iMac Frustration Causes Singapore Man To Go Out For Beer.

My iMac.

Fuck. I shake my head. Really. It is for superficial people, designed by people who were only concerned about the appearance of its features, not their functions, not thinking through about what people would want them to do.

(I am talking about the default programs here, not those brought in by smart, cafe-latte drinking, socially concerned, Moleskine scribbling, third-party people.)

~~~~~~~~

OK, I have found a way to put Dashboard widgets onto the main screen so that my clock, calendar, iTunes control, local weather report, and address book are all there, all the time. (Well the trick works OK in one direction, not so much in the other.) Like the Google Desktop Sidebar, like the Microsoft Sidebar for Windows. I don't have to click or press a key - the large clock is always there, ticking away. How hard can be it be?

So I look at the large date ticker on the iCal widget, click on it. Out slides a monthly calendar with today's date highlighted. I click again and out slides a list of today's appointments, if any. What about tomorrow? Nope, it won't highlight any other date than today. I can't check whether my schedule is busy on any other days. So I need to open iCal itself. Can I do that from the iCal widget? No.

They never thought of that when then spent hours getting the shiny black surface looking just right. I have to go to my Dock thingummy and find iCal to open it! How useless is that iCal widget except as a piece of eye-candy? Fuckers!

The default iTunes widget. If iTunes is off, will it turn iTune on? No. I click on the invisible Info button and the widget does a cool flip around to show a "Select Playlist" function. Does it actually allow me to select my playlists? No. They don't exist according the iTunes widget. I have to start iTunes and find my playlists from the Dock and from iTunes itself. Can I *start* iTunes from the iTunes widget? Are you kidding, No-ho! Of course NOT! That might actually be useful! All the widget does is allow me to pause, change volume, repeat and shuffle and select next and previous in the current playlist. I have to have iTunes running first, at the same time, if I want to do anything like change who I want to listen to.

The bland grey Address Book widget needs me to type an initial letter before it does anything, which is to drop down the list of all my contacts. Are they arranged by the first letter I typed? No. The letter has to be somewhere in the person's file, is all. The last contact I selected used remains selected even if it doesn't have the letter in the name I typed, which is really confusing. Why? Like I said, because maybe that letter is somewhere in that person's address or their email. Type another letter and it narrows the field, but not in a way you'd expect. Typing "t o" brings up a blogger mate who is filled under "Spike" for example, because his email is "hongkieTOwn@###.com"... Weird. When you do have a contact selected, you can click through all other contacts. Well let's face it, the parent Address Book is a boring and dull application anyway.

The Clock widget. Why not iClock? You can set regional times, but you can't set an alarm from the widget. OK the default clock on Windows Sidebar is pretty lame as well, so I won't get into that aspect of it all. But I want a reminder/alarm function. I can only do it by going to iCal (manually of course) and setting up an appointment, not through the clock function! How shitty is that? WTF?

I have downloaded a third party calendar application from the dudes at iSlayer that works OK, but still doesn't have an alarm. There are quite a few REALLY neat one for Windows, but the list of clocks for iMac is pathetic. To get an alarm, I have to download another clock widget.

~~~~~~~~

Also my Mighty Mouse will not scroll unless the sidebar is at the bottom of a page. It will then only scroll up, but when the idnicator is at the top, it will not scroll down. I kid you not.

Tofo!

Fuck it, I'm going out for a beer...

E@L

(As I am typing this, the beast, like the id monster in Forbidden Planet, seems to sense I am writing about it, and the keyboard locks up for no reason...)

[Addendum - after five beers, three white wines and a Knob Creek and three episodes of Battlescar Tallactica, came home and re-checked this post. My, I had a big visit from the Typo Fairy there didn't I? That's because I composed that post in Google Docs, which like 99.99% of everything in this non-BG universe is a piece of shit. Most of the day I spent trying to link my OneNote files automatically to GoogleSites. Not gonna work. Think I'll need to get a pirate of MS Sharepoint somewhere. Fucking Windows.]

Pseudoscience Gets Me Riled - I Won't Apologize Again.

Ben Goldacre has just written a nice little piece on those who deny the HIV/AIDS connection, and my blood started to boil - in support of him, of course.

Why?

My feet still hurt, alright? After several years the pain has not gone away despite surgery, orthotics, deep-muscle massage and stretching exercise to relieve nerve impingement, despite prostate-strangling mind-numbing drugs (two months of the Cymbalta poison was all I could handle!) - well, they are better than they were thanks to the drugs - but they continue to give me trouble.

But, no, emphatically NO, I will not see a homeopath.

