Oh yeah, by the way, I'm no longer alone in my domain. Hamilton finally gave into my blandishments and was lured into this iniquitous den of sin. Or something. Go visit him because he has style. I wouldn't let him in if he didn't, now would I?

Mood swings. So that's what they feel like. Just about bawling because someone sprayed a bit of beer at me. Granted, it was VB, but still... don't you think that's a bit of an overreaction, Dee?

Too tired to function in polite society. Or impolite society. Drained and at the end of my tether.

I had my first "Please, I have to get out of here" feeling this afternoon. A force so strong I just about turned and walked straight out of the college. Instead, I just sat still, stared into nothing, thought of people I could live with next year because I didn't want to live with people from college because that would still be too much of a connection to this place.

Coming down off the mood swing, I laughed as I wondered if Shauny would take me in if I showed up on her doorstep and made puppy-dog eyes.

And then laughed even more at the thoughts of nicking off with the bar takings from last night and showing up on Megsy's doorstep.

So I'm back to normal now. But there's still lingering traces of my slip in the back of my brain, pondering whether getting the hell out of Dodge might not be a nice, fluffy idea.

I'm sorry, due to fuckwits, morons and rum and coke, we are currently all out of happy, laid-back Dee. We expect to receive more within the week, but make no promises. In the meantime, why don't you try some of our cynical, growling, bitchy Dee? Full of pissed-off goodness!

(It was hell. It was late. People are stupid. I have to work now. End transmission.)

Aargle. I'm working tonight as bar and function staff for my college's 30th anniversary convocation dinner. I have to wear a bow tie as part of my uniform. Which means I have to button my shirt up to the top. I had a hard enough time just finding a white shirt that would go all the way up. I feel like I'm choking. I'm seeing stars. I'm not going to make it, kids. I'm going to be doing the traditional two fingers under the collar all night.

Sod it. Whose idea of fun is this, anyway?

(Note to self: buy shoelaces.)

From Empire Magazine, a brilliant publication entirely about movies that I bought for something to read at the train station and simply fell in love with:

George Clooney, when asked if he was the cause of Julia Roberts' and Benjamin Bratt's split: "I didn't have time. I was too busy breaking up Tom and Nicole's marriage."

I can't stand the man, but gee, that's funny.

All right, own up. Who snuck into my room and left an electronic typewriter on my desk?

The game's called "Trials and Triumphs". Play not there, if you value your respect for mankind in general, and staff in particular.

First login: I browse through the news, and find no information about the application (apping) procedure. While distracted by another window, my login times out.

Second login: I check the staff list. Ah! Six of them are online. But wait... none of them are available. On the guest channel, I ask who I should talk to regarding apping. Ten minutes later, with no response, my login times out.

Third login: Check the staff list again. Goodie, now one of them is active, at least. I page her, asking about apping. After two minutes, she tells me it's online. I ask a couple of questions about my character concept. She has no enthusiasm, and hence fills me with none.

Compare it with "Fading Suns", where the staff and older players were attentive, friendly, cheerful, helpful, thoroughly enthusiastic and happily put up with me asking a million questions, and this T&T place really sours. I'm considering apping, just to be a pain in the arse of the inept staff. And because they'll let me play Kabuki. Rah.

Oohhhhh, yeah. Haven't had coffee in a week and a half, and boy that's good stuff.

Something for Kate. Every playlist should have one. Mine has 26. Get yours today. I recommend everything, but especially 'Electricity'. Go forth and download. That means you.

They all played barefoot at the last gig I saw, which was the 'Echola-la-lalia' (or whatever) tour.

And a small voice asked: "Where is Elfwood?"

Frontier Psychiatrist: "So, lie here on the bar and tell me: When did you first discover that you hated your horse?"
Maladjusted Cowboy: "But, I don't hate my horse!"

Frontier Psychiatrist: "Aaah, but does your horse hate you?"

The Male has the original Wayne and Schuster recording. It was funny.

I'm contemplating changing the name of the blog. For various reasons. The title was something I conceived of in two seconds, when idly starting up my weblog, and put on the spot about what I wanted to call it. Puns spring quickly to my mind, and this one leapt up. But, well... it really doesn't have that much to do with me, you know. I don't feel any special affinity with fish. I don't even like eating them. It has no relation to the domain name. For a while I got people commenting on the John Irving relation, and I felt like I was acting under false pretenses, because at the time I hadn't even read The World According To Garp.

