I know how she feels.
Calvino asked: if not now, when?
and such a clear line between before and after makes you realise that time is passing.

He's not the devil, he's just a cloud of dust.
(apologies to Monty Python)
edit: not even in colour

Bourke St mall, lunchtime; outside the burnt-out post office, a man with a loudspeaker is shouting about missionaries and how after their visit and expulsion from an unnamed town, a girl was DEAD, yes DEAD, but came back to life telling stories of seeing Jesus. he was quite loud.
across the street, a spruiker was explaining how "make no mistake, this store is closing down, come and get your bargains now."
and I stood in the crowd waiting for the tram halfway between them, trying not to laugh too loudly.

biting my tongue dept: the person next to me who thought the attacks were justified now thinks it's "disgraceful" that Australia has the power to detain (legal) immigrants during national emergencies.
apparently it's a new law. I thought we could detain whomever the hell we liked during national emergencies. the key words here being "national" and "emergency". and that includes Australian-born citizens.
maybe those who think the West is getting to be a soft target are right.
I am so not a warmonger, but if we have a war, I'd rather we won it...

my weird dream from the night before last:
we were somewhere else (as always) and there were two planes flying overhead, a Qantas plane and another, sharper-angled one. The Qantas plane flew off and the second one suddenly turned and flew straight into the ground just out of sight.
I threw up.
Then another plane, a passenger plane, flew across the sky and crashed into a big lake over a fence. It was like a volcanic lake, set at the bottom of a steep slope so you looked down into it. the water was very still and I was amazed that it was so calm with the plane down there.
someone said "wait and watch" and gradually I saw the outline of the plane rising up, all shiny and covered in viscous liquid.
then things got weird. the plane rose on its tail (like a dolphin) and started hopping up the slope, going "cheep" like a dolphin's whistle on every hop. it was coming for us and we ran like hell. in the sky, some fuzzy red discs indicated that the aliens who were making all this happen had decided to actually turn up themselves.
then I woke up, and for a second I thought the background to the dream - the planes that had crashed before the dream movie started - was only part of the dream. but they were real
(the cheeping sound turned out to be the birds that nest in the roof near our bedroom; it's getting light so early here, I'm awake at 6.15 every day)

a panoramic photo essay from someone who's been photograhing the WTC for a long time.

my BlogOn column will be posted up here whenever I get around to it. this is last Thursday's

Sci-fi and fantasy have always been an Internet obsession, since the first text-based dungeon was built.

Potterland
The Leaky Cauldron's subtitle says it all: We Blog for Harry Potter. Fans of the spectacled one use this blog to share the latest sources of Potter paraphernalia: you want a Mattel Harry Potter Action Figure for $US9.99?
This is the place to find out where you can get it FIRST!
Gossip on the upcoming movie, maps of Potterland, scuttlebutt on possible future book titles and links to more serious discussion of the phenomenon make this a wizard of a blog. Generous updates are posted almost daily.


Oh, the horror

one, two blogs, and a monthly Webzine

WAAH! May I have this cat? Doki-doki!

It all makes sense in the world of Manga, where cartoon people with cute round eyes live out your worst nightmares while dressed like Tokyo fashion designers.
Steph's Illegible Scribbles documents a serious obsession with characters' hair, sexuality, motivations and the underlying struggles between good and evil. She/he also drives a hard bargain for Manga magazines on Ebay.
Too kawaii.



Trek-out

The mother of all sci-fi obsessions is Star Trek, that series that boldly goes on longer than any series has gone before.
Trektoday.com claims to be the first and only daily updated guide to all things Trek and it's true that, despite the Trekkies' devotion, few would update their comments daily. Trektoday links to interviews with actors at other sites and to discussion forums where you can share your thoughts on just why The Next Generation sucked. It even lets you piggyback off its own fanaticism by adding its headlines to your site, culled from a hundred or so sites visited by the blogger each day; probably a little too much Trekking for some, but that's the way true Star Trek fans like it.

note to self: 4 mth=1%

This sunny morning as I was getting ready for work, Nick Cave knocked on my door and asked if I had time for a coffee.
one of my sneaky little joys is to sometimes decide I'll be late for work, put on some music and just do what I like for half an hour - read the whole paper instead of scanning headlines, blog, plant some plants.
I've had a couple of weeks of going home if I feel vague and sleepy, then catching up by writing at home or working on my day off. and scarily, the more I please myself, the better my work and my life seem to be.
is there a message there?

digging behind the garage at the weekend, I found half a deep red tile with a blue art nouveau swirl running across the broken edge. it's evidence of the fireplace that was removed from the lounge room - this house would have been so nice if they hadn't hacked away fireplaces, pulled out pressed metal ceilings. well, it's still nice.
the next day I dug for more, but all I found was pieces of broken asbestos sheeting. how do you spell mesothelina again? I put them all in a garbage bags, but did a microfibre escape and flow with the air into my lungs? might I die a horrible death in ten years?
it's a lovely spring morning.

my idea for what to do: Afghanistan should hand bin Laden over to some neutral country like Switzerland so he can go on trial. or is that what the Hague is for?
every day the headlines here (apart from the collapse of Ansett Airlines) say something like: US Anger Grows or World and US Unite.
why don't we just make up a template front page with 36-point letters at the top saying "Afghanistan is going to get the crap bombed out of it" and run that, day after day?
this is not a wish of mine, btw. it's just the basic reality underneath all these. CNN was running a poll on its site asking if the US should bomb if bin Laden wasn't surrendered. I couldn't get to the results for some reason, but I can imagine.
if they asked "should we kill 100 Afghanis for every missing American" the result would probably be 80-20 in favour.
the one mistake in all this is the idea that the US can "stop terrorism".
whatever they do, whoever they kill, will only create more radicals.
and when I read that the US Air Force had never considered this scenario (domestic planes-as-bombs) in their training, focussing instead on shooting down enemy planes crossing the border, I just wonder what exactly they've been thinking for the past 10 years, and if they yet realise how the world's set up?
dare one mention postmodernism in this context? dare one mention that the idea of a single identity, a safe-bordered self (America) that can be somehow separated from outside influences (was the bombing a non-Western critique of late capitalist society??) is, well, bullshit?

more worryingly, if they don't get the idea that everything's connected and attack from inside is not just a possibility but an inevitability - something that can't be stopped by main force or a million counterspys - they will just use bigger and bigger bombs against nastier and nastier terrorist attacks.

