Remind Me I Hate DVDs

To one accustomed to watching ripped movies, watching a Real DVD is like hitting yourself over the head with a hammer repeatedly. We borrowed a few from the local video dump out of desperation & the one we're attempting to start watching is a disney one with some kinda Magic View or simlar. Which means you can't watch it on a PC at all & it runs u thru a whole raft of crapola in some automagical fashion, where your "go forward" button just makes it restart the crapola over & over til u contemplate suicide as you watch the same pups in space trailer over n over.

It sorta makes you shake ya head & wonder how come the people who want to sell these things to ya can't work out that all ya want is the movie. You want to flip quickly thru all the FBI warnings cos u know like perhaps you have SEEN THEM BEFORE, & you want the trailers at the END where u can choose to watch em so u can think about what u might like to see next time.
What tends to occur is you sit down with your dinner to watch a flick, happily thinking you're in for a treat, & buggered if you haven't eaten all your dinner by the time the feature actually starts & you wonder why you tried.

Thats my rant, & it all runs thru my head every time i stupidly try to watch a Real DVD. I got a shelf of em & i usually choose to watch a ripped one instead. I guess thats probably illegal.

BTW we didn't mean to borrow that disney film, they just gave us the WRONG FILM in the case. Awesome service... take a bow, Video Sleezy.

P.s review for the accidental flick we got, Race to Witch Mountain: Did the actors get paid in drugs for this? Its the only explanation.

Bit of a Rest

Well yesty was not too bad. I did my speech & unveiled the big feller & people liked it okay. I reckon i'm getting better at this lark they look more like statues now. On the other hand maybe that not so good ha ha. Complete denial worked again for the speech, my knees were shakin cos of my flu not so much cos of nerves & i just buggered the end a bit but people said it was Ok. but they always say that ;)

Researching how to do enlarging in a mechanical way so blocking them out large scale is a bit faster & simpler. If i could do an ideal maquette & enlarge it & then just do the finishing that would save acres of time & energy. I don't think its cheating, u still got to end up with something good, either way. Nobody cares how u get there, and in fact its how they did it in the old days & they did some good stuff then eh.

Looking in the papers ths morn & missing dad cos he used to be right there flippin thru the papers, complaining when they didn't name the sculptor, insisting on spare copies of everything. Who's gonna keep the clippings now eh.

Speechin

Hmm i'm writing this instead of writing my speech for tomorrow. Hmm does this mean i'm (a) fully confident of making it up on stage or (b) fully in denial that there is anything happening tomorrow at all.

i suspect (b) since thats how i usually do stuff.

Now i'm watching torchwood. Argh!

Back from the icy wastes of Canberra

Canberra was cool, literally, tho beaut & sunny. The wind cut thru ya tho & best wear a fair bunch of layers & a scarf. In spite of not believing u can get sick with just being cold for a bit, i am now sick with a cold & feeling a bit below average.

Bought an art book there, in a top little cheap bookshop in Belconnen, the book is New Art City by Jed Perl, its about the magical time in NYC from the fifties when the place was a wonderland of artists having a great fecund time in studios right in town & the vibrant scene they had then. The writing is so good, you can just open it anywhere & enjoy a sentence, even tho its about 500 pages it seems to ALL be good. I think the guy must have been an art critic or somthing similar, he gets right to the point & can describe an artists ouvre with one & a half sentences. Have even found my reading glasses so i can get into it when my head stops hurting.

Today went to the foundry, the people who commissioned the mystery guy came to see it, and the actual physical mystery guy himself, even. And, thank g-d, they absolutely loved it. I had to admit it looked orright there & the patina was excellent. Thats what u get from actually asking the patina man's advice eh :)

They had poured my 2 little things i made last week, they'd had some emergency castings requested & rushed mine thru with those just because. One was still too hot to hold from being poured that morning, I chipped it out of the mould with a wee hammer & it looked good. The other was poured while i watched & was still orange when i left. Awesome. I love that deep sudden slurping sound a nice hollow mould makes when it gets bronze poured in. This one was a little solid horse he was a nice rounded hollow space.

Installation of the mystery guy tomorrow nite. Already in trouble over who i didn't invite to dinner after the unveiling. This is just my destiny... there is never going to be a moment in these things when i don't snub at least 50 people, when u can only invite a very small number. Its a drag.

Off cross country

Off to Canberra tomorrow. To catch up with old things i hain't seen in a while like the war memorial. Its been updated its probably twice the size of last time i visited it. They got a 3d experience there now apparently that about fighter pilots done by Peter Jackson, who had a bit to do with District 9 wot i saw last night at the flicks. Got to be worth a look & tons more new exhibits. The Lancaster bomber G for George was an old fave & should be back on display. I kinda lost interest in going down there when they took him away for restoration. I got outta the habit of Canberra then.
Then hoping for a leisurely stroll thru the portrait gallery instead of stampede thru it as last time. Then the big gallery there & i dunno what else. A tour of public art too :)

Contemplating war art i been reading The Missing of the Somme by Geoff Dyer, which is a pretty good book in spite of being on the remainders table down the co-op & i just pcked it up by accident. Its about the effect of the Great War & all the remembering that went along with it, all the art for remembering, & the way the remembering affected everything that came after.

Mum n bub

Today i went back to the foundry for another morning of watching the big dude get finished. He got a top coat of ferric to warm the buffed thru bronze & then it got waxed. While i hung round i finished the horse & made a woman holding a baby. The horse just needed a little notch in the leg on the bad side to make it look more like i meant it & then the gravity went the right way & it passed my quality control. The little mum n bub was going to go with a soldier, but i never finished the soldier. The mum n bub is OK tho. I made her first on "pins", like they used to call women's legs, but literal, they were like legs that ended in points. That was to make her look kinda feminine i guess. it worked anyway & i changed them to feet later, with slippers on. The little bub is funny he actually has a face even tho he is very small.

I've almost never made female figure sculptures at all, but hey this could be the start of a whole new area to explore. After all that means there's 50% of the world population of humans that i haven't made eh.

I'm quite taken with the set up they got in the foundry for wax work. In my studio i never have any open pots of molten wax, i just have a hot water bottle. Bit crap, i now realise, and tho i had prided myself on the simplicity & awesome focus & function of my tools, its only in comparison to nothing, hey. I could work *much* faster with a set up like this. 4 open pots of different temperatures, set into a big stainless steel work table, so you can easily scrape it all down, and in fact the table is slightly warm too, just as a side effect of housing the warm wax pots, and the wax comes off it easy with a gentle scrape. Nearby is a huge open container of water to cool things. Bloody lovely.

Better

Less grumpy this evening. I feel thinner & more attractive, and its cos i made a sculpture today while hangin round at the foundry while the big fella got patina'd. I aimed to do that, cos i was expecting to be there about 5 hrs hangin about. The wax room was unoccupied, the wax pots were at the right temp (almost solidified) & i made a little horse. I started out thinking i'd make a lighthorse with rider, like from the war. Then i thought i'll just make a horse & rider. Then it was just a horse. A standing horse half asleep. Then it was a wide awake horse. Then it was on a hill. Then one of the foundry blokes said "nice dog" to get me riled and sure nuff i got fiesty & made it a bucking horse. That works OK for passable, i'll stick with that. He is pretty good from one side, not from the other side, but thats what u get for workin in 3d ;) I left him floating in the tub of green water they got there for cooling waxes in, & i'll fix the other side tomorrow.

But the upshot is i feel thinner & more attractive cos i actually done something. And i probably am thinner & more attractive - there's a long way to go, lets face it. At this stage everything helps.

Artist

I went in the foundry today to fix the nose on the big feller. His nose had either copped a poke in wax or it had maybe shrunk a bit funny. The wax does shrink when it cools.

Boy am i *ever* gonna make sure i check these things like with a microscope in future... this timing is ridiculous. Its my fault, as i should have been really anal about the wax pattern when i checked it before they cast it. But a slight squeeze in the nose is almost unnoticeable until you notice it - from then its a massive gigantic powerful eye magnet & torture device for the soul.

I think there is some shrinkage that occurs when you cast a life sized torso & head as one massive hollow wax. I'm so gonna be on this in future. I'm going to ask the foundry to cast me a plaster out of the mould as well as the wax just so we can compare the 2 things next to each other. This time was a bit strange cos i made the original in clay, and then there is no original once you remove the mould cos the clay dries up & falls apart or else more usually its destroyed & recycled.

First thing in the morn there was some dude there in the foundry i'd never seen before. We said hello to each other in the tea room & i said what kind of work do you do? And he said i'm an Artist. I'm sure there was a capital letter in it, and a fullstop after it. Ah well nuff smalltalk. I went & did some nose. Life is a bit too short sometimes innit. In my old age now i got more wisdom & less patience. Later i saw his work. Stuff like that would never have got cast in Paree in the 1700-1900's eh, rather the Academe would have had him taken out th back & shot. But then one of my favorite whinges at the moment is the pathetic state of the skills base in figurative sculpture in Aus, & i count myself in there too mind u, i really need to find a way to improve my skills. There's nobody teaching it but, cos there ain't no teachers with the skills either. What u gonna get then? What we got, shote :)

Anyway we sorted the nose out by 2pm & i had a chat with the patina guy about what we wanted. As my stars said for today regarding an important decision (yes the Amsterdam stars, yeah i know, i don't believe in it either), you can make a soap opera out of it or not, and so as i prefer not, i asked the expert & went with his suggestions of a purply-brown then a buff then a light tan-brown, and in the meantime learned a lot about the chemical personality of some of the colours as well. Very interesting & as you would probably expect it really matters a lot whether its outside or inside, what colour it will tend to change to over time & i also learned that sometimes a scratch can be self-repairing, again dependent on whether its outside or inside & what colour it is & whether its been waxed. There is so much to bronze work that really can be a life's work if you want it to be.

On site

Today went to see the site for the new dude. I wanted to see what colours were around so i could choose the patina. It was all concrete & dark silvery reflective glass windows. the windows had such serious reflective tinting that it was like the sky & clouds were inside the building. But it was all big & concrety around the windows & all the stairs & walkways were grey concrete. The foundry guy was discussing the drilling they were gonna do. The concrete was "post-tensioned" which means there's cables inside it that holds the structure in tension. If you cut one while drilling it goes "ping!" like buggery and thats not at all good for tha structural integrity. So they need to be sure where the cables are in order to avoid drilling em. Of course the placement is that the sculpture's legs straddle a cable. Gonna need to be pretty careful eh.

