Tomorrow I'll be heading off to Our Nation's Capital for some conferencing. The temperature is going to be a brisk and crispy -2 overnight, with a top temp during the day of around 11 whole degrees. I'll be breaking out the winter coat and scarf, and appreciating the warmth of some possum wool gloves and socks. Merci.

My flight should arrive in the afternoon just in time for the mercury to plummet again, after a day in which it appears the sky will be crying, if this image is anything to go by. Perhaps I'll see some scenes like this:



Then again, given I'm staying in the city near ANU, I doubt it.

Moving along...

Also on in Canberra at the moment is the Vanity Fair Portraits exhibition. Here's an interesting essay on the Vanity Fair Portrait for your persual. A + B = C: yes, I plan to visit and gaze adoringly at the work of Liebovitz, Testino, Beaton et al. Beats just buying the book; although I imagine I will do this too.

Full report upon my return; or perhaps before, during and after if I have internet access and / or a delay in flights. Arrivederci.

This morning, I picked up a package from the Post Office. In it, I discovered this:
Pentax X70. The one with the superdooper zoom. Like, totally superdooper.

Methinks some photography excursions are in order!

In french lessons some time ago I was told a good way to learn a language was watching and listening to it; so I watch everything from Amelie to La Haine, and music clips. Funnily enough, there are among pop singers multi-lingual folks, and so here's something I've been practising along with:



Although I am definitely unable to hit those notes.

Here's the original for comparison.



Still a perfect pop song.

( lyrics )

This is one our recently graduated students: only a few years younger than my most 'mature' student who at last count was 84 years of age. I supervise students aged from 22 to in their 80's, which makes for some unique and varied writing projects.

Check out her achievements!

Awesome.

Here (now suspended) and here.

Apparently in the morning there's going to be a grey blobby thing hovering over my area!

On the weather map tonight it looks like this:



I'll take a photo of it for you; that's if it doesn't consume us all....

Spooky.

A friend was discussing having a Christmas in July celebration soon, and it reminded me that I've always wanted to experience a white Christmas. It would look like this:


I'm pretty sure I've dreamed this dream aloud on here before. (Yes, I have) Anyway, it also reminded me of how amusing the whole Christmas in July thing is - and for those watching from the Northern Hemisphere, it roughly equates to Australians using the cold weather to justify having another Christmas in the weather it was designed for. Which, for everywhere bar the Snowy Mountains and some mountainous areas of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania will not involve scenes like that depicted above, but just cold shitty weather, with rain and frost and unhappy irritated people.

So kind of like Christmas in a lot of places in the North really.

Watched this last week with a friend on the occasion of his birthday with his flatmate; thanks be to the universe for a website with previous performances so I could see it again.

Between him yelling about how Lior can't sing for shit and her yelling about how she wanted to go to a dank and dingy pub for some more drinks I couldn't hear the song, save for Serena Ryder's soulful voice. They were both sitting within two metres of each other too; it was funny, even the bit when I yelled 'shut up guys, I wanna hear this chick sing!' and they expressed mock-surprise: 'what are you yelling for?'

Check out the song; it's a good performance from a very cool TV show, and not just because I can get a lot of questions right. Julia Zemiro holds her own as host, and it's filmed in the Espy. What more could you want?

Besides being able to watch it without people yelling in the background of course.

For a long time, I have had neither an actual desk, nor an appropriate desk chair. Hence, I seem to do a lot of my work on my computer perched at the dining table, hunched over the coffee table* or with the laptop on my lap. Yes, I guess I should mention the computer I use is a laptop; I have not been dragging a desktop computer from one end of the house to the other. And no, it's not one of these either:



Oh laugh if you will; at one point in time my friends that was the very height of technology.

If you're old enough to remember going to university and studying and completing assignments without the internets, and printing them out on a dot-matrix daisy wheel printer (oy vey!), you'll have a good laugh at that picture. If not, well, sorry kids; some of us really appreciate the technologies you take for granted.

Ahem. I sounded awfully like an adult just then.

But since we're talking about taking things for granted, let us return to our discussion about the flipside of that: thinking things are acceptable just because that's the way they've always been.

Ah, nice segueway there.

