tales from an ordinary world

1999-01-20

After an angstful afternoon of recompiling webserver stuff, to discover that it wasn't my fault after all, and it just plain didn't work anyway, I got it all going and escaped into the sunshine. I listened to some Pizzicato Five (one of those happy-sounding Japanese band - I really ought to learn Japanese one day...) to try and lift my spirits, and it all kinda helped - by the time I got home, I was fairly relaxed.

I've just finished rereading all my Frank Moorhouse books. There's a few I don't have yet, but in the meantime, I'll live. I remember reading about him saying something like 'the current younger generation are so angstful because they missed out on the '60s, which was the most exciting time to live". While I can't say I agree with that, I still love his work. Among many qualities, he (or some his characters, at least) seems to be one of many people who have trouble coping with the fact that they're expected to behave like adults. I share this problem :)

I also just read a new Hunter S. Thompson book called The Rum Diary, which is about a guy who goes to work as a journalist in Puerto Rico. Apparently Thompson wrote it at a fairly youngish age, before Gonzo Journalism and all that. It was fairly enjoyable, even without the rampant lunacy that one expects from him after reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or his account of the Kentucky Derby (with the help of Ralph Steadman...). Speaking of Fear and Loathing..., I saw the film a week ago at the Moonlight Cinema, aka. "come to some nice gardens, sit on the grass, and screw your back by trying to sit comfortably and see the screen at the same time". But I digress. The film was...well...I guess they did a fairly good job of making a film out of a book that's just such...utter chaos. It didn't work entirely - sometimes it seemed to get a bit lost in the mess, but there were some high points (the beginning road trip wasn't too bad, for instance).