i drew this

Reverse QR

2010-03-18T12:20:00.002+10:30

They don't work in reverse.

Holga TLR

2010-03-05T09:46:00.001+10:30

Leaky

2010-02-19T14:03:00.001+10:30

Xmas candle holder

2009-12-25T17:52:00.001+10:30

I made this in kindergarten.

Radioactive salt

2009-10-01T18:07:00.001+09:30

Moon

2009-09-04T18:52:00.002+09:30

Taken with camera phone, using digital zoom in heavy traffic. So the photo itself is crap but I've never seen the moon look so amazing.

Holes

2009-08-13T19:43:00.001+09:30

Port Adelaide

2009-08-08T18:47:00.001+09:30

Rainbow from the bus

2009-07-15T14:49:00.001+09:30

The toast is finished

2009-05-08T07:31:00.001+09:30

Sunset at brighton

2009-01-31T20:13:00.001+10:30

Selfish cow

2008-12-10T17:49:00.001+10:30

So special

2008-11-18T17:29:00.001+10:30

<p>Looks like a DIY job. But who would do that and be seen in public?

Gosa Slan

2008-11-13T18:00:00.001+10:30

It's Swedish for lying happily in a pool of your own vomit.

Warning

2008-10-23T19:58:00.001+10:30

It's only 3 feet off the ground.

On the walk home.

2008-10-15T22:15:00.003+10:30

Council need to do some footpath maintenance, but I thought this looked really beautiful.

20D pinhole test

2008-08-14T16:05:00.000+09:30

Train

2008-06-12T17:51:00.001+09:30

Pot hanging from a bus

2008-05-23T17:36:00.001+09:30

Non-flush

2008-03-14T17:19:00.000+10:30

So, am I s'posed to piss <em>on </em>the cube?

War

2008-02-11T17:33:00.001+10:30

In the food court

2008-02-08T13:43:00.001+10:30

Um... Just a couple of spring rolls, thanks.

In the toilet

2008-02-07T13:57:00.001+10:30

Is that Nicole Cornes?

The kid everyone wants to punch

2008-02-01T17:35:00.001+10:30

Thirsty

2008-01-09T18:46:00.000+10:30

Tit

2007-10-13T15:09:00.001+09:30

Suggestive toilet hardware.

Getting old

2007-08-31T23:25:00.001+09:30

I wonder how a 20 year old would look at this scene. The hardcore clubber or the grassroots live music junkie... They must just cringe. Suiting up and looking cool: that's something I do well at my age. Dancing to bad Simon & Garfunkle covers just takes all the dignity out of it.

Personalised instructions

2007-08-20T00:26:00.001+09:30

I'm very impressed with the level of service at Ikea these days. I mean, supplying me with instructions is one thing but going that extra step and including a picture of me in them... Now that is how to make a customer feel special.

Late friday sun

2007-08-17T17:28:00.001+09:30

The grammar olympics

2007-08-09T10:57:00.001+09:30

Recently spotted at a protest outside Parliament House

Apply butter

2007-07-27T21:52:00.001+09:30

The grim reaper going to work

2007-07-27T10:06:00.001+09:30

This was there yesterday

2007-07-25T08:18:00.001+09:30

Pure art

2007-07-14T16:43:00.001+09:30

I thought I was being original with my little red circle thingy but as I found out yesterday when I picked up Little Miss L from child care, it's the kind of thing any four-year-old can come up with.

But now that I think about it, that was point.

Plate

2007-07-09T10:45:00.001+09:30

It had biscuits on it.

Moved on

2006-09-21T10:00:00.000+09:30

Right. If anyone's looking for me, I'll be over here.

flogger

2006-08-31T23:15:00.000+09:30

Blogger's being a right shit at the moment so there will be no more content till I sort it out. Oh, to be one of those rich bloggers with their own hosting, domain and MT.

go AWAy

2006-08-29T20:47:00.000+09:30

I was offered an AWA today. By email no less. Which, when you think about it, puts AWAs right up there with cheap Viagra, p3n1s ext3nsi0ns and 'Hot $lut5 in your inbox'.

Bung!

2006-08-27T20:44:00.000+09:30

Call it a sign of the times, if you will but this is... I don't know... perhaps the beginning of the end of civilised society as we know it. It's a story of such import and magnitude, I can't believe the ABC hasn't picked it up. Still, the less processed offal our kids eat...

Boomtown

2006-08-23T11:58:00.000+09:30

Goodness, how exciting! I work in the CBD and at the moment, I think I'm prohibited from leaving my building. Down the road at 55 Currie St, the bomb squad has been called after a suspicious package was delivered. I tried to ring a friend, who, I think, works in that building but she's not answering. I think I'll just sit back and wait for the boom. More updates as they come to hand. Later... It turned out to be a box of brochures and, typically, the one time I actually want to be current with this, blogger fucks up and still won't publish

10 Across. Something new to read

2006-08-17T21:48:00.000+09:30

In the days before blogging was even a twinkle in the internet's eye, I used to keep a journal. Interesting expression: 'keep' a journal. Why is it something you keep? Hmm, it's probably lost a previous meaning more akin to 'upkeep'. Sorry, tangent. I used to have a series of spiral-bound notebooks that I used to write stuff in. It wasn't great stuff. It was sort of free-form poetry, I guess, though calling it poetry was a bit of a stretch. It was sometimes personal but sometimes just complete random rubbish, such as this entry about mayonnaise.

I love the mayonnaise they have in England You just can't get the same stuff over here I love the way it blends right in with chicken Yum, yum.

Killer, huh? Sometimes, I'd be stuck for anything to write, so I used to look in books for little writing exercises. Fun and challenging things you could do to get the imagination lubed up and doing lubey things. Sorry, that sounds disgusting. I'll try to do better. Anyway, they were fun and sometimes I'd write something that would make me smile, or chuckle to myself. And that was enough because there was no comments box down the bottom; I only had myself to please. As I was sitting on the toilet taking a crap earlier, I was on a bizarre train of thought that travelled through the following places.

I should really stay with my current employer for a few more years so I can get my long service leave
What am I going to do on my long service leave? Shouldn't I have a project?
I should write a novel on my long service leave
I should be preparing ideas for the novel what I'm going to write during my long service leave
How do you structure a novel?
Narratives written in a purely linear structure are clichéd and often boring. Real life isn't linear, like a straight line; our lives intersect with each other in a complex, random and unpredictable fashion. Events themselves are not connected but are linked by meanings relative to our personal and collective experience. Life isn't a series of cause-and-effect happenings; sometimes our lives are just made up of stuff that happens. No characters should be two-dimensional. All people are complex individuals with their own hopes, dreams, motivations, fears and sexual preferences. People's real stories don't just bumble along from A to Z, there are intersections with other characters and events
Real stories are more like crossroads
No, they're like crossword puzzles
Hey, yeah.. Crossword puzzles
Let's see, every word is a person. Long words are main characters that span the length or height of the puzzle. Short words are minor characters. Where they cross, something happens between those two people. You can work from left to right, or from top to bottom, or from top-left to bottom-right
My book could be called Times Cryptic N^o 4378
You could write a series of novels named after different crosswords and you'd develop a cult following of people who look to the crossword for explanations of what's really going on in the book
Let's refine this a bit. Every horizontal line is a character. Some characters last the length of the novel, others are there at the start, turn up again in the middle or at the end. Vertical lines are events that happen to the characters they intersect with. Some events happen to all characters at the same time; others happen to only a few, or even one
You could use the words from the actual solution of the puzzle as themes, places or devices within the novel itself
I should try to write a short story, as practice, using this approach
Now if I can only solve an entire Times Cryptic, I'll be ready for my long service leave. I have a few years up my sleeve. I'm sure to solve a whole one before then.

The aura of new stuff

2006-08-10T14:42:00.000+09:30

My colleague over the fence, so to speak, is having her monitor replaced. The IT guy is taking away her CRT and putting in a lovely new flat thing. I'm in no way involved in the removal/installation process. But I've very close by and there's this part of me that just wants to stand around and watch. Just to be a part of the shiny newness and the up-to-datedness of the technology. And basically to covet that shiny, new, flat monitor as it sits atop her desk, gleaming in the florescence, transforming the entire workspace into something modern, neat, shiny (did I say shiny already?) and shiny. I can't help but covet shiny new computery things because I am a boy. That means I like shiny new toys, especially ones that are made of plastic and silicone and have lots of slots and places to plug other things in. Toys that I can watch, listen to, interact with, control. Do stuff with. It also means that I like any toys that are better than the ones I have now. My stuff at work is pretty nice; it gets updated every few years. But my home PC still has a 15" monitor and the HD is full to bursting. And while it has some shiny new bits in it that let me do cool things like backup old Hi8 movies to DVD, its outward appearance is not shiny at all. Dull, you might say. And because there are so many people here that have shiny new stuff, and people being given shiny new monitors mere feet from where I sit, I think 'Surely there must be a shiny new 19" flat shiny monitor that I could just, y'know, take and use at home. Or, failing that, a slightly-less-shiny and not-quite-so-new CRT that is bigger (and perhaps slightly shinier) than the one I have at home. I offered the IT guy 20 bucks for it but he just ignores me now.

Picture this

2006-08-07T13:03:00.000+09:30

I'm not doing too well at the whole regular-posting thing. But to explain, since the vomit situation cleared up, I've been busy with work and with being a bit bored with winter to be arsed writing anything. I have to be in a certain mood, conducive to creativity before I can write anything I deem worthy of clicking 'publish' for. And for me, the finale of BB06 just wasn't fodder enough for me be bothered turning on the PC, let alone a dissertation on why the voting demographic favours pretty boys over feisty girls. I have been meaning to write about my new camera. It's a Canon S80. Niftly little compact thing coming in at 8mpx. I got in on insurance after dropping my S40. I was going to write about how I didn't like it; how I felt a bit cheated when it said the minimum focusing distance was 10 cm or something, only to find out it's only that short at 28mm. As soon as you zoom in even a little bit, it jumps out to like 40 cm. Then, a few days later, I was going to write about how I did like it, after I discovered one of the preset modes, which is digital macro. It basically puts the camera in macro mode and uses the digital zoom instead of the optical zoom, so I can still do the close up macro stuff I enjoy taking. And I know there's obviously going to be a loss in quality but I figure they've at least gone some way to give us the option of taking extreme close up stuff. Also, becasue it's an 8mpx camera, I can shoot at full-res, zoom into 2x and still get something that is probably better than I could have shot with my 4mpx model. I'm still kicking myself though, that I didn't think to trade in my SLR and see if I could work up to a 20D (or even a 350D). Kick. Ouch. Kick. Ouch. (Note to self: don't kick me in the sore ankle). But then, I thought maybe I could still manage that (trading up, not kicking myself), as just this weekend it started doing weird shit. When the dial was on Auto, the camera showed auto. But when the dial in P mode, the camera wanted to be in TV mode. Dial in TV = camera in TV. Dial in AV = camera in AV. Dial in M = camera in TV. Dial in C = camera in TV. Dial in Scene mode = camera in scene mode. Dial in stitch mode = camera in stitch mode. Dial in movie mode = camera dies on the spot without even retracting the lens and won't start up again until the battery has been taken out, replaced and dial moved to a position other than movie mode. But then, bugger me if it didn't start working perfectly again last night. Still, think I might ring the camera shop and see what their policy is on refunding insurance jobs and trading up. But then I wonder if I could really do a DSLR justice cos they're so big and cumbersome and if C wants to go and take pictures, a compact is easier for her. Indeed, that's why I chose the S80 over the other one I could have had, can't remember the model but it was about the same size as a Canon G-series. I take a camera with me everywhere and something this size is a bit more manageable and means I don't have to lug around a whole kit. But then I'm sure I could get more work on the side if I was digital. I have to admit, though I know what I'm doing with my film SLR, the whole instant feedback thing is very comforting when people are paying you to come up with the goods. What I need to do is to find a couple of grand lying in the gutter and use that to buy a new DSLR, while keeping the compact. Righto... off to search the gutters of Adelaide.

