i've been taking salsa dancing lessons. don't get excited, thinking i'm going to burn up the dance floor at your next formal event - i'm looking at it more in terms of a growing experience. apparently the instructor believes that i have a good sense of rhythm and if i can relax more, my instincts for the mechanics of the movements will stand me in good stead learning the dance moves.
hmmm...
in other news, i see that bonds and king gee are moving 1800-odd jobs offshore. that, to me, in these hard economic times seems, on the one hand, to be shrewd business sense. on the other hand, it does seem to be the kind of business practice that will harm australia as a whole, certainly in the short term and probably in the long term.
call me crazy but putting almost two thousand people out of work must be tantamount to commercial terrorism, don't you think? if a drunk person were to drive their car into someone's house and in doing so caused a fire that burned the house down, wouldn't they be held accountable? so how can a business in cold, sober deliberation, effectively set a match to almost 2000 people's lives? not to mention families, their debt loads, other businesses that rely on their money earned being spent with them?
i've said it before and i'll say it again - this is what happens when accountability is shifted from the stakeholder to the shareholder.
here's an idea. turn businesses into co-operatives with a cap on the number of people involved. have the co-operatives organise into unions or whatever but keep the business decisions made by people actually involved in the businesses on a coal-face level.
how about this? make it the responsibility of corporations to find work for those workers who are being "let go" before they're fired, or made redundant, or whatever lame-ass phrase the business community is using to deflect from the fact that a person who has a job today won't have it tomorrow. say, "sure, move those 1800 positions from here in australia to overseas, that's fine, but find all those out-of-work people jobs first".
maybe this kind of labour externalisation could be called treason. it might be acting in the shareholders' best interests but it's hardly acting in australia's best interests...
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
... immoral?
in an offhand comment a couple of weeks ago in discussion with a work colleague about aspects of different faiths, i mentioned that one of the things i like about Christianity is that, in a sense, we not only get our cake but we can eat it too - and before we've had dinner! we are offered heaven on a stick and need do nothing before saying yes in order to receive it. (kind of true and kind of not, i know.) she remarked that she felt it was immoral.
it's a remark that's been bugging me a bit over the last few weeks while i've been trying to finish a zine about how i came to be a Christian. it's an aspect that i want to address in my zine, since it does form a part of my understanding of my salvation experience (if i can use the phrase), but every time i try to pin down what i think about it my word count blows out. i'm thinking maybe this would make a good issue #2...
that being said, i thought i'd voice a couple of things here and see if people had any thoughts.
i guess the thing that bothered me most is, in the absence of God, from where does a person's moral compass gain its direction? or, if the person does believe in God, or a god, then what do they believe God to be like and how does this, if at all, inform their own moral compass?
it seems to me that, absent God, there is no real need for a moral compass. one simply acts according to one's desires, weighing outcomes against risks and rewards, and considering the gains or shortfalls of long- or short-term investments in pastimes and relationships. if a person feels there is no God and they do not believe they will be caught and punished by authorities, then it truly is up to the whim of that person what they will do with their day - they might be a murderer or a meals-on-wheels driver for invalid shut-ins. they choose their own moral north.
social mores and norms vary with the group, obviously, but even if one does not consciously choose to adopt the moral north of their "developmental context" (shall we say), not consciously choosing an alternative may well yield the same result, albeit with less conviction of belief. however, in the absence of an unchanging moral north, immoral is merely a question of perspective. (see star wars - return of the jedi for more discussion on truth and disparate points of view.)
my faith in Christ is rooted in the Cross and in Jesus' resurrection from the dead. i take these as matters of historical fact, aside from their salvation-meaning for me and in the sweep of Bible history as a whole. that Jesus lived and was killed is corroborated by sources external to the Bible canon, with no vested interest in such corroboration and with far less reliable history/provenance of transmission from antiquity to now.
the Bible tells me that Jesus' death is a sacrifice that turns aside the burning anger of God towards me and directs it upon his innocent Son (mercy, where i do not get what i deserve) and that since i am now counted, according to what may be considered the legal salvation framework within which God deals with human beings, as entirely and completely innocent of any and all wrongdoing, i am accorded adoption as one of God's own children and entry into heaven and eternal life with God (grace, where i get what i do not deserve).
so, heaven is my cake and i can effectively eat of it immediately. there is, of course, a but.
if i claim to be a hawthorn football club fan but dress in essendon bombers red and black, go to training at windy hill and can sing every word to "see the bombers fly up!", people would be forgiven if they thought that i were simply saying one thing and doing another. likewise, if i become a Christian but make no change in the way i live my life, who can say if i'm a Christian at all?
i think that this is what was being thought of as immoral, this salvation-before-works mechanism, that is so alien to pretty much every other religion i've heard of. many seem to be variations on a theme: do this, do that, make enough converts, kill enough chickens, kill enough infidels, do enough good deeds and maybe you'll get into heaven.
maybe. there's no assurance that i can see. the idea popularised in movies like the siege, that islamist extremists believe there to be seventy virgins waiting for them in paradise after a successful suicide bombing attack, is something i don't know the truth of. i've not had any serious discussion about this kind of thing with any muslims. it is about as close to the tangible assurance that Christians are offered as i've seen or heard of anywhere else. the idea that annihilation is the best chance of escaping an endless cycle of reincarnation jells with me, since an eternity in hell and an eternity of reincarnating on earth might (tongue in cheek) not look terribly different.
so how much is enough? how good is good enough? and what yardstick is there to measure by? "i've never killed someone" holds little water if you've never actually wanted to and yet restrained yourself, but is the person who genuinely wants to kill somebody the kind of person you want to meet in heaven? this moral north is pretty wobbly, especially with a good so relative!
Christianity is a funny thing. it offers salvation at no cost to the consumer with a three and a half thousand year old manual on care and feeding of that salvation. God didn't say to the israelites in egypt, sacrifice ten thousand bulls and i'll get you out of there. nope. he said to pharaoh (the guy in power who'd enslaved the israelites), let my people go. once they were let go, then he told them what to do. he took them camping, fed them, their shoes never wore out! once they got to the promised land, conquering it was pretty easy - when they did it the way God said to do it. follow the manual because you have salvation, not in order to have it.
God loves human beings and God loves his creation. the Bible makes pretty clear throughout what it considers to be moral. basically, love God, love others. in many ways, to love is to serve, thus: serve God and serve others. loving someone doesn't necessarily mean agreeing with them, or letting them run riot, or letting them hurt themselves or ruin their life or the lives of people around them. restraining a child from running across a busy street might be a slam-dunk moral choice to protect the child - so why do we not automatically put convicted heroin addicts into that fast detox programme they have in israel, or bring that programme here? if market forces combine (if not conspire) to make medical care or pharmaceutical treatments expensive beyond the reach of people requiring those treatments, why should those forces be allowed to persist?
why should people starve or be homeless when there is anecdotal evidence aplenty, if not statistical proof, that the west produces more food than it can eat, and has unemployed people who could be employed building housing for those who have none?
when enough is as good as a feast, a few in this world stand on their right to keep the leftovers to themselves and despise their responsibility to feed those who have not eaten. this is what comes of having a moral compass that points due relative north.
i'm not perfect. i believe that i am being made perfect. the Bible says it and I believe it. what do you believe?
it's a remark that's been bugging me a bit over the last few weeks while i've been trying to finish a zine about how i came to be a Christian. it's an aspect that i want to address in my zine, since it does form a part of my understanding of my salvation experience (if i can use the phrase), but every time i try to pin down what i think about it my word count blows out. i'm thinking maybe this would make a good issue #2...
that being said, i thought i'd voice a couple of things here and see if people had any thoughts.
i guess the thing that bothered me most is, in the absence of God, from where does a person's moral compass gain its direction? or, if the person does believe in God, or a god, then what do they believe God to be like and how does this, if at all, inform their own moral compass?
it seems to me that, absent God, there is no real need for a moral compass. one simply acts according to one's desires, weighing outcomes against risks and rewards, and considering the gains or shortfalls of long- or short-term investments in pastimes and relationships. if a person feels there is no God and they do not believe they will be caught and punished by authorities, then it truly is up to the whim of that person what they will do with their day - they might be a murderer or a meals-on-wheels driver for invalid shut-ins. they choose their own moral north.
social mores and norms vary with the group, obviously, but even if one does not consciously choose to adopt the moral north of their "developmental context" (shall we say), not consciously choosing an alternative may well yield the same result, albeit with less conviction of belief. however, in the absence of an unchanging moral north, immoral is merely a question of perspective. (see star wars - return of the jedi for more discussion on truth and disparate points of view.)
my faith in Christ is rooted in the Cross and in Jesus' resurrection from the dead. i take these as matters of historical fact, aside from their salvation-meaning for me and in the sweep of Bible history as a whole. that Jesus lived and was killed is corroborated by sources external to the Bible canon, with no vested interest in such corroboration and with far less reliable history/provenance of transmission from antiquity to now.
the Bible tells me that Jesus' death is a sacrifice that turns aside the burning anger of God towards me and directs it upon his innocent Son (mercy, where i do not get what i deserve) and that since i am now counted, according to what may be considered the legal salvation framework within which God deals with human beings, as entirely and completely innocent of any and all wrongdoing, i am accorded adoption as one of God's own children and entry into heaven and eternal life with God (grace, where i get what i do not deserve).
so, heaven is my cake and i can effectively eat of it immediately. there is, of course, a but.
if i claim to be a hawthorn football club fan but dress in essendon bombers red and black, go to training at windy hill and can sing every word to "see the bombers fly up!", people would be forgiven if they thought that i were simply saying one thing and doing another. likewise, if i become a Christian but make no change in the way i live my life, who can say if i'm a Christian at all?
i think that this is what was being thought of as immoral, this salvation-before-works mechanism, that is so alien to pretty much every other religion i've heard of. many seem to be variations on a theme: do this, do that, make enough converts, kill enough chickens, kill enough infidels, do enough good deeds and maybe you'll get into heaven.
maybe. there's no assurance that i can see. the idea popularised in movies like the siege, that islamist extremists believe there to be seventy virgins waiting for them in paradise after a successful suicide bombing attack, is something i don't know the truth of. i've not had any serious discussion about this kind of thing with any muslims. it is about as close to the tangible assurance that Christians are offered as i've seen or heard of anywhere else. the idea that annihilation is the best chance of escaping an endless cycle of reincarnation jells with me, since an eternity in hell and an eternity of reincarnating on earth might (tongue in cheek) not look terribly different.
so how much is enough? how good is good enough? and what yardstick is there to measure by? "i've never killed someone" holds little water if you've never actually wanted to and yet restrained yourself, but is the person who genuinely wants to kill somebody the kind of person you want to meet in heaven? this moral north is pretty wobbly, especially with a good so relative!
Christianity is a funny thing. it offers salvation at no cost to the consumer with a three and a half thousand year old manual on care and feeding of that salvation. God didn't say to the israelites in egypt, sacrifice ten thousand bulls and i'll get you out of there. nope. he said to pharaoh (the guy in power who'd enslaved the israelites), let my people go. once they were let go, then he told them what to do. he took them camping, fed them, their shoes never wore out! once they got to the promised land, conquering it was pretty easy - when they did it the way God said to do it. follow the manual because you have salvation, not in order to have it.
God loves human beings and God loves his creation. the Bible makes pretty clear throughout what it considers to be moral. basically, love God, love others. in many ways, to love is to serve, thus: serve God and serve others. loving someone doesn't necessarily mean agreeing with them, or letting them run riot, or letting them hurt themselves or ruin their life or the lives of people around them. restraining a child from running across a busy street might be a slam-dunk moral choice to protect the child - so why do we not automatically put convicted heroin addicts into that fast detox programme they have in israel, or bring that programme here? if market forces combine (if not conspire) to make medical care or pharmaceutical treatments expensive beyond the reach of people requiring those treatments, why should those forces be allowed to persist?
why should people starve or be homeless when there is anecdotal evidence aplenty, if not statistical proof, that the west produces more food than it can eat, and has unemployed people who could be employed building housing for those who have none?
when enough is as good as a feast, a few in this world stand on their right to keep the leftovers to themselves and despise their responsibility to feed those who have not eaten. this is what comes of having a moral compass that points due relative north.
i'm not perfect. i believe that i am being made perfect. the Bible says it and I believe it. what do you believe?
Monday, February 09, 2009
... travelling man
well, i'm moving house - again.
before i moved out of home, i think we'd moved twice, the third house we lived in being the one my mother still lives in. i shared a flat in north wollongong for a while before making the big move to sydney, where i lived in:
i never expect the next place to be the last, so i wonder how long it'll be before the next move? hopefully not until some other similarly life-changing thing...
before i moved out of home, i think we'd moved twice, the third house we lived in being the one my mother still lives in. i shared a flat in north wollongong for a while before making the big move to sydney, where i lived in:
- penshurst,
- penshurst,
- carlton,
- mortdale,
- hurstville,
- kogarah,
- chatswood,
- then chatswood again.
- carnegie,
- elsternwick,
- and soon to be glen iris.
i never expect the next place to be the last, so i wonder how long it'll be before the next move? hopefully not until some other similarly life-changing thing...
Saturday, February 07, 2009
... ahhh! the southerly change!
hot damn! bring on the rain, bring on a decent storm! (or is that too much to ask for?) bring on the cooler temperatures!
roll on winter!
roll on winter!
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
... postgrad wedding blues
i'm not married, i'm not a postgrad (on account of never having grad'd) and at the moment i'm not blue, but i saw this comic strip on phd comics and felt it was a ripsnorter.
two jobs ago, while i was still living in el norte, we used to have a lot of people coming into the shop looking for paper products for creating their own wedding stationery. it's the kind of combination logistical-creative problem i love, since you can work out what you're going to do by considering such variables as:
having been involved to varying degrees with a number of weddings now, i have considered from time to time a variety of wedding-related career paths, including:
all of which is thinking-out-loud, random, by-the-by thoughts, sparked by the funny comic strip.
two jobs ago, while i was still living in el norte, we used to have a lot of people coming into the shop looking for paper products for creating their own wedding stationery. it's the kind of combination logistical-creative problem i love, since you can work out what you're going to do by considering such variables as:
- how much money you want to spend,
- how much time you have available,
- how much time you want to spend,
- how creative you'd like to be,
- how creative you know you actually are,
- how many flunkies you have available to you in the time you have available, and
- how many friends and relations would disown you if you actually did elope after all...
having been involved to varying degrees with a number of weddings now, i have considered from time to time a variety of wedding-related career paths, including:
- professional m.c. (for about five seconds),
- wedding planner,
- wedding stationery consultant, and
- celebrant...
all of which is thinking-out-loud, random, by-the-by thoughts, sparked by the funny comic strip.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
... bitter and cynical?
hmmm...
wow! how amazing. scorching temperatures and the public transport system collapses. quelle tragédie!
why is this a surprise? just as i'm not surprised we have tennis players passing out or retiring hurt at the australian open, i'm not surprised we had the "transport chaos" we experienced today. i'm expecting bushfires and do you know why? because people do stupid things all the time (i know i do) and it doesn't matter how many fire warnings you put up or how many bushfires you fight, there will always be people who want to set fires. so many people operate under the assumption that whatever the statistics or conventional wisdom (neither of which are always right, either), "it won't happen to them".
the australian open operates during summer under insanely variable conditions, usually varying for the worse regarding the players' health. wimbledon always seems to be stopping and starting for rain - certainly the cricket seems to stop and start with the rain. one of the risks you run playing in the australian open is that you may collapse from heat exhaustion.
if you rely on public transport during a heatwave, expect problems. take some water bottles and a book. charge your ipod. do dinner and a movie after work. carpool. do not expect to catch your usual train/tram/bus and have everything working perfectly. think.
i saw a story on a current affair (i think it was) tonight, reporting on drivers who will not wait for rail crossing signals and instead drive around boom gates to cross ahead of trains. how insane is that? this is the world we are living in, where people have such an infinitely high sense of entitlement that even in the face of six train cars full of passengers and travelling at up to a barely brakable hundred kilometres per hour they persist in believing that whatever might happen to someone else stupid enough to try this, it won't happen to them.
perhaps it's too much to expect that people who will try to beat rail crossing signals that have already dropped boom gates might seek to elect governments that will provide infrastructure for the future of people other than themselves...
wow! how amazing. scorching temperatures and the public transport system collapses. quelle tragédie!
why is this a surprise? just as i'm not surprised we have tennis players passing out or retiring hurt at the australian open, i'm not surprised we had the "transport chaos" we experienced today. i'm expecting bushfires and do you know why? because people do stupid things all the time (i know i do) and it doesn't matter how many fire warnings you put up or how many bushfires you fight, there will always be people who want to set fires. so many people operate under the assumption that whatever the statistics or conventional wisdom (neither of which are always right, either), "it won't happen to them".
the australian open operates during summer under insanely variable conditions, usually varying for the worse regarding the players' health. wimbledon always seems to be stopping and starting for rain - certainly the cricket seems to stop and start with the rain. one of the risks you run playing in the australian open is that you may collapse from heat exhaustion.
if you rely on public transport during a heatwave, expect problems. take some water bottles and a book. charge your ipod. do dinner and a movie after work. carpool. do not expect to catch your usual train/tram/bus and have everything working perfectly. think.
i saw a story on a current affair (i think it was) tonight, reporting on drivers who will not wait for rail crossing signals and instead drive around boom gates to cross ahead of trains. how insane is that? this is the world we are living in, where people have such an infinitely high sense of entitlement that even in the face of six train cars full of passengers and travelling at up to a barely brakable hundred kilometres per hour they persist in believing that whatever might happen to someone else stupid enough to try this, it won't happen to them.
perhaps it's too much to expect that people who will try to beat rail crossing signals that have already dropped boom gates might seek to elect governments that will provide infrastructure for the future of people other than themselves...
