Pawly

Those of you who follow my cohabitator's blog will know that there's been some pretty lyrical regurgitation on the Harlot Heights feline front. The great cat spew of 2010 seems to have done its worst, thank Dog. The pertinent household appurtenances have been soaked almost to the point of disintegration in Napisan, and Harriet and Beatrice are now so frisky that if it weren't for the garbage bin full of vomit-sodden rags I'd be wondering if I dreamed poor Harriet's nine up-chucks in six hours or Beatrice's spectacular stomach-to-modem bile jettison.

Now that we're over the worst, and lest we give the impression that the cats are nothing but trouble, fur-balls, and pre-masticated kibble, I want to state in public the immense contribution Harriet and Beatrice make to the common weal.

For instance, you're trying to write an essay on Mr Darwin's Beagle diary?

Beatrice has got it covered.

You're trying to sew a shirt?

Harriet's right onto it.

You're trying to work out how to turn the rug that's drying on the clothes-horse because you had to wash it after Harriet vomited on it into a cat hammock?

Sorted.

My wonderful ma emailed my sisters and me today to point out that it'd only take three votes to bring wee Bea up to a grand total of TWO HUNDRED VOTES in the Who Wants to Be a Ten-Thousand-Dollar-aire? Whiskas catfood competition. Beatrice currently lags behind her chief competitor, Theodora, by 11312 votes, and the election ends tonight, but I have no doubt , no doubt what-so-ever, that with our electorial powers combined we can catapult Bea into first position. Metaphorically catapult her, that is, as opposed to the literal catapulting that's been going on in the catly oesophagus lately. No, actually, that was metaphorical catapulting too.

P.S. Speaking of elections: I hope the Geej gets herself elected, especially given the alternative, but it was pretty darn disappointing hearing her raise the ol "People Smugglers are Evil People" line on Sunday night. Surely she doesn't think so? Is it the helping to save persecuted people's lives that's supposed to be evil, or the being paid for it? So if - when - Gillard does win the election, my joy will not be unalloyed. It'll be so not unalloyed that I'm not even certain it'll be joy. If Beatrice, on the other hand, wins the election, my joy will be 100% pure joy containing nothing but joy. And disbelief. And thoughts of a new rug.

Vowel-free five-letter-word appears in dictionary, delights scrabble players

I got the new Macquarie Dictionary yesterday. Fifth edition and all. It turns out that "grrl" is now an Official Word. Also "grrrl". I got rhythm! I got syzygy! I got my grrrl, who could ask for anything more!

Milk Poem, the sensible

Finding God in coffee cups
brewed by stovetop percolator
so that the burnt coffee edges of God fill the house
and if one were pregnant, one would heave at the stench, I see:

that God leaves a brown ring at the base of the mug,
the stained china, bone china,
the molten ash of the bones of the ox
or where oxen are short, the bones of brown cow Bess.
We pour Bess's milk into Bess's old bones,
and bugger her baby, pardon my French.

Bone china and jelly and marshmallows the pink of cherry blossom,
all these are brewed from the bones of cows.

Reading the tea leaves, when they're not made of tea,
but dried-out beans from the dark-roast jar,
and their smutch on the mug is a fine dark line,
I study the Lord and wonder when.

Milk Poem, the silly

The milk of human kindness
Comes in many different forms:
like not teasing colour blindness
with strange chromatic storms,
or playing on your bagpipes
outside the boarders' dorms,
or other such impertinences -
for which, refer to common senses.
The milk of human kindness,
Like other dairy things,
Comes curdled, cooled, homogenised,
Whipped and drizzled on fruit pies.
The wise will know the wheys and whys
The lactic roundabouts and swings.
The milk of human kindness
Is the very sort of treat
To please the sort of person
Who likes a kindly teat,
The very sort of person
Who digs the sweetest dugs,
Prefers a nipply sympathy
To flowers, words or hugs.

iI

Wunna my all-time fave internetians (mine, and anyone's who digs Texan tacophile on-line feminism) has been embarking on a one-brain-campaign to illustrate the rhetorical limitations of the first person singular nominative pronoun, which pronoun is the great columnar phallogothingy, I. Around this phallogothingy, on this blog, have clustered divers and interesting claims. Such as:

1. that "I" is redundant, that putting an idea (e.g., X) under a name on a blog proclaims X to be the belief and the opinion and yea, the very synapse-spawn of the writer, regardless of whether or not the writer prefaces her claim, "X", with, "I asseverate that...". Also sprach mine high school English teacher, steering his feckless charges into the faux-objectivist rhetorical quagmires of agentless passive verbs, polysyllabic Greco-Latinate nouns, and nary a first - or second - person pronoun across the entire barren tundra of our Thomas Hardy essays. From this quagmire the emergence of the trusty Alexis is yet to transpire (to give you a fairly representative, if horrific, example of the sort of construction my high school English teacher encouraged);

2. that an "I think etc" disarms the idea, implies a subjective claim, when the author actually means an objective one: and therefore either weakens the claim or - and this is what makes "I think" rhetorical genius, imho - disables objections. Whereas you might be the world's most cogent authority on why X is untrue, there's no arguing with the claim I think X;

3. that personal narrative enjoys a long and illustrious history alongside such feminist activities as outing the oppressor and asking one's Sister to pass the muffins. This is whether the oppressor is one's boss, close relation, next-door neighbour, bus-driver, or local aluminium-based vaginal deodorant merchant. And also regardless of the moral status of the muffins.

Anyway, someone should tell all this to Apple. iMac was one thing; iBook, on the other hand (no, the same hand), was another. iPod sounded so cute - in a cetacean, beany sort of way - that I was beyond protest; iPad, meanwhile, so gloriously naive to the suggestion of menstrual equipage I almost want to buy a gross of them. But come the day that Apple manufactures its first wireless hominid central nervous system, it's going down in a welter of controversy. iI? I mean, really.