Aaaarrrrghhh!!!

Some people start their day with yoga, mung beans and fair-trade coffee.

Others may choose to do so with a packet of Marlboros, three cups of coffee and maybe a couple of illicit substances thrown in for good measure.

I usually start my day in a sleep-haze that lasts until an hour or so in to work. Very much not a morning person at all. I function much better from afternoon onwards - apart from being a vegetarian, having a love of garlic and not minding crucifixes, I'm sure I could have been a vampire.

But I decided to mix things up a little today. I started my day by nearly falling up the stairs at home, nearly falling down the stairs at work and calling a male friend a he-sl*t for being... well... pretty much what that term would describe.

Personally, I blame DEEPLY disturbing dreams involving Marilyn Manson, a general lack of sleep and yeah, the lack of sleep thing. A lack of sleep tends to make me say pretty much whatever's on my mind (thus, if you want candid honesty, ask me things while I'm sleepy) and fall over things.

Gleich hab' ich dich!

Finally!!!!!!!

Völkerball is mine!!!

Only erm... however many weeks it's been since I requested JB's get me the Limited Edition on November 17 last year. But now it's here and I'm happy. Hopefully I don't go down the "Yay! Mine!"-ness to "Bleh"-ness path that apparently is usual with people who buy things they think will be excellent (read Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton).




Wait... It's Rammstein.

There's not going to be any of that happening. I still love Herzeleid, even though that's about a decade old, Sehensucht is still all good, so's Mutter, Reise, Reise is played regularly, so is Rosenrot. Oh, and I realised Live aus Berlin DVD's lurking around, too. And the CD for that, too. And Lichtspielhaus.


I don't think I'll ever get bored of Rammstein.

Paul is dead, man, miss him...

Listening to albums backwards is bizarre.

I don't mean backwards in the "schnurfty ahbelah bfnurfty Satan is your sweet master wschnumpfy elab ablab buy more bananas" way (aka: backmasking). I guess it's more in the play-songs-in-reverse- order way.

It's just odd to hear things in such an order.

Especially when it starts out with things like hidden tracks and there are 10 minutes of silence between one song and the next (that'd be Placebo a couple times, wouldn't it... Bonus points if you can guess the albums and songs there). Or when the intro song is the final one, like Welcome to the Monkey House. Or basically any of the Ministry of Sound mixed albums, which makes them generally even worse (yet somehow their freebie CDs that came with the mag were of a far better quality in terms of what was mixed and sampled from. Odd that).

That completes Wednesday's random musings.

Pretty things I saw on the way home.

And now for something completely different...

Memo: nothing is black and white, other than the starkly chic apartment of a serious monochrome* fan

Oh thank God, someone's got something sane to say about the whole Big Day Out flag le gasp omg zounds the world is ending brouhahahahahahahahahem. Tunes Not Hoons from The Age's music blog (I know, Fairfax has far too many blogs and not even remotely near enough news - journalism schmournalism obviously - but this blog entry's pretty good).

I'm so sick of bogan nationalism getting paraded around as patriotism, especially when it involves the national flag (which makes it really hard to criticise without people going "Oh, you just hate Australia, you must be one of them communists! Get him/her and beat him/her with your patriotically Made In China Australian flags!").

Although the way the BDO people have managed it seems so very,very publicity stunt-y, the responses to it from politicians and others who might have been to a music festival when last they still played madrigals at them is also a bit over the top.

Oh well. If Australia really is going to become a total bogan nation, can we at least change the country's name to Timminsland?

And this morning I read Answer is Aussie values, says PM, because apparently multiculturalism is the root of all the problems here, not racism, intollerance and a lack of understanding about other cultures, let alone our own.

*I mean that in the photographic sense rather than the technique of painting in a shades of a single colour.

Has Australia gone to InsanityLand? Man barred from flights over "offensive" t-shirt.

How silly. You think the guy could have just turned the shirt inside out and gotten on the flight or something. Or gone bare-chested.

