Garry's Futurian Dinner
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1 TBS&E Number 43 - February to April 2011 arrangement should be fairly self evident and the need to find / follow an Index rendered unneccessary. In this edition however, the sections will Produced by Garry Dalrymple as run consecutively. Best of Luck - a contribution to mailing No. GPD 258, of the Australian and NZ Issue Index Amateur Press Association. Pages 1 to 3, Travellers Tales Pages 3 to 8, Astronomy & Science Postal Address: Garry Dalrymple, Sydney City Skywatchers meetings of Feb and Mar Local Post Office Box 4152, Pages 9 & 10 – Galaxy Paranormal Bexley North NSW 2207 Romance discussion meeting Home ph. (best after 7 pm) 02 9718- Pages 10 to 13, March 2011 Kipling Society of Australia meeting 5827 Pages 13 to 22, Notes from Feb & Email; March Sydney Futurian & Infinitas [email protected] SF&F Book Review discussion meetings Pages 22 to 26 – Garry’s Book reviews Supplimental for Efanzines edition – Pages 26 and 27 – Elizabeth’s Movie The Format of this edition is Review, the Battle for Los Angeles substantially different from the paper Pages 28 - Basenjis Tales version of TBS&E #43 that is distributed mainly through ANZAPA. The ANZAPA edition is manually The Heat - A week of Stinking hot days, up formatted with the intention of building to 47 degrees outside make it a pleasure up a mini magazine consisting of a set of to go to work in an air conditioned office. discrete four page sections, as these A4 Incidentally, the seeing was very good on pages of text are reduced down to A5 those nights when the skies were clear, and double sided, due to clean Tropical / Desert air that Ie a the Book Reviews section on a came with the heat. Also, everyone was single sheet of paper occupying pages indoors for the week, lessening activity 13 to 16 and the (Blue Pages) Astronomy related Light and Air pollution? Night time /Science section occupying pages 3 to 5 temperatures indoors for this week were and 25 to 27 etc. routinely over 30 degrees, even with roof insulation, as hot brickwork re-radiates The effect is to allow you to read all the heat long after sunset. In order to get Science, All the SF&F Meeting Notes, All some sleep we ran the air conditioner past the Book Reviews and any Mailing midnight in order to cool down part of the comments by flipping over the paper house, while behind closed doors it was 32 pages of the mini magazine. It helps if degrees and 36 degrees in other parts of you can imagine and rotate images in the house and still 40 plus outside. three Dee in your head, but on paper this 1 2 Travelling to work noticed a daily increase disappeared into thin air! They must in the number of blackened patches among have had a truck and a couple of blokes to the grass growing by the side of the railway, take this stuff in the night. Very presumably spontainous grass fires, it being surprising how spontaneous this was, the too hot for ‘kids with matches’? stuff was out in fading daylight for only February 7 - After The Astronomy meeting I about an hour. Perhaps the near midnight was waiting at the (Circular Quay) bus stop colIectors have someone tipping them off? for a 423 ride home. I encountered two I just hope that who ever took this stuff homeless people who were discussing how doesn’t bring it back when they discover they got on during the recent weeklong how rubbish the stuff is! Perhaps they heatwave. Winter Cold is usually the killer were after the scrap metal value of the of people who are living rough in Sydney, stuff? Who can say. Good riddance to but I can’t help but sympathise for how bad rubbish covers my feelings on the these people spent their week, I had air matter. conditioning at home and at work, but these I was disturbed from sleep at 6.30 am by poor people had no refuge bother than the similarly seismic noises. Half an hour great outdoors, and Cities are Heat Islands, earlier than the usual morning effort by the with the air in the Sydney CBD being a sleep thieves next door, so I had a look, degree or two higher than at suburban and all gone. All cleared up and taken Earlwood? away by the council. This effort has February 15 & 16 - Noises in the night? – rewarded me by cleared out the equivalent Prior to the Christmas / end of year break I to one side of the car port. Further re- had identified a heap of stuff that ‘just had organisation to come! to go’. This included an old and rotting March – In my daily Bankstown to dog house (which I disassembled). Spoke Campsie commute this week I have to the council and was told that they were recently noticed two Sydney SF fans, booked up for collections well into the New Damien and Charmaine. I’ve previously Year. I was able to fill a recycling bin and encountered them at SF&F meetings held a rubbish bin with smaller stuff that was at the Infinitas Bookshop at Parramatta, I ready ‘to go’, but much remained. conclude that they have recently changed Subsequently I was issued with a February address? 