bodies and kansan vihollinen/enemy of the people

I watched the Netflix series Bodies and when I say I watched it I had it on for every minute of its duration and semi-followed what was going on and didn't really get that much out of it but am of the opinion that shows like this perhaps invariably start out with a strong mystery and then as they slowly draw their threads together can only solve the intense weirdness of everything by coming up with freakishly, grandiosely nonsensical solutions. I mean it's science fiction anyway (indeed this is referenced in a scene late in the piece when a character from 2055 I think is trying to explain to a  character from 1890something various plot points that are probably more than most people can handle, let alone confused and sad gay (bisexual? Unclear) policemen from the 1890s in jail for murder. 

When it comes down to it... I watched the whole thing, but I was actually indexing a book at the time so I wasn't giving it my full attention. 

Unlike Kansan Vihollinen aka Enemy of the People (that's a literal translation),  which is in Finnish, a language I don't understand, so I have to pay attention to the subtitles at all times. But from the first episode it is quite gripping I would say. 

I don't suppose Finnish tv/film invented this type but I love the way they do these unglamorous professional women just doing their job who, by the way, you know could be glamorous if they spent half an hour on it but they cbf. In this case the main character is a journalist, Katja Salonen (Kreeta Salminen) who appears to have been dumped from her job as a reporter in Helsinki and instead has taken the booby prize of working on a long-established newspaper in Tampere. Sucks to be you Katja! 

There's not too much Tampere in the first episode but when there is Tampere it's beautiful Tampere like this: 

Oh ignore the text on screen that's football people sending texts about Katja's inferences re a famous Finnish football player's stinginess in funding a local stadium or something. The football thing is going to make the show slightly troublesome to watch but fortunately its heroine has zero interest in football - I think in part so everyone is compelled to do exposition around her - and everything is explained. 

I think I'll enjoy this! 

bye margaret cruickshank

Margaret Cruickshank's last Homicide episode was 'Don't Be Lonely', aired 30 September 1975 in which she played the supine Jennifer Marriott, who, spoiler, doesn't get out alive. The gentleman is I forget his name (he has several in the episode) played by Keith Lee if I'm not mistaken. 

I think I would have a soft spot for MC even if I didn't feel a slight, very slight connection to her as I semi- partially- kind of- knew her son James for a while. His last name was actually Watson (so was hers, I suppose?) and he took the stage name to be a musician, most famously in the Cruel Sea. I was under the impression he wrote the song 'Better Get a Lawyer', which I note is actually credited to many people and I also note, my memory is shitful, but I'll tell you what I recall just to have it written down and I can comprehensively forget it. 

I was visiting mutual friends in, I'm guessing, 1992? 1993? and James turned up unannounced, with a tape of a song that he'd recorded with the Cruel Sea - in my memory it was 'Better Get a Lawyer' and he was really enthused about it. After he left we all shook our heads because we thought it was so fucking awful and tryhard. Of course it became a big hit, probably played at weddings etc.  

anonymous

One of the good things about having a blog is, well, if it's a diary kind of blog as opposed to one where you get AI to write your posts, and as we all know that is the future of blogging, and with luck soon only AI will read blogs anyway, and will rehash old bloggery into new content for the pleasure of other AIs, but anyway, if it's a diary kind of blog then you can be reminded of things you really could not even believe, much less remember. Like apparently about 15 years ago I was not only watching Doctor Who but watching it like a fan. Admittedly, a fan who might stop watching it at any moment (I guess I did, because now I barely even recall ever watching it, after, you know, 1975) but writing about it like someone who thought that to watch Doctor Who was to be a valuable participant in the zeitgeist. I mean WOW. 

I could link to that post but on the other hand, who cares. 

