Jerry Jarvis' Wig

Japamart Review

2010-04-15T22:06:00.005+09:30

Do not trust them. They will try to rip you off if they can. Yes, they give access to the Japanese online market which is Yahoo not Ebay but charge a hefty commision and use an artifial exchange rate in their favour as well. But then they use other tactics to rip you off as well.

This is what happened to me. I won 2 Denon DL 103 PRO cartidges for Yen31,700. In the auction picture there was two boxes pictured, which means 2 cartridges. In the item description there was 2 at Yen31,70o. I bought and received only one cartridge.

When I queried Japamart about this they gave me a spiel about Yen31,700 being the price for one cartridge. Google did a pretty good translation and it was clearly 2 cartridges on the auction item. I even printed it out in Japanese and passed across the Japanese speakers I know. They agreed the auction was for two DenonDL 103 Pro cartridges for Yen31,70o.

Japamart sent one and tried to argue that I didn't understand.

I love Denon cartridges. They are maybe the single most wonderful thing that has come out of Japan. And I have so much respect for the artisans who designed and made them. While I write this I am listening to a Denon DL304. It is magic. Made by an artisan who knew exactly what he was doing. Respect to those artisans, so much respect.

Meanwhile, Japamart tries to rip me off and has no respect for what they are selling. I would love to meet the Japanese artisan who designhed the DL304.

Nigel Kennedy Concert March 2010 - QPAC's Response

2010-03-14T19:50:00.002+09:30

In the interests of transparency I post below the response I received from QPAC. It seems it's all Nigel Kennedy's fault, and QPAC, the event managers, will take no responsibility. The fact remains that the sound was bad and complaints, not just mine, were made on the night. I know from Stuart at work who has miked the QPAC concert hall a couple of times that it's as scary as anything to walk in cold to a place like that with its stunning acoustics. But then you ask the onsite technicians, "Can you tell me a bit more about the way the acoustics work here?" and the answer Stuart got was, "No, we didn't design the place."

"Dear Mr Maloney Thank you for your email. I took the liberty of forwarding your comments onto our Event Manager for the Concert Hall. He confirmed that it was Nigel's touring sound operator and touring fold back sound desk operator that were in control of the sound on the night. Earlier in the afternoon, all systems were checked and the technicians were happy prior and during the performance. We will forward your comments onto the touring company. QPAC appreciates and encourages all feedback and I thank you for taking the time to provide us with your comments. Regards
Kim Davis
Visitor Services Manager
Queensland Performing Arts Centre
PO Box 3567 SOUTH BANK QLD 4101
P: 3842 9180
F: 3844 1839
M 0434 606 318
E:kim.davis@qpac.com.au
W: www.qpac.com.au

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Denon Moving Coil Phono Cartridges

2010-03-12T18:58:00.003+09:30

Like a lot of people I'm a big fan of what Denon carts do. What they do fullstop. Then when you take price into account they seem to the best value for money around. If you shop wisely. The prices for Denon carts are quite often all over the shop, so here's a rundown of the range of prices I found on the internet in an idle moment.

DL103 UK pounds: 99 to 129; US dollars: 229 to 249

DL103R UK pounds: 212 to 289; US dollars: 369 to 379

DL103SA UK pounds: 382 to 449; US dollars: 399 to 499

DL301 US dollars: 299 to 329 -- no UK prices; this cart seems to be the poor cousin out of the whole range

DL304 UK pounds: 291 to 379!!!; US dollars: Pretty uniform at around 699.

DLS1 Us dollars: 849 to 949

DL110 UK pounds 139 to 149; US dollars 139 to 149!!!

DL160 UK pounds, pretty uniform at 169; US dollars 179.

No I didn't keep links to the companies selling. Sorry. And I haven't translated them into Australian dollars either. Far too much work and my brain is dead.

But for an Australian buyer of these carts, there are some really obvious things going on here.

Buy a DL103 from the UK.

Buy a 103R from the UK at the lower end or the US at the lower end.

Buy a DL103SA from the US; the UK prices for this cart are astonomical. It's a limited edition, only 1000 or was that 2000 made:) :) Maybe a joke on the consumer, but still I want one. (Try Galen Carol Audio).

Buy a DL304 from the UK. The US prices for this cart are fair. But for some reason this cart is undervalued in the UK. I've got one, it's brilliant. At the low end of the UK price it's a steal with the current Aussie exchange rate. (hint Mantra Audio)

DLS1 -- you'd need a bloody good reason for wanting one, but you can save $100 US by shopping around. I still haven't heard of this cart being available in the UK.

Both the DL110 and DL160 must be bought from the US. The prices for these carts between the UK and US defy the exchange rates.

Mostly all of the carts I have listed above will be cheaper if you buy overseas at the best price, including shipping, than buying in Australia. Ask the UK guys to give a price excluding VAT if it's not already listed. Mantra Audio does this. It has a great price on the 304, but not all its prices are the best.

Not all of these carts are available in Australia, but before you buy check out the price in Australia and tally up the shipping costs. Sometimes you get lucky.

Nigel Kennedy QPAC Concert Hall Brisbane 6 March 2010

2010-03-07T12:16:00.004+09:30

If I had been going to write anything about the Nigel Kennedy gig at the Concert Hall in Brisbane last night I would have expected it to be a string of superlatives with the word "brilliant" frequently repeated. Unfortunately, from where I was sitting in the balcony section the sound was so limp and undynamic, that it was near impossible to tell one instrument from another. It was sadly all a boring blur. Imagine if you can an old vinyl record played on a turntable with a worn needle through an amplify that has blown one channel. It was that good, you say. If only. It was much worse.

Complaints were made by several people during the break and in the second half of the concert the sound improved marginally. It was like they'd managed to fix the second channel of a still clapped out stereo system

Now the musicians can't in any way be responsible for this. They were clearly -- at least my eyes told me so -- putting their hearts and souls into the music. So what was it? At a guess, I'd say the stage had not been miked correctly to get the match between the music being played and the acoustics of the hall. Or perhaps some genius forgot to flick a certain switch on a certain console at the right time. Either way it was fucked.

People who pay good money to see a bunch of brilliant musicians in a beautifully designed concert hall deserve much better from the event organisers. And it's a downright injustice to the muscians not to treat their music with the respect it desrves. The blame rests with no one but the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC).

Hopefully QPAC will have spent the day running around working their butts off to rectify the problem. Nigel Kennedy plays Hendrix at tonight's concert. I've seen him do the Hendrix show in Sydney and it was brilliant. Let's see if QPAC can stuff it two night's in a row.

Chili Sauce

2010-02-08T20:59:00.003+09:30

It should be no surprise to anyone that after more than a year's absence JJ's Wig would suddenly burst alive again with a passion for Chili Sauce. I think Chilli Sauce with the double "l" is better but hell it's spelt with one 'l" on the bottle.

Now there are all sorts of Chilli Sauces in the world. Some are sweet and passionate upon first taste but post-coital all you are really getting is a sugary sweetness upon your tongue. It is like eating flummery for the true chilli lover. Others are killers, rough-edged, burn your tongue off, rip your throat out and dissolve your stomach Chilli Sauces. These were never meant to be eaten. They were actually designed for cleaning the ugly plaque off the bottom of your toilet bowl when bleach has failed. However, due to an oversight by our two major grocery chains, they did not end up in the household cleaning aisles where they rightfully belonged. But should you inadvertenly eat such a Chilli Sauce rest assured that its ability to cleanse the toilet bowl loses nothing by passing through your body. It would be advisable, however, to take youself off to a GP as soon as possible when you have cleaned the toilet with this method.

So, I hear you ask, where does that leave the serious Chilli eater who just needs a dash of fiery sauce to liven up his or her meal?

Up to now you had to make your own, painstakingly adding pinch of chilli after pinch of chilli until you had it just perfect, and often you cheated by using tomatoes and onions, to give the sauce body, but at the end of the process you knew you didn't have a true chilli sauce at all.

So is there another answer? There is. ABC Chili Sauce (Sambal Asli), made in Indonesia, and available in major super markets in the "foreign section". This little guy is the uncrowned king of Chilli Sauces. It's hot, true chilli hot, fiery even, with just a touch of sweetness, garlic and salt , and smooth, smooth, smooth. Try it on steamed potatoes and you'll never want to eat anything else again. Try it on anything and you'll get the same result. Drink it straight from the bottle and you will just want more.

It is not for the squeamish, not for the pansys who love their sweet Thai Chilli bloody dipping Sauce. ABC Sambal Asli is for true chilli lovers who don't give a damn about how dirty their toilet bowls are.

WARNING: During experiments carried out in the 1980s with my mate Brian I managed to prove that eating chilli is addictive. Brian was this tall lean guy who had an egg sandwich for lunch everyday of the week. One day, as he explained it to me, the lady at his favourite sandwich shop told him that they'd run out of ordinary egg sandwiches, but had plenty of curried egg left. Well, egg was egg as far as Brian was concerned and he took that curried egg sandwich and ate it. Pretty soon Brian was well-known in every Indian and Thai restaurant in town spending his money on chilli dish after chilli dish. The last time I saw Brian he had lost his job and moved back in with his mum. He had grown a long beard and his hair was all clumped and matted and he could hardly put two words together. The only thing that made him happy was the chilli crop he grew down the back of his mum's yard. He was eating them raw by then, including the seeds.

This is a true story. Please use Sambal Asli wisely. Enjoy.

A Musical Recipe by Erik Satie (1866 - 1925)

2008-09-03T21:40:00.003+09:30

Cefalophones

2 flutes with keys (F sharp)
1 alto overcoat (C)
1 duckbill (E)
2 stroke clarinets (G flat)
1 siphon in C
3 keyboard trombones (D flat)
1 bass in leather (C)
Chromatic tub in H

Instruments belonging to the remarkable group cefalophones, with 30 octaves extent, completely unperformable. An amateur in Vienna tried in 1875 to handle the siphone in C; after having jared with a piercing drill, the instrument burst, broke the spine on the executor and scalped him completely. Since then no one has dared to concern oneself with the powerful assets that cefalophones contain and the state has forbidden all schools teaching the instruments.

Remix Live!

2008-08-25T14:44:00.003+09:30

For the last few months, Wigger Lee Battersby (he's the Red Wigger) has been involved in the Remix My Lit project, where authors of the calibre of Kim Wilkins and Cate Kennedy have made available works to be recut and posted by members of the public. The Remix My Lit project climaxes in August with a live remixing event as part of the Festival of Melbourne.

Guests at the festival have been invited to bring their laptop or mobile phone and be part of a live multimedia remix event at Federation Square, where they can freely remix your work.

Remixers will find copies of the stories on the day or can access them in advance at the Remix My Lit Website - they can re-imagine and remix them - and then send the remixed short story to a mobile phone number. Using the Fed Sq SMS TV system the RML team will be publishing this flash fiction on the big screen at Federation Square as part of a live A/V set by ".M."

Readings of the stories have also been recorded by .M. and will be incorporated into her set, including video images inspired by the original stories.

All works created on the day will be posted to the Remix My Lit website and considered for publication in an accompanying print anthology.

If you are going to be in Melbourne for the festival we would love to see you at the event:

Date: Saturday 30 August 2008
Time: 3.30pm - 4.30pm
Venue: Federation Square - The Big Screen in the Plaza

For more info visit the official MWF program:
http://www.mwf.com.au/2008/content/mwf_2008_events.asp?name=3099

The Art of the Double Suck-in

2008-08-22T19:30:00.003+09:30

Paul Haines hit Geoffrey Maloney the other day with an email that made him realise that he might be falling into a pattern of not just telling silly stories for creative purposes, but telling silly old fart stories to anybody who will listen. The Art of the Double Suck-in is one of those stories:

Paul, your email reminds me of practical jokes we used to play at high school generally known as the "suck in" -- basically trying to convince someone of something that wasn't true, and once convinced the cry of "sucked in" would ring loud in the air. The height of this art was reached with the "double suck in" -- a very difficult thing to do. It involved the original victim of the suck-in (would it be suck-in-ee ?) turning the tables by adding additional information which lead to the suck-in-or believing that their lie was an actual truth at which the cry "Double suck-in" would go up. Sometimes this involved very subtle nuances and relied a lot on the personalities of the people involved to pull it off. Here's an obvious example complete with usual schoolboy obsessions.

The suck-in

Randy schoolboy 1:"Hey, guess what Mr Hardcox got caught by the headmaster rooting Miss Truelove in the sports storeroom."

