Category Archives: clicky

You should go here and read B’s giant panda story.
I know how the protagonist feels. But for me, it’s standing on the pavement outside the fabric shop, thinking about just getting on my bike and riding and riding and never coming back. Then thinking of my poor students’ papers piled up on our dining room table, and how they’ve all tried so much harder with this assignment, and obviously all studied their guts out for the quiz. How could I leave this job undone?

Because she loves Dan Brown.

Not being a big fan of bananas, this guy‘s arguments fail to convince me to become a creationist.

I’ve been reading this blog by someone I knew at Unimelb, and this here by someone I don’t know.
I’m kind of caught thinking ‘how wonderful’ in response to their grasp of the written word, and also ‘how terrible’ when I really pay attention to the things they’re writing about.
I’ve also had my attention caught by Galaxy‘s post on Sarsaparilla about Alan McKee’s book, where the most interesting thing about this books seems not to be McKee (or anyone else’s) actual content inside the book, but the ideas that it’s prompted in Galaxy’s brain. When she writes about her delight in the cook and the chef, and declares it is beautiful, I know what she means. I like the thought of finding a cooking program beautiful, or more importantly, of making that declarative statement usually reserved for sunsets and grand gestures for the happy working relationship between a middle aged country woman-cum-marketing queen and a slight, big city type chef queer young man. I know what she means. I think it’s the same way I feel when I’m sitting on the bus listening to Willie Bryant rollicking through Chimes at the Meeting. I know it’s a manufactured dot of pop culture, something mass produced for masses of people – masses of years ago, no less. I know it’s not perfect, and that I should be wary of the class stuff and the gender stuff and the race stuff and so on. But just for that moment, it is beautiful, because it matches the way I feel just then, and the way I like music to make me feel. And I stop thinking about it for a minute, and just enjoy the things I can do with this nice bit of music. Just as Galaxy points out, it’s not technically great, but it suits my needs, as a creative person, and as a fan and as a consumer and as a producer. It is beautiful.
When I read those first two blogs I mentioned above, I think of my friend B and her partner P, who I only knew a little bit before they moved back to the states. Not only are B’s blog and those other blogs alike in topic and the loveliness-to-read-ness, they’re also alike in the way they make extraordinary events ordinary. Life threatening illness becomes a part of the everyday experiences of someone I ‘know’. Maybe that’s simply a function of blogging – bringing you closer to people through the ordinary details of people’s lives.
Or maybe, as Pavlov’s cat suggests, it’s not only

a brush with mortality and a few days of submergence in the weird underworld of hospitals, doctors and industrial-strength drugs that brings out the very best in bloggers

but that

blogging is a particularly good mode for such experience; bloggers can write it and readers can read it almost in real time, recording and following the trajectory of the experience as it happens, and very likely even in an interactive way — so that the act of blogging itself is therapeutic, and the responses from concerned and attentive readers maybe even more so.

