feel like stopping in your tracks?

to watch this (from ozvault1 on YouTube) from the 2nd Melbourne show.  Three shows were not enough:

and from the beautiful Brisbane show, the audio recording on this one is wonky but it sounded great on the night and the clip gives a feel for the moody lighting and gorgeous suit and beautiful night outdoors, from wildhoney2204 via YouTube:

Car love, Motorhead love and my fickleness

Last night I hopped in the car to quickly pop up to Thornbury to a friends place to give her my ticket to MOTORHEAD and borrow a DVD (Gods Little Acre) from her massive collection.  In the last couple of days I’d noticed my car was idling slowly and put it down to my newly serviced generator and made a mental note to check it out.  On Queens Parade at Clifton Hill I got all green lights and was zooming when just before McDonalds my car seized into high revs like it was screaming at me. I was on the inside of 3 lanes.  Immediately I turned the ignition off and glided across two lanes (and traffic, and note my car hasn’t got hazard lights, but people tend to know it’s there) to the side of the road, and then into a car park, starting to smell that awful burning odour of metal friction without oil.  Sadly my car glided to a stop right out the front of one of the largest McDonalds in Australia.  It’s in a particular art deco building that I adore and was irritated when it was converted into a McDonalds.  I hate McDonalds and have boycotted them all my life. I refuse to go near one not even to use their toilets.   So I found myself parked immediately out the front of one.  Once I had adapted to that horror I returned my thoughts to the car.  I congratulated myself for defensive driving and successfully getting it off the road – that could have been nasty, especially as my steering wheel tends to lock when the motor is off.  

Rang my motor club and then opened the bonnet to investigate while waiting for help to arrive.  I could immediately see the problem.  The metal casing for the stud that holds one of my air filters in place has had a tiny nick of metal removed – no idea how or when it happened but it’s something on my list of things to fix – take off the metal casing and solder a little chunk of metal onto it.  I keep putting it off as it’s the sort of thing I could do myself at the farm with a soldering iron, and fortuitously I’m going to the farm this weekend.  But meanwhile, the stud that holds one of my air filters on the carburettor in place had worked it’s way off.  It must have happened quickly as last weekend I gave my motor a check and saw nothing wrong.  It was 8pm and light was fading but I retrieved the air filter, lid and nut from various places under the bonnet. Couldn’t believe I found the nut. But I couldn’t see the stud and, given the high revs I knew where it was but hoped not.  Instead I walked back to the road to see if any other engine debris was there but saw nothing and returned to sit in the car.  After an hour outside McDonalds my motor club man arrived. My motor club men (they are never female) are always quite affable and chatty, maybe because they like my car.  With him as moral support (and torch) I opened the air valve and ….. JOY!! The stud was sitting just inside it. Phew, it hadn’t gone into the engine.  BIG sigh of relief, we may be able to fix it.  Hopes rose, we both grinned. So the motor man got long thin pliers and I held the air valve open and shone the torch while he tried to remove it.  It was fidgety and slipped a little further into the manifold. We took deep breaths and I remained calm. It was like heart surgery, one false move and all would be lost.  He went to his toolkit and got out a magnet thingie and pushed it down into the manifold. But the stud wasn’t taking it.  It slid further away. We could still see it but there was no way to reach it.

“It’s a tow truck job now,” I sighed.  The motor club man stopped trying and agreed.  So he booked one, said it will be “20-40 minutes” and left and I waited outside McDonalds, breathing in that strange smell emitting from the place, looking at the "Angus Beef' poster and thinking of the pretty faces and funny characters of my parents Angus cattle. I scoffed and thought 'our Angus cattle would never go to McDonalds', but then I remembered one of our animals, a massive bull, that survived the drought and we kept hand feeding every day so he'd survive. One doesn't hand rear a 2-ish tonne bull without some love on both sides, he was a gentle giant with a sweet character yet also the leader of the pack.  But by the time we sold him at the end of the drought, only McDonalds would buy him.  I still remember Dad's disappointment and sadness.  RIP 'Bull' you're not forgotten, and we are very very sad that you became McDonald's burger, but you had the best life we could give you in a difficult drought.  But back to last night, I looked at people as they’d go in and out, only because there was nothing else for me to do - my phone battery had flatlined.  McDonalds is definitely not a place I want to loiter outside.


