the bath and health and climate and character

Sydney Morning Herald 22 June 1923, p. 9: 

So global warming explains England in 2023? 

newspapers.com

Newspapers.com is absolutely my go-to for all kinds of insane things from actual information on stuff (particularly the Melbourne Age up till the year 2000, also the Sydney Morning Herald - the only two real Australian newspapers it features) to random nonsense for fun times. It's seriously depressing to see what its top five 'searched' words were in 2022 however. Presumably this is fool Americans trying to understand their world. But surely no-one actually searches on these words alone (it kind of makes it worse to think that they put these together, no doubt with their home towns or states, or their great-grandpappy's name). 'Wrestling' is of course the weirdest one, I mean, what the actual fuck?! 'Murder' is predictable but boring (this is the one I can imagine people do actually just search on - 'hmm, time for a murder. Sherman, set the controls for Dumfuck New Mexico in I think 1878 where Mr. Peachfuzz is just about to kill his five children with a cunning arrangement involving a candle burning through a rope attached to a guillotine.' 'Right away Mr Peabody!'). 'Died' is a funny one, too. But surely once again this is to find out when grandpappy died, not merely someone or something. Or when the dream of doing anything constructive with one's life died. 'Weather' and 'hurricane' are odd as well, I wonder if these are climate denialists or climate conformists? Probs both.  

Meanwhile in Australia the wonderful Trove is under threat and I'm bothered by that. It's actually a more sophisticated searcher than newspapers.com (it distinguishes, somehow, between advertisements, illustrated and non-illustrated articles, etc) and really provides a wealth of valuable minutiae not just on Australian stuff but on all the world's stuff. I love Trove. 

moonee ponds creek this morning

It's been more flooded near our place in recent memory, but it's still quite impressive. It's incredible how much plastic crap is disgorged when it rains heavily. I suppose this is a very recent phenomenon (last 20 years?). I mean, I remember when plastic shopping bags were a cool new thing.

In the most extensive flood we've seen, the water came up to the top of the scoreboard which you see in the distance below (or if you can't see it, let's say it covered the bridge and taken from this same position the water would have filled 2/3 of this image). (Make that 3/4):

slacks

Today is going to be a much better temperature although admittedly still a little too hot for comfort (30). When it cooled down last night it was grouse. I am on a tram in Sydney Road and I am once again the unwilling eavesdropper into a very public telephone conversation about some idiot’s legal case which is obviously of concern to him therefore he has to make a really loud performance of it in public to make him feel better about ‘he’s gonna come off in court like a real bully which is what they’re accusing me of being, right?’ and lots of confirmations of meetings and where he has to be at particular times i.e. showing how in control he is of his appointments diary. Now he is talking about the trousers he can get to wear in court, he’s just I think repeated the word ‘slacks’ like he’s never heard it before. He probably feels it’s a little too much of a laidback term for something to do with acting really straight.

Melbourne’s history surrounds one on the Sydney road tram. A few minutes ago we stopped and I looked up and I was looking straight at a lawyer’s office with the surname Cilauro, obviously Santo Cilauro’s father and I think the same office used as the lawyer’s office in The Castle. Then we stopped again (dickhead got off by the way – I mean he got off the tram) to see the Brunswick Mechanics Institute, where local people met one auspicious night in the 1870s I can’t remember exactly when to demand the government build the Outer Circle line or was it just that the government build a rail line in the northern suburbs (there was one two minutes’ walk from the Mechanics Inst by the end of the century) I can’t remember. That’s the problem with history, it’s everywhere but you have to remember it or otherwise know it. Right now I can see the Sarah Sands Hotel of which I know little except geez it’s old, or some of it is. Geez.

welcome to february

There was and probably is a very funny columnist (I’m not going to blow his cover) who wrote or perhaps still writes a column for an otherwise seriously crappy free music magazine on the Bellarine Peninsula under an obviously made up name. I was such a fan of the column I sent him a postcard (two actually, about a year apart, he later claimed not to have received the first, not that I don’t believe him) suggesting he write for The Big Issue, which I was at that time somewhat involved in in a minor editorial capacity. He wrote back and said ‘it’s me, I already write for The Big Issue,’ and that was bizarre and sort of disappointing too though I suppose it does show one example of me having minor nous. Well, one of those columns was a tirade against weather men-women who would talk about the rain, or other cold weather, as though it was a real tragedy, and the column was about how a huge proportion of Australians live in the south-east, and clearly if they really hated the rain or cold, they wouldn’t do that. Which was, in all honesty, pretty funny and pertinent.

People these days blog because they don’t believe in a God who hears their prayers, and all praying is really is venting, so can I just offer a vent up to the blogosphere above, to say, this fucking hot weather is wearing me down, seriously, and I find it very difficult a third day in a row to have a near-40 degree day, and I know I should be completely inured to it by now, and I am perhaps slightly more inured to it than I used to be, but really, this is bullshit man. At least I am now, as I write, on a slightly more comfortable airconditioned train but no doubt it will be packed tight by the time I get to N Melbourne.

Last night we went to see Another Year which was tremendously engaging and funny. In the spirit of continuing to vent to God, can I say I completely despise the Nova and the people who go there (apart from the ones I like). When the lights went up at the end of the film it was clear that it was one of those rare events where almost everyone in the theatre was about twenty years older than me and I don’t know if that’s an excuse but what I do know is that one is never surprised when, during the first five minutes of a film at the Nova, everyone gets phone calls and they are all fumbling for their mobiles (‘dratted… thing…’) and of course during the very last, final, completely silent scene, someone had to decide to indulge in an enormous lung-emptying phlegmsperience. I know in a way that’s just other people, I’ll be like that soon, and so on. Still it is crappy. Also, there were at least two big digital glitches in the movie – why should that happen? It rarely happens with DVDs, but the same thing happened when we went to see the 3rd Narnia film at Broady Hoyts – and additionally for a brief moment all the colour in the film was washed across with a kind of pus yellow. I know it wasn’t Avatar (which by the way I still haven’t seen…) which is to say, it’s not like you’re there for the glorious colour contrasts in Jim Broadbent’s face, and I suppose you could say it’s part of the experience. But in my present state of mind I would say it’s one more example of ineptitude and shabby treatment being sold to a mindless, senseless bourgeoisie who are made to feel they should just be grateful. At least the Nova managed to show the right film first up, which is always a bonus.

