Retiring...

I haven't been able to do as much as I would like with this journal and so I've made a decision to retire it. I might come back to it when I have more time on my hands because I'm still interested in some of the ideas that I wanted to explore here.

Currently I'm working on Web Culture Killed My... (for cultural studies and new media interests) and Web Culture Killed My... Music Edition (looking at music subcultures, particularly Goth). I also have a fandom livejournal.

I hope you enjoyed the odds and ends found here!

Christmas Down Under

I posted this to my lj and thought it would also be appropriate here!

In one of my Christmas cards, from dragonbetween, she asks: 'but I was kinda wondering what it was like having the Christmas Holiday Season in the middle of Summer?'

Well, dragonbetween, Christmas Holiday Season in Summer is hot. Very. This year we had temperatures of about 35-40 degC (but I don't check the temp gauges because it freaks me out a little to know exactly how hot it really is). Brisbane is a subtropical city and that means it's hot and wet - we usually end up with a thunderstorm, at least for the last couple of years, in the late afternoon. This year it was pretty spectacular with lightning and gushing rain.

We're also a melting pot of cultures which means that each family, and each part of the family will have different celebrations. My husband's family is Scottish which means Christmas Eve opening the presents and having a big hot Christmas Lunch with Turkey and Ham and Pasta for us vegetarians, followed by Christmas Pudding, Brandy Butter, Trifle and Custard. His family put on a big 'traditional' spread. When I was a kid, with my English/South African migrant family, we would go over to my grandparents on Christmas Eve and then wake up the next morning to presents under the tree. We weren't allowed to open them until 10 am or so when everyone else was awake. We'd have a big family lunch with a mixture of cold meats and salads (again for us vegetarians). My step-mum is German and for a few years in the middle we would go up to Maleny, which is in the hinterlands about 100km north of Brisbane, and have a big meal on Christmas Eve.

The more traditional Australian thing, I think, is to have a barbeque with lots of alcohol, particularly beer, over lunch with your family. I'd say most Australians spend Christmas Day with their family (and boy can that be fun to arrange with blended families more the norm) and Boxing Day with their friends, to recover. It really is the one day of the year you're kind of obligated to see family, around here.

And Australia then shuts down for a week until New Year. It's the hottest part of the year and most businesses and the public service just tell their workers to take the week off, well except for all the boxing day/post-Christmas sales.

Of course we're all used to Christmas like this and every year there is murmuring about how commercial, how it's a winter celebration and how we should be more sensible and spend the day at a beach (yeah right, have you seen how much sun there is out there?) and every year people keep going back to hot meals with chicken and turkey and roasts and big family gatherings where we all pass out from the heat by two in the afternoon.

So, dear Readers, I am leaving this open to you.
To my Australian/Southern Hemisphere readers: does this match up with what you do? Do you have any traditions that are different? Do you think the description covers an Australian Christmas adequately?

To the people on the bottom of the globe, you know the heavy bit with all the extra land mass: Is it greatly different to what you guys do?

To dragonbetween: was that what you wanted to know?

your faithful guide, scribewraith

Weather in fragments...

First it was hot, for days, the pain was immense, the thought processes slow. I contemplated air conditioning... again.

Day 1 was spent watching Hornblower in the lounge with Ivy and Obake.

This is a comment made on an American friends journal.

"oh cold. i fantasise about cold. i have no idea what the temperature was here today but the three of us were sitting in the loungeroom watching rome all day and not being able to put coherent sentences together despite the fans and profusion of cold drinks. it didn't cool down again for two or three hours after dark and i'm pretty sure its mostly that i'm sitting under the fan that makes it slightly livable again... and we've got three or four more months of this

oh cold. i fantasise about cold.
;)"

Day 2 I embraced the idea of airconditioning and in the afternoon snuck into town and the bottom of the Myer centre, me and Gaius (my laptop), and the dozens of other people sitting in the food court reading and passing out on tables. It wasn't even super cool but wow compared to outside. I'm pretty sure that the food court at the bottom of DJ's is even cooler (strategises for next time).

Day 4 of the heatwave was today (I'd even lost day 3 from lack of movement yesterday) and the cat tried to escape the house again. He sneaks out while I'm asleep, or while everyone else is on their way to work, and then hides in the cold. He's supposed to be an indoors cat: Nia7 has so decreed.

