31 December 2004

I’m in the mood for a bit of navel-gazing (bloody New Year's Eve) so if this is likely to make you puke, best go elsewhere. No-one should have to start the new year in a vomitous way.

I wasn’t going to post anything tonight, scared it’d be obvious I’m the only person in the universe at home on New Years Eve. But I was out walking with the dogs an hour ago and noticed that down the hill and across the creek, a neighbour is out slashing his top paddock (ie. mowing with a tractor). I’ve never met him or his family (by road they live about 10 kilometres away), but they are reportedly cool and unquestionably social, so I suddenly feel better about being here. Also during the week I heard Kerry O’Keeffe at the cricket saying he thinks New Years Eve is overrated. So! Good enough for me. Here I am. At home. New Years Eve.

I think I used to be cool, and I’m hoping to be again, I’m just nowhere near it at the moment. I don’t know how this happened, how my life ground to a halt in this manner, sometime years ago. It wasn’t anything traumatic - there’s no event which ruined my life or anything. It'd be easier if there had been. It’d be something other than me to blame. But there isn’t anything else to blame: it’s my fault. Lack of oomph, or courage, or vision. I’m going to get out of this slump and start living again, but while I’m here I just wanted to look around for a minute. 2004. This is where I am.

I’m sorry this has become so horrifyingly personal all of a sudden, and actually, let’s just stop right here. I just wanted to say for anybody else who might be starting their life anew in some way (and it’s New Years Eve: in a calendar-type way we’re all starting again), there’s more of us in the same boat than maybe you realise. Hello!

And if you’re going out tonight, well, go you good thing! Have a good one.

Here's to 2005. New day, new year. It’s coming, ready or not.

Best wishes, all!

Sticks, dirt, and me.

(And yes, if you're going to get picky, that "new" is close to being illegible, but it says "new", I tell you! Happy new year!)

A walk in the country

Went for a walk this afternoon in lovely coolish sunshiny weather.


The resident magpie. He/she is very chatty and has quite a repertoire of different sounds, including the calls of other birds.


A country road with dogs (Big Pup on the left, Little Pup on the right).


Kikuyu exceeding its usual height restrictions (it grows on long runners, so there are roots running down the inside of the post somewhere).


A Christmas arrival.


Inter-species curiosity (left to right: Little Pup, New Calf, New Calf's mum).

Oh, shit!

There comes a time in life when you realise that no-one is much more adult or sober than you. This is not a good time. God help us all.

One world

This latest disaster - earthquakes, tsunamis - is unquestionably a disaster. It will blight the lives of too many for days or weeks or years. Whole communities have been decimated, and from an individual’s point of view, what is more devastating than losing the one(s) you love? But it’s not only people who will be missing - there are animals, livelihoods, buildings, roads, crops, a sense of safety and a belief in the future which will be mourned. We can’t bring these things back.

As far as I can see, unless you go overseas and assist in person, the most effective way of helping these people is to send money. And yes, I know we don’t all have money to spare. God knows this is a bad time of year, after Christmas and everything. Please do what you can. We in the “West” (generally speaking) are materially lucky. You know it, and so do I. We can do without most of what we foolishly take for granted.

The problem is this: the latest disaster is getting headlines, and rightly so. But in the shadows there are so many more disasters playing out quietly and so enduringly. Yes, turn your attention to this latest disaster, and do what you can. But please don’t forget the others either. Tears and anguish won’t help them. Money or political agitation might.

from “The Year in Review” by Rowan Gillies MD, President, MSF International Council + Marine
Buissonnière, MSF Secretary-General

