Views from Orbit

Peeking Around

2011-06-17T13:47:00.003+10:00

Greetings all, from after lunch on a Friday. I've been thinking of you, and wondering how you are. Life has been happening to us all, hasn't it?
Dinners and sunsets and laundry and "I thought I paid that bill" and missed appointments and amazingly beautiful unexpected moments and bad dreams and coughs that won't go and all those things.
I've changed jobs (twice) since we last spoke, and changed again inside, although I seem to look the same from the outside. Funny how that goes. "You haven't changed a bit" say people who are running into me from school days (Hi Tim! Hi Ben! Hi Kate!) and yet I don't remember who I was then, let alone bear even a passing resemblance... or do I? I don't know. It has ceased to matter. To quote a much maligned film "we're living in an ocean of motion" (The Secret. Don't start with me). I'm floating and bobbing along, and occassionally stricking out towards somewhere dry.

Anyway, this is more of a quick g'day and to promise that I'll be back soon for a decent yarn. Put the jug on.

Shitbags - That Was Scary!

2011-01-14T11:28:00.004+11:00

I'm safe. The family is safe.
It is pretty chaotic.
If you can donate to Red Cross or someone like that, please do - they're on the ground and they know what to do in an emergency. They're helping the people who've been smashed by this thing.
My heart goes out to the people where it is still raining, still flooding, and the waters are just receding to show the ruin.
Thank you to everyone who sent messages of care and support - it meant a lot to me to receive them.

A Bigger Wet

2011-01-11T09:20:00.004+11:00

The New Year has been ushered in on a surge of turbulent brown floodwater. So far my life and those of my family have been inconvenienced only and we are very grateful for this. We are all ok. Many people (actually the last count I heard was in the hundreds of thousands, but after this week it will probably edge up to the million/s as now the dense metropolitan areas are being effected) are not ok. They have been directly and negatively effected - damage, ruin and even death.

I have never lived through something that was officially a crisis and it is a bit scary to be inside an event where chance and nature are taking turns rolling the dice.

The water is not how it looks in the pictures - it is moving very fast. Turbulent and heavy with bits of things inside it. It pushes trees over, it carries things, animals and people away - very quickly. Underneath it, the road you take for granted may or may not be there anymore. When it recedes, the smell is boggling. I lack the imaginative skills to imagine what it is like for the people out in the north and west - where townships are facing a week or even a month before the waters recede. Oh, and it is still raining. Still raining. If you are in a position to help with money (the Red Cross is running lots of evacuation centres), then please do. This is not a drill.

Festivus

2010-12-24T13:29:00.002+11:00

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, nonaddictive, gender neutral celebration of the solstice holiday, practised with the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or the choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2011, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that Australia is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed,color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms:
This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal.
It is freelytransferable with no alteration to the original greeting.
It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her / himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.
This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings, for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Note: No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons have been electromagnetically relocated.

You Know You're A Queenslander (Pt 2)

2010-12-21T11:23:00.003+11:00

When...
* You can identify the type of ant that bit you based on the flavour of pain, the duration of the pain and the size of the scar it may leave.

* You pause in the mowing to find some longer pants to wear to protect yourself from the blowback, only to realise you own only one pair of jeans and one goodset of tracky pants and both are too hot. You continue mowing in cutoff shorts and thongs.

* Someone says "it is the Sprit of Christmas" and you think of Bundaberg Rum.

sigh

2010-11-30T16:25:00.003+11:00

Ok, so I gave up on Nano this year. I don't feel good about it. Lesson learnt.
Actually lesson not learnt - I already knew I needed to say no to a lot more things and I didn't! That large part of me that lives in De Nial thought I could take it all on and get it all done and, as usual, it was wrong.
Is misplaced optimism a sin or just a character flaw?

Week Two - Epic Fail

2010-11-15T09:12:00.001+11:00

I've never had such a bad Week Two of Nano. Zero count days at this point is utterly demoralising. There's reasons/excuses (colitis, work going spazz, etc) but 'failing' at Nano simply points out how I've allowed work-related concerns to colonise my effective energy. Again.
Another great exaple of an opportunity to learn from my mistakes.

Onward and upward.

NANO 2010

2010-11-02T17:28:00.002+11:00

Nanowrimo for 2010 has kicked off!* Woot! I'm the least prepared i have ever, ever been!! Woot! I have written my first 2500 words or so and still have no idea what's going on or if i will basically scrap that stuff and turn into another direction. I have been looking forward to this since December last year. There's something about the frivolous abandonment of setting off on this adventure that is charming and fun. I also discovered last year that committing to this made many other things take off as well, an unexpected turbo-charge that I am hoping for again this year but trying not to expect.

I know I won't be so perky in a week and half when I'm super-tired and blocked blocked blocked, but that's next week's problem!

(* Apologies for all the exclamation marks in this post)

Time turns Away from Us

2010-10-29T17:21:00.002+11:00

"Give up the wish for a better past"
is the illuminated sign in the churchyard on the corner. It's a bit of an odd thing to say at first pass, but as I thought about it and also about the way that my 3 hours a night for projects seemed to completely evaporate this week, it started to gel into something quite profound. Something that made echos around how slowly life comes together when we're living it but how quickly things seem to have passed when we look back.

I'd like to learn from my Mistakes

2010-10-26T11:56:00.002+11:00

Here's a hot tip for beginners - don't keep using earbuds that have deteriorated to the point that there's exposed wires. I shouldn't have to say it - but there it is.

The Morning After

2010-10-20T16:35:00.011+11:00

Since the Fat Quarter Challenge was accepted, there's been a frenzy of lists - ideas, schedules, possible shops and cafes this is a good excuse to visit, and most ironically, a list of all the other projects that really ought to be completed before this one is undertaken... such as the scarf Mellie ordered for her birthday - only one third completed. But, I hope you'll agree, looking slightly fabulous (the photo uploader thing didn't work - nearly got it! sorry).

This project is working excellently to take my mind off the impending horridness of Post Peak Oil* or whatever we're calling the trainwreck in slow-mo that is rolling down the mountain of non-renewable resource gluttony towards us. Kewl. Mission, pretty much, accomplished.
Bring on the Craft.

*"Impending" in the sense that it is the future at some point. However I don't (and no-one really does) know when exactly which is strangely what I find most stressful about the situation.

Craft-tastic! Challenge!

2010-10-15T17:18:00.004+11:00

As a way of re-invigorating my creative (bunny ears required?) life, I've chosen a fairly random challenge and recruited a few fellow travellers to join me in participating.
Actually I've tried on two fronts and 1 sunk like a proverbial (Nanowrimo not in flavour this year, tho I'm still in for it) and t'other is a little more accessible.

It is the Inaugural Trash City Fat Quarter Challenge 2011.

Oh baby.

What is a fat quarter? It is a piece of fabric. Still interested and willing to risk learning about quilting? Then read on, but over here. The project will be due sometime in April 2011, all those details are yet to be clarified by the organising society.

That's all for now, but expect updates and hi-larious anecdotes about paper-pieced hexagons, and even, possibly, photos. Yeah, watch my comfort zone blow right out.
Woot.

Very Busy Dog

2010-09-22T15:30:00.002+10:00

I once saw a doco on tv in which Grandmaster Flash said
"A dawg that chases it's tail is a very busy dawg."

I can not for the life of me remember anything else about that doco, but really - with a gem like that does it matter?

Panopticon Blues

2010-09-17T14:11:00.003+10:00

Wristwatches and schedules and tiny little boxes cut dreams into segments, and some things don't keep living when you cleaver them up into teensy pieces. Try it if you don't believe me. I suggest not with your own pet.

The Doubtful has had all clock readouts gaffed over and we're all the better for it. I prefer to not know what day it is, anywhere. Your timezone is your problem dude, don't lay that trip on me. Of course in my trade we're largely casual about many of those things people have gotten into the habit of thinking of as immutable (psst guys, we made it up and all agreed not to tell - don't you remember?). Occasionally we get all precise and specific. Sometimes bizniz must be clandestine and this requires some snappy moves to a sharp beat. Usually we cruise in rasta zen mode and this is the eternal perfect antidote to the lingering sweaty nightmares from my time in the panopticon.

The Invisible World

2010-08-24T15:35:00.007+10:00

The Doubtful has been in dry dock so I went crewing on a couple of other ships. Let's face it, sitting around planet side is not a strength I have nor really wish to cultivate.

It is always interesting to see how other systems handle the same things your own do but in bizarrely different ways - and of course that sometimes they don't. My ideas of critical functions and basic comforts that are just so obvious as to not be worth a mention are simply not shared by others. Whoa! I was away just long enough for it to all be an entertaining curiosity and working holiday rather than a horribly jarring experience.

So here I am, back in the same patched chair that has a little bit of stuffing coming out of the broken seam at the back, and thinking about something a wise man told me this week...

The freedom to reinterpret the world, to abandon a story of desperation for one of possibility and hope, is basic to the worldview of magic. It’s a freedom that today’s progressive community might find it useful to embrace as well.
...
It’s not just that change has to be thinkable before it’s possible, though this is true and important; it’s also that imagination can change the world by itself.

... and realising that so many things that have meaning are actually almost entirely held within ourselves. On a personal level, in our communities, our nations or ships. All of it can be reinterpreted according to our will, or the will of our enemies, or the will of the readers of the future to name just three obvious ones. In a world-view where 'reality' is this fluid, what can we hold on to? And let's not pretend that feeble humans do not feel safer holding onto things!

I've noticed that we hold onto habits and the familiar. Broken chairs, unsubstanitated opinions even our expectations and hopes sometimes are just placeholders for the meaning we really yearn for and that maybe we could finally discover if we accepted this secret. We are free to reinterpret the world.
Crazy. Could it work?

Morning Planetside

2010-08-17T08:55:00.003+10:00

Do you ever dream of birds, of warm currents that lift and caress? Do you dream of eternal sunsets and wondrous, unknowable patterns? Do you aspire to lift and see more? I'm held here by the miracle of gravity, part of this web.

That's the urge of sap rising, of rich complex earth smells.

Smother

2010-08-16T13:15:00.004+10:00

There's plenty of space out here in, um, space. But no matter how far away you are from the cities or worlds of the Culture, somehow, your mother can find you, and in just seconds say exactly the thing that will just most piss you off.

That's the super-power of blood relations. They accumulate a lifetime of misunderstandings, judgements and irritations that can be channelled directly into your reptilian brain, bypassing all higher-control functions.

Gotta love 'em.

"What's that?! Sorry, you're dropping out - there's a lot of solar flares in this quadrant..."

Stuff Dead People Like

2010-08-03T16:10:00.003+10:00

Do you think that would make for a good blog? It could be pretty involved, or maybe just really really short.

Do you think opinions would differ on whether being dead was basically pretty good, or ultimately suckful? By persons who are deceased obviously - not by us living types.

If all life and matter is really energy vibrating at different speeds and levels, then surely blogging - or interacting with the cybersphere (or WTF we're calling this space these days) would be the first place we could make "contact with those who have crossed over" in a way that does not require any human third party. Actually, it should be "receive contact" as we'll need them to set up some kind of Ghost account. Gmail of a new kind.

Pros:
* Either no longer conscious of human depravity and suffering or all-knowing
* Can understand all languages, see through all politicians and finally be certain of something
* Re-incarnated as cool person/animal
* No need for money, haircuts or bowel bacteria
* one-way ticket

Cons:
* Sensual /worldly pleasures a thing of the past
* Can't take advantage of perspective/situation to improve plight of loved ones
* No afterlife of any kind and so souls/consciousness disappear right on the moment of death, making this blog concept N/A
* Whatever the next realm/stage is, it is too awesome to be bothered remembering to try and tell us about it - everyone just scoots on over/up and gets on with it
* one-way ticket

Probably a bit of a shit idea, but I do wonder...

Detoxification

2010-08-02T10:03:00.002+10:00

Re-initiating the sugar/fructose detoxification process after dismal failure two weeks-ish ago. I've spent the intervening period clearing out the various storage facilities and carefully re-stocking, along with practising the "It's not being deprived it is being healthy" mantra which doesn't yet feel or sound sincere.

Aiming to stick to it for a month and trusting that it comes with the benefits as advertised on the packet.

Day 2: Basically holding my breath.

Ordinary Days

2010-07-27T11:26:00.002+10:00

There's been no news. Sometimes, hurtling through space has big stretches of time where Just not Much Happens. I look out a window. I wait. I read something and have a snooze. I talk to the cargo. I wonder if I could have done things differently. Such is life.

Sirocco Stream

2010-07-15T08:31:00.003+10:00

It's been a good run lately, I've been doing this for a while now and so I've picked up a few tricks from the old timers.
We're flowing with the solar winds for the next three cycles, a lovely extra kick-along, and it has put us into the path of the mild and loose social connections that natural nomads make. The bodegas in the port worlds are just that tiny bit more full with the more colourful and experienced characters. There's a light camaraderie that I had grown out of hoping to find, and here it is, under the current and seeping into my world.

I'm carrying settlers at the moment, their enthusiastic hopefulness and optimism is catching. I find that I am happy for no reason.

Sunshine Skins

2010-07-06T08:17:00.005+10:00

We picked up a fresh cargo the other day - mandarins and oranges. I took a crate as part payment and gorged myself on the first day and pulped and froze what I couldn't eat, because I remember the last time I took on board this stuff.

At first I had been delighted to have the fragrant crates in the hold, I love how they seem to store the sun in their skins, but quickly enough I couldn't get them offloaded soon enough. It is easy to forget that ripe means fresh. Which means "consume very soon". That's why jams and pickles used to be so big, because those gorgeous full globes will go off, and once they start it is a race to decay. Skin fungus, fermentation, even in the cold, even leaving the hold to get close to space cold - they'll turn fast.

We're landing in just hours now, and I know that the people here will go crazy for this delivery. There'll be enough good stuff in amongst it all to make it a lucrative run, and I've got enough snap-frozen pulp to keep scurvy away for a long while.

Soup

2010-06-30T14:26:00.003+10:00

What a revelation is can be when something lost and forgotten is found and valued again.
Rediscover homemade vegetable soup. Add an extra potato.

How delicious! Nutritious! Frugal Friendly!

I am the envy of the communal dining area.

The Gods of Space

2010-06-11T11:24:00.004+10:00

The Gods of Space are an interesting pantheon.
Eventually, of course, we'll forget that we created them and they'll become some weird kind of dogmatic religion for our post-human offspring. Whatever they'll mutate into by then, I doubt they'll be calling themselves 'human'.
Human started seeming a little grubby and somehow a bit unsanitary by the mid 21^st. All that blood and integrated systems and redundant genes. So our post-quantum, post-lunar, post-post generations will likely shun us as thoroughly as we do the drab and unknown millions of the first dozen millennia of pre-history humanity.
Humpf.
Where was I?

Peversity

2010-06-08T12:03:00.002+10:00

"The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the soul's very life."

John Updike (1965) Assorted Prose

Ah, Freecell

2010-06-08T08:29:00.004+10:00

My communications network failed over the weekend although at the time I thought it might have been just my handset. It was pretty inconvenient, no one could reach me and I had to find a payphone and queue with the unwashed to put strange coins into a machine and then strain to hear my loved one down a scratchy stinky line.

Rerouting comms worked until the network was back up, but what struck me about the incident was the irony that my only concern had been the prospect of losing my Freecell Challenge stats.
That's right, solitaire on my phone. 811 games so far with 798 wins (1.61% losses) and I'm heading to 1000 to see if it clocks, and to get my losses to less than 1%.

I do have better things to do with my time, but it is so easy to do this in all those little gaps (queues! Dr's waiting rooms! During the ads!) and then next thing you know, just one game before bed. It is a slippery slope. Obsessed? Nah, I could give up any time.

Hasty Packing

2010-06-07T13:06:00.002+10:00

I dreamt again of an enforced and urgent pack.

This time I was at work, although I was packing the bedroom from my first share house/squat, and the items were random, drawn from a broad range of my strange visual storeroom. I had a small, brown, late 70s style carryall - about the size of a contemporary average handbag and I was attempting to shovel only the most vital aspects of my life into it.
This is one of my few recurring dream themes. Due to some (always unknown) crisis there's only a short time to grab only what I can carry. It is what lead to my "interest" in evacuation preparedness and that did seem to alleviate the dreams for a long time. The new element last night was the ring of eager and aggressive scavengers, swooping in to scoop up anything I hesitated over or looked uncertain about. It certainly refreshed the normal baseline level of panic that this dream always comes with.

Time to update the evac 'go bag' and then spend some couch time untangling my head.

A Different Kind of Year

2010-06-04T14:09:00.004+10:00

This message is the 365^th.
A year's worth of messages - possibly making this blog one year old or maybe a decade old (in blog time). It is a cute milestone. Part of me thinks I should take a photo of it. What an atavistic impulse.

So many things are on autopilot now that I sometimes wonder if the ship gets as bored as I do. We're scheduled for a refueling and cargo transfer stop at the 711116 hub soon. I'm checking the mirror to make sure I'm presentable, but I can't remember if I'm meant to have hair or not. The transmission lag means it is not worth checking the feeds yet either.

Last time I got a case of the jitters and scurried back to the ship after about 4 hours. It was just too weird to be around people and eating food other than Stilton. Oh yeah, the mouse, a slow set of moves got it convinced that the ship was longer and wider than it really is, and using the only remaining advantage of opposable thumbs, I waited and waited and waited until it went into an airlock looking for the promised land, and I blew the hatch manually.

Likewise I then performed a hard start of the command systems, so at least I'm nominally back in control, but of course all of the tweaked settings and preferences and other niceties are missing. It just doesn't seem like home. It feels like my home was stolen and replaced with an exact replica, but all an inch to the left. I could just run a back-up, but now I'm looking out the window and wondering if I should just build them all up fresh. Maybe I'd like things to be different, but am just in the habit of *thinking* that I like them a certain way... like the hair thing, I'll wait and bit longer and see.

Are you Paranoid Enough?

2010-06-03T12:22:00.004+10:00

What does it take to survive?
Do you have to be willing to eat spiders just in case there's nothing else around later and look for hidden spy cameras as you go about your day to day?
I'm not up for that.

Why should I strive to propagate my genes at the expense of yours? I'm sure yours will suit the vasty unknown future just as well. Possibly better. Probably not as well as spiders or cephalopods, but we can't all be superior species now can we?

Good luck.
I'm making a cup of tea. Would you like one?

Danger or Reward

2010-05-31T09:19:00.003+10:00

Browsing fruitlessly in a newsagency for something fresh or stimulating that was worth the cover price, I came across a small article in a mag called "Ultra" (what? I don't know) that said that the entire self-help industry is pretty much based on a pointless belief - that poeple can be motivated by rational reasons and good information. Rather, it posited, humans are much simpler. There are only two things that will cut through our dislike of change. Danger or Reward.

Our long slow generations of survival before the internet taught us to be conservative, to fear change, and all the chirpy infomercials about abercisers and healthy eathing in the world won't save us from eating ourselves to death. The only think that reaches the far depths of our processing units is to put it into much simpler terms. DANGER or REWARD.

That is a model I might be able to do something with.

Plea from a Hostage

2010-05-26T13:32:00.003+10:00

I have not been able to post for some time as a mouse is terrorising us. I have snuck this missive out in the rubbish collection. If he finds out that I am in communication with the outside world, the retribution will be harsh. I haven't much time, nor space to write. I am scratching this into an old cat thigh bone that the mouse has tired of, using a broken knitting needle. All I will say for now is this: Help.
Please help me.
The ships controls are re-routed to the mouse den and the only food being replicated by the machines is Stilton. I hate Stilton, and I'm getting very podgy. I don't know where we're heading, but I doubt I will make the annual convention this year. Lock into my signal if you can. Track us. This mouse must be stopped.

Scale Free

2010-03-06T15:59:00.003+11:00

This morning I went to an art/science workshop called "Scale Free Networks" where we used massively magnified slides to assemble and then interpret images and make collaborative artworks, and then spent about 45 minutes tooling around looking at random stuff (ribbon, stone, sponge, fungus, coin, moth wing etc) under stereo microscopes (20x and 40x magnification). The workship was led by an artist and a scientist (molecular biology) and they shared with us a very little about the history of microscopes and then some images, and we talked also about the freedom of working collaboratively across disciplines. It was all too short (2 hours) and stimulating to mix up the nuanced and emotive values of art with the tools and language of science.

I love the way so many things in nature - shapes but also really relationships scale up and down. Everyone has their own experiences of this - from the coastlines of Norway designed by Slartibartfast to the edges of grilled cheese, to the way skin peels when it is sun burnt and the spreading silt echos on a flood plain, veins in our arms and nerves in our eyes, or the gorgeous aching arch of a solar flare or a Lilly's gentle pitch to sensuous tip. Those of course are shapes, but they're relational in time and space - as we are.

The way we trust, or dance around trust, the way we share, or close down and step away, the way we cluster as individuals (and relate to ourselves) or with others - intimate groups on specific lines of interest or in masses - for the kick that comes from tens of thousands cheering together - be it at the ritual of a ball through posts or for the frisson of balls on balls. Highly codified clothing or no clothing at all. Meaning held in the action translated through the lenses of our own experiences. In art as in science so many things are taken as truth that would be so much more useful to our understanding of each other more broadly if they were understood as multiple frames of position and preference.

"Lost my muchness indeed!"

Sedition in the Dark

2010-02-15T02:45:00.012+11:00

It is deeply unAustralian to dislike hot weather, be largely disinterested in sport and be underwhelmed by the idea of mowing in middle of the day, but nonetheless, here I am. Your personal representative of that irritating single digit demographic of population that insists on watching SBS, reading books without pictures and not eating meat. Frankly, under Howard the sedition laws were getting very close to netting us pale non-sporties and veggos. I don't think any of those "patriot act" style laws have been revoked, but I'm pretty confident they haven't continued to expand. (Of course, they may have. My deliberate ignorance of news means that I remain unaware of what new evils the blandly congenial face of our Current PM hides).

I used to find the idea of sedition very interesting. As I understand it (ie, vague guessing rather than any looking up of definitions, or actual research. I like to start off with a kind-of gestalt feel and spiral my way towards accuracy. Lends slightly more to poetry if there's any in the offing than just diving in to the dictionary. But I digress.) sedition is kinda like mutiny, but on land. Or the idea of mutiny. Of course learning about Pirates has shown me a few more things about mutiny too. Sometimes 'mutiny' was a fairly straightforward commercial decision where a strongly held difference in acquisitional strategies and philosophies of plunder led to simple (ie bloodless) partings where the pirates' fleet (yes, they often had small convoys and even fleets) would experience a re-distribution of crew and a ship or two would peel away and head to fresh horizons. Seems reasonable. In other times, most notably in the above-board commercial world and the navy, mutiny was the last line of defence against a Captain gone buttfuck crazy - wigging out all over the place and homicidal on an unsustainable trajectory. Of course, Captains get to write the Ship's Log, so later on it could be hard to get the dead to speak in one's defence if the Captain had a lucid moment with quill before the parting of ways.