Shit on mine

2006-07-28T17:29:00.000+09:30

I haven't been working for the last couple of days. And by 'working', I mean I haven't been sitting at work drinking coffee and surfing the net. The term really is rather inaccurate insofar as when we say "I'm going to work," we imply that staying at home does not connote the concept of doing any. This is clearly false, as anyone who has children will tell you. Sick children. Most of the vomiting happened on Wednesday. But Thursday morning also brought a few hurls from the girls. Actually, it was only from one girl but I couldn't make that rhyme quite as well. The other girl had finished hurling by this stage. Not sure if it's worse to have sick children concurrently, or consecutively. Yesterday, Little Miss L was mostly stroppy or floppy. She was asking for things that I just wasn't game to give her. Milk. It makes you phlegmy (phlegmatic?) and makes you want to hurl. Not that you really want to. Especially when you're three. Or thirty-three (not that I am, but I could be) She pepped up a bit later on in the day and I found myself giving her things I wouldn't normally give her: Barley sugar, lollipops. Under the circs, it's about the only thing you can give her without her hurling. So she came good. We went outside and kicked a ball around. And last night it seemed she was out of the woods. This morning, I was giving them breakfast. Little Miss M was at the table with me; Little Miss L was behind me at the breakfast bar. I had given her a drink of milo and suddenly heard liquid spilling on the counter and dripping onto the floor. I thought she'd spilled it ,then turned around. "I was sure this pool of chocolate vomit wasn't here before," I was heard to say... And don't get me started on runny poo.

Shit on Nine

2006-07-21T10:47:00.000+09:30

Now, as a general rule, I can't stand watching Channen nine. I find their flagship current affairs show more offensive than... oh, I don't know; nothing else really offends me that much. Their news (and I'm talking about the "parochial, yeah we're parochial" Adelaide variety) sets a benchmark as a basic minimum (sub)standard of news reporting that some regional stations would have trouble dropping to. Everyone on the network I think must have a big injection of smug when they're employed. They're just so bloody smug. Ray, Jamie and that ocker carpenter bloke, and Catriona... sheesh! And their website doesn't even come up properly in Firefox, because all their visitors are no doubt paying through the nose for broadband with Telstra and all use IE because, bless 'em, they just don't realise they have a choice so it doesn't matter. I'm glad that at last they're having to work a bit harder to get the ratings they've had in recent years. (I mean, ice skating with people from other TV shows? Maybe in the USA, where they actually have winter and ice and shit but they'd have done better in Australia to have a different media personality come on TV each week and punch Normie Rowe in the face.) But I just found out from Bruce that Penn & Teller's Bullshit is airing on Tuesday nights at 10.30 (not that any network screens their fucking shows on time these days. Is this just to screw with people setting their VCR/PVRs?). Of course, Penn & Teller aren't really well known in Australia so probably nobody will watch it and it'll just disappear from screens, which is standard policy for channel nine if a show isn't pulling its weight, rating-wise. Still, even a couple of eps is better than none. And we've still got Penn podcasts on pennradio.com. Teller's radio show is slightly less, umm... audible. While I'm on the subject. I saw Penn & Teller at Sadler's Wells theatre in London ten years ago. I saw Penn the next day in Greenwich and asked him for his autograph (thing to do when you're young and impressed by tall, famous magician/bass players). The pen didn't work (good pun there somewhere) and then when we got it working, it was just this scrawly bit of scribble because he didn't really have anything to lean the bit of paper on. I think it was an ATM receipt or some paper stock of equal quality. I don't think I still have it. I probably found it in a few days later, looked at it and thought "What's this ATM receipt with a bit of scribble on it doing in my wallet?" Still, if you ever needed to forge Penn Jillette's signature, just scribble on a scrap of paper with a not-really-working pen and you're pretty much there.

Incidentally...

2006-07-11T11:50:00.000+09:30

The Big Brother 'incident' was shown on Today Tonight last night. Now I'm just going to sit here and wait for a swathe of conservative politicians to issue statements demanding that this 'filth' be taken off air immediately. Just over here... Waiting... ...

Big Brother v. the thought police

2006-07-03T13:47:00.000+09:30

It seems it doesn't take much to raise the ire of the baby-boomer, "family-values" conservative politicians. When it does get raised, as it seems to have been following the latest notable happenings on Big Brother, we see the typical knee-jerk reactions you'd expect from media-hungry pollies with an axe to grind and a constituency of like-minded potential voters to placate. Ms. Smack has cited a source as to the nature of the incident which saw two contestants removed from Big Brother. I make no claims as to the veracity of the depiction of the incident. Her source made claims as to what action would be taken by Channel 10/Endemol (sometime Saturday night by the sounds of it) that have not eventuated. The description of the incident should therefore be taken as hearsay. I can't confirm Ms. Smack's (or her source's) account of what transpired but it is conceivable, believable and, true or not, certainly puts into context the ensuing events. Two points though. Politicians should not be screaming for BB to be removed because this happened. It wasn't shown on television. True, it was broadcast on the internet but I'm told there's a lot worse shown on the internet. Also, from the stills I've seen it's hard to tell exactly what was going on. It's not extactly HDTV streaming. Second, when something like this does happen, why blame the TV show for merely being there? As has been revealed, the actions of the contestants concerned breached the rules of the show and the breach was dealt with accordingly by the show's producers. Police are taking no action on review of the evidence. So why shoot the messenger? No one's screaming to have the news taken off because they show people firing guns and potentially murdering innocent people? While BB is primarily for entertainment value, surely it has documentary value also. Aren't the pollies missing the bigger picture here? What goes on in a microcosm is always going to be a reflection of what goes on at a macro level. If two guys are engaging in a bit of sausage slapping, when they know they're being watched by any number of cameras 24/7, what does this say about the culture in which some males think this is an okay thing to do? And what else is going on in the minds and bedrooms of seemingly normal people all over the country who know they aren't having their every move monitored by a full TV crew? Why aren't the pollies citing statistics or studies on violent or sexual acts against women (or children, homosexuals, battered husbands for that matter) that go unreported because the victims concerned are either helpless (in a my-word-against-their-word way) or otherwise believe for whatever reason that behaviour like this is somehow acceptable? The TV show shouldn't be held accountable for somehow harming society. It should be commended for revealing deeper issues, cultural mores and trends that are evident, if not prevalent, in society. Personally, I'm not worried about a TV show depicting something as it really happened. That's what reality TV is all about. (Big surprise folks: reality has an ugly side!) I'm more worried about current affairs shows, for their constant skewing of a story to maximise outrage and ratings; polarisation of issues; the depiction of disputing neighbours as comedy figures; the implicit judgment handed down on any number of small business people by the deliberate blurring of the line between the failing to meet industry best-practice and the intention to commit fraud. Blatant breaches of laws, morals or community standards are always black and white. Newspapers are printed in black and white. The two go together. So it's the blatant breaches, the most heinous crimes, the biggest robberies and the worst refereeing decisions that are going to grab headlines. But what about the unnoticed bending of the rules, the spin-doctoring, the ever-so-slight manipluation of facts in an insidious attempt to sway opinions of people who don't even realised they're being influenced to reach a certain conclusion or adopt a certain viewpoint? A lot of what's in the media is blatant propaganda as journos and producers try to get their point across in an attempt to sway public opinion. BB is perhaps one of the only shows that, sponsorships aside, just shows people not trying to sell us something.

Penalty

2006-06-27T02:36:00.000+09:30

I don't know what to say. But not in the way you think I don't know what to say. There are so many things that the Aus v Ita result brings to mind. That everything from here on in is a cliché, that sport really brings out the ugliest in people, whether it's in victory or defeat, and that now we have to endure the overblown aftermath of the bandwagon crashing at full speed. I really don't like sport. I used to play Australian rules football and didn't like the kind of person it was turning me into, so I stopped. I remember watching games as a teenager, being on the edge of my seat, yelling at the TV and lashing out in frustration when things didn't go my team's way. Then I woke up to how pointless it was. When there's 12 or 16 teams in a competition, come the end of the season it's a pretty large proportion of people who are going to be disappointed. I do like playing sport though, and apart from the physical benefits of it, for me sport became a mostly mental exercise, an exercise in getting over myself. I used to taunt the opposition, give lip and make snide comments. Then I realised I didn't like being that kind of person. It became a pursuit of being able to disconnect myself from the situation, an exercise in self-control and being in my own head and rather than concentrating on 'the game', concentrating purely on the execution of the manoeuvres I was performing. Sport should be about skill; not about rivalry. Have you ever seen the T-shirts they sell on The Onion? They have this great knack of distilling a message to its basic rhetorical structure, a method of comedy (or parody, I think) that I find rather clever and amusing. Anyway, there was one that said "The sporting team from my area is superior to the sporting team from your area." It kind of sums up the pointlessness of anyone supporting a team. I mean, so what if it's the Australian team? I don't know Mark Viduka any better than I know David Beckham or that Brazilian player that looks like Coco from Fame. So for me to support Australia is rather silly. I know someone who once knew someone who played for Italy, so really, I should have been supporting them when you think about the connections we have to the teams we follow. That said, I'm not going to stop watching world cup matches now. Coming up over the next week and a bit is going to be some of the best football anyone is going to see for the next four years, and even if Australia had lost against Uruguay, I'd still be looking forward to a lot less sleep over the same period because this is one of the few sports I enjoy watching. But I don't enjoy the news coverage; I don't enjoy the interviews with countless experts saying the same inane things over and over; I don't enjoy the attitude of fans, gloating in victory and becoming bitter (or blaming the ref) in defeat. I don't want to face work tomorrow knowing that some people are going to do one and some people are going to be doing the other. Sure, I'm having my own little rant about it here but I'm not accosting people in the office kitchen making them listen to me. And though I say I don't care, what I think I hate the most was that my heart was racing when that penalty hit the back of the net. So to qualify my earlier comment, I don't hate sport. I just don't like the fans. Or some of the players (yeah, the kind of players I used to be like). I'm going to keep watching world cup games but just not tell anyone about it because I think fans are what really ruin sport for me, so I just don't want to be one. I miss running (damn ankle). Non-comptetive running, when it's just you, the road, and whatever's banging around in your head at the time. Now that is sport.

Siccer

2006-06-19T15:36:00.000+09:30

A lot of people are really jumping on the world cup band wagon. I kind of am but then I'm not really. For starters, you may notice I didn't even capitalise it. Also, I would have been watching it anyway even if Australia weren't in it (as many 1st-generation Australians would be: cheering on the countries of their parents' birth). I don't really think Australia can win and I'm not sure I want them to. They should make the next round though and that's fine with me. However, the one thing I did do last week to get in the spirit of the tournament was to grow my tonsils till they were the size of soccer balls and I don't think many fans around the country, nay... the world, have shown that kind of commitment. Slackarses, the lot of you.

I might catch 40 winks now

2006-06-15T16:37:00.000+09:30

Being home, sick has its good points. You get to sleep a lot, take painkillers, doze, watch bad TV, have a lie down, go through old shit on your hard drive and either delete it or back it up, snooze, take painkillers, rest, read, nap, potter around, eat whatever you like and get some much needed shuteye. The only real bad thing about it is the being sick, which kind of puts a dampener on the whole staying home thing.

