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. 

the mentalist and the poochies

Series 6 of The Mentalist is madness. I mean, the show was always highly improbably and at some times quite problematically formulaic. But once Patrick kills his bete noir Red John, and he really does, the show is pretty aimless. It needn't have been, but it was. I would so much hate myself if I was, for instance, Joe Adler who played the character of Wiley, this guy, who's the kind of hotshot whiz kid computer boy, brought in to zhouzh up a tired program in its sixth season. We know nothing about him except he sits in a chair all day and can do anything at all in front of a computer. 'According to his credit card activity, he...' 

Meanwhile this season is seeded throughout with not 'will they won't they' but 'when the hell will they' between Patrick and Teresa, where they keep saying minorly dumb things to each other about how they like each other a little bit. 

Nancy of course couldn't give a loose root. 

Can't wait for season 7!!!

sunday

 Any ideas for what I should do with this picture welcomed. 

You know what they say about cats and dogs, well, do they say cats like to be in the sunshine and dogs like to be in the shadows? I hope so because then these pictures bear out the truth of that saying. Nancy in particular loves being out on the deck, loves it.

Also here's a bonus picture of no essential value, of a building in Parkville Gardens when we went there last night. Enjoy! 

 

this is my city

 

saturday

Saturday was in many ways a write-off. I could create two columns and put the pluses and the minuses there. Pluses include I washed Perry and got quite a bit of hair off him. Laura and I had some samosas (out of a box) and she made a really good salad. We watched two episodes of The Box (#365, #366) which was good. John keeps not leaving even though he's constantly telling people he's about to leave. Max went back to Channel 12 and wants to sack Tony or kill off Manhunt, or both. I can't help feeling the discussion about keeping Tony for 'a series' and killing off the show is a kind of reference to George Mallaby leaving Homicide but coming into The Box. 

So considering the above, it wasn't a bad day really. But most of the day I have had a work task hanging over me which I feel is very onerous and troubling and it's been really hard to concentrate. I haven't even done it all properly, yet, but it's not as problematic as it was. I've also been very, very tired and it's been hot. 

Above is a picture of Nancy on the deck this afternoon. 

personal file

Name: Helmi aka Mittens

Age: 8ish

Likes: Sleeping, being tickled or whatever you call that under the neck, sometimes a thumb in the ear is good.

Dislikes: Everything else and Nancy

Children: Many, but I don't talk to them

Lives: Upstairs. In the bedroom 99.9% of the time, leaving only for toilet and food. 

Ambitions: To eliminate my enemies, including Nancy and even Perry if I can. 

Will Angus Taylor challenge for the leadership of the Liberal Party today? I'd say 'those are all words' but I don't know what words are. Angus should take heed of Peter Costello's and Josh Frydenburg's hesitancy when it comes to challenging; you end up looking weak. However, he should also take heed of other Liberals-in-opposition who simply held the fort for a while as the real people got into position, a la Downer, Nelson etc. Hopefully keeping both of these in mind will put him in such a whirlwind of stasis he'll run round and round and turn into butter. 

Favourite album: OK Computer

What's a secret you've never told anyone? I quite envy happy bisexuals. 

 

bake your feet this summer

Sometimes I don't have anything to tell you but still I am sick of the latest post being at the top of the list so I find something else to post. Insider trick of blogging, a peep behind the curtain if you will. 
 

reasons to be sneerful

I don't care about national flags, except I care that the intensely embarrassing one this country presently has, appears unlikely to ever be changed in my lifetime. FFS. I will never feel pride when seeing a flag but it would be nice not to feel shame, even though it's not my fault at all. 

Speaking of grossitude, I thought I'd just record a moment just before Kyle and Jackie O were yanked off the air and the organisation which broadcasts them to a decreasing audience itself disappears. 

Here are some reasons to be cheerful: Nancy is now as big as Perry, or to be precise, Perry is now as small as Nancy.

