Headline

Not long ago, a new headline popped up on my feed reader. All the swine flu pandemic media hysteria was bunted (tempoarily, I'm sure) down a notch to be replaced by:

Sri Lanka army ordered to stop using heavy weapons

They too must have an OH&S advisor.

PhotoHunt: Protect(ion)

PPE:- Personal Protective Equipment



Here's Shooter, one of my workmates. He's exhibiting the typical PPE we're required to wear for the job. Hardhat, safety glasses, lace-up steel-capped boots, and because we tend to work with grease and chemicals, a disposable "sperm suit". Or, as Shooter likes to call them instead, an Oompaloompa suit.

Seems a bit over the top. Mostly. Until two days ago, that is, when I caught myself a beauty at a moment without the hardhat on. Consequently I buried an adjustment screw on a grease injector block more than a centimetre into the top of my head. A hell of a lot of incident reports, reviews and a suture later, I'm beginning to like the idea of having a chin strap to keep the thing permanently on my head.

Get Your Listening Caps On

Yes, you read that right. Get your listening caps on! Time to delve into the archives of Vic's Composition years.

This is the first piece I wrote for University. It's one I'm pretty fiercely proud of, too. The lecturer was a completely uninteresting woman who would demand all pieces to be played in class so that we students could "get input". Yet, the only input she seemed to give was to ask what the title was and what it meant.

She was a very accomplished pianist. I can barely get past Three Blind Mice when it comes to playing, so I asked if she would perform this one for me. Well... I don't think the old cow liked being put on the spot with that, because rather than the usual nothingness response she would give, she absolutely tore this one apart. Thanks, it's my first effort. Ever hear of positive reinforcement?

Anyway, despite her comments I like it. And to spite her, when we (our class) toured to another city to perform a selection of our pieces, I scammed this one into the program.

So crank up the listening caps and tell me what you think:
Catastrophe for Piano performed by Georgena Cooper.

Mum and LittleTyke

Ah yes, more from the recent archives of Auntiedom. My Easter weekend was spent visiting my gorgeous sister Kat and hubby Mike. And of course, the little bundle of wonderfulness that is my niece. LittleTyke.

Everyone was sick and overtired. Pretty much worn out. Poor LittleTyke was pretty ill and giving everyone a hell of a lot of stress trying to figure out how to best look after her, when she'd be fine one second and screaming the next.



Awww.

Kat kept apologising to me that LittleTyke wasn't her normal self. I didn't mind one little bit. As far as I'm concerned, I want to know all the little nuances of who she is. If she's sick, that's her normal self at that time. That's how she expresses it. She wasn't the usual million miles an hour. She was placid, slow and sleepy interspersed with major tears.



Mostly, could tell that she just wanted to be near her mum. Awwww.

Anatomy of a Linkfest

First up: Let's hit Google up about what the advantages of going gluten-free are.

In the descriptions we find this:
Many people may benefit from a gluten-free diet, including those with Celiac disease, MS, brain fog, seizures, arthritis, osteoporosis, autism, diabetes, ..

Brain fog? What the fuck is this?

Google? I feel a linkfest coming on...

According to Dr. Wilson:
Brain fog is extremely common. It affects thousands of people, children as well as adults. It contributes to school and work problems, low self-esteem, accidents, unhappy relationships and even crime and delinquency. Although it is common, it is not a recognized diagnosis, either in medicine or psychology.

Some people have been this way for most of their life and think this is normal. In other cases, it comes on slowly or perhaps almost overnight.

Fog? Maybe that's what's wrong with England.

According to what's-his-face, brain fog can be casued by just about anything from the wiring in your home to copper, to chronic illnesses, to food, to lack of grounding and even spinal problems. What a range.

But what do we mention here? Adrenal burnout?

And what's-his-face says:
Adrenal burnout can be the best thing that happens to a person. It is a wake up call. Often, some area of life is out of balance or alignment.

Addressing burnout is often the starting point for a deeper exploration of self. Rather than just existing as a programmed zombie, adrenal burnout may be the beginning of real living.

This was the case for me, and for many patients I have worked with. I suffered from adrenal exhaustion for a number of years. As I began to understand the condition better, I made many changes in my diet, lifestyle and most critically, my thinking.

I forced myself to do coffee enemas, to walk every day and to meditate daily, although I did not enjoy doing any these things, at first.

Woah. Back up. Coffee enemas? And saying that you didn't enjoy this at first implies that you sure did later. Sicko!

