One bothersome thing about watching Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure was the dream I had the morning after watching it.

Fortunately, the dream didn’t have Keanu Reeves in it, but it involved me travelling back in time and jotting advice down on sticky notes for my earlier selves to read, in an attempt to improve my current self’s station in life. I imagine that such notes would’ve said “hey, you’d better go to that physics exam", “putting your wet fingers in that malfunctioning freezer in the garage is probably a bad idea", and “ask her out, you dumbarse! P.S. shower first". Another note was left for my dad, telling him to go see the doctor for a full check-up, when the cancer that eventually got him was still treatable.

Obviously, this didn’t work either because my previous selves ignored the notes; or they took the advice, but in benefitting from it they forked the time strand away from the particular strand that poor sap leaving the notes was on. Quite reasonable too, as I (that is, me) certainly don’t remember any notes lying around that might’ve prevented me from getting frostbitten fingers. (Yes, that really happened.)

Time travel paradoxes vex me…

Back to Bill & Ted, some bod on the IMDB discussion on the movie made this point:

I actually came up with an ending to the Matrix that involved Bill & Ted. When Neo saves the world and celebrating, he hears an alarm go off. Cut to him in bed as Ted. He turns off the alarm looks over and sees Alex Winter (Bill). He then says “Whoa, I just had the most excellent dream.” Fade to Black.

An ending like that would certainly have made the Matrix sequels more palatable.

Yep, it’s that time of the week again, in that time of the year when half the competition is rumbling towards the finals, and the other half is grumbling towards the exits. And of course most teams will be wearing their funky old guernseys, such as Port’s weird blue and pink thing, and the Weagle’s predominately gold debut guernsey. In which they looked like a bunch of girls. After marching to 95 correct picks with last week’s eight, the ton looms large. Here goes…

Adelaide to lose to Hotham North Melbourne by five goals.
Carlton to beat Fremantle by two goals.
Britannia Collingwood to beat Richmond by four goals.
Essendon to lose to Port Adelaide by five goals.
South Melbourne to lose to Brisbane Bears by three goals.
Geelong to beat St Kilda by less than a goal.
Melbourne to beat Booroondara Hawthorn by seven goals.
West Coast to beat Footscray by eight goals.

The bay from St Kilda Esplanade, last Saturday evening about six. This picture doesn’t look too bad reduced, though it’s a little grainy at original size; I’ll have to make sure my next camera is less sucky in low light situations. I may yet turn the image into a banner the next time I play around with the site design.

I had this idea while at work today, so I thought I’d tease it out a little. This is a very rough first draft, with lots of holes and bad writing and shit, but you know, I’ve had this strange urge to write more fiction, however bad I am at it, and this is a start - it might make an interesting short story, I suppose. Indeed, someone else has probably had the same idea, and written it better…

I was about ten or eleven when the Collectors came.

I was playing Battlebugs or Death Patrol on the family’s computer when my mother yelled something from the kitchen and ran into the lounge room and found the remote control from amongst the junk on the round table, and feverously turned the TV on.

She looked at me for a second, and said “the news… in Paris!”

The screen warmed up with an image of a massive metallic box, like a box container planted on its end, in the middle of a city; an aerial shot from a news chopper.

continues …

When I come down by road to Melbourne with Mum, we usually drive down the Deadly Hume, before veering cross-country near Broadford or Wallan to cut across to Diamond Creek, where my aunt lives. The Hume is of course a bit of a grind, though, so since time wasn’t an issue, for a change we took the Midland Hwy south from Benalla, then passing to the Melba Hwy to take a route through Yea.

This route passes over the arm of Lake Eildon (which is still desperately empty) near Bonnie Doon, and just after going over the long bridge, the road sweeps up past an interesting looking hotel. About a mile further on we encountered a Labrador with an apparent death wish, playing chicken on the highway while cars and semis and such were rushing past with the abandon reserved for open country roads.

continues …

I reckon I’ve probably said enough about Schwab, except to note that while I’m largely saddened by his sacking, some people who call themselves Hawthorn fans are a little less unhappy about it, even casting aspersions on Schwab’s playing career as they dig the grave. (Feh, there were no passengers in Hawthorn during the 80s!) It’s almost Richmond-like or something. As it is, the tides have conspired that I’ll be at the ‘G on Saturday, in the cold amongst a middling crowd, and even though I’m not expecting a win, I am strangely looking forward to the game. It couldn’t be much worse than the last one I went to…

Besides, even if they lose, there’s Belle and Sebastian afterward. And if the Hawks win I’ll be wearing the guernsey on to the Palais, thank you very much. It’s not as if brown and gold are going to be the most uncommon colours amongst the coolsie patrons, anyway.

continues …

picture source unknown

It’s been an interesting weekend in the Minneapolis-St Paul of the South. Dude gets schloggered at nightclub, finally gets refused service, so he decides to drive home, in the process veering the car into the shopfront of a warehouse. The guy survived, but the damage to the building was such that one of the town’s main arterials out front, had to be blocked off for a while in case the facade collapsed, and the uninsured building will have to be demolished.

And of course that’s not all that happened on the weekend. But nothing that spectacular happened to me. I bought some new tires and brake pads for the bike, the new Machine Translations album, and a six pack of Coopers Dark Ale from the freshly opened Dan Murphy place.

Why the hell am I talking about buying beer on the weblog? It’s all very Jim Morrison. Not that I’m the Lizard King, more like the Duck President.

Yep, things look a little chillier than usual in Jindabyne today. Photos taken by my sister-in-law’s father. I’m sure he won’t mind me posting reductions here…

Photo credit: Keith Collicoat