While Darfur finally started receiving public attention by mid-2004, many other crises causing immense human suffering remained hidden from view, rarely mentioned in headlines. The forgotten war taking place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continued to claim lives, both directly through violence and more insidiously because of displacement and disease. Increasing violence in Uganda also sent thousands on the run, but made little impact on the outside world.
[...]
Living conditions in and around Chechnya are inhuman after over a decade of war and destruction. People inside Chechnya are terrorized in a daily and structural way and the disappearance and execution of people are more rules than exception. For the Chechens who fled their country during the war the situation is almost as bad, mostly ending up in neighboring Ingushetia, living in camps with little or no facilities in tents which fall apart after the winter. Most NGO's working in Ingushetia can not enter Chechnya to do their important work as the risk of being kidnapped is too high
[...]
Today there are plenty of crises and conflict zones requiring humanitarian assistance. While a few are caused by natural disasters or epidemics sparked by natural conditions, most are man-made. The need for humanitarian action usually arises when those in power refuse to uphold commitments they have made to protect those living within their borders or to shoulder responsibilities promised under national or international law.
[...]
When civilians are not protected or are actively harmed by governments or other actors, it is the role of humanitarians first to respond to their needs but also to expose the conditions and lives of those who are sacrificed – and to remain in solidarity with these people. Such situations not only occur in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Civilians escaping from Darfur and other crisis zones have been met with harsh treatment in Europe when they tried to gain political asylum or immigrate. [And not just in Europe, eh? - Deirdre]
[...]
The Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, which has had so much success with reducing the price of HIV/AIDS drugs, is now advocating for an urgent global approach to the lack of research and development on TB.

Quake/tsunami appeals

If you can help survivors financially, a number of Australian organisations are running appeals:
Australian Red Cross
World Vision Australia
CARE Australia
Oxfam Community Aid Abroad
UNICEF Australia

There's info about the earthquakes (there were several) and tsunamis at the US Geological Survey website.

And though most Australian media reports seem to have a blind spot, people were killed in Somalia, Kenya, and possibly the Seychelles as well as South and South-East Asia.

Thank you

Sharpes Beach, Skennars Head, 23 Dec 2004.

Christmas for me was really nice (and if you detect a note of amazement in that statement, you’re not wrong). My youngest sister flew in for a few days and we both stayed at our parents’ place (within reach of the photos). On Christmas Day we all went to my other sister J’s place for lunch with her family and in-laws. And it was all really good! The morning’s heat and humidity gave way to afternoon breezes and a pleasant evening. J & the Groovers put on a very cool yule meal. And sitting around talking and eating with people you love - even at times like (laughing) - well, if I ever whinge about anything ever again, just scoff. It’s time to be grateful, and I am.




Seven Mile Beach, Lennox Head, 24 Dec 2004.

Merry Christmas

Christmas can be difficult. No time, they said, regretting. Et cetera. Still, reader-darl, let's look on the bright side. It'll be over soon (laughing).

Here's a poem from a bloke who does a nice line in Christmas ships. Couldn't find a good copy online though, so here are some ducks instead:

Daddy Fell into the Pond

Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.
We had nothing to do and nothing to say.
We were nearing the end of a dismal day,
And there seemed to be nothing beyond,
Then
Daddy fell into the pond!

And everyone's face grew merry and bright,
And Timothy danced for sheer delight.
"Give me the camera, quick, oh quick!
He's crawling out of the duckweed." Click!

Then the gardener suddenly slapped his knee,
And doubled up, shaking silently,
And the ducks all quacked as if they were daft
And it sounded as if the old drake laughed.

O, there wasn't a thing that didn't respond
When
Daddy fell into the pond!

- Alfred Noyes

I've got to go and do the Christmas thing now, but I'll be back on the 26th. Take care, all. Peace be with you.

Trees in space

Now, reader: it's nearly Christmas, which means you're duty-bound to be nice to people and to do exactly what they ask. (No, that's the Christmas Rule, I tell you.) What I want you to do is go straight to Link's blog where you can discover:
(a) which tree you are, and
(b) which planet you're from.

Then, without further ado, return here and tell us who the hell you are. Okey-dokey? No grumbling. I want results here on my desk by tomorrow night. Off you trot.

Some of us advanced beings are way ahead of you:
Link - a Cedar tree from the Moon
Kent - an Ash tree from Mercury
Me - a Rowan tree (pic above: Trees for Life) from Neptune:

Rowan Tree (Sensitivity) - full of charm, cheerful, gifted without egoism, likes to draw attention, loves life, motion, unrest, and even complications, is both dependent and independent, good taste, artistic, passionate, emotional, good company, does not forgive.

From Neptune - You are dreamy and mystical, with a natural psychic ability. You love music, poetry, dance, and (most of all) the open sea. Your soul is filled with possibilities, and your heart overflows with compassion. You can be in a room full of friendly people and feel all alone. If you don't get carried away with one idea, your spiritual nature will see you through anything.

(NB. Strangely enough, only some parts of the above - ie. the parts I like - are true.)