But to return to my story about B and P. We met through dance, at the very first lindy exchange, and then only saw each other once a year (if we were lucky). And most of our time was spent rushing out words between dances, or over late night food. But you know, you come to know people through dancing as well – I remember how B feels in your arms when you’re leading her through a swingout. I remember the temperature of her hand and how she was taller than me, and how that was just the right height for me to lead (and still is).
And I remember the texture of P’s lovely velvet suit jacket under my left hand on his shoulder. The suit that boiled him alive, but which he refused to take off, for vanity’s sake (and vanity well spent, I say: it was such a lovely suit). I remember the expressions on P’s face and dancing to the theme song from Austen Powers with him and thinking ‘this is the very perfectest song to dance to with this partner, right now’. And when I read B’s posts on her blog, I remember the nice note she left us after they stayed in our house once, and the way she would talk sensibly about being ill and having to travel in to Melbourne from the northern territory for treatment. And I have so many of those little bits of memory about people that have nothing to do with what they say or think, and everything to do with the way we communicated for a few minutes with our bodies. Dancers talk about it in terms of ‘connection’, and that’s really the best word for it. It sounds a little hippy if you haven’t felt it, but how else can you explain suddenly moving with a complete stranger who doesn’t even speak your language in complete harmony? Or the way you’ll look up at your partner and laugh, not because you’ve said or done anything particularly funny, but because you’ve both suddenly started to really be together.
And when I read those blog entries about being ill, or dealing with surgery – living with illness, I should say, where you are most definitely more than just ‘ill’, you are someone who’s life is still going on, who’s still doing interesting things and having intersting thoughts and stopping to say ‘it is beautiful’ – I have that same echo-of-senses that I remember from dancing. When Stephanie writes about untangling herself from the demands of her everyday life or of illness as text, I think ‘yes, I know that feeling. I can smell it, right now. It’s like the feel of P’s coat, or knowing how tall B is with my eyes closed, even though I was only holding her hand, and she’s thousands of miles away’.
All the things that I can remember about my mother being ill are bad. There are no nice memories and nothing happy to remember. So when I read Stephanie’s stories about being ill, I also think about the way Galaxy writingit is beautiful reminded me that there is beauty in the minutiae of everyday things, and that these things – the smell of ya pears or knowing exactly how tall someone is, and how much they weigh, just from holding their hand – are the sorts of details that go into making up our memories of people or of days or of things that are beautiful. So while Stephanie’s stories make my nose run and my eyes fill up, I can also say, despite the difficult thoughts that go with them, it is beautiful.

I have plenty to blog about, mostly involving surprise dental surgery on Monday, giving a lecture the next day with tongue and lips still unrecovered from aneasthetic, figuring out a way to ride to the university that takes me only 45 minutes! when the bus takes me an hour and a half, having an infected ear with a (gross) pussy ear drum, discovering this and getting excited because it starts a couple of days after this, procrastinating with a ‘mini program’ for MLX6, getting the proper podcasting gear online for MLX6 podcasting (fat lotta radio will follow – when I made de page), adding two DJing sets to this already busy week and… well, other stuff.
But rather than write about all that boring rubbish, I will just steal some content from a blog I quite like:

5. Nora went to the doctor yesterday and she is finally THIRTY POUNDS. The big three oh! And it only took 44 months to get there! Better lay off the Fig Newtons, you tub of lard, or soon you’ll be waving bye-bye to the fifth percentile! I am joking, of course, but it does feel like a milestone. Nora explained away her recent weight gain by saying, “It makes sense, because I have been pretending to be a superhero for a while now.” You all can ditch your ‘roids and powders, because apparently the way to build mass is to wear a cape and run around the house striking poses and screaming CAPTAIN AMERICA! or INCREDIBLE HULK! I have tried to suggest that superheroes do more than scream out their own names (but do they really? Isn’t the entire superhero gestalt an ego-driven enterprise?), that they fight evil and such, but the concepts are too nebulous for Nora to grasp. Sometimes we play a game where she sits on the couch and I get ready to sit down, with elaborate yawning and “gosh, I’m beat” antics, and then I lean back on top of her and she yells OH NO! CAPTAIN AMERICA IS BEING SQUISHED! And then she struggles out from underneath with accompanying grunts of effort and triumphant shouts at the end. Maybe you missed the issue where Captain America is squashed on the couch by the buttocks of a five-foot-tall Midwestern editor and mother, but I hear it is a valuable collectors’ item, particularly in Japan where they probably have a fetish for that very thing. Check eBay.

This is the sort of thing that we approve of in our house – the amassing of mass and the declaration of superhero handles. We feel that asserting one’s professional identity in verbal form is important. While we were content with things like ‘The Ham approaches!’ and ‘The Cheese abides!’, I feel that we will now take it up a notch.
To full caps at the very least.

Get more genuin Scandinavian Design in you. Like IKEA, only with weirder grammar.
I think I love the fabric too much.
…there’s a reason lindy hoppers are obsessed with all things Svensk.

