Lick This

Do you think that irony is the dominant form of humour in Australia?

What prompts me in this musing is that as I sit here today in my McJob, doing the mail for solicitors and accountants, I notice that all our incoming letters this morning featured the "Eastern Brown Snake"  (which seems to be part of a poisonous animals series) whereas our outgoing letters are all stamped with "Kath & Kim".

Yes. That sums up a lot of businesses in this country.

Are Australia Post's design team constantly chuckling into their lattes? I think so. I know I am.

I've come over all AUSSIE all of a sudden, so Haveagoodweekend and here's to thrashing the Poms in the stick and ball.

Delivering the Goods

Sometimes, I don't need to rant about things.

 

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/11/delivering_the_goods.html

 

How charming, how literate, how I wish I'd said it....

 

 

Leaving it all Behind

Sometimes, humans get on overwhelming urge to walk into the promises of tomorrow ...

Half Way

Half way through NaNoWrMo thing.
Struggling.
Only 10 000 words. Feel creeping sense of failure, and light shame at being so far behind my golden ideal wordcount ... still, having fun, so all else can be forgiven.
Have had *very* bad experience with printer of book. She is a hag. perhaps will blog about it when pain has receeded.

In other news, have decided to move to the country for a while. Cop some 'organic hues', also, whilst free-forming in the park yesterday, managed to develop extended metaphor where cliterous = truffle. Was quite funny. Going to try and work it into the romance book. Still entertaining self...

It Had to Happen

From orbit, the Earth is a largely serene palette of organic hues. It used to be that the only man-made structure visible from space was the Great Wall. Well, times change don't they.

Using thousands of tiles, a fast food company have created what *they* are proud to call an "astrovertisement".

 

I am appalled. Utterly. Yet this is so bad, in such poor taste, that in a dark and sad way it has become hilarious. What an amazing waste of resources this amounts to. The thing is 8129m2. I'm pretty certain that must be at least 4 times larger than our local oval and park.

 

The president of the Junk Food Company adds insult to injury with this mangling of english, "the new advertising idea "contemporises" the brand".

Reality check anybody?

Actually, in a way we're lucky  -  they *could*  have claimed that it was "a contribution to re-balancing global climate warming, by increasing the albedo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo ) of Nevada".

 

My only real surprise is that it wasn't Virgin. Afterall, they have a product relevant to space, but as far as I'm aware, no JFC does... yet.

November always seems to bring change

Is there something in the water in November?

This is the time of year that always seems to bring the most energy, the most charge, and then... change! Maybe more elections and trials should be held in November (I know it clashes with the Cricket!). Perhaps it's just spring getting some momentum, and the sunlight perking up the endocrine systems or somesuch.

Mortals can't always double guess the gods!

 

Word count still not great, but less of an issue.

Week One: Reflections

Well, it's just gone one week in the Write a Novel in a Month gig, and how was the first week?

Devastating. Demoralising. Delirious and Addictive.

 

Strange things happened. Things like laughing out-loud during work when strange plot ideas come to me. Sitting, frozen, for over 20 minutes one night unable to make a single character move from the morass of ideas in my head onto the page. Writing a huge amount of any other thing *except* the novel/s (emails, particularly, but also journaling became very attractive). I have given up reading for this month in support of the writing, and it's confronting what a huge gap that's left. I've also gone cold-turkey on the nightly episodes of Blake's Seven.  That's left a lot of time for sitting in front of an unresponsive computer screen!

 

There's also been the bursts of creativity  and the joy in having a goal - which so easily feels like a purpose. Those cutsie little word count graphs on the profile page are cheering too. They leap so enthusiastically when you enter a new number! Then, there's the beautiful love that blossoms when a character starts to speak and act, and all I have to do, is get out of the way. Yeah - life is good!

 

I wish I could say that this has turned out to be a Walk in the Black Forrest, and that I am cruising on overdrive. That would be a fib, but oh - what a sweet daydream! That's the big leaning - how much fun I'm having being 'out and proud' with this program. They even gave us free tattoos. Genius!

 

OK, roll on week two! It's really turning into a no-lose proposition, even if I miss the stars, I could well make it to the moon!

