Apples..... and Seattle Oranges

Guess what I discovered? Oddly enough, not that I was adopted, or that Pink's hair isn't actually pink - for the record, I am not adopted and yes I know Pink's name is a nom de plume, or whatever the singing version is termed - but that the Australian Tax Office's much vaunted e-tax doesn't work on iMacs!! I know, what kind of wacko oversight is that? Here they are even sending me text messages urging me to get my tax in, and use e-tax to do it, and then this!! Admittedly I have left the joy of doing tax, and let's face it why holiday in the Bahamas when you can stay home and do tax right, to the very last day - I am either doing something the VERY moment you can do it, or leaving it to the last time-crushing minute (where I get to experience it with the rest of humanity - yippee!!) - and so now I am scrambling to get access to my house mate's PC. Thank goodness he hasn't seen the light and switched to an iMac, otherwise I'd be doing my tax at an internet cafe/jewelry store/pet supplies depot, and you just know the kitty litter will just get everywhere don't you? Thank goodness my house mate still worships at Bill Gate's possibly (and don't quote me on this) badly pedicured feet, instead of Steve Job's no doubt immaculate hoofers....

....I do wonder though why I pay my taxes...... well apart from the fact that if I don't I will get fined, thrown into jail, and possibly traded to another country in a carbon emissions trading scheme (and you just know it won't be a cool country like Iceland)..... when my very own tax office can't find someone somewhere who can program for iMacs! I may suggest they take one of those nifty courses at the Apple Temple in George Street, Sydney where you can learn all about using iMacs (as well as no doubt why Apple is quite likely the way to eternal salvation... no really.... that's what I have heard)...I may even use my tax return - and after all this stress there had better be one!! LOL - to purchase a gift certificate for them to attend said course..... ahhh, who am I kidding? LOL I will, as always, spend it on wine, men and singing, which as we all know, is a very sensible investment option in this financially unsettling times.... yes use denial to block out reality... it has always worked for me, and so too the Tax Office who apparently have been too busy carousing with wine, men & song to update e-tax!

POP GOZA!!! "WALL-E"

I am 42 years old. I have witnessed much.... and I have been exposed to much Hollywood-generated hype. It's effect on me is generally not what the rabid marketers intended (salivating as they are at all the expected sales they envisage will flow from their strenuous promotion) - I switch off, automatically assume the product being spruiked is a pop culture mongrel in desperate need of a decent and fast death & burial, and divert my attention elsewhere. It isn't hard to find something else to delight the senses in this pop-culture saturated world. 

But something about Wall-E kept capturing my attention. Yes I am a Pixar tragic from way back (with the odd exception of Cars) and yes, a quality movie, which this one clearly was judging by all the positive reviews it had garnered, will always draw me in, but there was something else that kept nagging at me. An intangible sense that this movie was something really special, and that's an unusual sensation in an era when quality is often swamped by mediocre quantity....

So last Tuesday night I took advantage of Tight Ass Tuesday, and went to see this movie that my inner pop culture bitch had proclaimed would be superlative, and worthy of the hype..... and it was! It was without a doubt one of the most intelligent, intellectually and emotionally, well-rounded, heartfelt movies I have seen in years, and with minimal dialogue too. Everything was handled with just the right amount of attention from the establishing of Wall-E's character at the start of the film to his romance with EVE to the return to Earth by the obese relics of the human race..... and suffused with a slapstick humour that complemented rather than detracted from the touching events that unfolded. This is a movie truly worthy of the word "classic", and I have already proclaimed it "DVD Worthy" (yes I know I should be hip and call it Download Legally Worthy but it just have the same ring!), and I dare say I shall be watching this long after the hype has subsided, and the frenzied marketers are drooling into their bedpans in a nursing home......

I Just Might Be The Lunatic You're Looking For

Dang Those Decibels of Death!

I think my ears have finally stopped ringing.... which is a good thing because Tinitis is not one of those fun things that you'll regale with fondness in your yearly Christmas newsletter to the folks back home, nor recount as an achievement worthy of accolades and a story on A Current Affair..... no, it's just very annoying, and feels much like having a miniature Hunchback of Notre Dame ringing his bells inside your head while your lie with your head under a pillow in 10m of water... so how did I come to have the Bells of St Clements peeling inside my head?

Dancing! Yes dancing! Well more specifically, spending three hours bopping away in a very small club on Oxford St, Sydney, just under a metre away from very large speakers, pumping out very loud remixes... in hindsight not the smartest thing to do, but at the time, eager to dance the early morning away, and hot men all around me, it seemed the very epitome of sense and sensibility..... I was out celebrating a friend's birthday and Palms, my favourite club on the now seedy strip, was jammin' and slammin' and.... nope, that's my dance-themed street language all tapped out!..... and Smirnoff Ice in hand, it was very easy to dirty dance and boogie and not notice the volume was deafening.....

...... until I stepped outside and oddly everyone was whispering, and the cars were gliding by silent as a mechanical lamb belching out noxious emissions (trust me such a thing exists... I am fairly certain the North Koreans have one hidden away somewhere), and my friends were speaking with this weird echoey lilt..... fairly certain that a silence bomb had not gone off, and that my friends were as Caucasian (and non-accented) as they moment we entered the club, I had to conclude that the boomin' beats had temporarily laid waste to my oh-so-tender 42 year old ears..... yes the ears that had once withstood decibels that would shred a monkey (I have never tried this but have it on good authority, such a thing is possible), now caved after a mere 3 hours in a crowded club about the size of a shoebox..... hmm, in retrospect, as I said, probably not the smartest move, but more fun that sticking the aforementioned shredded monkey back together with paper clips and super glue..... and that, my friends, makes it all worthwhile, especially now the Hunchback has stopped his blessed ringing, and my synapses have returned to their silent furiously-whirring selves.....

