Thursday morning vignette

There are certain phrases that one may use in conversation with one’s wife without wishing to hear the same phrase repeated by a two year old immediately thereafter.

Today’s example:

“No pants, though”.

I suspect this is not the last time that something like that will happen.

Updates as they occur.

Packet in

Hey ho, another day of employment at the local branch of Wolfram & Hart* is complete.

My office is a strange place at the best of times. Today’s odd discovery relates to the sugar packets in the tea room. The fact that I noticed this may give you some idea of how much coffee I have been drinking lately. Whatever.

For reasons best known to my employer, we buy our sugar in individual packets with little proverbs on them, something which I have previous only seen during far too many nights spent staying at the Fountain Motel.

The odd thing about the sugar packets is that the only three proverbs I found today all seemed a little pointed. The available words of wisdom were:
Speech is great but silence is greater
The unspoken word never does harm
The temple of our purest thoughts is silence.

I had many more than three cups of coffee, but this was all I could find. It is a mark of the respect I generally expect, and receive, at work that even the sugar packets are now telling me to shut up.

Why are they doing this? Does this sugar company get a lot of complaints? Are they sick of angry phone calls from dentists? Is the sugar packaged by CSR and they’re still annoyed about that ‘sugar refining company won’t save me’ line in Blue Sky Mining?

I will have to leave you to ponder this ridiculous half baked excuse for a post most intriguing of mysteries as it is nearly midnight and I have to finish writing a 4000 word job application and ensure it is received by my future employers by Friday.

Wish me luck.





* Every law firm in the world is, on some metaphysical level, a branch of Wolfram & Hart

Early morning ramblings

It’s 5.40am and I am writing this during the brief window of opportunity between Cherub finally, finally, going to sleep (Honey Bear, bless her, has been up most of the night and it is well and truly her turn to get some rest) and the inevitable early morning waking of the Bundle, which on recent form will be no later than 6.30.

The past week at work has been, even by the lofty standards set by this job, one of the most frustrating, tedious, energy draining pointless exercises I have ever had the misfortune to experience. Admittedly, they did pay me to turn up and my boss had a networking lunch with a local business on Thursday, so whilst I didn’t get a free lunch exactly there was some wonderfully nice cheese left over. This helped get me through the afternoon.

After the past few nights of more broken that usual sleep, I am so tired that I can barely remember what my own name is. I wake up panicking, wondering if I really am Craig and this whole thing has been a lie. It’s seriously concerning.

The point of this post is that I am actually feeling remarkable happy so I thought I would try to figure out why. Here are a few possibilities:

1. I got a haircut yesterday, which means I no longer look like I have some sort of hamster living where my hair would usually be (you will notice I cleverly avoided revealing my awful haircut in my profile photo by wearing a hat).

2. For reasons that sometimes escape me, it appears that people actually read this blog. I’m not sure how many, but even the number of regular visitors here is in single figures, I’m just excited that anybody has read more than one of my posts.

3. These early starts on weekends are great. By 9.30am yesterday, Bundle and I had already spent three most enjoyable hours building train tracks out of those little wooden pieces you get from Ikea, racing each other around the loungeroom, reading stories together, dancing, drinking good coffee (or, in his case, water in a coffee cup) and playing kick to kick up and down the hallway.

4. Dinner last night was veal scaloppini accompanied by a cheap but surprisingly good bottle of chardonnay. I love being able to cook.

5. It’s Sunday. I spent a wonderful day with my wife and two beautiful boys yesterday and I get to do it again today. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Where to take children in Melbourne: Part Two

Want to pat some animals? Don’t live particularly close to Collingwood Children’s Farm? Chesterfield Farm on Ferntree Gully Road in Scoresby may be the place for you.

Children under 3 get in free, so we got admission for two adults and two children, two tractor rides and a bag of feed for the animals for $25. The animals are much more accessible than in Collingwood, and the goats, donkeys, alapacas, deer and water buffalo* are very cute.

One word of caution. They have a café but if you want anything healthier than a cookie you may was to bring your own food. At 1pm on Sunday, the pie warmer was completely empty and apparently the only other savoury item on offer was soup in a cup (as in that freeze dried junk that you buy in little packets at the supermarket, add water to and wish you hadn’t) for $3 per cup.

