I'm back -- with pickled cabbage!

I've been resting for a little while, but as the weather gets colder it's time to emerge from hibernation to continue the production of jam and to expand my repertoire into the domain of preserved vegetables. As with all good plans at world domination, sauerkraut is only a start -- as with bicycles and as a general rule also with accordions, there's little sense in restraining oneself to one variety of pickled cabbage when others are being produced as we speak in the very same city...
Results soon.

All creatures great and small

The human is unquestionably a dog person at heart, although good manners -- or is it simply laziness? -- prevents him actively from encouraging the chasing of cats. (His position on split infinitives is unorthodox to say the least, though we do find common ground on the spiny topic of gerunds -- medium-rare please.) But I digress.
I, on the other hand, am a far more reasonable creature -- I put up with humans, I enjoy the company (if not always the over-inquisitive molars) of distinguished hounds, and some of my best friends are fugitive porcine socialists. I can provide documentary evidence of my correspondence with fluffy cats:

While I'm all for inter-species cooperation, I can't help noticing who's doing most of the work in this picture, and who's simply sitting there looking smug. I certainly hope these three faithful hounds haven't been tricked into strikebreaking.

Nuit blanche I: Dancing at the Centquatre

On a more cheerful note from a slightly earlier era, long live the return of the bal populaire -- dancing 1940s style complete with braces, net veils and accordions! The place may have once been a morgue but it seems no less jolly for the experience, and to top it off there's a late-night bookshop selling postcards of old photos captioned with truly appalling puns -- who but the French could pour half their science budget into la fission de la tomme?

Of unexpected châteaux and the objects to be found on their doorsteps

When he wasn't excalming to all and sundry about how the country really was divided into three parts, the human's last Gallic expedition seemed to revolve largely around the search for a suitable château.

This time around, he seems to have found one -- conveniently linked to public transport, no less -- in the most unexpected of places. The châtelaine is expected.
The setting is most pleasant, the interior is most spacious and the furnishings most commodious. Administrative and financial bureaucrats of various stripes seem unexectedly eager to please. The bibliotheca quadriturricula subterraneana is closed for holidays, but there is a well-catalogued library of several thousand volumes on the premises. The natives who maintain it are more than friendly -- books are not the only object occasionally to be found on the doorstep when returning from an excursion by bisorbiculus liberalis:

I'm not complaining!

The Hosts! The Hosts!

My last batch of science-fictional friends had barely finished their cafeteria antics when news arrived of this most excellent show by the inimitable Wade. Good fun was had by all, and it's a fitting sendoff from a neighborhood that both the human and I -- in agreement for once -- are very sad to leave.

Robots in Ukranian peasant costume, you might say -- or a one-night stand between Daleks and Kulaks!

Dogfatherly advice

As you get older, Steve, it's always best to remember where you came from. Hopefully the following will help.

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Quote of the week

From a usually reliable source:

Can anyone recommend a game cookbook that doesn't make me feel like a class traitor for reading it?

Ineluctable progress in the domain of procrastinatory baguette making

I have no idea why the human wanted to make muffin-shaped rolls either.

Bossnapping!

As a member of Africa's most dangerous mammal species, and one of the most aggressive creatures in the world, I can only applaud these latest efforts at bringing the law of the jungle to the workplace.

It goes to show how industrial action can be improved with just a little imagination -- and really, holding bosses against their will really just seems a good way of evening the usual state of affairs.

Any thoughts on whether it was justified to bring them croissants for breakfast?

Not dead -- assisting the human with culinary and other enquiries

It's been a quietish summer on this front. Bar December's outbreak of fluvially-challenged equine spam (is this a particularly gelatinous form of foot and mouth disease?) and the human hogging the computer to wrestle with the problem of jokes that are no longer funny once you try to explain them, I've been doing not much other than observe the decline and fall of the cherry tomato empire, soon to be supplanted by the upstart snake beans.

I ventured into the kitchen this evening to find the human engaged in trying to fit the remains of a packed of pasta into a jar that had held what is euphemistically named "Cranberry drink," and couldn't help climbing up to investigate.

The human, meanwhile, wouldn't stop muttering that his experiment had finally proved wrong the angry socialist flatmate from a half-remembered John Birmingham novel, who claimed that the manufacture of pasta to be two centimetres too long to store in an empty juice jar went to show the lengths capitalism will go to to conspire against universal happiness. He may have been right about capitalism, it seems, but I can't find the reference -- googling "felafel socialist empty juice pasta jar" produces some strange results!

Zucchini flowers in west-nor'-west Redfern, la suite

Cucumber vines are being oppressed as I type, but will learn to strive valiantly upwards on the stakes I must get around to putting in!

Identity fraud strikes! Hugo the Hippo has a 1970s Hungarian doppelgänger!

I'm not sure what to make of the discovery that there's another Hugo the Hippo out there -- quite how he managed to assume my identity a decade before I came into existence I'll never know, but he seems harmless enough. The plot, as far as I can work out, gets resolved by the Sultan of Zanzibar ordering that Hugo be looked after for the rest of his days; I'm taking this as before-the-event social realist codespeak for my brilliant idea about finding a châtelaine to keep me!

The only sensible explanation I can find is offered by one of the more enlightened Encyclopaedists, wondering whether his best novel was really

copied from the life of Tristram Shandy, unless the dealings of Jacques the Fatalist and his master happened to precede this work, and that Parson Sterne is the plagiarist, which I don’t really believe as I have a particular esteem for Monsieur Sterne who I distinguish from most of the writers of his nation, who make a habit of stealing from and insulting us.

Producers of Hungarian anime, on the other hand, should perhaps best stick to voodoo dolls!

This is an ex-Parrot...

Shades of Steinbeck

If anyone's asking, I'm happy to be played by Henry Fonda

Fidel in historic visit to America!

Reports of his demise seem to have been greatly exaggerated...

If there's still hope for Ingrid Betancourt...

VIVA FIDEL!

Nihil sub sole novum

With apologies to Baroness Emma Orczy

They seek him here, They seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in Brisbane?
—Is he in hell?
That dammed damnèd, elusive Pig Fidel!

Workers of the World Unite!

(Or from Red Square hopefully not to Green Square)

Fraternal May Day greetings, O human subalterns.

Someone needs to work I suppose, but quite frankly I'm quite happy to live off your toils and spout rhetoric from my armchair. Though the armchair situation is getting dire: I'm doing my best to found a viable microstate and establish diplomatic relations with like-minded life forms, the worthless human still hasn't managed to find a corner of Sydney real estate to occupy. Sigh. Who says capitalism works?

On that note, may I once again enquire as to the whereabouts of Fidel the Pig?

That will be all for today, comrades.

Surréalistes de tous les pays, unissez-vous !

(Think about this as a post-cold-war riposte to Ionesco's La Cantatrice chauve...)