PARTY ON!!! Very, very quietly please....shhhhhh....

I will have my pigeon to go, please

Ah, life in Sydney.... caught the train home last night squashed like a sardine (actually I secretly envy sardines and their roomy abodes), swam 750m, ate a healthy dinner, downloaded some tunes from iTunes including Snow Patrol's brilliant new song "Take Back the City", went to bed early (OK early-ish...I am addicted to a sci-fi saga at the moment by Kevin J Anderson and I had to keep reading! ), woke up at 4.45 and walked for an hour........... and I saw pigeons feeding on vomit...... yes folks, not only was someone not able to hold their drink, but the by-product of their over-imbibing fed a family of Sydney pigeons, and oh frabjous day, I got to see it.... naturally this being Sydney, the drinker had no doubt just eaten a gourmet meal at a nearby restaurant and so at least the pigeons got to eat well.... they are gourmand rats of the sky here after all..... I can picture them on holidays in Paris eating baguette-infused protein spills (vomit to lay people) and following up with a few sips from a stagnant puddle in the gutter, which this being Paris, was probably spilled from an Evian bottle..... yes Sydney is where I am more than likely to see it all, even if I don't want to.....

"Run!" he said. "OK, well just walk quickly then"

In a clear sign that I have been consumed by a raging madness (as opposed to those calming, zen-like madnesses, I guess), I got up at 4.45 a.m. today to meet my friend, Fahmi, for an hour of full-on, footpath-pounding, other-hyphenated-words power walking.... the air was crisp and clean.... well, crisply cold at least... with all that smog, clean is highly unlikely.... and as always I actually enjoyed it. Of course, I would rather be snuggled in bed with a significant other, a few bars of chocolate, a novel and a rainy day, but given that unique confluence of events and items, I have more chance of marrying a Yeti and traveling with him to Mars on vacation, so walking is probably a more likely use of my time....

It's been weeks since I walked with Fahmi, stopping all exercise as he did for Ramadan, and after getting used to walking my butt off (disembodied body parts are a little talked-about side-effect of power walking, and more than a little unsightly) with just my iPod for company, it was great to get back to the somewhat surreal situation of walking along like a madman at 5 a.m. while having an animated conversation with a good friend..... Fahmi though did not seem to appreciate just how mad we are remarking as we passed some cyclists that "they're keen".... at this point, I pointed out to him that we were also out at the same time, which quieted him fairly quickly....

Alas this morning there was no sign of the regulars we see on our route, all of whom have a quirky nickname, which no doubt if they knew about them, they would embrace as signs of great affection on our part... no, not slight bitchiness.... affection .... there's quite a difference, thank you.... there was no sign of 'Red' (a woman who exercises at a nearby gym with bright red hair), or 'Pecs' ( a cute guy who passes us each day with a chest to die for.... although it's unlikely I would frankly) or even our old favourite, 'Zombie Gay", who is always immaculately attired but walks so ramrod straight and never blinks, that he is the harbinger of a zombie outbreak to come..... trust me, when the streets are overrun with well-dressed undead, remember where you read the prediction of their coming.....

Given that I am back into the swimming too, I am thrilled that I stand a very good chance of developing some sort of Exercise Addiction, which will cause me to exercise morning and night, forgoing all food, in the quest for the 'perfect body', my life consumed with the idea of being thinner and thinner till when I am almost almost skeletal, my friends intervene in a dramatic late night moment replete with stirring words and violin music, and save me from myself, shoving a jam donut and half a tub of Sara Lee French Vanilla ice cream in my mouth while they make me sit down in a comfy chair with my feet up...... phew! Gotta say that while it would make a great bestseller, as I describe my heroic return to sloth and fatty indolence from over-exercise and carrot-eating, it sounds like far too much hard work..... better to just get up at 4.45, walk like crazy for an hour before rushing off to work to almost my train.... hmm, the Exercise Addiction could almost be more relaxing......

When the wild blue waters swallowed me whole

Don't you just love a wildly melodramatic headline? So much better than "I swam 750m in the 25m pool in my apartment complex!".... Yep I am not exactly shaking in my boots either! But that's not really the point. Let's face it - swimming laps is not exactly the most scintillating of exercise forms...it's all up and down a water-filled trough of tile-covered concrete, your only distraction the fantastically blue line that threads down the centre of the tiles to... why the end of the lane of course! The crowd roars with excitement while over-excitable ladies, and men collapse with the heart-stopping thrill of it, only revived by the heady smell of enough chlorine to kill off a colony of seals somewhere in Bass Strait....

