Dogged

I have this morning to myself, so I've hit the smart shopping precincts of Darlinghurst, Surrey Hills and Paddington. As might be expected, I get the impression that the whole area was designed to subtly discourage riff-raff like me. The expensive stores are intimidating, with lots of signs bearing simple white text on a black background, stating the nature of the store in the most fashionably minimalist way possible, and thus suggesting that if you need a store to have a "name", you probably can't afford to shop here. The Grocer. The Butcher. The Baker. Presumably in the shadier parts of Paddington there's The Prostitute and The Pornographer. Which is coincidentally also a fantastic name for a pub, especially in this area.


Paddington is one of the wealthiest and most stylish enclaves in the city, which means that everyone here is cooler than me. Even the homeless people wear their urine-soaked rags with a certain panache. And the dogs lounging outside the cafes and boutiques while their masters shop give me a superciliously curious look as I pass by, then no doubt growl to each other...


Dog 1: I say, Baxter.

Dog 2: What is it, Hampton?

Dog 1: I may only be a dog, and thus not well-versed in these things, but I'd swear that the human who just walked past WASN'T wearing Wayne Cooper!

Dog 2: Good gracious!

Dog 1: If only I had a mobile and opposable thumbs, I'd call the police.


I'm currently hiding in a bohemian book cafe, where the black-clad staff have politely sold me books and cake. No doubt they mistakenly assume that my Harbour Town jeans and $25 haircut are part of some ironic cutting edge meta-statement, and thus haven't felt the need to organise a mob and run me out of town.

Viewing

There may be views like this in Perth, but I'm generally not privy to them. I'm in Sydney this weekend, and this is the view from the window I'm sitting at right now. I'm in a tiny garret room in Darlinghurst, listening to Beirut on my iPod punctuated by the occasional police siren or thud of dance music, if the breeze happens to waft in the right direction. I think that there are also possums in the trees across the street, scrabbling about, squealing and making a nuisances of themselves.


Possums – the Britney Spears of the marsupial world.

Wood

From an item picked up by the Blandwagon News Service via The Times:


Tiger Woods quits golf ‘to be a better husband and adulterer’.


In a press conference this morning, conducted on the hallowed grounds of St Andrew's Golf Course, in the shadow of the impressive rack of Miss Tiffani Swallows, 22, Tiger Woods announced his retirement from golf to concentrate on his marriage and adultery.


“In recent weeks the media has hounded me over a number of transgressions,” said Woods, reading a prepared statement from note cards wedged in Miss Swallows' ample cleavage. “This has been very hard on my family. It has disrupted my game. And my golf is suffering too. After a lot of soul searching, discussions with friends, and some therapeutic threesomes, I came to a decision. I looked at the things that are important to me - my children, my wife, my bevy of mistresses, golf – and I realised that one of these things had to go so that I could concentrate on the other three.”


“I love my wife and children, and I really like banging skanky cocktail waitresses and high-priced hookers. Golf... meh. Once I'd decided to simplify my life, the choice was actually pretty easy.”


“We see this as a new chapter in Tiger’s career,” said longtime manager and mentor Sandy Montag. “He’s proven himself to be a driven perfectionist and role model for young golfers everywhere. I’m sure he’ll do the same for every man who’s ever dreamed of illicit sex with tacky bimbos named Jaimee or Candi on the professional sleaze circuit.”


Woods has not ruled out a return to golf at some time in the future. “Once the kids are in college, and if I can't find any Viagra, then yeah, I might consider picking up a club again. After all, golf has always been my fourth love.”

Wasted

Last Monday was my blogiversary, the fifth birthday of Get On The Blandwagon!


Calloo. Callay. Frabjous joy, and so forth. I sometimes have a momentary twinge of regret over the name of this blog, as it was chosen more or less on the spur of the moment and I gave it less thought than I have over far more trivial decisions. But the regret is, as I say, momentary. My life is one big blandwagon, about as sexy and exciting as a carpet tile, and going for a ride on it is like going to the fairground, ignoring the rollercoaster and the ghost train, and instead going for a slow drive around the park in a 2004 Toyota Avensis. It’s dull and modern, but it’s comfortable and hopefully people get a laugh out of it. Again, just like a 2004 Toyota Avensis.


According to the not-even-slightly patented Get On The Blandwagon! Modern Blogiversary Gifts List, the fifth blogiversary is traditionally celebrated with gifts of porn. Hmmm. Well, the internet it involved, so this should come as a surprise to no one. Fortunately over the last few years the concept of pornography has expanded (or become engorged, if you will) to include lust-inducing media of any kind, such as food porn, design porn, lifestyle porn, car porn, disaster porn – basically anything you slaver over in a way that shames you to a greater or lesser extent. So, if you feel the need, you can shower me with gifts of porn without risking either of our eternal souls.

Sticky

Individual Sticky Date Puddings


Simmer 1.25 cups of boiling water and 1.25 cups of chopped dates in a saucepan for a few minutes, until the water has become syrupy. Remove from heat, allow to cool for five minutes, then stir through 1 teaspoon of baking soda. Stir through 0.75 cups of brown sugar and 90g of butter, then stir through two beaten eggs. Finally fold through 1.25 cups of self-raising flour. Pour batter into a greased muffin tray (12 muffins) and cook at 180 degrees celsius for twenty minutes.


As the puddings are finishing cooking, mix 60g butter, 0.5 cups of brown sugar and 150mls of pure cream in a saucepan, then simmer, stirring constantly, until the mix is uniform and reduced slightly. Pour the caramel over each pudding once it’s plated, with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side.


They're just like grandma used to make, when she was trying to kill grandpa with cholesterol and diabetes.

Sweet

If you're interested (and frankly even if you're not) here are the ice cream recipes I created for my Serendipity Dinners.


Orange and Cardamom Ice Cream

Pour 300mls of milk, 250mls of cream, 0.5 cups of caster sugar, a pinch of salt and 2 teaspoons of ground cardamom into an ice cream machine and set it running. Finely dice an entire large orange, including peel. When the ice cream machine has turned the mix into a thick slurry, stir through the orange, then transfer into a sealable container and freeze.


Roasted Balsamic Strawberry Ice Cream

Pour 200mls of milk, 200mls of cream, 200mls of zero-fat greek-style yoghurt, 0.5 cups of gourmet strawberry dessert topping and a pinch of salt and into an ice cream machine and set it running. Hull and quarter a punnet of strawberries, then arrange them on a baking tray. Spray them with balsamic vinegar and sprinkle with caster sugar. Place under a hot grill until the strawberries just start to blacken. When the ice cream machine has turned the mix into a thick slurry, stir through the strawberries, then transfer into a sealable container and freeze.


