more hot weather

God damn it, I thought we had got through this nonsense. When is the weather going to get its house in order!? Totally unacceptable, I won't stand for it. And plus it's a degree above what was predicted.
Thank you Cameran80 for picture of my mind.

hard to resist

knowing

A few years ago I mused on the interest gleanable for Melbournites from the Nicholas Cage-starring film Ghostrider. I'm not one to deliberately rehash myself, only accidentally, so I won't go through the spiel. Watching the latest Nicholas Cage-starring film made to have been made in Melbourne, Knowing, gives the Melbournite a few rare moments, which people in various Canadian cities probably get all the time, of accepting a streetscape on the terms the film gives it, then suddenly realising, no that's Collins - Williams St intersection (above), or whatever. It is probably more annoying/strange for people in Boston (where a lot of the film is supposed to be set) that these Melbourne places fill in for their city, although the various streetscapes included tend to be relatively nondescript (I think I saw Parliament House in one scene towards the end, an exception, but only the steps).

As a film, it's OK but it drifted into vagaries at a certain point and I guess the hurdle you have to leap into the fantastic-bordering-on-psychedelic right at the end really depends on your disposition I would say. When you think about it the film's whole premise is so absurd it would be absurd to only accept it up to a certain point.

While accepting that the film's central premise is absurd, I reckon it opens a can of worms by the fact that the future predictions of major disasters 1959-2009 are all about centralised disasters. What about disasters culminating in major loss of life like, for instance, the rise of the automobile? The automobile kills more people in a day than the 81 who die in the subway accident (or whatever it was). Where does the prediction god draw the line? Are abortions mass slaughter in Prediction God's opinion? Apparently not, but for some this would be a consideration. And by the way I haven't done a tally but I'm pretty sure there have been a few more 'major disasters' (if the cutoff point is around 50 people dying in one place) than would fill two sides of a foolscap page giving about 3-4 such incidents per line! Oh, but wait a minute, it's a film.

and a bit i forgot

Unfinished, as yet.

more sketchbooks

The world is riddled with horrific events, though also some people are having a really good time and think life is OK. I have been looking through another sketchbook. It perturbs me to realise how many graphic novels I have started and not finished. In many cases I have done a lot more writing in sketchy form than the finished art. Here is one about Winky Pinstripe who was the character I invented when I was at university as a mature age student and finding it a compelling but in some minor ways disturbing experience, particularly the hormones in the air but also I guess it was the first time I was thinking (and I was late to come to this opinion because I was in my late 20s) 'young people's music is actually often shit'. So Winky was this aspirant singer in a grunge band, who I could poke fun at a lot because, well, he clearly had no idea about anything. There was a small degree in which he was a version of myself ten years earlier - he was embracing everything - but the thing I really liked (and like - which is not to say I think it was brilliantly successful) about these stories was that everyone was equally ridiculous. For instance, Winky only had to set himself up as some kind of 'rock god' and lots of other people took him at face value, and he got a lot of kudos and sex. For all that, though, he was often shown up and tricked and was shitted on from a great height, but he tended not to realise. I talk about these comics in this way and make them sound great but I think in most cases I didn't get the full message across or exploit the whole thing to its nth degree as I should or could have. A lot of people seemed quite perplexed by the WP strips and there is the possibility that they weren't that funny. There is also the possibility that they were too grumpy-old-man (before that concept properly existed) or that I didn't really understand what I was parodying; that's quite possible. Someone I was close to at the time who found the whole WP universe highly disturbing used to try and persuade me to make the whole story about Winky's guitarist and long-suffering friend Mal who would be revealed to be a good and valid person. In one sense I was already doing that - he was a kind of alternative version of Winky's 'fanboy' thing and much more levelheaded, a kind of Andrew Withycombe type, but I didn't want to do comic strips about wonderfully neutral people doing good things - it seemed to lack drama.

Here is a picture of Winky which I drew but plainly didn't know what to do with, it's very weird, I don't know what I was thinking, he has some model jungle animals. It looks like I was planning to put something on that television screen. He's not sitting right in that beanbag, really, which is possibly another reason why I abandoned whatever I was thinking of. Here is a comic strip I did early on about him, sadly whatever I was planning for the words they are lost.

