The view from my window at work this evening 31 floors up. I just thought I like to share.
Even when things are getting pretty dark there is still something to be thankful for.
Monday, November 27, 2006
melbourne sunset
The view from my window at work this evening 31 floors up. I just thought I like to share.
Even when things are getting pretty dark there is still something to be thankful for.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
How I closed my eyes and prayed to Jesus
It's hard being a christian in this day and age after living under such darwinian oppression for hundreds of years or so I can understand why they feel they need to stay in the closet, why the Family First website doesn't mention jesus even once, even when their policies are directly informed by faith. Oh I mean every christian has their coming out story: to their friends, their family and work colleagues, having to watch their faces drop in shock and horror. I can relate, I truely can. I understand why they need euphemisms like "family" this and "family" that instead of "the bible says" this and "God smote" that and why they need to lie in order to hide their shame: their faith and their business interests.
Seriously. They talk about the hidden Green agenda but how can you take a Party seriously that pretends it's secular when they're all basking in the light of jesus? How can you trust a party who talk about defending families but have such the narrow definition of what a family is that unless you're the family member of some director of a large corporation you can bite their shiney monetarianist asses[sic]?
Seriously. They talk about the hidden Green agenda but how can you take a Party seriously that pretends it's secular when they're all basking in the light of jesus? How can you trust a party who talk about defending families but have such the narrow definition of what a family is that unless you're the family member of some director of a large corporation you can bite their shiney monetarianist asses[sic]?
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
this state election sure is hotting up
Leaving my house this morning on my way to work I discovered my letter box open and a letter from my state ALP member torn up and strewn across my front lawn. Now a quick glance aside I could see several neighbours' boxes also thus open... hmmm I wondered: stupid kids fucking with peoples' mail or a concerted anti-labour putsch?
Monday, November 20, 2006
snatched conversation
I love overhearing little snippets of conversation. For example, today I was walking past the two dollar shop in Barkly Square, Brunswick when this rather upstanding gent, holding two champaign flutes in one hand and another just above his eye level in his other hand, examining so as to catch the light, said "Query," addressing the store clerk in his very best aristocratic British accent, "do these come any stubbier?"
Saturday, November 11, 2006
the definition of a bureaucrat
bureaucrats are "...men who lose things and use the wrong forms and create new forms and demand everything in quintuplicate, and who understand perhaps a third of what is said to them; who habitually give misleading answers in order to gain time in which to think, who make decisions only when forced to, and who then cover their tracks; who make perfectly honest mistakes in addition and subtraction, who call meetings whenever they feel lonely, who write memos whenever they feel unloved; men who never throw anything away unless they think it could get them fired."
Kurt Vonnegut The Sirens of Titan. p. 56
Kurt Vonnegut The Sirens of Titan. p. 56
Sunday, November 05, 2006
mushroom cloud over chadstone
I went out with a few friends after work on Friday. We'd had dinner and finally ended up, two friends - Adrian and Cam - and I in Black Opal (a TAB joint in the city) playing a card game called cheat with a deck we'd won in some Heineken promotion; Adrian I've know since high school, some fifteen years now and Cam, well is someone I sort of attached myself to last year at the Meredith Music festival and suffice to say they come from opposite poles of my social circle. But it worked and I had and hope they had a fabulous time sharing stories from our various pasts between the devious ploys and counter ploys of a game that I am proud to say I won: where we had grown up, the shopping centres we had hung out. For Adrian and I it was Chadstone Shopping Centre and for Cam some complex in Doncaster.
* * * * * *
I was in the old stomping ground today, just driving through with my mum in the car on the way to Forster Road and the south-eastern freeway onramp. We were on our way to see Rachmaninov Vespers being performed by the Melbourne Chorale at Hamer Hall - her birthday present. We'd passed the 7-11 convenience store that Adrian and I had loitered outside on various summer evenings, the creek where we drank and smoked weed and the stormwater drain where these girls from our clique had graffitied some warning about a nymph of the sacred spring who slumbered there. I laughed as we drove past it telling my mum the story who in turn changed the topic. I don't think she was very impressed by this disclosure but then I suppose there are a lot of things about my life she doesn't know about, then and now and sometimes we're better for it.
