edumacation

*** Warning – gratuitous bragging below ***

so i finally got my uni results for last semester and am well chuffed; a distinction for Cognitive Science and a high distinction for foundation linguistics. not too shabby considering i did it while also holding down a full time job, if i do say so myself.

*** ok, self congratulation over now – back to the usual sporadic blogs about nuthin’ much soon ***

CD Review: Rodrigo y Gabriela

i suspect i may be climbing on a bandwagon here but being a bit out of touch with these things of late maybe these guys aren’t as popular as i think they could be…expect to hear this in a slightly groovy cafe near you soon

Rodrigo y Gabriela are a couple of Mexican ex-metalheads who play fast, clear, acoustic guitar instrumentals (including percussion played on the same guitars) which sounds really quite good.

i don’t know if it’s just the power of sub-conscious suggestion and half baked cliche driven by the knowledge that these guys are Mexican but it seems to me like it would be an ideal soundtrack for drinking beer on a hot summer’s saturday afternoon

if only they had resisted the urge to include a cover of stairway to heaven…

Porgy & Bess – not the normal music review (for this blog)

M and I went to see Porgy and Bess at the Festival theatre. Really good productionalthough I must say that the lead singers were sounding a wee bit tired. and the guy who played Sportin’ Life had the odd tuning issue – but that also sounded like a result of too many times the same thing. Porgy was excellent – African american bass that sounded like caramel. Stunning. I liked the slight jazz to the opera and the bleak macabre nature of the story. The only serious criticism i have doesn’t relate to the music –  is that the surtitles were totally out of sync and often incorrectly translated. On some occassions they were ahead of themselves and so ruined the effect of the next line (really frustrating). But good that we saw it. M even liked it (there you’re secret is out!!). It was surprising to hear so many songs that we knew without ever associating them with the musical – Summertime, I got plenty of Nothing etc.

Garage Sale – all over in 2 hours

garage Sale was very successful and enlightening – without wanting to bite the hand that feeds me – the kind of people who turn up and stampede into the sale are really rather odd. Not to mention the fact that they all know each other ‘oh hi bob – what you get – oooh could have got that for less….’ etc and then the ones that buy stuff and then just stand around watching and chatting – and all before the thing officially starts. we shut it down by 11 30 and had made $600 – so we’re happy but god some people really are wierd.

Don’t get too worried about it

I have had a bit of friendly concern from people who read my blog entry regarding depression and my return to sensibility.

I just want people to know that this is not something that you need to worry about. I have had this chronic illness for better part of a decade – before I met Michael, got married, started or completed my law degree, travelled overseas 2 times, got my first professional job, got promoted, went and worked on a mine site, started a Masters degree etc etc. I have had 3 periods of extended depression in my life that have required medication. I have been taking medicine for this particular episode since January -  6 months. So its not something that I am unfamiliar with, frightened of or use to define myself, anymore than diabetics do. At some point in the future Michael,my doctor and I will decide whether I will stay on the medication or try for a fourth time without it.

If there is anything that I want people to realise is that 3 weeks ago i was still me, and in 3 weeks time I am still me – I am fine. I kept going to work, traveliing, planning, laughing and living. No throwing in the towel or getting into bed for 3 weeks and not getting out. it is no crisis - it is my life. Thanks for your concern but don’t get too worried about it!

JD

spam fiction chapters 3 – 8

yes, i’ll get over my fascination with this crap soon but in the mean time here are a few more excerpts pulled from spam emails…

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In fact. angelica compliment That and the droning passage of days with their simple convalescent pattern.

Only had to kill one roommate to do it, too, Paul thought, and donkeyed his shrill, frightened laugh Scheherazade to myself he thought again. Paul wondered, not quite idly, how far Grider Wildlife Preserve was from here. I was good at it. One, however, should be enough. He wrote until dawn was coming up in the east and then fell into bed and slept for four hours. Old enough and bright enough, maybe, to spill some kerosene around a cheap liquor bottle, then light a candle, and put the candle in the middle of the kerosene. cyclic

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but even more, he felt. bungle bugaboo It was a bent and twisted chunk of bobby-pin.

not where she usually sat, however; she sat on its foot and for a moment he saw only her solid, impervious back as she bent over, as if to check on something. Be quick. “Because I don’t want it grinning at me all night. “”Shhhhh! OOO. He awoke time after time in the middle of the night using the big toe of his right foot to scratch thin air four inches below the place where, on that side, his body now ended. So far all speculation centered on three illegal substances: moonshine, marijuana, and cocaine. Beth

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“He dry-heaved again, making a desperate burping sound. armoire beriberi “Someone could have come along and eased the boy’s terror, but nobody did.