This sums up the Winky world fairly accurately, it was quite gross, clearly he is having some kind of thing with a schoolgirl. I think I spent more time on the border than the actual comic. I came across another strip that was incomplete where I think the girl must have dumped him. I am sure he bounced back.



These are some pages from a work that I apparently titled Sydney Novel. Honestly I have no idea what I was thinking about when I did this, but it seems to link a few ideas I had already worked out and maybe I was going to try and rehash some shorter Winky stories into a longer work. There are at least six pages. The one with the girl playing drums I was particularly pleased with and still am, as you might be able to see through the pixels I really went to town with the liquid paper on that. This was all from about 1994 and it's pages 1, 2 and 6 (I know the last one is labeled '7' but trust me).

After I abandoned Winky as a downer (more or less; I started work on a strip about five years ago where he had become, well, exactly what people like him would become, a straight upper middle class pain in the arse who pined for the old days) and moved on to Fastidious Frog who was in one of the drawings I scanned yesterday - the incomplete page with the wonky wheel. I found the whole of that story, actually, it is about night soil collection and it is sort of amusing. Here is another failed or incomplete or whatever page from that project. It is quite cinematic, if you want to read it that way.
I suppose as I have been sitting here scanning I have been thinking, wow, this is all a bit self-indulgent, but then I also have to think, if you can't be self-indulgent on your own blog... well, you have to be self-indulgent on your own blog, don't you. Anyway, I'm not the one who said all media had equal value; I only know my blog is better than Andrew Bolt. (I don't just mean better than his blog, but better than him).

So, here is one more notebook thing, like all of the above I have no recollection of drawing it or where I was headed with it. It is the central section from a nearly page-long strip that carries on in much this vein. Obviously I changed pens between these two frames so who knows? There might have been two years between drawing what's on the left and what's on the right, or two minutes. Not that this is valuable in terms of 'understanding' what might even be regarded as misogynist silliness (but only silliness).
Alright that was a bit crude, I'll go and do something constructive now, so should you OK.

found some stuff

I have probably previously mentioned how Andrew Withycombe once said something very wise, wry and funny to me: 'Life's not that short'. And I go looking in the back room for stuff and I find one of my old sketchbooks, and because I seem to have gone back to it a few times, it's a mixture of things dating back to my undergraduate days (eg the address of a girl I was in a history class with, her name was Antigone) and things from the last few years (a New Estate handbill) and notes from the Blairmailer album recording sessions (1993?) and so on - it's hard to make much sense of as an object in itself, particularly since half the pages and the cover have been torn off.

This was in there on loose pages, I had forgotten that we had gone so far as to design a record cover for this one-afternoon-supergroup, I think one of the tracks ended up being on a 555 compilation - funny. I wonder why we never released the single. It might have been good.

I vaguely remember working on this narrative and I seem to recall that this was about 1996. I was obviously frustrated ultimately by the way I messed up the carriage wheel because I for some reason drew it a more appropriate size and then ended up abandoning the whole page, apparently. There wasn't any other part of this long comic strip in the sketchbook so either I ripped out all the bits that I did use, or... dunno. I think that's the only possible explanation, really.

There are a lot of these kinds of notes, which I guess kind of date from the days before I knew how to make notes properly and was sort of going through the, or some, motions. I don't really know what this refers to. It may have had something to do with my honours thesis from 1995, but that's just surmise.

This is an odd sketch I did, I guess of two of the main characters in one of the billions of longer comic strip narratives I started and didn't really finish called 'I am not your superstar'. I don't usually do sketches like this, but in this case, it would appear, I did.

There is something about this that makes me feel a bit weird. I wonder what I was trying for. Well, what does any doodler try for? You begin as a doodle and you go on to make change in the world, don't you. Right on.

should i let them hate me?

I am very partial to the spinach pies produced by a bakery not far from home, which is run by some men who clearly are disgusted every time I come in and try to partake of their wares. At first I thought I was just oversensitive, but slowly I have come to be of the opinion they wish I would die. They seem to try to get rid of me by always trying to sell me something other than that which I ask for, or to heat it up or, as happened this morning, charge me a dollar more than the advertised price.

