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Kahlúa, we get it: You want to suckle us with sweet love offerings | page 1, 2
The song, recorded by a certain Pauline Pantsdown, a satirist and Senate candidate (aka Simon Hunt), caused quite a stir in 1997, before Ms. Hanson succeeded in her bid to have it taken off the air pending trial. The Sydney paper reported that "Ms. Hanson wept as the song was played in court." Pantsdown's composition is described in the article as "a cut-and-paste job of odd fragments of Hanson-speak that apparently has her claiming to be a man, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, a transvestite, a homosexual and 'a very caring potato.'" How this grave issue will be resolved remains to be seen, says the Morning Herald. But "ABC lawyers were taking comfort last night that the judges had apparently restored their right to try to convince the jury that 'Backdoor Man' is a satire and not, as Queensland courts insist, literally true." Not surprisingly, Pantsdown agreed with the lawyers, declaring: "Any reasonable listener would not accept that Pauline Hanson believes she is a potato." No, she's more radish-like: red, white and bitter. And so as not to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, let's close with this tale by Simon De Bruxelles, correspondent for the Times of London. What is it about animal artists? Seems like they're popping up all over lately -- painting cats and gorillas and wasn't there even an elephant a while back? It's weird, no? Now Beenie, a 16-month-old female otter, has a whole frickin' exhibition of her watercolors, I mean watercolours, on display at the Wildlife Art Society's summer exhibition in Bath, England. And not to unfairly single out the Brits, but isn't it just the kind of thing they'd do over there in the Land of People with Too Much Time on Their Hands? Douglas Cruickshank Douglas Cruickshank's Rogues' Gallery appears every Thursday. The Raw and the Cooked appears every Saturday.
"Two of her five canvasses sold within minutes," De Bruxelles writes. "The paintings, which can best be described as abstract, fetch up to £275 each." That's £275 each! I mean, we're not talking about Eric Clapton's guitar here; how do you play "Layla" on an otter? The otter's painting career took off "eight months ago," De Bruxelles continues, when Beenie's owner, "Sophie Neville, 38, a wildlife artist who lives in South Africa, came home to exhibit her work. Her parents are licensed to rear otters at their home in Frampton Mansell, near Stroud in Gloucestershire." (Stop right there -- I don't care what kind of license they've got, no one should rear an otter except another otter, and then only after a candlelight dinner and a dip in the hot tub.) Whatever. Apparently entertainment's hard to come by out there in Frampton Mansell, near Stroud in Gloucestershire and otter rearing does indeed leave one plenty of free time, judging from Bruxelles' report: "After watching Beenie scurry around, Miss Neville put some watercolours on two plates and laid a parchment board on the grass. The otter paddled straight through the sap-green and rose paints and set to work on the parchment. A swish of the tail gave greater variety; the animal even rolled around on the paper for a smudge effect." I dunno. I just dunno anymore. But I'm getting a very, very hot idea for a Kahlúa advertisement. Next week? We have a winner! Two brains named Bob and Jayne aced the crocodile's birthday etymology contest -- and would be taking home several armloads of prizes if I hadn't lost their e-mail. It happens more often than I care to admit, but then we do save a lot of money on prizes that way.
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