So the objects I have utilised in the place of an actual desk have mostly been tables: work tables, kitchen tables, and currently a dining table. It's a very handsome dining table, to be sure, but it ain't no desk. In place of a comfortable desk chair I have been using an illegimately acquired, small in every sense of the word temperamental piece of junk with splits in the seat and a seat back that sits no higher than my lumbar. For some reason, I have had this chair in my possession for years; it's uncomfortable, it doesn't adjust anywhich way except vertically, and yet here it remains. Oh look; it does its job as a chair, it's just that given the choice between that and straining my back over the coffee table, I'll take the coffee table.

The only benefit of this chair is that its not too hot to sit on in summer; but then I mostly take the laptop out to the sunroom and sit on the floorboards. This house is old; a 'simple beach house' according to the owner when I ring inquiring about the absence of insulation or the windows I can't close.** The floorboards in the sunroom let through cooling slivers of air from under the house on hot days, and is a better place to be than in a stifling study sitting on the world's most uncomfortable desk chair.

So you see what I'm saying.

So why on earth have I kept this chair for so long? The answer is simple: because it's just always been there. We've been through five places of residence, two or three relationships and a move interstate, and the split-top brown desk chair has always just managed to avoid any culling. Not only because there was never any replacement (hey, when you're given something so easily it doesn't exactly encourage you go out and seek a replacement) but also because an uncomfortable desk chair is kind of hard to find a new home for. And you know; I do have a heart - I can't just kick it to the curb after all this time. Besides, I'm pretty sure leaving it on the curb is illegal here; should have left it in Sydney - there was a spot on my street that always seemed to have a pile of abandoned stuff sitting there. You know those spots? Once there was a fridge there in the morning; by the middle of the day it was gone.

Anyway, so therein lies the rub. This inoffensive chair does nothing for me, but still it gets to stay because I'm not quite sure how to set it free, and don't quite know what to do without it in the meantime. It's uncomfortable, but it'll do. Talk about your metaphors on wheels.

J____ has long asserted that the most unfortunate and difficult situation to be in is what he calls familiar hell. Be it your job, your body, your relationship: it's the hell that's nice and safe, compared to the uncertainty of life without it, as much as it isn't quite what it used to or could be. As our friend Kylie Minogue said: Better The Devil You Know. But familiarity breeds contempt, and hell is other people. That's what makes Anne Taintor's humour so cruelly witty, what makes people stick with things that aren't quite the ideal, and what made me keep this dumb old chair for such a long time, even though we both knew we just weren't working out.

So last week, after a little bit of research (sitting on other people's desk chairs and comparing them to mine) I got myself a new chair. And what a chair:
Assembling the chair was a task and a half, but the test-run at the store chatting with S____ and watched by a bemused Officeworks associate as we mimicked sitting at a desk with our feet up, typing while in a slightly horizontal and definitely unergonomic position, revealed the chair to be so comfortable and befitting I just had to have it.

Besides which, there's a certain amount of pride to be gleaned from being able to assemble a chair alone when it's clearly meant to be assembled by two sets of hands. It was quite the acrobatic struggle to put it all together, but I did it. There's actually not much I can't manage myself; necessity is the mother of invention. Ergo, independence is the sister of salvation. Amen.

And besides, it was worth it. This chair is so plush, I am just melting into it as we speak.

With the benefit of hindsight can I just tell you I'm looking back at that old chair, now pushed to the side and ready for the refuse tip and I cannot believe I put up with that for so long. It's nothing more than a seat on wheels with a lumbar pad. What was I thinking?! Retrospect gives us glasses to see familiar hell for what it  is; a poor substitute for what we really want and deserve.

Krishnamurti said 'If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten', and I'm pretty sure he was talking about desk chairs. I am well pleased with my purchase, and the associated feeling of embracing change it has brought about.

*Absolutely terrible for one's back.

** One window sits on rusted hinges; they're so rusted they don't actually connect to anything anymore. The window is held in place by a combination of good positioning and good fortune: I opened it once and the whole window, heavy wooden frame and all fell out into the clear blue sky. I managed to heave it back in, straining every muscle in my back before deciding I really didn't need that window open after all.

Does anyone have one of these lying around?

Groovy, huh?

If so, please let me know and I'd be happy to take it off your hands. Especially if it's bright coloured and in good nick.

Cheers. Thanks.

Not a week goes by without something on the Postsecret feed resonating with me in some way. This week is no different, but altogether spookier than usual. It is as if I sent it there myself.

Here's the website; here's the facts.

Musician Tyson Stevens, center, joins other fans to remember Michael Jackson at the star they believe belongs to pop star Michael Jackson but that belongs to a radio personality of the same name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Photo: AP

Gallery of fan reactions.

