Trysting Fields

Interlude: Return Of Soybean

She's back. Again.

Nothing will ever be the same.

(NB The extent to which nothing is or is not ever the same in your specific experiential sphere may vary in accordance with a range of factors - some known, some unknown; some known to be unknown, others unknown as unknown. The degree of liability expressed or implied by the above statement can be estimated at approximately one [1] wad of NADA. Hooray for everything.)

(Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.)

Interlude: Damn.

I wish it'd occurred to me to record some audio at the Chez Hagakure Post-Mushie-Hunt Impromtu Dinner Party on Saturday night.

But not with J; she doesn't want to be bitch #6. It's a not-liking-the-number-six thing.

Any volunteers?

(S*****?)

(Heh.)

Chez Hagakure G&T Sock Swap

With Liv.

(Previously; previously.)

Chez Hagakure Tea & Pizza Shapes Meet

Starring this chick.

(Previously; previously; previously; previously; previously; elsewhere.)

Seriously!

Ah, who am I kidding. It'll happen when it happens.

I am well, btw. Just not very blog-oriented right now, for whatever reason..

Happy Third Birthday, Blog

Here's to certainly at least one more year of.. whatever the hell kind of fuckery this is.

:)

(A year ago. Two years ago. Three years ago.)

Liv & Gab Done Got Blogs

Go read them. I got nothin'. Except an interminably unclearable email backlog. (Plus ca change etc.)

And, I guess, the news that after two years of global trekkage, an older, worldly-wiser Toots aka babysis is coming home today! To my home (ie Melbourne)!

Can you say "I'm fucking excited"? Coz I surely can.

No Posts This Week

No camera = no pictures + very low commentage levels = just got nothin'. Sorry.

It's all about F***book right now, anyways. If you want me, friend me on FB. If you want to know my FB name, write me.

I am well, and having a lovely time.

More TK when the moment is propitious. Please stay tuna etc.

Okay.

It's a bit hard to to know where to start.

*thinks*

So my computer's sound recording facilities had been playing up, right. Had been for a while. It was no good. I wanted to make an album.

Thus on the morning of January 15th, I called a taxi and took the old gel into town to be serviced. They told me it would take four days. It wound up taking three weeks. But they did it.

In the meantime, I got totally hacked. First teigan@gmail.com, then [mylegalname]@gmail.com, my blog and my Facebook accounts all stopped accepting their passwords across the final week of January.

On Friday the 8th of February, I got my computer back. On Saturday, I threw a party. This is where we came in.

Upon getting reputered, I created some special email accounts and conducted a few experiments. Via these I established to a high degree of likelihood that my hacker was good old Henley. Somewhat predictably, I lost my shit at him.

On Tuesday 12th, I attempted to boot my newly restored digital handmaiden only to discover that - four days after returning home to me - she had totally, totally died.

I was 'puterless once more.

Then the following night - Valentine's Eve, no less - none other than Henley's girlfriend, a former close associate of mine, claimed responsibility for the hacking via SMS.

Leave the poor petal alone, she said. He's innocent.

I was skeptical at first, but when she told me that teigan@gmail was wide open for resetting (Quick! Jump up and find an open internet cafe at 2am etc), I realised she was probably telling at least some weird Lady-J-since-she-turned-feral version of the truth.

Why had the former love of my life done this to me? She'd written to me at another account, she said - one of the ones she hadn't violated and locked me out of - explaining everything.

Only problem was, I had (of course) been changing all my passwords like a demon - without having gotten around to making a backup or a hard copy of any of them. From my computer. Which had since - you will recall - dropped totally, totally dead.

In other words I was now not only 'puterless and locked out of my hacked accounts, but 'puterless and locked out of all my internet accounts.

Then in the early hours of Sunday 17th, Wouters dropped my last remaining link to civilisation phone in a full glass of bourbon & coke.

Oy.

Various people have eased my journey through this Durdenesque ordeal, and thanks are due.

Mishuki of Hagakure 419 fame was good enough to let me use hir Facebook profile. My colleague in social research, fellow FB tragic and soon-to-be-housemate Celestine has been extremely generous with her 3G handset, enabling me to update my status in something akin to the style to which I've become compulsively accustomed. Thad gave me a safe-haven email account on his server. And last Tuesday, having learned that my dead six-year-old eMac would cost $700 to reanimate, my long-suffering parents offered to buy me a MacBook. Which was very nice of them.

