One For The Boofheads Of The World!

It has been brought to my boofy attention vis-à-vis my most recent post - here's a link to it if you can't be buggered scrolling down - that I have come to the attention of artista Katherine Tyrrell before.

In fact, last year. In her Making a Mark awards, to be precise. The same awards in which I featured this year. Only twelve months ago. Just to clear up the timeline.

It transpires that not only was I nominated in the same category for which I was mentioned this year - losing out to a damn cat!, the horror! the horror! - but I was also, in fact, the actual recipient of an award!

Indeed, the 2007 Amusing Musings Trophy was mine.

I only wish I'd known. Do they forget to tell the Coen Brothers when they've won an Oscar?

I can only put the problem down to the machinations of artista Tyrrell's cat - the despicable Cosmo - who more than likely intercepted the email carrying the tidings to me.

How often does a boofhead get to make an award acceptance speech? Ask Sally Field.

Unlike Sally Field, I'm only a boofhead, not a boofhead and a slapper, so my acceptance speech wouldn't assume anyone liked me and certainly wouldn't go as far as to thank the single-cell thingy that crawled out of the primeval swamp without which I wouldn't be here.

Instead, with every ounce of sincerity I could muster, and beg and borrow and probably even steal, I would simply say that This Is One For The Boofheads Of The World.

Excluding Sally Field.

Modesty

No, it's not a new brand of perfume. Or even a new brand of that wonderful advertising euphemism "feminine hygiene product".

Don't you love euphemistic advertising? Take those ads for nappies. Or diapers as I think the American cousins call them. Just as they pronounce aluminium nothing remotely like it's spelled. Yet, paradoxically, they pronounce the word colour exactly as it's spelled - or, at least, the way it's properly spelled, which, in a further paradox, isn't how they spell it.

Color. Color isn't a word. It's very nearly a word. One more vowel and it would be. So near, so far.

But I digress. Ads for nappies. I've never seen blue wee-wee in my life. Mine is either clear or pale yellow or other varying shades of yellow depending how much yellow cordial I've drunk. Yet take any ad for nappies that purports to show their absorbency. The liquid is always blue. Blue wee-wee? Has the bub swallowed a bottle of blue ink?

But I digress yet again. Modesty is, in fact, a virtue. Which, come to think of it, sounds like a new model of car.

It's something you're either born with or you're not.

I was.

And I'm not too immodest to admit it.

Praise me and I blush. Though you'll have to take my word for it on the basis that my blush is buried beneath a couple of feet and half a stone of boofy hair, thus:


This week I was given cause to blush. Trust me I blushed.

This week I was awarded a Special Mention in artista Katherine Tyrrell's Making a Mark Awards on her Making a Mark art blog. Scroll down to '"The Moose" Award for the best animal in an illustrated blog' and you'll find me. Adjacent to a whole feast of cats - a feast of cats is my collective noun for the soulless sociopathic creatures - but beggars can't be choosers when it comes to fame.

Katherine describes me as "rather charming if somewhat gruff". It's somewhat of an achievement to be both right and wrong within the space of five words, Katherine.

But I thank you from the bottom of my boofy heart.

As for spelling my name wrongly, two can play that game, Catherine.

Baaaaaaaaaaah Hummbugggggggggggg!

The only thing worse than Christmas is a collapsed lung. A collapsed lung is said to be the most painful condition imaginable. Apart from pleurisy.

Okay, so there are two things worse than Christmas.

At Christmas, for some reason, the two-legged dogs suddenly mistake you for a Christmas tree.

Come questo:

The only consolation is that Barbra Streisand looks worse. Like a €0.10 Parisian streetwalker:


Bah humbug!

Roll on pleurisy.

The Boofhead Guide to Bling

'nuff said.

Summer Summer, Wherefore Art Thou Summer?

Yes, I've been on holidays. Reading Shakespeare. He's some English coot fond of a bit of a scribble. English? It's not like any English language this boofhead has come across before.

Be that as it may, as I set off on my holiday, my change of undies and a clean hanky tied up inside a spotted cloth tied to a pole slung across my shoulder, two euros and my name and address in an envelope pinned to my boofy chest in case I got lost, someone gave me a Blackberry. It's the latest, coolest thing, they said.

I ate it.

On the whole, as soft fruits go, I prefer a Strawberry. You don't end up picking bits of silicon chip out of your boofy teeth.

But I digress.

I returned to this Italian village with the unpronounceable name to discover the temperature had dropped verging on 20 degrees. What happened to summer? What happened to my leisurely days and nights bludging food from the neighbours?

My cisterna was there, their summer dining table was there. But they weren't:

The sudden onset of autumn chill had sent them inside to eat. So who, now, cleans up their leftover panini, pizza, pane and other assorted boofhead delicacies?

That's something for me to contemplate over the winter as I thumb through Shakespeare's latest offering. I'm told it's due out soon, something about some Prince of Denmark or somewhere.

A Boofhead Guide to Coping With Global Warming

Antarctica melting? Pffft. Polar Bears overheating? Pffffffffft.

Selfless Boofhead that I am, global warming only enters my consciousness when it impacts on me in general and my stomach in particular.

Aside from the two-legged dogs, my most important food source is the neighbours, Marina and Lorenzo, not to forget their figlio, Vittorio.

