Chris Ware is one of my favourite artists/writers. This short ani­mated video, based on Chris Ware’s book Quimby the Mouse was put together by Ware, multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird and ani­ma­tor John Kuramoto. It’s an absoulte gem. Enjoy!

Quimby The Mouse from This Amer­i­can Life on Vimeo.

Dur­ing the week my house­mates and I found an old skull hang­ing on the fence in our back­yard. We had never seen it before in our lives. Well, OK, one of us had. The rest of us just hadn’t looked very hard before.

Rather than be spooked by the skull on the fence I have decided to embrace the skull into my life. Thus, I am propos­ing that we make Mon­day week — August 10 — National Take a Skull to Work or School Day.

I hereby call on all those who have skulls lying around (other than the ones encased inside your heads) to take them to work or school with you on August 10.

It doesn’t even have to be a real skull. Any skull will do. It may sound a lit­tle creepy but as long as you don’t take a real human skull (because a mur­der charge may ensue) it’ll be fun! Just like when some­one brings a pet or a baby to show off at school or work.

I for one will be tak­ing the skull from our back fence along with me to work to cel­e­brate National Take a Skull to Work or School Day. So, who’s with me?

I am a Tintin freak. It is true. And so I wanted to share one of the coolest lit­tle Tintin videos I have seen. This short video clip is taken from a Swiss doc­u­men­tary made in 1960 about Tintin and his cre­ator Hergé (though I’ve never heard of this par­tic­u­lar doco before; how­ever the 2003 doco Tintin et moi is most excel­lent). Watch Tintin in (pen­cil) action!

Today I spent a lovely morn­ing down at Alph­ing­ton Pri­mary School in Melbourne’s inner-north talk­ing to the Grade Threes and Fours about my book, blog­ging and writ­ing in general.

They were a fun bunch and at the end of the morn­ing we all wrote a lit­tle story together. One stu­dent — Tom — did a draw­ing of the hero of our tale and another stu­dent — Annabel — tran­scribed as the rest of us made the story up on the spot. Thanks to all the kids who con­tributed to the story (which was mostly every­one!) Here it is.

BARNEY THE GUITAR-PLAYING CROCODILE
by the Grade 3/4s at Alph­ing­ton Pri­mary School

Once upon a time there was a guitar-playing Croc­o­dile who got fired from a band. He had no job now so he had to play on the streets. One day a Mole came along and offered him a job in his band.

The End.

Nice one, Alph­ing­ton Primary!

If you haven’t seen it over at www.thegreatestbloggerintheworld.com there is cur­rently a Great­est Blog­ger in the World com­pe­ti­tion going to write a small blog post and go into the run­ning to win one of two Apple Mac­Books. Pretty cool, huh?

To enter all you have to do is write a blog post that con­tains these words from the book:

Ille­gal red cor­dial
Unshorm merino
Bar­code
Duck on a leash
Tuxedo
The Boots
Card­board
FAP
Dr Mary­loaf
School par-tay
Lola Cat
Granny flat
Trunk Food Company

I wish I could enter the com­pe­ti­tion but since I’m judg­ing it I can’t. But I’ve still had a go at mak­ing a blog post of my own out of all the above words. This is what I came up with:

THE CAT AND THE CORDIAL by Andrew McDonald

One day instead of going to school I went see Dr FAP with my Grandma because my foot felt weird like card­board. I took the boots on my feet off and the doc­tor feel back in shock and knocked my Granny flat! We were amazed to see there was a cat liv­ing on my foot. Who knows how long it had been there.  It was hold­ing on with its claws and seemed to be hav­ing a good old par-tay down there.

The doc­tor picked up his phone and called for Nurse Lola to come in. But Nurse Lola was attend­ing to an opera singer in a tuxedo who had shoved an entire bot­tle of red cor­dial down his throat dur­ing reherasals for a new opera called I Shoved an Entire Bot­tle of Red Cor­dial Down My Throat. So instead Nurse Mary came in to help us.

She reached for a pair of clip­pers and told us the only solu­tion was to shave the cat. She said it was as wooly as a merino and could not go on unshorn. In fact to leave it unshorn would be ille­gal. After the cat was shaved we had to duck as it jumped up and tried to escape. But Dr FAP put it on a leash and sud­denly we had a new pet. To cel­e­brate Nurse Mary brought out a loaf of sugar bread. Even Nurse Lola and the opera singer (cor­dial bot­tle now removed) came and joined us for the com­pany and the food.

Just before we left Dr FAP stuck a bar­code to our new cat’s head. He told us this was in case she got lost, we could always scan her to make sure she really was our cat.

Back at school the next day nobody believed my story. They all said they believe that it was pos­si­ble to shove an entire bot­tle of red cor­dial down your throat. Oh well.

THE END

To enter the blog­ging com­pe­ti­tion your­self visit www.thegreatestbloggerintheworld.com.