But what the hell? Google?

So the article in Wikipedia states that:
Coffee enemas are the enema-related procedure of inserting coffee into the anus to cleanse the rectum and small intestines.

No shit. Oh well, yes, shit. Definately. But tell me something I didn't figure out on my own!

Gerson said that coffee enemas had positive effects on patients with tuberculosis, and later even cancer. He claimed that unlike saline enemas, the caffeine traveled through the smooth muscle of the small intestine, and into the liver. This, he said, cleared even more the gastro-intestinal tract and removed more toxins and bile than a normal enema.

Yeah right? I still prefer my caffiene orally, thankyou.

But what's this reference article? "Colonic irrigation and the theory of autointoxication: a triumph of ignorance over science". Ha! This sounds like a cracker! Let's go!

Unfortunately I hit a brick wall there - the article is blocked to anyone who isn't a subscriber to the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology. Damn. But I think I proved a valuable point today. See how little time it takes on the internet for genuine research of a topic to link on to shit? Literally!

More Meme Slackness (Deal With It)

"Here's the rules--mention the person that tagged you (did that). Complete the lists of 8's (see below). Tag 8 of your wonderful blogger friends (usually don't do this, but I will!). Go tell them you tagged them (if I have time)!"

Now we all know that this is Vic's World.

Vic says:
Fuck the rules.
This is Blogville after all.
In a world without boundaries, rules are somewhat irrelevant.

So I'm not tagging. If you want to be as pathetic as I am and do the meme, go ahead and steal it. I did. Go ahead. Trust me, it feels good.

8 Things I Am Looking Forward To:

1. More sunshine. I was driving along with my arm hanging out the window this morning, feeling right and summery. The tunes were good and the weather was fine. Now it's all up and pissed off in order to make way for a preview of winter.

2. Watching LittleTyke continue to grow and learn. Auntiedom... It's made me fall in love with a baby. LittleTyke is the best. She can do no wrong.

3. The invention and wide distribution of intravenous coffee.

4. Making fresh gourmet pizza. Who knows when, but every time I think of it my mouth waters.

5. Gardening. I don't have a veggie plot yet, but the ideas are germinating. Let's hope they hurry up and take root because I need to get some seeds for winter crops germinating, too.

6. Losing enough weight to be able to look in the mirror and not think ugh, for fuck's sake you have to lose some weight

7. Beer. Always.

8. The day after tomorrow.

8 Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Yet again scored a free ride on public transport. I love that my station has no ticket machine. I get to raise my middle finger to the authorities and also spend the money I would have spent on a ticket on something far more worthwhile, like sushi.

2. I walked into a local photography gallery. Not much of a surprise, really. But this one was holding an exhibition of works by local photographers who are members of the flickr community. I got out of my shell enough to strike up a conversation with the founder of the gallery about it. We had a really open, easy conversation in a setting where normally I would have feared intimidation. I think how easily the conversation came kind of took me by surprise and made me forget to be self-conscious. The outcome: the guy looked me up on flickr and told me that he liked my work. I'm pretty chuffed.

3. Sadly, I did not invent intravenous coffee.

4. Drank tea instead.

5. Cursed my manager many, many times. I try to make an appointment with his boss, and he gives me every excuse under the sun as to why I can't. I try to resolve issues with him instead, and he palms it off on to his boss, who he has made completely unreachable. Good stuff. Much appreciated.


6. Ate sushi.

7. Grinned like a fool for having eaten sushi.

8. Resolved to continue to lose more weight.


8 Things I Wish I Could Do:

1. I wish I could settle on a plan for a garden and just get to it. I spent hours today doing drawings and contemplating where the sun goes the most. I need to revert to a good gardener friend's method of "just stick it in and if it grows it grows". As Nike says, Just Do It.

2. For one week I wish I could actually have a penis. I would have so much fun being given a whole new body part. I'm bored with all the other bits.

3. I wish to invent intravenous coffee. It's a winner, for sure.

4. Wave a magic wand and make it spring. I wasted summer and now it's raining and cold. This signifies icy mornings, multiple layers of clothes, miserable drizzly short dark days and massive power bills. The only positive I see being offered up by winter is the prospect of snuggling up under more than one doona. In fact a mound of them.

5. Retire the poor old Fuji FinePix for a more superior model camera.

6. Dammit, but I wish I could play guitar and sing simultaneously. Occasionally it works out okay, but I could never get a gig doing it. What's weird is that I can play and sing a little on guitar, but give me bass and all ability to even speak while I'm playing just disappears.

