Sunday, July 19, 2009

AMUSEMENT ...

... and a clue to why I've been absent -- but first the amusement: this link will take you to an exchange of
comments at the Akhond of Swat on the subject of the Crossword Book Prize shortlist for this year. It became suddenly active this evening, and I think some of the points made there are worth reading.

The connection between the shortlist and my inactivity here is of course that I am about to leave for Bombay to attend the event -- time is running short and I have stacks of stuff to do and ... and ... *all the usual excuses*

Still: I DID manage to finish my picture book and am very pleased with it. Just as soon as I get clearance from my publishers, I plan to post a couple of thumbnails here.

And Ms Malcontent is lurking just around the next corner. She will return.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

MY SECRET OBSESSION

... about to be not-so-secret ...

It's a French animation site called
MINUSCULE -- short (five minutes max) animated films entirely devoted to the Private Life Of Insects (that's the series title). You can very easily Google the name and see most of them online, but I couldn't bear the poor quality of some of the uploads and besides when I REALLYREALLYREALLY like something, I believe in supporting it with purchases. So ... I asked a friend (a REALLYREALLYREALLY good friend, as you'll see) to buy the boxed DVD set for me -- 4 DVDs -- and post them to me, from Belgium, by airmail please as I had already become a junkie and was now seeing pink spiders everywhere. And he did. And I got my boxed set by airmail and I have them in my hot sticky little hands and I can play them anytime I want even though they are PAL Region 2 and out of the five available devices I have for playing stuff only ONE has successfully overcome the Ogre of Conflicting Software. And I even successfully resisted watching them until I was through working on my picture book for TULIKA BOOKS -- it's called WHERE'S THAT CAT? and is now finished, finished, FINISHED!! Whoohoo! -- as of yesterday, and I'm beyond thrilled and contented watching my little films.

So yes, I STRONGLY recommend the Minuscule series ... and I have added a permanent link to the site, in the right-hand column.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Jeff Dunham's ACHMED THE DEAD TERRORIST

Got this from my friend Viji Ghose -- unlikely as it sounds, Achmed the Dead Terrorist Skit manages to be both hilarious and strangely (okay, VERY strangely) poignant.

I did wonder, tho, whether there are some people out there who might be offended. Suicide bomber wannabes, for instance ...


And also: a link to PETER GRIFFIN's(aka ZIGZACKLY)'s soulful tribute to Michael Jackson in FORBES INDIA magazine. The article is called Creature From Another Planet and features my Moonwalker image as its illustration.


Sunday, July 05, 2009

New Link NOTICE!

Just a quick post to shine a bright light on the new link in the right-hand column -- The Akhond of Swat has taken the place of Kitabkhana at this blog -- ring out the old, ring in the new, I say! -- even though the Akhond isn't new, has been around for a while and it's my own laziness that has kept this link unposted. But I've been missing the literary amusements once offered by Kitabkhana's enormously active and talented Babu -- and though I'm not certain, as I write this, the precise nature of the clan-lines that bind the Akhond to the Babu, what I DO know is that they are so alike as to be, for all practical porpoises, the same entity.

Much rejoicing and breaking of coconuts, then, as I declare this latest link open! *cheering, fireworks, fountains of sparkling wine, pods of leaping porpoises*