Here's one I wrote this year

count to a hundred a hundred times a hundred times
a hundred times count to a hundred a hundred times
count to a hundred thirsty six times a hund red times
a hundred counts a red dog a hund rot rotten hund
a toasted ham and cheese sandwich two toasted ham
and cheese sandwiches

Jeremy Harper counted to a million in 2007
Jeremy Harper of Birmingham Alabama
who had a pug called Skillet
and watched both his and his pugs weight
who danced the chicken dance when he got there
a great moment in internet history
and Craig said to Harvey this is how old you are
and marked three dots on a page
and this is how old grandma is and marked
another ninety five

it doesn't have to be your main identity
late afternoon autumn sunlit clouds of gnats
rounding the corner of my street on my bicycle
it doesn't have to be your main identity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aqCC2PVNcA

yesterday's reading

those trees reflect a lot of light

a clear morning when the curtains parted, then rain, then hot wind 

finished Oscar Schwartz's article on Falun Gong media 

a longish poem about ania walwicz and erections

coriander, cat piss, crushed rocket, parsley, mint

we strung a wire rope to train a wisteria away from the tree 

via a Court Green list, WCW's Pastoral 

a bluish green / properly weathered

arctic mint, toothpaste green - what is dog-lime

scurvy dog lime and chilli soda

it's a soft drink and it's made in Gympie - what's Gympie -

Gympie is a town in Queensland - where the gymps live

deep green and oily nettle silage tea, sweet peas, new garlic

a documentary about Andre the Giant bulked out with Hulk Hogan backfill

guardian screenshot

 

review

Sunday Herald Sun, October 4 2020

I bought this for the St Kilda news, a habit I got from a friend. After a good win, buy the Herald Sun. It was a good win on Saturday, and on Sunday I went to the supermarket and bought some milk and some Herald Sun. 

On the front page are Dan Butler's streaming mane and the stars of this issue: Schapelle Corby, Donald Trump and Nicole Kidman.

There are 96 pages plus inserts; 16 pages of AFL, 8 more of sport and 3 of racing plus a liftout 8-page form guide. The digital scales weigh it at 575 grams.

Race 4 at Kyneton: Poet Warrior, sired by Wordsmith, up against Prosecutor, Cyclone Sally, Raphael, Call me Cain, Pinot Party, Seabaz and Pommy Bird.* 

Two Harcourt boys on page 5 stand in a field of green rye. Never has their dad seen so many blossoms on their apple trees. (The apples here are blooming too.) 

The bulk of the paper's advertising is for Coles - a front page banner, a double spread on page 2 and 3, sponsored "Health" content, recipes and quizzes, a full back pager. 'Value the Australian way' goes their line.

A full page paid by the racing industry to say they're 'Here for the Horses' (and not because of).

There's one page of classifieds, which is 50% ads for News Corp's online classifieds. There are 11 "paid" print ads, of which two are in the traditional format of yore: three lines and a telephone number (both for share accomodation in Frankston). Happy 100th birthday Jean Hinton. 

Peta Credlin precedes the editorial with textual analysis of Dan Andrews testimony: 'The "personally" could well be important; it could read as though he has an idea of where the decision came from but that personally he wasn't there at the time it was made.' Who, she wants us to know, reassured the police chief?**

An excerpt from Jimmy Barnes' memoir about stripping for charity. Even Jimmy Barnes feels icky about Jimmy Barnes naked. Nicole Kidman was there.

A page of pets and weather and a page of posing animals - hippo, baboon, giraffe, red panda from Melbourne Zoo snapped by Melbourne zookeepers. Trad pictorial fare.

Letters to the editor from Jim, Bob, Conrad, Debbie, James, Rudi, Ricko, Tony, Bob, Jim, Greg, John, Wendy, Tony, Jennie, Robyn, Julia, Niall, Nige, Mick, Stan and Bob.

M Murphy from Sale hasn't seen her formerly FIFO-ing husband for a long time, Rudi Michelson grew up in Oakleigh.

Schapelle Corby grows and sells resin clocks and still sees shadows behind trees.

Matt Preston does sausage rolls and gets in 'pizzazz', 'Dadaist' and 'sticky, fatty deliciousness.'

