(the former) Plodding along to glory

Moving!

2006-12-18T08:42:00.000+11:00

Moving to Beta: Plodding along to glory

This site will stay here, as is, so please feel free to comment here if the urge moves you. If it moves you over to the new site too, that'd be good, thanks.

What's the point of keeping up with the news?

2006-12-16T18:16:00.000+11:00

I don't know. I've wondered about this for a long time and haven't got an answer.

Not long ago I avoided all news altogether. I had no idea what was going on outside my own little sphere, and that was good. I was happy being ignorant. The alternative was to know what was going on in the world, and that was bad. I couldn't stop myself getting upset about things. This won't surprise you: most world events are completely beyond my control or influence ;) So there was really no point in worrying about them, seeing there was nothing I could do anyway, but I couldn't stop worrying, so I had to stop the news.

That didn't last. Recently I stumbled across Werner's blog (Soldier of Africa - he's working as a military observer in Darfur) and suddenly realised that the situation in Sudan is one of the worst catastrophes this world has ever seen, and here I am, in blissful ignorance, doing nothing to help. Is that excusable? No.

So now I'm keeping up with the news again, or the Darfur news, anyway. There are untold numbers of other catastrophes and worrying events I could be focusing on too, but no, one is enough. Darfur is it. I'm reading the feeds and writing posts, and now it feels like I'm doing something to help.

And that is completely delusional. What am I actually contributing? Could any of the millions of displaced people in Darfur one day say, "Gee thanks, what you did really helped!"? No.

But the alternative is to do nothing, and that is guaranteed to be no help whatsoever. In other words, I'm hoping that doing something is better than nothing, and anyway, this activity is silencing the voice of my conscience (the one saying "Do something!").

I don't know whether blog posting is helpful, but I'm hoping that any focus on Africa and the events in Darfur will at least not be hurtful. The Australian media's coverage of African matters leaves something to be desired: specifically, some coverage, any coverage, anything at all. And the average Australian's knowledge of Africa is way beyond pitiful. I know this because I am an average Australian.

Look at that decision by the Tamworth City Council yesterday. Six out of nine councillors voted against housing Sudanese refugees, with the Mayor claiming that the refugee programme should be changed because of "the cultural difference of African people, things such as their respect of women in their community". It's a ludicrous statement, shameful and embarrassing, but not at all surprising. Why wouldn't an Australian's general knowledge about Africa be hopeless? If our world views are largely shaped by media output (and I think they are) then for most Australians Africa is just that big shape on the map over there. You know the one: the place where all the wild animals live.

So I'll be posting about Darfur now and then, prodded along by yesterday's decision by the Tamworth City Council, and I'd like to thank them for the inspiration. Very kind.

In case you're interested

2006-12-16T15:32:00.000+11:00

From Not going anywhere by David Blair, the UK Daily Telegraph's Africa correspondent, about Zimbabwe's President, the "selfish, delusional" Robert Mugabe, due to face elections in 2008:

He has just announced that he will stick around until 2010 at least. The hapless fools on the government benches of Zimbabwe’s parliament are about to rewrite the constitution, postponing the next presidential election and allowing Mugabe to stay in power until 2010.
[...]
In other countries, this kind of legal and political outrage would galvanise the opposition. But not in Zimbabwe.

Sadly, the bitterly divided Movement for Democratic Change is a shambles. Its leading figures are far too busy fighting one another to place any pressure on the regime.

So Mugabe’s calamitous rule will continue and Zimbabwe will drift on into ruin. The truth is that the world is giving up on Zimbabwe.

Quote of the day

2006-12-16T00:04:00.000+11:00

For my sister J, flying home today to some sort of Pacific island paradise. She can't wait to get away from Australia, strangely enough.

From the Channel Nine cricket commentary team, Third Test, Australia v. England, Perth, day two, afternoon session, yesterday.

Squeezed between numerous calls of "the tail's wagging" from somebody (was Bill Lawry there?), Ian Chappell - impressed by the way England's Monty Panesar and Steve Harmison were running between the wickets - remarked that it's not often you hear a "wait" from lower-order batsmen:

It's usually a yes or a no, or quite often, a sorry.

The meaning of mateship

2006-12-15T16:53:00.000+11:00

Sarcastic title referring to John Howard's Australia. I don't know what else to say.

Australian city rejects Sudanese refugees
15 Dec 2006 03:39:33 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Rob Taylor

CANBERRA, Dec 15 (Reuters) - A group of Sudanese refugees has been refused residence in Australia's most "Friendly Town" because of fears they could spark a repeat of the race riots that gripped Sydney a year ago.

City officials in the regional city of Tamworth said on Friday they had rejected residency for five Sudanese families because they could stir racial unrest in the city, 260 km (163 miles) northwest of Sydney.

"We need to change the (refugee) programme significantly because of the cultural difference of African people, things such as their respect of women in their community," Mayor James Treloar told Reuters, dismissing fears of a divisive race row.

Tamworth in January hosts Australia's largest country music festival and recently won a tourism award naming the busy rural hub as the country's premier "Friendly Town".

But Treloar said local people and some "redneck elements" had aired concerns at a council meeting about 12 other Sudanese already living in the city, saying most had come before local courts for crimes ranging from dangerous driving to rape.

"They will not take a direction from authorities, so we've got a fairly significant cultural problem," he said, adding that health services for Tamworth's 40,000 population were already stretched.

Local churches said they would launch a petition calling on the council to reverse its decision, which was a response to an immigration department programme to resettle refugees in regional areas to help reverse a drift of Australians to major cities.

Several councillors and business leaders said they would try to overturn the decision, arguing that the arrival of the refugees would not fuel the kind of tensions that led to last December's Sydney beach riots where mainly-white surfers battled Lebanese-Australians.

"It will reflect on Tamworth and I feel it will be somewhat of a negative effect. To say that we can't provide for another five families is I think a bit ridiculous," Tamworth Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Officer Max Cathcart told ABC radio.

Australia is a nation of immigrants, with nearly one in four of the country's 20 million people born overseas. Almost six million people have settled in the country since 1945 and Australia plans to accept about 144,000 new immigrants in 2006-07.

But the government is concerned the rapid transformation could fuel tensions and recently announced new citizenship tests to force new citizens to pass an English-language test and questions on Australian values such as "mateship".

Missing the bloody point

2006-12-13T19:29:00.000+11:00

Here follows a selection of online newspaper reports on US actor George Clooney's visit to China and Egypt - a trip he organised "to make a personal plea to Chinese and Egyptian officials to use their ties with the Sudanese government to help stop the violence [in Darfur, Sudan]."

The article (the same one, over and over) is by Associated Press writer, Lee Keath, with some help in a few by Brooke Donald. It begins, "George Clooney arrived in Egypt on Tuesday, campaigning to raise awareness about killings in Sudan's Darfur region."

Please notice where each paper chose to situate the story.

CBS News: Entertainment:

China Daily: Entertainment: Movies:

Guardian Unlimited: Film: News:

Newsday.com: AP Movie News:

And the winner of "Most Inappropriate Press Photo of All Time" goes to... USA Today:

I'm thinking that a few hundred thousand dead people and a few million IDPs (internally displaced persons) trying to survive in a rapidly escalating conflict - one of our worst human tragedies of all time - probably should qualify as a serious news story.

:)

2006-12-10T17:12:00.000+11:00

[Image removed because it infringed upon the copyrights of others.]

- Gary Larson, The prehistory of the Far Side: a 10th anniversary exhibit (Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews and McMeel, 1989), p. 102.

A cartoon from Larson's sketchbook. And don't panic: it doesn't make sense (as far as I know), I just think it's funny.

In case you've lost the ability to read anything written by hand (and who hasn't? I can barely read my own signature now) the caption reads: "It was Jeremiah's job to guard the rhubarb, but he never knew why."

Happy Sunday to you.

Words of comfort for the people of Darfur...

2006-12-09T18:08:00.000+11:00

... from their President, His Excellency Mr Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir, who was addressing the opening ceremony of the 5th ACP [African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States] Summit of Heads of State and Government on Thursday 07 December 2006 in Khartoum, Sudan.

UPDATE

I should have been specific. By "Words of comfort for the people of Darfur..." I meant the exact opposite. I meant the address delivered by their President would be anything but comfort for the people of Darfur, and in fact could be the worst insult they ever receive (just to top off all the other insults they've received already... torture, rape, murder, for instance). I was hoping to use sarcasm or irony or whatever the hell it may be called in order to say something without being direct or specific. If I was being direct I would have said I think President al-Bashir is a lying evil monster and should be dragged to the ICC kicking and screaming, hopefully because he's being kicked as he's being dragged.

If that doesn't illustrate my problem with being specific, here is another reason: I don't know enough to be sure that Mr al-Bashir actually is lying, and nor can I be sure that he's evil or deserves to face the ICC. All I have to go on are media reports, and they are no basis for proving anything, least of all guilt in relation to crimes against humanity. Everyone, including Mr Bashir, should be regarded as innocent unless or until guilt has been sufficiently established to convince any cool-headed and reasonable person. (Perhaps it's not necessary that a court trial be involved, but I don't know enough to be sure of this.) In other words, I should be assuming his innocence. It's very difficult to do this though, because I believe that what follows in his address is complete bullshit. I also cannot believe a group of world leaders - those whose countries make up the membership of the ACP - have willing elected this man to be their leader. I cannot believe it. What the hell are they doing? What's wrong with them? It makes me so angry there's nothing more to say.

If you'd like news updates on the situation in Darfur, Reuters AlertNet reports are very handy - here is the customised RSS feed.

Please note:
1. The spelling of Mr al-Bashir's name varies, so I've used the Wikipedia version.
2. The translation or transcription of his address is not the most clearly written piece of English you'll ever see; it's possible that it misquotes what he said or meant.
3. In the following extracts I cleaned up some typos and punctuation mistakes and threw [...]s everywhere. I don't know whether to apologise for the mess I made or throw a few more in.

Now! Attention, please, for the President:

I [...] assert the preponderance of Sudan to work and collaborate with the ACP member states on the one hand and the international community on the other, in order to achieve our common goals and interests, such as keeping of peace, security and stability, under the prevalence of justice, equality and respect of sovereignty of other states, in addition to the foremost of our priorities: sustained development and eradication of poverty.
[...]
May I mention [...] that the experience of our country in attaining peace is worthy to be noted, for it has relied on the recognition of cultural, ethnic and religious diversity. No doubt, agreement on the legal and constitutional formula, which makes of such diversity a source for strength and consolidation, [will] require[...] a long time to fulfil.

We, however, shall endeavour to make of diversity a tool for consolidation, and [...] the implementation of the peace agreements [will] be carried [out] in a manner which shall disseminate the spirit of loving concord, equity, justice and peace among all citizens.
[...]
May I indicate here that the noble principles of democracy and good government are principles in which we believe and [are] exalted by our teachings, values and traditions across our countries.
[...]
Many of our countries do suffer from conflicts and disputes created by colonial powers and further aggravated by poverty, backwardness, and the lack of recognition of the root causes therein. It is high time, however, to surpass and address them through dialogue, as you realize we witness a new phase of the world of today wherein its people are availed to closely interact, thanks be to [...] information technology, migration, travelling and cross-movement of individuals and cash, so we are now living in a world that looks like a small village. This situation urges that a culture of peaceful coexistence, respect for human rights, prevalence of justice and lifting of injustice on vulnerable societies be installed in addition to [...] endeavours [...] by governments to realize a better life for their citizens.

Following endorsement by member countries at the Summit, the ACP's president for the next two years will be - guess who? - President of the Republic of the Sudan, His Excellency Mr Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir. Mr al-Bashir's name has also been endorsed by Human Rights Watch as one of those individuals who should be investigated by the International Criminal Court. Hmm.

Darfur, Sudan

2006-12-08T02:21:00.000+11:00

Here's a post I've been working on, and I mean "working on" in the sense of reading things and wondering what to make of them and what to say, or whether to say anything at all. It was going to be the world's best post, too, so inspirational it would have galvanised you into action, reader - you and your superhero powers - to solve all the problems of the world, starting with the conflict in Darfur, Sudan.

But sadly I'm not going to write the world's best post, because I can't. There's too much to say and I don't know what I'm talking about. I've been reading all week, trying to absorb a few facts and build up a bit of authority, but there's too much to catch up on.

Let's not fuss (I say to myself). We'll just go with quotes - a collection of impressions.

But first an explanation for this sudden interest in Darfur. About two weeks ago and in keeping with the random fluky nature of all things internet, I was doing a Google blog search for "quotes" and one of the results on the first page was Some of my favourite quotes. I toddled on over there and found Soldier of Africa by Werner, a South African soldier who is working as a military observer with the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), and currently editing the AMIS newsletter from El Fasher, Darfur.

I ended up wandering through his archives, amazed that somebody could be blogging from Darfur, and aghast at just how much I didn't know about the place or the situation there.

So. That's how it started. And here's how it will continue: quotes from here and there, snatches of this and that, until hopefully I can sort out all these ideas in my head and put them in neat lines and sentences.

Darfur, Sudan, 2006.

There is no peace whatsoever in Darfur. To a great extent this is the responsibility of the Government.

- Jan Pronk, Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Weblog nr 38, 27 November 2006.

As of December 2005, more than half of Darfur's six million people - Arabs and non-Arabs, pastoralists and farmers - now suffer the effects of a collapsed economy, little or no freedom of movement, and the loss of livelihoods from looted and destroyed property. More than two million displaced victims of "ethnic cleansing" in Darfur remain confined in camps, some for more than two years, where they are almost entirely dependent on foreign assistance and remain vulnerable to violence. Most displaced persons are unable to return to their rural homes due to the insecurity created by government forces and Janjaweed [militias]. Where individuals have attempted to return, they face continuing harassment and deadly attacks from growing numbers of armed groups, including the rebel movements, in some cases at the hands of the same persons who forcibly displaced them.

- "Entrenching impunity: government responsibility for international crimes in Darfur: I. Summary," Human Rights Watch, vol. 17, no. 17a (December 2005).

Crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by Sudanese military and militia forces have included the targeted killing, summary execution, assault and rape of thousands of civilians, the destruction of hundreds of villages, the theft of millions of livestock, and the forced displacement of more than two million people.
[...]
The rebel groups in Darfur are also responsible for serious abuses, including killings, rape and abductions of civilians, attacks on humanitarian convoys, and theft of livestock, that are war crimes.
[...]
Escalating attacks on international and Sudanese aid workers and [African Union (AU)] personnel demonstrate that these groups are increasingly viewed by the warring parties as legitimate targets, a situation that jeopardizes the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance to more than three million people, or half of Darfur's population.

- "Entrenching impunity: government responsibility for international crimes in Darfur: III. Background," Human Rights Watch, vol. 17, no. 17a (December 2005).

[Among the lawyers at Amal Center in Nyala, South Darfur, is] Thuriya Haroon Daldon, who is teasingly nicknamed Mrs ICC by local judges and, unusually for a woman here, drives herself around in a van. Thuriya Haroon's first case with Amal was in 2001, representing a group of men who said they had been tortured by national-security officers. "I submitted the names of the torturers to the attorney general, but until now there's no permission even to pursue the case, and no answer," she said, and laughed. A frank woman with a friendly but firm aspect, Thuriya Haroon uses laughter to fend off the realities of death and cruelty that now fill her workday. "Instead, we face harassment," she said. "They follow us, watch us. And until now the victims say to me: 'What do you do? We give our stories, and those who tortured us are on the streets.' Sometimes I'm ashamed. I've done nothing." She has handled hundreds of rape cases, for example, and until now: "No one has been convicted of rape in all of Darfur. We've had only two cases of immoral behavior. They were sentenced to six months."
[...]
Since August 2004, the Amal Center has compiled information on more than 72,000 cases [of torture and abuse].
[...]
It's not that no one has been connected by Sudanese courts to the genocide. They have convicted several men who did not want to take part in it: Darfurian Air Force pilots who refused to fly bombing missions over their homeland. They are serving 10 to 20 years in Kober prison in Khartoum.

- Elizabeth Rubin, "If not peace, then justice," New York Times Magazine, 02 April 2006.

The main reason other international [television] stations don't always cover Africa well is - not because execs think viewers aren't interested, because they know very well that public attention is shaped by their decisions - but simply money. It costs a lot to send people into Congo and Darfur, [...]

- Andrew Stroehlein, "Great hopes for Al Jazeera International," Reuters AlertNet, 03 November 2006.

While one of the world's worst humanitarian crises continues some 600 miles away in Darfur, across Khartoum bridges are being built, office towers are popping up, supermarkets are opening and flatbed trucks hauling plasma TVs fight their way through thickening traffic.

Despite the image of Sudan as a land of cracked earth and starving people, the economy is booming, with little help from the West. Oil has turned it into one of the fastest growing economies in Africa - if not the world - emboldening the nation's already belligerent government and giving it the wherewithal to resist Western demands to end the conflict in Darfur.
[...]
The boom is also strengthening the government's hand at home. Over the past few years, [President] Mr. Bashir has been on an infrastructure binge, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into roads, bridges, power plants, hospitals and schools, projects that tend to boost any government's popularity. Mr. Bashir seems to desperately need it, with many people across the country, not just in Darfur, openly rebelling against his rule.
[...]
[According to Abda Yahia el-Mahdi, a former finance minister, now in private consulting] more than 70 percent of the government's share of oil profits is spent on defense. A government priority is to manufacture guns and ammunition domestically, in case external supplies are cut off.

- Jeffrey Gettleman, "War in Sudan? Not where the oil wealth flows," New York Times, 24 October 2006.

UN Sudan Bulletin 06 Dec 2006: West Darfur: Twenty five children, who were abandoned when their parents fled to Chad, were reported in need of food.

- United Nations Country Team in Sudan, "United Nations Sudan Bulletin 06 Dec 2006," ReliefWeb Latest Updates.

Personals

2006-12-04T22:24:00.000+11:00

I've been diligently reading serious articles with a view to writing a serious post about something really really serious (not joking), but suddenly happened upon the Personals at the London Review of Books. And now I can't think:

My most humbling moment was the birth of my first grandchild. No! Wait! It was when I won the office Grand National sweepstake in 1999. God bless you, Bobbyjo! Idiot gamer (M, 61). One eye on a meaningful relationship, the other on the William Hill Saturday quick-pick cards. Box no. 23/03

This advert began as a limp but over the following weeks it developed into this magnificent sprint. Woman, 36. Probably as good as you’ll ever get. Stop whingeing and kiss me. Box no. 23/04

Young, charming, thoughtful, attractive, sporty, zesty, intelligent. None of these are me, but if you’d like to spend an afternoon or more considering alternative adjectives to be applied to 53-year old cantankerous dipshit, write now to box no 2202

2 out of every 10 times I’m absolutely correct. Man, 35, (Islington). Non-smoker, academic, caring, solvent, passionate, articulate, full head of hair. Box no. 2203

Your Christmas bookings now taken! Pathetic man, 37. Box no. 2207

Oh, bless 'em. Aren't they cute? :)

Blogger commenting

2006-12-03T10:54:00.000+11:00

Bloody hell. I just did a random skip back through the Plodding archives and found a comment left on the Blogger system (thank you, Island) (UPDATE: and Greensmile), I know not when. Blogger commenting is not supposed to be on, and for most posts it isn't. If you click on "Comments", you're supposed to get a HaloScan form.

A random Blogger comment happened once before (and I also found a few spams too, damn them to hell) but I don't know why or what I did to the template to mangle it in such a way as to allow this. I hope it was just a temporary mess-up which later was corrected.

But the point is this: I don't get emails to say there are comments left on the Blogger system as happens with HaloScan, and I presume I can't enable this sort of notification unless Blogger commenting gets turned back on, which is not going to happen.

So - if you left a Blogger comment somewhere, and I haven't replied to it, it's because I don't know about it. And unless you come back and point to it with a new HaloScan comment, or unless I do a full archive expedition post by post, then your comment has been unread and unappreciated (at least by me) and that is a sad and stupid waste and I'm sorry.

UPDATE

Okay, I'm an idiot. I hadn't changed my blogger email address, so even if there were notifications, they were going astray. Not any more, but nevertheless: ... errr, whatever. I'm tired :)

The tribe of Melvin

2006-12-03T07:43:00.000+11:00

From today's post at The Blog of Henry David Thoreau, Thoreau's Journal: 02-Dec-1856:

I thank my stars for Melvin. I think of him with gratitude when I am going to sleep, grateful that he exists,— that Melvin who is such a trial to his mother. Yet he is agreeable to me as a tinge of russet on the hillside. I would fain give thanks morning and evening for my blessings. Awkward, gawky, loose-hung, dragging his legs after him. He is my contemporary and neighbor. He is one tribe, I am another, and we are not at war.

He is one tribe, I am another, and we are not at war.

Maybe that's how it is on the road to peace? Melvins everywhere you look.

Summer extremes

2006-12-01T18:45:00.000+11:00

Today - the 1st day of December - is the first day of summer here in Australia. That's based on calendar time, of course, and the official start of the season never really corresponds to the start of summer weather. In this region (about halfway up the east coast) the temperature and humidity usually start to rise in October, and in most years it would be disgustingly hot and muggy by now. But not this year. This year has been the coolest and most comfortable summer I can ever remember, and I presume this is due to the fact that most of the rest of Australia is experiencing one of the worst droughts of all time. Though we have plenty of water here, the air has been dry, and that makes all the difference.

Heat + dry air = a hot day.

Heat + humidity = hellfire and damnation.

The other day when I posted that photo of the grass under the clothesline (the one with the footprints), it didn't occur until later that looking at such greenness** might break your heart if you're in a drought-ravaged area, and if that happened, I'm very sorry. And I'm not sure that I should be writing a post about how great my summer is when it's all due to the extreme climatic misfortunes of others, either. But it is a great summer here. The coolest, the driest, the best. It's unfair, yes, it is.

** That lawn has never in its life seen water from a hose, or (apart from mowing) any other care or attention. It's wonder grass: kikuyu. Forget to mow it for five minutes and it'll be waving around your head.

What are the chances?

2006-11-28T20:58:00.000+11:00

This afternoon in a comment I said, "Buckley's and no chance," and only later realised that for anybody not from Australia or New Zealand, such a statement might be incomprehensible. More usually expressed as "Buckley's chance and none" or shortened to just "Buckley's" alone, it's a way to say that something or someone has no chance whatsoever.

This reminded me of something which once happened to my sister Mavis (name changed to protect the litigious). One night years ago she was standing in a pub or a club - some sort of boozy establishment - chatting to a man who worked in his parents' restaurant along the street from where she was working. She basically only knew this man well enough to say hello to, and really only knew that much because she saw his parents in the street every day, going to and from work, and that distant familiarity transferred over to their son.

So there they both were, Mavis and the bloke, standing in said boozy establishment, loud music in the background, smoke dulling the atmosphere, people trying to make themselves heard in a rowdy Friday night crowd... I've got no idea, actually, I can't remember the details. But the important fact was this: he was talking to her loudly and she had to yell in reply, and when he asked her something (I know not what) she was halfway through bellowing "You've got BUCKLEY'S chance!" when she suddenly remembered his family's name.

No, really. True story. It was Buckley.

Don't be an idiot

2006-11-27T08:22:00.000+11:00

Next time you're spraying herbicide around the base of your clothesline (because your mower is actually a small tractor with an overhead rollbar too tall to fit under the line) (and because you're too unmotivated to either weed the area by hand or plant something non-grass/weedy there instead), then for heaven's sake, reader! Don't spray the area, look at it, and then decide to spray it again (you know, like everything: just to be sure), because the second time around, you'll walk right through the sprayed area and get the stuff all over your boots, won't you? Yes, you will. And then when you walk away, the herbicide will go with you on the base of your boots, won't it? Yes, it will. And a week later - say, yesterday - the grass will look something like this:

Hahaha.

But you'd never do that, would you? You're not that silly.

Photo brought to you by someone standing at the top of a ladder. (The things I do for you, reader...)

Housekeeping

2006-11-26T23:29:00.000+11:00

I've been fiddling about with Blogger templates again, trying to get to grips with the world of Beta. Have you any idea how much difference there is in appearance between browsers?? Shocking, it is. It's been driving me mad.

Font size is a particular problem, so I've taken out the "font-size" tag or attribute or whatever it's called (not just in the Beta blog but here too), after reading somewhere that this will force each browser to rely on its own default size.

If it works, great. If it doesn't and anything looks more clunky than usual, please say. I'll be moving on out to Beta soon anyway - this blog will stay here and I'll start Plodding v.2 - but until then... Any problems, please do say.

By the way, the Beta blogs have comment feeds unless the author decides not to enable this. There's supposed to be a link down the bottom of the page (with the link for post feeds: Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)) but I'm yet to see one for comments, and even though the links for posts usually do appear, often they don't actually work.

Never fear, though. The link for posts is:

http://[nameofblog].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

and for comments:

http://[nameofblog].blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

I just did a quick test in my email-based reader and of course, no, it doesn't work. But I suspect the thing only reads RSS links, and these are Atom. If you're having trouble, use Google Reader. It's magnificent.

:) Well, it's good. Close enough.

Class consciousness

2006-11-25T11:17:00.000+11:00

Yep, in the stats race this blog is lagging well behind the field. In fact, more specifically, it has "low authority", which is probably even more impressive than racing really damn slowly.

I'm so proud... :)

You can calculate your own blog's "bloglebrity status" with a Technorati-powered widget at Kineda (found via Pavlov's Cat). Are you A-list, B-list, C-list, or languishing with the leftovers?

Just between you and me: we D-listers are the only real groovers. We're cool, we're exclusive, we're uber-cliquey. Oh yes. Oh yes indeed.

Shadow flower

2006-11-23T09:49:00.000+11:00

Something I found yesterday: the shadow from a weed falling across a red reflector thingie which had previously fallen off a post and onto the ground (no, I hadn't moved it there).

UPDATE

The bigger picture, another day, another time:

Headline

2006-11-22T17:27:00.000+11:00

I don't often read newspaper sports pages, but Australia's Hero (Ian Thorpe) announced his retirement from swimming, so... Good on him, by the way, choosing life instead of obligation. Or something. It's his own business, of course, but that doesn't stop the rest of us from passing judgement on it.

Yeah, we're horrible.

Anyway. The point. I think the following headline from aforementioned sports pages is so cute'n'clever, it deserves an award. From the tennis files, and in regard to "the former prodigy and Wimbledon finalist", Andrea Jaeger, who has decided to become a nun:

Short skirts are out and it's Miss Jaeger to serve

Bravo.

PS. While I'm giving out non-existent awards to people who will never even realise, Sunday's movie on Prime/the Seven Network, Touching the Void, had no ads running over the closing credits!! So impressed! So grateful!! I don't know whether they do this all the time now or not, but certainly hope so. Bravo again!

This one a long time have I watched

2006-11-19T18:51:00.000+11:00

I was just running through some old bookmarks and re-discovered this sweet gem:

(click image for a larger version)

Photo from a series called Yoda in Ireland which was posted at Tachyon Research, but is no more. There's no information on the front page there now, apart from "no albums, no images", so I don't know who the photographer was, or how he/she would feel about me having (a) pinched the photo, (b) lightened it, and (c) posted it. If anybody objects, please say and I'll take the thing down ASAP. It's all a bit rude, I know, but... it's so damn cute! That's reason enough, surely?

Continuing in this vein of not-being-sure-whether-I-should-post-this, you can still find links to the other photos in the series here: Index of /albums/Yoda-in-Ireland. I don't know why they're still there, but I don't know why my bookmark still worked either, so there we go. Ignorance aplenty.

Enjoy I hope you do.

This too shall pass

2006-11-18T23:02:00.000+11:00

Gam zeh ya'avor in Hebrew.

Some Kind Person has compiled a whole blog about the origin of this phrase in Hebrew folklore and variations in the tale from around the world: GZY.

Blogging is a fine, fine thing.

And so is the title of the following book - but wait! An extract first:

[...] everything - the good and bad, pleasure and pain, approval and disapproval, achievements and mistakes, fame and shame - all come and go. Everything has a beginning and an ending and that's the way it's supposed to be.

Every experience you have ever had is over. Every thought you've ever had, started and finished. Every emotion and mood you've experienced has been replaced by another.

- Richard Carlson, Don't sweat the small stuff... and it's all small stuff (New York: Hyperion, 1997), ISBN: 073380084x, p. 223.

