A drabble is a very short story, if you can call it that, which is supposed to be exactly 100 words in length. I don’t always like reading them very much, because they can feel hollow and pointless, but they’re a very good exercise in economy and can often lead to good ideas.
All but one of these drabbles is exactly 100 words in length. The last went over slightly, and was too good to cut. Forgive me.
Why am I Writing Drabbles?
This year I’ve suddenly found myself with a good reason to write, fiction, that is. Before, I was able to avoid the responsibility by pretending I didn’t have time. It is a responsibility, because if you start a story and don’t finish it, you’ve wasted your time, and you feel really bad. I thought that needing to write would make the process slightly easier, but it hasn’t. In order to force it to come more naturally, I’ve decided to undertake some entirely meaningless exercises. This is them.
What am I Doing?
I’m stealing a memeamor_demi_almahas just done in her writing journal. The terms of the meme itself are boring and I’ve altered it slightly because I wanted to, but in short, you have to shuffle your music collection, and write a drabble based on each song it produces. You’re supposed to do ten, I have only done five, because I didn’t have time for any more. Maybe I’ll do the rest later.
Her hot breath whispered the wordless truth in his ear as her small hands touched and played. Their movements were unconsidered and unchoreographed, striking every thought from his mind, leaving only the friction, the momentum of flesh against flesh.
This was all the meaning they needed. The quiet, fussy dance of the secretary he had watched a few hours earlier was the product of an alien world, separated from them by a vast, cold, inconceivable distance. She had transcended that, become real. all the grace and pride and predictability had left her. She was nothing but her, nothing but animal.
“Like fuck I haven’t. I’ve been working on it for three years! Isn’t that enough?”
“You haven’t. Three years isn’t long enough for you.”
“Haven’t you been listening? It’s fucking done! Finito! Over!”
“It’ll never be over. It’s like a girlfriend who keeps screwing around with assholes and flatmates and exes, but you keep taking her back because she gives you a blowjob every morning.”
As he lifted her out of the boot, he was struck by how fake she looked in the sunlight. Usually, he tried not to look at her at all.
“Do you want to lick my pussy?” she said. She’d gotten stuck on “crude” when a few of his mates had gotten carried away with her. He much preferred “subtle”, it was more rewarding. Maybe that was what had made him take the plunge.
“Sorry Penny. I’ve got a real girlfriend now.”
He flicked a switch, and Penny, “the gen10 sexbot ready to blow your mind, and much more” was gone.
“You just can’t get enough of that lovy dovy stuff,” said the Martian to the vampire.
“And you can’t get any!” The vampire gave the alien’s tripod a friendly pat, almost falling over in the process. “All you can do is cybersex while you’re stuck in that thing!”
“There are ways and means,” the Martian rumbled. “Another round for my buddy here!”
“For both of us!” the vampire cried lustily.
The bartender promptly provided them a pair of humans and they both set to drinking, the Martian luxuriantly, the vampire with savage glee.
“Tonight,” said the vampire, “we’re going to get you laid. If I can do it, so can you!”
Today, I decided to let the hand of fate choose my victim, and it stroked you,cassassinator, which is good, because you seem to have made an art of liking life.
Day Eight: Sleep
I haven’t been getting enough of it lately. The last two weeks haven’t seen me once achieve snoredom before 1:00 AM, and only rarely before 2:00. Thankfully last week, this was offset by my ability to sleep in until a healthy 9, which thus made it a fairly workable habit, but university frowns upon that sort of thing, which stops me because I like lectures at 10 in the morning, apparently.
Now, I am starting to notice a gap in my life, which can only be filled by a bit of good old fashioned crashing, and in trueborrisinaboxstile I have decided that it is worth talking about. Because today, I fully intend to be dead to the world by midnight. And that makes me happy.
How am I going to do this? Well, there has been one small, insignificant thing that has prohibited sleep for the last few days, partly thanks to myprocrastination,partly thanks tomy new cap,and partly thanks togirls with their toys.And now, it’s time for that small, insignificant thing to be strangled by the drain of history. This elated entries idea, as initiated ages ago by someone who doesn’t know me and doesn’t care, is now at an end. No more bouncy bunny blogs for you! What are you going to do?
Some of you know what you have to do, even ifyouhaven’tstartedyet.Thosepeoplewhom I have tagged, I fully expect you to do your duty to, ur,me. That doesn’t mean you will, some of you really can’t be bothered with that kind of thing, but I couldn’t, and I did it anyway, so it’s time you folks stepped up. You know you don’t want to.
My own blogging habits will now return to normal, and accordingly my entries will become less so. I hope you enjoyed these for what they were.Why I amsaying this I don’t know, it’s very clichéd, but I always do, because by the end of entries I’m tired and bored, or it’s 11:59 PM. That’s why conclusions always suck. We should stop writing them last all the time, it’s very illogical. That doesn’t mean I don’t mean it, though, and for the record, I do, because if nobody liked them then I would have to consider giving up writing and going to work in an icecream shop! Anyway, thank younick6489for making me do this. It was fun.
So is sleep, of which I will very soon partake. Coming slightly less soon: God gets a gutful of grim. Stay tuned!
This time, I choose you, pj_blindclown, because you started talking to me just as I finished writing this entry.
Day Seven: Stand Up
Today, I attended a talk at QUT by Sean Dorney, one of ABC’s most prestigious foreign correspondents. Last week, he was deported from Fiji, thanks to new censorship laws instated by its military dictator, Frank Bainimarama. He has been in power since 2006, but the recent crackdown on unfavourable media occurred thanks to a declaration by the court that his power was held illegally. Now, “information officers” have been stationed in all of the country’s major newsrooms, and the government have threatened to shut them down if they do not follow its instructions.
On the day after these laws were instated,the Fiji Timesleft many of their pages blank, noting that they were not allowed to publish the stories that should have filled them. TheDaily Postmade its own protest, by publishing stories like“Man Gets On Bus”.Both papers have been reprimanded and have since behaved better.
