I heard her get up and have a discussion with dad at 3 am. Her mind just can’t be stopped. And she worries. Fortunately, my mind can be stopped but only with drugs. However I can sleep whenever just like dad. But I can’t be woken up for a midnight discussion. No way.
Loopy night, with fever. I had hundreds of great thoughts for you blog. But they have all flittered off with the breeze.
I had a fever yesterday. I was totally loopy with a flu. I sort of knew it at the time but not really. Altered reality. It makes you think that reality is pretty much our imagination.
They ain’t no sanity clause. And there ain’t no closet sanctity. Doodah.
Apparently whinging is hereditary.
The best thing about the Kindle is that you can read porn on public transport.
Self delusion is universal. It’s just so much harder to objectively view yourself than it is to review others.
Part of your flight to freedom is the building of an effective mirror so you can look into your own soul. You may as well check out your arse while you are at it.
You have a choice; stay organized or embrace madness. In between there be monsters.
The fruits of your labour are the seeds of your resurrection.
Where do you go when your home country becomes unlikable? Personal freedom here is a mirage; it has been constrained by the collective good to such a degree that people live with contempt. Of themselves.
Those boys are too young to know the Groucho Clause. Any club that would have them is not worth joining.
I should start keeping a list of mis-deeds for ammunition, but it’s not me.
Beware of midnight and her hormones. The list of possible crimes is endless.
Any religion that has a specific bloke at the instigation has a problem.
We can be so much more productive with IT. I still remember how little we did before smartphones and computers. Less was expected and less achieved, but everyone was just as happy, if not more so.
You also have to wonder how much of the extra productivity is just extra bureaucracy.
Getting text into phones is still an unsolved problem. Voice recognition isn’t there yet, really. Keyboards are slow even with Swype. Mind reading might be the go.
Whatever the future brings I like to see my thoughts in writing before sending them. It’s the best way to edit them.
And reading is so much faster than listening, even if talking is quicker than data entry.
Today I focused on work. As a result I had nothing to say to my blog. It just goes to show that we have limited mental horse power and we need to choose what to use it on. Work can be fun or just an evil necessity. Today it was better than ok.
Today I hit emotional detox. Nice experience. Not
In the Herald today there was a report of a structural deficit for the next decade. The only course of action is significant tax increases. All the easy expenditure cuts have been made. A good time to be in opposition.
Cyclists dread the onset of winter. But it does filter out the fair weather pretenders.
It’s not dead and it’s still appreciated.
One of the keys to contentment is learning to enjoy the present.
It is related to enjoying what you have and not always fretting about what you haven’t.
Related also is the balance between living in they past, the present and the future.
Old Roger suggested that I have to keep going on one of my deals for my “reputation’s sake”. I was confused for a while and then realized he was being literal. He really cares about the opinions of people he barely knows.
I hate being micro-managed, even when I need to be.
Both sides of my brain have always been pretty functional. I have strived throughout my life, first subconsciously, and then more consciously, to connect the two sides. I get the point, but just about no one else I know does; they all have contempt to the ‘other side’, the side away from their own hemispherical strength. Or they simply don’t give a rat’s.
The cafe downstairs has a jazzy elevator musak version of YMCA going in a continuous loop. It’s so bad it’s good.
The bloke next door that married the tiger mum; he has the mother in law living there too. They shout at each other, the wife and the mother in law, in Cantonese, from one end of the house to the other, in their normal conversation. What was he thinking? Or more likely, which parts of his brain never worked? Hell is here in on earth.
The tiger mum next door has her child paying piano for hours a day. She has technical proficiency, finally, but has absolutely no touch. Never will have.
A flute has recently been added to the poor girl’s misery.
She believes that you are what you eat. There is soul food and body food.
Two suburbs over, in Rozelle, we have an organic food supermarket called About Life. It’s full of corporate types, working or on maternity leave. They wear their skulls on the outsides of their heads.
I am teaching my daughter that “sorry” does not include an excuse.
What does that woman fear the most? Not being loved, not being able to love, or not finding someone to love?
I hit the wall today. I suppose no one could keep up this pace forever. I am using all parts of my brain, soul and body.
Four years of Latin at school. I must have learnt something apart from a greater than average appreciation of Latin quotations. Youth really is wasted on the young.
