Bending Point

Here I am.

Following my last post, gosh! Changes in my life have been smooth but sharp, light but weighty. I am now a full-time editor (of BOOKS, my friend, yes! I am an honest and professional editor of BOOKS), which is an interesting new lifestyle to adjust to. My time is different: no more of the student life for me. Strange and not strange.

So. I've been thinking about this blog. I think it's time to make a change here, too. My personal time is more limited than it used to be, and my non-blog creative commitments (scripting & noveling) have been backburnering for too long. So I think it's time to refocus myself on those other things, and to put these Mistakes Being Made on a more permanent sort of hiatus. Possibly actually permanent, I mean. As in: no more this blog.

This has always been a very casual, experimental & ad hoc little blog – something for my own fun, rather than any serious attempt to build an audience or anything – but I've got to the point where, like I said, things need to change. Focus or no focus, do or do not. Etc.

When I come back to blogging – whether here, or somewhere new – it'll be with a much clearer sense of purpose and focus, I hope. If I decide I want to focus on music, then I'll do a Rage Roundup every week and I'll be an active presence on other music sites to try to actually build an audience, and so on. Or if I decide to do a blog that focuses on some other thing, then I'll focus on that some other thing instead. And if I decide to do another random meandery half-hearted self-indulgent blog like this one, then I guess I'll do it like this again; but at least I'll try to do it in a much more focused and wholehearted way, I think. If you're going to do something, better to do it right; better to try to do it best, don't you think?

(Or, better to do something that will actually get more readers to comment more often, at the very least...)

So, anyhow. That's what I've been thinking. And that's what I'm going to do, I think.

In the meantime: I may be about to give up long-form textual blogging for a while, but I'll be continuing to post beautiful (mostly) wordless content over at my other miniblog, the wonderful looktime.tumblr.com, which is freaking awesome and you should totally be following. (Seriously, go there, it's great. It's mostly not my stuff, it's just stuff that I like. You'll like it too, I bet.)

Thanks for everything.

More later.

:)

Priorities

So, it turns out that under pressure, my work priorities resolve like this:

1. Work that I am being paid to do

2. Work that I am paying to do

3. Work that I wish I were being paid to do

I bet you can figure out which category this blog falls into.

Lucky me, though, I only have one more month before my #2 ceases to exist! And that will bump my #3 endeavours up into second place! Right on. Looking forward to it, definitely . . . :)

In the meantime, let me tell about my Saturday morning. I was at my relatives' house in Essendon, looking through the window and wondering what time it was. The sky was a really stunning bright blue, but the clock said 5 o'clock, so that didn't seem right. I looked at the other clock, over on the bench; but that clock said 8 o'clock, which made even less sense.

It was about then I realised that it didn't make sense because I was dreaming. Feeling a bit silly about that, I woke up. (It was kind of neat that I woke up because I realised I was dreaming, right? That doesn't happen every day, definitely.)

I got out of bed and walked to the bathroom, but there I noticed that the toilet cistern was missing – weirdly, it looked like it had somehow become completely recessed into the wall. That didn't make any sense.

It was about then I realised that it didn't make sense because I was dreaming. Still. Ha! Fully conscious of this fact and feeling quite ridiculous, I put in a more serious effort to make sure that this time, I was waking up properly.

Having woken up properly now, I was immediately compelled to tell this story to someone else. How ridiculous was it that I would realise I was dreaming and so wake up, only to realise that I was still dreaming and then actually wake up?! Bizarre, definitely. So I was telling this story, but I couldn't actually hear my own voice very well because my ears were a bit blocked up. I tried blowing my nose gently to make the air pressure pop. Now, I'm always a bit wary of doing stuff to my ears (you can burst your eardrums if you do something stupid, can't you?), but I kept blowing and then I started to feel kind of weird, and the weird feeling kind of 'expanded' in my head – it was very strange, not entirely pleasant, and it didn't seem to make any sense.

