Beggars' Choice

Yesterday we bought a cat. His name is Philip J. Cat, in homage to Futurama's Philip J. Fry which is in turn a homage to Philip K. Dick so an excellent lineage there I think. We got him from the Perth Cat Haven, A Home for Destitute Cats. His original name, according to the Cat Haven, was Cosmo but it would be a cold day in hell before I'd let a cat be named Cosmo so I suggested we might get around the problem by naming him Cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin and call him Cosmo for short. But as everyone else pointed out he'd still effectively be named Cosmo so that idea got knocked back.

I guess this puts me on the cat person side of the cat person/dog person divide, much in the same way as driving a Falcon puts me in the Ford camp of the great Ford/Holden war. I couldn't really care less about either, and when it comes to pets I'm really more of a bee person. But if it must be one or the other, I'm fine with cats, at least they exercise themselves and don't shit everywhere.

At the time of writing, the Games For Countries Ruled By England At Some Point are in full swing. Things may change (and probably will once the track and field starts) but at the moment it's as one-sided as the 1984 Olympics with AUS substituted for USA. You might be forgiven for thinking the average punter would find this a bit of a yawn, but lunacy and sport go together in Australia like a beer and another beer and so everyone is going nuts over our dominance of traditional sporting rivals like England, New Zealand, and ... er ... Mozambique.

BUT NOT ME! I find the whole exercise jingoistic and trite, and so I'm not going to barrack for Australia. Yes, you read right; I'm not going to support Australia. Instead, I'm offering my support to the one, plucky nation that sits up and absolutely commands respect ... the Isle of Man.

Last time I checked, they were tied for 14th with one bronze. GO, ISLE OF MAN.

UPDATE. 21/3/06: Isle of Man have taken cycling gold and are currently lying 10th on the medal tally with 1 gold, 0 silver, and 1 bronze. Woo hoo!

UPDATE. 22/3/06: No more medals, and they have slipped to 16th behind Papua New Guinea and Cyprus. Still ahead of Nauru and Seychelles though. Whew. Also, I notice Trinidad & Tobago are competing as one country. Can they do that? I might write a stern letter of protest about this.

Medal tally here.

UPDATE. 27/3/06: The Games are over. Australia headed the medal tally with 578402986 medals or something, followed by England, South Africa, New Zealand perhaps, and probably Canada. Maybe. Look, to be honest I neither know nor care, although on something that IS near and dear to my heart - the performance of the Isle of Man - I am quite upbeat, for although they won only 2 medals they finished a creditable 19th, so well done and congratulations to all from the Isle of Conjoined Legs.

The Perth International Arts Festival is upon us again, and as a loyal supporter of all things artsy-fartsy and most importantly FREE, this afternoon I went along to see a free performance by a group called The Dream Engine. Basically it was a chick twirling around in some sort of gimble-harnass thingy attached to a giant helium balloon. Or as they themselves put it,

Be enchanted by the ethereal beauty of a graceful trapeze act performed high above the ground. Suspended from the Heliosphere – a giant helium-filled balloon – a trapeze artist tumbles and twists in a weightless aerial ballet. A beautiful spectacle that needs to be seen to be believed.

It was OK, and the chick certainly looked pretty fit, but sadly at no stage did the balloon come away from its moorings and rise steadily upwards with the chick twirling, twirling, twirling, until out of sight. It fact absolutely nothing happened that would justify a lusty cry of "oh, the humanity!" so I guess it was slightly unfulfilling in that resepct.

Went to a forum today which was to give the government a chance to listen to THE WORKERS. It started off rather comically when the Director-General of Health began his opening address with an effort to ingratiate himself to all present by drawing attention to how "casual" he had dressed, and how he had not bothered to put a tie on. Wow! "I say, you worker fellows! I've rolled up my sleeves, and I'm not afraid to do some real work; digging holes and so forth. Now let's eat pies, and drink local beer! Straight from the can!"

We banged our hammers and sickles together anyway, just to be polite.

UPDATE. Apparently on Friday he addressed a group of Occupational Therapists dressed as a chimney sweep and concluded his address with a rendition of "With a Little Bit of Luck". Or so I imagined.