Friday, July 23, 2004

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.........

The week from hell (work) and the rapidly approaching deadlines of three exhibitions have meant no bloggin'-a-me for a wee while.  Sorry.

Can I be the first to recommend a good night's sleep?  You really do feel better after a solid 10+1/2 hours or so.  I was thinking about the various natural methods available for assisting one to get off to Nod of an evening:

> Read a few pages of a book.  Not just any book though, it'll need to be something good, so as to hold your attention.  I particularly recommend the hallucinatory prose of William Burroughs and Paul Bowles, or the complexities of Lawrence Durrell, rampantly riddled as he is with oft-arcane poly-syllabillic adjectives.

> Try talking to your ex-girlfriend for about 1/2-an-hour before you go to bed. As well as putting you to sleep, a possible therapeutic spin-off is you might get over her way fast.

> Music.  Music is good.  Music works, man [or at least, it does for me].  You're going to need something without too much explicit beat.  That means no Gatecrasher techno, Steve.  Try the works of the heroes of the 60's avant-garde minimalist school - Terry RileyRichard Maxfield, Tony Conrad, Henry Flynt, Harold Budd, La Monte Young et. al. Otherwise more contemporary practitioners - Surface of the Earth, John Clyde-Evans, K-Group, Birchville Cat Motel, RST, Eso Steel, Signer...

> Popular wisdom holds that onanism, the science of self-pleasure, is a sure-fire method of unducing sleepiness.  I couldn't possibly comment, as they say.


Counting sheep is silly. I've never managed to achieve anything other than to end up with a pen full of sheep in my head, and worry about what I was supposed to do with them.

If you can't get a full night's sleep without help [I know I can't always] there are a number of options, of the chemical variety, to assist: 

> See your GP and blag your way to a prescription for sleeping pills.  There are a couple of good-ish ones around which aren't habit-forming and don't interrupt your R.E.M. cycle either, which means everyone wins [translation: they don't just knock you out leaving you groggy when you arise in the morn].  I'm thinking particularly of Imovene [a.k.a. Zopiclone], which I heard first about when reading Douglas Coupland's Shampoo Planet
 
> Tranquilizer and anti-anxiety medications - specifically, the benzodiazepine family - will help you achieve a good night's rest.  Which of these you can get your hands on legitimately may depend on how crazy you are. These are generally dangerously addictive.

> An alternative to the benzo's could be to raid your grandmother's medicine cabinet for halcyon and valium.  Take as directed, and then some.
 
> Particular products derived from Cannibus sativa can help remarkably well with sleeping - perhaps a couple of spots of some nice pungent oil - although experiences vary - as do side-effects, which can be long-lasting, and probably addictive too.


Getting really drunk isn't recommended. I appreciate that 1/2 a bottle of vodka will knock you out something wonderful, but you won't feel better for it in the morning.

Finally, one other suggestion for getting enough sleep: quit your bastard of a job. That way you can sleep to 1pm every day, ensuring plenty of rest each and every night.



Wednesday, July 14, 2004

In the presence of greatness: An evening with Dr. The Sneak

Last evening I was lucky enough to be present as world-renowned research scientist Dr. The Sneak conducted some ground-breaking experiments. The purpose of the research was apparently to find the effective surface tension of a dead mouse. I had the formula explained to me by Dr. The Sneak thusly:

nBite x nToss all over t

where nBite is number of times I bite the mouse, nToss is number of times I throw the mouse in the air, and t is the length of time I spend pretending the mouse is still alive.

I wasn't furnished with the raw data, but apparently when all calculated out the result of the formula turned out to be just slightly more than 1.

When I suggested to the good doctor that this number was somewhat short of being anywhere near something resembling a useful figure, Dr. The Sneak spoke several quick words in a language I could not understand, concealed the research subject somewhere in the laboratory and rather haughtily left the room via a small trapdoor which I had not previously noticed.

Five minutes later, however, it seemed I was forgiven because Dr. The Sneak returned and I was treated to a short demonstration on testing the effective surface tension of one of my dirty socks.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Long time between drinks

Today being the the 12th of July, it's been almost two months since I did anything interesting. Well that's not quite true - a couple of weeks ago I went to a pretty good party on a wet Saturday afternoon. Apart from that, though, and a weekend in the Bay of Plenty, nada. Thoughts of boredom lead me very quickly to thoughts of drinking and at the moment I'm drinking a lot of what is known in the films of Europe as schnaps.

Don't jump to conclusions; we're not talking about some sort of nasty sickly peach flavoured muck here, but rather pure grain alcohol. It's the stuff that looks like vodka. You know, some guy'll walk into a bar and order "schnaps" and it says "schnaps" in the sub-title and the barman drops a small glass onto the counter and reaches for some nondescript bottle filled with a clear liquid and sloshes a measure into the glass and the guy slams it back slams down the glass and says "danke" or "grazie" or "obrigado" or whatever and wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand...

Nelson's South Pacific Distillery make a line of spirits called Roaring Forties and amongst them is their Doppelkorn Schnaps [38% a.b.v.]. It's a very pure-tasting drink and best drunk cold and straight. Unfortunately I haven't yet found a distributor so I'm nursing the last of the bottle I picked up when I was last in Nelson. No you can't have any. It's mine, preciouss...

Even more pure [possibly] is Frog-shine. Y'see about the only other interesting thing to have happened to me lately is to meet a guy, a friend-of-a-friend from Wanganui, who distills his own alcolhol. It comes in two variants - 30% a.b.v. and 55% a.b.v. - and it's very similar in quality to the Doppelkorn.

Both drinks are good drinkin' and will get you well fucked-up [see image, above] but the beautiful, wonderful thing about them is being made in a pure, traditional manner - Roaring Forties "100% cane or grain, no preservatives, chemicals or artificial flavours added" and Frog-shine "pure as fuck, man" - there's no nasty chemical aftertaste, and better still, there's no morning after. No hangover. You can drink away the evening on the stuff - I have - and get up in the morning with just a slighty funny taste in your mouth [and how unusual is that?]. You can even pick up again at 9 a.m. or whenever you get up - again, I have - and carry on with no adverse effects.

They're also real cheap.

Monday, July 05, 2004

Nostalgia

Monday July 5 2:15 pm: I am overcome with a very strong urge to shop for second-hand records in New Plymouth.