It's been a big day. I was woken my the phone around half past nine.
"... an emergency. Your sister has gotten herself into a little bit of trouble," my mum said down the copper line.
"Say what!?!" I exclaimed finally waking up, wedging myself up on an elbow to give the conversation fuller attention. I'd gone out on Saturday night all by my lonesome to the Peel in some pathetic attempt to pick up and although I'd plucked up enough courage to eventually talk to this one guy, some accountant who worked for KPMG I could tell he wasn't in for anything more involved than a non-committal chat so I cut my loses and left.
"Your sister had a big night last night, a few too many glasses of wine," she said. "We need to go down and pick her up and that University car that needs to be returned today. I'll need you to drive my car home." My sister had been down at Phillip Island doing research for her PhD when somebody had tipped her glass one too many times and now she was apparently vomiting in a public toilet in San Remo.
"What about the concert this afternoon? By the time I get to your house it'll be midday; you think we'll have enough time?" As far as I was concerned she'd done the drinking and she could get herself out of it. It was all part and parcel of a hangover but my mum was insisting on being far more reasonable.
"I know, I know, look if we have to miss it, we have to miss it," as if repeating everything she said would some how sooth my rising irritation.
"Okay, I'll be around as soon as I can."
* * * * * *
We'd driven over 200 kilometres by the time my mum and I managed to take our seats B27 and B28 in Hamer Hall, oh so close to the front of the stage. The lights dimmed and the Melbourne Chorale walked on and for the next two hours we listened to the works of two Russian composers: Dmitri Shostakovich, a Soviet era composer who had gone in and out of Stalin's favour and Sergei Rachmaninov who had been writing chorale works for the Russian Orthodox church in the 19th Century. The Vespers by Rachmaninov were by far my favourite, truely beautiful, my mum later told me she had to fight back tears and while I can't claim such I did feel a chill down the spine. It goes to show I suppose that no matter how much power Stalin might have wielded he could never have inspired the kind of transcendence that faith in God brought out in Rachmaninov.
* * * * * *
I had a dream after the night out with Adrian and Cam. I was in the car with friends, old friends, driving through the old neighbourhood down Warrigal Road on our way to Chadstone Shopping Centre. I looked out of the window only to see a brilliant flash of light and a ball of flame barrel upwards into the atmosphere: the CBD below a roaring inferno. While I can't say why my friends couldn't see the explosion I nevertheless had to go crazy yelling at them to find a safe place. Acting on this the driver turned the steering wheel sharply and swung the car and us into the shadow of Chadstone Shopping Complex. We were safe.
* * * * * *
On the drive home from the city as the sky grew dark and the fat moon sat on the horizon, I told my mum that I was gay. I was shaking and could feel my stomach drop even though I had an inkling of what she was going to say.
"I kind of guessed that but I am glad you told me." She said but continued: "I don't claim to understand what homosexuality is all about but I am fine with who you are."
* * * * * *
I've been dreaming about the end of the world on and off for about six or seven years now, beginning just prior to the click over of the millennia and keeping me entertained since then. Sometimes I think they are more than some sci-fi obsession gone wrong but are actually building up to something. Oh... I don't mean in any kind of prophetic sense but a more internal, spiritual one. Because the apocalypse isn't about the end of the world so much as it is quite literally the revelation of a truth so profound that the world has no other choice than to undergo some fundamental change. And so I truly hope this one comes for the better.