Here is the end of this blog post. So, see? It's true. This too shall, etc.

Cartoon treasure

2006-11-18T09:48:00.000+11:00

(click image for a larger version)

Cartoon by Robert Weber, published in The New Yorker, but I don't know when... Definitely before 1996; probably before 1988; but that's still not much help and I'm sorry.

I've had a copy of this for years now, so long that the paper is now getting scruffy and yellow. It's a masterpiece of a cartoon, I think, and should be online and I couldn't find one by googling, so here it is.**

I'm really sorry not to be able to specify the date of publication. Robert Weber has a number of cartoons in the CartoonBank - in fact, 53 pages of them at current count - but according to search results, this cartoon is not one of those thusly immortalised and that's a real pity, I say. Look at the thing: Big ideas! Simple execution! Perfect!

** Apologies to the copyright holder(s), not only for violation of whatever, but for not caring enough to find out what "whatever" is or means. If what it means is that most people would be prevented from ever seeing this cartoon, then it means shit, baby, and we should invent a different way to protect author/publisher income.

Friday mumbles

2006-11-17T09:05:00.000+11:00

Ever wondered what a blog post would look like if the blogger was determined to post something, anything, and yet couldn't find a damn thing to say?

Yep. Exhibit A.

Juan Mann, many hugs

2006-11-16T10:35:00.000+11:00

Need a hug? (Doesn't everybody?) Here's a video which might help, at least in a virtual way:

Free Hugs Campaign. Inspiring Story! (music by sick puppies)
YouTube video, nearly 8.5 Mb

It shows Juan Mann (pronounced "one man"; a pseudonym, yes) and his supporters in the streets of Sydney, giving people hugs. Free hugs. For anybody who wants one. No strings, no expectations, no obligations - free. Now, wouldn't that be nice?

Actually, no. I'd be too self-conscious to hug a stranger, but that's a personal failing, and the idea is remarkable and worthy, so God bless them for doing it. The video is so heartwarming it makes me happy just watching it, which is why I recommend saving it to your computer so you can watch it too. I think of it as a type of vitamin whenever my faith in humanity needs a boost. Love in action, and it's lovely.

You might already be aware of this video anyway. It was uploaded to YouTube and earned instant stardom: a quarter of a million views in two days. The Free Hugs Campaign has gone global, leading to the launch of a Free Help Campaign, and so on.

But what interests me most is the way the whole thing started. As he says on his MySpace page and in a WHO interview, Mr Mann came back from London and found himself alone and lonely in Australia. One night at a party a random stranger hugged him, and it made him feel so great that he decided to share the love around and start offering hugs to others. One of those others was Shimon Moore, member of the band, Sick Puppies, who was at the time working a sandwich board in Pitt Street Mall, Sydney (scene of Juan's weekly hugging activity). The two became friends and eventually Shimon - wanting to make a documentary about something - shot the footage of Juan's hugging campaign. But he didn't get around to actually putting the video together until one night when he and the band were in LA. From his WHO interview:

It was made because I had hours of this footage and Juan called me up because his grandmother had died and he’s now caring for his blind grandfather as we speak. His head was just spinning around and I was out in LA, busy and I wanted to do something for him. So I turned the footage into a short film for him, which took me till the next morning but I just did it in one night. I sent it to him on a disc as a present and I wrote down 'This is who you are'.

Now if that doesn't bring tears to your eyes, smack yourself in the head, reader. And watch the video, do. It's lovely. Thanks to my own friend, Em, for sharing the link in the first place - hug to you, sir. And non-Em reader, a hug to you too. Come on. Be nice. "Clasp Me"**

:)

** The sign on one of the Free Hugs Campaign banners shown in A Thankyou Message from Juan Mann (YouTube, 3.8 Mb)

Saving videos

2006-11-14T08:54:00.000+11:00

In case you don't know and would like to, you can save online videos (eg. the Banana Splits one I mentioned yesterday) if you download and install VideoDownloader, which is available as a Mozilla Firefox Add-on. I've only used this twice now but it worked both times, so there we have it: a 100% success rate!**

In my experience (which might be freakish, I don't know) the video has to fully load in the browser first; you do have to view it online at least once, which can be a slow process if you're on a dial-up. But after that, save it to your computer. From then on, there'll be no wait for loading and no further cost to your download limit either, if you've got one. Watch at will, whenever. Fantastic.

The files are saved in .flv format, and one player which reads them is the VLC, which works even with older operating systems. I'm using Windows 98 and had to download the Microsoft Layer for Unicode (huh? see the note for Windows 95/98/Me users at VLC media player for Windows) but apart from that, all is well.

** The comments on that page are indicating problems at the moment and one of the links doesn't work, but here is the site approached from a different direction:

VideoDownloader

Or here's an alternative (which I haven't tried):

Ook? Video Ook!

The Banana Splits

2006-11-13T18:55:00.000+11:00

Memory is so weird. A short while ago I was just minding my own business, not thinking of anything in particular, when suddenly my brain started singing the theme song from The Banana Splits, a children's television show which was broadcast here in (I'm guessing) the late 1960s/early 1970s. This sudden musical visitation was surprising enough, but even more surprising (or let's call it alarming) was the fact that the main lyrics go "Tra la laaa, laa-la la laaa / Tra la laaa, laa-la la laaa", and I managed to get them wrong.

Forgot the "Tra"s.

Damn.

It's too strange. I didn't even like the show very much. Why on earth would the theme tune suddenly jump to mind about 30 years later?? ... No, can't think. Too busy singing.

Nostalgia makes you stupid. Well, specifically, it makes me stupid, and I hope I'm not alone in the universe on this. Maybe it's a process of ageing or something. Now that I'm 150, being able to say "I remember that!" (about anything, mind you - anything) is really thrilling. That's kind of pathetic and embarrassing, isn't it? Is it? ... Can't think. Too busy singing.

Look at this:

Photo from Nostalgia Central, showing (left to right) Fleegle, Drooper, Snorky, and Bingo.

The sight of that photo caused me to scream out loud and clap my hands. Actually, really-truly screaming and clapping. Yes I Am An Imbecile.

There's just no dignity in ageing. I see that now. Nostalgia-induced imbecility. Maybe it's waiting for us all. How depressing.

So thank God I can sing and scream and clap my hands...
:D

If you want to play too, there are music files of The Tra-La-La Song available for download here (both 167kb):

Mike's Classic Cartoon Themes (for MP3)
Toon Tracker (for RealAudio)

And the really scream-worthy item: a YouTube video showing the Banana Splits in action at the start or end of their TV show.

Outstanding! Fine art, I tell you. Tra la laa, etc.

Kobayashi Issa

2006-11-13T07:57:00.000+11:00

I just took a wander through some of the haiku written by Kobayashi Issa when he was aged 40 to 50 (Essential Issa: 500 haiku). Can't decide which one I like best, so I'm going to show you all candidates. No doubt this will reduce the impact of each one, but I really can't choose, so... you know... suffer.
:)
Read slowly or something. Pause occasionally. Have a cup of tea between each one.

(1)

did you meet
a thousand years ago?
Mr. and Mrs. Crane

(2)

for my soul too
help arrives...
spring blossoms

(3)

misty day--
no doubt Heaven's saints
bored stiff

(4)

moon! blossoms!
forty-nine years walking around
a waste

(5)

quite remarkable
being born human...
autumn dusk

(6)

his detested wife's
violets...
all have bloomed

Happy Monday to you, wherever you are, whichever day it is. Wait long enough and it'll be Monday again; live long enough and at least one of them will be happy.

Pondering the deep and meaningfuls

2006-11-12T09:40:00.000+11:00

Question: Is it possible to stop and smell the roses without thinking of "stop and smell the roses"**?

Answer: No.

**I tried to be clever and find the origin of this phrase, but can't. According to The Phrase Finder, its modern use probably follows the release of Ringo Starr's album of the same name in 1981, featuring a song of seriously weird lyrics written by Harry Nilsson and Richard Starkey, Stop and take the time to smell the roses:

Stop and take the time to stop that smoking,
Stop, before the light turns green.
You won't be blue.
Stop, in the name of the law!

Your new version of Blogger is ready!

2006-11-11T12:24:00.000+11:00

Uh-oh... A new notice on the Blogger dashboard when I signed in:

Your new version of Blogger is ready!

The new version of Blogger now has all the original features you're used to, plus new post labels, drag-and-drop template editing, and privacy controls. And, it's a lot more reliable.

After you switch you'll need to sign in with your Google Account, but your blogs will stay the same. Their content and layout will not change.

Switch to the new version.

I can't decide whether to switch or not, because despite what this notice says ("layout will not change") I think what they actually mean is that current layout won't change. That doesn't mean the previous layouts will stay too. Since losing one or two at the start, I've been careful to preserve the rest (by only publishing the index - the most recent posts), and now I don't want to lose them. They're possibly clunky and embarrassing, but they're my clunky and embarrassing, and I want to go back and visit them sometimes.

One of these days I'll probably just start a new Plodding in Beta and leave this one here as is, preserved for all eternity... (How long do you reckon modern eternity will last, then?)

Anyway, that's all by the bye. I signed in to say that I'm turning commenting on again. There are a number of reasons for doing this (I've been doing the yes/no dither for ages) but now I can't be bothered explaining. Suffice it to say: I had to move a motherless calf from a paddock on its own to a paddock where it would be reunited with the herd, and in some ways it was like looking at myself (only hairier). The calf didn't want to move; I don't want to turn comments back on. Both of us are being stupid.

So the point is: if you'd like to comment now, you can, and please do.

Remembrance Day, Australia, 2006

2006-11-11T08:16:00.000+11:00

After the Wilderness
by Andrew Hudgins

MAY 3, 1863

When Clifford wasn't back to camp by nine,
I went to look among the fields of dead
before we lost him to a common grave.
But I kept tripping over living men
and had to stop and carry them to help
or carry them until they died,
which happened more than once upon my back.
And I got angry with those men because
they kept me from my search and I was out
still stumbling through the churned-up earth at dawn,
stopping to stare into each corpse's face,
and all the while I was writing in my head
the letter I would have to send our father,
saying Clifford was lost and I had lost him.

I found him bent above a dying squirrel
while trying to revive the little thing.
A battlefield is full of trash like that —
dead birds and squirrels, bits of uniform.
Its belly racked for air. It couldn't live.
Cliff knew it couldn't live without a jaw.
When in relief I called his name, he stared,
jumped back, and hissed at me like a startled cat.
I edged up slowly, murmuring "Clifford, Cliff,"
as you might talk to calm a skittery mare,
and then I helped him kill and bury all
the wounded squirrels he'd gathered from the field.
It seemed a game we might have played as boys.
We didn't bury them all at once, with lime,
the way they do on burial detail,
but scooped a dozen, tiny, separate graves.
When we were done he fell across the graves
and sobbed as though they'd been his unborn sons.
His chest was large — it covered most of them.
I wiped his tears and stroked his matted hair,
and as I hugged him to my chest I saw
he'd wet his pants. We called it Yankee tea.

Treasure alert, again

2006-11-10T08:05:00.000+11:00

If you're not reading Stranger's Fever, you're really missing out on something fine, you know. At the moment Bronze John is in a psychiatric hospital being treated for bipolar depression, and illuminating the experience for the rest of us in his typically good-humoured way. This, for example, about his psychiatrist:

[...] an extremely tall man, an ectomorphic patrician with sea-green eyes, hooked nose and closely cropped hair. He speaks in a precise, European accent, and for some reason the thought of disobeying him, or of concealing things from him, does not enter my head. He sits, long legs crossed above the knee while I explain things to him – [...]

He generally attacks at dawn, like a Masai, seeing his first patient at seven AM. I think this is why psychiatrists think mental illness is so widespread. Many people who present as suicidal, homicidal or floridly psychotic at seven AM would be perfectly reasonable two hours later with a cup of coffee and a decent breakfast inside them.

- from Serum misery level by Bronze John

:)

John was planning to kill himself the other day, by the way. At least, I think so. That's the way I'm reading this post about his reasons for going to hospital. He didn't kill himself. He might have, had he not recognised that his thoughts were symptoms of illness and something to treat, not follow.

Ignorance about mental illness can kill people, and at the very least, it makes people stupid. Take me, for example: I hesitated about writing this post, wondering whether it was the wrong time to point you towards John's blog. He's in a psychiatric hospital, after all, being treated for a mental illness. Maybe he doesn't want this getting around.

Maybe he doesn't want this getting around.

I hope you're as shocked by that as I now am. "Maybe he doesn't want this getting around"?? Maybe he'd be ashamed, in other words. Not ashamed of being in a hospital being treated for an illness - I meant ashamed of being in a psychiatric hospital being treated for a mental illness.

Bloody hell. It's unforgivable. Mental illness is illness, for God's sake, not a character flaw. Where the hell does shame come into it?

And look, now I've made a big issue about it, when all I meant was that Stranger's Fever is fantastic, continuously so, and the latest post is, you know, fantastic too.

Poems

2006-11-08T08:10:00.000+11:00

Here's a handy thing:

Poetry Tool

It gives you lots of ways to search for poems or poets - by category, occasion, name, birth date, etc. For example:

Poets > Geographically > Australia & Pacific:

"There are 0 Poets from Australia"

Woops. (What's happened to our neighbours in Pacific, though? There'd have to be a few poets there, surely? All that sun, sand and sea - that'd make you poetic, wouldn't it?)

I've just spent too long trying to find a poem I like, but:
(a) can't find any, and
(b) it's taking too long.

So here's a little something I wrote myself:

The Poem

This
is
taking
too

long.

Yeah, I know. Brilliant. Thank-you-very-much-and-good-night.

No more mess

2006-11-07T08:20:00.000+11:00

If you occasionally despair about the mess and clutter and utter PIGSTYNESS of your surroundings - and of course you don't, being an upright citizen of firm virtues who never puts a foot or an item out of place; but let's just pretend for a moment that you did, okay? - and I do, all right? It's about me, this is all about me - then... help is at hand.

I've discovered a new way of looking at mess. It's a term, not a way of cleaning things up, but it turns mess into something else, and that is A Good Thing. It happened because I'm working in a plastics factory this week, assembling jars, and yesterday I learned about the two methods of packing them into boxes.

The first method is to arrange the jars neatly in rows and columns, filling the box layer by layer. We only do this if the client specifies it, because it's silly and annoying and slow. This method of packing is called "stack filling".

