I might have mentioned that l like to swim in the afternoons, preferably after a short nap as a bracing wakeup.
I might not have mentioned that if my desire to swim is thwarted, I get incredibly grumpy, hot and bothered and will go to ridiculous lengths (no pun intended) to find some cool water to jump into.
so it was not a good thing to find that the Fitzroy Pool had been closed this afternoon - on two days' notice - so this rich private school from another suburb could have its swimming carnival.
the poor old staff had no good reason why it was done so suddenly. I don't really mind school swimfest closures, as long as they TELL ME. worse, I've looked it up, and the school HAS its own damn swimming pool!
in the end I went to Brunswick, where there is a lot of weird-looking fluffy stuff and old plastic bags at the bottom of the deep end.
and I have written one of my famous grumpy letters demanding detailed explanations to the relevant faceless council officers.
and if I find out that the school closed my pool because they waved a wad of cash at the council, there will be more trouble than you can imagine over such a trivial matter.
did I mention there's a council election in two weeks?
:->

I've just seen possibly my last Ansett plane flying overhead. it is a shame, and if Air New Zealand or anyone else could have stopped it, they jolly well ought to be class actioned, as is being talked about.

and has anyone thought that it might not be a good idea to let planes keep flying when their pilots know they'll be out of a job in 3 days?

for no reason at all, this popped into my head when my husband's mobile phone was ringing with its usual annoying mid-80's pop tune noise. it really should be a short TV skit, but I don't have the actors and studio handy right now - they're at the dry cleaners.

the couple are having dinner by candlelight on the balcony of his apartment.

Him: (gazing deeply into her eyes) Darling...
Her: (similar cow eyes) Yes, Darling.
Him: I've thought about this a lot, and you know you've become more and more important to me, you're different to all the others...
Her: oh, darling...
Him ...so I've decided to get you a very special ring to mark that fact.
Her: gasps
Him: (pushing a button on the mobile lying on the table between them, causing it to play the Star Wars theme) Do you like it?
Her: "*" (speechless. stands up, picks up phone, drops it in nearby fishtank, causing minor electric shock to his rare South American guppies)

weird. my new blog now has everything on it that my old blog had, javascript and all, and it runs fine. the old template still sucks.
so I guess this is it for a while. I'll clean up the colours a bit later; it's taken forever just to get my linkbuddies and obligatory cute dog pictures back up.

via:Jim
Human Virus Scanner
The virus that have infected you will be show here along with thier cures, if known.

Viruses you suffer from:
Junkfood
Eat some real food. Something which you can identify the source of every ingredient, not the point of manufacture.
Goth
Grow up. Let your roots grow out. Listen to Britney.
Politics
Stop caring!
Brand Names
Having a well-known name doesn't make it good.
Environmentalism
Consume more stuff! It's easier to buy new stuff than to recycle.

Viruses you might suffer from:
Linux (80%)
Install the latest version of Microsoft Windows. Learn to love it.
USA (70%)
Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves! [repeat]
Religion (60%)
Read "God's Debris" by Scott Adams (yes, the Dilbert guy)
Hippyism (93%)
Free love is passe and potentially dangerous, and patchouli smells like cat piss.
Macintosh (80%)
Use a mouse with more than one button.
Cars (75%)
There just hunks of metal which go real fast. Ride a bike through London at rush hour.
Southampton (69%)
Move to the Isle of Wight.

my husband has been reading Davezilla.
especially the bit about hiding objects until I go mad looking for them.
via batgrl

the reader poll on this article about W's plan to get unmarried mothers to wed is split 51% in favour and 49% against. is it possible that women are saying "no" and men are voting "yes"?

some mothers are unmarried because the men didn't deserve their hands in marriage. and religiously-driven policies shouldn't be forcing them to become "honest".

can W spell t-a-l-i-b-a-n?

(edit: can't find the article and lost the URL. but you know what I mean.)

I guess every blogger, after the early self-conscious stage and the following "read-me" stage, gets to the what-does-it-all-mean stage, which is where I was when I wrote the article below, and where Andrew Sullivan is.
a nice metaphor: "bloggers are the Sherpas of the Internet."
a pity: he says he spends donations on design, but he still uses light text on a dark background
an aside: his site has a button that reads "homosexuality".

this link is doing well at Daypop, and why should I stand in its way?
"can't explain why he woke up naked and covered in egg/flour mixture"

darn. I don't know anyone on the six degrees of bloggeration site.
will someone I know please go and join so me and all my friends can swamp it?

never mind, I'll blog the whole thing.
will add links too, later, as Jill says, it matters if you link to someone and they don't link back.

Thursday 28 February, 2002
By JENNY SINCLAIR
LIVEWIRE
The Age

"You should be able to make links to a hastily jotted crazy idea and to link to a beautifully produced work of art. You should be able to link to a very personal page and to something available to the whole planet." -- Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web

The blogging phenomenon falls in a cyberspace grid somewhere between private diaries, published memoirs, letters to friends, referenced academic essays, an artist's pictorial diaries and the old Roman forum.

Any website that regularly records events qualifies as a blog. They are usually written by one person, but some allow large groups to collaborate.

The differences between blogs and hard-copy diaries are about much more than the medium. A blog normally contains links to other sites, often offset by the blogger's opinion on what's at the other end of the link.

New entries, called posts or updates, might come at the same rate as in a hard-copy journal, but unlike hard copy, they are instantly available to readers worldwide.

Joint blogs can be worked on by more than one person at a time, regardless of location; simultaneous posts can give a multifaceted "take" on the same topic.

Weblogs can say more about the real people caught up in events than the mass media; the weblog response to the September 11 attacks on America was a global recording of feelings, ideas and images that may have been less authoritative than CNN, but had far greater depth of emotion and community.



They have already attracted the interest of social scientists. Jill Walker is a digital-culture researcher at the University of Norway's department of humanistic informatics and one of the world's first blog experts.

Perth-born Walker, who recently served an academic attachment at Melbourne's RMIT, says blogs are a different style of writing - inclusive and refreshingly subjective.

"I love finding all these personal, individual voices speaking to me, instead of the pretended objectivity we're used to in the mass media and in most books we read. To me, blogs are liberating."

She credits their fast growth to a new batch of mostly free easy-publishing tools designed for blogs. "Communities form around these tools," she says.

The first weblog, appropriately enough, was started by Marc Andreessen of Netscape.

While developing the Mosaic browser in 1993, Andreessen recorded developments and stored links to references and work in progress on a publicly available Internet site.

But for the next six years, while the World Wide Web grew from a few servers to millions, posting material remained technically complex. Some HTML (hypertext markup language) skills were required, and direct FTP (file transfer protocol) access to the host server was also needed, often limiting the places from which one could post material.

