Flotsam.

It's Labour Day weekend here. Just like Labor day in the states, it's a three-day weekend at the end of summer. By good fortune, the weather is supposed to be in the 30s (that's a good thing here). We're going to try to hit the beach.

In chess news, I've been playing a guy who's a bit better than me, but who I can beat on a good day. But today I played a guy who just wiped the table with me, two games. A good dose of humility. Part of the reason that chess is fascinating to me is because you can follow all the supposed rules of strategy, and see them work, but then good players are still able to drive in a wedge and crash over you like a wave (to mix a metaphor).

The last great physicist of glory days of the first half of the last century died this week. This was the guy who figured out how the sun shines. I always wanted to meet him.

The Station Agent is a great little movie.

New Aussie term: "to spit the dummy". A dummy is another word for a pacifier here. So, like a baby would spit out a pacifier when pitching a fit, spitting the dummy is having a tantrum. Also known as "cracking the shits" or "having a tantie".

Besides taking first place at bar trivia tonight, we also learned an interesting additional bit of trivia: apparently, Guy Pierce and Hugh Jackman live right on our street. From what we heard, Guy has grown his hair and beard long to avoid recognition, and Hugh is a regular at a neighborhood cafe.

Aussie term. "Grog" is somewhat archaic slang for beer. To take "a bog" is to defecate. Hence, a "grog bog" is the equivalent of the "beer shits". Thank you and good night.

Caught Mudhoney last night at the Corner Hotel. A solid set, with a good mix of old and new. But overly smoky. Mudhoney is a band that I'm happy to have just grind out albums and tour, forever. Most bands have one essential member; they have three, in Mark Arm, the singer/songwriter, Dan Peters, the drummer, and especially (I decided last night) Steve Turner, the guitarist.

The dog's favorite food is, officially: cheese.

Geek alert. I made an interesting discovery recently. The building next door to my work is the State Library of Victoria. And, they have an entire room dedicated to chess. So, a couple of times over the past few week, I've started grabbing a quick lunch and running over to get in a quick game against random strangers. How geeky is that? Geeky enough, at least, to not even mention it to my coworkers yet.

Laika nearly dug her way out of the backyard yesterday while we were at the wine festival, as we were gone for thirteen hours. So today we took her with us when we went to breakfast at an outdoor cafe.

A bird pooped on her head.

Afterwards, we took her to the dog park.

A bird pooped on her head.

What are the odds?

Maybe we'll rename her after Steve Martin's dog in The Jerk.

Fruits of the vine. Yesterday we boarded a bus with a dozen or so of my cow orkers and headed out to the yearly Grape Grazing festival. We hit the first winery by 10:30 am. By the fourth winery, there was a lot less swishing and swirling; the Grape Grazing festival had become more of a Wine Swilling festival. Twice we ended up behind another bus full of women exhibitionists.

The festival was hosted by Honda, who recommend a nice Cabernet Sauvignon before getting behind the wheel.

We had a fantastic time.

Call me the man from Nantucket. I took third place in this year's Valentine's Day Limerick Contest. This year, your limerick had to reference medical pioneers, skin conditions, or microscopic life. So my limerick is about the little creature that lives in your eyelashes.

I had another submission that I thought was better, but probably got marked off because it was off-color, and maybe because the last line doesn't scan perfectly. You'll have to find it yourself.

If you're at all interested in the workings of the brain, biology, evolution, or conciousness, might I suggest getting a dog?

I mean, in addition to all the usual accolades of dog ownership, it's fascinating to this other mind, this other kind of mind, living in your household.

The communication barrier is between us and her is bewildering to me. There's just no way to tell her some things. It kills me that when she arrived home here, she didn't even know she was staying. When we go for a walk, she doesn't know which way we're going to turn, at every intersection. When we go out without her, she doesn't know if it's for a minute or for eight hours.

