And she's never even met me...

Hello, gentleman!

If you have it (Love), you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.
I am dreaming about you, my love [i've deleted a link here]
When you slip into my dreams, you set free my spirit.
Nobody except you can bring out the best part of me, because just love is powerful enough to do that. I wish you were here, with me, I wish I could reach out and touch more than empty space. I know you will be gone by the time I awake, but in my dreams I will always find my way back to you and I am ready to wait for eternity until my dreams come true.

Warm hugs
Tatti V.

Names. Yes, I know.

If it weren't for the sunday Herald-Sun I wouldn't have anything to write about at all:

Shaelyse is Danielle and Michael's first child. Danielle thought up her daughter's unusual name.

And a couple of weeks ago there was a Krystal and a Zavier.

Attention to detail.

Outer suburban Melbourne.

World's Worst Job, surely

In this morning's Australian there was an intriguing little article about how Microsoft are going to open retail stores. The first one will be in Scottsdale, AZ, which I think says a lot already. It's hard to imagine a place more bland and style-less. (Unless it's, say, Tyson's Corner VA. Which is where the first Apple store opened.)

So what can you expect in a Microsoft retail store? Well, there'll be gadgets. There'll be PCs and laptops and Zunes and whatnot. But the best bit is that, at least according to The Australian, there'll be a microsoft equivalent of Apple's Genius Bar, where people who are having issues with windows-based machines can go to get themselves sorted out. Ouch!!!

Tiger and ambulance

I fly back and forth to Melbourne a lot. I think I've been there 4 out of the past 5 weekends or something like that. So there's no glamour, no mystery about air travel.

I know the layout of the airports very well and I know exactly where I'm going. Which means I end up elbowing people out of the way as they stand and dither. I know what the process is like. And even though I know it's completely unreasonable, I'm vaguely contemptuous of people who don't.

Sunday night I was flying out of Melbourne on Tiger. My flight down on the previous day had cost me $28, which however you slice it is pretty good. $28 for an hour and a half is cheaper than psychotherapy, tennis lessons, a massage or piano lessons. After checkin, you wait in the usual line to go through security. They scan your bags, you walk thru the x-ray thing or whatever it is.

The line was long, about 30 people, and moving slowly. Every couple of minutes there'd be an announcement, saying that you had to place any metallic objects you were carrying (keys, phone, belt, whatever) in the trays provided. Laptops were to be taken out of cases. Some palaver about aerosols and umbrellas. The usual...

But almost without exception, people who'd been in this line for 15 to 20 minutes - who'd heard all the these announcements, and had even watched as the people before them (and the ones before them, and so on..) took off their watches, emptied their pockets of coins, unzipped laptops - these people when they themselves got to the business end of the queue seemed to be completely taken aback by the whole thing. They'd appear surprised at the idea of putting their phones and their coins into a little tray thingy. They'd walk though the metal detector with spoons or metal bars or whatever in their person, and appear genuinely surprised that the buzzer would go off and the security guys would explain again about metal objects.

We got through all that, then started boarding the plane. One fun thing about flying Tiger out of Melbourne is that they don't have a terminal. It's just a shed. Then, you walk from the shed to the plane. It's quite agreeably primitive. Anyway. We got almost the plane, we were about 100 metres from it and we could see it through a wall of grimy plastic sheeting. And then we stopped. A nice young woman from Tiger closed the gate and told us we had to wait, there was a medical emergency and they were waiting for an ambulance.

After about 20 minutes an ambulance showed up, during which time the Tiger woman (as I'll call her) explained to us that there was a passenger still on the plane, and we all agreed that a medical emergency is a pretty big deal, especially with an ambulance, and that under the circumstances waiting wasn't all that bad. (But why did it take the ambulance so long to show up? I thought airports had all that sort of thing on hand. On those fly-on-the-wall docos on airports there's medical emergencies all the time - women having babies, a drug mule inadvertently overdosing as the cocaine-stuffed condom in their stomach is worn through by gastric acid and so forth).