According to prominent weblogger Rebecca Blood, the term "weblog" was first used in about 1997.As their popularity grew, publishing tools filled the demand. The best known is Blogger, which requires no HTML programming and is attached to a free hosting service. It provided a simple online log-in, a text field in which to write, and a "post and publish" button. The most naive users could start a weblog in minutes, and they did. Blogger claims more than 350,000 users. Users typically post several times a day, sometimes including images uploaded from digital cameras or scanned from sketches.

But why have blogs at all? Are they just private diaries or are they a voice on the Internet for their users?

Most blogs are designed to be read by complete strangers. Many are submitted to search engines. Those that use the easy publishing tools like Blogger can make their blogs public or private, and most plump for public, meaning they are listed in a directory and every time they update a link appears on the heavily trafficked Blogger front page. There is even a movement to apply international standard serial numbers (ISSNs) to blogs, legitimising them as publications.

Blood, one of the first bloggers, found keeping an online journal both liberating and a tool of self-discovery:

"Shortly after I began producing Rebecca's Pocket I noticed two side-effects I had not expected," she wrote. "First, I discovered my own interests. I thought I knew what I was interested in, but after linking stories for a few months I could see that I was much more interested in science, archaeology, and issues of injustice than I had realised.

"More importantly, I began to value more highly my own point of view. In composing my link text every day I carefully considered my own opinions and ideas, and I began to feel that my perspective was unique and important."

In Blood's case, that feeling was validated by popularity and status among the keepers and readers of weblogs in the most direct way possible: links.

The hypertext link "pointing" to another weblog, site or article drives the dynamic flow of information, status and ideas between weblogs.

On many weblogs, a sense of community and a definition of peers is established by permanent links to friends' weblogs.

The more links pointing to a page, the more status it has. Popular sites, comments and links are reinforced by "most often linked" search engines such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Blogdex or Daypop's "Top 40 links".

Many links are to amusing or entertaining sites; a site where one could enter personal details and be told what one was "worth" in US dollars flew around the network. But important information and calls to action are also shared. At the end of September, a small number of webloggers (and news sites), including influential free-software advocate Dave Winer, posted links to a proposal to allow patented software to be declared a "standard" by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Within 48 hours, the formerly moribund bulletin board for discussing the proposal received more than 1000 objections, forcing the W3C to announce a review.

The effects of linking can help undermine the power of traditional media. "You read blogs differently to newspapers or books. You read across many different blogs, following links and gathering information," Walker says. "There are no links to follow from a printed newspaper article."

For people who spend a lot of time on the Web, having a "place" in cyberspace is becoming more important. Links and readerships are non-geographic, based on interests and personal characteristics ("rings" of sites exist for women, dog-owners and gay people, among others).

"It's a shielded space in a way mailing lists and Usenet or chat rooms or `real life' discussions aren't," Walker says. "I'm speaking publicly and yet safely within the space of my own blog. No one can attack me or interrupt me here; this page is all mine."

THIS IS JIM, OF WALES

"I've gone all psychic today. I've developed a remarkable superpower - the ability to tell how often someone eats carrots. Yes, it's true - it all started when I was talking to Ian, and for no reason at all I said, 'Why don't you eat carrots?' He naturally replied, 'What? How do you know I don't eat carrots?' and looked extremely out-freaked. So I tested everyone else in the office and was right every time. Amazing. Now, all I need to do is think of a costume and a way to fight crime."

THIS IS CHRIS IN AMERICA

"Recent happenings have humbly reminded me of the fragility of dreams and the brutal reality that no matter how well you might plan something, life will throw in a surprise or two just to show you who's boss. And when that happens, nothing can make you feel smaller, more helpless and at the mercy of the powers that be."

AND MIGUEL, AN EXPAT AMERICAN WHO LIVES IN AUSTRIA WITH HIS WIFE, KIDS, CAT AND SHOE FETISH:

"In the back window of the car ahead of me, one lane over, is one of those fake beagles whose heads sort of bounce with the movements of the car. I admire how real it looks. 'Sure is a big one,' I think. 'And what realistic fur.' Its head bounces, then turns and looks right at me, blinks, sticks out tongue."

my friend Richard on why it matters what we call the refugees

(nb: Richard has not, as this article says, been tracking attitudes to refugees since the end of world war II.

he has been tracking social attitudes to refugees which were held between 1945 and the present for some time. but he's only 30-something.

yes, Hoopty had the last word, but that never stopped your intrepid reporter before. today's Age GreenGuide media section article on blogging by moi.

the original academic essay I chopped it down from.

also: today's blogon crime against humanity: (for some reason they edited the pic we stole from Hoopty's site; you can't see his whole semi-naked body)


Last week we brought you the A-list, the creme de la creme of blogging. These are those other guys: the Z-list

Z-list blog

The blog that started it all, probably created by some overtired, attention-craving bloggers at 3am.
Subtitled "networking for the underblogdexed", it's open to anyone in theory, but in practice is run by a group of people who enjoy pointing out other people's clever posts. (Blogdex is a blog-rating service that neglects the Z-list.)
As well as a forum area where you can discuss the art of blogging, the Z-list site offers a good jumping-off point for some site surfing.
And of course, the actual Z-list runs down the left side of the page.


Hoopty-Loops
Hoopty, the alter ego of an IT worker and sometime musician from Fresno, California, burst on to the blogging scene a few months back, prompting a global chorus of "what on Earth ?"
He's down with the ladies, he's swingin', he's streaking - and it's not always entirely virtual. Indeed, Hoopty is the Austin Powers of the "Interneck".
Typical post: "Today's the last day for the International Flirting Week freak session. I know, it's been a long hard past few days, and we may be tired, spent, and probably a little cranky - but let's pull out all the stops and give it one last shot.
You know what I'm talkin' about I want your love, baby -oooooh-"
A lot of the action is in the comments area, where his loyal fans (aka "Hooptygirls") compete with each other on who can fawn the hardest. All good clean - well, good fun.

Have A Cuppa Tea
Meet your host, Batgrl.
She's an academic living in New Orleans, Louisiana, relishing the Southern Gothic culture, and the fog. She can write for ages about the fog: "There are so many variations in the fog - it always looks different, makes the countryside completely alien, and I love it."
Her eclectic interests, from the legend of the Blue People to the psychological and physical responses to kissing, complement the stories of how she's settling into life in the Deep South. Each post is conveniently titled for easier archive-browsing.

