Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Back on line after a dodgy day of thunder and lightning that has, in the past, played havoc with my barbed-wire connection. Still dial-up, {am I the only one?] so I’ve a healthy respect for the destructive power of nature. And it’s been happening here and abouts with some spectacular footage on National TV that most will have seen. I watched a most interesting sky an hour ago as a storm gave way to some influence from the south at lower elevations that were at opposition to the main direction of the weather streaming down from the north. I climbed up on the squatters tanks at the back of the house paddock to get an elevated view and it was truly awesome.
Watched a friend shave her head in the Shave For a Cure thing. I’d prefer to ride up a hill for charity myself – it’s going to take her years to grow her hair back to its former length if she wants.
Made some awesome baked beans in the slow cooker, with cabbage on the side. Luckily, I usually sleep alone … except for the cats.
Tried out a great new vegetarian italian recipe book I got last week:
Roasted beets and parsley
Yellow peppers in caper & balsamic dressing
Radicchio, rocket and chickory salad
Saffron risotto
Stuffed eggplant
Polenta with onion & cauliflower sauce
About four hours in the kitchen, and all a great success. My mid-week meals are taken care of in a delicious and healthy fashion. This book is definitely a keeper.
You can keep the polenta, patrickg, but the rest sounds really tasty.
Am reading Robert Crawford’s The Bard. Robert Burns, a Biography. Took me a while to get into it, but I’m enjoying a lot now; am also in the trhroes of writing the fourth chapter of my book, which is a bit of a delight to me – the rearch for it can be quite boring, but I enjoy the writing. Watched Desperate Romantics. Quite enjoyed it. One TV critic said they were unlikeable characters – they weren’t that bad.
I’m listening to Ephedrix, which is awesome trance, getting drunk, and contemplating a trip to Okinawa to see Ephedrix live on a beach. I listened to trance on a beach in Tottori three years ago and it was one of the most amazing musical experiences of my life – the waves, the wind chimes, the trance. It also taught me just how unoriginal Yoko Ono is.
Simultaneously, I’m writing drunken posts here and on my Japanese social networking site, to celebrate the great achievement of having read from beginning to end my first ever Japanese novel, which happens to also be about drugs and trance (and sex).
It’s a perfect synergy, really.
SG, Japanese novels are rather like Japanese manga… sometimes rather strange.
Try to get a start on The Tale of Genji: written 1,000 years ago, and includes versions of Hamlet and the Miss Havisham part of Great Expectations: but with happy endings.
Started reading a translation of The Pillow Book this weekend: much better than the movie, for sure.
Saturday saw me attend a safety lecture at work that included a presentation of new styles of level crossings being developed by QR. The first owes a lot to pinball machines, with boomgates that look like giant pinball flippers, roundabouts instead of bumpers at the top of the table slope, and giant sandpits for cars to be knocked into.
The second uses electronic signs and infra-red doppler cameras to do what ripple-strips and speed-bumps could do just as effectively.
The third just uses the electronic signs, but the sign becomes an annoying electronic billboard when there are no trains nearby.
While the fourth idea is just bizarre, and includes public toilets, vegetable gardens, food-stalls and childrens’ swings — but nothing to keep cars from going in front of trains.
Sunday turned out to be much more enjoyable, with a dinner-party to farewell a beautiful young friend who flies home to Taiwan at lunchtime today (Monday). It finished with a promise of dinner and bad Karaoke on Thursday night with a pretty young South Korean…
Worse weekends have been known to exist… [^_^]
On Saturday, in the rain, my wife and I walked up Mt Coot-tha – twice. Next weekend we do it three times, then we are off to do the Milford Track.
Too many listenings to The Goons over years gone by causes me to ask Brian if he and his wife ascended Mount Coot-tha from the inside of from the outside.
Yes. Sorry. It’s late and I drank a few too many beers after sunset….
“then we are off to do the Milford Track.”
Lucky old you Brian. The Milford track walk is an incredible experience.
@ 10, the walking tracks through the bush are closed, so we had to go up the road. Very exposed, so definitely on the outside.
Geoff, yes, we are looking forward to it, but hope it won’t be pissing rain which we are told often happens.
Spent the entire weekend at home sheltering from the Brisbane rain, finished reading Stephen Baxter’s Ark (sequel to Flood) on Saturday morning and commenced reading The Road. After I finish the road I will resume reading The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
Also washed the clothes on Sunday and was unable to rise my bicycle as I had to use it as an indoor drying rack.
terangeree, I have also read Tale of Genji, it’s a bit hard going at times. I read a Yukio Mishima novel (the sailor who fell from grace with the sea I think it’s called) and a Murakami or two. They all seem to have a slightly sad and wistful tone that I like.
