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...