A full pager for some buy now pay later service, then a photo of 'Rebecca Strickland at home with some of the purchases she bought using Afterpay'.

Investor tips: buy Coles Group, sell Bank of Queensland.

There's poems in the puzzles - a verse 'attributed to Ali Ibn Abu Talib' and a rhyming riddle. Puzzles are at the end of the TV Guide named 'Binge' and get harder the further you go. Turn the paper upside down to read the riddle's answer: plead.

As in Nicole Kidman pleads with Hugh Grant to return to acting.

The Bradford Exchange convincingly promotes a $99.98 Faberge-inspired egg featuring a family of wrens. Open the egg to reveal a blue wren while a hidden chime plays The Wind Beneath my Wings.

Ethan Hawke says he was born to act.

According to Stratco's insert, December 5 is National Patio Day. Dennis Cometti is National Patio Day Ambassador. 

On the cover of the Body + Soul insert, celebrity metereologist Magdalena Roze sits, bare legs wide open,  a wicker basket of pink lady apples the focus of her crotch hidden by strategic skirt. Roze holds an apple in her left hand, knife in right, and cuts a slice towards herself. Previously sliced slices lie browning in her skirt. Beneath beige painted toes a creamy shagpile rug; behind her white off-the-shoulder puffy shirt, beigey brown distressed cotton cushions backed up against a stack of split redgum 

'[D]uring lockdown,' Angela Mollard writes, '[Magdalena's] images of homemade focaccia gardens prompted many to go on a breadmaking binge'.

In the travel insert 'Escape', Craig Silvey writes about the summer forests of Denmark. He too was so annoying that he was left by the side of the road by his parents. He too saw his vagrant life ahead of him, before his parents drove back to rescue him so that he could then write Jasper Jones. 

On the back cover of 'Escape', a full page reminding us that The Walking Dead returns Monday on Binge.

One of these is made every week.

* Postscript 1: Cyclone Sally got the win (form guide: 'place hope'); Poet Warrior ('strong claims') was a scratching.

**Postscript 2: It was Eccles!

nostalgia

This is a pleasant time of the year the week before daylight savings starts, I wish there wasn't that rip that's coming on the weekend, maybe the curfew was taken down because Dan could see the irony of holding a curfew while releasing daylight savings: govt holding back time, govt giving time.

When daylight savings is near I always remember a piece in The Age by Paul Mitchell, and the simpatico feeling and envy I had that I didn't get to make the same point, though it's a seasonal argument ignored, that bolstered its target: The rip off's been bought a month forward! Since when? 

I have a memory of Flinders St Station after work at the stamp shop, the light across the platforms, a peace. And then it disappeared, the end of work was now some other time, there was no gradual fade,  time had been shunted. But that must have happened in an October, so I can't compare the days. September mornings are almost through. Late afternoons in October will never be the same.

Am I a morning person or a late afternoon person? I fall asleep at four to the radio. Last night M turned the clocks and there was a little fight about what time it would be tomorrow. And when it got to be today, this evening, I pointed at the clock when the boy went to bed and said, You remember last night? Look, it is still nine o'clock.

SPG

Sparse microbial populations persist from seafloor to basement in the slowly accumulating oxic sediment of the oligotrophic South Pacific Gyre (SPG).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17330-1

Sphenopalatine ganglion (SPG) stimulation for the treatment of cluster headaches.

The Sydney Protein Group is made up of protein scientists and students

Simon Property Group

SPG-8260. Sync Pulse Generator. Outputs Tri-level and Color Black on 4 independent pairs of outputs with a dedicated AES output.

SPG 3-Axis Gimbal (Splash-Proof Version), with Smart Portrait Mode, Precisely Adaptable for iPhone, Samsung, HUIWEI Smar

Speckleplethysmographic (SPG) Estimation of Heart Rate Variability During an Orthostatic Challenge.

SPG sent priests and schoolteachers to America to minister to the colonists and take the message of the gospel to enslaved Africans and native Americans.

Sturdy 2-finger parallel gripper for heavy components and a broad part range, equipped with robust guides.

Each new SPG is assigned a unique identification number and password. These must be kept confidential.