As predictable, and thrilling, as paint drying in the non day Summer sun, it is nonetheless one of the most soothing ways to chill out after a long day of sitting at my PC, a slave to Outlook and Bill Gates triumvirate of office horrors, Word, Excel and Powerpoint. There is an almost hypnotic element to pushing your way through the water, your wake lapping behind and around you, sharks nipping at your feet, giant barracudas...... OK getting carried away again! Truthfully, while it can be painful and boring, it is also one of the best way to wash all that corporate BS and reacquaint yourself with basic muscle-worn humanity..... making sure you have a hammer to get rid of those sharks, should they ever appear...and mark my words they will! All right they probably won't, but think of my times if they did..... I see a PB in the offing.....

**************************************************************

So today was not one of the worst in the Cubicle of Horrors it has to be said. My wonderful managed was having a well-deserved day off, and so instead of being manically busy, I was just rushed off my feet busy, a vast improvement, and one worthy of not one but two Chai Lattes! Yes I went overboard, and drank Chai Lattes like it was the 7th October, which amazingly it was.... so that worked out very serendipitously...... then I came home, beat off the sharks as I did my laps (c'mon when they do turn up, your ridicule will seem faintly ridiculous!) and chowed down on some Kanga Bangas (kangaroo sausages....yes I eat Skippy!).... I may even squeeze in some novel reading, shark attacks notwithstanding.......

I am an evil iPod parent and should be sold into slavery with Microsoft!

A dramatic headline it is true but I am prone to dramatic flourishes especially when emotions are running high.... and running high they are ever since I callously discarded my old iPod in the Apple Temple in George Street in Sydney City, all to get 10% discount on the brand new iPod I was buying.... the speed with which I handed over my first bought iPod was frightening and shocking especially since it had saved me from going quietly mad in many bland airport terminals - OK it is doubtful I would ever do anything quietly, including going mad, which let's face it, kind of cried out for a voluble soundtrack! - and came with me on various trips to Malaysia, Canada and to my parents' Ancestral Estate in Alstonville NSW... I loved that inanimate piece of technology with a devotion that my digital camera and PC could never quite muster.... here for the first time was a small tiny piece of metal and circuits that managed to contain all the precious music that has acted as the soundtrack to my lifestyle, and that selflessly (well I don't speak digital so I doubt I'd have understood if it had complained) kept playing year after year for 4.5 years until one day.... yes one day.....sob.... I....I...

.....traded it in for a newer model! I didn't mean to....OK well actually yes I did since my new iMac (fussy but wonderful thing that it is and far better than the PC ever was) refused to work with Ye Olde Original iPod (henceforth YOOI) and it was case of only ever listen to about 100 old tracks (all that was left after my disastrous attempt to reset YOOI to factory standard) or get a brand spanking new iPod (BSNI, which doesn't trip off the tongue like YOOI does it? Hmm let's call him Bruce then) ..... so I went to the Apple Temple, confident I could buy Bruce without YOOI suspecting a thing, but alas the evil tempters at the A.T. were offering 10% off if you surrendered in your old iPod....what a horrible dilemma.... how could I possibly give up YOOI for a measly 10% off..... apparently hideously easily it turns out as I whipped out YOOI so fast that I swear his circuits were thrown every which way inside his aging carapace and threw him onto the counter.... consumed with guilt, I dared to ask what would happen to YOOI and I was told by the devilishly cute guy behind the counter that YOOI would likely be pulled apart in some lab somewhere..... I didn't even dare ask why but I suspect there is an illicit trade in old iPods for use by Microsoft in nefarious experiments.... and just like that YOOI left my life...

Of course I told myself YOOI was just an inanimate object and I had freely surrendered up the digital camera and PC (which you will be relieved to know I never named) without any qualms, but YOOI was different....YOOI was fun, independence, music in 4200 shades of enjoyment tha I could soak up anytime anywhere....and now I had just callously given up my first bought iPod in a Faustian deal to get a cheaper deal on my new iPod....I was bizarrely upset in a way that confounded any logic to counteract it.....

That was until I got home, opened up Bruce and saw his pretty sleek lines, colourful screen, and the face that he synced up all 4200 songs on my iTunes database in 15 minutes flat..... to my increased shame all thoughts of YOOI raced from my mind.... and so while I love Bruce as my Second Bought, I can't help feeling like Mommy Dearest, dropping off my dearly treasured YOOI to be dissected like a piece of pigs bladder for whatever dark purpose Apple deems necessary.... Bruce would do well to be nervous because despite my protestations of devotion to my iPod, they can be dumped at a whim.... I am an evil iPod parent and should be hung, drawn and..... oh look Bruce's screen is lighting up...he's so pretty..... now what was I saying?

Mooses are voting Democrat this year I think!

Death and All His Friends......

Yes I have a new crowd of friends and frankly while they are a little morbid, they do a fine line in black eyeliner and white face paint..... seriously I am immersing myself in Coldplay's new CD, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends", and I find myself falling in love with it, something I didn't manage with "X & Y". I tried and tried to love "X & Y" as much as "Rush of Blood to the Head" but just like with "The Lion King" (yep didn't like that either despite repeat viewings....yep you may stone me now outside Sleeping Beauty's Castle), I just couldn't do it.....it lacked the sheer inventiveness and zest of "Rush...." and I finally had to admit that "X & Y" and I would never truly bond...... so imagine my trepidation (go on, imagine it!!) when I picked up "Viva La Vida" and discovered an album of exquisite beauty and sensitivity, lyrical vulnerability and gut-wrenching emotions married with heart-tugging melodies....in short, all the things I adored about Coldplay in the first place.....