I have tended to assume in my multiculturally tolerant way that since they run a shop and take my money, and I really like their product, that I should feel happy to go in there whenever I please and make purchases from them. But should I oppress them in this way with my money and wants? What do you think?

this morning

I walked to the tram through Gowanbrae. This takes about 1 hour 10 mins. I noted along the way that there is a bus system through Gowanbrae now that requires you to call 15 mins in advance if you want it to come to a particular stop. Actually it's a pretty good idea, though it seems more suited to a little Turkish village than a big grown-up suburb in the most suburban nation in the world. If it works for the Gowanbraeans, it works for me (I must catch it some time - said the cat). Then my knee was sore when I got off the tram. Oh boy!

No pictures. You wouldn't cope.

what's this about?

Hey! The internet has gone all creepy! The Age website is featuring news from March last year

And blogger is getting personal.

though today is OK

(sigh) the gooder old days

(YouTube comment on this song that tickled me: 'Fantastic song, so heartfelt! Strange how the worst causes have the best songs. Pity we could not have seen the war out and have Vietnam another south korea full of freedom and wealth. Stupid defeatest lefties.')

you know you're stressed when...

you absolutely totally wake up at 1:45 with a minor issue from work the day before suddenly amplified in your head, and you know you're not going back to sleep for some time to come. I am drinking some green tea now, in the belief that possibly this relaxes one, but it probably doesn't. I feel like I am drinking hot water infused with some old paper paste, you know. Yesterday I saw a young man wearing those shoes I drew for converse. I had to speak to him, which I know is not very cool but the whole thing is so bizarre I feel somewhat detached from it anyway. His pair were very worn. I said, 'excuse me, I know this is the kind of thing an insane person would say, but I designed those shoes'. We had a chat about them. Obviously he liked them, and he said people sometimes stopped him in the street and talked to him about them. It's all so bizarre. The only other real discussion I had seen of them away from myself was people on an online chatty thing discussing how they were too ugly to wear. Fair enough. (NB These are James Earthenware's pair not the man I talked to). I feel like saying 'I'm still not sure how all that converse thing happened'. But that's not true, I know how it happened. Bono and the Pope sent a letter to the Cannanes and asked them to assist in the fight against AIDS. 'You're the indiest band in the world,' they said, 'help us battle a deadly disease.' I suppose it's lame to stop someone at the coffee shop and tell them you drew their shoes, but I am still surprised when I see them around and this was the first pair I had seen that were not owned by someone previously known to me. Still, yeah, ok it was lame. I know, I'll wake up at 3:45 and stress about that. (Later: that was a good idea but I was still awake at 3:45)

stupid dream # 68498590060

I dreamt I was by timetabling error put in charge of 3 kindergarten classes at once, and was persuaded to go and see a film instead. I thought this would cause problems with the powers that be in the short term, but in the long term it would blow over.

i can talk to the animals

You know, the first feature film I ever saw was the Rex Harrison Doctor Dolittle, which plainly dates me... no it doesn't I could have seen it yesterday and be one week old. Anyway, I enjoyed some of the books, too (I can't remember anything about the film except a giant snail shell, which I may have made up) and I always liked the idea of a pushmi-pullyu, perhaps because I knew it would never have to go to the toilet. Which is fine as long as it didn't need to.

But what I was really thinking about was the fact that I can talk to animals, just like Doctor Dolittle. I really can! I wonder what they think it's about. Of course there's that funny Gary Larson cartoon where the dog can only hear its name, I think dogs are a little more sensitive to intonation etc than that, but what do they think is going on? Do they think it's communication they can't understand, like I would if someone talked to me in friesian, or do they just think I'm chattering away meaningless, like I would if a monkey or a dog made noises to me? I suppose it doesn't matter and there's no way of knowing.

I just talk to those animals all the time. When I am walking the dogs I say nonsense to them, using intonation (it would be mildly embarrassing if someone overheard me, though it's not like I'm saying anything private... just saying things without thinking about them, so actually, if the dogs think I'm chattering like a monkey they wouldn't be far off the mark). I do it to the cats, too, I think a lot of the time just having something with eyes around allows me to say whatever nonsense words are in my head.

It's relevant that this is a blog posting, too, because it is pretty meaningless.

just about to go out and check that rain...

Who is your last text from?
Phone died, charger at work, after hours pass not operating. So don't know.

