Archive for February 2000

Everything’s gone to hell and I’ve been boring lately, so here’s the contents of my wallet:

Cards

1. One Monash University Identity Card, with bad photo.
2. One American Express Card, linked to my parents’.
3. One photocopy card, unsigned.
4. One Telstra “Smart” Phonecard. Bears cartoon drawing of bunny rabbit. I don’t think this has any more calls left on it.
5. One Commonwealth Bank Keycard.
6. One International Student Identity Card, with old photo. I don’t know why this is here, I don’t need it anymore.
7. One “Driver Licence”, number 51968326.
8. One 3RRR subscriber card. 3RRR is a public radio station.
9. One card, green, indicating that I am a member of the Monash Co-Operative Bookshop. This item is in poor condition; it is made of cardboard and is slightly larger than a standard credit card.
10. One “Monash Fitness Gym” membership card, expired.
11. One Community Chest card: “You have won second prize in a beauty contest. Collect $10.”

Cash

1. $2.95 in coins–1 x $2, 3 x $0.20, 2 x $0.10, 3 x $0.05. [I heard this line on "Duckman" last night as I was flipping by: "When I was a kid, it took five quarters to make a dollar."]
2. One $10 note.
3. One $1 note. This one is a US dollar.

Receipts

1. One receipt from Coles Supermarket. I bought “O/M DRINK 2L” and “1960 MILK DY”. These two items came to $3.93, I paid $5.00 cash and received $1.05 in change. (Australia has no one or two cent coins; rounding was involved.)
2. One receipt from Borders Books and Music. I bought a “PERIODICAL”–Colors Magazine–which cost $10.00.
3. One receipt from the Monash Sports Centre. I paid $55.00 for a three month gym membership.
4. One receipt from Monash University. I paid a library fine of $35.30.

Miscellaneous

1. One slip of paper with the number (202) 328-2000 written on it, in my handwriting. I don’t remember anything about this. Is 202 the area code for Washington D.C.?

(Oh) “In this country more than in any other that I know of, the relationship between writers and alcohol is a curiously close one. I have often asked literary scholars for an explanation of the fact that while in the nineteenth century few of our writers except Poe were heavy drinkers, in the twentieth century almost every writer worthy of the name has been one. Among the dead, we have only to think of Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Lardner, Marquand, Sinclair Lewis, O’Hara, Crane, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Wallace Stevens, O’Neill, Barry, Millay, Dorothy Parker, Hammett, Roethke, Benchley, and Berryman. Among the living, the list is equally long, if not equally distinguished.”–Brendan Gill, Here at the New Yorker, pp. 259-60.

(Ponder) Is anyone else bothered by the “women and children” disaster-victim category? (As in “x people were killed, including y women and children”.) If there’s going to be a breakdown of the victims, surely women can have their own category, instead of having to share one with children? Equating women to children is not a terribly 21st-Century thing to do. (In other situations–in stories dealing with refugees, say, where women are treated differently to men–the phrase makes more sense.)

(Yow) You can get links to open in another, already open window by dragging them there. This is so convenient! (Does everybody but me know about this?)