YOU CAN'T TRIPLE-STAMP A DOUBLE STAMP!

hello my pretties! Long time no post. My mum got sick in May, so that's kinda been happening to us for the last few months, as well as filling out a lot of forms for uni and gardening for my nonna. And feeding someone else's cat, that's about all I've been doing. And walking. And watching movies and stuff. I'm not one of those people that goes out and BUYS HOUSES when they get bored or gets like 500 NEW JOBS with the exact same awful workmates. I'm sorry. I'm just in awe.

It's so weird, I write a lot of posts in my head and that kind of satisfies the need; helps me organise my thoughts. Never write them out though. But I need to get into the typing habit. Yes I would dearly like to watch The Passion of Joan of Arc that is in the DVD player right now when I have the exact right window of time but instead I'm posting because

TURTLENECK ALERT!!!

( HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS, TURTLENECK ALERT )

So it goes.

goddamn! goddamn! I can hear the Clipsal 500 from my house! I can hear the Clipsal 500 from my office! I hear it on the bus and when I have lunch! It is this nightmare midnight mosquito and I am getting close to doing something drastic!

Me, the other day, leaving a crowded food-court Muffin Break prize clutched in hand:

Muffin, for me
Muffin, for youuuu
I'll have, a COUGHSPLATTERHACK

I just had the greatest psychodrama play out outside my kitchen window.

We've got this female blackbird missing the feathers on the back of her neck who loves to spread all the pea straw in my tiny speck of garden all over the concrete of the public area of out block of units. I watched her do this for some time before she hopped around to the birdbath and spent ages having a drink and a bath. Then this massive bully of a Red Wattlebird came over and chased her off, told himself how great he was, had a bit of a hop around and a drink, coughed and shat at the same time, then jumped in and had a bath too. Meanwhile a this pair of White-plumed Honeyeaters that nest in the tree a couple of meters away are hovering around gossiping, flying up to the birdbath and fluttering away in a big show of wingspan and agility (they are tiny in comparison) until they annoy him enough and he fucks off. Then one of the honeyeaters flops about in the water for a while while the other sits in the jasmine and chirps encouragement and shouts at a New Holland Honeyeater that looks suspicious until the bloody blackbird comes back, kicks them out and has another bath. Then when she finally left I ran outside and refilled the bath because they'd managed to spill all the water out.

Last night we were at my mum's, who lives next to a big conservation park, and we saw a koala in the tree across the road. When we went to have a closer look (very cute!) there were Corellas grazing and a bunch of Rosellas hanging around enjoying being colourful and just all sorts, a lot of noise and life and I was very wistful thinking about my own little concrete-bordered patch on a major freight road. I never see many birds out there except for my pesky blackbird and the WPHs and the odd feral pigeon, and I've never seen them have baths, even during the heatwave.

Since we moved in I've been trying to make our garden bird-friendly, especially native-friendly, especially especially those natives that don't adapt too well to urban environments. Not doing too well on the last bit, gotta get more nectar plants and seed grasses, and it's not an ideal area for it, but after this morning's little display I am cheered immensely!

Tuesday       Dry. Mostly sunny.                     Min 20    Max 36
Wednesday     Dry. Mostly sunny.                     Min 20    Max 38
Thursday      Dry. Sunny.                            Min 22    Max 39
Friday        Dry. Windy.                            Min 28    Max 39
Saturday      Dry. Partly cloudy.                    Min 20    Max 38
Sunday        Dry. Sunny.                            Min 19    Max 38
Monday        Dry. Sunny.                            Min 17    Max 34

it has been like this FOREVER guys, and it's KILLING ME.

Jesus Christ, FUCKING FINALLY. I heard on the radio that even the Libs are turning around and realising that their previous policy has been completely inadequate. The shadow for indigenous affairs even wants it to be a joint apology!

Nice timing, considering the frustrating debate going on over at Andrew G's blog (oh, shut up. You'd go him).

Howdy y'all!

It's lovely to read about your Christmas dramas and food overdoses and peaceful moments. I had a lovely albeit exhausting and expensive one! Bumface wins Christmas because she got me the entire Aubrey-Maturin series in a lovely five-volume set. They're beautiful!

And now, it's yuletide and dssecretsanta time! I'll be house/dogsitting at a place with DIALUP for a week so I'd best get in as much as I can, now.

