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That appears to have been some kind of Easter weekend. Wellwell. I went to the Easter show with Anna and looked at a lot o stuff and stuffed myself full of sweets and bought a showbag and a surprise present for Anna and didn’t go on any rides because by that point the fairy floss had started reacting with the chips-and-mayo and somewhere in there was a hostage crisis with the cokes threatening to kill the chocolate thickshake and the cobs o corn were in there bargaining strongly for an early release… which some might argue is the ideal gastric environment for fast violent disorienting rides, but by carefully not bringing up the subject, I managed to avoid engaging Anna’s enthusiasm and my lunch. Phew.

Fillums
I did a bit of work on the OUAT web page, yet to be posted, but I went through and did screen captures of almost every shot of the film. So expect the annotated script some time this year. I want to finish the OUAT work before I post to John Nephew regarding releasing the film, as the webpage will hopefully engage a bit of interest.

Meanwhile, I rented the DVD of “The Cell”, a beautifully filmed movie with a negligable plot, and went through all the extras. As it happens, the director was only really interested in the look and sound of the film at the expense of the plot, so I suppose they got their wish pretty well. In any case, it was stunning.

Then we saw “Best Of Show”, an outstandingly well written film by Christopher Guest. There was a trifle too much humour based on embarassment, but enough laugh-out-loud moments to make up for it. Crackling dialogue, wonderful performances, cute dogs. Hm, a bit of a perfunctory review, but it’ll have to do, sorry…

Old blog

This old blog. I wrote one.
I pressed “publish” ad nausium.
With a small crash, big crash, backup on the go,
this old blog stayed incognito.

But now blogger seems to be working, so here ya go. It’s from Thursday.

Sorted
I have sorted it out. I’m definitely awake. The trains were running verrrry slowly today and it took me a while to get to work - but I did get here in the end, so that’s a bit of a giveaway. If it was a dream, I’d still be on the train, either trapped with a homocidal maniac or possibly going into a tunnel.

Still, if I’m awake, there are still some puzzles. Why did my dream-log from yesterday appear in my waking life? And why did I have to run through a big vat of treacle pursued by lions on snowshoes to open the front door of the office building, which was normally powered by giant intelligent rats (lead by magicrat, who it has to be admitted, is over-rat-ted), but who had escaped into the air conditioning? At least the air conditioning is cool now. Normally it would slightly warmer than room temperature in Summer, but now that the temperature outside is brisk, it has gone out of its way to correct the deficiency of high summer and has delivered us balmy ten degree interior weather. Carlos, my evil next-desk worker, has killed Pierre, and is now wearing his skin for warmth. If I was still dreaming, this would be disturbing, as Pierre is supposed to be my good side.

eester
Gosh, it has slightly crept up on me. And I don’t really have any plans, either, which is a bit foolish. Most friends are disappearing for the weekend, so I guess Anna and I can catch up on some snuggling. And maybe we can go to some parties and watch lots of DVDs and chill out for a few days, away from the stresses of respective works.

Rambling Rot

Haha! Allow me to regale you with the tale of how I got two quotes for the car repair ($3000 for a dented bumper?!) and thus arrived at work very late indeed only to find out that the NRMA could have handled everything with no cost to us ’cause the crash wasn’t our fault and therefore it was all a bit of a waste of time.

But then I woke up! Actually, no I didn’t, I’m still asleep. Wait a minute… if this is a dream, when did I start getting so literal? Is my subconscious on holiday? Usually I get dreams about flying and failing exams ’cause it took so long to tie my shoelaces and I’m running really slowly away from the monsters towards the cliff but I can’t stop. Y’know, obvious stuff.
This one is obscure. There’s Carlos, my evil next-desk worker sitting next to me, grinning maniacally. Does he represent my dark side? What about the puns? And does that mean that Pierre, to my left, represents the light side? Hey! He’s getting up and going home! That can’t be a good sign. Wake up! Wake up!

Hey you, out there. Could you do me a favour? I think you represent “the crowd”, so if you just give a big yell all together, it should startle me awake and you can dissolve back into the dream world from whence you came. Wouldn’t that be so much better than what you’re doing now?

