Late-night ramblings about Fourth Generation German-American writers (now deceased)

I've just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five for the first time (well, second; books that good deserve immediate second readings). Vonnegut's prose is the best I can remember reading for at least a decade.

I thought, after 354 pages, that I loved Vonnegut completely then I came across the following and fell in love with the dear man all over again and then some:

In the mid 1950s, Vonnegut worked very briefly for Sports Illustrated magazine, where he was assigned to write a piece on a racehorse that had jumped a fence and attempted to run away. After staring at a blank piece of paper on his typewriter all morning, he typed, "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," and left.

Mr Vonnegut, you're alright by me.

Motor Ace is still the shiz

So I used to love Motor Ace. You remember Motor Ace? With their angsty pop-rock they were the perfect band for the melancholic early-twenty-something. I remember going to a gig (ok several gigs) at the Metro in Sydney where I clutched my BFF's [sero] hand and we screamed the lyrics of 'Budge' as Patrick Roberston, in all his diminutive loveliness, sang them just for us (we were so sure).

Anyhoo, so a recent wave of the nostalgias has inspired me to dig out Five Star Laundry, and sitting here listening to it and wondering what the shit happened to Motor Ace, I came across this on Wikipedia:

The individual members remain on amicable terms. Robertson now professionally scores for film and television, while Ong still occasionally performs around Melbourne with his Joni Lightning project. Costin continues to work in the music industry. Matt Balfe is currently a freelance lion tamer.

Matt Balfe is currently a freelance lion tamer? This is not so much what I expected as not what I expected? Can anyone verify this?

Survey this

A long time ago (January?) I started a series of posts called 'Things I Don't Understand (But Wish I Did)' on another blog. It was meant to be an occasional series, and I must confess I have taken such liberties with it that I have not added to it since its inception in January (although there have been things, multitudes actually, and daily, that I have not understood).

So in an effort to address this terrible neglect I decided this morning to post the very next thing that mystified me, so here it is:

Not the easiest thing to read, is it? Sorry. I'll see if I can fix it.

Ok so apparently I can't fix it. Sorry about that (Alex help!).

Anyhoo, it's a survey that arrived today, one of those 'Tell us what it's like to live where you live, chump!' surveys. Now I love filling in a good survey, in fact I love filling in forms of all types (formgasmic), so imagine my delight when this giant 10-pager arrived.

I rattled through the pages, ticking boxes, strongly agreeing and mildly disagreeing everywhere. Then I got to the last two questions, above:

Question 42: How satisfied are you with the way democracy works in Australia?

and

Question 43: What is your favourite retail shop in your local area?

What the fuck? Seriously? Your thoughts on the effectiveness of Australia's political system, and oh, while we've got you, where do you buy your Tampax?

I'm guessing this is a State government effort.

Yeah I mean you, shitty business

So here's the thing with Facebook: If you're a business and you have a Facebook page and you post things on it and people respond, unless those responses are unforgivably lewd (and you're not, ahem, a publisher of adult 'books'), THEN YOU SHOULDN'T DELETE THEM BECAUSE IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A CENSORIOUS DICK of a business.

Just saying.

Polaroids of *Ahem* Hot Guys Reading

Shameless, Kettle, shameless.


See more (more!) here, via Readings (thank you ever so much, Readings).


Oh go on then, here's another one:


Thank you Mr Dean and your Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley, now I can get back to work.

Your coffee or your love?

There's a cafe up the road from our place where they're very serious about coffee. (Very. Serious.) If the term 'coffee shop' didn't sound so cutesy I'd call it a coffee shop because that's pretty much all they do: sell coffee, in its wet and hot, wet and cold, ground and unground forms. Sure they sell a few macaroons and the odd chocolate croissant but I suspect these items are more counter accessories than a major source of revenue.

So this cafe sells very good coffee which is, inherently, a very good thing.

By extension then, given the God-like status caffeine enjoys in my life, I consider the staff to be (inherently) very good people, and I would certainly have their babies and/or tweak their nipple rings if any were to ask.

(Please ask.)

But despite the centrality of these barista Gods to many of our lives, I worry they may not be altogether very happy people? In the year I've been frequenting this 'coffee shop' I have never seen any of these baristas crack a smile or share a familiar 'hello' with their devotees, nor (heavens!) engage in a spot of banter.

In fact, I was so desperate for an actual interaction with them last week that I mistook a barista chappy asking me how he could help me with how I *was* (existentially, I assumed). It was only when he looked away (embarrassed for both of us) that I realised he wasn't in the least concerned with how I was, just what form of coffee artistry was required of him. Ahem.

So my question is, can you be an expert coffee-maker and show your clientele the odd human kindness (a smile here, a 'see you next time' there), or does one preclude the other?

Marvellous!

From here.