STOP PHOTOGRAPHING SMUT

I have no idea who Geoffrey is, but he should definitely stop peeping.

You can't spell 'Apotheosis' without 'pot'

Here at the Riddled Institute of Forensic Literature and Postmodern Milking-shed Design, we have been looking at the vexed issue of the Uncanny and the Unheimlich in household appurtenances and appliances. It's a dirty job and no-one else wanted it.

We are particularly interested in the "pot" passage in Watt, where Sam Beckett invented a kind of Capgras Delusion for kitchen containers -- an Invasion of the Potty Snatchers, as it were --

Looking at a pot, for example, or thinking of a pot, at one of Mr. Knott's pots, of one of Mr. Knott's pots, it was in vain that Watt said, Pot, pot. Well, perhaps not quite in vain, but very nearly. For it was not a pot, the more he looked, the more he reflected, the more he felt sure of that, that it was not a pot at all. It resembled a pot, it was almost a pot, but it was not a pot of which one could say, Pot, pot, and be comforted. It was in vain that it answered, with unexceptionable adequacy, all the purposes, and performed all the offices, of a pot, it was not a pot. And it was just this hairbreadth departure from the nature of a true pot that so excruciated Watt.

I write "invented", but the evidence suggests that Beckett was inspired by a 1930 work by two English historians / philosophers. The Journal of Beckett Studies has declined to publish my paper on this trail of intellectual influence, not that I'm bitter or anything.

Anyway, the 1953 Watt Pot passage is brief, but we have advanced speculative-imaging technology available at the Riddled Institute. We used this to enhance the text, imputing missing details and reconstructing the actual pot whereof Beckett wrote. It turns out that the same pot came out of retirement, in 1976, to inspire Dick and Zelazny* with another pot-related passage of strangeness and alienation:



The 23-year periodicity of this sequence of appearances allows us to predict that a fourth tupperware text was published in 1999, though we are still pot-scouring the literature to find it. The fifth passage will appear in 2022, and will probably be an entire book in length, given the exponentially-expanding length of manifestations so far. Assuming that there are still books in 2022.

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Kids these days have it easy, with a vastly expanded armamentarium of household gadgetry -- with or without Internet-of-Shite -- to feel estranged and dissociated from. So here is a recent exercise in science fiction in which the narrator's thoughts wander down weird paths after she replaces her washing machine... thoughts centred on the alien, unheimlich nature of the replacement (until it re-familiarises itself behind a protective camouflage of domesticity).



But try telling kids what it used to be like, and they...

Is the story any good?

It is competently written, though derivative: Zoline's "Heat-Death of the Universe" filtered through the sensibility of Sheckley's "Can You Feel Anything when I do This?" What brings it to the attention of the Riddled Institute is the fact that through some glitch in the Matrix, it was published in an academic journal.

We hope that Riddled isn't turning into just another of those lazy let's-laugh-at-silly-academic-essays, Uncle Smut.

Not at all! And I would have got away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids! I am just relieved to find a suitable journal to publish my ground-breaking paper on post-modernism in the design of conceptual, non-utilitarian milking sheds.

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* With feline editorial commentary:

Work proceeded sporadically over several years as each author forgot about it in turn (and Zelazny's cat took the opportunity to urinate on the original manuscript). But they finished it quickly in the spring of 1975 when the publisher demanded the manuscript or repayment of the advance paid to Dick. The editor discovered Zelazny had sent photocopies of some pages and demanded the originals as per Doubleday's policy; much to Zelazny's chagrin, he had to send in the urine-stained pages and he always wondered what the editor made of them.

Commentary-Cat was only following a long feline tradition. See whole Twiddle-thread here.

Je vinaigrette rien

"Are you planning to blog about your regrettable pizza?" the Doktorling wanted to know. "All the hipster dads are posting food selfies of their pizza tragedies." So in response to popular demand:

My half (at left) is pumpkin, porcini and black pudden. The yellow-green hemispheres are Cape Gooseberries. Then a merciful veil of grated cheese was drawn over the proceedings.