Wine, (scary) women and song

2006-06-13T11:27:00.000+09:30

It was rather a bizarre day at the Sea & Vines yesterday. C & I met up with another couple, friends of ours, at Coriole, which is probably our favorite spot in the area. The wine was very drinkable and the bouillabaisse was on par with previous years (though quite how you're supposed to eat the whole lot, we weren't sure. The cutlery was wooden, so eco-friendly but not really eato-friendly. If you have any tips on how to eat soup with a spoon-shaped icy pole stick, suggestions are welcome). The afternoon was pleasant and we even got chatty with another group who ended up standing near us, which was nice. We moved onto Penny's Hill after that. I'm not sure what time it was but we were just in time to hear Daryl Braithwaite break into Howzat. Now, I'm not a huge fan of Daryl but I can respect the guy. Sherbert were a pretty good band, as Australian 70s bands go. Sure, they had some fucked up haircuts back then and wore some rather embarrassing leotard arrangements from memory but you couldn't fault the music: tight arrangements, good harmonies and not every song about bein' in lurve. He still has a pretty good voice and seemed to be enjoying himself up there. But oh, when people get pissed... I have seen no better illustration of the dark effects of alcohol than to see two middle-aged women, earnestly singing along with Dazza's musings on life, getting most of the words wrong, then sauntering up to my friend and I (our wives were in the mosh pit) and start trying it on with us. Now, to be honest, they were trying it on with my friend. He's a few years older than I am. I'm still within the 18-35 demographic but while I remember seeing Daryl on TV as a kid, he was probably going to concerts. He's also much taller than I am, and has a rather distinguished, manly look to him, so it was to him that these ladies directed their attention. "So you're both unattached?" one of them asked? "No, were both married, but not to each other, of course," I said. (Gee, I'm witty, aren't I?) "So where are your wives?" "They're up the front, moshing," said my friend. Then, the shorter, fatter of the two, directed the following at my friend. "So would you like to have it off with us while they're up there?" I had to turn around so she couldn't see me dripping tears of laughter into my cheese platter. One of the group we'd kind of hooked up with was a little scary too. We got chatting and discovered we had a mutual friend and, while that was good for chat-fodder, I think she started to fancy me after that. Did I mention I was there with my wife? It was too weird. I just don't expect girls to flirt with me. It's rather unnerving and I feel awkward and want to run away. And I so didn't fancy her. She then bought fish & chips and was sharing it around on the basis that she was really worried about absorbing the consciousness of the fish. I figure the fish probably kept most of its consciousness in its head before it was dragged from the water and dismembered and was probably finished with it by the time it was dipped in batter and deep-fried. Anyway, time to go around 5 and the other of the earlier two again approached my friend to say goodbye, with "Y'know, if you're ever looking for a bit on the side..." It was just really sad and embarrassing now, and I think she realised how sad and embarrassed she appeared. With any luck she'll have drunk another bottle of red last night and forgotten all about it when she eventually wakes up today. Then how about the game last night? And to think, around the 81st minute, I'd lost all hope and was seriously considering going to bed.

Franchised

2006-06-09T14:32:00.000+09:30

I was just going through an old notepad and found the following list

Gynacology
Funerals
Bank
Dance Academy
Patisserie
Hair & Nails

It took me a minute to remember what it was about but remembered that C & I had started it after seeing a 'Jim's Aerials' van and wondered what other franchises besides mowing and dog washing Jim might do well at. Over to you...

Wardrobe dilemma

2006-06-08T14:22:00.000+09:30

I have, as I'm sure a lot of men do, a selection of shirts that are what I shall call 'high-rotation' shirts. And I don't mean that they're spinny. Ho ho, no... that's silly. No, I have a basic set of shirts that I wear each week. One of my faves got ripped a few weeks ago so I'm on about six frequently worn shirts. Becuase my work is fairly sedentary, and because I always wear a T-shirt under a shirt, I can sometimes get away with ironing a shirt and wearing it again the following week before I put it in the pile to be washed come the weekend. Now, C has Wednesdays off and, I don't know, must have felt some urge to do a load of washing this week, so last night, as I watched the very talented Hugh Laurie pretending to limp, I was folding shirts I had worn in the first part of this week. So my dilemma is this: Is it OK to wear the same shirt twice in one week, even if it has been washed?

Dream hands

2006-06-06T17:13:00.000+09:30

I wrote a post here a while ago about how, one night, I was completely lucid the whole time I was falling asleep and remembered it in enough detail to write about it afterwards. I've always had a weird kind of lucid thing going on when I'm asleep, particularly when I'm dreaming. I got to the point in my early 20s when I was really really good at dreaming. I had worked out basically how to control my dreams, to the point where, I remember in one particular dream, I just looked at this guy I didn't really like a whole lot and said "Get out of my dream" and he promptly disappeared. I've had peaks and troughs since then. I still fly from time to time and I can, if I have my wits about me, control objects well enough. The other night though I was having a really weird one, which had no real narrative to speak of, it just moved from one scene to another. It moved from me being in a busy city street, not wearing any pants, to me being in a lift with a lot of people who were rushing to catch a train and I was tying my sneakers because as soon as I got out of the lift, I was going jogging (pants or not). Out of the lift was round the corner from the house I grew up in and then I ran into a side street and round the corner to a street where I used to deliver papers. It was around this point that I realised I was dreaming and I thought, "Wow, I'm dreaming... I wonder where my hands are." I wiggled my hands and saw them move in my dream. "No," I thought "not my dream hands, my real hands... "I wonder if I'm lying on my back, my tummy or my side." I turned the corner into another street, then saw in a window a whole lot of people having a party then I was somewhere else where there were all these weird steam trains going past. And then I woke up. (On my side.)

Merchant bankers

2006-06-06T16:40:00.000+09:30

I had cause to ring a certain banking establishment today to query a charge they had imposed upon my credit card account. Despite having paid around three times the minimum monthly repayment within the last calendar month, I was somehow lumbered with a 'Late Payment fee' to the tune of $35. It seemed rather incongruous that I could have paid a fairly substantial payment on the 13th of last month and still be charged on the 2nd of this month. It turns out that I had paid too early. Had I waited another two days to make the payment, it would have been included in the next billing period and no charge would have been imposed. See, they send out my statements on the 15th, then I have two weeks to make the minimum payment, otherwise I'm charged for late payment. I explained that I had paid more than three times the minimum repayment within the last 30 days, so after checking with someone who doesn't have to answer calls for a living, she said she'd remove the fee. But while I was on hold, the insidiousness of it struck me and I questioned her thus:

You send me a statement on the 15th, then I have two weeks to make a payment, right? Right. So if I make any kind of payment in the first half of the month, it won't stop me being charged for not making a payment. Right. So I could pay off all but $10 of my outstanding balance, and if I did it in the first half of the month, I'd still be charged a late payment fee for not making the payment in your two-week period. Er... right.

I asked if there was someone I could complain to about this. She said 'sure', put me on hold and I waited for five minutes before realising that obviously, they're going to take their fucking time to answer that call. Ah banks, eh? Cunts.

In training

2006-06-02T21:26:00.000+09:30

The last few days at work have been spent huddled over a stack of printouts, proofreading/copy-editing my poor little heart out. I got a bit of a runny nose on Wednesday and it's turning into a full-on head cold. Psuedoephedrine was my friend today, otherwise I could have been nose-dribbling snot all over my markup. Not sure what the layout people would make of a big green drippy full-stop in the middle of an otherwise coherent sentence. Anyway, that's why I'm in bed at 9.30. C is out doing girlfriend things, which may involve not coming home (neat... a sleepover!). Little Miss M has the same cold I have so she'll no doubt be up in a little while screaming her nappy off and I'll have to be bottle guy, as usual. So an early night is good. I'm going to sit up and read for a while, then hopefully drift off within the hour. It's good timing though, because if I get lots of sleep tonight, that's a few hours I have in the bank for when I have to get up in a couple of weeks and watch a two-hour football game at 2am.

Bonhoeffer's collected works

2006-05-26T23:42:00.000+09:30

I was subtly reminded in an email today that it had been nearly two weeks since I bothered to entertain my legion of readers. My apologies to both of you. So here's a few observations of the week gone by. Tuesday's commute down Unley Rd into the city gave C & I a bit of a snigger. I don't like to laugh at other people for their eccentricities but I think eccentric is an apt description of what we saw. We noticed an old Falcon a few cars up from us that had a message scribbled in black Artline 100 in the back windscreen. We were a bit too far away to read it, so after a few strategic accelerations and lane-changes (trying not to cause too much road rage among my fellow drivers), we got close enough to make out what it said. It read "Honk if you have read the collected works of Bonhoeffer and enjoyed it". I thought it interesting that the writer would include that rider. It would be rare enough to find someone that's read the whole lot, but he didn't want to hear from anyone that's merely read it; no, you must have enjoyed it also, otherwise talk to the hand (or eat my dust, or whatever dismissal is appropriate for such a non-verbal, intra-vehicular exchange). He could have gone one step further and tacked 'in the original German' on the end but that would sound just too pretentious. C & I wondered to ourselves what kind of person would go to the trouble of displaying such poor penmanship on a sheet of A3 in their rear window. We pulled up alongside the car and our question was answered. What kind of guy? The same kind of guy that wears a Bill Cosby sweater as he eats porridge straight from the saucepan as he drives into the city of a Tuesday. Actually, yes. That's only one observation. Well spotted.

Is this a cheese shop?

2006-05-16T14:20:00.000+09:30

I have come by some lovely cheese. Long story short, I scratched someone's back a while ago, and they've given me some cheese as a bit of an extra thank-you scratch on mine. So when I arrived at my desk this morning, there were two quarter wheels of cheese; one parmesan, one pecorino. But I had a physio appointment at 9am, meaning this cheese was on display, and mine being one of the more, shall we say, exposed desks in the office, just about everyone here saw these two great hunks of cheese on my desk and though to themselves, "My, but Drew has an awful lot of cheese on his desk; I wonder if he'll give me some." There was even an email waiting for me regarding said cheese, along the lines of 'where did you get such a lot of cheese, how can I get some too?' to which I replied, I knew a purveyor of cheesy comestibles (had to squeeze in a reference somewhere and, as there is no bazouki player in this anecdote, that seemed the obvious place to do it) who had supplied it to me. Two minutes later, before I even had a chance to warm my seat, she was around at my desk "asking" could she have some cheese, as if the gift given to me, on account of it being present in the office, was now somehow to be shared between everyone in the office. It reminded me of a guy I used to share a house with in Bendigo, who seemed to believe that any foodstuff purchased and brought into the house was thereby the property of the house and able to be consumed by anyone who lived therein, i.e. him. There was one particularly nasty discussion about a box of Nutri-grain I was keeping in my room. He used to eat my food, so I used to steal his condoms. It was only fair. So I was really put on the spot; one of those very awkward situations where it seems impolite to say no, even though it was extremely impolite to ask in the first place. It was like some kind of standover tactic, where she said 'hand over the cheese or I'll make you look selfish and greedy'. So, at the time, I said I'd give her some, though I have since found out that person who supplied the cheese actually brought in more to share between her workmates and this person had already ingratiated herself and scored a portion of pecorino. Then upon finding out that I had more, came over to ask for some parmesan from me. Who's being greedy here? Her or me?

Something is changing

2006-05-12T16:30:00.000+09:30

I'm kind of worried about this but then kind of not. I'm not sure if it's a temporary reaction to recent festivities or whether it's something that could be more enduring. I'm at once scared by it but at the same time relieved. I'm not sad to see it go but I somehow wonder what would take it's place. I am... losing my appetite for chocolate. (Thought that might shock you.)

