you can be turned into a diamond after you die. possibly the weirdest burial plan I've ever heard.

via the star-studded cast at the new expat blog, Lost in Transit.

is it just me, or is all this Saddam stuff getting more South Park by the minute?

first the playing cards

now this: A retired banker living in Switzerland spent 10 years helping Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hide millions of dollars via a bank account under the name of Satan, Britain's Sunday Times reported.

pictures of Melbourne

blogging? what's that? no time.

all is v. normal, at any rate. annoying site meetings, never enough time to see people, life dominated by renovation and the need to walk fluffy dog 3 times a day.

my big adventure was a dip in the 17 degree waters of Port Phillip Bay, via the Brighton Baths.

I really, really needed a swim; yet another headache, etc. and my regular pool has closed. so I struggled down to the sea baths and paid me money.

very cold water has this interesting effect on me: my chest constricts and I can't breathe. at first I clung to the steps, then after dunking my head underwater, I struck out for the other side, maybe 30 metres away. I swear I thought I wouldn't make it back, even though I turned after about 7 metres. once I realised I could touch the bottom, weedy and rocky though it was, I got braver. made it all the way to the other side and back, panting and hooting and wondering if the warm sensation in my limbs was hypothermia. I mean, there was one guy swimming around in there in a wetsuit, and I was virtually naked. I lasted about 10 minutes, I guess.

the thing is: it totally got rid of my headache. so I'll probably do it again.

well, that was a day.
W's wife, J, was amazingly strong. she stood up in front of a couple of hundred people and told their four kids (one hers, but he was the "dad") all the things W wanted to say to them when he was alive, but couldn't; why he loved them, what he got from them and that he was sorry he wasn't there. She also made sure to tell them not to carry his pain with them. she spoke for ten minutes at least, beautifully, and I am full of admiration for her.
as it was a pagan funeral, there was a meditation/visualisation; a chance to see him leave (stepping up into a sunbeam, and it worked better than it sounds), and to speak to him one last time. everyone very very upset of course, and when they took the coffin out she let herself cry properly, which was heartbreaking.
there were a couple of people there I haven't seen for close to ten years - W and J and I went way back, 20 years, but haven't been close lately, though knowing what's going on with each other.
the house they'd just finished building on their bush block is beautiful, their kids are beautiful and I still can't work it out. there was talk about him resolving issues in his life and so on, but if he'd finally done that, why suicide?
I'm trying not to be angry with him. as I hardly saw them, it's not like I'll miss him specifically, but I am so sorry that he's gone.

so if our world is constituted by what we share with other people. and it's this belief in the existence of other people that gives meaning and substance to what we experience (to mangle Heidegger etc).
what does it mean when a person with whom we share our world, or did very closely once, decides not to live any more? is our total world diminished by this, either in reality or perception?

the person in question is, was, married to a woman who was my best buddy when I was 17 and stupid. at the time (17), he was the partner of another friend of mine. I am remembering snippets of the funny half-lisp with which he talked, coming down to Melbourne one day on the back of his motorcycle, sitting in a corner on my 17th birthday packing away vodka and having what we used to call a D & M. his slightly defensive manner, mixed with sensitivity. the mudbrick house he and his wife were building in the bush to house them, her daughter, his son and their ?2?3? - see, the ties aren't as close as they were - kids, one of whom is still only 12 or 13. they came to my wedding. he died yesterday. the message I got said he'd been having difficulty lately. whatever that means.

earlier today, before I heard, I saw a shrivelled little lady with white hair tucked away in a corner of McDonald's, using a magnifying glass to check the death notices. by the time my grandmother died, very few of her contemporaries were alive. who has to be last?

I'll probably be going to a funeral this week.

most of the links to the time traveller yarn appear to be around March 31. hmm. is it a real story or an April 1 setup?

and a very sensible dolphin. bugger these sea-mines, I'm off to have fun! Douglas Adams was right.

NEW YORK -- Federal investigators have arrested an enigmatic Wall Street wiz on insider-trading charges -- and incredibly, he claims to be a time-traveler from the year 2256!

puggle (baby platypus) update: there were TWO of them. the second one was hiding.

I came into work today to an email from a journo at another publication praising my front page yarn on wireless Internet.

in honor of the self-satisfied feeling that created in me - even though I had to come in early last week and bust my gut to get it done, still knowing it wasn't entirely what I wanted to do - I dug up this, from a book I found in the Ballarat Mechanics' Institute Library when I was 18 or 19. The book is titled Adventures in Journalism

"The adventure of journalism which has been mine - as editor, reporter and war correspondent - is never a life of easy toil and seldom one of rich rewards. I would not recommend it to youth as a primrose path, nor to any one who wishes to play for safety in possession of an assured income, regular hours, and a happy home life.
It is of uncertain tenure, because no man may hold on to his job if he weakens under the nervous strain, or quarrels on a point of honour with the proprietor who pays him or with the editor who sets his task. Even the most successful journalist - if he is on the writing side of a newspaper - can rarely bank on past achievements, however long and brilliant, but must for ever jerk his brain and keep his curiosity untired.
As nobody, according to the proverb, has ever seen a dead donkey, so nobody has ever seen a retired reporter living on the proceeds of his past toil, like business men in other adventures of life. He must go on writing and recording, getting news until the pen drops from his hand, or the little bell tinkles for the last time on his typewriter, and his head falls over an unfinished sentence. ... Well, I hope that will happen to me, but some people look forward to an easier old age.
I have known the humiliation of journalism, its insecurity, its never-ending tax upon the mind and heart, its squalor, its fever, its soul-destroying machinery for..."

and that's just the first page!

it's official.
wanting to go to IKEA is not as daggy as we think.
not if LoobyLu is going.
everyone I know is feeling the inevitable pull of the homewares maze. soon, soon.

oh, and I've dropped out of uni. will think about that later. but it had to happen. that sort of thing shouldn't be a drudge, and that's how it was shaping up.

goshdarn doesn't it show when one slacks off posting and there's not much happening around here?

look, to me it's all truly fascinating. shopping for lights, booking tradespeople for the house and my pub, keeping up with the war, etc, etc. trying to keep up with exercise (a bit), friends (not very successfully) family (must ring my Mum). oh, and there's work

but I just don't feel compelled to blog it all right now.

