Parrot Confidence Course

Cowering kings
The parrots hereabouts are flighty, these winter days, as a lobster at the sight of a restaurant. With that wedge-tailed eagle cruising silently, the parrots have due cause. Not a single king parrot here might say, "Alas, poor Yorick" at the sight of a clump of feathers or a flightless feathered wing, but they sure know the meaning of mortality.

So it is with heavy heart that I heard of a certain parrot by the name of L______ who lives unencumbered by the threat of raptors, only to be terrorised by one of his own kind. Or maybe that is a feint for a shyness without excuse: either a morbidity of the soul or an existentialism much too heavy for anyone who weighs less than a supermarket magazine.

I was delighted therefore, to receive in the mail, an offer from a fantastic new multimedia club called "Featherpress Editions".

This wise concern must have been reading my mind because the offer was addressed to L______, saying

"If you are not L______, and are reading this offer by accident, then avert your eyes. It is not for you. It is only for L______ (and all other parrots L______ invites in, to participate in this special offer):

Walk Proud, Talk Loud: 7 Days to Confidence

This book can be yours soon if you ACT NOW. Several parrots have been transformed by the tips in this indispensable guide, written by the author of such classics as

SOFTIES AT HEART: THE SENSUALITIES OF BULLS
SIT: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CANINE NANNY
PARROT CHATS
THE UPPER STOREY: HOW TO RENOVATE INSULATION
&
SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS: A CORN SNAKE'S REMINISCENCES OF LIFE ON A FARM

5 Excerpts from 7 DAYS TO CONFIDENCE:
from Chapter 3: "Stopping bad habits"

Shifty eye
Teach your human to look you in the eye, explaining patiently how eagles never do. The sooner your human realises that you are not a cat, the easier it will be for all. Tell them that you size up a personality by engaging eye-to-eye contact.

Silence is suspicious
Eagles sneak up. Humans shouldn't. They need to be taught to verbally and musically, communicate. If you can't teach them music, then at least, teach them to converse. They probably won't make any sense, but as long as they're chatting, they're not eating you.

Demand your privacy
Just because your humans don't value it, doesn't mean you shouldn't demand it. If you are housed near some obnoxious object, be it a human child or adult who doesn't worship you, or some insufferably pushy parrot, train your human to use its body as a curtain in your interactions with it. In doing so, you can eat your proffered banana or date or nuts in peace, or if there is music you wish to dance to, you can dance to your heart's content without worrying over some other parrot's cracks about your rhythm.

Demand your intellectual freedom
Are you put upon by your human to be chummy at its remembrance and whim? Perhaps you are an introvert, and resent this forced social interaction. Assert yourself by making clear that you aren't shy. You are just thinking. You need the next guide in this series: Choose either SELF-ACTUALISATION FOR THE FEATHER-TONGUED or CRACKING NUTS MENTAL

from Chapter 6: "Body Image"

Make yourself small
You know they're the nastiest, so hunch while you open your beak. You might be the largest parrot in the world but if you act like a tiny handful, you'll soon gain respect. Think you can't hunch? Just think about that little snack who flew at you and plucked a beakful from your crown. That's motivation! Now concentrate: hunch, open wide, and you won't even have to screech. But if it helps your confidence, screech away--minding yourself to remember to screech when your humans are out of the environment. They are inclined to be flighty at certain sounds, which can damage your health.

So L______, what's it going to be? Be all you can be. ACT TODAY, and we'll throw in a free trial MP3: Ripping Wood Rhythms

Caution: Not to be used to cure adolescence,
which nothing can cure but age.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anyway, if are not L______, but are another parrot who could benefit from this fantastic offer, ACT TODAY. It won't help against eagles, but it will help.

Archaeologists, Palaeographers, and Punctuationists fight over cryptic dohicky

From the dawn of communication, semicolons have been misplaced.

Sans-serif font (sans gill), tertiary layer, otherwise uncontexted

Drs Martin Schone, Donalda Summers-Tjinkji, and Tim Winsome each state authoritatively that this dohicky is a:

• comma
• quote mark
• inverted comma
  
• decorative dingbat
• proto-Helvetic exclamation mark
  
• that top bottombottom! thingy that is part of a semicolon

In modern texts, experts are no less argumentative. However, a semicolon isn't a comma, which is what many graduates of tertiary institutions think it is. If a sentence goes on and on, and still goes on further, it may be a tedious slog that no one should have to get to the end of, but the sentence is no less tedious if a semicolon is thrown into it instead of another comma. If the sentence, however, could be cut into two sentences, that place that is the junction could be where the semicolon parks. However, a new sentence refreshes.

