July 31st, First Sunny Day of Summer

So, apparently at work today I said 'I'm appalled to discover its July 31st'. I wasn't listening; I don't always listen to myself because I'm really not that interesting. I try to tune in just for edited highlights.

In this case, I got the slow motion replay as everyone started laughing.

Disconcerting.

If only I could make people laugh like that when I wanted them too, and also, not at me.

I was quizzed on what other dates appall me. And I made the major tactical error of being so surprised to have found myself in this conversation at all that I told the truth. In fact, I dislike many months (and thus dates) on account of not liking some letters of the alphabet, and, in particular, disliking some combinations of letters. Hilarity ensured (but once again, not with me). Its an aspect of me no work person had suspected until now. They're worried and I'm worried and its all because of the sunshine.

Dissertation Update

I decided way back in Spring of this year that I was going to defer the submission of my diss till the Autumn, I may have many faults but I've always been an eminently realistic person. Given the appalling levels of general messing round I've got from the university, I sent of the form daring them (digitally speaking, which alright consisted of my giving the email a good, hard look before I sent it) to turn me down. I told the super this at the time, February or March, ish.

Back in May, about three days before the summer submission date I got a rather paniced phone call from my super, whom I hadn't heard anything from for about six months, saying that I didn't appear to have handed my dissertation in. She suggested I might like to send her some drafts. I patiently explained about the deferral, which she thought was a fabulous idea. I got a full apology (something that involved me falling off my swivel chair), and promises to respond fully now that x, y and z was no longer a problem and to support my application for deferral (which had yet to actually be judged) explaining about the total lack of research support. I didn't bother telling her the course co-coordinator had been in touch to tell me the sitting was only a formality in my case.

In this new spirit of industrious community she requested I send various documents, summaries etc. on to her. This I duly did, and haven't heard anything since. I find myself regarding all this with a zen like calm, which may indicate achievement of a higher state of spiritual being, or just that you can only maintain certain levels of total fury for a limited amount of time.

The sitemetre patterns are quite interesting. Most of the continental Europeans get to us through blogger, not surprisingly, I suppose. The British and Americans both seem to have the flapjack searching market sewn up, though the Americans also go in for Biblical quotes. We hardly get any hits from Australia; the ones we do seem to be searching sport-related topics.

Someone today searched 'Hannah', though I doubt they were looking for me; I'd be curious to know what they were looking for. Hannah is a Biblical figure. Because its spelt the same backwards and forwards its all pretty tripy from a numeralogical point of view - or so I'm told by one of my friends who knows about, like, numbers and stuff. Its also the name given to the sun in African American prison songs (or river songs).

I refused to tell Vin what our blog was, but he managed to track me down with the serach 'hannah afl cormorant'. These are the things that make me identifiable; I find this even more worrying than the earring thing.

In respose to......

This referrals thing from site meter is just brilliant. Given the expressions of indulgent bewilderment (something of a trademark production of mine, that expression) on the ladies' faces when I was rattling on about this before, a short explanation may be wise. This bit of sitemeter lets us see, how people got to which bit of the blog, which search terms they used and so on. I'm kind of glad that I started this whole blog business, even if it's just for the knowledge of what sort of astoundingly detailed information Google etc hold, I had no idea, makes you think....or more acurately worry. Anywho responses to recent/funny/scary searches below:

Q. Can I soak oats overnight?
A. Yes, but you need to reduce the cooking time by half.

Q. What does your 'mother is a hampster' mean?
A. (With patience) It is a quotation from the Monty Python film 'The Holy Grail', it is an insult, mostly.

Q. Herbs to go with steamed fish?
A. Hah! I love it I've totally nailed that one already, the interweb (my new favourite word) works.

Q. Wisdom in Gallic?
A. I have deep, dark suspicions that this query contains a spelling mistake, and if this is indeed the case, then given that the searcher ended up here, it is a highly amusing example of the cosmos giving you what you need rather than what you want.

I am actually beginning to find the sheer numbers of people Googling 'Oh lord, why hast thou forsaken me' so disturbing that I'm thinking of changing the title of the post. To these people and the individual seaching 'Purgatory, get me out of here' I can only apologise that you ended up here. Mind you this wouldn't be the first time my sense of humour got me into trouble.

"Don't be stupid man, there's no angels in Ireland, they'd bloody rust"*

Right well that's it, totally, really it. My sweetpea are actually starting to float away, the sage is dead from mildew, half my courgettes are rotting on the vine, and, this being the final straw, my tomatoes have blight, bloody blight (as in potato). How am I supposed to work under these conditions? I demand to see the manager, where's the original contract?

*Slightly adapted from the original by Dorothy Dunnett, can't remember which book.

