Things are Crook in Tallarook (contest prize)

Jack’s mom, who won the Famous Dead Person’s Blog contest, asked that I write 499 words (so that she could have the last one!) on sleep and dreams. Alyson may recognize her part in the inspiration for the following tale. Enjoy!

Things are Crook in Tallarook

Paddock chicken. Brendan woke with a start. What the heck was a paddock chicken? Come to think of it, what was a paddock? A field, wasn’t it, a meadow? Maybe a paddock chicken was a grouse or something. He glanced at the clock — 1:30 — and studied Martin’s peaceful, slumbering face. Brendan eased out of bed and cozied himself into his ancient terry housecoat and the sheepskin slippers Martin had bought him five years earlier.

In the living room, he gazed south towards the CN Tower and the downtown core. This view had aided his decision to buy the condo. Since the move, though, he had begun waking in the dead of night with odd phrases that sounded English but meant nothing to him, his mind racing from one verbal association to another.

He settled on the couch to channel-surf. “…went into overtime tonight…” Sports. “…for your baby’s…” Family. “…first book of short fiction, Things are Crook in Tallarook. Welcome, Tom!” This looked interesting; some kind of Australian talk show, probably live.

“So tell us about the title, Tom.”

“Well, Peter, I spent a year in Canada, and was fascinated by which Australian expressions were easily grasped, and which weren’t. I got funny looks if I said, “Things are crook in Tallarook”, but Canadians knew its Shakespearean equivalent –” Brendan started mouthing the famous line.

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark?” guessed the host.

“Exactly,” replied the author. ”On the other hand, no one had trouble understanding me when I’d announce that it was beer o’clock.” Brendan laughed along with the studio audience.

“And now, will you read to us from your new book?”

“Certainly. This story is set in Canada’s largest city, Toronto. It’s called ‘Paddock Chicken.’” Suddenly Brendan was wide awake again. On the other side of the world, Tom whoever-he-was held his book out like a choir member holding a music folder. He began.

“Paddock chicken. Brendan woke with a start. What the heck was –” Brendan clicked the power button, but couldn’t move, not even to lower the remote. He switched the TV on again.

“…housecoat and the sheepskin slippers Martin had bought him –” Brendan hit the power button once more before dropping the remote as though it were a live firecracker. His eyes were dry; he forced himself to blink. Then he silently returned to the bedroom, hung up his housecoat and removed his slippers, tucked himself in, and huddled against Martin’s reassuring bulk, trying not to whimper.

The alarm went off. Brendan, forcing open his sleep-sealed lids, found Martin eying him quizzically. “Brendan, you’re good with words: what’s a paddock chicken? I just had the funniest dream.”

“An Australian rabbit. Two shakes, while I go siphon the python.”

“Eh?”

Brendan retreated to the bathroom, running from his own voice, locking himself in, determined to take a long, leisurely shower, hoping that by the time he emerged to hear that funny dream, Martin would have forgotten it.

Can I Play a Rhapsody?

A few days ago, I posted my selections of theme music for my friends’ blogs.

Friends?

Well, strangely, yeah. I tell non-blogging friends and neighbours about my blogfriends. I tell my computerless mum about my blogfriends. I discuss Goodbear’s plans for a Border Collie, Alyson’s “Jack Russell cross” pup that has turned out to be mostly Irish Wolfhound, Bobbie’s tale of Brutus the Barracuda, and Livingisdetail’s neighbour’s lemon tree with my partner, E.g., as if they were fellow parishioners. I have never been so consistently happy in my life. Neither have I ever written so consistently.

 I know I have readers here in Ontario, over in Saskatchewan, down in various corners of the States, wa-ay down in eastern Australia, apparently at least one in the Netherlands, possibly one or two in England (hi, Catherine!), and maybe one in New Zealand (good day, Chris!).

It’s not like I could knock on any of your doors to borrow a cup of sugar.

But here you all are, and all I have to do is write. What’s not to like?

So the other day, when I tooled around YouTube looking for fellow bloggers’ theme songs, of course I reflected on what my own would be. And I came up with one. Do I love it? Yes. Is it Canadian? Yes. Does it say something about my writing style or subject matter? Yes. Is it on YouTube? I said, Is it on YouTube? Aw, nuts.