We watched the medics get the guy off the plane, and we all couldn't help noticing that he appeared quite sprightly, even walking down the steps to the ambulance unassisted. Then an announcement, which I'll try render as accurately as possible "Tiger Airways wishes to apologise to the passengers on TT688 for the late boarding of this flight. This was due to a passenger in the arriving flight being unwell". Unwell? Is that all it was?

Cleaner

I did some cleaning yesterday. I vacuumed and then mopped the floors. It had been a while and we'd had a dust storm a couple of weeks ago and all the floors were covered in a thin layer of red dust. This didn't trouble me much at the time, but when I came back after being away for a week I noticed it.

So I vacuumed. Then mopped the floors.. bathroom, living room, kitchen. And then, after all that, I found myself standing in the door of my bedroom and I started thinking that maybe I wouldn't mop the floor in there just then(floors here hardwood, just to clarify.). Maybe another time, I found myself thinking. A better time.

Another time? A better time? I caught myself thinking this and had to have a stern word with myself. What would be a better time to mop the floor? What would that look like? I was, after all, standing in the door of the bedroom with in one hand a bucket of hot water with floor cleaning crap in it, and in the other hand a mop and I had the crushing realisation that there just wasn't going to be a better time. And that the only possible reason for not mopping the floor right then and there was if I had a massive coronary, or the earth was hit by an asteroid or something.

It only took a couple of minutes.

Area

This at the back of Chadstone shopping center, as you walk over to the oval and the cricket nets (yes, my life is incredibly glamorous). This sign would once have said "Assemby Area" and someone's had a go at it. On the one hand, it's not clever and it's not funny. On the other hand, it actually is.

NCIS.. where?

Channel 10 here is about to show NCIS Los Angeles, which I only know because I've been watching some tv this week with my kids. And so what?, I can hear you ask.

If you watch anything on channel 10 you get endless promos for the show, which doesn't look half bad. But what gets me (and you know me well enough to know there's always something) is the voiceover guy. "NCIS... Los AngelEEZ", he says.

Smarter.

Ollie says I'm just like Homer Simpson, except a bit smarter. Could be worse, I guess...

More on names.

Yesterday's Sunday Herald-Sun. There were 17 babies featured. Take a deep breath... the list included:

• Sydnee
• Maddison
• Mitchall (no, I didn't get it wrong, that's how they spelled it)
• Mikayla (again)
• Morgan
• Hudson
• Eden
• Sienna

Names again.

And speaking of names (pay attention), I've trained my sons to answer to Brayden and Jayden. I'm less sure about the girls; I tried Krystle and Chardonnay but they don't have the same oomph. Also, of course, they don't rhyme. Suggestions?

Names

Sunday's Herald-Sun has a section towards the back where each week they feature a dozen of so babies. A little photo of each one, a couple of sentences. My kids and I are unhealthily interested in this; it's a little family ritual we've developed over the last couple of months.

It's the names of the babies that are fun. This week, for example, we found a Jaxon and a Mikayla. Bullseye!

Located.

I know you think I have too much time on my hands (and it's hard to argue with that) but just stop for a moment and think about the word "located". In most instances it's just a filler. This sign here (FF, Kings Cross) is a good example.

If it just said "Fitness First / On the 8th Floor" would it lose anything? I know that using "located' like this sweetens it a bit, gives it better rhythm, but it's meaningless. It's like, as someone once said to me in similar context, the polysterene beads they put in boxes when they're packing stuff. (RC - thank you.)

I've become sensitised to this (yes, I really do have too much time on my hands) and as a result I'm quite disciplined about it. If I'm on the phone making an appointment to go somewhere or whatever and I'm about to say "... and where are you located?" I steel myself and just say "where are you?", or, if I'm feeling especially louche, "where are you at?"

