Great Copy that works EVERYTIME!

As part of the research into my critic's comment yesterday (scroll down a little if you want to read that one first) I went looking for purposeful blogs and for possible topics of such a blog and gee-whizz there's a lot of overly sincere people writing mostly very dull things about nearly anything you can think of. So I constrained myself to about 2 hours looking only at copywriting. I must say that I did learn a lot in that time.

Hot Sex NOW
For example, I didn't realise how critical sub-headings are to the ongoing readership of one's copy. But many articles touched on or heavily emphasised this facet of writing. This seemed to jar a little bit with my view of the world, but then I discovered a hitherto unknown nuance - copywriting must be persuasive - it is promotional by nature. Anything else is just 'content'. Maybe this is where I've been going a little astray. I thought there was reporting, literature (or just fiction or story if you will) technical writing and then copy. Obviously my mental organisational systems have been limiting me. I read on and discover that not only does my copy/content not use enough sub -headings, but that when I do use one (as above), it's all wrong. Here's how that sub should have looked:

5 Tips to the Hottest Sex You'll Ever Have
1. Be really hot yourself
2. Get a really hot partner
3. Writhe around in a hot state of undress
4. Do it during summer
5. Buy my ebook for 27 kinky tips to set your love life on fire! Just $19.95 if you use this code: HOTMONKEYSEX

Wow. Do you feel the sizzle in that copy!? See that mad 'call to action'?! That is by-the-book AWESOME copy right there. Told you I wasn't wasting my friday night googling "monetise your blog for hot results now".
Mum rang last night in the middle of this mind-altering experience to give me an update on Riley (he's been moping around the house, bored and lonely - so he's gone for a mini-break to play on the farm until Sunday) and mum says "Are you doing anything special tonight?" and I am sitting in my jammies in front of the computer. I should have had the presence of mind to lie and say "Yeah I'm out at dinner with some friends" which would be a pleasant fiction for both of us. Sadly no. I say (with a bit more enthusiasm than it really warranted) "I'm reading about copywriting."
There's a cool pause.
"You're on the internet, aren't you?"
"Yes. Yes I am."
Another coolish pause.
"We found that bull that was missing. We put an ad in the paper, and it turns out he was about 3 kilometers away. He had gone up through Spicer's place but then must have cut through to the back of Joan's and kept going. He's up by Twohill road. Well worth the cost of the ad."
"Oh, I'm glad he isn't dead."
"Yeah, we'd started looking for a bad smell."

So after that call, I made a vodka & tonic and returned to the world of red, bold sub-headings atop numbered lists and people making outlandish claims about how much money they make EVERY DAY from ebooks and long copy and repeating the ask. Oh yeah, and the guy who insisted that no article of under 500 words should ever take more than 20 minutes to write. WTF?! - I mean I know 500 words is not all that long, but I can't even type that fast let alone compose a line of thought. oh, he says "I think about it and write it out in my notebook for a few days prior." "Oh", I think, "so lying to make the story better is still ok, and what I'm reading is story or copy - not reportage." Picky freakin bitch aren't I. How am I ever going to be tempted to click through to that ebook if I'm always thinking criticially?!

I learnt a lot about what people who call themselves "the best copywriter on the internet" think great copy on the internet is all about, but I don't think it's going to help me create the best possible 1500 words about the historic Cobb & Co Trail for a new tourism brochure that I need to give a client on monday . I think I'll risk not using the red bold sub-heads on that job.

In his defence, my critic apologised when he realised that his throwaway line had been a bit hurtful, but I honestly don't mind. I am long-time companion of self doubt and I think that's an ok thing to live with and make decisions with. He had a clear-hearted intention and besides, he's only little. As far as he's concerned the internet has always been there, it has always been huge, corporatised and socially networked, in a way he has been looking out for me - doddering dinosaur that I am.

We've strayed a little way this morning off the topic at hand and I've now been sitting in front of the computer (still in the jammies) for about an hour and Rage is coming to a close, which means it's nearly time to get the day officially underway. So let's wrap this thing up.

I really love writing. It is fun and it can be beautiful. I love swimming too, but not the same way. I can live without swimming for months at a time. I'm good at swimming and am naturally buoyant which helps (sometimes it rules to be fat!) although a lot of the time I like to just float and feel held by the water. That's what this blog is. It is my floating pool with a big sky all around and a nice breeze. I'm held here and it makes me happy. Sure there's the odd spider or frog fallen in, and sometimes the water is a bit frosty or i'm sick and can't get wet, but otherwise it is perfect.

So I think that's where I wan to be right now. Visualising this blog as a pool of surrender to physics and the sensuous nature of the physical world, participated in by the willing and friendly. So Come on in if you like, the water's gorgeous!


(BTW:Stay tuned for my up-coming SF thriller "Monkey Jockeys Riding Fascist Ex-Bankers" in which voodoo blood magic takes hold of a small community of Squirrel monkeys being kept for smuggling to rich collectors. These infected, possessed simians find deep roots and power in the spiritually weakened areas of New York (Wall Street) and take command of hollow primates to do their bidding. It's gunna rock out - really).

P.S. Buy my ebook NOW for 27 kinky tips to set your love life on fire! Just $19.95 if you use this code: HOTMONKEYSEX

Not Literature, no sireee, not by a long shot.

Apparently, this blog "lacks vision".

I don't often get feedback from readers, heck I'm constantly surprised there are any. So in a way I should have been delighted to get some frank and fearless critical appraisal, but I have to tell you, I was pretty cut about it.

Isn't the whole point of blogs to just noodle around and entertain oneself?! To write, or not write about things that happen (or don't happen) in a medium where one's words are as broadly available as it is possible to be and equally invisible or unknown as always - surely this is the blogging manifesto? My defensive thoughts circled sharply around this criticism, nipping out justifications, gobbling up rationalisations, but the burley ran dry and the sharks drifted off to richer waters and I was left with the unpalatable realisation that this criticism was entirely justified. After all, blogs are some of the most exciting contemporary writing and publishing around at the moment. I read some to be entertained, some to stay up to date with news of people and events and some just to feel connected to people of a like mind. Some blogs are the political poster kids for free speech - bringing real news out from under tough regimes. Some blogs are recording and tracking the work of researchers, of humanitarian workers, or pronoiacs. They all contribute to the betterment of our society. They are creative, diverse, international, exciting and relevant. Well, ones other than this one are.

So there are people making blogs where it really matters what they do. Theirs are not vague, personal noodlings or observations on minutiae. What options do I have? Could I become a better blogger? Should I just accept that I am crap and muddle forward? Should I delete the whole thing and chalk it up as an interesting experiment that entertained me for a while but should now really be cut loose to fade into the past?!

I thought these options over for a few hours yesterday, and I'm thinking them over again now. It seems like the blog is whatever it is, and changing over time because I let it be that way. Do I want to change? Do I have the control or discipline or interest to do that?
No. Not really.
I already lead a life of omission, control and deceit (and I live alone!). I just don't have the stomach for any more. This is also something that I enjoy doing in my own 'special needs' kinda way. So it's going to be option B, Crappy & Proud and muddling forward. Well, if not proud at least moderately self aware and kinda at peace with that. So to all my beloved, adored and precious readers, Thank You for coming by to read this humble blog now and then, and stay tuned for more of the same. But what the hey, I'm open to change. Call out if you want a request done, and I'll do my best to fufill it, and if I don't know the words, I'll hum something until we can get a jam going.

The Joy of Laminate

I have been feeling pretty good about how clean my desk is at work this afternoon. Yeah, plenty of laminate between the phone and the single (canted) pen and my glass of water. Oh, check me out - I'm Gordon Freakin Gecko! PURE POWER BABY!

Except until I needed to get something out of my bag, and turned around to find a towering mass of brightly highlighted pieces of paper saying "urgent - do right NOW" and dated last week, and evem, a bit deeper int eh pile, the week before last. Oh dear. When I face my screen, this pile is just outside of my peripheral vision, and so, it seems, also just outside of my ability to pay attention to it. Crap. I don't remember moving that stuff there, but I must have. I even found my "inbox" inside the anerobic bowels of this swamp, cracked and weeping.

Still, no one has chased up any of those super urgent tangerine highlighted tasks, so maybe I can just file them all straight into the recycling bin and get back to enjoying expanses of laminate.

Oh, yeah, that's it - nice clean desk!

Back to work work.

Welcome to the first day of summer.
December already. Why is it that February always drags but November goes so quickly?!
Nanowrimo has finished for another year. I didn't win. Which is to say my story didn't make it to my goal of 25 000 words and has no ending. Jeeze, it didn't even get to the middle. I got pretty demoralised by my immanent failure mid last week and cracked open a bottle of vodka. and just gave up. I don't like that about me, but there it is. I really feel like I owe it to Edwina to keep going, but some of the magic has dissipated. Actually, I want to finish it. That's the real point of Nanowrimo, to complete something outrageous.

Things I've learnt from doing Nanowrimo in 08:
* Write more. Write everyday. Write and write and write until the right elbow gives out and then go for it with the left.
* Have fun and go nuts with anything and everything in the story. I saw from a new perspective how buttoned down I am about things and that's making my writing boring. Next year I vow to play dirty and have characters singing endless songs or reading aloud from Tolkien, anything to get to 50k. I said I was going to do this in 08, and something in me baulked. Why?! So 09 it is!Really, on my heart, hope to die.
* Remember the rules are just word count and a beginning middle and end. That is all.
* Do not agree to do anything for anyone if it's in November. There's eleven other freaking months of the year to fill up, this is my month, sod off. I talk big, but I failed to say no to a single request this year - and then paid for it - with a slow word count and constant guilty/resentful feelings. Completely my own fault.
* Taking a month off from tv, reading and newspapers is awesome. I dabbled here and there, and noticed the difference when I did. This is not something suggested by Nano, it was an urge, I recommend it to you.
* Go to the write-ins. No one in my immediate family or surroundings gives flying pig about this stuff, so contact with others will really help with the stages of madness (and the boards and pep talk emails do kinda help, but it's better to be with people. I went to some write-ins in 06 and it was great. Even tho they were way-nerdy guys running them ... even I found them nerdy. That's out of hand).