Vietnam doesn't loom in my subconscious the way it does in the US's, but wasn't that the problem for the Yanks there? that they tried to steamroll an army of ants?

interesting. blogger doesn't log you off even if you stay on for ten hours. you could set your Palm or iPaq up to be a dedicated blogging device; no need to reload or log in ever time.
don't tell Ev

“Brother, if you don’t mind, there is a cloud of glass coming at us, grab my hand, lets get the hell out of here.”

(link found at Joe Pennant's site.)

Sunday
sad but true that as one gets older, one can not drink as much wine as one used to without paying for it more and more heavily.
particularly sad because as I get older, I can better afford better wine (I always liked good wine, well at least once I was over 21 and over the wine in a box thing).
There are seven boxes of wine in our hallway; they are numbered 3-8 and 10+.
the 3-8 each hold a dozen bottles bought on our forays into wineries around Australia - when we go away all we seem to do is eat and taste wines - and the one 10+ holds five bottles of really bloody good
St Hallett's Old Block Shiraz. They are for children currently aged between 8 years and 4 weeks. They are not gifts - they are to share with me on their 18th birthdays. by which stage the $55 bottles will probably be worth more like $500 each and be incredibly delicious.
3-8 corresponds to 2003-2008. it is a fine exercise in delayed gratification, even more so than gardening.
the whole lot of it is going off to a commercial storehouse next week. I've had enough of worrying about what's happening to the wines under the bed.
we looked at a house for sale down the road yesterday - a last -ditch effort to find something so nice we could move instead of renovating.
it was fantastic - a huge walk-in cellar for a start - big rooms (a former shop), four bedrooms upstairs, a cute brightly coloured kitchen.
and in the courtyard, a clear view into the bedrooms and balcony of the new apartment that had been built into the shop's stables. they'd chopped up one fantastic property and turned it into two squeezed-in properties. of course they'll make more money out of the whole deal - both are for auction next weekend - but I'd put it in the category of chopping prints out of antique illustrated books and selling them off singly, or splitting up old dinner settings. it spoils the whole thing for profit.
now if I had enough money and could buy both and knock down the apartment, reinstating the yard and offstreet parking for the shop, that would be different. and think what I'd save on wine storage fees! Hell, I could start offering commercial storage myself!
but no, yet again we realise that this old house and its big sunny yard is the best thing we can find, and that when - when, when when? - when it's renovated it will be such a wonderful place to live our lives.
so I went out and bought more little plants to shove into the tiny pockets of yard that won't be walked on by the builders, if they ever come.

two men have just come and cut off about 1/3 of the big old olive tree that is in our back yard.
it was in the way of the extension we're going to build.
if the architect and my husband had their way, it probably would have come down altogether.
they dragged huge bunches of live olive leaves out across the front garden and ground them up in a mulcher.
it looks empty in the yard now. you can see the ugly flats across the neighbour's block.
I guess if I'd realised how much of the tree would have to go, I would have made them change the plans. but I didn't realise until just before the tree men arrived, and even then it was more than I pictured.
when/if the neighbours get their permit to build in their backyard, 2/3 of what is left will go too; the tree hangs over their fence.
with that, and the big trees in their yard that will be cut down, I don't think I'll like the back yard any more.

I guess for some people who were there, just going back to the office and getting on with business will be an act of defiance.

funny looking at various blogs and news sites; there's a clear line between the banal, everyday and carefree posts and the sudden intrusion of words like "rescue", "smoke", "dead."

but there are non-terrorists related thoughts in my brain too.
pieces of unwritten stories
"he knew the marriage was in trouble when she started introducing him as 'my first husband'."
"she hovered uncertainly on the brink of middle age."

even here in Melbourne, I keep looking at tall buildings, massive concrete, steel and glass structures and picturing how easily they'd crumble if a fully fueled plane crashed into them.

I remember reading a story about earthquake survivors; how they distrusted the very stability of the earth beneath them after feeling it move.

We will now distrust the work of our hands.

As some bloke in suspenders and stockings once said: “Nothing. Will ever be the same.”
Although of course it will be. Strangely enough, life will go on, because that’s how people are.
At the end of 2000, I was in Nairobi. We made a special detour to go past the US Embassy, or where it used to be. It’s just a – well, we often refer to empty city blocks as a “bomb site” here in Australia.
You can still see the blast marks on the neighbouring buildings.
In early 1995 I was in Tasmania, on a big group bike ride. We stopped at the Port Arthur convict settlement; a kind of prison theme park these days. I declined the “ghost tour” – the whole place was too much built on evil for me.
And when a man went crazy with a gun there a year or so later and killed nearly 30 people, including little girls, I thought of how I stood in the café/shop where he started, posting a postcard.
When I went to London for the first time, I was riding one of those endless escalators up out of the underground. On the wall, where there are usually ads for movies and cigarettes, was a small plaque. And into my mind came the horrible images of the fire that killed tens of people crushed together on that very elevator.
In 1999, I came to New York for the second time. After a few days of museums and New York’s beautiful spring (blossoms in the Village’s squares, unreal tulips on Fifth Avenue), I headed downtown to Century21 for some serious shopping.
The nearest subway station is the World Trade Centre. I came up into the bland international plaza and wandered about, looking at the packs of men in suits marching in formation from one meeting to another, trying to find my way out into New York.
The next day, about 8.45 am, I was there again, to return some shoes.
Century21 was filled with highly focussed women, sorting quickly through shoes and skirts and blouses and stripping in and out of 5 or 10 dresses at a time in the crowded change rooms.
It was across the road from the World Trade Centre. I guess it’s gone too.

