Petite is back from New Zealand. Last night, she was ironing and I was eating my dinner. I had the television on for no particular reason, certainly not to watch it, maybe just to provide some background noise. It was some reality show set in a hospital. The doctor had drawn a picture of a liver on a whiteboard and was explaining an upcoming procedure to some nurses.
"The liver is shaped like a butterfly" he said. "And it stings like a bee" I said. "Imagine if a liver really did sting like a bee." said Petite. I ate a piece of asparagus. "It would be most uncomfortable, I imagine."
The iron hissed steam, asthmatically.
"I was at the doctors the other day," Petite said, "And a couple came out of the consultation room and went up to the receptionist. They were a sweet looking older couple. The receptionist looked up at them and said, really loudly "Now, are you the couple who wanted the appointment for the Personality Disorder clinic?" The old couple nodded."
"How horrible!"
"It got worse. The receptionist then got on the phone and started making calls. She kept saying "Is this the Personality Disorder clinic? I'm trying to make an appointment for some people at the Personality Disorder clinic." I felt so sorry for the old couple standing there."
"I wonder which of them had the personality disorder, and what kind of disorder it was, exactly?"
"I know. I was wondering that too. It reminded me of the time I was in a queue at the chemist with mum and the guy ahead of us said, quite loudly to the person behind the counter "My testicles are itchy and scabby.""
"Oh, the horror! What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything. I was at an age when I didn't want to consider the existence of testicles at all, let alone itchy, scabby ones."
Writing is so bloody difficult. Jill has a post today about writing and solitude and it is timely for me. I have now pushed past first draftitis and am in the grips of second draft terror. Bits of my essay read ok, I think, but other bits are messy and unfocused. Reading over it is like being on the scenic railway, I'll be bouyed with hope by one paragraph then come plummeting down after the next.
I don't find writing very pleasurable, even creative writing. So I wonder why it is that I often profess a desire to do more writing. It's not pleasurable in the way that making artwork is pleasurable. I don't lose myself in an essay in the same way that I might become emersed in a drawing. Sometimes writing is nothing short of horrific. Yet somehow the hardness of it makes it seem more valuable to me. Where does the pleasure of writing come from? I think it must be in the conceiving of the idea initially. Sometimes the first hurried draft can feel good, putting the random thoughts into words. Reading over the first draft is not always great, however, particularly a few days later.
And it's a lonely undertaking. I've spent far too many hours locked in my pokey room this semester staring at my laptop. Hours that I could have been spending watching reality tv. Oh the self-sacrifice.
This weekend there is a group going down to the Grampians and I have been saying that I can't go as I have to work on this essay. But I'm not happy about it. And last night the Ant said to me "You know, you should just go away for the weekend. Because if you do, and your paper doesn't get accepted then you can say it's because you were lazy, rather than because your essay wasn't good enough."
And I have to say that I can see the logic in his argument. Actually, now I think about it, I really should have done this post as a GG / Ant strip. Perhaps I'll convert it.
nostatic is the personal site of Luigi de Aloisio. Inactive works, typography and stories. I like the section of calenders and clocks.
De Aloisio sites John Madea as an important influence on his work, who also experiments with interactive type and calenders. More about them both in this month's Desktop magazine (not the online version, unfortunately, which is currently just a splash page, but the print edition.)
(note that there is a Marcus - Flash warning on the no static site. [MFW])
I think I found cityofsound through anne galloway's blog but I can't quite remember. He has some interesting posts about social software and user interface design, and he also has the occasional photographic collage.
Today I found a link via this site to Everyday Matters, a kind of online sketchbook by Danny Gregory. The handwritten text is a little difficult to read, but the drawings are beautiful. There's also an interview with Danny on The Morning News.
I've been invited to The Prom. The Prom is a foriegn concept to us Australians (although we've seen enough movies to know what it is.) In Australia we have Bachelors and Spinsters balls instead, but I'm not sure how many women in technology there would be at one of them (but perhaps I'm underestimating.)
Today is Melbourne cup-eve - the day most people in Melbourne take off so they can have a four day weekend. It's always an odd day for those who end up going to work (like me). The roads are deserted, the office is quiet. The people who do turn up feel hardly-done-by, as if they have some how been cheated out of a holiday.
I am here, early as usual, brooding about my blogosphere essay. I went to see the Sensei at RMIT on the weekend and we spent about six hours going over it, paragraph by paragraph. My draft is now almost entirely covered in notes and a major re-draft is inevitable. The Sensei was entirely correct in his summation, but I must admit to being rather overcome with lethargy at the task ahead of me. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking "Arrgh! I'll never get it done! It's too difficult! I can't do it!" I feel a bit more positive about it today, and am hoping that it was just a case of first draft-itis, and that once I sit down and face the damn thing I'll be able to pummel it into some kind of shape.