I picked it up this morning. I'm using it now. It's lovely.

(I'd take a picture but since the destruction of my phone I've got no working digital camera, except the one inside said MacBook. And its eye is not prehensile. But here's a picture of the box:

)

And now I have my accounts back.

Things are gradually returning to some semblance of what passes for 'normal' on Planet Teigan.

*flops exhaustedly*

Apart from all of that, I have mostly been going out a lot - having, y'know, not a whole lot else to do - and taking quite a lot of acid.

It's been.. awesome, actually. Can't complain.

Oh, and I got engaged on Saturday night. I think. But that's a whole other story.

Welcome back, blog.

Coming soon: the long, long-delayed multimediatastic Rainbow Serpent post.

Wither Comments

Looking at old TF posts for the purposes of linking to them in more recent TF posts, I was struck by something: No fucker is commenting here any more. (Except Liv. And Li. And Wortwut. And the odd Neurocam random combing the archives.) (Gotta love those tenacious, cockroachlike Neurocam randoms.)

Where have you gone, beloved blog massive?

Do you not love me any more?

Is it because Lady J doesn't love me any more?

That's it, isn't it.

It is. Don't lie.

Actually, I don't think that's really it at all. It's all about me. (It is always all about me.)

To get perhaps ill-advisedly personal for a moment (Li will enjoy this):

Towards the end of 2005, I had Learned To Love Myself. Man. Really, truly had. It was nice. It had been a long time coming.

And I got lots of comments in those days. Because as we all know, if you love yourself - like, really, truly do - then everyone else will love you too. Everyone who matters, anyways.

LJ fell in love with me at around this time. And that was great. But then I think I became dependent on her loving me in order to love myself. So when she stopped, I kinda stopped as well. Et voila: blog comments? Thing of the past.

It's more complex than that, naturally. But it's One Way Of Looking At Things. Makes a lot of sense to me.

This is partly the reason people sing the blues when their partners leave them. It's partly that you just desperately miss having them around, course; it's partly the shattered dreams of future happiness; it's partly the sense that all this time and energy expended on getting to know this person really, really well and them getting to know you really, really well, and building trust and constructing a shared identity and blah blah blah has all gone totally to waste. It's partly because you feel like a part of your very soul has been ripped out, leaving a huge gaping hole in your psyche.

But it's also significantly because you've forgotten how to love yourself without someone else to back you up on it.

That's really, really bad though. You shouldn't need anyone else to love you. And the more you do, the less they will.

Am I wrong, non-existent blog readers?

It's one of those perverse inverse dynamics that The Universe is so fond of, for some sick twisted reason that I will never entirely understand [*] except maybe when I'm on nitrous oxide.

Ah, sweet nitrous oxide.

It will never leave me. Until they make it illegal.

(Why isn't it illegal? It's so good.)

[*] NB This is disingenuous; I do in fact understand perfectly. It's because people are attracted to power and personal power derives from self-sufficiency. But for the purposes of allowing this post to form a nice, natural arc, I had to pretend to be stupider than I really am. Funny how that happens sometimes.

In Other News

Ms Fits has acknowledged my existence again. (Previously.)

There really is nothing left to live for.

(Except, y'know, art and shit.)

Racing Season, etc

Found in the toilets at St Jerome's on Saturday night:

I've got absolutely zero interest in horseracing, but I love this time of year.

In other news, the artist formerly known as Shemyaza and more recently known as Jonathan Carfax has a new blog-based venture "dedicated to providing an uniquely Australian perspective on absinthe, and to provid[ing] fellow absintheurs with the most up-to-date and reliable information on absinthe varieties and tasting notes, as well as providing a home for Australian Libertines and lovers of bohemian culture, decadence and art, both historic and contemporary."

It looks pretty cool.

He asked me if I'd like to be an occasional contributor. I replied:

Right now I'm extremely busy & preoccupied preparing for a VCA interview on the 21st and generally trying to metaprogram my way into the belief that I'm a Real Artist, whilst attempting as best I can to assimilate the monumental dual headfuck that:

(a) [censored]

(b) for all his sins, I really *like* the crazy, evil bastard.

And I should tell you that as a retiring semi-recluse I have at best only a nodding acquaintance with the Melbourne artistic intelligentsia and bar scene - although I wouldn't be averse to developing a closer one for a cause as worthy as your own.