I think that's the lot for now. I feel a bit sad and grumpy today, and there's work needs doing, and it's bloody hot again, and there's no food in the fridge, well, no food that isn't off anyway and the real world is impinging on my dreams.
I hate it when it does that.

Not Quite Coming

Sex scenes.
Better just to blurt it out.

People who are comfortable writing sex scenes are full of great advice. I would normally quote a few here, but treat yourself and put some keywords into your preferred search engine and watch your screen turn purple. Lately, if I want to procrastinate (and who doesn't?) this is my diversion of choice.
It's the kind of thing that everyone has an opinion about, and that's been a paralysing prospect for me in relation to poor Edwina. Early on I knew that this year's Nanowrimo project had to have plenty of sex. After all, I wanted to write something fun, and what's more fun than sex? (Ok reading, sure, but really that's a given in the writing of something). Trouble being, I've never been able to write a convincing kiss scene let alone getting down to the business. It was the first scene of the story I imagined, but here we are at 15 300 words and *I'm just getting to it* - and sadly, very little of that is foreplay! Plainly, I've just been putting it off. I've worked Edwina up into a hot, horny state and just left her panting because suddenly, I felt shy.
That's right, in the privacy of my own mind, I've had performance anxiety. I couldn't make it happen. Between the page and I was an uncomfortable tension. I didn't want to make a wrong move, but couldn't figure out what the right move was. The page waited, the moment started to go stale, I paced, the page turned on the tv, I'd lost it again.
There's so many darn things going on! Hair?! How many hands?! Every move or broad strokes? Physics - how's who's on top staying there? And this is just the mechanics - the stuff that needs to make sense but needs to be utterly utterly invisible. I can understand now why actors laugh when asked about on-stage romance under the cameras for their sex scenes and say "it's tightly choreographed" (tightly!). At the same time that I have these two wire-frame bodies twisting and shifting in my mind trying to maneuver into a docking position, I need to be evenly describing and building the emotional state, the physical arousal, the pertinent mutterings and exclamations. That's a lot to juggle, but it's not everything.
Aside from this is the thought that other people are going to read it. Are they going to cringe? Laugh? Read passages out to their colleagues in the lunchroom, just skip ahead, nominate it for a bad sex in fiction award? Or, worst of all, ring my mum and complain to her? (people did after Trojan Moments - Grandad in particular apparently found some of the poems "... a bit blue. Off". Great. Just what I don't need to know and can never un-hear).

ACK.
So, here we are, stuck at a frigid impasse. My characters are up for it - they're practically gagging for it. It's me, I'm the prude in the corner with the clammy hands and the self conscious attitude, and that's no fun at all, for anybody. I didn't have this problem with the murder scenes. Maybe I need to watch some more late-night SBS films, or just refresh my own docking proceedures.
Hold on Edwina - I'm coming!

A night aboard the "Private Dancer"

Today was meant to be solely dedicated to the formation of the perfectly constructed 3000 word essay on the managerial issues of problem-oriented-policing -programs. I could see this word-count perfect essay crystalline-pure and gem-like beautiful in my mind's eye. It turned gracefully there in the void of my imagination (yes, it's nearly all void in there. Handy for large models of things, but useless for ideas). It caught the light on its pithy, well-selected quotes. It rose above the choppy sea of interminable jargon and earnest justifications that I must trawl in order to form it. *Sigh* So beautiful, so ethereal. So fictitious. In reality, it was caught in the wake of the mighty plot engine I unleashed yesterday and the essay was swamped by the wash and has steadfastly refused to be written.
After the mad dash of 3 000 words in the previous 36 hours (oh Backstory - how I love thee) charting the formation of the (purely platonic!) relationship between Eddie and her Lawyer Henry Thornton (! charming story, really precious!), I have had to wrench myself away from the various saucy wenches of Eddie's world and come back to the plodding mundanities of justifying common sense and referencing it using the harvard system. It's ugly down here in the sea of Mandated Readings.
The trawler I'm on (the 'Private Dancer') is taking on water (in the form of many cups of tea - you want a nice steady, even stream of caffeine. At this point, a coffee would overload the delicate system and send us spinning out of control), and it's gone dark, the source material has merged into one amorphous morass (is that a tautology? Probably, yes, i think it is. too tired to fix it up) of meaningless italicised sections and bold headings with no content to hold them up. I've got some nasty drafts of the opening introduction and definitions section into the hold and on ice until I can gut and clean them, and so I am still needing about 2000 coherent words. I'm reduced to grinding out 20 or 50 stilted, dessicated words at a time, referencing them, and moving on. It's utterly numbing work. This friends, is the far from glamorous life of the essay ghost writer. No sushi here. No black velvet jackets and groovy knitted toys. Just sentences like this: "The management of community partnerships is of critical importance to the development, negotiation and daily operation of QPS's POPP initiatives." <> oh, I kid you not, and that's a tame one, and only 2980 more to go just like it.
I'm new to this game, and they're a tough and private breed the deep-sea ghost writers, they don't give up their secrets and tradecraft easily. In fact I wouldn't even know if there's any others out here - they run their ships dark to avoid detection. Only the wind, the waves and the steady drip of the word count to keep us company until we reach the cold dawn and shore - hopefully with a full hold and a properly formatted bibliography.

Maybe I should sacrifice some whisky and conjure the spirit of Hemingway to see me safely through to the dawn... Yes, that would take care of me, but it would be a shot in the arm for QPS's POPP initiatives. I'm not sure I'm cut out for this, no turning back now.
Wait, I can hear Hemingway!
"Lash yourself to the mast and hold tight to that fish."

WTF have I gotten myself into?

Weather update and Plot Engine Drama

The storms have eased back ofter the mid-week catastrophe which was very considerate and allowed folks to start clearing away the stinky muck that flooded their houses, pushed over fences, and basically terrorised the place. I didn't know what a big news story I was living inside of until friends rang to check I was alive (thank you!), and then I started to notice how many choppers were buzzing around the place. I decided not to participate in watching the news, the mild hysteria at work was (perhaps uncharacteristically) enough sensationalism for me. Today is blustery (yay for laundry!!) and hot. Expectations about the storm du Soir (? am I making that up?) are mixed, some say just thunder and lightening, some say a bit of rain and wind. I say, it's poker night, and unless someone can get a clue, we'll all be heading off shortly (well, not Rumi, he cares nothing for cards) to get a swim and a good spot at the table. Once we're there, we'll take any storm as it may (or may not) come.

My attention is really on Edwina, Lady Kenthurst and the agonisingly slow process of getting her into a lot of trouble with Soames. I've put them on a boat, I've removed the protective male figure from her life (mouldering in a Belfast cell awaiting his death by hanging) and I've got 10 600 words and still they haven't met!! ARGH!! Although it turns out the Captain of the ship might be up for some trouble too. Saucy types, those captains! I hope it turns out this is great tension, but of course from inside the plot engine it feels like we've lost power to the main thrusters and are dropping away from our target minor climatic peak. It's hot in the engine room where my oiled men in loincloths are shovelling coal into the furnace as hard and as fast as their lithe bodies possibly can, but there's something gumming up the cogs and we can't seem to translate this sexy raw power into plot traction. The editor is screaming down the tubes at me "DEADLINE AHEAD! More words!" the inner critic from the bowels of the engine is heard, "I *told* you the beginning of the story was shit, and now look where it's lead us. We're fucked, and I *told* you so from the start."
"Keel-haul that traitor!" I scream and two idea monkeys shoot out to drag the bastard off. Fuck I've been wanting to do that for years. The last thing I need in a crisis like this is sedition within the engine room. I also make a note in my day book to check the correct formation and usage of keel-haul for use in the third act.
It's hot in here, I can't think straight. Why can't we turn away from the deadline? I wonder, but that's not my decision. I have an idea.
"Let's try mixing it up - where'd we store the typewriter?" The men give a cheer, and in lifting their arms in encouragement, inadvertently flex and tense their abdominal muscles. I'm swooning from the heat and the sight of so many hot fictional bodies. I can barely spell, but taken on a wave of hope and pheremones, we bolt the typewriter into place, re-route the production crank and set the ribbon in place. This could just save us...
The words start to come, the ribbon spools, the cogs begin to inch forward, the little bell tings and the carriage return shoots back. Yes! We're still in with a chance.

A Damp State

Whatever the opposite of a drought is, it happened last night.
Flood is such a little word. It doesn't get across what huge stretches of angry brown water we're talking about. It doesn't get across the outside air turning into a wall of water for 8 or 9 hours and the resulting jostling for breathing space that causes on or in dry patches. You know it's wet when frogs are trying to get into the house.
Riley, Rumi and I sat on the bed into the wee hours of the morning. I was watching the rain turning into a lake on the front street and lawns and they were dozing - no biggie. The light would flicker off every now and then and each time spring back and that was comforting, but I thought "Somewhere, someone is really copping it" and sure enough this morning it turns out train tracks have been washed away, and we've gone from a state of emergency yesterday to a state of disaster today. I wonder what state we'll be in tomorrow after the next storm comes through tonight?
Perhaps a state of surrender.

Didn't need the Evac Bag this time

Nature really ripped out a corker of a storm on Sunday arvo. It didn't seem too out of the ordinary where I was - windy, rainy, a bit of hail, plenty of water - pretty much a standard summer storm. But it turns out that I should be (and I am) very very grateful that my house still has a roof, because a lot of places don't. The storm was a lot more intense closer to the coast and the region has been declared an emergency zone. We got a concerned PM walking around and being emotionally empathetic with folks. The news told me that in Brisvegas it amounted to a Class 2 hurricane.
Holy Snapping Duckshit Batman!

Apart from the sensationalism and wow factor, the basic news is that Riley, Rumi and I are safe, dry and well. The house is a little musty from the humidity and all of us in the place at once, but there's nothing that a bit of cleaning on the weekend won't sort out.

