The Silence of the Bunnies

At thirteen, kept awake at night by the plight of lab animals, I wrote a heartfelt letter to Procter & Gamble, urging them to cease animal testing. I took the letter into my father's office. He was working as an engineer for the Auckland City Council. I would often sneak away from after school care to visit his office with my brother (we played a very 90's snake game on Dad's work PC) and sometimes my best friend, Cara (she and I once took turns wheeling each other between the cubicles in the big green paper recycling bin while all the engineers were upstairs enjoying Friday Night Drinks on the AstroTurfed rooftop.) After greeting the friendly and familiar engineers on my dad's floor, I took my petition into the tea room and put it on the windowsill next to the fundraising chocolates and the boxes full of tea bags and sugar and wooden stirrers. Over the next few days I got a few signatures, albeit not as many as I'd anticipated. I sent off my letter and felt righteous and never heard from P&G, and eventually moved on to the next phase (poetry? the paranormal?).

Hand that pen over to me, poetaster.

What an exciting time this past fortnight has been. I found out that I am about to crawl out of the casual pool and walk on two new feet through the world of salary-earners. A job, I kept telling people, I just want a job. And by that I meant the kind of life with consistent pay one week to the next; where I could commit to regularly making myself dinner and perhaps even learn to enjoy doing so; where I could have Saturdays off, and recover from hangovers properly; where I could occasionally be paid for being sick. I am leaving my forager's life behind me and moving to a higher state of being. A hunter now, I'll be sitting on my ass all day, using my free time to order books and organic fruit & veg boxes online, and plotting my company takeover. Progress feels good.

To make a thing like that, you'd need to know what you were about.

Here I proclaim my unfashionable love of New Zealand band The Mutton Birds.


not my image

Since my teenage years I have conducted our musical affair mostly in cars and kitchens and through the public privacy of my earphones. Never live and never at parties. And not usually with anyone else, unless it is a home-early housemate, catching me stacking wet plates and keening along to Ngaire. 

It is not shame that makes me omit them from band-sharing conversations, but fear of an indifferent response. The Mutton Birds make me feel a bit desperate. I just want you to love them.

The Cat Video Post

It's an ongoing joke, a running gag, a cantering drollery among those closest to me: my knowledge of youtube cat videos. So here, not very reluctantly, is my List.

Magical War Poodle

Some passing thoughts and recommendations from the summer months:

After Cathy's demise, Wuthering Heights is s-l-o-w. The death of the best and most infuriating character occurs about 6 hours into the audiobook version. For the remaining 6 or so hours, Heathcliff persists in his domestic scheming, young Linton whinges a lot, young Cathy is spirited like her mother and Ellen Dean remains shockingly shocked at Heathcliff's godlessness. Gradually the cast fades out due to one deprivation or another. Warmth. General resilience. Broth.

Phlox and Fatty

Firstly, a google image search for 'phlox':

Secondly, following a friend's message containing a link to David Sedaris reading 'Fatty Suit' on This American Life, the rarely-helpful gmail sidebar had this list of search suggestions:

>Bathing Suit
>Mens Suit
>OMP Suit
>Fatty Liver
>Valentines
>Romantic Gifts
 
In an unsuccessful attempt to bring this entry full circle (hoping against hope to get further images of phlox), I googled 'romantic gifts':
 

Happy Anna Howard Shaw Day.

Happy Birthday Dear Robden of Solway Firth

According to the blog of my wonderful friend Alice, this week is the birthday of the poet Robert Burns. That reminds me of a joke that I love but can never remember well enough to tell, since I don't really know any of the man's poetry. Here's the joke:

Some startling facts about snails

...taken from Green Harvest (research for my continuing war on gastropods):

• 'They secrete mucous to move about and by using the same trail and sharing trails with other snails they save on mucous production.'

• 'During cold or dry weather, snails can seal their shells, and remain dormant for several years.' Like tiny, gross volcanoes.

• 'Australia has 6,000 species of native snails.'

• 'Handpicking, will over time, greatly reduce the number of snails... The best time is 2 hours after sunset by torchlight.'

Audioficionado

This avid podcastee has found her audio diet taking an increasingly American turn. Here is the summer menu...

To start on a sycophantic note, Dan Savage’s Savage Lovecast remains a staple. In the crudest and most bullshit-intolerant terms, Dan Savage - potentially the first actual sex-positive-and-feminist relationship advice columnist - encourages us all to just, please, just be good to each other. (Or, to be GGG to each other.) His reach extends into the mainstream through his recent web initiative, the It Gets Better Project, with video messages reaching deluge proportions, posted by everyone from everyday webcammers to the likes of President Obama and Janet Jackson.

The hosts of Slate’s Cultural Gabfest are erudite and curious and have a listenable rapport with each other. WNYC's Radiolab, which is fancier - more scripted, less gabby - has the same satisfying warmth and pace.

Postcards from Albert Street

This weekend we came very close to bidding our final adieu to the old place – smearing the last fingerprints off the windows, wriggling the last clinging weeds from cracks in the brickwork, watching locals on bicycles wobble off with the last of the crap we left on the curbside. A framed print of two moon-eyed kittens. Two plastic chandeliers. A synthesizer whose absent power cord could probably be replaced by one from an electric kettle. A diabolical, electric blue velvet armchair threatening back injury. Two televisions and several remote controls. A bike with no pedals. An unassuming set of purple plastic free weights, with stand.

a duck other ducks are ashamed of

This morning I woke up in Carlton with dry lips, unsure of the whereabouts of my clothes and of the quickest way to get to work via public transport. My first morning in my new house. Who'd've thought that packing for three days straight and then shifting everything on the hottest day could suck the life out of your very lips, especially considering we were keeping hydrated with tea, coffee, beer and eventually whisky?

Our (mine and Adrian's) place in Carlton is a high point in both our housing histories. Albert Street just about fell down around our ears as we fled Abbotsford, and the junkies shook their fists and rattled their teeth.

some Larkin

Sad Steps

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate -
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.


-Philip Larkin

Woolf

'...for he came every summer, poor old man, for weeks and weeks, and pretended to read German with her, but really played the piano and sang Brahms without any voice.'


-Mrs Dalloway

Audiopig: A Cultural Binge

About six weeks ago I put out a facebook request for podcast recommendations. I now have a podcast diet which, although gluttonous, is very particular. Here are the highlights of my audio-glut:


1. This American Life - tried and tested, whimsical and wonderful. I was already a big fan of this one, thanks to my David Sedaris obsession. Friend Jens put me on to a particular episode entitled 'Pro Se' (episode 385), which you need to buy, since it's archived, but it is well worth the $3 or whatever you pay on itunes.

Quotes of Note

Some snippets I've copied into my notebook over the past couple of months...

'there's nothing we own that isn't mortal
save talent, the spark in the mind' - Ovid, Letters from Exile
(Initially I read 'mortal' as 'moral' - as if talent were too true a quality to be subject to society's arbitrary standards. Long live talent.)

And some more mortality:
'Photography is the inventory of mortality.' - Susan Sontag, 'Melancholy Objects' in On Photography