Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Urgh!

Mutterings continued.

The climatic unpleasantness continues. High 30s and humid today; the sky has gone overcast and thunderstorms are forecast. We'll see. A cyclone has done a bit of damage, mostly flooding, to the north of the state.

Picked up some more props tonight - a nice log basket that will double as a make up/props box for the Mechanicals, and a long black torch that has had the glass bits removed. It has to be the stunt double for a longer, much more expensive model that gets thrown around. Just hope no-one in the audience notices the discrepancy in size. Oh what a give away!

Off to UWA at lunch time tomorrow for a mooch around the Octagon props store.

Just when you thought it was safe to go to the Winter Olympics...

Another parcel on the doorstep today - my order of series 2 of Space:1999 arrived from Ezydvd. And yesterday it was Vol. 4 of the B5 scripts.

Monday, February 27, 2006

The week begineth

Mutterings continued.

To start on a sad note: "Actor Darren McGavin has died at 83 LOS ANGELES - Darren McGavin, the husky, tough-talking actor who starred in the TV series "Mike Hammer" and "Riverboat" and played strong roles in such films as "The Man with the Golden Arm, "The Natural" and the surprise hit "A Christmas Story," has died. He was 83. McGavin died of natural causes at a Los Angeles area hospital with his family at his side, said his son Bogart McGavin."

Speaking of Mr McGavin, we watched another great episode of Night Stalker on Saturday night - this one had a werewolf. And Hymie! Poor Leece didn't know who Hymie was, but Rob and I did.

And we watched another ep of Rah Xephon, Black Books (featuring a very wired up/coffee and Sweeney saturated Mannie), Space:1999 and Mystie.

Yesterday was spent at rehearsals, adding more props to the list, driving around trying to buy more props, etc etc.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Saturday

Mutterings continued.

32c at 3pm. Not toooo bad, though I did have the aircon on while I was out and about props shopping at lunchtime. I'm still having trouble getting the lights I want but I did manage to find some really nice cushions that Director Stephen decided he wanted last week. He also decided he wanted a rifle bag - not essential, "but it would be nice". So I got him one. The things I do for directors!

No shiny thing purchase today, at least, not for me - I did buy 10 candle lanterns.

L and R are coming for dinner so I bought some nice looking chicken thingies from the great butcher at Garden City. Chicken, tomatoes, cheese in a lattice pastry. And I've made a salad to go with it.

Interest in Babylon 5 has been increasing, at least it has at work. I was talking to my Trekkie friend who said she had been watching episodes from Series 3 on Foxtel. When I told her I had the first four series, and all the movies, her eyes lit up, so I've loaned her series 1. And then I was talking to another friend yesterday, who works with Friend 1, and was with her when she took delivery of Series 1. He wants them after her. I was pleased to learn his favourite character is G'Kar. The lad has taste.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Reeeeeelly long week

Mutterings continued.

Feb. is almost over but this week has just dragged by. And it's only Thursday.

Cafe Press amusings - didn't take long.

And speaking of CP, my two birthday t shirts, designed by Leece, were waiting on the mat when I got home. They look wonderful! One is an ass's head (Bottom) with the words, "Props Diva" under it and the other has "Help! I've fallen into the props store and I can't get out!", which pretty much sums up my time with GRADS. 8-)

Had lunch with Kim today (hello Kim, hello Greg, hello Kaylee, hello tree, hello sky, hello Molesworth). I had the sweet and sour fish with rice and Kim a very tasty looking mixed noodle dish with seafood.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Quite sticky.

Mutterings continued.

Warmish, muggyish day.

I didn't go to Betty's tonight as I had some props shopping to do at Bunnings. Came away with a millet broom, masking tape and a bottle of meths. I saw some very nice bamboo lights - dark brown bamboo pole with lattice work at the top. Only $15. I'll check with director Stephen if he fancies this sort of thing for Oberon.

Tempting - Sendit.com have got the first series of Catweazle going for 13 quid. And Torchy the Battery Boy - a series that only I seem to remember. And The High Life! At roughly A$28, a little expensive for only 6 episodes.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Precipitation

Mutterings continued.

I was sitting with Pat in the Book Caffe at lunchtime hoeing into a chicken and bacon bagel (gods, but I'm a creature of habit), when she said, "That sounds like rain.". And it was! There were a couple of very, VERY loud claps of thunder this afternoon and now there are rumblings that sound like they're getting closer.