Blog and Toad are Friends
This girl has a strange life, well worth blogging. For Valentine's Day, she got a toy chicken that, um, lays bubblegum.
She's alive to what goes on in people's heads; the random memories of primary school, odd associations between ideas, addiction to "junk food" writing that you just can't stop reading.
With her small dog, Bee, she tries to survive overwork, Tater Tots (an American fast food) and the local Nasty Pig Dog.
She also understands that too much detail is sometimes not enough: "I will, however, be running a few experiments on the merits of different candies, and their velocity in shooting out of my valentine chicken's ass. I will publish the results and photographs as soon as they become available," she promised last week. It's surely worth logging on for that update.

Linkmeister
"Harvesting items, newsworthy or not," the Linkmeister's is something of a news digest blog, saving you the trouble of looking for items on US privacy laws, laws on hypertexts, cloned cats and the Enron case.
There's the odd appearance from the family dog as well; no blogger can resist that personal touch, it seems.

high-end cpu or not, I've also realised why it's geeky boys and engineers who love those Palm Pilot and iPAQ thingies.
it's not the increased efficiency, or that their lives are so much busier and more complicated than the lives the rest of us have.
no. the awful truth is that boys can only think of one thing at once
where girls have these wonderful but also maddening compendium, multitasking minds bred by having to gather grains, hunt small animals and bring up kids all at once, men have one-track minds bred by killing one mammoth every two months and thinking about sex or sleeping the rest of the time.
boys NEED a small pocket device to beep at them when it's time to do something. at least, they have since girls gave up being fulltime boy-minders and got ourselves lives.

he was "born at an early age", and now he's dead.
Spike Milligan was possibly the funniest person who ever wrote a radio script. even more so than Douglas Adams. Milligan was sadder, weirder and first.
this is not comedy, it's his poem about death. how lucky we were that he didn't die in that war too.
these are some Goon Show scripts. but if you can find it on the radio and haven't heard it before, listen. it's a slightly acquired taste, but I know it crippled my sense of humour permanently when I was a teenager.

Andrew's having some trouble with some new software they installed at work last night.
he's sitting on the lounge room floor with a mobile phone earpiece in his ear and his arms stretched out across the keyboard of the laptop, talking to someone at the office and doing funny things on the network to get the software to work.
I can just about see the cogs going around in his head. he's a high-end CPU, trouble-shooting less intelligent parts of the system through his various network inputs and physical outputs (keyboard and voice)
it's something that first occurred to me when I was working at a market research firm, reading scripts off a screen through a head-mounted microphone.
maybe not such a new observation, but the more we surround ourselves with machines to do our work, the more we become like machines. I'm sure Heidegger said it better (or maybe not; he is darn hard to read without a good tutor to translate him for you.)
watching Andrew also reminded me just how far ahead of the machines we are; how all those geeks and engineers really do amazing things with their few hundred grams of mushy grey matter.

not very long, apparently.
if you think this is bad, you shoulda seen the last one.
and it's goodnight from me, and goodnight from him.

man, I bet I'm the only blogger in the universe using this template right now. how long do you think I can stand it?

hard rubbish collection night score: two perfectly good old iron-framed kitchen chairs to put out in the back yard.
one large plastic pot, worth about $15, to repot all the trees I keep having to repot instead of planting in the ground
one fern. the fern is especially a good thing. I've been watching it dessicate in the front yard of a house down the road for two years now. every time it grows a frond, the heat comes along and fries it off. it was planted in an exposed position, and its owners appeared never to water it. it's true that it appears quite dead, but tree ferns are amazing things. you can cut them in half and the top half will just grow as if nothing had happened. and I plan to give this one a bucket of water every day for three months. if it doesn't do anything in that time, then I'll know it's really dead. but I have faith that there's some life left in the poor creature.

I have no idea how this happened as the hooptygirls ring is not on my blog at present, but look what I found in my referrals: the trailer trash blog I was looking for.

this morning I visited some lovely alternative types with pierced lips and noses at their gorgeous warehouse.
I love the feel of places like that; huge expanses of concrete floor, furnished almost exclusively with junk they found in the hard rubbish collections and third-hand computers, yoga workshop spaces, natural light streaming in, and not a hint of the Dollar anywhere.
makes my little office seem so, well, officey.
they have an indymedia centre that will be helping cover the big Woomera2002 anti-beating-up-on-refugees protest over Easter.
so it's my pleasure as a member of the evil nonindymedia to give them some coverage.

Professor hoopty has the very last word on blogging.

eh. old template still not working.
so I think I'll just use a new blogger template every day.

scrap that. it was last Friday. so it's more like 75,000 a day. that's OK then. go back to reading 'em all.

which means that Blogger is running at about 300,000 posts a day, since there are 12 hours between Agent Vulga's and mine. and that's just Blogger.

you can officially give up trying to keep up with all the blogs on the Web now, I think.

so that post below is number 10136775

aha! the little number at the end of your Blogger permalink shortcut is a post number.

strangely, the Official # 10,000,000 blogger post is a satirical thingie about unreliable builders. I'm with ya, Agent Vulga, I'm with ya.

number of hits for "untied states" on Google: 16,900

number of times major Australian newspapers have referred to the US as the "Untied States" in the past decade: 11.

aha! damnthepacific had a slow-loading problem they blamed on the YACCS comments. and they have been timing out a lot lately.
so when I get home, I'll reinstate my template minus comments and see what that does.

(edit: no, it was dotcomments slowing them down. they've switched TO yaccs. still going to try removing comments, though. )

yes, I know my comments are gone. and my Hooptygirls ring link and my links to all my homies and my cute pictures.
sadly, I need to work, sleep and eat. between times, I will be trying to reinstate Bloggety Blog in all its glory.
meanwhile, you can always e-mail me

man, this is an ugly template.

nuts. I killed my template and now my page loads immediately. this means there's a problem with my old template. nuts.

right. now my archives are gone. I am going to Sort This Out.

and if I did care about visitors, I don't think I could top this: 2,000 visitors a day!
A gray box with words inside.

there's a thunderstorm raging outside. I really should get off the Web in case the Electricity comes down the line and fries me.

batgrl said it better than I could
you don't have to spell properly on your blerg.

