my legs have lost quite a lot of their hair

sometimes i hold off posting because i have so little to report. not this time.

although my legs have picked up some distinctly hairless patches. they are smooth and itchy.

*cough*

.........................................

1. sensible units: type in a measurement and have it converted into real world equivalents. i weigh as much as 12 cats. here's the proof.



2. DIY album:

1 - Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

If you want to do this again, you’ll hit refresh to generate new quotes, because clicking the quotes link again will just give you the same quotes over and over again.

3 - Go to flickr’s “explore the last seven days” http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that’s your debut album.

well i lucked out. i present to you:

'Mine Are Still Greater', the debut album by the unfortunately monikered I Could Sing of Your Love Forever (or ICSYLF to their fans)



i presume it's meant to be inspirational. or christian. or both.

3. dark energy destroys physics: well, that may be overstating things, but still, the ny times has just published a very interesting (and accessible) piece on the search for the mysterious mass/energy presence which accounts for almost 80% of the universe yet cannot be detected or accounted for under any of the models currently available to science. weird.

4. mister nice hands: oh good, i'm 5 again.

5. free idea factory: a bunch of artistic types put up all their excess ideas for free public consumption and adoption. it would be nice to see them opening the channels of submission a little more, but still it's a cool little concept.

6. japanese video trilogy: the best thing about the japanese is the way in which you can never really be entirely sure whether any particular piece of television is intended as parody or not. try your hand at these.

a) card crusher



b) learn english while exercising



c) inochi



in case you're wondering, the answers are: a) serious; b) serious; and c) i have no fucking idea, oh jesus what in god's name is happening, i want it to stop, why won't it stop

japan. interesting place.

endurance factor

i love this picture with a passion that is almost physical. it may be the most east germanic thing i have ever seen.

...............................

having waltzed through my first batch of chemotherapy with a white blood cell count that had occasionally tilted me in to borderline leukemic territory, it came as somewhat of a surprise to find out that my count from wednesday was almost too low to proceed with chemo that week. my sweet, insanely expensive immune boosting neulasta injection appeared to have failed me. but it seems that there are feasible limits to how much medical pounding your body can withstand. and right now my bone marrow is on the ropes, apparently letting the george foremans of the oncological world beat it to a pulp. not that neutropenia is really that worrisome per se, but it does strip a certain sheen of invincibility from the whole project. i now have to be careful about the health of the people i come into contact with. people with casual illnesses need not apply.

the major complaint i can hurl at it all is really just a creeping sense of decrepitude. there's nothing colossally the matter, but i'm just tireder than i should be, more prone to infection than i should be, feeling the creak in my joints more than i should be, losing far, FAR more hair than i should be. these are inconveniences rather than ailments, but i do so look forward to a time when my youthful vigour has been fully restored. people say it can take up to 6 months before you really restabilise after chemo. but i say pish to them. the instant i am out of this mess i am going to beat the living hell out of my body. with fun. it'll appreciate it i'm sure.

.............................................

1. for those who tried to rock: a memorial to all those bands that never survived the teenage years, those who, despite the months spent whiling out in their parents' garage, never actually made it to the big time. as a kid with neither the musical talent nor social prowess needed to play in a band in high school, this is all very cute.



2. extinction timeline: a timeline of various conceptual and physical extinctions from 1950-2050. spelling has until 2025 it seems, and we'll be saying goodbye to sit down breakfasts some point around 2018. which will be sad.

3. playing jack sparrow: a man describes the experience of playing jack sparrow at disneyland. apparently disney are a vile corporation. who would've thought.



4. the day there was no news: gorgeously put together video of newscasters in various states of inactivity. quite evocative.



5. young me, now me: a variable, but sweet concept where people submit photos of themselves as small children and then try to recreate those photos as their adult selves. some peoples' dedication to the cause is impressive. mine would involve me wearing grey short shorts and a woolen vest while sitting on a brick step and hoeing into a cold leg of lamb the size of my head. i was a hungry child.



6. manbabies: kinda similar. but kinda different.