So anyway, why might this be interesting? It seemed to me that crumbly empires get more concerned with what you might be thinking than what you're actually doing. Critical thought can become a crime. Frank conversation about how things could practically be different can become a crime. Not a misdemeanour, not a concern, not a 'no scones for you naughty thing!' but a crime.

A much greater thinker than I, George Orwell, has of course covered this ground superbly, in his seminal work of paranoia "1984". I recommend it to myself for a re-read and to you dear reader for your own edification (read it here for free).

I'm not up to Orwell. I'm just saying that for some reason a few years back, we started making it explicit that thinking was problematic to the Australian way of life. That was interesting because it seemed so quaintly old-school and utterly, utterly pointless. Then it wasn't interesting at all for a long time, just another example of how shitty life can be, and keeping that list is a really dull hobby. I let it go.

Then last weekend I watched "Death Race" and it set me to thinking (as incredibly brutal, masochistic, post-collapse action films often do) about what we like to think of as "fiction" and therefore entertaining, and who we think are suitable people to fill the roles of villains. Not many people saw Death Race, despite Jason Statham in the lead and Ian "Swearengen" McShane in support so let me break it down for you... and bear with me as the plot does not hang together in the film so this will not sound very cogent*.

An ex-con who happens to also be an ex-car racing guy's wife is brutally murdered and he is framed for it so that he can go to the commercially run jail where they RACE (a la Running Man) in a competition to THE DEATH to win their freedom. BTW the race of fortified and armed cars is telecast live and viewing is by subscription, thereby earning the prison mega-bucks.

Ok. Nothing new there. Literally (it is a remake of a '76 film). I won't distract our conversation by going into the gender stuff (other than to say it is tediously predictable - the wife is a corpse before she gets 2 full lines out, the uber-evil Warden is a post-menopausal corporate witch drone, and then there's 3 or 4 bootylicious and interchangable sets of tits and arses to dress the cars up. Sorry "navigators" from the women's prison.) That was a long set-up for a short pay-off. The fiction here (can you spot it?) that makes all of this allowable - is that "in the future, prisons will be run for (dramatic pause) profit!" (GASP OF SHOCK) Only in that kind of hideously peverted world would something so craven come about.

But of course this fiction is a fiction.

Prisons the world over, and here in Australia, are run by contractors to lesser or greater degrees already. Some in the States are already "purpose built facilities" completely funded by commercial interests. Running a prison is like removing garbage - one of those services that the community expects gets handled, but actually as long as the name and the signage is ok, really don't care who exactly is taking care of that business, and it's a growth industry. It's the Indian call-centre approach to staffing and funding. A hollow-core world, and, most importantly to this discussion, it is old hat. Maybe in 76 it seemed a wild idea, great for some future world (Mad Max-esque - if you will. Actually Mad Max came out in 79 - but you get my drift.) and certainly when Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead came out in 88 it was a chilling commentary on a system running loose and note - even the title tied it in to the concepts that prisoners were people, with rights (BTW Nick Cave co-wrote this, and had an acting role in it. Keyword: BLEAK. It is not a popcorn and beer type film - unlike Death Race which is clearly made to be consumed as Entertainment "Ghosts..." feels like a nightmare documentary ). But I digress.

To bring this back to sedition, it seems we have eaten our own tail. If sedition is a crime of thought in which criticism of the ruling system is entertained, what is it called when telling the truth about the ruling system is seen as distasteful or undesirable enough that we maintain a consensus reality that these unpalatable truths remain fictions?

How close are we to a situation where, on the books at least, speaking aloud a truth becomes a crime?

Close enough, I'd say, that someone will be able to furnish an example in Australia of where this is already the case. Or proposed to be the case. Probably in that that bundle of ridiculous on-line measures. Anyway. There it is. I don't really know what to do with that line of thought. It begs for action of some kind. But what?

In a hollow-core world where do you toss the molotov?

* WARNING - PLOT SPOILER. You and I know that it is unlikly that you're going to:
a. Watch this film, eva.
b. Not see this twist coming, and
c. Have the pleasure of watching massively overclocked cars race around almost endlessly brutally killing 'people' ruined by this brief synopsis. Basically this is a film that delivers on the core promise of the title. "Death Race" That's what they were selling and that's what they made. No nancy-pantsing around.

A Steady Hand on the Tiller

2010-01-15T11:13:00.008+11:00

You know it, I know it. No one wants to talk about it. The Rut.

Sometimes the structures we put into place to support us and assist us get too familiar, too well known, and without realising it we've entered a rut. A rut is a worn path, a line of travel that is heavily used and heads in the direction you want to go and it actually eases passage in that way because it is worn smooth of little lumps and bumps. Of course if you decide that it is no longer the desired direction of travel and that your destination lies on another path ... well getting out of a deep rut can be difficult - even hazardous. If you don't have the right skills you can tip yourself over and even break something needful, maybe an axle.

Usually we aren't at risk from this extreme type of response, a little wiggle or a holiday, or a mix-around of the dressings we give our days is enough to freshen-up the experience. Other times, the realisation of a rut can seem like a life sentence and must be escaped immediately, AT ONCE and in this moment of panic hazardous and momentous shifts can be attempted, but rarely pulled off.

I've had a few weeks to walk barefoot in the cold waters of strange oceans and have a think about the rutness of things in comparison to the other way we often phrase the same situation - "plain sailing". As with so many things It is a question of perspective. Am I in a rut or am I experiencing plain sailing? It is only a rut if I wish to change direction and find it hard, but sometimes I know that I change direction just to check that I still can. Conundrum.

The unexpected beauty of Hobart (where I am on holiday very briefly) has been in the maritime history, flavour and lifestyle of the city. Although I can get motion sickness from watching others sway on the spot, I've been out on boats of all sizes and shapes on this trip. One of the subtle things I've noticed is how the metaphoric language of the sea can give a fluid and hopeful nuance to the expression of emotional states. Even the doldrums can't last forever (if they could ever happen in this wide river harbour in the lee of Mt Wellington). So direction of travel can be seen in the context of navigation and the avoidance of known obstacles. A route that takes you through known reefs and shoals is not quicker, no matter how much shorter. Perhaps this is a more helpful way to consider the apparent problem of a rut. A rut, by definition, is a path avoiding known obstacles. It is a navigational shorthand.

The trick, I think, might be in remembering that there is no such thing as automatic pilot. It is a real hand on the tiller of our life. It is our own hand, and it must be our own mind that charts the course and evaluates the hazards. If smooth sailing and known obstacles are what can be handled by the limitations of your craft and your desired destination than you are in harmony with your journey. If not, well maybe it is time to look again at the stars and the edges of the charts and plot for a different kind of experience, but plot my friends, don't panic.

An Offshore Wind

2010-01-08T22:40:00.004+11:00

There's whitecaps on the harbour and a dead seal on the shore,
all the yearning of the ages won't bring you back for more.
Its sweet to think of love, sometimes wrong to trust to faith,
for nothing comes from nothing when hearts have come up poor.

You trumped me on the western docks, you shamed me in the morn.
I saw all sins through your pure eyes and drifted, lost, forlorn.
When does your view turn inward? Do you see what's going on?
Grant absolution early and I'll sing you a true song.

Us troubadours are restless, always strumming for a feed.
I miss you in the mornings and have lost you in the night.
We tell the truth in verses if you give is what we need.
So hum a little for me and with luck I'll get it right.

Twenty Ten Commencement

2010-01-06T11:10:00.002+11:00

Brave new decade! I like the way it is two lots of tens. Sometime this decade our new century will begin to find the form it will be remembered for. We've pretty much wrapped up the 20^th now. What do you think the highlights will be summarised as?
Electricity?
Communications technologies?
Peak Oil?
Massive Proliferation in pointless music genres?
Coffee snobbery?
The only century in which computers weren't sentient?

Perhaps all of the above and more.

I'm not really fussed. I'm looking forward now. Things I'd like out of our new century include but are not limited to:
* Global ecological democracy - let's even things up, we're all on this globe together.
* Spontaneous intellectual uplift of all persons. Ever wake up and think something like "I'd like to be calmer, happier, better read, more forgiving, more grateful, less angry, capable of cooking a nutritious meal, kissed more often and so on."? I think it would be great if each person had one or more of those thoughts and did something positive and generative towards obtaining that state this century. Imagine what the cumulative effect might be. Of course, we might then need to hand out more condoms, but there's nothing too wrong with that problem.
* More great music. Nothing crazy there - just really like it. How can that be bad?
* Quantum travel/communications/ Fabrication - I just have a feeling that entanglement is going to rock our world/s.
* First contact with sentient aliens (preferably in a manner that doesn't result in the genocide of humans, but I would kind of understand if it did).
* Free chocolate days to celebrate the happy chemicals that make being human so much fun.

So welcome to Twenty Ten and here's cheers to easing into the 21^st century!

A Love Note

2009-12-23T22:39:00.005+11:00

Gentle reader, it is good to be back in your embrace. I have missed our moments together.

Perhaps, like me, the turbulent surf of life's currents has taken you away from your usual haunts, has tossed you, battered you a little and left you feeling a little bruised and thirsty. Perhaps you too find yourself wondering how the hours in each day have evaporated until it is nearly the end of another month. Those beautiful liquid hours that can be honeyed when we listen to wonderful music and watch clouds, or that can vanish in moments when a print deadline is looming over our hastily re-written copy and an image that just doesn't "pop". Perhaps you too have wondered why feeling busy can be such a burden when we love our friends, and love our social encounters and meals and movies but somehow come up for air each morning a little breathless, a little more wound up.
I have.

I have wondered long into the nights, and early in the mornings, and sometimes woken stunned and confused on the couch and sometimes thrashed into the early dawn entirely failing to sleep. This month I have consciously practised drawing long deep breaths into my belly to flush out the rush. It is starting to help. I have been silent, as you well know. Lost in oceans too wide to see across. I have been functional, my sister had her first child - a girl - and I have ferried food and nappies and messages. And I have been useless and angry, an empty woman wondering if there's reason to persevere. Here again and curiosity re-sparked for living inspired by Buckminster Fuller who decided that he had died and would see what came of things now that the pressure was off.

Tomorrow is the eve of the Christ's birth and a marker in my year towards the fabulous invigorating ritual of death and rebirth on the 31st and 1st. Which is all a long-winded way of saying that I've had some time off and am thinking of you with love and joy in my heart.

I wish you a healthful, inspirational celebration of your own spiritual/intellectual persuasion over the next week and that twenty ten brings you a stream of infinite bounty.

13 Awesome Nanowrimo Tips from Someone Who Has (finally) Won

2009-12-01T20:59:00.013+11:00

There's a few things you can do in preparation for your own Nanowrimo attempt next year, should you wish to join in the literary Running of the Bulls. I plan to use this list as a reminder next year to get my head in the game. So here's 13 of my hard won, best and hottest tips from 3 runs at Nanowrimo:

Before November
* Attend to the ergonomics or otherwise of where you write. My best time was about 1200 words in an hour, mostly it was less than that, so I spent over 50 hours sitting at the dining room table I have my computer on. Dining room tables are great for eating off, crap for typing at. Don't let your wrists/elbows/back take the pain - fix it up however you can.

* Don't be shy, lay in stores of staples. Why waste precious writing time queuing to buy coffee, loo paper, MREs, gin or chocolate? Exactly, too frustrating, so ensure sufficient supplies of these and other important items are procured in bulk in October. (A lesson I learnt on Day 2 of my first -failed- Nano.)

* Start saying 'NO, Thank You' early to anything that is not on your mission-critical social list. Sure you don't want to be a freaky hermit, but you need to find 50 or 60 hours of alert time in November and that is not as easy as it might sound like. I really needed a full day on each weekend just to catch up from the work flatline.

* Get a writing buddy if you can. Someone roughly in your timezone, or at least who is up hitting the keyboard when you are. The moral support is invaluable, especially in the difficult 3rd week.

* Align your timezones. I lost a day at the beginning because my machine was set to the wrong timezone and I didn't notice until on the 28th it gave me a one day countdown. Total Freakout! Save yourself the worry, and save yourself the indignity of having the comp end a day early for you.

* Start cutting down on TV or whatever other recreational narcotics you use to dull the passage of time. You will be needing that as alert time. If there is a particular type of tv, movie or documentary that inspires your planned story or the direction you'd like to write in, by all means lay in some dvds of shows you have already seen. This will be your comfort viewing. I chose Entourage, and a science doco series on SBS.

During November
* Write every day. Your goal is to produce 1 670 words per day. What the heck - why not round it up to 2gs? You're looking for a challenge right?

* Keep a scratch sheet for noting incidental characters names. You'll be in a fervour of creativity in the first week and during that lush 14 000 words you produce will be throw away characters who will rudely turn up later in your story and it can be annoying to have to trawl through your MS looking for their names. Especially when you make up silly names for them. I invented a manga series that I could later on not remember how to spell. Embarrassment.

* Don't watch tv until after you've done your words for the day. Even then think twice unless you've promised yourself the reward of a comfort episode. Likewise, I took the modem (yes I still have an external modem) off the computer to reduce the constant temptation to browse wiki or check emails until there was word count to upload. You may not be as weak willed as I am. More power to you.

* Keep saying no. This is your month goddammit, surely it can wait a few weeks? (My sister thoughtfully arranged the birth of her first child for December. That's teamwork!)

* Remember the rules are just a 50 000 word count. The need for a beginning middle and end that I mentioned last year was my own rule. Any expectations about quality are your own (excess) baggage.

* Write a bit more. Sneak in another paragraph or another scene. Take notes during boring meetings at work, or on the commute, or while you're on a boring phone call. Keep a whiteboard marker in the shower. Whatever. Momentum is your friend in the Kung Fu of writing. Skip bits that are sucking or dragging with a summary line eg "and then they fought. when things were better..." is a perfectly acceptable place keeper. Later, in week 3 for example, when you hit the plot doldrums these one liners are a brilliant place to revisit and flesh out and will give you another thousand words or two plus they give your story brain enough of a break to come up with something to move on with.

* Have fun. Why the hell else would you sign up for something like this if it wasn't fun? Write what you love to read, write for the joy of splashing words around, write for the sadistic pleasure of making your Main Character a total fuckup, whatever turns you on. Just stay in touch with the fun of it all.

So if you have ever said "I'd like to write a novel one day..." why not make November 1st 2010 the day you start that novel?
Go on, put it in your diary now. Of course there's no need to wait until them, but during November you'll join with 200andsomething thousand people worldwide who don't think you're crazy and who are going to applaud whatever you achieve and support whatever vision you have, because they're all doing it too. That's not something that happens any old day of the week, and with these 13 tips, you'll have an insider's edge on keeping your bar chart of word count growing.

"Domino Days" is a winner

2009-11-29T01:26:00.005+11:00

It is done.
I've finished the story as best I can and validated my word count at 50 268.
Today I produced nearly six thousand words and it is now midnight and still 30 degrees.
I'm beat. Happy, satisfied, but beat.

I love that just getting the words out is what counts - completely bypasses the old internal editor (although it took me three years to grasp that point enough to do it). The focus falls onto process goals and the experience of dedicating time to the project.

Although I started out with no plot or direction in mind, a story and characters did form themselves, and I don't mind what we've come up with. It is not something I would ever have consciously decided was "good enough" for a story but actually it has a lot more in it than I expected. It has ended up being a bit of Mrs Dalloway meets a bit of Entourage. Not as funny as I'd hoped, but at least not suicidal either.

Now is not the time to get caught in rambling justifications about it needing re-writes and having continuity errors and spelling probs, oh, and I think a character switched from being a sister to a girlfriend, no, tonight is for fireworks and celebrating and a long cold drink.
Thanks for your support and well wishing along the way. Cheers!

Checking In and Saying Hi

2009-11-24T20:25:00.007+11:00

Hi. I know I was a lot more entertaining last year during Nano. This year I promised you I would not subject you to my Nano output but you will note how cunning I was to not offer anything in place! Ah-Ha!! Tricksy! You can learn a lot from Hobbits.

It is just that I have been pouring it all into getting this story across the finish line. I'm only allowed here now because ofter a truly horrific week, I pulled a miracle out of the hat over the weekend (10 000 words anybody? Anybody? I'm still shocked my own self) and am now ahead of the linear chart-of-requirement again. For now. So I thought I'd pop over and give you a distracted wave. Plus, I'm kinda stuck again. I just don't know what happens next. I just got a thousand words out of describing one of my characters make a cup of coffee, maybe I can get another thousand out of him drinking it... hmmmm... possible - but what then? Only the muse knows.

The most beguiling and addictive thing for me about Nano and about writing fiction generally is how abstractly collaborative it is. Once I spend more than 5 or 10 minutes properly concentrating on whatever I'm making, plots and characters and developments can start to come from somewhere that is not conscious. Even when I sit down with an outline or an idea I want to develop, it nearly always goes somewhere else. I have a concrete physical sense that I am working with someone who sometimes walks up behind me once I'm settled and who whispers "oooh! I know, What if ...!" into my ear at odd moments and I go "Genius! Wish I'd thought of that!" only there is no one else here.

It just happened now. I sat down to write about how much I love coffee and how close and dear to my heart it is right now, and instead I told you that I hear voices. See? Weird.
What I have taken more than ten years to learn is that when I trust the voice and follow those suggestions, things become more interesting, more layered, more likely to work in a pleasing way, and more likely to feel good.

There it is.

That's all the wisdom I'm able to impart at this point in the biggest writing challenge I've ever faced - listen to the voices because it feels good.

Ok. Good luck with parsing that. See you in a week or 8909 words - which ever comes first.

Nano Halfway Status: Not Sucking! Woot!

2009-11-16T23:56:00.008+11:00

What is it that is different about this year?
I busted a gut last year and basically washed out.

It is half way through the month and I'm on 25 673 words - essentially right where I should be to have a chance of getting across the line. That is to say - tracking just fine, and so far I've missed only about 4 days writing due to work/travel/homicidal tendencies. And without wanting to jinx anything or sound like a wanger, it has been not too bad, writing-effort-wise. Not too many anxious blockages, that kind of thing. Actually, it has been pretty darn good. Fun.

This is why people get superstitious - because when things suck it is easy to figure out how I choked or sabotaged myself, but when things go well, I look for external reasons. "Oh, I found a white feather - there must be an angel watching over me" (thanks Angel, pls leave cash next time!) or "I was wearing my lucky striped undies when I had the idea / wrote the first page/ decided to make that character into a guy so people wouldn't think it was me," or "I turned my computer on and then I made the coffee - it must work better in that order." Whatever. Something outside of me is responsible for the good stuff.

How freakin insidious is that?!
Who designed these brains anyway? What kind of genetic or evolutionary advantage can there possibly be to building in a tendency to neuroses?!?

I don't think I'm alone in having that kind of experience. I just wish I could swap the polarities for a while. Have a little rest from being infinitesimally small and insignificant and soak up some center-of-the-universe juice for a bit. Ah well. I'm not hung up on it, not while the writing is coming ok. Of course at some point I'll have to take off the lucky striped undies, and then if things start going badly, well there will be tears until they're out of the wash, I can tell you that for nothing.

Also, please send chocolate, I'm out.

Nano Wk 1 (and a bit) Update

2009-11-11T23:26:00.005+11:00

A quick (and late!) update on the Nano situation. Oooh, I've been writing away.
My word count for 11th November is at 19 470 - a new personal best. Yay!!!
I am hungering to hit 50 000 this year, but my immediate next stage is to focus on cracking the elusive 25 000 mark by the night of the 15th, this Sunday coming.

Thanks for the supportive messages so far! I'm having a great time, but I don't want to jinx it. Just thought I'd share news about the PB.

I stubbed my toe on a gem.

2009-11-11T22:33:00.010+11:00

So the context to this story that happened last night is that the de-blimping program had been tracking well and I decided to re-allocate some energy to another area of the "Pentagram of Personal Power: Five Steps to Focus and Freedom"* specifically the branch that I like to think of as "Do i really have to spend decades more of my life in this job or one just like it?" but might be more succinctly summarised as 'my financial position'. So an appraisal of this position did not take long. 'Treading Water' is not a complicated process, and can barely be considered a strategy when it has been happening for two years.

Thus I have been reading a vasty range of books on the subject of managing money, personal finances, building wealth, why wealth is short sighted and prosperity is much better, how debt can leverage growth, how debt cripples your future, why stocks are a good investment, why investment is a bad idea, how you can make millions in houses and why the housing market is dead. They've been dry, outlandish, lurid, berating, cajoling, pompous and hilarious. Sometimes all at once.

Out of this project so far I had learnt just one very important lesson - own the pub. No matter what drink any one's peddling, there's loads of people willing to drink it. I didn't mean buy an actual pub, I meant that metaphorically - you know - to represent the publishing industry, but actually owning a pub's a pretty good concrete idea as well.

Anyway, it has been an ongoing exercise in embracing a wide variety of strongly held opinions that are presented as fact and doing so whilst holding a position of faith that out of the end of this process I will be able to distill useful concepts and 'from scratch' principles allowing me to navigate the shoals of financial reefs without gouging a fatal hole in the hull and sinking us all - leading possibly back to treading water although this time as a useful survival technique rather than a way of passing time.

Sorry. That was a hugely long sentence.

Plugging though these books has been interesting but also a penance of sorts. A way to lesson the karmic impact of my fiscally flagant 20s. None of it seemed to be sinking in, I thought I would just be confused and confused for ever, and fated to read myself in circles. Which is why I did not expect that on or about page 387 to have a sweet moment of clarity, one of those clarion bell A-Ha! moments.

There was a single line, hidden in the body copy (and I cannot find it again now, so I am very glad I had immediately transcribed it to a sticky-note) that said this "Seek not what the Master has, but what the Master sought".

That was a new one on me! And what an absoloute gem!
Roll it around for a little while - savour the layered and textured flavours to it.
I can think of many circumstances I would have expected to find such a fine philosophical aphorism, but no, it tripped me up when I thought I knew what to expect from this book, and that was another moment of awareness - all the reading I had been doing had been done through the prism (or prison) of my existing opinions about what I would find.

Damn.

This one little gem has pointed out to me that there is an abundance of riches in the dirt I was shovelling out of the way to get to where I thought I was headed. I'm sitting in my tailings, holding this rock up to the light and squinting through it. Everything looks different.

Better go and re-read a few things then.
Oh, and if anyone knows of a good pub going for a song, could you let me know? We'll rename it "Rosie's Tea House of Ill Repute" and institute competitions for reciting Beowulf (with actions).

* Do you like that? I made it up. Sounds good though huh? I'm thinking of branching out into pseudo-non-fictional self help ebooks. That one would be "aimed at the modern witch or wiccan seeking guidance of getting their life into a stronger, more aligned balance."

Tweetable?

2009-11-08T12:36:00.011+11:00

Is anything in my life tweetable?
Do I really need another on-line forum for airing my opinions and brain farts?
The only way to know is to give it a go.

Hey, that would make a good T-Shirt!
The only way to know is to give it a go.

Maybe done in some bubbly hippy font and a smiley face at the end.

Gee, you can tell I've had a few days off and wound right down. Anyway, I'm on the Twitter, it is part of the interwebs. If anyone can tell me how to drive it, that would be swell. I think my phone needs a different thingo to be able to talk to it. As usual, look for me as orbitaltorch and say hai, I love that.

