Picked up the new-to-me car today and how good does it feel to know I never have to drive my junky VW Golf again. Even before its current calamities — heck, for as long as I’ve had it — there’s always been something or other either wrong or suspect about it. Not going to miss the strange noises and the feeling that something could go wrong at any second.
Dreamt last night about picking up the car and in the dream I drove off and realised that I had forgotten to pay. So I headed back to pay and the brakes failed so I spent what felt like hours careening around strange streets, crashing into other cars, curbs, hedges and anything else you can imagine. It was not fun. Nice of my subconscious not to have me crash into any people though.
Watched Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense movie for the first time in decades. What a beautiful artifact of 1980s culture. I remember taping this off TV and making my own version of the packaging. I copied the writing style — I’m sure I had no idea that there were things called fonts back then — over a cut and pasted image of, from memory, a painting of a woman with a strangely elongated neck. My favourite songs are pretty conventional — This Must Be The Place and Once In A Lifetime.
Reminds me of the bible of Japanese grammar that was my constant companion back in uni. For some reason I decided that a picture of Albert Camus made the perfect cover image.
The only good music videos are the ones in which you can see the band playing for at least eighty percent of the song. The only exception is Pavement’s Gold Soundz, which features the guys dressing in Santa costumes, stealthily stalking about an LA mall with bows and arrows, firing shots into the air to bring down a plucked chicken from which they pull some car keys then driving to a bit of a roadside hill to enjoy some cookies and milk. Sure hope they washed their hands after throwing that chicken around.
Is there an accepted etiquette position on keeping earbuds in while talking to shopkeepers? Until now I’ve reflexively taken them out and put them in my shirt pocket, but because I use those squishy foam tips it’s kind of a hassle to put them back in each time. If I were on the other side of the interaction, I don’t think I’d mind a customer keeping them in as long as they were able to hear me and be present in the situation. But is that how the people who are on that side of our interaction feel.
I first gave Apple’s Discovery “radio” playlist thing a try when I got my AirPods back in January. It was pretty great. Lot’s of songs I hadn’t heard by artists whose names I sometimes recognised but often didn’t. Some cool finds: Gnaw, Little Things, Fix.
I still check it out now and then, but I feel it’s pandering a bit too much to its idea of my taste. I wish there were a way I could tell it to push the envelope of things I might like out a bit.
The question has been raised, in a fun way, as to whether I’m a person who doesn’t put things back where they belong. Although I would vigourously defend myself against the charge that I may leave the toilet seat up, I have to admit to having a very high tolerance for things being out of place.
From where I’m sitting in the dining room right now I can see a can of shaving cream I bought a week ago that I have somehow not managed to take up to the bathroom, a Japanese/Australian power adapter that’s been waiting to get put away for three months, and a box full of kitchen cleaning stuff that we cleared out from under the sink to make space for some plumbing work a month or so ago. These have all become part of what I accept as my “normal” living environment.
A bit over a week till Ghost of Tsushima is released for the PC. I know I know that there’s very little chance it’ll run on my MacBook with the hacky (but wonderful) translation software we rely on to run a fraction of the Windows games available at pokey frame rates. But even so, I took a look at the system requirements on Steam and they are much lower than for Cyberpunk 2077, a Windows game that runs surprisingly well on medium settings on my machine. Of course, there could be any number of other things that could prevent it from running. But I’m holding onto hope for a little while longer.
As for the question of whether I really plan to spend a hundred bucks on a game I’ve already played through? Even though I have enough games available to last me the rest of the year at least. But Tsushima is different. It’s just straight up fun. The first game I got for the PS5 and the only one I’ve mastered since Uridium way back in the day. Tsushima is a game that I can just pick up and enjoy the play rather than trying to make progress.
