made it

So this is my triumph but I'm not sure I'm going to take it much further with duolingo. To be tested - just as I was probably in the first week - on the Finnish word for Australia ('Australia') and koala ('koala') (at least Egypt is 'Egypti' and camel is 'kameli' - got tested on both of those too today) demeans us both. It seems pretty obvious I am not about to unleash a whole swathe of new words and I guess the duolingo model must be something like: string the lower tier language learners along (most of them drop off early anyway, obviously, none the wiser that there is no great epic trove unfolding down the track) and perhaps a few who hang around and finally catch on to the deficiency will opt for a more popular, expansive language course. I mean before they started offering Finnish I was dabbling in Norwegian and German and Duo still hopes I might one day take one or the other of those further sometime. 

Anyway, I've signed up to another app called Drops, which is sort of the same but seems - at this early juncture anyway - a little more sophisticated. Drops exchanges a lot more English for pictures than Duolingo which is probably good. It also, of course, doesn't hurt my language confidence that about 80% of the words I'm currently being 'taught' I also know from Duolingo. So I have a 96% score at the moment (largely because of my mental block about the difference between a finger pointing to a small ball - which means I think 'this' ('tämä') as opposed to a finger pointing to a small ball next to a big block, which means 'small' ('pieni'). Speaking of 'pieni', it willl be a big relief to put 'Mr Blue Sky, why is that small tree dancing?' behind me forever. I'd tell you what that was in Finnish but I can't be bothered correcting autocorrect every word.   

a walk this evening in north melbourne

They are renovating the ice cream shop. What's that about?! 

back

I hurt my back this morning in a weird way probably the weird way most backs get hurt/hurt themselves - I think I was bending down for something. I actually thought my liver broke or some other internal organ but now I think it is just strain of some minor otherwise never bothered with muscle, just trying to make itself known.

I thought 'either I can lie down and see if this passes or I can try to crash through' and I decided. possibly stupidly, on the second option. I was just about to take Perry out on our usual perambulation of 2500 steps on a route he knows well and considers to be a satisfactory walk. I started gingerly but picked up pace and ultimately it was fine, though it is still twingey.

What I noticed, which is what I think is the most interesting point here, is that Perry - who I tend to assume is powering along like a demon without really considering that he is on a lead connected to my hand - was actually extremely considerate of my slightly less mobile situation and walked a lot more slowly and sensibly (loose lead, which he sometimes finds difficult to countenance) and was overall just a good boy. People always tell you that your dog is deeply connected to your actions and demeanour but you forget it's the case in the day-to-day. 

Well, the joke's on him because having fully appreciated this I am going to do more disruptions to get him fully attentive to what I want him to do and remind him more in his conscious brain that I am his leader and don't need to be protected from every dog/tall man who comes past. 

While I'm here I'll tell you about yesterday. We went out with Ferdie (I am now ready to officially announce: Barry died a few months ago. Sorry to be brusque about it, I'm not being glib, he was a very, very good boy and he had an incredibly good life, almost to the end) up around the creek almost to the same place we went in the second week of June but not quite. 

We battled some steep creek banks for a while...

and came out where there is a stretch of open, um, stone, sandstone maybe? Anyway it was weird . It was weird because while we have crossed that terrain many times before now it has been covered in, well, it's probably not hessian but if I say hessian you'll get the picture roughly speaking. Or wait, here's an actual picture:

Ferdie, if you're interested, is in good spirits. It's hard to imagine he's old but he is (11 I think) but still the same affectionate and enthusiastic boy though not as naughty and I would say (never say never but...) his escaping days are over. He spends a lot of his time with the cats, which is bizarre but I guess it's like the cessation of enmity in war or something. They seem to get on well together. 

laura's epic

My girlfriend Laura is a genius who only does good things. This book is magical and you can own it for not much money. I don't even need to tell you how good it is - you can just look at the pictures and it's obvious. Buy one or more. 

new scheme

I had a great idea walking back from Rocksteady this evening which I will put to you succinctly. It will really work. 

You know how there is a scheme where artists whose work is resold (by a public entity, not between private individuals) over the value of $1000 get 5%? Well that should totally be the case for musicians too. 

I was listening to a podcast recently it was an interview with the guy(s?) who started Discogs and I thought gosh - it'd be piss easy for them to incorporate a small percentage payment to the original artist anytime someone buys a record. Of course, the big winners would be shit like Pink Floyd (in fact, PF's Dark Side of the Moon was the example given of an album that probably has more pressings than any other). But, and not to make this about me, I have been involved in some records that are now selling in the $300-$400 range on Discogs, or at least they're priced at that rate I don't know if they're actually selling but that's not the point. 

