Thursday, March 25, 2010

That, and being drunk

Almost nothing else makes an idea for a good blog disappear faster than sitting down to write it.

Writing the first sentence and waiting a second, brilliant sentence to appear before losing patience and hitting 'Publish Post'.

Sorry team, I'm pulling this all out from under my fingernails after two hours of study after eight hours of work after six and a half hours of sleep after eight hours of work after six hours of sleep.

After Charlie had a few sick nights last week and I was reminded of the good ol' days back when he was hungry every two hours without fail, I was also reminded that I probably would have traded anything for a solid amount of sleep.
It's not the same heroic feeling of making it through to the morning light when you were a kid. It's not even that hilarious panic that sets in when you trudge home from the pub and look up to see the palest blue leaking into the night and you know you've got work in twelve hours.
It's probably more akin to the inevitable horror that torture victims must experience when they see the bolt-cutters and realise that they have plenty more extremities. Every corner in your body and mind begins feeling like it's been vigorously rubbed with sand-paper and you're just as cheerful about the whole thing too.

5 comments:

  1. Hang in there! It can only get better....right?....right?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh yeah, I've been there. Eyeballs feeling like they've been dipped in honey and rolled in gravel and a face to match....

    It'll pass. Dunno when, but it will. In the meantime there's coffee and the unashamed befriending of work colleagues who are also parents and will therefore offer sympathy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Brocky - Right!

    Kath - Yeah, but the trade-off is hearing about their own little darlings. BOR-ING! Only Charlie is important.

    ReplyDelete
  4. So why are you blogging instead of sleeping? Get to bed! zzzzzz....

    ReplyDelete

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32