In the wake of the disappointment that was "X & Y", I had mighty satisfying dalliances with Keane (still brilliantly good at capturing emotions in a song that stay with you long after listening) and Snow Patrol, but I suspect I now have to recommit my true Britpop love to Coldplay, who have returned to the sort of form that makes lesser bands weep.....

All this on a cold Winter's day with intermittent rain....perfect weather to soak in the emotionally-delicate ambience of the new Coldplay CD....

The Curious Beast That is a Weekend

So here's the thing.....

It's Friday night and you've survived another week in the hideous rat race that is corporate life. The cubicle has been left behind in a shower of sparks (this is not generally recommended Monday - Thursday on OH & S grounds but entirely OK on Fridays when frankly - who the hell cares if the carpet catches on fire?) as you accelerate out of the building bound for 48 hours of sheer unadulterated leisure (unless of course you are conducting an affair out of your relationship in which case it will be all adulterated I'm guessing). You decide that tonight, in direct contravention of social conventions worldwide that you will not go out tonight, and stop in at the Indian takeaway, liquor store for some wine, and convenience store for some dessert and go home to watch an episode or two of whatever TV show came out on DVD that week. You stay up late, mostly due to the sugar high from the wine and dessert, and look forward to a sleep in Saturday morning, ignoring the pleas from your exercise junkie friend to exercise on the weekend and run around a 50 hectare park at 4 a.m. Saturday morning ( who incidentally should be locked away for his own mental health)....

Saturday dawns (but naturally you decline to check it our for yourself and just accept that if the sun's come up when you wake up that the dawn did indeed happen) and you bound from bed - OK crawl in slow deliberate movements to the coffee - ready to face a day of running errands...after the sort of brunch that you never eat during the week and that will set off cholesterol alarms at the Heart Institute.... god bless the super grande el gigante breakfast of champions (and possible heart attack victims) that gets you set up for a day of grocery shopping, buying things you don't need (and never will) and driving to far flung parts of the city you live in to see dear and close friends where you will eat that will further trigger those already klaxon-like alarms at the Heart Institute...but you don't care because you have no timetable (other than the social opprobrium of turning up late for Uncle Carls' 80th birthday BBQ at the local RSL).... ah what a glorious thing is a Saturday!!

Then Sunday comes along, and if you are like half of Sydney, you head to Yum Cha in Chinatown..... there, if you are insane enough (and it's entirely possible most of us are stark raving bonkers), you arrive just as the crushing masses surge forward eager for their weekly fix of chicken's feet (I feel sorry for all those poor lame chickens in wheelchairs), eggplant/tofu (yum!), or pork buns (that I maintain look just like the pods in Alien/s....and I once ordered then using that name.....the Chinese waitress clearly was no pop culture addict and looked at me blankly).... or if you are like me, you turn up at 11 and have a brunch-type take on Yum Cha and are done in time to see a movie just after lunch..... of course somewhere in the middle of all the activity, you have to find time for that most sacred of weekend rituals.....The Nanna Nap...combine that with Saturday's Herald and you have the perfect afternoon....OK throw in some LindorBalls and you have the perfect afternoon..... right some Pinot Grigio, Lindor Balls, the Herald and nap and you have...well you get the idea....

Hot Cross Buns, Lindt Bunnies.... Oh My!

So this is Christmas...what have we done?....wait a second....no it's not.... the year has moved so fast, it's already Easter, and what's more it's almost over! I have done my best to use the time well - napping, movie watching, book reading, iPoding music (yes love using brand names as verb...think it should be a national sport!).....and catching up with good friends....I have also, as is clearly obvious, finally found my blog again in the wilds of cyberspace, and I am making an entry...... of course after 3 days of near to no thinking, my brain has the consistency and mental alacrity of tapioca pudding (never considered one of the clever desserts), and so this will be just a general quick entry...

It's been a brilliant Easter break.....I briefly thought of packing the 4 days with endless catch ups, outings, movies etc but decided I couldn't be..you know.... so I just saw a movie on Friday ("The Dinner Guest" - French and wonderfully farcical..they do it so well!) with my friend Tim, spent Saturday morning at Temple (aka IKEA - a holy place with do it yourself religious experiences...and swearing!), and Saturday evening drinks on the roof of the Zanzibar Hotel in Newtown (they have a bar there lest you think I was clinging to guttering with a martini in one hand, and a bowl of peanuts in the other...hmm that could be fun!) with friends Fahmi & Stephen....and Sunday was just lunch out with my friend Peter.... all very chilled and civilised.... and miracle of miracles, and a sure sign of the coming apocalypse, I put up my new IKEA CD unit (striking red to sit among the existing 4 silver ones - tres chic) a day after I bought it!!! I know.... none of that box becoming a part of the furniture routine.... the box is open, and the unit has been assembled with minimal swearing.... it's a sign! Not sure of what exactly but it is a holy weekend so it could be a sign of anything....I'm hoping for a good sign as impending pestilence and war is not my idea of a good time..... funny that....

I leave this entry with the following picture - I am sure the designer had such very good, dare I say, holy intentions, but unfortunately the end result is....well....let's just say Jesus needs a better PR agency.....

