This is a low

I'm bored. And hungry. And ridiculously tired.

I will have to do some washing up before I can cook dinner, which is already at least an hour, hour-and-a-half overdue. I need to vacuum, especially after I somehow tracked a whole lot of dirt in despite NOT having been anywhere likely to include dirt, and didn't notice until I had spread it through more than half the house.

I have to pick 4 hymns to play at church tomorrow morning. I have to get to church by 8am to play the aforementioned hymns. And then I want to head straight from there to an orienteering event about 45 minutes drive away, which requires that I be well-organised by 8am.

And then I will come back here and, bizarrely, clean up so the guys fixing my ceiling can come in and make a mess.

I will then spend next week doing two jobs simultaneously, while being interviewed for a third.

It could all be quite thrilling, actually, if I could start doing some more living and spend less time wedded to a 15-inch screen.

Thrill 4-16: Low down and havin' fun {Hoochie Woman}

When I started this series of posts on Tori Amos' new album, The Beekeeper, it was supposed to be about first impressions.

That sounds faintly ridiculous after five months, but I can still recall some things from my first hearings of these songs. I certainly remember hearing Hoochie Woman for the first time, because it was the third track that I previewed and the first one that I actually liked straight away.

Why? Because it's fun, dammit. I can't think of a track on any Tori album that is this fun since Happy Phantom way back in 1992. Hoochie Woman has handclaps. Need I say more?

Well, yes, I do need to. As much as I was delighted by this song initially, on its own it isn't much more than a catchy groove, and the novelty does tend to wear off a bit if it's listened to too often. It's the context it appears in that makes it work so well.

I was extremely pleased to find out a few years ago that Tori understood the significance of song order to how individual songs will sound. As human beings, most of our senses and perceptions are relative - we are not very good at judging speed for example, but excellent at telling if we are accelerating or slowing down. We can tell whether two things are similar or different with respect to a particular attribute.

Tori spoke of song order as being analogous to hanging pictures on the walls of a gallery - you have to work out which pieces will enhance each other by appearing alongside. She understood that the effect of having Real Men at the end of the Strange Little Girls album, as a summation, was infinitely preferable to the original intention of making it the opening statement.

She also quite clearly understood the effect of following the unusually high vocals of Martha's Foolish Ginger with the unusually low vocals of Hoochie Woman. Try playing the latter immediately after Witness instead and you'll comprehend the huge difference that song order makes.

That, dear reader, is one of the chief reasons why Tori Amos makes some of the best albums in the business.

Linkage

Yes, I have started (but by no means finished) adding links to my blog. You know, the page you're looking at right now...

I was hoping to add them to the left-hand side, but for now my Luddite tendencies have won out and I put them where I've put virtually every enhancement - in a box that Blogger had already provided.

Let's see... that's a picture, a counter (what, you never look that far down?!), a blogwise logo, new improved comments shamelessly borrowed from elsewhere... I mean Elsewhere ;-), and links.

I could almost seem respectable. Sort of like the guy in the cheapest house in the street when he decides it's time to make sure all the windows have glass in them.

Thrill 4-15: Neurotic austerity? {Martha's Foolish Ginger}

Alright, I confess. I simply could not come up with a title for this post that satisfied me. The above is the best I can come up with to define what appeals to me about Martha's Foolish Ginger, the first in what I consider an outstanding grouping of tracks that closes The Beekeeper after the lengthy title track.

I already mentioned (probably some months ago!) that there are four songs on the album that strike me as amongst the most beautiful-sounding Tori Amos has ever constructed: Jamaica Inn and Sleeps With Butterflies were the first two, and Goodbye Pisces is still to come.

Martha's Foolish Ginger stands apart from these in many respects. Whereas the others (especially the first two) are warm and lush, Martha's is stripped down to its bare essentials. The verses in particular are little more than an insistent drum beat, a piano figure that focuses on two notes, and a nervous flicker of guitar. The unusually high vocal only emphasises the empty spaces.

And that's why I love it.

There's something that's always appealed to me about music that's made from small, seemingly unpromising cells. It's a dangerous tightrope act, requiring that the right cells are selected. Most of my gnashing of teeth over dance tracks is because they pick the wrong bar of music to repeat incessantly. At the other end of the spectrum, there are pieces of Classical music that do extraordinary things with tiny ideas. The 1st movement of Beethoven's 5th symphony is as good an example as any. Ba-ba-ba-buuuuuum.

