Salt and corrosion

Happy New Year, f-list.

Yesterday I went to an exhibition called Invasion, which was props and costumes from various science-fiction films or TV shows. I saw an Ood and the Alien and discovered the answer to the age-old question: Am I taller than a Dalek? ( Answer )

There was also Matt LeBlanc's costume from Lost in Space. The internet tells me that Mr LeBlanc is 178 cm (5'10") tall. I don't want to suggest that the internet is wrong, f-list, but… it is wrong. I am 162 cm (5'3") and I was shoulder to shoulder with that mannequin. Granted, the costume may have been made of stretchy stuff, so perhaps it would also fit a taller person.

I meant to say, when I went to see The Hobbit, I stood next to a woman in the ticket queue who was telling everyone: 'You'll see there's a bit where they ride some shaggy horses, well, my friend owns them. I've ridden them. Thorin's pony!' She was quite excited by that.

I am watching Dante's Peak, the 1997 film in which Pierce Brosnan tackles a volcano without once getting his hair mussed up. Pierce's boss, who pooh-poohed Pierce's suggestion that the volcano was going to erupt, has just plummeted to his death in a boiling, raging river. Of course he has. That's what he gets for pooh-poohing Pierce and his hair. I do enjoy a good disaster film.

This week's random word:

( 26. Mutton )

Now we have got that out of the way, what do vulcanologists do during an eruption? Pierce has spent the duration driving up and down the volcano to rescue his lady friend's family, which is making himself useful, if nothing else. His colleagues are just standing around hugging each other. Shouldn't they be, you know, monitoring things?

Pierce has just lit a match. I wouldn't have thought that was safe to do during a volcanic eruption, but he's the vulcanologist so I suppose he knows what he's doing.

Now he is being crushed in a car that is trapped in an abandoned and rickety mine shaft. He is having a bad day. His hair still looks amazing, though, so there's that.

Chickens can do subtraction! Perhaps we should start to worry when they work out long division.

The good people at Innovations have sent me another catalogue. I've never bought anything from them, but they keep coming, so that's nice. Does this seem like a bad idea: keeping your spare keys in a padlock on the thing they're meant to unlock? What could possibly go wrong there?

Today I went to see Hugo. I read the book last year and enjoyed it, and I really wanted to enjoy the film too, but... I did enjoy it, I suppose, but it wasn't quite what I expected. A few years ago, I saw a documentary called Touching the Void, which is about a man falling down a mountain. It has stuck with me and I often think about it. I was thinking about it just the other day, and then found out it was on television that night. So I watched it again just a couple of days ago, and it was just as good the second time round. So, yes, if you're looking for something to do, I'd recommend watching that rather than Hugo.

1. A newsreader just said, 'Police targeted as another beauty pageant after-party goes bad.' Isn't that always the way?

2. I have decided that I am a bit sick of Milo (a malted milk drink) as a hot beverage. I don't really like tea or coffee, though, so that's a problem. I bought some herbal infusions to try. Lipton's peach and mango is good. Dilmah's Exceptional Berry Sensation is the most vile drink I've ever tasted. I really wanted to like it, because the tea bags are pyramid-shaped and I am easily pleased. Also, it said it was made for 'the 21st century tea aficionado' and I fancied labelling myself thusly. Alas, it's not to be.

3. I have enjoyed the Easter break. We have had a few gloriously golden autumn days. Easter Sunday my mother and I met with one of her cousins who is doing his family tree and was after some old photos. They had a jolly old reminisce about their mutual grandparents: their grandfather, who liked a practical joke, and their grandmother, who was the stern one. They had a party for one of their significant wedding anniversaries – ruby or golden or whatever – and when the grandfather tried to cut the cake, the knife stuck in it like the sword in the stone. It turned out their grandmother had iced a block of wood.

4. Our cousin also caught us up on some family news. When I went to that 90th birthday party a few weeks ago, one of my cousins had lost everything but her car and her cat in the floods earlier this year. She's the mother-in-law of this man. The article says he was shot in the chest, but apparently the rifle discharged into a metal tool box and he was hit by multiple pieces of shrapnel. So that's all very sad.

5. Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk around Lake Pertobe, and it was nice. I mean, really *nice*. I stood on the suspension bridge and looked at the families paddling coloured canoes past the little ducks on the lake and thought, isn't this nice? And it was. Also, the suspension bridge is bouncy, but in an occupational health and safety-approved way, so you can pretend to be Indiana Jones. So that was good.

6. Also, I saw a rat on one of the other bridges. It was under the bridge and poked its head through a hole in the boards, then raced along the bridge and under a nearby shrub. I think I was the only person to see it, so I felt a bit special.

7. Today I went across the bay to Port Fairy and did the walk around Griffiths Island. No bridges or rats, but there was a lighthouse, so that was nice too.

8. I was planning to write ten things, but I don't think I've got two more things to say.

9. No, I'll tell you a joke. What's ET short for? ( Answer )

10. I've never seen ET. When it came out in, what, 1982? 83?, my mother offered to take me during the school holidays, but there was another film I wanted to see instead. I can't remember what it was, but the trailer on TV had lots of beards and horses and mountains. Does that ring any bells for anyone? Anyway, my mother said that wasn't suitable – this from the woman who happily let me watch Prisoner on a school night – and it was ET or nothing. I chose nothing, and I still haven't seen ET in protest. That'll teach her.

I thought I should do something for my holidays, otherwise I will go back to work next week and people will ask if I did anything exciting and I will have to say, 'Oh, well, I had my hair cut and my eyes checked.' So I went to see The King's Speech last night and enjoyed it, mostly. Every time I see Guy Pearce in something I always think, remember when he was in Neighbours and played second fiddle to Jason Donovan? How times change.

Today, even more excitingly, I have been to Port Fairy, the town around the bay from the City by the Sea, to watch the 2011 Commonwealth Championship Sheepdog Trials. Oh, yes. Here is some of the action:



I don't know if any of you, f-list, have been to sheepdog trials. I hadn't. What happens is this: the 'worker' (usually an elderly man) stands at one end of a field and three sheep are released at the other end. The worker has to stand still while directing his dog to bring the sheep up the field and around the worker. Once this happens, the worker can walk, but has to keep the sheep on his right hand side at all times. Bearing that in mind, he directs his dog to take the sheep back down the field and through a series of obstacles of the sort that they might find on a farm. First the dog has to get the sheep through a narrow gate in a fence, then through a race (a narrow passageway), up a ramp and finally into a little pen. Once they're in the pen, the worker closes the gate and a little beeper goes off. If they're not finished in fifteen minutes, they're disqualified.

I was really there because my mother told me that when she went a couple of years ago, they put on a little entertainment during the lunch break, in which one of the workers and his dog did the course with three ducks instead of three sheep. No ducks this year, alas, but there was a display: a worker rounding up three sheep with three dogs instead of one, with special commentary by Pip Hudson, an old man who is apparently a big cheese in the sheepdog trial world. At one point, the sheep got away from all three dogs and Pip Hudson said, 'No! Wouldn't that gap your axe?' I have no idea what that means, but it's going to be my new exclamation when things go wrong.

All the dogs have two names: a regular name prefixed by the name of the property they live on. I've got the program here: Singlines Wes, Tunglia Jasper, Armitages Gem, Springvale Darcy, Yandarra Frost, Roseneath Baz, and, my favourite, El'Shamah Madge. And one dog of mystery known only as Tweed. One dog that I watched, Sting, couldn't find his sheep. Even for sheep, these were a particularly dopey lot that just stayed in the holding pen when the gate was opened, and poor Sting didn't think of looking there. He was just out for a run. Another dog, Maisie, got her sheep to the finishing pen in ten minutes, only to have them spend five minutes refusing to go in. The time buzzer went off and she was disqualified.

( Real action )

A few years ago, I wrote about a man who was building a replica Portuguese caravel in his back yard. As you do. Anyway, he's finished and it's afloat in Port Fairy, so I stopped and had a look on the way home.



( Close ups )

Also, I bought a book of stamps. Germaine Greer has her own stamp now. I just thought you'd like to know.

There is a thunderstorm coming. It has been in the air all day and it is taking its own sweet time. It's coming, though, because I stood next to a man carrying his kelpie (a sheep dog) at a pedestrian crossing this afternoon and he told me. He said, 'It's the weather, if I didn't carry her she'd be hiding under the house.' So the man and his dog have spoken.

