Propping Up Lamp-posts

Someone has to do it.

Young Turk

This young bird is a total punk - look at that rebellious hairstyle. You can tell he's a troublemaker.

He's a weiro, otherwise known as a cockatiel, Australia's smallest but most troublesome cockatoo.

Exciting Start to 2011

As noted by Mini-Rob earlier, the forecast for the New Year is exciting for weather-watchers.

After the hottest year ever, 2011 shows ominous signs of being even hotter. I predict that by mid-week there'll be high levels of grumpiness in Perth, and I'll be sleeping on the back lawn to stay cool.

UPDATE - It turns out that this forecast was merely a prank, perpetrated on us by the Bureau of Meteorology on us hapless citizens - there were never going to be four days of 40. Well they've hoaxed us one too many times. From now on, I will switch permanently to Weatherzone.com for all forecasts. After all, who else has the ability to determine the weather inside Floreat Forum?

National Holiday Road Toll

Listening to all the reports on the national holiday road toll at this time of year, I started wondering why it is that this one particular type of fatality attracts so much attention. After all, heart disease and other circulatory diseases account for over ten times as many deaths as traffic accidents, so why isn't there a national tally of this more significant problem, particularly when Christmas is a time for over-indulging in food and drinks, and is the biggest time of the year for clogging your arteries. The reason is that car accidents are more spectacular. How illogical is that?

Here are the top causes of death in 2008, from the ABS. Car accidents are not even in the top twenty.

	2008
Cause of death	no.	Rank
Ischaemic heart diseases	23 665	1
Strokes	11 973	2
Dementia and Alzheimer disease	8 171	3
Trachea and lung cancer	7 946	4
Chronic lower respiratory diseases	6 255	5
Diabetes	4 191	6
Colon and rectum cancer	4 120	7
Blood and lymph cancer	3 889	8
Heart failure	3 360	9
Diseases of the kidney and urinary system	3 224	10
Prostate cancer	3 031	11
Breast cancer	2 788	12
Pancreatic cancer	2 291	13
Suicide	2 190	14
Skin cancers	1 857	15
Hypertensive diseases	1 824	16
Influenza and pneumonia	1 742	17
Cardiac arrhythmias	1 547	18
Cirrhosis and other diseases of liver	1 490	19
Falls	1 348	20

The Return of Joey

Actually this is Joey's close friend.

Christmas Down Under

Being on the bottomside of the earth, everything in Australia is upside-down. For example, these decorations from my neighbourhood are topsy-turvy (more turvy than topsy).

Whom Did I Spend Christmas With?

It was this fellow. First name Joey.

Unique Thought

On a Christmas Day when the temperature reached 40 degrees, our original thought was to head down to the beach. Surprisingly, 200,000 people had the same idea.

Note the lone baby, celebrating by itself at the bottom right. She invited her other baby friends but none turned up, so she was left with six mini-mince pies and some baby sherry to have by herself.

If you can name this beach, you might win a prize. Or you might not.

Joyeux Noël & Feliz Navidad

With only eight hours till midnight and the official start of seasonal festivities, I'm taking this opportunity to wish my sole reader of this blog a merry Christmas. She is a Señora S. Casal of Corrientes, and every Tuesday she sends me a chicken empanada by parcel post. Speaking of which, I should mention that I'm actually a vegetarian, and so I've been donating her meals to the local retirement village (which was at the centre of a salmonella scare only last week).

Horrifying Scenes from Solihull

Late news from Solihull. The scene below was captured by my local correspondent on his way to Tesco's for some prawn cocktail crisps. After snapping the behemoth with his mobile phone, he just had enough time to hide in a shed it stomped past, crushing or lasering anything that moved. Hopefully he made it home safely.

The only hope is that it runs out of petrol and they can't afford to refuel it. 