Homeopathy is dangerous. It kills people. "New(actually "old")age" medicine in general kills people. The arguments behind many popular pseudoscientific ideas have caused wars and incited otherwise preventable carnage. The oversimplifications and unprovable "logic" of anecdote have provided lunatic adherents with sufficient confusing verbiage to pollute the thinking of otherwise rational people. I hate it, hate them.

Enough, already.

I will not tolerate it. Homeopathy is up there with the HIV/AIDS refuters, with Holocaust deniers, with Mormons knocking on my door offering autographed 1st editions of Ayn Rand's ravings.

Go away!

I reserve the right to get angry and righteous (in the Pulp Fiction sense) if you mention it again, and I will not apologize...


E@L


(OK, it's just people in general that I hate. Pass me my Schopenhauer, I need a laugh.)

[Addendum: Actually, as homeopathy posits that the less you have of something the greater is its effect - a sort of new-age inverse square law - by having none of it, I should obtain infinite benefit!]

Yoghourt* Prices Trigger More Expat New Years Whinging

Milk glut? Farmers ploughing their dairy cows back into the soil as fertilizer? Milk run-offs polluting the drinking water in starving nations?

Not seeing it here in Singapore where my all-time favorite Victorian Jalna pot-set vanilla yoghourt still costs around SGD$9.60(AUD$9.42) for a 500g tub in the one or two supermarkets (Tanglin is one, natch) where you can find it here. The same tub on the virtual shelves of Safeway supermarket in Geelong is about $3.82($3.75).

Ah, the kick in the teeth we expats take on a daily basis just to get out taste buds around something like our home country quality. Supermarkets here perform merely a cheeky lip-service to the needs of the elite 'foreign talent' such as myself - witness the way Vegemite comes and goes from the shelves, the fact that there are only 217 types of flat-bread available, rather than the ASA mandatory 432. And don't we raise our eyebrows over the restricted range of Trail Mix or salad dressings? Just try to find a nice slice of ox-tongue when you need it most! Supercilious, indeed they are to our needs. An Aussie has to keep an ear out and an eye open for special gossip of the supply ship coming in as we spend our days wandering through Tanglin Mall looking for something 'Oriental' to send home to the family. It can really get up your nose.

~~~~~~~~~

And where have the soap and powders of my clean, non-sweaty dreams gone? I merely WANT Pears transparent soap, but I really NEED Dettol Daily Talcum Powder (SAFETY WARNING: do not use the Menthol version on scrotal regions!). With Dettol's perfect level of 9% zinc active-ingredient, I can rest (or be active) assured that I will not get great clumps of off-white clag adhering to my ball- and arse-hairs (as happens with 15% zinc powders) nor will an irritating anti-social rash develop in the crease of my lap-areas during the course of my 99% humidity day. Experienced expat men of the sweaty, groin-rash-prone variety know this, or they certainly learn it eventually the hard way.

Whispers in the post-golf shower room, mutterings in the club over snooker and gin-tonics - someone notices a certain gait, recognizes the wide-stanced symptom of a fellow traveller. Some high zinc concentrate powder (15%) in the acute phase, or even a some nappy-rash creme... A new brand of underwear is required - many swear by latex and recommend the pricey American ones, but M&S (when their freaking underpants ship comes in to dock) may have cheaper alternatives in stock. Some are happy with loose boxers, but I am not of that party. But once that red groin-crease of horror is under control, a 9% powder is required to maintain a rash-free, clag-free sexual recreation territory. In HK I found that Amiens, an American brand, in selected pharmacies, was perfect. Then after two months, knowing I needed it and being bastards, they refused to restock. Eventually I found Dettol (UK brand). Although it is an ESSENTIAL part of my life in the heady tropics, is also not available in most supermarkets or pharmacies in Singapore. Talcum powder, they think in these parts, is soft and gentle for babies' bums or lavender-scented to mask old grannies' incontinence.

No, I swear, talc is for REAL MEN! With real issues. But often I cannot get the zinc I need! I stock up when I can, but people look at you funny when you travel across the island to buy six shakers of talc...

I have some of those other brands of course, packed away in my toiletries cupboard. They were purchased in extremis and under suffrage, and they are rubbish, tripe, they make me puke, they are shite, useless, a failure in the provision of the service the proffer to deliver, etc,...

Ok ball-rash digression over, back to yoghourt.

~~~~~~~~

E@L, why, Falstaffian fellow, you tactfully ask, do you go for the Premium Creamy tub rather than the Low Fat? Other than the fact that one is rich, firm and luscious and the other is unavailable? Why do I not select from the the plethora of other yoghourt brands instead of hunting for my delicious Jalna (nurtured in the green valleys of the mighty Yarra)? Why do I not compromise and go for cheaper stuff like Marigold and,... and, yuck, whatever.

