The rains.
Hello from the Brooker Avenue overlook.
Finally, there is rain. Proper rain. It's incredibly relieving; the genuine worry I've been feeling about brownouts over winter has been eased, although there's not been anywhere enough rain at all. It's still too warm fo this time of year.
I spent some time doing things in my study. I should have been writing (I have so much I should write) but I engaged in that classic procrastination technique of tidying, which is different for me that it may be for you because I'm a hoarder. I hoard - well anything really, but it is sort of specific: When you're an artist, which I am (and why does it feel embarassing to say that? eh?)
I found this read about where Facebook is heading interesting, not in the least because of a series of very useful links (No, I do not think everyone should stop using it, I think you should be informed and do whatever you want).
Celebrity culture: I have a strange and unworked out issue with the entire contemporary culture of celebrity and what it means in our world right now. One thing I'm thinking is that celebrities may well be dull people because they do one thing for the most part, and even if they're good at it, especially if they're good at it, it has likely consumed them by now, making them kind of monomaniacal. In contrast, I've met a lot of ordinary people who have had utterly amazing lives, which are varied because, well, most lives are filled with accidents and weird shit that the very wealthy and famous seem to be insulated from. Oh, I don't know if all that's strictly true but I grow more fascinated by the odd adventures of people who just lived a life and did what they did rather than sought fame. I'd like the money that comes with celebrity though. Yup.
A new adaptation of Watership Down is in the works. I saw the Seventies version of the film at the movies, in the now non-existent Cinema One on Hobart's Murray St. It was a dark and violent film but also amazing. Speaking of Watership Down, did you know there was an epic post-rock-experimental-hardcore band called Fall Of Efrafa which made a trilogy of albums based around the epic mythology in the novel? The big surprise is it's pretty damn great .
A succinct summing of the arguments for gun control used in 1996.
Why are there so few black people involved with craft beer?
An exhaustive interview with William Basinski, creator of The Disintergration Loops. If you've never gone to this music, it's exquisite slow-cascading sadness is essential listening.
Review of a new (!) David Ireland novel. Ireland is a fine writer I much admire, with his great book The Unknown Industrial Prisoner being probably my most admired Australian novel.
Review of a new Robert Crumb show/book. I love Crumb but he's damn problematic.
You remember MAD Magazine? The guy who does the fold-ins is 95.
Okay. Have a good week there. The sound of the rain hissing under the tires of passing traffic is poetry.