Because it is Friday night and I’m huddled under a pathetically thin home made quilt in the lounge room (where I would usually lounge, but am currently huddled over the warmth of my lappy) wishing I knew how to light the pilot light on the heater (yes, I know, I know, learned helplessness = crap) and waiting for The Squeeze to come home and cook me dinner (look, alright, I do realise what this implies about me) prior to my going dancing for the first time in ages, I’m taking time to write crappy blog posts.
I’m also listening to a new Duke Ellington CD (oh, alright, it’s this one: ). I adore small group action (see my previous post on Benny Goodman’s small groups), and this is no exception. I am pleased.
I’ve also had my imagination caught by ducky’s Remember To Breath meme (over here).
It seems like the sort of exercise I’m into. So here are some things that make me happy:
1. making extremely lame dad jokes to a class full of teenagers, who then groan. I’d like to think it has something to do with my reclaiming the power of pun from the patriarchy, but it has more to do with simple humour and protuding funny bones. I have only one thing to say: “it’s not a tutor!”.
2. doing silly made up dances in the hallway for my own entertainment. These are not, in any way, cool or technically sophisticated works of art. They are silly dances which make me puff and feel lovely.
3. laughing like an idiot on the bus listening to the Media Report – it’s not cool, it’s nerdy, and it makes me feel ace.
4. re-reading Robin McKinley books. Also, re-reading a wind in cairo by Judith Tarr. It has horses and deserts in it, so I love it. Unfortunately, I have read it so many times I know each word by heart. But that’s not the point, is it?
5. chick flicks, especially ones with cheerleaders in them. I have no excuse – I just LOVE that shit.
6. doing things like this in the park:

and then having things like this happen:

(that’s my Squeeze there – isn’t he fine?)
7. having breakfast at a cafe with That Squeeze, reading the paper while he does the crossword, having the nice waitress bring us our drinks without us ordering (we are Regulars), and then not having to remember to specify scrambled eggs.
8. riding somewhere with The Squeeze, telling each other stupid stories like this one, laughing a lot and feeling the endorphines and adrenaline pumping through me as we ride down a hill.
9. riding anywhere at speed, when I’m feeling pumped. There is nothing, nothing finer.
10. going to yoga on Wednesday mornings with the older kids. I love that shit. I love the way they make me laugh, I love doing the yoga thing and feeling my body really work. I love talking after class, I love the teasing, I love riding up to Sugar Dough for lunch afterwards. I love all of that very much.
— I have to add more, because there are lots of wonderful things that I have to mention.–
11. listening to albums like this one (especially songs like ‘Rigamarole’, ‘Viper’s Moan’ and ‘Chimes at the meeting’), or stuff by bands like the McKinney’s Cotton Pickers – bands that are really fiery but serious fun as well – sassy stuff, where the musicians yell out with excitement – can’t contain themselves when the music really COOKS – mid-song. It just makes me feel great inside – all jiggly and excited.
12. watching clips of amazing dancers from the 30s and 40s – that rocks. I look at stuff like this:

and I just get so excited – that is some SERIOUSLY great stuff.
…oh, I could go on and on and on. But The Squeeze is home and we have to go swap stories of our day.
What are the little things that make you feel good?

Ampersand duck has made me sound really interesting over here. I think I’d like to make friends with those people. Then eat all their food and run off into the night, cackling… well, maybe waddle off into the afternoon.
Look over here at stack. Stacks of slacks. No, stacks of books, really (funny how you meet more booknerds on the internet than in bookshops, huh? Guess it’s a wordy* thing).
And you must, in the spirit of all things cute (and in honour of The Squeeze, who loves this shit), go look here to see more of this sort of action:

(stolen from here)
…I shouldn’t have let him know about that. Now he’ll do that pathetic sighing thing whenever the letter ‘f’ is uttered, or we see someone in a beret.
*worder? wordsmith? wordnerd? werd!

adopt your own virtual pet!