ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Journal

So there’s this pub…

There’s this pub I drive past on the way to work that’s advertising motorized esky races to celebrate Australia Day. And you know, if I’m honest, I see that sign and my first thought is, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with this country. Except there’s nothing wrong with this country, not in the way I’m meaning it. It’s not that I dislike the idea of a motorized esky – there’s a pro-wrestler, James Storm, who used one for his ring entrance for the better part of a year, and I largely found it hilarious. I don’t like the idea of motorized esky races ’cause I don’t like the idea of the people who think that’s acceptable way to celebrate….well, anything. ‘Cause I’m a snob, in a lot of ways, and ’cause it’s easier to dislike people than it is to try and understand them. And ’cause the same pub, years ago, was a dingy little hole that used to have a Goth night run in its basement. It was a place where people came to be freaks and weirdos, to drink wine and wear a lot of black. It was the first place I ever got to dance to Release the Bats with other people. One time, if I remember correctly, we missed the last train home ’cause we insisted on dancing to it. Not a big deal, in and of itself, but we were Gold Coast kids and walking home wasn’t really an option. I have good memories of that pub. Or,

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15/01/2013 1 Comment
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Doll Parts

I’ve been listening to this a lot today. Back in the nineties, when grunge was still a thing, I listed to a lot more Hole than I did Nirvana. Sharing it here ’cause I’m in a retro kind of mood, and ’cause I’ve apparently never seen the clip.

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10/01/2013 No Comments
Journal

The Long Run

Ask most people who know me, and they’ll probably tell you I’m one pessimistic mother-fucker. Mostly, near as I can tell, this is ’cause I have opinions on things, and ’cause most folks aren’t willing to accept that “being critical of something” and “not liking something” aren’t the same thing. It’s also ’cause I’d rather watch something that’s poorly made, but ambitious than technically accomplished, but soulless. I like to see flaws. I like to see people trying, stretching themselves, aiming higher than they usually would. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: every story is a mission statement; every climax is a world-view. But then, I’m me. I would think things like that. Truth is, like most pessimists, I’m actually fairly optimistic. I like to believe the world can change, even if it doesn’t. I like to believe that I can change it, even if it’s just a little at a time; blog post by blog post, story by story, argument by argument. I like to think the things I want to achieve in life are achievable, even if they’re slightly unrealistic. And, most of the time, experience proves me right on that front. Maybe not as fast as I’d like, and maybe the changes aren’t as drastic, but there are days when I kick back and think, yep, the world, it’s fucked, but maybe it’s a little less fucked than it was yesterday. It’s just that there are as many days when, shit, the world just makes me want to

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09/01/2013 No Comments
Journal

Reasons to Love the Dayjob

Went back to work at the day-job today. Discovered that the Queensland Writers Center has been dubbed one of the best arts organisations to work at in 2013, which is utterly true, but not for the reasons that are listed in the article. It cites the vast scope of QWCs partnerships and the sprawling Queensland lifestyle as the key reasons for wanting a job there. And, you know, fair enough. But QWC isn’t my first ride of the pony when it comes to having a day-job that looks idyllic from the outside. It is, however, the first time I’ve enjoyed working a day-job as much as I expected to enjoy it when I started. That’s got nothing to do with the Queensland heat and the cozy Queensland arts scene. What matters to me, what makes it a fucking kick-ass place to work, is this: 1) The work matters. I can look at what we do, see how benefits people, and it’s something I care about. It’s also hard, which means occasionally there are weeks where I could go at the world with a bazooka, but even those weeks are worthwhile when you look at the overall picture. 2) The people rock. I mean, my co-workers are fucking awesome. Seriously some of the coolest people I’ve ever had the privlidge to know, and for the most part they aren’t folks I’d befriend under regular circumstances. I like getting to know smart, passionate people who care about what they’re doing, and these folks do. 3) Genrecon. Back again

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08/01/2013 3 Comments
News & Upcoming Events

