geographies: Coomooran Creek

May linglist

selection from won des laits:

whern

libuild

thrisky

robussed

methodd

dorminant

turpsichorus

Monday newstrip

Violence flares in Spain as retail sales miss expectations • tornadoes strike storm shattered Oklahoma • Kim Kardashian has announced she's expecting the world's first crowd funded space telescope • a guide to Bitcoin • speculation is rife over the identities of two people allegedly involved in a secret affair • greatest moments caught by Google Street View • a flurry of fresh local economic data on Monday painted a mixed picture for the Australian economy • two police sergeants behind the production of 50 apparently racist stubby holders are still working in their Melbourne station which could have serious political implications for the baby girl crisis • the month of June normally heralds the official arrival of summer.

geographies: Mazeppa National Park

th'downstairs room

geographies: Dysart

Saturday newstrip

Daylight terror: the Ford Falcon, part of Australia's landscape for half a century, is driving into the sunset • soldier hacked to death in London • thousands attend spectacular Jerusalem wedding • Biggest Loser trainer Michelle Bridges has confirmed speculation she is dating her co-star Steve "The Commando" Willis • Australian astronomers have helped solve one of the cosmos's most thorny riddles • zoos are the only places where white tigers exist • 80-year-old Japanese mountain climber Yuichiro Miura reached the top of Mount Everest • touching reunion stories caught on camera.

Tresor

Today is International Turtle Day

& here's one from the local region . . .

geographies: Brandon

InterNaPwoWriMo

was last month, was International Pwoermd Writing Month. & some pwoermds from won des laits during that time are below

contnets

suppernatural

dΩme

brillain't

innonsequential

powerm

wnidow

alt-ctrl-er

thend

The dick who thinks

he will be Australia's next Prime Minister.

Simplistic in the extreme, cro-magnonesque perhaps, producer of simplistic pamphlets that he calls "books" but which, as the photos below the photos below show,

are too complex for his tiny brain. So he downsizes, first to simplex slogans

& then reduced even further, to the only thing he can get his brain around, a branded coffee shop takeaway container.

Yes, this is Tony Abbott, a dickhead who needs

to wear budgie-smugglers to find the head of his dick.

Grafton Bridge Revisited

geographies: Corio

tuesday newstrip

Celebrity stunts gone wrong • Twelve shot at US Mother's Day parade • A man beaten to death last week in Volgograd, south Russia, was the victim of a homophobic gang • The ARIA Singles Chart will again use foreign aid money to capture solar eclipse • 3D printed guns are reportedly too scary to pay for the care of asylum seekers • Robin Thicke has scored his first Australian No.1 with New Threats Emerge From Syria • The Greens will move to block federal funding for the anti-soy zeitgeist permeating the culinary & coffee-loving world.

Series Magritte #242

The New Years

In the closed circles of
psychic apparati, exposed
navels emphasize the
rural-urban rift. It is
from this dark rift that
the winter solstice sun

will emerge, offering
a single world with a
dichotomy of semantics
in which objects co-exist
with primitive types. More
problematic in theory

than in practice, it tends
towards a reductionist
framework. On the day
of the second new moon
after the December solstice
the new years begin.

geographies: Neerim

elsewhere II . . . & definitely elsewhen

The Queensland State Government recently passed legislation allowing local councils to decide whether they wanted to add fluoride to water supplies, instead of the former Labor government's push to make it mandatory.

The Townsville Bulletin

from the comments boxes of the above news item . . .

BRUSH YOUR TEETH, fluoride doesn't prevent cavities if you don't clean your teeth.Remove this poison from my water and I will stay in Townsville, I know of at least 1000 people in Mackay area who never moved north to Townsville because of the poison in the drinking water supply.It has driven house prices down in this region, Council will continue to lose more and gain less.Fluoride imitates calcium in the body and fools the heart muscle into believing it has sufficient calcium supply only to end with heart failure.We water our lawns, wash our cars and pet and ourselves with this poison, it ends up in the rivers and oceans, we are FLUORIDATING the whole planet, STOP THIS MADNESS.The only people who want this have business selling treatment devices and make a profit from it, or otherwise they are just crazy.

