guts and garters

2010-02-02T19:01:00.002+11:00

Priceline doesn't often make you think.

Actually, that's rubbish, because there's nothing like a whole frigging aisle of subtly different versions of the same personal-grooming item to paralyse you with indecision such that you're still there, muttering, "But do I need it to have a moisturising strip as well?" when they close.

But the thinking today was of an (arguably) higher nature. Making my lightning raid upon Priceline (you've got to keep moving, it's the only way to possibly avoid the paralysis) I overheard on the radio station they were piping in (to increase general torpidity) an advertising spot that used the phrase: "Me Sully, you Neytiri."

It made me guffaw.

And then it made me think fond and condescending thoughts about the generational shift.

And then it made me think about that more deeply.

Because, I think we'll all agree, the standard concept of Tarzan-and-Jane goes something like this, which is pretty definitely a pre-bra-burning sort of image. Jane clings to Tarzan, she's reliant upon his strength, she's helpless as he heaves her about the jungle. Oh, her calming/gentle/personal grooming influence is vital, but she's not really an independent lady.

Neytiri, on the other hand, is not to be trifled with. She came packing, wanders about the forest making it her mind-melded bitch, and she will fuck your shit up. Now, sure, she likes her some pretty buff marine and she does sort of hop on his motorcycle towards the end of the movie (but I forgive that, because I'd want a go on that beast as well, and I'm not talking about Sam Worthington here). But she is, no doubts about it, a strong, independent sister who's doing it for herself.

I sneer a lot about the generation gap, because clearly if you didn't know Nirvana, watch James Valentine hosting the Afternoon Show, and play the original Doom, you are missing out. But if Tarzan-and-Jane is being swapped out for Sully-and-Neytiri in the popular consciousness, then bring on the paradigm shift.

2010-01-06T16:53:00.004+11:00

Anthony: (coming in with that extremely thoughtful look on his face) You know... Really...
Me: (assuming this is House or Cricket or in some other way important) What?
Anthony: Really, they should be the Teenage Mutant Turtle Ninjas.
Me: ...what?
Anthony: Well, they're not mutant ninjas, are they? They're mutant turtles.
Me: It's a string of descriptors. Technically, there should be commas between each item in the list to indicate that all of them pertain to the subject at the conclusion.
Anthony: But the fact remains that the ninjas stands alone, while the mutancy pertains only to the turtles.
Me: Surely it should actually be a question of which element they most strongly identify with, that being the final descriptional tag to which all others relate. Do they see themselves as ninjas, with teenage, mutant and turtle elements? No, they are turtles.
Anthony: (nodding seriously) That's bullshit.

2010-01-05T09:20:00.002+11:00

We watched The Times of Harvey Milk (documentary) last night, and it was really damn good, but I spent the last third of it being depressed, because thirty years later, California votes to ban gay marriage. Thirty years. Why does progress to enlightenment have to be like dragging people kicking and screaming through cement?

It fills me with rage that half of my acquaintance can say, "Oh, about time!" when Anthony and I announce we're engaged, like we've been dragging our feet on the predetermined path of coupledom. What about all those couples who aren't even allowed on the path?

Oh yeah, and Anthony and I are engaged.

2009-12-23T13:54:00.003+11:00

Addenda to the previous:

Justin wishes it be noted that he has no idea where the sex shops are in Gladstone, and any implications that may have been present to the contrary are complete nonsense. Honestly, officer.
His wife, however, knows where they all are and is on first-name basis with the owners. Allegedly.
In fact, possibly their daughter owns one.
Big W took Prophecy's Ruin back with an alacrity that made me suspect they know precisely how rubbish it is. This item has nothing to do with sex shops. Sorry. I'll try harder with the next point.
Shibari. See? (Possibly NSFW, though what your boss is going to think about you reading something that mentions sex shops this often, I really don't know. Tsk tsk.)

2009-12-20T09:41:00.003+11:00

It's summer, and traditionally this means I go up to Queensland, lose my mind in the heat, and ill-advisedly buy a swathe of new Australian fantasy to read while I loll about on the couch crunching ice and jeering at the cricket. Often I manage to wangle these in the form of Christmas presents, but this year I had a brain blip in Melbourne, somehow thought half a Stephenson novel would be enough to tide me through a three-week stay (well, it is Stephenson) and have been forced to take matters into my own hands. Which would have been fine, except this is Gladstone, the town with eight pubs, three sex shops, and no bookstores. (Thanks, Justin.)