Randy schoolboy 2: "Shit, man, I would never have guessed. He's such a creep and she's so fucking cute."

Randy schoolboy 1: "Sucked-in!"

The double suck-in:

Randy schoolboy 1: "Hey, guess what Mr Hardcox got caught by the headmaster rooting Miss Truelove in the sports storeroom."

Randy schoolboy 2: "Man, I knew they were gonna get caught one day. I saw them going at it after school last Tuesday, down behind the toilet block. It was disgusting. He's such a creep and she's so fucking cute."

Randy schoolboy 1: "You really saw them?"

Randy schoolboy 2: "Going at it like a couple of dogs."

Randy schoolboy 1: "Shit, wish I'd been there."

Randy schoolboy 2: "Sucked-in!"

As you can see a double suck-in is a far more complex play. It takes imagination, a quick brain and good verbal skills:) Whereas the single suck-in could be set-up well in advance even by the slow-witted. There is no record of a triple suck-in ever having succeeded.

Six Silly Stories

2008-08-22T18:56:00.003+09:30

"Six Silly Stories", an absurd collection of fantastical stories by Geoffrey Maloney and artwork by Diana Maloney, is shortly to be released from Elastic Press in the UK. Here's the author shot that Diana carefully constructed.

Australian Story - She's Not There

2008-07-14T20:27:00.003+09:30

I've been trying to get this published on the ABC site tonight but The Moderator appears to have difficulty in releasing it. I may have used the wrong words, but I suspect that I took the wrong angle that the ABC wanted me to take. So I'm realeasing it here. It won't make any sense unless you saw their god awful show.

What a tragic tale of bitchiness. How incredibly ugly it was to see those woman moaning about about their team who collapsed during the games and not one word of sympathy or empathy for what must have happened to their rowing partner during that horrible day. What horrible horrible people they are and they still can't get over and still don't care. Congratulations I guess to the ABC for getting these women to talk, but it would have been better if we didn't know about about them. Ugly, ugly people who are justifying themselves on the basis that win at all costs counts more than anything else.

Their joy at the end about Sally not making it to the Beijing olympics was simply disgusting.

Sam's Town - The Killers

2008-07-13T19:32:00.002+09:30

The Killers with their very first album burst onto the scene with iconclastic rock and pop. The very best of the Brit and US rock at the time. Great songs, great voice and a wonderful production.

I've spent the close to the last 12 months trying to make sense out of their second CD. But the production is now totally all pumped up guitars, the voice is lost and because of that that stories the songs might have told as well. The production is awful.

And there you have The Killers on the back of the album - a full on B&W photograph of these guys, dressed in black and wearing beards. Like they will be the American icons. Somebody got them and captured them and they went with it. Sad. It turned their specks of gold to specks of shit.

2008-07-01T11:37:00.000+09:30

GEORGE CARLIN

Goddamn, it’s been a year for losing genius’. Now George Carlin is dead, aged 71. Truth be told, he was never going to outlive George Burns, not with his lifestyle, but still, he was arguably one of the best three or four stand up comedians of the 20th century, and his passing represents a real loss to anybody who appreciates hard-bitten, precise observation. His wasn’t the fluffy nothingness of a Jerry Seinfeld, or the cozy reinforcement of a Tim Allen or Jeff Foxworthy. Carlin trod the same path as the likes of Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and Billy Connolly, challenging the perceptions of his audiences and the structural status quo of the culture around him. He was, by turns, savage, acerbic, loving, and radio-friendly, and yet managed to maintain his rage and sense of damnation through forty years and something like 20-odd albums. And he transcended age: my boys knew him from his appearances in movies like Dogma, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, and the Bill & Ted movies, and now they want to know more, to hear what he was all about.

I don’t own enough of his work: my predilection for collecting comedy albums on the original vinyl is shown up by Perth’s distance from anywhere meaningful for such endeavours. But what I have is brilliant indeed, and among my list of stuff to be rescued from house fires.

If you’ve not experienced his work before, there are lists of quotes all about. Here’s a couple for starters: here and here

On Chesil Beach

2008-06-30T21:33:00.002+09:30

Ian McEwan, the greatest novelist in the English language of all time? I suspect so. In terms of history McEwan's work will be remember. As he spans two centuries he might be be up for grabs in either one. Who knows?

Everything McEwan has written up to now has been brilliant. We might quibble about "Amsterdam" being a more minor work even though it won the Booker, but it was exceptionally clever. Certainly "Child in Time", "Enduring Love" and "Atonement" are all monumental works, spectacular in their pacing structure and far beyond, in terms of literary merit, than "Amsterdam" could ever aspire too. "Black Dogs" is a favourite of many.

So "On Chesil Beach" : As with most McEwan novels it's painful to read. This is what makes his work a delight and horror at the same time. He captures people in their most vulnerable moments like no one else. This he does wonderfully time and time again.

No plot synopsis with this one; you can get that anywhere on the internet. I'm more interested in character and structure with this book, and pacing too and it fails on all three.

Firstly the characters are rather boring. They didn't give McEwan enough space to work with. They were far too tight and British. This was exactly what he wanted but still his characters weren't working for him. As a result, he couldn't get his pacing to work, and then there was no real structure to the story that was worth mentioning.

The ending is tragic of course. It would not be a McEwan novel if it wasn't. But the greatest tragedy was the irresponsible and lazy ending where paragraph by paragraph he counts down the years of his main character. At age forty, Edward was like this. At age fifty he was like this. At age sixty he was like this. A great big fucking yawn.

The whole thing appears like it should have been a much longer work in the making. Lives that could have been traced out in much more detail. But he didn't do it. Couldn't do it with the characters he chose, I suspect. They were deadly boring from the start and had no more to tell.

That said it is an incredibly tragic love story, and a very tragic novel because he never really finished it. The ending was rushed and totally unexpected for McEwan's work.

Even more strangely he adds at the end "The characters in this novel are inventions and bear no resemblance to people who are living or dead."

Now I could add that to every single story I have ever written. Why would someone like McEwan bother unless the story was true.

In which case we might ask what he is doing with this book. Because I don't know. Here is the best writer in the English language with a huge unfinished mess on his hands and he handed it over to be published. What he was thinking? What the fuck was he doing?

Ian McEwan is a great novelist. If you have never read his writing before read "Child in Time" first or his wonderful short stories "Between the Sheets" then "Enduring Love". Then read "Atonment" suffer it's first forty pages of too much Englishness and weep for the next 200 pages. It's that good. "On Chesil Beach" is an exercise in writing by comparison.

2008-06-11T10:40:00.001+09:30

TO LEE BATTERSBY, THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNPUBLISHED 18 YEAR OLD, BEST WISHES AND GOOD LUCK, ALGIS BUDRYS

Back in 1989, I did a couple of things in quick succession: read Algis Budrys’ novel Michaelmas and discovered the Writers Of The Future contest, which Budrys was co-ordinating. In those pre-net days (how did we ever survive?) you had to write in to get details of the competition. So I did- a gushing half-query, half-fan letter in which I signed myself off as ‘the world’s greatest unpublished 18 year old’.

Shaddup. I was young, okay?

In due course, back came the guidelines sheet. But also: a copy of the latest Writers Of The Future anthology, with an inscription inside— the title of this post.

Was I inspired? I had a story in the mail within a fortnight. It didn’t win, it didn’t even place. But the fuse was lit. Over the next 19 years I’ve written and performed stand-up comedy and one-act plays; published poetry, cartoons, reviews, interviews and short stories; completed my first novel; written a feature film and a TV series pitch; and on and on and so forth. The whole of my bibliography, set into motion by an act of kindness.

In 2001, after several years away doing other things, I entered the Writers of the Future competition for the second time, and became the first Western Australian to win. In August of 2002, I flew to LA as part of my prize, where I was going to be able to meet Budrys and tell him, face to face, what he’d inspired in me. To make things even better, before I flew out, I sold and saw published a reworked version of that story I’d originally written back in 89 (there’s a hint, kids. Never throw anything out….). It’s still archived: you can read it here. Sadly, Budrys fell ill, and so we never met, but I was able to tell the story, and have it relayed to him.

Last night, as reported over at Ed Gorman’s blog amongst others, Algis Budrys died of cancer, aged 77. We never did get to meet, but he was, and always will be, a central figure in my karass. He was a writer of important works: Michaelmas is a major SF novel and unarguably one of the major precursors of cyberpunk, and Who? is an astonishingly humanist reworking of the cold war/spy thriller. But more than that—he was an inspirational and kindly figure who will be remembered by a generation of writers for the hand he held out to them along the way.

Vale.

2008-05-02T15:31:00.000+09:30

FRANK WOODLEY: POSSESSED (A REVIEW OF SORTS)

When Luscious and I were in Adelaide recently, we had the fabulous opportunity to get out and catch some theatre, something we'd been unable to do for far too long. Frank Woodley's new solo show Possessed was on, and I was keen, but Lyn professed to being not a great fan of Lano & Woodley, so we passed. Instead, we bought tickets to a show that was cancelled ten minutes before we were due to take our seats when a crew member electrocuted themselves and blew out every fuse in the hotel where the show was being staged. So it goes.

Tuesday night, thanks to the miracles of teen babysitter and free tickets from my work's social club, we got a second chance. And this time, we went.

Woodley's always been a fantastic performer, combining an amazing physical elasticity with a talent for drawing pathos and sympathy from an audience with subtle changes in stance. And yet, and yet....

Possessed is the story of Louie, a lonely borderline agarophobe who spends his days collecting sailing ship memorabilia and building model ships to hang around his tiny basement apartment. When he is possessed by the ghost of Phoebe O'Leary, an Irish girl who drowned whilst stowing away on the ship whose model he is currently building, it leads them both to question their relationship, their choices, and whether to stay locked up within their own personal purgatories or take the chance on actions that may liberate or damn them.And much like the Jim Carrey movie The Cable Guy, what could (should?) have been a startlingly good example of one type of story (in the case of the movie, a black comedy. In the case of the play, a heartbreaking and ultimately sweet and hopeful love story) is cut off at the knees by the need to insert 'signature' aspects of the main performers style of comedy. Put more bluntly, there was far too much falling down stairs and not enough character in this one-person tour de force for it to be successful.

Don't get me wrong: Woodley still is, and will remain for some time, a masterful physical performer. But he's not so capable of character acting that I ever quite believed in his ability to transform from male to female mannerisms. His turns as Phoebe feel like just that: comic turns, a chance to mince and flap in a burlesque manner, rather than the assumption of a true alter ego. And, ultimately, the story of Phoebe's fate, and the journey she must take, are so well written and genuinely sad that they outweigh the bulk of the performace: Woodley's stock-in-trade physical buffoonery as the cross-lobed Louie is at odds with the tragedy that unfolds behind him.

The end result is neither wholly one thing or another, and left me wondering what the play could have been if performed by a genuine character actor, played straight, or at least, with a greater balance between the sadness and a gentler form of melancholy humour.

2008-05-01T15:58:00.002+09:30

BECAUSE YOU REALLY WANT TO ENTER THIS

The Katharine Susannah Prichard Speculative Fiction Awards 2008

Closing date: 5pm Friday May 30, 2008
Words: Minimum 1500, maximum 3500.

All forms of Speculative Fiction welcome.

2 Sections:
OPEN and the
Shire of Mundaring National Young Writers Awards (20 years and under)

PRIZES

OPEN: First $200 Second $50
Young Writers Awards: First $75 Second $25
Highly Commended and Commended Certificates will also be awarded.

Awards announced and presented at KSP Writers’ Centre, Sun August 17, 2008.
No entry form required

CONDITIONS OF ENTRY

1. Entry fees: Open - $7.50 per story, to be paid by cheque or money order only Young Writers Awards – no entry fee

2. Work to be original, unpublished, not received an award in another competition and not under consideration elsewhere from the time of entry in these awards until the official announcement of winners.

3. Limit of three stories per author. Individual stories cannot be entered in more than one section

4. Entries to be typewritten, double-spaced on one side only of A4 white paper, with pages numbered, a wide left-hand margin, and story title on each page. A good photocopy is acceptable. Post in an A4 size envelope.

5. To ensure anonymity NO WRITERS’ NAMES TO APPEAR ON MANUSCRIPT (MS). Please attach a COVER SHEET with name of story, word count, section entered, and age if Young Writer

6. On a SEPARATE SHEET please attach form below

7. MSs will only be returned if adequately stamped self-addressed envelope (SSAE) of sufficient size is included. Other manuscripts will be destroyed after the competition, so keep a copy of your work.