We had a GIGANTIC storm a few days ago - sheet lightening, Thor stamping about the place, rumbly thunder to move the foundations, flooding rains, wind to tear the atmo off. It was brilliant. Went for hours and took the power intermittently. I live on top of a hill and my street flooded to about knee height (so just above most people's ankles-ish) so there was a lot of water around. I loved it, and I loved that it cooled everything down by at least 10 degrees for the next few days and we've been back to mid 20s temps, and now everything is green and growing manically to catch up. There's even cool breezes! Oh how pleasant life can be when the physical world is not trying to scald you off the face of the planet.

I stood outside for a while after the bulk of the terrifying bit had passed and took some video on my phone so I would have a sound file of the rain and the frogs going all poly rhythmic gamelan style. Later in the summer if it goes all dry again I will have 45 precious seconds of proof that water can and does sometimes fall freely from the sky. Folk wisdom says that we'll have a wet season this summer. Why? I've heard everything from the large number of flies, ants in the house, 3 dust storms equals a wet season ahead, and my favourite of all, my mother's trick foot. Yes, her barometrically sensitive foot has been aching. It is accurate slightly more often than the meteorologists, but I'm not going to buy another lemon tree just yet!

The weather aside, I baked a banana cake* last night as a house warming gift for Sister2 and her partner who have moved into their dream(ish) home this weekend. I doubled the recipe, thinking that would make for a nice generously sized cake. Kindof an innocent thing to do but the outcome is a monster. I did not think through the fact that getting the larger sized spring based pan and then doubling recipes would result in a cake too large to fit on any plate, serving platter or tray that I have. If I could handle it safely, I would weigh it just to satisfy my curiosity but I am loathe to put it under any further structural strain than just sitting there, being a presentation problem. Hmmm. At least I know it fits on the base of the pan it was cooked in. That will be my back-up position. It is tall too, nearly 7 cm by what I can judge. Holy giant cakes Batman!

I was hoping that it would be a short-lived problem, that we'd be tucking into the moist banana-ry deliciousness of it for morning tea today. But no. They are inconveniently busy with cleaning the old house. I will have to wait the endless hours until afternoon tea. The cake is implacable. It knows it must be gifted whole. My mouth is uncontrollably watering in anticipation. Oh Caped Crusader, if only I had made a little muffin from just some of it!

BTW, while I've been telling you about the cake, twitter has told me about the new Cory Doctorow novel 'Makers' that's out. Happy Happy!

Make cakes people, and be happy.
The only way to know is to give it a go.

*I used the recipe from "Women's Weekly: Old - Fashioned Favourites" which I can recommend heartily to anyone with a sweet tooth and a preference for simple classic dishes. Easily found in good newsagents and occasionally even in the supermarket.

Remember Remember...

2009-11-06T00:54:00.011+11:00

... the fifth of November.
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.
I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

November 5th, 1605. What happened? "Treason" writes the victors and Guy Fawkes was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered for it. Imagine what that means for a second - and it was to be done in public (of the conspiritors sent to death that day, Fawkes was weakened by the torture he had been subjected to and using the last of his strength jumped in the noose and broke his neck thereby avoiding being drawn and quartered).

What would drive someone to such an act of (what would be named today as) terrorism?
He was Catholic and King James and most of the aristocracy were Protestant. Catholics were actively persecuted by the ruling Protestants at this time in English history. It was illegal to gather for mass. Ironically (to me) mass was of course in Latin, so many people were risking death or less serious punishments (such as lengthy imprisonment in unsanitary cells) to hear something that they did not understand. Such is the power of belief in ultimate truth!

Why that means parliament should have been blown up I've never been entirely clear, but I think it was a pragmatic rather than philosophical or symbolic decision - it was simply the place that the King and all the lords would be gathered when Parliament would open on the 6th. In the 17th century the European world was savagely fought over by competing christian churches in a way that to my modern eyes seems barbaric, wasteful and largely pointless. After all, they both have the same imaginary friend - right? But real wealth was at stake as the new worlds were discovered and then exploited. The power, drive and expertise to exploit those new sources of wealth came from the churches.

Our governmental system and laws are largely separated from the influence of any church now but at that time the idea of religious tolerance must have been as laughable and dangerous as the idea of hulling a ship with paper.

Guy Fawkes night was commemorated by government fiat to remind the underclasses that the King had survived, that the plot had been foiled and the conspirators given their just ends at the noose and sword. But. But. Had they consulted a magician, wise woman, or even just a low-level marketing hack, they would have been advised to change the name of the event. There's a simple but strong power in naming things.

Somewhere in that long line of burning nights from 1606, Guy Fawkes shifted from being a treasonous scoundrel to something of heroic figure. Indeed he must be magnificent or else why should he not be forgot?!

By the time I came across his story (in the late 80s or early 90s - I was slow to join the broader consciousness) the motivations were presented as political and very modern, he came with his own tagline: "The last man to enter Parliament with honourable intentions" and had been recast in the language of a freedom fighter, tackling tyranny for the justice and betterment of all. Such a stylish case of co opting a piece of history and an actual, historical person with quirks, flaws, joys, flatulence and awkward beliefs all of his own and turning him into a simplified symbol and then even more quickly into a marketing slogan and image for branding up parties and merchandising and acting as a shorthand for a whole bunch of modern concepts that our historical fellow would baulk or blanch at. He's in good company at least, I'm sure Jesus of Nazareth can empathise with that process. Ditto Einstein come to think of it.

It is from twisty turning stories like this that I have gained a sceptical respect for historians of all stripes. Even with primary sources and eyewitness statements or drawings, events must still be read and evaluated within layers of meaning. They happened in worlds so removed to ours as to be wholly alien. Entire, complex and detailed political and cultural structures existed then as invisible and obvious to those citizens as telecommunications and LOLcatz are to us. Shifting into a historical period involves letting go of some of oneself in order to make room for their values and needs. Yet we can't be completely objective, and we don't want to be. We read Shakespeare for our own meanings and pleasures, not to get a better handle on court influence or the emergent commerical structures of 17th centrury entertainments.

So for whatever reason you prefer, remember remember the 5th of November, the gunpowder, treason and plot. It really happened, it's a symbol. They were terrorists, they were fighting for what we take for granted - a separation of Church and State. They were killed as the lowest form of criminal, they live on immortalised in popular culture, more famous than the King who triumphed.

Nanowrimo 09

2009-11-04T00:27:00.005+11:00

It is that time of year again - Nanowrimo - which has gone international, but in the way of things I don't think they'll change the name. If you've ever said "one day I'd like to write a novel" then this is the month for you to give it a go, and as long as you don't blog about it, no one need every know you tried if you don't meet your own exacting standards!

Obviously, I should be over in my other window writing, but my characters are about to order coffee, so I thought I could take a little break and jump over here for a bit. Last year I wrote in longhand, in an actual, physical paper notebook. That was great, and I really enjoyed being able to write in such a portable and low-power requirement mode, but it made editing and sharing things a lot harder, so this year I'm trying it another way and just writing into the machine.

Don't worry that you'll be exposed to it here - it is rough like bogan vowels and as disjointed as a teenager's conversation and attention span. It is a lot of fun, apart from the bits that aren't. I shan't inflict it upon you.

But enough about me. What have you been up to? There are so many ways that people are filling their days. There's such an unpredictable and unknowable variety of things that can happen in the world. We spend so much time fighting against feeling as though we're in a rut that when something out of the ordinary really does happen, we can be at a loss about how to respond, how to grasp the implications, how to interrupt our pattern and reset with the new parameters.

Last night I stood outside in the yard and looked up at the sky. I tried to think about everyone I know and have known. I couldn't manage it. I just didn't have the space for it. Yet all of us and more than we'll ever know are all breathing in and out now, and living and bickering and worrying about pants or relishing dinner or avoiding bills or trying not to scratch an itchy spot or feeling pain or thinking of someone they love. It is immense. You're part of it. Can you hold everyone you know in your heart at once? I wonder tonight if this is something that would be a good idea - to make our hearts bigger and hold more variety, witness more and still feel compassion. It is the kind of idea that is easier to have in the dark silent night, far from the distractions presented by actual people, but that doesn't mean it is completely silly ... just that maybe I've got plenty of challenges in front of me.

Faced with that thought, I think I'll go back to my other window and get those guys some breakfast and maybe some light banter to fill their day. I wonder what will happen next?

The Satellite of Grace

2009-11-02T23:17:00.005+11:00

Go outside tonight if you can, maybe it will be clear and you can tilt your face up to the radiance of the moon. It is a still night where I am am, and the stars have all taken a step back to clear the stage. Only the leaves of the big tree shift a little in the glintering light. Leaves are impatient like that. I love to look at her on nights like this, but I can't hold her gaze for long.

Last night, the wonderful moment before her glory, she rose for me above the big wet and the waves made a song for her that sang and sang and echoes even now. It is hard to hear the salt song when we're under roofs or hemmed by the concrete that is hard but not slowly alive like stone. Hold there in your yard or the park and squint past the annoying edges that intrude of rooftops and power lines and all the other nagardly reminders of our control over electricity, and see if you can remember what it felt like to live within her rhythm and pray for her tides and good favours.
Her strong face cannot compete with the vibrant emanations of the blue teats of our screens and our clocks and our clevernesses. But there she remains, orbiting at a little over 1klom a second now (as though forever) in synch with us and facing us. The impression thus given of our centrality to meaning yet another gift from her. Ah, as light calls forth shadow in the language of psyche, does the moon gift Gaia with more than physics suggests? The teats' glows will fade and the moon will hold us again, hold us still and without judging our notions of independence. The echoes and songs of the salt that we live from will sing in us all whether we hear it or no.

Wha jus happ'nd?

2009-10-29T08:06:00.008+11:00

I had a good idea that came to me either in bed or the shower (two great spots for ideas, which is why I keep a whiteboard marker in my soap dish and my bedside table has more pens than my desk) but I can't remember it now because I have been completely distracted by the hilarious, random and prurient curiosities the world has to offer.

These have come to me via a wonderful network of curious and humorous souls who very thoughtfully send me things* to liven my days. I have felt a little bit like Mr Universe this week "There's only the signal Mal!" (I've been re-watching SF films in mute protest at Moon only screening in 1[one!] cinema in Qld for its release. WHAT KIND OF A BACKWATER IS THIS?! I mean, that's just rude. I've spent quite a bit of time in capslock this week).

Where was I? Oh. Yes.

So between the fury that is exile, and the fact that I've been trying to do what feels like two and half units of work in one work-time-segment, waaay too much coffee (jumpy!jumpy!overloud!), cooking timeporn, the excitement of a cool T shirt every single freakin day - I love the interwebs!, a vehicle I reckon would be a total booty magnet (ooh, toss up between this and the Tesla Roadster now if I ever become stupidly rich) , the latest from the Governator, there is the mindfuck of the utterly provocative and offensive/hilarious promotional material for the new the new Rammstein album "Pussy"... I can't seem to keep a thought straight in my mind until the next distraction comes along.
Ohh look! A monkey!

* Thank you to Mr Wright, Mez, Joel and Jen for some of the content I refer to here! And to Msjaye for content that is not! Do you want to send me things? Do so using orbitaltorch@gmail.com

Battle Lines

2009-10-25T21:48:00.011+11:00

My sister mentioned in passing yesterday that the family is considering holding an intervention on me. Well there's some news.

Which of my many antisocial and problematic behaviours could they be planning to target I wonder? Could it be my relentless cynicism and brooding depressive belief that life is pretty shit and it is best to pretend otherwise so one doesn't spiral helplessly into an abyss of self destruction? Could it be my venomous and acidic disregard for my fellow humans and seething hatred for politicians, derivatives fund managers and smokers? Could it be my addiction to Spider Solitaire - that sensuous and seductive siren who lures me endlessly onto the rocks of lost time?

No. Apparently, these things don't rate a mention. The family takes it all on board with barely a flicker. There are bigger issues. Issues that threaten the fabric of my life if only I could wake up to their horrible implications.

I look again. Is it the dead lemon tree that I haven't removed yet from the barren (possibly poisonous) part of the yard? No. The trees need trimming? I Mean they're kind of touching those wire things at the front of the house again - that can't be good. No, not that, but yes, they do need a trim. The obsession with re-watching Chronicles of Riddick? Nope. Dodgy and worth keeping an eye on, but no.
What then!?

The evil that hides in plain sight gentle reader is this:
Too many books.

To come here I jettisoned about two thirds of my library, and I have culled and thinned and negotiated ever since. Sure there's a few "rainy day" reads put aside, there's a few in the "maybe read" pile that need to be evaluated, there's the "read once - possibly keep for re-reading" pile, there's the room full of books that fall into the "LOVED IT" category, there's the small collection of first editions, there's non-fiction and reference collection, there's the Batman collection. Very humble collections they are too! There's a few piles here and there I admit. But there are no books in the bathroom! There are no books in the hall! And there are only cookbooks in the kitchen! The shed has only 3 tubs of books, that's not bad considering how much room is in there, but I just don't trust the tubs to stand up to the bugs and pests that rule the kingdom of Shed. All the doors in the house open and close without hindrance. Oh, well, except for that one! But other than that I think the house is, frankly, thin on the ground for intellectual stimulation!

Too many books indeed!
There's barbarians at the gate. Raise the drawbridge! Fly the flags of resistance, rattle your swords in their scabbards, release the monsters into the moat! Prepare for battle!

(Oh, and if you're going to pop by, you're welcome to stay, just let me know a day or two ahead if you can so I can unearth the bed in the spare room, it just has a little "filing" on it for the minute.)

The First Japanese Teahouse in Qld

2009-10-17T11:31:00.008+11:00

Ipswich is building the first Japanese Teahouse in Queensland in the Nerima Gardens -a small(ish - by Qld standards) enclosure in the very freakin large Queens Park.

That's kinda cool. A bit of kimono-zen-calmness is always good to soak up. Maybe this will be somewhere that one might be able to go on an utterly brain-numbingly dull and hot Saturday morning in order to escape the litany of suburban mediocrity and lawnmowers. Some green tea, perhaps some music. The gardens in which is is currently being constructed are lovely and beautifully landscaped with a mix of Australian natives and Japanese classics.

So I enquire.

Once it is built, there will be an official opening ceremony in early November with Japanese ambassadors and a Tea Master. Well that's a bit fancy-pants! Sounds good, so I ask if I can come. No Way. The opening ceremony is by invitation only - no plebeians allowed, no public at all. Oh, I see.
I further enquire, "After the formal proceedings there's bound to be some kind of public element or opportunity. That's what I meant. Can I please come to that?"
"No. There is no public event."
"Oh. So it will just be open to the public after the formal ceremony."
"No," Gives me a look like I am an irritating idiot, "after the ceremony it will be locked up. It's a very special place, you can't just let people into it willy-nilly."
"Right. I get it. So there's just going to be certain days or special events that it is open for the public. Like a museum."
"No. It. Will. Not. Be. Open. To. The. Public."
"Message received and understood. Thank you for your time."

WTF?
This construction is a function of the Sister-City relationship with Nerima in Japan (what are they getting I wonder? - a backyard barbie setup? Maybe a pool with a faux-Balinese shade house?) but there's neither inclination nor resources for integrating it into the "existing cultural fabric" of the area. So why the fuck is it really getting built?!
The cynic in me says so that:
a) It is a "first" and therefore secures the formal ceremony (and therefore press)
b) It is a "first" and therefore secures bragging rights

The chirpy, positive one inside me says - "Don't be so quick to judge! You don't know the whole story! There may be a whole team of people working away on a culturally rich and socially rewarding series of exchanges and events that will happen around this eagerly awaited facility and it is just that they can't officially be announced yet! It could still really work out to be great!"

Maybe she's right. I shall have to wait and see. In the meantime, I can go and visit the garden and see if I can peer into the construction site. I'll take a thermos of green tea and maybe that collection of Japanese Sci-fi I've been planning to re-read. Riley and I will have our own freakin tea ceremony. No kimono required*.

* Unless you use kimono in the direct or literal meaning of "things to wear" in which case, yes, I will be clothed. Riley will be sporting his fur - summer length.

I don't like Mondays

2009-10-12T11:40:00.004+11:00

For about eight or nine years I worked in the real world, where what you did and how you did it relly mattered in quite a direct way. That experience was far from cubicles and the monday-to-friday-9-to-5. As you probably know, in the real world, service industries (and like it or not Australia's domestic economy is largely service based) are 7 day operations. Well they are on the central planets. Out here on the rim there's not much that's open on a Sunday, or even a saturday arvo.
But I digress.

I had to make many changes when I took the colonisation shuttle here. The pamphlet said things would be a bit different, but I couldn't have guessed how hard it would be to crowbar myself back into the little box of punching the clock, trying to work on an interface centrally controlled and monitored in work processes based around political expediency and box-ticking rather than service, and with people who've grown up here and think (at best) of everywhere else as only a possible holiday destination (but why pass up a trip to the pleasure boats?). The one thing of all of these that is hardest to swallow is not the petty bitching over imaginary power bases, nor the endless chatter about the best fake tan lotions or speed bleaching of hair. It is the cold, terminal nature of Monday Mornings.

Back in the bustle and business of the central planets, Monday mornings and Friday nights are largely just like any other other moments in the purchasing/pleasuring continuum of modern life. Actual days off may vary. From the inside, Mondays and Fridays are the bi-polar manic days of emotional extremism highlighting the endless cycle of the rat-race and the pathetic occlusion of all that is organic and natural about living. Rigid, imposed and arbitary rules still are the guiding principles of bureaucratic structures, no matter their inefficiency, their pointless focus on attendence and process above output and quality, their heartbreaking monotony.

No sir, I do not like these type of Mondays at all.

3 Years

2009-10-11T22:53:00.003+11:00

For some reason I always think that it started later in the month, but no, the anniversary is on the 11th. Three years then of staring out the window and sharing it with you.

Woot!

The Parable of the Button

2009-10-11T22:40:00.006+11:00

Ever seen one of those crime tv shows, where someone opens a door and there's a reverse shot of the shocked faces then they cut back to the room and it is a total disaster zone?
"Some one's trashed the place!"
Well ... my place kinda looks like that all the time. Minus broken stuff and any bodies that you might see on the tv, but papers everywhere and so on - yup that's how it is. I don't invite people round because they just won't fit, plus there's no where for them to sit. It has been a lot worse since I moved into living on my own - no more guilt-driven clean-ups. But there's a reason, and just in case anyone drops over unannounced, I want to have put my justifications on the record.

All you clean, happy, clutter-free folk need to understand something about us OCD (Obsessive Clutter Disorder) sufferers - we're victims in this. Find your compassion for us. We wade through decades of accumulated cruft and kilos day to day, but we're not necessarily weak-willed, stupid or just lazy. We are in complex relationships with our possessions that are governed by a web of interacting issues often-times beyond our control. So you may understand a little of this world, I shall share with you the marvelous moment I had today when I was finally able to take a bag of 6 shirts to the donation box. This is the Parable of the Button.

Origins.
All stories start at the beginning. This work shirt was purchased in 2004 from a one-step-up-from-a-generic-chain-store—clothing-for-women. In plain black and a very hard-wearing cotton-viscose mix, it featured a collar (the mandatory element), buttons up the front (initially benign, but leading to later complications), a generous V-neckline (keeping things interesting, but not saucy) and a roomy fit (essential in a job with regular lifting and shelving of arm loads of books). The very bottom button never suited the casual look I embody and was removed early on and placed in the button compartment of the sewing box. Time passed. Work happened. The shirt did what it needed to do. It featured in the seminal photo-op with Neil Gaiman in July of 05 (ah - happy, hopeful days!), it was there when the crew went for karaoke after work, it was there for my nadir(s) of customer service and the odd scream in the "on-hold" cupboard. The new lowest button took a fair bit of abuse during the normal working tasks and increasingly as my love of veggo Laksa for lunch took the inevitable toll on my never-svelte waistline.

A Shirt Shifts
Working opportunities came and went, changes in jobs, changes in health, changes in cities and houses and the shirt went unused, unrequired, unnoticed.

The Dilemma
An overdue audit of the surviving wardrobe items in 2008 uncovers a limp black shirt, badly in need of an iron (a household drudgery I have now forever forsworn) and missing the essential second-bottom button. The bottom button could be of no consequence to anyone - either hidden by the tuck-in or too formal for the out-hanger. I don't really want to wear such an obviously creased shirt in my workplace and the need to use a safety pin to secure it is pathetic. The saved button is missing and no other one available matches. I can't throw the shirt out, for someone with an iron and a need for it, it would be an op-shop gem, but it cannot be gifted without the button replaced. This is obvious.

The Dance
Over the next 18 months an elaborate and complex dance takes place. The shirt is placed in a public position in the house to remind me to buy a button. The shirt is eventually overwhelmed by cruft and goes back into the 'wash and hide' cycle of laundry. A button is purchased ... and lost. This repeats. I neither want to re-neg on my earlier decision to not throw the thing away, nor to donate it in such poor condition. Yet through the competing demands on my time and energy I cannot for the life of me seem to align the button and the shirt in the same time-space long enough to achieve the desired outcome, which is to mend it and get it out of the house. Complicated further now by needing my glasses, and a threaded needle. This multiple planetary alignment of tools, time and purpose is needed for every single object that is waiting to leave the house. Effectively hundreds of decisions and actions waiting to be completed. No wonder I'm feeling overwhelmed.

Closure
Today, in a triumphant act of will, in about 3 minutes total I completed the attachment of the replacement button to the patient shirt (and that included a complimentary armpit reinforcement). With joy and satisfaction I showed it to Riley who remained unimpressed by what a feat this truly was. I tried the shirt on one more time, just to be certain I was ready to give it up. Then I placed the shirt next to the computer to remind me that I wanted to write this post about it but now, NOW it is next to the door and this afternoon will join the bag of 5 other equally heartrendingly culled and removed shirts and they will be sent on their way into a big blue box on the side of the road.
One less object in the house!

Malfunction

2009-10-10T13:30:00.005+11:00

Sometimes I really hate computers.
My whole post was just replaced by a letter I was capitalising before publishing, and the software autosaved that stupid version over the existing versions.
What I am really steamed about, what that I decided against composing in another program because I have a habit of always saving multiple copies of things unnecessarily and feeling like a worrisome nana with redundant files hanging around.
Until suddenly that just looks like prudent backing-up.
ARRRGH!!!!

The High Ground

2009-10-09T20:13:00.002+11:00

It has been a tough week. One where I can't sleep properly at night and nothing seems to go right at work and if I don't scream in the car on the way home then I shout at Riley when I open the door. Not good. Blah blah blah, right?! We've all been there.

Somewhere I haven't been, thank the deities, is shivering under a piece of tarp while some well-fed guy in chinos talks to a black box about how my village/town/city just got totally erased off the face of the planet by a wave, a quake, a fire, a mudslide, a flood or a typhoon. I haven't been sitting there in shock with every single thing I used to use in my day to day life needing to be replaced from stocks that just don't exist, there's no clean water, or food, and I'd rather think about any of that than the death I saw and only just missed out on myself.

