Update

It has been awhile. I note, with some appreciation, the trickle of hits this blog continues to receive, even though I have been reduced to posting email forwards.

So, what of me...

I have started a new part-time job, working in one of the commercial galleries [www.helenmaxwell.com] in canberra, which has been great. It is very nice to be working with art, and getting a feel for how a commercial gallery operates. The new shows just opened and are looking quite spectacular, so it is nice to feel good about where one's working hours are spent. Even if the range of skills bear no relation to anything I studied in my "Art History and Curatorship" degree - who knew that I would be spending so much quality time with packing tape and debating the merits of bubble wrap. And that it would be in an art gallery that I realised how profoundly unfit I am, having spent the day lifting and shifting, to collapse in a deadened heap at the end.

The thesis, is, brace yourself, going well! I have a sense of purpose about the direction and work is being done.

Combined with the other part-time job, it amounts to me being quite busy, which is a good thing, as I only truly become productive when there is a certain amount of pressure. Although there is a skill, when busy, to slow down and spend time over things that need reflecting upon, ie, anything to do with the thesis, when time is short and there is a feeling of being rushed.

I'm still digesting all the experiences of travel - it was such a charged, intense time of over stimulation, that only now, as I have flashbacks to different places and sites, do I feel like I'm absorbing it. It is nice to realise that a lot of it has stuck in my mind and I remember it. Having one experience after another in places so different from each other, I was worried that each successive place would overwrite each other and I wouldn't remember much except a lot of gallery cloakrooms and how much I hate renoir. Which would be a truly heartbreaking result. But, thankfully, I still have a firm mental picture of the truly splendid this-is-the-definition-of-kitsch water fountain (with its muzak soundtrack) of the Bellagio in Vegas, and the moment I almost burst into tears in front of the Cezanne in the Musee d'Orsay. AND how much I hate Renoir. And a thousand why-don't-_I_-live-in-New-York moments.

I'm in Bundanoon for the weekend, I came up to surprise my mum for her birthday [there's a certain arrogance in being able to assume that one can be a present for someone - but that is the joy of having parents isn't it? They have to be excited to see you, even when you walk in just as they sit down to lunch, because They Are The Rules.] We have just been out for an Indian meal [v. tasty] and are generally relaxing. It is great to finally see some rain, even Goulburn is looking a teensy bit green. Having some errands to run, I drove via Fyshwick, and then Queenbeyan and Bungendore, and then, semi-accidentally, Goulburn. Fyshwick saw my quest for The Perfect Soup Spoon achieved, which was a relief, as last weekend saw me on a tour of the Endless Mall that now adorns the centre of Canberra (and thus entitled The Canberra Centre - which if they keep expanding will have a certain amusing frisson, not actually having a centre, but being an interconnected series of land grabs with various acknowledgements to the streets that have been swallowed, incorporated into the architecture.) that ended up costing $85 dollars on everything except soup spoons.

The New Lexicon

I wanted to forward the following email on, but figured half of all people have probably read it by now.  And then I remembered I have a blog, and I can put it there. Tricky huh.

Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to
its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply
alternate meanings for common words.

The winners are:
1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4.Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.
9.Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that  when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts

The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are this year's winners:
1. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

2. Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

3.Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

4. Giraffiti (n):Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

5. Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

6. Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

7. Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.

8. Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

9. Karmageddon (n): its like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

10 Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

11. Glibido (v): All talk and no action.

12. Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

13. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

14. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

15. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:
16. Ignoranus (n): A person who's both stupid and an a--hole