Not a pleasant day, for all that, as the temp reached 41c; it's currently 32c.

Off to rehearsals tonight with rifle bag, flowers and dog-onna-rope in tow.

Watched a great episode of South Park last night. "Tom Cruise is in the closet and he won't come out!" Had a right royal go at the loonies in Scientology and the really loony things they believe. This is the episode Cruise got banned in the UK when he threatened to sue the network screening it. Apparently he's in Oz at the moment - wonder if he'll sue SBS?

Monday, February 20, 2006

'ot!

Mutterings continued.

18:22 and it's still 36c. Ooog! Tomorrow will be even worse - 39c and humid, chance of a thunderstorm.

I had a great weekend. Movie, coffee and cake with Pat and her husband on Friday night; shopping and L and R (and turkey moule with chilli and chocolate and other good stuff) on Saturday, and rehearsals and Narnia yesterday.

I enjoyed Narnia a lot - the animals were beautifully rendered and Leece was particularly taken with the gryphon. The unicorns, however, were, in her words, "Horses with ice cream cones on their heads."

Judging by the couple of scenes being rehearsed yesterday, "Dream" is going to be very funny. Anachronisms abound but they work.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

'nother birthday

Mutterings continued.

I'm really stretching this one out! Last night I went to see The Bouncer with Pat and her husband Tony - as a birthday pressie they paid for my night out, which included the movie and coffee and cake (lime and lemon tart, mmmmmm....) in King St.

We got into the film late, it had been going for about 15 minutes. This is ok as it meant there were 15 minutes less of the movie to sit through. Ahem. Jen McCann was very good, and gets her name on the poster. David M is great with physical comedy and made a wonderfully sleazy cop. And that's about it, really.

It's Saturday, which means food and viewing with L and R.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Me birfday

Mutterings continued.

And what a good couple of days I've had. Never one to do things by halves, me birfday has been spread over two days. Yesterday I went out to lunch with some of the gels from work (Secret Garden, had the chicken Caesar salad) and last night dined with TUS at Hungry Hippos (aka Hippo Creek) in Scarb. Rob had the assegai (he took a photo of it with my phone but it didn't turn out very clear, so we will just have to go back with a camera and do a better job), Leece and Steveg had the mixed grill and Ros, Maureen and I had the sausages with veg. Wonderful!

And I've scored some lovely booty, far too much to detail here. And adding to it all, the weather cooled down nicely and it even rained yesterday. My car is filthy but WHO CARES!?

Today has been much quieter - I'm off to rehearsals shortly, laden down with props and a hessian sack full of ivy for the costumer.

Just read this - "Babylon 5's Katsulas Dies

Andreas Katsulas, the character actor known to SF fans as G'Kar on Babylon 5 and a familiar face from Star Trek and other SF&F TV shows, died Feb. 13 of lung cancer in Los Angeles, his agent, Donna Massetti, confirmed to SCI FI Wire. He was 59.

Katsulas, a longtime resident of Los Angeles, played the Narn ambassador G'Kar for five years in the syndicated cult TV series Babylon 5, starting in 1993. He reprised the role in subsequent Babylon 5 telefilms.

Katsulas was also no stranger to Trek fans, playing Romulan Cmdr. Tomalak in Star Trek: The Next Generation. His last appearance in a Trek series was as a Vissian captain on an episode of Enterprise.

Born in St. Louis, Katsulas held a master's degree in theater from Indiana University, his official Web site said. After performing in plays in St. Louis, New York and Boston, he went on to film roles in such movies as Michael Cimino's The Sicilian, which brought him to Los Angeles, then in Ridley Scott's Someone to Watch Over Me and Blake Edward's Sunset.

Katsulas moved to Los Angeles permanently in 1986 and found scores of television and film parts in everything from TV's Alien Nation and Max Headroom to the big screen's The Fugitive, in which he played the infamous one-armed man, and Executive Decision opposite Kurt Russell and Steven Seagal. " Fuck!

Not a happy note to end on, I'm afraid.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Luuurve Day

Mutterings continued.

Happy Let's All Ignore Valentine's Day Day everybody.

The weather has been very icky the last few days - warm, sticky, making sleeping at night unpleasant. It's currently 31c with 65% humidity, which makes it feel warmer.

I bought a real witch's broom on Ebay over the weekend and hope to have it delivered within the next couple of days. Hope it's what the director wants.