But then Qantas seems a little silly with it, too. After all, it's a t-shirt.

What does classify as offensive under their policy? I had a lookie around their site, because I couldn't find any tickets conveniently in my overly large bag.

Although it's not something that will get you barred from the flight, they have quite a bit to say about making sure you take along a doctor's note saying you're all good to fly if you're having a complicated pregnancy (or a normal one if you're heading overseas rather than just within Australia). This makes sense - who really would want to be squeezing something from their loins on a long-haul flight? And apparently Qantas people can do body searches. Although that's more of an aside than something connected to the childbearing info.

But what will make them bar you from a flight? Scroll down to No. 10 and you'll find what'll get you barred from a Qantas flight.

But a t-shirt as a security risk? What? How's that more of a security risk than something, like, say a belt, which you could conceivably strangle someone with? Or a mastery of kung-fu, if I'm correctly recalling my love of dodgy 1970s/80s martial arts movies with one with Sonny Chiba in it that involves people hijacking a plane using said mastery?

If Qantas classifies this as offensive, what about skanky Supre tops that people of some faiths or the elderly or whatever might find offensive? Or the ones for guys from Jay Jays or whatever that totally have the double innuendo happening (Nuts! Nudge nudge, wink wink! Original, ain't it!)? Are they expecting someone to be so outraged by this guy's anti-Bush shirt that they'd stand up, declare whatever the pro-Bush version of jihad is on the plane and attempt to stab him to death with a packet of Pringles?

Or if he himself is the terrorist risk, what difference does wearing a shirt make? Is he less likely to be a risk if he wears a loud Hawaiian print? A coconut bra? A t-shirt that says "Hold my drink while I snog your boyfriend"? Does Osama bin Laden actually secretly wear a t-shirt like the one this guy has?

Some people might agree that George W Bush is the world's greatest terrorist (is there a competition for that like Miss Universe? Am I glad I missed the bikini section?), others won't. But surely we are mostly able to agree to disagree over points such as the message on a t-shirt without it becoming a security risk? Or are they worried that people who support George Bush will go into a murderous rage upon sighting of such t-shirts, rudely interrupting the in-flight movie?

Odd.

Memories from the City of Light

The only things I have from the guy I dated for three years or so when I was younger are a Hello Kitty bag, a pair of Axion skate shoes (I always used to steal his shoes to wear - that and his hoodies) and a love of the Hilltop Hoods.

I know my friend Tony (guess I'd say a bit of a music know-most-of-it) thinks they're crap, but I love 'em, mostly due to seeing them live a number of years ago just after The Calling came out at a festival thing where they capped off the entire day. Quite simply, they were absolutely fantastic.

The rest of the day had been pretty good. There had been some odd moments with seeing some people from High School who I didn't really like and them staring at me with a "What are you doing here? I thought you packed up for Sydney!" look while I stared at them with the "What? You're actually still alive?" look. Getting asked if my $5 sunnies were designer amused me. It had also been a perfect South Aussie Summer day.

Hilltop Hoods were the best thing, though.

Importing The Hard Road onto my 'puter this morning at work made me think of that and smile - nothing beats live music.

Existential Dilemma: Am I Imelda Marcos?

Tonight I took photos of all of my shoes. I have 51 pairs that I could find. There are a couple more pairs floating around somewhere. And I just realised I'd forgotten about the four pairs of boots behind the loungeroom door, so that makes 55 pairs. Here's some highlights.

My shoecase.


My newest shoes.


Current favourite shoes.


Favourite, but impossibly uncomfortable, shoes.


Possibly eternally favourite shoes.


Too good to wear shoes.


Shoes commented favourably on by young and old.


Astoundingly ugly, but astonishingly comfortable, shoes.

Remind me not to move to Wales...

There are enough dramas around here without living over a time rift (okay, okay, it's fiction there ;). I finished watching Torchwood - all 13 hours of it or so - if you hadn't guessed what I was meaning there about the time rift thingy.

