never one when you need one, though, is there?

Tonight's tram ride featured:

:: A passive-aggressive tram driver, who felt the need to rouse on the passengers for attempting to board the tram once it stopped at the tram stop. (Apparently, it hadn't stopped at the right bit of the tram stop to allow boarding. To which I ask: why open the doors then? To catch a breath of the refreshing arctic winds, perhaps?)

:: Ticket inspectors!

:: The passive-aggressive tram driver announcing he wouldn't drive the tram if people insisted on standing in the doorway and thus blocking his view of those getting on and off the tram. (The four people milling around in the corridor closest to the door shuffled about a bit. The passive-aggressive tram driver refused to start the tram and insisted they move. They moved. The passive-aggressive tram driver then hectored the entire tram on the evils of blocking the doorway, and only re-started the tram once he'd got it all off his chest.)

:: The ejection of a (presumably drunk) passenger. Don't really know why he was ejected — he was much, much quieter than the drunk and opinionated man in orange crocs who caught my tram on Sunday night. That guy was accosting fellow passengers and trying to send them "back to their own filthy, dirty countries". This guy was silent, even as he was being escorted off the tram by…

:: yet MORE ticket inspectors!

All in twenty minutes. Not bad, really.

Biko (Playing For Change — Songs Around The World)

30 June 2009 @ 21:15 | 4 Comments

don't leave your lies outside

I have no food in the house, and no clothes ironed ready for the dayjob tomorrow — but I have vanquished the civilisation which slyly staged a coup over my kitchen sink in my absence, and surely that counts for something.

I have also spent the majority of my evening noodling through Helen Austin's youtube channel — which is a most pleasant way to spend an evening. Highly recommended. She first came to my attention when a friend sent me a link to her Childbirth Song, which happens to be both amusing and set to the tune of one of my favouritest songs ever, The Pogues' Fairytale of New York. But tonight I explored her non-comedic work, and I'm hard pressed to pick a favourite.

I foresee a CD purchase (or three) in my immediate future.

The Message In Your Eyes (Helen Austin)

29 June 2009 @ 21:31 | 1 Comment

mark your calendars

A quick reminder for those of you in or near Newcastle this Saturday (since I'll be jumping a plane tomorrow morning and may forget to blog tomorrow) that I'm doing a signing at the Angus & Robertson at Westfield Kotara, from 11am.

Come and entertain me!

25 June 2009 @ 21:15 |

remember what she does when you're asleep

Today, I practiced Not Wanting things.

It worked really well — right up until lunch, when I decidedly did not want what I had brought, but equally did not want to shell out money for something else. QUANDARY. Apathy forced me to eat the lunch I had brought, albeit with much grumbling about the sub-par situation.1

In other news, Tess talks here of her and my participation in the freeze frame project, which I link you to because it's easier than telling the story again myself. The first photo of us has shown up online: here you can see me gawking at Postscripts #18 while Tess gawks at Shadow Queen. (The reading of the books was Tess's brilliant idea. She is clearly a marketing genius. Everyone who came near wanted to know what we were reading. Quite a few went beyond gawking at the covers of the book and started reading over my shoulder. In fact, close as that fellow was standing, he was perhaps the least obtrusive of the folks that hovered around us.)

I suppose the presence of me in this photo does put paid to the theory that I have the vampire-like ability of not appearing on film, however. Which is a touch sad. I was kinda hopeful I could hone that and never have to worry about being photographed again.

Oh, and yeah — I'll be watching Ponyo:

  1. Work laid on gourmet pizza for lunch yesterday. Now I am discontent with anything I can muster up and drag in for myself. [↩]

A Cautionary Song (The Decemberists — Castaways & Cutouts)

24 June 2009 @ 18:28 | 7 Comments

the view from the tram

There's an old man I see on the trams, every couple of weeks or so, has the look of decay about him. Emaciated, with wisps of papery hair clinging to the back of his grey-skinned scalp, ears grown too large for his frame, and eyes sinking into their sockets. The flesh of his eye sockets is so heavy, so ancient and stretched, that they sag open, revealing their raw pink interior, in stark contrast with the yellowed eyes above, like a basset hound caught in the pallid grey throes of chemotherapy.

His suit is neat, and pressed, although it is probably as out of date as he is, and I've only ever seen the one suit on him.

There are stories in the creases of his skin, stories in the way he moves, the way he holds his shoulders as he waits. Stories in the quiet way he accepts everyone's furtive glances, and in the weave of his well-preserved suit. A thousand stories, carefully gathered and held against the ravages of time.

But he has the look of someone who's never asked to tell any of them.

23 June 2009 @ 18:43 | 4 Comments

to be fair, the crepes were excellent

There is nothing I love more than a typo on a menu (unless perhaps it's a malapropism), and today I have an absolute corker of a typo to share with you, one of those instances where the error results in a phrase so sublime… well, to be honest, I start laughing and lose the capacity to speak in sentences:

because when we offer spite as a beverage, we do not shirk - oh no! you will have some lemon, nay, some <em>salted</em> lemon along with that spite!

because when we offer spite as a beverage, we do not shirk - oh no! you will have some lemon, nay, some salted lemon along with that spite!