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
... i'm reviewing... the situation...
i'm thinking about moving house. i looked at a bunch of for lease ads last night and actually sent out a few tentative inquiries. i don't know if i'll do anything straight away but i feel i'd like to live closer to church and closer to work. it's something i'm toying with at the moment, so if you feel so inclined, please pray that i will make a full, prayerful, considered, thoughtful approach to this... rumination.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
... happy new year
it was asked of me that i update my blog. here, then, is the news...
it's a new year. i don't know what you did on new year's eve. i was invited to a boozeup in northcote. since i'm such a boozer, i gave a reluctant "maybe", thanking that it's probably not a terrible thing to get out and meet people and maybe even enjoy myself. however, after buying a bottle of bailey's, having a shower and a shave, getting dressed and heading out with a locked door behind me, i decided that i didn't really want to go.
hard to say, really, what the kicker was. could it be my utter lack of desire to get plastered? my poor inclination in meeting new people and making friends of strangers? my general preference not to surround myself with uncreasingly drunk strangers in any given situation, especially at new year's? or my eminently reasonable desire not to navigate melbourne's otherwise stellar public transport system in the wee hours of new year's day from northcote to south caulfield? hmmm...
so for new year's i ended up at home, listening to music and reading, with a cup of coffee (and some bailey's), and sent a few text messages when the hallowed hour rolled around. happy new year to everyone.
Christmas passed quietly also. my mother visited from el norte and i enjoyed dinner with my mother and sister, and my sister's boyfriend. it's taken me a long time to meet him and i like him. that my sister is happy to hitch her wagon to his speaks a lot more to me for his character than my first impressions, which were good. he seems to me to be very down to earth, which i think is a good thing.
Christmas day i was at church. i had been invited to join my minister's family for lunch, which i gratefully accepted and thoroughly enjoyed. there had been an orphans' lunch planned for some of us neighbours here in my block of flats, which i had factored in but which everyone, it seems, did not. the invitation was providential and i am very glad of it.
my minister now has been my minister before. i think he was at the church i went to when i was at school - certainly he was there when i left - and i'm confident he was there before my conversion but to be honest, i can't recall. i remember being given a copy of leon morris's book the atonement, which i was meant to read a chapter of and then meet for breakfast with my minister and another man at church. it was a great thing to do and i'm glad the effort was made by these two men, whom i so poorly repaid with my efforts at reading the book. i learned important lessons about meeting regularly with people outside church, about deliberate fellowship (and accountability, a lesson that i never seem to stop being taught), lessons which served me in good stead for the years i was part of a prayer triplet at another church. it's something i miss.
work is good. i realised that this Christmas just passed was my 20th retail "xmas". i began working at venture ("venture - value - value with a double-v!") in october 1989, making december 2008 my 20th working in retail. frightening. also, my first rostered sunday in about eight years. i am getting to know better my workplace, my role, my co-workers, the customers and the area we service. all places (workplaces or workplace locales) have their quirks. i'm told i'm doing very well but i continue the pessimist, convinced that i'll make a mistake and the rug will be pulled out from under me and i'll be revealed for the fraud that i fear i am... so nothing really new there, i suppose.
i am looking forward to visiting el norte in february for a while, seeing some friends and taking in a trade fair while i'm there. with any luck i'll get a decent thunderstorm or two, which i sorely miss down here, south of the border. i would like to visit the united states in august to attend the portland zine symposium and i am hoping to sock away enough cash to make that happen with a minimum of fuss. we'll see.
i finally saw grindhouse at the astor on friday night - i can't believe it took me so long to see it! it was great. i'm just over halfway through the peter biskind book, easy riders, raging bulls, about hollywood in the 70s that i have borrowed from a coworker. i'm thoroughly enjoying it and every chapter brings with it flashbacks to my cinema studies at uni and the marvellous lecturers i had then.
i was invited along to a cafe after church on sunday night and had a grand old time. the cafe had to serve us on split tables because we didn't all fit in at once but that was ok. i ate a thoroughly delicious lemon tart and enjoyed very pleasant company throughout, something definitely to be repeated on both counts.
coming up next, what are the obama kids having for lunch today? (ask jon stewart on the daily show) then sports...
it's a new year. i don't know what you did on new year's eve. i was invited to a boozeup in northcote. since i'm such a boozer, i gave a reluctant "maybe", thanking that it's probably not a terrible thing to get out and meet people and maybe even enjoy myself. however, after buying a bottle of bailey's, having a shower and a shave, getting dressed and heading out with a locked door behind me, i decided that i didn't really want to go.
hard to say, really, what the kicker was. could it be my utter lack of desire to get plastered? my poor inclination in meeting new people and making friends of strangers? my general preference not to surround myself with uncreasingly drunk strangers in any given situation, especially at new year's? or my eminently reasonable desire not to navigate melbourne's otherwise stellar public transport system in the wee hours of new year's day from northcote to south caulfield? hmmm...
so for new year's i ended up at home, listening to music and reading, with a cup of coffee (and some bailey's), and sent a few text messages when the hallowed hour rolled around. happy new year to everyone.
Christmas passed quietly also. my mother visited from el norte and i enjoyed dinner with my mother and sister, and my sister's boyfriend. it's taken me a long time to meet him and i like him. that my sister is happy to hitch her wagon to his speaks a lot more to me for his character than my first impressions, which were good. he seems to me to be very down to earth, which i think is a good thing.
Christmas day i was at church. i had been invited to join my minister's family for lunch, which i gratefully accepted and thoroughly enjoyed. there had been an orphans' lunch planned for some of us neighbours here in my block of flats, which i had factored in but which everyone, it seems, did not. the invitation was providential and i am very glad of it.
my minister now has been my minister before. i think he was at the church i went to when i was at school - certainly he was there when i left - and i'm confident he was there before my conversion but to be honest, i can't recall. i remember being given a copy of leon morris's book the atonement, which i was meant to read a chapter of and then meet for breakfast with my minister and another man at church. it was a great thing to do and i'm glad the effort was made by these two men, whom i so poorly repaid with my efforts at reading the book. i learned important lessons about meeting regularly with people outside church, about deliberate fellowship (and accountability, a lesson that i never seem to stop being taught), lessons which served me in good stead for the years i was part of a prayer triplet at another church. it's something i miss.
work is good. i realised that this Christmas just passed was my 20th retail "xmas". i began working at venture ("venture - value - value with a double-v!") in october 1989, making december 2008 my 20th working in retail. frightening. also, my first rostered sunday in about eight years. i am getting to know better my workplace, my role, my co-workers, the customers and the area we service. all places (workplaces or workplace locales) have their quirks. i'm told i'm doing very well but i continue the pessimist, convinced that i'll make a mistake and the rug will be pulled out from under me and i'll be revealed for the fraud that i fear i am... so nothing really new there, i suppose.
i am looking forward to visiting el norte in february for a while, seeing some friends and taking in a trade fair while i'm there. with any luck i'll get a decent thunderstorm or two, which i sorely miss down here, south of the border. i would like to visit the united states in august to attend the portland zine symposium and i am hoping to sock away enough cash to make that happen with a minimum of fuss. we'll see.
i finally saw grindhouse at the astor on friday night - i can't believe it took me so long to see it! it was great. i'm just over halfway through the peter biskind book, easy riders, raging bulls, about hollywood in the 70s that i have borrowed from a coworker. i'm thoroughly enjoying it and every chapter brings with it flashbacks to my cinema studies at uni and the marvellous lecturers i had then.
i was invited along to a cafe after church on sunday night and had a grand old time. the cafe had to serve us on split tables because we didn't all fit in at once but that was ok. i ate a thoroughly delicious lemon tart and enjoyed very pleasant company throughout, something definitely to be repeated on both counts.
coming up next, what are the obama kids having for lunch today? (ask jon stewart on the daily show) then sports...
Monday, December 22, 2008
... reading...
wow, i've been reading a lot lately.
i'm also working on (albeit infrequently or haphazardly):
all this in the space of the last three and a bit months, since i began my new job. imagine if i were working in a video store!
- eragon, christopher paolini
- twilight, stephenie meyer
- breakfast at tiffanys, truman capote
- the jane austen book club, karen joy fowler
- the gargoyle, andrew davidson
- notes from undergound: zines and the politics of alternative culture, stephen duncombe
i'm also working on (albeit infrequently or haphazardly):
- how to eat, nigella lawson
- war and peace, leo tolstoy
- type, david silverman
- easy riders, raging bulls, peter biskind
- intimate ephemera, anna poletti
all this in the space of the last three and a bit months, since i began my new job. imagine if i were working in a video store!
Monday, December 15, 2008
... do we really think they'll be left out anyway?
bloody telstra!
how long did they have a monopoly (virtual or otherwise) in australia? under whatever name?
so if all there is to the report is what appears on the face of it, why should they whinge and moan about being left out of the tender process for our national broadband network?
this is classic. what is the thinking? "wow, we live on this huge island and we're so far away from each other! why don't we just try and make more people talk to each other on those really long pieces of string with tin cans attached instead of making new strings with better tin cans?"
it is yet another example of what happens when responsibility to the stakeholder is superseded by obligation to the shareholder. the consumer is consulted only in order to find some new product or service to sell back to them!
with better communication lines, broadband, satellite services, whatever, the need to clump people together like a tonne of marbles on one corner of a giant trampoline is reduced further. large-scale administration can be decentralised and opportunities for growth can be passed to rural and provincial cities, such as grafton, dubbo, cobar, broken hill, griffith, shepparton, warnambool, mildura, ballarat, bairnsdale, mount gambier, mount isa, cairns, longreach, cunnamulla, port hedland, geraldton, albany, kalgoorlie. why not encourage the growth of as many of these rural cities as possible, instead of contributing to the ridiculous urban sprawl that is such a blight on our country?
wow... perhaps with better communication and people moving out of the capital and satellite cities, there might be a greater demand for better rail and air connections? (oh don't be an idiot! people will simply bitch about having to sdrive their cars so far! what were thinking?!)
i don't know. telstra sucks. we could have had a far better network if we'd invested more in it decades ago. of course, that would have required a bit of foresight and that was so abundant in the 1980s...
how long did they have a monopoly (virtual or otherwise) in australia? under whatever name?
so if all there is to the report is what appears on the face of it, why should they whinge and moan about being left out of the tender process for our national broadband network?
this is classic. what is the thinking? "wow, we live on this huge island and we're so far away from each other! why don't we just try and make more people talk to each other on those really long pieces of string with tin cans attached instead of making new strings with better tin cans?"
it is yet another example of what happens when responsibility to the stakeholder is superseded by obligation to the shareholder. the consumer is consulted only in order to find some new product or service to sell back to them!
with better communication lines, broadband, satellite services, whatever, the need to clump people together like a tonne of marbles on one corner of a giant trampoline is reduced further. large-scale administration can be decentralised and opportunities for growth can be passed to rural and provincial cities, such as grafton, dubbo, cobar, broken hill, griffith, shepparton, warnambool, mildura, ballarat, bairnsdale, mount gambier, mount isa, cairns, longreach, cunnamulla, port hedland, geraldton, albany, kalgoorlie. why not encourage the growth of as many of these rural cities as possible, instead of contributing to the ridiculous urban sprawl that is such a blight on our country?
wow... perhaps with better communication and people moving out of the capital and satellite cities, there might be a greater demand for better rail and air connections? (oh don't be an idiot! people will simply bitch about having to sdrive their cars so far! what were thinking?!)
i don't know. telstra sucks. we could have had a far better network if we'd invested more in it decades ago. of course, that would have required a bit of foresight and that was so abundant in the 1980s...
Sunday, November 23, 2008
... not quite in the club yet
i watched the jane austen book club today, just now (about half an hour ago, in fact), and i really enjoyed it. i think i'm tempted to actually read through the jane austen canon. pretty scary, given my terrible experience of jane austen at high school.
we had to study persuasion and i really didn't enjoy it at all. i enjoyed less that austen had lengthened the book from 29 chapters to 44! that said, i always felt guilty that i hadn't given the book a better chance, especially since our teacher was such a huge jane austen fanatic - i always worried that my dislike for the book was received more as a personal insult and less as coming from a sci-fi nut having to read period romance and social commentary.
so i'm going to get the novel of the jane austen book club, read that, and then perhaps read the novels afterwards.
we had to study persuasion and i really didn't enjoy it at all. i enjoyed less that austen had lengthened the book from 29 chapters to 44! that said, i always felt guilty that i hadn't given the book a better chance, especially since our teacher was such a huge jane austen fanatic - i always worried that my dislike for the book was received more as a personal insult and less as coming from a sci-fi nut having to read period romance and social commentary.
so i'm going to get the novel of the jane austen book club, read that, and then perhaps read the novels afterwards.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
... i am wrong
...apparently.
i was told today that i cannot be discriminated against.
not that there is a law that says discriminating against me personally is illegal but rather that, by virtue of my skin colour, sexual preference, religious preference, socio-economic background, personal tastes, age, country of birth and place of residence, it is a political-logical impossibility that i should be discriminated against.
i was told today that i cannot be discriminated against.
not that there is a law that says discriminating against me personally is illegal but rather that, by virtue of my skin colour, sexual preference, religious preference, socio-economic background, personal tastes, age, country of birth and place of residence, it is a political-logical impossibility that i should be discriminated against.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
... things to do when you're home sick
well, when you're home sick, feeling nauseous and dealing with diarrhoea, sometimes you end up casting about for things to do to pass the time. here's a list:
of course, i could call refund home loans and try to find out how on earth buying into a home loan provider franchise could possibly be a good thing for anyone but me (maybe). o me! o life!
