... only nine more sleeps to go!

it's down to single-digits in terms of sleeps and i'm fairly excited. today i booked my accommodation in astoria (oregon) and in a moment of awesome synchronicity i also bought the goonies on dvd. i'm absolutely going to watch it before i go. i think last time i watched kindergarten cop and on my last trip i also had my picture taken in front of "astoria elementary school" (actually john jacob astor elementary school). i also booked my bus ticket from portland to astoria, so i have effectively locked in my first sixteen days of my holiday. yay.

all the excitement has, i fear, taken the edge off my preparation for my small group bible study. it's very difficult to focus on planning a study - especially using my computer to do it - when with a couple of clicks i could be looking at the next place i'm looking at travelling to. argh! so, i think i'm going to go have a quick shower, reboot my brain, and knuckle down. small group may not be until thursday night and i think have a pretty good grasp of the material but i don't want to be building with straw and sticks when i could be building with gold and silver... so to speak.

if you're so inclined, please keep praying for me, that i'll keep focussed on the things i'm meant to be doing now and not dreaming of the things i'm hoping i'll be doing in a couple of weeks' time.

... getting psyched!

it's perhaps a little premature to get all Christmas-y about things (even though today there's only five more months until Christmas!) but it feels a bit like it for me: ten more sleeps until i head overseas on my next holiday.

i'm pretty excited, especially since this holiday might not have happened at all, except for some divine expediting of my tax refund. this was the first year i've used e-tax online and it worked a treat. not difficult to use at all and since (despite the fact i do have a couple of computers and an ipod and whatnot around the house, i am something of a luddite) i'm particularly leery of putting a lot of confidential private data out into the ether, i felt a bit audacious using e-tax. this from the man who still has every tax pack he ever used to submit his income tax.

in any case, i have my tickets and travel insurance sorted out, my first lot of accommodation booked and the rest pretty much lined up too. i had been keen to re-visit astoria but their bicentennial celebrations seem to be leaving the place pretty much booked out for the weekend i'd planned on being there. not all that surprising, i suppose, given that it's a concert weekend. meh.

once i've dashed this off, i'll be re-evaluating my travelling itinerary and trying to contact 3m (makers of post-its and micropore surgical tape (i think)) about seeing if they have some kind of public showcase of their history and whatnot. i've been selling stationery now for over seventeen years and much of that stationery sold has been branded with the 3m logo. i'd love to be able to see where it was born. i'm not a motorcyclist and as interesting as the home of harley-davidson motorcycles might be, i'd rather visit the 3m factory!

... long way round

if you know me at all, you'll probably know that i'm not exactly my own biggest fan. over the past week or so i've had reason to think a little bit about this, think about who i am and where i've come from and where i'm going with my life. hardly the first time i've engaged in this kind of serious navel-gazing and i'm sure it won't be the last but each time i do, i find that i'm bringing a slightly different perspective. this is not a bad thing.

i firmly believe that when i became a Christian, the circumstances were such that God had allowed me to paint myself into a corner that i couldn't get myself out of. i'm fine with that - God in his sovereignty made room for me in my brokenness to pursue a lifepath to its particular conclusion. i often joke that if i weren't a Christian i might be an international assassin or some such. i have some pretty firm ideas about what i think is acceptable and what isn't. if i weren't a Christian, i think i'd be tempted to believe that that would be reason enough to start cleaning up the world... and i know i'm not the only person who thinks that.

the truth is, though, that if i weren't a Christian, i wouldn't be here. period. the day i became a Christian, i faked a headache and got out of school so i could stay at home. i spent a bunch of time in the morning going over a heap of stuff i'd been writing in the previous months, destroying some things and collating others. i ran a bath.

that i let the bath grow cold and had to top it up with hot water several times simply underlined to me what a failure, what a waste of space - and water, it proved - and essentially what an oxygen-thief i was. i was bitterly unhappy with who i was and where i was and where i wanted to go but could see no way of getting to. it was such a long-arse time ago that looking back at it now, details are becoming sketchy and are being filled in by the story i've been telling myself about it all these years.

