dishes and interview transcripts

I can't even think of anything to say about dishes and interview transcripts, except that i have to do both.

if life were a musical

mine would be pretty sonorous at the moment. From where I sit I can hear Mia doing something with a saw out the back. I should do something? Well I offered but obviously I don't really want to that much. I have nearly finished reading Suzi Quatro's autobiography (is this her second?) and Mia and I are both reading Madame Bovary which is yeh not bad. My friend Saul perfected a way of saying 'not bad' that sounded like 'knobhead' and that was pretty good. It was the seventies. Speaking of the seventies, fuckin' Facebook... never thought they'd perfect anything above myspace for putting you in touch with (or potentially in touch with) people you didn't need to be in touch with... christ. And of course even a straightforward statement like that is a minefield. It is my grandmother Mavis's 98th tomorrow and my niece Niamh's 2nd, so, together 100. It's my father's next week (69) and Mia's too (35, but that's not old by the way). I assume there is a crash-through point where you stop going on about how old everyone is, and how you used to think they were old and now you realise they weren't but are now... I went through the ARIA nominations this morning and there were about 3 acts I'd never heard of, a couple I'd heard of but never heard, and a couple of records I knew and liked... Silverchair and Powderfinger (actually that's far from their best album), Operator Please and Architecture in Helsinki. I bet I'd like Gotye if I ever heard him/them/it. Anyway, that's no sign of age, really, even when I was working at Smash Hits there were a lot of records and groups who meant nothing whatsoever to me and I was being paid then for them to mean something. Should I give some of my wages back? I added some good links at the right there to other blogs/etc I recommend. I took Prawnwarp off because I think it's kind of died. I'm into pruning right now. Other things I'm into: seaside daisies frogs cinnamon promoting myself controversy flaxseed oil gankok bulbogi or whatever it's called the jammed the believer

jacana station: a review of the facilities

catching up with me

Too many early mornings, well, late nights I suppose, as well, Summer Heights High ended last night, that was a show I laughed at twice, the one time I remember is when Jonah said 'Sorry if I said fuck you', otherwise Jonah in particular, his disruptive, bullying way, was disturbingly realistic, on Tuesday we went to see The Jammed, being the Nova of course they started playing the wrong film, needed to be told, there were 6 people in the cinema including two who were either kissing or eating soft food close to each other's faces, but it was a tremendous film, I loved in particular the subverted plot arc, last week also we saw Noise, what a classic, I am looking forward to Closer even though I would rather see a film about Ingrid getting sacked from Tactics.

scary picture

1990s Metallica video scary, anyway.

what people of note in gladstone park are throwing out this season

A lot of old stereos, mainly, and clothes and cases.

pictures

Here are four pictures from the last 8 days which I thought you might like to see. If you wish, you can make a story that includes ideas suggested to you by these pictures.

poor grandpa

So I looked at how the BBC covered Howard's announcement, and then I wanted to see how Yahoo's main page did. Now I've accidentally got myself the local Yahoo page for Melbourne, Florida.

This shows double decline, because (1) I did it, and (2) I seem happy to let others know I did it.

what people are searching for when they land here

Alright ignore my comment on the previous post. I figured out how to find out what people are looking for when they end up here. Some examples:

'You are scraping through'
'Trippy tree drawing' (post in question was about a tree drawing, not a trippy one)
'what would be the first day of winter in Australia' (?? the day when the water in the plughole changes direction?)
'mum the good old days' (good luck - sob)
'put you finger in the dyke' (no, you put you finger in first)
'fuck john howard' (high concept)
'blowfly disco'
'the character cartier in neighbours'
'warwick thai sydney road'
'melbourne royal dog show 2007'
'phallophilia' (a word I was sure I'd never used or even heard before, but it looks like I did!)

25!

Sitemeter tells me 25 people visited this blog yesterday alone, so I feel I really should be more productive here, but I have been doing a lot of academic writing right now and it's taking its toll. Can I just say however I got ahold of three great albums this week:

1. Hand Hell - Phonography
2. Red Krayola - Sighs trapped by liars
3. Kush - Snow white and the 8 straights

The first two are brand new, the third a reissue (that's a poem with resonance).
I also got Red Krayola's Japan in Paris in LA but I haven't listened to it yet.

Oh, and since I'm here I should say that even though Kevin Rudd is my friend in myspace I disagree with him re: capital punishment (I was about to make a joke based on something I recently saw again - 'except in the case of people who dramatically shake imaginary moisture/oil from their hands when eating' - but I'm over that slacker-styled culture jamming of flip commentary supposed to both veil and expose a greater truth. Veil and expose? Yes, that is what that kind of humour tries to do. But you can't veil and expose something. And plus it's not funny.)

deep south of hume

There is a finger of (what I think of as, though at that stage it might officially not be) the Jacana Reserve that comes to the smallish bridge that crosses the Western Ring Road into the City of Moreland where marvellous things are happening. One is this



An actual seat, as far as I know the only one in the entire area, which is ridiculous in such a vast parkland space, and the only time one is encouraged to sit contemplatively rather than whatever else one is encouraged to do in the park - I dunno, ride trailbikes, or teach your five year old to ride trailbikes, or perve on kids from your 4WD, or drive your ute up the hills, or walk around with an oddly-held stick as though you were lord of the manor out for a spot of black swan shooting - so this seat is all rather wonderful, and I condone it.