Hey, I will probably be missing for the next five or so weeks as I try desperately to make myself work on my thesis. I may hit the flist occasionally but yeah, if you need to reach me, get to me through my lj email or comment here or whatever. Y'all be good now.

My first stadium concert by Jessie aged 22.

I'm not the world's biggest Robbie Williams fan, don't know half the songs or lyrics. I'm like, "And through it AAAAALL, be mmmmmmm... PROTECTION, a lot of love and AFFECTION, whether it COMES to CALL," but because I have no memory of Take That I've always thought him pretty much a dude. He played tonight in Adelaide, and I went with sixty thousand other people, and I was quite moved. He's pretty much got it all, Robbie: he's a singer, standup comedian, slapstick comedian, dancer, stuntman, stripper, choirboy, rentboy, dork.

Everyone was a bit nutty from being out in the sun, Robbie included, and after he got everyone fired up with a few songs and a lot of, "PERTH'S SHIT! SYDNEY'S SHIT! FOOTBALL TEAMS! CRICKET! ADELAIDE ROCKS!" which is the perfect way to wind up an Adelaide crowd, the atmosphere just went to eleven. We all got really screamy and appreciative and Robbie started on these long comic rants with rude impressions of Elton John. He belted out each song and ran around the stage like a maniac and gave us every opportunity to cheer and clap and scream. By the end he seemed quite genuinely overwhelemed, and the giant screens showed him looking out at us with love and gratefulness and a bit of awe. He kept telling us how great we were, which was nice, and that this was the best show of the tour. He told us that we'd reminded him of why he does this and that when he wanted to retire after this especially long tour like he did after every tour, he'd think of us and get back to work. So I think that was quite special and I'm glad I went.

My favourite bit was probably first song of the encore, Let Me Entertain You, which went off and had everyone in the stands dancing.

As exhausting as it looks, next time I want to be standing in that first half of the oval. It was fascinating to watch the stadium fill up from my Godlike perch. It was like time-lapse photography in slow-forward because it was of a scale that you only ever see time-lapse stuff in (ever notice how you never see the middle-ground in time-lapse? Oh, a cell or a flower, a city or cloudscape, sure, but a room? the width of a city street? Those're the dimensions of *my* life, at least). The stage was a huge lightshow intricately planned with plenty of pyrotechnics.

One of the things that really struck me during the first half was how he got into the naughty/playful so-nonironic-it-becomes-ironic-and-then-goes-back sexuality of it, the performance aspect of it. He's not a stripper, really, he's a burlesque or cabaret performer. Just the scarf coming off is a crucial moment of the night, the first big scream during the show. Nipples are to be teased, not half-bared through a soulful and windblown unbuttoned shirt (that horrid fake babyish eroticism of boy bands or the simpering slut-eyes of so many women in pop). He's a really high-end hooker.

In conclusion: SIXTY THOUSAND PEOPLE ALL LOOKING IN ONE DIRECTION. Incidentally probably the most exhilarating thing was my first real Mexican Wave. That shit's tidal.

Fuck me! You've gotta love a show where the question is to genocide or not to genocide. How does BSG manage to be the most magnificent, scary, heartbreaking, disturbing, gorgeous, mindfucky show week after week? And I thought Oz was about heavy issues!

Only quibble with the latest: why did none of them consider the obvious possiblility that the Cylons would have developed a vaccine as well? I mean, they're all nutters, but they're smart too, and they've got Baltar. And their crazysciencemachines. If they survived they would be even more SUPERPISSED than ever.

As for real life, have mostly been Laurening and doing vollie stuff and reading. In between, catching up with some amazing tv: Deadwood and the Wire and Rescue Me in particular. Deadwood is crazyfunny and moving and amazingly acted, the Wire is really addictive and supersmart, and Rescue Me is....Irish and profane. Still enjoying SPN immensely (207 is one of the best eps in a while!) although slowly backsliding on House and VM. Also catching mup on Gilmore Girls with Lainy, which is another champion show. About to embark on the new Doctor Who. It's research for my honours, honest!. Also rereading Dark Tower series. Um, that's research too. So I guess I'm going through an away-from-the-intarweb phase, which happens every so often, although I've been hanging out at TWOP a lot. For, like, research. I will stop being such a sucky lj girlfriend soon, promise!