i remember feeling powerless. i remember hoping that maybe it was what it felt like to be dead because i honestly felt like i had hit rock bottom. i felt unloved by my family and rejected by my friends, like an alien in the community in which i lived and couldn't imagine feeling any different anywhere else. i didn't want to be dead - i most earnestly wished never to have been born in the first place.

thing is, i had been born. i knew that there must have been a reason for that and i didn't think it was so i could be pishing my last in a bathtub. God had worked his way into my life in a variety of ways over the years: scripture classes in primary school, sunday school (after which my sister and i would have a weekly ice-cream), friday night youth group (that new friends at my new high school used to go to and turned out to be at where i used to go to sunday school) and through some relatives in my extended family who were varying flavours of Christian. feeling like i had exhausted all other avenues, i could only conclude that God had a reason for me to be born.

now if there had been a hand suddenly appear and write on the fibro of the bathroom wall, "you are loved", i probably wouldn't be writing this now because an experience like that would have surely burned into my mind, my heart, my soul, the truth of it. sitting where i am now, i know that that's probably not true either - people have an unerringly erroneous ability to ignore God in the face of overwhelming evidence and after almost twenty-one years as a Christian i can firmly say that i am no different.

to my bitter shame i can admit that i have wilfully ignored God, probably more since i became a Christian than before. more, since i knew God more intimately after i became a Christian than i did before. it's hard to deliberately ignore a person you don't know. there are plenty of people in the world that i don't have to put any effort at all into not thinking about because i have no memory or experience of knowing them.

that's not the case with God. i know God. he knows me, intimately. he watched me being cooked, he saw me born by c-section as a breach (or is it breech?) baby, he saw me grow up. he knew the struggles i had before i became a Christian and he knows the struggles i continue to have despite being - or maybe because i am - a Christian.

i'm hopeless with money. i'm a spendthrift who feels guilty about it but never seems to change his ways. i swear way more in my head than i do with my mouth, although that wasn't always the case. i'm thoughtless, inconsiderate and cold sometimes. i struggle with sex, less than i used to but more than i would ever wish on another person. i eat too much and i don't exercise enough. i don't read my Bible enough and i've never been good at praying one-on-one with God. there are a whole raft of thing - from fashion to facial hair, vacation destinations to political preferences - that i have no opinion on and mildly resent feeling expected to. i'm quite content to not drive, aside from feeling that that choice (among several) mark me as somehow unaustralian and irresponsible.

despite all this, i believe that i am a better man now than i have ever been. every day i sense that God has changed me into someone who more and more resembles Jesus Christ. (and i'm not talking about my beard.) every day i feel more confident that when the time comes for all of my deeds and misdeeds to be read out from the book of my life before the judgement seat of God, they will be forgiven and passed over by a Father who is only waiting for the procedure to be over before he hugs me to himself and dries the last tears that will ever fall from my eyes and welcomes me home.

every day i understand better than ever that my relationship with God is founded on nothing that i have done but on everything that he has done for me through Jesus; that he strengthens me from within through the Holy Spirit; that he teaches me and talks with me through the Bible and prayer and the created world around me and through the brothers and sisters he has surrounded me with in the church.

i am here. this is now. and i have an opportunity in front of me that i haven't had for a long time, that requires selflessness and vulnerability and patience. i want to take hold with both hands and not let go, not because it's been a long time and not for any other reason, really, not really.

i want to because i believe that God has his hand in this too. that for all that it feels awkward or strange or new, it feels good and right and worth everything i believe it should be. how often i've prayed to God that he would show me a clear path for where he wants me to go - now it seems he has, i'm praying that i'll honour him in how i walk it - how we walk it together.

... what i would have posted on the age website if the "captcha" worked...

i spent some time composing this, in response to this theft-of-life of an article, brought to my attention by my housemate...

It’s hard to think of anything to write here that hasn’t been said already. Should I perhaps suggest something that’s completely over the top? A little context first...