Laura and I are in Adelaide and we have been doing fieldwork all day, it's been really good. She has been the driver. It was a very productive day. Hot take: Mt Barker (SA) is not a bad town. I just remembered something funny. I was in the Christian op shop and the two ladies running it were talking about someone else. One lady: She just talked and talked. Other lady: Oh well of course she would because [completely ran the sentence into the ground because she realised I was there even though she had no idea who I was of course but she had basically forgotten she was in public I think]. It was funnier the way she did it though unfortunately but I've written it down the best I can and we can move on. 

weird limbo

Perry and I are both in a kind of half-existence today, he was at Doggy Day Care four days out of five last week - that's the most ever I am pretty sure - and you know how every idiot who has never worked in academe always thinks that once teaching's over you're on holidays? - well I have been living the proof that that is the falsest of falsehoods. I have also had some kind of illness that doesn't really seem to know what it is, that reminds me I was going to have a covid test today but if this is covid it's the most uncovid covid ever. 

Not much more to report, but I know you like to check in.

Oh I got a few books in the mail - Bill Griffiths' biography of Ernie Bushmiller, and a book by Tim Blanchard called Being Gregory about Gregory's Girl, and a book about Mark Perry called Lost in Room. Oddly enough I ordered this book a long time ago and then when I saw ads for it I went looking for proof of my order to see whether I had actually ordered it or just thought I might, and, well, I couldn't find any evidence so I decided I probably hadn't. Well guess what! I had. Similarly, I got an email notification that I was about to be sent the new Blue Orchids album because apparently I ordered that as well, though in my memory I had thought to myself 'I'd love that but I have to stop buying record after record after record'. Maybe I'm ordering things in my sleep?!

Anyway it's 7pm and I have done virtually nothing today, except endure. I suppose I have sent a few work emails etc. Get off my back!!!

progress

Famously, young dogs start good then get a little worse then come back to being good... all other things being equal. Perry is such a strong personality I must admit I was worried but he is turning out well. Whereas a few months ago he would be inconsolable when seeing or hearing another dog somewhere, anywhere, including on television, and therefore barking like a maniac, he is now finding ways to reflect and reassess. So, yesterday when walking at Darebin Parklands we encountered a couple of dogs who not that long ago would have sent him spare but now he can tear himself away and focus on me instead. It's very encouraging and pleasing that I have managed to effect this change, which still has to be reinforced (perhaps forever! I don't know) but the beginnings are implanted. 

That was yesterday, and it was good. Then on the way to doggy daycare this morning we came out of a lift and he saw a dog go past and he went mental. But while that is a drag, it's also just the next thing to work on - stop him feeling like he's being ambushed. That's when the worst effects come on - when he feels that a threat (or whatever another dog specifically represents) has dropped out of the sky in front of him. 

 

ipswich last week

Stayed at Cumquat House. Would recommend. 

If this looks like a massive overuse of asphalt, well, there's no 'if'

egan st richmond etc

It being horsemurder day today* Perry and I thought we'd head down to Richmond to check out some of the locations previously mentioned. 

Here's a useless one:

Useless mainly because the morning sun was too big and bright, but also some fool has grown trees in the way. Also, I wanted to get a picture of Perry in front of the sign that said Perry Palms but the Y has fallen off. 

So this place:

I didn't even show it to you before because I didn't know where it was but we happened upon it. It's a bridge across the Yarra in Abbotsford and the building behind is now the big Salvos op shop. Apparently at one stage it had an incinerator (or at least a chimney) on it which it no longer has. 

I think this is Sheila Florance outside this place in Egan st and...

Here it is today. Literally today. 

The other side of the road, at 2 and 4 Egan which as you can see has now been blown out of all proportion by I'm sure entirely appropriate renovations. 

& generally speaking, the street. 

We also walked around to the parallel st, Peers st, where I used to live in 1996, so I could show Perry that house, but I couldn't find it. It might even have been pulled down. There's nothing that corresponded to my memory of the house. 

* and also destined to get reasonably hot

kensington street library this morning

This is a place Perry and I frequently find it expedient to walk to, it's just the right distance away for a satisfactory walk as far as he's concerned and it's on a fairly quiet route. Also, most of the books are pretty terrible so I am rarely tempted...