Also, I've realised that my evac bag and process needs updating, but there were plenty of candles!!

New Personal Best

Oh Happy Day!
I've hit 9000 words in the story!
Yay! I thought I was going to choke on 8000 for ever, but I pushed through and made my first ever literary kills (sorry Sir Simon Windemere, and unnamed wife and child).

How puny that word count seems. The NanWriMo official target for this week is 30 000. IN MY DREAMS!! But I could be in with a chance to make a new personal best, my next goal is to give the story an ending, not just leave everyone hanging.

If only I didn't have to work, do two assignments and my own laundry.....

Weeping on the First/Second Date

The severe cut-backs on media intake continue to be painful and are not yielding any improvement in mental capacities or creative output. Perhaps this is like that period smokers go through when they reduce the number of cigarettes a day hoping to gain the best of both worlds. I am merely prolonging the worst aspects.

On saturday I went to the cinemas again with The Jugger, and of his list of proposed films 3 were on war, 1 a surrealist montage and 1 about running marathons. The only one in english was "The Hunger", and I know enough about Bobby Sands to know I didn't want to experience any of that so I chose war: Waltz with Bashir. Partly because I had heard a little about the production and it sounded interesting. They used a similar animation process to 'Through a Scanner Darkly' and I find this blending of techniques interesting. Apart from that, I knew it was set in the Lebannon war of 82 via flashback. But I ask you - what's wrong with a romantic comedy for a second/first date? (I must mention the protocols of internet dating - first date is a coffee date. I can be over as quickly as it takes to say "Soy?! Decaff?! I'm outta here" and part of this arrangement is there's no hard feelings. It was just a coffee - no biggie. If that goes well, one may progress to the next stage - what used to be the first date - where as a couple you might tackle the challenge of formally dining together, or perhaps enjoying the air-conditioning of a cinema, perhaps seeing if that 'GSOH' actually translates into the both of you laughing at anywhere near the same things, people, lines, ideas and so on). Or even, what's wrong with seeing a film you've already seen if you know it's good? I've done that, I think it's polite, after all, the function is to spend some time together not to critique David Stratton's interpretation!

I've always been someone who easily suspends disbelief and enters into the world of a film. Sometimes this results in a wonderful journey into a time and place I would never have access to otherwise, sometimes I get lost in that world and have trouble coming back (LOTR) and sometimes, it just really hurts because the story isn't a fantasy or an escape, or a comedy, it's a freaking documentary about a genocide. Heightened by my withdrawal from the world of moving pictures this was an arduous, painful 90minutes for me, and I was glad of my nana instincts to always travel with tissues, because I needed them. It's a great film, a well told story, visually interesting, political from a personal point of view and so on. I'm sure David probably gave it a great round up. He should have anyway, and there's some great humour in it, and some dream sequences, and a bit of german porn and I really loved the visual impact of the way they'd done the animation, it's just that I wept. It was sad, it was horrible and it was distressing because despite the animation and the other tricks, it was real. This man we get to know, he unearthed this memory, and it was his memory because he was there when this atrocity occurred. It. Was. Real. Bodies. Death. Blood. Everywhere.
BAM.
No getting around it. This is what bearing witness is all about isn't it?! To listen and feel with an open heart a story, a memory, a confession and hold it. Just hold it. I can't change it, I can't fix it, heal it or wipe it away. I can honour the memory of the people who died, and the pain of those who survived by acknowledging it.

So hours later when I got home and sat in the quiet room, I'm sorry memory of the people who died and pain of those who survived, but I really wanted to escape your reality and wash it away. So I used fire against fire. I watched another movie. The Fifth Element which is possibly the only intentionally positive, feel good, happy ending SF film.... oh maybe also Galaxy Quest. as distinct to SF films one laughs at (Starship Troopers!!). So much for giving up movies - two in one day!!

Maybe I should have chosen the marathon one afterall.

A Failure of Fun

I hit a wall this week. Ah, no - not in the car or anything. Emotionally. Is there a better way to say it? Plateau? No, it wasn't a levelling out. There's something that happens when tension builds up and frustration build up - and after a while you can't just keep working through it.

This week I had a nasty plot hump with the story, a bit of writer's block and "why am I doing this" and not reading, ok, well I'm sneaking some reading in, but no novels! Very little TV too and so it's just me and the blank page and the broken brain.

The word count has stalled at about 7300 (nearly my previous best of about 8/8500) it's hard not to wonder - am I choking? Do I really just not have this in me? Is this the best I can do?

Last night midnight saw me walking backwards and forwards throwing handfulls of papers into the recycling and asking Riley how nearly a whole nother year could have passed. He had no answers. How zen dogs can be. He's right of course, there are no answers, only choices and further questions.

Many other Nanowimo participants are already finished! Finished!! WTF?! Should I have chosen a different story? Should I too be transcribing song lyrics into my story or have a character count to a thousand? You think I'm joking, oh I assure you, these are but two of the fiendish tricks employed to plump one's word count.

Everything is taking so long to get out of my stupid head! But the time ranting and pacing last night was not completely lost. I had a little realisation. I'm missing the point. I've been clinging to my story and to my idea of what's ok. I'm at a writing version of Mardi gras with my metaphorical legs crossed and mouth closed. What a noob!

So rather than staying stuck on how to move Robin around Antrim, or what approach Soames will take to Eddie's abduction, I'm going to get back into it again and move through this invisible wall with my mouth open and my legs akimbo and get back to having a rip-sorting time.
And maybe just a few song lyrics.

Rapture of the Nerds

Today I steal my title from Ken McLeod, a marvellous SF writer.
I'm indulging myself this afternoon (try it a little while you read - maybe rub your belly or loosen your shirt. That's it, feel alive) as I found out that Michael Crichton has died and I am sad. It's not cool to like his books, but I do - the ones I've read at least (which is not all of them by a long shot) and I admired how he went about what he did. It kind of reminded me of John Grisham, but with research. I sometimes felt that he was a thwarted documentary maker, and I also wish I had his talent for creating page turning plots. No, not great with the character development, but he didn't really pretend to be anything he wasn't, and the books nearly read themselves to you. Maybe they made better movies than books (Rising Sun) but that's ok too.

I also came across a great interview with Charles Stross, who is creating fascinating novels and I think is great fun. Thankfully, he is very well, and not dead. He talks here about SF as a genre with it's self-imposed limits, but also his own ideas of what keeps it relevant and interesting. It's from this interview that I pinched the title. I've read my share of singularity rapture!

I'm sad to have another writer die. Somehow it seems fitting that aging movie stars meet their end, or racing car drivers or politicians. But aren't writers exempt in some way?
I guess not.

Well, I hope he's having a good nerd rapture now.
So say we all.

You don't know what you don't know (thank you Captain Obvious!)

The world is an interesting place if only for the powerful, invisible powers that inhabit it. I'm not talking here about magnetic flux, or light being both a wave and a stream of particles, or gravity and their ilk - fascinating though they may be. No, I am talking about odd coincidences, the power of synchronicity as Jung described the "acausal connecting principle". I would love to know if there's a word for when the acausal connecting principle goes non-linear.
Yes, synchronicity is non-linear itself. I get that, but so many times people use the example of thinking of someone you haven't heard of in ages, and then they ring you. That seems pretty directly linked to me. How it happens is the off-the-hook, but the emotional/intellectual connection is direct. Some definitions make a bit more sense "...a colliding of the seen and unseen realities. Within the improbable events there will be layers of hidden meanings that ring true in your innermost being." It sounds more like magic to me.
Anyway, I digress. The story I wanted to share with you today was that almost 2 years to the day, I had a date on the weekend. Yes, two years.
(Strangely, my last date and I went to see the new James Bond film - Casino Royale, and guess what's in the cinemas next weekend for the (still theoretical) second date with the new guy? You guessed it! The new James Bond film - Quantum of Solace!! But that's not even the part!)
So here I am in the heated heart of post-week-one-euphoria (see Week One in Review) and now grasping at plot straws (I have a villain - I just can't seem to get him a big enough and evil enough Dastardly Plan). I am writing and reading crazy at the moment, and I have a date! Excitement overload. I can't wait to share my interests with him.
We rendezvous in a bookstore (reference section) and he says "I never knew this section was here." Not an immediately great sign, but not impossible to recover from. He's good looking, he's turned up, he's keen for a coffee. We proceed. He has manners, entertaining hobbies, a science degree, seems pretty happy to talk to me, likes arthouse movies and oh-yeah is dyslexic.

Dyslexic.

Thanks acausal connecting principle!

So, as I'm writing this story and therefore it's all about me, we can skip all the heartwarming stuff about how he's overcome this difficulty and what tricks he has to manage stuff and so on (bright as a button this chap) and instead dwell for a moment on how I was confronted by an assumption I didn't realise I had. We would not be able to share the pleasure of reading. Something so central to my life that I didn't even see it has no real place in his except as something worked at for a specific purpose.
Huh. Didn't see that coming.

After a while though, I started to see some benefits to the idea. No unwelcome comments about drafts, no fighting over categorisation systems for shelves, no long and pedantic disagreements about etymologies. God, it's sounding brilliant. No bad-mouthing of beloved authors or diminishing of children's books. Just coz I'm in love with spines and folios and fiddling around with pens, why should I assume that I need to always be around others who feel that way?

Apparently, he's a very good cook. Yes, thank you acausal connecting principle, I wouldn't have made this step on my own! Now, as long as he likes playing cards ....

Week One in Review

It was a great idea to come out to Ma&Pa's farm overnight. I wasn't going to, I didn't want to loose all that time driving, and I am no good at saying 'I have to go sit in my room and do other things than talk to you oh beloved parents who raised me and sacrificed that I might succeed in life' but logistical considerations for the rest of the weekend made it the logical solution, so I did. There was a meal together and an evening playing frustration on the new veranda. But in the perfectly non-linear way that the world actually works, this turned out to be relaxing, distracting, fresh and wholesome (in other words an antidote to a week of spitty gossip and petty work concerns). It also had the flow-on benefit that I could not guilt myself into doing chores before I wrote this morning (which I would have done at home). No indeedy. Here there's just the wind and the birds in the trees as much tea and left-over pizza (avocado, mushroom and corn) as I like and lo - I've done over 700 words and am not yet out of my jammies!