And hey, hey, hey... there goes Richard

2006-05-10T12:30:00.000+09:30

So the miners have been rescued, which is lovely for them. Most networks ran long with this story last night because it was payoff time. This was a network's wet dream. It had all the elements of drama, suspense, touches of humour and poignant sadness. No wonder every on-air personality was there covering it. Now they're out, It'll be interesting to see how much they milk it from here. Look out for the 30-min current affairs special, recapping the whole drama from start to finish. Look out also for the montage at the end of the news, with slo-mo replay of the families first finding out they were alive, then the anguish of the seemingly endless delays, and finally footage of them coming out of the mine lift and shaking their fists in the air, victorious. I'm thinking Wind Beneath my Wings (the crappy Bette Middler version, not the less crappy, orginal, Australian, Colleen Hewitt version). Look out also for the tribute montage at the end of this week's 60 Minutes, with slo-mo replays of Richard Carleton being rude to Bob Hawke, Richard fawning over Imelda's shoe collection, Richard flirting with the Spice Girls, Richard enjoying his picnic basket and a nice red, and drawing much unwanted attention to some East Timorese independence voters, Richard brooding with a scornful, contemptuous look on his face during John Doyle's Andrew Olle Lecture last year. I'm thinking that song that goes 'and then a hero comes along...' Lastly, not that I want to admit I was anywhere near a TV last night during Dancing with People You've Heard Of, did Daryl really commit an incredibly heinous faux pas? I'm sure one of the dancers had a 'Get Well Sophie' sign on his back, for that little girl who was run over by a car for the second time. I swear I heard Daryl say "Maybe she's watching..." Sure Daryl, maybe, she could possibly have come out of her coma just to watch your ridiculous show. For the record, I was only watching it because C was watching it and I was waiting for another batch of shortbread to bake.

Kids who smoke

2006-05-09T17:21:00.000+09:30

Kids who smoke The latest assault by the anti-smoking brigade features ads with graphic depictions of gangrenous feet belonging to some poor sod who's about to have the leg chopped. (And I always wonder about ads like that. Did the lighting and camera crew come in to set up the shot before or after the anaesthetist put the patient under and the doctor started drawing a dotted line with little pictures of scissors all over his shin?) Now, if I'm watching ER or RPA or When Smoking Goes Wrong... I might expect to see the odd rotting limb here and there. But when I'm watching the program of my choice, which involves no mention of septic body parts, should I be subjected to this in an ad appearing on all networks, merely for the benefit of smokers? It seems that smokers are no longer invading our lungs in restaurants but are indirectly invading our viewing matter on TV. Sure it's not them directly but it's because of them. They're the target audience, so if they'd kindly stop watching the shows I like... there, that's better. Funny thing though, about trying to get the whole anti-smoking message, or any message, across. I have kids. Our 3-y.o, Little Miss L, has been quite a handful for oh, about half her life. So we've thrown up our hands and in an attempt to modify her rather mischievous behaviour, we've consulted various sources on child pshychology. The revelation I've made is this. When you tell your child to stop jumping up and down on the coffee table, she can hear you. You don't HAVE to say it more than once. You don't HAVE to yell it at the top of your voice. Just as you don't have to tell her where the chocolate is hidden more than once. She can hear you, she just chooses not to change her behaviour. And if you threaten with a smack, or whatever, it may stop her from doing it there and then but you can bet that 15 minutes later she'll be back up there using the furniture as bits of play equipment. The good behaviour=reward/bad behaviour=punishment paradigm is falling out of favour with many child experts these days. My point being, do we really think there are any smokers out there who don't actually know that it's bad for them? It's kind of a given these days: you smoke, you cough, you can't exercise very well, you also may stink quite a lot of the time. I don't want to be around you or your foul excrescent odour but if you want to do that to yourself, go right ahead. Just don't litter the footpath with your burnt-out fart sticks when you're done. I think the people at QUIT should start reading some child psychology books because if you have to resort to the kind of gore we're going to be sujbected to from here on in (stuff that would probably have a warning, were it in a show or film), my guess is: they can hear you; you don't need to keep yelling at them, saying how naughty they're being; you need to find another way. Because the rotting-flesh punishment threat isn't going to to squat.

Daddy make de sho'tbread

2006-05-08T14:22:00.000+09:30

Spending the day at home with my girls today. Little Miss L wanted to make something. I'd always wanted to try making shortbread and for a first attempt, I don't think this is too bad at all. I'm having it with a cup of tea now.

Office mum

2006-05-03T15:16:00.000+09:30

Every office has an office mum. Some offices have more than one person who assumes motherly roles in one way or another. There have been a few members of staff here, mostly female (but then, the whole staff is mostly female) who, upon having some personal crisis or another have gone to office mum for a bit of tissue-offering, shoulder-crying and general pats-on-the-back, there-there-it's-okay kind of solace. I don't think, however, that the office mother here is a single parent. I think there is another office mother. Not the comforting type but the pedantic kind of I-have-a-system-for-doing-this-so-everyone-else-has-to-adopt-my-system type. I'm talking about a certain aspect of the kitchen here that frustrates the shit out of me. We have basic tea & coffee facilities supplied by our employer, which is nice. And it's not shitty Caterer's Blend or International Roast instant either, it's half decent freeze-dried Moccona, which, though a poor substitute for a proper espresso, does the trick if you need a fix sharpish and don't have the means to jam 43 beans of flavour into a syringe and go the intravenous option. So this coffee, tea and sugar is in a set of regular kitchen condiment holders, with air-tight swingtop lids. But what evil mother is doing, is putting a teaspoon in each of the canisters, which says to me "You're too incompetent to use a clean, dry spoon to make your coffee and will probably get coffee bits in the sugar and vice versa, so use this spoon (and this spoon only) for coffee, and this other spoon only for sugar. That will save me having to come along and wash your spoons". I know this may seem a horribly trivial thing to go on about but fuck that's just a bit patronising (or matronising, to coin a phrase). I think evil spoon mother is interfering in the communal coffee collective just as much as those silly people who do get the odd coffee ground in the sugar, or dip in the sugar with a wet spoon. Only she (and I'm assuming it's a she; in fact based on the male:female ratio in the office, it's about an 85% chance it is a she) is doing it on purpose. Bad mother.

Baggy

2006-05-02T15:10:00.000+09:30

Sometimes I like to take photos. I'm not saying I'm brilliant at it or anything but I've got equipment: big, heavy, pretty impressive looking SLR equipment. It currently lives in a couple of drawers in the hall and when I want to take it out and use it, I have the same dilemma. I've been doing a bit of photography on the side recently (I've also done it right-way up, on my front and even on my back, but probably not in the dirty-minded way you're thinking right now), and taking the full kit out presents me with this dilemma: where to put it all? I don't have a really flash, whizz bang, pocket-for-everything camera bag. But I kind of need one. So I've been looking around at various options. While I'd love a Crumpler, they're just ridiculously expensive. And that's pretty much my whole point for this post. Lowepro bags, too. So fucking expensive. Now, I don't need the full-on backpack with 200 secret compartments for filters, lenses, spare film, moisturised lens wipes and the like, I just want a decent shoulder bag with some of those padded, velcro-attached dividers so my lenses don't bump into each other too much, a pocket on one side for unused film, and a pocket on the other side for exposed rolls. Maybe somewhere to put a pen, too. And how much is a name-brand bag like this? Around $120. I'd rather sew my own fucking bag. I was in K-mart a few weeks ago and found myself looking at those soft-sided, insulated, esky lunchboxes. They come in a few different sizes. You could get one of these, that could fit a camera nicely and, I assume, keep your sandwiches fresh till lunchtime, for around $20. But they had no compartment things and no external pockets. And they were garish colours so looked kind of gay. But c'mon! Why is one padded bag with pockets five times the price of a padded bag without pockets? I know there must be a general, all-purpose bag out there for around $40-$50, that has similar specs. And right now, for a mobile phone cover I'm using one of my daughter's odd baby socks, so you're looking at someone who knows how to improvise to save a buck or two. So let's all be on the lookout for a non-camera camera bag. I know it's out there somewhere.

Unmotivated (or just resting... depends how you look at it)

2006-04-17T13:13:00.000+09:30

It's a holiday and I know I should be doing heaps of stuff: some computer-related, some not. But I think I'm suffering from that thing where the stuff you have to do is so insurmountable that you end up just doing nothing. Add to that the fact that it's effing cold out and raining (making the garden-related stuff a bit harder to do). Add to that the fact that it's nothing I really have to do, it's just stuff like transferring old videos to DVD, maintaining the photolibrary and updating the phone/mp3 player. Stuff that's almost fun, really. I'm sure this is my body's way of telling me that I need a rest so shouldn't push myself to do anything I don't have to. I think I'll just eat some more chocolate. My body is telling me I really should be doing that.

Science fiction plot for sale

2006-04-13T21:44:00.000+09:30

So there's a space craft orbiting our nearest planetary neighbour, Venus, right about now. Scientists are trying to find out how a planet, so similar in size, distance from sun, and age could be so different from our blue heaven here on Earth. While the air here is mostly Nitrogen & Oxygen, there it's mostly cyanide, or was it arsenic... something they used to use as poison in bad murder mystery novels anyway. And it's rather a moot point, don't you think? The point being it's pretty fucking hostile and would make you rather dead shortly after landing. They're looking at the way-bad greenhouse effect that Venus experiences and trying to learn what they can so that we don't go the same route. But when I heard this, I thought "Wow, what if they send cameras down there and find a planet that looks just like ours, with cities and highways and shopping malls, and one domed little biosphere. So we earthlings send a manned mission to it, where there are people who look a bit like us, and they tell the earthling space travellers the secrets of life on earth: that we originally came from Venus and we fucked that up so badly that Earth was colonised and the whole bit about how Venus got so fucked up was lost, the irony being that we're now turning earth into the same kind of cyanide/arsenic-based cesspit of an atmosphere we turned Venus into." Gee, us humans. We'll never learn. So that's my idea for a topical science fiction novel/screenplay. Of course, I can't be arsed writing the thing but if anyone wants to buy the synopsis, I'd be glad to flesh it out a bit more for a share in box-office takings.

Epilogue: a half-happy ending

2006-04-10T12:58:00.000+09:30

My mum is da bomb (sorry, I was watching video hits on the weekend). You may remember that, due to my sheer incomptetence and lack of life skills, I managed to lose a gift that my parents so kindly bought for me at Xmas last year. It was a voucher to Borders, one of my fave stores. It got thrown out with a boxful of Xmas wrappings. I was pretty gutted about the whole thing, especially knowing that my $100 worth of books could never actually make their way into my hands on the train, could never be stored, by author or Dewey subject number in my bookshelf at home, never gather dust lying on my bedside table, never be left lying on the coffee table to impress visitors with more money but less cultural nous than myself (Coupland called it 'status substitution', I think)(He also said to make esoteric cultural references that hardly anybody would ever get, so I guess I've just done that there). I thought about going in to Borders during my lunch breaks, finding a comfy chair and reading $100 worth of books, but I'm on flexi-time here, so that would mean staying late to make up the hours and staying here and missing the 5.13 is too miserable an existance to contemplate. Enter mum. My hero. The woman who told off Lee Brady when I was 10 because he called me a dickhead at tennis, the woman who actually seemed concerned about me, and not the expensive 4-wheeler I crashed into a vine post when I was 14, the woman who, when I was 17 and thinking of just disappearing for a few days, made me a steak sandwich full of love and homey goodness. Sure this is also the woman that confiscated my stash of nudie mags when I was 16 but I've since passed the age at which I'm legally allowed to buy more, so I can forgive her for that. So mum, who had the credit card receipt (but not the actual receipt; as you may recall, she stupidly gave that to me, so I could lose it) rang them and asked for a customer services person and told them the whole sorry story. They stated their case, that they're entitled to see their receipt before they can make a replacement, which she thought was fair enough. She didn't dispute that they are like cash and should be looked after by irresponsible sons. She said that if they could trace that card and show that it had been all spent, she could live with that. "But," she said, "the thought of that card lying unused at the bottom of a rubbish dump somewhere... well I just can't put it behind me." Borderslady told mum she'd speak to the manager and get back to her. Then, within an hour, she had a call saying they'd meet her half way and send a voucher for $50. Mum passed it on to me yesterday and I gave it to my wife for safe-keeping. I mean, it was my daughter's birthday party yesterday and I didn't want that voucher anywhere near where presents were being unwrapped. And sure it's only half what I originally had but the ex-mick in me feels that I need to be punished, and this is a good compromise. So, what's good reading at the moment, anyone?