White Peach and Ewok Ice Cream

Peel, dice and remove stones from six white peaches, then saute for less than two minutes in 100mls of grappa. Stir in 0.5 cups caster sugar, then put aside to cool. Kill and skin one small to medium sized ewok, kicking it a few times just for good measure. Ball up the bloody pelt and mail it to George Lucas, with a short note explaining that this is what you think of his frikkin' ewoks. Mince flesh, then feed it to your dog, especially if you don't like your dog much. Discard remains. Returning to the peaches, add 300mls milk, 250mls cream and a pinch of salt, then blend and put in ice cream machine. When the ice cream machine has turned the mix into a thick slurry, transfer into a sealable container and freeze.

Historic

Spice

Throughout the month of November I held a series of dinner parties I called Serendipity Dinners.


The system was thus: I invited a wide variety of people from all areas of my life to dinner on a Friday of their choice. The only stipulation was that they let me know which dinner they wanted to attend by 24 hours beforehand. There were no limits on numbers. The mix of people, and the overall number of people, who attended each dinner would be left entirely to fate.


The other angle for the Serendipity Dinners was in the menu. My policy was that the dishes had to either be old favourites that I hadn't made in years, or new recipes that I wanted to try, or my own off-the-cuff creations: I denied myself the luxury of falling back on my safe, regular dishes.


A few days before the first dinner I steeled myself to the possibility that it would just be me alone with one embarassed person whom I knew only slightly, or that it would be a dozen guys and one horrified girl, or that there would be awkward silences as a bunch of strangers sat around the dining table avoiding each others' gazes.


However the odd thing is that, left alone, serendipity works. Each week I had around a dozen people. Each week I had an almost perfect gender balance. Each week everyone chatted and got on fine. If I tried to interfere, such as suggesting that a potential guest might be happier in one week than another, the whole scheme jarred like a scratch on a vinyl record, then inexorably sorted itself out to the usual numbers and balance.


The menus came out as follows:


November 6

Roasted beetroot and goats cheese salad with a grilled walnut vinaigrette

Dukkuh-crusted salmon fillets with roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes and steamed asparagas

Hazelnut and poppyseed cake with orange and cardamom icecream

Lesson learnt: Too much cardamom makes icecream taste like detergent (fortunately that was a test batch).


November 13

Grilled peach and proscuitto salad in a chilli yoghurt dressing

Spanish-style barramundi, prawn and chorizo stew

Roasted balsamic strawberry icecream with crostoli

Lesson learnt: Grilling enough peaches for thirteen people in a sandwich press is both expensive and time consuming.


November 20

Creamy carrot soup with bavarian rye bread

Balsamic chicken on thyme and garlic cous cous with mixed vegetables.

Chocolate cherry liqueur cake with white chocolate marscapone cream

Lesson Learnt: Never pour hot carrot soup from one saucepan to another while wearing a $600 suit.


November 27

Red onion and rosemary tart.

Porterhouse steak topped with blue cheese butter and roasted pear, with asparagas, brocollini and candied sweet potatoes.

Individual sticky date puddings with hot caramel sauce.

Lesson Learnt: Butter + Sugar + Easy + Yum = Sticky Date Pudding.


The end result of the Serendipity Dinners was that I got to know a bunch of people who I didn't know all that well before, I discovered some new recipes that I will definitely try again, and I got to spend time eating and drinking with my friends. It was indeed a series of happy accidents. If you like the idea, I recommend that you try it.


As long as you invite me.

Wet

Some movies, like the recent smash hit 'Paranormal Activity', are spectacularly effective despite having all of the odds against them. Some other movies, like the $70 million Korean epic 'Dragon Wars', are spectacularly awful despite having everything going for them.


And then there are movies that fail because, like a South China Air jet made of tofu, maintained by Danii Minogue and piloted by pieces of fruit, their every component is hopelessly substandard. A case in point is 1981's 'Oasis of the Zombies'.




Great... eighty minutes of the living dead singing "Wonderwall" and bickering among themselves.


To fully understand why this film was a bigger fiasco than New Coke, it's necessary to go through the entire crew list, person by incompetent person.


Script and Direction, by Jesus Franco

In the midst of World War Two, a squad of Nazis escorting a gold shipment across the North African desert is ambushed at an oasis by Allied forces. Everyone is killed except for the Allied commander, who is rescued by a local sheik. While he recuperates at the sheik's palace, he impregnates the sheik's daughter, then runs off to rejoin his army.

An indeterminate amount of time later, the son born of the commander's tryst with the sheik's daughter discovers that his father has been murdered. He returns to North Africa from his home in London to find out what has happened. From his father's journals, he discovers that the Nazi gold is still in the oasis, and he and his friends vow to find it and get rich. Little do they know, however, that the Nazis are now zombies who rise up every evening and terrorise anyone dumb enough to be hanging around.

As bare plots go it's not such a bad effort. It's only when the bare plot gets dressed with the underpants of Dialogue, the jeans of Coherence and the shapeless T-shirt of Making Sense that it all comes undone. For example, the son is around 20 years old. That means that the story must be occurring in the early 60s. But the son's car is a 1970s Suzuki 4x4, and his girlfriend is shown wearing a Walkman. Therefore it must be the late 70s or early 80s. So either World War 2 lasted a lot longer than I've been told, or the director has the keen attention to detail of a drunken globus monkey.


Film Editing, by Claude Gros

Pausing the narrative flow every ten minutes to quickly recap the key moments of the previous ten minutes is not a valid editing choice. Unless, of course, you are editing with the intention of developing an insomnia cure.


Cinematography, by Max Monteillet

The colour is washed out, the establishing shots last longer than childbirth, and the closeups are so close that 80% of the screen is just some guy's nose. On the other hand, points for the lingering tracking shots focusing on the bottoms of nubile girls in two-sizes-too-small hotpants.




Max Monteillet, we salute you, you magnificent French pervert.


Original Music, by Daniel White

Imagine a young Philip Glass, zonked out of his brain on diazepam and messing about with his grandma's Hammond organ. Oh, and did I mention that he has Downs Syndrome?

Daniel's style was excellently summed up by viewing buddy JC: "This isn't a soundtrack. He's just fallen asleep on a keyboard."


Special Effects, by Richard Green

One of the zombies was a skull on a stick, animated by having a stage hand waggle it around. And that was a high point.


Sound Design, by Claude Panier

To signify the rattling, wheezing rasp of an oncoming zombie, Claude seems to have simply run his fingers up and down an old metal washboard. This gave the impression that the zombies were all auditioning for a zydeco band.


Acting, by several people who'd never acted before and haven't acted since

We don't expect Oscar-worthy performances from attractive girls cast as zombie fodder in low-budget horror movies. All we want is a little screaming, crying and convulsing as the undead (or at least the skulls on sticks representing the undead) drag them to the ground and start biting them. But even this was beyond the girls of 'Oasis of the Zombies'. Instead of panicked, desperate screams and thrashing, we got irritated little moans and the occasional fidget, as you would if some mosquitoes were really getting on your nerves, or your boyfriend was doing that thing that he knows you really hate.




Ow! Cut that out! I mean it! Ugh, you are so immature!


Assistant Direction, by Daniel Jouaniss

I don't know what an assistant director's duties on a film like this would be. However I'll blame him for not running over Jesus Franco with a Landrover when he had the chance.