I have quite nice hair. it's red, and shoulder length.
so if anyone out there would like to save me tearing it out, can y'all sashay down to my comments or email me and tell me where I can find that blog that's written in a kind of yokel trailer trash style?
I thought I left it on the kitchen bench with my car keys. now I can't find it ANYWHERE?
thank you.

don't know if it's that my connection is slow, or if YACCS comments are down, but the Web is being really uncooperative today.
I've come home because I just couldn't feel motivated @ work. am trying to work, but can't get anywhere.
Joli is considering asking her ex-boyfriend for his chili recipe. someone go over there and stop her.
ex boyfriends are generally not worth being "friends" with. I do have one ex I love to death - the others, I cross the street to avoid.

everyone else is blogging this, so why not me? A List Apart (part of the A-list, natch) has written some rules for better blogging.
I am so tired and my blog is not, is never, my best writing, so watch out for the falling glass, but this: "Links and word of mouth can go a long way, but don’t expect a big following right off the bat."
is a TERRIBLE mixed metaphor.
so first of all, this guy can't really write himself.
secondly, if you want what he's offering: basic, sound advice on what not to do and how to keep it short, go to your local hard-copy bookstore, and ask for a thing called Strunk and White. it's all you need.

lots o' test links here.
why o why am I surfing pointlessly past my bedtime on a Sunday night?
never mind, I can always come back and edit later. but with life itself, that cannot be done.

in my slightly insomniac state, this FAQ on caffeine looks like a cool thing.
via the how-much-Mountain-Dew-would-it-take-to-kill-you calculator, via usr/bin/hurl
(who I came to via Hoopty, if you must know, but enough with the credits already, let's watch the fleepin' movie!)

blog still taking about an hour to load.
Hoopty has a new URL.
maybe I should get one too? and a new host. you get what you pay for.
highlight of my weekend: getting a new old Russian birch mirror-backed glass display case and putting all our bits of lovely glass, which have been locked away, out where we can see them.
oh, and there were wild parties and afternoons lazing in the park.but you don't wanna hear about all that stuff.

a) I don't have much to say right now. too much red wine last night, need a bike ride to blow out the cobwebs
b) my blog seems to be refusing to do anything but be wall-to-wall purple. if you can't see this, don't worry, I'm working on it.

the ramekin thing?
it's getting totally out of control

today's Green Guide BlogOn. next week: the Z-list!

Where there are communities, there are cliques. There are some people whose sites appear on nearly everyone's "favourites" list, making them blogging royalty: The A-List.

Evhead
Evan Williams didn't actually invent blogging, but for the hundreds of thousands of users of his Blogger instant-update and Blog*spot hosting services, he may as well have.
His own personal blog covers Blogger developments, family gatherings, life in Silicon Valley, and all kinds of Web trivia he deems "random. neat."
Williams has a funny little test blog at www.evhead.blogspot.com as well.
And, of course, Williams maintains the metablog at www.blogger.com with blogging tips and links to articles and news from the land of blog.

usr/bin/girl
Usr/bin/girl translates roughly from the Unix programming language as "a program called girl" and is subtitled: "a girl, a browser and a lot of spare time".
Yes, a girl geek with attitude - or more accurately, "a digital anime girl located in Seattle, Washington". Zannah writes about the latest cool audio and programming tools and her thoughts on surveillance technology, but not much about her actual life.
This is the place to go for your links to amusing video ripoffs of the early computer game Pong, the best places to buy utility kilts (like utility belts, only tartan) and all sorts of the other great time-wasting stuff that's made the Web what it is today.

Slashdot
Slashdot is either not a blog at all or the most successful collaborative blog yet.
Devoted to discussion of technical issues and matters affecting the technical (like, f'rinstance, Australia's Internet censorship laws), Slashdot calls itself "news for nerds".
It has an open membership policy - anyone can start a discussion or add to one - and a huge influence on the course of Internet debate.
The term "the slashdot effect" was coined to describe the flood of traffic that a link from Slashdot can bring.
Recent topics included the next Star Wars movie, wearable Internet appliances and security flaws in Internet protocols. Go there and see if you can cut it with the real geeks.

Davezilla
Davezilla's "destroyer of memes" blog is only part of an extensive site carefully maintained by Dave himself, including a photo gallery, cartoons and essays.
He has a knack for finding new links to stupid stuff, like photos of what happens to a Palm VII handheld computer if you put it in the oven to dry off. A droll sense of humour can make even the most mundane events in Dave's life into a funny read.
Far from being a destroyer of memes (those ideas and tales that sweep across the Web daily), Davezilla has the power to launch a thousand memes.
Its popularity has led to a busy "comments" section, so Davezilla is also good place to go for a chat with fellow surfers about the topic du jour.

seen in the park yesterday: two mad Japanese tourists, male and female, playing paper-scissors-stone.
what was funny about it was that they were standing about 20 metres apart. and whenever one of them lost, they would laugh wildly and jump with both feet towards the other one. I wonder what happened when they finally met in the middle?

well, they didn't actually cart away the old fence. we're hoping someone is going to come and get it today. I really, really hope so...but the new one is way sexy, as far as a fence can be sexy.

as I write, there are two blokes - Shane and Phil - carting away the nasty, rusty, always-about-to-fall-over back fence and putting up a new shiny one.
it's a small thing, but it makes me happy.

the slow progress of all things House Renovation is driving me mad; I am getting more and more recurring fantasies of moving to a small, dilapidated cottage in a quiet country town, somewhere that will render irrelvant the very idea of a curved plaster feature wall, polished concrete floor and Miele kitchen. let alone the idea of a huge mortgage/long wait for same.
somewhere there would be no question of putting off planting trees, because there will never be builders crawling all over the backyard. somewhere with big trees already.
somewhere without car alarms, dogs next door, fluorescent lights. somewhere with an Internet connection, though. somewhere with a view, a verandah and an old couch on the verandah.
somewhere my old junky op-shop finds will look comfortable and eclectic, not chipped, scratched and lacking in "style".

somewhere with chickens out the back laying eggs, dammit.

ps; the David Lynch site is a pay-per-view. pity, because I'd hoped it would have a copy of Rebecca Del Rio's amazing version of Roy Orbison's Crying, sung in Spanish.

saw David Lynch's Mulholland Drive last night.
and frighteningly enough, I think I actually understood the plot.
This means I have seen too much David Lynch and the twisted little man who controls my mind from a mysterious velvet-curtained room will soon be setting the circus midgets on me, while I lie draped across a red couch in a revealing, full-length evening gown pouting and panting and a lonely saxaphone plays blue notes somewhere far, far away.

