03 Aug 2006
And suddenly there the two armies met, clashing noiselessly. Neither side can report any casualties, save the occasional bump — an unintended attaché clash ending in a mumble and an averted gaze: a moment is too long. After the battle, there is no blood, no amulet or token of commemoration. However, two civilians remain, unmoved. One, a girl, sits cross-legged, her back against the wall. Her face is obscured, for there is a man crouching between the observer and herself, resting one hand upon her leg (for balance, if nothing else) whilst his other is no longer visible. He is wearing a dark jacket, loosely fitting, and from its right sleeve a pale grey smoke emerges, its wisping effervescent form a substitute for his hand: this absent member the only victim of this urban encounter.
03 Aug 2006
Knowing that no further decline is possible without the aid of heavy machinery, commercial-grade explosives, and the NSW government.
03 Aug 2006
MySpace really know how to spend money. They’re presently repositioning htemselves as ‘a place for music’ (distinct, more astute readers shall note, from its previous slogan: ‘a place characterised by bizarre and angsty teenage social interaction or lack thereof’ — not quite as catchy) to the point that they are now sponsoring tours such that they are even being co-billed with Frontier on a poster I just encountered (I’m on a bus) for a Dashboard Confessional gig at the Horden next month.
How on earth they’re ever going to transform endless promotion into financial return is beyond me… but hey, I hear they’ve bought an Xbox hot air balloon, so at least they’re in good money-losing company. (Microsoft’s Xbox division, for those not in the loop, is more commonly known as the 4-billion-and-increasing-dollar-hole.)
03 Aug 2006
So people staying with us have moved out and the house now feels MUCH too big instead of just too big. I’m wishing there would be more on one floor/less open space at the minute, because it’s cold and I have to walk further to the bookshelf downstairs and because I’m here rarely enough during times when other people are that I’m not concerned about the noise of proximity at present. Even when I am, we’re in the same room and noise wouldn’t be significantly impacted. Part of an ongoing dissatisfaction with everything, I think.
I’d love somewhere smaller with carpets and solid walls painted twenty years ago in some inconceivable colour (as in, how could they have possibly thought that attractive?) and no need for stairs (unless it were a terrace, in which case stairs are permissible) and with no space for computers (I’d have to sell this thing and get a laptop instead) but room enough for one big desk — not in my room so I couldn’t put random existing-paraphenalia upon it (deodorant cans, clothes, random paper, keys, wallet, cameras) or the chair beneath it. The desk would have room at the back for an assortment of books within ready reach, but not impeding upon the workspace. I suppose that would make it about 115cm (45 inches) deep… it must also be wide enough for a laptop at one end that I could comfortably push out of the way.
A sun room would be excellent. One of those things you find in flats that’s completely useless for pretty much everything, but for the storage of books at one end of and reading in. West-facing, preferably, so one could enjoy a book in the winter afternoon sun after the room has reached a comfortable temperature over the course of the day. I may regret that decision in summer, but there are always curtains (or rolling shades; not blinds, they are too clinical).
The bedroom would be small with a separate wardrobe (the wardrobe itself is merely the object of nostalgia), such that there remained fairly little space–on the walls, especially. I have never had time for cultivating character in one’s bedroom — it always appears messy but I cannot commit to placing anything upon the walls. I will place a calendar there, dutifully, every year… and then forget to turn the pages. At present I am enjoying Leunig — I suppose I could arbitarily turn months to look at the pictures, as it is not as though the thing gets very much use. I live in the room next door for organisation (yes, IT) though the handheld now resides in my bedroom — I intentionally have wireless disabled to keep it out. My room is a haven for chaotic reading, hurried — but immensely enjoyable — academic consumption. Why I fail to spend more time in there is a mystery, probably in some way related to mess of clothes and so forth. Partially a rug instead of carpet, which means the chair gets stuck. Partially the chair being on wheels instead of fixed. Partially the desk being covered in aforementioned items (can you have forementioned items, meaning items to be mentioned in the hypothetical future? I refuse to believe aforementioned/forementioned can be synonyms). The actual reason why is a mystery cloaked in my own propensity to sit here and blog instead of just sitting down and getting things done.
One day, you see, I’m going to quit this web gig and uninstall my five browsers (well, four of them) and MSN and feed reader and email client and remove my network card and then start paying the university $2 a month for dialup and not bother to renew my domain name and stop checking my Gmail account and just use my uni email address (which I will check using the web interface tool, and have “Sent using Horde/IMP” appended to all my outgoing messages). Then, I’ll get rid of the mobile, and possibly my desktop computer. I’ll sit quietly reading books, papers, essays, and maybe even write something useful after a while.
Then I’ll discover that all I have done is transfer my focus, when I find myself growling at ridiculous ideas and writing angry letters, beaming hugely at characterful irregularities in works consistent with that in others and beginning to take advantage of the postal service. Then, the extent of the problem will be truly known, when even the humanities remain distinctly inhuman and detached.
Can’t I get anything right?
01 Aug 2006
Well, it might be the simpler English course this semester, but that doesn’t mean its potential for frustration is in any way diminished. Some lecturer wasted an hour of my life today talking about the binding and cover of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, the three metaphors in the title of that work, parroting some Emerson essay for about thirty minutes, and extolling the virtues of the American character as though it were some homoerotic process of creative inspiration. Oh. Dear. And I won’t even start on her ineptitude in the art of clicking “next” in Powerpoint. Shoot me now.
Unfortunately it is the same lecturer again tomorrow. I’m going to be getting an aisle seat close to the door.
Then there is (mercifully) a one-week hiatus, after which she will proceed to (probably) butcher Emily Dickinson — who looks vastly more interesting than Whitman to start with, but I fear this can only mean there is further to fall.