Riley doesn't know it yet, but he's staying here until Sunday evening. He needed a break from me, and a bit of dog time in the dirt always replenishes him. For myself, I am aware of how out of shape I am mentally and physically for writing. I have talked *about* it a lot more than doing it this year, and now I suffer for it. My wrist, forearm and elbow are sore. My mind is stiff, and my eyes are acting up (one keeps swelling and bruising. Maybe someone is sneaking up on me while I sleep and poking one eye with my thumb and laughing maniacally "that's for being you!! HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!) because I cannot think of any other explanation for this phenomena. Which simply demonstrates even further how out of creative fitness my mind is. Lazy and slow - too many pizzas and movies.

So, my week one word tally is 5 980. That's pretty good for an addled tryhard wannabe I reckon. Not great, not brilliant, but a fair effort. Shows potential, but plenty of scope for improvement. What I'm really happy about is that I don't feel bored. I can't believe how much fun this is! I still haven't got my characters off the fracking boat! WTF?! But I will dag-nammit! What's more, I'll get them off that boat and I'll get them into trouble, trouble they can not believe has rained down on their arses, and then I will twist that mother fucking plot on them! Oh yeah! and they will be in agony and things will be fucked up bad, man. Baaaaaad. And it will totally rock when, like a gentle ray of light from the high heavens, the characters think of a way to fight back, and they unravel the twist and they untrouble the shit and they fight the power. That is something I am excited about seeing, oh yes, and I have no fracking idea how the hell any of that is going to happen, or if it will be readable when the dust settles, but I don't care. We're in it together. If I keep writing, they'll keep doing and eventually, we'll have this adventure, or die trying.

You know, not die die, but just, maybe, well ....fail. But that's not the game plan! No, we're in it to save the Empire! (Questions about the value and validity of the empire can please be reserved for further projects on this theme should they eventuate).

Time to get out of the jammies.

Outcomes (bar chart this!)

I'm kinda feeling like today was a washout because I didn't write anything. That's what getting into the Nanowirmo does - starts pushing the orientation of priorities into the GET THE NOVEL DONE type order. But go over it again and the day wasn't a complete waste - I did a full day at work, I woke up to the aftermath of a pornographic dream and Dad lost at cards tonight. Overall - apart from the not-writing - a really well rounded set of outcomes!

Shame I can't cue up part two of that dream ....

The Rain, it Raineth Down

The rain indeed raineth down upon us last night, and all around for hours and hours. So very beautiful. Rain like that turns a house into a cozy retreat from the world. A safe place of contemplative refuge. A bit louder than the music, but not so loud you're worried it's going to pound through the roof. Very calming. This morning is very humid, and everything green has shot up about 2 inches. A little spider had ambitiously developed a web between the steering wheel and the gear stick.
Nature is utterly relentless.

What plot?

So lost the plot.
What book? Who am I? Where did I put that cup of coffee? What do you mean I have to report on that project at a meeting? My characters are stuck on a ship in the North Atlantic and you want me to concentrate on costings for a mailout and web updates?!
I'm shaking and I'm nauseous.
Forgeddit.

In other news - Well Done Obama!! Good work America!! Yay generally!! WOOT for HOPE!!

(ps. WTF is with not letting exclamation marks be in tabs? Get a grip people!)

(pps. Word count at 4300 and stalled)

Who's the Favourite?

The office is abuzz today with hats, sweeps, confusion over TAB forms, and anticipation of a feast for lunch. I've put a few bets on - it's almost un-Australian not to. Nothing unusual in how I chose my camels - I went with the three names I've heard most this morning on my way to work and in the kitchen.
So I've gone for Profound Beauty for a win or a place (what a beautiful name! Very Zen) and Zipping and Nom de Jeu for a place. ?I don't know?! But it adds to the frisson. Otherwise, I'd end up working through it and be totally underwhelmed by the whole thing. This is the lot of the office worker - bored by the eternal ennui of bureaucratesse (am I making up a word there?) and the blandness of our to-do lists and timesheets. So my bets are a token escape into a fantasy world of excitement, risk and glamour. Cheap oblivion. Bring it on.

In other news, some writing last night, and none yet today. I don't know what my word count might be. I also totally forgot about my reckless earlier commitment to audition for a role in the chorus of Oklahoma which has now come around this Sunday. Drat. It could still end up being hi-larious but i desperately need to write my fingers off to catchup my words! The good thing about being such a slow writer is that I am coming up with better plot ideas than if I was whizzing forward. When I say "better", I mean that in a relative sense. This story is very pulpy and unlikely. Increasingly so. Shockingly so. Bring it on.

A Thousand Bucks of Grog

My sister won a raffle on the weekend - I arrived at her place to see the pool table groaning under what appeared to be the full contents of a working bar. Name a type of spirit - there was two bottles of it. Including 3 different types of sherry.
"Yeah, I won a thousand bucks of grog at the fundraiser on the weekend. There's 10 cartons of beer to come yet, I couldn't fit it all in the X-trail."

Cool, but sherry? Oh, and they'd topped it all off with 2 or 3 casks of cheap and nasty wine.

Writing not so good on Sunday - about a thousand words. The addicted niece turned her nose up at the typing option. Apparently, she prefers earning pocket money in ways that allow her to continue to watch the tv while she 'works'. That bodes well for her employement future.

However, I had a swim and played a round of 'cranky pants' with KA and went home and fell asleep again. I seem to need an extra 3 hours in the afternoons of the weekend. Word count is at roughly 2650 and I'll have another session tonight. My PB previously was just 8 000 words, so this year if I can get to 25 000 I'll feel pretty stoked. (please don't tell me if you think 8k is pathetic. I already think that!)
Day 3 - attending my day job is cramping my style.

Bonnie RIP

Sad news for the family this week.
Our old dog Bonnie has died. She has been increasingly slow, deaf and stiff in her joints and it seems certain that these were contributing factors in the circumstance of her death.

She was missing last Wednesday and late Thursday she was found. Burial took place on Friday.

We remember here as she was in her youth - loving and active - and also her miraculous recovery from the nasty incident of falling from the ute tray and being dragged some distance by her leash.

She is survived by her daughter in residence, Zara, and an unknown number of other descendants living happily on other farms in the region.

“In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris”
[“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken: for dust you are and to dust you will return”].

Many Questions

As soon as I started trying to explain how Edwina was on the train, I was deluged by questions. Utterly flooded. What kind of train? How are the seats set up? How long will the trip take? What station is it going from? Can she walk from one carriage to another? Would she have a thermos of tea in her basket?

I didn't really think through the consequences of choosing to set my novel in Victorian times, I just wanted to write something that I would enjoy reading. But now of course, I have to figure out what year it probably is, so I know if trains even run to that city. Unless of course I don't and just keep going with making things up and all the poeple who actually know these things can rant and curse all they want about idiotic people who don't know the first thing about rail history between the period of 1830 and 1890. I can tell you - I know more than the average person on the street, and I don't know nearly enough to write this scene! So I'm going to stop worrying about it. I don't have time.

I'm about to bend a whole lot of other things, so I don't see I should worry overmuch about details like train timetables. But where things can be plausible, they should be. ARGH! How does anyone every write anything?! But she has a manservant, and seems to be independently wealthy, oh, and educated. I think I'll just stick with the old "it's different for the rich" excuse until I get a clue.

I slept poorly and had nightmares last night. Was it something I ate or just the heat? No matter, today Edwina must get to Belfast and discover that Ireland is a seething mass of political foment, not the idyllic pastoral retreat she had imagined.

Meet Edwina

As usual the decision to write today made me strangely motivated and productive in doing all sorts of household chores that I would normally be happy to allow to go begging for months on end. However I have managed so far to have two sessions (utilising the best writing tool ever - the egg timer) of half hour and one hour and produced about a 1000 words. It's a humble start, but a start nonetheless. I say "about" because I've started longhand and so the word count is manual. I am going to find someone to type it up for me... perhaps I can pay piece wages to my niece who always needs cash now to support her SMS habit. Addicts are so easy to exploit!

The weather is not co-operating either. It was 35degrees today. Days like this I think what a good idea it would be to put a big shade sail above my entire house. I've checked that Sis will be home tomorrow, I'm not risking another day like that without being near a pool! That's the good thing about taking the project longhand, I could write anywhere. Note the use of 'could'. We shall see. I am looking forward to getting to know my character more. I think she may turn out to be a bit of a spunk. Can we still say that and be understood? Edwina, Lady Kenthurst is pretty spunky in a librarian-meets-Lara-Croft-mid 1800s kind of way, but right now she's stuck on a train with two horrible bores and I need to get her to safety.
Pip pip!

Blackout

I got home last night and the suburb was dark.
No street lights, no shops lit up, no house lights, spotties on driveways or music or blurred blue from TVs. No moon either. Dark.

It was beautiful. It was quiet. And I was very glad I had a lot of candles in the house. Apart from not being able to listen to the radio it was pretty nice. I ate an icecream out of the freezer - I had to you understand, to test if the food was spoiling - and discovered that 5 candles lit up the room beautifully and two close-by were fine for reading to.

After about a half an hour there were some sirens and shouting and general rowdiness. I wondered if this might happen more often and should I get some gas lanterns. I made a cup of tea because gas ovens rule the world and soon enough the radio and fridge came back to life.

With all the discussion about carbon trading and emissions it can still be all too easy to think about it all in the abstract, until you're in a blackout. Tonight would be more thematically fitting for a blackout, so we'll see what happens.
Happy Halloween!

ps. Tomorrow is the begining of November - you know what that means!! http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Tunnel Vision

Riley and I were walking down the street this morning and it seemed like we'd been walking down the one street for a long time. Over and over again. There was the slightest sensation for a moment of being in a tunnel that has it's other end now joined to the entrance. Looping now and passing signs for turnoffs you'll never get to.