The second method is to throw the jars into the box. Throw 'em in. That's the method. When you reach the total number of jars required (counted by electronic scales which calculate numbers by weight), you stop throwing them in and close the box. And this method of packing is called "tumble filling".

This is my fantastic discovery: if something looks messy because you've just chucked everything in and left the scene of the crime - whether it be a room or a cupboard, a car, a bag, a pocket, a bookcase, a garden, even your brain or your life - look again. That thing is not messy at all. No. Look again. It's not messy. It's tumble filled.

Gold, reader. Gold.

Web science

2006-11-06T08:33:00.000+11:00

Exciting times, reader:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton in England today [02 Nov] announced they would jointly start a new branch of science: the science of the Web.

- A Science of the Web Begins, Scientific American

Is this like watching the birth of a star or something? :)
A new branch of science...

I don't even know what the WWW is exactly, but maybe nobody does for sure, and that's the point. The Web is higgledy-piggledy, and that's the interesting thing. How is it growing? What's going on? What do we want it to become? The Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) will be taking an interdisciplinary approach "to produce the fundamental scientific advances necessary to inform the future design and use of the World Wide Web."

Founder of said World Wide Web ... (pausing for applause - "Founder of the World Wide Web"? Bloody hell, the man is such a hero) ... Tim Berners-Lee:

All kinds of disciplines are going to have to converge. People with all kinds of skills are going to have to work together to build a new web which is going to be even better.

- Web inventor fears for the future, BBC News

Amen to that, and bravo! Heroes all: Creating a Science of the Web (follow link).

Accessibility, usability, inability, etc.

2006-11-05T16:55:00.000+11:00

I was going to write a fantastic post about website accessibility and usability, but it's taking too long and going nowhere and I'm rapidly losing the will to live, so let's just call it a day and say this:

If you have a website and use images, please write ALT text for them so that people with low or no vision (who use text readers) or those who have turned off pictures (to minimise download size on slow or limited internet connections) will know what you're trying to show them. To write ALT text, find the image links in your html (in Blogger you'll find this in the Edit Html window, strangely enough) and then between the quotation marks at alt="" type a description or explanation of the image. For example, if you can see the following photo and can hover a mouse over it...

... you won't need me to tell you that the ALT text says "happy white clouds in a springtime blue sky", and it says that because I'm just an old hippy, yes.
:)

There are lots of things to consider when designing an accessible blog/website, most of which I've never considered, and am only considering now because I got lost while trying to find information on link colours and ended up wandering through the archive of articles written by Jakob Nielsen: Current Issues in Web Usability. (I love the way that happens! Serendipity, etc. God bless the internet! Everybody should get the chance to get lost like this.)

Anyway, Nielsen highlights include:

- Accessibility Is Not Enough (2005)

[...] it's an oversimplification to distinguish between users with and without disabilities as if that were a dichotomy. It's really a continuum of people with more or less severe disabilities. For example, most users over the age of 45 have somewhat reduced vision and need resizable fonts, even if they don't qualify under the official definition as "low-vision users." Senior citizens' usability issues are different from those of young users with disabilities, but again, there are many similarities between the two groups.

- Beyond Accessibility: Treating Users with Disabilities as People

Our report documents numerous design flaws that reduce the Web's usability for users with disabilities. In other words, changing the designs to comply with the usability guidelines would reduce the difference in usability for users with and without disabilities. We are not stuck at the current level -- things can get better.

- Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute (2006)

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. [...] There are about 1.1 billion Internet users, yet only 55 million users (5%) have weblogs according to Technorati. Worse, there are only 1.6 million postings per day; because some people post multiple times per day, only 0.1% of users post daily.
Blogs have even worse participation inequality than is evident in the 90-9-1 rule that characterizes most online communities. With blogs, the rule is more like 95-5-0.1.

- Usability for Senior Citizens (2002)

Websites tend to be produced by young designers, who often assume that all users have perfect vision and motor control, and know everything about the Web.

- Usability of Websites for Teenagers (2005)

Teenagers are not in fact superior Web geniuses who can use anything a site throws at them. We measured a success rate of only 55 percent for the teenage users in this study, which is substantially lower than the 66 percent success rate we found for adult users in our latest broad test of a wide range of websites.

- Kids' Corner: Website Usability for Children (2002)

Young children often have hand-me-down computers, whether at home (where they often inherit older machines when their parents upgrade) or at school (where budget constraints mandate keeping machines in service for many years). Kids also typically have slow connections and outdated software. Given these limitations, websites must avoid technical problems or crashes related to access by low-end equipment. Faced with an error message, kids in our study told us that they see them a lot, and that the best thing to do is to ignore them or close the window and find something else to do.

- Lower-Literacy Users (2005)

Based on the available information about Internet participation at different education levels, I estimate that 30% of Web users have low literacy. Because most of the higher-literacy population is already online, however, future growth in Internet usage will mainly come from adding lower-literacy users. Thus, in five years or so, lower-literacy users will probably be 40% of Web users.

So. That's it. The end. A long post, badly put together. Thank you and good night, reader. In a manner of speaking. ("In a manner of speaking"? What the hell does that mean??) Etc.

:)

Random wisdom

2006-11-05T14:38:00.000+11:00

On the Blogger sign in page there's a little list of blogs recently updated. I've never taken any notice of it before, but just as I was signing in this time I caught sight of one of the blog titles - Quotes Archive - and being currently hypersensitive to all things quote-related (trying to get my own quotes archive going), I toddled over there to have a look, and found this:

A painfully-sweet fact:

Truth is,

everyone's just gonna hurt you..

You just have to decide,

who's worth the pain.

posted by Cheol-su, Quotes Archive

Short, sweet and wise. I hope you're not thinking it sounds needlessly pessimistic or something. Maybe it is. But I'm thinking it's more like an acceptance of inevitabilities. We humans can hurt each other without even trying to, and there'll be times when we are trying to. That's the way it goes. Life. Human nature. Whatever the hell it is, it just is. To know that and accept it and to make decisions on the basis of it seems like wisdom, I'm thinking.

But yeah, like I'm the expert on human relationships... And that's not what I signed in to write, anyway. Back later, reader, all being well.

1,234 =

2006-11-04T07:26:00.000+11:00

The number of photos now in my Flickr account. Look:

Thanks to Em for pointing out the (should have been obvious but wasn't) fact that PC keyboards have a PrintScreen button (northeast of the Backspace key). When you want a copy of what's on your screen, press PrintScreen, then paste (Ctrl + v) into MS Paint, save, and then do whatever you want with it. Screen capture. Yay. It works.

Anyway, the number 1,234? I just like it. Neat and tidy, you know. Nice.

Rambling

2006-11-03T09:12:00.000+11:00

Okay, well this post started off as a way to show you this:

Cartoon by Matthew Diffee, via The Cartoon Bank, originally published in The New Yorker, 24 April 2006.

I wish I'd found it in time to add to last week's Vespa moment, that's all.

Then I went traipsing further through the work of Mr Diffee and found this:

(Bet there's a whole TV series with dessert, though.) Cartoon by Matthew Diffee, via The Cartoon Bank, originally published in The New Yorker, 24 November 2003.

Looking for info about the cartoonist, I found this - NEW YORKER Cartoonist Matt Diffee - which I obviously had to add because you shouldn't have to go through life without reading this:

So we're cartoonists at THE NEW YORKER, which sounds like a really good thing and a really cool gig, and it is, but there is a lot of rejection involved.

This is last week's reject. It's a restaurant, a fancy restaurant, and there is this announcement: "Will the owner of the black Humvee in the parking lot please get over themselves."

:)

Then that article led to this one - The Artisan Profile - and this:

Matt Diffee is intimately involved with rejection. He’s a cartoonist for The New Yorker Magazine and in his first year with them he drew 15 cartoons per week. This adds up to 780 cartoons in total, and out of these they only bought 4. [...] the next year things improved – they bought 8. [...] Now in his sixth year, his rate of rejection has lowered to a mere 90%, and he sells about a cartoon a week, which puts him in the magazine almost every issue.

All that rejection! Now he's successful, and still gets rejected 90% of the time. Bloody hell. Made of stern stuff, I think.

And that thought led back to a Thoreau post earlier in the week - Thoreau's Journal: 28-Oct-1853 - in which poor Mr Thoreau had to find a place to store all the unsold copies of his book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:

706 copies out of an edition of 1000 which I bought of Munroe four years ago and have ever since been paying for, and have not quite paid for yet. [...] I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.

How could you look at them and go on? I don't know. I don't think I could. But he did.

Pity there isn't a more uplifting conclusion to this post, really. The end.

No, that's hopeless. Go back to the thing about the Humvee. That was funny. And have a good Friday, please.

Starry skies above

2006-11-02T09:56:00.000+11:00

Michael Leunig, cartoon for June, 2005 Calendar (printed supplement), Sydney Morning Herald.

The things I do for you, reader... It took about ten attempts and nearly an hour to get this image uploaded.

Applause and gratitude, please, or throw money.

;)

Swallows 2

2006-11-01T11:00:00.000+11:00

Remember the swallows who were nesting under the verandah roof in August? I'm happy to announce the babies have finally appeared and are flying around on their own now. Or some of them are. These two are still in the nest:

Click for a larger view. And if you can't quite make them out - look for big black eyes and white face stripes, which is practically all you can see of them: there's corrugated iron above, a nest below, and those big feathers (on the left-hand side of the photo) don't look like anybody in their family, so are probably imports.

UPDATE

Look out... More baby snaps...

A nest just a few metres away from the first one:

Yes, there are six (count 'em: six!) babies. The nest is big enough to accommodate them all because it's a freakish variation on the usual design: I messed with it myself. Years ago the original nest fell down and the resident babies fell with it. I tacked up a temporary house for them - a pocket of shadecloth wired onto an old bit of board - and put the one surviving baby back into it. He/she didn't go on surviving, unfortunately, but the temporary nest stayed where it was and became permanent, the birds returning in later years to add their own nesting materials to the outside of it (at the bottom of the photo you can see a bit of the green shadecloth poking out from within their mud wall extension).

Six babies though? That seems like a lot. I'm guessing that:
(a) the roominess of the nest meant that none fell or were pushed out (allowing more to survive than would normally be the case), or
b) more than one family has taken up residence there.

There's a lot of activity around the nest, anyway. Birds fly in and out all day, including all six of those babies whenever I walk too close.

Outsourcing

2006-10-31T08:03:00.000+11:00

Lately I've had a run of emails from most of the major banks in Australia, all wanting to improve my banking security and update my personal details. That's so nice of them, really, and surprisingly so: I don't even have have a bank account, I use a credit union.

Today's offering was helpful too, but had just a hint of the big stick about it (my emphasis added):

Please Note – if you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to temporally suspend your ------- online banking account.

Thank for your Co-operation
------- Bank Management Stuff

Temporally suspend? I'm not even sure what that means. But I do appreciate the fact that the stuff just want to help. It's kind. It's nice. And it's outsourced. The stuff are in Fez/Fes, Morocco. I checked the source of the email (View > Message Source) and then went to www.DNSstuff.com and put the IP address (the four-part number from the message source; appears in square brackets) into the IP Information box. I sometimes check my own address here too, just to see which town I'm near today. Not long ago it was Sydney, which - being hundreds of kilometres away - requires both a leap of imagination and a large movement of the earth. Fantastic!

But anyway. Unless today's email was also from hundreds or thousands of kilometres away and was in fact from an Indian call-centre after all, it came all the way from Fez/Fes, Morocco, not all that far from Casablanca and - what! Listen! Is it? Could it be? Yes!! The refrain of outsourcers everywhere!

RICK: If it's December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?
SAM: My watch stopped.

Simpsonising your Monday

2006-10-30T08:53:00.000+11:00

Homer joins the Naval Reserve and leaves for annual war games on board a nuclear submarine. With the rest of the crew of the USS Jebediah, he stands waiting for the captain to speak.

ANNOUNCER: Attention on deck! Captain Tenille wishes to address you!
TENILLE: I'm a man of few words. (Long pause) Any questions?
HOMER: Uh, is the poop deck really what I think it is?
TENILLE: (laughing) I like the cut of your jib!
HOMER: What's a jib?
TENILLE: (to ANNOUNCER) Promote that man!

- from Simpson Tide written by Joshua Sternin & Jeffrey Ventimila.

Get classified

2006-10-29T10:05:00.000+11:00

So far I've spent most of the weekend peeking into the world of subject classification schemes or indexing systems. (Yeah, what a party animal.) I want to find a better way to label the posts on my quotes blog, because:

(a) it's a process I HATE!! and it's driving me CRAZY!!
(b) the previous method of listing keywords (probably an idiot's attempt at a controlled vocabulary? not sure), was becoming unworkable - the list was getting longer than the whole archive of posts;
(c) I've started the blog again, right from scratch, so it's a second chance to get the foundations right.

So. Classification and indexing and so on. I've never had to think about them before. They're essential processes that keep the world running, but they trundle along behind the scenes, unnoticed and unappreciated, like all those other foundations and infrastructures and important thingies we rely on without even realising:

People passing through the city often mention the trees. They never mention the pattern over which they pass.

- D. J. Waldie, "Suburban Stories," The Kenyon Review vol. XIV, no. 4 (Fall 1992): p. 135.

Boo for us people.

Anyway, one of the heroes of classification is a person with possibly the best name in the universe, Mr Melvil Dewey, who was responsible for the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) scheme, now one of the most commonly used systems worldwide. The DDC divides recorded knowledge into 10 main classes, 100 divisions and 1,000 sections. In fact, it trumpets:

All recorded knowledge has a place in the DDC

!!! Big claim. Maybe that's true, and maybe it isn't, but either way, schemes like the DDC are brilliant, and so were the people who invented them. I don't know how they did it. I can't even organise a small group of blog categories.

I downloaded a copy of the DDC Summaries (from that previous link), hoping to just run through the list and choose labels from it, but it's probably not going to work. And I'd go ahead and explain why I think it's not going to work, except that I've been stuffing around trying to write this blog post for two hours now, and I'm tired. Who the fuck cares why it's not going to work? It's just not going to.

So back to the plodding then.

Doh!

2006-10-27T09:58:00.000+10:00

Heard the end of a classical track on ABC Classic FM and Margaret Throsby announcing it as "music for vespers" - and for whole seconds I was thinking she said "music for Vespas":

That could have been so cool, damn it.

