Just as well it's a Superfood

In a fit of idle curiosity, I counted the blueberries while I waited for the coffee to start bubbling up, and then I did the maths. They cost me 7.87 cents per blueberry, including the little shrivelledy one. And I'm going to eat them very very slowly.

He's my man, and I don't care how much it costs

This is Leonard Cohen in 1970, the year I was in what's now called Year 12: he was thirty-six and I was seventeen.

It was the year I first discovered him: I read Beautiful Losers, bought Songs From a Room and Leonard Cohen with saved-up pocket money, bought the sheet music and learned to play and sing fifteen or twenty of the songs:



(Question: when did she study for her exams? And does this explain the D for Matric Modern History, which still rankles all these decades later and which her entire undergraduate career was one long attempt to redeem?)

(Also, my mother made that round cushion, which was a kind of steely grey-blue velvet.)

Three years earlier my heart had been broken by my first-ever boyfriend, a beautiful Greek boy, who engendered a helpless lifelong passion for swarthiness in all its lovely forms.

Over the decades, Leonard and I drifted apart. And then one day a few years ago, my friend R played me this and I fell in love all over again.

R texted me today to say he's playing here on Australia Day and do I want to come with her. Hah. It's an outdoor concert at a winery down in the paradisal Southern Vales and he's being supported by Paul Kelly. On the other hand it's going to cost hundreds of dollars and it'll probably be 42 degrees. But I do not care.

The light in the garden

Very specific usage/spelling post

Here's something I've been seeing more and more often on the interwebs of late: people who have heard the Italian word segue, which is pronounced (approximately) 'SEG-way' and has been appropriated to English in much the same way as chic or Schadenfreude or joie de vivre, and have wrongly concluded that it's an English word and that's how you spell it. Clearly some bloggers and social networkers have seen 'segway' on other people's blogs and spelled it that way and so on and so virally forth.

A segue is a smooth transition. 'Segway' (TM) is the clever bilingual homophone used as the trade name for one of these.

Shock, horror, who'd have thought

Apparently, men think red is hawt.

Quelle breakthrough, no? Without the help of science and statistics, we would never have known. Think of the missed opportunities, the wrong choices, the sadly remembered teals and cerises and the hordes of women all over the world with their hands to their foreheads sighing Oh if only I'd known.

It has to make sense

Here as a result of this week's work-reading is a tip to all writers and would-be writers of fantasy, spec fic, utopias, dystopias and any other genre or sub-genre that involves creating an imaginary world: the internal logic of the workings of that imaginary world has got to make sense. Causes and effects need to be consistent, because a sequence of causes and effects is what adds up to a narrative, and if your causality is not logical then your whole storyline will fall into disarray and incomprehensibility.

An obvious example: the first question a lively child reader would ask whenever anything goes wrong in the Harry Potter books is 'Why don't they just fix it with magic?' J.K. Rowling goes to great lengths in various places to anticipate this question and answer it: because they're too young, because it's against the rules, because the castle is protected, because the other person is a more powerful witch and so on.

Fantasy is a very popular genre with students of Creative Writing and this question of internal logic in created worlds is where they most often come to grief: either in failing to think fully through the implications of whatever laws and circumstances pertain to their imaginary worlds, or in failing to communicate that logic clearly enough to the reader for their stories to make sense to anyone but themselves. I often get a strong sense, reading Creative Writing theses, that the student is very clear in his or her own mind as to what the rules of this imaginary universe are, but has failed to externalise and articulate them properly in the writing process.

I wonder what the Bronte Sisters would say. One of these days I shall wake them once more from their long sleep.

Patience is a virtue, my mother always said

Over two years ago, I went to the Royal Adelaide Show and bought, among other things, two beautiful and elaborate iris plants. At least the pictures said they were beautiful and elaborate; all I had was two rhizomes with some baby sword-shaped leaves, photos of what the flowers were supposed to look like, and some instructions about Seasol.

And from that day until about two or three weeks ago, they sat there in the ground, doing nussing. Ze Seasol, it did nussing. Ze watering, it did nussing. Every now and then they would sulkily lose a leaf and reluctantly grow a new one. They did not get bigger, they did not die, and they most certainly did not flower.

So this year winter melted into spring and the nearby Dutch irises grown from bulbs did what they usually do --




-- but again the fancy rhizomes did not follow their example.

HOWEVER.

Out I went into the garden one day earlier this month and something strange appeared to be happening:




A week or so later:




And yesterday ...




Sexiest flower in the universe.

Yes, I have a complaint

Two questions:

1) If one tries to ring Telstra to find out what, if any, one's options are for dealing with some idiot who wants to send a fax, has wrongly keyed one's own phone number into the machine and then walked away, so that my phone is now ringing every six minutes and emitting high-pitched noises at me when I pick up and I can't disconnect because my dad is sick and someone might be trying to call me, and, having rung Telstra, one gets redirected to some other number and routed through four, count 'em, four different voicebots only to be told that there is a long wait because they have 'more complaints than usual' (well, that'll be days then, won't it), is this all so that Sol Trujillo can get his $12 million a year?