Geekologie today has a Battle of the Lords: Vader v. Voldemort, which, to my surprise, Voldemort wins. That's not right, is it? He squeaks past on a couple of questionable decisions, I think: that there will be eight Potter films compared to six Star Wars episodes (despite Voldemort not being in all of them), and that killing Robert Pattinson is a better evil deed than blowing up a planet (I'd make that a tie). Also, they don't count other important things, such as who has the best personal theme music. (Oh, and reading the comments on the entry: they don't consider light sabre v. wand). So let's turn it over to the best judges of these things:

[Poll #1648540]

So that's today's important issue sorted.

1. I am going to try to do one of these new-fangled ten-point entries. They're all the rage. The big question is: do I have ten things to say?

2. Probably not.

3. Yesterday I was alone in the office while everyone else was out and about when a lean, grey-haired man came up the stairs. He had come with a new A4 drawer for the photocopier. I didn't know we needed one, but all righty then, Mr Photocopier Man, whatever you want. He changed the drawer and said, 'You know what was wrong with the old one, don't you?' Indeed I do: one day a couple of months ago we found a little plastic wheel rattling around in it, but the photocopier didn't seem to mind.

4. He sighed in exasperation and said, 'People push them in!' and followed that up with a lengthy lecture on the correct way to push in the paper drawer. He gave the whole office the same lecture when we told him about the little wheel. The short version: do it gently. Don't slam your photocopier's paper drawers, dear readers, or Mr Photocopier Man will be cross.

5. When he first came to look at the photocopier, he changed the A3 drawer to an extra A4 drawer for no apparent reason. We supposed it had something to do with the little wheel, even though the A4 drawer still worked. He just gave us two A4 drawers so we couldn't print on A3. So I said to him today, since we had a new A4 drawer, could we have our A3 drawer back, and he sighed again and poked some menus deep within the photocopier's touch screen and said, 'Ooh, that's a big job.' Then he left.

Bonus (or 'I can't count properly') 4. When the office manager came back from lunch I told her that Mr Photocopier Man had been and changed our drawers over and she said, 'Did he give you a lot of attitude?' Yes, now you mention it, he did.

6. The Catholic Church is getting ready to canonise Australia's first saint, a nun called Mary McKillop who did some of her nunning in this area. She founded her own order and was excommunicated for disagreeing with a bishop and in death has been performing miracles. Apparently you need to do one miracle to be beatified and two to be canonised, and the Blessed Mary has even performed a third just to make sure (this was reported as a 'backup miracle'). Busy lady.

7. My mother went for a walk on the beach promenade the other day and found it signposted with fun facts about the Blessed Mary. It turns out it was for a school thing, in which the kids dressed up as nuns and learnt while they walked. A couple of them were interviewed in yesterday's paper, being asked what they thought it would be like to be a nun. The girls didn't mind the idea, but Travis (11) thought it would be 'bad', because 'you have to do stuff with other nuns'.

8. A sparrow roosts in the eaves under the verandah, just in front of my bedroom. I don't mind this. I do mind that it wakes up at six-thirty every morning and chirps non-stop for an hour. No respect for my day off. Tsk.

9. Last night I watched Julie and Julia. My considered verdict: the Julia parts were great, but Julie was a pill.

10. I found it quite odd at the end when the film puts up a couple of paragraphs about what happened after, and it said that Julie wrote a book about her blog, and that 'her book has been made into a film'. Yes, that would be the film I just watched, wouldn't it? How circular.

Happy day. I've finally fixed* my weather station thingie, just in time for a 43C day. I love having a number to put on my misery.

After the Black Saturday bushfires last year, whoever is in charge of these things developed a new fire danger barometer. Today, the region above mine has become the first to hit the top level of fire danger, CATASTROPHIC CODE RED, which means that people living in particularly dangerous areas were meant to evacuate last night. Here in the City by the Sea, we, like the rest of the state, are at the second highest level of fire danger, EXTREME, meaning that people in dangerous areas should either evacuate to somewhere safer or put into action their bushfire survival plans (I don't live in a dangerous area, by the way, and my bushfire survival plan is 'get in the river at the end of the street'). So today's weather forecast, as well as saying it will be hot and windy, also says that today is a total fire ban day, gives a fire weather warning and says that the fire danger rating is extreme. No-one wants to see a repeat of last year's fires, but I do find this just a teeny bit of overkill. I'm not sure we need another warning system so much as advice on what to do with the old ones. Not to mention that making people evacuate runs the risk of crying wolf and makes them less likely to go next time.

