The "moving" image - anime that can touch your heart - by Tim Henderson

I'm so excited! This is the first serious contribution to the content of this site. Tim Henderson has written a thoughtful piece about how animation can, and occasionally does, move us to tears. From Final Fantasy 7 to Porco Rosso, Tim shares his thoughts about how animated films can deliver some of life's great memories.

"At age fifteen, Final Fantasy 7 made me cry. I'm sure that I don't have to point out what brought the tears on, but it may be worth underscoring something that perhaps intensified the impact for me (and probably for scores of others who were discovering the laws of Japanese narrative for the first time): this was my puberty game. It caught me at that stage in my life where my balls had dropped, hair had began to grow in places it previously hadn't, and I was starting to sound like a fast food worker from any random episode of The Simpsons.

Alongside all of this came a new degree of empathy. As a child I watched the original Star Wars trilogy all the way through and never felt so much as a twinge of sadness, a shred of hope or even much by way of a rush of excitement. In fact, I was bored most of the time. I stuck with it only because I thought that the combination of swords with lasers was just about the coolest thing that mankind would ever dream up, and because my parents seemed to think that I should watch it. To a young child, most of the feelings that I was supposed to feel were missing entirely, as I expect they were with many others exposed to the trilogy at an early age.

I'm not going to go so far as to say that young children lack emotions, but I might be willing to suggest that the scope for a complete pallet of empathy is locked away until such an age as the body begins to take its adult form. Owing to this fairly swift awakening, the media that is first consumed at this stage in a person's life is likely to resonate a bit more strongly. Braveheart evoked a similarly unexpected emotional response from me, and it was during this same period of my life that I first introduced that particular bit of re-written history to my VCR.

All of which makes me wonder just how poignant that scene from the conclusion of FF7's first disc really was. It may be seeped in the lore of modern videogames as a defining moment for many, but most of us who wrote that lore were young and naïve and caught completely off-guard. Could such a low-tech piece of rendered animation and a smatter of simplistic gameplay have the same power over me today should my memories of the past be washed away tomorrow?

Just how did this scene make me so terribly sad?

There are arguments to be considered for writing and characterisation - to say nothing of Nobuo Uematsu's musical contribution -, and they no doubt have a tremendous amount of validity to them, but for the moment I wish to focus primarily on the aesthetic form.

Some years ago, American film critic Roger Ebert admitted in an interview that he was “moved just about to tears” by Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies. Again, there is much that could be said for the writing and characterisation in this film, to say nothing of the mere premise of the events, but the whole point of what he was saying was to explain a specific fact about the power of animation - that had Fireflies been a live action production, then it would have succeeded only in providing the image of starvation; as a piece of stylised animation, it was instead able to cut through the distraction of actuality and go a step further to present the idea of what was happening to these two children.

Of course, he's also made some rather cold comments in regard to videogames and gaming, something that may seem a little counter-productive to the interview paraphrased above. Or maybe not – let's just see where all this takes us for now...

Some years later, a writer for the rather excellent Japanese film site, Midnight Eye, tore the CG movie sequel to Final Fantasy 7, Advent Children, to ribbons so tiny you might mistake them for strands of a spider's web. My initial reaction towards this was to recall my memories of playing the game and to suspect that the review had been written by a critic who shared Ebert's superiority complex when it comes to the interactive medium. Truth be told, however, finally watching the film for myself taught me two important things: firstly, that I should never make such strong assumptions, and secondly that while I liked Final Fantasy 7, I was hardly obliged to like what it had evolved into.

But it's something that I already knew, and was being reminded of, that is of the greatest importance here. That being, that there's a definite line between the cutting line of technology and genuine craftsmanship, and while one can certainly be enhanced by the other, only one can really stand on its own.

I came to understand the gripes in the Midnight Eye review quite quickly after I removed the DVD from my player, but I continued to have an issue with one very specific comment – a comment that was on the right track, but ultimately felt demeaning nonetheless: “acrobatic feats are not impressive if they are not being performed by a human being.”

One will probably assume that this comment is intended to highlight the importance of the true spectacle of human feats, the genuine sense of energy that they can elicit from the spectator, and the admiration that must be given a body that has been exposed to such rigorous and intense training, and I would mostly agree with this. However, while there was certainly a big problem with the animation in this particular movie, animation in and of itself isn't to blame and shouldn't be labeled as inadequate.

The problem lies with craftsmanship, and in a learned understanding of cinema.

Advent Children is a highly competent explosion of technology, but it suffers heavily by not understanding its audience. By 'the audience', in this case at least, I don't mean the specific hoard of Final Fantasy loyalists for whom the movie was designed to sap yen from, but rather the general, physical space that any and every film viewer occupies. In spite of its relentless action scenes, Advent Children was one of the least visceral films that I've ever seen.

As a piece of presently chic vernacular, the term visceral has become at once overused and misunderstood. It's become a steadfast member of the club of adjectives that get strung together to describe almost any action movie or series that may please any number of critics who need some quick and easy zest to spice up their sentences. The main problem with this is that it is too frequently used to talk about what's happening on screen, as if the simple act of showing somebody getting punched in the face or sliced in half is enough to stimulate our viscera.

It's not, and for a very simple reason: we relate what we see on screen to our innate understanding of the way the world around us works, and depiction alone is not enough to quantify a visceral moment. Sin City was a visceral experience for me not because it featured sliced limbs, but because I left the theatre feeling like I was suffering from internal bleeding. A mixture of lighting, sound editing, performance and some clever digital trickery combined to communicate not just a series of events, but the very physical power of those events.

This is the most important place where Advent Children comes unstuck. At the most basic level, the animators, or maybe the technology team, do a terribly inadequate job of communicating any sense of the planet's gravity. As amazingly detailed as Advent Children's visuals are, the experience of watching it is still comparably to watching some particularly intricate string puppets dancing about. This is only compounded by a directorial team that behaved like a young child who has just received his or her first camera for Christmas. The DVD special features contain extensive excited babble about how CG provides such amazing visual freedom, about how you can easily film countless shots from angles that would be just about impossible in a live-action production. the problem with such freedoms is that it's easy to forget just why you're doing certain things, and instead simply focusing on the fact that you can.

The result of this attitude was that the fight sequences in Advent Children were a dislocated mess: the camera flailed around like an out-of-control ball on chain, showing an absolute minimum of respect for rules of filmed cinema that have been developed over many tedious years of trial and error, and leaving an impression of wild key-framing rather than precise, intentional filming. Within the context of a script so laden with cod-philosophy that it actively smelled of fish, these sequences may as well have had the whole world upon their shoulders, and in a way it's a shame that they didn't. A little modest grounding, and a much greater sense of tactile weight to the character animation would have gone a long way to give this film at least some kind of impact other than that of fanservice.

Strange, then, that for all their simplicity, the stylised cut-scenes in the actual Final Fantasy 7 videogame carried with them a far stronger a sense of energy. Perhaps it's easier to make a character appear weighty when they're less detailed - this would hardly be surprising, as it does indeed seem that the narrower the gap between the art and the actual is, the wider the uncanny valley becomes. Whatever the case - and I expect that there was a huge, ironic benefit found in the restraints of the technology of the time - there is more expressive power in this short cut-scene than there was in the entirety of the movie sequel that followed roughly a decade later.

And it's here we get to what both the Midnight Eye review and Roger Ebert's comments about Grave of the Fireflies shy just short of acknowledging: that at its finest, animation - still typically hand drawn animation - offers the most precise, stylized, intentional and expressive performance that can be put to screen. Just because the action scenes in Advent Children could rightly be criticized as lacking the breath-stealing quality that a flesh and blood performance might provide doesn't mean that animation itself is incapable of this. Likewise, just because animation can cut through the actuality of the image and present something closer to a purer idea, this doesn't mean that it can't enhance its own potential through a sense of corporeality brought to life by a man or woman skilled in their craft. Sin City made me feel its violence despite an overload of CG, and more importantly, Studio Ghibli films are some of the most physical pieces of cinema I've ever had the pleasure to experience, and this may not be despite their prolific reliance on traditional illustrated animation - it may, in fact, be because of it.

Porco Rosso is a personal favourite film of mine. It is simultaneously Miyazaki's most self-indulgent mainstream work and the one that is most frequently ignored. At last check, there was only one essay on the Nausicaa.net database that focused meaningfully on the film, and considering that I wrote that essay while at University, I feel somewhat justified in calling this film overlooked.

This is a shame, because while Miyazaki's self-service to many of the things he loves is indeed palpable, there is no paucity of love given back through his depiction of these things. Indeed, it contains several components that define the quintessence of what can make animation so powerful, and so enchanting to watch.

It was amid the sweaty panic of a looming University deadline that I noticed the way that Gina - the mature and strong-willed love interest of Porco Rosso's story - blinked. It was the most graceful blink I had ever seen. No real person could possibly move their eyelids in such a fluid manner, but this one blink said more about Gina's character than several pages of exposition might manage. Like Ebert suggested, it cut right through the crap and presented the idea: here was a woman who was elegant and world-weary, but not without humour and a kind of nostalgic sense of hope, and it was all summed up in her blink, and further enhanced by the way she moved. Again, Gina's movements aren't entirely plausible and border on hyper-reality, but that's perhaps the whole point: being a series of stylized drawings, she is free to move in a manner that is nothing if not expressive, and the audience is able to accept this without a second thought. Furthermore, her movements are so precise, and the drawings so intentional that there is an undeniable sense of corporality to her. She may not be a real person, but it would take a very closed-minded one to deny that she has presence nonetheless.