8. Include a business-sized SSAE if you would like only a results sheet

9. Award winners will be notified by phone or mail prior to announcement, when those able to attend will be invited to read excerpts from their stories

10. Members of the KSP Foundation Management Committee are not allowed to enter

11. The judges’ decisions are final, and no correspondence will be entered into

12. The KSP Foundation Inc. reserves the right to publish the winning entry or entries in a publication related to KSP should the opportunity occur, in consultation with the author

Send entries to:
KSP Speculative Fiction Awards
11 Old York Road
GREENMOUNT WA 6056

Entries which do not reflect the stated conditions, or are postmarked later than 5pm May 30, may be disqualified without notice and the fee/s forfeited.

So get on your bikes!

Pictures at an Exhibition

2008-03-15T17:39:00.011+09:30

Last night The Kiln at Paddington (Brisbane) held its opening night for its "Wonderland: Inspired by childhood" exhibition. Someone by the name of Diana who is very close to my heart had six of her latest major paintings hanging on the walls. Kind of awesome really, even though I'm biased. Now that really is a beehive hairdo. And I get to see them in creation as the blank canvas emerges into something wonderful. Layers and layers of paint in the hands of an artist become things of weird beauty.

Barren Worlds

2008-03-12T20:00:00.003+09:30

Eric Reynolds has announced the table of contents for the Barren Worlds anthology. It's a biggie:

Drew Arrants "Man Alone"
Adele Cosgrove-Bray "Project"
Geraint D'Arcy "The Sound of Sun Rising"
Lawrence R. Dagstine "Living Amongst the Lizards"
Tristan Davenport "Elysium"
Graham Fielding "Rats"
Ginny Gilroy "The Secret Life of Jane Gray"
C.E. Grayson "This Abandoned Sky"
Rob Haines "He Would Have Given Them Wings"
Jasmine Hammer "Cleveland"
Erin Hartshorn "Winterset"
Martin Hayes "Something Out of Nothing"
Geoffrey Maloney "The Secret Life of Mars"
Mary Ellen Martin "Tiger’s Eye View"
Tracie McBride "After The Storm"
Ken McConnell "Ocherva"
Kevin James Miller "A Small Show on Double Gamma 3"
Shane Nelson "Alone On This Chance Planet"
Michael H. Obilade "Fallout"
Sue Penkivech "Saying Goodbye"
Shauna Roberts "Elessa the Restless"
Lawrence M. Schoen "Gift Time"
Ted Stetson "Blue Dome of Sky"
Gene Stewart "Bad People"
David Tallerman "Allotment"
Andrew Tisbert "Candhiga’s Corpse and the Birds at the Edge of the Sea"
Geoffrey Thorne "Antiope in Black"
William Blake Vogel III "Otsego Undead" Christopher Woods "Moon and Bones and Birds"

Further details here: http://www.hadleyrillebooks.com/

Eric has been one of those dream-to -die-for editors to work with. Keeps all the writers informed of where things are up to all of the time, sends cover options out for comment, and gives you a publication schedule. And pays prior to publication.

Eric, it's been an absolute pleasure. I'm really looking forward to the anthology coming out.

Check out Eric's live journal here: http://ericreynolds.livejournal.com/

Four Corners of Japan

2008-01-15T18:21:00.001+09:30

Fellow writer and Brisbanite, Chris Lynch (one of the many stars of The Devil in Brisbane) is in Japan preparing for a most wondrous, exciting and feel-good 2008. Envy, envy, envy. A few of us received this email from him last night.

"Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu: Happy New Year from the Land of theRising Sun. I hope you're well, and finding time for the important things in life.

As many of you know, I'm walking the length of Japan this year, some3300km over six months. I'm walking South-North, starting in March in the tiny jungle isle of Iriomote-jima, where I'll be trying to spot the elusive yamaneko, or Iriomote Wildcat. My friend Ian is walking East-West, starting in the four-metre spring snows of remote Hokkaido,where he'll be trying to stay alive. We're meeting somewhere in the middle of Honshu - hopefully near a bar.

We're both writing about our adventures on our expedition website: Four Corners of Japan.

I've been looking forward to 2008 for three years now. It's been said that I never get excited, but I'm excited about this - and slightly intimidated. Hopefully the inevitable disasters that befall us along the way will make for good reading - though personally I'll be happy if I never write about pressing the red button on my satellite distress beacon.

To help convince ourselves we're not completely crazy, we're raising money for the Fred Hollows Foundation. FHF eradicates preventable blindness in the developing world, as well as among indigenous Australians. As far as"practical reconciliation" goes, you can't get more practical than helping someone see.

So, if you enjoy reading about my adventures, please consider restoring the sight of another reader by making a donation. Twenty five dollars (or about $0.008 for every kilometre we walk), will pay for a 20 minute operation to restore the sight of one person, but even a few dollars will ease the pain of the daily 25km slog. Donating is easy - see how at fourcornersofjapan.net/donate/.

Feel free to forward this email. Also, if you know someone we should meet along the way, or if there's an interesting festival or place in Japan you've always wanted to visit, let me know and we'll see if we can add a stop to the list. And, of course, you're more than welcome to track me down in Japan and share a 100km or two...The world is small, and big.

Have a good 2008, and keep working away on those dreams.

Ja ne, ~Chris

Sci Phi Journal

2007-12-31T11:41:00.000+09:30

Sci Phi is a new journal aimed at readers who like science fiction but want to think about its implications a little more.

Each issue of Sci Phi will contain short stories and articles which look at various philosophical ideas through the lens of science fiction.

Issue #1 contains stories and articles by Matt Wallace, Paul S. Jenkins, Lee Battersby, Jason Pomerantz, Geoffrey Maloney, Michael Spence, Stephen Dedman, Ben Goertzel and Stephan Vladimir Bugaj, Ryan Nichols, and Jason Rennie.

Each issue comes in various ebook formats, as well as all of the stories and articles in mp3 format for your listening pleasure.

Cost is $7 per issue, available from http://sciphijournal.com/

Lee Battersby's story, "You Pretty Thing" deals with brain/body transplants, immortality, and what it might take to prove it's still you in the future. My own "The Oracle in The Red Limousine" considers issues of fate and whether knowledge of the future can help you avoid it.

Enchanted - No Spoilers (as they say)

2007-12-24T20:48:00.000+09:30

I wasn't expecting much out of this movie. I'd heard it was a story about a princess who turns up in New York and tries to convince everybody she is a princess, but my three daughters were keen on seeing it and it seemed a great way to entertain them on Christmas eve. So we booked into the very first screening in Brisbane at 6:15 tonight.

It's been a long time since I've sat in an audience where everybody has laughed so much, including myself. It's funny, it really is, and funny in a way that's not about set piece jokes. As with all good writing, the laughs come out of the interaction of the characters, and the marvellous juxtaposition that's created.

It's a Disney movie and it 's Disney sending itself up, pulling everything out of the closet and playing it for laughs. It starts off as an absolutely charming Disney cartoon. Pure animation in that traditional gushy Disney style. Almost a direct steal from Cindarella and Sleeping Beauty. But the evil cartoon Queen decides to get rid of the wonderfully happy cartoon Giselle, the would-be princess, by sending her down a wormhole to New York city, where she becomes a flesh and blood person.

And this is where the real fun starts. We have a Disney cartoon princess suddenly made real but only equipped with the emotions and knowledge that a Disney cartoon princess would have.

In true post-modern fashion all the cliches are pulled out of all the fairy tale books and put back together in a totally mashed-up fashion. But the fact that it ends in a totally traditional Disney way shouldn't surprise anyone. It is, after all, what the movie is all about. Disney re-doing Disney, and being very clever about it. The writers who worked on this movie did a great job.

Amy Adams who plays Giselle, and who I'd never heard off before, is amazing. Straight comedy is one of the most difficult things to do, in my book, and she does it brilliantly. There's quite a bit of singing and dancing as well, and those moments are hilarious or simply great fun, depending on your take on the whole thing.

Merry Christmas to all the JJ Wiggers, and to all of you who bother to read this blog occasionally. Looking forward to 2008 and a speedy recovery for our friend and colleague, Paul.

The Lost Bronte Brother

2007-11-21T19:14:00.000+09:30

Lee Battersby, quite correctly, asked me how I managed to forget about Peter Bronte when I posted the death stats for the Bronte family.

In my defence all I can say is I was identifying too much with the rest of the Brontes. No one knows much about Peter except he left his family before they become famous. Here's how the story goes.

Peter was the eldest of the Bronte children. He was seven years old when he ran away from home, leaving a poem that describe the life of tedious boredom he anticipated. He signed on as a cabin boy on the British merchant ship, Loyal Wolf, and was later kidnapped by pirates in the Caribbean. It is said that after many years of rum, sodomy and the lash, he became the fearsome pirate known as Pegleg Pete, who would treat his men to his poetry when the sails had failed in the doldrums. He lived to 84 and died in the arms of a whore. Well, at least, that's the epitaph on his gravestone in Jamaica.

The Bronte family, even the Byronesque Branwell, denied there was an elder brother. Such was the shame of having a pirate in the family in those days.

The Brontes

2007-11-20T21:02:00.001+09:30

We'll we all know about the Bronte kids. Charolotte wrote "Jayne Ayre", Emily wrote "Wuthering Heights" and Anne wrote "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall". And Branwell was something of a poet and a painter who appears to have spent most of his time just being Branwell, and living his life as a tragic Byronesque character, although I'm sure he had no intention of doing that. That was the sum and total of the amazing Bronte kids as far as I was concerned, but there were two others: Maria and Elizabeth, who never got a chance to reach an age where they could write. Did we lose two important books with their deaths? Perhaps, but they all died young. Here's the stats:

Maria, born 1814, died 1825, of TB -- age 11
Elizabeth, born 1815, died 1825, of TB -- age 10
Charlotte, born 1816, died 1855, of TB -- age 39
Branwell, born 1817, died 1848, of TB -- age 31
Emily, born 1818, died 1848, of TB -- age 30
Anne, born 1820, died 1849, of TB -- age 29

There's a couple of trends here, isn't there? TB was virulent back in those days but to have taken out every kid in the family, all at relatively young ages, suggests, I guess, that the Bronte kids were more than usally susceptible to it. Bad genes? Maybe. But it's also clear from these stats that Mum Bronte pumped out six kids in seven years. What happened to her?

Maria Branwell who was the Bronte kids' mum was born in 1785. She died at age 38 in 1821, the year after Anne was born. Some say it was TB, others that it was uterine cancer. At the time the Bronte kids' mum died:

Maria was 7 years old
Elizabeth was 6
Charlotte was 5
Branwell was 4
Emily was 3, and
Anne was 1 year old.

It's tragic any which way you look at it. It seems to mean something, but what that something is I have no idea. Maybe it explains why Charlotte and Branwell retreated into an inner world and created a fantasy kingdom to rival the one created by Emily and Anne as children. But does it also explain why Charlotte, Emily and Anne grew up to be significent literary figures despite their short lifespans? I wish I knew.

Publishing Update

2007-11-09T10:11:00.000+09:30

About time we let people know what the writers here have been up to this year. Here's the recent stories that are out from the Wig's writers:

Lyn Battersby, The Memory of Breathing, ASIM Best of Horror
Lyn Battersby, Born of Woman, Daikaiju 3
Lee Battersby, Father Muerte and the Joy of Warfare, Aurealis 37
Lee Battersby, Father Muerte and the Flesh, Year's Best Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy
Lee Battersby, The Hobbyist, ASIM Best of Horror
Lee Battersby, Through the Window Merilee Dances, ASIM Best of Fantasy
Lee Battersby, Eight for Working (poem), ASIM Best of Fantasy
Lee Battersby, Murderworld, ASIM Best of Science Fiction
Lee Battersby, Beached, Daikaiju 3
Paul Haines, Inducing, Orb 7
Paul Haines, Where is Brisbane? Fantastical Journeys to Brisbane
Paul Haines, Hamlyn, ASIM Best of Horror
Geoffrey Maloney, When the World is Flat, Year's Best Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy
Geoffrey Maloney, P for Power Station, Fantastic Wonder Stories
Geoffrey Maloney, Blonde on Blonde (An American Fable), Albedo One
Geoffrey Maloney, The Catherine Wheel, New Writings in the Fantastic

In the next few days I'll post a list of what's on the horizon for each of us.