And I have this strange urge to come to New York. I love the place, and I wish I could do something for it..
And I’m sorry that (now Ansett is about to fold) I didn’t just book that week’s leave and burn up all my frequent flyer points. I’m sorry I didn’t stay for a year when I was 25, looking at the to-let and friend-wanted ads on the walls, thinking how easy it would be to build a life there.
Of course I couldn’t afford it, etc, etc. And now I have doghusbandhousefriendsresponsibilities to stop me.
But that urge is there: pick up the phone, book a flight, go.

Things do change. Slowly I’m learning that you do have to carpe diem, that moments in time and history don’t hang around until you’re ready to enjoy them. Little things like wearing that funky top while it’s actually fashionable (not saving it for some never-to-materialise special occasion), big things like living in New York while you’re young.

but as a media type, I can't help but admire that Ev got the search function up so fast; I think I'll devote my next BlogOn column to the timeliness of this, and to blogs like andy's chest,, where you can hear the voices of New York unmediated by CNN and the inanities of TV voiceovers

blogger is down, so I'm in notepad: the real timestamp is 9 pm, New York time.

I was wondering whether to post this, after the "other" point of view crossed my mind: if you have even the slightest inkling that such an attack is a good thing, look to your politics.

then the person who sits next to me said she'd like to be in Palestine to see how happy they are.

apparently she takes the twisted position that because the Palestinians are so downtrodden, such acts are justified because it gives them a sense of "empowerment"

because she's been there and seen Palestine, she thinks she has some special authority.

hundreds of people are dead. some are still trapped in the buildings.

and she, in her safe position at her computer, says it's justified.

I feel like throwing up.

Only six days late, this is my first BlogOn column from The Age's Green Guide.

V-HOLD

Your Dad's a minister of the faith in New York. You're a self-described "popular faggot". Whatchagonna do? Move to San Francisco and post your entire life on the Internet, of course, complete with beefcake shots featuring your tattooed pecs.

Nathan, a 31-year-old Capricorn with an open same-sex marriage and a dog called Gordy, blogs his emotional ups and downs, his travel plans (New Orleans, the Burning Man Festival) and his opinion of the latest Michael Jackson release.

Just the thing when you can't get down to Commercial Road or Oxford Street.



Itinerant in NY

A keen observer of the only-too-human New York scene, Joe Pennant peppers his insights with enigmatic photographs of whatever's in front of his eyes.

That's everything from pool halls to melting sidewalks, to tragic tales of gold-diggers setting their sights on dot-com millionaires.

Pennant's blog is so popular, he sells his own branded "schtuff". (That's New York-speak for stuff.)

His is an impressionistic take on a town "where the flash of a skyscraper and a steaming mugga Venti Mocha counts as near nirvana ..."



DO YOU FEEL LOVED?

Chris Conroy lives in New York City and he's cooler than you'll ever be.

Anyway, that's what he thinks. But the inclusion of Sheila E in his top 10 tracks list must cast serious doubt on this claim.

His blog is a music-and-movies-obsessed student's guide to the media world, with a manga, sci-fi, animation and indy twist.

What in blog's name?

What's a blog? Yet another of those newfangled things that hardly existed two years ago but is already an indispensable part of the wonderful wide Web.

An abbreviation of Weblog, the blog is a bit like a journal, a bit like a news site, a bit like a page of links and a bit like nothing else you've seen.

The appeal of blogging is its immediacy; the best blogs are updated daily, with generous links to topical websites and other blogs. Some are devoted to an obsession (music, programming, the blogger's cat) and some are purely personal, at times verging on exhibitionist. Subjectivity rules; bloggers post what they think, when they think it.

BlogOn will survey the spectrum of blogs, from banal to near-genius, arranged in no particular order.

For a little blog browsing of your own, try Blogger, diaryland, Weblogs.com or just go to your favorite search engine and type in "blog" and your topic of choice.

trying desperately to get excited about the geospatial information industry today: aka mapping.
If you care about these things, this seems to be an excellent guide to the state of the industry in Australia.

one of my favourite things is to blob about in the morning, then have a coffee and go for a bike ride. the combination of caffeine, exercise and fresh air seems to help me think, although the thoughts are often pleasingly random.
and one of the nice things about riding along the Merri Creek bike path, partly degraded with onion weed and back fences as it is, is noticing new things after years of familiarity.
like seeing, across the creek, an apartment-sized pigeon coop, and getting a flash of the old Italian or Greek man who spends his mornings and night among flying feathers.

The time is 10.45 am, Sunday morning.
Blogger does have a "Pacific Time" option, but it says "Sydney", not "Melbourne", so I have chosen to remain somewhere in the timelessness of cyberspace.
The reason this blog is at www.platypus.blogspot.com is not to do with the strange, cross-species nature of the furry, warm-blooded, water-dwelling, egg-laying duck-billed platypus.
It's because www.ornithorhynchusanatinus.blogspot.com is way too hard to remember.

oh, and now Australia is committing international piracy to keep refugees out.
a few articles lately have reminded us that we did something similar to a boatload of Jews before WWII.
some of them got sent back to Europe and died in concentration camps.
this is an incredibly rich, well-off country. we canafford a few frightened refugees.
my prediction is that, whatever the polls say, the underlying feeling of Australians is that we want to be ruled by kind people. that's why the Northern Territory Government got kicked out (mandatory jail sentences for (Aboriginal) children who stole pencils and food), and why Jeff Kennett lost in Victoria (generally being Jeff.)
the election is supposed to be in November, they say.

sunday morning; from the other room comes the sound of panting, scrabbling, scratching and bodies hitting solid objects. Andrew and the dog are "playing" again.

so I told him what he's worth and he asked if value went down after IQ hit a certain level: "if you’ve got too high an IQ, you’re just useless to anyone," he said.

whereas my husband is worth : $2,232,074.00.

it must be that I'm two years older, don'thave a doctorate and earn a third of what he does. it couldn't be that he's male...

