Trysting Fields

SRC Xmas Party

17th December.

Vale SRC. I'm gonna miss you hugely in some ways; in other ways not so much. I'll certainly miss your Xmas parties. Or maybe I'll just crash them.

The following was captured at Harrie & Atkins' house, at some point quite far into the 17-odd hours' worth of extended shenanigans.

Messy night; messy audio. But I like it.

(Previously.)

Prudence

25th September.

I heart Prudence.

(Starring Toots, Zack & Grimsey.)

Hello, Blog (redux)

It's wet today. It's nice. I was woken up by the garbage truck at 9am this morning and realised I'd forgotten to put the bins out. So I did. Then I went back to bed until midday.

I started back at work on Monday. This is A Good Thing. I've become waaay too reclusive over the break.

I think my 'new' housemate - he still seems new even though he's been here three months, partly coz he went away for a month quite soon after moving in, and partly coz time has been frozen on Planet T lately - has decided I'm a freak.

He actually said this, more or less, late one drunken night in January. "It's funny the things you discover about people once you get to know them a bit better. Like you: before I started living with you, I totally thought you were normal."

I LOL'd. I was, actually, much more normal before he moved in. Or at least playing normal much more convincingly.

So it goes. I hope he doesn't feel conned.

We still seem to be getting along fine, even though he's decided I'm not normal.

What else? I got a new camera a few days ago, finally. It's a DSLR; sexy but overwhelming. I'm kind of scared of it. I haven't actually charged the battery and set it up yet.

But I will.

Chez Hagakure Red Wine & Homebrew Quiet Night In

With Luke.

Stuff I Did This Year

(Previously & previouslier.)

I missed most of 2007.

It started excellently, and ended okay. Adventures were had, things were discovered; it was not a total dead loss. But overall it will not be remembered as a banner year on Planet Teigan.

This year, amongst assorted other things (see archives), I:

• Misguidedly started a BA at Melbourne Uni for the second time, and then dropped out after a month for the second time.
• Got kinda down.
• Just about survived winter without going totally insane or throwing myself under a train.
• Gradually got better.
• Got totally ditched, in my absence, by the artist formerly known as Lady J after an extremely Significant & Intense 18-month relationship.
• Spent approximately 680 hours conducting telephone-based social research for money. (The weirdness, the horror, the tedium etc). (Also: The doodling.)
• Somewhat overambitiously applied & was interviewed for a BFA at one of the premier art schools in the country, despite having basically no traditional visual art-type skills or talent at all. Was not accepted.
• Spent what probably cumulatively amounts to several months on Facebook.
• Drank quite a lot.
• Various other things which are none of your damn business. Who the hell are you, anyway? Who are you really? etc

Maybe Some Doodles

That I drew at work.

I like to doodle whilst I work.

I got in trouble the other day for doodling when I should have been conducting legitimate social research.

My supervisor had to remind me that I get paid $20 an hour to call random phone numbers and then talk their owners into answering ridiculous questionnaires - not to doodle.

I'd completely forgotten, so engrossed was I by my doodle.

Heh.

Doodles.

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

Stuff I Did This Week

               

- Exhaustively cleaned the kitchen, the dining room, the hallway, the laundry, and the bathroom.

- Made sixteen phonecalls, took seven phonecalls, attended interviews with three people, and lodged one detailed & tedious application form in pursuit of new revenue streams. Ate dodgy Japanese food on Chapel Street; gawped at people hanging on Chapel Street.

- Visited Bentendo at his new place.

He has a very nice view of the city, which I was unable to photograph for security reasons

- Reincarnated my old mobile - which I thought I'd lost, eventually replaced, and later found - as a second phone, via the purchase of a $25 prepaid SIM card.

- Updated my address book and phone contacts.

- Succesfully enticed a professional tiler into assessing dire bathroom tile issue situation, pictured. (They refused to replace the tiles, arguing that the only meaningful solution was to retile the whole bathroom.)

- Made an elaborate pictoral blog post about cooking harira.

- Inspired by trawling my own blog archives, figured out how to region-unlock my DVD player.

