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Harvest Bird: Notes to Self
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Saturday was the Hen Day and Night. In between lunch and dinner, we went to Willowbank. There we saw the ring-tailed lemurs.

I like this video because you can hear my mother laughing.

[flickr video=4027208317]

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Colloquy with this post.
look back harder
through emptied spaces
no force of hindsight
can move the dust motes
indefinite shadows
the plants' life cycles
our words exhaled
the leaves sucked in.


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Low-quality photos taken on my mobile phone over the last month. Featured player: harvestdad!




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Work, more work, and idling about online, while in our near neighbourhood the earth shakes and the ocean sucks civilians out to sea.



  • A day of more-or-less recovery after lively work-break. Thank you to @saniac and @binkle for Saturday's entertainments. #

  • The personal trainer on the Wii is talking to @knedd in an unnecessarily sexy voice. What happened to "computer says no"? #

  • Fire drill, or, alternatively, fire. #

  • 'Twas a drill, and brief, and while I was out I got an oo-err email about suggesting we address a matter orally #nottooshabby #

  • The bridal party's first dress fitting is this Thursday, (@MeganWegan will be pleased to know). #

  • I've signed up for #Brizzly. So far, so good, although I'm keeping #Twhirl open in the background for automatic updates. #

  • Just mistyped "demographics" as "demongraphics". #drFreudandthedata #

  • Ooh, #Brizzly appears to auto-update. #

  • Gosh, the seconded life is not that different to the teaching life. Extended periods of preparation then contact periods of high intensity. #

  • Why did you come Doug, if you didn't want to light a fire? #fotcwisdom #

  • Damn but I hate the new breast cancer awareness ad. Driven out by mother's denial in the form of a giant tumour. #

  • I feel sick about the destruction in Samoa. #

  • Wednesday night is something like housework night, or the midpoint of the week in which I feel guilty about all the cooking @knedd does. #

  • It's a hard life in the ovarian kingdom this month. I should be sitting on a throne of hot-water bottles sipping peppermint tea, but no. #

  • As suggested by @saniac at the weekend, predictive text that knows common Mori and other NZild words would be very handy. 4th /= hui! #

  • In the midst of assignment marking, submission writing & remuneration review, I am having a dress fitting today. Not feeling v bridal tho. #

  • Today was the third hui in which I have played a small organisational part. My colleague told me I had a good ear for te reo. V chuffed. #

  • Earlier, I felt like a ship being launched in my bridal ivory. Fortunately there are some other, differently-coloured layers to come. #

  • I don't understand breakfast bars. When it comes to breakfast, I'm a low-rider. #

  • RT @lara_w: Please help the Red Cross help our friends in Samoa http://bit.ly/14zHm0, our tweets are with them but practical help rules! #

  • RT @Artandmylife: RT @CherylBernstein RT @ciccariello http://blip.fm/~dp1ja Happy 75th birthday to Leonard Cohen! #

  • Today we went across the road to the ceremony venue to eat lunch, drink a beer and talk about where we would do the deed. #

  • I have five more workbooks to mark, and when that's done, I'll have no more marking until February. #

  • Millie and Evie have pollen allergies. I sniff, they itch and chew. We're this close to have some sort of allergenic road show. #

  • Just watched Dirty Dancing with @knedd, who then directed me to this: http://bit.ly/26uXdL #

  • "Bitch, Lipton knows tea!": http://wondermark.com/557/ #

  • The sun is shining and the mowers are thundering. #

  • While an anecdote is not data, our household also knows the glint in the eye prior to doing something naughty: http://bit.ly/3J6euI #

  • Including the policy is all very well, but is it subject to review by H&S reps? http://bit.ly/itkeB #

  • I don't suppose I should go to literary bookshops for books w pics of puppies. #

  • Mick Harvey sings Serge Gainsbourg. http://blip.fm/~e99tb #

  • Off to a joint-40th birthday party (or, as the hosts put it, 80th birthday party). #

