Author Archives: dogpossum

Continue reading “more dancers!”

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i’m feeling terribly clever. this photo’s of two friends from dancing (crinnie and brannigan’s law), which The Squeeze took at the mlx. i’ve actually done some fiddling with the original in photoshop, which looked like this.

i must credit the photographer: well done Dave Cheney. i’d send you to his site, but it’s bung.
seems every hardcore IT nerd i know has a crappy or defunct website.

but i adore this pic. it’s just a wonderful moment in the swingout – right there, somewhere round 1 and 2 or 7 and 8, where crinnie’s pulling out her gorgeous swivel and b.l. is pulling it right out.
i love the way they’re oriented towards the camera with their bodies, but looking at each other. i like the way b.l.’s eyeline suggests he’s checking out crinnie’s awesome shit. and look at those fabulous big arms!
i also like it that they’re sweaty and look like they’ve been working. this isn’t some poncy staged shot.
the fact that b.l. is in sharper focus draws our attention to his face, and then this draws our attention back to crinnie with his eye-line.
i also like the way their clothes are coordinated.

oh, aren’t lindy hoppers clever and pretty?

well, i can’t keep away from it. i just keep going back. and she’s so rewarding. she writes frequently. she writes about personal, private things (which, in the spirit of big brother, i adore). she’s so painfully… painfully… you know, painful. it’s nice to read through her blog and suddenly feel a whole lot better about myself. i mean, she’s a total fashion victim, she has no clue about academic politics, she’s loathed by half the cultural studies nerds in australia and mistrusted by the rest and she has these hopeless crushes.

i haven’t had a crush in ages. crushes also came up on swingtalk again recently.
but i can’t really contribute. i get briefly passionate fits of admiration and hero worship occasionally, usually for middle-aged women with abominable dress sense and stunning vocabularies, but not real, honest-to-betsy crushes. i had a disturbing dream about a dear friend recently, but that’s not the same thing. that’s just disturbing (goddamn unconscious – what are you trying to tell me?).

but this chick has like three crushes on the boil. and text messaging plays a role in her love life. i don’t own a mobile, nor do i wish to, so i can’t understand this text message romance thingy. i don’t want a mobile – i like to be Unavailable. i’m more of an email girl. or an IM girl.
but it seems the Young People have integrated mobile phones indelibly into their social lives.
sigh.
i remember the days of phone cards and home cards (or whatever they’re called).

but this chick. i can’t stop reading her blog. so long as she doesn’t talk about her academic work, it’s ok reading. but i want to punch her in the head when she brings up university stuff.
let’s hope she gets bullied at the cssa conference…

but you know, i feel sorry for her. maybe i’d even like her if i knew her more? i’d certainly feel it was my duty to enlighten her re politics and, well, using her brain if i was her friend.
but i don’t have the energy for her particular brand of tragic, almost pathetic -ness. i do feel sorry for her when she goes on about her weight or how she feels she’s unattractive or ugle or whatever. that’s sad. and i want her to feel better about that stuff. but i also want her to start feeling bad about her abysmally crap knowledge of her field. honestly, she should be ashamed.

i know it’s looking dumb. i hate that big ‘miscellany’ over there on the left, too. i’ll try to fix it soon.
and i know the comments thing is annoying. and i still haven’t fixed up the search results pages. i’m sorry. i’m sorry.
sigh.

see how excited i just got about what amounts to a portable tape recorder?

so while i’ve been sick, i’ve also been discovering technology. i’m going to take The Squeeze’s little laptop, memory stick and little digital camera to europe with me.

the mem stick is actually totally bitching.

i was considering buying a little tape recorder thingy for interviews, when The Squeeze remembered the mem stick. it has a microphone built in. and it ROCKS. you can fit 8 hours of voice on it. then you just insert it into the side of the lappy and upload. or you listen with headphones. utter simplicity.

hoorah for media convergence.

hoorah for digital thingies.

the mem stick is also ace for listening to music (like an ipod, except better because you can then upload the music to other computers) and for carrying around other computer files (like word documents), and then uploading other places. it is utterly excellent.

i’m not much of a walkman technology type of person – i’d rather read a book on the bus, keep plugged into the world around me. it’s more interesting.

but i had a great big stack of interesting and thought-inspiring fun recording the sounds all around me on the bus.
it’s so small and unobtrusive, you can do it without people noticing. then you just plug it into your computer and play with the file. no need to digitise from casettes or any of that rubbish.
aw yeah, baby.

it is SO good.