IQ seems to be a big factor, as I put us both in at the same level, and that extra 10 % isn't much of a difference.

human for sale says I'm worth $2,034,574.00.
and that's in US DOLLARS!!
now, how do I go about collecting?

Ansett can't collapse! I have about 150,000 frequent flyer points with them! I was going to go to New York! Or Wales! Or India! Or LA!
please say it isn't so!
(the foregoing is a fine example of the failings of late capitalist culture. the person concerned is showing no interest in the fate of hundreds of employees and the Australian economy, caring only for her own hard-earned frequent flyer points)

NNNNNNnnnnoooo!

will someone tell Britney Spears that using magnificent wild animals for cheap entertainment is so 20th C?

what I would really, really like to know is why some days I feel like a giant slug masquerading as a person, and only, only want to go into a dark room and sleep, and other days I'm like "get up at 6.20, work 9.5 hours, ride to the pool, swim a kilometre, go home, cook, play with the dog and my husband and hey, let's redecorate the house while we're at it"?
I mean, there is no good reason. not the amount of sleep I get, not whether I'm in "the zone" or not, not my coffee intake or exercise that day.
nothing. just some days I feel great, others there's no point getting out of bed. what I'd give to be on the up all the time...

A free lesson in media theory: This is my original copy. The story as it appeared is on The Age's site.

This is a modern love story.
Stu and Lane have known each other for about three years: they've always got on well, and sometimes they'd stay up all night talking about this, that and the other thing.
It was a "just friends" kind of relationship; Stu had a girlfriend for a while and Lane and her boyfriend were off and on. Sometimes the pair didn't talk to each other for weeks at a time. Other times, when things were rough for one or both, they were in constant contact.
In May this year, (the 13th, to be precise) the friendship changed forever. Stu declared his love, and, in their own words, "Boy and girl become inseparable."
But for Stu Morris and Lane Collins, happily ever after is a way off; about 16,148 kilometres off. Stu's here in Melbourne and Lane's in North Carolina, USA. They've never met, and until they can come up with the cash for a plane ticket, they're not likely to.
Most of their relationship has happened via email, ICQ Internet chat and instant messaging services; the occasional phone calls only eat into the ticket fund.
It's one of the cruel realities for Generation Web that it's all too easy to start up a relationship with someone half a world away.
For 21-year-old Stu, a technology student and Web design contractor, and 19-year-old photography student Lane, the answer lay in the same medium that brought them together. (It all started back in 1998 with an email from Stu to Lane about her Web site devoted to singer Fiona Apple.)
A friend helped out with some Web hosting, and two weeks ago, they launched their joint blog, or Weblog, at the plaintively named www.damnthepacific.com.
The blog's purpose is to record their love and, a little controversially, to ask the world at large to donate money for that magic ticket.
Blogs are essentially online journals, used to document the progress of personal projects, new restaurants, musical interests and various other aspects of daily life, which can include unrequited love.
In a way, blogs can be more personal than the "webcam" sites that proliferated a few years ago. Instead of showing what you look like from moment to moment, personal blogs show the inside of your head.
Advertising your love on the Internet - and asking for cash to consummate it - might seem a bit out-there to some, but for Stu and Lane, who already have three other sites betwen them, there's nothing more natural.
"When I put something up (on a blog), I'm putting it up for more for myself than for someone else," Stu says.
The blog isn't really about the money, the couple say; it's a joint project, a little piece of cyberspace for them to call home. In an email, Lane said that "really, this is just a personal site. It's something for us to do together, to help us deal with this situation."
Most of the people who visit the site don't donate anyway - the visitor count is approaching the 5,000 mark and exactly four have shelled out cash. A fifth has bought a CD, with some proceeds going to the couple.
Damn The Pacific was made a "blog of note" on popular site www.blogger.com a few days after it appeared, causing the flood of traffic. A notable feature of blogs is that when an idea or site is hot, it races around the world like wildfire, only to fade away within days.
More interesting than the donations has been the feedback, positive and negative.
Stu is bemused by the reaction from a small segment of the public, who are somehow offended by the concept of Internet relationships as such, and feel compelled to tell the pair that their relationship is somehow not real.
Their "real life" friends and family accept the situation, more or less philosophically.
Lane says "my Mom is used to it". She's found a lot of friends on the Internet, and never struck problems with any of them. Stu's mother "doesn't really believe in online relationships," he says, but perhaps that will change when he and Lane meet up.
Plenty of people out there do believe in online relationships, they've discovered; Stu has received encouraging emails from couples who met online and are now quietly married with children, just like real people.
Despite the scepticism that abounds, both are confident that when they do finally meet, the relationship will work. Lane says this is what "everyone wants to know", but the possibility of the chemistry not being right "just doesn't worry me. I have a lot of confidence in our relationship." Stu says the issue "doesn't faze me".
There are plenty of practical hurdles to focus on first. Stu still has to finish his diploma of information technology later this year. Lane has just started her photography degree, and wants to move from rural North Carolina to Boston or maybe New York. The plan is for Stu to go to the United States, and hopefully find work there when
that annoying little matter of the ticket is resolved.
But until then, they can only dream and say: "Damn the Pacific!"

