Swandives

Image via WikipediaCue the Twilight Zone music: something weird is happening. I posted a minor rant about my disappointment with Weight Watchers and it mysteriously disappeared. The WW faeries came and took it away - if only they could do the same for the extra 8 kg of lard that’s hanging around right now. But thank you for all your ideas and comments - they’ve been filed away where I will put them to good use.

Yesterday I ran 4 km and then did a pump class. I was a wee bit weary by the end of it all. But I’ve entered the City to Surf so it’s training, here we come. I wasn’t going to enter because with only a few weeks left, it’s unlikely that I’ll get the 14 km even at my snaily pace, but I had a mini epiphany - I don’t actually have to run the entire way. Hell, most people don’t run the entire way. And all of a sudden, the C2S stopped being this painful chore and started being potentially fun. So that’s the plan, anyway.

Of course, this comes in the first year that C2S offers timing chips, so I’ll know exactly how slow I am. I am very happy about the chips and it’s providing extra incentive to train but why in the very year when I decide to be zen about my time and walking? Oh well. There’s always next year.

… in other news, a truly weird moment watching the news on the tele tonight. Actually, I was listening, not watching. It was all about the wildfires in California, which are pretty dire by the sounds of things. Too many fires, not enough resources to fight them all, forcing fire fighters to pick and choose and leave some to burn. The news coverage switched to the obligatory pollie news grab, and all of a sudden I was listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger declaring a state of emergency and ordering the National Guard to assist in the efforts.

It was a surreal moment because my first reaction was to think, “Why doesn’t Arnie just put the fires out?”. He saved the world countless times - he even saved Mars, for goodness sake! A few fires should be a doddle, right? A few moments later common sense kicked in: “D’uh Swannie, this is real life we’re talking about, not some movie.” Oh yeah. Right. Darn.

I’m putting it out there, in the hope that universe will provide (or already provides, and I just need to be made aware it exists):

Please sir, I want a universal status updater.

What’s a universal status updater? Well, I don’t know if I’m having a ‘the future is now’ moment here, but it’s a little application that allows you to automatically update the status on all your social networks without having to log into each one and do it manually. I don’t even use Twitter and without even noticing, I suddenly have five statuses that need regular feeding:

• Live Messenger
• Facebook
• MediaConnect
• LinkedIn
• MySpace (ok, so I don’t use this one regularly, but it’s there nonetheless)

Wouldn’t it be good if you could just enter your status once and have it update everywhere automatically? OK, there are some issues, such as ‘do I want my FB status, which is largely social, to also appear on my professional LinkedIn profile’? But you can get around that by only using it for universal status updates, and going in for the manual update on sites if you don’t want everybody in the universe to know what you’re doing.

There must already be something like this out in the world. Whatsit called and does it work? Anyone…anyone…Bueller….

If not, we can call it USU. Sit USU sit - good dog!

UPDATE: If you do use Twitter and want to publish your Facebook status on the service, I suggest the method outlined by Jeff Sandquist from Microsoft. It’s only one way tho; you can’t use Twitter to update Facebook, from what I understand. 

UPDATE2: And the Twitter app lets you use Twitter to update FB.  I must admit, I’m a teeny bit scared of using it, coz it seems to be an all-or-nothing approach, but I’ll be brave and jump right in shall I? Of course, it’s not a USU but it’s fun to play around with.

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!

So it’s the last day for voting and I head over to the YouTube awards channel. And, pretty much at random, I click on Randy Pausch’s ‘Last Lecture’ in the inspirational category. In recent times I have found I get a lot out of inspirational stories, even though in the past I may have dismissed it all as sentimental and therefore somehow unworthy of being useful. At about one and a quarter hours long, this YouTube clip is waaay above the commonly accepted two minute timeline for web video. But it’s worth every. single. minute. Randy Pausch is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, but that’s only part of the story. If ever there was a lecture that defined inspiration, this is it.

I love my tele. Luurrve it, I tells ya. Doesn’t have to be high brow, or even of terribly good quality - schlock TV, like music, is a wickedly wonderful social commentary that should never be underestimated. But us TV junkies have our limits; a few pet hates that will move us to action despite our addiction to the box.

This week I signed up for a workshop in presentation skills because, frankly, I’d rather eat styrofoam than stand up and give a speech. The irony is that it’s not the speaking itself that I loathe, it’s the worrying beforehand. I once had to give a speech at my godmother’s birthday and followed a performance by the utterly brilliant Toni Lamond - and as far as I’m concerned, if I can do that, I can do anything. But I’m hardly a pro and I have a lot to learn so I thought, yeah, a workshop sounds tops.

It was a complete disaster. Contrary to what my husband will tell you, I am not a performer. And I came away from the day feeling like I was crap and useless and could never again talk about anything - which of course is complete bollocks. Anyway, during the course of the day we had to give a presentation about a topic with about 45 minutes of preparation. Choosing a topic is hard enough. In the end I decided to rant about how I hate it when TV stations chop and change my fave shows with no apparent care for viewers. And it turns out I’m not alone - Peter Mattessi evidently feels the same way, as he wrote in Crikey today. Actually, his rant is a lead into why he is watching The Wire. Somebody introduced me to this show in much the same way as Peter a few months ago and I couldn’t agree more.

