another potentially career-affecting decision — my boss is wandering around singing, “am i not pretty enough…” do i provide him with a truthful answer? or do i escalate the situation by starting to sing, “oh mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind…”?

decision made — (boom-cha-boom) hey mickey!

foggy — clear in the eastern suburbs this morning, then mist in centennial park & totally foggy through surry hills, redfern & into glebe…

view from the cheap seat — grrr, creak, creak, grrr. so my bike seat is still kinda comfy, but now it’s just totally creaky, which is surprisingly annoying… i mean, it sounds like i’m riding some decrepit old clunker… not a good look/sound for the aspiring/perspiring cyborg with delusions of grandeur &/or fitness or something… have tweaked & tightened everything that can be tweaked or tightened, but to no avail…

weekend — had a fantastic weekend, coupla poetry readings & a book launch, a gallery visit, bumped into a bit of the anzac day parade (scotland the brave!), bit of a coast walk, lotsa rain & some general stuffing about… also finally started reading dave eggers’ a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, & yeah, it is… i’m really liking it…

technically speaking — i guess david attenborough is a mammal, but i was very disappointed the other night when i watched the last episode of the life of mammals… i remember watching life on earth back when i was a little tacker & being just totally enthralled… quite a lot of life of mammals just seemed really pedestrian…

animals think / they’re pretty smart — parts of it looked as if it was stock footage (lions are very big & quite sleepy when they’re not eating things… wolves hunt in packs & don’t mind having a bit of a howl when they’re silhouetted against an ever-so-scenic snow-covered mountain side…) i guess it’s difficult to come up with anything new in a wildlife documentary — should we blame the animals for not updating their acts periodically? although it did have some pretty astounding footage of a cheetah doing its fastest thing on four legs routine… “i know the animals / are laughing at us / they don’t even know / what a joke is…”

go kitty — my big problem with it was that quite a lot of it seemed to be more focussed on david attenborough making a program about mammals than it was on the actual mammals… & yeah, by & large, it was, well, kinda lame… e.g., will david attenborough get eaten by the siberian tiger that the editor’s been trying to convince us is stalking him through the snowy forest? doesn’t david attenborough realise it’s the [hushed, urgent, terribly respectful voice] largest land-based predator on the planet? look out! it’s gonna maul david attenborough! oh, no it isn’t! the tiger’s actually in some kind of fenced off nature reserve! & there’s david attenborough, safe on the non-tiger side of the fence! ho ho ho, well, that was artificially tense… yawn…

life of robots — amorphic robot works

getcha cold on — oh lordy, it’s gettin’ brisk on the bike in the mornings… mist in centennial park the last coupla days, & pullin’ up at traffic lights in a cloud of steam, the whole deal… my new jacket is rather good, though…

kinda swimmy — & yeah, the after-effect is one of those intense deep-body chills, kinda like you get after a swim in the ocean… like someone’s airconditioned you, implanting a cool zone a couple of centimetres under your skin… or mebbe that’s just incipient hypothermia?

jellybean drifter — so i’ve been kinda just drifting along the last few months… it’s starting to feel like i need a plan, or at least a list, or mebbe a whole series of interconnected lists… not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with drifting, but i’m just starting to feel a bit aimless… or gormless… or something… what to do, where to start?

spam subject line of the day: doctor’s weight loss… tangy.

uh… tangy? i guess i’ll never know… hand me the delete button…

mr dry, warm & highly visible — good morning campers… did the big comparison shopping expedition on saturday morning & finished up the very contented owner of a karrimor jacket… (the karrimor site is flashed up the wazoo… if you’re interested, enter the site, wait for it to load then go to products > clothing > active & look for the vapour jacket… of course, the colour i bought isn’t listed…)

mr features, you want features? well, it’s waterproof, windproof, & it does the magic Disappears Into Its Own Pocket trick if it’s not needed… &, it’s totally ORANGE, with reflective piping, so road raging drivers will be able to draw a proper bead on me & won’t have to rely on accidentally running me over… & yeah, it was half price as well, which only made it expensive, rather than stonkingly expensive…

mr my stuff is totally waterproof — &, i’m soon to be the totally happy owner of an ortlieb velocity backpack… keri bought it for me as a thank you for helping out with some editing work on her thesis… the only catch is, i can’t have it until the editing is finished… a fiendishly clever incentive scheme… but wow, i’m currently the fastest editor in the world… (again, the colour’s not shown on the ortlieb site… my pack is a totally cool blue & white… look at the yellow & black one & think white is the new yellow & blue is the new black & you’ll get the idea…)

mr does this come in a bigger size no longer — it’s so weird buying clothes at the moment… after years of doing the whole vin diesel, “does this come in, like, XXX-large?,” i’m wearing stuff that’s only large, or in some memorable cases, medium… i intend to continue riding my bike through wind, fog, storms, snow, &, if necessary, rains of toads…