The SPG5/6/7 of sapphire diaphragm gauges consists of capacitance pressure sensors that use sapphire as the pressure-sensing element.

Shropshire Patients' Group (SPG) is a volunteer network that represents, supports and encourages Patient Groups in medical practices in Shropshire.

SPG - Snake Pit Gym, Rockhampton City. 1.2K likes. Home of CQs biggest and top ranked amateur and professional MuayThai fighters.

SPG will mature and validate a unique, chemical-free, and cost-effective technology preventing sea lice infestation in salmon farms

SPG SUPPOSI-BASE™. Product No: 2532 2532. Description: A fatty-acid base consisting of a blend of saturated polyglycolysed glycerides of strictly vegetable

Submersible Pressure Guage. An SPG can either be a mechanical gauge connected by a hose that reads the pressure in bar (metric) or psi (imperial, pounds per square inch) in your tank, or it ...

SPG. Special Plastic Grease. Special Plastics Compatible Grease is a synthetic grease offering outstanding low temperature performance

Saskatchewan Pulse Growers is a Pulse Crop Development Board that is accountable to and funded by growers.

Screenshot of a screenshot of SPG
from https://tv.avclub.com/the-young-ones-flood-1798181145

Community Stable Complex

 

 

mango education

Last night, while the brown rice was on, and before reheating the night before's sweet potato curry, I read a deal of the latest Australian Poetry Anthology (volume 8), which arrived in the mail the day before. There are many mangoes in this book, I thought, that and Ernest Hemingway references. Those would be John Donne references I later realised. Flicking through again to confirm, I only found four mangoes, two of which are mango trees. But the poems with "mango" in them are placed close together.

On Radio National this morning, Fran Kelly interviewed a mango farmer representative from the Northern Territory (Leo Skirlos) about FIFO Pacific fruit pickers. As soon as the Vanautuans get off the plane they're heading straight to the quarantine camps, said Leo. There is no lurgy in Vanautu, there are other diseases, but no lurgy. How will you keep the workers safe, asks Fran. Oh, if a family gets it they'll be staying in the same hut. Fly in the workers, pick the fruit so it doesn't fall to the ground, give them the disease to take home. Ship the mangoes to Victoria. Keep the mangoes safe.

Screenshot taken while undertaking training
via the Australian Government Department of Health Covid-19 Learner Portal, April 2020

Joan Aiken

Whenever I see a Joan Aiken book in an op shop I buy it.
There is always a sentence in a Joan Aiken story that shows something from the world I never knew.
I wish I collected the examples I see.
The first time I noticed this was reading Five Children and It,
which isn't by Joan Aiken, it's by Eleanor Nesbit.
Whenever I see an Eleanor Nesbit book I haven't read I buy it.
If I did collect these examples, where would I store them?
In a card file, on this post? 'This post is a collection of examples of things from stories I've read about the world that were totally new.'
If I write it down I don't have to remember it, but I have to remember the feeling
or know where to look to find it again.
I have tried collecting things before. I came to the conclusion you only need two of something for it to be a collection. This is called desultory.
I promised to myself not to write in Google anymore.

- August 2019

to the tune of

To the tune of Saturday night by Cold Chisel: Covid 19.

To the tune of Shutdown by Australian Crawl: Lock down.

To the tune of Summer Breeze by Seals & Croft or Stylus, I don't know which version is in my head, the one that's had more airtime I guess, Seals & Croft have a toy piano intro, Stylus a flexatone, and it's jasmine blowing through my mind not echoes - Geraldine (but only when I hear Ms Doogue on the radio) and: Quarantine.

The introduction of the wikipedia entry on flexatone reads like a flexatone sounds...

Though it's cited as appearing, I can't hear the flexatone in this youtube version of Funkadelic's One Nation Under Groove that LaToya Jackson commented on:

A Norton ad appeared before the video, parodying Banksy's efforts of One Nation Under CCTV.

What do I mean by efforts?

Soft Rock. Last night I watched the last half of Escape from Alcatraz which has many scenes of Clint Eastwood picking away at rotting concrete.

Back to homeschooling today.

I own a flexatone.