Green-Keeping

2007-11-06T18:06:00.000+09:30

Samuel was floating in the sky, his eyes staring at the roof of his house. It was a beautiful Sunday morning. He had been out mowing the lawn, thinking how much he liked the smell of fresh cut grass when everything went black. When he came to he found himself a good fifty feet up in the sky.

He had heard about the Rapture from religious tracts that were dropped in his letterbox. Alien abduction he knew about from countless TV shows, and out-of-the-body experiences he had read about in a magazine in an idle moment. But none of these things were happening: he had not continued to rise up into the sky until he had reached some heavenly abode -- certainly there were no angels hovering by his side. Nor were there any whirring sounds or bright shiny objects to suggest that an alien space craft was within his vicinity, and he could not see his body lying next to the lawnmower on the neatly cut grass beneath him.

After some experimentation, he found that he could move his neck slightly to gain a view into his neighbour's yard. She too was floating in the sky and he took strange comfort in this; he was not alone. The thought struck him that this had happened to everyone, that right now, across the face of the whole planet, billions of people were hovering in the sky just as he was. It was an absurd idea, he thought reassuringly, somebody will come to rescue us. But as the day dwindled and the long shadows of the afternoon crept over the back yard, a sudden rescue seemed increasingly unlikely.

When the stars fired their light into the night sky, a natural calmness descended upon him, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. It was a seductive feeling, a wonderful feeling and he felt that he had nothing to complain about, nothing to worry about. He almost felt excited about his predicament. Something very different was happening and he was part of it.

He fell asleep at his usual hour, around ten at night and when he woke he saw that the roof of his house had caved in, that most of the walls had collapsed and the grass and bushes in his backyard had grown into a small jungle. He tried to move his neck, but found it very stiff as if he had grown hard and wooden throughout the long night. He was not surprised to see the tendrils that now grew from his stomach and snaked their way back towards the earth, nor the greenery that sprouted from his neighbour's back when he finally forced his neck to twist and bend.

He slept for a long time after that and woke many years later. Stretching his great limbs up into the sky and deep down into the earth, he looked around him and realised that he couldn't see the forest for the trees. His leaves rustled, chuckling at the humour of it.

Poinciana Time

2007-11-06T14:11:00.000+09:30

Out and about in the wilds of Ashgrove today I spotted an early blooming Poinciana. This little beauty lives a few streets away. Hopefully the Poinciana in the backyard will look this good when it finally flowers.

The Sparx Manifesto

2007-11-02T19:20:00.000+09:30

It's about time that we had something like a manifesto for Australian spec fic and Cat Sparks has delivered one with her article for the ACT Writers' Centre October Newsletter. You can also read it on her blog. http://catsparx.livejournal.com/49624.html

It's a good article and it pretty much matches my own history with trying to get stories published over the years. But.. but...but...as much as I agree with what Cat wrote I wonder if it might be read as just us older folks saying "It's not easy. We did the hard yards; you need to do them as well."

Why bother? I think might be a likely response. Why not get published by somebody who wants to publish you anywhere, anytime. You could even publish it on your own blog or your friend's. It's what everybody does. Your 700 Myspace friends will read it (that's more readers than I've ever had). And you've probably read those reviews of the latest Australian anthologies and magazines and most of them say the writing is pretty crappy, and the stories are no good, so why should you bother. It's not like getting publish in one of them is going to do much good, and there's no money in it either.

So while I agree with what Cat wrote, because it reinforces my worldview, and I wish it was totally true, I'm a little worried that the world has shifted on its axis and all the things we worked so hard to achieve, don't really matter that much anymore.

This post was not about jacarandas. If you are a jacaranda fan, I apologise. The next trees that come in to bloom in Brisbane are the poincianas. Pictures coming soon.

Purple Rain

2007-10-27T09:02:00.000+09:30

A big thunderstorm in Brisbane yesterday afternoon precipitated an early Jacaranda fall. The streets and parks are covered in a splendid carpet of purple.

The Glass Jeweller

2007-10-23T17:43:00.000+09:30

How long had they known each other? Not long, but still his interest in her had waned. There was nothing more to know ; she no longer excited him. Heartless, but he did not feel that way. He was not brave enough to hurt her, not brave enough to withstand the tears he felt would come. But each word he spoke to her now, he handled delicately as if it was a piece of broken glass, requiring careful wrapping in old newspapers, to conceal the dangerous jagged edges of what he really wished to say.

His manner towards her had changed, she realised this. Still - she was masochistic - she took each of his carefully crafted words and roughly ripped them apart, a confetti of newsprint fluttering about her, as she exposed the jagged shards of glass. These she plunged into her body, piercing her warm flesh until rivulets of blood flowed. She felt she was daring him to speak the truth, to tell her what she did not wish to hear. Yet still she hoped it was not true, that he would realise the pain she was in, that he would wish to ease her suffering.

On the last occasion they met, after he had finished speaking - it was good while it lasted, but we have outgrown each other - she began to cry, her tears crystallising to hard little sparkling stones that fell from her cheeks, tinkling to the floor.

She heard him sigh. It was over. It was done with. He felt relieved.

She did not think she would hit him but she did; with a closed fist that smashed his cheek. And before he could think, before he could stop the muscles working his arm, the back of his hand crashed across her face. There was the sound of breaking glass as she shattered beneath the force of his blow. So brittle and fragile.

He crouched close to the floor, fingertips gingerly searching among the pieces of glass for her precious diamond tears. They remained wrapped in a piece of black velvet for many years. He had never wanted to be the keeper of such precious things and he vowed he would never love again.

But time moved on and he met another woman, a woman slightly older, a woman slightly richer, who took a fancy to him, a woman whom he loved like he had never loved before. He took his precious diamonds to a jeweller and had them fashion into a necklet which he duly presented to his new love. But over the months that followed, through means both ordinary and diverse, her excuses and her indifference delivered what he had hoped not to hear. He took her message to his heart and drifted away.

Much later he read in a newspaper that she had been found dead at the bottom of her stairs, her throat cut by the shards of glass on the unusual necklet she wore.

More Purple Haze

2007-10-23T17:20:00.000+09:30

Visited my favourite jacarandas in the quaint old suburb of Bardon today. There's two trees growing close together here, but their canopies have merged over the years. It hasn't been a great year for jacarandas, but these two are splendid and have been year after year.

Like Sleeping Beauty

2007-10-22T18:25:00.000+09:30

‘I know what death’s like,’ she says.
The mortician has placed her arms carefully to hide the gashes.
‘Tell me.’
I touch her wrists.
‘Freedom from pain.’
I touch her forehead.
‘Eternal bliss.’
I touch her chest, above her heart.
‘So boring…’
‘Like Sleeping Beauty, my love.’
I kiss her lips. I wish.

It's Jacaranda Season in Brisbane

2007-10-22T17:37:00.001+09:30

The purple blossoms are all over the place in their tens of thousands. It is a wonderful time of year in Brisbane. As Merry Jervois once said: "Brisbane, she is a pretty city, yes?

A Winter of Discontent (A Rebours)

2007-08-30T17:21:00.000+09:30

Mr Panama had always thought of himself as a stoic and robust soul, but as stoic and robust as he was he hated winter. Now that he’d retired and had too much time on his hands, he found the shortness of the winter days filled him with a sadness that had little to do with anything else happening in his life. One moment he was as merry as anything, the next – as the days shortened, and the evenings darkened – he found himself plunged into a melancholy gloom. And the winds that came with the changing of the seasons seemed to nip at his heels like Icelandic terriers. It was a season unfit for anything at all and, at his age, he was beginning to think he’d had one winter too many. So he made his decision. Winter would be banished from his house.

He started off by buying a number of oil heaters, one for each room of the house, and he paid extra for the ones with thermostats, so he could stabilise the temperature at 28 degrees centigrade, which was his preference. At first this appeared to be a very successful, if somewhat costly, solution to the problem. Mr Panama thought it was wonderful as he walked through the rooms of his house checking the air temperature with a digital thermometer. Twenty-eight degrees in every room, and not a single draught in the whole house; it was perfect. No longer did he need to sit huddled over the radiator in his dressing gown, as he tried to read a book. Now he could sit in any room, wearing shorts and a t-shirt and read in complete comfort.

For two days, he was content, but then he found the listlessness of winter returning. It had, he decided, never gone away. It was there outside his window in the shape of the raggedy trees and the dull grey sky that refused to release its rain. So while the house now felt as warm as an early Brisbane summer, the dreary view out the window still brought his spirits down. The winter of his discontent could not be banished so easily.

His next step was to re-curtain the whole house. He got rid of the flimsy and delicate lace curtains his ex-wife had loved so much, and replaced them with something much more appropriate. He chose a heavy beige cotton material, with pictures of coconut palms all over it. There was nothing more likely to evoke the heat of the tropics than palm trees. But once the curtains had been made and hung, Mr Panama was not altogether pleased with the result. While he had always intended the curtains would be drawn closed, he had not taken into account that having closed curtains throughout the house would create a gloomy atmosphere reminiscent of a wintry afternoon. Despite the heating, he now felt he had achieved exactly the opposite effect to what he had been seeking. Instead of banishing winter, he had recreated its most mournful period of the day. He was forced to turn all his electric lights on, all of the time, just so he could read, but that made it feel like it was the middle of the night, and he felt sleepy most of the time.

Mr Panama was as stubborn as he was stoical, and flushed with funds from his retirement package, had no hesitation in throwing good money after bad. He spent several days searching catalogues on the internet, until he finally found what he was looking for -- Zonne Lichten. They were very powerful lights, made by a company in the Netherlands. They could replicate the sun on a lovely summer’s day, and were guaranteed to cure your winter ills. Mr Panama ordered ten of them, one for each room in his house and two for the lounge room, which was rather large.

While he waited the two weeks for them to arrive, he undertook some further redecorating. He had not intended to bring summer into his house, simply keep winter out, but he now realised that was the only way to achieve what he wished. He began ordering hot house flowers of all kinds: palms, vines and creepers, orchids, and delicate moist things that ate flies. Soon every room had its very own lush little jungle. He threw out his leather lounges as well – they had always been cold in winter and sticky in summer – and replaced them with cane furniture and banana chairs. But the piece de resistance, the crowning glory of Mr Panama’s achievement, was his beach. He’d had the brilliant idea of ripping the carpet out of the lounge room and replacing it with sand. To which he added a large blow-up paddling pool that he could sit in when he got too hot.

By the time he was finished, all the Zonne Lichten were blazing down from the ceilings, and huge amounts of greenery were curling and coiling about him. The interior of the house resembled nothing more and nothing less than a tropical island. And, it seemed, if you could trust your ears, there were monkeys and birds screeching and twittering everywhere. (It was only an ambient CD he’d purchased, but it had the desired affect.)

As Mr Panama lounged in a banana chair, sipping a pina colada, with his feet cooling in the paddling pool, he found he was very pleased indeed. He had achieved what he set out to and what a triumph it was. Not one sign of winter anywhere.

Meanwhile, outside, between the greenery and beyond the coconut palm curtains, through the closed windows, Brisbane had shrugged off its six weeks of winter. The jacaranda trees, the frangipanis, and the poincianas were all green again. Soon they would flower and the city would become a mass of natural colour, its streets full to bursting with the vitality of the new season.

Lost in his winter of discontent, Mr Panama would see none of it, but instead rejoice in the fact it was a perfect tropical day inside his house, every day of the week. It was a most remarkable achievement.

Jorge Luis Borges' toenails

2007-08-28T20:21:00.000+09:30

I wanted to put some wonderful quote up from Borges' "Collected Fictions" (a new translation by Andrew Huxley, Allen and Lane, The Penguin Press, 1998) before I returned it to the library for the second time or perhaps the third or maybe even the fourth. I've lost count of how many times I've borrowed the book. But I couldn't find the one I thought I wanted. And then the one I wasn't even looking for was there.

Borges is the dead man, the immortal, the philosopher, the librarian, the duelist, the labyrinth maker, the grand story-teller, and he wrote about the wonderful mystery of his toenails.

