welcome to the jungle

If there’s a better song to have on your MP3 player at the start of a run than “Welcome to the Jungle” I’m yet to hear it.

That guitar sound, that opening riff. Da–na–na–nana–nanana Da–na–na–nana–nanana, Da–nana, nanana–nanana–nanana–na–na etc. You can’t beat it.

The ending’s not bad either. “It’s gunna bring you down, huh”.

Absolutely. Axl, I’m completely on your wavelength there.

I’m not sure I’m so keen on the bit in the middle where he screams in what I can only assume is meant to represent a woman approaching orgasm. I’m not sure where Axl was going with that one.

Never mind, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s a good song, and it brings me back to age 13, when black t-shirts weren’t ironic and the sight of a grown man in a head-band was only partly ridiculous.

Running
A very sluggish run yesterday. I just didn’t feel sharp, even on the hills. Even Axl Rose couldn’t seem to get me interested. Still, I guess you can’t always be on the ball.

something different

Something different today: a poem by Wallace Stevens called “A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts”.

The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur—

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten on the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

(from “Harmonium,” 1923)

Kinda cool eh? Read it a few times. Read it aloud.

I like that line “the whole of the wideness of night is for you”. In the more impressionable portions of my 4am training runs, I feel a little like that.

Running
12.something kilometres today, my usual double loop of the tan, plus some Anderson street reps thrown in to spice things up a touch.

Cake
Just in case you thought I’d suddenly gone high-brow or something, here’s something disgusting AND fattening: Would you eat this cake?

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

ouch

I’m always happy to chew the fat with JoJo, the world-renowned blogger behind runjanerun, particularly when she’s in this sort of mood: uh-oh drunk pussycat.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to answer her question on Saturday night, owing to having other things to do….

Anyway, she expressed a desire to hear more about my whacking-the-elbow-and-writhing-around-in-pain incident from Friday. You might want to call that sadistic; I wouldn’t dare. So here goes, picture this:

Friday; morning; Yarra trail between Punt Road and Chapel street heading away from the city. Your humble correspondent sweating it up at a great rate, and also keeping a watchful eye out for lycra-clad speed demons.

All of a sudden, whoosh!!! from out of nowhere up jumped a great evil-looking fence. It must have been at least 12 feet tall. It’s eye, if it had one, would no doubt have been beady and evil-looking. I have an impression it was carrying some sort of firearm and had a few nasty friends lurking around.

Anyway, it jumped out, as I said, and whacked me on the elbow. Bam!

Owing to the great speed I was travelling (see above) it hurt. It hurt enough so I thought it was possibly broken. I pulled over to a convenient grassy bit (possibly a grassy knoll, whatever that is) and proceeded to rub the offending elbow and wince.

I was feeling generous, so allowed myself a grand total of 4 minutes feeling-sorry-for-myself time and then moved on.

I forgot all about it until that night, when I tried to lie on my left side, only to discover my elbows had gotten all out of whack. The right was as normal, the left seemed to have doubled in size and gone an attractive shade of purple.

It’s better now, you’ll be relieved to hear (unless your name is JoJo).

Running
I headed out yesterday morning for a brisk-ish 20k around the streets near me. I say brisk, but it’s all relative. There was a bit of a feral northerly wind, which hindered my progress somewhat, particularly along Dorset road. That was unfortunate, as Dorset road isn’t generally somewhere I like to spend a great deal of time.

I’ve passed 2850km for the year now. 3000km, here I come.

pyscho cyclists

I was all champing at the bit yesterday morning, uber-enthusiastic about the prospect of a lunch-time run. I even went as far as promising to exhibit my sagging frame and laughable running technique on the hills of Anderson Street.

I meant it too. I got changed into my singlet and shorts at 12:30 and shivered my way down the lift. Sadly, it was raining outside, which rapidly put the brakes on the aforementioned bit-champing.

I kinda wimped out. Sorry about that.

This morning, by way of atonement, I got to work bright and early and headed of for a punishing toodle along the North side of the Yarra, from my office in the city to Richmond and back.

As toodles go, it was fairly quick: it needed to be, what with having to stay out of the way of all the cyclists.

