OK, who do I have to kill to get my hands on the Kidneythieves CD?

I am now a godparent. There is a little bundle of joy that's been brought forth into the world, and I am responsible for its spiritual well-being.

Does this scare the pants off anyone else?

I suppose I'd better stop referring to it as my Godthing now, and start calling it by name. Or at least the correct gender. It's a boy.

Once I stop being flippant and actually consider everything, I'm struck by awe. My friends have brought a new being into the world. Wow. That's just fucking spectacular.

So here's to Daniel Xavier Hae-Myong Hearnshaw. (Hope I spelt all that right.) And, of course, here's to his parents.

t.A.T.u (or however they punctuate their silly name) covered "How Soon Is Now" as well? That makes it four covers and the original that I currently have. That's pretty impressive.

(The Male makes fun of their accents and their cute little chipmunk voices. Some shots are just too easy.)

I am easily amused.

I am talented. I mean, it's not just anyone who can practically get frostbite just sitting at the computer.

I have to stop typing now, while I stick my hands in my knee-pits.

So. Wow. I'm 23.

Doesn't feel that much different from 22, despite the hissy-fit I was throwing in the weeks leading up to the date.

Went to dinner last night, using our new spiffy gold Entertainment Card at a restaurant that would usually be out of our price range. We did three courses and all. It was just wonderful.

My present from my parents included a scarf and some pillow cases and an envelope full of capsicum seeds (for the growing thereof, it's not some bizarre Evans family metaphor) and what I actually asked for: a photograph of my parents.

Not just any photograph, though. I had a particular one in mind. I've long held that photographs are not so much about the physical representation of the subject matter, as the further traits and significances that the image can portray. Hence, when my parents asked for a framed photo of me for Christmas, I didn't give them a cheesy grinning portrait shot, but an enlarged copy of the photo that's currently up in my personal section. They were slightly perplexed; well, yes, it looked like me, but it was sort of... weird.

I tried to explain. I don't think I succeeded.

In any case, when it came time for the favour to be returned, the photo I decreed that I wanted was one from their wedding.

"But," my mother objected, "we don't look anything like that any more!"

"You do," I told her. "And you'll always look like that to me. And your stances just sum up your personalities perfectly. It's a photo of you, not just of your bodies."

In the photo, my parents are standing over the wedding cake. The knife's already been planted, and now my mother is turning to my father, hands waving, obviously holding forth about how things should proceed from here. He's watching her with the same smile of indulgent affection that he's worn for the next 25 years. It's them. It's perfect.

"When I went to pick up the photo," Dad told me, "the girl said: 'Ooh, he's good-looking, isn't he?' and I said: 'Watch it. That's me.' That photo was taken quite a long time ago, you know."

"Well yes," I admitted. "After all, it was taken at your wedding. Which was, I assume, at least 23 years ago."

"More than that, thank you!" my mother burst in.

Today, I tried to spend $130 at a bookstore. Unbelievably, I failed. It's not actually as easy as it looks.

But, purchased:
Harry Potter and the Great Big Merchandising Opportunity - books 1, 2 and 4 (no book 3 available)
A Song For Arbonne - being the only Guy Gavriel Kay that I don't own. Apart from that small Tigana problem, whereby I've loaned my copy of it to someone else and I can't remember who.
The Heart of Darkness - since I have to read it for class anyway.

I didn't buy:
Magician, since I'm not really a Feist fan, even though I recognise that it is certainly one of the foundational classics of my genre of choice.
Bladerunner, which is packaged as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? filmed asBlade Runner, which cracked me up, and the Male and I were just talking about it the other day, but I don't really like sci-fi.
The Scar, because much as I think I might like his writing, China Mieville manages to somehow irritate me without ever sharing more than the same general city for more than about five minutes.

I really wanted to purchase:
Roger Zelanzy's entire Chronicles of Amber,
Jennifer Fallon's Eye of the Labyrinth,
Juliet E McKenna's final three books in her series,
...but none of these books were there. Fuckers.