ADSL is making me so spoiled. I get impatient with having to type in my password on Blogger. I want a secret URL I can just type in to start blogging.

nice orange boxes, Mike

how deeply recursive: I blog Damnthepacific, they blog me, I interview Stu, he blogs about it, the article will come out, they'll link to it, we'll link to their site from the story, they'll blog about that...

from a journalistic pov, it's also an interesting, cautionary feeling knowing that the "subjects" have their own forum for reply if they think I misrepresent them (which of course I NEVAH do!). there should be more of it. the power of having a voice (ie, my own newspaper to play with) is often something that sits in the background. my cultural studies lecturers would say that this experience "foregrounds" that power.

a distance calculator for all you people pining for each other from opposite ends of the globe. Melbourne and the capital of North Carolina are about 10,034 miles apart, btw.

Reason # 1 for visiting St Kilda, Melbourne: the Monarch cake store, whose florentine biscuits surpass all others with the chocolateness of their coating and the freshness of their nuts. now I realise why every time I eat a florentine, I'm disappointed.
No, they don't have a Web site. when you've been in business since 1934 (and probably with the same chef!) you don't need a Web site.

oh, and if anyone's wondering: Stu of Damn the Pacific is definitely a real person. I met him this afternoon. I'll post a link to the article when it makes it onto dead tree pulp.

aargh! I made a stortrooper and I can't get her up here. maybe geocities doesn't allow image linking. will fix later. she is at geocities if you want to take a look. does anyone know how you get them on your page?

when I was a teenager reading every science fiction book I could get my hands on - and I mean that quite literally - I used to think I'd been born a bit too early, because I could see the computers and spaceships coming down the track, and I knew you needed to grow up with that stuff to really be part of it.
now that I'm surfing around looking at the amazing design and writing 20-year-old bloggers can do, I have that feeling again.

ah, now I know what the funny faces are for: you link to them in bulletin board postings

the people on the Tampa say please help us.
the analytical part of me can't help noticing the typo "public grieveyards"
apposite.

stolen from idiots savant - too cute.
i'm sure it's quite wrong to use their img src. if they object, I'll take it down. but they're CUTE!!!

why, garrry with three r's, why?
Ok, maybe Chris's blog does have some slightly theft-worthy elements...

an otherwise lukewarm blog, but look for the 29 August post titled "looking for a headache". I just have this image of blog readers everywhere swaying back and forth in front of their computers like hypnotised cobras. me included

potandkettle dept: "blog" is such a funny word. Blog this, to blog or not to blog, blogtastic. I know names using "blog" are about as cool as companies called "dot-com" but it's still amusing. and I'm not the only one (looks for examples on the recently-posted-blogs, finds none, insists one is correct anyway...)

I am quite irresponsible and careless of the welfare of me-future.
I sometimes get annoyed with me-past.
But I have no problems with me.

nice design and pleasingly random posts at 2xy
really nice design, actually.

as I queued for my fantastic bratwurst-in-a-bun lunch at the Victoria Market, two lawyers behind me were discussing sentencing rules.
one said to the other "yes, he lacked that innocence factor, didn't he".
and then they pushed in front of me in the queue.

now we've stormed the f'n boat!
unbelievable. unless the 430 starving refugees were mutinying (sp?).
but I doubt it.
a Norwegian tanker calls Mayday, heads for shore, and what does Australia do? we send in the troops to stop it landing.

412. that is the number of visitors DamnthePacific (the teenagers mentioned below) have had in ONE SINGLE DAY since they were made a Blog of Note.
(their sitemeter is the cube on the bottom left of their page).
man, I hope Ev warns me before he makes me a Blog of Note (it's only a matter of time, I'm sure). I'll have to bake extra cookies.

and relationships; these two teenagers (well, one's 21) want you to fund their getting-together. isn't that cute?

can I just say, as an Australian and all, that this is just evil?
I don't care who is technically responsible. I don't even care if they're not genuine asylum seekers at this point.
you just DON'T leave 400-plus people stuck without medical care and sufficient food and water floating about on your border while you sort out who's "responsible."
we're responsible. the Indonesians are responsible. everyone is responsible.
and to blather on about the law is to underline the lack of moral thinking involved in Australia's whole attitude to asylum seekers. sure, deport them if they prove to be faking. but don't leave them floating on a Norwegian tanker. get them to land, feed them, then get on with it.
grrr...

and this is a typical angsty teenage blog
(thinks again: mustn't put up too many links.blogs that are all links just scream "go away, and here's the door")

in keeping with my new role as a blog critic, I'll have to put up more links here to recycle in the paper. otherwise I just lose them; bookmarks suck when you use three different PCs. this is a dope slang chick

heh-heh

I've managed to work my blog obsession into my work. this is the intro for my first BlogOn column in The Age's Green Guide. but the actual three-blog column won't appear until next week,so I can't really post them here until then. I'll put them all up onThursdays from here on in. (thinks; this is a bit hyperbolic. must rewrite with reality filters on)

What's a blog? Yet another of those newfangled things that hardly existed two years ago, but is already an indispensable part of the wonderful wide Web.
An abbreviation of Weblog, the blog is a bit like a journal, a bit like a news site, a bit like a page of links, and a bit like nothing else you've seen.
The appeal of blogging is its immediacy; the best blogs are updated daily, with generous links to topical Web sites and other blogs. Some are devoted to an obsession (music, programming, the blogger's cat) and some are purely personal, at times verging on exhibitionistic.Subjectivity rules; bloggers post what they think, when they think it.
BlogOn will survey the spectrum of blogs, from banal to near-genius, arranged in no particular order.
For a little blog browsing of your own, try www.blogger.com, www.diaryland.com, www.weblogs.com, or just go to your favourite search engine and type in "blog" and your topic of choice.

oooh!
darn Blogger T-shirts!
I want one, just as I wanted a coffee mug.
but the $20 shipping cost just totally sucks. it brings the cost of the T-shirt to $80 Australian. After tax, that's half a days' wages.
I've asked this before, but you never know; does anyone in Australia want to share a care package with me?

