return

I sent the previous post from a $2 for 10 mins terminal at Sydney Airport and used the word 'shitport' (I invented that myself - like it a lot) and the terminal deleted the word 'shit' from both the title and the posting itself. I assume on postings from the home computer this won't happen, i.e. it's not Blogger's policy but the computer terminal people's. As it was a large email I sent to Kathryn Clarke that was even crankier than the posting didn't actually send through, as far as I can tell (she may let me know otherwise). One of her rats is breathing strangely which is cause for concern.

Anyway so I was up all night, and of course on the plane across the aisle from me was a big, Of-Mice-and-Men kind of big, guy whose enormousness might have been attributable to his ability to feed continually on his own snot. And the 1 hour flight seemed to take about 5 hours even though Annabel lent me a comic novel to read which I am actually enjoying and intend to finish this evening.

I got a bunch of great records in Sydney, which I know is what you really want to hear about. I got four records by Hurrah (2 LPs, an EP and a hybrid) I only ever was really keen on their song 'Flowers' which was a b-side of a single I once had, which is reissued on the hybrid, so that's great. I guess I will listen to the others. That was a sound investment as each of those records was 50c. I also got a 2JJ live late 70s album and the Motors' Tenement Steps which I remember coming out in 1980 and being bagged by the right-on RRR people as being cod punk/new wave by old people, which it probably was but I'm enjoying it. Also a couple of cool singles including a promo EP for the Cumquat lable which I must do some research on. And a Utopia album Swing to the Right and... probably a lot more but it's cold in this back room and I want to go back and sit in front of the heater with those dogs I feel so much empathy with. Who are presently barking at the back door just as I would if someone locked me out the back after I ate my dinner.

Extraordinarily (of course, not) my workplace have contrived through incompetence to remind me how little they require to give me a proper job, by cutting me off the internet and tossing me back and forward between the usual (cliché, I know) petty bureaucrats in an organisation that has a ratio of 2 administrative staff to one academic, as I said to Kathryn Clarke the other day, they needed one to take me off the internet, now they need another one to put me back on but I have to find the right one. She being administrative staff herself (and working at the time I called her to complain) it seemed appropriate to dig the knife in as far as it would go. The fact that she works for another organisation on the other side of the nation, irrelevant. Those people all confer all the time and you only have to know one to communicate with them all.

A few days ago I arrived at Broadmeadows station on foot with a few minutes to catch a train and was confronted by two gormless youths, one prodding at his mobile by the station entrance and the other smoking a stupid cigarette by the stairs leading to the dumbest pedestrian bridge on earth. In the vast space between the two a $50 note was curling over on itself. I picked it up rapidly attempting to make eye contact with either boy in case there was to be some problem. Neither of these young men wished to deal with another person, and had obviously had no eyes for their immediate environment either, because they hadn’t seen the fifty. I think this is the beginning of me starting to wonder if perhaps some people are stupider than me.

I was in ACMI later that day with a copy of Sweet and Lowdown which had been due back the previous Thursday, so I was all ready to pay a $15 fine. I was told this would not be required as their computer had crashed earlier in the day and all the records were gone. I had to tell the woman behind the counter how this was the second lucky thing that had happened to me, that I had also found fifty dollars. She said the same thing had happened to a friend of hers a few days ago, ‘so it’s been a week of pineapples’. My first thought was, she calls a $50 note a pineapple because of its colour (I am pretty familiar with the $20 being a lobster but I’ve never heard a fifty being called a pineapple before). My second thought was, no, her friend bought $50 worth of pineapples. I didn’t say anything. A few days later I decided my first thought was the right one.

kingsford smith shitport

(This post reconfigured after being censored by the $2 internet terminal - removed words replaced in italic) I hate (yes, the machine censored the word 'hate') Sydney Airport and I am there right now with 8 mins 41 seconds of credit. I am only doing this to register to the world how bored and exhausted I am. I have been up all night and expect tomorrow I mean today to sleep all day. I had a rewarding dinner evening with friends I have known for two decades. And who I admire, love and respect. So that's OK. But what is it with taxi drivers. You get in a taxi and say I want to go to virgin blue terminal. He says, domestic or international. And I say domestic and he says, virgin blue or qantas. I suppose I should have said I want to go to the INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL, QANTAS, TO CATCH A DOMESTIC VIRGIN BLUE AEROPLANE, to Parmafucking gianna, but it only would have confused the issue. At the end of the day that is all it would have achieved. But only a few hours before I went out in the street to tell a taxi driver that his passengers Greg and Amanda and their children were about to get there. The taxi driver is on the other side of the road and he says 'you order a taxi?' and I say, yes, and the passengers will be along in a minute. So he asks me the name the taxi was ordered in and I tell him. And there is a silence. And then he says, going to Darlinghurst? Like there were a whole lot of taxis ordered to Stanmore under that surname at 3 in the morning for CRYING OUT LOUD and he just had to check this was the one going to darlinghurst because things could get really awkward amongst the massive queue of taxis... sometimes i think i am the only person who realises taxi drivers are ridiculous fools!!! [Later: perhaps I confused him by not being four people; perhaps Sydneysiders have an ongoing tease operation on taxi drivers by agreeing with, or confirming, everything they say]. Oops, got to post, about to run out of credit on this shitbox of a terminal.

