when I think about it.
But I actually think that humour can be analysed - there are classes of transformations that underline humour.
Good comic writers for film and tv are big on technicalities. Asking themselves “What is the joke? Where is it? How do we organise them to occur one at a time? How can we take the transform one step further?
onya, Laura
No time for books, no time to read.
Levels to conquer on Need For Speed.
Hey, Zoe. Reckon ya might change ya link to ya new address at Crazybrave 2.0?
It’s been a while since there was a good, funny contest around here.
Accordingly, I propose to donate to charity $25 per pop (for the first ten entries, up to $250) for anyone who can write the following:
Alter a stanza or lyric from a well-known pop song to include and topically accomodate either Frankenstein or Godzilla. Other movie monsters are acceptable too, provided the twist is remarkable enough to warrant one. (In other words, don’t get too easy! — and good luck using the Night of the Living Dead!)
Example: (from The Beatles’ “And I Love Her”)”
Bright are the stars that shine,
Dark is the sky.
I know that Frankenstein
Will never die.
A few simple rules:
1. Original song must be relatively well-known, within reason (e.g., a parody of Yes’s “I’ve Seen All Good People” qualifies, but a parody of Yes’s “Gates of Delirium” doesn’t.)
2. The only two songs you can’t use are the Dolls’ original “Frankenstein,” and Blue Oyster Cult’s original “Godzilla”.
3. Special $50 jury prize for anyone who can work Godzilla into “The Monster Mash.”
4. Entries that are too “easy” can be summarily disqualified by a general chorus of booing. Be clever! And try to get those monsters into the end-line rhyme, whenever you can!
5. Charity recipient will be chosen by the author of the “best” entry (winner to be chosen by spontaneous general acclamation) from among the following options:
a. Doctors Without Borders,
b. Salesian Missions,
c. some well-known international anti-hunger org (suggestions welcome),
d. Sisters of the Road [homeless outreach and food programs], or
e. LP itself.
Hop to!
Let’s give it its own post, j_p_z, so everyone sees it!
Here it is!
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/11/26/frankensteingodzilla-lyrics-charity-challenge/
Fine by me. Extra bonus…
Special $50 Jason Soon Honorarium for the best riff on a Dylan song.
Cool. Thanks, j_p_z, great idea.
Then someone yelled out Monster!, and the bloke behind me swore.
We hid in there for hours, then a god-almighty roar
Frankie kicked the test tube, we scientists did swoon
God help me, we’re cloning them to soon.
too..duh.
Can you crosspost on the other thread, please, sg?
Mark, can I call you Dr Mark yet?
Nope!
Ah - hope you can soon!
Just came across an ad for a
a fixed-term academic appointment in Australian Government and politics with special reference to public policy and management which I imagine that some readers of LP might be interested in.
It’s a project for December, Sacha.
The link to the job is broken - which Uni is it?
It’s at ANU. Sorry - the link was from a seek e-mail.
This link should work.
Hope you complete the project in December Mark
LP seems to attract quite a few ex-UQ people.
Thanks, Sacha.
That would be a good gig - the ANZSCOG people are good value. Presumably Warhurst would be the person leading the research programme.
There was a similar looking level A position at ANU - forget which dept it’s in.
Adam, if you can find some way of sending me a postal address I’ll send you my copy of Iron Council - it wasn’t THAT interesting! The bloke describes himself as “weird fiction”, and he’s got the weird part right.
We’re having an idol party with friends now, so I’ll sign off…
Wow, thanks Tony. It’s the frontier thing that is the hook for me, because I’m doing some research on that concept, which seems to be ubiquitous in one form or another.
Hmmm, not sure about the whole postal address thing on the message board. I’ll publish my gmail address here if you want to send an email there, which I can reply to with a postal address. (Anybody else can feel free to email me here with comments, praise or abuse as well, that’s what I created this address for.)
I’m:
saukare [at] gmail [dot] com
Belatedly, for Laura: if you haven’t already, you should get yourself a copy of 3 Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome and Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim (which I recommend to anybody at any time, no matter what they are seeking). Both are highly instructive in the fine art of deadpanning. The humour in 3 Men in a Boat is remarkably fresh for its age. There’s a scene in Lucky Jim concerning a surreptitious attempt to repair a cigarette burn to a rug that has me laughing out loud whenever I think of it.