Did I mention?

I got my hair cut. So I guess the title of the blog is less of a literal description of my life now, and more the fading zeitgeist of my once hair-filled youth. Or something.

I went to bed so early last night. I think it was about 9. I woke up around 4 and couldn't really get back to sleep, so I got up at 5 and did some stuff on my laptop, which I'm obviously still doing.

Sleep is good. I like sleep. I like dreams. Dreams can have an interesting effect on how you start a day. Like the other day I had this dream that me and my brother and my dad were out on the ocean, just swimming, or with boards or something, and the waves were basically mountains of water rising up around the place, and I remember going under for so long, that in the dream I thought I might drown, but I just held on, tumbling and disoriented, until

 I rose to the surface. Then I remember being told to swim over the trees, because there was now this forest around us, and the water was rising over the forest, like when you swim over seewead and raised reef bits when you're snorkelling, except that was replaced with what looked like forest, as if you were flying just over it in a plane, not birds-eye, but on a downward angle anyway. I hope you know what I mean. Then there were these wire suspension bridge bits, which I can't really explain because dreams are just chaotic for me most of the time, and then it sort of went back to being linear and semi-rational for a while, as we came across a cliff, with some sort of cable/winch thing coming down from the top. Then I remember pulling and pulling ourselves, and all these packs we now had, up this winch thing. We pulled and pulled, and then we got to this point high above the forest and water, but still no where near the top, and we stopped, and I see that we were pulling a big brown sofa up this cliff. So the sofa was now suspended, on this rope, resting against the side of this straight up and down cliff. So I was hesitant in turning myself around to sit down, as it seemed a bit wobbly, and then there we were, sitting on this sofa, with camping gear, on the side of this cliff, as if it were some legitimate form of mid-cliff sleeping gear hahaha. So yeah, I got the sense that we were staying there over night, and you know how in dreams you just know things? and, absurd or not, you believe them, in the context? and you know how someitmes when you 'remember' something in the dream, the dream often starts to change accordingly? Yeah, well, it was kind of like that, like some lucid part of me decided that this must be a sleeping system, so there would have to be some kind of weather barrier too, like a half-tent. I think if I hadn't woken up then, that's what would've happened next, we would have set all that up. Sometimes I wish I could stay in a dream, to see how these things pan out. Do dreams ever conclude properly? Or do they always leave you hanging like this? I don't think the important feel of a dream can ever come across in it's description, but this whole dream felt very end-of-the-world important. That's sometimes not very nice in dreams. Other dreams sometimes feel light, and really freeing. I think they're the best kind of dream. Like when you're flying, or riding some crazy motorcycle thing. That's always fun.

Speaking of cliffs by the sea. I can't wait to see Ponyo On the Cliff by the Sea! Or Ponyo, as it's called over here. I'm going to see the english version. It has Tina Fey, and Cate Blanchett, and Liam Neeson. But also, I really liked the english versions of all the other miyazaki movies. Especially Howl's Moving Castle. I watched the making of the dubbing on the DVD, and the pixar guy talked about how they made a huge effort in making it really accurate and everything, as if no one had ever done that before. Anyway, yeah, should be a whole lot of traditional cell animation goodness.

Happy birthday for last week man - thanks.

I haven't said anything for a while.

I had a birthday. It was kind of spread out across the weekend like a throw rug of gifts and outings. I got a book of drawings, and a novel I'd never heard of. I got a $30 gift card. I played scrabble. I went to a cousins 21st party at Queens, at which I was refused entry until my dad came hahaha. It was really loud and packed in the upstairs bit. We left pretty soon after we had got there, but it was nice seeing everyone.

Yesterday I went to fremantle on the train with a friend. I'd only been for school excursions, so it was really fun going to all the different shops that I'd never seen before. It's a lot better than going into the city. We went to this little store called kakulas sister which is one of those old style food stores with open bags of beans and seeds and tea and coffee.