elsewhere

woken
by road-
trains & roosters

thursday newstrip

Soldiers making blunders · The Queensland student accused of throwing a sandwich at the prime minister says he is innocent · Cameras reveal amazing animals-eye-view of world · Celebrities attacked on stage · The unemployment rate is expected to have been steady in April · A "ring of fire" solar eclipse will darken skies on Thursday.

asemic weir

sunday newstrip

The national disability care scheme is a step closer with Victoria agreeing to a full rollout of the plan · Kitten makes recovery after petrol attack · What Seven Days Without Email Can Teach You About Your Inbox · Best slips of the tongue on live TV · Formerly obese dog gets skin lift.

The names New Zealand wouldn't allow

New Zealand's Registrar of Births, Deaths & Marriages has released an updated list of rejected names that parents attempted to bestow upon their newborns.

Six sets of parents have tried — & failed — to legally name their child "Lucifer" during the past 12 years. Other banned names include "Anal" & "4real." Punctuation marks such as “.” (full stop) & “*” (star symbol) were also overruled, as were names using slashes & brackets.

The agency does not allow names resembling an official title or rank, so there aren't any children legally called "King," "Princess," "Majesty" or "Knight."

"Justice" is the most popular banned name, having been rejected 62 times since 2001. Two sets of parents tried their luck with "Justus" & one with "Juztice,” but those were also shot down.

However, some peculiar names have been approved, including “Midnight Chardonnay,” “Violence” & “Number 16 Bus Shelter.”

In 2008, a 9-year-old New Zealand girl named "Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii" was made a ward of the court so that her name could be changed.

Sweden is another country known for its naming laws. In the ’90s, a couple famously tried to name their child "Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116" (pronounced "Albin," of course), but it was rejected.

Here is a list of New Zealand’s banned names & how many times they have come up since 2001.
Justice: 62
King: 31
Princess: 28
Prince: 27
Royal: 25
Duke: 10
Major: 9
Bishop: 9
Majesty: 7
J: 6
Lucifer: 6
Using brackets around middle names: 4
Knight: 4
Lady: 3
Using back slashes between names: 8
Judge: 3
Royale: 2
Messiah: 2
T: 2
I: 2
Queen: 2
II: 2
Sir: 2
III: 2
Jr:2
E: 2
V: 2
Justus: 2
Master: 2
Names that have come up once:
Constable, Queen Victoria, Regal, Emperor, Christ, Juztice, 3rd, C J, G, Roman numerals III, General, Saint, Lord, "." (full stop), 89, Eminence, M, VI, Mafia No Fear, 2nd, Majesti, Rogue, 4real, "*" (star symbol), 5th, S P, C, Sargent, Honour, D, Minister, MJ, Chief, Mr, V8, President, MC, Anal, A.J., Baron, L B, H-Q and Queen V.

New York Daily News

Kawana

Otoliths #29 is now live

When I started Otoliths seven years ago, I wondered if it would grow, if it would survive. That wondering is now far behind me, & even a cursory glance at the lineup below indicates how wide-ranging the journal has become in literary & artistic endeavor & scope, how truly international it now is.