Perhaps this is why Miyazaki has so stubbornly checked each and every frame of animation in his films personally. We can toot and hoot on about the ultimate supremacy of story all we like, but despite what we may choose to think, story is nothing but cold thoughts without expression, and the literal depiction of the abstract and the physical is something that has offered cinema an expressive edge for as long as it has existed. In this world the artist may be nothing if he is not also an artisan.

And so, when the story's pudgy lead, Marco, sets sail in the skies, it's entirely possible to feel that no greater love could be expressed for flight and for the craftsmanship of the aircraft that granted mankind this phenomenal privilege without actually sitting there, beside a pilot who loves nothing more than what he does, and the world that his work allows him to explore. Many of these scenes are timeless - carrying through each frame a fragment of the effort that Miyazaki forced from himself and his team to express his love - and all of them are breathtaking. And, although polygonal CG will no doubt eventually develop to the point where similar scenes can be reproduced without looking entirely like model planes on strings, I will be more than a little sad if this ability comes at the cost of the death of skill with a pencil. As an element of a story, flight may be little more that moving from A to B, but in the eyes of Miyazaki it has always been an experience to be shared, and his illustrations have allowed him to share these things in a way that few will ever be able to approach."

written by Tim Henderson for The Cartoon Gallery. Please feel free to leave comments about this article in the Forums!

Japan's anime industry in crisis?

An article, published by the ABC in July 2009, got me to thinking. The gist of the article is that Westerners aren't paying much for anime, and that so much is being downloaded now for free. Anime workers in Japan are meant to be furious because the former prime minister planned to spend millions on an anime museum, whereas the real workers in the industry can't earn a decent living. Work is being outsourced to China, whilst the strict heirarchy in the industry means that young people with talent are having to slave away for 20 years doing boring work before they can express their own creativity. Plus, many small studios are having to create anime porn to pay the bills. The porn is popular with middle-aged Japanese men, but is apparently not easily exportable. Whew - quite a mouthful!

The word "crisis" is such a catchy one, especially when used in the title of an article. Almost everything nowadays seems to be on the verge of collapse, if the reports are to be believed. So, let's have a look at some of the points raised in this article and see where it leads us.

Westerners have never paid much for anime, certainly compared to the prices which the poor sods in Japan have to pay. My first trip to Japan was about 13 years ago, in the days before DVDs. A client of mine just had to have the Armitage movie on VHS. I told him it would cost about AUD$120, he said just buy it, which I did. That was $120 for one VHS tape, and that was the going price. A quick look at some Japanese anime prices on the Net shows that now you will pay about 5,000 Yen or so, which is still about AUD$65, and that's with the Aussie dollar being strong now. You also need to be aware of how many episodes there are per disc. It is not at all uncommon for Japanese DVDs to have only 2 episodes per disc.

How is this possible? Because of Japan's extraordinary retail structure, where many hands make a little money along the path from manufacturer to retailer. Don't think that the greedy retailer is making a killing, he's not. He's hardly making anything at all. Unless you are wealthy, the idea of owning a vast collection of anime is almost unheard of in Japan. Most anime fans don't buy, they rent titles from the hundreds of stores which stock anime in all its genres.

Meanwhile, in the West, fanboys and girls moan about the prices which they have to pay; the length of time it takes for a series to be released; the quality of the dubbing blah blah blah. A word of caution to people who have been watching anime for years: try to keep in mind that the kids doing the moaning are just younger versions of you, perhaps 10-15 years younger, maybe more.

It's a bit much to expect teenagers to care about anything other than their own immediate, and obviously extremely important, needs. What interests, and concerns me more, is that so many people seem to think they have some sort of right to view whatever they like, and they want to view it now! The Internet is like a drug to these people. Not so long ago, bragging rights went to the person who had a friend who lived in Japan who recorded episodes of a brand-new anime series which was screening on Japanese televisionand mailedthe videoto their friend in Australia. This isn't fast enough for the "now" generation. Now, you can find sites where you can download the series yourself. It doesn't matter that there may be no subtitles or that the quality is crap, the most important thing is that you can get it now and brag about it to your friends. It also doesn't matter, at all, that the original creators receive no money from any of this downloading.

The logical extension from this self-indulgent, narcissistic view is that I, the fanboy, have a right to view whatever I like, when I like, from wherever I like. I want it now, I can get it for free, therefore I will, and the rest of you can get stuffed. This is theft, pure and simple. Try explaining your "rights" to a shop detective after you pinch something andattempt to leave your local supermarket. He may not be sympathetic to your world view. It is amusing to read the attempted rationalizations from fanboys about their downloading activities: they will "buy the series when it gets released in the West"; the downloads "help to spread word about the series", which will result in increased sales; the owners of the series "make a killing anyway", so what I do doesn't hurt them etc. This is all bullshit. The making of an anime movie or series involves a lot of blood, sweat and tears, and money, none of which has been provided by the viewer. The rights belong to the people who funded the project. It is their right to decide how the show will be disseminated, to whom, and when. Companies in other countries can enter into arrangements about how the show will be presented, in exchange for which the creators receive upfront payments and/or royalties from the proceeds of sales. Lacking a studio system like in the West, many of the small Japanese anime companies which are created to make a show or series receive very little in upfront payments. Royalties form a large part of their ongoing income.

I was privileged to visit Studio Ghibli on one of my first trips to Japan. They were working on the post production of Princess Mononoke at the time. I got to see the studio where the animators worked, as well as Miyazaki's desk (full of papers, cigarette butts and a hundred and one other knick knacks - lovely!). The man himself was in the sound recording studio. I still kick myself that I forgot to bring my camera (can you believe it!). A photo of Miyazaki's desk would have been priceless. I also saw the canteen, the walls of which were full of framed, original setups from all their movies. A wet dream for an animation fan like me. The studio building itself was not large or ostentatious. You could very easily have walked right past it without pausing. How different is that from a Western studio, which is often the size of a small suburb?

Yet, Studio Ghibli was the only real animation studio in Japan. A place wherefilm makerscould work full-time and have security of employment. This is still rare in Japan. Almost all animation staff work from job to job, often in tiny "studios" which are nothing more than office space. These journeymen and women artists earn very little in return for spending 12-16 hours a day, slaving away at the thousands of drawings which are necessary for any animated film to be made. It is an industry which does have a strong heirarchy, and it is very easy to imagine young people baulking at the prospect of spending a few decades doing this repetitive but necessary work before they can spread their wings and showcase their own creative talent. I suspect that it has always been so in the animation industry in Japan, and it might take some concerted action from the workers for their working lives to be improved. I certainly don't see how spending millions on an anime museum would have hurt their cause. Appointing cute anime ambassadors might make some of us want to throw up, but if it raises the profile of the industry, then it might be a good thing for those people who create these shows too.

What is sad is that some animation makers have to create hentai porn to pay the bills. This must be heartless, brutal work. You know that what you are producing is shit, and it will take weeks and months to finish, but you have to do this stuff to make some money to pay the bills. The people who produce this crap probably had some dreams at one stage of making great animated films, maybe they still do, and now they have been brought down to this level. It must be soul-destroying. The fact that there is such a large market for hentai porn in Japan could lead me into some discussion about the state of mind of middle-aged Japanese men, but I think I'll leave that for another time...

So, is the Japanese anime industry in crisis after all? I rather suspect that it is, but I also suspect that it always has been. Anime market sales in Japan have been declining; most TV series don't recoup their costs from broadcasting sales; sales of anime DVDs are also declining; Korea and China are not importing as much anime as they used to. The people who work in the anime industry struggle to pay the bills and the pay is lousy. If the pool of talented Japanese anime youngsters dwindles, then there might be a real crisis. The escalating outsourcing of work to cheaper Asian countries is ultimately self-defeating for the home industry. It might take some concerted action by government and industry bodies to halt the rot. I certainly hope that happens. In the meantime, if you are a Western fan of cartooning and you have dreams of going to Japan to become a famous anime director, I'd forget about it. You will have zero chance of competing against the tenacity of the locals. Best to draw manga, at least that doesn't involve so many people and such a large amount of money to produce.

Oh, and if this matters at all to you, then buy legally released anime. Some of that money will go back to the creators, who might then be able to produce more of the work that we love.

Dragon Ball Z - a health hazard?

Early December 2009 will see the release of the DBZ remastered uncut complete collection in Australia: 54 DVDs - 291 episodes - 6,990 minutes of spikey-haired awesomeness. Being a rather sick and twisted individual, my mind turned to what might happen once this box set, which would take almost 5 days to view, is released.

---

DBZ is one of the all-time anime bestsellers, spawning a blizzard of merchandising since the anime was originally released in Japan in 1989. Toei Animation must thank their lucky stars that they have held the DB franchise for all this time. Not onlyare there enough episodes to make even Rumiko Takahashi jealous, the series has been re-edited, re-mastered and re-packaged to within an inch of its life.

Here's a little story I put together. Can this happen? Time will tell

Interior TV studio. Mid shot. Bubble-headed bleach blonde news presenter. Over her left shoulder is graphic insert showing body bags being wheeled out of an apartment. Caption reads Cartoon Horror!