So yeah - if you have any absinthe you want me to drink / burlesque performers you want me to date / etc from next month onwards, feel very free to giz a heads up (equine or otherwise) (preferably the latter, ay).

That is the news.

Recent Doodles

Click to etc.

(In other news.)

It's All About The Early Mornings At The Moment

"On Monday morning, Paxton was woken at five from a claustrophobic, anxious sleep by the weight of his worry. After disentangling himself from the sweaty unwelcome embrace of his patchwork quilt, he padded over to his bedroom window and pressed his nose forlornly against the glass. The sky was clear and dark and sparkling - there was, as yet, no sign of the sun."

Jo (who I won't link coz she hasn't updated since March; maybe it's just me, but I think her blog's dead) told me the other week that my posts had become very cryptic this year.

I knew what she meant. But at the same time I was kind of bemused.

My posts have always been very cryptic. Sometimes they've been so cryptic that I didn't even get them properly myself until ages afterwards.

This one here is a perfect example. I'm really not at all sure why I'm writing this - but I just know I'll look at it in four months time, or in 2012, or whenever, and go "Ah, I see!! Ingenious, Teigs."

Brains are funny.

Braaaiins.

I - which is to say, a close personal friend of mine - keeps getting sent zombie invitations on Facebook.

I don't know what that's about either.

Okay, That Last Post Was Really Crap

I just started writing a new one about pending bathroom renovations but that was even crapper, so I threw it away.

I'm still getting back in the saddle. Y'know.

Further requests are invited.

I'm Going To Start Posting Here Regularly Again Quite Soon

I think it's Nearly Time.

The Necrotastic Rearchtivation of H (419)

Fans of Hagakure 419 will be delighted to learn that its long-lost archives from the golden era of April, May, June, July and August 2006 are back, and better than ever*.

* Relative value judgement; the quality of your personal H419 archival experience is your own responsibility and cannot be guaranteed by TF editorial staff. If dissatisfaction persists, stick metal skewers into your eyeballs.

Announcement: Today Is TF's Second Birthday

I celebrated by buying a new goldfish, Feustus II.

His predecessor Feustus I died in April 2005, as documented in one of my very first posts.

Note To Self: You Should Read Fitsy More Often

She's scenestery and overexposed (in blog terms) - but who cares? She's still great.

I've So Finished

.. the long-overdue task of tabulating the fiddly stats in my stuff i did last year post. I was unable to compile them in Manchester because I had (a) insufficient access to the relevant data and (b) much better things to do.

I so have! They're at the bottom of the page, if you're interested. Alternately, you could just follow the link up there. Or, y'know, you could go and do something else entirely. See if I care, dear reader. See if I give a fuck.

Hey, you could go and visit Nada. She just posted, which is an event these days.

I like Nada. But then I'm a Nadaist; I think it's probably compulsory. Even if I wasn't a Nadaist I would probably still like her, though. Honest.

Speaking of returns from the dead: as some people reading this will know, I was becoming a bit concerned about the status of my housemate ~ who mysteriously completely vanished off the face of the earth on Thursday night; I've seen neither hide nor hair of him since.

But all is well; he turned up at about 9pm this evening, looking very sunburnt. Turns out he'd simply taken an impromptu trip to the coast, where his phone died. There's a lot of it about.

After a touching reunion, we watched Press Gang whilst I designed a new logo for my media company on "the old one was a pile of shit" grounds.

Life is good.

That is all.

It's Narcissistic And Silly, I Realise

But I cannot for the life of me figure out who left this nasty trolly comment, and it's really bugging me. In all likelihood they're someone I don't even know. Making it really silly.

IP = 68.5.35.236, hence probably utilizing this ISP in this US city, probably an anime fan, probably female. That's the best I can do.

Anyone?

