It’s really, really difficult harnessing enough agro to be cranky when I’m rested, awake, nourished, somewhat fitter, not worried about much and having a prolonged period of freedom from the original black dog. I’ve read some unexpectedly good books, arsed in great parking spots whenever I’ve had to drive, and the shitty things like not being able to find local Japanese restaurants that actually want to provide food fade from my grumpy storage banks before I get to jot them down.

And Guy Pearce is on the cover of The Age’s A2 lift-out today. Life is good.

source: www.theage.com.au

I need to get back to work so I have a locus of shittiness again.

Added: I took a photo of the front of the A2 as it’s an even nicer picture.

Crank-o-meter: is this what they call content?

In world-breaking astronomy news, Venus, Jupiter and the eyelash moon will form a smiley face in this evening’s sky. Have a look after 9pm and grin back at the happy formation.

The weather report for most of Australia is dark and possibly cloudy, so let’s hope the (wo)man in the moon can peek its head out to say hi. And hopefully it’s a starry night so the face has freckly cheeks because that would amuse and delight me even further. I don’t know if readers in the northern hemisphere will see the same formation because you’re upside-down and all, but I’ll try to get a photo.

By the way, the journo referred to this celestial event as a smiley face before I did. Okay, he used ‘crescent’ to describe the moon and not ‘eyelash’, but that’s my value adding service.

Crank-o-meter: say cheese

I’m starting a course tonight in radio broadcasting and engineering (or whatever you call the dialling of knobs and pressing of switches to make sounds come out of the trannie).

It’s a tad exciting, especially when I had forgotten my commitment in one of those, gee, that sounds great, I’m up for it moments earlier in the year. Courses are panelled at the kind of short and casual notice that makes my plan-everything-to-the-nth-degree gene twitch just a little. I don’t even know if they want money; I don’t have any so perhaps I can dust the dials to pay my way.

It’s also a tad stressful because anything that runs on electricity and technology tends to die when I start fiddling. Let’s see: the blog has been destroyed twice, I lost a stack of work e-mails last week and they’re not in the deleted box so they could be missing in inaction anywhere, the Bluetooth thingy on the laptop doesn’t talk to me any more and there’s that day I logged in and brought down an entire network without even trying. These talking on the radio people are the type who keep organisations running on goodwill and magic and I’m not sure they can afford to take me in.

I have a face for radio but a voice for mime, so I doubt anything will come of it apart from learning something interesting. And I’m currently obsessed with Balkan-inspired hip hop beats and the other five people in the country who share this obsession won’t be in frequency range.

Please don’t let me break anything.

Crank-o-meter: good evening and welcome to the cranky hour