Michael Jackson has suffered a heart attack and has been rushed to hospital. I'm not even gonna specualte what kind of ads will surround that story*.

Just ten minutes after: And he died**. Or so reports are saying, including one from a friend via SMS from a mine site out West of here. Pop culture news travels fast.

Can I just point out now, before the news media goes wild in their quest to make their millions off of one man's demise, that I've always felt very sorry Michael Jackson: despite the questionable relationships with children, the plastic surgery, the weird behaviour with the kids...or perhaps because of them. He is/was a defining element of the pop culture world, and yet he was just a human being, albeit a very sad, isolated and messed up one. He was rich and successful, sure, but do you think he ever had many real friends?

Later: It is confirmed that Michael Jackson, 50 year old entertainer and father of three, has died. Let the ghoulish games begin: News.com.au has a headline blaring Jacko's Final Minutes; Entertainment Tonight has the last photo, wherein a strange-looking man in the midst of departing the earth has his final moments recorded for posterity; just like every other moment in his lfe since he was five. Fitting, isn't it?

Kind of sick too.

This is Michael Jackson in March, 2009; hoping for the comeback that never came.

Kind of sad really.


*Mostly because I'm afraid of looking cruel if he you know, dies or something. There will be a queue forming to make jokes at his expense anyway: I don't need to be at the head of it.

**These were the words used to tell Terri Irwin that Steve 'Crocodile Hunter' Irwin was dead: she repeated them in an interview on TV once and I was always struck how desperate her despair was, and at how strange the world is that we watch celebrities bare their souls so candidly.

Farrah Fawcett has died aged 62.

I've always been under the impression that on news sites, pop-up, banner and sidebar ads are placed according to the words in the text they accompany: this is why you see ads for tyres and brake alignments next to a news story about a car accident, for example. Actually, I know this because my advertising exec brother told me, and many moons ago there was an article about an abortion debate raging in parliament, accompanied by an advert with a woman holding a baby tastefully extolling the virtues of motherhood. A_____ sent it to me and I placed it on this very blog. As I recall, we all had a good snicker about it.

This morning, when I clicked on the story above about Fawcett's death, a pop-up video ad started singing 'Cos I'm having a good time! Nothing can stop me noooooowwwwww'. Not sure who sings the song, but I'll be damned if I didn't cringe a little.

So I'm teasing my hair into a mohawk tonight* and it is knotted like a Rastafarian parade on a hot sunny day; hair going up in all angles, great dark brown clumps of this mangled mane o' mine strewn from one side of my head to other, and after I've applied some blue hairspray, just for effect, I realise I haven't quite got it there yet to the desired shape and size of the liberty spikes I was going for.

Thus my head is turned upside again, teased till I get dizzy, and on the way back up I casually run my hands through it, collecting a wad of knots and blue hairspray. Mmmn I think, smurf hands.

And there they are; my hands have the first smear of Smurfdom on them. Anyway, back to the mohawking: more product and spray and rubbing of hair ensues, until lo and behold I almost overbalance from the exertion of rubbing both hands on the sides of my head because I've abandoned the idea of liberty spikes for now and am content to just make a great fucking mess of the thing. I lean on the bathroom sink for a minute, close my eyes for a hearty sneeze and wipe my nose with my arm like a grotty kid from a public housing estate, 'cos twenty five years later and in a pinch that's all I am see and I've got blue hair up in a birdsnest on my head so I might as well get into this character I'm developing.

I open my eyes, stop and look at my hands a minute and whoa, somewhere along there I've gotten blue hairspray on both hands, which have left blue handprints on the sink and in the mirror I see a blue smeared face smiling back at me because a hearty old sneeze is refreshing and makes me grin. My blue-stained nose shows the path of my forearm, but at least it detracts from the mottled aqua ocean that's formed on my forehead; apparently all that upending of my wall of hair has left it's mark. Mmmn I stop and pause to reflect, then realise I'm leaning on the sink again, adding to the flurry of pawprints already there.

Shortly thereafter I get a minor itch in my left eye, which is not so much relieved by the almost unconscious and altogether ordinary quick rub with the tip of my middle finger as much as it burns, it burns, it burns until I cry fresh tears and see my hand is completely covered in blue hair spray. A small blob rolls down my cheek in the middle of a cleansing tear and rests upon the edge of my nose, giving the appearance of a very small Smurf taking up residence on a proboscis.