Semicolons are best used in places where gaslights stain the walls and the carpets are regularly beaten. * There, they give tone and can be used to great purpose, as they can emit a great aura of place and time. They are as necessary as double cream is. Deliciously rewarding at the right time and place, but rather indigestible.

Newspapers eschew them, which should of course, make the injunction against their ingestion by children under 12, an obviosity.

* The Age of Semicolons was earlier yet, tho' most of today's readers must be roped to the text or a stake if you hope them to complete a sentence from that time.

His arm was around her waist; her hand was clasped in his; her head leaned upon his shoulder; all sterner thoughts were laid aside; it was the hour of tenderness and love. They thought not of strife and battle; they thought not of difficulty and danger; they only thought that in spite of all they were each other's, and that nought but death could dissolve the bond between them.

– G.P.R. James (1801–1860), The Fortunes of the Colville Family

Editor's suggestion: Insert comma between 'all' and 'they'.

Eel

Gymnothorax prasinus

Known by many other names, including the Green Moray Eel, Brown Reef Eel, and the Pettifogger.

Eels, even brightly lit, have such an air of mystery. This young one was washed up on a beach.

coming in Postscripts from PS Publishing . . .

Stories are like birthday party goers. I just love for a story of mine to sit beside those of some of my favourite authors, particularly when they don't behave themselves. So I'm thrilled to announce that my youngest squalling brat, "Marks and Coconuts", will be sitting with I-don't-know-who but I'm sure they have interesting fauna behind their ears and will be sure to say all the wrong things—in an upcoming PS Publishing's Postscripts edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers.

Here's the latest bumper-size hardcover Postscripts anthology:
Postscripts #24/25 -The New and Perfect Man edited by Peter Crowther & Nick Gevers

(And I just noticed that Jack Dann and Barry N. Malzberg announced in May that they sold a story called "The Rapture" to Postscripts, and that this story includes an "angel that wears ill-fitting corduroy suits". Lucky for them that Postscripts doesn't have a dress code, though I'm suspicious about that 'ill-fitting' which usually means there's stuff in pockets that shouldn't be. I'm not accusing, mind you, but I've told my little innocent to make sure that their story doesn't take the cake.)

Read Angela Slatter's fascinating interview:
The Postscripts Drive-by: Nick Gevers

I have wanted a story of mine to be in Postscripts for many years, not just because of the company my little brat would keep, but because of PS Publishing—a heavenly publisher for several reasons.

1. This is a brave and active publisher of exciting, unruly fiction, not me-too's—and is genuine quality, not up-itself pretension. They say 'genre' but I say 'piffle' to that label, as their definition is so broad.
2. This is a wonderfully decent publisher to authors in a trade that is too often, indecent in the unfun extreme.

Check out their novels, art books, new releases, and 'Unmissable Deals' here.

Finally, I don't know which issue of Postscripts "Marks and Coconuts" will appear in, but I will say, quite immodestly (with many thanks to two brilliant critics, Ben Peek and Richard Glatz), that it is a cracker of a story.

Skin, Fiction, Mushrooms, & Progress

Magic Mushrooms for Your Biggest Organ
It's good that few people read fiction now. If, for example, you've let Jeff VanderMeer tempt you down the dank history of the city of Ambergris, or found yourself rubbing the top of your head while trying to forget Marc Laidlaw's "Leng", you might want to anoint yourself with something containing fungi as enthusiastically as audiences who had just seen "The Birds" wanted to hit the shops the next day, to buy birdfeeders.

In non-fiction literature on information sites and packages, consumers spend their time more wisely than fiction readers, learning that creams and stuff containing stuff from mushrooms have been designed, formulated, tested and proved "amazing"; and not just that, but produced in sufficient quantities that even you can purchase some! And better yet, the mushrooms used for these miracles don't deplete the mushroom-soup population, nor are they called something disgusting like fungus, let alone caterpillar fungus. Not only that, but on an internet site that bristles with Drs and says it is "Recognized by Medical Authorities", it is written: "a mega celeb in the anti-aging skin care market, Dr. Weil, has infused his Origins products —Mega-Mushroom Face Serum and the Mega-Mushroom Face Cream—with an Asian variety of mushroom. Dr. Weil calls this ingredient a major breakthrough."