And to think I paid 99c for this movie.

Grossmen

One of the pleasures of using a seriously cut-price bookseller like The Book Depository is that one can afford to lash out and buy random books purely on the basis that they sound cool. Under normal circumstances I never would have bought 'The Magicians' by Lev Grossman and 'Soon I Will Be Invincible' by his brother Austin Grossman, because at an Australian bookstore I'd be looking at $50. At Book Depository they were about $20. That's all the incentive I need.


Although the books are completely unrelated, they're interesting in part because they're so similar. Both take the standard tropes of two popular youth genres and try to reimagine them objectively; as if to say, "Okay, if this scenario were actually true, what would it look like and how would it play out?" Lev deals with children's fantasy, while Austin has superheroes.





Lev Grossman's book is probably the more ambitious of the two, as it takes on and almost clinically dissects two of the juggernauts of children's fantasy: Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia. He tells the story of Quentin Coldwater, a fiercely intelligent but socially awkward teenager who discovers that, rather than getting into Harvard as he had planned, he has been accepted to Brakebill's, a secretive college of magic. He finds that the study of magic gives him a sense of identity that he lacked, but at the same time it creates a whole new set of problems and neuroses. All of this is brought to a head when he discovers that a magic kingdom from a series of children's books he loved as a child is actually a real place, and that he can go there.


The reimagining of Hogwart's and the reimagining of Narnia neatly fill the first and second halves of the book respectively - it's almost as if they're two closely related but different stories. In the first, Hogwartian half, Lev develops his conceit that magic is horribly, horribly hard. It requires fluency in several dead languages, complicated hand gestures, and a borderline-autistic knowledge of everything from the phases of the moon to the range of the tides. The only people intelligent and focussed enough to use magic are the hyper-intelligent but socially-retarded geeks on the fringes of your local high school. Studying magic at Brakebill's is like a combination of Japanese cram school and going to the Mathlympics.


The second half of the novel asks the question, "What would it be like to really visit Narnia? What would talking animals be like? Would they really want human royalty?" Lev’s magic kingdom is dark, violent and oddly empty, its inhabitants worn down and frightened by the constant threat of magic attack or interference. It feels more like a drug dream than a real place, except that death or injury can come for real.


Lev is at his best when he depicts what happens when the wholesome, awe-inspiring worlds of children's fantasy are occupied by the sort of adults who read too much children's fantasy. Like a lot of very intelligent modern nerds, brought up in an atmosphere of moral equivalency and a dearth of role models, Quentin is mostly unlikeable, with a sense of self-justification that works overtime to conceal his cowardice, his betrayals and his often weasely taste for power. While we appreciate the occasional good, upright characters who show bravery and self-sacrifice, it's more visceral to read about the students who drift off the proper paths and dabble in edgier magic. They tend to be devoured by monsters, tormented by demons or disfigured by their own hubris, and fear is a stronger emotion than admiration.





Austin Grossman's book looks at world full of superheroes and their supervillain nemeses. It's told from two perspectives in alternating chapters; first with experienced supervillain Doctor Impossible, then with newbie superheroine Fatale.


Austin's supervillains are the same people who make your life difficult every day: a mixture of bullies, blowhards, sociopaths and, in Doctor Impossible's case, the sort of restless, introspective geek who seems genuinely surprised that other people might get upset when he robs their banks, changes their weather or takes over their minds.


The superheroes are similarly dysfunctional: competitive, territorial, and elitist: some guy who buys titanium body armour and a flamethrower is considered rather gauche compared to a person who acquired superpowers via aliens, magic or the bite of a radioactive invertebrate.


The only problem with Austin's story is that it feels like a minor chapter in some gargantuan, unwritten book. It covers Doctor Impossible's umpteenth attempt to take over the world, and as it plays out it's clear that this is one of his less ambitious projects. Fatale proves herself as a superhero, but it's evident that her powers are fairly mundane compared to some others in The New Champions. Austin fleshes out the depth and history of his world by casually mentioning Doctor Impossible's previous time travel exploits or The Champions' earlier battle with an alien armada, but unfortunately all this does is suggest to the reader that there are stories more exciting than this one that aren't being told.


On the other hand, Austin has a neat trick of having his characters speak like normal people in private, then unconsciously switching to grandiose superhero and supervillain hyperbole in public. This is especially well done in Doctor Impossible, as the narrative flits between the ordinary, fretful thoughts running through his mind and the classic, "Prepare to meet your doom, puny mortals!" coming out of his mouth.


You can sort of see why he does it. After all, it's very difficult to speak the title of this book aloud without shaking one's fist in the air and bellowing. I've tried, and failed.


It’s tempting to look at these two books, written two years apart by two brothers, and make a call over which one is better. But I’m not going to do that, since there will then be the implication that the second-best one isn’t worth reading, and this isn’t the case. They’re both fun, inventive novels and I’d recommend both of them. Especially if you can get them cheap from The Book Depository.

Meow

‘Cat People’ is an odd little movie from 1942, generally classed as a horror film although it bears more resemblance to a noir thriller. Ostensibly it’s about a woman who fears that she is destined to transform into a black panther (literally – I don’t think she was particularly concerned about getting an urge to wear a silly beret and run about beating up whitey), but there’s a lot of subtext about repressed sexuality and gender roles.


But forty years later Hollywood decided to remake it, this time will all the subtlety that 1982 could muster. Which, as you can imagine, ran out about half a line into Malcolm McDowell’s first scene.


Try as it might, 1982 couldn’t generate the same sense of sophistication and poise that was more common in 1942. For a start, the story moves from New York to New Orleans – for some reason a lot of Americans seem to regard humidity as sexy. Supposedly it breaks down inhibitions, or something. Personally I don’t see anything sexy about sweat stains and clammy underpants... not that any of the characters wore underpants. Having spent considerable time and money hiring Nastassja Kinski and creating a script that had her disrobing every ten minutes, the last thing the director wanted was to spend precious screen time dealing with fiddly bra straps, panties or stockings. In a laudable gesture at equality, the director made male lead John Heard go commando for the entire picture too. They wouldn’t have put up with that sort of nonsense in 1942, let me tell you.


As for outerwear, this being the yuppie era, Kinski was dressed in tailored skirts, white blouses and neutral business attire, even though she was supposed to be an unemployed 20 year old. This means that for most of the movie she appears to be some sort of bureacracy-themed stripper.


The 1982 version does attempt to do the right thing. It retains the metaphor-filled setting of the zoo, in which wild animals pace and snarl in cramped cages. It also deals with notions of virginity, sex and repression. However, expressing these notions with oblique references and suggestive hints wasn’t the 1980s way. The remake felt the need to add sex scenes, buckets of blood, and a rather unwise spelling out of the mechanics of Cat Persondom.


