MEMEING THE DAY AWAY

A break from gardening, AHWA mentor line-editing, and back pain.

A-one

You Are a Dash

Your life is fast paced and varied. You are realistic, down to earth, and very honest. You're often busy doing something interesting, and what you do changes quickly. You have many facets to your personality, and you connect them together well. You have a ton of interests. While some of them are a bit offbeat, they all tie together well. You friends rely on you to bring novelty and excitement to their lives. (And while you're the most interesting person they know, they can't help feeling like they don't know you well.) You excel in: Anything to do with money You get along best with: the Exclamation Point

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

A-two

My Personality

Neuroticism	84
Extraversion	21
Openness to Experience	76
Agreeableness	1
Conscientiousness	27

You are not generally self conscious about yourself, however you tend to lack energy and have difficult initiating activities. You are not prone to spells of energetic high spirits. You prefer dealing with either people or things rather than ideas. You regard intellectual exercises as a waste of your time. You are willing to take credit for good things that you do but you don't often talk yourself up much, however you believe that a certain amount of deception in social relationships is necessary. You are guarded in new relationships and less willing to openly reveal the whole truth about yourself. You are a reasonably organized person and like to have a certain amount of routine in your life.

Take a Personality Test now or view the full Personality Report. The best UGG Boots.

(Wow. Even the internet hates me....)

A-three

You. Can. Only. Type. One. Word. Not as easy as you might think. Remember: one word answers.

1. Where is your mobile phone? Non-existent
2. Your significant other? Lyn
3. Your hair? Messy
4. Your mother? Deceased
5. Your father? Ray
6. Your favorite thing? Lyn
7. Your dream last night? Celtic
8. Your favorite drink? Cola
9. Your dream/goal? Writer-guy
10. The room you're in? Messy
11. Your ex? Deceased
12. Your fear? Sharks
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Free
14. Where were you last night? Lounge
15. What you're not? Famous
16. Muffins? Lyn's
17. One of your wish list items? Novel
18. Where you grew up? Beach
19. The last thing you did? Edit
20. What are you wearing? Daggy
21. Your TV? Playstationing
22. Your pets? Finch
23. Your computer? Cruddy
24. Your life? Crises
25. Your mood? Exhausted
26. Missing someone? Lyn
27. Your car? Black
28. Something you're not wearing? Shoes
29. Favorite Store? Book
30. Your summer? Past
31. Like someone? Few
32. Your favorite color? Burgundy
33. When is the last time you laughed? Earlier
34. Last time you cried? Hospital

Ah, well. So much for that. back to work...

THE BANDAGE COMES OFF

His mother and I are traumatised. Connor, on the other hand, took one look at himself in the mirror and laughingly announced "I a tiger!"

Trust me, it looks better on film than it does in real life.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT

Heart congratulations to the delightful Karen Miller, who recently made the shortlist for the James Tiptree Award. And the equally delighftul Robert Hoge, who was selected as a judge for next year's World Fantasy Awards.

Friends in high places, man....

HOW TO MAKE A FATHER'S HEART STOP BEATING

Connor + shovel =

The emergency department of Princess Margaret Hospital looks lovely in the evening light.....

FOO TO YOU, PAL

*Edit: After correspondences, Aiden has asked me to remove some passages from this post.*

I still remember the first concert my brother and I ever went to on our own. Back in the day, local radio station 96fm held a series of concerts. At the age of 12, I saw INXS, Ganggajang and Boom Crash Opera for the princely sum of $9.96.

By the time I was 15, I was a vet: I saw the Angels at the Entertainment Centre when I was 15, along with my girlfriend, my best friend, and my 12 year old brother, who achieved somewhat legendary status amongst my friends by virtue of falling asleep in the middle of the concert.

What's all this got to do with anything? Well, Aiden is 15.

Up until the middle of last week, he was going to see The Foo Fighters in concert last night. He had two tickets. Things happened. Upshot: no tickets.

The concert was last night. Aiden's first concert (okay, we won't mention the free Vanessa Amorosi concert in the mall that his Mum took him to a few years back, or the Mentals concert earlier this year where he spent the entire time roaming the playground with mates. This was his first real 8000-of-us-all-together-in-a-giant-mosh-pit-in-a-whopping-great-stadium-with-the-smoke-and-the-light-show-and-the-support-bands-and-all-the-trimmings proper damn concert) and now he was going to miss out.

Fuck that.

The concert was sold out. I mean, duh, how long before a band this size comes back to Perth? I missed Pink Floyd in '87 and they never came back. Madonna's been once, and never again. Paul McCartney's been once. Pearl Jam came on the back of their first album and then it was something like 15 years before they returned. Hell, even They Might Be Giants haven't been back in over 6 years (Are you listening, John? John? Johns? Fellas?) We're talking, potentially, once in a lifetime.