But actually I know that this morning is different to yesterday morning in a myriad of tiny ways and even though when we walk out the door we can only turn left or turn right - and that often feels very limited - well that's the same at every corner we come to on our walks and we end up seeing different things. This tree is blooming, that bird is odd, how weird are the clouds, the path has been brushed. LIttle things, but different enough.

It's at times like this when there is so little to take in, that I realise all over again how much I do take in. How much of this morning's walk I can remember (not reconstruct) and how much I am constantly learning about my neighbourhood just by walking around it. Then, being me, I turn this observation into a worry "I'm not stimulating my brain enough and I'll get wobbly and dim. Look how much it's noticing - my brain could be filling up on pointless information about yards and bins and cars!!"

What a drongo.

So I'm going to read more SciFi and fill my brain up with imaginary things instead!
A much better idea than watching the news I think!

Outside in the Morning

The air this morning was deliciously sweet. I wanted to drink swimming pools of it. The sky seemed as deep as the ocean and blue like a bird's heart all the way through.
All the crows flew to one big tree and spent 5 minutes loudly cawing over each other - scrabbling to prove their points before dispersing in gossiping gangs.

Flopping around on the couch like a pale moonworm

I had this fleeting idea for a good post the other day, and I didn't write it down, so guess what? Yeah, I totally forgot it.
So I've been sick. Let's not talk about it. It's very boring to to talk about being ill, particularly when it's not a new or exotic thing - just the same round of stuff.

I've read a few books lately - the two Vampire Academy books (Vampire Academy and Frostbite) and two "Mortal Instruments" (City of Bones & City of Ashes by Clare) these are good fun. Particularly if you like stories about vampires. If you don't like stories about vampires, well you won't really like these, and you've got other issues anyway. I'm currently reading the new Monthly and a dodgy e-book called "Palace of Paradise" or something. It sounds like it might be a saucy romance, but actually it's really an edited listserv doc for a type of therapy called Emotional Freedom Therapy. As you can tell by the name, there's not a lot of science to this therapy! It's only 140 pages but it's taking me ages to read it. I got recommended it, so I'm staying the distance... In more exciting reading news I've have started the new Neal Stephenson (Anathem) and have only got about 50 pages in and decided to draw it out, so have put it down until the weekend. ooooohhh - delicious fiction! It's way clever, and I expect it will get quite complicated. I've just ordered 'Babylon Babies' by Maurice Dantec (a French author, so it's in translation) as Sister and I went to the movies last weekend to see the movie that's been loosely based on it - Babylon AD and we enjoyed it. I'm not necessarily recommending it mind you, just saying that as huge Riddick fans, we were fanging for some butch-camp sci-fi, and this was just the ticket! I was very upset this week to realise that the new Riddick "film" I thought I saw listing on IMDB was actually just a video game. D'oH!!

While I was ill, all of my seedlings died. The backyard is so overgrown that I will only walk on the concrete paths because I am afraid of snakes. This is hurting the fig and lemon trees, as they're not currently getting the laundry water on the weekends. It feels terribly wasteful to let all of that water just go down the drain, but even if I could walk to the trees, I wasn't in a fit state to carry the buckets. That's ok, we'll start again next weekend. Maybe.

Vale

It's been a crap month and frankly, I'm pretty happy to see the back of September. It started out fairly promising - I came off the roids after 2 months and spring did the thing ... but it just seemed as though nothing could really get any traction and then I caught a flu. Although there's not medical concensus that colitis is an auto-immune disease, I can tell you that my GBS thought it would be *great* to join in with the flu and so I got two for the price of one.

I couldn't write about it at the time, but I was saddened and depressed by David Foster Wallace's suicide. If he couldn't hack it .... well, he's a lot smarter than me, so maybe I'm going to be ok living with the great existential abyss a while longer. After all, I seem to be able to happily live alongside it so far.

Some good news, a new mattress, which should really get an entry all to itself, yes it should. The new novel by Neal Stephenson has arrived and I have excitedly read the first few pages, but am holding off until my health has recovered - don't enter into his later works unprepared peeps! Looks goooooooood!!

Time for me to take more medicine and lie down quietly somewhere.

Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

I have low expectations about films like this, but I was well disappointed by this boring, lacklustre doin it by the numbers effort.
Such a shame. The playful spark of the 1999 The Mummy (no subtitle needed) with the sassy librarian and the boof-head boy (played with lovely comic timing by Brendan Fraser) was well paced, unpretentious and featured plenty of just-enough pommy plummery to flavour.

Not so this bloated and lost monstrosity.
The second film got a bit bogged down in the 'family' backstory and the laboured plot devises to bring the Scorpion King, the Mummy and Rick O'Connell into a massive three-way fight was lightened only by the girl-on-girl king fu knives in egyptian scanties action. You can watch it, but you really need to be nailed to the couch by beers and ennui to do so. This third film makes the second one seem fresh.

I thought Jet Li would totally rock out as an evil powerful emperor, but he seemed to have a bad headache and a stick up his arse. *sigh* The hot and sweet Rachel Weisz is missing, and the new girl Maria Bello ... well let's just say the chemistry isn't there. I don't care that Rick and Evie's parenting has been a bit lacklustre, where the hell's Arnold Vosloo oiled and in a loincloth? Jet Li spends the whole film encased in a piece of Bauhaus architecture.

Don't go see this film. Seriously, you'll have more fun re categorising your cds.

Generation Kill

There's always someone worse off.
It's not meant to be a cheering thought, but it is. As a fat, white, middle-class-ish Australian, roughly 92% of the world is worse off than I am, but of course I don't usually see them and so, every now and then, I just completely forget.

This week I've been reminded of this fact by watching the HBO mini series "Generation Kill".
There are many levels on which this mini-series is fascinating. Before I get into any rave or meandering, I'll own up immediately to the following points:
1. It is based on a book (Generation Kill by Evan Wright. There's quite a good review with excerpts at the New Statesman). I haven't read it but my brother-in-law is reading it and tells me that the two versions are very close.
2. I read (and "enjoyed") Jarhead.
3. I couldn't finish 'Catch 22' (but intend to give it another go now that I have some more 'water under the bridge').
4. I loved 'Waiting for Godot'.
5. I work in a (local) government body.

I'm not sure where to start. It's not so much about American politics (or even so much even about the war) as about bizarre reality. This is not a 'story' but neither is it a contrived 'reality' show or documentary or mock-u-mentary. A long time ago we might have used the term cinema-verite to describe something like this - but actually I think this is a new flavour, a new style. A very modern, unsentimental, "unpurposed" approach to this kind of subject matter.

As the first credits came up, I thought "Why am I exposing myself to yet more American culture and *another* take on Iraq?" - not the thoughts of a ready-to-cheer fan, but what drew me into the world of this group of men was the understated treatment of a hysterical, terrifying, aggro subject in a neutral, intelligent way. Nothing about the marines' behaviours, thoughts, language, politics or concerns are explained, diminished, justified or homogenised. Some of them are very thoughtful brave men, and lots aren't.
How does anyone stay sane in this environment of continual flip-flopping of command, the petty focus on 'grooming standards' above issues of resupply (of rations and ammunition - "you want logistics, join the army. Marines make do."), the constant 'bad comms' and blackmarket for essentials like batteries (what good are night vision goggles without power?), friendly fire, rotting feet and superstitions?
They don't.

These men are warriors. They're also opportunists, psychos, working Joes and reporters. They aren't philosophers or diplomats or politicians. They're warriors, trained to kill and cultured to win. They're largely fuelled by video games, sugar and caffeine. I am unsettled by how easily I can relate to them and their bickering and sing-songing on what must have been interminable drives , their dark, wry humour and the restlessness and frustration they experience of being deployed into tasks and positions they were not trained for and unused for exactly the missions they were.

What is best about this series is the attention to remaining complex. In one scene, the motorcade is passing a body. The body is vivid, bloody, personal. The camera tracks a number of responses in the marines (interest, sadness, revulsion) the reporter is shocked, and his immediate response is to raise his camera and take a picture. One of the marines confronts him "that's exploitation man" and he is shamed. The Reporter - our everyman for the viewer, our representative of the media - is the one who could least handle the moment but did so by turning it into an image, something that could be documented and filed. Distancing himself from it in one of the ways that we all do. Otherwise, what would he do with that experience of seeing and smelling that death of an innocent? What action, what sense is there for him? What is there for us? We saw these deaths too, despite the control over what images went out, we saw civilians hurt and murdered.

I am finding this series to be complex, confronting, valuable. I'm not sure it should be called entertainment. I don't know what to think. More importantly, I don't know what to do.
Still not cheering, but definitely a fan.

Rancid World View

What an unutterably foul mood has descended upon me today. Bored, angry and spilling over with acidic derision for all the world has to offer.
No reason.
Perhaps because it's Monday, perhaps because there's days yet until I can play, and perhaps because I didn't get my own way with anything on the weekend.

What would be opposite of Rose Coloured Glasses? Turd Breath? This is beyond cranky pants and into Devil Diapers.

Neil Gaiman Gives Away "Neverwhere"

The Magnificent Neil Gaiman is at it again.
You read that title right, you can download Neverwhere for free for a limited time.

Last year he made American Gods available as a free ebook and this year it's the dark adventure Neverwhere. It's a shorter book (for those who prefer to read on-screen) and a Gaiman classic. Go on, do yourself a favour!

First taste is free!


(btw, in case you don't know, The Graveyard Book is now only weeks away! Almost really, could be counted in days. YAYAYAYAYAYAAAY)
(AND Neal Stephenson's new novel out this month OMG a flood of riches!!)

Maths in Music

Last night was a chance to see the amazing Grant Collins in performance (at the Ipswich Civic Hall). It has been waaaaaaaaaaaayy too long since I was exposed to something so challenging and beautiful at the same time. I only wish that I could have been more rested and so able to keep up with the mathematical and physical gymnastics this charming musician performs - all with a gorgeous sense of humour. I'm so grateful for the chance to see someone that cool in this town.

