One of the nice things about studying is that I spend a lot of time with music playing. When I’m out in the shed I like to listen to CDs. After all, they sound better. And they have nice covers.
I was online talking to a guy from college and I said I’d been listening to a lot physical media. His response was that he hadn’t heard of them, were they any good? This is a pointless story. He’s a muso. He knows what a CD is. But still this sounds like a tale that is pregnant with meaning. Perhaps it just has a bit of abdominal bloat. I was reading No Idea in a waiting room the other day. Katie Holmes isn’t pregnant, she’s just carrying a bit of fat. Same with this story.
The CDs you can see are
Matthew Sweet – Japanese fan CD, title in Japanese. I’ll try to find the title online and paste it in, I can’t type Japanese characters. EDIT here it is : キミがスキ・ライフ
Preston School of Industry – All this sounds gas
Golden Smog – Weird tales
Sarah Blasko – What the sea wants, the sea will have
Marvin Gaye – What’s going on
Urge Overkill – Exit the dragon
13th Floor Elevators – The psychedelic sounds of
Curtis Mayfield – the best of
Pink Floyd – Wish you were here
Elmore James – The sky is crying
The pictures – Pieces of eight
I should stop this wanky nonsense and do some work.
My cheap photoframe plays a movie
Theresa and I went shopping at Big W down in the big W itself, Wonthaggi. I bought
- a cool jacket with lots of pockets, charcoal in colour, it makes me think of Kraftwerk for some reaon
- a new pillow
- this great little photo frame media player thingy. In the picture it is playing an AVI file of Jess Franco’s Count Dacula featuring amongst others the beautiful and doomed Soledad Miranda. (That’s not her – she’s a brunette, as you probably know or could at least guess)
The frame does have sound but it’s thin and weedy so I’ve plugged it into my cheap and cheerful iPod dock and speakers. The movie is on a USB stick that you can see sticking out of the side. The screen size is maybe 20 cm by 15cm.
Haven’t blogged for a while. Just cruising along. The insomnia’s a lot better this week. I still wake up every hour or two but I seem to be able to get back to sleep better. I get up at five or six which means I’m getting six or seven hours of bad sleep, which is a big improvement. I’m finding I have to make myself exercise, whereas a month ago I couldn’t sit still.
Theresa and the kids are back from Queensland. I think that has helped to settle things down. The week they were on holidays was quite hard down here. I had a session with the psychologist that I cried all the way through, and an assessment with an Education Department psychiatrist. He hasn’t finished his report yet but he did phone my principal and recommend that I have more time off. He also contacted the local mental health service.
I’ve been swimming a couple of times. I do about a kilometre of alternating slow breaststroke and freestyle. It’s very pleasant. Our hot water service was out for a couple of weeks (it blew the day the family went away – it’s lucky I stayed at home or it would have gushed hot water for a week). So the bonus when you swam was a hot shower.
Gavin, Shane and I worked up some songs the other night. I played drums, bass, guitar, some organ and harmonica, and sang. It’s fun but we drank a lot of whiskey and I certainly paid for it the next day.
I’ve been working very hard on a Java programming assignment. I was blocked for a day but I’ve found out where I went wrong (class-wide variables need to be declared as static) and now I feel it is more achievable.
… in my loungeroom at least.
I’ve been availing myself of certain internet technologies to catch up with some films by Jacques Rivette this week.
I saw Céline et Julie vont en bateau on SBS TV a couple of decades ago and it slowly blew my mind. I found a copy of it a few months ago and it’s well worth the four hours if you are planning a slow evening. Don’t let anybody watch it with you unless they promise to be silent.
This week I’ve been alone at home so I’ve watched Duelle and L’amour par terre. I’m currently obtaining a copy of La Belle Noiseuse which might be my reward tonight for finishing the FIT1002 Programming in Java unit test online today. I may also have a little glass of whiskey, which I find goes well with the graceful pacing and interesting logic of his films.
After I buzzed off my hair
I decided that the way to deal with the odd bald patch was to buzz most of my hair off. I was going to have a sensible haircut but my hair was greasy and because the hot water service has blown up I didn’t want to go to the barber’s. Also I’m still on sick leave and I feel a bit socially exposed when I ’should’ be at work. Short hair feels nice. Cold though.
And now it's black too
I figured since there seems to be a bit of white hair growing back in the hole in my hair that I might as well colour it all black. Showering it out with only cold water was pretty hard going.
Mind you, it looks better with a hat
This hat I got for $2 at the op shop in Leongatha. I like it a lot and have hardly taken it off since I bought it.
