Richmond to Reservoir.

Well, the big move from Richmond to elsewhere within Zone 1 is over, and it all went surprisingly well. The removalists’ technique was a shade casual, (more akin to airport baggage handlers), but they were friendly and obliging, even cracking the odd joke here and there, so it could have been worse. Actually, from what I’ve heard of other people’s moving experiences, much, much worse.

The only casualties for the day were one ceramic platter and 46 CD cases, but who’s counting. The so-called “packing tape” that I bought turned out to be as sticky as a Post-It note. You’d seal up your box and come back later to find it clinging on with only a breath of grip. It was like bark peeling from a tree come… tree peeling season, or whatever it’s called when bark starts to peel. I bought replacement tape, but must have missed re-taping the box with all my CDs. The removalist guy decided to upend the box to get it on the trolley, and… whoops. Over the years I’ve built up quite a large collection of spare cases for occasions such as this when new cases are needed. When packing to move, however, you’re reminded of how much junk you own and so look for any excuse to hurl as much as you can into the bin. As I generally take good care of my CDs, my large collection of emergency cases had done nothing but collect dust on top of a bookshelf for years and years, so they were looked upon with little mercy. I actually remember thinking, “Seriously, when am I going to need this many CD cases?”

The whole situation recalled to mind one of my favourite words from Douglas Adams and John Lloyd's, The Meaning of Liff.

NOTTAGE (n.) Nottage is the collective name for things which you find a use for immediately after you’ve thrown them away. For instance, your greenhouse has been cluttered up for years with a huge piece of cardboard and great fronds of gardening string. You at last decide to clear all this stuff out, and you burn it. Within twenty-four hours you will urgently need to wrap a large parcel, and suddenly remember that luckily in your greenhouse there is some cardb...

Anyway, moving’s weird. You wake up in the morning in one place, and then go to sleep in another. That’s not so uncommon, I guess, you do that when you go on holiday, but moving is like going on holiday and taking ALL your earthly belongings with you. Which actually sounds pretty good to me. I hate leaving my books at home when I go away, and I hate having to try to anticipate what I’ll need. You never know quite when Fowler’s Guide to English Usage is going to come in handy, but if I take that, it’s The Columbia Encyclopaedia I need, but if I take that… Oh look, I survive, and at least I’m not starving to death or being eaten by vultures, but all I’m saying is my life’d be a spot easier if I could have all my books on my Palm, please.

Ok, anyway, so in the space of a few hours I’ve gone from living in one place, to living in another that, up until a few months ago, I’d never been to in my life. First impressions are good! The street’s nice, the local shops are close, many and varied, the train station’s also close and the commute to work takes only a few minutes longer than it did from Richmond! And I believe there’s even a 7-Eleven within walking distance, although it could be a fair walk, I couldn’t judge the scale in the Melway. Investigation will be required.

Connex Pronounces ‘Reservoir’ Issue Settled.

In the Blue Corner, it’s the contender you love to hate, weighing in at 120 pounds of total pretentiousness and upper-class snobbery, it’s the delicate, puffed-up, featherweight, Reser-VWAH!

Boo! Hiss!

And in the Red Corner, it’s The Champ, weighing in at a hulking 250 pounds, it’s the mass of the masses, the down to earth, salt of the earth, Reser-VOR!

Yay! Woooooo!

But what’s this? Stepping into the ring, it’s a new contender, and it’s a woman! She’s sponsored by Connex, she’s smooth, confident, professional and focus-group approved, it’s the striking middleweight… Reser-VWOR!

Reser-VWOR? Coming home on the train last night, I thought I’d hear what the disembodied Connex “Next Station” woman had to say on the issue of how to pronounce ‘Reservoir’. I thought she could easily go one way or the other, but never expected her to go bang up the middle, forging this new, hybrid, son of a motherless goat.