None of this makes me happy, I assure you. The fact that that kind of thing can still occur should be very frightening. But the difference, in this case, is that we know, to an extent, what’s really happening in Fiji. Censorship, as much as China has made an art of it, is not as easy in this day and age, where channels of communication are so various that blocking them all is impossible.
Yes, many Fijian journalists are currently enduring terrifying intimidation and worse, and yes, the people are being deprived of their only potential source of unbiased information, but the protests, in this case, were instantaneous. People know now that they deserve better. Journalists are already standing up for that, risking their lives in the process. I think it will be a long time before Fijian journalists are given back their freedom, and Fijian people are given back their democracy, but the fact that already, people are openly fighting for it is a testament to the awareness we have gained of these issues in the last few decades. And the internet is a device by which many of these regimes can be undermined. They won't go away, but neither will they remain unnoticed.
Today, I tag borrisinabox because he was the first American I met with an informed reason for hating Australia. And now Australia is coming to him!
Day Six: Bigger and Better Broadband than... New Zealand
I don't like the country I live in. It's a hole, a great big desolate gap in the world where dumb people go to chase kangaroos and smart people call them child pornography. It was taken over by the Brits in 1788 and the Yanks after the Second World War. The former sent us criminals and labourers, the latter, mostly Spam. We are plagued by a nation-wide inferiority complex, as I have just proven, and as a result most of us believe that nothing interesting ever happens here. The rest of the world agrees, though only because we tell it so.
How does one escape from our primitive lifestyle and the harsh life of he outback which most of us wouldn't recognise if someone fed us with it? One uses the Internet! With that, one can be assured that everywhere else is pretty much just as full of stereotypes as we are, and everyone else thinks they're just as boring. Oh, wait, there's only one line out of the country! We have to share our porn with Japan!
Never fear, for Bigpuddle is here, cramming an ocean of information into our gutter. For just $20 per month, you can download.... 400 MB. There is a torrent of Baz Luhrmann's Australia hanging around that's pretty much exactly that size. But when you realise that it's actually just saying the same things we've been telling ourselves for the last century, you'll want something better.
Well, I did, anyway, though I payed $99 for 25 GB instead, because a movie a month is just not enough for me. And now, I'm paying even more. 60 GB for $150! Yep, they definitely charge you for the salt and the water, but I really wanted that Japanese porn.
My new cap was instated today, and in the last 12 hours I have downloaded 2.3 GB. I'm having fun! And so is that girl under the covers with her hot new toy...
Hi,Rebecca.I know you're a very busy child and you have better things to do than all of us unmotivated adults, but please do this, when you have the time.
Day Five: Fixing a Hole in the Ocean
Rebecca decided last year that she wanted a laptop, and after a lot of back and forth, managed to convince her parents to buy her a MacBook, upon which she would duel-boot Mac OS X and Windows. This arrived the other week, and she was immediately enchanted by its shiny...ness. She cradled it lovingly for a few hours, then booted it, only to find that... oh no! Jaws was broke! "What's a video intercept and how do I install it? Craaaap! What do I doooooo?"
I had a similar problem with my new desktop last year, so I sort of knew what was going on. She was not very happy when I told her that the only solution I found was a reformat, followed by a different order of operations, and that even after all that I still didn't figure out what the problem really had been.
She did, however, eventually give it to someone who, puzzled as he probably was by her quack-addled explanation of her issue, somehow managed to fix it. Due to the same quack, I have no idea what he did, but it seemed initially to have worked.
Then, she tried to turn her screen off, in order to save battery, and apparently went about it in a very strange way, because not ten minutes after she'd got it working, the video intercept was once again broke!
I spent ages thinking that it was just the same issue having repeated itself, but by the time I decided that it wasn't, she had already broken the screen entirely! There went any sighted assistance we might have got, not that it would have been that useful anyway.
Thankfully, after loads more mucking about, we worked out that she had somehow changed her display output to a virtual one that didn't really exist, though she also convinced her laptop that its own monitor was an external device, or some such thing. Obviously, all this confusion would have been very stressful for poor old Jaws, not to mention her and I. That being fixed, everything worked again, and I no longer had to endure the prospect of loads more attempts at tech support, followed by very confused and mostly quite untechnical responses. Wouldn't that please you too?
Hey, psycho_rabbit, you're it! You and me have been collaberating for years, and being somewhat more adept at it, your musings on music are likely to be a lot more interesting than my own.
Day Four: Jamming
Today, I met up withthe Mango Man and his father, whose music can be found at the above link. It has become a tradition that whenever instruments are available, no matter where we are, a sing-along/jam session occurs. We make no promises as to the quality of the result, but we enjoy it nonetheless.
Many of the covers we sang were by the Beatles, because Paul knows most of their lyrics by heart and the Beatles book is usually the one in Peter's guitar case. I sang the ones I knew well and learned to play the ones I didn't. Peter's original songs also featured, includingNot My Baby (link leads to demo) which became a monster blues jam.
Later on though, we hesitantly stepped into unknown territory, first with songs by Neil Finn, then Neil Young. Probably the only Neil Young song I know well is Down by the River, which Dave Matthews covered a lot in 2007. I decided that would be a safe place to start, but realised, too late, that I had entirely forgotten the second verse. We couldn't look up the lyrics, but Peter had the song on him, so we decided to listen to that. too late once again, we discovered that the original version was 9 minutes and 13 seconds long, and the second verse didn't appear until a good way through.
All was not lost, however. Quickly bored with the young Neil's version of jamming, featuring more drugs than it did music, I decided to start soloing over the song. I will happily tell you that I am no good at doing this sort of thing and avoid it whenever possible, but I must have breathed in some of the smoke wafting from the speakers, because by my standards, it was amazing. I never thought I could keep a solo interesting for 5 minutes straight, but I was definitely captivated by whatever I was doing. I did it all with one hand, and used the whole piano, throwing in references to other songs whenever I temporarily ran out of ideas. I hope it didn't get recorded, because if I heard it again, I would probably be disenchanted, but at the time, I was sure it was one of the coolest musical things I had ever done.