At any rate, today isn't like Black Saturday. Black Saturday was at the end of summer and at the end of a week or more of days like this, over 40C temperatures and terrible, hot, north winds, and everyone was tired and sweaty, and Melbourne's trains were melting (or something. They weren't working, at any rate) and the media were busy saying 'perfect day for a bushfire, any arsonist who's watching'. That's catastrophic. Today is just... unpleasant.

Friday night I couldn't be bothered thinking or doing anything productive and useful, so I plonked myself in front of the TV and watched the movie. You know how sometimes a film sticks with you? Days afterwards, you're still thinking about its beauty or profundity. That's what this was like. All weekend I kept stopping whatever I was doing to think, that didn't make a lick of sense. The film was Flight Plan, starring Jodie Foster. I like Jodie Foster, but I can only think she needed the money to pay off a gambling debt because Flight Plan is a terrible film. Jodie plays a widowed aeronautical engineer, who is taking her husband's body back to the US for burial, and whose daughter goes missing on the plane while she (Jodie) is asleep. And it turns out (spoiler!) that Jodie's husband was murdered by the plane's air marshal in an absurd plan to fill his casket with explosives and frame Jodie for hijacking the plane. I mean, obviously, if you're going to hijack a plane and ransom the passengers, you need a good plan, and I'm not convinced that a plan that involves the on-board kidnapping of the child of the one passenger who knows all the hiding places in a plane fits the bill.

Also, according to the film, one of the toilet cubicles has a manhole in the ceiling, which gives access to the inner workings of the plane. That information will come in handy if I ever decide to cause havoc on an international flight.

Finally, apparently children with unusual names are more likely to need hospital medical treatment. Yet another reason not to use Jyrus as a name.



* By 'fixed', I mean I put some new batteries in it.

I can't believe Nutritious Love didn't win the 2009 Name of the Year. Not that Barkevious Mingo is undeserving of the honour.

I returned Angela's DVD today, along with a mocked-up invoice:

Hours of my life lost watching Twilight
Quantity: 2
Cost: Priceless

It made her laugh. She said her daughter's English teacher 'hates the books, they're so badly written, but she loves the film', which makes me think the quality of English teachers (or at least their critical thinking ability) has declined since I was a student at the same school (I didn't tell her that).

What else? Oh, I received my economic stimulus package yesterday. Nine hundred dollars and a patriotic duty to spend it, says the Prime Minister. I bought two books during my lunch break, so that will help stave off recession for a bit. Forty dollars down, eight hundred and sixty to go... except I can't think of anything else I want. I was trying to cut down on buying stuff this year. Perhaps that's what caused the problem in the first place.

They've got a fun game going on over at Ayyyy! (their exclamation mark): identify the former teen idols. I'd say 1-4 would be Val Kilmer, Mel Gibson, James Spader (pin-up of choice by teen me) and William Shatner, but I'm stuck after that. I'm convinced that Charlie Sheen should be in there, maybe at 6 or 10; Corey Haim had hair like 9's, but the body looks too large. If Johnny Depp's anywhere, I think he'd be 5, but could he honestly be classed as a 'former good looker' when he still looks more or less the same as he always did?

My extended family are the only Daisynames in the region where we live so you can imagine our collective shock when we opened the new phone book and found a mysterious and unknown M Daisyname listed. Phone calls were made, let me tell you. I was all set to write an entry all about it, but then I found out that it was my second cousin Mia Daisyname, who recently moved back here from Melbourne. Phew. But that was the end of my planned entry, which is unfortunate because now I'll never have a good reason to mention that Mia's grandmother is known to the rest of the family as Jinny Grizzlebritches. (I have no idea why. She's lovely.)

I have to go to work tomorrow and then I have two weeks off. This is a Very Good Thing.