Anotherblog

Stockholm

I’m in Stockholm. The weather has (of course) been very nice so far, though we’re inside all the time. At least we’re not in a dingy little basement room - Ikivo are in a very interesting building, a military command centre from the 1800s, which has been renovated in a very ikea kind of way. Enormously high ceilings, gentle lighting with lots of big windows, polished wooden flooring, multicoloured chairs that are somewhat more stylish than functional, etc. I’ve more-or-less adjusted, in that I managed to get a good night’s sleep last night after 30 hours of travel in economy. The travel was really, really boring, though I did write most of a Film Forensics review.

Anyway, must get back to the meeting.

Comfy socks

My last minute packing for Sweden has included a quick trip to Marrickville Metro for a couple of pairs of nice warm socks. I still have an instinctual adverse reaction to things like socks, literature and vegetables, based on childhood scorn + inertia. It is, therefore, nice to finally come out and say that I really treasure good socks. Putting on socks is one of the first things I do each day, and until now, I have always had two favorite pairs of socks, which means that I only get to wear them on two days of the week. But oh, the pleasure when I do! This is also exacerbated by the fact that I wear the favorite socks right away, so they’re often fresh from the line, and even more pleasurable to wear than the usual grotty ones.

So, this morning I hunted down and found three more pairs of the same socks. For reference, they are the holeproof explorers with inner cotton lining. For some reason, whenever I looked for them before, they only had the regular nylon variety, which just aren’t the same. I shall keep one pair of the good new socks to change into at the half-way mark of the plane trip. That will give me something to look forward to. My old self might have disdained such sock-related pleasures, but now I can easily see how getting a really good pair of socks for Christmas might be a cause for happiness.

And so, off to Sweden. It will be 5-12 degrees each day, which sounds lovely. My toes shall be toasty warm.

Optical illusion

Ah, links. Once you start posting them, it’s hard to stop, especially when they’re reasonably cool. This one has been doing the rounds for a while, but the first time I saw it, while I was impressed, I didn’t realise just how much I was being fooled - there is no green dot at all. And all this time I thought there was.

http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

Stockholm Syndrome

I’m off to Sweden on Saturday to collect my Nobel prize, or possible my Novel prize, or perhaps even just some delicious[1], expensive Noble Gas. Any would be fine and better than what I’ll really be doing; the visit is going to be frenetic and mostly inside darkened rooms, hopefully drinking schnapps and eating pickled herring, but more likely working on world-wide-web arcana and not doing the aforementioned (schnapps, herring, Nobel etc.) If anything exciting happens, I aim to be pleasantly surprised. At the moment, stress and caffeine have combined to create a kind of perfect storm of distraction and procrastination, a state which I have come to accept and even rather enjoy: my creativity goes way up whenever I have better and more important things to do, as I have probably mentioned many times before.

Thus, I’d like to announce that despite my previous intentions and every sensible impulse, I will, in fact, be doing Nanowrimo again this year. However, it shall be Nanowrimo with a difference. This year, I will write a film script of standard (90 page) length, based on my previous Nanowrimo novel “The Old Woman And the Sea of Washing”. And I will attempt to polish the script and, on the First of December, send it to someone who would be in a position to turn it into a movie, like (I suppose) the AFI. All this, ladies and gentlemen, despite the fact that I shall be spending the first several days of November in Stockholm locked in the aforementioned herring-bar. I am unbelievably excited about this script. I have raved to friends about it before, but every time I think about it, now, I think of improvements. The protagonist has already changed age from 58 to 26, as required by the any-chance-of-being-made-into-a-movie fairies; I’ve disposed of the quixotic choice of making much of the dialogue in a made-up language; and I am content and happy to aim this movie at the hypothetical average moviegoer. This script comes pre-sold-out! And me too! And I’m loving it!

And that’s about all the Stockholm Syndrome we have time for today, ladies and gentlemen. If you have enjoyed reading this, don’t forget to start your own weblog and post about your daily grind. You know you want to.

[1] In the same way that water is delicious.

Button-pressing

Imagine, if you will, a figurine that has a button on it. When anyone presses the button, mechanisms deep within the figurine cause it to repeat a stock phrase of some sort - “Now let’s forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice cream”, for example. I have noticed that there are a number of things that people can say which are equivalent to such a button press - a Conditioned Response.

Examples:

Q: “How’s the time going?”
A: “Forward.”

Q: “Shave and a haircut…”
A: “TWO BITS!”

Q: “I presume…”
A: “To presume is to make a pre out of su and… um. Never mind.”

I am rather susceptible to this kind of Conditioned Response, which is unfortunate, because they reveal layers of idiocy I’d rather keep concealed. There is another kind of button-pressing, far worse, which is the Compelled Response. This occurs when someone says something that you feel compelled to respond to, even though your views are well-known on the topic and you’re not actually saying anything new and it’s not going to change anybody’s mind or lead to more interesting topics. A level of improvisation is allowed in the Compelled Response, but it should essentially be your stock phrases writ large.