Sound effect: drumroll
Shot one: velvet curtains, parting
Shot two: a pair of legs in formal trousers, descending staircase
Shot three: pan up to me, dressed in a man's dinner suit and top hat, leaping onto stage like Fred Astaire.
Shot four: me, sticking face way too close to camera so my nose distorts like a reflection in the back of a spoon.

"AND IT'S A BIG HELLO TO MY FAITHFUL READER IN ALASKA @ HOME.COM!!!

(come on out and say hi)

memo to the Bloggods: if you can't find my lost archives, can you at least get a sexier 404 message? this is, well, ordinary. unlike, for instance, oh, I can't be bothered right now, but I know there was an all-out competition for great 404s a few months back. will find them soon. after I find my archives.

typo of the year, from The New York Observer: "Egyptian by birth, Mr Assaad was born and raised in Australia..."

Sorry, no link.it was in hard copy press kit about Heavy.com, a funky, bandwidth-suckin', music-dissin, animation-makin' site-of-the-minute. It even won a webby

oh, what the hell. this is only the draft, of course. I think secretly I hope if I write it all down, it will stop swirling about in my head.

listlistlistlistlistlistlistlist

general to-do

fix stuff in sewing pile
index folder so it makes sense/reflects this list?
renew library books
Labyrinths – Borges – for Andrew
get off westpac’s mailing list
check BV re lost key
get Bilbo moved into our name.
send photos to Africa
sort out magazines in lounge
sort out digital pix
sort out wedding pix
copy documents and send up to Dad
new panniers for bike
email photo to Julian’s wedding person
fix woollen skirt
buttons: purple and black cardigan
put up dogsitting posters
book into mosaic course 28-9 October
barry baby fund
update password list – all passwords, work/home/Web
kylie’s wedding present
chase up boots at recycled recreation
See Renata
art gallery show – September
Dr Wong for Sue Cant
get strap back from Sue
check gift vouchers
call rob: 9592 2275/0403 814 514
morocco pix - liz

uni

blogs and writing and ideas:

writing blog
develop ratava concept more – declaration of no invasion of privacy page?
find missing archives
make them make sense and make them updateable

House stuff:

polish chandelier.
fix 60s chairs
recover grandma’s chair
new blinds for b2/all rest of house
clean B3 carpet
make a beautiful mosaic wall in the garden
stop the neighbours’ flats
concrete removal quotes – also dirtmoving
olive tree cutback quotes
call fence people.
ah to do garage quotes
list for front part of house: see list attached
four poster day bed/cushions/silk hangings
laundry basket on wheels
fix mirror
sort out renovation/objection folder
make sliding storage things for under bed (Home Beautiful may 01)

house shopping:

owl box
video recorder
get wine fridge - sophie lee 362 Clarendon St 9686 9922
frame for corrugated art
clean standing lamp
miele showroom
ascot vale plumbing
barbecue
church st furntiture store


Garden stuff

spikes for black plastic
use wedding vouchers
use woodworm killer
kill weeds
plant tomatoes
bird box

f flat

renovate kitchen
fix bathroom leak
paint windowsills
inset bedroom lights?
new bathroom vanity and cupboard?

work stuff:

update saved work files on disc
as per “jenny” list at work
this week: do school case study w. pic.

weekly stuff:

brush bilbo
dust
market
gardening hour
budget

3x
50 k
2000 m

monthly:

pay mobile phone bill
pay ah
pay other bills

end of financial year:

kill Fairfax shares

wish list:

10 more dogs
learn to cook polenta
sleep for 10 hours without waking up
hear Aaron Neville again
save Merri Creek
make a really productive vegie garden
swim twice a week for the rest of my life
meet Salman Rushdie
Tell Bettina Arndt what I think of her politics
find a job I really enjoy
make a glamorous entrance
ride the same horse for a week – make friends with it (Jackie says she’ll come riding with me)
spend a year gainfully unemployed (not being a mother, just free)
find out what happened to David Jantzen
Gothic night
Rialto views

music

Ross Hannaford live


food


flower drum
cicciolina

travel

ballooning
New York year (go shopping on 5th Avenue in high heels and a killer dress)
Go to Wales for Heather’s 18th birthday
Ride the London eye and get stuck on top for an hour
New Orleans month -sleeping days and drinking rum to R & B at night
Tasmanian walk
learn Spanish
speak Spanish in Spain
The Mansion - september
tassie walk
monet’s garden in spring & autumn.
wa wildflowers
See the Mayan temples
swim in a warm, lively ocean with surf – Byron Bay?

things
really nice pen
mx-5
new road bike
own an Emily Kngwarreye


life
see Marc married and happy with children
cross everything off my to-do list
turn 101 on a bicycle (or if necessary, tricycle)
have children
teach my children how to be happy
write something really good
tell all the people I love that I love them
have grandchildren
Get really stoned and laugh at the walls
finish my b.Litt
?masters of communications?

movies:
metropolis
Buffalo 66
Croupier
Elizabeth
Antz
Live Flesh
Twelth Night
Fast, cheap and …
Kurosawa movies

books:
Will Self – how the Dead Live
Dessaix – Corfu
Ulysses – Homer
Ulysses – Joyce
understand how they connect
rest of the bookshelf stash
The Second Sex
If now now, when – Primo Levi
Calvino – the Uses of Literature
2001 Saul Bellow book
Catch-22
The Reader
Tristram Shandy
Pat Clancy’s book on French woman in Melbourne
Frank Lloyd Wright: architect – R.McCarter
Duckness – short stories

anyway, can't hang around. am writing the list to end all lists, with subheads like "general stuff", "life", "wishlist", "travel", "books".
it's going to be a very long and challenging list. it includes meeting Salman Rushdie and spending a week riding one horse, getting to know it.
not necessarily at the same time.
it also includes "plant vegie garden" and "call Rob". from the mundane to the spectacular, it's everything I want to do.
the question is: how many ticks?

no, Blogger referrals are showing up. so all those "unknown" referrals must remain a mystery.
howsitgoing, Missouri?

it's only four archives. but I want them back. just talk amongst yourselves while I test some more.
good morning, New York State!

so we went off and walked the dog and looked at stuff that might be nice in our house if we ever get the renovations done, but within 10 minutes of getting back, here I am tweaking things.
I think my Sitemeter isn't recognizing referrals from Blogger. this post is so I can click through and test my theory.
hello, Arkansas!