Which means that good looking women should either be celibate, gay or go out with nasty blokes. Ipso facto.
This one is appearing at bus stops all over town. Does it mean cars should stay away from bikes by a meter, or that bikes should stay away from cars by a meter? In either case I would point out that the required distance is very much dependent upon speed. At 10 kmh one metre is heaps. At 70 kmh it’s suicidal.
It’s also very sad to see a nice bloke trapped with a good looking woman.
Why am I not surprised?
I hate being wrong. There is simply not enough time to waste.
How can the same country produce Joni Mitchell and Dick Cheney?
I hate being right. It’s easier if people just agree with me so I don’t have to be.
After a decade away from the game I am back into squash.
Ollie, my first ever coach, has just shown me that I have had it all wrong, forever. Grip, swing, footwork, movement, you name it.
Bugger me; my limitations were all self imposed. For almost 25 years…
I must run the ruler over other things I know to be true.
Why do I hate jade plants so much?
Well, they start as these little plants in pots and then grow way to be way oversize.
Then they get in the way of me and my bike.
Then they cause an argument when I want to kill them.
Then I have to surreptitiously try to trim them, branch by branch, over the course of weeks.
Without getting sprung.
When I go quiet on someone it is usually because I don’t know what to think. And experience has to taught me to question my first and second reactions. I am quiet until I understand or don’t care.
Reversing now.
If we were only allowed to consume sustainable resources, then the world’s population would automatically control itself.
We might have spare time and we might even consume non-essentials. But nowhere near as much as today.
I still believe they term ‘wealth’ is best used to measure unsustainable consumption.
And, just oddly, I think there is a link between the emotional state and unsustainable consumption.
Excess and unsustainable consumption is like an addiction; we gorge on the unsustainable resources and yet this makes us unhappy.
Therefore restricting ourselves to sustainable consumption might lead to contentment (just a note on terminology – someone who is ‘happy’ all the time should be locked up).
In the old days countries used to measure their wealth by ‘productivity’, which was how many labours-hours were required to convert raw materials into a finished good.
This is a relative measure of wealth, since if productivity goes up an economy is wealthier than before.
But its very hard to measure absolute wealth, and it certainly isn’t any GDP or GNP, cumulated over many years, because these are measured in currency units.
And currency units only show the relative wealth between nations (based on the total number of notes in circulation and their exchange rate).
I think a better measure of wealth is some complex function dependent upon the % of an average person’s time required to just sustain themselves.
Before the industrial revolution this was almost 100%, with only a handful of people having spare time. Say 99.9%.
Today in the West it must be much less than 1%. The other 99%+ of the time can be spent sleeping, but usually it is also spent consuming unnecessarily.
So tracking this thought through, wealth might also be measured by (consumption (in say energy units) not related to subsistence) x (number of people).
(Note here. The odd thing is the discrepancy between the place of consumption and production. China makes stuff and then lends the proceeds to the U.S so the U.S. can consume it. Odd and it can’t last).
The energy units should only be based on the non-renewable resources consumed (say oil, superphosphate, species, etc).
So what I am really saying is that ‘wealth’ is a measure of the consumption of the planet’s finite and non-renewable resources.
Enjoy it while it lasts!
Luke face-planted off his bicycle last night after a skin-full. I should have taken his keys off him….
It’s very sad to see a nice person trapped in the body of good looking woman.
This appeared on all the poles near work.
When they start to argue a lot, the first port of call should be the two chestnuts; commitment and babies.
Rarely do they come at these issues directly. They prefer to annoy the fuck out of you and subconsciously hope that you can join the dots.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It doesn’t look like a grade A gameplan to me.
Who makes this stuff up?
There is nothing like the snap of a jade branch in the morning.
Some French fashion editor wrote a book. She experienced bad sex for a decade and therefore gave it away for the next decade. Bzzzz wrong answer.
Freedom is knowing yourself truly. Or was that losing yourself?
Good food is worth more than all your philosophies.
The only thing better than a good sleep is a good sleep after a good fuck.
You can change yourself but it takes a really concerted effort. And time. And a genuine desire to enjoy the process.
She has finally realised that my inability to panic is an asset.
By the time it’s perfected, it’s obsolete. I think that was Robert Heinlein, amongst others.