mr round ’n’ round until he’s dizzy — donned my new jacket & headed off for laps of centennial park this morning, & yeah, the jacket is fantastic… warm, but not too hot, & yeah, i’m just totally stoked with it… did three laps of the park & then headed off to glebe for a coffee… i’m sure this life could be better, but sometimes i don’t see how…

mr back to the editing — anyway, would love to stay & chat, but you know, editing calls…

my life in the bush of spam…

If you are a steak lover like me ifhkzqexp
Penis growth — fact or fiction? $Randomstring
FDA Medications Sent Overnight ondg
reverse father time td v
Let’s do lunch 23458

if i was a politician i’d be alexander downer — been having a mild case of the blues the last few days… nothing specific, just the whole dumb time outta joint thing… work, home, me, everything… so today i’m wearing my jeans… i think this makes me look like one of the dandy warhols… (like, one of the dandy warhols after the band’s broken up, & they’re all sad, dishevelled losers, but still…)

good things — & yeah, i dunno, lotsa good things are still happening, so i guess i just need to ride it out… coogee is still fantastic, by the way… having lotsa fun stumbling around on the beach, & living with keri is totally great…

anime hair — i’ve also decided to attempt to cultivate a total anime haircut… it’s a work in progress… but the ultimate aim is a kinda windswept, pointy helmet kinda thing…

written event — had a great time on monday & tuesday, took two days off work & went to a workshop that keri had organised on fictocritical writing… it was just totally engaging, if a bit intellectually exhausting… & yeah, such a change of pace from the day-to-day (no doubt one of the reasons why i’ve been slumping a little… a glimpse of the academic career that might have been… but you know, what can ya do? bed’s made, gotta lie in it… & yeah, it’s not like i’m stuck in the futon of discontent…)

not riding, drowning — another severe case of the wet look last night on the way home… i wouldn’t have minded so much if my shoes hadn’t only just dried out after the last drenching… i wonder if i can find a set of gumboots that’ll fit into my toeclips?

splish-splash i wuz takin’ a bath — woah. did i say it was kinda damp yesterday? left work under relatively clear skies, but it started raining lightly by the time i was riding through surry hills, & once i got to moore park it was absolutely bucketing down… which was sorta fun, in a weird way… how wet was it? well, when i got home my shoes were literally full of water… & so, i discovered this morning, was my backpack — my diary took a drenching & may need replacing (i knew i shoulda bought one of those waterproof backpacks) — but yeah, it was totally great to be riding through so much rain… who knows why?

antbites — yeew. how bad do flying ants taste? bad. (hmmm. don’t wanna jump to conclusions… maybe i’d better try another couple… yeew! still bad.) centennial park. dusk. flying ants. slack-jawed cyclin’ yokel. you do the maths…

who’s to say what’s strategy & what’s a lack of preparation? grrr. had one of those days when you think something’s been sorted out, then a couple of hours later someone turns up with new information, so you process that, & you think things are sorted out, then a couple of hours later…

spam subject-line of the day thus far — “no more FAT you!” wow… could it be true…?

wet look — kinda damp today…

sulky — so yeah, had a weird, up ’n’ down sulky day yesterday… why? well, i applied for & was offered another job, but my current boss didn’t want me to leave & came up with some options & incentives to try to get me to stay, & i decided to stay (which was kinda weird in itself — i’ve never turned a job down before), & then it turns out that some of the incentives (e.g. oracle certification) may not happen after all, which kinda put me in a bad, childish, sulky kinda mood… & yeah, left me feeling like i sort of got mildly screwed… which is just dumb, because really, by any pseudo-objective measure, that’s not what happened…

& yeah, i was thinking about it some more on the way to work this morning, & you know, i made a decision to stay because essentially i was unsure about the position i’d been offered (it wasn’t a clear progression, more a step sideways) & yeah, if the incentives happen, then that’s kinda cream, & if they don’t, i’ve still gotta good job, that i mostly like, with people i like working with, so you know, get over it already…

kings sweep the championship series — looks like i won’t be going to a playoff decider after all… the kings beat the wildcats in perth yesterday to win the nbl final series 2-0…

coastwalk through shapes of sleep on old legs — had a great weekend, wombled about on saturday, did my washing & related blah, then keri & i went to the performance space on saturday night to see a development showing of a work called shapes of sleep (basically five people in five beds pretending to be asleep while following recorded instructions that told them things like “roll over onto your left side & put your right arm over your head…” it was surprisingly good, very intimate & quite hypnotic…) sunday morning we went for bit of a coast walk, then claire came over for brunch, & then i went to balmain & played basketball all afternoon… i’m a bit creaky again this morning, but not as creaky as i was at this point last week…

cassie lewis reviews search engine — hey, cool, a review of my book… cassie says, in part, “…the overall impression is of an author concerned with linguistic economy and compression, and with constructing poems that think…” gosh. you’d hafta be happy with that… i mean, yeah, i hope so… while obviously, you know, at the same time, playing dumb… (uh, playing…? ahem.)