Since "pineapple and tinned spaghetti" used to be the Doktorling's notion of BEST TOPPINGS EVAH, she is inclined to suspect the Pry Minster of stealing her recipe. Also, when the Pry Minster is on Pizza Duty, does he cut the ham slices into heart shapes with a cookie cutter? I think not. ADVANTAGE SMUT.

Kudos to the Italian Ambassador, who took the Pry Ministerial Pizza Provocation in good spirit and retaliated with a foteaux of a salami pavlova. Hungry now.

Right and below: Artist's impressions of further regrettable dining here at Maison d'Être.

Beer Label!

I won't give up the day job.

What the ack are you wearing now, monkey boy?

Mrs Spat is not impressed with my new t-shirt.

But it has an octopus on it!

Eat your branchial and systemic hearts out, P.Z. Myers.

Happy 21st Birthday, Doktorling Sonja!

This doesn't mean that we will let you drive the family car.

Even now the Frau Doktorin is festooning the house with balloons and glitter in preparation for your return from university.

Just don't feel obliged to shock us with a new piercing, or with a scanty costume like last time.

Just Kidding

"Oh" the New Zild tax department might say, "there is that Another Kiwi pulling himself up by his own, and others, bootstraps and getting paid income and such. Surely the free markets, MGBTN, have no finer example of rewarding the fecklessness of some people."
And it is true, paid income and such has been happening in frightening amounts of hours if not in terms of your actual money. One finds oneself in the forefront of the New Economy and having 3, yes, THREE, zero hours contracts! Unheard of amounts of coins are falling down the edges of the New Zild societal couch.
One must also make a strong recommendation for accepting any offers of Steamed Potato tasting work. A nice little earner and free steamed potato. I kid you not. Also milkshake lollies, for free, what a time to be alive!
In an attempt to spread the new found wealth of nations throughout the nation I sallied forth to a coffee kiosk which is cunningly situated right alongside the pathway from the carpark to the lecture theatres at the university where I am triply blessed.
 Noticing that there was no one else waiting there and with the same spirit of daring-do that inspired me to pull my straps up through my boots I vouchsafed to the kiosk inmate that I would like some coffee.
"Certainly, good sir" that unfortunate replied "and may I say that you have the scruffy old geezer look down good and proper"
"Why thank you" I answered "I have been tasting steamed potatoes"
"Ah hah" he said and stepped behind the safety shield provided to all who have to deal with uncaffeinated students.
Whilst he unlocked the bean safe and filled out the forms for the sugar dispensing unit my mind resumed it's usual flibbertigibbet motion around various projects that I am involved in now..
How had the 19 rabbits got into the -20C freezer during 2009? No one remembers putting them in there and the rabbits would not have been able to write "2009 Rabbits" on the side of the bag. And why did they all decide to hop in there? 2009 was not a great year but hardly bad enough for a mass rabbit "Bugger this, we are all going to freeze ourselves". Or was it? I confess to being somewhat out of the loop in Leporidae current affairs.
Maybe 2009 was a bad year for rabbits being one year after the Global Financial Crisis which may have impacted on the price of carrots.
Or was it some rabbit equivalent of Charles Manson "Look if we all hop in the bag and throw ourselves in the freezer, the pigs will all just go away". I just don't know. Maybe the unexplained Stoat at the other end of the freezer could tell us.
Also I was pleased to see plenty of Taq Polymerase in there and a "Cloning Kit"
Then my mind was sharply interrupted by a message on the Coffee kiosk radio. Apparently 50,000 Kiwis had gone missing in the last 10 years! I was surprised having heard nothing of the loss of a provincial centre amount of people. You would think someone would say something i.e. "Oh look Taupo has gone. That's unusual". And not such a bad thing, maybe some people, not me, would say.
But no, the Deep Voiced Radio Person assured me it was not an actual place but BEEBIES!
This, I thought, was really bad. People get quite attached to their children and marauding Vikings stealing them would lead to societal problems down the line.
Where would they keep them I wondered, in big camps?  Wouldn't someone say something.? Perhaps, and this is entirely possible, it is some new society thing I don't know about such as Pokemon Go.
 I know that Scandinavian countries have good child-care provisions but does that run to marauded babies?
Deep Voice Radio person then told me the whole story. IT WAS ABORTIONS!! Stealing away potential kiwis and causing irreparable damage to something or another. If I felt strongly enough about this I should send money to them because it is very expensive to have Deep Voiced Radio People telling me about the loss of potential kiwis.
I wanted to ask DVRP about how the extra 50,000 would fit in given that we don't have enough houses for those that didn't get stolen by marauding abortionists.
Is there an empty town somewhere in NZ with bitter town planners still waiting, waiting.
This is when I started to laugh, of course, since the grift is always amusing and in terms of effectiveness the action it takes is similar to farting at a hurricane. NZ has moved on a bit, in general while, of course, there are always some rubes to be fleeced.
I wondered how the radio for the kiosk is chosen, noting that the inmate had earphones on and was crouched over a laptop when I arrived and making disc spinning DJ motions with his hands. Certainly he did not say "Here's your coffee, how about those 50,000 potential children then?" "Buy them a potential coffee" I would have cheerfully replied.