Residents of a usually quiet lower North Shore suburb are still recovering from the discovery that all five occupants of an apartment were found dead in the early hours of this morning. All the deceased appear to be young men. Initial rumours suggested that they were all Muslims who committed group suicide when their terrorist plot was uncovered, but police have discounted this theory after discovering the remains of more than 14 family-sized pizzas in the lounge room, many of which contained meat toppings. Police also noted the lack of facial hair on the deceased and the absence of Islamic banners on the walls of the apartment. For more news on this baffling horror story, we now cross live to reporter Joe Bloggs, who is at the apartment block. Joe, what is the latest?

Exterior. Night. Joe is dressed in suit and tie. In the background is a cacophony of lights, police, ambulance officers and nosy neighbours. Lots of noise and apparent confusion. Joe has to yell slightly to be heard.

Thank you, Simone. As you can see behind me, the police and emergency services are still busy mopping up the appalling mess which was discovered ina first floor unit in the early hours of this morning. Evenveteran policemen have been observed vomitting into the azalea bushes which once provided such a nice entrance way to this attractive block of flats. Since the news of this mass death broke on a Sydney early morning shock-jock radio program, concerned neighbours, residents and Sydneysiders from the other side of the bridge have been gathering, hoping to get news, or preferably, a sneak peak, at the carnage which lurks so near and yet so far away.

For the latest information about what led to this bizarre group death, we are joined by Senior Sargeant Frank Matters, who is leading the investigation. Frank, what can you tell us?

The camera pans to Frank, impeccably dressed in his police uniform.

Frank
Thank you, Joe. There are five deceased. All five appear to be male, Caucasian, aged in their early to late 20s.

Joe
Is there any blood?

Frank
No.

Joe
Have you found anything which might be a weapon?

Frank
No.

Joe
Are there signs of a struggle having taken place?

Frank
No.

Joe
Suicidenotes? Pills? Drugs?

Frank
No. Just the remains of 14 pizzas.

Joe
Anything else?

Frank
11 empty large bottles of Coke, 3 family-sized desserts and what could be up to 18 packets of chips. They might be Doritos, it's hard to say at this moment.

Joe
Likely cause of death?

Frank
It's still very early days yet in our enquiries, Joe, but a superficial look at the scenario would suggest that a possible cause of death might be over-eating.

Joe
Overeating? Are you serious?

Frank
Very, Joe. A police dietician has collected all the foodstuffs found in the loungeroom and a preliminary analysis shows that there were enough calories contained in the food and drink to sustain 11 average Australians, or 108 refugees, for a period of more than one month.

Joe
But why would 5 young and apparently healthy Caucasians eat themselves to death? Do you think it was deliberate?

Frank
I doubt it, Joe. Interviews with the families of the deceased would indicate that they were all happy, well-adjusted young men. They all had friends, family, good jobs. Their prospects were excellent.

Joe
But surely there must be some common thread here. Why would all 5 of them have been in the apartment at the same time?

Frank
That is an excellent question, Joe, and is forming the basis of our enquiries, moving forward. There appears to have been one common interest which all 5 of the deceased shared. They liked watching DVDs together.

Joe (looking excited)
Ah, pornography?

Frank
Only occasionally, Joe. No, that doesn't appear to have been the motivating factor here. It was something worse.

Joe
Big Brother? Biggest Loser?Master Chef?

Frank (laughing)
No, nothing that bad, Joe, and I think you'll find that some of those programs are on your network.

Joe (sheepishly)
Ah, right, yes, only joking.

Frank
No, this was something more insidious. Anime.

Joe
Anny what?

Frank
Anime, Joe. Japanese animated cartoons.

Joe
Adults watch that stuff?

Frank
I guess that the same question could be asked of some of the programs which we just mentioned.

Joe (looks offended and says nothing)

Frank
We have found what appears to be a box set of anime, which appears to be what the deceased were watching when they became deceased.

Joe
They died while watching cartoons?

Frank
That would appear to be the likely option at this point, Joe, although I must stress that we are still in the early stages of our enquiries.

Joe
How large was this box set? How many discs?

Frank
Forensics are still aggregating the discs, Joe, but at this stage it would appear that the final number will be around 50. Maybe more.

Joe
50 discs! Any idea of the total running time?

Frank
We have uncovered a box which might have been used as the container for the entire collection, but it's hard to read the writing.

Joe
Why's that?

Frank
The box appears to have been torn to pieces at some stage. Some parts are missing, believed eaten, and there's an awful lot of vomit on all the surfaces in the vicinity.

Joe
How many cartoons can you fit onto 50+ DVDs? It must be a couple of hundred.

Frank
Early days yet, Joe, but our initial investigations would suggest that it is all from the one cartoon series.

Joe
All from the one ...? But that sounds impossible. You sure it's not just a Japanese version of The Simpsons?

Frank
Quite sure, Joe. A constable has been viewing the series from the beginning, to confirm this.

Joe
Where is he up to?

Frank
He got up to about episode 63, then he had to be relieved of duty.

Joe
What happened to him?

Frank
The constable in question stopped responding to outside stimuli, showed signs of a significantly reduced heart rate, and started jumping up at random moments, shouting Kame Hame Ha for no apparent reason.

Joe
Kame what...?

Frank
It's a mystery to us as well, Joe. Federal police are getting in touch with our Japanese colleagues to see if they can shed some light on this.

Joe
Do you know how many discs they got through before they died?

Frank
Disc 31 was in the DVD player when police first entered the scene.

Joe
So it is possible that these 5 young men ate themselves to death whilst watching a Japanese cartoon? Some sort of marathon viewing session?

Frank
I'm not in a position to confirm or deny that, Joe, but it is possible, yes.

Joe
Any idea how long it would take to get to disc 31 if they started from the first one?

Frank
I can't be exact at this stage, Joe, but possibly 3 days, give or take a few hours.

Joe
Do you have any indications that this is what they did?

Frank
Forensic pathology reports indicate that the deceased may not have moved much, if at all, for a very long period of time.

Joe
How can you tell that?

Frank
All 5 of the deceased displayed horrendous open sores on their buttocks and lower back, a condition usually associated with the elderly and infirm in nursing homes. They hadn't moved for a long time, Joe. And then there was the bodily waste...

Joe
Bodily waste?

Frank (glances at the camera)
This might not be an appropriate topic for your audience, Joe.

Joe (drawing himself up)
Our audience demands to know the intimate secrets of everyone's life, Senior Sargeant Matters.

Frank
OK then. All 5 deceased showed signs of not having gone to the bathroom for several days. Not to put too fine a point on it, Joe, the deceased were covered in shit, piss and vomit to a degree not seen since the Irish hunger strikers of 1981.

Joe
Oh my God.

Frank
All 5 bodies were found swollen to twice their normal size. Putrefaction was well advanced, and the smell upon entering the premises is something which I will never forget. Even police dogs refused to go inside.

Joe
Sweet Jesus. It sounds appalling. Back to Simone in the studio now, who has a behavioural psychologist with her who specializes in obsessive disorders.

Back to Simone, who has just finished throwing up into a paper bag, which she hurriedly discards off camera. Simone (looking a bit dishevelled, but recovering quickly back into her professional persona)
Thank you for that update, Joe. I'm joined now live and exclusively by Dr. Agnes Roberts, an expert in obsessive disorders. Dr. Roberts, is it possible that a group of young men could eat themselves to death, whilst watching a cartoon series. Can anyone really become that addicted?

Dr. Roberts (who has a face of stone. Only her mouth moves)
Well, of course Simone, addiction is the incorrect term, despite its widespread use in the media these days. In medical terminology, an addiction is a chronic neurobiologic disorder that has genetic, psychosocial, and environmental dimensions and is characterized by one of the following: the continued use of a substance despite its detrimental effects, impaired control over the use of a drug, and preoccupation with a drug's use for non-therapeutic purposes. Addiction is often accompanied by the presence of deviant behaviors that are used to obtain a drug...

Quick reaction shot of Simone, who is checking her lipstick in a hand mirror.

Not all doctors agree on the exact nature of addiction or dependency however the biopsychosocial model is generally accepted in scientific fields as the most comprehensive theorem for addiction. Historically, addiction has been defined with regard solely to psychoactive substances which cross the blood-brain barrier once ingested ...

Cut back to Simone in the studio. The live cross over her shoulder seems to show reporter Joe in a battle with a wizened person of indeterminate age and sex. The droning voice of the good doctor fades out as Simone speaks ...

We now cross back live and exclusively to Joe at the scene, who has managed to find the neighbour who lives next door to the deceased.

Cut to Joe, who is battling for control of the microphone with an ancient woman, dressed like one of Monty Python's Pepperpots. Unfortunately, because of the background noise and the battle, Joe is unaware that he is live...

Joe
Let me have the microphone, you stupid bitch!

Wizened old bag
I've waited76 years to be on television and you're not going to bugger it up for me now ...

Joe
But I'm the fucking reporter, you old bag!

Joe seems to have yanked the microphone away from the old bag and is just about to speak, when he gets king hit by what appears to be the world's largest and deadliest hand bag. He falls to the ground in a heap. The old bag grabs the mike and looks straight into the camera. The cameraman is a bit confused, but stays with the old bag and slowly zooms in during her monologue.

Hello everyone. My name is Ethel Matthews, and I've lived in this apartment block since 1963. This used to be such a nice place to live. When I moved in here the neighbours were so friendly, always dropping in for a chat and a smoko. They used to bring in home-baked scones and biscuits, and we'd go shopping together. Now it's all changed. No-one visits me anymore, not even my kids. I don't know who the neighbours are, and I don't want to know either. You hear so many bad things about young people these days, and there's all those ethnic types as well. So many Asians. I'm scared to go out of the flat, especially at night.

