six impossible things

My work is open-plan and headphones are encouraged. I don’t know whether Justin Timberlake is encouraged, but I can’t see why not and he’s certainly helping the day pass more quickly. But I was listening to the “Chess” soundtrack this afternoon, and I realised that during the first song I always consciously listen for the small squeal from my original taped soundtrack, where the record button was accidentally depressed again. If I’d known I would still be listening for it fifteen years after I recorded it, I might have taken a bit more care.

Other notable tapings:

• My mum’s version of “Phantom of the Opera”, which was an audio soundtrack taped on a video tape (as the video could handle 5.1 surround sound but the stereo couldn’t)
• My brilliant idea not to have any blank tape at the end of my mix tapes, resulting in the last song being repeated and being cut off halfway through the second time (God I was an obnoxious little ingrate)
• My fascination with making covers for my mix tapes (and yet I still can’t stand scrapbooking)
• The fact that under the new copyright law being offered, creating another version of a CD/DVD you legitimately own to watch on other hardware could land you in jail.

I don’t know sometimes. I feel like grabbing a politician, any politician, by his lapels and shaking him violently, while hissing into his astonished face, “For God’s sake man, KEEP UP!”

I was not jailed for any of this.
Yes, that IS a hand listlessly cluching a flower in the long grass at the top left.
I told you. Ingrate.

Blogger wants me to change to Blogger beta. Is it any good, or no different at all? Enquiring minds want to know.

I was listening to the news bulletin the other night and it showed a kid on a stretcher being wheeled into an ambulance. As you often see on your average news bulletin. Anyway, I started listening with one ear, but I was immediately out of my depth because he was, “bitten by a snake in his narnargoo …” and I just could not get my head around it. It was all cleared up for me in the next word, making the whole phrase, “bitten by a snake at his Nar Nar Goon school,” which is slightly more comprehensible (Nar Nar Goon is a small town, for those still shaking your head) (honest it is, see?) but damn, I was off-balance the whole sentence and it was a really odd sensation. I couldn’t grasp the meaning of the words – I could hear them, but they were sliding by me and I had no comprehension. It disturbed me.

Oh yeah, and some poor kid got bit by a snake. That too.

A friend of mine rang last me last week while I was at work, and I was happily talking away when an ominous voice rang out of the ceiling: “This is a test of the automated fire alarm system. This is only a drill.” I attempted to ignore it and kept talking, but I knew my time was up. Indeed, the whooping and wailing of the fire drill seemed to be coming from directly above me … ah, there’s a speaker right over my desk. Excellent. My friend found this enormously funny and although I could hardly hear him, I think he was exhorting me to flee the building lest I meet a fiery death. I told him I’d ring him back, hung up, and forgot all about it. I’m good like that.

He rang again yesterday, to check I wasn’t consumed in flames. I wasn’t, of course, just extremely lazy. Then while we were talking, he mentioned the low-level drone he could hear in the background… oh yeah, that’s all the industrial fans running out in the stairwell. The third floor bathrooms flooded over the weekend, and overflowed down into the second floor bathrooms and then the first floor bathrooms. Typically, he found this extremely funny. Let’s see how funny it is when he has to climb several flights of stairs to use the only bathroom left, which is now as busy as Flinders Street Station (and slightly hotter and worse-smelling).

So that’s earthquakes, fire (drills) and floods in the past two weeks. THE WORLD IS ENDING. Or, to be fair, THE PART OF THE WORLD DIRECTLY SURROUNDING ME is ending. Hey, maybe I should move. Closer to YOU.

Is it wrong that I am listening to Robbie Williams’ new album, and I’m going to his concert at the end of the year, but I keep taking a break to listen to Justin Timberlake?