She absently tore the rag that was choking him out of his mouth and threw it on the floor. She’ll just think they’re pistachio nuts and gobble them right down. Annie Wilkes was gone. The fourth was their father, Adrian Krenmitz, 41. No fucking way. An awful memory bloomed there in the dark: his mother had taken him to the Boston Zoo, and he had been looking at a great big bird. The gotta which had kept them both alive and it had, for without it she surely would have murdered both him and herself long since was also what had caused the loss of his thumb. Caution

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The lives were shadows. charlie consult Throw them in your trap.

Paul thumbed the thickness of the remaining pages in Annie’s book and thought Ralph Dugan should have checked his horoscope whoops, make that horrorscope the day he proposed to Annie. said Annie surely would be tried on one of the other counts. It’s called Dom P?rignon. I think of your troubles as my troubles, Annie. to begin the book for the first time in years, it was Can You? It was snowing outside, the first real snow of the year, and they said we’d have a foot by the next morning. Nothing else stupid old Annie Wilkes forgot because she doesn’t know how a Mister Smart Guy goes about writing a book. boycott

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lions on either side of him. aversion cryostat It splattered the wall.

Annie pulled the axe free and tossed it aside absently at the jetting stump for a moment and picked up the box of matches. That’s what I’ll say. Well it stinks. No cop. in the woods up there. Over the years Paul had grown more and more resigned to the fact that he could not read stories as he had when he was a kid; by becoming a writer of them himself, he had condemned himself to a life of dissection. He kept thinking unconsciousness would come and relieve him, but unconsciousness declined; instead Hour Thirty came, and Hour Forty; now King of Pain and Pretty Thirsty merged into one single horse (I Got the Hungries had been left in the dust long since) and he began to feel like nothing more than a slice of living tissue on a microscope slide or a worm on a hook something, anyway, twisting endlessly and waiting only to die. counsel

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and now back to our normal programming…

Get thee to a real estate agent.

Why won’t you post my results for god sake???

Ever moved to the other side of the world for 6 months and not had accommodation? I’ll let you know what its like.

Having a look at what I have missed

I have been afflicted with an attack of late nite insomnia and so i have been reading the blog. and i feel so sad at what I haven’t been reading or paying attention to over the last few months. i never really appreciated properly the impact of my wierd working arrnagements (ie the time at Olympic Dam) on M. it must have been a horrible and lonely time. I am sorry.

 J

Back to the land of the living

Hello everyone,

I am back from the abyss. Some drugs, a return to home, a big sleep and a series of arguments with my boss has put me back into the zone of living life and not wading in knee high water. What excitement has happened. After I got over the guilt of having a relapse having not had one for years, and not in the time that I have been with Michael, and then plunging over the edge completely, well I felt a lot better. I felt as though I had duped Michael and I didn’t know how he would respond to a properly depressed person. So yes the time is ripe to admit to those friends who read this blog that J has had for a number of years a proper full depressive problem. I have now had 3 major ‘episodes’ in 8 years. this is pointing pretty much to the fact that I cannot live a life drug free at all times. Admittedly I was doing well, but a boss that bullied and abused me, a miscarriage, a wedding (great but stressful) and then 4 months by myself in the desert (all in a 12 month period) brought it on good and proper. Now that i am 6 months into the medicine, life is getting back onto an even keel. And M – i love you – you have been great. It’s time for me now not to be embarrassed but to be getting on with it. This is going to be here for most of my life i anticipate and i know now without a doubt that you can handle me. It was the final frontier in our relationship and we are riding happily off into the sunset.

 Plans for germany are progressing well. We will be on a plane in 6 weeks. Hopefully some friends will visit, but if they don’t M and I will have the fabulous time that we have been dreaming of over the last 2 years. all the ‘no money this week’ blues will be worth it.

 No more bullshit – lets live life.

J