Bill Shorten v food

Just as when a cobra meets a mongoose, Bill Shorten’s encounters with food are thrilling because you can never be sure who’s going to come out of it best. Who can forget that time he took on a sausage sanger, eschewing dining orthodoxy to launch a surprise attack on its flank? It was a bit touch-and-go for a bit, but Shorten’s bit of lateral thinking ultimately won the day.

The latest episode of Bill v Food arrived on various social media platforms yesterday: a portrait of the member for Maribyrnong toiling in the kitchen, making the first school lunches of the year while a strangely baleful-looking scorch mark glares out from the wall like a cut-price Eye of Sauron. Showman that he is, Shorten raised the stakes by wearing a crisp white shirt to his duel with Vegemite, the foodstuff that best resembles grease scraped from the axle of Satan’s chariot.

The cook, the scorch...

As you behold the scene, a number of questions come to mind. Such as: Where is the splashback? And: Why Ryvita, which will lose all its crispness during its hours of buttered and Vegemited incarceration? Also: Is that Kiwi butter? Furthermore: snow peas? So many questions, all of which turn to dust the moment your eyes alight on that scorch mark.

The snag and its devourer.

That’s some burn

Once you’ve spotted it, it follows you around the room like Mona Lisa’s eyes. A carbonised Rorschach test, you can see all sorts of shapes in it the longer you stare. One moment, it’s a wind sock seen through thick smog, the next it’s a turd comet, the next it’s the ghost of one of Robert Menzies’ eyebrows, pausing on its spectral odyssey back to Kooyong. In the end, though, it’s just a burn above the stove. As for the culprit, Chloe Shorten went on Instagram to point the finger: “That would have been one of my little people a few years back and boy was that a massive lecture!” Scott Morrison’s going to have to up the ante with his next curry.

Utilising the space

When Twitter doubled its limit from 120 characters per tweet, it was feared many would simply expand to fill the newly enlarged vessel, like gas. For the benefit of those still learning the art of going long but keeping it tight, Labor MP Matt Thistlethwaite tweeted this helpful example yesterday: “Liberal MP Andrew Wallace just appeared before a House Economics Committee hearing & encouraged members of public about to give evidence to sign up to the Liberal Party. He then handed out forms. An outrageous abuse of the parliamentary committee process.” Zest, specifics, information, pacing and a dash of rage — but no flab.

Dynamo on the go

A standard question about my last book was what had inspired me to write it. My standard answer: Melbourne University Publishing’s irrepressible Louise Adler had approached me and I’d been too slow to get out of the way. Working with her was a blessing; to say her resignation yesterday came as a blow would be radically underselling it. Jon Kudelka and I just hope it wasn’t our forthcoming book that did it.

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