Sunny Breaks

The Heaven is Fire
The Sun its Fuel
The Rays its Smoke
The Day its Flame
The Star its Sparks
Into this fire God offers the oblation of faith
Out of this the divine king Soma (full moon) arises

- KHANDOGYA-UPANISHAD

I saw the firing of a traditional kiln last night. Just through throwing hardwood kindling into it constantly they get it up to a temp. of 1200 degrees celcius. How did people ever think of the idea of burning a fire that hard simply to get some decent crockery? If I was civilisation, we’d still be eating off nicely curved pieces of bark and drinking out of bull-horns.

To see how the glaze was looking the guy would pull small fragments out of the side and they’d glow red-orange hot for a minute or more.
I drank a whole bunch of green and arcane teas from a small cup whose glaze was coloured from oak ash. I got all razzed up and couldn’t sleep til late.

Some australians came to the sckool today. My joint has a sister sckool relationship with a certain christian college in Brizzy — they do student exchange at the end of the year and so on. Well actually - our girls go there but no one comes here - apart from this today - this teacher guy, his wife and 8 year old boy.
When they walked into the auditorium this morning I hadn’t heard hysterical screaming at that level since — *I* walked in the first time .. and before that - since the Beatles did Ed Sullivan. 1200 screaming 13, 14 and 15 y.o.s. If you’d let em, they probably wouldda torn that little boy apart. Did he look freaked — he was holding onto his mum’s leg for all he was worth.

They did a slide show about the college in brizzy and life in queensland, australia etc — and I was reminded of how much this country is like hell in comparrison to Oz. He mentioned the summer and winter temperature ranges and I started to tear up.

I got to meet them, and for some reason - mostly the christian thing - I thought he was gonna be like the principal in that Roald Dahl book The Witches - which if I remember correctly, turned kids into mice and then ate them? I don’t know. But he was okay and it was nice to talk to some australian accents. 98% of the people I know in seoul are n.american. The kid was was sunk in his game boy advance, which I could understand — the overwhelm.

I never mentioned how I made my first voyages into wacky korean t-shirt purchasing a month or two back. A close runner up was this one that said, “I’ll use anything” and the pictures of keys and brill cream and typewriters and an ‘Extra!’ old style paperboy. Another, which I would’ve bought save them not having my size was a laundry detergent style typeface with ’sunny days’ or some such on it - it looked way cool and I’d like to try and do the hompagey in that bold, brassy and upbeat style one day.

The one I got has

on it. It can be easily misconstrued toward the negative, but I try to take it in a zen - nothing way - even though buddhism is dead now.
The other night walking home I passed this mum+dad and their 10 y. o. girl in bright green pants, matching-coloured shirt and on it saying LOSER in red.

My lovely sister (not pictured) sent me some fotos from a Klingon wedding she went to. Thanks sis but you still haven’t given me any penfriends.

Hey, nice Batleth!

Just what we need, Klingons procreating.

I was in the Metropolis today and there was masses and masses of university students in red and blue. That is, some were in red, some in blue. I have no idea why but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a Ford vs. Holden thing. I’d like to think it was about rowing but this also seems unlikely.

They shouldn’t let mormons in this country. It’s just not cricket. If it were cricket, it’d be like letting Starscream the Decepticon Transformer on a team, he’d be running into bowl, get to the crease, stop and just shoot the batsman with a heat-seeking missile.

At least I imagine the LDSes have an unfair advantage with their salt-lake whiteness, blue eyes, trousers and short-sleeved white shirts. Perhaps folks act nice to them and tell them they’re handsome then they move in for the kill, ask the marks if they’ll hand over their eternal souls to Morm-Almighty (or whatever their deity is) — only to be told “I need to time to think about it”.

Everytime I bump them and their fool grins I’m down and having a bad day - which is always. If I got stuck waiting for a table at the restaurant at the end of the universe and the closest things to humanoid company were a couple of mormons and a waist-high, quivering purple jelly thing with tentacles, you can bet yr pants I’d be buddying up with the jelly dude.