**Image from here.

It's a jungle out there

2006-10-27T06:40:00.000+10:00

Cartoon by [firstname? I know not] Dunn, The Australian magazine, 12-13 December 1998, p. 16.

Survive the day, eh? Happy Friday to you.

The hat (probably)

2006-10-25T20:30:00.000+10:00

Well, I couldn't stand it. So I went back to looking for the hat (see the previous post). And there was still no sign of it until I watched a trailer at IMDb and caught sight (and snapped a dodgy photo) of this:

This is it. Probably. I remembered it being white and wider, and Ms Streep was walking along a row of coffee trees, not doing whatever she's doing in this frame. But anyway. I think this is the hat.

It must be.

It probably is.

That'd be it.

Yes.

Out of Africa in a hat or two

2006-10-23T22:38:00.000+10:00

Remember that hat from Out of Africa, the one I couldn't find an image for, the one I mentioned in the previous post?

I've been looking and looking and still can't find an image for it. Here follows a list of some of the several million other hats in the film, each and every one of which is not the one I'm looking for:

All of those images come from Simply Streep.com. There are other hats from other sites, too... but let's face it, reader: you've seen enough. Let's not get silly about this.
;)

Sunday whingefest (with New Improved Koalas!)

2006-10-22T18:10:00.000+10:00

I planned to watch a TV documentary this afternoon about Karen Blixen. I've always imagined I would have liked the woman, based on:
(a) the way she writes;
(b) Meryl Streep's portrayal in Out of Africa; and
(c) that hat**
And even though I didn't make it through to the end of the Paris Review article (disillusioned by the way she was talking), still I expected to like her anyway, and wanted to see this documentary.

First I got caught up here on the computer and lost track of time. Missed the first bit. Turned the TV on, and watched about five minutes (Denys the True Love was about to arrive) but then the dogs started barking frantically and I could hear a weird noise over in the koala area - a different sort of call (see the previous post), maybe the female variety, and in broad daylight, early afternoon: weird.

So I had to go over and investigate. And yes, I should have started taping the documentary before I left, but did I think of that?

First there was this:

A koala, high in the tree and not holding on to anything, just sitting there, its arms practically folded across its chest.

Very impressive, as far as senseless bravado goes, and I was amazed at its mighty powers of balance (it's quite breezy here today, and that branch would have been moving around a lot).

Then I turned to go - back to the TV, yes. But in turning I spied the base of the tree, which suddenly looked like this:

!!! Bloody hell! That's one close koala! (More photos in my Flickr account, starting with Koala1 and proceeding to Koala4)

I went closer. It didn't move. I went closer still. It still didn't move. I was about 3 metres away and talking out loud (saying really intelligent things, like "Hellooo!" and "Oh! Hello!!") Soon the poor animal climbed the tree, probably trying to get away from such fascinating conversation.

So I went back to the TV. But by this time Denys had already died, damn it, and anyway I was distracted, trying to transfer the koala photos from camera to computer, and blah blah de blah blah. Roll credits.

Bloody weekends. I also planned to do some gardening. Yeah, it's still not too late, but where's the torch?

**Yes, the hat I now can't find an image for. It was in the film - so wasn't actually Ms Blixen's hat at all - the scene where Meryl is striding through the coffee, wearing all white, I think, and this huge beautiful hat. Every time I stride through the coffee here, I imagine myself looking exactly the same way...

And then there were two...

2006-10-22T14:07:00.000+10:00

(1)
(2)
This morning. Not far apart. Very snoozy.

No.2 looks to have a problem with its left eye, which leads me to conclude that it's the same creature who appeared in last Saturday's post - he/she had a similar difficulty.

I only spotted these two because one of them was responsible for a loud mating call at daybreak this morning. The call has a very strange sound: if you were in the bush at night and didn't know what it was, I think it could scare the life out of you. To hear an example, go to the Australian Koala Foundation and click on the photo.

Variations on a theme?

2006-10-20T14:53:00.000+10:00

(1)
Copyright Matt Groening, "Life in Hell" series, Village Voice, 24 July 1990. (Click on the image for a larger version, then click on the hovering little-box-with-corner-arrows for the largest size.)

(2)

Poems of Passion Carefully Restrained So as to Offend Nobody: II

When you're away, I'm restless, lonely,
Wretched, bored, dejected; only
Here's the rub, my darling dear,
I feel the same when you are here.

- Samuel Hoffenstein, quoted from Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing

I've kept a copy of the cartoon in a folder for years, and a copy of the poem in my head for longer, but not until today has one brought to mind the other.

Anyway, point is: smile! It's Friday. People are weird and couples are painful, but that's all right.
:)

24hr mornings

2006-10-20T08:30:00.000+10:00

Since April this year I've been getting up early every day to take photos of the sunrise. I'm not entirely sure how or why this started, but now it's a habit, a reason to get out of bed each day, and I have a pact with myself to keep it going for one year.

The thing is, I've always been useless in the mornings, and that hasn't changed. I can stand upright and point my head in the direction of sunrise, but more complex human functioning doesn't kick in till hours later. And the sun is coming up earlier and earlier every day now (about 5:10am this morning), meaning that I'm getting tired and falling asleep earlier and earlier every night, which in turn means this: I've always been useless in the mornings but now I'm useless in the nights as well!

Bloody hell, reader. Damn, etc.

Lemon Fresh! Powerful Clean!

2006-10-18T10:15:00.000+10:00

I just got some freshly-washed bath towels out of the washing machine and they smelled so good (thanks to Spree laundry powder), I felt compelled to sink my face into them and think, "Mmm!"

And then I remembered this:

Click on the image for a larger readable version,** and I'm sorry the file is so big. I tried uploading a .gif, but it turned itself into a .png and just looked weird.

Cartoon by Sempe (? That's what the signature looks like, anyway), The New Yorker, 16 June 1986, p. 32.

**When the picture has loaded, you might need to then click on a little square orange thing with blue arrows at each corner (which you'll see if you hover your mouse over the picture).

Coffee harvest

2006-10-18T08:06:00.000+10:00

Following last week's mechanical harvest, the coffee cherries were processed and duly went to the next stage in their journey between tree and cup - coffee parchment:

Next stage will be green bean coffee, after the parchment/skin has been removed:

That's one green bean, and you'll notice it's not actually a green colour, more grey/blue. And that is my hand, and you'll notice it's not actually a skin colour, more extremely and weirdly pink. Eek.

The buyer for this coffee wanted it sundried for the first few days, believing it tastes better than that from a dryer. So over the weekend we spread the parchment out over concrete...

...(yes, I'm standing in it)...

...raked it periodically...

...the sun shone and a breeze blew...

...the coffee started to dry...

...and when showers moved in on Monday morning, we had time to shovel it all into boxes and get the whole kit and caboodle** undercover. Now (Wednesday) the parchment is rolling around in possibly the last available coffee dryer on the NSW North Coast, finishing off its drying process.

Time for a cup of tea, I think.

**A phrase which is both redundant and American, apparently. How annoying.

Boot bird

2006-10-16T11:03:00.000+10:00

How cute is this little bird?!

It appeared out of nowhere as my father parked the tractor this morning and promptly sat on his boot! As luck would have it, I arrived a minute later and had time to grab the camera for some photos, aided by the fact the bird showed no inclination to move anyway, even when Dad propped his foot up in the open like that. In the end, the little visitor only flew away when I went to pick it up.

Based on a quick browse through the photos in my bird book, I'm guessing it's a type of thornbill, but can't be sure (because I have no idea).
:)

Talking about birds though, this site is very handy: Bird Finder at Birds in Backyards, notable for its fact sheets and bird calls. Bravo.

Garden 5

2006-10-15T13:00:00.000+10:00

It's now three weeks since I planted the vegie seeds, and - get this - not one seedling has appeared. Not one. I'm not joking. The grand total of seeds germinating has been zero. Nought! Not one! None!

It's just unbelievable. The seeds were only four years old and they were stored in their original packets, in a box, in the house, in the dark. What's going on? I have no idea.

My first reaction is to take the whole thing personally, like some sort of cosmic confirmation that anything I try will only fail anyway, so there's no point trying. That's a comforting thought for a while, of course, and obviously also quite constructive and fun, but - damn it - the thrill just doesn't last...

Logically/rationally/more-sensibly-speaking, the reproductive abilities of vegetable seeds probably don't have a hell of a lot to do with me personally, so I think the best explanation for non-appearance of seedlings must lie elsewhere. Maybe it's just one of those things. Those goddamn annoying things. Not a tragedy, just a setback.** It just means I'll have to buy new seeds and start again. Again. Grrr.

The tomatoes, meanwhile (springing up from a buried whole tomato, remember?) are powering along, safely protected from rabbits or cutworms in their little Norco Milk fort.

**From a good idea in an interesting article in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald:

Standing in my local supermarket recently - somewhere between rice that takes 90 seconds to revive and entire meals that can be served in less than five minutes - I found myself thinking somewhat wistfully about the great unsung virtue of patience and what a vast difference it makes to us and to everyone around us when we are prepared to value and cultivate it. Some lucky and lovely people are naturally patient. (And some cultures value patience and make it easier to learn by openly disapproving of any failures.) Those people are usually also good-humoured and tolerant, as well as being clear about the difference between a setback and a tragedy.

- Stephanie Dowrick, "The waiting game," Good Weekend magazine, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 2006, p. 51.

Friday

2006-10-14T01:00:00.000+10:00

A few scenes from my day here yesterday (click on images for larger views if you want them).

Looking across a coffee paddock towards a neighbour's jacaranda tree (the purple one in the middle). It's weird, I always initially call jacarandas frangipanis instead, which makes no sense at all because they've got nothing in common. The only way I can remember the correct name is to think "Jack on the verandah: jacaranda".**

Also to be seen in that shot is a mechanical coffee harvester (the blue thing appearing over the tops of the coffee trees). It went through the whole crop today, picking much much more than we could by hand.

The harvester works a bit like an automatic carwash, except that instead of squishy washers it uses solid beaters, and they pummel the trees as the machine drives over the top. Coffee cherries get shaken from the branches onto a collection belt, and then they're transferred to collection bins:

Next they'll be processed to remove the outer fruit and inner skins, excluding the green (unripe) cherries, leaves and sticks along the way, and producing in the end just the more familiar-looking coffee beans (two per cherry) ready for drying.

I wasn't involved in the harvesting yesterday though, I was supposed to be mowing. And driving the mower down the road, I came across my father's ute:

It was parked there beside that public road, a coffee paddock in the background, and my Dad nowhere to be seen. On closer inspection, I found the ute's windows open, the door unlocked, and... umm, what's that in the ignition?

Oh. The keys.
:)
My Dad likes to trust people, I think.

And here's another friendly soul:

The little dog across the road from where I was mowing. He sat there in the shade for ages, just looking down the road, presumably waiting for his humans to come home. I waved to him a few times but it wasn't me he was waiting for, sadly, so I just wouldn't do at all :(

Finally: look!

Another koala! He/she was scrambling under the eucalypts about 6pm, and then climbed up a tree a short distance when the dogs and I appeared.

**What's even weirder is that when writing this post, I couldn't remember the name for frangipanis.

PS. I started writing this post at 10:31pm, and it's only just ready to publish now - 1am the next day. Boo, I say. What the hell is wrong with me? Why do these things take me so long? Hopeless!!

Lawn register

2006-10-13T08:16:00.000+10:00

I mow a property down the road, and every week there are new strange items lying around on the lawn there. It's annoying having to stop the mower again and again in order to move things out of the way, but the list of Newest Items is becoming more interesting all the time.

Highlights have included:

- tennis rackets and balls
- a cricket bat and stumps
- soccer balls
- a fishing rod
- a bicycle and scooter
- building materials for a treehouse and fort
- camping gear: tent, blanket, candle, water bottles
- a sports bag
- a baseball cap
- a plastic gun
- a miniature skateboard
- a hula hoop
- pens
- an oversized clothes peg (in the middle of the lawn)
- one rubber boot
- a broom
- a computer game CD (broken)
- various bits of litter
- and one pet rabbit, deceased (ripped apart by an unidentified predator, possibly a fox or dog)

The expression "Everything but the kitchen sink" should have occurred earlier, but I didn't think of it until yesterday, looking at this:

A tap, yes.

(^_^)

2006-10-12T07:46:00.000+10:00

Cartoon by Tohby Riddle, "Good Weekend" magazine, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 December 2003, p.11.

Brainy blokes rule, OK.

An open letter to you, reader, about ideas I'm trying to form into a blog post

2006-10-11T08:45:00.000+10:00

I've been reading the Open letters to people or entities who are unlikely to respond over at McSweeney's.

Some recent favourites:

- An open letter to my sister's psychotic dogs (02 October 2006)
- An open letter to the birds nesting in my air conditioner (22 June 2006)
- An open letter to the people behind the "Now that's what I call music!" series (18 April 2006)
- An open letter to a guy I work with who always comes into my office to tell me he sent me an e-mail right after he sends me an e-mail (15 August 2005)

Reading these letters brought up lots of ideas and questions about communication and conversation and the implied roles of writer and reader and I tried to write a blog post about it but no, fuck it, I can't. This is all there is to show for nearly two hours work. Oh, the joy.

Quiz: Which city do you belong in?

2006-10-10T08:22:00.000+10:00

Latest episode in my neverending quest to find the perfect quiz:

Which city do you belong in?**

Each city of the world has a special feel of its own. People living there either like the speed and quality of life there or have just become habituated to that kind of life. But do you really know to which city does your personality belong?

Well, yes! Now I really do know to which city does my personality belong. It's London, apparently:

A little old fashioned, and a little modern, a little traditional, and a little bit punk rock. A unique person like you needs a city that offers everything. No wonder you and London will get along so well.

Marvellous! Now, next up...

Can I be a Supermodel?

Do you have what it takes to be walk the ramp?

** From 3SmartCubes. You need to signup first, but their privacy policy seems reasonable and in the whole hour I've been a member, they've sent only one email (which produced the password needed for login, and almost instantly, too).

Older and wiser (fingers crossed)

2006-10-07T10:58:00.000+10:00

It's my birthday today, so I'm now officially 43, after thinking ahead to it for at least half the previous year. This happens every year; probably by tomorrow I'll be thinking ahead to 44, and after a few months it'll feel like I'm already there, so by the time the next birthday rolls around, it'll be time to skip ahead another year...