I can report back, four and a half ^$&*^%*&^ hours later, that ftp without Windows 2000 and frames without a clue are quite hard.
but at last, I have my "ratava" blog and general thoughts site up at ratava.com, and hey, what else would I have done? read a book? walked the dog? had a LIFE?
This tutorial was quite useful, and I can advise that if your frames are not behaving (like the second one just doesn't show up), it helps to clear the page of all other code. of course it is now totally disabled/old browser unfriendly, but I need to get outside and breathe, so usability will have to come later.
(all this reminds me how wonderful Blogger is)

spring: on the wisteria vine and the persimmon tree, green velveteen buds have appeared, and I know that sometime in the next two weeks, they will burst out into leaves.
it's raining, but the sun is strong enough to give the air a yellowish glow.
the white lilies that line the curve of the front path protude a liy head-height above the giant lily leaves. they have Art Deco curves, trailing off into an invisible line that points to the sun.

defining moment # 1:
visiting Heather and Richard and the beautiful 4-day-old Rosie last night. I came out of the hospital glowing and warm and frankly wanting one of my own.
they will be the BEST parents.

defining moment # 2:
getting my motorcycle jacket out of the cupboard and finding mildew all over the collar and back. I've had that jacket for 10 years. so what if I'm scared of the bigger bike. the sun is shining, the wind is blowing and dammit, I'm feeling restless.

ps: yes, I realise these two d.m.'s are mutually incompatible. so?

Happy birthday Blogger!
I'm always late...but I usually get the month right, my friends will tell you.

I am talking to a vacuum. blogger is down and my post will post, but not publish.
in two days, I have filled 1/2 an A4 notebook with work notes.
and I wonder why my work gives me headaches and leaves me tired.
and worse: I have to do my tax tonight... help, somebody save a poor strugglin' gal from the evil ATO

for weather nuts

The dot-com era didn't really end for me until last Thursday.
That was the day I sat down at my home PC after work, in the mood for a good argument, a little online discussion, some virtual interaction with real people. I tried to log on to Salon's Table Talk forums.
I couldn't.
Sometime in the last month, while I wasn't looking, Table Talk had become a "member-supported" community; a nice euphemism for "no pay, no play."
So after almost exactly four years of membership, I was shut out. I could no longer post irrelevant word associations on the One Word Thread, dream of New Orleans summers in La Nouvelle Orleans, or poke fun at the Yanks from the safety of one of various threads for Australian members.
I know that in Silicon Valley, spoiled dot-commer's complaints about the withdrawal of "free stuff" have been mocked by those who see it as less than a tragedy that young men and women now have to go and buy their own T-shirts, or pick up the phone to order pizzas.
And lately, I've been an infrequenter poster on Table Talk, distracted by new toys like my blog (Web log).
So whether I'm entitled to wax nostalgic about (no doubt wasted) hours playing "Continue The Story" creative games and indulging in mutual commiserating over trashed relationships with complete strangers is arguable. But to be suddenly locked out of a favourite forum like that still feels wrong.
Most of all, it's made me realise that what we thought was ours never really was. Salon - who have valiantly tried to keep going as a quality publication and no doubt have good reasons for what they're doing - owned us and our words and ideas all along.
And if you check the terms and conditions of your own favourite forum or free publishing service, like Geocities, you will probably find that they own yours too. An honourable exception are the free Web log services, who seem to see their role as facilitators a little differently.
Salon has, so far, left the forums open to public readership. The threads I looked at were filled with discussion of the should-I-stay-or-should-I-go variety, and the odd wail about the cost of membership - US$9.50 a month, soon to be US$15. In Imagination, where silly ideas and brilliant writing were the order of the day in 1997, one thread plaintively asked "Is There Anybody Out There?".
The consensus was that Table Talk was dying, a wasteland of diehards who would not stay once they realised that most of their buddies had gone.
I'll admit to being a Web cheapskate - my first-ever search string was "free software", and although I've paid for URLs, I've always found the cheapest possible way to get stuff published.
But I won't be paying to be part of a community. Friendship is just one of those things that you should get for free, or not at all.

my official "go-away" to all telemarketers, cold-callers, junk-mailers and banks at Junkbusters
it's getting there, as far as a personal profile on the Web goes. I wonder if I can refer all spammers etc to it? but how?

this is of no interest to you, it's just a young Australian geek I plan to come back and read more about: black ice media
This, otoh, is a site promising eternal life

what a good idea: spambait,, a series of pages that clog up the spam spiders.
did I mention I've been getting 15-20 spams A DAY at my Hotmail address since I put this blog up?

oh McJim, you've done it again!
I believe this product may be real. they have a patent pending 'n'all.

I have converted my dog - a perfectly good Keeshond (think big Pekinese) into a poodle.
I have done this by means of a skin-tight tank top that flattens all the fur on his middle bit, leaving a plume-like tail and a huge main separated by a sleek sausage.
I'm a bit ill tonight; just doing whatever comes into my head.

The incredibly depressing and guilt-inducing story of Coltan.
You know you're soaking in it?

graffiti of the day, newly sprayed on a wall on my way to work:
"bad cop, no donut!"

I'm starting to like Ruth, in a perverse kind of way:
"I grew up with the philosophy that you do not leave your bedroom unless you are properly attired and to leave your home looking anything but your best was considered a crime against humanity."
you go, girl! today, white shoes in winter; tomorrow, Milosevc!

