He's still Dirt and he don't care!

So, I got my invite in the mail this week: Saturday June 3rd is the World Premiere of the new DVD Beneath the Dirt, Dirt Petty 1985-2005.

It's also Dirt's 40th birthday, and of course the DVD will be on sale for $15 (although I'm hoping I can get a discount...). This year's ultimate A-list red-carpet event will be held at the Taylor Range Country Club at Ashgrove.

Dirt interviewed me about a year ago for the film.

This is Dirt's second video, but unfortunately, my brother-in-law taped over the master of the A $2300 Memory video years ago — the first time we loaned it to him — so I haven't seen it for a while.

[END]

Do not get into fights with other drivers

From one of the booklets that came with my bike.

[END]

She should have said it was a homage... (updated)

Harvard Novelist Says Copying Was Unintentional

Actually, I'm serious. While the 'mirroring' in the quoted portion goes on for just a little too long, it would only need to be slightly re-written (maybe find something that doesn't include the words 'ha', 'uh' or 'yeah') to make a claim that it was a homage to Megan McCafferty reasonably plausible.

But there's nothing wrong with the "(a), (b)" stuff - after I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test I used Tom Wolfe's triple-colons ( ::: ) loads. So a little bit of trying someone else's techniques on for effect is fine, I reckon.

Followed by: a bit of discussion in the comments of this post.

LATER: Here's a link to the article that broke the story, from the Harvard Crimson

Here's a big list of similarities, also from the Crimson.

[END]

Gonna form my own Moped Gang!

Scooter riders of the world, unite!

I'm glad to see that non-fatal accidents are down, too. That's reassuring. Now, if we can just get frickin' car drivers to see us.

Meanwhile Krustophenia sits on the shelf...

[END]

What I was looking at this month...

Here's some pictures of stuff, since I got my phone/camera repaired.

This includes stuff shot on lots of days, except none from April 20, strangely enough.

Although some things look familiar.

Doesn't my pergola look nice and clean? It'll stay like this for about a month...

More pictures below the fold...


[END]

Miscellany 060423

The Souths Logan Magpies extended the winning streak to four games, putting us in fourth place - equal on points with a group holding second to fifth.

I really like this: This Is My Last Entry: Why I shut down my blog by Sarah Hepola. A lot of what she says seems familiar.

Also, the New York Times has an article with some stuff on the whole 'Google doing evil in China' issue that I hadn't known or hadn't thought about; interesting background on how Chinese censorship works. Unfortunately, this article will disappear behind the Times' own Great Paywall fairly soon.

[END]

April 20 wrap

Everyone's photos from 'Pril Twennie are now on Flikr at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/63999942@N00/

And how was it? I got to see bits of Darwin, and more Kamberry and Syd-en-ee. Everyone got to see what a godforsaken wasteland I work in... It was good pointless fun.

[END]

Happy 20th of April!

Woke up, got out of bed... didn't realise the camera was set to macro mode for 12 hours...

More 20th of April action over at Paul and Suzanne's and Syme's blogs.

6.00am - What bloody time do you call this?


7.00am - Coffee!

8.00am - I'd better put the rego sticker on my NEW BIKE!


9.00am - At the Logan River


10.00am - Outside for a cigarette


11.00am - On a phone hook-up


12.00pm - Phone hook-up is finally over, back out for a cigarette


1.00pm - Four hours later and it hasn’t been nicked!


2.00pm - The shadow is moving


3.00pm - Welcome to the smokers' ghetto


4.00pm - The shadow is still moving


5.00pm - Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig


6.00pm - Leave me alone, I'm off the clock

[END]

The camera is by the alarm clock...

I'm all ready to take a photo an hour tomorrow for the inaugural 'April 20 Day', which this year is being held on the twentieth of April.

[END]

For the record

The Souths Logan Magpies have won their last three games.

Giving them a total of three wins...

[END]

It's been over 20 years now...

...and I still can't remember which '80s act was Yazz and which was Yazoo.

