There’s Homer, there’s Sappho … there’s even ΠO if you prefer your great mono-monikered poets to be, you know, alive.

And now, thanks to the literary editors at Coles, there’s Amelia:

The best part was when she rhymed “nice” with “nice”.

Anyway, time for a GrodsChallenge. Whoever writes the best poem about the most unspectacular grocery item gets to lick the cake-mix off my beater.*

Have at it!

* Not a euphemism, you depraved Leftists.

Peter Costello: gone but not forgotten.

It’s quite appropriate that Costello is displayed next to books about fear and chickens

When I was travelling around India a few years back, I picked up a beautifully bound and illustrated “gift edition” of the Kama Sutra. Every tourist does it. Seriously. Shut up.

Anyway, if you’re not too familiar with the ancient work, it’s probably not quite what you’d expect. Forget about the infamous 64 sexual positions — that part occupies only 10 of Vatsyayana’s original 36 chapters and, frankly, is about as useful a guide for lovers as Weekend at Bernie’s is for apprentice morticians.

The bulk of the Kama Sutra concerns itself with how one should live one’s life — not just in lurve, but also in general. Practical advice covers a diverse range of topics, from pseudo feng shui right through to convoluted schemes for seducing your mate’s missus.

Now, I can’t vouch for the quality or authenticity of the translation of the book I rediscovered on my bookshelf the other day, inspiring this post — it was published by Roli Books and now appears to be out of print, and my own Sanskrit has been rusty since I stopped speaking it in the 16th century — but if it’s in any way representative of the genuine article, the Kama Sutra is a work of comic genius.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Here are three of the book’s best passages, quoted verbatim.

1) On general hygiene:

You should bathe daily, rub yourself with oil every other day, use soap every third day and shave every fourth day. You should do all this without fail and rub the sweat of the armpits every now and then.

2) For the laydeez:

The rules for a courtesan to make a quick fortune are simple:

• First check your man out carefully.
• Secondly, make him fall desperately in love with you.
• Then fleece him well.
• When he’s broke, throw him out without remorse.

3) For mah homies (on which women are the easiest to seduce):

Those who stand at the doorways of their houses; who peer out on to the street; one who steals glances at men; one who is jealous, covetous, immoral or barren. Also those who are lazy, cowardly, vulgar, foul smelling, sick or old.

Well, what are you waiting for? Get out there and be the best damn lovers you can be.

A lost play by Sophocles has just been discovered:

It tells the chilling story of one man’s journey from rational conservatism to Latte Left after accidentally giving his mother the old bone job. Here’s hoping the QC doesn’t take legal action against Sophocles for stealing his idea.

Very occasional GrodsContributor, Bookmanoldstyle, was last night considering the end of the world and wondering whether it was worth washing her hair*, when she remembered that the Large Hadron Collider featured in Dan Brown’s novel Angels & Demons. So a-Googling she went and up pops a whole page on the CERN website devoted to a FAQ about the book. These are her favourite bits and they should be yours too.

Q: Does it consist of red brick buildings with white-frocked scientists running around carrying files?
No, that is rather far from reality; we have mostly white buildings made of concrete and the scientists wear everyday clothes and they mostly do not carry files.

Q: Can we make antimatter bombs?
No. It would take billions of years to produce enough antimatter for a bomb having the same destructiveness as ‘typical’ hydrogen bombs, of which there exist more than ten thousand already.

Sociological note: scientists realized that the atom bomb was a real possibility many years before one was actually built and exploded, and then the public was totally surprised and amazed. On the other hand, the public somehow anticipates the antimatter bomb, but we have known for a long time that it cannot be realized in practice.

That sure puts my mind at rest.

* This last bit is probably not true. It’s probably made up by The Editor.

Last week, the Editor whimpered something about damned responsibility preventing him from getting one of those infamous leftard drinks known as a latte.

I was reminded of his 10.23am latte withdrawals when the book I’m currently reading, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg, mentioned them. Goldberg’s book is, clearly enough, about the rise of Christian nationalism, that is, right-wing evangelical and fundamentalist so-called Christianity. A snippet from the book’s website describes it as thus:

In Kingdom Coming, Goldberg demonstrates how an increasingly bellicose fundamentalism is gaining traction throughout our national life, taking us on a tour of the parallel right-wing evangelical culture that is buoyed by Republican political patronage. Deep within the red zones of a divided America, we meet military veterans pledging to seize the nation in Christ’s name, perfidious congressmen courting the confidence of neo-confederates and proponents of theocracy, and leaders of federally funded programs offering Jesus as the solution to the country’s social problems.