The pickings at Big W were paltry, if I didn't feel like reading further Twilight books (and I won't until they lobotomise me, and even then I hope that some deeply entrenched hivemind memory will not permit me to hand over money for the dubious privilege). But I had, actually, been eyeing off Prophecy's Ruin by Sam Bowring in bookstores, partly for the spiffy-looking cover, and partly because it sounded marginally interesting. Stalemates! Two sides of a story! Potential for interesting character-driven stuff!

I got two chapters in. I'm a very neat reader, do you suppose Big W will let me return it?

It's not that it's bad - it's not! It's written as competently as any current Australian fantasy, with some literary flourishes that are sometimes delightful and sometimes overwrought. But in the first two chapters we were introduced to various of the forces of "shadow", comprising:

a cold, cruel, ruthless and unattractive overlord;
goblins, complete with claws and casual homocidal (or goblocidal, I suppose) impulses; and
an inscrutable, feared lich (well, what do you call an undead mage? Yeah).

"Oh good lord," I said. "This isn't just a Tolkien rip-off, it's a Peter Jackson inspired Tolkien rip-off, complete with stupid special orcs. There'll probably be wolf-riders for no good reason later on."

(I feel like maybe I should also point out that the ~~bad men~~ - sorry, perfectly nice men on the side of goblins and vicious overlords and liches, what the fuck was I thinking? - are called Arabodedas. I don't know how that got past an editor.)

I am a post-Tolkien fantasy reader. Good vs evil is boring. More importantly, good vs evil tells us nothing about the complicated, ambiguous, shades-of-grey world in which we live, and it's my opinion that good fantasy should hold up a distorted mirror to reality, using its freedom from that reality to show us new things about it. But mostly, it's just that it's boring.

And in this particular instance, it's probable that a lot of my dissatisfaction comes from the fact that I picked it up purely because the blurb sounded like it was a story full of compromise. Shadow and light (not evil and good) and a "hero" on both sides! Poking around the internet has revealed a couple of reviews using words like "balance" and "ambiguity".

So perhaps he's just establishing cliches of "light" and "dark" in order to ruthlessly undermine them later? Seems a little unnecessary, considering how insidious those facile terms are, especially in the genre. And TWO SODDING CHAPTERS (plus more - that's just where I stopped, and he seemed to be rather excited about his goblins catching up with the pretty blonde sorceress of the light) is completely unnecessary. Make it a prologue. GET ON WITH THE INTERESTING STUFF.

Though I am, now, considering trying it a little further, just to see if it does get interesting once the actual heroes show up. Except I am just so violently opposed to the establishing work he's done. Any shades of light that the "shadow" hero brings to the thing are going to be in contrast against the cliche, and the slow tarnishing of the side of "light" has been done before.

Of course, if I can't return and can only exchange, what the hell am I going to exchange for? Not even this is as bad as Stephenie "without your man you're nothing" Meyer.

2009-12-10T16:59:00.000+11:00

This afternoon, I spelt your "yr" in a text message.

Sure, I was texting with my left hand while holding an umbrella and a 600 page manuscript in the other hand, but I'm sure when someone accidentally causes the apocalypse, they'll have a good excuse too.

2009-11-27T23:29:00.001+11:00

Bartender: And what will you have?
Dee: Pint of the Fat Yak, please.
Guy to Dee's left: Pint of the Yak.
Guy to Dee's right: Pot of the Fat Yak.
Alterni-Yuppie part of Dee's brain: Shit. I'm going to have to get a new beer.
Sensible half of Dee's brain: You what?!

2009-11-17T10:54:00.004+11:00

Omens from the keyboard of a good day in progress:

"Are they fascist zombie house-elves?"
Creating a style in Word called "I'll bullet you in a minute"
Then creating a follow-up one called "I'll bullet your mother"
Realising that said styles are even in correct alphabetical order
"Is there a more formal naming structure I should be using for these files? (Well, of course there is, because the only way I could get less formal would be to call them Fred and Barbara. Barb to her friends.)"
"Imagining handcuffs is a noble pursuit."