(I won't spoil the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it, but a clue: I think Diane is definitely real.)

oooh! I won a Hoopty flirting award! congratulations to my equal winner, Wendy. Damn, that ass is white!

the future is now.

oh no, this is really depressing. just checked my stats and someone got here via the search term "big Jenny". I'm not THAT fat. yet.

have just had yet another house-renovation meltdown. I try not to think about the 16 months we've already spent "planning", I really do. but sometimes the disaster area we call a garden, the constant waiting and wondering what the fruit our architect is actually DOING get to me. then I cry.

basic dilemma: I want to fit into my old jeans (nice as my new op-shop ones are). I'd like my dresses to be a bit less tight. I'm secretly worried that this is the beginning of middle-aged spread and I'll only get chunkier from here on in.

but I LIKE food. I love a glass of champage before dinner. I crave sushi and sashimi. Cheese on toast really does it for me at the weekend, between the morning coffee and lunch. I have a number of excellent suppliers of chocolate cake/slice, and nothing can compare to biting into a fat organic peach while walking the dog in the late afternoon.

and don't tell me to exercise. I already ride 50 k a week, swim 2000 metres, and do a couple of rounds of home aerobics. at least.

am I lacking in willpower, or just a normal gal with a healthy appetite? excuse me, a fantastically spicy dolmade is awaiting me in the kitchen, where my spouse is cooking up fresh stewed rhubarb that would make a great fruit crumble...

current alternative-lifestyle fantasy: opening up a shop that sells Interesting Old Things. This would allow me to put my op-shop browsing obsession into top gear. drawback: I wouldn't get to keep all the good stuff.

and anyway: how can they tell what the "average life span" is for people my age? NONE OF US ARE 96 YET.

hmm. this seems inordinately long.
Your average life span is:
96 Years Old

By modifying your Health, Lifestyle, Diet and Environment you can live to be: 103 Years Old

You were born on Saturday, May 28, 1966. You have lived 13,047 days and have 21,993 days left to live.

You should die on Thursday May 04, 2062 at 1:26:20 AM.

life span calculator

I really need auto-blogging; a function that will allow me to just think "I should blog that" and have things blogged here.
because if I don't blog at work and have to sleep at night, all sorts of trivial things go unblogged.

like the group of four people crossing the road in the city the other day; quite coincidentally, they all had on some item in a similar shade of mauve; a shirt, a skirt, a jacket, a scarf. A purple patch in my day.

like a taste that I'd been craving for a few days, but couldn't think what it was. until I went into the Paul Bocuse bakery and bought a petite chocolate croissant to eat with my coffee before an interview; and it scratched that itch.

like the strange improvement in the level of sexual harassment by building workers; as he passed me on his way in to the building site, I could have sworn he said "can I have the next dance?"

Blogger has blogged BlogCon 2002.
what does this do to our Z-list status?
and how many people will come now?

someone at work said to me "are you doing anything for Valentine's Day" and I said "we're married."

In fact, once I got home after a full-on day and a very necessary swim, we got fish and chips and took that and some beer (me) and wine (him) to the park. where all the other married couples, like us, were sitting on the grass with their dogs in the glowing heat of the evening. We sat there as it grew dark and the lights of the city grew brighter, talking. We walked around with the dog - to whom it was all a big adventure, being in the park at night like that - then we went home and went to bed early.

I've been cruising my fellow Hooptygirls (ring link over on the left side) and you know what? they're a cool bunch.

today's blogon thing. madly busy today also.



Hooked on classics? Jazz afficionado? Headbanger? Whatever your tastes, there's probably a music blog to tell you something you didn't know about your favourite aural fix

Mostly Music

Written by two reviewers for the print-based Fanfare magazine, Mostly Music contains quotes about music and reviews of classical music by Laura ("I am addicted to period instruments") and Tom ("The joy in this music should sparkle with wit, the sadness weep").
Poetry in three languages complements the high-culture tone of this blog; only go here if you know your arpeggios from your allegros.

Sex and Sunshine

Alexander Fritz casts a wide web across the world of popular music, from Joni Mitchell to the Beasts of Bourbon, but with a bias towards some of the more dinosaur-like musos of the '60s and '70s, plus alternative music generally.
He reviews new albums, posts the odd bit of gossip and analyses lyrics for deeper meanings.
For instance, he claims that the last public performances of Joy Division and Nirvana's Kurt Cobain were strangely prophetic with their negative lyrics - but didn't all their songs sound that way?

Josh Blog

"Josh" provides little personal information on his blog, but we do know this: he knows his music backwards, inside out and upside down. (He may even be a musical academic of some kind, at a guess.)
His (partial) 2001 favourites list includes Miles Davis, Radiohead, Thelonius Monk, Beethoven's Op 132 and something called Mogwai. He posts often, reviewing his latest listen and trying valiantly to capture what it is about the music that touches him, throwing in ideas as diverse as Jewish wedding music and the way "layering" works in western music.
He reviews some live gigs in a similar way: this is what he said about band The Plan:
"I'm probably just used to the way things sound coming out of my headphones, but the synths are usually too low at their shows, and Travis slightly too high (even when he's on point!). The guitars are a lot louder live, and noisier, which is fine, but it unbalances the sound a bit."
If you like your music talk analytical and intellectual, go visit Josh.

Music Blog (Pearl)

The cool hunters and record executives of the world could do worse than to spend an hour or so reading blogs like Pearl's.
She's 21, a student at the University of California, and loves to spend her money on music.
No deep analysis here; just what she likes and even a list of recent purchases. Who needs market surveys when girls like Pearl will update you on her preferences, free?
The good news for the music biz? Despite the wonders of free download sites like Napster, Pearl still thinks it's worth buying CDs: "Something about the feel of the case in your hands, the quality of the CD you place in your CD player."

New York, London, Paris, Munich...

...everybody's talkin' bout pop music.
Are guitars coming back? Did they ever leave? Is pop music writing dead?
This site is its own answer. It's the daily update area of online zine
Freaky Trigger (www.freakytrigger.co.uk), written by various contributors.
Posts focus on individual bands and albums; reviews are indexed in a separate list if you're wondering what this site thought of the Beastie Boys' Intergalactic (Olde Mix).
And pop music writing? Well, this site has topped the 500,000 visitor (one million page views) mark, so judge for yourself.

Your husband's name is ewan mcgregor and you have 2 children. You're a journalist at large who drives to work every day in a deep blue mx5.

It's truly a wonderful life when you consider the countless romantic nights you have spent with ewan mcgregor in your shack in victoria.

I cheated. I used mx5 AND miata.

something romantic for Valentine's day: but I still say, it ain't what you got, it's the way that you use it.

Chris and his lovely photos are no longer.
he clearly wants to be let alone and I have no idea what happened. but it's true that blogging, like any other obsession, can have a negative impact on your "real life".
still, it's a shame he had to leave...

