Archives - Mike Crowl's Scribble Pad Blog January 2002/December 2001

28th Jan, 2002 Having said I was giving up the Blog, I'm tempted back into it by reading all these other bloggers, especially the ones I interviewed by email for this article I'm aiming to do....or these articles in the plural that I'm attempting to get off the ground. The variety of blog-approaches is interesting. I suppose I hadn't really got to look at too many others in the past because the huge lists of blogs on places like Blogger are overwhelming to the degree that you give up quickly. None of them mean anything to you - in a personal sense - and so they appear to be just some body ranting off about their life or other people's lives, neither of which they seem to like very much - and often the language is that of a person who learned the basics in primary school, added 97 swear words in secondary school and now strives to get those 97 words into most sentences, to the exclusion of any other words that might be available. One of the writers on the writers' list today claimed that English has its roots in German and that the Norman conquest proves this. Hmmm, I'd always thought William the Conqueror was French, or at least came from that part of the world. Curious how history appears to be changing! Maybe it's a by-product of deconstructionism. Or maybe, more likely, it's a by-product of ignorance. Another writer on this same list the other day claimed that Great Britain consisted of England, Scotland, Wals and Cornwall. Hmm. Don't know when Cornwall became a country rather than a county. Of course, it's a little difficult sometimes to see a single letter like 'r' on a computer. I think what irritates me about blogging via Blogger, is that I'm having to learn aspects of web-design all over again - web-design according to the Blogger rules, which ain't that self-explanatory. I don't like the way it's all set-up - certainly there's an ease of getting the stuff you write onto your page...once you've figured out how the heck you do it...but trying to make the page look half-way appealing is a major task, and not something I'm really keen to spend the hours required doing. In the meantime, then, if I want to keep writing in this Blog, I have to put up with the end result which is an ugly page (even though Ben had a go at sorting it) and the inability to make it look as though I care two hoots about it. 1st Dec, 2001 Did the Mosgiel Coronation Hall thing tonight. The Hall certainly is much improved after its refurbishment: the foyer is now a large meeting room and a new entranceway has been built around the side, leading into a smaller area and into the theatre. The stage has been extended (it used to be very shallow) and is now a decent depth for most performances. Backstage has all been improved, upgraded, painted, modernised...whatever, and there's quite a lot of space around there. Grant sang his one song, mucking up the same line twice, but that was okay...he went across well. But it was exceedingly hot inside the theatre; it's been a very warm day, muggy and overcast, and I'm now sitting in my singlet and shorts, 10.30pm, and it's hardly cooler. We finished painting the flat today (apart from a few touching up bits we have to do) and laid down newspaper under wood chips. So the place is looking a lot better, and, once tomorrow's out of my hair, musically, I should start to be able to get back to some normality. Although Christmas is on the way, and that's always a bit stressful. Hopefully this year it won't be, with fewer presents being given all round. But I'm sure we'll manage to make it stressful anyway! The concert tonight was a rag-bag of all sorts of Mosgiel-connected groups, and people who'd been involved in their Taieri Musical Society's productions. (Turned out Grant had played Pontius Pilate in the recent production of Jesus Christ Superstar.) There were bodies everywhere, though it was all very well organised. Ladies singing groups, of the older than middle-aged kind, with all the ladies sporting their latest perms - must have kept Mosgiel and its environs busy for the last couple of days. Dancing groups, taps dancers and the sort who appear to be about to do a ballet and suddenly do pop. Solo singers, and ensembles, and country bands, and a group doing a version of Cinderella with a bloke, a heavy, beer-stomach-carrying feller, dressed up as the fairy godmother. Would have been a great concert (I didn't see much of it except on a video monitor and didn't stay after I'd performed) apart from the heat. Can't imagine what it must have been like inside the theatre for those sitting through it all. I had 85 emails to churn my way through today. I notice there's more junkmail arriving on my home address - I haven't been accustomed to getting it there. It all claims to be stuff I asked to be sent, but I think that's a lie in most cases. I don't even bother trying to 'unsubscribe' because I suspect that trying to do that will only indicate someone at the email address has paid attention to their nonsense. The rest of it was mostly from the writing group. I'm getting good at deleting anything that doesn't immediately interest me in the way of subs (and thus, their crits) and trying to note those that are worth keeping. But of course I seldom get back to those...at the end of of trying to deal with 85 emails you don't have much energy for going back and reviewing the stuff you put aside. So eventually it goes in the bin, too. Back to Mike Crowl's Scribble Pad