Blank jugsaw for sale in supermercado

This dream I had

1. Simple enough. Darkened stair well, metal grate with railing. Bottom lighting. Near the bottom step sits a red hairy behemoth. Red monster has a briefcase. Is waiting. This is the dream I had the other night. The dream was real strong - I'd had a busy, memorable, sociable and drunken evening, and my dreammaker was somehow so loaded up with energy and material that I fell straight and deep and clear into this one. Emotions from the dream were: strangeness, fear, incredulity, helplessness, absurdity, curiosity. I almost recognised myself. I felt resigned to my strange fate, but that could have been a mistake. The dream might have revealed nothing.
2. This wasn't a dream peopled by persons. Obviously the human touch was there though, because of the strong emotional feel of the dream. But it was basically me just wondering about, but I can't for the life of it remember where. All that remains is this bizarre scene.
3. I may have mentioned this before - call it sympathetic pregnesia - but you know how sometimes you're in that sleepy state of wakefulness, where you have access to all kinds of past dream memories? It's like they're on tap. You can roll through vistas, landscapes, pathways, very often modified versions of real places, you can get the strange shock of remembering a recurring dream that was previously hidden to your conscious self, you can bring back those feelings. There's not many other kinds of memories that can be evoked so fully. What an oddball tour. Mine includes another version of my high school, trains, underground city food courts... I just remembered another class of dream that doesn't actually fit neatly into this evocative set - it's the dream I have where I'm playing basketball, and I can jump real high, with real big hang time, multiple pump fakes and all that. Haven't had one of those for a while. No strong emotions attached to those, I don't know why.
4. The other night I had the most vivid dream of a massive shelf of ice falling into the sea.

The transitory permanence of beauty

People look different

Give up

Who's really in control in your noggin? You? You don't even know what a you is anyway. Shine a torchlight in every nook and cranny and you'll agree, there's no one home. Who's shining the torch?

Contemporary opposite of innocence

Like a rusty barnacle, Beck's new album has grown on me. I initially had doubts, but those doubts have been swept away in a sea of funky riffs, beats and melodies. Beck retains the ability to make really cool musical moments. Not to be confused with tour de force songs, uplifting harmonies or penetrative lyrics, musical moments are those little gems within songs that pop up in your head, in anticipation and again and again afterwards. I can count at least five of these in the first five songs, but i'm confident the back end of the album will contain its sweet rewards too. I'm still not convinced that this album, like the last few, has the same emotional depth or simple richness that I feel some of his earlier work does. Heck, what do I know?

There's so much more than straight ahead

Sometimes as I'm walking near the road I avert my gaze from its usual residence - eye level or thereabouts, or attention grabbing things within a metre or two either side of that. I might raise my head to the heavens or take a moment longer to examine something I normally walk straight by, or glance at thoughtlessly. I make no apology for that. I gotta say, it's really worth it. Walking through life is a little like struggling to keep sleepy eyelids open. Your eye's view or your mind's eye's view struggles (or accepts) getting more narrowed, restricted, blinkered. It's normal, it's comfortable, it just kinda happens. But the inescapable truth is that you end up missing out on a lot. Course, you can never catch it all, but that's not my point. Averting my eyes is only a small thing, but it feels like a victory. Good to be with you.



I saw this when I peered out of a room in the Masonic Centre. You can't really make it out, but take my word for it - that's a black and white striped bikini top. As far as I could tell there was no easy access to this space, something my mentor tended to agree with me about. Chuckle and that versatile signifier, a shake of the head.

Fun and games at the tempe tip

So away I browsed, hopeful and doubtful of finding anything decent. For some reason I thought I might find a science gem - like the time I picked up a second hand volume of the Feynman lectures on physics.

Instead I found Tattoos On My Soul - From The Ghetto To The Top Of The World. This was a cover that had a lot going for it - as anyone who knows me would agree. An entree into the world of black American gangsta culture, an amusing name (Burrel Lee Wilks III) and standout cover quotes. One from megaproducer / big fat violent guy Suge (pronounced shoodge) Knight, although I don't understand why he put quote marks inside a quote. The other was from none other than babyfaced (him not her. although she does kind of have one too. i had a crush on her after somersault) Abbie Cornish-lover Ryan Phillippe. His quote is notable for its absence of adjectives and nouns - a good hint it may have been taken out of context.