Frighteningly enough, this is the second memorable musical moment I've experienced this week. On Tuesday I met up with Adam and Shane, 2/3 ofLandy's Mods,both of whom recently featured ina rather messy edition of Live and Loaded.We decided to jam in Shane's back bedroom, where he has given birth to a strange uneven hybrid of studio, rust and duck tape. Well, maybe I exaggerated a little, but it sounded rock 'n' roll.
Adam played bongos, eggs and a Tamborine that appeared from nowhere just when it was required. Shane played his mother's wobbly old acoustic guitar, which she might want back at any moment, though he swears she never uses it. I played a cheap plastic Yamaha keyboard from the dawn of time, whose 4th octave f really wants to be effed. Its ambition is only kept in cheque by an ingeniously placed piece of bluetack, which, like all methods of contraception, is not immune to failure. Ok, so maybe I wasn't exaggerating after all.
We had a great time though. We were there for hours, mostly going over just a few songs, but making them sound very cool to our own ears. The best moment for me came at the end. Up until then, we had been working on covers, but I wanted to try at least one original. I picked Henry Hill, one of Shane's solo songs, which you can hear on hisMyspace.I had just recently heard it, it was only two chords long, and we had been talking about my dubbing a piano line over his original recording.
Shane seemed worried that it would be boring with just a guitar and keyboard, as the studio version is driven by its bass line, but we did it, and it was almost immediately cool. It turned into a cross between gospel and honky tonk, a very appropriate interpretation for the lyrics, which, unfortunately, he forgot.
That was the song we went mad with. Picture the three of us dripping with sweat in this tiny room, Adam attacking us with his Tamborine, Shane belting the chorus, which we did know, while wondering what we were doing with his song, and me pounding the living daylights out of that stupid Yamaha. I swear, I effed that f at least three times!
These incidents make me feel, however briefly or incorrectly, that I could make it in the world as a musician. Just recalling that feeling makes me happy with myself. It's not necessarily the result that's worthwhile, but the passion of the moment. The music never sounds as good afterwards, but the memories always do.
Today, I tag stars_that_lie because you are paying attention.
Day Three: Procrastination
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I enjoy that art that the rest of the world calls a vice.
I know you've all felt it, that adrenalin rush that comes when you suddenly realise that something is due in just a few hours time. You know that if you don't succeed, you'll have to admit that starting assignments when they're handed out is a good idea. And if you did that, your life would never be the same again...
So you settle down, and you start working, determined to concentrate until your eyebrows get eaten by your bibliography. You type a sentence, put a full-stop on the end of it and tears of joy trickle down your face, to splash like salty pebbles into your coffee.
And there you go again, off on a random rampage through the digital resources at your fingertips. Your impulsive brain in conjunction with the power of the internet could lead you anywhere, and you'll probably let it take you as far as you can get before something reminds you that the clock is ticking.
I love that feeling of adventure, the knowledge that I'm defying all logic and sanity for the sake of nothing much. I love that moment when I leap back into action, ripping a hundred words out of thin air in 5 minutes just when I need them. I love the pleasure I get from taking 30 seconds to scratch my head when I've only got two minutes left. And most of all, I love the moment when the finished product leaves my hands, and I know that despite all the awesome tangents, I succeeded, again.
Are you one of those people who finish their assignments in the first week? Well, congratulations, but next time, don't! I think you need some excitement in your academic life, and in this sterile world of criteria sheets and useless wanks, this is about the only place you can get it! Find out how little sleep you can survive on, and how many entirely unrelated Google searches you can make in 12 hours, at the same time! Procrastination! It's due today!
PS: This entry, unlike yesterday's, is fully endorsed by procrastination, and accordingly, was written entirely in the 10 minutes leading up to midnight, minus a couple of lunch breaks.
Today, my victim is thecrazykiwi though I have a really bad feeling you have already done this. If so, please ignore me. I’m picking on you because you’re relevant. Read on…
Day Two: A Toasted Sandwich
I’ve been listening toShon and Damo’s cooking podcast,and being inspired. Having tips from the perspective of fellow blindys is more useful than you might think, and generally makes things seem not nearly so difficult. When I have time, I have decided to make a point of mimicking their meals, and today, that involved a toasted sandwich. I usually don’t eat these, so this was the first time I had thought of making them, though they’re very easy.
When you’re not as cool with these things as Shon, and some of your readers are sighted, it’s hard to make a toasted sandwich sound exciting without seeming ridiculous, in a bad way. I won’t even try, but I will note that it was a fulfilling experience. I even burnt the middle finger of my left hand, and carried my wound with pride, until it went away. Ok, so it wasn’t much of a wound, I’ll do better next time. The sandwich was good though, nice and… cheesy… with bread on top. Oh, and mutant fake chicken. The best part, for me, was just knowing that my fingerprints were the only ones to have scarred it before it was consumed.
Disclaimer: This rather insignificant entry about food is not brought to you by procrastination, because I had committed to do it before the day before. The fact that it was only one day before the day before is entirely irrelevant. The fact that I decided to make a toasted sandwich, on today of all days, is probably not.
Dave Matthews Band - Funny The Way It Is (for the last time)
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I don't usually subscribe to memes of any kind, but I am bored and need an excuse to procrastinate, and nick6489 threw this my way. It was a reason to blog with no criteria apart from smiles and bunnies, so here I am.
Post about something that made you happy today.
Repeat for eight days.
Tag eight people to do the same.
Today, I will tag acorna_cat because she is likely to emit a lot of positive vibes over the next few days, and because the object of my attenttion today would not please her. I'm not sorry, either.
