Pondering: fear and regret

February 29 always brings me a tiny twinge of regret and reflection as it wings around its little four year cycle. It's the birthday of a girl I had a huge crush on in high school - Ferne Kohlman - not a hard date to remember given its infrequent nature (and the fact that it's the day after my dad's birthday as well).

We sat across the aisle from each other at the back of the classroom and I was hooked from the moment my angsty little hormone filled teenage self laid eyes on her in early February at the start of year 7.

Obviously I've moved on to bigger and far better things in the #cough#24years#cough# time since then but as a lesson in how events at that age help shape who you are and what you become, it's still something that pops into my head on the odd occasion.

Valentines Day came around about a week after school started and the night before I spent hours painstakingly making her a valentines card that I planned to secretly slip into the pigeon-hole/shelves that we had just near the classroom door for our books and whatnot.

In green pen I (clumsily) drew this lush fern frond (because her name was Ferne - get it) with hundreds upon hundreds of those tiny fern (uh what are they called - leaves/nodules?) thingys and agonised over the perfect combination of words.

Being a relatively private person, (or perhaps fearful), I didn't sign it, figuring I could gauge the reaction when she read it and take my cue from there.

Come the next day I scurried early to class and eagerly scanned the pigeonholes looking for her name - Fern Coleman. (Which was how I had intricately written it in fronds on the card). Logically, it would have been between the B surnames and the Ds.
But no. I scanned in a panic another dozen times - why wouldn't she have a pigeonhole - it didn't make sense.

I scanned the whole wall of pigeon holes and reached the Ks (for Kohlman) to realise to my young mortification that I had spelled not only her first name wrong but also her surname. I slipped the card in regardless and when it was discovered, proceeded to deny absolutely to all and sundry that I had had anything to do with it. (After all, if I truly loved this girl, how could I possibly not even know her name)

And that was it - for the next four years (until she changed schools at the end of year 10), I pined for her from afar - afraid of I'm still not entirely sure what but nonetheless, ruled by my fears.

The truly stupid thing is that I'm pretty sure that she did actually like me and there were any number of chances to move on but in my strange little mind, I just couldn't and wouldn't act.

I hope now that I'm less proud or fearful or whatever the hell it was that I was doing - possibly a modicum of stubborn self-destructive willfullness in there as well for all I know.

But February 29 will always remind me of the consequences of fear

Enjoying: Star Wars as explained by a 3 year old.

This is all too cute but pretty impressive at the same time - she manages to get the gist of the movie across (not sure how you would go if you'd never seen it of course) and its really interesting to get a sense of the parts of the story that grabbed her attention the most.

She spends a fair bit of time talking about how the sand-people capture r2d2 and c3po (the shiny man) and have a sort of garage sale - except it's with robots.

She steers well clear of the whole Han shot first debate too - got to love the light sabre description as well.

Admiring: Till Nowak's "Salad" (eat your vegies before they eat you)

(Click on the image to view it at full size)

This is a beautiful piece of 3D work that pays tribute to HR Gigers design work for the Alien series of films. There's a fair bit of interesting info on the website about the creation of this image too.

LOLing: Yes we can song parodies

I mentioned back here how impressed I was with the song that Will.I.Am put together paying tribute to Barack Obama which has become a bit of a web sensation.

As with most web things, it hasn't taken long for a couple of piss-takes to arise - one is the kind of video that John McCain (front-running Republican candidate) would put out in response, playing on his statements that the U.S could well be in Iraq a hundred years from now and his poor-taste Beach Boys impression - bomb bomb Iran.



The second is a more generic rich peoples version of the will.i.am song, taking a "no you can't" line.

Sharing: the Meaty Bites diet story

This story just came through the email - gotta love it.

I've got 2 dogs. I bought a large bag of Meaty Bites at Big W and was standing in line at the check-out.

A woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

On impulse, I told her that no, I was starting The Meaty Bites Diet again, although I probably shouldn't because I'd ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 25kgs before I woke in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IV's in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Meaty Bites and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry & that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.

I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a guy who was behind her.