Otoliths issue 29, the southern autumn issue, contains a lot of new work from a lot of people: Mark Cunningham, Susan Lewis, Aditya Bahl, Jal Nicholl, Andrew Topel, Pete Spence & Andrew Topel, Julian Jason Haladyn, Ed Baker, John Ryan, Francesco Aprile, Unconventional Press, Kyle Hemmings, Philip Byron Oakes, Marco Giovenale, Sheila E. Murphy & John M. Bennett, Jim Leftwich & John M. Bennett, Thomas M. Cassidy & John M. Bennett, John M. Bennett, John W. Sexton, Louie Crew, Sy Roth, Jack Galmitz, Anthony J. Langford, Mark Melnicove, Yoko Danno, Pam Brown, Eleanor Leonne Bennett, A. J. Huffman, John Veira, Maria Zajkowski, Camille Martin, Wayne Mason, Bobbi Lurie, Darren C. Demaree, Michael Stutz, James Mc Laughlin, Howie Good, Reed Altemus, Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, Johannes S. H. Bjerg, Vernon Frazer, Jeremy Freedman, John Pursch, dan raphael, Sheila e. Black & Caleb Puckett, Ricky Garni, Jack Collom & Mark DuCharme, Kathryn Yuen, Tim Wright, Mark Reep, Gary Barwin, Taylor Reid, harry k stammer, Marcia Arrieta, Anna Ryan-Punch, Katrinka Moore, Neil Ellman, Sally Ann McIntyre, Jeff Harrison, Joe Balaz, Boyd Spahr, Tony Beyer, Jim Davis, Chris Brown, Sam Moginie, Lakey Comess, Alberto Vitacchio, Jorge Lucio de Campos translated by Diana Magallón & Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, Rebecca Rom-Frank, Craig Cotter, Javant Biarujia, Carla Bertola, Iain Britton, Anne Elvey, Bob Heman, Donna Fleischer, J. D. Nelson, sean burn, Spencer Selby, Charles Freeland & Rosaire Appel, Paul Dickey, Michael D Goscinski, Kathup Tsering, Miro Bilbrough, Chris Holdaway, Samuel Carey, Paul Pfleuger, Jr., Michael Brandonisio, Willie Smith, Mercedes Webb-Pullman, Bogdan Puslenghea, Andrew Pascoe, Scott Metz, Marty Hiatt, Eric Schmaltz, Sam Langer, & bruno neiva.

In addition, this issue features 147 Million Orphans: A haybun folio curated by Eileen R. Tabios, containing work from Eileen R. Tabios, Tom Beckett, j/j hastain, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Aileen Ibardaloza, Thomas Fink, Sheila E. Murphy, Michael Caylo-Baradi, Jean Vengua, William Allegrezza, & Patrick James Dunagan & Ava Koohbor.

geographies: Kolijo

some pwoermds from the tiem of march

thanks to won des laits

affourdoorable

tiradespeople

harft

thoughtography

souound

ergotist

geographies: Jambin

wednesday newstrip

Most surprising seal encounters • Boston explosions rock city • Black Caviar fever hits Randwick • A new experiment is revealing the future for the Great Barrier Reef if illegally crossing train tracks continues • A coffin will be displayed at Brisbane's Central Station to remind people of the dangers of climate change • The family of a man who fell to his death on the 18th hole while celebrating his bucks party said he was the most unlikely person to die from such a tragic accident • Adam Scott still sinks his putt.

geographies: Carmila

To Juvenal

She enquires anxiously
after G's. health. Says she

must return him those
codices of Ovid, now

incomplete at the end &
heavily glossed, though

offset with pale skin
& a lovely nude pout.

Marcus Valerius Martialis (40 – 102 CE)

included in Poems from the Oxyrhynchus Papiryi selected & translated by Umberto Allegrezza; The Uzbekistan Historical Society; Bukhara, 2012.

NineMSN news 4/10/13

Unexpected voices on TV talent shows • Her badly-beaten body was discovered three days after she was killed • Celebrity interviews turn testy • Her mobile phone was lying at her feet • Enormous spiders devouring oversized prey.

Elvis Costello's Tramp the Dirt Down

I saw a newspaper picture from the political campaign
A woman was kissing a child, who was obviously in pain
She spills with compassion, as that young child's
Face in her hands she grips
Can you imagine all that greed and avarice
Coming down on that child's lips

Well I hope I don't die too soon
I pray the lord my soul to save
Oh I'll be a good boy, I'm trying so hard to behave
Because there's one thing I know, I'd like to live
Long enough to savor
That's when they finally put you in the ground
I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down

When England was the whore of the world
Margaret was her madam
And the future looked as bright and as clear as
The black tarmacadam
Well I hope that she sleeps well at night, isn't
Haunted by every tiny detail
'Cos when she held that lovely face in her hands
All she thought of was betrayal