2009-11-12T08:20:00.002+11:00

It seemed like a lot of people, yesterday, asked me how my day was going. Possibly this happens all the time, but I particularly noticed it yesterday because the only 100% honest, full-disclosure answer would've been to say, "Well, I've had Space Lord stuck in my head since I woke up." (Keep watching at least until the dancing girls and the ejaculatory fireworks. And the lightbulb suit.)

On the other hand, at least I don't have a subconscious like Anthony. Who has dreams where he has to make a rhyming couplet in iambic pentameter summarising Polonius. ("Sort of an obit," he says.)

2009-11-05T13:34:00.002+11:00

I love getting my hair cut.

Sure, the hairwash and the treatment and the massage are nice; free coffee and trashy fashion mags are ace; leaving looking like a million bucks is... well, worth a million bucks. But actually, what I really like about getting my hair cut, is the actual cutting of the hair.

This would be a prime opportunity for the inclusion of some really edgy metaphors about ridding oneself of the old (that being, after all, what hair is: dead weight), perhaps get a bit of snakes-shedding-skins imagery in there, a bit of cycle-of-rebirth wank. Pretend I did, if you like, but the simple truth is that I just like having short hair.

This preference is, in its own way, something of a grand prize of a long struggle against myself. For as long as I can remember, what I have wanted more than anything in the world is to have long, blue-black curls. So why don't I? With the wonders of modern fashionista-ing, right, anything is possible.

Wrong. Blue-black makes my warm-tone skin look sallow and my hair will not take a curl even if you drug it, pay it, and threaten to kill its kith and kin. I managed to convince myself that the fluffy horror of the first perm was just a tragic misunderstanding that would not be repeated, but after a second disaster, I just gave my friends permission to shoot me should the suggestion ever pass my lips again, and resigned myself to straight hair. It's cool.

Black, though, was totally do-able, in strictly non-cool-toned measures. And the first time I went black nicely coincides with the first time I went short.

Well, not the first time. I'd had short hair for much of my childhood because it's easy to look after (my father used to cut my fringe with the kitchen scissors and a piece of tape across my forehead) and my mother always maintained (and I've come to agree with her) that it suits me. As I got into my teenage years I started growing it out, because of the standard long-hair/princess yen that most girls feel. It got pretty long. Halfway down my back long. Every morning my mother would braid it, and I'd just leave it in overnight (reducing sleep-thrash tangles) until brushing it loose about half an hour before she did it again the next morning. In short: gorgeous long hair, but I didn't do anything with it.

About a week before my senior prom, I got it all cut off into a Louise Brooks bob and dyed it black.

It took some firm restating and a bit of encouragement to get the hairdresser to do it. ("No, shorter. No, shorter. Yes, like that.") First day at school, I got sixteen variations on, "What did your mother say?" (Answer: "See, I told you short hair suited you.") And for the whole hour I was sitting in that chair watching the hair pile up on the floor, I was grinning. It was liberating. It was awesome. I no longer had to worry about doing things with my hair. My hair was done.

I've grown it out a couple of times since then, to lesser extents. Every time it edges past my shoulders, I hit the same problem: what do I do with it?

Yes, fundamentally, I'm lazy. (This surprises precisely no one who knows me, I'm sure.) Short hair doesn't need to be done. It requires no thought. Rarely, with me, does it even get product and more than two seconds styling. It's precisely the same wherever I'm going. I don't need to take heaps of stuff with me when I travel. Heck, if I forget my brush, it's probably going to be fine. It doesn't get caught in my earrings or necklaces or collar. It doesn't get in my face when I'm dancing.

I just like having short hair. And watching the hair fall on the floor as the hairdresser snips away is grin-inducing every time, because it's going to be short and easy and fabulous.

2009-10-27T21:09:00.002+11:00

Many thanks to all those who sent me their good vibes for the grandmothering. It went as well as it really could have, I think - that proviso being there because Grandma's situation is complicated and is going to require at least another month of hospital time. But she was looking so much better when I left, and it was great to have so much family around (we were only missing the cousin who's working in India, and if that isn't a good excuse, I don't know what is) and I think it really made my Mum feel better to have me around. So I call it a win, and well and truly worth all the dashing about, and the frantic hours to cram my temp contract in around it.

This makes it two posts from me in a month. Don't all fall over in shock.

2009-10-13T15:02:00.002+11:00

All the updates I've been thinking I should make have been cut through by the unshirkable.

