tales from an ordinary world

1999-03-01

A manager-dude from one of the Faculties came to talk to me and a co-worker this morning. He saw all the CDs in my office, and mentioned how he used to run a record shop back in the 70's - they'd bought a CD player in 1980 (ten years before our family first got one...), and turfed a lot of records, but he still had about 500 of them, including the rare white vinyl version of the White Album, and so on. It reminded me of how one of the managery/senior systems analyst dudes at my previous job had worked as an intern and all sorts of stuff before moving into the IT industry. These days, heaps of people (like myself) go straight into the land of IT. No wonder we have no life.

The new Underground Lovers CD, Cold Feeling (apparently coined from something Ralf Hutter of legendary 70's/80's electronic band Kraftwerk had said in an interview once, describing their music) was finally out, so of course I bought it. It's great listening, although I think they could have done a bit more with it - it's a bit...sameish. I also picked up something by some Japanese guy who calls himself Cornelius and plays most of the instruments, etc. etc. but also gets a bit of help from people like Sean O'Hagan from Stereolab. If you liked Buffalo Daughter's Captain Vapour Athletes, you'll prolly like this too - it's got those odd, experimentally sort of tracks, mixed in with a few nice loud guitary ones - the shop had mentioned My Bloody Valentine as one of the similarities/influences, although I didn't quite agree.

1999-03-03

There's a dead fruit bat on the nature strip (how appropriate) up the end of the street. I must say it's looking rather flat. And all this time, when I thought I could hear bats in the night, I thought I was imagining things, or that it was possums, or cats, or something else instead. Another mystery solved ?

I don't quite know why, but I've been making so many lists this week, mostly on Post-It Notes. It made me all too aware that I rely far too much on them to remind me to do stuff. And whilst my PalmPilot is handy for taking lots of notes on, I can't stick it on the side of my wallet to remind me to do something :)

I just cleaned a surprising amount of lint off the wheels in my mouse (I never really managed to cope all that well with a trackball, even if they are more ergonomic). No wonder my pointer was jumping all over the place, I can't imagine how it would have worked at all...

1999-03-04

Stayed at the pub all night with Christian and Fiona, and drank lots of beer (but not too much, mind you - I know my limits !). Heaps of punters liked my hairdo (see new photos), including the nice old lady who owns the place, and wanders around talking to everyone. I noticed they had some St Pat's day Guinness promotion going, where you could buy a t-shirt for $15 and get a free pint. The t-shirt said "I earned my wings drinking Guinness" and had a pint with wings on the sides. There was no way I'd fit another pint in tonight, so I left it for next time I came in...

1999-03-05

Skud had her last day, since she's leaving to go and do consulting work. We did the usual pub-lunch-'cause-someone's-leaving thing, so I bought my Guinness t-shirt with free pint :) I'd run around yesterday with the card and money bag, and Nate went off this morning and bought her a nifty Logitech trackball (since she'd got one for her PC here, and was quite attached to it). Last week she'd printed some Netizen t-shirts, so I dutifully wore mine today.

1999-03-06

It's Grand Prix weekend (and Moomba, although that seems to have taken a back seat since the Grand Prix arrived in recent years). I can hear the cars at home in Caulfield, if I stand outside. You'd swear it was only a few blocks away...

I woke up early (I'd been going to sleep pretty early all week), and wandered down to St Kilda for some breakfast, but mainly 'cause I wanted to get a new bag - I'd seen some in a shop window down there a few weeks back, and I'd already wandered around the city last weekend with no luck. I ended up finally getting one, made by some mob called Crumpler who seem to be quite hip or something, 'cause lots of people seem to have their bags. But it is a rather nice bag, and it's got plenty of space and stuff - I'd looked at those kinda rectangular over-the-shoulder things, but they didn't seem big enough to hold my 50-CD case thing that I won't leave home without.

I bought 3 books to take away on holiday in a week's time - Milan Kundera's The Joke, Banana Yoshimoto's Amrita, and William Sutcliffe's Are You Experienced ?, which I heard was fairly amusing. I'm also going to finish that damn Martin Amis book (Money) and Will Self's Great Apes, both of which I started some time ago, but put aside for other things. When I went away last November, I ended up reading a whole lot of 50's stuff - Chandler, Kerouac (I finally read On The Road...) and Capote. This time I'll try and be more, uhm, modern.

Hey, I nearly forgot to mention the wonderful graffiti I saw in St Kilda. It said "sack yr shrink. hire an artist."

1999-03-07

..."no longer rushes for the icing on the cake"...Everyone used to do this as a kid. Nowadays I actually enjoy the cake more than the icing. What's going on ?

1999-03-14

I'm on holiday here in Port Fairy. With my parents, what's more. It's like I'm 14 again. I had a bit over 3 weeks of leave to use up, so I figured that spending a week of it with my parents couldn't be too bad - you kinda get on with them a bit better when you're not living with them...

I went for a walk in the evening, to sober myself up after dinner, and there was this nice old church that looked like it was in the process of being rebuilt. Cool. Maybe it's just 'cause I'm a sentimental drunk, but if there'd been a collection box out by the road I've have dropped some money in.

