Work Force

Well I finally landed something regular. Got my own office and am doing more server and infrastructure work. I'm still here on my first day because of server patching, but that's all geeky stuff. Thank goodness for job placement agencies.

Heard of a Herd?

I love the English language. I mean, how else can you say something that means nothing in a way that sound interesting?

It is 4:35 am and I'm sitting in the basement of a large hospital waiting to install some software on a couple hundred PCs. We are waiting on the server team to finish upgrading their end so we can start on ours. So far, we are an hour behind and are supposed to be finished before the users get here at 8am. Why am I in this business again?

Network cables dangle on the wall in a stranglehold
Florescent lights flutter their dull eyes
To the roar of servers stacked side by side
And the thighs of boxes pryed open and discarded in a pile
All the while the night shuffles in keyboard strokes
Spoken in the corner while monitors doze
And toke the ozone behind the colon blink of the coiled phone.

I can't wait to get a regular gig...    

Blog Hiatus

Days run between my fingers like sugar spilling on the kitchen floor
I don't think much anymore, just move my limbs to the tick of my motor
Engine sputtering mid roar.

I've thrown out years of thoughts
Dumpsters full of broken plans and decay
Half eyeglasses, dead pens, rat torn bindings
All this detritus was left in my way

I'm here in this half land
Half dark and half felt
Lured by the promise of goods
Hoodwinked by the blink of the illumined eye
The clink of change in my lined pockets
Stocked with fine weaves and perfumes
Exhumed from the back mind
Always watching with his mouth open.

The fingers of trees have been cut back
The grass mown, the weeds sprayed
I stayed too long away
Drawn by the promise of arms
Where seeds were sown
Gophers burrow unimpeded, their number unknown.

So you think you can spot a cheesy grin?

Here's a test on the BBC website that gets you to try to differentiate between fake and genuine smiles. I thought I was pretty good at it until I realised I'm not so astute as I hoped, getting only 11 out of 20...

NZlanders Love Their Work

I came across this article in the NZ Herald about how we like to take our work home if we can. This tendency relates more to increasing workloads rather than to our sometimes mytical hard-working natures. I for one take the Italian approach and try to make the most of my home time...

Vive la difference!

Here is an interesting article in Salon.com about the differences between men and women and how they should be understood if we want both sexes to succeed in their life goals.

An excerpt:

"There's still a great deal we don't know about what is ingrained and what is instilled, but acting as if the differences between the sexes are purely anatomical, or merely the product of our environment, does not serve us well. Ignore the differences, and we forfeit the opportunity to encourage and enhance the talents of all of us, from the ordinary student to the truly gifted, regardless of sex."

Am I strange to find this unsurprising?

A Time Waster for You

Here's a game that's a bit of a brain tease...

I didn't watch the Oscars...

...because actually I was working and I knew I could catch the results on the web when I had the time. Although I haven't yet seen Million Dollar Baby, I find it hard to believe it could beat out the Aviator for best director, especially due to the difference of scale each project had. Scorsese is one of the all time greats, and I don't understand why he has yet to be recognised for his work.

The best surprise for me was that Charlie Kaufman won the oscar for Best Screenplay, 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', a movie which I thoroughly enjoyed. I've read three of his scripts, and he is very adept at writing quirky, profound and intelligent stories. I would like to be able to do what he does some day. Some of his screenplays are available for public perusal...

Can you pass third grade geography?

To my embarrassment I had to do this twice to pass.

Props to DS for making me feel young (and stupid) again...

Cute ways to Kill

if you ever thought that regular handguns are just not cute enough, here are a couple which might appeal to your japanese female sensibilities.

i'm looking forward to when they come out with the pokemon cruise missile...

Marketing the Babyspace

i heard about this item on the news the other night. i'm not sure i understand it since there is no shortage of places to advertise in more conventional locations.

probably the next step is to use well looked at spaces on the female body (such as the butt or the breasts) to advertise brake repairs or chimey sweeping. i think females should be encouraged to embrace the marketing mentality...

magna carta

i. my butt itches

i buy 10 rolls of toilet paper to feel mundane and appeased. please please please. don’t squeeze the duck. oh fuck. my chew toy used to bring me luck. i threw the throw rug across the room. it rained dust like powdered custard. mustard spots sprinkle the dishes in the sink. flecks of pink cat food calcify on the brink of becoming rock. my socks too will calcify in time. hush. even compassion will crackle when crushed. i’m bushed. time to water my neo-fuscist tendencies. (no i’m not a fusspot)

this burglary hones my slurp
i make soup with onion broth
burped (in bucolic overtones)
over burning bukowski tomes
drowned in drink and sloth


ii. wigwams warm my wagpole

i shop like anyone’s business shops when anyone shops at my business. i take the bus. milk drinkers make a fuss. political correctness makes me feel erect. my sausages are hickory smoked. come here bitch-ass and bring my rope. i fiddle with borders and cut the tags. glossy mags make help me feel whole. roads are better sloped. the pope rings my phone. control control he croons, coughing occasionally for effect. he swoons my prefect. perfect. let’s flip this reject regent reflex.