Is there any chance you'll get the person you like?
'Get'?

Can you sleep in jeans?
It's been a while.

Who's was your last missed call from?
not sure.

What are you listening to?
The sound of typing.

How did you sleep last night?
Heavily.

Do you get easily amused?
'Get'?

Does your phone ring in the middle of the night often ?
No

Do you have a friend that has a kid?
Yes.

What was the last thing you ate?
Tofu

Do you believe that if you want something bad enough, you'll get it?
no.

Do you think you type fast?
yeah.

Will you be up before 7am tomorrow?
Always

Is there a person of the opposite gender on your mind?
That's hi-concept

When was the last time you were grounded?
I am known for it.

Have you ever gotten butterflies?
'Gotten'?

When was the last time you went ice skating?
Previous life.

What did you do yesterday?
Wrote report I should be writing now.

Do you do your own laundry?
The washing machine does it.

Wearing any bracelets?
I'd like to say 'haha a fuckload' like Polly did, but no.

Do you feel awkward when strangers say hi to you?
Depends

Do you hate being alone?
Depends.

What are your plans for tomorrow?
Work

Does anyone know your password besides you?
No

What/Who woke you up this morning?
Responsibility

Did you kiss or hug anyone today?
I touched some dogs on the lower abdomen if that counts.

Where would you like to live?
Where I do live, if that's OK

Were you happy when you woke up today?
A bit of neck pain.

Closest green object to you?
Urban Policy and Research Vol 15 No 2 June 1997

What were you doing at 8 this morning?
sleeping.

What are you excited for?
I'm not

Pissed off at anyone or anything?
nuhh.

What's the last piercing you got?
Shriek, from small girl across the street.

Is there one person in your life that can always make you smile?
technically.

What's the fifth text in your inbox say?
Don't know

When did your last hug take place & who was it with?
Don't know

Who pissed you off last?
They won't be doing it again in a hurry

Do you know anyone with the same name as you?
Only a million

Why did you last say "ew"?
When describing someone as a lonE Wolf.

Are you frustrated with anything?
not really. i'm not sure.

What's your younger sibling's name?
Too many to relate

Do you ever fear of falling asleep?
I embrace it.

How's 2009 treating you so far?
I won seven million dollars in a bank hold up, so...

Which beach would you say is your favorite?
Silver Beach

What is it that you really want right now?
A scythe

Would you say you're a nice person?
Part of being a horrible person is refuting it.

Would you rather hold hands or link arms with your significant other?
Hold arms - it's my right in the constitution

Have you ever had a churro?
Is that, like, a chocolate donkey?

Do you enjoy the snow?
When I'm DESTROYING it.

What's your zodiac sign?
Peace

Would you rather eat rice or bread?
Well, here in the developed world...

Have you given up on anything lately?
This is about Springsteen, right?

Ever felt like you're not good enough?
No, I'm unusual in that way.

hey it rained again, heavily, you'd think I'd blog about that in detail but no...

Erase my answers and fill in your answers.

1. Name something you use in the shower?
the shower

2. Name something a football player wears under his uniform?
his anus?

3. Name something people hate to find on their windshield?
a thousand dollars (if they had been told there was ten million there)

4. Name something a man might buy before a date?
A lanyard

5. What is another word for blemish?
Robert Doyle would probably get in something about Adelaide, but I'll say... Robert Doyle

6. What is something you cook in the microwave?
as opposed to reheat... h'mmm. Good question. Maybe some of that microwavable cheesy pasta shit (tm)?

7. Name a piece of furniture people need help moving?
fireplace

8. Name a reason a younger man might like an older woman?
Duty

9. Name something a dog does that embarrasses its owner?
Invites friends home for dinner and forgets to tell anyone else. One of the friends is Joaquin Phoenix. It was the day the house was being demolished.

10. Name a kind of test you cannot study for?
A testanus injection.

11. Name something a boy scout gets a badge for?
For telling people to 'stop looking at my tits'.

12. Name a phrase with the word home in it.
Tally Ho Mephistopheles

13. Name a sport where players lose teeth?
hot dog eating contest particularly if conducted over forty years

14. Name something a teacher can do to ruin a students day?
not teach them about apostrophes

16. Name a bird you wouldn't want to eat?
Denys

17. Name something a person wears even if it has a hole in it?
there is nothing you can wear that doesn't have a hole in it... except a smock... and yours has a dirty big hole in it.