Vindication

I find that the massive quanities of rampant glee I'm currently feeling outway the moderate levels embarressment about blogging about this, so there you are. Anyway I was so totally right about Snape, totally, completely and utterly right. And ye, ye know who you all are, are wrong, very very wrong cos I'm right. Mwah ha ha ha.
Update: And no I did not say that just because Alan Rickman plays him. Also, before anyone gets all judgemental, this is only a spoiler if one has listened to me rant on this topic before, and everyone who cares has read it, so there.

Random, unconnected things

I'm back at work and still wallowing in a warm glow of a surfeit of sleep, good nutrition and a general lack of chronic exhaustion. It's really good, I'ld forgotten what it feels to think clearly. I am in fact so totally laid back that yesterday, I was able to listen to an extended conversation between two colleagues about whether a coffee table in the tea room would constitute a health and safety risk without showing any signs whatsoever of hysterical breakdown.

I am also coping admirably with the weather, I'm coming to terms with the shocking traumatic realisation that we are actually running out of summer and this is probably our lot. Mind you, you could be worse off, I'm sure I remember reading something somewhere once, that Noah was supposed to be a once off but this doesn't appear to apply to Gloucester, poor buggers. So how does one deal with our less apocalyptic but eminently depressing weather? Umbrella as accessory!! There a some seriously snappy ones turning up all over the city at the moment, so get out there and buy yourself some sassy wellies and a funky brolly. And the great thing is, it's guilt free - you actually need this stuff, its an essential rather puerile retail therapy. I already have a dippy little pink job and am going to hunting tonight for something in a darker colour, pinstrips would be cool - tres ironical. That might be a bit on the puerile side I suppose.

Very Worrying Indeed

Over the last 48 hours I've had about six hours of sleep and, for the second morning this week (out of a possible two) I am hungover at work. Basically I'm the best employee ever. My boss is a strange combination of Capt. Jack Sparrow and Christopher Robin, which is brilliant and alarming by turns. Anyway, perhaps its a combination of these pressures that have prompted me to write about 'earrings' today.

Also, I have a new pair of earrings.

From the ages of 15 to 24 I wore the same pair of earrings, so new earrings are a big deal. My criteria for jewelery is that I be able to sleep in it, shower in it and run in it. You would think that this would be roughly the same jewelery criteria adopted by Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Vikings and other early medieval Northern European marauders. But it's not. These groups really go in for bling. And like all groups whose taste moves in this direction, they are sufficiently armed to discourage constructive criticism of their aesthetics. Comically, their taste in jewelery is inevitably and indelibly imprinted upon Anglo-Saxonists, who wear the most enormous and golden jewelery, however reserved those scholars might be in other ways. (Anglo-Saxonists are armed with philology, which is worse.)
I am, apparently, armed with nothing at all, and so, upon running into an Anglo-Saxonist, I was told 'Your earrings are a bit... big.'

All things considered, very worrying indeed.

Happy Harry Potter Day

I was jet lagged about five years ago and I read a couple of the Harry Potter books. So in me talking about them now, you're not dealing with someone who is versed, or in fact, knows what they're talking about to any degree at all. There are several Harry Potter fans among the Ladies. Visitors to the City, who, in their search for healthy flapjacks or the meaning of life or spiritual solace, find this blog shouldn't be disheartened; the others aren't as Philistine as me. (I'm serious, by the way; check our sitemeter. The only people, apart from the Ladies and our friends, who read the blog are those asking Google why God has forsaken them (the fact that they end up here is the proof that Google is a false prophet; I can only assume the confusion arises amongst those with poor spelling*) and those trying to eat better.)

The most usual criticism is that Harry Potter is derivative. Most narratives adopt narrative motifs from somewhere else because cultures develop a cultural vocabulary of narratives. Its only really within the context of that vocabulary that any narrative we construct can make sense. In that sense you would have to say that the final episode of the first series of David Tennant Doctor who was very derivative of the Gospels. (Actually, in fairness, that wasn't just the sharing of narrative motifs. It was really intertext, what with identification of the Void with Hell, and the scene where he re-appears after the crossing from one world to another and says 'Noli me tangere'... I mean, 'Don't touch me'. In that case, the narrative motifs are being used for the same reason that they always are; that the writer is trying to express something present in narratives that share that motif.**) What strikes me as interesting about the 'narrative motifs' used in Harry Potter is that they are historically specific scenes from everyday life which mean nothing now and yet are being treated as signifiers of genre. These scenes designate, not setting, but rather that we are dealing with a magical version of our own world. I think its interesting in terms of our relationship with the past, if nothing else.

*No one got my West Australian Football League pun or, at least - more accurately - no one liked it. Could someone make the effort, if nothing else, with a bit of token laughter on this one?
** The 'Noli me tangere' scene is one of my all-time favourite narrative motifs and it turns up all over the place; its not particular to the Gospels.