blogon

War boy
Think your job is challenging? Maybe even dangerous? Log on to Kevin Sites' blog to realise just how mundane and sheltered your life really is.
Sites is a CNN correspondent in Iraq. Not near Iraq - actually in Iraq, in the city of Kalar, as of late last week.
While working his way through the north of the country with fellow correspondents, he finds time to email and phone in the occasional blog entry detailing his adventures. He even sends in photographs of the locals - some were still managing to smile for the camera last week - and if you have the right software you can listen to his phoned-in posts.
Luckily for Sites, he happens to have an Irish passport as well as a United States one. He also manages to stay calm in the face of threatening local chefs, rooster sacrifices to "christen" his car (probably not the word the locals use for the ritual) and aggressive attempts at story-spinning by army press officers.
His previous journeys through wartime Afghanistan are included, bearing the somewhat gung-ho title of "War Boy Journals Part III".
A typical quote: "The shock waves of the explosions are dulled as they cross the valley toward us. But they are still persuasive. Their concussions a silencing voice, ripe with anger, full of vengeance. We watch from a forward front line position. There are dozens of other journalists here. It is a theatre of war and war as theatre."
Anticipating the war, he wrote: "What will happen, where should we go? Race west toward the oil fields of Kirkuk," Sites writes.
And if all of CNN's coverage goes blank one day, Sites will know why. He says the buzz among the media on the ground is that the US intends to use an electromagnetic pulse weapon to disable all electronic gear in the war zone, including satellite transmitters and mobile phones.
"We could end up covering this war with wind-up film cameras." Sites writes.
Although the blog is still there, CNN has told Sites to suspend his blog. The reasons are unclear but Sites has complied.
www.kevinsites.net

this may be a dumb question (one is very, very tired today), but what happens if a missile hits a chemical weapons factory?

hmmm?

cnn seems to have told Kevin Sites, CNN correspondent and real warblogger, to shut up.
notwithstanding his Ernest Hemingway complex, this is a bad thing.

blogon
Written by "an environmental scientist of the disorganised type ... overwhelmed by the quantity of sites of relevance to my interest in safety of radioactive waste", the Radwaste blog is devoted to all things that glow in the dark.
This site can get quite mindbending, such as when it gives a supposedly simple explanation of how a particle accelerator can be used to clean up radioactive waste: "An accelerator is used to fire neutrons into some fissile material (which may be stuff otherwise regarded as 'radioactive waste'). The amount of energy put into the system (to produce neutrons rather inefficiently in the accelerator) is less than the energy out (on account of the fissions that occur in the waste fuel). That is, more neutrons are produced in the fissile material than are fired into it, and more energy comes out due to the fission processes."
And it can be a little disconcerting to see the prospect of a missile strike on an outback Australian waste storage plant cheerfully discussed in terms of the possible size of the crater.
Writer Geoff Williams ranges widely in his search for radioactivity-related data; he blogs a study on the health of British veterans exposed to nuclear tests (not that different to those not exposed, apparently), and notes that the United States Government is encouraging drug companies to research pills that can minimise the effects of exposure to a so-called "dirty" nuclear bomb (as opposed to the clean kind, one supposes).
In light of current events, Radwaste's long pieces on the safe levels of exposure to radiation, the differences between voluntary and involuntary exposure, and how to balance the risks of radiation exposure against, say, chemical exposure, make fascinating reading.
Williams also pulls in copy from news services on fun items, such as radioactive materials missing in Georgia, formerly part of the Soviet Union.
There is a disclaimer, though: "Radwaste knows absolutely nothing about absolutely anything, and everything written here is absolute piffle".
Somehow, we rather think he does know a thing or two.

www.radwaste.blogspot.com

I don't want this to turn into a warblog, but can I just point out that this Newsweek article about Bush v. the World doesn't even mention Australia as a supporter of the Iraq action?

It - makes - NO - difference - if - we're - there - or -not.

is. that. clear?

getting very, very tired of newspaper front pages showing British and American soldiers outside Iraq. the Australian media have been given bugger-all access to the Australian troops. I don't know if they've given up chasing the local soldiers (I doubt it), if they are making do with what they can get, or if they're deliberately interviewing Brits to highlight the lack of Australians to talk to. there are, what, two thousand? more? of them there. and we should be seeing them.

not that I link to all things platypus. but you can't go past a raging platypus.

procrastinatoin as a work technique: instead of just picking up the phone and calling people involved in wireless broadband, I've been reading articles about it, picking up random press releases and mentioning it to people whom I'm discussing quite unrelated things with.
and guess what? it's working just fine. a picture of what is going on and what I need to put in the piece is emerging. not that there won't be actual interviews to do at some stage.

why haven't I been posting?
uni Monday (headache)
yoga Tuesday
acupuncture Wednesday
Swim Thursday
actually see husband, Friday.
Drive to Ballarat, see rellos, Saturday.
more rellos and home, Sunday.

meanwhile working, arranging renovation, walking dog, doing washing. etc. especially etc.
;-)

sometime around 1930, my great-uncle participated in a rollerskate race from the city of Melbourne, to the newly opened rollerskating rink located on the corner of Acland and Barkly Sts, St Kilda. He was captain of a rollerhockey team or similar. the rink "in the Village Belle" was where the large, nasty new Safeway sits. Before that, I know from a man I met when I worked on the St Kilda paper, the site was a formal garden around a large Victorian mansion.
my great-uncle is now 90. he lives just outside a tiny town an hours' drive from Melbourne, with two old but still fiercely barking dogs, at which he bellows loudly. he had a stroke a while back, but continues to live on an acre of land, stoking the fire and lurching around. he's the last of my mother's mother's generation.the thing about him, like my grandmother who died four years ago just short of her own 90th birthday, is that despite the odd slip of the tongue and memory, you can look into his clear blue-grey eyes and see it's all still in there; all 90 years of it. and there is no shillyshallying or false politeness or special treatment for the old; he's Alan. that's all you need to know.

blogon from last week:

Blood on the tracks
Rebecca Blood is a blogger from a time before there were blogs.
Her archives start in December 1999. She wrote one of the first meta-blogging essays, musing on what it was all about, and has recently published a book on the subject. Blood's hit-rate numbers thousands of readers daily and she is generally considered an elder stateswoman of the blogging community.
Blood's day job is slightly obscure to the casual reader; how she finds time for anything but trawling the web and maintaining her smooth-running site is an equal mystery.
She is currently (and understandably) fixated on the war issue but in general she takes her own advice on how to blog: she considers anything out there that she's interested in to be fair game, adding her opinions in a voice developed over several years of online writing.
Sometimes it seems like she is already ruling the world: "When unsafe conditions are found, I want a follow-up inspection in a week. And if the conditions haven't been corrected, I want the inspectors to be required to shut down the factory, meat-handling plant, or whatever the facility until the required conditions have been met."
At other times Blood tackles inner-city lifestyles, the retreat or otherwise of the Sahara Desert, and wireless networks in Wales.
What she does not offer is trivial quizzes or descriptions of the state of her bathroom; this is serious blogging.
Having surfed around for a while, Blood has a highly refined list of must-read blogs that would serve as a primer for any new blogger. In her chosen categories of "gothica", domestic issues, film, books, "gaia" and exotica, she also offers a thoroughly road-tested selection of links.
From time to time Blood segues into full-blown opinion-style essays; titles included under the "other words" link are Breast Feeding in a Capitalist Society and Fighting the Merchants of Cool.
www.rebeccablood.net

thinking of someone I used to know who should have changed his life but didn't; the only way to change your life is to change the way you live your life.

blogger answers all the questions. except these: why did it go down for two days?

and how much money did they get?

blogger is finally up.