Anyway in discussion with people who cared, it was put to me that the new dude needed a "bling" patina cos of him being a modern kinda guy. Old fellers can be very serious in dark patinas, but the youngsters maybe should be brighter. OK i might go with a dark red with under buffing so it kinda glows.

A matched pair of furbys arrived in the mail, off ebay, a replacement for little coco who shit himself with his battery acid. I was quite attached to him & he entertained many visiting kiddies. He sacrificed hs eyelashes to small children, and then when left alone a little too long his batteries rotted. But i can probably replace his battery holder, eh, so some future project will be pull old coco apart.

These furbys (furbii) have camo pattern blue coats with pink fronts. just where blue camo is gonna work is mystery but i guess furbululand someplace maybe. Old coco was a ratty brown one, more like a real animal. I dunno that i can bond with the blue camo twins here but anyway they will keep visiting kiddies amused, which is essential.

Disenmarked

I found that most of those marks i spent the day making on the big fella didn't really make much mark. Its a funny thing, foundry work. Once you sandblast the whole thing you suddenly realise the marks u made are not what u had thought they were. The extra shine it gets when you whack it tends to double the intensity of what you think u did. Sandblasting knocks it back to matt & there you have half -or less- of the mark you thought you had made. Eh, life's hard innit. Theres a metaphor for it in there somewhere as well.
Anyway times short so i surrendered the big bronze man to the big foundry man, bless his heart, who took it on & killed it in short order. I went back today & there he is, finished.
Reckoned he was fine but then I picked his nose as a bit i wasn't sure about (i have a distinct aversion to looking these big sculptures in the face & only do it at the last minute to find usually some drastic bloody issue i should have dealt with a month earlier. Argh.)
So i went & got his face from my studio, its the only surviving bit, since i did the face in plaster. Currently I have 2 faces in a bucket in the boot of the car & i'll take them to the foundry & compare to the bronze. Heh its funny to have 2 faces in a bucket. Heh.

It looks like i left it too late to choose some junk & cover it in silver foil to enter the Crap Small Sculpture Prize by 5pm tomorrow, unless they have some online entry form. Doubt it. Anyway i guess not having the Trouble Ahead is probably just as well. Who wants to live in interesting times?

I did find the junk though. Seek n ye shall find, the Lord provides. Just now, in a huge dumpster, while i walked down the shop, i found some wood offcuts in there, about 3m long. Like fence palings. But anyway i can fix the backyard fence with them, so they won't go to waste.

Waste moulds

Spent yesty in the foundry again. The big bloke swinging longways on 2 hoists & flipping him over to get to the gnarly bits. I get to a certain point where i'm just get too tired to figure out what kind of mark i'm sposed to be making. Get to this point before 4pm & shoot thru about then. Maybe with practice i can go the whole day. But luckily don't need to push it that hard at the moment.

Regards this new proposal i got some quotes while i was there. For @metre high figures cos i'm thinking about that size or smaller. I learned about making plaster waste moulds to give wax impressions & i think i want to go that way for this next thing if i get the project. What a great idea, if you are only doing a one-off why bother with rubber anyway, you're just going to chuck it out after one impression. I can do some finishing in the wax too, & there you are. Can save about 20 grand in mould making for the project i'm contemplating, so that means that could go into making the sculpture bigger & more exciting which might help get the job.

Or else i can quote for the moulds too & just means i have 20K to play with if something goes wrong, or i run outta time & the foundry do the moulds anyway. Like would have to happen if i go back to my real job. This project is basically the first 6 months of next year, in which time i'd have either gone back to my real job or quit it altogether. How tempted i am heh heh. Anyway tempting's nothing, the numbers are the thing eh.

New Project

OK i got in the mail a brief for a project. This means i got to finish the last big guy, do my tax by wednesday for my tax appt & make a proposal & get ready a presentation for this new project in the hope of being so awesome that i get the job. So looks like i'm thrown back into real life again, which is probably a very good thing.

Tomorrow back in the foundry with my 1.0mm cutting blades & a bad attitude :)

Sadly we were watching Dancing w the Stars this evening for a few seconds. My sis thought one of the guys was blind who was dancing. He wore sunglasses & seemed to be looking at nothing. She said look at his legs, he must be blind. I sez just cos his legs are spastic doesn't mean he's blind. She had to agree. He wasn't blind actually, or spastic, just crap. The compere flattered the bloke afterwards by telling him his new chest waxing made him look "ripped". My bro was bemused that being called stoned was a compliment. I had to explain that since he's been living overseas, "ripped" has come to mean "muscular" rather than "off your face on drugs". Anyway the new chest waxing was completely covered by a singlet so why a chest waxing would make your arms look stronger is a mystery.

Trying to find a piece of junk to cover with silver leaf for the Crap Small Sculpture Prize. Another 50 bucks entry fee down the toilet? Well only if i can find a good piece of junk. Tempted to follow the asstrology instructions to the letter, and get some actual silver leaf. Tho i might get "trouble", as well, as was profesied, i can't imagine WTF kind of trouble an art comp could get you in that wasn't also funny.

Working day

Spent a day at the foundry working on mystery guy. With the top outstretched arm with large object attached welded to his stump he suddenly was extremely tall & a pain to tip over & work on him longways. Walking around him is a long way. There's a fair bit o pain in it all anyways as i removed 3 fingerprints on the cheese grater wot is his inner thigh when i tried to shift him around & my hand slipped. Ough i said. He was silent as u would expect, tho he thought it an apt payback for me calling him those names.

Did a lot of fine work with a cutting blade on a 5" grinder, 1.something mm blades... it gives step 1 of a multi step procedure to end up with the same texture as what he had originally. 1.something is OK ... but I *know* i got 1.0 mm blades at the studio so once i realised that i realised i *needed* them & i would not be happy to go on without them & i will have to go back for another big day Monday with my blades to tangle with the big guy again & this time he's gonna get a big can o' whup ass.

The foundry is nice & quiet on a friday. I soon fixed that but, with my grinding & hammering. It is good to be jolted back into the real world with a hard physical day like that. If only i could run with it. Sadly my next 2 days are sitting about at lunches with family friends. So who wouldn't want to blow a weekend doing that? well anybody whose got anything better to do, thats who... even me.

Picked up 2 little casts they did for me on the side. Perfect casts & impeccably finished & they had flattened the bases & even drilled threaded holes up the legs on both to be used for mounting them to bases. They have never done that for me before... i never even knew they did it. i think there must be a real bit of quiet time round the place at the moment.

Its Off

Have some sort of feeling, could be virtuous, could be just tired, but i did manage to fill out the online form to apply for a Paris residency yesty. It took (not counting a few hrs the day before) from 10am to 5pm with 5 mins for lunch. The worst part was the 2000 char limit on what you write in there, which doesn't apply itself or be described in any way til you have paste in something longer than 2000 chars & then tried to modify it in the box & then it goes all RED & cuts off the end. I had to then remove 1500 chars from my lovely BS which was a very time consuming process since u want it to make sense in the end & you cannot do it in the box there either cos the end is missing since it cuts it off. Its not the same as Word char count either, its a bit LESS, dunno why, but WTF its bloody frustrating. Then the powerpoint set of 10 pix that was problematic cos of not having Powerpt installed on the PC, der. But anyway finished it all, on the dot of 5pm it was in & in spite of putting in the same sort of app now for 3 yrs running, "i want to study sculpture in Paris", i guess its doomed like usual. There must be some hope there tho cos i still did it, and i got a secret tip from a mate on something to pop in there to spice it up (ask me how!) so let's keep fingers crost this year eh.

Then went in to the studio very late to drink cider while filling the dumpster next door. i suspect cos they not allowed to put tyres in their dumpster, tho they usually do, they haven't been doing it lately so there's been more room in there for my crap. Anyway there was so much room i chucked 3 boxes of clay & a massive amount of used & unruly chicken wire & foam & broken glass bottles from previous cider evenings & a big bag of garbage in there. And still room! Damn hate to waste chuckin out space but there u are... tempted to throw out good things & if i'd only cut the broken coffee table in half i could have chucked that in.

Speaking of doomed things my sis got some asstrology from Amsterdam on the net & it says "the 14th... covering a worthless piece of junk in silver leaf equals trouble ahead"
The 14th is the date of the close of entries for the Crap Small Sculpture Prize. Heheheheheh.

I'm Baaaack

Hey i got back to the studio today... i did a bit of preliminary neatening the other day but today i went in & hit it hard & finished removing the clay off the last big guy & stacked it into boxes & swept up so much that i can't breathe thru my nose its all clogged with dusty carcinogens.

Tomorrow nite is dumpster nite for the peeps next door so i'll do the midnight chuck & pop it in there. i'm keeping so much recyclable clay that my clay recycle box busted its wheels off already, its now on bricks & full to the brim. so i give meself permission to chuck some out.

i cleaned the desk & sat there drawing in my new notebook til my pen shit me to tears & it wasn't worth continuing. Biro's are no good when your paper might be a bit dusty or whatever they just can't hack it.

So anyhow i didn't do no *actual* sculpture but getting closer.

Rejection Email

Got a rejection for the Blake entry i proposed. They send it by email which is a fresh new marvel of progress. Its nice though they write it like a real letter.

I can sorta see its not quite a finished work, not totally resolved, tho i seen far worse shite in Blake shows in the past i'm sure. Anyway i was chattin with juz & she finished the sculpture for me. (Another marvel of progress since she is on t'other side 'world.) Re sculptures, an unfinished attitude is often a "feature" of my work. I kind of like leaving things open-ended but i can see that joining up the cycle or the circle would give a 'work of art' feel to it instead of a 'half-finished work of arse' that they can have. Anyway she gave me the awesomest idea that was just totally perfect... so perfect that i'm going to get the extra piece cast & weld it on there. So if life was fair she should be getting a % if it ever sells & maybe get to scratch her name in it somewhere as well. Lets work towards a fair life!

