Bloop - 12:33 p.m.

Zamonia? Isn't that somewhere near Slobovia?

…asks our good friend at Diaryland Ruthiebat. We don’t know, you’d best ask Walter Moers the alleged “author” of the Bluebear books. We think Slobovia could be near Teddytown which is just up the road from Nesbittville. Take the I 20 via Nesbitt Del Sud, along the lovely waterside drive at Lac Du Oso, then, after stopping for a cup of tea at the Devonshire Tea House at Tez Capiola, make a right through The Valley of The Bears and eventually, as you come over Toppington Heights, you’ll see Teddytown below you.

It’s near old Sedona, Arizona, as The Pixies once sang.

Is She Weird?

Someone named Teddy Cole sent us a spam email suggesting “sometimes she just can’t get enough” which we took to be a reference to Mrs. Oaf and her love of being driven around by Mr. Oaf.

As we have mentioned in the past, Mr. Oaf does not officially know how to drive – that is, he does not hold the requisite license from the authorities, but he has piloted various vehicles (including a shit-brown Holden Gemini through the busy streets of Kings Cross at 2am, high as a kit and without a license) and is confident that although his arse (the car’s arse that is) waggles furiously on bends, it’ll all be nice and legal by January.

To get to that point, Mr. and Mrs. Oaf go for long drives in the country with various hazards placed at irregular intervals along the way. For example, Mr. Oaf is distracted by ponies.

“Look! A pony!” says Mr. Oaf as the car drifts across the unbroken white line on the side of the road.

“The line! The line!” says Mrs. Oaf excitedly.

Unfortunately Mr. Oaf can’t hear her, as he’s imagining owning such a proud and majestic pony, its head playfully moving side to side, it’s lustrous mane shaking this way and that, Mr. Oaf the envy of people all around who all wish that they too could own such a fine horse as they ride through town waving to….

Suddenly Mr. Oaf is back in the real world as the car goes wheeeeeee across the road.

“Sorry, about that,” says Mr. Oaf. “I was distracted by that pony.”

Mrs. Oaf has taken it upon herself to explain to Mr. Oaf that having a license isn’t all ponies and parrots, you know, it’s about making difficult decisions…

Try This Quick Quiz

You are the driver of the black car, driving along a dual carriage way during the day. The sun is shining and the sky is blue. Approaching you on the other side of the road is a school bus full of children returning from a pleasant outing at an animal farm. Some of the children can be seen through the window – they are smiling and laughing and signing songs. Just as you are about to pass the bus, a small kitten bats a ball of wool into the middle of the road where it plays with the wool between its front paws, perhaps even laying on its back and purring.

What do you do? Do you:

(a) Swerve out of the way of the kitten into the bus, causing an enormous explosion and killing all the children aboard.

(b) Veer to the left and crash into a tree, killing yourself and all those in the car as well.

(c) Drive over the kitten, becoming a cold blooded cat killer.

or

(d) Brake hard, collect the kitten from the roadway and then take it home where you will love it and look after it and clean up after it and take it for walks.

These are difficult choices for the Learner Driver. They are ethical question with far reaching consequences. As Mr. Oaf invariably always answers (d), Mrs. Oaf quickly becomes exasperated and travels along in the car with her arms folded and a stern look on her face. Sometimes she can’t get enough.

Monkey Gone To Heaven

Don’t say this is just a coincidence…

“Zimbabwean scientist Euan Nisbet deserved credit for bold thinking. But his proposal to slow the melting of Mount Kilimanjaro’s glaciers by draping huge tarpaulins over their edges, to buy time until forests that once exhaled moisture replenished the ice fields could be replanted, had one problem; ‘It would be a mammoth undertaking yielding dubious benefits’. Environmental change could be challenged when it looked inevitable, but plans like this one could backfire.” ( The Australian, Saturday November 29).

Speaking of Backfiring…

What’s with all the wind on TV? Every time you see someone, they have wind in their hair, like it’s blowing a gentle breeze through the studio.

Here’s … a good example. This is the scary visage of one Naomi Robson. She hosts the high class TV show Today Tonight and whenever you see her on the promos for the show, she is turning slightly (left to right) towards camera, her hair bouncing up and down in semi-slow motion, as she looks very serious and all current affairs. Apart from the fact that Robson looks just like a praying mantis that has just finished eating her husband (the eyes, the eyes!) she is clearly a woman on the go. How else can you explain the wind? Perhaps, as Teddy suggests, she is moving so quickly that only super fast film will capture her rapid pass through the studio. Wind in your hair seems to imply a certain care free attitude, that you are essentially poetic and you can be seen bouncing around in a field of daisies when not presenting a hard hitting report into pedophile priests or dole cheats.

Nesbitt’s theory is that Robson is being buffeted from side to side by Ross Symonds and his infamously gaseous outpourings. Since Symonds is hard of hearing, it’s entirely possible he doesn’t know what he’s doing. That would of course be a logical explanation for how so much quickly moving air has found its way into the studios of Today Tonight.

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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