make a wish

 journal  4 Responses »
Feb 272009
 

I'm sitting on the couch, waiting for the removalist people to arrive and steal all my stuff and never give it back cart my stuff away to storage for me, and I have, for a moment, nothing to do. Well, plenty to do, in fact, but I can't start any of it while I'm waiting. (I hate waiting.)

So, to include you all in my current boredom (hey, don't say I never do anything for you), I shall indulge in a music meme. This way, you get to see existential accidental poetry, and a glimpse of my music collection. I know, win, right? ;)

RULES

1. Put your media player of choice on shuffle.

2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.

3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.

(There was more here, about tagging, but I'm not going to inflict that on you.)

IF SOMEONE SAYS 'ARE YOU OKAY' YOU SAY?

"Hallelujah", by Arooj Aftab

(I have a stupendously ridiculous number of covers of this song. It was always going to turn up somewhere. Although I do rather like the simplicity of this answer. It could be played straight, or with sarcasm. Brilliant.)

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF

"Complainte De La Butte", Rufus Wainwright

(That sounds…ominous.)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?

"Arabian Nights", Howard Ashman & Alan Menken

(Ha! I am all about Scheherazade round these parts.)

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?

"Emotional", Rilo Kiley

(Er, I do, actually.)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?

"Scratch", Kendall Payne

(Do you know, not only did I not know I had this song, I could not for the life of me hum the tune for you.)

WHAT'S YOUR MOTTO?

"Surrender", Cheap Trick

(Oh dear. I'd like a recount, please.)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?

"I Can't Fly!", Joe Hisaishi

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?

"Floating Clouds, Shining Hills", Yuji Nomi

(I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say my parents have never, not even once, thought this about me.)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?

"Bittersweet Symphony", Coldplay & Richard Ashcroft

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?

"Slow Journey II", Thea Gilmore

(Dear Best Friend, I have an urge to suddenly apologise. I do not judge you. I promise.)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?

"I'm On Fire", Carbon Leaf

(Ha! That's right. On. Fire.)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?

"The Oath", Koji Haijima

(Actually, I want to be Tessa, but the oath probably does run a close second.)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?

"The Road", Patty Larkin

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?

"Fool's Gold", Adrienne Pierce

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?

"Winter", Tori Amos

(Actually, I love winter. If I had to choose between Winter and Summer, it's winter all the way. I am aware that this is possibly because I am Australian, and thus my version of Winter does not include post-apocalyptic snowscapes. But heat is bad.)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?

"Say Hello To The Angels", Interpol

WHAT DO YOU WANT RIGHT NOW?

"Walk On By", The Mavis's

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?

"Destination Vertical", Masha Qrella

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?

"Make A Wish", Poe

 Posted by at 10:43 am  Tagged with:

at the end of the day

 journal  2 Responses »
Feb 122009
 

I kid you not: I just watched a sulphur-crested cockatoo trip over his own feet and face beak-plant. Perhaps the cats, both crouched in gargoyle mode the other side of the window, are putting him off. Or perhaps the knock to the head he took when he flew into the window has broken something. Or perhaps they are the clumsiest birds known to man. It's a toss-up.

My head, lately, has been full of the dubious joys of apartment hunting. It's really not fun, is it? Today, to distract myself from the pangs of attempting to find a place to live using only willpower and the internet (although I must not neglect the power of awesome friends), I started pulling things off shelves, cleaning them off and making them ready for packing, and in the process discovered quite a few cups and mugs and even a pair of candlesticks I'd forgotten I owned. Not to mention that set of Mikasa champagne flutes. Bonus! (If only I drank champagne.)

Max...lives on the edge

Max...lives on the edge

Why, on a bed that is at least an acre wide in relative terms, does the cat choose to sleep with a portion of his body hanging off the edge?

moving, precious, we does not like it

 journal  2 Responses »
Feb 112009
 

Pray for me, Internets, for I have discovered the wonders of Delicious Library 2. Seriously, it's software like this that makes me delirious to own a Mac.