18. Name something that gets smaller the more you use it?
Name something that doesn't.

sixty years of being written on

Nothing too special about this image in itself I am just amazed by the way that people think that writing on a page (which they don't own, but that's another thing) is somehow supposed to be seen by subsequent readers as an important indication of how it has been previously read. I mean, it suxs.

obscure photographs of life

shallowness plumbs new depths

It occurred to me today, about two weeks after being informed of his demise, that I had met Ernie Bourne when I was a child, at a party, I knew him then as Fester Fumble from Adventure Island (well probably I knew the difference between a character and an actor, maybe). It must have been quite a formative influence to me, that you could meet celebrities, I met Daryl Somers when I was about 7 years old, he shook my hand, I was a fan already before that time, he was doing some kind of appearance at something I don’t remember what and a friend of my mother’s – maybe a work colleague? – had to pick him up and take me there so she took me along, I sat in the back seat. I mean admittedly I would probably have been as thrilled if it were Skeeter or Marty or Marilyn or Fred Bear, who I think I once saw in person too, though that could be false memory syndrome. I recall Daryl telling the assembled crowd that Ossie Ostrich couldn’t be there as he had his head in the sand. That’s all I remember. I hadn’t thought of that for decades. The Ernie Bourne thing, to get back to that, was a party with my parents, and the other thing I recall about that party, really the only thing, is that their friend Georgie was there and someone joked, and I believed it, that the Seekers’ song ‘Georgie Girl’ was about her. I mean I suppose my reasoning would have been, if you are at a party with Fester Fumble, then you might well be there with the woman about whom the song ‘Georgie Girl’ was written. It’s true.

My next brushes with fame were – well, I had a friend my age whose older brother had appeared as a character in a series of children’s books – I wrote a letter to the Akta-Vite magazine about television programming – I saw Zig and Zag live. Now I recall I also saw Uncle Norman and Joffa Boy do an instore, it wasn’t at Waterfront. I think it was at McEwans, is that possible? My grandmother took me but she may not remember either. Additionally I am not entirely certain what McEwans is or was. For some reason the words Uncle, Norman, Joffa, Boy, Mc and Ewans all fit together for me in a special tag cloud. I am pretty certain that although this was Uncle Norman and Joffa Boy, indisputably, they were long past their time as hosts of the celebrated and important Tarax Show, though when you’re a child of 4 or 5 or 6 or whatever I was, a long period could be a week or a year I daresay, depending on your mood. It couldn’t, on reflection, have been that long because I certainly wanted to see them and so did many others. On reflection, how bizarre that two old men without appropriate child psychology qualifications would be considered appropriate children’s show hosts, although I now know Joff was a genuine television stalwart and a respected comedian (and similarly how amazing that you could call a character on a children’s television show Fester Fumble without someone making instant connections to self-hating gaydom). Speaking of Normans though, when we were in the UK in the mid-70s Norman Hunter took a coin out of my ear and… I can’t recall what else happened… met Roald Dahl at some kind of instore… I think I went to school with Bono*… we were going to see The Goodies in a live appearance but they cancelled, I think Graeme had his head in the sand. I was an attendee at the Dr Who fanfest at Longleat, were you there? But there were no celebs, unless you count Daleks. I daresay people now write sentimental long essays about those early Dr Whofests. I don’t think I want to read them, too evocative and sentimental. I am really racking my brain for more celebs, as I know that is primarily your interest, if it’s not werry porn, and I know celebs are a hot topic for me then as now. Nancy Cato off Adventure Island (who also edited the Akta-Vite magazine, this is getting a bit bizarre now isn’t it, as is the fact that there was an Akta-Vite magazine and that I apparently subscribed to it. Actually that is making me chuckle because I just realised how stupid that is) lived round the corner from my grandmother, serious. How bizarre. I went to her house and couldn’t stop laughing, not about Akta-Vite, I don’t know what about. Anyway how did I forget that additional Adventure Island connection when I was talking about Ernie Bourne above.

