Star Billing

For those of you who share these inclinations, here's a rundown of southern celestial events of note for the rest of 2005. See you on Mt Nebo for the Occultation of the Pleiades by the Moon. Bring the thermos.

I've been back in Australia a month today.

Crap.

I'm still hovering between the feeling that I've just arrived home, and the draining, sucking drudge that I felt before I left -- that caused me to leave in the first place. How long does one allow one's head to get it together (as they say in the classics)? Does everyone return from a great journey completely incapable of fitting into their former lives?

I absolutely don't belong here anymore, if I ever did. Situations and people I managed to smile thinly at and tolerate before now bring outright hostility and frantic agitation. I suspect I'm either going to do something new and gobsmackingly brilliant or end up a news headline.

Getting Down

Sometimes pleasure comes from the most unexpected quarters.

I called via Coles in the Myer Centre after work today. It wasn't an entirely deliberate act, but one in a series of almost random choices I'd made since ambling despondently out of the office mid-afternoon. Frustration and a vague, unfocused depression had daubed my day grey, so shouldering my way into that ants' nest of irritable grocery-seekers was a decision tinged with more than a little masochism, the kind of willfully perverse punishment I flay myself with when I'm in this dark frame of mind.

But life is not remotely predictable, and sometimes gives a laugh and a tickle just when a slap in the chops is expected.

Thud-unk, thwak! Thud-unk, thwak! Thud-unk, thwak! Thud-unk, thwak! All around me shoppers, who seconds before had been gnashing their teeth over which boutique brand of organic haloumi to buy, or screeching instructions into their phones relaxed, closed their eyes and began grooving and wiggling their bums to Stevie Wonder's Superstition which now seeped its soothing salve across the store. I kid you not: the shoulders of everyone within my sight dropped and their faces smoothed out of the knotty tension of before. B'DOW-dow-DOW-doooow! was all it took to slide the mood dial around from gratin' to groovin', from bitchy to bitchin'; smiles replaced snarls, and all thanks to some anonymous employee's choice of tunes. And then, to my utter, utter delight someone said, "Holy guacamole!" Alright!

Indeed...the most unexpected quarters.

Nerd Werds

Will we ever have robot lovers? Why do we sleep? Can we live forever? Will men ever give birth? What's it like to walk on the Moon? Does changing perfumes really discourage infidelity? When will cars drive themselves? Can we holiday in space - and what will that be like?
I'm not sure that I can answer these conundrums with any measure of confidence, but apparently reading a couple of issues of Cosmos may change that state of affairs. Yes, Cosmos. Have you not heard of it? It's Australia's new popular science magazine -- in fact, Australia's only popular science magazine. Is it good? I can't answer that either, as it hasn't actually hit the newsstands yet, but that it's edited by former Quantum presenter and 21C editor Wilson da Silva is surely in its favour.

Cosmos will be a glossy title with high production values and a focus on top-quality writing, photography and illustrations - a feast for the brain and the eyes.

"Every issue of Cosmos will explore who we are and what we might become, our place in the world and our future on the planet," da Silva said.

"It's time consumers had a quality Australian science magazine that appeals to a broad range of people."

- Press Release, March 17

Science journalism is strong and vibrant in this country on television, radio and online; to get a slice of the glossy paper variety join me in the newsagent bright and early on 22 June. Colour me 12 shades of excited!

Temporary Partial Blindness ROCKS!

Cool, huh? It's useful for scaring the kiddies, too.

I'm referring to the eye, incidentally.

Monday Morning Mobile Messages

Me:
"Oh my gawd! Greece
wins Eurovision!
What's going on?"

He:
"Oh ma gaawwd! I
can't believe it.
They've finally
admited that us
Greeks are the best
in the world at
everything mate.
This is the proof for
what we have been
telling yous for 5000
years and yous all
just laughed. Now
who is laughing? Mate
we are the bestest
and now yous have
to accept that. So
suffer!"

Slide Night -- Part 2 -- Melbourne

St Kilda Beach was littered with many things, some rather stomach-turning, others quite charming. What were all these live starfish doing on the sand, anyway?




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





Caribbean Gardens. A shot any wider would show this place for the bewitching smorgasboard of Seventies tat that it truly is. Next door is a "Rollerama". Need I say more?




Caribbean Gardens again. The yellow post is part of the chair lift, a rare death-defying find in this age of crippling insurance and enthusiastic litigation. Against my better judgement we took a spin on this contraption. How do I express the joy felt when halfway across, suspended over a dam (sorry, "lake") a section of the cable running in the opposite direction was... well, frayed seems too tame a word for it. *sniff* It took me back to my childhood. Which is when the chairlift last saw a maintenance man, at a guess.


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




His name's Newton, and he's a bloody genius if this is anything to go by.

Slide Night -- Part 1

I'm going to be inflicting a few pictures on you over the next couple of weeks. I'm particularly keen today, since I'm supposed to be hard at work on a rather crucial job application.

