Muppetational!

There are far too many things to do and wonders to see in New York, more than is possible to consume in any length of time. Thus, I have resigned myself to the foregoing of much memory treasure, but I was not going to let slip the Jim Henson exhibition currently on display at the Museum of Moving Image.

It was brilliant. Amazing. And, in keeping with the strong and irreverent spirit of all Jim Henson's creations, it was hilarious. There was a delightful sense of play in all the ventures that Henson pursued, whether or not they ever saw the light of day.

I could not help comparing it to the Tim Burton exhibition, which I saw while it was showing at ACMI. While Burton did branch out into various media, I walked away with the impression that his aesthetic had gone through very little metamorphosis in his many years of work. It is an aesthetic that has become an incredibly strong brand , however without development it does not seem as though the artist has challenged himself.

Henson had also maintained a strong identity through his aesthetic, but this was coupled with a drive to innovate, and as such his work throughout his life has about it a consistent freshness that I did not see in Burton's collection.

Did you know that earlier incarnation of the Cookie Monster was “IBM Monster"?

No photography was allowed in the exhibition, and there were 3 portly security guards patrolling to make sure that all enforced. However, because I am a ninja I did manage to sneak some photos on my phone, and these I share with you.

The below is part of a concept that did not go ahead. When I read it I was aghast. Irreverent and playful his works may be, some of them are down right horrific.

Dr. Bredlow Freedly is the Muppet scientist who invented MEL (short for Malfuntioning Electronic Logician). Freedly attempts to demonstrate the newest use for this mechanical marvel -- first, the machine will inhale our polluted air. It will then condense the smog, fumes and filth into handy little cubes for shipment to the less industrialised countries of the world. (Zounds! We'll make a fortune!)

Behold! The Mahna Mahna!


In the light of recent events I found this quote to be topical, to say the least.

For reasons... Wait, no. I think I just figured it out. Bert always put me in mind of a banana and I think that is because he is wearing stripes, and is yellow, with a pointy head, just like a Banana in Pyjamas.

He always reminded me of cricket too. Because of the sweater.

Mum used to call me Oscar the Grouch. No idea why.

ROWLF. (That blue elephant thing that appeared in the rerelease in Jabba's palace ain't got nuffin on Rowlf.)

The frog himself; Kermit.

(This was the hardest photograph to get, unsurprisingly.)

On the same floor was a display of the history and evolution of the television. Some of them looked like works of fiction, as opposed to works from the past.

And then, tucked up very back in the corner, were a few little special effects props from various notable films.

And I flipped THE FUCK out when I realised I was standing in front of the Tyrell Corporation ziggurat. “My mother? Let me tell you about my mother-"

If ever there is an open house tour of the ziggurat, behind-the-scenes may possibly and unexpectedly look a little like this:

In another corner it was a setup which allowed you to create your own stop work animations. Unsurprisingly I made many. I think we spent about half an hour faffing around with these.









The Museum of the Moving Image is not large but holy schmoly well worth the time travel.

Later, I was taken on a passing whim into the FAO Schwarz shop, which is a massive and magnificent toy store. Very, very dangerous. You have been warned. Especially given what is located in the back of the sweets section.

The Muppets Whatnot Workshop?

Oh hell yes I did.

Did an awful lot of trying out eyes and hair, but eventually a decision was made and I signed for my very own muppet with a fluffy fancy pen.

Insomnia visited me again last night. It was unexpected, I had and had not done all the things I need to during the day that would normally moderate insomnia off.

I missed my alarm.

The Dragon cannot transcribe the past few minutes of choked silence. I can think of no better way to describe the hour it took me to make a single decision this morning. Choked. Whether to get up, go and simply work late, or call in sick. There were a ridiculous number of factors that I took into consideration when weighing the pros and cons of each. Indecision was paralysing me, and I knew it, and I knew, no, I know that means that I am running too close to empty.

It feels ridiculous saying that, “willing to staytoo close to empty" (the Dragon interpreted that, truth is a slip of the Dragon?) When I have been running on empty for I don't even know any more, I think I remember what it felt like to have will end determination and strength.

The Dragon still cannot translate words thrown tears.

I lay there long enough that eventually the decision was made me, and I called in sick.

Of course, having made the decision I instantly felt better and felt that I could face work to do this. And now I am choking on the same decision a second time . In a

Did I tell you I was referred to a psychiatrist? They have not called back. I can't commit to a decision to go or not to work today this; thought of calling to make an appointment to this is a I can't work on and if five

Don't know what do. There are no safe place is in the world.