Trannies & Magic

Well twas a good thing we checked out that tranny, as it had a blocked filter. Any tranny will tell you that this something to avoid, it sounds painful, & as far as my car goes it almost certainly would have shit itself in the mountains.
So my bro sailed off to the great unknown in what is hopefully a reliable bomb & i be at home mostly now cos there's only 1 car & lot of ppl want to use it. There seem to be all manner of appointments & things to do for or with other people & i'm lazy as fuck so i just roll with it, rather than cracking out the motorbike from its icicles. I been a bit sick & sleeping bad & having nightmares like the ones you have when u think there was something you should have done. I tell it to my sis & she says my subconscious is very imaginative. The latest one is the magic wand one, which by harsh light of day is of course insane but in a dream its so obvious innit. U see if i had read the instructions & learned to use it, it would have been helpful. It wouldn't have cured him though, my subconscious is surprisingly realistic in that regard. But it would have made things much easier.
FFS.
On one hand its a nonsense sourced from the latest harry potter (which we did go see last week), or if u like asstrology, tarot, jung, dream interpretation & BS then u can say this wand stand in for a number of things i didn't do that i start to feel terrible guilt about cos i got too much time on my hands.
In the end u left with what u did do, & u done your best at the time, 110%.
My Subconscious is very childish though, it doesn't get it. And no, i don't talk to it, & it don't talk to me - ain't neither of us crazy.

Good news is that telling it to my sis has knocked it on the head & i slept ok last 2 nights. Hooray.

Have done one page in the new notebook. The lady next door gave me an article about the Crap Small Sculpture Prize from the Paddo news & i glued it in as page 1. Talk about a dearth of inspiration.
But could i be tempted to try for this stupid time waster again? Stay tuned...

Into the 6 months +

Well ok its 4th day of the week after my original 6 months. I am starting to feel like i should go back to work, but i've committed myself to 4 more months. I sleep really badly & fail to proceed in the days. Think i need something to distract me & learning a whole new IT system would about fill the bill.

But i haven't gone to Paris yet, or even to Canberra properly, so maybe i should be planning some of that & getting on with it. Sadly, someone is borrowing my car so that i'm left adrift for a bit. Sadly too i'm first spending a few days getting it fixed so that it doesn't get left up in the mountains with a busted tranny etc. Waiting around endlessly, i guess this might be a reason why i feel a little antsy about the week. And now the tax ppl want my tax. Dang they expect it every year???

Maybe i should throttle off, make like a fence & get over it all.

Food poisoning this morning. I cooked half the dinner & bro cooked the other half. So if the rest of the family, once they arise, are also a bit unwell we can flip a coin to blame.

A mate said its a good idea to keep a notebook, like you're doing a Masters', to keep your brain in order while you attempt a project. I reckon i will do that, cos i'm spending a lot of time away from the studio & if i had a notebook i might feel a bit less distanced from actually doing anything useful. It might help put my mind back on track maybe, give it a go anyways.

BTW only me is unwell. I ate exactly the same as everybody else yesterday. Guess i just lucky.

6 months plus a bit

Thusly the title of mine Blog boots itself into illogicity. What i mean to say is, its not 6 months anymore. When dad got sick i asked for an extension on my 6 months of bludging & they gave me one. So in total i'd have 10 months leave. Not gonna change the blog title, cos to tell the truth the bludging part has never been true either, since i seem to be working 7 days/nites a week, so its all a bit of an untruth in the end innit.

If it were still 6 months leave i'd be back at work in 5 days. So technically i could make it, all my commitments are committed. But luckily its all arranged that i won't. This is good, i don't feel ready to go back, feel like yesterday i left... like, where's the 6 months?

Botulism delivered to yr door

We have some funny old rellies. One brings us ancient used food at the moment. It is tradition to take food to people in bereaved situation. Today we were gifted some crossaints & some meat soup. How ever u spell that... croassaints. We ovened the cross-aunts to make em nice & took em outside & mum was the lucky recipient of the green one. Sadly we hadn't checked em over first. Oh yes, they were in my fridge since last week she sez. There's a gift that'll keep on giving.

We carefully drain her meat soups down the sink & never actually consume anything she brings, except her kugloaf, which being a baked cake like thing, you can't go wrong with. And a good kugloaf is worth a bit of staleness & think it would turn to concrete before it mouldered anyways. My bro sez the meat soup pot had tide lines, like its been heated & a bit eaten, then reheated & reheated & reheated. Thank G-d we don't attempt it out of good manners. We have probably saved her a bellyache too by taking it off her.

Nice of her to bring all this mountain of food, for sure, but she does complain she has bad tummy sometimes. People who been thru the war, they are sometimes funny about food. Never throw nothing out, eh.

In the back yard

Its been sunny every day since dad passed away. We all sit on the back porch thing in the morning & absorb rays. My bro is putting in loads of plants, the kangaroo paw is my favorite. He's adding creepery things where mum always wanted them & loads of flowers.

After the funeral

Well dad passed away wed nite, 11.15. Things happened really fast in the last few days. It was a massive effort from everybody, including dad, poor bugger. We did night shifts the last few nights cos we wanted always someone should be there. mum & sis were there when he went. We then had to do shifts again cos the body shouldn't left alone. Incredibly, there is only one doctor who can come to yer house in this entire side of town, & he was busy, gonna be til 5.30 am when the next Dr was due on. Piss poor service, what can u say. I didn't mind minding dad though, it seemed kinda fitting. Bro did the first few hrs, i slept on the floor. I woke & harangued him to bed at 5am. The morning Dr come at 6am to give us a bit of paper & then the funeral guys could take him about 7. It was a rainy day.

The funny thing was everyone wanted to be woken up for the Dr, but nobody responded at all when i knocked on the ceiling 3 times & even went upstairs to get people it was pitch black & not a breath of stir. In the past few weeks everybody would have instantly leapt up at any moment 24/7 when they heard a piece of paper fall downstairs or a pin bend in Tasmania, but they were totally knocked out now. It was over.

Funeral was yesterday.

Today and the next week we just hang around the house, people visit etc. Catch up some sleep.

Radio Arse

Moving dad this morning with the radio on... as we start proceedings, the pleasant classical melody segues to Schubert's Funeral March. We flick off the radio. We turn it back on when he gets to his chair in the front room. A few min later as he's nodding off, Margaret f'ing Throsby starts to harp on about friggin euthenasia. Its not fucking safe to listen to the fucking radio.

Attempt a shift

I dunno how other families do these things but we are doing ok i reckon. We've kept dad out of the hospice & hope we can keep him. He wouldn't get better care in there anyway & he gets it faster with 4 people waiting on him. This is the first night we done shifts, sitting in the kitchen minding him. I got the midnite to 3am. This seat is arse & my back hurts & i don't move cos it creaks. but i got the wifi working & with the laptop on my knee i'm downloading missile silo plans & line drawings of machinery. I fancy doing a full exhibition of sculptures based on the cold war. That would sure be a challenge. Its probably not gonna happen, its just my current ploy to keep my mind off things. i kinda feel guilty to have something else to try to think about, but got to have something to think about besides the usual cos this situation is, like they sez in the papers, untenable. The oxygen machine is going like the clappers with slight change of tone sometimes, which seems to be when a breath is taken, but i found out later its not. It makes a helluva noise really. Its even audible over the noisy fridge kicking in right next to me. Its in the other room going like you'd expect a small air compressor to go, like a fast little motor poppin away.

People are moving around the house now at 2.45am. We're going to attempt a roll over or at least a small shift.

That went reasonable-good. dad a bit stroppy to be woken at 3am just to be irritated, but we did what we needed. Its good he is stroppy.

Landscape changed

The house has become an unfamiliar landscape where nobody is in their right room or their correct bed. Dad is in my single bed in the dining room. Mum is in the lounge on the floor. I'm in their bed in their room (with a tv! which is an upside), bro is in sis' room on guest bed & sis is in my double bed in bro's room. How simple is that.

I'm sorting out my old bedroom to somehow turn it into a sitting room, as there's no bed in it anymore so we could use it as another living space maybe. Someplace for me to do my tax, anyway, and maybe some painting. A lot of stuff is in storage but yet everybody is still at me to put *more* stuff in storage. Sigh. Never happy with half finished jobs, some people, bugger it.

Sculpting wise well not much happening. i have an overwhelming idea for a theme that will come out when i get time maybe. I spoke about that in the last blog entry i think but anyway still leaning that way. I have a book called Wasteland that i try to read sometimes, its a bunch of short stories about the Apocalypse. I dunno why they are such depressing stories though. Since when was the end of the world so relentlessly a bad thing? Science fiction used to be about twist endings, sudden reversals, new ideas. Well, wouldn't be surprised if the committee that put this book together didn't actually think much about it. Youth of today- shonky job at bloody everything they do...

Future

I been reading a book about the cold war & the archaeology left behind in America, all the bomb shelters & the missile silos that go down many hundred feet & sometimes you can buy one, in the middle of no-where, and live in it (maybe some decontamination later, anyway). The Nike missile & the Titan & stuf like that what was sposed to be saving the duck & cover kiddies in their schools. The Nike bases were near every city in America, or that was the idea anyway. People have grown up with them things nearby & never really thought about them. Cool huh. Or horrible. Or both. Anyways i'm gonna do some sculpture about it. Not sure how, but thats the fun bit i guess.

Back in reality againe

Survived the speechifying, and the subject really liked the sculpture. I tell you what, doing live people sculptures is a very nerve wracking business. It don't matter if other people like it plenty, there's really only 1 person u really care about liking it.

Have had a week of being home mostly, my sister arrived from OS & we're all working to make dad comfortable. We got oxygen in the house now so its full alert for smokers etc & learning curves all over the place. I get funny looks from buying tons of morphine down the chemists about every 2nd day but i dunno what u sposed to look like when u buy that stuff anyway. I got some storage & emptying the house into that so there's room for wheelchairs & oxygen machines & other furniture & my sister & my bro too when he arrives. Phew. I'm working on the basis of moving mainly *my* shit out & resettling everything else. I got a lot of books & a heaving ocean of clothes that make me feel like the Imelda Marcos of clothes cos i won't part with em even tho i don't even know where i got em, or when i'll ever wear em, and they don't even bloody fit me. And i got a lot of weird things, but some of em i can't part with even to storage anyways. There's so many books i *intend* to read, i got to keep them at home. To save about a billion dollars (how can 1 cardboard box cost $5 at the storage place?) i'm pinching old boxes from the boozatorium in Mato.. they are very small boxes.. but with books thats enough.