Ilbilbie

National Visual Poetry Month

Amanda Earl's AngelHousePress presents

NationalPoetryMonth.ca,
"a celebration of poetic form of all kinds and an homage to those poets who try to extend the definition of poetry. This year’s edition, which marks the fifth anniversary, is a tribute to the Last Vispo, an anthology of visual poetry edited by Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill and published by Fantagraphics in 2012. The site contains visual poetry, asemic writing, collage, concrete poetry and other forms of whimsy by artists from Australia, Canada, the USA, Finland, Hungary, Italy, and Sweden. Each day in April a different visual poem will be shown. AngelHousePress thanks all who participated and sent work for consideration and wishes the month had at least forty five days in order to showcase all the great poetry we received."

Starting April 1, visit NationalPoetryMonth.ca for a different visual poem every day. So far this month there has been work by Gary Barwin, Michael Basinski & Ginny O’Brien, & Cecil Touchon dislayed. Another 27 artists are still to come.

there are or will be

No Polar Bears in his hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin.
No Polar Bears in your hat.
No Polar Bears in aggregations.
No Polar Bears in the Qatari Desert.
No Polar Bears in Antarctica.
No Polar Bears in bikinis on the side of the road holding signs.
No Polar Bears in cars.
No Polar Bears in Arizona so no posts tagged © Tumblr, Inc.
No Polar Bears in the home market.
No Polar Bears in Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl Campaign.
No Polar Bears in Finland.
No Polar Bears in Sweden.
No Polar Bears in Norway.
No Polar Bears in Hornstrandir.
No Polar Bears in Poland.
No Polar Bears in a Reliant.
No Polar Bears in South Africa.
No Polar Bears in Mexico.
No Polar Bears in Costa Rica.
No Polar Bears in the provincial park.
No Polar Bears in mission control.
No Polar Bears in the land of flightless birds.
No Polar Bears in a molecule—or is that Polar Bonds?
No Polar Bears in the aforementioned book.
No Polar Bears in Alaska. This is in error.
No Polar Bears in the area.
No Polar Bears in our streets.
No Polar Bears in penguin huddles.
No Polar Bears in the way.
No Polar Bears in the wild.
No Polar Bears in 20 years.
No Polar Bears in 10 Years.
No Polar Bears in the zoo.
No Polar Bears in sight.

No Polar Bears.

geographies: Thunder Island

fruit of the?

Eastern Freeway tolls loom

snapshot of . . . what?

I am sitting
on my ass in

the garden
picking weeds

& reciting
"Moses supposes

his toeses
are roses but

Moses supposes
erroneously."

geographies: Alpha-Tambo Road

In a talk

I gave a couple of years ago, I said, explaining my way of writing, "...the poem itself uses two techniques that play an important part in what I am going on to talk about. The first is parataxis, the juxtaposition of phrases or dissimilar images or fragments that have no clear connection with one another. The second technique is something I'll call varietal or news-channel parataxis, seeking out phrases that have the potential to create an alternate reality through their juxtaposition."

A just-found example of news-channel parataxis that caught my eye today:

A psychiatric patient imprisoned after she attempted to murder her boyfriend is still on the run from a Melbourne hospital. Close calls with sharks caught on film.

Merman Hanging from a Gibbet

Harlequin diamonds are
must-haves for fashion-
able women, now that
they are back on the map
for 'it' handbags with new
styles & such modern
colors as Waterlily Pink
& New Bronze available.

& in the home, unpinned,
stuck to the door, access-
orized with the movement
of a hanging merman, they
add a sense of drama &
visual tension to any space.

Fever won milks in February

ou
la fièvre de won des laits en février

machoinery

bfufalo

i'mposing

heavyrature

dealth

elketronic

conc(ave, conv)ex

The next big thing

I was recently tagged by Lars Palm to participate in a self-interview meme. It's obvious from the questions that it sprang from somewhere other than poetry, but, hey, what the hell! I've responded below, but have not tagged anyone to follow on from me. However, feel welcome to do so.

What is/was the working title of the book?

