owlrigh

2012, a disaster of a movie

erika@owlrigh.org — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:44:51 GMT

I spent the longest 2 1/2 hours of my life watching 2012; it was only after I saw the movie that I realised the director was also responsible for The Day After Tomorrow -- once I knew that it explained everything.

To begin with it seemed all right -- although it's hard to find John Cusack believable as a chap who'd mastermind a rescue operation, let alone cross-continent one, with an aeroplane flown by a chap who'd only done a couple of lessons. Anyone will rise to the occasion, no matter what?

The tsunamis got my heart racing. Seeing the walls of CG water falling on people, buildings -- I must admit, it did affect me. How cool is the power of water? If they ever to manage to harvest tides for energy it'd be great, even if an eyesore, hazard to navigation, and change underwater ecology.

Speeches, my god, they were so bad. The guy at the end, with the clock ticking past 15 minutes, speechifying people into opening the doors to save those throwing themselves at the boat -- what? To open the hydraulic doors would presumably take a few minutes, and then another few to close them. Getting everyone on board and then the doors closed in time -- what were the chances? What a surprise to find things going haywire: not!

If Everest was still up high, and the computer models said that the water wasn't going to go up that far, couldn't they have put into place some sort of secondary evacuation plan for people to go to high, very high places? If rigid buildings were going to go under, then how about the flexible sort, low-lying, to save as many more people as they could? Anyway. For a while there I thought they were going to be in spaceships rocketing out of the atmosphere, and then they'd be there for centuries while earth stabilised and the survivors eked out an existence on the broken land, to which they'd return as messianic saviours! Wait, that happened in SF books, which are much better.

Up until where the first car chase scene occurred I thought it'd be okay. Once the Cusack character started flooring it to escape growing cracks, and then flying through collapsing, rubble-filled buildings, it went downhill. Flying planes through debris and falling buildings? Yes, very good. Up until then it was fun, and then it was daft.

All I can think of is that this is going to fuel a rise in folks carrying useless gear around. I tend to visit edcforums.com every so often; it's a board for people who are interested in "every day carry", being ready for most situations. Now, there are likely some normal folks on there -- I like to consider myself normal -- but there are also the likes of the chap who carries four torches with him, or the chaps who carry several knives, or a fully laden backpack with him ... every day. I don't know their situation, whether he needs to trek through an hour of bush and then some white water rafting to get to the nearest town, but I think very not likely. Just slightly mad with the overkill.

Morning, afternoon, night

erika@owlrigh.org — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:51:41 GMT

Myself and a colleague were working in an aisle in the morning, capping, when I heard someone call out --

"Do you live here?"

I looked over at the customer, chip bag in hand; he was apparently talking to me.

"Me? Ha, yes, I think so sometimes."

"Whenever I come shopping you're here! Morning, afternoon, night -- you're here at midnight!" He waved the chips about in emphasis. I would have sworn myself blue in the face that I'd never seen him before in my life.

"Yes, that's about right," and he was, was so dreadfully right.

He shook his head, laughing, and walked away with his goodies. I, however, then spent another seven hours, right through to noticed afternoon.

It's funny when customers don't expect you to recognise them later when they're being wankers -- or perhaps don't remember you, despite trying to help them? And on the other hand, the quiet customers you don't notice, who laugh when you nearly run into them and say things like -- "Nearly got me this time!" and you never remembered the first time, and you feel guilty, bad.

Anti-magpie measures

erika@owlrigh.org — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:12:24 GMT

It's magpie season again, and unfortunately this time I can't avoid the two magpies who have it in for me. They're right on the Pacific Highway, and there's no way of getting around them; they take turns at bombdiving. Hardly has one been waved off before the other comes in from a different trajectory.

A couple of weeks ago Ben and I went for a ride into town, the first time that these birds decided to do the double-up attack. He pedalled up on ahead and stopped once he was out of their range, laughing at my continued assault.

"Hey, I don't have to ride too fast -- just fast enough that you're behind me, because then they'll go for you!"

That they did, and that they did again on the way home.

They continued to get me after that, whenever I was by myself, and then I caved in and stopped riding to town. I couldn't bear the fact I couldn't even try to avoid these birds; there was no escaping them.

I was discussing these birds with a lady at work one evening.

"You should try going along the highway!" she said. "Try that route instead. Get off your bicycle when it comes and walk, because that way it won't see you as a threat."

One afternoon I began with the first of these things, and it was then the magpie nest location became clear -- in the big tree at the very corner I used to turn. Also right under the new path along the highway, and it went for me with a thirst for blood in its ghoulish little eyes.

It was off the bicycle for me, and I tried to walk it along while keeping an eye on the magpie. The creature of evil then ran along beside me as I tried to walk, but mostly ended up getting tangled in my bicycle and falling over.

There had to be a solution!

Other cyclists about town have taken to putting cable ties on their helmets. I stopped one cyclist to ask him if it worked guy said yes: they swoop you anyway, but the cable ties stop them from actually hitting you.

"You're right!" said the 'walk your bike' lady from work. "I saw a woman on her bicycle with cable ties and the magpie swooped but kind of hovered and didn't actually hit her."

Work they may, but I just can't make myself pepper my helmet with cable tie spikes. Helmets are not attractive things anyway, to voluntarily make oneself look even more stupid.

"You look stupid waving your arm above your head to shoo them away," was Ben's opinion, and so I came up with the most brilliant of ideas:

An umbrella.

I took one with me as I set off into town today and discovered a new magpie. This one's right smack down the highway, before I even get to safe ground, and as soon as I saw it settle in the lines above me I stopped, pulled out the umbrella, and set off again with it jauntily over my shoulder.

A car parped its horn and I was given a thumbs up. Everyone else just thought I looked stupid.

It worked! I went past four magpies and they were all so confounded by the umbrella -- now broken from being inside out half my ride -- that they all left me alone! They didn't even screech as they flew past!

There is a problem with the umbrella idea, and that's wind. The faster you go, the more wind one generates, and that's without the gusts from the trucks as they go past or just a plain windy day. Would an umbrella without its fabric? Just the frame, would that work? I bought some lace today to put that in, just in case it doesn't. Or there's always a lace parasol.

Also: umbrella holding tires out the arm fairly quickly, and makes things dangerous for quick maneuvering. Perhaps cable ties is the way to go, but I'll hold out yet.

On another bicycle note, a comfortable, nice, totally uplifting one: I got myself a women's saddle seeing as my old one was dying, and this women's saddle is the best thing in the world. A Terry Butterly Ti women's specific saddle, shorter in the nose and with a blissful channel in the middle.

I never quite realised how annoying my old one was. At least now I can avoid the magpies in comfort.

a not-so-random naked man

erika@owlrigh.org — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:10:24 GMT

I saw Ben's dad, Dan, in the companionway of his boat one afternoon, as Ben and I were coming home.

"Put a shirt on!" I shouted out the window of the car as we went past, down to where my boat is in the yard and parked. We got out and played with one of the local yard dogs, and then --

"Did you say something?" came Dan's voice from behind us.

We turned around. He was standing on his deck, stark bollocks naked, and we swung around quickly again and made faces at each other. Urgh.

"Geeze, what's wrong with him?" I asked Ben.

"I dunno." He looked thoroughly disgusted.

Both of us avoided looking towards Dan's boat, and eventually I made my way up into the boat and tinkered.

There was a knock at the back of the boat.

"Hey, yeah, sorry about that," said Dan, poking his head over the transom.

"Oh, hey! No worries," said I, "I've seen my fair share wrinkly old men naked. No harm done."

"Oh, okay." He talked about what he was going to do with his boat before he left.

"You should put in a canopy over your cockpit, what with your newfound penchant for nudism," I put in. "You wouldn't want to get burned."

Later on in the day I was talking to one of the owners of the boat yard, and he came up in conversation. I told her what he'd done and she grimaced at the image.

"Where's he going to go now? Which of his women?" she asked. He has a couple of them on strings. "I don't know what they see in him! Although you'd know!"

"Not much to see, no, I wouldn't be standing around on deck if I were him," said I, and then we laughed ourselves silly until her husband turned up to see what the fuss was.

Just before work Ben and I went to have coffee together. We eventually got around to discussing the incident.

"Ha, he would have come over to see your reaction. Did you tell him why you'd seen naked old men?"

"Well, no, I thought you didn't want me to say."

"Thanks," said Ben. "You should bring it up all the time now, to embarrass him. When we go out to dinner, 'oh, hey, can you read this on the menu for me? My eyes haven't been quite the same since you flashed me,' that sort of thing."

We laughed uproariously, getting strange looks from other customers.

Since then, thankfully, he's kept his kit on; maybe he realises it's inappropriate to flash your son's partner, even if she is giving you the shits...

Karen Marie Moning, Fever series

erika@owlrigh.org — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:05:20 GMT

Karen Marie Moning's Darkfever was available for free from one of the ebook retailers, and so I downloaded it for lunchtime/dinnertime reading at work. This was the first the Fever series, an unfinished one of what I believe will be five, and I've now read the first four.

The world runs thus: there are Daione Sidhe in the world, and most people are unable to see them unless you're one of the sidhe seers, and if you are one of such you will likely live a short life as once you come face to face with one and see through the glamour they'll kill you. Or glamour you into having sex with them, rape, at which point you will become Pri-ya, addicted to sex with Fae, a mindless sex robot who dies from pining. Keep this particular in mind.

Our narrator, Mac, is drawn to Ireland once her sister is killed there, and gets thrust into the Fae world she's so far avoided by having lived in a small town. She meets both the mysterious (tall, dark, handsome, is-he-evil-or-isn't-he?) Jericho Barrons, who appears to have some kind of mystical powers, and V'Lane, a Seelie Fae Prince who has the hots for Mac and comes increasingly at her beck and call. In the third book he even implants his name in her so she can call him whenever she feels like it, like a dog!

She successfully avoids being killed, and during her street searching finds one of the Dark Zones her dead sister had scribbled the address to as she was dying. An address into stone. You'd think she'd say something a lot more useful -- "x killed me" or "x marks the spot" -- wait, she did that last one, a spot Mac would have died going into without a piece of foreknowledge of Fae. Just before her sister died she left a phone message about a book called the Sinsar Dubh, which everyone is after so that they can break down the walls between the Unseelie prison and Earth.

The Unseelie had been sealed away by the Seelie a long, long time ago because they'd been created by the Seelie (now Un-) King because he was trying to make humans immortal, and so ... no, I didn't quite get how this went, either, other than they were all hideous and the Seelie, being very pretty, were disgusted by them and sealed them all away lest their eyes be offended.

Over and over we are told about her sister, how she'd never have gone to Dublin if not for her, how she misses her long blonde tresses (which she dyed to go incognito), her love of clothes, how she thought she'd settle into a normal life, married, children, etc. Homesick galore, only ... not really, not getting a sense of it other that the constant whining. GET OVER IT ALREADY.

In addition to her sidhe-seeing powers, she's also a Null, someone who can freeze the Fae by touching them, can sense Fae objects from far away, and when she's dying in the second book, Bloodfever,she eats some Fae and discovers that by eating them she adopts super-strength and kicks arse ... but loses her Fae-object sensing ability. She keeps a stash of quivering, live Fae flesh in baby food jars in her bag for emergency arse-kicking sessions.

There are a number of Fae-eating humans around, and she gets to meet a self-styled vampire who's one of them; she's captured by him and is nearly beaten to death. This is her first consumption of raw, quivering, greasy flesh. It makes you part fae if you eat too much of it, and the 'vampire' had been stabbed by her fae-killing spear, killing the Fae part of him and leaving the human bits alive. It all sounded very gross.

Towards the end of the third book Mac is caught by the Unseelie princes who've been released into the world. She's raped and becomes Pri-ya, which she'd so far avoided becoming by not having sex with V'Lane, and becomes a mindless sex bot gagging for it.

The first couple of chapters of Dreamfever, book four, are her and Barrons having sex. He brings her back to reality with the aid of his magical cock and lots of sex. Okay, not so magical, but seeing as she's the only Pri-ya to ever come back to her usual senses -- as we know them so far -- what are we supposed to believe? Once this happens she runs away to V'Lane, whom we now discover she's immune to, and then the rest of the book appears to be her running from Barrons as he makes increasingly smarmy comments about her, sex, and where he'd like her mouth to be. Nice.

It was a sad departure from the promise of the first book, which although wasn't the best in the world, seemed to have had some thought put into the worldbuilding. I would have liked to see where it all went ... before it became obvious that Moning was making it up as she went along, throwing obstacles at Mac increasingly in the daft department. It suddenly wasn't as much about the world having to deal with the Fae as much as Mac having to deal with ... what? Her adolescent, pink-loving angst?