- sleep;
- read a book;
- watch a movie;
- follow the united states presidential election on various tv channels;
- play dune 2000;
- make a zine;
- do some washing (if you feel confident you can get to the laundry without needing the loo!);
- update your weblog;
- clean the bathroom;
- trawl wikipedia and other websites, trying to understand how the u.s. electoral processes work.
of course, i could call refund home loans and try to find out how on earth buying into a home loan provider franchise could possibly be a good thing for anyone but me (maybe). o me! o life!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
... and among other things, i took a test!
Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test...
Traditional, Vibrant, and Tasteful
1 Islamic, -2 Impressionist, 1 Ukiyo-e, -2 Cubist, -4 Abstract and -12 Renaissance!
Islamic art is developed from many sources: Roman, Early Christian, and Byzantine styles were taken over in early Islamic architecture; the architecture and decorative art of pre-Islamic Persia was of paramount significance; Central Asian styles were brought in with various nomadic incursions; and Chinese influences . Islamic art uses many geometical floral or vegetable designs in a repetitive pattern known as arabesque. It is used to symbolize the transcendent, indivisible and infinite nature of Allah.
People that like Islamic art tend to be more traditional people that appreciate keeping patterns that they learned and experienced from their past. It is not to say that they are not innovative personalities, they just do not like to let go of their roots. They like to put new ideas into details and make certain that they will work before sharing them with others. Failure is not something they like to think about because they are more interested in being successful and appreciated for their intelligence. These people can also be or like elaborate things in their life as long as they are tasteful. They tend to prefer geometric patterns and vibrant colors.
Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy
Saturday, August 23, 2008
... what have i been up to?
- i've been reading war and peace... but not as regularly as i'm supposed to be (i've fallen a little bit behind, partly because...)
- i've been reading the penguin history of the u.s.a. and i've been learning a great deal about the revolutionary war, the declaration of independence and the years and conditions leading up to the civil war. i'd heard of andrew jackson but knew little of him. i'd never even heard of alexander hamilton until about a month ago, when i read a book by gore vidal about some of the figures surrounding the early years of the u.s. constitution and became interested in learning more.
- i've been looking for a new job. i have had a couple of promising leads and may have more to say about it in the near future!
- i'm off to church camp next weekend. my new church is friendly and interesting and i'm still working out how i'd like to be involved in church life. i was so long out of a regular church context it feels kind of weird and a little artificial trying to acclimatise myself to a new church environment.
- i've got several ideas for stories and screenplays that i'd like to get stuck into and i'm exploring some new software i've downloaded to help me do that called celtx - it really is chock-full of writing goodness.
- i bought some language learning software and i'm teaching myself spanish. i learned the days of the week a couple of days ago... lunes, martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes, sábado, domingo!
- it's raining in melbourne (quelle surprise, i hear some people mutter) and i'm really enjoying the melbourne-ness of it. winter actually is winter here and while it's my second winter in melbourne it is still a heartwarming thing for me. i adore the cold weather and melbourne has been most generous in warming my heart!
- a few weeks ago some of the buildings in melbourne that you don't normally have the chance to see up close and personal threw their doors open for guided tours. i wandered around the city a bit with a friend from the library and ended up seeing less than i expected to see (some of the queues were extraordinarily long!) but it was very cool looking at the capitol theatre (i think it was) that had been designed by walter burley griffin, the same man largely responsible for canberra! such an obsession with geometry...
... and that's about it for the time being...
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
... time for a change
i've resigned from my job.
talking with people about it has yielded a few interesting remarks but the general feel is that i shouldn't be quitting my job without having one ready to go into. i agree that such a course of action is a wise one but it isn't one i feel works with my current situation.
for starters, when it comes to work i don't generally flitter from pillar to post. in the last eighteen years i've had three main jobs, with a couple of other jobs here and there. i also feel (whether that comes across in my work life or not) a genuine commitment to my workplace, to make it a better place for the long term and to be able to say that when i leave it will be better than it was when i arrived (and, no, not because of my arrival and departure!).
the time has come for me, in my current work environment, to leave. i have my reasons and i'm hoping that i'll find a new job sooner than later. contacts in the industry i work in have already been very encouraging and i will be following up on at least one of them tomorrow! if you feel so inclined, please pray that i won't be looking for very long and that the place i'm meant to be at will be quickly made apparent to me.
several people have asked if i'll move back to sydney. my answer (at this point) is no. my reasons for leaving sydney have not changed and nor have my reasons for moving to melbourne. i love this city. the weather suits me down to the ground, it's easy to get around and people here are so friendly. i love my involvement with sticky (at sidebar, right) and the great friends i've made through it. i'm gradually getting to know people at my new church and i'm looking forward to church camp and joining a small group Bible study very soon. i started my current job because i was moving to melbourne - i didn't move to melbourne because i had found my current job.
i have a cold. my video recorder is kaktus. a friend from school got married last weekend (yay!). God loves me. my life is pretty good.
talking with people about it has yielded a few interesting remarks but the general feel is that i shouldn't be quitting my job without having one ready to go into. i agree that such a course of action is a wise one but it isn't one i feel works with my current situation.
for starters, when it comes to work i don't generally flitter from pillar to post. in the last eighteen years i've had three main jobs, with a couple of other jobs here and there. i also feel (whether that comes across in my work life or not) a genuine commitment to my workplace, to make it a better place for the long term and to be able to say that when i leave it will be better than it was when i arrived (and, no, not because of my arrival and departure!).
the time has come for me, in my current work environment, to leave. i have my reasons and i'm hoping that i'll find a new job sooner than later. contacts in the industry i work in have already been very encouraging and i will be following up on at least one of them tomorrow! if you feel so inclined, please pray that i won't be looking for very long and that the place i'm meant to be at will be quickly made apparent to me.
several people have asked if i'll move back to sydney. my answer (at this point) is no. my reasons for leaving sydney have not changed and nor have my reasons for moving to melbourne. i love this city. the weather suits me down to the ground, it's easy to get around and people here are so friendly. i love my involvement with sticky (at sidebar, right) and the great friends i've made through it. i'm gradually getting to know people at my new church and i'm looking forward to church camp and joining a small group Bible study very soon. i started my current job because i was moving to melbourne - i didn't move to melbourne because i had found my current job.
i have a cold. my video recorder is kaktus. a friend from school got married last weekend (yay!). God loves me. my life is pretty good.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
... the end of an era?
imagine my surprise to find when, in a fit of public-spiritedness and interest in current affairs, i decided to turn on channel 9 on the tv while i was eating breakfast this morning, only to find that it's the last broadcast of the sunday programme.
sunday has been screening since i was six years old, its first broadcast in 1981 featuring laurie oakes interviewing then-prime minister malcolm fraser. today, in the last broadcast, laurie oakes is interviewing kevin rudd.
it came as a complete surprise to me that sunday is winding up. all tv programmes come to an end sooner or later - i imagine even 60 minutes will end one day - but i had no idea, had seen or heard nothing about its end in other media outlets - until this morning as ellen fanning reiterated for newly-switched-over viewers that today's is the last broadcast for sunday.
what will come next week? what programmes on australian television will now pick up the baton for investigative, "who knows what we will find?" journalism? helen dalley (now on sky news) commented that the difference between sunday and 60 minutes schools of story production was that on the latter, journalists and producers had researched the stories to the point that when they went into production they would know exactly what they wanted to say and exactly what they were looking at; on the former, journos and producres might not know what they'd find - only that there was a story there worth pursuing. who will do that now? (by the way, how gorgeous is nell schofield??? i think she's even more beautiful now, 27 years after puberty blues, than she was back then...)
it's difficult to get myself excited about news and current affairs programmes on australian television. a current affair and today tonight are barely worth the name of "current affairs" and much more like... the magazines they sell on the shelves nearest the checkouts at supermarkets! for mine, shows like dateline, landline, and the 7.30 report are genuine current affairs programmes.
perhaps it's even scarier that the 6 o'clock news programmes are advertising stories they're going to run (so-called "special reports") when i would've thought there's plenty to report in the news on an ordinary day without using stocking stuffers that they could put into their 6.30 current affairs (sic) programmes...
peter thompson commented that the australian film industry at the moment is in "deep schtuck". i don't think it's just the film industry. when decisions to cancel programmes like sunday come down from the people who are supposed to be far-sighted about such things, i fear the continued dumbing-down of australian television. calling it "making tv relevant" is a cop-out. in a world that wants to talk (it seems) in a language of icons, top 40 soundtracks and emotion, television seems to be leading the way to letting people slip back into a common baby-talk, instead of encouraging critical thinking and thoughtful consideration of the world around us.
our forebears' fears that television would make people stupid seems to be coming true.
sunday has been screening since i was six years old, its first broadcast in 1981 featuring laurie oakes interviewing then-prime minister malcolm fraser. today, in the last broadcast, laurie oakes is interviewing kevin rudd.
it came as a complete surprise to me that sunday is winding up. all tv programmes come to an end sooner or later - i imagine even 60 minutes will end one day - but i had no idea, had seen or heard nothing about its end in other media outlets - until this morning as ellen fanning reiterated for newly-switched-over viewers that today's is the last broadcast for sunday.
what will come next week? what programmes on australian television will now pick up the baton for investigative, "who knows what we will find?" journalism? helen dalley (now on sky news) commented that the difference between sunday and 60 minutes schools of story production was that on the latter, journalists and producers had researched the stories to the point that when they went into production they would know exactly what they wanted to say and exactly what they were looking at; on the former, journos and producres might not know what they'd find - only that there was a story there worth pursuing. who will do that now? (by the way, how gorgeous is nell schofield??? i think she's even more beautiful now, 27 years after puberty blues, than she was back then...)
it's difficult to get myself excited about news and current affairs programmes on australian television. a current affair and today tonight are barely worth the name of "current affairs" and much more like... the magazines they sell on the shelves nearest the checkouts at supermarkets! for mine, shows like dateline, landline, and the 7.30 report are genuine current affairs programmes.
perhaps it's even scarier that the 6 o'clock news programmes are advertising stories they're going to run (so-called "special reports") when i would've thought there's plenty to report in the news on an ordinary day without using stocking stuffers that they could put into their 6.30 current affairs (sic) programmes...
peter thompson commented that the australian film industry at the moment is in "deep schtuck". i don't think it's just the film industry. when decisions to cancel programmes like sunday come down from the people who are supposed to be far-sighted about such things, i fear the continued dumbing-down of australian television. calling it "making tv relevant" is a cop-out. in a world that wants to talk (it seems) in a language of icons, top 40 soundtracks and emotion, television seems to be leading the way to letting people slip back into a common baby-talk, instead of encouraging critical thinking and thoughtful consideration of the world around us.
our forebears' fears that television would make people stupid seems to be coming true.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
... new comic
i know it's been a long time since i posted but i want to assure everyone that, regardless of how i've been feeling from time to time, i'm not doing an enobarbus anywhere! i've been flat-chat busy with work and exhausted pretty much all of the time, neither of which i'm happy about but feel that won't be the case for much longer.
church-wise, i've been going to st mark's anglican church at camberwell, where the minister is actually one i've known in a past life in my early days of faith (from dapto). it's good but i've been slack in following up queries about small groups and i've been patchy in attendance. that being said, it's probably the most comfortable place i've been so far since i moved to melbourne. the fact that it's about 35-40 minute trip from my place to there (if i leave early) is about the worst thing i can think to say about it. apparently there's a lot of pigeons but going to the evening service, i haven't seen any.
to round out this entry, though, i linked to a comic strip called unshelved from my regular reading at phd comics. quite entertaining.
church-wise, i've been going to st mark's anglican church at camberwell, where the minister is actually one i've known in a past life in my early days of faith (from dapto). it's good but i've been slack in following up queries about small groups and i've been patchy in attendance. that being said, it's probably the most comfortable place i've been so far since i moved to melbourne. the fact that it's about 35-40 minute trip from my place to there (if i leave early) is about the worst thing i can think to say about it. apparently there's a lot of pigeons but going to the evening service, i haven't seen any.
to round out this entry, though, i linked to a comic strip called unshelved from my regular reading at phd comics. quite entertaining.
Friday, May 02, 2008
... iron man
i have to say i was very impressed with this film. it lived up to my expectations from the previews and tv spots, the effects were great and seemed to me to be rooted in an kind of organic reality which is much sought after in special effects movies these days (see transformers).
right from the outset i said that on character alone, robert downey jr was born for this role. take a character who is an egotist, alcoholic, wealthy, brilliant, philandering, ne'er-do-well only child prodigy of workaholic parents... who else do you get to play tony stark?!
i thought gwyneth paltrow as pepper potts was great, although her "action" sequences in the third act of the film weren't (for me) set up very well. had she had one or two more active sequences earlier in the film i might have believed in her a bit more. as it is, she felt a bit more to me like "pepper puppet" at the end of the strings in tony stark's hands. i don't doubt that the character is capable but i pepper as presented in this film was not.
jeff bridges and terrence howard were good, bridges much better than howard in the skin of his character (i had trouble believing rhodey being such a close friend of tony stark's but none at all buying obadiah stane as the family friend turned nemesis).
i watched the film to the very end of the credits and my final thoughts on the film were these: i love the movie but i feel a bit dirty - tony stark's final revelation was poor... and that is NOT nick fury.
right from the outset i said that on character alone, robert downey jr was born for this role. take a character who is an egotist, alcoholic, wealthy, brilliant, philandering, ne'er-do-well only child prodigy of workaholic parents... who else do you get to play tony stark?!
i thought gwyneth paltrow as pepper potts was great, although her "action" sequences in the third act of the film weren't (for me) set up very well. had she had one or two more active sequences earlier in the film i might have believed in her a bit more. as it is, she felt a bit more to me like "pepper puppet" at the end of the strings in tony stark's hands. i don't doubt that the character is capable but i pepper as presented in this film was not.
jeff bridges and terrence howard were good, bridges much better than howard in the skin of his character (i had trouble believing rhodey being such a close friend of tony stark's but none at all buying obadiah stane as the family friend turned nemesis).
i watched the film to the very end of the credits and my final thoughts on the film were these: i love the movie but i feel a bit dirty - tony stark's final revelation was poor... and that is NOT nick fury.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
... i love nigella...'s cooking!
upon being told of a cookbook worth investigating, i went into my local angus & robertson bookshop to investigate. they didn't have the title i was looking for but they did have the new nigella lawson cookbook, nigella express.
i flicked through it a little and about five recipes in i found this one for mustard pork chops.
hopefully it'll taste as good when i make it as it looks like it does when nigella makes it!
i flicked through it a little and about five recipes in i found this one for mustard pork chops.
hopefully it'll taste as good when i make it as it looks like it does when nigella makes it!