Turning on the news this week has really put my petty concerns into perspective. Which is to say, they are trivial. It is something about Australia that I have taken for granted my whole life - we live inside the boundaries of a tectonic plate. While we drift NNE and enjoy our generally placid lives, the edges of this plate scrape and gouge their way along our neighbours' and sometimes this is the result - quakes that lead to tsunamis. Just to make you feel inadequate it can all happen during typhoon season to give that added tropical sense of Armageddon by puring pelting rain that stings as it slaps you.

No matter what problems I have this week, I'm grateful to be in the position of being able to help some people who have got a much rougher end of a much larger pineapple this week.

Ouroboros

2009-10-02T20:21:00.012+10:00

Without warning, preparation or preemptive therapy there was a brown snake asleep on the footpath this morning when Riley and I went for our walk. It wasn't in the park, or on the path near the river, none of the places I would expect to stumble across one of the worlds' second most poisonous snake. It was on the footpath, outside a house, not far from a 90s model Commodore. That's really part of the special fear that snakes can produce - I don't really expect them to be right here, right now in the same time-space as me and my dog.

But there it was. Undeniable. Painful death in a long thin sock. Looking, I have to say it, basically innocent and peaceful. Snoozing or sleeping - I couldn't say. It was a coldish morning and it was across a little patch of sun in the dusty grass and it scared the crap out of me. And yes, btw, it was a brown snake - not a dark green tree snake. It's in the head. Pointy little heads bring pointy little teeths.

So what was really strange, once the ghastly ghoulish fascination of watching it just be had passed and I'd walked on, grateful Riley was oblivious on his leash and safely breathing, was that I think I brought this moment to happen. I mean, I made that snake appear in our lives.

It could be a coincidence - there seems to be lots of snakes around this spring and there's been loads of sightings already on properties, at the farm and so on, but this is the first time since I was about 6 that I have seen a live, real snake myself. That's a long time. So I don't really think it is just a coincidence, I think I called that snake into our orbit. You see, last week there was an article in the paper about a guy in the Blue Mountains who does occupational health and safety seminars on the risks of brown snakes for people who work in the outdoors. It freaked me out. I got obsessed over what a horrible job that would be (obviously he doesn't mind), I even photocopied the article and stuck it in my notebook and wrote about how scary it would be to be handling those snakes (he lives with them! There were pictures!) anyway, I haven't been able to get it out of my head all week. Big frackin oops!

What kind of massive brain-wave energy load did I accidentally dump into the universe?! Because here, out of no-where and no-how, one is in the physical plane almost right on my doorstep. I'm really wishing I'd listened more closely to the instructions for manifesting things into the world using visualisation because now I want, very desperately, to undo it. I want to un-think snake and re-think "wooden deck on my house" or "fabulous new novel idea". But I'm stuck in a looping party trick where the more I don't want to think about it, the more clearly I see it in my mind. That's something the self-help gurus tend to gloss-over a bit isn't it, the trouble shooting parts of these theories. Right now you're probably going, don't worry about it! There's nothing in this positive thinking shit.

oh. I guess so... but what about the way that quantum physics suggests* that at a sub atomic, a quantum level, our world is purely energy - energy arranged by some kind of organising structure that you could call "invisible glue" or you could call "ideas". Matter (or "the world") is constantly being effected by the act of observing it . We look at things and we thereby interact with them at one level. But more than that, studies of the brain's function show that seeing or doing something and visualising seeing or doing it are indistinguishable to the brain (There was one guy who did groundbreaking visualisation processes with the USA Olympics and NASA programs, and this guy has also done some work on this too). Indistinguishable. If you're detailed and thorough about it, it has effectively really happened as far as your brain is concerned.

So a week of thinking nothing but SNAKE produces ... guess what? A freakin SNAKE! Oh, I'm starting to feel like I'm swallowing my own tail.

Gentle reader, please think of something very pleasant, and send me a fresh, happy new thought loop to entertain. Just remember, in the words of those magnificent popular philosophers, The Pussycat Dolls, "Be careful what you wish for coz you just might get it."

* Actually they're pretty sure that they know that they really don't know, but as my general reading on QP is out of date, I don't want to overstep myself on this bit.

Does my mind know my mouth is typing?

2009-09-30T18:25:00.009+10:00

I'm not sure I've got anything to say tonight, but I wanted to squeeze one more post into September as a pretty soft way of making up for the whole lack of an August thing.

This month has seen a small variety of fairly mundane things happen (that is to say - on top of the interesting things which I have already written about so very entertainingly) (stop fishing and get on with it!- Ed) ...

My leg has healed well and the physiotherapist certainly shamed the doctor with her knowledge, professionalism and capacity to give helpful advice about healing. It also gave me an interesting series of cultural vignettes - she kept tying to give me analogies and motivation based on the Broncos and football. I kept giving her utterly blank looks. I feel for her. That stuff probably works with the vast majority of people who sustain a "sports injury". It would be tough for me to find an upbeat parallel in, say, the life and works of Jane Austen or, worse, Virginia Woolf. No, I'm not ready to wade into the Bremer with my pockets full of stones. Not yet at least. Certainly not over a calf muscle. Anyway we're back up above 80% and frankly I'm not sure I even had a 100%. She lost me when she said "when you start running again..." and I was all "What do you mean again?" and she had a moment and just plugged the electric current octopus thing onto me and left me humming happily with my book. That thing is awesome. I asked her what it is called and she didn't know. It has no labels on it, and these weird 50s plastic tube things that end in a large suction pad that has a bit of sponge roughly cut to fit inside. It vacuums onto one's body and then they let it make a circuit and just run an electric current of some kind through you. Brilliant! I asked what kind of current - couldn't tell me. I asked how it worked, or what it did - couldn't really tell me (she literally waved her hands). How fantastic! I go to a scientific-y type place (where people have clipboards and machines that go "ping!") to get ritual magic performed on me. I so wish I could hear what Tesla would say about this.

Also, from the "it had to happen sooner or later" basket, Ma&Pa bought a 20something year-old caravan which they've parked next to the house and I don't reckon will move again for at least 6 - 9 months, but that's probably why they're not talking to me. Rationality ought never be injected into tightly held dreams. I got confused about that and now I will be given the cold shoulder until I am considered to have learnt my lesson. As with many of the baby boomers, my folks wish to spend their grey years nomadically traipsing this wide brown land soaking up the pleasures of the road and seeing the myriad sights of wonder. I can get behind that vision. I just thought it would make sense to wait until my Pa could fit the the door and maybe walk more than 5 or 10 meters unaided, or my Ma had finished working as a wage slave, or they'd sold the 155 acre property that takes up every available waking minute and dollar to keep functioning, but no. They scrimped and saved their whole lives for this and BY GOD they're going to have it. Well I am glad for them that it has manifest in their lives, and I hope they enjoy looking at it from their bedroom window as they run endlessly around the wheel of their life waiting for the pattern to change.

I really didn't want to get too caught up on that. It's an ugly mofo too - all brown and beige as only the very early 80s can be. *sigh*
But I digress.

In funnier news and for no apparent reason I have a massive, crippling crush on Jeremy Piven. I know nothing about this person (I had to point to a picture of him and ask around until someone knew who he was) other than that he is an actor who recently suffered mercury poisoning from living on too much sushi (no, really!), he does yoga, and he portrays a basically horrible agent in a tv show. How terribly modern! But none of that really matters, can it? After all I only found these meagre half-scraps out *after* the crush had formed. Ergo, he is a symbol of something (or someone) else. Still, it is entertaining. I've printed out a picture of him from the interwebs and stuck it on the wall opposite where I sit to eat my dinner. Hilarious!
"How was your day?" I ask
"Oh, the usual, but tell me all about you! You look tired, howabout a foot rub while you unload?" he answers....
haha. no I'm making that up.
I don't really say that out loud.

Was than an overshare?

Anyway. I have also spent some quality time with the "Amazon Recommends" software this month and that is a relationship that I can heartily endorse. It may not be fabulously healthy for the credit card, but the results will warm your reading heart and keep any problems in the real world with family or fictional lovers at bay. It will take anything and everything you might wish to throw at it - Batman, Georgette Heyer, Buddhism, esoteric reading, poker, sushi, peak oil, roman empire, gardening, knitting, sewing, and give you a hundred, two hundred recommendations, and you plough through those babies, rating the ones you've read, hooking the finds into the wish list and ploughing the corpses of the undesirables back into the database to fertilise the way forward for the next hundred. It is like some kind of Aztec blood cult for media. It is strangely addictive and although fundamentally consumerist, also culturally pleasing because it augments the ring of trust friends have - "oh I just read this - you'll love it!" and usually you do, or kinda do and want to find some more. In that way it is also often wrong, but then it just tries again, and doesn't entirely give up.
A bit like me and this blog (...sortof. Ok not really, but it would have been a nice tight ending, hey?! Now you'll have to make do with this limping "no you hang up" ending.) Bye.

Elemental Questions

2009-09-27T08:02:00.008+10:00

The second front of the dust storm that enveloped most of the eastern seaboard this week has passed through. 75 000 tonnes of dirt every hour she dropped at her peak. That's impressive, and to use the older meaning of the word - awesome.

Which is to say that today is dusting, mopping, vacuuming, washing, and generally tidying day. It is days like this, when I realise there is far far too much stuff in my house. And each of those little surfaces is now dirty, and each of them needs a particular type of attention, and none of them have a clean place to be set down once they have been done. If I think about it like a great big puzzle, I'll get through it - or at least far enough through today that I can finish off or give up at my leisure another time. If only one could clean in this way with fire. There would be no reticence on my part to engage, however fire doesn't quite work that way, especially not against earth, so I shall have to persevere with water and air.

I went to see a play yesterday - The Trail of the Catonsville Nine - with thanks to The Monthly. Not only is it the best magazine in Australia, but as a subscriber you can sometimes win treats. The play is being presented here as part of the Brisbane Festival and without the email from the Monthly, I wouldn't even have known there was a BF on, let alone got out of Trash City for the day to participate. It is about 9 people who were put on trail for burning American draft office records during the Vietnam War. They felt profoundly moved to this act of civil disobedience and this play is set in the courtroom with just the 10 actors moving around to play all parts. Really marvelous and I encourage you to see it if the opportunity arises where you are.

One of the questions the play raised for me is "Are we complicit each time we do not speak up or step up to act for justice, for life?" There's a lot of argy bargy that could be done about what exactly "justice" might mean, and even for some contexts "life" and my intention now is not to wiffle about semantics - but to look at the bigger essence. Do we as a community - do I - still believe that there is justice? That life is sacred? Elements of this play were confronting as the characters talked of their commitment to equality for all, of their personal works to bridge poverty and education gaps between the haves and the have nots. The setting of this play might be historical but actually these remain urgent, contemporary issues and Australian issues too, not just American, or African, or Whereverian.

There was one line that tied this experience back to the reading I've been doing on Black Barty, and it was where Father Berrigan said in his statement (and I'm paraphrasing slightly) "I have lost faith in the institutions of this country. The law does not look after the people." He was referring to the illegality of the USA entering into the conflict and that somehow the President seemed above the law. Well if the President is above the law - what good is the law? The foundation of the democratic model has been undermined. And more - I remembered the East India Company, I thought of the ramifications of what probably seemed like a good idea at the time - creating a new kind of entity that would have standing and identity in and of itself in front of the law - The Company. Perhaps with hindsight, this is one of the moments where the interests of these new breed of "people" - Companies - overtook the interests of human people. The law certainly looked after their interests in this instance, but not of humans.

We are in the middle of a revolution and it can be hard to see for the haze, and think for the noises and baying. I wonder if the Companies will come through this revolution intact and stronger or if the machines will short-circuit that entire logic and power structure. I'm feeling a little depressed about it, but that's just my natural pessimisim and the fact that I've not yet had breakfast. I'm sure after some eggs and coffee I'll feel more hopeful about our democratic and governmental institutions re-vitalising the sanctity of human life, honouring thoughtful debate, flexibility and the fact that we're all on this ship together. Otherwise, it looks like fire will get a chance to clean after all.

Ahoy from HMAS Private Dancer

2009-09-19T18:41:00.014+10:00

Frankly it astonishes me that this blog has never mentioned "International Talk Like a Pirate Day" and yet so it is. This is my second-most favourite international day of the year after New Year's Day and I mark it in my own ways.
This year, bereft of fellow revellers, I am re-watching Firefly, and reading a very cool history book. It is called "Black Barty: Bartholomew Roberts and his Pirate Crew 1718 - 1723" by Aubrey Burl*, and across the top of the cover is a quite realistic looking skull and crossed bones along with the shout "The Real Pirate of the Caribbean". They manage to avoid using an exclamation mark, but I bet the marketing department fought that battle bitterly. The cover itself is cool, and it is not often you'll hear me make that kind of remark, but to balance out the GIANT FREAKIN SKULL, the bottom is a reproduction of a painting of a naval battle (Barbary Pirates Attacking a Spanish Ship [oil on canvas] Willem can de Velde II. 1633-1707 [studio of]/Private collection) which gives it that fabulous heft of historical authenticity. Plus, the Author's name is Aubrey! Aubrey! Actually, I've just realised I can just link you over to it and you can see the cover for yourself. See?!?!?!
But I digress.

I'm as pleased as the next provocateur for self governance and non-corporatist lifestyles that Pirates have become so hugely popular in the mainstream. Like vampires I think they are performing an important psychological function by bringing metaphor and rebellion back into mainstream entertainment. They offer a way to express shadow desires and to reconnect with a careworn and sadly faded idea of personal freedom that is outside of the constraints of "responsible" adulthood. There are very few blockbuster films or books about going daily to a job you don't enjoy to pay off a mortgage you resent on a house that suffocates you, and nothing much changing from there. No much of an arc to that plot is there?

So this year I have been thinking about how "Talk like a Pirate Day" is a lot of fun and a jolly good idea, but that under the caricatures and cheerful costumes is a very interesting history. Specifically that many of the pirates were normal people looking for a way to get by in very difficult times, and a very few of them were utterly astonishing. The early 1700s were a tough time to be alive and the European nations were slicing up the globe as fast as they could cast cannon and sail there. It was the time of the East India Company, and of the brutal emergence of ruthless Companies - a new kind of entity, with more power it seemed than any crown. Crews of merchant ships were paid a pittance (which was not paid for days at port or ashore, encouraging men to find a better berth) or simply not paid at all. Just before setting sail, a gang of a few burly men from the ship would roam the alleys of the town or city and "press" any able bodied men into service - no matter how unwilling, unskilled or otherwise occupied they may be. Any wonder then that many of the crew members of threatened merchant ships would not even fight, and either flee in the longboats or actively welcome the pirates aboard and volunteer to join them.

If you were caught as a pirate, you died. No two ways about it. You were hung. There was no clemency. But... who was going to catch you? It's a rather large globe that is two-thirds covered in water and the navy ships are largely taken up with fighting someone else's navy. Plus, there was a legitimate business is attacking and scuppering merchant ships of a crown your crown happened to oppose. As you can imagine, this led to quite a bit of grey area between the black and white. There were so many exclusive interests at this point in global trade that many goods were only able to enter the open market through the action of the pirates and so some trading posts would gently look the other way about the provenance of some items and happily purchase them at a fraction of their normal (astronomical) cost in order to be able to do business at all.

So to become a pirate captain you had to be brave, cunning and ruthless but it also helped if you were clever, good with people (pirate crews didn't wait long to mutiny if the booty was slow in coming), strategic (carpenters and other skilled crew were critical to the success of any ship at the time. A surgeon was almost literally worth his weight in gold) and could pull off a bit of play acting in fancy clothes (ships would masquerade as legit traders in order to get close to another ship or a port they wished to plunder). Black Barty had all this in spades. His men adored him, he was a bit of a dandy (but only drank tea) he observed the sabbath and managed to pull off audacious raids.

He even had a manifesto of sorts:
"In an honest service there is thin commons, low wages and hard labour. In this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power. And who would not balance creditor on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sour look or two at choking? No, a merry life and a short one shall be my motto.
Damnation to him who ever lived to wear a halter".

It's hard not admire that.
So on this ITLAPD I urge you to be like a real pirate. Be brave, cunning, ruthless, clever, good with people, strategic and if you find the opportunity, indulge in a little bit of play acting (preferably in fancy silks and brocades). Remember, Damnation to him who ever lived to wear a halter!

*BTW I'm pretty sure that the comment in the one reader review on Amazon is by someone who doesn't recognise primary sources when they read them. I have noticed no such errors.

This work is good work

2009-09-15T18:27:00.005+10:00

Two hundred and twenty-four letters need to be printed (4 goes it took for the printer to acknowledge the tray, the correct paper, the single-sidedness of the issue) each needs to be folded (by hand, so the crease is right to read the address through the little window) and go into one of two hundred and twenty-four envelopes, each letter to be accompanied by two copies of the competition form.
Dull day much?

There have been worse.
This client loves a personalised mailout. The largest so far was for 8000 but I made the client pay a rambunctious group of seniors to do the folding and stuffing (the printing alone took me over 7 hours). It would be easy to think that this kind of thing is a real low-point of my job. So tedius, so old-school, so, so predictable. And so yes they are tasks I'll procrastinate over a bit, mostly because once I start them they create massive drifts of papers and if it all gets interrupted (paper jams, unexpected meetings, file crashes) it can be a real mongrel to figure out where everything was up to.

But...
Actually these mailouts hit nearly all of the key criteria for satisfying work! How can this be?

It is easy to tell when I'm finished - the letters are put into our mailroom lady's hands. We exchange brief pleasantries.
These letters work. Addressed to previous customers who have purchased tickets to a similar show in the last 2 years, these are qualified, hot prospects. They sell tickets.
At the end of the process there's no further anxiety - that happens up front when I want to do something either new, tricky or clever with the copy and the client wants things nice and normal. Once that discussion is resolved for each project it is virtually a mechanical process to complete. I don't lose sleep over it once the lovely mail lady takes charge.
Did I mention that they work? We know because of the timings of sales after postage, but also because when we put a special offer in the letter, we can track the results super easily. Last time 800 letters got us over 100 sales. Sweet!
The client doesn't have to pay for postage and they get sales - mailouts make them happy. Happy client = less stress for me.

So as I sit folding, folding, folding, and stuffing (and checking I haven't put them in backwards) I can turn my brain off knowing that the only risk is a paper-cut or keep it on a little and browse some news and listen to music safe in the knowledge that although it might not be glamorous, exciting, interesting or something that would ever ever get mentioned in ads or shows about this industry, this work is good work. I am content.

Once Were Worthy

2009-09-13T20:39:00.005+10:00

A nasty, heavy thump on the front porch drew Riley and I from our peaceful slumber on Saturday morning. About 3kg of the past was hand-delivered by some begrimed striding labourer into my present.
Eventually, when we had recovered from the rudeness of someone encroaching uninvited into our personal space so far as to be nearly upon the front steps, and I had brewed some coffee with which to fortify my responses, I peered from behind the curtains sideways out at the evidence of the encounter.
"Shock" is a little too strong a descriptor. Let's say rather that it took a few shifts of consciousness to come to terms with the resources bought to bear very early (before 9am!) on a Saturday morning to physically hand deliver to me, at my house, a phone book.

You may not be familiar with this concept. It is a large, alphabetical (by surname) index of all persons (in this case, although it could also be businesses) who have a telephone and who live within an arbitrary radius of a large city or, indeed, town. It is supplied printed on paper. Paper. It is not available for download. Not even as a PDF. It includes many many dozens of thousands of people, comprises hundreds of pages (more even than Infinite Jest!!) and asks to be let into the house and kept for a year or more. How very cheeky. I drew the curtain again and left it on the porch in order to ponder this request.

Pros
* I do have a phone. Conceivably I may wish to use it at some point in the next 12 to 18 months to call someone I don't currently know. This reference may help to source their number.
* My sister is about to move house and she may need a large amount of wrapping paper for her glassware.

Cons
* I feel it likely that anyone I am welcome to call will provide me with their preferred contact mode and the details thereof.
* My sister has completed wrapping her glassware, as she also received a delivery.
* It is large, ugly, poorly bound, and has nowhere else to live other than the drawer currently colonised by the mouse/mice and I feel it would be interpreted as encouragement to their expansionist ambitions.
* The house is already somewhat cluttered with books.

I feel slightly put-upon by this assumption that I want or need this reference tome.

There was no "tick the box" to opt in or out, no consultation, no other strategy, just presumptuous delivery. Another physical manifestation of the parochial concept of "service" that pushes down from the echelons what it is we plebeian suburbanites apparently want and need. For the same energy and carbon, perhaps I would have chosen a nice fresh (and blank) 8gb flash drive, or even a plain unbranded dvd full of data of my choice, or even better a bale (probably bales plural in relative terms) of mulch straw to bolster the efforts of my neophyte vegetables. So many options. So little consultation or inclusion.
But I digress.

I use the back door to leave the house for the errands in order to postpone the inevitable confrontation, athough I know the final outcome already. It just seems a little rude to put it into the recycling bin immediately. Let the poor doomed thing have a few pitiful hours in the sun, feeling the breeze and hearing the neighbourhood thugs practise their gansta cant before it begins the dark and unknown journey through the big yellow-lidded bin of second-chances to be reborn as thicker paper, light card or perhaps a box.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

A Short Reprive

2009-09-05T19:47:00.004+10:00

Today an acquaintance here in Trash City said, whilst browsing a cookbook, "I mean, who's ever heard of some of these things?! Blood Oranges?! They made that up!!."
And although I said, "No, they're real, and particularly good for juicing" I thought something else entirely.

I dreamt last night that I was possessed by a length of galvanised chain that turned into a snake that both poisoned me and became me. So I was at once dying and my own killer.

There was a bit more too it, but thankfully I woke and there was rain on the roof - a very welcome sound - and I realised I was very hot under the covers. The dream was hard to shake off, especially as my leg that was hurting in the dream was very painful in real life. I got back to sleep after a while but the sensations and memories of the dream kept coming back throughout today.

Interesting, don't you think, for that theme to be so clear in a dream at this time?

The Sitzfleisch has an Agenda

2009-09-03T22:25:00.010+10:00

There have been so many things to bluster about, to notice and to mourn in these past six or seven weeks (neighbours/heatwave/garden bounty and then death from aforementioned heatwave and Disney buying up Marvel to name but a few) but sadly none of my moments of lucidity have corresponded with any access to suitable/compatible/functioning tech and these have simply slid by, like tears in the rain (slumps: releases dove).

Some things, however, are timeless and can be shared somewhat after the fact without losing impact. I'm referring, in this instance, to my complex and fraught relationship with my physical body.

It's a funny thing, biology. We cannot be separated from it, it is the source of so very many pleasures and pastimes, it defines (or contributes greatly to) many of the profound emotional states we experience and yet it is coordinated through an almost impenetrable chemical (nay, alchemical) process that has another agenda.

Some Points
Point. A few years ago, keen to take responsibility for my health and well-being I reviewed my life and put myself on a diet, took on a new job and began cycling to work. I came down with Ulcerative Colitis. Hilarious. (the UC is still rocking along BTW. You can't shake that snake in the bowel!)

Point. Nine months later when I could be awake for more than 4 hours at a stretch I tried again - took a course to learn something new and joined a gym. Within 3 weeks, the gym burnt to the ground. The GYM! Concrete and steel. I mean - what was there to even burn? Stale sweat is just not that flammable! How utterly unprecedented is that?