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Postcript: While I'm on the subject of signs and Fitness First Kings Cross, there's a sign in the men's shower area warning about "inapropriate behavior" and we all know what they're getting at. But context is everything, surely. What's inappropriate in a gym in, say Chatswood might not be at all untoward in the postcode 2011. Quite the opposite, in fact.

tagline

I treated myself to a new laptop this week, a lovely sleek 13" macbook pro. It's to replace my current white macbook, which I'm donating to some needy kids who live in an isolated and economically deprived area.

Anyway. One of the things I really like about unpacking any Apple product is that every piece you unpack will have somewhere on the packaging the tagline "designed by Apple in California". I find this immensely reassuring.

Tax.

There's an otherwise-unremarkable story in today's Australian about the remote possibility that the capital gains tax exemption for owner-occupied housing might be scrapped. But the really great great part about it was left out of the online version. It's a picture of the young couple who are quoted towards the end of the story. They're on the terrace of their North Sydney apartment and behind them you can see the bridge and the harbor and whatnot. And then there's the caption:

Thomas and Katherine Ko, who are selling their apartment at Milsons Point, Sydney, for upwards of $3 million, oppose the idea of a capital gains tax on high-end family homes.

Well they would, wouldn't they? I don't blame the Kos for this, by the way. I'm opposed to anything that disadvantages me too. But who's the genius at The Australian who found this couple? It is the same person who finds a struggling family out in the Hills and puts them on the front page (always a front-lawn shot) when there's an interest rate cut?

Speaking of which, I expect that when interest rates start to rise again they'll have a picture of a semi-employed ex-banker on the front page, someone who's living on investment income and who welcomes a rate rise. That'd be me. They can find me at the Gazebo on a Thursday afternoon when the time comes.

Bananas.

I was walking down the street early this evening carrying a banana peel. By way of explanation, I'd eaten the banana as I was walking, and was hoping that on the way to the bank and the supermarket I'd find somewhere to put it.

I heard a woman behind me say "excuse me" and I turned around. She was in, I'd guess, her 60s. Eccentrically dressed but not - at least at first glance - barking mad. "Yes?", I said, expecting she'd tell me that my shoelaces were undone. I get that a lot.

She pointed to my hand "can I have your banana peel?", she asked. Then, by way of explanation, she added "it's for the worms".

I handed it over and crossed the road in case she was, in fact, a nutter. And as I crossed the road I realised I'd missed my chance. My chance to say something like "Banana peel? My kids get worms and I usually give them those worm tablets you buy at the chemist".

Your dog's called what?

I was downstairs having a coffee and reading the increasingly-feeble SMH and I couldn't help notice that both of the other outside tables were occupied by people who had brought their little dogs along. One of the dogs was called Brooklyn and its owners were - of course - New Zealanders.

My neighborhood's overrun with these little dogs. An acquaintance of mine was at a dinner party near here recently and was introduced to a couple who described themselves to her as dildoes, which took her back a little until they explained that it stood for "Dual Income Little-Dog owners".

Unneeded Complexity.

This morning, in between driving around to take number one son to soccer and number one daughter to hockey, and trying to schedule the thee or four other things that have to be done today, I almost ran out of gas. No, I don't mean in some figurative sense, I mean literally. (And I don't mean literally as in not literally, as it often does - see this blog.)

The car was almost empty; I pulled into a gas station (and I do say 'gas', by the way. 'Petrol' makes me wince. As, for that matter, does 'capsicum'.) I put $50 worth in the car and went inside to pay, and that's where it all started to get confusing. I told him "Pump 7" and handed over a $50 note and he said to me that if I bought $5 more I'd get 14c a litre cheaper, or something like that.

This stopped me cold. I don't really have much of a sense for how much a liter of gas costs, so is 14c lot? I asked him, and he said that on my $50 worth, I'd save about $1.50, which to me sounded like something worth investigating. But then he said that this saving only applied if I bought something in the convenience store for $5. Now clearly, if I was already going to buy something in the convenience store that cost $5 or more this is an unqualified good deal - by expressing a preference to buy the $5 item I've already said I'd rather have the item than have the $5, so having the-item-plus-$1.50 rather than $5 is a easy call.

