Baby Whale needs TLC
Photo: Nick Moir, from The Age website
Anyone who knows me well – especially anyone who knew me as a little kid – knows I love whales and dolphins to bits. I had whale and dolphin books, posters, Greenpeace membership at age seven, even a cassette of whale calls I would listen to and imitate when I was a little tacker. I was completely cetacean mad. So when I read about this today, my heart absolutely broke. Just look at the little guy! Poor thing . . . and the hardest part? Knowing there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it. It’s not like finding a baby possum or something and taking it to the wildlife rescue people. You can’t just hand-raise a baby Humpback and release it in the wild again. You can’t just come up with some whale-formula and make a surrogate mother out of a sock puppet like you can with baby birds. And you know what else does me in? Knowing how distressed he must be. I can just imagine how his little whaley brain must be thinking and feeling and it really gets to me.
But I probably empathise with animals *way* too much . . .
Anyway, on another note, I came across a really cool game today which it turns out I really suck at. You watch a bunch of people reading a section of a poem and you have to guess where their accent is from. I always thought I was fairly good with accents, but I only got 28 points and some of them are really tricky. I’m interested to see how everyone else goes.
Quick Update
To say I’ve been busy the last few days would be something of an understatement, but I thought I better just give a quick status update as I’ve got a few things on at the moment.
Firstly, the “30 Days of Text” . . . oh boy. What started from a tiny little “wouldn’t it be cool?” post on the forums at Worth has grown into something bigger than I ever thought it would. Inspired by the photographer’s daily photograph project, I figured it would kinda cool to have a Text version where everyone vows to write once per day for a whole month on whatever subject or form they like. It’s now got quite a big turn out, a structure, rules and it’s own writer’s group over at Multiply (I’m assured the layout will change soon). I’m trying to keep philosophical about it, as I think the aim should be to have fun, play, experiment and see where the discipline takes us rather than turn it into a competition or something overly rigourous, but it seems to have fallen into place. I’ll post my daily snippets here, but I’ve also got a personal page going over at multiply too keep up with the community spirit (I’m stillbeing over there).
On top of this daily writing practice, I’ve got the deadline for Short and Sweet fast approaching . . . I’m putting an entry up and it seemed to go down well at Script Tease this Monday but it’s getting to the point where I can’t tamper with it anymore. It’s a comedy and I’ve been toying with it for a while now and I think it’s up to standards but I still get the same doubts: is it funny enough? Is it just a bland, soulless fluff piece devoid of meaning or impact? What’s the point? Is it really just crap and I’ve been delusional in thinking that anyone would want to read it? I know that’s all just harmful thinking, but you can’t help wondering these things. Oh well, it’s comedy and light entertainment so I really shouldn’t be putting so much weight on it and I’ve got a lot of positive comments in the past, but still . . .
And lastly, the Film Festival is on at the moment. I’ve managed to catch two films so far and I might see what else I can go to on the weekend but as usual I’m super-busy weeknights which means I’m missing a lot of things. Last year was great – I’d see whatever session that sounded interesting at 5:15 after work, get a glass of red wine if I had a bit of money free and just kick back, but with dancing and everything else that’s been going on that hasn’t really been possible this year and I already know there are a few films I’d like to see that I’ll miss. Anyway, I might post reviews of the films I saw last weekend soon, so stay tuned for that.
Two Word Games
I was going to try to post another short story today but that will have to wait. I spent more time then I intended down at the Vic Market and although it was good to get out, buy veggies from hippies, have a late all-day breakfast and watch the world go by, I managed to waste pretty much all of my Sunday. My flat is a mess, I’ve got dinner to cook and lunch to make for tomorrow, a script to study and two stories to write . . . dammit, why are weekends never long enough?!
And speaking of time-wasting, here are a couple of word games you might find fun. Firstly, the Human Brain Cloud. I only came across this last night and I’m already terribly addicted. It gives you a word or a phrase, you you tell it the first thing that comes into your mind, and it builds word-connections based on player input. Apparently it all grew from a single word: volcano. According to my stats, I’m currently 45% original and 55% in tune with humanity. I think that’s a good thing.
Secondly, Wordle. This lets you put text in, and it analyses it to see which words are most often used (discounting the “the”s “and”s, etc). It puts it into a graphic you can edit the look of until you get something like this:
That’s an example from my synesthesia story, and you can see other Wordles I’ve made over here. They’re great for drawing new connections or seeing things you might not have seen in a work, plus they’re fun to make.