I think you'd have to start with the hair. It's very Eraserhead.

Sucky Way to Die has accepted my nomination of Christopher Skase as a person who died in a sucky way (natch).
can I just say that it's sucky, too, that all the people who were pursuing him for the money he ripped off from ordinary tradespeople and other creditors to finance his family's nice life in Majorca, stopped maligning him just because he's dead?
I mean, I know there's no point now, and his family's upset and all that, but he was a thief and stayed one. The suckiest thing about his death, I think, is that he appeared to still be in denial about having done wrong. Like John Howard, he never apologised, and unlike Alan Bond, he never faced a court and did his time.
not that I really care.

According to the source code, Ruth's Web designer is: A satisfied Microsoft Office User
I wonder if that's built into Front Page or if he actually wrote that?
keep up your HTML and Perl skills, kids. if you forget how to do it from raw code, Bill WILL own you.

I really shouldn't poke fun at other people's foibles - after all, I was looking for "black tie" dress codes because I am anxious about what to wear to the HUGE wedding tomorrow - but could one deprive one's loyal readers of Modern Etiquette.com?
This particular page features the author, Ruth, in a fur muff of her own design on the page devoted to "Ladies Who Lunch."
Quite.

I could set up a really strange referral loop with Jim

the academics folded, btw. on both my creative arts subject and the last-minute problem they found; apparently I'd been doing all "second year" subjects and was supposed to call some of them "third year" to complete my degree. all exactly the same subjects, of course.
when the course advisor suggested this morning that I should just do more subjects (this is after SIX YEARS) I looked at her and said "I don't think I have the financial or the emotional commitment."

the tireder I get, the weirder the things I say. last weekend in the great bathroom fittings shopping disaster, I used the word "concept" to describe a tap. on the way home, I told Andrew I really wasn't enough of a yuppie for him. but he loves me anyway.

after reading my last two posts: no, I am not a substance abuser. really

usually, if I've had an extra hard day at work, I'll come home and after a while have a bath and a dhinandtonik. but not tonight. no, tonight, the jynnantonyk has to be NOW!
I think it was the addition of a story for the news section that turned the slight ache in my neck into a full-blown cervical headache
I've probably had it coming for a while, what with my being down the slack end of the scale. but why'd it have to happen so FAST?
and on top of that, various administrative nightmares at uni, I've lost the key to my bike, the neighbours' flats appeal is creating work, my friends and rellies all want their kids babysat, and Andrew hasn't been home from work before 9.30 pm, usually midnight, and won't be tonight either.
no wonder I only work a four-day week. apparently the cure for these headaches is relaxation. hah!
maybe if I filled the bath with gin'n't'n'c?

(if you're wondering why I can't spell Gin and Tonic, you need a Guide)

I've had two cups of good Italian coffee this morning and am typing MUCH faster than usual.
Read about coffee (in the US only, maybe I'll offer them some reviews) at caffmag

there are some amusing words on the Echelon keyword list
this one finishes at "Middle" (Middle Earth? Middle Age? whatever can they mean?) but before that are the words "fangs", "furby", "Scully" and "dictionary." And you'd think the word "explicit" alone would jam their servers, wouldn't you?
the words "mailbomb" and "computerTerrorism" are, of course, in every good computer terrorists' emails. not.
and "froglegs"? FROGLEGS!?! huh? non comprende

Stolen from Jim: revenge on those annoying academics; the truth about how they make up subject titles.
yes, I know they haven't done anything to me yet. but they will, they will

I think Jim is probably a really nice guy. And if I ever get back to Wales, I will track him down and take him to the pub.
this is because I have laughed out loud no less than four times while reading his blog.

dogcam
'nuff said.

morbid, yet strangely amusing: sucky way to die

ho hum. here we go again. another administrative battle, this time with the University of Melbourne
seems Arts students aren't allowed to do creative arts subjects (in this case my coveted biographies/writing subject). And I've bought the reader and everything!
don't know if I can be bothered going back to the doubtless very fine Shakespeare subject that is the alternative. but if I don't, I'll be one of those people who is one subject short of a degree, so to speak. $329, it would cost. enough to do a semester of Spanish for the trip back to Spain I'll probably never make.
option C is to fight the ruling, blah blah blah. it's too late to do the subject as a "community access" person, even.
why do I have a feeling this will end up in some tribunal or other?
but given that I originally started my Arts degree in order to transfer into Law, and given that they then changed the rules so I had to do heaps of arts subjects before transferring, then lost interest in law and decided to just do my B.Litt, I'm inclined to stand my ground this time.
stupid rules.

I have decided I want to buy an Emily Kngwarreye painting. I will have to remortgage my flat to do so, or convince Andrew that it's a good idea. but I really want one.
a) she was a genius and they are really beautiful works and
b) I fully expect that they will be worth more as the years go on. we're talking Picasso, Monet, Rothko-level art here. It's funny, because I have always been very suspicious of the Aboriginal art industry - it can be deceptive, shallow and exploitative. but when I went to her retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria a couple of years back, it blew me away.

I don't know if this is a bug or a feature. but if you click on my archive links, text from the archives appears below the text area as a kind of wallpaper. anyway, it looks cool.

eh. sometimes I just sit down to blog without having much to say. maybe because it's Monday morning and I'm procrastinating the whole shower/ride/behave like a work person thing.
so I'll just put up a link to a teenage stream-of-consciousness blog with less than the usual level of banality and some intriguing (verbal) images scattered through it.

I have a new blog for my new uni subject at the rather pretentiously named Internet Flaneur
it's all about writing, journals, biography, identity, real life as it appears in fiction. I think.

I find it hard to believe that an index of popular links from 9,000 blogs could only find four new links in common.

usually when something is hot, it pops up EVERYWHERE for a few days; think Kaycee Nicole.

but this is worth a look; and I might submit my blog to get the backlink traffic ...

life in space

life on mars