7. I wish I could be travelling. Right now. Tomorrow. Every day.

8. I wish I could think of something else to write.


8 Shows I Watch:

Huh? I don't even own a television. I worm my way into other people's lives to watch hours of Bones and the occasional other crime type show.

Stupid, stupid question.

It's Vic's World, so let's change it.

8 albums I'm granting listening time to lately:

1. Jason Mraz - We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things
Okay, so it's a bit poppy/easy listening. But it's just appealing that way. The music is cruisey enough to flow right into your soul and make something move inside you with you even being consciously aware that it's going to happen. Worth a listen on a warm summer evening.

2. Dave Matthews Band - Everyday
I keep coming back to this album, even though I am really only rocked by roughly half of it. The rest is clever but doesn't stick me right to the core in the way that some of the more brilliant Dave Matthews efforts do.

3. Lily Allen - Alright, Still
She cracks me up. The music is tongue in cheek. The lyrics are sassy. I'm in love... but I think she'd slap me.

4. Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You
Latest album: Sadly, not as good as the first. There are still golden moments on this effort, just they're less in number than on the first album. In adolescent style, I've fixated on one track with a sweetly sung little chorus of Fuck you, fuck you very, very much. The plus is that I'm not the only one. It's now our work anthem.

5. Medeski, Martin and Wood - Note Bleu
A nice best of album that just keeps me coming back. Funky, interesting, sometimes completely weird. It's everything I like to be, with a little more confidence.

6. Counting Crows - August and Everything After
This is an old friend that I bring out like a well-worn pair of jeans. I can slip into it like a second skin and feel completely at home with every inch of it.

7. Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd.
Apart the fact that Nine in the Afternoon shits me to absolute tears, I've been pretty clinically fascinated with this album. There's a real Sgt. Pepper feel to it. I'm not happy with committing to liking it yet. I think it's more one of those things you have to stare at and poke for a while to work out what it is, but you cannot just walk away from and forget about. Eventually you figure it out and make the decision to go with well that was a complete waste of time or perhaps the opposite of hey, that's really cool. Judgement is pending.

8. Black Eyed Peas - Elephunk
This is great for just rocking out to when you come home from work. I tend to like funky sounds when I hit the shower, but not overly complex ones. This is perfect. I challenge anybody to listen to Let's Get Retarded and not be moving along with it. You're just not human if you don't.


8 People I Tag:

This is Vic's World, remember? Steal away. You know you want to.

Quote of the Day

May you always have success in your quest to irritate those who you despise. -Ben Goode

Dad and LittleTyke

...all in a laid-back afternoon.

PhotoHunt: Purple

It's been a while since I've done PhotoHunt, but what the hey. Sometimes you have to just up and follow the sign that says "Disappear Here" for a while.

So now it's all exciting and a challenge again. When I found that the challenge was "Purple", the first thing I did was look around my flat too see what I had in that colour. Funny, it's got to be my favourite colour, but I really only own a tie that is purple, and that's it in the clothes department.

My current sheets are that colour, but I'm not really interested in taking pictures of them.

Hmmph. It's going to be harder than I thought.

Then I looked a little closer. Dammit, I sit on it every day. Duh! My couch throw is a great hand-knitted mixture of different purples and a little black. Idiot! The answer is always under your arse if you look!

Converse

"The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen."
- Duke Ellington

Think about that one. The context that I came across this quote in was a section of a book regarding jamming - getting together as a group to create music, to just play. To function individually toward a common, often undetermined goal.

For me, it echoes out into life. I think whether you know how to listen is the most important thing in any person.

Take my experience recently of hitting it off with a complete stranger while we sat and shared a section of gutter. We started off discussing a local point of interest and ended up talking about various places we'd lived, and a hell of a lot in between. This conversation wouldn't have been possible if we didn't have the skills to listen and respond accordingly. That tiny amount of time spent has become to me one of the best things that I have encountered lately - to engage in a fascinating conversation with a complete stranger.

It's one of the things I miss about customer service. There was more opportunity to meet strangers and hear their stories. A lot only had interest in telling, rather than responding. They didn't know how to listen, and I did. Cool, because I was being paid to do it, but it lessens the interaction. The few that you meet that converse, actually listen and respond in a cyclic fashion... They're worth their weight in gold.

Reasons To Smoke

No-one likes a quitter.

