"An egg a day keeps the axe away" - mercy!

Man I'm so cheating today, busy weekend yadda yadda, so hurrah for the hard-working Simon Webster of the SMH for this chicken-based weekend hilarity.

Headline: 'Emo chooks cry fowl'.

Expectation: high; met.

I promise not to be so paltry, no wait, poultry, tomorrow (snort snort, guffaw guffaw).

When I grow up

After many wasted years at university and a HECS debt that matches the deficit of a small country, I think I've finally hit on the career that will make my life worthwhile and meaningful: sudoku champion.

Sure I've never done a sudoku before and the little puzzle above leaves me slightly cross-eyed, but there's an 11 year old chappy (Lucas Yeo) who's just completed a puzzle in 1 minute and 38 seconds and made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the fastest sudoku. Surely if a pre-teen can bang a few numbers into a grid and break a record I could have a crack too?

So I thought I'd run through some of the features of a sudoku champion to see how I match up. Do I too have the potential for great record-breaking-grid-filling?

1. According to his school principal, Lucas "comes across as quite disorganised in some ways... His desk's always all over the place. He doesn't come across as an organised person." On this Lucas and I are like identical twins, completely indistinguishable.

2. According to Lucas's principal again, his talent "came out of the blue". Similarly my talent at sudoku would be completely out of the blue, having previously shown no talent for numbers, grids, patterns, problem solving or logical thinking. We're clones, this Lucas and I.

3. Apparently it took Lucas 10 days to complete his first puzzle. I reckon (actually, I desperately hope) I could finish one in 10 days, and if I have absolutely no other commitments I might just succeed. Again, like Danny DeVito and Arnie, who could tell Lucas and I apart?

4. Apparently Lucas can hold the 81 spaces of a sudoku puzzle in his head at once...

Ok, so this is all starting to sound a bit hard. Maybe I'm better suited to hamster sudoku...

Why I hate headlines

Here's a beautiful example of why newspapers (excepting Icelandic ones) leave me thoroughly disappointed and wandering around all day singing the Star Wars theme with the lyrics "lame lame lame laaaame lame / lame lame lame laaaaaaaame lame," and etc.

Headline on homepage: "Copyright police are patrolling cinemas with night vision devices."

Expectations: high; there are copyright police? Do they have a uniform? Do they carry truncheons with red pens attached?

Headline at the top of article: "Cinema 'cops' deploy night vision devices."

Expectations: lowering; lameness of story rising due to use of single quote marks around 'cops'.

Caption under photo of probably quite sweet cinema chappy who we now pretty much hate enough to throw javelins at because he's dobbing on the kids who are just try'na have fun: "A cinema employee demonstrates a night vision scope used to spot illegal video taping."

Expectations: abyssal; lameness confirmed.

I'm mostly disappointed that I'm like some kind of goldfish-brained reader who gets excited about headlines anew every day, having sweetly forgotten the steep gradient I've just witnessed a story go tumbling down not 15 seconds before.

Oh well.

Ooh look! "Navy sunk my trawler, not pirates"...

What ho, what news?

I've recently discovered Icelandic newspapers and from them I've deduced that life is far more interesting in Iceland than anywhere else.*

While my local newspaper is blabbing on today about recessions, sleeping tablets and Gordon Ramsay (surprisingly, not in the same article), the Reykjavik Grapevine is leading today with the Viking giant show, the glacial boogey-worm the Lagarfljótsormurinn (try saying that fast after a visit to the Egill Skallagrímsson Brewery), and a list of top fives for November including top five important changes necessary in Icelandic society and the top five concerts attended by Petur Eggertsson (don't know who he is but how cool a name is 'Petur'?).

While my newspaper is banging on about teen drinkers and petrol prices, the Reykjavik Grapevine is spreading the good word about taking a Northern Lights tour and how the world can be changed through Icelandic fiction.

And while my paper has no ad more exciting than the Nissan end-of-year car sale, the Grapevine contains the work of beauty pictured above. Sure it might be an ad for incontinence undies but how prettily does "verour svaoilfor a Graenlandi naesta sumarfri" roll off the tongue?

If you're still unmoved by the erudition and magnificence of the Icelandic dailies check out what Miss Finland is reported in the IceNews as doing while suspended from a rope. If you can find a story as interesting in your local paper I'll eat my hattur.

* Factoid not based on actual research.

Musical Confessional

It's possible that I'm the last person to discover this, but did you know that no-one likes musicals?

Apparently most people would prefer to spend the rest of their days doing public speaking engagements (or heck, their taxes and / or dying) than go to a musical.