How coincidental - I have a Discovery doco about the Hubble telescope on in the background and have just Stumbled upon a gallery of Hubble images. Spooky.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Keeping Cool.

Mutterings continued.

It's been a productive weekend - props shopping yesterday, props buying and making today. I didn't end up going to rehearsals, I stayed inside, out of the heat, and made props instead. And I bought a witch's broom for $20 on Ebay. Much easier that trying to make one. I really should read the script to see where the besom comes in.

Great night last night - the beef swags were delish and Rob made an evil dessert which had choc gelati, nuts, topping and Kit Kats. And we watched Rah Xephon (episode 19 - I just love slash-your-wrists anime), Black Books, Space 1999, Kochak (a very cool vampire episode) MST3K (an appalling propaganda piece about Russkies with nuclear weapons in which everybody dies).

And today I've been having a great time watching series 3 of Babylon 5.

I had a look on the Piccadilly Cinema website for The Bouncer and found this succinct review of Underworld Revolution: "Bloodthirsty hack and slash sequel to the successful critically panned 2003 vampire flick with slinky kate beckinsale returning as the leather clad pistol packing vampire selene and scott speedman as her hybrid lover."

Don't think they like it. I know Kim didn't - apparently Derek Jacobi is the best thing in it and wears some lovely clothes. And Bill Nighy's performance is the same as in Underworld. This isn't a good thing.

The Bouncer, by the way, opens on my birthday - isn't that nice?




Saturday, February 11, 2006

Jetting about

Mutterings continued.

Lots of shopping this morning - some of it involving food, other to do with propping.

Found this via Stumble - it's called Cute Overload for readily apparent reasons. Have a look at Unusual Animals.

Last night I went through most of the extras and the Joss Wheedon commentary on Serenity. Cool stuff, especially the sequences of Summer Glau training for her fight scenes.

L and R are coming for dinner tonight and I'm doing something more suitable for winter - beef swag from the fab butcher's at Booragoon, mashed spud and carrots with tarragon.

Next Friday I'm off to the flicks with Director Pat and others to see The Bouncer, a film made a couple of years ago here in Perth in which a number of theatre types appears - David "Hamlet" Meadows, Jenny "Best Actress 2005" McCann, Fred "Claudius - who writes this shit?" Lawson amongst others.

Friday, February 10, 2006

It's Friday, though it feels like Saturday

Mutterings continued.

That's because I had today off as a flexi-day. Went to Carousel Shopping Town to do some props shopping and came home with clothes instead. Shiny clothes.

Had lunch with Genette at Book Caffe in Sth Perth (the bacon and chicken bagel beckoned; ditto the iced coffee sans creme) and a good natter. She alerted me to www.stumbleupon.com - you input your interests, click the stumbleupon icon and it take you to sites it thinks you might like. The first place it took me to was the Calvin and Hobbes Snowmen site. Love it! Hobbes: Your snowmen lead tragic lives. Calvin: Well, they're not very bright.

And then went more props shopping and came home with a printer cartridge twin pack from JB's and more clothes from Miller's. *sigh*

"Boldly going: Star Trek and spaceflight by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, November 28, 2005

It is arguably the most famous opening television monologue ever:

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

It turns out that the last line of that memorable speech delivered by Captain James T. Kirk (well, William Shatner) nearly four decades ago came from a White House document produced in 1958 to help calm post-Sputnik hysteria.

Here is an excerpt from the March 1958 document “Introduction to Outer Space:”

the compelling urge of man to explore and to discover, the thrust of curiosity that leads men to try to go where no one has gone before
The final line of the article is amusing.

And speaking of Trekkies, I was discussing this with a friend at work yesterday and she called me an old-fashioned Trekker (no, I didn't hit her - I AM an old-fashioned Trekker and not ashamed to admit it). The reason for this? I see red shirts, such as that being worn by the chappie in the article, as being cannon fodder; she sees them as Command (a la Picard, et al).

Foxtel's TV1 is finally showing the third series of Babylon 5 - yes, I do own all the eps on DVD so can watch them any time I want, but it's still nice to see them on the telly. Last night's was And the Rock Cried Out No Hiding Place. Great stuff.

And finally, today's shiny thing (other than clothes) purchase - Serenity inna Box! My Ezydvd copy of Serenity arrived today, encased in a nice shiny tin.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Hump day.

Mutterings continued.