To me, Martha's is an example of doing a lot of good things with a little material. Those verses appeal to my obsessive-compulsive streak, I think. Just when it could become a bit much, the end of the line resolves into a definite key, and leads to a chorus that adds just the right amount of melody to warm things up. Literally, on the word 'just', and also on 'I'. If those harbour lights had just been a half a mile inland, who knows what I would have done.

Those two little high points in the already high melody, when everything else in the song is bent on behaving like a ticking clock, make all the difference. The right touch in the right place, and we've moved from boring to entrancing.

'Pacific Breeze'

The car air freshener I just bought had a 'scratch-and-sniff' panel on the packaging, so I could test-drive the scent before purchasing.

It's a nice idea. However, the panel somehow didn't quite capture the God-awful bubblegum stench that is now emanating from my vehicle.

When I come to power... (part 4)

...the use of economic theory will be legally restricted to those select few who are capable of understanding it. Which will basically mean academics, and not anyone in a management position who can't take their eyes off the bottom line.

Words like 'efficiency' and 'productivity' will not be able to be used in a business proposal without vetting by a panel of experts, at least one of whom must be a Nobel laureate.

People will be made to understand, by force if necessary, the hidden costs inherent in 'efficiency'. They will have drummed into them that it might be better to process 1000 applications (or orders, or units, or...) per month well than to process 2000 in a rush, because sooner or later one of the rushed items will come back to bite you in spectacular fashion. The short term savings of cutting corners, or staff, will be weighed up against the long term loss of quality.

Recalcitrant managers will be rotated into the positions that they manage, so that they understand what unending stress does to performance. Entire finance sections may have to be put through this process.

In the worst cases, the word 'sustainability' will be tattooed across the person's forehead.
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In case you're wondering, the above is not inspired by my own work situation. It is inspired by several things - a report of what is happening elsewhere in my employer, a report that has just been issued here in Australia about the disastrous administration of our immigration department, and an explosion some years ago.

I may have mentioned the explosion before - I can't remember, but it wouldn't suprise me. That's because it is the most vivid example I know of what can happen when 'efficiency' and dollar signs override common sense. A power plant in the state of Victoria gradually ran down its maintenance program. Fewer and fewer staff had to do the same job, so obviously they couldn't do it as thoroughly.

I'm quite sure that some idiotic manager somewhere in that company felt very satisfied with the savings they made... until the power plant exploded, killing two people and blacking out a third of the state - over a million people - for days or in some cases weeks. The compensation claims, particularly from businesses that were forced to shut down or lost stock (eg refrigerated food), made the initial savings on the maintenance program look truly pathetic. And, I repeat, two people died.

Every time I hear someone talk about efficiency, productivity and savings, I think of that.

I think about that a lot, unfortunately.

Call that entertainment?

I've just come home from the evening session of The War of the Worlds.

I'm trying to decide whether to sue Mr. Spielberg for emotional distress. If I sleep any time in the next 48 hours, I will be pleasantly surprised.

A hole in my tooth, and a hole in my roof

You know, there are times when the excitement level in my life needs just a little adjusting...

I shall, for the sake of the dramatic structure of the narrative, begin back in October last year.

*cue neat wavy flashback transition effect*

I was at an engagement party, munching happily on one of the many delicious little snacks on offer (note to self - K's mother is a seriously good party host), when suddenly and painlessly there was something hard and non-chewy in the corner of my mouth.

It was a small piece of a tooth. One of my molars, right up the back.

It occurred to me at that moment that I really hadn't been to the dentist for quite a while. Our family lost the dentist we used to go to quite a few years ago (um, like... maybe 10 years ago... *embarrassed cough*) and I never seemed to get around to finding another one.

However, going to the dentist was never going to make it to the top priority list back in October last year. For one thing, I had lost my car in an accident just one week before - trips to anywhere other than work and back were a major chore to organise. For another, I was trying to look for a house (that's what I was doing when my car argued with a four-wheel drive, don't get me started on four-wheel drives...).

Once I was in my new house, and also had my own health insurance, my mind did turn to dentistry again eventually. However, I managed to misplace my health insurance membership card in the move. Turns out I never moved it - it was still at Mum and Dad's house. I got motivated enough to find that out a bit less than two weeks ago. Making an appointment for the dentist officially made the 'to do' list at that point.

