Worksheet #74, or When I Grow Up To Be A Mannequin

Today's theme song



*

Examples of me getting around

• I have a guest post over on the Rosa Mira Books blog to tie in with the impending release of slightly peculiar love stories, an e-book anthology for which you can probably guess the theme.

• I'm the subject of the Q&A in this weekend's Dom Post. (It'll be a double dose of me, actually, as it's my week in the Your Weekend mag). A photographer just came and visited me at home and made me stare into the sun for twenty minutes.

• You can scroll down here to see my Five Questions with the NZ Book Council.

• I also had to help out my publisher write discussion questions on A Man Melting for book groups that'll pop up in the next issue of the Book Council's Booknotes.

• And I have a stack of questions to answer for Unity Books' website...

It makes a change from all the FAQ documents about school buildings I write at work, and I know I'm going to miss talking about myself when it's all over (hey, there's always the blog...) but there's only so many interesting ways to talk about what is essentially a boring time-sponge (sitting alone in my home office writing about things that never happened).

*

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

Ashley Young, an NZ writer in London who has taken to blogging like a NZer in London takes to proper Marmite, has posted 'Things I've Wanted To Write', following the lead of Bill Manhire's 'From an Imaginary Journal' in Sport 39 (which you can read if you click here and then click "preview").

I seriously considered writing "'Abandoned blog posts' after Ashley Young after Bill Manhire'" but I guess I'll have to add that to the list of abandoned blog posts.

*

Musical aside

Weezer has covered Radiohead's 'Paranoid Android'. It's inoffensive, perhaps even neat (a very Weezer-y word) but sadly falls into my first category of bad covers by not differing enough from the original.

*

All The Moves

This is ancient in internet terms (it's so 2010!), but I only came across it the other day when it was batted around on Twitter:

41 Moves in Contemporary (American) Poetry.

Calling them "moves" implies some sort of chicanery on the part of the poets who have employed these techniques. And it's a problem if a poet or a nation's poetry overuses any of these "moves", but there aren't many surveys out there that grapple with what a lot of contemp. poetry (especially on that published online) is up to.

I wonder what a similar list would look like for NZ poetry?  A good place to start would be Best NZ Poems, which has been going for 10 years and now has a best of the best print edition. You can listen to a heap of poets reading their BNZP work here.

*

Fun Fun Fun

Yesterday a bailiff snuck up our drive and put a sticker on the window of our car saying, "You have unpaid fines and I totally could have clamped your car, pay up now you dirty crim!" [Slightly paraphrased].

Turns out we had a speeding fine from 10pm on Christmas Eve near Pukerua Bay and they'd been leaving the "D" off our address on the infringement notices.  Thing is, M. and I were in Christchurch at 10pm on Christmas Eve.

My brother/flatmate has some 'splaining to do when he gets home!!

(He was only clocked at 105kmph in a 100k zone and he's getting a root canal tomorrow, so I'll think I'll go easy on him).

*

Snippets from Papers Past that prove I'm doing research but also that I'm easily distracted^

1. "R.B. Williams, Wellington's barrister-vocalist, doesn't believe in encores. He bows his acknowledgements but won't 'oblige again.'  Encores are a heavy tax on the good nature of public favourites." From the Observer, 2 June 1894.

2. "Another applicant [for the job] forwarded a testimonial which stated that he had nearly lost his life while rescuing sheep during a flood, but the Council did not consider this conspicuous act of bravery had any connection with the appointment of a caretaker for the reserves." From the Manawatu Times, 19 January, 1901.

3. "[A boy named Taupaki] missed the coach taking the team to Waitekauri, and walked and ran there, a distance of 14 miles, arriving as the first spell ended. He was allowed to play, and scored no less than three tries..." Reported in several papers, June 1902.

^I think this may become a regular feature!