U3

Due to overwhelming demand from literally one person, here's another pic from the U2 concert on Saturday. The event left such an impression on me (or brainwashed me) that on Sunday I returned to listen to the final concert, although without a ticket I was forced to park outside the venue in my car, alongside many other poor U2 fans who had the same idea. Interestingly, the selection of songs was somewhat different between the two concerts, and Bono's jokes were also not repeated.

Fortune Cookies

At my work Christmas Party, it's traditional to distribute Fortune Lollies, the cheapskate version of Fortune Cookies. Here are a sample of the type of message people receive. Luckily nobody reads this blog, otherwise this could spoil tomorrow's fun.

Your office romance has been discovered

Meh.

Never give up, unless defeat arouses that girl down the corridor

Confucius says: go to bed with itchy blah blah, wake up with stinky finger

The end is nigh, and it's your fault.

You will die alone and poorly dressed.

Your colleagues secretly agree that your bum is too big for your body

Help. I'm being held prisoner in a Pascall lolly factory.

Someone has googled you recently.

I apologise for the innappropriate nature of some of these fortunes. I blame someone who shall remain nameless but knows who they are, and should be ashamed of themself. 

From My Solihull Correspondent

Thanks very much to my friend in Solihull, this is the current view of my old house.

Madame Dog at Sunset

It's a shame that this blobby dog got in the way of my photo of last Friday's marvellous sunset.

Space Insect Lures Thousands

Yesterday evening booming bass sounds and melodies reached me at home. From the balcony, I saw strange lights and a stream of people heading towards Subiaco Oval. I felt a strange compulsion drawing me to follow them, and after a short walk, this is the sight I came across. Tens of thousands of people aged between about 25 and 45 were trying to get closer to this vast insect with strobing coloured legs and beams of light shooting straight up into the sky. A tiny humanoid called Bono seemed to be in charge, although he only spoke in song and verse, but everyone was under his spell.

U2 in concert. I2 was there. 

Nighttime in Wembley

You're looking at a cruise missile launching on the left. The glowing in the centre are my disco balls hanging from the rear view mirror.

The view from the backseat of my car after drinking half a litre of orange cordial

In truth, this was a regular photo from the back of my car. On the left is the lamppost across the road. I went to rollip.com and jazzed up the photo for fun, and it became a fantastic scene.

Mothman Prophecies

Mothman was seen on the rooftops above Woodlands last night. Normally a bad omen, this time I think he was likely just trying to catch the sea breeze and cool down on a humid night.

Frog Visitor

Watering my garden today, I was spraying a pot plant when this creature jumped out and hopped up the fence.

Why is our Climate Broken?

As we approach the end of Perth's second driest year ever and hottest of all time, I'm wondering why? Beyond the long term pattern of increased CO2 in the atmosphere leading to the greenhouse effect and global warming, what are the local reasons that our weather is so extreme this year? Having watched literally hundreds of weather reports presented by Channel Ten's Michael Shultz I feel qualified enough to make an informed comment. Here are theories I've heard this year -

1. Reduced sunspot activity has led to less solar energy hitting the atmosphere and with less energy this leads to weaker weather systems over the oceans that aren't strong enough to push through the high pressure system that can sit over the middle of Australia for weeks at a time.

I can't find the reference in New Scientist magazine to the article that explains this all, but believe me, it's true !

2. Westerlies have moved south by 6 degrees, due to changes in upper atmospheric temperatures http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/3065125.htm
This means that the storm systems and cold fronts that used to hit the South of Western Australia now tend to pass too far to the south. This theory is also true.

3. Land clearing - trees generate rain. And the massive clearing in the wheat belt has increased the aridity over the inland significantly. http://www.sciencealert.com.au/features/20090710-19945.html .

