Skippy - 5:03 p.m.

Someone Or Other Won The HQ Short Story Competition

Actually, it was two people who won it due to the fact that the so-called judges couldn’t make up their minds between two stories – one a magic realist number that “touched on the plight of the detainees”, and the another which was about some girl and her boyfriend having an argument over a milkshake (or something).

Oaf In Mood

Mr Oaf couldn’t bring himself to read the stories because he was in a mood. While considering his fate as a TEZNEZCO! (The Compnay Run By Bears! ™) employee and his endless days of toting barges and lifting bales – and the impossibility of ever escaping - he wondered where he had gone wrong with his story The Horizon. Since he had to print it out and take it to UTS for submission to the 2004 UTS Anthology, he read over the first page looking for tell tale signs that it wasn’t a winner.

All seemed fine until he got about halfway down the page and discovered what people in the journalism profession call a “screaming literal”. It’s where you edit something and accidentally cut a sentence in half and don’t notice it. You then print it out, read it over one last time for mistakes, and since you’ve read it 1,000,000 times, you can’t see the words for the trees, and then post it off to the competition.

Now wonder Mr. Oaf didn’t win – the sentence went something like “and since.” Since what? In an odd, avant garde kind of way it made sense, but the people at HQ don’t like avant garde stuff and anyway, it wasn’t a ‘deliberate’ mistake, it was a f#@%ing great big mistake. There was a chance that the people at Veruna (the “retreat” for writers in the Blue Mountains) would come a-knocking if Mr. Oaf’s story had made it into the top 25, but with such a glraring balls up, the only way Mr. Oaf will be going to the Blue Mountains is if Mrs. Oaf drives him there…

Holly Fed Up With Complaints

After the last update, which was little more than a whole bunch of woe-is-me complaints dressed up with some quotes, Mr. Oaf received a email from HollyTheLiar. She used the word “fuck” in the subject line and you could tell by the tone of the content she was fed up to here with Mr. Oaf’s bitching and moaning. The gist of the email was that The New Yorker accepts unsolicited submissions so why doesn’t he just goddamned stop goddamn complaining and shoot for the goddamn stars, hmmmm?

In other Holly related news, she also emailed Mr. oaf to apologise in advance for the editing of his paragraph on Tracey Moffat. Fearing the worst, Mr. Oaf cursed her name to the heavens only to discover that when a copy of the magazine arrived it was all fine. There had been a light trimming of extraneous insults and in the end, was perhaps more diplomatic and circumspect than Mr. Oaf himself could have achieved. Maybe it was all a ruse, because a note attached to the magazine said that the word in the HQ office was that Mr. Oaf smelt. And that was “official”, apparently.

Teddy Livid

After attending a screening of Master and Commander: The Far Side of The World, the small bear known as Teddy was absolutely livid. Roped into the project as a “technical adviser” after his long career aboard a Royal Naval Bark during the 1800s, he was appalled to see that no mention of him survived to the final cut.

Russell Crowe plays the part of Teddy while Paul Bettenay is well cast in the role of Penguin. (An uncredited Frenchman plays the part of Nesbitt complete with “outrageoooooous” accent). The plot – if you can call sailing about, sweating and firing guns a “plot” – is an obvious rip off of Teddy R.N..

Long time readers of these pages will no doubt remember the squabble and consequent legal action that ensued after the canceling of the project when director Luc Besson pulled out due to “personal reasons”.

Teddy R.N.went into what Hollywood insiders call “turnaround”. There was talk for a time that the film rights might be bought by a Japanese manga production house, then turned into either a made for TV mini series or a touring puppet show. The bears lost track of the project as other more exciting opportunities came along (and went just as quickly) and decided to just write off the whole thing was just a bad idea.

Next thing you know Peter ‘Mr. Quality’ Weir is signed to direct and a bunch of actors Teddy had never heard of were involved. It was a bloody rip off! Teddy got a call from Weir at one point during the shoot to be asked, what side does an experienced seamen hold his telescope on? Teddy put the phone down thinking it was a prank call and thought nothing more until an invitation arrived in the post.

The bears waited until the very last credits – the bit where it says that animals weren’t hurt in the making of the film, that the book of the film is available through Random House and the soundtrack through SONY - but NO MENTION of Teddy.

“What a gyp,” Teddy said into his empty popcorn box.

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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