That IS wrong. That’s so wrong. I swear to god I’ve never listened to JT before. And there’s a song called “What Goes Around” (hint: it also comes around) and it’s about Britney and now Britney is in the news getting a divorce and I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THIS STUFF but damn, it’s like “Home and Away” but musical. Also the album is good. Hmmm, let’s further destroy my musical street cred… the iTunes on the laptop only contains the last few albums I ripped before leaving all the CDs with Mr. T. It contains:

• “Wild, Cool & Swinging” (a sort of lounge compilation)
• The Offspring “Ixnay on the Hombre” (Mr. T’s I SWEAR TO GOD)
• Robbie Williams “Rudebox” (bought & downloaded it last week)
• JT “Future Sex/Love Sounds” (ditto)
• Pet Shop Boys “Actually” (shut up)
• Guns N Roses “Appetite for Destruction” (see note for Offspring, although after years of familiarisation I actually find GnR to be soothing background music)
• Fatboy Slim “Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars” (I forgot I owned this) (and now I don’t)
• Compilation of NZ music: “Nature’s Best 2″ (there’s also 1 and 3 but I don’t know where they are)
• Assorted 70s and 80s all grouped together into one super-album called “Retro 70s and 80s” (I have no excuse for this – although having a look, there’s some 60s in there too: Herman’s Hermits and The Small Faces? Look, fucked if I know; some songs on my main iTunes collection are called things like MDYT.mp3 and they are mysterious creatures of the night, skulking round the bottom of the library. I am just pleased I attempted any sort of organisation at all.)
• Another compilation entitled “Christmas with the Stars” (and by ‘stars’ I mean the 40s and 50s stars; the best is Rosemary Clooney singing A Little Drummer Boy, which I also have a German version of, which is not by Rosemary Clooney though, and this sentence is officially OUT OF CONTROL.)

Right, that’s enough humilation for now. But now I know why I never listen to iTunes on this laptop. Apart from Justin, that is. There’s only so many times I can hear Robbie singing about buying St Johns wort from Boots before I flick him for JT. DON’T PRETEND you wouldn’t do the same.

Jack-o-lanterns at an outdoor bar last week. Seeing as how this is Australia, and pumpkins do not feature prominently in spring, they were carved out of our current seasonal produce: rockmelons. Awesome.

(Incidentally: the bar was actually a shipping container plonked in an inner city lot. You wouldn’t think shipping containers had really expensive beer, but now I know better.)

I know it’s the height of terrible blogging to talk about your spammers, but one of mine is obviously in trouble. His copy of P&P has gone through the shredder, and the poor man is trying to rebuild it, one garbled paragraph at a time:

——– Original Message ——–

Refinance Rate: 4.43%* – $350,000 loan for $579 a month – Bad credit OK
http://redacted.com

was sixteen, was now on the point of accomplishment, and her thoughts and her words ran wholly on unworthy of mr. bingley’s regard; and yet, it was not in her nature to question the veracity of a youngof them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.”him to sacrifice of his own happiness to the caprice of their inclination. had his own happiness,had always distrusted the appearance of his goodness. elizabeth, though she did not credit above halfhad most incautiously shown. every lingering struggle in his favour grew fainter and fainter; and in

… and that’s where it ends. But I must know what happens!
Fortunately there was a follow up:

——– Original Message ——–

You got Loan Preapproved Q
Come on over and see how much you can sa.ve on your h0me with us
http://redacted.com

Weak as she was, Emily had spirit enough to feel the reproof. She walked in her meek noiseless way to the door. ‘I beg your pardon, Miss. I am not quite so bad as you think me. But I beg your pardon, all the same.’ over the stove. She opened the door. Agnes called her back. There was something in the woman’s apology that appealed irresistibly to her just and generous nature. ‘Come,’ she said; ‘we must not part in this way. Let me not misunderstand you. What is it that you expected me to do?’

(That doesn’t sound like Austen to me – a bit of googling (sorry, “performing a search using the Google search engine”) reveals “The Haunted Hotel”. )

But the thing is, why garble all the text like that? Why not just chop a full paragraph, and send one per email? It could be like The Pickwick Papers for the modern day!

What? These spammers are totally literate. They’ll understand that reference in a heartbeat. Or they’ll have been called Scrooge often enough to at least have a passing acquaintance with Dickens. (Oh god, unless they think of the duck?)