 

oh, I'm having this *amazing dream* where

Bush gets *humiliated* in the polls, and basically looses power, and even Rubnub Rumsfeld becomes one of his own unknown unknowns, hahaha! then the big man in China goes, like, "we were wrong!" and lets googles run free all over the wild steppes and he goes around smashing all the coal power-plants, and planting flowers and maybe mulberry trees. Then, as the mulberrys start to bloom, all the little children cluster around and laugh, oh how we all laugh to see the sky clearing and the beautiful stars smilling down at us here in eden and Howard appears at the edge of the forrest and he's snorting and grunting, and slowly he turns into a hairy old boar, except that his tusks grow out *over*his*eyes* and his last act as a human is to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and then he's the pig, and the tusks keep growing!! Argh, and they pierce his own skull!! Arghh!! It's kinda getting scary coz there's blood, and even in his death throes Howard is grunting, but then Serenity powers down into the clearing, and Jayne is hanging off a rope and BAM he blows PIGHoward away with just one blast from Vera, and all the little children cheer! and we start a BBQ, and someone plays guitar and and and and it's really good and and, then I wake up.

 

ah well.

 

Still, it's good about Rumsfeld, and congrats to the Governator - he earnt this one.

Shame File

I don't often rant .... well at least not over email.

But today has *inspired* me to say just one thing.

That thing is "shame".

 

Humans, despite their smell, are precious miracles. Sometimes, it is easy to forget that. The people in the world who vow to serve and protect those precious miracles (such as clerics and politicians), seem to forget it most easily and quickly.

Here's two examples from today's rag - one from each direction:

one from the away team:

 

Jews and Muslims unite against gay rally
Tim Butcher in Jerusalem November 8, 2006
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/11/07/1162661683104.html
 

Great! How lovely for them that they've discovered a common bond in ignorance and bigotry.

 

 

and then one from the home team:

We'll help Indonesia go nuclear
Mark Forbes, Herald Correspondent in Jakarta  November 8, 2006
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/11/07/1162661684698.html

 

Gee, isn't that big of us. What a pack of arseholes, "We promise to look the other way while you perpetrate whatever human rights abuses you can think of, sell you dangerous materials, and make any other rules up as we go along, as we see fit. So help us God."

 

Shame, shame, shame.

Bilbo Was Onto Something

Putting one foot in front of the other really does lead to interesting places. Before you know it, you're down along a path and marvelling at mountains for the first time, or the ocean, or the architecture of the Elf, greed of dragons or sheer pig-headedness of politicians.
Sometimes scary in that sense.

This week I have been caught up in the amazing power of denial that the Australian PM maintains. Apparently, global warming is not really of concern to Australians. We have no interest in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol - especially not while China and India exist. Amazing. Hundreds of thousands of Australians walked in cities and towns all over the country on Saturday to show their concern in person, and it was not mentioned at all in our papers - except to say how great Cate Blanchette looked (picture). The London walk got a mention - literally, as a caption to a picture of someone in a polar bear suit.

Even the Hobbits recognised a Nazgul when it screamed through their town. If only we could set the Witch King onto Howard. I'm starting to think it will come to that. Probably in these days of economically rationalist outsourcing the Nazgul are probably keen for small contracts to supplement their week-on-week cashflow. I'll see if Bilbo has their email address ....

(ps. word count on novel/s still pitiful. Batman is turning out to be the Dark Horse, coming up from behind)

Day Two

Day two of my month of literary abandon, and I have exams! I burned-out last night after only about 1200 words and fell into my habitual repose on the couch - an episode of Blake 7. It should come with a warning. It's so very addictive. I'm certain it's the potent combination of beautiful BBC diction, and Avon in makeup.

However, I rally.
I go now to the shops (out of coffee and dog-food - says everything there is to know about my lifestyle) and from there it is onward and upward. I will simply push on. After class today, the evening stretches with promise. I got a snappy pep-talk from the site too - very cheering to know that there's 70 000 other people in the world who think that this is a fun thing to do with their time.
My Kinda People!

Write a Novel in a Month

It's that time of year again - November is (inter)National Write a Novel in a Month time.
Kewl.
I've chickened out enough times before that I'm gung-ho this year. There's some neat technical things that I'm trying to figure out so my blog will show my live word count. There's three of us so far - I'm hoping we'll get a few more signed up in our group. Of course, while I'm sitting reading the FAQ, my writing buddies are already plotting and sketching story arcs. Curse them!Curse their cornucopia of ideas and their willingness to stay up later than me!

Don't worry, I'm playing a long game on this one. I've got the stamina, I've got the staying power, I've got a commercial supply of coffee!!
BWAHAHAHAHAAAA
Jeeze - this is going to be more fun than Talk Like A Pirate Day!

The clock starts at one minute past midnight.
Gentlemen, sharpen your pencils...

Some Days are Diamonds

...and some days are stones.

Keep moving, no matter how slowly, and the earth turns under me bringing another breath, and then another, and slowly, before anyone has a chance to turn into a fossil, things have changed.

This is faith.