He isn't alone. Products such as Super Mushroom Miracle that you can buy over the counter promise (under the text's surface) a level of desirability that even prescription drugs haven't achieved, without expensive spells to the peepers of your beholders. No wonder mushroom miracles are popping up all over. Each one is formulated to give you results that are almost guaranteed to be incredibly amazingly unbelievable, but that you can have within days of purchase or in no time.

Birthday candles stop for no one

"Aging is not simply the passage of time marked by lines & wrinkles. Irritation silently simmering within skin's surface may be invisibly aging your skin faster than the candles on your birthday cake. Origins collaborated with Dr. Andrew Weil to create these clinically proven formulas."
– Mega-Mushroom products site

How Wrinkles Have Created Progress
Ever since women were capable of getting old enough to grow to witch age, the skin care market has been blessed with Drs.

Primitive cream sellers grew fat on the odd unleavened bread snuck into their hands when the rest of the tribe wasn't looking, not to mention Dr Viper-Oil and his imitators accruing piles of shells that they traded for coins, by 300 BCE or, depending on how a historian counts, 2500 BAK (Before Anyone Knows). A few smart sellers, bored with pouring their piles of coins over their heads, thought of opening new markets, so they used their coins to fund the building of sailing ships. These entrepreneurs sailed north—some, up around the left side of Spain—some, up over the beaches of the Mediterranean and the Confusing Seas, then up the Steppes and still north—all of them ultimately landing up in lands so cold that those brave explorers knew they had hit the (first *) Lands of Promise. For here, women were fair and beauteous for a week after achieving Womanhood, and then winter hit, and they wrinkled faster than a linen suit, forever.

The Progress of the Anti-Aging Miracle-Workers led, as Common People once knew but have forgot, to History—the unsettling of northern Europe, where before that time, prune-faced hags lived from puberty till death, in ignorance of hydration, and their children and menfolk waxed fat and slothful; and the only axes those tribes possessed were used in the winter, to hack portions of frozen strawberry ice cream.

Strawberryicecream Hacker
(Hypoallergenic: Note strawberry pick with huller)
Norðreyjar Bog, Unknown date

* In Australia (climate: Mars), Drs have fallen to their death, surveying facial crevasses.
" I once left my make up bag at a hotel and had to get them to mail it back to me. It was only when I priced up replacing things that I realised I had ' invested ' thousands of dollars in my face. Sad but true. "
– Australian bon vivant "thirty something"

Why Mushrooms?
If you take a look at the typical government-approved picture of skin, you'll see immediately that Government sees your skin as a disgusting cube of busy gunk. It's no wonder soft smooth skin takes experts in beauty to restore it, not anatomists who don't care about how someone looks. Their picture has hairs long as whale harpoons popping through what looks like a lumpy mattress, and in the stuffing, a tangle of rusty springs and clumped dead rats. No wonder your skin sags, wrinkles, and is something to run screaming from. Whose wouldn't?

Now see this mushroom nestling beside a jar of an unnamed Mushroom Cream.

See that the mushroom is like your skin should be, complete with the lovely beauty mark. Here there are no lumpy layers, only such suppleness that the mushroom curves around the jar, like the curves in your to-be-soft cheek, if you purchase now.



Your True Skin Layers
How your skin is really constructed. Two views from noted experts:













Note that in both of these views, the Elastic has been removed. That is because these model skins belong to size 0 women who have had their Accordion Layer sufficiently vacuum sealed, Not to Be Resuscitated. But fat is a cultural issue to be covered another time. Drs have been expert in rich cures for weight gain and loss, accordionly.


Getting back to skin. Unless you use mega mushroom stuff, never let anyone you want to be your lover get this close:


"[the nipple] was so varied with spots, pimples, and freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous … The fair skins of our English ladies . . . appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying glass; where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and coarse, and ill-coloured."
– Captain Lemuel Gulliver

A Salutary Lesson: We all need anti-aging miracles.

They only read fiction.


After only two applications of a clinically-proven miracle cream,
this mushroom looked like this:












Tho' use all miracles with moderation.

Wanted! The Baker's Dozen Gang

The gang lit out at cockcrow, making a bold but wisely led escape.

"Slow and steady" said their leader. "Just roll along."

Come breakfast-fixing-time back in town, the whoops rang out. "Where're they headed?" asked a visitor.

"Anywhers but here," an expert said.