We ate at home.


I thought that this was the coolest thing we saw at the farm:








However, Bundle was far more impressed by this:






He is SUCH a boy.








*Why? Was there a meeting where they said let’s all brainstorm about what animals to buy this week? Was there some sort of sale on? Is the CEO even now yelling at some unfortunate employee “I said ‘bye, son’, not ‘bison’?” Baffling.

Hide and discuss

My beautiful two year old son has developed his own unique version of hide and seek.

It generally starts with him announcing "Bundle. Cupboard" and climbing into the cupboard and shutting the door, all in full view of Honey Bear and I. We then try to find him. The dialogue that follows usually goes something like this:

I'm not Craig: Is Bundle in the lounge room?

Little voice from cupboard: Nooooooooo

Honey Bear: Is Bundle in the study?

Little voice from cupboard: Nooooooooo

I'm not Craig: Is Bundle in the laundry?

Little voice from cupboard: Nooooooooo

Honey Bear: Is Bundle in the cupboard?

Little voice from cupboard: He he he he he

Beat.

Little voice from cupboard: Nooooooooo

We always find him eventually. Parents are cluey like that.


It is so so so so cute.

Play something you wrote

Today’s question to my reader(s).

Has there ever been a cover version that was better than the original?

The following are presented for your consideration:

Goldfinger: 99 Luftballons
Much as I liked the original (and I’m nearly old enough to remember it), this cover seriously rocked

The Bangles: Hazy Shade of Winter
I would usually mark them down for leaving out the bit about vodka and lime, but Vicki Petersen’s rampaging guitar riffs more than made up for it.

The Living End: Tainted Love
Then again, apparently unlike everyone else in the world around my age, the original never really grabbed me. I don’t know why.

Chocolate Starfish: You’re so vain
Took one of the best lyrics ever and added some grunt. Fabulous. Even better than Adam Thomson’s attempts to pick up Pamela Anderson at the ARIAS.

The Chantoozies: Slightest notion (Originally recorded by James Reyne as “Motors too fast”)
Nice to have some idea of what the lyrics actually were.*

Alien Ant Farm: Smooth Criminal
You have to love a bunch of punks like this who called their first album “Greatest Hits” and their second album “ANThology”.

They took a moderately successful Michael Jackson song and gave it the full cali-punk treatment. They were probably as surprised as everyone else when this worked.

Frente: Bizarre Love Triangle
This may annoy the purists, but I declare this to be the best cover version of any song anywhere ever.


Have I missed any?





* On the other hand, I once played in a band that covered “Fall of Rome” and even when we could understand every word it still didn’t make sense. Everybody said/ What’s that sound/ Put it in a skillet and slap it all around. Huh? What?

Dr Seuss is completely nuts a genius

The benefits of being a parent are far too many to list in one little blog. Perhaps one of the least appreciated is the hours one gets to spend reading and indeed memorizing Dr Seuss books.

How do I love Seuss, let me count the ways

Leaving aside the cute illustrations and wicked rhyming skills, the best thing about a Dr Seuss book is the man’s uncanny ability to anticipate problems and deal with them even though no one else could ever have thought of the possibility of such problems, no not in a million years.

For example, had I thought about what happens when gooses sleep, I suppose that after much thought I might have realized that they sometimes dream of goose drinks. By inference, it is only logical to conclude that a moose in a similar situation would be dreaming of moose drinks.


Only Dr Seuss, however, thought to alert the world to the frightening possibility that a moose and a goose might be asleep at the same time, and each of them might dream that they were drinking the other one’s juice.

This is too stupid for words a very serious issue. The consequences are dire indeed. But, fortunately, the good doctor has the solution. What’s more, he is able to explain the problem and solution in terms so simple that even a child can understand immediately, as follows:

So, when goose gets a mouthful of juices of moose's
And moose gets a mouthful of juices of goose's
They always fall out of their beds screaming screams
SO…
I’m warning you, now! Never drink in your dreams.



Sorted.

Ever wondered what I look like?

Has this been on your mind for quite some time? Possibly not.

Well the wait is over. Here's a picture of me:

























So, no surprises there, really.