Joe can be seen in the background, stumbling around, slowly coming back to his senses ...

These dead people lived on the same floor as me. I'm not sure how many of them actually lived in the flat, but who can tell these days? It might have been dozens, sleeping in the bathroom and on the balcony. They liked to play loud music, I know that. Probably full of drugs too. Nothing surprises me anymore. Sometimes I'd put a mirror out the window and try to see what they were up to, but I couldn't get the mirror out far enough to see anything really. Many is the time I wanted to hit the walls and tell them to turn that racket down, but I'm scared. I'm on my own with no-one to help me. I can't wait to die ...

Joe runs at the old bag from backstage, wielding what looks like a lump of 2x4 and hits her plumb on the head

Joe
Then let me help you along the way ...

She slumps out of view. Joe grabs the mike with both hands and recovers his composure. He is just about to speak when we cut back to Simone in the studio, who has a special guest.

Simone
We are now joined by the Federal Communications Minister, the Honorable Herbert Fang. Mr. Fang, what do you say to the growing chorus of concern about the effects of these cartoons on Australia's young people?

Herbert Fang
I, like most right-thinking Australians, am appalled that a foreign product can be imported into this country and have such a devastating effect on our youth. I have been in touch with the Prime Minister, and we propose to introduce legislation which will ban the viewing of more than 10 consecutive episodes of this so-called anime without certification from a qualified medical practitioner. I also propose to ban spikey haircuts. Anyone found uttering this weird "kame hame ha" phrase will be quarantined until the possible toxic effects have been thoroughly diagnosed and treated.

Simone
Thank you, Minister. It's reassuring to know that the government isn't going soft on this cartoon terrorism.

THE END

PS - the legislation was duly passed, unanimously, by both houses of Parliament. Online gamers, cosplayers, gothsand the members of anime clubs went underground. Secret sects were formed with tight security to hide their identities. Driven into hiding, these already paranoid people took to creating their own religions, despite overtures from the Church of Scientology. They worshipped their anime Gods, which led to an increasing incidence of people dressed in latex jump suits and weird haircuts. The more the authorities tried to close these religions down, the more obsessive and secretive the members became, which led to all sorts of problems. But that's a story for another time ...

"It's alive, I tell you! It's alive!!!"

Yes, finally. On August 11, 2009 the new-look web site went live. This was done with no fanfare, just a few clicks on the name server with MelbourneIt and the deed was done.
Still a nice feeling though. In about one hour, clicking on www.cartoongallery.com.au brought up the new site. I sent an email to about 40 past clients, and some of them have been visiting the site to see what I have been up to. It has been nice to get back in touch again with some clients who I haven't heard from since the shop closed (more than 3 years ago now!). I'm looking forward to this continuing, along with "meeting" new clients in the coming months and years.
It will be an interesting few months to see how the site rates in the all-important Google rankings. I'm quite astounded at how quickly the site has moved into some high positions. Keeping in mind that the site has only been going for one week, the site ranks as follows for Google searches in Australia (as of 19/8/09):

• top of 2nd page for "cartoon"
• page 7 for "anime"
• page 2 for "anime in Australia"
• first page (#5) for "anime DVDs"

This is really encouraging. I will have to keep creating content, but this shouldn't be too much of a hassle for me. What I would love is some articles from readers - people who would like to contribute to the site. I'm sure this will all happen, but it will take some time. Meanwhile, my goal is to have the site firmly on the first page of Google Australia for "anime" by the end of the year. We shall see ...

On the personal front, I've just been to my 2nd visit to the psychologist. My dose of Cipramil has been upped a bit to 1.5 pills a day. I *might* be feeling some effect, but if I am, it's pretty subtle. I have no doubt at all that this combination of things - pills and psychologist - will have a good effect on me. It's all pretty encouraging right now.

Until next time ^_^

Pills, shrinks and getting out of a hole

It's been a while...
Now that I'm working at another branch, I don't have the opportunity to sneakily work away at this blog as I used to when I was working on my own. A new weekend manager was recently appointed, a young dude, who I think will do well at the job. I've been filling in until he is trained up, then I'll be helping him and the weekday manager with maintenance-type issues.
The main development for me in the past month or so is that I have started seeing my local GP, a very nice man, at the gentle but firm prodding of my lovely wife. It was time for me to do something positive about this emotional hole which I have dug for myself over the past few years.
So, the doc and I have had a few chats. He prescribed some small white pills - Cipramil - for me to take. They are anti-depressants. The hope is that they will help lift some of the fog in my brain and get me thinking some positive thoughts, which might lead to some positive actions. It's been about two weeks now. I can't say that I have noticed any real change, but my wife is acting as the canary in the mine here, and she says that I'm sleeping better (not thrashing around so much) and that my tone of voice isn't so edgy. This has to be a good thing.
I saw the doc again yesterday and he gave me the name of a psychologist. I'm waiting to hear back from her now. Apparently the government will subsidize the cost of 12 visits in a 12 month period, so it won't wind up costing me a bomb (hopefully). At the moment, I have to say that I'm looking forward to talking to someone about what has been going on in my head over the years. As my GP said, it is probably time that my brain was "downloaded" a bit, which made me laugh.
Now that this process has been started, I want to see it through to some sort of conclusion. I know that this is something I should have done years ago. My best guess is that it was/is fear that stopped me doing anything about it. I suspect that I will have some confronting times ahead.
On other news, I got an email yesterday for my highschool's 35th anniversary reunion, to be held in a pub in North Sydney in November. This should be fun. I've been to a number of these - held every 5 years - and I've been struck by what a basically decent bunch of bastards we seem to be. About 90 0r so dudes turn up. I suspect that some of us will now be granddads. What a hoot.
Work on the web site has slowed down to a crawl in the past month. There's not much more I can do now. The folks at Netreach have to finalize some things and then we will be ready for testing. I will let you know when this happens, but no projections as to when that might be. It's taken much longer than I had thought but it should be worth the wait.
Younger son, Max, had braces fitted to his teeth a week ago. He seems to be coping without any great dramas. Some sensitivity in the first few days, as some of his teeth were being gently pushed in new directions, but he has no trauma at all. There are about 10 other kids at the school who have braces, so it's no big deal. Seeing a plaster mould of his upper and lower teeth, with so many of them in the wrong position and/or twisted, was quite a shock. The hope is that they will gradually go into their correct slots over the course of the next 20 months or so. No sticky or hard food in the meantime!
I'm looking forward to the site being open for business, and getting back in some sort of contact with those of you who I've gotten to know over the past years. This should be fun, and I'm hoping that we will share some laughs along the way.
Stay well until next time.

Last day, then a new start

Today is the last day for me at the particular branch of the storage company I'm working at. In 3 days from now, I'll be working 5 days a week at another branch which is closer to home. I'll be helping out the manager; doing some cleaning, inventory control, and possibly driving one of their 3 tonne trucks on the weekends for people who want to move into one of our units. It'll be more hours, so I suppose that's a good thing.
I'll miss a few things about this branch: it's a bit off the beaten track, so it's reasonably quiet here; I'll miss the rubber duck (see an earlier post!); and I'll miss my mate who pretty much lives here. There was no "goodbye and good luck" note from the week day manager, so I suppose she either forgot or couldn't be bothered. So it goes...
I'll be working at a branch which I've worked in before, so I know how everything works and I know that the manager there is keen for me to start, since I won't need to have any training. Driving the truck will be new for me, so I'll have to get some experience, especially in reversing a truck in driveways. I don't really want to wipe out someone's fence when I'm reversing into a house or block of flats!
The possible downside is that I won't be a manager anymore, so I'll be reporting to someone else. They will give me my jobs to do. I expect I'll be doing lots of cleaning, restocking, and attending to customers. This should work OK, as long as I'm given some space and not micro-managed.
On other news, the development of the new-look web site is going well now. It will - hopefully - be just about finished in one week from now. I have added most of the articles which I want; most of the products are there. I have to customize the forums and payment section and it'll be about ready to go.
So, there are some new developments happening for me right now. I can't honestly say that I'm all that excited about them, but it might just be that I'm a bit tired today. I had a late night watching "Die Hard 2" with number 1 son, Jake, last night. His brother and mother were having a sleep over at my sister-in-law's place, so Jake and I made the most of it ^_^
Stay well until next time.

