Swandives

Image from WikipediaNot only is it incredibly alliterative, it’s coming to a venue near you! That’s right, the third annual Fly Fishing Film Festival tour is on its way. Check out venues here. I’m quite excited, not only because it’s a FLY FISHING FILM FESTIVAL (I could say those magic words over and over again), but because Corryong in the list of potential venues (date to be confirmed). I’m in the neighbourhood at the end of the month/beginning of next and there’s nothing I’d like better than to attend! I can’t attend the Sydney show because, well, I’ll be fishing!

The running season is in full swing again, so expect Swandives to become somewhat of a jog blog while I attempt to motivate myself to pound the pavement. I am really struggling this season. Today I managed 9 km, which sounds like a lot, but I am so slow people can walk faster! I kid you not, it took me an hour and 20 minutes! Where did all that hard work from last season go? I feel very discouraged.

I’m noddling around on the internet (I tend to noodle when TV viewing is bad which, sadly, is fairly regularly these days) and I find the most amazing pictures I have seen in ages. Apologies if this is old news to you or if you’re in any way easily grossed out.

It’s the story of a enormous sperm whale carcass that, for various reasons, ended up on the back of a truck in Taiwan in 2004, according to the website, Truck Spills. Unfortunately, it had a little accident and exploded. Warning: it’s seriously disgusting and, like a car crash, you just can’t help but look.

http://www.truckspills.com/whale_spill.html

OK, so I think the original ICHC site is still the best, but was cruising around at lunchtime on the interwebs, saw this, and had to post it.

see more loldogs are funny dog pictures!

We went to see Charlie Wilson’s War at the cinema the other day. It was a lunchtime screening, which provided me with the perfect excuse to eat popcorn! The beloved doesn’t eat popcorn so the larger menu options just aren’t necessary, but he does drink the cola so we share a large cup between the two of us.

There is one problem with this cosy arrangement.

For some really bizarre reason, a large cola and a medium popcorn costs more than a large cola and a large popcorn ‘combo’. So in order to save myself 65 cents, I went with the large option.

Check out the size of that bucket! And in what mad universe does more food cost less than less food? I even asked the girl behind the counter if I could pay for the large combo and just get the smaller popcorn AND SHE SAID NO. And they wonder why more than 50% of Australians are overweight.

With all the hullabaloo, hand wringing and haggling surrounding Facebook, MySpace, Twitter et al, it’s easy to become complacent and cynical about the social networking phenomenon.

Then something happens to remind us of the potential positive power these networks have.

Today, thousands of Australians have in their own small way helped reconciliation in this country - making a profound statement simply by updating their social network status of choice. All over Facebook, for example, individuals are saying sorry. And suddenly, it’s not just our government making an apology in parliament - it’s about Australians being part of that sentiment. Which in turn makes it more than just sentiment. Now that’s powerful.

If I had my way (and the time and space), I would have a black standard poodle as a pet. Sadly, living in a flat and full time work mean we have to make do with a tank of tropical fish. I should add that I love our fish, and I would have them even if we lived in some marvellous alternate universe where somebody was always at home, we had a lovely large yard and owned a dog and a cat.

But I must admit that I have a favourite in the tank - a large blue gourami which we’ve nicknamed Gutz.

The name is self-explanatory: the fish loves to eat! For, well, years now, we’ve thought Gutz was a boy because of its beautiful colour. But it turns out that Gutz is a girl (apparently, you can tell from the dorsal fin, which is shorter and rounder in girls and longer and more pointed in boys). So we’re going to try to get her a boyfriend blue gourami, because she’s currently suffering from ‘biggest fish in the tank’ syndrome and thinks she’s pretty tops.

I have my conspiracy theory hat on here, but does anybody else find it weird that, with all those planespotters that hang around Heathrow with their digicams, mobile phones and out and out camcorders, there is NO footage of the approach of Flight BA038 or the subsequent crash rolling around the internet?

I find it very hard to believe. And, I want to see what happened for myself, thank you very much. I don’t want to have to rely on the ‘official reports’. Indeed, if I could see the footage, I’d be more likely to accept official reports. And it doesn’t make it better that YouTube had a video that had been tantalisingly titled “British Airways BA038 Approach” but the link explains “This video has been removed by the user”.

The cached comments for this vid say that the person handed the footage over the authorties, but I guess it’s just as likely that he’s sold it to a news outlet? Anyway, the internet being what it is, there’s got to be another link out there. And I hate not being able to see it for myself. So if you find it, please post it here. Thanks!