Enough is amazing

I can’t think of anything to write. Yes, again. Shits me. But there’s this: we’re all human, yes? That's pretty good, don't you think?

*Update: It's just struck me (yes, I'm a dag) that it looks like I was talking about writing (above). Bugger the writing. I meant the idea. We're all human. We're all human. That's amazing! All of us, little individual worlds, whirling around in our own little orbits (this is written after What Planet Are You From? obviously) but we're all human. There's such a lot we have in common. And if that doesn't gladden the old heart in times of sadness, well... Bless you, darl, one day it will and then you'll be happy again. Hold on, hold out, et cetera. Go the humans! We're amazing.

Compare & contrast (at great length)

Just upgraded HaloScan to the Premium service, which means that comments can now be up to 3,000 characters in length. Consequently I want you to go to much greater efforts in your comment-writing activities. Anything less than a bloody great essay will be marked "Fail", all right? And no, yes, no, I'm probably joking.

Watching the grass grow

When animals die here on the farm, I’m often the one who buries them (tractor, big hole, rope). I won’t do it until their bodies are cold though, because of an (until now) unquestioned belief that something of their spirit hangs around until their warmth is gone. I wonder whether this is a stupid idea, though. Maybe yes, maybe no. I don’t think there’s anyone qualified to say, and that's the beauty of it. (Doesn't it make you feel proud as a human to have this leniency?)

I like the idea of soul or spirit because it links our puny lives to a larger reality. We might not be just individual lifetimes, we might be aspects of a greater whole, working through billions of versions to get at the truth of something. Or not. I don’t know. Nobody knows. It’s one of the great questions. Are we just “me”, here and now and no further, or are we linked to something beyond our understanding? And yes, this is getting into the realms of Airy-Fairyness, so you might want to thud back to earth if it’s offending you. (Come on, though... be brave.)

There’s no question that when an animal dies, something leaves its body. Life, obviously. But what does that mean? I’ve seen a number of animals die now, though no human ones so far. Usually there is a brief moment when you think suddenly, miraculously, they’ve recovered from whatever is killing them, and they’ll be fine. Their eyes light up, their faces shine, and for that brief second your heart races. But then it’s over. They go back to suffering, and you go back to praying for their deaths, or for the arrival of the bloody vet, or a gun. And then they die. Minutes or hours or days later. Hopefully the sooner the better. I’ve seen enough horrible deaths to know that a good death is a quick one.

I don’t know what soul is. I don’t know whether we have one. All we really know is here and now, and sometimes that can feel inadequate. Maybe this is just wishing for the moon when we should really stay more firmly bound to earth. Dunno/don’t care. I’m going with the soul option, just because I can. I want to believe we’re more than just cells. I want us to be eternal. I want to believe in fate and coincidence and a higher power that’s overseeing us dopeys, and if that’s ludicrous? Fine. Ludicrous it is.

Tradition teaches that soul lies midway between understanding and unconsciousness, and that its instrument is neither the mind nor the body, but imagination. - p.xiii

The act of entering into the mysteries of the soul, without sentimentality or pessimism, encourages life to blossom forth according to its own designs and with its own unpredictable beauty. Care of the soul is not solving the puzzle of life; quite the opposite, it is an appreciation of the paradoxical mysteries that blend light and darkness into the grandeur of what human life and culture can be. - p.xix

Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life (New York: HarperPerennial, 1994, copyright 1992) ISBN: 0060165979.

Credit where credit's due

Can I just say, before going on to something else, that all you commenters are gorgeous? Your thoughts are like manna from heaven. Thank you.

Now! Business-like!

But...

Bugger it. I’ll never be business-like. You people are gorgeous. That’s all. Thank you.

:)

Me, myself & bits

I made a blood donation at Red Cross today, and it makes me wonder about what will happen when someone else gets the stuff pumped into their veins (or arteries? Which is which?). There’s something of me going into their bodies: is it just a physical substance, or does something of my spirit go with it?

A friend of the family once suffered a terrible & mysterious infection. I don’t know the details, but after years of liver trouble she caught some sort of bug (not the medical term used). This infection quickly spread through her body, and her limbs had to be amputated, though this failed to prevent her death. My mother and I at the time wondered about this woman’s loss of limbs, and what it meant about identity. The “person” we knew always remained that part of the body lying in the hospital bed, despite the growing number of bits amputated from it.