The Codicils. The title stems from the following definition — "Codicil: an instruction or amendment which is added to an existing Will & which, in effect, becomes part of that Will" &, in keeping with that, the book is actually a collection of books, or, at least, a collection of book-sized themes. At present count, about ten books, about six hundred plus poems. Lots of pages.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Not really so much "an idea", but the continuation of "an idea(l)." It's essentially a temporal ex(is)tension of my selected Pelican Dreaming which, I suppose, could be considered as the "existing Will."

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry? Humor? Genetics? Chaos Theory? Plagiarism? Geography? Speculative Fiction? Searched Engine? Bricolage? Autobiography? Alternative Medicine?

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

There's an animated series on TV called Miniscule, about the lives of insects. There are any number of possible actors displayed there, & the variety of insects portrayed would probably cover all contingencies & dramatic interpretations required.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

How long is a piece of string, & how many strands is it made up of?

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

A thousand years. A moment. Somewhere in between. How long is a piece of string?

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I was wondering how long a piece of string was, so I looked it up in Google . . . :-)

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

It contains evidence that, in uni/verses parallel to this, Fermat's last theorem has yet to be proved, & mammoths still shake the tundra. The clues are all around us. I have simply put some of those pieces together.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It will be published by Otoliths in the next few months, along with grounds by harry k stammer. harry has been responsible for the preparation of nearly all the covers of the many books from the press. These will be the last two books to come out from Otoliths.

A Power Point Presentation

The Glass Key

for Dashiell Hammett & Jo Nesbø

Ned finds the body of a
Senator’s son on the street.
He's tall, lean, mustachioed
& tubercular. He's also
a gambler. & a big fan of
literary noir. You can use
census records & voter
lists to see where he's lived

over the years. They have
a pervasive feeling of moral
& sexual ambiguity which
may not be visible yet be-
cause of a delay in updating
the database. You can also
use them to read about
Harry's journey to Thailand.

geographies: Jooro

some janvary pwoermds

from won des laits

raucouscous

boredbrand

jihadn't

embareass

vivacuous

po'sses'sive's

bisketweaver

allreiterations

epitoyou

geographies: Port Alma

geographies: Winton Creek

This is

the year of the snake.

I was born in a year of the snake many years ago.

Kinda ironic, since, after my experiences up here, I'm now paranoid about them.

This flood,

unlike the others we've seen
over the past five years

Photo: Chris Ison / The (Rockhampton) Morning Bulletin
was full of dead fish.

"Queensland's Environment Minister says the deaths of thousands of fish in the flooded Fitzroy River in central Queensland were due to natural causes . . .water releases from coal mines are not responsible for the deaths."

Photo: Alice Roberts, ABC News
One word:

bullshit.

Out from Otoliths—Martin Edmond's Eternities

Now out from Otoliths.

Eternities
Martin Edmond
6" x 9"
64 pages, illustrated
Otoliths, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9872010-7-2
$14.45 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/shop/martin-edmond/eternities/paperback/product-20612650.html

Martin Edmond's Eternities is at once memoir, belle lettrist in a kind of Modernist French tradition, lyric prose poetry, literary criticism. He is a chronicler of lost and discarded sacred things, people, places—Tempe Velodrome, the Manzil Room, the Wet Taxis playing at the Britannia Hotel. The writing frequently builds a pathos that often leads to grieving, grieving for lost youth and ruined possibilities. The paradox is that the romantic desire for the ideal can be realized in dreaming. Edmond is so authentic you can believe every anecdote he tells, partly because he puts himself and the reader at the scene of real crimes and with novelist’s skills re-enacts their immediate horror. Meticulous research underpins the mythic dreaming and the constant resurgence (via mechanisms of memory, portents-reading, and hallucination) of the uncanny, seeping, if you like, out to the detritus of past time. The intertextual transcends the dull mechanics of postmodern technique, emerging epically as the Koran, the Tora, Aztec lore and old Testament parable populated with hitherto uncelebrated gypsies, thieves, dream-chasing hippies, and murderers. The book rolls with humanity, a secularized laughter and magic. Not theological at all, but as powerful as re-incarnation and pagan idol worship; such profound depth to even the most innocuous recollections. Perhaps it is Edmond’s expat origins, a New Zealander who has made Sydney crueler, kinder, more exotic and more magical than it ever could be on its own: . . . in those moments some ineffable translation happens, some occult adjustment of soul, some realignment of possibilities, after which he is profoundly changed. And all else too. It is as the book says—the redeemed world will be the same but not as this is. It’s theology without god. It’s nothing. Everything. —Adam Aitken