Of those others also here, I do like the Uzbekkis though. They’re beat. I’ll be cruising the chung-ang-no, scanning faces, notice the something slightly different of an Uzbekka and be taken by how subtley shifty they look. There’s one guy lives somewhere near me who’s the dead-set replicant of Harry Dean Stanton.
They should open a restaurant.

Oh man I’m not feeling well. I just got another visit from aliens. They get into my apartment through trickery, like knocking on the door, holding out mail I take it then somehow they slip by me and into the footwell.

It’s my fault really. I saw them on the street and gave them a photo of themselves from our last close encounter. I suppose they were made happy by it. So they brought chestnuts. And let me tell ya, chestnuts at the best of times can at best be described as ‘not delicious’.

Then they insisted on feeding me one, and I know that they’re not going to leave until they’ve had their way with me so I give in. They cut one open and used a teaspoon that was sitting on the sink to spoon-feed me it. As they’re lifting it to me gob I try to remember what I’d used the teaspoon for. But then when I’m taking it, I discover that the alien’s hand reeks of dog food…
Also, they tried to tell me that I should put my bread in the fridge, which is ridiculous. What do beings from Zeta Reticuli know about how bread keeps? Don’t email; that’s a rhetorical question.

And now I’m fighting off the urge to gag from the lingering smell and thought-of-smell of can dogfood.
I was just on my way out to dinner, and the mail they gave me isn’t even for me.
Could life possibly get any worse?

Eventhough I was out of town almost the whole mid-year break, as soon as I got back here (to work) I noticed a couple of things. 1. There is a pair of twins in level two (yr eight). These kinds of things can be easily missed across a group of 450 - I leave one classroom, head to another, look at someone and think didn’t I just teach you? I’d like to get a photo with them just for the symbolism value.

There’s also a couple of sisters one year in age apart. There’s probably plenty but for some reason, for five months, I completely missed the striking facial resemblance between these two. The one in yr 7 is rather tall - same height as me — and once waved her fist around threatening to clobber me if I didn’t remember her name. I still don’t know her name, I must have some kind of fear-induced mindblock. The elder is not abnormally tall, but most certainly has a shot-putter’s build. Nice pair of girls but I wouldn’t want to be around when the sibling feudin’ starts up.

It’s a gradual thing but when set against fixed time points, I can see metamorphosis. One level 2 class has started behaving like level 3 i.e. good and one level 1 class has is behaving like a level 2 i.e. bad.

My close personal friends, TZU have just put out a new album called Smiling at strangers. Good for them. I smile at strangers all the time. I like it. But usually when a stranger smiles at me I assume they are mad.

Yesterday we went up and over to Incheon, where the airport is. There’s 2.5 mil people there but it sure didn’t look like it — maybe you can’t see that part from the trainline. Being near the sea, seafood is all the go and women stand out on the street and shill for their shops. One of them eventually won. My dad would’ve been impressed at all the disgusting-tasting crustaceans I wuz wolfing down.

“happy with prawn”

There’s a ferry that heads to the island that’s got the airport on. We took it but to me it just looked like every other place really. Plus the weather was like the apocalypse was nigh.

Then today we went to the local pool/spa/sauna place and cor blimey bugger me if that wasn’t bulk fun too. Unfortunately no pix because the camera’s not waterproof. I don’t know what crack’s like but it probably feels a lot like this.

There were fragments in the years before, but for the real, I became aware of popular music in Grade 5. This was like the neandertahal who’d come upon fire but didn’t know what to do with it yet.
In my case I’d come across a slab of busted down hi-fi; record player on the top, AM/FM radio on the front. I had a mild facination with how the mechanical arm would jerkishly move around when commanded. There were a few 45s with it, the only ones I can remember are JJ Geils Band - Centerfold and ’shuaddup your face’ - by Joe Dolce. The beginning of Australian multiculturalism!

Radio it could pick up, way down there in deepest, darkest cargo-cultsville was 3YB - warrnambool - AM. I remember there being some ‘thought for the day’ voice. And American Top 40 with Casey Kasem, but at that stage I could barely understand the words he was saying.