And speaking of old, I got my hair cut this week. There's just more grey every time.

[END]

C'est moi

Here's me doing my Ambassador Kosh impression.

[END]

Quiz

Who is this? Where can he be found?

This picture is circa 2001? (Stolen from here)

I guess I could try this mobile number that's been programmed into my phone for at least the last seven years, lazy bugger that I am... Last I saw him he did some free design work for us because we were going to be getting a regular newsletter printed through him, and then our business went bankrupt.

Hope he didn't think I stopped calling to avoid paying him or anything, because, as I mentioned, I'm a just lazy bugger.

He's here: http://www.gasolinegroup.net

This has got to be fake, doesn't it?

Bizarre baby born in Dolakha

A link to information about a hoax referred to in the comments is here.

[END]

Blog or have a life? Blog or have a life?

Hmmm...

[END]

Frickin' 36 year-old Smiths fans...

There's an article in The Guardian about the Smiths. From the intro:

The songs that saved my life

Twenty years ago, Mark Taylor was a 16-year-old with few friends and an obsession with the Smiths. To mark a new album from the band's former lead singer Morrissey, he recalls how a scrappy fanzine made in his bedroom led to an unexpected friendship...

For the record, I liked The Smiths for Johnny Marr. He played a Rickenbacker for god's sake. Who had time for Morrissey?

But what I find most interesting is the age of all the people who contribute at the bottom...

[END]

Making the Freeway, Chapter II

Here, again (mostly) below the fold, is chapter two of the piece of writing I was mentioning before.

II: George

Curious George — Capt. Logan explores, climbs mountains — George, the map freak, before the accident — a riverboat ride — "...the finest tract of land..." — a parent's dream comes true — non-danger signs — The accident.

George was a psycho nutjob with a serious drug habit and an acquired brain injury. He lived with his mother in Loganholme. He spoke his mind — constantly — but his mind was crazy...

George was not always like this, of course. Before the injury was acquired, he was an active, inquisitive boy with an interest in cricket and cars and the world around him and, basically, in doing what boys do. And he also had a developing interest in Logan City — where he lived — and Captain Logan.


Captain Patrick Logan was the commandant of the Moreton Bay Penal Colony from 1826 until the time of his unsolved, but undeniably unpleasant, death in 1830. He was an avid explorer who discovered the river than now bears his name — although in the custom of the time, he named it the 'Darling' after the Governor of New South Wales (which is where the river would be for another two decades) — and thus gave his name to the area.

Logan liked watercourses and climbing things, once trekking along Oxley Creek with Cunningham, another explorer now with his name on things around South-East Queensland. On one of his inland excursions, Logan became the first white man to climb Mt. Barney. By the accounts, it was a difficult — possibly even dumb — climb. Other experienced climbers in the party gave up and waited the five hours it took for Logan to return.


George was immediately interested in Logan from the first time he heard about him, at age 12, before the accident. By that time, George already referred to himself as a 'map freak'. So did his friends and family. He liked to know where he was; he liked to relate it to the pocket street map he always carried.

George especially liked travelling on trains while tracking his course on his map. Roads and buses went past the front of people's houses; trains often went past their backs. It wasn't that George wanted to see people's sordid secrets; he just liked the new perspective on things this back-to-front view gave to his world. Trains also went through empty ground and farmland that roads didn't reach. Another chance for a new vista.


It was on a riverboat ride he had received for his twelfth birthday that George first saw the view from the river.

The riverboat was sailing in commemoration of the boats of times past which used to ply their trade up and down the Logan River. George's parents, who, having been pestered for maps as Christmas and birthday presents for years, were well aware of George's passion for seeing things from new viewpoints, had saved for the trip ever since they read in the Albert and Logan that such an opportunity was upcoming.

George was inspired. The river gave him the chance to see things he hadn't seen before; notice details obscured by the speeds of the vehicles — even the trains — in which he'd previously been travelling. He saw how the features of the land, like the Tanah Merah hill he'd trudged to the top of many times, affected the course of the river. And he listened intently to the knowledgeable lady from the local library who provided commentary on the journey.


