tuesday : 28 dec 2004

Holey crap. The earthquake was so powerful it made the planet wobble in its orbit, and deaths have been recorded in Somalia, Africa. Apparently some Japanese tourists in one of the resorts saw the water go down and warned that tidal waves were coming two hours before disaster struck. They should know, but no one believed them. I swear that some people must have done extra study at university to become so stupid. Dumb people deserve to die!!! Ahem. In other news, you will be happy to know that Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the renowned scientist and SF writer who lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, is alive and well. Click here to read his message to the world.

Apart from killer earthquakes, the four days off was fine. I mostly stayed up late and ate bad food. I spent yesterday afternoon and night at Marylu's place catching up with goss, watching stuff and pretending to play happy families at the local movie theatre. Bloody good fun actually. Made me feel useful for a change, and less like the man-child that I am.

wednesday : 15 dec 2004

Been to the flicks for the third time this week to use up tickets that were due to expire today. I have to say it's pretty surreal. You come home (usually late) from work, chill out for a spell, then have a shower, put your 'chav' wear, drive to the multiplex by yourself, and then disappear into another world for two hours. It would be very therapeutic if I actually had something wrong with me, har har. I have another movie pass that's valid until the end of the month, so I'll go again tomorrow night to see if I either get sick of the movie treadmill or want to do it some more. However, between relaxation time and being a cinephile, I have accomplished virtually nothing at home this week. No bother, really, although I must ring dad back tomorrow night. You can't read this dad, but sorry young fella.

So. Thoughts about being single earlier in the week collided with two news articles that raised a smirk and made me feel less like a circus freak. ("Roll up! Roll up! See the astounding and terrifying Single Bloke. Don't miss this spectacle, folks. You will never forget it!") Apparently Linda Hamilton, yes the star of the two good Terminator films and also rubbish such as Dante's Peak, in which she simply looked wholesome and gorgeous – that Linda Hamilton, well I read that she has not kissed anyone or even dated for two years. But wait, there's more. The goofy actor from the American Pie movies, Jason Biggs, the one who is caught dirty dancing on the internet among other mishaps, et cetera. Well yesterday's paper said that he has not had a girlfriend for two years either. In fact, he is the latest single to join Match.Com. The gossip item also reported that women kept expecting him to be like his drongo characters. Is this another case of Hollyweird, or can us mere mortals take comfort from these tales of woe?

tuesday : 30 nov 2004

Last night I had a jolly good time shooting the breeze with some reviewers from Michael's DVD Info Page. Two of them certainly enjoyed a tipple – I had trouble keeping pace, actually. This was in the Blue Train restaurant mind you. While Monday night is not my usual drinking night, I succumbed to the beer pressure and slurped the turps to the point where maximum conversation lubrication occurs with the lowest signal to noise ratio. All in all, it was fucking fine way to spend a balmy evening in Melbourne Towne, one has to admit.

In stark contrast, tonight's action-packed agenda consisted of grocery shopping at Bi-Lo-Brow, web surfing, and evaluating the AC power filter upgrade on my headphone equipment. Ooopse, I did it again: yesterday I marched back down to the hi-fi shop and bought another power conditioner. I did test it last night, but the results were underwhelming, possibly due to the alcohol in my system (booze dilates your blood vessels) and/or the need to burn-in the power unit first. Whatever the cause, I got the results I expected 24 hours later: more detail, a slightly lusher sound stage, better control of sibilants, and a touch more bass punch. How sweet the sound.

The next evolution will happen when the headphone amplifier arrives this week, and I am bloody well hanging out for it!! The audio shop in Brisbane had to ship over a unit from GSPAudio in England, so with luck it would have been sent via priority air mail or better yet, a courier service. Arrghh! I want instant gratification and I want it five minutes ago! Must be patient must be patient must be patient must be patient must be patient must be patient must be patient must be patient must be patient must be patient must be patient must be patient must be patient must be patient... But even when the amplifier arrives, it will need about 48 hours of initial use before I can listen to it critically, and the manufacturer actually recommends three weeks of burn-in!!

(The sacred ritual of 'burning in' a new amplifier, CD player, cable or whatever else, involves playing music through the component continuously. For instance, my Sennheiser HD600 headphones are said to require 500 hours of use before they are fully broken in. Oh yeah – this is a whole other world of madness that exists under the dooner of everyday life. Then again, I cannot help taking it a step further by imagining the industrial designers at Sennheiser testing this 500 hour break-in period on rabbits and German shepherds...)

wednesday : 24 nov 2004

Howdy all. Your humble narrator is still in hermit mode, fighting summer apathy and doing even more arduous research into headphone amplifiers. The tough thing about this venture is that my choices are limited to what retailers in Australia are selling. That represents about 5% of products available world wide, although North America is a zone unto itself because of the 110 volt mains power standard in use there. Europe has 230V and Australia uses 240V (which is what the aborigines were using quite happily for 40,000 years before the convict settlers arrived). The upshot is that I have finally ordered a tasty looking unit made in the UK, and I'm just waiting for stocks to be confirmed by the audio retailer in BrisVegas, because demand for this little dynamo is currently outstripping the factory output. But I digress.

Telstra delivered an amusing punch line to this year's Australian Idol cringe-fest. Our esteemed communications carrier graciously published a link to the Idol winner's website – hosted, one assumes, by the Big T. itself. Unfortunately for all involved, the ".au" was left off the web address "www.caseydonovan.com.au". At this juncture we cross live to Telstra's own redfaced delegated, as quoted on Casey's home page. Read it and weep with laughter:

Bigpond apologises to Casey posted by BMG
Posted on Tue Nov 23, 2004 09:50:46

BigPond Corporate Affairs Manager, Craig Middleton, said BigPond deeply regrets the inclusion of the incorrect website address in an advertisement celebrating Casey's Australian Idol win. The correct site is www.caseydonovan.com.au "BigPond apologises for any embarrassment or offence to Ms Donovan, her family and to anyone who has accessed the incorrect website," Mr Middleton said. "Since being alerted to the error, we have taken a number of steps to reduce the risk of customers accessing the incorrect site, including the placement of a page on the BigPond service which will direct BigPond customers to the Australian Casey Donovan website," he said. BigPond also has advised web content filtering providers of the US site's content, to have it blocked for customers who subscribed to Internet filtering services.

Oooh yeah, that's correct. Telstra unwittingly sent who-knows-how-many eager, young, underaged Idolettes to a hardcore gay porn site, namely this one. Furthermore, the offending web detour could not have been listed in the various NetNanny software filters doing the rounds. I wonder if Mr. Donovan scored any new subscribers from the blunder. Squeaky clean Guy Sebastian (aka username 'theFro') perhaps? Thanks to Heath G. for relating this most newsworthy of news items over the phone this evening. "You complete me."

thursday : 11 nov 2004

Nothing much to report from planet Earth. Life strobes onward like a time-lapse film where things buzz around madly but the greater landscape stays the same.

Having rediscovered the spiritual bliss of listening to music on headphones, I've been hiding out in my bedroom slash library a lot lately, going through my CD collection and weeding out titles that no longer beat my eardrums. The stack of rejects (it's time to go... Naïve by KMFDM) is growing slowly centimetre by centimetre, probably because the nature of this exercise is necessarily nostalgic. So there I am, lying in bed, wasting time revisiting craggy old sonic fossils from yesteryear. There are worse ways to unwind after a long day toiling away in the corporate ant farm.

I have also been auditioning dedicated headphone amplifiers to improve the already silky performance of my Sennheiser HD600 audiophile cans. Currently I'm using a superceded Arcam 8 stereo amplifier for juice. The conventional wisdom dictates that the headphone socket on most consumer hi-fi components are afterthoughts that compromise sound quality. A headphone amplifier has circuits and transformers that optimises incoming mains power specifically to drive headphones, and in the world of high fidelity sound, having enough clean power on tap is everything. However, the main point of testing these amplifiers is not merely to find one I like, but rather, to figure out how much of an improvement they are over the Arcam integrated box. Do I really need to get one? It is a toss up between the British Musical Fidelity X-CAN V3, which uses valves, and the new and improved Perreaux Silhouette SXH2 made in New Zealand, which replaces their popular (and sold out) SXH1 unit. No-one has reviewed the SXH2 yet, but cyber scuttlebutt favoured the older X-CAN V3 over the SXH1.

I am excited about an alternative headphone upgrade that should be arriving from the US any day now: high quality replacement leads for the standard Sennheiser cord. This tasty Cardas lead retails for $US150.00 and has been engineered to suit the characteristics of the Sennheiser HD580, HD600 and HD650 premium range. Perhaps to keep the price competitive, Sennheiser included a serviceable but musically unerotic lead that could be unplugged from the headset and replaced. Conventional wisdom also dictates that the build of the audio lead (shielding, the type and grade of wire used, how they are terminaated) affects sound quality, though electronic purists argue that improvements are largely subjective, due to vague psychological phenomena such as the so-called 'expectation effect'. After reading countless appraisals written by audio magazine journalists and hobbyists on the Internet, I have yet to be convinced that there is no improvement to be gained from such upgrades. You just have to be aware that any perceived improvement may be in the order of say 5%. For example, cleaner treble or punchier bass. If you can afford to experiment (and I can) then nothing beats giving it a bash yourself – within the realms of common sense, of course.

friday : 29 oct 2004

For crying out loud. I have to do another journal entry just to make room for more comments, so here it is. The most exciting news of late involved seeing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre tonight with Michael from work, the only soul out of our bunch brave enough to watch it too. I rang the ACMI this arvo to find out if they were showing a real 35mm blow up print from 16mm or just projecting video from a DVD, and it was an actual print. That sucker must be 30 years old by now! It was definitely a privilege to see it projected properly in what ACMI modestly call "the best cinema screen in Australia", and also on the film's 30th anniversary, as Hank did in BrisVegas. It still holds up as a grand 'fuck you' to the normal conventions of story telling and how to treat characters. Apart from Michael, several other punters in the cinema (well attended) had not seen the flick. Very cool indeed.

The rest of the weekend should be a quiet one except for perhaps seeing another film tomorrow night at the ACMI, doing my tax return, selling furniture, and gardening. The fun never stops. I need sleep and I also want to finish reading the Hemingway. Should do that later on, in fact, if I can stay awake long enough. Yawn.

thursday : 28 oct 2004

4:51am. Oooohhh yeah. Groove Armada gig (bloody excellent) at short notice with Michael from at 8:00pm, then local clubbing (bloody excellent) till 4:30am. Gulp. I'm about to hit the sack and resurrect myself for office work at 7:30am or there abouts, probably closer to the customary 8:00am, me thinks. At least I'll salvage what's left of my REM sleep...maybe. Gotta fool the body clock first...Ciao.

tuesday : 26 oct 2004

With the day spent at home, I had an early dinner. Unfortunately this evening I've been reading The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway, and it is driving me bloody insane with hunger, specifically for anything to do with fish. If you have read this novella you would understand. Arrghh!!! I was going to type up this entry before relenting and opening my last can of John West pink salmon, but it is impossible. So, back in a jiffy...

15 minutes later...Hmmmm. Salmon dusted with garlic power, baby tomatoes on the side, and a cup of English Breakfast tea spiced with lemon juice. This old man is happy, for now at least, despite a faint headache that competes for my attention with itchy scratches on my hands. Yes, today I launched an attack on the giant triffids that have taken over the courtyard and made it resemble a lost Inca city. Of course I have no gardening gloves, and of course the main bush was crusted with tiny thorns, and naturally being a dull witted male, I thought I would be OK. 'Fraid not. Still, I managed to hack down half of it while my fortitude (and skin) held out. I'll tackle the rest tomorrow – how tedious. Setting the whole tangled mess on fire, or poisoning its Jurassic roots with Diet Coke, are more appealing options. On my last day off I'd much rather be hunting down cheap Jack McDevitt novels in Croydon or eating baked cheese cake in Hampton.

By the way, Sydney was ace. There was a slight breakdown in communication concerning arrival dates but it worked out in the end, sort of. Needless to say I drank and ate a lot, thus increasing the risk of stroke and a thousand other 'surprise complications' later in life. Apart from staying with my comic book artist friends – sleeping every night beneath a colossal Van Helsing poster, my cheek nestled upon a Hulk Hogan wrestling pillow case – I caught up with two other NSW comic scene dudes, Stratu of Sick Puppy infamy and Ross of Radiation Sickness infamy, as well as Mr Refused Classification, who happened to be in town. He and his friend Dave took me on a mini pub crawl around the Rocks precinct, finishing up in what they assured me was Australia's oldest pub. There was nothing to distinguish this fact, other than the barman calling pots "middies". Hey mate, I'm a spirit drinker. How was I supposed to know?

Any celeb sightings? Only seeing Crowded House drummer Paul Hester at the airport as I dined on spinach quiche and salad. No one else recognised him. I also did some shopping, though not a lot. Catching public transport to and from airports means carrying bags, and that means the less to carry the better. What I could not leave behind included:

Transitions by Tony Lockwood, $60, great fantasy art
Alien Horizons by Bob Eggleton, $13, more fantasy art from Paper Tiger
From the Borderlands edited by Thomas and Elizabeth Monteleone, $18, horror anthology
Dreadful Tales by Richard Laymon, $15, UK hardcover
Stop at Nothing by Dying Fetus, $25, a brutal death metal CD

Thanks to everyone who kept the comments ticking over. I had a grand total of three minutes' access to the Internet. Instead I was busy listening to avante rock music and watching various TV shows my hosts never missed. The best by far was The Shield. The episode I saw featured a particularly nasty thug getting his face branded on a stove by the crooked protagonist cop. I also saw the season finale of Oz, which was too melodramatic and staged for my liking. They also had Law and Order: Criminal Intent on, but I cannot handle the formulaic story telling for more than five minutes (death, clues, interviews, problems, vital clues, resolution). Of more interest is the Halloween horror film festival being thrown by the ACMI in Melbourne. My six season pass recommendations are:

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Hills Have Eyes
Halloween
Last House on the Left
Dawn of the Dead
It's Alive

Although I own most of these titles, I have never seen any of them projected from film. On top of that, the showing of Last House on the Left will be the Australian premier, because it's been banned for over two decades. It remains to be seen, however, if the ACMI have an uncut print. I am also wondering whether these movies are being projected from film prints, rather than video projected from DVD. If it's the latter, I ain't really interested.

Back to work on Thursday. Groan. How time flies when you throw a clock out the window.

thursday : 21 oct 2004

Captain's Log / stardate 04.10.21 – As of today I have five working days off. I fly to Sydney this afternoon. I don't think there will be any updates until Monday night at the earliest, but feel free to leave comments because I will have sporadic Internet access. And no, Ken, I am not going up for anything Mardi Gras related. Pillock! Hmmm, well it's 11:45am. I suppose I better make like a whip and get cracking...

monday : 18 oct 2004

All up it was an agreeable day on planet Earth, with a manageable workload, a leisurely stroll around the CBD at lunch time hunter-gathering for food, sharing a few laughs with colleagues before catching the 7:00pm train home, listening to music on headphones, and reading some Harlan Ellison non-fiction. On Thursday I fly up to the settlement at Olde Sydney Towne to visit friends for the weekend, and then I'm back for a couple of days in Melbourne getting a suntan.

For argument's sake I do have olive skin, but my part-European heritage keeps the clothed portions of my carcass eggshell beige. Overall this gives me a two-tone appearance, so during summer I try to even it out. The problem is that I find the sport of sunbaking tediously, ponderously boring. It's too bright to read a book lying about in broad daylight, you can never arrange yourself into a comfortable position holding said book, and it's easy to burn yourself down here where the ozone layer has all but evaporated. I read somewhere that this poor abused membrane of ours is only three millimetres thick at sea level. In the lower pressures of the upper atmosphere, it naturally spreads out a bit more. But just think of how whispy and fragile a layer of gas 3mm thick is. No wonder it has a dirty big hole in it.

sunday : 17 oct 2004

This weekend I took any opportunity to stay in bed and sleep. The upshot is that tonight I feel nice and rested after the rollercoaster of last week. The system outage finally got resolved at 3:00pm Friday afternoon – that night I treated myself to the necessary dosage of theraputic booze. I crashed at Tim's place again and we spent some time in my suburban stomping ground just taking it easy, although lunch included the worst fish and chips take away I'd ever attempted to eat in my life. We were at the beach, and when Tim threw his whiting fillet away in disgust, even the seagulls wouldn't go into the scrub to fetch it. This was quite funny actually, and I would have laughed more if I wasn't busy ejecting scales and bits of fin myself.

thursday : 14 oct 2004

Today was one of the most stressful days of the year. A major system upgrade went cactus and we spent the whole day bashing our brains to fix it. Five minutes before our Unix guru David was going to kick off the drastic measure of restoring the entire system from tape backups, Dale and the DBAs managed to pull a miracle out of the hat and create a work-around. I won't bore you with the details, but I was right in the thick of it, talking to Tech Support in Sydney and informing our SAS programmers and business report users to be patient.

It's the hair style, damn it. Look, for a joke I combed my hair differently yesterday morning and made myself look like I belong in a New Romantics rock band – the only thing missing was eye liner. I did the same today; I even cut my hair before going to work to make it look neater and more plastic, like Ray Martin's helmet shiny head. So what happens? I have an angsty day yesterday (verging on a dummy spit in here, heh heh) and a mega-insane day today in which I ate nothing but half a packet of wasabi peas. I also walked out the front door without my jacket on both days, thinking it would be nice and warm again, and almost caught a chill when temperatures dipped well below 20 degrees Celsius. Tomorrow it's back to the flicked up fringe look, and hopefully smoother sailing...

No doubt you have sauntered over to Damian's movie review page and had a squizz. I offer no apologies or caveats, except to say that I hope I have captured every flying spittle and spark of his animus and cathartic chaos, frozen in amber for future generations to marvel at. Damian, when you have your own national TV show one day, don't forget us plebs OK?

wednesday : 13 oct 2004

It is 9:54pm and I've been home for a couple of hours. Woohoo!! Last night I stumbled through the door at this time. How things change – I'm even enjoying a crisp glass gin and tonic spiked with bottled lemon juice as I type this. I almost feel human. Yes, the light at the end of my tunnel of doom is almost bright enough to read by. Only another day or so of tidying up to do, and then I'll be back on the 9:30am to 6:45pm shift with the rest of you other mugs.

Ahh, those late trains: how I will miss them. Last night's sideshow exhibit of freaks and weirdos kept my nose out of my book for the whole trip (truth be told, it doesn't take much to distract me). Among the memorable human cargo was one particularly rancid specimen. This character, a male aged about 55, long grey 60s rocker hair and a huge gut, reclined in his comfy zone of leisure with all the arrogance of Nero or Caligula in their Declining Years. Bare feet perched on the seat opposite, he wore a loose fitting beige singlet that allowed one of his fetching man boobs to escape the sweat-stained fabric, as if he was about to breast feed. His right ear was pierced, too. Where I'm from in Queensland, the local wisdom dictates that such an individual was surely gay, a possibility that gave me a shiver despite the tropical, malaria-friendly climate. As you'll recall, it was stinking hot yesterday. The last place I wanted to be after cutting SAS code all day was in Connex's oldest rickety train, tired and sober, and surrounded by sweaty morose passengers of ambiguous sexuality. But still, all attempts to escape into the pages of my book failed, as there were too many other oddities to gaze at with dumb fascination. I was glad to get off when my stop arrived.

The fallout from the election on the local world wide weblog circuit has been, predictably, rather venomous over how the Liberals managed to (a) win the election, and (b) gain a larger majority than before. Did I miss something fundamental here? Granted, it would not be the first time. I've been living in a kind of brain fog for the last couple of years: lots of fast-food, binge drinking, frivolous spending, no direction in life, feeling guilty about living interstate from my immediate family, treading water at work, sharing accommodation with a couple rather than singles like myself, et cetera. I can be forgiven for maintaining a not-so conservative political stance, but it would have been more heartening if the vote count was a tad closer. Even that corrupt sock puppet George Dubbya had to rig the system to 'win' the presidency. The Liberals hand out cash for babies and slide home easily...

Is it just me who remembers the times of no bank fees? Of being able to earn a few hundred bucks on modest cash savings amounts? True, sales tax was higher back then, but the current government still charges import duty on goods, as well as GST when it hits the shelves. (Three weeks ago I got a nasty reminder of this when I received a Customs bill for gemstones I purchased from Thailand via E-Bay.) Furthermore, my tax rate for 2003-2004 was more than 31%, same as it was ten years ago, and I will be getting a tax bill once I lodge my return thanks to all the heath insurance crap. (That's right, in the good old days I wasn't forced to pay $97 a month for health cover I didn't need, either.) And let's not forget the fees and taxes on my superannuation, too. Yeah, great system we've got now, and a great government. No wonder there's a fucking surplus, and spare change lying around to buy votes with.

But hey, I am just a corporate bum – a SIND or SINF or SINC (single income no clue) or whatever the term is. A wage slave and obediant worker bee who watches a leader get re-elected by the same public that also votes on Big Brother and Australian Idol en mass. I'm afraid my psyche is disturbed by far more trivial matters, such as: why there was no plane wreckage found at the Pentagon 'crash' site, trying to understand why people want to blow up Australian Embassies, how all of my considerable taxes are spent, and hearing the tired old 'blame movies and computer games for the violence in society' bullshit again and again. There's four things that concern me, among many. But what do I know? "Eeeeeahhh!" as my dad would say.

monday : 11 oct 2004

I read today in the paper that Freddie Prinze Jr. might give up the acting game and continue writing the gothic horror novels he's been toiling away at in the dark. I thought "good for him", but then read about potential film deals already being set up for the books. Now come on, why should Freddie Prinze Jr. get a phat movie contract from Hollywood while established giants in the field get bugger all attention? But thinking about it some more, I realised how ironic it would be for Hollywood to trash and plunder Mr. Prinze's creative coffers. Even if they are terrible novels (and I have not sampled any of them) writing a book takes a great deal of effort, not least of which involves a lot of typing in a room by yourself, out of the sunshine and away from friends. I am waiting for one of Aussie writer Kim Wilkins' darkling stories to be filmed, hopefully by someone talented.

And what am I reading now? I resisted the urge to dip into my new stash of classics, opting instead to clear off more titles from my In Progress list. The next one is The Great Philosophers. I read the chapters on Socrates and Plato a ways back, and I am launching into Descartes tomorrow. Part of me wanted (begged) to read something less challenging after chewing on Dylan Thomas for a few weeks, but there is an element of perverse fun to be had in mulling over philosophy on the train after hacking away at the programming gig for eight or ten hours. At first the poor brain resists, but then gradually submits itself to the habit of reading every third sentence four times with eyes that feel like dry marbles in order to comprehend it fully. It's mighty slow going, I tell ya, and yet it's all the more satisfying too.

(The only other book on philosophy I have read to date is Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche, which almost had me slitting my wrists by the end of it. I now realise that an introduction to the subject would have both put Nietzsche in context and prepared me for the kind of language these thinkers use. You cannot read these books casually like a novel and expect to digest everything in one pass without making notes and actually 'studying' it, as you would a uni text book. At least I can't. Anyhow, I am looking forward to going through Beyond Good and Evil again after reading his earlier work Thus Spoke Zarathustra.)

A recently circulated PowerPoint file listed Dalai Lama's quotes and friendly advice for 2004. The list included this gem: "Judge your success by what you had to give up to get it." I read that and reflected upon the extra hours spent at work, not to mention the effort sepnt deciphering lines in various Dylan Thomas poems, or trying to follow the plot in an intelligently written novel – all on the late train, feeling less than chipper and usually a bit cranky, surrounded by loud bogans and squealing toddlers. Or else composing journal entries after midnight. Why do it though? I don't know, but I can't help myself.

sunday : 10 oct 2004

The Liberals won again despite my vote going elsewhere. Labour had to deal with an inexperienced reformed thug for a leader, public apathy toward regime change, and various cash enticements. I don't have a family, pay off a mortgage or run a company, so what the hell do I know about the economics of domesticity or what's good for the nation anyway? At least I savoured a delicious hamburger with "the lot" at a takeaway joint near the polling booth. Eating that sucker in the sunshine was almost the highlight of my weekend. Well, the US elections are next. After the way our own poll turned out, I am trying not to think that the unimaginable might actually be inevitable.

On a brighter note, Marylu took me as her 'date' to the opening night of Eureka, a new Australian musical about the tragic Eureka Stockade siege in 1854. Being the show's premier, there was a dusting of celebrity sparkle present, including our fearless state leader Steve Bracks. Also making an appearance was news reader Jennifer Hanson (again), Kamahl, Livinia Nixon (a total babe in real life), that guy from Big Brother Blair McDonaugh, theatre owner Mike Walsh (whom I met that afternoon), actor Peter Phelps (looking sheepish for some reason), Neighbours cast members I failed to recognise, stunner Suzie Wilks (she can change my room any day), various comedians and other faces Marylu remembers better than I, but enough name dropping.

Eureka itself is rollicking good fun. It tells this familiar Australian story with song and dance by characterising the broader political issues through a small number of personal dramas. On one side you have the hero Peter Lawler, and on the other Governor Hotham. Conflict is the essence of drama, after all. There was no Saving Private Ryan battle scene at the end, which was disappointing, but the vocal talents and art direction where all impressive. I heard at least one punter crying at the end (Steve Bracks?) so take the Kleenex if you intend going along. Afterwards we hit the turps. I ended up drinking straight Scotch backstage, then went down to a spiegeltent nightclub on Southbank with Marylu and some others for more drinks and hijinks. By the time I arrived home Saturday morning, the sun had already been up for a while. Burp.

wednesday : 6 oct 2004

This A.M. I got ready for work in my usual somnambulistic trance, then plodded outside and noticed with mounting alarm and horror that my car had vanished during the night. It took me a few beats to realise that I had left it at the train station overnight. Move over Jessica Simpson...