The idea of holding a funeral for the limbs seems comical, wouldn’t you say? But if it is, then why? Are these bits of us just accessories to the “real” us, or what? Do they not in themselves constitute something of our identity? If it had been physically possible, just how much of this poor woman’s body could have been removed before she herself was gone?

I don’t feel that I’ve lost part of myself in that blood donation, though I do drift towards thinking there might be communication of energy or spirit or ... you know, something to the poor sod who needs to use the blood products. High levels of caffeine, perhaps.

Old comments are go

All the pre-HaloScan comments have reappeared! The COMMENT (0) thingie shows zero, but if you click on the time shown at the end of each post, all your wise words will be revealed once more. Yay! I missed 'em.

A big thanks to Kent the Genius. Why not send him all your computer questions and problems, people? (laughing) No, no. I-am-joking, except for the genius part. Thanks, Kent.

Looking ahead

Someone should ban this time of year. It’s summer, it’s Christmas, it’s New Year, it’s the end of one year, the beginning of another, and it’s one more milestone on the way to... ?

This time, my only New Year’s Resolution is to start swearing like a sailor. Shit, yeah (laughing). Never too late to find your true calling in life.

I'm going to be terribly busy singing Christmas carols later on, so please let me jump in now: Season's Greetings, reader-darl. Be happy if you can, or whatever you can manage if you can't.

AIDS x 13,000,000

A Guardian article, via 360 Degrees of Sky:


Photograph: Gideon Mendel / Corbis

The Araújo family

My name is Sole Araújo and I am 15 years old. It was in 2000 that my parents started getting sick. I was still very young but because they were very ill, me and my sister Rebecca had to take care of them. We used to cook for them and also wash their clothes. We were doing everything for them. It was difficult. I was feeling so bad because I was very young. They lost their lives at the end. Before he died my father crawled from his bed to our neighbour Mama Clara's house to say that he wanted her to care for us and take us to school. My father lost his life in 2001, then my mother lost her life at the end of 2002. My mother also had a young baby, Ana, who had the problem of rash all throughout her body and she was always having some pains. She passed away before she completed one year.When the young ones are sad about our mother and father I invent some place or we start to play together so that they can forget. They are sometimes sad and sometimes happy, but most of the time they don't think about the past. My youngest brother Elias has been sick since long back. We have been trying to treat him because he has always had this problem of rash all over his body. He has been to the hospital a few times and I had to stay with him so I was not able to go to school. But now he does seem to be improving.

Ssshhh! It's beautiful

Summer afternoons

Mumbling

The more you learn, the stupider you become, eh? (Or is that just me?)

HaloScan. I went back and actually read the instructions this time, including the part on the Template page where it says: "You can use the CSS template editor to edit your stylesheet...", meaning this is where you can change the size of the font. OHHH!! Which I've subsequently done, but only by cutting & pasting the "font-size" bits from this Blogger template. If it looks ridiculous, please let me know. This goes for anything else here as well - I've patched together bits of template to modify this Blogger standard, not knowing what the hell I'm doing. It looks okay in my browser, but dunno whether it works in others. Any problems, please say.

The computer language thing is interesting. It really is a foreign world. Everything about the language is incomprehensible, unless you know the basics (s'pose that's true of all languages). But just for basic tinkering, you don't need to understand what things mean (I'm hoping, because I don't), you just need to figure out where to put them. In English it would be the equivalent of looking at the word "tree" and seeing it as a collection of written lines, not as a symbol referring to anything in the real world, and not as something which could be replaced by "TREE". The word becomes a thing in itself, not merely a way to refer to something else. Or something. (Hot day, brain melting, yes again, very funny, shut up.)

Just one more thing about the HaloScan thing: the forums seem to be moderated by volunteers, who perhaps are too patient and forbearing for their own good. Nice job, Remarkables. Thank you.

Just one more thing x 2. The CSS Tutorial is great, and explains things very well (plus you can tinker with stuff and see the effects).

HaloScan rumbles in

HaloScan commenting is here on a trial. If it gives you any trouble, let me know. I don't know whether I can be bothered with it: I was only told after signing up that it doesn't send email notification of comments unless I pay to upgrade to a Premium service. Seems a bit rude...

Update:
- All the old comments have disappeared (sob sob)! Is this permanent, or will they come back if I get rid of HaloScan?
- Is there a way to make the font in comments a bit larger than the current "microscopic"?

