Thursday, June 29, 2006
flying things
A hundred small, furry moths beat against the screen in a halo of light and moth-dust.
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Six wood swallows perched shoulder to shoulder on a thin branch, swinging in the breeze.
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She watched Under the Tuscan Sun on DVD and longed to see such things before she died.
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Six wood swallows perched shoulder to shoulder on a thin branch, swinging in the breeze.
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She watched Under the Tuscan Sun on DVD and longed to see such things before she died.
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Tuesday, June 27, 2006
footnotes
Dressed for work in an orange jumpsuit, she was not sure whether she felt like a Guantanamo Bay detainee, an astronaut or Rocketman!
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When the motor repairer installed a new weather seal to the boot of her car he was secure in the knowledge that she would not know whether or not it was fixed until the following wet season
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A brilliant star appeared just above the treetops and hovered in the one position for minutes until it became an aeroplane
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When the motor repairer installed a new weather seal to the boot of her car he was secure in the knowledge that she would not know whether or not it was fixed until the following wet season
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A brilliant star appeared just above the treetops and hovered in the one position for minutes until it became an aeroplane
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Monday, June 26, 2006
Thinking and watching
She wondered whether she could build muscles in her arms simply by lifting them above her head at intervals; without use of weights.
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The Gathering Storm (Churchill between the wars)was such an inspiring and riveting movie that she had to forgo her planned snooze in front of the DVD.
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The Gathering Storm (Churchill between the wars)was such an inspiring and riveting movie that she had to forgo her planned snooze in front of the DVD.
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Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Reprise the reprisal
The other day at work I submitted an article for the departmental online daily news bulletin. Okay, I dashed it off in a bit of a hurry, otherwise I probably wouldn't have used a word like "reprise" - as "in a reprise of the role they played". Yes, it's a trifle archaic, so shoot me!
Lowly public servant and wordsmith that I am, my humble submission was edited by the clearly superior, more highly placed and paid web editors in Canberra (seat of all government knowledge and power)and appeared online the next day altered to read "in a reprisal of their role."
"That doesn't look right to me," thinks your humble servant..."shit, I must have used the wrong word (after all highly paid editors must know better than I, I think, in my usual excess of self-doubt)."
So I consult my trusty dictionary. Lo and behold, "reprise" appears to mean: "repeat action: to repeat an action or performance", while "reprisal" on the other hand has quite a different meaning: "Retaliation for an injury with the intent of inflicting at least as much injury in return. The practice of using political or military force without actually resorting to war".
Well done, you oh so superior, highly paid editors who constantly crop, chop and change my work then publish it with my byline - this was a particularly entertaining blooper in view of the fact that the "role" under discussion was facilitating aid to a combat zone!!!
Whoops...didn't like the way they treated us last time we tried to help get food to them when they were having a war - let's make sure we effect a reprisal this time - what? poisoned porridge maybe?
Hmmm... now "effect" I'm not at all sure about - should it be "affect" oh editors from hell?
Lowly public servant and wordsmith that I am, my humble submission was edited by the clearly superior, more highly placed and paid web editors in Canberra (seat of all government knowledge and power)and appeared online the next day altered to read "in a reprisal of their role."
"That doesn't look right to me," thinks your humble servant..."shit, I must have used the wrong word (after all highly paid editors must know better than I, I think, in my usual excess of self-doubt)."
So I consult my trusty dictionary. Lo and behold, "reprise" appears to mean: "repeat action: to repeat an action or performance", while "reprisal" on the other hand has quite a different meaning: "Retaliation for an injury with the intent of inflicting at least as much injury in return. The practice of using political or military force without actually resorting to war".
Well done, you oh so superior, highly paid editors who constantly crop, chop and change my work then publish it with my byline - this was a particularly entertaining blooper in view of the fact that the "role" under discussion was facilitating aid to a combat zone!!!