Day One: Funny The Way It Is
I woke up this morning, picked up my keyboard and was immediately alerted to the fact that the new Dave Matthews Band single had been released, and that I couldget it, right now.So can you, by the way, unless you're reading this from the comfort of next week. If so, comment and tell me whether I'm going to enjoy it.
I was first introduced to the Dave Matthews Band in 2007, and they have rapidly become one of my favourite musical entities of all time. Interestingly, the first I heard of them was their latest album, Stand Up, released in 2005. When I decided to go stumbling through their memories, I learnt that it didn't measure up at all to some of their earlier material, despite having easily captured my interest. Since then, I've been waiting with everyone else to see how their next release would compare, both to Stand Up, and to the "big three" albums of the 90s.
This single is the first track I've heard of that release, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, which they've been working on for the last few months. While I don't think it's quite what I would have hoped for, it has grown on me significantly, through the 20 or so listens I've given it today.
It initially doesn't sound like DMB, as Tim Reynolds' guitar work is the meat of the song, and there are, unusually, no horns at all to be found here. But as I listened, I realised that it has the typical structure of a DMB track, and when I reached the bridge, which I think is the key to the song, I suddenly realised that it was brilliant. Just listen to it, it's completely unexpected and entirely unique. As if that weren't enough, Boyd's violin solo redefines the song yet again, immediately afterward. Carter's drumming is spectacular throughout, as usual, ending my fears that he would dumb himself down for this album in order to make performing easier on him.
I feel the band have been increasingly underused in the last few years, in favour of Dave's own, sometimes flawed vision, and that has been the problem with their recent material. I don't think it's a problem that has disappeared with the release of this single. It feels more like a song from Dave's solo album, Some Devil, than one that belongs to the band. But Some Devil, unlike Stand Up, was a consistently good album, so this remains a step in the right direction. It is also a song that, because of its commercial sound, will probably get them airplay again, and that will go a long way toward sustaining the band, and the quality of music too, as this is obviously better than most pop currently on the market.
They also kicked off their tour today in New York, and played two other new songs there, which, while recordings so far have been patchy, both sound very interesting. What's more, I think the death of saxophonist LeRoi Moore last year has made the band more passionate about their new material than they have been in a long time. Wow, three mores in that sentence, ha ha. This album is in his honour, after all. I'm still worried that I may not like it, but this track is very promising, and to be honest, it's exciting just to know that it's finally coming out, even if I end up hating it. I've been preoccupied by it for most of today, and will be eagerly watchingthe forums at Antsmarchingfor updates and commentary over the next few weeks.
Thought I was a poet, I feasted on my words. Said I had a song to sing, just like the mockingbird. For all I know, that's all I am, made of masks and mimicry. And innocence is only worth the value of your honesty.
Once I stole the image, of a heavy cross. Wore it round my neck and said it marked the things I've lost. But why should I display my guilt with others' iconography? What crime might I have hidden there behind a false apology?
Do we wear our shame to remind us of our doubts? Or is it just a warning, that our devils aren't cast out? Would I unleash deception, if I burnt that cross to ash and dust? Or can the kindness in my heart defeat the science of distrust?
Perhaps my crime is nothing more than not trusting myself. Unsteady beats make hearts harder to hand to someone else. So I'll try to put my doubts to rest, to value every youthful word, To voice the rhythm in my chest, and have faith in the mockingbird.
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."
I wrote the first verse of this poem a long time ago, then, not knowing what to do with it, let it languish in my file (or is it a pile) of unfinished business. This week, I started two more, both of which, at a certain point, sat down under a tree and refused to stir, no matter what I poked them with.
In desperation, I dove into the file/pile, and no I definitely wasn't smiling, in an attempt to work out why they always do this to me. Interestingly, the answer, or at least an answer, wrote itself into the other verses, and there you have it.
I'm not going to apologise for posting poetry, because that would be hypocritical. I acknowledge that it isn't necessarily very good poetry either, but in the spirit of the piece, I've decided to publish it, for better or worse. I think its flaws make it more honest, though that doesn't mean I don't want to hear about them.
If you don't like poetry, I don't know why you've read this far, and I'm afraid I'm not going to say anything to restore my reputation in your eyes. I do hope, though, that someone will like it.
The final part of my commentary on the Sound Relief telecast.
6:24 PM: Watching Jack Johnson instead of Jet's second set. Banana Pancakes. Nice. Hope this announcement they're pimping is worthwhile.
6:30 PM: Followed up with "Same Girl", featuring one of his best lyrics. Jack Johnson is so much more compelling/interesting live. Now "Times Like These".
6:33 PM: Why is it that the acoustic sets seem to be so much better today? Is it because the sound is better, or just because I like acoustic more?
6:41 PM: Oops, got confused by the timetable, actually missing Eskimo Joe, not Jet. Don't care, Johnson may be formulaic but he's still fun, and good to relax to.
6:42 PM: Johnson wound up with "Better Together", surprised there was no "Taylor". Proves he's a bit braver than some. Everyone knows it anyway.
6:46 PM: I like Johnson, you can tell he actually cares about everything he's talking about. Some people are just doing this for the music's sake. Not him.
6:53 PM: Watching Eskimo Joe highlights from Sydney now, they've finally got the sound pretty much perfect there. Makes sense, they've always been fairly slick.
7:00 PM: God, the weather is really hormonal today! I knew Victoria would screw with everyone, but I thought Sydney would be kinder.
7:19 PM: Wolfmother currently ripping up the Melbourne stage. Version 2.0 is better than the original IMO, not too different though.
7:27 PM: I wonder where these new musicians came from. They certainly don't miss a beat, though presumably they're Andrew's backing band more than anything else.
7:33 PM: Wolfmother did a very short set. Weird. I guess now I wait for this apparently big announcement. If it has anything to do with Kylie I'm going to kill someone.