2) Does anyone have any tips about producing one's voice in such a way as to maximise the chances of the voice recognition software actually understanding one when one says anything more complex than 'yes' or 'no'?

Sometimes you just know

One of the eponymous characters in the second of this week's four work novels, Rudolph Delson's Maynard & Jennica -- Maynard, to be precise -- has just observed on page 54 that the expression 'prevailing wisdom' is an oxymoron. And there's my Pick of the Week right there.

Usage update: I thought as much

As I was pondering the usage rant a few posts back it suddenly occurred to me that 'step foot' for 'set foot' was almost certainly an example of the phenomenon recently christened the eggcorn.

If you follow that link and read up on the eggcorn, and then follow the link under the heading 'Examples' to the Eggcorn Database, you will find 'step foot' listed there. Not to mention a whole lot of other excellent stuff including 'hone in on' for 'home in on', which is one of the most common eggcorns about.

We should just pack up and move to the US so we can vote for him

Con gaz

I pinched this from Ampersand Duck who borrowed it from Boynton who got it from here.

Dedicated language usage whining post

Just because I haven't had one for a while.

A spy has recently heard and reported back two beauties:

'Do you want an internal line or an out-ternal line?'

(We had some fun with this one. The speech was out-temporaneous. Do you want outra cheese? That was an outcellent movie.)

And

'[.... if they do so-and-so], they will be shunned upon.' (Repeated several times in the course of the conversation.)

At first I thought the perpetrator was mixing up 'shunned' and 'frowned upon', but it's only just occurred to me as I was typing that that she may have been subliminally thinking of 'shat upon' as well.

Also, it reminds me of two that have crept into mainstream TV and radio newsreading over the last few years and that includes, alas, the ABC:

(1) 'A did such-and-such while B watched on.'

(2) 'X had never stepped foot there before.'

Now, B did not 'watch on'. B either 'looked on' or 'watched'. Nor did X 'step foot', which is a tautology; if you step, you do it, by definition, with your foot. X either 'set foot' or 'stepped'.

Thank you for your attention.

Eek

The current novel-for-work is a rather good historical-psychological semi-thriller by Alex Scarrow called October Skies, in which a couple of contemporary documentary-makers find themselves on the trail of a deluded breakaway Mormon sect (yes, they've broken away from the Mormon mainstream; I'll leave you to contemplate what sorts of people we're talking about here) led by the standard charismatic yet drug-addicted sociopath who does a lot of chattin' to Gahd. This group is heading west along the Oregon Trail in 1856, just a little too close to the onset of winter.

Scarrow telegraphs a few too many of his ideological punches, which is annoying when what you're reading is fiction and when in any event you could not agree with him more, but he certainly leaves us in no doubt of what he thinks about organised religion in general and, in particular, the tight grip that "faith" seems to have on much of contemporary America.

[UPDATE: I should have mentioned here that the whole plot turns out to revolve around those tablets containing the Direct Word of God that Joseph Smith claims to have found on a hillside. Because that fact is directly relevant to the following paragraph.]

So it was a tad spooky to go outside to look in the mailbox and find in it a single and clearly hand-delivered item: a CD in a clear plastic sleeve of the ten-a-penny supermarket kind and a rather nicely designed label with pastel Persian patterns, entitled 'The Noble Quran: The Creator's Message to Mankind'.

Now, I've already read the noble Quran so I am not in need of it on CD, especially not one labelled 'Free Gift' (as though there were any other kind of gift). But they want to be careful. Round here we've got two big Russian Orthodox churches and one Greek ditto, plus a high-octane Baptist stronghold, all within a few streets of each other, and they're all extremely active and well-attended. I can't really see the local Muslims, the local Eastern Orthodox and the local Baptists going at it hammer and tongs with gardening tools* in the middle of these quiet little old suburban streets, but you never know. If they do, and if you're looking for me, I'll be the one selling binoculars and red cordial.

AFTERTHOUGHT, 3.43 PM: You know, I can foresee several different kinds of not particularly distant future in which having written 'I've already read the noble Quran' on my own personal blog will be enough to get me into some very serious trouble. I really can. But I don't think I'll remove it quite yet. Goddess preserve me in the meantime.

*Or, indeed, hammers and tongs. Der.

Two puzzles

(If you know the answer to either or both of these and decide to say so in the comments, ploise expline the answers -- ta.)


What's the next letter in this sequence?

OTTFFSSEN_



And what's this?

** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **

** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **
** / ** / ** / ** / **

Not with my vote you won't

So I go to the ABC website to see what's happened this afternoon and the first thing I read is speculation that some people apparently want SA Premier Mike Rann replaced as leader by Treasurer Kevin Foley.

It's not that I am a Rann enthusiast, though it's always nice to have an undeniably smart and tough bloke running the state, whatever his failings may be. It's more that Foley's public behaviour and demeanour, particularly in Parliament, has been consistently that of a bully and a boor. I can't see him leading any sort of group out of a paper bag; while clearly a Type A personality, he seems to me to be a fundamentally divisive one.