Hilariously enough, I took my seven year old niece (Kirra) who loves music and is pretty much hyperactive. It was her first concert, and she loved it. From the support act (who were brilliant) (The Gap High School percussion ensemble) who had jammed 4 full size glockenspiels/xylophones into the foyer along with a normal kit, a whole bunch of tom toms a base drum and various bells and stuff. They played some thilling contemporary stuff (ever heard a glockenspiel played with a bow? Haunting.) and something that sounded very ritualistic (an interpretation of something - I couldn't quite hear the bandmaster). Kirra said "It sounds like a movie" and I think that's the highest praise she has in her current paradigm.

The Idiot Files

You know it's been too long when you're not sure you can remember your password.

Of course, most mondays are like that for me going back to work. Actually i forgot my address the other day (after all, I've only lived here 9 months) and gave the one from 2 years ago. A natural mistake.

I always thought that people talking about "ageing" or "getting older" were sprouting shite. You know when someone you think is an otherwise rational person starts banging on about their knees or their back or whatever, and they give you that little half smile which seems to be saying "pity me and please join in here", well don't. Stay in denial as long as you can (or just stay 20something as long as you can - same thing really) and change the fracking subject. Otherwise, before you know it you'll be comparing meds and laughing about how you spent 20 minutes looking for your reading glasses and they were on your head the whole time. Hi-larious.
Really, just shoot me.
Except of course, that insidiously, it's happening to me. Me!!

I had a bingle with a trolley at work today. A completely innocent accident - I was reading and walking at the same time (a move for the experienced at the best of times) and a low-lying trundle heaped with boxes of printing was under my peripheral vision - KA-POW! My left foot went under the bed of it at full force and I went A over T and the sodding printing never budged (there's physics for you kids!). Holy snapping turtles it hurt! Someone with some sense put me into a chair and fetched a cold thing. It was a good 5 minutes before my eyes unglazed and I had to sit there for quite some time just breathing and trying not to cry (not from the pain, more from the aftershock). When I went to stand up - it still hurt, my knee hurt and I could feel a stiffness creeping up to my hip. My knee hurt!? WTF?! As I hobbled back to my desk with my icepack I thought about the number of times a word I know I know has eluded me lately. How I have to reach for simple spellings and that the other day I couldn't for the LIFE of me remember who the only ever Australian nobel laureate for literature was. How embarrassment! I hid it ok in that conversation, and it came back to me within about 4 hours or so, but still - more than a close call, it was a big blank empty whistling space in my head where once there had been knowledge.

It was a shock, I can tell you that. I have to admit it, I am growing dumber, and dumber. My light is dimming even more rapidly than my hair.
I entertained the thought recently (7 months ago now seems recent - when did that happen?) of dying my hair. Camouflaging all those wiry little white bastards with something enourmously funky like purple or primary red. In the end I decided not to, not so much because I wouldn't like to look better (I would, but then, why start now?) but more because I've always thought of my hair as a natural warning system for others. Anything in nature that is yellow or red is often hazardous to tangle with. Grey? Grey is not a colour that says "watch out" more possibly "wake up" (with the exception of Germaine Greer who is currently grey, and really, for the safety of all, should probably be dyed in red and yellow stripes over her entire body). I had hoped to grow into an eccentric older person with a sharp wit and a quick tongue, but at this rate I'll be happy not to have to wear a nappy and a helmet by the time I'm 40.

There's an image.

On that note, I think I'll run a bath and see if I can do the kids sudoku puzzle from the weekend paper, maybe work up to a clue or two from the crossword before the wardens come and change my nappy and put the lights out.

G'day, how the heck did August start so Early?

Well it's been nearly a month , actually a whole month, since i posted, and I can't remember if there was a thread going, or a theme, so I'm going to just start again from here. Hi. I've been sick and you can fill in enough of the blanks from there.

Great news is that the seedling tray little Sister gave me, some potting mix and the dodgy seed packets I've been carting around for over a year (half of them had expired!) came together in a small spasm of hope last Sunday week ago, and already many of the little blighters have decided to give life a chance. It's exciting watching the tiny stems pushing the husk of the seed casing up through the soil and into the air to wave their first two triumphant leaves in the air - proud and free!! How marvellous! The pumpkins have taken a strong early lead, and look to need planting out this weekend - what am i going to do with them now? I hadn't really thought that far ahead! The seed tray is great, I've never had one with such a good lid (I usually improvise and it becomes a bit touch and go) and the resulting moisture retention is fantastic. So far almost half of the seeds have sprouted, but some have longer lead times, so I'm not giving up yet. I did make a little map of what I put where (this seeding tray is massive, about 8 or 10 punnets!!) thank goodness (i did a little x-y axis charting hehehehhehehe) (seedling battleships!) but in true style, i'm not really certain where I put the map. I'm sure I'll find it by the weekend.

So that's fun.
I've got the banana lounge of my dreams - it's a plastic and aluminium folding number (also gratis from little Sister. She's very generous!)(actually she was going to put it into the tip! So I begged it off her) and it's had a few test runs and works *perfectly*. Still a bit cold to use at night, but has had some good workouts for weekend mornings and afternoons. I'm imagining the Stig laying on it holding an air-steering-wheel.

Speaking of the Stig, Audrey is really complaining about the cold mornings, and conks out on our short commute at the slightest pause (say, to change down for a corner). I'm being understanding, but the knob has come off the choke, and it's hurting my fingers to hold onto the thin little metal spike the knob was once mysteriously attached to. She started to shake this afternoon - a full body shake. That was pretty disconcerting. So not great there. Maybe a tune-up would help her? I wonder when I last sent her to the mechanics? I've been daydreaming about buying a muscle car, pimping it, and converting it to LPG and electric. My inner bogan and the inner hippy seeming to find common ground in an unusual forum. I'm not sure I'd ever put my money where my mouth is on that one, but a charger turned my head today, and I found myself admiring a well-kept and tight-arsed Datsun 120Y in cherry red in the parking lot today. Have I caught some kind of virus?

Also, the family obsession with Texas Hold-em continues to gather more momentum. Middle sister has, using the wonders of Ebay, sourced a 1000 piece set (easily enough for 8 of us to play) of poker chips, and now, the piece de resistance, the wild turkey poker table to do it all at! Oh the illicit pleasure of well laid felt, the satisfying heft of weighted clay chips, the joy at a perfectly pitched deal. *sigh*.... It's not that I don't want to go out anymore, it's that the cards are calling. Can you hear their siren song taunting and lilting as we speak?

Papa Bear has his birthday on Friday, and I am trying to finish knitting the bedsocks he requested (one down, and one a quarter done) before the tournament on saturday. You might think, that, having been ill I would have been finishing knitting projects off at a cracking pace. Alas, my mental and physical capacities have been greatly diminished, and many nights I have simply dozed listening to music until it's late enough to take my final daily medicines and then go to bed! How exceedingly vexing. Even watching tv is too draining. Consequently, I have had a bit of tv detox (always a very good thing), heard a lot more of the recent piano competition than I thought humanly possible, and got my recipe scrapbook into much better order. Living it up :o)

There's been some changes at work, but I'm not quite up to that story just yet. I'm sure in another week my humour systems will be patched, refuelled and back on-line and I can share the highlights with you then.

Until then, and as way of parting, I say unto you: "Batman". That is all.

"Use Your Baby Bonus to Buy a Plasma!"*

I guess it had to happen at some point.
I can almost see the entire picture now, sometime in the future, in a cluster of plastic chairs filled with sullen, shifty people in dark colours, there I am. The recovering advertisers support group. The first step is to acknowledge you have a problem.

But that's the future. Right now, what I have is a sneaky addiction to learning about advertising. Oh sure, I learnt semiotics theory in uni (and used it in part to do a Nietzschean analysis of Batman), I've written academic essays on the portrayal of motherhood, I've skimmed through copy-writing books and screen writing books and watched the odd documentary here and there about design or typography. We've all been there ... it's recreational use only.

To state the obvious - the signal to noise ratio in modern life (even in a total backwater like Trash City) is horrendous. Thank-you Brain for filtering so much of it out. In the last week or so I have asked for the filters to ease back a little to I can see it all again, and it is everywhere. Really all over the place. Walls, Streets, rooms, flashing , bleating, radio - I don't even need to mention the TV do I?! Why do this to myself? Well, The Client wants a lot more advertising than they did when I started. Before, they just wanted some promotion, some press releases, some web copy. Nice, low key pull-stuff. Now, now they want branding and positionals and targeted ads and direct mailers that aren't letters. Shit that I, frankly, just don't understand and have spent some effort to avoid up to now.
Ok so the library card is getting a flogging, and I am learning some things including jargon. I have no qualms about learning jargon - I use it on the client whenever I feel the bullshit quotient needs adjusting. Jargon often means I can do the common-sense thing that I suggested in the first place, but the cool/official sounding jargon for it makes it all sound very upmarket and professional. So instead of sending a group a personalised letter, we will send them "A direct mail "feel good" response initiator to a targeted demographic utilising below-the-line best-practise." I'm clearly making stuff up there, and I'm laying it on as an example. Those of you reading with any background in actual marketing will know how that barely even makes sense. But wow! Can you believe how clients lap it up!? So jargon is a great tool when used sparingly/ lathered around like jelly.
It is slow-going to pick up how to critically read these things from a capitalist/product point of view rather than from my existing (almost second nature) dissident political POV. Perhaps that is what is addictive - this feeling of "insider secrets revealed!" One of the first books I read was written in about 1910 (I'm falling in love with ebooks too - another thing I never thought would happen!) and it is pretty much all still there, and in his intro he was "capturing these time-proven methods" etc. Hi-Larious!
Will I use this power for the greater good? Or will I, like the fuckarsebaby boomers, just sell out and get loads of cash and drive a Kompressor? oooh, a Kompressor. So sleek, so powerful....
NO! I work for an art gallery goddammit! I will lull stupid bogans into bringing their snot-nosed brats in for edifying art encounters! YES! And if it takes shouting FREE! in all the material, well so be it. I'm not above a gratuitous sausage sizzle either. Don't start me. I've sunk so low now that an alley cat would avoid eye contact.