I swear at one point I was putting blogger in the URL and Google was coming up. something weird is going on here.

life is very exciting and I have a backlog to blog. later.

blogon

href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/20/1045638409396.html">blogon



TOPBLOG

Calling Batgrl

Louisiana blogger Batgrl found she was collecting so much random hoo-ha
from
other people's sites that she needed a whole new website to keep it at -
hence the launch of hooha.org.

Its main feature is the "out of context" area, where quotes from
bloggers
around the world are blatantly cut and pasted with an editorial
direction
that can only be described as flippant.

The more ambiguous, sexually suggestive or strange the line, the more
likely
it is to be sampled:

"In case you didn't know, Phil does not come out of hiding to forecast
the
temperature for the next six weeks. No, he's looking for babes! He wants
some hot, furry tailed loving. So he comes out of his little hole hoping
to
get some action and all he sees are a bunch of women, children and men
dressed in top hats staring him down like he's the second coming of
Christ."
(Phil is a groundhog, of course.)

"Have you ever seen a woman running from a crazed Sigourney Weaver fan?
That
was probably me. Doing the running, not the chasing. It's quite scary.
Scarier still, it happens a lot (usually minus the running). I
personally
think the resemblance stems from my propensity to send marines to battle
chest-popping aliens and die violently in air ducts while I strip down
to my
underwear and kick ass. Yes, that must be it."

There are certainly some lively but strange writers out there, and
Batgrl
seems to know where they all live.

Some of them go beyond strange to scary; follow links like this one at
your
peril: "Because Precious is my control batch I don't need to feed her
every
day like I do with The Beast. I keep Precious in the fridge and take her
out
every 2 weeks for a feeding."

The site also has various definitions of the word "hoo-ha", as
distinguished
from brouhaha and hooey.

If you can't be bothered actually reading the couple of million or so
blogs
that exist these days, hooha.org will pick the eyes out for you -
assuming
that what you're after is random hoo-ha rather than any meaningful
communication.

For that kind of thing, you can follow the link provided with each quote
and
read the whole entry in its original context. Or surf on over to
Batgrl's
own site, houseogroove.com, where there is plenty of hoo-ha of her own
going
on. A number of other sub-categories of hooha.org are under development;
stay tuned for the hair-colour blog.

hooha.org

houseogroove.com/cuppa

oh goody. I get to start yet another blog. it makes sense to separate out the pub stuff. think I'll get Blogger Pro soon so I can have a private area, and keep the public blog as a sort of record/promotional tool for potential rentees. you know, posts about the wonders of the district, etc, to go on the pub's actual site.

permaculture resource page. has a link to "composting toilet world" but it's dead. dammit, sounded like fun.

you thought I was never going to do it, didn't you?

well, I have.

I won't get it for five months. which is good. because I need a plan. no, I need several. I also need to finish renovating our own house before I take this on.

oops, I did it again

:-)

baby platypus. platypus baby.
I wanna be #1 on Google for "baby platypus."
PUGGLE!

ps: failed to blog an earlier offer, btw. so this is the THIRD.

Idjuts.
although my 5-mth offer was the full amount they're asking, they said no.
apparently the woman of the couple just kept saying to the agent "that's not normal" re: 5mths.
agent also modified my offer, without consulting me, to less for 60 days. I've just called him back and insisted he put the original offer as I made it - he has second-guessed what the owners want (assuming full amount is more important to them than faster settlement) and assuming I won't get finance in that time (I already have it). unspeakably highhanded, imho.
but they will still say no. and it will cost me thousands more to try to come up with the full amount upfront. so I'm not doing it. I'm going to make a move on selling my flat soon, see how much I get and resume the search when I can do it sensibly.

there is no point owning a pile of fallen-down bricks, is there?

colour me terrified: rang last night and made my final, final offer on the pub. less for 30 days, more for 5 months (cash flow issues, of course)

got an agent who happens to know a friend of mine, so I spoke frankly - as I'd intended anyway - about how I felt the vendors should make some concession. he gave me the usual "vendors' advantage if the sale's not forced" rubbish. but he called back and left a message on my mobile at 6.30 last night. I have to call him this morning. I suspect they're going to take one or the other of the offers. which will be good, yes, as I feel the pub is mine. but also horrifying in the amount of work and money this is going to take...

blogon 12/2

Space oddity
Sitting in his tin can, far above the world, International Space Station science officer Don Pettit can indeed confirm planet Earth is blue.
As of last week, there were only nine entries in Pettit's Space Chronicles, which is part of the official space station site. But they are like no other blog on Earth, because they're not.
Pettit's writing reflects both his scientific training and the sheer wonder of being in space. Here he talks about the atmosphere: "Below the blue you see an orange-red layer with cloud tops from rising thunderheads. These thunderheads are poking their noses up into the outer reaches of the meteoric zone where weather as we know it ends and the stratosphere begins."
And did you know that space has a smell? Pettit does, and he can describe it. He can also instruct you on how to move around in microgravity.

I have PMT and a keyboard. Any questions?

hoopty bows out. or so he says...

well if someone has to buy blogger, I guess it should be google.

rokewood is a very long way away.
I compusively went to investigate a cheap, pretty cottage: this is what I'd like the pub to look like one day.

it took me most of the day. the only highlights were getting to go to a good op shop I know of in Geelong (I now have some classic old 78s I can't play, and am kicking myself over not buying a $6 Samsonite suitcase), and seeing a giant plane as I passed the Avalon airshow. there was also a cool little UFO-looking plane/helicopter thing landing.