Togetherness

Jaybee has introduced me to the wonders of Facebook. I've decided that Facebook is only for the angelic, the pure of heart, the clear of conscience, as Jaybee indeed is. My staunchest defenders will tell you that I'm not of this elect. Amongst my many faults is a deficiency in perseverance and a dislike of hard work. The one exception to this is my dedicated pursuit of avoiding people. Life's too short and I'm not that much fun. The people I'm avoiding should be spending time with the, no doubt, limitless supply of people who do like them. Avoidance is an Olympic event for me and I excel; I have to because if I actually do run into someone I'm trying to avoid I will be so appalled that I will have to invite them to tea.

Vin, a very dear friend of mine, finds this endlessly amusing.

This is how Facebook has undone me. Never have more people I'm avoiding been able to track me down. Worse still they send those creepy emails which ask you if you would 'would like to be friends'. I always imagine it being read out as Bill Bailey says 'are you alone?' in the sketch about travel dictionaries. What I find amazing though, is the number of people who've found me, on the one hand, and the fact, on the other, that I don't like any of them. Statistically, given that there are many people I adore, and countless numbers to whom I am indifferent, how is that possible? Can it really be that the set of these people who are at least indifferent to me and are also on Facebook is actually nil?

Slightly Soggy Nirvanna

I am on holidays for two weeks, off to the wilds of Ireland, well it's moderately rural anyway. There will be no phones, pda's or laptops. I will not talk to anyone unless I specifically decide I want to, no matter how much mymother mutters about me being anti-social, dour and indeed, 'just like your father'. If I'm really lucky it may at some point stop raining and I can go and be anti-social out on the cliffs. In many ways it's as good as it gets really.

Go You Little Horse

This blog entry is named in honour of my brother who loves piss-takers and hates shit-talkers and, who used to say 'Go, you little horse' after that Simpsons episode. It is one of his terms of approval, hence, 'Buckley, he's such a little horse'. My brother has always maintained that I know absolutely fuck all about footy, so he probably doesn't agree with the blog entry...

I've been so despondent about the Daniher news that I actually find myself reading The Herald Sun in an attempt to get more information about it, so I shouldn't be surprised if things go from bad (reading that fascist paper in the first place) to worse. According to an article in The Herald Sun, Gerard Neesham, a mate of Riley's, says that anyone who thinks 'playing record is relevant' is an idiot. He would; he only played nine AFL games. Interestingly, he has a corresponding coaching record at AFL level; he won 32 from 88 games. But my favourite bit of the article is where he makes an analogue between being an AFL coach and being a horse trainer. He points out that you don't need to have ridden a horse to be a good trainer.

Arguing by analogue is stupid because you ask the audeince to form an opinion, not based on experience, common sense or even theory, but rather by drawing a conclusion from a gratuitous generalization about something completely unrelated. However, this particular analogue doesn't even do that. The analogue would be right (if pointless) if we were talking about training jockeys; that is the example of doing the thing yourself in order to be able to teach others. (And as it turns out, I'm pretty sure most jockeys are taught by people who, at some stage in their lives, have ridden horses.) In fact, the proper version of his analogue for this situation would be that horse trainers have to spent time as horses competeting in races in order to be a good horse trainer. Actually, we would ask that of horse trainers (at the AIS anyway) if we possibly could.

Pancake Footy

I have barracked for Melbourne all my life, and my father before me, and his mother before him. We have been Melbourne supporters since the club was formed in 1858. We have been Melbourne supporters for longer than we've been Australians (Australia was only federated in 1901). My cousin (briefly) played for Melbourne. My grandmother made it a condition of marrying my grandfather that he convert from Collingwood (!) to Melbourne. Collingwood, for anyone who doesn't know, isn't the kind of club that people desert on a whim, especially not to Melbourne, who were their arch-rivals (we now play Queen's Birthday in some sort of weird commemoration) at that time.

When the club started they were known as the Melbourne Fuchsias. It was a sign of things to come - though, curiously, they aren't the only football side in Australia to have a floral mascot; I'm thinking here of the Waratahs. (I know I'm not going to get it, but I'd like a little bit of credit for knowing that; the Waratahs are NSW and league, as a Victorian its amazing I've even heard of them.)

My time as a Melbourne supporter hasn't really been like those fortunates who grew up with Ron Barassi. The first game I ever went to, Melbourne was defeated by what was at the time (actually it may be still) the largest margin in AFL/VFL history, while John Longmire kicked an MCG ground record of 14 goals. Most people remember Longmire as a solid, mild mannered full forward, eclipsed by Wayne Carey, who had a good day one day at the MCG; for me he will always be an antichristal, avenging angel.

My point is, I've taken a lot of knocks as a Melbourne supporter, not least this year. And now, Neale Daniher, a great player and coach, and a top bloke, resigns and is replaced, albeit temporarily, by Mark Riley, a player who never made it to seniors, not even in WAFL football (or pancake footy as I like to call it in honour of two Freo boys I met in a pub once).

This really can't be happening to me.