So yeah, I'm thinking of maybe morphing the name to something a little more related to me and the domain name. Maybe I'm just bored. Maybe, after a year and a half, I feel I deserve a change. Anyway, do you think I should make the switch? And do you have suggestions for names? Drop me a line.

In the player: (the best of) New Order and Depeche Mode - Singles 86>98. I'm so old-skool, it hurts.

The email has finally stopped at 178 new messages. And that's just in the inbox. We won't even start adding up all the subboxes that have things going straight into them. Gah. (So, yes, I'm back, I'm bad, I'm running on three hours sleep somewhere early in the week and the sheer willpower only a McChicken Meal can provide.)

The week in review:

The trip down. The guy sitting next to me on the train travelled in a cloud of stale nicotine and tobacco. He spent his time messaging someone on his mobile phone and assaulting my sense of smell. It wasn't too bad, though, because he seemed to have an inability to sit still for more than half an hour at a time, and kept getting up and disappearing for long stretches. Probably to renew his personal atmosphere. Or maybe he was shooting up in the toilets. I noticed, when I was forced to use the facilities, that there was a needle disposal unit. I personally think that anyone trying to find a vein on a rocking, jolting train deserves everything they get.

The relatives. If you can possibly avoid it, or are not Italian yourself, do not get involved with an Italian. I have been kissed by more people in the past week than in most of my life to date. I've been babbled at in Italian so much that it's possibly a miracle I haven't returned with any of the language myself. Nonna spoke pretty much only Italian, but she thought I was wonderful. At least, the way the threw the Male aside to embrace me suggests it. Or maybe her slight dementia had taken a hand, and she'd concentrated so much on remembering me that she'd forgotten he was important too. (Or maybe it's just that I'm prettier than he is. Smell better too, I imagine.) They were all wonderful to me, though, and cooked the most beautiful food, apparently without really thinking about it. I felt quite unworthy, and very much in awe.

The city. Is beautiful. Oh my yes. I love the feel of it, beautiful old gothic buildings, complete with gargoyles, nestled amongst glass skyscrapers. Trees, parks, trams, little alleyways turned into chic markets. I love it, because I laugh at it, and sometimes with it, and revel in the atmosphere and laugh at myself. I certainly don't take it seriously. But I think I could quite easily live there for a year or two. Just long enough to fully appreciate it. Not long enough to be totally overpowered by it. Oh, and I could handle staying at the Crown for a week or two as well. The word 'sumptuous' barely covers it.

The trip back. Also know as the Hellfire and Damnation Express. Two hours late to begin with, leaving me huddled on an arctic platform, thumbing through Empire with numbing fingers. Behind me, four teenage girls of the itchy-trigger-finger variety. They didn't shut up for the entire journey, I'm absolutely certain. Between them, they had two mobile phones, two game boys and a walkman. I have nothing but pity for people who can't entertain themselves for at least half an hour purely alone - just them and their brain. They talked about boys, make-up, music. Rinse and repeat. Ad Nauseum. When I had to change to a bus, there was a baby right behind me. It screamed on and off in a strangely rhythmical fashion most of the way home.

And I staggered home to my email. Somewhere in here are messages I actually want to read. But for now.... sleep. (It's good to be back. Holidays are good, but I like the comfort of home.)

What would I do without my internet acquaintances? Electronic conversations soothe me.

My college is full of rabid, homosexual-hating, Muslim-bashing, charismatic Catholics. They blessed (or consecrated, or something involving waving holy-water-bedaubed evergreen twigs aroung the place) the rooms that they are staying in. I had an image of some mystical force keeping me from entering a room. Sorry, can't do a linen change: I'm an instrument of the devil.

Imagine what that would do for my reputation.

gil's wonderful suggestions of going full, scary goth for breakfast aside, I do not want to antagonise these people. It's just not worth it. The amusement to trouble ratio is too small from such an enterprise.

I do wish I had a copy of the Spawn soundtrack, though. Just so I can crank up the third track. The one that starts with the rousing chorus of "Satan! Satan! Satan!". Dope, Faith No More and Snake River Conspiracy will have to do.

I go forth to pack. See you next Wednesday. Thanks, all. You're part of what keeps this Dee happy and shiny.

Oh wow. There's a lot to be said for Canberra in the spring. It's about sights and smells and feelings. New flowers absolutely coating branches, and the fluff will start falling soon. Watching two peewees and a magpie in a twirling, angry dance, unsure who's winning, or even who's chasing who. Sweat on my top lip after shivering for so long.

The world is new and shiny. May I never lose this.