To all the cyclists out there, I realise you’re in a hurry, and you want to go about twice as fast as I run, but is it strictly necessary to be so rude, aggressive and macho?

Would it kill you to use your bell? It’s right there on your handle bars, just give it a jiggle next time you’re whooshing past me at a million miles an hour.

So a fairly speedy 13.4km, aside from about 4 minutes spent rubbing my elbow by the side of the track after whacking it on one of the fences.

It hurt. The elbow, I mean, not the run.

I’m rapidly bearing down on 2850km for this calendar year. 3000km is in site sight and, barring any calamitous injuries in the next 6 weeks, should be well within my capabilities.

Rove McManus
I’m not normally a big fan of “Rove”. As far as I’m concerned, he’s made a career of being nothing more than professionally affable and a series of TV programs that promise to be vaguely amusing, but usually aren’t.

That being said, I do admire the way he’s handled himself publicly in the last few years, which must have been hard. (Compare him to Samuel Johnson, for example, who seems to be a self-pitying, self-publicising, drunken, violent git.)

I don’t think there’s much to be gained by splashing Rove’s new romance all over the front pages of the Herald Sun. Can’t we just let the guy be?

chess

On Spicks and Specks they sometimes play a game where the contestants are shown a series of mug-shots and have to decide whether each is an obscure musician or mass-murderer.

The guy on the right is too easy.

Meet Alexander Pichushkin, the “chess-board killer”, from Moscow.

He’s quoted as saying:

A first killing is like your first love

Ahh yes, I agree completely. You’re full of hormones, way to overeager, it all happens a bit too quickly and everyone’s disappointed, especially the victim.

No? Maybe that’s just me.

If I were his lawyer, I would have advised against that particular facial expression in court. If he looks like that at the judge or jury it’ll add about 20 years onto his sentence.

Not that it matters: Alexander “chess-boy” was found guilty of 48 murders, disappointingly short of the full 64 he needed to fill the chess board.

I assume he’ll end up somewhere nasty and Siberian for his troubles.

Anyway, sorry about the morbid, serial killer stuff. I just felt I needed to lift the tone after yesterday’s Andrew Bolt discussion.

Running
A couple of laps of the tan yesterday lunchtime. Possibly something similar today. If you want to catch a glimpse of me in action, park yourself somewhere near Anderson Street about 1pm today.

stop being tired

The internet is a wonderful thing – it gives us access to all the loony theories of the world and helps while away the dreary afternoons in which we would otherwise have to work.

Two examples:

Andrew Bolt
Not strictly an internet thing, but it’s on the Herald Sun website so I’ll let it through. This is Master Bolt’s piece describing Sophie Monk’s nude photo shoot:

She looks simply delicious, and makes me salivate for a beef curry.

Now, I know he’s trying to be funny, but the idea that he wants to eat Sophie Monk is just plain wierd, even for a right-wing nut-job propogandist.

I’m not even going to get into his companion piece on the great debate, in which he describes the Nine network as “left-leaning”.

Really? That would explain why Peter Hitchener keeps interrupting news stories to sing a quick verse of the Internationale.

You can sleep less
As a parent of a young child, this is dear to my heart. Apparently, my troubles with feeling tired, grumpy and exhausted are actually because I sleep too much.

That makes sense.

Now, when you think about it, it all makes sense. If it wouldn’t be for tiredness, we wouldn’t need sleep. We could just stay awake for the whole 24 hours each day. Tiredness is preventing us from doing that.
Source: stopbeingtired.com

Right. So, I would need less sleep if only I could manage to be less tired. Of course, why didn’t I think of that?

And how do I get less tired? The answers are all in one convenient “end tiredness program”, only $37 US.

Brilliant. Where do I sign?

Update
Yesterday I mentioned a poor tase headline from Crikey.com.au about Crazy John Ilhan. Today I’ve found something even blacker, from the Onion:

Lethal Injection Ban Leads To Rise In Back-Alley Lethal Injections

TALLAHASSEE,FL—”If governors can’t execute prisoners legally in prisons, they’re going to turn elsewhere for the procedure,” said Dr. Daniel Blecker.