Thursday, April 03, 2008
... i love my back
it's been a while since i blogged. it's part procrastination, part i-have-no-internet-at-home(-and-seem-unlikely-to-in-the-near-future), part my life feels very blah at the moment... but i love my back.
this weekend just gone i was away from melbourne, in sydney for a trade show. the fair was ok and i was pretty tired from having to be out of bed at 4.30am to get my 7.45 flight from tullamarine. there was a harbour cruise dinner in the evening that i was ready to leave about two hours prior to docking, simply due to fatigue.
the biggest problem was that i had another back spasm on sunday morning while getting dressed. i've been waking up as "pretzel man" every day since and while i'm recovering faster and feeling less sore as the days wear on, it's still frustrating. i wasn't able to be as quick on my feet and people i wanted to visit i wasn't able to - very, very frustrating.
back in melbourne, i had yesterday off so i could at least have one day of lying down, which was what i did. then around 3pm we had a blackout as part of the big windstorm that came out of the low pressure cell from the south. power wasn't restored to my part of town until about 5am today. blah.
all things considered, this is about as interesting as it's been. as for the title of my post?
as i was crossing the road near the slip inn on my way back from breakfast at cockle bay wharf, i noticed some people crossing against the light. i turned to watch them go and noticed a woman standing very close, closer than people would normally stand if you're the only two people at the lights. she seemed equally surprised. "i suppose i should introduce myself!" she laughed. i commented that this was the kind of conversation i enjoy in melbourne (randomly with strangers) and she mentioned that she might have already crossed. i remarked that i was a bit slower than normal due to my back spasm and she replied that she was a healer (i assume a reiki therapist or some such) and she offered to give me a go.
five minutes later i'm standing besides the slip inn, bag on the ground and eyes closed while she did... whatever... to my back. afterwards, she said, "i'm feeling a lot of dark energy there... what i really need you to do is to love your back. do you love your back?"
i really love my back!
this weekend just gone i was away from melbourne, in sydney for a trade show. the fair was ok and i was pretty tired from having to be out of bed at 4.30am to get my 7.45 flight from tullamarine. there was a harbour cruise dinner in the evening that i was ready to leave about two hours prior to docking, simply due to fatigue.
the biggest problem was that i had another back spasm on sunday morning while getting dressed. i've been waking up as "pretzel man" every day since and while i'm recovering faster and feeling less sore as the days wear on, it's still frustrating. i wasn't able to be as quick on my feet and people i wanted to visit i wasn't able to - very, very frustrating.
back in melbourne, i had yesterday off so i could at least have one day of lying down, which was what i did. then around 3pm we had a blackout as part of the big windstorm that came out of the low pressure cell from the south. power wasn't restored to my part of town until about 5am today. blah.
all things considered, this is about as interesting as it's been. as for the title of my post?
as i was crossing the road near the slip inn on my way back from breakfast at cockle bay wharf, i noticed some people crossing against the light. i turned to watch them go and noticed a woman standing very close, closer than people would normally stand if you're the only two people at the lights. she seemed equally surprised. "i suppose i should introduce myself!" she laughed. i commented that this was the kind of conversation i enjoy in melbourne (randomly with strangers) and she mentioned that she might have already crossed. i remarked that i was a bit slower than normal due to my back spasm and she replied that she was a healer (i assume a reiki therapist or some such) and she offered to give me a go.
five minutes later i'm standing besides the slip inn, bag on the ground and eyes closed while she did... whatever... to my back. afterwards, she said, "i'm feeling a lot of dark energy there... what i really need you to do is to love your back. do you love your back?"
i really love my back!
Saturday, March 01, 2008
... still alive
i'm sitting here at sticky, marvelling at how tidy the desktop on the computer screen is, trying to think about what's been going on in the last few weeks.
it's been pretty busy. after almost a dozen weeks of looking, i'm now in my new place. it's pretty small, but i guess that makes it "neat and cosy" or some equally real-estately euphemism for "small enough to swing a young cat, maybe". i quite like it. it reminds me a lot of my old place in kogarah (something i think i mentioned before) but after some discussion with mum on the phone a few nights ago i realised it also reminds me of my grandparents' last place in unanderra. the direction of entry into the flat is different from theirs, and i have no backyard, no outside toilet/laundry... similar then, but not the same.
the neighbours that i've met so far have been very welcoming and friendly. a couple of them have taken to semi-regularly going on walks of an evening in an effort to boost fitness levels, something to which i've been given an open invitation i've yet to take up. and so on...
i'm currently without a fridge, something i'm hoping to remedy this weekend but how successfully remains to be seen. i moved out of my family's home in may 1994 and this is the first time in all that time that i've been drinking powdered milk! (it's actually not as bad as i might have anticipated...) i have some uht milk in popper-portions but i don't like to open them unless i'm going to drink the whole portion in a sitting. good for breakfast cereal, not so great for a cup of tea at the end of the day...
i have rent due in about a fortnight and i'm trying very hard not to send any more money than i need to on things, not because i want to have money to pay the rent (obviously i want that!) but because i'm still saving towards going to the u.s. in august for the portland zine symposium. i have a stash saved towards it but moving house meant that i had to dip rather heavily into it. I'm not too concerned - my tax refund and the return of my bond over the coming months will greatly assist my savings in this regard again - but i am a touch worried. anyone who knows me will tell you that i'm not very good at saving and i secretly suspect in my heart of hearts that portland may end up getting carried over to next year. i really don't want it to, though, and if i can get there this year, i will.
that's about it for the time being. i've been having a lot of trouble trying to get internet connection at home and i think at the end of the day i may have to go with some kind of wireless broadband option. until then i'll be relying on free wi-fi at cafes and public spaces, along with my lunch times at work...
oh well... i get the feeling that God saved this new place for me as an opportunity to prune my life of extraneous crap. i guess news will follow as it comes to hand!
it's been pretty busy. after almost a dozen weeks of looking, i'm now in my new place. it's pretty small, but i guess that makes it "neat and cosy" or some equally real-estately euphemism for "small enough to swing a young cat, maybe". i quite like it. it reminds me a lot of my old place in kogarah (something i think i mentioned before) but after some discussion with mum on the phone a few nights ago i realised it also reminds me of my grandparents' last place in unanderra. the direction of entry into the flat is different from theirs, and i have no backyard, no outside toilet/laundry... similar then, but not the same.
the neighbours that i've met so far have been very welcoming and friendly. a couple of them have taken to semi-regularly going on walks of an evening in an effort to boost fitness levels, something to which i've been given an open invitation i've yet to take up. and so on...
i'm currently without a fridge, something i'm hoping to remedy this weekend but how successfully remains to be seen. i moved out of my family's home in may 1994 and this is the first time in all that time that i've been drinking powdered milk! (it's actually not as bad as i might have anticipated...) i have some uht milk in popper-portions but i don't like to open them unless i'm going to drink the whole portion in a sitting. good for breakfast cereal, not so great for a cup of tea at the end of the day...
i have rent due in about a fortnight and i'm trying very hard not to send any more money than i need to on things, not because i want to have money to pay the rent (obviously i want that!) but because i'm still saving towards going to the u.s. in august for the portland zine symposium. i have a stash saved towards it but moving house meant that i had to dip rather heavily into it. I'm not too concerned - my tax refund and the return of my bond over the coming months will greatly assist my savings in this regard again - but i am a touch worried. anyone who knows me will tell you that i'm not very good at saving and i secretly suspect in my heart of hearts that portland may end up getting carried over to next year. i really don't want it to, though, and if i can get there this year, i will.
that's about it for the time being. i've been having a lot of trouble trying to get internet connection at home and i think at the end of the day i may have to go with some kind of wireless broadband option. until then i'll be relying on free wi-fi at cafes and public spaces, along with my lunch times at work...
oh well... i get the feeling that God saved this new place for me as an opportunity to prune my life of extraneous crap. i guess news will follow as it comes to hand!
Friday, February 15, 2008
... not long now
i pick up the keys this afternoon. i'm still quite excited, even though i know the actual moving part is going to be a touch difficult, given the way the balcony is laid out and how far along from the stairs my flat is. i'll pick the keys up, come back into town to go to the zine event for the festival of the photocopier (follow the links from sticky), then go back there and measure the place up for the fridge.
i'm hoping to move some stuff in over the weekend, bibs and bobs that i can get there on my own steam, and i have removalists taking the bulk of my stuff later. my housemate is moving out mid-week, so i'll be without a fridge for a bit but that's no biggie - i'll get some uht milk in the small-format six-pack and use that on my cereal.
anyway, i have to get back to work. i'm here early to make up for leaving early this afternoon.
i'm hoping to move some stuff in over the weekend, bibs and bobs that i can get there on my own steam, and i have removalists taking the bulk of my stuff later. my housemate is moving out mid-week, so i'll be without a fridge for a bit but that's no biggie - i'll get some uht milk in the small-format six-pack and use that on my cereal.
anyway, i have to get back to work. i'm here early to make up for leaving early this afternoon.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
... new digs
well, i have new digs. i signed the lease today and i pick up the keys on friday. it's pretty exciting, actually, and i think it's the first place i've actually the signed the lease on for about five or six years. a while. it's a nice place, reminds me a lot of my place in kogarah, although this is only a one-bedroom and not a two-bedroom place.
there's a bus stop just outside and across the road from the block of units i'm going to be in, which is a mixed blessing: one route takes me up to the next station but far less frequently than the other route goes into the city. the flip side to this is the nearest station has trains which only take about 15 minutes into the city, while the bus directly to the city takes almost an hour. bus-train beats out bus-only in peak hour (i tested it this morning). i'll be interested to see how the weekend traffic affects the times.
it's taken quite a bit of time to find. i've been looking more or less for two months now, since my housemate decided to move east, nearer to church. i've looked at one- and two-bedroom places at ofis (open for inspections), which seem to be the main method of property managers scooping up applicants, and about a dozen various share places. i didn't remember this being this hard, back in 2001. when i found my place in kogarah, i think the whole process only took a few days... although, once i saw the place, that's about how long it took for this new place.
i had seen the unit advertised as being ofi about three or four weeks ago but through prior arrangements and mischance i didn't actually get to see it. so last saturday i had planned to look at three places - one in richmond, two in st kilda east - but i felt too tired to hit the richmond one up and decided to go to elsternwick instead and see if i could snag the keys to see a unit on glenhuntly rd in elwood, just on the other side of the nepean highway.
well, after having a long and involved conversation with the receptionist about her injured finger ("it was just a little cut but two weeks later i woke up at 1 a.m. and all there was in the universe was the pain at the end of my finger and "nursesonline" said, 'you have four hours to get to the emergency room' and now it's bandaged out to buggery..."), i discovered that the unit would be unavailable to view for another week while they did some painting and carpeting work. with some time to kill, i ducked across the road to another real estate agent, where i discovered to my astonishment that the unit i'd missed the ofi at was still available to view! i paid my fifty bucks and hopped a cab to go check it out.
first floor. wooden floor boards throughout. wooden slat venetians in the east-facing lounge room. pokey little kitchen (my words - in real estate speak it would be classified as "neat"). two sets of four powerpoints in the lounge room and two pairs in the bedroom. built-in wardrobe in the bedroom. gas hot water. good hot water pressure! communal laundry downstairs with big-arse laundromat washer and dryer for a dollar a load. car space (oh, the irony). great neighbours.
so great, in fact, that when i was leaving the block i ended up having a bit of a yak with them and they (hilda ("i moved in in 1982") and sharon ("i think about getting fit while i'm lying down with a block of fruit & nut") were on their way out for the day) gave me a lift back into elsternwick! how great is that?! so i applied for the place, ditched my plans for the rest of the looking-at-units, and wandered into town.
they phoned monday to say they were offering it to me. hadn't spoken to any of my three referees... i guess my application spoke for itself in ways that the last dozen applicants' hadn't. so i signed the lease today (tuesday, even though i know it's now wednesday) and i pick up the keys friday. so i'll be out of lovely carnegie by the end of the month.
i'm rather looking forward to the whole thing.
my housemate's blog included this little tidbit, upon settling on the new digs further east:
and where was God in all this? as it turns out... here the whole time... there were plenty of whiny prayers from me, i admit, but i've slowly come to pray more and more "i shall trust you whatever the outcome, and trust that all of this will make me more like Jesus."
as for myself, i didn't pray very much about my own search. i was fully confident that i would find a place, somewhere God was happy for me to be or (perhaps slightly more accurately) where he wants me to be from now on (for whatever reason that may be). i've been feeling pretty distant from God lately, not because of the search for somewhere to live but because i haven't been giving our relationship the attention it needs. i continue much encouraged by the passage:
there's a bus stop just outside and across the road from the block of units i'm going to be in, which is a mixed blessing: one route takes me up to the next station but far less frequently than the other route goes into the city. the flip side to this is the nearest station has trains which only take about 15 minutes into the city, while the bus directly to the city takes almost an hour. bus-train beats out bus-only in peak hour (i tested it this morning). i'll be interested to see how the weekend traffic affects the times.
it's taken quite a bit of time to find. i've been looking more or less for two months now, since my housemate decided to move east, nearer to church. i've looked at one- and two-bedroom places at ofis (open for inspections), which seem to be the main method of property managers scooping up applicants, and about a dozen various share places. i didn't remember this being this hard, back in 2001. when i found my place in kogarah, i think the whole process only took a few days... although, once i saw the place, that's about how long it took for this new place.
i had seen the unit advertised as being ofi about three or four weeks ago but through prior arrangements and mischance i didn't actually get to see it. so last saturday i had planned to look at three places - one in richmond, two in st kilda east - but i felt too tired to hit the richmond one up and decided to go to elsternwick instead and see if i could snag the keys to see a unit on glenhuntly rd in elwood, just on the other side of the nepean highway.
well, after having a long and involved conversation with the receptionist about her injured finger ("it was just a little cut but two weeks later i woke up at 1 a.m. and all there was in the universe was the pain at the end of my finger and "nursesonline" said, 'you have four hours to get to the emergency room' and now it's bandaged out to buggery..."), i discovered that the unit would be unavailable to view for another week while they did some painting and carpeting work. with some time to kill, i ducked across the road to another real estate agent, where i discovered to my astonishment that the unit i'd missed the ofi at was still available to view! i paid my fifty bucks and hopped a cab to go check it out.
first floor. wooden floor boards throughout. wooden slat venetians in the east-facing lounge room. pokey little kitchen (my words - in real estate speak it would be classified as "neat"). two sets of four powerpoints in the lounge room and two pairs in the bedroom. built-in wardrobe in the bedroom. gas hot water. good hot water pressure! communal laundry downstairs with big-arse laundromat washer and dryer for a dollar a load. car space (oh, the irony). great neighbours.
so great, in fact, that when i was leaving the block i ended up having a bit of a yak with them and they (hilda ("i moved in in 1982") and sharon ("i think about getting fit while i'm lying down with a block of fruit & nut") were on their way out for the day) gave me a lift back into elsternwick! how great is that?! so i applied for the place, ditched my plans for the rest of the looking-at-units, and wandered into town.
they phoned monday to say they were offering it to me. hadn't spoken to any of my three referees... i guess my application spoke for itself in ways that the last dozen applicants' hadn't. so i signed the lease today (tuesday, even though i know it's now wednesday) and i pick up the keys friday. so i'll be out of lovely carnegie by the end of the month.
i'm rather looking forward to the whole thing.
my housemate's blog included this little tidbit, upon settling on the new digs further east:
and where was God in all this? as it turns out... here the whole time... there were plenty of whiny prayers from me, i admit, but i've slowly come to pray more and more "i shall trust you whatever the outcome, and trust that all of this will make me more like Jesus."
as for myself, i didn't pray very much about my own search. i was fully confident that i would find a place, somewhere God was happy for me to be or (perhaps slightly more accurately) where he wants me to be from now on (for whatever reason that may be). i've been feeling pretty distant from God lately, not because of the search for somewhere to live but because i haven't been giving our relationship the attention it needs. i continue much encouraged by the passage:
Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy, for:in those times when i find myself drifting, more or less actively, away from God, knowing that he is unchanging in his love and faithfulness is the most tremendous comfort to me. that is what keeps bringing me back to him. when i fall down, it's always shame and selfishness that keep me from getting up again but it's the unchanging word of God and the power of the cross that break through that.
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself.
