off line

And speaking of Crocs, I had one of those awkward I read it on the internet moments at a family gathering yesterday, that went like this

- I think I read somewhere that Crocs were banned for setting off electrical equipment...

(Pause. Faces look skeptical. Scientist neph. unimpressed)

...Yes ... I think they were banned for setting off electrical equipment...

But what I should have said is

Static electricity caused by the popular footwear has been implicated in the malfunctioning of electrical medical equipment at hospitals in Sweden

(I think I read this via As Above originally)

over et

recent googler arrived looking for

overcoat

ettiquette


(Sic. Apparently I'm at the top of the misspelt google tree for this nice ensemble)

au flo

croc-ery

Lone croc seen in local park while walking dog



Within cooee of popular children's playground.
Only metres from junior cricketers bowling in the nets.
Within a foot of free-running dogs.





Meanwhile, Bumper book snared at op-shop not so casual:

crockery

China update: I spotted Kontiki doing a turn in The Chatterley Affair last Sunday. That thrilling glimpse of crockery occurred just before I switched off.

"Is it a television drama that you would even wish your dinnerware to see?"


(Update: A bowl of K variant seen in Romulus my Father.
This crockery ain't shy.)

fl-ying

Flying high in Melbourne

(I think it's more Melbourne FL than Melbourne VIC though)


Ephemerally Yours via Ramage

wrap

Why is it so...

Did the Channel Nine News really spell it School Chaplin?

and while we're talkin' marbles

Wild reading in bed.

Surprising. I guess all the doll dirt squarely outstrips the trousers

A surge in my stats from this search was curious, and suggests a puzzle or quiz in the US that leads to a quick google-squiz? Who knows.

And speaking of dogs, nice lines and tumblers, Impending dog disaster might be a useful phrase to unleash

Q: Is it time to stop playing pub trivia when the answer is Labrador and I say Alsatian?

After the chainsaw massacre, they left a note on the nature strip.

Learnt recently at Trivia: The difference between a King and a Queen is a foot

Last night I dreamt I watched Rebecca again

It was certainly raining cats and dogs and cattle dogs were whining.

2007 @ boynton in first lines, via a first line meme @ Genevieve's.
Bit late off the mark, of course, since 07 is so last week.
And 07 was pretty slim pickings around here.
I cheated on the last first line. That was actually the third line.
And alas, I couldn't include my favourite line of the year, which was not mine, but such a nice found line I'm thinking of nominating it for a martini:

A Tudor is the sacred cow of house styles
 

08

Oh ate

and oh drank





A Cordial New Year.
 

gladys

My band is Un Sospiro and our new album is Gladys the Swiss Dairy Cow.

1. Music of Uruguay
2. Constabulary
3. David Messas
4. Russell Blackford
5. Abu al-Walid
6. Llandyfaelog
7. Milan Decree
8. Kitty Winn
9. Camp Century
10. Harold Volkmer
11. Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006
12. Louisiana Purchase
13. Salt Lake City Angels
14. Pre-caudal gland
15. Mark Roosevelt

This was autogenerated from random Wikipedia article names. Get your own Wikipedia Album.

Track 11 is sure to get the feet tapping.

by Kevan, via As Above

cheers

I nominated myself for this award. (From here via the presurfer)


But I am honoured to receive it on behalf of my readership,

this informal collection

of like minded soles.
 

stormy day

Did we just have the worst storm in a hundred years, or in four years, to the day?

(this latter fact was pointed out by a 774 listener, to whom I was listening via battery-powered radio)

It was certainly raining cats and dogs and cattle dogs were whining.

retro metro

Further to biopics...an abandoned post from early October.
It was going to be a big sarsy post on Melbourne, memory, history and nostalgia (# 233)





from Graham Kennedy's Melbourne Nelson 1967

I watched The King on TV recently, and it was pretty good.
But Biopics always seem ...
The mood of the times is greater than ...
Post-war Melbourne can seem like a Retro Chrysler


(I've cut all metaphors but the link. Here the post became bogged in outer suburban roads of greater childhood memory. eg:)

... but TV stars were BIG in the 50's and 60's. They lived above us, glamorous, and made fleeting forays with footballers into the suburbs to open shopping centres.
 

one liners

Don't put off your happy life

No girls laugh at me


Spam One-liners via Daily Jive

TV 20-10

Was inspired to do this after aftergrog was whingeing about 20-1, which I never watch, but I did hear Debbi Enker roast on 774 (such dumbed-down shows are cheap oz-content filler apparently). So this post of loose ends is likewise ez-oz blog-content filler.

20. Graham Kennedy biopic, The King. Well crafted, expert reproduction, but lacking a sense of authenticity evident, say, in any home movie of the period. The gaucheness therein. These suave doppelgängers are actually 21st century aliens stranded in a sovereign hill of decor.

19. Is that the dilemma of all biopics? The faithfully-enacted chronicle where everyone knows the ending? Do the best narrow the focus to a key incident or relationship? Famous Person and the case of the Close Shave?.