When Turnips Ruled the World

To be honest I wasn't around when giant turnips ruled the world - if in fact they ever did; the fossil record is scant in this regard - but was around when the rain poured down on Wednesday night (6 Feb) and still I went to the Open Air Cinema. Going to this most breezy of cinema complexes is a sacred rite of Summer for me, and the more times the better. When it's fine at least. Back when Sydney was mired in drought, worrying about a rainy night would have had you locked up in a mental institute, whereas now it marks you as perfectly sane, and well informed weather-wise. This year has been marked by never-ending deluges and even though I am a supreme optimist, not even that can stop the clouds spilling forth their raindrops. At least on Wednesday night, we made it through dinner with nary a droplet falling from the sky - and thankfully Warren & I had parked ourselves under a giant umbrella on the upper level of the eating concourse - but the fun started when just before the movie, so did the rain in a deluge that would have had Noah a little concerned......and me without my ark! (Hate it when I leave it at home....Mum always said to leave home prepared for any and every apocalypse but sadly I have gotten slack in my middle age.)

Unlike a great many other people, we stuck around for the movie, a delightful (if wafer-thin) romantic comedy called "Definitely Maybe", featuring the delicious Ryan Reynolds, and clad in our clear ponchos, rode out the rain which lasted for only about a third of the way into the movie.....it wasn't exactly sunshine and roses after that, but nor was it the deluge that swamped Sydney, and we walked back to the car nice and toasty dry..... alas my work bag, caught in the flood that washed across the floor of the dining area didn't fare as well but it has lived to commute again you will all be relieved to know...

Long time, no blog...has the world changed?

So it's been a while since the old blog was updated sad to say....actually there's very little emotional swirl attached to saying that but it sounds suitably contrite and a little melodramatic... I am not entirely sure who pressed the Fast Forward button on my life, and pushed me so far into the future, which interestingly has an eerie resemblance to the present, but the blog entry I am absolutely positively intended to do the next day never materialized... until now ...... there may be issues of alien abduction involved here, or a Bermuda Triangle disappearance, and really that would be far more dramatic, but in reality, I just got busy...far too busy...and a little lazy.....

But I am lazy no more! (He says with a flourish of the cape he doesn't have).....and yes the world has changed....well mine has anyway....since that last entry, I have finally left my old job (which was killing me with stress...alas not kindness.... and giving very little back) and got a great new one (which makes sense...getting a crappy new one would have been a village idiot kind of thing to do).... moved from The Shire (way down in Sydney's deep dark southern suburbs) to my natural home in the Inner West (I can hear David Attenborough narrating the doco now)..... and started exploring a whole new neighbourhood, life... and a great pizza place (this ranks very high on great new things in my life!)......

...and today is a blissful glorious day off, which naturally, as an office worker chained to a PC, I am partially spending at my computer.....lol..... good old Australia Day and the magnificent public holiday it brings.... after a week of frantic deadlines, and many social outings, all I plan to do today is read the rest of a novel (yes fast living folks!!) and take a nap..... stellar high-reaching goals I know but I daresay achievable by dint of their ordinariness.....

HAPPY OZ DAY!

JUST ANOTHER MANIC MOVIE REVIEW

"The Three Burials of Malquiades Estrada", which I saw last night, is a profoundly touching movie that examined everything from racism in the USA and how this affects their border policies, the callous disregard for life bred into people who treat the illegal immigrants as less than animals with no understanding that they are people with lives too (something that is beautifully underlined later in the movie when the border patrol guard kidnapped by Tommy Lee Jones's character, Pete Perkins, comes face to face with a Mexican woman he assaulted back in the USA when arresting her, who was deported back to Mexico), and the loneliness and disengagement of people from others, or their homes - whether its the border patrol guard 1000s of miles from home, or the Mexican immigrant who makes a home in the USA but with the constant threat of deportation, which makes true interaction with their adopted land well nigh impossible, or the wife of the cafe owner in the border town who is married but plays around on the side so emotionally estranged from her husband is she. It was a slow moving drama, with a rich tapestry of characters, and in amongst all the grimness, quite a bit of macabre humour which softened the unrelenting harshness of the landscape and the lives of the people in it........all in all, a brilliant, emotionally evocative movie.....

Now I am old? I don't think so! Reflections on turning 40

So the big 4 - 0 hey? I have no idea why certain milestone numbers - yes we are still imperial when it comes to big birthdays it seems! - suddenly have to be spelt out, like you are trying to hide something from someone. Reminds of when my parents would spell something out when I was child so I wouldn't know what they were getting or doing - it may have been true that I couldn't understand that the spelled word was, but I understood the act of spelling all right and the fact that it meant something! Somehow saying the two numbers separately doesn't disguise the fact that I am officially sliding into a gloriously vigorous middle age.....not that I am all that worried really. 40...sorry 4 - 0....is the new 30 I am told, and 50 is the new 35, which places me back at the start of my 30s, which thus far has been my favourite decade. Lots of wisdom about me and how the world operates coupled with youtful zest (no, not lemon zest - too bitter) - lt's see of the 40s can top that! As ever, my cup is half full....full of Vanilla Coke that is!