Living in Sydney for 12 years, I grew used to buses travelling in threes, heat slowing trains (when they were running at all) and dwell times on platforms little changed between red-rattler single-deckers and Tangara double-deck carriages.

After moving to Melbourne in 2007, I find our trains, trams, and (yes!) even buses to be comfortable, reliable and convenient for almost all of my travel needs. I don’t even have a driver’s licence and rarely feel the worse for my choice.

It vexes me that it’s so hard for passengers to move out of doorways on trains and trams; why drivers struggle with slowing beside a slowing tram and stopping beside a stopping tram; why it’s so hard to have your Metcard or myki ready BEFORE you need it, especially if you’ve been waiting for longer than a minute; why school students sit while adults stand; why men remain seated while women stand (call it sexism or chivalry, I don’t care); why the able-bodied will not give up their seats for the elderly, the infirm, or expecting mothers. The social good manners that I was raised with (not so long ago - I’m only 36 now!) seem to have gone out of fashion.

So, some over-the-top suggestions then? Let passengers who actually validate their tickets kick in the shins anyone who doesn’t. Fine parents whose students don’t validate their tickets or give up their seats to adults. Make the penalty for fare evasion compulsory donation of blood to the state’s blood banks. Maybe repeat offenders could donate bone marrow.

Stop whinging. This is me.

i don't know why i'm surprised. it's always been easier to curse the darkness than to light a candle.

as much as it might be entertaining for five minutes to have everyone who doesn't validate their ticket on the tram kicked in the shins by everyone who does, it's not the answer.

the problem is that people are selfish. they're selfish because they're sinful. they're sinful because they're born cut off from God. even after you turn away from a life without God and earnestly do your best to live a life worthy of the calling you have received, that brokenness still impacts your life. amongst many other things, it means i still want to kick people in the shins when i think their behaviour merits it.

if you're inclined, please pray for me in this regard. i will do my best to remember to thank you, when we meet in heaven.

... who knows the day or the hour?

well, for the big thing, no-one knows. for this thing, though, abbasolutely. (insofar as a man makes a plan but the Lord directs his steps...)

the portland zine symposium now has dates, which is great because the thing that has chiefly inhibited my planning for next united states trip has been not knowing when they would be. august 6 and 7. i didn't see information on where it's being held but i can only assume at this point that they're going to use the same place as last year. maybe. who can say?

the volume of my writing has really gone down the toilet this last year and while i may have a million ideas for zines (or other stuff) it seems very rare that any of them actually get off the ground. i've been involved in some of the "target" zines co-ordinated through sticky and i've tried to get stuff together for nanowrimo and script frenzy (which i am doing this month, yay!) but i haven't actually done any new zines off my own bat.

i'm still reading plenty, though, and my plan is to do one zine a week starting this month. just mini - a8 size - with some kind of linked image on the back (if it's folded) or maybe with some crappy drawing of mine (if it's stapled). we'll see how we go.

dates for the portland zine symposium is, however, fairly exciting news for me. my next trip overseas beckons... hopefully!

... a taste of childhood dreams

this tv advert was... well, it encapsulates a lot of what i love most about my life. i like coca-cola, don't get me wrong, but what i loved most about this advert was the idea of a bunch of friends, gathered together around a meal and good music.

it looks pretty cheesey now and this youtube clip isn't the best quality but the ense of it is there. looking back at it now, i realise there's a large amount of hip-swinging that i didn't recall before watching this again. what i did remember very clearly was the spaghetti fanned out into the pot and everyone cooking together.

that's what was in my head. enjoy.

... an idea...

"I don't know what you're complaining about," she grumbled. "We took your car - "

"I'm not complaining. I'm angry. There's a difference, Karen." He felt as if the entire trip had been matched to a soundtrack of dropped plates in a kitchen, one fall after another, one spinning plate coming to a halt before a brief respite - and the next crash.

"Then I don't know why you're angry."

Dean ground his teeth. "You don't want to know." Just let it go, he thought.