Doodleberry Fairypoo Pumpkinpie Cupcake Detritus

He has not been the subject of any posts lately.

Other than that, he deems your homage to be acceptable.

Apparently kitty photographs make people go "Squeee"

He's a pedigreed aristocrat who can trace his ancestry to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule... she's a street-wise feral with no known parentage.Yet they found each other!

These were taken back in April-May 2009 when Doodle and Mrs Spat were first pinky-promising to be BFFs.

Terror Cotta

November 2009:

Ends badly (as it always does).

The die is cat

Mrs Spat's cunning disguise would perhaps have been more effective if more sides of the cube had been non-Cyclopean.

Antisocial media

Hey monkey boy! Those annoying Tonkinese kittens from the next street over have their own FB page for their friends to Like!

You're cats. You don't have friends, only resources.

It is not good enough. Lola the Aro Park cat has her own FB page! Even her own beer! Why are we not on Furbook?

Tell you what, I'll credit you as co-authors on a paper, and you can have your own ResearchGate archives.

As long as it's not Mendeley or Academia or we'll be very very... um very... ummmmm

Do not bore me with your problems, puny primate

 Mrs Spat models the camping stool.

The weasel-poo gourmet coffee-bean industry need not fear the feline competition

Do not eat the magic beans, people! Firstly, no-one wants magic farts. Second, they are likely to germinate internally and send their tendrils sprouting out through all available orifices as well as the sutures of your skull in the manner of an otherworldly orchid or a dream-apple seed.

Fortunately this did not happen to Mrs Spat when she brought us a bean or nut or something as an early $mas present, although it was firmly wedged in her duodenum, for she is not a fan of the time-wasting activity of chewing her food. The blockage resulted in a few days gone AWOL without eating or drinking, followed by a few more days of nil-by-mouth at the vet, and finally expensive surgery, and a bill running over two itemised pages.

Now I have the bean, which really should be a gold nugget for what it cost me, and Spat has a zipper of sutures along her midline and looks like a pyjama bag. STUPID CAT you are NOT A LABRADOR.

Shimmering neon lights

The consumer feedback from the new Riddled range of neon-themed bedroom furnishings has not been particularly encouraging. The unfocus group had nothing good to say about our conceptual circular pillow, while the test subject complained that the light kept him awake (despite our explanation that what he was feeling was not insomnia, but rather a melatonin rush).

Old Jem added that the lion had halitosis, before storming off to the pub with the stated intention of rendering himself insensible with whisky and cheap gin.

 This is hard to fathom, for Fritz Lang made the cylindrical neon mattress look so comfortable.

Not to mentin Dan Flavin's traditional planar mattress. If you can't trust Dan Flavin, who can you trust?

...Updated with 1955 neon furniture because reasons.