Way back in the Year Dot I started a birthday tradition of weeping and wailing:

and have kept it up ever since, replacing the crying with trying to weasel out of accepting Happy Birthdaynesses and other embarrassing attentions by just not telling anybody-who-doesn't-already-know just when my birthday is. This strategy worked quite well actually, except that it always felt like what it was: fear and avoidance, trying to escape from something, hiding away, and on the days when I should have been celebrating the fact I've been given my own life on this planet, not doing so.

Silly. Yeah, I'm an idiot. But that's all right. One day I might grow out of it. (Yay.)

Garden 4

2006-10-05T07:43:00.000+10:00

Yesterday the first seedlings appeared:

Tomatoes!

But they've sprung up from a squashed and buried whole tomato, not from the packet seeds.

And in other news:

Something is snipping off the tops of the little nasturtium plants. Cutworms? Rabbits? Uh-oh.

It was a dark and stormy morning...

2006-10-04T07:14:00.000+10:00

Taking photos with an automatic camera means accepting that exposure control is tied to focusing - it's a joint operation that can't be separated. If the subject of your photo is too bright or too dark, you must find something at a similar distance which is the correct brightness and lock your focus on that instead, then swing the camera back to frame the actual subject of your photo.

That's my method of operation when photographing the sunrise. Specifically, I madly click away at whatever there is to focus on (anything but the sun) and just hope for the best. The camera's preview screen gives only a vague indication of results, so it's not until the files are loaded onto computer that the true impact is unleashed of a shot like this one today:

Whoa! Scary sky. A classic "miss" in the "hit-and-miss" genre.

The way things go

2006-10-02T09:54:00.000+10:00

Okay, so this is the way things go sometimes.

I wanted to get all those quotes online, so I started a new blog in Beta. It was attached to a throwaway one which has now been deleted, so neither of us have to worry about it, though you could worry about this if you're inclined to: the throwaway blog had posts of only meaningless text and wasn't listed publicly. I used it only to tinker with designs and to test-drive the migration to Beta. Yet my profile there has been viewed 7 times. Huh?

I logged in to the quotes blog this morning and decided that its start-up problems have probably been sorted now, so it would be okay to make it public. I changed the settings to allow this, and settings were saved. Fine. Good. Away we go. Publicly.

Then I tried to create a new post. No. Away we do not go. Nothing was working. Beta had started a go slow. It wouldn't create a new post or return to Settings or anything else. I couldn't even log out. And now, more than an hour later, I can't log back in and can't view the site online either.

This would be merely annoying, except that in the interim I decided to test whether the blog shows up in searches, and googled the title. And... bloody hell. The correct time to google a title is before I make the blog public, reader - before!

Because, you see, my blog's stupid and boring title when googled brings up a book of quotes written by a woman with a first name not a million miles from my own (and her last name looks to be contrived), and she's sitting there on the web site in big hair and toothy smile (can you guess where I think she's from?) and her quotes... her quotes...

Let's just say that maybe they would inspire you and maybe they would make you puke.

So that's the situation. I've made my stupid blog public and then only then found that its poxy title is wildly inappropriate, and now I can't log back in to either make it private again or change the title.

Damn, I say. Damn.

...

And now it's later than that, and Beta is now working, and I've changed the title and now, taa-dar!! Here it is:
Cite that source!

Of course I've run out of time to say anything else now, so I might add to this later.

UPDATE

Well, I came back and added "add" to the last line, which probably deserves a prize of some sort. (It previously said "Of course I've run out of time to say anything else now, so I might to this later.") Hmph.

Nasturtiums

2006-10-01T12:20:00.000+10:00

I was hoping to update the garden report with news of little seedlings emerging, but no, they haven't. This is hardly surprising - the seeds only went in a week ago - but I was hoping nonetheless.

Here are some nasturtium flowers instead, being amazing:

Happy Sunday to you.

PS. I just discovered the "alt" thing in photo html codes, which allows you to put a label on them, which allows search engines to find them... !!! Only took me two years. (Why am I so slow? Why? Why??)

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, when you upload a photo to a Blogger blog, in the Edit Html window you can see the code for the post. Part of this will be a link to the photo, starting with a href= and continuing to alt=" " . I've just discovered you can click between those alt= quotation marks and then write whatever you like there, including words to describe or label your photo.

The koala in the camphor laurel tree

2006-10-01T11:48:00.000+10:00

Updating yesterday's post: the koala has moved on.
:(

But here are some photos from its camphor laurel holiday (click on each pic if you want a larger version):

He/she slept in that position all day, and only started to move after the sun went down. I stood around in the dark for a while, hoping to get acquainted and take a photo when the koala arrived back at ground level. But no, said koala spotted me straight away and must have been reluctant to extend the hand of friendship - movement down the tree trunk was not forthcoming, damn it. So eventually I gave up and hop-skip-jumped my way back to the house (scared of stepping on a snake in the dark). Boo.

The latest threat to wildlife

2006-09-30T11:46:00.000+10:00

A strange thing happened this morning. I woke up before sunrise and these cows (shown here after the event, looking like they're still in shock)...

...seemed to be fighting. Some were prancing around and pushing each other, and all were making a really loud noise, setting off answering bellows from other cows in neighbouring paddocks.

Then from the middle of the jostling herd appeared a small animal, close to the ground, furry, not moving much. The cows made way for it to depart, but then followed and nudged at it with their noses, and it looked like one of them even kicked it. I couldn't see what the little creature was, though - a dog? a cat? a very fat fox?

Just as I was preparing to run out and save it, it made a movement like that of a rabbit. Huh? There are lots of rabbits around here, but this one looked quite incredibly big, and slow, and I've never seen cows look twice at them, let alone congregate around one.

Then suddenly the "rabbit" found its feet and raced away in ungainly fashion - under the fence, across the lawn and... umm, what? ... straight up a tree!

Are you putting two and two together here? Rabbits do not climb trees. And they don't run in ungainly fashion, either. Here are the marks the climbing creature left on the bark as it clawed its way up the trunk of this camphor laurel tree:

And here is the thing seen from a distance - a great distance, because that tree is big. Look for a dark shape in the middle of the shot:

And now, finally, as close as I could get and it's still a crappy shot, sorry. Click on it for a larger version. I hope you can see a grey furry face looking to the left, its left ear seen at top-right of its head:

A koala! In a camphor laurel tree!** After it was practically mauled by a herd of cows!

!!!

If the poor thing was heading towards the eucalypts nearby (shown in the background of that vegie garden/rain photo the other day) it's nearly home free. There are no dangers between where it is and where it needs to go, so it can probably relax until sundown. I'm guessing it'll be relaxing there anyway, wherever it was headed (koalas sleep a lot) but let's hope it doesn't have to retrace its steps across the cows' paddock, which is what it will have to do if it's trying to get to eucalypts on other properties. Cross-country travel is probably always difficult for koalas, threatened by cars, dogs, cats, and foxes. But who knew they also have to worry about cows??

**As far as I know, koalas only live in and eat the leaves of eucalypts. A camphor laurel would be foreign territory.

Friday quiz 2

2006-09-29T08:34:00.000+10:00

From the home of Is Your Cat More Intelligent Than Your Boyfriend? and Is Your Girlfriend More Neurotic Than Your Dog?...

What Zodiac Sign Should You Be?

Brought to you by a should-be Scorpio: "Brooding resentment, aggressive and sadistic brutality, total arrogance, morbid jealousy, extreme volatility of temperament, these are some of their vices."

Woops.

Storm

2006-09-27T22:58:00.000+10:00

Following on from those other seasonal firsts I've been mentioning (eg. jasmine flowers, camphor laurel leaves, nesting swallows**), this afternoon we had the first real Spring storm. It wasn't particularly noteworthy but was nice nonetheless, and gave us 31mm of rain.

It's always a challenge to show rain in a photo and I still haven't found a way to do this effectively yet, but here are two of today's attempts.

(1) Looking from the verandah - the vegie garden, with coffee trees and eucalypts in the background, and rain over all:

(2) Looking through a window into the backyard - white roses and a camphor laurel in the background, and a sudden waterfall coursing down from the roof (presumably created by blocked guttering).

**Maybe the swallows aren't nesting after all - I haven't seen any babies yet - but then what else would they be doing here? Holidaying?

Quotables

2006-09-26T08:52:00.000+10:00

Years ago I used to read a lot, and made a record of interesting excerpts along the way - by hand, on paper. Now I've got several folders full of these quotations and they're all just sitting around, doing nothing. I'm thinking I should put the quotes online or at least get them onto the computer and organised, but haven't worked out a way to do this yet, mostly because the idea only occurred about an hour ago and I haven't actually tried to think about it yet.

Sigh.

Here's a dip into one of the folders, anyway:

In the course of this book I shall jump barriers, cross fences into other people's fields, trespass into areas I have no business to be in. But you cannot have a view of the world if you restrict yourself to one little valley; you cannot have a view of the universe if you turn your back on other people's planets. [...] Trespass, I'm afraid, is obligatory.
- Graham Dunstan Martin. Shadows in the cave: mapping the conscious universe. London: Arkana, 1990, p.2

There is something about us Australians that prefers to communicate in silences rather than words. Perhaps we are defeated by it all, tongue-tied in the presence of ultimate things. Perhaps we feel safer with the great things left unsaid, meaning them only in silence: we, the inarticulate, offering our homage to the ineffable.
- Tony Kelly. A new imagining: towards an Australian spirituality. Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1990, p.15

We are all on edge. Human beings feel safe and secure when they can stand confidently in the center of things, either in the center of an age or in the center of a class of people with a common world-view, but when they come to an edge, they feel nervous and unsettled.
[...]
As long as one operates in the middle of things, one can never really know the nature of the medium in which one moves.
- William Irwin Thompson. The time falling bodies take to light: mythology, sexuality, and the origins of culture. London: Hutchinson, 1981, pp.7,8.

If the Sun stopped producing energy today, we wouldn't know about it for ten million years. [...] the Sun is so big that heat and light from its centre take ten million years to filter up to the surface. Then it takes another eight minutes for the heat and light to travel across from the Sun to the Earth.
- Anthony Wilson. The Science Museum book of amazing facts: Space. London: Hodder Children's Books, 1996, p.82.

Until very recently the only method of communication was physical travel.
- Edward De Bono (ed.) Eureka! How and when the greatest inventions were made. London: Thames and Hudson, 1974, p.15.

The important frontiers of the future are spiritual, psychological and social, not technical and industrial. [...] Whereas the 'modern worldview' based on mechanistic science, technology and the Industrial Revolution is primarily about the development of things, the postmodern worldview is primarily about the development of people (Birch 1990).
[...]
Technology is not simply the use of tools. It is first a vision of reality. The use of tools follows.
- Charles Birch. Regaining compassion for humanity and nature. Kensington NSW: NSW University Press, 1993, pp.20,72.

Northern Exposure

2006-09-25T07:56:00.000+10:00

Did you ever watch the American television series, Northern Exposure? I really wish it could get a rerun, particularly because I didn't see many of the later episodes and would like to. Some kind soul has published transcripts, and from them I've chosen the following gem about identity, truth, and other stuff.

To set the scene:

Alaska. Day. Chris is the local philosophising radio announcer. He had an eventful childhood crime-wise, and has just been arrested (years later) for violating parole conditions in West Virginia. He now has to appear at an extradition hearing, and if the judge can determine he is the person named in the warrant, he will be shipped off to gaol. His lawyer, Mike, decides to challenge the warrant on identity grounds: "[...] I hope to demonstrate, with the court's permission, that my client has undergone such a substantive change in the very nature of his character as to constitute a separate and unique identity from the individual named in the warrant. Simply stated, this man is not the same individual who skipped parole six years ago in West Virginia!"

Chris is called to the stand (such as it is... the court being held in the church).

BARBARA [Officer Semanski, acting as bailiff]: Raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

[Chris pauses (I'm guessing - I didn't see this episode).]

JUDGE: Mr. Stevens, is there a problem?

CHRIS: Well, Your Honor, I may have a conflict of interest here.

JUDGE: Would you care to elaborate?

CHRIS: I can't swear to tell the whole truth. I mean, when push comes to shove, I'd just as soon not go to jail, you know. I don't think I can keep that from influencing my testimony, if only at the subconscious level. You see, Mike and I, we've been over what I'm supposed to say and I got to tell you, it's pretty persuasive stuff. But is it the whole truth? It's a slice of truth, a morsel, a refraction. It's a piece of the pie, certainly not the whole enchilada, and now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think I could tell the whole truth about anything. That's a pretty heavy burden, because we all just see the world through this little, distorted piece of Coke bottle. Is there such a thing as objective truth? I wonder. Don't you?

JUDGE: It is a conundrum, Mr. Stevens, but it does not help us with the problem at hand.

CHRIS: Well, maybe I could just, you know, get up there and say the thing without the oath.

JUDGE: No, I'm afraid I can't do that.

CHRIS: Well, I guess I can't testify, then.

JUDGE: Mr. Stevens, in view of your extraordinary candor, I am going to break with tradition here and grant you the opportunity to make a brief statement in your own defense. It won't go on the official record, of course, but I think you've earned that much.

CHRIS: Well, I think Carl Jung put it best, Your Honor. We should not pretend to understand the world only by intellect. We apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is at best only the half of truth and must, if it be honest, come to an understanding of its own inadequacy. Thank you.

JUDGE: Thank you, Mr. Stevens. The court will take a 20 minute recess to review the physical evidence.

...

Later...

The judge rules that Chris is the person named in the warrant, but orders him free on his own recognizance because his removal would place an undue burden upon the town.

Closing the episode, Chris is back on air.

CHRIS: Who is Chris Stevens? Who are any of us? Are we one person fixed at birth? Do we grow like a snowball coming down the mountainside of life, or can we change, shed our skin? The caterpillar becomes the butterfly, leaving the remains of his former self behind. I look at my yearbook photo, Wheeling Central Catholic High School, class of '81, and I wonder who that stranger is. Damned if I know. Maybe that's the point. Maybe we're not supposed to know. Maybe that's what this earthly joyride's all about. Like Robert Frost said: "We dance 'round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows."