Over an hour later the tow truck arrived.  During this time I’d phoned my friend to apologise that I’m a no-show. When I mentioned ‘tow truck driver’ I sensed a sharp intake of breath from her.  But I’m not one to judge and kept an open mind about the impending doom.  He arrived in a shiny new tow truck and parked across the exit. Remained in the truck cab eating a falafel looking at me with a blank expression.  I remained standing next to the car, but eventually walked over to the truck.  He got out and said “sorry love I have been on the run working all day”. No you haven’t, I thought, you are sitting in a cab eating a falafel and you’re very late.  I smiled and replied ‘no worries’. He was short, stocky and had a black curly mullet, and gold chain necklace under his overalls.  He was also either grimy or sweaty or maybe both, with an odor of armpit and falafel.  But I too had engine grease smears so wasn’t one to judge.  I was wearing a red cardi with two embroidered rifles on the chest.  When he spoke to me he looked at them with an unaverting gaze, even when I replied to him.  “You need to tell me about your car,  what’s wrong with it? is it front wheel drive?” began the rapid fire questions and I answered them and he seemed offended that I knew the basics of my car and got a bit weird.  He started saying he’d been working all day and to tow it he’d have to push the car backwards (easily done as it was flat there and my car is easy to push, I've done it many times) and he was tired and 30 kms is a long way to tow a car……  I got his gist.  I was going nowhere with him. I then decided I didn’t want him to tow my car, I wouldn’t let my precious car anywhere near his carelessness.  So I pointed out where in the manifold the stud was and said if the car is towed from the front at an angle the stud might fall further back into the engine (=catastrophe) and did he agree it would be safer if it was lifted backwards onto a flat top tow truck.  He seemed relieved and went back to his cosy truck cab (and maybe desert) and radioed for a flat top tow truck.  Came back and said I’m a high priority so it shouldn’t be long.  Etc etc then gave me and my rifles a final narrow-eyed glare and drove off. 

I got back into my car and over the next hour started to need a toilet, looked into the windows of McDonalds thinking they allegedly have clean toilets but remaining resolute.  I will not enter under the golden arches.  Over an hour later a bigger tow truck arrived.   This time I was delighted in that the driver was polite, efficient, moved quickly, asked questions and didn’t flinch when I answered and in 10 minutes my darling car was secured atop the flatbed.  I felt a pang of heartstrings looking at it there.  It’s been towed before once about 12 years ago and I felt a similar pang.  I gave the driver the address and instructions of my mechanic.  He wanted me to come with him but I felt OK with him handling my car and really wasn’t in the mood for the badlands of the Moorabin industrial area after dark. So he left me there and I started the several kilometre walk home at 10.45 pm, carrying the contents of my car.  I felt like a Cormac McCarthy character, dirtied, sullied, bereft, and with a mobile phone with a flat battery.  But grateful to the second tow trucker.  

Walking home I thought long and hard about my car.  I've been with my car longer than any of my relationships, I love my car, we’ve had great road tips together, seen and done many things, I look at him and I smile.  I felt a real pang.  I’ve recently been thinking of selling him for a 1960's EK station wagon, now that I’m getting older and more sensible.  Perhaps the stud in the manifold was my cars’ way of telling me not to. Perhaps breaking down was his way of telling me I really should  hold onto the Motorhead ticket and go to Motorhead this weekend and not up to the farm/ Chris Isaak show.   I’m heartbroken that I can’t go to Motorhead, truly, I am a huge fan not only of their music but of the ethos of Lemmy.  I've even made a book about Lemmy. But family comes first, and there’s family issues and farmwork to do up north and I have to be there (and by the by I have 2nd row middle seats to Chris Isaak in Brisbane....). And I'm going to try and get to the Gold Coast Motorhead show.   I kept walking and pondering.   I haven’t been driving him as often as I should, he got dirty last weekend and I haven’t washed him.  Yes I had new carpet put in recently but then my Miss Melody Mae cat got in and clawed a little section and I didn’t chasten her, just removed her and swept it over…..  I’ve been fickle, negligent recently, inattentive, distracted from my car.  I've not given him the care and attention he deserves.  I live in a converted garage and my car sits behind a glass wall. As I move around my home I glance over and ..... he's not there.