I was surprised to see her start exhibiting behaviours appropriate to her breed. She won't fetch things, except at the beach -- where she'll swim out and fetch (other dog's) balls and sticks, then come back and drop them on the beach, just like a good retriever should. I never realized such a specific behaviour could be bred for, even if it's substituting balls for ducks. But why not? Beavers build dams on instinct alone, and spiders spin webs. I tend to think of such specific behaviours as learned, not ingrained. Evolution in action, even if the selection isn't "natural".

Which makes me wonder -- why have they never bred dogs strictly for intelligence? At least, not that I've ever heard of, or can find with a web search. Why concentrate on floppy ears, miniature size, long or short hair? I wonder just how smart you can make a dog. (Just out of curiousity. Laika, bless her heart, is in the fat of the bell curve, methinks, but we have no plans to trade her in.)

Recording history. I have a kind of fascination with things that are lost to history:

The loss of the Library at Alexandria -- almost inconceivable.

Two whole Shakespeare plays -- Love's Labour's Won and Cardenio -- didn't survive to the modern era.

Lennon and McCartney sat down, early on, and knocked out about fifty songs, which have vanished into the mists of time.

Countless early movies have been lost, or survive in only partial or edited form. (I for one would love to see the orignal ending to The Magnificent Ambersons.)

Many movies are in the process of being lost. There are people trying to prevent that.

Most of early television is gone. People just didn't think it would ever be considered important. Even recently, most of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson from the 1970's is nowhere to be found, I understand.

Those who don't learn from history, they say, are doomed to repeat it. So, I often wonder if there's anything happening these days that's being lost, because we don't realise that future generations might be interested.

Which brings me to an idea for a web site I'd like to implement, if I had more time. It would be appealing in the present mostly to music geeks. In fact, most would consider it frivolous at best.

What I would like to create is "gigography.com", a web site that archives concerts. It would list the band, venue, and date at a minimum, but also trivia, band line ups, set lists, opening bands, audio files, etc. Not just new concerts but shows dating back in history. You could easily browse back and check out the Woodstock lineup, or the Beatles set list on the Ed Sullivan show.

Until recently, this would be an impossible task for one person. But now with the concept of wikis, where anyone can add content, it's quite doable. You would be surprised how many fans have already compiled similar lists (cough) for their favorite artist. But so far, nothing has been centralized. It would be a simple matter to put the plea out there to various music lists to get the ball rolling.

Pointless? Maybe. Historically necessary? Well, doubtful. Fun? Surely.

Life goes on. We drank a toast to Mike at the Rufus Wainwright show last night. (Don't know if Mike was a fan, but it wouldn't surprise me.) An intimate venue, and a fantastic show. I don't think I've ever seen an audience held in such a trance. While the songs were intense, Rufus was jovial in between, joking a lot about being on a diet because his mother said he was fat recently. And because it was just him, he was free to rearrange his songs on the fly, and skip over or redo bits at will. An enormous talent. I never realized what a good piano player he is, too.

We both thought about Mike again during a song Rufus did about Jeff Buckley, who died tragically at a young age. Who frew da ham?

By an odd coincidence -- I watched an old M*A*S*H rerun earlier in the day. It was the one where the nurses all get sent off, and it featured a folk singer that played a sad song in the officer's club. In the closing credits it was revealed that the singer was Loudon Wainwright III, Rufus's father.

Sadness. Our friend Mike has died, far too young. We met in Atlanta, as a result of our mutual Elvis Costello fandom. His blog was consistently our favorite, and we've linked to it many times here.

His last blog entry has become the place for tributes.

Just before we left the states, we took a last trip to NYC, where we got to see David Bowie in an intimate venue. That was all Mike's doing; he scored the tickets through his musical connections.

I have a handful of other memories of Mike, and they're almost all gems; an Elvis show in Nashville, Steve Earle and Nick Lowe shows in Atlanta. Beyond that, some parties, some dinners, an occasional email.

It's hard for me to characterize just how decent a person he was, both globally and locally. It was my good fortune to know him. Go easy, my man.