Work is barrelling along and causing more and more of these detours into the Twilight Zone. I had my third 9:00pm finish in a row this evening, and it's pretty ordinary when staying home on a Sunday feels like a long weekend. There are only a couple more days left of this Haitian zombie existence, then I can work on my tan instead of cultivating the undead pallor I picked up during winter. If this workaholism keeps up any longer, I'm going to end up finding fragments of Dylan Thomas verse in my SAS programs. And as much as our ex-school teacher project manager appreciates the finer points of literature, everything has its rightful place in the cosmos.

monday : 4 oct 2004

Hmmm, my rather interesting weekend began on Friday night with a blind date – just a casual meeting for drinks after work, really. While chatting via e-mail all afternoon we learned that my regular TGIF watering hole was convenient to her workplace, so she lobbed in at about 6:45pm and we shared a few beers. There were no sparks good or bad, but the conversation was stimulating and the brewskis went down a treat. It's also a good chance to network yourself; the other person will naturally have single acquaintances, just as I do.

Which brings me to the wedding: several steps up from Brittany Spear's faux fiasco, and not quite a Danish fairytale in Leggo Land. But before the wedding I had offered to help Chris carry a desktop from a furniture store to his house. For some unfathomable reason, he and his partner thought paying Harvey Norman $40.00 to deliver said item roughly one kilometre down the road was a tad exorbitant. Maybe Hardly Normal uses flocks of white doves to airlift furniture these days? So anyway, mindful of the clock, I arrive at Chris' place at 9:00am bearing freshly baked scones from the local bread shop, thinking the sugar hit would come in handy for the morning's exertions. We are, after all, two IT professionals, not swarthy lumberjacks or circus strongmen. As things turned out, we need not have fretted. The delivery clerk must have taken one look at us and decided that the mighty task ahead was beyond our combined musculature, and supplied us with a wheeled trolley thing to do the job. No complaints from me. I bounded ahead to suss out a secondhand bookshop nearby, scoring a UK Futura edition of Different Seasons by Stephen King for $6.50 (good condition except for a crease on the cover near the spine, which I'll erase with a black Nikko pen). Chris was also kind enough to carry my new literary acquisition on top of the desktop back to his place. He sure earned that scone.

But, alas, I had to abbreviate our neighbourly socialising because the wedding approachethed. I met the other groomsmen and the best man at the rendezvous point at 12:30pm to change into the chosen livery: a black Chicago suit, grey pinstripes, with a matching vest and white wing collar shirt, topped off with a silver fatboy tie. Oh yeah, I looked like a million dollars...Monopoly money, that is. Hear a preview of the best man speech, take some photos, jump into the ribboned Lexus and scream up to the church. The ceremony was all smooth sailing. I tell ya, it's quite different being part of the bridal party – a lot more fun and involving, although I had nothing to do except look broodingly handsome to any palpitating single women sitting in the pews, fanning themselves with their wedding programmes. I was not wearing my glasses at the time, so I can't confirm one way or the other, heh heh. So the vows were spoken, Bible passages were read, live music was played, papers were signed, and bubbles blown in lieu of confetti. It was a cool wedding I reckon, simple yet personable, and of course all the more moving when you know the couple well.

Afterwards, when us groomsmen could let our stomachs out and breath properly again, I mixed with the gathering for photos and nibblies, which I found hard to eat because by that stage, my smile muscles were aching. During this time, I noticed an attractive young woman gliding through the crowd and giving me the eye a bit as things wound down, but she seemed to have a boyfriend – one of the blokes who came to surf school. Still, I found it difficult to not look at her. It's funny how you seem to zero in on one person like that; put it down to basic chemistry and agreeable looks, I guess. I quietly hoped that she would be at the reception. In the meantime, we had our photos taken in nearby Canterbury park, then sat for about four minute's rest at the rendezvous house – yes, it was already time for the reception. This wedding business is more tiring than having an extended pillow fight under water!

We get to the restaurant on time. Lots of people I don't know are there...I expected that, but as one of the bridal party you've got minor celebrity status. People are happy to talk and some even introduced themselves. And I spotted the girl from the church too, sitting on the table right next to ours, looking slightly ravishing. She even gave me a smile. Needless to say, I made a discrete inquiry and found out that she was (a) only the sister of the surfing buddy, not his girlfriend after all, and (b) only eighteen years old. Arrghh!! Are there no exit ramps on this endless freeway of bachelordom?!? Kee-rist on a stick. Oh well, with hilarious speeches to enjoy, food and wine to drink, and digital jukebox music to dance to, the night still promised to be better than most. It was a privilege for me to share such a special day like this. Living away from your own immediate family, you learn to cherish situations where feel as though you've been adopted as part of someone else's family, if only for a short time. That's the good stuff in life.

What's also good is clubbing. The brief dance session at the reception had me hankering for more of the same. My local venue was like Jonestown the morning after, so I ended up at Mink in Brighton until 4:00am, grooving along to the occasional useful song the lame DJ played, all the while cursing the wankers standing around the podium/stage area not dancing. One idiot up there thought it was clever to clap loudly in time to the music (commercial dance spiked with bad techno). I suppose I should mention that everyone I knew from wedding had headed home after the reception. We're talking 11:45pm – way too early for moi.

On Sunday I slept in (well, duh) and eventually 'forced' myself to watch two entertaining DVDs and a certain disaster fillum on TV. Mid-afternoon at Chadstone Shopping Town I found three more Wordsworth classics. The fourteen titles I'm still looking for appear in the second part of the list.

Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Homer, The Odyssey (matching set replacement)

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
Stephen Crane, Red Badge of Courage
Cooper, Last of the Mohicans
Henry James, Portrait of a Lady
Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers
Graeham, Wind in the Willows
James Joyce, The Dubliners
D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
F.Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
Voltaire, Candide
Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland
Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth (matching set replacement)
Virginia Woolf, The Waves (matching set replacement)
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (matching set replacement)

thursday : 30 sep 2004

I attended another practice for Saturday's wedding, followed by a satisfying pub meal with the bride, groom, the groom's brother, and the best man (the "surf, steak and strip" mastermind). Soon I'll be watching Donnie Darko – bought it sight unseen today at the urging of Ken from work, who saw the last hour on pay-TV and loved it. The upshot is that with all this happening, time for website updates has been ultra minimal.

Which reminds me: I picked up another coffee table book yesterday on minimalism called Minimalist Design, an overview and history of minimalism in art, design and architecture. In the same shop was the sequel to the sublime Minimalist Interiors, and this time I was not impressed. Unless the book features hardcore minimalism, there is utterly no point in buying it. Minimalist Design was touch and go. The text is informative without sounding too pretentious and there is a good selection of photos, particularly of industrial design products. I need more bookshelves. And...it's 2:47am. Perhaps I should be off to bed?

monday : 27 sep 2004

Had a practice run for the wedding last Saturday morning, which was a good laugh. There is a dress rehearsal on Thursday night before the real thing takes place this coming Saturday afternoon. It really is getting to the pointy end of the stick, as the saying goes. In other news, I bought two more classic novels today:

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
The Ghost Stories of Henry James (includes The Turn of the Screw)

thursday : 23 sep 2004

I go big shopping – buy many good book at many cheap price! The Wordsworth snatch 'n grab tally (including the four titles I mentioned on Tuesday) now comes to 48 classic tales. There are actually three Wordsworth editions floating around, the most current being those with sky blue covers. I will replace as many of the old fashioned nine navy blue variety as I can with newer ones to make a matching set. (Only collectors of books – or anything for that matter – would understand this madness.) Normally I don't care that much, but these books are cheap enough for me to accede to the great god of bookshelf aesthetics without suffering too much cash rash. Exploiting the Angus and Robertson three-for-two sale, these Wordsworth paperback editions ultimately cost me $3.40 each, a ridiculous price. And here they are:

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Lost World and Other Stories
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Homer, The Odyssey, The Illiad (Chapman)
Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native
Virgil, The Aeneid
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and Other Stories
Guy de Maupassant, The Best Short Stories
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Hard Times, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion
Daniel Dafoe, Robinson Crusoe
Virginia Woolf, The Waves
D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love, Sons and Lovers
Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, Rob Roy
M. Cervantes, Don Quixote
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Misérables
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Anna Karenia
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask
Johnathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
James Joyce, A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
Virgil, The Aeneid
Guy de Maupassant, The Best Short Stories
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
M.R. James, Collected Ghost Stories

By the way, I also bought the Star Wars DVD boxed set: it looks and sounds amazing. I am so-so about the movies themselves. George Lucas set out to imitate the adventure serials from the 1930s, and he largely succeeded, thanks to (a) his cinematic style, a modern version of the Flash Gordon cliff hangers, and (b) the movie public being unaware of the advances in science fiction literature, which left pulp stories behind back where they belonged, in the 1930s.

Unfortunately, Hollywood refuses to mature or take risks. Concepts in SF movies are dumbed down for mainstream consumption, the marvels of science and physics are either warped beyond recognition or ignored totally, and the characters are mono-dimensional silhouettes. This is not to say that films like I, Robot and The Chronicles of Riddick are not entertaining on some levels, but they are nulls compared to real science fiction in novels and short stories. The same can be said about horror, although there is always a small number of quality fright flicks made every year. Cinematic SF is another story. It appears to be trapped in an endless cycle of more dollars = less sense, the inverse square law of big budget movie making.

And, finally, a quote from Jack Black: "I call myself a morning person, because I usually go to bed in the morning."

tuesday : 21 sep 2004

Oh, hell. I should be slouching off to bed, being that it's 11:31pm, but stuff it because tonight has been all right: a better than average evening out here in the suburban nightmare of Melbourne for this single bum and his losing way of life.

First of all, I got home from work before 10:00pm – that's a good start right there. But still, it was 8:00pm and I was hungry: no food had been consumed since my afternoon snack of Kasugai Roasted Peas (the Happy Present from the Earth) supplied by the charitable Ken, one of our IT top guns and the main instigator of elevator pranks...he hit me with a rip-snorter one day that still gets a laugh in the retelling. So yeah, hungry, but with no real food around except one tin of baked beans. Ten minutes later, the legumes are history. What to do next? Check e-mail, check newsgroups, check websites, check online journals, check the Internet dating service (flatline), kick off a few random Google searches, so on and so forth. All done – PROC SORTed.

Next, retreat to my bedroom-library with the large box of premium imported Swiss Lindor chocolates I won at ten pin bowling on Friday night. Did I mention they were imported? Yumm. Listen, if you are going to eat that poisonous, pretend non-food known as chocolate, go for the gold. Savouring each unwrapped dollop of divine sweetness was a religious experience. These I ate while reading more of Hell House and some of the introductions in the Wordsworth classics I bought today for $4.95 each:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Odyssey by Homer (Simpson?)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I will be buying a whole bunch more tomorrow before the prices are jacked up; I swear they used to be $3.95 not long ago. Other publishers (Penguin) are peddling these very same titles for $17.00 or more in paperback. As I discovered looking for the Hemingway, these old fossils cannot be had for less than eight or nine bucks secondhand. The matching Wordsworth imprints also come with scholarly introductions and helpful cheat notes for late bloomers and literati posers like myself. Great value. I shall report what the next haul brings in the next entry.

Once I had finished gloating over my stash of door stoppers and reread parts of Ghost World, one of the many graphic novels that Anthony gave me on Sunday, I watched all of the extras on the DVD for School of Rock, and they are funny, or rather, the hyperactive Jack Black was funny. I can't wait to see him in the remake of King Kong, even though I don't like the idea of remakes or sequels, yadda yadda. Which brings me around to the DVDs I bought yesterday, and more gloating rights:

Bad Taste, uncut special edition
Dawn of the Dead (1978), special edition
I Spit on Your Grave, uncut special edition

sunday : 19 sep 2004

I survived surf school: I was not attacked by sharks and I did not drown to death. While I am no expert in such matters, common sense dictates that to suffer either fate, the water has to be deeper than one metre – it probably averaged about 80cm. However, climbing out of bed at 6:45am with an outside temperature of 10°C was scary enough. By the time we arrived on Phillip Island the temperature had soared to 12°C, which might qualify as a heat wave in Antarctica if nothing else. Let's just say that wetsuits are a bloody marvelous invention, although make sure you visit the bathroom before zipping yourself inside it.

The lesson itself went fine. During our warm-up exercises, I learned that my flexibility ranks one notch below a beam of hardwood. This made performing the necessary tricky movements more difficult, hence the girls in the class managed to surf standing up long before I could. Yes, the standing thing. Balance an ironing board on top of a soccer ball, then imagine stepping up onto that sucker and somehow staying upright. That's what surfing is like for a beginner who is not very flexible. Also factor in the wetsuit, which restricts your movements, weighs you down, and makes breathing harder. It took me a while, but I managed to stand up a few times. There is still hope for this old man and the sea. Speaking of which, I didn't take the Hemingway book with me because Chong was elsewhere surfing, the book cost me $17.00 new, and I found it hard to consider destroying a book, especially a title that won for its author the Nobel Prize for Literature. So I've still got it. The only secondhand Hemingway I found was For Whom the Bell Tolls, and that was $9.00 (I'm in the wrong line of work). No thanks either to the citizens of Melbourne, who are such a well read population that it was extremely difficult to find secondhand Hemingways anywhere. I had to visit five shops in the CBD to get what I wanted. You literate bastards!

Phase Two of the "surf, steak and strip" bucks festivities, as Chong's best man put it, was a sumptuous dinner in town with ten of us in attendance, followed by drinks and cigars at a strip club on King Street, and finally clubbing it up at Bond Bar. (Please to note that after three hours of surfing, I was a corpse. Two hours of sleep at home, and I pry myself off the mattress like a barnacle for the second time that day, get dressed, and take myself into town by train, feeling better and better by the minute.) Dinner was hilarious and delicious, the strip club drinks and cigars made us feel like Masters of the Universe, and stocks of tequila at the clubbing venue are much lower now than before we arrived. I caught the 3:35am Night Rider bus home and crashed at 4:30am. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give "surf, steak and strip" Saturday a score of 13. No hangovers, either!

Oh, I won bowling on Friday night – again. Even received a trophy to make it official. I started badly with three open frames, then followed a spare with four strikes and another spare. A split in the last frame fucked it all up, otherwise I could gotten more. Chris captured the evidence with his digital camera. Today I slept in, then visited Anthony before working for a couple of hours. Whew, wotta whopper weekend.

thursday : 16 sep 2004

Judging by her recent entries, it was only a matter of time before Belle de Jour packed up and moved on. Some friends of mine, in fact the same ones who first recommended her journal, fairly bristled at the mere mention of her name at dinner one night, citing recent misadventures as the sources of their contempt. I was shocked, but fair enough, I thought; each to their own. Belle's journal has been part of my daily Internet 'rounds' for over a year now, and I will miss it. Her book is not far from seeing print – I will be looking for it in our overpriced, understocked chain stores.

While we are on the subject of weblogs shutting down, it is with deep regret and sadness that I announce the on-going continuation of Corrosive Journalism. I know what a terrible disappointment it must be, but, you know, things always happen for a reason in this crazy, mixed up world we live in. Do what you must to cope with this crushing news. Your grief is my grief...

But seriously. The resurrection of my weights exercise routine, coupled with a string of ordinary night's sleep and omnipresent work stress, have nudged regular journal updates off the schedule. This should be temporary. I am coping with the extra demands on my time and energy well enough, plus it feels good to push and challenge myself, to dig up more motivation when it feels like my reserves have dried up. There's still much laughter to be had on all fronts, both at work and outside it. Levity at the right moment always brings the mercury down when the heat is on.

Examples? The electoral Great Debate between Howard and Latham, silly Italian horror films like El Antichristo, the young country bloke Marty from Big Brother casting a fish hook into Jen's face on Outback Bogan Wedding or whatever it's called (insert mullet joke here), reading the Artistic Delusions weblog, seeing more crazies on the train, funny photos on the Internet, elevator humour at work, the disaster area my bedroom has become – fark me sideways, the list is endless.

The weekend is looking mildly full-on, just for a change of pace. Tomorrow night involves another bout of drunken bowling with the work social club, followed by my ex-flatmate Chong's bucks party celebrations on Saturday, which kick off with a surf lesson. I'm planning to take a book with me to read whilst on the board, a second-hand copy of something by Hemingway. Preferably The Old Man and the Sea if I can find it cheap enough – no doubt it will get soaked before the lesson is over. Apart from looking ridiculous enough to make the groom chuckle, my stunt should make me appear less like a seal. You see, hungry sharks attack surfers because from below, a surfer paddling a surfboard looks like a seal. Seals are good for sharks to eat because sharks need seal fat for energy, given that they never stop moving. Ever. So if I should suffer a fatal case of drowning, or get turned into a great white shark's idea of a McHuman, please eat an apple a day, be nice to one another, and have a good life.

sunday : 12 sep 2004

I've been doing a passable impression of a ghost lately. On top of continuing workaholism, there have been two all-nighters in the last week, Thursday night and last night. A case of work hard / play hard? Perhaps, but stupidity might be a more appropriate term for it, ha-ha. Finishing up at 5:30am after Heath's birthday celebration and solo venue-hopping on Saturday night, I faced a three hour wait for the first train home. Feeling awake and energetic, I decided to walk – a stunt I have wanted to try for years. My car was parked at the local train station, making the epic journey across half the metropolis about 20kms long.

Walking for three hours and twenty minutes non-stop under those circumstances (no sleep, flat from drinking, wearing dressy clothes, taking in the dawn stillness) was surreal to say the least. The film Touching the Void came to mind more than once, I tell ya! The mind really does cope by establishing reachable milestones, one after the other. I became obsessed with figuring out how long it was going to take by guessing my current progress and factoring in how much time had passed – if I didn't have a watch, I would have gone batty.

A happy coincidence was finding a dollar coin on a footpath on King's Way, and a five dollar note on the grass beside the bicycle track on the highway. An unhappy development involved missing the train, which had finally caught with me at 8:30am one stop before mine. By that stage I thought enough was enough, but being half crippled from walking for so long, I couldn't jog or even power walk the last 100 metres, and missed the bastard by 15 seconds. Those additional (punative?) kilometres were rather difficult. I finally flopped into and operated the Mazda exactly like did Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. My feet felt kind of numb, refusing to be pressed into anymore service. How anyone can handle walking across deserts for days on end just staggers my mind.

wednesday : 8 sep 2004

"If I knew you were coming over, I would have hired a maid to move the dirt around." Yep, I just finished watching The Curse of the Jade Scorpion for what, the forth time? I was on the verge of buying it but decided to rent a copy instead. I like it lots, though not enough to fork over my hard unearned cash if I can see it on TV. And in other movie news, I finally saw Dazed and Confused last night. It only took me eleven years to do so. Hey Marylu, have your kids finished with my School of Rock DVD yet?

sunday : 5 sep 2004

Thursday night was the last time I slept in my own bed. The culprits were two bouts of nocturnal festivities: Tim's housewarming on Friday night and Alice's birthday drinks last night. After driving home from Marylu's place this morning and then taking myself into work (no hangover) for the rest of the day, I am slightly not up to relating the details right now. In summary it was all rather effortless fun that resulted in a hoarse voice, minimal hangover trauma, smelling of cigarettes, sore cheek muscles from laughing, disorientation from waking in strange beds, and the requisite sleep deprivation. Inelegantly wasted perhaps, but wasted all the same and glad for it. As I told Tim on the morning after, surrounded by unsightly debris, "the bigger the mess, mate, the better the party".

thursday : 2 sep 2004

I got a laugh out of Mondo Thingo's phrase of the week Al Desko, meaning to eat at your desk rather than outside (al fresco style). It gave me a good chuckle because (a) I am somewhat famous at work for the tea towel picnic blanket on my workstation, and (b) it reminded me of that hilarious lifestyle spoof show on SBS called Life Support. Ah, where is Courtney now, that sassy Modern Woman? Utilitarianism is so sexy.

Via channel surfing I also caught Surprise Wedding, an Australian reality TV show on which hopeful, beaming brides propose and marry their shocked partners – sounds like a kooky idea imported from Japanese TV. Five brave souls said "I do" and one, a young bloke, said "I do not". Most amusing was seeing The Question popped live on camera in front of a huge audience. Those poor guys practically wet their pants. Bloody funny shit I tell you, disregarding the cheapness of it all, naturally. Suzie and I shared many a guffaw. I even recognised one of the brides as a stand-up comedian I'd seen at the Espy with Chris and Kylie.

Apart from At the Movies, which now gets the scoop on The Movie Show because of its new Thursday timeslot (thus reviewing films being released today), I just managed to see the Catalyst special on the Cassini Saturn space probe. Special mention must be made of the lead astrophysicist. To me there is something irresistible about intelligent, enthusiastic and vibrant female scientists. Aged late 40s to early 50s with no wedding ring, she is the most stunning, drop dead gorgeous woman I have seen all week. She even quoted a line from the movie Apollo 13. Arrgh, I am not worthy! For more heavenly bodies, this time extrasolar planets, visit Planet Quest and download the New Worlds 3D Atlas. It requires Shockwave but jump through the hoops, because the results are worth it.

wednesday : 1 sep 2004

Commercial television no longer factors into my narrow viewing schedule. I am no commercial TV snob, just as I have no qualms about eating at Hungry Jack's, buying top 40 commercial music, or wearing brand label clothing. But as far as spending time in front of the vidiot box goes, the only programmes I seem to highlight these days are ones such as tonight's superb 90-minute documentary Soundtrack to War on the ABC (anamorphic widescreen, digital stereo, no ads).

Another suitable name for this Aussie-made look at how music affects the lives of American soldiers in Iraq II would have been 'War Ensemble', but Slayer already used that title on their savage 1990 album Seasons in the Abyss. Another Slayer song called 'Angel of Death' did actually play over the opening credits, which was quite a novelty itself if you are a fan of their music, since Rage (cough) hardly run them anymore. Anyway, the filmmakers interviewed various soldiers who were into all kinds of music, from the inevitable thrash metal headbangers to very talented rappers, folk singers, vocalists and so on. Put it this way, Michael Moore never showed army gospel singers getting down and deliriously happy with The Word in Fahrenheit 9/11. What I really enjoyed seeing and listening to was the mythical Iraqi death metal garage band. Yes they are alive and well, and like many people drawn to this style of music, these guys are jolly, smiling characters, full of mirth and animation. Singing about death and evil does not make that person evil. Dats hoW dee wHole arty exPresioN stuFF kiNdA works, yA see?

So yeah, I am getting my tax dollar's worth by absorbing the choice selections on ABC and SBS. Drama is taken care of by movie watching, which agrees with my lifestyle and memory recall a lot more than sitting down for regular shows. Even then, I'm hard pressed to catch 70% of my current TV Exposure titles in any given week!

tuesday : 31 aug 2004

On SBS the credits are rolling on another damning documentary about the Bush administration. It covered similar ground to Michael Moore's emphatic Fahrenheit 9/11, supporting his allegations in a more prosaic but no less convincing manner. Particularly mortifying was grandfather Bush's role as a key Nazi banker, and Kay's interview at the end where he says the inspection team could not even bribe an Iraqi into leading them to weapons of mass destruction, because said WMDs just did not exist. Cut to Dictator Bush giving a speech that pretended Kay's report validated charges of a terrorist threat by exaggerating the existence WMD "plans". Oh yeah, and the media has been banned from areas where dead soldiers are packed up and shipped home. I don't know about you, but the whole filthy plot sends shivers up and down my spine.

On a brighter note, the weekend is booking up fast, with a housewarming on Friday night, lunch on Saturday in Williamstown, and birthday drinks on Saturday night. I am planning to work on Sunday if there are any loose ends, but I would prefer to spin some DVDs with Heath or get out into the sunshine...

sunday : 29 aug 2004

I slept in this morning then took off for work, finishing up at 7:30pm. I didn't mean to push the martyr song and dance in the previous entry. Many people work extra hours, and I did enough of it for my first programming job back in Brisbane. No big deal, it's just a novelty at the moment.

But anyway...I have discovered that Sunday night is Loony Night in Melbourne. I had to eat my Lean Beef Burger at McDonald's sitting directly across from a bearded freak. Late 30s, wild eyes, ill-fitting clothes, dumb hat, and sipping what passes for coffee at Macca's. His act was mumbling what sounded like sports commentary to himself. Each time I made I eye contact with him, he gave me a slow salute, then went back to babbling his stream of unconsciousness at no one in particular. With the Muzak playing I could not quite follow the thread, but it was English, not just the verbal equivalent of coleslaw. Draining his cup, he lurched off his swivel seat and wobbled through the doors and outside. I looked around and saw everyone else furtively watching him move on, too. One day he will find his perfect audience. On this occasion though, he was just another sad, hopeless, pathetic waste of human life.

On the train home I shared a carriage with more arseholes, this time a nasty, aggressive bogan, and his dim-witted sidekick. The rough one took great delight in espousing his views on dark skinned ethnics, stating in a loud raspy voice that they were "all terrorists, the lot of 'em," as well as explaining his approach to bedding Asian women, who apparently like it "doggy style, with a kidney punch thrown in too". Instead of causing offense and sounding macho, this miscreant only succeeded in presenting a solid argument against smack whores and the mentally retarded ever having unprotected sex. Apparently he was also an expert DJ, and offered no small amount of advice to his stoned, submental buddy, who was keen to get a piece of the action. I could understand: glue sniffing does present a somewhat limited career path for a young man. Needless to say, I made absolutely no eye contact with either of these characters, fixing my gaze upon the Richard Matheson paperback I brought with me until it was time to disembark.

friday : 27 aug 2004

Hi gang. It is 12:56am on Friday night. Your Humble Narrator has just stumbled through the door after another successful work-sanctioned social event. I caught the second-last train home for a change, despite being tempted to go all the way, pushing for a dawn finish and subsequent 9:18am resurrection (I hate my biological clock sometimes). I'm meeting Sydney visitor Antoinette tomorrow at 11:00am for some quality face time, so I thought an all nighter was inadvisable given the circumstances. And besides, I ran out of Alcodol. The flatmates are still awake, hence there are actually signs of life that proclaim we are "Alive Inside", as scrawled on the shopping mall roof in the remake of Dawn of the Dead. For a crap movie, I've made numerous references to it lately. From now on, I promise to quote the original 1978 film exclusively.