Flying home on Thursday. Grandma's post-fall hospital stay is getting more and more complicated. Fingers crossed this is the over-reaction that my father thinks it is, but I'm not taking the risk.

I've caught myself thinking, "Why did it have to be this fortnight?" I'm working a temp assignment, and Anthony's birthday is coming up on the 24th.

Because it is this fortnight. That's all there is. I'm going.

2009-09-04T13:33:00.003+10:00

I don't think I ask for much out of life, you know. Just a decent cup of coffee once a day, ADSL internet access, and pants that don't unfasten themselves every single fucking chance they get.

But apparently, today, that's one thing too many.

/me does pants back up.

2009-08-17T18:00:00.002+10:00

Today's round of "Me against the Mac"¹ was a comprehensive victory for Steve Jobs. Fucker.

I have an ever-growing list of reasons why I hate Macs, and I'll get it out any time someone's stupid enough to bring up the platform debate.² To such classics as "G4s don't have mechanical CD drive overrides" and "no way to interfere with a looping process", I have a new addition³:

The undeletable file.

For starters, he's invisible. And to the best of my knowledge there is no way to actually view invisible files on a Mac. You can do a search for them, which is what I ended up doing.

Then I dragged him to the trash. Since this seemed to have no effect on him whatsoever, I did it another six times. I hit delete, though with little expectation of anything happening, since the delete button on a Mac keyboard is pretty much cosmetic. I right-clicked⁴ and told it to "move to Trash", but apparently it didn't feel like it. So I right-clicked and selected⁵ the option "destroy".

Still nothing happened.

I did consider setting fire to the machine - always at the bottom of any trouble-shooting guide I author - but while it seemed likely to solve that particular problem, it didn't do much for the other problems I had.

Gosh. I must be getting soft in my old age.

What I can't figure out is whether it won't delete because it's invisible, or it won't delete because it is TRYING TO DRIVE ME TO MURDER.

Obviously, I suspect the second option. This is, after all, a Mac.

-----
1 It's like Britney's "Me against the Music", except the help desk is never staffed by Madonna and I get to wear more clothes. The dancemoves, however, are exactly the same.
2 I freely admit that most of the reasons I hate them don't apply to people who aren't using them to produce 23987-imaged high-resolution book files.
3 He might be new, but watch this guy, he's going places!
4 Yes, OK, "right-clicked", using ctrl-click, because Mac mouses (mice?) are also retarded.
5 With some trepidation, I might add, considering a few years back a colleague managed to delete the operating system off one of our office Macs without the machine so much as suggesting it might be a bad idea.

2009-08-14T14:22:00.001+10:00

New cat-names suggestion for the list: "Hurry Up" and "Wait".

2009-08-13T13:13:00.002+10:00

In one of those strange cases of coinciding rhythms, I've been made an ancillary element to a friend's quarter-life crisis. Barely three weeks after Anthony said, "You're going to need to get a proper job," Steph and Dani are off in New York and I'm temping for the government. There's amusement in trying to shoehorn one of the less conventional working histories into a temp agencies only-work-in-IE boxes. There's even more amusement in hearing that one's references are being checked after one's already taken up the position.

The temporary thing is strange. I want to be considered a resource - an item of applied, if advanced, stationery - and thus be efficient and impersonal. On the other hand, I'm probably going to be out of here in two weeks, so if I add whimsical notes to the business items going out (just to the team!) does it really matter?

I've never had a problem being strange. I have often had difficulties making sense to people not currently on the right wavelength. I'm trying to be restrained. I haven't made any Anthony-esque "you're an open action item" responses.

Yet.

The real fun, of course, comes when I have to administer these professional fora thingies. "Have you taken minutes before?" Steph asked, as she was inducting me.

"Well," I said. "Not of anything that didn't involve copious consumption of alcohol."

2009-08-12T22:23:00.000+10:00

Anthony: *looks at the book I'm reading* So is that, like, the fourth one in the series, after Ultimatum?
Me: Yeah. This is the one where Matt Damon dresses up in drag.

2009-07-23T18:41:00.002+10:00

The template, she is finally updated! This latest battle in my ongoing low-intensity conflict with CSS properties was much quicker and easier. Maybe I'm finally starting to get the hang of this. Or just realising that webdesign long got out of my immediate grasp, so I reach sooner for the CSS helpfiles.