Thursday last week, I was sitting down to yet another delicious stir fry when, suddenly and painlessly, there was something hard and non-chewy in my mouth...

It was a bigger piece this time. I'd say that something like a third of that same tooth is gone now. Not good. Still no pain, but I am getting it checked out tomorrow morning. By the time I finish this post, that will be this morning.

Meanwhile, a few metres away, events were conspiring in a most unfortunate manner...

A week and a half ago, my gas heating system decided not to turn on.

This was pretty inconvenient on a cold winter morning, and I couldn't figure out what had happened. The gas was still on. The fuse hadn't blown. One possibility was that the 'pilot light' on the heater had gone out - although why it should go out when the system is being used on a daily basis is a bit of a mystery.

My next door neighbour is a young guy (ie younger than me, therefore he shall be eternally regarded as youthful) who works for an airconditioning and heating company. So I asked if he would mind taking a look. He was happy to.

I wasn't 100% sure where in the roof the heater was. I misdirected him by about 5 metres. The first place he took tiles off wasn't right. He moved across, took off some more tiles and found the right spot. The pilot light was out, he relit it, the heater worked again. All was well with the world. We wished each other a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

Fast forward to last Thursday - four days later. It rained heavily from about 5pm. (I keep meaning to post about the amazing run of wet days we've had for the last few weeks, there's months with not even a trace of rain and then suddenly we can't go 48 hours without at least one shower, it's bliss!).

I went out that night. About 11pm I come home and discover a sizeable pool of water on the floor of my meals area. The way I discover it is by nearly doing the splits as I skid across it, but that's really incidental to the plot.

There are two reasonably fast drips coming from the edge of one of the heating ducts. As I watch, they are joined by a third.

Right then, I didn't have a clue why this was happening. I raced for a bucket and tried to figure it out. Despite the drought, I knew this wasn't the first heavy rain - it had rained just as much a few weeks before and this hadn't happened. So, the big question was, what was different?

It came to me eventually. The drip wasn't all that far from the first place my neighbour had looked for the heater. He had forgotten to put those tiles back.

I confirmed it on Friday morning once it was light. There it was, a gap a few tiles long and a couple of inches wide, letting the heavy rain in. Actually the rain had stopped only about 10 minutes after I got home on Thursday night, and the drip soon slowed and ceased completely after a couple of hours.

I got my neighbour back on the roof late on Friday afternoon. He was mortified and apologised profusely, but we both said how fortunate it was that there was no furniture underneath the leak and the electrics weren't affected and no real damage was done. Before replacing the tiles, he felt the insulation batts underneath and they didn't seem wet.

Fast forward to tonight, Tuesday night...

Above and behind me, there is a metre-long crack in the ceiling, which is dripping, and a round hole close to it.

About 3.5 hours ago I noticed the crack when I moved the chair I'm now sitting on to get at the computer. I wondered how the chair suddenly got a couple of wet spots on it. Then I looked down, saw a pool of water, then looked up.

At that stage the crack was only about 10cm long, and the pool of water wasn't as big as Thursday night's effort. Nevertheless, I freaked a little. A crack was real damage. I rang my Dad because I had no idea what to do.

Dad came over, climbed on my roof, removed tiles, and found that underneath the insulation batts, there was a biiiiiiiig pool of water lying in the lower layer of loose insulation, which basically had the consistency of papier mache.

He started mopping it up and wringing it out. As he pressed the towel into the mess (not with all that much force, as far as I can tell), the crack suddenly expanded tenfold, to its current size. Which is probably a good thing in terms of releasing water, but it meant the crack went from something you had to look up for to something glaringly obvious and rather dramatic.

When he had done all he could up there, he came back down and poked and prodded at the roof a little, releasing more water through the crack with each prod. At first he used his hand, then tried my mop. With one of his prods - again, not all that hard - the mop went straight through the sodden ceiling.

At this point we agreed that the situation was beyond amateur help.

I've just rang my house insurance company, and I hope to God that there's no problem with the claim. I mean, 'deliberate and intentional acts' aren't covered, but I'm moderately confident that negligent inadvertance followed by desperate attempts to rectify the situation are within the scope of the policy. Certainly the woman I spoke to on the phone didn't detect any instant reason to tell me I was on my own.

It's going to be one hell of a mess to clean up, I'm sure of that.

And now, as I wait for news about what it might cost me to repair both holes, I silently pray that the thrills are at an end for a while.