The biggest problem remains this matted mess of mayhem upon my melon, and detangling it all. And therein lay the wonder of unnatural substances, for while it is true that the shower I seek salvation in from this shitty mess does turn blue as coloured hairspray departs my hands, face, forehead and moptop, the chaos created by my late-week foray into fixing my hair is completely dissolved within seconds by the application of a simple soaking of conditioner.

A magical elixir to be sure. Just what is in conditioner that it can detangle such a colossal coiffure? 

And thus I am relieved to report that the only remaining evidence of tonight's follicle follies is the human hand prints randomly placed on the sink, the towel rack, the shower curtain and the shower wall.

Otherwise, it's almost like nothing ever happened here.



*'C'mon ya fucken wuss! Get up there! Or haven't ya got the balls? Crybaby...' And soforth.

An early morning SMS can only mean one thing:


Surf.

After two days of squinting at the phone and reclosing tired eyes to try to capture some more celestial slumber, I acquiesced this morning and hopped out of bed, struggled into my superdooper steamer and drove to the beach as the sun came up to see what all the fuss was about. Halfway down the beach, window open and peeling lines pushing me to drive further and faster to the surf spot, a blanket of rolling fog obscured my view, to the extent I slowed right down, making a mockery of those who would mock me for my apparent bogan roots.

Out of the morning mist, five vehicles appeared, set in a line in the sand; three near the dune and two sitting smack-bang in a puddle of seawater. I de-bagged my board and bustled on past to the water's edge, wondering if I should move them further back - then saw several surfers through the haze and figured they must know their 4WDs position. Legrope in place, I waded into what was not the cold water I expected, but a fairly temperate refreshing ocean.

The fog thinned as I paddled out and joined the rest of the early morning line-up. J___, who sends SMS surf reports and exhortations: 'come here now' grinned as he watched me make my way through clean sets and said with a smile "Welcome". That's his usual greeting, sometimes punctuated with a click of his waterproof camera or a great guffawing laugh on a recent occasion when I tucked a croissant under my hotskin and delivered it to him out the back.

These are moments those on the shore don't get to share. A recent late afternoon surf with S____ for his birthday became something altogether unique as we pointed out the metallic blue waves, the fading Sunday sun and the beginnings of a rainbow just to the South.

'I arranged that.' I said. 'Happy Birthday.'

'Thanks!' he grinned and caught another wave. It's just a moment, but it's a good one. Like watching another S____ stand up at the end of a long whitewash ride, the kind you take when you're learning, face flushed of workday worries and beaming, calling out 'I wanna do that again!' the ear-to-ear grin belying that inner determination: I wanna do that again. And better.

These seemingly minor moments make up the whole. And while I didn't get the best waves this morning, I drove home afterwards in my clammy wetsuit with piles of towels protecting the carseat and giving me the appearance of a grinning kid, sitting on telephone books driving her parents softroader.

No, I didn't get many good waves this morning. But watching the sun rise and burn through grey fog, blue sky peeking through as the colourless world became bright was good enough.

Over at girliejones place, she's bemoaning the fact Family First Senator Steve Fielding has concluded, after intensive research on Wikipedia and a couple of emails from Andrew Bolt*, that global warming doesn't actually exist.

This from a guy who earlier this year blamed the whole environmental catastrophe on people living alone, especially those who have committed the ultimate in ecological selfishness; divorce:

DIVORCE adds to the impact of global warming as couples switch to wasteful single lifestyles, according to an Australian politician. Family First senator Steve Fielding told a Senate hearing yesterday that divorce led to a "resource-inefficient lifestyle" and it would be better for the planet if couples stayed married.

Good grief.

Here's his blog on the subject, just in case you're of a mind to share some thoughts on the matter.

Link.

*Actually, it would appear that he has asked the expert opinion of the country's leading climate-change skeptic scientists, and some folks who just happen to work for a lobby group on behalf of one of the world's worst polluters. So you know, completely unbiased, objective people with absolutely no agenda whatsoever. Kind of like a man who heads a party opposed to, among other things, abortion and same-sex marriage, based on their conservative Christian ideology.

Brother Pork sends this image from his travels abroad:

Okay, enough with the moping and sighing; off to work with the lot of you now.

Happy Monday people.

*Glances back*

Sigh.

Two attempts at initiating friendly conversation with others today have failed due to lack of interest and / or inclination.

Let's see how we go with trying to find some help with the flat tyre I just found on my car.