I’m not sure about ‘VWOR’. Maybe it is the best of both worlds: a cultural adaptation that retains the spirit of the original; but it sounds a lot like “Phwoar” to me, and brings to mind Rik from The Young Ones, secretly reading his Cosmo magazine behind the locked door of his bedroom.

I don’t know. It’s too hard to make a decision. Maybe I’ll just have to stick with ‘Rezimate’?

Kicking and Screaming.

I felt the lil’ tine-eh bear-bee kickin’ for the first time the other day! Profound life moment and all that. Kate’s been feeling the kicks for some time now, but it takes a while before you can feel them on the surface of the skin. I’m sure I’m not the first father to recall the Chest Burster from Alien in response, and I’m sure I won’t be the last. Nice.


I’m pretty sure it’s not a Chest Burster though. It’s not in Kate’s chest for a start. And it was too soft and gentle a push to be coming from some amoral killing machine trying to force its way out. It felt more like a kitten pushing a paw into your palm, and now that’s an image from the other end of the scale. It could be a new sort of Burster, I guess, that’s more like a kitten; a kitten alien! Cool. That’s something I’d like to see. It always disappointed me that the alien in Alien 3 came from a dog. Not that I want to see a cat burst apart, but I would like to see the alien that came from a feline host, it’d be all...

Anyway, I’m not sure how I went from the miracle of life to Alien 3, but there you go. Let’s assume it’s not any sort of Chest Burster, as I’m pretty sure something would have shown up on the ultrasound. It’s not even going to be one like the character in Spaceballs, who’s more concerned with vaudeville song and dance routines than the survival of the species. It’s just going to be a totally normal human child that’s currently doing the totally normal set of womb-bound gymnastics and strenuous karate routines. Now that’s reassuring.

15 minutes of South Park.

Look, it's me on South Park. Wheee. Fun.

Make your own with the South Park Studio, then take a screen shot and email it to me so I can start a collection here!

First up, here's William.



Here's Nee Hancock.



And Jay as well. Hilarious. That is so bang on.



Here's Kate, at home with a cuppa.



Davidic, complete with a touch of Supes.



And Blythe, with her camera and its redundant flash! Nice.



CK, fighting poverty.



And, oh my gosh, JJ, this is so close it's incredible. Gold!



Here's Davet after a night of gaming, his Networking Bag of Joy in hand to solve all our networking problems.



And here's Lisa, all the way from Bangladesh, enjoying a balmy summer’s night!



And Adrian too, with his satchel (or "man bag", as some would unkindly call it).



Here's Ahab, appropriately kitted out exclusively with Sony and Star Wars merchandise.



And if there's anyone who could get away with using this smile, it's Bomber.



Of course, I need to mark the arrival of Winter.

"Alpha", aged 19 weeks.

Well, we had our second ultrasound on Friday and the verdict was "all good". The ultrasound person described herself as being "very happy with baby's progress". We got the VHS recording and can report that it's as exciting as most ultrasounds. We chucked it in the VCR when we got home and I got up five minutes in to go and fix myself another drink. No, only joking, it's the Miracle of Life and all that, although it's not a very clearly defined miracle of life. Resolution still leaves a lot to be desired, and I can't believe they're not recording to DVD yet! What is this? The 20th century? In years to come Alpha will be asking what this black rectangular box thing hidden away in the back of some cupboard is. No, probably not, actually. I'm sure we will have digitised it by then and ditched the tape into the abyss. But will we be watching the digital version on DVD-HD or Blu-ray?! Ha, ha; that's the question that... probably very few people reading this... are asking, at the moment...

Anyway, the image above is the print-out they gave us. In case you can't tell what's what, they also gave us this enhanced version that should make things more clear.


So 19 weeks down, and what seems like a lifetime to go...

The world isn't worse...

"The world isn't worse. It's just that the news coverage is so much better."

I was tramming into work last week, reading my book, heading up Swanston Street towards Melbourne Uni. As we stopped at Melbourne Central, a woman walked up to the driver and said something that I couldn't make out. The driver stood up and looked towards the back of the tram, a concerned look on his face. He opened his... what is it? Cockpit? Driver's booth? He opened the door to his operating compartment and walked briskly to the back of the tram. I rubbernecked down the aisle and saw him pull a Puma sports bag out from under the seat. He unzipped it.

