5 - Questions Interview Meme

I don't disparage memes. They sometimes take you into areas that your posts might not. This one is from the delightful Vancouver BC blogger Meghan, over at Blog Voyeur. I'd say here's lookin' at you kid but I get the impression she's the sort of standout person everyone would be looking at anyway.
1.) A lot of your blog posts have large gaps of time in between them throughout the year. Do you have any particular reason for that or just times when you're not feeling very 'bloggy'?

Not feeling very bloggy is priobably the best way to describe it, now that you mention it. Nothing noble about it. I'm not prevented from blogging because I'm busy manning a volunteer refugee support line or collecting for Greenpeace or any of the other things I should be doing. No, it's mostly explained in the profile: "Just a lazy Melbourne bloke..."

Although, I can be a bit pedantic about posts, and so tend to keep it to just a few, because they take a bit of time for me. You see, I proofread over and over and keep changing a word here and there until I think it's just right. Not that you'd know it from the quality of posts here.

2.) Are you closer to the goal you set of having your band reunite for your 50's birthday?

Shouldn't be too much drama about getting the guys back together again. The other guitar player works in my building, I'm in regular contact with the bass player and even though I haven't seen the drummer in ages I know he loves a gig and would jump at it. As would we all. I'll start moving on it in about April for the November party and work on a song list.

One thing I've learned from doing this ensemble at work is that you can't just pick up your instrument and do it. Plenty of practice and rehearsals needed. I'd like to do around 15 songs to make it really worthwhile. We did 12 at my fortieth.

3.) Since you're a man with amazing taste in music (and a self-proclaimed rock snob!), what music would your perfect road trip cd include?

Oooohh, I love this question. It's a little like Desert Island Discs. The two albums I reckon I could listen to over and over again would fit on one CD so here they are:

Who's Next (1972) by The Who - Just a simply amazing album and an LP I've known intimately since one of my older sisters bought it when I was about twelve. Pete Townsend had originally conceived it as another rock opera a la Tommy but when that project proved unworkable the Who were left with just ten great songs.

Let It Bleed (1969) by The Rolling Stones - this arrived when I was about fourteen and it was my other older sister's boyfriend who gave it to us to mind, along with a whole lot of other great albums while he went overseas. The intro to Gimme Shelter had me hooked right from the word go and I've been a Rolling Stones fan ever since.

Any road trip would be enhanced by the presence of these two classic albums.

4.) At the risk of flogging a dead horse, did your crush on Siobhan die or are you just better at handling it now?

Just a mild crush, that one. I suppose three blog posts was overstating the case somewhat but I wanted to articulate strange new feelings and behaviours.

Not much change in the situation. She's just as charming as ever. We're getting along okay and the ensemble is giving us plenty to do and talk about. It seems like quite a healthy friendship.

5.) Any New Years resolutions you've made and would like to share?

Yeah, I'll be visting a hypnotherapist in the New Year to have a go at giving up smoking. Just cigarettes. I'll still be having regular spliffs, but I'll be cutting back on that too. Reserved for when I'm in good company, or lack inspiration.

I just hope I don't come out of the hypnotherapy believing I'm the reincarnation of the Emperor Tiberius or anything.

Thanks again, Meghan!

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide I

Merry Christmas and best wishes for the new year to everyone.


This is a letter I had to write to the CEO of the organization I work for:

Dear Anthony,

I’m bringing an incident involving myself and Michelle McClennan to your attention I informed my Manager, Rae Newcombe, of this incident on Wednesday 10th December after some careful consideration. I ask for your assistance to resolve this issue locally.

The incident took place at our end of year staff function on Fri 5th December:

At around 11pm I returned inside the venue to say a few goodbyes to people and approached Colin Ginty, who was in conversation with Michelle McClennan. I shook hands with Colin and thanked him for his efforts on the Social Committee. Colin returned the thanks for my agreeing to MC the awards segment of the evening.

It was around this point that Michelle began speaking to me and went into some detail as to her assessment of my character. Her conclusion was that I was an attention-seeker of little substance with a poor work ethic who tries to get by on personality in order to mask these shortcomings. I was quite shocked by this and tried to deflect her by thanking her for the career advice and turned away towards Colin.

She then commenced a monologue that seemed to be outlining my psychological profile, positing deeper problems she felt I may have which cause what she had described earlier. Again, I attempted to deflect rather than confront her by complimenting her on her grasp of psychoanalytic theory and turned away towards Colin once more.

I am unable to give precise details of what she actually said because I was a bit shocked by what I took to be an unprovoked attack on me. I was also somewhat transfixed during the conversation by the tone of voice she used, which I can only describe as very nasty, cat-like and reminiscent of that used by upper-primary school girls when they’re being particularly cruel to each other.

With a little help from Colin, I was able to cut her off by turning the conversation to another function I would be on my way to afterwards and said a final goodbye to both Colin and Michelle and left. I noticed what I interpreted as a fairly smug, self-satisfied look on her face as I turned away.

I hardly know Michelle at all, beyond the type of greetings and small talk I might engage in with any staff member with whom I don’t work directly, and she also took family leave not long after I commenced in mid-July, so there’s been very little interaction between us. I have neither said nor done anything that could possibly have generated any personal animosity between us, nor had she, up until this incident occurred.