I'm feeling, in a way, a bit of an old dog recently. Thirty's alarmingly nigh, my friends are breeding, and 2AM no longer carries the prefix "only". The dream/reality quantum is collapsing into a single focus. And we're staring down the barrel of a serious house (with associated serious mortgage).

I'm not entirely sure how this happened when I still feel so twenty-three. Then, of course, I look at my friends who are twenty-three, and realise that they're really very young, expending so much of themselves. Is growing up not losing energy, but gaining efficiency? Or are these just the lies tired old women tell themselves?

I don't even have any cats yet. Better get on that.

I should also try and figure out some way to have a collapsible menu for the archives, because goddamn I've been waffling for a long time.

2009-07-09T16:36:00.002+10:00

If I said I was currently reading the ICC's "Standard Test Playing Conditions" rules and regulations, I'm trusting that no one will actually call the men in white coats, citing an obsession gone too far, until I say that this is actually for work! It really is! Never mind that the Ashes started last night, and we upgraded to digital television especially for the occasion so we could be glued to the couch from 7:30 onwards, catching most of the first session of play. (GO HUSS!)

Though it is related. "YOU CAN'T BLUFF THE TOSS," I wrote in my rough-draft editor's notes on the latest manuscript to be hurled in my direction by the boss. I used the trusty internet to quickly check that the Toss was, indeed, the first official act of a Test Match (up until the toss is made, the game can be called off without registering a No Result) and just blithely assumed that that meant the (other) Men In White Coats would be watching closely to see whether it was heads or tails.

Then we watched the toss at Cardiff last night, and nary an umpire to be seen. Oops? Mind you, both captains did very carefully keep their hands behind their back and not go near the coin. So now I'm checking the official ICC regulations on the issue. SEE! It's perfectly work-related.

Of course, when the site asked if I wanted to download the regulations or merely view the PDF in the browser window, I may have gone the download option. But I do a lot of cricket books! It'll come in handy!

Really, officer.

2009-06-19T21:55:00.002+10:00

I suspect it may prove a boon to humankind if someone developed a device - possibly USB connectible - that would detect the intoxicification of the computer user, and correspondingly deactivate all the "post" buttons on the internet until said user became frustrated and went off to, say, play Scrabble with those alternative rules that mean you can only put down words you've invented, as long as you can provide a coherent and believable definition for them.

Just sayin'.

hic

2009-06-17T11:32:00.001+10:00

It's just gone 11:30 and I've only just put the coffee on.

Nothing good will come of today.

2009-06-15T15:20:00.001+10:00

All my good intentions are undone by the matrimonial habits of my friends.

So sure, we're building a house, and it will be splendid despite the lack of turrets, secret passages and shiny black bricks. You wait. But that doesn't mean we can't go to Moscow next year for a friend's wedding, right? RIGHT?

2009-06-04T08:24:00.002+10:00

They're dropping with alarming frequency: David Eddings dies.

It's been a long time since I desperately read an Eddings series in a week. It's been a long time since I argued with my best friend over marrying Garion or Sparhawk. It's been a really long time since I first picked up a little volume called Pawn of Prophecy and looked at the cover and said, "...eh, why not?" little knowing that this was going to change my reading habits forever.

David Eddings mightn't have been the best fantasy author who ever set pen to paper. He was sort of facile and rather predictable and certainly frothy. But he introduced me to modern fantasy, to fantasy as a current and breathing genre, and therefore as something that I could write. He showed me that it didn't have to be Serious (like Tolkien) but could be Fun. He launched me into it.

Not to mention that if it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have frolicked my way into alt.fan.eddings, and the experiences and friendships I garnered from that group. That was my first internet community, my first internet friends, my first internet meetup, and it was all just plain brilliant.

So thanks, Mr Eddings. You gave - or rather, helped me discover - a lot. Cheers.

2009-05-05T18:49:00.003+10:00

Listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs while drying up. It's all fun and games until, in the middle of strutting your Phenomena stuff, someone just about throws the jar used for holding espresso at the corner of the counter.

Someone. Not naming any names. Gee, who'd do something that stupid?

It pretty much disintegrated. There is glass dust on my kitchen floor.

Oh well, it probably needed sweeping anyway.

2009-05-05T13:05:00.000+10:00

A hummer just drove past.
A stretch hummer.
A pink stretch hummer.
HOT pink.