Troll fishing

or trawling

takes troll bait
baits trolls take?

you sure you want?
no meal they make

but throw it back?

leave on bank
keep for bait

like honey flies
or ants ants
trolls draw trolls

but how to get
the nibble?

greatest hits and so so ones

A measure of best ofs and the very best ofs is the amplitude of taper towards the end of the CD. Cover versions, remixes. Happy Mondays' Greatest Hits is the benchmark (and should've been released as a cassingle). The Beach Boys' 'Made in the USA' is going fine until four fifths through it hits a cover. After that the hits, from somewhere in the late 70s, aren't that familiar and the peachy beachy feeling flees. That's the taper. Granted, every Beach Boys song is, in itself, a cover - these songs have been heard so often they've become covers of themselves. The Beach Boys could just as well be the Beachy Boys, nay the original Beachy Boys.

After the less familiar tunes of 'Made in the USA' come songs famous bands put out when they've long done their dash that they hope 'fans' will buy because they've been recorded by a famous band they thought they liked, to wit Rock to the Rescue. Often these songs are covers. Excepting Happy Mondays' number, they're always at the end of the album, filling out that extra half hour the good inventor of the CD created so he could play Beethoven's nth symphony the whole way through without having to get out of his leather recliner to flip sides. Finally come the bonus tracks. I think I love Lee Remick is the best song on the Go Betweens best of. Unfortunately, 'Made in the USA' has no Kokomo.

Fortune Cookie form

'There is sufficient space 
for about 120 characters
(including spaces) on 3 lines.'

Sard Harker

There's a good chance with an out-of-print book that you could be the only person on the planet reading it. I might be the first person to have read Sard Harker out loud for seventy... I don't know how many years, maybe ever.

I had to learn off something by John Masefield
about the sea that he wanted to sail a ship on,
heavily stressed. I thought all poets old and bald.
Laurie Duggan, Adventures in Paradise.

There are lots of adventures in Sard Harker - though they take place on land, not sea. There's abandoned pueblo adventures, desert adventures, high sierra adventures, fixed wrestling match adventures, chicken fight, cantina, poblacion, mining town, cougar, stingray, silver train at midnight, cañon hunt, rotten rock, waking up with a snake on your chest, and pages upon pages of wading through swamp adventures.

Another good thing about reading old books is coming across odd spellings. In Sard canyon is spelt with a ñ.

Title of book = name of hero. Might Masefield have been trying to do a Conrad? Sard never quite manages a Nostromo; he's always just scraping through, getting weaker, getting into worse and worse shit, never winning, staying alive but only just.

I was very proud of myself in 1999 or so when I finished reading Nostromo (to myself), proud I'd read such a long book, a full-price purchase (probably from Hawthorn Readings) prompted by the silver-ish cover and the sticker on the front that would've read, 'One of the top 100 books of the Twentieth Century' or somesuch. And I read the whole book, me, and I can still picture Nostromo slipping into the waters at midnight to apprehend a sailboat just like in Swallows and Amazons.

I've not yet got to the end of Sard Harker; the sentences are awful to read out loud, syntax stiff and repetitive; and it's such a shaggy story, I don't trust I'm going to get anywhere when I do.

La Fontana

La Fontana (the fountain (at right))

La Fontana is Italian or Spanish for fountain. It's also a block of flats in Glenhuntly Rd, Elsternwick with a fountain out the front. La Fontana's water feature is middle right, though it's difficult to make out in this photo. The fountain was working the day I took this snap - several thin streams of water curve approximately a metre and a half into the air from a sprinkler centred in a concrete pond around 4m in diameter. I ride past La Fontana's fontana three mornings a week and always check if she's on. Lately no.

Joie de Vivre

Joie de Vivre as it once was

Joie de vivre is French for corps d'esprit, the joy of living, the very essence of existence, and is probably the name of a perfume. It's also a block of flats in the Avenue, Windsor. In the photo, taken from a real estate website archive, you can see the sign affixed to the steel picket fence. The sign reads Joie de Vivre. I used to walk past this block of flats most days and look at the sign and wonder about joie de vivre. I remember there was also big cursive lettering on the flats' front in brassy plastic that read the same. But the other day when I went to take a photo there were no signs. The flats had been given a paint job and the signs removed. Joie de vivre is no more for joie de vivre has gone.

Santa Monica

Santa Monica is a town in California, a saint named Monica, and a block of flats in Carnegie on a street that runs alongside the train line, not far from Carnegie station. If you lived on the second floor of Santa Monica you could see your 9.49 to Cranbourne arrive 8 minutes late while eating your toast. These flats have no front fence, clipped pines and grass mown tight, although the shrub on the right is quite choked. I don't know what Monica is patron saint of, but she was a character in Friends which I have watched episodes of.