[ 2 Timothy 2:8-13, ESV ]
Sunday, January 20, 2008
... happy accident
i found this while i was trying to get an earworm out of my head. i went looking for a piece of music from the u.k. talent show "the x-factor" (and "kill bill") called "battle without honor or humanity". i looked on youtube for a film clip that accompanied it, found an interesting one cobbled together from bits of the star wars movies...
and then found this:
and then found this:
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
... qfs
i'm very sad to say how utterly unsurprised i was to hear/read about the out of control party at narre warren over the weekend. i can't help but hear the voice of v in the background as i think about it...
i've heard people say that there comes a time when you have to think of yourself, which leaves me to wonder if it ever really need be true... after all, if you can have two people looking out for one another, making sure they're safe, why can we not have 22 million people in this country looking out for one another? why can we not actively seek to make sure as we step into the future that the person beside us is not left behind?
we talk about being "the lucky country" as if we are somehow different from other nations but the more i see our newscasts and read our papers, the more i see advertising and billboards, the more i hear people on trains and see them on streets, the less difference i see between australia and the rest of the western world. this is the effluent affluence that developing nations are aspiring towards? so they too can afford to crave the things we have? type-2 diabetes, spiralling divorce rates, people unable to build things or repair things but wonderfully trained to create web pages complaining about why the water pressure is poor or why new houses are so expensive...?
our very success is the albatross around our neck: our prosperity makes us targets which need to be defended by men and women with guns; our growing population weighs our economy down with credit card debt being paid to overseas interests while we import food because we cannot support our own appetites; there is no apology without the expectation of damages; there is no forgiveness...
when i started writing this i wanted to come up with a rant about irresponsible young people who could probably do with a good thumping when it comes to being punished for damaging people's homes and our community's police cars. i want to see the people i perceive as being the cause of this be punished.
what i want is wrong. what i should want is not recompense but redemption, not judgement but justification - not payment for past mistakes but a changed direction to a better future.
i read that some party organiser said that this young man's party organising skills would be worth $10,000. so heart warming that such public if deniably tacit approval of defying one's parents can be so rewarding; such a pity that that only comes halfway to paying the bill for cleaning up such a wonderfully well-organised party last weekend! one person thinks he's hot; another described him as having raided doctor zhivago's wardrobe.
it comes as no surprise to me that the community outrage that some might have expected to see about this incident hasn't much teeth. for the appropriate level of community outrage i suspect there needs to be a certain level of community responsibility felt within the community itself by its members towards each other, community responsibility that would have meant this would never have happened in the first place. five hundred people would have been fifty, who would have accepted that the police were there because the community as a whole empowered them to say, "you have gone thus far - too far".
so we have an acceptable level of debt, when any debt was something to be worked off rather than lived on; acceptable levels of unemployment, homelessness, divorce, scandal, corruption... what a lucky country we are! what? are we a lucky country? compared to others, perhaps. compared with what we could be, no.
we are some of us living on the verandah of a mansion, scorning the people on the stairs, ignoring those at the bottom of the driveway, and all of us together refusing to turn around and bring everyone inside the house.
how did this happen? who's to blame? well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.how do parents instill in their children a sense of responsibility toward others when everything in the world around them tells them only to think of themselves?
i've heard people say that there comes a time when you have to think of yourself, which leaves me to wonder if it ever really need be true... after all, if you can have two people looking out for one another, making sure they're safe, why can we not have 22 million people in this country looking out for one another? why can we not actively seek to make sure as we step into the future that the person beside us is not left behind?
we talk about being "the lucky country" as if we are somehow different from other nations but the more i see our newscasts and read our papers, the more i see advertising and billboards, the more i hear people on trains and see them on streets, the less difference i see between australia and the rest of the western world. this is the effluent affluence that developing nations are aspiring towards? so they too can afford to crave the things we have? type-2 diabetes, spiralling divorce rates, people unable to build things or repair things but wonderfully trained to create web pages complaining about why the water pressure is poor or why new houses are so expensive...?
our very success is the albatross around our neck: our prosperity makes us targets which need to be defended by men and women with guns; our growing population weighs our economy down with credit card debt being paid to overseas interests while we import food because we cannot support our own appetites; there is no apology without the expectation of damages; there is no forgiveness...
when i started writing this i wanted to come up with a rant about irresponsible young people who could probably do with a good thumping when it comes to being punished for damaging people's homes and our community's police cars. i want to see the people i perceive as being the cause of this be punished.
what i want is wrong. what i should want is not recompense but redemption, not judgement but justification - not payment for past mistakes but a changed direction to a better future.
i read that some party organiser said that this young man's party organising skills would be worth $10,000. so heart warming that such public if deniably tacit approval of defying one's parents can be so rewarding; such a pity that that only comes halfway to paying the bill for cleaning up such a wonderfully well-organised party last weekend! one person thinks he's hot; another described him as having raided doctor zhivago's wardrobe.
it comes as no surprise to me that the community outrage that some might have expected to see about this incident hasn't much teeth. for the appropriate level of community outrage i suspect there needs to be a certain level of community responsibility felt within the community itself by its members towards each other, community responsibility that would have meant this would never have happened in the first place. five hundred people would have been fifty, who would have accepted that the police were there because the community as a whole empowered them to say, "you have gone thus far - too far".
so we have an acceptable level of debt, when any debt was something to be worked off rather than lived on; acceptable levels of unemployment, homelessness, divorce, scandal, corruption... what a lucky country we are! what? are we a lucky country? compared to others, perhaps. compared with what we could be, no.
we are some of us living on the verandah of a mansion, scorning the people on the stairs, ignoring those at the bottom of the driveway, and all of us together refusing to turn around and bring everyone inside the house.
... i love blogs like this
i came across this blog as i was logging in to upload my last entry. very cool.
Monday, January 14, 2008
... bicycle! bicycle!!! (1)
i want to ride my bicycle!
i did, yesterday, and so i took myself off to chadstone, shopping centre of the one-bike-rack kind. i ended up locking my bike to a light post outside, being warned off so-called "dumb" signs, those posts that are simply slotted into holes in the ground without being cemented in at all.
chadstone is busy! in a very terry-pratchett-it's-all-quantum kind of way, it exerts a strong socio-economic gravitic force on the area around it... distorting traffic movement, parking areas, public transport, property and rental prices, green grocery prices - the works. scary to see that kind of thing up close. i expect any large shopping centre would have that kind of impact but chadstone seems to be a bit more pervasive than most i've seen.
i did some exploring on my way home and by the time i'd put my bike away my thighs were screaming that they were about to cramp up at any moment! i had as hot a shower as i could cope with, scrubbed hard at the sweat that had caked my body (ewww, i know, but it also kind of felt good to have exerted myself that much), and took a great deal of pleasure in washing my hair.
i did, yesterday, and so i took myself off to chadstone, shopping centre of the one-bike-rack kind. i ended up locking my bike to a light post outside, being warned off so-called "dumb" signs, those posts that are simply slotted into holes in the ground without being cemented in at all.
chadstone is busy! in a very terry-pratchett-it's-all-quantum kind of way, it exerts a strong socio-economic gravitic force on the area around it... distorting traffic movement, parking areas, public transport, property and rental prices, green grocery prices - the works. scary to see that kind of thing up close. i expect any large shopping centre would have that kind of impact but chadstone seems to be a bit more pervasive than most i've seen.
i did some exploring on my way home and by the time i'd put my bike away my thighs were screaming that they were about to cramp up at any moment! i had as hot a shower as i could cope with, scrubbed hard at the sweat that had caked my body (ewww, i know, but it also kind of felt good to have exerted myself that much), and took a great deal of pleasure in washing my hair.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
... no resolutions
well, none but this - i want to go walking for half an hour every day.
it's been a while since i blogged but nothing terribly exciting has really happened. not that i only blog the exciting stuff... it'd be the world's shortest blog, given my preference for avoiding (chinese curse-style) interesting stuff.
new year's eve last night was the first one i've had for about 13 years where i wasn't away on a camp of some kind. what did i do? i watched fireworks on telly, caught up with some filing on my computer, and watched a film on sbs. not a whole heck of a lot. i had sausages and baked beans on toast for dinner. i'm told the temperature yesterday maxed out at about 42 degrees here in melbourne - after so many steamy summers in sydney, it totally didn't feel that hot without the humidity i was used to over the Christmas period. anyone who saw me last (or was it the year before) new year's, when sydney had all those bushfires and it was one of the hottest new year's days we'd had and it was so dry, will agree that it's definitely the humidity that knocks me about, not the heat so much...
my mum and sister were over here on Christmas Day for lunch. that could be filed under exciting, i suppose, but from my point of view it was more scary than exciting. i made a slow-cooked lamb shoulder with mint and pomegranate, peas and parmesan, zucchini slices sauteed in olive oil, chilli and garlic, and potatoes with whole spices, with a variation on eton mess, serving meringue, whipped cream, cut strawberries and pomegranate seeds and juice piled up in a big heap for dessert.
i've never slow-cooked anything before, let alone 2kg' worth of lamb, so i was very glad to wake up and find the house had not burned down overnight. in fact, the cooking had filled the house with a yummy sweet, meaty aroma.
no surprises here either - i used nigella lawson's recipes for the lamb, the potatoes and the pomegranate meringue mountain (her name, not mine; i like the succinctness of "eton mess") and jamie oliver's recipes for the peas and zucchinis... truth be told, the green dishes didn't require much in terms of recipes but when you're uncertain of how even to cook frozen peas a simple recipe goes a long way. at least i could already boil water - i know more people than i'm happy to who claim to burn even that!
it's been a while since i blogged but nothing terribly exciting has really happened. not that i only blog the exciting stuff... it'd be the world's shortest blog, given my preference for avoiding (chinese curse-style) interesting stuff.
new year's eve last night was the first one i've had for about 13 years where i wasn't away on a camp of some kind. what did i do? i watched fireworks on telly, caught up with some filing on my computer, and watched a film on sbs. not a whole heck of a lot. i had sausages and baked beans on toast for dinner. i'm told the temperature yesterday maxed out at about 42 degrees here in melbourne - after so many steamy summers in sydney, it totally didn't feel that hot without the humidity i was used to over the Christmas period. anyone who saw me last (or was it the year before) new year's, when sydney had all those bushfires and it was one of the hottest new year's days we'd had and it was so dry, will agree that it's definitely the humidity that knocks me about, not the heat so much...
my mum and sister were over here on Christmas Day for lunch. that could be filed under exciting, i suppose, but from my point of view it was more scary than exciting. i made a slow-cooked lamb shoulder with mint and pomegranate, peas and parmesan, zucchini slices sauteed in olive oil, chilli and garlic, and potatoes with whole spices, with a variation on eton mess, serving meringue, whipped cream, cut strawberries and pomegranate seeds and juice piled up in a big heap for dessert.
i've never slow-cooked anything before, let alone 2kg' worth of lamb, so i was very glad to wake up and find the house had not burned down overnight. in fact, the cooking had filled the house with a yummy sweet, meaty aroma.
no surprises here either - i used nigella lawson's recipes for the lamb, the potatoes and the pomegranate meringue mountain (her name, not mine; i like the succinctness of "eton mess") and jamie oliver's recipes for the peas and zucchinis... truth be told, the green dishes didn't require much in terms of recipes but when you're uncertain of how even to cook frozen peas a simple recipe goes a long way. at least i could already boil water - i know more people than i'm happy to who claim to burn even that!
Monday, December 10, 2007
... ten years later
it's hard to believe that it's already ten years yesterday since my father died. i loved him dearly, even though i don't think, even at the end, that we were terribly close.
God showed me very tangibly the enormous love he has, however, on the day of the funeral, when he brought so many of my friends together to be with me and support me that day. i thank God for each and every one whenever i think of my father.
God showed me very tangibly the enormous love he has, however, on the day of the funeral, when he brought so many of my friends together to be with me and support me that day. i thank God for each and every one whenever i think of my father.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
... cool
i got home from celebrating my birthday with friends from sticky - we went to taco bill's on russell st - and i found these waiting for me, cooked by my very thoughtful housemate!
how nice is that?
big shoutout of thanks to all my friends and family, without whom i can confidently say that i wouldn't be here today. God bless all of you in every way!
how nice is that?
big shoutout of thanks to all my friends and family, without whom i can confidently say that i wouldn't be here today. God bless all of you in every way!
Monday, November 26, 2007
... quite by accident
i found this link to a blog about "a day in the life of a female marine". i find the u.s. marine corps to be quite interesting, not least because of my affinity for matthew reilly novels but also because they seem to be invested with such... a gravity and mythology that the military in australia (notwithstanding the s.a.s) doesn't really seem to have.
i can't say i really thought much of the movie g.i. jane but it also gave (one would assume, not knowing any better) something of an insight into the navy s.e.a.l.s... i've happened on this blog before and not read much of it but maybe i might take a bit of a longer look at it.
i can't say i really thought much of the movie g.i. jane but it also gave (one would assume, not knowing any better) something of an insight into the navy s.e.a.l.s... i've happened on this blog before and not read much of it but maybe i might take a bit of a longer look at it.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
... thoughts on blogging
it's easy to go m.i.a. when you're blogging - life happens, things distract you, and the actual act of blogging (agonising over oxford commas aside) really does take up time. normally it's like time you spend with a friend - you don't always notice the time passing until for a little while you don't hang out with them and you realise trying to make time again to see them can be difficult. (i'm not sure that makes sense but it's early and i'm still eating my coco pops...)
i was thinking about this after reading a friend's blog, who confessed that life had intruded on blogging. to blog only quality or to blog sub-par thoughts? that was the question.
i don't know what i blog. sometimes i'm filling in space but sometimes (most of the time) it's stuff i can't keep inside me. i need to tell someone and in the absence of people being around to tell (or not wanting to burden my housemate with all my random thoughts), i blog.
why do you blog? why do you read blogs?
i was thinking about this after reading a friend's blog, who confessed that life had intruded on blogging. to blog only quality or to blog sub-par thoughts? that was the question.
i don't know what i blog. sometimes i'm filling in space but sometimes (most of the time) it's stuff i can't keep inside me. i need to tell someone and in the absence of people being around to tell (or not wanting to burden my housemate with all my random thoughts), i blog.
why do you blog? why do you read blogs?
