Bolt from the Blue

Wandering around an unspecified western suburbs university today, I came across a giant-sized nut of the mechanical variety lying in a garden. What enormous piece of machinery has this fallen from? Is there an alien spacecraft whose wing is now loose?

Age Superiority

When you're a youngster, everyone you meet is older, wiser, more experienced at life, and you know nothing by comparison. You're at the bottom of the heap. As a schoolkid, progressing through the years, you're gradually increasing in status as you see new kids start each year and you have the advantage over them. You start a new job, and you're the most inexperienced, lowest of the low. Then gradually you gain some insights into what you're doing and you're moving up the rungs slowly. So how do you feel when you're getting old? Is there a relaxed sense of wisdom and calmness from having been around for a while and knowing how the world works? And when you're older than 99% of people you meet in everyday life, do you get a tiny feeling of superiority over them all?  I guess I'll have to wait a few decades to find out.

More from Churchlands

Processed with Kitcam.

Autumny Trees in Winter

Taken in Churchlands this morning after an early sprinkle of rain, leaving everything glistening.

Rokeby Rd Trees

Taken with my iPhone out the front window of my car on the way home. Every day I hope that this stretch of the street is clear of parked cars, but no, there's always something in the way, spoiling my perfect shot.

More Revolutionary Concepts in Literature

Another aspect of real life you'll see in my novel is forgetfulness. I often read a story in which one character is recounting an earlier conversation or describing an incident that happened to them. And the words and actions seem are remembered verbatim, 100% accurate, as if they had been recorded and transcribed. Well when I'm recalling a conversation, most of the words are lost to me and I can only remember the gist of it. I'll know that someone made a witty comment but the actual comment has completely gone from my memory. So I will dump the literary convention of perfect recall and my novel will feature an old dude sitting around a campfire telling stories from his youth. But he'll get muddled and not remember the endings, and people's names will change halfway through, and the chronology will be jumbled, and most of the dialogue will be forgotten. Because that's the way my brain works.

My First Novel

Being a voracious reader, it's appropriate for me to one day add my modest contribution to the world of writing. And the revolutionary idea for my first novel is to disregard the artificial conventions that have constrained literature for too long. My unfamiliarity with postmodernism probably means I'm reinventing the wheel, but nevertheless, here are my ideas so far:

1. Ditch conventional chapters. Is real-life divided neatly into chapters? No. 

2. Don't start at the start. In your life, how often do you encounter a narrative that's presented neatly in chronological order to you? Yes, if you're the centre of the story, but otherwise it doesn't happen that way. Normally you hear bits and pieces of the story out of sequence from different sources. 

3. Repeated names. Novels usually contain uniquely-named characters for ease of identification. My novel will contain Alan, Alain, another Alan and Alna. In real life, people have matching names and you need to rely on context to identify people. So my readers will be faced with the same challenge.

4. Ditch the ending. 

5. Add mumbles and malapropisms. In real-life, 30% of dialogue consists of undecipherable mumbling, and sentences that are abandoned halfway through as the speaker loses their train of thought. And there are mistakes in grammar every five seconds if you pay close attention to what people say. So I'll incorporate all these imperfections in my dialogue. Writing mumbling will be a challenge, but expect to read something like this "yeah, err the umm chrmstnfrmnnbmthsfl lf  ten, okay."

So now that everyone is looking forward to my book, I should probably get started.

Lingering Knell

How many more years do I need to wait until Facebook dies? I've been successfully abstaining from using it since it hit everyone's consciousness five years ago, hoping it will fade away before long, but it still lingers on and I get the little gnawing feeling I'm missing out on something. It's like rejecting an invitation to a party you're not interested in - there's a little regret at excluding yourself from the slim possibility of an awesome event. So it does perk me up every time I read another article on social media on its declining trendiness among teens. In only another decade or two, it could be gone !

King's Park Banksia

Walking through King's Park, I came across this pretty banksia.

Fighting Squirrels

Less Blurry Autumn Colours

This time I stopped my car to take a photo.

Autumn Colours

Most Perth trees don't change colour through the seasons, but this avenue on Rokeby Road is an exception. I pass here on the way to work in the morning, and it's gorgeous at this time of year. It's a little blurry because I took it as I was driving with my iPhone.

Future Archaeology

Avidly watching Time Team this week, the show where a bunch of archaeologists start digging up your garden to discover a mass grave of plague victims, or the mosaic from a Roman villa, I've been wishing that they come to my property one day. But I fear there's very little to find of interest under the soil, other than a few tags from plants I've bought that perished over summer and ended up in shallow graves. The problem is that these days rubbish collection is too efficient. Unlike previous decades, it's no longer necessary to dig a pit for household waste. And it's rare to bury your dead relatives under the lemon tree even if they would provide a welcome slow release source of fertiliser. So my plan is to strategically leave items of interest under ground rather than toss them in the bin. I'll bury some cans of baked beans, some CDs, an old mobile phone, some costume jewelry, and maybe a few handmade flint arrowheads, just to get the archaeologists excited. And then all I need to do is email Tony, and see if he can bring his team over for a riveting three days of digging. I can't wait.

