Kristina Olsen is on The Music Show on Radio National this morning at 10. Try and catch her, she's sooooo good.
Later: She IS so good. Check her out. RLY.
And this tribute to LOLcats, is, as the maker suggests, rather good (snaps to Zoe for the link). I'm rather fond of the Kraftwurst clip as well (we are pork products...)
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Lunchtime
VH1 has half an hour of Split Enz vs Crowded House videos.
Split Enz is winning so far IMHO.
I know, it's the perfect Twitter entry, but I just haven't mastered that process yet.
Carry on.
-- Post From My iPhone
Split Enz is winning so far IMHO.
I know, it's the perfect Twitter entry, but I just haven't mastered that process yet.
Carry on.
-- Post From My iPhone
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Comfort zones
TOO MUCH INFORMATION! was bellowed down the phone.
Heh. I do love those moments. Well, I replied, BB needed a small reward for mowing nearly all of the lawn...
He steeled himself and braved the heat on Monday to mow everything but half of the back yard, only stopping because the lawnmower conked out. Now we are experiencing that exquisite but short-lived time when our lawn has transformed from unruly white trash into something that makes everyone else look unkempt. Bliss!
Please note the abundance of plums on the brink of harvesting. Not long now until BB goes completely nuts with the jam jars and our kitchen turns purple.
Bejeebus, it's hot, isn't it? Padge thinks so, and is cooling his fur coat by living in the bathroom:
He's very happy.
I did a similar thing during the holidays, at a wonderful waterhole near Kyogle:
The water was cool and green, the blue sky had a wonder of cloud shapes, and I lay there for ages watching them, fringed by rainforest. Around me, people splashed and played, but my ears were under water and I just floated and breathed.
After a long while, I looked up to see my son and my brother-in-law watching me from the rocks. FOUND ANY EELS YET? they yelled. Ahem. Time to hop out. Still, it was splendid, and I was reminded of it by Fifi's splendiferous recent post about swimming. I'm NOT a swimmer, never have been, but I enjoy water when I can swim within my comfort zone. I do so envy Fifi's being comfortable in the ocean.
I am drowning in blogposts to catch up with. My feedreader says I have 2786 unread posts. Holy mouseclicks. I'll get there, but don't be surprised if I leave really stupid late comments on posts you've written months ago. I seem to start with the people who only post occasionally, because they only have a couple of things for me to read, which is why I nearly fell off my chair catching up with Bad News Hughes' Visit to an Antique Store this morning (warning: that link is not for anyone culturally sensitive or Nice, but it is definitely for people who think dolls are creepy).
OK, enough computer. Time for a cold shower and a bit of studio time. I love cold concrete flooring (in summer!).
Heh. I do love those moments. Well, I replied, BB needed a small reward for mowing nearly all of the lawn...
He steeled himself and braved the heat on Monday to mow everything but half of the back yard, only stopping because the lawnmower conked out. Now we are experiencing that exquisite but short-lived time when our lawn has transformed from unruly white trash into something that makes everyone else look unkempt. Bliss!
Please note the abundance of plums on the brink of harvesting. Not long now until BB goes completely nuts with the jam jars and our kitchen turns purple.
Bejeebus, it's hot, isn't it? Padge thinks so, and is cooling his fur coat by living in the bathroom:
He's very happy.
I did a similar thing during the holidays, at a wonderful waterhole near Kyogle:
The water was cool and green, the blue sky had a wonder of cloud shapes, and I lay there for ages watching them, fringed by rainforest. Around me, people splashed and played, but my ears were under water and I just floated and breathed.
After a long while, I looked up to see my son and my brother-in-law watching me from the rocks. FOUND ANY EELS YET? they yelled. Ahem. Time to hop out. Still, it was splendid, and I was reminded of it by Fifi's splendiferous recent post about swimming. I'm NOT a swimmer, never have been, but I enjoy water when I can swim within my comfort zone. I do so envy Fifi's being comfortable in the ocean.
