Salt and corrosion

A public holiday today. I did some constructive things: I washed the laundry floor, put up a little trellis for my sweet peas to grow on, reconciled my bank statement, sorted out lunches for the next few days. I take my lunch to work most days. Tomorrow i will be having chicken and vegetable soup left over from tonight's dinner; Wednesday and Thursday I will have grilled zucchini and haloumi on wholemeal muffins, warmed up in the sandwich maker. And Friday is my day off, so I will worry about that lunch then.

I also played this "species appropriate" music for cats to Alistair. He was unmoved. I got more reaction when I dug out my ocarina and peeped that at him.

There was an article in today's newspaper about a group of low-rent hitmen who referred to each other by nicknames. There was Batman and Cookie and one remarkable gentleman who was known as both Satan and Lug Nut. Those are two very... different names, aren't they? I amused myself by imagining those two names were interchangeable in other contexts. That bit in the Bible where Jesus says, "Get behind me, Lug Nut." All those heroes in romantic novels who ride black stallions called Lug Nut. People who make a pact to sell their souls to Lug Nut.

Here is a nostalgia machine. Put in a year and see what music people were listening to. I tried 1978. Five of the top eight songs are by people surnamed Gibb.

This meme entry is going to be long enough for an entry of its own.

Day 1 - Ten random facts about yourself
Day 2 - Nine things you do everyday
Day 3 - Eight things that annoy you
Day 4 - Seven fears/phobias
Day 5 - Six songs that you’re addicted to
Day 6 - Five things you can’t live without
Day 7 - Four memories you won’t forget
Day 8 - Three words you can’t go a day without
Day 9 - Two things you wish you could do
Day 10 - One person you can trust

I wouldn't say I'm addicted to any songs, not now, but I can be a slightly obsessive listener. My earworms need constant feeding. When I was younger I used to listen to things on repeat: whole albums, a single song, or even, once I had a Walkman, just a couple of words. Over and over, until I got it out of my system. Actually, I still do that. These days it's songs, which I buy on iTunes, listen to many, many times, then retire until it turns up on shuffle and I remember. I don't really buy albums any more. I miss that a bit.

Anyway, this is is history of musical obsessions in chronological order.

1. Baby Face - Bobby Vee

I grew up with a multi-generational music collection. On one side of the record cabinet were my grandparents' records. My grandmother liked older music: old-style country music, just a man and a guitar, although she did have a best of Kenny Rogers; old-style dance music by Jimmy Shand and His Band; old singers like Nelson Eddy and Peter Dawson; and the Magic Organ Playing Hymns We Love. My mother's records were in the other side of the cabinet, being the collected works of Leonard Cohen, Joe Cocker and Rod Stewart. There was also a Demis Roussos record that no-one seemed to own. The only person to listen to it was me, because I liked "My Friend The Wind". At that stage my own contribution to the cabinet was limited to read-along books and a novelty red plastic single of "Another One Bites the Dust" that came with my hula hoop.

The real attraction to me was at the back of the record cabinet, behind my grandmother's albums. That's where the singles lived. Most of them were my mother's from when she was a teenager, most of them by the Beatles, but some of them must have been my grandmother's, dating from the late 40s/early 50s, when her children were too young to be music connoisseurs (her eldest being born in 1947). My favourite was "Baby Face" by Bobby Vee. Apparently my uncle G played it for baby me when he came to visit, and played it again, and played it again and again and again, thus inadvertently setting me on the path to musical obsession.

My mother has all those singles now, so one day they will all be mine. Except "Another One Bites the Dust", which turned out to be prophetic. (In the sense that I folded it in half to see how flexible it was, and found that it was very flexible, until it was quite brittle. Snap!)



( Five more )

This is delightful. (Warning: it makes a noise.) I have left my design playing while typing, and it's quite soothing. Which was good, because I needed soothing after this. It made me dizzy. (Warning: it also makes a noise.)

This week's random word:

11. Nigh

It means 'near', obviously. The end is nigh; it's well-nigh impossible. That sort of thing. The comparative form is nigher and the superlative is nighest, which are two words I've never actually heard used. Perhaps try using them in conversation today. 'Could you pass the salt, please? It's nigher to you than me.'

Something else I've never heard before, although apparently it can be done: nigh used as a verb, the same as near can be. Perhaps you're eager to get home as the end of the working day nighs; perhaps you get hungry as dinner-time is nighing; perhaps you grew sleepy as sunset nighed.

Also: controversy! Nigh refers to a side. But, and this is where the controversy comes in, the sources I checked are in disagreement about what side. Some are very firm that nigh means left, as in 'pull on the nigh side rein to turn the carriage, Trevor'. Others insist that nigh refers to the passenger side of a vehicle, closest to the kerb, rather than the driver's side. So for those of us who drive on the left, the nigh side is indeed on the left; for those who drive on the right, the nigh side is the right. So if your carriage horse bolts in Australia but your driver is Canadian, don't mention the nigh side rein at all. Best to avoid confusion.

