explodes if you poke it

In the Department of Saturday Morning Hee (and possibly also the Department of Rude Puns Only Stv Will Appreciate), more David Byrne. Or, more accurately, the Brighton Port Authority, which is apparently a collaboration between David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. (David Byrne seems to be a recurring theme in my posts lately. Memo to self, actually acquire some Talking Heads). The video for "Toe Jam" is full of naked people whose naughty bits have been creatively covered with censor blocks in amusing patterns. Despite this it's curiously innocent and rather sweet, one of those things that's simply happy-making to watch. (Gacked from the Very Short List, who have an amazing ability to dig up random cool stuff).

In other news, the Evil Landlord acquired a new computer and is playing computer games incessantly. This is just in time to avoid having his head ripped off as I stagger home from yet another day made psychotically annoying by what seems to be post-menstrual tension to find him cluttering up the living room so I can't watch X-Files. I should have realised these irritation levels were hormonal, since there is really no other way I can justify being horribly miffed at the presence of my housemate in his own house, one we have shared for eleven years without me manifesting any desire to kill him other than occasionally, for justified reasons like the washing up.

His mad computer gaming has, unfortunately, also vouchsafed me a revelation, namely that I really, really want to play Shadow Magic again. I am therefore casting this forth onto the waters, or witterers: if any of you geeky gaming types have, or know anyone who has, an unwanted copy of either Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne or Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, I am willing to pay Good Monies for same. They are not available new, and bloody expensive on Amazon Marketplace, so I'm hoping there's a lurking Saffrican somewhere who can make good the deficiency. (Alternatively, if anyone hangs around second-hand games joints and happens to see a copy, please let me know!)

Today's September Retro Kiddielit entry is another nod to my semi-professional obsession with self-conscious fairy tale. E. Nesbit's best-known works are her Edwardian children's novels, among them The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Railway Children, but she also writes amazingly witty and entertaining fairy tales. I grew up with two collections, The Last of the Dragons and Some Others (most of the stories in which you can find here) and the E. Nesbit Book of Fairy Stories. Any of you witterers who happen to have sat through one of my fairy-tale or Victorian seminars will probably be familiar with some of these stories; Nesbit's most notable tendency, apart from her self-conscious deconstruction of fairy tale structures and expectation, is her happy mixing of traditional structures with up-to-date elements. She has a passion for Edwardian cutting-edge technology, so her stories feature "magical" elements such as the lift in "The Charmed Life" (the Prince disguises himself as a lift attendant), Billy the King's dragon-slaying Lee-Metford rifle, and the diving bell in "Belinda and Bellamant". She's also very good at playing games with christening curses, enchantments and logic. My favourite story is possibly "Melisande, or, Long and Short Division", about a hapless princess cursed with baldness, who tries to rescue it by wishing she had golden hair a yard long which grew an inch every day and twice as fast every time it was cut. In the immortal words of the poet, you do the maths.

Last Night I Dreamed: preparing a braai for my sister and unspecified guests at my grandmother's house in Harare, I threw three old ginger stalks into the garden, where they promptly went feral and burrowed into the earth. They then almost instantly filled the garden bed with long, thin, wriggling stalks of ginger which we couldn't uproot. Surprisingly Cthulhoid, actually.