Whoops...didn't like the way they treated us last time we tried to help get food to them when they were having a war - let's make sure we effect a reprisal this time - what? poisoned porridge maybe?
Hmmm... now "effect" I'm not at all sure about - should it be "affect" oh editors from hell?
Monday, June 19, 2006
Cyclone shelter
Apart from yawn over the weekend, I did complete this painting inspired by a fearful wait for the force 5 cyclone that (thankfully) just missed us back in April.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Yawn!
Y.a.w.n....yawn...oh (stretch)... I'm so tired!
That's how I've felt all weekend. What a pity to waste a precious weekend falling asleep all the time.
Yesterday I met some people for lunch at the markets, ran into some other friends, met some new people...it was nice but by the time I got home at 2pm I felt I could hardly keep my eyes open. Then a friend called in with some takeaways for dinner and by the time we'd sat down to watch a DVD - you got it...I slept through most of seven years in Tibet (well the movie anyway if not the entire 7 years!). Such a great entertainer I am!
Today I went to the vegie markets, bought a couple of necessities from the grocery store and met my friend for the Darwin Seafood festival. After about 1k each way walk in the sun there and back, a bottle of beer and some seafood, I promptly fell asleep on his lounge for the next two hours before dragging myself home.
Anyone interested in a few hours of scintillating conversation and lively company apply here do!
That's how I've felt all weekend. What a pity to waste a precious weekend falling asleep all the time.
Yesterday I met some people for lunch at the markets, ran into some other friends, met some new people...it was nice but by the time I got home at 2pm I felt I could hardly keep my eyes open. Then a friend called in with some takeaways for dinner and by the time we'd sat down to watch a DVD - you got it...I slept through most of seven years in Tibet (well the movie anyway if not the entire 7 years!). Such a great entertainer I am!
Today I went to the vegie markets, bought a couple of necessities from the grocery store and met my friend for the Darwin Seafood festival. After about 1k each way walk in the sun there and back, a bottle of beer and some seafood, I promptly fell asleep on his lounge for the next two hours before dragging myself home.
Anyone interested in a few hours of scintillating conversation and lively company apply here do!
Monday, June 12, 2006
From the NT News
This bloke wins my vote for living life to the full...
Long life ends in fast lane
FROM our friends in London: A young-at-heart pensioner who whizzed around a supermarket on a trolley shouting "wheeeee" died after losing control and crashing in the car park outside. Widower Dennis Wiltshire, 80 of Neath, south Wales, was hit on the head by his speeding trolley when he was thrown to the ground as it overturned.
An inquest in Swansea recorded a verdict of accidental death after the pensioner died.
Way to go Dennis!
Long life ends in fast lane
FROM our friends in London: A young-at-heart pensioner who whizzed around a supermarket on a trolley shouting "wheeeee" died after losing control and crashing in the car park outside. Widower Dennis Wiltshire, 80 of Neath, south Wales, was hit on the head by his speeding trolley when he was thrown to the ground as it overturned.
An inquest in Swansea recorded a verdict of accidental death after the pensioner died.
Way to go Dennis!
Friday, June 09, 2006
Three unrelated happenings or miscellaneous woo-woo!
1. Tonight when I arrived home from work I found a dead dove lying peacefully in my favourite balcony chair - thankfully I noticed it before I sat on it!
2. In the mailbox was a letter from the "NT society". This letter went on for six tightly typed pages telling me how I'd been "specially selected" by a "secret society" of the world's most powerful and successful people to receive absolutely free (of course!)the "shockingly powerful secrets" that have made them "the world's most famous and powerful people."
Apparently I've been selected because these people, whose identities can never be revealed, have identified some "rare traits" I possess, which have made them decide to offer me membership in their "exclusive society and to share their secrets, too, absolutely free!"