Quiet Corner galeolaria neap tide 7 July 2020

Quiet Corner wet black rocks neap tide 7 July 2020

Quiet Corner sea grass neap tide 7 July 2020

mental fitness

I turned on the telly at ten this morning. Wayne Carey was on sunrise talking up his hair therapy treatment and how hard it was for himself as a local celebrity to go see a psychologist. He'd always been physically fit, Wayne said, but never mentally fit.

Over on SBS world movies was a film from Fiji about a woman living with a man with dwarfism who might not have been her husband. There was a scene where her family comes into her house and tries to talk her back home. She says I'm not going. Later there was a scene where the man scrubbed the woman's shoulders with a large green leaf.

This afternoon I checked the St Kilda website for videos on the weekend's win, and an ad supporting mental fitness came up, spruiking Lynx deodorant. I took a screenshot but didn't save it. I searched "lynx mental fitness" for the ad, and there it was. Another result was a website selling four day "adventures" pretending to be a sniper in a Slovenian forest.

I didn't go outside at all today. There were sunshowers, and someone cut down a tree with a chainsaw nearby. In the evening a currawong did some singing

It's the evening now, and we are each on our individual screens.

furtive photo

There was this cat-face pillow in the back of a silver car and I stopped, stepped onto the naturestrip and pulled out my camera. Across the road I saw two people on a porch, smoking, watching me. I took my photo, knowing they were in the corner of the picture and walked away hot-cheeked, feeling as if I was being followed. Maybe this was their car and they put the cat-face pillow there to lure passersby. Notice how their bin's out? Green rubbish was sometime last week, but maybe they always leave it there.

Look across the road. The guy in the beige jacket across the road with the camera. He's on the naturestrip. He’s going to take a photo of us. We're sitting on the porch having a cup of tea! Off he shuffles. He knows we saw him. He’s going to walk the whole way down the street with his hands like that, like he’s stolen something.

Excuse me? Have you got permission? You can't go taking my photo without permission. / But you're a cat pillow. / Have you got permission? / Who do I ask? / Me. / You're a cat pillow. / Yes, and you have to ask my permission. / How? / How do you think? By asking me. Can I take your photo, please. / But I'm talking to you in my head. I'm imagining this conversation. / That's right, I'm the talking cat pillow. In your head.

=

How to take random photos of people without their permission, or how to ask someone's permission I was thinking when I saw the family on their bicycles in the middle of the road, grandparents, Dad, daughter on a white-tyred, pink bike. She'd stopped to do something and the whole family just straddled their bikes in the middle of the road waiting for her to get back on her bike. The grandfather gave me a look, probably because I was looking at them. A car had to swerve around them. I turned away, kept walking, looked at fresh concrete landscaping in a front yard. 

Once at Oakleigh Market I saw someone with an SLR around her neck photograph a basket of red capsicum. The stall holder got really angry at her. You have to buy these she said. But she took the photo and ran off. 

furtive photo

On the other side of the picket fence of this twin townhouse a man in his front yard was wiping down the dark metal frame of a glass-topped table. When I stood in the driveway to capture the astroturf sculpture I made sure the bushes at the front of the house obscured me from the man and his table.

imaginary review

I saw before getting in the car to get to the pizza restaurant
http://jacket2.org/commentary/our-radar-ride-alice-notley
I took a Daniel Johnston CD with me and at the foot of the street
with the margarita sunset thick on the horizon over the park
It's Over It's Over playing through I thought that's a good idea
write an imaginary review of Alice Notley. There's no other
way I'm going to get to read that book, I have a copy of the sonnets
but never bought no Notley from Collected Works. And now
I shall write the next part of my review with the Dvorak keyboard
C cmaicb.e pcidycbi yr Hajt.y2 abe o.becbi yd.m ydco ncbtv
Ancj. bryn.f-o yddcpyc.yd xrrt co d.p ucb.oy f.y oaf yd. xngpxo
Back to Qwerty: instead of I remember, I imagine. When I
get the pizza and gnocchi bolognese, there's a car pulling out
in front of me, so I eat a slice of molten margarita salty and soft
with Aint No Woman Gonna Make a George Jones Outta Me
whatever that means, DJ repels Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers
feeds him acid. Driving home with one hand down a side street
I dictate in my head: I imagine this is also part of the review.
On a table in the pizza restaurant was a poem in black marker:

This Table is Not in Use.

com post

I'd left the compost bucket outside after dark, brought it in to do the dishes.
On the lip of the bucket was a big cockroach, a bushie, that dropped to the floor.
I scooped it up, popped it back in the bucket and dropped a used teabag on it.
There was an earwig in there too and a little cockroach, a German, on the lip.
I watched the roaches try to climb the slimy sides of the bucket as I washed
mugs and plates, scraping tinned corn kernels and corn chip crumbs,
then I took them out to the compost and left the bucket outside.

last night's viewing

Omega Man
The trailer made me wish we'd watched this instead of Will Smith's version. The motorbike stunt down stadium stairs is jagged, and Rosalind Cash wears a leather suit. Bright red blood.

Westworld
I'd seen this one at the Astor (the trailer that is). Starring the Dad from Little House on the Prairie, a scary image of some Roman bust in a stream, Yul Brynner's shiny contacts and a convincing rattler, also bright red blood.

Soylent Green
Naturally. But this was not the trailer with the refrain I like to repeat around the house from time to time: What is the secret of Soylent Green. R asked, what is Soylent Green and we said you'll have to watch the movie. With Edward G Robinson and thrillseeker Chuck Connors who was also in:

Flipper
Wherein Chuck promises son he'll kill any dolpin who gets in the way of his nets. Even Flipper? Even Flipper. But the kid rescues the dolphin. M said she watched this every afternoon, the TV show that is.

The New Adventures of Flipper
This one's set on an island, but it doesn't star Chuck, even though the voiceover promises excitement for any red-blooded boy or Dad. There's underwater caves and green bananas and Flipper flips a fish to a girl. The voiceover promises it's like a dream.

Dracula
We were getting the hang of watching trailers so we looked this one up because K told us about a meme about armadilloes in the movies that apparently no one knew about armadilloes until they appeared in the original Dracula. There's no armadilloes in the preview, only floppy bats. What did he do to you? He made me drink...

Freaks
Also directed by Todd Browning, but not so much of a trailer more a couple of scenes cut together, punters looking into a box, a lady screaming, two small people having a tiff and the small man flirting with tall lady. Viewers also watched:

Them!
See the whole film in two and half minutes! From teletype tickertape technology to bazooka igniting pool of oil! Comes with a catchy acrostic: Terror Horror Entertainment Monsters! R felt sorry for the giant ants and this afternoon said she wanted to watch the movie. You've seen it already I tried to persuade. Directed by Gordon Douglas or Douglas Gordon who also made:

Viva Knievel
Evel's first movie vehicle, also starring his stars and stripes motorbike and his haircut, Lauren Hutton in a jumpsuit, Leslie Nielson in a porsche and Red Buttons, who joins Rip Torn and Nique Needles in my venn diagram slash pantheon of actors with unnames for names. The theme tune is sing-around-the-house-able and there's a motorbike stunt down stadium stairs.

today's reading

Day of feeling poor memory.

This morning before work Gavin Yuan Gao in Stilts journal

                                [...]I hear summer moult

into autumn, persimmons untethered
               from stalwart branches thudding
                          to the ground like bells of flesh.

I don't know if persimmons do that - they're fairly firmly tethered to the branch and will stay there long after the orange leaves have gone, so long as the birds don't get them; and 'like bells of flesh', isn't fruit flesh already? An invisible simile?

Cycling, pondering over the persimmons, then an old man in business shirt on footpath with pendulous belly.

And Dženana Vucic also in Stilts.

and i wade out with this summer’s froglets  
skipping against my shins

Like a friend's memory of her grandparent's rice paddy in Sendai, covered in frogs. This one is structured semantically.

Then Peter Porter in Meanjin which I could half not work out - for example, why 'Yeats's Nobel head' and what is 'the long tree of light'?

Waited in the car for takeaway burgers with Be With, Forrest Gander with the inside light. Put book in glovebox so as not to rest greasy bags on it. Made mental note to remember to bring it inside so it didn't cook in the car.

After doing dishes, a mug of tea to the radio, Marlon Williams singing aria from Tannhäuser.

