I cannot tell you how much I love this animated short by PES. It's Svankmejer crossed with ... with... umm, something not scary at all. (via)

Day one: Swung swords, injured no-one. Not sure if this counts as a success or not. Announced C5.

Day two: Went to a panel. Drank. Gasbagged. Frocked up. Ate. Drank more. C5 room party (definite success)

Day three: Sat in dealers' room, sold books. Crashed a dinner party. Drank. Gasbagged. Room party.

Day four: Quite blurry. Sold books. Gasbagged. Drank.

Day five: Saved the world. Came home.

I had the most awesome con experience anyone has ever had. I talked to so many wonderful, funny, intelligent people from all over the place. My eyeballs are still rattling around in my skull from exhaustion and everything I left undone before the con remains undone.

I will write more over the next few days about books and dresses and alcohol (the three major themes of the weekend), but sadly I have no photos. I had my camera, but everytime I attempted to use it, it failed, so I took that as a sign to participate rather than document. Which worked well. Cat has some photos here and if I come across any more I'll point them out. But right now I need Heroes.

Inspired by Nina Katchadourian's Sorted Books series (via) I had a look through my "To Read" shelf and came up with these. Recommended fun!

Last night was Father's Night at the kinder and, I swear, suddenly so much becomes clear. Why do so many kids have trouble remembering 'please' and 'thank you'? Because their dads are all 'Where's the butter'? and 'I haven't had any soup, yet' when presented with a free meal.

A free meal prepared by unpaid mothers who have been in the tiny kinder kitchen all day helping their kids pretend that they've made the soup themselves. Peeling carrot for a full hour is not my idea of a good time.

Now of course my back is stuffed from standing up all day and I have to take Abbey to that place with the clown mascot for a birthday party. Her first visit actually and it's only because it's one of her best friend's party that she's going at all. I've always managed to come up with excuses before now. Abbey only found out the name of the place last week, and then very aptly prefixed it with 'Old'. Ha!

I'm trusting that she won't like it and we'll never have to go back, but before then it's a stop off at the pharmacy for some targeted pain relief.

Why am I not blogging?
I am Twittering.
What am I Twittering?
Pure gold.

Have you checked out the auction items lately? There are new ones going up all the time, and many still without any bids at all. There are all sorts of arts, crafts, death metal demo tapes, guitar lessons, books...Go! Go see!

All the money raised will be going to Paul Haines to help fund his fight against bowel and liver cancer.

The Australian speculative fiction and art community are holding an online art auction to raise funds for Paul Haines, a talented writer currently fighting bowel and liver cancer. The theme 'Art that Scares You' was chosen to reflect the kind of creepy, disturbing and macabre fiction that Paul is known for, as well as the fear and horror surrounding cancer itself.

The ART THAT SCARES YOU auction will be going live from Art That Scares You from 14-28 August 2008. Items include "The Survivors" by Shaun Tan, "Heaven and Earth" by Cat Sparks and "Chairman Sanders" by Andrew Macrae (pictured below). Other items in the auction will include original art commissions, manuscript assessment services, fabric art, sock puppets, cards, jewellery, sculpture, china and various rare and unusual books. If you would like to donate an item, contact Tansy at artscaresyou@gmail.com.

You can visit Art That Scares You from 14-28 August 2008 to bid in the auctions. Please feel free to redistribute this information.

In the meantime, if you'd like to make a donation via paypal click here:

Less than four hours sleep last night because my Brain is Stupid. I can't even tell you how difficult typing is right now. I have to go back and correct every word. So I made another mix tape to perk me up. Its success lies in shocking and confusing one into a state of wakefulness.
Oh, who am I trying to kid? *snore*

Actually it might've been because I watched that House episode last night where the girl couldn't sleep because she had the PLAGUE.

I've been listening to The Presets' Apocalypso album nearly non-stop for the last few days, but I can't seem to find the dud track. They must have left it off.

Just substitute a few words here and there and, you know, not much has changed in the world of change.

With regard to mechanical knowledge, it is probable that we are still in our infancy, and when it is considered that, fifty years ago, many inventions for abridging the operations of industry, which are now in common use, were utterly unknown, it is not absurd to conjecture that, fifty years hence, some new contrivance may be thought of in comparison with which the steam engine and spinning jennies, however wonderful they appear to us at present, will be considered as slight and insignificant discoveries.

- Fredrick Morton Eden, circa 1790, quoted in English Society in the Eighteenth Century, Roy Porter.

