... miracle

5 "Look among the nations, and see;
wonder and be astounded.
For I am doing a work in your days
that you would not believe if told.
6 For behold, I am raising up Dr Maya Vale,
that strange and lackadaisical fellow,
to march over the breadth of New South Wales,
to find a dwelling in Victoria to call his own.
7 He is dreadful and fearful;
his raucous laughter and twisted humour go forth from themselves.
8 He has no horse, is no swifter than sloths;
less fierce than the overfed koala;
he goes by train, when they actually go.
He travels by bus also;
for one, or two, will take him where he goes.
9 They come every fifteen minutes or so,
all their windshields forward.
No passenger will sit beside him; he rides alone.
10 At ticket inspectors he scoffs,
and at mortgages he laughs.
He laughs at every fortress,
for the repayments and interest rates pile up.
11 Then he moves onto a new lease,
a untrammelled man, whose comfort he carries with himself!"

i don't know. i'm feeling a bit silly tonight. the actual passage comes from habakkuk and is about how God is going to judge his wayward people. he is going to judge them by using the world superpower of the time to do his bidding, but they will take credit for it and he will see them fall for not giving the credit to him, God, who gave his own people into their hands.

i've been reading chronicles on the train on my way to work from the city. 1 chronicles is pretty tough reading and if you ever get picked for a genealogy reading at Christmas, don't complain. rejoice, with great gladness! why? because they're a picnic compared to the genealogies in chronicles. i'm praying hard that God will teach me something from this, but i'm confident that (if nothing else) i will have gained a greater familiarity with scriptures that old testament prophecies tie in with - a good thing, given i'll be helping lead study groups over the summer doing surveys of the old testament. i'd like to read esther, ezra, nehemiah again as well, and maybe daniel, ezekiel, isaiah, jeremiah... (i've studied the last two before, a while ago now, and ezra and nehemiah more recently in church.)

... tired

i've been asked a few times when i'm going to post next, and now i'm posting. i'm tired. it's been a really long few weeks - work's really busy with all the stuff that's going on there, getting ready to move to melbourne is taking a surprising psychological toll, and heading into Christmas means getting ready for summer camp which brings with it its own pressures and deadlines.

one of the things i did was go to see a movie the other week. the movie was called trust the man, starring julianne moore, david duchovny, billy crudup, and maggie gyllenhaal. i quite enjoyed it, even though it was rather more of a chick-flick than i was allowed to expect. in the words of a good friend, "it's about how men fail women and get away with it". i suppose that's one way of looking at it. i give it two and a half stars.

hmmm, yes well, that's about it from me for now. more later, maybe. i wan't to try to get into the one-post-a-day thing i did a little while ago. not sure when i'll do it though - evenings i'm barely compos mentis enough to do more than watch tv... which does little for the diagnosis of compos mentis!

... books, film, and a disturbing thought

"as i was travelling to st ives..."

actually, i wasn't. i was travelling home, my seventy-odd minute commute from work suburb to home suburb. i changed trains more than i needed to, and one of my change point was at town hall. i was waiting for my connecting train (due in about ten minute) and i saw a woman reading mona lisa overdrive (by william gibson) in the exact same edition as i have. gibson's novels were one of the reasons i wanted to become a writer; they encouraged my experiments in role-playing games; they were a complete world of escape - they are a complete world of escape. a future (in the cyberspace novels and short stories, at least) extrapolated from a past that didn't quite happen, where the usa had kind of ceased to exist and the soviet bloc had managed to survive the cold war. (gibson ruminates on this in an introduction to an anniversary edition of neuromancer.) i love seeing people read gibson's work, and mona lisa overdrive was a great way to end the cyberspace trilogy. go check him out for yourself.

as i was nearing my destination, a woman sitting across the vestibule from me was reading a book by ann patchett called truth and beauty. it seemed an interesting enough title to me, although what actually caught my attention was a brief smile as our eyes met when i was looking around the train. in sydney, i've noticed, not many people are willing to lock eyes with strangers much less start conversations with them - melbourne's seeming friendliness from my point of view stems in large part from a very positive experience of this kind of thing during my stays in melbourne.

stopping off at a couple of friends' house on my way home, i borrowed one of the books on the bookshelf there: prozac nation. i finally finished dan brown's digital fortress today, and read deception point last week. neither of them filled me with much excitement and to be honest i found them to be a bit east to guess what was going to happen. matthew reilly without the excitement.

i watched a movie tonight called mozart and the whale. the characters are mostly people with a variety of mental illnesses and disorders, and the leads (played very well by radha mitchell and josh hartnett) both have asperger's syndrome. i found myself sympathising with the characters a little too much for comfort.

it made me revisit a recurring... nightmare (?daymare?) where i find that everything i think i know is true turns out to be a hallucination. the kind of solipsistic dystopia the philip k. dick wrote so compellingly, where i wake up on day and find out that all the people i know don't know me at all, have never met me, call and have me arrested. all the phone numbers i have in my phone are disconnected, all the addresses wrong, all the photographs someone else's. a more horrific version of this is that i don't know that i'm crazy; like someone with the kind of aphasia (a kind of brain trauma, i think) that sees them speak volubly, not realising that between their brain forming the words and their mouth speaking them a disconnect has occurred and they have become completely unintelligible to anyone listening to them, i don't know that i'm not intereacting correctly with the world - like the tarot deck's fool, walking along the cliff's edge, utterly insouciant or unknowing of the danger nearby...