The name does matter

Interesting result of a survey done in Australia regarding job applications. About 4,000 identical job descriptions were sent out to employers, the only difference was the name of the applicant. Not too surprisingly, those "applicants" that had obviously woggy names were less likely to be contacted than those with nice safe Anglo names. I heard a representative from an employer group saying that this was nonsense etc.
And then there is the ongoing situation which has developed recently in Sydney, with young Indian students feeling that they are being targetted by thugs when they try to get home after leaving their late-night jobs. Seems that quite a few of the Indian students who are studying here - and hoping to get permanent residency - work in late-night convenience stores and some are being attacked in the early hours of the morning.
How are these things related? I think they both have something to do with racism.
It was interesting to see the knee-jerk reaction from the police and politicians when the first of these Indian incidents happened. A molotov cocktail was thrown through the window of a house where some of these Indian kids lived, some of the kids got burnt, quite a bit of damage done. Then more news about Indian students being attacked after their shifts at these convenience stores. Then some protests by Indian students about how they want protection. All great fodder for the media.
The police and pollies state that these incidents are not race-related, just some bad luck, but it's hard to believe it. When you do some reading, you find out that these incidents at Harris Park involve the Indians and the Lebanese. HP was a predominantly Lebo suburb, but now it is changing into an Indian area, with the Lebos moving out into other suburbs. The Lebanese youngsters have never seemed to have a problem with responding physically to perceived injustices, and the Indians have a history of responding publically and loudly when they feel threatened and abused. Both sides seem to quite enjoy a bit of biffo, and none of the skirmishes seem to involve youths loaded with drugs or alcohol. Seems to me to be a rather straightforward case of testosterone and fear.
The idea that Australia is not a racist country is absurd. All countries are racist because all countries are full of people and people are racist by nature - full stop. If there is a country on this small blue-green planet which has managed to "deal" with racism, I'd very much like to know where it is located. To deny the existence of racism does nothing to help reduce it, or to control it, or to help make people aware of these feelings which lurk in each one of us.
I am reminded of something said by Larry King, the US talkshow host. It was a story which he told about himself, which I thought was insightful and brave. He thought of himself as a modern, educated, "tolerant" (hate that word) man. His daughter had gone out with black men, he had black friends, Larry was not a racist. There he was, sitting in the waiting room at an airport, waiting for his flight, when he saw the flight crew walk through the checkout. He noticed that the captain was a black man, and this thought immediately went through his head, "I wonder if he is qualified?"
This has always stuck in my head as a brave and insightful comment for anyone to make. Larry acknowledged the racist thought, which had been made before he could consciously control it, but the important thing is what happened next. Then his rational brain kicked in: of course the captain was qualified; he knew many black people who were highly trained; his original mad thought was nonsense, and he saw it for what it was - some weird part of his primal brain which had vomited up this racist bullshit. Larry probably laughed at himself in a self-conscious way, but then had the grace and bravery to offer up this story about himself to a public audience. This is a classy thing to do, and I've never forgotten it (a story which I might well have heard some decades ago now).
To have a racist thought isn't a crime, either to yourself or to the rest of the world. But, acting on that madness and then seeking to justify it, is. It's a crime to your brain, your education, and your species. This whole area deals with a very murky and primal part of who each one of us is, and I'm not surprised in the least that politicians try to avoid it like the plague. I think you would be on a hiding to nothing, with any attempted discussion quickly degenerating into insults and lots of emotional posturing. Who would want that?
No doubt things in Harris Park will quieten down over time. The media's attention will turn to other events and some of the youths will get bored and resume their normal lives. But the cause will remain, barely covered by a thin veneer of civilized behaviour.
For those of you with woggy names, lots of drive and ambition, perhaps some history of exploitation which you have inherited from your parents or their homeland, the thought that "someone" hates you because you look different is going to be hard to lose. Hang in there. If you can manage to focus all that energy into a career or your personal development, you might well astonish us all yet! Hate is a nil sum game.

What Color Is Your Parachute?

I'm reading a book at the moment called "What Color Is Your Parachute?", a best-seller by a guy called Richard Bolles. 9 million copies sold! Apparently, the world's best-selling job-hunting book. I've only just started, so I'll let you know my thoughts in another post. Having had a quick flick through and read about 100 pages, it strikes me as being a serious read, with quite a lot of exercises to be done along the way.
I have been lent this book by my sister, Susan, who seems to have a vast library of similar material. It felt a bit funny when Susan mentioned the book, since someone that I used to work with at Bunnings also suggested the book to me. What a character he was. Vastly over-educated and over-qualified, this guy had the job of updating prices in the store. The Bunnings store I worked at had about 45,000 products, so I usually saw him with pages of stickers, desperately looking for the one brand of light bulb which needed an updated price sticker put on it. Not a job for the faint-hearted. I never really found out why this guy was working there at that job, but I suppose he had to, for one reason or another. Same as me, come to think of it.
We had some funny conversations during the 9 months that I worked there. He was a sarcastic bastard, so we hit it off right away. During one of these chats he mentioned this book, as one that had been a help to his daughter, when she was searching for some direction in her career. The name stayed in my mind, but of course I didn't get the book. Now I don't have an excuse not to read it.
I have a natural aversion to self-help books, and the booming self-help industry in general. The image I keep seeing is of those annoying American self-made gurus, with their perfectly capped teeth, their unrelenting optimism, and their tanned millionaire smiles. Being an "olde world" personality, I find all this brouhaha to be pretty nauseating. Perhaps this book will be different.
If this book can help me focus on a career path which I find challenging and interesting, then it will be a fabulous find. My part-time, 3 days a week job which I have now is OK, but certainly not something which I would look at doing for any great length of time.
It would seem that further staff changes have been made. The person who was the operations manager would now appear to have been demoted to the rank of relief manager, which is really pretty close to what I do. No idea why this has happened. Nothing was announced, although I'm sure the person concerned is not a happy camper right now. She has been at this company for some years, so I suspect that there was a major to-do, possibly with the son of the owner, who would now appear to hold the position of general manager/operations manager/sales and marketing manager - good luck to him. My guess is that he's in his early 30s. I'll give him 3 years before he has a breakdown of some sort.
I must also report that the rubber ducky which I mentioned in an earlier post was stolen shortly after I wrote that post! What a bummer. Football fans are suspected, since there is a footy stadium not far from where I work. My wife bought a package of 3 replacement ducks, and I'm happy to report that one of them is occupying the bucket which was home to the original one. We shall not allow footballing bastards to win over the duck!
In other news, work continues on the web site, although it's slow going. My computer guru is sorting out the shopping cart system now. I'll be using the PayPal system for online payments. Trying to work with Westpac (my present merchant bank) was turning into a nightmare. They wanted me to sign a 3 year deal with lots of fees; to have approval on what items I sold (if anything I sold might be considered naughty, then they could terminate the contract); to have a lot of conditions attached to the agreement - urgh. Forget it. I'll go with PayPal. They are a bit more expensive, but so much more straightforward!

Office politics

One thing I have had little experience in until recently has been working in someone else's business, as an employee. Being self-employed for 15 years, it's easy to forget some of the finer points of being a "team member", like the petty and stupid world of office politics. You don't have to work in an office cubicle to experience it. I suspect that all businesses have their fair share of this destructive nonsense.
The company that I work for 3 days a week has branches spread across Sydney, so it's rare that people get to see each other much, if at all. Most of us work on our own, with occasional phone calls, emails and visits from the people at head office. This is quite unusual. We work face to face with our customers, keep the facility looking clean and tidy, and do all the usual reporting to head office. Such a business requires staff to have some emotional maturity, professionalism, and to be self-motivated. It is impossible to micro-manage such a dispersed workforce, which is one of the things I like about what I do: I have some room to move without someone always looking over my shoulder (which has been my experience in other jobs I've had in the past 3 years).
One of the longer-term employees was recently "terminated" - a large, male, former football player. I had met him twice, I think, when I was working at another branch. He seemed to be a roving manager, going where he was required for a few days at a time. He gave the impression of someone who was fond of a beer and who knew a fair few swear words - a good Aussie bloke.
There has been no formal announcement of his departure, although, of course, everyone knows. He even sent a "see you later" email to all the branches, which I thought was quite unusual. All I really know about him is what I have heard occasionally from other staff, and a few customers. His manner might have been a bit abrupt with some of our late-paying customers. It would seem that way from what I've heard. One guy came into the branch where I now work and asked if I was this person. I said no, I'm Michael. Which was possibly just as well, since the customer looked angry enough to have caused a real scene if I was the person he thought I was. This very angry and large man then told me the whole story of what had happened. He felt better afterwards, and we even had a bit of a laugh about a few things. I suspect, although I don't know, that this man had then contacted head office and made a complaint. This might have had something to do with the termination. There are other stories, too.
It's not easy being an employer. You want to be able to forget about your staff and get on with the important thing of running your business. So much of what you hear from staff sounds like moaning and bitching: silly, seemingly-irrelevant things which just chew up large parts of your day. You quickly lose respect for these whingers and stop really listening to what they have to say. It's all so understandable.
But, it's also stupid.
In any service industry, where your staff are dealing with customers (is there an industry which doesn't?), your staff are the most important part of your organization. Forget all the bullshit about "the customer comes first" or "the customer knows best", if your staff aren't engaged in what you are trying to achieve, then you have failed, period.
Staff who feel that they are involved and appreciated for their efforts will create a better return for their employers than any number of impossible-to-meet sales targets. Give them a sense of ownership, make them accountable for what happens in their department, and you'll soon sort out the ones who will prosper and the ones who don't want that level of involvement.
In my particular job, you need some genuine empathy with people. A part of what I do is look after customers who are behind in their accounts. I make phone calls, send SMSs and emails, post letters. This isn't any fun, but it's an important part of the process, and customers understand that. After a while, you get to know the people who are always late with their payments. Some are just hopeless at remembering, but most are unable to pay. The times are tough for them: tradespeople scrounging for work; health issues; family breakdowns - the list goes on. It is frustrating to send SMSs and emails, to leave messages, and these people never seem to respond. It's the ostrich mentality - stick your head in the sand and everything will be OK. Unfortunately, that never works for long.
People who don't pay will have their goods auctioned so that we can rent out their storage units again. This is a clearly defined procedure, which has real legal consequences. We are required to give notice to these clients about the consequences of their continuing non-payment, which is entirely as it should be. Auctions don't happen often. Usually the recalcitrant client pays up on the verge of the lock being cut off the door of their unit, but not always.
It is easy to become rather indifferent to the plight of these customers, and I suspect that this might have been the case with the terminated ex-footy bloke. He had probably heard the same old lies for too long (the cheque is in the mail; I'll pay off $200 tomorrow etc.). I hope that he'll move onto something more enjoyable. In the meantime, gossip will continue about the real cause of his sudden disappearance; head office will say nothing; and no-one will learn anything useful.
Does this sound familiar?

