Pad-o!

When I was 18, I had a job as an outbound telemarketer for a telecomms firm. I would sit in a chair while a new piece of software, called Genesys, would scan a database of calls and transfer someone to me when a human voice was recognized as having picked up. I would then offer some deal and...well look, the point was, I worked the swing shift between 2pm and 10pm, and for half the day even Genesys couldn't find anyone at home, and I'd spend a lot of time playing Gameboy. Which, even in 1998, was pretty retro.

Around that time, Comic Book Reader (.cbr) format was brand new. It took scanned images of comic books and compiled them into a fairly intuitive viewer for your PC. Also, there was Napster- a ridiculous concept, where people could download digital songs and TV shows to their computers (in real player format...remember real

player?)- for free.

I remember at the time thinking about what it would take to put books, especially my new cbr comic books, onto a device like the Gameboy. It boggled my mind- take my entire comic book collection everywhere I went? And what about books? What about a single device, in colour, wrapped in leather, but that could replace textbooks and novels? I was really excited.

I talked to people about it. My future brother in law, who was in software. My friend Jake, who was just starting to get interested in industrial design. From my end, I imagined it being subsidized by the government as a health-saving device, part of a healthcare bill, specifically because it saved young backs. You sell them en masse to the education sector, and people can load in cartridges (like the gameboy) pre loaded with entire libraries.

I didn't shut up about this idea for many years. In 2001, I moved to Seattle, without a degree, and still chasing dreams of being an actor. I wasn't really a computer guy, but I liked the idea of nice things that did neat stuff, rather than really cool things that were hard to do cool stuff on. I was excited to start making friends with people in the IT industry.

I moved back to Melbourne in 2002. On the bus between Seattle and LA, where I caught my flight from, I started talking with a fellow passenger, and showed her my Rio Volt, a cd player that could play MP3's. It was by far my favourite thing in the world- I could load 120 sings to a disc. I had always been the kid carrying lots of entertainment in my backpack- a walkman, 10 mix tapes and probably 3 graphic novels. I'm a voracious media nerd. I always wanted more, and that idea about having everything on one device kept in my head. I want more content and less physical stuff.

She showed me her favourite gadget- an iPod. It was so expensive and out of reach in my mind, that I was barely curious. But I was a little curious. Apple was completely foreign to me- I had Windows 98, and all things Mac were a bizarre universe to me. But I had a play and yeah, it was ok.

in 2003, iPods got colour, and I bought one. 20GB. Now THAT'S a lot of media in one spot. I filled it, and I'm not even a big music fan, I loaded it with photos, even though I barely ever take photos. I liked doing stuff with it. I liked using it as a hard drive. I would take it to work (another call centre job) and work on uni assignments in between calls, or read comics, or write short stories and scripts, and save them to my mini digital briefcase, and then strap that fucking thing to my arm and listen to music while riding my bike home. I even used a converter which took any word document and turned in into notes, which could be loaded into the iPod and read like a book. I read Wealth of Nations and Josephus' Histories on that thing. I even tried taking single scanned pages of comic books and loading them in as individual photos, hoping to flip through them and read as...but alas, the screen was way too small.

The video came, and I sold my old one and upgraded to that. And the storage was even bigger- 60GB! I watched cartoons, porn, full movies, TV shows- whatever I could download in digital form, I could get on there. I liked it.

When the iPhone came in 2007, I evolved into full time tech nerd. I followed a live blog of the keynote, and audibly "wowed" when Jobs showed how to pinch and swipe on the thing. I knew it wasn't coming to Australia for a while, but I was patient. I'd get one.

And as soon as I got one in 2008, I opened it. And then that night, I loaded the thing with apps. And one of my first apps was a comic book reader that took....PDFs only.

Fuck it, I thought. I've been waiting for this. I converted some CBRs into PDF, loaded them and....it was garbage. Too small.

iCried.

Well no, I moved on. I even sold my iPhone and upgraded to the 3GS as soon as it came out, and I've now converted to Mac as well. I'm hooked, because Apple seems to do things the way I like- they make simple looking devices that do great stuff, rather than just cool looking things that do everything half assedly. I liked their marketing too- it seemed the perfect marriage of steak and sizzle- they sold the benefit, but the feature behind it was so thoughtfully built, that it actually exceeded beyond what Apple itself sought to deliver. Now that's how you run a railroad.

In all this time though, I still wanted my comic book and book reader. I'm addicted to the economist, and I love the audio downloads they offer, but I also want the print edition- but after years of moving around crates and boxes of magazines and books, I'm sick of clutter. I wanted a slim device that did all this stuff, and not a bunch of things that needed looking after! I want to consolidate! I want space, not bookshelves, room to move, not a need for more room. That's what clutter is to me- it creates need, rather than happiness. I want happiness. And I'm happy when watching movies, reading books and sending messages to my loved ones. I like to be entertained.

When a friend in early 2009 told me he could get me an old Windows XP tablet, I was interested. Fuck the crippled UI- it would load PDFs and cbr files. I was willing to give him $700 for it. Thankfully, that deal never materialized. Then the rumor mill about an Apple tablet started to heat up. Then the Kindle came out, and it was shit- black and white? Jesus, this is 2009. Other tablets started to pop up (not in shops, mind you), and they all looked like crap.

