The Herald Sun Collins Short Story Competition is currently open for entries. Perhaps it should be called the very short story competition, as the upper word limit is 750 words. This is the perfect length for blog writers, however. I am currently finding it difficult to write anywhere near 750 words. The competiton closes 5 pm, December 19th.
I think I've written about this French animation before, but I've only recently discovered the associated website. It's all in French, of course, and my high-school French is pretty rusty now, but the images are wonderful and the trailer is great (it's accessible through the last dial on the television set: bande annonce.)
There's also an English interview with the Director, Sylvain Chomet on BBC Films.
I must admit that I had assumed that "...she's a flight risk" was a fictional blog. It didn't seem logical to me that someone trying to hide would write about themselves and their past on the Internet. The last time I wrote about her she emailed me and said:
It constantly amazes me. People see in my weblog exactly what they want to see. It's almost alarming. Hoax. Truth. Fiction. Biography. I got a 5 page email earlier insisting I must be from texas because of some of my sentence structure. (?)
I wrote back to her, saying :
Humans love an inigma. And we love to think that we alone have seen through deception, especially if others have failed to. It makes us feel superior to others around us. Your site would make for an interesting study of human nature.
Her response was :
The site has brought out the best, and the worst it seems.
This article by Esquire journalist John Richardson is an interesting read. He goes through an elaborate and convoluted process to eventually meet up with Isabella, or at least someone claiming to be Isabella. I must admit I'm quite fascinated by the whole thing. It rings of an elaborate hoax, but why would anyone go to such an effort, just to fool a journalist? What could she possibly have to gain from it?
RESFEST 2003 starts in Melbourne tomorrow at ACMI and runs until the 8th. There's a variety of things being shown, including a Michel Gondry retrospective and a selection of Spike Jonze films.
This is the first year that Resfest has come to Melbourne, and it has toured this year through South Africa, Japan and Spain.
I had a good Birthday, despite the fact that it fell on a Monday and I had to work. We had Christmas drinks last night, partly to say thankyou to the Chairman of our board, who is a Prominent Australian. A large chocolate cake was bought in her honour, with the intention of presenting it to her during the evening drinks. Unfortunately, the Prominent Australian twisted her ankle on the weekend, and was unable to attend. So it was decided to present the cake to me, instead.
I was oblivious to this, and was half way through an exercise class in the boardroom when the doors open and everyone trooped in, carrying the most enormous chocolate cake I've ever seen. The Prominent Australian's name had been covered up with a piece of paper that said "Happy Birthday Meredith." There were candles, one for each year that the Prominent Australian has been on the board, which, I'm happy to report, ended up knocking a cool thirteen years off my age. Much happiness there.
So we ate chocolate cake, and then later I ate sushi and drank champagne, and the only bad thing about this was that by the time I met my family for dinner I was really too full to enjoy the dinner as much as I otherwise would have done. But I put in a pretty good effort.
The Frontier Librarienne had, in anticipation of her evening, looked up the restaurant on the Internet during the day and the waiter was impressed by her familiarity with the menu. "I've looked at it four times today" she told him, "On the Internet." He said "Well, it's good that you're up with the technology."
The Frontier Librarienne didn't like this. After he left, she said "That's ageist. He thinks that I'm too old to know how to use the Internet." We tried to convince her otherwise, but to no avail. When the waiter returned FL said to him "I'm a librarian and librarians invented the Internet." "Really?" said the waiter, clearing plates "How lovely." "Librarians are at the forefront of Information technology, you know." "That's super" said the waiter, making a hasty exit. I'm not sure that he was convinced.
Thieu gave me a bike, which was waiting for me in my room when we got home. This was very exciting, although it must be said that I have had some bad cycling experiences, the most recently being my trip to Tassie two years ago. All I can say is that Tasmania is very hilly. But I think that now I have a nice light bike with good gears things will be different. And considering the amount of food I've put away over the last 24 hours, some cycling is probably a good thing.