Next week: Marjoram

Something I have learnt today: a composer called Julius Fucik wrote a piece of music called 'Entry of the Gladiators'. Imagine gladiators entering the arena: sweaty, muscly men getting ready to fight each other or lions or elephants or, like, really big lizards. Whatever the Romans had to hand. Anyway, imagine them coming into the arena to the baying crowd. Now imagine them coming into the arena to the baying crowd to the sound of this (the first 15 seconds is enough to see the problem):



I bet Julius Fucik is really ticked off about the use we've made of that piece of music. We've completely ruined the mood he was going for.

This week's random word:

6. Peregrine

This week I asked the word generator for an adjective and it gave me peregrine. Thanks, word generator. My thought process went something like: peregrine... falcon? - peregrine means migratory, doesn't it? - I should check that - yes: migratory, travelling, foreign, alien, roving, wandering, nomadic or unsettled - what do I have to say about that? - absolutely nothing.

I could tell you about the peregrine falcon being the most widespread species of raptor. Also, while they generally cruise at about 65 kmh (40 mph), when hunting they go into a high-speed dive known as a stoop, reaching over 322 kmh (200 mph), making them the fastest animal on the planet. Take that, cheetahs! But none of that is particularly related to their migration.

So thinking of peregrine obviously had me thinking about birds and migration, and that put me in mind of a poem I had to do for Year 12 literature: The Death of the Bird by Australian poet, AD Hope. All these years later, I think this is the only poem I had to write about for that exam that still sticks with me. I find it immensely sad. Cinematic, almost, too, in the way it swells: you can picture a close-up on the little bird, then the camera going further back and back and back until all you see is a tiny dot in the sky, suddenly falling.

( The Death of the Bird )



Next week: Back to nouns with 'purse'

Today my boss declared this 'the greatest song in the history of songs'. Possibly an overstatement.

I've just been reading an interview with US-based Australian author Geraldine Brooks. This interview, in fact. In it, the interviewer says to her that Tasmania is a separate country and she doesn't correct him, and then a bit later he suggests again that Tasmania is a country and she still doesn't correct him. So now not only does he believe, incorrectly, that Tasmania is a country, but so will all his readers. That reminds me of a book I picked up in the library a few weeks ago, about a couple of American writers who visited Tasmania. I put the book down again because both the blurb on the back and the text of the first few pages also suggested that the authors thought that Tasmania was a separate country, even after having been there. Which it isn't, any more than Hawaii is a separate country. It's a state (as in a province rather than a nation) that also happens to be an island. That's not a difficult concept to grasp, is it? Anyway, that incensed me so much I didn't really take in the rest of the interview. Hmph.

Driving home the other day, I passed an accident that had won the emergency services trifecta: there was a police car, an ambulance and a firetruck in attendance. A policeman and an ambo were standing by the side of the road, having a good laugh at something, and there were two firemen just sort of looking at a patch on the road, so I gathered that whatever caused them all to be there wasn't serious.

I bought a new jar of marinated capsicum strips the other day. Alas, I will never eat them. I can't open the jar. I've tried bare-handed; I've tried with a tea-towel; I've tried loosening the lid with a spoon. Nothing. So that's a problem.

Last night I went to see Tripod vs The Dragon. Good stuff. In the unlikely event it comes to a school hall near you, I highly recommend it.

I say 'school hall' because the City by the Sea's performing arts centre is under reconstruction at the moment, so visiting shows are playing at the auditorium of one of the local secondary schools. It was all very intimate, but it worked for this show.

Walking through the school grounds on the way to the auditorium, I saw signs pointing to the school's sports hall, named after a former principal. Which is nice, but the Stalker Stadium is an unfortunate name.

Today's email for doctors brought news of a new anatomy book for children: Tummy and Guts, featuring Penny Pancreas and Benny Brain. I'm no anatomist, but that's not where I thought the brain was. Shouldn't it be Penny Pancreas and Lenny Liver? Kenny Kidney?

There is a new book in the Gormenghast trilogy! Er, well, I suppose it isn't a trilogy now there are four books, is it? Anyway, I loved the first two but wasn't all that keen on the final one (more fuel for my mother's belief that the last book in a series is always a let-down), so I'm not sure how I feel about the new one. Perhaps I will wait until it appears in the library. Or, more likely, I will forget about it for a while until one day when I will buy it on a whim and be horribly disappointed.