Stuff I Did This Year

• Broke up an eight-year marriage, arguably
• Destroyed Neurocam, according to some (Neurocam continues to function in a lame, shadow-of-its-former-self kind of way)
• Bought my first DVD player
• Visited Sydney
• Took LSD for the first time
• Moved from a cupboard in St Kilda to a house in Fitzroy (the first house I have lived in for five years, fact fans)
• Had a bit of a fucking breakdown
• Collaborated in the creation of a singularly unsuccessful gated community for Neurocam graduates
• Took mescaline for the first time, in the form of San Pedro cactus (and on two subsequent occasions)
• Turned 30, legally speaking
• Took ecstacy for the first time
• Threw my first proper party (and my second)
• Took magic mushrooms (and went to a soccer match) for the first time
• Hosted my first Zenarchist Coffee Ceremony
• Finally gave up and got a MySpace page
• Spent Christmas in Geneva, Switzerland and new year in Manchester, England
• Made my first album
• Started my first business
• Attempted (ultimately unsuccessfully) to write a 50,000-word novel in a month
• Kept one ongoing blog, and co-created & contributed to another, for a combined output of 20,253 words, 344 photos, 10 videos & 31 audio recordings (comprising 16 songs, 12 audio messages, and 3 miscellaneous)
• Wrote approximately 458,000 words of email to 92 recipients (& received approximately 506,000 words of email from 128 correspondents, not including machines)
• Spent 164 hours at the gym
• Held five ongoing paid jobs, of which I lost two, quit one, and currently retain two
• Amongst other things

Vale Tript

*tips hat*

Sad day.

In other news, thank you to the anonymous person who ingeniously sent me this in a way I couldn't respond to:

If you are who I think you are - you're funny. And if I don't know you, that's even funnier.

Tell me - do you get curiously predictable headaches and phantom mice in your bed at 4am, too?

Search Hit Of The Week

irresponsible whack "american psychiatric association"

Go off your meds, kids.

(and omg - update - happy birthday, toots!)

If You're Happy And You Know It

Or alternately, if you're miserable and you know it - and it's just no good at all...

CLAP. YOUR. HANDS.

CLAP! CLAP!

If you're happy and you know it,
And you really wanna show it,
If you're happy and you know it... clap your hands!

CLAP! CLAP!

I feel better already.

Despite - he said, by way of explanation - the depressing fact that I have failed.

I am A Failure; one who has failed. That is What I Am.

CLAP! CLAP!

It's the last day of November. And despite my best intentions, I have failed to write a 50,000-word novel.

I gave it a good old Aussie go, though. Really, truly did!

But I didn't write 50,000 words - and I didn't finish it. And it's dead now. It doesn't want to be worked on any more. It has become a stinky moribund dead project that pains me and makes me annoyed at myself. And it's bad when you annoy yourself.

Winces, girds loins, drives a stake through its beloved heart.

It's dead. RIP, first attempt at writing a novel.

The silver lining is, I'm actually well pleased with the 37,566 words I did write. They came out great.

CLAP! CLAP!

Which was really the problem. They were too good. Consequently, somewhere along the line, I forgot to not take myself seriously. Which is the whole big-thing point of NaNoWriMo. You can write a stupid 50,000 word novel in a month. But unless you are a bona fide literary genius, you can't write a good one. Forget about it.

I'm tempted to quote Alanis Morrisette at this juncture. But for everyone's sake, I shall abstain.

The point is: I'm, like, trying to be philosophical and shit. I feel pain now, but I know the venture was far from a dead loss. In the end, I got more out of it than I would have if I hadn't undertaken it. And in any case, I've lost nothing. Just a ride. Etcetera.

CLAP! CLAP!

In other shittiness news, nobody but a handful of stalwarts - it seems - can come to our party.

Again, I don't feel too bad about it. It's getting towards That Time Of Year; everybody has lots of prior engagements. A bunch of people came to the last one - and most if not all appeared to genuinely have a good time. So it's not like this is a sign that all our friends secretly hate our guts, or think our parties suck.

CLAP! CLAP!

Finally, congratulations are in order to Mr Tripto Deluxe, who jumped on board my NaNo bandwagon and then kicked my ass right off the damn thing by actually finishing his book.

Kudos to you, my friend. Kudos to you. No, I wouldn't come to my party either. You have better things to do. Course you do. We're not really going to kill you. That was totally, like, an empty threat. Course it was.

Love your work.

CLAP! CLAP!

Oh, man - that's the shit, right there.

CLAP! CLAP!

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

CLAP! CLAP!

Excuse me, I have to be alone with my hands for a while.

Man, I Just, Like, Voted

I wasn't planning to originally, but Semi talked me into it on the grounds that the Greens will likely take some seats away from serious politicians, which is always a good cause. I hope he is having fun at Earthcore. I imagine that he is.