7. bill o'reilly loses his shit - the remix: surprisingly good remix of the truly detestable bill o'reilly going absolutely apeshit on air. leaves me with a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

like lazarus reborn

well, things got a little shaky there for a couple of weeks, but we're back now. in life and blog form. purportedly dire surgical pronouncements notwithstanding, i think everything has begun to stabilise somewhat. having the concept of amputation usefully proffered to you is, it must be said, a reasonably visceral experience. but with the gift of a few weeks, it becomes easier to recast the results in a more positive light; indeed, i'm probably facing up to the best possible outcome given the size and placement of the tumour. amputation was probably always going to be the surgical option on offer, they just didn't tell me. and i didn't ask. easier for everyone that way. but the fact that i'm currently in a position where i have an option over whether or not to indulge in surgery is very fortunate. had my tumour's response to the treatment been less than total, the choice regarding the amputation may have been correspondingly less than equivocal. as is, there's still plenty of uncertainty in my long-term prospects - sarcomas are notoriously aggressive - but plenty of reason to believe that a reasonably non-traumatic outcome could be on the cards. and hell, if nothing else this probably just accelerates my repatriation to melbourne - i have my last dose of chemo on the 21st of june, so could conceivably return at some point in july. we'll have to wait and see though. which seems to be the general shape of things at the moment. uncertainty gives your life an odd cast; a depthlessness, or free-floating lassitude. but maybe that's just a vague lethargy brought on by the hardcore regimen of radiation and high-powered cytotoxins they're feeding me. actually, come to think of it, that's much more likely...

...................................

but enough self-important existential wrangling. on to the links!

1. sorry i missed your party: a guy trawls through flickr to find and post people's obscure party photos. almost as much fun as being there.



2. crash bonsai: cute and quirky art project where miniature cars are made to crash into miniature trees to create minature models. adorably tragic.



3. the psychology of wine: a piece from the new york times on the various factors contributing to people's appreciation of wine. validates my inability to really distinguish wine types.

4. a stunning piece of video/street art by buenos aires based artist 'blu'



5. a reasonably well-done video on the social absurdities of facebook. chortle.



6. a spike jonze directed skate video set to m83's 'lower your eyelids to die with the dawn'. also has lots of explosions. like skateboarding in the somme.



more soon. i promise.

i burn, you burn, we all burn for melbourne

radiotherapy finished up last thursday, and thus brought to an end my pre-surgical treatment plan. now i have a PET scan (the one that checks for activity) on the 21st, and an MRI (the one that sees exactly where it's sitting/what it's attached to) a couple of weeks after that. which is the kind of window i need to justify another trip to this beautiful city. currently rendered even more wonderful by the final week of the comedy festival. yes, yes. it's all research. so far i've seen (aside from the 24 hour show, which, while still an amazing experience, could not live up to the almost life-changing experience that was last years)

glenn wool - here describing his dissatisfaction with contemporary swearing. reasonably offensive. while this bit didn't make it into the show we saw, he was nonetheless absolutely fucking hilarious.



daniel kitson - who has evidently decided that embedding is too good for him, but you can find his gala performance from 2003 here. his show went for nigh on two hours and was the most lucid, enervating, philosophically charged, enagaging piece of comedy i think i've ever seen. the man is doing wonderful things with the medium.

josie long - sweet, endearing, quirky female comic from the uk. one of those girls who is so adorable that when she swears it makes your heart melt. not necessarily hilarious (not a huge amount of videos kicking about), but this video of her describing her favourite books remains fairly heart-warming.



reginald d. hunter - this video from the gala is far, far different to his show (though no less funny). his show was slow and measured, filled with odd pauses and drawn out sentences. you don't often see a comedian control themselves like hunter. there's never any apology for the things he says and the way he says them. he'll just let them hang, leave 4-5 seconds of silence, and then resume in an entirely different vein of thought. quite remarkable. also, quite funny.



still yet to come: phil nichol, kristen schaal (mel from flight of the conchords) and mark watson. plus late night comedy and assorted party fun times. oh so good.

and if you're in the mood for my self-indulgence, this is a video of a set i did two weeks ago in perth



and finally, this is the best thing i've seen since that count video. my god he sounds drunk:

almost there

three more bursts of radiotherapy and i'm through phase two of this semi-arduous process. hard to know where the time's gone really. people continually ask me how i fill in my days and i'm constantly at a loss as exactly how to answer them. certainly i'm not bored, but i still haven't made it through the backlog of books and tv shows that i had intended/presumed to by this point in the process. the internet accounts for a lot, surely. google reader is next best thing to a live-in partner given the amount of time i devote to it. i'm also spending a huge amount of time immersed in music of all descriptions, which is rather lovely. another tick next to the internet. then there's the obligatory facebook communiques. internet again. blogs. internet. news. internet. idle wanderings. internet.


and sometimes, i leave the house.

..................................