There are a lot of snifflers on the train. What do you think that means. A woman across the aisle from me is reading a book called Island of Shadows and drinking her snot and a man opposite me is eating a ham and salad roll, drinking lemonade and sniffing back.

Also, I hate mobile phone rings that are a woman whistling and calling ‘taxi!’ though not as much as the laughing baby mobile ring, which thankfully is on the wane as far as I can tell (did you have something to do with that God? I bet you did).

Anyway, so, hot day. Barry is being desexed today too. He wasn’t keen on going in the car, but that doesn’t mean he had figured something out – he’s never keen on it. I hope he’s OK but there’s no reason to think he won’t be. Broady Vets is actually pretty good.

Oh by the way I just want to tell you what I also hate is being called ‘boss’. It is somewhat a 21st century version of being called ‘mate’ (though I guess women are often now called ‘mate’ by men and other women, whereas I am guessing neither men nor women call women ‘boss’, but I’d be interested to hear otherwise). It is the sort of thing that should be challenged, except you come off like some kind of shorthaired hippy ‘I’m not your boss, mate, OK?’ The reason why it is similar to mate is that it can be used quite aggressively. If someone calls you boss they are usually (in my experience) in a position where they’re serving you (petrol, whatever) and I take it to be a way of drawing attention to this situation while at the same time saying, ‘you’re not better than me’. I resent this because I don’t think I’m better than anyone really, well, certainly people who have not shown me otherwise. Not in a status sense, I’m not ‘better’. So, it pisses me off to be called ‘boss’ because I feel it is demeaning to both of us - rare exception: irony. ‘Mate’ is a little more generic these days I guess but it is still irritating in some contexts. No-one calls each other son any more or love that often I think – there are exceptions.

I had a teacher in Grade 5, Mr. Howard, who was very Terry-Thomasish, he called all the girls in his class Biddy because he couldn’t remember their names (I think, though he might have given us another explanation and said we weren’t to read anything into it). I interviewed him for the school newsletter. He had a stroke half way through the year and we had replacements for the rest of the year. Come to think of it, it was Grade 6, because in Grade 5 I had a complete arsehole for a teacher. I suppose I should be ashamed that I derived enormous pleasure from the fact that I heard he had his arm cut off by an airplane propellor in the late 70s, then significant disappointment when I heard many years later that it wasn’t true. I told one of my former classmates that man was a piece of shit and he said, ‘Oh, you just feel that way because he hated you.’ Good enough reason.

Yes I am bitter! About that.

it rained today

You would not believe the rain today. I was up late last night writing a lecture and so I didn't get to work until 11:30. On the way in (I was driving the Honda, which leaks - or at least it hasn't leaked for years, because it hasn't been in the rain for years) a thunderstorm hit. I guess I have said this more and more lately because we have had a bit of precipitation, but it's still true - people still don't remember how to behave in rain! So when I got to campus people were running hither and thither with genuine fear and confusion on their faces; I heard one girl say 'my shoes!' Personally once again I had cause to appreciate the value of sloth; I had left a raincoat in the back of the car about a year ago. My feet still got wet though ('my shoes!') because of course the drains are all backed up with old leaves and so on so the roads become rivers. Anyway, it was all pretty nice. Didn't seem to do much for the water tank mind. But it's supposed to rain all week, on and off.

yes it was a good weekend thank you

It was a good weekend, seriously, the weather was nice (canberran, cold yet sunny) and I had a really nice time at the Lurid Yellow Mist launch on Saturday night, though unfortunately tension, nerves, or schoolboy exuberance prompted me to give Olivia the finger in a silly way just like I said fuck you to Kellie the day before at Guy's birthday. What a baby. Anyway. Saturday I bought two apricot trees, one for us and one for Julian's birthday, it's kind of a bad present an apricot tree inasmuch as, it didn't come with an offer to dig the freakin' hole to plant it, though I did get some compost to go with it. I also got Nicola H. a birthday present only ended up not seeing her as she had a cold and her birthday breakfast was cancelled. We had a good breakfast this morning at a cafe in North Melbourne after being turned away from two pompous bugger cafes in Carlton - who cares. And I finished the Richard and Mimi Farina book by David Hajdu which was tops even though he is pretty nasty to poor Donovan. As long as he keeps being nasty (or fair) to Dylan I'm cool with it. I can't remember what else happened on the weekend but it was OK.

Hey do you ever listen to Dirty Deeds on RRR? It's a truly wonderful gardening show and I recommend it. You can podcast it here. Enjoyable even if you don't have a garden (Annabel) or care about gardening (well, that's probably me - no I do care - actually I care more all the time). Bye!

why are there always ambulance sirens when a cool change is imminent?

Possible answers:

1. People can't stand the tension and do themselves damage or various organs just naturally shut down
2. They aren't ambulance sirens, they're Bureau of Meteorology sirens warning of possible light rain. The BOM and the Ambulance Society did a bulk siren order back in the 80s
3. The ambulance drivers get overexcited by the pressure in their skulls and go crazy
4. They are the ambulances of my mind rushing to put out fires on the sails of the windmills of my mind
5. ...?