Also, sentences were longer in the olden days.

I love Cul de Sac, it's just like my life. Well, the library, kindergarten, and playground parts anyway.

Fawn and Forest have some terrific looking toys, along with all the essentials for today's modern interior. This gloggomobil is entirely handcrafted in Switzerland (which accounts for the $899 price tag), but there are more affordable choices, such as the cattiest cat toy in existence.

(Abbey's birthday = November. It's sooner than you think!)

I've been reading The Dawn Chorus for a few weeks now and it's great. It's smart, thinky and, like today, they link to stuff that's really funny.

Don't even read this unless you've seen the film. Srsly. I'm not even going to try and separate the spoilers from the chaff*.

First off, I really liked Hancock. I'd see it again. Charlize Theron does good work with what is in the end, three different roles and Will Smith plays it well. Predictably, but well.

There were two points however, at which the story failed for me and unfortunately they occurred quite close together towards the end, so I came out thinking a little bit, huh?

The internal logic, if you think about it for just a minute really comes unglued. They're both Angels I think? And they both have the same powers (well, very similar). Conceived as pairs I get, yet later they are described as opposites. What about them is opposite? Male, female, black, white? But we're all taught these days that those are not very great differences at all. Not so much that when they get together they become mortal. What's the sense in that? They're conceived as pairs of great strength to come to earth and... live as humans? I don't get it. So why do they stay together? Some irresistible love for each other? But that's contradicted by the ending, where they're perfectly happy living separate lives with Ray and the eagle. (The eagle was cool. Pointless, but cool!)

More distracting for me though than broken logic was the way we were expected to keep up with Angel's (stoopid name btw) changing loyalties without any good reason. She's a committed partner and parent. Check, I bought that. Then, as soon as she's challenged she dons the Outfit of Sexy Eeevil (dark mascara, tight pants, plunging neckline). For what? Because she feels threatened? I would have believed this more if she'd stayed in her sundress and sandals and got really angry. But if we stay this course while they destroy the city around them we can only infer that she must be a baddie. So when Angel comes to Hancock in the hospital and talks at him about how great they used to be, how can I accept that change in character? I can't. They're just words! Why does he even believe her?

And here's where I indulge in one of my How to Improve a Will Smith film diatribes.

Angel has faced Hancock and they're wrecking the joint. As they do so he's becoming more and more mortal (staying with the faulty logic). He gets pummelled by a few buildings, has a concrete mixer dumped on top of him and he begins to remember. He remembers being with her in Greece, Miami or wherever. Via flashbacks we can see all that stuff that Angel spouts off in the hospital about their life together - the sword fight, the fire. We see how he gets injured whenever she's around. All this time he can believe she's his sister. Then we can still get the reveal at the same time as Ray at the house, they can still do the liquor store attack, which becomes even more pathetic because it's such a petty crime. Finally, at the hospital, she can come back, not to exposition us to death, but to apologise to Hancock for leaving him in the dark for eighty years. Then (and this is the good part) when they're both busy dying and Hancock leaps out of the hospital to save her life it Means Something. It shows that he forgives her and that he accepts the life she's chosen with Ray. I could see that his attempting to fly down the street was supposed to be the big moment in the film, with the rousing music and all, but it just didn't work because of the lack of emotional resonance behind it.

Also, the two codas were shit. Coulda lived without them.

Did I mention I liked the film? It's loads of fun. I like new superheroes and I like the gratuitous destruction of freight trains, so yay!

*I mean wheat. It's all finest quality wheat here.

I could never hope to uphold this site's position as the preeminent Justine Clarke Appreciation Blog if I did not tell you that her new album Songs To Make You Smile will be in stores this Thurs 3rd July. Just in time for the school hols!

The main impression left by the police officer who visited Abbey's kinder today is that the back seat of the police car is "really stinky".

At my graduation we had some guy talking about road accidents and statistics. This speech is far more motivating, and I must say, more appropriate.
The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.

Hello, blog. You're still here then? Have a meme.

Pinched from Lili.

How to play:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into this mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name (I got no hits for my flickr name, so used my Last.fm name instead,)

Not so much a movie as a catalogue of past Lucas and Spielberg productions. You can have fun with a catalogue though, known territory and all that.

Spoiler follows in white text:

I was sitting there towards the end thinking, but what about Close Encounters? And there was the frickin' space ship! Why would inter-dimensional creatures need a flying ship?