I kept saying things like "ooh, I've never tried those" and "oh man, those look so good". There was a bag of chamomile flowers which I lent over and smelled. I've never tasted chamomile, or even really smelled it. I think I'll buy some chamomile tea. I'm not really a tea drinker, but I still like it. Then we went to elizabeth's, after some other little detours. There was a section for the antique books. I picked out a book that had one of those old style hardcovers with no writing on it, with some sort of opal/paua shell looking pattern on it. I don't know what it was made of, but that part was embedded onto the cover, and the page edges were coloured too. It looked very old, but I think it was from the sixties. The introduction explained that it was a novel by a german novelist from the seventeenth century who worked under many names, all anagrams of his own. The list was very amusing to read through, all these german three-part names. Apparently he was the father of the novel, before the english 'fotn' who I forget the name of, wrote. It said that people were still passing around these books that they thought were written by different people for years and years, and only very recent research had found out the little they know about his life. It had woodcuts in the front section and everything. It's so interesting to look at old books like that. I found another one which was an old, old book about bees! Anyway, we looked at some other books before leaving. There was an old 50's penguin copy of The War of the Worlds by H G Wells which was pretty cool to see. After that we had lunch, sitting in that park near little creatures brewery. Then we ended up at the other elizabeths, the sister store of the other one, just around the corner. There's a proper fiction section which the other one doesn't have. There was an old penguin book there I saw, amongst all the others in the classics section, that was by Henry Handel Richardson. I read the introduction/bio part. It kept saying that 'she' wrote it when 'she' was here and 'her' inspiration was this and that. I couldn't understand why someone would name their newborn daughter Henry in 1870. Furthur reading revelealed that she, Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson took the name of her brother, who had died, I think. She said that there was a controversy at the time over whether a woman could write a novel as well as a man, and she wanted to test this.


The book I had picked up was the second in 'The Fortunes of Richard Mahony" trilogy, about a man who comes to Australia for the gold fields. It's apparently one of the best australian works of literature, but was hardly successful or recognised when the books were released. Because the release dates were so far apart, and the story takes a while to conclude.

• Australia Felix (1917)
• The Way Home (1925)
• Ultima Thule (1929)
• The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1930)
  • Comprising the novels: Australia Felix, The Way Home and Ultima Thule

When it did, with Ultima Thule, it was then recognised as the great work that it was. What's a story without an ending? Then it was released as the one volume.



Maybe I should go back and buy the book. I'd have to find the other two though. Hmmm.

-Oh wow, I just thought, maybe she has a story in my best australian short stories book, and I looked, and there she was! Ha! I love that. iquwpreoiuqwpoieru You don't need to know this. But it's fun.

Anywayyyy, we got some gelato from Il Gelato. I got Cherry. Hahaha, somebody knows I was thinking of them. Anyway, we walked back to the train station, and I felt very at peace, and breezy, and summery. It was the best I've felt in a long time. Fremantle is lovely. Herman Melville was right, about man being drawn to the sea. You can feel it in the air. The cool breeze of the coast. We ate pumpkin seeds on the ride home, and looked out the window at the sun glistening on the brown, port water of the shipyards. We were so close to it, if the train fell to one side, we would all drown. When we went into a tunnel, and all went black, I could see my reflection in the opposite window. I smiled at myself, as if to say, hi, friend. A man kept looking, staring intently at me the whole trip, but I made no notice, and tried not to be judgemental. Sometimes I'll stare back into their eyes, the people who do that. I once did that, with a man, I forget where, and I smiled at him, and he was almost repulsed by the warmth of it. He stared back for a whole second though, which is a long time to have direct eye contact with a stranger. Then he looked away, defeated. I don't know why he was looking at me. A guy with thick rimmed glasses, in that horn-rim shape, you know, I don't remember what to call that, but a guy got on the train and sat down at the end of my row of seats, and I lent over to see if he had lenses in his glasses, because it looked like he didn't, and I find that pretty annoying, and also, I need a new prescription and I'm going crazy looking out for people with glasses, trying to decide what frames to get, or to just stay with these. Anyway, so, stupidly, I lent over very conspicuosly and looked and he saw me do this and I felt really silly, and he looked down and I sat back on my seat and stared out the window, and sort of laughed at myself, inside.

A Dilemma

You have a tin of prunes,

you can either:

a) stock them in the dried fruit section.

b) stock them in the canned fruit section.

You make your decision at some point between the two aisles, without looking at the sections for reference, and cannot turn back if you are wrong.

As the night-fill God's stand-in, I decide your fate. Choose wisely!

What can money buy a man like me?

It really doesn't help, that I get home from work at 1:30, or thereabouts. Then I feel hungry, and that I really need to do something or watch something, as a precautionary measure against lying in bed with shelf stocking running through my mind like the tetris effect, and then feeling like that's pretty much all I'd done that day.

But don't get me wrong, the job suits me, and I had my first payday today. Maybe I'll buy something.


Maybe I'll buy an old penny farthing that travels through time.

































Maybe I could buy a fjord.


























Maybe I could buy another year of life.


























Maybe I'll just go out somewhere with a friend. Somewhere.
























Guten nacht, friendo.

Frumpa-dump-dump.

I was hoping to get up early and enjoy my weekend. Why am I still up! I should be in bed, not typing this! QWRTUQYIORUTYEQROI!

