61.

I’m not a hero

But I like to dress like one

When I’m all alone

62.

A wonderful thing

To look back on life and say

I was never bored

63.

Suddenly I woke

And found that it had all been

A reality

64.

Why be serious

When laughter is more honest

And more beautiful

65.

Hostile hospitals

House hospitable hosts who

Hoist hosed hostels

66.

Is swearing clever?

Is swearing necessary?

Yes it fucking is

67.

She has a great laugh

He has a funny story

Is this a romance?

68.

Here’s an empty page

Pristine white and virgin pure

I draw a penis

69.

I wrote poems to her

When we were both in high school

Never again though…

70.

As they’re making love

She’s crying because she knows

This is the last time

I made a stupid macro-image thing. It’s a delicious collision of cranky sarcasm, clumsy irony and poor computer skills all in the one delightful thing. Enjoy…

Ad-dolt: Someone who is old enough to own a credit card but dumb enough to believe advertising.

Amuso: a musician who writes funny songs.

Cataloguing: when we have chopped down all the trees and have to start chopping down the cows.

Genteel: a chivalrous water snake.

Halloween: the greeting given to a baby who has just stopped drinking breast milk.

Mandate: when two guys can go out and a majority of the population approves.

Methane: how an English speaking caveman with a lisp attests to his state of mind.

National Trust: when your partner moves interstate for business and you assume they won’t cheat on you.

Pedagogue: to stare in disbelief at someone’s feet.

Platitude: something exhibited when a platypus gets all uppity.

Platitude (2): saying thank you when someone gives you a platypus.

Platitudor: a trite remark to a 16th century Englishman.

Plaititude: a seemingly original, but somehow empty compliment about someone’s new haircut.

Prattitude: A trite remark delivered in an offensive “Asian” voice, making the sayer look like an idiot.

Polygamist: someone who marries more than one parrot.

Sar-chasm: The awkward pause between someone making a joke and someone understanding a joke.

Sex drive: when a car mounts the curb

51.

If I had 10 cents

For every great thing I’ve done

I’d have 7 cents

52.

Decontaminate

Pseudo-intellectual

Refrigerators!

53.

A murder of crows

Sometimes a crow is a crow

Not a bad omen

54.

When I die please use

My lifeless body to play

A practical joke

55.

Nothing better than

A nice, big slap-up breakfast

And there’s nothing worse

56.

More news, more ideas

More theories, more opinions

More ignored. Less time.

57.

There’s nothing sadder

Than a sad old man crying

Into his hanky

58.

A good poo is like

Great anal sex with yourself

Many disagree

59.

She’s looking at me

I look up. She looks away.

I’m looking at her

60.

Punch the warlords with

The paci-fist of fury

And some snide remarks

This Saturday at 2pm at the Bella Union Bar in Trades Hall I will perform my song, “You Make Me Feel” with the Uke4Kids Ensemble as part of the Melbourne Ukulele Festival. The details are HERE.

This is a great honour for me and I would like to thank Uke4Kids, especially their organzers Yanai and Dassana. Yanai is a very talented musician, teacher and songwriter, and he conducts the group and arranges their songs. It is an immense compliment to me that he added one of my tunes to his program.

I love the ukulele. I bought my first one in 1985 with $24 of my own money and it is that very ukulele that I used over 25 years later to record You Make Me Feel for 2011’s “The Man Who Broke His Own Heart” album. There is a comfort and warmth to the plink plunkiness of a ukulele’s fishing line strings that infuses a song with charm and honesty. It is not an instrument one can hide behind. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the ukulele is the door to the heart.

I cannot speak highly enough of the Uke4Kids program, which goes out to schools to teach ukulele to groups of primary school students. If it had been around in my time I would have cheerfully thrown my recorder in the bin and begged my parents to allow me to play the ukulele instead. The recorder is a spectacularly useless instrument to teach to children, especially as an introduction to making music. Cheap school recorders sound like shrill tuneless prizes pulled from cheap Christmas crackers and when humourless music teachers force this dour instrument onto young people it must kill the joy of music inside them, like dropping a government building on a unicorn. The ukulele is the antidote to this. Ukuleles are cheap and come in an array of fashion colours. Some have dots and stars on them. And there is room to put stickers on them. Or draw on them. Or whatever. But the main thing the ukulele has all over the recorder is that children can play a ukulele to accompany themselves while they sing. Most children don’t want to play music, they want to play songs. The ukulele allows them to become tiny troubadours – they can learn songs off the radio and play them and sing them and they will be recognizable. Or they can write their own songs and play them. This is very empowering.

When I was about 7, someone gave me an old guitar and I taught myself how to play it. My hands were too small to make the shapes necessary for the harder chords so I took the bottom two strings off the guitar. This essentially turned it into a giant ukulele as the intervals and finger positions are the same. And the simplicity – four strings and four fingers – opens up more achievable music to someone who is starting out. The ukulele can be percussively strummed or thoughtfully soloed upon. And it is the gateway to the skills needed to play the guitar. The only thing a recorder is the gateway to is making a decent noise on that whistle that comes with your lifejacket should you happen to find yourself in a plane crash.

On Saturday I rehearsed with a group of about 15 Uke4Kids students. They played my song, and a bunch of others from Guns ‘n’ Roses to They Might Be Giants. And they achieved that rarest of rare feats when teaching music to children: they were both entertained and entertaining.

Uke4Kids perform at the Melbourne Ukulele Festival (with me on guest vocals)

Uke4Kids official website and more information