Recently I’ve been having a problem. And that problem is Fiji.

Well, to be more precise, that problem is that I agreed last Christmas to go to Fiji this year & now that the time is rolling close, I find I’m really depressed by it. Okay, not depressed. More like stressed, upset & annoyed.

And why, you’re wondering, am I annoyed about a trip to a tropical island that I, as a grown woman, agreed to? Yes, it’s a good question, isn’t it, & I myself have spent the last month wondering what the hell the answer is & what is wrong with me & whether I’m quite sane.

But then Friday after 2 glasses (could’ve been 3) of red wine & some of my favourite cider from one of my favourite pubs, it hit me with all the sudden clarity that alcohol, in its raw animal wisdom, can invoke.

The *reason*, you see, that I agreed to go to Fiji is that it’s the place where my grandfather spent part of WWII as an engineer for the Colonial Sugar Refinery Company (CSR) in Lautoka. And it’s where my grandparents were married. And given this is Female Appreciation Month, I can confess to you, gentle reader, that nothing has been the same since my grandmother died in, was it 2001? It’s a blur, really, because in a way her death has never stopped happening for me.

So, no, I don’t quite appear to be sane!

And if my travel companion, my mother, is as unnerved by this trip as I am, it could probably explain why SHE herself appears to be limping forward with the planning that I’ve been trying to avoid! But by god we’ll get this trip sorted & we’ll visit that damned church in Lautoka (er, I’m not sure which one, but I’m assuming NOT the Sri Krishna Temple) & — by god — we’ll have ourselves a tropical holiday if the damn thing nearly kills us!

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Now that editing is done I can return to the myriad open browser tabs I’ve been saving for future reading for months. Most recently, an article on the world’s only poisonous primate: the slow loris. (Who names these things?!)

Sez the Herald, Its venom is stored in an elbow patch. When it is feeling threatened, the slow loris will raise its arms above its head in a diamond shape, suck in the poison from its elbow patch, then mix it around in its mouth before delivering a toxic bite.

Sure is a cute little fella, though.

The slow loris also makes it onto James Gunn’s ‘Evolution Fucked Your Shit Up‘ list of the world’s most hideous or plain confusing animals (sourced via Twitter — jamesgunn, from memory). In Gunn’s list the slow loris is, in fact, confused for a tarsier (a slightly less cute and much less lethal animal — with much less ordinary elbows.

Which means the list actually has 51 weird creatures on it.

Why spend your time writing fiction when the world has it all over us for weirdness, eh?

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

My favourite Twitter buddy & source of inspiration? New Scientist.

Yesterday they were looking at clouds. Some amazing images there. No wonder we believe in the supernatural. If the world can create ‘accidental’ images like this, it’s very confusing…

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.

-- Adam Zagajewski, Try To Praise The Mutilated World (excerpt) via choriamb

After the world failed to end on schedule, Kuznetsov was found trying to commit suicide by hitting his head with a piece of wood.
-- SMH, 'Corpse stench drives cult from cave', 16 May 2008

Kuznetsov's other achievements include starting his own cult, and convincing his followers that barcodes 'are a symbol of the devil'.