The easternmost part of the Western Australian wheatbelt has less rainfall than the uncleared wilderness country lying immediately to its east, even though there is an overall natural trend of rainfall to decrease from the west to the east. Land clearing has altered the albedo of the ground surface by replacing relatively dark native vegetation with relatively light cereal crops, resulting in less heat absorption by incoming solar radiation and consequently less low-level turbulence as that heat is re-radiated. Low-level turbulence is an integral part of the rainmaking process; a process also affected by the removal the surface roughage (the tree layer) that provides transpired moisture, which also assists in the creation of low-level atmospheric turbulence. (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9946)

This theory is definitely true.

4. La nina. I would explain this one further but instead I need to go and make a pizza right now.

5. Back from the pizza for the fifth theory, that our erstwhile Premier Colin Barnett is behind the reduced rainfall. I have long suspected that the Bureau of Meteorology has fraudulently conspired with the State Government in order to hide true rainfall figures. It often rains at my place and yet nothing registers in the official rain gauge. This indicates that the WA government is manufacturing a crisis in order to push ahead with endless desalination plants, thus enriching their private friends. This theory is likely true but as yet unproven. Please add comments if you have evidence.

Purple Glowy Balls

Possibly the classiest Christmas decorations ever created.  Straight from Guanghzou Industrial Park's Factory Number 22 to Innaloo K-Mart and then to me. 

Snotty the Snowman

Made from real snow, we have to keep the air con blasting chilled air 24 hours a day in order to save him from a puddly fate.

Wikileaks Scandal Reaches Perth

Prepare yourselves for a revelation. The latest Wikileaks cables from the US State Department reveal that I am in fact "Agent Turtle", the trusted informant to the US Consul General in Perth who supplies her with comments on both the WAFL and the Perth Wildcats.

In exchange  I've received a Hungry Jacks voucher and a pair of night vision binoculars. But best of all, I get advance copies of 30 Rock, The Office and Community.

Disco Balls Glow Happily

Discovered today in a dark cupboard, a set of electric disco balls.

Lowering Standards

HI PEEPS. HVNG PRVOUSLY ABNDND HGH STNDRDS OF SPLLNG AND GRMMR A MNTH AGO I R AGAIN HEADNG DWN THT PTH BY MV1NG 2 TH MORE CONC1S3 TXTNG STYL OF TH FuTURe. AS A BuSY BLoGGR I JST DO NT HV TH TiMe FR SPLL-CHCKNG FoR PRoP3R CaS3 &C. APLGIES.

The White Ibis Posse

Down the road a posse of white ibises hang out. Someone should remind them that they're meant to be living in a swamp.

Decorations are Up and Cats are Festive

Look at the joy in this cat's eyes.

Midsummer Madness

With Britain now experiencing blizzards and temperatures as low as 20 degrees below zero, here's a scene from warmer times - a midsummer visit to a Welsh beach.

This photo was also used as album cover for 1980s folk band The Paddling Montagues

More Crud

You may not be aware, but crud and cruddedness is a venerable concept.
Here's Sturgeon's Law (1958) -

“Ninety percent of everything is crud”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

Carrying on this tradition, I proudly declare that my blog certainly abides by this law. And this post in particular falls in the "crud" category. I had planned to post a beautiful sunset photo today but the heavy clouds and rain have kept me and my camera inside.

Anyhoo, here's the full explanation of Sturgeon's Law from the man himself -

I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud.

Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms.

My Favourite Numbers of All Time

1. 99 = the optimal number of red balloons, and also the digital tv channel featuring some of my favourite programmes 
2. 65536 = number of rows that will kill my version of Microsoft Excel
3. 200 = the ideal speed for driving across the Nullarbor Plain (km/h)
4. 1.41421356 = the square root of 2, and how high I can hurdle in metres 
5. 1/2 = how many pence I paid for a lollipop at my corner store in the 1970s
6. 8 = my mental age
7. 2041 = the year I retire and take up lawn bowls
8. 102 = how many times I went to the cinema in 2008, my all time record

Brangwen of the Brecon Beacons

On a 1981 holiday to Wales, we encountered a mountain child of the Brecon Beacons, wearing her traditional Welsh red costume. Her name was Brangwen Mairwen Llannerchdyffern and she offered to guide us up the mountain in exchange for a bar of chocolate.