When you come to the end of the first book you get the general idea: this is a romance novel, one with a long arc, told in first person. The repeats in the first novel aren't too bad; she narrator tells you over and over again that she's interested in Teh Pretty, although for as much as she tells you this you don't get that much of a sense of it in her thoughts as she goes through the plot.

It grows towards the Mac/Barrons romance -- although what she sees in a guy who makes sexual comments about you when you were broken, I dunno -- and Mac is thrust into alternate worlds in Dreamfever. She calls upon her trusty mobile and its "When You're Dying" phone number and a big creature comes to her defense. She has to choose between it and going back to Earth at the end and stabs him ... and she screams! Who is it? Barrons? Fade to black!

THIS SERIES ANNOYS ME SO. The End.

Torchwood, Children of Earth

erika@owlrigh.org — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:35:32 GMT

Now I've seen all of Torchwood, Children of Earth, and it's excellent, very good science fiction.

There are fans who are going to be very upset with certain developments, most notably Ianto dying. This was sad; Jack and Ianto's slow development in the story was good, although I don't know if coming to it spoiled meant it was more obvious to me he was going to die, but it felt like another step in showing us how Jack is alienated by everyone's mortality. Or his immortality, I should say. The number of times he dies and resurrects in this miniseries shows us all the more how he doesn't fit, and his telling Ianto that he's a fixed point in time, the Doctor's description of him if I recall correctly, makes this all the more obvious.

I cried really hard not when Ianto died, though, no. It was Frobisher was called into the PM's office and told that his daughters were going to make the cull. Sure, he wasn't the best of men, and he was herded into the hard decisions and set up as the fall man, and this was all going to happen anyway. He knew this. Then: not only was that going to occur, but his children were gone, too, and I could see him breaking right there and then, and I cried when he got that gun and killed his family, himself.

Finally we see more of the other Torchwood members than just Gwen and Rhys; more of their lives outside of the group, their roots. As Ianto's sister, Rhiannon, tells Gwen, she didn't really know him -- none of us as viewers did, not really. We had a better idea of Jack, getting more of his backstory as well as from Doctor Who, those of us who watched both series. It wasn't as expected, however, to see him sacrifice his grandson, or even, really, any child; it reminds me of the train dilemma. Of course he would choose the logical option, seeing the long term. That boy was always going to die, anyway. It just happened to be a few years sooner, and in the meantime a lot of people were going to get to live, and live free: not bound to the 456 forever, for as long as the 456 needed or wanted to harvest their fix.

Of course he chose the way he did, and of course he left. He'd been around Cardiff for hundred -- actually, 2000+ -- years, waiting for the Doctor, and then when he found the Doctor didn't want him, he didn't have much reason to hang around there anymore. His daughter would want him around no longer, he'd have to see Gwen with her new child, and see them grow old, a reminder yet again of people he cared for dying.

It's funny how Gwen and Ianto didn't want to believe that Jack'd given the children up. Someone who's lived all that long, been with Torchwood so long -- and Ianto here would know some of the skeevy things Torchwood would've done along the line of history. Did he somehow think that Jack had escaped the morally dubious, grey, and somehow completely amoral things the organisation'd done? Did they think that Jack would have stayed with Capt. John Hart, the way he was, if he'd not been morally grey himself?

I'd been dabbling around in the slash fandom, a bit, because hey: canon slashiness! Of course I had to! It didn't grab me in hard, because the show didn't have the pull, but now I'm thinking the Torchwood slash fandom will go silently into that good night. Some fandoms can continue with "virtual seasons" -- I'm thinking The Sentinel, here, boy do I feel old -- but somehow, well, it would lessen the impact Ianto's death. Not that his death was all that well used. How fucking stupid were they to walk into the room of the 456, knowing nothing about them at all, not even how to hurt them in theory, and throw around ultimatums? I mean, really.

The storyline, though, that blew me out of the water. So strong, much unlike anything we've seen for a while, dark, and the political satire was dead on. Everyone scurrying around, trying to pin it on the other guy. This'll stand another viewing.

Being a science fiction fan is like being in the closet

erika@owlrigh.org — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:35:35 GMT

Earlier in the week I was packing with someone else in the same aisle, normally something which occurs if there's a lot in it. Sometimes this happens and I'm silent for hours; this time we struck up a conversation.

"So, are you friends with many of the women here?" he asked.

"Friendly, not friends ... I find it really hard to make friends with women. We tend to not have much in common." For some reason I felt garrulous and open, and all of a sudden I didn't care about putting on a 'normal' face. "I don't care for going out and drinking every night, and I don't have kids to discuss. I'd rather stay at home and watch some science fiction tv show instead."

"Oh, you like science fiction?"

"Yeah."

"Me too. I was thinking about going to Supernova this year. I thought about cosplaying."

I was surprised, taken aback at the casualness of this mention, of the "pop expo" (not really a convention, not really), and of cosplay. His courage to mention even the word in a mundane setting.

"I thought about going as Mario, or maybe Luigi." Definitely a Mario.

The rest of the evening was spent in a frenzy of conversation of SFness, conventions, various movies, gaming tie-ins, and general nerdiness.

It felt like coming out.

It's been years since I felt the need to come out, sexually, seeing as I've been with a man this long. It still feels relevant, and so very many times people say stupid things about sexuality, and I bite my tongue because I don't want to expose myself to another thing people can poke and pry about, or ask inappropriate questions.

It's bad enough I had to ask to change my dinner times because I didn't want to be around men cracking "you don't eat meat? But you're with a guy" 'jokes' about being vegan, making me feel unsafe and molested.

The discussion that night, it made me feel open and free, joyous that I didn't have to hide my nerdiness, I could share of myself.

"I never knew this about you before!" the guy said. "I always knew you were into cycling; don't take this the wrong way, but sometimes you come across more like a man. You should have told me before that you like science fiction."

"What? And gotten people cracking jokes about Spock ears or Dr Who? Half the day staff who knew I went to Perth for a science fiction convention didn't let me live it down."

"That's not right," he said, angrily. "You should be able to tell people what you like."

In a perfect, world, yes.

Years ago my ex-girlfriend was telling me about how she'd come out to an co-worker about us, and the co-worker's reaction was:

"Why are you telling me this?" Rejection.

Why? Because it was part of who she was. Of what she was feeling.

Being bi is part of me, even though I don't share this anymore, even if sometimes I want to. Being a fan is a huge, huge part of who I am; what I think of most of the day, making up fannish stories as I pack shelves, or wanting to talk about the latest episode of some series. And I can't; the only person I do this with is my partner, and even he's not into things much, so I dampen it down.

It feels like coming out, and now that I've broken it a bit, I want to go all the way. Trying to be normal sucks eggs, and I'll never be "one of the girls", as the so-very patronising term goes, most likely especially because of not having children, and not wanting to ever have them.

Clearly some people like SF-type stuff; the ladies keep going on about how good Twilight is, and I can only think that they've not even tasted the good stuff, and want to point them towards the good vampire romances. It's like when Harry Potter was hyped and everyone was on about how great it was, and if you tried to point them towards some other good series, even Philip Pullman, and they'd be: nah, just the Harry Potter, thanks.

The clock ticked towards midnight.

"I had an excellent time tonight," said my co-worker when the call came.

"Good. So did I."

Whale Warriors, Sea Shepherd

erika@owlrigh.org — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:08:03 GMT

I've just finished reading The Whale Warriors, by Peter Heller, the companion book to the Animal Planet channel series Whale Wars on the Sea Shepherd. The writer/journalist went on the hunt with them in 2005.

The Sea Shepherds are a hardcore anti-whaling group, with two ships at their disposal -- at the time of the book there was only one -- and have been known to sink whaling ships, or at the very least ram them. During the course of the book the chap at the wheel deliberately puts the boat in the way of the whaling ship, and would have been cut in half, if it weren't for the whaling ship turning away at the last moment -- which may have had something to do with the ropes they were about to foul its propeller with, and not to avoid killing a bunch of anti-whalers.

What struck me about it was just how undisciplined and daft the lot of them were. Hooning around in inflatable boats in the harbour, "for fun", and doing so with jetskis later on in open waters outside a Tasmanian harbour, proceeding to flip it over and drown it; six people taking to an inflatable when it wouldn't support that capacity in rough seas, and not even being able to anchor properly when things came to a crunch. What the hell? Didn't they train their volunteers properly?

A number of the chaps on board seemed to be there because they were ex-military and the setup of the boat lent itself to shady, secretive maneuverings that people with gun issues would in all likelihood love to be a part of. Others were hardcore vegans who harassed non-vegans, and the boat was vegan vittles only. The writer was annoyed about this, I sensed between the lines, considering at every opportunity he would stress their veganhood when they were doing something daft.

The people running the show appeared very us-against-the world, and the skipper well familiar with the international marine law; although it says that people breaching international law against poaching can have their property confiscated/destroyed, it also says that boats attempting to sink other boats are pirates and so should get full strength of the law. They skate close to the line, and as I recall they were boarded by the Australian Federal Police earlier this year for pirate activities.

I'm not pro-whaling by any means. Greenpeace's "witnessing" is a bit limp, because although they get footage, they're not exactly going to stop any ship from spearing. Hell, just about every year they get footage and it's not stopped the Japanese government going back for more. Ramming boats with scythes attached to their sides, however, could kill people, and running up a skull and crossbones? Nutter territory.

One would presume that this group would have people all over the world volunteering, and out of those there'd be a fair number who'd have reasonable qualifications to assist properly in the ship's running. Instead you have a bunch of professional card players, a vegan nurse who got kicked out of uni for not participating in dissection (eh?), children of a few prominent eco-founders, and somem random folks who seemed on the far side of sane. Admittedly an Australia sparky joined the ranks when he heard they needed an electrician, but you'd think, at the very least, you'd get a few people with marine experience -- or train them!

They stopped some whaling, yay! On the other hand, I think of the fuckups they had, and that if it wasn't from sheer luck they'd have their volunteers dying because they didn't think it through, because of the skipper deliberately playing chicken with whalers. Only, that was the idea, kinda; if they'd all died that day there would have been an uproar and the Japanese would have been shamed into stopping. Yet not everyone signed up for that. What a bunch of insane proto-murderers! As if the Japanese are any worse than they!

luxurious boat living

erika@owlrigh.org — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:51:02 GMT

I grow tired of being on a small yacht in the same place for years. Small yachts are for sailing, for travelling on, and when I bought this yacht I was single, plans filling my head about places I was going to go, places I was going to station the yacht while I went off to the mines and worked for top dollar and then returned home to cruise.

Of course it didn't quite turn out that way; by the time I reached Airlie Beach I was utterly broke, taking the first job which came my way, and stayed doing it, pissed as a fart most of the time, and then I met Ben. At first he had his own yacht, and we sailed our respective boats to places and then rendezvoused at different anchorages -- he would always arrive first, and then my little yacht would rock up. This was good; we still had more space, our own space.

And then he sold his boat. That day we went aboard his little catamaran and filled up his dinghy with large garbage bags full of his belongings. I'd gone through my own stuff and gotten rid of a lot of things to make room for his, and then suddenly my boat had an occupancy of two.

This wasn't so bad in Mackay; for a while we were on hardstand, and my parents were around to visit and annoy. I rode my bicycle around and explored a lot, because it was possible for a variety of bicycle rides there, with a number of starting possibilities. I could even go visit the parents and use my mother's sewing machine, or use library facilities easily, and basically didn't need to be on board as much as I do here, where the nearest place is 20 minutes' ride away.

It's been over two years here now, and the lack of space gets to me. When I mention to people that I live on a very small boat, the size of a small caravan, they're -- "you're so lucky! I would love to live on a boat. I would go fishing all the time." The lack of space doesn't faze them; it's when they find out that there is no toilet that they screw up their faces and reconsider boat living. Well, my sort of boat living.

For me it isn't the lack of toilet, or the lack of shower or hot water -- it's that the boat is so damned small. If you take anything out you have to put it back the second you are finished with it, for if you put it down and get one more thing out suddenly the boat feels cluttered, smaller. It dampens any inclinations to do things. Thoughts of nice food spring up and occur to me, but if I want to get stores out I have to shift Ben from his seat first, and then move his legs, shuffle things from one side to the other, move his legs again to get to the fridge, and then once it's made I have to clean up and put all the food away before you sit down and relax.

It's dispiriting, exhausting. We eat peanut butter sandwiches, fruit, and tins of baked beans more often than not; if I make a meal at all it will be at midday, when he can sit comfortably in the cockpit and I can clean up without having to move him every ten seconds.