"Gentle socks pamper them by day, and shoes cobbled of leather fortify them, but my toes hardly notice. All they're interested in is turning out toenails--semitransparent, flexible sheets of hornlike material, as defense against--whom? Brutish, distrustful as only they can be, my toes labor ceaselessly at manufacturing that frail armament. They turn their backs on the universe and its ectasies in order to spin out, endlessly, those ten pointless projectile heads, which are cut away time and again by the sudden snips of a Solingen. By the ninetieth twilit day of their prenatal confinement, my toes had cranked up that extraordinary factory. And when I am tucked away in Recoleta in an ash-coloured house bedecked with dry flowers and amulets, they will be at their stubborn work, until corruption at last slows them--them and the beard upon my cheeks."

The miracle of mundanity. Adios.

Le Petomane - The Original Organ Arse

2007-08-08T18:54:00.000+09:30

This one's for Stinky; I'm kind of missing that silly smelly skunk. It's from "The Literary Companion to Medicine" by Richard Gordon (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993).

Le Petomane was a star turn at the Moulin Rouge in 1890s. He was six foot tall, grandly moustached, handsome Jospeh Pujol from Marseilles. He had enjoyed an ability since boy hood of filling a normal five-inch-long roomy rectum, its preceding three-foot-long capacious colon, even the end of his remoter small instestine, with air drawn through his anus. He did this by grasping his knees and using his front sheet of abdominal muscles as an expanding bellows. His control of his anal sphincter was so delicate that he could emit the air with such variations of volume and timbre that they recalled the double-bass, the trombone, and violin, producing chords, arpeggios, familiar tunes, and drawn-out notes lasting fifteen seconds. He could snuff a candle at twelve inches. Substituting water, he generated a horizontal fountain five feet long. He made La Semaine Medicale. The Professor of Physiology at the Paris Faculty of Medicine was rightly impressed by a man using his guts as lungs and his anal sphincter as an opera singer's voicebox.

Ah, those were the days my friends, when farting was not only respectable, but had become an art form.

Desert Candy

2007-07-23T19:32:00.000+09:30

As most of you know, the writers here at JJ's Wig really appreciate a good recipe when they see it. So it's an absolute delight to have stumble across Desert Candy. Not only does the lady responsible for this blog really know food and a great recipe when she sees, but she's a damn fine writer. Yes, it's all about food, not about writing at all, but there's wonderful recipe after wonderful recipe posted.

And the story about the preparation of soft-shelled crabs...well, you just want to eat them...although it's not for the squeamish. They keep twitching apparently right up to the very end.

Aurealis Awards

2007-07-22T18:56:00.000+09:30

As one of the editors for Fantastical Journeys to Brisbane, it was my responsibility to nominate the stories we published for the Aurealis Awards this year. In previous years it had been quite a tedious business. Print out the forms, fill in all the details and post them off. But this year the AAs have a new bright and shiny site complete with an online nomination form. Fill in the details online and submit. It's done. It's simple and it's wonderful.

But then you need to supply copies of the books or copies of the stories, depending on how many categories stories are nominated in. For small presses this can be quite difficult. We run on a budget that is next to nothing. In the end Fantastical Journeys only supplied four books to the Fantasy judges, which covered the majority of the stories. I mailed print-outs to the SF judges and emailed copies to the Horror judges. This was a simple and easy arrangement we came to after discussing it with Ron Serduik who is the director of the AAs this year.

On other blogs there's a lot of silly stuff going on about criticising the AAs yet again. I don't know why this happens. Everybody who works on the AAs works as a volunteer. The judges change year after year and the directors of the awards do too. It's as honest and fair as it can be without setting up some fully paid management committee to oversee them. Now where might the money come from for that? My view is that people who criticise the AAs need to get off their butts and volunteer to do the work it takes. No point in sitting back in your comfy chair, or blogging away on your comfy blog, and criticising the AAs. Get in there, volunteer, and do the work.

Trent Jamieson's just published a very personal view of the AAs over on his blog. Trent is a great writer and through his work on Redsine, in my opinion, the best editor in Australia today. He's also a humble guy who doesn't blow his trumpet often enough. Go read it. It's real, personal, and important.

Fantastical Journeys to Brisbane

2007-07-22T18:26:00.000+09:30

Fantastical Journeys to Brisbane is now slowly getting out and about. This is a great new collection of Australian spec writing that Trent Jamieson and myself edited with Zoran Zivkovic, the World Fantasy Award Winning writer, and Izvori Publishing in Croatia. It is a beautifully strange book. The cover image and table of contents are available here. Gulliver views the floating island of Laputia on stamp.

Copies are available in Pulp Fiction in Brisbane or directly from geoffreymaloney@izvori.com . Bill Congreve will also have some copies on his dealer's table at Conflux in Canberra in September.

FJ has received its first review, at ASIF, and it's a good one.

Portrait of a Corny Writer

2007-07-12T21:52:00.000+09:30

When Mr Persimmon retired from his job as a post office clerk, he realised all too quickly he needed something to occupy his time. So he decided to become a writer. Not a novelist or a short-story teller – he’d never had a talent for fiction. Not a non-fiction writer either – he was of a totally impractical nature – nor a poet, although his trade – as he called it – was closer to poetry than anything else, so he believed. But he enjoyed a good joke and decided to write cornies for crackers that were torn apart at Christmas time.

It was not a lucrative way to make a living as a writer. After all, you could not very well make the best seller lists no matter how clever your joke might be and how popular it might become, but still it was enough to keep him busy, and his mind active, and the occasional sale supplemented his post office pension nicely. At first, having had no experience at writing, he started out by imitating – one should never use the word plagiarising – the jokes of the very best cracker writers. Karl Kapuscinski and Lyle Barrymore, were two of his favourites; they really knew their business. They rose above the mundane corniness of the usual cracker joke. Kapuscinski was still talked about for his corker from 2005:

Q: Are you a piece of string? ...
A: No, I'm afraid not.

It was simple, straightforward, and clever. Mr Persimmon regarded it as a work of pure genius. And then there was Dr Barrymore’s gem from last Christmas:

Q: What can you make that cannot be seen? ...
A: A noise.

So succinct! So magnificent! Again genius manifest.

Mr Persimmon was convinced these two corny writers were the ones to emulate. They were a cut above the rest. There was something about their play on words or their slightly leftfield view that appealed to him, compared, at least, to the work of Dory White. White was a typical corny writer who turned out the same lame jokes year after year:

Q: What bee can never be understood?
A: A mumble-bee.

Q: What do you call a sick crocodile?
A: An illigator.

Q: Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill?
A: To get to the bottom.

Sad, very sad, Mr Persimmon decided, but he knew White made the money. Her work was syndicated throughout the whole world. Buy a dozen Christmas crackers in just about any country and it was certain you’d get four of White’s cornies in the box. But… it was not original work and Mr Persimmon believed originality was the key to all creative arts, and a corny was no exception, was it?
Mr Persimmon strived to make his own work original and finally achieved his first sale, to a Christmas cracker company in New Zealand. He was paid thirty New Zealand dollars. At close to three dollars per word, it was quite a reasonable rate for a writer of any genre. He cried with joy when he received the acceptance.

Q: What do you call a flock of sheep tumbling down a hillside?
A: A lambslide.

When he’d written it he’d thought it brilliant and, while not as enigmatic as either Barrymore or Kapuscinski, he believed he was following in their footsteps. However, liker all artists, once he’d sold it he was no longer convinced it was his best work. In fact, he now believed it was more like something White would have written, and not as clever nor as insightful as Barrymore or Kapuscinski at all. The year his lamb corny came out he waited anxiously for the post-Christmas reviews, as all first-time authors do. It didn’t even rate a mention. But then distribution had been poor, limited to New Zealand only. So his first sale sunk without a trace. To pile insult upon injury, the New Zealand company who’d purchased it went out of business, thus removing his joke from circulation the following year. He tried a few other Christmas cracker companies, but it seemed that lamb jokes – lame jokes, Mr Persimmon thought – were only appreciated by the special few.

His next joke was not necessarily a significant improvement, but it did not rely on a pun in English, which was an advantage as it would translate into other languages freely.

Q: Why do blondes have more fun?
A: They’re easily amused.

He was certain this time it was more like the work Kapuscinski and Barrymore were doing. Of course it was subtle, but all the best writing was full of deep and meaningful subtleties. Still he was not entirely happy with it. He had, for the first time, incorporated a cliché into his work. He did not personally believe all blondes were dumb – he was sure some of them were just as intelligent as other women, so he debated long and hard about whether he should submit it or not. But a good joke was a good joke, he decided. So he sent it out and was very pleased indeed when it was snapped up immediately by a company in the UK and received syndication across the whole of the European Union.

With the success of his blonde joke – it received very positive reviews and made it onto the long list for the Australian Corny Awards - he was determined to write something completely original. No more clichés. It was time to take things more seriously, if he wished to become a true writer:

Q: Have you seen the photograph of Sarah Lee?
A: It’s a piece of cheesecake.

Yes! When he wrote that one, he knew he was breaking through. That one earned him a two hundred dollar advance plus royalties. It was syndicated in all countries Sarah Lee sold cheesecakes in, and made it onto the short list for an Australian Corny.

Alas, the award eluded him, as it does so many good writers, but spurred on by his success Mr Persimmon’s work went through a very fertile period. His best joke at the time won a Cornelius award in France in the film-related category:

Q: Name the famous French actor who enjoys a good time?
A: Gerard the Party Dude

The award itself was a lovely little statue of a silver cockatiel, and was given pride of place on his mantelpiece. But it was, after that award, his fellow writers began to see a note of hubris creeping into Mr Persimmon’s character. He began to hint in his private correspondence that his Gerard Depardieu corny was better than anything Kapuscinski or Barrymore could have written, and the fact it hadn’t been nominated for an award in any English-speaking country simply demonstrated the sophistication of French culture. The French appreciate true art when they see it. Mr Persimmon knew this and he had the Silver Cockatiel to prove it.

Sadly after Mr Persimmon’s triumph de francais he wrote only one more corny. He believed it was clever, earthy and sophisticated, exactly what a Christmas cracker joke should be. He put it out on submission straightaway, thinking he’d sell it easily. He didn’t.

Q: Have you heard the one about the existential farter?
A: I stink, therefore I am.

It was rejected by every Christmas cracker editor Mr Persimmon had ever worked with and all the others as well. Rejected at what he believed was the height of his career, he wrote no more after that, and thus his life as a writer came to an end.

Stinky Au Revoir

2007-07-11T19:28:00.000+09:30

Dear Stinky

I know I should not have disrespected you with the skunk recipe post of 3 April 2007 on Jerry Jarvis's Wig. It was not right to make fun of skunks the way I have been, even dead ones such as yourself. I apologise for hurting your feelings, but you must realise, my friend, that since you decided you wanted to become an editor ( see post of 9 June 2007) you have become unbearable to live with. Always peeking over my shoulder as I write, always telling me that the opening sentence is not ze killer opening, in your silly French-Canadian accent, and that nobody, ha, ha, ha, would every think about buying a story about silly middle-aged men.

So that is why I took you to that bar that night in the Valley. Whoopee, you think, let's go drink in the Valley and then silly writer man gets drunk and puts me upon his smelly bald head and I take control. No more writing for silly man, now we become Editor. Wrong. But of course you didn't know that I set you up. I knew that wannabee editor was going to be in the bar that night; I knew you wouldn't be able to resist and he wouldn't either. His plans for conquering the world. Your plans too. As soon as he heard you squeaking in my backpack he wanted to know what was going on. I pulled you out. You were quivering with excitement. I placed you on his head. Ah, he said, and rose from his chair like a zombie. I knew where you were taking him, to the airport, to the US to make your fortune as an editor.

Good luck to you both. Enjoy the smog, you stupid little smelly skunk.

Do I miss you? Not much. Maybe a little. Not sure. Couldn't care less!

Anyway I've got a new friend. His name is Chuckanucka. Chuck for short, I guess. And he doesn't smell, at least not like you do.

Yeah, okay, that's all I got to say. You know where to reach me if zombie boy gets you into trouble.

A Few French Novels

2007-06-16T08:26:00.000+09:30

Last year I finally managed to read some French novels. It was something that I’d been meaning to do for a while and it proved to be an immensely rewarding experience, even if I did only read them in English translation. The novels I chose spanned a sixty year period, from the latter half of the 19th century up to shortly before the second world war. Given the time period over which the books were written and the rather random way I chose them – largely through what was available in my second hand bookstore – I hadn’t expected to find the novels had much in common. It was a pleasant surprise then when I found that the books I had chosen indeed had a strong common thread running through them.

