“Between the wish and the thing, life lies waiting.”

Andrew Denton’s interview with Deborra-Lee Furness (actor, director and wife of Aussie heartthrob Hugh Jackman) on Monday night impressed me. She came across as humble, genuine and at least just a little bit wise.

Which is unusual for acting types.

The quote, which comes from Furness’s short film Standing Room Only, could be a metaphor for my crazy life just now.

I’ve been going through a quiet period on the blogging front for a while now. I’m not sure why — I don’t feel especially uninspired and I’m reading and doing lots of fun things, many of which I would normally choose to share with the world on here.

Maybe that’s the problem — having too much fun?

No, that doesn’t feel like it either.

Well, please accept this as my mea culpa for the lack of content over the last few weeks. I’ll try to post at least once a day for the coming week, and I’ll work through a backlog of ideas and thoughts as I go.

Buggery.org is one year and one day old today.

The site launched on 19 March 2003 — the same day the war started (coincidentally … not). In the year since, 72,421 visitors have dropped by, and my server has pumped out almost 11 billion bytes of data, or 87,117,340,672 binary ones and zeros.

Happy birthday to … it.

I spent an enjoyable few hours today writing a “now playing” script in PHP. On the left side of the page, under all those nutty buttons, there’s now a list of the last six songs I listened to. Apologies in advance for my complete lack of musical sophistication.

The way it works is fairly neat, and similar to the way the blogroll over there is updated. When I play a song in WinAmp, a plugin sends the song details to Audioscrobbler.com, an open-source service which promises to introduce me to new music I might like one day, by allowing me to view the playlists of other musical insophisticates with similar tastes to my own. When you load this page, my web server then grabs an XML file from Audioscrobbler and formats the output as you see here. It’s all sweetly automatical, transparent and zero-maintenance … which is nice.

For no reason in particular, here’s a photograph of my office:

My office

Or, as I like to call it, a photograph of a desk, a computer, two chairs, a sofa, two labrador retrievers, a window, a tree, some rain, a whiteboard, a thesaurus (open at the letter “D”), a dictionary, a medical dictionary, a Merck Manual, a “John Hunt is a Coward” coffee mug, a mobile telephone, a framed photograph of the man I love, a box of files, a pile of old train tickets, several items of stationery, a yellow legal pad with all my secrets written on it, an item of East German communist propaganda, a front cover of the May 1977 Nation Review showing John Howard with the words “This Man Rapes Housewives”, an Adbusters postcard, an “AZT=DEATH” button, a first communion photo, a rack of uniform shirts, and an empty yoghurt container.

It ain’t much, but it’s home. And work.

SES training last night … week three and I’m happy to report that the training is moving, gradually, from the general to the specific. Last night was pretty engaging and interesting.

We learned about the principles of emergency management, the difference between an “incident” and an “emergency” (essentially, an emergency is bigger, but you could’ve guessed that) and we were introduced to the State Disaster Plan (known, military style, as “DISPLAN”) and its many sub-plans (“Animal Health Emergency”, “Hawkesbury-Nepean Flood Emergency”, “Bad Hair Day Emergency” and so on).

It’s comforting to know, in these difficult times, that the emergency services are ready to respond should things go pear-shaped.

Certainly it’s more comforting than the picture painted by our elected leaders, who (Foreign Minister Lex Loser, on the front page of today’s paper) want us to believe there’s a “Terror army on the rise” in Indonesia, hell-bent on destruction, mayhem and other distinctly un-Australian activities.

Downer reckons that Jemaah Islamiah, the Indonesian Muslim group widely blamed for the Bali bombing, could have as many as 5000 members. Scary stuff, although it’s worth pointing out that the population of Indonesia is about 201 million, making JI’s recruitment efforts (0.002% of the population) look a little pale in the scheme of things.

But let’s not get too caught up in the numbers. Yes, there are terrorists in the world, and we should deplore their tactics, do what we reasonably can to prevent them and — here’s a radical suggestion — maybe think about understanding their motivation and ameliorating their distaste for us, rather than using them for cynical short-term political goals.