But with today came relief.

Here's my IM shared with obake as the day progressed.

Session Start (scribewraith@yahoo.com:O_bake): Thu Dec 08 12:11:39 2005
O_bake: Hiya! How goes it?
scribewraith@yahoo.com: hey!
scribewraith@yahoo.com: i'm awake and have a runaway kitten that i've tracked down and brought back in
O_bake: ^^;
scribewraith@yahoo.com: so what's your plan for today (haven't looked at beta yet cause i've probably been awake about 20 min
O_bake: ^^;
O_bake: Plan today is to clean house--we've almst accomplished that already; just some stuff needs picking up off the kitchen floor and sweeping/washing floors to do. But we're taking a break from that because it's getting too hot, so I'm downloading stuff for Sims and trying to think of some more dolls to make.
O_bake: I probably should be working on icons/fic instead, but eh.
scribewraith@yahoo.com: omg you're cleaning in the heat during the day - that stuff waits till it cools down
O_bake: *Grins*
scribewraith@yahoo.com: ok hadn't finished reading your message
O_bake: That's why we're taking a break now.
O_bake: *Snorfle*
scribewraith@yahoo.com: nah its holidays you should indulge your whatevers
O_bake: ^^
scribewraith@yahoo.com: i went cleaning: gah...
O_bake: ^^


O_bake: ...okay, wtf? My cursor's really weird today.
scribewraith@yahoo.com: has it gone bright blue? or is it just slow cause of the heat?
O_bake: No, it's picking up windows I didn't click on and dragging them all over the screen. O.o;; It always has a habit of travelling across the screen by itself, but not this.
O_bake: The computer is slow because of the heat. Well, and because I have a heap of stuff open. >>; But ordinarily it would run fine with this much.
scribewraith@yahoo.com: yeah i know what you mean


O_bake: *twitchtwitch* Computer is so slow at the moment.
scribewraith@yahoo.com: hai
scribewraith@yahoo.com: i'm sitting with the fan pointing at me and gaius


scribewraith@yahoo.com: hey i'm leaving the house tomorrow - do you want to come out into the air con somewhere - i need to find somewhere that colour prints and then i'm going to send off one/some/cards to foreign places ;)
O_bake: *nods* I have to do vege shopping at some point, but yeah.
scribewraith@yahoo.com: grin
scribewraith@yahoo.com: you'd have to be out anyway...
scribewraith@yahoo.com: i meant come out tomorrow, yes?


scribewraith@yahoo.com: yum its windier over here
O_bake: Yeah.
scribewraith@yahoo.com: gonna quickly get some liquid brb
O_bake: Okay.
scribewraith@yahoo.com: and the temp has dropped a little
scribewraith@yahoo.com: checking from front verandah ;)
O_bake: ^^
scribewraith@yahoo.com: yup reckoning them thar looks like rain clouds up over that thar city
scribewraith@yahoo.com: *closes some windows*
scribewraith@yahoo.com: *and moves cat up to the cooler part of the house*
scribewraith@yahoo.com: its so going to rain! its so going to rain!
O_bake: I am currently idle.
scribewraith@yahoo.com: its dropped more temp degrees and stuff
O_bake: *Grins*
O_bake: It's just kind of gone dark and still here--I'm hoping that's a prelude to rain bhut it hasn't actually cooled down much.
scribewraith@yahoo.com: it is a prelude - i can see the clouds down your way


scribewraith@yahoo.com: i sat on the stairs with the cat trying to get us both to cool down - hope he hasnt decided to escape again... shouldn't be able to get out
scribewraith@yahoo.com: very cool
O_bake: ^^


scribewraith@yahoo.com: come on rain!!!!
O_bake: ^^ *seconds your motion*
scribewraith@yahoo.com: ;)
scribewraith@yahoo.com: so we're done?
O_bake: Yep. ^^
scribewraith@yahoo.com: i really really appreciate the quickness of this beta - next time i won't leave it till the last minute (next time it won't be so ruddy hot that i can't concentrate for most of the time either)
scribewraith@yahoo.com: and i owe you a beta!
scribewraith@yahoo.com: and an icecream
O_bake: ^^