George had been brought up in an era when road transport ruled. It never occurred to him that the river; that flash of water seen between the railings of the concrete cattle-run of the freeway bridge at 100km/h—that river; could once have been at the heart of everything. But on the riverboat ride, George heard about local history and about how the river had once been at the centre of it all; transporting timber, sugarcane and, of course, passengers and everything else it took to sustain a nineteenth century frontier community in the midst of what its European discoverer, Logan, had once called "...the finest tract of land I have seen in this or any other country..."

And, on that day on the river, George finally heard about Logan himself: the commandant, the explorer, the mountain-climber. It was when he heard about Logan's (probably incorrect) claim to have seen the river from Mt. French that George realised height provided the opportunity to see his world from yet another angle.


Not long after, George's social studies class at school began looking at the history of the Logan. This had two effects: first, it reinforced George's interest in the subject, almost to the point of obsession; second, he aced that exam at school.

So, his parents were happy. They had always encouraged George, providing gifts or matching funding for his map and street directory purchases. They were pleased when his interest in knowing where he was developed into an interest in knowing where other things were and then into knowing how those things and places came to be there in the first place. And when it helped George's grades at school, his parents were ecstatic.

To George's parents, the fact that the interest continued after its utility for grades at school ended was no problem: this was how people found out what they wanted to do for a living. That the interest escalated into requests for funding for 'topographical' maps — aerial photos with little lines drawn over them indicating the height of the land — was harmless enough. It seemed to George's parents that knowing the history of an area and knowing its landforms were related disciplines.

And teenage boys can always use a little discipline.


George's parents didn't see any danger when their son made it his mission to walk to the tops of all of the high points in the local area. He was 13 by then and he had been going to the top of the rock at Tanah Merah since he'd been given a (secondhand) bike at age ten, but mostly just to ride back down really fast. His parents listened with some pride, but mostly boredom, as he described the view from Eden's Landing, North Hill in Cornubia or the Kingston reservoir.

On George's part, he hoped his parents didn't know the reservoir too well, or they'd know he'd had to break-in to see what he had described. Maybe 'break-in' was too strong: there was a two foot gap in the wire security fence where it joined the fence of the house next door. And to see some of the other sights he'd had to trespass in some pretty posh places, too.

To George's parents, it was a natural extension when he wanted to travel further afield to see what he could see— Daisy Hill, Springwood, Wineglass Park at Hillcrest...


By the age of 16, George had an intimate firsthand knowledge of the place of his birth. He knew where everything was and every way to get there. He knew the history and the people. But he also knew that Captain Logan had done things he had not, besides order all the floggings. Such as to follow Oxley Creek overland, or to climb Mt. Barney.

So, it was on Mt. Barney a year later that George's accident occurred. He had taken along photocopies of books containing information about Logan's climb. He had already once insisted on a more dangerous route based on what he considered to be Logan's "true path" that he had discerned from his reading.

He was walking along a narrow ledge, apparently reading a map, when he stumbled and fell.

This was the accident in which George acquired his brain injury. Along with his overwhelming interest in Captain Patrick Logan, the injury caused two more effects: a need to know exactly where he was at all times, and a pathological obsession with safety.

© 2006

[END]

Voting

Well, apparently candidate for Mayor of Logan City, Councillor Lutton has admitted to sending a threatening text message to Councillor Darren 'Supertool' Power: "ur dead meat arsehole" during the election campaing, which ends today.

He's got my vote.

But then again, Lutton did put "landscaping" as his second dot point... and I just think we have to accept it that plants have to be left to die when we're likely to run out of water in two years.

While not running, Darren has apparently endorsed two people. I must find out who they are and put them last. One of them will be that Jessica Rowe-looking woman, because she's listed that she tried to stop the Daisy Hill Rd development...

[END]