It’s the little things that make a difference
I’m just getting more and more respect for the real estate agents managing my ex-flat. They just did the final inspection, and extracted from me a promise to return the toilet brush that I stole, and also to clean the shower cubicle a little better this time. But it was otherwise fine. No worries! I’ll just do it after roleplaying tonight, eh? They’re going to drop the keys off in the letterbox and I can return the brush and clean the shower cubicle (hm… brush… clean shower… I think I’ve worked out a time saver here…) and then I’ll drop the key back in the letterbox and the new people will move in tomorrow. Um. Maybe I should return the key to the real estate agent. Anyone could take the key and walk right into the flat and steal the toilet brush. And that would be fatal to my rental bond.

Rental bond, James Rental Bond. It would be fatal to you, Mr. Rental Bond. Fading to black, Mr. Renton Boy. You have the beasht in your shites. Choose life. Choose sleep. How come I’m so sleepy in my dream? Don’t I have enough dream caffeine and dream sugar in my system?

Spit!
Ah yes… my last waking moments, getting the new Spit album onto the computer from the minidisc, which I judged to be fairly important ’cause Evan’s erased some of the tracks from his HD multitrack recorder. Anyway, they’re just about ready for some CDs to be cut. Soon, soooon…

More errands

What makes me think that you’d be interested in a list of the errands that I have to do tomorrow? Perhaps it is the fact that you’re reading this blog in the first place, which by track record tends to contain this kind of thing. So if you’re tuning in for the first time, and don’t like lists of things that someone else is doing, tune right out again by all means, and certainly no hard feelings.
It’s not as if I can trace who you are, is it? Not as if there’s a real person behind this writing, watching as you read. Filling you up with my boring but expensive semi-memes, and complaining all the while about the price of thought nowadays and what’s the government going to do with it? Does the Middle-East have a monopoly on stories? What about the Arabian Nights? Huh? Ya ever think about that? Ya ever think about someone else for a change? Ya ever think about me?

I think about you all the time.

Yes, well let’s not get into that.

So what’s on this list?

Well, there’s the old “getting quotes on the car repair tomorrow morning”.

A classic. That’s from the old “having a minor prang in which you stopped because there was a car ahead of you turning right, but the car behind failed to stop quite in time and now there’s a bit of a dent in the rear bumper of Anna’s car, and by the way that was on the day of the final filming of ‘Bullet Hole’ which was filmed at my old flat leading me nicely into the next errand on the list”, isn’t it?

Quite. The next errand on the list is, “get the keys of the now empty flat to the landlord”. This is a bit of a cheat though.

That’s because you’ve already done this one, haven’t you.

Quite correct, yes. However, the list would be fairly thin without it. Hardly a list at all.

So - the next item?

There are no more items. Oh, there’s “Play on the PS2, thus getting your money’s worth”. That’s a bit of a chore. And there’s “Send some flowers to Mum for her birthday and call her up tonight”, but I’ve already done half of that.

Still, it contributes more to the list that the previous couple of items. Shall we leave it at that?

Why not.

Moved Out

I finished the move on Saturday. The steam cleaner came, I got rid of all the weird skid marks on the walls - some were definitely caused by the guitar case, but what the hell is that one about two metres up? What was I *doing*? - and I cleaned up the kitchen and bathroom. Next I return the keys and they do the inspection and it’s all over this Thursday. Yay! The flat is dead! Long live the new house! With lots of new junk.

Playstation 2
Ted & I played playstation games in lieu of going for a bikeride on Saturday morning. On the bright side, all the games we played were very active - we did some tag-team fightin’, some competitive snowboardin’, and some race-car drivin’. Would suggesting that they count as exercise be a tired and somewhat lame heheh excuse for feeble humour? Who cares? *I’ve* got a playstation.

Memento
Anna and I saw “Memento” last night. It’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen, and once again, it comes down to the script. Fast, subversive, always a couple of steps ahead, and very, very smart. This is the kind of film that makes me dream about film-making (which I did last night and the night before, for that matter - something about an enormous circus tent and a huge crowd of extras and amazing camera-work and lighting all coming together in just a weekend where we decided “what the hell, let’s film something” and started doing some workshops on improvisation…) It’s the kind of film that I want to make. It has serious things to say about the human condition and just falls on the right side of pretentiousness. It has kick-arse acting. It made me think, and is still making me think. It has enthused me even more about making “Swap”, especially because Memento had Guy Pearce in it (and brilliant), who was also in “Dating the Enemy”, a rather insipid Australian film that inspired me to write (what I have written so far about) “Swap”. Rave!