greek restaurant

I was coming back from the conference having delivered my paper reasonably successfully (but incredibly fast probably) with Andrea who I often see at these kinds of things when Annabel SMSd to say there were explosions on the underground. I thought she meant, the Sydney underground (my grandmother for instance had been known to refer to all of Sydney's railways as 'the underground'). So it wasn't till we met up with her in Newtown that she revealed it was the London underground. Then we went to a Greek restaurant and about 1/2 way through our meal the proprietor brought down a big screen and played BBC world news, and Tony Blair's speech etc. 37 confirmed dead they are now saying. I wonder how this is being reported in the States.

haunted

The alarm clock went off twice very early this morning making the dogs jumpy and both times when I woke up with a jolt I saw out of the corner of my eye a presence leap across the room. Is this a protective spirit, or does it wish me harm? Perhaps a bit of both, stick and carrot.

Meanwhile I am headed for Sydney for a few days of grim spending and keeping up appearances. Actually I am not keeping up appearances at all. I am dressing comfortable. It just seems right.

clean out your desk

My contract ends in a few days and I have to go to Sydney tomorrow for a conference so I am emptying out my temporary office. What a pain in the arse.

dead mouse, uncomfortable snail, seedy me

On Friday when I got home Bela had a dead mouse he was casually flipping around like it was just one of the cool things he was into. I think he had been on this project for some time because I had noticed earlier in the day he had a lot of interest in my coat, on the chair inside the door and I of course had no idea why (and no particular interest). So now he's had his first kill (that we know of) and he strutted around like Scarface for a short time.

Suitably for a house of carnage such as this, there was a snail on the step which seemed terribly unhappy but I couldn't figure it out. I took the recycling out in the morning, and then later saw this snail which seemed to be trying to get out of its shell on the step. I thought I must have run over it with the trolley thing we keep the recycling in, and figured a bird would finish it off any minute. But it was just there straining. I tried to pick it up, and its shell was still intact, but it seemed to puff up which was disturbing so I left it for a while. Finally I went out there and picked it up. It was so odd, it was seemingly trying to crawl over a big prickly seedpod that had either become stuck to it or was in some way obstructing it... most peculiar. Anyway I put it on the grass and figured it had a fighting chance to work out the whole situation. It was gone later.

Yesterday afternoon was the glamorous and glittering wedding reception for Andrew and Katrina. Andrew's and Katrina's speeches were beautiful and they looked very handsome together. I noticed that the two glasses of red I had drunk by this time seemed to be making me ridiculously drunk. I was blabbering and being stupid. I congratulated Andrew's mother on her speech and really had nothing to say. I was a goof. We went back to Michael and Nicola's house and ate borek and then went on to the Old Bar, I started drinking whiskey and that's where things really went downhill; I recall telling Shane and Olivia they should get married - I recall very little overall however. The bands least of all, which is ridiculous, as it was a good line-up.

This morning I was very sad and throwing up. There were the usual stages of a hangover with a few interesting extra elements. One was visions when I closed my eyes of Peter Boothish (but more abstract) scenes of carnage, in black on red. My god! Even now (12 hours later) I don't feel great but I will live, I would say. Randall, Carla and Rupert came round and we went for a walk with the dogs. Rupert was right into the beagles and they were very good with him, although Charlie barked a bit much in the first instance. We all got a lot of mud on our feet.

Mia's adventures, my unventures

I went to the major demo in the city yesterday morning, they said there were 120 000 people there, I didn't count that many, but it's possible. I got there a little late - only heard Beasley from miles off. People seemed pleased though.

I spoke to Mia yesterday and apparently when she, Tracey and Boyracer played New York Mike Myers came to the show. Well, I guess he's a man of taste, if you forget about that shit-drinking scene in the second Austin Powers.

I just booked my flight to Sydney for next week. I should have done this months ago but I seem to have managed it ok. The one problem is it leaves me with virtually no money for the next five days. Well, this is not an unusual situation, however, it does make me think now might be the time to drag all those stupid review CDs off to Dixon's (later: I did, though they only bought a few, but they gave me $58 which I'm not about to complain about).