Martin Edmond’s bohemian travels documented within these prose pieces are eternities made manifest in run-down flats, movie sets and, along with other jobs, toiling on the night shift at the post office among fellow poets, painters, musicians and other variously assembled creatures of the night. Here is a writer with abundant gifts. With a novelist’s eye for detail and a poet’s perfect pitch Martin Edmond lives the life of the writer who takes ecstatic possession of every living moment. Within these pages the writer asks, ‘can music banish a curse?’ You bet it can. —Richard Lopez

geographies: Charlevue

What's wrong with this sentence?

Crocodiles have been spotted swimming through the streets of Rockhampton as floodwaters continue to rise in the Queensland beef capital.

Otoliths #28 is now live

There is blue sky, it's very warm, but the river is due to peak later on today at major flood levels. The highways to the west & southwest are both cut, & the main highway south has only just reopened & is only passable with "extreme caution." There are minimal fruit & vegetables available apart from some local pineapples, fresh bread & milk are rationed to one loaf / container per customer at the local supermarket, eggs & meat are scarce, & bottled water & longlife milk are gone almost immediately they arrive. The fiber-optic cable & its backup connecting this part of the world with the southern parts of the continent were both washed away over the weekend which meant no internet or cell phone connectivity for several days, though they've now been restored.

But the USPS insists that the journal must go through. So, with no further fanfare, the summer, 2013 issue of Otoliths—#28—has just gone live, with work from Alexander Jorgensen, Paul Dickey, Felino A. Soriano, Alexandra Yurkovsky, Jim Meirose, Simon Perchik, nick-e melville, Tim Suermondt, Mark Melnicove, Adam Aitken, bruno neiva, Philip Byron Oakes, Dane Karnick, Howie Good, Walter Ruhlmann, John Crouse, M. Pfaff, John M. Bennett, William Garvin, Michael Farrell, Willie Smith, Jack Galmitz, Craig Scott, Raymond Farr, Carlyle Baker, Patrick James Dunagan, Sheila E. Murphy, Reed Altemus, Micah Cavaleri, Tom Beckett, Tony Brinkley, Bobbi Lurie, Tom Pescatore, Cecelia Chapman, Tony Beyer, Lakey Comess, George McKim, Steven D. Stark, Orchid Tierney, David Dick, Colin Herd, Michael Caylo-Baradi, Lee Slonimsky, Chris D'Errico, Susan Gangel & Terry Turrentine, Catherine Vidler, John Pursch, Stephen Nelson, Leigh Herrick, Jeff Harrison, Volodymyr Bilyk, Charles Freeland & Rosaire Appel, Márton Koppány, Alyson Miller, sean burn, Donna Fleischer, Bogdan Puslenghea, Paul Pfleuger, Jr., Joel Chace, Bob Heman, Scott Metz, Ed Baker, J. D. Nelson, Nicolette Wong, Michael Brandonisio, Lance Newman, Sam Moginie, Kit Kennedy, Samit Roy, Sam Langer, Aditya Bahl, Cherie Hunter Day, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, & Michael Gottlieb.

& never one to let the opportunity for a pun pass by, let's just say that this issue's come out under floodlit conditions.

Some years back,

maybe seven or so, we planted a number of pineapple tops in the garden.

Only a couple of them managed to take root, & for the time since then, only the leaves grew. We'd given up the idea of them fruiting.

Then, late last year, November-December, a flower appeared in the center of the plant to the right of the garden path, & gradually has taken on the familiar pineapple form.

& even later in December, the plant on the lefthand side of the path, perhaps prompted by the nearby activity, launched into bloom.

Am unsure, but I think they take about six or so months to get to the point of harvesting.