Given that we have ten times as many bacterial cells in our bodies as compared to human cells, do antibiotics really make that much sense?
Maybe we shouldn’t annoy them.
Why do we have seaweed hanging on our clothes line?
Don’t answer that.
Succulents are sneaky fuckers. One minute they are this tiny little plant in a pot and the next, they are all over your garden.
It’s a big hill. I get up to 70 kmh down it.
Tonight a cyclist was killed just before I got there. He got nailed by a car coming out from a side road on the left. Rest in peace brother.
Having said that, he should know you can’t do that speed down a hill and stay in the far left bike lane. You need to be right in the middle of the road so you can react to the fools.
The enemies, my friend, are cars, motor bikes, buses, trucks, dogs, cats, pedestrians, and other cyclists. That is, yourself.
Money does not validate anything. Just the opposite.
How much of the average person’s life is spent subconsciously engineering out future risks to life, limb and pride?
I have decided not to get my coffee at the new cafe downstairs. Because I am guessing they would abuse any goodwill, eventually. Gut feel.
Left brain fear? It’s just another form of expression. More efficient but less explicit. The trick I find is to work on connecting the two halves. That is powerful.
We, in NSW, have bicycle police!
I had a chat to them this morning.
They spend their time hanging around trouble spots where cyclists do dumb things, a.k.a. around me.
They also get to chase the odd delinquent cyclist.
They must be the only NSW police that are not overweight.
Three nephews, all twenty summin’t.
The hood has come off the older one, finally.
Almost.
If it’s worth saying, it’s worth saying ad nauseum. Doo dah.
Just through perusing the business pages. Articles about old-ish CEO ‘s and their plans or reports, yada. The fascinating bit is the photos. They do their best to take sexy photos of these old dudes, with arty angles. It doesn’t work, but it is an ongoing myth. I hope the photographers get a chuckle out of it.
Another massacre in the US. You have to wonder if the Americans will ever turn the spotlight on themselves and properly address why this all seems to happen in their country to such a disproportionate extent. I suspect we know the answer to that alright, already. They invented gen x and y after all.
Gold is down a zillion percent today.
I recall having some thoughts about investing in silver because they were using so much of it to make solar cells; I figured supply and demand would push up its price. Fortunately, Google came to my rescue. I got a hold of an incredibly detailed and legible report showing me that the price of the metal was influenced by many more factors than I could have ever imagined, and that the price was in fact going the other way.
Gold, I suspect, is even more complex. For the lay folk it’s a tipple not an investment.
Wealth; there is always a desire by many to have more. However as an economy matures into a wealthy one, people increasingly switch from creating new wealth to rent seeking. It just looks easier, and maybe it is. Therein lies the downfall of all empires.
Respect. Maybe. Whatever. You don’t know. I am sure I don’t.
There are 10 times more bacterial cells in our bodies than human cells. Those of us looking for the meaning of life might do well to remember that we might just be host systems for bugs.
Expect nothing and you will be pleasantly surprised. Want nothing and you won’t need to be.
The term wild goose chase was around before Shakespeare but his use of it in Romeo and Juliet was the first recorded. Apparently it referred to a kind of follow-the-leader steeple chase. Ironically, the Germans don’t have any version of this expression, I learnt today.
This morning I crossed a red light on my pushie right in front of a cop car.
They chased me down the tram tracks but I squeezed in between two trams and then took a quick left, right, left and was gone.
It felt good.
My parents generation talk about being ‘under strain’. These days that has morphed to being ‘under stress’.
Its an interesting shift; scientifically, stress is applied externally and strain is the response to stress.
The relationship between the stress and strain that a particular person displays is known as that particular person’s stress–strain curve. It is unique for each person and is found by recording the amount of deformation (strain) at distinct intervals of a variety of loadings (stress).
Being ‘under strain’ implies a little more personal responsibility as to what the outcomes are to applied stress. I prefer the old lingo.
Whichever knives I choose, they will be the wrong ones.
‘Smart’ isn’t knowing things, it’s using your knowledge to do new things. Or knowing how to find knowledge to do new things. Tell that to your teacher…
The Union Cyclists Internationale sets a minimum bike weight for professional cyclist at 6.8 kg. However the average professional cyclist actually has a bike weight of 7.2 kg.