DST+1

2006-03-31T15:39:00.000+10:30

I've not been at all impressed with this extension of Daylight Savings. Of course, DST usually finishes on the final weekend in March but because a whole bunch of Queen-loving runny jumpy people wanted to run and jump about a bit, then all get together for a kangaroos-on-bikes-fest, it was apparently deemed by the powers that be (and who love such sporting displays) that we were to have an extra hour of daylight at the end of each day (and the corresponding hour less daylight in the a.m.). While this isn't a bad thing per se, it has caused a few problems. Firstly, there was the sleeping in. I have an alarm clock that has a calendar built in. It likes to think it's pretty smart by adjusting the time for DST without consulting me. It didn't come to me last Saturday night and ask "Drew, shall I go off DST now, or should I stay on it for a week longer for whatever sporting events you humans are busy watching at the moment?" Had it done so, I would have replied "Thanks for asking, let's go the extra week, shall we?" So my alarm has been going off at 7.45 am all this week, which is why I didn't hear it because I had managed to drag myself out of bed by that stage and was probably ironing a shirt out of alarm clock earshot. The other similar thing to have happened, has been the Outlook system here at work. See, my computer forgot to ask too, whether we were thinking of extending DST this year (which is just so inconsiderate if you ask me), so I've been having reminders come up for meetings that were due to happen an hour ago. Today I had a meeting at 1 pm, so I knew I'd want to nip out before that and grab a bit to eat. But when I started to get peckish, I looked at my computer clock and it said it was only 11 am: too early for lunch. So my mind goes into food-snooze for an hour, then I get a call saying my appointment is here and I look at a different clock and think "Shit, where did that hour go?" The answer to which is, it disappeared somewhere between the time my phone is showing and the time my PC is showing. The upside, is that I looked at the PC just now and it said it was still only 2.30 pm. But my phone says otherwise: it's an hour closer to home time and that's a good thing.

Dead wood

2006-03-30T21:38:00.000+10:30

Dad came over today to help us get rid of a tree. There has been this old plum-looking thing, with lots of thin branches that go straight up, sort of just sitting there at the bottom of the garden path and just being dead. You could just tell by its general nakedness leafwise and blackened bark that had we taken the wait-and-see approach it would have looked just as dead next spring as it has all this summer. So, my pa being the proud owner of a chainsaw (an electric one, bless him), was only too happy to come and get some exercise in the front yard because it meant he'd have a nice pile of logs to take home for his combustion heater. (I was going to say for his pot belly but no, he puts beer in that.) The chainsaw, as I said, is electric. Hmm. It just seems somehow wrong that anything with sharp, rotating metal bits should really be in the vicinity of a live power lead. But it's really only a pruning chainsaw. I think it's a 6" model, which is just huge, really, so it couldn't really go through the trunk of the tree but was just able to... I don't know... amputate its limbs. So we're left with this 3' or 4' high dead tree trunk with sawn-off branches sticking out at all sorts of angles. It actually looks rather fetching, in a kind of anti-tree way, as if it's saying 'you'd expect there to be a tree here but no, I'm not a tree, I'm just a chunk of dead wood and I have as much right to be here as, say, that letterbox over there cos that's made of dead wood too'. So what I'm thinking is that I might just get me a little hatchet, strip off all the bark, sand it back till it's baby-arse smooth and lacquer the whole bloody thing. It could stand as many statues do, remembering the dead personage they resemble. And I might even bolt the letterbox on top of it as a finishing touch.

Out at lunch time

2006-03-29T16:55:00.000+10:30

I actually left the office today at lunch, which was nice. I know I should do it every day to clear my head and get the fuck away from this screen but sometimes, believe it or not, there is actually work to do and sometimes I actually manage to knuckle down and get some of it done. But there's a lot to be said for going into the city at lunch. It means that I'm actually engaging in the world around me and this is so important because it can actually prompts me to think about things, make observations and reflect on the deep mysteries of life. So anyway, there was this busker doing that trick where you get out of a straightjacket. And I thought 'that old gag, been done to death'. Apart from which, having yourself tied up in a straightjacket seems like an awfully odd thing to do, especially when you're only doing it so as to take it off again. So instead of putting 50c in his... um, straightjacket case, I gave 50c to a random passer-by who was smart enough NOT to have himself tied up in any kind of restraining device, then I gave another 50c to a woman who didn't tie up the guy in the straightjacket so badly that he could get out of it anyway. And then, I bought myself a vanilla slice, but that was less about making a statement to straightjacket guy and more because I was hungry.

I drew this

2006-03-27T22:57:00.000+10:30

downtime

2006-03-22T16:40:00.000+10:30

I'm really not doing very well with this, am I? I know I'm disappointing my legion of regular readers by not posting more often but life, well, it is what it is; and right now it's what it is with creativity and spare time occurring at mutually exclusive parts of the day. When they start putting a dining/internet café carriage on the 8:11, blogging will be so much easier. I'm still a bit reluctant to take the laptop on the train though, mostly because I don't have a bag that makes lugging it up the fuck of a hill to the railway station at all easy.But here's a humorous anecdote to take home from work.I was at a party on the weekend and caught up with a friend I hadn't seen in over a month. She came into the room where I was enjoying more than my fair share of the corn chips and we started chatting.

"I've given up smoking," she informed me. "Way to go," says I. "Yep, four weeks now," she said "So what have you been doing out on the balcony for the last hour?" I couldn't help but ask "Oh, having a spliff," she said.

I told her that dope and me don't have a very good track record. I explained that it tends to cause me to lose the ability to breathe involuntarily, something we all take for granted.

"Is that all?"

Whoah, tough crowd.

Touch-up

2006-03-15T09:20:00.000+10:30

I found this link a couple of days ago. I can't remember where I found it but that's not important right now. I do a lot of photography for my job, especially photographing people against a plain background, for contouring (alpha-channelling) later on before they're dropped into publication layouts. Sometimes, if the lighting sucks when I take the photo, or if subjects haven't bothered too much about their appearance, I'll do slight touch-ups, just to make them look presentable. So while I think more people should be aware of why and how people look so artificially stunning on mag covers, if you want to engage in the deception, even if it's just to cloak someone's 10-pack-a-day habit, this is an excellent tutorial.

Water damage: manufacturer's warranty void

2006-03-10T12:31:00.000+10:30

Gosh, it has been a long time. With all the sleep deprivation of late (yes, I have kids) blogging hasn't really been a high priority. I was woken six times last night. So no long post today either, rather a dot-point summary of various recent goings-on.

I think I saw Austen Tayshus in Adelaide Railway station yesterday morning. He appeared to have a slight limp.
The Fringe is on, as is the Festival. I shall be attending no events. I've usually had a press pass for recent festivals but not so this time around. Strangely, I don't seem to care though; must be the sleep deprivation. Or the fact that I am immune to stand-up comedy, which seems to dominate the Fringe at least.
I saw on the news last week that public interest in the impending Commonwealth is "lacklustre". Noooooo, really? People don't care? Quel surprise! And aren't those Prepare to Hug Strangers ads just the most embarrassing thing you've seen on TV?
Speaking of embarrassing ads. The new Australian Tourism Commission ads have had a mixed reception overseas. The handwriting in the ad looks like a psychopath wrote it. What are they trying to say about the penmanship of most Australians? My handwriting isn't the best but it's better than that! And is Where the bloody hell are ya? really an accurate reflection of what most Australians say? I rather think Where the fuck are ya? is probably closer to what passes most Australians' lips. I hate the way this post-war, larrikin, drongo, Uncle Harry, carn-the-pies, g'day-mate, Waltzing Matilda, prosperity-on-the-sheep's-back, Croc Dundee version of Australia is still peddled overseas. Haven't we moved on from that? Then again, they still yell 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oi, Oi, Oi,' at the cricket so I'm no judge of what goes for being a true Australian. I don't even barrack for the Australian Cricket Team. I'm sure if John Howard found out about this and my dual citizenship, he'd have me ported to Blighty for unaustralianness quicker than I could say 'but I was born in Bendigo'.
I just bought a video capture card and a Firewire card for my PC (Birthday money). Now I can record from a DV camera, watch/record digital TV, and backup precious things from old analog Hi8 and VHS tapes. Now I can covert all my old D-Generation recordings to very bad quality DVDs
My youngest recently gave my new Sony W800i a drink. Joy. I have the insurance forms on my desk.

That's about it. Now go and read something interesting, elsewhere.

Ready for the action now, danger boy?

2006-02-28T16:58:00.000+10:30

It's here! It's here! I just wish I had time to watch it.

How I lost $100. Twice.

2006-02-17T11:29:00.000+10:30

It has become a delightfully predictable part of my Christmas that my parents buy me a $100 voucher from Borders. I like it because it's the kind of present that keeps on giving all year. This Xmas, as we left Ma & Pa's place, we put all our pressies in a big box and brought them home, to add to the ones that were already here from Xmas eve with C's family. Long story short, I asked C a couple of weeks ago, where my voucher was put after the box was emptied. It turns out the box wasn't emptied, but filled with torn wrapping paper and left out for Mr. Recycle. I'm sure the voucher was in the box, having spent the last two weeks looking in every conceivable place an envelope could have been put, then looking again and again and again. (Truth be told, I'll probably have another look later). I even went through our envelope bin that gets emptied once about every six months. It's a waste paper bin that lives under our desk and when bills, rates notices, bank statements come in, the envelope goes in the bin. It needed emptying the other day, so I went through every last bit of rubbish there to look for my voucher. No luck. Monday was my birthday and of course, there was some money in my card from Ma & Pa. So I, not really being able to cope with my loss, think fuck it, I'm just going to use my birthday money and buy another one. When I got in there and explained that I'd like one $100 voucher to replace the other lost $100 voucher, they explain that if I, or whoever bought me the voucher had the receipt, they could track down that card and cancel it if no money had been taken off it. Whoop-de-doo, thinks me. Mum will have the receipt; she's that kind of person. I can get my hundred back. Sure, it means I'd have to tell her that I'd lost the card, something I was hoping to avoid (Yeah, sorry Mum, I threw your hundred dollars in the bin), it meant that I could get it back which would kind of make it all okay again; all's well that ends well, and all that. After talking to Ma was when I lost the hundred dollars for the second time. She told me "Oh, the receipt had an offer for a further ten per cent off any purchases made before the end of January. SO I GAVE IT TO YOU". Mum's bringing the credit card receipt round on Monday, so I'll see if I can get anywhere with that but I'm not holding out any hope. Incidentally, Tuesday night saw me going back through the recycling trash looking for the receipt. I'm having a lot of trouble letting go of this. It's really put me behind in the general scheme of things. When I was 16, two friends and I found some gaudy costume ring and sold it to a jeweller for $15 so we got $5 each. I won $15 on the pokies at the Coomealla club when I was 19. I was given $20 too much in change once from some guy at the central markets. I would normally have gone back but he'd been rude to me because I'd asked a stupid question about his cheese so I figured it served him right. Then I found $10 on the ground last year outside Baker's Delight in Blackwood. That put me about $50 up. Now I'm $50 down. And I'm thinking of giving my birthday money back to Ma simply because I can't be trusted with $100 from her, so I'd feel better if she put it into her super or something. Maybe I should sell my 2 full cans of Duff on Ebay to recoup the loss. They've been in the fridge since 1997.