I was amused by a paragraph she wrote and I wanted to share. Writes Ms Goldberg:

[D]uring the Democratic primary season [in 2004], the right-wing Club for Growth ran an anti-Howard Dean ad featuring an elderly Middle American couple ranting against a type that populates much of the Northeast and Northwest. The man began, “I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading…” His wife continued: “…body piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.” Imagine for a moment, if MoveOn had run an anti-Bush ad that called his following a gun-toting, Bible-thumping, McDonald’s-eating, gay-bashing, gas-guzzling right-wing freak show. There would have been no end of hand-wringing about the supercilious secular elite and their contempt for so-called ordinary Americans. Having defined Americanism as an amalgam of anti-intellectualism, provincialism, self-righteousness, and bellicosity, conservatives then attack everyone who finds these things repellent as unpatriotic, and few mainstream voices challenge them. (Incidentally, conservative evangelicals are the only religious faction I’ve encountered who sell lattes in church.)

It seems that even one of the bastions of right-wing rabble-rousing — the pseudo-political evangelical, fundamentalist “Christian” church — cannot resist the lure of a leftie latte.

It’s a well-researched, well-presented book, very alarming and a good record of the damage the right-wing “Christian” nationalists are doing to the good ol’ US of A. I finished reading it tonight while drinking a flat white with one sugar. Go get this book. Highly recommended.

It is well known around these parts that I enjoy a good read. I am a bookworm. Hell, even when I don’t have a book with me, say, on the train to work, I’ll read other people’s books. Or notes, as the case may be. This morning was no exception.

So, I get on the train and sit next to a nice looking, zaftig, middle aged lady (read: safe, normal, not insane looking).

Soon enough, however, I come to regret my choice of seating. Having left my book at home again, my eyes stray over to the book being read by my seat companion. The first thing I always look for is the title and author of the book that commuters are reading.

OK, so the author of this book is Miranda Lee. Nup, never heard of her. What’s the title, dammit? Look again, lean over ever so slightly, tilt my head this way for a better view…

Oh. My. God. That book is seriously not called…

THE MILLIONAIRE’S INEXPERIENCED LOVE-SLAVE 

…is it?! No no no no no no. NO!! WRONG. WRONG. WRONG!

WRONG!

Check again. Yep, it’s definitely called that. What’s the dialogue like?

‘”Yes,” she said firmly. “Yes, you are.” Something in her steady and resolute voice calmed him down.’

OK, enough, don’t want to read anymore! Quick, look out the window, it’s a beautiful morning!

After sending a text message to a friend about the title of this book, said friend texted back and asked, ‘Does it include the words manhood, throbbing and quim?’

So, at work, I use up some valuable working time to Google The Millionaire’s Inexperienced Love-Slave and find out that it’s actually a novel published by Harlequin. Well, that explains it. But it gets worse. The blurb for the novel:

One wicked night with the Sydney millionaire…

Adrian Palmer, a millionaire architect, always had a beautiful woman in his bed. When he met Sharni Johnson, a pretty young widow, she seemed perfect for his wicked brand of seduction. And wicked it was; he was blown away by the intensity of their lovemaking.

But Sharni was not a one-night-stand kind of girl. Adrian was prepared to do anything to have her–but there was one problem: he was the spitting image of Sharni’s late husband….

Oh noes! Disaster!

I can tell you, however, they do get together in the end and have a baby boy and live happily ever after. Yeah, I took another glance at the final two pages that the lady was reading. Hope I didn’t ruin the ending too much for you. 

Prediction confirmed! What do you reckon John Howard’s reaction was to reading that news over his Wheaties?

I love reading popular science books about physics, chaos theory, string theory and all that sort of stuff. I’m not very smart in these areas but I know just enough to be dangerous and love the Dummies Guide To-style explanations that these books provide.

Since it’s school holidays and I have both the time and energy to read for pleasure I’m currently working my way through Atom by Lawrence M. Krauss. Something that I’ve noticed in Atom and previously in other similar books is the authors’ love of a good exclamation mark! I mean, they sometimes cram two or three into a single paragraph! If somebody had the time and the inclination they could do a study into the ratio of exclamation marks to full stops in popular science books versus non-popular science books. Wouldn’t that be a riveting research project?

Here are a couple of choice exclamation mark samples from Atom.

At a certain point, if it collapses by a factor of 50 in size, then the density will have increased by a factor of 125,000!

The number of collisions of the atoms in this volume of air during the 4-billion-year history of life on Earth is about 10^45, about 10 billion times smaller still!

Current estimates in supersymmetric models are in the range from 10^34 to 10^35 years, well beyond the current limits!

I’ve decided that the exclamation mark in popular science books is like the laugh track in American sitcoms. The laugh track tells you when to laugh because it’s usually not obvious that the “joke” is meant to be funny, and the exclamation mark tells you when to be amazed because the scales are so small or large that it’s sometimes not obvious that the subject of the sentence is amazing.