Broadband, mobile outages in wake of Queensland floods.

"Telstra has flown techicians in to repair a flood-damaged fibre optic cable between Gladstone and Bundaberg in Queensland that it says "carries much of the state's communications needs".

The telco said that severe flooding in Colosseum, about 72km south-east of Gladstone, had damaged the coastal cable. The flooding is caused by ex-Tropical Cyclone Oswald.

"A repair crew has arrived in Colosseum by helicopter to attempt repairs on the damaged coastal cable and begin restoring services," a spokesman said.

"All restoration efforts will be weather dependant, but the team is in the process of running cable in an attempt to reinstate services."

A cable near Harlin that could usually act as a backup has also been damaged by flood waters.

"To date, poor weather conditions and flood levels have prevented technicians accessing the second damaged cable north of Harlin," Telstra's spokesman said.

"As the weather clears, technicians will attempt to access the area by helicopter or road with the help of local emergency services to begin works."

The cable damage, together with widespread power outages, led to landline and broadband services being cut in Mackay, Freshwater, Cairns, Rockhampton, Townsville, Mount Isa and Gladstone, Telstra indicated.

"Many 2G, 3G and 4G mobile services throughout Central and Northern Queensland have also been impacted," it said.

While it had a crew working on the Colosseum cut that was impacting fixed services, the carrier hoped to be able to restore some 3G services using a transmission route via Darwin."

itnews

30 hours this time...

& overall, it's an increasingly strange weather event, that keeps being greeted by the phrase "unprecedented." It's still going, moving down the coast, in New South Wales now, dumping many millimeters of rain & accompanied by extremely strong winds.

Australia Day / Invasion Day / Some Sort of Reconciliation Day

For many Indigenous Australians, today marks the 75th anniversary of the fight for Aboriginal rights and recognition.

In 1938, a large group of Aboriginal people gathered in Sydney at a protest they called The Day of Mourning.

The Indigenous demonstrators demanded full citizen rights and equality, and the protest was the beginning of the organised Aboriginal civil rights movement.

Today, 225 years after the First Fleet arrived, the Aboriginal and Australian Flags have flown together on top of Sydney Harbour Bridge for the first time.

Today, the heavy rain

has moved away, but the results of the 520 mm of rain that has fallen over the last three days are extremely evident. Much of the communication infrastructure—internet & cell—was down for nearly 24 hours & has only just come back up; there's an inland lake around the south & west of the city; the major highways south, west, & southwest are all closed with washed out bridges, washed away road, or just too much water over the road to get through; the airport is closed/open/closed/open/closed, though I just heard a plane come in; & the usual stream of gawkers on the streets leading down to the lagoon at the bottom of our street (which is now cut off there) is making getting out difficult.

& the snakes escaping the floodwaters are still to come . . .

350mm of rain

in the 24 hours to 9 a.m., the wettest day here since 1939......

It may be a bit late this year,

but the monsoon trough has finally reached us. 120mm — 4½ in — of rain overnight.

geographies: Morinish

Stage 6: The Great (Media Tarts) Race

A re-elected President is always sweet meat!!

This first stage of the new year is being judged by members of The Academy. Some amongst them

have cast their vote in favor of the alliterative Bono / Barack Obama. Others have gone for the rhyme of

Dalai Lama / Obama.

There is no clear winner. A second round of voting will have to be held; but now The Academy members are arguing over whether it should be constructed in limerick or in haiku form.

Bono is heard muttering offstage "Next time I'll get photographed with Yoko Ono. That'll fix the fucking fuddyduddies!"

why I like proboscis monkeys

Cicerone: A guide who shows the antiquities or curiosities of a place to strangers

How inventive!

A monkey
with a / prominent
proboscis

is called
a / proboscis
monkey.

Yesagyo

In publication terms

November & December were quite prolific months for me. I've listed the November pubs previously. Below is the December list. & I've seen proofs for a couple of things coming out in January.

ditch

3 a.m.

Cricket Online Review, v8 i2

Mascara #12

Fact•Simile #8

Counterexample Poetics

Tip of the Knife #11

Offcourse #51