Update on the web site

Hello again.
Work on my updated web site is now ploughing onwards. Poor Norm Douglas, the computer guru who is doing all the customizing of the Joomla! template and VirtueMart shopping basket has been putting in some long hours. But then so have I.
Right now we're getting the products sorted out. This will be the bread-and-butter of the site, which, after all, is meant to earn me some money. There will be 5 broad product categories: DVDs, Books, CD Soundtracks; CD Roms; Artwork. Then there'll be two sub categories for DVDs - NTSC and PAL; and three sub cats for Artwork - Japanese art, Western art and Cartoons.
A large part of the recent work has been customizing the database for the new-look site. This has been tedious, since the existing site runs on several databases, and the new one will just have one for the products. Given that there are different field names for the different products, poor Norm has had to use a lot of query statements to get the right fields to display in the appropriate categories.
The good news is that we are now getting close, with mainly some styling and reformatting yet to be done. The old database had over 8,000 products, many of which were redundant (anyone interested in buying VHS anime anymore? I kinda doubt it!); the new one has about half that many, but they are all current and have relevant info.
All the images have been uploaded, which makes a huge difference. I will be very interested to get your feedback once the site is open for testing - you will be informed! I will also have a secure online payment system this time, something which is common on other sites, but which I've never had before. This will present some challenges to me, but I suspect that once the site settles down, it should work very nicely.
There are still a lot of things to be set up: I have written quite a few articles which are yet to be included; there will be links to anime clubs; histories of anime and films in general; cartooning organizations; and what I hope to call "Mike's Shed", a place where I will put in links to things which I like but which have nothing at all to do with anime or cartooning. I do want to have some fun with this site, after all. Then there's the forum to set up, and a mailing list. I want to produce a regular online letter, which will be sent out to registered users; I plan to do regular podcasts; I've done a practice video (which I will redo) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF9OXwPTFW4 - I'll put a link to the final version on the front page of the site. Hopefully it doesn't prove to be too scary for new visitors.
All this activity has certainly kept me glued to my computer seat over the past few weeks. I'm beginning to think about what I will occupy myself with once this project has been completed and the new site is up and running. Of course, work on the site will never end, but it won't involve hours of work every day. I might have to go back to looking for gainful full-time employment again - urgh.
I saw a hilarious spoof on The Onion about outsourcing your own work - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaZ57Bn4pQ - if this doesn't make you howl with laughter, I'd check for a pulse. What is almost as funny is some of the posts from viewers, thinking that this may not be a bad idea. One of the joys of watching the wonderful Onion clips is reading the comments. Quite a few people seem to take them seriously, which is a tribute to the skills of the film makers, and a rather sad commentary on the mental age of some YouTube viewers (who can't all be 10 years old).
I'm feeling more positive lately, about myself and what I'm doing with my time. This is a good thing. I have to keep myself motivated and engaged. A good laugh every now and again is also very good medicine for me.
Stay well until next time.

The parable of the rubber ducky

Back at my part-time job today - sunny, windy and quiet - so what better to do than to update my blog!
It's been a while since I spoke about my revamped web site. Norm Douglas from Netreach in Victoria has been working away at it. I've spent about 100 hours in the past 2 weeks updating the products database for the site. Sheesh - I never want to do that again. This is a list of all the products which were currently entered, a list which came to over 8,000 products. I managed to get a copy from the company which currently hosts my site, and Norm then converted it into an Excel spreadsheet and sent it to me. It's the first time in the 12+ year history of my site that I'd seen it all on one spreadsheet.
So, I had a lot of work to do! Deleting about 2,500 videos was dead easy, but then came all the finicky work: adding an image here, a review there, the correct volume number etc etc etc. Seeing it all at once for the first time helped me realize how much of it was either out of date, or just missing. As an example, I've added about 2,000 images to the site. Now the database lists about 4,000 products, almost all of which have all the available info connected to them (correct title, format, volume and episode numbers, running times, image, languages etc). The payoff should be that it will be a pretty complete listing of anime in Australia, plus quite a bit from the US. The serious work is now being done by Norm, and I expect that in a few weeks I'll have something to show you people.
I'll get in touch with some of my old anime clients, explain what I'm doing, and ask them to test the site - give it a thrashing, and let me know what doesn't seem to work properly or make sense. Some of my followers will be invited ^_^ And, by the way, a very big hello to my 4th follower, whoever you may be!
Now, to the story of the duck...
You see some strange things by looking outside the office window, and one of the stranger things I see is a very cute-looking rubber duck, floating in a basin of water. I'm a big fan of rubber ducks, so it's nice to see one anywhere. What makes this one interesting is that the basin is positioned on the nature strip, where anyone walking past could reach down and grab it. But, in the 8 months or so that the ducky has been there, no-one has.
OK, so this is an industrial area where you don't get much foot traffic, but even so, it is amazing that not even one bastard has stolen it in all that time. Most of the regular clients who come into this place know about it, as do others who work in this area, yet there is something about a cute rubber duck which seems to bring out the nice part of people's nature. There are joggers going past, people walking their dogs, yet the duck lives.
Thinking of ducks reminds me of possibly my all-time favourite Tshirt: one from the Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig. It was his trademark duck, with the words "innocent bystander" arranged around the image. I wore that shirt for a lot of years before it fell to pieces. Maybe I just have a weird thing for ducks? It's possible...
I'm struggling to think of anything else of value (OK, so the duck isn't worth much, but it has an intrinsic value) which could last for that long in a public area without being stolen or vandalized. Is there a message here, or do I just have a weird thing for ducks...
Is it possible that items which are cute and defenseless are somehow immune from the usual fate of found objects? I would suggest that a psychology graduate look into this as an interesting topic for a thesis.
As for me, it makes me smile everytime I look in that direction, and that's a very nice thing indeed. May the duck float for a thousand years and help everyone who sees it feel a bit better.
Stay well until next time.

Random acts of kindness

A rather overcast day, chance of showers, occasional sunny patches - thus endeth the weather report.
I was talking to one of the regulars who stores at the place where I work. If you met him in the street, you'd possibly think he was a homeless person. He has long hair and a beard. The clothes were new once, but that was a few decades ago. He is intelligent, perceptive and articulate. Age? My guess is early 60s, could be more or less - it's hard to say.
This guy is here every day. His unit is packed from floor to ceiling with stuff, with just enough room left for him to get in and out. I have seen units like this before at some of the other storage facilities I've worked at. The clients are serious hoarders, nothing can be thrown away. It might be useful one day ...
The first thing that struck me about this guy was the twinkle in his eye. I am getting to hear more of his story each time we meet, which is a nice way to find out about someone: slowly, a bit at a time. I now know that he was a serious surfie in the 1970s, spending a lot of time around Noosa. All day at the beach, then doing some dumb job like cleaning dishes from 6pm to midnight, then back at the surf the following morning. He would have been in his 20s/early 30s back then.
He told me a story yesterday which helps illustrate the qualities of the man. One of the trucks this company I work for uses had broken down, and the driver, unable to fix the problem, rang this guy and asked him to help. I found that quite amazing, keeping in mind that this man does not work for this company and is a customer here. But, that's what the driver did, because he knew that this bloke can fix things and would probably be available. It was on a weekend.
So, the guy gets the details and drives off in his truck to help. The spare is hard to get off, the truck has been forced to stop in a bad location (on a busy street, on a corner, sloping ground, and the flat is on the driver's side, so they have to work close to the traffic). This guy gets some timber from the nearby bush, levels out the jack, sprays the nuts (which have become frozen) with lubricant, and manages to get the job done.
The good news is that the driver bought this bloke a case of beer and the company, when they found out about it, gave him a month's free rent. A nice outcome all round.
This guy has a lot of stories, and I've heard some similar ones about him helping out some Chinese restaurant people with floor tiling, not asking for any payment, but then getting free meals whenever he's in the neighbourhood. I love these stories.
Random acts of kindness, done when a need is seen and then met, is one of the great things that anyone of us can do. Helping out someone in need, with no other thought than it's the right thing to do, is a fabulous quality that we humans have. Perhaps these acts stand out more to me because we live in a society of rugged individualists who spend most of their time looking out for themselves. It is a lovely thing to see people stepping out of their own minds to help someone else.
We have all heard the stories of people drowning while others looked on. Would I jump in to save them? I suspect I would. I can think of two instances where I might have saved someone's life - both of them those split-second reflex actions which you either make immediately, or stand there and think about it (by which time the person is probably dead). These were reactions, requiring no thought on my part. I just did it.
Hamlet would have understood perfectly: sometimes you can think about things too much ^_^
Stay well until next time, when I'll probably give an update on the progress with my new web site.
Oh crap, I almost forgot: happy birthday to my elder son, Jake, who is now 15, just about as tall as me, much better looking, and despite his father, doing very nicely thank you. Nice one, big guy!