From Crime and Punishment written by Jeff Melvoin; transcribed by Duvelle.

Garden 3

2006-09-24T15:40:00.000+10:00

It's more than 4 weeks since I updated the garden report, and that's because it's more than 4 weeks since I had anything to tell you.

And speaking of you, just who do I think you are, anyway? It's one of those interesting bloggy questions. If anybody other than me is reading this... well, specifically you, obviously... you could be anyone, any time, anywhere. You might be reading this in 2010 for all I know. That's all quite strange, isn't it? I might do a blog post about it one day and consider the whys and wherefores.

But back to the garden. I finally got it planted. All the seeds are pretty old now, so it'll be interesting to see how many of them germinate. They're a mix of types: some patented ones from big commercial companies, and some non-hybrid traditionals from the marvellous Eden Seeds.

I still have very little motivation for gardening, hence the time it took to get the beds planted. It feels like I'm not getting very far, but looking back to the way things were before (Garden 1 & Garden 2) gives some evidence of progress, small as it is. It's something more than nothing, as I said last time, and something more than nothing is good. Small steps, baby steps, plod plod plod... I probably need to resign myself to the fact that this is the only way I ever achieve anything. Slowly. Painfully. Kicking and screaming the whole way.

;)

Here are my boots (because I love them so). You can also see the pavers, the garden bed wall thing (what's it called?) and the seed markers made by cutting strips from an empty plastic bottle and writing on them with waterproof marker.

Nasturtiums. They're popping up like weeds. And I suppose if they're growing where they're not supposed to be, that probably means they are weeds. It seems disrespectful to call them that though. They have really beautiful flowers and leaves - and you can eat them too, did you know that? Little treasures, really.

Heidiness 3

2006-09-23T07:48:00.000+10:00

The ongoing adventures of the characters in Heidi, because I like them (adventures and characters). And I can't find a better way to write that sentence, damn it all to hell. And I always wanted to be Heidi but it just didn't happen. So boo all round.

It was a bright sunny autumn month. The doctor came up to the hut every morning, and thence made excursions over the mountain. Alm-Uncle accompanied him on some of his higher ascents, when they climbed up to the ancient storm-beaten fir trees and often disturbed the great bird which rose startled from its nest, with the whirl of wings and croakings, very near their heads. The doctor found great pleasure in his companion's conversation, and was astonished at his knowledge of the plants that grew on the mountain: he knew the uses of them all, from the aromatic fir trees and the dark pines with their scented needles, to the curly moss that sprang up everywhere about the roots of the trees and the smallest plant and tiniest flower. He was as well versed also in the ways of the animals, great and small, and had many amusing anecdotes to tell of these dwellers in caves and holes and in the tops of the fir trees. And so the time passed pleasantly and quickly for the doctor, who seldom said good-bye to the old man at the end of the day without adding, "I never leave you, friend, without having learnt something new from you."

Johanna Spyri. Heidi. London UK: Cathay Books, 1986, copyright 1881, ISBN: 0861784081, p.211.

Project Gutenberg etext #1448

Friday quiz

2006-09-22T11:02:00.000+10:00

From Quizilla: What obsolete skill are you?

You are Gregg shorthand. Originally designed to enable people to write faster, it is also very useful for writing things which one does not want other people to read, inasmuch as almost no one knows shorthand any more.You know how important it is to do things efficiently and on time. You also value your privacy, and (unlike some people) you do not pretend to be friends with just everyone; that would be ridiculous. When you do make friends, you take them seriously, and faithfully keep what they confide in you to yourself. Unfortunately, the work which you do (which is very important, of course) sometimes keeps you away from social activities, and you are often lonely. Your problem is that Gregg shorthand has been obsolete for a long time.

Take this quiz!

OBSOLETE NOTE:

Please excuse the dodgy format. I think the Blogger line breaks are messing with the way the thing is set out, but I've run out of time to fiddle any more and it's still skewwhiff. Damnation, etc.

Very happy to align myself with Gregg shorthand, by the way. I like the way it looks: that sparse sort of squiggly motion is really nice. What a pity it disappeared (if it has).

UPDATE:

I couldn't stand the mess and couldn't fix it either. Quizilla has a "plain code" option but I couldn't get it to work; maybe you have to be a member. So here we go with a plain post instead. But on the way here I found a list of this quiz's other possible results and some of them are quite amusing (and not all of them are so very obsolete, either):

- Growing one's own food: "Your puritanical work ethic makes makes people think that you are weird, and not much fun."
- French: "You have a certain appreciation for the finer things in life, which is a diplomatic way of saying that you are a disgusting hedonist."
- Latin: "...you have a certain fascination with the grotesque and the profane. Also, the modern world rejects you like a bad transplant."
- Juggling: "You are friendly and well-liked, particularly for your sense of humor, although you sometimes play with people's heads."
- Programming in QBASIC: "...your emotionally unstable friends may be put off by your devotion to logic; they may even accuse you of pedantry and insensitivity."
- Regularly metric verse: "You enjoy the company of other people, but they find you unexcitable and depressing."

(^_^)

Peace

2006-09-21T08:56:00.000+10:00

Today is September 21, the annual United Nations International Day of Peace, so if you're feeling warlike, stop it.

The meaning of "peace" is disputed (of course...) but Wikipedia does a short round-up of options and I like this one:

[...] in the Great Lakes region of Africa, the word for peace is kindoki, which refers to a harmonious balance between human beings, the rest of the natural world, and the cosmos.

This sort of "harmonious balance" takes effort, I think, which means that global peace is not always conducive to individual feelings of peacefulness. Typical hippy-trippy images of massed peace campaigners smiling at each other over candles suggest that peace means the absence of conflict, but I would argue (argue?! Hell, I'd fight you!) that peace isn't necessarily the way of individual "peacefulness", but instead requires hard work: self-discipline, sacrifice, effort. It's easier to be selfish than it is to be generous and co-operative. Peace takes effort.

I see an illustration of this notion in a true story told by Jane Goodall. Her speech to the National Press Club of Australia was broadcast on ABC TV yesterday but there's no transcript unless you pay for one (grrr). I'm guessing she's told the story hundreds of times before anyway, and there's a version of it in this article. I posted the relevant extract over here.

It's the story of a chimpanzee who was terribly wronged by humans, and of the man who intervened at a critical moment - at the potential cost of his own life - to help. I'm not entirely sure what I think this says about global peace, but it's in there somewhere, tangled up in notions of heroism, justice, co-operation, doing good, and respect for life.

Peace be with us, reader. Let's hope.

Thursday

2006-09-21T08:05:00.000+10:00

Patrick Cook, The Independent Monthly, November 1992, p.42.

Arrr!! A pirate treasure alert

2006-09-20T09:54:00.000+10:00

I forgot that it was Talk Like a Pirate Day yesterday, damn it, but it's never too late to say Arrr!! and some parts of the world are still in yesterday anyway. So! Here we go, me hearties!

In honour of the fact that:
(a) most Australians are descendants of boat people, and
(b) all Australians inhabit a continent stolen by sailors,
here are the opening lines of the Australian Constitution translated into Pirate-speak (with a filter found here**):

WHEREAS the swabs o' New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, 'n' Tasmania, humbly relyin' on the blessin' o' Almighty God, ha' agreed ta unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown o' the United Kingdom o' Great Brit'n 'n' Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established:

'n' whereas it be expedient ta provide fer the admission into the Commonwealth o' other Australasian Colonies 'n' possessions o' the Queen:

Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice 'n' consent o' the Lords Spiritual 'n' Temporal, and Commons, in this here treasure Parrliament assembled, 'n' by the authority of the same, as follows: ...

Arrr!! and Yarrr!! et cetera.

**Thanks to this treasure: Those damn immigrants (Pirate version) by dr faustus at The Killfile ("Because sometimes ignoring people isn't enough...")

A Seinfeld moment for your Tuesday

2006-09-19T07:32:00.000+10:00

Closing monologue from The Note:

What causes homophobia? What is it that makes a heterosexual man worry? I think it's because men know that deep down we have weak sales resistance. We're constantly buying shoes that hurt us, pants that don't fit right. Men think, "Obviously I can be talked into anything. What if I accidentally wander into some sort of homosexual store, thinking it's a shoe store, and the salesman goes, 'Just hold this guy's hand, walk around the store a little bit, see how you feel. No obligation, no pressure, just try it. Would you like to see him in a sandal?'"

Treasure alert

2006-09-18T19:17:00.000+10:00

Any idea what an interrobang is, reader? No?! Well, Mister Trivia ("Elevating the Insignificant since 2006") can enlighten you.

Following one of his links and then wandering about at Wikipedia, I found there are punctuation marks to indicate irony and sarcasm. Who knew?! Bloody hell. Just what I need, except that I'm never quite sure whether my type of joking is ironic or sarcastic, so a punctuation mark to indicate "too damn stupid" would probably be far more useful.

I was particularly impressed that closed captioning indicates sarcasm with this:
(!)
or this:
(?)

So quick! So easy! Why isn't everybody using them?!

A Simpsons moment for your Monday

2006-09-18T08:45:00.000+10:00

Lisa (home from school because she had a cold the day before) is playing one of Bart's video games.

LISA: No, no, yes, that's it! Bite, bite, bite!
MARGE: Lisa?
LISA gasps and ducks under the blanket.
MARGE: Aw, sweetie, you look so much better. Ready to go back to school?
LISA: Oh, I don't know. (Pretends to cough) I mean, I could risk it, but...
MARGE: No, no. You just stay put.
BART: Wow! You didn't even feel her forehead! How do I get that kind of credibility?
MARGE: With eight years of scrupulous honesty.
BART: Meh. Not worth it.

From Lisa Gets an "A" written by Ian Maxtone-Graham

Treasure alert

2006-09-17T08:04:00.000+10:00

Oh. Yeah. Right. Sorry. by Martin Magdalene in Newcastle, NSW.

The other day, his post Battlestar Galactica is the best drama on television was nearly enough to get this sleepy non-science-fiction-watching viewer to stay up and see the show for the first time. (Unfortunately tiredness intervened, but maybe next week.)

Anyway, it's worth taking a look at his blog just for the latest post, Multicultural Pizza, and his admirably patriotic way of cooking dinner:**

I made sure that all the ingredients swore to uphold Australian values before allowing them entry into the pizza - eg do you, sultana, swear to respect my kitchen and my cooking, accept the other ingredients and flavours, respect vitamins and nutrition. I told the ingredients that if they didn't swear to uphold this then I would put them in an envelope and send them to Nauru indefinitely.

**Reference to the latest all-singing, all-dancing production in The Great Australian Pre-Election Sideshow. See Clarke and Dawe (The 7.30 Report, ABC TV) for a review.

Heidiness 2

2006-09-17T07:37:00.000+10:00

Heidi [...] continued her way up the mountain, her basket on her arm. All around her the steep green slopes shone bright in the evening sun, and soon the great gleaming snow-field up above came in sight. Heidi was obliged to keep on pausing to look behind her, for the higher peaks were behind her as she climbed. Suddenly a warm red glow fell on the grass at her feet; she looked back again - she had not remembered how splendid it was, nor seen anything to compare to it in her dreams - for there the two high mountain peaks rose into the air like two great flames, the whole snow-field had turned crimson, and rosy-coloured clouds floated in the sky above. The grass upon the mountain sides had turned to gold, the rocks were all aglow, and the whole valley was bathed in golden mist. And as Heidi stood gazing around her at all this splendour the tears ran down her cheeks for very delight and happiness, and impulsively she put her hands together, and lifting her eyes to heaven, thanked God aloud for having brought her home, thanked Him that everything was as beautiful as ever, more beautiful even than she had thought, and that it was all hers again once more. And she was so overflowing with joy and thankfulness that she could not find words to thank Him enough. Not until the glory** began to fade could she tear herself away. [...]

It was with a happy heart that Heidi lay down [...] that night, and her sleep was sounder than it had been for a whole year past. [...She] did not stir; she had no need now to wander about, for the great burning longing of her heart was satisfied; she had seen the high mountains and rocks alight in the evening glow, she had heard the wind in the fir trees, she was at home again on the mountain.

Johanna Spyri. Heidi. London UK: Cathay Books, 1986, copyright 1881, ISBN: 0861784081, pp.164-5, 168.

Project Gutenberg etext #1448

**I wish this scenic glory had prompted the name of this blog, Plodding along to glory, but alas, no, the actual prompt was less beautiful. The way I remember it, I was listening to a sporting show on the radio (weirdly, because I'm not interested in sport) and someone said of a footballer who was making a speedy advance down the field: "He's racing away to glory!" I was a bit down on myself at the time and thought, "If that was me, I wouldn't be racing away, I'd be plodding along."

Hence. So. Damn. A bit regrettable, really. Maybe I'll here-and-now rewrite history and take this Heidi scene for meaning instead.

Baby snaps

2006-09-16T16:00:00.000+10:00

In a recent post (Semi-consciousness) I mentioned that a new calf had been born here. He's not the only one, in fact, but he's the newest and littlest, and I've been meaning to show you what he looks like. So here we go.

Reader, meet Baby-darl:

(a) with his mum:

(b) with his cousin (he's on the left; cousin is on the right):

(c) wandering about on his own:

He's a curious little chappie, and if it wasn't for the warning murmurs from his mother (apparently telling him to stay away), I think he would have come over closer to the dogs and I to investigate... and maybe say hello...

...and maybe kick us... No, not really. But sometimes - usually in the afternoons, and maybe it's always after they've had a feed and are feeling pleased with the world - little calves prance around like deer or foals, kicking into the air with their back feet, seemingly just for the joy of it. (I wish I could get a photo. You'd be very impressed, you know ;) )

Heidiness 1

2006-09-15T08:08:00.000+10:00

The valley lay far below bathed in the morning sun. In front of her rose a broad snow-field, high against the dark-blue sky, while to the left was a huge pile of rocks on either side of which a bare lofty peak, that seemed to pierce the blue, looked frowningly down upon her. The child sat without moving, her eyes taking in the whole scene, and all around was a great stillness, only broken by soft, light puffs of wind that swayed the light bells of the blue flowers, and the shining gold heads of the cistus, and set them nodding merrily on their slender stems. Peter had fallen asleep after his fatigue and the goats were climbing about among the bushes overhead. Heidi had never felt so happy in her life before. She drank in the golden sunlight, the fresh air, the sweet smell of the flowers, and wished for nothing better than to remain there forever. So the time went on, while to Heidi, who had so often looked up from the valley at the mountains above, these seemed now to have faces, and to be looking down at her like old friends.

