is it the weekend yet? please?

 journal  2 Responses »
Oct 292009
 

For some reason, the scar on my cheek is burning burning burning today. Perhaps I am developing mutant powers at last? Here's hoping. (Dear mutating genes: I don't need invisibility — I've pretty much already perfected the art of not being noticed as it is. And mind-reading is right out, I really don't want to know what anyone else is thinking, it's quite noisy enough in my head as it is. Flying, on the other hand, would be awesome. Or maybe some sort of camouflage/chameleon schtick? Or even just telekinesis.)

Consequently (the logic of this thought progression makes no sense, even to me), I have decided it's time I shared with you my position on a few matters that are utterly trivial and can make no lick of difference to anyone, even me. Ready?

  1. Beards: In general, I don't like them. But this is because the vast majority of beards are dreadful. A good beard looks great — but a good beard is a lot of work, and it involves more finicky shaving than just shaving your face clean can ever involve. A good beard, as far as I'm concerned, is kept trimmed short, and doesn't grow up to your eyeballs and down to your shirt collar. A beard is for outlining your jaw, not for attempting to pass as some kind of human version of a woolly mammoth.
     
  2. Romantic Comedies: Constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the terms of the Geneva Convention, and should be outlawed. Misogynistic, patronising, and actively involved in setting up unhealthy role models of what a relationship should be. Give me giant exploding robots any day.
     
  3. HAN SHOT FIRST.
     
  4. This amused me. Mainly because any chart that puts me at the position of "least geekiest" is (apart from obviously leaving out a large portion of society) alright by me.
     
  5. I want piano stairs! Okay, not in my apartment block, because that corridor is plenty noisy enough already, but there needs to be more whimsy in urban design.

mr jekyll is wrestling hyde

 journal  2 Responses »
Oct 152009
 

Last night, just as I'd switched off all the lights to hit the sack, the phone rings. (My family have impeccable timing — it's genetic.) So out I trudge to the living room to silence the thing.

"Hello?"

I am answered only by the sound of heavy breathing.

Luckily, I recognise that breathing, so I do not immediately panic and assume I am marked for a gruesome and grisly end.1

Instead, I adopt that crooning, cajoling tone popular the world over among those who have ever been treated to phone conversations with the vocally challenged children. "Hello…..?"

Giggling from the other end, and then a SQUEAL TO BURST THE EARDRUMS. While I am still reeling, the story starts. I am not sure of the particulars because, well, did I mention the kid isn't so much with the talking yet? I caught "I makkit, makkit, mak…" and then it was interrupted by an angry yell and the bellow, "NAN! NAN! UGH! ARGH! NAN!"

Ah, I think. Nanna has rescued the phone, and soon I will be treated to rational conversation. She may even be able to act as interpreter, and tell me to what the makkit story pertained. Because I have to admit, now I'm a bit curious.

Instead…Nanna promptly hangs up on me.2

  1. Although the breathing, if I am right, belongs to Brutus — whose namesake was rather into meting out grisly ends, now that I think of it. [↩]
  2. Having since spoken to my mother, I learned that in the space of 90 seconds, Brutus managed to find her iPhone and make no less than 3 phone calls. Well, more actually, but those were the three that connected. We're all three of us suffering ruptured eardrums. That boy can squeal, I tell you. Sadly, I am still unenlightened as to the makkit story. [↩]

it's your turn of phrase that gives you away

 journal  Comments Off
Sep 272009
 

What to do after a comedy fringe festival show?

Out to a nearby pub for a drink, of course!

At which pub, you venture up the narrow and rickety stairs, although those who've been here before swear said stairs lead only to the toilets — and at the top there are toilets, but there is also a series of hidden rooms, so thick with smoke your contacts seize your eyeballs like claws and your lungs ponder the wisdom of collapsing as a viable method for forcing your escape.

But there are tables, and empty couches big as brontosaurus backs, and lamps in the shape of tortured foliage backed into corners and niches, and even your eyeballs and your lungs concede this is a pretty cool spot to sit for a bit. (Some while later, the doubters who lingered by the bottom of the stairs waiting for your eventual shame-faced return realise the rest of you are not all just crammed into the toilet to make a point and venture upstairs as well, and they also concede that this is a pretty cool spot to sit for a bit.)