I slept all day, saturday and sunday, and now I feel weird and cabin-fevery. I keep thinking if I don't sleep for 10 hours before I go to work I'll drop dead in the aisle. I worked till 1:00 am on friday. There were three people missing from work, and admittedly, I didn't help by talking so much to Paul from Zambia about boarding school in africa and how everyone has house-servants over there.

Tonight my brother's girlfriend was over for dinner which is always nice, we get along well. She had this nasal infection once and now she's lactose intolerant. She still ate some of my coffee cake though, she can handle that. I'd seen her drink chocolate soy milk, and more often, hot water by itself, but she told me that rice milk is gross so if she really wants milk she can drink goats milk which has a different type of lactose. Also, she has these little pills that help her digest lactose if she ever has any, but they're expensive. It may seem like an awful thing to to have, an adverse reaction to a lot of people's favourite food group, but you just adapt, and paying close atention to your food is something everybody should be doing. She also plays the oboe and speaks almost fluent mandarin. She chose to study it at uni as a minor to music. What a brave decision. It's very interesting to hear her speak it. This monotone asian language coming out of this blonde australian.

Lessons you should learn: Interesting stories can come from the most unlikely people.

Perhaps there is someone you've known for a long time. Perhaps there's a neighbour who you say hi to on a regular basis? Perhaps you've just met somebody, on the bus, in an elevator. How much do you know about these people? Probably not much.

Go find someone, you shouldn't have trouble, people are everywhere. Ask them their life story. Make a video, a photo album, record an interview. Write a song about the time their cat ran away. The best way to learn about the world is through other people. One on one. Maybe they grew up in a country you've never heard about. Maybe you hear about it all the time, but what's it really like there?

I'm off to bed now. It's unspeakably late. Night everybody.

Coffee Cake

is on the menu tonight. If I can get myself to bake it.

It should look like this. Complete with walnuts. Thanks google.

A good ol' thursday night.

You know how I said I work mtw&f? welllllll, thursday nights I have off, obviously, and tonight I unexpectedly had something to do outside of the house. If it were to have an overriding theme that was in some way present throughout all of it, it would be my brother, or my career. Let me tell you about my brother. He and I have very different tastes, and somethings he will not like because I like them, and he can be spiteful sometimes, in a very clever way. This is just sibling stuff really, go read a saddle club novel and find out more about it if you like, but this is not how Samuel and I interact entirely. It's strange, the relationship between siblings. They have their family histories and personal histories scattered with each others involvement and this can be a bad thing, but there's usually just a unique closeness their that underscores any surface rivalries or disagreements. I could use the word 'bond', but you don't wanna hear that, you don't, I know. It's more intricate than that. Better.

Anyway, forget all that. Samuel was acting crazy for some reason in and around dinner tonight. Then we ate mum's stirfry in my room while we watched that show, corner gas, which I'm pretty sure I mentioned before. Somebody say something if they know what I'm talking about. Mum is an awful cook, but vegetables and rice and some soy sauce is pretty much all you need for sub-par but edible food. I throw fistfuls of cashews in mine, Samuel opts for his usual lashings of tabasco sauce. We all have our ways of coping. Corner gas surprised me by having all the characters reading and talking about this book I once bought in a book store on impulse, and haven't read. But it won the man booker prize and I think there's some canadian connection there. But yeah, it's strange when things like that happen. When worlds collide I guess you would say. We didn't watch the rest of the episode because it would've spoiled the book. Samuel didn't care really. Then we got a call from a friend of ours inviting us to a cafe on beaufort. So we went, it was called Soto and it had this table at the side with scrabble and uno and mancala and stuff. I thought that it was a cool idea because I'm shamelessly a fan of board games, but I kept thinking that it wasn't something people would do in a cafe like that because of self-consciousness. Like yuppies in leather jackets don't like uno. I think this is a rare time that I would use the word 'pretentious' because it's such a misused word and I frankly don't care for it.

