One genius, two genius. Marjorie and I had a dinner table discussion the other day about musical genius in regards to bands. More specifically, which bands are based around one genius, and which have more than one? I guess what we were really talking about was songwriting genius more than the ability to play an instrument. We broke things up into categories, and had a lively little discussion. However, the opinions expressed here are mine, not hers. Solo artists can obviously only be single geniuses, and are not listed here.

Two geniuses. The rare confluence of talent that happens only once or twice in a lifetime. Only two bands here:

The Beatles

The Clash

Two near geniuses that add up to more than one genius. Sometimes people can only achieve their best through working with others. This is not to damn these people with faint praise; genius is not a word to be thrown around lightly, and these each add up to more than one.

The Rolling Stones

REM

The Smiths

U2 (actually, a sum total of more than two, I suppose)

One genius, one wannabe genius. Often times a genius will inspire another in the band to better things than they would otherwise achieve, but at the end of the day, there is only one:

The Pixies

Crowded House

XTC

One genius.

Nirvana

The Who (lots of instrumental genius here though)

The White Stripes

Radiohead

Weezer

Many others

Your mileage may, of course, vary. Afterward we had a ton of fun taking turns playing DJ while goofing around with the dog.

My three favorite job titles here in Australia:

"Spruiker" -- a salesperson who addresses passing members of the public from the door of a store, bar, or other establishment.

"Stevedore" -- One who is employed in the loading or unloading of ships.

"Removalist" -- Our office is moving to a new location, and the people that are going to clear out our office have this title. That'd be a cool job title to have.

Spring is gone. Literally. I found out today that Australians mark summer as starting the first of December, basing it not on astronomy, but on the months. Strange to me, but when I explained to my cow orkers that summer starts on the 21st for us, their response was "What? Why?".

So now it is officially no longer spring here. On cue, it rained for most of the day.

Spring has sprung, it seems. About time, too, as it's three weeks until summer. With the heat has come the mosquitos (aka mozzies, which seem to love me as much as North American and Asian mosquitoes) and flies. But the weather is still very nice, and there are lots of outdoor cafes and restaurants.

On Saturday we went to a housewarming party/barbecue for one of my cow orkers, on the rooftop deck of her new townhouse. It was beautiful and clear and the full moon made an appearance late. Fun bunch of folks I work with.

Sunday we saw Garden State, which was first-rate.

Tomorrow night, PJ Harvey.

Elvis Costello is playing up the road right now, and somehow, I'm not there. It wasn't in the cards this time.

Tomorrow, though, we're off to see the Finn brothers. Front row!

This Thursday, we're invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of some Americans we met. I'm excited. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, or at least my favorite meal.

Then, next week, we have good seats again for PJ Harvey. There are advantages to living in a country that doesn't have the internet saturation of the USA -- you can score good concert tickets if you're among the savvy.

Comparing countries. I made a couple of graphs, just out of curiousity, with a little help from NCES's Create A Graph.

First, here's a comparison of Australia, the USA, and China, in terms of area. Pretty close, yes?

Now, see the graph comparing their population.

The point? I have none. I just think it's interesting.

Book roundup. Recent reads:

Call Of The Wild/White Fang (Jack London). I've read a lot of London, but somehow, never these books. Now that I have a dog I figured it was about time. Good stuff. London knows his dogs.

Great Expectations (Charles Dickens). I'm reading this for historical reasons. Recently I came across a couple of separate references to this novel which refer to it as a cultural phenomenon of its time. Pretty much the whole world, it seems, was reading it when it came out, serialized in a magazine. So I thought I would too.

Singularity Sky (Charles Stross). Science fiction candy. The guy obviously reads Slashdot. Some seriously crazy technical references, not dumbed down. Still, his short stories are better.

Titan (Stephen Baxter). Timely reading. Written in 1997, the story begins with the Cassini/Huygens probe -- which lands a month and a half from now -- finding evidence of life on Saturn's moon Titan.

Odd goings-on at the local Borders. Browsing in the bookstore this evening, I came across a ball-point pen that someone had left on a shelf -- not a skinny, cheap one, but a big fat nice one. I picked it up, and hit the button to push out the tip -- and promptly got shocked. What the...?

Why? What purpose could it serve? My immediate (and far too overdramatic) thought was that it some sort of spy pen, like the briefcase that shoots poison gas at you if you open it wrong. Then I thought, maybe it's a self-defense device, like pepper spray.

Of course, like the dumber maze rat, I had to get shocked a second time before I learned.

An internet search cleared up the mystery; it's just a novelty.

I just hope I wasn't being filmed.

Resuming my job as a cultural ambassador, today I tried a famous Australian "delicacy". Composed of yeast and sea salt, vegemite is typically spread on toast at brekkie. The cafe at work has little packaged individual servings of it (surprisingly to me, made by Kraft). Taking the advice of the Aussies I work with, I spread a very thin amount on my English Muffin. It has the appearance and consistency of gunky axle grease.

Americans notoriously react negatively to it. I thought I might be different; yeast and salt don't sound like a bad combination to me.

I have to say though. Ick.

The other night I proofread fifteen OCR'ed pages of an old book about the influence of ancient Greece on modern times. Why? For Project Gutenberg, a project (started well before the internet) to make publicly available books of interest that are in the public domain. Most of the books had copyrights that expired, or were old enough that they were never copyrighted. Check out some of the amazing books that are available for you to browse or download.

