TheBanyanTree: Past the one month mark

[tobie at shpilchas.net]

Oh thanks a lot, Peter.

	I clicked on your links, both of them, to Brochan Lom.  Now I’ve got an insistent ear worm that will not go away.  I’ve tried substituting the first movement of the Brahms viola quintet #1 (the one with the sumptuous cello solo at the beginning) but that didn’t work.  I even tried substituting something more prosaic: Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla sooit …………….    Didn’t help.  I stop at substituting something just as nagging, you know, advertising jingles  ——— no. I just can’t.

	I’m not even Scottish. Someone is having his terrible revenge.
		
	Yiiiiiiiiiii!  MY EARS! MY EARS!

	Well, it did replace Daffy Duck’s hideous wooohooo hooo hoot hoot hahahahahahahaha. Meyshe was listening to a compilation of Daffy Duck’s daffy laugh, and it had attacked my brain, so now it’s Brochan Lom.  Reminds me of that Mark Twain story. But I can’t remember the title. I guess that will keep me busy while I’m batting away Brochan Lom.  


Tobie



> On Apr 21, 2020, at 10:50 PM, peter macinnis <petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> 
> Today being Earth Day, V. I. Lenin's birthday and mine, I have had a visit (at a social distance) from my twin granddaughters and videocalls with the New Zealand grandkids.  We are now all allowed out under controlled conditions as things begin to get more hopeful here in Oz and NZ.
> 
> BTW, don't feel bad about missing my birthday if you did: (a), it probably isn't my birthday where you are yet; and (b), I typically lie about the actual date, so you would probably see it as the 25th.
> 
> Each morning, Chris and I walk in the sanctuary where I work (we workers aren't allowed in there right now) where visitors are allowed, so long as they avoid each other, and today was no different. I and my colleagues have been prowling and plotting, and sharing schemes and plans, ready to get into action as soon as the whistle blows.
> 
> Despite having world-class idiots of Boris and Donald stature as our state and federal leaders, the medical people have kept the loose lips buttoned, zipped, stapled and glued, which is why we are now able to be getting hopeful.
> 
> Fully 10% of Australia's Covid-19 cases stem from the authorities letting a single plague ship's passengers off without checking. Without that ship, we'd be far better off, and I have staked my reputation as a fraud-finder that the cause was a bribe that will, if and only if my advice is followed, be uncovered.
> 
> Still, we are playing safe. I had to jump through hoops to get to see an audiologist yesterday, to be told that my left ear retains ornamental qualities, and just one functional quality: it keeps my glasses from falling off.
> 
> I can no longer listen to opera or orchestral music at preferred levels, but I'm holding it all together, even though I am now officially deaf. (That said, I an using a massage tool that has greatly improved things: the problem is fluid build-up in the middle ear, and this is shaking the fluid about and out.)
> 
> This past month has seen two e-books go into circulation with Amazon Kindle, and a dead-tree book has gone onto the shelves in good bookshops: 'Survivor Kids' is about how to cope in the wilderness.
> 
> That was supposed to be the point where I hung up my pen, but I found two relics on the back-burner to play with.  I watched the re-make of 'Whisky Galore' last night, and I had used the islands of Big Todday (Todday Mhor) and Little Todday (Todday Beag) for my fictional Ugly Islands, written as the background to a statewide science examination.
> 
> A miserable intellectual twigmy with the creative talents of a dead sheep tried to claim copyright in the whole work when a friend sought leave to use it, so I put it on the web, declared it open and challenged the dead sheep to sue me.
> 
> Anyhow, I later started writing stories a bit like 'Tales of the South Pacific' located in the Ugly Islands before setting it aside.  Now, having seen the movie, I am playing with it again, Sam, though the new movie only has Todday, and failed to set up the second-best joke of the whole movie, when a village idiot, holding up the lawmen, suddenly declares that "whisky" is the password for no good reason.
> 
> After that, there was a book on beach-combing that might be fun to research, if not to write...
> 
> Meanwhile, I got on the 'Whisky Galore' thing because in the 1949 original, there was a children's nonsense song 'Brochan Lom' used as mouth music in the movie, and I was thinking of teaching that to my granddaughters (they have Scots inheritance on both sides), but if you listen to it <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f0zm9DfVw0> or <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjim2wN9pqo>, it makes a fine marching song, and as Chris and I sought the remaining flannel flowers of autumn, these words came to me:
> 
> Flannel flower, flannel flower, gentle never tough,
> Flannel flower, flannel flower, soft and never rough,
> Flannel flower, flannel flower, you will be enough,
> Home to beetles, butterflies and other lovely stuff.
> 
> I'm working on a few other verses...
> 
> Now about Lenin's birthday: in 1970, I was a "quiz star", which entailed strangers accosting me in the street and saying "You're Peter from Pick-a-box, you must be very intelligent". I always thanked them but wanted to say "Look, I may be intelligent, but that's beside the point: I have a ratbag mind, and that's how I do it..."
> 
> Anyhow, in one show, there was a warm-up "Who am I" question, and when Bob Dyer read out the first clue "I was born on 22 April 1870..." I hit the buzzer. He was counting on filling two minutes with this, which was lucky, because as he said "Peter, I don't believe it!" the name went out of my mind, but I can talk under wet cement, so I stalled. I explained that I was also 22 April, and had read something about the centenary in 'New Scientist', so I knew that the leader of the Russian revolution was born that day, he was pattern-bald, had a small beard, and that was when the name came back. "Some call him Ulyanov," I said "but we mainly call him Lenin or V.I. Lenin."
> 
> peter
> whose sig file celebrates his new auditory status
> 
> -- 
> Peter Macinnis,
> Stand-up chameleon,
> 
> 
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"Seek and Ye shall find."     Old proverb

"The truth shall set you free."    Old proverb

"What you don't know can't hurt you."    Old proverb

"Ignorance is bliss."  Old proverb



Tobie Shapiro
mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>