This evening someone asked me if I had brought my green laser pointer along to the social function. I briefly considered it, but if I had flashed it around while quoting lines from Star Wars, everybody would have wanted a turn. Not to mention that the visible peppermint thread, which is the main reason for buying the bloody thing, would have been all but drowned out by the venue lights. While I think of it, a warm howdy to anyone at work who reads my journalistic dribble on a regular basis.

How goes the Internet dating service? In a word, slowly. In seven words, like maple syrup seeping into wet cement. My ego took a slapping today when a workmate declared that he had no less than three dating service contacts on the go. I groveled something to the effect that I would gratefully accept any crumbs he might deign to brush off the expansive dinner plate of his love life. Presently I am having an e-mail conversation with a girl whose response time averages four days. Not exactly the cornerstone of effective communication, unless you happen to be living on a space station two or more light-days from Earth. But one always enters into these ventures with low expectations, so there are never any soul-shattering epiphanies. Much worse is dealing with almost daily online rejections from women you send your profile to. You should not take a rejection personally if the rejector does not know you personally, but the flame of hope does splutter in the cruel draft of such indifference. C'est la vie, huh?

By the way, I am working on Sunday again unless I get a better offer, such as baby sitting, lawn mowing, vacuuming the floor, defusing landmines, organ donation, live crash test dummy research, milking taipans, being a makeshift speed hump, sewer patrol, handling raw plutonium, et cetera. It will be a productive slog, fleetingly worthwhile in the Grand Order of Things in the corporate termite mound. What makes it tolerable is the fact that I have decided to make the effort. Unilaterally. I sometimes tip generously at a whim in restaurants and bars – this is my small gift to the tax payers of Victoria.

thursday : 26 aug 2004

Random synaptic burps: Walked in the door five minutes shy of 9:00pm. Am I afflicted with workaholism? Revisiting selections from Crackpot by John Waters, I came to the disturbing realisation that I have been subconsciously stealing this trash culture hero's funny shtick. Polishing off dinner (vegies and salmon) I wondered if the canned fish gave me cat breath. I checked and it did. There is this fat ginger cat living on the street between home and the train station. S/he is very friendly and always submits itself to a luxurious patting session, which I bestow gladly. S/he does the routine that starts with leg rubbing and purring, followed by rolling on the ground. Hence, every time I walk down this street, or any street for that matter, I do a cat-scan. I don't understand anyone's hatred of these agreeable animals. The weather has improved about 580% in Melbourne. Mum sent an e-mail to my work address but I have been too busy to respond. That is kind of fucked: what sort of life is it when you don't reply to correspondence from your own mom within 24 hours? Shameful. I find the word 'agreeable' agreeable. Tomorrow night will be another raucous social event with work types, involving dinner and drink. I still have five Alcodol tablets left and I am planning to make good use of them before the night is out. Watched At the Movies earlier and I rather enjoyed it. The revamped SBS variant has copped a hiding across the board. All fair criticism, but we must remember that David and Margaret have been doing their thing for a long, long, long time. This paragraph is starting to make me look like Henry James or Bret Easton Ellis. "Groovy," to quote Ash in Evil Dead II. Oh by the way, please to be noting that the film Girl Next Door has probably been censored in the US. Either that, or the longer, more explicit US DVD has been padded with more footage, as was American Wedding on DVD. Look for scenes that end abruptly. Anyone who saw the Dawn of the Dead remake is probably aware that a gorier director's cut is due out on DVD in October, with nine minutes of appended footage, making an enjoyable but pointless film slightly more enjoyable and slightly less pointless. Anyway, the new documentary The Corporation looks excellent. Some of the bits mentioned by Margaret and David were discussed in Project Censored's book Censored: 25 Years of News Censorship. For example, corporations privatising drinking water in third world countries. Expect many more disturbing revelations in this must-see exposé. Wow, this is classic fun, just rambling aimlessly. As I've said before, it is way too late for effective composition, which makes this approach a winner. Speaking of winners, Jana Pittman isn't one. I missed her race this morning. As if I was getting up at 5:00am, good legs or not. Aerobics Oz Style is the only programme that could crowbar me off the mattress at that hour. As a tadpole I remember setting my alarm to watch old horror and science fiction films late at night on TV. On one occasion I rose vampire-like from my cozy coffin to catch Phase IV, that creepy weirdo SF movie by Saul Bass. I slipped in and out of REM sleep while it was on, resulting in a memorable non-chemical trip. OK, at the third keystroke it will be 11:46pm precisely. Time for 30 scrunches then bed.

wednesday : 25 aug 2004

Wednesday night, and home at a reasonable hour for once. I don't mind working late or doing extra time, but the law of diminishing returns kicks sooner than one might think. A recharge or downtime becomes essential.

The US Army discovered that after eight hours on the battle­field, the incidence of friendly fire jumped sharply. Think about that. Being in possession of a deadly weapon, for argument's sake an M-16 assault rifle, does not improve a soldier's concentration enough to prevent accidents – namely putting a bullet through your mate's head. Now apply that to office work: how many of the thousands of logical decisions made while burning the midnight oil are lousy ones? In these situations, I often find myself going in circles, fixing small errors with ever more fuzzy logic. Thus the term 'workaholic' is an accurate one: the more work you do, the drunker and less coherent you become.

tuesday : 24 aug 2004

Three late nights in a row: two working back, and one seeing a cheap film at an arthouse venue with workmates. Enjoy a bourbon you can actually taste (so rare) in the bar, and then plonk yourself down to watch something sublime like Coffee and Cigarettes. I agree with Hank Hankerson that nothing beats the cinema experience. Even at its worst you can walk away with at least one useful anecdote to impress friends with or use in a web journal.

Tonight was not so glamorous and cultural, more like garish and mouldy. I needed food, groceries, chow, grub, sustenance, stuff to eat at home. The local Bi-Lo opens till midnight and is compact enough to do a circuit in 30 minutes or less. That's what I like. But being situated in a depressing area, the overall mise-en-scène of the joint is what you might call 'shabby'. To give you an idea, the petrol station franchise nearby had to close down, probably after a long and protracted Diet Coke pricing war with Bi-Lo. It sits there now in ruins, its days of selling Marlboros to school children well and truly over.

Leaving the Mazda parked as far away as possible from (a) up-ended shopping trolleys, (b) cars owned by people who learned to drive from Stevie Wonder, and (c) gangs of homies loitering near the clothing bin, I walked through Bi-Lo's trademarked yellow façade and into an explosion of fluorescent light. Sadly the bottle shop was closed, which meant that there would be fewer colourful characters milling about for my eternal amusement. Surrounded by their own personal eco-systems, these smelly, hulking monsters are a hazzard – they make the celery wilt and scare little kids. And hey, by this stage I was no Prince Charming, either. The whites of my eyes were covered in road maps, my stubble had gone terrorist black, any remaining anti-perspirant had become anti-social, and all the while my tired suit hung from a body crippled by 10 hours of manning a computer workstation.

But it all went smoothly in 20 minutes flat, a new personal best. Soon I was driving home: listening to the apples and tinned salmon roll out of their bags inside the car boot, belatedly rememebering to buy lentils, and pondering what I was going to do with the two precious hours of spare time left to me. March inside, dismember some vegies, boil the pesticide off them, then sit down for the feast in time to see someone I know on the TV. Ahhhh, not a bad finish, all things considered.

sunday : 22 aug 2004

I swear it's like living in the far future! Or like a totally amazing science fiction trip! Ahem. Now what the hell am I rabbiting on about? My new gadget plaything, actually. I am the chuffed owner of a lean, mean, green laser pointing machine, and it feels like being in the future. This is better than red cordial! The model I bought is not the official one called the Skypointer, but rather the cheaper version on sale at Think Geek. From what I can tell, they are exactly the same beast anyhow. Other manufacturers have made their own pointers, but reviews I've read were none too flattering.

You are no doubt familiar with the red laser pointer. They are a dime-a-dozen these days, pretty common coin, very 1990s, yesterday's key-chain ballast. Face it, red is dead. The green laser pointer is relatively new. The beam is much stronger than the red laser, and with a wavelength of 532 nanometers, it can be seen in midair as a fine green filament, but only at night. The thread is so wispy that light reflecting from its own dot will drown out the beam. All that's required is to turn the lights out or shine it around outside at night. I was amazed: it's like coming back from the future with a cool artefact!

I flashed it around in front of people at Pony on Friday night, just before walking out the door, and their jaws dropped open, probably because being so smoky, the green laser light effect was quite impressive. The catch is that looking directly at the beam may cause eye damage, necessitating careful handling. Let's just say that shooting it around inside a mirror maze may result in a Darwin Awards Special Jury Prize.

Like the Geomag construction set before it, this unassuming gadget has fired up my imagination. One of my favourite SF novels Ringworld featured a green flashlight laser, which the characters used to fend off hostile types living on the ring floor. Even though my laser carries utterly no heat or destructive capacity, it too is portable and runs on batteries, just like the one in the friggin' book! It has given me hours of 'light' entertainment during an otherwise gloomy week. To wit: I spent six hours at work today, not including travel time, lunching at my desk, and web surfing.

wednesday : 18 aug 2004

I am here but I'm not here, if you get my drift. It is now 3:03am on Thursday morning, and I've just arrived home after attending a spoken word event at the Greyhound Hotel in St Kilda with Kami and other poets from Adelaide. That function actually finished at 1:30am.

Since then your humble narrator has been trying to find a venue that was still pumping. Frost Bites on Chapel Street had all the vitality of John Lennon's funeral, so I caught a taxi and tried a local venue, but there was a bloody 2:00am lock-out, which I missed by 15 minutes. My usual arsenal of verbal enchantments and hard luck pleas fell on deaf ears as I tried to talk myself past the stoic bouncers, who exibited as much animation as your garden variety pillar of salt. Not their fault, really, and I told them so. But can't a man get wasted midweek anymore? Seems not.

I had a fun morning away from work though, attending a Star Wars trilogy DVD preview at Crown Casino. Visit the movie section to read the details...I cannot be bothered typing the link in here right now. Sorry 'bout that. Oh yeah, tonight was great, mainly due to catching up with Kami and talking to other brave souls who write for real, and even make enough of a living from it to support a family. How inspiring.

sunday : 15 aug 2004

Today I've been smoothing over potential Toxic Waste layout glitches, trying to making a few modifications look the same on different web browsers. Needless to say, Microsoft's Internet Explorer was the bad apple. After several hours of agony I finally found the problem and applied two bandaids. Those of you fluent in HTML and style sheets will spot them without much trouble. As a consequence, I had to forego real updates and flee the computer to save my sanity by watching two heavy and intense DVDs: Kids and L'Avventura. The flatmates are out house-sitting this week, so more self-indulgences will follow.

thursday : 12 aug 2004

Nothing much to report, and not much spare time for waxing lyrical about life, the universe, and nothing, either. I just watched a Hong Kong choppy socky film on SBS, and I might stay up to watch The Movie Show repeat if it's an episode I missed (and voila, it is). The weekend is looking all right – any time away from the rat race of work will be total bliss. Have a good one yourselves, and let's hope the Olympics broadcasts are in widescreen.

tuesday : 10 aug 2004

My mouth was an inferno at dinner time tonight. This medical crisis was induced by the red chili I ate with the usual bowl of steamed vegies – to make them less bland, you see. But because I am relishing this meal more and more, I think the speed at which I consume it has also increased. So perhaps the chili burn went into exponential over­drive, like the chain reaction that eventually blew the roof off the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. It was all under control after downing a glass each of soy milk and cold water. Of course, I've made myself hungry again just relating this tale, the same way people fondly remember near-death experiences that involve super hot curries or self-inflicted wasabi abuse. Been there done that he says, with nary a hint of hubris.

monday : 9 aug 2004

Just a quickie. I went to see The Mother tonight at the Kino, which costs a measly $7.00 per adult. Then I had Japanese food and sake with a friend after­wards, which all went down well except for a piece of crab shell that lodged in her throat, poor thing. Water, rice and Miso soup failed to move it on. I suggested eating a mouth­ful of bread: an old stuck fish­bone remedy. I like having a late night snack after a film, especially if it includes good conver­sation and/or rice wine.

Oh yeah, I watched My Foetus last night, the British abortion documentary that sparked more debate about the issue that apparently is still raging on. The gory images and descriptions were horrific, no doubt about it. Kudos to the ABC for showing it uncut, though. It reminded me of that other great series from America called Trauma: Life in the ER and also Extreme Make-Over, which I found fascinating for no good reason.

saturday : 7 aug 2004

10:43am News Flash. This item has been posted all across the Internet by now. It is worth repeating, not the least because I just finished listening to Ministry's new album, a vicious polemic against Bush and his administration. Without further ado, here it is copy-pasted from Moby Journal:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Bush told a roomful of top Pentagon brass on Thursday that his administration would never stop looking for ways to harm the United States. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we," Bush said.

I would just like to take this opportunity to state, for the record yer honour, and now completely sober after a night at home on the turps, that I have never watched an episode of this programme and don't plan to. I suspect it's not so bad that one feels compelled to stick his or her head in the oven after seeing the thing, but from the brief snatches I've caught in promos and from mindless channel surfing, it holds no appeal for me. Altogether too colonial (or colonic) and way too much wood, both in the décor and in the acting. Thanks but no thanks.

friday : 6 aug 2004

What am I doing home on a Friday night? Aiiiieeeeee!!!! (Psst: For those not conversant with chintzy pulp horror comics, which your humble narrator loved to read as a kid, a character might unleash an agonised "Aiiieeee!!!" across several panels when he or she was ripped open by the werewolf, had fallen into the lair of the giant spider, or when meeting another similarly gruesome end.)

So anyway...you may have noticed that I've been blabbing about horrific tale this or scary business that a lot lately. 'Tis true that I like a good creepy chill or an over the top splatterfesto. It is a tricky interest to explain to people; usually I don't bother. Like all things, it too obeys the '95% of anything is crap' rule. Ultimately some like it but most hate it, for whatever reason – I accept and understand this truth. If I was going to espouse the virtues of fictional terrors with any degree of eloquence and conviction, I'd need to slurp less muscat than I've had tonight.

(Have to laugh: the spell checker had trouble with "Aiiiieee!" I added it, of course.)

wednesday : 4 aug 2004

Is the Hoyts multiplex on Bourke Street trying to go out of business? I went to see I, Robot tonight at said sinerama with three young, strapping, lantern-jawed IT professionals: Tim, Chris and Ken. Walking along the footpath at 96 frames per second, I swear that we were the quintessential image of an Armani or Hugo Boss clothing billboard come to life. Women turned and gasped, junkies scrambled out of our way, tourists on a bus took hurried snapshots, other males nodded in awed respect – the rain even stopped as we crossed the street. Virility personified.

That all ended when we strode into Hoyts. What was that ghastly smell in the lobby? It was like a mixture of reheated vomit laced with the sharp tang of day-old roadkill. When Chris reported helpfully that it was much stronger in the men's bathroom, I was glad that I went before leaving work. Inside the theatre I quickly located the audio 'sweet spot', middle row dead centre. Unfortunately the chair was wobbly, and I mean it was farking loose, as if someone had used it for kickboxing practice, or two Sumo wrestlers had just made mad passionate love on it. This forced me to remain perfectly still for the duration of the picture to avoid getting seasick. Adding to my woes, half of the audio speakers had snuffed out around say 1984. Come to think of it, the popcorn litter under the worn seats was at least that old. (Memo to Hoyts management: buy a vacuum cleaner.) Anyway, to call what I heard tonight in that theatre 2.1 surround sound is being generous. Luckily the poorly aligned 2.35:1 projector image (creating blurred edges) and clouds of hot vented air boiling against the screen distracted me from the compromised aural experience.

The crowd was the expected demographic for such a film event: solitary hulking slobs with VDU suntans wearing last year's role-playing fashion essentials, giggling Asian students hoarding the back rows, a few 50-plus bachelors arguing over who made the most daring moves in the 1967 World Chess Championships, and our group of four corporate intellects with liquid Viagra for blood, dressed in nothing less than Super-140 tailored wool suits and handwoven silk ties, waiting for Will Smith and an army of CGI mouse-clickers to impress our Versace socks off. Actually, I may have lied about the socks: one of mine was a Loch Ness souvenir from Scotland.

monday : 2 aug 2004

Long time no update. I finished the Fritz Leiber dark fantasy collection last night. The remaining stories, 'The Girl with the Hungry Eyes' and 'A Bit of the Dark World' made amends for the poorer entries, although scanning the contents page for The Best of Fritz Leiber, I saw none of the stories I'd just read in Night Monsters listed there. Charming.

Today I launched into The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. You see, I really wanted to read Richard Matheson's novel Hell House, which even frightened the celebrated British spookster Ramsey Campbell. Hill House was written earlier and is something of a musty classic of supernatural fiction, so I thought it wise to do my homework, albeit grudgingly because I had already seen the film and therefore knew how the story went. Bor-ing, right? Well, thirty pages down and I am firmly in the grip of a master story­teller. I'll save my thoughts for the pending review in Skintomb #9 (due 2005), suffice to say that the novel is scary – it is actually giving this humble narrator a genuine case of the creeps, and yet I cannot read it fast enough! (It was an effort to break away and do this entry.)

But getting on to more mundane matters: after doing a round of installing new software on other people's PCs at work, it struck home how common the 800x600 screen resolution still is. I have been using 1024x768 for a couple of years and could never go back to the grotesque VIC-20 kitsch of 800x600 – spew city. So it was that Toxic Waste came into existence with a bias toward higher resolutions. Bzzzt, boy was I off the mark. Belatedly, as a concession to the inertia of the masses, or what you might call the lowest common resolution, the main font size has been whittled back accordingly, mainly because I prefer the look of justified text – a puristy throwback to the printed typesetting, if you like. On lower resolutions, however, such formatting loses its effect when there are too few words on each line. I already use soft hyphens to avoid the most horrid instances of word wrap (the Mozilla version I have stupidly does not support it) but at 800x600 it is a losing battle. If you are using 1024x768 or more, I can only hope that you have a good monitor and better eye sight than I do.

I had a good weekend seeing two movies at MIFF, not to mention downing more than one and less than 10 drinks on Friday night with Chris and Kylie. All three of us got pretty hammered, but Chris and I rose on Saturday morning feeling better than we normally do on a work day. At least I did. Vitamin muscat obviously has hitherto undetected health properties.

thursday : 29 jul 2004

Since the last update, Life has been a barren desert of news worthy adventures. I suppose I could recount a buffet selection of random morsels centred around work in the corporate ant farm, but I would bore myself to death before any of it could be uploaded to the internet, thus causing a minor narcolepsy pandemic.

But on Tuesday, in an effort to iron out the wrinkles in my sleeping patterns, I gave up my morning cappuccino treat. The reasoning behind this monstrous sacrifice concerns my body's slow metabolisation of the national demon drug of choice, caffeine. I reckon that it takes me 12-24 hours to fully negate the effects of one heavy dose of café strength beverage. And whadda ya know: this morning, instead of waking up prematurely at 6:15am, I slept through like a priest at a sexual misconduct seminar.

However, this lifestyle paradigm shift backfired tonight. After polishing off an interminable, unfunny and shamelessly padded Fritz Leiber novelette called 'The Creature from Cleveland Depths', which played like a bad episode of The Honeymooners ("One of these days, Alice!") set in the near future, I curled up on the train for a light snooze. Bereft of the demon drug caffeine, I peacefully enjoyed a dreamless nap... thereby missing my stop. Arrgh!! It is always nice to know what's happening further down the line, late at night. Just you and the cold, lonely wind.

sunday : 25 jul 2004

Bow down to me, for I am...King of the Sloths! Not much to report today, except that I had a glorious sleep-in this morning, thereby grabbing snatches of REM dreamtime long into the daylight hours. Following on from all of that physical exertion, I camped out in the lounge room and watched Sunday Afternoon on Aunty, along with a couple of DVDs. Oh yeah – ate food, too.

The online match-making campaign dribbles onward. Thus far I have not convinced anyone to meet up for coffee. But now that I have familiarised myself with the interface and some of the essential strategies, things should unfold in a more promising direction. However, I do need a better photo. For instance, more of my jawline is visible now than in snapshots since 2000!

saturday : 24 jul 2004

Good evening. It's Saturday night and I am gearing up to watch the director's cut of Underworld (hello Son of Hank) on a DVD, imported from the US of course. Not much happened today apart from picking up two lovely tourmaline gemstones from the post office, watch­ing a DVD, spending a few hours in a musty second­hand book den (found a rare Clark Ashton Smith Panther paperback I did not have), web surfing, and pre­paring another healthy dinner.

A few weeks ago I took my improved eating habits to the next level when I started buying soy milk – that papery, cow juice substitute – and yeah I like it. The brand I drink is thicker than the regular moloko plus and the woody taste agrees with my palette. I'm not across all of the so-called benefits of soy milk, but it is a de­parture from the norm, and as one fitness robot pro­claimed in a health magazine, "I refuse to con­taminate my body with bovine excreta." Or words to that blunt effect.

I saw a MIFF show last night with Michael, his partner, and their flatmate Lorna. The movie was a terrific Australian production, and the human company was in top form at the dinner we enjoyed earlier at Unwine in Hardware Lane. Because of the vast amount of food and drink I'd already con­sumed that day, including a "medium" sized pizza as wide as a hubcap, I opted for a warm chicken salad. It went down a treat, as did the cabernet merlot (?) and the raspberry baked cheese cake I ordered for dessert. Yummm. All round it was a brilliant night out despite the glacial weather conditions. Brrr...

I also read the next two stories in Night Monsters: an Outer Limits kind of short called 'The Oldest Soldier' and 'I'm Looking for Jeff'. Both were mild forays into terror, with a couple of effective sequences and again extremely well written by the late Fritz Leiber. But they come nowhere near the likes of Ramsey Campbell, who is my favourite author of terror tales that are truly fright­ening, as opposed to vanilla horror stories, 'weird' tales (which Leiber tends to write) or the grisly yarns once labelled splatter­punk. They all have their place in the broader pantheon of horror fiction, and I enjoy each one in equal measure.

wednesday : 21 jul 2004

Friday night last week was a trivia social event that was far from trivial. Much of the hilarity derived from had-to-be-there moments such as: using a person's tie as a napkin, shoving raffle tickets down the same victim's shirt, lobbing cashews into each other's glasses of VB (thus turning said missiles into beer nuts), aiming a handycam at choice female attendees and zooming in on their bosoms (I am a leg man so it wasn't me Your Honour), ignoring most of the trivia questions (closest I came to answering one was naming "Magnus Clarke" as the author of For the Term of His Natural Life), asking for a "red" at the bar and being handed a whole bottle, watching my boss the MC try to keep rest­less punters enter­tained, coming fourth largely by the efforts of Chris and Kylie, loading my plate with vegies, and generally drinking a lot and cracking witticisms at each other.

Afterwards Michael took me along to his ex-flatmate's farewell bash at a venue on upper Queen Street, where people who clearly had no business being near a microphone were strangling various pop songs on the Karaoke set up. Then we dived into Scubar and finally did a circuit of the Crown Complex before hitch-hiking on the first train at Flinders Street station going our way. Dare I say it, we had a bloody good night. I nursed a mild hangover all Saturday – thank­fully it cleared in time for the dinner party at Marylu's house...

This evening I bought a bunch of rather expensive rough African gemstones for dad to cut. It is hard to judge quality from small photographs, but I'm getting better at choosing the least risky specimens. As with E-Bay shopping, if the image looks even slightly dodgy then you ignore that item and move on; there are always more posted tomorrow.

I also finished the next shuddery dark fantasy story in Night Monsters. Entitled 'Midnight in the Mirror World', this 1964 tale was a far better example of the art of ghostly fiction. A pedantic old bachelor looks into a double mirror image and sees that one of his infinite reflections carries a look of horror on its face, because hunched behind him is a black, rake-like figure that might be reaching up to grab his neck with a hooked claw. Each night as the clock strikes twelve, he checks the reflection and notices the apparition getting closer and closer.

This is what I enjoy – a creepy, somber tale written almost as a homage to the implied terrors of M.R. James, one of the most entertaining exponents of this brand of ghost story. And what becomes of the doomed protagonist? Well, you will just have to read it for yourself. Heh heh heh.

tuesday : 20 jul 2004

Hi-de-ho! I just finished reading 'The Black Gondolier', the first story in the Fritz Leiber anthology Night Monsters. It concerns a nutter who theorised that oil beneath the ground, and especially near where he lived in Venice, California, had coalesced a malevolent sentience over millions of years, being that petroleum is the essence of dead organic matter. He tells a friend about dark dreams featuring a gondola that carries him into a black, deathless netherworld where the oil is all pervasive. Of course when the story begins, this crackpot has already disappeared under strange cir­cum­stances. Hence it is told to us by the friend, a learned skeptic. Published in 1964, the story suffers from too much padding and a trite ending. Despite the formid­able literary arsenal at Leiber's disposal, the story is a macabre failure that teases inter­minably without a satis­factory payoff.

That is the reason I tend to avoid genre fiction written between 1945 and 1969: it has dated poorly on all levels bar the prose. In the golden era of pulp, clunky science and supernatural mythologies retain a quaint­ness that goes down like a shot of muscat. Fiction written since 1970 is modern enough that someone like me, who grew up on the likes of The Shining, Clive Barker's Books of Blood and American Psycho, can find adequate literary purchase. Naturally there are exceptions – I Am Legend by Richard Matheson – but with a limited time line available to me, I have to avoid crusty misfires like 'The Black Gondolier'. To be fair, Leiber wrote the story in the style that suited the narrator: a kind of droning, motor mouthed know-it-all. Leiber forgoes the pulp trap­pings which might have resulted in tar creatures pouring from their sub­terranean cata­combs to invade Los Angeles one night during some rare celestial event. That's a 1930s idea, and perhaps a slightly more enter­taining one.