Avoiding the question

If something is wrong and you could do something about it, but the problem is far away - is there a point where it’s okay to call it someone else’s responsibility? What if your doing something wouldn’t have much individual effect? And it would distress you? And if - by not doing something - you could put the whole matter out of your head, where you wish it had stayed?

A letter arrived yesterday from Amnesty International Australia. The envelope says, "Warning: Some people may find the enclosed material disturbing", and they’re not bloody joking. There’s a leaflet inside. On the front is the photo of a face:

When the body of street child Catrachito Luis was found in Guatemala, his eyes had been gouged out, his ears and tongue cut off - treatment customarily meted out by police to informers. The police claim they were not involved.

It’s not obvious when you look at this child that he no longer has eyes or a tongue, nor that he is dead. His face is so badly messed up, it’s not obvious he was real.

There’s also a plastic pen in the envelope, which you might possibly be holding in your hand as you read about the torture methods of interrogators at the Korean Central Intelligence Agency in Seoul. No, you don’t want to know. Neither did I.

Amnesty is trying to shock us out of complacency. I don’t know whether it’s a good idea. It’s taken me a whole day to look further than the first paragraph, and yesterday I thought I’d stop there. The point of the mailout is to say that:

In the right hands, the pen you are holding is a powerful instrument of change. In the right hands, it can make things happen. ...[Join] more than a million people in more than 150 countries who are prepared to stand up and be counted as people who won’t look the other way.

When, if ever, is it excusable to look the other way? I don’t want to look at this horror. I don’t have money to donate. I could write letters, but then I’m going to have to live with these torture stories in my head. They don’t make me feel angry, they make me feel sick.

But then I think about the people who aren’t me, and there’s quite a lot of them. Some are getting their eyes gouged out, or are being forced by Indonesian police to beat their mother (who is hanging upside down from the ceiling), or are finding their 2-year-old daughter has been raped by a soldier in Columbia, or are being sexually assaulted in public by reservists in Bosnia, or are found beaten to death on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, or are killed as child soldiers in Monrovia, or are dying in prison in Malawi.

In a letter accompanying the leaflet, the sentence: “What happens next is distressing. You may wish to stop reading.” Stop?? I wish you’d never made me start! Yes, I wish to stop! Yes, obviously!

But what if I do stop? Would you?

Quiet revolutions

I’ve been a real pain in the arse for days. Yesterday’s rain brought a brief happy interlude, then it was back to grumble, mope, aggravate... I couldn’t think of anything to write about here, and I mean nothing, at all. Only eight weeks after starting this blog, all the never-ending ideas had up and ended.

So this afternoon I did a bit of WWW research into writer’s block and found lots of useful ideas for getting past it, including these comments on a blog: stop obsessing and get a life, basically (laughing).

This seemed like rather appropriate advice**, so I set off for the creek, hoping to get some exercise, let Little Pup wander about (Big Pup, the day-boarder, had gone home), and relax. Thanks to yesterday’s massive rainfall (138mm or over 5 inches in the old scale), the creek had flooded overnight, and is now running fast and strong. And joy of joys, the yabbies are back! I don’t know how or where they survived the drought; it felt like a mini-miracle to see them again:



Then tonight I tackled the washing up (it was only a mountain covering half the kitchen) to the sounds of Triple J, a radio station I hardly ever visit, featuring current music rather than the usual (for me) ponderous talking. Instead of worthies being earnest, it was energy, noise, guitars. And more guitars. (When did they come back?? Just how long have I been asleep?)

So here’s the point of this self-centred post: if you’re feeling a bit jaded, try changing one small thing. Doesn’t matter what, really, as long as it feels like a change. New day, new way. Or some bloody thing (laughing). End of sermon. Pass the collection plates. Thank you & good night.

---

**Note to JeanieJ: Stop smirking. Yes - You Are A Genius.

Sounds of happy

Something I love about Australia is our summer rain. It’s raining right now, and when it’s like this - heavy, wild, loud - you know it’s really raining! It blunders in, no subtlety, just thunders through the day unrestrained. Listen - can you hear it? The rain on the roof? the frog in the guttering? the wind in the trees? Lovely.

Sunday grumps

Oban, Scotland.

