Rufus:
Unless you have already fallen under the power of Rufus, you will not understand THE AWESOME of this concert. I will content myself with the comment that watching grown men in dinner suits leaping and prancing and tumbling about the stage like sprained acrobats, or truckies given their first taste of choreography, while Rufus sings Judy Garland in cabaret drag? Is All The Good Evah.
I will also add that "Between My Legs" is a damn catchy tune — and not particularly socially acceptable to sing random snatches of in public. Although it's not the absolute worst song you could sing in public — that honour would have to belong to DAAS, closely followed by Radiohead.
Melbourne Zoo:
Two words: Present Backside!
That's right. EVERY SINGLE ANIMAL at the zoo saw us coming and turned away from the camera. At the start, we managed to catch some face as well as some backside, but by the end of the day, word had clearly spread, and the blasted creatures had their backs to us almost before we even reached their enclosure. We'd almost entirely given up on the cameras by this point, but apparently even that wasn't sufficient. Even the giant tortoise managed to turn his back, which is seriously hard-core.
Photographic evidence:
Tess tells me that I should stop claiming particular animals are my favourite, because apparently you can only have one favourite. It's in the dictionary or something, she says. I maintain I'm allowed a favourite from every genus at minimum, but she says that's quibbling.
All of which is to say, I will not list all my favourites here, and will content myself (due to the majority of my photographs being of this critter) in saying that meerkats clearly rock. (There were a whole lot of photos of the bear as well, but that was because I was passing the time while Tess sorted out a camera malfunction, as much as anything.) So, meerkats. Do they have the largest hearts in the entire animal kingdom?
You cannot see his tail in this photo, but it is stumpy because his mother chewed it off. I forget why. Melinda tells me the perpetrator has been disciplined accordingly, and this practice is neither condoned nor permitted at the zoo any longer, so there are also meerkats with intact tails. They didn't look any less pensive though.
Finally, the Australiana section of Melbourne Zoo has some serious Bermuda Triangle qualities. It is easy to enter, but not so easy to escape. It is worth daring, however, because it contains the Great Flight Aviary, where we saw a brolga killing (by means of spine-breaking shaking and drowning, for good measure) a mouse. We were also chased through said Aviary by the largest pigeon I've ever seen. It had red eyes, and cooed like it wanted to eat our souls. Zombie Pigeon!
The Australiana section also boasts an amusing and bemusing literary bent: almost everywhere you turn you will find artfully rusting structures painted or engraved with … surrealist poetry. I kid you not.
No, I have no idea either.