When on land I had a predilection towards craftwork, other sorts of handiwork, and writing in my journal. Now ... if I want to sew I'd take up most of the table, unfeasible if Ben's here, and when he's not, well, I think about the cleaning up I'd have to do almost right away and it just ends up easier to read all day, or sit on the computer all day, and do nothing. As for journal writing; in my paper one it's private, stuff I would never, ever want people to see or read, all sorts of uncomfortable stuff, and yet, if I start writing his eyes skim across the page, pick out words --

"what are you writing?"

and the urge fades, I close the book up and put it away, train of thought broken and suddenly unwilling to continue to write private things any longer.

This sort of living shaves you down to the basics, to the minimum of what you need and nothing else. It wearying to have to constantly stop yourself from getting something pretty, just because you like it, or a book; to stop and think "but oh, I have nowhere to put it" and then leave it behind.

When it's raining belowdecks becomes wet too, with raincoats and gumboots, drybags -- the things to keep us and our stuff dry between shore and boat, only to soggy up the inside. If it keeps raining long enough inside the boat gets mouldy, the condensation builds up, and then everything develops dampness, a faint mustiness that lingers until one day you realise your shoes have become green and furry, and not in a good, cool, hip way.

Every day is cleaning up, tidying, 'can I get rid of this?'; an endless dance for both of us, trying to find the right moves, and yet -- not succeeding. Bring on the new life: I'm ready.

Adventuresome haircuts

erika@owlrigh.org — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:15:38 GMT

I got into a rage with my hair the other day, got out the scissors, and chopped most of it off while hanging over the side. The idea was that no itchy remains would be on the boat, but when I turned around I saw that all the hair offcuts were going into the dinghy; I would have to fish them out anyway.

Mostly I was angry with Ben's mum for not cutting my hair the way I wanted it; her last visit a couple of weeks ago I asked for it short and she cut off a couple of centimetres, the straight-cut way. If I'd been paying her, for she's a professional hairdresser, I would have had a few choice words to say.

There was hardly any time before I had to go to work, and so I packed everything up quickly and headed ashore to find Ben.

"What does it look like?"

His horrified face said it all.

"Can you fix it up a bit?"

"I only have the fibreglass scissors," he said, and went off to find them. They're huge shears, and he delicately SNIKed bits of hair off with them, the blades sounding ominous in between his admonishments. "It's all different lengths! Okay, I've fixed it as much as I can, made it layer-y, but there are chunks everywhere."

I wwore it in a ponytail the next couple of days anyway, and then went to visit my family up on the Gold Coast over my 'weekend'.

"You cut your hair!" said my mother, and then got out her scissors to 'fix' it some more. "It's not straight!"

Which I didn't want it to be, anyway, as hair cut straight across looks awful on anybody. I fended her off that time, but throughout my visit she would take to combing my hair and then -- a surreptitious SNIP! would occur, and I'd have to fend her off again.

Work rolled around again, and on Sunday I sneaked out during my lunch break for a proper, paid-for haircut, by someone I could tell off if they didn't do what I wanted.

"What happened here?" she asked, combing my hair down furiously.

"Um, my mum cut my hair," I lied.

"Your mum's not a hairdresser, is she? I'm sure your mum's a nice person, but don't let her do it again!"

I walked out of there twenty minutes later feeling kilos lighter. I hadn't realised just how heavy my head of hair usually is, and although it seemed like she cut enough off to make me bald, I still have longish hair -- only now all layered so that it's springy and swishy like in shampoo ads.

Even the video store lady stopped me in the aisle, a couple of hours into wearing the new look, and complimented me on my hair. Every second female -- no blokes -- have made comments on the hair, about how nice it looks. It makes me dread how I've normally looked with the usual old-style homecut! There are photos of the really bad ones my mother gave me years ago, unfortunately; I look at them sometimes and wish her to perdition...

"Your hair looks more like you, now, than your old hair," said Ben. "Suits you more."

I can even put my helmet on without it being in the way, take it off, and it doesn't look overly helmet-hairy. Helmets are good to save your life, but sheesh, they sure do get in the way of trying to look good at the end of a ride.

And so, all that came to an end with a $23 haircut. Don't be so cheap in the future -- you're not starving! As a reminder along these lines, I accidentally cut one particular chunk next to my ear very short, and it sticks out from the side of my head. That'll teach me to shell out the required funds!

Edit: 'after' photo added

a supermarket affair

erika@owlrigh.org — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:58:34 GMT

"Did you hear about what happened?"

"...no?" said I.

"L.C. came in the other morning, in full work uniform, and V. was on checkout 1. She walked up to her, tapped V. on the shoulder, then punched her in the face! In front of the line of customers waiting to be served, calling her a slut! It was all caught on camera; the managers were watching it in the general office earlier."

A couple of years ago the supermarket I work at underwent a refit, during which there was much chaos and high turnover of staff. It was at this time that a new chap arrived, B.C., a manager who eventually settled into the perishables department. He was immediately noticeable because of his height, and because his trousers never quite fit, hovering above his work boots like that of a child.

He was one of those somewhat sleazy guys; never quite hitting on women, but saying things that were just on the far side of acceptable crudity. He toned it down before too long, and it was only when I shifted to days that I found out why: B.C. was sleeping with the office girl, V.

It was off enough to imagine this guy with a girl half his age, but it became even worse when I realised that his wife worked in the deli department, that the affair had been going on for a year at that stage -- various people had seen his car parked outside V's house in the middle of the night -- and his wife had no idea.

A year passed, I returned to nights, B.C. moved to a different store, and still his wife had no idea. Apparently a few people had dropped hints, and a couple of weeks ago someone had straight-out told her that he was dancing the horizontal tango with V, but still she didn't believe it.

She returned home to ask him that evening, so the story goes, and he denied it; she believed him.

Last Wednesday some was happily burbling to another deli staff member about how B.C. was going to be returning home soon, and the plans they were making.

"That's it!" said the deli staffer, "I can't take this anymore, go talk to the manager."

So she went, and was told in depth the various proofs of her husband's affair, including V's application for transfer to B.C.'s new store (which was denied), where V'd been introduced as his girlfriend. Things get around this supermarket chain's stores like wildfire; it could happen in Sydney yesterday and we'd know about it up here today.

It all culminated in the punch to the face Thursday morning.

"V wasn't allowed to go home," said my informant, "well, not until her eye started going black, anyway."

I had felt sordid knowing about this whole thing up until now; those two were sleazebags, and I couldn't look at V without thinking she was a horrible person for being able to sleep with someone's husband and look the other woman in the eye for two years, knowing he had kids and as far as his wife was concerned everything was fine and dandy. I thought he was a horrible person, too, but at least he disappeared off a few months back.

Now everyone is secretly cheering -- or not so secretly, amongst ourselves -- that L.C. punched her in the face. I wish she'd punched him in the face, too, but as far as the story goes, she's not done so. I suppose it's a bit hard to punch someone that tall in the face, because she's about my height and I'd be a bit reluctant to hit a chap up that high. In the nads, however, is another story; while they're writhing in agony you can still get away.

"All the little old ladies in that line, you just know that they've gone off to bowling that morning and talked about it. 'It's Underbelly in Ballina!'," said the night manager. "There'll be stories about drug raids and police all about town next. All centred around this store!"

V's not been back in the store since, and L.C. has been back for one shift, her job still in place ... unless V. decides to press charges, in which case she'll be fired. B.C. is officially not welcome in the store anymore, and will be asked to leave if he comes in.

Everyone knew, and nobody said anything to her for two years. How would she feel, knowing this? Doubly betrayed? Deli staff, from the discussion I had with her not too long ago, aren't all that chummy and inclined to post-work gatherings like the other groups. It'd be hard to come back to work and now know that everyone ELSE knows and always did, all along.

Still: three cheers for the punch, that she didn't stay at home and cry. Now all she's got to do is burn his fancy sportscar to the ground and she'll be my hero!

Terminator Salvation

erika@owlrigh.org — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:52:38 GMT

I went to see Terminator Salvation for the second time yesterday, this time with Ben; the first was with a coworker with SFnal tendencies. I'd hoped for some discussion of the movie with the coworker, but instead we discussed his intentions to move to Thailand to be with his boyfriend, and so Ben and I nerded it up in the car last night, desperately trying to avoid stepping out into the cold.

My opinion was that if it wasn't a Terminator movie, it's not all that likely that anyone would have bothered hyping this, because the storyline is thin on the ground, so full of holes they might as well renamed SkyNet to MosquitoNet. Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it; I did go see it twice, after all.

I liked young Anton Yelchin as Reese; he did a good job as a teenager, a strong youngling wanting to fight. He was the best thing about the whole movie, and not because I particularly thought he was hot; Worthington was more my eyecandy.

I liked Reese's saving Marcus from the clothes-wearing machine in NY; I wondered aloud to Ben why the clothing, at which he posited that it was in camouflage to flush out humans for the kill. Early models of the T-800, not yet clad in flesh? His history was barely even broken into! It would have been a good movie about him, if they went with the old concentration camp backstory, and then made him into something other than a male version of a heroine needing saving.

My problem begins about halfway through the movie, when young Kyle Reese is grabbed up by the Gatherer. Up until then I was enjoying the characters, the feel of the land ... and then we get the silliness.

Williams so falling for Markus that she ignores that he's a cyborg, a machine, and sets him free. She's been fighting the machines for umpteen years, and she doesn't come to the conclusion that it's possible he's been saving her, being nice to her, just to get back to the base and wipe everyone out there? This wasn't so, but it didn't quite cross her soldier's mind.

I'd wondered when Reese eventually got taken back to the holding place and his face was singled out: how did they know that was him, and why didn't they get him before? This was explained later on, satisfactorily, but the steel he picked up: it would have been nice to see him trying to jimmy the door, at the very least ...

Sam Worthington's accent throughout the movie was a hoot. Clearly his voice coach couldn't train him into Americanness quickly enough; his Strine accent strode through at every available moment. It was Ben's opinion that they should have let him be Australian in it; unworkable with the death sentence for murder, unless they made him another Guantanamo Bay Australian, convicted of terrorism ... harder to make him sympathetic, that way. The unspoken history of the reasons for his death leads you to wonder: what did he do? I put forward the scenario of vehicular manslaughter, where he and his bro got tranked on drugs and led the cops on a merry chase and then killed his bro in an accident, went mad and killed the cops. Or, or. He'd been some sort of paramilitary, or a soldier, or a mercenary, before; nobody ordinary knows about guns and fighting that much, surely. Or how to fix a car. Or a radio. Unless SkyNet delicately introduced this knowledge into him?

THe first part of the movie, a road movie, had a good speed. Then we got Connor, with his megalomaniac schemes and daft trust in a machine -- "I can see he truly believes he is a man" -- piffle. Asking people everywhere to hold off on the Resistance bombing; sure, it saved Reese, but there can never be two masters of any group, and clearly his hold over the Resistance was in place. The guys running the show should never have let him do radio talks; big mistake on their behalf.

Onwards he goes. to SkyNet headquarters ... where he battles a T-800. But wait! He then gets stabbed through the chest! And Marcus pulls the steel out; a big no-no when it comes to injuries, I believe, and then has open heart surgery in the midst of the field, notwithstanding that Marcus and Connor probably didn't have the same blood type, or even if a beefed up heart would make the transition cleanly. Surely a throwaway comment would not have been amiss.

Escaping a nuclear explosion twice: once on foot, and the second time setting off a chain reaction as they hover directly above the whole thing in a helicopter. And off they go. With all the nuclear stuff having gone off, there wouldn't have been some sort of no-go zones? Or radiation meters? SFnal "anti-radiation injections"?

My main thought towards the end there was that if SkyNet can create that many small nuclear batteries for the T-800, then surely it could pinpoint clusters of human warmth signatures and just bombed the larger congregations, heading down the list of smaller populations as it went. No need for machinery then, just heat scanner satellites, or photos of changes using Google Earth.

Kaboom!

the whitewashing of Australia

erika@owlrigh.org — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:18:44 GMT

"You don't look Australian."

That's what people say when I ask them why they want to know where I'm from.

What the FUCK does an Australian look like, then? What if I were Aboriginal? Because I've met Aboriginal people with my colouring, and how would they feel to be said that to? Other people cop it too; in a way it's reassurring that I'm not the only one getting the insensitive wankers, but on the other hand it's depressing how pervasive to Australians it is.

The other day I was describing the high school I used to go to, with the wide range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds of the students there; Samoan, Fijian, Indian, Cambodian, Thai, Laotian, Papuan:

"Oh, so there weren't any Australians?"

I just stared at the culprit.