- Made a disastrous birthday card.

- Stupidly trammed it all the way out to the RSPCA in Burwood East to buy a kitten, only to discover that - it not quite being kitten season yet, see - they didn't have any. (Note to self: next time ring ahead.)

- Got shitfaced at The Mint and elsewhere again with Jo, Xade, Rorschach, Jaye deKoan and sundry others. An unshaven Tript was vaguely encountered somewhere in the vicinity of the Victoria Markets at around 1am. About two people at least one of whom I did not previously know ended up on my foldout couch watching Reservoir Dogs.

- Recorded a cover of Always On My Mind with my associate Mishuki One for H419.

- Made an elaborate pictoral blog post about things I did this week.

- Watched entire series of John Safran vs God (purchased secondhand last Sunday for $5).

- Went to the gym five times.

- Wrote 36 emails to 15 people.

- Et cetera.

I Just Successfully Applied For An ABN

You can do the whole thing online.

Takes about ten minutes.

So, if anyone would like to pay me for my services, rest assured that I can now issue you with a tax invoice quoting my ABN, in accordance with applicable laws.

Once my new business has made $540, maybe I'll register a company.

Apparently that takes about twenty minutes. (And $540.)

I Don't Want To Work In A Streetcorner Newsbooth, Apparently

So, as planned, I conducted some research this week into the question of how one gets a job in a streetcorner newsbooth.

This research took the form of patronising several of said newsbooths scattered around the Melbourne CBD, as a pretext for asking the people working in them how one comes to find oneself in their enviable shoes.

But not a single one of them would tell me - on the grounds that I was better off not knowing.

Quoth the guy in the booth on the corner of Queen & Bourke Streets: "It's shit, mate. You have to get up at 5am every morning.. stand in here all day.. It's - trust me, you do not wanna work in one of these."

They all said basically the same thing.

Inevitably, part of me suspects some kind of conspiracy.

But a larger part was basically convinced.

Ambitions, Revisited

Last July I posted a list of ambitions.

Time for a review.

1. To work in a streetcorner newsbooth.
Partly a joke - but I'd still quite like to do this. I suspect they're basically owner-operator kind of deals, though. Gonna look into it this week.
2. To become a cult leader by rising to the front ranks of Neurocam and then either taking it over, or creating a sizeable splinter group.
Done. I became the head of Neurocam last August (and was subsequently deposed in November). Being a cult leader was fucking cool, if extremely intense and an insane amount of work. I want to be one again some day, in some form. It suited me nicely.
3. To write a throwaway novel ("which I am doing in November").
As things turned out, I was too busy fulfilling ambition no 2 to do this last November. So I'll do it this November.
4. To make an album, provisionally entitled 'Everyone's Too Stupid' ("which I will do next year when I have more time").
A change in outlook has seen this one deprioritised - although I might still release a compilation of Mishuki One's recordings for Hagakure 419 under said title, if a sufficient number of them accumulate.
5. To study for and obtain a degree in Creative Arts from Melbourne's premier university ("guaranteeing me a colourful and lucrative subsequent career as a Creative Artist").
I intend to begin persuing this one next year. Unless my career takes off stratospherically between now and then, of course.
6. To finish reading "The Magus" by John Fowles, and then to ritually burn it.
Done.
7. To have fun and not care about people.
8. To be beautiful.
9. To be loved.
Realisation of these three remain works in progress, although great strides have been made (admittedly, in some cases, made then lost) on all fronts.

Material things I wanted:

• An umbrella.
Acquired.
• A preamping device for my microphone.
Latterly I've been using my soon-to-be ex-housemate's guitar pedals for this purpose. But they've stopped working - I think because the audio-in jack on my eMac is fucked. (Along with several of the USB ports.) But - see above - evolved approaches have rendered this less important than it used to be.
• A Bigpond Movies membership.
With a Blockbuster just down the road, this has become less desirable. Although I would like to join ACMI, whose lending collection goes places theirs, frankly, doesn't.
• A region-free DVD player.
Acquired. (It isn't really region free. But it's okay.)
• A better camera.
Acquired.
• Peter Greenaway DVDs.
Some still pending, some acquired. In one case acquired (see previous link), then rendered unplayable due to careless handling.
• See also: Amazon wishlist.
Note: the DVDs on this list are for reference only - although I know you'd love to buy them for me, I'm better off with locally-purchased Region 4s (see above).