Dear reader, E@L replies, did you not read the bit above about "rich, firm and luscious"? Other yoghourts are like some form of liquid plastic by comparison; artificially thickened and festering with bad chemicals like,... like, yuck, whatever. I eschew them, they are too,... too, like, yuck, chewy.


Nutritional Comparison

Jalna Low Fat - "Energy": 441kj/100g, Fat/100g: 2.0g, Sugar/100g 14.2
Jalna Premium - "Energy": 520kj/100g, Fat/100g: 4.6g, Sugar/100g: 12.0

There you go, bugger all difference really. I only use two scoops (maybe 60g) in my mixed fruit and muesli breakfast. So I am saving in sugar (getting heaps of carbs from the fruit anyway) and increasing the calorific total by only about 30kj.

A little bit more fat, but that's what Lipitor is for, right?


E@L

(*Yes, I know there's an alternative (i.e. non-Australian) spelling, but I am an Australian, so get fucked.)

(Oops, just realised that my GMail timezone does not carry over to Blogger. Fixed, I hope.)

GMail On GoSlow?

Anyone else finding GMail is on a crawl and has been for several weeks? Is there an extended DoS going on? I deleted most of my large unnecessary (aka porn) files (thanks T!) so that's not it.

Other things are working fine - my Audible downloads are charging through at 250KB/s.

E@L

New Years Revolutions

One year turns around into another, yeah? So what? It's that I'm getting dizzy is what. Can we slow this turntable down to 33.3333333RPM, please?

200andfreaking9? What happened there? I was planning to big-time it for 1999 just the other, the other... I can't find a suitable descriptor for the time period I'm talking about here. The other awareness point... Last crisis... Shit, whenever.

It's a whizz, a spin, a flurry, a rush, a charge, all a bit too much, this continual progression of the NOW. This eternal transience. This everlasting ephemerality. And the tickers tick over to another digit in the 21C as we sip on champagne in a Jacuzzi in Bukit-Timah. And unlike Catch22's Dunbar, trying to get bored to make time last longer, the exquisite boredom of having too much interesting stuff to do which seems to take forever only makes my life spin even faster.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thought in a taxi (driver nodding his head continually: bob bob bob) - when religious people say that we atheists lack spirituality, I get the impression that they really mean that without god there would be no *romance* in their lives. They are afraid to live without love, everyman's touch of the metaphysical. Which is fair enough. As if god was the sole source of that. As if they were afraid or embarrassed (it's not tough) to accept that goodness, justice and love can have a HUMAN source, just as hate and stupidity do as well. As if people weren't enough.

So OK, sorry, back to the point - there's no real, like, SEXUAL romance in my life. Currently. But there is drama... And plenty and plenty of love. By Darwin, I am swamped by those that love me.

I'm doing OK. Keeping on, convinced of my contribution, satisfied that my weaknesses aren't all that bad in the greater scheme of things, pleased that my efforts are appreciated, surprised that my vices haven't killed me yet.

Just doing it all as an older man than I was.

E@L

Music Shuffle Thing AGAIN...

Do the shuffle thing with your music machine... yada yada, you know the story.


IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
Need You Tonight: INXS (Like the taxi driver saying tonight, "You need girl?")

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Dollars And Cents: Radiohead

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
My Heart Belongs To You: Hayley Westenra

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Tolerance Levels: Hilltop Hoods

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Hunter: Bjork

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Mornington Crescent: Belle and Sebastian

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
Poison Arrow: ABC

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
After The Rain Has Fallen: Sting

WHAT IS 2+2?
Ulysses "With A Gentle Finger He He Felt Ever So Slowly The Hair Combed Back Above His Ears": James Joyce (audiobooks count, yeah?)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Angel Of Harlem: U2

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Suffragette City: David Bowie

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
A Space Boy Dream: Belle And Sebastian (Again? I haven't even heard this!)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
It's In Our Hands: Bjork

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Nothin': Robert Plant & Alison Kraus

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
You Shook Me All Night Long: AC-DC


(From the flatmate on Facebook)

Current number of songs, etc... on the iPod: a measly 4,652.

E@L

Burger? Go Grill'd...

We went out for a very nice hamburger in Melbourne last week, not so much because we are especially huge-meat eaters, but because one of my son's schoolmates did the distinctive thematic art work (unsigned and unacknowledged) on the website, on the menus and on the walls. They continue the cute naivete he has always had - I even recognized his style from some of the notes and sketches my son had in the house 12 or so years ago.

Grill'd.