The name given to the middle of the week, apparently. No dins with TUS tonight - I'm propping instead. I put a call out at work today for ivy and have some very promising responses. Stephen the Director wants lots of it for set dressing and he may just get his wish. My status as Props Diva is intact. For the time being - he also wants candles for the fairies that look like glow worms, or similar, that won't go out until they are blown out at the end of the scene. Rob suggested LED candles - I shall have to pay Jaycar a visit to see what goodies they have in stock.

This is really exciting - Scientists Discover Dozens of New Species in “Lost World” of Western New Guinea

And now, a little quiz for cat owners:
Does Your Cat Own You? (as if we need a quiz to know that!)

  1. Do you select your friends based on how well your cats like them?
  2. Does your desire to collect cats intensify during times of stress?
  3. Do you buy more than 50 pounds of cat litter a month?
  4. Do you scoop out the litter box after each use? Do you wait at the box with the scoop in your hand?
  5. Do you think it's cute when your cat swings on the drapes or licks the butter?
  6. Do you admit to non-cat owners how many cats you really have?
  7. Do you sleep in the same position all night because it annoys your cats when you move?
  8. Do you kiss your cat on the lips?
  9. Do you feed your cat tidbits from the table with your spoon?
  10. Does your cat sit at the table (or ON the table) when you eat?
  11. Does your cat sleep on your head? Do you like it?
  12. Do you have more than four opened but rejected cans of cat food in the refrigerator?
  13. Do you watch bad TV because the cat is sleeping on the remote?
  14. Did you buy a video tape of fish swimming in an aquarium to entertain your cat?
  15. Will you stand at the open door indefinitely in the freezing rain while your cat sniffs the door, deciding whether to go out or come in?
  16. Would you rather spend a night at home with your cat than go out on a bad date?
  17. Do you give your cat presents and a stocking at Christmas? Do you spend more for your cat than you do for your spouse?
  18. Do the Christmas cards you send out feature your cat sitting on Santa's lap? Does your cat sign the card?
  19. Do you put off making the bed until the cat gets up?
  20. Does your cat eat out of cut crystal stemware because you both watched the same commercial on television?
  21. Do you microwave your cat's food? Prepare it from scratch?
  22. Do you climb out of bed over the headboard or footboard, so you won't disturb the sleeping cat?
  23. When you are preparing to leave for the day, do you seek out each cat and inform them of your anticipated return time?
  24. Do you sleep with no pillow under your head, because the cat wants to sleep on it?
  25. Do you stand at the computer because the cat is sleeping on the chair?
  26. Do you you make sure there's plenty of kitty litter in the house, even though you may run out of toilet paper?
  27. At the store, do you pick out the catfood before you pick out anything for yourself?
  28. Do you go to sleep sitting up in bed because you were reading and the cat is curled up on your lap asleep?
  29. Does it always take you longer than expected to read a magazine, because the cat keeps curling up on it while you're reading?
  30. Do you frequently leave your dresser drawer open when you leave for the day, because the cat jumped into one of them and is asleep in one of the drawers?
  31. Is the only comb you can find in the bathroom a flea comb?
  32. Do you cook a special turkey for your cat on holidays?
  33. Does your cat "insist" on a fancy Sunday breakfast consisting of an omelette made from eggs, milk, and salmon, halibut, or trout?
  34. Do you have pictures of your cat in your wallet? Do you bring them out when your friends share pictures of their children? (Pollsters claim that 40 percent of cat owners carry their pet's pictures in their wallets, by the way.)
  35. When people call to talk to you on the phone, do you insist that they say a few words to your cat as well?
  36. Do you accept dates only with those who have a cat? If so, do you eventually double-date with the cats to see how they get along?
  37. When someone new comes to your house, do you introduce your cat, by name, to them?
  38. Do you keep old, empty pizza boxes on the counter instead of throwing them away, because the cat likes to sleep in it?

SCORING: If you answered "Yes" to any of the above, your cat DOES own you!!

I won't say just how many of the above I answer "yes" to; let's just say it was more than five. And before anyone starts looking at me strangely, I did NOT say "yes" to 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Gooey

Mutterings continued.

A humid day, grey skies, rain is forecast.

Another flat inspection tomorrow. I've done all there is to do and am now making props. Specifically, six scripts for the mechanicals.


Sunday, February 05, 2006

Flamin' 'ell!

Mutterings continued.

14:29 and it's 37c. Supposed to have been 29c. Not happy. It was hot yesterday however the evening cooled off nicely; here's hoping the same will happen today. And tomorrow.