A posable thumb

Congratulations to Doktorling Sonja.

Harsh words would be said about "invasion of privacy" if I posted a recognisable photograph of her, so instead here's a picture of a cat with polydactyly.

Mrs Cat impressed by Autumn.

Mrs. Cat is impressed with the Autumn sunshine but feels that this does not make up for the continuous disappointment she feels on seeing her food bowl. Which is some sort of toxic waste dump, obviously.
Also she doesn't see why going up the hallway to eat the other cat's food is such a big deal since that cat did not want it's yumdelicious food. Also that bad cat is very stupid and bad.

Taking Leif off the census

"Oh" people might say " what has occurred in the life of Another Kiwi that he is too good to come around Riddled no more with amusing stories of cheese robberies and stringing beads under olive trees whilst drinking ouzo, backwards"
Well me buckos, it is the time of reckoning in these here shaky isles and what with losing a bet involving no trousers, a humourously shaped vegetable and a unicycle I have been distributing and collecting census forms. Yes, enabling the jackboot of government regulation to oppress the harmless and freedom-loving new Zilders who are in love with a Chucky doll Prime Minister and like being abused.
Many and amusing are the stories what I have to tell involving fecking dogs the size of fecking Alaska, reclusive old ladies who turn out to be not reclusive and ask one in for a cup of tea, people growing veges for Africa in their back yard and charming African people who were having sausages for tea.
And, of course, the neighbourhood haunted house.
A piece of NZ rurality plunked down in the middle of a middle-class suburb and now all dilapidated and falling down. It certainly looks haunted and some brave census-collectors knocked on the door and walked quickly away.
I also found a hidden paddock in the middle of surburbia, just a paddock with nothing there. Alien landing site or oddly shaped bit of land with tiny access ways? I report, you decide. 
An interesting thing is the amount of internets there are in New Zild, it's all over the place. The gubblement wanted 35% of forms to be done over the webz and it looks like it will be over 40%. some people think it is a bad thing and all these rays whizzing about in the air can't be good for us. In these cases the brave census collector backs away slowly and doesn't argue.
Similarly the brave census collector does not argue with old white guys telling him or her about how there will never be a white president in the US again. The blacks are apparently outbreeding the whites AS IS HAPPENING IN NEW ZILD!!!. Also we have given too much back to the Maori. This is why OWG lived in a eye-wateringly ugly but expensive house.
A note for those who wish to tell brave census collectors about US politics: Do not call your example of The Last White Presidential White Person, Milt.
Milt Romney isn't a real person.
As, I suspect, the OWG also isn't.
On the whole it has been a good if tiring experience and I am going to get Government cheese for doing it.
And there is more to come as I get into the very exciting phase of Organising The Documents. Ooooh!
Of course there is a reason beyond money, beyond the glory, beyond the status for doing the job.
I HAVE A CLIPBOARD OF MY OWN1!!!!1 With spiral binding and everything but no whistle onna string. Hah hah hah. It's mine, all mine, until I have to give it back.
All of this is happening in New Zild's worst drought since the last one and which is not connected to Global Warming or nothing. Your brave census collectors have been driven from the streets by HOT weather several times.
Luckily cold refreshing drinks have been available. 
 

Spicing up the relationship -- UR DOIN IT RONG

An Invercargill man died in hospital of head injuries a week after a woman hit him in the face with a pepper grinder, a High Court jury was told.

Police described it as "a case of aggravated assalt", and described the grinder-hurling as a performance "that should only be attempted by seasoned professionals".

Weaving the tangled skein

Evangeline van Holsterin -- head barmaid and champion Owl Breeder -- today repeated her emphatic denial that any performance-enhancing mechanical device was involved in her successful attempt on the world record for French Knitting. Anyone continuing to question the integrity of her unaided performance would be putting at risk the continuation of their bar-tab privileges. Her exact words were not recorded but they were vehemently expressed.

UPDATED with bonus Time Tunnels, to use up the colours seeping out of the threads. May include traces of left foot.