7:42 PM: Split Enz wasn't his band, but because he's easier to like, everyone remembers Neil. Poor Tim, living in the shadow of his lil bro.
7:46 PM: What can they do to make people in both Sydney and Melbourne happy? This had better not suck as much as her speech. "Countless wildlife also perished"?
7:50 PM: William and Harry. They probably don't even know where Australia is. Aah, silence. And it really is silent. now that is worth seeing. Beautiful.
7:53 PM: Hahaha, actually, they probably just muted the crowd so it seemed that way. Oh, God, she's singing. Massive disappointment. Anything but this.
8:01 PM: Was very worried about Hunters and Collectors, but they've made a really classy start and I am officially impressed. Mark's vocal is amazing.
8:10 PM: I didn't know they were the people who did this song and yet I've heard it many times. What have these guys been doing with themselves all these years?
8:14 PM: You don't make me feel like I'm a woman any more.
8:21PM: This set has the weirdest banter between songs. "I'm just making a few adjustments to my girl".
8:23 PM: The horns are brilliant in this set too. God damn, everything's brilliant. These guys are showing quite a few of today's performers how it should be done.
8:24 PM: Final song. Surely it's going to be Throw Your Arms Around Me?
8:25 PM: And it is. Sometimes, predictable is good.
8:30 PM: They want one more song? What can they possibly do to follow that?
8:39 PM: I think that set should probably have ended with "Throw Your Arms Around Me", but it remains one of the best of today. Said song was magic.
8:40 PM: Oh dear, lost signal. Don't tell me I'm going to miss Split Enz! I would not be impressed. Oh, thank God, it's back. Close.
8:51 PM: The Presets. They're not quite as boring as I thought they were going to be, but they're really very plastic compared to what surrounds them. Next please.
8:59 PM: Split Enz opened with "Shark Attack". I thought Tim was on good form when I saw him, but even then I underestimated him. I feel this will rock.
9:02 PM: Now "Poor Boy", the traditional arrangement. The energy these guys put out is really quite spectacular, you can tell especially that Tim's giving his all.
9:08 PM: They just performed "I Got You". Neil sung it with all the enthusiasm of the day he wrote it. Wow, "Message to my Girl".
9:15 PM: My favorite Split Enz song, and they did it better than I thought they could. "Dirty Creature now". Tim's vocal sounds more honest than the original.
9:20 PM: Brilliant piano solo from Eddie leads us into "Six Months in a Leaky Boat". This set, once again, is so much better than I thought it would be.
9:29 PM: "History Never Repeats". Nothing constructive to say about it, apart from that it was really really good. Now, "I See Red", their final song. Tim going mad!
9:33 PM: I don't know what to say about that set. It was definitely something special. That's what should have closed the show. What the hell do I do now?
9:39 PM: An ok Presets song in the highlights. Might one of these two surprise me with something good? Midnight Oil or Barry Gibb? Which of these hurts less?
9:48 PM: What's worse, something that I would rather eat my intestines than endure, or something that makes my ears want to escape my head and live in a bucket of acid?
9:56 PM: Chose to watch Barry Gibb, which tells you how much I hate Midnight Oil.
10:04 PM: I like the band. Not the songs. Very very 70s. If they play an early BeeGees song it might be better.
10:07 PM: They are, and it isn't really. Oh dear. I think I'll just refuse to acknowledge the existence of either closer.
10:33 PM: Winding up with Spicks and Specks. I can deal with this one I think. Aah, the memories.
10:36 PM: And So it ends.
11:20 PM: Highlights were Paul Kelly, Hunters and Collectors and Split Enz. Enjoyed it, and the liveblogging experience. Now, for my next project, tomorrow’s show...
4:08 PM: My but is hot, because I just evicted a laptop on leather to accommodate it. As you can see, I'm not excited by either of the current performers.
4:12 PM: I wish things were better scheduled, have to pick between Josh Pyke and Kasey and Shane soon, though I suspect Troy Cassar-Daley will ruin the latter for Me.
4:22 PM: Eskimo Joe still exist, wow! Playing new stuff today but I'll probably miss it. Too bad.
4:33 PM: Blis N Eso have certainly made some friends. Peace, love, and unity. How bout some poetry? Bring it on Josh Pyke.
4:37 PM: Pyke sounds completely different live. Opened with “Lines on Palms” from Memories and Dust, while stupid people tried desperately to mute their microphones.
4:42 PM: I always wondered how he could possibly perform the first verse of "The Summer" without taking a breath. Answer: He can't.
4:48 PM: Now performing "Don't Wanna Let You Down". He's picking all my favorites it seems. Kasey and Shane are late, so it seems I may see some of them after all.
4:51 PM: "Middle of the Hill"? This is traditionally his closer. Surely he can't be done already! Harmonies not nearly as good live, Pyke riffs well though.
4:54 PM: Oh, right, closing with "Memories and Dust". Thematically, that works very well, though the audience probably doesn’t realize it.
4:59 PM: Pyke probably has the only closer of the day you can't sing to. Chambers and Nicholson playing "Monkey on a Wire”, spoilt a bit by the full band.
5:07 PM: She played "the Captain", the best of her solo songs, but it got old about half way through. Her daddy's playing the guitar, how cute.
5:11 PM: Hahaha, they're already playing “the Captain” as a highlight on the Sydney telecast. Oh God, it's Troy. But they're playing “the House that Never Was”!
5:22 PM: Troy was unnecessary but not as bad as I expected. Apparently I get to se Marcia Hines, not sure whether that's a good or bad thing.
5:28 PM: Apparently everyone is looking forward to Midnight Oil. That's another 80,000 people who've just lost my respect.
5:44 PM: Marcia played "Fire and Rain", with the Qantas Choir, which did nothing. Now, Liam Finn! A ridiculous and mad, sound like the MCG is under alien attack!