Where to take children in Melbourne: Part One

I spent about three hours last Saturday at Bell Park* in Murrumbeena, which is absolutely the best place to take a two year old in all of Melbourne’s south east suburbs.

Here’s a few things I enjoy about Bell Park:

1. It has bells.

2. The adventure playground is huge and the walkways are very stable and quite difficult to fall off.

3. They have a lake with ducks. The also have birds which look a lot like penguins. In fact, on a previous visit I was on the verge of calling the RSPCA to report that a penguin had apparently ended up several miles from the ocean and was looking lost. I changed my mind when the bird in question flew away.

4. This park has it’s own velodrome next door. This is not something you can find at just any park.

5. Lots of people have parties there. This means I can take a break for five minutes while my son is distracted by watching a group of 8 year olds play musical statues. If there is a song that is less suitable for 8 year olds to dance to than “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt, I can’t think of what that would be.

6. Even the graffiti is entertaining. Someone, apparently quite recently, has spraypainted the words “It’s art not a crime” on a nearby wall. This is a direct response to a campaign run by our public transport service around ten years ago. It’s great that the written response arrived ten years later on a wall which is nowhere near a train station.

7. The bathrooms are truly amazing. To wash your hands, you place them under the soap dispenser. A movement sensor activates the dispenser, whilst at the same time activating the flushing mechanism. You then move your hands to the right, which activates the water, and a further move to the right activates the hand dryer. Whilst this is all happening, for some mystifying reason the cubicle plays a jazz version of “What the world needs now (is love sweet love)”

8. Seriously. Love sweet love.

9. There is a giant lizard made of that Rubaroc stuff for children to climb on. It is around 3 metres long. It was a proud moment when Bundle, who is getting quite good at identifying body parts, walked straight up to it, pointed at exactly the correct area and yelled “butt”.

I am hoping that no-one noticed. Let us never speak of this again.





*Actually called Packer Park, but it has bells in it.

With a yay and a moo and a cock-a-doodle-doo

Extreme tiredness does funny things to the brain.

Here's a conversation I had with my Honey Bear at around 3am, about a week after Cherub was born.

Honey Bear: Does he need feeding, do you think?

I'm not Craig: [mumbles something incomprehensible]

Honey Bear: I'm sorry, what?

I'm not Craig: [mumble mumble mumble] promenade

Honey Bear: I can't hear you

I'm not Craig: I SAID, I think you've got time for a quick promenade

Honey Bear: THAT STILL DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE


In my defence, once of Bundle's favourite bedtime stories at the time was Sandra Boynton's "Barnyard Dance", which uses the word 'promenade' quite often.

Hmm, seeing that in print really does make it seem like a very thin excuse indeed. Did I mention that I was also exceptionally tired?

I really had absolutely no idea what I was trying to say. The general idea was that Cherub probably would not need to be fed for a couple more minutes.* I love the fact that I specified the actual length of promenade that would be involved.

Now, any time I fail to communicate with absolute clarity,** Honey Bear will look at me for a moment and then say "PROMENADE". Mystifyingly, she occasionally adds variety by yelling "Loretta!" instead.

This is one of many, many reasons why I love my Honey Bear so much.




* Which is how long a quick promenade would take

**Hard to imagine, I know

Meme update

Three people I am tagging:

1. Herbert

2. Adam

3. Gigglewick. This should give you some material for that "difficult second post".

It is of course part of the rules of this meme that you are absolutely entitled to tell me to stuff it or alternatively just pretend that you did not read this.

Hooray for linking

I am very excited to finally be able to link to other blogs.

This has not been possible up until now because I am an idiot Blogger is not very user friendly. So a big thanks to Melbourne Girl and Bevis for their help in getting this link thingy set up.

A few notes:

I would have linked to Bevis even without the threats of physical violence. Of course, such threats will be slightly more effective if Bevis ever finds out where I live or indeed what my name is (Hint: NOT CRAIG) .

Sharpatootha does not read this blog as far as I know but, in case she does, let me just ask how can I not link to someone who can start a post about a haircut with “I’m all revved up with no one to punch tonight”

Herbert is a genius

Linking to Gigglewick is an act of faith. Specifically, faith that she may at some stage freakin’ post something. I plan to start some sort of online petition about this.

