sing along!

This is one of the best FAQs ever and demonstrates why I giggle in girlish glee whenever Joss Whedon has a new project out. The last installment of Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog goes up sometime today, and it will be available for viewing free until Sunday night. So check it out! It's great.

clouds

I love things like this - Wordle is amazing (thanks Doug!). You just dump a bunch of text into the site and it generates a beautiful word cloud. You can adjust the colours, direction of words, fonts, number of words it displays. And it seems to be able to handle a lot of text very easily (it managed my 53,000 Undragon words with nary a hiccup). I find this fascinating because you can see what words you use the most, and maybe what sort of themes are coming out in the bit of writing. And it's pretty. They're like fingerprints.

So here is my novel in word cloud form (using 400 word clumps...that might be too many for this exercise, but...it's still pretty).

The Jasmine bits:

The Daniel bits:

The whole shebang:


Click on the pics for a closer look. I guess I must use the word 'don't' a lot.

joy!

Karen went to a Shaun Tan reading/signing at Kinokuniya last night. She texted me a photo of him drawing last night. Then this morning she brought me back my copy of tales from outer suburbia with this on the inside:

If you can't quite see it, he's drawn a flower with a sign next to it saying 'for Bec'...oh okay, here's a close up:



Thanks K! You made my day!

is it because of the full moon?*

I hate depression. It's such a stupid thing. It makes you feel stupid, as though you ought to be able to pull yourself up out of it, as though you're just lazy when you succumb to it, as though you're just making excuses because you can't be bothered being an active participant in your own life. I know that isn't true, and maybe that feeling isn't the same for everyone, but it's definitely the case for me.

I've been trying to 'fix' myself, even though I don't feel like it. I listened to positive music. I chatted to friends. I went to the gym. I even went to Peter's of Kensington to spend my farewell-from-church gift voucher, and I just wandered around feeling miserable, even though I was buying lovely things (and it wasn't costing me a cent).

And yet there is still this hot prickling behind my eyes, a mildly panicky feeling in my throat, a bone-weariness that makes me feel like the only thing I want to do is to curl up in my bed and cry. And yet I can't cry. There's nothing to cry about.

Buh. It sucketh.

Well, here are the wonderful things I bought from PofK.

Do you remember that ad for pens (was it Parker, or Papermate, or...what's the one with the little hearts on the clip?) where the old guy is looking for the perfect gift for his daughter who he hasn't seen for ages, and he goes to all this trouble to get a pen and it's perfect and in a box and she loves it and it's all shot with that kind of gauzy, sentimental effect? No? Hmm. Well, trust me, it was an ad ages ago. And when I saw it I always thought what a sucky present a pen would be. I mean, it's not exactly exciting, is it? You use pens every day and they're things you lose and chew the ends of and so it comes in a fancy box, big deal.

Well I think I am finally old enough to appreciate that a good pen is indeed a magnificent thing. And obviously, it's a fitting present for a writer and something that presumably will remind the giftee of the giver whenever she uses it.

So the first thing on the shopping list was a Fisher Space Pen. They had them in purple, my favourite colour, which delighted me greatly. This is going to be my Pen (with a capital P) that I use to write all the great and wonderful things I write in my Moleskine. Hopefully I won't lose it, won't chew the end of it, and it will remind me of my dear friends at St Martin's when I use it.


Then the next category is long-coveted items of no great need. Exhibit A: Bodum Pavina double wall thermal glasses. Mum refused to pour the coffee in them without me doing it first because she was scared they would break, but they're designed for hot drinks and they look gorgeous (that's obviously not coffee in the picture, it's ginger beer).

Exhibit B: a Furi East/West scalloped knife, to go in the empty slot in my Furi knife block. My chef's knife has a nick in it, which annoys me too, so it's nice to have a new knife (I loooove my Furi knives. Well...maybe love is too strong a word for an inanimate object. I greatly esteem them).
Exhibit C and beyond: lots of little things such as cupcake holders with feet (! a present for my godmother); a red melamine spoon that is extremely satisfying to hold and only cost $3.50; a Microplane grater which turns the hardest cheese to a beautiful fluffy snow-like substance; and a black polka dotted shower cap, made out of a pleasingly thick PVC that has that yummy new-plastic smell.

And I still have change to go back and spend another day!

So...actually...now having had dinner (with vegies from the garden!!!) and looking back over my little stash, and being comfortable here in my track pants, with my insane cat doing laps of the house and my mother in the other room...life could be a lot worse.

And this blah, this nothingness, this stupid mood...this too shall pass.


*we're wondering whether Scout's insanity and my flat mood and mum's frustrated mood are a result of the full moon. Don't know enough about that stuff to make a call either way, but suffice it to say, we're all a little weird in this house tonight.

space

We picked up some gorgeous postcards last night at the Spiegeltent, advertising Regents Court - 'a unique hotel of studio apartments' in Potts Point. I went to check out their website and came across this fascinating tidbit of information:

The Regents Court residency commenced in October 2005 and is our way of helping to create a space to make projects happen.

We offer a ground floor studio apartment for artists and writers who wish to find a sanctuary in Sydney to work on a specific project. In exchange for 3 - 5 weeks accommodation, we ask the residents to help maintain our rooftop garden and be available to welcome late arriving guests and answer the night phone occasionally. This initiative is unfunded and doesn't necessarily suit everyone. So if you are handy with a watering can, have a great project you wish to dedicate some time to, please email to Mel Flanagan the details of the work, excellent references, any support material, and preferred dates. Green thumbs are not essential.

How cool is that?! I mean, obviously there's no guarantee you'd get the residency but there should be more places doing supportive and creative things like this.