But I’ll tell you about it anyway.

The song is called “I Will Play a Rhapsody.” It’s by Winnipeg-born Burton Cummings, who hasn’t stopped making music since he cut his first record in 1965 (or maybe even since he cut his first tooth). Cummings teamed with Randy Bachmann to lead the Guess Who for a decade, before going solo in 1976. The piece I’ve selected was on his 1978 album, Dream of a Child.

“Rhapsody” is well played, well sung, and not too fast. It has a delicious little harmony line on the last chorus. These facts would describe a lot of pop songs, though; why do I want “Rhapsody” for my blog?

It’s the lyrics. They describe what every good musician — and every good writer — wants to do: take the stale and make it fresh, take the old and make it new, take the shabby and make it shimmer:

I will play a rhapsody

Cleverly disguise it, so it’s not been heard before

 The artist doesn’t need to have met his hearers in order to have a personal relationship with them, but it is they who must decide by judging his work:

How will you know

If I am for you?

You won’t know me to see me,

But you’ll know by what I do

And what does the artist do? He plays love songs. Love of one’s partner (”Timeless Love”), of one’s blood relatives (”Break it to Them Gently”), of one’s neighbours (”Share the Land”), of one’s God (”I’m Scared”), of one’s fellow musicians (”Gordon Lightfoot Does Maggie May”), of one’s listening pleasures (”Clap For the Wolfman”). Maybe one or two of you have a memory similar to mine, that of being glued to the radio as a teenager, letting the music and the dj’s friendly voice wash over me like soothing balm.

I will play a lullaby

I’ll let you know I’m near you through the night to keep you warm.

I want my writing to have the same kind of effect on my readers as Burton Cumming’s music has on me. I have no higher aspiration.

Tender

This is from a true story. I invented the names and a few details.

Jake was a gardener. He was in his early sixties, a man still strong from a lifetime of physical labour, showing decades of good care.

Between shifts of working for people such as my friends, helping their London suburb yards to look their best, Jake visited his wife. He stopped by for a few minutes just about every day, rain or shine. Taking advantage of his vocational skills, he tended her grave, weeding, planting bulbs, plucking off spent flower heads.

One day, Jake saw that the grave next to his wife’s looked a little forlorn. So he trimmed its grass, and on his next trip he brought some posies to plant on it. Over time, little by little, he tidied the neighbouring graves, until he was caring for the entire row.

Although it was in a cemetery big enough to warrant a caretaker’s house at the front gates, the labour that Jake put in did not go unnoticed. In fact, it was the caretaker’s wife herself who saw this gentle soul arrive day after day, tarry a short while, and depart quietly, leaving the grounds fairer than when he had arrived. Emma had seen many people pass through the gates; Emma knew the faithful ones from the less-so.

When a full year had passed, Emma approached Jake. She told him of her sister Robyn, 53, a widow for two years already. “I think perhaps you are lonely, like Robyn,” said Emma. And she pressed into his hand a piece of paper with Robyn’s phone number.

Two weeks later, Jake came skipping onto my friends’ property, whistling as he tied off the morning glory strings and singing little snatches of song as he plied the edger. My friend could not contain her curiosity, and directly enquired as to what his good news might be.

“I’ve met a young lady,” quoth he, before gamboling off to tend the rosebush.

 

 

A Musical Interlude

Hi everybody, and Happy Laundry Day!

Some of you had fun adding extra bits — bumper stickers, theme songs, URLs — to your Famous Dead Person Blog Contest entries. And I was reflecting this morning that I already hear a particular pop song in my head for two of your real-life blogs. So I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to play around on YouTube and discover other theme songs?

I had three criteria: I really like the song; it has to come from the country where the blogger lives; and it can be located on YouTube.

Today’s list, then, is:

Theme Songs for My Blogroll

1. Checkers’ World. Checkers knows how to relax and have fun, to lie in the sunshine or walk barefoot in the park. My theme song for him is the Lovin’ Spoonful’s What a Day for a Daydream. I’m sorry this video leaves Fido at home, but the stop action is kinda funny.