I am drowning in blogposts to catch up with. My feedreader says I have 2786 unread posts. Holy mouseclicks. I'll get there, but don't be surprised if I leave really stupid late comments on posts you've written months ago. I seem to start with the people who only post occasionally, because they only have a couple of things for me to read, which is why I nearly fell off my chair catching up with Bad News Hughes' Visit to an Antique Store this morning (warning: that link is not for anyone culturally sensitive or Nice, but it is definitely for people who think dolls are creepy).
OK, enough computer. Time for a cold shower and a bit of studio time. I love cold concrete flooring (in summer!).
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Not much to do with Australia, but it was a good weekend
WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? My father bellowed down the phone.
Here, talking to you, I answer.
WHY AREN'T YOU BLOGGING? YOU HAVEN'T WRITTEN ANYTHING SINCE TUESDAY. ALL YOU'VE LEFT US WITH IS TWO CATS WEARING HATS! WHAT ABOUT THE RESPONSIBILITY TO YOUR READERS? WE'RE DYING HERE!
Sheesh, talk about parental pressure. You'd think this was my homework or something. I've been busy, ok? Osteopath appointments, voluntary newsletters, paid work, studio setting up, movies to watch, partner to woo, overhaul to attempt. It's been a busy time.
The Studio is as set up as it can be until I have the muscle strength to have the press in the same room as me. I'm not even going to put my letterpress gear in there until I can comfortably lift a half-empty typecase, it's just too tempting. So here's a quick tour of Studio Duck, phase one:
Bottom left corner, the 'reading room'.
Top left corner, the 'clean working room'
Top right corner, the 'print room', yet to be established...
The bottom right corner, the 'homework room', later to be part of the printing area.
If you are studio-buffs and want to know more, click on the images to go back to Flickr and read my notes. Basically, one side will be clean work, the other dirty work, and I hope to have a central bench with drying racks underneath to divide the two spaces.
So I got to the point of getting out some actual pages and folding them on Friday afternoon, and then had to stop and go to meet Best Beloved for a movie. And I haven't been back all weekend! So today will be my first proper working session ever. I've decided that until art school goes back, I will work on the computer in for the first half of the morning (or all morning if I have to) and go to the studio in the afternoon. Hooray!
I knew I had a lot of computer work to do over the weekend, so Best Beloved and I made a commitment to go to a number of movies over the long weekend. We decided to go to the first session of the day, since these seem to be the least crowded, and then you come out of the cinema with the rest of the day ahead of you, which we love.
Friday was the exception, we went in the afternoon to see Frost and Nixon. Loved it.
Saturday we didn't see a movie, but I managed to get BB to drive over to Gunghalin with me and look at a Display Home Village. Miracle! BB is very cautious about debt, but now that I have a 6-year tenancy for a studio, we're starting to think about what to do at the end of it: move house to something with a studio? Extend? knock down and build again? We haven't got the finances yet, but if we start planning and budgeting, we may well have in the next few years.
Well. What a load of crap is out there. Project homes range from scummy badly-designed tiny boxes on tiny blocks up to enormous bloated badly-designed McMansions on tiny blocks. We found one we liked, and that is because it actually had some wall space for bookshelves and pictures. Obviously no-one likes books or gardening anymore. We are hoping that Penny and Kevin can push a few more mandatory green features onto these designs over the next few years. And we've been pointed in the direction (by friends) of some affordable eco-designers who may be able to help when we're ready.
Sigh. Anyway, it was a first step. And they're important.
Saturday night I went to a Girl's Night with some art school mates. Traditionally these consist of nice food, a bottle of champagne each (bare minimum) and some home hairdressing and beauty treatments, accompanied by lashings of gossip. This one wasn't much different, except that usually I'm the odd one out, not liking nail polish or hairdye. I usually sit and watch them play with each other. This time one of them had hit upon a less permanent plaything and brought along her curling tongs. I got thoroughly tonged and sprayed, and ended up looking like an aging 1920s flapper...
