deny the legitimacy of difference, Murray!

I’m reliably informed by the one careful owner of a three-year-old daughter that a well-known brightly-shirted children's entertainment group has done a cover of the tune “Old Dan Tucker” on their latest release. The three-year-old cites it as ‘her favourite song’, which is saying something, because that one about fruit salad is surely hard to top.

Wikipedia tells us:

‘Old Dan Tucker entered American folklore soon after it was written. Its simple and malleable nature means that singers may begin or end it at any point or invent new verses on the spot. In fact, hundreds of folk verses have been recorded. These folk versions can be quite ribald. This one, recalled by a man from his boyhood in Benton County, Arkansas, in the 1910s, is one example:

'Old Dan Tucker was a fine old soul,
Buckskin belly and a rubber ass-hole,
Swallowed a barrel of cider down
And then he shit all over town.'

Tucker is an animalistic character, driven by sex, violence, and strong drink. He is ugly, unrefined, and unintelligent, even infantilized. As a stranger in town, his devil-may-care actions show his problems with or ambivalence to adapting to local mores. More broadly, Tucker's disdain for social norms allows the song to send up respectable middle class American society…’

It's unconfirmed, but rumour has it the group's next album will be a Kevin Bloody Wilson cover.

Aw, now. As we all quite well know, KBW is about "the denial of the legitimacy of difference" and "the politics of identity...in the context of the current 'culture wars' debate". Constructing the politics of identity; it's what all the college kids are calling it these days.

I wonder what Old Dan Tucker would have to say about that?

lunch with the literati

The Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts, held in British Columbia last week, has a quite brilliant comedy twist (I mean, other than calling itself the Sunshine Coast Festival when it’s in B.C. Good one). On the last night of the festival, the authors and other bigwigs gather aprons, teatowels and implements of destruction and serve up a salmon barbecue to attendees. There are photos as proof, and everyone looks remarkably jolly, given they’re being reminded of effectively what they might well be doing as a job if the whole writing thing hadn’t worked out. Is this a scheme to take writerly egos down a peg, d’you think?

Either way, this scene must forthwith be replicated at literary festivals and conferences and awards shindigs the world over. Could the Booker nominees be persuaded to come up with a casserole for the judges? What about the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Potluck? The Montana Awards Strawberry Tea Social? Pasta Night at the Sydney Writers’ Festival!

The culinary expectations would focus the authors’ minds far more than the usual acceptance speeches, Q & As and panel discussions. Going home after a successful keynote address knowing they’ve got to knock up a batch of raisin buns for tomorrow’s coffee morning, and that someone can be relied upon to comment “I don’t care if she did win the Governor-General’s Award, her pastry’s like lead,” would radically up the performance anxiety.

Husband-and-wife team Yann Martel and Alice Kuipers could co-ordinate the teacups. Stephenie Meyer, who got such a rough deal recently from teenagers the world over for not writing the book they expected, might be happy spearing cheese and pineapple cubes on cocktail sticks. I hear Nick Earls does a good line in pesto. And the sandwich production line could have Lloyd Jones digging into the economy-sized pail of mayonnaise and Salman Rushdie cutting off crusts.

Who’d you have in your literary lunch lineup?

fair go, though

There may never be a time when there is too much Tim Winton in the world, and we can keep track of the latest here with the handy Tim Winton Watch fe-yature. In general, we do seem to be all a bit surprised that Breath didn’t get on the Booker list; I suspect it’s because it fails in the 'ah, but could you use it as a doorstop, or stand on it to reach very high things?' category.

Anyway the reviewer in the NZ Herald appeared to concur on overall brilliance etc etc, but she still couldn't resist a stab at the ‘heavy-handed Australianisms’.

All those bloody Aussies going about talking like Australians all the time and doing Australian things. In Australia. Flat out like lizards drinking. With pocketfuls of Anzac biscuits smeared in Vegemite. Heavy-handedly. Tch indeed.

worst week of the week award

When you look back and take stock of the last five working days, and it turns out that the most successful part of it was when you accidentally performed minor hand surgery on yourself with a box cutter, well, then you know it’s been a winner of a week.

merry-making

There's been a distinct lack of merriment about the place lately, and although I haven't really had the time to find sources to add merriment, it has been my duty to eliminate some of the causes of the lack of it.

On the right, a swift (the big umbrella thing that, in a Harry Potter-style moving photo, would be spinning madly). To the left, a ball-winder. The whole setup is engineered to enable you to wind skeins of yarn into balls of yarn without getting it all tangled up until you collapse in a sobbing heap. It's the ultimate anti-stress device.

Wrapped around the swift? It's the green blanket. Here's what it looks like now:

Ready and waiting to be turned into something that doesn't have me donning the shroud of woe and despair every time I pick up the needles. I love this about knitting. Almost never is there a point where it can't be undone and made better. Suddenly, a piece of misery becomes a heap of potential. Let the merriment be forthcoming.