Ok, I admit it. I'm a big-brain groupie.
one thing I really like about this job is the occasional chance I get to meet and interview people like Vint Cerf (invented TCP/IP), Tim Berners-Lee (invented the actual Web), heads of Microsoft research and the like. I find that the smarter and more important people are, the more interesting and lucid they are (with the possible exception of Bill Gates, whom I haven't interviewed, but whose keynote speeches I regularly walk out of or skip).
Today I allowed myself the luxury of going to a conference on autonomous systems where I got to hear one Chuck Weisbin explain the latest thinking on sending humans and robots to Mars - and this isn't sci-fi, he actually works for NASA.
Then I met one Dr Lotfi Zadeh, who only invented the term "fuzzy logic". he took a shine to me and spent the coffee break telling me his theories on the best way to set up search engines (I can't go to his talk on that tomorrow, and he uses Google, btw), and why we need more funding for research.
and at the end of it all, I got to drive up the highway for an hour back to work in brilliant sunshine. a good morning.

however, I now face a hell of a time catching up on my actual necessary work here...

dark alley dept

about halfway down this article is a quote from the Australian prime minister, John Howard, accusing Mary Robinson of having "some agenda" in wanting to look at our refugee camps.

well yes. she would have an agenda, being the UN High Commissioner for human rights. that would be a human rights agenda, presumably

someone sent me this in the email. it's from SatireWire a month back. but it's still funny

Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the "Axis of Evil", Libya, China, and Syria today announced they had formed the "Axis of Just as Evil", which they said would be way eviler than that stupid Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis President Bush warned of his State of the Union address.

the Hoopty fan club: I'm a member. and you know what they say about clubs that will have me as a member...

work consume be silent die. but sing about it first.via Jim

so my big brother turns 40 in a few days. the tin racing car with the flashing lights and moving pistons had the desired effect; he grinned like a 10-year-old with a new toy.

I now have comments. It's Hoopty's fault.

when my loyal reader at net.au types "bloggety blog" into Google, as he/she/it does regularly, this question pops up:

Did you mean: blodget blog

there are 49 listings for blodget blog and 947 for bloggety blog.

SO NO, THEY DON'T MEAN BLODGET. WASSA GIRL AVETA DOTA GED SUM RESSPEC' ROUN 'ERE???

look, I'm busy. I don't have time to read everything. but this article looks like the goods; just the headline did it for me: How to Sexually Gratify a Woman ...PRELUDE: LOCATING A WOMAN STUPID ENOUGH TO SLEEP WITH YOU

overhead in the Chapel St Bazaar today: "yes, I've been here for about 15 years. I'm from Iran. I had a good job: then we had the revolution."
just the way it was said, like, "I used to be like chocolate then I developed an allergy." like it was a little thing, just one of those things.
Revolutions? you get that.

and also at the Bazaar (which is a sort of supermarket of old stuff, lots of stallholders sharing a big space and taking turns manning the shop), I discovered that vintage toy cars are not cheap items. in fact, you couldn't get much decent stuff under $100, and there were some quite ordinary-looking cars for up to $300 (these are Australian dollars). I was looking for a present for my brother's surprise 40th on Saturday ("I'm 40? That's a surprise!"), and settled on a tin Lotus race car which is probably not a collector's item, but does have flashing lights, is reasonably big and was within my budget.

and there were also Smurfs. $27 each. and yes, people do buy this stuff. while I was there, one guy, aged about 30, bought a foot-and-a-half long Astro Boy figurine for $100.

Things I'm not good at:
singing
remembering people's names
playing clarinet
doing stuff because I should.
hiding my tears
ego massage
appreciating jazz music
jogging

I don't like high-voltage power lines.
I don't like the humming sound they make when there's moisture in the air.
I don't like those big metal towers looming over the landscape.
I don't like their invisible radiation.
I don't like the way the hairs on the back of my neck rise when I go under one of those towers.

where's my Segway? I'm sure I asked for one a while back.

what the hell is Antidepersonalization?
John C. Dvorak is a respected writer on technology, but you can tell reading this that he a) isn't a blogger and b) has probably been asked to knock off a few pars on blogging between lunch and afternoon tea.
Mike at Keep Trying got angry about the Dvorak piece; I say it's just irrelevant.

my BlogOn column is back for 2002. today's:

There are "celebrity blogs" written by people who are famous for blogging; then there are blogs by actual celebrities. Here are a few of the latter

RuPaul's Weblog

RuPaul - the first male ever to get a contract promoting women's cosmetics - didn't get where he is today by being shy. ("Weblog =sweet narcissism.") Still, it's surprising to find this "Supermodel" being quite so frank on his new blog. His diary isn't particularly shocking, just honest about life as a performer, his favourite movies, his sense of inadequacy compared to some legendary blog-keepers.
It helps to try to read it aloud with a slightly camp accent; that will make the botox jokes funnier.

Moby Tour Diaries

Moby, holder of the Guinness record for the world's fastest song, and descendant of novelist Herman Melville, is not hogging his tour diaries in order to sell them later dressed up as an autobiography. Instead, he's posting them on his site, where he demonstrates that he, too, is not immune to the unselfconscious public ramblings that blogging seems to induce. "When I talk about the weather I sound like a fruitcake," one entry reads. But in a way, this is nice; it reassures you that this is Mr Melville writing. It's not Moby Dick, but it's a good read all the same.
He doesn't stick to life on the road but wanders all over the place, from linking to his favourite causes to memories of drug-addled New York in the '90s. When he's not touring, he posts answers to fans' questions.
This is a well-designed, stripped-down blog, with entries arranged by date, city, and a short headline summarising their contents: "George Harrison", "My new computer", and so on.

Wil Wheaton Dot Net

Wil Wheaton used to play an ensign on Star Trek. Since then he's been "exploring career options" as they say, including a short (self-imposed) stint as a "hobo" and maintaining his own Web site and blog. The blog has won a 2002 Bloggie Award, decided by a popular vote.
Wheaton has little time for hardcore Trekkies, but has agreed to play ensign Wesley Crusher again in the forthcoming movie Star Trek: Nemesis.
His blog proves that even successful actors are only human, as the following exchange with a Hooters waitress shows: "She screwed up her courage, leaned close to me, her full, pouting lips just inches from mine and asked, breathlessly, 'Didn't you used to be an actor?'
"WHAT?! USED TO BE?! I STILL AM!" I hollered, as a thousand fantasies fell from my mind."