Apparently the Cat People are distantly descended from an African tribe who sacrifice their children to some sort of black leopard god. Why they do this is never explained - perhaps they just really hate kids. Somehow over time this results in the existence of Cat People; men and women who transmogrify into big black cats whenever they have sex, and only change back into people if they kill. If this seems like a ridiculously arbitrary set of rules to you, then obviously you are not seeing things from the black leopard god's perspective. If the transmogrification occurred based on, say, the Cat People eating celery or driving a Toyota, he'd spend a lot of time being bored.


As would the audience, who only paid to see this film in order to see Nastassja Kinski getting her kit off.


However the best part of this movie wasn’t actually in the movie itself – it was in the blurb on the back cover of the DVD. It was presumably meant to describe Nastassja Kinski as, "a young woman on the brink of sexuality." But what it actually says is, "a young woman on the bridge of sexuality." As you can imagine, this lead to a line of riffing that my viewing buddies and I kept up through the entire movie.


"Sorry I'm late, the traffic was terrible. It took me an hour just to cross the bridge of sexuality. I'm exhausted, let me tell you."


"Well, you could take the bridge of sexuality, but I find that it's quicker if you stick to the freeway of chastity. It's less scenic, of course, but there are fewer red lights."


Me: (in news radio voice) The traffic 'copter is reporting a big pile-up on the bridge of sexuality. And yes, it's just as filthy as you'd imagine!


Me: Are you allowed to go fishing off the bridge of sexuality? What would you catch?

GC: Herpes, probably.


Me: Oh no, he took the wrong turn! He's missed the bridge of sexuality and he's going into the tunnel of... er...

PM: Innuendo?


So what’s next for Cat People? It’s been 1940s art noir and 1980s art porn, and it’s probably about time for another remake. Ever the entrepreneur, my friend PM has suggested the most obvious 21st century incarnation: LOLcat People.





Don’t pretend that you wouldn’t go and see it.

Earthshattering

10 Things I Learnt From '2012'


1. It only takes a minute or two to drive from the leafy suburbs of LA to the centre of the business district... without taking the freeway.


2. Supervolcanos don't produce poisonous gas clouds, or even particularly hot ash.


3. If you want to save the great works of literature from the apocalypse, you might be tempted to take 3,500 books on a Kindle, or 50,000 on an iPod, or even 1,000,000 on a portable hard drive. But nothing beats the feel of a dozen real books, and let's face it, it's not important to save the world's great literature; it's important to appear to be saving the world's great literature.


4. People who've callously allowed almost everyone they've ever known to die will nevertheless offer you the sanctuary that they denied their dearest friends, their faithful staff and/or their extended family. All you have to do is show up. It helps if you have an adorable moppet that you can brandish at them.


5. If your aeroplane is running low on fuel, whatever you do, don't lighten the load by dumping the dozen or so tons of luxury automobile in the cargo bay.


6. And while we're on the subject, never save any fuel for landing.


7. Everyone in the world, from a rural Chinese welder to a flighty Russian mistress, speaks perfect English.


8. Air Force One is built so soundly that it will survive being hit by a kilometre-high tsunami then being barrelled up a rocky mountain pass. It won't even scratch the paintwork.


9. God promised Noah that He would never again flood the world. However Roland Emmerich knows better.


10. The moral of the story appears to be that the ends justify the means... a slightly sinister lesson when you remember that it's coming from a German.

Notes

Several Short Notes to the People in the Queue at the Bank on Saturday Morning



Dear frumpy woman,

It's 28 degrees outside; why are you wearing a cardigan?

It's not cold, and let's be honest, you're not exactly lacking in personal insulation in the first place. We can also rule out the cardigan as a fashion statement, since it's a horrible grey shapeless thing teamed with a grey T-shirt, khaki shorts and, worst of all, Vodka Breezer promotional thongs. Why, frumpy woman? Why why why?

With hesitant regards,

Blandwagon



Dear man in a t-shirt,

Dude, I realise that you can't see the back of your own neck, even in a mirror. So you'll have to trust me on this - get help. In the long term, investigate getting skin grafts to replace the mottled, pocked, melanoma-studded lunar landscape rearing up from under your shirt. In the shorter term... wear a collared shirt, not only to protect you from the sun but also for the benefit of those unfortunate people who happen to be standing behind you and witnessing what appears to be a vampire attack from a diseased pikelet.

Your humble yet horrified servant,

Blandwagon



Dear morbidly obese woman,

I appreciate that you have a lot of problems in your life. Your husband is frequently away working on the mines. Your daughter has some sort of problem that I didn't quite catch. And you have more surface area than a 1987 Nissan Micra and roughly the same aesthetic appeal. All of this, however, does not excuse you monotonously explaining your financial issues to an overworked bank teller after it's been firmly established, within the first thirty seconds, that she can't help you and you need to see a different staff member.

Oh, and the phrase "disability pension" should not be uttered as if it's as inevitable a part of everyone's life as paying taxes or grocery shopping. It may be perfectly expected in your social circle, but in wider society it bespeaks an overfamiliarity with the welfare state.

With peevishness,

Blandwagon



Dear Blandwagon,

Have some compassion for those less fortunate than you, you fat fatuous git.

Except for the Vodka Breezer thongs. They're just inexcusable.

Ever yours,

Blandwagon

Classic

Wisdom for the Ages

with The Flatmate


"Nothing says class like large silver naked ladies."


May these words guide you on your path to enlightenment.

Survivors

I thought that my water lilies were dead, but recently they put out new leaves and now they've started flowering.





No thanks to the goldfish, who are a bunch of deviant psychopaths. Always with the gnawing on tender new shoots and buds. When they're not trying to kill each other.





I blame their parents. I doubt their mothers breast fed.

Baroque

My head hurts, I'm having trouble focusing my eyes, and I think I'm developing carpal tunnel syndrome. This is what happens when I get addicted to a computer game and lack the self-restraint to limit my exposure.


The game in question is Gothic 3. It's your basic quest-based fantasy game, in which you wander around a world full of castles and ogres, collecting gold and artifacts, upgrading your weaponry and skills where possible, helping the occasional friend and smiting your many enemies. I haven't played the first two games in this series, but I seem to have picked up the basic gist of things anyway.





Call me shallow, but one of the things I'm really enjoying is the simple beauty of the world. Whoever designed the graphics for this game is a genius and a true artist. The meadows are sparsely scattered with wildflowers, providing tiny bursts of bright colour, but occasionally you'll wander into a dell or a hillside that's thick with them, just as it would be in nature. The landscape slowly evolves as you walk along, going from wild meadow to deciduous forest so gradually that you barely notice. As the sun goes down it turns the landscape golden and the sky sinks from blue to purple to black. The stars twinkle and the light of the full moon ripples in the water. The next morning as the sun rises it turns the sky a pale orange, and birds begin singing in the trees to herald the dawn. It is completely enchanting.