I turned to the back and discovered a quote from Baron Davis, the man more responsible than any other for Golden State Warriors' recent resurgence (since opted out and gone to Clips, but thassanutha story). I flipped open the book and discovered to my incredible shock that it contained an authentic dedication, penned by the author himself to un certain Tim. For everything you have done for me and my brother. Who is this Tim? Could it be Tim Webster? Tim Bailey? Both! What did he do for Burrel and his brother? Sell him life insurance? Look after his labradoodle? Commit perjury?

I was momentarily saddened that such a lauded and autographed book was now sitting amongst worthless duds on a crappy old bookshelf. One day, I hope to meet someone who's read the book, that I might discover its contents.

Grimly but eagerly I trudged onwards, stupidly and predictably ignoring my true mission to search for furniture, and this time I found something equally amazing - the Power 2000. This was, to my eyes, a carbon copy of the AbFlex, a circa '96 televmarketing piece of crap that my beloved father purchased in a moment of deep insanity. The red end is nestled into your stomach flab, the handles are gripped (from beneath I think) and the body is pulled inwards to you, against all odds plus the resistance of a piece of stretchy rubber on the underside. The rubber broke on my dad's one and they sent him a new part. I dont know where the aBfleX is now. I can't recall how much they were selling the Power 2000 for, but whatever it was it's too much.

You don't need to go first hand

In a way, these pictures tell a story. In another, more accurate way, I'll be telling the story about these pictures. Stay tuned.

Curtis White

I just read a short essay called the Spirit of Disobedience by above author, wherefrom I got the three suggestions above above*. On the whole it's a great piece, and reminds me of Ralston Saul, Suzuki and Hofstadter, in that certain things (dare I say, truths? Interpretations of reality? No matter.) are said in a simple and engaging way that make sense, and that no one else ever seems to say. The kind of writing that makes the usual fare seem like an utterly misguided, laborious waste of time. I meant to write a post about the piece, but haven’t gotten round to it. Yet. And yet.

* since removed. They are "Misbehave. Make something beautiful. Try to win."

The power of mobile phones

Some of you might have seen a viral marketing video floating through the air, in which some hipster doofuses create popcorn out of corn kernels merely by merely placing their ringing phones in the kernels's' vicinity. I decided to have a lark and so I stole three mobile phones from passers by on the street. After I had recollected my breath, I layed me down on the yielding ground and placed a phone beside either ear, one above my head, and the other on my face. I then demanded my number one, two, three and four guys, Phil A. Shio, C. Bass, Col Medina and Rick Tal-Payne, to ring the four phones stimultaneously.

Can you guess what happened next?

That's right, my pineal gland exploded. This had some startling consequences. First of all, it turned me into an unpredictable, suave and tic-laden hermit with an inability to tell more than three true words in a row. Second of all, it really, really hurt. Fortunately, modern medical technology has a solution for me - liposuction.

I wrote a poem describing my new life, entitled Reaching Within

Pineal gland
disintegrate
to dust and sand
Help me mate

Internal pain
cellphone weird
Cellulite gain
my curly beard

My new life
full of hope
no more strife
no shit rope

Reaching within...

i'm a big fan of succulents

Do yourself a favour and head down to the succulents garden at the Botanic. There's some wild succulents there - not wild, but freaky, you know what i mean. I discovered my favourite plant there and one day I hope to own it.

Nope, that's not it. But pretty cool, huh?

It's pretty close to this one, except - get this - the trunk has spines all over it. That's so cool.

I wouldn't mind having a garden that looks like that.

By the way, I really don't care for the ubiquitous little balcony succulents, you know the ones that people put on their window sill above the kitchen sink? They have every right to exist, but they're just not on the same plane of awesomeness as these ones.