By Grant Jacobs • 09/04/2011 • 7

Tim Minchin’s 9-minute beat poem Storm that takes on medical ‘woo’ in an expatriate London dinner-party setting is well-known to many already, but this new cartoon presentation of it, released a few days ago, makes for good weekend viewing. (Credits: Poem written and performed by Tim Minchin. Directed and animated by DC Turner. Produced by Tracy King. See stormmovie website for further credits and details.)

The first video is the new cartoon, the second one with just the words.

(Memories are associative things. This poems brings back to me sitting next to an expatriate Australian scientist in a conference when I was a Ph.D. student in England. He had the letters DAWAF written on the palm of one hand. I asked him what the deal was and he said his wife had suggested that he do it to remind himself: Don’t Argue With Any Fools. The same problem as Minchin’s protagonist, but in a scientific conference setting.

I hope to be back to writing later this month – hang on in there, I’ll be back in force!