The tipping point needs to be lower for records because there are more of them, they're not unique art works so let's say - $100. Every time someone sells a record to someone on discogs for more than a hundred dollars, the people who made it - assuming they're registered with the appropriate official arbiter - should get 5%. It's only fair. It will also recompense all those people who put in all the work all that time ago and then didn't really have that career in music they possibly deserved and they wasted their lives and are bitter and a drain on resources. Also, people like me who don't really need the money but, you know, it's only fair. 

Spotify should use its excessive wealth to make this happen and then maybe less people would hate Spotify. Think about it, Spotify! Because you are quite hated! 

Record collectors are not quite the scum of Spotify but they're on the scale. They also deserve to pay extra for being allowed to continue living on Earth. I hate them too. I mean Pink Floyd are the worst of the bunch. 

renovating

We don't go to this dog park much, it's a strangely macho place not the owners so much but the dogs yeah definitely. I don't know if the revised design is intended to change behaviour here. 

Samuel Hatty's sister used to live over the road, you might recall. 

Skygack

I have to tell you, strange but realistic, I am less likely to post things here about current work I'm doing because I don't want to be gazumped or have my thoughts stolen by AI. I have a strong sense that it would regard things like this blog as easy pickings. I mean, obviously it takes 0.1 seconds to read everything and sift through it and perhaps even reject a lot, but I am reasonably good at sourcing things (except when I forget) and I probably do quite a bit of decent research for nothing.

So whereas a few years ago I would have been very generous in discussing my current research into Mr. Skygack, and whereas admittedly I have fine tuned the Mr Skygack wikipedia page - probably more of a boon to AI than this blog - I am still reluctant to put the interesting sticky bits up here for a bot to snatch. 

But I had nowhere else to go with this snippet so I just wanted to show how actually fucking useless AI can be (though I don't know how old this particular kerfuffle is or whether it's even real, I suppose). So for context: I'm interested in a short-lived comic strip phenomenon called 'Mr. Skygack, from Mars', which ran in US newspapers between 1907-11 in its initial incarnation. The feature was syndicated, ineptly by our standards, and different papers did different things to try and promote it / be associated with it. One paper, for instance, had a competition for a dinner set which required entrants finishing a sentence about Mr. Skygack. He also very quickly got in the general conversation, so journalists and columnists would throw him into their musings - along the lines of, I wonder what Mr. Skygack would make of... etc. One paper had the genius idea of throwing in various lines along the general lines of, 'Mr. Skygack coming soon' and 'What would you say to Mr. Skygack?' and, like the above, 'Mr. Skygack here to-day'. 

So why a computer wants to go through Newspapers.com and clip out particular death notices, I don't know, but you can see what the confusion was here, because I guess a computer can't see a context of the top line being just one more iteration of spruiking Mr. Skygack, and instead assumes that it must be the headline for the article following. Icing on the cake is that it reads the 'a' in 'Raber' as an 's', so Mrs. John Raber becomes, in death, Skygack Rsber. The other details the computer has recorded, such as the children, are just a mangling of misread names; the name of her spouse - I mean obviously the spouse should be Mr. John Raber - I can't work out where that crazy jumble came from. Doesn't matter. Mildly amusing though I suppose if you are vested in people not being replaced by machines, or whatever we're calling this now. 

things in streets

Terry on the 6 November 76. I am not sure what this is about, sorry. The name 'Terry' does appear in the Age for that day 19 times, including once in a mention of Terry Norris and also once in a mention of Terry Donovan, who were both adding their name to an advertisement for a colloquium on the meaning of 11 November and the Dismissal a year before. Perhaps one of those Terrys did this. Perhaps someone was inspired by the terry curtains included in a caravan for sale at Roma Caravans of Camberwell. Anyway it can't just be random, it must have a meaning. 

I noticed it for the first time a few days ago in a lane that Perry and I often walk through in the morning. Just sitting there hiding in plain sight. 

