Month: November 2002

Continue reading “What Are You Smiling At?”

I accidentally went to church the other day. I was only expecting to go to a christening but apparently these days at St Brendan’s you get the baptism super-sized to include a mass at no extra charge.

Mass ain’t what it once was. They (well this branch of the Catholic church) seem to have taken a leaf out of those funky fundamentalists book. There were lots of musicians and some people parading stuff up the aisle. Weirdest thing was the altar boys weren’t. Some were girls. Apparently they are now all called altar servers, or, as my dad pointed out, in the case of girls they are alter serviettes. Perhaps the greatest moment was the opening hymn. I have no idea what it was but the tune was ‘Go West’ – at first a Village People classic and more recently covered by the Pet Shop Boys. It was all I could do to stop myself doing the actions from the Petty’s video clip.

The strangest thing for me was that I wanted the mass to be like it was when I was a boy. Less ‘involvement’ from those present, altar boys only, no Village People covers – just a guy standing up there being all somber. Retro religion for an agnostic? Who ever would’ve thunk.

Rae though had the observation of the day. She turned around to have a look at the congregation and said “no one’s smiling”. Sad really.

My office mate was having a whine this morning about the number of speed cameras (or ‘traffic cameras‘ in police speak) on the Western Ring Road.

“I mean, if you’re not concentrating or have to speed up to overtake someone it’s so easy to go over the limit”.

Let’s try counting how many ways that sentence is disturbing.

Phee is six so this year will probably be her last true ‘Santa’ year. I’m just hoping that she makes it December 24 without some school yard Scrooge breaking the news.

Last night she wrote a letter to Santa asking for “a car that have to be red”. I’m hoping she means a toy car.

Someone out there typed in cauterising nose bleeds on Yahoo and found me.

I’d forgotten all about that incident. Hope they found what they were looking for.

Hey you – the snotty nosed P-plater punk who almost wiped me off the road this morning.

They’re called INDICATORS. You use them to Iindicate BEFORE you wish to change direction. What’s more, when you almost wipe me off the road don’t sit there grinning like a lobotomised baboon.

It upsets me.

It’s still top secret but the Melbourne Ice site is getting closer. At least there’s a whole lot of empty pages to look at now.

Next step – static content followed by all the database stuff.

So, waddayarekon?

The Internet can still amaze me. With thanks to Nigel I found the site for the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre. The interesting part of this (apart from finding out that that Shirley Bassey is playing there 3 days after my birthday next year) is they have a web cam that you can control.

I spent my allocated minute and a half panning and zooming around only to discover that night time in Glasgow looks an awful lot like night time in Melbourne. Though I would like to know where the taxi that I saw was going.