Horrified, she asked if I'd ended up in the hospital in that condition because I had been poisoned by the food. I told her no, it was because I'd been sitting in the middle of the road licking my **** and a car hit me.

I thought one guy was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard as he staggered out the door.

Stupid woman…why else would I buy dog food??

Thanks Flyfinn

LOLing: New Matilda apology to Andrew Bolt

Andrew Bolt is a petty little man columnist in Rupert Murdoch's Herald-Sun newspaper in Melbourne who sprays bile over his favourite imagined foes of the left, climate change believers and the stolen generation. (According to him, it never happened.)

Not surprisingly he was ropable last week when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (still not tired of typing that) apologised to said Stolen Generation on behalf of the government and the parliament.

The left-leaning bloggers at New Matilda published their apology to Andy Pandy shortly afterwards.

I'm sorry we had the blazing audacity to kick John Howard out. I apologise for our flagrant ingratitude towards him for all he did for us, and to you for all you did for him. I'm sorry for that little smile we keep allowing to creep onto our faces. I am so, so sorry for the way we put you on the sidelines.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of you, your fellow Howard-boosters and their descendants, we say sorry. To Bolt and Akerman, Henderson and Windschuttle, for the breaking up of the Liberal leadership, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud right-wing people and a proud culture of denial, dog whistles and xenophobia, we say sorry.

Honestly, Andrew, I’m really and truly sorry for you.

Check it out in full here.

LOLing: De-Rez does Resident Evil

If you're at all familiar with my early video work, you'll know that I'm a fan of the ultra-low budget funnies and de-rez are my new heroes in this realm.

They poke a little fun at the Resident Evil series of games in this video - a series highly regarded for sparking the zombie craze of the last decade or so in pop-culture and also for having a few quirky aspects (although possessing great game play)

Enjoying: How to behave on an internet forum

How To Behave On An Internet Forum

Drinking: in rooftop bars

High atop stately Curtin House in the heart of Melbourne lies The Rooftop Cinema (and bar) - a funky place to watch movies when the sun goes down and drink with the cool young sorts of Melbourne. (Why they let me in I'll never know)



A few floors below is the equally groovy and highly tasty Thai/Asian restaurant Cookie, with all its done up old building stylings and tasty tasty food. (And you know they're cool because there is absolutely zero signage for the place at streetlevel)

Enjoying: Melbourne laneway art

Sneaking: in a quick post during a workshop

Just about to run out of internetz - but in Melbourne, had a top day yesterday - saw the Nick Cave memorabilia show, went to a sustainable living festival and had tasty Indonesian tucker for dinner.

LOLing: Yahtzee on Sim City Societies

Yahtzee is a very funny, very sharp and very fast talking games reviewer (and game maker) who has rapidly developed a cult following on The Escapist website.

He uses simple graphical animations to illustrate his fast rant reviews and claims the great Charlie Brooker (who I've mentioned here before) as a stylistic influence.

A couple of random quotes might start to give you a sense of his style:

Japanese RPGs and me have this little understanding: I don't play them and they can suck as much as they like somewhere far away from me.

# It's kinda like if Tim Schafer knocked up David Lynch in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory and he did meth right up until the birth

The day I fork out seventy bucks for an expansion pack is the day I swallow razor wire, pull the end out of my arse and floss myself to death!

(You can find the complete index of reviews here)

This week he looked at Sim City Societies, skewering it mercilessly and pointing out that it makes it easy to see how simple it would be to set up totalitarian societies.



He has also previously done great reviews of The Orange Box (including my fave game Portal), Guitar Hero III and Halo 3, among others.

Watching: Underbelly

Not living in Victoria at the moment, I watched the new Channel 9 Melbourne gangland wars drama Underbelly on tv last night. (It's currently banned from broadcast in Victoria at the moment by Supreme Court order - for fear of prejudicing an upcoming murder trial. Evidently the legal system isn't familiar with satellite receivers or internet download)

Having seen it, I'm not entirely sure that the court didn't slap a ban on the show for more aesthetic reasons - in spite of the interesting subject matter (and prevalence of gratuitous breasts), it's a bit of a pedestrian and slightly dull affair.