Stay (Oingo Boingo — Donnie Darko)

21 June 2009 @ 15:11 | 2 Comments

honest to goodness news

An email from my publisher today tells me that the mass market paperback version of Shadow Queen should be available for purchase before the end of the year. This means those of you who hate and loathe the trade paperback format, or don't hate it so much as think it's simply too expensive, will have the chance to buy the smaller, cheaper format. Much more suitable for shoving in small bags and reading on buses and trains and planes.

This means the current publication date for the second book, which I've been calling Pledged (but the title is already slated for change), should be hitting shelves around March 2010.

The (first round of) publication edits for Pledged are due to land on my desk inside the next month. At which point I'll probably have to put aside the faerie novel and retreat from the world until they're done, because otherwise they'll never get done and the book won't be out in March because I'll still be slaving away over where to put my commas and everyone who's waiting to find out how on earth Matilde manages to dig herself out of the hole the first book put her in will come and bludgeon me to a paste with their trade paperback versions of the book.1

  1. Except for Tessa, who already knows what happens. But she may join in just in the interests of solidarity, I suppose. [↩]

Who Cares Anyway? (The Jackson Code — The Second Greatest Story Ever Told [Disc 2])

18 June 2009 @ 19:23 | 6 Comments

the writing on the wall, that nobody was there at all

I am growing less and less, by the day.

Last weekend, in between a quest to find the world's best jam (victorious, despite wily misdirection from the internet and two-faced cafes) and wandering about cemeteries, I had to go, of all the most horrendous things, shopping. For bras, no less, that most heinous of all heinous shopping chores. Because a year ago I stopped taking the pill, and consequently my anatomy has leaped at the chance to, er, jettison some weight.1

Last year, I visited a plastic surgeon who took my face, cut two triangles out of it, and left me looking like Zorro had dealt with me and my infamies for good.

Today, I visited a dermatologist who, for the bargain-basement price of $350, ogled me all over for scarification possibilities, jabbed me with a needle containing (admittedly boring) drugs, and stole a piece of my thigh.2

Day by day, in chunks and slices the size of pygmy shark bites, I am being whittled away.3

  1. I am not unhappy. It's ever so much easier to do simple things like, oh, run. Bend over. Jump. That sort of thing. [↩]
  2. The curse of pale skin: I leave the house, and catch cancer. Dammit. [↩]
  3. Luckily, I have discovered that eating with abandon can accumulate weight faster than life can carve it away from my frame, so I have no anxiety on that front. [↩]

On The Wall (Neil Gaiman) (One Ring Zero — As Smart As We Are)

16 June 2009 @ 19:53 | 4 Comments

it's a system built to reward the clockwatchers!

Let it be known that I highly approve of flex.

Flex is wondrous, flex is superb, flex is the reason I did not go in to work today. Because all those extra minutes each day turn into extra hours each week — which means I've already worked today and didn't need to do it again.

This, my friends, is sheer genius.

If only it worked on novels as well, I would have already written my entire life's oeuvre and could spend this evening lolling on a couch.1

  1. Er, provided I had a couch. Note to self: buy a couch already! [↩]

15 June 2009 @ 17:57 | 8 Comments

the rustic wilds

Whoops: when will I learn there is no internet at my mother's house?

I'm back with the family this weekend, for birthdays and bon voyages, and I was rather counting on snatching a quiet moment to check and answer my email and update my website. But how quickly we forget, that the internet here is reliant upon mobile phone signals, and thus vanishes whenever more than one person is using a mobile phone in the vicinity. Saturday is a very mobile-phone-intensive day, as are any hours out of the 9-5 grind.

One thing my mother's house does have, that mine does not, however is TV. And do you know what's on TV on Saturday evenings round these parts? Seven gazillion hours1 of The Simpsons episodes.

Sometime during the last week, I was chatting to work colleagues about TV episodes, and The Simpsons came up. And I said that I really liked the show, but had gotten a little complacent over it, because there just seemed so much of it on, and I never seemed to catch any new episodes. But you know what? I think I have to take it back, because I sat through around three hours of it yesterday afternoon, chuckling all the while. And nary a previously-viewed episode among the bunch (which probably has more to do with my not having a TV recently than the tv station's broadcasting policy). (Also, sitting through three consecutive hours of the one show may have had something to do with my having been up since 04:30, and running on only 4 hours sleep, and thus in possession of a brain with the consistency of stewed apple by the early evening.)

All of which got me to thinking about the delicate balance between "more" and "too much" of a good thing.

It's a good show. People are inevitably going to want more of it, which is why, in addition to continuing to air new episodes, tv stations will air reruns — to slake our thirst while we endure the delays inherent in the creative creation (vs consumption) process, but also to catch new audience members. How much is too much, however? How often can you air and re-air and re-air a single show before you've worn it away? How much of your broadcast schedule can you give over to rehashed content before you turn the audience away, because they're tired of never catching new content and come to associate a new show only with tired, pre-digested material because that's all they ever seem to catch on the airwaves?

  1. okay, so this may be a slight exaggeration. maybe. [↩]

My Beautiful Sinking Ship (Devics — My Beautiful Sinking Ship)

14 June 2009 @ 7:48 | 4 Comments
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