Sculpturally speakin i got some awesome tools... i had to finish a wax for the life sized man, & forced to go buy a particular tool that made a particular mark. Tiranti "C" was the one i needed. They only sell them in a bag of 6 different ones for vast amt of bux, tho. Anyway i bit the bullet & got em - and guess what - they are so great. Wish i'd done it 10 yrs ago, tho 10 yrs ago that amt of money was probly a whole dole cheque. The excitement of a new type of tool is intoxicating & need to use them on everything. Anyway- half way thru a very cute little bloke in wax now using the smallest tool. Need to get back to the studio.

Pre-recorded

Well i'm prerecording this entry, cos while this too-expensive hotel supposedly has wifi, it only worked for 5 minutes. I guess that was to give you hope. Some bastard in room 520 is probably downloading 25 wii games at once & hogging all the bandwidth. i guess that, cos its what i'd be doing if i had no brain & could just get the hell on.

The bed is very soggy, but the pillows are too so i guess its meant to be that way. Its not bad. Got a couple of cable channels & a big flat tv. But the best feature is the wall mounted air con/heater with remote control. Yes, and a timer, so i will set it to be warm for when i wake up. Wow.

Been writing my speech. Its got to mention a few things & you got to string em together so it all seems easy. I talked my parents into staying home. Dad wasn't getting out of hospital anyway & mum will be much more relaxed nearby. So i have now a nice hotel instead of a cheap hotel, cos life's to short to rebook. Its so expensive they don't even give u a free breakfast, dammit. At least the location is good - out the back there is the biggest cut-price booze barn i ever seen & a bunch of useful looking shops. Its too late for anything to be open for food, but i caught a burger on the way cos u know small towns, they often got miles between food & shut after dark anyways. it didn't make me feel particularly awesome tho, for some time after.

Meh, tomorrow's gonna suck till i finished my speech & get a gin or 3 in me.

Actual moving

Have filled the car with house crap while being watched by gormless idiots sitting at the cafe across the rd. This time avoided being cracked in the head by the car boot. It tried it on, but realising i knew its trick it gave up. And its not raining! Incredible. Sadly somebody's borrowed the housemate's van last nite so they could sleep off a party in it & that won't be back till later. Reckon if i had a van, i'd fill it with cats for just those occasions. I only need one trip in the van though so i just hoping the rain holds off till i get that trip over in the evening or so. I doubt the rain can hold back for the evening. Stress.
There's an incredible amt of cat hairs on everything, even tho i never deliberately let the cats in my room. I guess it flowed under the door. Sigh.
One last download before i go, thus the time to sit here writing rubbish.. 25min to go.

Grump

Am grumpy. Its basically rained the entire frekn week except the few hrs i was rostered to mind some hungarians yesterday. During which the sun was out like Hawaii in summer & even though one tries not to see this as some kind of sign of the personal bastardry of the One in charge, of whom mankind was made in His image, one find it very difficult, eh, doesn't one. Being that mankind was made in His image it behooves one to Not see the definite correllations between Hisself's sense of Humour & Bart Simpson's.
And it follows i wd not be surprised to find His hand in droppin the car boot on my head.

Anyway... I guess i will just let it go. Here, as i breathe out I attempt to breathe away the sense of stress involved in having no time to move house. Cos really, i could take a few days & nobody would mind too much. Really, i reckon i could. Is it EVER gonna stop raining, but? Cos eventually i DO have to actually bloody move.

Back to sculpture. Art. Well OK painting. Am painting a picture to go in the Cricket Painting Prize. I'm going real hard on the theme that has stuck with me since high school, when the teacher said that it was juvenile to paint a picture of the sun in a picture when you want to show the sun in your picture.
So now of course i will break my neck to put the sun in every picture regardless of any need for it in the picture. They said & done a lot of stupid crap. Not that i got post traumatic embitterment disorder over it, oh no. From them i also learned that if you can do it once, you can do it again. Thats for when some asshole steals your work, or they throw it away after u been waiting a year for it to get fired.
Gosh, i did learn 2 things then in art class: the sun thing & the do it again thing. The sun thing seems to be a bit of an impediment really but then the do it again was worth a bit.
A do it again is worth 2 suns in the bush, ya knows.

So anyway there is a big frekn sun in this picture u better frekn believe it. I got halo's & fractals of sunshine goin on all over it. Get that up ya, Ms De Twattser.

Transparency in the media..

Listening (without watching) the tv news makes the BS stand out like dogs balls. The emotive hype is much more apparent. The hysterical bodings of doom & despair are a massive load of shit shovelled onto us every day by shameless tossers.
It COULD be said to be the end of civilisation. It COULD be a new tide of death. It COULD be a sign that. What an utter load of crap.
The RISING tide of maybe POSSIBLE but IMPENDING death & despair washes the will from ya & depresses the hell into ya. Damn media is a scourge on humanity.
To make up so much crap, I guess there was nothing much actually happening. Ah, nice.

Feeling a bit depressed today.. trying to move house but its pouring frekn rain, like every day lately, & when i go to take something outside it immediately BUCKETS down 5 times as hard. The bastard back door of the wagon cracked down on my head, as it likes to do when it rains & i'm trying to load something heavy in the back & its the most fucked possible moment. Has completely removed any regrets i have about getting another car instead of gambling $1500 on rego.

Sad about moving out, and realising i feel sadder than my housemates who couldn't give a rats. I guess its actually no big deal is it. Feels lke it is tho. Obviously i need to do it more often, move house, then it won't bother me.

Entering things

I'm entering the Blake Prize again. Its 50 bucks thrown down the toilet, but for once i have a sculpture ready enough to get there & its religious (if yr egyptian) AND almost taking the piss (if you consider who i wish would go straight to hell & not pass Go). So really i got to do it eh. Its a case of beer - in a way a dreadful shame to pour a case of beer down the toilet innit. Tho u could say it cuts out the middle man.

Looking into what residencies close yesterday as well. Its about that time of year, so i've probably missed out on stuff. If not, then its time to get onto it, whatever is still available. 12 months in Berlin? oooh yum!

Free week!

So this week starts the new freeness of not doing a large sculpture. Ah, the relax... the time... the drink with umbrella. Feets up & chocks away.

Well no, actually its no relax, no fun & workworkwork anyway. Now i'm old enough to work it out i have discovered that you will NEVER have time for what you wait to have time for and you will NEVER be in the right headspace to do what you might like at some airy fairy time in the probability of the future, and you will never feel ready - so just get on & do them things, whatever they are, if you want to EVER do them, cos the perfect moment never comes eh.

I wish i'd worked that out 20 yrs ago but better late than never. I reckon everybody else knows that & that why they are so serious.

anyway.... today the foundry guys are starting to add the plaster mother mould over the top of the rubber mould & i'm doing some heavy socializing day where i have coffee & cake with old sculptor mate from yrs ago & then go look at house inspection of some run down dive in a hell hole no-man's-land type location & then out to a show tonite & beers. Life's hard eh. In between i move house or bits thereof. i got less time for that than i had expected cos of family stuffs. Friday has been removed from me but thats OK. Should be able to shuffle the big stuff on the weekend & just do the little stuff this week.

Easy!

Passed the taste test

Hey so he passed the test, they loved it. Not for a second did they not love it nor did they start to think of looking for somethin they didn't like about it, cos they knew they liked it. How cool is that. In & out in 5 minutes & all good.

Phew. I went home & celebrated by walking out & finding some food. You can live off the land pretty good in the inner west. I walked under Petersham rail & strolled up the rd there & ended up with some chinese takeaway. There's a lovely mist outside & while i forgot my hat i still didn't freeze. Somehow its not as cold this evening as it was during the day, maybe the mist is damping down the body heat of sydney this evening.

Surviving without a hat is no mean feat, cos I've been forced to wear a hat at all times since my unfortunate haircut on tuesday. Luckily Aldi had thermal fleece beanies a couple weeks ago, i had snapped up a couple, & they been keeping me alive since the haircut.

So anyway, a milestone has been passed & this week i just got to babysit the foundry dudes while they work in the studio & somehow at the same time, move house. But i'm gonna do it slow over the week, will be easy.

He come good

So well he's come good. 10am this morning i realised he was orright.

I need to work out what the deal is here. I can't handle the endless terror with a happy ending at the last moment. It sounds like a cheap sci fi episode if i ever heard one.

I ended up up making his face on a head armature on the table, and then casting it into plaster. Added some wire hooks on the back to attach it. I removed most of the head off the main figure, and then placed the face up there in its place & added clay around it to make a full head related to it.

i guess this is the way to go, something along the lines of making sections in plaster & glue em together. Rodin used to do that sorta thing, though he used to have a stack of body parts that he mixed and matched, far as i know. Can't say that wouldn't be handy (heh heh).

I think plaster is my medium, for the future. It fights back better than clay does & yet you can have the best qualities of clay in the finished product cos you can make the sections orignally in clay if you want to. But you don't have to, you can make them drect n the plaster too :) Except for the dust problems, its the best stuff to use.

Head

I been having head problems. I had to make a bunch of new heads for this dude cos it wasn't working out. Time's a pressin as usual. For some reason i always get it just before the last possible moment but. Which is pretty nerve wracking, but its better than after the last possible moment i guess. It not just settling for what i have either, cos i made a whole new head, eh. And its quite different. Anyway we'll see if they like it tomorrow night when they come see. if it passes the foundry guys are in at 8.30am the next morn.. and apart from needing to hang around all week, i'm free.. :)

So tomorrow is the last few details... its got to pass the test.

Stagnancy

I've come to a bit of stagnancy. This is where Concentration drugs should kick in i imagine, something to force you to keep going when you really don't want to. Any excuse to not go to the studio. So far its 4.17pm & i've done everything else bar my tax return & only cos i hadn't thought of it.

