I just watched Far From Heaven. I really liked it a lot. Julianne Moore is a champion. She's good in everything. But I can't put my finger on why I loved this film and was so bored in About Schmidt. Both of them were "character-driven" vague sort of films. Normally I'd say I liked that kind of film, but About Schmidt just had that special nothing.

Jem came back from New Zulland. Yay. She's changed lots.

Ian, Rebeka and I went canoeing on Friday night. We set off down to Crosslands with the racing canoe and dad's spiffy new yellow canoe. I didn't think there was going to be any room in them for our stuff, so I brought as little as possible. Just a jumper, a blanket and my tent. In the end there was heaps of room in the yellow canoe.

The camping spot was pretty close too. It took a little while to get there, because we had to stop every now and then to rearrange our cargo. But it was really only a 5 minute paddle. But that was alright. Apart from the odd jumbo jet flying overhead, once we got there it did seem pretty isolated.

Ian had brought absinthe, Thai saki and a 6-pack of migraine-inducing Tooheys. I had brought some old wine and one of my Cubans. We cooked up a really tasty pasta, which had just the right amount of smoky, ashy goodness. Then we sat around the fire and smoked the cigar and drank and chatted.

The night was absolutely freezing. My blanket wasn't thick enough or big enough. Not unless I curled up in a ball and wrapped it around me twice. Which I ended up doing. I wrapped some of our canvas shopping bags around my legs and tied my t-shirt around my head and put dad's OV cap on. I pulled my arms inside my jumper so I could give more blanket to my legs. That must have been about 3am, and I was desperately hoping for morning to come. After a bit I warmed up enough to go back to sleep. But I woke up with the sore throat and coldiness I still have today.

Despite the sickness, I woke up to a band of ducks fossicking merrily through our campsite. So that took my mind off it. I often wake up in that tent to something interesting going on outside - usually animals of some sort. I can just open the door a tiny bit, and sit in the tent and look out.

Ian an I spent a lot of our morning crushing cans and collecting beer bottles that had been left in our secluded paradise. I paddled back to the mainland and stole some of the plastic tube wrappers they had put around the newly-planted trees. I needed them to keep the cans and bottles in. It was such a cold morning. I ran across the dewey grass barefoot. The water in the river was the only warm thing, so I'd stand in the river for a few minutes between trips.

I poked sticks through one end of the tubes to make bags so the garbage wouldn't fall out the bottom. Then we ferried it over to the car when Jem and Chris arrived. We managed to consolidate the garbage into one big garbage bag, so I could wander back and replace the tree protectors. Although there seemed to be too many bags for the number of trees. I hope that doesn't mean that some of them had died.

It makes me want to go canoeing again. It was heaps fun. Fully tops. I need to ring Alex Miller and see if he's still interested.

Prescribed: $356.69 Total recommended: $836.15

The Virgin icon is stuck in my bookmarks next to "New blog post". It's a bit offputting.

I'm listening to Adore. Haven't listened to those chaps in forever. Well, not forever. It hasn't been that long. LOL. But it has been quite a while. He he. :)

I went to Virgin. It took 15 minutes to load. Then when I searched for flights most of them were closer to $200 than to $29.

The film, starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus, is a bloody depiction of Christ's final hours and crucifixion.

What do they mean "depiction"? Is there another version? I wouldn't mind betting that on Wednesday night we saw an incredibly sanitised version of what really happened.

...while some Christian and Jewish leaders complained that it could fuel anti-Semitism by implying Jews were collectively responsible for Christ's death.

I don't think there was an implication that Jesus' community put him to death. It was stated quite clearly. But that is different to saying that Jews were collectively responsible, whatever that means. It had nothing to do with his community being Jewish. Are white people collectively responsible for what Australians did to the aborigines? Is anyone who suggests that a race as a whole is responsible for something even going to be taken seriously? I don't reckon you can find that sort of silliness in the bible. There's lots of other silliness in there, but not that sort. Although it would be interesting to look more.