Garbage

To find this weblog, you need to click on the tab marked "band communication" on the Garbage site.
Mostly written by singer Shirley Manson (who else would be thankful for baby pink cashmere socks and stick her tongue out at her fellow performers?) with the odd contribution by her three band mates, the band diary covers actual shows, what's happening in the recording studio, just exactly how tiring it is to be on tour, and snippets of normality, such as outbursts of admiration for the TV show The Sopranos.
Typical entries:
Dateline: Trondheim: "are we not playing a big daft circus tent tonight in sub zero temperatures!!! Oh yeah - the GLAMOUR keeps on coming."
Dateline: Paris: "Today we are tied up with promo duties whilst our various crew are off on exciting expeditions - I'm experiencing vast amounts of barely contained jealousy. I LOVE this city and I want to go out and play!!!!!!"
Manson is tuned in to the weirdness of rock-star life; commenting on travelling with other members of the recent Australia-New Zealand Big Day Out tour, she wrote: "it's just the most bizarre sight to see (the band) New Order standing opposite you over the luggage carousel."
Naturally, the main site allows you to play Garbage's music as aural wallpaper while you read.

you know what I love? I love it when you're desperately wondering what to write for a particular section X (deadline: tomorrow) and then, as if by magic, an email from a leading research institution about a new report on an issue central to X drops into your mailbox.
and then you actually get through on the phone and the report turns out to be online and a weight of fear and panic lifts from your shoulders.
hooray for research on high bandwith provision to schools.

g'night.

via theothercheek, a fast and incredibly detailed online test. I might get some coloured blocks and see how my dog does. it's here: colorgenics (warning: annoying music on this site. if you're at work, turn the volume off BEFORE you go there)

my results, with which I have quite a few quibbles;

You have always longed for tenderness, love and a sensitivity of feeling into which you would like to blend. You are a very gentle warm person and responsive to "All things bright and beautiful". This personifies a caring person... A person who "needs" and indeed "needs to be needed".
You are working extremely hard - perhaps even over and beyond the call of duty. You are preparing for the future and therefore trying to build a firm trouble free foundation upon which you may base all of your dreams and aspirations.
Every thing seems to have gone wrong and the situation at this time is such that you are not quite sure which way to turn. So it would appear that you are "holding back" re-consolidating your position relinquishing all fun and games for the time being.
Stresses resulting from a recent disappointment have led to considerable trepidation. It would seem that there seems to be so much left undone...Everything surrounds you with that air of uncertainty. You badly need to feel a sense of security and whatever it takes to protect you against further disappointment. At this particular time you doubt that things could be any better in the future. But you are sticking to your guns and refusing to take advice from any source..
Since in the recent past all of your hopes and aspirations gave been denied you, you are now convinced that the future will hold nothing but anxiety... so therefore... "why bother?" You would love to get away from it all, to escape from the trials and tribulations of this mundane existence and fall into a peaceful and harmonious relationship, which will protect you from the lack of appreciation and give you the chance to start afresh..

everyone else on the Web other than me has probably already seen Davezilla's freak gallery.
I guess I've been too busy playing with the Z-list to grok the A-list.

It's plugged into your ass. How can you not be aware of that?...go read this post. you'll snort coffee out your nose.
via Batgrl via Davezilla.


Luminescent looks like fun...but how will that title affect my Luminous Duck plans?

notes:

the way a newly painted sign looks like the letters have been placed there whole, but after a while they fade so you can see the individual brushstrokes. and how I much prefer the faded version.

a person - male or female, I couldn't tell - hanging up the phone in the public phone booth as I passed in a way that was so final. then he/she stood with bowed head and I wondered what story was beneath that dark mass of curls.

hearing two or three people pass in the laneway, debating loudly in some Asian language. thinking of a story; being somewhere like Venice or Marrakesh and hearing English emerge from the babble of voices; following them and ending up somewhere you really shouldn't be.

Mystery solved. story as written :

S11 is going to Woomera.
A national anti-detention movement is planning a cavalcade of protesters, timed to descend on the Woomera detention camp at Easter.
Acts of "civil disobedience" will include entering the exclusion zone around the Woomera detention centre and trying to breach the centre's walls, organisers say.
Protestors from Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and regional centres will set up camp near the centre for five days during the event, dubbed Woomera2002.
The event is being organised by the many of the same Melbourne activists who were behind the S11 protests at the World Economic Forum in Melbourne in September 2000.
Woomera2002 has been in the planning since the S11 protest, according to Angela Mitropoulos of action group XBorder.
She said the event was a loose alliance of groups, each planning their own actions.
"I think we're looking at the whole range (of protests) from prayer meetings to people dismantling the fences."
Damien Lawson, a member of the No One Is Illegal action group, said they planned to enter the exclusion zone. "We will attempt to get to the detention centre and communicate with the people inside and do what we can to free people."
Mr Lawson said the government had "effectively suspended the rule of law in the desert", justifying direct action.
He denied that the protest could incite further problems inside the camp. "That's a very patronising attitude to the people inside the detention centres. There's (already) a political movement inside the centres ... we're only joining their protest." Mr Lawson said he expected upwards of 1000 people to make the trip to Woomera.
The Australian Protective Service, which is responsible for security around the Woomera centre, declined to comment on security plans for Easter. A spokesman for the Department of Immigration said the department was aware of the protest and that people were entitled to protest "in a public place."
Less direct action will include public art - some Melbourne artists are making giant fake boltcutters, hacksaws and files to symbolise removal of the fence - huge billboards drawn on the desert floor, music and Internet events. Splinter protests will occur in major cities over Easter.
Other groups joining the protest include Buddhist group, a Christian students' group, Rural Australians for Refugees, a mobile alternative media centre and a first aid group. A "safety group" experienced in events such as S11 and the Earthcore festival will attempt to quell any problems during the five-day protest.
Ms Mitropoulos said the number of people actively working on the protest had risen from 30 to 100 in Melbourne alone in the past two weeks.
She said she hoped that that ordinary Australians would join the experienced and sometimes hard-core protesters to send a message to the detainees. Protestors will meet in Adelaide on the Wednesday before Easter and travel to Woomera in convoy.
The ultimate aim of the Woomera2002 movement was not just to show opposition to the Federal Government's policy of mandatory detention, but to actively end it, Ms Mitropoulos said
"From my perspective, either they put an end to mandatory detention, or we do it for them."

story as used, in the early edition that goes interstate (it was later bumped out by some economics story you have to look towards the end to find my bit):