"Yes, there were Australians -- they all were, they were born here." Maybe they were, maybe they came as babies and then were Naturalised. However it happened, they were living in Australia, going to school, participating in an Australian education.

There was the merest suggestion of an eyeroll, that I was being deliberately obtuse.

I've heard the not-Australian remark from many people, and I usually shrug it off, but this time I was overcome with rage, with hurt, and was offended. It was like he was saying that I wasn't Australian, like suddenly I was a non-entity in his eyes.

I even had a little cry about it at work later on, hiding out on the back dock, and felt suddenly like I was stuck in a cage of white people when I went out on the floor.

It's in the way people phrase it. They don't ask, "What's your cultural heritage?"

Or: "What's your background?"

Or: "I notice you have dark skin; where did that come from?"

Anything except "Where are you from?"

Because I'm from Australia, and if I say that then there's that huffiness that I didn't answer the way they wanted, and then there's always the:

"No, I mean, what's your background?"

That second question should be the first. I often answer anyway, tell them the truth if it's someone I know, or a fanciful story if it's some rude stranger.

It didn't used to bother me nearly so much until I started travelling, and these past number of years I've been in contact with a lot more strangers, and oddly enough been in white-washed towns where the coloured folk are few and far between -- and those who are dark-skinned are usually Asian-heritage people running the local Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese takeaway -- and usually with that exact sign over the door.

Why does it matter? Why are they curious? It never even occurs to me to pry into some dark-skinned person's life, and it wasn't until I started travelling that I became at all aware that I stood out; when I lived in Woodridge about half the population seemed to be of ethnic origin. I was barely even aware I wasn't white ... I was just me, and I liked my skin just fine -- although I wished I was dark all over and not subject to the vagaries of sunlight, tanning on exposed skin and paler elsewhere.

Of late I have undertaken to educate myself in my Peruvian background, and borrowed out books on the history of the Incas and Peru. It's all very interesting and I realise that now that the Incan "empire" was only on the cards for three generations. So much for the "ancient civilisation of Inka", as the local hippie rag calls it in an attempt to flog some New-Age twaddle. In fact, now that I know that bit more about the politics and history of the area, although I can identify with the peoples and am sort of proud of it all, it makes me realise all the more that I don't consider myself Peruvian. I don't consider myself Welsh, either, but what if I did? I hardly think nosy strangers would be willing to take that as an answer to their question, because they want to know why I'm not white, not anything else.

Next time someone says to me "you don't look Australian" I'll be hard pressed not to say:

"Funny, you don't look like a racist bigot, either."

the graffiti monster

erika@owlrigh.org — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:04:51 GMT

Last week we were made to watch another of the demeaning training movies the supermarket produces. This one was on safety and compliance, along with skits of supposed employees performing in "So You Wanna Dance?" style, and other things so horrible I have since blanked them from my mind.

In fact, I watched so little of it the night captain kept barking my name because of my unsuccessful attempts to slide around the doorway and leave.

Around the time they started in on compliance and workplace safety a terrible poem appeared next to the finger scanner. It goes along the lines of:

I could have saved a life today
I saw someone doing something dangerous
I could have told them not to do it
but I didn't
and now they're dead
I could have saved a life today, rinse and repeat.

It's insulting that management put this up, when they're supposed to be models of safety and yet are not. The store trading manager (STM) comes in after he's supposedly left, in plain clothes and a pair of thongs, and uses the forklift out the back. Not safe at all, no way; not to mention the lack of uniform, which is a no-no. The grocery manager is worse; he's stood at the top of a "safety ladder", on the bracket supposed to keep you on the platform, and pass things down to the service manager -- because he's too lazy to fetch things down with the forklift. This same manager went along the capping -- he's not a lightweight fellow -- and was removing grills between the aisles when his foot went through one of the chipboard shelf tops -- which are not fastened down at all -- and nearly killed himself. He certainly knocked everything off and I heard it from the other end of the very large store.

After scanning my finger to start my shift last night, I took a look at this unattributed poem, and decided to write on it.

"Who wrote this poem? Unattributed display of works is wrong, and in a business setting, is theft."

Something along those lines. I put my pen away and went to do what I start off with every day: filling the toilet paper.

I'd not been doing that long when I heard my name being called over the PA, and the night fill captain told me the STM wished to see me in his office.

"How's the head?" asked the STM.

I'd gone home early last night; I bashed myself on the head on a protruding display, one of the rigid, non-moving ones, and proceeded to give myself a large lump. After feeling dizzy and a bit ill, they sent me home.

"I'm all right, it's a bit sore, but yeah, not too bad," said I.

"Good, good," he said. "There's this other thing ... there's a poem by the finger scanner. You saw it? Did you write something on it?"

Now how on earth did he know that? I contemplated saying no for a split second, but the fact he was asking clearly meant he knew, that someone saw me do it, and then went to management with that knowledge.

"Yeah, that was me."

"If you have a problem with something, you have to come to me and ask. Writing on supermarket property is graffiti," he said. "As it happens, that poem was written by a woman employed by this company, who had that happen to her twenty years ago and was haunted by it. She wrote it and gave it to the area manager to put up, so she could help prevent it happening again."

"All right, I'll take the writing off with some metho," said I, caving.

He pulled it out from under the desk and passed it over to me. "Put it back up, all right? If you have a problem with something, come to me."

The bloody poem is back up there now, sans writing. It should be attributed, even if "... by an employee on something which happened long ago, who wishes to remain anonymous" or some such.

The worst thing about all this is that now I can't write on anything else in the store because they'll know it was me. I've been a longtime culprit in this manner; not usually on the supermarket stuff, just advertising fliers fellow employees put up when they're trying out the latest pyramid scheme, or school fete -- one had a $80 entry fee, with a $40 further charge for the meal! How could I resist writing a smart comment on that?

I should have known that writing on things was considered wrong back years ago shortly after I started. They made a photo wall of store employees -- and you were not allowed to opt out. One night, bored, I found my picture and gave myself horns, tail, and trident.

The next day was a storm of management and day employees apologising to me that my picture had been taken down, "because some malcontent had defaced your picture". Half of nightfill'd seen me do it, and they sniggered along with me. I packed my pen away for a while, until I forgot.

Other people clearly think this sort of thing is funny, pointed, and apt, too; just the other day I was passing by one of the local messageboards and scanned it. Someone had lost their cat, and plaintively asked that anyone who'd seen her contact them for they were missing her dearly.

"Last seen outside Chinese restaurant," I read aloud.

Ben laughed, and it took me a moment to realise why.

Now I can't do it at work anymore. It'll teach me to be more careful for my next place of employment: look left, look right, behind you, and then check again! You never know just who is looking to further their cause with the head honchos, squirrel a few more hours, maybe...

Fierce winds in Emigrant Creek

erika@owlrigh.org — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:12:27 GMT

There's been a low pressure system hanging around the Northern Rivers area the past few days, which will stay over the weekend. High wind warnings were issued and now flood warnings for all the major rivers in force. We couldn't sleep the other night, because of the wind howling and being in general nervous over whether the anchors would hold. Nothing untoward happened, unless one counts a lack of sleep.

Ben's father, Dan, left for Mackay yesterday morning, going to check a boat for someone who's interested in a boaties' opinion of its current seaworthiness. We dropped him off at the bus stop and then hung around town. Before leaving we had a look at the ocean; the beach was a mass of white froth and the wind, even though it had eased off considerably, was still so strong I could only just wedge the car door open with my body to get out.

It was just edging towards evening and Ben had gone ashore when I looked over at Dan's trimaran and noticed it was now further out in the river and pointing towards my boat, a sign it'd dragged anchor. Chances are if a boat points sideways to the wind, it's moving, adios, bye-bye.

"Ben," said I into the phone immediately, "you'd better come back. Your dad's boat's moved."

It must have snagged something, for it stopped moving shortly after. It was dark when Ben finished moving her closer back into the shore and resetting her anchors with the strongest one shoring up against the prevailing winds. He turned her navigation lights on so he could keep an eye on her against the dark background of the mangroves, the bright red and green lights reassuring us over the next few hours that she was all right.

We'd decided to pack it in for the night, for although it was windy it's wasn't as bad as the night before, and we were tired from sleep deprivation. It was still raining, though, and around 11pm Ben went outside to bail the dinghy so it wouldn't sink, as happened recently when we slept through the rain.

He'd hardly gotten back in the boat and was drying himself off when the wind picked up suddenly, and the next I knew the boat was flattened sideways, wind screamed, water came through the boat, and Ben was swearing.

"Fuck! Fuck! Dad's boat just flipped over!"

I jumped up and threw my clothes on hurriedly and scrambled around in the dark for my glasses, which had gone flying when the boat was knocked sideways. There's a reason to get laser surgery, thought I out of nowhere, and eventually I found my glasses -- and opted for the contacts, instead, in case the wind and rain picked up again.

By the time I was dressed it was eerily calm, and has remained that way ever since. Gone from 55kt (100km/h) winds to nothing in the space of minutes. [ screencap of Ballina weather info from bom.gov.au over this period of time ]

Our dinghy had filled up with water; the gust had come down the creek in a white wall of wind and water right up our stern, which was why the cabin had gotten wet even though the boards were all in. Priority was saving the dinghy and getting the engine working again. The fuel container was gone and we had just enough fuel to get ashore.

"I'm scared the shed's fallen in," said Ben, "I'm shaking."

We both were. We made it ashore just as the outboard began to splutter and ran up the yard, which was flooded with water, up to the shed. It was miraculously still standing. All around us small boats had fallen over and trees were broken and this shed, banged together with recycled roofing tin and whose sides are nothing more than tarpaulins had held together. Inside was a shambles, but it hadn't fallen in on the catamaran; I think it would have broken Ben if he'd found that these last two years of work had just been destroyed.

We found some fuel, "borrowed" some, and then went to look at the the capsized trimaran. The current in the creek was strong and the boat in the middle of the channel. The only thing keeping it in place is the mast stuck fast into the mud underneath it.

"Let's go ask Jacko for help," said I, expecting him to brush my suggestion away. "I know you hate asking people for help, but we have to this time. We have no rope, nothing."

He didn't even put up a fight about it and off we went, knocking on a yachties' boat downstream and sourcing rope and assistance. First we had to bail his dinghy out, and then took ages motoring against the current to get back to the boat. Tying a rope to the riverbank was hard, because such was the force of the water on the rope that the dinghy wouldn't move. We eventually managed, just, and then for the rest of the night watched the debris make an island of the trimaran.

As the night wore on we pulled out the boathook and pushed the collection of sticks and logs piling up on my yacht, for if the pressure grew too much it probably wouldn't hold, and Gecko would go on down the river too -- we ran out of diesel a couple of days ago and the prop is fouled; even if the engine was full we wouldn't go anywhere, not with how much growth is on the hull.

I kept quashing tears at the thought of Dan's home gone; he left yesterday with only a backpack, and now that's all he has in the world. The only comparison to a house I can think of is someone's house burning down, only they'd still have the land value, and the house would be insured. Now Dan has nothing, no savings, no insurance ... nothing, not even money to fix his boat if it could be salvaged -- and he has no money even for that.

At least he wasn't inside. His chances would have been slim, what with the boat flipping around in the wind and then smashing back down in the water. With it upside down it would have been impossible for him to get out, if conscious to do so. If last night had been the night before, when he'd been on board ...

"I can't believe Dad's boat's capsized," Ben kept saying last night. "I just watched the lights go around, it just flipped with the gust. I can't believe this, it's like it didn't happen."

"Let's have a cup of tea," said I, and continued to do so as we maintained watch throughout night, eyes burning but still awake.

a meeting with Bundjalung

erika@owlrigh.org — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:22:05 GMT

When I was working during the day I would ride an extra twenty minutes out to the breakwater wall and see what the water was doing. When on these rides I would often see the same people over and over again: the guy who "walked" his dog by having the dog pull him along on a skateboard; the two grey-haired ladies who colour-coordinated with their pink bicycles, but whom I never saw riding; the older Aboriginal man who would call out and wave as I rode past.

This morning I rode out to get a loaf of bread from one of the local bakeries. I discovered this loaf, their Pana di Casa, a dense, light-tasting sourdough which reminds me of the breads my mother used to make, an excellent example of home-made bread. It's best eaten the day manufacture, and as I sped along to get some, I came up behind a couple of people along the bike path. I wormed my way around them slowly and was about to speed up again when the man called out --

"Wait!"

I stopped and hopped off the bike, then turned to face them. It was the Aboriginal guy of the many waves. They were middle-aged with friendly faces, and when they got closer I noticed the guy had wonderful, beautiful dark eyes.

"Hi. I've seen you around a lot, and I wanted to know your name. I'm Antonio, and this is Rhonda," he continued after I introduced myself. "I've seen you for the past twelve months."

