Hand Models Wanted

While I was strolling down the street on my way to Uni last week, I noticed a couple of very attractive pieces of hard-rubbish lying on the nature strip - two 51cm x 60cm MDF offcuts. If I clean them up and put a couple of coats of that gesso stuff on them, they'll provide very suitable surfaces for painting on.

I already have one drawing that I want to paint up, but as I was thinking about it, I inevitably came up with the idea of elaborating it (bloody subconscious) so now I'm stuck with finding eight volunteers - four male, four female - who're prepared to sit around for an hour or two while I draw various sketches of their hands.

Some token remuneration, in the form of tea (or coffee) and Tim Tams, might be offered. It will give your right hand something to do while I draw the left, and vice versa.

Why not just use my own hands, you ask? Well, the only one of those I can draw with any facility is the right one, since I'm left handed. I think that a painting of a lot of allegedly different pairs of hands which are all, in fact, the one hand variously misrepresented would lack a bit of verisimilitude.

Looking Better

Almost human in fact - give or take a little bit of leftie bias - for some reason the right side never comes out as good looking as the left side.

Leftist Subversive Mah-Jongg Circle

In all that book-sorting I've been doing over the past week or two, one very valuable little volume finally turned up - the little plain English "how to play Mah-Jongg" book.

So, given a week or so to get the house cleaned up and the dining room table cleared, it should be possible - at last - to get a social game or two happening here. It's a fairly convenient cover for our real agenda of plotting the overthrow of bourgeois democracy. Expressions of interest are cordially invited.

And if it happens to turn out from time to time that we have a few players over the four, there's a Boules set sitting around - weather permitting, surplus players can put in an end or two of Crazy Boules. That's the Aussie suburban version, where there's a bloody big clothes hoist between scratch and the jack.

Livres

- a fun game of biblioclasm for two or more players.

Playing equipment
One political pamphlet, government form or similar document. Two books per player. The books of all players should be of approximately equal size and weight.

To start play
One player screws up the pamphlet (or other document) in a tight ball and throws it across the room or other playing space. This is the jack.

The Play
Each player in turn reads a particularly egregious passage from one of his/her books, then hurls it at the jack using the hurling action described below. The game ends when all players have hurled both their books at the jack.

The hurling action
The book is held in either hand, open at the central page (or thereabouts), with the thumb resting between the pages and the index and middle fingers touching the front and back cover. Either hand may be used.

The hand is raised to the shoulder, then the book is hurled with a backhand motion, releasing the grip at the end of the arc.

Other methods of throwing the book are not permitted. A player who throws the book with any other action than the proper hurling action is disqualified from the game.

Scoring
The winner is the player whose books land closest to the jack. Scoring is as in boules or lawn bowls.