5:48 PM: Uncle Nick and "N Dog" came out, and are playing "Don't Dream it's Over"! I would have liked to se more Liam, but this is cool anyway.
5:56 PM: It's "Weather With You". Of course. I should have known this would happen. I'm sorry, but this is not as interesting as Liam was. It's not fair on him.
6:00 PM: "Better be Home Soon", what a surprise. Come on guys. Give Liam a verse. Wonder what Taylor Swift is doing. Lol.
Continuing my commentary on the Sound Relief concerts from Sydney and Melbourne, from the comfort of my couch. See previous entry for more about the concerts.
3:18 PM: Augie March now playing. Opened with Lupus and Pennywhistle, as I expected. Glen's vocals are quite good, guitars seem out of tune but that's them for you.
3:21 PM: Rocking out with Brundisium now. I love Glen's vibrato. Screw it, I love everything about Glen's vocal. This song helps.
3:26 PM: This is the best I've heard the horns sound on this tour in every way. Now doing There is No Such Place, and I'm really starting to like this full band version.
3:31 PM: The world's most dangerous chord heralds "train". Seeing it on a TV doesn't match it, but I've experienced it live and I can imagine how people are feeling.
3:37 PM: The crowd seems too small. as Glen said, the rain has driven some of them away. But "One Crowded Hour", never less than amazing, rewards the loyal.
3:42 PM: Didn't get to hear any of Architecture in Helsinki's set. Damn! It really is going to be crowded hours from now on.
3:52 PM: I hate laptops, battery went flat, very inconvenient. You am I now doing their thing, really nice guitar tone.
Without any provocation, or reason, apart from that I want to see what happens, I am providing live commentary, for those who feel like having it, on the Sound Relief concerts currently taking place in Sydney and Melbourne, dedicated to the bushfires and Victoria. If you want to hear either of the concerts, they are available most easily on Fox for Ausies, or I know there is an online stream of the Melbourne concert, I'll try and get a link to that up here as soon as I can, if someone else could help me with that I'd appreciate that. A timetable is also availablehere for those who want to watch or know what's going on.
For live updates, se my Facebook statuses, but for the record, I'll compile my microblogs over here every hour or two I haven't done it until now because was trying to think of a more efficient way than this to do this. Here is where Twitter would be really good, but it wouldn't be worth signing up now just for this. If I ever want to do such things in the future I think I'll make sure I'm twittered well in time.
Here’s my running commentary so far. Very very big thanks to Rebecca for making this possible, I wouldn’t have had time to do this if not for her.
12:23 PM: Jet thrashing out "Are You Gonna Be my Girl" while in Sydney people are babbling about Midnight Oil. Hurry up Coldplay.
12:32 PM: Crowd are loving it but Coldplay are making a messy start to Sydney. Chris's vocals are way too low and the drums are a bit unsteady. Now playing Lost, ironic.
12:36 PM: Cester's falsetto in Jet's "Put your Money Where your Mouth is" is stronger than Martin's. Coldplay have, however, recovered now with old favorite "Clocks".
12:43 PM: Farnham sang Coldplay's rather good cover of "You're the Voice". And his voice is amazing, though he can't hear himself either. Martin's piano worked well here.
12:50 PM: Wanted Farnham to sing a verse of "Fix You" to close out. Come on, it makes sense. This song really works live.
1:00 PM: Coldplay in conclusion: Martin's vocals very messy, sound sucks, but the crowd really loved it, an "You're the Voice" was special.
1:15 PM: Gabriella Cilmi is ridiculously competent for her age. I also really like her keyboardest.
1:17 PM: Cilmi is covering "Whole Lot of Love"! And it's working!
1:23 PM: Yes, I appear to be liveblogging the Sound Relief telecast. No, I don't seem to have found a more efficient way that via Facebook statuses.
1:35 PM: Think I blinked and missed Wolfmother's first set. Oh well. Both telecasts are now killing time until Hoodoo Gurus or Kings of Leon, neither of which excite me
1:59 PM: Hoodoo Gurus finally playing, after a delay while Sydney temporarily relieved itself of sound. Got some Kings of Leon footage in the meantime, looked ok.
2:18 PM: Hoodoo Gurus pretty much exactly as expected, only not as good. Sound in Sydney is still not very good, vocals way too low.
2:25 PM: Waiting for Paul Kelly and trying to work out how I'm going to deal with the next few hours. A few clashes coming up.
2:29 PM: Kelly opens with Dumb Things. Predictable but satisfying. Just him and another guitarist so far, wonder whether he'll do the whole set like that, aka Tim Finn.
2:34 PM: Aah, to her Door. I have so many memories of hearing this song live, mostly by the good Jack Murphy. Still just the two guitars, like that.
2:58 PM: Kelly stayed acoustic, with a surprisingly good set. Unfortunately though I missed some of Little Birdy, which has been equally good. Amazing vocals and melodies.
“This is the second voice post for today. They're for a good course. In my previous which barely even qualifies to be a blog(?) in my opinion I intended to rant about the inadequacy of taxis in my city of Brisbane. However I felt forgiving. I do not feel forgiving any more because after I hung up I found that my driver was very lost. He was lost in my own street and he remained lost for 10 mins. He drove up and down the same road over and over and over again missing my house at least a dozen times. Taxi drivers take heed when I give you good directions it is your job to find my house and my directions were perfect adequate. They've worked fro dozens of other taxi drivers before you. You have made me very very unhappy with life and telling me that I don't know where I live is really not a way a very good way to improve that situation. I think I know my own address. What do you think? I'm very unhappy with life at the moment and I'm very incalculant(?). So I'm going away.”
deeply improbable, think dolphins at a rock concert
]
There’s a bird outside my window, and, in the distance, some form of machinery that is singing in C Major about a purpose that I’m sure I would recognize if only I could be bothered. I can’t, nor, I suspect, could anyone else in my situation, but these two sounds, organic and synthetic, you might say, reaffirm my existence. That’s what this blog is doing for you, as, if you didn’t know me, you would have no idea what has occurred since that last, gloriously happy voice post from Sydney airport.