Point. I move interstate and focus on other areas for a while. I get all housified and workified until that's running smoothly. Meanwhile, it is once again time to un-blimp. I get a program together, make a graph, start plotting and basically doing the right things and lo ....tear my calf muscle nearly in half (right at the bit where it starts to become the Achilles tendon. Yeah - nice choice) while playing with Riley in the yard. I am immobilised for weeks. Oh, and it hurts like you do not want to know*.

Do you see a pattern here?

A Script idea?
Maybe I should volunteer my services to the defence force.

Army type: "What exactly are you offering to do?"
Me: "Exercise. You know - lose some weight, get some core strength, whatever. Maybe do some pilates ..."
Army type: "... (goldfish mouth a little) and why exactly is that of benefit to the people of Afghanistan?
Me: (looks around, leans in, speaks in a conspiratorial whisper) "Because when I exercise, bad things happen!!"

We can leave that there. Sadly, most of the time, bad things happen to me, which sucks and seems to be pretty much the exact opposite of the intention of the exercising.
Huh.

Bad Juju
I'm no ubermensch but even i can tell (eventually) when I'm swimming against the tide. Whilst in the initial phase of recovery from this latest insult, I read some books on exercise, and none of them covered "Handling Bad Juju" or even "Unconscious Self-Sabotage". I have learnt how to translate calories and kilojoules but not how to unravel the chaotic and vastly vague intuitive associations of the mind/body relationship (and yes I checked the index!). The doctor has not been much help and I don't have any answers. But I do have an idea.

Fire With Fire
It was Einstein who said "as far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue." Which is a freakin awesome philosophy of no direct relevance to this line of thought at all, but so so worth throwing into the mix. More prosaically, he said "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." Oh yeah - there it is.

As I am unconscious of what is causing this problem, I need to rise up to consciousness! If it is mystery/magic/alchemy playing these tricks - then this is the field I need to enter to solve this puzzle! Simple eh!

On the other hand, Einstein also said "It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid" and cunningly neglected to incorporate a measure or her understanding or grasp of the conversation as being an important component of the conversation. Double clever or just arrogant?

So I shall become both the physicist and the barmaid, I shall embrace the lead and the gold, I shall be both the promise and the prestige .. and either go totally nutso or integrate in some marvellous (possibly mystical way) and become the dove - flying upward through the rain and into eternity.

* I acknowledge that as I have not gone through childbirth I don't have the Gold Standard of Pain for comparison available to me. I have made every effort to substantiate my subjective claim to pain, and many others (some of whom have birthed) have advised that they too feel this injury objectively earns the "painful" label. I'm not just exaggerating this. I do presume that everyone reading this blogs assumes most things are exaggerated. I do that. It's a hobby, telling tales. I'm not subtle, I know it. I'm sorry, that's how it is. But in this case you can take it as read. It hurts like someone has stuck a 12 inch hunting knife into your fucking leg, looked you in the eye and fucking twisted it. Then they pulled it out and you heard your own bone scrape. Yeah.

The Big Life in a Small Town

2009-07-18T17:53:00.005+10:00

This week started out poorly. I decided to floss my teeth and this resulted in a big chip coming off one tooth and another getting lodged in a crevasse. After the initial shock, I was pretty annoyed that my attempt at dental hygiene had been rebuked by my body in such a forceful way. I am learning to live with the strangely lodged chunk of tooth as I am irrationally terrified of dentists ever since one told me that it was inevitable that I would lose all feeling in my lips and possibly most of my jaw if I was to have the operation to "correct" my wisdom teeth. I decided at that point to grow tusks instead and here we have the ongoing consequences of that act of cowardice.

I don't really remember a lot of the rest of the week. I'd like to be able to put this down to outrageous drinking and wild living, but actually it is because it was so mind-numbingly dull and predictable that the highlight was baby-sitting my nieces for a few hours while sister went to class about how to sell beauty products. We watched Kung Fu Panda (again) and I struggled with a crossword. The week ended with two people leaving work who have each (in their very different ways) had a big impact on my working life here. The first is Gill. She is a veteran of the Sheltered Workshop and was the person who hired me into the organisation as a temp and tried to teach me the ways of survival ("Always cover your arse with a paper trail") and the codes of the chronic martyr. Shocked though I am at her resignation, my hope in the resilience of human spirit is renewed. Perhaps she will find her smile again in the near future. Inshalla.

The second is Strelan, the person who first showed me some friendship (or at least companionable emailing from our respective far-flung fortresses of solitude) and has been a reliable source since then of off-hand humour, new musical influences, occasional insight into the worldview and values of Gen Y, and frankly an ambitious but ultimately non-winning poker strategy. I am delighted at the fact that he has gained escape velocity from the draining gravity well of the Sheltered Workshop's weekly pay cheque, and is smiling and bouncing at the idea of working somewhere that he can do stuff. Happy hunting Strelan.

Today was so perfect that I had to dust down the banana lounge and find a pillow and a paper to read then I had all the props in place to do nothing at all. The paper was a week or two old (and was just the News Review and Business sections), but I read it on and off and the birds sang and the sky was blue and the dog snored softly in the grass by my side. A gorgeous way to wrap up the week and I'm so relaxed that I think I'll just hum a little to myself and maybe snooze a little more.

The Blood Orange

2009-07-13T19:06:00.004+10:00

Isn't that the most Gothic (Gothically? Gothetically?) named fruit?!
Say it aloud in dark tones with me, let the words drip with gore "The...BLOOD...Orange!"
yessssss

I would have thought that with all the vampire chic going around these fruit would be enjoying a heyday, but stuff me if I know where to get them from normal channels. I have recently been given a small bag for free from Ma & Pa's neighbour (yes, Peter, whom I'm sure has been mentioned in the past at least once) and who is my best line on farm-fresh cauliflowers. During summer we are inundated by tomatoes the size of my head (Bullocks Heart the variety is called in case you feel your tommies are inadequately sized. A few people call Custard Apples by this name so double-check. Not that it would be horrible to end up with custard apples, but they're trees, not vines, and are no good for making sandwiches or salads. But I digress) and in winter it is mandarins and oranges.

I've never really gotten too excited, after all mum's been getting gamey, tart little mandies and tight, terse oranges off her trees for a while now and I figured it would be more of the same. No biggie, so normally I let Little Sister totally snaffle all the produce she wants, and it can take me a whole week to eat a single orange or mango due to my love of anticipation and enormous capacity for self-denial. In fact sometimes I have looked forward to it for so long it is no longer edible.

Last weekend, when Little Sister said she was planning a trip to the orchard, I thought I'd tag along. The fruit from the supermarket has been utterly deplorable for the last month and I had never laid eyes on this promised Eden so if nothing else it would make a nice diversion for an hour or so. She always gets this happy glaze to her face when she talks about the place and now I am a convert too.

We stood in the bountiful grove (that required a 4WD to get to) and plucked the most delicious fruits from the trees and ate them with the sun warming us and bees buzzing merrily around the flowers of the next crop. The soil was a rich, soft black and every tree was heavily laden with ripe or ripening fruit. We walked for a while, just to say the names and guess the varieties and we just didn't know them all. It was gorgeous.

Two trees were stripped bare of fruit and we crossed our fingers that the goods were waiting at the farm. Loaded with stuffed bags of fruit, we ventured back towards roads. Little Sister leapt onto the large box of fruit waiting on the front porch of the farm and then let out a long shuddering sigh of pleasure - here they were - the Blood Oranges. Very bravely she watched as we divvied up the total, a few here, a few there, some for so and so, and here Grandad you try a few, and then the rest were tucked safely into the boot of the car.

Have you ever seen them? They look normal enough from the outside, maybe with a faint hint of pink on the skin. I'm told that colour gets stronger with each frost (we've had such a mild winter here, these ones are barely blushing) and then you cut them open, and from the skin and pith in, depending again on the frosts, they're deep rich pink like fresh blood cut with a little water. And they bleed too - so juicy you can't help but want to lick them. The flesh is soft and pulps easily and quickly. These are a little tart from lack of frost, as though there's cranberries snuck into the blend. So very very delicious.

I've counted mine, and am rationing them out, one at a time, as an aperitif to breakfast and dinner. We're all on the lookout for another source now. You don't know anyone with a tree do you? Now I understand why my sister stands over her baby tree and wills it to blossom and grow. Peter could charge whatever he wanted for these and we would be reduced to stealing car stereos to pay him.

He Invented Tomorrow

2009-07-10T18:39:00.007+10:00

I am utterly stoked today by Google commemorating on their homepage the birthday of Nikola Tesla! Yay Google! Perhaps this prompted a few dozen people to digress from their purpose in booting the big G long enough to click through to the Wiki page and discover the brilliant and sadly under-rated (and occasionally just totally nutty) works of this amazing engineer and inventor. I hope they're now feeling a richer connection to their computer screen, and considering digressing more often (you know I'm already a fan).

I've been laboriously trudging my way through "A Brief History of Time" (which I know even Hawking says is outdated now) and I can't help but wonder today what Tesla's incredible and intuitive brain might make of our modern world and in particular of the wealth of advances in theoretical and applied physics. How valuable his creativity and inspiration would be to us, when we have more chance of understanding him than those dazed and confused Victorians.

In 1891 Tesla could create illumination without wires, and believed that this was merely the beginning of a field of industry. In Experiments With Alternate Currents Of High Potential And High Frequency in February 1892 he wrote "Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe".

Not "...at any point of the world", "of the universe" the man had a real scope to his vision that I find inspiring. This was just one of his strands of enquiry. I wish more of his work survived the inevitable fires that came with his experimental conditions and most of all, I wish that he had found a helpmate during his life to take care of the practical things, so his eclectic genius could soar higher and further.

Happy Birthday Nikola Tesla, and thank you for persevering with us as long as you did.

Bronze Nails

2009-07-06T21:43:00.006+10:00

I intended to blog tonight, and I even made a bit of an effort to think of decent ideas for once, but obviously this plan has not come to fruition. Please forgive me. I've just spent a cozy two and a half hours snuggled up to my Greader. So many blogs and articles and essays all queued up for me by topic or author. I have barely gotten through half of it. What a pleasure. If only I could read it on the couch.

The major distraction tonight was catching up with new posts from Club Orlov. One of the things I love about this blog is the "been there, done that" nature of the analysis and information. Just because the big big mass of Russia is a long way away (in all the different nuances that hang around after the cold war) doesn't mean we can't learn a lot from their recent history and experiences. It is one thing to look at a bunch of graphs and say, "This is going to be bad" and another to hear exactly how bad (and I don't mean just having to live on cabbage). There are little tidbits too, such as the value of bronze nails.

"It also makes sense to establish stockpiles of non-perishable materials that will preserve their usefulness far into the future. My favourite example is bronze nails. They last a over a hundred years in salt water, and so they are perfect for building boats. The manufacturing of bronze nails is actually a good use of the remaining fossil fuels - better than most. They are compact and easy to store."

I didn't even think about the possibility that nails might be made of stuff that erodes. I mean, that's a stupid idea, right?! What a perfect example of how our thinking as a system is faulty. Not that I'm ever going to be able to build a boat. Or even that I can use a hammer without hurting myself. Who am I kidding anyway, I'm almost certain to die off as soon as the chocolate supply gets dodgy. I've got three lightfittings in my house where I can't even get a lightbulb to work. Plus, I live nearly 150 kloms from the ocean. And I don't eat fish. Now. I reckon if rotten cabbages get on the menu, pretty much anything goes.

But I digress.

It's not just the handy hints towards a happy post-peak-oil-life that I enjoy and it is more than the fabulously footnoted details, it is that Club Orlov presents with a fabulous sense of humour. Anyone who can make me laugh involuntarily about global economic collapse due to the denial of the (easily projected) minimum production volumes and maximum affordable costs of energy has to be clever, resilient and fundamentally very, very funny.

I don't want to spoil it for you in case you have the urge to explore for yourself, and maybe you won't think so, but I'm still chuckling now. Anyway, that's the reason there will not be a blog from me tonight. I've been deliciously distracted and suddenly it is past my bedtime and time to don jammies and sleep. Ah, but my mind is spinning, trying to recalibrate my plan to take in all the knowables, the unknowables, the things we don't know we don't know and now to do all of this and yet remain flexible, with lots more humour!

2009 in books (pt1)

2009-07-01T17:47:00.011+10:00

As usual I've been both cranky and ill.
Someone (irritating) at work today said,
"...but i've seen you be cheerful and friendly before"
and before I could remember the cover story I replied
"It was a LIE."

So, it's out in the open. On the other hand, once one has cultivated even a minor reputation for eccentricity, nothing after that needs to make too much sense to be shrugged off as "just another thing." So you can tell the radical truth and it becomes outrageous entertainment.
"What do you think of so-and-so?"
"I love him and obsess over him in the long nights of my solitude."
Cue uproarious laughter.

It couldn't be any better if I actually wore a Jester's outfit.
But I digress.

For anyone who hasn't noticed it is pretty much the middle of the year. I considered some kind of sincere post, but I'm not up to it. The only goal-related thing I would say is that I am happy with my reading list so far this year, which has held up rather well despite being flooded this month by a series of works by Stephenie Meyer. The tally stands at 28 books in total and of these, 13 are non-fiction! Nearly exactly half!! WOOT! (gently mimes punching air so as not to dislodge reading glasses.

Of these, what books can I recommend to you my tasteful and clever audience?

A good question.

From January, Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman. Very thoughtfully re-published by Penguin in their charming $10 range (thank you Penguin and good idea going back to classic jacket designs!). Get into some Physics - it is already in you!!

February yielded some good quality reading in the form of The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton (another Penguin $10 winner). A novel about Tesla called The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt and a collection of Essays gifted to me by Mez called How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen. I felt pretty clever by association after those highlights.

March needed a new flavour, so I read the new SF by Richard Morgan - The Black Man and I really liked it but I recommend it to SF readers with some qualifications (depending on your taste). The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman was lovely and had a little unsaid, which I like. The real standout this month was finishing The Invisibles by Grant Morrison which was a loaner from MsJaye and one of those books that infects and gives one a fever. I got through the fever, and now I can't wait to find out what I'm inoculated against or prepared for. Turns out I love anarchistic-chaos-magic. I want to do it again! (BTW for snobs - be warned - that one's a comic.)

April was quiet, I read some non-fic that was a bit dull and I re-read a favourite novel and then read a French SF novel called Babylon Babies (by Mauice Dantec, but I don't remember the translator. It wasn't Nicole Kidman so don't sweat it). I'd read some mixed reviews and of course the film (Babylon AD)was hopeless but actually i thought that the book was good. Not quite as fully anarchist chaos magical as The Invisibles, but possibly a good enough chaser. Lots of good themes and a clever central character and plenty of wild tech. I would like to read more SF from NESB (non english speaking background) as the flavours and textures are less predictable (all of which was pretty much removed for the film. Poor Vin Diesel. I bet he loved the original script.)

So May was not a big reading month, I was pretty sick, but I did finish Kimono: Fashioning Culture by Liza Dalby which I got on a whim and then was able to read nearly half of during a day of travel. It was fascinating, and I feel slightly more informed now when I watch Japanese cinema, or see modern women wearing Kimono. Actually, I'll fess up and say that I went out of my way to re-watch Memoirs of a Geisha just so I could look at all the kimono.

June, ah June. June has been the month of escapist reading. Binging on one-night-reads is something we all do sometimes, but that doesn't make me proud. In the middle of that I finished What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Darwin Knew: From fox-hunting to Whist - the facts of Daily life in 19th-Century England by Daniel Pool which I had been very eagerly awaiting. I was anticipating a detailed and exhaustive book, but actually this book ought to be subtitled "In Which Things that are Almost Obvious from The Context of the Novel are explained in length oftentimes using Quotations from Self-same Novels. Perhaps you ought to read more proper history books?"
Ah well. More than half of this puny book is pointless. I'm trying to think of a redeeming feature .... um .... it has some nice etchings.

I love to keep lists of books, I wish I'd given-in to the urge a long time ago instead of feeling furtive and dirty for wanting to do so. In a lot of ways it is a more interesting way of tracking the tides and flavours of my life than the dates of trips or the odd event. Movies and Knitting have both taken up a lot of time that I would otherwise have spent reading. But that's ok - ther'e more to come in the great Western Genre exploration, and Riley very nearly has his own bespoke cardigan.

Solstice and Spaceship Earth

2009-06-20T22:35:00.006+10:00

It is winter solstice again; the long night.

I went to my little sister's place for dinner and to play cards and it was good to see them and catch up on their news. Time is moving faster for them now that she's going to have a baby. There's a very finite and concrete sense of 'time left before the baby comes' and 'everything after'. I can see what shape it is giving to weekends and plans and of course their relationship. All the natural winter urges are heightened for them.

I was thinking earlier today - what is the most beautiful thing that you can think of? Or perhaps it is a place or a person or a sound... feel the joy and the beauty it brings you. How precious and wonderful that is.
Now unless you naturally think of the Eagle Nebula, the Sun's corona or the rings of Saturn, chances are very very good that what you thought of - even your top ten - are all here on earth. Everything is here. So why is it that being a 'greenie' or someone concerned about the well being and survival of the planet is still considered such a social crime? I just don't understand how anyone can be so obstinately ignorant of the peril we're in. It isn't even that "if we break this one we don't have a spare" because we know this one is already broken and the question on every body's heart and mind should really be more like "how much can we mend it if we all pitch in?"

All those extinct species won't come back, but maybe we won't all have to genetically merge with salamanders to survive.

At Home

2009-06-14T18:08:00.007+10:00

I staked up the rogue tomato plants this morning and discovered that they're not just flowering but have set fruit, in June! That was a cute surprise adding to the fact they they're growing over the top of the sweet potatoes. I've got one square meter of garden where every thing's happening. The cauliflowers I tried are all dead and gone. Apart from that one very cold morning last week (about -3⁰ I think it was here, which I thought would kill off the tommies) it is a mild winter so far.

I'm back in touch with the yard because this month I've borrowed a half-remembered part of an English tradition and have decided I am "at home" for my weekends this month. Which means to me that I am by default at home or that I won't be going anywhere simply because of obligation, habit or to fill in time. I've reclaimed the sleep-in! (and the afternoon nap!)

Two weekends in and I'm caught up with myself a little. I have realised how many projects of every kind I've started over the last year or so but left scattered around the house. I'm a full set behind in my subscriptions reading, but that now is back to feeling like a treat in store rather than a task to be completed. I went to two stores today and found it easy to zip in and grab the items on the list and nip back out with just the things I needed and not another armful of stuff. I got some drill bits to put holes in my button blanks and some elastic and batting to make a night-cap (my head is cold when I go to bed. How Dickensian I shall look!).

Yesterday I finished a book (Thursday's Child by Sonya Hartnett. The play is coming to the client's venue in August and as I'll be promoting it heavily, thought is would be good to have a clue what I'm talking about as the material the touring company sent us is heavy on how awesome they are and very light on plot/character details. As usual. It's great too, so I can happily throw my shoulder to the harness for this one.) and then read Twilight (by Stephanie Meyer). I'm possibly in the last 20% of the human population to read this, so I won't say much about it. I think it's more a thriller style than a romance, and that's about as much as I'll venture for now, and yes I'll read the next one.

So with some sleep back behind my eyes and clean sheets on the bed my sense of goodwill-toward-human-kind-O-meter has drifted back into the realm of the positive and I can bid my fellows a good morrow with nary a sneer nor a sardonic riposte in my mind. Hoo-Ray!

Also, Kerryn gifted me owl patterned flannelet jammies! All is right in the world!

The Winter Refrain

2009-06-12T18:28:00.006+10:00

Overheard in the mall on my way to work (and you'll have to imagine the nasal bogan whine that this is said in):
"Gee it's cold. I can't believe how cold it is!"
So I surreptitiously glance behind me in order to appraise this captain of the obvious and spot a cluster of idiots who are in thongs, shorts and T-shirts and one of them, in concession to the change in seasons, has thrown on a cotton hoodie. They are all hunched over and attempting to gain warmth from lit cigarettes.
It was minus 3^oC overnight. Winter, albeit a late (and probably brief one) has arrived. I do not understand the stubborn reticence of locals against putting on warm clothes. This cold weather happens every year. Surely it is not beyond any one's means to have one woolen jumper and a pair of socks bundled into the back of a drawer? That's all it takes, and you can get a decent jumper these days for what it costs to buy two packs of smokes. Then by 9 or 10 in the morning it is back up to a sunny and warm 18^oC or so, and then people, you can take the jumper off! A simple, but effective, system that has been serving humans for millenia called "clothing". I recommend it.

Also worth mentioning this week is that the World Health Organisation has officially declared Swine Flu (H1N1) to be a pandemic. Congrats Swiney on your new status. I'm sure no readers of this blog need any delineation made between pandemic and epidemic, but you will appreciate the irony in this being the week that on one hand the Sheltered Workshop has made buckets and buckets of hand sanitiser available to curb to possible spread of Swiney, and on the other (perhaps inevitable and very very bureaucratic) hand, decided that far far too many dollars are spent on tissues and so has cut off their supply. No worries, sneeze into your hand - there's plenty of hand sanitiser!

*shakes head*

Terminator: Salvation

2009-06-10T17:53:00.005+10:00

(Spoiler Alert! Yes, again. Don't read this if you're seriously looking forward to the latest Terminator film. But really - who is?).

I swear to you, this blog is not going to devolve solely into me bagging the shit out of popular culture. I aim to bag the shit out of high-brow stuff occasionally as well.

Over the long weekend I went along to see Terminator: Salvation at my local cinema. There were many members of the public in attendance which I do not like. It is not (just) that I am anti-social, they are simply not fit to be in the public arena. Case in point: the 'gentleman' seated next to me wore thongs presumably so that when the urge came over him, he could pick his toes during the film without the irritation of having to remove any shoes. Charming.
But I digress.

Firstly, this film is badly misnamed (why do they think that dropping the numbers helps? Oh, that's right, because we're now scraping the prequel barrel and it confuses people to have non-linear sequences. An argument, perhaps, for using the Dewy system for films. But that's a subject for discussion at another time). Anyway. "Salvation" is a misnomer. This film should rightly have been subtitled "Survival" or even something like "have you ever seen a more gritty dystopian future prequel than this?! Holy Shit we're really all going to DIE!!! RUN - RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" but as a marketing person I wouldn't really recommend that - it's hard to make puns with for the actor profiles during promos.

I guess "Survival" was taken, but it is a shame, they should have saved Salvation for when they win the freakin war I would have thought. Not for a film where the resistance takes massive casualties, loses their entire command structure and basically get their arses kicked at every single point.

That leads me to my second point. I don't know a lot about war. Actually, I know very little about war on any level. I've made effort to avoid it personally. From what I have seen and heard it is a deeply unpleasant experience, and something not to be undertaken lightly. Which is why I would have suggested that someone in the Resistance who does know about war ought to read a little book by an old guy call Sun. In this book, which is kind of like a "War for Dummies¹" he suggests that you should know everything you can about your enemy. In this film, that could be as simple as remembering that the machines you're fighting are very very smart. Maybe not the ones directly in front of you, but the ones that built them are. I reckon that odds are good that machines that have made themselves self-aware are going to be pretty bright. Hence, one ought to think things through as if you're playing a game of Chess or Go in which your opponent has a higher rank than you. That is to say, they're likely to set traps for you. I would, if I was clever.