Unfortunately it's unwise to give in to temptation and run through a field of sunlit wildflowers like some medieval Maria Von Trapp, since it's pretty much guaranteed that there's a pack of wolves lurking in there. Virtually everything wants to kill you and is easily capable of doing so. Step beyond the gates of any town or village and you'll be attacked before you can say, "Is that a boulder or a drowsy troll?" On the plus side, unlike certain games (yes, Bioshock, I am looking at you) the enemies in Gothic 3 do not respawn or repopulate: once you clear all of the danger out of an area, you can galavant around it with impunity.


I've barely scratched the surface of the game and already I've fought at least twenty five different monsters and wild animals, all lavishly rendered with their own mechanics of movement. All of them are dangerous; even the dodo-like Scavenger can kill you if you drop your guard. At this early stage there are whole areas that I've had to avoid because there are creatures there who will kill me within seconds. The only way to deal with them is to turn around and run like hell, hopefully without colliding into their mates in the process. Eventually I'll have the weapons, the skills and the armour to come back and clear them out, but it will take a while.


Experience points are pretty easy to come by, but experience is worth jack squat without gold. Gold IS hard to come by, at least in the quantities you need to properly equip yourself. If you kill a monster with a weapon, then take their weapon, you'll find it's usually worth between 5 and 15 gold pieces. By contrast, a set of heavy armour costs 70,000 gold pieces. I like slaughtering goblins as much as the next guy, but do I really need to kill 14,000 of them just to get some decent armour?


It doesn't help that the trading system is badly designed. You can't just stroll up to a bloke in the pub and offer to sell him your Magic Sword of Awesomeness for 500 gold pieces. You can only trade. If you need gold, you must put all of his gold on one side of the ledger, then hunt through your inventory finding enough gold, weapons, spell scrolls, rare herbs, random pieces of hardware and the occasional lute to match that amount. So I often seem to find myself in the position of needing 1000 gold pieces, having 800 in gold and 2000 worth of spare stuff, and not being able to buy what I want because everyone I meet has a minimum of 5000, which is 2200 more than I can raise. It's rather dispiriting to go into a town and discover that every single person there is way richer than me.





The internet tells me that Gothic 3 is widely reviled. Apparently the earliest versions of the game, released in 2006, were more bug-infested than a picnic in a swamp, and the lush graphics taxed ordinary computers beyond their limits. Now that the bugs appear to have been fixed, and my reasonably high-end 2008 computer is hosting the game, these faults are no longer relevant. True, the voice acting is mediocre, the combat design is primitive, the quests occasionally contradict each other and the game momentarily but jarringly pauses to refresh the scenery if you run in any direction for more than a couple of seconds. But it looks beautiful, it's fun to play, and hey, everyone likes being able to spend an evening or two butchering their way across a fantasy ecosystem.

Critical

On Saturday morning I drove down to one of my local JB HiFis (there are several in my area, and they are multiplying - it's like a zombie apocalypse of audiovisual retail) to spend a voucher I got for my birthday. I ended up buying two CDs:


1. 'Worldwide Underground' by Erykah Badu

On the face of it, there's no reason why I would want to buy one of Erykah Badu's albums. The woman should, by all rights, be a laughingstock.

Let's start with her name. In her late teens the then Erica Wright changed her name to Erykah Badu in order to reject her "slave name" - apparently being called "Erica" is an unacceptable concession to The Man. Given that she was born in 1971, four or five generations after the abolition of slavery, it's a little hard to see her rationale, but we allow a certain amount of eccentricity in our musicians.

Then there's her lfestyle. Erykah identifies strongly with the black ghetto experience. This explains why she has three children, all with ridiculous names (Seven, Puma and Mars), by three different babydaddys, none of whom has a proper job. All she needs is bad hair extensions, garishly painted acrylic fingernails and an ass the size of a minivan and she could fit into South Central Chicago like a kosher canape at a Bar Mitzvah.

Erykah is also prone to spouting worrisome soundbites. When asked why she had stopped wearing her trademark African headwraps on stage, Erykah replied, "Art is my religion. You don't see the head wraps anymore because I am the head wrap." Which rather speaks for itself.

Wikipedia also notes the following quote: "I try to be as honest as I can. Being humble is so 2007". I can see where one might get such an attitude, if one spent most of one's time hanging out with (and being impregnated by) rappers, a group not noted for their discreet modesty. Oddly enough I don't recall a sudden breakout of humility among the rapping classes in 2007, but it could be that I'm just out of touch.

So the woman is tacky and yet pretentious, given to laughable pronouncements, and somewhere between Britney Spears and Ike Turner in terms of family role modelling. Why on earth would I buy one of her albums?

The simple, mitigating truth is that for all her personal faults she is enormously talented. Her music is a blend of modern urban R&B and retro 70s soul, including samples from old blaxploitation trailers. It's complex yet smooth, standing out in a black music landscape dominated by interchangable songs in which a diva crams a dozen notes into every phrase while some guy goes "Uh huh" and "Oh yeah" in the background. Her music is authoritative and sophisticated where the majority of the black urban music scene is just thuggish and gaudy. And in the proud tradition of my people, I am appropriating her music and intend to play it at my next dinner party. If she knew she'd probably have an anuerism.


2. 'Music for an Accelerated Culture' by Hadouken!

It's fitting that I discovered Hadouken! after one of their songs was used as the soundtrack for a YouTube video - they are the embodiment of everything Gen Y holds dear. In the first listen through alone, I picked up references to skinny jeans, mp3s, Playstations and MySpace. Throw in some emo hair and you could create a Gen Y-er from scratch just from their lyrics.

According to Wikipedia, Bebo, MySpace etc they have a guitarist, a drummer and a bass player, but frankly all I can hear is vocals and synths. They feature crisp, aggressive electronics with lots of shouty, chanty singing. I'm reminded of The Klaxons, even though Hadouken! are supposed to be "grindie" while The Klaxons are supposed to be "new rave". So much for any hopes I had for a career with the New Musical Express.

On the other hand, iTunes classifies them as "emo", JB HiFi had their CD in the "dance" section, and Bebo classes them as "garage/new wave/electro". So it's hard not to get the sneaking suspicion that none of these people know what they're talking about!

I realise that the facebook generation are prone to babbling on about themselves like there's no tomorrow, but even so Hadouken! seems to have a remarkably solipsistic streak. Take the main line from the chorus of the first track:

Welcome to our world / we are the wasted youth / and we are the future

Of course you are, poppets. Have a juice box.

To be honest the whole Gen Y thing is laid on so thick that one is tempted to think that there's a 50 year old svengali behind the scenes, rather hamfistedly attempting to play to the tastes of cashed-up 20 year olds. But whatever. I like it because it's good to listen to cranked up too loud while driving too fast, even though I look like a nit because I have a convertible and am far too old.

Prejudice

While noodling around an online bookstore the other day, I made a rather unsettling discovery. It concerned Mr Darcy, the romantic foil in Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice'.