"I moved here about two years ago."

"What's your background?"

"I'm part South American."

"I live on an island," he said. I presume he's one of the Cabbage Tree Island folks.

"I'm from Coraki," said Rhonda. "We're proper people, we are, we're Bundjalung. We can speak the language."

"Other than English," said Antonio.

"Oh, that's great!" said I. "It's good that you still speak it."

"Our grandparents could speak Bundjalung and they taught it to us."

They then saw my necklace and asked to see it, what it was. Antonio picked it up off my chest and looked at it.

"Opal, from Lightning Ridge. One of the locals gave it to me for my birthday, as they're miners and there was a slight flaw in the stone, so they couldn't sell it."

"I saw that, yeah."

"I found this nice brooch just down there," said Rhonda, pointing down from the bike path at the river's oyster-encrusted rocks. "It was big, this big," the size of her palm, "and it looked like it was made of diamonds. I'm going to get someone to look at it. It might be worth something. If my mother was still alive I would have given it to her. She would have liked it."

"If I lost something nice I would have jumped in after it!" said I.

"Oysters on the rocks," said Antonio.

I waved towards the Wellington boots strapped onto the back of my bike, specially procured when I was living in Mackay for oyster-rock climbing purposes. "I'd use these."

"Ah, yes. You ride around a lot?" he asked. "I saw you, wanted to say hello before, but ..." he gesticulated uncertainly.

"Yes, I do. It was nice to have you say hello when I was riding around. I would have stopped, but usually I was going to work, and couldn't."

"Where you do you work?"

I told him the supermarket name, and then his eyes brightened up.

"You know, sometimes the supermarkets have photos out the back of people who aren't allowed in. Did you see them?"

"Sometimes we do, but not at the moment ... a while ago there was a mother and daughter team who were stealing people's bags, but not now."

"Good, thanks."

"It's been splendid to meet you both," I said when we'd run out of things to say. "Goodbye Rhonda, Antonio."

"Good to meet you, sister," said Antonio, and then we waved our farewells and were on our way.

There have been a lot of people around the area who've waved at me as I go past, people in houses whose corner I turn at, the guy in the caravan park whose caravan I ride past as I leave the bike path. I don't normally stop to talk to people who say hello, because saying hello is one thing, but stopping to talk? Not always a good idea. This time, however, it was.

I saw them a little later on at an op shop and we smiled at one another in passing. I'd wondered why this fellow always hailed me so keenly as I went past, and found myself brightened by his hello fading fast behind me. It's a perk of being a bicyclist; locals recognise you and you get waved at, smiled at, parped horns at, and sometimes even -- like the other day -- someone winding down their window and sticking out their head to yell hello at you as they go by.

Star Trek, the movie

erika@owlrigh.org — Fri, 08 May 2009 07:24:39 GMT

I have been steadily watching the days go down until today: when I could go see the latest Star Trek.

Ben and I went to the matinee session, the first screening in Ballina, and after getting our ususal crunchies and drink we shuffled in and sat down.

"Look at all the single guys," said Ben once we were comfortable.

I looked around; sure enough, there were lots of men sitting by themselves. Usually around here there are packs of oldies, or couples, but not often men by themselves.

There was this peppering of blokes, but it took me a while to notice that they were seated in this particular order: bloke empty seat, bloke. With lots of empty seats all around. Why seated so close?

"Are those guys together, do you think?" I asked Ben.

"Of course. They can't sit next to each other; that'd be gay," was his response.

It was clear that these guys, all of them, thought so; they stretched their necks over the empty seat to talk to one another, but that space was taboo when it came to two blokes seeing movies!

I found this very funny, laughing until I cried. I started Ben off too, and I saw little tears of laughter in his eyes. We calmed down in time for the trailers, at which I think our laughter would have proven annoying to the others.

Ben nudged me when the trailer for Transformers appeared; I nudged him accordingly when the Terminator one concluded. He wants to see one, me the other, and we'll drag one another along for the viewing.

All in all, we were both very pleased with the movie. It was full of action, which I was told about by a lucky fan who got to see an advance screening, but at the same time it felt appropriately Star Trek-y.

Of course there were cheesy lines, like when Kirk takes the helm for the first time, and then hails all the people on the ship; how did it go? Something about beating the enemy or die trying? I groaned and hid my face.

Someone in the audience called out "the guy in the red shirt dies!" when Kirk, Sulu, and some redshirted chap go on a mission.

"Shut up!" called someone else in the audience; someone who was then spoiled, perhaps? Certainly Ben didn't know what a redshirted appearance meant, although that was something taken the mickey out of in later incarnations of Star Trek series. Now that I think about it, I'm surprised at Ben; there's a reference to red shirts in Futurama, which he paid an arm and leg to get all seasons of a few years ago.

Chekov was so cute, so young, so very young to be sitting on the flight deck with lots of responsibility. I'm sure that his age, seventeen, was appropriate to the show's age or something like that, but ... yes. I guess it was also a reboot with his presence, seeing that in TOS he didn't appear until second, or was it third season?

All in all, it was right. I read somewhere that J. J. Abrams said he wanted it to have a more action feel, because this new generation wouldn't be familiar with the old series and wouldn't come with any expectations. True. Older fans would, but that's not where the money lies, and so he went for the action, and it worked, anyway. Not that I have seen all that many of TOS; I was a Next Gen girl, and that only because the local libraries had the whole series available on VHS, and so I got to see it for free.

The whole Spock/Uhura thing was great, it was. I know there are die-hard Kirk/Spock folks out there, and fair enough, I can see that too. Old Spock was certainly misty-eyed over his version of Kirk, so likely that happened in their timeline. This one, who knows? Maybe Uhura goes traipsing off with someone else and he goes and falls for the fair-haired boy.

I was staring at the Romulan madman, Nero, trying to figure out whether it was really Eric Bana underneath the makeup, and now I see that this was indeed so, and I was right in spotting Winona Ryder as Spock's mother. Makeup doesn't quite hide everyone's features. Speaking of Nero, I wonder if his plan was to blow up Vulcan and then go wait out another hundred-odd years so that he could throw some red matter into the heart of the supernova and save the Romulan home planet? Or was he beyond such thinking and just wanted revenge, which was entirely odd anyway?

So our Kirk gets command of the Enterprise, and sets off with the classic "where no man has gone before" words ringing in our ears ... and set for the next movie? It could bear it, I think; there's enough in the ST universe to support a number of movies, and perhaps escape the bridgedeck a little, although perhaps with Kirk not being quite so hands-onl, as I recall always annoyed me about any of the ST series I ever followed.

Odyssey 5: a spoilery overview

erika@owlrigh.org — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:46:31 GMT

Ben and I have been watching the Canadian SF series Odyssey 5 over the past two weeks. The premise runs thus:

Five astronauts are in space on a mission when they see the Earth explode, and just as they are dying they are saved by an alien who says he's seen oodles of worlds die in a similar manner, only he's arrived long afterwards. This is the only world he's arrived at soon after it's exploded, and he can help by sending their consciousness back five years so they can try to stop what's going to happen. It only works on biologicals, he says; he himself is synthetic, and soon we discover that the astronauts are up against our own type of synthetics, artificial intelligences.

The series starts off really promising, but the acting's just a bit weak in parts, and Peter Weller overacts like mad in the last couple of episodes, as if to make up for the others.

They're sent back to a fortuitous point. They arrive just as the AI experiments -- escape to the internet. They're set up as a "nature, red in tooth and claw" fight to the death experiment, where the AI to survive has to kill and absorb all other. This makes their nature to warr with one another, and presumably also humans, although all we see to that effect is their experiments on humans to see how they tick. They foil these experiments on human rage and anger.

Just as things start to look more interesting because the "Cadre", the people who are against sending people in space because they know something, have just made their appearance, the series ends. Just like that. How long have the Cadre known about the Synthetics, and weren't they only new?

A rock had been found on the moon which was synthetic, singing a hum which made it clearly made, and the Five get their hands on it. This might be what the Cadre knew about, but a singing rock does not a hugely well organised cabal make. When did they realise about the escaped AIs and their synthetic, humanoid counterparts?

Kurt figures out early in the series that the synthetics show up as cold on a thermographic imaging display, and so are easily distinguished from humans this way.

"Why didn't they use a temperature laser pointer?" Ben asked.

Not only does he find this out, but he keeps it to himself, only quite late in the season revealing it to the others. If the Cadre knew about this, and surely they'd figure it out quite quickly too, why wouldn't they be able to find the synthetics and hunt them that way?

The Angela and Kurt storyline is interesting, but in the old timeline Angela has a five year old son by Kurt, who he doesn't know about. We don't see her angsting about not having her child anymore, although Angela angsts about her father lots. A discrepancy!

Sarah, whose child dies in the original timeline, bumbles badly in her attempts to save her child in this time. If she's anyone to go by, then Angela should be somewhat upset, too.

We see a brief moment of her missing her child in the episode where the Space/Time watcher turns up to see what these anomalies are up to, and in doing so throws them into a "what could be" scenario, to show them how they could stuff up saving the world. Hers and Kurts was where they have their child together and are occupied in connubial bliss, letting the world go by, presumably.

Speaking of the S/T watcher, what? More aliens out there to make the world interesting? Why didn't the Seeker, the synthetic consciousness who sent them back in time, tell them about those chaps?

At one point Neil, the youngest astronaut, thrown back into the body of his teenage years, has to take care of himself. I noticed in one episode his wearing this collared blue shirt with what appeared to be bleach stains. Further on down the line the same shirt made a reappearance, but this time the whole thing had been bleached except for a few blue spots on the collar! The writers must have been having fun those days. I was wiping tears of laughter from my eyes while Ben's going "what? what?" until I explained, and he clutched at his sides, too.

"Just like a teenager would do!" he said.

The feeling of the series was us-against-them, which was becoming more prominent when they ended it. More of a government presence would have made things more interesting to start off with, a push, because sometimes they were clutching at straws which made the episodes seem a bit thin.

It's unfortunate that the series ended just when it was starting to hit its stride after a few weaker episodes. It was starting to look like it was possibly the Cadre with their "Bright Sky" satellites to do away with AIs which could have been responsible for the world's end.

There were even hints that the Synthetics were willing to work with the Five to see about keeping the world alive, even though they railed against working with the Synths. In fact, two separate episodes had this as a theme! Government conspiracy stories run abound, but this one, at least, would have a government cabal convinced they're doing the right thing, instead of being deliberately evil for power.

Swancon, the last day

erika@owlrigh.org — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:28:39 GMT

I was rugged up against the cold, walking down the street towards the convention hotel. A guy walked up towards me, unshod and slightly unclean, hair stringy down his back. I smiled at him from habit, my eyes sliding away, shoulders hunched inwards.

"Good morning!" he said just as I passed.

"Good morning," I replied, twisting backwards, feet still moving forwards.

"You have a lovely smile," he continued.

"Thank you."

"You've the loveliest smile I've seen today. People have said good morning, but you've the loveliest smile."

"Thank you very much," said I, walking backwards now, ever closer to the hotel but not game enough to present him with my back.

"Have a good day!" he called as I carried myself further away.

"You too!"

And then he was gone.

I faced forwards once more, firmly on track, and another man slowed just as I was to turn the last corner.

"Hello," he said, and waited for my attention.

"Hi." I looked slightly off to the side of this man's head.

"Are you Indian?" he continued, looking somewhat eager.

"No, South American."

"Oh. Sorry," and with that, continued on his way.

Almost as soon as I entered the convention things were different, and I put it down to one thing:

Fine Fellows in Spec Fiction
I was a panellist for this, held late the night before; purrdence was one of the others, and she did most of the work involved in the slideshow. We presented a chap, discussed his pros and cons as a chap in your life, and then had the audience vote on whether they'd marry, shag, or throw him off a cliff.

From the numbers of chaps in the audience I presumed that they didn't quite know what it was going to be about, but it must be said that nobody left; it was hilarious fun and everyone participated with gusto.

Straight away afterwards congoers came up to speak to me, and this set the stage for Monday: I had chats to people who'd been in the audience, and so I didn't feel so much like what the cat'd dragged in like I had the first couple of days. I should have volunteered to be on lots of panels: therein lies the secret.

And so when I arrived Monday morning, I was intending to go listen to:

The Physicist's Guide to the Afterlife

Only I arrived in the room and it was empty. Everyone was next door in "The Ultimate Fight", where a couple of fans were waving swords around. This is likely fun to do, but palls in watching. Slowly people trickled in, along with the second panellist. The first fellow'd no idea what to talk about, and when the second guy came in -- well, it was too early in the morning for me properly pay attention to what they were talking about, and was soon lost.