I have linked to Ms Fits because I believe there is now legislation requiring all blogs to do this.

I wasn’t going to link to IOYC because he claimed to have quit blogging but when I tested the link I discovered that his second retirement was as much of a cheap stunt as his first. Welcome back. I am very happy now.

I'm sure there are several other fine blogs that I should be linking to. Please leave your shameless self promotion suggestions in the comments section below.

I wish I was a punk rocker

I really do.

The closest I have been to achieving this goal so far was being interviewed and playing two songs live on “Punk Hour” on Portland Community Radio.* All I can remember about the interview is that the host, who I had known for two years, called me Steve during the interview.

That is not my name.

I should add that the songs we performed were closer to folk rock than punk, but if Portland Community Radio had an “Obscure folk rock bands no-one has heard of hour”, then we didn’t know that.

Someone else who apparently wishes she was a punk rocker is Sandi Thom. Unlike me, Ms Thom has a successful recording career. Her song is not only number one in this country at the time of writing this, it is also rather catchy. And I have been trying to work out why it bugs the hell out of me.

Some possible reasons…

1. It may seem obvious, but a punk rocker with flowers in her hair would be routinely mocked by the other punk rockers (although Ms Fits could probably pull this off);

2. The only way to make this song sound less punk would be to get Lee Harding to cover it

3. The irony of getting a recording contract by broadcasting concerts over the internet and then singing about how great life was before the internet is apparently lost on this woman and everyone who has bought the song;

It’s actually “4. None of the above.” The real reason that this song bugs me is this:

NOSTALGIA FOR HOW GREAT THINGS WERE WHEN ONE’S PARENTS WERE TEENAGERS IS THE. LEAST. PUNK. THING. EVER.

Sandi Thom is 24 years old. This means she was born around 1982, so this song is entirely about what life was like before she was born. What is the point?

Really, can’t we all just be happy to live when we do instead of longing for a golden and possibly utterly fictitious past? Does all this nostalgia actually serve any useful purpose whatsoever, other than apparently correcting my excessively low blood pressure? If we don’t like the way things are working out (and anyone with any sense of justice must be pretty damn unhappy with the stuff the Australian government is currently doing in our name) could we perhaps look forward and imagine a better future?




*That’s Portland, Victoria, population 10,000, not, say Portland, Oregon or some such place.

They Went Dumb Tonight

More bad news for Today Tonight. Again, I quote from The Age, where Daniel Ziffer and Mark Forbes tell us that:

Last night Robson and her crew were being deported from Indonesia after police had apprehended them for posing as tourists.

And also:

Papua police chief Tommy Jacobus confirmed the five were forced to leave. "They admitted to being journalists who were intending to report on events here," General Jacobus said. "It is best if we deport them."

Two things about this:

First, Today Tonight claimed that Channel 9 dobbed them in to the authorities for posing as tourists. The response from Channel 9’s Executive Producer, David Hurley, is priceless:

"They get off a plane and they have at least a dozen camera cases … If you try to do that in Jayapura with your hair extensions hanging off you and you say, 'We are here to write a story on cannibals', what do you really expect them to say?"

Secondly, we all need to write to Today Tonight and assure them that if they ever do a story criticizing anyone who is alleged to have entered our country illegally ever again, they will be mocked loudly, endless and with great enthusiasm.

Today They Went Dumb

I would rather hit myself in the head with a rock (full of angry bees) than watch evening current affairs shows, so I only just heard about one of Naomi Robson’s recent career high points.

I read in today’s Age about the outrage over Ms Robson’s broadcast from outside the Australia Zoo, 24 hours after Steve Irwin’s death, “dressed in an Irwin-style khaki outfit with a live lizard on her shoulder”.

I think Age journalist Kylie Northover may have crossed the line from reporting to editorializing just slightly by informing us that “the station blamed the unintentionally comical safari look on the wardrobe assistant who packed Robson’s bags”.

Ms Northover should feel free to cross that particular line as often as she wishes if there is something even half as funny as the phrase “unintentionally comical safari look” waiting on the other side.

So, how did this happen?