When she first wrote the character, Jane Austen could not have anticipated that he would eventually become a cipher for the romantic longings of a billion women across the planet. I suppose he is an archetype of the man with great potential who needs only the attentions of a perceptive woman to realise them. Mr Darcy was, after all, a boorish snob until Elizabeth Bennet cracked his hard shell. Once he saw the error of his ways he became the ideal man. It makes him a beacon of hope for every woman who looked at her lazy, flabby, inattentive boyfriend and thought, 'I can make him change!"


When characters become icons, it's inevitable that they will attract parasites. As such there is any number of knuckleheaded modern "sequels" to Jane Austen's masterpiece. Some are straight sequels, approaching the continuation of his life much as Austen herself would have. Many, however, use Mr Darcy as a springboard to explore issues and topics that only besot the modern woman. Obviously there is a market out there for novels about Mr Darcy + That Thing That's Really Popular With the Ladies Right Now. You'd already know about Mr Darcy + body image issues, otherwise known as 'Bridget Jones' Diary'. And perhaps you've heard of Mr Darcy + cake, in the form of 'Tea With The Bennets of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - An Anthology Of Recipes'? But did you know about Mr Darcy + 'Twilight' , also known as 'Mr Darcy, Vampyre' and 'Vampire Darcy's Desire'?


Of course you didn't. You are a sensible person. But as you can see these things do exist, and they are proliferating. No doubt somewhere out there someone is writing a novel about Mr Darcy meeting Andre Rieu.


I'd like to get in on this cash cow myself, and pen a few of my own "Mr Darcy meets the things the average Oprah audience member identifies with and dreams about" novels. Here are some of my plot scenarios:


- Mr Darcy flees the strict social conventions and stifling repression of Georgian England to find love with a woman he met while going through the half price sale bin at Bed Bath & Beyond.

- Mr Darcy falls in love with a lonely housewife after he buys some of her adorable handmade frog-shaped oven mitts off etsy.com

- Mr Darcy begins a new career as a chocolatier, with a magic receipe that makes chocolate calorie-free and able to erase cellulite and stretch marks.

- Mr Darcy reads 'The Secret', at the same time that plus-sized Minnesota singleton Lori-Jean Splatt reads it, and they achieve a magical connection across the centuries as they both visualise each other as their perfect match.

- Mr Darcy opens a shelter for homeless kitties. But their antics with balls of string cannot fill the hole in his heart, a hole that can only be filled by a codependent cat haven volunteer named Karen Kovlowski.

- Mr Darcy opens a darling little cupcake shop, which somehow does a roaring trade despite the fact that he spends all his time wooing the local passive-aggressive dental receptionist.

- Mr Darcy discovers that his great uncle, Antonio da Vinci, created a fiendish code that explains how the Catholic church controls the world, with the help of the Freemasons and possibly some Rotarians. It's up to Mr Darcy and his bookish but beautiful assistant Britney-Ann to thwart their plot to destroy the world's supply of cheesecakes.

- Mr Darcy hangs out around some designer shoes and watches a Martha Stewart marathon with the cast of 'High School Musical'. And then he does some scrapbooking. With a unicorn.

Commercial

AAMI Insurance has made some annoying, vaguely offensive commercials in the past. However I love their current campaign, for a variety of reasons:





Reason 1. The acknowledgment, rarely if ever publicly made, that swans aren't nice creatures: they're vicious, aggressive and very stupid birds. With beady, beady eyes.


Reason 2. The cute kid who starts off finding the swan attack all very hilarious, until one sticks its head in the window and makes him cry. Ha!


And, in the follow up commercial...





Reason 3. The woman who blames it all on global warming, with the implication that this is something that ignorant people fall back on when they can't explain a phenomenon.


Swans are bastards. Cute kids are annoying. Global warming is a fad. These are pretty subversive ideas for an insurance commercial.

Toying

One day Dalek decided to go for a wander across a strange new planet. "Golly," he thought, "I wonder who I shall exterminate today?"





In fact, he was so busy thinking about who he could exterminate that he didn't even notice Godzilla coming up behind him. At least until Godzilla started to bite his head off!





"Ha ha, I played a funny trick on you!" laughed Godzilla. Dalek wanted to exterminate him, but he couldn't, because he'd had his head ripped off, and he was dead.





Fortunately Mr Wampa happened to be strolling by, and he fixed Dalek as good as new. "Thanks, Mr Wampa!" said Dalek. "I didn't like being dead one bit!"





Then he exterminated both of them. Because he was kind of a dick like that.

Scream (Addendum)

More stills and commentary from 'Scream Blacula Scream'...




Willis: You mean to tell me I ain’t never gonna see my face again?

Me: No way!




Pam Grier is Indiana Jones in ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Funk’.




Pam Grier: Will you excuse me?

Me (as Pam): It's Thursday. I promised Roger Corman I'd make a couple of movies with him tonight. It should only take an hour or so.




Even in death, Gloria’s hair has more surface area than Venezuela.




Ah, the 70s. When a man could wear his pyjama pants to work and still be the best dressed dude in the office.




This is what the coolest vampire hunters are wearing this season. The turtleneck protects the throat, and the red acrylic hides the bloodstains. The purple safari suit is just there because it’s groovy.




Justin in a burgundy turtleneck with burnt orange suit jacket. Not shown: very tight matching burnt orange pants with lace up fly. Oh yeah, baby.




Blacula, either undergoing his death throes or practicing for his highly anticipated new role as Zombie Superman.




And finally, to understand everything that was wrong with the 70s, all you need to know is that this was supposed to be the home of a hip professional black man. Saints preserve us all.

Scream (Part 2)

How can one go past a 1971 film called ‘Die Screaming, Marianne’, featuring a blonde babe go-go dancing in a bikini on the cover? How, I ask you? I am not made of stone. I had to buy this film, even though it cost nearly $3.34.


‘Die Screaming, Marianne’ tells the story of the eponymous heroine trying, fairly unsuccessfully it must be said, to escape the clutches of her evil father and her whacked out half-sister. She briefly escapes to England with her lover, but forces conspire to drag her back to her father’s incongruously sunny lair in Portugal.


To get more of a feel for ‘Die Screaming, Marianne’, it may be instructive to take a closer look at the six main characters. It’s also enlightening to see how they die… and no, that’s not a spoiler. It’s a 70s film – of course everybody dies in the end. That’s why there are so few sequels of 70s films: the entire cast were generally dead by the closing credits.


Rodrigues (although we inevitably referred to him as “Senôr Combover”.)



Senôr Combover is the Judge's sinister henchman, whose oily broken English and equally oily strands of hair lend him a threatening aura. But he's not a really bad guy. If only he'd had wild, untrammeled Warren Beatty hair he could have been the hero.

Death By: Electric chair, probably, since he strangles Hildegard after she makes an ill-advised attempt to seduce him. Girls, never bat your oversized false eyelashes at a tonsorially challenged Portuguese. That's one of the first things they teach you at any good finishing school.


The Judge




Marianne’s father, known only as The Judge, made his millions by taking bribes, which explains why he eventually had to flee to Portugal. He may be corrupt, but he doesn't take up the offer of incest made by his loony daughter, so by 70s standards he's not all bad.