I ended up driving out to Rokewood Junction - which is what the place is listed under. by this point, the dog was quite cheesed off and lying with his head on the handbrake. eventually I realised it was all too silly and turned around; and realised the place is actually on the outskirts of Rokewood. as I suspected, it is quite chintzy-looking. and dammit, it's in ROKEWOOD.

back to the drawing board.

damn blast botherATION.

for some reason I logged onto daylesford real estate to idly browse; haven't done that for a couple of weeks.

and there is THE PUB!! so the owners have moved from a small, non-online agency in Castlemaine to a large, wellconnected agency in Daylesford with a busy front window and a web site. rang the agent. it was only listed today. there is still no flexibility on price. which sucks totally, as I assume that back wall hasn't magically shifted back into line in the past 3 weeks. f'it. what to do?

you'd be surprised, nay, amazed, how many searches are done on the string "what is a baby platypus called?"
so I'll say it again: puggle. puggle. PUGGLE! P.U.G.G.L.E.

in the vain hope batty might mention me on hooha, I present the conversation of two women who shared my table at the market today (imagine the second one with a strong New Zulland accent)
first: so he had to go back to England. and the only way he could come back would be if we got married
second: are you in love with him?
first: (pause) Yes, I think so. it's always that first rush, you know "here we are". but it's too early.
second: who says what's too early?


ok, it's lame, but it struck me that they would never have talked like that if they'd borrowed a man's table to eat at. will try to find something hooha-worthy to say.

this review pretty much sums up the acoustic problems.

that said, Sunday was great. Tony Joe White sure is one droll ol' swamp dawg, and can play the harmonica a bit. and John Mayall was an of an eye (ear?)-opener for me. the whole thing just confirmed for me that I need to find out more about this music - it's good to know there's a 50-year archive of blues I have yet to hear.

Ray Charles's voice is fading, but he still has Presence, and he simply sat and played piano and sang. a bit jazzy, but no complaints.

we left early, when the final act degenerated into a dinosaur rock concert. not yer average weekend.

the problem with 3 day concerts is there's no time to blog in between times.
lots of great harmonica yesterday; collard greens and gravy, a local band I've stupidly never gone to see, particularly.
ani was wonderful. clearly jetlagged and slightly out of it on it, and a smaller venue would have been good (outside stage, 1000s of people) but the quality of her songwriting (mostly songs I haven't heard, and I have 3 albums of hers) is just stunning, really clear spare guitar playing. she talked about love, blood and shame at what America does. and how she has to leave all the things she loves about the States behind when she travels, but "that man" follows her (making a mouth-flapping motion with her hands).

then Bob Dylan. he's a funny little thing really, I discerned through my binos. lots of new stuff, a strippeddown version of Just LIke a Woman, and for encore, blowin' in the wind and All Along the Watchtower (andrew is waiting at the door, almost literally, have to type fast, too bad if there are typos!) those boys really know their guitar. I think hearing so much at once is helping me "get my ear in" and I understand what I'm hearing better. danced a tiny bit. audiences in Melbourne tend to be slightly inhibited.

now, inlaws brunch and back to the show for Ray Charles etc.

yawn. only one night of blues and rock down, two days to go.
lessee, what to report. the numbers looked low - it's not a proper festival if you can move around easily - and the acoustics inside the hall were shite, to the point where the sound guys had a sign on their booths saying "yes we know it sounds like a cave in here, we think it's awful too."
but when I moved down the front the sound improved. and due to people's inability to wait patiently, we got right to the front barrier before Chris Wilson's set and he and the band really turned it on. I did the fan thing afterwards - bought a CD, got him to sign it and told him I'd been coming to hear him for 15 years. which is true. I still cannot fathom why he remains a Melbourne phenomenon.
the band before him - Jerome Smith etc - was patchy and brilliant and funny. apparently he used to play bass with Keith Richards, according to my too-cool-for-school music writer colleague, whom I bumped into from time to time.

Max Merritt sucked. sorry, but he did. and he went on too long. the babyboomers loved it, but I just sat on the grass and waited for Wilson Pickett to come on. Pickett's band were all honkies and/or slick Italian-looking sax players. he was just a funky, horny, well-matured blues legend. it was pretty cool.

am making a point of getting dressed appropriately for this gig. lots of people in jeans and T-shirt, but not me. last night was the skintight black lace dress. today is a zigzag pattern halter neck thing. it feels more rock and roll, more party. but always sensible shoes.


oh and totally unrelated: a baby platypus was born at the Taronga Park Zoo this week, making it only the second place to breed them in captivity. a baby platypus is called a puggle.

naughty me.
went to the auction room and bought stuff.
item: tricycle. old, rusted.
item: box of 1950's crockery and glassware. all really quite nice.
item: three tin cars, not sure why I bought them.

now I have to work out how to sell stuff on eBay. if I can get back what I paid for the box and cars while keeping the things in the box that I wanted, I'm doing OK. leaving aside my time etc, of course. anyway, it was fun. the auction guys are all very formal with each other; it's all "sir" and "mr" and they have little jokes about the rubbish that gets knocked down. and dangerously, you can pay on Visa card.

blogon

Plastic bag
Plastic bag is a good name for this blog, which is a grab-bag of topics, ideas, personal and professional observations from one Tom Coates.

One minute he's describing how a tanning booth burned his skin pink and the next he's laying down the law on website design. "A good site must necessarily be well designed. It's designed to be a clear and unobtrusive content-delivery mechanism with no sharp edges and no confusing bits of functionality."

Coates is a true web enthusiast ("I've been building pointless sites for fun for years now."), and his criticism of a new trend to consciously design community websites as "social software" hits the mark: "And what are we likely to end up with after all of this process has been conducted? Sites that fulfil many of the same functions (if not exactly the same functions), but which fulfil them via completely new paradigms that have been designed rather than evolved - meaning that they're sites that people are now forced to try and understand from scratch ..."

Coates is not averse to link-dumps of cool stuff he's found on the web, such as "10 ways to tell if your co-worker is an extra-terrestrial" or "butterfly etymology" (not entomology - you have to follow the link to get it). He's an avowed anti-war blogger, which sets him up against a certain type of online writer who advocates backing the US against the so-called Axis of Evil.

There's a lot more here than you can take in at one visit, and you'll find yourself bookmarking his links for future reference.

This is Coates's take on what blogging is about, and ultimately the reason his blog is so readable is that he walks it like he talks it: "There is something very profoundly different about the polyphony of voices interacting and arguing with one another. It's not just a way to shout your opinions as loudly as possible in as flat and featureless a way as possible. Engaging in that community - not of webloggers, but of citizens who happen to be empowered to respond and engage with you - is the whole point as far as I'm concerned."

