reaching out

to the cyberhermitage that is savage reserve. So as my cyberworld expands I have begun to receive strangers into my hermitage. I'm not talking desperate scammers from the Bank of Nigeria, but actual people. I just received an invitation to stay in the handsome building known as the Harmony Club of Selma which is odd as it does not appear to have accommodation, despite the so-called residential floor.

As the charming but not so informative website explains, the Harmony Club was set up by the Jewish community of Selma, Alabama. In 1930s it became the home of the Elks, which sounds like one of those Barney Rubble type secret societies. So what happened to the Jews of Selma? Does anyone know? Did they head out west with the Joads? Emigrate? There was no Jewish state to speak of? I imagine the building for years abandoned empty like the temple MM and I visited in Plovdiv with its beautiful naive art and its abandoned scrolls and apparatus of worship, and how MM spoke Spanish to the Ladino speaking caretaker. A language that had been carried to Eastern Europe by the Jews leaving Spain, some east, some West with Columbus to the New World, a phrase which now looks odd as its local referent here is a chain of supermarkets. That gives a new spin to the John Donne poem

let us others to New Worlds have gone

doesn't it?

I am rambling and you have better things to do...

rehydrating

is probably good idea right now. Though, never the poster boy for the late 2oth early 21st century, I am not one for toting round a waterbottle. So I guess my veins are shrinking or necrotising or something nasty as we speak, and it could according to the pump ads be (partially) responsible for my miserable attention span ... though I am still blame late onset attention deficit disorder ...

Anyway the long awaited tour of the 'Grad with Melf and Sean was well worth the angst of a four hour delay in arrival. Especially since they brought with them a bottle of seven tiki white rum and (left behind the last of the) manuka honey vodka. Either of these mixes with ginger beer and lime went perfectly with late after noon badminton on the lawn.

Games where it is reasonably possible to participate with a glass in hand are the best kind, clearly. Despite losing in the Manawatustan Wellington play-offs it was a good time all round(s after rounds). The proceedings were interrupted by the unusual Spanish women he keeps a lot of her furniture in my garage., but that was all by the by.

We went into town and showcased the local residents' talent at the local karaoke joint. Which is breath-taking, but not in the way you might think. Palmengrad appears to be bride capital of the universe. We spotted 7 different hen parties. Each with not-so-blushing-bride with veil and skimpy outfits, all matching a theme ... naughty catholic school girls seems popular this year, which gives a whole porn-as-as-street-theatre atmosphere to the strip.

Melanie succinctly summed up the problem of the 'Grad, from a Newtown/Wellie perspective ... there is only the equivalent to Courtney Place here.

Speaking of 'atmosphere' this time as a lexical item, I awoke the other day to ad on the local radio for a brand new restaurant "opposite the hospital" ... fire your copywriter ... which has rebranded itself and has a great new name .... ambiente', pronounced in the approximation of a French accent as only a resident of the 'Grad could produce AM-BE-ANT-TAY. If you have to French it up a little, what's so wrong with ambience?

The locals, conservative about all other facets of life, have a very gung ho attitude to language. I'm not one an apostrophe-obsessed person. It is perfectly reasonable for people to be confounded by the rules of the little bugger, as the standardisation of this aspect was produced by printers not linguists or authors as late as the nineteenth century. Besides, the morphology of English is so poor that in spoken language we do not distinguish the ending -s as attached to verbs to mark 3rd singular present habitual aspect, and both plurality and possession on nouns. Yet no-one is confused when listening because we recognise word class and function from context. I digress ... rant ... What locals here seem to enjoy is sprinkling diacritics from other languages over perfectly reasonable English words in a manner reminiscent of heavy metal bands. There is a hotel named after an English county which has a nice overlay of umlauts above each of the vowels, which must really confuse the German and Hungarian tourists. Another obsession is inappropriate z. Just down the road from the aforementioned hotel, is another imaginatively named shadzz. Most locals have no idea how this is meant to be pronounced, which surely would impact on room occupancy rates, no?

And before I go. If you hanker after white rum, take a look at seven tiki. The bottle and the website reproduce the legend of the seven canoes that brought the Maaori to this corner of Polynesia. Who says hard liquor can't be educational. Though, if you ever find yourself navigating an outrigger in the Pacific in hopes of finding us down here, don't rely on the map on the bottle. For some reason, Tonga is west of Tahiti and more northerly than Hawai'i ...