Happy 124th

Today this blog celebrates its 124th post. I would have commemorated the 100th if I'd remembered but I was too busy watching tv. Anyway, for this special celebration I will tell you the story of my new fridge.

On Wednesday morning I awoke to hear a buzzing and swishing noise booming from the kitchen reminiscent of a Chinook helicopter taking off in a storm. After checking that there was no Air Force activity in Wembley I worked out that the fridge motor was dying and that instead of freezing my food it was deafening it, which is not a known method of preserving food. So a new fridge was bought from Hardly Normal Superstore, and the salesman promised delivery "before 10am tomorrow". Tomorrow eventually arrived, and the delivery guy rang with the entirely unexpected news that he'd be delivering it between 10am and 1pm. By now I'd emptied the food onto the kitchen table in the heat. Knowing it would go bad shortly I had no option but to start eating as much of it as I could. In a race against time, I got through half a packet of veggie hot-dogs and half a kilo of salmon patties.

The new fridge arrived and the delivery guy managed to topple it over onto its side, crushing his foot and badly denting the top corner. He went off for medical attention (with his partner laughing continuously and offering no sympathy) and a replacement fridge was ordered. So I waited for another five hours, eating more and more food until the new new fridge turned up and normal refrigeration resumed.  In all, a successful day both in terms of calories consumed and in the excitement of viewing a real-life workplace accident.

Further Psychoanalytical Revelations

Analysis of the results from testing subject's responses to names of people reveals an interesting gender divide. Males often respond with descriptions of appearances, whereas females tend to respond with feelings. One male explained that when he hears a person's name, an image of that person appears in his mind, and then he describes one of their visual features ("old", "beard", "hot", "skinny").  Contrast this with responses from female subject J, whose emotional responses included "scary", "mad" and "dork".

Advanced Psychoanalysis

During a rare lull in activity in the office, it was decided that everyone should be psycho-analysed, using the famous word association test. Ten innocuous words were read one by one to the subject who had to respond spontaneously with the first word that came to mind. The results were startling and scandalous as I will now explain. Here are the words we used -

1. apple
2. taxi
3. cream
4. beach
5. dentist
6. numbers
7. woman
8. purple
9. dolphin
10. fog

Firstly, several subjects hesitated for a long time before responding in relation to "woman", and one even failed to respond at all. This block in expression likely indicated a feeling of discomfort with their answer, perhaps feeling it was inappropriate and so an attempt was made to find an acceptable answer.

Interestingly, "dolphin" also triggered similar reactions in some subjects, perhaps the word having special meaning.

The real scandal started when we began to use real people's name as the trigger words. This provoked several candid responses that caught everyone involved by surprise. I will explain more later...

Shadow Play

Exactly once a year, when we approach the summer solstice, and the position of the sun in the sky at midday lines up exactly with the windscreen of a luxury car parked in a reserved spot outside the office window, sunlight is focused into a beam that illuminates our room, and casts enormous shadows on the far wall.

Someone forgot to comb their hair today

This is spectacular enough, but even more fantastic is that occasionally silhouettes of people who are not present appear. One year ago we were shocked to see the outline of a young lady with amazingly fluffy hair. She appeared with a watering-can and spent a long time tending to the shadow tree.

And three years ago, we saw another young lady's shadow throwing pop-pops at the wall with audible effect.

Losing the Will to Live in IKEA

If you've ever seen the film Labyrinth then you'd understand how I felt this afternoon, trapped for hours in the tangled passageways and vast halls of the Southern Hemisphere's largest IKEA store. It's bad enough navigating through a normal store, but this one is designed to prevent you from taking the shortest route. Hapless victims are funneled through a zig-zag route of showrooms, a one-way circuit with narrow aisles and no useful shortcuts. At one stage I turned round and tried to return to the entrance instead of walking the 500 metres to the exit, but going against the flow was so difficult I had to abandon that foolish idea. Once you've reached the end of the showrooms, you still can't leave - you find yourself swept downstairs into the warehouse walking another several hundred metres towards the checkouts.

