How I Spend My Day

Suprise!

No Dan Kelly moment, then, and Labour got in and, more importantly, John Howard has gone. Huzzah!

I spent the weekend getting sozzled with Nick, playing a very good and very nerdy boardgame with David and Andrew and then attending a housewarming. Well, it was billed as a housewarming but when we arrived there was a banner announcing "Welcome to Niki and Ryan's Suprise Wedding!". You can imagine my reaction - "They went to a banner maker who can't spell surprise".

Anyway, it was an unexpected treat, the kids charmed one and all, and I've never seen so many flip-flops at a wedding. Why do I always end up boozing with the father of the groom?

Drunk on Election Night

Australian federal elections tomorrrow, so hopefully a chance to kick out Howard after 11 long years. It looks like it could be a landslide, a real Blair 1997 moment (we won't dwell on how that turned out).

On the other hand, we could get this:

What the fundies really care about

(Seen on the ace Pharyngula)

So there's this thing called Conservapedia, a Christian fundamentalist response to the leftie, liberal, science-infected Wikipedia. I suppose the idea is that readers can go and find out their own strange version of "the truth" unhindered by such godless phenomena as evidence and, you know, reality.

Any guesses as to what Conservapedia's users choose to spend their time reading about? Bible stories, maybe? Applying moral values to everyday life?

Erm, nope:

Look out below

Beth as a cat
Originally uploaded by Tom Goodfellow

A few more photos over at Flickr - cute.

We had a better weekend than I had anticipated, actually. Our mate Kylie and her daughter Trinity were staying with us so Beth had a playmate. Saturday happened to be Trinity's third birthday, so we had a fun party that included face painting, as you can see.

The most startling moment was when M and a friend were sitting in the shade under a tree, each breastfeeding their children. Suddenly the friend gasped and we say that a crow had shat on her baby in mid-feed. The poor wee thing had lime on his cheek and even in his ear, though he seemed blissfully unconcerned by the incident.

On Sunday we went to a fair with Mark, Tanya and Ollie. More face painting ensued. Most pleasant.

Oh, and M has virtually completed her thesis. Yay! I get my wife back (and my computer).

And if all that is not heartwarming enough, go watch a brilliant doco about Christian fundies being routed by right-thinking people in, Dover, Pennsylvania. Featuring Eugenie Scott, one of my new favourite people. My browser has gone mental, so here's the full link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html

Uploaded

I've just added a bunch more photos over at the Flickr site. Beth dominates - she is very photogenic at the moment - but Barnaby has the chance to shine too. And their Mum's pretty gorgeous and all...

Not Finding Nemo

I notice that Michael Haneke has remade his 1997 Austrian movie Funny Games as an English language film, although otherwise the film appears to be virtually identical. I saw the original recently, and it is both utterly amazing and something I really couldn't recommend to anybody.

I have never seen a film so ruthless with both its characters and its audience. Even though there is barely any violence shown on screen, I spent the entire time chewing my own forearm and gibbering quietly behind a cushion. By the end, the audience has been forced into complicity with the awful events on-screen and one is left feeling terrified, queasy and strangely guilty.

Like I say, I really liked it.

Book Fair

M is still stranded deep inside the labyrinth that is her Masters thesis, so I have been unable to wrest her from the pooter and upload any photos. Sorry.

Rest assured that the kids are cuter than ever. I am spending a lot of time with B1 so that M can concentrate on her work. This weekend I took her to a local second hand book fair. There were several long tables covered in books so I set up a box for my picks and deputised B1 into the position of book carrier. I would select a purchase, pass it to my assistant, and she would carry it to the box and stack it neatly. It's just the sort of activity she is into at the moment, so we were both in our own respective happy places. She charmed the ladies of the Rotary Club and I got a box of 30-odd books for $10. Sorted.

Meanwhile, B2 is at the expressive stage. We were able to do webchats with both my mum and my sister on Monday morning, so they could admire his facial expressions. We're off to blighty to see them in a month - woohoo!

Fame at last!

Ooh, I just got a mention on the Observer's film podcast - touched by the hand of Jason Solomons, swoon! I came second in a film competition and they read out some of my comments about one of my favourite films: Rififi.

Listen to the podcast here - my bit is read out a couple of minutes from the end.

Other Holiday

We're now gearing up for our Big Trip in December/January. Briefly, we're flying to the UK (with an overnight stop in Japan) on December 12th and hanging around like a bad smell until about Jan 28th.

As is traditional, we're getting hopelessly booked up weeks before we actually get there: trips to see family, a week in Portugal, New Year in Bakewell (no, really), a few days at a Centerparcs holiday-in-a-bubble place, Arsenal v Birmingham, McKellen does Lear, Jennings does Noel Coward and so on and so on.

I'm both exhausted and excited just thinking about it. Bring it on!

Holiday

Well, our wedding anniversary trip to the Hunter Valley was just fabulous. The lodge was to be found along a long, slightly scary road and perched atop a big ridge. When we arrived we were enshrouded in mist, but when we awoke on Saturday the glorious view over the valley became apparent. once I get my arse in gear, i'll post some photos over at Flickr.

The best thing about the place, though, was the community of wallabies and kangaroos that lived there. B1 wanted to go out and see them all the time and got very excited whenever we did ("Hello kangaroos!"). We particularly liked the mothers with their baby's heads poking out of their pouches ("Hello Joeys!").

The restaurant was good, the wine was good, the cheese was good. Going again sometime, I reckon.