  • By the sounds of it, the weather here isn't as crummy as in Wellington or Dunedin, but it's still crummy, by Jove. #

  • This network drive was supposed to solve all our data storage challenges. In many regards it has, but in others it is vexing indeed. #

  • Across from me, @knedd is watching Tua fell Cameron. Not one of my favourite things, boxing. #


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My thanks to you all for your kind wishes on the next few months' change of occupation. I spent today on sick leave, not discharging my duties. The pattern of the days when I am on my feet and on the job is not that different from the rhythms of teaching: thinking, preparing, doing, reflecting. The difference is that I share my work now with a wider variety of people, and have a rather more looming sense of my responsibilities to others, because I am new at them.

Last week I endeavoured to combine a meeting in Wellington with a few days' break. It may have been a better idea to schedule the break after, rather than around, the meeting, but I am not necessarily the best decision-maker concerning my leisure. Nonetheless, it was splendid to see so many people and do so many things.

I took in the shooting of an episode of Off the Ropes, in the company of Jo, Ms. Ratpony and others, not least among whom was the wrestler Lazarus Volt, for whom we waved glittery lightning bolts o' cardboard and shouted down the Heels with due ceremony. Later, an erotic reading at The Watusi was not quite what I expected, and even as the wine flowed, I considered, not terribly coherently, the problem at hand.

The next day I enjoyed lunch with MTNW and the Gamester at Large, then ambulated from Thorndon to Mt Vic to see the newest premises of Wanda Harland, where I was greeted, unexpectedly, by Kowhai at the counter. This was my chance to see first hand so many of the household items and objets d'art that I have previously viewed only online. Following afternoon tea with Megan, we took the opportunity for a second journey to the original shop in Petone, where I was delighted to meet for the first time the proprietress and make a small purchase. Later I had dinner with Faith, working on luring her back home for my hen's outing in exchange for the imposition of my getting married on her birthday. (I promised not to do it again.)

After Friday's all-day meeting there was just time to take a glass with most of those heading to the WOW opening (which my eye continually misreads as WoW, thanks to where the seor's interests have lain), and on Saturday morning I enjoyed brunch with Dangermouse, with whom I considered the relative ease, or not, of coordinating family members away from home while attending a wedding. During the afternoon I was considerably entertained by the company of Stephen, Kathy and Hannah (whose latest work you can see here), who took me around the south coast, including the sadly-named Happy Valley and the intriguing Carlucci Land. Here, salvaged goods became newly rendered on the landscape. My favourites were these foreground spheres, which rolled out like totems along the driveway.

I returned home to a newly-shorn seor, although the extent to which his more conventional crop has an impact upon the world's gender confusion remains to be seen. We have now less than a month until our wedding, to which I continue to look forward. There are a still a few matters of which to take care, and for which I hope to have more enthusiasm when I am feeling a little more well, and I thank my Wellington friends for their company on what was technically my last out-o'-town outing as a spinster.

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Colloquy with this post.


You whom we made,
you whom we need,

Needless, to say,
mindfully, risingly,

needing, needling,
kneeling, kneading,

the pounding of the dough.
The heart set, to-and-fro.


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A two-week grab-bag.



  • A morning doing union work goes faster than a morning doing teaching prep, but that could be because I'm not at my desk & lack distractions. #

  • After the buzz of the union offices, everything at Desk Central is very quiet and still. #

  • L[ol] @br3nda: http://bit.ly/6CXiD #womenintech #

  • Dear Megan: please go back in time to the cool, pollen-free air of winter. Love, your turbinates and sinuses. #

  • The living room door is open to the porch at 6:25pm! This is almost as exciting as spring blossom. #

  • "Play some god damn Billy Joel!" http://bit.ly/xqPfT #katebeaton #

  • I am wearing contacts as a pre-wedding trial run. First time in about 7 years. Oh how my face has aged. Part dad part grandma part nanna! #