He smiled, stood up and carried it back to his booth.

It took me a a few seconds to realise what I'd actually thought as he unzipped the bag. I'd thought, "This is it". It was all over in a flash, but thinking back I'd actually felt my pulse quicken and my chest tighten. I'm sure if you slowed my mind down to frames you'd see images of all those Israeli buses, Baghdad markets, etc, flicker past, but all I got was a beat and then this faint feeling that a second ago everything could have changed.

I've always felt like Australia is an unlikely terrorist target. Mainland Australia, I mean. And then, somewhat coldly, that if it ever was it'd be Sydney before Melbourne. Not really something I need to worry about. Worry about in the sense that I don't need to think about my tram suddenly exploding. Now I'm not so sure. With everything going on at the moment, everything you hear on news, things seem to be escalating. Getting worse. The unbelievable seems to be happening more and more.

I'm not going to change my way of life or my way of thinking in response. I'm not going to avoid the city, or large public events, or expect every second tram to explode, but I'm no longer as sure of my little impervious bubble called Melbourne any more.

Doomed.

Went and saw Doom last night. As expected, it was pretty much entirely awful, but it did have a thematically-consistent film studio title-card at the beginning, which is something I always enjoy. In this instance it was the standard Universal animation, with their name revolving from right to left around the Earth, except this time the Earth was Mars. Once the ‘Universal’ stopped, the point-of-view zoomed down to the planet’s surface, and the film proper began.

I love it when big companies, who are usually so protective of their identity, allow their logo to be played around with. The first example I can think of (although it’s not actually the same, but close enough) was from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The graphic, blue and white Paramount logo (from the Olde Days, before animated studio logos), cross-fades into an actual mountain, and as the camera pans down we see Indy hiking through the jungle towards it. Nice little way to work your symbol into the movie.

Other ones like Doom that I can think of off the top of my head are Waterworld, where the oceans of the Universal globe rise up to flood the land; The Matrix, where the Warner Bros logo is rendered in the green of a monochrome computer terminal; and Batman Returns, where the Warner Bros logo is covered in snow and ice.

I also seem to recall Independence Day having a shadow crossing over the 20th Century Fox logo, Ocean’s 11 having the Warner Bros logo rendered in flat colours, and The Day After Tomorrow having a storm or something going on. But I’d need to check to be sure.

I wonder what the connection between these films is? Why do some get this treatment and not others? Do studios try for it every time, or only with certain sorts of films. Ocean’s 11 was highly stylised, so I guess it makes sense to follow through where possible. Most of the others I can recall are sci-fi, so maybe that’s clue, although I’m not sure to what.

Anyway, except for the FPS sequence (complete with exploding barrels), and the Universal opening title card, the film was a great disappointment. Even as a must-have-low-expectations, mindless, disposable nothingness it was disappointing. Oh well, maybe things will improve in the inevitable sequel…

Exodus. Chapter 2.

Well, it's official. Come December, we're heading off to Reservoir!

I don't want to leave Richmond yet because I love it so much. It's all about the location really. It's so close to so many things. I also don't want to move because I feel like after two and a half years I'm finally just settling in! After living in Templestowe (the Great) for 28 years I tend to like my stability and my familiar surroundings. I've only ever really had one home, and Richmond was just starting to feel like another. Though I know its back streets well, I'm only just discovering those things that only locals know about, those things hidden just beneath the surface of the everyday. I'm only just finding those spots that are mine, that I return to. And now, Richmond will once again be a place that I sometimes go to. It'll be a special-effort suburb, not a fall-out-the-door one.