Then Happy Gilmore while trying to recall the actor playing the nasty orderly's name, to add to the list of unlocked names: Julian Assange, Le Corbusier, Kenneth Rexroth, and Fiona something, still to be solved.

accidental found poem

obstacle course

correct exposure

The pipes are in. Is the scope open? The ridge of the dome aligns to a pale piece of sky. An amateur astronomer within is looking at the sun.

overexposure

Tomorrow, if the weather is right I will try taking another photograph of the secret backyard observatory that has become in view since the music teacher's house was demolished. The day was too bright today and the white observatory was made invisible. Soon a new house will appear and only people living there will be able to see it like this.

friendliness

If you don't do it Victorians will die, said Dan Andrews on channel ten tonite. He ended a serious and clear address sounding like he was holding hostages. I walked past him once on Centre Rd Bentleigh, he scowled at me. I walked past Joan Kirner once too, on Collins St, near the Kino, she gave me and my friend a warm smile. But she's long gone.

Milk - it's legal.

What would you do if milk was outlawed?

vague or ill-defined

Sometimes ad copy works against itself unintentionly.
Febulous sounds more nebulous than fabulous to me.
Hidden in the palm tree, 'Ts & Cs apply'.

the age-old question

Books I didn't read in 2019

The red clothbound at right is Clancy of the Overflow.

The Jindyworobaks anthology has a poem about weeds and other invasives: "Prime Minister To Go Home" by Paul Grano.

King of the Air by Herbert Strang had a postcard of the Matterhorn glued inside its cover I tore out.

The Dutton Penguin on Eyre: Hero as Murderer came with a sheet of mint stamps.

M read the Dickey and said it was horrible. I got a fair way through the Chabon and a chapter or two of Sent For You Yesterday. You Can Learn English was in Polish.

The Art of Bowling smelt of shoe polish.

I abandoned The Night Land.

The 'Burbs

width of The 'Burbs = ~ two smartphones

This, a jar of date balls and a tin of hand-shaped homemade marzipan figures - an unko, a rat, an ice cream, a knotted-roll - were given me for Xmas.

Thames & Hudson's marketing line on the cover 'A visual journey through the Australian suburbs' would read more accurately: 'through Melbourne's south eastern suburbs'.  There's no captions in the book, I doubt there's any pictures of Launceston suburbs here, but there's plenty of Bentleigh.

There is at least one pic from Fitzroy. It's of the Kosovo TV repair shop, which I thought, not knowing Fitzroy too well, might be in somewhere in Sydney, given the phone number on the shop's window begins with 4. But a google search proved me wrong, and I learnt David Wadelton also takes photos of fading milkbars, compositions of white cast-iron balustrade and sentinel shrubs.

I like the fading milkbars, compositions of white cast-iron balustrade and sentinel shrubs, but am not so keen on all the vintage cars in The 'Burbs, but that's my taste. Still there are photos here that shouldn't have made the cut, most blaringly a pair of rainbow lorikeets on a twig, and this gives the book the feeling that maybe there wasn't much of a cut, and that what the book needed was a photo editor.

Perhaps the lorikeets are still up on Walvisch's @sublurb instagram, maybe there's a clue in the comments as to why the photo was included, but I would need an account to log in and see if there's a discussion about the late 90s drought, and how before then lorikeets were an unusual sight in Melbourne, but that may not be how instagram comments work.

As an insta book, The 'Burbs belongs to the genre of books publishers now publish because of the internet. One Red Paperclip being an exemplar from the early 2000s, Grumpy Cat a more recent standout. I won't be donating my copy any time soon, but I expect to see The 'Burbs on op shop shelves in coming years.

Walvisch judged the 2019 Glen Eira Council My Brother Jack photo competition on the theme Life in Glen Eira. My entry, a photo of a tuft kikuyu grass sprouting halfway up a power pole, didn't seem to make the show reel at the small exhibition for the awards held at council's gallery, even though it seemed every other entry did, including multiple pictures of tweens posing in a laneway. I stood for twenty minutes watching that reel and anticipating the slightly embarrassed feeling when my photo would appear, but nothing. Somehow it didn't make the cut.

Are the bushfires Scott Morrison?