Win­ter is cer­tainly a time when beards are at their most sported. Every sec­ond or third man seems to wear a beard at some point of winter.

After a dis­cus­sion on Twit­ter today about the var­i­ous parts of the beard, mostly with a chap called Phill, a new set of beard terms have been reached that I think reflect the class and dig­nity inher­ent in a fur-face.

I recently dis­cov­ered a poster on a friend’s fridge that out­lined Cuts of Beef and their com­mon uses. It was an inter­est­ing chart that taught me which parts of the cow are which in rela­tion to a mixed grill.

It’s a nice poster with some nice typog­ra­phy and, unlike the real-life ver­sions in an abba­toir, not dis­pleas­ing to the eye. How­ever it was when I viewed the poster on the side that I started to think not about beef but about rabbits.

I hope you too can can see the rab­bit inher­ent in the illus­trated beef. And so the poster of beef cuts failed to do its job because all I could think of after­ward was rabbits.

And just as I’d thought, if you place the Beef Rab­bit along­side other rab­bits it becomes indis­tin­guish­able from those other rab­bits. This has raised a lot of ques­tions for me. Was the Cuts of Beef poster try­ing to be sub­lim­i­nal about some­thing? Are rab­bits cows? Are cows rab­bits? Rab­bits are, when you think about, steak-sized. Mmm. Food for thought.

Birds!

Cor­ner of Barkly and McDougall Streets, Brunswick, Mel­bourne, Australia.

Syd­ney is a fun city for a week­end. Beyond that I can make no informed com­ment about the place. Here are the funnest of the funs from the week­end in the ‘arbour city with my trav­el­ing part­ner Sean #3 (I knew two Seans before him).

I.

Gatz

What an amaz­ing piece of theatre/experience-that-wasn’t-really-like-theatre-at-all. You’ve never been so emo­tion­ally invested in a show like you are if you sit through those final ten minutes/few pages of Gatz/The Great Gatsby hav­ing been there for the pre­ced­ing 7 hours. There’s a nice recent review of Gatz from the SMH here. That’s Sean #3 above check­ing out the bald head of Gatz himself.

II.

Me find­ing a copy of Ursula Dubosarsky’s out-of-print Bruno and the Crumhorn in that mega-stock book shop Kinoku­niya.

III.

Me buy­ing Tintin fig­urines for only $13 each from said Kinoku­niya store. How could I not for that price? I was just going to get Had­dock but I thought I’d be a lot fun­nier if he could be star­ing down an obliv­i­ous Castafiore.

IV.

The Syd­ney Writ­ers’ Fes­ti­val was pretty nice too — in par­tic­u­lar the panel that dis­cussed the ques­tion ‘Are some teenage nov­els too ‘hard’/literary for teenagers’. Obvi­ously, they’re not, der, was the con­clu­sion Margo Lana­gan, Mal Peet and M.T. Ander­son all came to. I’m about half-way through M.T. Anderson’s first Octa­vian Noth­ing novel The Pox Party and it really is as good as every­one keeps say­ing. Hard and lit­er­ary and appro­pri­ate read­ing for teens too.

V.

T’was wet’n’windy. As Sean #3 demonstrated.

Tomor­row morn­ing I leave for four days in Syd­ney which, at the moment, can only be described as ‘the future’. To be less with­hold­ing, I am head­ing up for the Syd­ney Writ­ers’ Fes­ti­val. It should be a good week­end. In par­tic­u­lar I’m look­ing for­ward to the Don’t Tell the Teenagers: Young Adult Fic­tion That’s “Too Hard” for Young Adults ses­sion with M.T. Ander­son, Mal Peet and Margo Lanagan.

I’m also see­ing Gatz at the Opera House. It’s not a per­for­mance of The Great Gatsby but a per­for­mance that fea­tures char­ac­ters who read The Great Gatsby out loud from front to back. Every­thing I hear about it makes me buzz. Here’s a lit­tle snippet:

Throw in a Zine Fair at the end of the week­end (who can resist a lil Zine Fair? Not I) and it should be a few good days in a row. If so, I’ll be sure to blog about it. If not, I’ll delete this post and we can for­get I ever men­tioned any­thing about it.