Body memory is a powerful force: I can still undo the linking in the old Rubiks rings.

Doing it, on the other hand... well, that was tricky.

Hello from Canberra.

Boobs.
Pancakes.
Fabulous Asian dinner.
Long Island Iced Teas.
Mad crazy dancing.
Ouch.
Pride and Prejudice the musical.
Wenching.
Extreeeeeeme cocoa!
Twister.

And that's just so far.

A friend's writing an essay on internet communites and needed chat transcripts. Going through my old logs, I find the funniest things.

TitaniaFae: God. Thank you. I like the entire house committee not looking at me like I have two heads. :-)
Nemetoma: We're on the same wavelength evidently.
Nemetoma: Why?
TitaniaFae: Because I prefer the mutual ignore we have going currently.
Nemetoma: You can maintain the mutual ignore with them being in awed fear of your intellect/nastiness.
Nemetoma: Could be fun.
TitaniaFae: intellect/nastiness/weird sexual views...
Nemetoma: yeah..?
Nemetoma: Gavan?
TitaniaFae: I'm not worried about Gavan.
Nemetoma: Oh, I thought you were describing him.

Best bad-grammar example sentence of the day: The box fell on my head, which was fortunately empty.

I laughed for at least ten minutes.

I'm easily amused, especially in Editing 1A.

Typewriter update.

The Male came home about five minutes after I posted, and he gave me his bicycle lamp to use as a flashlight. I also set up a reading lamp, so I was well-lit. I felt like telling the mechanism that it was surrounded and that it should come out with its hands up.

Twisting and craning and following the little metal-and-widget path of the doo-hickey what was playing up, I threaded my way circuitously through the innards of the typewriter to find a lever that went to...

...a switch on the front that I never ever use but had accidentally bumped when poking the ribbon.

I switched it back to where it should be, and everything worked.

Commence Dee feeling sheepish. Which I have continued to do ever since, and it's working out well for me, so I'll just stick with it. Thanks.

As if I needed more proof that I was my father's daughter...

Dad loves fixing things. Not just fixing things, but solving problems. It makes him happy, and he's very clever at it. He follows a very methodical process, and it's one I've certainly inherited through nurture, if not nature.

Step 1: you find what's not doing what it should be doing. Sounds simple, right? You'd be astounded.

I was just typing on my typewriter, my little Olivetti portable and all of a sudden there stopped being ink. I figured it was just the ribbon not switching, because one end of it has lost its little button that makes the mechanism trip, so I opened up the top, manually flicked the switch, made sure it was now turning the right way, and put it all back together.

Still no ink. It took me about five minutes to realise that the ribbon was actually not rising to meet the hammer to imprint the letter, and hence, no ink.

Step 2: you figure out exactly how it does what it should be doing.

In the past fifteen minutes I've learned all sorts of things about the mechanism of my little Olivetti. But I'm having problems. Because after a thoroughly intractible leverish bit, the mechanism disappears into the bowels of the machine, which are not designed to come apart for anything less than the apocalypse or, failing that, a screwdriver and a lot of willpower. Neither of which I have on hand.

But a torch might do.

Never fear, I shall soldier on. For I am, indeed, my father's daughter, and I will not let some mere simple machine with a problem defeat me.

Besides, I have to get up to

Step 3: Make it do what it should do.

Yesterday I confused my Novel 1A class (not the teacher) by using the following words:

• sussuration
• sibillant (while explaining sussuration)
• synaesthesia

Yesterday was brought to us by the letter 'S', obviously.

-- White Ajah --


What's your Ajah?
brought to you by Quizilla

I was almost surprised by this one. Was kinda expecting Blue, what with the politics and all. But the 'leadership' bit of Blue fits me not at all, and the bitchy 'aloof and cool' aspect of White suits me well.

As long as Whites still get to get pissed and dance provocatively in hotpants. Can I get that clause put in my contract?

I just stopped past Maccers, because I had a serious cheeseburger craving, and the kid in front of me got a sundae, and paid for it with EFTPOS. I swear, this child was not more than ten years old.

Buh?

