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Hey! We're not out of beta yet, so thanks for your patience; here are some of the changes you can expect to see coming up.

-- Job quitted. This will take effect in a couple of months. We sure do appreciate your standing by.
-- Positive influence on life of new computer. Just got a few teething problems to sort out. Rosetta whosa? Intel whatza?
-- Implementation of New Year's resolution* (made in December). Stats on progess so far are as follows: three applications written, two deadlines missed, two applications successful (jury still out on number 3). Looks like I should start applying for something bigger!! (My head?)
-- International rock climbing championship in bag. Workin on it. However, my new climbing shoes are not foot-bindingly tight enough. I can wiggle my toes slightly in them. This could slow my climbing career down. Also not anorexic.
-- New entry in Macquarie Dictionary for past tense verbs; "quitted". Stop the presses! Influence of blogs on modern English etc etc.
-- Interstate travel! Berlin, Hill End, Berlin, Hill End [insert 'weighing' hand gestures here). I know where I'D rather go!!
-- Studio. Am gettin one. A good one. Cheap. In which to make MASTERPIECES. Quibblers refer point number three.
-- Ennobling poverty scheduled for initial implementation around end of April.
-- Love. Room for that in maybe ... early 2008? Apologies for the inconvenience.
-- There's some other stuff. Art etc. Fine print. Supplement to the terms and conditions on its way in the post. If I have your address. And you registered for updates.

Everything I said to everyone about 2007 is true, so far. I'm not even scared of jinxing it. I'm practically like Mystical Medusarer! (Vague Wortwut? Not to self; get better thesaurus. Also new dictionary.) Some of these changes might appear to be subtle, but we insiders know that there is a paradigm shift a-sailing in the open seas.

I so don't know ANYTHING about blogging. La di da.

*Resolution was: apply for everything. Yep, there's pretty much NO reference to absinthe parties in this post.

Dream 31/12/2006

I went to see the Blake Prize for Religious Art exhibition. There were about 150 works on show. Adrian Hobbs had made a kind of karaoke video with Chris Hanrahan and other artists lipsynching to a Christmas song. The production values were unbelievably high but all the singing was out of synch. I realised that most artworks could be seen as having spiritual or religious content and began planning my own entry for next year; a large-scale cartoony Breughel-esque (Paul Noble-y in scale) drawing of bricks dressed as people undertaking their everyday activities in a series of fenced, conjoined circular areas about the size of above-ground swimming pools. The brick-people would have faces, arms and legs, and would be doing things that happen in the lives of ordinary suburban people. Two would be getting married; a teenage one would be cutting herself; stuff like that.

attention to detail

I was supposed to have an early night but I'm just so damn alert! What up?

I have the strongest urge to make stuff or do my website or write applications for things I want and could maybe get or start a band or find a studio or ... that's about it actually. But I promised myself an early night! Something has to give, lifestyle-wise. I need to develop some discipline. Make sacrifices, what! Rome seems like it's never going to get built.

I need to work out a good project that someone in the Northern Territory could support me to do. I don't have any Northern Territory-centric ideas. I want to do a residency at the National Library. That would be so great. They don't exist. Maybe I could get them to create one just for me. I've heard they have little boxes that shoop the books around, like those little train things you imagine they have in coalmines.

I went to Brisbane and it was really good. I like Michael Parekowhai. He make good things um.

Words of more than two syllables in this post that aren't proper nouns:
applications
studio
actually
develop
discipline
sacrifices
residency
national
library
syllables

You know that feeling when you get excited and you go and buy, like, notebooks and sharp pencils or a kayak or whatever, like, purchases that signal your intention to undertake a particular activity? Instead of doing the thing itself you go and buy something that flags your 'productive' feeling? Well, if the shops were open that's what I'd be doing. Instead I'm doing this.

So, in answer to your email, reader, I draw the line at MySpace. Life is Too Short. la di da.

I don't know any more

Today has been pretty durn average.

How do you type the sound of a deep sigh with the air forced through the lips to make a kind of horsey exhaling sound? You know, like, audible resignation?