These were taken from one of the wonderful old ferries that chug along the Brisbane River, whilst returning from a visit to Miss Wendy.

All hail!

We sat in the lounge room holding the children, soothing the fear that flared with every clap of thunder. It wasn't even approaching the worst storm I've seen in my thirty-five years, but in their short lives it was as malevolent as any. I guess when you're three, any tempest seems life-threatening. It had been rumbling on for a while when a tink... tink-tink.... tink-tink-tink-TINK! was added to the soundscape. Hail. A borrowed car sat in our driveway, so Sally dashed out to bring it into shelter while both the kids burrowed under my arms. After just a light peppering the hail passed, and the evening settled into a steady rain.

It wasn't until the ABC News came on that we realised our luck. The presenter announced that we would have to make do with the Sydney broadcast tonight, and showed images of the ceiling of the Brisbane studios collapsing under the weight of water the ice-choked drains had washed in there.


Still thick on the ground the next morning

7 000 properties lost power across the city, and the SES were kept busy running makeshift repairs to damaged buildings until the small hours. The hail storm came with no official warning, since the Weather Bureau lost all radar signals leading up to the worst of it.

Following the climatic mayhem came another squall, but this time of cheap cliche. Wild gusts of "unleashed its fury", "trail of destruction" and "night of terror" lashed the unwitting residents, with ensuing damage beyond estimation. At least the kids were spared that particular trauma -- they're too young to know the horrors of The Curious Snail.

AND ANOTHER THING...!

[stamps onto soapbox]

It's Paniyiri* this weekend. I've been known to trot along to this annual shindig for a souvlaki and galaktoboureko in years gone by, so thought I might stroll through for a brief look and a bite of lunch tomorrow. But my breath will remain sweet and garlic-free this year, because.... they're now charging an entry fee!! It's a damned outrage! I have to pay for the privilege of spending money?!? Because that's the thing: people go to these events with the aim of emptying their wallets with abandon, so why not just let them do so unhindered? Why the fiscal disincentive? What happened to the all-inclusive West End eth(n)ic? Hey? Hey?!

[steps off awkwardly off soapbox]



Paniyiri 2004 -- Hellenic puppet drag comes but once a year.**


For my part, I think I'll just be making do with visiting Coffee Guy on Monday for a kataifi, an espresso and an amusingly animated description of the weekend's events -- assuming he goes along, of course -- and save myself the distress of being trampled under the frenzied feet of the world's longest Zorba dance... to say nothing of the distress of witnessing it.

~~~~~~~~~~~
In other Brisbane Greek news, during my absence the zaxaroplasteion on Gladstone Road has pulled in its shingle. Any advice on procuring Hellenic sweets in this town will be most welcome.

~~~~~~~~~~~

*Paniyiri has become known as the "Paniyiri Fesitval", literally "Festival Festival".

** This kind of looks like the result of that kids' game where you draw a head on a strip of paper then fold it down, and then the next person draws a torso, and so on. "Ha ha, Brian drew Dr Robert Winston's head, Carmel did a biker's chest and on the bottom half Mike put his little sister going to ballet!"

Don't waste your time here -- go and enjoy PostSecret instead.

Yet another good idea I didn't have. :/

Pinko Plush

I'd heard of it happening, of course; it's one of those things you might see in a movie, or a story you'd hear at the pub. I'd always held a faint hope that one day I might be so blessed, but, as with winning the lottery, never really believed I would.

Until today.

Today it happened to me. And all thanks for a fondness for the image of Vladimir Illych Lenin.

~~~~~~~~~
I had decided, almost on the spur of the moment, to pay a flying visit to Melbourne. Running late to board my flight at Brisbane airport, an announcement requested that I move past the restless and snaking queue to hasten my last-minute check-in. A brisk trot from the train had raised the climate inside my vinyl jacket to tropical, but in the frantic juggle of bags and slips of paper and luggage tags and identification and pens simply didn't have enough hands to remove it as I fronted up to the counter. I left it on.

As a pair of baggage handlers shuffled a trolley through the adjoining gate one of them stopped, his eye fixed on the red Lenin badge glinting cheaply on my jacket lapel. "Wow!" he said, pointing. "Where did you get that? They're really hard to come by, aren't they?" I described the market stalls of Soviet paraphernalia I'd seen in icy Berlin: great mounds of sinister flotsam, watched over by hard-faced Russians under the dour, snow-heavy skies. The conversation bobbed buoyantly on as the clerk listened, smiling, to my new friend and I share our enthusiasm for communist trinkets, and chirpy gossip about the coin-and-medal traders in the city. We both departed lively, but not before the clerk handed over my boarding pass with, "Well, since you're so nice, I've upgraded you to Business Class."

The badge had actually come from a box of dozens like it in an Elizabeth Street Army disposal, and cost $2. Two hours flying in unexpected luxury? Priceless.

Ahhhh...

The flat white...



...has been consumed....


...and all is well. Hi Brisbane!

(Now I can get back to some coherant posting.)

Konichiwa!

........................heh heh heh heh heh!