The Chronicles Of…

I was never much for being a reader as a child.

In the MS readathon, my friends had often read 600 books by the end of the month, and I had just realised that I was more captivated by the cover of my books than the words inside… But in 1991 I found a book and an author that I liked, and I began to read… and I liked it. I was 11.

The author was Victor Kelleher. The first of his books I read was “the Red King”.

After that book I went up to buy and read a further 9 of his books. Just last month I discovered my collection of Victor Kelleher books at my parents place, so I took them home and started to read them again.

The Red King was definitely a primary school aged book… not quite as brilliant as I remembered. The plot was quite predictable – which is what you expect I guess reading a children’s book.

However, I read 2 more: Brother Night, and Toronga. These were still as brilliant as ever! And they had me staying up way past my bed time just to read them – that’s the sign of a good book.

I’ve got no idea where Victor is now, whether he’s alive, still living in Sydney, or writing books… but I’d love to tell him that he’s been partly responsible for my appreciation of reading. As an adult, I’m certainly not about to set any book worm records, and I still can’t chew down a book like Pete can, but i really enjoy reading these days, especially when I work in a profession that is all about ‘The Word’ and The Bible (the books). And not just a profession, but my relationship with God is all about his communication to humanity through a book.

Thanks Victor for your contribution. 

So we went for Fi’s first antenatal checkup today (we’re 13 weeks now woohoo!).

As part of the initial checkup procedure, there was a point where I had to leave the room so the Doc could ask Fi some personal questions about our relationship etc… This is a really good system in our hospitals. It gives women the chance to safely tell someone if there’s domestic violence violence issues and other nasty things that people are at risk of talking about.

However… The Doc asked Fi if I drink alcohol. Fi said “well. no. he drinks beer, but doesn’t get drunk. You know, like he’ll take a week to finish a 6 pack kinda thing…”

So the Doc says “He’s a social drinker.”

Fi says “yeah I guess so.”

So now there’s a file with name on it in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital that says “Michael Dicker – Social drinker.”

There’s nothing wrong with social drinking. I enjoy social drinking… I’m just not sure I like being labeled though. I feel a little bit pigeon holed.

Anyway (sigh) “Hi. My name’s Mike… I’m a social drinker.” 

Someone’s made a video to go with a song that Ed Vedder wrote for the film ‘Into the Wild’.

They’ve made a bit of tenuous link between their politics and the song, but it basically fits.

Had one of those great days yesterday…

Fi left her mobile phone in the car overnight. We remembered it before going to bed but couldn’t be bothered walking down stairs to get it, and as we tried to motivate ourselves to go get it we joked “we’ll probably get broken into tonight.” “hmmmm yeah… you can see where this is going.

“Low and behold, what should I find 7:30am yesterday morning? Our car had been broken into, and Fi’s mobile? Goooone.

That’ll teach us.

It’s the 3rd time in about 5 months it’s been broken into, and I’ve been since told by the cops that it’s one of the easiest cars to break into (though hard to steal…).

The good news is that they didn’t wreck anything, and we didn’t have much in the car for them to take or mess up (we washed and vacuumed it on Saturday). And the extra good news is that 3 Mobile sent us a letter on Monday informing us that they’d give us new phones if we signed up again for another 24 months, so we’ve been able to replace the phone for free with the only inconvenience of having to cancel the old sim card, and losing Fi’s contacts…

One of those days. 

I am now officially an Apple man…

My new macbook arrived in the mail yesterday, and I’m now in the re-education phase… I’m glad to say that after only one day, i feel as though I have the hang of it, and I know my way around.

For those who like to know…

•  250Gb HDD
• 2GB RAM (will be upgrading to 4GB soon)
• 13.3″ screen
• White (very sexy!)

I’ll be keeping the old PC desktop as well, but the old PC laptop will go (ebay), an the macbook will be my main machine.Recommend it? so far. Buying it with the education discount certainly helped. 

If Saul Bass had got the contract to make the titles for Star Wars:

Take a good look at this picture.

What do you see? This is not a a psyche test. You’re not supposed to see an apparition of Mary, or the face of Jesus and the sacred heart.

It’s concrete. Plain ol’ fashioned concrete. There is nothing special about this particular concrete surface. It’s not from anywhere famous. It’s just concrete.

A couple of weeks ago Fi was in a community services meeting with other community service professionals in an unnamed community. At that meeting there was a discussion about graffiti on the newly built, council provided, community skate park which, incidentally, are made of concrete.

One particular lady shared a story about being on holidays in NZ where she came across a community skate park which was totally, utterly, and completely free of graffiti. She was so impressed by this that she took photos of the bare concrete skate park – much like the photo above – and she proceeded to show them around the group which welcomed them with words of praise and grunts of affirmation…

Do you hear me? Photos! Of bare concrete! What? Has the world gone mad?

Don’t get me wrong here. I love concrete as much as the next man, but taking photos of a bare concrete skate park without any graffiti is like taking photos of spaghetti bolognese without the bolognese… it’s just plain pasta – boring. Concrete with poo smeared on it is more interesting than plain concrete.

In an attempt to challenge the group thinking and slow down the social retardation of our community service providers, Fi had the presence of mind to suggest to the group that maybe… just maybe… a skate park was an appropriate place for graffiti, and that a little colour in a plain concrete skate park may not necessarily be such a bad thing for society…

“Woe! Slow down! Is this progressive thought?”

What difference does it make if some kids decide to express themselves with a spray can on a plain concrete surface which is made to be grinded and ollied on, and to absorb the blood of skaters who take frequent spills? (I agree, concrete with patches of blood, skull, and hair does look cool, but we can be more purposeful about decorating our dull public spaces).

Surley a bit of paint can only serve to add some colour to an otherwise dull environment. It causes no damage to the ramps. It provides a space for public art. And it fits with the skating culture.

I can’t endorse illegal graffiti because it’s illegal… and that just wouldn’t look good for a Christian youth minister to endorse painting on canvases that aren’t owned by the artist, but I say give the kids a space to spray. And a skate park is as good as any. An arbitrary decision made by a bunch of community service professionals who think the world would letter better if it were only made of plain grey concrete, is no good reason.

I say let the kids spray.