It may actually be filled with some kind of beer

I passed it in. All 23,000 words.*


And the most exciting thing I could think about for the whole process was flicking through it before I let it go and noticing that I had actually gotten up to 8 footnotes and there it was, sitting down the bottom of page more-than-4, intelligently informing the reader that if they wanted more information, they could squint down at the helpful little 10 point font.

Yes, it was a reference to my new favourite long-term study/internet whimsy site, but, darn it all, it was useful:

8 This tendency for middle-class Australians to align themselves with images of hardship often followed by deserved success has been noted and documented in great detail for comic effect in Things Bogans Like (McSween, Hubbard et al., 2010).

In semi-related news: someone rear-ended me yesterday and, as well as paying for everything, bought me this delicious bottle of wine.



*Calm down. It was just the literature review. I've still got the rest of the actual thesis to go. You know: the part with my ideas instead of someone else's.

There simply aren't enough Xmas present gags

Dear everyone,

I'm waiting for a Powerpoint to load and send so I can practise my first ever lecture to students, but that's not important right now. I was Googling for old school photos to use in the presentation and came across this little gem:



It was on a page where they'd gotten all these old scholars to write in their memories and that kind of thing. Like going to your granny's, but online.
Anyway, one of the oldies sent in a photo of their brother, reproduced below.



I'm sure the Feds will be raiding my blog any day now ...

Glenfiddick, in case you were wondering

Help! I'm trapped in an exegetical treadmill!

I know they all this the Golden Hour, when everyone has gone away and the door is closed and the internet is quieted and the work flows, but it's cold and my neck is sore and my brain keeps tugging at my trouser-leg like a little boy I know and whispering "Hey. There's a nice warm tumbler of whisky in the next room. That would help you define why the critical concern among children's literature scholars is in fact limiting their discursive scope!"

You ever get that?

Got any good sarsaparilla?

Hoooooo-ee.
Sometimes (most of the time) sitting down at 8:30pm after dinner to work on the PhD is like pulling teeth. Not my teeth - somebody else's. But somebody unrestrained by leather straps or high-dose chemicals. Somebody who can have a real swing at you if you loosen that headlock.
All you come out with at the end of the nightly ordeal is a few teeth and sore eyes.

I did actually have a meeting with both supervisors last week and, unlike the black days of The Proposal, neither of them used the phrase "read the riot act". They liked some bits I'd written. They gave me the "Keep it up, sonny" usually reserved for the newest coal miner who learned how to heft a pick in a tight space.

Unfortunately, I'm back at the beginning. And all my enthusiasm got me a deadline. Not some vague "let's meet when you've got something to say" type deal. June 2nd. 2pm. Have something readable. I feel as though I should be muttering this into a shallow dish of whisky while some slab-faced bartender pretends to listen. That would be pretty darn sweet. The Great American ideal of alcoholism is an alarmingly attractive one. Ask any non-American bloke who's ever read a detective novel or heard of Moe's Tavern.

Problem is that my head is cold. And I've got a great idea for a new book growing like a face-hugger implant and the only time I'll ever get to start squeezing out the ideas is between now and when I'm genuinely overcome by the need watch the latest Boondocks.

Wish me luck.

I hope you all enjoyed the photos.

Maybe I should have just gone to bed

Then there was the time when I was working on my PhD's literature review, gathering all these sources and awesome quotes, and I was pretty tired and not really thinking clearly, so I decided to do something non-brain-heavy, like putting all my hand-typed references with page numbers into properly-linked citations using EndNote. So at about 11pm on Tuesday night I carefully and slowly went through my Word document, replacing the typed out references with ones linked to my bibliography. Then when I open it up the next day, it had kept all the citations (author, date), but not the page numbers I'd added in and assumed would stay there.
So I still know what book the quotes come from, but no longer which page of that book.
It's okay, I'll just have to read them all again and remember where they're from. There's only twenty-five or so - books, that is.
How hard can it be to find sixty or seventy specific quotes?

Decaf? Y ........ um ........ yes.

What kind of coffee do you have?
Skinny flat white?
Decaf latte?
Weak cappuccino?
Soy Chai latte with extra foam?

No you don't. You might think that that's what you're getting every time, but after slinging the black crack for a week or so, I've got some terrible, awful, skin-peeling news: If it looks like the coffee you ordered and it tastes near enough and you don't bring it back, the chances are about 75% at best that you've received exactly what you asked for.
The further you travel from 'regular flat white', the more likely it is that you're getting the caffeinated equivalent of those cross-pollinating, super-inseminating GM crops.
If I'm making them, that is.
Unless you're lucky enough to order it during a fairly non-busy period when I can really concentrate on whatever the hell I'm supposed to be doing (and even then, I don't like your chances), that skinny decaf latte probably isn't the full shot of sugar.

