Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Pictures are still words.

Jono did this, so I'm doing it too. Take the first sentence of the first blog of each month for 2010:

January: With cancer, it's like we're all standing in a hallway while a madman fires a gun in our direction.

February: In fact, we're all so busy that I've discovered a new measure of 'busy-ness': pee smell.

March: And now he is one.

April: 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.

May:


June: "Do you think the reason we've been having so many earthquakes recently is because we've taken so much oil out of the earth's crust? You know, because oil is a natural lubricant?"

July: Although sometimes you can just wake up in the morning and sunlight shines a little brighter.

August: I saw this somewhere and thought "That looks easy!"

September: Silly me.

October: I've been utterly silent lately because I'm writing a lecture and a literature review and editing someone's Masters thesis.

November: Here is what I set out to make:(Follow in my greasy footsteps!)



December: Take two people who are intelligent, witty and outgoing.

Give it a crack!
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6 comments:

  1. Kath LockettTuesday, January 4, 2011 at 5:34:00 PM PST

    I remember *all* of those (esp the homoerotic photo and the greasy hand injury). I'm going to shameless steal this one.

    ReplyDelete
  2. franzyTuesday, January 4, 2011 at 6:27:00 PM PST

    "homoerotic"?!?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jonathan ShawTuesday, January 4, 2011 at 8:19:00 PM PST

    Yeah, homoerotic, definitely - could be a scene from A Single Man. What a great list of first lines.

    ReplyDelete
  4. franzyTuesday, January 4, 2011 at 8:50:00 PM PST

    Jeez.
    Are you sure you're not just seeing what you want to see?

    ReplyDelete
  5. RiverThursday, January 6, 2011 at 12:44:00 AM PST

    That crispy duck looks delicious.
    I remember all those first lines too.

    ReplyDelete
  6. franzyThursday, January 6, 2011 at 5:03:00 PM PST

    Oh it was. In fact putting it here again has made me want to cook it again (but sans fried long pig).

    Thanks for not reading my male friendship as homoerotic.

    ReplyDelete

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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