Luckily, thanks to the foresight of some long-dead Italian architect or builder, I have my own dining table between the two properties:

That's Marina and Lorenzo. That's me standing on the dining table. What's a Boofhead to do when no one thinks to supply a chair?

Anyways. The dining table is the metal lid of a very old cisterna, a very deep water receptacle. The difference between a cisterna and a pozzo (Italian for a well) is that a pozzo has its own natural water supply while a cisterna is filled with water from another source, like drained rainwater. But enough of the semantics of water receptacles.

The Modus Operandi is simple. I sit on the cisterna and look hungry. The neighbours feed me.

Last night it was Chianina beef from the BBQ. The other day it was fegato (liver) and a mortadella sandwich. Sometimes it's even pizza.

Let not the words overweight Boofhead enter your consciousness!

Which is okay in Spring. And Autumn. The metal lid of the cisterna is a bearable temperature. Not in Winter. The cisterna lid is - 26 C in Winter. Too cold for even a Boofhead's botty. Particularly one paranoid about piles.

Summer? Summer is an altogether different case of burnt Boofhead botty when the temperature of the cisterna lid climbs to more or less 197,000 C.

It's okay at night, after the sun has gone down:

But at lunchtime? In the blazing heat of the middle of the day?

I park my Boofhead botty in the cool of the garden bed in the shade of the olive tree.

Is my middle name Ingenious?

So there you go, Polar Bears. There's your answer to Global Warming.

Find a garden bed in the shade of an olive tree and quit grizzling.

The Boofhead Guide to Art I

On account of it's about to rain, thunder and lightning outside - yes, in Dog, lightning can be a verb - I've shelved plans to torment this fat lump who lives next door -

- who happens to go by the name of Lampo, which happens to be Italian for Lightning, which has to be the most most nonsensical piece of naming since Condoleezza Rice. I mean, did Ms Rice's parents enter a competition to see how many double vowels and consonants could be fitted into a name?

Be that as it may, Lampo is saved from trauma by his namesake, and I'm free to unburden myself of my accumulated wealth of knowledge of that most mysterious thing called Art.

I know of what I speak on the basis that, thought she won't want to see this fact wafting around the ether, I'm actually on bum-sniffing terms with an artist. I sniff hers. It ain't mutual. Just for the record. Elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, I'm involved in an ongoing war of words with Cosmo whose Kitty Litter, I'm led to believe, is changed by yet another mighty fine artist. Give Katherine a break, Cosmo, try lifting your skanky leg against a tree.

Anyways, between pawing - yes, that's the Dog word for poring - over these two artists' blogs, and my frequent trips to the various Italian churches, museums and art galleries, not to mention my perusal of my tattered copy of Art For Boofheads, I've come to a simple conclusion.

The secret to great Art is in the eyes.

Not the artist's eyes. The eyes of the subject of the painting.

Now, someone once said that it's great Art when the eyes follow you around the room. Pfffft. Pompous undergraduate waffle. The secret to great Art, I'm here to tell you, is when the eyes follow you around the room, out the door, down the street, into the car, home, into the toi-toi, into bed, and into your dreams.

Cupping one oversized paw to one oversized ear, I hear you say, "What if the subject of the painting doesn't have any eyes?"

Simple. It can't be great Art if it ain't got eyes in it.

On which basis, great Art can only feature people. Or animals. Or potatoes.

You read it here first, fellow great Art aficionados.

Reason To Get Up In The Morning #2

Thursday mornings especially.

Gina comes on Thursday afternoons.

She's married.

Not for long if I've got any say in the matter.

Reason To Get Up In The Morning #1

When a visitor arrives and he hasn't caught up with the edict about Boofheads not being allowed on the couch.

And, natch, I'm not about to update him.

*Snigger*

Mm? What? Time to get up?

Yeah yeah, so I overslept.

What does any sensible boofhead do when it's colder than Condoleezza Rice's smile and the days are shorter than Danny Devito? He hibernates.

So I did. I jumped into the cot and set the alarm clock for March.

Only I slept through it.

Dreams? I had a few. But not too few to mention. Best of all was the flying dream. Yeah, everyone has flying dreams. Mine was special. I was flying a Harrier Jump Jet launching missiles at a Cat Retirement Village. To paraphrase some bloke in some movie: "I love the smell of singed cat hair in the morning ... it's the smell of victory".

And a very special cheerio to Cosmo.

Be that as it may, I jumped out of the cot, took a look in the mirror, and fair pooed my jim-jams in fright. Five months in the cot can take a toll on a boofhead's appearance. So I said to the two-legged dogs, I said, "This boofhead needs a makeover".

Lo and behold, we're straight into the macchina - that's Italian for car; I hibernated with my iPod loaded with Italian language courses jammed into my oversized ears - and we're barreling down the road to see Paola.

Here I am, straight out of the hibernation cot, with Paola:


Paola's great. She kisses me every time I drop in. I try to kiss her back. She ducks. Maybe it's the big pink flapping tongue.

Paola and I usually shoot the breeze while she works her magic. She teaches me Italian, I teach her Dog. I'm winning.

So a couple of hours later, Paola's done her job, and I'm ready for summer. Even if I'm looking like Bjork with PMS:


So how did Barbra spend her winter?

Where she belongs:

Behind bars.