I need a new System for my life. I suspect it will, as usual, involve setting up lots of files and folders for different activities - uni, renovations, work, freelance stuff, etc, etc, etc - then scribbling notes on bits of paper and throwing them into the files.
the problem is there's too much going on. I have little thoughts all the time - must do X, or Y - and get sidetracked. this also applies to my blogs, which require constant feeding, and sometimes not at appropriate times. so I think that if I throw it all into a notebook during the day and schedule regular downloads - at lunchtime, like now, and after work - I might be able to develop the discipline to stick at one thing at a time. right now, for instance, I'm ignoring an Ebay auction I'm bidding in. and my Hotmail.

five minutes in a Camberwell auction house this morning (after the dentist, you don't want to know), was enough to set me off on pub dreams again. there was a glassed bookcase that would look great there, and a pile of tin canisters, and best of all, a box of iron and wood hand tools. no idea what they were for, but they looked rustic. so I'm also ignoring my fantasy of setting up a second hand shop and spending my days buying stuff at auction houses. I'd be great at the buying bit, but I have NO customer service values.

there can be nothing so pleasing to a homeowner's ear as a tradey saying "that's fine, that doesn't need replacing, no it won't take long". plasterer done, ony 15 quotes to go...

the front half of our house is a nightmare of unfinished surfaces and lead-paint walls. it is my task over coming months to marshall an army of tradesmen (and women if we can find any) to make it nice before we move in. expect this blog to lose all perspective and descend into detailed discussions of shades of off-white and the virtues of new vs antique light fittings.

and when it's done, I think I'll run a "see our renovations" tour for the neighbours (except the one across the road and the ones next door who hate us) and for all our friends who keep saying "when do you get your house back?". some other neighbours actually waved at me today - I think they liked my Save Merri Creek sign - and if I was watching builders trot in and out of a nearby house for nine bloody months, I'd be dying to see what they'd done.

I knew it! I knew the blokes hanging out in cars at the beach car park at funny hours of the morning were drug dealers! it was so obvious!
what I didn't know was that they were drug dealers and cops at the same time.

sitting at work listening to some loud soul/blues music on my personal block-out-the-chattering-neighbours device, I surfed back to the paper's home page and found that the man in question, who may not have produced the track I was listening to but certainly influenced it, Phil Spector has been charged with murder.
now, I didn't even know if he was still alive or not, but I'm still shocked. you don't think of ageing legendary music producer types as murderers

"If someone absolutely insists that you write truly useless documentation, say yes and quietly begin looking for a better job."

I'm reading this thing on how to be a programmer (yes, this is work too!), and it seems to be full of advice that would work well for just about any corporate drone employee.

that's if you skip the bits about how to improve I/O ratios. and even those could be of use, read metaphorically.

yesterday was Greek Culture day: first we went shopping for marble for the house at a truly stunning marble showroom, staffed by slick young Greek-background people who could speak Greek at a million miles an hour. I love the way some veined marble looks like an aerial photo of a strangely coloured desert.
that done, we headed for the Greek cake shop and the addictive spanakopitas, plus some naughty honey cakes.

have yet to do my Melbourne's Best dinner party, where I buy stuff from all the world's-best food shops here - steak from Jonathon's, spanakopita, cakes from Monarch. did have a HUGE piece of Monarch plum slice friday night during the dvd viewing of LOTR #1. in explaining the plot to a 13-year-old I found it mapped nicely onto Star Wars, down to the bar scene and Han Solo sitting in the corner.

today was supposed to be Find A Bargain At The Local Bowls Club Gala Day day. but it fizzed. not a single ramekin set was brought out for the stalls - I know, 'cos I was there on the dot of opening. slightly perturbing fact: the bowls club's big day was sponsored by Nelson Brothers Funerals. I know it's their target market and all, but it seems slightly tasteless.

I like this one. it's on 5 acres with a dam and creek 10 minutes from castlemaine. it's $295,000

HA!

memo to self: stuff on Ebay is in US DOLLARS YOU FOOL!!
do NOT bid as if it was in Australian $$$.
luckily the bid in question is only US$20. it will not break the bank and I think someone will outbid me anyway. darn ramekin obsession.

pub update: agent eventually came back to me saying that the owners are holding firm at $135,000.
this suggests they either have no idea what a market is, or that they are willing to wait to sell it. I might have even thought hard about it at 130, but at 135 it's just too expensive. my flat may or may not be worth more than I think, but I can't bank on that.
no point having a charming old pub with a collapsed back wall, no toilet and no trees in the paddocks... it's difficult, but as I've moved into This Is Serious mode about getting a place up that way, I've been better able to deal with the romantic yeanings, and more able to see the difficulties. my job, for one thing. even at four days a week I don't have a lot of time to be supervising tradesmen 100 kilometres away. and if I chuck, or cut back, the job, I can't afford the pub. catch-22.

anyway, will think more. will reconsider my plan b place. will probably wait a bit and see a) what comes on the market and b) if the pub is still for sale in six weeks. if it is, may well try again.

Which OS are You?


but I'm not happy about it.

not all Americans are crazy. what Kurt Vonnegut has to say about the present situation.

and this is Iraq, this afternoon. it doesn't really look worth bombing, does it?

some amazing satellite pics of the fires. if you click on the one pixel-250 metres link, your computer will grind wildly and half an hour later a huge, crisp image will come up. you can see everything, even large fields and certainly towns - I can see the one where I grew up in this one, about 100 k due west of Melbourne.

aargh! visitors! and I haven't even cleaned the bathroom sink! panicpanicpanic.
seeing as how Meredith and LoobyLu (oh, the honour) are sending some of their hordes of readers my way, I may as well put up some Real Content to make myself look good.

no mistakes in this one that I know of.

blogon


Samuel Pepys

This blog is almost 350 years old. Inspired by the proliferation of online diaries, Phil Gyford came up with the bright idea of posting the famed diaries of Samuel Pepys on the Web - not all at once, but day by day.

Pepys meticulously recorded his daily life in 17th century London for many years, with topics ranging from political intrigue and near-revolution to how he paid the rent that month. Nothing rivals his journals for insights into the city's life over a period that included the plague years.

A typical early entry: "It snowed hard all this morning, and was very cold, and my nose was much swelled with cold. Strange the difference of men's talk! Some say that Lambert must of necessity yield up; others, that he is very strong, and that the Fifth-monarchy-men (will) stick to him, if he declares for a free Parliament. Chillington was sent yesterday to him with the vote of pardon and indemnity from the Parliament."

But a diary is not really a blog, so the Pepys Diary site is annotated without changing the main text in ways that would be impossible in print.

A reference to the writer's wife, for instance, links to a short article about his marriage to 15-year-old Elizabeth St Michel, her beauty and her poor housekeeping skills.

Like the flashbacks at the start of a soap opera episode, this helps you keep up with the plot and start reading any time. Very postmodern.

There are also traditional numbered footnotes, taken from an 1893 edition of the diaries, and a comments function identical to those on modern weblogs.

Just as Pepys' diaries (originally written in a kind of shorthand code) spent a long time languishing in a library before they were rediscovered, this site will bring first-hand history to a new generation.