Although I started off loving it, I have some mixed feelings about it now. But I did rather enjoy how the whole series made me think (or turned my mind onto little tangents of thought, which weren't always related to the exact matter of each episode).

The main thing to think is it's not Dr Who. It could stand alone from that quite well, really. The storylines are mostly interesting, there's some cool things that happen, they do tend to work the suspense quite well and the characters are all interesting enough in their own ways.

Except that they were morons.

Well, not all of them all of the time. But there were some moments where you're sitting there wanting to scream at them, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, YOU IDIOTS!??!?!" You'll know the moments when you see the series.

The thing that ticked me off the most, though, was the lack of emotional and professional maturity in the final couple of episodes that the characters allowed themselves to slip into. Although you probably wouldn't go, "The world may be ending! I'm going to pull myself together and be very sensible!" you also really probably wouldn't start not listening to your boss when you've listened to him in the past about much crazier things.

And Owen.

My, my, my. Owen. By the end of the series, I'd developed an intensive level of hatred for his character. You just wanted to take him out the back of the bike sheds and give him a damn good thrashing for being such a selfish, arrogant, idiotic little twerp. And for opening the rift that nearly... Well, you'll find out.

That said, it's still a good series. There are some very touching moments in it that might just have you reaching for the tissues and thinking "Who cries over TV? Honestly? Oh, me apparently. Dammit!" It also gets you thinking about things like love, life and the way it's lived, possibilities, what it means to be human (or inhuman), eternity and beyond, etc.

There's some laughs, there are some scary moments (I'm quite sure Countrycide would have scared the pants off me if I hadn't been wearing a skirt at the time), there's some plotholes, but the overall product is a good one. Worth seeing - especially to keep an eye out for They Keep Killing Suzie and Out of Time (the scene with the father and his son had me bawling my eyes out). You just have to get over the immensely cliched second episode (it's pretty well done inspite of itself, though) and then you should be right.

Oh, and the music reminds me so much of the music used in Nochnoy Dozor that I really wasn't surprised to see "the gloom" idea making an appearance in one episode! ;)

6.5/10. Not as good as Dr Who.

Hmmm

So very humid.

This sort of humidity feels like I should be in a large mansion surrounded by trees overhung with mosses, speaking with a southern accent ("Good golly miss Molly, it's mighty hot out here this a'ternoon!") and sipping iced tea out on the verandah.

Instead, I'm inside in my little house listening to droplets of water fall from the treeferns outside, listening to the fan swirl away and just finished off the last ice-cream.

Lord ha' mercy!

I do declare I've watched Fletch Lives too many times indeed!

Finally got the computer to behave today and have succumbed to the addictive qualities of Torchwood (follow-up to Dr Who), which arrived from Mic the other day.

Enormously good series!

Plus Captain Jack Harkness is utterly delectable. Although the guy who plays him looks somewhat like a non-shortarse Tom Cruise.

Disturbing now I think of it.

But yes. Torchwood. Find it, view it. Good stuff.

I'm about nine episodes in. So far a couple have freaked me out (and was then followed by finding a spider in a pot I was replanting roses into - ugh) and one has made me cry a lot (would you believe it's titled Random Shoes?).

Fern with a drop of the (minimal) rain we had last evening.

Rebuilding the Addiction

Now that it's not the holidays any more with the extended break from daily blogging, it's hard to get back into the addiction. Can't think of anything to say! So I'm going to write a random list of things I love because it takes up some space and I'm feelin' the love today.

> Friends coming to stay on the weekend - talking, great food, laughing loads, walking, having to unfortunately wake them far too early on Monday morning when I left for work... And then coming home to find the house looking immaculate! Thanks so much, Kimmi and Steve! :)

> Cleaning out my phone's 290+ SMSs/MMSs and finding heaps of cool messages, silly things, videos from Drewsy (such as the classic "Hello there. My name's Harry the hamster..."), pix from friends, random amounts of twistedness, etc. Too hard to decide what to get rid of.