More thoughts through the office window

It's windy today. The gum trees are swaying and the roof of the small office I work in is flapping in the breeze. Yesterday was ANZAC Day, which means something only if you live in this part of the world. A day of remembrance for fallen soldiers generally, although the original was from the First World War.
When I was a kid in early highschool, the Vietnam War was on, and conscription existed in Australia. If I had been a bit older, it's possible that I would have been drafted and possibly sent to the jungles of Asia to kill strangers. One of the few things I have left from that period is my Vietnam Moratorium badge, which I used to wear on the bus. I do remember the looks I got from some people. It was probably my first experience of what being unpopular with some people can mean.
I got some dirty looks, and the occasional remark from fellow commuters. This was in the early 1970s. Australians were quite politically active at that time. There's nothing like a war going on which involves your country's troops to help focus the mind. The media coverage and the body bags and the length of the conflict was having some bad consequences on public support.
There's an old Spike Milligan gag about the army (something which he knew about from personal experience): "Join the army, travel the world, meet interesting people...and kill them." Unknown to me at the time was that my Dad would have moved me to Austria if I'd been called up. Both my parents were born there, so presumably I would have stayed at a relative's place, and maybe started a new life over there (or wait until conscription was revoked in Australia). As it turned out, we didn't need to do anything as exciting as that, since the Labor government of Gough Whitlam abolished conscription in 1972, when I was 15.
I wonder what I would have done had I been called up? Would I have been prepared to go to court and defend my beliefs that killing people I don't know is madness? Would I have been prepared to go to gaol? I will never know. Fortunately, the odds of conscription being reintroduced in Australia must be about zero. If either of my sons are called up, I'd like to think that I would do the same thing as my Dad.
It's easy to be a hero in your own mind, always doing the fine and honourable thing, but I wonder how many of us would live up to those ideals when faced with the reality of some really unpleasant consequences. When I was a kid, the idea of soldiers going to war just sounded crazy to me. My highschool still had a cadet program, where some of my school mates would dress up as soldiers and do some drills and marching. I thought they looked like dweebs. ANZAC Day was just embarrassing, with all those thousands of dead people who were killed in so many bogus wars.
I don't feel the same anymore. It really has nothing to do with whatever reasons the young guys had for enlisting, but more to do with what they did when they were there, in a foreign country, shit-scared, and faced with the likely prospect that they could be killed at any minute of the night or day. Would I have jumped out of my comparatively safe trench to help a wounded mate who was screaming in pain only 20 yards from me, when I would almost certainly be shot at by opposing guns? I have no idea. And I never will. And how would I live with the memory of not having done the proper, brave thing if I had been in such a situation? Do you think the nightmares would ever go away? I have my doubts.
Human beings should never be put in situations like this. We have free will, a conscience, and a memory. Any decent human being would be scarred for life if they had to live with such memories, and I'm sure that many people around the world have to do just that. Sure, you can rationalize your reasons and motives, but the dreams probably won't ever go away.
So, whenever I pass a war memorial now, I spare a quiet thought for the poor bastards who are represented, and am very grateful that I am not one of them.

Some thoughts through the office window

I'm not meant to be working today, but any day which offers work is a good day to me. The regular manager has burnt her hand, so I'm giving a hand (sorry about the pun) by filling her seat for the day. The place where I'm doing some regular casual work is one of those storage places, where you rent a unit to store your goodies. Most customers are people moving house or tradespeople storing their equipment here.
There are quite a few stories in a place like this, many of them not happy ones. People going through divorces; tradies who have no work, can't pay their rental bill, can't get access to their tools (which are stored in the unit) which they need to earn money. Moving house is enough of a trauma anyway. Moving because you have no other choice is no fun at all.
I went through something like this when my family had to move out of our home. We couldn't afford the mortgage payments, so we rented a small 2 bedroom unit and rented out our house. The money we save has helped keep our heads afloat whilst my wife and I try to find some gainful employment. Apart from a blow to the ego (and no real quiet areas in the small unit we live in now), moving hasn't been that bad. The poor sods going through divorces or business failures are doing it tough.
I'm much more sympathetic to their plight now. Having had some personal experience does make a difference! I doubt that I would have felt the same way 10 years ago, when my financial situation was strong and I felt confident and invincible. I suppose that anything which makes you more humble is a good thing, and I feel more humble now than at any other time in my life. This might even be the onset of some wisdom - time will tell.
Some of the other people who work here aren't as sympathetic. It's understandable, but doesn't help either them, the business or the customer. I hear stories from clients about other staff who are rude, making demands for payment etc. I don't see that that is their job at all. They are not debt collectors, eventhough the employer does want us to chase people who are behind in their accounts. There are ways and means, though.
There are always going to be some clients who will lie and lie and lie about their reasons for not paying on time. It's not hard to realize who those people are after a while. They are also the ones who tend to get abusive and aggressive. These people are also very defensive. I mainly feel sorry for them. But, you do have to deal with them. I'm pretty friendly and approachable and find that that seems to work most of the time. If they are being a real pain, then I give them the facts they want and try to get them out of my face ASAP. This also seems to work.
Even quite a few of the pain-in-the-arse people realize that they are being a pain at the time. It's just they are having some grief (caused by the company you work for, or some private hassles) and you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. So it goes...
Young guys are especially prone to over-reacting in such circumstances. They feel that they are being personally attacked by this arsehole and react as such - not a pretty sight for anyone concerned. It's not an easy job, dealing with people who can be as bad-mannered and nasty as we can be ourselves. Yet, customer service jobs are typically lowly paid and not highly regarded, despite what the bullshit job ads keep telling you. A terrific person as the first point of contact with potential clients is priceless to any business. They will not be fully appreciated, despite their obvious qualities to the business' customers. What a shame.
Meantime, I've had quite a busy morning this morning. It's nice to be able to make some decisions for myself (without being micro-managed) and see some happy people leave this place. Stay well everyone.

Remembrance of things past

I was sitting at the desk the other day, at the storage company where I do some part-time work, and I had the most wonderful flashback. No, it wasn't drug-related.
There was a pop clip that I saw years ago: an Aussie band, dressed as ninjas, singing something about a stop sign. Yes yes, I know it sounds like an acid flashback, but this was for real. And there I was, sitting down, minding my own business, when the name of the band came back to me - TISM. So, it was off to YouTube and there was that song, and a heap of others from this rather weird and wonderful band (now no longer with us, apparently).
If you're dying of curiousity, the song is called "Greg The Stop Sign!" - here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSTm9aititM
I was thinking about other things I've seen recently which reminded me of earlier times. A great documentary on surfing in the 1980s (lots of memories for me since I worked at a TV station at that time and met quite a few of the main surfers of that period). And there are always the songs that you were listening to at that time - great stuff. It's funny, but my kids tell me to turn the sound down when I'm listening to music. I wonder how long that will last?
As the years go by I find it easier and easier to imagine myself as an old man. My Dad is 83, and he's become a lot more nostalgic in recent years. Memories of climbing mountains in Austria more than 60 years ago are fresher to him than things which happened last week. I can imagine the same thing happening to me: I'll be flashing back to events in the 1970s and 1980s when it's 2030 - this will probably be quite confusing to my middle-aged kids, but I suspect it's all part of the journey we have. I look forward to listening to the madness of TISM when I'm an old fart in my 80s - if I'm still alive, I'll be doing my best to embarrass some people. Seems only right.
I'm still working on my Joomla! site. I think I'll soon be at the stage where I'll pass it on to a professional to do the finetuning. I'll have to get access to my existing database and have that converted; new fields have to be entered; it sounds like hard work to me.
A very big hello to Luke - my third follower! Soon I'll be able to form a religion. I promise vast tax breaks to my first 20 followers, so join now and beat the rush. It's lovely to see. Thanks Patrick for pointing the way.
Everyone stay well until next time!

Joomla! continues ....

Well, I've spent most of the past week fluffing around with my new web site, which is stored on my laptop for development purposes. After having got the main guts of the site downloaded and installed in about 3 days, I'm now up to my armpits in the fine tuning.
I can see that I am approaching the end of my present knowledge about web sites, and that I'll need some professional help sooner rather than later. There's only so much you can do before you have to start fiddling around with the source code, and that's a place I don't want to go to at all - too dangerous for the uninitiated like me! I've looked at a few other sites which are using the same template as me, so I'll try to do as much as I can before getting in the professionals.
The old adage that the last 10% of the process takes 90% of the time is pretty much true in this case. I have spent hours trying to change one small thing. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Sometimes it's because I have to delete one space from a line of code. I don't mind doing this if I know what to do, but I'm not a computer programmer, so the lines of code look like Sanskrit to me.
I love the idea of this open source programming, though, and have nothing but admiration for the people - unpaid - who create and develop it. This must be a true labour of love. One major hassle I see, though, is that the documentation and help which accompanies this free software isn't terribly good. Unless you can "talk the talk", you are going to get stuck. Then you'll either tear what's left of your hair out and throw your innocent laptop out the window, or you'll pay to have someone fix it for you. The ideal scenario would be for each development team to find a computer geek who also is able to explain the entire installation and modification process very thoroughly and systematically. Such a person will not be easy to find.
I suspect that most geeks have progressed way too far along the path of computer coding to remember what it was like to be a rank newbie. Writing something as particular as a help file for a computer program requires some real communication skills. You would have to keep simplifying the language, whilst at the same time remaining factually accurate. This would be a lot harder to do than it may sound.
So, I'm heading back to the laptop now to see what useful changes I can make to my site - wish me well.

Joomla!