The posse mounted while coffee boiled, and each man chugged a mug while sitting on his horse and burnt his throat on account of having to catch the gang before High Noon under the pitiless sun, which had a habit of being hot enough to wake the posse's lice in a bad mood, itchy from their own mites, and along with the lice's mites, ready to wolf breakfast. So there was no time to waste in catching the gang, especially as the posse, like everyone in town, had been mightily looking forward to the spectacule when each member of the gang would be broken, as broken as a wild horse.

Bent Jim, the tracker, led the posse, mumbling. Not only was he the expert tracker. He didn't have a horse. At first, he circled the town like a dog with a cold, but finally found what he called a track, and set out. For an hour, he did his famous almost-crawl, verbally lambasticating the gang with increasing creativity.

Then he smiled grimly, pushed his hands against the back of his waist to help him straighten, cracked a couple spine bones or something else, and ran down a hill, hotly followed by 7 jolting, yelling, hat-swinging, sweaty men on 7 tolerant horses, disorderdedly followed by the rest of the posse.

At the base of the hill, the men still had steam to blow off, so they danced those horses till the hills echoed from hooves clipping hardpacked ground, and neighs, and the dust rose to coat the grease on the 15 mustaches, 11 beards with mustaches, and innumerable faces whose dirt and hair were too long married to be separately distinguished.

By the time the dust settled, the posse was left with one hopping mad tracker. What Bent Jim said wasn't polite but the men were used to him. He subsided quickly however, and set off again because he had to because of that pitiless sun, which never stops getting higher or lower for nobody except Daylight Savings Time for whom it either speeds up or slows down, if it remembers which.

So for a while Bent Jim raced around as well as he could, being about as bent as Bent with a capital B gets, cussing better than he could race. By the time he took off in a straight line, he had a frantic glint to his eye, and as was told later by one of the posse (many times): "The words, wild goose chase, excaped old Jim."

But Bent Jim, being the expert that he was, loped along with an easy stride soon enough.

"We've almost got them," he called out at 10:03 AM (by his wristwatch).

At that, the Kid in the posse twirled his lasso, to the laughter of the other men, who spurred their horses in anticipation, earning a lot of enmity (or emnity, which is just as well, for it wasn't spoken).

"Get ready to round 'em up!" Bent Jim yelled at 10:56.

"Were are they?" asked Burtrand who couldn't spell any better than his mother.

"Just over that hill," answered Jim, "I reckon (at 11:48, give or take some punctuation)."

The posse squinted against the sun's glare, out over the open country, but try as they did, they couldn't see over the hill.

11:4856. Bent Jim ran ahead, mumbling and hissing over the baking ground, the posse following behind him, men kicking the flanks of 15 increasingly slow mares, 4 stallions who were preoccupied with their own plans, and a number of other horses who were in no mood to have us remind them of sexes.

"Come on!" he yelled. "Ya lousabouts. Move along now with me, and we'll catch the gang afore High Noon."

11:59 AM (by Bent Jim's watch, but by the sun's time, HN had taken place an hour and twelve minutes ago). Bent Jim reached the top of a long hill going down, and expelled a long, low whistle. The base of the hill was as hidden as a dead man's thoughts. Forest: cool, closed country that would be thickly carpeted with pine needles.

"They've licked me," he said, to himself.

When finally, the posse caught up to him, the horses surrounded him on their own account. He was kneeling about two feet down the long slope. The horses snorted, relieved, as the men slid off.

Bent Jim was peering at the ground, all right, but this time anyone could see what his expert eyes did.

Burtrand clucked his tongue.

"It's too late for this bastard," said the Kid, trying to be tough.

At the same time, down in the valley where the gang had holed up an hour and eight minutes ago, XL, the leader said: "Let this be a lesson to you fresh ones. We're always wanted. That we know, like we know we'd make lousy gun slingers. But geniuses we ain't. You can practice all you want. You ain't never gonna learn to gallop."

Meanwhiles back up the slope, objectionably next to Bent Jim, Burtrand burped something long past et. "My stomach's crying out," he whined. "Can I?" He reached down with some embarrassment, but only some–and a lot of fear. Not that he touched anything, yet.

"No!" yelled the Kid, his eyes wide. Men turned their backs on the sight and walked away.

"I get his horse," said one.

Bent Jim straightened up. "I don't rightly know. But you'll probably live if it hain't been on the ground for more than ten minutes."