Karen looked out the window at the damp street. Shops on both sides were closed, excepting the odd bottle shop or pizza place. She turned and stared at the side of his face, the slight tick of his jaw muscle working silently as he focussed on the tram in front of them.

Dean could almost sense her about to say something, like bread about to pop out of a toaster. traffic lights ahead, the tram slowing down; Dean shifted gears and slid sideways into the left-hand lane. If he was quick, he could pass before -

"I just - "

"DAMN IT!" Dean slapped the wheel as he automatically slowed at the sound of her voice. He could hear the bell of the tram sounding, saw the doors opening as he moved past, almost saw the face, eyes narrowed angrily, another, eyes wide in shock.

Karen yelped in surprise and shrank back into her seat.

"Can you not just let it go?" Dean growled. "I obviously don't want to talk about it, not while I'm - "

The engine abruptly died, windscreen wipers stopped in the middle of their paths across the glass.

"What the hell is this?" Dean wondered aloud. Karen turned in her seat to look through the rear windscreen, while Dean checked his mirrors. The car was losing momentum: he guided it gradually to the kerb, then braked to a halt. He put the gear into neutral and turned the ignition - silence.

"Shit." Karen was silent, eyes dumbly following the tram as it passed them. Dean unbuckled his belt and popped the bonnet. "I'll be right back." As if knowing he had no umbrella, the rain began to fall more heavily, drumming on the roof.

Dean opened the hood of the car and disappeared from view, then Karen felt a thud as if he'd fallen into the engine. Karen opened the door and raised her voice over the rain.

"Dean! What are you doing?"

She heard a grunt in reply and nothing else. Then the car seemed to shift, as if someone heavy had scooted across the back seat from one side to the other.

"Dean..."

She opened the door, then leaned back and pulled the keys from the steering column, not wanting to accidentally get locked out. She stepped up and out into the rain. It felt like icy needles and she decided to leave the door open instead.

Cars passed and it was with a sudden sense of dread that she stepped past the edge of the car door.

"Dean - " Karen yelped as she saw him lying headfirst in the space under the bonnet. It looked darker, almost... oily -

- and then the darkness moved.

Karen shrieked but the sound was lost as a tram on the other side of the road braked as it approached the traffic lights. She felt herself smacked in the face as if by a slab of meat, but it stuck to her. She realised sickeningly that there were some kind of hooks in her flesh, then she began to shriek again as she was yanked into the darkness under the bonnet of Dean's Commodore and into the smell of salt and seaweed and then she felt nothing more.

... it's out there...

i saw this somewhere and i couldn't keep a straight face the whole time - this guy should be releasing a dvd or something!

... nanowrimo 2.0 (for me, at least)

well, november begins tomorrow and so does my latest attempt to write a novel. i don't remember right this second where i found out about national novel writing month but ever since i've been planning and trying to come up with ideas that will take me over the 50,000-word mark by november 30. i guess we'll soon find out.

this year, if you're reading my blog, my challenge to you is to likewise take up the challenge. i know some of you who read this were creative writers in times past. if you can crank out 1700 words a day, you too can write a novel in november. the link is www.nanowrimo.org. last year i only managed a few thousand words - this year i plan to be a good deal more disciplined.

give it a try. if you manage 2,000 words a day you get to have a sabbath! and if this appeals but you don't think you can write a novel (and the theory behind nanowrimo is that everyone can write a novel - a good novel comes from the editing... maybe), try script frenzy - it's 152 days away (apparently) and requires 100 pages of script over the month of april. the script itself can be film, television, radio or graphic novel.

wish me luck - comments and text messages with script ideas are welcome and appreciated!

... oops...

well, it's been a little while, alas. just a short note to let anyone who might possibly be reading this blog that today (october 13) is international suit-up day. suggestions for how you might participate in the day include:

• wear a suit to university
  
• wear a suit to work
  
• wear a suit to hospital
  
• wear a suit to school
  
• buy a suit
  
• drink in a suit

my small group at church is going out for dinner tonight and i know there is at least one woman in the group who, instead of "rocking up and frocking up" is actually going to suit-up for the event!