Decaf? Sure. Sure thing. Putting regular coffee into the group head (handle thing) is as fun and flashy as cocking a shotgun in an Arnie movie. You've seen that grinder, you've heard the click. *shkSHK*
*tamp tamp*
"Lock'n'load! Semper Fi! Double shot! Fire in the hold!"
Putting decaf coffee into the group head involves wiping "all traces" of regular coffee out of the group head, getting out the decaf tin from under the bench where the regular coffee falls on it, spooning it carefully into the basket, smoothing it off and then pressing it tight with the tamper that gets used on the regular coffee all day, every day. And even that doesn't include the occasional lapse in judgement and/or patience that causes me to put a scoop of regular in anyway, just to spite you non-caffeine drinking whimps. Don't give me your well-considered reasoning and sleep-filled nights. You had better not have some kind of heart condition ...

Skinny? Chug it up, fatso! There are two jugs (three, if you count soy, and I'm getting to that). One is filled with full-fat milk and the other with skim. Each jug holds enough for two and a bit coffees. If you're Skimpy Wimpy number three and your cup doesn't have enough milk or froth in it, trust me, in goes the full-fat, creamy-dreamy artery-butter-in-a-bottle. No pause. No lip-chewing moment of guilt. No sigh of compromised workmanship. SSSSSSSLOP. "Looks great! Drinks up! Next!"
Especially if it's busy. Or I'm making it.

Latte? Wanker. Everyone who orders, has ordered, has considered ordering, may conceivably in the future order or who knows or has shaken ungloved hands with someone who orders, has ordered, has considered ordering, may conceivably in the future order, a latte, in any of its configurations, is a wanker. A W-A-N-K-E-R. I'm not kidding. Total tossbags one and all. I should know; I drink them all the time. Look at the first sentence of this paragraph! Wanker! It's because you're not drinking coffee for the caffeine, you're drinking it so that, even on some teensy-tiny, subconscious level, you get to say "Lah-TAY" to rhyme with the one time you tried pronouncing the word "party" as "par-TAY" in all seriousness. You got laughed at. We all did. It sounds stupid. Problem is, that you (and by "you" I mean "we" and by "we" I mean "I") did not learn your lesson. You kept on saying "lah-tay" and getting a microscopic kick out of it. "Latte" is Italian for what happens when you try to simultaneously make a cappuccino and a flat white and somehow fuck both of them up and the mistake ends up in a water glass. Like the barista equivalent of pulling a Homer.

Soy? Soy-tenly! Ah-hah-hah-haahhh. But seriously, you'd better not have any serious lactose intolerance issues, because that soy jug is almost "soy-tenly" contaminated. By the steam wand that gets dipped the other milk jugs a hundred times a day, and then wiped clean with a milk-soaked cloth that gets milk spilled on it. By the thermometer that probably doesn't get as much of a regular cleaning as the steam wand. And by the fridge it sits in all day, surrounded by milk-dripping milk bottles until you float on in and order your coconut semen cappa.

So drink. Drink your coffee and enjoy it. If you didn't see nuthin', we didn't see nuthin'.

***

In answer to all you questions, yes, I am extremely jealous of all the clamorous attention that Mele is (still) receiving for her well-aimed skewering of Queensland in general. But, what are you gonna do? A man knows when he's beat. She will be back ...

In other, sadder news, my laptop died. The distant whisperers of the Dell Helpdesk have told me that my CPU is probably reverting back to the beach sand from when it came and also that this can be prevented by extending my warranty to the tune of $600. Ouch. I wish I had one of those internet tip jars so that I could ask all of my beautiful readers to kick in and save my blog, my photos, my comics, my mp3s, my Phd ....... But, even with Mele writing anti-Queensland diatribes around the clock, every reader would still have to fork out a month's worth of internet each. Fortunately Mele's computer hasn't died and so ... I'll see you folks around. Hopefully. When she's done with her Phd.

The PhD Student's New Proposal

You're right! You're all right! It has been far far far too long between posts. Mea culpa! But I was working. As has been said on this blog before: the less frequent the posts, the more that's actually happening in my own backyard (ie. 2 well-swept square metres of concrete porch).

I have been workin' it and workin' it hard. The Proposal is finally out and over. For those who don't know the tortuous story, here is the condensed version:

A year ago my supervisor flicked me an email asking me to bring along everything I had for my exegesis (the mini-thesis one writes in conjunction with their creative work) and give the proposal (a speech about what your research is going to be on) a first run. I walked into the tute room with my bibliography and a few notes about the interesting news articles I had been collecting and, relying on my ability to speak in public, started telling everyone what I thought my research was going to be about.
I cringe even now. It was like one of those dreams where you're naked and can't find clothes. I didn't so much conclude my little speech as trail off. Everyone was very constructive about it, through their embarrassed shock at my lack of preparation, and I slunk away, promising to have "something more polished" to show my supervisors by the following fortnight.