Next time I'm feeling GREAT I will force myself to blog, just for a bit of balance.

Good things:
* The place I'm staying at in Brisbane has a swimming pool and my work is paying. I will get to go to art openings as well as exhibitions while the office foots the accom/tansport tabs. This is a pretty good deal.
* I am out of debt. Long time coming. Soon as the tax bucks arrive I'll even be (gasp -) ahead.
* Christmas is coming and I will be going; to Thailand with my sister to drink cocktails and lie on the beach reading or drawing or staring snoozily into the middle distance (reputedly Margaret Thatcher's special skill, the staring bit I mean.)
* I am not Margaret Thatcher. The shame would be terrible.

I've run out. Note to self; collect list of good things to post on blog. I can do better than this, surely.

Average, average, average.

token something

I bought some new clothes today. Shit, they're good.

It's really fucken hot. No really.

I got a huge tax return and can buy a new computer. Yay!

I am going to Brisbane on the weekend. I suppose it'll be even hotter there.

Seems like a lot of effort to have a blog. I'm not short of projects, y'know. Wah, wah, wah (that's a self-mocking whingey tone in case you didn't realise).

Things I've eaten that grew in my garden recently: a cucumber. lots of beans. some strawberries. a few peas. countless mulberries. rocket. basil. sage.

who know where it will all end! probably with the golden shallots.

In other news, the ginger's finally coming up.

Possible influence of Lenny Bruce movie on work

Due to popular demand from our reader

What's wrong with this picture?

If you don't know, I can't tell you.

It was only on an interview with Julian Barrett. How can the Independent allow itself to be associated etc.

becarse yr a luddie

For the worst Scottish accents ever recorded on film, see 'Brigadoon' with Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse. But don't go watching it for any other kind of entertainment value. There's not enough dancing to make it bearable. It doesn't even have one great memorable song or dance or scene.

You'll thank me.

Spend that time reading The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Or Middlesex, that's even better. And less depressing! I am going to read Swann's Way next.

No, really. I am. I'm staring on the bus tomorrow. I figure it will make the time pass more slowly, thus delaying my arrival at the office.

Call me [insert square here] if you want.

(...is my square magic working?)

Not a picture of a piece of paper

It's a picture of a sculpture!

Seriously!!

There's more, but I haven't documented the show yet.

It looks really good, since you're asking.



Sure feels late here

Look, I don't see the point in having a blog if there's all this pressure to make it good. I got enough challenges, already! And anyway, why would I need to generate content when there are so many content generators out there plugging away on my behalf.

I am sometimes asked what 'wortwut' means (except by Germans. they don't ask this). Imagine my excitement on discovering an online quiz that (after repeated rejections of inferior definitions) explains this so definitively:

wortwut -- [noun]: A person who has the ability to be invisible 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Or was it

wortwut -- [adjective]: Smelling like turnips at all times 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Or maybe it's more like

wortwut -- [noun]: A poltergeist sent back in time to change the course of history forever 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

And how do you think Google knows I'm letting down my committment to going to the gym twice a week?

What I have fimoed

Do you ever get those reality checks about what the hell you're doing when you're making things? Frinstance today. I'm making a piece of paper out of fimo, with little blue lines, y'know, like on an A4 pad, just so I can photograph it and print it onto paper so it will look like a real piece of paper only wonky and wrong.

It's a bit strange when you think about it.

I have this routine when I'm doing really manual art projects of putting on the tv or dvds to half watch/listen to while I work (some would do that with music but I haven't got anything I want to hear). Today I watched/listened to season 2 of Absolutely Fabulous, Down and Out in Beverly Hills and Lenny. I really like that young Dustin Hoffman. Sometimes, with my head down among the fimo, I really thought I was listening to Lenny Bruce.

Bleak, though. Hence the 'why am I making craft about office supplies' reality check. Poor old Lenny.

I don't ask for much

I haven't made a list like this since I was about 15 but I think it might as well be done.

Ideal partner: qualities #1-??