Let’s start with the lizard. Ms Robson explained that a young man had brought his lizard along (to a zoo?) and he wanted his lizard to be on TV. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him ‘no’,” she said.

This is great news for all publicity hungry reptiles and their caring humans. It seems all one has to do to get one’s pet amphibian on TV is ask Ms Robson, who is apparently constitutionally incapable of refusing. Once the Iguana Appreciation Society gets onto this, surely no day will got past without Ms Robson presenting the show with some form of scaled creature on her shoulder. And I’m offering $100 to anyone who can convince Ms Robson to host an entire show whilst balancing a fish bowl on her head.

And then there’s the khaki gear. This can be very simply explained. Ms Robson did not know what she would be wearing until just before the show went to air. To quote directly from The Age “Robson said it was ‘just all too quick’ and the shirt was all she had to wear."

BEST. EXCUSE. EVER.

I have just one question.

What did Ms Robson wear whilst traveling to and from the Australia Zoo that could possibly have been less appropriate than that shirt?

Surely no-one could possibly be convinced by these excuses. Is it that hard to just say “We went too far in trying to cash in on a tragically sad event and we’re really, really sorry”?

That's what it's all about

I have done some stupid things in my life.

Around about mid-1999, in an attempt to resuscitate an almost dead career, I took a job in a small town in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley.

Fitting in to a new social setting can be difficult at the best of times.

I tried training with a local football club, despite that fact that I was in my late 20s and I had never played for a club or even a school team in my entire life. I injured myself in the second training session I attended and I was out for the season. I probably would not have gotten a game anyway.

I joined a local church and helped to run the youth group. This went pretty well, although most people in the church seemed to regard me as some sort of communist/evolutionist/dangerous heretic.

I found a flatmate who had also recently moved to the town from Melbourne. She set my couch on fire*, nearly burned down the house, went slightly nuts and moved back to Melbourne. And yes, in that exact order.

By far the most unintentionally hilarious episode in my attempts to fit in to this town was my evening with the local Community Singing Group.

My boss’ wife was heavily involved in the local community centre and she told me about this singing group. I thought this would be a good way of getting to know some people whilst impressing my employers with my enthusiasm for involving myself in local community activities.

It went wrong.

As soon as I walked into the community centre it became obvious that I was the only person under 60 at this event. I nearly sprinted for the door but before I could do this a friendly person had grabbed me, said welcome and guided me to a seat, whilst simultaneously extracting a small donation toward the cost of a cup of instant coffee.

The other thing I noticed at this point was that the boss’ wife was not there. Subsequent enquiries revealed that she was not and never had been involved in this group. In other words, there was no reason for me to be there.

This was not a group that existed for the purpose of performing in public, ever. It was a group that got together solely because they just enjoy singing. This is a great concept and I love that they do this. However, it does mean that the group is not made up of highly trained professional singers.

This suited me, as my singing is patchy at best. The one thing that the group should perhaps have considered is that if Australian Idol has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that singers of average or less talent should be very careful with their song selection.

Specifically, a group like this should not attempt songs where the note to syllable count is particularly high. This would include “You’re the Voice” and Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you”** Those who remember Mike Whitney version of this on “The Late Show” will have some idea of how this ended.

We then moved from “Contemporary”, to the extent that such a label covers both of those songs and also stuff like “Imagine”, to more traditional*** tunes, including Loch Lamond, My Grandfather’s Clock, Ain’t She Sweet, Daisy Daisy, and Welcome to the Jungle (actually, I can’t remember but I think I have started making them up now).

The one I will not forget in a hurry was the Hokey Pokey. They did not just insist that we sing this. Oh no, they did indeed insist that we must dance.

There have been times in my life when I have looked back at the choices that have lead me to that point and I have felt pleased with myself. This was not one of those occasions.

There is nothing quite like doing the Hokey Pokey in a freezing cold community centre with a group of pensioners in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere to make one question one’s life choices.

Just when I thought my night could not get any more absurd, we finished the evening off with a rousing chorus of “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts” It was at this point that I put my head in my hands and literally sobbed with laughter.

And yes, I did go back the next month.

I told this story to a friend a few weeks later and she suggested that I lived my life solely for the purpose of gathering good stories. Do you think there’s anything in that?