I just voted for the Greens whilst tripping on leftover cactus, partly in his honor. I'm sure Bob Brown (with whom I once shared a taxi, whilst dressed as a giant koala - i'm sure it wasn't just a dream) would not disapprove. I tried to imagine what John Howard would feel. I tried to imagine him feeling pain in some way. How I tried. But all I could see was him going "stupid hippies; ah well, *shrugs*, they will all self-destruct soon enough anyway", and not understanding at all. Which kind of pissed me off, but did at least make me feel like, in some obscure way, I had not done entirely the wrong thing.

Now I am trying to decide whether to watch The Dark Crystal again. I fell asleep before the end last time.

~ has suggested to me that the girl Gelfling ultimately dies; but I feel sure that this cannot be the whole truth. Henson and Oz would not do that to me. They would not dare.

I will watch their silly movie, in any case. They can bring it. Doesn't matter if the chick dies; the whole healed-crystal thing redundifies such petty concerns.

Yes, it does.

C'est L'Hamish

To make a Hamish, you will need:

Peach schnapps & vodka

Orange juice, sparkling apple juice and passionfruit juice (if you can find it)

Ice

Step One: Mix juices to taste.

Step Two: Add 1 shot of vodka and two shots of peach schnapps.

Step Three: Decant over ice. (The ice is important.)

Et Voila:

The New Spirituality interests him.

If you have not yet discovered the genius that is Alcuin & Flutterby, perhaps now is the time.

Read My Friend Dave's Blog

One of my oldest living friends - which is not to say that he's really old, just that most of my friends dating from his era of my life have either died or I'm not friends with them any more - now has a blog.

He's really good; I consider him a top-quality friend. If I were you, I would definitely give some serious consideration to the very real option of reading his blog.

It's fun and it's free, just like the Scientology personality test. Except even better, because your chances of being seduced into joining a dodgy pseudo-scientific quasi-religious cult created by a sadistic maniac that will brainwash you and take all your money are relatively small.

Read Dave's blog.

In Other News

Everybody should watch The Hamish Show. I have been catching up on old posts episodes this evening; it is a great blog show.

This one in particular is the best ever!!

(In semi-related news: I just reinstated my notorious Neurocam-destroying post from February, in response to several requests I have received over the last little while. If you were wondering what all this 'Phase Two' malarky was really all about - there you go. It was me. I lit the Chicago Fire, I killed the baby Jesus etc. And this here should be considered my absolute final public word on the accursed subject of the Neurocam.)

Should I light my cherry cigar? I just can't decide. I think it may be called for; it really is that good of a post episode.

UPDATE - I lit it. But I can't take a picture, coz ~ has my camera again and there is no waking him at this hour of the morning.

Life, eh?

2nd UPDATE - And now someone is bashing on our front door, but I'm not going to answer it; it's probably for him. Fuck it, they're not going away and it's getting on my nerves; I guess I will. I hope it is not Robin Hely. For his sake, obviously. Heh.

3rd UPDATE - It was ~'s friend Film Student Boy; he was incredibly drunk. He just came into my room and wouldn't stop apologising, because he could see I didn't really forgive him. So I had to look him in the eye and pretend that I didn't mind him virtually bashing down our front door drunkenly at three o'clock in the morning, to make him go away the hell out of my room.

I wish I had some weed.

This cigar is no substitute.

Recent Correspondence

From: Trysting Fields Central Communications
To: JoBean
Date: 8 November 2006 10:45:32 PM

> :D  I have enough trouble coming up with my own posts, m'dear.
> And you want me think of topics for you as well?

You seem to be doing okay.. slow but not short of content

> How about the fact that I went into a pet shop the other day and saw
> me some kittens.

You want me to post on *my* blog about what *you've* been up to? Tript's right.

> Yay kitten season!  

Yay! I saw two cats fucking for the first time ever the other night; it was well surreal and shit

Everything is surreal at the moment; I blame the racing carnival

I was saying to LJ this morning: the streets are filled with outrageously drunk women in slutty dresses and ridiculous hats; singing, getting into fights, throwing up, falling over

At all hours of the day and night

No one bats an eye, that's standard in Melbourne at this time of year

Freewheeling, zany-ass city that we are

I was trying to sell Melbourne to her

Do you think that will work?

> You should call  those places again if you  want  one  :D

Thanks for the tip :P

heh

But too busy! Too busy!