A fan came in late and sat down next to me and then proved to be the most obnoxious person ever. She'd interrupt the panellists, say her thing and then do that annoying half-deprecating, half-sneering laugh those who think they're terribly clever do. When she proceeded to sneer down an audience member for his question -- whom I found out later is a first-time con attendee -- I couldn't take it anymore, and left.

Whatever I did manage to get from the panel was torn out of my head with rage and the need to smack her head in; I might as well have slept in a bit and come into things fresh and happy.

Celebrating Bad Movies

Movies mentioned, amongst much amusing dialogue, quips, and reminscing from panellists and audience:
Dungeons & Dragons
Blue Santos vs Frankenstein
Manos: The Hands of Fate (which had been screened on Sunday, apparently, but I missed out on this famous piece of rubbish)
Billy the Kid vs Dracula
Bad Taste
Cannibal Holocaust (according to harveystoat, the only snuff documentary-style film to ever have been made)
The Spirit
Metal Storm
Battlefield Earth ("so bad half the audience walked out from the screening I was at" said an audience member)
Starship Troopers 2
Plan 9 From Outer Space

("and we're not going to just list all the movies MST3K covered, people", said a panellist.)

Global Warming: Spike vs Precipice
The list of things to be covered for this panel was enormous. Ideas were skittered from one to another, mentioned and then quickly onto the next, although discussion of energy use went on for a while.

Solar energy is too expensive, although useful in Australia; wind and wave not living up to expectarions, biofuels are proving problematic, and geothermal sounds interesting but hasn't been fully explored as yet.

The bad: global warming, agricultural disaster, pollution, lack of potable water, peak oil, fundementalism/totalitarianism, gene tech/biodiversity collapse, nuclear technology, societal collapse, malnutrition, Next Big Pandemic, growing population.

The good: Nanotech/molecular engineering, geoengineering, carbon sequestering, permaculture/organic farming/aquaculture.

I wonder at putting "nanotech" in the good stuff to save the world, but hey, that's just me. Some of those in the audience were already going down the small gardening road, with no-dig gardens and one lady discussed with me how her mother was setting up their farm just in case the end of the world was going to occur, and how they were going to save themselves if it was from disease.

All in all, rather interesting. I was tempted to mention my current setup of power and the awareness of the power consumption of everything you develop once you're entirely dependent on renewable resources, to the point you are willing to spend a couple of dollars extra to get a lighting system with half the wattage of your old fluoros, you can't use your TV if it's been grey all day, and the like. I don't think most people would be able to cope with the limitations of renewable energy, most especially if they like their wall-hugging plasma tvs, like my conspiracy-loving younger brother.

Apollo 11 Turns 40, But did It Happen At All?
They never really landed on the moon! ... goes the conspiracy theory, and I have been unfortunate enough to hear about this from my brother for years on end until finally I snapped and said: go read this! See! It's all rubbish! and that was the end of it.

This panel covered the start of the hoax accusations, from some nutter in 1974, up to the 2001 TV show by Fox, which roared the whole thing into the general populace. Tremendously amusing that such cranks have actual people believing in them, and there's a high belief amongst the French that it's a hoax! They think that they landed, but that the photos were all faked so the science could be kept to themselves.

I made many notes, and it's all very fascinating. Van Allen Belts "too radioactive for human survival", the space race with the Russians made them lie, photos tampered with and obvious because of crosshairs, LRV couldn't fit into the module (but it folded), and on it went.

He gave a bunch of debunking links, the likes of which I could have used in the early 2000s when my brother started spouting conspiracy nonsense and bringing it up at every family meet.

And then I went to lunch

... and was quickly sorry I did so. I walked down William Street and had to stop for the lights for a moment. As I resumed walking the man beside me did a double-take.

"So, how was your Easter?"

"It was all right." For a moment I thought he was a con-goer.

"Did you get any Easter eggs? Where you a good girl?"

"Um. No."

"You must have been a very bad girl."

Just as he said this a backpacker's entrance came up. I ducked into its doorway as if I belonged, and then peeped out after a minute to see if he'd gone away.

They sure make 'em in cities.

The 17th Annual Doctor Who Panel

This ought to have been subtitled Worst Season Ever: the 24th season, the first with Sylvester McCoy. They showed clips of the episodes too; one of the episodes came up in SFX's magazine compilation as the worst on TV, "Paradise Towers", so I guess it's not just the panellists who thought so.

I'd never quite seen anybody show any Sylvester McCoy episodes, and I'd guess that would be why. The clips shown gave the opinion weight, although I've not too much old Dr Who to compare it to, just some Jon Pertwee episodes, those with the Master in them. I used to know a fan who was a die-hard Doctor/Master slasher.

I recall reading somewhere that Ace was amongst people's favourite Companion, and we were introduced to her in one of the clips. I don't know about her being a favourite if she constantly jumps up crying "Ace!" when things go her way.

Unfortunately I was rather swept up in the whole panel and neglected to take any notes to refer to, and so specifics now slip from my mind.

So the convention ended on a good note, with my learning more about the Whoverse from the more experienced than I.

Swancon, on a Sunday

erika@owlrigh.org — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:30:57 GMT

Holy Respectability, Batman!

Comics making the adaptation to film, beginning with DC -- the first Superman was deemed acceptable, and then went downhill from there. Superman, the man, after some discussion, is now hailed as very creepy due to his entrance into his son's bedroom without his parent's knowledge, to watch over him.

Batman, the first Burton, was deemed acceptable; the second less so, and then the others horrible, except for when we came to the reboot -- all right, on the road again, with both Jokers (Nicholson and Ledger) considered excellent evil guys.

Swamp Thing and The Return of Swamp Thing were considered bad, and "Heather Locklear looks way too happy in the poster" of the latter, said one of the panellists, who was grinning away in the arms of the Thing.

Shaquille O'Neal was in Steel, a superhero who makes his costume out of steel from a junkyard; is as far a description as we got, other than it was horribly bad. Catwoman had howls of derision, deservedly so.

Onwards to Marvel, and Captain America -- the costume! So bad! The first movie had a blue motorcycle helmet with "A" painted on it; the second movie, not a sequel, had very limited release and then was shelved.

Fantastic Four was done many years ago, only to hold onto movie rights; it screened for a week in Italy and was very bad, the heroes grinning cheesily in the poster. Not redeemed by the ones made recently, either.

Mention was made of Alan Moore's comics being made into movies, and how he must be spitting mad. All bad, including the latest, went the opinion. Sin City was all right, but now is responsible for the scene-by-scene retellings being done, which don't work except for vignette movies.

Plague: Culture Versus Culture
Jenny Blackford is an interesting panellist to listen to, because she has a good grasp of history. Here she talked about the Athenian plague during the Pelopponesian War, and how they didn't know, still don't, what particular virus it was. She read Thucydides' description of that plague, which he himself survived, and how the people were living at the time, and when it was all over one third of the population had died.

Mostly it was a history of plagues, not how it would be in the future, although someone called out a question about whether zombies are considered a virus, and how would a zombie spread itself? Biting, a panellist replied, and another said that if the zombie could think, which it can't, it would chop chunks off itself and put it in the water supply.

A recurring theme of past plagues is the belief that the sicknesses were due to poisoning of the wells, and many minority groups were vilified and mistreated because of this.

Guest of Honour Speech: Trudi Canavan
"I hope they give her a microphone," I said as an aside to a fan before going in, and luckily they did, for it was an interesting presentation of her life. Getting a job with Lonely Planet after doing a week of workplace training, and then on to other publishers, doing illustrating and mapwork. These were all supplemented with a powerpoint presentation of her work, and descriptions of how it was originally all tape and scissors, now much easier because of the digital format.

What's Hot in Fantasy
Assassins are the new dragons! ("Do does that mean that assassins are now passé," asked a cheeky audience member.)

Fantasy sells a lot, and increases every year; more so since they started putting more general covers on the front instead of dragons, because, as Theresa Anns put it, only hard-core fantasy fans will buy a book with obvious dragons, but your everyday office worker will more likely buy one of a chap swirling his cape.

Laurell K. Hamilton tops the lists, followed by Sherrilyn Kenyon, whom I never would have picked as a "fantasy" writer; I think of her as a bog standard romance writer who chucks the fantasy stuff in to make her stuff more interesting.

One of the panellists had looked at the top 25 on Amazon and made a tally: 19/25 were in a series, 11/25 had vampires, and 3/25 either had zombies or werewolves. Of the non-series, they were by high profile writers. The moral goes: if you are a writer, go write some vampire books in a series, and you'll sell! Once you have a name you can go branch off and be original. Or maybe your fans will then abandon you.

Because of the current financial crisis it was put forward that people were all going for the happy, happy, joy, joy; when this evens out, the happy stories will pall and people'll start heading for the darker stuff. I read years ago that's why British fiction tends to be dark; after the Blitz people were sunk into depression and darkness, and now UK SF is tarred with that brush.

They suggested some writers (with one particularly annoying panellist going "oh, but I don't read fantasy, so I have to suggest literature" -- why was she on the panel then?). Jacqueline Carey, Philip Pullman, George R. R. Martin, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, J. R. R. Tolkien, Kelly Link, Jeff Van Dermeer, Thomas Pynchon. This last was Richard Morgan's suggestion, and it sounded most warped. Australian writers specifically mentioned: Kaaren Warren, Margo Lanagan.

Changing the Heroes
I ran away from this panel not fifteen minutes into it when I realised that I was being horribly spoiled for the last season, but what I did catch sounded quite interesting:

People without powers are surrogates for us, the viewers, who are without. This accessibility was lost when they killed Simone (?) and Mohinder found his power. (At this point I began to realise this was going to be spoilery...)

The point of the show is power acquisition; Sylar could absorb powers without killing (that's new...) but he wants to be the sole holder, and so he offs them.

Precogs are needed for the plot, but they killed the two they had and so then had Matt develop such; it was the panellist's opinion that they must have done a bit of blind fingerwaving at the character list and landed on him, instead of developing another character.

Threats to family is what makes things happen. Mr Bennett's done everything so save Claire and family, or so he says. Peter's easily manipulated when he thinks his family's in danger, and Sylar's a lone wolf until he thinks he's found his birth family. (My god, I need to see the new season!)

Sorcerers and Storytellers
Lovecraft and his influence on the nutters down the ages. Oops, I did type that in.

Originally Lovecraft had no knowledge of the oesoteric, and read up on a few books by Aleister Crowley's contemporaries. From that he went on to make good use of them in his work, and then came his idea of, dun, DUN, DUN, Necronomicon.

The word is bad Greek; it doesn't make particular sense, but it came to Lovecraft in a dream. Lovecraft's writer friends began mentioning it in their works, and the next thing you knew people thought it was real.

Some chap wrote a fake Arabic script and claimed it was the Necronomicon, and that set off a bunch of other cranks to write other Necronomicons. All very interesting, packed with oodles of information I didn't write down, but fascinating.

It even ties into fandom, with Dave Langford of Ansible doing a mathematical translation of a more recent spoof Necronomicon, which its creators owned up to in the end.

Hayao Miyazaki
Apparently he's a perfectionist in his work, and this is why his manga takes so long to appear.

Princess Mononoke was the highest grossing movie in Japan in all time prior to Titanic; Spirited Away then knocked that one down the list. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke are essentially the same story retold, opined the panellists. Reoccurring themes in his work are anti-war and pro-nature, and questions of whether technology is good, or bad, and how much is too much?

Miyazaki came out of retirement to make Howl's Moving Castle when the director quit, and thankfully so! His work is very popular in Japan, with oodles of merchandise. You go into stores and 90% of stuff will be of Totoro and Kiki.

Character tropes in his work are "the girl", who is the powerful one, does the moving and shaking; "the boy", who is there for backup, "the older sister", and "the older woman". I saw a clip of Howl's Moving Castle later into the night, and true enough, they're there.

Shakespeare Themes in SF
"Much Ado About Nothing" was written on the board, with a bunch of traits apparently a part of that story: Unrequited, or doomed love; mistaken identity, miscommunication, gender bending, father issues; the list went on. We were to make mention of particular shows or books which had these issues in them -- and mention them people did, only I didn't see the point of this.

Surely ALL shows will have some issue which Shakespeare has touched upon, if only in one episode. Just about every show will have doomed love, for example; the last three series I've seen has had the theme! I thought the whole thing daft, and left soon in. I'd thought they were going to go into direct, or semi-direct, retellings of Shakespearean plays; Star Trek did it a couple of times, for example. But no.

Paranormal Romance
One of the panellists didn't make it to this, but that was all right; Theresa Anns arrived and, perky and full of Tequila, plonked herself on a seat at the front and promptly took over.