Then, while two of your friends are at the bar fetching the drinks, another discovers a scrabble board.

Hell yeah we played.1

  1. I did not get to spell anything even remotely cool. I did, at one point, try to insist that erg was a viable word, but it was not allowed. Alas. [↩]

tell me i'm having a bad dream

 journal  6 Responses »
Sep 222009
 

Happenstance of the day: a flash car with the personalised plates DRWOLF, parked by the tram stop where I'm waiting…and sitting in the car, in the driver's seat no less, is a malamute.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the expensive car, the personalised plates, the well-groomed dog…it all speaks of pretension, of a carefully preened image to be maintained. I suspect (I don't know, but I suspect) that the owner of that car and I would perhaps not have too much in common. (Except perhaps a love of dogs.)

On the other hand: a malamute. In the driver's seat. Of DRWOLF's car.

Image001

This amuses me no end.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I think tomorrow is an awesome day to be hungover.

fuge, dammit

 journal  4 Responses »
Sep 152009
 

Did you know that Latin has a supine verb form?1

I can only postulate that it is a verb form devoted solely to a) lying down and b) the various ways of accomplishing or maintaining (or imposing) such a position.

(This sounds most excellent to me.)

Alternatively, perhaps it is the verb form used to imply that the poor Roman in question, exhausted by the process of trying to conjugate his verbs and decide which particular form fits the current situation, has been rendered cerebrally unfit for further conversation and just needs a little nap now, please to be returning later when he may be recovered and capable of actually concluding the sentence that clearly just broke him.

(This, also, sounds most excellent to me. Conversations plagued by mid-sentence fainting fits! Rooms full of people who have keeled over mid-conversation while their brain re-boots!)

This post brought to you by sleep deprivation and fluctuating blood sugar levels.

  1. It can be accusative, or ablative, apparently. [↩]

i'm totally doing that again. stat.

 journal  4 Responses »
Sep 142009
 

I have lived through the apocalypse.

Somewhat surprisingly, given all the various visions of the future which storytellers have imagined over the years, it featured nachos1, and two-thirds of the first season of Arrested Development.

It. Was. Awesome.

(Next time, it'll feature boysenberry ice cream. :mrgreen: )

  1. so. much. nachos. :shock: I am still not hungry. [↩]

your grammatical tics, they drive me crazy

 journal  1 Response »
Sep 112009
 

Every morning, on the way to work, I pass the "Grate Cafe".1

Their sign promises Grate Food, Grate Coffee, Grate Catering, and I CAN'T STAND THEM FOR THAT SIGN. I don't care whether it's deliberate2 or a genuine mistake.

Grate coffee? Unless it's made from grated coffee beans, I don't think so. For that matter, I'm pretty sure grating isn't the right way to treat coffee beans, so even if it is made from grated coffee beans…I don't think so. And if we're following that theme, then grate food and grate catering…don't appeal so much either. I just keep imagining vast, inedible, stomach-clogging mounds of carrot shavings…

On the topic of things that routinely bemuse me, every two months Telstra send me a bill, oh-so-helpfully detailing the zero activity on my account (which is not surprising, given the account has been closed for some time now) and pointing out that I'm $7.58 in credit but not to worry, we'll put that against any future activity. Makes a nice change from the bill telling me I'm $0.98 in credit against the mobile phone account I closed well over two years ago now.

And a nice change from the bills that do need to be paid, for that matter. Which, if you'll excuse me, is what's next on the to-do list. The glamour!