Having lived in Melbourne during most of the time this "war" was going on, it was good to see familiar locations on screen and to get some insight into the back story of the news stories and names I vaguely recognised - though who knows how accurate this show actually is. (I'm not sure if I was telling the story of a bunch of people who seem prone to whacking one another whether I'd be as accurate as possible or as flattering as possible.)



Channel Nine has gone the absolute hack in promoting their new flagship show (and are no doubt loving the court injunction sick for the notoriety it offers) and you can see that in the above trailer. Shame that all of their splash quotes (one helluva show, landmark drama, showcases Australia's best talent) really don't say anything much in particular. (And two of those come from Melbourne's newspaper of the lowest common denominator, the Herald Sun)

Aside from a few (admittedly talented) key names - Vince (Lantana) Collosimo (already killed), Marcus (Good guys, Bad guys) Graham and Simon (Phoenix) Westaway and Frankie (every channel 9 shit-com in the last 2 decades) J Holden, the majority of the cast for me was a who's-he rather than a who's-who.

But that's neither here nor there really as the proof is in the pudding - sadly, with relatively cliched writing and plotlines, the best a good actor can do is not look like a complete goose. The story is pulled together with occasional scene-setting voice-overs but if you are going to use voice-overs to tell your story (generally a lazy strategy), they need to be smart and punchy.

Gyton Grantley put in the best consistent performance of the show with his slightly unsettling, slightly dopey seeming and fairly chilling Carl Williams, creating a real sense of someone who will get darker and more interesting as the show progresses.

Vince Colosimo did the best with what he had to work with , Frankie J played a template harried cop and the women were almost entirely in the background.

I've just noticed on the Underbelly "the biggest all-star cast on Australian tv" photo page - which doesn't actually offer bios of any of the "stars" that Dan Wyllie (below) is in the cast, which gives me some hope - he's done a lot of interesting work, though generally always as a petty crim.



The Sopranos or Phoenix (gritty Melbourne 90s cop show) it ain't - it might bear some comparison to Blue Murder over time and in fairness, it's usually a good idea to give shows a few weeks to get settled so I guess I'll keep watching.

Interestingly, one of the stories in The Age today mentioned that hundreds of Victorians were skirting the Supreme Court ban by hitting the file-sharing sites but some had found downloading slow because so many people were trying to access the files at the same time. (Not quite appreciating that the more people downloading the file at the same time, the faster the downloads are due to the shared distribution nature of these sites)

Watching: the apology

Update: Here is a link to the text of the formal apology.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd just finished apologising to the Stolen Generations - a symbolic event that has been a long time coming.

It's hard to go into a lot of detail - both his speech and the reply from Brendan Nelson (leader of the opposition) were lengthy - but here are some impressions.

Overall, a beautiful, powerful and worthy speech from Rudd that teared me up a little when the "sorry" words actually came out. He didn't dance around the subject or quibble with the matter, just copped it on the chin on behalf of parliaments and governments past and set forward to make a new and better path.

Rudd generally kept things statesmanlike, just occasionally aiming the odd jab here and there at the former Howard Government's refusal to apologise and on the odd occasion he tried throwing in a little, relatively irrelevant humour when he talked about the way the post-reformation Christian issues were resolved in the way Aboriginal children were assigned churches on the basis of which line they were in.

Brendan Nelson on the other hand started well but then had a total mishmash of a speech which seemed a little laden with dog-whistle politics and slightly lessened the whole day and its focus. He made telling points about how wrong and damaging the child removals were and how important it was to make things right but then insisted on throwing in a series of qualifiers about how the people doing it thought they were doing it for the right reasons and that children were being removed from lives of squalor.

He then went on to imply that many of the problems are their own due to alcohol, language issues, corruption, nepotism and choosing to sit outside the economic mainstream. He also banged out about how we shouldn't condemn the white folk of this age because many of them went to fight in the war?!? Rather missing the point of the whole thing. Throw in a hearty, heavily political defence of the Howard NT intervention and a call for the PM to continue that and you have something that the more you think about it sounds less and less like an apology as you go on.