... ready for boarding

alas, my plane is not. i'm waiting at the domestic terminal at tullamarine for my flight to sydney. i played raiden ii (classic vertical-scrolling airplane fighting game) and realised i'm very out of practice. actually, i rather hope i'm just out of practice - i'd hate to think that my hand-eye co-ordination is decaying so badly!

the gate lounges are very clean but a bit spartan. i don't think i've ever really noticed that before. after having spent several hours wandering (pleasantly) around san francisco airport, my expectations of what a good gate terminal should be like have risen - perhaps unrealistically. given melbourne is meant to be such an artistic and cultural mecca in australia, it seems a shame that there's no art displays to speak of around the departures terminal. when i was in s.f., there were a series of display plinths along the centre of the corridors showing crockery (i know, a little boring, but...) from different eras in post wwi american history. i found it really interesting, especially the accompanying stories of the designers and their lives.

later...

arrived in sydney ahead of time if that can be believed. we left melbourne ten minutes late and actually hit the tarmac here in el norte just a little ahead of schedule, around 10h35. refreshing. so i'm sitting here, enjoying a gloria jeans coffee and whiling away some time while i wait for my pay to be processed by my bank. i'll buy my new myzone multi2 ticket (which i've just learned has replaced the previous travelpass series of tickets.

i find it a little ironic that i've just left melbourne, in a state that has wasted something to the tune of $1.2 billion, and touched down in sydney, where the nsw government has implemented a ticketing system that looks and smells a whole lot like the metcard system that myki is meant to be replacing. not that i'm complaining - i think it's about time that the private bus companies in sydney were finally brought into line with the rest of the transport system's ticketing - i just hope that when the time comes for government to waste the public's money on the public transport system here in new south wales, they'll throw money away on improving rail infrastructure and not one a white elephant smartcard that is more difficult to use than the system it's meant to supersede.

still what would i know? i don't drive or have a mortgage or a credit card, so why would my opinion count for anything? (oooh... bitter much? just a little bit, maybe...)

... not unhinged

having lunch and catching up on reading phd comics and in a strip about visiting comic-con for the first time jorge cham referenced another online comic called unshelved. i took some time to check it out and while it refers mainly to to the world of librarians, i think there are some gems in there for anyone who's worked in customer service. now that i've been working in a bookshop for a while, i'm enjoying rather a bit more of it than i would have before. delicious. you should check it out.

... visiting el norte

i have my flights booked - 09h15 melbourne to sydney on the 5th, 21h15 sydney to melbourne on the 8th. i even worked it out that i'll have clean work clothes for the monday and tuesday after i get home that i will have washed on the tuesday night before i leave! (bonuses to being a creature of habit...)

i'm looking forward to catching up with people in sydney while i'm there, as well as kicking back and relaxing a little. i'm especially looking forward to visiting mars hill cafe - it's been such a long time since i had my classic chicken quesadillas and dark horse coffee, i've almost forgotten what they taste like!

... some musings on wisdom

i've been thinking about wisdom a little bit lately. here are some quotes on wisdom that have stuck in my head:

wisdom for a man’s self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing. it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house, somewhat before it fall. it is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him. it is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour. but that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as cicero says of pompey) are sui amantes, sine rivali, are many times unfortunate. and whereas they have, all their times, sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end, themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of fortune, whose wings they thought, by their self-wisdom, to have pinioned.

- sir francis bacon, of wisdom fo a man’s self

in seeking wisdom then art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool.

- rabbi ben azai (aze)

the moving finger writes; and, having writ,
moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit
shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

- omar khayyam, the rubáiyát

the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction.