 Monsieur Fancygestures. Get a cigarette holder you. 

nancy 2026

 

Nancy continues to be a perfect cat and a good friend, if a greedy one. There's noone to be grateful to exactly but you'll know what I mean when I say, I am grateful that we found each other. I have really never known anyone like her. 

She had minor (?) health issues last year which I think have been remedied with radiation treatment which she didn't like but she got over it and indeed, being a cat, she doesn't think about it at all. Lately she's been enjoying going outside even in the obscenely hot weather we've been having lately. I don't understand it but I'm glad she's getting to do things she wants. 

 

late december 2020

Laura pointing to a cat. Or offering a finger to sniff as prelude to something more intimate, I'm not sure. 

Nancy just hanging out. 

On Christmas afternoon I went to Laura's place and we watched a ridiculous Swiss film about the trials and tribulations of a young jewish boy from a fairly traditional if not stereotypical family in I guess Berne or perhaps Zurich who was attracted to a shiksa called Laura. I guess it engaged us but to be fair, it was also fairly crummy. The next day we went to the NGV for the Triennial which was actually pretty amazing but I found it overwhelming after a while and then had to sit down. Later we went to see a film I was very keen to view, Promising Young Woman, and I have to say I was deeply disappointed by the fact that she died in the end. That is not my idea of revenge, 'black comedy' or otherwise: part of vengeance is you don't get killed, and the people you seek vengeance on punished not for the original crime but for the crime of killing you. 

nancy getting treatment

The many moods of Nancy. She had radiation treatment today for a tumour on her thyroid. She will be in isolation until Tuesday at the earliest and then back home (but still in isolation) for another two weeks. I miss her very much but feel hopeful that this will conquer all her thyroid problems. 

then I got sick

Shortly after posting the previous, I came down with something, a minor thing. You have to take these things seriously of course but it's still a stupid, unimaginative, boring, dull, irritating, minor illness which will soon die and not be missed. Meanwhile, I have found that as is so often the case, pets (and a really perfect girlfriend not pictured) are a comfort. 
 

 As Perry gets older and more comfortable in his/any environment, and as Nancy continues to be Nancy, the two of them are finding it much easier to coexist. Here they are on my bed yesterday (please excuse my clean washing). They don't seek each other out necessarily but they are not at all bothered by each other's presence. 

Yesterday Perry gave Nancy a big lick right down her face, which she also took in her stride, with a bit more 'chill' than I think I would have if I was her. LOL

sometimes you just gotta sniff it

 

it's good to have a blog

If I didn't have a blog, neither you nor I would ever know that I saw David Kilgour and Yo La Tengo play a show in 2007 (and I didn't enjoy it, but that doesn't really mean anything in itself). Amazing. I literally do not remember this at all, I don't know where it happened and my description of the experience is so oblique I am not sure why I had a bad time. Crazy! I suspect the bad time probably had less to do with the actual show, than I appreciated at the time. I am also surprised to read that I've seen Yo La Tengo six times. Six??? I really like them, but I can only vaguely recollect seeing them once, and it wasn't this 2007 show. Madness!!!

This is a picture of Perry and Nancy yesterday. Perry is at one of his doggy day care hangs today. I would be happy to have him stay at home all week but he really seems to need to expend the energy and he loves going to those places so much I can't deny him. But I miss him. I am fairly sure Nancy doesn't. 

Walking at the moment is not easy because while I am (I'm pretty sure) coming to the end of my four or five-month bout of plantar fasciitis I am still hobbling a bit and every time I stand up I don't know whether it's going to hurt or not. I am also often really, really tired which can't just be the fact that I am 60 now but has to be more than that. Well, I guess I'll find out over time. But it doesn't make me the ideal companion all the time for a sometimes boisterous three year old (dog). 

I got back on Netflix recently, I forget why but to watch something in particular, possibly the Sarah Silverman special which I actually didn't enjoy that much but perhaps it was too close to the bone. Anyway, what I have since discovered is that a lot of Netflix shows have a Finnish captions option, which means I can justify watching any old pap on that basis, as a way to keep treading water on my Finnish. Most recently it was a five-part British crime show called Missing You. The above reads, 'Didn't it bother you that he had a family?' (I didn't translate that all by myself, by the way, though I know some of the words). 