If they want to replace Rann with Education Minister and former Adelaide Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith then I am all for it. Hooray. But if they replace him with Foley, then I will be voting Green or Independent somewhere to the left of Labor at the 2010 state election.

Behind

That's behind as in not out in front, not behind as in bum, the latter being even more depressing to contemplate than the list which I now put before you. I am behind with the admin in particular, and in general with the ongoing project that is Life.

I once read an article about the importance of prioritising in the daily pushing-back of life's chaos. It recommended writing a list of every single thing you needed or wanted to do and then prioritising them into categories A (must be done, and ASAP, preferably today), B (is very desirable and should be done soon), and C (every intention of getting round to it eventually). A typical such list looks like this:

clean out the cat litter -- A
learn Italian -- C
pay speeding fine -- B/A
finish the current work novel and start the next one -- A
get a haircut -- B
go back to Tuscany -- C
write to H -- B/A
new front fence -- C/B

Etc. In practice what happens is that you get all the As done plus a handful of the Bs but the Cs never even get a look-in. However, as you can see from the forward slashes, Cs sometimes become Bs, and Bs often increase in urgency until they become As. Which is why I have made another list.

As inspired by some comments over at Laura's place about how one would spend the prime ministerial dosh if one were so fortunate as to be either an oldie or a breeder (and I, like Laura and Amanda, am neither, being, like them, too young for the former category and, unlike them, too old for the latter: like both of those fine ladies I too am what Amanda calls a 'full-time tax-paying-not-eating working schmo'), here, in alphabetical order, is the list of people I really need and/or want to contact, visit and/or hire:

Accountant
Bank manager
Beauty salon (special environmentally aware variety) (my feminist position on skincare, makeup, haircuts and so on is 'Assimilate and transcend'. Brought up in the 60s, what can you do)
Blood bank
Carpenter
Dentist
Electrician
Fence people
Gutter cleaner-outerers
Hairdresser
Local council (hard rubbish section)
Optician
Osteopath
Pest eradication people
Physio
Plumber
Plumbing supplies shop
Self-storage firm
TV antenna people
Tree surgeon
Yard-cleaning-up people

It's almost a meme, don't you think?

Some of these can wait a little longer, like the optician. Some of them can't, like the growing tree that is about to actually push the garage over. What I don't understand -- given that I can now afford at least some of these things -- is how I could have let that list get quite so long.

Won't somebody think of the children?

At the top of page 4 of yesterday's Adelaide Advertiser, there was a report, rhetorically framed in full-on tut-tut mode (the phrase 'shocking behaviour' was used and it was not a quotation), about sexually inflected behaviour among SA primary school students, with 42 reports of actual sexual assault.

Now, I agree that this is appalling, though anyone with any kind of clear memory knows that sexually motivated behaviour in the later years of primary school has been around forever and was often quite nasty, not least because in my day and earlier, you didn't talk about it, and if you had, you would not have been believed. Being a girl was, in that respect, almost as much jolly fun as being a woman. And as for British boys' schools ...

But this is not to the point. The point was political reporter Michael Owen's tone, which was dominated by that tabloid-journalism favourite, horrified righteous indignation, that we have all come to know and love so well.

Owen reported that SA Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith had ascribed the children's behaviour to the fact that 'today's students [are] increasingly exposed to inappropriate forms of media.'

The article had a big black headline:

Alarm over lewd students

At the top of Page 5, directly opposite, there was an item about the revamping of the high school science curriculum, for students in Year 10 or younger, to make it more "relevant". And the big black headline on this one?

Formula to sex up science


*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*

The cosmos taketh away and the cosmos giveth

Seen by chance as framed by the bathroom window, a flying lesson: ma, pa and the three little honey-eaters, using the sloping shed roof with the bottle-brushes all over it for take-off, landing and debriefing. Think flashes of white and yellow in and out of the red and green.

Which was worth at least half of the speeding fine.

A half-full glass in a toenail of a day*

I've spent most of today either sitting at the desk or rushing around like a mad rabbit to places like banks and post offices doing a big pile of mind-numbingly boring and in three cases quite expensive administrative tasks, several of which I ought never to have been asked or expected to do in the first place. When I asked the woman in the post office how much stamps were for a particular sized item, all I wanted to know was the answer. When I was going through the supermarket checkout, all I wanted was for big heavy items not to be dumped directly on top of small fragile ones. And when I checked the mailbox, there were two items in it, and one was my superannuation statement, informing me that over 9% of what used to be in that account had melted away like fairy floss on the tongue between the beginning of January and the end of June.

So the other item -- the speeding fine (and yes I did totally deserve it, thank you all for asking) for $202 -- seemed as nothing by comparison, and therefore setting fire to those ten $20 bills and watching them burn isn't going to be anywhere near as painful as it usually is. Hooray.

*I am aware that this is a mixed metaphor, but it is a much more original one than something the Prime Minister is reported to have said today: 'There are big bumps in the road ahead; it's not all going to be smooth sailing.'