> Overly phallic bananas. Don't ask. The local IGA has cornered the market in them, though, and you can't eat them without thinking that there really should be a p*rn soundtrack accompanying it.

> delicious. magazine. I have some kind of addiction to foodie magazines, although I don't buy them all that often. But this issue of delicious. came with some adorably kitsch magnets! And the pizza dough recipe from the gods is contained in an issue from last year and everyone I've made it for loves it. Or they're just saying they do so I don't push them in the oven or something... But no, it's really delicious (oddly enough ;).

> Catching up with people who I haven't had contact with for years. It somehow leads to extraordinarily long conversations, guess it's about trying to cram the past three, four, five, ten years into as little catch-up time as possible.

> Rain. It drizzled/made the effort and rained on and off here for most of the morning. Makes such an incredible change after days of weather so hot you feel like you're about to melt into a little puddle. Here's hoping the BOM is talking out of their rearward-facing orafice when they're saying it'll be insanely hot again on the weekend.

It's the first day back at work for 2007. I actually had holidays. Yes I did! And yet I feel like I've never been away and sitting here at my desk slogging through more than 390 e-mails that had come in over the holidays is making me want to slash my wrists with the calculator.

*le sigh*

But I actually did have holidays. Three weeks of 'em. They went far too quickly, I didn't get done half of what I'd hoped, but I went away, had some dates, did some shopping and actually made jam.

It's amazing jam, by the way. The first lot was from some of the morepark apricots that grew on the tree in the back yard (they were absolutely amazing this year). Then I got inspired with some organic peaches. And then on Saturday I made plum jam from the plums that grow wild by the house.

The plum jam is the best so far. Luscious, sweet but also with a sour tang, thick and a beautiful congealled blood-like colour. Really I think the jam-making was me just channelling my Nanna and Pappa. They were brilliant at making jams.

If only I could make scones that didn't turn out like little bricks (unlike Pappa's, which were light, fluffy and sooooo good), I'd be set. Nothing better than scones, home-made jam and fresh cream.

Yaarrrr...

Some kinda bizarre pix involving the new stockings. I love the skull and crossbone ones, except the print makes my legs look short. So no pirate life for me! I shan't be running off to sail the seven seas, saying "Yaarrrrr" a lot and elbowing people in the ribs with a wink when anyone says "Jolly Roger" if that's what skulls and crossbones can do to your legs.





No idea what happened in the last pic. Think it involved moving my legs at the same time as moving the camera and clicking the button thingy at the same time. That's a talent, I do believe :-p Somewhere in the world.

Back by popular demand!

Ever gotten something fiiiiiiiinally after lusting after it for ages and ages?

I finally got some stripey stockings, which I had wanted for years. Now I feel decidedly unexcited about the whole thing and am left thinking, "Well, retail therapy really is bollocks."

Who'd have thought I'd say that?

But yeah. Sometimes getting things you've wanted really isn't all that amazing and just sometimes makes life a only a lil' more striped or whatever.

Ohh... Dammit!

And I guess I shouldn't wear red shoes with them, just in case there are any flying houses around, containing anyone named Dorothy, accompanied by a small dog :-p

Aww, bless!

Trains are the most bizarre places for conversations.

A lady started talking to me randomly on the train this afternoon, which was okay, but just kind of bizarre. But then I seem to attract people who want to have bizarre conversations or spill their guts about their life.

Maybe I have a trustworthy face that says I won't take all they've said and put it into a book like W Somerset Maughan or whatever.

But the funniest conversation was one I overheard that a group of little boys about 8 - 10 years old or so were having about how they were going to get tattoos of their kids names if/when they have kids and one of them saying, "I'm only going to have babies when I get married," and the others all agreeing.

'Twas so cute *lol*