It tries to be very trendy and emo (whatever that means) - and has had some mixed reviews but I certainly enjoyed my Bada Bing! Burger as it was spicy and not too meaty. I hate those huge burgers so thick that they taste like a they have been made with the bloodied sawdust from the butcher's floor...

The chips were good though some had been triple fried, or even more.

~~~~~~~~

Anyway - off for a martini.

E@L

Phew! Now I Can Rest Easy...

Nearly half of Americans believe that heaven is open for all good people, no matter WHAT their religion - even entrenched godless atheists like

E@L

Addendum: Oh hang on, they said GOOD people!...

Post Xmas

With the day finally finished, the mad, hectic 'organization' of it all over, guests gone, most of the dishes done, but the dining table(s) still arrayed with sparkling green, deep-red and silver bunting, still taunting with erect candles and their gothic veniform drippings, some forgotten half-empty bowls of gravy, cranberry sauce, sugar… E@L comes in from a few minutes in the back-yard and sits for a final drink. A softie, dry ginger. Jeff Buckley's arrangement of 'Halleluiah' is playing softly in the background.

The general run of the benevolent hereditary sarcasm that had peppered the day with shouts of laughter and with raised eyebrows, winks, smiles, smirks and guffaws, had ballooned everybody's mood.

Cries of "Nice one, Gordon" and protestations of "Now look here, Ramsay," only generate a "Get the fuck out of my fucking kitchen," response to the chattering ladies. The F-Word comes to the kitchen again.

If it isn't Gordon Ramsay, it's Nigella, or sometimes a mix of the two that the self-proclaimed sous-chef (under mum) of the day is channeling. That someone approaches the crowd around the cheese and pre-dinner drinks table and states, "Now I want you to know love you all, you are my special darlings, but if anyone touches the oven temperature again, they are fucking dead, OK?"

Yes, Gordon cooks Nigella's semolina-bruised roast potatoes in lard, and this year he is determined to get it right. Even if it means swearing in front of mum!

And the jokes and laughs continue. Luckily the one non-family guest is a comedian by trade and falls easily into the taunting and cross-table conversations.

Adrenalin and coffee, beer, champagne cocktails (just Moet and Cointreau), a Brown Bros Pinot Grigio, a Mt Edelstone Shiraz, a quick hit of bronchospasm inducing back-yard cricket - yowser, over the fence E@L, 6 and out!

And so E@L was firing on all cylinders. Who knows, who remembers where he went, whom he ran down on the way…?

And so here he records a hodge -podge of snippets - no apologies for mis-hearings, mis-quotations, grammatical and artistical corrections or even outright inventions - it's all for the blog hits!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Ignatius Loyola as a childhood hero? What, was Torquemada not an option?"

"Tribute!"
"Allusion!"
"Homage!"
"Rip-off!"
"Plagiarism!"

"Why are the heterosexual couples just living together and all the gays and lesbians trying to get married?"

"So, whatever happened to 'Nature Boy' across the road?"
" 'Nature Boy'?" - comedian b-f does a fairly good impersonation of The Toxic Avenger… (He'd already popped some plastic laurel leaves around his brow and set his face into a mask of divine acceptance and forgiveness for a fairly good Jesus Of The Sacred Heart… His next routine will be a Family Christmas Lunch for sure.)

"But aren’t you a pilot?"
"Haven’t you been paying attention for the last 20 years? What am I everybody?"
"Radio-ologistical, X-ray-sound, or something…?"
"But you're always talking about travelling, I thought you were a pilot."
"Yeah, so the only person in a plane is the pilot."
"Well, you could be a hostie!"

"I think there's too much sarcasm." Said seriously.
"I don’t think there's enough." Said with a straight face.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All happy Christmases are the same, and we love repeats of a good TV series, of a good movie, of a successful day, but an unhappy Christmas is very unusual round here. But they can happen, for some.

After all the personality peccadilloes have been dissected and the accusers in their turn accused and demolished - all in the good family fun of character assassination - with mixed emotions and bloated, churning stomachs, people start to head off home.

However a flatness descends after one or two words are spoken amongst the last ones standing (or sitting), not so much in accusation as in disappointment, about a certain character trait. True words, plainly spoken, in response an outrageously provocative taunt, but with no veneer of sarcasm to make them easily laugh-off-able, with a hint of bitterness and suppressed anger that just makes one wonder what happened to the pleasant ferocious sarcasm of just a few minutes ago. Ouch, E@L takes a hit - a cartoon in his Christmas present book: 'hey, kids, these are real arrows!' Revenge? Bitterness, was it?

Inter-family barbs can scratch and tear with their sarcasm, but to the thick-skinned it is all merely a series of tickles, however one special person still has the ability to injure... Not everyone heard it, no-one comments, it was part of a general multi-voice chorus, perhaps it wasn't meant to be taken so seriously after all.

But suddenly a rent in the balloon of mood has brought E@L out of his personal stratosphere… and when the air is out, it is out…

