Peppy?

I found myself at this entry on IMDB:

Intriguing.

It reminded me of this stuff. There's something about the correctness of the invention that just cracks me up.

Staring out of windows, whining about ducks going to Moscow

There have been fireworks let off in the park near my house this evening. This after a bunch of possums/cats had a party with lots of flamenco and brawling on the corregated sunroom roof. The other night there was a flying fox (bat? I do not know) hanging in the tree directly outside the sunroom window. I've never been so close to one before. It was having a go at eating something, upside-down. It looked all wrong, gravity-wise. Like one of those pictures that's sometimes a bunny and sometimes a rabbit ... wait; I think I mean duck. Anyway. With legs that have hands to hang with when your head's upside down.

Quite strange.

I've been working on my website tonight. I decided a while ago I was going to put everything on it. Everything I still liked, that is. I'm beginning to question that decision as the project spreads into its second year. Mind you, I haven't touched it for at least six months, so ...

Sometimes I really want to post on the blog but there's nothing at all to say, so I end up doing these la-di-da kind of nowhere nothing posts about the birds or the sunlight. It's like a little hand with nothing in it, reaching out over the interwebs, grasping for something to hold on to.

Banalities for Novembers

Blogs are tops. What did we ever do without them? In fact, life without the internet on the whole seems like another planet in another dimension.

In other news, my show includes subliminal nods to both Officeworks and Corporate Express. I don't think it's particularly significant, but there it is. Symbols abound.

Jemand musste Josef K verleumdet haben. Why can I not get this out of my head?

Trash patch

This is quite an amazing story. At first I kind of thought it might be a positive story about how ocean life is adapting effectively to this new, human-derived environment. But then I read about the fish with plastic in their stomachs and I thought, not so much. But how amazing is this? You can't tell how large it is from this picture, but if this quantity of small stuff is what's in there, how the hell could you clean it up? Size of Texas, they think this patch is.

Look how the fish are treating this area, like it's a coral reef that they interact with. The evolution of these artificial forms that find themselves with utterly alien afterlives fascinates me. It's like when you're little and you think your toys have a life of their own when you're not there; maybe there's something to that. Material things don't enact their own fates, but they're a part of the evolution of the physical environment, as shaped by all of our actions. This patch is like a garden gone wild (...and with toxicity in the groundwater).

More upbeat

I have these times when I want to do paintings/become a painter. That might happen, one day. But other times I want to become a writer (again). Both have the same problem in them; content/subject.

What of/about?

So silly. It's best just to do things, and not worry or anticipate or plan. You can always make it good later if it's crap at the start.

Anyway.

I'm feeling a little more upbeat now.

Here's a picture of something I made recently:



Just doing anything at all is usually the biggest problem for me. I think I need to do more that's messy. Precious schmecious (if you will).

Meh, and not even original meh

I just watched a bird on a power line out the window, after hanging out there for a minute, reach across and chomp down a spider from a web. I'm aware of the banality of this observation, so perhaps it says something about my mood that it made me aware of how casually a life can be chomped up by some external force. All this angst and worry and whatever, when you can be Struck Down at any time; what's the point? Rationally, you'd conclude that with this knowledge the best strategy is to be living each moment as happily as you can and not worrying about or planning for the future. The reality of your life means nothing to the bird that sees you as dinner (for a quick second, before ceasing to think of you at all), but that personal, petty reality is so strong to you; how can you overcome being so wrapped up in it?

Wherefore perspective?

I was looking at Facebook (it's all your fault, Facebook) because I read something online about someone from primary school who is now on the BRW Young Rich List. I opened the mail and got my credit card bill and thought: What am I doing with my life, and what for?

Day after

I don't feel in the least bit triumphant.

Best Picture

There's a William Eggleston one I've always rather liked. I'm not sure if it could be called 'best' exactly.


But that's a whole other discussion.

Fuck it, I'm going to blog more

Anyone watching Mad Men (obsessively like me)? I'm even feeding the habit peripherally through re-watching movies such as North by Northwest, The Apartment, and reading this book:


It tries to show how much things were changing in the mid-late sixties via an in-depth study of the development and production of the five movies nominated for best picture Academy Awards in 1967. It's a really good read. Super-well researched. Anyhoo, I digress.

There's an episode where Kinsey has this great idea (supposedly; I'm sceptical) but he's drunk and doesn't write it down and thereafter continually regrets the loss of the (supposedly) best idea he's ever had. The 'moral' being, write it down. That's the moral I'm choosing to take in this moment, given that there was something I needed to write down, which triggered the memory of that episode, so I've retrospectively assigned that moral to the story. I can't even remember how it was needed for the narrative. Oh yeah, I think it was to show how good Peggy is relative to her peers at coming up with ideas.

My old friend Rommel said something once about not writing all those ideas down, and getting stuck in yesterday's stale ideas and re-churning them. Put them away (or something), he says. Go fly a kite.

I promise

I hereby resolve to finish my website and have it online before the end of 2009. This joint here is for ramblings, not for sensibleness. So I'm gonna flippin' do it, orright?

I've been looking at the work of Donald Evans. It's very interesting; that whole coming up with a pretext and limitation in order to produce a very particular kind of series of work thing; that whole classification and miniaturisation of a fantasy version of the world, naming as knowing thing; that whole mail art global connectedness international languages thing; that whole copying the signifiers of a certain genre thing.

It's pleasing to see someone find a project that's so clear to them, no matter how nichey.

Cakewrecks

I adore the literalism of this


Cakewrecks killed a good half of yesterday for me.

I love google-image-searching cakes. Trust there to be a whole blog about it.

When I was in Year Nine I took an elective class for one semester, cake decorating. I do not know why. It was with Miz Clee, the least liked home ec teacher. It was pretty awful, still I learnt a lot about marzipan. I made an ugly ugly cake with lots of pastel flowers on it. No sense of imagination or humour.

Perhaps I should just be a clock repairer. I think I'd be good at something like that ('what're the hours?')

The Crimson Petal and the White

Right now I'm reading this:


It took a while; initially I felt it was too cold or something, but I'm about a third of the way in and it's completely pwning me. It's a page-turner, to be sure.

The best part, now that I'm in there, is that I have some 500 pages to go.