The other tales in the book seem less ambitious and more personal. I'm hoping that a few shudders, rather than yawns, eventuate in the coming weeks! Speaking of scary, just tonight I decided to produce a ninth issue of my fanzine Skintomb, purely online of course. But this does mean I'll draw a cover for it...

monday : 19 jul 2004

The rollercoaster has finally stopped, throwing me against the padded restraint of Monday morn­ing with a jolt. I don't think all the coffee in Brazil could fix the sleep debt I've in­curred over the last couple of days. But if one is going to get this wasted, let it be from pur­suits of the high­est order. I'm not sure I can re­collect the whole mara­thon to­night – here is a be­ginning at least:

Thursday night kicked it all off with nothing less than the Australian premier of Fahrenheit 9/11 at MIFF. As I men­tioned the other day, these hot tickets were secured by Michael from work, whose yoga regime is obviously pay­ing dividends in terms of clarity of thought. Prescient, even. If it was left to me, I would have been doing a mad scram­ble at the eleventh hour only to dis­cover that – yeah well, duh – the show had sold out two days ago. Before catching the film, Michael, John and I gobbled up a scrumptious meal at the Korean Japanese BBQ joint on Bourke Street. "Garghgh," as Homer Simpson would say. After lick­ing our bowls utterly clean and boosting the price of sake stock by several percent­age points, we met the others at the Village cinema­plex and stepped into one of those long, snaky lines of people stand­ing behind one another out­side the front doors. I think this thing is called a queue. How weird. Anyway, the queue inched along slowly until we found our­selves deposited in good seats, soak­ing up the incredible buzz in the room and patting our­selves on the back just for Being There.

You know my thoughts on the movie, so I'll skip to the bit where an ABC TV journalist wanted to interview me for the news and I shyly declined. If I had already formed an eloquent summary of the experience I may have agreed, but my mind was still a jumble of potentially cool but disorganised sound bites. And I chickened out. (Later I realised that if I had sounded like a twerp the editors would have erased me in a nanosecond.) Not content with this major cultural coup, most of our gang headed out for drinks nearby. I caught the 11:30 train home and eventually crashed at 1:00am.

saturday : 17 jul 2004

...and in news just to hand, the technical guru at Cosmos has killed the gremlin that prevented me from updating Toxic Waste. (Hey, I'm glad you like the website!) I did miss doing updates, actually. After a longer stretch I suppose I'd move on and get used to it, but for now the effort is fulfilling in a bizarre way. I can't explain it except to say, if you maintain your own website or weblog, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, Life has been good. I'll get around to doing a recap later today or some time tomorrow. In the meantime, try to see Fahrenheit 9/11.

sunday : 11 jul 2004

Last night. The MUFF screening of Maniac. It was jolly good, but in that intangible, difficult to describe manner. For those of us who met the director William Lustig in the George Cinema bar, shook his hand, enjoyed the round of drinks he bought us, listened to his anecdotes about the New York indie filmmaking fraternity circa 1980, it was special and surreal. Mr Lustig is a legend not only for the string of minor cult movies he has created, but also for his meticulous approach to bringing exploitation movies of yore to DVD using the best transfer techniques possible, and in the most complete versions available. (Jump over to his website to get an idea.) That he is a friendly, approach­able guy who conducted himself at the festival like an eager fan – which he is to a fault – only makes you like him more. Standing around Bill at the bar, I remember looking over at fellow film fiend Colin a few times, and seeing the same idiot grin of reverence on his face that I no doubt had on mine. It was also good to catch up with some characters in 'the scene' too, most notably Michael Helms, who wore his From Dusk Till Dawn denim jacket with pride.

Although I was home by 12:30am, I stayed up fairly late and consequently took it easy once again today. Is being old like this all the time? Hope not. I even opted to stay home rather than venture out for an evening of trivia in St Kilda with Chris and Ky. Instead I got some reading done on the 550 page Peter Straub novel (100 pages to go) and wrote up a profile for one of the More Respectable Online Singles Dating Services.

I suppose this move was prompted by the perpetual no-show in matters of the heart, with the final shove being the birthday milestone. I have been a member of a telephone system for years but with limited success. To get anywhere on this thing, one must spend a fortune on exchanging dribbles of voice conversation that usually lead nowhere, just because some other bloke says what the object of your affections wanted to hear, regardless of whether he could make good on his claim. Not only that, the whole absence of visual cues makes it all the more difficult and frustrating, throwing into reverse the normal process of seeing first, then talking.

At any rate, I am trying to ignore the implication that signing up to a web based service is like an admission of failure. Let's face it, as friends of mine well know, on this front the sands of time are moving about as fast as they would if the bloody hourglass was adrift in zero gravity. I am just not meeting enough new people in order to bump into a useful number of single, potentially compatible women. Participating in activities (sport or whatever) and ventures such as speed dating and singles dinners are options too, and far better ones. However, they are a heavy drain on your wallet and your spare time. I will be searching out things to do centered around the arts and creative pursuits, but in the meantime, I'll see what a snapshot and a few carefully chosen words yields up. Stay tuned.

saturday : 10 jul 2004

Hey!! Thirty five years old, huh. I've had a quiet day so far just taking it easy. I collected a bunch of DVDs from the post office, which was excellent timing. For the record they were:

Wild Things, uncensored version
Citizen Toxie, uncensored version
Underworld, director's cut (and possibly uncensored too)
Dracula (1931), also contains the longer Spanish version
Kids, at 91 mins it is shorter than the 102 min NTSC laserdisc

friday : 9 jul 2004

It's almost my birthday and I'll drink if I want to, drink if I want to, drink if I want to, de-blah blah... Yes, your Humble Narrator turns 35 tomorrow, the 10th of July. I have just arrived back from sinking a veritable banquet of alcoholic seductions from four venues in Olde Melbourne Towne with a bunch of merry happy chaps from work. I also ate lunch (and sipped two bottles of house sake) with other workmates at a new Korean BBQ joint on Bourke Street that offers tasty, value for money Korean & Japanese fusion cuisine. I went there with the beautiful Shazza on Wednesday evening for a quick dinner before seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind @ the Lumiere Cinemaette on Lonsdale.

Before tucker and the movie, we sampled grapes juices at the weekly wine tasting event held in the atrium next to the main book shop at Federation Square. It was here that I rediscovered my lurrrrve of Muscat and Tokay dessert wines. I'm going to order three bottles of these primo liquid delights from one particular cellar, with free delivery. Life is too short to drink cheap wine!

Because Marylu and other friends are throwing an intimate dinner party for me next Saturday night, I have decided (or decreed) that I shall be celebrating my turning 35 years old all of next week, too. There are no concrete plans yet, but if tonight can turn out as good as it was with virtually no itinerary, then next week might end up being an extended party worthy of this milestone. Tomorrow night I will be attending the MUFF screening of Maniac, a sleazy favourite of many gore film cogno­scenti, together with a late night showing of something else, the name of which escapes me. Today I also found out that I am booked in to the Australian premier of Fahrenheit 9/11 during the Melbourne International Film Festival, thanks to the miracle telephony of Michael. July is shaping up to be my favourite month of 2004, despite the Ninth Circle of Hell weather conditions.

I have not journalised for two days because (a) I spent a coolness evening on the town with Shazza on Wednesday night, (b) because I spent last night typing in the last page of that DVD Now censorship article, and (c) because I last night I spoke to mum and dad for a long enjoyable time. But all of that's done and I can now focus on the DVD Review That Will Not Die and other, more ephemeral distractions.

Oh, by the way, I have already received two BD presents, one from Tim at work who bought me an authentic mini Slinky, and another from the rest of my immediate team who chipped in to replace my shattered crystal glass with two new lead crystal tumblers. Both are perfect gifts that indulge both my inane nature, and my passion for the finer things in life. What can I say except thank you very much!

Well it is now 12:41am on the 10th, and thus officially my 35th birthday. I'll resist the urge to stay awake for the full 24 hours like I did one year, and instead conserve my energy for the coming week of partying. Let me just say that sleep has been assigned a Low priority for this juncture in my space-time continuum.

tuesday : 6 jul 2004

Just a short entry to say that I've spent more time keying in the censor­ship article and, as a result, my spinal column has turned into a pretzel. At least there is only one page to go. Carrying on with this theme, the French film Anatomy of Hell goes before the Classification Review Board tomorrow at the behest of the Australian Family Association, who are hoping to get the movie banned for some idiotic reason, maybe the tampon tea drinking scene? I am looking forward to buying Irreversible on DVD soon, after it survived its own assassination attempt from Reverend Fred Bile and these AFA fuckwits on June 30.

At work I had to swap my old PC for a new one. Cleaning out the hard drive, I found a bunch of snap­shots from various social events. I scissored myself out of one such photo and stuck it to the end of this page. I think the credit belongs to Harry's friend Kaz, but I'll try to confirm it. Shane is stand­ing beside me in this shot, and that might be a can of Canadian Club & cola resting in my paw.

monday : 5 jul 2004

Another uneventful day in Paradise. After work I bought groceries then cooked up a vegetable feast while watching an hilarious episode of Queer Eye. This is such a good show, even mum tunes in. Actually, hold that thought, because when I was staying with her in Brisbane, I once put on Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head as we dressed for dinner at my brother's place. To my astonishment, she started humming and singing along to the vocals! My mother: the infallible cultural litmus test.

Anyway, just now I've been typing in the last censorship article of mine that was published in someone else's magazine, this time a glossy Australian journal called DVD Now. It is longer than the other articles so it may not be ready until later this week. Which reminds me, I have to get cracking on my Customs bust piece, and also on typing in the first five or six issues of my review fanzine, since they were created with old school methods using 'paper' and 'glue'. Oh, what a rapturous joy that will be. I might have to rig up an electric shock apparatus in order to keep me at the task until it's done, or else buy one of those scanners that can read text.

sunday : 4 jul 2004

Not much time for journalism lately. In brief: I just got back from watching the two big must-see films in the cinemas, and a good time was had by all. Most of Saturday I was out of the house or resting, and on Friday night I went to an interesting but desultory 21st birthday party. I also got fitted for some wedding attire, typed up an old censorship article I rediscovered when moving boxes of stuff around in my wardrobe, took delivery of a gorgeous amethyst gemstone I bought off E-bay, and saw Harry Potter III with Chris and Kylie last night.

Running for the train on Friday night with Chris in the lead, I literally fell behind when I leaped off the bottom step at the station and looked up at the monitor to check the arrival time. Suddenly I was in free fall as the floor levered itself up 90 degrees, then I found myself sprawled over the tiles in my black suit like a stunned bat. Very embarrassment. Luckily my knees and left wrist broke my fall. If you see a clean spot in the foyer of a CBD station, that would have been my doing. Bow.

thursday : 1 jul 2004

I have 30 minutes to belt this entry out before the John Woo movie Once a Thief fires up on SBS. I've never seen it before and it will be in widescreen without commercials – all good reasons to sit down and suffer the 12:50am finish.

There's not much guilt on my part, though. I left the corporate fishbowl at 8:45pm tonight still wrestling with a twisting anaconda of a problem related to some cryptic business reports that should be doing this, but are instead doing that. And because the fucking programs are never documented properly, a person trying to figure out what the Heckle & Jeckle is going on must backward engineer the original business think from source code that, more often than not, resembles a wall of Egyptian hieroglyphs after being sprayed with machine gun fire. But that's what I am paid for, and enduring one frustrating day every two months or so is an agreeable average by any office drone's standard.

There was, however, some cool stuff that happened to me today that made it all bearable: free cakes in the kitchen left over from a meeting, complimentary salad at the café I often have lunch at, reading The Green Guide for free, being shouted a beer at an Irish Pub (I owe you one Michael), watching the end of financial year jobs go through smoothly, being invited to lunch, finding a bit of rolled paper in my gloves as a practical joke, snoozing on the train, and eating a Kit-Kat. Yeah right, it was such an awful day!!

tuesday : 29 jun 2004

I paid an overdue electricity bill today. The notice warned our household of a trip to the "Disco Nection" in bold orange typeface if it was not settled by July 5th. That is how I parsed the heading anyway. "Way Out" and "Get Off at The Next Exit" never fail to inspire a chuckle, either.

While lifting dumbbells tonight with the best of INXS warbling on the headphones, I read another paragraph worth quoting from Danse Macabre by Stephen King on the subject of suspending disbelief in fantasy and horror stories. What I was doing at the time probably made his point all the more poignant.

Disbelief isn't light; it's heavy. The difference in sales between Arthur Hailey and H.P. Lovecraft may exist because everyone believes in cars and banks, but it takes a sophisticated and muscular intellectual act to believe, even for a little while, in Nyarlathotep, the Blind Faceless One, the Howler of the night. And whenever I run into someone who expresses a feeling along those lines of, "I don't read fantasy or don't go to any of those movies; none of it's real," I feel a kind of sympathy. They can't simply lift the weight of fantasy. The muscles of the imagination have grown too weak.

King does not intend to sound elitist, nor do I quote this passage to that effect. For me I find that, not only do I have an active imagination, but I also need to have my imagination challenged and sated regularly, hence the steady diet of movies, fiction, visual arts, music, and other conceptual areas of interest such as astronomy and cutting edge science. If I go too long without a fix, restlessness sets in and I develop a kind of mental cabin fever – caused by too much 'reality'.

Sound fanciful? Consider this: we all dream bizarre scenarios every night. In fact, researchers say that regular unbroken REM sleep is an essential part of maintaining your physical and mental health. Perhaps my poor sleeping habits lately have translated into a voracious appetite for manufactured fantasies? This might be true if these tastes had developed in recent times, but this is not the case. I've always enjoyed outré entertainments. Maybe I need more now than I used to?

A more mundane explanation for the symptoms, which are very subtle, could be chemical withdrawal. A book on hormones I read earlier this year mentioned dopamine as a trigger that may cause much of our subliminal enjoyment of, and possible addiction to, things like music and nostalgic moments. Hmmm...

sunday : 27 jun 2004

Here we are again on the eve of another working week. I've had a lazy weekend doing the bare minimum necessary to sustain myself – it's a tough life having no dependants or responsibilities, no guilt or obligations. The days stretch out before you like an open highway of free time and dispos­able cash.

Today I sprang out of bed at 3:00pm, driven by hunger and the urge to do something pro­ductive out­side the zone of sleep, literature and music avail­able at a mere arm's length of my pillow. I decided that my top priority was doing another update for the Chopping List, so I spent a few hours with a DVD remote control glued to one hand while I scribbled notes and then willed the necessary HTML into existence on the various Chopping List pages.

Censorship has been a hot topic lately. Besides Last House on the Left finally being classified after spend­ing 25 more years as a prohibited import, the dead­line for public submissions concerning the performance of the Aussie censors has just passed, the Melbourne Under­ground Film Festival is about to commence, Irreversible is under review yet again at the behest of the AFA, who also want to ban Anatomy of Hell without having seen it, and the Refused Classification website now has regular updates, probably to keep up with all of these develop­ments. As a con­sequence, I have added this great site – run by our very own 'Melon Farmer' – to the Ticking Over list. I consider it to be manda­tory read­ing for all Australians.

I had a ball going out Friday night with Shazza and other friends to a selection of CBD venues. I caught the third train home in the morn­ing, because I arrived too late to get the first one, and nodded off on the plat­form waiting for the second. I woke just in time to watch it pull away – that is such a wither­ing sensation. Last night I caught up with Marylu and had an equally enter­taining time absorbing all manner of sights, sounds and vegetable soups.

thursday : 24 jun 2004

This is a short radar ping before lock-down. Bugger all has happened in my world lately. Tonight I drove the Mazda to Chadstone for a spot of clothes shopping and general sussing out, it being pay day and all. And hey, why is it that every time I drive up Murrumbeena Road, a bloody train happens to be passing by, thus stopping the traffic dead. Argh!!

Alas, I only found one red parka jacket in Esprit after visiting every men's clothing store in the entire complex (I am wearing now as I type this and the price tag is still attached), plus a few sports shops and Myers. For some bizarre reason, which might be male menopause, early signs of Parkinson's disease, or something similar, I have become partial to puffy jackets, white sneakers, white shirts, skateboard and track pants, another other associated nasty apparel. Actually, I think I spoke of this minor obsession in one of my first journal entries, so forgive the r-r-repetition. The upshot is that I am looking more and more like a gangsta rapper these days, but I can't help it. Very few styles of casual clothing or colour schemes appeal to be. I have also ditched wearing blue denim, which severely limits my choices.

In case you're wondering, my overpriced sports label of preference is the Swedish Swoosh, Adidas. Ever since reading about Nike's sweat shops, I've maintained an informal boycott against them. The other brands – Champion, New Balance, Converse, Puma, Reebok – rarely design clothes that catch my eye. My ultimate preference is for obscure brands such as the skateboard labels, but scant few of them can resist splashing their ugly logos around. The best show a cool, discrete glyph, rather than titles or slogans related to skating. I do not skate, and probably never will – I like my skeleton all in one piece thanks, and my tender tegument without holes or tears in it. Of course, I'm not into sport either, so don't ask me why I like wearing Adidas gear. Anyway, that's the dilemma.

Now, as silly as I may look, give me credit for avoiding the Fubu rap star wearable billboards for 50 Cent, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, et al. And I don't own any parachute pants. Honest. Err, I mean: straight up, homie. OK I have a lot of work to do around the mattress now. This was not really a short entry after all. "Sorry about that, Chief". And I'm still typing away... Dum de dah. Oh yeah, tomorrow night looks like it should be nifty, with drinks and multiple venues lined up by the delectable Shazza, who is back from NZ and partying hard. I hope to do some dancing at last. It has been a long time between podiums.

Lastly, I found what is supposed to be the weblog of Fred 'Dumped by Britney Spears' Durst from Limp Bizkit today via the Onion A.V. Club (I love those guys). I'm not sure if it is him yet, since it's written incognito, but I'll read it and see...it might be crap. Gillian Anderson from The X-Files also has one, but it's only updated monthly and is pretty tough going. Just remember that Mulder is not around to save you.

monday : 21 jun 2004

Canceled and late trains have plagued the Metwork lately, causing grumpy commuters up and down the plat­forms to snort with disgust. Sans reading material, I might have been one of them, but I have enough pots boiling on the mental stove to keep me occupied.

It was a modest weekend spent indoors with various enter­tainments. Work chugged along as usual, except that our boss is away for a week, thus liberating two of us from the loathsome chore of compiling time­sheets that account for every minute of our toils during the previous week. Though necessary (as the saying goes, if you don't measure it you can't manage it) this hated account­ing exercise represents the only grey cloud on the bright sky of pro­fessional life as I know it.

Anyway, enough moaning and groaning. I'm starting to sound like Big Brother house­mates on nomin­ation night. I've just had dinner and a shower and plan to chip away at some un­finished business on this site, as well as remind mum to send my Wahl hair clippers back, since I left them behind in Olde Brisbane Town. If my Polynesian hair grows any thicker I won't need a helmet to go motor­bike riding.

saturday : 19 jun 2004

Tim Burton's dark comedy Beetle Juice is haunting my TV as I type this out during commercial breaks, there­fore it could be the longest entry yet. Well, almost.

But getting down to business, I roused the huskies and sledded across the urban tundra with my faithful Eskimo guide Chris-Nook today to check out the minimal­ist apart­ment in Prahran. It was smaller than expected, at least compared to the glamour photo­graphs used to show it off. The floor tiles were not pure white either but textured with beige speckles, and a close look at the over­all detail­ing revealed some rough crafts­manship. All up it was interest­ing but not worth the pro­jected $360,000. We did not stay for the actual auction, opting to walk down Chapel Street and play with the cats in Syber's book emporium.

Tonight I helped the flatmates clean up the unit ready to receive Euan's sister, who is spending 30 hours flying over from England to partake of the smashing Mel­bourne weather.

thursday : 17 jun 2004

11:12pm and I am sipping a nightcap as cruel winds hurl pellets of rain at our windows. Friday is already here thanks to a short week, the last one for a long time. Cheers to the person who invented annual leave is all I can say.

I have no grand plan for the weekend yet. On Saturday the minimal­ist apartment I have coveted for three years goes under the hammer, so I might turn up to have a sticky nose and give myself a real virtual tour. 302/11 Hillingdon Place was first featured in Houses #24 (2001) and as work­mates can attest, I've had a photo of this gorgeous apartment on my work­station wall since then. I even sent its architect and owner David Hicks a fanboy e-mail gush­ing about how much I liked his gleam­ing white shoebox of a dwelling. If I had enough cash I would bid for it, but the long-term plan involves build­ing my own such palace on a good block some­where in metro Melbourne. In my imagin­ation I can already walk through every room and corridor, making small design adjust­ments at will. Dreams are free...

Tips for Aspiring Yuppies #4: The source of those mysteri­ous stains on the French cuffs of your opposite wrist (e.g. the left cuff for right-handed execs) is not sauce, but the result of gripping the cuff edge with your finger tips to aid dragging that arm through its Super-140 wool jacket sleeve. The solution is to poke that hand through unaided. This is made tricksy by the protruding cuff-link, hence the key is getting a good start. And if you happen to topple off the corporate ladder at some stage, a fruitful career as a con­tortion­ist awaits you.

In a rare sporting interlude: well done to Queens­land, who leveled the rugby league State of Origin series one-all. I saw the first game at my brother's abode during my last night in Bris­bane, downing stubbies of Carlton Mid-Strength and having a laugh just like the old days with mum and dad in the lounge room (minus the brewskis). Needless to say I enjoyed his company more than the game, but scratch me and you'll see more maroon than ruby red showing through. I did not watch the match this time, opting instead to read Peter Straub, exercise roboti­cally, and listen to CDs. I had a rotten stretch of non-sleep last night – I'll be happy with five hours of coma tonight. Then bring on the week­end!

wednesday : 16 jun 2004

I went along to see the Beatle tribute show tonight courtesy of Marylu the magnificent. It consisted of a covers band called The Beatels, who did their best to energize the leth­argic audience, and video footage of the Beatles live in Melbourne, June 17th 1964 – forty years ago. This rare archival tape included all three support acts and audio for Beatles songs deleted by Channel 9 for the comm­ercial breaks. While I'm not a fan of the Beatles, I so like some of their popular songs and own the compil­ation CD of their 27 number one hits. The B&W concert reminded me of A Hard Day's Night with its candid por­trayal of the Fab Four at the peak of their success. An enter­taining night, but it may be another ten years before I play Beatles music under my own volition, yeah yeah yeah...

tuesday : 15 jun 2004

Jesus wept ice cubes. Was it cold this morning or what? I had to stand in front of the fridge until I'd warmed up. Brrrr. Later, I almost developed hypothermia standing on the train platform because our service had been canceled and the next one was late. Some gloves and a volcano erupting close by would have made it more bearable. Tomorrow I shall be taking the leather mits for sure. An overcoat on top of a wool suit tends to induce sweating if any measure of walking is required, but this winter I might have to buy one. Either that or (gulp) wear under-shirts.

And how was work today? That is, after walking in at 10:00am, downing a cappuccino (no coffee no workee) and settling amongst the remaining piles refuse left over from moving desks? Things were bloody hectic and a tad frustrating. Just one of those days where one niggling chore overlapped with the next one. I departed at about 7:45pm like a lobotomy out-patient, nursing a brain that the chilly weather could not numb any further. At such times the late train offers welcome succor in the form of neutral gear, switched off, go along for the ride zone-outs.

At home, wrapped in a blanket of central-heated air, things improved as I consumed another vegetable dinner and watched the limp finalé to There's Some­thing About Miriam. It may have registered a twitch on the emotional Richter scale if the whole thing was not so staged, as reality TV shows tend to be. It worked much better in The Crying Game. Duh. Before snuffing the tele­vision I soaked up some current affairs programming about the Middle East situ­ation, and the push by some Vietnamese for agent orange compen­sation. All of this was a good antidote to the Miriam malarkey. I also sampled Rove Live briefly: two minutes and thirty five seconds by stop-watch.

monday : 14 jun 2004

Happy birthday, Queen. Anyhow, today was bloody good. After doing the mandatory public holiday sleep-in, I caught Super Size Me at the local cinemaplex as the rain poured down. By the time I left, the weather had improved to being merely shit, but there was no time for climactic meditation. I had to scream over to Heath's den of iniquity for a catch-up session involving new DVDs and old gripes about censorship and inept filmmaking. He also has a friendly ginger cat – the company of these animals always has the effect of grounding me and I miss owning one, or rather, being owned by one. Dogs have masters, cats have staff, as the bumper sticker goes. Back at home I cook up a pot of steamed vegies, update the Sinema page, and plonk down to watch another electric episode of Queer Eye.

sunday : 13 jun 2004

I have been coasting lately with reading fiction, hearing new music, web surfing, watching TV and movies. On Friday night I caught up with friends at various bars around town, finishing up in The Kitten Club on Little Collins. Saturday was spent shopping in the morning and relaxing in the afternoon. I was invited to an opera but opted stayed indoors after waking from an afternoon nap. Today has been more of the same, and tomorrow I will see Super Size Me in the morning then lob in to see Heath post-lunch. And now back to my favourite web journals...

The Diary of an Average Australian is written by a veteran of the form who also created Toxic Custard. Daniel's diary entries are always witty, informative, or personal. I particularly enjoy his accounts of shopping excursions.

I Don't Get It is a new journal that details the search for love by university student Dermot McGuire in Sydney. He appears to be slowing down regular updates, which would be a shame for the fan base he has attracted. What Dermot has posted so far is quite unique among the hundreds of weblogs I have sampled in search of interesting material. Still one to watch, I reckon.

I found Lyn Screens via the Melbourne Blogs website not long after she launched it. She covers a variety of topical genres, including horror films (woo-hoo!!) and some amusing discussions about naming movies that featured cannibalism, or scenes in which humans were eaten by animals. Her approach to film criticism is intelligent and she doesn't hold back on the wordage. Based on her latest entry, it looks as though she creates her masterpieces of analysis in the most ideal writing environment I can think of: at work. I am officially jealous.

Sister Madly, aka Marylu, is a good friend of mine in Melbourne whose Live Journal inspired me to start my own. It was only much later that I discovered how massive the web journal presence on the Internet really was. Her personality and great sense of humour come through in her entries, although her busy home, work and social life do not leave her much time or energy for more regular updates. But there is always something to enjoy when does post, as there was tonight.