I have to catch up on Adam's blog too, I haven't read it for ages and ages and ages; his posts are gold but they're too long

So much to do! So little weed. Indeed none at all; it's becoming unacceptable

Get it sorted, "Johana"

Honestly, sometimes I wonder why we are still friends

You never send me flowers, you never have any weed when *I* need it

We may have to see about your license to practice if this whack continues

Much love,

T

So, November Rolls Around Again

And, as previously advertised, I'm going to be spending much of it writing a 50,000 word novel. Wish me a broken leg. Heh.

I'm not sure how this will effect my blogging output; whether it'll go completely dead, or through the roof, or stay basically the same, or grow into a (yet another) poignant and/or disturbing document of my progressive descent into total insanity, or what.

But I 'spect we'll find out!

Hot Flash, Call The Papers etc

More Rushkoff linkage: In which it occurs to our protagonist that contemporary western democracy is eminently recognisable as - gasp - nothing but an elaborate con!! Who'd a thunk it?

Don't Y'all Be Looking So Smug Now

Did Lady J send you this picture?

Did she then give you permission to post said picture to your blog?

No?

Be grateful that I am so generously inclined to share.

(Sometimes.)

Soiree de Semi

~'s extraordinary invention, The Discombobulator (tm) astounds and delights jaded party guests who thought they'd seen everything:

American Guy's Oxfam Trivia Night

My team, Custard of Lump, performed badly. For my part I was still a fair bit hungover from the previous evening.

But I did come away with this candelabra that looks a bit like the Fiat NOX octopus:

The bidding got kind of silly, but I still paid $1 less than its market value ($25). I needed a centrepiece for my mantle.

Adam Got Hacked!

Cunts messed with his template and his archives - and deleted Hagakure 419. Cunts!

Life just keeps dropping the bombs this week. First there was that whole freakish untimely death of Steve Irwin thing.. now this.

Harira

Another culinary adventure inspired by the house of Rorsch & Semi (see also).

You will need:

• 500g of lamb


• Olive oil


• 2 chopped onions


• 4 cloves of crushed garlic


• 1.5 teaspoons of cumin & 2 teaspoons of paprika


• 1 bay leaf


• 2 tablespoons of tomato puree


• 1 cup of soup stock (Rorsch recommends VeCon if you can't be bothered making your own stock. I recommend Bovril.)


• 500g of washed, soaked and cooked chickpeas


• 2 cans of chopped tomatoes


• 3 tablespoons of fresh, chopped coriander


• 3 6 tablespoons of fresh, chopped flat-leaf parsley


• Turkish bread

1. Saute onion and garlic until soft.
   


2. Add meat, and brown.
   


3. Add cumin, paprika & bayleaf, and cook "until the fragrance makes your eyes start to water".
   
   
   


4. Add tomato paste and cook for a couple more minutes, stirring continuously.
   
   
   


5. Add stock & chopped tomatoes, stir and bring to boil ("by now you should be able to feel the spice on the back of your pharynx").
   
   
   


6. Add chickpeas coriander and parsley.
   
   
   


7. Bring to boil.
   


8. Simmer for 1 1/2-2 hours or until lamb is tender.
   


9. Serve, garnished with extra coriander and parsley, and warm turkish bread.
   

Cactus Postscript

The cactus suggested, amongst other things, that I should return to life and start blogging here again, although it's simultaneously rendered me kind of speechless. In a good way.

Perverse. I blame myself for eating a psychoactive cactus during a Mercury Retrograde cycle. Heh.

Actually I don't.

I have no regrets. It was ace.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.

What have you been up to lately?

Seriously! Go read Hagakure 419!

If you have enjoyed this (possibly now defunct) weblog, you will have multiple orgasms over the 'Kure.

It's filled with bloggy goodness the likes of which you ain't been seeing round these parts for ages. It's a depraved new world! And quite frankly, you owe it to yourself to get into it. Any way you can.

What are you, scared?

I reckon you're just scared.

Our resident Enlightenment Officer, Calumny Pointsettia, sent out a promotional email which was a bit over the top. Perhaps it frightened everyone off. I tried to tell her to tone it down a little, but she wouldn't listen. She gets a bit carried away sometimes. But that's just because she loves our little house blog so much.

Go on - we've got Chesh and everything.

What more could you possibly want?

Nothing!

There's nothing more that you could possibly want.

House Blog

That is all.

Should I Take This This Down?

Cast your vote now etc

Ever Onward [*]

My archives will be going offline soon. They're under review.

Like I said, there are going to be changes.

They'll take as long as they take.

Thanks for your patience.