In one corner of the warehouse I found a dishevelled group of expeditioners from the Liege Street retirement village camping inside some pine wardrobes. They'd entered IKEA the previous Thursday not even looking for modular furniture, instead wanting to try the Swedish meatballs from the café. But their sense of direction had failed them, and with dodgy hips and doddery legs, they were building up their strength before making another attempt to escape that evening.

My trolley was on the small side.

In the end I left with a cheap set of crockery, but only after walking three entire circuits of the store. I vow never to return, in the same way that the hobbits would never return to the Mines of Moria after experiencing the horrors of the evils dwelling deep within.

To emphasize the malevolently designed layout, let me explain that the car park is on the ground floor, and the checkouts and most smaller items for sale are on the first floor. But it's not possible to reach the first floor without first wandering through the second floor in order to find the stairs down. This is cruel in anyone's language, but for navigationally impaired people, it is beyond their comprehension.




Observe how high the shelves reach into the clouds in the photo above.

Grotty Grotto

Never one to go overboard with seasonal decorations, I prefer the subtle and understated approach. So last year, a secret Xmas Grotto was constructed inside a cupboard in my office. We charged kiddies 5 cents for a 5 second view and the chance to make a wish. It was terribly successful, with literally 2 children visiting.

Pocketism Strikes Again

I can't explain how this photo was taken. My mobile phone was busy snapping pics from within my pocket again today, and despite wearing black trousers with black pockets, this Rothkoesque rouge image resulted. Clearly this cannot be explained within the strictures of current science and so I must infer that it is a spirit picture, significance currently unknown but perhaps connected to the Shroud of Turin.

Who Is This Handsome Stranger?

Please send suggestions on a postcard to:

Mystery Face Competition 
15 Kijabe St
Nairobi
KENYA

It's rare to have only one nostril

The Future is Already Here

The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.

—William Gibson, quoted in The Economist, December 4, 2003

Are you living in the past? If you don't have broadband internet, a mobile phone, a digital video recorder and a digital tv then you're still in the 1990's or earlier. Do you still use a video recorder and a CD player and listen to 94.5fm? Perhaps you're in the 80's.  You may think that you're normal, but in reality you're a historical anachronism. In another generation, your primitive existence will be regarded as outdated and as quaint as we think of the 1930s today.

Elderly relatives might still be in bubbles from even earlier times, perhaps the 1960s or 1970s. They have a fixed line telephone, patterned wallpaper and "modern" furniture from Mad Men, and their cuisine consists of the traditional meat and veg; pasta other than spag bol is weird foreign food that is occasionally sampled at restaurants, and Asian fusion is a complete mystery; ATM's are dangerous futuristic machines that can't be trusted that surely won't catch on.

If you're related to someone who hasn't kept up with the modern world, I recommend taking advantage of Christmas and providing them with a taste of 2010 -  donate an old mobile phone or a $10 MP3 player loaded up with Lady Gaga and Daft Punk, and see their face light up with delight.

One More Esperance Lightning Strike

Since the Perth storms never arrived, I'm reminiscing further about the Esperance storm. Here's a fearsome thunderbolt.

Approaching Stormclouds

More from the Esperance storm, this is the scene mid-afternoon when the sunshine disappeared and the ominous  black clouds of doom approached.

Awaiting Thunderstorms

With electrical  storms predicted for Perth this weekend, I've dug out a photo from my trip to Esperance earlier in the year. On 15 February we were hit by a thunderstorm that lasted all night and into the morning, causing local flooding and hail damage, and lightning strikes every few seconds continued for hours and were so loud we couldn't hear the television (and you don't get more serious than that). Hopefully, we're hit by something equally dramatic in the next day.