- the Bible (esv), proverbs 1:7

the words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one shepherd. my son, beware of anything beyond these. of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
the end of the matter; all has been heard. fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. for God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

- the Bible (esv), ecclesiates 12:11-14

... in recent news...

there's been a few things happening, so this is kind of a catch-up entry: there'll be more to follow of other musings and i may even finally start posting on my movie review blog. don't get too excited - i say may - we'll see what happens.

work continues well. i enjoy my job and work with good people and continue to be able to say that i have fallen on my feet and no mistake. i am reading quite a bit - i just finished john birmingham's new book, after america, and am currently working my way through a book slated for release in the coming months. i've not long since finished a couple of bill brysons - the lost continent and a walk in the woods - and i'm also reading all gone to look for america (peter millar), intercessory prayer (dutch sheets) and thriving youth ministry in smaller churches (rick chromey and stephanie caro). there's quite a bit on the go, as i indicated, but i'm enjoying the richness and variety available. my favourite book of the last twelve months remains the brain that changes itself by norman doidge, m.d. - it's a brilliant book, electrifying in its ability to inspire hope in the face of tragedy and the excitement of possibility in the face of the apathy of assumption.

my sister was married recently. it was a great day and i'm very glad for her. i'm sorry - i didn't take photos - i'm simply hoping to try to acquire some of the myriad photos taken by others i know who were in attendance. i'm a pretty poor photographer anyway. my sister looked beautiful; my new brother-in-law, mon beauf, seemed pretty pleased with himself and my mum seemed wonderfully content with the day. i'm glad. i'm hoping to visit sydney for a few days to see one of my sisters in Christ get married. (my weddings-and-funerals suit is really getting a workout...) if you're in sydney and would like to catch up, please give me a bell. i hope to be in sydney for three, maybe four nights. we'll see how we go.

i've been struggling with a cold this last couple of weeks but hopefully it's on its way out and i'll be back to my usual self in short order.

... what the...?!

my yahoo id has vanished. i checked my email today fine, last time i checked was about 2-ish this afternoon at work and now it's as if i haven't had the same email address for, oh... i don't know... a very long time!!!

maybe i'll wake up in the morning and it will all be a dream.

... i really like this

i was put onto this by a friend. personally, i think that the papyrus font has been seriously abused in the video clip and i'm sad to see such a versatile and robust font treated so badly. like ms comic sans before it, papyrus seems to be going through a bit of... well, it would be the font-equivalent of radio over-play, like with teardrops by womack & womack (in its heyday) or love is all around by wet wet wet. on the other hand, i do like the font used in the slideshow...

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

... tweet?

it's only a very short post but i had to pass on a retort i read as a comment on a vlog on youtube.

a canadian viewer commented:

"oh were you making fun of canada?
i couldn't hear you over my health-care benefits."

pithy but, as the vlogger commented in return, "i put this in 'cause it was a good call... that would hurt me if i were american... that would, uh, that would hurt..."

good thing it's an australian vlog.

... this is so true!

i was going to simply past the url for this image into my post but it takes up way too much of the column-inches. i love piled higher and deeper and today's comic is no exception.

check it out.

... time marches on

well, nanowrimo was a fizzer as far as my writing is concerned but that's not entirely a bad thing - it got me thinking more about writing and what i want to do with it. one of my new year's resolutions is to write more, and write more frequently. we'll see how we go from there.

Christmas and new year's passed quick as a flash, it seemed. all through 2009 i was dumbfounded at how fast the year seemed to fly by and after a week into the new year, 2010 doesn't show much sign of being any different. i'm hoping to visit tasmania for a brief holiday this year, as well as doing some planning for a five-week trip to the united states in 2011. we'll see how we go from there.

i'm going to be updating my movie-viewing blog more frequently, too. we'll see how we go there. i've got to put my thoughts together after seeing avatar and sherlock holmes. i saw rocky horror on new year's eve and plan to do so again next nye - i'm told it's an annual event at the astor.

as an aside, i'm amazed by the international (read: some american responses) to the kfc advert featuring west indian cricket fans being quietened down by a bucket of kfc chicken. perhaps kfc might broaden their appeal by creating adverts featuring such colourful groups as: hip-hop fans; shire-dwellers; bogans; politicians...

yes, i'm a bit tired and cranky. please forgive me.