Massage
Anna’s business looks likely to take a turn for the better - the Hilton referred a guest to Energetic Healing and the guest was very happy indeed. More business from them this week? We’ll see.

Moving Out

The timetable for moving out of the flat has accelerated - I’m hoping to be out by this weekend. We took Anna’s receptionist Andy around the flat last weekend and he was very keen to rent it. I got a call yesterday saying: “Congratulations, the flat is rented, when can you move out?”. As it turned out, this was someone else again - the real estate agents had been showing the place as well, and gotten some interest. So I quickly called up Andy and told him to get his application in quick smart to have any chance… but I suspect that the other lot have pipped him at the post. Oh well. I tried.

That was the internet revolution that was
…is busy, busy, busy. And our stock price has taken a depressing turn for the worse - one year ago it was at roughly UK12.50. Currently it is at about 68p, after a savaging the other day (24% loss in one day). People are smiling grimly and waiting for the tide to turn, as everyone has stock options that are currently worthless. Could be worse. We’ve not gone under, nor are we likely to.

Gin Rummy
I’ve played almost 200 games against the computer now - current score is me - 102, Palm pilot - 84. I think I’ve gotten the hang of this game now.

And speaking of games
My funagain.com order has arrived at last! Last year I ordered a bunch of card and board games through the internet, and specified “shipping” as the mail option, as I didn’t particularly care if it took a couple of months to arrive. Which it did. So, four games: Kuhhandel, Euphrate & Tigres, Wiz-War, and Illuminati Deluxe. The latter two are old favorites from Uni days, Kuhhandel is an extraordinary auction game I played in Adelaide, and E&T is one that I’ve heard a lot about. Now I just need the time to actually play them.

Woah.

That was a pretty busy two weeks… busy with being sick, mostly, but in there was also a house-warming - 40 person fun, with pool-playing, short-film-watching, craptacular BBQ action, and more Greek fooooood than you could shake a kebab at. And there were some spectacularly helpful people to help with setting up and tidying away. Thanks in particular, Fiona! And also Dave and Jimbo and Simon. No, really. And Anna’s friend Irene for her zombie-like but completist washing-up frenzy at about 3:00am.

“You can stop now, Irene, go to sleep”

“I’m… just… about… done…”

“No really, we’d like to sleep too.”

“Just… one… more… plate…”

And thanks everyone for coming along and making it an extra cool time!

Massage message
Anna’s massage business has been steadily ticking over for the last two weeks. There are about two massages a day at the moment, and the word is slowly getting around. The Hilton still hasn’t gotten back to her, but she’s getting a lot of success with a special lunctime offer for half-hour and quarter-hour massages. Soon they’ll have some five-minute discount massages available, and then I predict we’ll see an end to financial difficulties for the next year or so…

Playstation 2
I got a small payrise, but the backdate was long enough that I could suddenly afford a Playstation 2 and a bunch o’ games. So why the hell not? I bought it last Wednesday along with Tekkon Tag Team and Ridge Racer 5. Tekkon is cool, but my god there are a lot of moves and combos. I suppose it’s the legacy of being the latest in a long-running series, but I really wouldn’t be surprised if one of the characters had a “Kitchen Sink” move. Anyway, I’ve made a start on learning the moves for one of the characters - Jun - and at least it has an optional one-on-one game mode.

The PS2 also comes with a DVD player, so I’ve been taking advantage of that, too. Anna’s brothers have a vast DVD collection, and I bought two DVDs too: “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” and “Baraka”, two films that I have no doubt I’ll see more than once. I’m hungry to watch films with director’s commentary turned on. I watched some of “Three Kings” that way last year, and it was way cool.

And then I bought SSX, a snowboarding sim. Lot of fun. Makes me want to go skiing again.

Otherwise…
Otherwise, a nice relaxing couple of weeks with a miserable cold in the middle of it. No work on short films, except that I think I’ve managed to get the flat rented out to someone, so that’s *definitely* the end of filming Bullet Hole when that happens, regardless of what the footage is like.