* Not a metaphor. I suspect I’ll post that story another time.

** Technically a Dolly Parton song. Whatever.

*** Old

Blah blah blah me

Hooray. My small technical difficulties have been sorted out. We have moved the computer into the kitchen so we can use it when the baby is asleep. Also, I have managed to find a way around the small difficulty that made it impossible for everyone except me to view this blog for a day or so last week.

A week ago I didn’t know what a “meme” was, but Melbourne Girl tagged me to complete this one and I figured any opportunity to talk about myself should be grabbed, so here we go.


1.Three things that scare me
- dentists
- how easily lead public opinion is, particularly when it comes to “border protection”, intolerance, fear of terrorism etc
- the thought of losing my family (I need to stop working in family law yesterday IT IS DOING MY HEAD IN)

2. Three people that make me laugh
- My Honey Bear
- Our two year old son (Bundle)
- The actual Craig (ie the guy who I am not)

3. Three things I hate the most
- Salmon (sing it with me “6.66/ is one hundredth/ of the number/ of the beast” etc)
- The ads that Channel 10 inserts into the closing credits of shows
- Gaining weight

4. Three things I don't understand
- The purpose of algebra
- what Kyabram is doing there
- Atheism

5. Three things I'm doing right now
- gazing at my baby son
- chatting to my adorable wife
- drinking beer

6. Three things I want to do before I die
- Play more gigs
- Travel to absolutely everywhere I haven’t been already and a few of the places I have
- Hug my great grandchildren

7. Three things I can do
- figure out who Honey Bear is thinking of with only the broadest of clues. For example
Honey Bear: “You know, the guy with the accent”Me: “Oh, Sean Connery”
Honey Bear “Yes”
- entertain a two year old for hours with a series of meaningless but funny sounds
- parasail

8. Three ways to describe my personality
- Intense
- Relaxed
- Somewhat confused, it would seem

9. Three things I can't do
- Rap
- Dunk
- Use a wipper snipper, apparently

10. Three things I think you should listen to
- A CD called “Powerpoint Battle of the Bands”. I’m on it. So is Jesse Spencer (from TV’s House, Neighbours etc) You don’t find stuff like that every day.
- Julie Delpy’s speech about where magic is to be found in “Before Sunrise”
- My son giggling

11. Three things you should never listen to
- “Tracy and Tim for breakfast”
- Cosima’s cover of “When the War is Over”
- The Liberal Party, and anyone to their right

12. Three things I'd like to learn
- How to be a better daddy
- How to reliably count to three

13. Three favourite foods
- roast chicken
- any seafood platter, particularly if it includes coconut crab
- my wife’s chocolate macadamia brownies

14. Three beverages I drink regularly
- cappuccino
- cafe latte
- macchiato

15. Three shows I watched as a kid
- Saturday night football replays
- The A Team
- Doctor Who

16. Three people I'm tagging

No blogger is likely to read this other than perhaps MG and Bevis (and he’s already been tagged)

Anyone who reads this who wants to be tagged, leave your blog details in the comments. I’ll then edit this accordingly, which will make the whole thing slightly weird but hey it’s a blog, it happens.

I will even link to your blog as soon as I work out how to set up the links section. I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT COMPUTERS. SEND HELP.

People I have underestimated

Part One: Kasey Chambers

I always though that Kasey Chambers’ early solo work was a bit one dimensional. With songs like Cry like a baby, The Captain, Not Pretty Enough, Like a River, and more like that, I thought that there was some decent country music going on but the songs lacked a certain spark.

I have underestimated this woman. I know this now because I have heard the last track from her first solo album. It is cheerfully titled “We’re all going to die some day”

It starts out sounding like a pretty typical country song. The chorus tells us

We’re all going to die some day, Lord/ We’re all going to die some day/
Mama’s on pills, daddy’s over the hill/ We’re all going to die some day

Things pick up quickly as the first verse progresses from “it hurts down here on earth Lord” to “It hurts down here ‘cause we’re running out of beer”

The second verse contains the fabulous line “Janie got stoned ‘cos she couldn’t get boned” which is hard to top, but it’s the last verse that really brings it home. And here it is:

Well they can all kiss my ass, Lord/ They can all kiss my ass/
If they want to kiss my ass/ well they better do it fast/
‘Cos we’re all gonna die some day.