Friday, November 16, 2007
... is it ok...?
one of my favourite cds from years past (about a dozen or so) was by artist max sharam, called a million year girl. it had a few hits and was nominated for a bucketload of arias. i just liked the songs and the more i listened to it the more the songs got into my head. no surprises there, of course - if you spend time filling your head with something or other, some part of that something is bound to lodge in there.
thing is, the music didn't lodge like a sesame seed or a piece of spinach or that coppery-cellulosey bit in the popcorn that gets between your teeth and gums that you spend hours worrying out with toothpicks and tongue. it kind of dissolved into my brain, rising unbidden like an athena when i least expect it. there are a few albums and songs that do that for me... not heaps, not really, but there are a few.
i remember seeing advertising for max sharam's one-woman show in sydney last year or the year before and doing a bit of googlesearch found some reviews and articles about them. she played the melbourne international comedy festival, many gigs around australia, a ten-year-reunion gig for the album in '04, and the gig i saw her perform at at wollongong uni in 1995 (i think). (i caught a very late train home to my place in penshurst and was terrified i was going to be beaten up by a bunch of drunk guys who got on the train at thirroul and got off at sutherland...
a million year girl is a nostalgic touchstone for me. i don't listen to the album very often now but when i do, i feel pulled bodily into the past, into the feelings and emotions attached to the years i was living when i was listening to the album. merril bainbridge's album the garden, fiona apple's tidal, the doug anthony all-stars' icon and henry rollins' the boxed life all form a part of that internal soundtrack from then, glued together by canasta, Bible study, youth group, poetry and loneliness.
i suppose it's not a good thing to go back to the thing that causes you pain - but we're all human beings here, i guess, and hurting ourselves seems to be part of the package, whether we like it or not - but i believe that's a big part of what makes nostalgia bittersweet: that it's not just bitter...
thing is, the music didn't lodge like a sesame seed or a piece of spinach or that coppery-cellulosey bit in the popcorn that gets between your teeth and gums that you spend hours worrying out with toothpicks and tongue. it kind of dissolved into my brain, rising unbidden like an athena when i least expect it. there are a few albums and songs that do that for me... not heaps, not really, but there are a few.
i remember seeing advertising for max sharam's one-woman show in sydney last year or the year before and doing a bit of googlesearch found some reviews and articles about them. she played the melbourne international comedy festival, many gigs around australia, a ten-year-reunion gig for the album in '04, and the gig i saw her perform at at wollongong uni in 1995 (i think). (i caught a very late train home to my place in penshurst and was terrified i was going to be beaten up by a bunch of drunk guys who got on the train at thirroul and got off at sutherland...
a million year girl is a nostalgic touchstone for me. i don't listen to the album very often now but when i do, i feel pulled bodily into the past, into the feelings and emotions attached to the years i was living when i was listening to the album. merril bainbridge's album the garden, fiona apple's tidal, the doug anthony all-stars' icon and henry rollins' the boxed life all form a part of that internal soundtrack from then, glued together by canasta, Bible study, youth group, poetry and loneliness.
i suppose it's not a good thing to go back to the thing that causes you pain - but we're all human beings here, i guess, and hurting ourselves seems to be part of the package, whether we like it or not - but i believe that's a big part of what makes nostalgia bittersweet: that it's not just bitter...
and what im trying to say isn't really new...i don't often go looking for it - usually something will set it off and there i'll be, standing in 2007 but reliving ten years earlier, or twenty (if it's the pet shop boys), or twenty-five (if it's the smell of wattle)...
it's just the things that happen to me
when im reminded of you
like when i hear your name
or see a place that you've been
or see a picture of your grin
or pass a house that you've been in
one time or another
it sets off something in me
i just can't explain
Monday, November 05, 2007
... freedom! forever!
remember, remember the fifth of november
the gunpowder treason and plot
i know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot
it's been many, many years since cracker night, or bonfire night, the end of so many stacks of old fence pailings and tree branches in the middle of winter, the last vestiges of empire day... many years since i had a hole burned in the back of my dressing gown as a child by some other child's sparkler... i knew of guy fawkes through old agatha christie novels, through the rhyme, but nothing of the man himself, not really. v for vendetta - awesome graphic novel that it is, great film as far as it went - sparks some ideas but doesn't really say that much about guy fawkes himself.
tomorrow is the melbourne cup public holiday here in sunny melbourne; i believe i'll use some of the day to do a little internet research on guy fawkes and see if i can't glean a few more special seeds from his story that might yield a harvest in my own.
v says in the movie, "people shouldn't be afraid of their governments - governments should be afraid of their people". i understand the intended meaning, i think, but i think that so much of the failings of governments around the world come down to that: governments fear those they govern... no - scratch that - governments fear those they rule. all around the world so many of those in government are the greedy and the afraid... and how long does it take for the idealistic to compromise their beliefs until one day they fall into one category or the other?
it is an interesting idea to consider coming up to the next federal election. the last fit-like spasms of the parties trying to win over the electorate before the end of the month is painful to watch. perhaps we should draft people to serve as members of parliament - like jury duty - instead of electing them.
the gunpowder treason and plot
i know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot
it's been many, many years since cracker night, or bonfire night, the end of so many stacks of old fence pailings and tree branches in the middle of winter, the last vestiges of empire day... many years since i had a hole burned in the back of my dressing gown as a child by some other child's sparkler... i knew of guy fawkes through old agatha christie novels, through the rhyme, but nothing of the man himself, not really. v for vendetta - awesome graphic novel that it is, great film as far as it went - sparks some ideas but doesn't really say that much about guy fawkes himself.
tomorrow is the melbourne cup public holiday here in sunny melbourne; i believe i'll use some of the day to do a little internet research on guy fawkes and see if i can't glean a few more special seeds from his story that might yield a harvest in my own.
v says in the movie, "people shouldn't be afraid of their governments - governments should be afraid of their people". i understand the intended meaning, i think, but i think that so much of the failings of governments around the world come down to that: governments fear those they govern... no - scratch that - governments fear those they rule. all around the world so many of those in government are the greedy and the afraid... and how long does it take for the idealistic to compromise their beliefs until one day they fall into one category or the other?
it is an interesting idea to consider coming up to the next federal election. the last fit-like spasms of the parties trying to win over the electorate before the end of the month is painful to watch. perhaps we should draft people to serve as members of parliament - like jury duty - instead of electing them.
Monday, October 22, 2007
... the sublime helen mirren
i missed the start of the interview, so i was lacking a mite in context, but i was most fortunate to see andrew denton's enough rope tonight. fortunate indeed!
i honestly believe that there is no other actress like her in (anglophone) cinema today. from the time i first saw her in excalibur - when i was about 9 or 10, i think - i thought her to be one of the most beautiful women i had ever seen. despite the fact that my own opinions of female beauty are rather more broad than the usual, the conclusion i reached some twenty-three years ago remains true today.
in more ways than i can say, helen mirren is for me the standard and marker of beauty.
i honestly believe that there is no other actress like her in (anglophone) cinema today. from the time i first saw her in excalibur - when i was about 9 or 10, i think - i thought her to be one of the most beautiful women i had ever seen. despite the fact that my own opinions of female beauty are rather more broad than the usual, the conclusion i reached some twenty-three years ago remains true today.
in more ways than i can say, helen mirren is for me the standard and marker of beauty.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
... beautiful girls do fart
if someone had asked me, i don't think i ever would have said, "i'll miss sydney taxis when i move to melbourne". if i had said that i wouldn't miss sydney taxis, i would have been wrong.
i've seen sydney taxis cross four lanes of traffic and make an illegal u-turn to pick up a fare... and here in melbourne, the city i find new reasons every day to love, i've seen twenty cabs pass by in as many minutes, except for the one which pulled up, melways propped up on the steering wheel, chirping in a near-unintelligible indian accent, "did you phone for a taxi?"
i've resigned myself to not being able to get an omelette that i like here in melbourne the same way a man might resign himself to his girlfriend being immovable on leaving a toilet seat up (i.e don't do it)...
... but i never thought i'd miss sydney cabbies.
i've seen sydney taxis cross four lanes of traffic and make an illegal u-turn to pick up a fare... and here in melbourne, the city i find new reasons every day to love, i've seen twenty cabs pass by in as many minutes, except for the one which pulled up, melways propped up on the steering wheel, chirping in a near-unintelligible indian accent, "did you phone for a taxi?"
i've resigned myself to not being able to get an omelette that i like here in melbourne the same way a man might resign himself to his girlfriend being immovable on leaving a toilet seat up (i.e don't do it)...
... but i never thought i'd miss sydney cabbies.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
... navel gazing (a little)
sometimes i'm disappointed by things i have no real reason or entitlement to feel disappointed about, not really. i read in a zine (dream whip, issue #12, us$4 to p.o. box 53832, lubbock, tx 79453 usa) about the writer's thoughts on punk rock in texas. they feel that the punks they grew up with are now all in rehab or jail or law school (kind of all the same in a bizarre kind of way, don't you think?) and the void they've left behind has been filled with Christian punks.
we were talking at work today about scary movies (i don't recall why) and i commented that perhaps the scariest, or at least creepiest, novel i'd read (at least while i was at high school) was it, by stephen king. i don't think he'd written anything before it came out that was better; i don't think much of anything he's written since, although i did quite enjoy needful things. fantastic novel, crappy film.
my reasoning for the film's crappiness was that it was made for television as a mini-series. i think that had it been made for cinemas, with a bigger budget and better cast (or at least a different cast, which was about as good as the context would allow, i suppose), it would have been given more leeway to stay true to the... vibe of the book. it's hard to be genuinely creeped out by a clown talking to an eight-year-old boy from a stormwater drain when your dad's falling asleep in his dinner at the table and your mum is haranguing you to finish your homework even if it's a saturday night and you've already put up with the world around us. the context within which we consume television is vastly different to the cinema experience. the film was a terrible disappointment to me after the engrossing thrills of the novel. as far as films go, halloween, poltergeist and friday the 13th were far scarier. they were made for cinema and not adapted from books, so the comparison isn't perfect, but there you go.
i finished the new terry pratchett book, making money on sunday. i don't remember (and i'm too lazy to go looking) if i blogged about how disappointed i was with matthew reilly's novel seven ancient wonders but if i did, or you and i talked about what i thought of it, then you'll understand what i mean when i say it fell short. after the brilliance of going postal and thud, this latest one seemed to be a rehash of a lot of gags (or that didn't make the cut) in going postal. it felt a bit like a carry on... movie. boring villains, deus ex machina, bit parts for good characters, and the least interesting depiction of lord vetinari i've read so far.
alas. no, i suppose i have to wait for matthew reilly's new book to excite me because i doubt i'll see another discworld book for another twelve months and it'll likely be another witch book.
sorry for all the whingeing. we'll try to return you to your regularly scheduled sunshine next week!
on the 4th of july, the Christian punk rockers roll down broadway on their own float. they rock, i can't deny it. but it's confusing, too, because the stuff i think about when i hear fuzzy guitars and screamed vocals isn't the same stuff these kids are thinking about. i remember when the Christians used to worry that punk rock would steal their souls. now i'm worried that the Christian kids are going to save punk rock's soul and ruin everything.interesting thought... could the salvation of a soul be a bad thing?
we were talking at work today about scary movies (i don't recall why) and i commented that perhaps the scariest, or at least creepiest, novel i'd read (at least while i was at high school) was it, by stephen king. i don't think he'd written anything before it came out that was better; i don't think much of anything he's written since, although i did quite enjoy needful things. fantastic novel, crappy film.
my reasoning for the film's crappiness was that it was made for television as a mini-series. i think that had it been made for cinemas, with a bigger budget and better cast (or at least a different cast, which was about as good as the context would allow, i suppose), it would have been given more leeway to stay true to the... vibe of the book. it's hard to be genuinely creeped out by a clown talking to an eight-year-old boy from a stormwater drain when your dad's falling asleep in his dinner at the table and your mum is haranguing you to finish your homework even if it's a saturday night and you've already put up with the world around us. the context within which we consume television is vastly different to the cinema experience. the film was a terrible disappointment to me after the engrossing thrills of the novel. as far as films go, halloween, poltergeist and friday the 13th were far scarier. they were made for cinema and not adapted from books, so the comparison isn't perfect, but there you go.
i finished the new terry pratchett book, making money on sunday. i don't remember (and i'm too lazy to go looking) if i blogged about how disappointed i was with matthew reilly's novel seven ancient wonders but if i did, or you and i talked about what i thought of it, then you'll understand what i mean when i say it fell short. after the brilliance of going postal and thud, this latest one seemed to be a rehash of a lot of gags (or that didn't make the cut) in going postal. it felt a bit like a carry on... movie. boring villains, deus ex machina, bit parts for good characters, and the least interesting depiction of lord vetinari i've read so far.
alas. no, i suppose i have to wait for matthew reilly's new book to excite me because i doubt i'll see another discworld book for another twelve months and it'll likely be another witch book.
sorry for all the whingeing. we'll try to return you to your regularly scheduled sunshine next week!
Monday, October 15, 2007
... one of the few reasons to like youtube
i don't use a mac; haven't really had much contact with macintoshes since i was at university, actually, but one thing i love about apple is their advertising. if nothing else, it's encouraged me to go looking for different music. feist, for example:
this is the clip they used in the new nano advert. one of the things i love about it is that it's all shot in one take. you don't really notice it, not really, not unless you're looking for it and to be honest i didn't realise it until it was pointed out to me. the irony is that one of the reasons i was so enraptured by the movie children of men was a key sequence in the film that, likewise, was all shot in one take. check it out - it's well worth it. some enterprising young bean may well have put the scene i'm talking about on the internet somewhere but i think you should go buy the dvd. like i said- well worth it.
another reason to like youtube - and bear in mind i'm not gearing up for a youtube lovefest here; there's really very little that's positive about it and my reason here for liking it is pretty much the reason i hate the rest of youtube - is my purely selfish pleasure in checking out all the commercials that people post on there. i love the apple adverts and the pc vs mac ads are amazingly entertaining. this is an edited compilation of a bunch of mac vs pc ads but if you go back to youtube you'll find japanese and uk versions of the series. you'll also find my new personal favourite, the novell pc/mac ads, featuring linux!
to my shame, i love entertaining advertising more than the entertainment it shows in, a lot of the time.
this is the clip they used in the new nano advert. one of the things i love about it is that it's all shot in one take. you don't really notice it, not really, not unless you're looking for it and to be honest i didn't realise it until it was pointed out to me. the irony is that one of the reasons i was so enraptured by the movie children of men was a key sequence in the film that, likewise, was all shot in one take. check it out - it's well worth it. some enterprising young bean may well have put the scene i'm talking about on the internet somewhere but i think you should go buy the dvd. like i said- well worth it.
another reason to like youtube - and bear in mind i'm not gearing up for a youtube lovefest here; there's really very little that's positive about it and my reason here for liking it is pretty much the reason i hate the rest of youtube - is my purely selfish pleasure in checking out all the commercials that people post on there. i love the apple adverts and the pc vs mac ads are amazingly entertaining. this is an edited compilation of a bunch of mac vs pc ads but if you go back to youtube you'll find japanese and uk versions of the series. you'll also find my new personal favourite, the novell pc/mac ads, featuring linux!
to my shame, i love entertaining advertising more than the entertainment it shows in, a lot of the time.
Friday, October 12, 2007
... the astor
got home from the astor theatre on chapel street just a short while ago. i saw die hard 4.0 and die hard. both as good as i expected. i know a lot of people have hung shit on die hard 4.0 and i understand why they do but i really wasn't asking very much of the franchise by this stage.
consider a few "part fours" with me here. jaws 4 - the revenge - utter, utter crap. i hope michael caine got a big fat cheque for that one. it had better have been worth every penny, too. star wars 4 - effectively what the phantom menace is and i don't know many people who wouldn't say that it's the weakest one in the series. hellraiser iv - bloodlines - a not entirely unworthy addition to the franchise, although by this time alan smithee had come out of retirement and was credited with helming this heap. a nightmare on elm street 4 - the dream master - we know freddy's never really going to die, not while robert englund and wes craven have bills to pay; once we all come clean and admit that we kind of like seeing american teenagers die excruciatingly fantastical (fantastically excruciating?) deaths in cheesey plot twists that you can see from a week away, i think we'll all be better off.
die hard, however, truly stands the test of time. released in australia in 1988, almost 20 years later it still has the power on the big screen to draw you in and excite you. i jumped in a few places i haven't jumped in years, inured to the small screen experience i have acquired through years of seeing this film on vhs. widescreen is the only way to see this film, the wider the better. die hard has consistently made my top ten movies since its release; without it, i honestly don't think you would have any one of a hundred action movies made since.
i never realised how conveniently placed the astor theatre is. alas, the timing of the film sucked - i knew that die hard went for a long time, so i ended up catching the train to elsternwick from windsor and then tramming home from there. i simply didn't trust the 64 not to run late, nor the 67 to run late enough for the 64 to meet up with it comfortably.
i'm dead on my seat and need some sleep. good night.
consider a few "part fours" with me here. jaws 4 - the revenge - utter, utter crap. i hope michael caine got a big fat cheque for that one. it had better have been worth every penny, too. star wars 4 - effectively what the phantom menace is and i don't know many people who wouldn't say that it's the weakest one in the series. hellraiser iv - bloodlines - a not entirely unworthy addition to the franchise, although by this time alan smithee had come out of retirement and was credited with helming this heap. a nightmare on elm street 4 - the dream master - we know freddy's never really going to die, not while robert englund and wes craven have bills to pay; once we all come clean and admit that we kind of like seeing american teenagers die excruciatingly fantastical (fantastically excruciating?) deaths in cheesey plot twists that you can see from a week away, i think we'll all be better off.
die hard, however, truly stands the test of time. released in australia in 1988, almost 20 years later it still has the power on the big screen to draw you in and excite you. i jumped in a few places i haven't jumped in years, inured to the small screen experience i have acquired through years of seeing this film on vhs. widescreen is the only way to see this film, the wider the better. die hard has consistently made my top ten movies since its release; without it, i honestly don't think you would have any one of a hundred action movies made since.
i never realised how conveniently placed the astor theatre is. alas, the timing of the film sucked - i knew that die hard went for a long time, so i ended up catching the train to elsternwick from windsor and then tramming home from there. i simply didn't trust the 64 not to run late, nor the 67 to run late enough for the 64 to meet up with it comfortably.
i'm dead on my seat and need some sleep. good night.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
... buckingham palace
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terrible hard,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We saw a guard in a sentry-box.