But there was nothing in the shop that I really needed to buy for $5 or more. I could buy something I didn't want for $5, but then does the $1.50 I'd gain from the saving on the gas make up for the negative utility on the thing I wouldn't have bought anyway? Something I wouldn't pay $5 for, but which I'd happily pay $3.50 for? It's not easy.

And then I remembered than the man in line ahead of me had bought one of those protein drinks (and, I couldn't help noticing, a pack of winfield cigarettes - but he was that sort of guy) and I thought that might do it. I'd been to the gym yesterday and I need protein. The protein drinks were $4.65, so all I had to do was to buy something I didn't want at all for 35c and I'd still be up. Some gum or something, I don't know. They'd be paying me to have the gum and I could throw it in the bin as I went out. Gum, of course, being an absolute disgrace.

But this side-deal wasn't as straightforward as that. They were also offering these protein drinks as a deal: you get two for $6. I could, of course, buy 2 for $6, but then I'd probably leave the extra one in the car for a day or too and it'd get a bit too funky to drink. But I'd feel like a chump paying $4.65 for one when I could have had the extra one for only $1.35. I couldn't justify buying a second one... (This happens to me in the supermarket quite often. I need one of something, but they have some deal on where you could also buy 7 for the price of 13 or so and I end up not wanting to buy any. It's my professional training: if you can't tell who the sucker is in a deal, it's you.)

By this point my brain had just completely seized up. I meekly gave the guy $50 and walked out, feeling like I'd been defeated and had left money on the table. I should point out that I have a good undergraduate degree in physics and that for most of my professional life I've been dealing with complex financial structures. I'm not an idiot. I just behave like one.

Postcript: After wrote this, I saw the obvious solution. I was, I think, indifferent between $4.65 and one protein drink. $6 for two protein drinks is really $4.50 for two, so the second one would cost me negative 15c. I could just discard it as I left the shop. Or I could put it in the car on the off-chance that I remembered that it was there and that I needed it. I think though, that at a subconscious level I did evaluate all this, and realised that the extra fuss of having to manage this inventory wasn't worth the 15c I'd gain. I have quite a bit on my plate today anyway.

Airport Security. And wine racks.

On Badscience there's a link to a superb article in the Atlantic about how airport security is as poorly thought-out as it is annoying. Which is saying something. As an aside, last time I was taken aside for a random security check I asked the guy exactly how random it is, and he said 'continuous random'. Which means, he explained as he got out the glove and the car battery, that when they've finished doing someone they grab the next person who walks past.

Anyway, this article would be a great find anyway, but it also has this superb paragraph. Note the past sentence, the one in parentheses:

During one secondary inspection, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, I was wearing under my shirt a spectacular, only-in-America device called a “Beerbelly,” a neoprene sling that holds a polyurethane bladder and drinking tube. The Beerbelly, designed originally to sneak alcohol—up to 80 ounces—into football games, can quite obviously be used to sneak up to 80 ounces of liquid through airport security. (The company that manufactures the Beerbelly also makes something called a “Winerack,” a bra that holds up to 25 ounces of booze and is recommended, according to the company’s Web site, for PTA meetings.)

See! (Oh, and if you don't know the colloquial meaning of the word 'rack' in American I suggest you get out more.)

What sort of board exactly?

Swans

I would expect this sort of thing (a hanging garden of apostrophes) from one of the rival codes, and I'm thinking particularly of the one that's had all the off-field incidents lately. But not AFL.. and not the swannies. I'm a member!

Numbers

Younger daughter asked me the other day "Who invented numbers?". And I thought for about a tenth of a second and said "The arabs", which isn't all that true but it seemed to satisfy her, and - now that I think about it - is a pretty good answer to any question of this type.