Also once when I was 12 or so I got shown round channel two and saw the actual clock that sat inside a camera and was the clock that the tv screen would routinely snap to on channel two in the seconds before the news or similar. It was a bit shabby! Around the same time I was in Carlton and I saw Mick Conway in Johnny’s Green Room, that was a blast. But that’s getting more into adult-world celebrity isn’t it and less of a surprise and less of an event. Still, if only I’d kept a diary. Who can I sue for not inventing blogs thirty years earlier?

I suppose it is time to muse on celebrity and its value or lack of, but who cares. We all know what it’s about.

* The only lie in today’s gallery of memories.

By the way, there is a nice four minute thing here which will mean little to anyone who wasn't a viewer of the original and obviously I was very young because it barely means much to me. I loved the viewer comment: 'I was very priviliged to be a child in this era.Sadly a time which is long gone and probably never will return.' I mean I loved the 'probably' bit. Live in hope.

i wonder when jimmy buffett will die

I'm betting on some time around September 2023. Wish me luck, I have a few hundred thousand dollars riding on this. Then it's Margaritaville here I come. 

tdmi #2

Skinny, bullet-headed youngish drug addict* all sweaty with a runny nose at North Melbourne station carrying on an external monologue in a pushy, bitchy, dregsy, camp voice. When he comes to the walkway above the platforms he stands in front of the many destination screens a la Peter Finch in Network and cries: 'Oh god. They don't even give you any information about where the trains go from. How are you supposed to find the right train.'
Possibly someone tells him that he only has to look behind him, because shortly afterwards it's an even more anguished:
'How do you know what number the platform is!'

* Be fair, he could have played 'Junkie no. 2' in any tv show so I am just assuming he was an addict to something, but who knows, perhaps it was his first and last time, hence his disorientation and talkativeness.

they drive me insane

Most of all I drive myself insane. I lost the keys to the station wagon two days ago, after impetuously deciding to take the car to work when it started raining (me and 7 million other Melbournians obviously, as we had forgotten what rain was) and then deciding impetuously after driving for ten minutes that the traffic was too awful, that I’d have to take the train after all, and parking the sw in Oak Park, where it’s been for two days now because some time on Tuesday afternoon I lost the key. I drive myself not only to Oak Park but also insane.

But what about the other idiots I have to endure? What about that woman on the train a short time ago waggling on about how they should take all the seats out of the train so more people could stand in it? Oh, she was bad enough, all with her ‘I should be in parliament… introduce a private member’s bill, even though I’m not a member, apparently…’ that ‘apparently’ apparently supposed to indicate that it’s not really a democracy if not everyone in the world can be a ‘private member’ in parliament. But her friends were mental: ‘oh, that’s a really good idea. That’s a really good idea actually. No really, I think that’s really good.’ Blah! She gets me down and so do they.

But not as much as the Dickensian junkie on the train yesterday who I purposefully went down the far end of the carriage to get away from, so Dickensian was his junkieness, more like a Cruickshank engraving really which has since distorted further in my memory, and then for some reason he and the fluoro-jacketed middle aged man he was with came down my end of the carriage, where I had expressly hoped they would not be. He was one of those junkies with an endless sense of wonderment about his surroundings, as though his awe with the world excused his so-called experimentation with a life of deadly addiction. They were getting off at Strathmore. ‘Are there any trees where we’re going?’ he asked fat companion. ‘Why?’
‘Because I need to piss!’

Obviously using a toilet would befoul an otherwise fine and private place.

Speaking of which, what about ‘William, did you do a poo in the back of your pants?’ on the bus yesterday. She was horrific, in her brown peasant tent and her grin-moron child would have made Alfred E Neuman recoil in horror. I mean for god’s sake. In fact his name wasn’t William it was Tom. ‘No, I’m very cross with you Tom, that’s very naughty, you should wait to go to the toilet.’ OK, your child is all wrong, having him was an error, and he did a poo in the back of his pants (had he done it in the front of his pants she might have been proud of his ingenuity, I don’t know, or maybe that was what he was taught and doing it in the back is a special talent he has developed which the parents can’t do themselves, being front-pooers, so of course the mother is scared a la the Chrysalids.) Hell. I hated them.