But all that said, I'm still excited about making my second-ever move. The time I've lived here has been time well lived. It's burnt fast and furious, but it's burnt brightly. And now, with lil' tine-eh bear-bee on the way, the time is right to move on. It's a nicer house for less rent, still in Zone 1, near a station, and it's more baby-friendly with more natural light, actual heating, and a lack of rough-rendered, thumb tack-like, walls of death. Shuffling to the facilities through the black of night without the fear of a false step leaving you impaled on the wall will be pleasant.

Actually, the worst thing about moving to Reservoir is that I'm copping abuse for how I pronounce the suburb's name. My default setting was "reser-VWAH" but I've been told in no uncertain terms to put down my Devonshire tea, loosen my cravat, and say "reser-VOR" instead. La de da. Although, interestingly enough, I've found that most people who use the latter pronunciation actually use the former when saying Reservoir Dogs. Maybe Tarantino's cred is enough to overcome the stigma?

Freedom. Made in China.

Last year I happened across this in my kitchen cupboard.


Interesting juxtaposition of brand and manufacturing location. This is the bottom of a mug from Freedom (if you couldn't identify the mystery object). I wonder what conditions the mug was manufactured under?

I tried to think of other ironic pairings. The only one I could come up with was 'Everlast. Made in USSR.' Kate had a pair of Everlast shoes, so I photoshop-stitched the country onto one of them to bring it to life.


I wonder if anyone reading this can think of any good ones?

Of microwaves and materials

This article appeared on ABC News Online on the 20 October 2005.

Blind woman dies in microwave fire mishap
An elderly blind woman has died after she accidentally set her self on fire near Newcastle on the New South Wales central coast yesterday. Police spokeswoman Joanne Elliott says it is believed the 86-year-old put clothes in a microwave oven. "The lady has put some clothes in the microwave oven, they've caught fire and as best we can tell she's taken them out of the oven, her nightwear then caught on fire," she said. The woman suffered extensive burns and died at the scene. A report is being prepared for the coroner.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/australia/nsw/newcastle/
200510/s1486316.htm

Without wanting to minimise this tragedy, it did bring to mind my own brush with microwaves and materials, as recorded in The Qualey Journals: The Life and Times of Dam Qualey, and others.

"Bart slightly tore the lateral ligament in his knee, and so he went to the doctor. The doctor told him to wrap a warm towel around his knee as this would increase the blood flow, thus decreasing healing time. Naturally, Bart assumed that the best way to warm the towel would be to place it in a microwave. Someone else’s microwave. And as we were at my house, my microwave. I was hesitant, and a bit sceptical that microwaves had been designed with this use in mind, but eventually I relented. As Bart said, “What could happen?!”
     I left him to it and went back to the movie that we were watching in another room. Bart followed soon after. Ten minutes later I quickly ducked back into the kitchen to refill my drink, and smelled the smell of something burning. Something burning in the microwave.
     “BART!” I yelled, “Your towel’s on fire!!” “Ha, ha,” was his disbelieving reply, as he ambled out of the dining room and into the kitchen. Upon realising I was serious he made all speed to the microwave and opened the door. Smoke billowed out. My eyes watered, my throat constricted, and I got down low to go, go, go!
     Once the smoke had dispersed - with much opening of doors and windows, much operating of ceiling fans, and much frantic waving of hands - we all sat to ponder Bart’s level of intelligence. How had he fooled us all these years? I was then further stunned by Bart’s whimper of “My towel…”. YOUR TOWEL?!! WHO CARES ABOUT YOUR STUPID FOSSEY’S PINK PANTHER TOWEL? YOU ALMOST INCINERATED MY MICROWAVE!!!
     Bart removed the smouldering, ashy, ember-covered towel, (a towel, it was later revealed, that actually belonged to James), and displayed it for all to see. Bart was incredulous that this had occurred. I mean, he had taken all possible precautions while placing a bone-dry towel into a machine that works by heating water molecules. To get the towel to just the right temperature, he had followed a logical progression in power output versus time of operation: 1 minute at 80W, 1 minute at 150W, 8 minutes on 450W!!! I mean, just what had gone wrong???
     His explanation was that he “thought it worked like an oven”. WORKED LIKE AN OVEN? What would be so revolutionary about a little oven? How did he account for the decrease in time taken for cooking food if it “worked like an oven”? Why would there be separate microwave and oven instructions on food packets if they worked following the same principles? They wouldn’t be called Microwaves if that was the case; they’d be called Little Ovens!
     But in the end Steve was happy. He may have almost lost a microwave, but he’d gained a priceless gem for 'The Qualey Journals' and Bart’s 21st speech."