I'm sure I've mentioned before my interest in conspiracies of the international intellectual. Illuminati - Bavarian and Discordian and such. Right? Well, remember: There are a few highly significant numbers to these organisations. One is 23 and another is 5 (2 + 3 = 5).

Watch closely: 11/9/2001 - 11 + 9 + 2 + 1 = 23. The article of NATO which allows the entire mob to go to war is Article 5.

This, for me, just goes to prove that if you look for them, the connections are everywhere.

They interviewed my Honours supervisor on the news after the event. He's a specialist in strategy and diplomacy and stuff like that. He's also my mentor, and taught me most of my knowledge and cynicism about America and the world system in general. I just wish this event hadn't proved him right, and wasn't going to continue proving him right. Cynical I might be, but there's still an optimist streak in me that shrivels and dies a little more every time I see that footage again, or hear that they're going to bomb Afghanistan. Because that's a travesty of justice, and I run out of fingers when counting up reasons why bin Laden wasn't behind this attack.

Every conversation I have these days swings round to this. I'm almost sick of it. (And I hope J^e's wrong, and I don't wake up tomorrow morning to find that there's been another attack. Please, let her premonition be wrong.)

How do you move on from talking about it? I guess you just do...

Some people are going to find their Irrational Licenses revoked if they're not careful.

Norma does some beautiful artwork. I've found inspiration for several minor characters in the Novel from her pictures, once I finally got to access them in the lab downstairs.

From Wednesday, I'll be away for a week. I'm going down to Melbourne, for the second time in my life. This time, I go to meet the Male's family in a real way. Not just the parents, but some extended relations. I also go to look at the city in a new light, as a prospective new home.

Who wants to move to bloody Melbourne, I ask you? But it seems likely that come 2003, it will be my place of residence. Better get used to it, I guess.

See, I heard yesterday that the hijackers were only using knives, and that piece of knowledge clicked into the puzzle in my head quite nicely. Before then, nothing had made sense. It was not a sensible terrorist attack, though it very successfully created terror. They could have used supplementary technology to make the attack much worse, if all they wanted was to hurt the US.

But if this was some sort of ritual, cultish action, with no other purpose than to be a strike and a cleansing suicide, then it starts to come into perspective.

The information that the hijackers, in some recording the powers that be have, speak only English, and without accents, also adds to the mix.

(Don't I have anything else to talk about? Have I been thinking of anything else since midnight last night? Not really. My thoughts roam on brief journeys out from the centre - I watch Memento, an excellent movie; I read a bit of Dune; I study some German for the test today; I have a conversation that does not include this event. However, my brain still turns this in the back of my mind, and when the distraction is finished with, it returns to the front. It torments me because it is something so huge, so vital, and it doesn't make sense. But slowly, piece by tiny piece, things start to come together in a way that, while it does not deliver comprehensibility yet, suggests that it might occur.)

Awake, now, and the world is still the same.

My mind keeps circling around two questions: drifted off to sleep obsessed with them. They are inextricably linked and right now, for me, they are the only things that matter.

Who, and why?

Please excuse me while I think out loud for a moment, but I'd like to order some of these thoughts.

There must be a purpose for the attack, and that purpose is directly linked to who committed the act. Those capable of committing limits the potential window. The stupidity of it limits it even further. A state is out of the question, for that very reason. The United States is going to go beyond medieval - will go biblical - upon those it finds responsible. No state would survive, and they would have known that.

So any terrorist organisation with the organisation to pull this off would also have to know that America would not quiver in abject terror as a result of this action, but would come out with all guns blazing. Any group would be suicidal to claim responsibility with any sort of validity. Then again, the attacks themselves were suicide attacks...

If this is not a suicide bombing on a grand scale, then no one will claim responsibility for the action. However, a terrorist act is not just an act of terror. It always has a purpose. To further a cause, to protest something, to achieve an element of leverage. Because this act is unclaimable due to its size, it serves no purpose. People mention the anniversary of the Camp David Accords, talk about Osana bin Laden's quest of terrorism... but when the attack cannot be claimed, it serves no purpose in a campaign of terrorism.

The next thought: it had no purpose beyond striking hard at America. The only purpose was to inspire fear in American and Americans. To show them what it's like living with terror. To prove their vulnerability. Or just as a vicious attack of America itself. In which case, why was it not much, much worse than it was?

"Stop it!" Net-acquaintances shouted at me. "It was bad, can't you just accept that? Do you have to dwell on how it could have been worse?"