1. will it blend?: at some point in early 2007 a man by the name of tom dickson had an ingenious idea as to how best market his range of high-powered, ultra-resistant food blenders. he'd use them to blend a range of normal household products, including rakes, ipods, bic lighters and glow sticks, and then release them as a series of videos on the internet. the rest is viral marketing history.



anyone else keen to do a buy-in to get one of these babies? this has theme party written all over it...

2. movies in typography: a great blog post compiling together the best examples of movie scenes told only through animated typography. some of them are brilliantly inventive.



3. the 8 least impressive guiness world records: i can remember the magic of the guiness book of world records dying tragically for me when i realised that the ability to toss a cow pat farther than any other human who had decided to toss a cow pat was perhaps not worthy of official recognition. this list brings together a lovely assortment of those moments.

4. the battle for wikipedia's soul: now anyone who has broached the topic of the internet with me in the last year or so will probably know that i rank wikipedia as among humanity's greatest achievements (notwithstanding this somewhat depressing list of the most needlessly detailed wikipedia entries). with it's ethic of free collaboration, free access and non-profitability, nothing seems to symbolise the potential of the internet to invert/radically shift the power structures of the pre-digital age than the further development of wikipedia. however, the economist here picks out the emerging tension between the inclusionists, those who think wikipedia should include everything that it's contributors choose to contribute, and the deletionists, those who think varying amounts of quality control are needed to prevent the encyclopedia from collapsing into triviality/irrelevance, and how these increasingly bitter editorial feuds are starting to impact upon the collaborative base upon which wikipedia was founded. the missing wikipedians page provides a compelling glimpse of the users and their reasons for leaving. given the recent emergence of google's 'knol' project, with its focus upon individual merit and proclaimed authorship, it's an interesting time for the wikipedia project.

5. the top 25 tv put-downs: a magazine called 'radio times' decided that it was within its remit to do a poll on the best put-downs from the past 40 years of television. my personal favourite, patsy from absolutely fabulous: "one more facelift on this one and she'll have a beard". oh zing. zing.

6. and finally, this. stare at the centre of the picture for thirty seconds and then look away while blinking rapidly. coooooooooool.

cancer: an exercise in stasis

man, things were exciting at the get go. there were diagnoses, treatment plans, scans, life upheaval and emotional superfluity. now it's all just variants on low-impact routine. radiotherapy is monday to friday, but for 10 minutes apiece. as lizzi said 'it's just like a 9-5 job. but 9-910'. with that said, they very rarely get me in and out in the allotted ten minutes, and i have had multiple opportunities to further avail myself of the daytime television force-fed to the waiting patients at the sir charles gardiner cancer centre. so, what have i learnt?

1. ready, steady cook is as good evidence as any as to why we might still be considered minnows on the global entertainment stage.

2. dr. phil is even more odious than previously assumed. at one point he based a show around the dr. phil house, in which he collected together a racist, a black, female social elitist, a guy who hates society and a misogynist in a house while he force-fed them his own brand of social normalcy. and it wasn't the earnest attempts at group personal development that really grated, but rather dr. phil's earnest brand of self-congratulatory, auto-erotic ego massage. and then at one point someone in the waiting room asked if they could turn it up. and they did. and i withered a bit inside.

i also hold out severe worries for the calibre of human stashed in his studio audience. watching an excerpt from the christmas special, in which they 'shocked' the audience by rewarding them with medium-quality giftwares (0.5 carat diamond earrings! a credit card with $200 loaded on it! because that's really going to take the pressure off!) i couldn't help but notice the tears streaking the faces of a number of audience members. to paraphrase lydia millet from her novel 'oh pure and radiant heart', it seems that the idea of secular america doesn't so much refer to a diversification of beliefs as it does a diversification of demagogues. everybody's still looking for their messiah. and maybe dr. phil could be it. what jesus would have looked like if he could have held on for another couple of decades.

3. oprah can get a laugh out of the line 'you know how you always pack too much?'. maybe i'm trying too hard...

but radiotherapy is pretty low impact, and to this point in time i've only been left with eerily geometric radiation burns on my front and back (which are really just low-end sunburns, but 'radiation burns' has that little extra kick, you know?), a slight morning scratch in my throat and some moderate lethargy. i am becoming a nap ninja. last week they kept on rostering me on at 8/9 am, so i'd sleep for 5-6 hours, get up, go for treatment, come home and sleep for another 2-3, get up, do what i do during the day, and then go down again around 5. it's like looking into the lifestyle i'll be living when i'm 80. although hopefully without the tumour.

in other news, my hair is coming back. like jesus himself (that's an easter joke). at this point in time it seems darker than before, and my facial hair is considerably thicker and darker too. other body hair is returning as well. which makes it look kinda like i'm going through puberty all over again. exciting times.

and finally, i'm back in melbourne from the 6th to the 19th of april. make space in your social calendars.