The birthday was marked by a 12 day visit to Canada on frequent flier miles, where I got to help celebrate (and organise the party of) my wonderful friend, Sandra, who also turned 4 - 0. (See I still know what I mean!) I spent 2 days covering the greater part of Port Coquitlam (in Vancouver) with Ilesa, Sandra's friend and neighbour, for lots of food, red and yellow everything (inspired by the balloons we ordered) and even a birthday tiara (plastic) and a sash saying "Birthday Queen", which also somehow ended up on me at the 40th. Thats right - make fun of the gay man! LOL The party went off a treat....I drank lots of Sangria, Sandra got to see some close friends, and there was cake! Mmmmm....cake....when I wasn't doing the Queer Eye for the Party Guy routine, I was shopping in Kitsilano (funky neighbourhood) and downtown (with Sandra where we stopped in for sushi at good ol' Tsunami Sushi, and lots o' CDs at HMV Megastore), and checking out dead frozne salmon in a stream.....well I was supposed to be checking out live ones rushing to spawn but I was a tad too late....

Flew back into Sydney Town on the day of my birthday, where I was not wished Happy Birthday by the customs officer (so much for my tax dollars at work!) and carrying a very bad cold picked up courtesy of Sandra and her partner Ken's two lovely kids, Katie and Graham. The one thing I didn't have was jetlag but after some shopping and a birthday lunch of Indian with Susie, a very good friend, I had to come home and crash out for 3 hours to sleep off the effects of the cold. Do I know how to party of not?! Got up, felt way better, got an SMS from Warren (this great guy I met via Yahoo Personals, who may yet turn out to be the best birthday present yet) right at 6.18 pm when I was born - very sweet! - talked to various wonderful freinds, and Mum & Dad and headed out for fish and chips from the local in Gymea with John and Susie. Yes another night of wild and frantic partying that may or may not have included drunken sheep and small people with killer abs (long story) but more than likely didn't....

Got home, watched some "Queer As Folks" I'd taped, and then rang Warren at 10.30 pm for what I presumed would be a quick chat prior to our get together on Sunday. We talked for 3 and a half hours with a single stop, awkward silence or anything. Way cool. (Its very hard to make smart remakrs when you're happy isn't it? That could become a problem real soon, methinks). We did try a couple of awkward silences just for effect but they inevitably ended after 5 secnds when one of us lost concentration. Let's face it Waz - we suck at awkward silences! It was a wonderful end to my birthday and was followed by a quick call to my friend Kerry in Briz Vegas, who's a complete night owl.

The next big event on the 4 - 0 calendar was the Big Birthday Dinner That Ate Paris on Saturday night.....OK there were only 7 of us but they were very good friends (Andrew, an old housemate, Ellen & Tracy, John & Susie and Ross, a friend who travelled down from Newcastle, which was wonderful of him) and everything went like clockwork.....had the dinner at a fantastic restaurant called "Sealevel" at Cronulla, and we tucked into gloriously rich food (Szechuan Pork Fillets with mango, and pear dressing and rice rolls for me!) we looked onto the night ocean , lit up by a spectacular storm. Conversation flowed freely, as did the Southern Comforts and Coke (here's to not driving!!), and we followed up dinner, after a frantic dash through the rain (me with a ton of helium balloons including a giant Tigger one!), with Toblerone Cheesecake, silly party hats and presents at Ellen's. If you have to turn 4 - 0, then I figure this is the way to do it - great friends, great food, and cheesecake.....and you can quote me on that....

Right now to my 41 st year....roll on !!!

Dates, Figs and Various Other Types of Fruit

So I know that you have all been waiting with baited breath - I can't use that phrase without picturing a tiny, shocked worm desperately clinging to a teensy weensy hook, hanging from a minute piercing on the upper lip, while suspended over the gaping maw of someone's oesophagus: presumably someone did that once I 'd like to think unless there's a more prosaic reason for the phrase's evolution which would frankly be a bit disappointing - to see how my date went. Well so have I really! I am still waiting for a phonecall or email two weeks after the second date, which I was asked out on about 3/4 of the way through the firs date, which went exceptionally well. We met at a trendy cafe in Newtown, a funky inner city Sydney suburb, inside the Dendy arthouse cinema complex, and to my delight (I delight easily it seems) the man in question, Phillip, turned up in his work suit, looking suitably well dressed and handsome. So far so good. Thankfully there was a minimum of syllable-barren awkwardness, and we soon fell into a wide ranging discussion of our upbringings, backgrounds, families and the deteriorating geo-political situation in the Abkhazia region of the old USSR. Just kidding about the last bit but that would have been an interesting twist in the conversation. So engaging was the conversation, and so well did we get on that he asked me for a second date, even settling on the Thursday two days later.....

So fast forwarding to the Thursday, we agreed to meet at a funky (there's that word again but hey this is Newtown, and besides its a very cool word, right up with there with 'plethora' and 'soporific') Thai restaurant at 7 p.m. Only we didn't quite make it there, or in actual fact to anything resembling a real restaurant. He called me when I was already driving to the funky eatery (see you just can't use that word enough!) and proposed a switch of venue to the Taxi Club, which is just off Taylor Square, right in the heart of the gay heartland. All well and good, but City traffic is a bi-artch, and finding a parking spot recalls the search for the Yeti, Loch Ness Monster and Elvis all rolled into one gloriously frustrating quest, testing even the most half glass full of people (which would be me). As all sorts of funkiness slipped from my mind, replaced instead with 300-400 circuits of the roads around the Taxi Club, a lovely drive if you like construction work and bitumen, I had the vague feeling that this date was slipping into a coma even before it got going. But rallying my optimism (ya gotta love a Sagitarrian's ability to cultivate optimism), I persisted till dizziness (one too many circuits of the same block) and a dying wanderlust for discovering new and unknown neighbourhoods, forced me to call Phillip and propose another change of venue to Fox Studios, near where he lives. He didn't sound too thrilled but agreed and so being the nice guy that I am, proposed parking at Fox, and driving in his car - he has free parking - to the Taxi Club.