In fact, I recently scored free tickets to see the multi-award winning, highly acclaimed smash hit Billy Elliot and my aggrieved viewing companions felt we'd paid too much.

"That's a bit harsh," I thought, as the bell rang to mark the end of intermission. "Silly buggers, just wait 'til they see the second half, I can't WAIT for them to see how it all comes together."

It took me ten minutes to realise THEY WEREN'T COMING BACK.

Anyhoo, so I accept there are problems with musicals, including naffness, general offence to intelligence, and the bringing forward of the onset of dementia. But it's possible (I have to believe it is) that there's someone else out there who could spend a heart-stopping 120 minutes watching grown adults leap around in cat costumes, so for the sake of the two of us, here are some bad-arse musicals that might just win you non-believers over:

1.

2.

3.

Hmm, after staring at my blinking cursor for a good half and hour I've realised there is nothing good about musicals. I wonder if it's too late to get a refund for my ticket to Jerry Springer: The Opera?

I knew you were going to say that

Illustration by Spashlight; Photograph by Angela Jimenez for The New York Times

My search for a new wealth creation plan post-financial-bun-fight continues and I think that I may have just hit upon the winner.

The financial benefits of my earlier suggestions (including commandeering an oil-laden tanker, and encouraging our friends and loved ones to become Jehovah's Witnesses in order to save on birthday presents) pale in comparison to today's sterling example of entrepreneurship: become a psychic and give financial advice!

The New York Times interviewed one poor dear chappy (a Mr Taccetta, stock trader) who is reported as saying “when conditions are this volatile, consulting a psychic can be as good a strategy as any other.”

Mercy! On this logic standing half way across a bridge wearing plimsolls and facing north-east while throwing bundles of dollar bills to the evening wind is a good strategy.

I've been so black hat about the financial crisis, harping on about despairing brokers and suggesting we spend our freshly minted unemployment watching re-runs of Twin Peaks and stealing things off the visually impaired (sound the moral bankruptcy alarm!).

But now I'm switching to my yellow hat because fabulous new growth areas, with 'practitioners' eager and willing to help part fools from their money, are starting to appear.

These are happy business days for psychics, astrologers, people who channel spirits and those who read palms. Due to high demand, some psychics have been able to charge up to $1,000 an hour for 'insights'. Give me a thousand bucks and I'll give you an insight, any insight you like.

The NYT reports a psychic in LA is charging $70 for moss-scented candles, available on her website. I'm not entirely clear what a moss-scented candle would do, but if I felt like standing on that bridge wearing plimsolls flinging money etc I'd be happy to let you know how it goes.

I see great things for these industries. See, I have the gift.

Man with globe and suitcase does stuff with books

So I'm thoroughly enjoying my new dictionary. I laughed through 'H', cried through 'J' and I can't wait to see what you make of the cliff-hanger at the end of 'P' (do you think Pythagoras's victory will be a Pyrrhic one?).

I'm now deeply immersed in 'S': oh sepulchre, sequacious, seraglio, serendipity, Serengeti National Park... like a gentle stream tripping delightfully down the page, one sparkling word giving way to the next... Seuss, Dr, seven deadly sins, 7-Eleven...

"And what ho!" I hear you cry, "can it get any better than this?" Indeed it can, dear friends, because this dictionary bears the name 'Bill Bryson' on the cover. That's right, it's Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors.

Forget writing the Great Australian/American/Danish Novel or discovering the cure for blah blah disease-that-affects-baby-seals blah, write yourself a dictionary and you'll be assured long and loud public adoration.

History provides us with a raft of examples: Samuel Johnson and his Dictionary of the English Language (you know, that old chestnut), and my personal favourite, Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas which very neatly defines 'absinthe' as "extra-violent poison: one glass and you're dead. Newspapermen drink it as they write their copy. Has killed more soldiers than the Bedouin."

Who can but feel safe when such wordy celebrities put quill to parchment, fingers to keyboard, tongue in cheek?

Who can but understand my disquiet, then, on reading the following on the dust-jacket of Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors:

"Originally published as The Penguin Dictionary for Writers and Editors, Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors has now been completely revised and updated for the twenty-first century BY BILL BRYSON HIMSELF."

Well crap I hadn't even considered the possibility that Bill Bryson DIDN'T have anything to do with this book, you know, the one that's been published with his name on the front cover, until I read that he really WAS involved. Way to kill the illusion, dust-jacket-blurb-writer.

Nevermind, let's get back to 'S' and see if the Shar Pei make it to the Shea Stadium with the help of the Sherpas... Do you think they'll stay shtum? Sterling stuff.