I am excellent at putting leftovers in the freezer and awful at actually eating them. Time after time I’ve realised I have no idea what is in any of the plastic containers or how long they’ve been there and ended up throwing it away. Well, I broke the cycle today and actually took some frozen lentil curry to work. Wow! Best work meal I’ve eaten since my leftover satay beef!
About a year ago my favourite crackers — Vita-wheat Sesame and Poppy — disappeared from supermarket shelves. I assumed they’d stopped making them. But looking for something else in the fancy, overpriced 24 hour supermarket the other day I found them again. Such happiness! The perfect base for some Castello Blue Cheese.
How great is it that X, the social network “formerly” known as Twitter, still lives at twitter.com? You know they’d love for it to all be at x.com, but with all the money in the world and they decided it was just too difficult to work out all the overlapping and intertwining dependences and, it appears, just gave up without comment. Good to remember next time you find yourself not able to follow some plan you had, whether it’s giving up on chips or trying to exercise every day.
Moments after this photo was taken, the crow launched into the air, shopping trolley in tow. Amazing sight.
If you happen to be getting by with one pair of glasses, make sure not to leave work without them. Currently enjoying the challenge of trying to keep my broken pair on my face with just one stem. Is stem the right word? Arm? Leg?
I’m always impressed when I see someone in a movie doing something while smoking a cigarette — just having it stuck in the side of their mouth while they clatter away on a typewriter or fix a bicycle or brush dirt off a recently exhumed bit of pottery. Could never do that back in the days of smoke. It just went straight for my eyes and anyway just felt wrong. I probably just didn’t try hard enough.
Spent a birthday celebration night in a fancy hotel. Not a fan of the overly mirrored bathroom. I really don’t appreciate seeing myself from behind — or from any angle — while washing my hands. Wonder if there is some amount I could pay to have a room with no mirrors at all — now that would be luxury. But the rain shower was nice, as was the breakfast spread — perfectly crispy bacon — and the high thread-count sheets. Seems that if I did accidentally become fabulously wealthy, I could probably get used to it.
Speaking of Threads, what a strangely earnest social network it is. Seems to mostly be made up of people posting stories about someone doing something good or someone doing something bad. Then there are a hundred replies pointing out that either the person doing something good was bad actually or the person doing something bad was good actually. Kind of exhausting.
And the way it does quote posts is a bit dark patterny. They are almost all truncated so to see what people are quoting you need to click on the quoted post. Vive la engagement!
Currently quite taken by There’s a Rugged Road by Judee Sill. Just love the rhythm she puts into roll on roll on roll on bits. One of those songs I’d need to hum to explain what I like about it. Oh, looks like Greta Gerwig sings it in Greenberg.
Dropped the car off at the mechanic feeling very much like someone who hasn’t been to a dentist in five years and is only coming in because the pain is too much to bear. But the guy at the counter was friendly and helpful.
I wonder why I sometimes expect people in such positions to be critical and judgmental. Is it because I would be if I were in their shoes? I hope not, but …
Later in the day, the mechanic had to use the words catastrophic failure to describe how dire things were under the Golf’s hood. Happily, it didn’t come as a huge surprise and I’d just bought its replacement. And he didn’t charge me for the time it took to work out how bad things were.
Day three of the sore throat life. Soothers’ Butter Menthols are far better than Strepsils at taking the edge off. Less medicinal and more flavourful.
Sick of eating soupy, throat friendly stuff so having supermarket shepherd’s pie tonight, which is, when you think about it, basically a thick mince and potato soup. Oh, found my USB adapter, so here’s some grapefruit.
Had to call a mechanic today, so immediately turned into a small child on the phone: I fink there’s somefink wrong wif my car. Can you fix it, pwease, mister?
Seems like finding another car has gone from being a leisurely just taking my time activity to a right here right now crisis. I’m trying to approach it like playing a game — do the research, check the stats, make a choice then roll the dice. It’s fun, he tells himself. The thing is, in the used car buying game you don’t find out whether your roll was good or bad until some time later, when the radiator fails or the back hatch refuses to open.