What does this say about the weekend warriors who splurge $15k on a bike that weighs 6.5 kg in order to huff and puff between cafes?
To those of you who love to leave at the crack of dawn, I say, leave the night before.
My bike intermittently starts to squeak, groan or rattle, and then it stops. Whence and why-for nobody knows.
The perfect woman is a myth. The perfect man isn’t even a myth.
Or, why risk everything for nothing?
What we need on Australia is a big push for population decentralisation.
We have it all on paper; unlimited resources and only 25 million people.
But because we all want to live in the same places we blow all that wealth on real estate.
The result; stress, fear and loathing.
Never get between an academic and a dollar.
friends and lovers
I know you well
and will awhile uphold
the unyoked humour of your
idleness
regrets
forgets
someone else’s life
it is all really going to end
In the old days one could get past any security in the world simply by carrying a clipboard and adopting a busy attitude.
Today the trick is to wear a plastic badge (backwards), a big Bluetooth headset, a polo shirt and the self-same busy attitude.
Fear and prayer. Fist and glove.
Is Julia Gillard the worst prime minister we have ever had? I think so, at least in my tenure.
Today she unexpectedly lobs in a new policy, via press release, that hundreds of millions of dollars of university funding is going to be diverted to our schools.
‘For the benefit of the kiddies’ she says.
I would really like to see a more factually supported argument as to why, in a relative sense, education funding is skewed unreasonably towards the tertiary level. It is not obvious to me.
And I am very, very unsure about the benefits of the new federal primary school curriculum, with its focus on keeping our national standards up with the tiger mums of Asia.
And why doesn’t this government ever learn that they can’t just announce major policy without months of behind the scenes consensus efforts? By lobbing policy as they do, the losers (and their are always losers to any new policy) simply get angry and vocal. The media has a field day. And the opposition, shutting their collective mouths, will laugh all the way to the bank.
Although I should note that the opposition did open their mouths last week to announce their ‘NBN-lite’. Sweet be-Jesus, the other side of politics is just as bad…!
I am hoping that when they get in, someone old and wise just says to them ‘no new policies – just say and do nothing and you will get re-elected’. Maybe it will be more fun if they go the ‘Julia’.
I have been at it for ten years now, and it would be fair to say that in Australian gyms, women are far less courteous than men.
Today, an older woman asked for a machine back because unbeknownst to me she was using both machines (in her mind).
There was not a towel to claim ownership, nor any recognition that it is probably bad manners to hog two machines in a crowded gym.
Now, a statement like that is a statement of well-considered and direct opinion, but it could be construed as sexist or worst.
It is not, but the fear of such claims probably mean that these sorts of observations are not noted nor feedback given, and problems are not resolved.
Whadya?
I have just been aurally assaulted by a Hyundai. You know, the noise that tells you that you have just turned off the ignition but the thing is still in reverse. Well bugger me, I almost panicked, the noise was so offensive.
There goes any Korean auto purchases.
My BMW sounds like a U-boat about to dive. It must be some sort of German joke. Or not.
I like the soft chimes that the Japanese propagate. But I wonder why they chime inside the car when you reverse? Surely it’s others (on the pavement) that have no idea that you are reversing.
I must take note as to what the Americans do when I am next over there.
The ideal situation is as per my Subaru where I have managed to fuck the chimes altogether. Sweet silence. I may just have to keep that car forever.
Riding through the Haymarket, daily on the tram tracks, I just love the ‘Chinese Dodge’.
For some reason the Chinese simply refuse to look before walking across the tram tracks.
I am not sure why but its very odd. Occasionally they get hit by flying cyclists, and sometimes even a tram.
You would think the price of failure might focus their attention on the odd prophylactic head-turn.
I have tasked myself to stop and do a survey one day. I will report back.
The one issue with riding is that I have thoughts and I can’t very well stop to blog them.
Hence, I make up mnemonics like ‘Collateral Lactic’ to capture my gems.
Sometimes I like the mnemonics more than the thoughts 🙂
Flying down Lillyfield Road on the limit.
The nice bloke in the car behind me draws even to tell me I have been averaging 50 km/h, and says ‘well done’.
Little does he know that my body, the vessel, is a boiling cauldron of lactic acid.
offshore westerly 