Tonight the plan was to watch the Spencer Tunick documentary on SBS, and fondly remember being on of the 4000 freezing souls that impossibly cold October morning. The only thing I had forgotten was how appallingly my place picks up SBS. The reason I’d forgotten is I never watch SBS. So I decided instead of squinting at fuzzy black and white images straining to hear the audio over the static that I'd go and hire it. They only had it on VHS so naturally after much pondering borrowed Drunken Master by Jackie Chan, came home, tried to watch SBS again: “Hmmmm... are they naked now?”, and now it’s just me and TextEdit. Spencer Tunick wasn’t expecting 4000 people that morning, but in the end we all got a photo to keep, and I can identify my freezing self lying on Princes Bridge, mainly because I remember that someone’s feet were very close to my face :)

This week I went to a new branch of a large national stationary chain for some CD-Rs and a printer cartridge. They used to sell the generic brands of cartridge, but don’t any more, probably because of pressure from Epson or because someone tried to sue them because using generic cartridges had voided their warranty. I on the other hand, paid $150 for my printer three years ago and apart from the first couple of refills have never used anything but generic. So I told them not to worry, and in an example of intuitional navigation of which I’m very proud, wandered towards Chinatown and almost straight away found an entrepreneurial Chinese woman who happily sold me a generic cartridge for half the price of the Epson cartridge and told me (I was still carrying my CD-Rs) to come back for a good price on CD-Rs. The beauty of it is that the printer companies don’t care about her and the obvious caveat emptor feel of the place would make it impossible for anyone to sue her.

After that I and 250 people were utterly diddled by M-Train. I understand if the power lines are down and the train has to travel a different route. It may be necessary for all the people not on the new route to catch another train and change at North Melbourne. But really, if the Broadmeadows train arrives in North Melbourne, surely the driver might have noticed “Hmmmm... there aren’t 250 people waiting here. The connecting train must be more than five minutes late. Maybe I’ll wait a couple of minutes and see if it turns up.”

That would have been so straightforward, but off it went, and 250 people had to wait 28 minutes for the Broadmeadows train. That was utterly preventable.

Before that I stumbled on a youth event at Fed Square. There was one of those skateboard thingys, but I could only see them flying at the top. It was often obvious when they were going to fall, but I was spared the grisly details. It was put on my Channel V, had Garnier Fructis bubble cars, a live band with moshers, an impressive camera crane (the guy at the base only seemed to be changing the position of the camera— someone or something else seemed to be pointing the camera at the relevant things, a bit like a two-person puppet) cool presenters and lots of teenagers. I quite liked it, though I think as a teenager would not have liked it at all. But I listened to talk-back radio when I was a teenager, so go figure. :)

And on Wednesday I won an epic battle with a photocopier. The only price I paid was ending up with 484 pages to collate.

And the only reason I don’t watch SBS is because the reception is so bad.

Here’s an interesting entry I’ve been reading by .

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