Not being clever brings me to my third, and final point. American action films have made a fruitful industry out of not worrying too much about clever if you can be very strong. This almost completely defines the action genre. It is about guys (usually) chasing each other, thumping each other and blowing shit up. This is where T:S comes home and delivers. It's got all the things you look for in an action flick: big guns (tick), attack helicopters (tick), funky secret commando hand signal stuff (tick), blowing shit up (tick, tick, tick), and best of all, big tough guys taking an absolute flogging (sadly I don't mean an actual flogging on a rack. I think the only SF film to deliver that particular delicacy must be Starship Troopers. If you know of any others please, please tell me). In this instance I mean fisty-cuffs to the snoz stuff.

This is what kept me going. I really liked seeing Sam Worthington² get killed, take a nude mud bath, be beaten, shot at, beaten again, killed again, resurrected, beaten again, and then suicide. Not only is that a thrashing and a half, but it is also one heck of a character arc! And, he just eats it up. I want the next film to be about Marcus Wright stirring things up in the afterlife. OOOHHH - Marcus Wright Vs The Mummy!! I would so totally go and see that. The human equivalent of the bear vs shark question. Brilliant.
But I digress. Again.

On the way home I thought of a great drinking game for this film. It goes like this - first of all you need to get all resistance (shame they skipped the Steampunk possibilities - but one can't have everything) and build (or borrow if you're not well suited to experimental conditions) an alcohol distillation set up ("a still")and make some moonshine (Please remember to cut the juice you get!) then you and your mates all take a swig and settle down to watch this film. Once it starts, every time Marcus Wright does something brutal or has something brutal done to him you have another shot. I leave it up to you to decide if kissing Helena should count. In this way, if you are by some miracle still conscious by the end of the film, you really don't really care that most of the film made no sense and that John Connor is a total arse.

Everybody Wins!³

1. There is both a "Vietnam War for Dummies" and a "War on Terrorism for Dummies" actually published. I thought I was being funny, but it turns out satire is too easily just being inaccurate.
2. Who, BTW, was awesome as Macbeth. Man, I love that version. Even better than Polanski's. Really.
3. Except the humans. And Sam Worthington.

BSG_S4: WTF?!

2009-06-06T12:20:00.008+10:00

(SPOILER ALERT - If you're a Battlestar Galactica Fan and haven't watched all of Season 4, don't read this. Really.)

I can't be the only person who has seen the final episodes of season 4 of BSG and checked under the couch for the missing plot. There's at least two episodes that should exist that seem to have gotten lost as far as I can tell. I went to the pilot of Caprica to see if they're there, but no - just more problems there (if the centurions are created by the combination of a grief-crazed father, a dodgy military contract and a punk genius happy-clapper accidentally dead daughter then how did the Cylons we know as the Final 5 know to spend those thousands of years travelling at sub-light speeds to travel to the 12 colonies and warn of the uprising she would create? See my dilemma? But I digress).

Ok. At least they didn't just fly into the sun (apart from Anders, sorry Anders, someone had to do it, and now that you're a weird-arse brain-in-a-bucket its gunna be you. There's no datastream for you to be zen with on New Earth). I liked the Kara Thrace music psychosis and culmination, I thought that tied a lot of incidental things together very very well. On the other hand, it is always hard to end a long and arduous journey, narratively speaking. We don't like settling for "they rode happily off into the sunset" which is how the wagon-train genre used to settle it. This is one of the difficulties of taking the Western genre into space. It all tracks well until you get to the sunset. Having said that, Serenity had a great sunset ending. Ends got tied, some emotional closure, an uncertain future. All good. So why the frack is the BSG ending so shite?

Firstly, because I think it tries to be cute about tying the story into our Earth (as opposed to Ancient Earth) and that feels kinda patronising. We're SF fans, you don't need to start putting big red YouAreHere arrows around the place (especially at the end. Idiots).

Secondly, because the 7 might have been denied resurrection technology, but the centurions had no mortality issues whatsoever. They're machines who can make more machines, and what happens at the end of the series? The machines who rebelled against the humans and launched the largest genocide program ever then got turned into the followers of the Seven Cylons, fought the big war for 4 years, participated in the civil war, and then... what?! Watched the last of the human-siding cylons ride off into the sunset with the humans leaving them in space with the sad-fuck Cavills and all those other numbers we don't really care about? And what? They made a cup of tea and took up tapestry? I'm not buying it, and I don't think you are either.

Thirdly, the idea that a space going population is going to walk away from their ships carrying *nothing* (look again at those lines of people, they aren't even wearing hats for frack's sake) and survive more than a week against mega-fauna? C'mon. Even I can't suspend that much disbelief.

Fourthly, we spend four years with this community, with the rousing "so say we all!" speeches of the Admiral, and then he goes and build a cairn on a clifftop to die alone with? No. I'm not saying that it might not really happen that way. People might well say "No i'm happy to give up all (ALL) of the comforts, medicines and technologies (including roofs) I've lived my whole life with and go off to compete with Cro Magnons to survive, and if we're all lucky our kids will interbreed with them and the centurions will forget that they hate our guts and that we've given up guns and we'll have a lovely time. But I simply do not believe that they would do that without at least one more speech on the ground from the old man, and a state funeral for you-know-who. (Point was possibly going to be about the raiders and other ships that landed them and the fossil record, but on reflection I think that the psychology is more important).

I'm weighing up how much of my annoyance is purely because the story has finished. I had a childish wish that it just wouldn't end and that these poor people, many of whom I have come to love, respect, and desire would remain trapped in a state of war, or fugitive guerrilla struggles for survival with their numbers slowly decreasing faster than they could ever grow, all just for my entertainment. I can't wish that on anybody. No, it had to end. In endings though, I am more selfish than I like. It doesn't have to be happy, and I'm not such a nihilist that I won't let it be happy. It is just that this ending seems like a nothing ending, and the epilogue feels like I've been watching a "Fall of the Roman Empire" lecture. Just not good enough from the crew who've taught us to expect more.

Grade: FF Fracking Fail - RESUBMIT.

Westward Ho!

2009-06-03T15:21:00.002+10:00

I never met a Western I didn’t like until I watched this film. Occasionally films have poor production values, or stilted acting, or a plot that just is too implausible, but not usually all at once.

Released in 1935 (originally in B&W) starring a young John Wayne as John Wyatt, this is the story of two brothers and their paths in life after the brutal murder of their parents on the trail (and the theft of all their cattle). The elder brother (Wayne) is left for dead while the youngest is taken as a protégé of the bad guys. As soon as he can swagger and wear a gun, John Wyatt commences his personal vendetta of tracking down and killing the men who murdered his family. The film is dedicated to a group called “The Vigilantes” active in the 1860s, and that’s exactly what happens, Wyatt can’t get funding for an actual police force so he assembles a posse of likewise wronged, angry and gun-wielding men to bring ‘justice’ to the area.

I wanted to start at the beginning of the genre, and here it is. The “good guys” (ie Wyatt’s Vigilantes) all ride white horses (I kid you not!) and most of them sing (yes, this verges on being a musical). The bad guys all have poor personal hygiene and frankly are not that bright. With the focus on vigilante justice and a moral code that makes it ok to shoot some men but not others, I found myself seeing parallels to the Batman origins stories. Batman doesn’t kill, that’s his personal line over which he will not knowingly cross, in Westerns it seems that the willingness to make that decision to shoot to kill and move on with life is what constitutes a man and it is just whether you use your power for good (killing bad men, men in your way, or anyone who cheats at cards) or for stealing cattle.

When watching older films it is useful if one has some personal sense of the period from which they spawn. This is not really a film about the 1860s so much as it is about the 1930s idea of the 1860s and possibly also about something that was topical in the 30s that the director thought might be discussed well by analogy through this story. I have enough understanding of most periods of the 1800s in Europe and North America to be comfortable getting half-way towards the mindset the filmmakers were aiming for. This film made me realise how alienated I am from the 1930s. I don’t really know what was going on, and I certainly don’t understand what was being said in this film implicitly.

The best things for me in this film is that many of the horses are part-Arabs and so are very easy on the eyes, and that it is only 60 minutes long. I had borrowed my Brother-in-Law’s 2 volume set of John Wayne Westerns to watch this film, I skipped the other 11 hours of films. Westward Ho! is sometimes listed in the top Westerns of all time. It might be a great film in the history of the genre, but it didn’t tickle my fancy.

The Western

2009-05-15T19:30:00.003+10:00

I was lucky enough to be able to indulge recently in a little bit of fairly nerdy, high-def movie marathoning. We watched Serenity for entrees, Blade Runner (Director's cut) for mains, and finished (and I mention here that it is not a decision lightly made finding the right film to follow Blade Runner!) with an encore screening of Tombstone. A most excellent night, and as it was an exclusive viewing club, there was no guilt and much pleasure in talking over boring scenes, rewinding and freeze-framing, reciting dialogue along with the actors, in short all of the things that make re-watching great films fun.

Obviously at some point the subject of The Western as a genre came up. It is kinda easy to see how Firefly (and so Serenity) qualify (plenty of ponies, sidearms and law of the fastest draw), and Tombstone which apart from the Latin-off is nearly a textbook Western ... or is it? In discussion about what great Western films should be watched (we like a list, oh yes, we like a list) Unforgiven came up. And it is an utterly brilliant film in itself, "But" I said in the slightly preachy and pretty annoying way that I have "you simply can not start with it. You have to know about westerns, at least have a feel for them, to really get why Unforgiven is so good." Rather than calling me a wanker, or pish-poshing my elitist stance, my co-nerd simply enquired "What then, do you suggest I watch first?" thus further endearing her to me.
I took a moment to think about it.
I took a deep breath, marshaled my feeble mental resources and began.

I took another moment.

As I thought about it, I realised there was quite a complex history and lineage to a film like Unforgiven (or indeed Firefly on a different branch) and although I'm a fan of the genre as I critically appraised my knowledge in order to provide a reasonable, purposeful and appropriate guide to suitable viewing for a keen neophyte I realised (not for the first time) that I was in over my head.
"I'll have a think about it, and I'll make you a list." Best I could do at the time.

That was over two weeks ago, and I've been thinking it over. I started a list, and it seemed inadequate. Then I started a second of films I've seen but forgotten, then a third of films I'd been recommended, but never got to, and then a fourth of westerns set in space. The myriad shifts and mutations in the genre, the massive and now difficult to grasp homogeneity and popularity of it in its heyday all these things somehow need to be encapsulated and yet there are a huge huge number of westerns, and really I have only seen a very tiny part of their whole. Also, to add a little more piquancy some films set "in the west" are not a Western, likewise a story can be on a moonbase and still be quintessentially a Western (so I think) so why is that? What is at the heart of this genre? What really defines it? Is it independence? Masculinity? Justice?

So I have not made the list, and in another fresh move for me, I am not turning to my reference books (much as I am tempted) but shall instead embark upon a course of viewings. I shall ramble my way through 70 years of Western films in all their guises with no deadline, no schedule, no roster, no real purpose other than for the journey itself and to share the glory and the pleasures of the trip with you, my beloved travelling companions.

Suggestions and recommendations are warmly welcomed. Reviews and notes or mentions of films may or may not appear here in the future after this next week - nothing much is certain in life. In the great tradition of the high-country cowgirls "we will be together on the ride until we aint" (BTW I made that up, that tradition and that little aphorism, but I promise, I'll take the reviews a lot more seriously. Actually, I had my fingers crossed then too. You're on your own. You'll need to cross-reference anything you find here that you want to quote, or believe, or otherwise propogate).

I've decided to start in the 40s and have borrowed 2 volumes (!) of the "John Wayne Collection" from my brother-in-law. I shall view selectively from this vast array lest I sicken and fall early into the undertaking.

Until next we meet, Ye-Har!

Push Me, Pull Me

2009-05-08T21:27:00.010+10:00

Tonight I had a fresh run-in with the hidden mechanism to social networking - gated communities.
Yes, I know they've been around the whole time. After all, before it was the interwebs it was ARPAnet and if that wasn't the biggest on-line gated community to begin with I'm a chartered accountant. I didn't even have to make that up about ARPAnet. I noes that from reading a book! Thank you Bruce Sterling!! You too can read The Hacker Crackdown if you're old school and don't mind reading things on that scratchy stuff called paper, or, if you prefer, here's the wiki link on it.) (Oh, how droll, i just went to find a link to the book, and actually, it's gone digital. MIT is hosting a copy here. Thank you Bruce Sterling and MIT, you rock.)

But I digress.

I've been getting recommendations for a particular site¹ from different persons of varying trust levels (ie knowledgeable strangers in shops and friends), and in the end, I remembered to write it down on something and put it into my weberciser. Well, jolly jumbucks if it isn't by invitation only! It isn't truly closed - I didn't have to get invited by someone I know (like gmail used to be) and I didn't have to provide in 25 words or less why I would like to be included, or justify my inclusion on the grounds of skills and expected contribution. No, I just asked to be invited, and got told that 1500 invitations go out a day, so I'm 3thousand 6hundred something something in the queue, so I'll have to wait about 3 days.

So my point here, and I do have one, is that pull marketing works.
And that humans still like to be a bit exclusive.
Finally, that the idea that the perfect anything/everything is out there somewhere secret and I don't know about it because I am not in the right circles is traumatising - thus identifying me as a vulnerable under-developed idiot ripe for clever marketing (read = "pretty normal").

Can you tell I've been compulsively watching Mad Men² lately?
Ah, Advertising, my dirty secret.

So I go and look up a bot more about the site and discover it's in Beta (since 2007 - no rush guys!) and has tools based around organising everything for one's hobby. That's what F'book lacks - a hobby connection (apart from tagging in photos). It would be good to cross-sort tools/books across various interests. But now I'm speculating, I still haven't tried to use it.

Something they don't talk up and I will be heartily surprised if it doesn't happen, is targeted advertising inside that room. Once you've asked to enter, you're self-identified as a consumer for linked products and people like me (wearing a work hat for a second) salivate at such a target-rich environment.

We have to make due at work with putting ads in the paper. LEFT.BE-HIND. people, we are being left behind. I cannot tell my eager potential customers about our wonderful range of products - because I have No pull! NO PULL! People are not queued up 3thousand 6hundred something deep to get the latest news about the next tribute show being hosted in Ipswich (it's John Denver in case you're interested, and then Sinatra next month. All happening at the Civic Hall!! peeps). But there has to be an answer to my work problem out there somewhere, somehow...

Which takes me into another tangent. One of the writers for the show (Mad Men) set up a twitter account for the lead character and had the character twittering to fans. Brilliant idea! Other characters got in on the act (hi-larious!) BUT WAIT - the studio that owns the show asked Twitter to shut it down! Oh Dear! You can read about this over here.

So I guess I'm not the only one trying to get more people involved in my product, and engaged in what we offer but then still completely and utterly trying to control how that happens and when. The sheltered workshop has a very strong stance - no interactive stuff! No blogs! No f'books! No relationships. We are push only! PUSH I say! So we push.

We do letter campaigns - no blip in sales. Email campaigns- no blip in sales. Radio - nothing. Yet some shows sell out with barely any work from us. Word of mouth. We have to get the right mouths going. Or book better acts. That the major variable that we don't really like to mention. Paul Kelly played our venue for half the price he played in Brisbane. Any wonder he sold out? Different proposition trying to fill "standing room only" (there's optimism for you) for the Noiseworks re-union tour that no-one was clamouring for.

Life isn't about buying things, it is about being in relationships. That's why we love movies and TV shows - we want to share in those extra relationships. We want to do things and go places with our friends and loved-ones and that's where the pull is, so be pull-able! But being pullable means letting go of the push a bit. We have to loosen up, flow with the breeze, be more like bamboo. Strong yet flexible.

There it is folks. We have to be more like bamboo.

Don Draper would be pleased with that.
There's the concept, work up some art for it.
Have a whiskey everyone.

1. It is www.ravelry.com if you're interested. It's a knitting thing. I really can't tell you anything else until I can have a peek inside.
2. Not just for the eye candy either, although that is a consideration, but for the thoughtful discussion of themes and issues yes, really, I'm watching it for the articles.

Correction

2009-05-08T14:42:00.002+10:00

On Monday I wrote a little post in which I referred, somewhat vaguely, to a "NZ Author". I intended to go away and figure out the name of the person I was thinking of and put the name in there, but forgot to do so before I hit the big button.

It came to me last night that I was thinking of Janet Frame.
How could I have not been able to remember that? I don't know.

So Janet Frame, please accept my apologies for having a blank on your name although being able to recall your "Rainbirds" book (wish I'd kept that one), and readers, please accept my absentmindedness in this instance and be assured that this is pretty likely to happen again at some point.

A one-third achievement.

2009-05-06T12:08:00.004+10:00

I'm delighted to advise that the project to finish reading Ulysses (by James Joyce) in 2009 continues to trundle forward and today I have basically reached the one-third mark. For those of you good at maths, you will immediately suggest that in order to finish on time I ought to have reached this milestone at the beginning of last month, yes, well done, you are correct.

This does not diminish my current (yet ultimately ephemeral) sense of achievement.

Herewith a relatively random sample (not too random, I chose a bit that at least seems like part of a story) to share with you the jaunty tones and fabulous rhythms. I would give you a little context and explain what is going on, but I barely know myself. I'm trusting in the journey.

Enjoy!

"Lenehan linked his arm warmly.
--But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch too after all the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o'clock the morning after the night before. Coming home it was a gorgeous winter's night on the Featherbed Mountain. Bloom and Chris Callinan were on one side of the car and I was with the wife on the other. We started singing glees and duets: LO, THE EARLY BEAM OF MORNING. She was well primed with a good load of Delahunt's port under her bellyband. Every jolt the bloody car gave I had her bumping up against me. Hell's delights! She has a fine pair, God bless her. Like that.
He held his caved hands a cubit from him, frowning:
--I was tucking the rug under her and settling her boa all the time. Know what I mean?
His hands moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in delight, his body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp from his lips.
--The lad stood to attention anyhow, he said with a sigh. She's a gamey mare and no mistake. Bloom was pointing out all the stars and the comets in the heavens to Chris Callinan and the jarvey: the great bear and Hercules and the dragon, and the whole jingbang lot. But, by God, I was lost, so to speak, in the milky way. He knows them all, faith. At last she spotted a weeny weeshy one miles away. AND WHAT STAR IS THAT, POLDY? says she. By God, she had Bloom cornered. THAT ONE, IS IT? says Chris Callinan, SURE THAT'S ONLY WHAT YOU MIGHT CALL A PINPRICK. By God, he wasn't far wide of the mark.
Lenehan stopped and leaned on the riverwall, panting with soft laughter."

"you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior"

2009-05-06T09:14:00.002+10:00

Inspired by a tattoo, I discovered this quote:

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept record of their troubles. You’ll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.“

- Excerpt from Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

... and realise that either I've either never read this book (could this be possible?!) or I need to read it again, urgently.

Not What it Seems

2009-05-04T12:18:00.007+10:00

Since the Enlightenment our western culture has revered the advances and solutions that science has delivered. It is one of those fields of human endeavour of which we are very proud.

After all, We fought our way up from thinking that all flesh contains the maggots that may crawl out of it from death and that the entire firmament spins about us, the magical centre of the universe to a much more detailed, specific, understood and known set of laws and reasons and consequences. We can make a machine and send it to another planet via a complex set of other machines and operate it from here for years of reseach and images. We can measure things so small that they become unpredictable in their behaviour and so discover another realm of knowledge enticing us forwards, we can split the centre of an atom and power a city with it. In short, we have become wizards. But just like Bod, we also call up things we cannot control.

We introduce Cane Toads to deal with a moth they don't eat, we have no way of dealing with the waste outcomes of splitting atoms, we can clone sheep, but we aren't really sure why we might do that. So we have Wizard Watchers, people versed in the lore of science, and ready to protect the interests of the greater good of humans. We call them ethicists. We trust that they are at the front lines, balancing our powers with our responsibilities, weighing the possible good with the largely unknown dangers, calling upon the broader communities for discussion, awareness, support and concensus.

Oh wait, I obviously strayed into science fiction there for a moment. When was the last time you heard an appeal from an ethicist for debate? Actually can you name an ethicist? Um .... Peter Singer? Is he? Does he count? I don't know.

What I do know, is that when I read a news article this morning about a court granting permission to a 17 year old to remove his breasts after having been on a gender-reassignment hormone treatment since the age of 13 everything seemed to be in order until I came across this quote from the ethicist (I excerpt here from the article, my emphasis added):

'But ethicist Nick Tonti-Filippini said mainstream medicine did not recognise hormone treatments and surgery as treatment for gender dysphoria. He said it was a psychiatric disorder qualifying under American guidelines as a psychosis because "it's a belief out of accordance with reality".
"What you are trying to do is make a biological reality correspond to that false belief." he said.'

Well that set off my "danger danger" antenna. My understanding is that psychosis is an extreme level of measure, a non-functional state of mental operation. A level, let us remember for a moment, that was applied in the not-too-distant-past to creative types ( NZ author) and women not deemed suitably compliant or docile by their husbands and used as an excuse for labotomies, elcetric shock torture and extreme confinement. But also, and perhaps more importantly, the way this has been formulated as being abberant in relation to an objective "reality".

So apparently, whenever any of us have an idea or a wish to use our will to make reality different, we're possibly just plan psychotic. A line like this is inviting criticism of everything from hair dye, tattoos, and dressing in BSG costume through to going to university and even the entire field of science itself. Where does Mr Tonti-Filippini intend to draw the line?

What a double whammy. I presumed that if ethicists exist, they would be humanists. It seems this has been naive. It seems also, that Mr Tonti-Filippini would find many of my behaviours and desires to defy existing reality as being aberrant enough to justify the label psychotic and so deprive me of my capacity to contribute to the human endeavour of growth and expansion (in ways that do not simply involve the multiplication of our number) and nested inside that issue is his presumption of an objective "reality". In the words of Dylan Moran, "Why does no one say, let's be realistic, oil me ?" Why is reality presumed to be locked in, ordered, un-changeable?

It is easy enough to discover that much as Alex in the court case identifies as "he", our ethicist actually identifies himself as "Dr Tonti-Filippini, Catholic bio-ethicist". Ahh. A little bit more detail gives a lot more context to that right-wing quote. Of all the versions of this news story promulgated across the various news sites of the interwebs, no one bothered to do any more than repeat the copy and the flaws of the first story filed.

Proving in the end that judges in courts can still make thoughtful, humanist decisions, but we only hear about them through the irritating whine of bigots masquerading as informed specialists and the haze of lazy journalism. We, in the form of science have created from our own efforts amazing tools, but we clog their workings ourselves.

I welcome our robot overlords.