Bottom right is the Esperance jetty

My Xmas List

I expect you're wondering what Xmas presents I'd like this year, so today I will reveal all.

I want the disco version that strobes in the dark

1. Platinum Cinema Membership. This will entitle me to a chauffeur service to Innaloo, a velvet armchair with my name in the centre of the cinema, with an unlimited Malteser dispenser built into one arm, and a tube refreshing me with my choice of liqueur coming out of the other arm, and if I need to pause the film for a break, I'll use my special remote control. This might annoy the other patrons but they should have bought Platinum Membership too.




2. Remote-Controlled Dalek. When the neighbour parks on my verge, I'll send out my dalek to exterminate it (I mean the car not the neighbour). In seconds only a smouldering chunk of metal will remain. Alternatively the laser can be set to Stun Mode, in order to shock irritating feral doves when they visit. It's also handy when you need a quick cup of tea - one little zap and the water is boiling in an instant.

Burgundy Sky

An update on yesterday's post. Reliable sources tell me that Mauritian beetroots are a burgundy colour, and so residents of that island wouldn't have read anything into last Sunday's sunset.

Now to switch to a less controversial topic, here's a flower picture from my recent trip to Margaret River. I was excited to capture the three colours of the Romanian flag so close together.

Purple Sky

Traditionally, a purple sky presages a bumper crop of beetroot. And I can only hope that last Sunday's freakishly purple sunset means that.

Coneheads in the Family

I'm related to these charming orange children. It's a shame they're so bashful - they're only ever seen in public wearing protective cones. Not having seen their faces, it's possible that they're zombies.

Council Approval

Cambridge Council have finally approved our application for a Great Hall in our backyard. Despite objections, our 35 metre tall building can now be started, and I'm heading over to Bunnings to buy the first building supplies this morning. It's inspired by the National Galllery of Victoria's beautiful hall below, but ours will be a little larger.

Remembrance Sunday

In recognition of the 92nd anniversary of the end of the First World War, here's a rare colour photograph from 1917 showing the aftermath of the Battle of Passchendaele, near Ypres in Flanders.

 Possibly it's a diorama in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Public Holiday Problems

Western Australia has ten public holidays, which is nowhere near enough. But my main complaint is that they're all clustered around the New Year and Easter, with only two days off between the end of April and Christmas.

Here are this year's days of happiness and freedom from work -

Jan 1 - New Year's Day
Jan 26 - Australia Day
Mar 1 - Labour Day
April 2 - Good Friday
April 5 - Easter Monday
April 25 - ANZAC Day
June 8 - Foundation Day
Sep 27 - Queen's Birthday
Dec 25 - Christmas
Dec 26 - Boxing Day


As detailed below, I propose that we need at least an arvo off each month. Even if nobody else agrees, I'll be celebrating these days next year.

Jan 1 - New Year's Day

Jan 26 - Australia Day

Feb 14 - Valentine's Day (or Dungeons and Dragons Day if you're single)

Mar 1 - Labour Day

April 2 - Good Friday

April 5 - Easter Monday

April 25 - ANZAC Day

May 1 - Celebrate Communism Day (including military parade)

June 8 - Foundation Day

July 15 - Puddle Day (to celebrate the start of the rainy season. Every year it moves back by 1 week)
Aug 10 - Official Sickie

Sep 27 - Queen's Birthday

Oct 1 - Son's and Daughter's Day (there's a Mother's Day and a Father's Day but there's no celebration of offspring - the most neglected family members.)

Nov 15 - Hug Your Boss Day (show that you care)

Dec 25 - Christmas

Dec 26 - Boxing Day

Opinions?

Embracing Dreariness

Now that I'm obsessed by this most boring tree in the world, I'm keen to make it a local landmark. And I have now made a commemorative oil painting of it, to sell as a memento.