The subject of the sculpture came for a peep last night. Astonishing how it *doesn't* look like him. I took a snap of him next to it & the differences are staggering. Tis laughable & in some ways depressing but on the other hand the fact i can see whats wrong is surely a fantastic aid to getting it right when i fix it.
I guess this is one downside of making a sculpture based on b&w laser printouts of photos... they totally flatten out everything. I guess its almost the worst possible method of reproducing a photo, short of dot matrix or even inkjet b&w printing. Hmmm, make note of this.

Have started making plans to move out of the share house. Looked into storage costs. 1.8m2 for 105 a month. If i pay for 6 i get 1 free, which makes it 90 a month. Do i want 7 months but. Gawd knows what will i be doing in 7 months? Probably much the same as i'm doing now, stressin over nothin. :)

Essence of a house

I think i have come across a literal metaphor that personifies the share house.
A bit of furniture something like a wee platform or tiny tallish table was placed in the bathroom as part of the owner's SO moving in. Hooray i thought, a place to put stuff!! A place to dump the towel/clothes while i'm having a shower!! Marvellous. Much better than balancing everything on the toilet. There are no towel rails in the bathroom, or hooks. I have mentioned this actually but i think the bemused look i got in return was as if to say why would you hang a towel in the bathroom anyway. And what do i know, maybe other people don't. Maybe i'm the strange one, tho i sincerely doubt it.

Anyway i was pretty pleased for about 1 day & i used that little table & it was very good. So simple so relaxing so stressfree. Its crucial my clothes don't hit the floor cos they will get cat hairs on em & i will sneeze, eyes swell up, get grumpy, etc. Balancing them on the toilet is a skill but having a wee table was great.

The next day, there was a bloody pot plant on it.

Not a huge one, just about the size of a dinner plate. Just big enough to delete the useful space from the bathroom.
Like, can some bastard tell me, why there should be a pot plant in the bathroom anyway? Its only a small bathroom its not a greenhouse with vaulted glass ceilings or an outdoor style cabana bathroom, its a poky little terrace house bathroom with damp walls & peeling paint that leaks into downstairs thru a hole cut in the laundry ceiling into the 2nd bathtub down there thats full of old tins of paint & rollers etc.
Placing this pot plant actively removed the one useful bit of the entire bathroom thus transforming the entire room into a complete freakin joke. In one tiny fell swoop whipping away all the promised & longed for functionality. And so thoughtlessly cruel to give it & then take it away like that.
Do i sound unreasonable? I know i am :) I guess this is where you start to wish to call a house meeting & discuss it logically. But its no longer a democracy in the house anyways & i'm outta here soon.

So anyway, in closing, that example of assbackwardry is a living metaphor for the way the entire house disfunctions. I'm kinda glad i'm leaving soon, i like the people, though i think the preggers hormones in both of em are making it like 3's a crowd at the moment & i bet they can't wait for me & the other bloke (currently OS) to leave so they can nest down proper like.
But the only room where i can walk straight without sidling past piles of stuff, see where i'm going cos its not dark like in a catacomb, or put something down on a flat surface is in my own room, which is lovely & airy & light. My beautiful room simply rocks. In afternoon sun it is like joy & peace across the universe thank you very much. I'm almost never there at that time but i remember what it looks like.

Its the exact polar opposite of my room back at home though, to whence i shall return soon.

Lots

Lots of things have happened since last post but you have to say things is relative. If i get excited about the fact i walked up the very steep hill without collapsing & all the way to the shops & done the supermarketing this doesn't sound like much worth crowin about but its a rare thing for me esp in the day light hrs when i'm usually killing myself in the studio. Sound pathetic, well it is but i tell u what i don't underestimate the beauty of a cloud in daytime when i see em so seldom, & esp a cloud bathed in sunshine as its been raining for bloody ages.

The life szed dude is coming to that strange stage when every step you take consolidates an area & almost completes it. This means its comin up to deadline. Cos thats when this happens. It comes good. i think i've organised it all into stages now:
1) maquettes
2) measuring the subject & calculating stuff.
3) studying ferociously the photos & drawings & maquettes to get the body form right
4) the portrait - as above but 10 x harder work. you get to either love or hate the subject during this time.
5) 10 minutes before end: finally realise u need to throw away the photos & drawings & use own judgement to complete

somethin like that anyways.

Disappointin 10

I'm a bit disappointed... i can invite as many people as i want to the unveiling as long as it not more than 10. So with the obligated ones like rellies filling up that quota, some of whom i don't know at all but just live local there, i have no spaces left to invite people. Just as well my siblings is all OS & i have no bloke, or i'd be in real trouble. Tho i guess in that situation they'd bend the rule maybe. But they wouldn't bend it far. I usually get around the 8 - 10 rules (they all have em) by saying i'll invite 30 & only 5 will turn up, is that ok, and it usually is, cos its true. But for this one the 10 are definite starters & so i'm stuffed. I dunno why but people seem to get extra excited & committed when they have to travel a long way & its a huge pain in the ass to get there - weird.

But i got to just realise this is work, it ain't a sculpture exhibition i'm having or nothing fun like that. I just made something & they paying me for it & this is like a handover & thats it. You don't invite all yer mates to a sculpture selling do ya. Still, feel a bit shit about it. But there you are. It should just make me work harder toward having a real proper show where i can get blind with my mates, sometime in the future.

Googlorama

Heh there is a funny side to blogging here. Your posts really hit high in a google search. Thus is you search "Crap small sculpture prize" u get mine post on same as #1 hit. If you search "woollahra small sculpture prize" you get me on page 2 of the results, but thats pretty amazing too.

Hopefully they won't bother suing me for calling their sculpture prize crap. But you know thats what blogs are all about: free speech :)

Beer & sittings

Once again a mate come over & forced me to sit & drink beer (terrible!) and we picked out some issues. She left & there it was 100% better than before. Amazing. Cos just a shoulder angle can do that. Just a bit here n there & its all the difference between being dead & zombie like & being flexible & alive. Needs a bit more of that though so keep the visits comin :)

Today i added another few bags of clay to his flouncy pants. Yes, there is no end to how much clay you can add to a pair of flouncy pants & they still look a bit skinny - i had never realised how much, though i had feared. The torso is a bit out of sorts... after a day of cutting off & shaving & forming those RHS ribs, the ones under his upstretched arm, well as i was finishing up for the day i did some hacky drawing on it with a knife. This got me some indications of where the movement & life might come from when i cut more off. However i'd been doing just that all day... so instead of that i just added some massive slabs of clay - sure enough it come alive in the ribs. Well i'll be hornswoggled. How come, when you think you want to cut more off, you really should throw more on? Shouldn't such a thing be more obvious? Never fails to surprise. Except it happens so much it hardly surprises anymore. I need to pay attention though, cos there will come a point where i actually understand it & can file it away - i hope. Would certainly save some time.

I chucked on a head like shape so he had a head when my friend come for a beer. I threw it all up there to make some vague face & head shape & made the neck more necky. It had only half a head from the back, like some Torchwood expendable character it looked like it had copped an explosive round in the head. But she commented later the head was good. I was shocked, but then i looked at it & thought hey its ok eh. Thats lovely when that happens, that is :) Not to worry i will bugger it up again. She said the arse looked a bit strange & i defended it as being just like in the picture & then after she had gone I realised the arse was rubbish & cut it off. Damn capricious i am eh wot.

Anyway as darkness fell (about 4.30, bloody winter) some gallery freak was coming to see another artist in the place & so i covered the big feller up & left. No need to get anyone seeing it who shouldn't. Never trust a gallery type anyways.

Listening: Torchwood "Slow Decay" audio book. Doctor Who audio books. Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book" audio book. Long day, eh.

A bit off the side

So its been a few days since i felt like writing, things been a bit busy, dad went orf to horspital & now he's back lookin loads better. He had pneumonia or something. Its so hard to find out cos nobody tells you nothing, they just did a raft of testings & hole pokings & drained him almost completely of blood & replaced that with IV solutions & drugs. Anyway it seems to have improved him so there u go. Grease & oil change perhaps.

Finally got a day in th studio today, dunno if i progressed much but i finished putting up the curtains anyhow, for to stop people seeing the subject of the sculpture. I've snatched an hr here & there over the past few days in the studio & to tell the truth it feels like months have passed this week, but they haven't, it just seemed long, and i probably didn't even miss that much time in the studio anyways. I also been taking care of the ravenous cats in the share house, who were as starved for affection as they thought they were for food. No idea why they ate like they hadn't had a cat snap pass their lips in weeks when i fed em. Maybe cos its becoming winter. Or it could be they got an appetite after having the runs all over the laundry (thanks cats - i will now NEVER own a cat, i was pretty sure before, but that experience cinches it). One of them forced me, literally forced me, to play with him for half an hour the other night cos he just had to have some play with a human. When he gets like that he usually bite & scratch me plenty. In a loving way, but by that time of night i'm not partial to sudden stabby pain like when a max warp cat stalks & attacks your legs. I used my dangly clangy belt as a prothesis for the cat to bite at & escaped without scars. Anyway housemate got back yesty so Phew.

Anyways been working on the old life sizer. Have started on a different tack this time, i decided to work in a way as to block out one section at a time rather than work over the entire thing as a whole. Like Trousers, Shirt, etc. Wisdom is, you're not sposed to finish any one section, working as a whole is best. But I'm trying this way cos i have a feeling i get to this eventually anyway. You need to have some section fully blocked before you know exactly where to put the next. But i guess i'm not "finishing" anything in the way them old sculpting books actually mean that you should never do. Eh, lets try it.

As i noted before, sitting back across the room on a milk crate with a beer in my hand i picked out some major errors to fix. I really should do this every evening. Trouble is by the time i'm sitting there, i'm tired, so instead of having a beer i'd rather go home & have a cup of tea. What i really need is a friend to drop by & have a beer with me, thus forcing me to do the right thing.