And where else on the Web would you find the term "sack-posset"?

have just made a colleague dig in the bin for some batteries he threw out. well, I didn't make him, but I did say that I keep all mine and recycle them via the photographers' recycling system. they're toxic waste.

beside my desk is a box full of old drink bottles, which I will dump in the caf recycling; I brought them back from the market, where you can't recycle.

but I'm not a mad hippy or anything. honestly, I burn fossil fuels and waste paper with the best of them. just some things get me in the conscience, and others I can ignore.

oh, and for Batty: a Sleestak mention in my paper. I couldn't put "via" in the piece, but you know who you are.

trudging up Spencer St in the not-that-hot (25 degrees) but very humid air were two Scandinavian backpackers, loaded down with Stuff.
thought bubble above their heads: "I want to go back to my snowdrifts and my reindeer."

an interesting book on networking

it's 35 degrees outside and the building just went quiet. I think the a/c has gone off.

and in other news: rang and offerd $125,000 for the pub ten minutes ago. it's probably not worth even that. my brother pointed out some structural flaws that are quite dodgy; a builder who's seen it says it's fixable, but I don't know how much.
and it's deteriorated in the past year. the whole task is daunting me a bit right now. also, agent seemed quite pleased at the number I mentioned. he's the son of the cagier principal agent. I like the place an awful lot, but it would be financial ruin to pay more, especially as I can't rent it out yet.
so I will not give them one cent more. half-hoping they take it, half-hoping not. will let God, and the owners, decide this one.

also "work"; a discussion about in which episode of Star Wars Darth Vader strangled a commander by teleconference.
really. it's work.

actually, this is work.
first I went to the Blues Festival site (yes, I'm going, but that does not make it an illegitimate target for a web sites column, does it?). there I was pleased to realise that far from keeping me out until 2am, with the associated sleep hangover and dog-walking problems, the latest anyone will come on stage is 9.20 pm on Sunday; Saturday's an early night, wiht Bob Dylan starting at 9.15.
the last music fest I went to was a young person's fest, and finished around midnight. I forgot this one was for the oldies baby boomers.

then, in search of an online event I could use for the column, I plugged 8 Feb 2003 online chat into Google. and got back a very scary page about larger men and their male admirers. at the base of that was one of those links you know you shouldn't click on, but do: Chubnet.
(nothatthere'sanythingwrongwiththat)

oh God, this is embarrassing.
this is my first revamped blogon for the year. I'll spare you the blog tools and meme of the week, b/c they're trivial. but this is my review of william gibson's blog, as it ran in the paper. spot the mistake. (I considered not posting it, or Newspeaking it, but decided not)


William Gibson only invented cyberspace, so the appearance of his very own Weblog was sure to excite the digerati.

Gibson has a history of being something of a Luddite in practice, while making accurate if somewhat dark predictions about the future. He once wrote in Wired magazine that buying old watches on the eBay auction site was his only reason for going online.

Now the author of Neuromancer (where the word "cyberspace" was first used in print) and Snowcrash has his own little corner of the Web, where he discusses much that will excite his fans.

For instance, there's the effect of drugs on his novels: "Yes, I did, rather textually obviously, take some of those, most notably LSD of the old (and I gather rather different) variety, though that now seems a lifetime prior to the writing of Neuromancer. My drug of choice during the composition of Neuromancer, for the record, was O'Keefe's Extra Old Stock Lager..."

More relevant to the books themselves are his musings on style: "There may well be people who abandon Neuromancer on the grounds that it's riddled with sentence fragments, but, in a sense, the sentence fragments are there to scare off readers who aren't ready for that, and to encourage those who want to see the envelope of language pushed even further, the pedal taken even closer to the metal."

Gibson is a writer before all else, and his blog doesn't shy away from that experimental grammar - something of a relief after countless spelling-doesn't-matter-online efforts by lesser mortals.

If you want that kind of thing, you can head over to the forum area to talk to other readers about Gibson's novels and questions such as whether they should be made into films, how new readers find their way to Gibson, the quality of computer games based on his books.

Back on the blog, Gibson offers comments on the discussions like a benevolent ruler watching over the masses, but says: "I regard my being me, ultimately, as a sort of cosmic accident."

Saw Adaptation Sunday night; now this is a weird movie. very, very clever, too. I laughed from the moment the writers'-block-affected voiceover started. it gets a bit off-topic about 3/4 of the way through, and I thought "where did all this guns and drugs stuff come from?" - of course it comes when he lets his formulaic brother in on the scriptwriting.
it's more complicated than even Mulholland Drive, but easier to follow. I just wonder what the guy who wrote this and Being John Malkovich can do next; he's self-referenced himself almost out of existence.

butterflies in the stomach and an elevated heart rate.
last weekend I dragged husband to Castlemaine for breakfast and looking at country blocks.
I checked the window of the agent who has the pub. there was no "sold" sticker.
so all week I've been nagging him to call the agent for me - thought that to ring myself would be altogether too keen.

and it's still on the market. apparently the lack of a toilet is a big issue for some people. it's been sold and fallen through twice. I wonder if there's a catch I don't know about?

but it's freaking me out and I will have to make a decision. lunch with husband will reveal more.

too funny. my tenant still hates me.

I never did hear back from him on my offer of 1/2 the amount he surprise-billed me for installing the new stove (long story, you get the idea).

now I'm having the shower - which leaks badly - replaced. the plumber has had no trouble getting access, so I was hoping he and his partner had chilled out a bit. I bought a new tap and shower rose kit, and need to drop them off.
so I bit the bullet and dialled the tenant's mobile. keeping my voice as modulated as I could - last time I got tight-lipped, slow furious and he got loud - I told him I needed to drop them off, I wouldn't have to disturb them, I could just leave them outside the door. I had to warn them I was coming around, I thought. from the moment he heard my name, he simply answered "mm-hh", and short sharp ones at that. no actual words, not even goodby. rude f*&^r.

it left me feeling a little stressed but what the hell. the final inspection of the rebuilt shower will be fun. I'm so scared I'm going to get my husband to come with me (and the rental agent, of course).OK, he hates me. but if I was him, I'd at least have taken the $350 or so. rude, silly f*^&^r.

wrong again.
this slightly amusing site has it:
, Hoppo-Bumpo does of course consist of two opponents hopping on one leg whilst bumping into each other with folded arms in order to knock each other over. The Murtoa Catholic School 1961 version of the rules are being played.

I've discovered something you can't find on the Internet!
the rules of hoppo-bumpo.
there are references to it, but no actual explanation.

will the whole thing suddenly vanish in a puff of smoke now that I've proved it fallible?

finally got through to the animal hospital, and possum news is not good.

his tail was damaged and he was in shock and generally not well. so they put him down "on humane grounds".