Chunt.

Oddly enough though, his last line sounded almost like he was putting forward an apology not just on behalf of himself but on behalf of all Australians, so who knows what he's on about.

All in all though, about bloody time.

(I'll try to put video up when I can find some)

Appreciating: Six word memoirs

NPR (National Public Radio) in the U.S has a nifty multimedia project up on their website at the moment where they have asked 26 notable cultural figures to put an image of themselves together with 6 words to sum up their lives.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that the only person I had heard of was Harvey Pekar (cartoonist/author of American Splendor)



Some of the people they used though - fortunately for me - didn't really register with Google either. Of the 10 entries for Carletta Perkins, 5 of them were referencing this page with the quote about cake. (Great way to be remembered :)

Interested in: Guitar Rising

Guitar Rising claims to be the next step up from the wildly popular (and super-fun) Guitar Hero series of games. It's PC based software that allows you to plug in your actual electric guitar to your computer and use a Guitar Hero-esque interface to measure your success in playing a range of different songs.

A big question is obviously - which songs. If you take a quick look at the song-list in this promo video, there's nothing that I've even remotely heard of but the website does mention that they are currently working on deals for song titles, so it could well just be the working list.



If it lives up to its promise, this could be a very exciting development in learning guitar. At the moment, its scheduled for release later in the year.

LOLing: The Wicker Man (2006) as a rom-com

Nice mashup job here from JasonSly on YouTube of the trailer for the Hollywood remake of the classic horror film The Wicker Man as a light hearted comedy.

Aspiring: to be used as a disparaging analogy in Parliament

Ok so just when I thought that the naughty party boy (a.k.a Corey Worthington/Delaney) saga was over, his name has popped up once more and made me realise that I have a dream I'd never known of before.

To be used as a clumsy pop-culture analogy in Parliament.

Here's the story from the ABC news website.

Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has compared the Coalition's attitude to inflation to the Victorian teenager Corey Worthington's views on parties.

The comparison came as Mr Tanner announced more than $600 million worth of cuts to programs promised by the Coalition during the election campaign.

Corey Worthington came to national attention in January when he refused to apologise when a party he organised grew out of control. He also became known for distinctive yellow sunglasses.

Mr Tanner says the Coalition has taken an irresponsible attitude to inflation.

"Like teenagers whose party just keeps getting longer and longer and bigger and bigger and ignoring the consequences, they've ignored 20 Reserve Bank warnings on inflation, 10 successive interest rate increases and they just kept partying," he said.

"Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull are still looking at the Australian economy through those big yellow shades."

Watching: Super Tuesday unfold

Yep, more American election stuff - today (yesterday - whatever, it's a timezone/dateline thing) is the day that voters in 24 states around the U.S vote for delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions which choose the candidates for the Presidential elections in November.

The delegates are tied to the existing candidates, so by default it's a vote for who the states want to be the candidate. The Democrats use proportional representation in their voting, so most of the votes are likely to be split down the middle (between Obama and Clinton) but the Republicans tend to have more of a first across the line gets all the goodies process. (Similar to their respective politics I guess)

Voting is still going on and the counting continues - the only news is that the Gomer Pyle looking Republican mo-fo Mike Huckabee has won West Virginia, grabbing 18 delegates. Um, whoo - or should I say, well gollleeeeee.





Updates to come.

There was a pretty interesting story on Hillary on Foreign Correspondent on the ABC last night - even though I have issues with her support for the Iraq war and moralistic objections to video games, I'm feeling better about her now as a Barack alternative. (Particularly in the way she infuriates the conservatives like few others have done before)

LOLing: Buffalax's world music "subtitles"

Shane put me onto some highly amusing YouTube videos that were put together by someone called Buffalax and I've been having a good old chuckle ever since.

It doesn't sound as funny when you describe it, suffice to say that he/she has taken music videos from around the world - Bollywood, Japanese tv, German pop - and added English subtitles of what the songs sound like in English.

This means that you get a string of nonsense lyrics such as "my loony bun is fine benny lava" and "I'd love to see you pee on us tonight".

Enjoy.