The right trousers

Today i worked on his trousers. I want them flouncy, with a knife crease. Yet also flowing & organic but not too organic. I want em to look like bloody good trousers. I generally make trousers a bit skinny, cos i love to have the leg shape under em. Of course there's billowy trousers that completely hide the underlying legs. This type of trouser i have never made. I reckon these are gonna be a bit like that. Of course you got to have any underlying features in the right places, like the hip bone they hang down off of, and the ankle they stop at. But even though i love to know where the knees are, they may end up invisible. I got some aversion to this, dunno if its cos i hate to throw away all the knee work i done, or if i reckon it just needs to have knees. I think the latter, cos if i had a dollar for every bit of work i have wasted in my life i'd, like, live in a Paris mansion with servants. Or if i didn't get a dollar for em, i'd be a bitter & twisted individual who thought everybody was out to get me. So it can't be that. i mean bitter & twisted, maybe, but nobody could be bothered to be out to get me.
Anyway as usual when i come up to a problem that boggles me mind, i say to myself, well there is a sculptural challenge i got to solve. So there i have it, i need it to both have knees and yet not have them actually visible. Good challenge eh.
It takes a helluva lot of clay to make flouncy trousers BTW. I spent the day basically just patting loads of clay on there. Reckon i added at least 6 bags just to his legs. 60kg of clay to make them look light as air, or attempt to. Then i got interrupted & never got back there. Tomorrow.

They're orf

Packed orf the family on the hairplane, paid an hutterly hexhorbitant rate for parking at the hairport (bend over and insert your card) and back home now surveying the wreckage. There is shite strewn from one corner of the house to every other corner of the house. One would think there has been nothing but carnage for 2 weeks, and yet during that 2 weeks at every possible moment we were cleaning, like little beavers building wee dams, the entire time. Its just that 2 kidz who transmute food input into violent movement & noise instantanteously have been thru the place & there is no escape for anything.
Anyway was lovely to have em & its lovely when they leave.
BTW I'm starting to understand why grownups are so serious. Its cos if you try to beat a kid at playing, they got more energy & reflexes & persistence & singlemindedness that they will work til they win, or at least exhaust you so you lose. So u learn to be grumpy & gruff so they will not dare to try to out-tickle you. Cos hysterical writhing & screaming on the ground isn't a good look in a grownup.

Before the dust was even thinking of settlin, i grabbed a bunch of clothes & my drawings & headed back to the rented room. The cats might be starving. Of course they weren't, they were perfectly fine if not even fatter. The house's been mostly free of people for as week apart from the visiting cat lady & sure enuff there have been some changes. There are male bits on the painted girl on the wall nearby outside, an old HSC major work. To be fair, i was surprised it lasted as long as it did in untouched state. And some total loser has signed it, badly, which IMHO shows even less imagination & definitely less skill than coming up with the bits. Ah, i dunno. Why critique a badly painted set of bits? Well cos its there, a course. Next time a professional art show opens in the street outside my place i'll discuss that instead ok.

I found another change later, when i half killed myself on a big ugly baby stroller in the dark on the way to the dunny. There are also @50 boxes of possessions in the hallway. Something's afoot... and it ain't convenient.

Came, saw, liked

The suits came, they saw, they liked, enjoyed lunch, and chose a patina in clear unanimous way. Cool. Its funny the bigger the project the nicer things seems to work out. I doubt that's everybody's experience, cos people moan a lot about commissions. But it seems really that if someone wants a cheap job out of you they treat you like crap & if they ask an expensive one they just treat you much better. For a $10 job they reject it endlessly but for a $100K one they trust your judgement. Maybe its the @ 20 years between the $0 job where i got the sack & the 100K one where they treat me nice. I dunno that seniority counts for much, but what does? Luck, probably :)

On a stupider note an old acquaintance i met in the supermarket last nite managed to root my phone bad enough i had to reboot the damn thing this arvo. He set it sending himself a message, and whatever he done to it, it was tryin valiantly to send this msg for like 24 hrs & kept flattening the battery like nuts. Even after i killed the msg it was still tryin to send a nothing. The funny thing was he was showin me all these cool tricks on my phone like he was mr smartass of nokia land & in the end he ruined the silly thing instead. Good on ya mate.. chalk up a good big fat tick for useless twattery & time wastin. I known this dude for some years & it kinda typifies the guy. Nice bloke, but.

Then after i rebooted it & it stopped trying to send that stupid nothin, i finally got the 3 voice mails that i'd not got over the previous 24 hrs cos the phone, a course, can only do 1 thing at a time. What a top way to really bugger up someone's phone! i must work out how he did it, cos it be worth repeatin to shit someone off.

New comp new inspire

Foundry tomorrow, some suits comin to see the big feller & choose a colour for him. The foundry guys did some test colours on his legs for us, his legs are big enough to do a full pantone chart on there in big print. Anyway guess we'll see what they like. I'm sposed to bring cheese & dipz for lunch. Luckily i bought some the other day for the family & they never touched them yet.

Going to enter a comp for a cricket painting. 20K acquizitive. I recently traded 2 paintings for 2 cases of beer, so i feel like i'm quite a professional painter now. I don't think Van Gogh sold as good as that did he. Of course i still remember the furious furore it used to cause among certain pissed painter persons of my acquaintance when a sculptor reckoned they could paint, but hey - i feel confident to say there's LOADS of crap painting out there & mine's as good or better than plenty of that. So bugger youse all who think it unnatural.

Anyway the artiste of today, whatever they exhale is Art. Their footprintz is Art. Their fart is Art. So a stroke of paint is bloody Art if i says it is, even if its me that did it.

Back into it

We all back now from the magical central coast land. It was so nice there. Nature, ahhhh. But now we back in reality land where everything hurts. I spent an hr in the studio yesterday & fought hard but the main result being that i simply find out how much work i got to do. The pose is a bit wishy washy from the get go so i got to pull the intention right out of it & make it strong. Find those little nuances wot make it & push them a bit harder. I don't think i can actually overpose this one cos of how little there is to work with in the beginning, so i reckon i can just have fun with it.

Car's not too healthy, definitely time for a change. Even the cd player has decided to only play cd's when is not essential. On the way back from the coast it wouldn't play nothing at all. It make me cross. There comes a certain point where its just TIME.

Crap Small Sculpture Prize

In the mail today an entry forma for de woollahra small sculpture prize. something y'd think wd be right up my alley but it not seem like i sync with that at all. The very first yr i got rejected & it was won by a piece of glad wrap surrounding a bit of air which was apparently the space in which a sculpture would be. While i find that entertaining for almost 5 whole seconds, IMHO it wasn't worth a 10K first prize. Since then it really seem like it not my cup of tea. Last yr i put in an app again - seems 10 yrs was enough that i forgot my lesson & got all mellow & forgive the $40 entry & anyway sure nuff i got rejecto again. It was very funny though i did feel happy for a moment as i tore in there 5 minutes before closing of entries feeling like a dick cos anybody sensible would have posted it weeks earlier & not had to travel into woollahra council chambers & try to park & run inside just before they shut the door in my face. Anyway what made me happy was that other people were also there doing the same, just as unorganised, slack, and "ARTISTIC" as me! I felt like i wasn't alone! Yahoo!
And one of them had a horn black Triumph motorbike & i slightly knew him from somewhere so i could strike up a convo about bikes AND sculpture. Niiiice.
We probably all got rejected tho. Fuck it.
I dunno if i'll bother this year with payin for the disinspiration of another rejection... i think once every 10 yrs is about right. I got one new sculpture cast thats small & vaguely religious, could try the Blake - i got in that once i did.

Small Holidays

The fambly have arrived from OS, my bro's fambly. So we went to Central Coast & rented a beach house for 8 ppl. Its very nice, bit crap in some ways like there is nowhere enough light to read except if u stand under the fluoro in the kitchen. But we not there to read, we there to be tortured by the kiddies, who are now grown enough to decide throwin cushions at me & trying to crush me to death for an hour straight at a time is a good thing to do. Luckily i readily outweigh them both by a factor of 2000 so i am ok - this time. We are also there to walk down the back yard & out the gate & across the lane to the estuary where there are seats on the edge of the water & see all the ducks looking hopeful for bread & then also walk up the street to the huge surf beach with massive headlands either side. Nowhere else i been is it so obvious that we walk on sand made of the same rock as the headlands, as its a golden colour & quite gritty. The headlands are a golden brown colour & sprinkled with modern architecture. Well guys, one day.... long after yer dead.... your houses will be never & yr headland will be toast. Imagine the property prices that far in the future. Ah a sydney trait that eh.

The house must be often used by tourists as there are 4 kookaburras & some cockatoos & parrots & many other creatures hanging round the balcony expecting a handout. Some just take what they feel is theirs & mum shriek very loud when she unwisely walked out there with a bit of carrot cake in her hand & dive bombed by a burra that snapped her bit of cake clean in half. I went to scare it away & to move it took nothin short of pushing it off the balcony railing using my foot on its chest. Blimey silly lookin things close up. Well fed though.

The place has a plethora of fire making areas & places to sit. there are about 5 or 6 sets of table & chairs scenarios set out over the property outside & 3 or 4 different BBQs & some fire holding devices in various states of neglect. One BBQ is enough tho & there is one that definitely works & we used it. There is a nice glass fronted fireplace inside & an indoor fire is such a nice thing that i reckon i will be wanting one in my own mansion one day. The best luxury.

Surprisingly i actually relaxed while i was there. I can't remember relaxing anyplace ever before. (Last weeks inner city relaxin business was more like plain old exhaustion.) Also i had dreams & i haven't had any for ages. So anyway if i had got to stay there more than 3 days i might have become all holidayed right the hell out & floppy & soft & loose & like a leaf in the breeze kinda thing. Can't have that can we. As it was tho, i needed to come back to do some work & get to the foundry so i left em there & come back to Sydney for mid week. I'll go back for the last day cos we can't all fit in 1 car.

Bumbling along

I been given 2 weeks longer on this project now, i feel so terribly relaxed its hard to even get out of bed in the morning & take myself seriously. I sneak a look out at the world for seconds at a time, now. Esp in the mornings. Its nice & sunny a lot. One evening I walked to the newly renovated park 3 doors up & walked across it. Then i walked back. I wouldn't know what to do if i did have a day off, even doing that little exploratory stroll felt somehow annoyingly pointless. Even tho, u know, almost nothing needs to have a point, really.