Using the MacBook's inbuilt iSight camera and this software, I have catalogued some 200+ books, some 300+ CDs, and about 100 DVDs. All in the space of a couple of hours, total. (The DVDs were the slowest part of the process, because none of the Amazon stores really stock Australian DVDs. I anticipate the VHS tapes to be even more slower.)

it's the end of days

 journal  2 Responses »
Feb 102009
 

To everyone who's written, asking if I'm okay in light of the horrific Victorian bushfires, thank you. I'm fine, largely because I haven't moved yet, and so the fires (at least, those particular fires) are thousands of kilometres away from me.

For those who are feeling helpless, the Red Cross has set up an appeal.

In the meantime, the north of Australia is currently sinking under floodwaters, while the northern hemisphere suffers through debilitating snowfalls. And people suspect that global warming is a hoax.

ETA: And just as I posted this, my random quote generator served up the following quote:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
– Phillip K. Dick, 1976

wrangling code

 administrivia  4 Responses »
Feb 092009
 

Apologies for the silence. I swear, every time I think I'll take a day off from blogging, life intervenes and makes it impossible to blog for the next five days. Inertia, it doesn't just apply to trains.

To cut the onerous story short: my webhost shut my site down, due to high server load. This didn't actually bother me so much: it was spelled out clearly in the terms of service, and consideration of server load is the price I pay for shared web hosting. What did bother me was my webhost's neglecting to inform me they'd shut the site down and, when they restored access to it, telling me I could not install any plugins on my WordPress install, ever again, on pain of further shutdowns or termination of my account.

So I've spent today moving to a new webhost, which is a tedious and time-consuming affair. I took the opportunity to give the site a spring-clean, although all you all out in the big wide web shouldn't notice too many differences.

» I've scrapped the old News page, and created a News category. This means I don't have to remember to update two sections of the site, and as a !bonus it means the news feed is now much more likely to be more chatty than previously. If you were previously subscribed to the news-only feed, and don't want to trawl through the blog's inanities, fear not: the News Feed is what you want.

» I have (finally!) gotten around to rescuing all the blog posts that were lost in the upgrade what made me crash my database. Because there was a change in permalink structure and blog structure after that upgrade, the internal links in any post labelled as pre-crash are not to be trusted. I will one day look into fixing them, but it will be in fits and spurts.

If you're reading this post, either directly at the site or through a reader, then congratulations! You've find the brand new webhost and all silences should now be my fault, not that of the DNS propagation.

More soon, when I'm less sick of the web.

 Posted by at 7:24 pm

i'm just no good at blurbs

 journal, shadow bound, the wages of salt, writing life  4 Responses »
Feb 042009
 

Today, I am full of requests for blurbs and biographies.

Note to self: when you write a story, write a blurb then and there. You'll need it later.

Pledged has been read through (and hopefully all those embarrassing typos caught and corrected) and emailed to my agent and editor, which means it's off my desk for the immediate future. There was a lot of wonky formatting this time around, courtesy of the switch to mac (Word on the mac seems determined to ignore my underlining, bastard program). Of course, I forgot to send along a blurb, so had to spend this morning on that.

Also, news from PS Publishing that Issue #18 is ready for design, which means I need to provide a blurb and bio for them. It looks like they'll be publishing a signed edition as well, which should prove interesting, as the signing sheets are set to arrive…right in the middle of my interstate move. Oh yeah, that'll be fun.

this does not bode well

 journal  6 Responses »
Feb 032009
 

The dream: I'm sitting beside the Doctor, watching Rose play soccer (sorry, football) with a giant exercise ball, and I know the fate of the a world hinges on the game but somehow I just can't quite make myself believe it.

The analysis: er, yeah. Freud would probably have a field day with that, wouldn't he? But I don't care about that. What I want to know is, where's the narrative drive? Where's the conflict? Oh, okay, football inherently brings with it conflict and tension, but really, I suspect the use of the exercise ball would sap a lot of that away.

Is my brain so broken that the best it can do, when given unfettered imagination, is to dream of sitting still for a bit?

(I need to get out more.)

I blame it on the joys of apartment-hunting via the internet.