The next year we moved to Geelong and on the levels of fashion, culture and customs it was like being sling-shot 10 years into the future.
It was mid-summer, 1985 and I was sharing a smaller, better lit room with my brother. The walls were white-painted brick and the floor was covered with a dense wool carpet. The hi-fi was set up under the bunk bed. I turned it on, rolled the large, balanced silver knob clockwise and got my first taste of Frequency Modulation. A red light next to it, labelled ’stereo’ lit up and stayed lit.
It was like finally hearing with both ears.

It was mid-unctum, 9999 et e wuk shuudock morler pasta ffritum mit uh nudda. Halls & Hoates ahh H-ain’td orr ternedon. ROLL, ROLL.
Roll. Ball bearings, chimes, chrome balls with bells in and fire engines. Metal prongs ofa finger      harp. Guts of a wind up clock. alloy n copper green
Labella
Mirabellus
vaudnum
vordis acrium enella

“We Hold Something You Are Looking For”

The first station I came across was EON FM. For 6 months I thought ‘eon’ was short for ‘fox’ - I’d heard of a thing called fox fm and thought that was what I was listening to.
I can recall what the news hour theme music sounded like and thought it strange.

No trax are in my mind as consciously being from that time, but when I come across them, I know. I intend to put a tape together of songs from roughly that time, which excludes songs that’ve already been discovered or were never forgotten to begin with. I’M ONLY interested in the ones that haven’t continued to morph under the strain of inevitable life-experiences that continue to drag through — no matter how hard I might try to avoid them.

Tears for fears - shout, head over heals, everybody wants to rule the world, madworld,

simple minds - don’t you forget about me
big country - it’s a big country … ?

Book about the Simpsons - academic style.

if you know me and got an email from me saying I want to share photos, please ignore it.
I got tricked into some nonsense because it’s morning and I was only halfway through my coffee.

I found that someone was hotlinking to a picture of old people singing that I was hosting on this site. I swtched it for a picture of a big black member. That was the 2nd biggest kick I got this week.

My short term goals have changed to
# singing Purple Rain at a noeraebang (and singing well)
# getting a chinook and making it my personal vehicle it would take me all over and come and get me anywhere I am by dropping a line down.

Dark Network stuck up some unreleased tracks for d/load. They’re from ‘97, were critically acclaimed, and apparently DN haven’t done anything of note since.
Although that one on frequencies will be remixed was okay.

Is it really okay to wash your sneakers in the washing machine? I seem to recall seeing it done by others who’re more knowledgeable about such things.
Now I have the equipment and the choice, it does not seem proper.

device pictured may not be a washing machine

Last year if you’d told me that LG make washing machines I would have laughed at you Hahah and told you that you were a fool. But the do and they are not white as whitegoods traditionally are.
The first place I stayed at that had one reminded me a lot of Brian Eno.
I have the same model here at home but it’s more renditious of Front Line Assembly.

The news was that I got a new laptop - I’ll save saying anything about it til I’ve given it a good spin, save that a) having trouble getting the Linux to connect to the internet and b) I got a Sony specifically to subtly erk my co-workers who have patriotic delusions that if they buy a samsung or LG/IBM mixo, it benefits the nation. And therefore, buying a sony directly benefits the electronic ‘opposition’. They’re actually given laptops — most are LG but some of the newer are fujitsu, which doesn’t make sense because that japanese.

Corporal punishment is something that is still top of the pops here. There was a couple of situations that I saw happen earlier in the year that were so severe that it went into the too-hard basket. I didn’t want to write about it here because I couldn’t decide if it was my cultural supremacy kicking in and saying — I am better than them because I don’t think that’s right.
They turned out to be isolated incidents, and all other whacking or pinching I’ve seen since then has been of a much more compassionate variety.

In fact I’ve turned right around on it.
One of the women teachers, surnamed ‘Oh’, in the smaller staffroom here has something of a hankering for discipline. Most afternoons she pulls in two or three grade 3 girls, that is - year nines, that is 16y.o.s - that is 15y.o.s. She makes them face the wall — and hold on to it, then she whacks them on the bare shins or bum with a cane. They go, “Oh!” in slight pain - but mostly surprise.