Foreshadowing

Some movies and novels are richer than they initially appear. When the story starts in the middle and you're thrown in without any context and thirty characters are introduced all at once, and you have no idea what's happening, don't despair. There's a chance that the writer has grand ambitions and has got you absorbed in a complex multi-layered narrative (although it could just be a sign of bad writing). Hopefully, further into the story, you'll gradually piece together what's happening. And by the end, you'll think you've understood what's happened. But wait, there's a bonus for you. If you know watch the movies again, or read the book again, with knowing eyes, you'll pick up so many additional textures that you missed the first time round. I love it when this happens. It means I can read a book through twice for twice the fun, or I can watch the same film twice, and experience it differently each time. And I'll end up with a richer experience.

Here are some wonderful examples I've experienced in the last year:

Cabin in the Woods - the twist in this film changes your perception of everything you've seen up to that point

Oblivion - as above, the twist changes everything

Gardens of the Moon - 100 characters are introduced in a hurry and there are no obvious heroes or villains in this beautifully written first book in the series of ten by Steven Erikson.

Minimising Walking

When someone drives to the gym, do they try to park as close as possible to the entrance? Or are they pleased when only a distant parking spot is available, so they can get in an extra bit of exercise?  It struck me as contradictory that someone who'll be getting on a treadmill for 30 mins is reluctant to walk an extra few steps when they're not officially exercising. What brought this to mind is that I'll happily play sport for ten hours a week, but I'll still activate my brain's navigation computer in order to calculate the shortest walking route wherever I'm going. Is there any logic to that?

Me at work. 

Perth from Bold Park

Last Sunday as the sunset approached, I was on a hillock in Bold Park with camera poised, ready to capture the view as the colours of the sky reddened.

Tomatoey Pizza

A typical scene in my kitchen in the early stages of pizza preparation, when the scene is very tomatoey.

Innovative Magazine Reading

Seen in the supermarket this morning (Woolworths, Floreat Forum), a middle-aged women in leopard-skin prints hogging the magazine aisle. Not only was she reading the cooking magazines from start to finish, not allowing anyone else to get close, she was taking photos of recipes with her phone camera.

Sunny Football

A scene from Claremont Oval this afternoon. In the balmy 18 degrees of a late autumn day, any stray rays of sunshine hitting me with their warmth were welcome.

Don't Believe Movie Reviews

The life of a professional movie reviewer is bleak. They might sit through three or four movies a day, and when they get to the last one, their patience could be wearing thin, their hunger might be gnawing at them and they're keen to escape into the real world again. So their experience may be tainted compared to that of someone heading out to the pictures for a treat.  And so when you see a harsh criticism of a movie that you'd otherwise be interested, it's wise to be sceptical of the reviewer's opinion. After reading damning reviews, I've seen numerous films which have been hugely entertaining. For instance Speed Racer, the Wachowski brothers' next film after the Matrix Trilogy was a spectacular experience in the cinema, with ribbons of coruscating colour and energetic audio hitting the audience unlike any other film, yet it was critically panned.

Or The Host, Stephanie Myer's story in which a woman coexists with an alien spirit in her head, again was damned yet entertained throughout.

So please, ignore those critics and make your own mind up.  

Are Executives Big Babies?

Are senior executives as helpless as babies? They're often hopeless with email, struggle with their smartphones, can't operate office equipment like faxes and photocopiers, they have people preparing drinks and meals for them, and they have reserved parking bays so they don't need to walk far or even have a driver. So what are they good for? Is the idea that their bodies are pampered so that they can direct all their energies into their intellectual processes. Their enormous brains are floating above the material world, devoted to high level insights and revolutionary concepts for their business.

Robot Alert

Spotted wandering around, zapping bugs with its laser, I took this with my iPhone and processed it in Camera+.

My Addiction

Candy Crush is a drug. This puzzle game is so cleverly designed that it's sucked me into its little lolly world, as I progress from level to level. My time for photography and reading books has evaporated as every waking moment is spent obsessing over this.

Although it's a free game for smartphones, when you run out of lives you need to wait for another, or else you buy another. But once you're addicted you can't wait that 15 minutes for the next life, and so  you put the clock on your phone forward by 15 minutes. I've done this again and again and now my phone thinks it's mid-July. My life is now completely messed up - birthday reminders pop up months early, and my phone tells me to put the bin out on the wrong day. If only I had the strength to uninstall the game...

Best Invention of the Decade...

...dishwashing brushes with built-in detergent dispenser.

These devices make cleaning the dishes such a joy. Instead of filling a sink with soapy water then cleaning everything in one go, you can clean as you go, one item at a time.

Windy Before Rain

Being an amateur meteorologist, I've noticed that when a calm day suddenly turns gusty, it can be a sign of approaching rain. It's natural to imagine that wind strength is fairly consistent over the space of 30 minutes or an hour, but when there are stormy systems in your neighbourhood, it can go from still to strong winds then rain then still again several times over.

So next time you feel that sudden strong wind, get under cover.