where furniture lives

See, Melbourne does have blue skies. Once in a while.

merry christmas

I hope the plastic snowman kitchen timer of peace visits all your homes, scattering his minutes of love & happiness all over you.

Trichoglossus haematodus

... and that's all I have to say.

new skies

With Tintin away in Bali at a climate conference, deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard became acting Prime Minister. It was lovely being governed by a woman. I felt the difference.

Read this great article by Tracee Hutchison for more on the gal pollies in my country.

When Bill Heffernan called Julia Gillard "deliberately barren" in Parliament, Howard the Coward said nothing to censure him. Read it, kids. I wanted to make a tee shirt saying "deliberately barren" to wear, as I knew even as a wee teen that I didn't want to have children. My friends who are mothers were also frothing at the mouth and wanted to wear tee shirts too. Theirs, I decided, would read "accidentally fertile".

Julia would like them I'm sure. She could wear it while striding the corridors of power.

pulp friction

There's nothing like a pristine slice of Nature to make Man say - Hey, let's put up a pulp mill.

Thylogale billardierii

And now for Chickie's new favourite animal.


Mama pademelon


Baby pademelon



Far away pademelon.


Close up pademelon.


Another pademelon.


Watch out for the car, pademelons!


Good-bye pademelon.

And some really really good news. Cedric the Tasmanian Devil has been injected with DFTD cells and his system has responded by producing antibodies. Read about it here.

Schmetterling

Here is Inachis io on a Buddleia alternifolia in Schatzi's mother's garden in Bubenreuth.

This is my one hundredth post. Perhaps I am emerging from my chrysalis.

Yesterday I delivered my commision to Victorian Opera. If you are in Melbourne in May 2010, perhaps you will come and hear my opera.

vale Lumpy

Lumpy flung himself out of his pond and now he's swimming in the big glass bowl in the sky. Lumpy is survived by Blackie, and Michaelangelo Optica. Our thoughts are with them.

naming names

In the bush it's important to know the names of things, as proven by my last post. This time, I know what the pond is called. Do you?

some trees

I don't know what Europeans call these trees. Anaglyph might, polymath that he is.

Of course, the Lia Pootah people would have had their own word.

Nothofagus cunninghamii

Tasmania is covered in Myrtle Beech. And the trees are covered with lichens. It is cool and otherwordly standing in the green light, quietly awe-inspired.

willing & able

Many years ago, young Cissy played a cop in a dreadful TV show called Willing & Abel. It tanked. Unlike Sara Sue's new career with the CIA, which will flourish. This one's for you.

(And yes - culottes)

as the Cow commands, so do I obey

I was walking down my spiral staircase ...












... thinking about my latest invention, a whistling dildo, and wondering why ...













... it seemed so attractive to Scientologists ...













... and clowns, when suddenly ...













... I tripped over that little piece that you always have left over after making something from Ikea.

faux lesbo

For Cuntie, in case she missed this, and to say welcome home. This is a young Cissy in "The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant" by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, about to go the tongue with another young lady. Please don't mention the turban.

for mike, because he asked

Mmmmmmm....



Ahhhhhhh....



ooooh oh oh ....



Ah! Ah! Ah!



uh uh


waaaargggleeeeboyyyyeeezshhhhhhaaaayyyyyyy ...... uh

duck's arse

Ah Melbourne, where it rains on you even when the sun is shining. And then a duck shows you her arse. Sigh. Still, I hope you are enjoying your new home, Anaglyph.

just this once ...

Ginger Stick features photos by me. But just this once, a photo of me. I don't know, JediMac sounds as if he needs a boost.

This is me twenty-five years ago in a long-forgotten cabaret. And yes, that is a wig. Everything else is real, though. Sorry the photo doesn't show my legs. They were spectacular.

Next, we return to another natural wonderland, Tasmania.

Satan's flesh eaters

Tintarella and I were lucky enough to visit a research facility for Tasmanian Devils, and it was there that I took these photographs.

Satan's Flesh Eaters was the name that the European invaders first gave to the Devils. They were perceived as a threat to introduced livestock, and so a bounty was put on them. Keep in mind that, when you are decimating a population, not only are you removing individual creatures, you are also substantially reducing the gene pool of the species. We shall shortly see how bloody appalling that is.

Tasmanian Devils were finally protected in 1941, after the last Tasmanian Tiger had died.

But our Devils are not safe. In 1995 a previously unknown disease appeared. It is called Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD). It is 100% fatal. In ten years, the Devil numbers have halved.

Because the Devil population is genetically limited (only cheetahs are more genetically similar to one other) it is assumed that any Devil who contracts the disease will die. In a genetically varied population, some instances of disease resistance might be expected. And that might have led to a vaccination. Too bad.

DFTD is one of only three communicable cancers that are known. Why did it spring into life in 1995? Was it a mutation? And if so, what caused the mutation?

