So I was at the cafe and I picked up a Cosmo that was lying there to catch up on all the gossip and latest fashion. I read it for about 20 minutes finding out about all these new celebrities I'd never heard of. But when I got to an article about "new" date rape drugs I was surprised. Sure enough, the magazine was from July 2004.

On Sunday I went to the city with one of my friends. We went to church in Broadway and then strolled up to QVB for some lunch and knife shopping. I ended up buying a very fancy set of Global knives at Victoria's Basement. For the very cheap costings of $275. Yikes.

They are very sharp knives and good. Rather hard to hang onto without dropping them on your foot. Because they have ergonomic handles. Apparently, you don't get RSI because they slip out of your hand every couple of minutes and drop on your foot. Or, as it turns out, slice off tiny pieces of finger or stab you in the palm.

The first night of knife ownership went forward without major mishap. There were a few scares, but no blood. However, the second day saw two crafty kitchen warriors fall to the unwieldy, unyielding blades. Kyung did lose a tiny piece of her finger and spent seven hours in the Emergency waiting room. Her left hand is now one giant bandage. Shameer stabbed himself in the palm and he is still bleeding today.

As the witless one who welcomed these weapons into our harmless home, I can't help but feel somewhat to blame.

Samson & Delilah is one of the best films I've ever seen. Almost certainly the most important one I've seen in a long time. And maybe the best Australian film. It is compassionate and thoughtful and fascinating. I would even venture to say it is respectful, but perhaps that isn't for me to say.

This morning I tried to find a new doctor. I haven't had a regular doctor since I was a child, but often that is annoying. I have been to two doctors in the last couple of years. Neither of them spoke very good English, and I had trouble explaining what was going on. So this time I went through the phone book and pulled out all the doctors Anglo-Saxon names. It is perhaps the most racist I have ever consciously been.

Transformers 2 was the worst of films, it was the best of films. It was a total farce. Utterly absurd. Too long in the wrong parts. Fairly boring. Too many sweeping crane shots across young girl's bodies (i.e. more than none). The script was shit. It wasn't funny at all. Many of the actual transformers were totally ridiculous and looked just like the cute children's action figures they are destined to become. The plot was way to ambitious and yet still dumb. Some sort of conspiracy-theory/end-of-times agglomeration that wandered all over the place. The need for an extra level of bad guy is so typical of Hollywood at the moment and it leaves you feeling more juped than jubilated. The whole romance sub-plot is painful and bad and unnecessary and Megan Fox is silly.

However, overall the film was still brilliant. The fighting was totally great. The fight scenes were massively ambitious and that totally paid off. Most importantly, as promised, the film has transformers in it, and transformers are always well awesome (with the exception of the children's action figure ones). Some of the fight scenes were absurdly long and totally indulgent and there is almost nothing that pleases me more. I had a big smile on my face during pretty much every scene without Megan Fox, when the smile turned to a mild scowl.

I think what I miss most from the first film is the humour and the cohesive (and somewhat sensible) story. I think the other thing I found slightly disappointing was how organic the transformers have become. These days they are kind of half ninja and half ent. But I really like it when they are just robots and act robotic.

So I'll give it 4/5. It gets 4 points for the fight scenes but misses out on the final point for doing every other thing wrong.

[They are reading page after page of I meet Jesus even though you are only supposed to read one. After about five, I am trying to figure out how to get them to wind up. I run through a few different scenarios in my head.]
Them: [suddenly quite impatient] Alright. No more.

I love my job so much. I can't really imagine a better one. I keep meaning to write a good, long blog post about how much wonderful fun it is, but more hilarious things keep happening and the potential post keeps getting longer.

Last night one of the fellow in my house was wondering around the kitchen and he came across a teddy and a doll in a miniature pram. He had the nicest little conversation with the teddy, rather incredulous that there was a teddy in the kitchen. Then he did a good dance performance for the teddy. Then he came over to let me know there was a teddy in a pram in the kitchen. It made me very happy.