Almost as soon as everyone's sat down people began banging the Twilight series, especially the sparkling vampire part. It was Theresa's opinion that this series appealed to young girls and sexually frustrated older women, and that she was afraid of being near women reading it in case they ravished her out of a fit of need.

The romance reader's average age is 40, and their secondary or tertiary purchase; they buy a couple of other books and plonk the romance at the bottom so that nobody else will see it. They also spend up to $500 a day to go to romance conventions! And here I thought some SF cons were edging up to overly pricey!

When the panel was nearly over the panellists got to read a bit; one was getting visibly cross at the interruptions. One of the chaps got up to the whiteboard and drew as the more explicit story was being read out, that of a disembodied penis. How do you draw a penis following a woman around as she answered the phone? How do you explain the character getting aroused at the thought of this penis bouncing around the floor and "rubbing up against her, soft and almost purring"?

It was a highly amusing to the end of a long Sunday, and almost surreal with the lack of sleep and being surrounded by slightly overimbibed convention-goers.

Swancon, Day Three

erika@owlrigh.org — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 05:49:03 GMT

Yesterday was a write-off; few panels sounded interesting, and so there were few I went to, and those two were:

Women Characters in Comics

I arrived late for this. As I rocked up they were showing an alternate version of Supergirl and her massive knockers, and pointing out the typically drawn female dimensions are out of whack, with huge boobs, teeny waist, muscular thighs, and skimpy clothing. As if a real female warrior would look like this, and then pointed to Gabrielle of Xena as a real athletic woman, with six-pack and muscly arms. No huge boobs and tiny waist there, and so she was deemed "fat".

(Although here I feel obliged to point out that Gabrielle lost most of her clothing as the seasons went on, and the buffer she got the tinier the top and the skirt.)

Nancy Lorenz, one of the panellists, drew a picture of Spiderman washing silky underthings in a thong, parodying one of the Spiderman publicity pictures shortly after the original movie was released. She showed us this, and talked about how it hit the web with a storm, and then on to other parodying pictures her sister'd drawn. The X-Men fellows in typically feminine dewy, provocative poses; looking utterly ridiculous.

Examples of women drawn in a realistic, non-objectifying way were few; those who were mentioned were from smaller comic companies, with the exception of Dust, who was clad in burkah (from what I can see, hugged the curves of her body in a sexy way), most are in lycra or bikinis.

Suggestion of Girl Wonder as the place to go to find interesting women in comics, as well as Nancy Lorenz's own work as worthwhile.

More Than Meets the Eye - The Golden Age of the Transformers
Toys! The fellows handed out plastic Transformers for everyone to play with, and while I was there the sounds of CRIICK filled the room. I was handed a couple but I am obviously beyond toy-playing; I couldn't for the life of me transform the bloody things. When I handed them to the chaps behind me they managed well enough, although bits still fell off like when I handled them.

Originally the Transformers were three different types of transforming robots, and when imported to the US they were packaged as the one, so they could sell the toys, most likely.

Most of the talk revolved around toys and whether they were made up for toy manufacture or whether they existed in the shows, various incarnations of; I could only handle this for so long before I left.

The thing which stuck in my mind is that the toy manufacturer in the US tried to make a gun Transformer in colours such as pink, but even that was considered too realistic and were denied permission. Pink guns too realistic! Never heard of water guns, obviously...

Taking a break from Swancon ...

I disappeared for the rest of the day into reading at the backpackers, where I met another couple of Irish boys talking about the place they were going to work at as of today.

"The lady said to get long sleeved shirts and hats, but why? Our shirts should be good enough! Weird that the farmer has a dress code."

"Um, no," said I. "That's because it's sunny outback, and the shirts are to keep you from burning and the hat to keep you alive."

"What?"

"The sun is fierce in Australia, and the sun reflects off the ground, so even if you have a large hat, the reflections will still get your skin. You need long sleeves."

"Why didn't the agent just say that? We would have gotten shirts!" But it was too late; Easter and everything was shut. Those poor pale redheaded Irish boys are going to fry.

Masquerade

I reappeared in time to see the magnificent costumes. I should have taken a camera, but didn't want to be burdened with anything I had to carry, for I intended on a couple of drinks. Two set me back to the tune of $25; cocktails are bloody expensive.

"The embodiment of pain" won; it was this huge ... thing. With tentacles. A red projecting face, like a bloodied skull, teeth in its belly, and dragging its entrails. Very spooky, looking like it took oodles of work, and very deserving of winning.

A fellow with an alien on his face won runner up. It was nifty.

Honourable mention went to the Jaffa, whom, I am told, had programmed the eagle head or jackal head to move independently, projecting from the guy's face. It was very impressive.

Later on, after the masquerade had ended, this guy appeared in a ... Boba Fett outfit? I think? Full helmet and uniform. I was most impressed. The guy was talking about the dints in the helmet and whether they were canonical or not because of the changing in canon. The mind boggles the amount of detail he paid to source.

Throngs of ladies in corsets ran wild, with lots of anime characters -- with coloured contact lenses for full effect! -- and a team of Jedi waving lightsabres. This latter won group runner up, a trio of anime girls first place.

Others: the least scary Cthulu ever, which children ran up and hugged; an egg carton Dalek inhabited by a child; a lady in a flesh skinsuit with a tiny jacket amusingly distracting all the guys.

Sitting down after all this was good, and I finished off my last cocktail -- of two -- and slipped away, for blessed sleep.

Swancon, on a Friday

erika@owlrigh.org — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 04:41:22 GMT

After my jaunt to Fremantle, I returned to the backpackers to get suited up for airconditioning -- although not enough, for I was still cold -- and settled in for a day of conventioneering.

Top 10 SF & F TV show - Vote!
This was a completely chaotic panel! There was so much hubbub from the audience that shows called out could hardly be heard, and some of the things were amusing beyond belief. Darkwing Duck? Aeon Flux? Roger Ramjet? No, really. There were lots of animated series named, so many that I think next year there ought to be a separate animated SF series panel, so they can be done justice, for they were always going to be outvoted by the likes of Dr Who.

There were more, and although there were over 80 shows listed, few of them were serious contenders. In fact, the series listed at first -- Dr Who, Buffy, Angel, Firefly, were the ones with the most votes. Enterprise got only three votes, and when Hercules and Andromeda were wiped off the board someone called out "Kevin Sorbo exits the building!", and deservedly so. Andromeda was such a waste. It seemed to have some promise, and then when Sorbo got his production hands all over it that was the end, my friend.

Some series probably would have gotten more votes, except for that people hadn't seen them yet. True Blood, Primeval, Being Human, were all listed; I hear they're all right but hardly any hands went up. Despite this day and age of broadband and downloads, there are still the few without the werewithal.

Trailer Park
This was another of Grant Watson's, which drew me; some chap with red hair was the multimedia fellow. There ought to be a fundraiser to get the chap some more RAM, for his laptop is feeling its age and kept freezing while showing the higher quality trailers.

Just to show how lost I am to multimedia these days, I purchased an Empire issue which had discussion with the Terminator: Salvation folks, and I was intrigued. Anything with Christian Bale draws me, and I want to see this movie. There were groans in the audience, but I don't care.

Equally there were groans for Wolverine, which, yes, looks groan-worthy.

Star Trek looks huge, exciting, and when I saw the other day that the world premiere had just been shown in Sydney I got excited, and thought that I could go see it this weekend -- but no, it was just to torment me as it's still a month away, the jerks. There was discussion of whether this was a reboot of the franchise, and although it seems canonical to ST:TOS now, it will likely eventuate as so.

Guest of Honour Speech - Richard Morgan
Despite RM's claims that he's not a good speaker because of his training as an ESL teacher, he did admirably well. Except for his complete and utter belief that anyone with religious beliefs is not reliable and illogical, that is. He used an example of a student he posed a philosophical question to and whose answer was religious to mean that he would not be capable as an engineer, being illogical. It's funny that people can be rigid in their ideas of religiousity as the ultimate of human evils, even if magical thinking is an intrinsic part of human nature, and yet not realise that their rigidity is as illogical a thought as thinking that anything is good because you deem God/Allah/Yahweh says it is so.

He was discussing when people need to knuckle under and exercise constraint in their writing when a particularly cringing moment occurred. An aspiring author asked him if he thought that at 27 chapters, would he make sure that he'd have tied up all ends, go back and revise his book? When he said that yes, he would, the author was all "oh, I'd better do that to my book, what do you think?"

Why is that people always seem to have these questions of published authors? It's not like they have any idea of what your book is about or the state of your novel, so asking them wide questions like that is illogical. What do you think I should do in my novel? Although he did field the question admirably. I bet he gets it by the truckloads, and usually when he's at the bar trying to have a beer and can't get away so easily.

At one point he asked if anyone'd heard of the Chagos, as an example of what he was trying to demonstrate about society. I said yes a little too loudly.

"Ah, so tell us about Chagos!" he said, pointing in my direction; I'd luckily slunk down far enough at my seat by this point that he couldn't actually see me.

He gave a very good account of the Chagos, better than I could have, anyway; most of what I know is from yachting books and other discussion, and could only have lightly touched up on the political history of the area. Briefly: The US wanted to build a base on Diego y Garcia, so the UK kicked all the islanders off and sent them to Mauritius, and when a court not long ago said it was against human rights and they had to be sent back, the UK squashed it because they didn't want to piss off the US. The islanders live in squalid slums now, poor, underclass and dispossessed.

Yachties visit the islands as a stop-off, and it's sad to read reports of everything falling into disrepair, villages once thriving covered with vegetation. The islands are wonderful, green and full of wild food plants, and the waters with thriving coral, full of fish.

Strong Women in New Who, the Whedonverse, and SFF
Are women truly strong in SF? There's the triptych of woman as innocent, whore, matriarch, and mostly we see the whore and power -- Battlestar Galactica's Six was discussed fiercely. Someone said:

A whore's power dcomes from sexuality, but it depends on the man's finding her sexy and wanting her; he can change his mind at any time and her power is lost. So her power, whatever there is of it, comes entirely from the man, is not intrinsic to herself.

Power with a child, like in anime, comes from vulnerability and innocence; she is controllable.

A matriarch is powerful, but is not allowed to be sexy, is discouraged from it, and often made frumpy. Exceptions:
- Jacqui in Dr Who, who is capable, a mother, allowed to save herself and then falls pregnant later on -- shown to be sexual
- Zhaan in Farscape, very sexual, very powerful, and then the fanboys were up in arms because she was "old and gross".

Is strong the new sexy? Is a woman being physical the new thing? I think being strong is good, but when you look at the likes of Buffy, all tiny and twiggy, it's hard to think they could harm a fly, and then you've got Firefly's Zoe, or BSG's Starbuck, both of whom I think are most excellent, sexy.

Nothing in particular was settled, as it wasn't a structured panel; it was meant to be a round-table, and lots of good points were made.

Launch of The Priestess and the Slave
I was drawn by the offer of free ouzo, and I have discovered I don't like ouzo. I knew it tasted like liquorice, but not that it tasted like bad, bitter liquorice. I guess I have more of a sweet tooth than I realised.

Dave Luckett was channelling Jack Dann for the introduction -- which made me think for a moment Dann'd carked it and I'd not heard about it. No, but it was funny, although his saying he was going to lock everyone in until they'd bought a copy of the book nearly had me bolt, especially after Trudi Canavan's long ode to how wonderful it was.

While Trudi often has interesting things to say, it's a sad fact that she's so softly spoken I can only ever hear every second word. It was late in the evening and this didn't help to keep me awake, so I left for the next panel when everyone jumped up to grab their piece of free baklava.

Speaking of Trudi, I now think she's the coolest person on earth since I witnessed her knitting a pair of socks with the thinnest knitting needles in the world, using the thinnest wool imaginable. She finished the last as I watched, while we in the auction room earlier in the day. Yep, definitely the coolest.

Tintin
These guys all knew what they were talking about, and very detailed. Hergé apparently didn't like most adaptations of his work and was very particular.

Tintin in the Congo wasn't translated to English for ages because it's not politically correct, with "nignogs" (said someone from the audience, very nice) being shown in a particularly racist way.

One of the chaps rhapsodised about how he liked Hergé's work because of the realistically drawn stuff, for Hergé once drew a ship as he thought it would look like, and it was deemed "unseaworthy". From then on he only drew from real life objects, and as an example, the hotel in The Calculus Affair exists. The proprietor had to put up a plaque saying "no, you cannot stay in the Professor's room as that number does not exist".

Eventually it became too geeky even for me, discussing why the change in animated scenes from comic to movie, and so I left.