Using italics in strange ways in this entry. Will it stick or will it fade?
The first real rain of the year. Sadly, no petrichor that I could detect, perhaps due to my cold, which came on quickly overnight and set up camp in my throat and the right side of my head. A good day to be sick at home and listen to the rain overflow from a blocked gutter.
Chasing vitamin C I had my first grapefruit in how long? A year or so at least. Such bright red flesh!
Found some unopened hummus and tzatziki that I bought last December and was delighted to find they were both good to eat — that is, until I put my glasses on and saw that the expiry month was Jan, not Jun. Reminds me that I need to get new glasses. I broke my newest pair, which were themselves at least two or three years old, while in Japan — one of the dangers of living on tatami and futon. I’ve been using my old pair, which are maybe four or five years old since then. And they’re okay. I can read without getting a headache, but this is not a sustainable solution. Next week for sure.
I’ve lost the adapter that lets my old USB devices connect to the new USB ports in my MacBook. Pretty cool that for the want one cable I can’t access any hard drives or import any photos. How great is the future! I want to post my grapefruit picture — or just see whether it’s worth posting — but it’s trapped on my camera’s ancient CF card. Estimated time of finding the lost cable is about one week after buying a new one.
Nothing in my youth prepared me for how much time I’d have to spend peeling and chopping and grating and crushing garlic. Maybe I should go for the tube version or even one of those huge jars. I don’t have any reason to suspect that I have a particularly refined palate and would be able to tell the difference. But I don’t want to let down the team.
And cloves! So many recipes call for a certain number of cloves, as if cloves are stamped out of the clove factory at exactly the same size — or even vaguely similar sizes. I often buy the cheaper made-in-China garlic that comes as three bulbs in a pack and the cloves are easily half the size of a the grown-in-Australia version. When a recipe calls for five garlic cloves, like the green soup I made yesterday, I wish they’d put the weight instead. Much easier to work out if you’ve hit the target.
Stopping to get a loaf of the best bread from the best baker in Perth yesterday, I pulled off a perfect bit of parallel parking. I usually avoid this because I’m worried about holding up traffic and under-confident in my spatial judgement. I was so close to driving by that parking spot and finding a park far away or, equally likely, just giving up and going home breadless. But the road behind me was clear so I gave it a go and jagged all the timing and spacing on the turns. Good start to the day. And the soup was much better having the bread to sop it up with.
Lunch was Ramen Keisuke. It got a lukewarm review from my wife’s friend forever ago so it kept getting nixed when I suggested it. But Tosaka doesn’t open for lunch so it got the nod today. Despite the Showa-era kitsch decor it doesn’t have a “run by Japanese” vibe to it. But the flavor! It absolutely nailed my ideal of a deep, unctuous Tonkotsu soup. Very respectable chashu too, though not close to Tosaka’s charred perfection. It has instantly zoomed to the top of my list of best ramen places in Perth.
Grinding your own sesame seeds to add to the soup was a very cool touch.
Coincidentally, the night before on Mastodon this screenshot popped up in one of those “What movie is this from?” posts.
I fired off the answer and in no time got a couple of responses telling me to check my spelling. Yep, my iPhone had helpfully corrected Tampopo to Tampon. Thanks, Apple.
Happily, Mastodon lets you edit posts, like all respectable social networks should do.
I went intoYvonnie Scarce’s exhibitionThe Light of Day knowing nothing about the artist or what I was about to experience. An Aboriginal artist from South Australia, Scarce’s handblown glass works illustrate the human effects of colonialism, from eugenics to negligent exposure to nuclear radiation. It feels like such a cliche to say that it was “powerful” or “thought provoking” but, really, it was. I need to think more about how much of our society was built on a foundation of, at best, turning its eye away from the harm it caused to Aboriginal people and, at worst, turning its power against them.