The girl behind the counter had to say "Yes please?" twice, I was in such a "that did not just happen" zone.

Bloody hell. I hope you Canberran people appreciated the sacrifice I'm making for you. I could be at a fantasy-writing workshop with Cecilia Dart-Thornton on Saturday 17th May. Yeah, sure, I thought her trilogy was the worst sort of wallowing, onanistic purple prose, combining all the worst elements of both Tolkien and trashy paperback romances, but still, she's a published fantasy author and it's so cheap!

Amazon.com wants me to ship The Principia Discordia to my mother for Mother's Day.

Well, it's possible she might appreciate it.

I probably shouldn't have another bowl of Sultana Bran for dinner. Just because I can't be bother getting off the computer long enough to get anything else.

(Paint me cliched.)

I wish I knew the phone number of a certain woman who works at a windows desk on the sixth floor of the AXA building. Because then I could call her and tell her that when she sits like that, I can see right up her skirt.

Disgraceful.

After several pointers in its direction, the Male and I have been trying to get to a place called the Croft Institute for ages.

"It's really cool!" people kept telling us. "It's all kitted out like a science lab and upstairs, there's grass on the bar!"

Whatever. But, y'know, I'm collecting funky little bars in Melbourne, so we wanted to get there eventually. Every time we were out on the town, lounging at the Lounge, or at La-La Land, or even yuppying it up over at the Metropolitan, one of us would say: "Hey, we should go to the Croft."

We'd especially say it when we had company, which was fairly frequently, considering the number of visitors we've entertained since we came down here. It was such an utterance that led to the four of us - Jojo and Bugalugs in the party, when those two were down to visit - staggering down a dark alley in Chinatown. They thought we were trying to get them mugged. We knew that this was actually the way to this infamous Institute. Although even we were starting to think that we'd picked the wrong dark alleyway when we reached the end, and all was still dark.

It was the right alleyway. The place was closed. Foiled again.

But the Male is not one to accept failure, so he tried again on Friday night, while entertaining a couple of the old collegial crowd, down from the 'Berra to witness another old collegian getting engaged. (There was much speculation during the evening about what her fiance's surname was. We'd all met him before, some of us many times, but no one could remember what his surname was. I suggested reading his mail.) I'd piked on the gathering earlier, but was told the result.

The place was, at least, open this time. However, as they made ready to gleefully enter, the Male was pulled up short by an aggressively casual lout loitering in the doorway.

"No ties, no suits." He had his cap on backwards, and his attitude was so laid-back it could have been used as a battering ram.

The Male blinked. He'd gone straight from work to drinks to dinner to there, so he was corporately attired. Unacceptably so, apparently. "Well, how about if I take the tie off? And the jacket?"

Young Gangster of the Year shrugged, pointedly not caring. "No suits no ties, man."

The Male performed his partial strip. Even, daringly, undid the top button of his shirt. Since YGY couldn't object any further without looking like he actually cared about something, they were allowed to continue.

Apparently, after all that, the place was really quite funky and had a relaxed vibe. But honestly, was it worth it?

This arouses my anarchist instincts. I cannot currently think of any way to fuck their system, but rest assured, something will occur to me, and then they will pay for their trendy fascism.

What should the Male and I get for our Godthing?

I suppose I'd better explain. An old friend of both of us is having a baby (well, his wife's having the baby, but he was, we assume, involved in the process) and we've been made Godparents. Gender of future child unknown, hence: Godthing. We have been charged with finding a present both outrageous and useful.

Any suggestions? The best idea we've had so far was membership to the MCG. Which just goes to show how I've been assimilated into the Victorian culture. Shoot me now.

In the building across from me, the lights suddenly came on. Always eager to witness the next Watergate, I pay attention.

A business-suit-clad man opens a drawer, pulls out something, and squirts it in his mouth.

Then he slicks his hair back.

Then he takes up the phone.

After talking for maybe two minutes, he hangs up, and leaves the office, turning off all the lights.

Must have been some phone call.

What is the point of flesh-toned fishnets?