Au-Av
Hear the story of Peregrine Took,
As (with Merry), by hook or by crook,
He unites with the Ents
To defeat foul intents,
In The Two Towers audiobook!
Out now on CD in The Complete Lord of the Rings, volume LXVII.
Put a stereo in your Corvette,
Either 8-track or audiocassette,
So that every day, you
Can rock out to The Who:
You better, you better, you bet!
“You Better You Bet” is the best song from one of the less better Who albums, Face Dances.
Auf Wiedersehen, liebchen; farewell!
I’m off to the front for a spell.
If my mother should call,
Say I’m having a ball;
If the Kaiser should call, give him hell.
“Auf Wiedersehen, liebchen; farewell,”
She heard her departing beau yell.
How could he say that—
The despicable rat!
They had sechs crates of bratwurst to sell!
Saint Augustine found it quite odd,
How the spirit would fight with the bod:
So he wrote his Confessions
To purge his obsessions,
And then wrote The City of God.
So you reckon you’re really an Aussie?
Well tell me, True Blue, what’s a cossie?
Doncha come the raw prawn!
Whenya think I was born?
Next you’ll tell me yer budgie’s a mozzie!
True blue: patriotic (here, a nickname for a patriot). Cossie: swimming costume (NSW). Don’t come the raw prawn: don’t try to fool me. Budgie: budgerigar, small parrot kept as a pet. Mozzie: mosquito.
A popular pastime of Aussies
Is splashing about in their cossies
At beaches and pools.
Improvident fools!
Bare skin is a magnet for mozzies.
“Tell us, mate, what would typify Aussieness?”
“Well... wearin’-an-extra-tight-cossie-ness.
Enjoyin’ the sunniness.
Findin’-things-funny-ness.
Scratchin’-a-bite-from-a-mozzie-ness.”
Australia is where I was born:
A land full of paddocks and lawn;
Where sheep roam the plains—
Which maybe explains
Why the grasses are constantly shorn.
These pieces use the 3-syllable pronunciation of uh-STRALE-yuh.
Australians all, let us rejoice!
We’re unusual, bonzer, and noice.
We’re young and we’re free,
And our home’s girt by sea.
(She’s a mate of me great-auntie Joyce.)
Australia’s national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair,” starts “Australians all, let us rejoice/For we are young and free/We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil/Our home is girt by sea”—which prompts wags everywhere to ask “Who’s Gert?”
When next at a local election,
Just watch how they stop the detection
Of names on each vote
(Or each ballot); then note
That Australia devised this protection.
Victoria and South Australia were the first representative democracies to introduce the secret ballot (in 1856), which came to be known as the Australian ballot.
This collection of kangaroo collars
Cost A$80
And 99c,
But in my defence,
That’s a steal for marsupial scholars.
What, you thought I meant dog collars made of kangaroo leather? Researchers use these to tie up roos for closer examination, obviously. (The A$, or AUD, is the Australian dollar—so here, eighty Australian dollars and ninety-nine cents.)
When they lose an election, or theft
Of their office occurs, we’re bereft.
They care for each neighbour:
Australian Labor
MPs are our reps of the left.
The Australian Labor Party, Labor, or the ALP, is the oldest political party in Australia, its colonial origins in the 1890s predating the Commonwealth itself. As the main centre-left party in the country, it has alternated government with parties of the right, primarily the Liberal-National Coalition. Labor governed federally for most of both World Wars; the longest-serving of its 13 prime ministers was Bob Hawke, from 1983–91, although many Labor state premiers have governed for longer.
In 1975, the reformist Labor government of Gough Whitlam was sacked by the Governor-General after opposition senators blocked supply (the bills needed to finance government spending) in an attempt to force it to a third election in as many years. The government, as in other Westminster systems, drew its support from the lower house (the House of Representatives, or Reps), so this obstruction by the upper house and the intervention of the Queen’s unelected representative were seen as a constitutional crime by many Labor supporters.
The spelling of Labor, reflecting US rather than Australian English, was only standardised across all party branches in 1918. One authority argues that it had “more to do with the chap who ended up being in charge of printing the federal conference report than any other reason”.