A great night's viewing, and eating, last night. I finally introduced L and R to Black Books and we took great delight in repeating lines back to each other. "It's nice here....indoors." "I do sell a lot of...wank." The Little Book of Calm that Manny swallowed is the same Little Book of Calm, only slightly bigger, that the Chifley on Terrace had on the bedside table.



I obviously wasn't very calm when I took this photo!!

We watched another incomprehensible episode of Rah Xephon, a great, great ep of Kolchak: the Night Stalker (with the very X Files title of They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be...), a rather cool ep of Space:1999 (featuring Ian "Lovejoy" McShane as the disposable star of the week) and a really bad, which means good, episode of MST3K. This week's offering was Jungle Goddess, which has a lot of stock footage of animals in the African jungle - you know, lions, cheetah, tigers, orangutans, mountains lions, the usual.

Speaking of S:1999, I'm pleased to see that Ezydvd has got series 2 for $29. I've got Friday off and plan to visit Carousel, which is where Ezydvd is at. Hopefully they will have it stock; otherwise I'll pay the $1.50 postage and order it online. Dunno when series 3 will be available.


Saturday, February 04, 2006

Erudite

Mutterings continued.

From LitLine:

100 Best First Lines from Novels

1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. —Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)

12. You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

13. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. —Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; trans. Breon Mitchell)

14. You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. —Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler (1979; trans. William Weaver)

15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

16. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

17. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

18. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. —Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

19. I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. —Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759–1767)

20. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. —Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)

21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. —James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

22. It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

23. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. —Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

24. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. —Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

25. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. —William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)

26. 124 was spiteful. —Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

27. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605; trans. Edith Grossman)

28. Mother died today. —Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert)

29. Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. —Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)

30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

31. I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864; trans. Michael R. Katz)

32. Where now? Who now? When now? —Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Patrick Bowles)

33. Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree." —Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925)

34. In a sense, I am Jacob Horner. —John Barth, The End of the Road (1958)

35. It was like so, but wasn't. —Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2 (1995)

36. —Money . . . in a voice that rustled. —William Gaddis, J R (1975)

37. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. —Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

38. All this happened, more or less. —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

39. They shoot the white girl first. —Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)

40. For a long time, I went to bed early. —Marcel Proust, Swann's Way (1913; trans. Lydia Davis)

41. The moment one learns English, complications set in. —Felipe Alfau, Chromos (1990)

42. Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. —Anita Brookner, The Debut (1981)

43. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; —Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)

44. Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. —Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

45. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. —Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)

46. Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation. —Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa (1974)

47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. —C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

48. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. —Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

49. It was the day my grandmother exploded. —Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992)

50. I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. —Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)

51. Elmer Gantry was drunk. —Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry (1927)

52. We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. —Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)

53. It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

54. A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. —Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)

55. Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. —Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)

56. I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me. —Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)

57. In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street. —David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988)

58. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
—George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)

59. It was love at first sight. —Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

60. What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? —Gilbert Sorrentino, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things (1971)

61. I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. —W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944)

62. Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. —Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)

63. The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. —G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

64. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

65. You better not never tell nobody but God. —Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

66. "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." —Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)

67. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. —Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)

68. Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. —David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987)

69. If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. —Saul Bellow, Herzog (1964)

70. Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. —Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away (1960)

71. Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. —GŸnter Grass, The Tin Drum (1959; trans. Ralph Manheim)

72. When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. —Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show (1971)

73. Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World. —Robert Coover, The Origin of the Brunists (1966)

74. She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. —Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902)

75. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. —Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

76. "Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. —Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956)

77. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. —Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)

78. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. —L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)

79. On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. —Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980)

80. Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. —William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994)

81. Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. —J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973)

82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. —Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)

83. "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing." —Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983)

84. In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. —John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)

85. When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. —James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)

86. It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. —William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948)

87. I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled. —Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934)

88. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. —Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)

89. I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. —Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

90. The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. —Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)

91. I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl's underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self. —John Hawkes, Second Skin (1964)

92. He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. —Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche (1921)

93. Psychics can see the color of time it's blue. —Ronald Sukenick, Blown Away (1986)

94. In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. —Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

95. Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen. —Raymond Federman, Double or Nothing (1971)

96. Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. —Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye (1988)

97. He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. —Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)

98. High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. —David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

99. They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. —Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. —Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

Coming in at #22 was, yes!, It was a dark and stormy night..."

Dins.

Mutterings continued.

Another Saturday, hurrah! Quite my favourite day of the week. Friday evenings and Saturdays.