REFUGEES

Byline: ANDREW DARBY

Rebel Liberal Greg Barns expects his short life as a candidate to end today, when in a rare move, the party disendorses him over his outspoken views on asylum seekers.
``I'm still resolved to face the music and state my case,'' said Mr Barns, 39, chairman of the Australian Republican Movement. ``But I think I have about a 10per cent chance of survival. I think I'm pretty well rooted.''
A special meeting of the Tasmanian Liberal state executive will vote on whether to cancel his ticket, in what he has described as a hypocritical witch-hunt.
No candidate has ever been stripped of endorsement by Tasmania's Liberals, and with a three-quarters majority required, it is not easy. Around the country it is an extremely rare sanction, reserved for occasions such as the jettisoning of Queenslander Pauline Hanson, who went on to found One Nation.
Less than three months after Mr Barns was endorsed for this year's Tasmanian poll, he is to be cast off after repeated attacks he made on the Federal Government's treatment of asylum seekers.
Despite gaining the public backing of influential Liberals such as former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, he has angered some in the party's right such as the special minister of state, Eric Abetz.
The slide towards his removal began last month when he attacked Senator Abetz's defence of the Howard Government's asylum-seeker policy, which Mr Barns calls inhuman.
When the state party hierarchy called him to account, he argued candidates should not be silenced over issues of human rights, and continued to speak out.
The party gagged two former state leaders, Tony Rundle and Sue Napier, who publicly backed Mr Barns. But he was buoyed by the offer of support from Mr Fraser.
Mr Fraser warned that it was wrong of the party to try to suppress members such as Mr Barns.
On another front in support of asylum seekers, S11 is going to Woomera.
A national anti-detention group is planning to descend on the Woomera detention camp at Easter.
Acts of ``civil disobedience'' will include entering the exclusion zone around the detention centre and trying to breach the centre's walls, organisers say.
Protesters from Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and regional centres will set up camp near the centre for five days during the event, dubbed Woomera2002.
The event is being organised by many of the Melbourne activists who were behind the S11 protests at the World Economic Forum in September, 2000. Woomera2002 had been in the planning process since the S11 protest, said Angela Mitropoulos, of action group XBorder.
She said Woomera2002 was a loose alliance of groups, each planning their own actions. ``I think we're looking at the whole range (of protests) from prayer meetings to people dismantling the fences,'' Ms Mitropoulos said.
Damien Lawson, a member of the No One Is Illegal action group, said they planned to enter the exclusion zone. ``We will attempt to get to the detention centre and communicate with the people inside and do what we can to free people,'' he said. About 1000 people were expected to go to Woomera.
A spokesman for the Department of Immigration said the department was aware of the protest and that people were entitled to protest ``in a public place''.
Meanwhile, 600 lawyers, legal academics and law students today used an advertisement in newspapers to condemn the conditions facing asylum seekers.

I've now messaged or spoken to no less than eight different chiefs of staff/news editors in my efforts to find out why my Woomera yarn didn't run, and to find a new home for it.
that's not counting the head photographer to organise a pic.
news desk staff change at least twice a day, and there's no guarantee that the person you spoke to yesterday will be there tomorrow.
so stories slipping through the cracks is a very common occurrence.
but I am going to keep resurrecting it until either a) it runs or b) they tell me point-blank that they are actually not interested in hundreds of young Melbournians driving for 16 hours to protest at Woomera.
in which case...

a few years back, I wrote a story about a young Web entrepreneur.
now, his site has become a porn site.
our archives on the Web still point to it.

this is what happens when things hang around forever.
we could go back and amend the link = Newspeak.
we could go back and put a note on the yarn = managing years and years worth of back copies.
we could delete the story.
we could do nothing and hope that people are Web literate enough to know that things change.

what sort of a mess will the Web be in 50 years if time keeps piling up on itself like this?

luminous.com: the possibilities are endless. I want to get a whole lot of glow in the dark paint and paint anti-refugee-detention slogans all over the highway.

or maybe make a private universe for my bedroom ceiling.

tearjerker of the month: DamnThePacific is damning the Pacific again.

have just used the phrase "serious pedagogical content" in a conversation without a trace of irony!

A fence, a fence, my kingdom for a fence!

so, I ring the nice people at Lee Brothers Fencing, who have consistently failed to come and replace our ailing, nay, dangerous back fence for more than six months now.
She answers the phone. She says "do you mind holding?"
I say to the hold music: "why not, I've been waiting SIX MONTHS NOW."
Then have pleasant but fruitless discussion about when actual workmen might turn up.
do you think the Guinness Book has a section marked "Longest Wait for a Colourbond Fence"?

(and to you pedants: I know I'm taking Richard III out of context a little, and he wasn't offering to swap his horse for a kingdom. but right now, I'd swap my horse for a fence.)

a post from yesterday when Blogger wouldn't.

yawn. Saturday evening. gotta go to a party/barbecue thing with a whole lot of alternative hippy types. where did I put the dope when I last used it 17 months ago?

Shirley's comments about her song "cup of coffee" made me put it on the stereo and listen to the lyrics. that reminded me of something I wrote for a uni class way back when. so I dug that up. and that led to going through some old writing. might bung some up on my Vicnet site sometime. must get around to integrating all this under some cool URL. how does "luminous duck" sound?

comfort zones: sometimes I ride my bike up the Merri Creek bike path on a Sunday morning. I always stop and rest, then head back, at the Coburg Lake, adjacent to the lovely Pentridge Prison.
but today was different. today I was brave, and feeling like a bit more exercise.
so I went further up the path
yes, after two years of regularly turning around at Coburg, I kept going. the path is not that different to the parts further south; it runs behind houses that seem to pretty much ignore the burbling waters and thick willows, and the further north you go the less native tree plantings there are.
and the people you meet on the path look less like people you might see in Brunswick St coffee shops, and more like either European villagers or ex-inmates of Pentridge. The dogs, too, get less cute and more like Petey .
after a few kilometres, I felt I'd had enough strangeness and turned back. there is such a difference between ground covered so often and completely new territory. maybe that's how Sam felt in Lord of the Rings when he took that step beyond the Shire and everything he knew.

sounds like Shirley Manson of Garbage enjoyed the show the other night even more than we did.
"oh I don't have words to describe the feeling.....it was just too intense and supernatural!!!"
and she reads Salman Rushdie for fun! smarter than your average rock star, apparently.
(you have to click on the 008 tab, labelled "band communication"to make her blog come up in a popup window.)

well, they did it again. this time I think they've really hurt my feelings. instead of running my perfectly good article about up to 1000 Melbourne people planning to drive for 16 hours to the desert to try to break into the Woomera detention centre, my paper has given space to a piece about the ABC radio station selling a whole lot of old LPs. In Sydney and Hobart. which, in my opinion, illustrates why we have fewer young readers and lots of baby boomers; despite a stated policy of trying to get more young readers, the editorial direction hasn't changed much.

they will probably run my piece on Monday, which is when they are desperate for stories. also when hardly anyone actually reads the paper. but you can only have selective amnesia about this kind of thing so many times. I think, if the news desk on a big paper is a tease, I've finally had my heart broken. I might go looking for something a bit better now. the metaphorical boy-next-door of jobs/places to write.

tomorrow is 02/02/2002. whichever way you do your dates

from The Ground Beneath Her Feet
"the eagerness with which they were pursuing other interests aroused my envy, an emotion that's always a reliable guide to the secret heart."