... inspired?

a list after a recent post by the always delightful prue...

1. favourite beatles song: when i'm sixty-four
2. favourite rolling stones song: paint it black
3. favourite doors song: love her madly
4. favourite bob dylan song: hurricane
5. favourite led zeppelin song: stairway to heaven
6. favourite tv theme song: coupling
7. favourite prince song: kiss
8. favourite madonna song: live to tell
9. favourite michael jackson song: billie jean
10. favourite queen song: who wants to live forever / i'm in love with my car
11. favourite motorhead song: ace of spades
12. favourite ozzy song: n/a
13. favourite public enemy song: n/a
14. favourite song from a cartoon: oh susanna (from any warner bros cartoon)
15. favourite bruce springsteen song: i’m on fire / born to run
16. favourite depeche mode song: n/a
17. favourite cure song: love cats
18. favourite song that most of your friends haven’t heard: 100 games of solitaire - concrete blonde
19. favourite rem song: everybody hurts
20. favourite beastie boys song: (you gotta) fight for your right to party
21. favourite clash song: n/a
22. favourite police song: every breath you take
23. favourite eurythmics song: who's that girl?
24. favourite beach boys song: god only knows
25. favourite cyndi lauper song: she-bop
26. favourite song from a movie: the time warp / sweet transvestite (the rocky horror picture show)
27. favourite duran duran song: view to a kill
28. favourite peter tosh song: n/a - who????
29. favourite johnny cash song: i walk the line / don't take your guns to town
30. favourite song from an 80’s one hit wonder: video killed the radio star - the buggles / mickey - tony basil
31. favourite song from a video game: theme music for galaga
32. favourite kinks song: lola
33. favourite genesis song: i can’t dance
34. favourite thin lizzy song: boys are back in town
35. favourite inxs song: just keep walking / falling down the mountain / anything from "kick"
36. favourite weird al song: smells like nirvana / pretty fly for a rabbi
37. favourite peter gabriel song: sledgehammer
38. favourite john lennon song: ewwww... n/a
39. favourite pink floyd song: brick in the wall
40. favourite cover song: stairway to heaven, covered by the doug anthony all-stars and barry crocker
41. favourite white stripes song: n/a
42. favourite dance song: re-jigged 80s stuff usually does it for me... not that i actually dance :)
43. favourite u2 song: all i want is you
44. favourite song from an actor turned musician: confide in me - kylie minogue
45. favourite disco song: ymca - the village people
46. favourite power ballad: love bites - def leppard
47. favourite guns n’ roses song: welcome to the jungle
48. favourite the who song: pinball wizard
49. favourite elton john song: crocodile rock
50. favourite song, period: probably a love song or something sappy... we learned to sing "touch the wind" in 3rd grade and the few lines i remember still make my eyes tear up
51. favourite ryan adams song: n/a
52. favourite green day song: good riddance (time of your life)
53. favourite alanis morrissette song: your house
54. favourite jamiroquai song: virtual insanity (is that the track name?)
55. favourite foo fighters song: monkey wrench
56. favourite david bowie song: ground control to major tom
57. favourite metallica song: nothing else matters, and anything on "rise the lightning" and "master of puppets"
58. favourite jeff buckley song: lilac wine
59. favourite pearl jam song: n/a
60. favourite grateful dead song: n/a
61. favourite def leppard song: let's get rocked
62. favourite dixie chicks song: changes
63: favourite cowboy junkies song: n/a
64. favourite james brown song: i got you (i feel good)
65. favourite barenaked ladies song: one week
66. favourite creedence clearwater revival song: down on the corner
67. favourite garth brooks song: n/a
68: favourite chuck berry song: you never can tell
69: favourite willie nelson song: on the road again
70. favourite tom petty: n/a
71. favourite van halen song: jump
72. favourite old school soul song: i gotcha
73. favourite song that totally kicks righteous ass: love shack - the b-52s
74: favourite song of yours that everyone else hates: sweet transvestite - the rocky horror picture show
75: favourite zz top song: legs
76: favourite ac/dc song: thunderstruck
77. favourite blondie song: heart of glass
78. favourite bob marley song: buffalo soldier
79. favourite violent femmes song: the country death song
80. favourite alice in chains song: n/a
81. favourite wallflowers song: n/a
82. favourite james taylor song: n/a
83. favourite counting crows song: n/a
84. favourite blues traveler song: n/a
85. favourite drinking song: anything you can karaoke to
86. favourite hendrix song: all along the watchtower
87. favourite break-up song: simple twist of fate - concrete blonde
88. favourite allman brothers song: n/a
89. favourite rusted root song: n/a
90. favourite dave matthews band song:n/a
91. favourite elvis costello song: she
92. favourite beck song: n/a
93. favourite muse song: n/a
94. favourite radiohead song: creep
95. favourite stone temple pilots song: the big empty
96. favourite the eagles song: new kid in town
97. favourite janis joplin song: mercedes benz
98. favourite coldplay song: n/a
98. favourite soundgarden song: black hole sun
99. favourite 70s song: dancing queen - abba / bohemian rhapsody - queen / heaps of karaoke tunes!
100. favourite joan osborne song: dracula moon