Yes. Because if the purpose of this attack was to cause death and destruction, why pull the punch? This attack, killing as many as it does, and causing the destruction it does, escalates itself from a minor (or even major) act of terrorism. And yet it stops short on a completely devastating offensive. How could it have been worse? The mere mention of biological weapons introduces a whole other range of possibilities. Not Saddam-Hussein-missile-weapons, but just the inclusion of, on those kamikaze airliners, an aerosal can full of something nasty.

I'm lost. I'm wandering through this maze of motives and culprits, and what's driving me, tormenting me, is the fact that it makes no sense. I can't see the point, and hence I can't understand.

All of this is not helped by questions such as 'What happened in National Mall, and why won't they tell us about it?' And 'How many planes were hi-jacked, really?'

I doubt we will ever, ever find out what really happened.

Today, J^e and I will scour the papers, cross-reference the 'facts', look at responses, and try to reconcile in our own minds the why, and the how.

(Note: To all those directly effected, I extend my deepest sympathy. All of us are indirectly effected.)

So where were you when you heard?

(Yes, I speaketh of the incidents... attacks... whatever in America.)

Jesus... I cannot begin to put into words how much this has blown my mind. The huge scope of it. The unbelievable brutal efficiency of it as a terrorist act. The complete incapability of any of these small Palestinian terrorist organisations to co-ordinate and pull off something like this.

This is huge. This is precision. This is a surgical strike. I don't even know if I'd consider the US Military capable of an operation like this. It must have been so long, and so many people, and so much planning in the making.

I keep coming back to suggestions my rational brain is not prepared to accept. The Illuminati do not exist; they cannot have been responsible for this.

I'm in shock. I can't think.

I have, in the past, been told that in response to the inane question: "Whatcha doin'?" my usual respone of "Nothin' much" (or, on particularly loquacious days: "Bugger all, dear boy") is unacceptably boring. With that in mind, a list of other potential responses:

• Pandering to the heathens.
  
• Alphabetising my clothes by what I did in them last.
  
• Desexing my stereo.
  
• Full-contact origami.
  
• Considering the viability of world domination.
  
• Tie-dying my fridge.
  
• Making reservations for the afterlife.
  
• Playing Queen backwards, looking for Satanic messages.
  
• Paying off Third World debt.
  
• Taxidermy.
  
• Tantric crochet.
  
• Bringing about the Apocalypse.

The essay is finished. For the moment, I am all out of words.

Except these ones: Bastards! Why can't I right-click in Internet Explorer in the computer lab? Alternatively, why does Netscape, in which I can right-click, not connect to the sodding internet? What sort of bloody use is an internet browser that doesn't connect to the sodding internet?

I am surrounded...

Essay rough drafts. For when you really, desperately need to scribble all over something.



You have to use a pen, not crayon, but then again, I'm supposed to be a university, not a kindergarten, student.

The conclusion I didn't write for my essay, but that is too good to just disappear into that emptiness where the deleted words go:

So, then, the implications of exposing this limited reading of Machiavelli upon realism. To whit:

- Universality. Pisses all over that.

- From above: Change. Get some.
Having thus disturbed the fundamental premise of realism and suggested that it needs to get over itself and look at evolving into something more useful, I think my work here is done.

"Like a child in this fantasy,
Punching holes in the walls of reality.
All my life I wanted to fly,
But I don't have no wings, and I wonder why
I can't break away."

"Breakaway", Big Pig. The only band comprised almost solely of percussionists? Go the 80s.

You know, it's not often I lambast my own friends or close acquaintances, but this is a note to the two gits I associate with who just ran past my door:

Bleached hair does not an effeminate man maketh.

Honestly. I think my problem here is that I guess it is a common conception that gay guys bleach their hair and do 'feminine' things like that. However, my perception has been drastically skewed by having lived in college, where most of the males of my acquaintance (the straight ones) have bleached their hair at least once. J² has certainly dyed his hair more frequently and more interesting colours than I have.

Maybe - actually, definitely - I associated with more interesting people than the majority of the world. I'm so lucky.

This week - in two days, in fact, Tuesday and today - I have written some 9 pages, or 2500 words, of the Novel. Nothing, right? Yeah, well, considering last week, and pretty much all the weeks before that, I had written precisely zilch that wasn't fanfic, I am feeling pretty good about this.