Like the best F&SF, what was revealed was a glimpse into another world which was known in so many ways yet so oddly different at the same time. Compared to all the English literature I’ve read, these French novels seemed to working in a completely different sub-genre. While they are all regarded as “literary” work, there is a sense of hyper-reality about them that is akin to the sense of wonder that is evoked by the best fantasy novels. The sun is brighter when it shines, the storms darker when it rains. The characters all feel so deeply and passionately about life, yet at the same time there is nothing in these books that could be classified as melodrama. Perhaps it simple enough to say that these books work at a very intense level as all really good writing should. Another plus is that these novels are all so exquisitely short, with most being around 160 pages long. (I would love to see the short novel make a comeback in F&SF.)

1. Le Grand Meaulnes (aka The Lost Domain in English, which is not a translation of the French title) – Alain-Fournier (published 1912)

I was at first disappointed with this book. It starts out as the simple tale of two schoolboys in a French Village School and involves largely what you might expect: the studious boy who hero worships another (the Meaulnes of the title) and deals with their daily life and exploits. Having, however, carefully constructed this French pastoral setting and beautifully drawn his characters, Alain-Fournier then begins to weave in a thread of remarkable strangeness and mystery. This centres around the discovery of the lost domain, a farming estate deep in the French countryside. Perhaps the most complex and tragic love story that has ever been written. I now understand why this writer, who died in action during the first world war, only two years after the publication of Les Grand Meaulnes, is so revered.

2. The Immoralist – Andre Gide (published 1902)

The story of a young French land-owner, who having recovered from a serious illness, finds that he cares little for his previous bourgeois life and all its intellectual trappings. Instead, he yearns for, and begins to explore, a more basic sensuous form of existence. The novel is said to be a metaphor for Gides own concerns about his homosexuality. But irrespective of whether that is the case or not, the book is remarkable in the way it gets inside the head of a person wrestling with a darker side of human nature, and suggests that for some life can only be fully experienced and enjoyed when it is lived at a more base and instinctive level.

3. L’Etranger (The Outsider) – Albert Camus (published 1942)

I read this book many years ago, but I did re-read it again in the last 12 months. It’s so well-known and was made even more well-known to a whole new generation during those heady post-punk days with The Cure song, Killing an Arab. And the book does indeed involve the murder (manslaughter perhaps, given there is an element of self-defence) of a French Algerian, by the hapless protagonist. The scene in the book when this takes place is an absolute classic. You can positively feel the heat of the sun frying your brain just before the trigger’s pulled on the gun.

This novel has long been a cause of debate among friends: Is the protagonist an unfeeling murderous bastard or just an average guy stumbling through life who got sunstroke at the wrong time, in the wrong place, then got stitched up by the law for merely being human?

4. La Symphonie Pastorale and Isabelle – Andre Gides (published 1919 and 1911 respectively)

I found these two novellas of Gides published together in a Penguin Classics edition dating from 1967. La Symphonie Pastorale has been ranked with The Immoralist as one of Gides’s great works. The Penguin Classic edition makes it clear that Isabelle is a lesser work. Au contraire. Isabelle is wonderful gothic tale of a young scholar who visits a French mansion inhabit by an eccentric family of octogenarians. Instead of seeking out the manuscripts that would help his research, he finds himself captivated by the lives of the family members and obsessed by the mysterious and absent daughter, Isabelle. It is another tragic love tale full of darkness, wit and intrigue. And should we be surprised to find out what Isabelle is really like when we finally get to meet her? She is one of those characters who dominates a story even though she only gets a small walk-on part at the end.

La Symphonie Pastorale might be considered a more serious work, but the tale while perhaps shocking in its day is more one dimensional in many respects. A country priest teaches a poor abused waif to speak then falls in love with her. Of the three Gides stories I read this one perhaps hasn’t stood the test of time as well. But it is much better than it sounds, saved by the use of a splendid first person narration. There are moments you just know that the priest is lying to himself and it is pure lust in his loins not the love of god in his heart.

5. A Rebours (Against Nature) – Joris-Karl Huysmans

The first time round I was forced to read this for a university course run by a one-armed lecturer who was Nietzsche fanatic. I found the book unbelieveably tedious at the time, probably because we were told it that it was a serious philosophical work. But that was many years ago and the second time round I found it be hilariously funny. I even suspect that among all Huysmans’s intellectual gymnastics, he means for the reader to laugh at the outrageous hypochondriac he has created.

The story concerns a wealthy French gent, Des Esseintes, who, sick of his life of debauchery in the city, retreats to a house in the country to live the life of a recluse. With him he takes his collections of French literature, French art, perfumes, hot-house plants, and, of course, liqueurs. Here he attempts to cultivate and refine his senses to a state of heightened awareness while completely indulging himself in his possessions.

“He drank his liquid perfume from cups of that Oriental porcelain known as
egg-shell china, it is so delicate diaphanous”

It is a grand folly and we watch Des Esseintes as he lurches from one ridiculous pastime to the next, whilst battling his hypochondria and boredom. At the same time, we are treated to a guided tour, through Des Esseintes eyes, of some of the finer points of French culture and the philosophical debates that informed them. It’s a more difficult book then the others I’ve mentioned, but if you take view that it’s not meant to be taken as seriously as everyone has made out, then hopefully you’ll delight in its humorous side.

Stinky Plays Editor

2007-06-09T11:56:00.000+09:30

Now that Stinky is finally talking to me again, he's been asking what it takes to be a writer. I told him the first thing was that you had to have a killer opening as most editors could tell from the first paragraph or even the first sentence whether the story was any good or not. There was plenty more to tell, but Stinky wasn't listening; he immediately started scrummaging around in back issues of magazines to do some "skunk analysis" as he put it. Here's what he came up with.

"There were four of them who entered the haunted darkness of the Old Forest that night, but only three who would return, because three was a magic number. Featherflower walked silently beside Nightwind, her head high, trying not to stumble over the twisted snakelike roots that seemed to snatch at her legs, etc" F&SF, 1982

Dear Monsieur, What is this Featherflower business? Three it is a magic number, you say? You is fooling me, no? This no killer opening. You must write killer opening. My friend sez. Stinky.

"Things change." F&SF, 1981

Dear, Monsieur, Oui, you are most correct. Things they change all the time. Never they stop changing. But no good way to start story. Is not killer. Must be killer. Without killer, I do not read second sentence. Too bad. Bye, bye. Stinky.

"In the one-thousand-and-third year after the great Diaspora following the discovery of Gilpin's space, when tens and hundreds of millions fled Earth and its terrors, the cloistered planet Yamato sent an embassy across the lights years to learn what had befallen Old Japan and -- with great caution-- to seek the wisdom of which it so suddenly stood in need." F&SF 1982

Monsieur, You confuse poor Stinky. This is not sentence. You think this is sentence? You think this is killer opening? Tens of millions of years or hundreds of millions? They are different, oui? I read no more. Other editirs might like, yes? I do not think so. Stinky.

"The moment the girl stepped out onto the hotel terrace she caught sight of the man standing in the splash of shade cast by the largest of the lasiandra trees which lined the road down to the village." F&SF 1981

Monsieur, Perhaps your opening sentence is too short, oui? Perhaps not enough subjective/object things in sentence, oui. I have good idea to fix for you. For free. "The moment the girl stepped out onto the hotel terrace which was paved in marbled from the local quarry six or so miles away she caught sight of the man with a dark rabbit felt hat which had been made in the neighbouring town standing in the splash of shade cast by the largest of the lasiandra trees which lined the road down to the village which could only just be seen in the distant haze of the sun which was the centre of the solar system and part of the milky way galaxy." Much better now, oui? Good-bye. Stinky.

"My people have not lived on a planet for a thousand years." Analog 1990.

My Dear Mademoiselle, that is very sad to hear. I wish you and your people well with finding a planet in the future. Earth is quite nice. Fond wishes, Stinky.

"Lin Plamer watched the first big wet flakes of snow drift down out of a yellow sky and felt the muscles in his gut tighten up." Analog, 1990

Monsieur, I did not read second sentence. I know in next sentence character will vomit. Vomit, I do not like. You will never succeed as a writer with vomit in your stories. Good day to you. I hope you feel better soon. Stinky.

Deep-Fried Pepé: Recipe for Stinky

2007-04-03T13:09:00.000+09:30

I just know that Stink's going to like this one:

French Fried Skunk

2 skunks, skinned and cleaned
1 tbsp. salt
water to cover
2 cups bear fat or lard
2 egg yolks, beaten
3 cups milk or cream
1&1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp baking powder

Clean and wash the skunks, making sure the scent glands are removed. Cut into small serving size pieces. Put a soup kettle on the stove and add the meat. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat and boil until the meat is tender, about 40 minutes. Remove all the scum that rises to the surface of the water. Make a batter by mixing together the egg yolks, milk, flour, salt and baking powder. Mix real good until the batter is like cake batter. Heat the bear fat or lard in a deep fryer to about 360 degrees F. Dip the pieces of skunk in the batter and fry them in the deep fryer til golden brown. Drain well and serve.

Serve with Quebecois Tripe Liquor.

Tips:

The scent glands are not found in the skunk's nose.
There is more than one way to skin a skunk. See how many you can think of.
Retain the skunk skin; they make wonderful toupees
Bear fat can be hard to obtain in Australia. Ask your local Canadian deli to order a couple of kilos in for you. Once you've tried it, you'll never go back to olive oil again. While you're at it better ask them to order a couple of skunks in too.

This recipe was borrowed from Bert Christensen's Weird and Different Recipes. BBQ moose looks pretty good and it's hard to go past the stuffed camel if you're feeling more than a little peckish.

Okay, Stinky, put the tail down. It was just a little joke. You want to me say what? Okay. Stinky said that people who eat this or any other skunk recipes die weird and horrible deaths. Like giant skunks fall out of the sky and crush you -- even if it's a completely sunny day and there are no skunk clouds in the sky.

Bang-Banging On About Maxwell's Silver-Tongued Demon

2007-03-28T21:43:00.000+09:30

It’s no easy thing to try and escape the surly bonds of the small press. Every effort to transcend its borders is met by an equal and opposite reaction designed to keep one in one’s place. Football fans might fall back on phrases like “the level playing field” or “the tall poppy syndrome”. We, however, are the all-dancing, all-singing Fred Karno’s Army of geekdom (and incidentally, just what bl00dy good are we?). We move to more esoteric rhythms. Our great leveller is Maxwell’s Demon.

What is Maxwell’s Demon? Well, apart from a vague idea for a comic strip I wish I’d read in The Beano as a child, it’s a scientific principle invented by a mad Scotsman some hundreds of years ago which states that if you have two containers filled with gas of the same temperature, the only way you'll heat up one container is by summoning up Satan's personal Turkish Bath attendant. You'll be pleased to know that the hot water tap has now been introduced to Scotland by the Chinese, and half an hour after turning it on, they want to turn it on again.

Anyway, to put it all in terms an Australian SF writer can understand, this means that the more effort you put into a story, the more the ezine editor will tell you that they don’t understand it and the quicker they will buy a fluffy bunny story with obvious drug references and a cheerful hobbit sidekick. The writer is made to feel less intelligent than they really are, and by cutting someone off at the knees, the editor is made to feel more intelligent, or at least, to feel like they're banging a better class of rock together. Equilibrium within the system is thus maintained. The demon lies in the form of International Return Coupons, which enables the writer to send work overseas, thus engendering rejections from a higher and potentially more bitter source, and tipping all the hot molecules into container B and all the beer and resentment into the writer. The more successful the writer, the more beer. This is known as Maxwell's Behan, and we can't discuss that until I've downloaded enough Pogues songs.

So how does a writer deal with this demon? Much of it depends upon what you wish to achieve, and where you reside. Submitting within the US small press presents a vastly different set of barriers to the Australian model, for example, many of them to do with not being from round hyear boy and squealing like a pig. Successful American writers have developed a whole range of tactics to defeat Maxwell’s editorial demon: Leo Tolstoy, for example, couldn’t speak English, never set foot on American soil, and even went so far as to not be born in the country or take out US citizenship. It all depends on how much you want to succeed, and what you’re willing to do to achieve that success.

Myself, being a resident of Western Australia (2 hours and 20 years behind the rest of the country), I simply speak quickly and use more than one form of cutlery within a meal. That usually confuses him enough for me to get at least one beer in before closing.