iii. ichthyologist’s lament

parched arched wriggling a swansong – or even a sonnet. did someone forget my fishnet bonnet?


iv. molotov made one hell of a cocktail

i’m not much for ranting i prefer pants panting rolled into cuffs at my ankles so spank me, loretta. i like salad with feta. frank rants get chicks by the busload (if they are old and asleep). don’t goad me into a false sense of abuse. i’d rather burn some jiffy pop than brake your caboose.


v. how to disseminate your decolletage

i’m not one to make you stumble over this ass. pass the gas station, i’m full. no, this is hardly bull (you cow). i won’t stand for twiddling. perhaps a tweak. speak to me of political dualism while i flip your flapjacks, you rag bag. flag it, i can’t be fagged.


vi. curtain cacophony

melrose place was once a symbol of the failure of single life. now titans warps time. slime lubricates every smile. it dribbles the chin like a simile.

accessible

my son adam never stops talking.

instead of engaging in inward contemplation he vents all the chatter of his detailed memory including episodes of pokemon, digimon and dragonball z.

meanwhile, i am trying to drive and relax at the same time. lately my drives have become the only times i have any solitude. the drive out to my son's house is a good 30 minutes, which means i can listen to almost all of my groove armada cd in the round trip.

i want to tell him to be quiet, but we haven't seen each other in two weeks. so i listen to his perpetual banter and attempt to respond in a way which at least gives him the illusion that i've heard every word. after 20 minutes, my head starts to throb.

"adam!" i say, trying to interrupt his flow.

"...and then goku said, "you'll never defeat me" and they started to battle and-"

"ADAM!"

"yes dad?"

"please. talk less. say more."

"but i'm just telling you what happened."

"then tell me another time."

adam is quiet for a few uncomfortable minutes.

i eventually feel bad and ask him about his school lessons. this ellicits the short "okay" and "good" answers from him and then silence again. i know that i have stifled something in him.

i can't but feel like he's trying in his own way to reach out to me and catch me up on everything he's experienced in the last fortnight. he's trying to make everything normal since the divorce, to include me in his life and share himself with me. and my requests for silence start to put distance between us a little at a time. i wrestle with this thought as i turn on to the southern motorway.

however, my desire for music and calm overtakes my guilt and i turn up "raisin' the stakes". after a few minutes, i almost forget he's there.

Another from the "only in America" file...

Don't bake cookies for your neighbors as a nice gesture, you might give them a heart attack...

It was Waitangi Day yesterday

Waitangi day came and went yesterday, but as a national holiday here in NZ its positivity seems to be increasing. With the mainstream acceptance of Maori culture, it has started to symbolise the elimination of racism and the acceptance of a national identity.

The relevance of this holiday is that a treaty was signed between Maori and the British Crown in 1840, giving the British sovereignty and recognising Maori land rights, thus establishing NZ as a proper nation. The problem was that the English translation of the text varied from the Maori version, and along with departures from the treaty itself by the NZ government, it sowed the seeds of conflict between the two cultures. The result was the establishment of a tribunal which gave a forum for resolving treaty violations and offering compensation to the Tangata Whenua (People of the Land - i.e. Maori). So far, hundreds of millions of dollars has been paid out to various tribes throughout the country.

For a more in depth understanding of the treaty and the issues surrounding it, this website is worth a view.

As a foreigner I've tended to overlook these things as quaint aspects of the place I live, but the significance for NZ shouldn't be underestimated, thus my token gesture to at least raise some awareness of it.

Class dismissed...

I'm Lightly Nerdy

My partner sent me a nerd test for some reason, and I had to do it to prove that I wasn't as much a nerd as she thought. Actually, her favorite term of affection for me is 'geek'...

It's da bomb

If you ever wanted to know who's exploded a nuke and when, you can go here to find out...

Otherwise relax and enjoy the view...

Thanks to bd for the link!

she sits

she twists her hair until it binds her hand
in the scuffed corner of some espresso dive
not quite alive but still smouldering,
ember poised over a bland paperback
shades in place despite the hour.

panhandlers do their rounds at the outer tables
partly warded off by the approach of staff
she moves her bag with her feet without changing her stare
her brown strands stay wound like a rope

i glance over my copy of the stranger
shifting my chair with unease
her pale knees closed as if asleep
the breeze from the fan
shuffles the smoke from her face
the place where interest should be
is erased from memory

i circle the word 'deceased' to remind me
like the brown foam on the sides of my bowl
the past is a hole
it hungers and prowls like the haze of dead cigarettes
wiping yellow residue on walls and over eyes
before it lies at your feet and growls when you move.
she watches it linger with the last of her storyline.

a late bus groans by with a howl of air
and the waiter begins his wipedown
the town barely slows in the dark
the glow of coffee hues the skyline
as mercury halos spotlight sooty figures
passing absently beyond the glass

i find no excuse to remain
but she feigns a dream state
insect eyes fixed on the horizon
a model's pose awaiting immortality.

13/1/05

Who says the British Education System isn't Working?

This young lady saved 100 lives when she noticed the water being sucked away from the beach in a funny way while holidaying in Phuket.

Now if only the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii could have been as responsive, more than 100,000 people could still be alive...

I'm on holiday

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