Two drafts later: I still hadn't shown my face at any PhD meetings and I was having a Very Serious Meeting With Both Supervisors in which they were using words like "framework" and "methodology" and I was using words like "newspaper clippings" and "um". Finally an exasperated Jeri asked me: 'What sort of research did you do for your Masters and your Honours?'
'We didn't do any research. It was all creative writing coursework.'
I admired their extreme professionalism in that they didn't gasp in horror.

Then I got married.

Another quick draft later and I dragged my sorry arse into another meeting with Double Supervisors, seriously missing the glory days of being a sumo suit operator.
They liked it.
They understood it.
My half-baked idea about looking at class in young adult fiction made sense.
I rushed straight back to my study and slaved away, spewing 500-word-long sentences wondering when the emperor's new clothes were going to stop fooling people.

The presentation went well. People shook my hand afterwards. Two of the other academics who turn up to make sure you're not crazy actually made sure to congratulate me beforehand for finally taking a proper look at social class in literature. It is all done.

The week before the official presentation, I had finally completed enough of a draft to present in front of my colleagues again. A year after I stood up in front of my class and actually read out the sentence 'This is the hazier part of my thesis' (never were truer words spoken), I was able to regain some confidence and claim that social class can be used as a metaphor for the oppression experienced by the young protagonists of young adult fiction without anyone avoiding my eye afterwards.

However, I almost didn't go through with it. Just before I was due to give a 'dry run' presentation, a few of us were in the tea room, preparing warm brownness for my upcoming seminar. Another lecturer and supervisor saw me and said that she thought my proposal was very interesting, but that she didn't quite understand it. My heart turns to porridge.
'Oh?' I said, trying to sound non-suicidal.
'Yes,' she continued. 'I tried to read quite a bit of it, but it didn't really link up. There didn't appear to be any real cohesion between the sections.'
I edged towards the window, ready to make a break for the Tasmanian wilderness. A life of cold rain and hunting stray sheep awaited.
'I even tried clicking a few of the videos, but it still didn't ...' It was her turn to trail off.
Videos?
...
...
Ohhh. 'You mean my blog, you mean my webpage.'
'Well isn't that what you sent in the email to everyone?'
'No. I mean, yes, but the email had the proposal attached mmm anyway, yes I have it here, it's different I think we're starting ...'
In my piss-poor quest for publicity every email I send has the signature "Writing (click here!)" at the bottom. It almost had me living a self-sufficient lifestyle among the forests of Vaginal Euphemism Island.

***
I'd like to extend a massive congratulations to my great friend Stefan Laszczuk for winning the 2007 Vogel Literary Prize for his unpublished (but soon-to-be-published) manuscript I Dream of Magda. There were nicer photos around, but I believe this one is the funniest and the one he'd probably appreciate the most.
He was on the ABC news last night. They filmed him in his self-imposed uniform of t-shirt and backpack strolling along and then sitting on a concrete wall with a tiny notebook and pen to quickly scribble out some notes for the next prize-winning novel. The novel is about a young man who fantasises about the characters played by Maga Szubanski and so they also had a short interview with Magda herself, who looked very flattered and puzzled at the thought that someone had written a prize-winning novel staring her own creations. Media publicity is indeed a strange thing.
All ribbing aside, I am extraordinarily proud of him. And instead of feeling insanely jealous like I suppose one probably should in the ultra-competitive world of Australian literature, I am surprised to find that I'm inspired to continue writing my own work (which I haven't really had a chance at since Captain Proposal took over). No more! Back to blogging! Back to the novel(s)!

***
GTH - Aye, it's been too long in coming and The Other, other Sam does indeed take the prize. The photo was taken during my last grand final in 2004 by Trent, who was too slow to check the blog to win the points. It shows a Coopers Pale being drunk at The Pines Hockey Stadium in Gepps Cross and the shadow may well have been me. Speaking of grand finals, this year's hockey campaign is over as of last weekend. Beaten by Port the Nemesis again. Well, not beaten, but after a 2-all draw, the highest team goes through and it was them. Darn.
And for a little insult to injury, today I am going to watch my old team, the Div 4 Rhinos play in their own grand final to which they have pretty much cruised after thrashing the shit out of most sides in the division all year and which I had to hear about as I rehabilitated quick enough to have joined them on this perfect day for a final. Sunny, cold and a little breezy. The Knee would have loved it.