Body Parts

2007-03-26T18:49:00.000+09:30

"Up to this point Mr Aubergine had resisted the urge to mix up the body parts. Although it had been his intention when Juliana arrived, she'd had such an affect on him the thought had retreated to the back of his mind. But shortly after the wedding, the desire to mix and match returned. The truth was he was becoming a little bored with Juliana; his initial passion was beginning to wane and Juliana no longer seemed as exciting as she had before. Still he did not take this decision lightly; he was aware that there was a certain integrity in Tracy and Juliana’s original forms, and pulling their bodies apart and joining them together willy-nilly would be an act akin to vandalism. Something more methodical was called for and, as with all collectors, Mr Aubergine was very methodical indeed. So before he commenced work on his “transformations”, he took a pen and a piece of paper and made a list of all the permutations which could be achieved by swappingthe body parts around."

From "The Doll Collector" - a work in progress.

Geoffrey Maloney
Tales from the Crypto-System

Feeling a Bit Pancreatic? Recipe for Lee

2007-03-24T13:30:00.000+09:30

Savoury Braised Sweetbreads (from the Australian Home Journal, September 2nd, 1957)

1 calf's sweetbread (that's its pancreas)
1 oz dripping
2 rashers bacon
1/4 pint tomato sauce
pieces of carrot, onion, turnip, parsnips, swedes, choko, and celery
flowers (preferably a bouquet of garni)
stock
seasoning
peppercorns

Prepare the vegetables and slice them thickly, then saute them in fat for a few minutes. Add the seasoning, peppercorns and the flowers. Cover with stock and lay the prepared sweetbread on top, then cover with the bacon and some greased paper. Put the lid on and cook gently for about 2 hours till tender. Remove the flowers before serving.

To prepare the sweetbreads, wash and soak in cold salted water for several hours. Then add some lemon juice, bring slowly to the boil and cook for 5 minutes until blanched. Throw into cold water and pull off any fat and skin that will come away.

Tips:

Garni can be difficult to grow in Australia, particularly in the warmer cities. Most flowers from the garden can be subtituted without loss of flavour. However, avoid Oleanders if you'd prefer your loved ones to be around the next day. Datura and Foxglove can also be problematic.
Greased paper can be hard to come by these days so you may need to make your own. The easiest way to do this is to plan ahead. Take a couple of sheets from a newspaper, preferably one you have already read, and leave them under the engine of your Holden overnight. If you don't have a Holden, a Toyota will do. If you only have a Ford, best to ask if you can use your neighbour's car.
Care must be taken when throwing the sweetbreads into the cold water. If you miss the pot and they land on the stove or the kitchen bench, they are very likely to explode. In fact the recipe must be followed precisely to avoid unwanted explosions. A sweetbread is only completely defused once it has been fully cooked in the manner describe above.
This one definitely requires winter seasoning.

Frocked Tripe: A Recipe for Lyn

2007-03-24T12:51:00.000+09:30

Okay, I'm feeling kind of guilty that my last offal recipe was posted almost a week ago and I've been promising Lyn a tripe recipe for ages. So here we are my friends.

Dressed Tripe (from the Australian Home Journal, September 2nd, 1957)

a load of old tripe
4-5 rashers of bacon
2 large onions
1/2 oz butter
1 lb creamy mashed potato
a little grated lemon rind
1/2 pint tripe liquor
1/2 oz flour
1 teaspon of chopped parsley
a little lemon juice
seasoning
circles of hot cooked carrots, glazed in butter, to garnish

Cut the tripe into 4-5 pieces. Do not be worried if it smells a little offal. Roll each strip up with a rasher of bacon inside, and secure with string. Place rolls in a saucepan and just cover with water, then add the lemon rind, and sliced onions. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for 2-3 hours. When tripe is cooked, drain and remove the strings. Pipe a thick line of mashed potato down the centre of a dish, arrange the rolls on it and keep them hot. Meantime melt the butter, add the flour and cook for 2-3 minutes, then gradually add tripe liquor. Bring this sauce to the boil, stirring, and cook for 10 minutes. Add the lemon juice, parsley and seasoning, and pour the sauce round the tripe. Garnish with glazed carrot circles.

Tips:

It's the older the better for tripe, so try to get some the butcher's had hanging out the back of his shop for several months. Hung tripe will cost a little more but it's worth it. The flavour is succulent and mellow.
Do not be tempted to substitute large lemon juice for little lemon juice. These are two entirely different species of lemon, and substitution can be dangerous.
My favourite seasoning for this receipe is spring, but I know some people prefer winter. If your tastebuds are particularly jaded, you could always try summer. It's a little more robust and spicy.
If you are having trouble making carrot circles, turn the carrot around and cut through the horizontal axis of the carrot, instead of the vertical.
Tripe liquor is available at all good bottleshops. Stinky assures me that it's the national drink of Quebec, and it has a bigger kick than the tequila that has the mescaline worm in the bottle.

Over in Perth Lyn should still have plenty of time to nick out to the butcher's and get this one ready for tonight. I imagine a load of old tripe wouldn't be too hard to find in Perth.

What....? Oh, yeah Stinky's just pointed out that I haven't posted a recipe for Lee yet. Patience Stinky. Patience Lee. I have a beauty coming your way. I just have to check the dictionary to find out what sweetbreads are.

The Devil in Brisbane

2007-03-15T21:23:00.000+09:30

Sometime in the early 21st Century the internationally acclaimed Serbian writer, Zoran Zivkovic happened to turn up where I live as a guest at the Brisbane Writers' Festival. We produced an anthology together, "The Devil in Brisbane", which we hoped would help some Australian writers get published for the first time and give some better known ones a chance to try their luck with an age old theme.

Above and beyond that what we wanted to do was capture an early 21st Century view of an ancient cultural and religious icon. Put quite simply: How do people view the Devil in this day and age?

Miranda Siemienowicz at Horrorscope has just done a review of DinB which understood all the things that we wanted achieve: http://ozhorrorscope.blogspot.com/ Scroll down to March 10.

It's an intelligent review and it's not often that you get one where the reviewer got the text and the subtext as well.

Stinky says I'm just saying this because I've got the hots for Miranda or she's my very best friend like what happens with so many other blogs where writers/editors try to make themselves look big deal. Stinky, as I said before, is a dead skunk who knows nothing much at all, but if you saw the previous blog I'd take his advice on using skunk brains. All I did was send Miranda a copy of the book.

Food for Thought: A Recipe for Professor Duffy and Dr Barry

2007-03-15T20:43:00.000+09:30

From the Australian Home Journal, September 2nd, 1957:

Brains and Potatoe Pie

2 sets of brains -- preferably fresh from your favourite species
3/4 pint of white sauce
1 teaspoon chopped parsley
2 lbs potatoes (cooked)
1 egg

Beat the egg well. Mash the cooked potatoes and beat in enough of the egg to bind. Grease a casserole dish thoroughly and line it with a thick layer of mashed potatoes. Chop the brains and mix them with the white sauce and parsley . Pour this into the potato lined dish. Cover with the rest of the mashed potato and score with a fork to give a roughened appearance. Glaze with egg and bake until lighlty browned.

Doesn't that sound yummie? Not sure where you'd get fresh brains from these days. Back in 1957 in Australia it was kind of okay to get the chopper out and give the annoying next door neighbour the coup de grace. Voila, as Stinky would say, one troublesome neighbour meets his destiny and we have fresh brains for dinner. These days however we have learnt to live in peace and harmony with our neighbours. So brains come in jars and at a price. But it's worth it. The Coles "Brains in a Jar" range is the closest thing you can get to fresh. But don't be fooled into buying the "Einstein Brain" because it's a fake. Einstein only had one brain as far as I know, so I'm not sure how they could be selling his brain all over Brisbane, in all their stores. They might have cloned it I guess.

Whatever you do, Stinky says, DO NOT USE SKUNK BRAINS. Skunk brains are really smelly, full of evil thoughts, and very likely to give you an upset stomach and bad dreams.

But I was thinking that back in 1957, they probably ate lots of sheep brains. Baa, Baa, Baa. Singalong if you wish. And that might explain some things about Australia today.

Should She Have Been Spanked?

2007-03-09T18:30:00.000+09:30

From the Australian Home Journal, December 1st, 1953:

“I am 25 years of age and have been married about two years. My husband took me to a party recently, where I met a very attractive man. He paid me a lot of attention and I could see my husband was not at all pleased. I had several dances with him and flirted a little. Unfortunately, the affair did not end there, as this man persuaded me to go out with him one day while my husband was at work. I admit this was very foolish and wrong of me, but I do not think it warranted the treatment my husband gave me when he heard about it. To cut a long story short, he made me bend over a chair and gave me twelve hard strokes with a leather strap. The pain was awful. He then promised me more of the same treatment if I did not behave myself. Do you think he had any right to punish me in this way for my misdeed? – Spanked Wife

“Dear Spanked Wife, in the normal differences between man and wife the wise course is an extremely straight talk which irons things out, but your husband evidently felt you had behaved in such an underhand manner that reasoning was useless. Can you blame him? After only two years of married life you publicly flaunted your preference for the attentions of another man. By this time you should possess both sense and scruples, but you actions show little evidence of either. Do you not realise how much you have hurt your husband and how unpleasant it must be for him to feel that his wife has made herself the subject of neighbourhood gossip? Doesn’t it also occur to you that the playboy in the case must privately label you as an empty-headed type easily susceptible to a little judicious flattery? He is obviously of a calculating nature or he would not have acted as he did. You both appear to be weak and vain. It is your husband who possesses strength of character. Take all this into consideration before you decide the punishment he gave you was too severe, and avoid a repetition by behaving in the manner any decent-living man has a right to expect from his wife.”

Ouch! Insult to injury. The 1950s, don’t you just love them? Stinky reckons she’s lucky her “decent-living” husband didn’t chop off her head and put the rest of her through the mincer, and make himself some hamburgers. But then he’s just a dead skunk that knows zip. Can’t help wondering if Spanked Wife and Mr Spanky ever managed to settle down into matrimonial bliss. One suspects not. Running off with the glad-eye playboy must have looked like a much more attractive option. “Darling, would you like to have some fun or stay at home and let your boar of husband whip you with his strap.”

Stinky and I have been coming to the conclusion that the Australian Home Journal was a post-war propaganda rag, dedicated to helping women think inside the box.

Stinky the Skunk

2007-03-06T17:46:00.000+09:30

Here's a nice picture of Stinky I took today.

This is for all those people who have been saying I just made Stinky up. But no, he's real. There he is the cutest little skunk toupee you have ever seen. So there you go, you Doubting-Tomos, how much more proof do you need than a real live picture of Stinky.

Offal is awful

2007-03-05T19:50:00.000+09:30

My parents had two tripe recipes which they inflicted upon me as a child. One was with white sauce and one without. I loved the with, hated hated hated the without. Once I found out the truth however I swore never to touch either type again. I love liver as long as it comes from a chicken and is pureed to within an inch of its life with brandy or port and pepper. And served on crackers.

Or toast.

Realistically speaking, I hate all offal. Pate aside (and I do love pate) I just can't stand the texture upon my tongue. It's never in my mouth long enough to make it to my stomach.

So, dinner. We ate vegetarian tonight. We simmered him gently in broth.

Cooking for the Heart: A Recipe for Paul

2007-03-03T16:13:00.000+09:30

Stuffed Sheep’s Hearts (from the Australian Home Journal, September 2nd, 1957)

2 sheep’s hearts
1 dessertspoon chopped ham
3 tablespoons breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon melted butter
egg (to bind)
chopped parsley
grated lemon rind
flour
dripping
salt and pepper
¼ pint of tomato puree
½ pint of water
lemon (to garnish)

Wash hearts thoroughly, and remove any veins and arteries, then soak them for about ¾ hour in cold salted water. Place in a saucepan, cover with cold water, bring to boil and poor off water. Rinse hearts. Make the stuffing by mixing the breadcrumbs, parsley, lemon rind, and ham, season well and bind with egg and melted butter. Stuff the tops of the hearts with this filling, sew up and roll in flour. Melt some dripping and fry the hearts until they are browned all over, add the water and bring to the boil, put in a covered casserole and bake for 2 hours in a moderate oven. Drain hearts, reserve liquid and remove string. Mix tomato puree with one tablespoon of flour, add to the reserved liquid in the casserole dish, bring to the boil, season and strain over hearts. Garnish with lemon.

Simply irresistible! Although Stinky reckons if you add several garlic cloves and a Spanish onion it will taste even better, but that's just the sort of Continental baloney Stinky would suggest after having sat on Merry Jervois's head for all those years. The above is a proper dinky-di 100% Australian recipe. Meddle with the ingredients at your peril. This is not just a recipe; it's a link back to the Australian way of life, 1950s style.