She thought for a moment, then asked a follow-up question: "Daddy, did they have numbers when you were little?"

Remix

At the gym I go to they play a lot of music which is remixed and updated versions of 80s songs. At first I thought that what this meant was that all popular music these days is just remixed versions of old songs (which span me off into a "kids these days.. so unoriginal" bender), but then I realised that the gym's a controlled environment, and that a remixed 80s song allows them to cater for a wider age range. People like me recognise the original, the younger crowd like the remix sound. Everyone's a winner, right?

They were playing a remixed version of "Another Brick in the Wall", that loathsome Pink Floyd song, which actually sounds even worse than it did back in 1979. And what struck me is that among the things the song rails against (education, thought control, whatever) is.."dark sarcasm in the classroom". Dark sarcasm? My heart bleeds.

Useful.

Concentration.

Lovely review in the Wapo of a book called "Rapt", whose thesis is that noone concentrates on anything any more. (See also the mythology around multi-tasking. I don't think you can do two things at once if one of them requires much mental effort. And don't get me started on the connection between this and the gender sterotype....)

Anyway, the reviewer says:

Spending an hour doing just one thing -- such as reading a book or practicing a musical instrument -- may soon be the equivalent of wearing spats

Note.

Note to self: If I ever go out drinking again with Neighbor Girl and her friends, I have to make sure I don't have to do anything the next day except lie in bed and recuperate.

Rewrite...

It's so perfect.

SGT Joey

These nigerians are getting lazy. I got this spam today, which I reproduce in its entirety. Nothing about plane crashes or someone's uncle who was finance minister. Just this:

I am SGT joey, with the USA Army in Iraq, we have 20,000,000.00 USD and we want to move the funds out, you will be entitled to 8 Million, respond for details.

Why I don't live in Cairns.

This gem's been doing the rounds for the last few days. Cairns Post did a street-corner vox-pop asking passers-by what they were going to do with their $900 stimulus package windfall. Brilliant!

Apart from the Connor Simpson thing, I think it's interesting to note that two of the others were planning on spending money on tattoos.

Another Queensland newspaper (and why does that sound vaguely comical?) did a follow-up and interviewed our man Connor, who claims that the whole thing was a joke. And, strangely enough, I believe him.

Bristols

I'm sure everyone but me already knows this one, but I was reading in the Australian today about the dispute between the Palins and the father of Bristol's child. It's oddly fascinating as these things often are. But the best bit was a statement from the Palins, trying to diffuse the whole thing:

"Bristol is focused on going to college, raising Tripp and advocating abstinence."

Abstinence? It's a bit late, surely.

Hot. Shallow.

My friend Neighbor Girl (and before you ask- no, that's not her real name) has a rule. She only goes out with men who are hot. She's noticed that when she explains this to people she often gets accused of being shallow. But as she points out, it's only the not-hot who seem to care about shallowness.

Telstra

I was listening to the radio today and they were talking about Telstra. How its constant battle with the government had backfired and so on. Which I love, of course. I loathe Telstra. But then (and this was the ABC, and someone who probably should have known better) the host said, in a way that suggested he was shocked at the thought, that Telsta's management had run the company only in the interested of the shareholders, rather that in the interests of the broader community. Well, that's Telstra management's job.

Alphabet

I apologize in advance, this is another of my rare posts about my kids. Bear with me.

My four like nothing better than arguing and fighting among themselves. Maybe because it's because there's four of them and they feel like it's the only way they get airtime, or maybe because they're all just plain crazy. A couple of years ago I realised that they must, at some level, quite like it. Otherwise they wouldn't... right?

When we stay at my mother's, she often makes soup. And as a special treat, this weekend she made alphabet soup. Or as my oldest son termed it, "alphabetical soup", which has a pleasant Edwardian ring to it I'm sure you'll agree.