The ticket agency couldn't help. Lyn's brother Raymond used to work in venue security. Did he know anyone? Unfortunately, no. Lyn's best friend's daughter had mentioned a spare ticket a while back! Sold it. One by one, the possibilities dried up.

3pm, the day of the concert, a workmate turns to me: they might have a spare ticket. You still need one? Oh God, yes. Give her an hour, she'll see what's happening and call me. An hour later, she calls: no luck. The spare ticket has been promised to someone else after all. I'm disappointed, but grateful she tried. That's it, really. I'm dry. Out of leads. Stick a fork in me and all that...

Lyn's been trawling Ebay for some funky PJs for Connor. As a last resort, she decides to check for Foo Fighters tickets.

4.50pm. 2 hours before the concert starts, she finds one. 30 minutes drive away. Fuck me.

Aiden has it in his hands 45 minutes later. A couple whose babysitting options fell through that morning. It's been on Ebay all day, 15 bucks cheaper than cost. Not a single bid, until us.

Is that providence, or what?

We were at the concert with 20 minutes to spare.

Was Aiden happy? Did he actually sing "I've got a golden ticket" as we drove up? :)

Aiden rocked out, and I sat in the Burswood Resort food hall for three hours: worked on some AHWA mentorship stuff, read from Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Werewolves, and watched Newcastle down Sunderland 2-0 (shitbuggerbuggershit. Not that I care about Sunderland, but I have a triple digit IQ so I'm not allowed to be a Newcastle fan...).

Aiden left the concert half-deaf, clad in a tour t-shirt, and though he will refuse to admit it, fell asleep in the car on the way home. Yes. He was happy.

Engage smug mode....... smug mode engaged.

SOMETHING I LEARNED OVER THE WEEKEND

Give your six year old daughter a fish, and she'll eat for a day. Teach her to play fish, and she'll hand your arse back to you every goddamn time you play!

COKESPRAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.......................... NOW

Your Slogan Should Be

Lee. As Delicate as a Caress.

The Slogan Generator

VILLAGE OF PERVERTS

Battersby, line-editing. Thinks:

Hmmm. Given that their houses are burning down, I’m pretty sure this line should read ‘the sound of screaming villagers’, not ‘the sound of creaming villagers’.

Wonder what was going on in my subconscious when I was writing that sentence……

YOWSER

Congratulations, sir/madam, you are the 60,000th person to visit this blog.

Thanks for reading everyone. Hope you're enjoying it so far.

Stay tuned for...... well, stuff, mostly. And things and junk. The usual :)

DEEPLY DIGGING DEXTER

So first, at the behest of Lily Chrywenstrom, we rented and watched Season one of Dexter. Twelve hour-long episodes. It took us three days.

Before the viewing had finished, I found myself in the bookstore, with enough money to buy either of the two volumes they possessed- Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the first in the series, around which the TV show was based, and which, therefore, (I thought) would hold few suprises; or Dexter In The Dark, the third in the series. What the hell: I lumped for the first.

That took a day and a half.

Now I'm skint, and it's not pay day until Thursday.

Sunuvabitch.......

THIS WEEKEND

No kids.
No jobs.
No duties.

The rest of Season 1 of Dexter.
Season 2 of Life on Mars.
The rest of Season 2 of Deadwood
The rest of Season 2 of Torchwood
Season 4, episode 1 of Dr Who

Don’t phone.

OH, THIS GROWING UP THING GETS TO ME SOMETIMES

This afternoon, I am taking my daughter to her first disco, where she openly hopes to be able to dance to the cool song she and her classmates have been learning in music.

That song is Agadoo.

This is all becoming very weird.

SSSHHH: DON’T TELL ANYONE, BUT……

I’ve had the idea, and now all I need to do is fill in the gaps.

Father Muerte And The Child.

NAMED! or WE KNOW WHAT YOU SAID LAST SUMMER....

BECAUSE OF LILY CHRYWENSTROM

5 episodes in, we’re hooked on Dexter.

There just aren’t enough serial killer romantic comedy-drama police procedural biopics, in my opinion…

FAR TOO LATE, SAYING YEAH, BUT! TO STEPHEN DEDMAN, A POST FOR THE PURPOSES OF...

Stephen Dedman is an extremely good friend of mine. But there are occasions, usually during conventions, and usually when we’re discussing television, when he is apt to cry out “Don’t you like anything?” in response to my dislike of shows that all about me are gushing over in admiration (Buffy, Angel, Babylon 5, whatever SF show is flavour of the month this Con… hey, I remember all those conversations about Dark Angel…).

Which always strikes me as odd, because I go home to my cabinet full of DVDs and my ongoing complaints that we watch too much TV, and the two things do not compute. Until this year’s Swancon, when it was made clear to me just how little I fit in with Perth fandom, and moreover, how little I was welcome.

