David Harding's Blog, page 4

The Cousin Itt Show!

Did you hear the news? Cousin Itt, of Addams Family fame, has a new show called: The Cousin Itt Show!

from Fanpop.com

Click here to listen to this amazing piece of audio entertainment!

Pizzaboxdrawcember update:

Pizza boxes drawn on in the name of all goodness and kindness and love of humanity and gorillas and dices: 7

Sunday Night Pizza Bender

Reblogged from Breezy Books:

In case you haven’t heard, something is afoot this month.

“PizzaBoxDrawcember is an age-old celebration created by David Harding last week in which participants order pizza online and ask the pizza shop to draw something awesome inside the box.”

I lifted most of those words from Chris Morphew who is also celebrating PizzaBoxDrawcember.

I’ve actually never heard of a pizza bender before, but…

Read more… 230 more words

Wow! Maddie Cochere (author and Dr Mario expert) has had a run in with the honorary mascot of this blog, Mr Gorilla Dice!
Hold onto your pizza hats, people...!

Happy Pizzaboxdrawcember!

Reblogged from Chris Morphew:

Pizzaboxdrawcember is an age-old celebration established by my cousin David Harding a few days ago in which participants order pizza online and ask the pizza place to draw something awesome on the box.

(For the record, I observe this celebration all year round, but there is something particularly special about commissioning pizza box drawings during the Pizzaboxdrawcember season.)

Tonight, I ordered pizza and requested a picture of “a gorilla playing dice”.

Read more… 87 more words

As the great Pizzaboxdrawcember fairy once said:
"Ask, and thee shall receive. Ask nicely and thee may receiveth double!"
My cousin Chris asked nicely, and received double! Congratulations for your two gold stars on the Pizzaboxdrawcember box of fame!!!

Sharing the love

The Ocksford Offishal Dicshunry defines ‘love’ as: That thing that you do when the things that you do and the people you’re with are just right.

Many people throughout history have approved of love. Ghandi once said:

Frikkin’ love one another, dudes. Peaceful as.

So, in honour of this, the season of love, the love season, I’d love to share around a bit of the love that other people have loved upon me.

Blog roll, if you please…

Maddie Cochere (author and Dr Mario lover) recently wrote about me in her blog. I love that! Now, let’s all love her back!

Click on this gorilla head to visit her post…

Brother Jon (LDS enthusiast and toileting in the woods lover) recently wrote about me in his blog! I love that! Now, let’s all love him back!

Click on the Mario to visit his post…

Christopher de Voss (zombie hunter and Pringles reviewer, also my muse and the reasons for the songs I am singing) recently wrote about me in his blog! I love that! Now, let’s all love him back!

Click on the Wil Wheaton head to visit his post…

LaLa (droopy tree owner and lover of light-up dresses) recently did NOT write a blog post about me. I was devastated but have finally pulled myself together and have decided to return the love to her anyway. After all, she did solve my lifelong question – What’s wrong with the dolly for Sue?!

Click on the Charlie Brown head to visit her post…

Lastly, sometimes families love too. Here is a post from my cousin (author and dreamer) about my brother (board gamer and frankenteen) so why not love that too?

Click on the phoenix to visit his post…

Oh, you can also hear my interview with Chris, here.

So let’s all share the love and affection that these people give to me each and every day! They are all wonderful, beautiful human beings and I mean that really very sincerely. So get off ya butts, click on these links and get jiggly with it! SHARE THE FRIKKIN’ LOVE ALREADY! WHY DO I EVEN HAVE TO SHOUT?! I LOVE THEM ALL AND YOU SHOULD TOO! LOVE THEM! NOW!!! DON’T PUT GHANDI’S WORDS IN THE BIN!

Pizzaboxdrawcember update:

Entries received (besides mine):

0

Gorilla dice pizza

Okay, so the other night my brother and cousin are over for a board game session. As we all got hungry and wanted pizza we thought we would buy some. Home delivery. We ordered the pizza through an app…

After we chose what pizzas we wanted etc., there was a small box on screen asking for any special requests or directions. My cousin suggested we ask them to draw a picture on one of the pizza boxes. Fair enough.

“Let’s get them to draw a picture of a gorilla playing dice on the box!” I said.

Our request was made and then we played the waiting game. (The least fun of all the games we played that night.)

The pizzas finally came and we flipped open each box in eager anticipation. Finally, the most glorious sight ever to be beheld by thine eyes whichsoever hath already seen some amazingeth things, brother, cameth into view!…

It is the most amazing image my eyes have ever seen. I mean, what’s an artist of that ability doing working at the local pizza emporium?