[*] Whilst we're in disavowal mode, please note that contrary to rumour I am also emphatically not affiliated with the Church of Satan.

Happy

Yay!

I've finally compiled my "Stuff I Did Last Year" post, which had become the object of increasingly dire procrastinatory enmirement over these past two weeks. It involved conducting a larger review of the year which I'd been dreading.

That was stupid of me. (Hindsight's a wonderful thing.)

It may seem like I've been neglecting this blog - but the truth is I've been going half-demented thinking about what to do with it.

*sigh*

The only fly in my ointment today, however, is that I've accidentally deleted the audio file - which I really, really wanted to post - of a conversation conducted between myself and my neighbour on Thursday night.

We were discussing the most efficient way of killing everyone in our building. In the end we decided to get two pistols with a silencers and then just knock on each person's door one by one. I would do upstairs, he would do downstairs. Simple, effective, no muss, no fuss.

The talks broke down, however, when it became apparent that my neighbour thought we should give ourselves up once the job was complete.

That seemed ridiculous to me. What kind of milksop goes on a merciless killing spree and then surrenders? "Gee, sorry about that. Here, let me spend the rest of my life in jail"? Fuck that.

I'm going to Sydney tonight, for the birthday of an old friend and to hang with baby sis, who is going backpacking overseas next month for a long time. I shall return on Tuesday evening. There will be pictures.

But then, once I get home, I'll be working like a trojan through to Sunday. So don't be anticipating too much action round these parts over the next week or so.

There are going to be changes. Good changes. Still not sure exactly what form they'll take yet. But they'll be good.

Finally, word up as always to all the good people I've been woefully neglecting in various ways of late (specifically: Agent Blabber, Alexis, Clover, Desci, Hits, Li, Nada, Reanimator, Simon Blackmoore and the mysterious, oracular Mr Simon Moon.. although somehow I feel sure that he, at least, is not offended).

Please be assured of my regard and that communques are pending as applicable.

From: Trysting Fields Central Communications
To: Bentendo
Date: 13 December 2005 9:50:46 PM
Subject: Re: I have a new personal blog

On 13/12/2005, at 5:19 PM, Bentendo wrote:

>hey,
>
>hows it going,

Ah aight. I had all this cleaning I wanted to do and I've only done the kitchen so far. And it's really bugging me.

Also what will I wear to the wedding? I've just got nothing at all to wear. It's really bugging me also.

I'm okay. Destruction continues apace.

>so i'm doing this blog thing but i'm really not sure what to do,
>it seems really impersonal, like um i cant really explain, but
>i'm finding very hard to write anything particularly good on the
>thing.
>
>tips? help?
>
>i'm not after feedback or anything, just maybe something i dunno

Hmm.

Having a theme helps.

Also a bit of an audience to give you feedback.

I've found the best blogs (apart from ones that started from an absolutely shit hot idea to begin with) are the ones that have evolved their own style by trial and error over time. Just keep posting shit and see what sticks, kind of thing.

I started my old one in January entirely for the purposes of documenting my involvement in Neurocam, as was the style at the time. I just wrote about Neurocam to all the other Neurocam people. That was pretty straightforward. But eventually I got frustrated because other things kept creeping in that I wanted to write about. So eventually I started my other blog and just wrote what I wanted and was happy.

You get into a habit of thinking "oh, that would be a good thing to put in the blog" and soon enough ideas start occurring to you all the time. Many of those ideas will probably be crap, but there you go.

Library Punk Is Dead

He's post-punk now, doncha know. And he's moving to Melbourne!!! Smart.

More to the point, he now has a blog, which promises to develop into a prime source of quality rantage which will help keep us all amused as the twilight era of late stage western capitalism skids merrily towards its inevitable cataclysmic meltdown.

It's good! I would definitely check it out if I were you.

Beltaine In "Not Wrong" Shock

Toots really is Chesh in drag.

Don't tell anyone I told you; bitch'll have my spinal fluid.

UPDATE - Community Service Announcement: This is Beltaine spoofing Toots, and not the real Toots.

Alexis & Avery

Alexis is back, again.

And the legendary Avery Cardoza was back for about five minutes but now appears to be gone.

Grimsby, shakes fist etc

Why Do I Always Have

The nagging sense that I'll never really be complete unless I take a picture of every book I own and post them all along with an explanation of what each one means to me?

Does anyone else get this? Is there a name for it?