It is still cold, within and without.

The referral to the pain management specialist went out in the mail today. I've been sitting on the letter a couple weeks, always intending to but never making any effort to act upon it. Did I hesitate before releasing a letter to mailbox's maw? Yes. It is so little an act, but then at the moment it takes very little to overwhelm me, and nevertheless have left my hand my reaction – physical and emotional – was complex.

But it is done.

A few people have contacted me regarding the last post. I cannot reassure you. It is. .. Some would say I share too much, and yet the burden seems to fall upon me, and the price is not paid by me, because I do not care. Those I spoke of at the last, those who still love and still care, they pay the price.

It was a necessary release. As I am no longer spending strength I do not have it maintaining a rational facade and hiding my implosion I can now use that strength I do not have on small little other acts, such as posting letters.

I admit more strangers yesterday. It is still cold. You wake us, even though we are dead in the water. The piles of books on my bookshelves grow; there is nothing more calming exhilarating delightful soothing and inspiring that being surrounded by books. The sight of all these books guts me. I hoard what I cannot have. Hampson of time with.

Dragon can barely understand and Australian accent; it cannot dictate a voice from a sob-choked throat.

But I know what I'm missing.

Things keep falling out of my head. Mostly they are little things, the loss of which has no impact on my life, but that I am poorer for the loss.

Better now I can hear myself. The glass between me and my howling heart is thinner. This combination of medication has raised me and kept me above the quality of mind that can only be described as “surviving".

There is always a price.

My memory.





These things to fall out of my head may be small, but, they are important. And now they are gone.

When The Unconscious Drives

Some of us do peculiar things while we sleep, such as talk or fight or walk or make sandwiches etc etc etc. Some of us even snore. I have only been accused of snoring. On occasion. That said, I have from time to time found evidence of a rather peculiar nocturnal activity. That is to say, on waking, I have on occasion found evidence of what appears to be earwax (really thick orange gross earwax) beneath my finger nail. It would appear that my unconscious is taking care of my aural hygiene while I am not driving the body.

This is kind of weird.

Albeit not actually of any concern. Just a little bit gross.

This hasn't happened for a little while, and I had completely forgotten about this bizarre behaviour until today. I was changing the sheets on my bed and discovered a small colony of what appears to be earwax (really thick orange gross earwax) crusted on my cotton blanket.

I can only conclude that my unconscious noted that I had noted its activities due to the physical traces it left behind, and concluded that the best way to continue operations was to somehow negate these traces, ergo, covering my finger with the blanket so that the result of such nocturnal excavations would not be so readily apparent in my fingernails.

This is also kind of weird.

And a little bit irritating, given that earwax stains, and blankets are far more hassle to clean.

Dear Unconscious, I hope you are listening. Stop that shit.

Failing to Make a Difference

I have walked down a dark street towards the couple having a screaming domestic, his fist hovering by her face and obscenities in his spittle, and I have stopped, and said straight to the woman, “Do you want me to call the police?"

Sometimes I have called the police despite their answer. Sometimes I have not needed to. I have stopped a fight merely by being the only other person on the quiet station platform, standing up, and walking towards them, until they noticed me, and stopped screaming.

Today, some eight yobbos were crowded around the Coffee HQ at Spencer Street Station as I and the beginning of the peak hour crush hurried for that train home. They were shouting and screaming at the sole barister standing behind the counter. I stopped. I got out my phone.

After some more yelling, the gist of which I didn't catch it the cacophony of the station, one knocked a display of fruit bars from the counter, sending them spinning across the pavement, and the group walked away and up the escalators towards the platforms. I followed them. When they goaded each other into turning around and going back down the escalators, back to the coffee counter, I stopped, finger on the dial button. “Wait," one of them said. “We're gonna miss the train."

They turned again and ran back up the stairs through the barriers, and I followed them. I stood at the railing of the second tier and watched them push down onto the platform and dive onto the 4:14 Epping. Then I turned, dashed back to Coffee HQ, and babbled on about what train they'd caught, if I needed to make a statement, call the police, they'd be caught on CCTV, security saw them running. The barista just looked at me and shook his head.

“What's the point?" He gestured towards a far too late appearance by a security guard who very carefully did not approach the coffee counter. “Look at the security here. What they do." I offered to leave my details as a witness. He just shook his head again.