~~~~~~~~~~~~

And so E@L, who obviously can give it but can't take it, lies supine, flat on a bench in the dark and waits, facing up, letting his eyes adjust to the backyard at night. The sky is clear above and the moon not yet risen. A swathe of stars cuts across the canopy. Immensely far away. So fucking BIG. How BIG is this universe? How long would it take for him to go there, to see that little speck of twittering light up close, to have proof that it is actually a mind-numbingly immense roaring furnace, a relentless energy factory that has been churning up hydrogen and spitting out helium and all the low mass atoms for billions of years. But it is just a dot from here, a dot that can only be seen when someone bothers to find a dark yard at night and to look up. An immensely powerful thing, massive, for all intents eternal. If it came closer it would fry all our lives, swallow the entire planet, crush our solar system, no disaster movie would be big-enough, yet no-one knows or cares about this star. "Now" here is 900 years ago there. It has no impact on how we live today, on how we get our roast potatoes crisp.

Yes that giant star by Orion, it is Rigel, or Aldebaran? E@L always gets them mixed. He looks away, toward the Seven Sisters, but slightly off center, to see these soft muses more clearly.

How large it all is. And of course, how small is E@L in this broiling cold emptiness of the universe. What impact is anyone making on any of this? What could it possibly matter?

E@L comes inside, pulls out a dry ginger to washes down his medications - nerve growth, pain relief, arterial relaxation, inflammation suppression, cholesterol inhibition, anti-histamine - and sits at the incompletely cleared table.

His mother wanders past on her last trip to the toilet. She gives him a hug and kiss goodnight.

"Thank you darling, you did a marvellous job today."

"Yeah, but I was too loud. Why do I always shout and carry on when I get excited? I can say the nastiest things."

"Oh, don't be silly. You were terrific, it doesn't matter. Everybody loves you."

E@L sighs. All mums say that. (Well, they should.)