A Trade to Fall Back on

Today, with the sun blazing and the light, cool wind playing over skin, eyes, hair, the difficulties of winter are vanishing and it is once again natural and easy to feel the abundance of life. Spring is such a romantic, hazy time of ease that it's hard to imagine being cold and hungry. Today is so very lovely that I can barely bring myself to be sitting here with the machine rather than be out on the grass watching the treetops dance languidly.
Writing writing writing, the words flow on and form their own alliances and sometimes coalesce into jewels, even strings of gems and ropes of treasures. Oh yes, these moments are the the glory of living! But I am in here, the classroom, the buzzing of tired brains slowly filling up with gobbling jargon as a hedge against the winter. I am stuffing nuts into my mental cheeks, collecting knowledge and skills that I can sell later if need be in case those gems aren't fetching their value on the open market.

Life Lesson: Never Spend the Mystery Money

A few days ago, some mystery money inexplicably appeared in my account.

Where did it come from? How did the great money God choose me for this timely gift?

I had no answers...

I just couldn't figure it out, it didn't add up to what was owed to me and despite recently being broke enough to beg, I hadn't actually gone ahead and sent my bank details around with a dodgy scam letter. Let me tell you, I let this small windfall go straight to my head! I rang friends, gleefully clapped my hands together, immediately went on a small (but ultimately ill-advised) spending spree, and oh the joy of this unexpected bounty from the great digital ocean!!

 

Today the mystery resolved itself, sadly, into the mundane reality of a bounced rent payment.

Ahhh....

And a dishonour fee.....

Yes, and, you guessed it - a call from the Landlord's Watchdog about overdue and now late rent....

 

I wasn't laughing this morning, I can tell you. I'm still tired thinking about the number of phone calls it's going to take to sort out (I don't need to tell *you* there was no reason for it to be bounced - that goes without saying in a comic drama). It's funny, I've read those books on money, and none of them include this important tip: "Don't Spend the Mystery Money".

 

Maybe if I email this to Robert Kiyosaki, he can write a Rich Dad book on this topic and give me a finders fee - yeah, that's a great idea - that should almost cover the dishonour fee... yeah - I can feel it all starting to flow back my way!

Unputdownable: Cliches & Made-up Madness

Well I like some alliteration as much as the next punter, but oh how I yearn for an embargo on the pointless pun, the reliance on cliche and most of all, on marketing people being the source of so much of our visual and aural culture!
*sigh*
no really, this week I was lucky enough to go to one of the big publishing houses' annual Christmas preview. There's not really a lot of publishers in Australia and less and less of them are financially capable of throwing a bit of a booze around in a nice hotel so that booksellers and their crews know more about their books. In the logic of the market, it always seems to work out that the people with the blandest (sorry! "Most Popular") books have the most money - and consequently, one really doesn't need more information on those titles, but they're the ones who throw the parties.
John Grisham is publishing a new legal drama - well, who would have thought!? I wonder who'll buy that?
Someone's written a great book? Let's give it a cover image of some steps in Greece - that'll keep it in the not-too-hard basket!
Got a crime novel about a murder? Obviously it's a "quiet and picturesque place before the horror descends".

Sitting there, in the dimly lit room, watching the wanky powerpoint display, it struck me that this is what passes for the heart of publishing - and therefore for a big chunk of that most noble art - literature - yet what is being showcased other than the house red? Why it is "Marketeer". A strain of English that dulls and numbs as it chews up the words of glory in our language and once done, turns to the German style of kludging words together to get what they want. How many times does it take, being bludgeoned with another poster, blurb or presentation claiming something is "unputdownable", before we all just give in and accept that it will be in the next edition of the Macquarie and it's our generation who put it there?

I'd really rather hoped we might sort global warming.

Some gentle words from Osho

Thanks to Rob Brezsny (http://freewillastrology.com) for these today

"Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you'll come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You'll see that no one else other than you was responsible. The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival."
~ Osho

West Side of the Room

As the new kid in this McJob, I get the desk with the only phone that rings (and ring it does). Actually in this place everyone's pretty nice... the difficulty is in staying awake as I'm nestled against the western wall and the heat radiating out from it by 3pm hits that internal hardwired snooze button.
Each week as I make another mistake I learn one more of the labyrinthine kinks in this place's filing system. "No no no, only P/L files are red!" and so we go...

Isn't that just how life works - we all want to be the one to see the big picture and to really *get it* and so often, the difference between having a good day and a bad day can be how one 2 minute phone call goes or the milk being off in your first coffee. We're more vulnerable than we like to imagine. On the other hand, it's also easier to spread a little bit of light than you might think. Just as things seemed relentless in their dullness, the Cardigan Man gave me a slice of mudcake.
Now that's awesome.