Updated want list:

• More driving lessons.
I started learning to drive in March last year, but stopped in September, due to being too busy & stressed. I'm no longer too busy/stressed, but I am too poor. Shall recommence when it becomes viable.
• A cat.
Once my domestic arrangement stabilizes somewhat - and again, given sufficiently consistent income.
• New trainers.
Soles of my current trainers:

• iPod Mini repair.
I bought a little 512mb Shuffle after my 4GB Mini broke for the second time late last year. At around $150 this was a substantially cheaper option than getting the Mini fixed. At this rate I will be able to get a Nano for less than the cost of getting the Mini fixed. In any case, I miss my Mini.

We'll see what happens.

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.

Black Thumbnail

One of the ridiculous jobs I am currently forced to do for economic reasons by a harsh, uncaring and insane world involves a lot of attention being paid to my hands.

In order to deflect attention away from my retarded right thumbnail, I painted my left thumbnail black.

It seems to be working, but I don't know if it was a particularly productive strategy.

I'm Going Into The City Today

To be assessed by a recruitment agency who are going to get me a (slightly more) lucrative job in a stupid callcentre.

Wish me luck!!

Ambitions

Someone asked me what my ambitions were the other day. I can't remember what I told them, but I should have said:

1. To work in a streetcorner newsbooth.
2. To become a cult leader by rising to the front ranks of Neurocam and then either taking it over, or creating a sizeable splinter group.
3. To write a novel, which I am doing in November.
4. To make an album, provisionally entitled "Everyone's Too Stupid", which I will do next year when I have more time.
5. To study for and obtain a degree in Creative Arts from Melbourne's premier university, guaranteeing me a colourful and lucrative subsequent career as a Creative Artist.
6. To finish reading "The Magus" by John Fowles, and then to ritually burn it.
7. To have fun and not care about people.
8. To be beautiful.
9. To be loved.

Other things I want:

• An umbrella.
• A preamping device for my microphone.
• A Bigpond Movies membership.
• A region-free DVD player.
• A better camera.
• Peter Greenaway DVDs.
• See also: Amazon wishlist.

I Want To Work In A Streetcorner Newsbooth

Seriously. How do you get a job in one of those?

I'd be great. I could keep my toe in the communications industry, without compromising my integrity. And it would sound cool, too. "Oh, I work in a streetcorner newsbooth." "Wow, that must be interesting; what do you do there?" "Well, I sell news."

I can just see it.

I still want to work in a cinema. Longer-term readers will remember my ill-fated encounter with Village a while ago, which was disheartening. I haven't approached any others, partly coz I'm too shy, and partly because the dearth of proper, livable-off positions in the field is somewhat demotivating. Maybe I should, though.

I don't know.

Work! *throws up hands*

At Least The 'Cam Wants Me

Village didn't.

Oh well.

208 pages of The Magus to go.

Things They Made Us Do At My Group Interview At The Jam Factory Village Yesterday

1. All fifteen or so applicants were left to wait awkwardly around silently eyeing each other up for over 25 fun-filled minutes.


2. We were given bingo-style cards with boxes containing phrases like "Has a sister", "Plays a musical instrument" "Is currently reading a novel", "Plays sport competitively" etc, and instructed to mingle and aquire signiatures from six fellow applicants in boxes whose phrases applied to them.


3. Each of us had to stand up and tell the assembled company what our favourite movie was and why, what "our goal" was, and our most embarrassing moment. I was the only person who couldn't think of a most embarrassing moment.


4. We were given transcripts of three hypothetical staff-customer interaction scenarios, divided into groups of three and instructed to discuss how well or badly each situation was handled. One nominee from each group was then required to give a short statement of the group's findings.