The friend-of-friends were much older than me and walking in I felt young and stupid. 'Stupid young me' I thought. 'Look at the disappointment on their faces, they have to make awkward conversation with this doofus.' This is just reflex however and I don't let myself think these things for long. We start talking and I have trouble hearing people as usual. They are this group of three writing students. ECU I think. The girl, whatever her name was, was doing writing as a minor, and majoring in science, geology and biology. She wants to be a conversationalist and Samuel is surprised at her decisiveness. He says that all the sciences students he meets don't have a clue what they want to do. I say something about recently landing a nightfill job and trying to think of what I should do on the side, and the guy in the middle says a very long sentence to me, and I didn't hear a word of it and I awkwardly nodded and there was a silence after he stopped. I felt bad for him, but I later find out after he left, from the friend of ours, that he is usually very awkward to talk to, and from Finland. I apparently failed to miss the thick accent. We ordered iced coffees and I, not having much to say, kept talking to my brother as I tend to resort to doing, and I make a point about him not knowing the band that was playing, which was arcade fire. You might be surprised, but on the drive over, triple j played that new radiohead song done as a tribute to the oldest surviving WWI veteran, which was very nice and sad. Samuel liked it too, but was confused by the strings-only instrumentation. "Is radiohead a band? Or is it just one guy?" I reacted to this with a good deal of shock. I mean, whenever I ask people what music they like I often just get radiohead and something else as an answer. But I mean, I wasn't like "oh me oh my, they R lyk essential listening mannnnnnn." but I was pretty surprised. Samuel thought for very long about what band was being played in the cafe and then said that it might be death cab for cutie and I said it wasn't and then refused to say who it really was because I just wanted to drop the subject. Musical taste is a pretty inconsiderate conversation topic, only in that everybody there looked kind of alienated by the discussion.

Other things said and discussed:
-doing writing at uni would defy the basis of my interest in it. How do you guys feel?
-How hard it is to get something published
-what do you guys actually write anyway? (sci-fi/fantasy, medieval/fantasy and historical narratives)
-"Yeah but nobody reads short story collections!" says the girl "I do!" I say.
-we exchanged drunkenness/vomit stories
-do people actually use the games here? (we do, and some people over there were about a half hour ago, and would you like to now?)

We played mancala, well me and the friend. I had never played it before. I think it's south american. It's that one where you move little stones around a board and try to get them to your side. It's actually pretty tedious but it was something interesting for a bit. Samuel and the other girl who I haven't even mentioned yet kept talking.

We left and decided to spend time at planet. I looked at movies, and music, and books. The full range really except the new clothes store part. I ended up buying a book. I told you about my efforts to not do this, but it was a coffee table type book, and I have a job now. My pay hasn't come up in my account and I have to sort it out tomorrow, but I have a job, so I owe Samuel 40 dollars for the book and coffee and then we went to mcdonalds so 50 really. But it was great. We made a real night out of it and I felt satisfied with my work/play balance which has so much been too workless and so recently too playless.

I read a short story in a book too because I wanted to, but also because that's the goodness about them, that they are short and sweet and leave you with an impression that is so often more immediate and affecting than drawn out narratives that should really just not have been written in the first place. Then we left and went to mcdonalds as I said.

We went through the drive in, and samuel spoke real loud and clear, "Could we please have two big mac large meals (we were hungry) with coke thanks." and she was surprised. A "Thank you very much" was enthusiastically squeezed into the reply coming out of the speaker box, and then we drive up, and she was thanking us, and samuel was like "well you know, malaga is known for it's manners" and she was like "well we only get 25 seconds to let people order now, and it's just so nice to have people know what they want and not sit there umming and ahhhing" and it was just one of those nice moments where you actually connect with someone in a store or drive through or whatever. You know, like, we obviously had brightened her night or whatever. Samuel asked the girl who gave us the food whether that was an automatic drink filling machine there, and she said that it was, and he made a strange erotic noise and drove off embarrassed which made me spill the coke. It was only a little bit though and we laughed about it.

It was funny, because Samuel can be so casual and at home with anybody mostly, and I said that to him and he was like "yeah, I hate it when people can't be like that." you know, loose and I dunno... can be jokingly silly or stupid I guess you would say. It was nice, and extra nice that someone I've known for my whole life can be so refreshing. Like coming home after a long time away, someplace unpleasant.

When we got home we reheated the food in the oven which makes it so much better somehow. Like leftovers but not. We watched more of our show, and it was just like that,
'our show'
'Our night'
'Our $50 agreement'

We argued about something afterwards and it felt very negative and awful between us, but this is not what I will remember about tonight, so neither should anybody else. It was great. I really think that you should have been there.

It's so late now. Night.

Catnip dream, catnip dream.

I don't know what show this is. But the song is by a japanese band called Shonen Knife, who are apparently very popular, and also they're coming to Perth too so I hear.

I like it when the cat is all big.

Readinggggggggggggggg

Well, I pretty much just got out of bed. The chainsaws next door were pretty hard to ignore.

Last night I did stay up rather late. I won't do it again (I promiiiiiissseeeeee).

But I at least enjoyed reading the first story in this book.



I don't know why there aren't any bigger cover pictures. My brother had to buy it for school, and I gladly salvaged it from wasting away in the garage. I don't think he read much/any of it.