Once the soup was served up, the fun started. "I've got a 'Z'", announced one, triumphantly. "No, that's really an 'N', you're always cheating", and "'Z' isn't so special, there's plenty of them.. I've got a 'Q'"... and so forth, with increasing volume and vehemence until there was a tantrum (me) and tears (girls).

It's a death-match, a fight to the bitter end, real scorched-earth stuff.

My sister gave them two bags of very nice and rather expensive easter eggs to share and they fell on these like Cape Hunting Dogs on a sick zebra. "They don't share", I told her. But I guess if you don't have kids you wouldn't know that.

More Pat!

See! I really don't make this stuff up.

Economics

People sometimes think of economics as being abstruse, or just plain made-up. And economists disagree on stuff all the time, so how can you trust any of it?

But there are a few really fundamental things that pretty much all economists agree on, and they're pretty much right. And there's a superb example of it in this morning's paper, an article about how the money the government's giving to first-home buyers ($14k for existing house, $21k for new house) is, you guessed it, pushing up prices at the low end of the market by about, you guessed it again, $14 to $21k.

So the subsidy's really to first-home sellers. And it will all end in tears.

Adelaide

Yes, but you'd still be in Adelaide.


And while we're on the topic, there was a report out the other day about how Sydney's airport is the worst in Australia, and part of it said:

At $14 an hour, Sydney's parking is the most expensive in the country. At Adelaide, an hour's parking costs $4.

Well it would, wouldn't it?

That's what I thought she said..

I was at dinner last night with a charming woman and I was pretty much on my best behavior until she said something like there's a creative world and a practical world and she was "rooted in both worlds". I tried not to but I really can't not react to something like that and I couldn't help saying "as it were" but with a completely straight face, and she was about two or three sentences on before she realised what had happened.

She then guessed my star sign. She had told me the last time we'd met that the stars reveal peoples' character so I said she could try to figure out mine. She had three strong possibilities. It wasn't either of them. She tried a few more. Finally after about 8 or 9 she got it, which she put down to not knowing me all that well.

If finally happened...!

At last, after 30-odd years, it happened. Let me explain...

I was at the supermarket on Monday, the Coles in Kings Cross. And only because the Wollies in Potts Point was closed in the morning for renovations. I gathered my items, dithered a bit, and then went to the checkout. The woman at the checkout, I noticed as she started scanning my stuff, had a nametag on her breast that said "Pat". I nearly had to be stretchered out, and even now, a couple of days later I get the giggles just thinking about it.

(For those who don't know, there's a Benny Hill sketch along these exact lines. He looks at the nametag, pauses, then looks at the camera. That's it. When I first met A our shared love for this sketch, its economy and perfection, was a powerful bond.)

Cloud

My younger son took this on Friday night while we were watching Number One Son playing cricket. My phone vanishes for a while, then comes back. A few days later I look through what's there.. a weetbix in a bowl, a foot, some wallpaper. And, in this case, a cloud.

Art School

I was on my way to meet a friend for coffee this morning, walking past the so-called National Art School, when I passed two women talking. The younger one said to the older one in exasperation:

"But Mum, it's Art School, noone wears anything"

Phone.

As the weekend wore on I became more and more despondent. I'd mope about feeling sorry for myself; I'd walk around dragging my feet. I was miserable. "Why?", I can hear you ask...

Well, I'd been brought abruptly face-to-face with the realisation that nobody likes me. "Huh?", you ask, "but isn't your life at the moment one long, glorious picnic?".

That's what I thought too. But on the weekend I felt shunned.. spurned... at one point late Sunday afternoon I worked out that I'd sent texts to 8 people that day and only one of them had replied (she called back, but I said I was in too bad a mood to go out). And on Saturday... same. I had made plans to have lunch with a very good old friend of mine but when I texted to confirm.. nothing. And on it goes. I wore my "I judge you when you use poor grammar" t-shirt all day.