Yesterday I noticed this in Brunswick: 

Man I wish I could read it but I bet that cunt is older than 60 now. So the whole thing probably needs an overhaul. 

isn't it strange

 

Evansville Press 5 May 1909 p. 4

things i like right now

I have been hoeing a few disparate rows at the moment, in-between doing my tax and occasionally playing the Our Daughter's Wedding album and walking Perry. I finally got into the show known everywhere but Indonesia and Australia as The Morning Show but here in Australia as Morning Wars, I assume because there's already a show called The Morning Show in Australia but I don't know, I should check. I have to say that the first season is really well done, and the acting is rad. The second season is a bit 'difficult second album' but still has its high points. Good intelligent use of music. Billy Crudup operates an incredible character who quite often doesn't talk but the camera lingers on his face and he communicates anyway. Right now I'm watching episodes with Valeria Golino who I think is also really tremendous. 

I think I have mentioned in the past that I enjoy Giles Brandreth's podcast Rosebud and just this morning I was listening to the Bjorn (a man so famous you just know who I'm talking about) episode. Bjorn is a little understated but it's still a really good interview (probably a bad idea to do it in front of an audience, but sure). (Possibly Bjorn insisted on that on the basis that it underlined the charity aspect of the program). 

My current podcasts are: Handsome, Slate Culture Gabfest, Slate Political Gabfest, usually WTF but not always, Blank Check except when I couldn't give a loose root about the director/films, Dave O'Neil's The Debrief, If Books Could Kill, Sizzletown, You're Wrong About... that's about it atm. Well it's not but no doubt when I remember the others I can add them in and remove this sentence. When possible, I subscribe to the podcasts in question (btw aside from apple tv, most of the streaming services I have typically had at my fingertips are unavailable to me all as a result of some cunt hacking my credit card and diverting funds to Barcelona and I cbf putting in the new details). 

The Debrief is really a case of a great show made from the rump of someone's day - Dave O'Neil drives to and from the absurdly diverse shows he plays in different parts of the country with the other comedians he's on the bill with and he kind of workshops the process before and after. So simple, so straightforward. A lot of fun. 

I have about ten novels on the go and I really should call a moratorium and finish them off. I know - I'll put them all in a list and then do it. 

arden st

I think I have mentioned before my fantasy that atop this building in Arden St North Melbourne is an actual house. It probably isn't. Or maybe it is. I mean, I can dream, right? 

Also, I wanted you to see the rainbow. Because remember, when in the sky the bow is displayed, be sure you think of... 

the book arcade

More books than anyone could ever want, as evidenced by the fact that no-one wants them (actually there's quite a fast turnover here. But I'm still not sure that anyone wants them). (Perry was interested in the rubber chicken but I dissuaded him). 

end of hk (a week plus ago)

You can fill in your own captions, they'd be more interesting than anything I came up with. 

last couple of days in hong kong - this time last week

I guess if there's a lesson to be learned it's something like either, don't try to find your way around HK on your own or if you do don't use maps on your phone to do it or some other thing that is something to do with general expectations about things being where they are 'meant' to be (I am n.o.t. not criticising HK by the way, not in this regard anyway, I'm just saying that I found it very disorienting etc - but of course - I am who I am). 

I'll probably post about the record shop I did get to go into soon enough but right now here's the one that was closed when I got there. Zoo records. A little peek through the window made me think, well, I'm kind of glad that it's closed so there's no need for me to awkwardly engage with the owner (there was almost no space in it do anything that wasn't awkward - and as it was there were two people waiting ahead of me to go in, so jeepers). I just hastened to the lift and hoped the owner didn't show up before I got in it. Of course the lifts were going up and down and almost making it to whatever floor Zoo records was on and then changing its mind and going elsewhere... whatever. I didn't get to Zoo records. I did get to go to Infree records, more about that sometime down the line. 

I don't know why I took this photograph - it is down the corridor from Zoo records outside the lifts. I don't know. 

Sleeping cat at Kowloon Park. I went to Kowloon Park to get some breakfast. I saw on google maps or mapsonmyphone if that's not the same thing that there was a place called something like Cafe on the Park which I imagined might be serviceable. It so wasn't that I initially went right past it, rather than being an actual cafe on the actual park it is the foyer of the boy scouts association with a lot of cake available. 

This (below) is just an amazing building, but they are all amazing buildings in their way, let's be fair. 

And below is where I did get my breakfast. Perfectly fine but not really a restaurant and if the woman who runs it got joy out of life this morning it wasn't through her interaction with me. 

Here are a couple of other curios.

Below ha ha, right? I should post that on facebook and get someone make a bleak, mundane acknowledgement post of the inherent humour. Or they will say, 'how long are you in Hong Kong? Be sure to go to Zoo Records and HK Bit'. Etc

 My wrap up thoughts will come later.