.onion_embed {background: rgb(256, 256, 256) !important;border: 4px solid rgb(65, 160, 65);border-width: 4px 0 1px 0;margin: 10px 30px !important;padding: 5px;overflow: hidden !important;zoom: 1;}.onion_embed img {border: 0 !important;}.onion_embed a {display: inline;}.onion_embed a.img {float: left !important;margin: 0 5px 0 0 !important;width: 66px;display: block;overflow: hidden !important;}.onion_embed a.img img {border: 1px solid #222 !important;;width: 64px;;padding: 0 !important;;}.onion_embed h2 {line-height: 2px;;clear: none;;margin: 0 !important;padding: 0 !important;}.onion_embed h3 {line-height: 16px;font: bold 16px arial, sans-serif !important;margin: 3px 0 0 0 !important;padding: 0 !important;}.onion_embed h3 a {line-height: 16px !important;;color: rgb(0, 51, 102) !important;font: bold 16px arial, sans-serif !important;text-decoration: none !important;display: inline !important;;float: none !important;;text-transform: capitalize !important;}.onion_embed h3 a:hover {text-decoration: underline !important;color: rgb(204, 51, 51) !important;}.onion_embed p {color: #000 !important;;font: normal 11px/ 11px arial, sans-serif !important;;margin: 2px 0 0 0 !important;;padding: 0 !important;}.onion_embed a {display: inline !important;;float: none !important;}
At least that’s supposed to be funny.

dodgem trams

What is it with all the tram crashes lately? Apparently there have been three this month.

Admittedly, I’ve never driven a tram myself, aside from the stationery ones they used to have in Wattle Park when I was a kid, but I would have thought it’s pretty hard to crash one.

• They only go in straight lines (if not, you’re in trouble).
• They don’t go that fast.
• They’re also bloody big and tend towards the garish end of colour schemes: you’d have to have a pretty big blind-spot to miss them.

Christ, one of them is a bloody restaurant. How do you crash a restaurant?

Despite all of that, Melbourne’s tram drivers seem to think they’re in the world’s biggest game of dodgem cars. Go figure….

Update
A late entry in the “Most tasteless news story of the year” competition, this one from Crikey.com.au:

‘Crazy’ John Ilhan: young, rich and dead

Nice.

masochism

Yesterday was bookended by two examples of mild masochism on my behalf. In the morning, 90 minutes sweating up a storm running in a great long circle in the furnace-like early summer heat. Then at night, 90 minutes spent sitting through the great debate between our glorious leader and his twin from the other side of politics.

I don’t know which was more painful.

Running
The run was a bit stressful – sweaty, chafing, nowhere near as fast as it should be. I worked it out at 19km or so. Not enjoyable at all. It’s hard to believe the marathon was only two weeks ago. I suppose I’ll get used to the heat sooner or later, but there’s no guarantees. I have a dim memory of last summer doing my long runs at 4am to escape the heat.

Debate
The debate, while hardly an example of inspired rhetoric (someone on the front page of the Australian called it the best debate in 15 years, which doesn’t say much does it?), at least gave a pretty good idea about the choice that’s in front of us in 5 weeks.

John Howard looked nervous, tired, waffly, irritable and loaded down with 11 years of dodgy, ideological, unpopular stuff (Workchoices, Iraq etc) and missed opportunities (Climate change, water, broadband etc).

He also claimed to be “passionate” about being an “economic conservative”. I’m far from convinced that it’s humanly possible to be passionate about that particular topic, unless he and I have a radically different idea of passion. It’s the kind of thing you say in a job interview when you need to sound keen but have nothing real to say: “I’m passionate about customer service/accountancy/flipping burgers”.

John Howard junior aka Kevin Rudd was also nervous and occasionally sweaty, but at least could speak clearly and articulate what passes for new ideas these days.

I called it clearly, though depressingly, in favour of Rudd.

There was a wide range of responses in the media. According to the Age it was Rudd “convincingly“. The Australian were watching a different debate by the sounds of it, one where Howard was “feisty”. The Herald Sun gave it to Rudd, but didn’t want to admit as much on the front page.

The best thing to happen last night was someone at Sky News pulling the plug on Ray Martin. Twice. There should be more of this.

While they’re at it, could they pull the plug on Mark Holden?