January 2010
68 posts
H-Bird’s Weekly Twitter-Spatter →
Two poems at Bat Bean Beam →
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formspring.me
Do you warm to the brutalist architecture of the university?
I have done, over time. It wasn’t until I visited the UK, and London, specifically, that I understood a little more about its form and function. As an undergraduate I assumed that brutalism predominated on campus because the buildings were put up in a hurry.
The university’s brutalism is also much offset...
listening to "The Donnas - Fall Behind Me" →
I have been thinking about The Donnas, and how they were at the forefront of the adult-women-who-enjoy-unicorns-and-rainbows movement.
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formspring.me
Are Norwich terriers considered a dangerous breed?
Not at all; but when it comes to dogs I am all for being fanatically cautious. I don’t let my dogs off the lead in public (mainly because they tend to follow their noses and not come back, and I don’t approach other people with dogs I don’t know when I’ve got my dogs with me.
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H-Bird’s Weekly Twitter-Spatter →
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formspring.me
with your pre-disposition to darker days of depression, are you worried about how this might affect you post-natally?
A fair question. I know that it is going to be a significant risk, but I feel perhaps better prepared (or at least more aware) in that I will know what it is when and if it hits and I won’t have to work to the same extent through some of the compounding...
Summer Husbandry →
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formspring.me
Who is your favourite muppet character, and why?
As a child it was Miss Piggy, whom I admired for her beauty, egocentricity and cheerful willingness to resort to violence, but as an adult it’s Beeker, who is clearly an anxiety-disordered post-doc.
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formspring.me
Team Edward or Jacob?
I’ve not read the books and have only seen the first of the series on film, and, in all awkward honesty, I much preferred the cheerful, friendly first boy Bella met — whom I believe is called Eric — over those two moody brooders.
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Kei hea te pene? →
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formspring.me
Where’s the summer gone?
I made a pact with Satan to get fine weather for my outdoor wedding ceremony last year, and we’re all paying for it now.
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formspring.me
Who is more sympathetic to your pregnancy needs - Fern or the Señor?
Fern’s role is as the exemplar of what a pregnant mammal needs: regular attention, big meals, help getting on to high surfaces and constant reassurance. The señor must follow the exemplar.
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formspring.me
octopuses, octopi or octopoes?
Where I’m uncertain of a plural I tend to use the Anglicized version, so octopuses it is, with eight arms to hold you.
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listening to "The Verlaines" →
Death and the Maiden!
Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne On Google Streetview? →
Music News: The Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne can be spotted in Google Streetview emerging from the bath.
The eternal struggle of why with how (3/5) →
The Man of Errors recalls Charles Darwin’s father’s disapproval of his son, who took a while to find a path in life.
The Verlaines: Death and the Maiden →
Ned’s favourite (Verlaine Verlaine Verlaine Verlaine Verlaine Verlaine Verlaine Verlaine Verlaine)
My own land; she makes things →
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formspring.me
Would you appear on a TV cooking show alongside @kittenypentland, knowing the master chef supreme she is?
If I were on a TV cooking show, I would be the oaf(ette) at the margins whose hopeful hand the cook slaps away, but who is allowed first bite of whatever is prepared.
I see that @kittenypentland has not just herbs but a bottle of Cointreau in her Twitter background. I...
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formspring.me
Do you have a bicycle?
My use of cycle lanes is limited to checking my blind spot when I cross them on foot or in a vehicle.
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formspring.me
Have you considered getting contact lenses?
The wide corneas through which I read text all day are not the corneas best clad in contact lenses.
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formspring.me
Sorry about the St Albans question, it’s the St Ailsa Court Rest Home that is the subject of the question. It’s up there at #46, over the street and up a bit from the funeral parlour.
I’m guessing by your use of “street” and “parlour” that you’re not local. That’s alright, but I’m not going to tell you any more about...
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formspring.me
Ok, so if you could commit a crime (obviously one that didn’t result in anybody getting hurt), what crime would you commit and why?
It is a selfish wish, and lacks community spirit, but I would be quite happy to park anywhere and never be fined nor ticketed.
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formspring.me
If you are having a baby, what names are you considering for to be giving it?
They are largely secret at this stage, and nothing like as numerous as the list of joke-names (which starts with Jesús the Gay Baby and goes downhill from there).
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formspring.me
How many paces distant from the St Albans retirement home is your new home in Sockburn?
Alas, your knowledge of Christchurch geography, and the amount of time I have lived here, is faulty.
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formspring.me
Share question with friends try http://tr.im/KQGz
You are using one question service to advertise another question service! Smooth move, anonymous hawker; smooth move.
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formspring.me
If you had the chance to go back in time for 24 hours, where and when would you go?
As a newly(ish)wed I can make a predictable answer to that. Second time through I would have worried less about the bar tab, worn a pair of gel insoles in my shoes and checked the box of stuff we carried back to the hotel before concluding that I had lost my mobile phone.
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formspring.me
Is it ok to use the AM radio after noon?
Without a doubt; the fuzzier reception adds an atmospheric aural patina to the talkback callers’ looser grasp on reality.
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A Rare Opportunity to Individualise your Lifetime →
Progressive Nomenclature →
Full Circle: Bronwyn Lloyd →
Two infant deaths, a book of poems and a research and writing journey.
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formspring.me
If you could have written any one thing, existent or otherwise, what would it be?
In the last year I’ve read quite a bit of Haruki Murakami’s prose. Two short stories left me with that heart-in-mouth thrill-and-envy that has as a component the wish that I’d written them: “Thailand” in <i>after the quake</i> and “A Shinagawa...
H-Bird’s Weekly Twitter-Spatter →
Relationshipism (The New Republic) →
After spending many Sundays this last spring with the SATC marathon playing in the background, this early-century analysis by Lee Siegel seemed trenchant.
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formspring.me
Was A.R.D. Fairburn really a complete tosser?
I think he was a shovel-wielding, verse-writing man of his time who probably did his best work relatively early. I enjoy thinking of him feeling vaguely uncomfortable around Frank Sargeson.
Lauris Edmond’s edition of Fairburn’s letters (1981) couldn’t have come out at a worse time for his reputation in terms of...
Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit →
Lambrusco Socialism →
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formspring.me
Robin Hyde - why so sad???
Poverty, disability, employment inequality and mental illness. Other critics’ answers have included trying too hard and Teh Menz!
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formspring.me
Have you ever thought about breeding babbies instead of dogs?
Despite my frequent requests for someone to tell me how is babby formed (http://www.somethingawful.com/flash/shmorky/babby.swf), no-one will enlighten me.
Indeed, of late, people have been shaking their heads and telling me it’s too late to ask.
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formspring.me
Is there any possible occasion for which it is acceptable for a man to carry a man bag?
There are to my mind two schools of thought on this: one is that any bag in the possession of a man is by definition a man bag (hence the wounded dignity of the young “Never Shake a Baby” man in the supermarket with the big pink tote of baby’s things). Another is that a man...
I only wanted to know →
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formspring.me
If you could be a character from a novel who would you choose to be?
This has given me cause to ponder. An obvious choice would be a character for whom the outcomes are “good”, but I often find tragic characters more interesting (Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, for example). I have to say I would rather be the novelist than the character; getting to play...
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formspring.me
If one were thinking of opening a design/baby/gift store type thingaling in Christchurch, where should one be looking?
I would suggest Merivale or Fendalton, in an area where foot traffic is quite high (or St Albans or Ilam, the adjacent suburbs where rent is cheaper). Alternatively, the central city around Victoria Street or the top end of High Street.
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