scribewraith@yahoo.com: have you guys got rain yet?
O_bake: Nope. It's getting darker (might just be the sun going down) and we just got a whiff of a cooler breeze coming through, no actual water dropping from the sky yet.
scribewraith@yahoo.com: and i are discussing that if we were in lismore it'd be raining.
O_bake: >>;
O_bake: *wants to move to Lismore suddenly, for some reason*
scribewraith@yahoo.com: we're talking melbourned
O_bake: *Nods*
scribewraith@yahoo.com: you know two years and i've done my horrors and then nothing says i have to do my postgrad up here...
O_bake: *Grins*
scribewraith@yahoo.com: k
scribewraith@yahoo.com: solstice comin up but thinking about it after the rain
O_bake: *Nods*
O_bake: Aha! A flash of lightning!
scribewraith@yahoo.com: ooh ooh!
O_bake: ^^
O_bake: ...and now there's a little thunder about...
scribewraith@yahoo.com: and its darker over our way too
O_bake: *Nods*
scribewraith@yahoo.com: the cloauds are definitely grey and we've got an hour and a half at least until sunset
scribewraith@yahoo.com: 's on his way home - it's probably waiting for him...
O_bake: ^^
O_bake: Yeah, they're *very* dark clouds to have come up so quickly, aren't there.
O_bake: *they
O_bake: More lightning.
O_bake: I'm going to close the window near my computer, but I'll leave my door open for now.
O_bake: Winds's picking up suddenly.
O_bake: We have rain and gale!
*** You have been disconnected. Thu Dec 08 17:39:27 2005.

The storm itself was pretty spectacular, you couldn't see the city or the tv towers on the top of Mt Cootha from our back verandah. The sky went from green to grey and we've been told there was hail.

I stood out in the rain, arms out, getting saturated for the first time in what feels like years.

We have more rain this year than the last few, of this I'm sure, and thunderstorms, this is about the third, and it's wonderful! (except for the bit about the extreme heat first)

Emo boys snogging

We went to a friends birthday last night, which was fun, with mexican food. On the way we caught a bus. It was filled with emo kids. There were two boys, snogging and well I actually saw a groping of crotch. I was thoroughly amused.

Firstly there's this vid of two emo boys kissing here (if that doesn't work, let me know) which I'd thought everyone had seen but obviously not (m_minna who was also on the bus).

Secondly emo is the new goth and nothing anyone has said yet has convinced me otherwise. So these kids are on the bus, kissing away and peeking across at us, up at the people behind them: they were so putting on a show. Not that I don't think they were actually interested in each other (it was way more convincing than the vid which is a party game daring the boys to kiss for two minutes), it's just they were very aware of the titters coming from behind them. When we were gothing it up, just dressing in cloaks (in the middle of a high summer in Brisbane) was enough to send the 'normals'(read the sarcasm) into paroxysms of terror, now, 15 years later, they have to act it up a notch.

So I'm sitting across from them dressed in not 100% goth, because hell it's this funky egyptian style top with blue that looks really good on me, nia7 in our favourite Type O Negative shirt, and our two geek-like crew, because really don't need to be Goth to be goth. And they're putting on a floor show and all I can think is *snigger* a)kawaii, you guys are *so* young and so not original and b) I've written stuff more graphic than the boy-on-boy love you're trying to *freak me out with*

kawaii desu!

also what's with all these emo kids out this weekend, oh that's right: Halloween...

eta. as of 060909 the link doesn't work - thank you shadefur for letting me know. Can't find a new link to the original but if you youtube emo boys kissing there sure are a lot of vids!

The start of summer: 2005's first bushfire...

Its been hot. Very hot, cat sleeping on the shiny lacquered floor to keep out of the heat hot, not leaving the house even to go to air conditioning because its too hot to move hot. Just hot.

And I'll point out the frustrating thing. Look at the date of this entry. No seriously. It's October. We've got at least another month before its supposed to get this hot.

If someone tells you there isn't climate change they are lying. When I was in Grade 1 (1981) I can remember in late November/early December being told that we were moving our class out of the classroom to the covered cement area under the building because it was cooler. The temperature had reached 37 or 38 degrees Celsius and I remember this because it was so unusual. Now our summers are usually 37-40 degrees Celsius and the last five or so years has instituted a policy of including air conditioning in all school classrooms.

