Boring Like A Drill.

Just in: an addition to the list of people or things I have been mistaken for, or allegedly physically resemble, in increasing order of ridiculousness. Russell Crowe is the new entry, but I wd welcome your input about whether he shd go above Ben Lee (but below Harry Potter) or below Ben Lee (but above shit). I’m pretty sure Ben Lee represents some line of truth.

In other news, I got a digital camera. It was a gift: I think the donor was trading up and wanted to get rid of his old one. It may not work at all. Otherwise I haven’t figured out how to use it, because all my shots so far look like this:

After November’s trenchant, incisive interview with Stelarc some readers thought I’d run out of artists to interview, but long-term readers knew I was just too lazy to upload more treasures of Australia’s cultural heritage.

Ricky Swallow became a household word after he handcrafted Melbourne’s Crown Casino complex entirely out of cardboard, balsa wood and carpet remnants, complete with a fully-working model of Steven Jacobs. After being named “Australia’s Most Collectable Young Artist” by Cleo magazine for three years running, he has now fled the country. This interview was conducted at 200 Gertrude Street last year.

Inspired by the British Museum’s publishing coup in printing The Tale of Peter Rabbit in hieroglyphs – the perfect tale for busy mummies who want to unwind with a nice story about bunnies after a hard day punching holes in the chests of character actors and overwhelming the world with an army of the undead – I am now working on translating Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix into cuneiform.

This is no easy task, even after successfully neogtiating the rights with J.K. Rowling’s publishers and several earthmoving contractors. There are the difficulties of finding equivalent terms relating to an anachronistic British boarding school that will make sense to the average Babylonian, how to translate all the cod Latin into an even more ancient context and, most of all, how to live with myself as a fully-grown adult ploughing through a children’s book only slightly shorter than the collected works of Jane Austen.

The new edition should hit the streets in time for next Christmas, and is expected to take up about 12,000 clay tablets. Customers are advised to pre-order to avoid disappointment, and to hire a truck to take it home. Please take care not to drop a page, or get it wet: tablets will not be sold separately. For vision-impaired Sumerians, a large print edition is in preparation.

From the BBC: “Beatrix Potter’s classic children’s book The Tale of Peter Rabbit has been translated into ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs by the British Museum.”

Two choice quotes: the obvious…

“Beatrix Potter’s words sometimes do not readily fall into ancient Egyptian,” they wrote in the foreword.

and the not so obvious…

The “time seemed appropriate” for the hieroglyph version, due in April, translators said…

I guess you had to be there.

Before resuming this timewaster properly for the new year, I have to note that I don’t remember writing that last post at all.

Oh, and don’t I feel foolish now for mocking that tsunami warning I received last month? Well, no I don’t because it missed me entirely.