Happy to do this, we rocked up to the Taxi Club, and I wandered into something akin to a rundown RSL full of cross dressers (not an issue) and old carpet and ambience from a forgotten decade with bad decor. In its defense, I had one of the best salmon fillets EVER there and the French waiter, camp as an entire tent factory, was a lot of fun, and made ordering a vaudeville experience....and Phillip and I talked non stop....so mostly all good right? Well on paper yes, but something niggled at me as we drove back to Fox. Phillip had lost some sort of spark, and having not admitted to a yearning to marry him immediately (absent I can assure you), sympathies for right wing dictatorships (past or present), or a love of clog dancing to polka music at midnight while nude, I couldn't think of anything I could have said to put him off. There was much talk of keeping in touch via email and SMS over the next week, when he would be busy fixing up his rental house, and couldn't see me, and after a half-hearted hug that put human embraces back a few thousand years in terms of warmth and intimacy, he walked off, and though I tried to stay upbeat and positive, had a funny feeling that was it.....and it seems it has been. I am not entirely sure why gay man cut and run, and never even call you to say 'thanks but no thanks', but I find it faintly amusing that he thinks his rejection of me, when he didn't even know me, would send me into some sort of Cecil B deMille-esque melodramatic rant involving much crying, gnashing teeth and copious amounts of ash flung over hastily stitched together sackcloth. He would have actually got more of a mildy ambivalent shrug but let him run with his ridiculously over-inflated sense of his own magnetic attraction!

At least I found out he had great claim to flake status before he sucked me dry of money, hope or the will to live which some previous boyfriends have done. OK not the will to live, which I am rather fond of, but you get the idea. The upside to all this is that another man who said hello via the online personals at about the same time, had quietly snuck up the inside and he and I are well on the way to becoming brilliantly good friends, with the very real promise of more substantial things to come. Yes, happiness isn't as funny as dating disasters but I am happy to put aside witty barbs if it means I find true love...or as close you get to it in this life.....

And then he ate and a great multitude of calories did enter him

Ya gotta love the weekends! They invariably involve catch-ups with friends, and very rarely does this involve learned discussion of Archimedes principles of buoyancy; usually its food and great amounts of it. I do tend to let myself depart from my usually spartan diet on the weekends, consuming chocolate bars, Indian food, and icecream like its going out of fashion (and the way Sara Lee discontinues product lines, that could well be the case) but this weekend set all new benchmarks. I managed to consume two lots of Indian food - but in the interests of variety I did vary the curries lest you fear I had fallen into a great big culinary rut and couldn't climb out), fish and chips (accompanied by a long walk with a good friend and his hyperactive 2 year old so that must count for a reduction in the calorie count surely), and tons of Yum Cha including the Alien Pods (pork buns), Jellyfish (dumplings) and Glowing Yellow Logs (mango pancakes) - notice my use of the actual Chinese terms (which they would be if the Chinese person was adopted at birth by Caucasians who didn't teach their child of word of their native tongue). And today? Low flat muesli bars and cucumbers with salmon....yep, DE-CA-DENT.....

I have a date tonight! You don't care really but after 9 months of licking my wounds after the last disasterous foray into building long and lasting intimate relations with someone, I am back in the fray and in exactly 1 hour and 20 minutes shall be making really awkward conversation for a good 10 minutes till I either hit a comfortable groove or start counting the time till I can reasonably walk away with dignity intact. Stay tuned.

All Those Little Things That Jam My Brain

Its been awhile snce I visited the ol' blog, and many small, spectacularly important, as you will soon see, questions and observations have rushed into my brain, stuck to my grey matter like super glue and refused to let go. So in an attempt to dislodge them, and free up my brain space for important things like watching "Grey's Anatomy" and ordering lunch, here they are in all their unadorned glory:

(1) Why did my iPod, which if pushed could no doubt rule the world in a benign and caring fashion while simultaneously washing up and watching over a flock of sheep (assuming I had anywhere in my 1 bedroom apartment to keep them) beep at me when it was uploading the latest batch of Songs I Cannot Live Without When Away From Home - yep, it has all the manners of a backwoods peasant as a medieval banquet at times - and say it couldn't find song such-and-such and hence couldn't upload it. Yet it knew that song was there hence the song must have been there to upload. Strangely enough my yelling at it that the song must have been there for it to know it even existed, failed to move it and it remained defiant to the end, hinting that if I pushed it, I would find myself in a chain gang smashing extremely large rocks in Mongolia, come the revolution when it would take over the world (yes, I know, I should never have mentioned to it that I thought it could pull it off).

This naturally forced me to.....meekly tinker with the name of the song so the iPod would deign to recognise it. So I guess that cowardly act rules me out of leading the resistance to my iPod's rule - unless I get another MP3 player, with no charisma or ability to govern anything - then I will be free to resist the benign yet despotic rule of my iPod which...what's that above me? An anvil - but wait where'd it come from? And what's that sliver of white & silve behind it? No it can't be! It is...aaagghh....