Okay. Here's the other thing. 1994 saw the beginning of a systematic scheme of laying a poison called 1080 (ten eighty). 1080 is a fox poison. Unfortunately, native Australian animals don't read labels. Foxes are carnivores. Devils are carnivores. There are some who believe that the poison contributed to the factors which produced DFTD. It certainly killed some Devils.

Do you want to hear the kicker? There aren't any foxes in Tasmania. But there is a lot of government money to be had for fox extermination. Last time the Tasmanian government considered ceasing grants for fox research / poisoning, a dead fox turned up. Good timing, Mr Reynard.


Here is a cute picture of two Devil pups just out of the den.



(Wiki has a good article on Devils, but before you go there please be aware that there is a distressing photo of a Devil with DFTD.)

Vombatus ursinus

This Common Wombat is a young joey just emerging from the burrow. Tintarella & I were in Tas for 4 days & we saw 22 wombats.

Here is what they often look like:



Yes, that rock is a beautiful tough little tank of a marsupial. Here she is in the open:



And another joey, just for extra cuteness:



Go to wiki & read about these marvelous marsupials. Among other delights, you will see the phrase "distinctive cubic scats" (hee hee hee).

scat

Only one animal in the whole world lays square poo. And they only live in this wide brown land. A photo of the beast next time.

Cradle Mountain, Tasmania

See it now, folks. We don't know what is coming.

Up next: What is the meaning of the phrase 'map of tas' when applied to a lady? And: wombats & wallabies & devils, oh my!

nudes in the news

Queensland's new Premier, Anna Bligh, is concerned that the Gold Coast's international reputation (sic) is being ruined. Apparently, some spectators at recent Indy car racing events were drunk and/or bare breasted. Ms Bligh finds this disgusting and lewd.

"The annual event at the weekend was marred by drunks stumbling around Surfers Paradise, topless and nude women cavorting on balconies in full view of other spectators, and prostitutes on balconies holding up signs advertising sex."

As the Government cannot control private parties, "all we can really do is appeal to people to behave sensibly".

That ought to work.

remember to wear a snake on your wrist

Phoebe Fay's wonderful post about orgasms reminded me of this gorgeous work from the Musee D'Orsay. It is Femme piquée par un serpent (woman pricked by a snake) made by Auguste Clesinger in 1847.

This sculpture caused a sensation, a scandale if you will, when it was first shown. A naked woman writhes in ecstasy, a small snake wound around one wrist. Auguste tells us by his title that the girl has been stung by the snake, and that this is the cause of her posture. Yet such is the erotic power of the work that we understand he has captured her at the moment of her orgasm.

Even the resting art lovers in my photograph are instinctively responding to the work. Just look at those curling toes.

everywhere I go there are nudes

Last evening, coming home from an execrable theatre performance which was mercifully brief, I was sitting wearily beside my companion as he steered the car down City Road towards Cleveland Street.

From nowhere, the road was filled with nude young men, weaving between the cars and running along the footpath. They gleamed in the streetlights and car lamps, these naked boys, all shapes and sizes, intoxicated with their own youth and daring. I swear they were giggling as they ran, shoed but unclothed, about twenty five of them. One held firmly onto his donger, but the others obeyed the Streakers' Code and let their flesh move as it would. They streamed past us, and turned into the forbidding Victorian stone gates of Sydney University, their buttocks winking their hilarious farewell at us, heavy and stationary in our cars, sad that we were old and clothed, and scrambling to remember the last time we raced through the dark in the nick.

So, farewell then, Townsville ...

Ah, Townsville. We've learned how to memorialise a military campaign, how to avoid irukandji, why green butts are sometimes good butts, the rewards of Rooball, the delights of roosting avifauna, and the answers to some pretty important questions.

It remains only to have a farewell drink at The Criterion (or The Cri, as it is called, we Australians being polysyllabically challenged) home of the longest running wet t'shirt competition in the Southern Hemisphere.




Here's a thing. When I was young and firm, I would never in a million years have entered. Now I am older, wiser & need the money, I would enter without a second thought, were it not that the inexorable migration south of the marvelous mammeries is well under way. Oh yes, they look fine with the application of clever and increasingly expensive foundation garments. But unfettered in the nude, or modestly shielded by wet stretch cotton, their once-famous generosity now brings to mind two ponderous dugongs wallowing in warm water.

So we say, farewell Townsville. We'll be back one day. The next post will come from Tasmania, home of the Devil, the Tiger and the original Tetherd Cow.

Oecophylla smaragdina

Green ants love the tropical coastal regions of Australia. Here are two busy workers attending to their nest made of living tree leaves in Little Victory's back yard. Don't let them nip you, though. That would hurt.

And if you are mining uranium in the Northern Territory, be careful not to disturb the eggs of the Great Green Ant, lest she re-emerge and consume the Earth.