I finally met John Coleman yesterday, even though I've been here nine months and it was his music which first made me think about working at L'Arche. Donna introduced him. It went something like this.

Donna: Hey Ryan. This is John. I don't think you've met him.
Ryan: [shaking hands with John] Like John Coleman? [John Coleman nods]
Donna: Yes.
Ryan: Hello.

That was it. My only memory of what he actually looked like was from when I saw him at Blackstump when I was 12 and thought he was a big dag because he sang about love and wore shorts.

Transformers 2 opens on the 24th June. Whose up for it? If you aren't convinced of the awesomeness of Transformers, I suggest you watch it repeatedly until you are. Because it is awesome.

It's the Cronulla riots personified.

Who wants to have lunch today? I got an unexpected day away from the house. But everyone I know has gone away... Perhaps I will gorge myself on Korean bibimbap all alone in the restaurant down the road. Yes. Kimchi also. That will be the plan.

I have seen the previews for Disgrace. I have the overwhelming sense that I'm going to be one of the book-lovers that hates the film. In the preview, nothing about the film felt right to me. Most of all, John Malkovich. The girl was also wrong - she seems like a total basket case. That said, I probably don't want them to make a film, because I don't think it can be done well. I don't even want to go and see it, but I will have in order to criticise it fully.

I have one Augie March ticket for myself. They're playing at The Metro on the 17th July, 2009. Tickets are only $35. Everybody should get one!

Them: [With a mouth full of finger bun] Can I have one more finger bun please Ryan?
Me: What about a crumpet?
Them: I'll make a deal with you. If you give me one more finger bun, I promise you I'll have a crumpet. Scouts honour. [Makes scout's honour sign].

Well, all the reviews were bad. I had been excited, but all the signs were pointing to a massive disappointment. Like so many blockbusters that have gone before it. They were even saying that Christian Bale was no longer the man he once was. That he'd become stale.

Well, they were all totally wrong. Terminator Salvation was totally freaking awesome. Constant violence and fighting of every kind. No plot to speak of, but so much good CGI and so many battles. The acting was good too. Christian Bale was great and worked well as John Connor. Sam Worthington was beautiful.

I can't understand what all the reviewers were upset about. The film struck me as beeing absolutely, 100% what it claimed to be. It was like a two hour preview, which is often all I want from an action movie. And it had a lot of violence. Which is all you'd expect from the previews and all you'd expect from a movie about the final war between humans and machines. It could have gone all Matrix Reloaded, but that would have sucked.

I think I can recommend it to everyone who loves movie violence and who resents the various futile attempts to inject any plot or seriousness into action movies. What great fun it was.

Lame.

I forgot to review it when I saw it. So this is my rather late review of it.

I've booked some beds at ski chalet mum and dad are members of at Smiggins Holes for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week (8th, 9th & 10th June). It's going to be a bit of a L'Arche holiday, except that some people have a little bit cancelled.

So I think that if some people are interested in spending four days/three nights in the Snowy Mountains for about $170 (food & accommodation), then that would be very good. You can email me or comment or something.

Note: We probably won't do much skiiing, but the ski fields should be open for anyone that does.

Oh gee. Last night I promised I would get up at 6am! And not sleep in at all! Absurd perhaps. But I almost did it. I got up at 6:03 today. Every single morning the fellas are late for work because we take too long to get ready. So I keep trying to get up earlier so that we make it on time. Often I sleep in anyway, but today I didn't.

But even with 2.5 hours to get ready I only just made it this morning. At that was only helping one person get ready. Gee gee whiz. I don't know what to do.

Yesterday I decided to walk home from Canterbury station as a bit of a public transport optimisation experiment. The 428 goes to Canterbury station quite quickly from places I like to hang out, and from there it isn't too far from my house. I wondered if it would be quicker than walking to somewhere that a train or 413 went from. The experiment worked out pretty well. From Newtown, it's probably a 30 minute bus trip and then a 15 minute walk.