On the art of mastering pinhole photography

2006-02-02T22:02:00.000+10:30

As some of you may be aware, I am an avid amateur photographer. I guess a lot of people have become such since digital photography took off so in order to, I don't know, make myself seem somehow superior, I thought I'd go completely retro and get into pinhole photography. I've seen some amazing stuff on the net, particularly at nyclondon and I'm really intrigued by the amazingly long exposure times required to get enough light in a shot. I love the idea of shooting a busy street in broad daylight but ending up with a photo devoid of people or traffic. So I recently purchased an old Polaroid Colorpack camera from ebay for around $3, spend four times that on postage and money order to get it here, smashed the front bit off with a hammer (later finding out there were screws that would have made the whole process quicker and rather neater). Then I had to buy a can of coke, flatten out a bit of aluminium, poke a tiny, tiny hole in it, attach it to the front of the camera with insulation tape, then spend $20 on a pack film. I took it to the park today and made my first exposure. Then I came home and tried a few more in the back yard. And if you're really excited about seeing the results, hold your breath as you click and view this photo. Très formidable, non? Okay, so there were a few teething problems, which is why the shots ended up as they did. But if you're interested in what a pinhole polaroid looks like, maybe you're thinking of trying my technique and making one yourself, here's a picture of my camera.* I think there may have been a problem with the rollers in the camera back, causing the gooey and caustic substance to ooze out, partially over my fingers but mostly over the rollers themselves when I tried to pull out the first photo. There are these little tabs you're supposed to pull out for each exposure; they were covered in caustic, sticky polaroid ooze, so the next couple of tabs just ripped off in my hand. So, back at home, I fiddled around with the back of the camera open, wrapped in a polar fleece jacket, under a doona, in a darkened room, trying to get the next tab through the rollers so I could make another exposure and pull the thing out. Well, none of them worked. Whenever I pulled out a tab, goo went everywhere. My fingers feel like I've burned them. At one point, after I wasted a few exposures to get an unexposed neg ready, I took a photo, pulled out one tab, and three photos and lots of goo came out. By the end of a couple of hours trying, I had ten... um, I nearly called them exposures but that can't be what they're called. I basically had ten sheets of gooey, ripped and basically fucked up polaroid nonphotos. So, any suggestions for my next project? * Of course, you'd have to throw it against a brick wall to achieve the same finish I've come up with here.

More recommendations

2006-01-31T22:35:00.000+10:30

I've mentioned before how tenuous some of the recommendations are on Amazon. I think this bears mentioning again: Mmmm... Punctuation... Enya... Even more confusing: I rated Fiona Apple's album Extraordinary Machine and it recommended that I buy, and I'm not making this up, a salad spinner.

Ben Lee is a genius

2006-01-30T16:50:00.000+10:30

Men are stupid. World leaders are a given but you don't have to look any further than the TV to see how men are held in contempt for their utter numbskulliness. There's the "Honey, have you seen my pants?" ad where stupid man is unable to dress himself without superior flower-pot-on-head-wearing woman. There's the man-washes-car-part-in-dishwasher ad where, well, a guy washes a shiny bit of metal from his car in the dishwasher. Then there's the stupid-man-follows-trail-of-underwear-into-garden-while-frigid-wife-drinks-coffee-alone ad where, well, you can probably figure out what happens there. Men are always accused of being slobs, living in a pigsty, not being responsible, or being the (n+1)th child of the family (where n=the actual number of offspring in a relationship). But hey, who starts screaming like a schoolgirl every time there's a huntsman on the back door? Yeah, men cop a lot of crap from the fairer sex (and I'm wondering how they got that adjective ascribed to them when so much of what they do is completely UNfair). But what of Ben Lee? Where does he come into it? Why do I think he's a genius? I'm not referring to his general talent for writing witty, clever and very catchy pop songs; this makes him popular. No, his genius comes from one single lyric that he employs over and over again in one of his recent songs, which, when used properly, is the ultimate response that any "stupid" male can give to any nagging female (the term 'nagging female' being somewhat of a tautology) when such derogatory criticism is hurled our way. And the great thing is that males of any age can employ the response, viz:

Teacher (female): Your grades are the worst in the class. You're insubordinate, insolet and just plain lazy! Student (male): And that's the way I like it. Girlfriend: Ooh, stop. You're doing it too hard. Boyfriend: But that's the way I like it. Wife: You're so unmotivated. You just plod along in your life without any focus or direction. Husband: And that's the way I like it, that's the way I like it.

A similar situation occurred to me a few days ago. I was home looking after little Misses L and M and C was doing some shopping. I had finished making lunch for everyone and had been taking apart a camera at the desk so a few things were out of place. C: I leave the house for one minute and I come home to this! You're such a slob! Me: So, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease, Baby, ple-ease...

Manhood... finally

2006-01-28T14:10:00.000+10:30

I have just reached what may well be the final milestone to becoming a real man. No, I didn't just grow a penis, I've had one of those for at least four years now. My most recent achievement involves housing materials and power tools. I just put a screw in a brick. Not just some sissy soft bit of timber but a hard, heavy, bricky brick. I used my new hammer drill, made a big hole in it, shoved in some of that spaghetti stuff they use on the DIY shows, and used my other drill (yeah baby, I got 2!) to screw in the screw. I am man!

Further to my previous post...

2006-01-25T11:48:00.000+10:30

Goodness, people actually left comments on my last post, giving me the impetus to get my fingers into gear and maybe get some content happening, as indeed I think I promised a few weeks ago. Not that that makes it official or anything, it's in writing, yeah, but it's on the internet so I can easily go back and change it or make it look as though it never existed, and anyone who read it in the first place and went back to look for it would start to doubt that they had read it here when they read so much stuff on the internet and save so little of it that it would be impossible to prove that I ever had said it (unless you had some really big caching thing going on, but why would you bother really, it was only a passing comment on my part and not really worth anyone's while in chasing it up or holding me to it). So... I might get back to a few items I listed in my last post (in no particular order). Renovations are almost done. I love my new shower: no screen, no curtain, it's just behind a wall separating it from the rest of the bathroom. The basin and vanity are on the other side of the wall. I may put photos up at some point. Let me know if you really can't live without seeing them and that may speed things along (till then, consider it as just another potentially empty promise... ah, I'm so capricious). We recently bought some new cutlery. The set we had was short a few forks and spoons and it seemed that when we wanted to make a cup of tea, we were always having to get teaspoons from the dishwasher, rinse them, then stir, squeeze bag, add sugar to taste, stir again (it's not a set routine, just illustrating there's a process involved). But when we bought the new cutlery, we bought not just one but two sets, meaning in one fell swoop we tripled our teaspoon inventory. I know it's only a little thing but y'know what they say about the little things (and if you don't, click here). Well, it's just such a great feeling not having to worry about there being enough teaspoons in the drawer. It's bliss just to be able to reach in, without necessarily even looking, grab a spoon and start stirring/sqeezing/adding sugar to your beverage without having your whole flow interrupted by having to go through the inconvenience of actually washing one every time you want to soothe your nerves with a cup of Tetley. Aaaaaah... I've been involved in the shooting of some footage at the new Adelaide airport terminal. I guess I've been the producer, as I'm representing the client so have to be there to make sure it all goes nicely as it's my company signing the cheques. But wow, I love the new terminal. I mean I love it because it's all so new and shiny but it's just so big and airporty. I took some nice photos there the other night, when it was almost deserted. I promise I'll post one of them soon (yeah... right). The thing with the car park though is that it's kind of cramped. I was there in the morning last week when we were looking for locations and the car park was chock full near the entrance, so I stupidly drove around looking for a place in the busiest part of it. I was also in one of work's cars, which are bigger than my sporty but miniature 4WD. So I don't know if it was just that I was in a big car, or the place was crowded but there really didn't seem to be a lot of room to do simple things like turn into a parking space, turn a corner, or even drive past a car coming the other way, without narrowly avoiding a bingle (been trying to work that word into a post for months). At one point, I was turning a corner to come down the next lane of non-empty spaces and there was a lady turning the same corner in the opposite direction. We both had our windows down and had to do some slow, meticulous driving to get past each other without bingling (!!) and I asked her "Is this supposed to be one-way?" and she said something back to me that I don't recall now. My point being, not much room to move in the car park. And I really don't think it would have put the planes out too much to have built the whole thing 3 metres to the south. I still have to get my sunglasses fixed. Might go and do that now, actually.

A list

2006-01-18T22:22:00.000+10:30

Things I have been meaning to write about but just haven't had time:

the new Adelaide Airport terminal (including car park)
teaspoons
renovations
impending leave
bad impersonations
lack of telecommunications services in Adelaide, more specifically the hills.

I could also go on about how fucking hot it was today and therefore not a good day to be scouting locations for a video shoot and an even worse day to have dropped and broken your sunglasses the night before. I swear, I had my eyes closed for most of today and still the glare was burning my retinae. So how have you all been?

On the move

2006-01-13T15:43:00.000+10:30

I've been crunching some numbers and I think I've finally found a way to save at least $60 a month on telecommunications. I'm with the animal company now for both mobile and home phone. I pay about $30 a month just in line rental, and for argument's sake, add about $50 a month to that for local/national/mobile calls. Then there's the $17 a month for unlimited dialup (yeah, I know), plus the average $40 I spend every month on my mobile. I'm spending $140 - $150 on home phone, mobile and internet. Now, if I go with "3" on a $49 cap and a $29 net connect card, I'm saving at least $60. I know the wireless broadband is capped at 200mb but I'm kind of used to not being able to download that much on dialup (yeah, I know). So my mobile contract and ISP contract end at the end of this month. And I don't think "3" provide web space. So you're all on notice: IDT may be moving. I'll need some hosting space. Any suggestions?

Going shopping

2006-01-11T16:06:00.000+10:30

Ooh, you all have to watch 'Shopping for Love' tonight. Not because it's a great show but because if you like the look of the blonde girl in tonight's episode, I can probably hook you up.

Sweating it out

2006-01-11T15:06:00.000+10:30

I managed not to fall asleep on the train this morning. I did this by reading my copy of Graham Greene's A Burnt-Out Case. I picked it up when someone left a pile of stuff outside their office marked "free stuff" and thought 'yeah, I should read some Graham Greene' before I really realised it was about a leper colony; not really the happy but engaging read I was hoping to kick off the year with. And speaking of second-hand goods, I've been looking around for ages now for an old polaroid camera. I intend to lop off the front half of it with a hacksaw and converted it to a pinhole camera. What fun I have in store! I won one in an auction on ebay a few days ago but I'm still waiting for the seller to contact me ('yes, I can send you a money order but there's the small matter of needing your address first...' It's his first time; yes, an ebay virgin, so I'm trying to be gentle). Where was I...? Oh, right, yeah, I was in Norwood yesterday on some unrelated business and while C checked out that store with the cute picnic accessories, I limped over the road to the Vinnies op shop. I went in, did a quick reconnaissance of the store's interior and, not seeing anything vaguely polaroid, or camera, or even electronic, I made my way back to the front counter to ask if they might have any in stock. It was kind of a hot day yesterday; not sweltering, but a bit warm and a bit humid. They didn't have proper air-con in this place, only those big old metallic fans that look as though they could propel a small airplane, which were running full-boar (and gosh what a strange expression that is; must look it up some time). There were a couple of other people loitering around the front counter. As I waited, the smell in the place really hit me. Now I'm a pretty tolerant guy for things like this. I've travelled and I've been to Asian and European markets where there has been overwhelming (almost overpowering) olfactory evidence that perhaps not all the food on sale came straight from the vine/branch/slaughterhouse that morning. I've been around some large, smelly people on various public transport systems around the world. On the whole though, I've coped with it. Not yesterday though. Never before have I thought I might actually have a physical reaction to a smell as strongly as I did here. The smell wasn't like stale urine. I've smelled that enough times in various shop doorways in the vicinity of Hindley St, on bin night when it's full of nappies and there was that guy on the 106 bus about a year ago. No, this was more like concentrated stale perspiration with a hint of napthalene. Usually mothballs are used to cloak any other offending smells but this just wasn't cutting it. It was just mixed in with it and the overall effect was quite a pungent stench. I don't know if they wash the clothes before they go on sale; they're supposed to, aren't they? Maybe the carpet was made from the underarm hair of people living on the equator (where it's often hot and humid) with no good showering facilities. Needless to say, the polaroid became much less of a priority than keeping my lunch down had suddenly become. I'll just wait for the ebay virgin to come through.