* Actual sign seen in local TV retailing store

Not Quite Neighbourly

The "Cult Film" mini project for work is happening. It's not for ages yet, but you have to get things nailed-down (spontaneity is for artists, not galleries) in advance so promotion can be booked, and staff can get used to seeing it on the horizon. There's a little hiccup with one of the Councillors having booked one of the nights for some lame event where they hand out certificates to whoever turns up. Might not be able to get out of that .... have to see.

KS and I have been circling mentions in the local paper of "Bookmarks of Excellence" being given to children who do craft at the shopping centres during the school holidays. There's something basically wrong with telling a general population that they're 'excellent' all the time, that their city is the best, that they're 'leading the way'. It's delusional apart from anything else!

Rather than get caught up on the many "quirks" of Trash City, I want to tell you a little about my new stalker. Anna.
Anna is my new neighbour (replacing Merv who Mowed), and has been transplanted from an Eastern Bris suburb - so she's a long way from her friends. She's moved to Trash City because her dutiful daughter is concerned for her safety (and the DD's response time should there be an emergency) now that Anna is in her winter years. So she has some time on her hands. And windows. Time to look out of windows. And a front porch as most of the houses in our suburb do. A front porch (rather than a back one) to add to that sense of 'community' - where everyone can 'watch out for each other'. Literally.

She has had a very interesting life - being raised in China in a Russian school (so although she's Australian, she has a heavy Russian accent). She and her husband started their family overseas and there were a few stories about trains and border crossings with babies and bags going missing, and no food and so on which made for an astonishing 45 minutes listening. She has two cats and a dog just like Riley ("only she is proper breed!") called Poppy. She's kind, friendly and always up for a chat. ALWAYS UP FOR A CHAT.

I realised last night as she sprung upon me out of the dusk as I darted from my car to the front door and started relating the activities of Rumi during the day, and how her two cats responded to this, and how great it was that one of my new shrubs was flowering, and how I had been at work a long time today and how I must be tired and she should be going, except that it would be best for me if I cooked a big meal on sundays and froze it in portions and then i wouldn't have to cook each night, just heat up my meal and it's much better that way, which is how she does it, in an enamel pot, they're the best kind and I nodded and tried to smile and it dawned on me. I am just not made for this suburban life. I am a crap neighbour. I have no interest in who is doing what to who over in number 13, or what number 15 thinks of it, and is trying not to say, nor why number 12 has so many people living there, or what they think they're doing with that great big boat, nor why Mrs Number 18 was in hospital recently, or if the people at number 11 are still the same ones who had the big drug bust or are there new people there now.
I DON'T CARE.

I say g'day, I offer to bring bins in if people are going away, I'll swap cuttings or dog-sit. That's kind of it for me. I've expanded that to being the loose-dog-pound-ringer and I'm done. I didn't realise that a yard would come with such a high cost. I also thought that fences would absorb more sound. There you go - wrong again.

Quote of the Year: Economy

"The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment."

Things I've learnt in June 08*

1. Holes in gardening gloves make them redundant. Bite the bullet and chuck them out.
2. Dogs dislike the smell of nail varnish.
3. My snooze button only works for 45 minutes.
4. Ridley Scott is working on a new Sci Fi film. OMG.
5. I can knit a scarf or a beanie in a weekend - but not both.

6. Not many people hire out carnival/movie style popcorn machines.
7. Mum's homegrown mandarins taste brilliant.
8. Soy sauce stains books badly when it spills unnoticed in the carrybag.
9. There are people in the world who will wish you a "Happy New Year" today. And they are not joking or being ironic.
10. Taking photographs of objects is not as straightforward as it may initially seem.

11. Sometimes it is cheaper to buy the hardcover edition of an old book on Amazon. Go figure.
12. Imagining is a lot easier than creating.
13. Scones taste best fresh. Good jam will carry the day.
14. There is no satisfaction in being right about grim things.
15. The ancient Romans used to make a silica based concrete that modern science is now advocating we return to due to its much lower carbon footprint.

16. Reading a great work of literature in small blocks (of two and a bit pages) does not diminish its impact.
17. Hollywood does not, in the end, shy away from using images of a dead star to heavily promote a forthcoming film. Actually almost featuring them. Macabre.
18. Sometimes, people who write about art don't want you to understand what they're talking about. That would spoil the fun.
19. Being able to grow things is marvelous, and possibly a right that is under more threats than we feel comfortable acknowledging.
20. Being lonely every now and then isn't so bad.

*Some items re-learnt from previous years.

Can we find another Ace?

It's winter solstice time again. The mornings have been foggy on and off for the last two weeks - lending a slight air of mystery to our walks. It burns off by 8.30 and then the days have been largely clear and bright. I can hardly believe it's winter. The full moon is gorgeous in the bright nights and I'm looking forward to Spring when I'll have my outdoor-moon-chair set up. The yard is still not an enticing place to spend time, but it will get there eventually. Or I'll leave. You know how it goes. So for solstice tonight it's just some incense, a candle in the window, some pondering ont he cylces of our world and a good dinner.

Rumi the Giant Snow Cat has taken to eating Riley's dinner as well. Riley sits and looks on with a slightly sad face as if to say "If that's what you really want, I'm not going to stand in your way." Meanwhile, Rumi seems to be attempting to grow to rival Iorek Byrnison for the kingship of the Ice Bears, but somehow is unable to stand his ground against Tiger the three-legged tabby who's just moved in next door.

I have been forgetting things lately. I've found it difficult to connect the list of words I know I have somewhere in my head with the idea I'm trying to express. Also, just simple forgetting - leaving my lunch on the kitchen bench, completely erasing conversations, tasks that need doing, or things I intend to do. It's really confusing. The world has a different tone to it. I think I'm still remembering the important stuff - but who's to say?

Last night on the "7.30 Report" (go the ABC) there was a fairly sober interview with an Chappie about how the price of oil is just going to keep going up, and how urgent it is to start switching over to renewable resources and so on and so on. I sat on the couch, thinking how nearly everything in the house (and the house itself) is cheap-oil dependent. Me too. I'm cheap oil dependent, I think nearly all of us are. Anyway, I won't get onto this again, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned peak oil before, and immanent ecological downspin etc etc etc Al Gore etc etc etc Global Warming etc etc etc Carbon Footprint etc etc etc. It was just, to hear this step-by-step implications on the ABC and realise that these issues do still not have a mainstream understanding, was beyond sobering. It was shocking all over again. If Kerry O'Brien has to work that hard to get his head around it (or to feel confident that his audience has their head around it), and the pollies have gone back to ducking the issue, what hope do we really have? If we wait too late we won't even have the reserves to build the new infrastructure we need! Isn't anyone project managing this thing? There are critical paths people!

I'm not a big fan of humans generally. Obviously there are some stunning human achievements, but they just don't seem to make up for this greedy, self-destructive impulse that over-rides all in it's path. We could call it the Trump Factor. Like there's this idea in the back of people's minds that we've anthropomorphised "Mother Earth" into reality, and like all mothers we can either threaten her children or pay her off, and she'll back down. It's Trump Brinkmanship. we are going to fuck ourselves because we can't grasp the simple rules of the game, and we think that oceans of cash will sort it out.

*sigh*

Bloomsday

Well and it is Bloomsday again, and I'm reading my way through Ulysses. Not the first time I've started, but hopefully a finish this time. It is (for anyone who hasn't read it) a dense and rolling read with so many things going on that may (or more usually) may not make any sense. I'm not far in, but I'm already further than I've ever been (that's sounding very Star Trek, isn't it!?) and there's something alien and seductive about this work.
Here's the passage I'm up to:

"Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves."

It starts out like a normal paragraph, and then.... goes somewhere else altogether. I love it.
I remember the first year I discovered Bloomsday, and went to the reading at the Mitchell wing of the state library in Sydney. They had put a first edition of Ulysses in a glass case towards the front of the room, and to me that physical book was a miracle. It was a big moment to consider all the effort, all the writing, all the energy and attention and love and passion that had gone into every single stage of getting those words into that order (look at one of his manuscripts if you ever get a chance - it will rock your world) those pages typed up and the damn thing published, let alone all the way across the world to Sydney.
Forget the travails of Rowling - James Joyce couldn't get a publisher! In the end, Shakespeare and Co. in Paris printed 750 copies (in about 1922). What if there hadn't been anyone willing to risk the prudes, the nay-sayers, the economic uncertainty and publish it at all? But they did, and the world of human literature is richer for it. Is 'human literature' a tautology? At the moment I guess it is, but I'd like to think "not for long"!

Anyway, happy Bloomsday!
Yes! She cried, Yes!!

Quote of the Week: Sunsets

"Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunsets. Sunsets are quite old-fashioned. They belong to the time when Turner was the last note in art. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand, they go on."

Oscar Wilde
"The Decay of Lying"

Hollow Promises

This afternoon I found myself looking forward to grocery shopping. I had decided to go to the bigger store over the river which is set in a big complex thing rather than the normal strip of shops type place. You know the kind of place I mean, it's large enough to have 3 or 4 major traders and then a B-list string of food franchises and XXX "Specialty Stores". Lots of white lights rather than 'warm' lights. Why was I looking forward to it?
I don't know.
I hate the place.

The larger store stocks items I don't need very often and can't get at the normal store. It has a wider range of vegetables and cheeses, but is the same in every other regard - except for the tempting idea of neighbouring "specialty stores".

This is the pattern. I go, and wander for nearly an hour getting sore feet and a headache, not finding anything of a special nature. Instead I am shocked and awed by the physical and emotional parade of my fellow shoppers, I am numbed by the blandness on offer. This is not a particular insult to this town. I think it's fair to say that most if not all suburban shopping centers are like this. Middle-ness in essence.