"One of the sergeants looks after their socks,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We looked for the King, but he never came.
"Well, God take care of him, all the same,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
They've great big parties inside the grounds.
"I wouldn't be King for a hundred pounds,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
A face looked out, but it wasn't the King's.
"He's much too busy a-signing things,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
"Do you think the King knows all about me?"
"Sure to, dear, but it's time for tea,"
Says Alice.
A.A. Milne
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terrible hard,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We saw a guard in a sentry-box.
"One of the sergeants looks after their socks,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We looked for the King, but he never came.
"Well, God take care of him, all the same,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
They've great big parties inside the grounds.
"I wouldn't be King for a hundred pounds,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
A face looked out, but it wasn't the King's.
"He's much too busy a-signing things,"
Says Alice.
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
"Do you think the King knows all about me?"
"Sure to, dear, but it's time for tea,"
Says Alice.
A.A. Milne
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
... what's in my head right now
i've been reading some zines lately, omnibus editions, where the... sense of reading a bucketload of zines in one go, and reading a quirky little book gets kind of blurred.
presently, i'm reading the constant rider omnibus by kate lopresti. (available here) as an avid user of public transport myself, i find myself reading this very much with an eye to familiar situations and "what-would-i-have-done?" thoughts. i'd love to do one for my experiences in melbourne but i think that i'm pretty optimistic about public transport (in fairly stark contrast to the rest of my life, some might say, throughout which i take a position (which i read about over someone's shoulder on the train this morning) of defensive pessimism). not that i'm saying the kate is pessimistic about her experiences - on the contrary i've found here to be neither dismal nor pollyannaish - but what i am saying is that (1) i'd feel like i was slavishly copying something that's already been done and (2) i might be too lopsidedly "up" about it all. maybe. who knows? (maybe i'm being to up about how up i'd be...) i'm loving it and if you're in australia and you'd like to borrow my copy (or even buy one - i have connections down here, you know!) please let me know.
another omnibus i've just finished reading is invincible summer by nicole georges. (available here) again, heaps of fun to read. i'm not a vegan and i'm still not a fan of live chickens (although lately i'm not even much of a fan of dead ones), having grown up keep some in the backyard during my childhood, but i still managed to take away a sense of nicole's singular view of the world. and of her small dog. shudder small dogs...
i have been lucky enough to meet a few zine authors in the last few months as well! i was privileged enough to meet the writers of such zines as antonyms for demure, das papierkrieg and westside angst, erinsborough exploits, and giantess, all of which are available to the zine shop in melbourne, sticky.
just being in contact with these people, hearing about their ideas, their thoughts, their desires for where they want their titles to go and the drive they have to take them there, it's all very inspiring. it's made me pick up my pen and start writing stuff again - not just pithy little three-words-a-line poems (although i still write plenty of those) but short stories that i'm doing my best to actually plan out. i have a new zine coming out soon talking about ten of my favourite IKEA items. (now that i have the covers...) hopefully i'll get them done sooner rather than later.
anyway, just a bit of what's in my head tonight.
presently, i'm reading the constant rider omnibus by kate lopresti. (available here) as an avid user of public transport myself, i find myself reading this very much with an eye to familiar situations and "what-would-i-have-done?" thoughts. i'd love to do one for my experiences in melbourne but i think that i'm pretty optimistic about public transport (in fairly stark contrast to the rest of my life, some might say, throughout which i take a position (which i read about over someone's shoulder on the train this morning) of defensive pessimism). not that i'm saying the kate is pessimistic about her experiences - on the contrary i've found here to be neither dismal nor pollyannaish - but what i am saying is that (1) i'd feel like i was slavishly copying something that's already been done and (2) i might be too lopsidedly "up" about it all. maybe. who knows? (maybe i'm being to up about how up i'd be...) i'm loving it and if you're in australia and you'd like to borrow my copy (or even buy one - i have connections down here, you know!) please let me know.
another omnibus i've just finished reading is invincible summer by nicole georges. (available here) again, heaps of fun to read. i'm not a vegan and i'm still not a fan of live chickens (although lately i'm not even much of a fan of dead ones), having grown up keep some in the backyard during my childhood, but i still managed to take away a sense of nicole's singular view of the world. and of her small dog. shudder small dogs...
i have been lucky enough to meet a few zine authors in the last few months as well! i was privileged enough to meet the writers of such zines as antonyms for demure, das papierkrieg and westside angst, erinsborough exploits, and giantess, all of which are available to the zine shop in melbourne, sticky.
just being in contact with these people, hearing about their ideas, their thoughts, their desires for where they want their titles to go and the drive they have to take them there, it's all very inspiring. it's made me pick up my pen and start writing stuff again - not just pithy little three-words-a-line poems (although i still write plenty of those) but short stories that i'm doing my best to actually plan out. i have a new zine coming out soon talking about ten of my favourite IKEA items. (now that i have the covers...) hopefully i'll get them done sooner rather than later.
anyway, just a bit of what's in my head tonight.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
... quelle surprise
i was thinking about writing this post in french but i'm too tired and i really can't be bothered.
it's not that surprising that i couldn't get my act together to write every day... i thought i was raising the bar a bit right there but you hear enough of that stupid "aim for the moon and you'll land among the stars" crap and even though you know it's crap you can't help but fall for it from time to time. i have been thinking each day about things to write but i've not kept track of them. i suppose i should get a notebook or something, keep it with me all the time.
did fitness training again last night. calves still sore a bit, thighs not bad as they were when we finished up last night, chest a bit sore from the push-ups and prone braces though. i feel a bit better, a bit more energetic. i suppose that means it's doing me good. we did some boxing and i keep getting told that i push myself hard. i don't know about that. it'd be really easy for me to blow it off and stop doing the training at all. once i'm there doing it, i get somewhat bloody-minded about it, i think, and what might be interpreted as "getting into the training" by someone outside my head is probably better interpreted as, "i really don't care about my body at all so i'll punish it because doing so makes me feel better". i'm sure that's no more mentally healthy than it is physically healthy. (i probably should delete that but i've already edited this enough... i can let that go through.)
the new series of the bionic woman looks good; bit of a battlestar galactica reunion, though - i've counted two guest stars just in the first episode. i watched the first episode of season two of heroes tonight as well - given that i only kept up with season one through the ads, always telling myself i'd buy the series on dvd (when i got cheaper than immdeiate release price), i pretty much kept up with what's going on, i think.
And can the physician make sick men well?
And can the magician a fortune divine?
Without lily, germander, and sops-in-wine,
With sweet-briar and bonfire
And strawberry wire and columbine.
it's not that surprising that i couldn't get my act together to write every day... i thought i was raising the bar a bit right there but you hear enough of that stupid "aim for the moon and you'll land among the stars" crap and even though you know it's crap you can't help but fall for it from time to time. i have been thinking each day about things to write but i've not kept track of them. i suppose i should get a notebook or something, keep it with me all the time.
did fitness training again last night. calves still sore a bit, thighs not bad as they were when we finished up last night, chest a bit sore from the push-ups and prone braces though. i feel a bit better, a bit more energetic. i suppose that means it's doing me good. we did some boxing and i keep getting told that i push myself hard. i don't know about that. it'd be really easy for me to blow it off and stop doing the training at all. once i'm there doing it, i get somewhat bloody-minded about it, i think, and what might be interpreted as "getting into the training" by someone outside my head is probably better interpreted as, "i really don't care about my body at all so i'll punish it because doing so makes me feel better". i'm sure that's no more mentally healthy than it is physically healthy. (i probably should delete that but i've already edited this enough... i can let that go through.)
the new series of the bionic woman looks good; bit of a battlestar galactica reunion, though - i've counted two guest stars just in the first episode. i watched the first episode of season two of heroes tonight as well - given that i only kept up with season one through the ads, always telling myself i'd buy the series on dvd (when i got cheaper than immdeiate release price), i pretty much kept up with what's going on, i think.
And can the physician make sick men well?
And can the magician a fortune divine?
Without lily, germander, and sops-in-wine,
With sweet-briar and bonfire
And strawberry wire and columbine.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
... road not travelled?
i was watching numbers tonight, briefly (i missed most of it, actually), and at the end heard a poem which i felt compelled to go look for.
the poem is by siegfried sassoon and is entitled, the death-bed. there's so much in it, more than i can write now, but the thing that impacted me most is that i have forgotten how to read poetry.
the poems i grew up with remain with me - they have formed an integral part of my vocabulary, so much that on any given day i probably quote five or six poems i learned before the age of 12 in ordinary conversations without even realising that i'm doing it! i can still recite matilda, who told lies and was burned to death (by hilaire belloc, from cautionary tales for children) - a poem i first heard when i was about four years old - and fragments of verse by lewis carroll and edward lear, robert louis stevenson and dr seuss all pepper my thoughts and my words, like pilling on a suit that will not allow itself to be removed!
absorbing new poetry, however, is something i have fallen out of the habit of doing. i set myself to learning a few of shakespeare's sonnets; i managed to get three down pat (i think) and i'm sure if i put my mind to it i could learn more - i simply don't choose to. i write my own words but will not put the time into discipling myself and my writing to much in the way of a formal meter or structure.
i hope that this will be a switch to my back that will get me back into reading poetry again. in high school, we had no choice but to learn the poems we read; old eisenbart so distracted by a girl with titian hair; a woman in a park saying her children have eaten her alive; a bishop haggles with his illegitimate children for the best monument in the cemetary; a proud duke shows a visitor a picture of the last woman who would not only smile for him.
i miss them.
the poem is by siegfried sassoon and is entitled, the death-bed. there's so much in it, more than i can write now, but the thing that impacted me most is that i have forgotten how to read poetry.
the poems i grew up with remain with me - they have formed an integral part of my vocabulary, so much that on any given day i probably quote five or six poems i learned before the age of 12 in ordinary conversations without even realising that i'm doing it! i can still recite matilda, who told lies and was burned to death (by hilaire belloc, from cautionary tales for children) - a poem i first heard when i was about four years old - and fragments of verse by lewis carroll and edward lear, robert louis stevenson and dr seuss all pepper my thoughts and my words, like pilling on a suit that will not allow itself to be removed!
absorbing new poetry, however, is something i have fallen out of the habit of doing. i set myself to learning a few of shakespeare's sonnets; i managed to get three down pat (i think) and i'm sure if i put my mind to it i could learn more - i simply don't choose to. i write my own words but will not put the time into discipling myself and my writing to much in the way of a formal meter or structure.
i hope that this will be a switch to my back that will get me back into reading poetry again. in high school, we had no choice but to learn the poems we read; old eisenbart so distracted by a girl with titian hair; a woman in a park saying her children have eaten her alive; a bishop haggles with his illegitimate children for the best monument in the cemetary; a proud duke shows a visitor a picture of the last woman who would not only smile for him.
i miss them.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
... oh, brother! (part 2)
well, (touch wood) my computer is up and running again. over the next day or so i'm going to be running diagnostics on it, maybe some tests on the video card, if i can find something that will yield results i can understand.
i also managed to get the software for the brother dcp-130c installed. i haven't scanned anything yet, but (again) it's something i'll be working on over the next day or so.
it's about 1:35am on saturday morning but it's still kind of friday night. i'm going to post this and go to bed. good night! :)
i also managed to get the software for the brother dcp-130c installed. i haven't scanned anything yet, but (again) it's something i'll be working on over the next day or so.
it's about 1:35am on saturday morning but it's still kind of friday night. i'm going to post this and go to bed. good night! :)
Thursday, September 27, 2007
...in brief
* eating salad(!) for lunch
* listening to one-hit wonders through itunes on my computer
* feeling not too bad/sore after fitness training last night
* not very happy that my computer is stuffed - one long beep and two short ones apparently means there's a monitor/video card problem (grrr)
* got some more rivers socks (yay!)
* listening to video killed the radio star (double yay!)
* ... i should finish my lunch and go back to work
* listening to one-hit wonders through itunes on my computer
* feeling not too bad/sore after fitness training last night
* not very happy that my computer is stuffed - one long beep and two short ones apparently means there's a monitor/video card problem (grrr)
* got some more rivers socks (yay!)
* listening to video killed the radio star (double yay!)
* ... i should finish my lunch and go back to work
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
... mooks on trains
i was very saddened to see the pictures of and hear about the tram collision on st kilda rd yesterday. i am always surprised when i learn of how many tram accidents there are in melbourne. given the high profile trams have in this city, i suppose i shouldn't be. i heart goes out to all those injured and i hope against hope that their experiences do not deter them from using trams again.
i was, however, very annoyed by my experience on the train this morning. boarding the sandringham/flinders st train at elsternwick i sat down on a backwards-facing seat and began reading the latest addition to my 'zine library. we arrived at ripponlea and i spied with my little eye two women standing in the doorway on the left-hand-side (facing forward, so my right hand side) of the train. i thought, perhaps they're getting off at prahran or windsor, since they were dressed quite niftily and might well have worked (although more likely shopped) along chapel st somewhere. they didn't - they ended up getting off at richmond, after deciding moments before the doors closed that that was actually where they wanted to get off and had to plough through a vestibule full of commuters to get out.
at the same time, a man who boarded at ripponlea took up station a third of the way down the aisle. he could have quite easily kept moving down the aisle to make space for additional boarding passengers but chose not to, caught up as he was in reading his "timeout: berlin" guide. one particularly determined woman squeezed past him and was eventually (two or three stops later) rewarded for her efforts with the seat of another alighting passenger.
what is it about commuters - especially rail commuters - in melbourne that makes them cling to the vestibule/entryway of train cars and trams like drowning sailors to life rafts??? there were seats aplenty when these two friends-esque women got on the train; granted there weren't any both facing forward and side-by-side but that's not really any reason to make moving on and off the train difficult for people for the rest of the journey! martin merton i'm not but i don't think it takes a phd to realise that affording fellow commuters a bit of courtesy and thoughtfulness actually contributes positively to everyone's commuting experience.
it pains me to see the gradual transformation of chatty, friendly melbournites into chilly, solipsistic sydney book- and newspaper-readers.
i was, however, very annoyed by my experience on the train this morning. boarding the sandringham/flinders st train at elsternwick i sat down on a backwards-facing seat and began reading the latest addition to my 'zine library. we arrived at ripponlea and i spied with my little eye two women standing in the doorway on the left-hand-side (facing forward, so my right hand side) of the train. i thought, perhaps they're getting off at prahran or windsor, since they were dressed quite niftily and might well have worked (although more likely shopped) along chapel st somewhere. they didn't - they ended up getting off at richmond, after deciding moments before the doors closed that that was actually where they wanted to get off and had to plough through a vestibule full of commuters to get out.
at the same time, a man who boarded at ripponlea took up station a third of the way down the aisle. he could have quite easily kept moving down the aisle to make space for additional boarding passengers but chose not to, caught up as he was in reading his "timeout: berlin" guide. one particularly determined woman squeezed past him and was eventually (two or three stops later) rewarded for her efforts with the seat of another alighting passenger.
what is it about commuters - especially rail commuters - in melbourne that makes them cling to the vestibule/entryway of train cars and trams like drowning sailors to life rafts??? there were seats aplenty when these two friends-esque women got on the train; granted there weren't any both facing forward and side-by-side but that's not really any reason to make moving on and off the train difficult for people for the rest of the journey! martin merton i'm not but i don't think it takes a phd to realise that affording fellow commuters a bit of courtesy and thoughtfulness actually contributes positively to everyone's commuting experience.
it pains me to see the gradual transformation of chatty, friendly melbournites into chilly, solipsistic sydney book- and newspaper-readers.