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

So how was your day?

I am over over over my 'clients'. In other news I have felt hung over all day after a big night out on 3 drinks.

After a birthday drop-in on a friend with a boxed gerbera ... rapidly becoming the most insincere flower ... replacing the chrysanthemum and the carnation ... though they are kinda disney-like .... I ended up watching people salsa at a Chinese bar (?!!). Men seem to like dancing salsa. I think because if you can you look good at it. Salsa skills perhaps run along an inverted bell curve, as you see a lot of good salsa dancers and a lot so-so ones, but really no-one in between. Perhaps men like it because it is such an instructed dance, they seem to be listening to a little voice in their heads counting one and two and, and shouting hip-swaying instructions. Hmm I guess I am not a big fan of these contrived styles. Dancing is a language and last night most of them looked like they were lip syncing it.

Gosh criticism? Here on Savage Reserve? Perhaps because I feel unable to criticise the aforementioned clients. So sorry dancers, sorry salsa fans, I'm projecting.

no comment?

Blogger won't let me comment on my own blog! So this is for you K. Yes anything with crust in it is hilarious and any expression with moist makes me blush

someone needs to go

to abuse school. Walking home on Friday night at the dangerous hour of 9pm, I got this shouted at me from a dude in a car

you're a fucking sexy man ... or woman ... or whatever you are

I think I'll analyse that as an initial slippage with a poorly attempted coverup.
Still abuse from passing cars is the norm here. I had apples pelted at me from a moving vehicle the first week I lived in this town which really kicked off my loving relationship with this place.
Ill-advisedly, we went out last night. We forgot it was St Patrick's day ... and fiddly dee potatoes to that, I say. Though I did learn an amusing new expression -kia ora begorrahs i.e. people of Irish and Maaori ancestry. Everywhere we were out of place, too old, not rugby enough, not emo enough, not wearing green, not pissed till puking. MelF and McDreamy are coming up next weekend and I am worried now about how entertain them. I am tired of smirking at the provincial ways here. It is no longer amusing, now I get that there are no alternatives.

calendarisationmania

apropos to the apropos to MM's post. I have been scouring the net for more examples of the calendarisation of professions. Though perhaps as not as odd as the men of mortuaries, the gondoliers of Venice have been immortalised and calendarised, and most sacrilegiously, priests of Rome

if you're fond of

sand dunes and salty air....

When I was a kid summer started just before school ended in December. But things have been happening here on Earth since then ... global warming? crustal shift? cellphones? and now summer starts the day school starts back.

To celebrate the greenhouse affect, today I went to the beach. I am actually not much of a beach-goer. In fact, my co-beach-goers were surprised and a little put out that I didn't want to swim. I would have had there been waves, but to me there is little point in swimming when there's barely a tide. And besides, because there were kids in our party they swam between the flags in a very crowded people soup. So I instead investigated the sand dunes and burnt the soles of my feet in doing so ... Doesn't this, though .....

.... seem more inspiring than that?

I still find it hard to believe that on many parts of the coastline, the local governments not only allow but generally encourage people to drive up and down the beach ... so much for salty air.

lost in found

Have spent the afternoon at foundmagazine. I used to look at all the time but then I forgot about it. So I guess I found it again. Anyways, I am sentimental, and nostalgic for things that we might have experienced individually and yet somehow remember collectively. Is that you, zeitgeist, haunting us all?

This photo received a lot of comments, especially from women who used to own these togs. Many wished they still had them now. She's a little scary, a little fierce, but so so cool...

Anyways, as much as the found photographs are arresting, it is often the little notes, the scraps of thoughts addressed to the self, a lover, or a stranger who has boxed your car in at the carpark that really grab you ...

say no to bbqs

dammit. At least last night's one could be the last of year, given that summer is officially over. I think the autumn equinox could be reorganised slightly and celebrated as the end of wiener season.

So I have the blahs today, and I have tried to walk it off. But apart from some cool kites it didn't really work. I should be preparing stuff for tomorrow but you know me... I was going to give you a virtual tour of my lounge with new pacifika frames but only this shot come out anywhere near decent



There is a tiny spot of blood ... my blood on one of them ... but I'll not tell you which.