Death By: Austin Healey convertible with faulty brakes (so basically any Austin Healey convertible). Of course one could argue that it was actually the plunging mountain roads of Portugal that killed him... I mean, you're not going to die if your Austin Healey's brakes fail when you're sitting in a stationary traffic jam on the A45 outside Thrapston, are you?


Hildegarde



Marianne's half-sister Hildegarde is as mad as a box of frogs, and looks like Twiggy must have felt when she was woken up at 6am after a particularly hard night of partying. I suspect that she applied her eyeshadow (in a classic 70s shade of blue) by painting it onto a boxing glove and then getting someone to clock her one.

Together with her father, Hildegarde plots to kill Marianne before her 21st birthday so that she and her father can steal her inheritance. Psychopaths with poor impulse control are not, however, the most astute project managers, and her plans inevitably end with Marianne escaping and Hildegarde left bedraggled and fuming, like a wild-eyed Petula Clark who's been shoved through a car wash.

Death By: Irritable Portuguese man.



Bury me... with... my false eyelashes...


Marianne




In theory, she's the perfect exploitation heroine: a nubile, blonde, free-spirited, bikini-clad go-go girl. And yet for some unfathomable reason we never get to see her boobies. Somebody didn't really seem to understand what the 70s were all about.

Marianne's a sweet girl who's had a hard life, having left home at 14 to escape her deranged family and making her way in the world using nought but her go-go dancing skills. She's not the cleverest bikini on the beach, however. Even after she's had incontrovertible proof that her sister is trying to kill her, she keeps going back to the family home instead of holing up in a busy motel... in another country. What can one say?

On the plus side, she never seems to be wearing pants. For this at least we are grateful.

Death By: Loneliness, given that she was the only who didn’t end up dead or arrested.


Eli



As Marianne's naive love interest, Eli is all smooth boyish good looks (somewhere under that giant pink and purple cravat) and twinkly eyed kindliness. Bizarrely the audience gets to see him with his shirt off twice, while Marianne keeps her outfits resolutely G rated. What a gyp.

Death By: Obscurely motivated former best friend.


Sebastian



Perhaps at age 32 Christopher Sandford was a little old to be playing Sebastian, especially as he had one of those angular, cadaverous faces that make a man appear to be 70 his entire life. He looks like somebody's grandpa cunningly disguised as a mod youth, with tight paisley shirts and an enormous mop top wig which smothered his head like a hirsute jellyfish devouring a sardine.

Sebastian starts out as Marianne's boyfriend, but gets seduced over to the Dark Side by Hildegarde's wiles and the promise of £1000. I appreciate that inflation ran high in the 70s, but even so £1000 doesn't seem like a lot to doublecross your sweetheart and your best friend. That'll barely get you a good iPhone plan, let alone a buffer from karmic retribution. Still, Sebastian agrees to the scheme, and presumably died knowing that he could at last afford to get the brakes fixed on his Austin Healey.

Death By: Falling into an abandoned cellar and being forgotten.


The odd thing about ‘Die Screaming, Marianne’ is that I think it’s actually better now than when it was released thirty eight years ago. Back then it would have been nothing more than a bland, low-budget little thriller which scandalously wasted several perfect opportunities to showcase Susan George’s breasts. Now, on the other hand, it’s a hilarious cavalcade of ridiculous hairstyles, ludicrous clothes and quaint attempts to shock. The whole “no breasts” problem still stands, of course, but other than that it’s a priceless piece of kitsch.


If only they hadn’t killed everyone. Then we could have had a sequel.

Scream (Part 1)

On Saturday night some of my friends and I had a Festival of Bad Cinema which I am in retrospect calling ScreamFest. Not because they were particularly scary, at least not in the traditional sense, but because they both had the word “scream” in the title. I’m kinda obvious like that.


First up, we had 1973’s uniquely wonderful 'Scream, Blacula, Scream', a sequel to 1972’s ‘Blacula’. It was a clever title for a sequel, far cleverer than, say, 'Blacula II: Back in the Blood' or 'Blacula II: Bite Harder'. Although possibly not as evocative as 'Blacula II: Vascular Boogaloo'.


Irritated that his mother the Voodoo Queen has chosen to pass on her power to the lowly Lisa (Pam Grier) rather than him, Willis (Richard Lawson) uses some mysterious human bones he got from a witchdoctor to cast a voodoo spell against her. However the bones are those of Blacula (William Marshall) who arises from the dead, fangs Willis, then sets about creating a new army of the undead to do his bidding.


Sadly for Blacula, you just can't get good minions these days. For a start there's Willis, who is as whiny in undeath as he was in life. He's more concerned about not being able to see himself in the mirror than he is about being cursed for all eternity. I'd like to think that this explains his dress sense, but unfortunately I suspect it's just one of those 70s things.





Then there's Gloria (Janee Michelle), winner of the very hotly contested Biggest Hairdo of 1973 award. It's like someone stuck a grizzly bear on top of a popsicle stick.





Or Elaine (Barbara Rhoades), sporting the Auburn Tsunami over what looks like a figure hugging blue velvet hijab.





Perhaps this is why Blacula becomes enchanted with Lisa - she's the only one who dresses like a normal human being. That and the fact that she's one hot mama. Blacula may be dead but he's not dead.





Blacula hopes that Lisa will be able to use her voodoo powers to release him from the vampire curse. She eventually agrees, and there follows a lengthy ceremony that involves a lot of sweaty heaving and moaning from both parties. Unfortunately before the ceremony can reach its… er… climax, Lisa's boyfriend Justin (Don Mitchell) bursts in with a bunch of cops, hell bent on putting an end to the vampire invasion.


The cops are dispatched as gruesomely as one would expect them to be in this sort of movie, but not before they and Justin kill most of Blacula's legion. In the end, as Blacula's unholy appetite finally turns on Lisa, she dispatches him the only way she knows how: with voodoo. You don't see many vampire movies in which the head vampire is killed by someone sticking a stake into a voodoo doll dressed in an adorable little black cape.





I actually liked ‘Scream Blacula Scream’ more than the original. It had a bigger budget, a tighter script, and of course Pam Grier. There’s also a moment towards the end when Justin realises that the man he knew as Mamuwalde is a vampire, and he cries out his name. Blacula pauses, then responds; 'The name… is Blacula!' At his direst moment, Blacula identifes not with his regal African heritage but with an identity forced on him by a white man centuries ago. He's as trapped by it as his minions are by him. In a silly blaxploitation flick, it's an unexpected burst of poignant social commentary.


Or maybe I’m reading too much into William Marshall’s dark and dignified performance. Perhaps it’s not a good idea to read anything into a movie which has characters dressed like this:





And why do I have the overwhelming feeling that the guy in the pink plaid jacket is a jocular TV weatherman?


Tomorrow, the second of our ScreamFest movies: ‘Die Screaming, Marianne’.