16 collection date for the rest. The Dodgy or What? – By now I’m used to remaining ‘to go’ list included; Two huge TV seeing women (I can only assume) in sets, the Satanic Treadmill, a dead costumes that leave only the eyes Microwave oven, the ‘spare’ Refrigerator, a uncovered. There are also dodgy spare office chair, the dead air conditioner, customers about, catching the train (with the busted rowing machine, two ancient or without tickets?) to early morning VCRs, some dead wood and some rusty old appointments at Bankstown Courthouse. metal. Got home at 7 pm, put the whole Bit of a surprise to run into a bloke of lot out (using ingenuity, leverage and a Pacific Islander appearance (and Mass), homemade flatbed trolley), finished by 8 pm wearing a hoodie, Mirror sunglasses and a ish. While watching TV (QI) at around 11 handkerchief covering his lower face. pm I heard some noises in the dark. Fortunately I saw no sawn off ‘shottie’ to When I went to have a look at midnight, the hand. He was in hushed conversation Treadmill, Microwave oven, Air conditioner, with a girl outside the youth centre. Why Rowing Machine and the VCRs had all would you make such a spectacle of 2 3 TBS&E Number 43 - February to April 2011 yourself if you were trying not to be noticed to have the effect (Gift of Aphrodite etc.) – passing strange? advertised for a Pommegrate derived fruit March 7 – My usual look-in at the homeless drink. Brian Walls also attended part of campsite on the way from Wynyard Station this meeting as well. Discovery of the to the Observatory revealed only two night, some very green Bananas on offer bedrolls / persons sighted, a much lower at Woolworths Town Hall for $10 a Kilo. count than usual, possibly the consequences of cool snap after the April Banana Watch – Bananas are back heatwave, or the tourism downturn after at Franklins and ‘Fruitworlds’ everywhere, Brisbane flooding, the economic upturn $12.99 for lime green ones, weighed a few allowing more to get permanent bunches out of curiousity, you get five to accommodation or a pre-election council the Kilo, so ~$2.60 a Banana, and week clear up? Could always blame it on the till they’re ripe. reappearance of Sunspots I suppose. Bananas, possibly three to a Kilo. Saw On another Matter, I spoke to the people at some people automatically reach for a the Observatory about getting access to bunch, mentally process the cost then put BAA NSW Branch Membership records held down the Bananas after suffering sticker at the Observatory i.e. annual membership shock. I also observed people carefully renewals in the account books. The idea inspecting a whole hand of Bananas, being to draw up a list of 1935 to 1955 BAA before snapping off just one or two of the NSW names to compare with the list of better ones before proceeding to the cash 1935 to 1955 Sydney SF names I’m register. So for the moment it’s, “Yes building up from the investigation of Mum. We have no Bananas!” I suspect Molesworth. It didn’t turn out as I had that Avocados might currently be cheaper expected, for OH&S reasons I will have to by the Kilo. In future I may get three take a day off work, rock up to the quotes / local tenders for the supply of Observatory between 10 am to 5 pm on a Bananas. weekday and scan / email the stuff to my March 12 – Faithfull readers of TBS&E will work email account. no doubt have missed my occasional March 8 - Renovations to the North side of rainfall notes. I bought a plastic rain the Bankstown station surrounds require a gauge in February, at the height of a wet ‘via Perth’ detour on the way to work. One spell, with the natural consequence that morning I encountered three Local High this has stopped it raining at Eulabah School Girls emerging from the Seven Avenue for some weeks. ‘Perhaps Eleven. One was carrying two four-packs of tonight’ I recite each night. ‘V’ a highly caffeinated ‘sports drink’. Three into eight goes? Drinks for play lunch, I was Involved in the NSW state Election, lunch and afternoon Free period.