A quiet, cool afternoon. Rain on the roof. The sort of day when I dream about being in Scotland. Not because it’s always raining there, I just like Scotland (laughing). And when it rains here, the light is muted and grey, like it is in more extreme latitudes (I’m guessing). We hardly ever get light like that in Australia. Our sun is fierce and unforgiving. It casts hard shadows, high contrasts, it bleaches colours and dries the depths of all moisture. It’s not my natural sun; it’s not the sun I was born for.

I don’t know where my real home is. How do you know when you’re in the place you’re supposed to be? How do you know anything? Instinct? Is that different from impulse? or hope? or stupidity?

If it sounds like I’m bleating in a self-pitying way? Well, yes - yes, I am! It’s my blog and I’ll do what I bloody want, thanks very much. And I’ll cheer up any time now too, so please don’t venture to give me sympathy, if you’re that way inclined. This is how we all feel, sometime in our lives (guessing again).

Some pictures from yesterday:

(SARCASM>>>)** A nice relaxing walk with the dogs:



Despite the recent rain and ridiculously long grass, the creek is still not running properly. There are even seedlings growing where the water should be:



And the weeds here are unfortunately scenic:


Thistle


& something Fireweed-like (what's this called? I can't remember ever having called it anything at all, but it's now flowering everywhere).

And by the way: The Lord of the Rings is Australia's favourite book? Well, thank you, Peter Jackson!

---

** Or is that irony? The walk was not relaxing, therefore I'm implying the opposite, therefore it's irony. I think. So now I don't know what sarcasm is. What does it matter? Well, yes, good question. I'll just shut up now. (Was that sarcasm? Or just me toddling off in a dismissive fashion? But I really will shut up now...)

Nice weather for ducks

Coffee.1

Yesterday we had a bit of a mini rerun of the previous coffee flowering. This time I've got a camera, so here's what it looks like:



Once again the bees have returned, but - with fewer flowers available - there are fewer bees as well:

Regrets, I've had a few

I got my hair cut yesterday. (Pauses to marshal reserves of strength.) Hair causes people (eg.) all sorts of problems, but other people only think they have problems - they don’t have my hair! And I don’t have much of it now either, since yesterday.

The problem started like this: several decades ago I was born. (In my current state of queasiness, it would be appropriate to stop right there - end of story - but let’s plod along, shall we?) My hair was thick, unruly and stubborn. It has continued to be thick, unruly and stubborn ever since, accompanied by a rather alarming change in colour. For the last few years I let it grow and just tied it back every day, hoping it would look at worst only boring, and not shockingly so. And in my more optimistic moments I thought it’d look like I was just too damn cool to worry about hair, and it would thus look intriguingly boring. However yesterday this optimism took a turn: why not visit the hairdresser who had wrought a miracle on the head of someone I know, trusting that she could deliver my head also to a gorgeous future?

Can I say right here and now: optimism - unless restrained by good judgement - is never a good idea where hair is concerned. (Why does hindsight always arrive too late to be useful? Why? Tell me!)

Most of my hair was hacked off and I’m now several kilograms lighter. That was the good part. The bad part was that now my stupid head looks stupid. And not only, but also: really stupid, tragically insipid, and the personification of disappointment. No, really. No, really!

And before I wander off, who’s the sadist who invented lovely red wine, then, hmm? Several of my brain cells were rounded up and shot at dawn. Several more were killed by shock, reacting to the sight in the mirror this morning. It’s just a battlefield in there. Bloody hell.

Creature Comforts

ABC TV (Australia) is screening three episodes of Creature Comforts tonight. Made by Nick Park and Aardman, it's a sibling to the Wallace & Gromit films. One of these, A Close Shave, has the most brilliant piece of characterisation in the whole history of cinema.** One tiny bit of dialogue gives us the whole world of Wallace:

INT. PRESTON'S DOG FOOD. NIGHT

Wallace, Wendolene, Preston, and a whole lot of sheep are facing the instrument of their imminent deaths: an invention stolen from Wallace and modified for eeevil, "Preston's Knit-O-Matic".

WALLACE

It's a sheep-mincing thing! (pausing) Now that's clever!

Australians, do yourselves a favour, et cetera - 8:30pm.

---

**Just a little joke for anyone who writes about films for a living.

(Very) still life

I cannot think of a single bloody thing to write about... So (laughing) here's a picture of a flower: