\: nine point seven five .\ addendum of addendums





....Pure unadulterated laziness alone stopped me from reporting that I managed to meet Shag on Feb ummm... 22nd. There was an exhibition of his work at the Opera House, and he came over from California for the last couple of days of it. A damn nice, unassumming guy too.

... that's IT, no more for you tonight!

\: nine point five :/....of Tiki's and cabin fever






today I was on a bit of a mission... I've been by myself in the house for a couple of days (cobb's gone to his mums 50th birthday and mchunraha and Dali have gone down to Canberra for a week or so), perhaps it's a little bit of cabin fever, but it feels really good. I was up until 3am this morning watching 'the bourne identity'.... I really enjoyed it. Quite the excellent spy-thriller type movie.



I woke up about 8am, went for a walk to get some milk for that all important morning coffee. I like walking for a couple of reasons....

• it gets me out in the open air, I get a real zest for life when I'm actually out in it,
and
• it's the bare minimum excercise I can do without guilt and the sneaking suspicion that I'm not actually alive at all

~(:^D)

...Just to make the point clear, this is day 5 without any nicotine at all. Then good news is that making this point day after day is starting to become boring. That's a good thing right?

No cravings at all at the moment, although there aren't any smokers around, so I'm not sure what it will be like when I am, I'll find out soon enough I guess.

I spoke to my dad today, strangely he rang only a minute or two after I transferred his contact details from my phone to my Palm m125. I thought to myself: "If he calls now, I'm going to be scared out of my skin." Two minutes later, there he was. He's an amazing guy y'know. It's like every time I talk to him he's doing something different. He was always the same uptight person when I was growing up and living at home... always too busy, always aloof, always correct. Then, after my mum passed away he opened up a bit more I think.
He was always the manager, and I can see I've inherited his preoccupation with efficiency. ~(:^D)

I remember him telling me when he started looking after an autistic aboriginal boy, I really didn't know what to think, I almost didn't know who I was speaking to. The joke between us kids was that the boy wasn't really autistic at all, he just didn't want to speak to dad. hehe.

...So how do I feel when he tells me today that he is now teaching at Murrami school? I'm not sure. Apparently he's teaching a couple of different things, maths and english as I remember it. He's doing it a couple of days a week, but I really think that's amazing, that he, a man turning 60 soon, can turn around and dramatically surprise his children like that. Ten years ago, I really could not see him making one of these choices, let alone two (and how many more to go?)... I just wanted to say here, to make it clear to both you and to myself that I am really proud of him.


cheers dad!


I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I wasn't a very good farm kid. I was much more interested in reading our quite impressive array of encyclopaedias. One of those is a 'do it yourselfers' almanac kinda thing, with step-by-step instructions of how to do all sorts of things from building pergolas to toy boats to ...well, you get the jist I'm sure...and I remember seeing in it instructions on how to make your own Tiki head garden ornaments out of a wet sand mould and concrete.
The Tiki's (aPolynesian god) are (or have become?) a representation of the creative masculine force in us all, (note to self: is there a female version?) so it's fitting for anyone who suspects they have an artist sneaking around inside somewhere to let them out by producing (via a painting or drawing or sculpture or what-have-you) ..a Tiki.

...And today that is just what I have done. I have never concreted anything before, I have never purchased concrete mix. But today I did that and made a wet-sand mould (with the invaluable [depending on quality of the final work] assistance of a 2 Litre milk bottle) and made possibly the first of many Tiki's. I carved the date and my initials into the back of it, and pressed three coins, a New Zealand 10c, an Australian 10c and a Fijian 10c. So, theoretically, it's at least worth 30c. ~(:^D)

The notion of the Tiki also fits well into my appreciation of a good cocktail and a heady lashing of lounge music too.


The biggest problem for me right now is that I have to gather all the self control I can not to disturb the setting Tiki. It's like a cake in the oven... something inside me keeps running back to it and seeing how it's going. I have to leave it for like 4 DAYS the cure tho. Holy shit, how am I meant to manage that?
...again, more questions than answers.

While writing this, I have just watched and enjoyed 21 grams...another great movie.

...Till then, gentle reader,
.....I bid you adieu.

.: nine :....The empire strikes banksy


Just found this in todays Sydney Morning Herald.... excellent stuff

_____________________


'Museum fails to smell a rat
By Vikram Dodd in London
April 10, 2004


Doubtless it is a publicity stunt, but is it also art?

A graffiti artist called Banksy smuggled his latest work, a dead rat in a glass-fronted box, into the Natural History Museum in London, where it was exhibited on a wall for several hours.

Staff did not notice that the rat was out of place amid the museum's usual fare of dinosaur bones and artefacts from the animal kingdom.

The rat was stuffed and clad in scaled-down wraparound sunglasses, and had a rucksack on its back and a microphone in one paw. A miniature spraycan sat at its feet, while above it was sprayed in graffiti-style lettering "our time will come".

The piece, called Banksus Militus Ratus, was displayed with a text that said the common sewer rat had some remarkable new characteristics.

"Attributed to an increase in junk food waste, ambient radiation and hardcore urban rap music these creatures have evolved at an unprecedented rate." It quotes a bogus university professor as saying: "You can laugh now . . . but one day they may be in charge."

Banksy is believed to have disguised himself as a museum worker to glue the case to a wall.

Banksy is known for his graffiti art around London, and some of his works sell for thousands of pounds.

His manager, Steve Lazarides, said museum visitors liked the rat exhibit and one staff member had thought it was genuine.

Last year Banksy, real name Robert Banks, said not getting caught was part of the buzz.

"The art to it is not getting picked up for it, and that's the biggest buzz at the end of the day because you could stick all my shit in the Tate Modern and have an opening with Tony Blair and Kate Moss on Rollerblades handing out vol-au-vents and it wouldn't be as exciting."

The Guardian'

_____________________

...more after dinner [chicken fettucini]

.: eight :....one Easter, hold the frenzy please


hello. It's Easter Friday and I've nudged my way into working again, which is cool as I had things to do in here and I knew full well that there would be very few call (there have been none and I have 20mins to go).


"Easter is named after the pagan goddess Eostre (Latin: Oestre), an Anglo-Saxon maiden-goddess of fertility. The "Oestre" name in Latin apparently derives from the Greek, and has it's roots in a word that means "frenzy." We see this word again in English in "estrus," meaning a female mammal 'in heat' and able to conceive, and there we see the meaning behind the "frenzy" definition."

Today is day 4 with no nicotine. I feel good, I feel like I'm on the way up. Day two I spend feeling pretty depressed about nothing in particular (I found this also happened on day two of the last time I gave up smoking, about 18months ago), and as I mentioned previously, I have been dreaming vividly. Last night I dreamt that one of my friends had died on an ice-skating rink of some sort of heart defect. My dreams are not so much the actual events, but the repercussions, the conversations, having to tell people that he had died.

Where does this stuff come from, and more importantly, can it be sent back. As much as a dream like that can really ruin the next day, I'm really glad to be dreaming.


.... a couple of new blogs today that I'd like to share with you :

• die puny humans


• Geisha asobi blog


• the null device

enjoy.... see you soonly.

I'm going home to write some strange music.

au reviour!

.: seven :....oh gods be spanked, I'm becoming addicted to not smoking !@%&*

today is my rostered day off. I worked Sunday you see, which isn't as bad as it may sound... I had only 3 calls, one of them from a manager asking if there had been any calls for his particular client and another two simple ones from a lady in New Zealand. See... easy. I did some work for this frontline management course I have undertaken through work. It's ok too, there's a lot of psychology in management I find.


The day before (often known as Saturday) I went to the Macquarie centre and bought a nice new fish tank for work (this one is large and plastic, I can't vouch for the durability of the 'old' one [don't want to come in and have to clean up 40L of dirty fish water AND explain to my manager how I'm going to replace a few thousand dollars worth of computer equipment])... it's a bit larger than I thought it was, but i think that's better than being too small. I ducked into work quickly after buying it (work is just down the road from the shopping centre) and quickly set it up, then went into the city for an afternoon of beer, pool and eating steak with my friend Link. I smoked a few cigarettes too, although as I'm writing this I have had no nicotine whatsoever for about 36hrs (that includes nicobate gum), so that's good.

I actually surprised how much I wanted a cigarette on Sunday morning... damn those things are stupidly addictive. The novelty is over, time for them to go. As I've been saying to people : cigarettes just aren't making me seem as cool as I thought they would.


Oh yeh, I lost my debit card Saturday too, so i'm running on empty for (according to the bank guy who I spoke to to order a new card) at the latest the 19th. That's 12 days. Of course, technically I can get money... I'm not going to starve to death, but it's an interesting experiment to play with yourself.

This is linked I guess to my previous post (all those months ago), I have this preoccupation with life needing to feel real. I'm not sure if I can explain that more clearly : I'll try....

When I lived in Wagga, things just seemed more vibrant, time passed more slowly, my senses seemed more alive (well, most of the time). I was earning less money, had no car, but life was good. Now it seems to meld from typical day to typical day... and like some of my other friends, I spend the weekend trying to recover from the week. To quote Office Space : "we're not meant to live our lives this way!".


I've just come back from a nice walk along some bush trails in my area and found myself analysing how and when I use different senses while at work:

• sight : limited focus length (at a computer screen) ~ part of the job
  
• hearing : listening to customers and managers and colleagues ~ part of the job
  
• touch : inanimate objects (kbd, mouse), occasionally someone with come up and play with my hair.
  
• taste : when I have lunch, or a cup of tea, coffe or a snack during a break.
  
• smell : when I have lunch, or a cup of tea, coffe or a snack or a walk outside or in the atrium during a break.
  

...Both smell and taste are never used in the course of my work, and touch is usually only of inanimate objects. Even if we give touch the benefit of the doubt, I'm only using half of my senses during my working day. It doesn't sound so strange that I've started growing flowers at home, having remedial massage and enjoying cooking. I'm being starved of sensory input.


I had a second massage on Wednesday evening. I can still feel the difference a week later. Magic. I plan to go again in two or three weeks.


I had a dream last night that my gf of a couple of years ago, JM and I were having coffee and cake and talking of getting back together. It felt sweet, uplifting. But I woke up, and she wasn't here. I still miss her quirky insights.
I'm the only one of the three of us living in this house who is single. It's lonely for sure... but there's always a flip side... (no matter how horribly practical it is), I'm spending more time on my art and music, and I'm crawling ever closer to being debt free, it may still take 18 months or so, but things will be amazing when that time comes. I'm going to reward myself with a holiday I think. The grand plan after that would at this stage probably be looking towards a deposit for a house, although I'm keeping my eyes on the news re: interest rates and the housing situation in Sydney, by that stage it may be time for a move elsewhere, although I like that there is always something happening in Sydney, although do I like WHAT is happening?.
I guess seeing myself make statements like that only reaffirms that I possible don't yet have a well-formed overview of Sydney yet. I've been here for what? 5 years now? I've lost count.

plug. plug. I stumbled across the blog of dazelie...and I think you should read it.

...That's about enough of my ranting at the moment. I hope this finds you well.


...more soon.