Sally Morrell writes the most bland, vacant guff, full of motherhood statements and celeb-obs, yet the Herald Sun sees fit to give her a weekly column (probably because she’s Mrs Bolta). She’s also trying to break new ground on paragraph size, some formed from just three or four words. To relieve my abject boredom I skimmed through the last five of her columns, harvested all paras of <12 words, and jumbled ‘em up to make my own Sally (TM) poem. It reads like something from Wallace Stevens, or Ern Malley-meets-Richard Wilkins:

Madonna became a mother at 38 and had her second child at 42.
So congratulations, Nicole.
After all, she’ll be representing Australia on the world stage.
Give the woman a break. Didn’t someone tell these guys superwoman is dead?
Go girl.

Take Germaine Greer.
It was easy to think it was just a publicity stunt.
They’d better do something sweaty soon.
They only make us wonder why they bothered opening their mouth.
But I think Terri genuinely does crave a message from Steve.

I don’t believe in John Edward.
But why does John Laws want us to know his secrets?
Deep down he just wants us to like him.
And knowing you, we’re not necessarily liking you.

Maybe that’s why we still like them.
Or, rather, by the blokes hanging off them.
Ignore them, Therese.
Why must your love die with their body?
Think Jeannie Little on a bad day.

An extreme makeover was urgently needed, he said.
Trust me, Therese. You won’t be looking at Armani.
Go work on your putting or pasting.
Usually there’s a look-at-me reason behind all the revelations.
Oh, and yes, she has a new album coming out.

Well if anything it’s just as meaningful as the original source.

Sick of boring old Dick and Jane readers? Stuck for Christmas stocking-fillers? Fed up with the fascist media / Maoist teachers? Why not try some ‘political education texts for kids’. Reminiscent of those What’s Happening to Me? sex-ed books we sniggered at back in the 80s, all are cute, informative and (of course) thoroughly objective. There’s wonderful titles such as Why Mommy is a Democrat, Why War is a never a Good Idea and The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming.

Our conservative friends shouldn’t feel left out. Also available is Help Mom! There are Liberals under My Bed (a possible crossover into the horror genre Down Under). For Bolt and Blair, there’s The Sky is Not Falling: Why it’s OK to chill about Global Warming (it’s blurb claims to give “kids the scoop, not just about global warming, but the real-world consequences of the Left’s responses to it”). At least we now know what’s on the coffee table at AWH headquarters.

The children of Australia are missing out and need their own titles, like Mummy, When’s the Election? and Why Kevin says Executing People is Wrong, except in Other Countries, Unless they are Australians. Suggestions?

The secret behind Iain Hall:

Thanks for the kind words about my writing; I take to heart what Stephen King said in “The Danse Macabre” when he said that any one who wants to write, in any genre, should set out to write everyday and treat writing like a job, because only then do you have a chance of mastering the craft, and finding your own authorial voice.

No wonder he’s a shit writer, he takes advice from Stephen King, another shit writer. But I don’t think King had quite the way with semi-colons Iain has. He’s really made those things his own, and is possibly in line for a “semi-colon” award. The prize? I’ll give him a free semi-colonoscopy.

I contributed some work (along with 4 other colleagues) some time ago to a technical book that was recently published. Today the 5 of us each received cheques for 21 pounds and 80 pence for our efforts. Awesome… it’s going to cost me 20 odd bucks to cash the thing, leaving me approximately 30AUD for my trouble. I think I will get it laminated for posterity instead. We actually asked for a single cheque so we could maximise the amount of hookers and blow we could acquire but they did not oblige.

Obviously I didn’t work on it for the money, rather because it would look good on the C.V. However this book is so expensive (400 Euro) that I can’t even afford a copy to put on my bookshelf….. so my dear friends, you won’t be getting signed copies of this riveting tome any time soon.

J-lo’s parting gift before she fled the country were two books on how to be a super heroine and and ‘How to be President‘ (of the United States). I think she rightly thought we’d have trouble coping in her absence.

The ‘How to be a POTUS’ book is fascinating. It contains really useful information like each POTUS gets to design their own special rug for the Oval Office ‘with the aid of knowledgeable White House staff’ – Dubya aptly went with a ‘lone star’ design. It also answers pressing questions like can have a pet? (You can!)

I personally found the ‘how do I get a snack’ section the most useful. Apparently ‘Coca-cola’ and ‘Pepsi-cola’ companies stock the White House fridges for free. You can also get free M&Ms which come in boxes with the Presidential Seal, as well as potato chips and pretzels (I’m guessing Dubya is keeping well clear of these). However, proving that even the POTUS can’t survive on corporate largesse alone, if you take snacks back to your private quarters you have to pay for them.

How come I don’t remember this stuff from The West Wing?