Recently I have been doing that thing where you type in the names of old acquaintances into Google to find out if they have an Internet presence. One such discovery was the continuation of a fanzine published in Brisbane from say 1988 to 1998 called Mondo Gore. I was 19 years old when another zine editor, Chris Doolan, introduced me to it. Edited by Hank Hankerson and distributed for free around "B-bane", Mondo Gore was addictive and influential, especially with regards to its attitude toward censorship. (In those days, Queensland had strict state censorship.) Mondo Gore V.2 sees the welcome reappearance of Hank with all guns blazing.

To Be Continued...

Hey, how about that Merlin guy being evicted from the Big Brother house, and then holding up a "Free the refugees" sign instead of giving Gretel K. and the screaming-then-booing TV Weak fans the usual darling little interview. Wait a minute, let me make sure I understood what happened. Someone on commercial television – a reality TV show to boot – did something spontaneous and unexpected to make a political statement? Stick it to them, mate! If teevee was more like this I would tune in more often.

thursday : 10 jun 2004

Right, I'm not insane after all. Went through the morning routine today in my usual Haitian zombie trance-like state. So far so good. Then it was time to grab my set of house keys before heading out the front door. But they were not on the kitchen bench, where I leave them 361 days in every year. A search high and low turned up nothing. Cutting my losses, I leave my bedroom window unlocked and stalk off to the train station. After work I 'break in' and do a more thorough search, half cleaning the detritus off my bedroom floor in the process. Still nothing! The flatmates went to see Harry Potter III, so I just played some 'looking for your lost keys' music and poked around morosely until they came home.

Turns out that Euan took his keys and my keys with him today – an honest mistake. I was kind of glad to get them back, because the one remaining car key for the Mazda was on that set. I had left the other one, along with a complete set of house keys, in a taxi one night. Pure genius, that's me. At any rate, it is now 11:12pm and I am calm and relaxed for the first time on this day, June 10th 2004. Better late than never.

Last night, before chucking on the cartoon travesty that is Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (why bother shooting live action at all?), I spent some time dipping into Stephen King's fabulous Danse Macabre, a non-fiction tome I keep coming back to again and again. The Peter Straub novel I'm reading prompted a scan of King's discussion of an earlier novel by Straubsy called Ghost Story, along with his own classic, The Shining. Summing up the haunted house subgenre, King writes:

It doesn't hurt to emphasize again that horror fiction is a cold touch in the midst of the familiar, and good horror fiction applies this cold touch with sudden, unexpected pressure. When we go home and shoot the bolt on the door, we like to think we're locking trouble out. The good horror story about the Bad Place whispers that we are not locking the world out; we are locking ourselves in...with them.

That makes me smile, it really does. Granted, it is an uneasy, disconcerting glow that one derives from such an effect. But it reminds me of why I enjoy reading a cracking good tale of lurking terror. Horror fiction is quite a different beast to horror films, and while Stephen King is less successful now (critically) than he was, he bloody well understands what the horror genre is about, both from an academic and a fan's point of view. I cannot recommend Danse Macabre (1981) highly enough for those of you who are students of either spooky novels or fright flicks. Unpleasant dreams...

tuesday : 8 jun 2004

G'day. Or rather – G'evening. The handy thing about writing a weblog is that if you run out of anecdotes or observations, you can always talk about...weblogs. Now although I have not run dry of topics, I do want to rave on about the current state of my favourite online journals. You can see them listed over there on the right side of your fancy pantsy LCD panel, if you scroll down a little bit. There they are.

Look Up and Grin has stalled; he does not appear to be looking up or grinning much these days. His style, or lack of it, made me laugh a lot. I can only conclude that his hunger for indie rock stardom has poached all of his spare time. Because I only want Ticking Over to contain weblogs that are updated frequently, I have bumped him off the list like a snitch in a gangster film. Bang! Gone, but not forgotten, you funny bugger.

The dynamo behind Concoction is now working on a cruise ship. This expatriate Aussie gal always posts long epics about her partying adventures, even to the point of listing how many standard drinks she had consumed: gotta love that. I'm hoping that she can stop long enough to regale us with random morsels of passenger scuttlebutt and stories of her onboard lust affairs.

Lola Wolf lives in the CBD of Melbourne somewhere but has taken to knitting of late. Is that endearing or what? Well I think so – who asked you, anyway? Her journal is well written and populated with juicy personal musings on precisely how she feels on a given day, not to mention being forward about certain 'hungers' that demand immediate attention, together with her revealing word association responses. One part serious, one part whimsy, shake and serve with crushed ice and passionfruit juice. Tangy.

Lately, Miss-Iz Hairy Legs has been sporadic at best. I like her slice of life anecdotes and she, like many web journalists I read, knows how to write a good sentence. But updates have been so far between that I mostly forget what her personality is like. Please note that this is probably more to do with my 256-byte memory capacity than any failing on her part. I mean, how could you not like someone who calls herself Mrs Hairy Legs? I've just tried to reacquaint myself with the owner of said hirsute limbs, but 'Blankspot' seems to be down. Again.

If you read The Green Guide or any of the Australian audiophile glossies, then there's a good chance that you've read an article by Stephen Dawson, aka Hi-Fi Writer. In recent times he has been clearing the fog of misconception from the rocky terrain of high definition video. A ways back he even devoted an update to questions I raised about how video circuits might affect sound quality in audio amplifiers and surround sound processors. He is a nice bloke who really knows his stuff.

Another cool cucumber is James at Hooverdust, which is one of my favourite websites. I figured this out because I, like Lyn and many others, now wait anxiously for each new update. A visitor count in the vicinity of 250,000 and climbing does not surprise me at all. Hooverdust has a perfect blend of minimalist layouts, a laid back and appealing writing style, personal insights, and some interesting photography. Hey, stop raising the standard for the rest of us poor lazy sods! At least put a spelling mistake in occasionally. Sheeze.

Damn it, the cuckoo clock has just struck midnight. As Lou at work says on his way out the door: To Be Continued...

monday : 7 jun 2004

I've taken a break from movie watching tonight. Ten films in two days is not a bad effort. In fact, it's bloody astounding considering I also had a lovely roast dinner at Chris and Kylie's abode last night, thereby preventing me from seeing Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (uncut on DVD). To the declaration that your humble narrator sat and watched six DVDs back to back on Saturday, Chris responded somewhat rhetorically, "Isn't that a bit excessive?" I smirked as I replied in the affirmative. It was uberfun. Few modern indulgences can match crawling out of bed at 9:30am on a Sunday morning, powering up the home cinema gear, and having your bed hair blasted straight by a very loud action movie like S.W.A.T., all the while gobbling up Weetbix and toast like popcorn and grinning stupidly.

Even though I did not get laid in Brisbane, I managed to find the following movies in the excellent secondhand CD shop at the top end of the Queen Street Mall. It is nice to know that some things remain constant over the years, unlike my eyesight and greying hair.

28 Days Later, $15
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Criterion release, $20
Toy Story II, $15
Ocean's 11, the Soderbergh's remake, $13
The French Connection, special edition, $15

There are about 30 purchased DVDs and VHS tapes that need watching between now and when the sun turns into a red giant star in five billion years time. So...no rush. Then again, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Signs are due back on Saturday. I have a suspicion that the late fee records in the video store database would indeed survive such a stellar cataclysm. I think I'll save my futuristic simulacrum the hassle of that particular financial burden.

sunday : 6 jun 2004

I have been busy clothes shopping (Thursday night), attending a work social function (Friday night) and catching up on a stack of DVDs – literally. It is 1:30am Sunday morning and I've just watched six movies straight, with more to come tomorrow until the flatmates return from their weekend away. Friday night was pretty agreeable apart from walking into the women's toilet at the Croft Institute by accident; I was blind from not wearing my glasses, rather than from drinking too much. Honest.

wednesday : 2 jun 2004

I have been spoiled this week: last night with the Larry Clark doco, and tonight by minimalism on This is Modern Art – the one episode of the six I Did Not Want to Miss. And it was good. Afterwards, when the minimalist soundtrack has died off, I almost wanted to shout "Amen brother!!" and do a Mexican wave.

Channel Ten has a potentially terrific minimalist TV show in Big Brother Up Late, but they insist on installing a garish neon host and running banal competitions. Fuck off, please. I tried to sustain the minimal mood by watching it, despite the late hour. There was even a neat moment when the camera showed someone lying in bed looking at photographs of friends and/or family. Beautiful. At least until the director cut back to the host, as if this glimpse of real human poignancy was something to be shunned.

tuesday : 1 jun 2004

Just finished watching a super documentary on SBS about filmmaker Larry Clark, the vanguard drug scene photographer who eventually directed Bully and Ken Park. He talked at length about his approach to presenting life in his photography and movies; very refreshing. It was also gratifying to hear legends like John Waters gush about Bully and the existence of 'real' people like Clark, who makes no claims about being perfect and yet has gained the respect of peers and people he has worked with. Never compromise!

Day Two of returning to work held no surprises. The restructuring of our teams has changed the ebb and flow slightly in my favour – what this means in the long term is still foggy, but the future looks promising. Still, I had to escape for another long lunch to share a delicious vegetarian lasagne with Marylu, and then do more scouting for a new leather jacket.

Yesterday I found a perfect black number by Oroton – soft leather, silver zip, sleek cut – but the price tag was $1000. After hoofing it down Collins street and back up Little Collins, I chanced upon a small shop near Oroton and picked up a much cheaper jacket that was almost identical. Of course, it won't be as good (perhaps the lining will wear out sooner or something like that) but the imported Italian leather is silky smooth and the Aussie manufacturing appears to be sound, at least to my untrained eyes. I simply look for straight stitches and no loose threads, and make sure it fits properly. Oh yeah baby – I love leather. It feels good to have another leather jacket after loosing my old one a few years ago in someone's car boot. Idiot.

Lastly, I went grocery shopping tonight and bought even more fruit and vegies than usual, including brussel sprouts and beans. Viva eating for health. Anyway, I go bed now.

monday : 31 may 2004

Planes, trains, and automobiles! Please – I have had quite enough. For instance, my voyage from Sydney to Melbourne yesterday involved the following modes of vehicular transportation:

Sydney train to CBD (for CD shopping)
Taxi from CBD to Central Station (running late)
City bus to the airport (free due to service disruptions)
Plane to Melbourne airport (only one flight attendant babe)
Skybus to Melbourne CBD (snoozed)
Met train to home (read and snoozed)

So I finally walk through the front door at 5:05pm in time to watch The World at War, having missed two weeks of This is Modern Art and not wanting to skip anymore of my idiot box programming. Pity poor Harry, who rings me ten minutes later to see if I want to watch Super Size Me at the Kino in town, 7:00pm. Apart from being riveted by the B&W war footage, I would need to catch yet another train into the CBD. I flashback Nam-style to today's trek and also to the seventeen hour, forty five minute rail journey I endured returning from the gemfields, then explain to Harry that, regretfully, I cannot make Super Size Me.

By the way, my two weeks off were glorious, thanks for asking. The theme was quality family contact, with some old mateship at the tail end. Hello also to tOOleS, whom I had coffee with at Circular Quay through the racket of indigenous busking. I was in Queensland for the birthdays of both my brother and my mum, then I spent an unscheduled five days on the gemfields with dad.

Notes for a sketch of the Central Queensland Gemfields: small townships, friendly retirement age diggers and tourists, dry land sparsely forested, lousy TV reception, electricity and tank water at dad's shack, no young people and utterly no talent, contagious gemstone fever, hard yakka digging and washing gravel, watching dad cut a 1.12 carat yellow sapphire I subsequently bought, pub meal at the Rubyvale Tavern, sausage sizzle and XXXX Gold, photographing a $15,000 green sapphire, seeing a $97,000 sapphire in a gem shop, sponge baths, hearing weird noises at night, watching Rabbit Proof Fence on my dad's 34cm 4:3 Sony TV, afternoon naps, eating banana pancakes and sipping port, me finding the first sapphire chip, mosquitoes and flies and dust, remembering to block the back door to snakes, the vivid splash of the Milky Way galaxy at night, chatting to dear old dad for hours.

Alas, my plan to catch up on writing chores failed because I had maybe two idle days during the whole trip, and I had to spend those sleeping or watching shows like Dr Phil. And on the gemfields there was no computer and certainly no Internet access. My father did not even have a landline, just a mobile phone. It is supremely ironic that dad, a born again technophobe, purchased one before me.

tuesday : 25 may 2004

I arrived back from Central Queensland this morning, a trip that took 17 hours and 45 minutes by train. Tedious. Staying in the gemfields was all good; more details later. I tried to load the previous journal entry with FTP, but I could not connect to my ISP, despite having done so the day before. Argh, nevermind. Tonight I'm taking mum into town to celebrate her birthday. Ciao for now!

tuesday : 18 may 2004

Greetings from South East Queensland. This quick update is brought to you by MS Notepad.

Things have been laid back thus far, with family visits and self-imposed rest and relaxation the main priorities. The flight up was smooth and the weather has been perfect. Why have I never returned to Brisbane, where everyone dresses in resort couture and train tickets are checked manually? Well, for many reasons, the main one being Melbourne, which is a great city. One does not walk away from such a locale without a good excuse.

I am about to catch the all night vampire express train to the Central Queensland gemfields, where dear old dad is living out the winter in his shack until August. The return trip happens on Monday afternoon, so I'll definitely be off the radar until then. If there is an Internet cafe up there somewhere, I might be able to log some random comments along the way, but honestly it's not a pressing concern. Pottering around the quasi-outback should be fun. I'm taking two novels with me: Mystery by Peter Straub, the author of Ghost Story, and The Terminator novelisation by Shaun Huston, the author of Slugs and Relics. What a lovely contrast they'll make...

friday : 14 may 2004

We are watching The Royal Wedding, but it's not in widescreen, just 4:3. Hardly a regal aspect ratio if you ask me. Reow. I just arrived home from doing a CBD venue crawl for Tim's birthday. I drank a modest amount of vitamin 'A', mindful of tomorrow's flight and the limited cash I was carrying. The last time I jetted interstate I went clubbing and left myself a slender two hours of sleeping time before my 'alarm' clock detonated. Hardly a tragedy though when 9-to-5 no longer applies. I think it was film director Stanley Kubrick who once said that artists and criminals fascinated him as characters because they lived their lives outside the mores of society.

The Wedding makes a nice change from the doom and gloom on the airwaves. For instance, I have seen the beheading video, and it is as disturbing as you could imagine. The image quality is a blurred mess that obscures most of the detail, but the whole ghastly procedure is still very difficult to watch. Like the 'wish you were here' Iraqi prison photographs, such video footage transcends the rhetoric and politics. It says: all human beings are still capable of hideous cruelty. No culture or race holds the patent on righteousness. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Append your own aphorisms at will...

Ah, two weeks off will be grand. I'm looking forward to filling in gaps on Toxic Waste, maybe jotting down some dilettante poetry, and catching up with family. I will download enough software on mum's PC to maintain Toxic Waste, but if the site becomes an oil painting, you'll know that technical difficulties intervened.

My travel dates are: BrisVegas 15 May to 27 May, Syd-a-ney 27 May to 30 May. I'll be checking my Yahoo e-mail inbox over the duration, and reading my favourite weblogs. I expect you all to keep me entertained with your fine graffiti while I'm away!

thursday : 13 may 2004

One more day to go before my holiday starts! It's 11:38pm and I am pretty wasted. Last night was a late one due to watching the bonus episode of Words in which Matthew Collings from This is Modern Art was interviewed. He is a highly engaging speaker – you could listen to him talk all night. I will have to track down his books on art criticism. His views in general match perfectly with my experience, which is to say that while I love the art in art books, I rarely read the accompanying text. This is especially the case with my tomes on minimalist art. The commentaries are dry and academic, whereas the joy I get from this style of art comes from a totally different direction.

The girl I mentioned yesterday was not on the same train tonight, so I'll have to postpone being rejected by her for another two weeks. Ha, what a lovely defeatist attitude I have! It would be quite sad if I wasn't joking, which I am. Joking, I mean, although many would inevitably disagree. Well, in 32 hours from now it will all be forgotten ancient history as my plane flies up hill to the sunny latitudes of Queensland. The question is, will I be flying with a hangover or not?

wednesday : 12 may 2004

As the countdown to my holiday continues, the available time in which to do stuff dwindles at an alarming rate. Tonight I got back into jogging and made an import­ant phone call, one of three I need to do before blast­ing off on Saturday morning for a respite from the chill. At the moment I'm watching the brilliant and unmissable This is Modern Art (got the name right finally) on Channel II.

This week I've noticed a young woman possibly checking me out on the train. We ride the same carriage to the same station. I have always found her attrac­tive, but last year I saw her walking down Russell Street with a hunky boyfriend, so there seemed to be no chance there. But circum­stances may have changed, unless she is just bored like many commuters on the late shift. It happens. I really need to break the ice before my two weeks of shore leave.

And lastly, I deposited my $260 of coinage at the bank today. Hauling the heavy load down there, you'll never guess in a million years what happened –
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Nothing. Well, almost nothing. In my zealous rush to stack it up and count it all, I went twenty cents overbudget in one of the 26 little $10 plastic bags. So the climax consisted of a bored bank teller handing me a twenty cent piece over the large, polished counter of her large, polished finanical institution. Because, you know, filling out a new deposit form for $260.20 was such a totally absurd idea. It felt like she was giving me the tiny seed for my next nickel mountain of legal tender. I'm also surprised that she didn't hand over a free money box, too.

tuesday : 11 may 2004

My bruised shin has almost healed, so I no longer have to hobble around like a crippled hunchback, making small children cry and being chased by villagers. Tomorrow night I'll go for a jog around the block to loosen up in preparation for the trip to BrisVegas and Sydney.

Yeah. Obviously I have a paucity of anecdotes to share, which means I am forced to mention the television show that brings new meaning to the term 'reality TV', There's Something About Miriam on the pansexual network, Channel 10. But I fear the novelty has already worn off. Do we really have to wait five weeks for the big Crying Game revelation? Bloody hell. Watching the lads perform army drills and other interminable trials holds slightly less appeal than eye surgery circa 1845.

Speaking of painful: earlier on us flatmates were watching the pathetic second series of The Block, and Suzie raised the question of whether I would do the whole reno thing. I had to reply, "no way Hosay." My father is a trained carpenter and builder. He would be as horrified at me renovating an apartment as I would be at him coding SAS programs. I just want to walk into my minimalist white shoebox with nothing left to do except tweak the downlights just so.

I suppose the federal budget warrants more analysis than such flakey concerns, but I have thus far missed the details. It all sounds like the same old malarkey anyway. Stop taxing superannuation! Also, tax churches and corporations properly and I might be inspired to give a hoot, plus 10%. Levies and stamp duty – it's robbery by any other name, I tell ya!

monday : 10 may 2004

I had fun carting 10 kilograms of loose change to work in a backpack today. I expected the bottom to give way, spilling $260 of five, ten, twenty and fifty cent pieces all over the footpath. With the bag torn asunder I'd have no way of continuing, except by dragging my loot along the ground like a snow sleigh. That would be a good look. Not. Tomorrow is the day I wrestle it all into the bank, no doubt looking as if I'm carrying suspicious package.

Saw Elephant tonight with two chaps from work. It is great that unconventional movies are being shown theatrically and getting exposure. But in my opinion, the art-house approach does not automatically guarantee artistic success. So it is with Gus Van Sant's latest picture, which features a low budget, first time actors and non-linear narrative. It was the big winner at Cannes. All I can say is that the competition must have been average.

sunday : 9 may 2004

We had a good time at Abode last night amongst ourselves. The venue is more fringe culture than gothic, so that was disappoint­ing. I caught up with some friends and enjoyed wearing my black leather pants around denim-plagued Acland Street and in the club till 3:00am. I drove the broom-broom there and back, hence the menu of lite brewskis. Woke at 10:30am today feeling rested for the first time since last Sunday.

I spent today perfecting the art of sedentary living: checked e-mail and weblogs, played the longer Japanese cut of Kill Bill: Part (A), listened to the blistering new CD by Deicide on head­phones, robotically channel surfed TV stations (but it looks so good), had dinner at the local take-away joint while reading a three year-old copy of Vanity Fair, rang mum, and watched The Bank while I counted the rest of my loose change – how apropos. The total came to $260 which, when added to the $70 I banked last week, smashes the previous record of $270. Hey, I can retire two days ahead of schedule!

saturday : 8 may 2004

I bought new tires for the Mazda this morning and realised that I forgot to pay the rego. The sticker is here somewhere, so I'll whack it on and deal with the fall out next week. Driving through Sydney once I was pulled over because my rego sticker was about eight hours away from expiring. As the cops dis­covered, I had renewed it, so things were OK. (Simply displaying an old sticker results in a nominal fine.) I really need to get on top of my personal adminis­tration some­time.

Also this morning I had a friendly chat to the waitress who served my coffee and break­fast. I have grown more fond of her after each success­ive weekend break­fast I've had at her rest­aurant. Today I decided to flirt more and eventu­ally asked for her phone number, but she declined with a smile and "sorry, I have a boy­friend". I used to go on quite a few dates. Lately though, even getting to that point is proving to be as diffi­cult as turning lead into gold.

One has to be aware of the 'captive audience' syndrome, particu­larly with people whose job it is to serve you and be friendly, no matter what you say or how you look. I some­times forget this when making the regular pitstops at super­markets, eateries, and other places of public contact. Thus, I mis­interpret basic courtesy for romantical interest. But if you never confirm the hunch one way or the other, you are left with that lingering doubt: hmm, what if...?

Tonight I'm heading out to a goth/subculture venue called Abode with friends. That might yield more opportun­ities for me if the mix is right in terms of approach­able singles, not just hermetically sealed groups of friends. After listening to some death metal CDs and watch­ing their bonus DVDs, I am in the mood for some darkling sonic wall­paper.

In other news, my Japanese DVD release of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 finally arrived. I have only had a quick scan through, but there is a little bit of extra gore, and the Crazy 88 massacre is all in colour, which plays much better than the black and white version. Watch the Chopping List page for a full break­down of differences later this week. I am also hoping that the DTS sound­track is full bit rate – a unique feature of some Japanese DVDs compared to their western cousins, thus making them collector's items, not to mention sounding better.

friday : 7 may 2004

INTERIOR – SUBURBAN RENTAL PROPERTY. NIGHT 11:23PM.

What the Dickens am I doing at home on a Friday evening? (a) Drinking a 375ml can of Smirnoff Ice Double Black, (b) testing and burning-in my new SCART video cable, (c) chatting on IRC, and (d) watching Big Brother Up Late. Stop the world I wanna to get off.

At lunch time I visited Encel Stereo in Richmond to grab a SCART lead for the STB. Why spend $169 on said accessory? Please to explain, however inadequately. The old SCART cable is 1.5 metres long and positioned midway on the consumer quality scale. Because I can pass a luscious RGB video signal to my German TV, you can improve the image by using a good interconnect. The conventional wisdom among electrical circuit nerds is that any old cable will deliver the same quality signal, and that any perceived improvement is purely subjective.

Translation: people like me who buy expensive leads imagine any improvement. When comparing cheap leads and midrange non-crap ones, the difference is real and obvious. But when comparing midrange leads, you are splitting split hairs. My new IXOS cable is half the length of the old 1.5 metre cable, and it's at the top of their range. (You have permission to be impressed.) To make any kind of conclusive claim you need test patterns, side by side demos, and measuring equipment – none of which I have. But I believe there is an improvement. The image is crisper, cleaner and more detailed. It is, in short, a bloody wonder of modern technology; I like it. So take that, you four-eyed electrical engineers and hi-fi purists who wear designer label pocket protectors.

Big Brother Up Late is dull. Like I could never have guessed. The Win a $1000 for Getting the Brainteaser Correct competition is dumb. While being a juicy amount, the Network are probably earning way more than the $5000 promised on the 1900 calls. However, as rivetting as the show is, I am heading off to bed now.

FADE TO BLACK.

thursday : 6 may 2004

Holy Paddlepop Jesus – that last entry is a mess. I was still inebriated at the time, which is obvious because the last bit makes no sense. What a laugh! Should do that more often. As it happens, I was not the only person in a state of heightened spirituality after our bowling night.

One reveler, who shall remain nameless, had reduced himself to talking gibberish near the end after knocking them over by the dozen, and I don't mean the bowling pins. Then this morning I am informed that this human beer keg was a scratching for the day. What a marvelous effort, and more worthy of a prize than my high-scoring perform­ance of 160 not out. It could have been higher if the strikes I made for absent team members were added in, ha-ha. I realised today that I never attempted to bowl with a Stella in my hand. That would have been a good photo for the social pages, especially if I got a strike.

Yesterday we had an important meeting for the section I work in. I learned that I am bi. Well, BI to be precise. Our team is now called Business Intel­ligence, an oxymoron second only to 'military intelligence'. Today we had a good laugh at the many unflattering permuta­tions of our new identity, especially from co-workers who were obviously jealous of our newfound bi status.

Hey, take a look at this website. It should amuse fans of sardonic humour. Marylu and I have had similar discussions in the past about the one-way traffic going over the Westgate Bridge. I like the captions on the photos.

Preparing for bed last night, I cracked my left shin against the metal bed frame. Since the flatmates were sound asleep, I thought reciting a thesaurus of swear words at the top of my voice might be a tad inappropriate. The bruise came up nicely this morning. Now I have an egg attached to my lower shin that jolts painfully with every step. This is so much fun, I think everyone should try it at least once. Those really are tears of mirth running down my face as I hobble past you, yes indeed. I won't be jogging for at least seven days, but this is nothing compared to what my brother suffered. He was off his feet for a week and then needed crutches to walk when he could finally put weight on the injured leg. But the president of our work social club takes the cake. Just before the booze bowling event started, we heard that he broke his lower leg in two spots (below the knee and near the ankle) playing touch footy. Yeah, exactly – touch footy!? My eyes water just thinking about it.

wednesday : 5 may 2004

Fuck the bouncers at Ding Dong. I was there near the end of 5,6,7,8s set and the bastards did not let me or my friend Steve in. These lame brains said the band had maybe one or two songs left, but entry was still only available to "ticket holders". God­damn boun­cers and their puppet strings. We tried, anyway. I'm just home now after ten-pin bowling and drinks in the CBD for a work social club function. I got the high­est score prize for the bowling night, which Damian has taken home for me. (I owe you a beer or four, mate.)