Beck rears up his dandy head, again!

Well, lightning's struck twice, and this time the Mac mini was plugged into a monitor, so you'll be pleased to hear I was able to get a better quality image. I should point out that this twice-or-possibly-more-in-a-lifetime occurance was on Kate's Mac, which is why there's a Dido cover in there. I was tempted to Photoshop it out, but didn't want to mess with the authenticity of the image. Heaven forbid.

Caught with a smoking pun

Is there any news subject more likely to have a pun in its story title than a smoking-related issue? I would be surprised. I think sub-editors the world over rub their hands with delight when a new smoking story puffs in the door. From my large collection of articles on smoking, close to half of them have puns in the title. From "Where there's smoke, there's ire" to "Smoke promotion stubbed out" to "Tobacco controls vanish in a puff of smoke" to double-headers like "Pubs read the smoke signals and choose to butt out early". It's a phenomenon that shows no signs of running out of puff.

Of butts and bins

Is there something I'm missing? I'm confused. Why do so many smokers leave their butts sitting on the corner sections of the bin's mouth where they stub them out?


As I understand it, you stub your cigarette there so that when you throw it into the bin there's no chance it'll set fire to the bin's contents. The corners aren't ashtrays! And yet there they are, all over the city! Bin after bin with stubbed out butts sitting just centimeters from where they belong, just waiting for a gentle breeze to come and blow them down the street!

Do people think that butts are some special sort of rubbish? That they can't go in the bin because they might contaminate it? That there's some little man who potters around the city's bins collecting butts specially because they can't be collected with the other rubbish? I guess that smokers could think that if they put their butts in the bin it might be a fire hazard, but that's why you're STUBBING IT OUT!

I suppose we're at the point now where the behaviour's just ingrained because monkey see, monkey do. But isn't it just common sense? Why can't smokers see beyond the pile of butts already there to realise it's a two-step process? Stub and throw, not stub and leave. I don't know. Confusing.

"Alpha", aged 9 weeks.

Well honestly, what sort of a father-in-waiting would I be if I wasn't to get this image up on the web as soon as possible and then group email every man, woman and child with instructions to look, pronto? An oddly refreshing sort of father-in-waiting, you're probably thinking. Well, sorry to disappoint! Except I won't be doing the email bit, but mostly because I think I've already shown the hard copy to every man, woman and child with eyes to see.

So allow me to introduce "Alpha", aged 9 weeks. That's him/her, resting at the bottom of the Africa/steak-shaped womb; head looking up and to the left, and a little body flicked around underneath like a cocktail prawn. Nice.

Damaging the keyboard

I’ve been horrified for some time by the lack of care so many people seem to take when communicating over the internet. From Instant Messages to Message Boards to Blogs, people seem to just clench their fists, bash the keyboard, and hit Send. There’s no editing. It’s all stream of consciousness. Bblluurrgghh. You’ll always get “You know what I mean,” as the explanation, but that’s the problem; often I don’t know what they mean. Or I switch off and turn away before they get to their point. I get bogged down in spelling mistakes, grammatical errors or, worst of all, SMS-speak.

My, I hate SMS spelling. I take great pleasure in keying whole words into a message. Even if I’d grown up with it and it was “my language,” I’d still hate it. Hope I would. It looks so ugly. I love words. I love characters. I love how characters look when arranged together, and SMS just seems wrong. Like a dwarf with a leg missing. I’d rather send two messages than compress what I wanted to say into one by hacking away parts of words.