..........................................

1. the procrastination flowchart: a fair explanation of why this blog gets updated so irregularly.

2. the best medical pictures from 2007: i'm kinda disappointed i didn't make it in. this is a picture of red blood cells leaking from a ruptured blood vessel. coooooooool.




3. the playmobil security checkpoint: getting kids scared early. playmobil cavity search cubicle sold separately.


4. presumably the dollar palace has gotten rid of wal-marts ever so onerous 'pants' policy



5. what ronald mcdonald used to look like. as someone said, the subtitle to this ad could quite easily be 'how to lure a child into your car in 60 seconds'. or possibly just 'gone in 60 seconds'.



6. let's paint and exercise tv. against a backdrop of hypercolour camera effects, a rumpled, unfit man in a paint spattered suit runs on a treadmill while painting badly, taking abusive calls and pursuing other side interests - in this episode, making blended drinks. all at the same time. so awesome. so overstimulating.



from a list of the 7 most insane moments on cable access television (which is worth browsing in its entirety - if you dare, no. 1, the 'merrill howard kalin show', can be found here)

7. a news anchor and roving reporter crack the shits at each other. fabulous television.




and i'm done. enjoy.

absurdity

and that's me being consumed by the immensity of the stage at his majesty's, photo courtesy of a friend seated well back in the gods. this photo was taken at almost the exact moment that i managed to accidentally turn off my microphone at the very beginning of the set. which was not the best way to soothe my already jangling nerves. as a result my opening gambit kinda fell flat, and i then spent half the set trying to win over the sections of the crowd who were convinced that i was just an aberrant character comic trying to make jokes about cancer because he had no hair. i won them over by the end, but the damage had been done. weird, and a tad disappointing, but still, it was one hell of an experience. especially for my 9th set of stand-up...


....................................................

1. judge a book by its cover: a librarian in america keeps a catalogue of the worst covers she encounters in her day to day work. i gotta say, i do enjoy this hawaiian pidgin bible:



EDIT: oh my good lord. the pidgin bible has a web page. with extracts. go here now!

But da angel guy say, “No scared. I come fo tell you guys Good Stuff From God dat goin make you guys an all da peopo stay good inside. Dis day inside King David's town, one boy wen born dat goin take you guys outa da bad kine stuff you stay doing. He da Christ Guy, da Spesho Guy God Wen Send. He da Boss." (Luke Tell Bout Jesus 2:10-11)

2. 41 awesome science fair experiments: photographs of some sterling science projects being staged by america's best and brightest. as my mate dave said, i so want to hang out with this guy:



3. LOLTapirs: this is exactly what you think it is.

4. OM NOM NOM NOM: this, on the other hand, is not.

5. song charts: a flickr photo pool where people upload semi-scientific graphs of the logic behind popular songs. this is kinda what my thesis was about. only not really.



and to keep in the mood of the day, here's a video that no amount of explaining could possibly explain:



now go waste your days! back soon

p.s. a casual reminder that i'm also a regular contributor to electrorash, a melbourne based electro/indie/awesome music blog, so head over and see what else is keeping me occupied at the moment

all continues apace

i began radiotherapy last tuesday. despite the process essentially boiling down to me holding very still while they shoot me with gamma rays, it's all a bit of a non-event. well, at least to this point in time. each treatment lasts from between 5-10 minutes, although most of that is just spent positioning you on the table. the actual blasts themselves are completely invisible and last for about 3-4 seconds a pop. then you get up, put your shirt back on and get on with your life. still no signs of potential side effects, but they're probably unlikely to emerge for another week or two anyway. i was rather disappointed to work out that the chances of me turning into the incredible hulk are apparently minimal, but i'm still hoping that at the very least i might end up with an incredible hulk shoulder. and when i get angry it turns green and huge, and shoulder butts its way through a tank. with me hanging on the end like a marionette puppet... even so, everyone continues to tell me that radiotherapy is as nothing compared to the chemotherapy shitstorm... but then i look back to the almost complete lack of tangible effects that the chemo had on me, and i wonder if that adage can possibly hold.

