Turned on my phone at 7am. Beep beep, beep beep. 9:01 train cancelled. Connex apologises for any inconvenience. (Is it really a sincere apology if it was typed by a programmer into the automated alerts system, and it’s just the computer repeating it ad nauseum ever after?)

So it was no surprise when I got to the station a couple of hours later (after breakfast, shower, dressing, glooping toothpaste all down the front of my shirt, doing an impression of a quick-change artist, dropping kids at school) to find the 9:13 was pretty crowded. Not to sardine-packed Tokyo Subway attendants-with-white-gloves-needed standard though, being a bit later than the peak hour. Shuffled along to the end of the carriage, found a hand hold to hold my hand on.

Looked down. Bloke sitting next to his bag. He stared off into space with a kind of semi-mean “I don’t care” look. Given the crowding I pondered if I should/could/would say something. Like “Does your bag have a ticket?” or “Is your bag quite comfortable there?”

Then I noticed he had one foot up on his other thigh, wrapped in a bandage and a sock. Further perusal revealed a crutch on the ground under the seat. So perhaps he wouldn’t be able to lift the bag back up if he put it on the floor. Okay. Benefit of the doubt.

At Malvern a suit on the platform was pushing a kid in one of those three-wheeled pushers. In the compartment underneath the kid was a Bob The Builder bag, in bright colours with “Yes we can!” written on it. Obviously this wasn’t a response to the question “Can we squeeze on board that train?” because they decided not to try it, but to wait for the next one.

At the other end of the MATHS stations, South Yarra, there were not one but two people boarding with iPods (or iPod clones). Maybe they’re a tad more prevalent in South Yarra than less well-to-do burbs.

Off the train at Parliament. Through the bustling crowds (express lane on the escalators working as they should — hooray!), up and out into the fresh air, and a brisk walk along Collins Street to work.

• Where it came from
• What’s in it
• Where it’s going to
• Why this name
• Comments
• Other stuff

Where it came from

When I originally started writing and posting stuff to the Net (via e-mail and Usenet) in 1990, it was pretty much all off-the-wall “I wish I was a Python” surreal bizarro kind of stuff. And arguably not particularly funny. But by the mid-90s a lot of it had morphed into more auto-biographical material: amusing anecdotes and so on. A colleague, Stewart, suggested I write it as a diary, and never one to let someone else’s good idea go to waste, I tried it.

As far as I recall, the diary first appeared on the web in early 1996, switching to its current address in December 1996. The pages were updated by hand until January 2004, when I switched all new entries into Wordpress 1.2. During the coming months I hope to migrate all the old entries across into Wordpress, though as I remarked once switching to something like that [is] a job in itself.

Another early experiment of mine in the style of what has become known as blogging was a page poking fun at the March 1996 Australian elections. The Political Circus was updated daily with japes and laffs of all types, and to my surprise, earned itself a feature in The West Australian newspaper.

Anyway, all these years later I continue to write a few paragraphs most days, doing my bit to contribute to the sum total of inconsequential trivia on the Internet. And it’s pleasing to see many friends and acquaintances also doing so — you can find some links to some great blogs along the right hand side navigation.

What’s in it

A tiny subset of my life makes it into my diary. It’s usually something I think might be moderately amusing, and often things will be exaggerated for comic effect — sometimes I will whinge here about something that is really trivial, and I would not complain about to anybody in real life. Many events go unreported. The lesson here is: Don’t think you know me based purely on what you read here.

From time to time in the past I’ve descended into coarse language. This is not something I apologise for, but since my kids have started reading (so far principally for the pictures) I’ll be mostly refraining from this in the future, looking elsewhere in my vocabulary to achieve comic effect and to express frustrations.

Where it’s going to

For the forseeable future, I’m going to be blogging, and maintaining the web site. ‘Cos it’s, like, fun. Some other parts of toxiccustard.com that get regular updates and would be suited to blogging tools (eg The News You Had To Have and the Guide To Australia) and are likely to be converted at some stage.

A comment from Rae the other week got me thinking about the long-term future of blogs, and mine in particular. Will this content be recorded for future generations to look at? Would anybody be interested? Perhaps just my descendants? Please?

In the case of my diary, some of it almost certainly will, since (for whatever reason) the State Library of Victoria decided to archive it in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive, though the updates seem a tad sporadic. Archive.org also has a massive library of archived web content, and a cursory glance seems to show it has a few local blogs archived in it.

The longevity of such archives depends on how long those programmes continue to get funding, and whether or not the devices of tomorrow continue to be able to read the media of today. I suspect that at some stage I will feel the need to make a copy of at least some of my writing onto that most flexible and futureproof of media — paper — for future Bowens to read, if they should wish to do so.