Top Five of 2012

So I was checking out some of the site stats last night – something I rarely do here on my personal site – and spent some quality time looking at the data. Since I’m off at write-club today, trying to catch up after a slow weekend of writing, I’m going to take advantage of the data and the changing-of-the-year feel to showcase the most visited posts here on Petermball.com in 2012. Number One: 13 Things Learned About Superhero Games After Running 30 Sessions of Mutants and Masterminds Number Two: Why I Have Problems With the Big Bang Theory I have to admit, the order of these two surprises me. I know a lot of people found their way here when I posted about my M&M campaign for the first time, largely courtesy of the link showing up on a bunch of gaming message boards. It represented probably the single-biggest spike in traffic I’ve ever had, and under any normal circumstances, I probably should have assumed it’d have a lock on the most-visited spot. And yet… I posted my concerns about the BBT back in March of 2011, and there isn’t a day goes by when *someone* doesn’t find their way here after searching for Big Bang Theory information (usually, for whatever reason, about the sexuality of the actors or some combination of are character X and character Y fucking; I imagine both sets of searchers are disappointed by the blog post they find). Had I been a bit more aware of the data tracking

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07/01/2013 2 Comments
Journal

This is what I’ve done this Sunday eve

When I got back from the Gold Coast, it was time to take a walk. When I got back from my walk, it was beer o’clock. When I went to the bottle-shop, they had Mango Beer. And really, that’s all you need to know to figure out how I reached this point of the evening. # So here is one of those things that I discovered this weekend: when you read something aloud to my father, particularly if it’s non-fiction, the text isn’t really a text so much as the beginning of a conversation. We discovered this on Friday night, when my mum was going through the copy of the second Women of Letters anthology I got her for Christmas (This, in and of itself, is something worth writing about, ’cause I’ve spent years trying to figure out how to buy books for my mum and it’s only occasionally that I get it right outside of the cook-book genre). My mum started reading letters aloud, just ’cause, and my dad would start interjecting comments aimed, largely, at the writer of the piece. It was interesting to watch, ‘specially when my mum pointed out the difference the kindle has made in my dad’s reading habits. He’s always been more engaged with text than most readers I’ve seen – throughout my childhood he was the kind of guy who marked words and recorded them in their own book, and he’s owned some pretty kick-ass dictionaries – but it seems the kind of

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06/01/2013 2 Comments
Journal

Gold Coast, Redux

It’s my mother’s birthday this weekend, and while I’m not inclined to disclose her actual age, suffice to say that it’s one of the numbers where you generally get together and celebrate a little harder than usual. It also means that I’m back on the Gold Coast for 48 hours, although I made some smarter choices about coming down this time and I’m therefore somewhat more sanguine than I was last time I arrived down here. At the same time as I’m down here, my brain is mentally marking off the last days of my holiday from the dayjob. Part of me is really happy about this, ’cause I kinda miss catching up with my work colleagues by this point, but I’m also going to miss the writing time. In the two weeks I’ve had off, incorporating both Xmas, New Years, and at least one birthday celebration thus far, I’ve managed to clock up over 8000 words of short fiction and 14,000 words on the novel I’m trying to get done by March. Slowly, very slowly, I’m remembering how this writing thing goes. More importantly, I’ve finally dropped into a routine that’s working for and gets shit done. With that, I’ve gotta go get ready for tonight’s celebration. It’s time to feast, yo. This actually involves going out *into* the Gold Coast, rather than hanging around my parents place, which means my good mood could potentially evaporate. I mean, we’re going near a beach and everything. If you haven’t heard

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05/01/2013 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Recent Reading: January 4th, 2013

So here’s the thing about my reading habits: I tend to do things in lots of four. On novel by a male writer, one novel by a female writer, one non-fiction book, one short story collection or anthology. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule; ebooks tend to fall outside this reading pattern at the moment, since they’re largely things I read on my phone. Books people lend me tend to get read fast too, lest they fall into the vast pit of my to-read pile and never emerge. Poetry gets read whenever I want, ’cause I’m much more likely to dip into a collection and read a poem or two than I am an entire book. For the most part, though, the pack of four is my approach of choice. I have personal rules built up around it, the same way I have personal rules built up around eating out (when there’s pork belly on the menu, order the damn pork belly), buying drinks at a bar (always order the drink that comes in a tiki cup), and going to SF conventions (follow other people to panels they’re going too instead of picking the ones that interest you, ’cause that way you’ll actually see stuff that’ll surprise you). The logic of these rules isn’t always apparent, or even applicable to other people, but they’ve built up over time and work to ensure that I make sensible decisions that make sense to me. This year I’m adding a new rule: blog about each four-pack