I'm on a roll. And what's more, I'm on a crunching-writer's-block-and-the-internal-critic-beneath-my-bootheel roll. It's pretty bad, what I'm writing. Talking heads and no descriptions, but I'm just getting down the action, the basic skeleton and a hint of cosmetics. I can come back and enflesh and clothe the thing later. For now, I just want to get a first draft done. I can write a whole novel. I know I can. I have done it before.

I will do it again.

Note: 'Revolting Cocks' provide surprisingly good music to write to.

David Bowie does not, due to my propensity to wiggle about and dance to it.

Honestly, they really shouldn't colour the ponds for Open Day. They insist on doing it every year. It looks pretty good on the day, with the little pools of water bright and happy. But then as time passes, they get darker. So now the blue one looks quite unnatural, but in a relatively normal way. The red one looks like some sort of horrible murder has been committed in it. And the yellow one.... er, well... it looks like we've been visited by a flock of incontinent mammals with kidney disease. Ahem. Pond clean-out is in order, I think.

The phone has rung three times in the last five minutes. What made me so popular all of a sudden? Two hang-ups - one post and one pre-answer. Am I being stalked? Well, if I am, then he's closing in, because one was external, and one internal.

Meanwhile, I want to go to this, or maybe this. They just sound... well, excellent. Inspiring, exciting, gripping, useful. Of course, there's always the Australian version, but it only goes for 5 sodding days (as opposed to six weeks).

Oh, for a few thousand spendable dollars...

Today feels like Germany, and I'm not sure why. I had Vegemite for breakfast, so it can't be that.

Everyone should be a whore for the Princess Bride, dammit.

(This is much more interesting taken wholly out of context, without the reference to the original point as made by Melissa, from whom you should all learn.)

Via my friend R^y, from the Sydney Morning Herald of... Saturday just gone, I believe:

We must congratulate the Prime Minister on his bold plan, which is as brilliant as it is obvious.
Step 1: The SAS take the Tampa into international waters. This act of piracy puts us at war with Norway.
Step 2: The SAS, cleverly left on board for this purpose, immediately surrender on our behalf to the captain and we all become Norwegian subjects.
Step 3: This takes care of the pesky republicans; after all, who can object to King Haakon!
Step 4: We automatically become citizens of the European Union.
Step 5: Our farmers receive the massive EU subsidies and the EU market opens!
Step 6: All rural seats go Coalition, by a landslide.

--Tom Torda,

--Double Bay, August 31

I believe this would be an appropriate juncture to note how boggling it is to visit the website of a publication supposedly connected to a university program which (also supposedly) teaches web-site design... and then get stuck in frames.

I Am Surrounded By Morons!

Yes, the cry is back. In full force.

But anyway, I take solace in the fact that though I am considering this course, it is not for the web-design elements, but rather for the editing and creative writing aspects. It sounds wonderful. It sounds like just what I want. It sounds like it can get me the job I want. And it sounds unbelievably cheap. There has to be a hitch...

Oh yeah, I have to move to Melbourne.

The typed pages of Novel-planning smell like a book. This, I find reassuring.

Yes, I am pulling it out, stretching my mind, entangling my fingers in the details once again. Determination, driven by the usual source. The new releases of HarperCollins, including so many new authors and books, and I experience a surge of covetousness.

Mine. It's purely visceral. I want it.

Now, I guess, we see whether I want it enough.

9. Pray... select a word describing your inner feelings: (Urgency, Escape, Mellowing, Togetherness, Confusion, Questions, Reflection, Accomplishment, Stability.) Dee goes looking for the non-existent option: Abstinence.

Incidentally, this is what comes of getting the Grim Reaper to guess my age. He said I was 24. Three years off ain't bad, I guess. I really don't want to be 24, but that's my own bag of issues.

Link from Megsy-Wegsy.

Today is Father's Day. So I'm taking a break from Machiavelli to say this:

My father is a wonderful man. A wonderful, brilliant, awe-inspiring man.

He is laid-back, prioritised, unregretful, full of life. I try to emulate him. I feel bad when I don't live up to him. I feel terrible when I disappoint him, in a way that just doesn't happen with my mother. My mother rants, raves, and has to order me multiple times to do something. My father need only ask, or even merely suggest, and I will leap to do it.

I am my father's fourth child, my mother's first. I am my mother's only child, but merely my father's youngest. He always respects me. He is always assured of my ability to think and act in a sensible manner. He is the source of a great deal of my own self-confidence, both consciously and unconsciously. He is warmth and stability and comfort. He is the rock upon which the edifice of my life is built.

I love you, Dad. Just wanted you to know that.