Been walking though, as i was prescribed a walk everyday by my new Dr. Thats OK, cos there is a purpose. And getting my knee better is also part of it. The new Dr has since suddenly disappeared to China & is never comin back tho, which i discovered the other day when i tried to make an appointment. Its hard not to have abandonment issues innit, when every Dr you try sucks, & then u find a good one & they die on you, or whatever.

Measured up the mystery subject the other day, went to the house & went thru the embarrassing measuring business, where i get a few measures & then realise i forgot 40 more & then do some more & then do some weird ones & then pull one out of a hat & then do some more & take a ton of photos. I still dunno exactly which measurements i need, though i usually have less than i'd like, when it comes down to it. Maybe i will improve at this with practice.

Some rellies visiting for the next 2 weeks. It kind of neatly removes the spare 2 weeks i have from the original equation doesn't it. Hoping i can do more than that in the end.

Next one...

OK have started the next big one. This one is just life sized so its gonna be a doddle, even though i only got 4 weeks. The foundry loaned me a nice man to help weld up the armature last week. They are a bit slow on the work front so they have spare people. Its was great we got the main armature welded right up in half a day. We used the wheely bit from the previous one, its bigger than usual but its nice and strong & let's face it i always err on the side of flimsy gossamer butterfly wing type steel & paper origami style welding when i make those wheely bases. So this will be a nice change, it should be quite strong cos its overengineered. Or maybe its justrightengineered. We shall see.

That was Friday. Then i spent the weekend doing prep work & procrastinating & today being Monday i hit it hard with the clay. I put on about 10 bags today which would be over 100 kgs of clay. Sounds like a lot eh, well let me tell u, it is.

Have been taking my bung knee for a walk every evening. I think i'm gonna break out the wii balance board & get my balance back. Not really able to walk normally cos of it being a month without straightening me leg. Some strange muscles have been tortured to get me about til now & i'm a bit bent outta shape. I reckon the wii fit will be a great help, like physio :)

Tiring day

Yesterday my housemate Tim helped destroy the big fella. We knocked off the remnants of clay, then cut him off at the ankles & then cut the big support off & he toppled over. Then i got the angle grinder with a nice big sharp cutting blade to slice off all the chicken wire. I found out that you can never be too careful when doing this task as i got a nasty on my arm from being whipped by a bit of chickenwire going at 10,000 rpm when it got tangled in the grinder. Keep it tight, peoples! Lucky there is a nice tee tree antiseptic spray in the first aid kit in the studio.

After that we just slogged away, cutting him up. Cutting the foam with breadknives, the steel & wire with the grinder. Sweeping up the huge amount of dried clay chunks & particles. We packed him into boxes & into buckets & into bags, and stashed the biggest part, the main torso, under the big table for later disposal. Some i chucked in the dumpster next door. Some went into my car for later losing a bit in various people's bins. Man was i exhausted by the end of that. I was aching all over. I got second thoughts on cutting a dead body up for disposal, thats for sure. If i ever kill someone, its gonna look like an accident. This kinda thing is just way too much work.

Big hot fella

They cast the big bloke today in bronze. We saw the first pour, which was a handful of legs & arms. They cast well & some bits chipped out of the moulds showed they were good. His torso & head were to be cast later in the day but i had to split. Went home & had for lunch leftovers, which were pastry versions of a star wars stormtrooper helmet & munch's "the scream" while watching Alien. Funny i don't remember those gross bits from when i saw it last i guess i had my eyes shut at the time.

Then took maquettes of the next one to a meeting so they could choose. With some mods one of em got thru. I got bugger all time for this next one, have managed to squeeze a couple of weeks outta the foundry & so i got 4 weeks rather than 2. But then if the last one took 6 weeks then this one being "only" life sized will be easy. LOL.

Have collected an Aldi volin off my mate who acqured it for me. Awesome I want to learn the fiddle. First problem... tune it?

Tassie Knee

I can talk about knees now cos mine is getting better fast. No more crutch & the swelling's right down & my kneecap is back where its sposed to be. I can straighten it out too! Though i won't. Anyway if u want to read about knees...

Having always warned people going to Tassie that Queenstown was the only slippery bit, it come as no real surprise that that was where i fell in a ditch. I had meant slippery roads, but maybe just the entire area is actually slippery. Well why not? Maybe the dirt is slippery from the sulphur in the air & the dirt gets run across the roads to make them slippery when it rains.

We had stopped for a photo opp on a curve where there was a bit of run off to park the car. I got out &, as you would, i attempted to cross a tiny ditch to get a better view, and my foot slipped. I managed to catch myself on one hand & made sure the other hand was in the air holding the camera. Landing on my hand was no fun cos that hurt, and it basically just held my butt off the ground by 1cm. It is important to note however that i didn't actually fall on my arse.

Jo climbed the hill in the meantime, and did the dance of death down the hill, managing to avoid falling with some fancy footwork. Val took off up the hill & we both yelled out that it was slippery. She never heard us she said later. Anyway she went down like splat & i was most annoyed none of us was filming as we fully expected it & it would have made a good movie. She was fine tho & even her camera which bounced a few times was quite OK.

I didn't seem to hurt my leg at the time but i must have cos the next day my knee would randomly do this "collapsing" thing on me & that was kinda gross cos it felt like the bones were sliding off each other & going the wrong way & so it was pretty untrustworthy. Took 3 days or so get a bandage for it cos of it being Easter weekend in a strange country. I just tried to be careful with it. It didn't hurt much considering there was sure something funny going on there.

Have my suspicions that driving the tiny car & its clutch didn't help tho, cos that day i'd done most of the driving, and it never actually swelled up till after we got home a week later, & i'd driven half way from Melb to Sydney in the one day & that was a pretty painful thing to do, tho i wasn't gonna admit it & make Val drive all the way, cos like being a highway you would think even a bad clutch leg would be able to get you there, eh.

Anyway its put me off thinking i should get a small car with a clutch in it.

Tassie: the Sea Shepherd

While we were in Hobart we stumbled upon the Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin. Jo was real pleased as checking out this exact thing was on her Bucket List, something she referred to sometimes & i never knew WTF she was on about til i got home & saw a trailer for the flick of the same name. Its something to do with a list of crap u want to do before u die, a course.

Anyway they were doing tours of the ship! Hey whatever ship it is, going on a ship is always fun. So we went & hung out there in the dusk with the wind coming up & it getting colder. The ship's painted black with skull & crossbones on the side, & flies a jolly roger. It comes with a grand set of huge scrape & gouge marks near the bow which it got from ramming a japanese whaling ship. It was very homey inside. People take on 12 month rides on it as volunteers. They get paid nothing & the food is entirely donated & its all vegan stuff. They go out & try to save sharks, seals & whales & whatever else they reckon is worth a try. The tour guide chap was a little pessimistic in that he fully expected sea life to be all dead in the southern oceans in a few years anyway. So doing a tour of duty on the ship was maybe a futile gesture. So on that cheery note i was kinda left alarmed but not the slightest bit alert cos when i asked Val later on what did he actually mean, she hadn't heard it & made something up that didn't help me at all.

They had parked the ship in Quarantine & he said in case we were wondering why, its cos they had been filming whales being killed & normally the whalers stop killing to avoid being filmed but they hadn't this time, they just kept killing & let them film. When the ship got in to Hobart they were directed to Quarantine & the Feds run on board & confiscated the film. But like they had made 80 copies or something (like you'd fully expect) so it was kinda just a show of force. It was filmed by some cable tv show in america, for a 2nd series of some show that rated wildly for the 1st series so this footage is going to get out there regardless.

The inside of the ship was self decorated by what seems like people with a litle time on their hands (like on a long sea voyage) and it was real cosy & nice. A massive DVD collection in the lounge room with comfy chairs & a bar & a Skullery to make food.

We left there all inspired to do a fund raising art show for them. Cos really if any of us were fit & young we'd be on there like a shot doing a 12 month stint or what! Awesome.

Waxing

Spent the day waxing in the studio til 3pm, when overcome by tired i went home & fell asleep. Quite like this make up yer own hrs business. Though i can see some avenues for things to get outta hand. Luckily paying rent for a studio is a bit of incentive to get off my ass.

So anyway now i'm bright as a button this evening & i guess i should just sit down & work out stuff on paper. I need to construct a new armature for the next life sized man & work out some curtain setup for security against prying eyes cos this ones secret. Not really secret i guess just incidentally no-one should know WTF i'm making. At pain of death etc. Personally i reckon the less secret it is the less people going to care. But that only works if nobody cares in the first place, and sadly a surprising percentage of people do care, far more than you'd expect. Anyway the secrecy thing is gonna be a bit of a drain on the enjoyment of the project which is a shame, for me. But then its just another requirement i guess for a customer, and thats what ya do.

A studio in Arncliffe is coming up, where i'd get more space and broadband in the rent. Could be good. I'm really over the people next door, they have about 50 cars in various states of wreck & for sale etc on the street & while my leg's been bad the lack of parking is even more a pain. Also they're so damn noisy. With them & the airplanes a day at work is headache.

Rotten sorta day

Had a rotten day with my knee. It went "over" in the morning & then hurt like hell all day regardless the repeated anti inflammitries & codeine. I did nothing much except learn to walk with a cane on the odd hop about.

Found out this evening that i had agreed a long time ago to be executor of the will of a fruit loop. I must have agreed yrs ago before i had any conception of what it entailed. I have no memory of agreeing & it horrifies me now.

She wants it all to go to one child & none to the other, and that one child cannot be trusted with money as they are also a fruit loop & so there'd need to be a trust fund set up or something.

So I wish her a long & healthy life eh.

And to top off an indifferent day the ext HDD i had all the tassie pics on has shit itself. I froze it & now its kinda working... desperately trying to retrieve the pix off of it. I had copied off the jpegs but left the RAW files only on there. So its kinda depressing if i lose em but not entirely despairingly tragic i guess.

Riding vs Driving in Tas

Lets get this question out of the way straight off the bat: ride a motorbike or drive a car? Which is better in Tas. Having been there twice on bike & now once in car, i reckon i can comment on this one.

