Every time I opened and closed the shutters and window I considered sweeping her out.
She hoarded flies and I thought she was doing me a good turn getting rid of pests.
Until today. Her nest hatched hundreds of tiny little ones. Pests.
So out came the dust pan and they all were swept up and thrown outside.
Madam was not amused - but I spared her life.
Her rage and pain is evident.
Perhaps she was just mad because I was sticking a camera in her face.
And no her name was NOT Charlotte.
It was Mary Jane Watson. ;)
Guess I must be the Green Goblin then.
When I was a kid I was petrified of the Wirrn, a race of insectoids who infested a cryogenic arc that Dr Who's Tardis pops into - it was up there with vampire shows that I watched standing at the door of the lounge room, the open door.
The Wirrn converted people into embryonic slug Wirrn with a tiny brush of their slimy sluginess - stalking their prey from hidden corners and under the space ship grates - just like the Alien in Alien.
These days I watch almost anything - with the lights out by myself and I'm OK.
Thought I'd shaken off all those irrational beliefs - like miracles. ;)
But there I was, standing in the dim light of a toilet at Australia's premiere scientific institution the CSIRO - for real!
And as I wiped my hands the paper towel wrapped around my hand and I panicked because it felt and looked just like the image of the guy with the slimmed hand in Dr Who.
So there I am shaking my hand and trying to free it from the paper and I stop and suddenly I stop and stare at it - I snigger as my subconscious throws up this Dr Who image.
I'm quite proud of myself for having achieved a certain level headedness - but you know what I did when Darth Vader walked through the glass doors directly in front of my desk in the features department of the Courier-Mail?
My instinctive reflex was to duck under the desk - and I was halfway through a bob down when my brain kicked into gear: "Wait a minute! He's not real!"
No one can tell me that the media doesn't affect people's psychological states - lighting affects people's psychology. Maybe if that toilet had supermarket dazzle the Wirrn would have remained dormant in my mind.
But I believe that when people live through crisis - particularly prolonged crisis such as war, revolution, drought, destitution - it may change people's mindset and they may not even know it.
I know people who have kept people alive, kept families together, left everything they own behind and started again in a country beset by racism - Australia in the 1950s - and it affected them for the rest of their lives. They never forgot. How could you?
Earlier this year I read a social studies report about the communities which depend upon water from the Murray-Darling River Basin. It doesn't seem to be on the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's new website any more. Lucky for you I kept a copy. See below.
Watching the farmers' protests on the news reminded me of this report because it explains a few important points like how farmers are getting on in years - there, in Australia's salad bowl, young people aren't lining up to farm.
At least one or two generations have left their parents and grandparents to carry on because they don't fancy being slaves to the whim of the seasons and climate.
Do you wonder that farmers approaching their retirement years are panicking? Remember what self-funded retirees felt like when the Global Financial Crisis crushed superannuation funds and share prices?
These people know that they feed the country. They probably feel like they've just been slimmed by the Greens.
They don't even have anyone to take over the farm. Farmers are as scarce as hen's teeth - or as scarce as a drop of rain in a drought.
There are so many issues all wrapped in the this proposed water management plan which has panicked the farmers and made the Greens so happy.
Everyone's minds are set. Boy do we need a miracle now Saint Mary!
The Green Photo Series.
Amazing, amazing, amazing! That culture is on TV for the enjoyment of the masses.
Saw this duet recreated on Glee tonight - I didn't know about this duet before Glee.
Thank you Glee.
The ARTS MATTER.... says Sue...
And then ... there's GQ smut ... how disappointing.
When it comes to Brisbane's suburban sprawl the egg's been cracked already but when it comes to a truculent Flip Video Camera there's a solution.
So I learned why the Flip Video Camera tells me it's full even after I've deleted all the video.
You have to delete every single file - not just the video files but also all the Flip programs that are installed on the camera when you buy it. Pretty scary huh?
And then you take the trash out after deletion. So then it prompts you to reinstall the updated programs - if you're connected to the internet.
You start from scratch with a set of new files.
For a time there I feared you had to throw the thing away after using it up - since that's what happens with most consumer products.
Just had to throw out a printer because of a paper jam.
Here's a shot of Brisbane from a Qantas flight. Qantas must have the flight path right over the city because Virgin never takes this path. Pretty ugly huh?
UPDATE: Sony got back to me. They paid for a repair man to come out and replace the power board - apparently they are now called static converters.
Sony have moved their call centre to New Zealand. A few of the guys I spoke to were very, very helpful. I guess it pays to be patient.
