fatvegan

We had our Woodcourt St house warming party last night. It was a little ripper. We probably had 100 people here over the evening. And the house was no where near full. For the first couple of hours there were whole rooms almost empty, even though there were a tonne of people here. You'd still wonder aimlessly around looking for someone. We could have fit so many more. Dinner was a little congested, but we didn't put a lot of planning into the logistics of it. The congestion was also mitigated but the kind of rolling dinner we had running. People would just find food and start making it dinner when they felt hungry. It was good.

And there were so many good people. I mostly had short conversations because I was running around a little stupidly, but they were nice ones.

The house really feels like it was designed for enormously grand parties. I love it.

Nat and I went to the Easter Show today. It was so much fun. I'd been worried it would be like some other fond memories from my childhood and be a giant disappointment as an adult. But there wasn't even a hint of disappointment. All the stuff I loved as a child (like cows and chickens and woodchopping) I loved just as much. And all the stuff I didn't love as a child (like paintings and cake decorations) I thought were awesome. I still think the rides and showbags are silly. Especially the showbags.

We also managed to catch a ferry back to the city, going against the advice of every responsible adult we spoke to. We had to walk and wait and catch a bus to get to the ferry wharf. But we did it. And it was a winner ferry trip. Even though we didn't go outside because Nat doesn't like wind.

Then, after a stupidly long bus trip (like 50 minutes) back to Woodcourt St, Lauren and I had the most amazing pizza from Crust. Really spectacular pizza. Each slice was an extravagance. At least, each slice of the vegetarian supreme. The mushroom wasn't so incredible (but still good).

Lauren has just moved in today, and it is very good to have her. She is fun and has a good commie house character. She has a lot of tupperware too, which we are in desperate need of. Very good person to have around.

After dinner, Chris and I tried to get the fast internet working. But we couldn't. It hasn't been connected yet. March 31st though. Not far off.

Alone, I went to see Rambo 4 last night. I thought it might suck a lot, although I was hopeful because Tom had liked it so much. And as it turned out, I did too. It was pretty intense and visceral and you couldn't really say it romanticized violence. I don't feel like the Rambos are about glorifying violence in any sense. I reckon their just trying to make us think about that side of ourselves. The bit with the rock at the end didn't feel like it was trying to demonstrate that violence was right and necessary, just that everyone has a breaking point.

The fourth film looked much, much better than the others. I think they took a lot more care. It was still a simple film, without a lot of nuance. And it is the same ideas, but then the issues haven't changed that much. A lot of stuff happens in this film that looks like it's demonisation because it is so unbelievably barbaric. I don't know much about Myanmar, but having read a little about the Khmer Rouge, I didn't doubt that any of the stuff that happened in this film was based on true stories.

Most people would probably hate it, and there's plenty to hate. And plenty of killing. I'd reckon only about half of it is done by John himself though.

A bunch of folk went to see Pivot at the Arts Factory. Nice place. Winner band. They really were super cool. Although major dags. It makes me happy to see bands play who are their own favourite band. Musicians who would rather finish the song then ever have sex again.

When I see good bands, I feel like running around the world trying to find more good bands would be a pretty good way to spend life. Like Sal & Dean did back in the olden days. I think Pivot tonight were the closest I've seen those new-age sythnsters come to jazz.

Rough Edges tonight was a bit of a challenge. The normal team wasn't there so it was just Michelle and myself. The Shore boys were there too and they are pretty cool and work hard. But we can't ask them to solve our problems and break up fights.

So we had to close early, which meant we couldn't get Govindas. So everyone was sad that they were going to go to bed hungry. There also was hardly any Oz Harvest food, so everyone was even sadder. Late in the night, about 15 minutes before we were closing, Oz Harvest did bring more food. It was very popular. Everyone was well hungry.

I love Oz Harvest. And Govindas. Good people.

There were also no blankets. So other people were sad about being cold.

