Author: Purple Wyrm

And so into our third day running of choking smokey haze. It’s worse today than it was on Wednesday, even though the fire is supposed to be under control. I’ve decided that ‘under control’ is a fire service euphemism for ‘not likely to burn anything important’. If I never smell smoke again in my entire life I shall die a happy man.

Apparently it’s the worst fire the state has seen in 45 years, and has burnt out over 25,000 hectares. Under my proposed sentencing scheme (outlined yesterday) this would mean the arsonist would spend at least 12,500 years in jail. I maintain that this is a perfectly reasonable and appropriate penalty.

I’ve just had a quick look around for webcams to show just how bad conditions are, but every one I can find seems to be stalled at about 5:00am. I suspect that this is a conspiracy by the Tourist Bureau to prevent foreigners from cancelling bookings when they see nothing but a wall of hazy brown.

I’ve got a dentist’s appointment today. How about that then?

For the second day running the city is choking under an all pervading cloud of smoke from a massive fire in the hills. Visibility is down to about a two kilometres (and hazy), people with heart and lung conditions are being advised to stay indoors, and everywhere you go reeks of burning. The fire is ‘under control’ now, so hopefully it won’t be as bad today as it was yesterday when we couldn’t even see the city from our office window*The city consisting of skyscrapers about 1.5km away – when you can’t see something like that you know conditions are bad and sunlight was reduced to baleful dull orange. I’ve never suffered from asthma in my life , but yesterday I had trouble getting enough air – just walking from the bus-stop to the office left me feeling dizzy and out of breath.

The government’s put up a $100,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the arsonist responsible for starting the blaze – not nearly enough if you ask me.

I’m not sure what kind of penalties the guy (and let’s face it, it’s almost certainly a guy) will get if he’s caught, but I’ve been thinking about it and reckon they should institute a standard scale of penalties for arsonists based on the damage done. One year’s imprisonment for every $1000 worth of damage, with bushland being valued at a standard rate of $500 per hectare. So if a deliberately lit fire burns out 50 hectares of bush, destroys two cattle sheds worth $8000 each and damages someone’s house to a value of $50,000, they’ll be looking at 91 years in jail without parole – which seems fair enough to me.

In this climate fire is not something to play around with.

This is just a quick update to explain that I am actually still alive. It’s just that the process of buying a flat (I mentioned I have to find somewhere new to live a while ago didn’t I?) is really taking it out of me. I’m spending most of my time dealing with real estate agents and banks and stuff, and the rest curled up in the corner with a blanket over my head hyperventilating. Well OK, it’s not quite that bad, but it’s still really stressing me out, and things like weblog entries (and emailing people I’m ashamed to say) have been falling through the cracks 🙁

But I’ve found a place now and convinced the owner to sell it to me for $103,000, which is pretty good for a two bedroom apartment. I’ll probably be moving towards the end of the month – great, more stress to look forwards to.

In the meantime what else has been up? Well the tsunamis of course. I’m not going to say anything about those because it’s all just too horrible to think about. Well I won’t say anything about those except that after having their friends, family, houses and entire towns washed away the last thing the survivors need is bloody Ray Martin sticking a microphone in their faces. Channel 9 seem to be treating the entire disaster as a ratings bonanza, they’re continually crowing about all their journalists in the disaster zones and putting on specials like ‘Tsunami – One Week Later’. Bastards.

Um, let’s see, Christmas was good, even if I only got one thing off my list ;-). I’ve been working on a major update of the Zurvár section of my website – I sent a preview version to Helen but haven’t heard anything, so it’s probably way over the top :D. Carnivàle is every bit as good as I thought it would be when I first saw the posters for it in the London Underground, although the ABC is playing two episodes at a time strung together, which makes the narrative seem a bit disjointed at times. Joan of Arcadia seems harmless enough in a slightly sacharine way. I wouldn’t rush home to see it, but if there’s nothing else on (and at the moment there isn’t) it’s resonable enough for an hour. The viewing experience can be greatly enhanced by mentally replacing Joan’s dad with Fat Tony*You know, from The Simpsons? If that seems like a strange thing to suggest I should point out that the actor who plays Joan’s dad is the guy who voices Fat Tony, all clear now?. And they’ve finally put Gilmore Girls back on which (embarrasing as it is) is making my life a lot more bearable. Hmmm, maybe I should forget that $103,000 apartment and move to Stars Hollow instead 😉

So, we’ll see what happens next then hey?

The local kookuburras woke me up at 4:30 this morning. I don’t know what they were laughing at, apart from maybe the thought of getting the entire building out of bed at such an unholy hour, evil minded beasts.

(Yes, technically they’re birds, but at 4:30am who’s counting?)

Christmas is almost upon us once again, which means that the networks have started their yearly ritual of hurling “Season’s Greetings” adds at us at every hour of the day and night. The majority of these seem to feature a bunch of primary school children (arranged in a suitably ‘Christmasy’ environment of snowflakes, reindeer, angels, candles and occasionaly polar bears) cheerfully belting out some Christmas standard, with a voice over at the end saying that the network wishes us a ‘Happy and Safe Christmas and New Year’, or (in the case of the more politically sensitive stations) ‘Holiday Season’.

If this is as far as it went it wouldn’t be so bad, but – for some ungodly reason known only to those unsavoury individuals that call themselves ‘Station Execs’ – the scope of these adds isn’t limited to the primary school population. Inevitably a number of them will be made featuring ‘pre-primary’ (that is, kindergarten) children. And this is something that no reasonable individual wishing to retain their sanity could ever condone.

The thing is that three and four year old children have no sense of tune. Neither do they have a sense of metre, pitch, timbre, or any kind of vocal control. So what you end up with when you get a bunch of them together to ‘sing’ a Christmas carol is a cacophony the likes of which hasn’t been heard since the outlawing of bear-baiting.

They don’t sing. They shriek. They shriek the words – or something vaguely akin to them – at the top of their miniature lungs in a confused, high pitched warble that comes dangerously close to shattering glass. And rather than alter the pitch up or down as the tune requires they alter the volume up and down instead, and the chorus and first few words of every line are yelled for emphasis. The end result is the kind of noise that could be used to torture rats, and yet it’s put onto our TV screens every night as some kind of expression of ‘The Christmas Spirit’.

Apparently this is because the children are considered ‘cute’.

I’m sorry network programmers, but they’re not ‘cute’ – they’re very very annoying!

Hrumph!

OK another brief entry because Rebecca said if I didn’t get a gift list up she was going to buy me almonds for Christmas. So here we go, suitable gift suggestions for anyone who cares to take notice of them…

CDs For the less musically inclined they are listed Album then Artist

• The Dresden Dolls – The Dresden Dolls
• The Spine – They Might be Giants
• Destroy Rock and Roll – Milo
• I’m already Home – Waikiki
• Fingerprints – Powderfinger
• We Shall all be Healed – The Mountain Goats
• Room on Fire – The Strokes

DVDs

• Back to the Future Trilogy
• Indiana Jones Trilogy

Books (Hmmm, they’re all by Terry Pratchett, how about that?)

• The Science of Discworld II: The Globe
• Equal Rites
• Feet of Clay
• Moving Pictures
• Pyramids
• Small Gods
• Soul Music
• Sourcery
• Wyrd Sisters

Trade Paperbacks (They’re like books, but you get them in comic shops. A Geek? Me?)

• Hellboy – Weird Tales Volume 2
• B.P.R.D. Hollow Earth and Others
• B.P.R.D. The Soul of Venice and Others
• B.P.R.D. A Plague of Frogs

There, that should do 🙂