Friday, January 29, 2021

someone left a case out in the rain




I know it was silly but when I saw this case in the park, shut and laid down carefully, I thought well look there's no way the person who put it there didn't know that it was in some way an invitation to look inside it. And I thought that is kind of suspicious. I almost looked inside it, actually, but instead I called the police, in the spirit of, I wonder what they will say/do.

The guy I spoke to at the North Melbourne police station had never heard of Ievers Reserve (two minutes from the PS), of Gatehouse Street (ditto), or seemingly even of suitcases. Maybe he was very, very tired. He asked 'do you think it's suspicious?' and I sort of hedged around that, because the obvious response is a sarcastic 'no, this was just an opening gambit in a casual chat', but then it occurred to me that perhaps 'suspicious' was a trigger word. So I said yes it was. Anyway I told him where it was and went on to the public records office, where I spent the morning looking at court documents for Raymond Borg and meeting minutes for the decentralisation of government departments in Victoria 1972-3. Passing by again four hours later, it was in the same place I had last seen it, seemingly untouched. [Shrugs]

Update next day: I won't bore you with a picture, just these words: I walked past it again this morning and it had been opened. It was/is a camera case I think, whether it had anything in it yesterday is unclear but it would have been hard to stuff it full of money or corpse parts with all that moulded foam rubber. I could have saved the police a lot of trouble (of talking to me on the phone) by looking inside but of course I was troubled by the possibility of it being $100 000 of drug cash, and what I would then do with said drug cash, clearly I'd have to take it somewhere and bury it for a decade, and that would just be a major fucking hassle wouldn't it. 

the blue mask


Well I'm just going to say it, this was the first Lou Reed album I heard and it was the time that it occurred to me that, well, this Lou Reed is probably pretty terrible. The song 'Women', which let's be frank, is excruciatingly bad, and the song about JFK, which is also insanely poor, are the only two I actually remember, but do you know now I'm thinking of it I actually think that perhaps I heard the whole album played on the radio when it came out, in a kind of promotional shizzle. Maybe not, maybe I just heard big bits of it on RRR or something. Anyway, I actually don't give a loose root about The Blue Mask. This is what I think of these days when I think of blue masks (this is all today's crop - well technically yesterday's, a few hours ago though):




So I may not have mentioned that since the beginning of the year, since I have been walking a lot (not the 20 000 steps a day I was doing late last year, but 10 000 - actually an average of about 11 000 a day) I decided that it would be more interesting and also more productive if I did something about it so I pick up a lot of rubbish. I put it in bags and bin it. 

Now, there's a lot of gross stuff out there in the world but the three grossest IMO are masks (#1, because they've been over someone's mouth and they probably stink), fast food i.e. KFC and McDonalds packaging, and Coke cans/cups/bottles because, I guess, well, I just hate Coke and I always have. It's all foul but the masks freak me out the most. I just can't imagine people just pulling their masks off in the street and throwing them to the ground, I haven't seen it happen, but it apparently does happen, at least, these things are everywhere. 

Once again I find myself feeling I must be the naivest of the naive because I don't understand a society where people recognise the value, apparently, of wearing a mask but not the value of throwing a disposable mask in the bin - !!! I actually have found a few non-disposable masks, too, so I guess some of them just get dropped by accident, which I kind of understand. But still. What the hell people. 

I don't have anything more to say than this. Except that Lou Reed song about women is execrable. If I was a woman I would sue him. Unless it's a joke? I wonder if Laurie Anderson ever heard it. Maybe she figured she could love him better if she didn't listen to his back catalogue.

Thursday, January 28, 2021

28 jan 2006 good times (probably)

 

What a fabulous poster. I am pretty pleased with this. The show was 15 years ago today. 

Monday, January 25, 2021

mid to late jan 2011

25 Jan 2011: I am trying to start the habit of blogging into the future. If I keep this up I will NEVER REALLY DIE, at least not in blogworld, except of course my blog posts into the future will eventually run out and then I WILL REALLY DIE. I wonder what blogger actually 'is' and whether it will outlive me.
I am in the final throes (I hope) of finishing my short book currently known as The Bogan Delusion. I am at the point where I am 4/5 finished but feeling a crisis of confidence, now being so immersed in what I have to say that I feel like it's not worth saying and uncertain whether I believe it or not. I am at the point where I have railed against class hatred, but then go on to talk about why I have every reason to feel class hatred if anyone does. I'm glad I wrote that down, it now seems a lot more easy to deal with.
I am also over where I would expect to be word count wise at this point in the book, so I can start pruning and culling a bit, which is a relief and a pleasure. This morning I have taken Barry and Charlie out, put some washing on the line, put some clothes away, thrown some mouldy things out that were in the fridge, and fussed around on the internet putting up pictures of Barry etc - time wasting.
I wonder what it will be like in 10 years' time and whether every second conversation will be about Facebook. Annabel last week said she was fed up with facebook and it was a great relief to not have it in her life and I thought about this for a couple of days and then emailed her saying however much you hate/blame the messenger you are cut out of people's lives if you don't get involved in things like that. Hopefully in 10 years we won't be talking about it constantly however.

Sunday, January 24, 2021

today will be bad, tomorrow worse


I'm talking in terms of heat. Tomorrow is going to hit 40 apparently, today only mid-30s, which is bad enough. I'm never entirely sure how to endure these kinds of days/heatwaves but of course they do end eventually (hold the front page). I have some stupid admin to do so I'm just going to spend my day doing things like that, and whining. 

Thursday, January 21, 2021

box of crap #20, 21, 22



Three disparate items. The top image is one of a bunch of photocopies of stuff from a Chads Tree scrapbook, lightly annotated. I don't have the slightest clue why I have this stuff, although it just occurred to me that it *may* have had something to do with the Chads Tree compilation CD - did I write something for that? I might have. Or I was asked to and it wasn't used. Either way I might have said is there some gumpf, or perhaps some bumpf, I can look through for ideas/detail? Because that would enrich the whole. So perhaps that's why I had that. 

The second thing is fairly self-explanatory, a classic Mia handbill for a show and a very fine line-up, I miss the Paper Planes and Marika was such a great songwriter, and probably indeed still is. 

The last picture I hesitate to share, it's one of a few along those lines, of me in the 1960s. I was having a great time clearly. I have these pictures and I am not entirely certain by what channel they came to me but they belonged to one of my grandmothers I am fairly sure and I retain them not through sentimentality about myself as a young child but because I loved both my grandmothers and I miss them (in a very different way to the way I miss Paper Planes). 

women's protest against trump 21 jan 2017





another visit to the yrnong

This morning Laura and I went to Monstalvat. I can't believe I'd never been! It's pretty extraordinary. Anyway I'll tell you...