On the train home I had a great ranta­torial with some punks: I'm talking mohawk, tartan, and the whole get-up. We shared very similar views on the government, and I even think that I over­turned their bias against all people who wear business suits, but I would not be so gullible as to claim that Holy Grail after only one train trip. Then again, I am a bit of an anomaly. I rarely wear matched socks, at work or in public. Could someone please recite the exact law pertaining to always wearing matched socks? Thank you.

tuesday : 4 may 2004

Just walked in the door at 11:15pm after seeing Talking Heads at Her Majesty's Theatre. But before that, I almost suffered a catastrophe. This evening I was to deliver some work-related CD-ROMs to a data centre by hand on the way home. Fate intervened when Marylu phoned me at work, shattering my concentration as I pecked morosely at the keyboard. She was inviting me to see Oscar-winner Maggie Smith (Gosford Park, the Harry Potter movies) and Margaret Tyzack perform two 50-minute mono­logues written by Alan Bennett. Oh yeah, I said on a rising note, count me in baby.

So we enjoy the show, relishing the clever writing and the word perfect orations of these two seasoned professionals. By the time I sleep­walk onto the train, having downed two champagnes during the night, it is way past ten PM. Immersed in my discarded, trampled, and reassembled copy of MX, I forget about the two data CD-ROMs on the seat beside me. Finally arriving at my stop, I saunter off the train without them. Thanks, brain. Then it hits me a few beats later. I turn as if in slow motion, fully expecting to see the train close up and glide away. But for some reason it just sits there, so I dash inside – still thinking the old crate is seconds away from departing – and snatch up my precious cargo, which happens to contain 193,000 addresses in ASCII plain text, among other businessy ephemera. I skip off again just in time, sighing with relief. Disaster averted.

monday : 3 may 2004

I had one of those 'running for the 9:30am train' starts again this morning. This time I fired off an e-mail to my manager before leaving home just in case I had been ambushed into one of those 10:00am pre-dawn meetings. Chris even had the temerity to invite me to a 9:30am (!!) conference on Wednesday, which I arrived 10 minutes late for. As part of the technical staff, I do not look ahead to see what meetings are coming up. I'm sorry, but it's just not cricket!

The highlight of this evening was counting and bagging part of my vast treasure trove of small change shrapnel. I banked $70 of it last Tuesday, and I guesstimate that about $150.00 remains to be cashed in. A few years back, an ex-girlfriend tallied up $270 worth of loose coinage; I promised her 10% of whatever she counted. This chore needs to be done again because my bedroom, as much as I like it small and cozy, can use the liberated real estate.

Big Brother IV has begun. Because my flatmate Suzie watches it, there is a good chance I will be infected once more with passive Big Brother viewing. I don't mind it actually, and I much prefer watching this kind of fluff over sport. At this early stage I have only evaluated the perve potential of this new group. That girl Bree, who went into the house wearing Ugg boots and a denim miniskirt, sort of got my attention by flashing her fine gams around (yuh, I'm a leg bloke). Alliances and dramas are already making things interesting, but most nights I stagger through the door way after dinner time, like a foot soldier returning from the Front, so I miss the 7:00pm highlights. The saturation approach of the show's producers will no doubt ensure that enough continuity is maintained.

sunday : 2 may 2004

Lola Wolf (happy birthday) puts her responses to the weekly Unconscious Mutterings word association list on her weblog. At first glance this exercise seems trite until you compare your own answers to those of others, and realise that theirs rarely match any of your own 'obvious' answers. So without further ado, here are mine:

Elastic – band
Intervention – divine
Risk – taker
Junk food – cheap and nasty
Arrogance – sucks
Responsibility – ?
X – factor
Marshall – amp
Kill – Bill
Brother – Big

Bowling was good tonight. My scores were below my usual average when playing league years ago, but that is the nature of the game. For the record they were (mumble) and (cough). We all had a good time anyways. I'm back home now with Rage on in the lounge room and the flatmates still out, so various multiple choices beckon. But it is 1:16am and I am pretty tired, therefore I might crash in order to have a productive Sunday for once.

friday : 30 apr 2004

Ah, Internet for breakfast. This is the kind of nutrition that every growing mind should get in the morning! Without the permanent ADSL connection my flatmates installed I would not bother, but since it's sitting here waiting, why not? It's already 7:18am (farking early for moi) but I'll do a mild weight session soon and get to work by 9:00am to compensate for a potentially early finish this arvo. Oopse, sorry mum – this afternoon. The effect of having a school teacher for a mother never quite leaves you. Love ya mum, and y'all have a good day, too.

Update 11:26pm. I watched the Britney Spears 2004 tour concert filmed in Miami. Strike One: Oopse, she mimed the songs. This is so bad, words fail me. The only song she did not mime was a ballad where, instead, she mimed playing the piano. Let's say it again with feeling, italics and an adverb – this is just so incredibly bad. Strike Two: The overly glitzy stage show was aimed at short attention spans and designed to mask the lip sync fiasco. Every twitch, pout and look of mock surprise was utterly predetermined; no room for spontaneity. Robotic. Strike Three: The concert was not in widescreen. There is no excuse in this day and age. Drop and give me 50. Strike Four: Not enough footage of the band. This is typical of such shows, and it goes without saying that my favourite part of the concert was the solo breaks. Strike Five: The new songs are shit and the good older ones were ruined. Strike Six: The dancers never looked cohesive and they distracted you from Brit. Maybe a good thing.

No surprises there really in the shrink-wrapped world of pop teen idols. I used to keep one or two embers of fondness glowing for Britney, but seeing her play along with this blatant marketing venture leaves me cold. If you cannot sing live, just release studio albums. Why cheat audiences by miming? Bah! Watch any of Kylie Minogue's Fever concerts for a real pop diva performance with an integrated (and way more attractive) dance troupe, and much better stage design. Oh, and real singing, too.

I also caught Bound for Pleasure on SBS, which was okay, and I am now waiting up to see the start of Audition. Is SBS screening the sooty dark transfer used on our local DVD, or the brighter one released on one of the Euro DVDs?

thursday : 29 apr 2004

At the third keystroke it will be 10:05pm precisely.

I can hear thunder outside, which is rare for Melbourne – to me it sounds vaguely super­natural. In Brisbane summer storms are a common feature of the diorama, a natural extension of life in the subtropics. But down here in Melbourne, where the light often has a surreal gaussy character, and the dry air brings to mind the stillness of a crypt, and where volumes of esoteric lore gather dust in dark forgotten bookshops, the presence of night-thunder portends something more ominous than a simple downpour, especially when it never breaks. I find it unnerving.

I have felt cravings of true creativity niggling at my psyche over the last few weeks. Not in the form of reviews and weblog graffiti, but rather drawings and/or verse. The seeds for a number of poems and illustrations are rattling around in my head, and this makes me think whether these vignettes are best savoured in my mind's eye, and not torn to shreds by dyslexic prose or bad penmanship. In the past, such ideas tend to refine themselves to the point where they almost demand to be let out. Also, at least in my experience, fresh ideas never come unless matured ones are recorded. Artistic inspiration is a strange process, and it is one I don't engage that often, but once it gathers momentum, it cannot and should not be ignored.

Had a good time last night at the Kino cinema as the invited guest of Harry, Melbourne's most eligible bachelor, along with Kaz and the young couple from the Glenhuntly evening. We all had a glass of chardonnay before sitting down to watch a preview of The Dreamers. Poor Kaz had to put up with the awful Matrix dialogue Harry and I exchange every now and then. Our current favourite is, "Ahhh, Mr Anderson. Welcome back. We missed you." This is funny (only to us) because Harry, a contractor, does itinerate work for us on various projects. This line got used a lot – stupidly, spuriously. We make no apologies.

The weekend is looking quite okay, thanks. Farewell drinks tomorrow night will segue into drinks and bowling Saturday night (I will be coming out of retirement from junior league competition to do so), followed by recovery on Sunday. I need to address domestic issues, although the predicted wet weather might dampen my enthusiasm on that front. However, top priority should really be given to – cue lightning and thunder – The DVD Review That Will Not Die.

tuesday : 27 apr 2004

My nanoweekend has come and gone. Sob. After seeing Kill Bill: Vol. 2 with Steve and Antoinette, who both hated it, I have been analysing my own reaction to the film while listening to music and reading in my bedroom.

I realise that nothing you see or hear in any fictional movie is arbitrary. Therefore, Kill Bill: Vol. 2 plays out exactly the way Quentin Tarantino wanted it to. In my somewhat impatient summation, I called it "long and boring, with maudlin dialogue sequences and minimal action". To me it seemed that Tarantino was aiming for a cross between his earlier films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and the markedly different Jackie Brown. Now understand that I have infinite patience when it comes to dull, plodding movies, as long as there is an enigmatic quality underlying the slow pacing, torpid dialogue passages or cryptic imagery. Three examples that come to mind are 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969), Blade Runner (1982) and Matrix Revolutions (2003).

Kill Bill: Vol. 2 lacked that quality, especially toward the end. I sensed that David Carradine and Uma Thurman had lost touch with their characters, and were reduced to reciting pages and pages of banal dialogue. That worked for Jackie Brown, but Kill Bill (finally we can drop the "Vol") needed its own special way of speaking, and I got the impression that here and there, Tarantino forgot what kind of movie he was making. I applaud him for attempting to rattle our expectations, reducing key moments to exchanges of politely poisonous words. My feeling is that the criticism that Matrix Revolutions received is far more applicable to Kill Bill: Vol. 2.

At 138 minutes, here is true self-indulgence. At least Matrix Revolutions delivered. In contrast, Tarantino displays a more severe lack of self-criticism, thinking that every word or moment is golden. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 was tighter and much better for it. I also said QT managed to make Uma Thurman "dull". I meant that because her character is in most scenes throughout Volume 2, you kind of become sick of seeing her. Ditto David Carradine near the end, who grated on my nerves the more screen time he accumulated.

There remains much to appreciate, with great cameos and vignettes to enjoy, and many subtle references and threads to uncover (bare feet, the appearance of children, unresolved plot points). One I picked up tonight was the reference to Blade Runner in a scene with Daryl Hannah – my favourite in the movie. The violence is tame and sporadic, though no less accomplished thanks to the work of KNB. Still, as much as I liked Jackie Brown, I have never been moved to see it again. I had the same premonition walking out of Kill Bill: Vol. 2. Just make sure you stay after the credits to catch the short but amusing outtake.

monday : 26 apr 2004

Last Friday night was bloody full on – just the way I like it. For starters, work was insane. Thinking back, I don't even remember why, but it was. Everything seemed to happen all at once, and you just had to take it like a surfer riding a wave as long as possible without getting dumped. That night included meet-ups with two parties in different venues. Yeah, de ja vu. I managed to share myself around at both venues, though much too quickly and soberly for my liking, since I had friends from Sydney arriving at home around 8:00pm, which they did just as I was walking back from the train station, in the rain, chilled yet sweaty, and slurping a can of sugar-free Redbull.

Once inside and seated on the lounge, the Wild Turkey, music and conversation flowed non-stop until about 4:15am the next morning. I have been doing these CD and bourbon sessions with Steve and Ant for over ten years, and they seem to get better and better! Recently, DVDs have been added to the stack of curios to sample. Steve also creates noise music at home. He played a selection of new tracks to see how they sounded on my system. It is amazing what you can produce on a PC with good software, inspiration and a good deal of perspiration. So that was all fantastic, and I woke the next day not hungover at all, just haggard. The fact that it was only 9:00am did not help much.

After lunch, I met up with groom-to-be Chong to visit formal hire places with his fiancée Julee and his brother. The fourth attendee was unavailable and had entrusted us with the decision making. It was not hard to envy him, because the weather was detestable: windy, cold, wet and grey. In other words, a perfect day for a funeral. But the footwork had to be done, and we eventually settled for the best of a limited choice if you wanted to forego basic black. In my haste to leave the last shop, I left a bag behind with my shoes in it. Upon returning to scoop them up, I thanked the young attendant for not hiring them out to someone. Then we grabbed lunch nearby in a trendy café stroke restaurant – eating smoked salmon risotto always tastes better when you're arse is resting on a cube. It was good fun because I got to catch up properly with Chong and his brother, who DJs part-time around Melbourne.

Saturday night, Steve and Antoinette came over to watch one, then another, horror movie on DVD, both featuring monsters in deep wells in their climaxes. I'm sure Freud would twitch his eye brows at that. After two days of talking, my voice was kaput. As a vocalist in a band, I make a great drummer.

And how goes the massive pasta bolognese meal I consumed last Thursday night? Still working its way down. The subsequent (and much smaller) meals I've eaten in the last few days have overtaken it. Which reminds me. Tips for Aspiring Yuppies #3: When eating pasta dishes or noodles soaked in gravy or broth, protect that crisp white business shirt of yours with the biggest raincoat you can find, because flecks of catapulted condiment – seemingly drawn to the whitest components of your attire – will beat your defenses and get in, no matter what. Tonight I checked out a small, local Indian eatery. Good hot! A pity though that I couldn't fit it all in. I hate leaving food behind, but what the hell is my body going to do with all those carbs tonight? That's right: store most of it.

Tomorrow I have a one day holiday to see Kill Bill: Vol. 2 with Steve and Antoinette, among other things. I've avoided reading reviews of it thus far. It is a pity that the movie had to be cut in half, so to speak (heh heh). Rumours of a full 200 minute version abound on the Internet. We shall wait and see. Meanwhile, I am still waiting for my uncut Japanese edition to arrive on DVD... Kill Bill? Kill the censors, more like it. Let us hope that the promising vampire theme park movie Van Helsing is more adult than PG. The Mummy movies were fun, but they had no gravitas to them. Blade was a another fair attempt. However, it had too much superhero content derived from the comic for my liking. I generally hate superhero stories and characters. Boring. The best examples define the notions of good and evil ambiguously, but on the whole this material really should stay in comic books.

sunday : 25 apr 2004

Just a brief entry while Critical Mass unspools on Aunty. You may have noticed that a few layout changes have occurred around the joint. Although they are minor, I agonised over them for a ridiculous amount of time. I can't help caring about the way things look, and will tweak and fiddle settings endlessly until I am reasonably happy with the result – I am a little bit fucked up like that. The hardest part was getting it to look acceptable at both 800x600 and 1024x768 resolutions. And don't get me started on the whole dashes and soft hyphen HTML controversy, and the subtle differences between Mozilla and IE. Arrggh. I'm not sure it all works perfectly yet, so I'll fall back on the old line that goes: no great work of art is ever finished, it is merely abandoned.

I didn't do much else today except mooch around the house, grazing on groceries I purchased yesterday, watching the Vivaldi: The Four Seasons documentary and live performance on the ABC, followed by Words, Critical Mass, and then that old chestnut The World at War. That's right, no TV sport for this particular metro­sexual. I also worked on The DVD Review That Will Not Die. If you are a glutton for punishment, check out some of my forgotten DVD reviews on DVD Net. Lastly, a report on Friday and Saturday is coming!

thursday : 22 apr 2004

I just ate the biggest bowl of pasta bolognese in my life. It was terrifying. My next meal of solid food might have to be in about six days time. I had dinner with friends at Mary's on Glenhuntly Road after seeing the premier of Osama at the Classic, courtesy of Melbourne's most eligible bachelor, Harry. While in the restaurant, one member of our group pointed out that Aussie actress Toni Colette (Muriel's Wedding) was also there having dinner, except that it wasn't Toni Colette – just someone who looked nothing like her.

I would have confirmed this much sooner if I had my glasses with me, since I am okay with faces, being able to draw and all. And yes, this does mean I watched a subtitled movie without the aid of spectacles. Luckily I could read the subtitles well enough, saving Harry or Kaz the bother of verbalising them for me. You see, Harry's invite arrived this morning, and I normally do not take my glasses to work. But it would have been a shame to miss an AFI-related premier, with compli­mentary food and Stella on offer. Plus Harry (aka Morpheus) is always good company.

Anyway, like I was saying...when the burly guy at Not-Toni Colette's table walked past us to pay their bill, he turned out to be the CEO of my organ­isation. We had a good laugh at that – getting a dose of serendipity after all, even if it lacked the frission of a real celeb sighting. The last time my CEO saw me was in the elevator on the first day I sported my (albeit tame) black eye. No wonder he didn't recognise me.

wednesday : 21 apr 2004

11:00pm already – where did the night go? This week I have been retiring to bed earlier than normal to get eight hours of naptime, rather than a measly six or seven. Undoing months and possibly years of nocturnal abuse – effectively smashing, on a regular basis, my biological clock with a hammer, thereby ignoring 550 million years of evolution that occurred on a planet with day/night cycles – requires more penance than chugging a nightcap and pulling the covers up to one's chin 30 minutes before the usual time. I can see Mother Nature waggling her finger at me: "Tut tut, little man-ling. You think you're getting out of it that easy?"

And so I toss and turn, taking ages to fall asleep. Or I wake at 4:36am with a full bladder. Or I wake and hear the flatmates going about their solemn rituals, then notice that my own alarm is due in 42 useless minutes. Or I find myself composing limericks (which I'll never remember anyway) when REM sleep should be carrying me off into Loopy Land. Or I realise, somewhat belatedly, that "Noise Pollution" is a far more appropriate title for my website than "Musick". And a thousand other impedi­ments to a good night's sleep...

The required remedy means going to bed at the same time every night and waking up at the same time every morning for between three and nine (hundred?) months straight. Just like a Bible salesman, or untold legions of birds that rely on their sultana-sized brains to signal, without fail, the arrival of dawn and another day of pooping on Mazda Astinas. But the coming weekend promises to be a late one, because friends from Sydney are in town, and another friend has returned from her New Zealand diversion and is having drinks on Friday night. Hmmm. Can you buy elephant tran­quilisers over the counter?

tuesday : 20 apr 2004

That explains it. On Sunday night I drank two 335ml bottles of Smirnoff Ice Double Black just for the hell of it, and I almost got pissed. Tonight I grabbed another stubbie from the fridge to celebrate Comet Bradfield screaming its way around the sun, and also to downshift a few gears after another late night at the orifice (I really wanted to do some 'personal' photocopying, but there were too many nerds diligently burning the midnight oil. Who are you all trying to fool?!)

Well, tonight I just happened to notice that these Smirnoffs actually have a vitamin 'A' content of 7%. Heh heh heh. Kind of explains why I rather enjoyed myself at the boss's birthday party last year – I downed four of these Double Blacks as a warm-up before moving on to other elixirs. I had always thought they were something of an unleaded candy drink, weighing in at around 4.6%. Once I finish the single bottle I'm enjoying now, that's it. Off to beddy byes. A nightcap works wonders for people like me who can stay awake indefinitely. It is not so much insomnia, as a compulsion to squeeze as much into each day as possible.

Thanks to gravitational drag, each day is in fact getting slightly longer. Eventually one side of the Earth will face the sun permanently, just like the moon. Before that happens though, I speculate that we would have long abandoned our little nursery of carbon-based life.

monday : 19 apr 2004

Oh crap, it's already 11:00pm. In the interest of hitting the sack by 11:30pm I have given myself just 30 minutes to belt out this entry. Most of tonight has been spent on the phone organising an interstate trip in May for birthdays and other visitations. Chong, an ex-flatmate, also dropped in to tee up formal hire fittings on Sunday for his wedding in October – I am a groomsman, one of three. He apologised that only one of the bridesmaids was single, but chipped in with the hopeful news that many other eligible singles will be in attendance at the celebration. It's nice to know people are looking out for me.

Miss Potentially Perfect walked past tonight as I sat waiting for the 7:00pm train. There was no pang of longing, no throb of regret. Rationality has asserted itself and moved things along, as if towing a parked car from a clear-zone. I didn't even notice her until she had gone by, since I was busy wrestling with some eldritch poetry by Clark Ashton Smith:

The mysteries of your former dust,
Your lives declined from solar light –
These would you know, or these surmise?
Beneath a swathed and mummied sun,
Descend where dayless dials rust,
Where the void hourglass fills with night;
And seeing with still-living eyes
Dim Acherontic rivers run,

Follow where shrouded barges float
And fall, in regions of the dead,
Into the sable-foaming depths.
Then over ghostland mountains go
To find, beyond a bridgeless moat,
What stairs with shadows carpeted
Crumble behind the climber's steps
In some foreknown forlorn chateau.

(from The Dark Chateau, written circa 1950)

sunday : 18 apr 2004

Dull administrative matters. I've done more tinkering to make this page suitable as a destination in its own right. Now you have a choice of linking straight here (Corrosive Journalism) or to the main home page (Toxic Waste). This is all similar to the Chopping List censorship area that hangs off the home page. My Aussie Blogs profile will be switched to the Corrosive J. location and title, too. I figure that anyone who is interested in the wider scope of my site (bless their hearts) can link to the home page.

Although I don't have a proper comments facility, you can send remarks in via e-mail and I'll graft them into the next journal entry, with any appropriate feedback tagged on. Because this site is all manual, threads cannot be maintained. Toxic Waste was intended to be basic and fast-loading – a sentiment also adopted by Moby, as I found out when reading through his archives. But, then again, never say never!

saturday : 17 apr 2004

OK, it's 2:00am, late Friday night. Late enough in fact that I'm going to set this entry to be for Saturday, not Friday. Most of my journal entries are written and posted at the Witching Hour, describing the day or days (daze) just past. From a writing point of view this is bad, because the brain, being a biochemical neural network, functions worst at the end of a long period of being awake. Memory recall is lousy and logical thinking sucks. Playing chess with syntax is the last chore you should impose on a fatigued neocortex. But here I am kicking it in the guts like a Holden Escort rust bucket.

This explains why small tweaks are made to previous entries. I review them the next day and discover crippled sentences, bung grammar and poor judgment. (Writing is easy. Writing well is bloody hard.) I'm not sure if other web logging software allows for revisions, but I'm glad I can fix mistakes here. All the while, 99.9% of the original material is retained. If I stuff up majorly then so be it. I'll fall on my sword in the next entry and mop up the mess. Nobody should be compelled to re-read the whole archive again 'just in case' history was changed. Not necessary.

Tonight, as the guest of Marylu (aka Sister Madly), I attended the first of two performances by Aussie comedian, Carl Barron. A real pro who earns his keep, you would recognise the face if not the name; that was the case with me. His act was a model of deceptive simplicity. Like UK maestro Daniel Kitson, Barron (a fellow Queenslander) gets laughs by apparently being himself. Faced with an Australian audience, his routine reveals the undercoat of absurdity beneath everyday situations and phraseology. Constant laughter: what more can you ask of an entertainer?

We arrived ten minutes into his show Whatever Comes Next, having dined at a local Chinese restaurant beforehand with various theatre notables, including some local acting talent. That episode was funny in itself, and could have easily run on its own steam for hours. Naturally I was already juiced up from drinks after work and at dinner with Chris and company. I arrived at the theatre just as Marylu's friends were feeling that wonderful "Ahhhh" that occurs after the first two glasses go down. Sweet. After the show, I scooted once I'd shared a bourbon with Marylu. A great night, with no effort expended beyond turning up and laughing a lot.

The Melbourne comedy festival ends in a few days time with the biggest comedy event of all, the TV Weak Logie Awards. If Carl Barron makes us love those stupid idiosyncrasies we all observe in daily life, the Logie Awards make us (me) cringe with embarrassment and self-loathing. Over the last decade I've never been able to endure a full broadcast. Can I go the distance this year?

Final note: Marylu said that her well-read partner thinks that my gravity explanation was correct. I'll do some checking myself online soon. It was based on an explanation I'd found in a pop-physics book years ago. It stuck because it was the first cogent description that I had read and understood up until then. Even Brian Greene in his great book The Elegant Universe declined to tackle the subject.

thursday : 15 apr 2004

I should be finishing a DVD review, but my brainware is too doughy with end of week vagueness for thoughtful composition. Better to muck around here than spend three hours carving out one paragraph from the unyielding granite of DVD criticism – even if the topic of discussion is a comedy from the makers of Jackass. It will be ready soon, Michael. Please don't send in the heavies!

And what happened today? Well, I drove to the station this morning to make up for time spent picking up some dry cleaning. Tips for Aspiring Yuppies #2: Leave it too long to collect dry cleaned articles and they will need repressing, or worse still, hand ironing at home. So I park at the station for the first time in yonks, and come home late and tired to find that a bird has used my Mazda as a toilet. To winged creatures everywhere: die horribly.

Last year I once parked at the station and came back at dawn from clubbing to find that the windscreen had been struck hard enough to fracture 75% of the glass. Smashing, huh. Like many stations across town, mine always has pools of glass on the ground where thieves have broken into cars. I don't mind so much – they are either desperate or drugged out of their skulls. Us well-laundered suburbanites can afford it, even if the damage is not enough to supplant most insurance policy excesses.

But mindless vandalism is another thing. At least scratch a witty polemic across the shattered canvas while you're at it. Give some indication that there was a splinter of psychic angst behind your act of destruction. I'll even settle for something maudlin like, "Fuck Johnny Howard". Is that too much to ask? Instead, what you did amounted to little more than what that uncaring, insouciant bird did to the paintwork. And that is what depressed me most about the incident – more evidence of mental ruin. I would rather give these thugs a library card or a newspaper subscription than send them to gaol. As for the errant birdy? Your flying days are numbered, beak face!

tuesday : 13 apr 2004

Tips for Aspiring Yuppies #1: Do not cut your finger nails just before putting on your nice woven silk tie. The sharp little barbs of skin and nail tend to pull those expensive silk threads loose.

I caught the 9:30am train into town this morning – a top effort, I thought. I even had to run to catch it, which is no fun wearing a suit. Cary Grant makes running around in a suit look suave, but I am no Cary Grant. Finding a cosy seat in the half empty carriage, I promptly got stuck into some heavy snoozing. Two stops later (you can never get express trains at this hour) a bunch of noisy kids pile in. Oh, that's right, school holidays. It was impossible to lapse back into slumberland because at each successive stop we collected more and more kids. The next best thing to drifting off is keeping your eyelids shut, so I concentrated on doing that and salvaged what was left of the journey.

