Tuesday 25 May 2004

Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing

Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing

okay, this is very very funny but in a good-lord-i-can't-believe-so-many-people-are-so-stupid kind of way.

i was laughing a lot and doing fine until i got to the woman who named her child 'Catatonia Calliope', knowing full well what it means. then i had to go and lie down.

Tuesday 18 May 2004

Salam Pax

Salam Pax: Enough Rope, episode 42, transcript

just finished reading/watching an exhausting hour-long forum with Salam Pax at the enough rope website - the questions were rolling in too fast to keep track of. the interview last night was great - he seems like an amazing, if completely ordinary, guy; in fact his ordinariness probably is what makes him so compelling, the fact that he survived both the actual war as well as commenting on what was happening in baghdad, and he was just a guy in his family of thirty, all waiting to see what happened.

juxtapose that with the preceding interview with john travolta, who was also extremely compelling in a super-charismatic way, but for totally different reasons...an excellent show and an interesting collision of topics.

(salam also has a great turn of phrase and a lovely smile. it would be interesting to read his book (the blog all in one go) and maybe hear him speak at the sydney writers festival, but that would require me getting my act together and that's extremely unlikely to happen)

Monday 17 May 2004

sad act

have spent the last half an hour trying to write alternate lyrics to 'your song' and 'summer lovin'' (promos for an upcoming dinner-event thing). it's very sad. and difficult! i've decided the best option is just to go for the crass and corny, as there's no way you can be clever and witty in a situation like this. well, there's no way i can, anyway. people expect the corn. and i shall give it to them. (besides, john, my co-conspirator, is writing words to 'i'm gonna be' by the proclaimers - already high up on the corn stakes there, so he can't fail!)

and i was going to be a prize winning novelist by the time i was thirty.

(i was?)

Thursday 13 May 2004

sated

I am officially happy now.  I have a new gadget.  It was worth it.  Ahhh.

iWaiting

i feel like calvin, waiting for his propeller beanie. wish i could find that strip online to show you, i'll have a hunt around...it just sums up the agony of waiting for my ipod to arrive.

i know, i know, waa, get over it, etc. but having made the ridiculously unnecessary financial leap and actually buying the damn thing, it would be nice to hold it in my hand and feel that, perhaps, i was justified in buying it. because, of course, it's going to fulfil my every desire, give me complete contentment and mean that i never lust after another piece of electronic gadgetry again.

sheesh. i'm so gullible.

Tuesday 11 May 2004

crawling days

What do you do with those days that just seem to drag on interminably?  My back seems to have decided to be uncooperative and no matter how much stretching, walking, changing position I do, I just can’t get comfortable.  I’ve got various bitsy things to do here at work but nothing particularly inspiring or challenging.  Some days are just like this.

The only thing I feel like doing is sleeping.  Back to that again.  I slept very well last night in my new pyjamas, snuggled under the covers – it was the perfect (cool) temperature and not noisy.  Most satisfactory.  I’d like to be back there now, reading my new Tamora Pierce, thanks to Bethany (so you see, I chose not to venture into grown up books...).  Now I have to get acquainted with a new heroine, Daine, who I’m sure will be as cool as Alanna.

I’ve got to get cracking with my own story – got about 16000 words, and it’s just one of those stories I add a few thousand words to every so often.  I read back over it the other day, not having read it for about a year, and feel like it might actually have some merit to it.  Now that I’m not so obsessed with it going somewhere, and can just enjoy getting to know my characters, it feels good to write it.

It’s like going back to the gym or something, learning to write again.  Not having done anything but thesis for six or seven months it’s really hard to get back into it and write something I’m happy with.  I think I just have to do small writing exercises (to further the gym analogy) until my brain remembers what inspiration is like.

Monday 10 May 2004

listing lists

So chuffed with this new blog I think I'll post 3 times in one day. Also, work is dreary-dull.

Haven't done lists for a while! I guess I had been too busy with scary academia that I didn't have much of a life outside of it. So. What have I been doing?

books
Have recently read the song of the lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce. Bethany had been at me for years to read these books, and now that I have I know why. They are simply written, but compelling, in a pre-JK Rowling kind of way. The lead character, Alanna, is totally legendary, a fiesty, intelligent, aggressive, principled, attractive, emotional, talented and tenacious woman; so basically, a complex and well-rounded character (unlike, say, some of Rowling's).

Now do not know what to start reading. Might continue with Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn books, or read something grown up. Haven't decided yet. Pulp is good. Got Bethany onto Terry Pratchett, starting with Equal Rites...had an interesting experience driving back from Bowral with her family the other day, with her reading the narration and me doing all the voices. Couldn't have been worse than driving down to Bowral and singing along to the Bee Gees greatest hits...could it?

movies
Saw van helsing with bek on Friday. O what a supremely silly movie! it was very enjoyable, had lots of delicious things to look at, but what a clanger of a script! Still, Kate Beckinsale has proven that she looks good in lycra, leather, vinyl and corsets (in this movie and underworld) and that she can fall through debris down three storeys and still have all her hair in place, with maybe only the faintest smudge of dirt on her nose. Hugh Jackman has proven that even though you lose all your skin and clothing when you turn into a wolfman, when you revert back to your human form you will still be wearing a loin cloth.

DVDs
love actually again...despite its unapologetic frothiness, I love this movie.

this is spinal tap- I had never actually seen this until a couple of weeks ago. If you listen to the commentary, I think it's almost funnier than the original film.

music
Been listening to the 3 CDs that I got with my CD voucher from heath for my birthday, almost non-stop: life for rent by dido, sunrise over sea by the john butler trio, and if I left the zoo by jars of clay. John loaned me another jars of clay CD last night, so I might yet get out of this cycle...and into another one.

Also, my ipod should be arriving soon...tee hee...

the birthday exorcism

i had a repeat performance of my birthday yesterday. it was a joint bec-imogen birthday and mother's day, with people from church at the tonks' house - it was supposed to be a picnic in their large backyard but of course if i ever mention the words picnic, barbecue and birthday in the one sentence, it's guaranteed to rain. it did, intermittently, all afternoon, but we still had lots of fun. now i don't have any lingering feelings of petulant disgruntlement (my prerogative to make up words, you know) about the non-event that was april 21 this year, and it was just very cheering to spend the day with lovely people who are all there because they like you (as opposed to the parties when people are all there because they don't like you, but that's just sad...). birthdays usually don't bother me one way or the other, but this year's was such a doozy in terms of nothingness (if that's not a complete contradiction), that it's good to have finally exorcised it.

and today it seems as though winter has arrived! well, almost. it's grey and drizzly and cold and i like it. got my new scarf on :)

ooh, shiny!

since blogger has given itself an overhaul and it all looks lovely and lets you do cooler things with your blogs, i thought it was about time to give this l'il ole blog an update. of course, it's a template, but i thought it was purdy.

unfortunately (or is it...?) all the old comments have been lost! so if you had anything particularly witty to say you'll have to repost it.

but howzabout we start with a clean slate, eh?