The advantages of a car are kind of compelling cos you can go any season and you can carry any amount of luggage & collect crap all the way like a new pair of shoes cos yours got wet & not have a problem storing it all. You can even have an esky so you can have available food! And in the rain you can just sit there as you drive thinking, gosh i'm glad i'm not out there freezin my ass off & then having to dry all my clothes by a fire at night & getting there with my luggage full of water. So there's a bunch of areas where cars trump bikes from a great height.

However I have to say i have decided that motobike is the way to go.There's 2 reasons for this.
1) No roof. Roofs, & the associated pillars that hold em up, they keep you dry, but they stop you seeing a whole @40%-50% of the landscape at all times. Yes i mean the sky. Cos the sky there is massive. Like the mountains are massive and the trees are massive. You need the tops of the trees and the sky in your landscape. Sorry, u can't have them if u in a car, esp a small car.
2) On a bike you're Alone. Even if you travel with 100 other bikes, or a pillion, while you're riding inside your helmet you are alone & what u see goes in your brain straight thru yr eyes & you smell it thru yr nose without it needing to be translated into/from what someone else thinks by someone talking about it. A place like Tas needs you to be able to take it in. You don't get to appreciate it when someone sits next to ya exclaiming all day. Even if they're saying "oooh thats beautiful", well hell i know its beautiful, thats why i'm here, and i'd rather just absorb it without putting it in a box all the time. I'm sure this can vary depending on your co-driver/passengers but out of 4 people in yr car u gonna get one who thinks there is need for constant commentary. Which is also ok sometimes but like i said, in a place like Tas u need alone time.

Back from Tasmania

Well i been back for a day now, been for x-rays for the knee from when i fell in a hole near Queenstown, been hacking up a lung (left) from my tasmanian respiritry infection, and generally doing what is pretty normal after a holiday.

Yes i could have guessed that just sitting on my ass at home for 2 weeks would have been cheaper & easier & have less negative effect on my life & general progress, but there you are, don't ya just have to take the chance?

I'm gonna present the last couple weeks in a series of subject headings, cos looking back thats the way it fits together. So read on... when i get writing...

In the meantime i went to see the big feller in wax today at the foundry. I had to OK the wax before they started putting the shell on there for casting. i'd been worried about his face cos it'd been the last bit i did & it'd been still a bit soft when they moulded it. But i was real pleased. He was lookin good the mould had been a good un. He is gonna be one big mother or what. I stayed there & made a wee thylacene & left it there to be cast. They let me chuck in a few freebies with each big fella, as well they should. They're happy to have the work now as business is a bit slow, what with the economy & all. I better stop typin & get on & make some waxes actually. I need to make a model for the next life sizer & it'd be great if i got some small things thru the foundry cos i been gettin nibbles thru the website. Though they usually spit it out once they find out a price. Bronze casts are exxy things.

Bloggable

This weather is the flamin pits. Get totally soaked every time you venture out. And i'll have to venture out again in a moment. About to go to Tassie for a bit. Not taking a pc, so will be out of bloggable range i imagine, but will take loads of photos with the new canon g10. Did a shakedown last nite to see if it works & the outcome is i learned a lot suddenly about file formats & RAW & how to see those pics once you have taken them... cos it ain't as easy as your common garden .jpg file thats for sure. Its funny how fast you can absorb technical info when its your new camera, LOL.

Bewdy. Better get packing, i got some things to find.

See yez all on the other end- to the one person who's reading this (thats you!)

Packin

Packin for Tassie. Took a housemate out with me to the shops, i got a pair of shoes & he got a kitchen sink. Both of us feel a sense of achievement & that the day weren't entirely wasted.

Now that i'm not

Now that i'm not doing much sculpture, you get to read about the petty BS of my boring little life. I quite lke my boring little life though i think i have it very easy & i know i'm very lucky, tho lke they say a MAN would consider it good judgement & skill etc. However i'm not just a woman but also i know luck when i see it thanks.
But anyway i thought i'd mention something i don't think much've. People who say "i work in IT" with that downward inflection on the IT as if to say, move along, yer too stupid for details, and this s how you spell I.T.: I.. T....
And then when i say what kind of IT they say Virtualization, which means thats enough bugger off now. Just cos i too work in virtualization to a certain extent i have even strung out said person to the point of mentioning VMWare itself but it never gets to the point where i get any actual information. Cos i'm hideously polite I don't push it any further for fear the person actually knows jack shit about their job & is trying to fob me off by using a 6 syllable word lke Virtualization. Anyway i have narowed it down to either they reckon i'm stupid & they don't want to bore me & waste their time, or else they're scared they gonna expose theyself as stupid cos they dunno nothing about what they're supposedly doing. Which can happen in IT & can cause people to worry about losing their job everytime someone sneeze upstairs.
Anyway if i didn't have to communicate w this person often perhaps i would not worry bout it but there u are i am stuck with it & these little things knaw at ya. Beng the only thing we have in common it wd be good to have a proper chat but it seem one of us is too stupid, or both of us, i dunno.

Down tha shops

Went down the shops to buy some staples for the trip to Tas. Got a 6 pack of sox that are plain black with "pow" "smash" "crash" etc on each one. they will mix & match nicely. You can always have a "crash" with a "bang" after all. Dunno wtf my sox have gone.. i have only 2 pairs left now so i been going without most of the time. Have become a bit feral since i'm not going to work. Luckily i do have enough undies etc, but sox, i have fallen down in that area. Heh heh. I wore my work clothes out for beer yesty cos in my new place i actually don't have anything else. Luckily my friends don't mind. Or they just used to it.

They were playing kill-yourself music in Big W. some teenage emo drip must have chose it. Wrist slashing music, I was getting so terribly depressed i couldn't wait to leave. I had some PJ's in my hand, for the trip, in lovely gaily coloured stripes & i was so affected by the music i found them commenting on my joke of a life & my lost hopes & dreams. I knew i wouldn't be able to look at them again without the connotations so I threw em back. One song after another.. each as bad as the last... "i'm not goooooood, i'm hopeleeeeessss, i want to diiiiiiiie.." minor chords & nothing good in it at all. How do they allow it? Everybody walks out of there suicidal. You know if just HALF your customers act on that suicidal impulse, you're out a lot of customers, Big W.

Sydrail sucks

I got an sms from james did i wanna go into town for Bavarian Beer. Well why not eh. Sure it would write off the entire day but it would be nice. And hey, its only a few stations on the train from my place, and the station is but metres from my door.
Track work. I always thought, poor bastards, as i drove past the station & seen people lined up outside waiting for teh rail bus cos of the bloody trackwork.
Hey - today it was me.
I got on & said, i don't have a ticket. He said some mumble. I said can i buy a ticket when i get there. Mumble. OK then let's see if i get booked.. He drove lke a kamikaze, going places buses ain't sposed to go, to be able to stop at each station on the way. When we get to Central someone told him he was a bad driver. I thought that a bit mean & he told them to fuck off.
He drove ok. We took corners on 2 wheels sometimes but that could have just been the bus.
Anyhow free ride.. nobody give a crap when we get there.

Beer was nice. Expensive, was it ever. But nice. After 1 beer i made poor james walk all the way to town hall so i could buy a mini tripod for the tassie adventure next week, and i was looking for an Ultrapod 2 but ended up with the "FUN" tripod: Ultrapod Mini... it is to real tripod what anodised blue shuffle is to real ipod.

After more beer n some food walked down the quay to see the big cruise liner there, Millenium it said on the front. It not as big as the queen mary. i saw the QM come in at dawn a few yr ago. now that was a biggun.

On the bloody long bus rde on the way home i put on my new eyeglasses to see how that was. I wore them all the walk home then & when i watched tv at home. I could see clearer. But when walking across roads or down stairs things were not the right distance away & not the right angle either. Stairs were weird they were not flat they had an angle like you could slide down em. Crossin busy rds was a bit stupid really it was not the moment to try out yr new glasses. Survived but didn't feel like a good way to do it. is this what i got now, unreality comin in thru the peepers, bugga.

Bathroom Stuff

This morn i realise that a low bed is not so easy to get out of & maybe should do something about it. I might be ebaying for a taller one eventually, some nice but cheap ikea thing maybe. Its either that or put the bed on a layer of milk crates, but even i have some shame. Ash's old bed frame is a bit too low for those rough mornings when everything hurts. Its cos i been stupid the night before, but i'm probably never going to stop doing that.

Then i go up for a shower. There's 2 housemates & they both have GFs & there is a move of product into the bathroom that lately seems to grow every day as the GFs move further in. It all make me feel even more unsofisticated than usual, as my idea of extravagant luxury is moisturised soap that squirts out of a bottle & smells like nuts, on special at Bi Lo. Large seethru bags of tubes & bottles are turning up full of stuff branded with names i never even heard of. The one shelf near the shower which used to be sparse is cluttered now with stuff & my lonely blue bottle of shampoo is almost invisible up the back. Luckily they don't seem to spend loads of time in the bathroom though so i guess its just a feelng like there's 5 (or 20, if u see the bathroom) people living in this house, but as for concrete effect, not much.

Big night

Argh my back's a killin me i been trying to make shelves. Cos the foundry dudes have made such a disaster out of my work space (everything sticky wth uncured silicone rubber) i need to use the floor over the other studio, and my back ain't up to this kind of sudden working on the floor abuse for a period of 5 hrs without warning, so now i'm gonna pay..

The shelves are morphing into a strange modular design (or lack of) which could turn out quite Ok. In a way its heaps better cos it means it can be carried by just me alone in sections, so ya boo sucks to asking for help. Have had every possible variation of problem tonight, from the tape measure tricking me (2 mm extra at the start!) to having the wrong kind of screws (too long & too big a thread which split the wood edges) to uneven floor (so everything's f'ed) to shiteridden drill that could not screw in 1 screw properly, to bent drillbit, to buggered phillips head screw bit, to wrong jigsaw blade angle (incredibly difficult to cut at all) to cutting thru a milkcrate (that was OK: just stupid), to self-unwinding bloody wood clamps & even a tool vibrating into the jigsaw such that the entire kit & kaboodle went off angle & buggered the entire cut... twice.
But hey - a bad workperson blames her tools right.
Those freaking tools totally suck!!!

Got the ebay camera for $6.50, hopefully it won't have the same issue that dad's has.