Leece and Rob are coming for dins - they're cooking and I'm supplying the sweeeets and coffee.

I've been DVD purchasing this morning - the Muppet Movie for $19.80 from Woolies and Black Books 1 and 2 from the ABC Shop ($14.95 each. Bargain!). Black Books 1 has this written on the inside cover: "This DVD contains the first series of the series Black Books, the Channel 4 comedy series for that channel. (4). The first episode is episode one, which is then followed in sequence from numbers two through to six. The sixth being the last of the first six part series. The series was originally shown on Channel 4, but now for the first time since the original Channel 4 programme was made it is available on DVD, which this is.

"In order to operate this DVD you will need a DVD player or know somebody who owns or has access to a DVD player. To play this DVD put it inside the DVD player and press play. The programme is also available on video which will NOT WORK in a DVD player. In the event of possessing a DVD of Black Books without a DVD player, you will need to change your DVD for a video cassette, or you have a DVD player and a video of Black Books the reverse will, of course, in this instance, apply. The makers of this programme hope you will enjoy it in this exciting format. (DVD)" Dylan Moran.

I read it out to the ABC Shops sales lady as she was trying to work out why the computer wouldn't acknowledge my loyalty card. Oh, how we laughed!

A few weeks back I mentioned that I bought Joe Jackson's Night and Day album for one track - Stepping Out. I've been considering other albums I have bought for just one track:
  • Jethro Tull's Living in the Past - a double album with faux leather cover (you can't get that kind of quality with CDs!) - for Living in the Past
  • CCS's The Band Played Boogie for....the Band Played Boogie
  • Chicago's Chicago for Policeman
  • Blood, Sweat and Tears' BST for Sometimes in Winter (an album which introduced me to Eric Satie and one of my favourite pieces of music - Trois Gymnopodie. I discovered the writings of Herman Hesse via Santana. There is a quote from his "Demian" on the cover of Santana's Abraxus album.)
  • A Best Of triple set by....gasp...The Bee Gees because it contains Kilburn Towers, a gorgeous song I first heard a couple of times in the mid-70s and had been looking for ever since
  • Pentangle's Basket of Light for Light Flight - another song I heard in the 70s and have wanted ever since
  • and any number of foreign imports for tracks I've heard on ABC Classic FM.
And now, fun with www.tinyurl.com. Try /twat. Or /dick. Or other rude four letter words. Tee heeee.

I see that Blogger is fucked again. According to their "help" page the problem has been fixed, only it ain't. I keep getting error messages saying that I'm forbidden access to my own page or that there is no data.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Caffe

Mutterings continued.

Had lunch with Kim and Pat at the Book Caffe in Mill Pt Road. I had the chicken and bacon bagel, which was divine! Avocado and dijon mustard. Delish. The Caffe is one of these sensible places that does breakfast all day. I think I might treat myself to the Big Breakfast one of these days

I've just downloaded a really, REALLY annoying ringtone for my mobile phone. Not that I want it, it's for something that Stephen the Director has in mind for Dream.

From Shiny Shiny: " Tom Baker becomes voice of text

Gone are the good old days when text messages were in the written form. You see, while you may write them on your mobile as texts, send them to your text-enabled BT landline and a computerised voice will read them out for you. Some of you may like to point out that you may as well just call the person rather than send them an eerie robot voice message, but that would be churlish of you. And anyway, while the original voice may have sounded like you were being stalked by the great Stephen Hawking, for a short time you can have Doctor Who make your calls for you.

That's right, it's the now ubiquitous Tom Baker, the man currently responsible for shouting over the top of Little Britain, who will be voicing the "texts" for the next 3 months. Head over to Tech Digest to find out how it all works." Hoot!

And speaking of Shiny, hey, Leece! This is the Flybook I was trying to describe last night.

Who in their right mind would pay US$450 for Hello Kitty earrings??? Who would pay $4.50???



Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Beans

Mutterings continued.

Back from dinner with TUS at Retro Betty's in Leederville. I got there early and had a mooch around the Oxford ST bookshop. I came away with 2 books - one for Ashley's birthday and another for myself. It's the hardback edition of Vol. 2 of His Dark Materials (with added drawings) by Philip Pullman.

Rob has a shiny red new toy, which he hasn't blogged about yet, so I'll leave it to him to describe.

For dins I had chilli beef with beans on steamed nice. Nice it was, too.