Sense of humour I get; gets mine (makes me laugh)
Attractive
Supportive; enlightened
Independent; not clingy, but loving and affectionate
Generous and not petty
Clever (intersted in things)
Good vocabulary
Reads, watches films, can discuss art if pressed not because has art education but because is able to form opinions on things witnessed or experienced
Emotionally available
Good social skills
Calm but not boring (clear perspective on big picture items; chilled out)
Practical/together (can deal with paying rent/saving for holiday etc)
Within about 3 years of my own age (somewhat negotiable)
Moderately healthy (n/smoker a must)
Manageable dark side (not a sap, nor a card-carrying cynic)
Can argue without taking offense; able to challenge me
Likes dancing
Snappy dresser (ok this is getting silly)


Surely that's not too difficult?

possible dialogue for real life situation

Person A: Hmmm, it's Tuesday October 17th around 6pm and I am bored.
Person B: Why don't we go to an exhibition opening?
Person A: That is a good idea, I believe there is one tonight at Firstdraft at 116-118 Chalmers St Surry Hills in Sydney.
Person B: Oh, goody! (thinking) maybe I can get some decent conversation there

Mild quandary

If you knew something you knew someone else wanted to know, even if they hadn't asked you, or they had given you an opportunity to speak up that you hadn't initially taken so that telling them the thing would now involve reopening the subject oneself in order to tell them the thing, and noone would suffer or be reflected poorly upon either way, what would you do?

Example of irony

I can't even spell committment.

On reflection, perhaps that's more of a Freudian illiteracy than something ironic. Alanis, can you help me out here?

ah-ha

I am "sick" today.

Is Alan Partridge funnier when experienced through a naproxen sodium fog or is its humour one of those cumulative things? Sometimes when the jokes are lame (and I don't mean the 'chatosphere' kind of jokes that 'Alan' makes on purpose), the show becomes exactly the thing it's mimicking. Like when Alan knocks down a streaker and signs off his show with his face pressed up into a naked man's arse. I mean, the humour becomes parochial or something, slotting right into the style of British TV that Coogan is making fun of. A form following content sorta thing. Or is that content following form?

I guess I've come to it a bit late too. The outfits and whatnot have lost their specific connotations in a given time and place and just look generically daggy. But the character and his desperation are as palpable as they would ever have been ! !

Time to get on with the aforementioned art project. While I'm sitting here.

This ...

... is the boy I had a massive crush on, until he and his family moved back to South Africa at the end of year nine. Wait, no - this is the man that the boy I had a crush on grew up to be.

He once broke up a fight in my Vis Comm class, when everyone else was cheering and laughing like Beavis and Butthead. My hero.

Who'd a thought it - Head of Investments, eh.

"you're crazy"

I am going through a really trashy stage. It's all about boozing it up. Yay, booze.

Today I got a phone call from my fresh ex. We don't talk so much any more. He asked me what I was doing, I'm all 'working, of course' (I was at work). We chatted for about 40 seconds. Then he went 'I've just done this really strange thing - I meant to call the other **** and I've called you instead [how embarassment!]. I've just realised who I"m talking to. So ... how are you going, anyway? You going to that opening tonight [blah blah blah]'

Needless to say, we didn't then have a lovely chat about life etc. I got the hell off the phone asap and felt depressed the rest of the day. Call me crazy, but I find the blase-ness really upsetting. I don't see the benefit of pretending everything's nice and neat and happy when it's actually ugly, traumatic and miserable. Much better just not to speak.

Had a nice night, though. If a little desperate. I still have sore forearms from ice skating on Monday ... it's a very positive injury. I wear it like an invisible bruisey badge of niceness.

Good Clean Fun.

Hear that, reader? When in doubt, take to the ice. Wear two pairs of socks though. And good gloves.

Wasted youth

Far OUT it's 4am! This is what comes of being indolent all day ... I just amn't tired! It's not all lost time though, I have found some fabulous apparel to bid for on ebay, I will post if I win anything good ... but since I am a very cheap bidder it's not too likely.

Tomorrow I shall go into the city and buy records, make pictures and do yoga maybe. All my art project ideas get the mental kybosh before I even start ... that way I don't have to start. Clever, huh? As a short-term strategy I mean.