Now, just to clarify, it's not like I did nothing all weekend. I went to a fabulous and strange pool party on Friday night and then got an unexpected call from a new friend who needed someone to talk to, which resulted in me having a very pleasant drink on a balcony overlooking the harbour. And on Saturday I got a new bed and I played tennis. But it's not enough.

Early Sunday evening I ran into a friend (the one I call Neighbor Girl) and I asked her to send me a text... nothing. She tried again... nothing.

I fixed my phone. When I say fixed, what I mean is that I turned it off, opened up the back, took the battery and the sim card out and then put it all back together. And, sure, enough, messages! My balance has been restored!

Name.

On a dating site I'm on I got a message from someone called 'Piscesbutterflychick'. She seems fine but I couldn't possibly respond to someone with a name like that. Someone (and that's not going to be me) should tell her to tone it down a bit.

In the same vein, I once helped a woman friend of mine by getting her to remove all the references to her cat from her dating profile. It worked.

Poseidon

When we were in Flinders I went for a run early one morning and found this (I went back later to take the picture; I don't run with the bloody camera). It's a tasteful modern house, and just outside is this. You just know the owner knows better but he just couldn't help doing it.

Hard Rock Letterbox

I saw this on a letterbox outside a terrace house in Surry Hills yesterday afternoon:

NO JUNK MAIL
PRETTY PLEASE
WITH A CHERRY ON TOP

Of course this annoys me, as most things do. (As an aside, I was recently in an airport departure lounge with my sons and I was pointing out things that annoyed me about the other passengers and my older son remarked that it would be quite a lot quicker for me to find the handful of people who didn't annoy me and just point them out instead.)

So back to this letterbox. Whoever lives in this house doesn't want junk mail, clearly. So far so good. But instead of a sticker that says sternly "No Junk Mail", they've gone for this lighter, let's-try-to-make-a-joke-of-it-sticker. Why? I'm guessing that they thought the plain one was too harsh, too negative, too judgmental. Too heavy.

It's like that loathsome sign they have in all the Hard Rock Cafes, "No drugs or nuclear weapons allowed inside". Which really just means no drugs allowed inside, but rather than just saying that and letting it be they had to make it sound a bit more whimsical. I doubt very much, though, that if you were caught with drugs in a HRC a defense along the lines of "the sign's clearly not meant to be taken seriously" would do a lot of good.

My oldest son and I found this car in a parking lot in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne. This is a superb example of the genre. Points to note:
- really impressive menagerie of stuffed animals, front and back
- P plates
- Hello Kitty headrests
- almost total lack of visibility out of the back window

Passport

I renewed my passport today, which was a lot less work than I'd imagined. I filled in a form, got some photos taken, went to the Post Office with the forms, my beloved old passport and some money and the whole thing went very smoothly.

On the way I ran into my friend Ian who, when I told him I was going to get a new passport, wanted to see my old passport photo (where I look impossibly fresh-faced) and my new one. In my new one, I told him as I handed it over, I look quite a lot like a Dutch serial killer. He looked at the picture and said "more like a Belgian serial killer", which is, as we all know, infinitely worse.

For what it's worth, the lady in the Post Office said that I looked handsome with the beard.

Bikinis and tools.

From the Grauniad:

Researchers used brain scans to show that when straight men looked at pictures of women in bikinis, areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated.

Phew.. so it's not just me then.

Attention to detail.

Big and presumably expensive ad at Melbourne airport, just as you come down the escalators from the Qantas lounge. Aaaargh....

Guernica, South Yarra style.

I've had 5 beers and I can't think of much to say about this. Shop window, South Yarra. A week or so ago.

Did I hear that right?

I was just half-watching the tennis and I could have sworn the commentator said that Rafael Nadal had had "two mystery turns" this set. And of course I'm imagining that's he's had some sort of seizure, not once but twice, maybe his tongue lolling out, foaming at the mouth and twitching, some tourettes as well. But a split-second of thought tells me that he'd had "two missed returns". D"oh!