Examples:

Q: “Solar panels costs more energy to create than they make back in their entire lifetime.”
A: “Well, that used to be true in 1970, but things have progressed since then - nowadays, they make back the energy cost within two years, which given that they have an average twenty-five year lifespan isn’t bad, and…”

Q: “So, how much does Jar-jar Binks suck, eh?”
A: “He is almost too simple a target, isn’t he? It’s almost as though Lucas finished the script, realised it sucked, and needed something to distract the hatred from every other aspect of the film…”

And then there’s the combination of Conditioned Response and Compelled Response, which can be nigh-impossible to resist:

Q: “So, what’s wrong with killing whales, anyway? They’re just big stupid fish.”
A: “They’re not fish! They’re a species of INSECT! And they feed on BANANAS! But seriously, are you aware that…”

Anna’s Mum vs. A Telemarketer

A couple of days ago, Anna’s Mum answered the phone at the same time as the answering machine started to record. Thus, we have a unique transcript of what occurred.

Pics from Lindeman Island

Here are some pics from Lindeman Island, courtesy of Marco.

You can just make out the feathers indicating that I managed to get three bullseyes, though I did not shoot from the range suggested by the photograph. Note also that although I have three “bullseyes”, all of them are in the outermost yellow ring.

My flushed appearance is the result of my having come second in a table-tennis competition, and having won a silver medal. I didn’t do particularly well in the final - the score was about 21-13. He had a rather good forehand topspin serve. The red-back spider t-shirt is one of my favorite t-shirts, manufactured by Marco’s company Cueldee. In the archery competition, I became known as “redback” amongst a group of highly competitive scotswomen.

That’s Marco and me in the middle, in mid-applause at something-or-other. The ones in blue or purple are guests, the others are the trapeze professionals. The two fellows in blue on the right had come to Club Med many times, and did very advanced transfers.

Laughter and joy

Just to show that I am perfectly capable of dishing it out (if not taking it), I would like to offer some of my quantity surveying regarding a workmate who has a laugh that is somewhere between a donkey, and the sound that Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lector made after his “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti” line.

Let me first say that it is very nice that this fellow has such a jolly time at work: I certainly don’t mean to diminish the sense of joy that he feels from moment to moment in his interactions with his fellow humans. My unnecessarily snarky comments are merely a reflection of my own bitterness and sense of mortality, and, should the target be reading this and suddenly recognise himself, he ought to feel no embarassment, but rather pity for my small-minded obsessiveness exposed by the following observations.

So, in approximately half an hour of meeting, he laughed thirty-seven distinct times. I should note that I only started quantity surveying after a particularly egregious episode of laughter, a giggle that simmered, and occasionally boiled over, for a full minute. Of the thirty-seven, thirty of the times were a full-blooded bray of joy with all optional extras included, and the remaining seven consisted only of the f-f-f-fava sucking sounds (which, honestly, I thought would consist of the majority of the laughs).

But he did not laugh alone. A full fourteen of these thirty-seven laughs were shared with at least one other person. Co-incidentally, the next laughiest individual recorded fourteen laughs during this time. And there were four instances in which someone else laughed, but he did not.

That he was bountiful in his laughter is without question, but he was also generous. A mere eight of the thirty-seven instances were times in which he laughed at his own enunciations. Indeed, although I did not seek to provoke him for the purposes of getting more impressive-sounding statistics, things I said caused him to laugh nine times. Regrettably, I did not record other statistics regarding the causes of his laughter, but I do not think my efforts were particularly amusing to him. He just laughs a lot, in a moderately indiscriminatory way.

As is often the way, when an individual proves exceptional in some regard, others around them often shrink. A leaderly person will draw those around her to conform in her presence; an incoherent fellow will cause others nearby to enunciate with greater clarity. Perhaps it is our goatish natures, or a kind of desire to not dwell in an intellectual niche already bursting with vibrant activity.

Anyhoo. During the meeting, I laughed not at all. Now, I have my headphones on, and am content and happy listening to Gorillaz, safe in the knowledge that the volume will block out all but the most proximate of exploding volcanos. Now, what’s the next song? Ah, “Feel Good Inc.”

Conflict

Apropos of not very much at all, I’ve been thinking about conflict. I very rarely get into conflicts with people, and when I do, I try hard to be reasonable and not personal, and keep things as friendly as possible (as do, I think, most of my peers). I think I’ve managed to get get through life fairly successfully this way, with a minimum of burning grudges and simmering resentment (which are the most likely possible side-effects of being non-confrontational).

Unfortunately, this leaves me ill-equipped to deal with people who are more accustomed to conflict. When situations rise to the level of “robust exchange of views” or “mild criticism of something I have done” or “unreasonable request”, the reasoning centres of my brain take a holiday, leaving me rather incoherent. I can be perfectly in the right, but be totally unable to articulate how this is the case, until the half-hour or so has passed that is required for me to calm down. Then I can come up with dozens of things to say.

Now, I don’t think I’ve risen above the level of the horoscope prediction here - everyone has more difficulty putting arguments forward when they’re under pressure - but I think I have unusually low levels of immunity. People like Alistair R. or Dave V., can argue skillfully and coherently (and, especially in Alistair’s case, aggressively) while under attack. I suspect the only way to get better is through practice, but I’m not willing to go through the aggrivation required.

I suspect I’ll always be less than perfectly sensible when incensed. At least I don’t just give in nowadays.

Rock-scissors-paper

Very occasionally, I am unable to resist posting links. Here is one such occasion - the 25-way rock-scissors-paper:

http://www.umop.com/rps.htm