2. Cody Bear’s Friends. I started with the Captain Kangaroo TV show opener, and soon found Dolly Parton singing the perfect song on his show! Someone else has posted a much better, non-Captain version. Here’s Cracker Jack, goin’ out to Goodbear!

3. Dog Daily Photo is all about the Beautiful Pupple, as seen by the puparazzi. I chose Steely Dan’s richly-layered song, Peg, for this dog blog.

4. Drawing the Motmot. When I think of New England, I think of Robert Frost. I found a slide-show video with Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening set to music by a guy named Dan Sample.

5. Laugh in the Sun. This one is dedicated to Alyson and her husband and kids and chickens and horse and garden and canning and writing and housework and… Anyway, here’s the Little River Band’s Help Is On Its Way.

6. One Little Detail. Livingisdetail’s selected theme song is already a theme song, for an Australian television series on their goldrush days. I don’t quite remember what the show was called; the German who posted the video on YouTube shows German credits, with the title meaning “A Handful of Gold.” The song is Golden Pennies.

7. The Aged Cat. I couldn’t think of a better choice than The Byrds singing Pete Seeger’s Turn, Turn, Turn.

8. Themarvelousinnature. Again, there was one obvious choice: Gordon Lightfoot and Pussywillows, Cattails. I read somewhere a long time ago that he wrote this song for his grandmother. The guy who posted this one, thomasj157, has lots of nice slideshow presentations using Lightfoot’s music.

9. The Right Blue. Three times lucky! Here’s John Denver singing Calypso. (No, he’s not imitating Harry Belafonte; Calypso was the name of Jacques Cousteau’s ship.)

10. The Unwound Road. Eyegillian writes about current issues with a slight philosophical slant — and once in a while, allows a peek into how she really feels. I’ve chosen Bruce Cockburn’s Wondering Where the Lions Are because it employs the same deception, using a bouncy rhythm and cheery tune to half-conceal some pretty deep lyrics.

11. Urban Observation. This one, along with Checkers’ World, are the two blogs for which I already had theme songs. Boy, was I surprised to learn that both songs are by the same group! Here once again is the Lovin’ Spoonful, with Summer in the City.

12. Yasashiikuma.  Shelley can rhyme off all the dogs who ever played in the Canadian TV series The Littlest Hobo. Youtube has the original version from 1963, and the one from the 70s. Travelin’ around from town to town…

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s concert. Thanks for listening!

Blog-Day Afternoon

For the last — and first — contest I held, I gave a full week till the deadline. I didn’t know who was out there reading my stuff, or if anyone new might stumble along and decide to get in on the fun. The contest closed with seven contestants, four of whom I know in real life (no, not my mom, but she helped judge the entries), and all of whom posted their suggestions in the first 48 hours.

I have since learned that most blog entries receive comments within a maximum of three days’ posting. This time, then, I shortened the lead time to 7 00 Saturday morning EST/ 11 00 GMT / 21 00 Saturday evening in Melburne.

It has been 24 hours now, and so far there is only an ominous silence (tempered by munchings of oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies). In a panic, I consulted with a real-life reader over the phone.

“This contest is a lot harder than the last one,” she said, between bites.

“It is a bit,” I conceded. “But basically, it’s: you think of somebody famous and give them a blog title. You only give them a username if you want me to write a limerick.”

“All I’ve come up with so far is the Marquis de Sade,” she crunched.

“The Marquis de Sade? The Marquis de Sade? Explorers, inventors, cartoon characters, and you came up with the Marquis de Sade? That’s — like — oh, whatever. If you’ve got something, post it.”

“Except,” she said, licking the chocolate off her fingers, “I haven’t thought of a blog title for him yet.”

“Oh.” Straightening up again from the wall just before my forehead made impact, I tried: “How about, Mad, Bad, and Sade?”

“I suppose,” she said, flicking cookie crumbs off her knees. “But who else is there? I mean, there’s Homer…”

“Ah, but which one?” I challenged. “That’s why you need a few words for the disambiguous…ness… disambigi…fication… to know which one you mean.”

“Well, you’d know which one was meant if his username was ‘Duh’!” She snapped her dinner napkin before folding it. “But what could his blog title be?”

“You could call it The Idiossey.”