But more important than all that, on the walk home I found this great cat. I gave it quite a good pat and neck scratch for a while. It was quite an old granny sort of cat. Skinny and with lots of stark white hairs. The best bit about her (apart from her friendliness) was her fluffy chin, just like an old granny.

After a bit of patting, another cat walked over who was much tougher. But not so tough that he didn't want a bit of a pat himself. So I patted them both there for a while, thinking to myself that I should probably get back to the house because I was late. I was just about to set off when I noticed another cat behind the fence that looked like a bulldog. It had a very stout nose and mouth and jaw. It made the tough cat actually look like quite the dandy. This cat actually was tough enough to resist any urges it might have had to come over for a pat.

But then, I realised the whole house was full of cats. They were all over. Maybe 20 or 30 of them. It was a really winner house. And all the cats were different. But they seemed to be getting on OK, and most of them just lolled about. I didn't have time to stop and pat them all, so I said goodbye to my two little chums and wandered off. I was walking past the next house, when I noticed a funny lump of fluff caught on the fence. I peered over at it for a tad. Then I realised that actually, this also, was a cat. There were some eyes just visible inside the lump. They weren't the sort of eyes really begging for a pat, so I didn't give it one. It was very tempting though.

I watched Flightplan with some of my house chaps last night. While I was watching it, I pretty much liked it. At the end, I even said "Well that was pretty good." Except, that as I reflected more I decided that was a big lie. It wasn't pretty good. It was actually pretty dumb. Jodie Foster, obviously, is totally infallible. But everything around her was pretty silly. Not Sean Bean. I do like Sean Bean... especially is name. Everything else though. I didn't like the bad fellow at all. He was too bad. And his plan was too silly and needed too much explaining. The CG was bad. The Arab terrorist herring was bad.

Watching people explore a big plane was pretty cool. Even if it was an imaginary plane. I really like planes and watching the film reminded me of the day Tom and I got to explore the Boeing 747 in Longreach. Apart from Jodie, that is pretty much the best thing about the film. If you haven't been to the Qantas museum in Longreach, you'll just have to enjoy Jodie.

This will be the fastest blog post I've made in ages because it's on our spanking new Optus Cable connection. Happy days.

I think this article on the "crisis" of housing oversupply is an excellent example of a number of things rather wrong with capitalist economics. It suggests that somehow too many houses have been built. That is now causing problems because housing prices have dropped (which makes house owners sad) and there are too many empty houses scattered about (which also makes the house owners sad). There is another problem with all the construction workers who were building those house. They no longer have jobs because nobody is building new houses anymore.

The ingenious solution to this problem, is to pay all those construction workers to knock down all the houses they have just built. This is presented as a solution that, at face value, sounds absurd but in practice is a solves the problem wonderfully. I certainly agree that it sounds absurd at face value. But I would go further than that. I would say that the idea is absurd in every respect. The solution also suggests a wondrous contentedness with the original problem. The core problem was that the time horizon relevant to decision-making in our economy was about six months. The decisions made were totally stupid and invested money in all the wrong things and almost none of the right things. The solution is not to waste a lot bunch of additional effort undoing all that work. Our economy is now facing a whole lot of real problems far more substantial than wealthy people having to cope with lower asset prices that were fictional anyway.

We don't have a problem finding work for people. If we need to keep people busy so they don't get sad (which we do), we can keep building solar power stations. Or fix up our existing houses to make them better. Knocking down houses can only "create value" if you're a perverted individual who has managed to link his own happiness to the House Price Index. Some people might get excited at the idea that knocking something down can make prices go up, but I doubt it's most people. Prices are not the issue. Despite all their magic, they didn't get us anywhere good when we thought they were working. They're certainly not going to save us now we've realised they were wrong the whole time. And fucking around with the real world purely to give us some sense of financial planet stability is not what we need.

People just like this fellow were and are in charge our of economy and society. What the hell are we doing?