I was now jailbroken on my iPhone, and I loved it even more. I like pushing it. I like using bluetooth headphones and being able to ride my bike and listen to podcasts and music without any wires (yes, I know it's dangerous, but you don't understand- I, unlike everyone else, know what I'm doing). But even with my handy little device, I still carry a notepad in my backpack, usually a novel, and a portable hard drive (actually, my old iPod, now devoid of any music and just used as a briefcase) to play with at work. Does the iPhone have annoying limitations? Sure. No USB drag and drop. Low storage, comparatively. No Flash support for Safari. Crippled Bluetooth. It's not perfect. And it certainly can't display my comic books.

I was seriously hanging out all week for the keynote on Jan 27. I devoured all the news and rumours. I got up at 6am to follow a liveblog.

The details- the name, the fat bezel, the iPhone OS- didn't even register to me. I just looked at that big beautiful screen, and smiled. Finally!

But I was so disheartened to read the press. People loathe it. People think it's ugly, crippled...they're laughing about the docked keyboard- I was praying for a docked keyboard! I was shocked Apple came out with one at launch! People want a full OS...really? I love the iPhone OS. When it first started coming out, I was thinking "this is what computers will look like down the road. No more windows, it'll be about home screens and apps". I'd buy a new computer right now if it offered every single package and program out there as a standalone app instead. But shit, you can do that and make it portable? And always connected by 3G? For under a thousand bucks for the highest end? Does anyone really believe this thing isn't going to sell like crazy?

Well, whatever. Haters, says I. This thing is going to be really cool. And I'm going to buy one as soon as I can, get home, find the app that reads cbr files, and then load on every issue of Cerebus, Sandman and Transmetropolitan. And I'll finally have a device I've been thinking about for over a decade. It won't change my life, but it'll make me happier. And hey, if they can make legal content cheaper, I'll gladly drop my pirate

ways and pay for more content.

(Ahem. More, not all. Let's not go nuts).

And 6 months after that, I'll convince my girlfriend Lisa to get one too, which she'll grudgingly enjoy, and then I'll pull that smug-as-fuck face and get my ass handed to me. That'll make me happier too.

Fictionary!

Every couple, I imagine, creates an entire lexicon out of their shared experience; cute words and phrases that are intended to strengthen the pair bond, a secret language that identifies one to the other as their freely chosen companion.

Most couples mercifully keep this cutesy shit to themselves- out of a sense of self consciousness, a desire to keep it private, and for a lack of elegant phraseology to take the words out of personal context and explain them to the lay-person. Thankfully, I have no shame, no desire to keep anything private, and a thick, veiny vocabulary that's just bursting with enthusiasm.

1. Boobelachma- boobs, or anything related to them, uttered in a faux-arabic accent. Can be a noun or adjective (n. "Gimme some boobelachma!" or adj. "That woman sure is boobelachma! But you even more so, pon rabies")

2. Mah Bebeh (also. Pon Rabehs, Pon Swayzeh, Vince Frabehs, etc.)- a vaguely insincere rendering of "My Baby", meant to evoke the patois of an un-self consciously "cool" hipster action hero, or Eurotrash. To be used when the other partner is upset about nothing important (eg. "What's wrong, Pon Shwabies? Did life not come out the way you want to in your mind babehs?")

3. Balls, Ham, Smith- Versatile suffixes to render adjectives as nouns and verbs as institutions. Eg. "I feel angryballs at all this reality telesmith! Fetch me some sodaham!"

4. Splayed Fatly- the condition wherein the described is unappealingly lying on their back due to over-consumption of food. Usually accompanied by high pitched moaning and sad, beefy farts.

5. Scroobily doo and boobily doo, foobily doobily do (toot sweet!)- A tonal garbleham evoking nothing beyond mild restlessness or an inability to otherwise articulate one's thoughts.

6. Doo, do-do da-doo!- A tonal garbleham specifically evoking an insincere conclusion to a thought, using a tone common to the tail end of late 20th century US television sitcom theme songs. Further intended to evoke a sense of contrivance or an otherwise unsatisfactory conclusion.

7. Garbleham- An incongruous grouping of sounds, syllables or mis-heard words and phrases, intended to evoke a sense of deja vu or ironic self awareness.

8. Totes- All purpose adverb used to evoke both a sense of completeness and an ironic detachment from youth culture, through gentle mockery. Eg. "That sandwich is totes tastyballs. Let's get an iPhone app to describe it's awesomeness, Von Shwagels".


You better believe this list will be updated. I'm even happy to include good ones from other couples and claim them as my own.

Discuss-o! : Where The Wild Things Are

I'm not familiar with the work of Maurice Sendak, the creator of Where the Wild Things Are. Like anyone else following the drama of how the adaptation finally made it to the big screen, I know the vague outline by now- born of immigrant parents in Brooklyn, Maurice create a number of works in the 60's and 70's, sparsely worded but wildly illustrated tales of pre-adulthood angst. The books are by now storied classics, clutched protectively to the collective chest of 2, maybe 3 generations of largely white, middle class people. At the time, they were censored ins ome areas, widely debated in others. Particularly for the illustrations, which evoke a universe of Id- packed with burly monsters, grotesque villains and brave children.