Strangenesses

Today I found myself sitting in a gutter having a really interesting conversation with a complete stranger.

Life throws some weird things at you sometimes.

Postcards from Wallsend II

As promised earlier here are a few more shots of graffiti goodness found in Wallsend, Newcastle.

Take a walk along Ironbark Creek, which really turns out to be a storm drain, and you'll come across a few of these beauties:

A whole-wall collaboration:



The best portion of a wall that stretched forever (and also more of the face theme):



More of the face theme again, this time under a roadway.

Backyard Snail Relocation Program*

*also known as "Photographing a Better Snail"



Meet Mister Gastropod, our relocation test subject for today. Mister Gastropod tends to hang out on the fence. He'll move by gliding along on his foot, making his path slippery with mucus on the way. With this slippy gunge making movement easier, Mister Gastropod conracts the muscles of his foot in waves in order to reach amazing land speeds of 1mm per second. When he hangs out on the fence, though, he doesn't get into the movement thing very much. He becomes boring. He washes out onto the colourbond background too easily. He is not particularly photogenic. Hence, he becomes an ideal candidate for the Backyard Snail Relocation Program.

Mister Gastropod adapts to a change in location very easily. Unsuspecting, he will be hanging out on the fence and The Hand of Vic will descend, plucking him from his inphotogenic slumber and relocating him to a more appealing location. He will wait a few seconds in order to ensure that the Hand of Vic will not intervene and relocate him again. Then he will extend his stalks and check out his new home.

In this picture he's following his nose. Mister Gastropod has two sets of retractable "stalks" that he uses for his sensory needs. Much like us humans, the eyes are at the top and the sniffers are below. So here he's sniffing out any danger through the hole in his new leaf environment before he pokes his eye stalks through to get a look.

And after the shot was taken, The Hand of Vic rested, and will remain at rest until further relocations are required.

Irony

Found outside a Newcastle brothel.



Happy Easter!

Postcards from Wallsend

Went for an early morning wander the other day in search of some cool urban art.

I wandered for miles around backs of buildings, edgers of storm drains and under bridges. This is one section I found - not particularly artistic, but a brilliantly coloured section of wall under a bridge. A great opportunity for a reflection shot...



Also nearby:



And poking his head out from the grass of the same bridge I scored the reflection shot at was this dude:



More later!

Quote of the Day

I hope life isn't just a big joke 'cause I don't get it.

Blast from the past

Time is never time at all
You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth
- Tonight, Tonight The Smashing Pumpkins

I've been brushing the accumulated dust off a few of the old albums I've accumulated. In listening to them, I think that I've also been brushing the dust off a few old memories, too.

One of the albums I've brushed down and breathed back into life is The Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which is a two-disc odyssey mainly composed of polar opposites: fuzzed out anger, and sweet lilting love tunes. There's an overall attempt at hopelessness, but honestly it doesn't stick. What I find amazing is that even though I haven't bothered to keep the dust from gathering in layers on the surface of this album, all it takes is one listen to have it all come flooding back. You know what's coming in every song, you anticipate the opening to the next track, all those words are still tucked away in your mind ready to sing along. All without being aware that the knowledge still exists somewhere in there, dormant, but ready to rise given the need.

I think the lyric above - you can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth - can be interpreted in a positive way. Yes, you leave a piece of youth with these things that gather dust in dormancy. But blow the dust off and it's still there waiting to be experienced again. In those moments, time is never time at all.

Alternative furniture

"London-based contemporary design firm Purves & Purves offered a flat-pack DIY cardboard armchair frame along with a package of grass seeds in the summer of 2006, promising outdoor furniture that blends in perfectly with your lawn. You assemble the 14 pieces, fill it with soil, sprinkle the grass seeds over it and watch your new Chia Chair grow right before your eyes. Interesting idea, but mowing it could be a challenge."

Wow! A lawn lounge room! All I need is a lawn coffee table to put my feet up on while I drink my eco-freindly beer by the light of the solar lanterns.

Come to think of it, I could even have an outdoor kitchen with a built-in dual purpose water feature/kitchen sink. Hell, it could have it's own super-fresh salad bar. Plenty of fresh, leafy greens. All you need, right there.

More eBay goodness

Moustache
****slightly used moustache in immaculate condition****

With a starting bid of $150 dollars and $4.20 postage.

Here is the product description:

Four month old untamed moustache, gingery brown in immaculate condition. Long enough to cover the bottom lip but curls nicely upon the top. Stylish and workable, endless possibilities.