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The first lol is the deepest
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Call me mint jelly, I’m on the lamb
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A dribble in the time-space continuum
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The Remarkable and the Magnificent
My remarkable friend, Steven, was in Lyttelton when the Christchurch earthquake hit on February 22, 2011. His girlfriend, the magnificent Andrea, was at her work, based in the Arts Centre in Christchurch, when the earthquake struck, isolating Lyttelton from Christchurch.Andrea fled her building with her mobile phone, nothing else. Steven walked over the Port Hills – the northern rim of the ancient Lyttelton volcano that separates the port from the city – on foot, to find Andrea. Now they can’t return to their home but it’s okay, they’re okay. He walked over the volcano.
* Andrea Bell featured in the Let’s Okay Unheimliche Manoeuvres post.
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The Festive Bomb
He has built a trebuchet (“to return the neighbour’s cat”), a hovercraft (?), and for Christmas 2010, my brother-in-law (BIL), built a bomb. Actually, he built three. He, and his wife, my older sister, are fond of explosions.We were at my mum’s boyfriend’s land in Runanga, New Zealand – an isolated rocky outcrop on the South Island’s west coast. It’s not actually a rocky outcrop, I just love the phrase ‘rocky outcrop’.
BIL was taking advantage of the isolation to discharge his homemade bombs, a luxury he can no longer indulge at their city home due to conservative legal restraints. This wasn’t always the case. In the nineties, he says, the back of many of his t-shirts were ripped and blackened as his experiments often prematurely exploded before he had achieved safe distance from them.
My younger sister and I attempted to image the blast but our camera batteries both expired seconds before the bomb was triggered. The cackle belongs to my mum, though my older sister has contracted it, too. The bomb, the largest bomb of the three detonated, made my family giddy. And cuss.
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Crimson and Clover
Roy Orbison’s In Dreams often piped through the computer lab speakers as Arthur Clover instructed my old desktop publishing class how to – using a caricature of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover – wrestle Adobe Illustrator into submission.There is a reason 1960s musicians are central to Art’s tutorials.
Here is the Glimpses website. It may never load.
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Dusty Shangri-la #1
Mal Marchant presides over The Gunbarrel Laager, a dusty wee Shangri-la situated near the Canning Stock Route and the Gunbarrel Highway in Wiluna, WA, Australia.I met Mal in 2009 when I stayed there as part of an Awesome Arts residency at the local school.
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Unheimliche Manoeuvres
A brief overview of the progressive childhood speeches of New Zealand curator, writer and Chicken enthusiast Andrea Bell.
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Internal Geology
I was, ostensibly, interviewing my mum. She was reluctant, to say the least.She asked me what my favourite stone is – because she thinks that having a favourite gemstone is one of the few things that distinguishes you from everyone else, somehow.
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