Live free or fry

____________________________________

These were caught whilst they debated free will vs. determinism.
There is some debate over whether they were caught 'because' they were debating.
'Sadly', they are not available to add their weights to the discussion, 'sadly' having been quarantined in quotes because it has been objected to as so unscientific a term that the use of the word adumbrates the issues.

Soon to be waved away

Like the days of free bar lunches, without the salt

Meet Iain Rowan at infinities and beyond, where he not only tells about the new free sampler from infinity plus, but also leads you to another freebie, Rowan's unhealthkick-for-weak-hearts "One Step Closer" from Nowhere to Go, his crime collection that is definitely not lounging.

an aside
I hope that Rowan gets the breaks he needs, as there is so much drab and predictable crime fiction around—and I include Ian Rankin in that lot, whose characters make me think of empty cardboard boxes in the rain. I don't usually hiss at books I've read, leaving that to the experts; but I bought one of his bestsellers at an airport for a Sydney—Europe tortureflight, and partway through the book I found myself reaching for the airline magazine to break the boredom.

Back to earth again

where rain has brought forth fungal flames.

I don't want to bore you with travel pics or tales, so will just report that you might have been treated to the unauthorised, unexpurgated Secrets of the Astroidian *s if I hadn't been caught with my first draft of it as I was leaving. They don't want anything revealed, and as you might know, have recently had a hand in the decision to cut off those SETI eavesdroppers.

But what of me as an author on Asteroid * you ask? Yes, it was hard work holding out samples of fiction all day, for tastings. It's satisfying at times, especially when a customer asks for two measures of yours truly's artisan-created Scientist Fiction (a label that surprised me, but since I've written about scientists a lot, I'm not complaining. The labels also said "chewy", but scientists should not be alarmed, yet). And you might have laughed seeing the result of the equivalent of the Worshipful Society of Anarchists' reverse-shelving of the Healthy-and Junkreads. But it's good to be home again. An author's ego gets malnutrition on Asteroid *. Fiction consumers there are as interested in authors as earthling eaters are, in having chickens sign their eggs.

But looking at earth from beyond gods' heavens does excite the synapses.

Their different classifying of genres made me think of one genre that is overdue for recognition here: Chook Fiction. I don't know why there are so many wonderful stories that revolve around chickens, but there are.

Here are a magic 3 Chook Lit tales to get you started, and I invite you to tell about others:

"Count Poniatowski and the Beautiful Chicken" by Elizabeth Ziemska
"The Blood-Feud of Toad-Water" by Saki (H.H. Munro)
Love Among the Chickens by P.G. Wodehouse

But we mustn't forget Egg Lit.

Which brings us to Alisa Krasnostein and her fabulous Twelfth Planet Press, where great reads meet creativity cavorting with excellence of execution. I highly recommend TPP's

Doubles Series

• Roadkill/Siren Beat by Robert Shearman/Tansy Rayner Roberts
• The Company Articles of Edward Teach/Angaelien Apocalypse by Thoraiya Dyer/Matthew Chrulew
• Above/Below by Stephanie Campisi/Ben Peek

This is a book format that has had its times, but has never been popular. All the more covetousness for collectors. Abebooks' current example (if it hasn't been snapped up) is a book that would reek nonsense if it could get that interesting, yet is offered for an astronomical price, for it cuts quite a figure as an up-down-back-forth production, in musty leather. As with the Pope's advocacy of Latin, this book isn't meant to be actually understood or enjoyed, just appreciated. Read Dos-à-dos & Tête-bêche Bindings

All the better to buy a "Doubles" that is a great read whichever way you hold it. And what could be better than a whichcomesfirst Chicken/Egg Double? Not that I'm going to lay that egg.

Instead, here's an effusion of jelly fungus, one of many outbreaks of fungal fruitings that are popping out everywhere around here now.


And before I leave this post today, a few more recommendations.

Steve Aylett's newest must-read novel, Novahead, has just been released, at a must-buy price. I've listed it in my Irresistibles on my newly updated site here, where there are many other new recommendations, and some new great, brave and funny quotes. Spencer Pate caused a problem, though. I only quoted one ioteena of his uproarious thesis, but dearly wanted to cut this and that and slap it into my site. Do read his essay, unless you are a vewy sewious poet.

The call of the astroidians

They've got a yen, and will not be denied. This trip will be longer than my previous visits, because this time they've set aside a deli section for me to fill.

As usual when I leave for Asteroid * , I leave you with a glimpse of a treasure so great and full of mysteries, that worlds of study are mere bits of dust upon its surface.