thinking up title takes too much effort

Once again, I'm ill once more. This is the season for hangovers of course but I do not have one. It is just another ridiculous minor illness as Old Testament God (OTG) goes on trying to turn me into some kind of modern day Job with death by a thousand irritating and briefly incapacitating minor ailments.

Yesterday afternoon was quite delightful as we attended a party in Hepburn Springs for my old friend Fiona, who unbelievably is turning 40. As I said to Mia as we left, Fiona is one of the few people we know (I realise this is a slap in the face for almost everyone I know who reads this - oh well) who is simultaneously a lot of fun and no bullshit (this doesn't do her justice if you don't know her, as it might suggest for instance she is some kind of naif, which she isn't). Anyway it was a very nice afternoon I must confess.

I finally watched the first two seasons of The Killing (the original) and while I liked it very much I also have to say that Mia is quite right when she says (after watching 2 1/2 eps) that it is quite contrived. I won't go into detail about the problems I had with it (PM me! No, don't) but I will say this: while I appreciate the different strands/storylines/spheres that are covered over time, I don't think all of these realistically work within the 3 week timeframe, specifically: the political stuff does, the family stuff doesn't. That said, I really enjoyed the characters and performances. Particularly the characters of Meyer and Lund, and also Theis and Pernille. I also - but I would - loved the Copenhagen locations. A city I've never actually seen.

I just checked out Job on w'pedia to make sure he really was OT and he is. W'pedia says he had a daughter called Keren-happuch, a name meaning 'horn of eye-makeup'. That cannot possibly be true, as it is so nonsensical.

comics at the ngv

Yesterday Shane got into town and he, Mia and I went on a trip to town, firstly to the Botanics to see the corpse flower (55 minute wait in the sun, no thank you, we glanced it through the front door of the greenhouse, it was impressive from afar) and then to two branches of the NGV to see firstly photographs & a short film by Thomas Demand and then photographs by Jeff Wall. But at the main NGV in the foyer they had this arrangement going on. People were being invited, unsupervised or actually generally untutored, to 'draw comics'. 

Here were some of the efforts - just a random few from the top of the pile:

And here's the one I did. You could barely call it 'off the top of my head'. Because really if it had been thirty five years ago I would have done pretty much the same thing.

butterball lost & found

Butterball spent a long afternoon/evening yesterday stuck under the house next door. He didn't like it. He crammed himself into a space near a vent and meowed pitifully - once he realised this would get attention. He is still very dirty. But pleased to be back.

and to top it off...

it tolls for thee

It was simultaneously depressing (for the reinforcement of the known fact that dogs are slaves to their own - well, pavlovian responses) and hilarious to see Charlie and Barry's routine last night.

A week or more ago, Bela had somehow cast off his collar; it lay next to the front door. When the dogs come in at night - which they always do, for an hour or two at least - Charlie goes to bed almost immediately, presumably half out of agedness/laziness and half out of the desire to find a surveillance/control point in the room. Barry however has a different mode of asserting himself - he trots around and finds things to do, minor annoyances so we tell him off and his existence and importance is reaffirmed. Last night, he found Bela's collar and took it into his bed to chew (it tasted like a cat's neck, presumably).

The ringing of the collar bell immediately got Charlie awake and aware. As far as Charlie was concerned, there was some cat, its bell resonant, just flagrantly and actively present in the room. Barry, unaware of the effect on Charlie (he was facing the opposite direction), continued to harass the bell. Charlie was bolt upright trying to pinpoint the location of what was clearly, to her, a prancing and audacious cat. She got up and went to every possible corner of the room, at each point listening again for the bell, which was persistent but less revealing each time. Finally Barry cottoned on that Charlie was excited about something strange in the room, and both went into sentry mode. They patrolled for some time until Barry got sick of the lack of hard evidence and went back to the collar. At which point Charlie started all over again.

It could have escalated and been even better slapstick but then Barry got sick of what was, surely, a pretty lame chewing exercise and went to sleep. The end. But a good scriptwriter could spin that into something pretty fine I would say.

bad day

I was looking at posts from 2008 a while ago and wow, they are the halcyon days of this blog. Nothing even remotely as good happens now. There are some real classics there, not just me but the respondents, what a classy bunch. I guess they have all moved on. 

Today was a bad day as I broke the car door and haven't been able to find my keys for about 30 hours now. It occurred to me that perhaps shingles impaired one's cognitive function but I guess I was just looking for a scapegoat. Besides shingles feeds on your anger/angst/discomfort, so you can't let it get to you otherwise it grows. 

Hope you're well.