My girlfriend, Lisa, is a fan. She was having shpilkes over it's release way back in August. I agreed that it looked good- I like Spike Jonze, I liked the cast, I liked the soundtrack, and it certainly looked compelling. And of course, I originally figured it was another delightful sequel to Major League, this one where Charlie Sheen returns as Rick 'Wild Thing" Vaughan, now a pitching coach with the feisty Cleveland Indians, helping them back to the World Series! Surely they will need to sacrifice more than a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken to overcome those evil New York Yankees!!

!!!!

So we saw the movie, and we both genuinely had weird dreams that very night. We can't say for certain that the movie did it- we'd also had felafel and red Twizzlers that day- but it probably helped. Lisa was underwhelmed at first, but formed a complex assessment. I'll post hers first, and then my own take.

Lisa's Analysis

Lisa is always looking for a psychological angle, and her approach to this movie was no different. She felt that the creatures were manifestations of the Kubler-Ross model of the stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. There are 7 creatures, though if we take the morose couple of Ira and Judith as one, and powerless goat-boy Alexander as a proxy for Max himself, then we get a reasonable analogue: Ira and Judith are Denial; The hulking and impulsive Carol is very much Anger; Douglas, the peacekeeping bird creature, is our Bargaining, KW, the loner, is Depression, and the dangerous, silent but ultimately gentle Bernard is Acceptance.

In this context, the film is a story of a boy who has to come to grips with the fact that his father is gone. Supporting this is the crux of the story, where Carol wants to build a home for everyone to stay together. Keep on seeing it in this context, and it's difficult to see it any other way. Everyone is eager to accept Max as a king. They need a king. Max needs a father.

I think Lisa is dead on with this analysis. The director has subtly hinted as much, with Max glimpsing painful reminders of his father's absence; a globe on his desk from an anonymous giftbearer, his mother canoodling on the couch with another man.

Adam's Analysis

I, uh, thought maybe the whole thing was that Max had met up with some homeless people, and he saw them as scary/lovable monsters. Apparently, I can't distinguish subtext from subway- sandwiches that is!

*laughing so hard that delicious meatball sub starts spurting from my nose*

I'm open to any other suggestions. Maybe it was just a delightful family romp about a boy and his furry pals?

Oh, and I also saw some Viking allegories with Bob and Terry, the two weird little owls that say nothing, but that everyone seems to understand. Didn't Odin have a pair of ravens named Thought and Memory that would return to him every day? And doesn't Max's boat look like a tiny little Viking longboat? And didn't Max tell the Wild Things that he had beaten up some Vikings? Hrmmm???? We're through the looking glass here, people.

Mott-o!

DATELINE- Melbourne, Jan 3, 2010. A new decade dawns! Happy New Year to all: may your days be fuller, your blood calmer, and your meringues fluffier in the 365 to come.

This morning I was escorted to work via automobile by my chum Lisa, a sexy broad who cooks and does the sex with me. Along the way, we noticed the car ahead of us, a people mover from Queensland, had the motto "Queensland- The Smart State".

Lisa is as prone to violent outbursts of rage as I, and she delightfully screamed- "Smart state? That's pretty shit. Why not 'Queensland- A Good state"???

We agreed that this is a trend- rather than our license plates decrying some famous or would-be famous characteristic of our states and territories, they are now bestamped with meaningless, broad generalities- not the least of which is verdant Victoria, once "The Garden State", now reduced to "The Place To Be". Which, I pointed out, would make as much sense if it were followed by a parenthetical "If you are in Victoria".

Below is a list of license plate mottos for the new decade- A broad, meaningless decade. C'mon- The Tens? That's shit. Wake me up for the Roaring Twenties.

Western Australia

Current: The Golden State, Home of The America's Cup, State of Excitement (wordplay!)

Future: The Western State, The Most Western State, Large and In Charge

Northern Territory

Current: Outback Australia

Future: Ol' Nothing, Searing Hotness, The Territory of the North

South Australia

Current: The Festival State, A Brilliant Blend

Future: Also Big, Home of some Grapes, Munincipally Sub-divided

Queensland

Current: The Sunshine State, The Smart State

Future: The State State, Really Good Water, We Have Pineapples 'n' Shit

New South Wales

Current: The Premier State, The First State

Future: Actually bigger than all of Old Wales, Above Victoria, Where Some of The Matrix Was Filmed

Australian Capital Territory/Canberra

Current: Nation's Capital, Heart of The Nation

Future: Canberra: Canberra, Gateway to Fyshwick, Totes Boring

Tasmania

Current: Explore the Possibilities

Future: Courtier of King Island, Shaped Like Pubes, Not New Zealand

Victoria

Current: On The Move, The Garden State, The Place To Be

Future: The Place at Which You Likely Am, The Best at Footy, The State Where Underbelly Wasn't Shown on TV

Also: do you call it a motto? A slogan? A tag line? None of these words seem entirely proper.