  • What happened to my glorious bone structure? Now my visage is a cross between a potato and a pudding. #

  • As much as it cheers me to know there is a twitter feed called @sinuses, I won't be following back. #followthis #

  • Ta-Nehisi Coates lights up my internet with his writing: http://bit.ly/8kJ5e #

  • Sleep by no means comes too soon: http://bit.ly/ISMOP #

  • Another huge day at work but now I am listening to #ErykahBadu, who always makes me feel as if nothing can go wrong. #

  • TEU on staff-student relationships. (Short version: nothin to gain except killin your brain) http://bit.ly/2SIOvC #

  • Lady Gaga earworm, dangnabbit. @MeganWegan, I'm your papa-razzi, etc. #

  • In working on wedding vows last night, replaced phrase "one true love" with "true love" but am tempted to go with rasta-style "one love". #

  • The suggestion the bride and groom just rap a few verses of Outkast's Miss Jackson has also been made. ("Forever? Forever ever?") #

  • These vows have a certain appeal too: http://bit.ly/x1QVZ #

  • No D&D tonight as the dungeonmaster has gone to Princeton, so I will have my dinner cooked for me in the appropriate fashion #domesticsphere #

  • Arthur's daughter Martha is in pup & due on the day of our wedding. (That's the wedding of @knedd & me. I'm not marrying my dog for now). #

  • Sadly that means Martha's breeder won't be there for the revelry. OTOH, grand pups! #

  • http://twitpic.com/i4x2j - Bring a little NZ cultural modernism to the Kanye Apology Generator: http://bit.ly/AAG1t #

  • I now have bridal lingerie and hosiery, in this season's exciting nanna-neutrals. #

  • It has been a very very mellow day. Currently sipping a White Cliff sauv blanc donated by harvestmother. #

  • Furthermore, I am getting better at using the phrase "it's for my wedding" to get prompt service in this city's retail establishments. #

  • The iTunes version of Wham!'s The Final lacks the remix of I'm Your Man and the instrumental version of Blue (Armed with Love). Feh! #

  • Based on their advertising, I would say the answer to how it feels to chew 5 Gum is: complicated. #

  • I think I love Chris Rock's intonation as much as his jokes. It's one soothing set of incendiary rises and falls. #

  • The question of which dog gets to sit where on the couch has complicated answers. #

  • First blog post by @knedd at http://www.thepubrightnow.com/ #

  • Mood today is less than sparkling. I may try a post-brunch walk in a little while, by way of rehabilitation. #

  • The bags in which http://www.ufitin.co.nz (lingerie shop) pack their products come from here: http://www.lovecalcuttaarts.com/About.html #

  • I went for a ten-pylon stroll in the sun and the wind, from Sockburn to Riccarton Park to Hei Hei #rockingthesouthwest #

  • First line of "They Call Me Big Mama": "They call me Big Mama 'cos I weigh 300 pounds". It quickly gets very saucy indeed. #

  • RT @johubris: turns out the #tikishack will be open on Friday for @harvestbird #

  • Things I have seen and cannot unsee #12897346743: pictures of Jonah Lomu in bodybuilding poses. #

  • Today I am busy but productive. But busy. But productive. But busy. But busy. #

  • Drinking something called a mega mocha. This may not be wise. #

  • I can tell I am learning things with these new responsibilities at work, since each day I start off by thinking, "I can't possibly do this". #

  • So long as I continue to surprise myself, it's all good. I will be the fail-whale-tamer. #

  • RT @johubris: Yup, sorry kids, I'll be being wined and dined and entwined. No #tikishack this Friday. Boo-urns #

  • Results of @knedd and my separate training efforts starting to pay off. We are jumping around like a couple 9/10ths of our age, by gum. #

  • Happy typing error: Victor Hugo becomes Victor Hug. #

  • As much as I enjoy using #Chrome, it doesn't always respond to Javascript commands, and some pdf links crash it at home and at work. #