“Three to five thousand people can do a lot of damage if they get their hands on TNT. Let us not be complacent about it.”

Yeah, right, and “Let us not be complacent” about politicans who will think nothing of stirring up hatred and division to protect their own sorry arses.

This is going to be a tough year. A desperate Prime Minister and his cronies, behind in the polls and with unquestioned form on playing the race card, using the wedge and caring nothing for the consequences, in an election year.

Yeah, I know, more than a week without posting anything. Here’s an update:

Mardi Gras (the parade) was a washout which we sensibly skipped. All due respect to those who suffered through it. I was in the really wet parade (’91, was it?) and didn’t want to get pneumonia again so we stayed safe and warm inside.

Mardi Gras (the party) was surprisingly good — music variable but not all bad, good company, nice friendly vibe. After party was especially enjoyable — well done to all who participated in that exercise.

Highlight of that weekend was seeing several old mates visiting from the UK. Lunch with Michael C. was lovely but reignited my sadness that he lives on the opposite side of the planet to me. The delightful Tom L. brought his also-delightful boyf for us all to marvel at. Tom combines sweetness and sexiness in the exact right proportions; it’s always a delight to be in his company.

The week after MG was taken up with recovering (it takes longer and longer as you get older, who knew?) and getting my magazine to press (finally on-street this week; it’s a cracking good read too). In the old days, the week after MG was always tinged with a bit of sadness as the tourists fled to warmer climes and the long dark winter loomed ahead. I feel a bit that way now, which I guess explains my lack of output.

Still no word from immigration: Brent and I are resigned to the wait but tired, so tired, of waiting.

www.kingstroker.com (commercial site, not safe for werk)

Don Watson, former speechwriter to Prime Minister Keating (how we miss him!) and writer of some note, in today’s Herald:

We may soon expect to hear it at weddings and funerals – George had a good life on an outcomes basis. Every day in government departments throughout the nation countless sentences are built around “outcome”. The same happens in the big corporations. Government departments learnt “outcomes” from business, and small companies and little local government agencies, and quite possibly bridge clubs and church auxiliaries are committing themselves to “outcomes” – “going forwards”. Poor fools. I’m told among the really cutting edge these days “outcomes” have been superseded by “outputs”.
…
The words – “value”, “strategic”, “quality”, “commitment” and “outcome” – are almost to modern management what “proletarian”, “glorious”, “revolution” and “marching forward” were to copywriting in the old communist states.

Well, my trip to Sydney was a bit of a bust — after 2½ hours on the train, I arrived at Uni to find a picket line between me and my classroom. The university staff are on strike and all classes cancelled. I’m no scab so I didn’t cross the picket, just wished them well and went on my way.

Bumbed around Sydney for a few hours, went to the library, browsed a bookshop, got back on the train and came home. Basically a wasted day. These things happen.

Our landlords have decided they want their house back when our lease expires in July. This is less than pleasing news, as we really like this house, but hey, it’s their house. At least we have five months to get used to the idea of moving, which is more than most people get.

It’s early, but the sun is up and so am I.

Back to Sydney and to University this morning for the glam-sounding “Professional Practice and Culture”. When I return home this afternoon I expect to be professional, practiced and just a little bit cultured. And probably dog tired, what with the three-hour commute on the front and back ends of that class.

I’m thinking I need to get a laptop so at least I can write on the train, should the muse grab me by the testicles, which she has been known to do at the least convenient of moments.

The weekend has passed without incident. Our new sofa was delivered on Saturday, so we’ve been lounging a lot. The sofa is big enough to seat about nine people in comfort so there have been many lounging configurations experimented with in this house over the last twio days.

Still no word from the MRT. Could be this week. That’s what I said last week.

Our other project partially completed over the wekend was the invitations for our wedding … it’s been a challenge to find the appropriate balance between appropriate gravity (I am getting married) and cheeky subversion (I am getting married).