Alisa Krasnostein at Twelfth Planet Press has picked up my short story ‘How to Select a Durian at Footscray Market’ for the forthcoming anthology Sprawl. You can check out the (quite impressive) full ToC at her blog.

From The Age:

Breaking News
6:45AM Wheels of bus packed with kids fall off

This one was me, writing an informative (ha!) article:

. . .hygiene laws are pretty sick

Personally, I think they should have called it the Apple Scroll.

Today my spell checker made the following suggestions:

Change Hainanese to hairiness

Change Larrabeiti to laryngitis

Change Skendgrot to skeleton

As I was heading down the street to stock up on fruit and veg today:

Random guy: Well, all families have skeletons in their closets

Girl: Yes, but that doesn’t mean you have to invite them to the dinner table

My little sis to my step-dad: Dad, can we have some carrots?

Justin, surprised at a request for something other than junk food: What for?

Little Sis: So we can see in the dark!

From The Age:

I’m not sure how, unless they resort to raising the dead. But I suppose zombies are en vogue.

From The Age:

Man’s body in boot tied to girl’s death

Things are getting a bit frantic over here, so I’m afraid that you won’t be getting much in the way of coherent blogging (not that that’s ever really a problem, I suppose). My laptop keyboard is still buggered, and has fits of semi-working, followed by seizures of not-working, making the whole writing stories business a bit of a challenge. I’m a bit behind on deadlines as a result.

Since so many of you were intrigued by the hazily photographed ’snow brown’ drink of the other week, you’ll be happy to know that I stumbled upon it once more (at a Korean place on La Trobe Street), and this time was daring enough to order it. No doubt you’ll be fascinated to know that it tasted like Weetbix with crushed ice. Mmm-mmm.

Today’s enlightenment is an equally hazily photographed image (I only had my phone with me, unfortunately) from a menu at Ghurka’s on Chapel Street, which is also apparently proud to proclaim that its menu is ‘glutton free’ (not true, given all we ate last night):

Jack Denials: for the abstemious drunkards amongst us

From The Age:

Tourist caught smuggling lizards in pants

Lizards in pants? What’s next? Elephants in pyjamas?