Johanna Spyri. Heidi. London UK: Cathay Books, 1986, copyright 1881, ISBN: 0861784081, p.37

Project Gutenberg etext #1448

Randomness

2006-09-14T22:17:00.000+10:00

I was eating a piece of cheese today and suddenly thought of Johanna Spyri's Heidi, a story I loved as a kid and which fixed some permanent links into my brain: I see goats, I think of Heidi; I hear wind in the trees, I think of Heidi; I see European mountains, I think of Heidi; I hear "grandfather", I think of Heidi...

Point is: I was eating a piece of cheese,** thought of Heidi, and wanted to find the relevant passage in the story. There wasn't time to do more than put the book aside to read later though, but on the way to doing that, I opened it to a random page while mentally commanding, "Show me the cheese!"

Would you believe...

Johanna Spyri. Heidi. London UK: Cathay Books, 1986, copyright 1881, ISBN: 0861784081, p.40. (click for a larger view)

True. And the book didn't open there because the page was dog-eared; I only folded the corner down afterwards.

** Local cheese from a local company: Norco Nimbin Natural. It's nice.

Morning

2006-09-14T08:54:00.000+10:00

Looking northwest at 7:15am. That'd be the moon, yes. I'm always surprised when it's visible during the day - it feels like something has gone wrong with the cosmos. It's the moon, after all, a night thing. What on earth is it doing up there, dawdling across the sky in broad daylight? No, that can't be right! Get back to the night!

Rainbow

2006-09-12T20:27:00.000+10:00

This afternoon.

Unniceness

2006-09-12T11:51:00.000+10:00

This is the butcherbird who ate those willy wagtail eggs. Seen through a window and insect screen and looking far too complacent, damn it.

In other news, a load of vealers (calves) went off to the abattoir first thing this morning, soon to become breakfast, lunch or dinner for a few humans, who, unlike the butcherbird, will never have to face the parents of the creatures they eat.

Framing

2006-09-12T08:42:00.000+10:00

Dramatic sky this morning. Also known as an ordinary sky, dramatically cropped. Click on it and you'll get a larger one.

Hmph

2006-09-10T17:43:00.000+10:00

It's an overcast and occasionally rainy day here and I hereby declare myself to be "The Loneliest and Grumpiest Person in the Universe".

If you try to dispute that title, I will fight you.
To the death.
Don't cross me, motherfucker.

;)

Yeah well. Maybe I'm exaggerating. And you can't dispute anything here anyway because commenting is still turned off. Every time I publish a new post I have to ask whether to turn comments back on again, and so far the answer continues to be No.

If this is annoying, I'm sorry. You could argue (if I let you) that I'm under some obligation to allow commenting, just because this is a blog and commenting is an accepted and expected part of the blogging process. And to that I'd say: Well, yes. Fair enough. There's some truth in that.

On the other hand, I could also say this: It's my blog and I'll be a bitch if I want to, baby. If you don't like it, you could always go away, couldn't you?

I used to love comment conversations. For a while it was my favourite part of blogging. But now the idea of having to respond - whoever comments, whatever they say - makes me feel sick, and one of my personal rules about blogging is that comments do require replies.

For a while I considered making this a private blog where only the people I already know could comment (a pleasant scenario, ideally). And this is an alternative made easy by the new Beta Blogger, by the way: I just tested it on a throwaway blog. You can restrict readership to invitees, and Blogger will even email the invitations for you. But the catch is that all such readers must have Google accounts or they will only be given temporary guest entry. (The Google account will soon be required of all Blogger account holders, did you know? The new Beta system - requiring a Google account for login - is voluntary at the moment but will become compulsory "after a couple of months".)

A private blog though? In the end I think there isn't much difference between that and emailing, so what would be the point? Plus the idea of restricting readership to a select few seems simultaneously rude and disappointing, like imposing a strict dress code on the door when you're really quite fond of the riff-raff:

[Image removed because it infringed upon the copyrights of others.]
Gary Larson. The PreHistory of The Far Side: a 10th Anniversary Exhibit. Kansas City, USA: Andrews and McMeel, 1989. ISBN: 0836218515, p.60.

So. Anyway.

Does this post have a point? Well... errr, no. Apparently not. Comments are still turned off, but you knew that already, didn't you...

Hmph.

Bird war

2006-09-10T10:16:00.000+10:00

Some Willy Wagtails are nesting on the verandah:

(Seen at a distance through a window and an insect screen. Crappy photo, sorry. You might just have to imagine the details: most of the bird sticks out over the small roundish nest; its beak points left, its tail angles up to the right.)

They were there last year too, which is when bully-bird Australian Ravens stole all the eggs before they hatched. The same thing is happening again this year, except this time the enemy is a young Butcherbird. The damn thing seems to be fearless and certainly isn't distressed by the wagtails' fierce defence of their territory.

Whenever I hear their distress calls, I race out and join the fight, my contribution being to yell at the butcherbird, who then responds by ignoring me. This morning, infuriated by its blatant disregard for my power and authority ("Don't you know I'm a human??") I hit it with a stick. Yes, really.

It was so distressed by this abuse that five minutes later it was back, sitting overhead on the guttering, its head out of view. It was probably mooning me, the bastard.

Yesterday the nest held three eggs:

Today there is only one.

UPDATE

And now none.

Rwandan tools, the DRC, a Do-Nothing and regrets

2006-09-09T10:27:00.000+10:00

The handmade Rwandan tools linked in the previous post reminded me of something. When I was about 12 years old and on holidays with my family, we were browsing through a souvenir shop one day and I nearly bought a Do-Nothing:

(pic found here)

It's a wooden toy. You turn the handle on the top to create a circling action (as depicted in this animation). It's a mesmerising thing to watch and the movement of smooth wood across smooth wood sounds and feels lovely.

The way I remember it, I stood there for ages, trying to work out how the thing worked and whether I could make one myself, or whether buying it would be worth the cost (including having to go without alternative purchases such as mixed lollies, ice blocks, postcards or comics).

I didn't buy it, and walked out of that shop alone.

(Well, not actually alone. Just lending a touch of drama ;) )

The thing is that now, if I had to list all the regrets of my life, the Not-Buying-Of-The-Do-Nothing would be right up there near the top. This is silly, I know, but maybe that's the point. The Do-Nothing was silly too, it didn't really do anything, and that's probably one of main reasons I didn't buy it. I let my head decide, and the rest of me has felt a bit sad about that ever since.

Getting back to Rwanda now, and if you visited that link, you'll have read that the makers of those beautiful tools were all murdered in the genocide of 1994. (Isn't it frightening the way you can summarise the end of the world in a sentence?)

I don't know what's happening in Rwanda now, but there's trouble across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). According to a mailout from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Australia, the DRC is "the scene of perhaps the world's bloodiest conflict since World War II: the UN claims that nearly 4 million people have died as a result of violence there in the last seven years alone."

That'd be 4 million people. Four million people.

It goes on: "...with the breakdown of basic government services - health care, transport, water, sanitation - this conflict continues to claim over 1,200 lives across the country every day."

I wish there was some huge crashing wave of a way to say this, to highlight the injustice and horror, but there isn't. A country of 56 million people, just around the corner of the globe from all the rest of us, limps along in blood-stained terror while people like me shine starry eyes of longing and regret onto wooden toys.

Please help MSF if you can.

Treasure alert x 2

2006-09-08T23:03:00.000+10:00

Alfred Stieglitz
The Glow of Night, New York
1896/7

You might want to take a packed lunch for this, one of those great sites which leads on and on and on to more and more and more. Don't expect to rush. Peter Marquis-Kyle publishes a blog, Marking time, a collection of Special places sites, a collection of Queensland Cartes-de-visite (don't know what they are? Neither did I), a page about Tools from Rwanda, and more. See his site map.

And that led on to this:

The marvellous Luminous-Lint, the purpose of which is "To create the world's leading collaborative knowledge-base for the history of photography showing significant vintage and contemporary photography."

You can find great exhibitions there, including one dedicated to Alfred Stieglitz (source of the picture above) and Alvin Langdon Coburn (source of the picture below).

Bless the internet, I say (again). \(^o^)/

Alvin Langdon Coburn
The Tower Bridge
1910

Cicadas

2006-09-08T19:23:00.000+10:00

One more sign of seasonal change: the cicadas have arrived. This house was suddenly engulfed by New Cicada Surround-Sound as soon as the sun went down today. The damn things seem to be flinging their songs out from every tree in every direction, and there are thousands of trees here. The sound, I'm sorry to say, is much like that of a mosquito. Once you've noticed it, it will not leave your head!

It's a sound which is hard to describe... Imagine a mechanical thingamajig in which a belt should drive a spinning thing, but the spinning thing has disappeared, so the belt whirls too fast and loose, making a "thuckathuckathucka" noise so rapidly that you can hardly hear the difference between one "thucka" and the next. Now take that sound and make it high-pitched and give it the ability to vibrate your head if you're standing close to the source.

That was probably nothing like it whatsoever, but it was a damn good try, wouldn't you say? I was very impressed by the "thuckathuckathuckas" in particular.

...

It took me so long to write this, it started to rain, it stopped raining, and somewhere in there the cicadas all fell silent. The familiar old night noises have reasserted themselves and the old night, it seems, is back.

Oh.

Right then.

Quiet, isn't it?

(Yay.)

Casablanca,

2006-09-08T12:54:00.000+10:00

in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies:

A Movie Parody in Bun-O-Vision

Happy Friday to you.

Winging it

2006-09-07T21:42:00.000+10:00

It was really windy today. I was out in the paddock picking coffee for the first time this season when an unusual something appeared overhead:

A motorised glider (or so I presume).

When I say it was really windy today, I mean it was REALLY windy, and gusty as well, not smooth and constant. I was amazed a glider could fly in these conditions and kept expecting this one to get flipped over. It didn't, as far as I could see, and I just hope it made it back to ground in one piece.

Feral flowers

2006-09-07T08:25:00.000+10:00

Some Busy Lizzies (Impatiens something-or-other) which leapt the boundary of somebody's garden and are now frolicking in the wild down the road.

Semi-consciousness

2006-09-06T08:20:00.000+10:00

A calf was born here on Monday, and since then it's been wandering around, getting to know its mother and the other calves and cows. I was watching it yesterday and wondered: when did its consciousness start? Did it get pushed out into the world, hit the air and the ground and suddenly start thinking and feeling? "Oh, whoa! I'm alive! Here's the world!"

I don't know whether consciousness is part of the fabric of our bodies (and thus begins in the pre-birth body-building process) or a separate something that has an on/off switch, tripped at the appropriate time.

It seems like a pretty fundamental question for a conscious being to ask. Funny it took me 42 years to think of it.

UPDATE

Not joking, I just published this post, read it through and panicked: "Oh shit! Am I 42? Is it 42? Am I 42 or 43?" and had to count up from my birth year. On my fingers.

Oh Lord give me strength... ;)

I'm blogging this

2006-09-04T08:58:00.000+10:00

I tend to be an anxious sort of biddy, and these days feel a sense of dread whenever I leave this farm. It's not to the level of a syndrome or disorder or what-have-you, or at least not as far as I can see or am admitting. I think I'm just out of practice in social situations, and for a shy person this is bad news.

Mum organised a family lunch for yesterday, to celebrate Father's Day. We were all going to a cafe at Brunswick Heads and later we'd stroll along the waterfront for what should have been a pleasant and sweet afternoon. But I didn't want to go. I knew I should, I knew it was probably selfish not to, I knew that it would probably end up being a fun day out and even I (old Eeyore-features) would enjoy it.

But I didn't want to go. At all. At all. On the phone I hemmed and hawed and screwed up my face but it was all just a variation of No.

Mum sounded disappointed but would have understood. Dad would have been fine about it too. Everybody else, ditto. We're not a touchy-feely let's-all-get-together kind of family, and it wouldn't have been the first time I'd missed something like this anyway.

So I was all set to stay home, feeling guilty about not doing something nice for Dad, but to an even greater extent feeling relieved about not having to go anywhere.

But then...

The other day when Mavis and I drove through to Brisbane, the river at Brunswick looked beautiful. I thought about being there to take photos for Flickr or this blog, and suddenly - click! - the balance of motivations tipped. Suddenly I wanted to go there, not stay here. And (no doubt you'll have guessed already) I did go. And it was good. We had a lovely lunch, we sat around and chatted, we wandered off towards the beach and battled our way through the vicious headwinds (the seabreeze was a mite enthusiastic yesterday afternoon) and it was all good. I think Dad had a nice time, and that, after all, was the point of the exercise.

But let's get back to me.
;)

It was the thought of this blog and Flickr which pushed me out into the world yesterday. Maybe that's pitiful, and I really shouldn't need such a push, but I did, and it did, and all was well in the end.

In other words, reader: yay for you! Thanks for reading.

Brunswick Heads at Flickr.

Camphor Laurel

2006-09-03T11:12:00.000+10:00

Well, the rain has gone... Take a look at the sky this morning:

Now, that's blue! And the green thing is the top of a Camphor Laurel tree, one of many which grow around here. All the leaves in their new Spring range have just been revealed and the hot colour for this season is...

(wait for it)

Fluoro Lime Green!

The Camphor Laurel (Cinnamomum camphora) is a noxious weed unfortunately, but I love it anyway. It's my favourite tree, and I can say that without agonising and dithering. (Usually I agonise, usually I dither: is this really my favourite?)

This leads me to wonder why online profiles have such a narrow range of "favourite" categories. At both Blogger and Flickr, you can list your favourite movies, music, and books. That's it. No favourite trees, no favourite birds, no favourite weather or places or foods or smells or... etc. I'd prefer a general "Favourite things" category. At least that way I'd have some small chance of being able to choose and list a few favourites. (Wasn't joking about the agonising and dithering. Do you realise the "branding" power of such lists? It's too scary. You're not just nominating the things you like, you're signing up to one tribe or another: the "classic movies" people, the "tired old rock" people, the "not-serious reader" people.)

Anyway, back to the Camphor Laurel, and I put a few photos up at Flickr - starting with this one.

Happy Sunday to you, reader, and Happy Father's Day as well, if that's appropriate.