(2) Right - false alarm....just my overactive imagination and love of cheesy melodrama getting the better of me.....now where was I? Ah yes trivial thoughts that may yet impact mankind's very future on this planet...actually this one already has...I have become quite the Ebay mogul of late, selling tons 'o' stupidly ill-considered purchases in an attempt to get the baying wolves of VISA from my door.....didn't know they were using baying wolves did you? Yes the wolves, and the odd really ticked off wolverine, and irritated domesticated barnyard fowl, were all congregating at my door far too often, scaring the aforementioned herd of sheep, so something had to be done!

Oh, and I had to somehow get some money for my trip to Canada in November so I immediately drew up a lengthy list of Christmas ornaments I never put on the tree, DVDs I have yet to watch even though when I bought them I Had To Have Them Or Life Itself Would End, singles of an eclectic collection of artists, and in the most amazing part of this, gathering together a pile of plastic creatures that came in Kelloggs cereals back in the early 70s that I had recently found it were worth actual money! Lots of actual money! They have been the cash cow of my whole operation - just a second, I have to calm the sheep; the idea of a large bovine near them scared them silly - in one case bringing in $210 for 6 small plastic pirates. Yes honestly. So while I am not a hoarder - when you move as much as I do, hoarding is a silly idea! - I am heartily glad I am a sentimentalist and kept these tokens of my childhood. So I can sell them off, and make money as an adult! Natch! Not sure if I owe my parents a cut off the proceeds since they did buy the cereal in the first place, but I will try to convince them that my great love for them is more than enough compensation...or give them a few sheep maybe....

(3) As well as selling off treasured mementoes of my childhood to the highest bidder like some callous childhood memento selling-type person - do not let me near your treasure childhood knick knacks or you will find them on Ebay faster than you can blink; I have the fever, I tell you, I have the fever and must sell - it all!! - I have also decided to be austere and only buy things I actually need when I need them. Get out! Too late, I already am! Now this thought initially was as alien as suggesting I miss the latest series of Survivor - Stephenie has been brought back for the latest jaunt...hooray! ....this time to Guatemala - but I have done it over the last 3 months and discovered you don't need Lots of Stuff. Frightening indeed but true. Of Course, VISA and Mastercard are running scared, warning shareholders of profit downgrades this year, and I have had one or two calls from the Treasury begging me to keep spending, lest the economy stall....but I am resolute.....I am going to keep living on less...so I can spend lots in another country instead! Hello Canada!

Right well now that my brain is a little freer now, I think its time to think about what to have for lunch.....sushi perhaps? See, I do focus on the important stuff!

!POP! KORN

MOVIE

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"

I was beginning to wonder if I was meant to see this movie as my first attempt coincided with a rainy Father's Day and untold numbers of families deciding that the ultimate bonding experience would be a movie, and specifically the one I wanted to see, and my second, on the following weekend, synching beautifully with a massive street fair in Cronulla which meant that I couldn't find a parking spot to save myself. Success at last, and by this stage I was loudly proclaiming to my film buddy, Ellen, that the film had better be as good as everyone was saying, at Westfield Miranda which not only had it on at a good time, but had parking spaces (mercy me!) and tickets available. All snug in our seats and surrounded by more teens & pre-teens that a single person in their late 30s should ever be exposed to in a concentrated period, we beamed the sweet smile of victory as the pre-show ads and trailers (for a super exciting mix of G rated fare that I won't be seeing, thank you, lovely though the trailers are) started flickering onto the screen.....alas, with NO sound! Yes there was much gnashing of teeth, and a frantic rummaging of my mind as I'd tried to remember if I had ever offended Tim Burton (the director) at any point, and if so ( a little hard since I had never met him but ya never know), was he isn't some occultic religion that cursed me to never see any of his movies? (A very ego centric occultic religion if I may say so.) But then the sweet decibels of overhyped trailers and pointless ads kicked in and stayed on for the entire movie! Success at last!

So was it as good as the critics, all of whom praised it as a witty, colourful and faithful re-imagining of the dark tale by Roald Dahl, said it was? Thankfully, yes. Visually it was stunning, full of more rich colours inside the factory than I could process, and appropriate winter-like bleakness outside it, which made the scenes inside Willy Wonka's chocolate-driven flight from reality all the more richer. Freddy Highmore, who played Charlie, had the right mix of goodness & sweetness (without miraculously becoming nausea inducing), and Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka was a delightful mix of loopy, dark, engaging and sad, and an absolute standout in the movie. Tim Burton was in fine form, staying faithful to the book, which no doubt suited him just fine since he and Roald Dahl share the same delightfully twisted view of the world. Even the brief musical numbers, performed by the mysterious Oompa Loompas to send off the four children who's various human foibles and glaring flaws doom their chance to win the factory as an inheritance, were fun, kitsch, and oh, did I mention, brief. Having disliked people spontaneously breaking into song in any movie since I was a child, this was an EGT (Exceedingly Good Thing)! There is very little to dislike in a movie that manages to wrap surreal characters, unusual circumstances and a happy non-corny ending - the less corn the better I say - into one wonderfully coloured, vibrant fun movie.

Strangely enough, I was left with a strong desire to eat not chocolate, which is what you'd expect after a movie set in a chocolate factory but for a chicken roast dinner, which Charlie's family ate in the last scene of the movie......so of course I went home, and ate a cajun flavoured kangaroo steak.....very, very close to a chicken roast dinner....OK no it isn't.....