.................................

other news of import:

1. i got through my raw semi-final. next stop is the state final, on at his majesty's theatre on march 8. in front of 1200 people. shit me running. tickets are available through BOCS

2. i had been hoping to do a couple of elective units at uwa this semester in order to chip away at the 15 odd units that i presumed i still had left in my law degree. however, in a rather... odd turn of fate, it turns out that, by a miracle of modern academia, la trobe only thinks i have 5 units left to do. yes, by the mere act of transferring my degree to another state, i have lopped two thirds of it off. i now have less law to do than most of my friends. this is both hilarious, and slightly unnerving. they've credited me for trusts (because it was bundled up with equity) despite the fact that i have never done trusts, and really have absolutely no idea what they are or how they work. hopefully they won't come up in any future interviews...

........................

odds and sods:

1. stuff white people like: this does exactly what it says on the packet. a blog of things that are peculiarly white, such as #70: difficult breakups"" or "#67: standing still at concerts". brilliantly done.

2. fuck i hate garfield. i mean, everyone does, but for me it goes deeper you know. i feel like he stole certain portions of my childhood. luckily some form of comic redemption is at hand, because similarly resentful individuals have been doing experiments in garfield. first up we have the classic random garfield generator which simply combines three disparate garfield panels and mashes them together to form a newly absurdist take on feline-canine-human interactions. and then we also have garfield minus garfield, a collection of garfield strips that have had the cat removed. leaving jon to speak aimlessly into the air. it's like, existential, and shit.

3. a distressing, but awesome video of a slow motion karate chop. this clip is made by the sound effects.



4. a wonderfully embarrassing video of a man attempting a public proposal at an nba game but being rejected by the object of his affection. i can only hope that if something similar ever befalls me, there'll be a giant mascot on hand to aid with the comforting. commentators would also help.



5. a man using crystal glasses filled with different amounts of water to form music. i can only imagine how many hours of hard work and experimentation it must have taken to get to this point, and exactly how little real world application it actually has.



and that's plenty. more soon. or as warranted.

audiovisuals

back from a thoroughly enjoyable, if not a little flat-strap tour of melbourne and its people. was good to feel part of the rhythms again though. there's a lot to like there. but it remains a future contingency for the moment, and perth has plenty to keep my thoughts busy. my raw comedy semi-final is on this thursday at the charles street hotel, and i'm doing a run through of the material at the shapiro comedy night at the brisbane hotel on tuesday. i'm rather excited actually. and if the prospect of 5 solid minutes of jokes about cancer gets you all hot under the collar then you should come to one/both of them. tumour humour is the new aids.

...........................

remember prince? me too. what i don't remember is this 1987 incident involving james brown and a black michael jackson all whiling out on stage together. only problem is that prince seems like he may be a little... hepped up. as they say on the streets. best vocal performance ever? almost definitely



if i was manager of an office, everyone would be using hawaii chairs. hell, i'm tempted to get one for home. i just can't get that jingle out of my head...



and finally for some audio. radiohead's 'in rainbows' was not only a pretty stonking album, it was also a pretty stonking exercise in the capacities of digital distribution. their 'pay as much as you want' policy was both reasonably revolutionary, and awesome. of course a subsequent experiment by the slightly less cultish trent reznor and saul williams entitled 'the inevitable rise and liberation of niggy tardust' has not fared so well, but the idea of freely available music underpinning a new musical economy is kinda intoxicating. but i digress. yesterday i stumbled upon a project by producer/dj amplive called 'rainydayz', a hip-hop recreation of 'in rainbows'. despite being hit with a cease and desist halfway through, amplive managed to plead his case and now the album is available for FREE from the website behind these words. While it's a little patchy, there's some pretty cool tracks on there and it also features vocals by a whole suite of mcs, including perennial favourites chali 2na (who has the deepest voice in the universe) and del the funky homosapien (who doesn't). definitely worth the download though. think of it as doing your bit for the new musical age.

the politics of failure

i was doing a set of stand-up at, of all places, the ruby room last week, and i found myself newly acquainted with the sweet taste of failure. the experience was thoroughly educational. performing to an audience of 25-30 casino glossies in a lounge designed without the rigours of comedy in mind, i went down like a sack of spuds. i'm not sure if they appreciate my type down there. also, i missed out on the sympathy laughs because i went the entire set without using the word cancer. having wanted to do something different upon realising that my raw comedy set used it 14 times in five minutes. or once every 20 seconds. which may have been a little slef-indulgent. still, i managed to acquit myself reasonably well doing a set last night at the brisbane, so at least it kinda feels like i've got the shit back in the horse.