“You see? You’re brilliant!” she gushed, her mouth no longer full of home-baked goodness.

“But I’m poor.”

“We can’t have everything,” she lectured. “Gotta go, there’s a meeting at one. Why don’t you post the ones you’ve just come up with, as examples?”

So I am.

Example one:

“The Marquis de Sade, 18th-Century mentally unstable writer. Blog: Mad, Bad, and Sade.”

Example two:

“Homer, of the TV cartoon show The Simpsons. Blog: The Idiossey. Username: Duh. My limerick word: Kwik-E-Mart.”

In Principio Erat Blogos (a contest)

“Hello-o-o-o, evry-bud-deeeee! This is your old pal Grover, with aynother contest, that’s right, ay nice contest, mm-hmm!”

If Sesame Street’s cute-and-loveable, fuzzy-little Grover decided to write a blog, what would he name it? Or if naturalist Charles Darwin had a blog, how would he entitle it? Or how about heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali? Or Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell? You decide! I think enough of us had enough fun with last month’s contest that it’s time for another one.

Rules

1. Choose someone fairly famous and completely dead (puppets, cartoon personalities, and characters from novels are all eligible). Someone with an unfamous name, but who did something famous, also counts.
2. Describe the person in one phrase (e.g. “who invented eraser-topped pencils”, or “first European in Tasmania”).
3. Give a humorous, fitting (or ironic) blog title.
4. Bonus: Give that person’s username.
5. If you supply a username, you’re an automatic winner! Provide me with a word, and I’ll use it in a limerick. New limericks go up on each date divisible by seven, and all limericks are kept on my “Limericks of the Turtle” page.

Judging

Like last time, I will seek out approximately two dozen non-blogging acquaintances to judge the entries. Judges will be asked to pick the entry that is funniest to them.

Prizes

• First prize: Again, like last time, I will write 500 words on the topic of the winner’s choice.
• Second prizes: See rules 4 and 5 above. Please provide your limerick word along with your entry.

Deadline

Saturday morning, April 26, at 07 00 Eastern Standard Time. Winner to be announced by Sunday evening.

I can hardly wait!

Pickup: A Horror Film with a One-word Script

One piece of advice for writers — and if it’s good enough for Little Women’s Jo, it’s good enough for me — is to write about what you know. I wonder how such counsel might work for horror films? I have watched very little of that genre myself, but today I thought I had the makings of a good one. So I played around with e.g.’s camera, which is currently wearing the macro lens, and came up with this series of unretouched movie stills. What do you think, do I have the start of a decent portfolio?

“AAA–

–AAAAA–

–AAAAAAAAA–

–AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA–

–AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA–

–AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA–

–AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa–

–aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa–

–aaaaaaaaa–

–aaaaa–

–aah.”

 

Two Spirits

Glory be to God for dappled things!  — Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty”.

In my short career as bloggist, whenever I’ve received a comment, I’ve gone to check out the commenter’s blog. This past week I had two blogs to investigate. Both were written by men, and both have a certain bluntness to them, but the similarities pretty much end there. It was a sheep-and-goat experience for me, to retain one blogger’s comment (and therefore his link) and to delete the other.

The zapped blogger sent me to a page which made me think he hadn’t seen enough of my writing to notice that I’m an Irish-descended queer from the colonies. Breathtakingly offensive. But enough of him.

The other blogger…man, this guy works hard! Urban Observation’s  stuff is gritty and honest and courageously personal. From the few pages I dipped into, I learned that he’s an American of African descent who grew up in the Bronx ghetto. He studied well enough to land a decent office job when he grew up. For his pains, he’s been labelled an “Oreo”, a traitor to his race. And yet — if I got this right — he’s come home to his neighbourhood, the ghetto from which he had always been encouraged to escape.

Let’s see, get out the books on myths and archetypes, flip-flip-flip, protagonist leaves ordinary world, goes to other world, returns with increased wisdom to own world, that makes him… a hero.

An earlier entry of mine, in which I explained how my pets got their names, was called “Adam’s First Task”. Long before Adam became a dirt farmer and sweaty baker, his first job was to name all the animals. Naming is fundamental to human language, which in turn is fundamental to human interaction. A string of letters becomes a word only by consensus, which means that at least two people must agree on its meaning. Unfortunately — ironically? — to define a word is also to limit it.