I almost wonder if I shouldn't have kept him and tried to nurse him back to health. I mean, how hard do they try with a sick animal? sigh. sad.

just remembered why I've given up reconfiguring my blog. in the process of saving all my back files, have noticed that June 02 is missing. trying to get it back, have lost all but may 01. would it be better if I paid? this is why I'm backing up, of course.

another fish died last week. no, I don't want to talk about it.

am being very naughty.
sadly, this no longer involves large quantities of abusable substances and unsuitable young men.
no, at my age it means sneakily deciding that I need a/c in my car, whatever my husband thinks about convertibles (it gets really HOT in there and one can't always be sitting in the baking sun), then working out how to pay for it without blowing the budget (some trickery involving mortgage extensions and paying off loans at higher rates), then ringing around until I can find a place that will do it NOW (or at least by Saturday, when it will be 40 degrees and I'll be driving long distances).

bad me. I have lovely girlfriends here at work, though, who have said things like "you deserve air conditioning in your car". I don't, but I'm getting it.
:-P

the air outside is yellow, and there's a smell of smoke. the sun is up there, but it's darker than it should be.
a north window is blowing.
days like this make me feel like something bad's about to happen. I'm on a day off, staying inside and knowing I can't imagine what it must have been like in Canberra.

(not actual possum; stolen from the Tasmanian gov's possum site)

ringtail possum day: I put some books, water and grapes into a plastic bag and headed across the road to the park for a late afternoon sunny day read.
but then a possum crossed my path. it was sort of just crouching there, which is not at all normal, not to mention dangerous in a park full of dogs.
so I tied Mr B up to the fence and approached it. it moved away, but not fast. I put a grape near its mouth.it responded by walking up to me and snuggling against my shoe. this is very not normal for a possum.

they can in fact bite and scratch quite nastily, so I was careful. it moved away a bit further, but then stopped. I put my cardigan down around it and instead of freaking, it snuggled in. so I got some passing people to watch Mr B while I wrapped it up and carried it home.

it went into the washing basket with a towel over it. what next? I rang the emergency wildlife number in the phone book, and they recommended I take it to the Lort Smith Animal Hospital.
so Andrew drove while I sat in the back of the car peeling grapes for it and trying to get it to suck water off a piece of bread - the wildlife guy said it was probably dehydrated.

it was so gentle and slow - probably because it was sick. it spent most of the time curled up in the cardigan; at one point it even licked water off my finger. the hospital said I can ring in a couple of days to see how it went. I hope it gets well enough to release to the wild.

if you like native Australian animals, btw, this page seems to have lots of pics.

of course, if you like your animals slimier and weirder, there were always the Sleestak, which Batty has reminded me of. too cool.

astrofish knows I'm a Gemini. and knows I work out and put my hair up in a bun. and that when I dress up I really dress up.

but I have never turned up on his/her trailer doorstep. really. and "client"? hmmm.

the Web in all its confusing glory.

not sure where to put these; in my uni blog, or to do them for work. but anyway:
pepys' diary. now this is a good way to get through all those Great Works one is meant to have read; get someone to post them on the Web in bitesized chunks. start now while there's only a small backlog.

cory doctorow's book for free. of course I began scrolling and jumping immediately; this is the nature of online stuff.

and z-plus. which looks full of good stuff.

the rubbish ping pong match is going nicely.
Tuesday night I came home to find a whole lot of junk mail in our letterbox. I immediately realised what had happened; our morning paper pushes the junk through to the garden behind. the body corporate president has decided we are deliberately leaving rubbish in the garden, and crammed it into our letterbox, including one very old and dirty Bunnings catalogue.
so I tossed most of it, but popped the screwed-up catalogue into her letterbox. the next morning it was in our newspaper slot, blocking the paper. poor Mr B couldn't find the paper for a second. so back into her letterbox it went. I felt I'd proved my point, for why would she return it to us if she hadn't given it to us in the first place.
last night it was back in our paper slot. at first I returned serve, with a short note saying "please stop, and btw, we didn't do it on purpose". then I thought again. it's time to call her on this passive-aggressive stupidity and ask, ever so nicely, why she's shoving rubbish in our letterbox?
cow.

hahahahhahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahaha

oh, I just can't begin on this one. The lack of poetry. the narrow definitions. the fact that they seriously expect us all to trot to Federation Square and recite this together on Australia Day.
isn't it possible to be patriotic without being mawkish or gung-ho? or, dare I say it, sounding American?

(edit: and is this the actual card they're handing out? that man under the flag looks suspciously like John Howard)

ha. last night one of the two neighbours who have hassled us about where we park our cars left her lights on. this would have meant a flat battery in the morning. did I just let her car run down? hell no. I trotted upstairs and sweetly informed her of the potential problem. this means she OWES ME!!!

now all I need is the really scary one, who's put herself in charge of Everything, to lock herself out of the block when I'm the only one home. maybe I can even help her upstairs with her shopping, while taking the bins out with the other hand. good little residents us, yes, good. wouldn't hurt anyone would we, no, never, yes. just parking, us, yes precious. good. yes, leave us alone, just parking.

Dear City Mazda,

I don't know how to say this. Look, I'll get straight to the point. I don't want a relationship with you. I don't want you to call me asking me how the service was. How I feel about you. Really, I hardly even noticed it. I know that must be hard for you, after all that work you did. But I paid you, didn't I? Believe me, if I wasn't happy, I'd complain, loudly and often.

So don't call me. If I need you again, I'll let you know. Sure, you could go and find someone else. But I know your type. You'll be there, waiting. You're a sucker for girls with sexy sports cars. So leave me alone, OK? I might be, you know, busy having a relationship with someone else. Just because I used you once doesn't make me a valued client or another number in your little black database.

No, don't cry. Just get on with it. And when I want you, I'll call you. Is that perfectly clear?

Jenny

Scott has linked to me. so I'm linking to him. warning: contains dachsund.

watering the garden is becoming a necessary habit. I went past there on my way up to the country today, and stood with the hose for 45 minutes. I'm damned if I'll let any more plants die. plus the butchered grapevine is sprouting a tiny leaf - only a cm long - and I'm determined to keep it going. the builder has been in touch with a friend in WA who runs a vineyard and is promising me a replacement, 80 or 90 years old, for the one that really is dead. that's extremely impressive really - he either actually cares about us or does a good job of pretending to. meanwhile, the architect seems to thinks sending us emails at our work addresses is "communicating." we love our builder. he's getting a slab of beer and good bottle of red at the end of this job.

and why was I going up the country, you ask? to look at more real estate, silly. I may have to start yet another blog, devoted to my idea of a large block of land with a cute building on it in a funky country location. yes, yes, just like the pub I moronically neglected to buy.

have seen one place that I could get fully furnished; it's a old-person house, which is kind of cute. the one I really liked was a big old Victorian place at Glenlyon, just out of Daylesford. but they want $190 for it, plus $75 (those are thousands, btw; divide by 60 for US dollars) for the 1/4 acre next to it. and it needs work. the other place is half that, on a much smaller, almost town-sized, block.

