teething

I have one wisdom tooth that's bustin' on through in a really painful manner... went to the doc last night and he was rather blase about the whole thing. Apparently my tooth isn't some kind of rabid alien spawn trying to force its way into my brain through the back of my jaw, it's a normal, albeit kinda giant, human tooth growing upwards in my mouth the way nature divined. Which would be cause for great comfort if it wasn't making me so damned uncomfortable.

Something exciting and adventurous may well be happening at work... shhhhh for now. But it's making me bounce (silently) all over the room like a puppy that swallowed a fairy on meth.

Working on the poker doco this weekend, which is another cause of my bounce-owch my jaw!-bounce refrain. I've never really been a poker player, but B, the director and all-round champion of the project, has been putting me through Hold 'em 101 in the last few weeks. The game is fun but what appeals to me the most is the way the old gamblers speak about their profession. There's an old-world gentleman's code of war about the way they strategise, play and make deals, and a hypnotic romanticism to the way they talk about risk and loss. Daddy, when I grow up I wanna marry a hustler.

sweet child o mine

Yes, this is my new bambino.

totally... in... love.

Should

work some

alas

there are too many interesting things to see

Kino #13 was rock and we were all remarkably well behaved at the pub afterwards, in that no one got jacked off under a table this time- or maybe people are just getting subtler about it.

I accepted a challenge film for the first time. A challenge film is where the audience or the hat chooses your topic for your next film. The hat handed down my fate in the form of a white strip of paper with "FOREIGN FILM" written on it. I've scraped together the bones of a script from my sickbed today.



Kino #13, from the POV of the fan. Will be a bit strange not going to the chalkhorse any more.

winemouse

Maybe i should try the baby mouse thing next time the lover tries to leave.

I never thought i'd hear pete doherty say wiggedy wibble, but there you go.

Bonde

I can't fucking wait for these guys to hit sydney on the 6th... then come together festival on the 7th and 8th. Trying to bug Kaitlyn to come with me to BdR. Henceforth known as the Queen's Wild Weekend

Spoiler

I went down to my grandma's on the weekend with my brother, which gave me the chance to finish off the book I'd been trying to read for six weeks but had been interrupted by my involvement in the local Witch of Portobello Experiment (our team did Heron's Story. I'll post the youtube clip for the entry I worked on when it's up online) and throwing together two films for Kino Sydney, Cut Off, directed by me, and Mine Demons, Mine Own, the Surgical Sideshow collaboration directed by Victoria.

Anyway, the book I'd been trying to read was Karoo by Steve Tesich. Generally, it's an entertaining story, but it started off so masterfully that I thought I was reading some kind of new american classic. Then the ending died in a hole in a way that you can't help comparing to James Joyce and finding rather sparse and angsty in comparison. It's such a shame because most of the book was really enjoyable, then Tesich goes and ruins it. I spent about two hours cursing him for coming up with such an indulgent wank of an ending.

Still, you should read it. At the very least, so that I have someone to commiserate with.

Corrupt Hieroglyphics

So I stayed up until 3am making the call sheet a work of organisational art.

Then I find out this morning that the fucking 90 day trial on my flatmate's laptop only sent corrupt hieroglyphics to everyone and I have to try to do the whole thing today in my lunch hour. I know I've been a fragile sooky la la this week, but that was just a cruel twist, Computer Jesus.

On the upside, this is all in aid of the rather enormous amount of fun we'll be having making a delectably demented short film piece with whacked performance artists Surgical Sideshow tonight. At midnight no less, coz that's apparently how the sideshow freaks roll.

Surgical Sideshow are like a nightmarish silent children's pantomime show, where the oversized demons like to perform random acts of surgery and sometimes eat foam entrails. Pretty jazzed to be working with them. And of course my Punk-Monk Propaganda production tribe.

Songs Not To Be Misconstrued

The lover made this 2-CD mixtape for me approximately the third time we broke up last year... actually, he threw it together before that, but then left the CDs in the Mcdonald's paper take-away bag that he packed the rest of my possessions in. It was called Songs Not To Be Misconstrued because some of them were love songs and he didn't want me to get the impression that he felt that way about me. It's this definitional disease that he has.

I haven't listened to it all the way through in a while but that's what I'm doing today.

Work is still shit and it's not made any better by the fact that all my friends have left or are leaving.

This is one of the best songs off the mixtape. The alcoholic couple in his songs are pretty reflective of the way we work, generally, but this is one of the sweeter choons.

Emergency

Sometimes, you're sitting at work, hating the unbeautiful meniality of some task but simultaneously enjoying re-listening to the diablo cody/ john cusak myspace artist-on-artist. Then you hear the south-pacific accented Voice of God come over the PA and warn you that the next annoying interruption to the day he just interrupted is going to be the emergency test sirens. Which then blare, despite the total lack of emergency.

As you sit there with the unheard dulcet tones of john cusack warming your earphones pointlessly under the blown-out hypersiren, you realise that maybe the universe was trying to tell you that the real emergency was the long silence that you'd maintained online since about 2004 when the most interesting thing you had to say was 'i'm so glad i'm not pregnant... again'.

And then just as you're feeling like maybe you achieved something today by having a virtual brain-vomit, the Voice of God announces that the emergency test is over, a good ten minutes after it actually was over.

I've never heard one of the security guys at the front desk actually use that accent anyway. I'm pretty sure one of them is an unemployed voice over artist who likes to spread his wings by making my ears bleed once every couple of weeks.