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04/01/2013 1 Comment
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Six Thoughts After Re-Watching Labyrinth

ONE I went and saw Labyrinth at the China Town mall last night, which meaning posting this and inviting you all to get your groove in is practically mandatory: If you aren’t at least singing along to this, wishing you were Jareth and drawing odd looks from your workmates, then I’m afraid you are dead to me. TWO I love this movie. In fact, I love it with the kind of deep and abiding love that can only come from being exposed to *sheer, raw awesomeness* when you’re very young. God knows how young, ’cause I couldn’t actually tell you when I first saw it, but I’ve watched the film *a lot*. Like, as often as I’ve watched the Princess Bride a lot. Or as often as I re-watch The Gilmore Girls or The West Wing a lot. And yet, it’s not a movie that I love unconditionally. It’s simply the bits that I love, I really love, while the bits that I don’t love leave me kind of ambivalent. I am not, for example, a fan of the Firey’s with their removable limbs and random singing (I’m frequently irritated by people bursting into song in movies. It makes musicals particularly painful, and Labyrinth mostly gets a pass on account of David Bowie). I’m also not a fan of the entire sequence at the end, in which the pre-climax can largely be summed up as have Sarah run around in an Escher painting while David Bowie sings something vaguely threatening. They went to such effort to

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03/01/2013 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Things on My Shelf: The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler

It’s been suggested that there’s an undercurrent of gloom running through my posts of late, which is one of those inevitable things that happens ’round these parts every Summer. I’m pre-programmed for deep seriousness December through February, largely ’cause it’s too damn hot and I spent the better part of a decade being broke during those months on account of doing session work for Universities. Also, they’re my drinking months. I brood when I drink. Still, in deference to the fact that not everyone is as fond of embracing their inner gloomcookie as I am, I figured I’d spent a blog post talking about awesome things. Specifically, this awesome thing, which ranks among the coolest books in my collection: I picked this up at a Melbourne bookstore back in 2008, although I’ll be damned if I can remember which bookstore it was. A friend of mine took me there, and it was back in the days when I’d never really been to Melbourne, so I didn’t have any real spatial sense of the city (truthfully, I still don’t, but comparatively I’m doing better than I was back then). Buying it was something of a no-brainer for me: I was reading a lot of Raymond Chandler at the time, finally getting around to the books that weren’t The Big Sleep, and I’ve always been fond of reading about other writer’s processes. I figured Chandler’s notebooks would be one of those two-great-tastes-that-taste-great-together kind of things. Instead, it was this real holy-hell-this-is-awesome kind

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02/01/2013 2 Comments
Journal

Stupid Paperbaghat

It’s been a while since I busted out one of the dreaded paperbaghat pics, but I was tidying up the study a little and figured, yeah, what the hell. The flatmate is back at work today, which means I can indulge in some of my old living-on-my-own bad habits: Tradition dictates that I order pizza while wearing the dreaded paperbaghat, then answer the door while wearing it. I mean, it’s happened a couple of times now. But for once, I’m going to break that tradition. This one, internet, this one’s just for you.

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02/01/2013 No Comments
Big Thoughts

The Things I Think About On New Years Day

ONE It’s the first morning of 2013 and in the writing room, writing. Not even writing, really. More dragging myself back into a writing mindset after being not-a-writer for the bulk of last year. There are days – today is one of them – when the fact that I still do this amazes me. I figured I’d kick this year off by telling you a story (it is, after all, what I do). I want to start it with something like once upon a time I met a girl on a bus, but truthfully it’s not the kind of story you’d expect from that kind of opening. The way you starts a story sets up the ending, makes promises that need to be delivered, and I can’t deliver on that one. So instead I’ll start it like this: when I was twenty and still at university, I learned not to tell people that I wanted to be a writer. And the way I learned this, truthfully, was through an awkward conversation I had on a bus during one of the interminably long trips you take on the Gold Coast when you try to get anywhere that isn’t a beach. I don’t remember the girl terribly well, but I remember the conversation. She got onto the bus just before Miami Beach and sat in the seat before mine. I want to say that I didn’t really notice her at first, ’cause that makes for a better narrative, but that probably isn’t

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01/01/2013 No Comments

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