'Did s/he make a mistake?'

This relates to a website called, unconvincingly, 'Honest Aspect': 'I reviewed all Honest Aspect-related documents for errors'. 

I don't know how useful this all is in learning Finnish (my ten-year plan, to be fluent by 2035!) but it can't hurt - can it? 

please end summer, you suck

Not only will summer ending be a good thing in itself but it will reduce the number of summers before we see a conclusion, for there must be a conclusion, to the right-wing insanity of much of the world at the moment. IE the end of summer will be a hurdle. Indeed if we see, as we surely must, Trump's power reduced at the US midterms in um 2027, then we really only have one full summer to get through. 

I have made a decent writerly space for myself on my small balcony which actually works well although the wifi is not always brilliant (but still, it gets there more or less). It was a junk space for years and I will most definitely sometime be locked out there you bet but I also find it very good for getting stupid little things done, like today I finessed my first lecture of the year. This is the so-called view from the balcony - pretty ridiculous I suppose, though it is definitely trees (and slightly miserable pot plants which I water lovingly every day). 

Mouldy cat picture rescued from a street in Flemington, plant Laura didn't want anymore and I did. 

The loyal animals nearby: Helms

Nancy - very much in repose

Perry - he stays close

Books for me to read while I wait for someone to come and rescue me when I get locked out on the balcony, which will definitely happen one day before too long. 

25 august 2019

Looking at my phone photos from five years ago is a bit confusing because obviously like anyone but particularly like hoarders (it's in the genes) I use my phone (as mentioned in previous post) as just a dump for every impression/ thing that happens/thing I do/ thing I see, but at the same time I can't be friggin' bothered to make a note about why this is important or what it means, I just assume that one day I will sit down and notate on it all, which to be fair.... well, what I'm doing now is the closest I will ever get to making any kind of extra commentary on this shit. 

So five years ago, I made a loaf of bread. Yes. The weird thing about this is that I had made a loaf of bread the day before, too. So I am not sure what this was about. This bread was born in the humblest of circumstances, the scungefest that was the kitchen in Albion. I mean my kitchen today is pretty awful but nowhere near as awful. 

I guess I walked Barry and Ferdie that day, although this is the only picture from that moment, so who really knows. 

It doesn't matter in the slightest but why did I go to the 12th Caulfield (St Johns) Memorial Scout Hall five years ago today? I definitely can't tell you. 

I vaguely recall seeing this book in a bookshop in Elsternwick I think. Maybe it was the first time I saw it IRL? Because I have a short chapter in it, so I would have been interested. Maybe I was just pleased to see it out in the wild. 

Fabulous op shops in Elsternwick, so that's probably where the above images are from. 

This was around the time that I was getting ready to go to Europe, and I visited my aunt Maggie a few times with my mother, apart from anything else, I was proposing that Maggie take on Chanticleer as her new cat. Not sure what this would mean for Pompey but maybe I would keep him, I don't know. Maggie was ill with cancer and as it transpired she died in September. 

Pompey (rear) and Chanticleer in the Albion hovel. If you don't know the story of have forgotten (sometime I forget) I rescued these two from the mean streets of Albion, they were street cats with no future or at least the future of being run over by cars. They were flea-bitten, wormy and undesexed. I am guessing that by this stage they were no longer the first two categories and maybe not the third either anymore. 

Nancy hated them (still does). Though fortunately for Nancy, she doesn't have to think about them too often. & vice-versa. 

Once again this is all trivia but the one thing that I am amazed by is how awful things were five years ago and how good they are now (for me, not for anyone else, just me). I put most of the credit for that with Laura, who is a daily tonic. No doubt by this stage she had already agreed to look after these three cats while I was overseas, and as it transpired - she ended up keeping the two boys, together. It's hard now to imagine ever separating them.