11 October 2001 (box of crap treasure # umpteen)

You may remember on 5 January I mentioned I had found a box of crap which included a 'diary' from 11 October, 2001. It was actually a little disingenuous/lying to call it a diary as it is actually only five pages, and all relating to only one day - 11 October, 2001. I thought about typing it out, but decided it was better for you to read it as written. This also means I don't have to read it (and I am not tempted to add or subtract anything). By the time you read this, these pages will have been recycled comprehensively into something useful. 

For a little context, Mia and I (and Andrew and Ellen) were heading off to the US to tour with our band Huon. Then September 11 'happened' and I guess we were uncertain about whether we would go at all, and then we decided we would, and we did. This must have been me recording activities leading up to that time, well obviously it was, but I mean it was because of that. I was very close to completing my PhD, I think. 

more spray-on british

I think I mentioned when I discussed my rabbit hole re the Instant Pressure Pak Spray-On British Show that I would be doing more research and in a manner of speaking I am but it will take a bit more real print media research to get any further I suspect (old TV Weeks or something). However, I did purchase cheap a couple of Marty Feldman books online* and they finally showed up this week. In his (extremely posthumously published) autobiography, eyE Marty, Feldman barely mentions Australia but does say:

'The live shows went really well in Australia and the people were lovely.

'We did a show for telly too, which included footage of me at the Sydney Zoo talking to the animals and fooling around. We planned to go back one day and see the whole country, get a bit of a far-off culture into us.' (p. 202). 

A few pictures accompany this infuriatingly unspecific text like the one above, uncaptioned and really unclear. 

* Apparently I was also interested in MF 13 years ago. I had forgotten this but that is why blogs R good

weird shit

I did actually have a big productive work day today, but nevertheless I didn't necessarily earn the right to spend hour upon hour watching Mr Inbetween and drawing. I think I am going to have to remove the person doing the toasting's teeth as they look too much like lips. That's probably because teeth don't actually follow the edges of one's mouth, but sit behind the mouth opening. Learn something new every day. 

In other news (I know I said I wouldn't obsess over viewing stats but seriously...) this is one of the most viewed of my blog entries this week. It must be for some other weird reason than its content, which is as meaningless now in 2021 as it was in 2007 or whenever I posted it. I am assuming it's something like - someone has a code book and they are given the URL for that post and some numbers that refer to words in the sentences and they put together a new sentence from the components, either the words themselves or letters perhaps in the words, which refer to other concepts. I DON'T KNOW! All I know is there is no reason why 20+ people would want to read that stupid blog post in the last couple of days. 

activity

So this is my latest lockdown project, although it would probably be a project anyway lockdown or no lockdown, a series of drawings for a book of poems by a hot new previously unpublished author who needed my help it would seem. Usual caveats apply re: my inability or ability when it comes to actually depicting stuff (and I have to say I feel like this picture is ridiculously unbalanced but I can't really say why). Anyway. When you see the actual poem, you will come to appreciate that this is not a crazy interpretation of it, although the distant city and the colossal fujiesque mountain are really just my own idea that I extrapolated from what I read. I am going to do 8 pictures, I have done this (obvs) and one other so far, the one other tbh I am not completely certain about (it's OK but really I did it mainly to test out my new purchase, an Art Tracer, which is kind of like an electronic periscope that projects images onto the wall where you have to trace them). There's nothing actually traced in this picture except the axe and logs which were part of a line drawing in an old newspaper, and I didn't use the Art Tracer I just used tracing paper. It feels a bit naughty tracing a drawing to make a drawing, but it was very freely interpreted. Anyway - I feel pretty good about these, I think this could be a really nice project. 

The other thing I did today aside from my usual swathe of previously-whinged-about meetings was finally send of the final corrections for my grandmother's memoir, which has been over two years in the making. She died almost twenty years ago but left a few big chunks of biographical writing and a travel diary, which my mother and I have been turning into a book to be privately published and not sold to anyone. It's as much work as a real book though, and satisfying as it is complicated. I certainly learnt a lot (about my grandmother obvs but also from trying to flesh out through newspaper research some of the people she mentions in her recollections of the 1930s). 

Hope you're well. 

adventures of bunyip

 

who the fuck wuz steve jobs (from ten years ago)

Pic of BJ stolen from The New Yorker 5/10/11

Sorry, but I am shocked by the amount of public grief over Steve Jobs today, 6 October 2011. I am so shocked I am not going to say anything about it on, f'rinstance, Facebook because it seems everybody loved him like a brother. Who was he, and who cares? I'm sorry, I just don't get it.

I am in Edinburgh - Bert Jansch's hometown - and he died today too. That seems more important to me, out of the two, though let's face it neither were personally known to me.

When this post comes to light, cancer will have been cured, so it will seem almost funny to talk about death from cancer (like, Houdini died of a cold or whatever it was).

I am terminally disoriented in Edinburgh but I like it well enough. It's rainy. I wish I had more time to do stuff here but I won't. I am sort of really tired anyway. Probably got cancer. What I do definitely have is a weird pain in my back-shoulder-neck which just isn't going away. It wakes me up in the morning and the only thing that improves it is getting up and doing things. Even then it hurts to sneeze or yawn. Suxs. Anyway, greetings from the past, I'm mortified Steve Jobz iz deadd (that was how we used to write in 2011).

rabbit rabbit

I saw them yesterday for the first time in months (extension to 15km on Wednesday) and we had some good times.