All this is by the by, you know. What has really got my goat right now is the utterly blatant and completely annoying house ad Channel 9 foisted upon me last night while I was watching Moonlight. Yes, the show is still on at 9.30pm - yay! I was beginning to think that perhaps I had unfairly maligned the network that sickeningly ‘hearts’ TV when it came up with this little gem - an ad for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicals across the bottom of the screen. It’s a static image that sits beside the channel logo. And for a show like Moonlight, which is largely set at night, a white logo (even a transparent one) is infuriatingly obvious. I’m moved to complain - which seems to involve jumping through several hoops acccording to Free TV. You can’t send an email - you must “post or fax your complaint to the relevant body”. Are you kidding? This is 2008 we’re talking about here. Email is soooo 1990s and even that’s not an option. Deliberate perhaps? And stations wonder why people are switching off in droves. D’uh!

Mr Gee probably won’t post this on his blog, but I have no such scruples. An excerpt, I think, from a larger article from the Herald Sun:

MICHAEL Hutchence’s biographer says the rock star’s death cursed those closest to the INXS frontman.
“Everybody has struggled and, for many, it’s been messy or tragic,” author Mike Gee said.

Oh joy! Oh rapture! The Arcade Fire, my favourite band at the moment (I’m completely besotted) is playing the Big Day Out next year. I’ve been waiting all year for them to tour Australia. I’m very excited.

A few weeks ago we decided to eschew a Foxtel subscription to buy DVDs. We figured it would be cheaper and so far it’s definitely worked in our favour. Imagine my delight when we discovered the local video store was selling Northern Exposure discs! I have the most wonderful coffee mug branded with the show’s title and the tagline: may the moose be with you. If there was every anything on television that spoke to my sensibilities, that show was it. I’ve since turned to eBay to round out the collection.

Nearly 17 years later, it’s still good! Actually, probably better. I’m rediscovering the wonderful nuances of the characters and, more interestingly, seeing things in the context of life experience that I simply didn’t have when I was younger. For example, the Shelly-Holling story arc was never really on my radar. Now, married to a man 21 years older than myself, I see it with an entirely different perspective. And it was so daring; I suddenly realised that we live in much more conservative times for all the changes and ‘forward progress’. I doubt the show would be a hit today because I doubt audiences would get it. Actually, I’m surprised it was ever a hit, truth be told. Surprised, and very pleased.

Northern Exposure always seems to be described as ‘quirky’ but on second viewing, I’d call it ‘accepting’. I realise this concept was the underlying theme of the whole show, but juxtaposed with the undercurrent of fear and hatred of today’s world it stands out as extraordinary. As a friend once remarked to me after watching an episode: “I feel at peace with myself and the world.”

The show first aired in 1990 so these days it’s considered a retro classic - which is not really a word I’ve ever associated with Northern Exposure until I realised there little to no technology onscreen. No internet. No mobile phones. Chris opines into a microphone where today he would no doubt be tapping away at a keyboard or podding. It is all the more wonderful for the lack of gizmos and gadgets. I am reminded of the joys of an analgue world. Then I remember that without digital, my Northern Exposure DVDs wouldn’t exist, and everything falls back into place.

It’s Friday night (thank goodness), which normally means I’d be parked in front of the TV watching Big Brother. But there’s no more Big Brother. And it’s a week or so until Idol begins. I’m looking forward to Dicko being back on board as I really rate him.

Anyway, as I predicted Aleisha won Big Brother, over Zach, the flamboyant gay boy. Yes, I can pick ‘em. I think Zach’s a legend and I’d have loved to see him win, but I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t. Australia loves the ordinary. But the most interesting thing about Big Brother this year was that, amid the vote counting fiasco, a bit of magic occurred: we actually got to see some reality tele.

You see, the votes were apparently so close that it took almost an hour extra to count them all, forcing the poor crew to pad it out in the meantime. I’ve heard a lot of criticism about that but all I can say is: to the knockers - you try doing it. It’s bloody hard, and I think Gretel and Mikey et al did a fantastic job. But that’s by the by. The real gold happened when, needing to get through the show and still count the votes, the decision was made to let the parents of the finalists into the house.

What followed was the most wonderful 8 minutes of reality television you could imagine. There was the emotional reunion, which was expected. But then everybody sat down and actually ‘talked’. Not like people on tele. Like they were a family, with all the baggage that families have, catching up with each other. The audience didn’t know who they were talking about and it didn’t matter - just watching the interaction was enough. It was sweet, with a depth and a pathos that you just can’t contrive. It rose above the pre-planned, scripted psyco-rubbish that is Big Brother’s bread and butter, and it went somewhere wonderful. And it happened because of something unplanned.

All those who bag the show or bag the host or both miss the point entirely. They’re so busy getting their knickers in a knot about a rubber chicken throw that they fail to see the nuggets of gold that sometimes appear in the Big Brother vein.