Or that woman on the train on Tuesday, she in a red gypsy outfit, giving a monologue not unlike something someone might deliver if asked to play a game of stand-up comedy with the game being not actually making one single joke, in which she was apparently parodying someone a little like Neil from the Young Ones only an American, who was driving a van somewhere and wouldn’t take any notice when being told that he was already on Ballarat Road, ‘OK man just tell me when to turn onto Ballarat Road.’ You know those people who think that if it sounds laconic it doesn’t matter what the content is, it’s hilarious, and of course, Australians who think they can do American accents (and so pronounce the ‘r’ even in words without ‘r’s) are fucking idieRRts man.

But the worst was actually the guy on the train this morning. He was cutting his fingernails on a crowded train. Now, really, seriously, that is de trop. I looked around hoping to catch a bit in my eye, or if not that, then stare him into embarrassment. He was doing it inside a plastic bag. This was horrible, mainly because it was so freakin’ loud, and ‘clut! Clut! Clut!’ all the frigging time, and you start to think, Alright, prick features, you can cut your nails in a plastic bag on the train, I can’t stop you, I don’t know how to tell you this is socially Not Done if you can't intuit it, you looking straight ahead of you as if you aren’t doing a thing, and no-one else but me can hear you because they are all listening to Doof and metal on ear buds but HOW MANY FINGERNAILS DO YOU HAVE? When I cut my nails – which I do at acceptable times, without others around to listen to CLUT CLUT, or is it more like CLINT, CLINT, or is it STRIK, STRIK, I don’t know, a failing of the roman alphabet or probably all alphabets, anyway, when I cut my nails I make that noise about 20 times probably, not for half a freakin’ hour, are you actually trimming your hooves in there, or are you cutting the horny scabs off the heels of your hands, or are you shelling chestnuts I MEAN CHRIST, no-one should have to put up with that. Especially not me as I have enough bullshit to deal with I don’t care if it’s of my own making.

unsurprising phenomenon

I have mentioned before how when Charlie is higher up than a person (thereby problematising the natural and expected order of things) she becomes bashful and her ears curl at the ends like That Girl's hair. Well, here it is happening again. For real!

the internet... promises so much, delivers so little.

Sitemeter continues to dazzle me with information about why the heck people visit this site. Imagine the baffled Hungarian who on a perfectly innocent search for 'Werry young girl porn' happened up on this.

graffiti crimes II: graffiti crimeser

Rimimber thus? As Steve Gilpin used to say on his blog. I know, I know, accent 'jokes' - they are beneath me. It was Steve! Anyway, there's more, as I discovered recently looking at the front of Purdom (there are seven stages of purdom, by the way - it being a cross between purgatory and boredom - not really, it's a fine book, I like it a lot). (Great diagrams when someone's not drawing japanese sheilas on it).



I don't know what it's about. The book has a lot of big blank pages in it (at the beginnings of chapters, etc) but our little mincing pal really likes to add his dream ladies to extant diagrams. Notice how the hair perhaps reminds one of what an old girlfriend of mine used to call when sketching ladies fashions 'her bust'. There is another one with only one eye, which is creeping me out a bit (a little like that porn script about eunuch schoolboys watching porn which I accidentally happened on a few days ago) so I'll save it.

oh no more old manisms

I heard on Movietime on Radio National Julie Rigg's mention of reviews being sent to your mobile phone in 'handy capsule form'. However before unscrambling the concept I thought it was discussion of 'handicaps you'll form'. Modern life. *This morning on RN Breakfast I am sure I heard Fran Kelly talk about hamsters underground. But I don't know what this was about.

it rained today

Not once but twice. On waking I appreciated it had been raining a little not long before. It rains so rarely you tend to forget the tell-tale signs but there were some. We went for a walk.

Actually nothing looks lush at all (though if you could see the more uberpixelled version of these pictures you'd see everything glistening) but tomorrow might be different. It greens up very quickly when it's incentivated.

Charlie and Millie were in their element, and everything smelt totally different apparently: as though it were wet, I suppose.

If I were a poet, I'd somehow convey a cyclist dispersing some crows and magpies that had just been hanging around making crow (not magpie) noises en bloc. But I'm not. However, I have a blurry photo of it.

I'm sort of optimistically envisaging that some remarkable transformation is about to take place.