So, well, I'm not devoting as much time as I'd quite possibly expected to blogging.

This may, however, be a good thing.

Nevertheless, here I am again, blogging only at the most completely silly moment. 4AM.

But, well, I guess it's a bit of an update for those who care (and those who don't) on the events of the last few weeks.

• MUFF are going to screen my film. Yep, that's right, as of July I can officially start calling myself a 'filmmaker' without the awkward-maybe-the-title-aint-justified-thing.. though perhaps I may have to suffix it with "see I've had a feature screened at a festival n'all, like, totally."
• I haven't had a full-on drinking session for -- oh wait, wednesday before last. Forget that thought. Actually, mind you, that's still a fair while. All things considered.
• I've been a good little consumer (more below).

Yep, I bought an iPod. Little slim insidious device (for 'insidous' read 'is rapidly and alarmingly losing its sinister aura') now holding most every album I own.

Though for sake of maintaining my distinct non-conformist pose, I don't wear the silly little white earphones that EVERY SINGLE FUCKING HUMAN BEING HAS ON THESE DAYS come with it. Mainly because a) I like good sound, and b) I don't like inserting things into orifices unless other people are involved.

But, y'know, my excuse is, IT'S OK, I'M GOING BIKE TOURING.

Same reason I bought a spiffy little new camera.

Which as per my usual form I've been out (after being at the uni library until 3am still fretting over Deleuze ) taking night photos with it.

I saw the Bill Henson exhibition the other day, and, well, it's spurred me on to go back to doing some night shots.

Plus it's all in the name of research.

The institute, you know.

With the beakers, and such.




I love empty brutalist spaces. Brutalist architecture DEMANDS to have no people around (well, actually, maybe I just see it that way because I'm picturing concept art of the building featuring people in flares, and, like, 1971 Ford Falcons parked out the front. Oh, and maybe a monorail).




I have found definitive proof that Yarra Trams' new monstrosity outside Melbourne Uni is an intently anti-humanist project. See, it says so, right there! In the fine print, or something.


I will call him ... Graham. You may prefer to... not.. call him... Graham.


You are passing another Le Corbusier.





For a little tiny tiny tiny camera, it's not bad.

It's not as good as the world of late night Digital SLR photography which I've been into for a while and Certain other blogger(s) are discovering, but it's pretty good for a small thing. Plus the first night I took it out I got priceless blackmail-worthy karaoke photos at Charlton's (Charlton's is like the tardis.. it's in the CBD, but you step inside, and you're in Frankston -- fighting off drunk people intent on breaking up your conversation, eyeing off smack dealers, listening to people destroying songs they don't know the words to, 18 year old girls in suburbantrendy clothing alongside 45 year old guys drinking shithouse $3 spirits that even if you order a double - I asked them for a triple vodka and they wouldn't do it - you can't taste the alcohol).

Aaaanyway, so about my bike tour aforementioned, I've been brewing it up for a while.. decided to go solo (was going to take one or two people but I seriously need some wind-down/chill-the-fuck-out time). Planned route being (by day):

Melbourne - Seymour - Shepparton - Yarrawonga - Jerilderie - Griffith - Lake Cargelligo - Condobolin - Parkes - Orange - Bathurst - (Lithgow) - Sydney.

About 1200km, and I'm allocating myself the time between the uber-intimidating cast & crew screening of my film in a couple of weeks and the far-more-intimidating festival screening of my film in July to do it.

It takes me through a lot of drought country, and past the end of a few closed/run-down railway lines in NSW. Not that I'm a gunzel, not at all. I mean, I travel by rail when going long distance (unless circumstances demand otherwise), but that's because of questions of ecological footprint and also because quite often if I'm going Melb-Syd etc, I'm taking a bike, and it's less hassle (even via Countrylink's box silliness) on the train than on a plane.

Plus taking the train forces me to not do anything for 12 hours, and sometimes I need to do that.

But back to the pseudo-gunzel thing; it's more a fascination/obsession with run-down or abandoned infrastructure, I guess somehow linking back to the whole empty-Brutalist-architecture thing before. There's something that decidedly problematises modernism in the space of the closed or run down railway. Progress progressing on. No continual expansion, no fifty-lane-freeways-of-hover-cars, but contraction of the system. Also the idea of moving from something economic and sensible (rail) to something more dangerous, expensive and destructive (road), because the "numbers look better" - though only if you don't think about the whole picture.

Plus with the camera thing, in general when I go bike touring I take my EOS 300D - an SLR along the vein that Agent Fare Evader has just bought, and it ends up just being too big.. too much hassle to turn my bag around, rummage around, pull the thing out, then repack afterwards... so I pretty much don't take any photos. This time, I'm going to have panniers (which will help a LOT), and a pouch somewhere containing the little tiny camera.. so hopefully more photos this round. But we'll see..

Anyway, best I try to get some shut-eye like.