5. We were given eight minutes in which to complete a short standardised maths test. I only finished about a third of it. So did the guy next to me, though.


6. We were herded outside again and then called in three at a time to participate in two one-on-one roleplay exercises. These involved assimilating a sheet describing the two scenarios and some relevant information about protocols etc. I did everything right on a fuctional level but I kind of fucked up the presentation aspect of it, since by this point all I could think about was how badly I wanted the whole thing to be over.

I think the experience of participating in recent Neurocam group assignments was beneficial. The vibe of vague dread and menace engendered by the mysterious nature of the Cam was substituted with standard job-interview dread and menace, but in other respects it was an eerily similar kind of experience.

Unhappily, I miscalculated the number of pages of The Magus I had left to read. It was actually 300. Now it's 274.

This Week Has Been Crap

Well, it has. Not crap as in terrible, just crap as in nyeh. Total non-week. Except for Monday evening's little Neuroventure, that was frikken awesome. Only interesting thing that's happened all week. Pretty much getting on for the only thing I've done all week, of any note.

I went to the Henson exhibition again today. Well worth a second go. It's great. No posters for sale! Must be a rights thing. Sucks.

I am still somewhat ill. It's very tiresome.

I am going clothes shopping tomorrow. I hate clothes shopping. I find it almost impossible, especially in my current incarnation. But society (and the weather.. brr) dictates that one must have clothes.

The things I go through for you, The World.

Whoo, grumpy post.

I do have some good news. Remember how I wanted to work in a cinema? Well, I have an interview at the Jam Factory Village on Chapel Street on Monday. It's certainly not my dream cinema job (I still fancy the Astor.. or the Nova.. mmm.. Nova..) but it's a step in the right direction. And god knows, it would be a hell of a fuckload better than my present 'job'.

They rang me up out of nowhere and did a preliminary interview over the phone whilst I was en route to the airport last Friday, which was kind of startling. Apparently I did alright though. In a way it was better than a conventional job interview (ie one you know about in advance) because I didn't have time to get nervous.

What else?

I had this post on the launchpad about The Magus which is kind of grumpy too, so I might just drop it in here and have a great big ol' grumpfest but actually.. nah, I'll save it for tomorrow. Why not finish out the week in high grumpin' style? It's my blog, goddamnit.

Whatever, I'll do what I want etc.

Here is a picture of Gwen Stefani:

Work

Sooner or later I'm going to have to get another job. I'd like to work in a cinema. Concomitant to liking movies, I like cinemas. I've worked in two previously.

Firstly this one, from 1997 to 1999. I was also apprenticed to the projectionist there for a while. Prior to discovering Peter Greenaway at the age of 14 and deciding I wanted to be a film director, my ambition was to become a lighthouse keeper. Lighthouse keeping is a dead profession, alas, but I reckoned projectionism would be the next best thing. In some ways even better; lighthouse keepers can't splice single frames of pornography into children's films. Unfortunately what with increased automation, not to mention the inevitable imminent digitalisation of cinema exhibition, it's also a dying trade.

Subsequently, in London, I worked at this incredibly cool and scruffy old revival house in Hampstead called the Everyman. It's since been sold and upmarketed beyond all recognition, which is sad.

The downside of seeking employment in a cinema is that it will involve cold canvassing, which - shy & retiring semi-recluse that I've become - fills me with unholy dread. Also, I don't really feel like I've been taking enough interest in movies lately to be very convincing as a prospective cinema employee.

(Digression: Didn't get to Sideways, due to its timing being misadvertised; saw The Life Aquatic instead. It wasn't great, but it was unique, and had a number of absolutely classic moments. And it looked really nice as well.)

One of the great virtues of my current job is that pretty much anything would be a step up from it, so I'm not hidebound by snobbery. I'm easy. As long as it doesn't involve really severe public humiliation, or cold-call telemarketing. Or wearing a suit, goddammit.

All of this is theoretical at the moment, though, coz I'm going to Canberra next weekend before hitting the employment trail.