Upon arriving at work, I discover that yesterday's heroic deed was for naught. An upstream process had also died on the weekend, which meant a chunk of important jobs had to be rerun this morning. Not only that, I was five minutes late for a 10:00am meeting. I mean, come on, now. Who the hell schedules a meeting for ten O'clock in the ayem? It's still dawn for Chrissakes! So things don't exactly kick off to a flying start. I finally leave the office fishtank at 7:10pm, with eyeballs like pickled onions and back muscles fused together like wood lattice. Miss Potentially Perfect was not on the train platform, either. No doubt she started at a normal time and had everything done by 6:00pm. Or else she got married on the weekend and was away on her honeymoon.

Thanks to James at Hooverdust dot Com for letting me know, without a hint of smugness, that he actually attended the booked-up, sold out, one show only David Lynch symposium on April 2. He even talks about it here. Speaking of links, you may have noticed that I am still fiddling with the links panel on the right. This will go on for a while, so if links appear and disappear at random, don't be too alarmed. I do recommend the Daily Astronomy image page, though: these photos truly are postcards from the Edge.

Also, Chris tells me today I may have gotten my gravity explanation wrong, or rather, not quite right because they don't exactly know how it works yet and the Earth might not keep orbiting for 8.3 minutes if the sun vanishes. If I get the dope I'll amend as required, but it would mean that the faster than light maxim does not hold in all situations. I know it didn't during the early days of the Big Bang, so I wonder...

monday : 12 apr 2004

With the flatmates staying overnight at a friend's house, I fired off three DVDs back to back. Having changed my diet to somehow recover my 20s physique, I did not buy any snacks for the occasion, but instead uncorked a 1996 chardonnay from the cellars (the cupboard above the fridge) for casual sipping. I ask you, what else goes better with Hollywood sci-fi nonsense? Well, maybe biscuits, dips, pizza, popcorn, Malteasers, ice cream, antipasto, a six-pack of Haywards 5000. Unfortunately, the chardy had soured into a blend of vinegar and Listerine while in storage. I managed to finish one glass before baptising the kitchen sink with the rest, which was a dumb move – it might have come in handy for neutralising box jellyfish stings, or getting grease spots off the driveway. I'm never thinking ahead.

Today I listened to the Coldplay CD again, this time on the hi-fi system. It sounded a tad better than it did being played on my dinky CD-ROM drive, though the production still makes me think it was recorded through a closed door. I should also mention the fantastic minimalist cover design that complements their sparse musical style – soporific vocals and lots of repeated notes – perfectly.

Later on, when all that excitement had died down, I tried to watch a spaghetti western movie while Leatherface across the road used a chainsaw to do some tree trimming. (There's never a rocket grenade launcher around when you need one.) Still fuming, I renovated this web journal page to make it friendlier for anyone who wants to skip the home page and link to it directly. A list of links was added and I smoothed out the design a bit. The weblogs in the upper tile are home-grown favourites.

And finally, I topped off this long weekend by driving into work this evening. WTF? Did that single flute of rank chardonnay kill off a hemisphere or three? Nope, just call it professional guilt. I submitted the weekly reports on Thursday under my user ID instead of the person I was doing it for, who is away. This causes programs to crash when I don't have update access to certain files, ergo the reports are not ready first thing tomorrow. Ordinarily I would have fixed it in the morning: swaggering in late as usual, twirling a fob watch and smelling the fresh daisy in my lapel, but the last two disastrous weeks have made the Iraq situation look like a Church fete. The fix was rather painless: I had Subway for dinner and skipped whenever I had to go anywhere on the floor. Naturally I sent some e-mails to let people know I was actually at work on a long weekend. My modesty knows no bounds.

saturday : 10 apr 2004

Another lazy day in paradise. I eventually defeated inertia at about 11:00am by rolling off the mattress and devouring the first breakfast I've had at home all week – I ran out of milk, bread and fruit five days ago, forcing me to buy nourishment before work. Then I visited some regular Internet haunts and addressed an on-going skirmish on alt.dvd (a newsgroup) involving Kill Bill – Vol. 1 censorship. I swear, half the respondents simply attempt to bait you into arguments, which you learn to expect. The world of newsgroups and message boards is like most things, 95% crap, so you indulge them at your own peril. Argue with an idiot long enough, and soon nobody can tell the two of you apart.

Spoke to mum last night and she tells me that my brother was attacked last week by a drunk arsehole at a taxi rank. The upshot was a kick to the shin which needed hospital attention. The incident was unprovoked, with the apologetic girlfriend of Thag Stonehenge handing my brother $60.00 as recompense for his ripped shirt. As for Thag, he melted into the night: a text-book example of simultaneous liver and brain damage. What a wonderful world.

This afternoon I picked up a DVD delivery from the post office, then drove up to JB Hi-Fi for some stock taking. No DVDs jumped into my hands, but the following CDs did topple off the shelves (must have been a gust of wind, or static electricity):

Cannibal Corpse, The Wretched Spawn, $26
Coldplay, A Rush of Blood to the Head, $16
Slayer, Seasons in the Abyss (remastered), $27

Soon I'll be watching a midnight movie treat, Beyond Re-Animator, from the uncut Dutch DVD. Alas, my plan to have a movie binge this weekend has not eventuated. C'est la vie. By the way, did anyone reading this attend the David Lynch film seminar at the ACMI? I turned up on a whim 15 minutes before starting time, but it was already sold out. Arggh!!

friday : 9 apr 2004

Oh yeah, thank you very much. Four days off to commemorate a meaningless anniversary from the mists of antiquity. Meaningless that is, if you are not Christian or a radical atheist, as I am. Call me stubborn, but I need empirical proof to believe in any kind of spirituality. With repeatable evidence, the foggy notion of belief is replaced by hard knowledge.

Our universe and the teeming laws that govern its workings are astounding, elegant, even miraculous, once the basics are absorbed. While I understand how spiritual beliefs and superstitions spring into being, be they Christian, Islamic, Hindu or whatever, they ultimately dumb down the clockwork majesty circumscribed by physics and quantum mechanics. The mathematics that underpin it are beyond my comprehension, but I have learned enough about the concepts to appreciate it. Getting this far lets you see every day reality from a fascinating perspective.

Examples? How about light, and the space-time continuum. Chuck in gravity, too. Like love, space-time is a reality governed by rules. You cannot point to the space-time continuum anymore than you can grab hold of love and put it in a shoe box. Describing it involves pointing out its effects.

OK. Every time you look at the moon, the sun, or the stars, your are literally looking back in time. Sound incredible? Yep, but it's true. Nothing can travel faster than light, which purrs along at a steady 300,000 kms per second. The moon is 384,000 kms away, which means you see it as it was 1.28 seconds ago. As for the sun, which the Earth orbits at an average distance of 148,800,000 kms, it takes 8.3 minutes for sunlight to arrive on Earth and hit your retinas. In other words, the sun is 8.3 light minutes from us.

Think about the implications. If the sun disappeared 'now', if it totally fucken vanished without a trace, we on Earth would not know about the cataclysm until 8.3 minutes later, when the light and heat – or rather the absence of it – reached our neighbourhood in space. Our blissfully ignorant planet would happily orbit a non-existent star for 8.3 minutes. Incredible! Then darkness would fall, and the Earth would drift off on a dead straight tangent to its old elliptical orbit.

This phenomenon explains in simple terms what the 'space-time continuum' is. Space and time are bound by the speed of light, which remains constant for all observers. Stars and galaxies can be thousands, millions or billions of light years away. We see them as they looked in the past. An alien astronomer in a galaxy 65 million light years from us would not see Earth in all its polluted 20th century decadence, but rather as it was when dinosaurs stampeded across our protean continents.

But what about gravity? That is harder to explain, and forgive me if I stuff it up. Any mass distorts the fabric of the space-time continuum, just as a bowling ball makes a depression in the middle of a trampoline. Large masses like planets and stars act like the bowling ball. Space and time are distorted in a way that creates a slippery slope or bias toward any mass, from boulders to planet Earth and beyond. Put another way, the future of an object near Earth is biased toward the planet's centre. Gravity, then, is represented by shells of warped space-time, structured like the distorted trampoline surface, but invisible and three dimensional. The Earth keeps us glued to the ground because our futures and that of all nearby stuff is biased or destined to fall 'down'. A falling object gains speed as it drops through successive shells of Earth's gravity well. The bigger the planet or star, the more that space-time is distorted, and the steeper the slope – the faster the drop or 'pull'. Imagine a three dimensional funnel that sucked objects 'in' from all sides, rather than 'down' into one curved chute.

The extreme case of gravitation gone crazy is, of course, the black hole. It's gravitational attraction is so strong that not even light can escape. In effect, the depression on the trampoline surface ends in a puncture, and the bowling ball is suspended underneath, hidden but still using its weight to distort the trampoline. This means that once you cross the fabled event horizon, your future lies inexorably in the direction of the black hole's crushing core, which astrophysicists call the singularity. Actual black holes have been found: they are no longer mathematical abstractions. Scary stuff.

I'll take real physics over spirituality and UFO bunkum any day. Just because scientists have not figured out the mathematics needed to describe events before the Big Bang, that does not make Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy eligible for a Medicare card. Nor does it cast doubt on the scientific method. Easter, the resurrection, blah de blah. Believe it if you want, but keep in mind that there are far more interesting answers to key questions waiting at your nearest Angus and Robertson bookshop, and on the Internet.

Whoa. Anyway, getting back to mundane matters: I went out for drinkies last night. It was a skeleton crew showing at the pub, where by accident I met Karen, a friend from my first job in Brisbane. I had not seen her for eight years – amazing. I was left to my own devices after 8:00pm, and among other joints, I visited the Hyatt on Collins for the privilege of being charged $13.80 for one Wild Turkey and diet coke, plus a bowl of nuts and rice bites. And I left a tip, just to top off the experience. Absurdorama. Later, I trudged around various CBD venues chatting to patrons, talked my way out of a $13.00 cover charge in Little Collins Street, lobbed into student nights at the Loft and Ding Dongs (said howdy to MUFF man Richard Wolstencroft), and eventually caught the last train home.

Today was tres laid back. Saw some DVDs with the flatmates as well as pecking out this mega journal entry. Sorry if I rambled a bit. There is so much more to appreciate in nature than nice weather or a pretty butterfly. The human race has achieved sentience after four billion years on this green and blue bowling ball. I for one intend to understand, as much as possible, how everything works. In my more naïve moments, I figure that if more people saw each other as citizens of the cosmos, instead of members of cultural silos, then true peace might be easier to achieve.

tuesday : 6 apr 2004

The Comedy Festival is a Melbourne institution, and tonight I did my bit by seeing Todd Barry perform at the Victoria Hotel on Little Collins Street. It was Chris and Kylie's idea to see one of the headliners on this "cheap-arse Tuesday", but they were all sold out. Chris heroically chose a name at random from the remaining bunch while we were standing at the ticket booth at lunch time, and it turned out to be a droll American comic I'd enjoyed on the TV Galah (*cough*) Special last week. His one-hour show was funny – he has the whole low key, poker faced, jaded-with-life routine down pat. But we almost missed the start, partly because of me, your humble narrator.

Chris and I waited in PJ O'Brien's on Southbank for Kylie and UK friend Sarah to arrive, downing a few lite brewskis in the process, before we all headed up to Blue Train for dinner. Fishing around for non-bulky dishes, I selected pumpkin soup for starters and steamed vegies for mains. Said soup arrived in about five minutes flat. I slurped and we chatted. I finally drain the large bowl of broth, which approached spa bath dimensions, feeling rather like a human waterbed. There were, however, no waiters checking on my slow progress, thereby enabling the next course to appear like magic soon after. And so the minutes tick by...

Kylie starts to get agitated, and quite rightly too, because Todd Barry was on stage in 40 minutes; after dinner we still needed 10 minutes walking time. Our waiter informs us that the mains have not been "called up" yet, due to a starter meal being served. (At this point, I take a sudden interest in the ceiling decor.) He goes back to hustle things along, and we talk morosely about how comedians tend to chastise late comers to their shows. And more minutes tick by. Eventually the meals arrive, and a wave of relief crashes over us. Kylie, who has been exhibiting great restraint, demolishes her pizza like a thing possessed. The bill is paid and we arrive with several phat minutes to spare. Sorted. Inside, we even bump into Damian (yes, the anti-Christ) from work as we laugh about how exciting dinner was. At least I did, somewhat inwardly.

Afterwards, I learned the hard lesson that to attempt a quip after 70 minutes of champagne comedy – even a half decent quip, maybe not the best in the world, but a not so bad quip either, if I do say so myself – will more than likely be met with blank, derisive stares.

monday : 5 apr 2004

Being a Monday – that is, the first day of the working week, when the pleasant 48-hour nirvana of real life shudders to a halt, and the 120-hour lunatic contrivance of modern society begins, usually with the oh-so-aptly-named alarm clock stabbing your ear drums like an ice pick at 6:66am, puncturing that cosy fugue state into mere shreds of tattered memory – given this fact, I took a break from jogging and stuck to lifting 10kg dumbbells. With gravitational acceleration being as it is, namely 9.8 metres per second per second at sea level, and being a Monday as well, doing three easy sets was gruelling. As mentioned in an earlier post, to dull the pain and excite the brain, I listened to music via headphones and read pages from Altered Carbon between sets. Trust me: it helps. It was a long day in the corporate fishtank that is my home away from home, fraught with many problems and chores to handle, and coupled to a later than usual finish.

The one highlight, if you can call it that, since I think of it now as ultimately rather pathetic, was seeing Miss Potentially Perfect on the train platform tonight. I first spotted her about two years ago, haunting the same late trains on the same suburban line that I use. She looked like a lawyer or some kind of project manager: sharply dressed and well groomed. Alert, clear-eyed and purposeful. I imagined that she starts early and finishes late to get through her huge workload and tend to the crushing responsibilities of her role, which she does with aplomb. Me, on the other hand – I'm a bum who lurches out of bed each morning like some Haitian zombie resurrected by voodoo culled from a James Bond movie. I'm lucky to start programming by 10:00am, causing me to stay back after everyone else has gone, and ride the post-peak hour ghost trains. With Miss Potentially Perfect.

There was instant chemistry, at least by my unreliable reckoning. Once I'd caught sight of her, I could not look away. Of course, I did, for the sake of public protocol, but it was difficult. We made eye contact repeatedly. You know how it goes: she catches you looking, then you catch her looking, and so on like a game. I also found it impossible to read any book or printed matter I happened to be carrying when she was close by. I never approached her; the timing was wrong, but naturally I regret not doing so. Then she disappears...until tonight.

Well, she didn't look good, she looked ravishing. Pheromones kick in, unrequited infatuation kicks in, hormones kick in, loneliness and romantic starvation kicks in – I know all this. And the attendant thoughts return: "she could be the one", "life partner", "make a move, idiot!" The train arrives, and we board the same carriage. As far as I know, she has not seen me. I chose an inconspicuous position that also gave me a direct line of sight. I slip my glasses on, turn to look, and immediately notice her...engagement ring? No!! I look again as if doing a double-take to confirm the awful, hideous truth. No wedding band though, but it's as good as hopeless, like Tom Cruise's acting skills or the odds of winning Powerball. I slump against the wall, deflated. It was a long trip home.

sunday : 4 apr 2004

On Friday night I became a human tennis ball, volleying myself between two social groups in the CBD. As things turned out, the shifting venues were close to each other, which meant precious drinking and talking time would not be wasted in transit (you also sober up and get sweaty if walking is the mode of transport), and I only had to make three calls from payphones. Problems arise with this not-owning-a-mobile-phone shtick when I ring and there is no answer, because people cannot call me back, but this tends to happen later in the night anyhow, when you expect things to unravel. But it all went smoothly. Everybody was in good spirits – I worried that I was spreading myself too thinly, but there appeared to be enough momentum happening on both fronts.

Afterwards I wandered down to see how the remodeled Heat was going, and I shouldn't have bothered. Fridays are now R&B nights, and it was pretty bad R&B at that. I am no connoisseur of the genre, but the R&B I heard once in Sirens (beneath Telstra Dome) about two years back was far preferable to this clunky dirge. The place was packed enough create a great vibe and overcome the soulless muzak. However, I fled once a few hours had passed, stopping in at Mercury Lounge and Barcode before sauntering down to catch the first train home.

Yesterday was spent in recovery: reading in bed, checking my PO Box, buying more secondhand books, buying DVDs, then watching the three-hour documentary about the making of Alien. Today will be much of the same. I really need to write up an overdue DVD review, but Sunday afternoon TV on the ABC is too addictive if the subject matter agrees with me. The flatmates have gone to see Paycheck, which the Critical Mass panel scourged and crucified last week. Instead, I am staying home to watch the Fellini documentary, then get started on the review. Once the opening sentences are down, it's a breeze to push on to the end, though mentally exhausting and physically akin to holding the same yoga position for nine hours. Running laps around the block should help to alleviate each of these complaints.

friday : 2 apr 2004

The weekend beckons. Tonight there are drinks going down at various locales around the CBD. One involves a friend visiting from New Zealand, Marky Mark. I am still nailing down the itinerary of the other group – a brace of sparkling career women.

Somehow I have to orchestrate my rendezvous with everyone without the aid of a mobile phone. Why? Because I do not own one. And I still have a pulse, and I have not been chased out of the village with sticks, and my immediate family are still very much alive and well in Queensland. The trick is to utilise my Telstra Message Bank service, which I can access for free from any payphone, and call people from payphones. I've found that hotel foyers have payphones in good working order, and in relatively quiet surroundings. Planning ahead also works a treat. I'll go into my mobile phone rantatorial another day.

wednesday : 31 mar 2004

Tonight I bought books – five to be exact. I love books, and collect the buggers much faster than I can read them. At present I own over 1000 volumes, mainly novels in various genres. They all but obliterate two of the walls in my tiny bedroom. It feels cozy in there, like camping out in a bookshop after closing time. Even more so, because beside my pillow I have formed two small hills out of books and magazines I'm reading or dip into at random, such as collections of poetry and film criticism. (Hearing a loud clunk from my room in the dead of night means that I've managed to bump Stephen King or John Keats out of bed.) The books I bought today were all secondhand orphans needing A Good Home:

Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond, pulp-era SF stories, hardcover, $7.00
Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels by David Pringle, hardcover, $7.50
Clive James: Reliable Essays, trade paperback, $5.00
Dragon Tears by Dean Koontz, a horror novel, hardcover, $4.00
State of the Art by Pauline Kael, film criticism 1983-1985, trade paperback, $6.00

Except for the novel by Koontzy, which I'll shove onto a shelf and probably never read, I will peck away at these titles over the coming weeks because they contain nibble-sized essays, reviews and short fiction. And with Lord of the Rings (yawn) and Altered Carbon in progress, the last thing I need is to start another novel. But as for quick power reads: Oh yeah, baby – bring it on!!

I sampled the Kael book whilst on the toilet earlier tonight, and it's already whispering seductive sugary nothings to me. Pauline Kael does not 'review' movies as such. Instead, her style approximates that of a weary and cynical art gallery tour guide, stuck indoors on a sunny afternoon nursing sore feet and caffeine withdrawal, lecturing about abstract flecks of colour that resemble nothing more than a house painter's drop sheet. One of the films she 'reviews' is Superman III. See what I mean about the sweet nothings?

Regarding the bookshop itself. It is one of my favourites in Melbourne, which is no slouch where "kulcha" is concerned. I had to leave work early to arrive with enough time to sniff out, bloodhound fashion, any new stock. The proprietor is a great character: a tall kind soul and book-lover himself, who is so friendly and eager to shoot the breeze that once or twice he has hobbled my browsing time, thus probably maybe a little bit preventing some sales. All the more reason to go back. (Gee, I'd have to leave work early again. Oh the sacrifice.)

Saturday was fine. Mentally cataloguing the events reminds me of that Cougar bourbon TV ad where the bloke is trying to remember his shout: "One stage show, two parties and bar-hopping. One stage show, two parties and..." Marylu generously supplied the ticket for Shaolin Monks: Cycle of Life. It was an energetic performance pitched at kids, but vibrant enough for adults to enjoy, if you overlook the corny aspects.

The two parties, one in Jolimont and the other in St. Kilda, were each worth attending for the whole night. Harry and I trammed it to both locations, toting cans of Jim Beam and Canadian Club around the city like the Leyland Brothers on a pub crawl. Later in St. Kilda I visited a few bars with Michael, his partner, and another couple John and his partner. We tried to find a nightclub for dancing in Prahran, but the $15 cover charges were a tad discouraging. John and his partner dropped me home at about 4:30am, but my eyes popped open at 8:00am and would not close again – one of the perils of drinking cola with spirits. So I read the second half of Harlan Ellison's incendiary thesis on television, The Glass Teat.

I wish I could quote snatches of Ellison magic for your enjoyment, but (a) he would probably fly to Australia from his home in California and "rip my fucking nose off" for breach of copyright, and (b) it is already too late to be sitting here any longer. So I'll just make like a whip, and get cracking.

thursday : 25 mar 2004

Just finished jogging around the block four times in my Adidas tennis shoes. Exercise is mental tedium. The thought of being reduced to a lobotomised hamster spinning a treadmill is not easy to shake. Occasionally, fleetingly, I fall into a rhythm where my tortured breathing becomes easy and relaxed, and my hard clumping footfalls seem to be sinking into the soft, manicured verdure of Hugh Hefner's front lawn. It feels like I am stationary and my stride is actually turning the planet beneath me. Then a stitch jabs into my right flank just like that Roman lance skewering JC. Velvety grass becomes unyielding cement, and suddenly I'm not gulping enough oxygen to outpace an emphysema victim.

If I don't live to be at least 300 years old after all this malarkey, I'll be a teeny bit cranky. Let's not even think about a pitbull jumping its fence and chewing my face off, a black van pulling up and abducting me for the body-parts black market, or a meteorite pounding my squishy corpus into the rough semblance of a Super Supreme pizza. Thankfully in each case there would be little time to mull over my misfortune.

During Tuesday night's run I solved a mystery that has nagged me for years. Why do so many amateur poets write verse without punctuation? I am sure you have seen examples. If not, I'll wait here while you skip through a few Goooooogle search results. Scary, huh? Bad schooling is not to blame. I went to a state school in Queensland, and even our teachers taught the proper theory. And forget published works – try to find a bookshop that sells poetry written in that style. The answer to the riddle, when it came, was so simple and logical: song lyrics. Writers of 'poetry' who forego punctuation, causing you to blunder through the lines like a giraffe in a Jumping Castle, derive their approach from song lyrics, which, as printed in CD booklets or on LP sleeves, hardly ever use punctuation.

Hmmm. Maybe this exercise nonsense has something going for it.

wednesday : 24 mar 2004

Today I received two party invites and one theatre ticket, all for Saturday. How do I reconcile this three-way collision? By attending all of them, of course. Duh. One is a housewarming soiree, the other is a farewell bash for a Norwegian friend, and the stage show is by the Shaolin Monks, which starts at 2:00pm – giving plenty of time to rush off later with Harry (aka Morpheus) to both parties. Knowing this Norwegian cabal, there will be much killing of brain cells and raucous behaviour into the night.

Speaking of raucous, the Whitehouse gig from a few weeks back was a crack-up. As you may recall, I missed the sell-out Merzbow show due to being late. For Whitehouse, I strove to arrive at The Corner Hotel way before kick-off. On sale inside were noise CDs and T-shirts. I grabbed a copy of the latest Whitehouse opus Bird Seed, shaving at least $10 off its retail price tag. How does one describe Whitehouse? Imagine the cacophony of the World Trade Center towers imploding, overlayed by the shrill whine of 100 dentist drills biting into a sheet of corrugated iron, all of it amplified and distorted, with screaming bursts of vitriol thrown in to break the monotony. No rhythm or melody – just noise and verbal napalm.

Weaving through the expectant crowd, I stumbled across Leon, Tristian, Morgan and the gang from Albury, as well as Kami the "drunk poet", who was visiting from Adelaide. The support 'bands' consisted of: (a) Two young blokes sampling the sound of breaking sticks into a laptop and looping it back out. (b) The Von Krapp Family, who operated various gadgets – my favourite was the kid reading then noisily shredding pages of the Bible. (c) A two-man act in which one was electrocuted by jumper leads and then later ate glass. (d) An angry vocal performer who squealed garbled nonsense into a microphone. (e) Headliner Whitehouse, who hail from the UK and take their name from that conservative old stalwart, Mary Whitehouse. Needless to say, Whitehouse make it their business to rail against the dulling influence of such complacency and stodginess. And how!

Kami didn't go for it. I enjoyed myself, though. It was not the auditory apocalypse I was hoping for (I put in, then removed, my quasi-earplugs) but the guys did well for being in the game since 1980. Apparently they were more brutal and abusive in those days. With censorship and the whole tide of banality threatening to drown any subculture not aligned with family values, paying a mortgage, becoming a wage slave, or blindly worshiping sport, Whitehouse were a welcome breath of fetid air.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Iraq has proven that. It is human nature to retaliate, rebel, and castigate forces that try to shovel bullshit down people's throats and expect them to walk around with glassy smiles on their faces. There are a lot of unhappy Earthlings out there. It helps to vent.

tuesday : 23 mar 2004

Yes. The orange lines are kaput. I like minimalism – it affects me in sublime ways and often raises a smile. And like most modern art, you either 'get it' or you don't. Personally, I cannot get enough minimalism: I want to look at it, wear it, sit on it, live in it, and generally celebrate the absence of non-essential prosaicism. I admitted this paradox to Marylu over the phone one day from my desk in the office, and she responded with laughter, so Marylu gets it, too. Extreme minimalism in design and art is difficult to achieve and even harder to explain. It is also hilarious.

This website is kind of minimal, but not quite minimalist. Blocking in margins as big as airport runways and banishing text to the nether regions of the window sounds like too much hard work. I might attempt something like that in the next incarnation of TW. Still, whenever I notice redundancy in an aspect of the current design – bzzzt, out it goes. Just because you can do something, does not mean you should. I suspected the lines were overkill from the start (the bullets sufficed) but I thought it was so clever being able to wedge these separators in there as well. Bzzzt, wrong. In this case, less is more.

