On Any Thursday

I'm blogging in a complete vacuum today ... life is a completely Event-free Zone, so this post will be an exercise in trivia: odds and ends, bits and pieces, that are floating around in the Mel-o-Sphere. Nothing earth shattering (which is a good thing, because there's too much depressing stuff happening lately), and possibly good for a laugh here and there.

An update on LORDS OF HARBENDANE might certainly be useful for folks who're getting themselves a Chrissie pressie -- or thinking of giving the book. The new release date is Thanksgiving, about a month later than previously planned. Still in plenty of time for Christmas shopping. The reason for the delay is that we're launching on Amazon, and it's s slower process than what we're accustomed to.

(Amazon uses ONLY CreateSpace as its POD printer; CreateSpace does NOT have digital printing partners around the world, so the proof copy has to be sent out here be USPS Priority ... cost: US$26 -- estimated delivery time, four WEEKS. Omigod, what is US Mails going to do with it for four weeks, for $26?! We'll be on Amazon for Christmas, guys: bear with us.)

We're enjoying mid-spring on this side of the globe, and the weather locally has been glorious. The downside is, it's not raining. It doesn't even rain when they forecast rain. We've had a tiny fraction of the rainfall we were supposed to get last winter, so we're going into summer with an existing water shortage. It's going to be another drought summer. Hmmm.

Now, the other noteworthy thing abut spring turning into summer is that the Cricket season is almost upon us. In fact, I think the first games are already being played somewhere. And the thing you notice most about the TV coverage of the cricket is --

Batting? No. Bowling? No. Punch-ups on the pitch? No. Century scores? No. Streakers? Sometimes. Moronic commentators? Alas, too often. But mostly --

The beer commercials. And occasionally they're actually not too bad:



And of course, beer is of vital importance to Australians, as witnessed by the following song from the late, great Slim Dusty ... which is frequently mistaken for our national anthem:



Good on ya, Slim. Nice one.

In other news ... well, there isn't much, if one doesn't want to ramble on about the state of the world today (and I don't, because it's way too depressing, and I've talked about it a dozen times in the last month. In fact, I have only one more political thing to do today. I want to give you this link:

http://palinaspresident.com/
Welcome to 2009's oval office ... give the Flash movie a little while to load ... (then roll over and click on EVERYTHING. Enjoy! We sure did).

... So, there not being any news, let's look at some surprises, not all of them altogether pleasant. Would somebody please tell me how this:


Turns into this:

I'm extremely curious to know, so that I CAN STOP IT HAPPENING TO ME.

Pardon me for shouting there. I feel a little better now. Maybe it's something to do with not eating white bread, getting more fiber?? Vitamins. That's it. Vitamins. I'm sure it has something to do with vitamins.

In other news, the fair state of South Australia is about to be hit by a kind of biblical plague. Seriously. Locusts. The little buggers are hatching right now down in the southeast ... and there is no upside to that. I wish I had some locust humor to share, but the closest I know would be something like this:



And my parting thought for today, before I go back to THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE:



I shall be more coherent tomorrow.

Ciao for now,
MK