Classique

Melbourne prides itself in being the xenith of sophistication in Australia. Its residents generally regard Sydney as brash and materialistic, Adelaide as sleepy and Perth as beneath contempt.


Sadly for Melbourne's self-image as the centre of style and good taste, glaring exceptions have a tendency to pop up. We must remember Newton's* First Law of Interior Design: for every tasteful action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction of gaudy, screaming hideousness.





As a case in point, take this house in the satellite municipality of Hooper's Crossing. The residence is described as "palatial" and yet offers an opportunity for "possible redevelopment"... probably involving a bulldozer and some pent up aesthetic rage. Let us take a tour room by room.




Note the placement of the pedestal basins, right on the edge of a sudden change in floor level. If stubbed toes don't get you, falling over backwards while combing your hair and cracking your skull open on the floor will. Take that, houseguests who stay more than three days!




I'm guessing that the wrought iron railing in front of the window is to prevent Nonna from going through it when she comes tearing down the stairs and misses the turn. Which she will, since she's been temporarily blinded by the colour scheme.




Nothing says class like a chandelier over the dining table, a fancy lace tablecloth, and a TV in the corner so you can watch 'Dancing With The Stars' while eating your KFC Variety Bucket.




And for fancier occasions you can use the formal dining room. It has a bigger TV.




Apparently the house comes with its own thrift store. Everything on the table is only 50 cents!




The iron gates lend an old-fashioned, romantic air to the bed chamber, harking back to days of yore when maidens were locked in the bathroom to protect them from ravishment when barbarians invaded the castle. Now, of course, they are purely decorative... except when Dirty Uncle Dominic comes to visit.




It's good to see the family portraits on the table; Mama, Papa, the children, Nonna, and, er, Great Aunt Cleopatra. Notice that they are considerately arranged so that you can't see any of them no matter where you sit.




Seriously, you can never have too many chandeliers. Let no one tell you otherwise.




On the plus side, I've never seen a house that would be easier to convert into a bordello. Some red flocked wallpaper, a couple of "tasteful" nudes, and we're ready for business!


It's Price On Application, but go ahead... you know you want to.


*Obviously this is from fashion photographer Helmut Newton, rather than legendary physicist Sir Isaac Newton. By all accounts Sir Isaac had terrible taste in home furnishings.

Resilient

It's 1am, and I've tried, and failed, yet again, to go to bed.


Since 10pm or so I've just been noodling about, tidying the kitchen, writing an email or two, rereading some old blog posts (hey, wow, I used to be funny!) and sniggering my way through several pages of upcoming LOLcats. Eventually I went around and turned off all the lights, brushed my teeth, then headed for my bedroom, but only got as far as the doorway before I thought, "I really should floss." So back I went to the bathroom, and I flossed. I returned to the bedroom, faced the bed, and thought, "You know, I think I missed a bit." So back to the bathroom and more flossing. I was about to leave the bathroom again before I thought, "Mouthwash!" So I swigged, gargled and spat. Then I tidied up the bathroom, stacking the toilet paper rolls neatly and putting away my shaver and other odds and ends.


Then I thought, "Should I have a glance at the new book that arrived from The Book Depository?"


"No, bed!" announced whichever hemisphere of my brain is the sensible one.


Then I thought, "Maybe I should hang out the washing that's still in the machine?"


"No, bed!" said the sensible hemisphere.


Then I thought, "Maybe I could write a blog post about my hilarious inability to go to bed?"


"GAAAH! Fine, whatever, I give up," said my good sense. "Pfaff about. It not like you have to get up and go to work in a few hours. Idiot."


So here I am writing about nothing, struggling to keep my eyes in focus and feeling as if my head is encased in cement. And now it's 1.13am.

Delivered

I've recently discovered The Book Depository, a remarkable boon for anyone who a) lives in Australia and b) reads the occasional book. It's an online book store based in England, and their big gimmick is worldwide free delivery. This means that you only pay the cover price when you buy a book from them.


This wouldn't be all that exciting if books were not outrageously over-priced in Australia. Take Max Brooks' cult zombie novel 'World War Z'. It's $18 in England, and $32 in Australia. It's the same edition (that's how I know that it's 9 pounds - it's printed on the back cover) but for some reason it costs $14 more to put each copy on the shelf in Australia.


With savings like that, I'm wondering why I'd ever enter an Australian bookstore again. I've used The Book Depository twice already, and each time the book has arrived within a week. The first time I bought a copy of Claire Messud's exquistely crafted novel 'The Emperor's Children' for my sister's birthday. At $28, the hardback English copy was less than the price of the local paperback... which is out of print here anyway. The second time I bought the first two installments of Joss Whedon's new Buffy the Vampire Slayer graphic novel for my other sister's birthday. $17.50 each at The Book Depository, $27 each at Borders here.


The only downside to buying books in this way, besides having to wait a few days for delivery, is the delivery itself. The postman delivered 'The Emperor's Children' right on schedule but, discovering that the package didn't fit in the mailbox slot in my garden wall, he simply lobbed it through a gap in the gate into a flower bed. When I got home from work eight hours later, after a storm had swept through the city and lashed it with heavy rain, I found the sodden package already disintegrating into cardboard mush. The book was waterstained but salvagable, with the dust jacket puckered and split slightly on one edge.


I can see that I'm either going to have to limit myself to slender volumes or do all my book shopping during the summer months.

TMI

Over the last few weeks I've had a minor physical annoyance whenever I slept on my right side. As my head sank into the pillow my right ear would become blocked. It was easy to unblock just by pushing on the lower part of my ear, but let's face it, that's not condusive to relaxation.


This morning I'd had enough of it, so when I got up (at the crack of half past eight) I went straight to the bathroom and got out my otic irrigation syringe. It's a rubber bulb that you fill with warm water then stick in your ear to wash out excess wax, earwigs and bits of Lego, depending on your age and/or state of hygiene. It's one of those things that you can never imagine buying, but which is very handy on the rare occasions that you need it.


I filled the sink with warm water, flushed the bulb out a couple of times, then squirted it into my ear. The jet is quite powerful, and there's always that immovable anxiety that I'll do it too hard and punch a hole through my eardrum. Still I went ahead. Every time I'd flushed I glanced down at the water, and saw nothing much. A lot of tiny specks of dead skin cells, a few flecks of ear wax the size of pinheads; nothing significant.


Then I flushed again and immediately felt something change. "Ah," I thought. Then I glanced down at the water. "AAARGH!" I thought.


It was the biggest lump of ear wax I'd ever seen. I stared at it. How could I describe the size of this thing? The size of a couple of peas? No, it was bigger than that. The size of a raisin? No, too variable. I decided to stick with my favourite universal constant. Imagine the head of a standard Lego minifig. Now imagine it attached to another standard minifig head. This lump was bigger than that. It was big enough that I should have been charging it rent.


I got ready for work in a sort of daze, with the novel sensation of the breeze whispering through my ear canal. And ever since then I've been walking around the office bumping into door frames, as my sense of balance is shot because one side of my head is much lighter than it used to be.