when i grow up (he's 27...), i want to be russell howard:



........................



but while we're on the topic of failure, there appears to be a LOLcat-esque phenomenon occurring with the word FAIL. which you can keep up to date with at the aptly named fail blog. me, i like spelling bee fail



also of interest from the last few days is this listing of 'books that make you dumb', a brilliant and, by their own admission, flawed piece of statistical analysis that has indexed people's purported favourite books on facebook with the average SAT scores of the colleges that they attend. fun facts:

1. 'lolita' corresponds with the highest scores (closely followed by '100 years of solitude')

2. 'the book of mormon' scores higher than 'the holy bible'

3. dan brown is on par with 'fight club', but both are beaten by 'he's just not that into you'

too funny.

but just to prove that not all is lost in the world, here's a stunning stop motion video of a steadily evolving room-as-art. ah, this brand of ingenuity makes it all better.

russians: better than australians?

had my last burst of chemo yesterday. at least for the moment. when i have this charming fellow extracted om my back we might consider having a bit more, but that will depend upon post-operative pathology tests. not that i'd be entirely opposed mind you. without chemo i lose half my material...

..............................

i feel that as we come to commemorate the brutal occupation of this fine country, perhaps we should start to think about the alternatives, the possible paths for the future. and i'm sure that when you do, you'll have to agree with me when i suggest that perhaps we should all think about becoming a little bit more... russian.



loan me your sister is a semi-regularly updated celebration of all that is drunk, provincial and russian. the guy's knack for finding photos and videos of eastern bloc people in states of heightened steretotype is almost overwhelming.



and while you're in the neighbourhood, how about you pop over to one of soviet russia's former favourite sons, lithuania, for a trip to grutas park, perhaps the world's only stalinist theme park!.

It's called "Gulag tourism." And Grutas Park offers visitors a journey back to 1984 to remind citizens what life was like under Soviet rule. Organizers believe that for those old enough to remember life in the Soviet Union, visiting the park can be therapeutic, filled with old memorabilia and humor[...]

After an amiable introduction, visitors are quickly transported back 25 years. They are ordered to stop smiling or thinking and are chased through an elaborate labyrinth of corridors. Any misstep can result in a violent encounter with angry KGB agents. All of the activity lasts two hours, costs more than 35 Euros, and takes place inside a bunker located in the woods.

sign me up! i can thoroughly recommend watching the video to be found at the bottom of the news story...

and finally, dancing. good ol' fashioned zangeif-style cossack dancing. if this don't convince you that the russian's are superior to us feeble westerners in all ways, then i don't know what will. perhaps a victory in the cold war would have done the trick...



now if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go barbeque some meat rations in vodka. i'll see you when i'm naked and trying to stuff an elk into my boot.

a week of positive developments

i have had three pieces of reasonable news this week:

1. i managed to wrangle my way into the state semi-finals of the raw comedy competition by performing a five minute set that featured the word cancer 14 times, and finished with the line 'my name's luke, and i have cancer, but, you know, it's ok, you don't have to put me through to the next round'. shameless. i may try and diversify somewhat for semi-finals, which will either be on the 21st or the 28th of february.

2. i was accepted into law at la trobe university in melbourne, where i shall hopefully be able to live out the remainder of my law degree in victorianised bliss. today i ran my sob story past them and hopefully i'll be able to swing a couple of units at uwa this semester and have them cross-credited back there. my university degree becomes more complicated by the second. this is going to be my fourth educational institution since 2002. all theoretically in pursuit of the same double degree. if anyone can work out who's supposed to be awarding me what degree by the end i'll be very impressed.

3. i had a pet scan yesterday which appeared to confirm what we'd been otherwise presuming/hoping - that wilhelm (my tumour) had suffered a fairly significant reduction in its metabolic activity, and had also shrunk slightly. this is, in the words of at least one doctor, reassuring. i prefer to think of it more like stalingrad circa 1943. shrinking the tumour is still the primary aim because of its proximity to, well, everything, but that's where the radiotherapy comes in. also on the good news front re. radiotherapy is the fact that because of worries about cumulative chemo/radio toxicity, they're giving me a few weeks off between final chemo (on the 25th january) and first radio (probably on the 18th of february). this means that i have time to COME TO MELBOURNE AND CAUSE RIOTOUS AMOUNTS OF DAMAGE. FUN DAMAGE. hopefully we'll try and incorporate the weekend of the 9th or the 16th. for extra DAMAGE.