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I keep getting caught “stealing” when I’m just trying to look at something. Gotta be more careful. It’s quite different than Ghost of Tsushima, where you can run about picking up linen, iron and supplies to your heart’s content.
Won the battle against the harpies! Thought I was being clever by positioning most of my party on the cliffs above where I knew the battle would take place, but half of them were lured jump into the water in the first turn. Even so, just managed to prevail.
Two months later I’m still somewhat bemused by the combination of brain chemical swirls that led me to not seeing Dinosaur Jr when they played in Perth for what I’m pretty sure has to be the last chance I’ll have to see them. First I felt I didn’t have the money, then I thought I wouldn’t be able to get there in time after work. Later, when I knew I could afford it and was willing to take the loss if I couldn’t get there in time the only seats left were, I thought, terrible so I still didn’t buy tickets. I ended up driving past the venue on the way home in plenty of time to see even the opening act.
The only time I’ve seen them was back in 1995, a week or so before I moved to Japan, and it was an awesome show. My main memory was of Mascis going off on a massive solo that the bassist stopped trying to keep up with so he just took a break and lit a cigarette while J wailed away on his guitar for a blissful eternity.
Somewhat surprisingly, this was completely absorbing. I had the impression that Bergman would be a slog, but I was riveted from start to finish. There’s so much power in these two women. Although it’s not always clear exactly what is going on, you always feel like you know, which is just as important. I had read somewhere that this was about a woman adopting the other’s persona and was expecting something along those lines, but I felt fairly early on that was not what I was watching — way more going on.
This is my first Bergman film. It’s kind of hard to believe that the insufferably pretentious kid I used to be never picked up a VHS copy of this at Planet Video back in the day.
I bought some AirPods recently and they’ve been great — good sound and comfortable to wear. They have this thing called spatial sound that’s supposed to create something like a surround sound effect. I’ve only really noticed it when watching a movie and I turn my head to one side or the other and the sound shifts. It’s pretty subtle and feels like a bit of a gimmick because practically all the time I’m watching a movie on my MacBook I’m staring straight ahead at the screen.
The other night I was watching an episode of the recent show Mr and Mrs Smith. Donald Glover and Maya Erskine were having a fairly intense talk about whether having children would be a good idea when there is a tapping at the door. And it sounds like it’s coming from right the glass door right behind me so my heart does a mid-chest flip. I pull out the AirPods and look outside and it takes me a moment to realise that it was just the show.
I rewind a bit and start watching again and about a minute later I hear the tapping from behind me again and I jump out of my skin again even though I’d just gone through the same thing not ten minutes before. Spatial sound may well be a bit of an afterthought now, but if someone put a lot of thought into it, they could create something pretty great.
There’s a really important thing that sometimes nervous people like me don’t realize — that the expression “to make a decision” is perfectly accurate: a decision is something you create. There’s an inclination to think that with enough research and thinking and conversation and information, it’s possible to determine what the correct decision is; to think that decision making is an intellectual puzzle. But generally it’s not. You make decisions. Something is created when you make a decision. It’s an act of will, not an act of thought.
I was thinking of posting a youtube link to My Bloody Valentine’s Sometimes, which I think of as the acoustic track from Loveless, although it obviously isn’t acoustic at all. It wasn’t a single so didn’t have a proper video but someone had put one together using scenes from Lost In Translation. It makes sense, because Kevin Shields contributed to the soundtrack, which was the first music I’d heard from him since Loveless.
I haven’t seen Lost since it came out. I was living in Tokyo at the time and totally connected with the feeling of excitement of being an outsider from a much duller town in a vibrant and pulsating cityscape. I remember thinking it was cool to see Scarlett, who at the time I thought of as the minor character from Ghost World, in a lead role. It was fun to see Bill Murray doing his thing before he had become ザ Bill Murray.
Putting this on my very long watchlist of things to watch again.
I also need to check out Somewhere and The Beguiled.