Hollywood Reporter

Robyn and I went to the pool this morning for kickboarding and flipper-swimming. She mostly used the flippers, and I mostly used the kickboard. I did 6 laps of just kicking with no arms. Each lap took about 90 seconds. My legs were dead. Fully. Then I did some more laps without a kickboard, but with arms, and they were much easier.

Then I went to Tom's for a run. We went pretty slow. My legs got more tired and more sore.

Absolutely miserable. But I would recommend it to anyone and everyone.

Mr Howard used his address to praise the country's "noble" teachers and reminisce on how the world had changed since the school opened its doors in 1954.

"The world is a very different place. There is no point arguing whether it's better or worse. I think it's better," Mr Howard told the school's 1,200 students. PM plays on tolls anger

Just the other day he said that problem with public schools is that they had no values. Or when he calls teacher's "noble" is he just talking about private school teachers. And if John thinks something, then there is no point arguing about it.

I came home to find the chicken huddled on the door step. She was very damp, but ran off into the rain when I walked past.

I was thinking the other day that the chicken has better road sense than Raj does. She's just more clever all round it seems.

I can appreciate a hunky man as much as the next guy, but this really doesn't do it for me. The Sydney Morning Herald has some funny ideas.

James Clark has joined us at the water hole also.

This relates to Jo's Biblical Challenge.

Step out of the traffic! Take a long, loving look at me, your High God, above politics, above everything. Psalm 46:10 (only in The Message)

This isn't related, but I think it's funny.

I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. Luke 19:9

1. belonging to the Emperor
   1. embalmed
   2. trained
   3. pigs
   4. sirens
   5. fabulous
   6. stray dogs
   7. included in this classification
   8. trembling like crazy
   9. innumerable
   10. drawn with a very fine camelhair brush
   11. et cetera
   12. just broke the vase
   13. from a distance look like flies

From The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge

Until relatively recently there was no well established word for a baby hedgehog. Although the word kit had occasionally been used, and sometimes pup or piglet, most books about mammals just called them baby' oryoung' hedgehogs.

However, by the early 1990s the word hoglet (or sometimes hedgehoglet) had been introduced, and this word seems to have been in general use among those with an interest in hedgehogs since at least the mid-1990s. AskOxford.com

The seed cases on the ground out the front our house are normally spiky and quite hard, and they tend to stick into your feet when one is trying to be hobbit-footed. The great thing about rain is that the casings get soft and squash under your feet as you walk on them. It always takes me a few soft, comfortable steps out before I remember that I don't need to be cautious and tread carefully. Perhaps I should just always tread carefully.

Jen is very tentatively on Blog Water Hole. But she's quite fragile and could break at any time.

Jen, I think I remember you saying you would go on if you could. If I'm imagining that, let me know. I think Sal is the only person left. But other people are welcome to join in as well. It's good publicity for your blog, and it gives you some sense of the community in a sometimes cold and hostile internet.

James also managed to knock himself off it for a bit with such a long post that the parser thingo barfed. If I was any sort of web developer I'd work out why, but I kind of want to go to bed.

I'm so stupid. I'm really tired, but instead of going to bed when I say I will I go off and start reading George Bush quotes. But now I'm really going to bed.

I KNOW THAT HUMAN BEING AND FISH CAN COEXIST PEACEFULLY.

Update: The nausea-inducing long posts problem has been fixed.

We all went to Anmol's party last night. I think it's great how much fun you can have talking to your friends, even though you've been talking to them all your life. It never gets boring.

It was a good party. The food was great. I had two entire drinks. Lots of people came. I think Anmol had an OK time too, which is good.

I like SOAP and Lucinda Williams. SOAP will make the internet a better place, and Lucinda is just good at singing and guitar. The more I use SOAP the more I love it. It's so much fun. Andy, Woody and I built a little thing we've called EuroSnarf. It SOAPs the European Patent Office a few thousand times looking for special codes. We're creating a patent database that doesn't exist yet in Australia. And it will be more up to date we think. Fun stuff. Not patents. Patents are boring. But SOAP is fun.