I resolved my desire to keep life simple.  Buy the best once only and keep it for life.  And I'm so bonded with my P1800 that to me it is the best.

Today is another day.  Rang my lovely mechanic this morning who said yes my P1800 was there but the tow truck driver had left it across the driveway and he couldn’t get past it (I’d left a big note on the dash: “DON’T TURN THE ENGINE ON”, so they had to push it out of the way - but my mechanic is fine about pushing cars).  As always he was affable and happy to fix it today and I’m to call him tonight about the surgery outcome.  He also mentioned that he’d like me to put it in a car show at Flemington next Sunday April 3 (some European historical car show thing?) to commemorate 50 year birthday of P1800s.  Sheesh is my car really that old????  Mine is probably the oldest one in Australia -1963, 48 years old.  My poor little 48 year old car had the life thrashed out of him last night.  Yes dear old car, you WILL go to the show Sunday fortnight!  (will need to get new rubbers around the windows beforehand…..  ) . And then hopefully I can fly back up to Queensland and MOTORHEAD!!!!!!!

Narcissism

6Apr11 update: ANOTHER study has found a correlation between Faecebook and narcissism.   Flagler College psychology professor Meghan M. Saculla and Western Kentucky University psychology professor W. Pitt Derryberry set out to discover whether there was a correlation between moral judgment development, narcissism, and technology use.  The study population was students - probably because they are captive.  Saculla and Derryberry found that students who use technology for self-promotion tend to be more narcissistic than those who simply use technology to connect to others.  The researchers focused on narcissistic and self-promoting behavior, as well as moral development based on the research of Lawrence Kohlberg.  


The researchers' main finding confirmed their previous suspicions: students who used technology and social media tools specifically to promote themselves and attempt to gain popularity tended to come off as narcissistic. Those students also tended to self-report as narcissistic, showing a correlation between perception and self-reporting. Importantly, Saculla and Pitt Derryberry note narcissistic people may find that technologies help amplify their already existing behavior, especially if those devices are used "as a replacement for face-to-face peer interactions or other venues that are beneficial for moral judgment growth." If students are able to use technology to accompany their normal interactions instead of replacing them, they don't have much of a problem. 

A new study has found that users of Facebook had higher self esteem after 3 minutes compared with participants who sat in front of a blank or mirrored computer screen.  The study titled 'Mirror, Mirror on my Facebook Wall: Effects of Exposure to Facebook on Self-Esteem' was by Cornell University researchers Amy Gonzales and Jeffrey Hancock.


Fair enough.  


A possible explanation for the rise in self esteem may be narcissism.  Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, said a study she conducted of 16,000 university students across the US showed 30 per cent were narcissistic in psychological tests.  


In a keynote address to the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders Congress in Melbourne, Professor Twenge will say that celebrity culture and the internet are among the causes of the emerging narcissism epidemic.  


Narcissists had an inflated sense of self, lacked empathy, were vain and materialistic and had an overblown sense of entitlement. Some resulting social trends were a greater interest in fame and wealth, more plastic surgery, and an increase in attention-seeking crimes.  


Professor Twenge was concerned about a culture ''that seems to not just accept narcissism but finds it laudatory … But the problem is that narcissism doesn't help you compete. It blows up in your face eventually.''