Apparently, to some of Urban Observation’s acquaintances, the meaning of “black” doesn’t include “decently-paid office worker”. A South-east Asian classmate of mine referred to her husband as a “banana”, which is the Asian equivalent of an Oreo. Most, if not all, lesbigay Christians have had the experience of other people believing that “queer Christian” is an oxymoron. And on it goes, with language, the tool that should increase the human capacity for love and acceptance, being used instead as a weapon to tamp us into restrictive little boxes and jab us with narrow pointy sticks.

Once upon a time, certain tribes preferred two-spirited people — those who had an innate understanding of both masculine and feminine ways of being — to be their shamans. They were the holy men and women, the unusual ones, the ones who had visited two worlds.

I need to rush off to work now, but I will leave the final word to a Cardigan Welsh Corgi whose wisdom I missed the first time around: Checkers suggested, during the “Name-and-genderize-the-sea-turtle-stuffy” contest, that the turtle’s gender should be green.

Impulse Purchase, with Prologue and Afterword, in Diary Genre, Prefaced by a Victorian-Era-Style Overly Long Title — Complete with Two Types of Parenthetical Punctuational Enclosures — Made in a Slapdash Effort to Create some Humour by Providing a Visual Device to Preface the Writing Portion, Being as I Don’t Have a Ready-Made Photo to Insert Here and Didn’t Have Time to Compose One (Although I Did Briefly Consider Entitling this Entry, “Photoless Phursday,” in Reference to “Wordless Wednesday”, the First Attempt at which I Essayed Yesterday); OR, A Study in Concealing Mediocre Writing under Clever Design

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Wednesday, 2 pm.

I have a headache. Despite a nice visit with Jack’s mum this morning, followed by an hour and-a-half of walkies, I feel crummy. And Cai is limping again after playing with some of the other doggies in the off-leash area, which makes me feel doubly crummy. And tomorrow I have to work for a living, and Friday I have to work from 6 am to 7 pm, so like how am I sposta keep up with this daily writing habit when my head hurts and I’m feeling guilty for letting Cai offleash and all I can think of writing about is fridge magnets? I feel triply crummy.

3 pm.

I start sifting through my partner’s photos. I find one that I would like to entitle, “The Unbearable Lightness of Cheesies”, but can’t organize my thoughts to write any commentary. That would make it another Wordless Wednesday entry. Lemme see, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Su– I’m not that organized.

4 pm.

The cheesie photo has made me think of movies. I stuff the little cloth WWF bag, the one that Seamus the Sea Turtle came with, into my coat pocket and head over to the neighbourhood video store. They don’t rent videos anymore, of course, but my partner has claimed that even DVDs will soon be anachronisms. Never mind; no one has dialed a phone in years, either, though we still say we do. I’ll survive the next technological change with grace, if not gusto.

4 10 pm.

I’ve come to rent a movie. Some film with a bit of brain behind it. Maybe “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, or “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, neither of which I’ve seen. Something that doesn’t have its protagonist staring at a computer screen wondering how to expound on fridge magnets. As I edge past the sale bin, a decade-old film that I’ve already watched waves to me. Should I buy instead of renting? These previously-viewed DVDs are are a good price; there’s a buy-two-get-one-free deal on this table; and two of the other six dozen movies look like we’d watch them at least twice. Good enough for me.

5 30 pm.

My better half arrives home. She has a great idea of how to cook the trout I pulled from the fridge this morning, so I graciously allow her to make supper.

6 40 pm.

We settle into the sofa with big, steaming bowls of soba noodles and trout with orange sauce to watch the Japanese film, “After Life.” Like the few other Japanese films I’ve seen, it is very quiet and slow paced — but hey, this one’s about eternity.

8 40 pm.

Such sweet characters! Such gentle pathos! Such  dirty dishes! Time to wash up, put Cai’s kibble on to soak, and go to bed. The movie was a good idea. By doing something completely different, away from my keyboard, my subconscious was able to move beyond cheesies and fridge magnets to Friday’s topic, which I’ll work on tomorrow when I’m fresh. Tomorrow, I will write about my coffee cup.