hopefully i'll get to have a party with this guy



line of the day

"i suggest you go away and take a good long, hard look at yourself"
"i have. everyone has. they love it."

arsey bastard

sesame street will mess you up

a month or so ago various portions of the media were righteously outraged over the american decision to release the dvds of the early seasons of sesame street with an adults only label. in their words:

These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.

i'm just going to leave that sentence to hang there for a second, but for a more comprehensive appraisal of the situation, virginia heffernan has written a corking piece on it for the new york times. have a look here.

sesame street started in 1969, so maybe things were a bit different back then. more tumultuous. fuelled by hallucinogens. rife with invisible woolly mammoths. still, surely times haven't changed that much. even back then sesame street really just wanted to teach kids how to count.



and while we're getting nostalgic here's a clip of the now deemed inappropriate 'monsterpiece theatre'. absolutely sublime.

thank heaven for little girls

there's something intrinsically wrong with that title, isn't there? something fundamentally creepy and unwholesome? fortunately for me, and for the school-age female population of perth, it wasn't my idea. part of my christmas loot this year was the very funny tom reynolds book "touch me i'm sick: the 52 creepiest love songs you've ever heard", pseudo-sequel to "i hate myself and i want to die: the 52 most depressing songs you've ever heard". in the former, reynolds explores in some depth the song "thank heaven for little girls" from the 1958 musical gigi. the films is ostensibly about the blossoming relationship between the eponymous gigi and her ardent admirer gaston. but, there's a catch: gigi is being groomed to be a courtesan. for those not overly well-versed in the vagaries of early 20th century french culture that means whore. high class perhaps, but there remains a definite emphasis upon the exchange of money for particular services. luckily gaston, who, classy rogue that he is, was in line to be gigi's first client, decides he'd prefer a more long-term arrangement and so marries her instead. presumably buying out the madame. oh happy day.

luckily this was 1958, and they probably referred to it in such charmingly clothed language as 'seamstressing', but it doesn't change the fact that the song which bookends the film is reasonably unnerving.



even beyond the atrocity that is mr chevalier's french accent, and the fact that a seventy year old man wearing a top hat is sitting in a park watching a suite of young girls frolicking, certain lines have become reasonably distressing over the past 50 odd years. for instance, the refrain 'their little eyes, so helpless and appealing' has not, it must be said, aged all that well, while his later spoken word break "it's about one in particular, that one, her name is gigi. giiiiigiiiiii. hehe. what you have to look forward to. hehe. gigi." sounds sleazy, even by french standards. he is, after all, predicting her eventual passage towards prostitution. and as reynolds puts it, the man 'beams like a lighthouse on amyl nitrate'.

sure it's well-meaning, and musicals aren't necessarily the best candidates for literal interpretation, but times have changed. when one talks about their affection for children these days, the fewer specifics the better. the phrase 'i love children' is endearing. the phrase 'i love eight year olds' is not. if this guy let rip into song during the interview, i can't help but feel that his chances of procuring a 'working with children' card from the police department would be shit to none. now we just have to work out how to keep him out of the parks...

this is the year that television forgot

my house in melbourne was like the poster child for the digital generation. three macbooks, three ipods, an external hard drive and copious amounts of ultra-fast wireless internet. at least we thought it would be copious. but then the three of us started regularly going through the full 20GB/40GB monthly bandwidth allotments provided under our plan. and really, that is a shitload of data. remember dial-up? yeah, me neither.

so, where did all this bandwidth go you ask? well, we were downloading a lot of movies and tv shows, so that certainly took sizable chunks out of it. but on a more immediate, day-to-day bent we were also watching a lot of youtube. a LOT of youtube. also, sometimes, we talked to each other. usually when our broadband got shaped.

now, i'd like to think that all that video watching wasn't for naught, so in an effort to quantify how awesome and life-fulfilling all this youtubery actually was, i've decided to compile my list of the 5 best youtube videos of the year. here goes:

(qualification: i've exempted both weng weng and the count song because i've already posted them up here)

5. breakdancing in times square. a clip with a real kick to it.



4. new wheels on the block. ethically challenging comedy at its finest. i'd also suggest watching the merrill howard kalin show, but youtube seems to have removed it. probably for the best really...



3. frankie and johnnie's furniture commercial. from the moment that the overweight black woman starts berating hans moleman you know you're onto something special. the chicken is just an added bonus.