BBQ lunch

2006-01-09T16:33:00.000+10:30

Now, I'm not normally one to pore over the contents of my colleagues' lunch boxes but after having leftover rissoles for lunch myself, I couldn't help but notice at least three other people reheating/consuming various sausages and patties, along side various corn, pasta and potato salads. It must have been a nice day for it.

Sleep is the new awake

2006-01-04T09:44:00.000+10:30

I wonder, does anyone actually come back to work refreshed (or even awake) after having time off? I've fallen asleep on the train yesterday and today on my way into work and it nearly cost me. Yesterday, I left home without a train ticket, so swung by the ATM for a crisp fifty before going to the station. At the station, the café was closed, so I couldn't buy a new ticket there. Of course the machines on the trains don't take fifties so, after sleeping from Mitcham to Adelaide, I bought one at the customer service counter within Adelaide station. I handed over my money, took my ticket, and went through the turnstiles. But as I was putting the ticket in my wallet, I noticed that a picture of Little Miss L had fallen out of it, so I was sort of looking back over the turnstiles on the ground for the picture. It was then I noticed a girl from the train whose ticket hadn't worked. She was at the counter I had just been at and was gesturing to me, pointing towards the counter window. I thought "have I left the photo there?" and thought I'd go back. Then, as I went back through the turnstiles, the whole sequence of events replayed in my head and I realised I'd walked away with my ticket but had forgotten to wait for my change. Fifty bucks is a lot to pay for a 10-trip ticket. Lucky I lost that photo.

Housing issues

2005-12-22T14:20:00.000+10:30

No real news from me other than that I'm so glad it's only a couple of hours till home time and I don't have to work again until next year. On that, I have 2 weeks of being busy when I get back, as I'll be acting in my superviser's role while she's on leave, then after that I'm going back to 3 days a week for a few months to spend time at home with Little Miss M (I did the same thing when Little Miss L was 9 months old too). Look forward to a flood of creativity from me early next year when I have all that spare time on my hands. (You'd think staying home looking after kids gives you spare time, wouldn't you...) Other good things at the moment are that I can walk. I'm now bearing my full weight on the recently operated-on ankle and today I have left the walking stick at home. Interestingly, I'm not sure whether it has to do with my slightly sarcastic demeanour, but having had to use a walking stick of late has increased my being-told-I-look-like-Hugh-Laurie-in-House factor sevenfold. (Actually, wouldn't it be sevenfold to go from 1 to 7? I've gone from 0 to 7 so that must be some kind of infinite-to-the-power-7-fold). It's amazing what a stick and a roll of the eyes will do in terms of prompting people's imaginations (or lack thereof). Maybe the fact that I've been speaking in an American accent and recently became a highly paid senior pathologist who can play the piano has had a little to do with it also. And that would be two facts. If indeed they had any basis in fact whatsoever. The other aspect of the recovery has been my inability to wear shoes due to some bulky bandages that won't let me slip my foot into my new Manolo Blahniks. C bought me some way trendy thongs the other day (the ones you wear on your feet). Get this, they have bottle openers in the sole. So if you're at a BBQ, you just reach for your stubbie, put a foot up on the other knee and pop off the cap. It makes me cringe a little bit because it's so fucking Aussie but it's kind of cool too, cos y'know, it's for beer. And good news on the home front: renovations are moving along and we now have an indoor toilet. I can't tell you how good it feels to yell 'Bombs Away' inside your own home after having to use a hired outhouse for the past three weeks. It's been a bit of an effort to time my poos to coincide with working hours. That feels better. I'm also off during the holidays to a wedding not in Melbourne (i.e. they live in Melbourne and C & I will be staying in Melbourne but the wedding is at some country estate retreat). So bugger off, have a great Chrissie and don't come lurking around here, here, or here until the new year.

Mixed bag

2005-12-17T11:44:00.000+10:30

Having time off work: fun. Recovering from general anaesthetic: not fun. Recuperating at parents' house: fun. Not being about to walk: not fun. Re-runs of Scrubs every day at 11am: fun. All other daytime TV: scary. Having time to relax for the first time in a year: fun (and relaxing). Not being able to get comfortable in bed because of recently-operated-on ankle: not fun. Pain, in general: not fun. Paracetamol and codeine: fun. Reading time: fun. Forgetting to take a decent book: bummer. No one knowing what to buy me for Xmas because I'm apparently "difficult": not fun. Using mum's credit card to order my own presents online: fun. Most things I actually want costing too much: not fun. Inability to leave the house unaided to go and buy C's b/day pressie: regrettable. Hobbling: not fun. Carring a walking stick: surprisingly useful for any number of non-walking-related things. Bathroom renovations: progressing steadily. Portaloo in the back yard: starting to get a little on-the-nose. Cup of tea: beckoning. Kettle: me, going to put it on now.

The kids are asleep. Now, where did I put my life..?

2005-12-10T17:09:00.000+10:30

Oh, that's right... I have a blog. We're renovating the bathroom & laundry, so it's been all hands (at least, all of mine) on deck for general domestic duties; not necessarily reno-related but there's a lot to do around the house given that C has project-managed the whole thing and I've been trying to keep on top of some of the more menial duties. Last weekend I had to get up in the roof to fix our TV reception. See, we have an aerial on the roof, as you do, but I recently discovered, on an unrelated trip into the roof, that there's an aerial in the roof as well, sitting just above the ceiling fan in the lounge. It appears our TV was plugged into this one and that the one on the roof came out at another plug on the opposite side of the lounge. Anyway, I bought a few bits from Dick Smith and got up there last week to run both outlets from the aerial on the roof. Now all stations are bright, sharp and shiny. And get this: there's a channel 31. Who knew? So Australia has drawn Brazil, Croatia and Japan in their pool for the World Cup. We don't stand a fucking chance... I'm having day surgery on Tuesday to clean up this fucked up ankle. It's been bad the last couple of days; really, really, really, really, really, really painful. It's funny though because mostly, it's not walking that does it (though it was yesterday), often it's the things you wouldn't give a second thought to: standing up from sitting, rolling yourself around the floor on an office chair, just trying to get comforable in bed. It's a real bitch. This post has no real point. I just happened to have 20 minutes free.

At least the colours are nice

2005-12-06T15:57:00.000+10:30

As I said here, I'm a little bit excited (not too excited, you understand) about the imminent release of the new Aeon Flux movie. What I am really fucking thrilled about though, is this. No longer do I have to lug around taped-from-the-tv episodes on 4 video cassettes. When I get my Borders gift voucher for Xmas (as I invariably do) I can consign the vid tapes to the hard rubbish pile and watch it in all its remastered fabulousness. The original production team have even come back in to re-write some of the stuff that MTV made Peter Chung change. I wonder if that means I'll now be able to make sense of Chronophasia.

dreaming of sleeping

2005-11-30T11:05:00.000+10:30

I'm having an operation on my ankle in just under two weeks. While I'm looking forward to the pain relief this should bring, I really can't wait for the procedure itself. You see, it will be under general anaesthetic, meaning I get to have a couple of hours' sleep. Also, have organised to recuperate at Ma & Pa's, so as not to put more pressure on C, who has little misses L and M to deal with. And with our bathroom reno going on nowish, Ma & Pa's place has the added lure of a working, indoor toilet and shower, which our house is presently lacking. I'm looking forward to Ma's cups of tea, bacon sarnies and lashings of codeine.

media trial

2005-11-22T14:13:00.000+10:30

I caught a bit of Sunrise this morning and saw the media circus surrounding the imminent arrival of Michelle Leslie. There was the overwhelming impression that the girl wasn't exactly going to get a warm welcome. I've just read online that she only answered one question before losing her shoe while being pursued by media. And good for her. It was as if she owed the media money and they were waiting there to collect. What they wanted to ask her, is whether she "faked" being Muslim to get a better outcome in court. What a ridiculous fucking beat-up. You don't have to wear a headscarf 24/7 to be a Muslim. One of the main criticisms of some forms of Islam is that it's repressive to women but oh, as soon as a young, liberated woman claiming to be Muslim shows a bit of skin, everyone's up on the horse accusing her of double standards, as if you have to be all or nothing. Typical. It's all black and white with the media. 'Either you're with us or you're against us.' People can and do exist, who identify with one religion or another without being a hardline fundamentalist. You don't have to go door to door selling the fucking Watchtower to have your own faith in a god of your choosing. (Though, as an aside, if I were in a Balinese prison on drug charges, I'd convert in a nanosecond if it meant I might not have to spend 20 years shitting in a bucket. Wouldn't most people?) And if people are calling her some kind of hypocrite for wearing a burqa in court and a tank top when she got off the plane, well, why do you think people wear suits in court? Why do they dress smartly for such appearances? Because it wouldn't help them if they didn't. You don't appear to have a good character if you front the judge and jury wearing a dog collar and a Sex Pistols t-shirt. People forget that court isn't about 'the whole truth', it's about making a judge and/or jury believe your version of the truth. And who wears their Sunday best on a plane? Who could bear to wear anything but a tank top in Singapore? As for all those "fake" Christians who never go to church but observe Christmas every year just so they get presents... I don't remember the tabloids digging up Shapelle Corby's church-going record when she expressed a renewed faith in Christianity. The other aspect of the ML case is whether she should be allowed to sell her story to the media, given that she has been convicted of a crime and the law states she should not be allowed to profit from that. Well, why should the media be allowed to profit from it and not her? I think it's time people stopped living in a fantasy land when it comes to the motives of the media. They're businesses, they're huge corporations, they do it for the money. If it weren't profitable, Rupert would be running sweatshops across Asia and churning out computers or sneakers or dildos. The media already have, and will continue to make money off Michelle Leslie's story. We live in an age where the media uses information as currency, yet have the conviction that they have a right to this information. Sure, when the government is planning to fuck us all over, yeah, the public has a right and a need to know and journalism should not forget its role as the fourth estate but when it's someone's personal story the media is after, someone's first-hand account, the media is being sanctimonious and hypocritical if it thinks it can tell someone 'we want you to tell us everything that happened and we'll then use your words and pictures to sell newspapers, while giving you nothing'. If the perpetrators of crime should not be allowed to profit from their exploits, why should anyone else? It's still making money off crime. If spending three months or 20 years in a Bali prison is considered a valuable insight into the Indonesian legal system, one that people can learn from or be entertained by, wherein lies that value, and how is that value determined and quanitified in what used to be a society but is now just a free-market economy? Furthermore, the law in question is silly because it's so easy to split the hair. ML's crime was drug-use (I'm inferring this from ABC online's description of her as "convicted drug user"). She surely won't be asked about what it's like to use drugs; they'll want to know about what it's like to be on trial and imprisoned in Indonesia, how Shapelle is doing and what was happening with the whole Muslim thing, a story that would be much the same whether she was found guilty or not. On the other hand, she's now a lot more famous than she was so someone will pick her up for a big modeling contract. Is it making money from crime if your profile is increased through having a conviction? Chopper Read sold kids' books. Did people buy them because he's a good children's author, or because he has no ears?