The noble Australian pound
Was the currency formerly found
In the land of my birth.
Just two bucks, it was worth.
You can still find its coins on the ground.
If you’re lucky, and eagle-eyed. I found an old George V penny in my family’s garden once, and post-1938 kangaroo pennies from time to time. They were all swept away—Australian halfpennies, pennies, threepences, sixpences, shillings, florins, crowns and pounds—by decimalisation in February 1966.
My uncle would often aver
That Munda’s the same as Mon-Khmer.
But up in the attic,
His Austroasiatic
Thesaurus declined to concur.
They are, in fact, distinct subfamilies of the Austroasiatic language family.
An authoring tool lets you write
Electronically, all through the night,
Many reams of fine prose
For the screen, which then glows
With your words, be they ever so trite.
Each shot can have more than one setting
On the camera this gun nut is getting:
“I adore autobracketing!
Just one frame’s strait-jacketing.
I’ll be shooting like crazy, I’m betting.”
Postmodernist sex lives are free
Of most modern-day hang-ups: you see,
Their Foucauldian twists
Make the most of the wrists
(He’s the autoerotic emcee).
The work of French theorist Michel Foucault (1926–84) includes multiple orgasmic volumes of The History of Sexuality.
That aircraft that did the last drop, a
Half-plane kinda thing, and half-chopper?
Write this with yer biro:
The cartel’s autogiro.
That’s as much as I’m telling ya, copper.
When an aeroplane autolands, pilots
Aren’t flying, the system is. While it’s
Some passengers’ fear
That they’ll crash, it’s quite clear
It’s all roses—hold off on the violets.
In flower arrangements at funerals, violets symbolize that someone has gone too soon.
“Our automated limerick-writing
Machine saves you time”—how inviting!
Let’s see... just press play...
And it’s off and away!
Shame the punchlines are so unexciting.
Acrobatic: high places she climbs.
Mathematic: he’s looking for primes.
I’m ecstatic: in love.
In the attic: above.
Automatic, this writing of rhymes.
What in olden days folk did by hand
Is in modern times done rather grand.
Our industrial scenes
Are now full of machines:
Automation reigns over the land.
Toot TOOT! Hullo, now! What’s the deal?
It’s a car with a frog at the wheel!
I say! Tally-ho!
What a jolly good show—
Mister Toad in his automobile!
It’s maybe my favourite season,
Is autumn: quite rainy and breezin’,
But still fairly warm;
And the change in the form
And the colour of leaves is most pleasin’.
This virtual world is the worst!
My avatar looks like he’s cursed.
The rendering’s shoddy—
His head has no body!
A second life? Oh, for a first.
My avatar girlfriend once reckoned
That life goes much faster in second.
I know how I feel—
Her body’s unreal!
Our virtual bedroom has beckoned.
Some Roman centurions have
Found a time machine! Watch, as they nav-
igate here to our year,
And in New York appear,
Hailing, “Ave, O Madison Ave.!”
The Roman greeting is pronounced AH-vay.
My therapist thought he could make
All my bad habits go. Big mistake!
I still smoke and drink,
And I swear without think...
Stop hitting me, dammit! You snake!
Aversion therapy.
Avgolemono: first, take some stock,
Add some rice (and then simmer, to lock
In the taste), lemon juice,
And an egg, to produce
The most common Greek soup on the block.
Boil a litre/quart of chicken stock; add 1/4 cup of white rice and simmer until tender. Beat an egg or a yolk, and continue beating while gradually adding the juice of a lemon. Slowly add some hot broth to the egg mixture, still beating; then stir the mixture into the broth, heating slowly until it thickens. Season. Serves 2-3.
If a boy makes no pass at a girl
Who wears glasses, then what would unfurl
If she happened to try
Those you wear when you fly?
I don’t know, but let’s give it a whirl!
Aviator glasses.
Just a few little things to avoid:
An elephant, when it’s annoyed;
Any thug who shouts “Oi!”
Or a horse made in Troy;
The last album or two by Pink Floyd.