It often strikes me how fragmented my life really is, and not just from this blog’s perspective. There are bits of it that stand out, that will have an everlasting impact on me, or on someone else, that will be memorable and valuable and special. And there are bits that are just me, living, breathing, being. This is one of those bits, as are most of the bits in which I blog. There have been a lot of those bits lately. Some people call them “going with the flow”, a clichéd phrase that sounds simultaneously hippy and unhappy.
Funny, how it’s the moments where I as a person am least important to the world in which I am able to write most captivatingly. Kinda supports the death of the author theory. My writing works when I am willing to accept that my text outweighs my own individual value. This is an oddly selfless notion for me to get my head around, but I would like to keep thinking that way, because hopefully, it will make what I choose to say here more relevant to you.
Is any of this relevant to you? I suspect most of you will either shrug at this point, or decide that it doesn’t have to be relevant if you find it entertaining enough. I’ll decide whether it engages you according to how many of you respond, but that’s the kind of measurement television executives and other such killers of innovation might make. I suspect it’s not very accurate.
Nonetheless, this blog, like most of mine, will probably subscribe to multiple demographics. This first part has been for those who are wowed by big ideas in sweeping sentences, those academic enough to be intrigued, though perhaps not enough to realize that I’m really not saying much. I’m about to move on to more lighthearted things, having been enthused by my momentum, so for those who don’t give a damn about all this, your bit is coming.
Am I right about the things that make me blog the way I do? Maybe it’s my disconnected state of mind that allows me to leap easily from one thought to the next, but maybe it’s just my scientific approach to blogging that requires it. Maybe it’s really boredom that makes me want to produce something I like, whose value is increased in my own mind by having nothing better to do. Pretension definitely makes things seem cooler than they really are, and it’s something I’m definitely guilty of. Unfortunately, I’m really bad at drawing conclusions about anything, and thus I don’t know what to make of all that I’ve just been thinking about.
Why do all of you blog? Do you blog when life is at its most interesting, or are you like me, the other way round? Do you start writing because you have something to say, or because you feel obliged to, or even just out of habit? Are these questions worth answering?
***
Yep, we’ve now left academic wank mode and have now entered… what? Thursday? Well, this is Thursday. I don’t feel welcome to it and nor should you. Any Thursday that welcomes you is severely failing itself. I think that I’d rather believe that I am in denial than that one of the days of the week, which recurs on a much more regular basis than I ever will, has lost its meaning.
Many Thursdays have seemed welcoming to me in the past few months, but that all ended on the Thursday that took me away from Sydney and brought me back to nothing much. And that’s pretty much exactly what they’ve been about ever since. Thursdays in 2007 were comparatively forgiving, as they at least gave me something I could transform into humor with the magic of my wit. Now all I have is the magic of severe boredom. Little did I know that my last Sydney voice post heralded the beginning of a long and oppressive chain of deeply depressing mid-week moldiness.
That’s exactly how I feel right now. Moldy. Yes, it is possible for a human being to feel moldy, don’t try this at home. I wouldn’t feel moldy if not for the fact that I’m stuck at home, with nothing to do. If only I had uni on Thursdays, life would be so much more worthwhile, and this blog so much better. I could sit in my lecture/tutorial, mercilessly making fun of everything and everyone just like I used to do in high school. Instead, here I am, making fun of myself. Wait, I thought we’d surpassed the wankage. Oh well.
So what did I do today? Well, I spent the first hour of my waking life wondering why my computer wasn’t on. It wasn’t on because I turned it off last night. It was the first witness to my crusade of charity, you see. I decided that it was necessary to be kinder to the world, and that to start me off on this quest, I would give my computer a night’s holiday. I gave up on that when I realized that if not for my kindness, I’d have been able to reach over, pick up my keyboard and unobtrusively Google a lyric someone put in their Facebook status last night in order to confirm its origin, which would then allow me to happily go back to sleep. Screw the world; it never appreciates anything I do for it.
After lengthy pontification on whether getting out of bed would wake me up too much, how cool telepathy would be and why life is so damn hard, I decided to screw the lyric too. The effort involved in doing that made me tired enough to sleep again, but just as I settled back to indulge my exhaustion, my father entered, ordering me to have breakfast so that I wouldn’t be in his way when he cleaned the house.
How unfair is that? It’s Thursday, and nothing but Thursday, and I don’t even get to sleep through it? Well, to be honest, I could have slept through it if I wanted and nobody would have been any the wiser after 9:00, but I am of the inconvenient belief that sleeping during the day is bad, unless you never got out of bed in the first place, in which case it isn’t day yet anyway.
Thanks to my own guilty conscience, and perhaps my stomach too, I got out of bed, and ate breakfast. I came back, was tempted to go back to sleep, but didn’t because that would have been too easy, and started this blog. After, of course, I read all the other blogs, reviews, news items and other miscellaneous sources of information my RSS aggregator had for me. This is a habit that has been encouraged by my journalism work at uni, though most of the stuff I read is music or otherwise entertainment related. Must get some good hard news feeds to look at…. Nah, can’t be bothered. It’s Thursday, they’d all be sad.
This semester, by the way, is quite exciting so far, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that I’m mostly doing creative writing stuff rather than journalism stuff. Journalism was initially intended to be my income while I wrote something very clever, published it, got famous and then never had to work again. But you get to pick some elective subjects to go along with your degree, so, having been particularly unimpressed by last semester’s journalism work, I decided to see whether their writing subjects were any good. One is fairly non-specific, basically just an excuse for you to write a hell of a lot. The other is called “Great Books: Creative Writing Classics” which is a politically correct way of saying “literature”.