Which is all good and well (besides bringing back memories of years of bad perms in my yoof), but then I drunkenly rode home on my bike sometime after midnight, flopped into bed, and woke the next morning with a crazy halo of tortured hair that made Best Beloved (who had been asleep when I got back) do a double take when he opened his eyes. Thank Ceiling Cat it washed out, which is something that never happens when you do drunken girlie perm nights.
Sunday morning we saw Seven Pounds. I hadn't heard much about this, apart from friendly mentions about letterpress scenes. The first half of the movie was extremely frustrating; I knew they were teasing out strands that would be pulled together by whatever fantastic climax we were heading for, but it just felt TOO bitsy. Then the letterpress scenes started, and I stopped thinking about anything but what I was seeing right then and there. By the end I was very impressed by whomever thought about using letterpress technology as a perfect way of showing how that character's working life could be disrupted by a heart problem (not a spoiler!). It just wouldn't have worked if she'd been a computer designer, and it tapped into the recent explosion of letterpress stationery designers, so it wasn't way out in left field for an American film (since that is where the explosion is mostly happening). I loved that line about impression (or embossing) being the only way to prove something isn't digitally printed. Although the idea of her press sitting there ready-inked waiting for her to trot out and demonstrate the process is ludicrous, isn't it, Printing Grrrls?
And Monday morning we saw Slumdog Millionaire, which I think is one of the best movies I've ever seen. I loved everything about it, and spent the rest of the day listening to Indian music on my computer just to keep myself in the mood it had left me with.
And the rest of the time I've been working on the computer, finishing paid jobs, working on voluntary jobs, and eating BB's excellent cooking, including a dinner of goat vindaloo and a lunch of poached eggs Florentine, my favorite.
So there you go, Colonel Duck, that's what I've been up to. And sex. Lots of sex. (well, not lots, but enough to get back in the saddle.) Blushing? Heh.
Here, talking to you, I answer.
WHY AREN'T YOU BLOGGING? YOU HAVEN'T WRITTEN ANYTHING SINCE TUESDAY. ALL YOU'VE LEFT US WITH IS TWO CATS WEARING HATS! WHAT ABOUT THE RESPONSIBILITY TO YOUR READERS? WE'RE DYING HERE!
Sheesh, talk about parental pressure. You'd think this was my homework or something. I've been busy, ok? Osteopath appointments, voluntary newsletters, paid work, studio setting up, movies to watch, partner to woo, overhaul to attempt. It's been a busy time.
The Studio is as set up as it can be until I have the muscle strength to have the press in the same room as me. I'm not even going to put my letterpress gear in there until I can comfortably lift a half-empty typecase, it's just too tempting. So here's a quick tour of Studio Duck, phase one:
Bottom left corner, the 'reading room'.
Top left corner, the 'clean working room'
Top right corner, the 'print room', yet to be established...
The bottom right corner, the 'homework room', later to be part of the printing area.
If you are studio-buffs and want to know more, click on the images to go back to Flickr and read my notes. Basically, one side will be clean work, the other dirty work, and I hope to have a central bench with drying racks underneath to divide the two spaces.
So I got to the point of getting out some actual pages and folding them on Friday afternoon, and then had to stop and go to meet Best Beloved for a movie. And I haven't been back all weekend! So today will be my first proper working session ever. I've decided that until art school goes back, I will work on the computer in for the first half of the morning (or all morning if I have to) and go to the studio in the afternoon. Hooray!
I knew I had a lot of computer work to do over the weekend, so Best Beloved and I made a commitment to go to a number of movies over the long weekend. We decided to go to the first session of the day, since these seem to be the least crowded, and then you come out of the cinema with the rest of the day ahead of you, which we love.
Friday was the exception, we went in the afternoon to see Frost and Nixon. Loved it.