The first story, The Ghost on the Rail by John George Lang is apparently true. It was written in 1859, or published, either one. It's a document of farmers in NSW, ghosts, rails, and a bewildering mystery surrounding a murder which caused a massive stir in the wider society at the time. It doesn't seem like something I would ever enjoy or search out, but that's just the thing, I just opened the book and decided to read whatever was the first story, and it was great! It's like when I had to read 'Holes' for english in year 8, and again, I wasn't interested but it really left an impression on me.

I have been prone to buying and then not reading books. Then I'll go back and decide to read one of them, and fret over the decision. I feel like if I'm not really in the mood I'll miss out on the experience of the book. But really, a book can come to you at any time or place, or rather, you to it, and it can say what it says regardless of your present circumstances. There is a little contamination there, but at the end of the day, you'll remember the characters and the events and not how bad the day you were trying to shake off with a bit of reading was. I'm almost finished the book I'm currently reading, Ariel. I have a few pages left, and I'm really surprised. I actually stuck with the one book until the end, minus a short bit of this and that here and there. I can tell you, I felt like starting something else many times, but I stuck with it and I've really enjoyed it, all considered.

Now I have to go have dinner and go to work.

Happy reading.

Here's a bunch of google image search results for 'reading'.

Knit me a sore throat (?)

My older brother has had a sore throat everyday since Tuesday. I told him that he probably has a throat infection, and that he should google it.

Lots of people say to gargle with salt, to kill the bacteria.

Lots of people have recommended milk with turmeric.

Lots of people also recommended lemon, ginger & honey tea.

So he gargled, and I chopped lemons, and a piece of the birthday banana cake I made him to cheer him up.

We watched that show, Corner Gas, which is really good and I'm sure you'd all like it; Siahne and Boris.

It was on sbs for a while.

It's set in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.

Also, I didn't intend to talk about knitting again, but, look, it's a bus! An entire bus!



It might be a little anticlimactic, but there was also a bike in that particular google image search.

Because it's amazing, duuuhhhhh.

There's a blog I once found called "why would you knit that?"

It was pretty cool.

New Job

I have a new job. Already! Why, I've only been 'looking' for, like, ever!

Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty lazy.

But yeah, this job, that my brother's friend works (IGA NIGHT-FILL WOOOO) is pretty breezy. Cut open box, put the tins of tuna or cat food or shampoo on shelf, neaten it up a bit, move on.

But the music is really annoying. But oh well. We get to wear anything we want because there are no customers between six and midnight- obviously, and the people who work there, of which about six were new like me, are really nice. But it's strange, there were almost as many women as men, and the women were middle-aged, normal women, or there was the one young girl. There were a couple african guys, some asian guys and the managers are from Ireland. Quite a mix. But everyone was so nice. They'd smile and ask you your name as you crossed trolleys (full of boxes of stuff) in the aisles. We pretty much throw the boxes down on the ground roughly near where they are on the shelves. This is called 'dropping' and we all do this until all of the 'pallets' are 'dropped'. Then we all start down at aisle 1/2/3 and start stocking, as I described earlier. Last night, we were 'facing' as we went. Which means we neaten everything up, 'ticket to ticket', as we stock it. Other times we might just do that at the end.

It is amazing when you actually study how many varieties of tinned salmon you can get. There is chilli, capsicum and chilli, mild indian curry, lemon and cracked pepper, in springwater, in brine, tomato and basil, oven-dried tomato and basil, smoked, as well as almost all of these in their light versions. Then there's the tuna. Then there's tinned mussels, oysters, kippers and some other seafoods. All in small, difficult to tidy tins. This is a much more trying task than, cereal boxes for example. But it's luck of the draw really. I was stocking cat-food (they have venison and rabbit meat varieties! What?!?) and Simon (brothers friend) comes over and starts stocking, and he tells me they used to assign people to certain aisles, and he used to do the pet aisle (which has always been my least favourite in the whole supermarket) every night. I felt sorry for him, but then I needed to know where to put the chicken and liver snappy tom and he knew straight-away.

There's a staff room, with seats and a table and tea + coffee and toilets. There's a cardboard crusher for crushing into bales that they string up every now and then. Other than that, that's about it. Monday here I come.

I worked till eleven last night, and I was suprised how quick it went by. The pay, well, I don't know how much I'm getting, but if it's only 10 dollars I still be getting a good amount. I work mon-tues-wed-fri.

Last night I went to ride home, which is only about 5 minutes thanks to a nifty alleyway near my house, and Tracy and Michael told me to bring my bike in through the warehouse door and keep it inside next time. Also, to be careful, because some guy got stabbed a little while ago in that parking lot. But yeah, I sped home and felt free and wonderful. Life is good.