The latter of these seemed somewhat more frightening, as literature is stereotypically taught in quite an inflexible way, but the first thing the lecturer did was to quietly condemn the high school English method, which was very much a relief. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy high school English, my teacher was very engaging and did things her own way, but in school, there is too much demand for a right answer, which I think is the wrong way to go about reading.
Anyway, and yes I know, that was a tangent, the first book we were asked to read was Beowulf. I found this quite terrifying because there are many translations, and some are a lot better than others, but I quickly learnt two things that were comforting: that it didn’t matter what translation you read as long as you read it, and that the Seamus Heaney translation, which almost everyone recommended, actually looked very friendly. I learnt this by reading an excerpt available online.
Here was where I came to grief. Finding a copy of said translation that didn’t need scanning or shipping from the US has been very difficult. That was the next thing I attempted, for about the fifth time, to do this Thursday morning. I am supposed to have read Beowulf by tomorrow morning, in preparation for the lecture, and if not for the difficulty involved in locating it, I would have. Ironic, that the one time I want to do uni work before the night before, I am stopped in my tracks by a simple problem.
Surprisingly, through little more than desperation, I did finally find a copy. Yay, I thought, now I know how to carve away today. But woe was me, it was not to be! For in coming, it had to travel a dark road. And thus it took ten hours in the download. Excuse me, I just burst, unprovoked, into poetry. It seems these days I often do it, then pretend I can’t stop… making of myself… a… real… tit?
Um… yes… so I now have it, and intend to read it tonight, upon having finished this blog. But this morning, I did not, thus perpetuating my lack of anything to do, and increasing my frustration at my situation. In protest, I decided I was going to boycott technology and go meditate, which I then did, in the sun, until I decided that I was more likely to fall asleep than be enlightened. That seemed too enjoyable for my taste, so my technology boycott ended, and I came back to continue this blog, still having found very little of any substance to write about.
I’m not really sure where the next few hours went. I know part of them must have been spent on my blog, part on searching for a more speedy Beowulf/watching the download travel very slowly and part just on mucking around, but none of those seem like things that could occupy me for a long time, and yet I have not a clue what else I might have done.
The next thing I remember was my brother coming home from school. He was obviously bored because he set out immediately to irritate me, mainly by chewing on lollies far too close to my ear. He succeeded for a brief time before we both found one another too inconvenient to be bothered with and decided to co-exist peaceably. Actually, I think it was because he wanted my money. He always wants my money. Family is like that.
My dog arrived, and we played with him. Whenever Brother Sam would stop paying him attention, Zak would leap out, standing on two legs, and put his arms on his chest. Several times, he almost failed to reach and fell over, but each time he just managed to save himself. He eventually settled down on my stomach, something that he very rarely does, but under Sam’s guidance was bribed into, just this once. Zak is a special kind of family member, because he doesn’t really want anyone’s money, but he does want my bed, and tries to get it every night, then barks at me at three in the morning. This makes up for it.
I was actually so bored that I wanted to go for a swim for no other reason than because I could, but I was advised against it by Brother Sam, who then unhelpfully left. I tried to blog more, but, having been doing it for too long, was bored even by that. So, I abandoned all my principles and went to sleep. That was the best bit of my whole day.
I woke up to eat dinner, which was bad because my dream was a good one, but nothing good can last. Dinner was good too, until I ate it, thus proving my very revolutionary theory. By this point, I had Beowulf, and intended to start reading it then. This idea, which seemed to validate my patience, or perhaps my lack thereof, was crushed by… American Idol. I’m not sure why I watch Idol, it’s probably a masochistic thing. It provides something in common with at least a fraction of the family, so I grudgingly trudged out of my cave to watch it. It was…. Entirely uneventful.
I survived that, and decided that this year’s top 12 really isn’t going to be as good as last year’s, or even as the last Australian Idol, which statistically is quite unlikely. Go Australia. I came back here, and since then, I have blogged, because I have so little to do on Thursdays that I can spend lots of time on that sort of thing, and so little motivation that I need to.
That, I suppose, brings us to the here and now. I have decided that if I read Beowulf tonight, I won’t like it, or it will be broken, or I’ll fall asleep, or I’ll screw up my sleeping patterns and be awake all night. Yep, the editions of sleep in that sentence triggered happy impulses in my brain, sounds much more appealing. I’ll read Beowulf tomorrow morning, which is admittedly cutting it just a little close, but I’m sure I can do it, because I’m cool like that, and tomorrow will be Friday.
This is the final paragraph. I can’t write final paragraphs, therefore it will suck. But apparently I’m depressed and dysfunctional enough to have enjoyed writing this. Though I wish I was still in that last voice post, when Thursdays didn’t suck. No, I wish I was earlier still, in a hotel room in Sydney, when everything seemed vivid and meaningful, or in a taxi, when I didn’t know what I was in for. Yep, this is a really bad final paragraph. Still, I’ve made the best of one of the blank bits of my life, and that’s something to do I guess. I hope you found something worthwhile in it. Seeya next time I have nothing to say.
“Hello, this is Jonathan and I'm currently in a taxi on my way to the hotel. We've just arrived in Sydney and everything seems to be fairly easy so far which is quite surprising. This is the 1st of the voice posts I've ever created and this is because I've never had the ability to do so before. I've always wanted the live general paid account up until this point I've never had one because I'm cheap and miserly. Thankfully Rebecca is not and so she bought me 12 months worth of paid account for Christmas and I thought it would be rather fitting for me to sort of acquire it for the 1st time on a trip to see her. So here I am in a taxi. We've just flown into Sydney. The flight was short and happily uneventful because events are generally not good things to deal with in, in a aeroplane. I'm wondering how this transcription system is going to deal with my speech. Usually it either gets people really wrong or really write. I guess we'll just find out quite soon. Oh well more updates later if anyone finds them interesting that is. I didn't even find this one interesting so I guess I'll just have to leave it up to you. See you soon ___.”
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