wednesday : 10 dec 2008

Ahhhh. The days strobe past, just as they did in The Time Machine, with Rod Taylor sitting in his special arm chair, watching the sun streak across the Zodiac in a phantasmagorical blur. My time is divided between socialising, work, recovery, indulging the arts, sleep, etc. My IT demands at the office have been quite draining over the last two months or so, which means less motivation for Toxic Waste updates. Naturally this happens just after I said the exact opposite in a recent post. Nevermind.

wednesday : 12 nov 2008

To say it's been an interesting two weeks would be an understatement. Apart from Barak Obama's sanity-restoring win in the US presidential elections, Your Humble Narrator has been living it up with fine dining and rampant socialising around Melbourne's inner city nightspots. Warm weather has that effect on me. It's been a non-stop circus: sushi mi lunches and street corner rendezvous and umpteen text messages and shouts and dance floor moves and chatting up strangers and late night adventures galore. I've even managed to keep the binge drinking demon more or less under control, rather than having it possess my mind, like what happens to Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

But...there have been two casualties, maybe three. One is sleep, and the other is exercise. You just can't run around the neighbourhood at a fair clip when you're tired, morning or evening (i.e. after work). Of course, the partying also takes it toll on your personal Reserve Bank liquidity. Again, with curbed boozing habits, there's now always a few orange notes and perhaps a yellow one still in my pocket in the morning.

monday : 27 oct 2008

Today was quite all right. Better than average, in fact.

First. I got rid of two dud tickets for Kenny Rogers' show tomorrow night at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne. I'm on the Ticketmaster early warning e-mailing list, and since dad was due to visit at this time, it made sense to grab two good seats in the stalls for us to use. Well, it turns out that he couldn't make it, hence I was saddled with $300 worth of useless cardboard rectangles. Was E-Bay an option? Some meticulous research revealed that it was fine – the legal connotation of the term "cannot be resold at a premium price" notwithstanding. So today at lunchtime I posted a listing online, my first ever E-Bay auction, albeit for a fixed price of $300 bux. 35 minutes later, the tickets were sold, and after work I met the buyer at Maccas near Ackland Street in St Kilda, and the transaction was done. Perhaps not the best place in town to be spotted exchanging a handful of $50 notes for a plain envelope, but there ya go.

Second. Heading back to the city from St Kilda via the Number 16 tram, which arrived 23 seconds later, I decided to drop into Transport on the river for a pint of cold Paulaner beer. Why? Because I had $300 cash in my pocket, and because today I received a promotion at work. Between now and March 2010 I'm a senior analyst programmer, or "SAP" as my helpful brother pointed out upon hearing the news. Yeah, thanks for that. Anyhoo, this senior project position has yet to be confirmed as permanent; we'll see what happens. For now, I'll just tackle the role and responsibility head-on. Try to kick SAS arse and earn the stripes, with an eye on becoming senior CEO one day...

Third. Only a small bonus, this one. When I arrived home, Volume One of On the Road with Harlan Ellison, long out of print and just re-pressed by Deep Shag Records last month for a limited batch, was waiting for me in the letter box from the USA. Nice.

thursday : 16 oct 2008

The finger's going okay I suppose, thanks for asking. I consulted Dr Google for a prognosis. It seems that the rather absurd and entirely pointless symptom of swelling in the joint and whole finger for an extended time period is normal. Some spread to the palm itself is also expected, and I did get some of that. I tried lifting a 10 kg dumbbell last week, and it wasn't possible on the left side. So much for resistance training. Dr Google also mentioned that pain in the damaged socket could continue for another four to six months. Smashing news, huh?

Offsetting this gloomy forecast was an injection of retail therapy today. I finally bought – are you sitting down? – a new mobile phone, my first ever. Yep, it's another Nokia, it cost less than $100, and it's 33% more compact than my old phone, a hand-me-down from Marylu which held me in good stead for the last three years. And strewth, did I give it a caning...just looking at the poor bugger makes you wish there was an RSPCA for cordless devices. I mean, this phone looks like it was chewed up by Godzilla, then fired from a canon into one of the World Trade Centre towers, which proceeded to crash down on top of it. Now, thanks to Optus buying out Virgin Mobile, I was able to use my old cheap-arse plan (cheers Code Monkey) without paying to unlock the phone. Oh yes, sometimes the Little Man wins. A new DVD player is also on the way if a certain transaction goes ahead.