So, what is "Joomla!"? An African form of abuse? A new recreational drug? The chances are pretty good that if you are a regular Internet person you may have come across the term somewhere before.
OK, enough suspense. It's the name of a website Content Management System (CMS). What that means is that you can use this CMS to create your own website without having to know anything at all about writing computer code. The great thing about Joomla! is that it is free and open source. You can download various templates, modules and plug-ins and literally create your own fully-functioning website. For someone like me who is not a technical person and who has very limited knowledge about HTML and all the other web acronyms, it's nothing short of miraculous.
My existing website was put online in 1998, a long time ago in the history of the Internet. Little has been changed on the site since, apart from me uploading new product information and images. In 1998 there was no Joomla!, and without being certain, I suspect that the only way to create a web site in those days was to sit down and physically type in all the code. I paid two young guys about $15,000 to create a site for me, one which we would now call an e-commerce site. It has links to various news items and a shopping basket. The main purpose of the site from my point of view was to allow the increasing number of on line clients of mine to order products from me through the site.
The various databases on the site run from FileMaker Pro, and the scripting language was cobbled together from different sources. Not being a technical person, I knew then - and know now - very little about what this involves. The guys had to create both a front end and a back end, which I could maintain remotely from my home computer. It took some months to get this done. I remember problems getting the site hosted on a stable platform. The site was moved from company to company, which may not have helped, as crashes were pretty common in the first few years.
My lovely wife, who in a previous life was a computer analyst at the Sydney Stock Exchange, has been gently nudging me to create a Joomla! site for some time. She spent a few years, going to college at night, doing a computer course to update her skills. One of the modules she studied was on using Joomla! to create a web site, and since then she has been a big fan. Knowing that I wasn't happy with the way my site looked, and knowing also that we needed some income (!), she made the very good point that I should look into creating my own site using this freely available product. It all made sense to me, but it's taken me some time to finally sit down and do it. This I did two days ago.
What I've managed to do is:

• choose an existing Joomla! template, one which could include a shopping basket.
• download and install the template on my laptop (I wanted to install the site somewhere where it was not online, so that I could play around with it first).
• choose a shopping basket system and install it into the website.

This may not sound like all that much, and you experienced users will be smiling into your Corn Flakes about now, but I have managed to create a fully functioning site, with a functioning shopping basket in 2 days, and it has cost me US$70 (to buy the customized template). I could put this online now and it would work (although it would certainly look clumsy and weird). If I was to do this again, I reckon I could do it in a few hours. This is nothing short of amazing!
I realize full well that I have a long way to go. Now comes the time-consuming part: working out how I want the site to look and function, what goes where, the fiddly stuff which takes 90% of the total time, but the major front end items have been done - the site works!
It would have been much harder without the help from various sources on the Net. If you are looking at installing a Joomla! site, I will gladly give you this wonderful source - go to YouTube and search for Joomla! Template Modification. Find the tutorials by Norm Douglas, who is one of the folks from the Joomla! Forums (and an Aussie). I followed Norm's process to the letter, and it worked. I'm not sure if Norm is a Catholic, but I'd vote for him as our next Pope. You will find various tutorials by Norm on different Joomla! subjects. If you are interested, I would definitely subscribe to all of them. With so much Internet content being plain rubbish, it is a joy to find people like Norm, who are giving up many hours of their time to help dumb arses like me.
Finding such a source is one of those lovely, unexpected moments which can help restore your faith in mankind. Long Live Norm!
And on a related note, a big hello to Patrick, who is now my 2nd follower (and the first one who is not related to me!).

Virtual relationships

Most of my job applications have been online, which has probably been a mistake. It is hard to avoid, though. Employers don't want to spend their days interviewing scores of people, most of whom will be unsuitable for the position, so they outsource the process to recruitment companies. For their part, the recruiters are in the same position. No-one wants to spend hours eyeballing lots of different people for the same job. Much easier to assemble a short list of about 3-6 candidates and then invite them in for a chat.
If you can handle it, it's probably better to be more proactive in your job seeking. Maybe find a small group of employers that you would like to work for, then phone the relevant HR person and see if you can get in the door to have a talk with them. You can impress them with your initiative, plus leave a copy of your CV. A brief, followup phone call every week or so will keep your name in their heads. With some luck, patience and perseverance, this might pay off.
This is not an easy thing to do, though. Not everyone is a salesperson who feels comfortable about imposing themselves on others and trying to sell themselves. I find this very hard to do.
You can try to trick yourself into believing that you are not really acting like a stereotypical salesperson. After all, you have a lot of skills and talents which would be beneficial to the employer, right? It's just that they don't know about you yet. You are giving them the opportunity to discover someone who will prove to be a real asset to the business. You are doing them a favour by knocking on their door.
There is a lot to be said for face-to-face meetings. So much communication today seems to be done through a computer, and so much of it is shallow, thoughtless and bad. Emails are a disaster for real communication. I can barely think of one which I've received (or sent) which had any real thought put into it. It's perfect for those people who you really don't want to talk to at all. Just a quick email to say that you're still alive is much easier than having to phone them up and listen to all that whinging and moaning.
Writing something to someone whilst looking at a computer screen is not the same as looking at that same person across a coffee table. So much of what we "say" isn't said in words at all. The hundreds of small indicators which we unconsciously use as body language tells a lot more than words can. We get immediate feedback on our comments, and learn a great deal more about our friend than through a text message.
There is so much nastiness on the Internet, too. So many young punks who seem to feel brave because they can trash someone else on an online game, or on YouTube, or on a Message Board. There's no way that 99% of these cowards would dare to say such things to a real person's face, regardless of their age.
I think this is an important trend - this lack of responsibility for one's actions. The online untraceable, bombastic coward feels like they can do or say what they like, with impunity. Your actions seem to have no consequences. You get away with it. It doesn't take long before you lose any sense of shame or regret or even responsibility about posting some awful video on YouTube, which might be devastating to the person featured. It's easy to forget that the person in the video or post is real. It seems like fun, so you do it. You just don't care. This emotional detachment in our dealings with our fellow humans is being exponentially exacerbated by the Internet. There is no virtual "kick up the bum" to someone who behaves badly.
How many of us write letters anymore? It takes too long. It takes some real effort to sit down, assemble your thoughts, and tell a story with a beginning, middle and an end. I'm talking about writing a letter with a pen on paper, not in a Word document. I have read letters written hundreds of years ago which are masterpieces of expression. Letters written not just by statesmen, but by soldiers and farmers and widows. I doubt I could write anything approaching the eloquence of these people, yet I am infinitely better educated, fed, housed and clothed than they were.
I'm sure it's partly a question of time. Is there anyone out there who doesn't feel that their life is always busy? That they don't have the time to do certain things (like write a decent letter to someone)? If you ask anyone how they are, they'll say they're busy, as if this is a good thing. Try telling someone that you are not busy and watch their reaction. Say that you have spent the day sitting under a lovely tree, reading a book, and watching the birds flying overhead. Not a very productive way to spend your day, especially when your friends have been working long and boring hours at a job which they really don't like, with people that they don't really care for all that much. Tell them that in an email, sent a few days after you received their email, and they'll probably hate your guts.

A bit of a laugh

Ah, it was good to have some laughs today. I can take myself too seriously.
The cause of the laughter? Finding some new websites which appeal to my sense of the ridiculous. Try this one - http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of
Parental warning though - it does contain lots of f**king bad language.
In a previous life I worked as a film editor at a commercial TV station. I started off in the news department, cutting together stories to meet the daily deadline. A good way to learn the trade quickly. Despite the last-minute shitfights to get the lead story to air on time, there was a tremendous team spirit in the newsroom. This was in the days when local news stories were still shot on 16mm film stock, no video.
Then I worked in a newly-formed documentary unit as the lead editor. This was probably the highlight of my working life. I just loved it. I had a lot of autonomy and got along well with the various producers I worked with. This was in the late 1970s and early/mid 1980s.
Watching someone edit a story is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but if you are the one doing the editing, and you enjoy the process, it is totally absorbing. The idea of combining vision and various audio tracks to tell a story is something I loved doing. During the 2 years or so of the doco unit's existence, I was editing about 1 one hour documentary a month. This is quite a workload, but it was terrific. Included was a series of 13 docos in the lead up to the Los Angeles Olympics.
I was also in charge of the annual Christmas reel. This is a collection of bloopers and other embarrassing moments, which had been carefully kept by some deviant soul - me - who would then turn them into spoof stories, or set them to music. This would then be aired for the first time at the annual Christmas party. This was in the days before blooper shows were seen by the public, and were, in any event, much too naughty to be aired commercially. Great fun was had by all.
So, I've always enjoyed stories which are told using film and sound. I especially like the irreverent ones, when they are well written, acted and presented. If the link above doesn't make you laugh, then we are on very different wavelengths.
It's been so long since I've had a really good bellylaugh, that I was initially a bit concerned. The thought crossed my mind that I might wind up having a heart attack. I held my breath, my face went red, then this strange guffaw came out of my mouth - quite strange really. I suppose that laughing takes some getting used to.
Years ago I remember hearing about these Laughter Clubs, which I think were started by an Indian man. A place for people to get together and laugh. This might sound insane, but I suspect that this man is a genius. The idea is that you join in with other people and you try to laugh. OK, to start with this might be hard or impossible, so you fake it. You pretend to laugh. You keep faking it for as long as it takes. Eventually some emotion will rise up. Perhaps it will be fear, anger, sadness, maybe joy. Whatever it is, it's a good thing to let it out. Chemical reactions start happening in your brain and body. You might even consider it a form of cardiovascular exercise. At the end of 15-20 minutes, I'd imagine you would feel quite exhausted.
No drugs, no how-to books, no gurus. Just a group of people, getting together and sharing some wordless emotions. I like the sound of it. I should probably join.