I do have two questions, though. Why is the gorilla so fat? And, why does it have such tiny pin legs? There is NO way they could support his ample frame. But whatever – beggar gorillas can’t be choosie.

In honour of Mr Gorilla, I am setting up my own special month (hey, the mustache people stole November so why can’t I steal December? It’s not like anything else is happening in this: the most boring of all months.)

It’s called PizzaBoxDrawcember! All you have to do is do what we did and get the doughboy to draw or write something on a pizza box that you have ordered to be delivered to your house with pizza inside. You can be sponsored by people and put the money towards an Italian charity of your choice. If no one wants to donate, donate yourself, ya cheapskates! (or expensive rollerblades, the Italians aren’t picky.)

Hey, you could even email, tweet or instagram me the results and I will have a prize and blog love for the best entrant! (I can do it on the 31st – there’s nothing else on then.)

SO ENJOY PIZZABOXDRAWCEMBER AND SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT IT AND YOU TOO MAY EARN YOURSELF A BEAUTIFUL PRIZE WHILE YOU RAISE AWARENESS FOR ITALIAN PROBLEMS IN THE WORLD AND ONE DAY YOU’LL BE FAMOUS FOR HAVING TAKEN PART IN THE INAUGURAL PIZZABOXDRAWCEMBER!!!

Florence takes the lead

My shameless plug post o’ the month.

In September I posted about a book I wrote, Animal Tales 8: Race to the Finish. It’s time, people, for my second book in the series to be released! Welcome book 10: Florence Takes the Lead!

It’s a great little series (I’m not biased at all) about Ben and Cassie who have animal-related adventures (and learn a little bit along the way.) The deeper issue explored in book 8 was the hard life of greyhounds, during and after racing, Florence explores the inhumane methods often found on pig farms.

The challenge in writing these books was to make the stories fun and engaging while looking at tough stuff, and to make the issues relevant to kids. They were fun to write and I was able to add in some groovy Easter eggs (even if I’m the only person who will find them.) For example, while writing the book, my two year old was obsessed with a 50s Disney cartoon, Paul Bunyan, about the big guy with the axe. I needed to call the country town in the book something, and I settled on Bunyan. I thought it sounded just like an Australian country town!

Florence Takes the Lead is available now in Australian book shops and online, as well as an ebook for Kindle, Google/Android and iBooks.

Click here to visit the book’s page on the Random House Books Australia website.

Bonus Feature:

Here is Google Books’ word cloud from the book. Read this for a fast (but a little confusing) summary of the story!

Extra Bonus Feature:

Also out now is a series of four books: Stories for 5/6/7/8 Year Olds, also published by Random House. These books feature short stories by some of Australia’s most famous children’s writers, including Andy Griffiths, Morris Gleitzman, Paul Jennings, Jacqueline Harvey, RA Spratt, Deb Abela and Tristan Bancks. Oh! And I have a story in there too! In Stories for 6 Year Olds. It’s called No hat, no play! and it is easily the best one too! (And I’m not biased at all!)

Dear Jh

Recently, I allowed my wife Jh (not a pseudonym) the opportunity to ask me any questions she wished. If you missed it, you can read that Q&A here.Last night I returned the favour, and asked her the following questions. Her answers are complete and unedited.

Hi, what’s your best feature?

I’d have to say my deep brown eyes. Either that or my punching fist…

And what’s my best feature?

Your stinking BLOG!

What is your favourite feature film?

Rankin Bass’ 1960′s all time classic: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

What is your best, cleverest ability that I may or may not know about?

Last night I dreamed that you put a pair of pants on Bart and he couldn’t do a poo.

Interesting! So, what was it that most attracted me to you?

I was feisty!

If you could do anything, what would you do and why?

I would go to a 5 star hotel, without kids OR husband, and I would run a big bath with bubbles etc and watch some stupid chick flick while devouring something yummy like the best choc fudge sundae you can imagine (or should I say, the best one I can imagine). Why? Isn’t that obvious?

Name a memory you have of me that stands out.

When you made blow faces on windows, before we were going out, to “impress” me.

If we never met, you would have…

Become a spinster and worked at the local library – “Mary! Mary! Mary it’s George, don’t you know me?! What’s happened to us?! Don’t do this to me please Mary! Help me! Where are our kids? I need you Mary!!!” – tissues please! (I may need to change my answer to number 3…)

Describe yourself as an animal.