From a distance it looks like it is a good place to view the sward; what is revealed when you get up close and sittery is



a little more of the western ring road than one might have wanted to see, but you know, it's the truth, the naked lunch, the crux of the matter if you will. If you can't handle the crux then don't sit on the seat.

Also in the region is this marvel:



That's right. This new unit gives every impression of fronting directly on to the park space. I love this kind of thing and as far as I am aware - with a few half-way versions, eg the houses in Eaglemont that have their mail boxes in the reserve but their street addresses on the Boulevarde - there is only one other comparable example, in Glenorchy (West Moonah actually) in Hobart. That is, if that is what this is. I hope they get a proper wall/fence and genuinely face into the park. This would be a great precedent. I would like to see a lot more of this in the Jacana region if it could possibly be swung.

Another thing I love is urban agriculture. There is a little bit of this just near the above:



And once again I endorse it, not just because it brings people into that scariest of states - contact with the neighbours - but also encourages local activity, food production (in this case I'm sure of an extremely limited sort, but that's OK) and productive use and beautification (I find it lovely) of underutilised suburban space. It's grouse and there should be more of it.

more on lockers

Essentially the issue with the lockers (i.e. at the SLV – see below) is that there aren’t enough of them, you have to pay for them, and it can take time finding free ones. I think those are the three main problems.

Basically, the area at the front of the SLV where once you would go to leave your bag and be given a token which would tell the bagchecker where the bag was, is now a cavernous hall half filled with lockers arranged in open-ended squares. Each bank of lockers, three high from memory and three banks per square of course, has a touch screen that enables access to a locker.

First problem is that if you have a lot of locker users, some whole banks of lockers may be booked out, a fact that is not immediately obvious until you spend time interfacing with the screen (which itself may involve queuing). So you may have to go to a few screens to find a bank of lockers with free lockers.

Second problem is you have to pay, which just sucks.

Third problem is there is a little area between the main part of the locker and the locker door which, for some reason, cannot have anything in it or the locker will malfunction. Being the tetchy shit I am, I can never see the reminder not to let things stray into this space without being reminded of one of my first experiences of these lockers, when I could not get the locker to open and had to get assistance from, you guessed it, an assistant. As she opened the locker with a thingummy she told me that what had probably happened was some part of my bag or whatever I had in the locker (actually it was a dismembered baby’s head) had strayed across the line. When she opened the locker, it was clear that this had not happened and my stuff was stashed securely up the back of the locker. Nevertheless little miss smugarse (or, to use her official title, Little Miss Smugarse) saw fit to point to the line and to inform me that things could not cross it or the locker doors would not open. No wonder I hate those shitty rubbish lockers when I get patronised meaninglessly like that.

I know this all comes back to a character fault I have previously identified in myself, that I feel like I own the library because I have been going there since I was a pre-teen (also it was where I wrote Monkey Grip). So that I really should have a gold card access allowing me special privileges in the library and the executive washroom and the executive sharps deposit box. But it also comes down to a character fault easily identifiable in the library, via which commercial enterprises are allowed to leech onto an enterprise that should by rights be allowed entirely to fund all its services through the perfectly rational and reasonable tithing of the mentally ill (i.e. gamblers) rather than tugging at the change purses of ordinary decent taxpayers, blah blah I’ll stop now.

turmoil

Well, it seems like the railways can't handle the addition of two new stations, since every train on our line I've caught since Sunday has been late. The screens at Melbourne Central



apparently can't accommodate new information either, though Specs in IT managed to knock this one up for the time being. I have already seen one example of two young NESB women thoroughly confused by this who tentatively got on the train at Melb Central and then panicked and got off at Flagstaff (I don't know where they were intending to go).

Last night it was business as usual inasmuch as the Craigieburn train had all the wrong information on the in-carriage indicators and as we pulled into North Melbourne we were told by the indicators and a recorded announcement that 'the next station is Melbourne Central'. Two ESB people got off in a hurry, once again I don't know why but considering a lot of people are obviously confused about the Craigieburn destination and the lack of detail on the platform indicator screens, this conflicting i.e. false information can't help. (This happens a LOT incidentally so it's not surprising it happened yesterday).

Anyway I did finally make it to C'burn yesterday morning just for a look round. It was swinging. One teenage girl addressed another as 'Faggott'. There was still some very loud building work going on. People on the line between Broady-Craigy actually stand and watch the train go past in amazement, I'm serious. Mind you I saw some kids doing this in Kensington yesterday too.

broughton