It was about then I realised that it didn't make sense because I was dreaming.

So then I woke up, for the third time, and immediately I burst out laughing and didn't stop for at least a minute.

Let me tell you, it was a heck of a way to start a Saturday.

--the Drowsy Thoapsl

Soon

Whoo!

Lately, I have been way too busy to give this blog the attention it deserves; luckily, however, my busyness is not quite at Axe Cop's level, yet. (Axe Cop being the webcomic from which the sublime moment above derives.) Most of my specific busynesses look to be cooling down soon, too – but anyhow, we'll see how that goes . . .

In the meantime, I also wanted to draw your attention to what may be the greatest news headline of all time: the "Ash Dash Rash Cash Splash". Subeditors of Fairfax, I salute you.

)

--Thoapsl

Top 10 #6: Top 10 Pop Culture References That Will Make Me Feel Nostalgic For My Childhood, I Hope

Okay, people. This one is personal. So personal, in fact, that anybody who reads this list will surely be able to figure out not only just how old I am, but also precisely which elements of pop culture I was most receptive to as a child. And yes, yes, it's a damnably geekish list. (Although, on the other hand – when you're talking about pop culture, what's not geeky?)

So, the latest of my Top 10 Top 10 Lists That Don't Really Deserve To Be Top 10 Lists:

It's
The Top 10 Pop Culture References That Will Make Me Feel Nostalgic For My Childhood, I Hope!

10. The Seven Cities of Gold! (It was actually called The Mysterious Cities of Gold, but that's not how I remember it.) They get this big golden boat, and later on they get this big golden bird-plane thing?

9. The theme from Inspector Gadget. And from the show itself, especially that story where they're in this big house and it gets completely flooded with water. But mostly just the theme.

8. Ulysses 3000. (It was actually called Ulysses 31, but that's not how I remember it.) The crew is frozen, hanging in space, unconscious and just floating up near the ceiling of this big metal room . . .

7. Hot jam donuts, sausage rolls, twisties, icy poles. And sunnyboys, even though I'm not sure I ever actually had one myself.

6. The Mac Plus. Especially when used to play the original Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? game. Especially the "typewriter" sound effects.

5. The original line of Transformers toys (the ones with metal in them!), and The Transformers: The Movie. By which I mean the real Transformers movie, the one with Orson Welles as the voice of Unicron.

4. Doctor Who. Especially any Tom Baker story where someone slowly transforms into a hideous monster. (There are a bunch.)

3. The Super Nintendo. F-Zero, Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart. And NBA Jam, and Super Ghouls 'N' Ghosts, and StarFox. And Castlevania. And all that glorious 8-bit sound! And everything else. And the original NES console and various Segas, too, I guess . . . but most of all, the Super Nintendo, summer of 1990-91.

(video not entirely related, but you should probably watch it anyway.)

2. LEGO. Glorious, brilliant, spectacularly wonderful Lego.

1. The Rage outro, on a Saturday morning at first light.

So, did these references actually make me feel nostalgic for my childhood?

Hard to say.

What about you?

And what are you nostalgic about?

Mondays Can Be Disturbing

Cheap of me to do two linkblogs in a row, rather than blogging something that I've actually created myself, but this tickled me too much to resist.

CONTEXT:

See, lately I've been looking for someone* to fill a vacant room in my house, and the process of interviewing prospective housemates has reminded me just how difficult it is to get to know people from only brief conversations. You can absorb a lot of intuitive impressions, but it seems impossible to really find out what they'll be like; I think people usually don't relax enough to show their "true" colours until you've been living with them for weeks, at least.

Thus, there's been a running joke between me & my other (non-new) housemate about the absolute best way to interview a stranger: the Voight-Kampff test.

The Voight-Kampff test is the interview from Blade Runner (via Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?) that's supposed to test your empathy – empathy, of course, being the unique quality that sets humans apart from "non-humans" (e.g. animals, psychopaths, killer robots). I've always thought it would be great fun to spring the Voight-Kampff interview questions on somebody when they're not expecting it, but I've never had the guts to do it "for real" . . .