Meeting Mary

2009-05-03T14:34:00.006+10:00

Riley and I had some house chores to do today, and when we got to the Vet's place to pick up his special food he decided to wait in the car for this stop. I'm glad he did, because when I walked in after a moment I realised that I had inadvertently arrived at a very difficult time for the older couple in the waiting room.
I went to the display of leashes and tried to be invisible while the man took care of a very hefty bill. The woman on the bench was also trying to be invisible, but after a few seconds she started shaking, and I realised that she was sobbing, and trying not to make any noise. Her face was utterly collapsed in grief, and her hands, her arms, her back were all shuddering. I couldn't stand by and see that pain and do nothing. I could feel my own chest, my own guts cramping in empathy. I had a moment of hesitation about what would be polite, but this was beyond the realms of polite, I could not pretend that this was not happening. So I just sat next to her and put my hand on her back with my nearest arm, and let myself feel with her.
This could have been me last month if things had gone differently with Riley. She could barely breathe. Her husband was handed a dense, heavy black plastic bag, and he could barely see, although he was trying to hold himself together, he couldn't talk. It was the vet who called the woman, "Come on Mary, time to go." and she could not leave that bench. She was trapped in the moment of realisation that nothing they had done this morning could save their beloved, and she would be going home to a funeral, not to a recuperation. I sat with her through that horrible, horrible moment, and I wept too. I wept for her pain, and for their grief and for the loss of that precious life, and for the weary voice of the vet and for the gratitude I have that Riley is still alive.
They left in a slow, agonised stumble.

The assistant apologised to me "that you shouldn't have had to see that", but what had I seen? Nothing bad I thought. I had seen love, love caught in grief, but love nonetheless. I took a tissue from the box on the counter and caught the tears. A deep breath helped me to come back to my self, and the reason I was there - for love alive, waiting in the car and in need of biscuits.
"No problem" I replied, "its all part of the job, isn't it?"
"Yes." She said relieved, for the reality of being a vet's assistant is littered with moments like this but people like to think that it is all birthing kittens and the heroic saving of lives. "Sometimes there's just nothing we can do." She said, and it wasn't an excuse, it just was.

Riley was waiting eagerly for me when I returned to the car, and he had been happily oblivious of the black bag carried tenderly past him. I thought of that couple, laying the bag on the back seat of their car, and I hoped that they didn't have far to go before they could be safely off the road.
We backed out of the carpark and re-entered the world, and there they were, still parked on the side, and we caught each other's eyes, Mary and I, and she raised her hand to me, and I to her.

Under the One Roof

2009-05-02T09:57:00.005+10:00

Indeed a new month has rolled into view and taken up residence on the couch - you know in the one spot that has the best view of the tv and the hallway and the kitchen - the spot the alpha person in the house takes. That's where May is sitting right now. It is just a guest, so I'm letting it go.

There's always been something very comforting about a positive communal living arrangement to me. Possibly due to being raised in rural environments where it is hard to see the roofs of ones neighbours, let alone easily interact with them, and so whoever is under the roof where you are is the sum total of what you've got to deal with. The idea that there might be people of my age or who share my interests under that roof rocked my world when I moved out of home and continues to do so. Sometimes I wonder why I live alone now. But nothing is absolute (except maybe for the rule that nothing is absolute).

Yes yes the internet means we can all be under the one roof, and of course at a very fundamental level we are all part of the great oneness .... but as these things remain somewhat intangible in my moment-to-moment reality. Actually physically seeing people and sharing meals and laughing at spontaneous convergences of personality, circumstance and wit remains a delicious pleasure that simply cannot be replicated in any other medium. And like a child, I still try and glut myself with it, and in doing so trigger the need for withdrawal and reflection to balance it out again and feel whole, both myself, and a social self and only in the gentle repeated mixing of aloneness and togetherness does this blend mature and rise and become some very tasty bready product that I love to be and share and be again.

Ah. I am feeling the concrete of the path and the dirt of possibility and the walls of protection and the sky of opening and the joy of being held and the lure of the quiet room. Perhaps I need another coffee before I deal with May. It got one day in under my guard, but I've got my eye on it now. A bleary, unfocused eye but it is all I have to offer.

Ramble from Singlets to Kashmir

2009-04-14T16:35:00.006+10:00

Another "you know you're a Queenslander when" moment over the long weekend - I packed for 2 days/nights away and arrived to discover the following:

* Shirts = 3 x Bonds singlets (albeit different colours)
* Shorts = cut off trackies
* Shoes = thongs only
and although it was rainy when I packed ....
* Sunscreen, hat and sunglasses - but no umbrella.

Hi-Larious.

So here we are in April (bloody-near over actually) and there's nothing to explain the thundering lack of output/blogging/writing/inspired living from me.

I've been thinking a lot, but that doesn't really translate well to paper when I put it like that. The stuff I've been thinking about has lead to the odd catchy little brain-burp, but I'm quite keen at putting something a little more substantive than a burp together. Of course, that leads to the cycle of producing nothing at all. *sigh* But I will prevail! Even if I do so in a singlet top and cut-off tracky daks. You love me for my wit and vim (thankfully. If you love me at all of course) and not for my sartorial tastes which were never strong have waned and died a wilted death here in sub-tropical land.

Today I wrote a post card to Aunt in NZ and talked to a man who is passionate about building a bakery in an African village. I have been curious about this "let's help the Africans" approach to helping people and I feel a bit uncomfortable that we prefer to help those who are far away, and possibly a lot easier to patronise. So I asked Renee, who is both a church person and an African helper, and she said that her church goes to Africa to build orphanages and wells and so on because people to help are easier to find and accept the help. Huh. I hadn't thought of that part. Apparently the food baskets for poor folk were rejected by local persons of need simply because they came from a Church group (she's some kind of Uniting Church type denomination- not a weirdo/full-on-cult. Although I know that for some readers *any* Christian is cult-y enough). So folks, if you're wondering which charity to support here in Australia - go with the Smith Family - we're much more of a secular country than the media and pollies like to admit.

I don't know how I got onto a religious thing... oh yeah, Easter and crucifixion (My 13 year old Niece said "What's crucifixion?" wish I'd been able to get to that age without knowing that!) so Compass had the British theologian Robert Beckford on (in the last of the 2 part doco called "The Hidden Story of Jesus") following many things including the trail of the (heretical!) Gospels of Thomas and the just-so-crazy-it-might-work story (that pisses everybody off) that the big J didn't die on the cross but scarpered to Kashmir where he preached on, married and had a family and eventually was buried. Hi-Larious! I love that. Particularly the tiny little old guy with a bazillion pieces of paper and clues that point to it being true, but neither church wants it to be true, so very inconvenient!
Turns out I really like British theologian Robert Beckford. (Not to be confused with Michael Beckwith. Who, you-know, is also ok, but slightly too Hollywood for my tastes) He's not afraid to keep it all mixed up. More chaos, that's what we need, more chaos in good ways, and the thing with chaos is that it is very likely that you can't tell what's good and what's not for a long time after.

Except for Alan Moore, he's good right now.

A short tour of Hell via Thai Hospitality

2009-03-07T13:19:00.007+11:00

Yesterday KA and I went to a Thai Spa in a far corner of the Ipswich Kingdom and had a massage.
I love the way they have planted a forest in the foyer and made the ceiling out of giant louvers so that when it rains, they roof can open to let it in. Fabulous! Of course, I don't really like to think of what this means in terms of the whole ecosystem of insects and all the things that eat insects so it is not something you might really want to incorporate anywhere you actually sleep, but in a ritzy spa, it is pretty cool.
Anyway, our session started with a steam room treatment, and neither of us has experienced that before. I don't know why the hell I agreed to it, given how much I detest being hot and sweaty, but somehow I was a bit intimidated by the tiny women who effortlessly shepherded us into the room. We were left alone to get out of our very un-ritzy clothes and into a kimono style robe and soak our feet in bowls of warm water with slices of lime floating in them. We were soaking in the warm water and agreeing "Gee this is pretty nice", and I could see a little towl next to the bowl and I just thought we would towl oursleves off in a minute, but then a stranger kneeled in front of me and in a flash a vice-like grip has speared right into the vulnerable flesh of my stress-knotted and ticklish-tender feet, which startled the crap out of me and I yelped.
"Just breathe", she said, smiling, and squeezed again. I don't think she meant to be evil, but I quailed. It felt more personal than I was ready for. They washed our feet! I did live through it, but I was culturally, politically and physically uncomfortable with the process.

The opening gambit out of the way, we were herded into the steam room. It looked innocuous enough - like the steam that hangs around after a really hot shower (but with a wooden bench seat added to the cubicle). Knowing it would only be for about 10 or 15 minutes we both acted brave. This lasted through a few jokes, one or two snippits of gossip and basically until the thermostat realised the temp was a long way from the requiste 45degrees and ramped things up.
I now have a fair indication of what the waiting room for hell might be like.

The rationale is that the heat relaxes one's muscles and makes the overall effect of the massage greater. The outcome was that both of us began gasping for breath and flailing around a little in shock. Once again there was a large gap between knowing it would be "wetter" than a sauna and the horrific shock of the experience and my over-active imagination seeing my dead body on the searing hot tiles drained of all fluid through my skin.
"I have to get out for a second!" I shouted over the silent whirlwind of steam.
"Don't yell, you'll use up all the air!" said Kerryn pretty calmly really.
So I staggered to the door and started trying to slide it open. IT. WOULD. NOT. BUDGE.
The more I try and slide it the weaker I feel and everything's wet and the sweat is stinging my eyes and my lips have gone a bit rubbery and I'M REALLY BEGINNING TO FREAK OUT and i'm calling to Kerryn to help me (we're in a 2m square cubicle) and finally I realise that she's been yelling and laughing over me
"JUST PUSH! Push! Push the door!"
oh.
I push and escape. We'd been in there 4 minutes.

Kerryn is laughing heartily (ie she can barely breathe) by now and after i splash a little cool water onto my face and have a bit of a sip I was able to admit that maybe I'd over-reacted a little and possibly I was a bit stressed and could do with sitting still for another 10 minutes. If anyone outside heard me screaming, no one came to check on us. Probably they just noted it on my file "utter coward".

We went on to be pummelled and cracked and massaged down to squidgy pulps over the course of an hour. KA didn't realise that the masseuses would climb up onto the table and straddle our (considerable) girths in order to pierce through our shoulder blades with their thumbs, but she took it in her stride and merely congratulated them later to me for the flexibility of their hips.

It was, all in all, a marvellous adventure. The beautiful decore was calming and luxurious> our hosts had gorgeous smiles and talons of steel and at the end of it, my smile had returned. I *love* flex days.

Weather

2009-02-24T16:25:00.003+11:00

Anyway, how shit has this summer been?
February is that month where summer really puts the boot to the throat and demands complete surrender. It tied me up and gagged me until I begged to die this year. I thought it might end badly, but Summer has become bored and is finally moving on towards the equator, leaving me to drag myself into March. Come on March! Meet me half way.

Deadline of Death

2009-01-26T22:14:00.010+11:00

I've got something I have to do and by God I am going to procrastinate until the very last second. I've put this off twice already (by weeks) and done nothing towards it. Nothing. Rather than complete this task, that I originally offered to do as a favour, I've done home improvements this weekend.

Yes, I, the least capable, least interested, least skilled person in all of south-east Queensland picked up a hammer! Then nails! Then discovered I needed screws instead and called a handyman. That was a call he'll wish he never answered.

There was a full ute-load to the tip! Carpet got ripped up! The man-hole (giggle) was investigated to ascertain the viability of taking out some walls (walls, it turns out, can be finicky things to remove. Apparently some of them are keeping the roof up! This is clearly an activity that will have to wait until I have another project due that requires an even higher, more demanding level of procrastination). I pruned, I carted rubbish to the bin, I culled papers, cooked. I even cleaned. The house is looking great.

Still this thing needed to be done. So I watched my tv show and laughed the jolly laugh of someone who is frivolously throwing away time knowing that the DEADLINE OF DEATH is inexorably drawing near. The show finished after only an hour - nothing for it, I must turn on the computer and begin this slow, tedious and uninteresting task and perhaps earn some measure of redemption as a person by finally completing this thing.

But oh, Google opens and I remember that I wanted to find out what car Vin Diesel was driving in XXX as he chases the 'submarine' that thankfully has decided to run on top of the water this time or it would have been a fully shit chase scene
"Can you see it?"
"NO YOU IDOT - it's under the fucking water"
"OK, stay calm, we'll just bomb the shit out of the river"
"Well that's cool, but now what's our reason for drinving this insane care around really really fast?!"
"What?! We need a reason?!"

"Yes," I think "that's a valid tangent so follow at this point" so enter: Classic Muscle Cars and after only 2 pages discover that the Pontiac GTO is nicknamed "The Judge". Cool. I also learnt what 'break horsepower' refers to (and it is not about stopping!), and then as I find myself comparing the relative merits and lines of the 64 Plymouth Barracuda and the 67 Chevy Camaro three things really struck home:

1. I know nothing about cars. Nothing. But somehow I now find them funny instead of reprehensible. I've changed. I also want to meet a mechanic who shares my dream of making the first moon landing in a muscle car. I'll be navigation, they can drive.

2. I am an olympic level procrastinator. The only thing more hilarious than trying to figure out my car's "performance" metrics (Audrey the 81 Mazda 323 is so banged about that we can't be sure which of the two models that were released that year she is. Using Occams Razor - I'd say the cheaper one, not the slightly sporty one. But they had the same engine capacity so no big diff right? Anyway I've kept a log of how many kloms she does every time I fill up the tank so that I can figure out her average kloms per litre, but it's in the glovebox and I forget to bring it in) to add into the heavy-weight champs battle of Barracuda Vs Camaro would be to blog about it and invite the world to laugh along with (not at) me. Please feel welcome to laugh .... now.

and

3. That's another Hour and A Half gone and there is now no way I am going to get this thing done now. Maybe I should just go to bed, and blame the Global Financial Crisis...

Another gold for procrastination!

(Oh, and Happy (Chinese) New Year! Go the mighty Ox!)

Pondering this rancid weather

2009-01-26T11:31:00.003+11:00

Sometimes rain is not so much a distinct meteorological event, as simply sweat congealing from the sky.

Disgusting.

Australians all let us rejoice, for we are protected by our paternalistic government from seeing complicated things on the interwebs

2009-01-24T22:56:00.012+11:00

This week it was easy to shake one's head sadly at those poor Chinese people who have suffered the indignity of the whole world knowing that their internet feeds censored Barack Obama's inauguration speech. In a double-whammy they got fucked by their own government and they missed a few good lines. Poor bastards. But then that's what you get for living in a politically shit country, like ~~Australia~~ China.

Of course Australia is a pretty cool and democratic place where if someone proposed that kind of thing it would be laughed at by me the rude people and heavily debated and considered and then rejected by all the polite &/ thinking people. Not just implemented. Not our style.

Aussies like to think of ourselves as easy going and fairdinkum enough to not really need the pain-in-the-arse paperwork. We as a nation are happy to sign up for things that sound like good ideas (with all the best intentions,) but we don't necessarily turn them into anything specific here at home. Our constitution reads like a random chunk of tax law. I guess that's what happens when you're set up by bureaucrats rather than Enlightenment idealists, but I digress.

Australia isn't the kind of place to freak out over, say, art or worry too much about people taking responsibility for their own lives, no way mate! So when our government says that blocking nasty things is for our own good, they probably really know what they're doing. We should just stay relaxed and comfortable, and let them take care of it.

After all, it'll be completely painless. You won't even know there's anything missing!

404 NOT FOUND

An aside about the weather

2009-01-23T00:02:00.003+11:00

You know it is really hot when you overhear this from a gecko,
"I don't mind the heat, but this humidity is just impossible..."

Minds immeasurably superior to our own*

2009-01-21T22:41:00.013+11:00

My computer at home has been a bit tired (and fundamentally unable to handle anything with sound) lately and a friend had recently upgraded and had a "perfectly good" machine lying around unused. In the way of these things, my need and his surplus thought there might be a mutually beneficial arrangement in this situation.

One thing led to another with very little haggling (ie. none at all) and shortly after that brief discussion (meaning roughly 3 weeks) one hot afternoon on a crest of South street in downtown Ippy you could have seen us do the quick box-shuffle from one car t'other and the deed was done.

Or was it?

Quite quickly after that (about a week and a half) I (my defacto brother-in-law) tried to set it up, but it wouldn't go. All the frackin cables had to be replugged into the old tower and the corpse re-animated with a Dr Frankenstein-esque jolt of near lethal voltage (to the machine - not me). Cue manic cackling laughter from Rumi who dressed as Igor for this particular exercise. That cat is scary enough without hamming up the crazed laboratory side-kick feel, but I digress.

I tell my friend that it won't start, but I act clever and say "it won't boot up". See how already I have made an effort to speak the language?

Also, having been the idiot in the village for long enough to have all the badges, I have written down the error code and there it is "Insert boot disk."

"Ah," Says my friend sagely.

I wait, confident that this pause represents the process where the technical brain runs through a complex diagnostic decision tree.

"It's possible that the power cable to the hard drive is loose." Says my friend.

"Ah." I say and pause, allowing us both a moment to consider the wide-ranging implications of this possibility.

"How would you feel about opening up the machine and just checking the cable is in place?"

That sounds reasonable, I think to myself.

"It's pretty straightforward" he goes on, "Here's a diagram of what you'd have to do."

"Well ok then, I think I can manage that." I agree. It's been a long time since I last went under the hood of a machine, and frankly I was pretty heavily coached back then. I'm momentarily excited about the prospect of being a tiny bit handy. I know not to mention this to my defacto brother-in-law or he'll be all over this like stink on a blanket and I won't get a look-in.

"By the way," says my friend as an afterthought, "don't, whatever you do, don't plug the cable in the wrong way around. You'll totally break the whole thing. Really. Don't."

WTF?! There's important cables that can be placed the wrong way around with catastrophic consequences?! What is with that?! I'm used to the outside of these boxes - where, not content with making everything as simple as a toddler's kindergarten shape toy, pretty little colours are used as well to match pointy bits with holey bits. In this way the pre-verbal/reptilian parts of the brain can handle plugging machines into monitors and pointers and keyboards. This has to be the most damming indictment of lowest-common-denominator product development ever, except that it works. People too dumb to put 3 cables into the right slots get to run a powerful machine and use it to advance their Command & Conquer scores, or in the case of my dad, meet avatars from around the world and whipped by them at poker. But I digress.

The pretty matching colours and the one-way-only-into-this-hole design disappears on the insides. Apparently, once you take that phillip's head screwdriver to the casing, you're saying "I'm up from some hardware adventure, I'm grounded (geddit?!) and cool headed. I'm gunna pimp my drive" (oh, I'm killing myself!!) or you better have a handy schematic to take in. Just in case you read ahead and didn't look at it before, take a look at this now. Clear and simple. Beautiful almost. Elegant in the lines and the brevity of direction. I was ready to not fuck it up, and off comes the lid.

Shame then that the insides of the machine actually look somewhat more complicated. That is to say that they look exactly like the insides of a fantastically scary bomb and there's wires everywhere. Take a look for yourself. I'm not even that willing to put my hand in there let alone wiggle anything around. There could be a croc lurking just under the surface of that tangled mess of cables to grab at me and pull me under by my glasses cord, twisting, turning and tumbling until I drown in the confusion of RIDICULOUSLY USELESS FRACKING DRAWINGS.

And there we have it. A classic case of communication gone somehow very wrong. I'm sure in his mind it is completely that simple. All that other stuff in there is not central to the problem and so can be ignored.

Maybe each of us have this ability for something, and we are equally obtuse to others when we think we're being as simple as it is possible to be. It's just that for most of us, we don't find what our genius clarity is about, or if we do, it might be something like the capacity to visualise the internal pressures and counter thrusts of a dam wall. Not called upon so often in general interactions. Computers, in their still nascent form admittedly, are in our homes, our jobs, our recreational spaces. People who can visualise clearly how to make them go by prodding hardware or writing code are still our magicians and everybody wants to know one.

Just don't ask your wizard to give you a spell you can do yourself, it's not as easy as they make it look.

* I totally love that opening to War of the Worlds. Also, this post is based on real events, however some aspects may have been modified or heightened for raconteurial purposes. Michael Strelan's name has not in any way been changed or modified to protect his identity or dignity. There is no right of reply. No correspondence will be entered into, although I probably will read comments, and counter-blogs, but let's not go there. You said I could use this. C'mon man, it's freakin gold!

Oh Happy Day

2009-01-21T10:35:00.004+11:00

Along with millions of other people this morning, I'm in love all over again. Barack Obama has been inaugurated as the 44^th President of the United States of America. He and his family and his team and supporters have created a king tide of hope that sloughed off the mud and spite thrown during the electoral process to wash into office. The swelling pride in the unfolding of this historic event (a first African-American President) took pauses to see if the corruptions we were hurt so badly by in the past would try again (the Florida polling fiasco, dodgy sexual shenanigans, or worst of all, a successful assassination attempt), but they did not. And day by day we came closer to this, Inauguration Day.

I feel like I have been holding my breath since last November. Something akin to living in a movie where the best president in the world has taken office and wrongs begin to be set right, and any moment now the credits will roll and I'll have to walk out into harsh reality. The first US President I remember was Ronald Reagan and his UK counterpart, the Woman who Wore the Pants (or Pearls whichever you prefer), Margaret Thatcher. I've grown up and lived my life in the cold shadow of cynicism that was cast by these people. Their rule was for the benefit of business, of the material, of fear and aggression. I have had my heart broken by the promises of politicians over and over again. For so long it was an abusive relationship of co-dependence and I had to withdraw from it, and turn my heart to the same stone of the people I had despised just so it would stop hurting.

Today that hard stone has melted. There's wisdom and strength in his leadership, and it is shared through a warm confident voice that pitches us sombre speeches of responsibility that ask us all to find a more courageous path towards a better world. History happened today, and not just the facts of firsts and the dates of transitions. Millions of people listened to the same words and together reflected on our relationship to this manifesto. For he spoke to each of us. Here is a tiny excerpt from his speech.

"And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.
They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint."

This is a magnificent day.
I want to believe that this is real, that it is really happening. Even more, I want to not feel like a fool in a year's time for daring to hope that we can heed this call. I'm inspired by the crafting of this speech (as are many others) and I hold a cherished anticipation of what it heralds for America, and because we're all in this together, for all of us.

A happy day indeed.

Enlightenment from Band T-Shirts

2009-01-18T22:58:00.011+11:00

I was just thinking that I would tell you about my time ITRW¹ over the last few days, given that I've had a 4 day long weekend. Some of that time was spent implementing project "Cheerful" by going to the QLD GOMA to see the exhibition "Optimism" and to a concert (concert doesn't seem the right word for 6 bands over 8 hours, but neither does "festival" fit anything where Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are headlining) and then a large amount of time doing very normal things (took out the rubbish, started trying to make a picture of a giant octopus -as you do when you have a bit of time, went to dinner in Ipswich, and yes, we were the only people in the place on a saturday night at 8pm!, set up my new second-hand computer which won't boot up *sigh*, tidied, messed, washed, dried. Dull as dishwater. Literally).