The refurbished National Gallery of Victoria has minimalist touches; most contemporary galleries do. But if I had to attach a meaningless label to that hulking edifice, the term "neutral post-modern stove rangehood grill and internalised shower cubicle patterned glass" might sum it up. In attendance were my flatmates Suzie and Euan, and friends Marylu and Alice. I was a tad washed out, having just arrived home from the Saturday night party at Michael's place – not hungover too much, but fuzzy more from sleep dep and the lingering effect of some magic cookies. Food helps a lot, and within 15 minutes I had ditched my original plan of sewing myself to the lounge suite and spinning some of my less cerebral DVDs, followed by the terrific ABC arts show Critical Mass at 4:30pm.

Everybody was in good form as we shuffled around the small but varied displays. In Australia you get used to seeing things done to Mickey Mouse scales, appreciating what is there instead of what is not. Despite my positive attitude and the refurbishment, the gallery failed to impress me much. More memorable was the feast we enjoyed afterwards at Chocolate Buddha. I spent over $50, half of it on sake. Back at home, I took in a stupid Clint Eastwood film, followed by the encore broadcast of – woohoo! – Critical Mass. A great way to cross the finish line.

Incidentally, who coined the phrase, "to coin a phrase"?

monday : 22 mar 2004

I arrived home late tonight after taking advantage of cheap Monday night tix at the Kino Cinema. Then: a fruit and vegetable dinner, some mandatory web surfing, and finally reading cyberpunk in bed cosily for an hour. Well, scratch the cyberpunk bit. I have been neglecting this web journal in favour of visiting art galleries, attending inner city parties, going to nightclubs midweek, and watching Japanese fright flicks. But no more, damn it! Now is the time to put Life on hold and do what propeller heads do best: inflict more weblit on the world.

I have to laugh. The previous journal entry was written at 5:00am. I awoke three hours later feeling worse than Papillon after a rough night in solitary confinement. The shambling, cursed horror that greeted me on this page as I slowly masticated my perennial bachelor's breakfast (Weetbix, Vegemite on toast, Alcodol) caused my bloodshot eyes to bulge out like those in Total Recall. Even at my most lucid and crafty, my writing always needs editing and revision after the crime has been committed. That original March 18 entry was a mess.

It must be said, though, that I cannot take the blame for coining that detestable neologism 'blog', which I fear has fallen irrevocably into popular use. To me, a 'blog' is something the human body is prone to do after digesting a particularly noxious curry the night before. I have been forced to quote this blight on the Queen's lexicon to ensure that my website snares people searching for 'blog', rather than more agreeable terms such as 'web log' or 'online journal'. Even something clunky like 'e-diary' would be an improvement. But no. Netspeak rulez, and with SMS shorthand fast becoming a first language for many teenagers, the situation will only get worse. Anyway, enough waffle. I'm clicking off into 'meatspace' to dream of electric sheep...

wednesday : 18 mar 2004

A quick update before I crash. It is Thursday morning, 4:47am. The east coast of Middle Earth (aka New Zealand) might be glimpsing the first feeble rays of daylight, but here in Melbourne darkness still reigns.

I have been out clubbing on a school night. Earlier, I spent time with two of Chris' UK friends in Prahran at Frost Bites for Act One of this evening's drama. Afterwards, I asked to be dropped off at a local nightspot, and carried on there while the music held up, which it did just like a Saturday night, with a covers band and a DJ. The house bourbons were useless, but that is typical of venues that service younger crowds. A few bottles of Jim Beam Black and cola at Frost Bites had ushered me into Act Two nicely.

Of course, Act Three involves lurching off to work in the corporate fishtank at the expected time and being productive. I can do it, although I expect to be wearing some tomato stains before the curtain drops. To quote the famous phrase: "No coffee, no workee". Or as a quadragenerian once told me during another late social occasion, "Tommorrow is another day".

monday : 08 mar 2004

I spent the afternoon at Heath's place watching bits of movies and episodes of Michael Moore's aptly named TV series The Awful Truth. Loosing track of time, I had to rush home to see Harvey Krumpet on SBS at 9:00pm.

On Saturday, intending to replace my bung PC monitor, I purchased the new model digital set top box from TEAC, because the computer shop was closed and I found myself next door in JB Hi-Fi looking for some retail therapy. What is so ace about a STB? (a) The broadcast signal comes in as compressed digital data, which is decoded by the set top box. This means that the image does not suffer distortion from hills, buildings, or the hair drier nextdoor. (b) The image comes in a native widescreen (16:9 ratio) format, which is perfect if you have a widescreen telly. The compression used is MPEG-2: the same method employed by DVD. All TV viewing now approaches DVD quality. And that is why I wanted to see Harvey Krumpet at my place. Things had wound-down at Heath's anyway, especially with no dinner plans on the agenda.

I met Heath in 1992 while doing a national tour 'promoting' the fourth issue of my fanzine, for which he had written some book reviews. I was 23 then and Heath was about 18. He was the only person I had planned to meet in Melbourne. We kept in touch and after leaving Brisbane late in 1995, I hooked up with him when I arrived in Melbourne. Thus far, he is one of the friends I have stayed in regular contact with for the longest stretch of time in my life. Two in Sydney, whom I also met on my tour, beat him by three days! Incidentally, I ran into Kami at the Whitehouse gig the other week – I met him in Adelaide a few days after Heath.

The write-up for that weekend is coming soon. That, and the Customs bust article, and another DVD review, and more stuff from this long weekend, and...

monday : 01 mar 2004

Just spent four hours watching the 76th Academy Awards.

I cheated a bit by skipping out during the dull sections – tributes and nominated songs – but by and large this was a snappy ceremony. Like the best of them, tonight's was pretty funny thanks to Billy Crystal and a number of quips made by presenters and Oscar laureates. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King scooped the technical, design, director and best picture awards as a payoff for the trilogy, which was 'made' as one film anyhow. Sean Penn deserved the best actor award, although I thought his performance in Mystic River verged on scenery-chewing. Some of the dresses were disasters but you get that. I loved Adrian Brody's gag, and it was hilarious when the best cinematographer recipient for Master and Commander opened with, "Note that this is an Australian accent." Peter Weir missed out on a gong yet again. Gutted. Better luck next time, mate.

Mondayitis. It was amusing to hear people discussing plans for the long weekend already. Knowing that some workers have their priorities in the right order is heart-warming. My day was OK. Avoiding the customary all-nighter on Friday made me feel more human when the alarm bleated this morning, not to mention waking up early enough on Saturday to scoff down a large breakfast at the local Westfield gigaplex.

sunday : 29 feb 2004

I have been coasting along this weekend. On Friday night some of us from work poked our heads into The Croft Institute, a bar decorated like a 19th century war hospital. There was even the scent of disinfectant in the air. Apparently this theme venue is packed on Saturday nights, with queues extending down the sewer-like alley way. As an after-office hangout it didn't spin my propeller, but it certainly scored points for novelty. After the others went home, Harry and I tried to visit a number of other places but our dress was too casual. Good old Bridie O'Reilly's took us in, as did The Portland Hotel, where we stayed for two hours nursing spirits, ignoring the band, and talking to a few of the single female patrons.

Last night I addressed an eleven-day movie drought by spinning three DVDs while the flatmates were sleeping over at a friend's house. I also tried puffing a cigar I had stashed for a rainy day, but this time the acrid flavour was over-powering and I extinguished it. With smoking in public venues being less common, the number of Winfield Passives I choke down while partying out on the town has dropped, which therefore may have led to a lower tolerance of Cubans (I was partial to the Romeo Y Juliet brand). I don't mind this mutiny at all – most nicotine addicts cannot stand cigar tobacco, and at least one smoking pub I know has a No Cigar rule. Even if you don't inhale, and I never did, the risk of developing some kind of cancer was still high. The research I did before trying it was rather sobering. If I can no longer enjoy the things merely standing alone in the front garden at 12:30am, then there is utterly no point to the exercise.

Today was spent here on the PC web surfing, reading books, chatting on IRC, listening to music, giving myself a haircut, and chipping away at the DVD review. The hair thing. Yeah, I trim my own hair. At the rate it grows, my scalp lawn needs mowing every three weeks. Explaining to barbers what you want, not getting it, then paying for the privilege, was a tad frustrating to say the least. I used scissors at first, which all got confiscated at Sydney airport two years ago, then switched to proper barber's shears. At an average of $15 per cut, I guesstimate that I have saved $1820.00 over seven years. Spanning my entire life: $16,120.

Printed on the back of an air freshener we use in the household, and best recited in exaggerated sing-song: "Ambi-Pur Exotic Lime & Green Tea is a unique fragrance, which combines lively Exotic Lime with Green Tea, resulting in a genuinely fresh and revitalizing 'East Meets West' Zen-like ambience for the home." Who on Earth writes this stuff? The profile that comes to mind is of a seemingly quiet copywriter who otherwise loiters around tramstops tickling himself and laughing maniacally, or is spotted screaming abuse at rose bushes in the botanical gardens.

thursday : 26 feb 2004

I should be finishing a DVD review, but circumstances have not been conducive to effective writing this week. Tonight it is hot and humid, plus I resurrected my running routine: laps around the block, followed by a perfunctory dumbbell session while listening to Pantera on headphones and snatching chapters from a news media censorship book between sets (the CIA knowingly bombed that Chinese Embassy, the US work safety authority is useless, and corporations are trying to privatize the distribution of third-world drinking water). I was supposed to buy proper running shoes first, but a flash of motivation broke the back of my procrastination. In lieu of $299.95 Asics joggers designed by the European Space Agency with help from Stephen Hawking on weekends, I opted for my old Adidas tennis shoes, which once got noticed by player Alicia Mollick in a Melbourne bar one afternoon. She also wears Adidas, as I saw during a game that weekend in the Australian Open.

All traces of the blackish eye have vanished. Carrying it around for 10 days was interesting. Strangers and acquaintances alike reacted in different ways. Mostly I perceived a tenor of unspoken curiosity, especially from train commuters and people in elevators. I don't wear glasses out anymore if I'm not driving or seeing a film, so the precise cataloguing of reactions was not comprehensive. No matter. Once or twice I thought I picked up a hint of "blame the victim" or "you got what you deserved", but it was fleeting at best.

I am a pacifist. I do not believe in war, fighting or consciously harming someone else, except in self-defense, and in that department I have no skills except my wit and a degree of unpredictable eccentricity. My taste in films, books, music and art have no bearing on this, a concept that people brainwashed on mass-media scare-mongering seem to have difficulty grasping. Violent video games and movies get blamed for violent behavior in society, yet football gets ever more prime-time coverage despite the ugly brawls. (Oh yes, I forgot, it's just the spirit of competition coming out.) The guy who hit me was not glued to a Playstation at the time, he was simply an aggressive little shit who had the intelligence of a gnat.

An account of the Whitehouse gig and subsequent weekend will follow after the DVD review is published online. Drinks tomorrow night after work should be a cracker, as we plan to test-drive a new venue nearby. Hope you have a great weekend, too.

wednesday : 18 feb 2004

Whitehouse.

sunday : 15 feb 2004

I got punched in the face. Now it hurts when I smile. This happened Friday night slash Saturday morning in the Crown Casino complex at about 3:30am. Luckily the perpetrator was an "amateur", to quote Chris on the way to lunch today. I had wandered into Crown after a terrific ferry cruise around the docks with our work social club, followed by bar hopping with some lads for three hours. I made a quip to a group of people, obviously a flock of relatives given the mixed ages, that went along the lines of, "I'm just here to go dancing and find a working girl to keep me company!" The young guy shoved me against a glass wall then landed a glancing blow to my eye, whining that I should not refer to his girlfriend that way. Huh? His uncle dragged him off before I could damage the kid's other fist with my face, or fall through the glass and be turned into human coleslaw. Hang around these venues at odd hours and such incidents are bound to happen. There is only a hint of bruising near my nose and some minor swelling. Thanks for that, you punk. Happy Valentine's Day.

Otherwise, the week started off well last Sunday with Marylu and Alice. We had planned to visit the Federation Square art gallery then the renovated state gallery on Southbank, the one where panes of glass tend to slip out of their housings. Damn that gravity. We arrived at our first port of call late due to eating and drinking Japanese cuisine at the venue on the corner of that disgusting central courtyard, the one that looks like a vast outdoor latrine. So we eventually went through the gallery with its exhibits of Australian art, including a few colonial classics I had only seen in books. There was modern art too: some junk, some fabulous – seeing a Jeffery Smart original was the highlight for me. Window shopping at the bookstore and a late lunch at Blue Train left no time for the state gallery. Next time.

On Tuesday night I saw the XXX live show by La Fura Del Baus, which was again preceded with much Japanese food and rice wine. The story is based on a Marquis de Sade tract about the gradual debasement of a virginal lass (but of course). The show was enjoyable, being as it was a multi-media mélange with full frontal nudity and a number of amusing visual gags. It was arrogant, industrial, avant garde, wreckless, grotesque, and mostly in Spanish, which gave it a detatched flavour similar to some of the noise bands I like. Video footage showing hardcore porn was blurred and pixelated to comply with Australian censorship laws. Don't get me started.

This week the What is Music? festival is on. I am trying to gear up for tonight's gig featuring the legendary Merzbow from Japan. Wednesday night is England's Whitehouse, from all reports a brilliant performance. I have been advised to take ear plugs.

Update 11:00pm. I tried to get into the gig but it was sold out and packed solid. I waited around in the back room at Revolver but there was no change in status, so I fled the scene. We outsiders could see part of the show by standing near the doorway, but the bouncers were keeping that area clear, obedient guard dogs that they are. Just before I left Mr. Merzbow walked past me, doubtless on his way up to drill people's ear drums with the sonic equivalent of a bonesaw. Memo to the organisers: Revolver is too small for these shows. Let's hope Whitehouse at The Corner Hotel works out.

monday : 09 feb 2004

The weekend was all right. Drinks after work on Friday, then clubbing down at Heat. On the way down I took the King Street route – always an eventful stroll. I think it should be on the Tourist Trail. This time I witnessed an ugly fist fight outside Bar 20, one of many strip clubs feeding off this inner-city bitumen artery like leeches.

For fun I tried to get into Spy Lounge. I have been inside a few times, and I hate the place. Spy Lounge was designed by someone with no design sense. Imagine, if you can, a mix between a steel mill and bad saloon bar rendered by a first year Open Learning architecture student. The floor of the main dance area, which is small and boxy, feels like used sandpaper gummed up with council-surplus road tar, and there are never enough patrons to fill the upper levels, which tend to be fenced off and gloomy. Tonight I was dressed more like an adult in 'smart casual' couture and must have looked older, because they refused me entry. "Member's night, mate. Sorry." Like fuck it was. A few seconds later new punters turned up and sauntered through the rope barrier without breaking their besneakered stride. When my verbal sparring with the three bouncers grew tiresome, and I ran out of potential "membership" cards from my wallet, I shuffled off to Heat. Something was different: no door bitches, hence no cover charge, and no R&B room. WTF? The techno area was alive, though with a weaker pulse than normal. It sufficed enough to keep me there till closing time. (The second-last song was 'Feel the Beat' by Darude, one of my favourite Euro-dance tracks. I think they know this, because I always go mental for it.)

On Saturday I went DVD shopping at JB Hi-Fi after lunch. Having hours to sift through their stock, looking for new titles and old bargains, is consumerist, movie buff heaven. No, wait. Understand that I am not a 'movie buff'. Such a person memorises generic factoids about every Hollywood film ever made in the service of boring party guests to death. Me? I love a handful of movies, am knowledgeable about a select number of genres, and have a basic grasp of film theory and home video formats. Not a buff. So what did I buy?

There's Something About Mary, extended edition, $32
Manhattan, a Woody Allen film, $13
Annie Hall, another Woody Allen film, $15
Faust: Love of the Damned, Arachnid, and Dagon in a horror triple-pack, $37
Audition, which played on SBS uncut last Thursday, $19
X-Men II, single disk edition with the audio commentary, $15
Romance, not anamorphic and once banned by our censors, $14

I have only seen three of those titles before (Faust, Dagon and X-Men II), so factor in two bucks each saved on rental costs, and it was a cheap haul. Like my listening habits, this list is also indicative of my varied taste in film, which confounds a few people I know. Ironically, I watched none of these movies that evening, because Michael from work came over to see the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers before taking in Return of the King this week. I was invited by Chris to see Ferris Bueller's Day Off at the Moonlight Cinema, but staying home after an all-nighter was probably more advisable.

Sunday was T-riffic, but that tale must wait. Tomorrow night I am off to see the arty XXX theatre production, front row seats. Memo to self: remember to take glasses to work. I once had to watch The Secretary in a cinema without the aid of my prescription goggles. I did not pay $70 to give myself eye-strain during a live performance that boasts comparable subject matter!

thursday : 05 feb 2004

It is now 11:15pm, which leaves just enough time to send up a quick smoke signal before turning in. Tomorrow should be nutty, with the quarterly departmental information session again poised to spill over into the nearest pub way before sunset. On the previous occasion, a hen's party begged us to sign our names on any unclothed acreage we could find – or make for ourselves. With our mob already pickled, and the hens socially lubricated with champagne, the ensuing autograph session resulted in a good few anecdotes on Monday morning. The warm weather and TGIF mood should deliver another 'mammorable' evening, despite the absence of one or two ring leaders.

Speaking of bared flesh, what do you make of Janet Jackson's stunt during the US Superbowl? MTV have been told that their catering services will never be called upon again, while the network prepares to sue somebody, anybody, for the lost advertising time, which will no doubt run into the millions. All this over an unplanned display of one breast? What twisted message is this furor sending to children and young adults? As a libertine my view is predictable: big deal! Creating fuss only draws more attention to the incident and away from the game itself, and whatever advertising had bought that prime time slot. Still, replays of the opprobrium on recordable media (VHS, DVD, HDD) will probably give one or two lucky advertisers more bang for their buck. The snapshot of comedian Rob Schneider doing his own version of the titular infraction in the paper today raised a smile.

Otherwise, the week so far has been uneventful and very much business as usual – trying to hit the sack earlier, lifting weights every day, and sticking to what might even pass for a healthy diet of vegetables, fruit, sushi, one counter meal per day, and gallons of water. My chipmunk cheeks and paunch are receding ever so subtly under the relentless onslaught of this regime, and all the while my jawline and complexion are improving. Call it an extreme makeover happening in Bullet Time.

Spooky Coincidences #384: On a whim, I watched two George (Night of the Living Dead) Romero movies this week on home video. Today just happens to be his birthday, so I hope you had a good one, George, and thanks for sharing your vision with us.

wednesday : 28 jan 2004

A few days back it was the Australia Day long weekend. Mine started on Friday after work with several pots of Carlton Black, which is my favourite beer at the moment. In the 'burbs a few hours later I wandered into the local wine bar for Spanish meat balls and light entertainment. While enjoying the female crooners, an ex-work acquaintance walks in with his wife. We sit and chat and I discover that they know the singers. How could I leave?

I eventually departed at around midnight, planning to party on a the local dodgy nightclub against my better judgment. And yes, it was the Dance of the Living Dead. After talking to a few morose punters, one of whom was from Brisbane, I caught a taxi to a newly re-opened nightclub up the road, but could not get in due to the bar closing soon. When a fight broke out on the footpath (mainly heated words and shirts being pulled) I walked in as the bouncers attended to the scuffle. There were still many people inside and I downed a few weak spirit drinks before things closed down about 45 minutes later. Thus began a long, invigorating walk home. The rest of the weekend was mellow by default. I was still horribly jet lagged from the string of 2:00am nights spent working on the website.

On Monday night I went to The Candy Bar in Prahran for Blue Bingo, a popular drag queen event hosted by – wait for it – Melanie Breasts and Sal Monella. Their act was polished in all the wrong places, if you get my drift. We had a meal, played two games, and watched the Dummy Spit competition. All round an entertaining night, although the combination of sobriety and a screeching, obnoxious man in an equally loud summer dress, is a union destined to split up sooner or later.

Anyway. Here we are lowering January into its plot of turned earth already. Now that my first major goal has been kicked (website plastic surgery) I can focus on other targets. For the creative person, there never seems to be enough hours in the day, days in the week, weeks in the year, and so on. People sometimes say they are bored, or wonder what they will do once they are freed from wage slavery. I cannot relate to this mindset. Even if I became dirt poor and crippled, I would still draw and write. Neither task wants for more than pencil and paper. Even as I tap out this journal entry, one eye is one the PC clock display, making sure I wind things up so that there is time to proofread the text before the hour becomes too late, and I arrive at work tomorrow looking and feeling like a zombie from a Lucio Fulci horror film. It is a compulsion: I cannot be idle, not for long. Down time is essential, but as a commuter with at least 60 minutes to kill every day, satisfying my vegetation quota is easy. On top of that, there are all the books, CDs and films to take in, countries to see and quality socialising to indulge, all the while holding down a full-time job for another 30 years.

Maintaining this website has helped me to monitor what I have and have not accomplished quite effectively. With one month in 2004 gone to dust, it's time to forge ahead...

wednesday : 21 jan 2004

"It will be the most dramatic rose ceremony yet!" Well, Bachelor Bob chose Estella. Granted, young Kelly-Jo was a hot, perky, corn-fed cheerleader type, albeit suffused with a home-spun quality that kept her grounded, but older Estella was a better match and understood more what was at stake. Sadly, her astute prediction that Bob would choose neither woman came true. Flatmate Suzie was onto Google Dot Com before the end credits had rolled, discovering that Bob broke off their union on boxing day 2003 over the telephone, one month after he gave her the last rose (in the most dramatic rose ceremony yet) or was it a thorn? Seems so. For the sake of the show, he obviously had to pick somebody at the end. I think it was a bad sign that Bachelor Bob never wrote any poetry; as smart as Estella is she never worked that one out. Ah, ya gotta luv it! Reality TV cops a lot of flak, but it's no more contrived than many of the soaps and 'drama' shows that command huge audiences, many members of which would consider themselves above watching trash like reality TV. Meow/Hsss – saucer of milk?

Switching back to my own nutty reality TV show, which does not feature limousines, pleasure boats or women throwing themselves at me (throwing up, maybe). New Year's Eve started out with a cruisey afternoon talking and getting ready in St Kilda with one of our group; we would meet the other at the venue. We caught a tram up to town after downing a quick beer and a caffeine hit on Fitzroy St in the sunshine with other would-be revelers. The mood was subdued but expectant. Having great weather for such occasions helps when the populace are used to sudden rain squalls and drops in temperature. (The perennial joke about Melbourne is, if you don't like the weather, wait a minute.) This time we were fortunate.

The function, as you will recall, was run by the RSVP singles website. Our low expectations were not buoyed by the talent touching down on the curb. Just think Over 28s nightclub. We put away three drinks each before walking out to see what else was happening in the CBD. From experience I knew that most of the bars and clubs would be closed, but we stumbled into a joint on Bank Place and stayed there till about 4:30am, missing the whole public transport fiasco. It was trendy, dark, somber, with DJs playing club tracks and two bars open for business. The clientele were much the same: fairly well-to-do, classy but casual, reserved yet approachable. By now we were in a good mood, patting ourselves on the back for this lucky discovery. As we found out later, we had actually crashed a private function. No bother, because we learned later still that the owner had no qualms about it. So we drank and mixed, or at least the other two guys did. It took me a while to find my bearings. As it happened, I wore a suit and tie for the RSVP bash. In this club, though, even buttoning up your shirt was optional. I love wearing suits and care not a jot if I am over-dressed, but if anyone looked out of place there, it was me.

The night rolled on – it was New Year's Eve after all, and things had warmed up nicely by the time midnight came and went. An architect I offered to buy a drink for earlier bought a bunch of us shots. I even got a bourbon shot. Along the way I found myself chatting up his 19 year old sister, which concluded two hours later with her admission – relayed through the brother's girlfriend – that I was "too nice". She was always an outside chance, of course, but good practice if nothing else. However, I do not recommend as a strategy composing sonnets after having too many drinks. Or trying to explain what one is, for that matter.

One of our party left at about four while I was dancing, then my friend and I walked back to St Kilda not long after. A quick nap was followed by breakfast on Fitzroy St, and presto it was 2004. No hangover, really, just the usual bleary vagueness and a hollow, drained feeling that occurs when alcohol has expelled all of the vital nutrients from your system, hence the craving for food. NYE 2003 was brought to you by Redbull, Carlton Draught, CS cowboys, an exotic imported beer, Marker's Mark bourbon, the charity of a drunk architect, Alcodol, and blind luck. As for ditching the RSVP party we paid $40 to attend? No regrets.

saturday : 10 jan 2004

Happy New Year everyone. I cannot believe 10 days have already gone by. I can still replay every minute of New Year's eve in my head. It was quite OK thanks to some blind luck and good company. The telling of the tale, however, will have to wait until the website renovations are done.

I am finally on a roll after dithering about like a senile wombat. In the last two days I nailed the all-important design aesthetic. This morning at 4:00am I picked an agreeable colour scheme – perhaps not to all tastes, but I may have two palettes across the site anyway (The Chopping List will have its own) just for variety. The 'look' continues to be sparse with few graphics and clutter. If not a work of art it will at least continue to be usable. Both Mozilla/Netscape and Internet Explorer have decided to display my stylesheet gymnastics the same way. Sigh of relief.

Yes, I made some new year's resolutions. For the record – literally – here they are in no order of priority or failure potential: (a) Get a six-pack rather than drinking them. I actually want to bounce back into a semblance of being 'in shape' and maintain it right through to the age of 45 or 50, and maybe even until my body dies and my brain is downloaded onto a computer. On The Simpsons I recall someone telling Homer Simpson to get into shape. His droll response: "I am in shape. Round is a shape." (b) Get back to drawing; it has been way too long since I put pencil to paper. (c) Write more reviews and cut some poetry if inspiration strikes. (d) Get a girlfriend. (e) Design a tattoo. I have one elaborate concept totally sketched out in my head. If it looks fine on paper I will have my back inked with it.