My digikamera has a motion-pic function. There is places on the net that’d pay money for that kind of footage. I really should take the initiative a bit more.

Sep 7, 2005 8:35 PM
In transit
SUWON-SI KR

7:13 PM
Int’l shipment release
INCHEON KR

The inside of my head is excited and is making that Daffy Duck hoo-hoo-hoo! noise. Man it seems like every delay that could possibly come up between me and this thing that’s coming for me - has come up. But it looks like finally tomorrow I will be getting it.

I just got an email from my financial guru and spiritual advisor, Froggy. He says it’s the first email he’s ever writ. It’s in one monolith and has that Neal Cassidy screwed up spelling and stream of consciousness style.

I may have 900 students but I know them all and today I realised one of them was missing. The girl who could’ve gone to new yourk and played bass in a punk rock band because she had such understated-RAD hair and glasses frames, aka 2321. She moved to Incheon.

The other day two girls came up to me and started beat-boxing. Now when I get them up to read I get them to tack a bit of boom-shi-boom-boom-chi on the end.

If I was in Melbourne this Friday I’d probably be getting along to this.

I would hope that most folks reading would straight-out agree that moving to nuclear power in australia at this stage of the game is a really dumb idea.

Personally, when I visited the Nuc. power plants in Ulchin here in this country I was struck with how they sat right there on the coast and how it looked like it’d be easy for someone to fly a plane along the sea then blast away at those things.
They might have procedures for shutdown if things go a bit wrong, but that won’t work if half the place is turned to paste. There might be people watching for planes — but what if they say they’re filming a movie? What if Larry Ellison decides to go insane? He has a jet fighter.

A lot of people in this country really, really really take pride in their jobs. Like the welcoming guy at E-Mart, when he bows he looks like he’s really getting a kick out of it. For the people working in the power plants it’s doubled because of the hot compitition with Japan for Most Efficient Reactor of the Year Award.

Nuclear power combined with australian slackerism doesn’t particularly thrill me. If the world starts growing reactors again it’s just a matter of time before something nasty happens.

There is something coming for me. It’s really exciting - it’s coming via FedEx. This is all new to me, but you can go to their website and punch in a tracking code and find out where the parcel is.

Aug 30, 2005 10:21 PM
Left origin
MARIETTA, GA

10:05 AM
In transit
MEMPHIS, TN

Aug 31, 2005 10:15 PM
Departed FedEx location
MEMPHIS, TN

8:08 AM
Arrived at FedEx location
ANCHORAGE, AK

Sep 1, 2005 12:24 PM
Departed FedEx location
ANCHORAGE, AK

INCHEON KR
Package available for clearance

So, wow - it’s been to good old Memphis, home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks, then temporarily anchored down in Anchorage, Alaska — and now it’s stuck at customs at Incheon. As far as I know, no one’s written any songs about Incheon.
I don’t know if FedEx is a good company or not, but I am obsessed with the arrow in its logo. I visit the website just to look at the logo.

More things should be trackable like this. I would sign a thing at the supermarket saying I will buy a bottle of milk next Friday, so they could put a virtual label ‘for yak sox’ on a bottle.
Sept 5, 2005 6:46 AM
(Grass) In Transit
Cow’s 3rd Stomach

and so on and so on — such n such — departed cow .. arrived homogenising vat such n such …

We didn’t feed animals at the zoo or then later see a movie too, but yesterday was the Perfect Day - the one that I spent with my new bestest friend, Jin.
At one point we were walking along, holding hands, talking — and the street is busy busy as always and there’s this older guy standing to the side who smiles and says to me, “How’s it going mate, alright?” with the kind of voice/accent and look that he could’ve come straight out of the Collingwood cheersquad stand.
Because of the crowds and everything it was the kind of situation where, by the time I had turned around to take a second look he was gone.

Anyway, for some crazy reason I told Jin about this site, and unlike pretty much every other flesh and blood individual who I feel comfortable enough to tell, she actually reads it, (Hi!) and went so far as to check out all the links down the leftside. She asked me about the banana-phone Flash animation. I know, I know, in hindsight it’s not that great. I think the say the F-word too much - to a point where it’s a script weakness.