One important lesson though: Don't be lazy.
You have 21 days with Sony to return the item.
The one-year manufacturer's guarantee covers repairs not replacements.
I should have packed the TV back up immediately and taken it back to the store for a replacement on the first day.
Original post:
When I bought a Sony Bravia widescreen 62cm TV for about $1000 in January I extended the warranty (FIVE YEARS).
I didn't realise that the warranty doesn't mean that they will replace it if it is faulty - what exactly is a warranty worth to a customer?
Do I have to be an alchemist to turn a warranty into a warranty?
I didn't realise that the initial one-year warranty offered by Sony itself doesn't even cover the cost of getting someone out to fix the fault which it appears they actually knew about when they were selling the X5500 model to dopes like me. By the way it also affects the Z5500 model. Wonder how many dopes there are suffering it out like me?
I should've taken it straight back the moment it switched itself off without warning on the first day 30 minutes after I installed it - I just couldn't hack repacking it and then reinstalling it.
Apparently Sony released the Firmware Update Version PKG1.428AA patch in January - the month I purchased it.
The download stops the TV from launching into self diagnosis i.e. going dark.
On Friday afternoon my TV switched itself off and went dead. I went to bed disgusted. It still didn't work on Saturday morning.
And at 9am today, Monday morning, a Sony representative informed me that the only option I had to fix the TV which was still under a 1 year warranty was to download this patch, put it (the patch not the Tv) on a USB stick and then stick the USB into the back of the dead TV. Self service. The new Sony warranty.
If I wanted to get a repair man out to do it then I would need to pay for it myself.
So just for fun I asked for the number of the closest Sony repair guy - at this stage I believed I could download the patch myself but I wanted to know how much it would cost to fix a TV under warranty.
Call me troublesome.
The repair guy told me he needed paperwork from Sony to come through normally before he could come out otherwise it would cost me.
He thought it was weird too.
So I went to the website to download the patch - however the download is not Mac compatible so all I got was a page of crap. So I rang Sony again.
They wanted a reference number from my initial call and I told them that the generous guy who took my call didn't give me a reference number or take down any details.
No he "offered" me this download and website directions only - EVEN THOUGH THE ... TV... is still under WARRANTY!
They have promised to get back to me tomorrow. My 10-month-old TV is having a little lie down.
Shall keep you posted.
It's not the done thing to recount a murder in "polite" circles - unless you're among journalists or emergency workers.
Way too "confronting" - but I ask you, can you empathize? Will you finish reading this story?
I was 24. I sat at the end of a pew - a graduate journalist from Brisbane who shared house with young teachers from Brisbane.
Bundaberg's Holy Rosary Church overflowed with frightened people grieving for another young Brisbane teacher named Therese who was murdered in the provincial sugar town.
I was not in church to pray - do you think this was "confronting"? I was there to report about the evening memorial service - police hunting for a killer. Would you do it?
That newspaper office, that church, the police station, the courthouse are embedded in my memory.
It's not a trauma though. I went on trying for years to winkle the unspeakable memories out of war veterans on ANZAC Day - this was a task dreaded annually by jaded journalists.
A terrible grief to relive for veterans. So much depends on your perspective doesn't it?
Communications - no matter how high-tech or how moving the words - are weak dramatizations of intense personal experiences.
If you ask the question "why" you have to go up close and personal - you have to empathize, even with a villain.
I remember being disappointed by Truman Capote's novel, In Cold Blood, which established his celebrity and was hailed as the first nonfiction novel.
The 1965 publication is so tame - but back then only the New Yorker magazine had the guts to publish something so "confronting".
Turn the news off - it's too "confronting". Yet we love being horrified by Silence of the Lambs or Schindler's List - no, not Schindler's List because that's real. If it's only in the movies - that's different.
Is there something wrong with this picture?
Thomas Keneally, Steven Spielberg and his team they went there.
They got up close and personal to tell a story that put you in people's shoes - it's "confronting" but these story tellers had a good reason. It was a plea for tolerance and compassion.
When tragedy becomes a media play thing: the dismemberment of a young Australian girl in the United States, the rape of a young Australian in PNG, two road workers killed by trucks backing over them overnight ... it's more sane to switch off.
Are you being empathetic by watching or reading? It may be more empathetic to switch off, if the media is like a greedy, myopic, yappy chihuahua that runs around the table getting excited by a whiff of the meat on the table and waits for scraps.
I think that a person's ability to empathize actually stops them from becoming a media cretin chihuahua. And they blame computer games.
