Of late I have mostly been reading...

[Mr Naga]

I lived right out in the country for twenty years and never saw a badger. Still haven't. This place doesn't help.

On the way home from a booze-drenched night out I neared the estate where I used to live (in the suburbs of Croydon) only to have a badger tear out of an alleyway and directly at me. I let out a pathetic squeal in shock/fear before the badger had a change of heart and came to an abrupt and scratchy halt on the pavement no more than two feet in front of me before it ran off in the opposite direction. It was terrifying.

[babycart]

Badger-related poetry from Robert Kroetsch´s long poem Seed Catalogue, which I tucked myself up with last night.

My father was mad at the badger: the badger was digging holes in the potato patch, threatening man and beast with broken limbs (I quote). My father took the double-barreled shotgun out into the potato patch and waited.

Every time the badger stood up, it looked like a little man, come out of the ground. Why, my father asked himself — Why would so fine a fellow live below the ground? Just for the cool of the roots? The solace of dark tunnels? The blood of gophers?

My father couldn’t shoot the badger. He uncocked the shotgun, came back into the house in time for breakfast. The badger dug another hole. My father got mad again. They carried on like that all summer.

Love is an amplification
by doing/ over and over.

Love is a standing up
to the loaded gun.

Love is a burrowing.

One morning my father actually shot at the badger. He killed a magpie that was pecking away at a horse turd about fifty feet beyond and to the right of the spot where the badger had been standing.

A week later my father told the story again. In that version he intended to hit the magpie. Magpies, he explained, are a nuisance. They eat robin’s eggs. They’re harder to kill than snakes, jumping around the way they do, nothing but feathers.

Just call me sure-shot,
my father added.

[eine]

Why, my father asked himself — Why would so fine a fellow live below the ground? Just for the cool of the roots? The solace of dark tunnels? The blood of gophers?

[ginghamkitchen]

I would not like to see a honey badger, by the way. They seem really mean. Mind you, I have a dachshund. They were bred to take badgers down.

[babycart]

I would not like to see a honey badger, by the way. They seem really mean. Mind you, I have a dachshund. They were bred to take badgers down.

Dachshund owners make me laugh, like table tennis fans who get upset when you call it ping pong.
It´s a sausage dog. Bred to look like a sausage.

[ginghamkitchen]

He's a Badger Hound. Dachshund. He looks like a sausage, though, I'll give you that. What do you call your car, the metal box fast go go?

[babycart]

He's a Badger Hound. Dachshund. He looks like a sausage, though, I'll give you that. What do you call your car, the metal box fast go go?

these days I call it a heap of shit, mostly. "Fast" certainly doesn´t come into it, and "go" is by no means guaranteed, either.
I always try and use the German word for hovercraft, though. it´s Luftkissenfahrzeug, which means "air cushion go thing".

I don´t believe sausage dogs were ever used for badgers, It´s like setting a hamster after a wolverine.

[ginghamkitchen]

A standard dachshund will dig into a sett and kill the occupants dead in double quick time. I don't condone it, but it's a documented fact. I have a miniature dachshund, so he might struggle, especially as he's a right Mummy's boy. I suppose you'd call him a cocktail sausage with your stone age 'call something what it looks like' naming practices.

[giantchicken]

Oddly enough, the only badger I ever saw in the wild was being enthusiastically pursued across a farmers field by a Jack Russell terrier who in turn was being pursued by a couple of kids who lived on the next street from me. Although only about 12 at the time I recall then chasing those lads to tell them that unless they called their dog off, the badger would surely break it's neck, for even at that tender age, I had heard of the fearsome fighting reputation of Brer Brock...the whole scene must have seemed quite a procession....Of course, both badger and terrier left us panting in their wake and I never did learn the outcome.

You have a 'miniature dachshund', Ginghamkitchen? Is that like an even smaller version of an already fairly small dog? By Babycart's logic wouldn't that be a Chipolata Hound, or in German, 'eine wurstchenhund'?

Anyway, the badger incident I witnessed was on the outskirts of Sheffield, so there's hope for you yet - the thing that surprised me most was that the badger was more brown and white than black and white....

[Sonovox]

Despite years of pounding the second hand SF paperback beat, I pulled a fair wodge from Oxfams vintage SF 2-for-a-pound table today to add to the reading queue...

[Tsundoku]

Wow. Those New Worlds are quite a find. Presumably they are collections of experimental SF from the magazine that Moorcock used to do. I'd be interested to hear how good they are, and how avant garde. I've read quite a bit of the Jerry Cornelius stuff that (I think) was first published here quite odd I would imagine. I have the Ellison "Deathbird Stories" - it's an amazing book.

[Sonovox]

Those books are the 70s incarnation of New Worlds, what they migrated to after the original magazine folded. Looks like plenty of experimental stuff from the usual suspects - Ballard, Sladek, Disch, Moorcock etc etc. Never seen any of em before!

I like Harlan Ellison, wildly variable and hyperbolic in style, but when he hits it he hits it! Most pleased with the copy of Pavane, been after that forever and a half.

[Mr Naga]

Anybody on here use Goodreads?

[eine]

I do, or at least I'm a member. I don't really use it to be honest.

I've read three of late:



David Foster Wallace—The Pale King

An incredible book about capitalism, boredom and concentration, set in a tax office where there is a plot afoot about psychics and computers. Except the plot never really manifests becasue DFW committed suicide before he finished. It doesn't make the book any less readable. DFW proves that realism in fiction is impossible by making every moment potentially endless. I love the style, and attempted to ape it myself in this post (apologies to candiman). Recommended to plusses who like big books and lots of words.



Sarban—The Sound Of His Horn

An alternate history of time travel where Nazis won the war. Written by a British diplomat in 1952, there is a lot in this short book about fascism, technology, nature, love, sex and violence. Richly deserves it's cult status appellation. What you see here is the second printing of the Amercian paperback edition from 1960, itself quite an expensive book. OGs cost a fortune. I totally recommend this to plussers.



Michael Fisher—The Captives

A well written thriller from the turn of the 70s, published in paperback here by the mighty New English Library. What if a scientist captures humans and experiments on them but doesn't and they fall in love and have orgies and then they reverse the imprisonment and paint patterns on each other and pretend to be bears. It's like a pencilface dark hippie swap CD. Good book, recommended.

[Shere Khan]

Despite years of pounding the second hand SF paperback beat, I pulled a fair wodge from Oxfams vintage SF 2-for-a-pound table today to add to the reading queue...

That Keith Roberts Pavane is classic. I introduced my son to Keith Roberts when he was at school and he wrote a concept CD based on Roberts' Kiteworld book! Some of it is here on the old myspace page. I miss the old myspace days.