 I've seen deadly tiger snakes near this tree, which makes me think I should've worn shoes when taking the original photo. 

Boring Tree

Living in the middle of a city can be so dreary. A couple of kilometres from my place is this boring tree doing nothing. I hope one day the swamp it lives in can be drained and developed into something interesting like a rollerdisco or mini-golf. Perhaps a concrete pillar or mobile phone tower can be erected in its place.

Note the miniature city on an island in the swamp on the right. 

Shocking Security Camera Footage

Graphic video footage has been uncovered, showing the terrible moment last Friday when some foolish drunken blogging almost cost a young star of the web world his life, as previously mentioned here . Here is the shocking image (not suitable for minors).

And making matters worse, I had just that evening seen a 3D zombie movie, and was still getting used to moving about in the real world after having worn my 3D glasses upside down, thus messing terribly with my depth perception.

Grammar and Punctuation is DEADDDED

from now on this blog is abandoning the conventions of english spelling grammar and punctuation
no more will i be taking the time to switch between upper case and lower case
im such a busy person that i estimate that simplifying my language can save me up to 5 hours a year that i can better spend sitting around watching tv or playing computer games

Dinosaurs in the Garden

Cleaning out the shed yesterday, I moved a pot and a couple of large geckoes emerged. Being noctural, they weren't too pleased when I moved them outside into the sunlight for their photoshoot, and they refused to stay still for long. But I did manage to get a few decent shots before they ran back into the safety of the darkness.

Their camouflage pattern would make them invisible against a 1970's wallpaper.

Guide to Gold Class

In Australia, the poshest thing the whole country has to offer is Gold Class Cinema. Let me explain how it works, step by step.

1. You pay between $27 and $37 for your ticket, weeks in advance (because the tiny cinemas are usually sold out early). You're selecting a movie that hasn't been released yet, so good luck in finding a decent one.

2. You dress smartly and enter the Gold Class Lounge. You may think that now you're in, your money is safe. But oh no, the worst is yet to come; so far you've merely paid for the privilege of being allowed to see the menu.

3. Once the shock of the prices wears off, you order your gourmet wedges and cocktails and hand over your $35. Or if you want to share something tasty like a seafood platter and a couple of drinks, that'll be $65 thank you.

4. Find your seat and relax. There's a lever that lets you recline almost as far as a dentist's chair. But don't settle in too much - once the movie starts, the waiters will be in and out every two minutes delivering to the whole cinema. You'll always be on edge, wondering if this food is yours.

5. You're now having the time of your life, munching and drinking away, feeling posh, and even catching occasional glimpses of the movie. You're spilling sweet chili sauce and wine over yourself in the darkness, but you can't see it, so you don't care. Even more entertaining is the challenge of eating and drinking while wearing 3D glasses.

So there it is - a treat best enjoyed if you forget how much cash you're burning up. The way to do that is to ask for a Gold Class gift card for Christmas. Then you're content in the knowledge that it was someone else's money. Yay !

Froggy Dilemma

This hapless frog was found in our garden this morning.

Clearly there were two options - cook his legs for lunch, or release him at nearby Lake Monger. After heated discussion we came up with a compromise. We ate one of his legs, and then released him. Everyone was a winner.

Paperbarks in Late Afternoon Light

Just a few minutes until sunset and I was racing around snapping shots before the light disappeared. If you click on the photo for the larger version, you'll see more clearly the warm orange glow hitting the trees.

Drunk Bgloggigninhhg

Is fun, buuuuuuut treachorousss. I jnust fell offff my vchauir.!  hehe

Horrors from the Deepness

Gruesomer and gruesomer

This Halloween our office was startled when the dumb waiter was sent to our floor (it rarely stops at our level), and when opening it we found this horrific scene. Evidently a gargantuan spider was roaming loose in the lower levels, and had entombed these little humunculi in its tangled cobwebs. The mortal shock dumbfounded us, and absolute silence shrouded the room for nearly ten minutes before the screaming started. The women and men of the office broke down and sobbed and shrieked until their voices were hoarse.