“Don't let the fuckers win," I said, and then left to catch my train.

Justice is not a concept with which I have ever thought myself particularly vested in. Nothing in the world is fair, I do not expect or even hope for fairness, but fairness and justice are two different things. It aggravated me to think that these jerk wads would feel no consequences for their arsehole behaviour. Having been behind the counter and screamed at by a customer, I know how it gets under the skin and makes it just that little bit harder to come to work every single day. This time the fuckers won, and I helped them to do so.

I am a lone and unintimidating female. In such situations this is to my advantage. The taboo of men hitting women, while it cannot be relied on, nevertheless exists. That I am diminutive to boot only compounds my lack of threat, and therefore, the lack of any gain in bullying or crushing me. The man who pushes over the small woman half his size is more likely to be ridiculed by his friends than lauded.

I am a lone and unintimidating female. Unfortunately, I am not unaware of this, and of the position society slots me into, and I let that inform my decisions. Cowardice kept my feet still. You could call it pragmatism, I suppose, but it was cowardice alone that stopped me from stepping in and taking more direct action.

I am a lone and unintimidating female, and I let this be an excuse not to be a Big Goddamn Hero.

I do not turned a blind eye walk away. I'm not a bystander, I will give myself that.

What disappoints me is that what action I do take is not enough.

One day it will be me surrounded by aggressive cunts, and when that happens, I hope someone, anyone, everyone, will step in and make more of a difference than I did today.

It doesn't recognise 'eh'. DOOMED.

hello, my freaky darlings.

for Christmas, my family put in together and bought me Dragon Dictate for Mac. It was at my request. A year is long enough to sit on an idea, and where it down, until, it is no more threatening than my age painted this. I was actually a little bit excited to receive it, as while I will not be using it for fiction it will enable me to properly e-mail all you far-flung distant beautiful friends. I have missed you.

Unfortunately, many in technology, well, we have “issues". When I installed Dragon Dictate it politely informed me that it refused to run on the current version of Eddie's operating system. Fussy little sheet. That shouldn't have been a problem, and I was quite happy to even pay for a legitimate upgrade (because Macs are just too weird and funky to our stuff on) and went to do that right away. However, Apple beings so forwardthinking shooter orientated, and all that, there was no option to simply download the upgrade. Noel. They insisted on shipping me the physical disk. Which... Was not what I wanted this year on the first day of the four-day long weekend.

Beach ripe Martin.

I cultivated some patients (meaning I stole some from our little old lady on a Zimmer frame outside the supermarket) and ordered the damp upgrade will stop. It was not delivered on Wednesday. It was delivered on Thursday. And of course Apple use a courier service so they weren't going to just shove it in the letterbox. I had to sign for it. So I missed that first delivery, and low! The next delivery would not be until Tuesday due to new years public holiday will stop. Fine stop. That's just fine. Fortunately they agreed to deliver to my workplace which happened on Tuesday quite early, and it was just a CD case. It's not even like it was a big cardboard box of new slots packaging will stop they could have quite easily have shoved in the letterbox. It was only $40. The.

After doing a quick backup of all my necessary files, of which I'm sure I forgot many, I upgraded Eddie's operating system. Which was surprisingly painless.

Then I ran Dragon Dictate.

Then, I pulled out the fancy Swedish headset that my family had also given me for an extra $100 and went to plug it in. The fancied swish headset has a USB plug that is the some reason ridiculously why stop.

Eddie has only two USB ports.

I could not plug the headset in and have my ergonomic keyboard plugged in at the same time.

Can't.

I can tell you right now I did not just say “can't" Asian stop.

So I had to unplug my ergonomic keyboard, which meant that Eddie could not sit in he's nice ergonomic laptop stand, as it covers his own keyboard. This seems to be, I don't know, ergonomic forces at wall? I know. Factions of occupational health and safety revolution coming into conflict and you're getting distracted so that they not actually fighting the problem which is RSI and instead bed is fighting each other and... It is a little bit frustrating. I'm going to have to buy a USB hub. The better Eddie gets for my hands, the first portable he becomes.

So. There we are a will stop. As you can see, I have a little bit of trouble ending sentences. I haven't corrected anything in this post. For ease of reading I will go back and insert paragraph breaks.

And then, I am going to teach this program how to swear will stop.

Expletive. Blasphemy. Expletive.