I'm still processing some of the art/music experience. It was a very big day. I was going to root through it all and find some nugget of insight about public entertainment, give a little review of the event, share something pithy about the ecology of band t-shirts that were on display, maybe mention that I deliberately rationed myself to a max of 2 text messages to any person I felt compelled to say something to while there .... but either I'm not going to make enough sense of it and how I felt about it or in some important way I wasn't really there.

Isn't that weird?! If I'm not the one living my life - than who is?! Is the real me off in a different probabilistic 'verse having a much better ITRW experience and I'm just keeping this seat warm? Of course, scientifically that's hard to substantiate² so Occam's Razor⁴ would suggest something else is the true cause. Buddha tells me that this is the experience I'm having and I better come to grips with it. Strangely enough, it was a T-shirt on a tall lanky man who walked past me many times to fetch beers that has, in hindsight, untangled this knotted skein of transcendental angst. His shirt said, "Don't just listen to the music, feel it". Feel it. Hmmmm. Feelings .....

Feelings happen in the body, and I spent that time here. In my mind.
I was watching everything, noting, cataloguing and analysing it, thinking about ways to capture it ... not experiencing it. OHH!! (sound of light coming on) Gee whiz. Of course. What a drongo. Feelings might be important to project "Cheerful". I get it. Figured that one out all by myself. Ok, well there's a good heads-up for next time. Good thing I didn't get too committed to that idea of actually being busy in another probabilistically linked universe hey!!

1." In The Real World "
2. i.e. I borrowed that concept from a SF book and it has no Scientific basis AT ALL³, but it's a great story, you should maybe have a look at it - Anathem by Neal Stephenson. If you're going to steal - steal from the best.
3. Maybe a little in some little backwater of time/physics that I haven't got to or understood (that's not narrowing it down) so I can't say definitively that there's none at all, but, you know, it was fiction, and he normally footnotes really cool real things. So if it is real, don't hold it against me, but it's like, massively unlikely. That's all I'm saying.
4. I meant this is the newer and slightly less accurate sense, but in reading this reference, realised that both are applicable in this instance. How fortuitious! Also, here's a good example of where a mass usage, although incorrect, has already modified the primary meaning of the phrase. Inexorable! Another good reason to keep hold of those precious, printed copies of the OED with word histories in them!

Deciding not to know

2009-01-14T22:44:00.015+11:00

It's about a quarter to ten on a mid-week night (you know it's wednesday - the damn post is time stamped!) and my week of house-sitting for Sis2 is halfway over. The highway out the front is pumping with the flow of semi-trailers both in towards Brisbane and out towards the range and the inland highways. They're properly called a B-double Combination but of course are contracted to "B-Double" and I would like to think but cannot assert with any veracity (but shall put it out there anyway), to "B-Dub", my sister-of-the-wife-of -a-real-trucker access only gets me so far and no farther (even if I were to show my tatt it wouldn't help - wrong kind of ink for this crowd). Anyway, this is the only time day to day that you can be in the house and really notice that you're only a few hundred meters from a major transport artery. There's plenty of traffic during the day, but the general noises of the house cover most of it, and something about the traffic flow keeps it all a bit muted (I don't want to point any fingers here, but I think it's because during the day the speed limits are only flaunted by 10 or 20 kloms per hr). Tonight, as each night, it sounds like I'm under a runway for cargo planes that never leave the ground.

Australia leads the way in the use of B-Doubles. They can clear a port up to 17% more quickly (fascinating isn't it? Read the rest of that article here or delve deeply here go on, live a little). We're a big trucking country. Excuse me if I'm repeating myself about the importance of the B-Dub in the road transport world. They are the lion of the asphalt plains! The haemoglobin on our economic bloodstream! And after three days of sharing the road to and from work with the general public (a whole nother kettle of stinking rotten dead fish) and these giant trucks I was curious as to what they might weigh. I know how fast they're moving, and for some macabre reason I thought I might try and figure out what their momentum is (ie to see how dead I would be if they ran over my little car, even a bit). Sometimes as they change lanes there's a particularly terrifying wobble that moves through the load and I seem very close to a lot of very large wheels. Upon further reflection, I think I should not figure this out, even roughly. These are not the kinds of informational tidbits that will make the long drives easier, nor are likely to endear me to any random persons I may be in conversation with anytime in the next, say, 3 to 5 years.

Because that's the risk - there's some things you can't un-hear, un-see or un-know. Dropping even a single one of them into conversation can expose you as the fraudulent, freaky, or flat-out weird person that no-one wants to sit next to at a work function, live near, or invite to parties or go out for coffee with (unless, oh happy days, they too harbour curiosity that leads them into knowledge, strange philosophies and odd tastes in reading matter ... but there are other, safer secret handshakes with which to gather this kind of intel. "What do you think of that Dexter show?", "How cool is that Mars ice?!" but again I digress).

Knowing that the Panama Canal was first crossed on a Tuesday is an exactly fine tidbit to have floating around the noggin. It doesn't even have to be right! (I got this from a film and haven't even bothered to verify it, but have shamelessly used it on a number of occasions.) It can pop up when small talk is required but is too taxing in relation to the expected return and creates a small burst of conversational frisson to get over the hump into actual dialogue or out of the elevator. Telling people ways they can die in everyday situations - never popular. I'm unpopular enough without further handicap.

Craft Rage

2009-01-13T10:38:00.010+11:00

Knitting while watching "Blades of Glory" last night I dropped a stitch. I should have seen it coming (if you can excuse the pun, please do), I had the lights off, I wasn't paying attention to either activity and I'd consumed a 'slightly' over-large dinner so was sprawled skewed on my side, whale style. Uncomfortable and irritable is not the right attitude for almost anything other than perhaps voting and deciding on one's funeral arrangements. But I digress.

So I don't immediately notice I've dropped this stitch because ball #2 of the originally cute and fun wool ("Snowball" from Lincraft. I would link you through it it, but even their web site sucks) has turned out to be a ball of scraps and so far I've had to re-join it 3 times in the first 4 rows. Cue gritted teeth and irritation spiking into unfocused anger. So I was trying to check that my knot hadn't come undone and inadvertently gave the dropped stitch a nudge and BANG down she goes about 5 rows. Shit. I fumbled it and another 2 rows gone. Oh man. Lots of fiddly stuffing around will have to happen in strong daylight if this project is going to be salvaged and it is already late. Weeks late. It was going to be a gift, then a belated gift, now, now I'm just a shit friend who couldn't get it together to finish a simple project.

Having learnt from dealing with my Father and Microsoft products that there is simply no use in cursing and railing at an inanimate object, I put it down. Mid row, mid stitch, mid cluster fuck. Walked away.

Craft is pitched as something that is easy and fun. Magazine TV shows, soft cover coffee table books, catchy little projects at the back near the recipes and crossword puzzles or the odd feature article about some gorgeous design savant who only wears moccasins and silk and here's something you can try at home.
Well the reality is that most projects are an exercise in salvaging the beautiful vision from the miscalculations, errors, accidents and monumental fuck-ups that we the unskilled, we the incapable, we the deluded perform upon the project. These usually start in the infancy as we chose the materials but always always appear and manifest in the execution. Most of us have crappy taste or no visual eye for matching patterns and colours and create truly grotesque items even we can't bear to look at. From the garish colours to the badly constructed angles and fully creepy eyes or lopsided mouths. We spawn horrors. I spawn horrors.

I suck at this. I am ashamed that I persevere and, sin of all sins, give my pitiful pathetic mewling aberrations as gifts to my suffering friends. I'm sorry. Actually, it's just me... I'm certain that it is just me. After all, my friends make things, and they're beautiful (the things and the friends in this particular example). Some of them are complicated and technical (things) and all of them (both friends and things again now) are excellent. So it must just be me, and a secret workshop somewhere designated to create Crap Craft for resale in op-shops. Maybe I should go and work in that secret workshop. Maybe that's my true calling. My chance for redemption, for a meaningful life.

Or I could just sleep on it. After all, not every day can be a Monday.

A Rumi Moment

2009-01-11T00:06:00.007+11:00

Oh Rumi. Rumi, Rumi. What are we going to do with you?

Cats are funny (read "you wonder if you'll wake up whole") creatures to live with. Anyone who has lived with a cat will be nodding at that. They twist the truth, they re-write the code, they shed fucking hair everywhere. Seriously. Everywhere. A genetically modified for extra hair -shedding woolly mammoth could not shed as much hair as a domestic cat. Seriously. They've done tests. You want to know why so many shuttle missions failed? Cat hair in the intake valves. Really.

Despite all of this, you worry when the giant trolling food hoover doesn't show up for one of the meals that as the designated human I am obligated to provide. When he missed breakfast as well, I initiated DEFCON3. This is as high as you can go without seeing blood. Actually DEFCON3 really just involved checking under the house again and calling my mother so I had someone to talk aloud to as I reasoned through the last time I saw him and could that large dog roaming the street last night have gotten past the hair defences and 50 million razor sharp claws and actually have possibly hurt my missing puddy wuddykins?

A million million (is that a pentillion? No, it's a billion. What was a pentillion then? A billion billion? Huh. Have to ask the maths ref again.... anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, OK maybe 3) scenarios played through my sluggish and understaffed mind. I made a coffee and sat pondering life's imponderables on the couch (ie no thoughts at all, just waited for the coffee to kick the motor over). Riley watched. I could see he was weighing up the variables and figuring out if he was going to get a walk or not. He decided the odds weren't good and went back to bed, leaving me with a creeping sense of guilt that I had been judged a bad human and Rumi had simply decamped to better feeding and shedding grounds. I wrestled somewhat with my conscience. Tried again to figure out when I'd last seen him. Couldn't. Was it breakfast yesterday? Had he come in at all in the afternoon? What matter did this make? If a cat doesn't want to be found, you won't find it. I let the matter drop. There were things to be getting on with, after all, I was up at the crack of 10am and a day doesn't just get underway by itself.

Laundry is one of those household chores I like in that a machine actually does the hard work once you put the stuff in and press Go. There was enough for a whole load just from all the towels. Made toast, squinted, hung out wet things, stumbled to bathroom to open cupboard for actual clothes for washing and scared myself shitless when I reached in and it was warm. So help me for a split second I thought the Alien mother had laid eggs in there and I was about to have something horrendous force itself down my gullet and gestate in my abdomen until killing me for food. But no, I had woken Rumi. Not quite so different normally from Rumi really.

Which was how I knew things were pretty serious and he had been in that completely dark cupboard for a loooooong time. He stretched, gave a yawn, and strolled off with eyes almost completely devoid of irises. He ignored me. He made no snide comments. He made no showy exit. He walked around the house, he walked outside around the yard and came back, and asked for some breakfast. I felt very contrite, I served the special Chicken/Tuna combo he doesn't get very often. He ate a little to show there were no hard feelings, drank some water and sat on the back step. Not cleaning himself, not anything.

Eerie.

A tumbleweed rolled through the tableau.
Riley, quite pointedly, was no where to be seen.

Rumi came back inside and ate a little more of breakfast. He sat and turned to me.
"Here it comes" I thought "the reaming to end it all."
He looked me in the eye for a moment and said, "Don't let that happen again." and left to lay under the house until dinner.

"I won't. I promise." I said to his retreating tail and went to unblock the washing machine of cat hair.

The Intentions of 2009

2009-01-08T09:29:00.006+11:00

I will write every day.

I will use my work email Inbox as an inbox only and not as an undifferentiated filing cabinet (currently 4058 items dating back to May 2007).

I will be more cheerful (or at least less actively depressed) by doing fun things more often. Given the poor performance in this area in 08, this year's efforts have been buoyed by pre-purchasing comedy tickets for March and April - Ah HA!! I've recruited Tim Minchin and Bernard Black to fight on my behalf. Take that evil depression empire!!

I will keep a daily gratitude journal to remind me of all the wonderful glorious bountiful things in my life (rather than dwelling on things like, say, being attacked by two stray dogs this morning and screaming my throat out for help and not so much as a curtain twitching. Fuck you too Leichhardt). Big Breath ... calm thoughts ... happy thoughts....

I will read 50% non-fiction this year. Last year was the year of "I'll just read for fun", and so there were a lot of comics, a lot of vampire/werewolf romance, indiscriminate magazines and random weird trash. Fun in a way, but like any diet filled with junk food, I began to feel a bit bloated and unwell. Too much is too much. Plus, in relation to the cheerful/fun thing, turns out that pop science makes me feel happy. Something to do with stimulating the knowitall gland and excretions of smartarse enzymes.

I will do yoga twice a week all year. When I do it, I am calmer, have better posture, worry less and feel stronger facing daily crud. What's not to like?!

I will do some housework. Not a lot. Not all the time. Just some, ok?! Enough that the cat stops reporting me to the RSPCA (ungrateful little traitor).

There should be some more shouldn't there? There should be stuff about eating healthy foods, meeting all my work deadlines, shedding x kilos and being kind to old people who smell like mothballs. After all there's not even 10 things on my list...
Who am I trying to kid? That's plenty to be going on with. I can barely keep 5 things in my mind at once, seven is a stretch and 10 is just asking to lose at least 3 right away, feel bad and stumble on the other 5 until I collapse by mid feb and give it all up as a bad job and spend the rest of the year moaning about how "let's hope 2010 is a better year". No Thanks. Jeeze, it's already taken me a week to decide on them, and in this week, I've already mangled 5 of them. I'll do better next week - I promise.

Cheerful or Bust

2009-01-06T17:08:00.004+11:00

One of my intentions for 2009 is to be more cheerful.

My consulting medical professional suggested that I should "have fun" more often. Apparently he refers to something more active than simply snidely snickering at pointed political essays in The Monthly.

This project was meant to commence last year but was largely unsuccessful. I did discover a couple of odd things. Firstly, that on TV I find Top Gear very funny, but only in the UK version - the Australian version failed to excite. Also, somewhat shamefully, Two and a Half Men can make me laugh aloud causing the dog to startle and check for intruders. This has been waning in the newer seasons, but the mantle has been taken up by the new show by the same writing team (Chuck Lorre & the other guy whose name I've forgotten - sorry mate) Big Bang Theory, which is also stereotypical fare (Geeks don't do social well) but despite my misgivings - makes me laugh.

Next week I'll be going to a music concert. It has been along time since I did this, and I'm already finding myself mentally planning to take a book for the slow bits. Obviously this plan for "having fun" will have to rollout in very small increments. Perhaps I should have chosen someone a little more upbeat than Nick Cave - but you have to go with what you know.

Swimming is still a good option, but there's little scope for snorkling in my sister's pool, so it remains in the 'float around and daydream' mode. Listening to 'cheerful' music is another idea... I've tuned the car radio to a dance channel and that is pretty hilarious, but still seems to fall into the snickering snidely box more often than not. There's a very David Foster Wallace type moment that happens when one is 'faking it till one makes it' where you're watching yourself going through the motions of whatever it is (such as, trying to sing along to inane dance lyrics while cruising downtown Ipswich in the beatup Mazda 323) and this witness character is saying to the other internal selves "Do you really think this is working?! In *any* way?! You are delusional and humiliating the rest of us. Cut it the fuck out now."

Sure it's funny, but is it fun?

On the other hand, laughing at myself is still laughing, and a small step forward, is still a small step forward. Yes. Cop how freaking zen that is!!

Uber Monday Antidote

2009-01-05T16:53:00.003+11:00

It's the first Monday of 2009 - can't you feel it?!
No amount of coffee is going to ease the pain of the first day back at work - no matter how good the aircon is. Rather than dwell on the less pleasant aspects of this, today is a perfect day to do a quick whip around of cool things that happened in 08.

There were plenty of great tech breakthroughs for a greener future. That's nice. Science is always clever, but where's the political will to implement what the scientists learn? Turns out America had a bit of a breakthrough in that regard in 08 with a new President elected and taking office in a couple of weeks who seems very keen to makes some changes. Of course, no offense to B.O., but KR made some promises before he took office that haven't quite panned out ... although kudos to him for starting out on the right foot with a long overdue apology.

Thankfully also a bit of good news for books - that some publishers (mostly of trashy escapism - but hey - whatever floats your boat) are thriving. That's good, I worry for books. All this kindle reader, and iphone crap gets plenty of "the future is paper-free" but books need to survive a while longer yet.

Until we head into space (My solar system or yours?) basically, when they will be way too heavy to earn a place in the hold and those poor colonists will be stuck with reading from monitors or possibly, if they're lucky some groovy type of thin and flexible "electronic paper" which the kids of the future will totally laugh their guts up at how we had to give it such a daggy and derivative name.

Some good things got done by activists in Australia. And there was a little bit of vindication for people like me who don't feel the need to breed. Sci-fi nerds who got another half season of Battlestar Galactica. Oh and a fully kick-arse Batman film.

There was loads more of good stuff in 08, please feel encouraged to add your favourite via the comments.

A Mediocre Daughter

2009-01-04T16:06:00.013+11:00

The alarm went off at 7.30am this morning.
Why so early on a Sunday? You may well ask.

It was a misguided ploy to emotionally prepare myself for the 6.30am start tomorrow. It worked in that Rumi got fed and Riley and I went to the loo (not in the same place, obviously) but it didn't work insomuch as all of this was achieved in a mumbling stumble with eyes mostly closed and earplugs firmly in place so that we could all fall back onto the Heaven Mattress and slumber peacefully on for another 2 hours or so. I mean there's being conscientious about work, and then there's down-right silliness.

Last Day Blues
In atonement for this (pretty much expected) lapse and over the morning cuppa, I wrote out two lists - all the things for today and all the things for tomorrow when I'm back at work. As my little Sister's taken to saying "You need to bring your 'A' game." Ok, Game On.
Hence the two lists. They each were three quarters of an A4 page. Daunting. Even broken up into little steps and next actions - it still seemed too long. Then I noticed that the more little steps I used, the longer the freakin thing got - it's a zero-sum game. You can either have a really short snappy list with massively dense action lines, or nice sweet action lines of 15 or 20 minute tasks that you need one of those toilet-roll length scrolls to track. Nope, not today thanks. I'm still way mellow from spending time up at the farm.

Parents: You Get No Choice
I'd put off going to visit the folks. Sometimes it is easier to love people in the abstract than in actual smelly, moody, messy real life. But as Riley had gone home with them for a farm stay on NYE and I was missing him badly, it had to be done. Friday night I packed the car and headed up, and there was the most amazing sunset for the last 30mins of the drive. Really. I know they're on the taboo list for writing about so I'll just say it was operatic in scope and style and I had a near miss with an oncoming holden because I'd drifted towards the middle a little bit trying to soak it all up. That put me into a pretty chilled-out vibe (the sunset, not the holden). Mum had made a veggie pizza for me and Dad was already in his cups and $5G down in his imaginary friends poker game. It was cooler there and a cold breeze. Actually "breeze" is a bit of an understatement - the wind had pushed a branch through the laundry the day before I got there but after a few days at 40degrees, a bit of wind is no problem if it brings the temps under 30.
So anyway Dad cleaned up about three quarters of a bottle of whisky and mum and I cleaned him up playing "Frustration" (a card game where you have to complete sequential hands. This is the easy version - KA and I have a hard-ass version we play which we've dubbed "Cranky Pants"). Anyway the scores total came out at: Mum 2, J9 3, Dad 0. Unheard of. Much laughter and bagging-out of crap play was made.
Sadly Dad did not remember his crushing defeat the next morning, and refused to allow that it had come out that way. Mum and I had kept the score sheets for just such an eventuality, but he brushed these aside as fabrications. The power of the mind is a wonderful thing. Rather than dwell in the past, I gave him a haircut.

Made in China
I don't know if other people do this, but many members of my family have an aversion to hairdressers, so we have a bit of a DIY ethic for haircuts. Maybe its a White Trash thing. I don't know. Anyway, Dad had recently got himself some clippers (top shelf gear too - $12 he paid - new!) and didn't quite insist that I use them but whinged that I always cut his hair too short when I do it by hand. In a gesture of reconciliation for being a crap daughter generally and a moody bitch often, I consented. Well, you know the pleasure that can be had from holding a beautifully designed and constructed piece of technical or mechanical equipment? Something that seems a perfect amalgam of form and function? Right. Well these clippers are the exact opposite of that. I read the chinglish instructions - twice - and attempted to decipher the accompanying diagrams and then we were on. I fired them up and off we went. Enter the Clippers.

The Field of Engagement
My Dad has an almost spherical head and is pretty much bald. He has a Friar Tuck do - bald and shiny on top and a fringe of faded fine hair ringing his skull in line with his face. Dad likes to offset this feeble growth with what can only be described as a mammoth set of Fuck-Off Mutton Chops. These grow in the super-wiry white steel that now passes for his face hair and they stick out from his head much like Blinky Bill's ears. Needless to say, the clippers quailed at the job, but being of stout constitution I persevered at my Herculean task until it was completed. I then offered to run the Dragon Clippers of Death (albeit slowly and possibly painfully) over the acre of old-growth forest Dad keeps on his chest but this thoughtful gesture was rebuffed (somewhat rudely). Despite my concerns over the tools he looked pretty darn good at the end of this, but the really beautiful thing is that this entire procedure is always completed on the front porch so we can all enjoy the view and the "breeze". Oh yeah, farm folks do it casual.

In his own magnanimous act of reconciliation as I was leaving, Dad pressed upon me his two new prize DVDs - Dire Straights Live and Jethro Tull Live at Montreaux 2003 to watch and enjoy as best I may. Dad's not very good at initiating sharing, and he only got these last week - so it was a big gesture, and I couldn't refuse.

So today, instead of those do-gooder to-do lists, I've been pottering around doing craft and soaking up the vibes of Dad's tunes and you know, Jethro Tull can really rock a flute solo.

The Magic Block

2009-01-02T18:21:00.003+11:00

There's a threshold of knowledge needed to enjoy a city as a resident, and it is different person -by - person. The sooner each of us finds the things that make us happy, well the happier we'll be (all the best axioms are self-evident)!

For my taste, I like to find these things in close proximity. The less transit time there is the less I am exposed to undesirable elements (such as off-key buskers, old people who smell like mothballs and any women who like to team white and gold in their clothing or accessories). For example, there's a haberdashery in Ipswich, surrounded by mechanical repair garages. No good to me - too isolated. There's a teeny teeny comic store in Ipswich surrounded by hairdressers and jewellery stores getting to it is like crossing a freaking minefield. There is NO sushi train in Ipswich (one v. dodgy kiosk in a foodcourt over the river ... just terrible in every way). You see my point.

Today there was a breakthrough. I have found a Magic Block in Brisbogan. Relief. In one square block of the city is a good art store, a small and wanky but independent bookstore, a major (bland but okish) chain bookstore, hidden away next to each other under a concrete out-ramp for a carpark is a dense and nerdy comic store and a sushi train (with little carriages even! and people cooking!), a haberdashery and craft store, and a cafe with excellent coffee (and comfy chairs and steroid air-con). Finally.
It is common sense to think they're there somewhere - but until I found them it was impossible to emotionally orient and every venture felt unfulfilled. I had found an arthouse cinema, but it's closed down. No matter. This is the minimum of destinations I needed to keep afloat.

My tummy is full with tasty sushi, I have some new craft materials I can't wait to get into and I scored a hardcover of an old Batman I've been looking for (still in the plastic wrapper and half price on a bottom shelf). Who's a happy little nerd then?