Music. I think I've mentioned here a few times my plan to have a home music server where I would just start downloading everything, without even considering the quality. There'd be a lot I would never listen to -- but, so? Memory is relatively cheap; I think the tendency to be discriminating is merely a holdover from a time where a large number of albums would require lots of money and space.

Well, here's a story about a guy who's trying to do it. His goals are, at least on the surface, more noble; he claims to be an archivist. Interesting, though.

It's funny, 'cuz it's true. Today's Overboard. 2.4 seconds is maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but this morning Laika wolfed her bowl of food in under 30 seconds.

The comics I keep thinking about in relation to her, though, are a series of classic Far Sides. It's obvious that Gary Larson knows his dogs:

1. The one with the two dogs watching their food being prepared, with big smiles. The one dog says to the other, "Oh boy, it's dog food again!"

2. The one where the dog is picking up another dog for a date, and he says to her, "You look lovely tonight, Alice -- and whatever you rolled in sure does stink."

3. The one where the dog is riding in the car, and you can see that outside a nuclear bomb has gone off, and people are running around screaming in terror. The dog, though, is looking at another dog, who's just sitting there on the sidewalk. The caption reads, "Suddenly, Sparky saw something that interested her."

It's Friday evening here, and pretty nice out. We're sitting out in the backyard now because it's supposed to be rainy and cold again this weekend. Phoo. We just cooked up an awesome Mexican meal of soft tacos and beans, with Coronas on the side. Marjorie is reading over my shoulder and the dog is sitting next to me chewing noisily on a piece of bone.

Our stuff is supposed to arrive in port on the 17th, and then spend God knows how long in quarantine. But soon. We simply CANNOT WAIT.

We did get a box of groceries that Marjorie mailed from the states. Customs confiscated some of the stuff, like the black bean mix (because, apparently, it had chicken in it) and a Sante Fe rice mix, presumably because of the corn. They are seriously uptight about agricultural imports here.

The IOCCC winners have been posted; mine is under "schnitzi". Ah, the sweet buzz of fame. Actually, I haven't even shown it to anyone at work.

No chance to see the aurora last night. Actually, the sky was clear and blue in the morning when I woke up, so I missed my chance, I think.

It struck me earlier today how much the "Woy-yoy-yo"s in Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier" sound like the theme song to The Banana Splits. Coincidence? Conspiracy?

There's a chance that I'll be able to see something tonight that's on my Life List of Things To See. Heavy sunspot activity means that the aurora australis (a.k.a. the southern lights) should be visible from here tonight. If the weather cooperates, which it isn't. Bummer.

Mall rats. Today we took a train a good ways out of town just to go to a mall. Marjorie convinced me by showing me on their website that they had a Wendy's, my favorite fast food. It turned out to be really quite a huge mall, and we had big stupid grins on our faces as we arrived, which we attribute to our being American. There's something fundamental in the American psyche that requires an occasional mall visit, and it's been years for me.

It turns out that the Wendy's was an ice cream store. Phooey. The excitement of being in a mall wore off rather quickly, in fact.

In the Borders there, though, I finally found a copy of the November issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal in which I am mentioned on page 16 for the IOCCC thing. Aw yeah.

Cup day. Today is an officially sanctioned holiday here in Melbourne -- Melbourne Cup Day. Perhaps the only holiday anywhere that's based around a sporting event? Lots of big hats on the tram. I went in to work thinking there'd at least be some skeleton crew there, but there was nobody. So I left. Time to go play!

Two things I haven't seen in years, that I just saw:

A rainbow, on our way home from the dog park. Then, half an hour later --

Hail.

Move your bloomin' arse! For once, the weather was crappy leading up to the weekend, then turned beautiful: not the other way around. We just went city exploring, like we hadn't done in a long while. Me in shorts.

Late in the afternoon, we headed back to a bar just across from Flinders Street station, which is in the very heart of town, to watch people come back from the races. It's great stuff, and we can't wait to do it up ourselves next year when we have more disposable income. It's rather like Ascot opening day in My Fair Lady, except that everyone is like Eliza instead of the snobby rich people. Ladies in fancy dress and big hats with feathers; men in suits or tuxes; everyone drinking a lot. Monday (and maybe Tuesday, I haven't quite figured it out) is a work holiday here in Melbourne, just for the Melbourne Cup, which all the other races have been leading up to. Of course, being paid hourly, there's no real motivation for me to take a holiday.

Marjorie had an interview the other day that sounds like it went really well. We'll keep our fingers crossed. That'll be a good one to check off the list.

Happy birthday, Mom!

The dog continues to provide comic relief. Now she's taken to attacking her tail. Not chasing it, but actually catching it.

I'm fascinated by the race of hobbit people that have been unearthed. I'm sure the scientists are cringing about them being called "hobbits" everywhere. The significance of this find can't be overstated. I mean, the reason you've heard about neanderthals is because they used to be considered our nearest neighbor in the evolutionary tree. Now we have a new closest relative. Wild stuff.

Marjorie had an interview the other day that sounds like it went really well. We'll keep our fingers crossed. That'll be a good one to check off the list.

Happy birthday, Mom!

The dog continues to provide comic relief. Now she's taken to attacking her tail. Not chasing it, but actually catching it.

I'm fascinated by the race of hobbit people that have been unearthed. I'm sure the scientists are cringing about them being called "hobbits" everywhere. The significance of this find can't be overstated. I mean, the reason you've heard about neanderthals is because they used to be considered our nearest neighbor in the evolutionary tree. Now we have a new closest relative. Wild stuff.