1999-03-15

Visited exciting Portland. The smelter, powerlines, and all that sort of stuff. But that's not all ! I picked up a brochure about a nifty-sounding mob called the Wayward Bus touring company, who do these trips (one being along the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne to Adelaide), and you can pretty much get off (and back on) where and when you like. I might have to try this sometime...

Went to the local trendy restaurant for dinner. Country towns used to be all fish and chips and pubs and meat pies (and kangaroos and holden cars ? :), but not anymore - This place was so hip, the waitresses had these huge pepper shakers. It seemed like some sort of elaborate joke (that huge ceramic penis in A Clockwork Orange, perhaps ?).

1999-03-17

Being St Pat's day and all, we went to one of the local Old Pubs, the Caledonia Inn, known affectionaly as "the stump", which has been around since about 1847 or something. I even had a chicken parma, just for Christian.

1999-03-18

We left Port Fairy, and headed off to Apollo Bay (or thereabouts). Heaps of tourists thronging about the 12 apostles and the like, but the place we stayed at near Apollo Bay, Beacon Point, was fabulous - we were way up on the hillside, with a great view of the sea, Apollo Bay, and so on. Definitely a Gin & Tonic kind of view.

Crimson Rosellas came and ate from a birdfeeder just outside the lounge window, and later that evening a wallaby came by to get his share of the birdseed. Amusingly enough, young Crimson Rosellas have green plumage (the adults are, like, bright red, with the odd bit of blue). Kinda like that line from A fish called Wanda - "don't eat the green ones, they're not ripe yet." :P

1999-03-19

The last day. I'm looking forward to coming home - I've enjoyed being on holiday, but being trapped in that nether-world of holidaying makes me feel like the boy in the bubble - observing everything from a distance, but not being a part of it.

1999-03-20

Home again. Rehabilitated myself by chucking on a Fall CD.

1999-03-26

Ballarat. We hit the pubs and after the token Irish pub, we come across the Bridge Mall Inn, which seems to be the local student bar. Bands for the night were F. S. McCracken and Insect Girl. McCracken were way into the 70's thing, with wigs, slides of Denis Walter, and K-Tel records being scratched on the turntable. They were a lot of fun. I was prolly a bit too tired to enjoy Insect Girl as much as I should have - they certainly seemed pretty good, and they seemed to pay their dues a little, with the keyboardist wearing his Stax t-shirt. They even had some guy up front of stage, blowing bubbles. He'd take a drag of his cigarette, and blow the smoke inside an opaque bubble, that would burst into a puff of smoke. Very nice...When we walked home, just around the back of the pub we found a brick rendition of Stonehenge, or so it seemed.

1999-03-27

Since we were in the town that's home to Mars (at least around these parts), I succumbed to childhood fantasies and tried a deep-fried Mars Bar. It was...well...oddly satisfying, but I think I can cope without having another one for a while. Gooey chocolatey stuff encased in greasy batter. Hrm.

Tried another pub, but ended up returning to the Bridge Mall Inn, where the door guy recognized us from last night, so we didn't have to pay the cover charge - regulars after 24 hours ! I could get to enjoy it here ;) A Bob-Dylan sing-a-like (you couldn't understand a word he said) preceded rockabilly (and such) band the Turkey Slappers, who had some new song about the Loch Ness monster.

1999-03-28

Drove past the new Eureka Stockade Centre, which looks very Jeffish...much like Jeff's Shed (aka. the Melbourne Exhibition Centre). Or perhaps that's just the style of the times ?

Tramped around Old Cemetery. Wandered through trash and trivia market (I came here in 1993 with a friend who was working at Mars...major déja vu...nothing's changed - the homemade goods, the 2nd-3rd-10th-hand books and spare parts for things you haven't seen in 15 years. A guy selling various nuts, seeds, pulses and other foodstuffs, along with free brochures on the evils of caffeine, "nuclear alert" and more. Get me out of here ! I love it and hate it all at once...

Bought a Zippo windproof lighter in Balaclava. The lighter fluid reminds me of airports...of aircraft fuel...of the time Christian and I were idly driving around on his birthday and somehow ended up at Tullamarine Airport, went up on the observation deck and it was quiet ''cause the planes had stopped flying for the night. But you could still smell it...Like Dag's story in Generation X about petrol "smelling like the future"...All these memories in a pocket-sized container. I wonder how many more it'll fit ?

1999-03-31

Is travel really the solution to everything ?

Gyu-don in the local japanese restaurant. Muzak renditions of Blue Moon and stuch. Then the girl in the supermarket admires my hair (yeah, sorry Christian, another hair story). "I really like your hair. I'd never do it myself though". "Why not ?" "My boyfriend'd kick my ass". "Everybody says that. You oughta try it." "My parents'd hate it. And my grandfather...gawd...I won't tell you what he'd do..." "Uh, ok."

I was meant to go see R.L. Burnside at the Continental tonight. Dammit. My social life needs a bit of organization. Advance planning. Yeah. Whatever.

There's a booze shop on campus now. I wish they'd open a bakery - something that might be open before 8am.

Blue moon, you saw me standing alone,
without a dream in my heart,
without a love of my own...