  • The Rolling Stones' "She's a Rainbow" appears to be in the same key as the start-up music for Windows XP. #

  • It's a glorious day at Christchurch airport. Wellington had better work it for me! #

  • Thank you weather tweeps, this is most asseptable. #

  • A poor choice of bus has led to a light constitutional around South Wellington. #

  • I did not think when making plans for this evening it would involve Full House slash, but who can fault the element of surprise? #

  • But the record should also show that @doompony and I were first-rate cheerleaders at the wresting ce soir. #

  • Oh dear: sic transit gloria slash. It's Dr Phil and the feet of a jogger. I should never have left Kansas, Toto. #

  • A lively evening necessitates a quiet morning. Looking forward to lunch with @lysergica and afternoon tea with @MeganWegan. #

  • ... followed by dinner with a FNOT (friend not on Twitter). Even my mini-breaks involve sitting and eating and sitting and eating. #

  • Lunch with @lysergica and @gamesteratlarge = passetyme with gud companye. #

  • Went to Mt Vic to see @wandaharland at her shop but was greeted instead by @wellykowhai. #splendid #

  • A spontaneous post-cuppa outing with @MeganWegan took us to the Petone premises of one @wandaharland! I have seen the empire's outposts. #

  • I should also note I bought a pack of playing cards with 3D images of puppies. #

  • RT @doompony: rasslin' pics from Wednesday. Too cool. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ratpony/sets/72157622319307141/ #

  • Last night I dreamed of PBRF. It was as frustrating in dreams as in real life. #

  • Cafe eating has now become paying someone to prepare and serve what @knedd makes for free at home. Thus, I turn into my mother. #


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Colloquy with this post.


Oh, we invested in you,
a kind of futures trading:
time, money and mobility
yet to be set aside.

That's the way it goes,
baby, often and often enough:
the word for you was "blighted"
although by whom, dunno.

The last thing we spent on you
was giving you a pronoun:
only once you'd gone from us
were you in the second person.


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My employment in my current position began in June, eight years ago, when I was grateful to have a job, a salary and a desk to call my own. Indeed, I still am. Since then I have taught continuously for anywhere between thirty-six and forty-five weeks a year, running parallel to, but not in sync with, the wider university's teaching schedule. In the early start-up days, this included teaching from April to October with no non-teaching time, thanks to two overlapping twenty-four week programmes. In October there was one week's break and then straight on until Christmas. In 2002, my first year full-time on the job, I went more-or-less mad. I had an office to myself behind the covered bike-stands, which was a fairly grim view but offered privacy for when I needed to cry between classes. You get the idea.

Somewhere in between the incessant turning-over of weeks, I managed to get out some: to the Old Countr(ies), France, and latterly Hong Kong and Japan, not to mention the wider environs of Aotearoa, from the Far North to the depths of Western Southland. For a long time, my working pace was such that marathon holiday jaunts, such as one-day drives from Wellington to Auckland via the Taranaki Coast, or from north Northumberland to Oxford in a day, seemed consistent with the pace of working life.

As of today, however, I am seconded from my teaching for the next five months, thanks to the current demands of my voluntary role. This was only confirmed in the last few days, so there has been very little mental time to prepare. I hardly know what to make of this, and keep having to repeat it to myself: from now until February, I will be working on course development, contributing to a group research project, and (for the majority of my time) carrying out the voluntary duties for which I am now paid. I don't think this will really sink in until my colleagues start teaching again (and, to be honest, since that begins a week before my wedding, I doubt I'll be paying too much attention for a while).