So, in an effort to set Stephen’s mind at rest, and give him something else to feel exasperated at me about, a partial list of the TV I do enjoy, outside of the individual documentaries that make up most of my watching habit:

Battlestar Galactica v2
Blake’s Seven
Deadwood
Dexter
Garden Invaders
Invader Zim
Life on Mars
Matt James’ Eco Edens
Most Evil
Mystery Science Theatre 3000
Original run Dr Who
Red Dwarf seasons 1-6
Spaced
The Brak Show
The City Gardener
The Fairly Odd-Parents
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
The Prisoner
The Venture Brothers
Time Team
Torchwood

All of which proves... something, I'm sure...

A BOOK FROM BALL

One of the most exciting emails I can receive from a friend is one that says simply “What’s your snail mail address?”: Grant Watson sent me one in the middle of an argument about David Bowie, and introduced me to his late-career electronica work via a hand-made ‘best of’ CD; Paul Haines did the same while we were both grokking our love for Thomas Dolby, and sent me a DVDs-worth of Dolby albums, film clips, and ephemera (including my first taste of the glorious Richard Cheese); and a few days back, after reading our blogs, Clarionite, insane genius, and the author of the best unicorn porn story I’ve ever read, (picture me, on my hands and knees with two other guys in a cramped student living room, index fingers pointing outwards from our foreheads, discussing bone density and the relative physics of stabbing versus charging…) Peter Ball did the same.

Yesterday, with a postcard tucked into it explaining that, as far as Peter is concerned, random bookness is one of the best potential cures for depression, we received a copy of The Nimrod Flip-Out by Israeli author Etgar Keret.

And what do you know? He’s right. It's not the package, of course, but the thought behind it. But seriously, random packages (by which I don't mean male gymnasts, oo-er!), how cool can you get?

JULIET, JASONI, AND NICKY WHOSE NAME REALLY SHOULD BEGIN WITH A J TO MAKE THIS TITLE A LOT SNAPPIER

Such incisive and caring correspondences. Such heartfelt and involving glimpses into their own lives. Such trust, and companionship, and freely offer vows of friendship. Such reaffirming statements of respect and amity.

Our thanks.

CHARLTON HESTON DIES PEACEFULLY AT HOME. MILLIONS OF IRONY LOVERS SADDENED THAT NOBODY TRIES TO PRISE GUN FROM HIS COLD, DEAD HANDS

Oh, Charltie, how you conflicted me. Loathed you for your untra-conservative, gun-totin' moronicism, but God, you were one hell of an actor in your time (Anyone who doubts me, check out his performance as the Player King in Branagh's Hamlet). Hopefully, hopefully, in time, people will forget the stupidity, and the movies will remain.

This is where I found the story

FACES OF EVIL

There’s been a strange confluence of interest in the Batthouse lately: Aiden and Blake have become fans of the old Universal horror movies, particularly the works of Boris Karloff, at the same time as I’ve become immersed in the reading of two very similar books— Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Next Door by Wenzl, Potter, Kelly & Laviana; and Happy Like Murderers: The True Story of Fred & Rosemary West by Gordon Burn . In my case, this isn’t new—serial killers have always held a fascination for me. But for the boys, those great old black and white movies are new ground, and they’re swallowing them as fast as they can be presented. Aiden, in particular, is Karloff-Boy: has the t-shirt, has the DVDs, only a matter of time before the action figure arrives….

But it’s set me a-thinking.

I’ve always been interested in the argument that one of the most disturbing aspects of the Nazis was their ability to bureaucratise evil—to turn the slaughter and dehumanisation of human beings into a mundane, even boring, act of civil administration. Yet it strikes me, comparing the contrasting images flittering across my evenings, that evil has always been mundane: that what we seek in horror movies is not the safe thrill of the cinema scare, but the reinforcement that evil can be easily recognised, that it stands out in such a way that we brave and noble (and more importantly, perhaps, normal) types can readily raise our torches and pitchforks and see it off. If it bleeds, we can kill it. But only if we recognise its otherness first.

Vampires are scary. Dinosaurs are scary. Monsters are scary. But the church leader, the builder, the landlord? Too much like us, too reflective a mirror. Too normal. Humanity, we’re told, has evolved past the point of micro-tribalism. We’re no longer helpless prey to be hunted down by animals bigger, stronger, and better equipped. It’s easy to band together in the face of an readily-identified monster. Easier still when the identifying marks cannot be hidden behind a smile and the living room curtains.

But be honest:

Look closely

Which ones can you name?

Which ones scare you more?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND WE'RE BACK

We have interwebbie access at home. You may now email your threats and hatred directly to the source.

Brandy deliveries, as always, are round the back.

PATIENCE, GRASSHOPPER

According to Westnet, yesterday's welcome-to-the-run-up-to-winter thunderstorms knocked out our local server, and they've no idea when it will be back on line. So, as I only have net access at work for the moment, and as that access blocks gmail so I have no email, those of you awaiting replies to hate mail will have to wait a short while longer.

On the bright side... umm...