On Thursday night there was a bushfire which was so pretty against the D'aguilar ranges, just north of Mt Cootha and the TV Towers. I could see it from my verandah at the new house while I was trying to get some airflow to take the heat down in the evening. We have to lock the cat into the library or our rooms temporarily and open the front doors that don't have flyscreens but are very pretty and shiny even. My SO insists that a cat, three generations from wildcat, will be an indoor cat. Me and The Cat aren't so sure and I've got the scars to prove it.

StephenDann on lj linked us to this set of photos by Bandido of Oz of the bushfire and there's a shot (the first one that you see) that looks like our view but from closer - we have another hill and about three suburbs between us and them there flames.

Currently it's still hot, not as hot as Thursday with the smoke and flames keeping the heat in, but still pretty hot. I'm staying in the house, not moving until the evening and then I'm going to see Serenity for the third time.

Moving: UQ: The Ekka: Imbolc

Everyone is moving at the moment. We moved and then Atratus' house, um, exploded and everyone moved, Pan's moving into our old room at the Coop and tomorrow we spend the day shifting my Da and Jane from their West End house.

I'm partially convinced it's got to be in the stars: everything's in Leo. Our Housewarming (which rocked and thanks to everyone who came) was on the 5th when Sun was in Leo, Moon was in Leo, Mercury was retrograding in Leo and Saturn was in Leo (which is of course where my Saturn was at time of birth and I'm coming up to my Saturn Return next month). And then Neptune was squaring all of that in Aquarius. Now I'm not going to do a detailed analysis but suffice to say when there's that much stuff going on, well, stuff goes on.

I'm adjusting to going to UQ: it's very different to what I'm used to. Atratus says that there are 30,000 staff and students which is more than the whole town of Armidale (population in 1993: 25,000) when I was there. And QUT isn't really that big population-wise, particularly spread across the campuses. So a little intimidating. Of course the xplore-it gene has kicked in and I'm coping and can finally find where all of my classes are (which has more to do with screw ups on si-net, the uq web based thing, than with my direction sense). Greenintestines is also on campus and Arika but I haven't tracked anyone else down and its another place where it'll take a while to make friends and actually I'm pretty good at that.

The Ekka's on and we go past it on the new train line. People reckon that it's flu season with the Ekka - another good reason to avoid it. We won't mention the price. We're talking about a day trip to Dreamworld/Movieworld/Seaworld next month to make up for not going. Oh and actually getting to go on rides. (A history of the Ekka can be found here.)

It's shifted ever so slightly into spring. The light's changed again and you can feel the touch of heat in the sun. The days are a bit longer too. The 8th was Imbolc by the 15 degrees Leo tradition and the 5th by Full Moon in Leo tradition. I bet if I went outside somewhere where there was Acacia's they'd be blooming.

Maleny vs Woolworths

On the 20th August, the citizens of Maleny are asking us to join them in protesting the building of a Woolworths on the creekside of the Obi Obi.

Maleny is a small rural town in the Noosa Hinterland, about an hour and a half north of Brisbane. They sit on the top of the D'aguilar range which feeds into the watershed of the Brisbane River Catchment. It's a beautiful part of South-East Queensland and has an interesting mix of rural and green residents. There are farmers and communities all sheltering in the valleys on the top of the table land. My Dad has lived there, with both my sisters and his wife, for most of the last twenty years and while I get the most horrendous allergies whenever the camphor laurels are in flower, it's one of those spots that I'm so glad I can get to, and so glad it exists.

Woolworths is putting in a Store on the edge of the Obi Obi Creek that runs through the town and currently the residents are running a campaign to stop it's development. The Woolworths is being built on the edge of the creek where Platypus burrows have been found and are being destroyed by the building works. It's competing with small rural businesses that have been running at least as long as I've been going there which will have detrimental affects on the economy of a small town that has managed to survive the rural to urban immigration of the last fifty years. It's also being built in an area that is known for it's existing traffic problems and will only add more traffic. It's across the road from a primary school and high school with all the safety issues that entails.

The way that Woolworths have been responding to the actions has been quite heavy handed. The Maleny Voice site has a lot more information, both on the affects and the way that Woolworths have been responding. You can find the copies of the reports, planning documentation and press releases updating on the current state of the campaign on the site.

I've been asked to spread the word about the action on the 20th of August and let everyone know what's going on. If you can't make it there, at least think about boycotting Woolworths in support.