It is late, he is tired. The universe doesn’t sleep - matters of stellar matter that don’t matter need to keep on doing meaningless powerful things on a cosmic scale, they have no option but to continue what they started back at the dawn of time - but E@L must ponder deep trivialities and try to sleep…

~~~~~~~~~~

Have a fucking nice one everybody.

E@L

[Addendum - slept like a log...]

Wensleydale? Yes? Good, I'll have some Wensleydale! No, I'm MR Wensleydale!

My goodness gracious me, but life is a bundle of busy-ness these solisistic type days, isn't it shoppers?

No time to blog - too busy with the catching up and eating and drinking with people schtick... (Don't ask about the golf.)

BTW - next time you're in Melbourne, don't hesitate to spend a coupla hundred bucks here - the website is terrible, but the girls in the fromagerie are great fun and Jeeeeeezes the cheeses, they are just utterly... The runny epoisses, OMFG!

Don't forget to remind them that "de gustibus non est disputandum" and they'll know E@L did send you thither...

E@L

O minus 5hr 59 mins 5sec

Get ready for a worldwide YES! YES!! YES!!! It's Global Orgasm Day!

Mark Your Calendars
This year we’re synchronizing in the two-hour period around
the Solstice, which falls on Sunday December 21 at 12.04 p.m.
(four minutes after noon) Greenwich Mean Time. So in the U.K., Global-O time will be from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

For those of us in Eastern Summer Tume in Australia, that'd be between 11pm and 1am. ("Wake up honey, it's time we had an orgasm!") For Singapore, 9pm till 11pm, much more reasonable!

Tell your friends to stock up on tissues and hand-cream and to find a good free porno site, it's the day that brings out the GEE! in G-spot!

Focus world orgone energy on peace, unity and underpantsing! All together now! Ooooh, YES!

(big tip to Batbitch)

E@L

What If... ?

Around the Christmas table in E@L Mother'sHQ, this question has never arisen. Lot's of thing don't arise around Chistmastime - the dead (that would be Easter), my cousins and his kids who are lying on the couch after eating way too much when a game of backyard cricket is proposed (see above re: raising of the dead), my sense of humour above the waistline - but some things DO arise. The question of what happened to the Harry Belafonte Christmas Tape for example. No amount of searching through the cupboard drawers and those spider-webbed cardboard boxes in the garage (you wonder where I got my hoarding of books thing?) can bring this cassette to light. Why? Has it been hidden? Has it been stolen?

It's one of the many mysteries of this special time of year.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Ghost Cat is another. Mystery.

Why won't people drink my Christmas Cocktail (with freshly pureed peaches)! Mystery!

How to put more plastic cutting wire into the Wipper-Snipper. Mystery!!

Why, after I bought my mother a new outdoor setting with seating for 12 two Christmases ago and yet she has me repainting the old one (which falls apart under the threat - multiple joint failure - and must be reconstructed by DIY E@L and TBIL's WarStrength power drill)? Mystery!!! (The aching back is no mystery.)

E@L

Sleeping Around

I estimate that I've stayed in 40 or so different hotels for work trips in the last 18 months. Round it up, maybe more like 50 or even slightly more, as some of the trips may have involved moving from town to town, night by night. I sort of keep track, via expense reports and work schedules but sometimes the dealer-company pays directly so I don’t have any expense, therefore no record. Anyway, point being that sleeping around has put me in a bit over two new beds each month.

Unfortunately, due to the bad feet, foot operation, foot medication, mojo falling, etc… most if not all would have been just E@L in the bed. (It's been a baaaaaad year. I'd put my golf/sex ratio as positive, and I've not played much golf at all. Guess what my New Years Resolution is going to be: a lot more sex, because I can hardly play much less golf!) Whatever.

Last year, William Gibson on his blog showed a montage of photos from one of his book tours - Spook Country I believe (not a fan of this book - the persistent product placements [a parody maybe] put me off after page not many.) The blog, it was cool though, just lots of plain photographs of the beds he slept in on his tour, arranged symmetrically in a largish matrix. He was only in each town one night, so he quickly got a significant portfolio going there. So I thought I'd try it, even though I usually stayed 4-6 nights in the same hotel each trip and would not approach the size of Gibson's montage for a quite a while.

I started in earnest in July '07 but got pretty pissed with the tedious concept eventually, as I kept forgetting to take a picture just often enough to make it all seem a bit of a fizzler. Also, as my camera doesn't do a very wide-angle shot, I could not always stand directly at the end of the bed and get the nice symmetrical shots that Gibson could. Some have my briefcase is on the bed, which was what Gibson did, and some have my suitcase, and in some the beds are unmade. Whatever.

So tonight, on holidays in Geelong, getting ready to write my annual list of 10 New Things for 2008, I pulled all of the bed shots together: not so bad really. I've got, what, 15 - 16 beds, about a third of the possible number. There's a 4x4 matrix practically done, or however Blogger pulls them up. (There may be more bed pics in my iPhone, which I didn’t bring with me, as no 3G.) Checking through the pics I have on this laptop and in my camera, in preparation for uploading, I notice that four of the hotel-beds are from the one trip to Egypt and Libya! LOL! Whatever.

Everybody's gotta have a hobby. No crime in that. Mine is sleeping around.

E@L

p.s. GingerNuts, the freaking Ghost Cat, has returned from places metaphysical to my mother's house in order to piss yet again in my old bedroom and piss me off! I nearly choked on the ammonia fumes last night as I went in order to go to bed, I swear by all that is profane, you have no idea, I kid you not, spooky mystic weird! I have moved to my sister's old room.