2. the pirate song. possibly the shittest thing ever produced. also the most over-stimulating. oddly addictive though; in the early stages me and dan were watching it at least once a day. and would then catch ourselves singing it at random moments. even to this day, i will still unthinkingly start humming the chorus to myself: yarr yarr fiddle de dee. ah, blessed siren song. watch carefully at 1:29 for the best facial expression of all time.




1. charlie the unicorn. i cannot tell you how many times, and in how many different states we ended up watching this video. first time i saw it i was absolutely inconsolable. i may have fallen over laughing. second time was similar. third time it found new reaches of humour. fourth time may have been funnier than the first. even now, when i must be brushing close to 20 separate viewings, it can still set me off. and to be honest, i'm still not entirely sure why. 225 seconds of glory. show it to someone you love.




honourable mention: dramatic chipmunk. the best 5 second investment you will ever make.



my god, i love the internet.

getting into the christmas spirit

this, my friends, is some sublime television



is it just me, or do the recreations make it look awfully like santa is starting some shit with the reindeer?

[from the people you've never heard of at everlasting blort]

i cannot tell you how much this unnerves me

now, i'll be the first to admit that i don't fully understand the mechanics by which the semi-ubiquitous second life works. as such, i cannot tell whether this recruitment video, and accompanying promo website are in any way real institutions involving real people. what i can tell you though is that my brain watches this video, seizes up and then proceeds to demand a full and total cessation of all further exploration into the realm of the digital.



any takers?

[first seen on regine's delicious]

now that's what i call cinema

here's one to dazzle loved ones and acquaintances alike. show off your cultural versatility with a treatise on the merits of Filipino cinema circa 1981. because in 1981 there was only one actor worth talking about: weng weng (i cannot urge you strongly enough to read the wikipedia article behind that link. it explains a lot). standing at 2 foot 9 inches and equipped with a black belt in martial arts, weng weng tore the domestic film scene apart; his first major film "For Y’ur Height Only" was the only Filipino film that year to be picked up by international distributors. and you thought australians had crocodile dundee related image problems. in 1981 the nation of the philippines was being represented by a midget with a propensity for kicking and/or punching his adversaries in the nuts. he also had a tiny yellow motorcycle. and a jetpack.


i wish crocodile dundee had a jetpack.

here's weng weng rather dishonorably shooting a collection of samurais.



and here's a much more comprehensive preview of his filmic career courtesy of a hip-hop reversion of weng weng's fight music by a toronto group called the chuds. it may be the best thing you'll see all day. including your family.



in other news, my right nipple has gone hypersensitive.

it's not painful, it's just weird.

first emissions

so, i figured that rather than overloading LTAS with continual and unwieldy updates, i may as well bring in a blog on the side. but fear not, this shant be a mere collection of miserablist writings on the travails of high end illness (although that may puncture the breeze every now and again). instead i'm hoping to dilute some of the immense amounts of web content i consume on a daily basis into a more interesting/quality-controlled format. i may also delve into music blogging, if it takes my fancy, and there could also be some tumour humour, if you're lucky. consider it a miscellany for the modern age. but with more jokes about cancer. which i can totally make. it's like black people with ni-... that word.

...............................

i'm pretty sure i can officially be declared a drain on the national economy. to this point in my life i have achieved two things: attended educational institutions and accrued expensive illnesses. this was a point that was drive home in particularly... pointed style, when i yesterday recieved a 0.6mL injection of an immune system booster known as GCSF, an injection which, i shit you not, cost $1970.44. for 6mg of substance. luckily, the australian taxpayer footed most of the bill, and the injection was mine for a miserly $4.90. complaints can be directed to here.

in the meantime, my first bout of chemo has gone off without too much distress on my part. i get the feeling that next week may not be quite so pleasant, as it also involves a drug which, aside from being a bit more gastrically intense, also has the tendency to make your nails crumble off. and, much like piercings, anything untoward happening to my nails is one of those occurences that freaks me out no end. apparently the effect can be minimised if you keep your hands in -15 degree gloves, but that doesn't strike me as particularly feasible... tempting as it is. but for the moment i'm rolling along without too much difficulty. i'm about to wander into the wonderful world of immuno-suppression though, so two requests:

1) if you are sick, and you know you are sick, STAY THE FUCK AWAY; and

2) if you feel the, very understandable, need to have physical contact with me, please wash your hands beforehand. i can't risk letting you dirty little filthmongers getting in the way of my rapid recovery... in the nicest possible way.

that's it for now, but as a reward for getting this far, i present to you a video which i have been dining out on for the past week, an old sesame street favourite: the song of the count. with some slight editing.



[cheers to matty for initial discovery]