Channel Flicking
This started off well, with a clip with singing popcorn, hots dogs, and the like. Very dodgy, and an angry ... jube? ... threatening to do you in if you weren't polite at the cinema, and perhaps run over your kid if they made a noise. Very wrong, very funny.

It went downhill from that, with stuff from Don Hertzfeldt mostly. The only bit of his I found at all amusing was the student film creator manipulating a bunny rabbit to show tropes. The others were horribly tasteless; although I must not be warped enough as everyone else laughed at balloons choking children and dropping them from great heights, at clouds bleeding from their anuses, and other delectations of classic amusement.

Religion in Fantasy
Unfortunately everyone except Dave Cake was almost inaudible in this one, because everyone else was in the below panel, and the uproarious laugther drowned out the soft-spoken panellists, one of which was Trudi Canavan, hard to hear at the best of times.

What I did hear sounded interesting, but the effort involved to hear was hard; I was tired and prone to falling asleep, so I went to the one guaranteed to keep me awake:

Magical Hat of Mysteries
This was very odd, and I think it's a Swancon regular. Three panellists pulled questions out of hats and then came up with very funny answers, often. All three are funny, and I have the strong suspicion one of them's professionally inclined to be so. Warped.

Especially warped was harveystoat talking about the Smarties projection at his last job, where kids would go up and try to grab a holographic Smartie and come away with none; he kept Smarties in his pocket and would reach out to the hologram and come away with a real one, saying to the child, "is there a problem?" as he ate it.

And the funniness went on, keeping me up past my bed hour until I could no longer stay; thankfully last night involved no drunken Irish, and I slept like a baby.

And lo, Swancon!

erika@owlrigh.org — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:51:39 GMT

I'd hardly arrived at the sign-in desk yesterday when I was collared by a male fan, who I didn't recognise at first. Who was this fellow? It clicked after he began on a familiar spiel. Being a bit lost, I sat down at the bar with him for a beer, and then it was too late: I was locked in until I could find an excuse to leave.

It became one of those horrible scenes where the guy starts in on how beautiful you are, while looking at your boobs. I found a reason to leave -- a good one, I wanted to find my co-panellist -- and got out, finding others to hide behind.

Just now as I was leaving the convention hotel he stood at the door, smoking with another fan.

"So where you off to? Dinner somewhere?" he asked.

"No, just to the backpackers, to open a tin of baked beans."

"Lots of sex at those places," he said out of nowhere, completely inappropriately, with a cheesy grin.

The other fan and I looked at each other briefly, and then I looked down the road.

"Um, no, just drunk Irish. See ya."

Him aside, it's been all right so far. I'd forgotten how alienating conventions can feel if you don't know many people; it was bad years ago, when I first went to cons, and now it's because everyone's friends and they don't need someone barging in like an elephant and sidling in on conversations. This sort of "who're you?" look gets thrown your way.

The panels make up for it, and I'll begin with those from yesterday:

Safe spaces at cons
This was mostly reiteration of some discussion from an LJ post mentioned on metafandom not long ago. Boiling down to being polite and cogniscant of your effect on others, and their effect on others, and other's effect on you; get out of you don't like a situation. "Friendly fan" badges so that you can go to them if you feel uncertain. Safe from: sexism, racism, gender issues, and other "isms".

I am the Night: A History of the Caped Crusader
Batman, in his first appearance in Detective Comics, had wings! He was a minor character that was so popular that he became his own comic, and the title of the comic series became that of the publisher, DC. The first Batman story was ripped off from The Shadow, and it went on. Grant Watson's panels, I discovered years ago, are ones to go to, even if you're going "WTF?" at the title.

The earlier series were dark, and then they introduced Robin, and there was discussion of why. I personally of the opinion that he's a Mary-Sue type insertion, there so that boys (or girls!) could imagine themselves as Batman's sidekick, seeing as probably being Batman himself might be a stretch of the imagination. Kind of a Wesley Crusher.

From the comics to the movies, which were the worst, best, and Burton did a good job with the Penguin, which was originally invented when the Comic Code was in full force and they wanted some levity in what was considered a fairly dark series for children.

The Seduction of the Innocent, what sparked the Comic Code, apparently harped on about Batman, the gayness of him and Robin and how they'd Alfred to make it ultra gay (which was why he was killed off and then they had an Aunt Harriet). The folds of Batman's came were designed to suggest a vulva, making it unsavoury for children ... but if the folds were vulvas, then wouldn't that make boys want to have sex with girls? Unless it was so frightening it made boys gay for life.

This morning I started by heading on to Fremantle by bicycle instead of going to panels -- the early one was cancelled anyway, I saw when I got back. A nice, long leisurely (and bloody cold) ride to Fremantle, where I thought I'd go to the museum and check out the E-Shed market.

The markets were shit and the whole of Fremantle as quiet as a mouse. Nothing was open. Easter weekend, by damn! I am stupid, and so I hopped on the train -- I was too dispirited for another one and half hour ride back.

Onwards to more panels! Discussion later.

Perth! Day One

erika@owlrigh.org — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:57:21 GMT

I almost didn't make the flight to Perth this morning. The traffic into Brisbane city was almost at a standstill; what would have taken two hours took nearly three. I was ushered through the check-in desk fast, and then sat around anyway, for the plane was going through "technical problems". Funny that you need so many Federal Police hanging around the gate for a technical problem!

Once into Perth city itself I walked to the backpackers instead of trying to hunt down another bus. The wait would have been just as long as walking, and plus: the bonus of exploring while getting from A to B.

The Museum was along my path. It's sad to think that last time I was here I spent most of the time sick after the convention; I didn't get to go exploring at all. I suddenly find this city to be endlessly fascinating, and that the week or so I've here won't let begin to scratch the surface.

Two hours passed at the museum, huge displays of stuffed animals, fish, preserved marine life, displays of skeletons of various different animals. I had no idea of the scale of some of these things; the American bison is so huge I almost thought it was fake. Then there are little fish, tiny wee things, tiny birds, tiny marsupials and rabbits and cats -- and oversized things, like the stuffed feral cat. They grow so huge in the wild they eclipse the red fox!

As I trundled along I came to the museum bookstore. Any bookstore adjacent to a museum or an art gallery is well worth anyone's while. They carry all sorts of weird, small-press, oesoteric, and single-subject books and chapbooks imaginable. One which caught my eye was the "bike rides in Perth", with handy maps and terrain guides. My time off will be spent in the saddle of a hire bike as I get around. No buses for me, no siree!

Fremantle is only 30km away; an easy ride, at the end of which are the maritime museums, gaols, and if I go on Monday I'll be there for the Catalpa re-enactment, which I didn't even know they did. Funny how my knowledge of maritime history comes from old sea shanties I memorised as a highly geeky teenager.

Another two books which caught my eye were those on the Bibbulmun Track, which I've come across in various Australian Geographic issues previously. It makes me want to go strap a backpack on -- the new snazzy one I bought for this trip, because remembering trying to carry a duffel bag as I looked at things when going to the Brazil trip was too close to the fore of my mind. How people ever carry those daft things long distances baffles me; until I recall most people just carry it from the plane to a car and then from the car to a room and that's about it.

Tomorrow is Rottnest Island for me, no tracks other than the ones I'll be riding madly around on. I might get to see a quokka or two, unless my reading of Australian Geographic has led me astray. The number of animals I saw at the museum today, tiny little marsupials only really existing in WA ... the diversity of life people can only ever begin to imagine!

So now I realise that the time I asked off wasn't enough; I could spend another week here, and more, hitting the road on a bike. Next time I come over it will be with my bike, and for longer, and I'll go hunting the far reaches.

There are weird little stores everywhere, or I should say, shop fronts -- for if they're stores is debatable, seeing that there aren't any signs, just stuff. Some look like they've been closed for decades, everything faded in the windows ... only the stuff's still there, and most places would have been long gutted, wouldn't they? So what's all these mysterious shopfronts?

I suddenly realise that Ballina is whitebread, utterly white without fail. There's a strong Islam presence here, and when I watched the evening news there was much mention of the tension. Or, at least, of the presence of racist bastards; mosques had "Ragheads go home!" and were otherwise vandalised. The local stores are all run by Indians, Muslims, with the assortment of weird foodstuffs their places tend to have, which are an utter delight to my heart.

That's what I miss about Woodridge, although nothing else. This place reminds me of that suburb, all dry, tinder-like, and with the huge diversity in people and skin colours and ethnicities. I bet I could find just about anything I wanted here, and wouldn't even have to try hard at all.

Many years ago I considered moving to the West coast, back when I was at loose ends and thought it might spark something. It wouldn't have been a bad idea at all.

Rain, rain, here to stay

erika@owlrigh.org — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:50:50 GMT

It rained almost non-stop for a season last year; with winter it broke, and it was with sighs of relief that we welcomed the dry cool days. An entire summer of rain. We dreaded the appearance of summer towards the end of last year, and although it wasn't as bad, it still rained more often than not. I splurged and bought expensive raingear, two sets; one for boating, and one for on the bicycle, so that either way I wouldn't get caught in a downpour and join the legion of drowned rats.

The weather has turned grey again, and the rains started up. There's a low squatting above us. I've been lazy the past few days, not doing long rides because of rain. Walking through the quagmire of a boatyard is bad enough; riding through town and having an accident on every hidden pothole just takes the fun out of things.

This morning I entered the cockpit to greet the day and as I looked around I noticed the dinghy was apparently missing. This is not an entirely uncommon event; a couple of years ago, when we were anchored in Mobb's Bay, the dinghy disappeared.

That time it was Ben who rose to the cockpit and noticed it was missing. It'd been windy, as it tends to get in Mobb's; it's only got the beach protecting you from the ocean, and the ocean wind blows freely. That night the dinghy had twisted and turned and eventually freed itself from its knot, bounced over the rock wall, headed on across the very wide river, and we found it via the binoculars on the beach on the far side, banging along the rocks.

We managed to get someone over to give us a lift ashore, by which time a yachtie had pulled the dinghy up on the sand. The bottom was cracked and leaking but even though the outboard had been beneath the water, when Ben pulled her out and cleared out the excess, it started on the first pull. We all stared at it in amazement, uncertain if our eyes deceived us.

The story was a little different this morning; although the dinghy wasn't to be seen, I noticed the line was still there. In fact, upon closer investigation, I noticed that they were both still there ... both pointing down.

I swore with some vehemence, at which Ben jumped out of bed -- a sight unusual enough in itself without a lot of prodding and a pot of coffee -- and so began Operation Rescue.

Ben pulled on the stern line, and the outboard appeared. Pulling further had no effect; the dinghy is solid fibreglass with no internal flotation, so there was nothing trying to keep it afloat in and of itself. We set up a halyard to pull it up, and because we haven't gone sailing in two years the blocks have seized up. We probably could have done better pulling it up by hand!

When she was floating I abandoned Ben to engine restoration while I washed the dishes. I had now only 20 minutes to spare before I had to leave for work, and he was going against the clock. The oars have long ago become sticks, with the sides of each paddle falling off and now the centre part remaining. Really, there's no reason to keep them other than sheer laziness. They'll become firewood when it's next dry and the fireplace isn't a bog.

It took no time at all and it started, in time for me to go to work -- and although the jerry can washed away, my Havaianas oddly stayed in the dinghy even while underwater! I don't understand it at all. Ben's attempt to find the jerry can came up nil.

That's what we get for not hearing the storm in the middle of the night, the thrashing wind and the driving rain. Everyone else was talking about nothing else all day; we slept like babies through the whole thing and our dinghy sunk because of it.

I can tell that the river is flooding. I don't even need to look outside to find out. I can hear the mullet jumping and the fish that grunt taking up residence under the boat again. They're only around when the creek is mostly fresh.

The jumping mullet are a hazard. Going to and from the shore involves contortions to hide the face and ears and yet still try to see where we're going. One night last year we were coming back home when WHAM! a mullet jumped and hit Ben in the chops. It was sizeable, and although since then we've inadvertently caught many mullet, some twice as big as the one which hit him the face, we've had no face contact since. One glancing blow off the arm. I wonder where one can get one of those gridiron helmets from, for one day we'll run into the shore or the boat instead of the mullet into us.

It's now still outside, and dry. The forecast says 50 knot winds for tomorrow, but I don't believe it, or hope it won't, for I won't be able to ride if so. A couple of mornings ago, when the wind would have knocked me off the bike, Ben drove me in via the north wall. There were many cars at the lookout, people eating breakfast and drinking coffee while looking out at the breaking white froth over the beach and the stormy clouds. I stood outside, the wind bowling me over and the rain pinging my face. It was most excellent, a great day to be alive.