Why this name

Some reasons why this diary has this name:

• When I first put it online there were hardly any diaries on the web, and I thought it would attract hits from people curious about Australia
• Because the “average” word sounds a little self-deprecating, which I like, though lately I’ve thought it sounded almost grandiose
• To annoy any white supremacists who might be outraged that someone who is not entirely Caucasian would dare to call themselves an average Australian (okay so I thought of this reason after it happened — if I find the e-mail again, I’ll post it)
• It was originally “An average Australian’s diary” so it would be near the top of the alphabetically sorted Yahoo directory — though I note I’ve fallen out of that list completely now.
• It was a better name than Toxic Custard

Comments

I reserve the right to delete or edit anything. It’s my web site, I pay for the hosting. If you want to express your freedom of speech, get yourself your own web site. That said, I generally don’t act like a Nazi on the comments, and I don’t generally fiddle with comments which disagree with my opinions. Comments that will incur my wrath include:

• Spam. This gets deleted, out of hand.
• Comments which (like spam, really) are blatantly irrelevant to the topic at hand.
• Anything plainly designed to offend, be it aimed at myself, my friends, or whoever.
• Anything else deemed inappropriate.

Think of it as being a bit like going to the pub. Everybody’s welcome, but if you’re just causing trouble, insulting other people or annoying the proprietor, you’ll be ejected.

New comments are currently disabled 60 days after the post has gone out. Theoretically this may cut down on comment spam, though I’m by no means certain that it works, and I may change this in future.

E-mail addresses on comments get stored in the database, so I can reply personally, but never shown on the pages, to avoid spammers picking them up.

Other stuff

Sometimes I edit posts after I have published them. Yeah, apparently this is very bad form. It’s mostly fixing typagraph… typograf… typos. Occasionally I’ll read something back and think of a much better (wittier, usually) way of saying it, and change it. But I try my best not to fundamentally change the essence of what I’ve written. And certainly not after someone has commented on it.

This particular post may get added to as a kind of one stop FAQ.

Anything else I should say? Any questions to add? Put ‘em in the comments.

I just got home. Off with the work gear: trousers, jacket, shirt, tie. On with the clothing I wouldn’t be seen dead in: the trackie-dacks, that old red windcheater and the slippers.

God help me if anybody drops by unexpectedly.

Last weekend’s footy tipping started off badly and didn’t much improve. 3 out of 8 was the final tally, surely bad enough to play havoc with my lead in the work competition and my equal first place in the other. But surprisingly, no! It seems that the unpredictable results affected most people in the same way, in fact Trish (who was equal first) only got 2, and so now I’m a point out in front in both competitions. Further, I’ve heard tell of people who are aiming to get the wooden spoon inadvertently getting 7 out of 8 this week. Oops.

Meanwhile the 28 working days for delivery of my alarm clock (bonus credit card bank awards programme thingy) has well and truly passed. I was going to ring yesterday and hassle them about it, but then discovered that bank call centre staff were on strike. So I rang today. After negotiating a maze of automated menus, I finally got hold of a human.

She peered deeply into her computer screen, confirmed the delivery details I’d given, went on hold for a couple of minutes, and then told me she had no idea where the clock is. She’d have to enquire as to its whereabouts. She suspected the courier might have brought it to the delivery address given (my work address), completely ignored the fact that it was meant to be delivered to me (and in the process ignored the phone list on the wall in the foyer, which s/he could have used to find me) and given it to somebody else instead. There’s another company on the floor, and she reckons it might have gone there.

Terrific, eh? I mean, what’s the point of them insisting on courier delivery, that you have to be there to sign for the package, then they go and give it to any passing person they might happen to encounter?

So she’s finding out where it’s gone. Expected time to locate the item? 5-7 working days. Pah. So I should expect a call late next week — not the actual clock, of course, just a call to say they’ve worked out where it is.

Hands up who thinks I won’t hear from them at all, but will have to ring again myself? Yup, me too.

It had plenty of warnings about content, but I pity anybody channel flicked onto My Foetus last night. My sister encouraged me to watch it in part because a friend of hers was involved in it. Initially I thought I wouldn’t watch it, but eventually relented, with the proviso that I’d turn it off if it was too disturbing.

It was very disturbing. Profoundly so. Some of the images shown were truly horrific. One had me wincing away from the television, unable to watch until it had gone. And one doctor’s description of his work was equally gruesome. It was the sort of stuff that could easily spark nightmares (and there’s something a tad ironic about disturbing programmes such as this having to be shown late at night just before bedtime).