We only calmed down later when we found that the mini peoples were deliciously edible. Yummo.

How to Wreck a New Car in Five Easy Steps

Firstly, buy a brand new car. Take enormous pride in it and then experience the despair and devastation as the following happens, all within the first nine months.

1. A raven picks out the waterproof seal around the sunroof. The guy at the dealer said that the bird might have been upset by seeing its reflection.

2. A bollard pops up out of nowhere in a carpark, while I'm in the middle of a rapid reversing / parking manoeuvre, causing $1500 damage in the side panel and the rear bumper - dents and scratches.

3. One evening, again while in the middle of a rapid reversing manoeuvre, a large wheelie bin looms out of the darkness (much like a triffid) and strikes my right wing mirror, knocking it off. The plastic casing is cracked and the reflectors fall to the ground.

4. When entering a steep driveway at high speed, the low ground clearance of the car caused the underside to collide with the ground, breaking the plastic panel underneath the engine.

5. Visiting the beach, some sand became lodged inside the key which is housed in a fancy retractable case. The key ceased to be retractable and refused to pop out and so I had no choice but to whip out my screwdriver from the toolkit and destroy the key and electronic inside the casing in order to extract the damn key and start the engine and get home. 

All of the above is true. And my heartbreak is very real.

Further Qualifications

I've enrolled in a new degree by correspondence from the University of South Carolina.

Students can study ‘Lady GaGa and the Sociology of Fame’.

The University of South Carolina will offer the full-time course, Lady GaGa and the Sociology of Fame, next semester.

“The central objective is to unravel some of the sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady GaGa,” the university's description reads.

Sociology Professor Mathieu Deflem, who is leading the degree-level course, said students would examine what it meant to be famous in modern-day culture. He is certainly knowledgeable on the Poker Face star – the 48-year-old professor has seen GaGa live in concert nearly 30 times. And it’s not all in the name of research as Deflem has admitted to being a superfan; he has met her five times and even runs his own fan site.

With my close connections to the diva, I'm looking at a high distinction for sure.

The Summer Palace in Winter

I painted this over the last few days. It's a scene of St Petersburg in 1905, inspired by a painting.

And by "inspired" I mean that I copied the picture from a postcard I bought from an art gallery.

Double Rainbow

Taken with my mobile phone a few months ago on a rare rainy Perth afternoon.

Double arc-en-ciel

Double rainbows are quite common, but I'd be delighted to see an elusive triple.

Taking Blurry Photos Like a Pro

For years something was lacking in my photography. My problem was that I had a compact camera and it captured everything in focus. I knew that a blurry background in portraits would keep the viewers attention on the subject but I just couldn't do it with my little Canon Powershot. I'd fluke occasional good shots if the conditions were perfect - if I zoomed and the aperture was wide open and the subject was very close and the background was distant then yes, I could achieve the desired effect. But it was almost impossible in practice.

But now I know. The solution is to ditch the compact camera and get something with a larger sensor. Although there are many factors that determine depth of field (focal length of lens, aperture, distance to subject), the one that makes the biggest difference is the size of your camera's sensor (because of how it influences the focal length). If you have an SLR, or a micro four thirds then your sensor is in the top two rows below, and it's big enough. But if you have a compact or a mobile phone camera, it's too small. Sorry!

Sensor sizes (from wikipedia)

The other benefit of a larger sensor is that it captures more light. And so the quality in low light conditions is superior.

It's scandalous how small the sensors are in most digital cameras. Manufacturers love promoting zoom lenses and the number of megapixels they can squeeze in, but with a tiny sensor, it's tough getting a perfect shot. It's not too bad in sunny conditions but when the light is lacking, you can be in strife.