Anyway, it’d just be nice if people slowed down a little and at the very least re-read what they’d written before they posted it. I guess I can’t expect too much on the spelling front, especially when the Blogger spell checker doesn’t even know the word ‘blog’! What’s all that about? You’d think if there was one word it was going to know for sure, that’d be it. But no. Oh well.

Dandy Warhol's head

Rejoice! Rejoice with thanksgiving and song! My time of waiting is over!

The iTunes screensaver uses album artwork from your music collection to create a 10x8 grid of ever-changing covers, one of which flips and changes every two seconds or so. It's cool. I made life difficult for myself, however, by noticing that Beck's 'Sea Change' album was a photo of just his head, and that the Dandy Warhols' 'Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia' was an image of just a torso. Wouldn't it be great, I thought, if Beck's head sat on Dandy's shoulders?! Wouldn't it?

Well, much staring at the screen ensued. And continued to ensue. Still ensuing, until finally I could take no more. Beck's head was flipping all over the screen, but never onto a deserving set of shoulders. I had a three-head stack of Beck's heads, I had a peeled banana on the Dandy's shoulders, I had seen almost every possible combination but the one I wanted. I finally gave up (as a cunning strategy to then make it happen), and surely, soon enough, Kate gargled out a scream from another room and told me to come running! The impossible had happened. Fortunately, in anticipation, I'd left my camera next to the TV so as to be able to document the moment and provide proof to those who would never believe.

I only had time to click off one shot before Beck's head rotated back into oblivion and the moment was gone. I wasn't too happy with the quality of the image - it's a bit UFO in the night sky over Maffra - but you can get the idea.


It may never happen again...

Not brought to you by television

A friend of mine was commenting on the lack of posts on this, my blog. “The point of a blog,” he told me, “is to update it regularly.” My blog had been online for a week and I had only two posts, one of which said nothing more than “test”. ( I was still trying to get the hang of the system, you see). Suitably chastised, I committed myself to going forward achieving an enhanced rate of posting outcomes.

Thinking about it now though, based on my experience of the average blog, I think I could well conclude that the point of a blog is to update it as infrequently as possible! And then wear that attitude as a badge of honour. Too cool for school. I think we’re often more excited by the idea of a blog, than by actually maintaining it. I certainly want to post frequently, it’s just finding the time in the day. I think I’m watching too much TV these days, you know. I think that’s the problem. It’s not leaving enough time for me to do all the things I want to do. But when friends keep dumping truckloads of quality AVIs in front of my house; I’m only human!

No, got to be strong. TV sucks. (I’m not upset). Got to write...

20 hour labour

Hand me the shears! Let's cut that cord!


Well here we are. I'm exhausted. I've just delivered a bouncy blog after a 20 hour labour trying to think up a username that wasn't already taken. Talk about Herculean tasks. These days the good names have already been claimed, and we're having to get increasingly creative or obscure to come up with something new. I wanted Apostropher, but it was already taken. I had to go for Punctuator in the end. Close, but not exactly what I'm after. And it makes me sound like some sort of Marvel superhero. The Punctuator. I could team up with The Punisher. That'd be a combo!

Anyway, I weep for my children. What's it going to be like by the time they're all creating My First Blog (at age two, no doubt)? There won't be any usernames left, and they'll have to choose "PurpleMonkeyApostropher" or something equally ridiculous. Or will blogs be a thing of the past by then? As much a memory as fluorescent socks and (here's hoping) Paris Hilton. Maybe the human race will have moved on, and the Profound Life Experience of Blogging will have been left far, far behind?

Actually, maybe by then people will be dying off and usernames will be becoming available again?! Maybe I just need to be patient, and soon enough Blogger.com's Apostropher will shuffle off this mortal coil and I can complete my username set? Maybe. At least I got my Gmail one.

So anyway, this is my Blog. For good or for evil. I'm swimming in the Zeitgeist, and I'm happy to be here.