I feel neither excitement nor trepidation at this point, so much as relief that I won't be potentially short-changing my students by rushing off to meetings. Now I can rush unencumbered. I think if I am to make the most of this time in terms of the skills I have worked so hard to acquire for much of this century -- and from which I am officially on hiatus -- it will be to think hard, but stealthily, about what I've accomplished and what I would like to do next. I'm enjoying, a great deal, the stimulation of university-wide work and the opportunity to contribute on a wider scale (and have been helped to this point by the fact that those students who know about my role think it's a cool thing to do); it serves my altruism and my love of meta-narratives alike, not to mention my sense of responsibility to my colleagues in the wider university. But I wonder how long it will be before I miss the classroom, the responsibility and the intimacy of the teacher-student relationship, the blend of duty and creativity.

I don't know what's next. This is the first time in nearly nine years that I've been able to say that. I'm happy that the possibility of new adventure synchronises so well with my intention to marry next month. Even if life continues with business as usual, the symbolism of the juncture will be sustaining.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KO90EdKB-g[/youtube]

A hat-tip to MTNW for the video link.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5JALwwaASg[/youtube]
You ain't nothing but a hound dog
Crying all the time.
You ain't nothing but a hound dog
Crying all the time.
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine.

The seor and I came out of sleep and into the weekend arguing, as is our habit, about metaphors. Our focus in this case -- and I cannot remember why (perhaps the part of the conversation that began while I was still asleep) -- was on Elvis Presley's recording of "Hound Dog". Recalling early hearings of it in early childhood, the seor claimed the song to be, most likely, about a disappointing dog. Then why, said I, would the singer tell a dog that it had previously appeared "high class"? Maybe, said the seor, it had been sold him as a top show dog, or hunting dog, since rabbits were mentioned.

I stuck, metaphorically, to my point, and claimed the song was directed at a person. Why though, if it were a song of disappointed love, would the singer address his let-down of a lover as a "hound dog"? Did he want to call her a bitch? Was he in fact speaking to a friend (but again, the problem of "high class")? It sounded, I said, as if the song had been originally sung by a woman addressed to a man, and had got appropriated for the use of Elvis. The point after all, we agreed, was that Elvis rock it, not that the lyrics be particularly illuminating or penetrating.

Since ours is a Love 2.0, we asked the tubes: I to my netbook and he to his iPhone. The trail was quickly revealed, thanks to Wikipedia.

Elvis in April or May 1956 heard the song performed in Vegas by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, whose lead singer gave him permission to include it -- as a comic closer -- in his own performances, using the lyrics and some of the movements of Bell. Bell and his band had recorded the song the previous year, after rewriting the original lyrics at the suggestion of Bernie Lowe, for whose label they were making singles. The rewritten lyrics were intended to broaden the song's radio appeal.

In April 1953, five different country-style versions of the song with its original lyrics had been recorded, following its release, the previous month, on Peacock Records, performed by Big Mama Thornton. Thornton's 1952 recording had been produced by the song's authors, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. As a twelve-bar blues, it was an R&B number-one single.

And at the point of Thornton's performance, it all becomes clear. The song is addressed to the lover the singer is trying to jilt. Her points of frustration are clear: this main is a moocher, a shyster, from whom she needs to disentangle her time. Thornton's delivery is imperious but sassy, the kind of indirect storytelling that brings in one's friends and neighbours to shoo the interloper off the premises. Sometimes lovers come back, and are duds (even as late as 1965, the time of the performance below). What are you going to do?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XUAg1_A7IE[/youtube]
You ain't nothing but a hound dog
Been snoopin' round my door
You ain't nothing but a hound dog
Been snoopin' round my door
You can wag your tail
But I ain't gonna feed you no more

So what's the point? Something like this: that the seor and I were both right, about the song's underlying metaphors, and their flattening out to the point of death by the time of Elvis's performance. Both singers performed with barking and howling noises, but the weighting was different. "Hound Dog" carried Elvis's new celebrity, his notoriety, his threat to propriety; the dangerous dog was, in effect, he. Thornton makes barking noises and finishes the song where she started, but Elvis goes out on a shouting, gyrating, end-note, the song an augmentation of what began before it. If my preference is for Thornton's performance, that also recognises that, in Elvis's case, the song is not the point.

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