If I mail or fax back this exclusive invitation form by Friday they will share with me their secrets, "totally free", and before long I'll be - choosing all the right lotto numbers and the winning horses, making a fortune by working from home and setting up a multi-million dollar company, attract love and desire from, well almost anyone in the world, look 10 years younger and more... all obviously "absolutely free"!
I'm told the "two times winner of Binion's World Champion of Poker" (whatever that is) and a Fortune 500 company both offered tens of thousands of dollars for these secrets. But no, the secret NT Society is only prepared to divulge them to a few select people who have been identified as having "rare talents"... and of course to us select few its all "absolutely free"!.
Spare me do!!!!
3. Just when I'd finished reading the above pile of horse-shit, my phone rang. Lo and behold, it was a computerised voice telling me I had won a "6 day, 5 night holiday in sunny Orlando Florida".
Somehow I managed to keep my excitement in check long enough to hang up the phone and get back to my novel, my glass of wine and watching the sun set over the Timor Sea.
God my scepticism cuts me out of all kinds of fabulous possibilities!
2. In the mailbox was a letter from the "NT society". This letter went on for six tightly typed pages telling me how I'd been "specially selected" by a "secret society" of the world's most powerful and successful people to receive absolutely free (of course!)the "shockingly powerful secrets" that have made them "the world's most famous and powerful people."
Apparently I've been selected because these people, whose identities can never be revealed, have identified some "rare traits" I possess, which have made them decide to offer me membership in their "exclusive society and to share their secrets, too, absolutely free!"
If I mail or fax back this exclusive invitation form by Friday they will share with me their secrets, "totally free", and before long I'll be - choosing all the right lotto numbers and the winning horses, making a fortune by working from home and setting up a multi-million dollar company, attract love and desire from, well almost anyone in the world, look 10 years younger and more... all obviously "absolutely free"!
I'm told the "two times winner of Binion's World Champion of Poker" (whatever that is) and a Fortune 500 company both offered tens of thousands of dollars for these secrets. But no, the secret NT Society is only prepared to divulge them to a few select people who have been identified as having "rare talents"... and of course to us select few its all "absolutely free"!.
Spare me do!!!!
3. Just when I'd finished reading the above pile of horse-shit, my phone rang. Lo and behold, it was a computerised voice telling me I had won a "6 day, 5 night holiday in sunny Orlando Florida".
Somehow I managed to keep my excitement in check long enough to hang up the phone and get back to my novel, my glass of wine and watching the sun set over the Timor Sea.
God my scepticism cuts me out of all kinds of fabulous possibilities!
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Home is where the heart is!
The stench of the dead flying fox placed in our communal
garbage bin this week gave new meaning to the smell of decaying flesh!
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On the nightly news: scientists have cloned a human heart from a patients' stem cells and it's beating in the body cavity of some animal. From a selfish point of view all this says to me is that the technology may be available in ten years' time to keep me alive indefinitely as a very old person! Why couldn't they have discovered it when I was 30?
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How old are Maggie Smith and Judi Dench anyway? I feel personal sadness in identifying more with them than I do with Angelina Jolie.
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Every new wrinkle is uglier than the previous one. Laugh lines are one thing...but this is getting ridiculous!
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What was that 50 year old bloke doing on Mount Everest anyway? Trying to make the rest of us feel slack?
garbage bin this week gave new meaning to the smell of decaying flesh!
...................................................................................
On the nightly news: scientists have cloned a human heart from a patients' stem cells and it's beating in the body cavity of some animal. From a selfish point of view all this says to me is that the technology may be available in ten years' time to keep me alive indefinitely as a very old person! Why couldn't they have discovered it when I was 30?
...................................................................................
How old are Maggie Smith and Judi Dench anyway? I feel personal sadness in identifying more with them than I do with Angelina Jolie.
...................................................................................
Every new wrinkle is uglier than the previous one. Laugh lines are one thing...but this is getting ridiculous!
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What was that 50 year old bloke doing on Mount Everest anyway? Trying to make the rest of us feel slack?