Check out Paul Haines’s short story “Slice of Life: Cooking for the Heart”-- available in his collection “Doorways for the Dispossessed” from Prime Books. The story begins: "It's hard to find recipes for the heart these days."

Paul, I know, man, but you've just been reading the wrong literature. Stephanie Alexander, Jamie Oliver...sheesh! Stinky says...ah, forget about what Stinky says; he's just a dead skunk who was lucky enough to get made into a toupee.

Tripe and liver recipes will be available soon...

The Ballad of Betty and Laurence

2007-03-03T09:42:00.000+09:30

From the Australian Home Journal, March 1st, 1958:

"Laurie, my boy-friend, is a dear in a lot of ways, but he worries me because he never wants to do anything which involves using any energy. He has a job, but dislikes it, and doesn't want promotion because that would mean responsibility and harder work. I can't even get him to do anything much at weekends. He just wants to sit around, either in the garden or on the beach. Occasionally, but only very occasionally, he comes surfing with me, but he would rather sit and talk, or read. My family says he is bone lazy, and I'm wondering if they are right. Do you think he will ever be different, as he now wants to be serious with me?--Betty

"Dear Betty, you may as well have a piece of statuary around the house as a husband of the type this lethargic young man would make. It would be a good idea to suggest that he has a medical check-up, as his lack of energy seems abnormal. Could be, though, that he was 'born lazy.' If so, end your association with him smartly. Better to cease seeing him than to 'see red' when his bone laziness wears you to a frazzle."

Ah, those were the days, 1950s Australia where if you enjoyed conversation and reading you were abnormal and in need of medical assistance. I mean who ever heard of a young Australian that didn't like surfing? And it doesn't sound like he drank beer either and that's simply un-Australian.

I wonder what ever happened to Laurence? The 1960s were looming and with them the hippie movement and the Vietnam War. Did he get drafted and finally see some action? Did he take up dope-smoking and drop out completely? Or did he realise that Betty wasn't his type and run off with Pierre, the ladies' wig-maker, from the local shopping centre?

Stinky reckons that Laurence probably became a wino sleeping under bridges and writing obscure poetry on scraps of paper that no one would ever read. That sounds just a little too romantic. More likely Laurence realised the error of his ways, or some quack found a way of curing him of his reading and talking addiction, and he took that promotion at work and never read again unless it was the turf guide in the weekend newspaper, and he and Betty lived out lives of suburban mundanity oblivious to the changing world around them. And without a single book in the house.

Because More Haiku Is What The world Really Needs

2007-03-02T14:04:00.000+09:30

Culled from countless cats

I should have removed the bells

Devalued merkin

Oh, God. Some real content soon, I promise. It's just that I have the script, and those story edits, and the day job starting soon, and.......

Rachel was Innocent

2007-03-01T19:03:00.000+09:30

Okay it’s National Wig Day in Australia, but I didn’t get to the Wig Pride Parade this morning and I won’t be making it to the Wig Day Out concert. So I’m going to miss Husker Du who are playing later this evening. That was going to be the event of the year for me. It’s not everyday that a legendary Swedish rock band reform especially for a big gig in Brisbane.

So why won’t I be there? Well, I’ve got the flu and I feel like I’ve got the flu. Can’t do anything much but lie on the bed feeling like I’ve the flu, and staring up at my skunk toupee on top of the wardrobe who’s got his beady little eyes on me making me feel guilty because he didn’t get to be out and about in the big Wig Pride Parade. Every now and then Stinky snarls at me because he’s so cross. Well, go ahead and snarl all you like, Stinky, and keep your tail down, because right now I’m feeling stinkier than you.

But as sick as I was I did manage to achieve something today, despite Stinky snarling at me. I reread Daphne Du Maurier’s “My Cousin Rachel.” For those who haven’t read the story there’s a synopsis here: http://www.dumaurier.org/reviews-rachel.html

And it is a synopsis, not a review and not a critique, and hopefully people who publish stuff on the internet will one day learn the difference between all those things.

However, when I first read “My Cousin Rachel” I was young and in my twenties and really identified with the loveforlornless of the narrator. Rachel was guilty, guilty, guilty! She was a dark and manipulative woman. She lured innocent men to their deaths. She poisoned them. But reading it again today, as I approach my dotage, with Stinky giving me the evil eye, I got to the end and thought that Rachel was innocent. Rachel is a dark and gothic sweetheart and I love her. So, Rachel, darling, if you are still listening, I was wrong all those years ago. Forgive me.

One of the wonderful things about the story is that Du Maurier herself never said whether Rachel was guilty or not. She was so trapped in Philip the narrator’s mind when she wrote the story she could only see the world from his perspective, and Philip, bless him, simply had no idea. He was the perfect unreliable narrator. And if you identify too much with Philip, as I did when I was young, you don’t realise he killed Rachel. An accident caused by withheld information. A femme fatale who met a fitting end. But not true, not at all.

Stinky’s laughing at me as I write this. He reckons my judgement’s warped by the flu and Rachel has got her claws into me just the same as she got them into Ambrose and Philip. But then Stinky’s just a skunk toupee sitting on top of the wardrobe pissed off because he didn’t get to go out today.

Geoffrey Maloney once wrote an award winning story. It can be found here: http://www.tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse/WorldAccordingToKipling.html

Stinky isn’t in it.

Wig Day Out

2007-02-24T12:26:00.000+09:30

Next Thursday 1st of March is National Wig Out Day in Australia. In Brisbane, the celebration kicks off with the Wig Pride parade starting from City Hall at 10.00 a.m. It will feature international hairpieces from all over the world and is yet another excellent example of what a fine multi-cultural city Brisbane is. Be sure to arrive early to catch the presentation of the Brisbane City Wig to the Queen of the Parade by Lord Mayor Can-Do Campbell. Can-Do himself, by the way, is follicly challenged.

But the big buzz is that the Queen of the Parade this year will be none other than po-mo pop songstress Britney Spears. She’ll be flying in from LA especially for the big event and those of you who have been following the life and times of Brit will know she’s recently wigged out in a big way. That’s the girl!

After the parade the festivities kick up a notch with the Wig Day Out concert at Roma Street Parkland. Three stages have been set-up around this lovely city oasis. The highlights will be The Wiggles for the kiddies, the toupee-loving Jonny Jervis doing his Frank Sinatra Tribute Show for the oldies, and for the rest of us the legendary Swedish rockers, Husker Du, will be performing their 1985 album, “Flip Your Wig”, in its entirety.

So shave your head, grabbed your toupee and let yourself really wig out for once. I’ll be there doing the skunk, and Jerry Jervis might even show up. See if you can spot him in the crowd.

Geoffrey Maloney’s latest story published in the UK is “Confessions of Imray.” It’s available in the anthology “When Graveyards Yawn” from Crowswing Books.

A Wig of Almost Humourous Construction

2007-02-14T19:16:00.000+09:30

Two days before I was to be married my wife demanded I wax my back. I thought perhaps this would be for the wedding photos, but no. She sat on a chair and studied my face while a sour Russian woman in her forties ripped the hair from my back. I collected the wax strips into a plastic bag and then we had coffee at a nearby cafe.

That was four years ago.

I have a rather large collection of hair now that I have shaped, quite successfully I might add, into a late 1980s Simon Le Bon "Wild Boys" style mullet. It has been crafted from a heady concoction of back, nostril, armpit, testicular and anal hair. I had to use a hair straightener on the testicular hair to create the length at the back of the mullet, and the nostril hair creates a reasonably authentic short cut sideburn. (It must be noted I resisted the urge to collect my facial hair, mainly because it had turned a silvery white since my wedding day -- this mullet, after all, is a nostalgic nod to a younger virile day).

I have employed several of the humours as binding agents for this mullet, with approximately 60% of the humour being based in phlegm. I struggled to summon forth any black bile and instead had to revert to using semen.

The wig now is almost finished, perhaps needing only a few thickened strands of anal hair woven through the spike for body, and I keep this piece in a humidor to retain the vitality of the fibre needed to present a healthy and lifelike appearance when wearing the wig to significant occasions in my marriage.

Sometimes, when I look closely and the sun shines on a certain angle just after midday, the light suggests the initials JJ blazenly bolden in a reddish-brown pube where the crown would be.

At this point I would like to point out that I no longer smoke as it is bad for my health, and the scent of cigar is best not appreciated when worn on the head.

Paul Haines has a collection "Doorways For The Dispossessed" available at your local online Amazon. Duffy hasn't.

My Wonderful Skunk Wig

2007-02-12T20:20:00.000+09:30

These of you who have met me -- all half-a-dozen of you, perhaps -- will know that over the years I've become somewhat follicly challenged. So in an attempt to regain some of my lost youth I decided it was time I invested in a toupee. But it couldn't just be any old toupee. Not like one of those worn by the guys with striped lavender shirts and regimental ties who sing Frank Sinatra songs when they get drunk. I wanted to look younger, not older, and there's nothing that will make you look older than a real natural looking fake toupee. In short I needed something that was radical, something more in keeping with my "devil-may-care" attitude to life. Something that would make a lasting impression on everyone I met.

I finally found what I was after in an S&M bondage shop in the Valley. It was a bit like the radical toupee Daniel Boone used to wear -- yep, Daniel "the big man" Boone. The guy who killed a bear when he was only three or was that Davy Crockett who died at the Alamo? My American history ain’t the best, but you know the toupee I’m talking about. It was the one made out of coonskin and it had a big floppy striped tail at the back a bit like a ponytail, except it was a raccoon's tail, not a pony’s. But this one wasn't just some dead old raccoon I was sticking on my head. It was genuine skunk. Yeah, skunk-- radical, I know – jet-black skunk with fast white stripes down the sides. It was the sports car of toupees, and the tail didn't flop down the back like a dead coon's did, but fluffed straight up in the air. It looked great with my silver slinky kaftan.

Admittedly it wasn’t brand new. The skunk wig had a previous owner. His name was written inside on a small white label in indelible ink. At first I thought the name was Jerry Jarvis, but as I looked closer I realised the wig had belonged to Merry Jervois, a clown that once performed in the streets of Brisbane. He was a refugee from the Circus de Soleil and a devotee of the two Marcels: Marceau and Proust. He became a legend in everyone else’s lunchtime, but died a tragic death, plunging from the Storey Bridge during one of his famous performances as the “Blind Bridge Walker”. He was wearing his skunk toupee at the time, the same one I’m the proud owner of today. Sometimes you just get lucky.

Geoffrey Maloney lives in Brisbane, Australia. His latest story, “When the World was Flat” can be found in Agog! Ripping Reads, available from http://www.prime-books.com/ or http://www.catsparks.net/. “When the World is Flat” contains no references to Jerry Jarvis’s Wig and no references to toupees or dead skunks either.

Who is Jerry Jarvis?

2007-02-11T13:41:00.000+09:30

Jerry Jarvis might have been the guy I saw singing in a dingy little RSL club in Sydney once. He did a Frank Sinatra tribute show and he'd been playing the same club once a week for the last twenty years. He had Frank's toning and phrasing down pat, but he had this really obvious toupee that looked like he'd stuck a roadkill cat on his head. At first I thought it was a little sad, but as the show went on I realised his dead-cat toupee was all part of his act; during a dramatic and overblown rendition of "My Way" he ripped his toupee from his head and tossed it into the audience. It landed at my feet. I was kind of surprised when it let out one last meow. Yeah, that might have been Jerry Jarvis, but now I think about it again, I'm sure it was Jonny Jervis. Still the wig's the thing!

Geoffrey Maloney writes stuff. His collection "Tales from the Crypto-System" is available from Prime Books: www.primebooks.net . It contains no clues to the true identifty of Jerry Jarvis or that of his wig.

The Saturation Of The...

2007-02-10T16:37:00.000+09:30

Hi, My name is Paul and I live in Melbourne. Today I saw a little boy chasing a bubble almost run through a lamb that was made of cake with mint icing. Just checking I can work the controls and that I've beaten Duffy to do it.

2007-02-10T10:58:00.000+09:30

Once we've got ourselves sorted out, this will be a group blog dedicated to the mutterings of award winning Australian writers Lee Battersby, Lyn Battersby, Brendan Duffy, Paul Haines, and Geoff Maloney (alphabetical order is the safest way to travel)

Soon as we're all ready, we'll letch'all know....