Paul, I have read The Second Chronicles of Thomas Convenant and, from memory, I think it was even more annoying than the first chronicles. What do you think of it?
We went to see Keating the Musical. Laughed? I nearly had a cardiac arrest!
Also finished re-reading David Sedaris “When You Are Engulfed in Flames”
Then made a nice curry with a bottle of red.
sg #14, The First, Second and Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are all “annoying” in the sense that the central characters from the “real” world are, most of the time, not the kind of people you’d invite to dinner, and I would agree that it can be burdensome to labour through literally thousands of pages of text in which such characters persistently behave abominably towards all the decent characters in the story. Of course the central message of the books is about the capacity of such people to raise themselves from the slough of despond and, when push comes to shove, not succumb to despair and self-hatred. I suspect a lot of readers would also find Crime and Punishment an annoying book for much the same reason. I guess what it comes down to is that there is a certain kind of book which can’t be written about pleasant and appealing central characters.
I spent much of the weekend, like the previous three ripping out and mulching invasive plants. Hard physical work — every muscle aches. (well perhaps not all 200(?) of them, but is feels as if they are.
As I was assailed by mosquitoes, ants and spiders and kept falling into and through accumulations of lantana, cactus, hakea, camphor laurel and aspargus fern, I kept wondering why it was that this mass of waste biomass couldn’t be converted into useable energy (perhaps via plasma torch methods) or even in an AD. Surely local councils could have blitzes where they cane in and did a block for a discount rate — say $150 per Ha — I mean, we surely would all pay, and the council could get rid of potential fire hazard and invasive species and even turn a profit on the deal.
I made spaghetti and got the satisfaction of being able to source seven of the ingredients — tomatoes, buck choi, garlic, chile, leek, parsely and mint — from the kitchen garden. The buck choi were very luxuriant and it’s hard to imagine I could get them this fresh any other way. I’m sure it tasted nicer even than the organic stuff I buy, though this could simple be affirmation bias. I’ll take it either way.
Hubby managed to put his new mobile phone through the washing machine. He’d only bought it because he had mislain the old chunky NOKIA — though he got it back ultimately — and had wanted an exact duplicate. Apparently this style is no longer sold and so he had no choice but to get one of those iPod-like things with the result I described. Hmmm … progress ….
Also, if you consider the other books I’ve been reading recently which I mentioned in my first comment, you would probably conclude that my reading habits perhaps reflect my depressive realist personality type, as even the escapist fiction I read is depressing!
Yes Paul, I remember I enjoyed both series but in a kind of strange masochistic way. I think there’s a real skill in crafting a story about an essentially not very nice person and convincing people to keep reading it. I try not to dip into that type of fiction too often…
I loved Thomas Covenant. One of my favourite fantasy books. Read it in my 20s, I think. Don’t know why they’ve never made it either to TV or the big screen.But then again, I love Crime and Punishment too. As I noted some time ago it was a seminal teenage reading experience for me.
The Book of Genji is one of my favourite pieces of world literature. It just blew me away. But I love that kind of epic stuff in books and on the screen.
Started on the last book in “the gap” series. I really enjoyed Thomas Covenant so thought I’d read the gap. Very different, but I am enjoying it(perhaps I’m just a Donaldson junky).
Zorronsky@1, we are in the same boat with bloody dial-up. Crappy mobile reception so no wireless and we are only 25k from town and 1.5 k from a telstra exchange.Needless to say when we hear Conroy rabbiting on about ultra fast broadband for the city we wonder aloud why we always miss out.I don’t think this Govt. has any intention of providing those of us who live in the bush broadband.
Just to clarify, I would not have read and re-read the Thomas Covenant series if I did not enjoy them and get into them in important respects. I think, though, that most readers of (for example) the final volume of The First Chronicles would probably have found the chapters in which High Lord Mhoram (a more or less conventional hero) is leading the defence of Revelstone against the Raver and his army more unambiguously enjoyable than those in which Thomas Covenant himself (the anti-hero) figures, apart from the penultimate chapter when he meets and defeats Lord Foul).
A Beginner’s Guide to Art Gallery Etiquette, and How to Say Things about Art that are guaranteed* to impress other people.
(Just in case you were wondering).
The rest is bollocks…
http://www.tinyurl.com.au/30x
*This does not in any way imply a guarantee that these things might work. In fact they probably won’t.
“Geoff, yes, we are looking forward to it, but hope it won’t be pissing rain which we are told often happens.”
Yep. Fiordland is damp but you do get see incredible waterfalls and the whole experience kind of transcends the rain. Watch out for the legendary sandflies at Milford Sound.