A Job Well Done

My camera offers no solutions to this flood;
I offer images of only what floats past.
My feet are on the ground but it is mud.
The difference between loose and fast
Is obvious to some.

If I paint these mocking pictures (if I was a painter)
What more or less would you expect of me?
If a singer of political songs, must I sing them fainter?
The difference between blind and won't see
Is obvious to some.

So I write my words and string them in a poem
They take up space not on paper, but on screen
Because they no longer can find in print a home.
The difference between heard and seen
Is obvious to some.

Journalist I am not, no politician's mate.
The canary's job is to drop dead - it's a token
Of his contribution - it is more than fate.
But there are no answers when questions are left unspoken
Even that is obvious to some!

E@L



This pathetic poetical excursion was inspired by the mrbrown affair, something that still haunts the Singapore blogosphere, the way the reaction to Osip Mandelstam's poem tells us so much about Stalinist Russia. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3

Quotes from Hope Against Hope:

Was it just coincidence that none us ever broke the rules of Soviet etiquette? M. [Mandelstam] for example, didn't observe them at all. He had no self-control - he joked, shouted, hammered on closed doors, raged and fumed and never ceased to express astonishment at what was going on around us. P289

"Stalin doesn’t have to cut heads off," said M. "They fly off by themselves like dandelions." P301

Ouch, That Really Hertz! The "Benefits" Of #1 Club Gold

After surviving the blistering heat of Brisbane and the town's "interesting" streetlife on Saturday night (I only went out to get a small plate of sushi [another story] and nearly died [of embarrassment, at being an Australian]!), I went up to the Hertz counter to rent a car at the airport in chilly old Melbourne when I arrived last night. Before signing up for anything I checked the breakdown of costs. The Airport Commission's tax on renting from there would have added $240 to the total cost of rental, which was already $1200, so, what did I do? I took a $60 taxi ride to my son's place. What is this, a stupid face?

Sunny morning Monday, but still chily, I connect to Hertz.com to book from online; I'll take a car from downtown Melbourne, thanks, another $30 taxi ride (or $4 on the train - North Richmond station is right outside my son's flat). I choose an Aurion. The total cost for the 14 days is calculated at only $502. Woah, lucky I didn't take one at the airport, eh?



Then, when the automated form asks for my details, I realise that I haven't logged in as a #1 Club Gold customer to receive any and all those exceptional benefits and discounts that are continually on offer and make the $60USD annual membership such an essential expenditure for any smart world traveller. (end sarcasm)

Hey, let's do that. What's the worst that could happen?

THIS is the worst!



OUCH, mother of all toe-fuckers! The rental charge has jumped to $2226! J. Herman Christ, I could BUY myself a car for that! Outa nowhere, an extra $1700! Same car, same rental period! Evidence: the benefits of Hertz #1 Club Gold membership! Supremely NOT!

What the hell is going on? Three wildly different estimates for the same service.

a) I am never going to log-in again! b) I am never renting from the airport again. c) I am cancelling my Hertz membership.

It's cheaper just to book online with any old car rental company...

E@L

The Shock Doctrine, Praise The Lawd!

"It’s a wonderful time, a great evangelistic opportunity for us. When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors." (emphasis mine)
- THE REV. A. R. BERNARD, pastor of New York’s largest evangelical congregation, on the economic downturn.

Sigh.

E@L

Coincidental Quote Of The Day

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
- Charles Baudelaire

I kid you not, it be a conspiracy. I put up a cynical Baudelaire quote, The Quotations Page (actual daily quotes will have changed by the time you click on the link, obviously) puts up a cynical Baudelaire quote. Sometimes I feel like I am running this universe by example.

E@L

Heartwarming Thought For The Day

The unique and supreme pleasure of making love lies in the certitude of doing evil.
- Charles Baudelaire, Intimate Journals

E@L

The Natural (not)

So there we all were, playing Tonk at Indy's place. It took us several hands before we got the hang of the "going down" strategy, but it certainly seemed to be the best way to play the game.

- Your deal, said Mercer, handing me the pack.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was a kid at school I was lucky. Talented, smart - lucky to be brilliantly talented and smart, I mean. Counting came easy. Finger-painting was a breeze. Reading was not so much difficult as boring (until my Grade 3 teacher took me aside and introduced me to Huysman's "A Rebours" and to the marvels of the 19thC French realism; Baudelaire, Flaubert, Wilde, Dr Seuss), and my writing and English composition skills were, let's face it, exceptional. Exceptionally messy hand-writing anyway - a left-hander with the mirror of a classic right-handed grip, I dragged oceans of fresh bright blue ink across those pages of exquisite prose composition with my shirt, my fingers, my palm... I reeked of squid ink.

"the skin-diver floated through this colourful animation of glory" - from a Grade 5 piece I still recollect getting called out to read aloud. However, I was unable to explain the meaning of the word 'animation' to the class. Like cartoons, I clumsily said. I FELT the meaning, I KNEW it, but could not say it, I was too embarrassed by the attention.

Overwheeningly* proud of my left-handedness, I never compromised with that dinzy, curled, over-handed grip of some fussy molly-dookers who want to actually read what they have written (or whose mothers had berated them for ink-stained cuffs and that deeply ingrained indigo in the ball of their hands which took scrubbing with carbolic soap to eradicate). Tidy? Moi? Who gives a fuck? I dipped my pen into the open inkpot in the hole at the top of the wooden desk and smeared my way into the nun's good books with my dimpled smile and my curly white hair and my gifted compositions if not my public-speaking.