i’ve had a busy few days. busy being SICK, that is.
i’m in stage three with the cold. week three, stage three. from head cold to chest cold to horrid, tight chested, wheazy dryish cough where i get dizzy from lack of oxygen because my lungs don’t work. i’m run down, i’m tired, i’m dizzy.
this is fucking shit.
i’ve been to another doctor since, today at uni, who offered me antibiotics with side effects i had to press him to explain. spew guts. great. i’d blotted that out of my memories of last time with this cold. that ‘wonderful new top drug for respiratory infections in europe’ antiobiotic makes me spew up. vigorously. it’s also likely to give you thrush. so i’ll really enjoy the next week. itchy and vomiting.

so i pocketed the script with a ‘yeah, right i’m going to take this without checking it’s not the one that makes me spew’ and no intention of shelling out the dosh until i’d double checked it with a real doctor.

i’m going to go to dr flowers. couldn’t get an appointment til next goddamn friday (a week! A WEEK!). so i’m going to stalk her at the drop-in clinic tomorrow. not the derro/junky drop in type clinic. the sad, desperately ill student drop in. where we fight for a last minute appointment.

meanwhile i’m filling my head with nasal spray, ventolin and pulmucort, and decongestants. symptom management is go.
i’ve done no exercise in three weeks, so i’m stiff and sore and cranky. i’ve tried walks, but i get tired and faint and feel spewy.

this has to end.

seems that there’s a sudden rash of submarine film interest in melbourne. The Squeeze has a long standing interest in the genre. which i will foster as it allows me to ‘watch’ a film while crocheting that subtitled flicks do not. plus there’s lots of audio-centred content (ie being very quiet so we don’t let other subs know we’re there; and ‘pinging’ other marine vehicles) to cue you in on the narrative development.

personally, i don’t care much for submarine films per se, but they have their place.

Today I went to the doctor on Sydney road. I usually go to the uni doctor, pretend like I’m still going to unimelb so I can see the excellent doctors there. But when I’m too sick (or lazy) to ride the 20mins to Carlton, or ride the annoying tram 15mins then walk 20 slow minutes across to the clinic, I go to the medical centre on Sydney road. It’s where I go when I want antibiotics and a complete lack of patient-doctor rapport. I’d never go there for anything important, like a pap smear, or an ongoing problem. I go there when I want a Quick Fix. And I know this cold. It needs to be Fixed, or I’ll be sick forever. Just like last time. I’ve been sick since last Thursday – that’s a week of sickness. I’m finally riding my bike again (though, as I learnt today, it’s a slow, coughing-my-guts up and arriving really exhausted sort of riding), but I’m not properly well yet. My voice is weird, I’m coughing and snorting up discoloured goobs, I’m run down, etc etc etc.

So I went to the doctor. I donÂ’t want to fly with buggered Eustachian tubes. Pain really isnÂ’t my thing.

I saw a nice Indian lady doctor (rather than the somewhat disturbingly overweight middle-aged man doctor), for oh, about 10 quality minutes. I’m usually all about booking double appointments with doctors so I can actually get some useful communication going – I don’t really feel that 10 minutes is sufficient time for a discussion about, oh, contraceptives, say. It took the doc, what, five years of study to figure out contraceptives. I think I’ll need more than 10 minutes.

But because I was at the clinic, I was prepared to spend 10 minutes. It was a nice 10 minutes. We talked mostly about that Moulin Rouge program thatÂ’s on the ABC at the moment. It’s about these Australian dancer girls who go to France to dance in some can can show (the actual Moulin Rouge may be involved, but IÂ’m not sure). I think we talked about that show because I said I needed to be well to go dance in Europe. IÂ’m not sure exactly what she thinks IÂ’ll be doing in Europe, and I didnÂ’t really want to disappoint her. Though that quick look up the back of my shirt while she plied her stethoscope should have cued her in on my actual status as a Dancer. Maybe she though I was sporting some fashionably European curves for the new season. Or maybe she wasnÂ’t really paying attention when she watched the naked dancing episode.

We did, though, spend a fair few minutes discussing the naked episode. I was assured that it wasnÂ’t just nakedness. It was well, you know, dancing nakedness. I assured her in return, that I understood. We talked very much in subtexts.

Seems the doc (whoÂ’s name I donÂ’t know) is mighty keen on the Moulin Rouge show, that she works long, hard days on Tuesdays (hence the programÂ’s appeal) and was interested in the ethical dilemma posed for the girls by the naked episode. And by their living conditions in Europe.

Well, I guess it was far more interesting than the content of my lungs.

I will have to go see the inestimable Dr Flowers to discuss this ongoing cold situation, though. Wonder what sheÂ’s been watching lately