…but some catfish are more evil than others and yesterday, the beloved found out just how evil they can be. We’d hired a tinny from Brooklyn to do a spot of fishing on the Hawkesbury River (a last-ditch attempt to make the most of our quickly dissolving holidays). It was a humid but lovely day and a light cloud cover kept the worst of the burning sun at bay. We hadn’t actually caught a great deal – two small bream that we’d put back. I’d had an enormous bite that had broken the line at the swivel and was beating myself up a bit about it…there’s nothing worse than losing a good fish because of the fisherman’s ineptitude with tackle. Overall, a very pleasant morning. I just love messing about in boats and my morning reverie, as I was vaguely attempting to untangle a knot from a line, was broken by the beloved showing off his latest catch – a large striped catfish.

I loathe catfish. The very sight of the slimy, squirming, whiskery golems of the deep fills me with dread. And until yesterday, I had no real reason to be so horrified. But, judging by subsequent events, my reaction would seem to be based on some sort of primordial intuition. Mike, however, did not share my revulsion and was all but ready to grab the thing to dehook and send it back from whence it came.

“Don’t touch it – use a cloth,” I said and began a mad scramble in the bottom of the boat for the cloth I knew I brought along for just such an event. Of course, I couldn’t find it so threw him a Chux instead.

Note to fisherman: Chux don’t protect you from fish spines. Not even Chux of the super duper, extra thick, heavy duty variety. The evil thing flipped about, stabbing the spine on its pectoral fin straight through the flimsy protection and into Mike’s hand – not once, but twice – into his index finger and the webbing of his palm.

Chaos. Did you know catfish are venomous? Slightly less venomous than Stonefish and Scorpionfish, as it turns out, but the emphasis is on slightly. Ok, I am exaggerating. Stonefish will kill you. So the smarmy, venomous fish is flapping about the boat, there’s blood everywhere, the poison is working its way through Mikey’s body and the man with a pain threshold like an elephant (do elephant’s have a high pain threshold?) is writhing around in misery. Mind you, he’s understating things somewhat, even at this point. If it were me, I’d have been screaming. The entire Hawkesbury would have known what had happened. Mike just sat there and said “Ooh, that really hurts. My finger’s gone numb,” and then proceeded to tell me to get the hook out of the fish. Which, naturally, I was reticient to do. When he suggested I get the camera out and take a photo of the fish in case he became unconscious, however, I figured it was dire.

You know, the funniest thing about the whole situation was the pictures I took ended up looking like the rest of our fishing ‘brag’ photos. “Look at the fish I just caught!
It almost killed me!”

Note the bloody drops, tissues and ice brick. Anyway, I cut the thing off and it sunk back to its watery lair, we got the beloved cleaned up and I gave him an ice brick to put on it. He didn’t like the ice but after a while things calmed down. I figured that if catfish were deadly I would have heard about it so, would you believe, we continued fishing! Mike even managed to haul in a very nice flathead!

Once we were on dry land, however, Mike began to feel bad. By now, his hand was a swollen, angry red balloon, hot to touch. He was light headed and sweating and the pain was becoming worse. He suggested, of his own accord, that we go to the doctor and I became progressively more worried. I could tell it was really bad when he asked me to drive, because he never does that. So we made for the Brooklyn Community Centre clinic. As soon as they heard Mike had been stabbed by a catfish they organised somebody to see us almost straight away, prescribed antibiotics and a tetanus injection (which also includes diphtheria and whooping cough these days). But as for pain, it was over-the-counter medication only. I had a feeling that wasn’t going to cut it, but it was all we could do.

So we continued up the road to my aunt’s place (she was a nurse…she’ll know what to do…and she may also have drugs). And it wasn’t until this point that I thought, “I know, I’ll look it up on Google”.

Out of all the technology I own and use, the thing that tickles me the most is being able to access the internet from my mobile phone. Mike teases me mercilessly about it. He calls me his ‘little geek girl’, which isn’t true because, while I like using technology, I’m hardly a geek. Geeks hate Facebook and I quite like it, for example. Ok – I’m addicted to it. But he has had to eat humble pie in any case because thanks to my so-called geekgirliness, I discovered this site, which details treatments for marine stings, among them catfish. And it turns out the correct treatment is not ice, but hot water (ice actually makes it hurt more…and I’d made him use that ice brick and stick his finger in front of the car’s air conditioning vent)! The only consolation was that the doctors didn’t know either. Codeine did nada but hot water is a miracle painkiller – 45 degrees Celsius – for a max of 90 minutes. Today his finger is still swollen and a little sore, but the agony has dissipated – yay!

“That’s the most useful your geekness has ever been, I think.”

Moral of the story: catfish are evil and geek tendencies are to be encouraged.

A little video I took in Manly watching the 9pm fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Great view huh? Happy New Year to everybody.