The logic is that folk want roughly 20% of stuff 80% of the time. Think about groceries - bread and milk and potatoes every shop, but all those other 10 aisles .... well we pick and choose. I skip about a third of aisles every visit and probably you do too. Anyway, of that 20% ... most folk then have only one or two preferences.
Ice cream? "Sure!" Says most folks, then they split between Chocolate and Vanilla. There's the odd statistical anomaly who wants Strawberry, and then there's all those "special occasion" ice-creams, but for the bog-standard 4litre Ice Cream purchase (yes, I said 4L!) it's choc or vanilla. So extrapolate that out, and let the logic run for a while. No wonder there are people who just don't realise that you can get pistachio ice-cream, because even in an internationally award-winning mid-sized city with XXX specialty stores, there's not a one selling anything too far different from everything else everyone already has. They're offering hollow promises,

So to come back to where I started, I grocery shopped tonight with speed, precision and organisation (possibly the only realm of my life where I can muster all three skills in one place) and was in and out of there in 50 minutes (almost a personal best!). I looked in the windows of the stores as I walked briskly past them, and confirmed that I don't need any of that shit. I was grateful to be able to get the stuff I did need, but came home as quickly as possible to enjoy my time and thoughts (and maybe a little bit of ebay activity, where the 80/20 rule does not hold sway and the erratic and irrational have their power returned).

It was good to get out unscathed, but I am am not always this calm and controlled. I resent the foggy numbness that sometimes comes over me. I don't even have to be in the endless mall/centre for it to happen (so I can't blame the lights or the mirrors or that insidious fake-food smell that Subway pumps out) but when it does I become a wandering, impulse-shopping zombie. Something that works to snap me out of it, if I have any intelligence left flickering in my cranium, is to imagine the stare of withering derision that Henry Rollins would give me if he caught me doing this, and that sorts me out quick smart. Of course, Hank wouldn't know me from a baboon, but in some Jungian way I have taken all that I admire from him and Batman that possibly has a faint echo in myself and given it his face (the cowl was too hidden in the end for my own already hidden corners) so I can accord it some respect. Having said that if the chance to actually differentiate myself from a baboon in Henry Rollins' consciousness ever did present itself I would jump on him. I mean it, jump on it. The opportunity, I'd be all over it, not Henry. He's too big. Not that I'd try, you know, to literally *jump* on him, but, oh forget it. This is going from bad to worse.
I am so uncool. I'll just stop there.

Night Sweats

The last week or so I've been having night sweats.
In case you've gotten through life without experiencing this kind of thing, let me just say - it's unpleasant, but not dangerous. It's also kind of weird to suddenly have a haywire temperature regulation system that is haphazard in its activity. Just a bit unnerving.
Feeling a bit hypochondriac about it all, I thought I might see if it was related to the meds I'm on for the colitis (Dr Holt is always asking me about a string of side-effect symptoms), and whaddya know, loads of people get them, so I start reading one of the forum threads - where folks are trying to find correlations between their meds, the flare/remission, the intensity or onset of the sweats and like most human things - it's all over the shop. There's no single answer.

In a way, I did get an answer though.
He's a sample of the dozens of posts - this one by "BadGut" (the member names of these forums are brilliant) : 'When I first was diagnosed I suffered severe bed sweats at night - I used sleep on a towel and t-shirt which then I would have to get up 2-3x a night to change due to the wetness of it all. '
Wow. Other people wrote in too - changing PJs 3 times in a night, sleeping on towels, getting plastic sheets for the beds and so on. Mine are very mild in comparison! I am so lucky to have such manageable symptoms, and to effectively be in remission again. I have had flare-ups of only a month or two - some of these people have never had a remission! I really feel for them. I wouldn't be able to work, heck, I found it tough just to get my groceries done when I was in a full flare!

So basically I am now feeling very grateful today for what I do have, instead of worrying over what is really, in the scheme of things, some pretty inconsequential stuff. There was a great line in a film I watched on the weekend. It went something like "While you're trying so hard to claw back what you lost, a whole lot more can walk out the door". It was in No Country for Old Men - towards the end.

One of the forums suggested that as a first step to healing I should laugh more, everybody should laugh more. Excellent! How often does the Dr prescribe laughter?
I'm going to take the script to the Chemist and see if I can get some laughter in bulk. Can you get a discount if you show your medicare card?

Quote of the Week!

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.

Chinese Proverb.

Pitter Patter of Very Little Feet

I'm delighted to announce that we've had some new members of our family join us!
Last night, cogitating on the throne in the bathroom I idly mused "gosh, that bit of dust looks like a tiny weeny lizard!" dust balls being both common and dynamic in my my house.
When lo! the tiny weeny lizard did move in a non-dustball manner and prove itself to be a newly hatched Gekkonidae! Woot! I watched it for a moment, with a feeling of amazement - where could it have come from? Do they miraculously emerge from tiles if the grout is really festy? But, no, there in the corner was a weeny little egg cracked open. It was fresh! But then I was all concern - it was wading through dust and a long way from anything a baby gecko might be able to eat or drink. From a viewpoint about 3mm off the ground my bathroom would seem an immense, arid landscape, devoid of life.
So I tried to pick the little guy up. Hi-larious. My giant sausage fingers were skyscrapers and it just scampered between cracks I couldn't see. Eventually he ran up my hands and I tried to cup firmly but gently around a body like a cobweb and hustled him out to the parsley. At least there in the nascent herb patch he has some chance of getting insects and water before his egg sac juices run out. I went back to look at the egg ... and there was his little sister - even smaller, even fainter, even harder to pick up! But after a brief fumbling debacle which I fear tired her out considerably, she too was relocated to the teeming Gecko Forest that was once a simple parsley plant. I went back to the bathroom and made a slow scan just in case any other hatchlings were looking for a herbivore to bond with.
I feel that in some small way I have been able to demostrate my grief over the accident that took the life of my work-gecko some unknown time ago. I discovered his/her little body about 2 weeks ago, pinned by the bulky transformer on the powerboard that sits on my desk. The body was dessicated and I felt terrible that I didn't even know when it had happened. I took the little corpse home in a tissue and buried it in the yard.

This afternoon I'm thinking of the new babies and hope they're enjoying discovering the world in the leafy green shade of the herbs, and most importantly, that they don't draw the attention of the cat.

Weighed, Measured, Found Wanting.

I've been in lockdown at work for the last two days, being "developed". Not with the white room crew, but with the balloons and sausage-sizzle side of the operation.

The teams that really need some development don't put their hand up for this kind of thing normally, so in a way it's an easy win. You get to go 'off campus' and sit in a room with a flipcharts and coloured pens talking about how great it would be if we all respected and valued each others differences, share some dodgy catering and look out of a different window for a while. Normally I'd sign right up for a tour of duty, and in fact that's excatly what I did when this was mooted. It's been ages now since I left the corporate world, and I thought I'd get the same kick out of doing the quiz and getting the little graph or chart or colour code, or animal sign or whatever the fuck this one would be, as I used to. It was one of the perks of working in a giant company - the world-class quizzes. They end up being in the realm of 'emergency fallback conversation topics' just under Monty Python and just above root canal dentistry for being largely neutral politically and a pretty wide-reaching experience that people have an opinion about.

Somewhere along the line, something's changed for me. There was no frisson of discovery as I recieved my little animated trivial pursuit pie chart of rainbow colours. There was no passionate buy-in from me as the team decided that all their core values and beliefs stemmed from LOVE and made that the umbrella statement for the shared vision, with all the fabulous, feel good generic statements actively dot-pointed underneath. It was a pumping workshop, and where was I? It turned out that I was the one with the cynical eyebrow and the willingness to ask the facilitator "why?". I was the grouch, the fly in the ointment, the devil's advocate. I'm still not really sure why I wanted so badly to piss on that chirpy rainbow, but there was something deeply inauthentic about letting a room full of kids and newbies get carried away with such starry-eyed hope and glamour before we put in any groundwork and built up some (any?) skills about what it really takes to accomodate difference, handle the consequences of honesty or even simple communication such as confirming meanings people have for words that seem simple. Words like, say, "communication" which someone was adamantly arguing was sufficient to cover 'feedback', 'teamwork', 'honesty' AND (my favourite) 'measures'. Woah! Busy word!!

So did I do any good? I'm not sure that I did. It was my intention to influence the group to aim for something shared and incremental. My experience has taught me that small but real/concrete gains are far better than large, vague, hugely far reaching and perfectly unattainable gains (such as a mission statement including clauses along the lines of "create pride in the city") that half of the attendees never opened their mouths to support, didn't have an opportunity to contribute to in their "prefered mode of communication" (one of the major "linking skills" we did the quiz to uncover) nor in a way that reflected the established diversity of profile strengths. All I managed was to get a few people confused, one or two people nodding, a further reputation as a pointless ranter and condescendingly co-opted to 'write up the outcomes as you're so good with words'. Great. Oh yeah, and give myself a massive headache.

It reminds me of the only time I've done one of these and didn't get a little print-out with a chart. The pair of people running the session really knew their stuff, and they stood us up in the drab motel conference room and called out names, grouping people around the room in what seemed like no particular order. I was on my own. I didn't get to hear what anyone else was told. There was no high-fiving. I can barely remember what they said to me, because the surprise of the first part stopped too much of the rest of it sinking in.
"You are a fool." They told me. "You are the court jester, and you will tell the truth, and no one will listen."

I thought about that conversation this afternoon as I came home. I pondered the workshop, and the workplace I returned to. I thought about my own under-siege sense of joy and resiliance in the face of constant frustrations and limitations and I wished for two things. I wished I could remember anything else those people had said on that long afternoon all those years ago that might help me make more sense of what to do with my life now, and I wished that I'd lightly shrugged very early today and let it all go with a smile and a quip, had a bit of a caper and a jape, and not tried to take on the weight of the world, at least not without giving folks a joke to take the edge off.

One more thing I wish for. I wish that I hadn't read my little animated trivial pursuit pie chart of rainbow colours where it said "Creativity: 18%".

A bit of Rain

Oh what a miracle!
Water falls from the sky - freely
unwalled
unmeasured
untimed!

There's precious water sloshing
onto us, onto the ground
wasted on the bitumen
washing away the dust

Water wallowing
pooling and soaking

Oh it's a miracle!