When my mother asks people if they would like a hot drink, she always says, 'Can I get you a drink? Coffee, tea, Bonox?' Bonox is a brand of beef stock cube. No-one ever asks for it, and even if they did, I don't think she has any. I've always thought this was some little family joke, but yesterday, showing some visitors into his office, my boss said, 'Can I get you a drink? Coffee, tea, Bonox?' The exact formula my mother uses! I said to Brian, 'My mother says that!' and he said, 'Yes, it's from an old, old ad.' For Bonox, I assume. So there we go.

Despite having too many pointless diversions to fill my waking hours, I'm thinking of buying a keyboard. A musical keyboard, I mean. I already own several computer keyboards. I also own a piano, in the sense that it's in my house, but not in the sense that I could dispose of it if I wanted to (it's a family piano). The piano, though, is ancient and not entirely in tune, and last time the tuner came he said that would be as good as it got. So I have a decorative piano. Anyway, I had piano lessons as a littlie; I wasn't terribly good or terribly enthusiastic, and I eventually switched to woodwind instruments. I haven't played any of them for ages, but lately the keyboard is speaking to me. So I'm making a list of pros and cons. Pro: It's good to learn new things (or, in this case, re-learn an old thing). Cons: I already have a shelf full of neglected instruments (a flute, a clarinet, several recorders, several tin whistles and an ocarina); I don't need another sedentary hobby; I was a rubbish piano player anyway. I think the cons have it, don't you? I was looking at sheet music on the internet last night and downloaded some piano music anyway, then I downloaded a few pieces for flute and recorder too. It's just... if I imagine peeking in my own window and seeing myself playing the piano, that seems diligent and clever; looking in at myself tootling away at a recorder like a big pixie just seems a bit sad.

Speaking of recorders, do small children in other countries learn the flutophone? Or is that just an Australian thing? Or was it just an Australia-in-the-early-80s thing, and no-one knows what I'm talking about?

What else? Oh, Telstra/Bigpond, whatever they call themselves. My ISP. I am sure they have a Department of Annoyances. Their most recent triumph has been the announcement that they are closing Bigpond Movies, which is a DVD rental by mail service like Netflix. I'm quite sad about this. I joined years ago when I needed to watch some old films for university, films that weren't in the local DVD stores and weren't available to buy anywhere. Now they've got this mad idea that, instead of renting one of their 45,000 DVDs, customers will instead all choose to download from their selection of 2,500 films. That's not going to happen, Bigpond Movies. If I wanted a choice like that, I'd stick with the local Blockbuster. I think a lot of customers will, like me, take up the offer from another company to transfer our DVD queues to them and get the first couple of months half-price.

Finally, here is a thing: the average colour of the New York sky.

Out and about today I was subjected to a jazz flute rendition of 'Joy to the World'. I could have happily lived my whole life without hearing that.

Speaking of jazz, the book I'm reading at the moment had a character wanting to buy some 'jazz-coloured balloons'. What colour would that be, do we think? ( Answer )

This morning I left the house on my way to buy the paper when I saw something icky looking in the front garden. From a distance, I thought it was dog vomit, but closer inspection revealed it was actually a sort of fungus growing on the bark chips that cover the ground. Later, I found some more growing on the straw covering the vegetable patch. So I spent part of the day finding out what it was: a type of mould known as scrambled egg slime. It's an interesting addition to my usual collection of toadstools.

Today I thought I would post the only commercial I find just as awful as the man-size Boost chocolate bar I mentioned last week, and maybe create a poll to find which one is worse, but I can't find the offending advertisement on-line. Lucky f-list, you've dodged a bullet.


My interest in the World Cup is, shall we say, minimal, but the photo at the top of this page is endlessly amusing to me. I think it's his ears that I like best.


The woman who runs the tapas bar underneath my office either likes the song 'Around the world' by Daft Punk so much she played it twenty times in a row, or else she's obtained a special extended mix of it for venues that don't want to change tunes. Or her iPod's stuck. At any rate, it did go on a bit. And by 'a bit', I mean 'all afternoon'. It's not a song I've ever cared for, and after today it would feature quite highly on a list of Songs I Never Want To Hear Again*.

Last week I went to a family do, hosted by my mother's cousin. She and her family are quite musical and there were oldies present, so her son sat at the piano to lead us all in a good, old-fashioned sing-along. Which I enjoyed, I must say, but also found eye-opening, in the sense that I had never realised that there are still people who genuinely do sing 'Roll out the barrel' for fun and good times. What a sheltered life I've led.

Anyway, this afternoon I had a horrifying vision of my future: sitting in a nursing home, all rugged up and minding my own business with a cup of cocoa, when in comes an earnest young chap who sits down at the electronic keyboard in the corner to make us all sing Daft Punk's 'Around the world' with him. That's a dystopian nightmare, right there.




* At the top of which would be 'The Little Drummer Boy'. How I loathe him.