I am most like a koala, because I like to sit around and take it easy and, of course, I give birth to live young!

Canary chicken or bottomless giraffe?

Giraffe, bottom or no, would be too gamey for me so I will have the canary chicken, with a side of ‘slaw please.

* Bart is the name of one of our cats.

 

Our first photo. She was 16, I was 17. She had braces, I had a shaved head. Also I liked trying to rip her head off. And the rest, as they say, is ‘istory.

The tale of the pig and the bun

The following is an example of my firm writing powers…

So there was this pig (not halal) who ate lobster (not kosher). Day after day he would eat lobster. He couldn’t get enough. He really, really liked lobster so, so much. This pig – lobster was his favourite!

‘Arr, he be loving the lobsters, he be,’ chuckled Farmer Bluebeard.

Look! Do you get the fricking point about the stinking lobsters yet?! I’m not talking about this again! I’ve wasted long enough on this already!

So… the pig (who loved eating lobsters), used to hang out with his friend Mr Belvedere (halal) on Friday nights to play cards, gorilla dice, and drink warm sangria (and eat lobsters too – the pig loved them.) One particular Friday, Mr Belvedere pulled back on his lobster’s back and cracked it backwards. Then he stretched across the table and whispered into his pig friend’s ear. ‘Pardon me, pig,’ he said, ‘but do you have any more tartare sauce?’

The pig squealed. ‘Of course I do! I eat so much of it, my blood is practically tartare!’

Then Mr Belvedere squealed. ‘Ooh! Gimme, gimme, gimme!’

So the pig (not kosher) passed his sauce past Mr Belvedere’s eyes and into his palm. His sticky, sweaty palm (not halal).

Mr B drank the sauce hard and fast like a real man should and then rolled the dice.

‘Hey, whatcha doin’ ya pig faced jerk?’ snorted the pig. ‘We haven’t started gorilla dice yet!’

‘Chill out, ya jerk faced pig,’ snorted Mr Belvedere, ‘I’m just practising! Keep your truffles on!’

The pig was so offended, he grabbed the bun that he was saving for dessert and took a bite as steam rose out of his gigantic nostrils.

Unfortunately, the bread product was laced with anthrax and the pig died. Mr Belvedere laughed and proceeded to win at gorilla dice.

The pig…



…And his pig faced killer.

And what, aspiring writers, do we learn from this?

It’s not about the ending, but the journey,
Pigs aren’t edible in many cultures,
The pig in the story ate like a pig, and this is what good writers do – they make parallels that make the reader go ‘oh, how clever was that, I wish I was David Harding who has a new book out on Monday that everyone better buy.’

The Fan

Please to be enjoying this play I wrote, directed and starred in, yes?

It is called ‘The Fan.’

CLICK ON THESE WORDS HEAR TO HERE IT.

The magic of Thanksgiving

I have celebrated four (4) Thanksgivings in Americar.* I believe that should qualify me as an expert. So, what’s it all about, dogs?

No, it’s not about dogs, you cats. (And it’s not about cats, you turkeys.) It’s about turkeys, you morons!

Turkeys! The scariest birds you will ever meet carried by a CLOWN towards you in the DARK!

Turkeys! Smarter than the average GOOSE!

Turkeys! They taste like big CHICKEN!

Turkeys! The food that taught me all about racial HARMONY with its meat that comes in BOTH ebony and ivory styles!

Turkeys! The THING that you eat before PIE!

It’s a day when you should give thanks! In fact, the day should really be called Givingthanks, but George Washington had DYSLEXIA! Similarly, Christmas (when we celebrate when the wisemen first weighed baby Jesus) should be called Maschrist, and New Year’s Eve should be called Eve’s New Year (the coming of age story about sweet girl Eve and the day she meets spider monkey trainer Terry.)

According to a dictionary I found at a bus stop, thanksgiving means: Giving the thanks for the things and the stuff and the things that you thankfully love and respect thankful for thanks.

Finally, I have written an acrostic poem just for YOU!

Turkeys live in

Hawaii which is near

Australia. Ha ha ha, just kidding,

No it isn’t.

Knife the turkey in the meaty

Flesh surrounding its bones.

Unbelievable! I cannot believe how much I

Love nachos!

So be THANKFUL all you TURKEYS and never forget that George WASHINGTON had DYSLEXIA!

* And one of them was at Denny’s which makes me a real Americern.