Monday, September 24, 2007
... oh, brother! (part 1)
i got a new multi-function centre today. it looks a little beat up - and i'm going to try to post pictures so you can see how it arrived at work today, although i may not do that tonight - and if i hadn't ordered it for myself i could have asked that we send it back straight away. it came to us in melbourne from sydney via perth - classic freight company snafu, though not the first and not the first by this company - but it did finally arrive.
it's an inkjet-based brother dcp-130c mutli-function centre, which does colour copying, printing, scanning, and which can also print direct from camera and memory card. wow. i bought it because i wanted a scanner.
so i'll be taking a progressive series of photos of me unpacking it and setting it up and if it doesn't work, the pictures will help back up any claim for replacement. as it stands, our supplier has also asked for photos, just so's they can see how badly mangled the box is. i guess we'll see what happens.
it's an inkjet-based brother dcp-130c mutli-function centre, which does colour copying, printing, scanning, and which can also print direct from camera and memory card. wow. i bought it because i wanted a scanner.
so i'll be taking a progressive series of photos of me unpacking it and setting it up and if it doesn't work, the pictures will help back up any claim for replacement. as it stands, our supplier has also asked for photos, just so's they can see how badly mangled the box is. i guess we'll see what happens.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
... slightly addictive
i have a tendency to become addicted to different things. i went through a phase at school where i had to have vegemite and lettuce sandwiches for lunch. (a little bit scary, i know.)
i've always been addicted to solitaire and other patience games. i have several programs for playing patience and the myriad games one can play but my favourite is called free patience. it has a wide assortment of games to choose from, you can play with or without stats and the help file that comes with it is a wonderfully simple and concise introduction to each game.
my housemate is mildly addicted to spider solitaire. i don't mind it, although i find it frustrating to play for long periods of time. my favourite on free patience is a game called "aunt mary", which i currently have about a one-in-six success rate in getting it out.
the question is, can i get it out before i go to bed or will i have to throw the towel in?
i've always been addicted to solitaire and other patience games. i have several programs for playing patience and the myriad games one can play but my favourite is called free patience. it has a wide assortment of games to choose from, you can play with or without stats and the help file that comes with it is a wonderfully simple and concise introduction to each game.
my housemate is mildly addicted to spider solitaire. i don't mind it, although i find it frustrating to play for long periods of time. my favourite on free patience is a game called "aunt mary", which i currently have about a one-in-six success rate in getting it out.
the question is, can i get it out before i go to bed or will i have to throw the towel in?
Saturday, September 22, 2007
... thoughts while at work
today i'm at the shop i volunteer at on the weekends and i gave the web address for where i get my favourite fonts to a couple of young whippersnappers who came in: tom's fonts. i got hooked on tom's new roman almost ten years ago now and it is still one of my favourite fonts. tom's handwriting is another one i love; i used it in a 'zine title i've been making the last couple of years and one reader actually thought it was my own handwriting (kind of scary and complimentary at the same time!).
i've hunters & collectors playing on the imac here and it's been quite a busy morning. i'm interested in seeing how the afternoon turns out.
i've hunters & collectors playing on the imac here and it's been quite a busy morning. i'm interested in seeing how the afternoon turns out.
Friday, September 21, 2007
... new faces
i don't know how many of you reading this follow the links i have in my sidebar. i know that one or two people link to some of those pages solely through this blog (and i appreciate that, really i do!) and i thought i'd share some thoughts on one of the links, piled higher and deeper.
i got hooked on these comics while i was on holidays visiting a friend in the states, which probably worked out well because i could safely be left next to a computer to amuse myself until i'd read all the backlog of strips... now that i'm sharing a house (again, actually, now that i think about it!) with someone doing (kind of) postgrad study, i read the strips with an ear for what she tells me is happening at uni.
recently, jorge cham was in australia. i don't know if he thought he was coming here for a holiday or not because the few events initially pencilled in for his stay seemed to blow out quite quickly. however, i was extremely disappointed to hear from my housemate that the talk at monash was limited to actually postgrad students and fellows(?), staff and researchers. i would have paid money to hear jorge talk about his experiences doing the strip but alas, it was not to be, neither for me nor for my housemate.
that was disappointing. what is encouraging is the introduction of new characters into the strip and the setting up of tension (maybe?) between mike and professor smith... i can't help visualising a godfather-esque storyline emerging here - "power cannot be given - it can only be taken..."
the most recent strip - the exodus of new characters unwilling to stay in the strip for no pay - had me reflecting that if i were of a particularly suspicious nature, i might think that jorge cham is setting our other female regular (tajel) up with a partner now that cecilia has broken up with her boyfriend. i think tajel and gerard would make very entertaining reading.
i got hooked on these comics while i was on holidays visiting a friend in the states, which probably worked out well because i could safely be left next to a computer to amuse myself until i'd read all the backlog of strips... now that i'm sharing a house (again, actually, now that i think about it!) with someone doing (kind of) postgrad study, i read the strips with an ear for what she tells me is happening at uni.
recently, jorge cham was in australia. i don't know if he thought he was coming here for a holiday or not because the few events initially pencilled in for his stay seemed to blow out quite quickly. however, i was extremely disappointed to hear from my housemate that the talk at monash was limited to actually postgrad students and fellows(?), staff and researchers. i would have paid money to hear jorge talk about his experiences doing the strip but alas, it was not to be, neither for me nor for my housemate.
that was disappointing. what is encouraging is the introduction of new characters into the strip and the setting up of tension (maybe?) between mike and professor smith... i can't help visualising a godfather-esque storyline emerging here - "power cannot be given - it can only be taken..."
the most recent strip - the exodus of new characters unwilling to stay in the strip for no pay - had me reflecting that if i were of a particularly suspicious nature, i might think that jorge cham is setting our other female regular (tajel) up with a partner now that cecilia has broken up with her boyfriend. i think tajel and gerard would make very entertaining reading.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
... i knew i'd be saying this
ouch.
my legs are killing me. i didn't think that going up stairs could hurt so much... until i had to go down stairs and see just how much that hurt. the muscles on top of my thighs, just above my knees, feel like they're being knuckled by some 8 year old with a killer punch every downward step i take.
surprisingly, that's about it.
my legs are killing me. i didn't think that going up stairs could hurt so much... until i had to go down stairs and see just how much that hurt. the muscles on top of my thighs, just above my knees, feel like they're being knuckled by some 8 year old with a killer punch every downward step i take.
surprisingly, that's about it.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
... never thought i'd be saying this
you know, there's a lot of things in my life that i've done that i'm not necessarily proud of. my friends know the kinds of stupid things i do - the closer they are, the greater the number and magnitude of my stupidities that they become aware of - but anyone who knows me will say that i have a love-hate relationship with exercise.
i don't love it - i hate it.
pretty simple, really. that being said, though, i do enjoy walking, long walks, especially, and i really used to like walking from the house i was living in in chatswood to the rocks or the sydney cbd. it was a long walk, ignoring the fact i can be a bit of a dawdler if i'm just in my head and without distraction, and i tended to average about 2.5, 3 hours to do it. i haven't walked from where i am now (caulfield-ish) into the melbourne cbd but it's all a damn sight more level than around sydney. if i could stay away from prahran and richmond and st kilda, i reckon i could do it in at least 3 hours.
anyway. i'm a little ashamed to say it, but here's the truth. for the last three weeks - three wednesday nights including tonight - i've been participating in fitness training after work.
i know, i know. fitness training? (gasp) but you hate exercise! and do you know what? i hate it even more because i can actually feel it doing me some good.
don't say that too loudly, will you?
i won't bore you with the details of what we've been doing - i'll get the details wrong, anyway - but suffice it to say that if i can actually walk down to the bus stop tomorrow it will be a deadset miracle. i'm in a bit of pain tonight. i've got the electric blanket on, so my sore muscles don't lock up into cramps by morning but i'm a bit cold already because i'm watching the making of kenny on channel 10.
i don't love it - i hate it.
pretty simple, really. that being said, though, i do enjoy walking, long walks, especially, and i really used to like walking from the house i was living in in chatswood to the rocks or the sydney cbd. it was a long walk, ignoring the fact i can be a bit of a dawdler if i'm just in my head and without distraction, and i tended to average about 2.5, 3 hours to do it. i haven't walked from where i am now (caulfield-ish) into the melbourne cbd but it's all a damn sight more level than around sydney. if i could stay away from prahran and richmond and st kilda, i reckon i could do it in at least 3 hours.
anyway. i'm a little ashamed to say it, but here's the truth. for the last three weeks - three wednesday nights including tonight - i've been participating in fitness training after work.
i know, i know. fitness training? (gasp) but you hate exercise! and do you know what? i hate it even more because i can actually feel it doing me some good.
don't say that too loudly, will you?
i won't bore you with the details of what we've been doing - i'll get the details wrong, anyway - but suffice it to say that if i can actually walk down to the bus stop tomorrow it will be a deadset miracle. i'm in a bit of pain tonight. i've got the electric blanket on, so my sore muscles don't lock up into cramps by morning but i'm a bit cold already because i'm watching the making of kenny on channel 10.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
... it's the little things
i was thinking today about how much i like where i've moved to. the weather is totally more agreeable here to me than sydney's ever was. people on trains and trams seem friendlier and more inclined to have a conversation with a stranger (i was actualy talking with a couple of guys on a tram the other night about the pros and cons of the clive barker canon)...
there's not much about melbourne i don't like... but one of the few things that really makes my teeth itch is the bovine approach so many melbournites take to walking around their lovely home. they wander around like farmer brown's cows and what translated while i was on holidays as "everyone's really laid back here compared to sydney" i have now concluded is actually "i don't think half of these people know where they're going..."
it's only a little thing... but it's usually the little things.
there's not much about melbourne i don't like... but one of the few things that really makes my teeth itch is the bovine approach so many melbournites take to walking around their lovely home. they wander around like farmer brown's cows and what translated while i was on holidays as "everyone's really laid back here compared to sydney" i have now concluded is actually "i don't think half of these people know where they're going..."
it's only a little thing... but it's usually the little things.
Monday, September 17, 2007
... falling in lamb
just a brief note - i finally found an online version of my new favourite television commercial, "falling in lamb".
following on from the "lâmb" advert (parodying the "j'adore" perfume advertising campaign), "falling in lamb" is a parody of british romantic comedies like love actually and notting hill.
watch the advert - it's great. there are also links to the "vote lamb" adverts with sam kekovich, also very cool ads.
following on from the "lâmb" advert (parodying the "j'adore" perfume advertising campaign), "falling in lamb" is a parody of british romantic comedies like love actually and notting hill.
watch the advert - it's great. there are also links to the "vote lamb" adverts with sam kekovich, also very cool ads.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
... just a few things
it's been about a month and there's no marvel in that at all. while i take comfort in knowing i'm not the only one amongst my friends who's not very... diligent about updating their blog, i continue encouraged and challenged by those other friends of mine who manage to blog several times a week. by turns i feel less distant from some and more distant from others all the time.
for a period a year or two ago i attempted to blog every day while i was at work. i'm pretty sure i only managed it for a week but this time around i would like to manage it for a month. a big step? perhaps. i might put some poetry up or maybe serialise a story i'm playing around with. (crikey, i almost spelled "serialise" with a "z"!) we'll see how it goes. the trick will be to work out exactly when during my day this is going to happen.
there was a 'zine writing festival held several months ago here in melbourne, similar to one which will soon be hitting newcastle in the next couple of weeks, and one of the many things i bought that weekend was a diary for writers. it has buckets of information in it about places to send your writing, some stuff on competitions and whatnot and on each week-to-a-view opening it has a small grid with "word tally" printed next to it. one space for each day. i don't use the diary yet - quelle surprise, i know - but i have a sneaking and not entirely unfounded suspicion that even if i were using the diary those blank boxes would be probably remain almost entirely blank. i suppose i'm thinking that if i can blog every day for a month, perhaps i can turn that time investment into a regular investment in time spent in disciplined writing exercise or even actual creative writing. who knows?
for anyone who's interested, the diary is "the 20xx australian writers diary" published by flat chat press. of the 232 pages, only 118 are given over to diary- and calendar-space; the rest is information for writers from a whole gamut of sources and order forms for the 2008 edition are available online at the website.
my housemate and i went to go see hairspray last night at pinewood in mount waverley. it was lots of fun, more entertaining than i would have expected and john travolta surprisingly short of pork products in his portrayal of edna turnblad, mother of the heroine of the film. a marvellous array of nods to john waters' original film and the broadway production as well.
for me, i'd have to say that the best part about the film was finding out that my housemate still has the song "good morning, baltimore" stuck in her head this morning.
for a period a year or two ago i attempted to blog every day while i was at work. i'm pretty sure i only managed it for a week but this time around i would like to manage it for a month. a big step? perhaps. i might put some poetry up or maybe serialise a story i'm playing around with. (crikey, i almost spelled "serialise" with a "z"!) we'll see how it goes. the trick will be to work out exactly when during my day this is going to happen.
there was a 'zine writing festival held several months ago here in melbourne, similar to one which will soon be hitting newcastle in the next couple of weeks, and one of the many things i bought that weekend was a diary for writers. it has buckets of information in it about places to send your writing, some stuff on competitions and whatnot and on each week-to-a-view opening it has a small grid with "word tally" printed next to it. one space for each day. i don't use the diary yet - quelle surprise, i know - but i have a sneaking and not entirely unfounded suspicion that even if i were using the diary those blank boxes would be probably remain almost entirely blank. i suppose i'm thinking that if i can blog every day for a month, perhaps i can turn that time investment into a regular investment in time spent in disciplined writing exercise or even actual creative writing. who knows?
for anyone who's interested, the diary is "the 20xx australian writers diary" published by flat chat press. of the 232 pages, only 118 are given over to diary- and calendar-space; the rest is information for writers from a whole gamut of sources and order forms for the 2008 edition are available online at the website.
my housemate and i went to go see hairspray last night at pinewood in mount waverley. it was lots of fun, more entertaining than i would have expected and john travolta surprisingly short of pork products in his portrayal of edna turnblad, mother of the heroine of the film. a marvellous array of nods to john waters' original film and the broadway production as well.
for me, i'd have to say that the best part about the film was finding out that my housemate still has the song "good morning, baltimore" stuck in her head this morning.
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