Running - I was fastest in the class, not counting the girls who had hormonal thick-thighed advantages by Yr 6.

Swimming - I was that year's Captain of the School Team which had dominated the annual splash and drown inter-school competition for unbroken stretches of time.

Cricket - as No3 batsmen (and Captain) I nearly took off the umpire/teacher's head with a straight driven 6 (still my favorite - read "only" - stroke). I opened the bowling for Grade 4 when we played against the Protestant school as well. I was taken off after only for two overs, but I opened!

Football - I was 2nd Vice-Captain of the blue team, only because the Captain, John Dangerfield, was a slightly more nimble around the packs. And he could kick. And handball. And mark. The 1st Vice-Captain took my place on the bench for the second half of the match. Still wondering about that...

Popularity - I nudged out the said JD for the Class and School Captain (boy) because he was too quiet. I was loud, cheeky and funny.

And to top it off, I was dux of the primary-school - not counting Dorothy Sheedy, who was (is still, I believe) a girl.

Yep, I was a natural. Sport, academia. You name it. Academia, sport.

But then came secondary school, where someone decided we should play cards during lunch-time...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- Your deal, said Mercer, handing me the pack.

I began to sweat.

I held the deck in my left hand and began to mix them up into groups with my right, what we card-players call shuffling, but misaligning them for some reason: this new deck was sort of sticky, or too smooth or something. I put the deck on the table, tried to cut it and do that spiffle trick where the corners of two half decks flip into each other. Four or five sections clumped together, sorta, hey, that's close enough. OK I did not reassemble the pack perfectly cleanly. It looked like I had dropped it and not bothered to align the cards to the long sides. Why did they do that? Whatever.

OK, it was THEN that I dropped it. No, sorry I only dropped half of the deck. But no damage done; after a minute or two we had all the cards back again, facing the same way this time.

Hey presto! - nothing up my sleeve except a laugh! I shuffled them again, clump, clump, just to be sure!

I dealt out the five cards to each player with a deft flick of the wrist and the cards flew straight, sorta, well, not exactly all over the place but not in the absolute direction of the person I was aiming them at either. Smugly, being able to arithmeticise my dealing so that everyone got the same (and correct) number of cards (unlike others & I was good at counting when I was young, did I mention that?), and with a minimalistic flourish (not sure if everyone saw it), I placed the rest of the pack near the centre of the table and turned over the top four, oops, one card, for the discard pile.

I looked up. Everyone was watching me with incredulous intensity.

- You are a total klutz, said Indy, slowly.

Mercer had just rolled his eyes. They seemed stuck. All white, it was weird. Lum, the fourth player (whoa actually knows the rules for Texas Hold 'Em, which we played later), was speechless.

- What? I asked.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

- These are SUCH shit cards, said Mercer after a few turns.

As we picked up from the deck in the centre with each of our turns, the discard pile magically filled with cards in numerical and suit order. Amazing how my shuffling had managed to bring them all back together.

What are the chances of that happening, hey?

You wouldn't bet on it. Unless I was the dealer.

E@L


* someone actually used this word in a pizza parlor earlier that night! (cough Mercer cough), he of the four-card deal.

ToastBox Are ToFus!

The toefucking bastards at the ToastBox in Changi Terminal 3 - yes, you skinny bastard, stop looking at me type - tried their best to fuck up my Set 1 order: kaya toast, kopi and two runny eggs.

Truly this is the lowest of the low in Kopi/Kaya chains. Owned I believe by the Food Republic group, well whomever - they should know better.

- Set 1, please
- Set 1? The lady looks at me for a second. An ang moh, ordering a breakfast set!
- Set 1.
- Wan runny egg, soft bore?
- Yes, please.
- No, soft bore?
- Runny eggs, please.
- Wat u wan drink?
- Kopi.
- Kopi?
- Kopi.
- Hokay. Fort Wenny.

I pay with $50 and she gives me change from $10. She insists that I only gave her a ten. I check my wallet, maybe I did give her a ten, but I'm wary. I'm watching you, bitch! She passes me my eggs directly over the cashier section of the counter. The eggs come in a paper cup, like ice-cream, not on a plate where you can swish them around, dig the crisp, crumbly (more dehydrated than toasted) toast into the yolk…

I move down to the kopi section and see the kopi-man moistening the bottom of the paper cup with the rich dark brew. He fills it with water, stirs vigorously and then has the audacity to pass it to me.

- Kopi? I ask.
- Kopi, lite.
- No. I want kopi, normal kopi. Fill it up to here, just a splash of water. What's this piss you are giving me?

He makes another cup, condensed milk, a long pour of kopi, a splash of hot water, stir, stir, stir. I look ferociously at him. (Did I tell everyone that I'm off the Cymbalta: everything that was serenely amusing now pisses me off majorly. Thanks, thanks - no flowers please, I'm allergic to pleasant sentiment - but it's good to be back home.)

Kopi-man looks surly back at me and passes the paper cup kopi. I mumble under my breath something along the lines of "Make what the customer ordered, tofu, not what you think he might like because of his race."

I move down to pick up my limply soft, pre-prepared kaya toast. The butter has melted. Is it even butter? I pick up the paper boxlet. There is only ONE layer of toast!

What the fuck!

These tofus have to be exposed to the world for the crimes there are committing against the Supreme Singapore/Malay/Chinese Breakfast Tradition!

E@L