This morning I was working on a tricky part of The Floating World (please like it, Preston, please!). Feeling feeble and dizzy as I tried to marshal lazy, knockabout thoughts into some semblance of order, I had to slack off frequently to recharge the old mental batteries.

This is what I did when I was slacking:

Pictures created with SP Studio (http://www.sp-studio.de/), by Janina Köppel.  Such fun…

Now I have to write a 500-word not-a-bio for Baggage, which has to sound intelligent but unpretentious. Or I could go play with plasticine…

Continuing the morbid themes…

Seen recently in the local newspaper, a 3-hour craft workshop: Make and Decorate Your Own Coffin.

With only three hours to complete the coffin, it would have to be a plywood job. Of course, for the decoratively inclined, plywood is a good option — pale and easy to draw on.

I daydreamed about how I would decorate mine. Maybe figures from the Commedia dell’Arte, to portray the idea that all the world’s a stage, and because it would be an excuse to indulge my fetish for masked characters; or porn, to amuse, mystify, scandalise or bore future archaeologists; or decoupage photos of some bodacious siren, so that people will think that was me; or a whole lot of sudoku squares, to give me something to do in the afterlife.

So, how would you decorate yours?

Via Mum –

A friend of hers rang up the telephone company to cancel the mobile phone subscription of her recently deceased father. “My father died recently,” she said, “and I’d like to cancel his phone.”

“I’m sorry,” said the customer service representative at the other end, “but we’ll have to speak to him in person.”

“Did you hear what I said?” asked the friend. “He’s dead. This is his PIN number…”

“I’m afraid we have to speak to him in person…”

No, really.

The latest report is that she hit one of the staff and escaped again, using her Jedi superpowers. Assuming cosmic proportions, she went on a stomping rampage through Melbourne, mistaking it for Tokyo (she wasn’t wearing her glasses), tearing up skyscrapers and shooting lasers out of her eyes. Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, seeing (though a periscope in his bunker) my aunt’s potential as a weapon with which he might realise his dream of destroying Adelaide, deployed a crack unit of parking inspectors to capture her. Pulling the dome off Flinders Street Station and the spire off the Arts Centre, she made a mortar and pestle with which she ground the parking inspectors into a hearty (and livery, and bony) soup. Then she wandered west and destroyed Adelaide* anyway.

Mum is none too pleased and has hired an outside carer with ninja superpowers to keep an eye on my aunt. However, in fights between Jedi and ninja, the Jedi usually wins.

*Speaking of Adelaide, South Australia has passed a new law allowing the cloning of human embryos for research, and the mixing of human and animal genetic material. No longer will Adelaide be known as the City of Churches, but as the City of Flying Dog-Men. And you can grow your own dope there. For Baphomet’s sake, does that sound like the kind of place that should be shut down…?