I might be serious about starting another blog for it, which would bring my total to five, I think. if I run it as a rental proposition, it would be cute to have a blog waxing lyrical about the garden, magpies, cows blocking the road, etc etc, to entice visitors to give me money to stay in a place with an outdoor loo. on the way back (I drove 350 km today, all over the shop, down roads I've never been down before), I stopped at the gorgeous Deer Park op shop barn and paid about $50 for a bunch of pastel-coloured crockery that I figure will look cute on the kitchen dresser of this house I don't have. talk about aspirational consumption.

drama and dog-kissing in the park:I came home and took Mr B straight across the road, as usual. there was a boxer running around with two little terriers chasing it; I didn't take much notice and was talking to an English woman about her greyhound. suddenly another woman came running over asking for a mobile phone.
the boxer had collapsed and stopped breathing. its owner was actually, really, giving it mouth-to-mouth rescusitation. apparently it had an operation a few days ago and he thought it might be reacting to a new antibiotic. I thought it could also be a heat collapse, so I used my placcy bag to get some water, and we all stood around calling vets and worrying.
the owner's wife was coming to get him with the car to go to the vet and last I saw he was carrying his rather large boxer away. the dog was properly awake by then and didn't seem too distressed; nor did it want to get up.

would I give Mr B mouth-to-mouth? if he wasn't breathing? in a flash. dogs really are wonderful things to have around, and this one in particular and if anything happened to him I would cry and cry and cry.

plans for tonight: dinner with my fairy blogmother, Jill, and Meredith the grumpy girl, who is a student of the form. it's shaping up as a very bloggy day. have decided to keep BlogOn going but to dump the stupid theme thing, which was getting harder to sustain, and bring in a meme of the week and a blogging tool, site or tip as well as a main featured blog.

ooh. William Gibson has a blog.

grumpy. angry. upset, even. had just decided to go for it with the pub, even go up to their $139,000 on the basis it might be a very basic place, but it had such huge potential for improvement.
so I rang this morning - pretty much against husband's wishes - and it's sold. for $135,000, I believe. so all my garden and doing-up plans went up in smoke. and I've had it in the back of my mind for nine months and I'm really quite distressed. plus, kicking myself. yes, it was a lot for my budget. but in the perspective of country properties, it was cheap. and I knew it and should have done something about it.

I'm baaaack!
as I go back to servitude my lovely job on Wednesday, I expect I'll blog more. not just because I'll have fast Internet at my fingertips again (though 28.8 is seeming fast right now because husband spent most of the weekend downloading some game, thereby clogging our connection), but, where was I, because I think I'll have my writing/words functions turned on again. holidays can be like that. get relaxed enough and you don't feel like anything's happening, and certainly not anything worth mentioning.

oh, and today? today we spent the day scoping out properties we weren't going to buy, including some right up in the remote hills around Castlemaine. the land is dry as dry and sometimes looks like outright desert. but it will rain again eventually.

and get this: the pub is still for sale. this is a real problem. my husband rightly says it will be a huge overcommitment - OK for now, but if either of us earns a dollar less we'll be stuffed. but I really, really want it.
and while we were stalking it, another couple - our age or a little younger, also with a dog and with a car parking permit from our suburb, turned up to look at it. this put me out enormously as I was planning to break in. they were obviously planning to do the same, so we went to get petrol to let them get on with it. I felt very miffed; even though they had clearly never been there before, he said they were "thinking about it". I made sure I dropped the fact there is no sewerage. we went back later and I snuck in through an open back window while husband stayed outside. he's just not into it like I am.

so I want to call the agent and agree to buy it at 9 am tomorrow. husband, naturally, is not quite ready yet. ( we first saw it last April or March). rationally I know it would be silly - I don't have time to renovate and plant a new garden - it's basically half an acre of dry grass right now - I can't afford it and we don't have time to go there. it isn't rentable as is, and probably not after I put in the planned composting toilet. but I want it. I want that project, the planning, the planting, the decorating, the freezing nights huddled in front of the fire, the drama of digging the dam, all of it. the "math" says it's just affordable if I sell my sensible investment flat and keep earning at the current rate. just.

aargh.

a publican listing mentioning the Yapeen pub.

a central goldfields land management site.

damn, but the Web's slow today!

I seem to be back on the country-place obsession thing.
here's a report on property prices in the area I'm interested in. (pdf)
and here's a site that has "eco-properties" for sale.
I like this one. no price, but.

the new agents for the pub I wanted have no web site. but I'm sure it's sold by now. pity, as I've just worked out where I'd put the organic dam/swimming pool and how I'd deal with the grey water issue. have decided septic tank is not needed; instead, I'd have a composting toilet and use only genuinely biodegradable products to wash with; subterranean irrigation of non-food plants would deal with the rest.

my Mum does love me. today she dropped by and left behind a copy of the first Lord of the Rings movie on DVD. not ready to watch it yet (want to wait until we're ready to go back for our second viewing of TTT) and have had to hide it from husband. I may sneak it out sometime and fast forward to the scenes with Aragorn, though...

a possible thing to use at work: a study on how patients' internet use affects their medical treatment.

scary. this blog is in the top 10 results on AltaVista for the word "blog". anyone bet they are heavily influenced by page title?

obligatory New Year post:
nye agenda: 5.30, The Two Towers. words cannot describe how much I liked this movie. but I do agree with the reviewer who said there should have been more closeup and action shots of Viggo Mortenson (Aragorn). I am going to rush out and get the DVD in order to play the scene where he dons his armour for battle over and over and over and over and OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. cor.
also of course had an academic appreciation for the niceties of translating to the screen a classic work, blah blah blah. plus the FX and battles - Gollum of course - were just perfect. may even go see it at the cinema again, which I rarely do. last movie that made me want to do that was Mulholland Drive (didn't bother), and that was just to make sure I'd understood it. with this, though, there is so much going on and you need to see it again to get a good look at every Ent when there are 20 on screen at once.
anyway, this is just repeating what everybody already knows.
9:00 - dinner at a good Asian place husband had managed to get a booking for only 10 hours earlier. yummy, mostly. two glasses of champagne and I'm on my ear.
11:30 - meet brother at Federation Square and find a spot to view fireworks
12:00 -fireworks start. everyone scatters as our viewing spot is crap. find better spot and go ooh-ah for 15 minutes.
12:30-1 - shuffle along banks of yarra in huge crowd trying to get home. I even gave one girl a good shove at one point - she turned and said "you shoved me, lady". to which I calmly replied "I did, because you shoved me." I can never believe how a few people think they can RUSH through a crowd of 200,000 tightly packed bodies. and I'm not sorry I did. etc.
so we got home, talked and went to bed about 2am. all of which made me feel like less of an old fogey than I really am.

resolutions? floss more often. that's about it. anyway, the day of the worst hangover of the year is a rotten time to try to clean up one's act. made the traditional hangover fryup for lunch, with organic burgers. am considering becoming an organic substance bore. it appeals to my obsessive side.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!