But it was also compelling viewing, challenging the viewer with the stark facts, and encouraging people to weigh up the arguments both for and against, and make up their own minds.

My opinion remains something of a cop-out: I am pro-choice, but the realities of abortion are something I would find hard to deal with if ever involved personally. Late-term? No — a lower limit should be imposed except in extreme cases — perhaps 7 weeks. (12? 9? Not sure.) And contraception should be cheap, safe, quick and easy. The less people who have to make The Choice, the better.

To give this programme a thumbs up or thumbs down may seem crass. But it is remarkable film-making. Very difficult, confronting material to watch, but if you need more information to make up your mind about the issue, it could be very enlightening (maybe too much), and I thought quite even-handed. Certainly it should be compulsory viewing for anybody choosing to study, debate or legislate on the topic.

Here’s the inside of my car, not quite from the driver’s position.

As usual, hold your mouse over stuff in the picture to read about them. (Anybody know why Firefox only shows the first few words — and can this be fixed?!)

Want to post yours? Link in the Trackbacks or comments.

• Past photos in this series
• Notes on creating the image map/hot spots with text

The other day an old bloke got on the train at Spencer Street. He looked vaguely familiar. A station or two later I worked out who I thought it was. Major Grigsby! Griggers. My old year 12 co-ordinator*, probably long-since retired. I wasn’t sure until a few stops later when some kids from my old school got on the train. His eyes narrowed to the teacher’s glare, observing intently. Yep, it was him. Still a teacher at heart.

(*Actually he might have been senior co-ordinator, in charge of years 11 and 12. Not sure. Something like that, anyway.)

I never had Griggers as a teacher myself, which is why I didn’t say hello (besides, the novel I was reading was at a critical juncture). But his presence brought back memories of my only memorable interaction with him, on the occasion of the last day of year 12. A small group of us had formed a SWAT team to perform a last day prank.

Our target was the school hall, during a school concert rehearsal for the juniors (years 9 and 10). The conspirators met up outside the main school building, armed with water pistols and two big packets of bean bag beans. We synchronised watches, and then team A moved off around to the back of the school to gain access to the hall stage. I was in team B, and we took a route along the top floor corridor towards the hall balcony.

We were waiting in a vacant classroom until the allotted time when we heard a roar of the juniors in the hall. Team A had attacked early. Damn their lack of precision, jeopardising the whole operation. We sprinted down the corridor and ran into the hall balcony to perform our mission: a few squirts of the pistol, and a bag of beans dumped over the teacher there, the unfortunate Mr Rush, as amiable a teacher as you’d ever encounter. He didn’t see us coming because he was watching with amazement the sight down on stage of the music teacher also getting covered in beans.

Then we ran, back along our pre-planned escape route. Along the top floor corridor, out the northern entrance of the school, and down the cliff-face steps out to Alexandra Avenue. Down the road and across the bridge spanning the nearby river, and there we waited at the agreed post-operation rendezvous. What next? Stay clear for a few hours? Maybe jump on a 77 tram to the city?

While we pondered, we saw the sight of the (rather more rotund in those days, as I recall) Griggers striding across the bridge. Damn. Rumbled.

He’d spotted us, and followed. We surrendered and went back to school to face the music. One of the other co-ordinators was ranting about the prank, but Griggers simply set us to work cleaning up the mess with a vaccuum-cleaner and a broom and some rubbish bags. It took ages. The beans kept moving about — they’re very difficult to sweep up.

We heard a rumour later that Griggers thought it was a pretty good prank. No real harm done, and amusing enough to those who witnessed it.

When everything was tidied up, he dismissed us. No other punishment, no letter home to parents. Didn’t even confiscate the water guns. We celebrated by drawing military-badge-style “HALLBUSTERS” logos in texta on the shoulders of our shirts, and at the end of the day we departed school for the last time, heading for the pub.

Onya Griggers.

Heard a rumour on the grapevine earlier in the week that Sopranos DVDs can be found on special at the moment for about $35 per box set. I reckon it’s the best thing on TV at the moment, my favourite, so I dropped past JB’s tonight to pick them up. And there they were, seasons 1 to 4, $34.99 a box. Out with the credit card — purchased. I predict a Sopranos marathon or two at my place at some stage. That’d better be my lot in DVDs until the end of the year. Anything else I want, I’ll plead to my relatives to get for me for my birthday or Christmas.

(For the purists, season 1 isn’t in widescreen, but at $35 for 6 discs, it would be churlish to complain.)

If you follow The Sopranos, and haven’t seen Monday’s episode yet, stop reading here.
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