Pure. Country. Gold.

I will never underestimate this woman again.

What I did on the weekend

Warning. This post is entirely serious.

I did something this weekend that I have not done since before Cherub was born, four months ago.

I went to church.

I used to do this every Sunday, often two or three times in one day. It is quite easy to start to take thongs for granted, and even to become a little bit jaded. Coming back to church after a long absence was however, a truly awe inspiring experience.

The idea that the universe exists for a reason, and that it was designed by an all powerful God who in some inconceivable way knows everything about every single one of us and loves us all individually, is truly wonderful. And to join together with a group of hundreds of people who are all there to share a connection with God and each other is amazing.

We sang together, we read beautiful words from the Bible, we celebrated Father’s day, we took a moment to mourn the passing of Don Chipp, we talked about how our church could better connect with and help people in the local community. And I was close to tears for almost the entire time.

A brief sample of the beautiful words we heard from the Bible that day:
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
The creator of the ends of the earth
HE will not grow tired or weary,
And his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
And increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary
And young people stumble and fall;
But those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
They will run and not grow weary,
They will walk and not be faint.

Eventually, as a group of people talked about what they had learned from their fathers, the tears started as I felt lost in the beauty of it all.

I also felt incredibly challenged by the responsibilities that come with being a father to my two beautiful boys. I don’t know if I can be the parent they deserve. I don’t know if I can raise them well or be a good role model for them. It is terrifying. Still, just at that moment, there was a sense of hope that just maybe it will all be alright.

Fun facts from the 80s

For my most recent birthday, Honey Bear and a few other lovely people chipped in some money so I could update my much neglected CD collection.

I spent a very happy hour or so at JB Hi Fi and bought CDs by Ben Lee, Holidays on Ice, Sleepy Jackson, New Order, Michael Franti, Kasey Chambers, The Cure, The Bangles, Missy Higgins, Hi5, Clare Bowditch and Wilco.

My taste in music is eclectic. Deal with it.

Great music, not much good blogging material, apart from Luke Steele’s alleged links to Hillsong, but that’s been done.

There will be a future post about Kasey Chambers, but for now here’s a few things you may not have known about the Bangles.

1. They are confusing
Lets face it, they sang this:
All the Japanese with their yen/ The party boys call the Kremlin/And the Chinese know (oh whey oh)/ They walk the line like Egyptian
That may be simultaneously the most multicultural and the most absolutely drug induced, blurrily confused and completely mental set of lyrics ever. What does it mean? Dude, no one knows, its all too confusing, aaargh etc…

2. Prince is confusing
It seems every article ever written about the Bangles mentions that “Manic Monday” was written by Prince. However, the CD cover tells us it was written by “Christopher”.

Prince has changed his name/symbol a time or too, but I didn’t know he ever went through a period of calling himself “Christopher”. I wondered briefly if there had been some sort of misunderstanding. However, I have no doubt that it was Prince who wrote this song, mostly because the first two lines of “Manic Monday” sound like a sleepier version of the first two lines of “1999”* And just as an aside, does the prevailing view that Prince is some sort of musical genius seem slightly less credible when we consider that in looking for things to rhyme with “Monday” he came up with “Sunday”, “fun day” and “I don’t have to run day”.

I think that what I like most about this is I still can’t tell if Christopher is meant to be his first or last name. Even when he uses a sensible name this dude retains an air of mystery.

3. The one that really surprised me
Two of the tracks on this CD were co-written by members of the Bangles and one D Navarro.

There can’t be that many D Navarros around, surely, but I really hope this is not who I think it is. In fairness, the on line biographies I checked didn’t mention the Bangles at all, but they wouldn’t, would they?

The guy may have much credibility left after hosting Rock Star (anyone who contributed to sharing the talents of JD Fortune with the world has some explaining to do). Even allowing for that lapse of judgment, if this man wrote the lyrics “I remember words that fell like coins into a wishing well” then the former members of Jane’s Addiction and the Chillis should get together and give this guy the biggest wedgie in the history of rock/metal/funk/whatever.

Oh, and did I mention I really like this CD?



*Yes they do.