I believe we have a very healthy workplace culture here with, from my observations, almost exclusively positive interactions between staff, so I’m still somewhat shocked by the nastiness involved in this. I’d like to be confident that this incident is a result of a series of poor choices made by a single individual and is not representative of tendencies to be found in other staff members.

I assert that this incident constitutes action taken within a work location that directly affects an employee that the employee considers is otherwise unfair or unreasonable and ask that it be investigated and, if proven, action be taken to ensure that it does not occur again, either to me or anyone else.

Yours Sincerely,
Lad Litter


More to come on this one. That's for sure.

Gone...

You might remember I was having virus-generated PC problems at home. And that I was trying to get a solution via the http://www.techguy.org/ forums. This is a great way to solve problems and I highly recommend the website.

Alas, I had to have a problem that resisted even the good folk who trawl those forums dispensing sound advice. Okay, fora for those of you who insist on correct Latin plurals.

For some reason, the WinXP disk's recovery mode just wouldn't fix things so after a couple of luckless weeks, I rashly went for the reinstall option. After all, it only warned that I MIGHT lose the contents of the My Documents folder. Any chance is better than no chance at all. So I did it.

And lost everything. Family photos and video, family history research, personal stuff, everything. And 28 nearly-completed posts for this pathetic blog. When I say that they were all brilliant, witty, cutting-edge pieces of fine writing that could change your whole outlook on life, please take my word for it.

It's my own stupid fault. Mea culpa. Again with the Latin. I should have had virus protection in the first place. And even failing that, I should have waited until I came across someone who could help me recover Win XP without causing loss of data.

And then last week, TLOML's laptop surrendered its internet capability. And I got knocked back for one of those Virtual Community personal PC loans. Something about me only being in the new job for less than six months. So we're technologically-challenged at home.

Luckily, I'm now semi-comfortable at the new workplace and have girded my loins and posted this from work.

I'm not back in town as such, but I'm entering Kalkallo.

Kalkallo - small town on the northern outskirts of Melbourne

At A Standstill...

There are 27 files in the PendingPosts folder on the hard drive of my PC. There are 28 viruses, trojans and spyware gremlins infecting that PC. Just as soon as the new ADSL was connected, they flooded up the cable like sperm swimming towards an egg. But unlike fertilization, they all got through.

Now I'm waiting for our good friends at MicroSoft to deliver the Win XP disk I need to fix the damned registry problem the spyware has caused. And then I'll need to get some anti-virus software on. Last fucking time I ride bareback.

The battery on this laptop is getting low and TLOML has left the power cable at school, the darling. My blog and web access might be in tatters at the moment but life is not. I'm enjoying the change provided by my new job and funnily enough, I think I'm a bit more pleasant to be around for my loved ones. The Bombers playing great footy also helps.

I've been neglecting all of your blogs too as I'm not quite bold enough to run through them at work. Being new and all.

But guess what? One of my new colleagues is the partner of a blogger who I've been reading and commenting on for the past two years. Small world. Delightfully so, sometimes.

It's Up To You, New York, New-ew Yooorrrrk!

You’ve probably seen the footage on the news. The CCTV from the Kings County Hospital in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York City, which shows a 49-year old black American woman dying on the floor of the waiting room. It’s here. The TV News in Australia described her as a psychiatric patient who had already waited 24 hours for unspecified treatment and that the other patients in the waiting room, who ignored her for the whole hour she was dying unattended, were also psychiatric patents.

You would also have seen how she was observed and successively ignored by: a security guard; a doctor; another security guard – that’s right, the one who rolled his chair back to have a look and then rolled it back out of frame. And of the nurses who finally did come to her aid, one gave her a bit of a kick before bending to check on her.

The news you saw probably also had a New York public official saying something like:

“You might expect something like this to happen in a Third World country. You do not expect this sort of thing to happen in New York City.”

I disagreed with her. I’m not totally surprised that something like that happened. And I’m also not surprised that it happened in New York. I thought that the American cities I visited in the mid-80s all looked a lot more like Third World countries than I was comfortable with, including New York. I think there might also be quite a few Americans who are similarly unsettled by the nature of American cities.

And if there are any of you out there who’ve also been to New York City, you might just have picked up the same vibe from many of its inhabitants that I did.

That people seemed to be predisposed towards being deliberately unhelpful. And further, would even appear to take some deadpan pleasure in you being disadvantaged by this unhelpfulness. Always politely, of course.

Some of it was epitomized in the TV show Seinfeld: In scenes where the main or other characters would delight in or be dismissively uninterested in someone else’s misfortune. And then when the plot resolved and some disaster had overtaken the indifferent, their despair and pathetic pleading for assistance. I picked that recurring motif as very much a New York thing. In Australia, it appeared to be perceived as a combination yuppie Gen-X thing. The final two-hour episode was probably the quintessential example of what I’m talking about here.

Now, I’m happy to cop a roasting on this, particularly from any Americans who don’t see it as an indictment on New York or America anymore than backpacker murderer Ivan Milat reflects Australia. But that’s just it. He does reflect Australia. If you’re able to, check out some of the statements attributed to him by people who encountered him and tell me they’re not (admittedly) extreme examples of attitudes to women and crime that are not entirely rare in Australian males.

The indifference and deliberate inaction of those officials in the CCTV footage towards the dying woman is an (again admittedly) extreme example of attitudes you would not find altogether uncommon among New Yorkers.

We should be shocked, but not surprised.