  1. Just next door to the Exotic Pots, Exotic Staff garden store (if that's what it is). Clearly, it's a semantically interesting pocket of the suburb. [↩]
  2. A recent news article postulated that a lot of grammatical errors in signs were in fact a genius marketing ploy, in that it catches people's attention and drives them into the store. Presumably to complain about the grammatical error initially, but I suppose getting people through the door is the first hurdle. Selling them something after that is probably easier. I would link to the article, but my google-fu is not strong this morning. [↩]

what's there to decide? and what's there to say?

 ficlets, journal, writing life  2 Responses »
Sep 052009
 

Yesterday at the dayjob, sitting through a seminar on government programs to support innovation, and the presenter comes out with this:

"In this job, I've learnt that everyone in Australia has either written a novel, or invented something."

— and every head in the room swivelled my way, my dayjob colleagues laughing, the presenter following the direction of their gazes a beat later with mystification on his face. I guess his joke had never gone down quite so pointedly before.

I of course handled the attention with my normal tactic in such a situation: I blushed.

It's a little trick my ancestors obviously thought clever. Someone looking at you? Someone call your name? Someone directed even passing attention your way? BLUSH. You'll look ever so much more fetching if you're blood-red, donchaknow.1 Presumably they learnt this trick concurrently with another one that actually presented some real evolutionary advantage — or else being pathologically incapable of surviving the focus of attention untouched presents some advantage I have yet to determine.2 Either way, they bred successfully enough to pass it along to me.

And I simply can't tell you how grateful I am for that. No, really.

  1. I am so good at this trick, thanks either to my inheritance or to my own ability to improve upon what I inherited, that even THINKING about being the focus of attention makes me blush. [↩]
  2. Maybe it helps you stand out in the snow? If that's the case, not helpful here in desert country and my genetics should please to be adapting to my situation faster, kthxbai. [↩]

got my fever down

 journal, writing life  2 Responses »
Sep 032009
 

Yesterday, I popped in to a pre-auction inspection. As if I have the money to buy property!1 As if I have the money to buy this particular property! As if I could ever have the know-how to make a bid at an auction or negotiate the tangled thicket that is the purchasing of property — or wrap my head around the very concept of owning land, for that matter.

Rank foolishness.

Said property is less than 5 minutes walk from work, however, and thus it continues to haunt my brain.

In writing news…I think I've converted to Scrivener.

I know this not because I've started using Scrivener in preference to Word for my first drafts (which I have been doing, on and off (more on than off) for the last however long lately), but because over the weekend I took the plunge and actually handed over money for the program. Me! Hand over money for software!2 It must be commitment.

I'm not sure what made me switch, in the end. Probably a whole host of little things which just add up to a far smoother first-drafting experience, because to be honest I haven't even started using the corkboard or outliner in any depth. But I'm loving the typewriter scrolling feature which keeps my text at eye level instead of at the bottom of the screen, and the way everything from notes to pictures to previous drafts is all in the one window.3

But d'you realise what this means? This means I can never go back to a PC. (Or at least, I can never go back to "just" PC.) I HAVE ASSIMILATED. :shock:

  1. Hush, I know no one ever has the money to buy property and everyone borrows from banks and thus the world continues to turn, its impetus fuelled by debt…but you know what I mean. [↩]
  2. I know it doesn't cost much, but that is decidedly beside the point. [↩]
  3. And no, having it neatly organised in Explorer/Finder does not count as having it all in the one window. This is quicker. And definitely betterer. I speak as one who has spent years trying, and jettisoning in favour of Windows/Finder, software designed to keep writing notes organised for me. [↩]

milo, milk and iron

 journal  Comments Off
Sep 012009
 

To Amalie all those whom I may have misled on the topic of Milo as a dubious source of iron:

As promised, I have Googled. (Albeit cursorily.) And I have found no mention of milk preventing the body's absorption of iron. Clearly, it was a vicious urban rumour, perpetrated by the makers of, er, I'm not sure, really, but SOMEONE, designed to slander the good name of that chocolatey "food drink".

Granted, there was mention on one site that the naturally occurring caffeine in the cocoa beans in Milo can interfere with the proper absorption of iron — but I think we can all agree that CAN does not equal WILL and you are clearly immune to this biochemistry and thus, it is now in writing, you may continue to quaff Milo at will in the interests of warding off anaemia. (Just, er, maybe eat some red meat every week as well, okay?)

You're welcome.

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