In between shows. Last night we caught The Shins at the Corner Hotel. I wasn't too familiar with them going in, besides liking some songs. But they're from Albuquerque NM, so I was subconciously expecting them to be, well, inconsistent. But they were anything but.

So rare for good bands to come out of smaller markets. The only other one I can think of is Built To Spill out of Boise, Idaho. Any others?

Tomorrow night we have an evening planned with Rufus Wainwright. Very exciting.

Alas. I caught the first half at home, a bit of the second half at the casino, then monitored the game at work via the internet. It seemed whenever I was watching, the Eagles did well. So their losing is obviously all my fault.

Something else was missing -- the Super Bowl isn't the same without the million dollar Super Bowl commercials.

All this talk of "dynasty" in regards to the Pats. Winning three Super Bowls by three points each does not a dynasty make, in my book. If they are, they must be the most boring dynasty ever. They play football with German efficiency.

Speaking of bitterness (and nailbiters), I think I'll finally quit biting my nails, thanks to a new product -- Stop That! by Manicare -- that's like clear nail polish, but is extremely bitter (and non-toxic). I made it through most of the day without biting today, but got a good nasty taste a couple of times this evening.

I like the name -- "Stop That!". It's like having Marjorie in a bottle! Ha ha.

Super Bowl Monday! Monday morning here, and I'm home watching the Super Bowl. Eagles looking a little tentative so far but are starting to settle in. The dog is trying to relax next to me, but keeps jumping up when I shout out the TV. The game started later than I thought, so I'm probably going to have to miss the second half, as I'm expected in at work at lunchtime.

Metamorphosis' Valentine's Day limerick contest is back. The subjects this year are medical pioneers, microscopic animals, and skin conditions. We'll be back to defend our crown.

I placed a bet on the Super Bowl today, legally, at Crown Casino. (The guy at the counter tried to wind me up a little, saying "Eagles? You mean the West Coast Eagles?")

Rumor has it that Paul McCartney, who's doing the halftime show, is an Eagles fan.

Another Aussie-ism is to use "crap" as an adjective, instead of "crappy". Like, "It was a crap movie." If something is really bad, it was "the crappest".

Yesterday's weather was the crappest. It rained all day to start with, then in the evening the wind whipped up as well. And kept it up all night. Supposedly it was the heaviest rainfall in Melbourne since they started recording it in 1856. Wow. To top it off, the huge ferry that leaves for Tasmania from just up the road from us was forced to turn back in 20m seas, which is more than 60 feet! Bleah.

We were woken up at about 5am by the sounds of drips; our bedroom roof was leaking in a couple of places. It also leaked into our kitchen and bathroom. The wind was still blowing something fierce. But, less than an hour later, it all stopped, and there were blue skies.

Everyone took their dogs to the dog park today, since no one could yesterday. There were twelve trees down. I think we were actually pretty lucky all in all. Mad weather here.

Bike. Last weekend I bought a used mountain bike. There are some spots of rust but it rides good and I like it a lot. Marjorie already has a bike, so this will definitely extend our range, having previously being limited to walking and our single tram line. Not always, of course, but most of the time I'm glad I don't have a car. I think bike's are one of the greatest inventions ever. The fact that they've had the same basic design for a century says a lot.

Bikes I have owned in the past (that I can remember), and their eventual fate:

Age 5: Orange tricycle.

Age 6?: The bicycle I learned on. I seem to remember it was red and very stripped down.

Age 14: Red, white and blue bike with banana seat. This was a cool one.

Age 16: Ten-speed.

Age 18: Ten-speed. My college bike. Left it locked up over winter break and it was gone when I came back.

Ages 18-33: Nothing!

Age 33: Mountain bike. Great bike. Left it locked up at Music Midtown in Atlanta; came out and it was gone.

Age 37: Green crappy Carrefour (i.e. K-mart) special, in Singapore. Stolen from train station bike rack. And they say there's no crime in Singapore!

Age 38: see above.