Just Another F*%#ing Day - 3:34 p.m.

News At Six

Bim's 20th Day of Wooden Hat Stunt

Bim has had a piece of drift wood on his head for 22 days and is halfway towards fulfilling his promise of a 44 day-long “hat stunt”. The piece of wood, collected from the beach, looks remarkably like a hat and is a perfect fit. Bim is hoping to meet and perhaps better David Blaine’s 44 days in a box and will utilize a similar two-pipe set up. Whereas Blaine had one pipe going in for water and one pipe going out for waste, Bim has set up an ingenious two-pipe-in-no-pipe-out tube system that feeds the diminutive bear tea and cake on demand. He currently feels “confident”.

Left Trompidor, Right Trompidor

Teddy and Nesbitt are now planning a bold new venture, even by the bold and adventurous standards of their previous escapades. They are now planning on becoming roving Shakespearean minstrels. Teddy denied the idea evolved out of his desire to wear pantaloons threaded with real gold, but instead from a genuine desire to bring good cheer to all those they meet on the road. Nesbitt, meanwhile, is concerned that they may meet ruffians, scallywags and toughson the road, or perhaps mad fisherwomen who can cast magic spells. Teddy pointed out that there were no such mad fisherwomen about, certainly not around here. There may be a mad, or just slightly crazy lady hanging around outside Delifrance, but that should be easy enough to avoid. Nesbitt remains unconvinced but has put all his belongings in a hanky and is ready to set off.

Mr. Oaf Watched Closely For Signs of Incipient Insanity

Not once, not twice, but thrice denied by stooges in positions of power Mr. Oaf is under constant watch around the TEZNEZCO! (The Company Run By Bears!™ office.

First Denial: Just as he had feared, the people at Fran Bryson Agency Australia sent Mr. Oaf a curt email saying that since they were “streamlining the agency” and since 40,000 words is too short to do anything with, well, thanks but no thanks.

There was rather brutal tone to the email and was PS’d with a reminder that Fran Bryson herself had sent Mr. Oaf a letter that “should have arrived by now.” Arriving home, Mr. Oaf opened the letter to find that the agency had thoughtfully returned his submission along with sundry other pages such as the cover letter Mr. Oaf had written to Fran back in August. Normally Mr. Oaf would have taken umbrage at having his cover letter sent back to him, but he was in too much of a hurry to see what this letter that “should have arrived by now” had to say.

The letter explained in two short sentences that while Fran “admired” Mr. Oaf’s writing, she was streamlining her agency (a likely story) and that she couldn’t take on anyone new. Oh well, thought Mr. Oaf, she admires my writing at least. Unfortunately, the more Mr. Oaf thought about it, the more it became apparent that “admiring” someone’s writing is a meaningless statement.

Mr. Oaf is guilty of using very similar words when he wants to say nothing about an artist’s work and he has built up a very effective dictionary of meaningless adjectives. For example; if you say someone’s work is extraordinary or unprecedented or indeed unique you are only saying that it’s different to something else. Originality is overrated especially when you say white is different to black or the weather today is different to yesterday. It’s hard to think of anything more banal.

Admiring someone’s work is along very similar lines. It’s like saying something is admirable, and that’s something you say when the author is not in complete control of their faculties, say, or is missing limbs. If Mr. Oaf had lost both his arms in a freak accident and typed his novella with his toes, you could say “that’s admirable!” without offering a single shred of critical evaluation. It’s like being patted on the head. How demeaning.

Second Denial: As Mr. Oaf was standing outside the shop and reading the letter, he noticed that there was another envelope. This one was a letter from the Australia Council advising him that his application for funding had been knocked back. Mr. Oaf kind of half expected that this would happen. After all, his proposal had been to write a book about the search for Lobby Bears around the world using the internet as a road map. Teddy was saddened that his story wasn’t being told but was reasonably sanguine now that he was getting into Shakespearean Drama.

Third Denial:. Perhaps the best approach is: if you cant say anything nice about someone, don’t say anything at all. Mr. Oaf considered this approach when it came to writing about the photographer Tracey Moffat but threw caution to the wind and said what he really thought:

"Tracey Moffat - she’s absolutely everywhere, isn’t she? From high school art text books to the staff tea room at the NRMA, from the record books for the sales of Australian photos to the holdings of museums the world over - not to mention the hundreds of international group and solo shows she’s been in since the late 1980s - she’s one of the most commercially successful Australian artists of all time. Still, all-pervasive ubiquity isn’t necessarily such a good thing for a modestly talented artist with an eye for an obvious statement – history may judge her easy-to-digest artistic statements harshly. For now, however, she joins Brett Whiteley and Sir Sidney Nolan on the list of this county’s ‘top’ artists. All she has to do now is to die to become immortal."

Mr. Oaf showed the piece to Mike Hutak who said that everything except the last line was perfectly acceptable. (The last line, he said, was in “borderline bad taste” but otherwise ok). Sure it flirted with bad taste, but it was just true as well… Anyway, Mr. Oaf had asked the minions at HQ to let him know if they were going to cut it, thinking that if they had a problem, they’d get in touch and he’d rewrite it. Instead they (and by “they” we mean HollyTheLiar) sent Mr. Oaf an email to say that it had been cut. Cut to what? To whom? “Take it up with the editor” she said.

It’s been a tough few days and Mr. Oaf now finds himself eating his dinner with a plastic knife and fork set, watching kid’s TV in the day time and pondering the meaning of HollyTheLiar’s present…

Boy Meets Bear, Boy Sustains Head Injuries…

According to Holly, it’s bad manners in Japan to write a letter on note paper without some sort of piece of plastic in between pages to stop print-through. Cunningly, Japanese stationers have come up with a handy device that slips between the pages and is decorated with attractive pictures of bears.

In the first frame the boy opens his present to discover a bear. The next few frames shows the burgeoning friendship of boy and bear as they get into all sorts of scrapes and adventures such as having a bath together, withstanding outrageous accusations from parents and going on picnics. It’s only when you get to the last frame that you discover that the whole proceeding story is a flashback going on in the head of the boy who is, in fact, being beaten by the bear with a nasty knee to the head. The boy is bleeding and droplets of blood can be seen dripping from his nose. The bear, meanwhile, is laughing. Who is sorry now?

bears in history - future bears

“This diary cracked me up, completely, perhaps the oddest diary I have ever read. I'm not sure if it's a takeoff on something or someone that I have somehow missed. Regardless, TEZNEZCO! chronicles the adventures of two bears and describe them as if they are a minority of some sort. The writing is disturbingly matter-of-fact as if it is perfectly normal to be writing about these bears as people. I like it; it's pleasantly novel" - Diaryreview

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