Saturday we didn't see a movie, but I managed to get BB to drive over to Gunghalin with me and look at a Display Home Village. Miracle! BB is very cautious about debt, but now that I have a 6-year tenancy for a studio, we're starting to think about what to do at the end of it: move house to something with a studio? Extend? knock down and build again? We haven't got the finances yet, but if we start planning and budgeting, we may well have in the next few years.
Well. What a load of crap is out there. Project homes range from scummy badly-designed tiny boxes on tiny blocks up to enormous bloated badly-designed McMansions on tiny blocks. We found one we liked, and that is because it actually had some wall space for bookshelves and pictures. Obviously no-one likes books or gardening anymore. We are hoping that Penny and Kevin can push a few more mandatory green features onto these designs over the next few years. And we've been pointed in the direction (by friends) of some affordable eco-designers who may be able to help when we're ready.
Sigh. Anyway, it was a first step. And they're important.
Saturday night I went to a Girl's Night with some art school mates. Traditionally these consist of nice food, a bottle of champagne each (bare minimum) and some home hairdressing and beauty treatments, accompanied by lashings of gossip. This one wasn't much different, except that usually I'm the odd one out, not liking nail polish or hairdye. I usually sit and watch them play with each other. This time one of them had hit upon a less permanent plaything and brought along her curling tongs. I got thoroughly tonged and sprayed, and ended up looking like an aging 1920s flapper...
Which is all good and well (besides bringing back memories of years of bad perms in my yoof), but then I drunkenly rode home on my bike sometime after midnight, flopped into bed, and woke the next morning with a crazy halo of tortured hair that made Best Beloved (who had been asleep when I got back) do a double take when he opened his eyes. Thank Ceiling Cat it washed out, which is something that never happens when you do drunken girlie perm nights.
Sunday morning we saw Seven Pounds. I hadn't heard much about this, apart from friendly mentions about letterpress scenes. The first half of the movie was extremely frustrating; I knew they were teasing out strands that would be pulled together by whatever fantastic climax we were heading for, but it just felt TOO bitsy. Then the letterpress scenes started, and I stopped thinking about anything but what I was seeing right then and there. By the end I was very impressed by whomever thought about using letterpress technology as a perfect way of showing how that character's working life could be disrupted by a heart problem (not a spoiler!). It just wouldn't have worked if she'd been a computer designer, and it tapped into the recent explosion of letterpress stationery designers, so it wasn't way out in left field for an American film (since that is where the explosion is mostly happening). I loved that line about impression (or embossing) being the only way to prove something isn't digitally printed. Although the idea of her press sitting there ready-inked waiting for her to trot out and demonstrate the process is ludicrous, isn't it, Printing Grrrls?
And Monday morning we saw Slumdog Millionaire, which I think is one of the best movies I've ever seen. I loved everything about it, and spent the rest of the day listening to Indian music on my computer just to keep myself in the mood it had left me with.
And the rest of the time I've been working on the computer, finishing paid jobs, working on voluntary jobs, and eating BB's excellent cooking, including a dinner of goat vindaloo and a lunch of poached eggs Florentine, my favorite.
So there you go, Colonel Duck, that's what I've been up to. And sex. Lots of sex. (well, not lots, but enough to get back in the saddle.) Blushing? Heh.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Kitten Wars: Cat in the Hat
Pooter and Padge decided to try on Aretha's hat: who do you think suits it more?
Mr Padge doesn't seem to like the hat, but he loves the new president.
Mr Pooter just wants that person over there to SHUT. UP. He's loving the Brave New World vibes.
(Snaps to Ann oDyne, who added to the joy at Sorrow at Sills Bend)
Mr Padge doesn't seem to like the hat, but he loves the new president.
Mr Pooter just wants that person over there to SHUT. UP. He's loving the Brave New World vibes.