Despite the tricks, the night went reasonably smoothly until right near the end. A few people got involved in a fight. A very big chap, taller and wider than me. And a tough lass, wider but rather shorter than me. In general people tend to trade words for a while, before getting physical. But these guys cut to the chase. The girl tried to use a broom as a staff which which to do battle. The fellow's weapon of choice was a bread crate. I had to jump in and distract them from one another. I politely asked the girl to give me her broom/staff. She reluctantly did, but quickly traded it for a chair. A much better weapon with which to combat a bread crate.

So these two had their weapons raised above their head, ready for a good throw or a good swing. The chap was in the corner, and the girl was covering his escape pretty convincingly. Spontaneously, I decided to tackle the girl and drag her away. She got a bit upset because she thought I was trying to protect her and she certainly didn't need protecting. I assured her that the last thing I was trying to do was protect her. That calmed her down. That is, until she processed the implications and decided that I must be trying to protect the other chap. That would mean I was taking sides, and that he needed protecting from her. Which might imply that she was somehow a threat or unreasonable. I insisted I wasn't protecting him either. Which was actually also true.

I asked her to commit to not hitting the fellow until I'd talked to him and asked him to leave. She said that was OK. So I went and asked the fellow to leave. He didn't want to leave until she left. We had a bit of a stand off. Thankfully, he didn't punch me. I negotiated for them both to leave at the same time in opposite directions. Which I thought was very clever, until I realised they were both wanting to go the same way and walking off the other way would be fairly silly. Fortunately the fellow was gracious and walked off, even though the lass sat down at Rough Edges and waited for him to go. His grace came with a lot of shouting and swearing and threats, but it was grace nonetheless.

I handled the whole thing rather poorly. Partly because it happened suddenly. Partly because I wasn't properly team leader and wasn't expecting to be jumping into fights. Partly because I didn't know the people. Partly because I was so scared that I didn't think about anything I was doing and just said the first thing that occurred to me. Quite a few of those things didn't make sense. And a few of them made things worse.

Rough Edges is a wonderful place. The lass apologised profusely for causing such a ruckus. I apologised to her for tackling her. And we made friends. I don't think I am friends with the chap who walked away though. I made him pretty cross.

I think this is way cool. I'm really curious about the 80-84 age group. For some reason hardly any of them have three children. A lot had two kids, and a lot had four or more, but only a few had three. My hypothesis is that those mothers are all strong Anglicans or Catholics. All the Anglicans had 2, and all the Catholics had 4+.

Age     Birth       Women by number of children ever born
group   cohort      (%)
                    0       1       2       3       4+   
15–19    1982–86  97.6    2.2     0.1     0.1     0.0 
20–24    1977–81  83.2    9.6     5.8     1.1     0.0 
25–29    1972–76  58.1    18.8    13.6    5.3     0.3 
30–34    1967–71  33.2    22.2    25.1    13.5    4.2 
35–39    1962–66  15.9    13.4    36.1    22.0    6.0 
40–44    1957–61  14.0    12.4    36.2    22.4    12.6
45–49    1952–56  10.7    14.2    36.3    25.2    15.0
50–54    1947–51  8.1     9.4     40.2    26.1    13.6
55–59    1942–46  6.6     6.7     37.2    27.5    16.2
60–64    1937–41  7.5     6.7     29.0    24.4    22.0
65–69    1932–36  5.4     8.4     20.9    27.7    37.6
70–74    1927–31  5.8     8.9     26.1    25.5    31.6
75–79    1922–26  8.4     10.4    30.0    20.3    30.9
80–84    1917–21  5.0     11.5    30.6    17.3    35.6
85–89    1912–16  13.4    8.6     27.5    23.7    26.7
90–94    1907–11  3.7     4.9     31.4    36.2    23.8

Source: Australia's fertility: a HILDA survey based analysis

We signed our lease at Woodcourt St and have handed over a lot of money. There are a few people interested in staying there as well, so hopefully it will all work out. I went to visit it for the first time on Saturday and I think it is brilliant. Giant and light and practical. I took a few photos of the place.