In a similar vein, earlier today I was driving and half-listening to the radio and they were talking about a racehorse whose name, somewhat improbably, was "A Patchy Cat".

How hot is it? (more)

7-11 at the corner of Waverley Rd and Darling Rd, about 3pm yesterday. Slurpee machines are overwhelmed.

Further thoughts on slurpees and negative marginal utility.

How hot?

It's 10am here and already 38 degrees (or 101 if you prefer). That's hot. How hot has it been?

This was the dreadful scene at the 7-11 on the corner of Waverley Rd and Darling Rd yesterday in the middle of the afternoon. The slurpee machines had wilted under the pressure.

Beer Signs

I got my younger son (10) a camera for Xmas. He takes photos of people's feet, of weetbix in a bowl, dozens of shots of crabs on the beach. And signs. He's a lot like me.

I love these.

Another sign

This one on a house in East Malvern. It can only mean one thing:

"Dangerous dogs not permitted".

Flinders Village Cafe

I've been away for a few days, down at the beach with my kids. We were staying in a small town called Flinders, just over an hour out of Melbourne. Beaches were great, weather was hot, kids were fun.

I'd wake up earlier than the others (they were exhausted) and go into the main street to buy a newspaper and have a coffee. My usual order was this: "a small latte for here please, and can you turn the music down". The cafe had a very pleasant area out front in a courtyard, shaded, nice tables and chairs. But they'd hung speakers from the trees and were pumping music into it - something vaguely new-agey crossed with trance. So there'd be pan pipes and horrible flutes and a peppy electronic bass line too. I can endure this sort of thing in the middle of the afternoon but first thing in the morning it's more than I can stand.

One morning I decided to just endure it - I hate being the Grumpy Old Man who keeps having to ask to have the music turned down (I used to have huge fights with cabdrivers in Singapore about this. Singaporeans abhor silence). So I sat there in the lovely courtyard with my pretty-decent coffee, early morning sunshine filtering through the tree, no kids running around.. and I was seething. It should have been a perfect moment.

Then I saw the sign. It explains everything. I like the second bit. "It would be appreciated if you change tables to inform staff". Now I'm not stupid, I know what they're getting at. They're saying that if you change tables (the tables are numbered) you should tell someone. Which is entirely reasonable. So why not just say "Please tell staff if you change tables".

Pearl Harbor and worms.

From a NYT article about the latest computer worm thingy:

Worms like Conficker not only ricochet around the Internet at lightning speed, they harness infected computers into unified systems called botnets, which can then accept programming instructions from their clandestine masters. “If you’re looking for a digital Pearl Harbor, we now have the Japanese ships steaming toward us on the horizon,” said Rick Wesson, chief executive of Support Intelligence, a computer security consulting firm based in San Francisco.

Is this just a mangled metaphor, or does this guy really not understand that Pearl Harbor was an air attack? And yes, I do hate being this picky.

Food

I've been away with my sons, staying with my friend Y (a very lovely friend indeed) and her kids at the beach. At one point she and I said we were going food shopping, and my oldest son, who's 12, enquired skeptically "what's 'food shopping'?"

Hard Game.

Where exactly?

I was on the 0600 flight this morning and I kept myself busy by reading the papers and then a book and having something to eat. Then, as the plane was coming in to land I looked out the window and remarked to myself how sometimes when you come in to land at Sydney it looks very flat and dry, sometimes the angle means you can't see the harbour or the coast and it looks quite different. These thoughts ran through my head without any real purpose; I was addled from lack of sleep and bit racey from having had two cups of strong tea.

Then I looked at the video display, where it showed that we were, in fact, coming to land in Melbourne. So that explains it.

Image

I was randomly following links today when I stumbled upon a posting about how to be successful if you're in a band. I so love this, and I don't think it's a parody.

You need an image. Some go for the "I hate my dad" look, others go for the "I love Satan" look. Personally, I prefer the "I hate my dad and love Satan" look. This one is up to you.