. . . unlike the journalists at San Francisco's The Wave magazine, who decided to give the Voight-Kampff test to all the upcoming SF mayoral candidates. If you don't know Blade Runner, you probably won't get it, but I thought it was freaking hilarious.

As one would expect, at least half the mayoral candidates are definitely not human.

*Subsequently found: hello, Sarah D—! She's moving in tomorrow, good luck to all involved . . .

Gosh

Yes. Things have been busy. The future keeps on happening, damn it, but that's alright. It's better to be busy than bored, right? (On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I haven't been bored since the late '90s.)

In the meantime: more words to follow. I'm going to be working (real-working) more intensively than usual over the next few months – various new endeavours, see – but I'm still going to aim for at least one post each week, or so. What do you reckon? Time will tell, huh...

Anyhow.

Hiatus, what hiatus?

There will always be more Mistakes Being Made!

--Thoapsl

Happy Bloomsday!

Eat some kidneys and think about piss! Say hello to a lady on the beach!

Have you read the chapter that's all questions and answers? Or the one that's all musical?

It is one lurid heck of a book. Say yes!

Excuses, Perfectly Valid Excuses

Oh Anonymous, you are totally right & I am indeed regretful...

Yes, I have been on hiatus for the past month or so. At first for Xmas, and at second because I've spent the past four weeks juggling three jobs (well, more like two and a half, but heck). As these are all jobs with imminent-ish deadlines, sometime in late December I decided that I had to hiatus myself (hiatize?) from Mistakes Being Made until they were definitely sorted. Possibly I should have mentioned this, here? I did think about putting up a "Going On Brief Hiatus" post, but google images couldn't find me any picture that looked like a hiatus.

Maybe Charles Dana Gibson can help us out, though?

Okay, so I'm the dude with the white bow tie, obvs, and maybe, like, the elbows-on-table lady represents one of my jobs, which I'm trying to – uh – fulfil, and, let's say that the what-an-elegant-neck-ribbon-I-have-whoops-my-cleavage lady represents my other job? Which I am also trying to fulfil, er, simultaneously. Hijinx ensue. And that's cool, or it would be, but I'm really leaning up at the bar here in the first place because I'm trying to get a drink (which represents the novel I'm trying to finish, or something?), and then my cocktail is taking forever to mix, and the metaphorical ladies are all distractionlike to me, and oh man I don't even have a face anymore, they call me Blurface.

But I don't know, I think that picture writes some analogies that my metaphors shouldn't be trying to cash. Also, comparing a lady to a job is a bad, inappropriate, wrong thing to do. In many, many ways. Hence: no post about going on hiatus.

Don't worry, Anonymous. The point is rapidly mooting itself, because these pesky employments & misc. other commitments of mine are rapidly approaching endgame. Finally! And in fact, probably within the next fortnight. By mid-Feb at the latest, I should be gainfully unemployed and have reached "The End" of my novel, which means I should be posting stuff on this site at a far more respectable rate. This work is not abandoned.

Besides, it would have been a heck of a downer to finish up here with that last post. I'm sad about Dorothy Porter, but that's no reason to abandon the interweb.

-- Love, Thoapsl

Dead Poet, No Punchline

Dorothy Porter died very recently and I've been thinking about her all week. Once upon a time I read her Wild Surmise and it hit me in a way that felt very real. As if it was something personal. That book in particular, it really got to me; it still does. Afterwards, I carried around a little fantasy of meeting her in person one day, of letting her know how much her work had meant to me. We lived in the same city, it turns out – the same suburb, even. It was bound to happen eventually.

Now, this all seems overwhelmingly stupid and pointless and self-absorbed of me.

The words aren't right, but for sheer feeling I'm thinking of the music around the last line from that Neil Young song: "what a killer..."

...