Howie and I went canoeing this morning. I woke up late, and got to the French's late. Then we left late, and were late getting the canoe on the car. We didn't leave until about 8:50 and we had to pick up Hannah at 10. We got down to Bobbin Head, and put the canoe in the water. We knew we had to be very quick, because there wasn't much time. We quickly untied the ropes. We quickly pulled off the canoe. We quickly screwed in the seats, and put our drownable stuff in my snazzy water-proof bag. We quickly hopped in. Then we quickly paddled off. Almost as quickly, we capsized and both fell into the water. We were still quite a way shy of the bridge, so we really hadn't gone very far at all. And old man and his two grand-daughters laughed at us, and he explained to us how to empty the water from the canoe. We thanked him and set about paddling the canoe back to the launch spot. By the time we'd paddled the 100 metres back, we were both thouroughly exhausted. I remembered that I'd forgotten to set the alarm in my phone on the first bit, so I went to set it. But I realised that I would have had to set it for about 5 minutes later if we were to have any chance of getting to Hannah on time. So we pulled the canoe out of the water. We put it on the roof, got in the car and drove home.

I've never capsized a canoe before. It was good fun. I hope I get to do it again some time in the future.

I was listening to the radio this morning on the way to Thomas' house. They were talking to the Mayor of Yarrah. He wants to make parks nicer places for homeless people to sleep. He and some other folk want wash basins, bigger benches and benches placed closer together so it's more companionable. What a champion. Hearing that made my day.

I fixed the "malicious comment curbing" problem by breaking MT a little more, and inserting some constants into some binary selections.

I've got the hiccoughs. I love having hiccoughs.

I just finished watching About Schmidt. What an incredible relief.

I just broke MT so it works a bit better. I made it use <br>s instead of <p>s. Now your multi-line URLs won't stuff up. Or they will. But they'll stuff up differently. They'll stuff up with <br>s.

No, actually it is useful, for those who, like me, sometimes wrap multiple paragraphs in the one tag. Like quoting a newspaper or something. Now that won't stuff up. But multi-line URLs still will.

And Emily's boyfriend too.

After four years of loyal service and about $2000, I left Optus. Yesterday I got a bill in the mail for a $50 cancellation fee. But I accidentily paid it because I thought it was calls. I reckon that's fully crap. There's still $6 of if that I can refuse to pay. Hopefully that will be enough for them to chase me and give me an opportunty to get self-righteous and talk about how unjust they are. I'll talk about youth and that cycle of debt stuff I heard on the radio. That's solid gold.

I've changed the blog feed so that offsite folk (Tom, Jo, James, Matt) have their blogs cached. So changes made by them won't show up on blog feed for 10 minutes or so (less often at night). It was getting a bit slow, and I couldn't think of a better way of doing it.

Update: I found a better way. Now it will update every 2 minutes.

I was thinking about food fights and how it wastes food. Pie fights waste dairy whip that could be sent to poor children. I was wondering how I could condone other people having pie fights, and then wondered how I could possibly get excited about the thought of doing it myself. Originally I hadn't been worried, but somebody suggested to me that it might not be such a fantastic idea, and I thought they could be right.

But then I thought about party poppers and streamers and harbour cruises. All forms of entertainment that are at least as wasteful as throwing dairy whip pies at people. Just because something is edible doesn't mean it's more wasteful when it's used for entertainment. Using stuff for food fights is only wasteful because it's resources that aren't being spent making other, more useful, things.

So it is wasteful and uncompassionate to use dairy whip for a food fight. But so are 99% of the things I choose to buy. And 99% of the non-edible stuff that sits in a supermarket. We could donate all the money we spend on all that stuff to poor countries, and people would stop making it for us. And start making stuff that would be useful for poor people. Like rice. And guns to shoot rabbits. And stools to sit on. But we don't stop buying it. I guess because people suck. Or something.

I think this is hilarious. This was over 6 months.

Transaction Summary

After some minor hiccoughs Matt has joined the Blog Water Hole.