bzzz-click-whirr — astrological robots r me…

Lately, you’ve had so much work that you’ve begun to tackle it like a robot. If you stop just for a moment, though, you’ll realise that your routine isn’t making you happy. Make time for solitary pleasures that will recharge your batteries. Taking nature walks or working on craft projects can help clear your head when life becomes too difficult. Avoid volatile people who sap you of every ounce of energy.

yeah, there’s nothing like a craft project to recharge your batteries… but why aren’t i solar-powered, that’s what i wanna know… mebbe a solar cell retro-fit would make a good craft project du jour…

lo, maintenance — finally got around to updating the archive links the other day, for whatever that’s worth…

bluster buster — weirdly blustery day yesterday… the weather, that is… & today has turned kinda cold… must be winter approaching…

use of weapons — so i was looking forward to going to see iain banks/iain m. banks at the sydney writers festival, except… he’s torn up his passport & sent it to downing street in protest against the war in iraq…

artspaced — went to artspace last night for the opening of a show by the shangri-la collective… lots of artists had all been asked to make short, three minute videos… loma did the camera work for elizabeth day’s vid, which was great & featured a hypnotic revolving door…

i liked a lot of the videos, but the show itself was a bit headache-inducing, mainly because at any given moment there were five or six different videos being shown/projected at high volume in various parts of the space & the sound for all of them just became a giant, muddy, incomprehensible mess… which turned the videos, some of which were quite intimate, into interchangable components of a huge media assault/overload, which i’m not sure was really the intent, & which really detracted from them… still, it was a good night, loads of people, & lots of fun despite all the noise…

kings win game one — meanwhile, over at the entertainment centre, the kings came back from a big last quarter deficit to beat the wildcats 98-94 & move closer to their first ever nbl title… i’m almost hoping the kings lose game two in perth so i can go & see them play game three…

the thing that will never fail (has failed again) — our storage area network has fallen over again… not that it’s like, mission critical, or guaranteed by the vendor to have enough built-in redundancy to never fail or anything… & not that it’s taken down the mailserver & our new database… at least (touch wood) we still have access to our fileshares…

fate, tempted — hands up all those who took their puncture repair kits out of their backpack yesterday morning… keep ’em up if you arrived at work with a rapidly deflating rear tyre that you had to fix at lunch time with your newly purchased replacement puncture repair kit… & people said i was wasting my youth by hanging around the bike shop until they gave me a job…

the brain in sprain falls mainly down the drain — a bit of continuing low-level urk ’n’ snuffle from my cold, but generally speaking i’m starting to feel post-human again & (punctures aside) it’s good to be back on my bike after spending most of last week in car &/or buses…

daylight unsaving — i’m in a weird kinda space at the moment, probably some kinda post-viral hangover or something, mildly exacerbated by the end of daylight saving… it’s weird that simply putting my clock back by an hour can throw me off so much, but it’s like every time i look at the time i’m kinda incredulous, coz my body’s convinced it’s an hour later than it is… & yeah, generally speaking i’m sorta having bursts of energy interspersed with bouts of lethargy… my more energetic moments have recently featured…

professional basketball — saw the sydney kings get badly beaten by the townsville crocodiles last wednesday night, & then watched the kings bounce back to take the semi-final series 2-1 on saturday night… sydney were lame on wednesday, but were totally committed on saturday…

unprofessional basketball — went to balmain on sunday afternoon & played some pickup games for a couple of hours… lotsa fun, but wow, i don’t think i could’ve been any creakier on monday morning…

b-b-b-beach boy — swimming at giles baths on saturday & sunday morning… the ocean is just fantastic at the moment…

24 hour party people — went & saw 24 hour party people at the verona on sunday night… it’s a lotta fun, lotsa people careening about on screen being dazed & confused… it’s kinda like a new wave spinal tap, except the musicians are (mostly) serious & it’s the management who get the satirical mauling… favourite moment: the happy mondays selling their clothes in barbados to buy more drugs, having already spent all of the record company’s money to buy drugs, & having already sold their instruments & all the studio equipment to, uh, buy drugs…

woooo! magic-oracle-dog! work are talking very seriously about sending me to oracle university… it looks like i’m gonna be doing five days of intro to oracle 9i:SQL, starting on 28 april… oracle certification beckons… this is totally too cool…

daylight unsaving, cont’d — the other bit that’s mildly disconcerting is it’s now totally daylight when i get up around 6.15am & head off on my bike, but it’s totally dark by 6.00pm when i’m on my way home… it feels like someone’s turned the entire day upside down…