You've probably noticed minor aesthetic upgrades to Toxic Waste's façade over the last week or so. These simple tweaks are in lieu of the major renovations I have mapped out and specified in my head. It feels good to have at least a modicum of change. Once my current movie watching binge (1980s American horror flicks) is over, the motivation to fill in more writing gaps is higher than ever. I may even stay home tomorrow night instead of bar hopping. What the fuck's wrong with me?!?

wednesday : 8 oct 2008

9:41am. I drove back to Melbourne in the Mazdarati last night after spending a pleasant four days in Olde Sydney Towne. We also headed up to Newcastle on Sunday for the Young Writer's Festival fanzine fair. With rain threatening, the organisers moved the event into one of those huge halls near the train tracks, which was better than being at the mercy of wind gusts, leaves, melanoma-causing UV rays, and spiders dropping out of trees onto your head. Of course, the thunderstorms never arrived. I sold one back-issue of Skinned Alive, and also gave away two copies in exchange for a swig of bourbon from the Paroxysm Press crew.

And...there's not much more to add, really. Over the years, these trips have become routine, although there's nothing much I'd change in the itinerary – maybe not having to use the bloody shower fan? Heh, heh. Anyway, I chose to drive up this time to have maximum flexibility with arrival and departure tims. Besides this, the strange thing is that driving up the Hume Highway is getting easier: no more headaches, micro-sleeps, terminal boredom, road rage, or physical discomfort. It was also cheaper than flying Qantas, even with the elevated petrol prices, and I always fill up with premium unleaded, too. Next time, I hope to have a CD player in the car to replace the tape deck, new speakers, as well as noise dampeners inside the doors. Come to think of it, the Mazdarati also needs a new paint job and panel work to fix numerous dents.

Back to the corporate antfarm tomorrow. Dare I say it, I'm actually geared up to kick project work arse. Must remember to collect my dry cleaning later today, otherwise I'll be fronting up to the office wearing tracky dacks.

tuesday : 30 sep 2008

I've got eight days off work. Beyond driving up to Sydney for the coming weekend, there's not much planned otherwise, just relaxing at home and enjoying a routine that includes reading in bed upon waking, running before breakfast, watching Today and Sunrise with Mel and Kochy on the idiot box during brekky (both shows are harmful to one's IQ), French lessons, checking e-mail, web surfing, raiding the fridge, more reading, perhaps catching a DVD (I've been off movie watching lately for some reason), growing stubble, and other fun activities. I also had the fridge repaired yesterday after living a post-apocalyptic existence for three months, which was easy to do once I could cope with the limitations: no milk hence no cereal, and having to buy fresh veggies every week, which prompted a weekly trudge to the supermarket on top of my (spotty) running regime. Good stuff.

Also on the agenda is recovering from a mild injury. On Friday night I was running down Exhibitionist Street to catch up with mates – we'd all been at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow for a pint or three. After bounding across Little Collins Street, I kind of lost my footing and crashed to the ground at a non-trivial velocity. It felt like a heavy fall because it was happening before I'd realised it. In other well-telegraphed spills, I try to relax and roll out of the tumble. Not so this one. I avoided face planting by using my hands and knees to take most of the force. Getting to my feet, I looked at my left hand, which felt a bit funny, and was greeted with the sight of my left ring finger pointing at ten O'clock from the main joint, i.e. 30 degrees, or facing northwest.

It's suppose to be, umm, straight.

My first instinct was to snap it back into place like Deckard in Blade Runner, which I did calmly and without fuss. A muted crack, and the digit was situation normal. Although, it was also badly grazed on the right side of the traumatised joint, which showed just how awkwardly I fallen on it. Then, over the next 24 hours, the joint and whole finger proceeded to swell up to 50% of its original size. It's still chubby as I type this, causing it to remain stiff and immobile. Apparently you're suppose to bandage and splint the whole hand after a finger dislocation. Too late now. It's not getting worse, and I do believe the swelling is going down. That means the bone probably isn't broken as well, otherwise it'd be turning black and any movement would send bolts of pain up the nerves.

The irony is that the fall happened early in the evening, around 8:00pm. The laws of physics predict that I would not have fallen over if I'd had more drinks, due to the auto-stabilising effects of James Squire Golden Ale on a closed system. Maybe. An amusing thought: since I'm into the horror genre, aren't I supposed to relish these kinds of life experiences? The short answer is no. I like scary things in the arts. Nobody gets hurt; you enjoy the thrills and chills safely. Cathartic release and all that. And while this little episode was rather interesting and mostly devoid of pain, I'd prefer not repeat it thanks, especially on larger and more useful limbs and joints.