Man gets hotel room

2005-11-17T09:52:00.000+10:30

I knew they were going to be closing half of North Tce this morning for the arrival of Donald Rumsfeld but I wasn't expecting what it actually looked like. I don't know what I was expecting though. I think the presence of about 40 police officers threw me at first, as I thought they were just part of the barricade. But as I got further down the street it hit me that he was about to arrive. And just as I was about to step into work, the cavalcade arrived. No explosions, no gunshots (that I heard). Just some guy checking into a hotel. He's probably up in his room right now, sitting on the bed flipping through the TV channels, checking what's in the minibar, ordering room service (the boss is paying), seeing if his shaver plugs into the socket in the bathroom, browsing through the array of tiny shampoo bottles and stealing the sewing kit and stationery.

...and in the morning

2005-11-11T15:20:00.000+10:30

I found myself walking along North Terrace this morning just before 11am (I was wondering where I'd gotten to) and happened upon the Rememberance Day service at the War Memorial. I had bought a Poppy when I got off the train and decided to stay for the service, sitting on one of the new benches over Kintore Ave from the Memorial, outside the new Library entrance. I haven't been to an event of this kind since Anzac Day, 1990, when I had to photograph a service as part of my Photography course at 1st year Uni. It was a little odd as they don't really observe Anzac day in the US, that being where I was on 25 April that year. Fortunately, I was with a Sister City delegation at the time and a small service was organised in a local church. So I guess I'm a little out of touch with that facet of Australian culture. There's a bit of cultural cringe on my part when it comes to this type of event, where the cliché and hyperbole kind of overtake what's really the central meaning of days like this. Those parts of our culture seem almost mythological, especially when every other sports commentator compares 'the fighting spirit' of our 'war heroes' with the current Australian XI. It makes me want to turn the volume down. All that talk about 'the Diggers' and John Howard talking about 'mateship' a few years back made me pretty much want to hurl. I tend to think of WWII and Vietnam veterans as rather helpless pawns, and of current servicemen as somehow being complicit in a war that the allies kinda started so the 'hero' label has never sat well with me. But seeing a couple of old boys laying the wreath at the memorial really hit it home what the day was all about. They were obviously young at the time they saw action, and the men they lived with, ate with and who, for a time, were quite possibly the only friends they had on earth, were killed. And they weren't heroes; they were just men. Laying the wreath was a simple gesture that transcended any ideas about war, or service, heroism, or even conflict; it was just a gesture of grief, remembering a friend or friends who died, probably before their time; and taking stock and being thankful it wasn't them. As the Last Post rang out, filling an otherwise silent city street, punctuating those two minutes of rememberance, my mind wandered to my Nanna, whose funeral was in ealry November years ago, then to two guys I knew, contemporaries of mine who have died this past year, and the bit about 'age shall not weary them' ceased to become just 'words they say on Remembrance day', and actually started to mean something. My cynical Gen X heart started to soften. Then, as I got up to go, they started singing the National Anthem and talking about God and my Gen X feet bolted for the Mall.

Pain management

2005-11-10T10:46:00.000+10:30

This whole constant-pain thing is really quite interesting. Now, I'm a bloke and as such I'm bound by the code of blokedom not to complain about it. If I were a girl, I'm sure I wouldn't have been to work at all this week, such is the pain involved in walking to and from the train station every day. So I'm not complaining about the pain as such, I'm just mentioning that it is there and it's rather a nuisance. It's "just a flesh wound" if you know what I mean, ignoring the fact that it doesn't actually involve flesh (it's a bone thing) and it isn't a wound either; I think I'm drawing attention to that famous Monty Python quote in order to illustrate the ahh-it's-nothing-ness and general blokeness of the sentiment expressed therein. It feels like I have this way of walking on my right foot that doesn't cause any discomfort but any deviation from that perfect step brings excruciating pain in a whole lot of areas: both sides of the ankle and right up the achilles. When this happens, my leg partially gives way and I wince in pain. The interesting part is trying to separate that wincing bit from the pain. I mean, sometimes when it happens, I say 'ouch'. But why say that? What a silly thing to do! Why does pain elicit the 'ouch' response and not, say, cause us to sing My Sharona? Why, for that matter, does pain cause a sharp drawing of breath and contortion of facial muscles? Someone once told me (could have been Bruce) about this guy who had learnt to do really good prat falls and was asked how he managed to do them so well, to which he replied 'The secret is in not minding that it hurts'. This statement is at the backbone of my pain management strategies. I mean, the pain is pretty much constantly there, but shit it gets tiring saying 'ouch' and half falling over all day. It's so much more convenient just to keep on walking and say to oneself 'Gosh, that's an interesting sensation. My bones are grinding against each other... is it morning tea time yet?' or 'Wow, that's what it must feel like to have a nine-inch nail hammered into the back of one's shin... man, I never realised the difference between early and late Bauhaus design was so distinct!' You see? It's so much less of a bother merely to notice the pain rather than going through the whole melodrama of falling over, clutching limbs, crying and screaming. All that only gets you sympathy and sympathy is so bloody patronising and it doesn't really help at all. I'd rather much less sympathy and much more being able to walk like a normal person. The not-minding-that-it-hurts strategy helps me feel a bit less like a cripple and I guess it's my way from distancing myself from the pain. Apart from which it's all the way down there in my ankle, which is nearly as far away from my brain as possible, so it should hardly hurt at all, right?

Hard work not talking

2005-11-06T23:45:00.000+10:30

I saw someone on the train this morning who is not talking to me. And while you're thinking 'Well, I don't talk to you on the train either Drew, I have no idea who the fuck you are,' I should mention that that this was someone who used to talk to me a lot, sometimes on the train, but who now doesn't. I used to get along with this person really well but I inadvertently offended this person a few months ago (and I still don't know exactly how) so since then it's been cold shoulder and avoiding contact with me. I won't go into how the offence was caused because I can't speak for this person's state of mind at the time but it was nothing malicious on my part and I considered this person a good friend so I'm kind of sorry offence was caused and equally sorry that offence was taken. But the train thing this morning was kind of uncomfortable. Not so much for me because I've tried to say hello and tried to be friendly to this person since said incident but I have receieved nothing but curt, one-word replies. I want to say hello and be friends again but this person's having none of it. I get on the train fairly early in the trip so get a good choice of seats. This person gets on at the last stop before Adelaide so often doesn't get a seat. I was sitting near the door this morning so when this person got on and saw me, they had to stand at the door, back to everyone, and stare out the window before opening the door and bolting when the train finally pulled in. So while I wasn't uncomfortable with seeing this person, I was uncomfortable because I could see how uncomfortable this person was in that this person went to such lengths in order to avoid contact with me. I won't go into right and wrong or whether this person is over-reacting or not because that is pointless and I'd be friends again and forget the whole thing in a second if this person so desired. But I think it's a real shame that this person now has to do all this extra work to keep up this facade of not-talking-to-me-ness when it would be so much easier not to have to keep up said facade. How tired-making the whole thing must be.

It's the system that's sick

2005-11-04T15:48:00.000+10:30

I have this recurring ankle problem for which I've been seeing a podiatrist for some time. Apparently though, podiatrists aren't real doctors, so when it came to referring me on to a specialist (after seeing my scary x-rays), he said I'd have to go back to my GP and do it. The closest thing I had to a GP was a practice in the city, a few blocks from work, that specialises in Travel Medicine (immunisations, innoculations, malaria tablets, etc) but also ran a general practice. I booked in and saw the doctor I saw a couple of years ago when I was feeling generally run-down and constantly tired (diagnosis: children. Condition continues). She made me a referral and wished me well. I rang the specialist and made an appointment for as soon as possible (which turned out to be late January) and was told I needed more x-rays (mmmm... radiation), which I would need my GP to organise. So, (getting to the point now) I rang the same GP and was told that the doctor I saw "was only a casual/fill-in type doc who wouldn't be working in the near future and anyway we're not taking any more general practice patients so it might be best to find somewhere else and would you like the numbers of some other doctors in the area?" I couldn't believe it. My GP just dumped me. But I'm not the kind of guy to sit at home and get all down about it. I'm now seeing someone new. He has a nice new office and was an absolute dreamboat with his smouldering English accent and his neatly pressed GazMan shirt. He's going to try to pull a few strings and get me in to a specialist sooner (because quite frankly, this constant pain is a real bitch). Oh, and I got stung by a wasp the other night. How fucked up is that?

Smug, conservative country music fans

2005-10-28T10:00:00.000+09:30

From the Adelaide Independent Weekly Online news service, 27 Oct 05:

Adelaide's newest radio station launches as Cruise 1323 To commence broadcasting from mid-November, the ARN's newest station will target "Baby Boomers and beyond" with a "sophisticated and smooth" music format. In addition to music the station will feature community info on such things as food and wine festivals, concerts and shows relevant to listeners, as well as regular news. At last night's launch, ARN's SA General Manager Steve Rowe spoke about their careful consideration of various radio formats as well as offers from interstate networks, "but we settled on keeping it and operating the station ourselves".

It's my usual gripe. Adelaide, Baby boomers and media (or the complete lack of diversity therein). It's like they own the fucking airwaves and presses. Ahh, the internet... they can't take that away from me. I guess I think of baby boomers this way: have you heard that saying "We don't inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children"? I sometimes feel as though I'd like to give the world to my kids but have to tell them "Sorry, but your grandparents are still using it". And they want to take it with them when they go.

≤ 4

2005-10-20T10:30:00.000+09:30

Last night, C found an article on childhood amnesia, which is where you pretty much forget anything that ever happened to you before the age of four or so. Of course you don't wake up on your fourth birthday and forget who you are but as you get older, these memories fade.
It's interesting for me though that I was four when my family moved from one city to another, giving me a pretty big event by which I can judge what memories happened when.
So here's a list of things I can remember from when I was four or younger.

I stepped on a bee and got stung in the back yard
I learned to ride a bike in our driveway
My younger sister got her fingers jammed in the car door
Mum & Dad went away. I stayed with my Nanna. She made me eat carrots that were cut with those serrated edges. She told me they'd make my hair go curly. That put me off carrots for a while
One of the cranks on my bike had something wrong with it so dad fixed it; only he put it back on the wrong way so both pedals were in the same position
A friend of Mum & Dad's came around on his motor bike. He had a clock radio for mum
We were watching my dad play soccer one weekend. I was standing at the end of the field. A man with long hair, a headband, a beard and moustache (it was the 70s) had a shot at goal, missed, but hit me fair in the stomach. I fell backwards, cried a lot
Later in the car I ate some vegemite sandwiches
At another soccer match a big stack of lumber fell on me
I had a pop gun (y'know, with the cork on a string at the end) and I was pretending to shoot some vagrant guy in the vacant lot by the aqueduct next to our house
Did my older sister fall out of the car, or did I dream that one?
I was running through the house like an aeroplane while dad was on the front porch about to put up the TV aerial. My outstretched hand caught the aerial and I got a big cut on it (my hand, not the aerial)
There was a party for dad's soccer team. I remember being in the lounge, people everywhere, dad playing the piano and it being really smoky (the room, not the piano)
Me & my siblings being interrogated by my parents because one of us did something wrong. I think one of us ripped the encyclopaedia. I think it might have been me
Climbing up through the Cypress tree in the front yard and sitting on top of it
Going to the Gypsy Ball at my brother and sister's school. They played the Mexican Hat Dance
Going to Kindergarten one day, being in the car as mum dropped me off, trying to tie my toy trains to my feet so I could use them as roller skates, without success.

There are others but thankfully nothing in there I'd rather forget.