* * * * * *
I was in the old stomping ground today, just driving through with my mum in the car on the way to Forster Road and the south-eastern freeway onramp. We were on our way to see Rachmaninov Vespers being performed by the Melbourne Chorale at Hamer Hall - her birthday present. We'd passed the 7-11 convenience store that Adrian and I had loitered outside on various summer evenings, the creek where we drank and smoked weed and the stormwater drain where these girls from our clique had graffitied some warning about a nymph of the sacred spring who slumbered there. I laughed as we drove past it telling my mum the story who in turn changed the topic. I don't think she was very impressed by this disclosure but then I suppose there are a lot of things about my life she doesn't know about, then and now and sometimes we're better for it.
It's been a big day. I was woken my the phone around half past nine.
"... an emergency. Your sister has gotten herself into a little bit of trouble," my mum said down the copper line.
"Say what!?!" I exclaimed finally waking up, wedging myself up on an elbow to give the conversation fuller attention. I'd gone out on Saturday night all by my lonesome to the Peel in some pathetic attempt to pick up and although I'd plucked up enough courage to eventually talk to this one guy, some accountant who worked for KPMG I could tell he wasn't in for anything more involved than a non-committal chat so I cut my loses and left.
"Your sister had a big night last night, a few too many glasses of wine," she said. "We need to go down and pick her up and that University car that needs to be returned today. I'll need you to drive my car home." My sister had been down at Phillip Island doing research for her PhD when somebody had tipped her glass one too many times and now she was apparently vomiting in a public toilet in San Remo.
"What about the concert this afternoon? By the time I get to your house it'll be midday; you think we'll have enough time?" As far as I was concerned she'd done the drinking and she could get herself out of it. It was all part and parcel of a hangover but my mum was insisting on being far more reasonable.
"I know, I know, look if we have to miss it, we have to miss it," as if repeating everything she said would some how sooth my rising irritation.
"Okay, I'll be around as soon as I can."
* * * * * *
We'd driven over 200 kilometres by the time my mum and I managed to take our seats B27 and B28 in Hamer Hall, oh so close to the front of the stage. The lights dimmed and the Melbourne Chorale walked on and for the next two hours we listened to the works of two Russian composers: Dmitri Shostakovich, a Soviet era composer who had gone in and out of Stalin's favour and Sergei Rachmaninov who had been writing chorale works for the Russian Orthodox church in the 19th Century. The Vespers by Rachmaninov were by far my favourite, truely beautiful, my mum later told me she had to fight back tears and while I can't claim such I did feel a chill down the spine. It goes to show I suppose that no matter how much power Stalin might have wielded he could never have inspired the kind of transcendence that faith in God brought out in Rachmaninov.
* * * * * *
I had a dream after the night out with Adrian and Cam. I was in the car with friends, old friends, driving through the old neighbourhood down Warrigal Road on our way to Chadstone Shopping Centre. I looked out of the window only to see a brilliant flash of light and a ball of flame barrel upwards into the atmosphere: the CBD below a roaring inferno. While I can't say why my friends couldn't see the explosion I nevertheless had to go crazy yelling at them to find a safe place. Acting on this the driver turned the steering wheel sharply and swung the car and us into the shadow of Chadstone Shopping Complex. We were safe.
* * * * * *
On the drive home from the city as the sky grew dark and the fat moon sat on the horizon, I told my mum that I was gay. I was shaking and could feel my stomach drop even though I had an inkling of what she was going to say.
"I kind of guessed that but I am glad you told me." She said but continued: "I don't claim to understand what homosexuality is all about but I am fine with who you are."
* * * * * *
I've been dreaming about the end of the world on and off for about six or seven years now, beginning just prior to the click over of the millennia and keeping me entertained since then. Sometimes I think they are more than some sci-fi obsession gone wrong but are actually building up to something. Oh... I don't mean in any kind of prophetic sense but a more internal, spiritual one. Because the apocalypse isn't about the end of the world so much as it is quite literally the revelation of a truth so profound that the world has no other choice than to undergo some fundamental change. And so I truly hope this one comes for the better.
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