18.Love My Way series one: contains some of the best television drama I've seen. Series two was very good. Series 3 - overall, didn't do it for me. I lost sympathy with most of the characters whose drive seemed directionless and victim of soap stasis.

17. But I did see this in the new style - by the box-set load, which can skew both appreciation and tolerance.

16. Often though in later series of TV shows, the stories move away from the smaller everyday moments of revelation, and the world and characters arc up (in order to jump the shark I guess)

15. ditto Kath n Kim. Despite the exotic locations and product placement courtesy C7, the best scenes still often happen around the kitchen. Though I did love the very visual moment when the big rainwater tank rolled off the car.

14. Despite the corn, I enjoyed Rain Shadow. I liked the slower pace and the novel relationship of the two female colleagues. I enjoyed seeing the younger woman's quietly assertive negotiation of bullying boss. Time slot was a killer, no one wants to deal with drought-despair on a Sunday night, even though the story proved to be redemptive.

13. The Abbey was OK. A call to gardening for me as I feel guilty about my lack of horticultural attendance.

12. Summer Heights High deserved the hype- mainly for Jonah and friends.
Good blend of fiction and real-life, on location and in location.

11. My favourite show at the moment is Grand Designs, or castle-building for cashed-up couples.

11. The cricket is too early.

10. And too much.
 

prison alphabet

At first I thought- well, this is a strong contender for the dumbest use of a highlight pen in a school or university text award.



(Having once seen a history textbook in the library with 5 entire pages green-highlighted, nothing surprises me)
But further thought (and the annotation) suggests it's a script for a school presentation.
Still, I think I would have photocopied before striping my book.



(Update The poem is from Sometimes Gladness. Collected Poems of Bruce Dawe 1954-1997
5th Edition (Longman, 1997)

The teaching of poetry in schools is, after all, variously done, sometimes good, sometimes not so good. BD

rebecca

Last night I dreamt I watched Rebecca again.
Actually it was Sunday night, in the middle of a November heat wave, when the lounge was so hot the only thing to do was watch an old favourite.
(And what's not to like? Cinderella nervosa.)
A couple of days later, I savoured some of the chilling moments in matching climes, wearing a jumper.

Googling, I found my way to Self-Styled Siren, with a recent post on Joan Fontaine and Rebecca.

ben been

Last Saturday as I'm getting my hair cut, a woman rushes up and declares:
Ben Cousins is downstairs!!!!...
My hairdresser is (like totally) indifferent, and the woman retreats.
A pause before I ask:
Did she just say 'Ben Cousins is downstairs'?
- Yeah so what who cares he's a bogan.

- a line which inspires a Google poem

ben cousins
Compiled 11/19/2007 5:31:41 AM GMT

WITH the late-night behaviour
these days hey starro. spose, ur

Cousins drove through an underground
will arrive at AFL House in suit and

jetted into LA, where he was met by
in - From Consciousness Explained by

as What do you get when you cross
DRUG SCANDAL - In other news: grass

has bumped Britney Spears and Lindsay
team down at the cat bowl from a play

BEN Cousins will need AFL approval
was allegedly admitted to hospital

been forced to defend his wayward
is (your northern Have you heard

he was met by two attractive blonde
Cousins got picked up drunk outside

the football future of former West
grass is green, sky is blue – Post

haiku

poorly placed chew toy
above the old cabinet
lonely but not dead

protagonist gone
soft-singing baleful ballads
what did I do wrong

Javascript Haiku generator via Twists and Turns
 

up there

My sister acquired a pianola recently. Of all the rolls I could choose to play, from the old June Balloon Moonlight Foxtrots, all the thirties ballads I love, all the forties songs I know by heart, at that moment I had to choose Up There Cazaly.

And maybe youtube is the pianola of the neo-noughties, but when I saw Up There Cazaly was up there, I had to play it 10 times. I love this clip.




In 1979 this gesture did not mean this guy's on his mobile. This crowd is a mobile free zone.

And the football was better in 1979 of course, "in those days when going to the football was not like going to the cinema..." Brian Courtis (When footy players have to pause on the field to let the ads run on telly you know they've lost the plot) But also part of my strange nostalgia for this clip may be that I was at the grand final in 78, the one featured in the ad, and I'm watching my past zoom in and out with the balloons in the aerial shots of the MCG where I stood in the standing room section with my brother and sister and their friends and my first crush.

But I also love the blend of words and images, the unpretentious verite of the crowd, the heritage stanza of champions in slow black-and-white, the rise and fall of the music matching the choreography of marking, that by Billy Picken becomes quite beautiful.

".....Cazaly" can still make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up even after all these years. To say that it is outdated or old fashioned is missing the point. Football is about memories of winters past and ".....Cazaly" will always be a part of that for me, regardless of what some soulless bureaucrat might say. Posted by: Buck Buckaw of the real world 7:59am October 02, 2007 Readers' comments: Cazaly may be benched

critical

well if I were a single issue voter, a single issue that might swing my vote would probably be orangutans.
It's sad that the tragic and desperate plight of these gentle creatures has become lost in the gesturing and jesting of electioneering

We need to recognise the massive amount of suffering being inflicted on a species that is 97% genetically identical to humans. AOP