(Snaps to Ann oDyne, who added to the joy at Sorrow at Sills Bend)
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Dawn, new era
Mr Pooter, as a cat of colour, has been glued to the radio since the wee hours and can't wait to see what the DVD captured. He thinks that the Americans got everything right except the President's species, but also knows that is just a matter of time...
-- Post From My iPhone
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Orange from Greens
My studio is cool. Not in the 'oh wow, amazing' sense (I'm working on that), but in
the ten-degrees-cooler-than-outside sense.
It has a tin roof. Right now it is raining, hard, and I am transported back to... Just back, somewhere where there are tin roofs. The sound is fantastic.
I am playing Machine Translations, which is my rainy-day studio music, always has been. They've got the right sense of atmosphere.
I hope that photo turns out. It shows the only nice corner set up with all the things that will allow me to work until I get more shelving and move in the press paraphanalia.
Today I went looking for bookcases and shelving. I went up to my local Salvos on the way to Aussie Junk (looking for a teapot, but there's a DEARTH of them in Canberra op shops. I may -- gasp -- have to buy a new one) and intercepted two people with a trailer full of stuff trying to offload it to the reluctant shop assistants. They had a couple of bookshelves, and I asked if I could buy them directly from them -- or should I wait & see if the shop would take them? Turns out that they were jolly people from the Greens doing an office clean-out, and since the Salvos were looking harried, why not?
We ended up with them following me back to the studio and they helped me move the bookcases into the space, plus they threw in a couple of whiteboards. I gave them a donation to the Party in return, and I think we were all pretty happy. I heart The Greens.
One of the bookcases is wildly eccentric: hot orange, a bookcase on one side and a display case on the other! I think I'll slap a rough coat of lighter paint on it to knock it back a bit, then use it as a divider to hold all my poetry on one side and show off a bit of making on the other for anyone that peeps in the window at gallery openings.
Ooh, thunder! What a great day. Not for poor BB, though, who is home feeling miserabubble from a spider bite incurred whilst helping me move shite from the garage. Poor bugger. Still, the beauty of this studio is that it's less than one pop song's ride from the house. And with Bumblebee away, I can play for hours. And I will!
-- Post From My iPhone
the ten-degrees-cooler-than-outside sense.
It has a tin roof. Right now it is raining, hard, and I am transported back to... Just back, somewhere where there are tin roofs. The sound is fantastic.
I am playing Machine Translations, which is my rainy-day studio music, always has been. They've got the right sense of atmosphere.
I hope that photo turns out. It shows the only nice corner set up with all the things that will allow me to work until I get more shelving and move in the press paraphanalia.
Today I went looking for bookcases and shelving. I went up to my local Salvos on the way to Aussie Junk (looking for a teapot, but there's a DEARTH of them in Canberra op shops. I may -- gasp -- have to buy a new one) and intercepted two people with a trailer full of stuff trying to offload it to the reluctant shop assistants. They had a couple of bookshelves, and I asked if I could buy them directly from them -- or should I wait & see if the shop would take them? Turns out that they were jolly people from the Greens doing an office clean-out, and since the Salvos were looking harried, why not?
We ended up with them following me back to the studio and they helped me move the bookcases into the space, plus they threw in a couple of whiteboards. I gave them a donation to the Party in return, and I think we were all pretty happy. I heart The Greens.
One of the bookcases is wildly eccentric: hot orange, a bookcase on one side and a display case on the other! I think I'll slap a rough coat of lighter paint on it to knock it back a bit, then use it as a divider to hold all my poetry on one side and show off a bit of making on the other for anyone that peeps in the window at gallery openings.
Ooh, thunder! What a great day. Not for poor BB, though, who is home feeling miserabubble from a spider bite incurred whilst helping me move shite from the garage. Poor bugger. Still, the beauty of this studio is that it's less than one pop song's ride from the house. And with Bumblebee away, I can play for hours. And I will!
-- Post From My iPhone
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