useful

They don't make useful things like they used to do they. I have been looking at Building and Construction from 1926 and these items are frequently advertised. Takes me back to my childhood in 1926 when we'd double quick boil, er, stuff and there was always a door within a door. Very good times that actually will probably be back with us quite soon again. 

I remember a boy in school who climbed into the Kaustine tank once. Perhaps he's still there, as Doug Ashdown sang. 

art project

 

Every so often someone lines some stuff up like this at the dog park known as Clayton Reserve which, by the way, is undergoing significant overhaul at the moment. I have no idea if this is an art project or has some other meaning - obviously it has meaning for someone, at least one person, the person that is doing it. 

delta 5.1

I mentioned a few days ago my mild disappointment at Delta 5's only 'real' album, See the Whirl', not least that fucking apostrophe. I'll have a second go at that if you don't mind.

I've been playing it (interspersed with the sumptuous French Disco and Boogie Sounds 1975-1984) pretty much all week, at least, when I play a record. For a first album, it's actually very excellent. It has range and there's a couple of tracks that really take the whole D5 project beyond the realm of the first three singles (which are brilliant, faultless but like the Buzzcocks, you can't do that forever). I particularly like the song 'Telephone' which is very, very Au Pairs-y and in a very good way. It's here if you're interested. If you feel sentimental about getting crank calls on your landline (oo-er) that song will do it for ya. 

tax time

Doing my tax always puts me in a weird place, partly I'm forced to remember things I have done over the previous 12 months which is hard but once I'm in that place I feel OK about it. Sometimes when I'm looking through my credit card transactions and see where we went for dinner to that African place in Victoria st and then went to that bar in Queensberry st afterwards, I am like, wow that happened and it's provable. But in the main it's just... fuck I can't believe how much I fucking spend on... whatever. There are actually some massive, like hundreds of dollars, supermarket transactions that actually make no sense at all. But you know, Woolworths wouldn't rip me off so... I don't know. 

The fact is I don't really understand tax returns anyway, or at least only in the most basic way. I am a rube. I feel like it's bad karma to think/worry about it too much. 

This cartoon dedicated to Pauline Hanson, who at time of writing is enjoying some prominence. 

port melbourne this morning

Perry and I went to the beach this morning just for something to do. He loves to dig in the sand, I hope he doesn't cause an environmental disaster. We went out on this pier which btw I had never noticed before...

And got the weirds, because there are all these memorial plaques on it. Did you know about this? 

Then we had a quick look at the vacant site over the road. I can't even remember what used to be there, only that I was somewhat disappointed it was pulled down. 

I took this photograph through the gate. Made me feel a bit like the Mars Rover

i'm coming out

This bizarre animal, having been a complete shut-in for five and a half years, rarely if ever venturing out of my bedroom and spending most of that time underneath my bed, has now decided for some reason to do the complete opposite, and to be perennially in public (well, at least, she has located permanently to the sitting room and as far as I know has not returned to the bedroom once). She sleeps in the sitting room, usually on the couch, sometimes with her face turned resolutely towards a bar heater that's here at the moment and turned on a lot of the time. 

It makes absolutely no sense to me - and I suppose both nothing and everything makes sense to her. 

I will say that Nancy is here too and does not venture into my bedroom anymore either.

Perry, who used to sleep in the sitting room, now sleeps in the spare room.