I love the way that some of the word combinations lead to odd turns of phrase and overextended metaphors that you wouldn’t see in any normal book, such as

“My voice a light and airy soufflé, straight from the oven.”

“Roy nodded encouragingly, though his concentration had drifted out to sea in a small dinghy.”

The best part is that this method of construction isn’t arbitrary — in the end it becomes part of the plot itself. Very clever indeed.

Thanks to Wikisource and the wonders of copyright law, you can read The Art of Always Being Right online for free.

I tend to agree with him in general. Here’s a rather trivial example of a way I have tried to avoid the problem. When confronted with a restaurant menu, I try to read down the menu until I find something that sounds good to me. Then I stop, and order that thing. There are some restaurants I have been to several times where I have never read to the end of the menu, because I know that I will end up agonising over my choice and thinking I should have chosen something else anyway.

Now I realise that my life would be pretty cushy if this were the biggest problem I had to deal with. It’s not. But it does illustrate the gist of the book. “Satisficing” is the word to describe this strategy of choosing something that’s good enough, rather than holding out for “the best”, whatever that is.

Here’s my summary of the whole book. Feel free to print this out and stick it on your bedroom wall. Words to live by.

Reduce the number of options you consider. It’s easier to choose when you have fewer choices, and most of the time the reduced choices won’t lead to a significantly worse outcome.

Satisfice rather than maximise. If you can develop good standards for what is “good enough”, then you’ll usually feel better about your “good enough” choice than you would have about your “best” choice.

Minimise consideration of opportunity costs. Thinking about opportunity costs can help you avoid making a genuine blunder, but thinking too much can paralyse you.

Make decisions irreversible. Decide, accept your decision as irrevocable, and move on with the rest of your life.

Anticipate adaptation. You may be delighted with your decision now, but expect the novelty to wear off. It will. This is normal.

Curtail social comparison. There’s always somebody else who seems to have made a better choice than you. It doesn’t help you to find out who.

Acknowledge the good things in your life. Everything of any value has good and bad in it. Try to focus on the good.

Regret less. You may now regret a choice you made earlier, but that one choice probably didn’t change your life as much as you think. And at the time it was probably the best choice you could make.

Putting all these strategies together may help you to spend less time choosing, and more time living.

The film-makers dug deep into their box of tricks for this film. The timeline zooms back and forth across the 500 days. A voiceover occasionally offers explanations. There’s a surreal moment when the thunderstruck protagonist turns into a drawing and gets erased, and an even more surreal song-and-dance number during an earlier happy moment.

Even though there are quite a few cliches — such as the kindly boss, the loveable loser friends and the wise little sister — there is enough humour in the thing to keep you smiling.

I must single out the film’s website for special mention because it (a) looks amazingly low-rent, plastered as it is with ads, (b) has an amusing Sid & Nancy ripoff featuring the leads from the movie (you have to see the film to understand), and (c) lets you make a film poster with your own photos mixed in (as I’ve done with a few random holiday snaps here — see if you can spot the Portuguese landmarks).

Any time the thunder starts to rumble down
Don’t let hope tumble down
Or castles crumble down
If the blues appear just make the best of them
Just make a jest of them
Don’t be possessed of them

At the risk of sounding rather platitudinous
Here’s what I believe should be the attitude in us

A sunny disposish will always see you through
When up above the skies are black, ‘stead of being blue
Mr Trouble makes our faces grow long
But a smile will have him saying “so long”

It really doesn’t pay to be a gloomy pill
It’s absolutely most ridic, positively sill
The rain may pitter patter
It really doesn’t matter
For life can be delish
With a sunny disposish

Must confess I like your way of viewing it
No use in ruing it
When gloom is bluing it
Taking your advice the sad and weary all
Have no material
To be funereal

It’s a thought that they should all be swallowing, my dear
Look at me, already, you’re a-following, my dear

A sunny disposish will always see you through
When up above the skies are black, ‘stead of being blue
Mr Trouble makes our faces grow long
But a smile will have him saying “so long”

It really doesn’t pay to be a gloomy pill
It’s absolutely most ridic, positively sill
The rain may pitter patter
It really doesn’t matter
For life can be delish
With a sunny disposish

Lyrics are reproduced without permission. But after all, it was written over 70 years ago by Ira Gershwin, who is no longer alive.

(OK, his real name is Ricky Gervais. But I had to look it up.)

Ghost Town‘s premise makes it reminiscent of Ghost (but don’t let that put you off) and The Sixth Sense (which I haven’t seen. Apparently there’s some twist at the end), only done with humour instead of, respectively, mawkish sentiment or edgy foreboding. My favourite parts were near the beginning, especially the hospital scenes.

A human rights lawyer forms one of the corners of the film’s love triangle. It seems that human rights lawyers are the ultimate symbol of goodness and purity in cinema (see Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones’s Diary).

Plot takes over from comedy halfway through, though it’s all worth watching. The expected feelgood moments near the end aren’t too badly overdone (though with Ghost as the benchmark, that’s not saying much). So I laughed several times and left with a smile on my face. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Headless Chickens have been one of my favourite bands since the early ’90s, even though they pretty much called it a day in about 2000. I remember listening to their first recordings on BFM in New Zealand 20 years ago, and then the splash they made in Australia a few years later with their Body Blow album. I still listen to their music now, so imagine my surprise when the Fiona McDonald we met when we moved back to Auckland turned out to be Fiona Headless Chicken, whose sweet yet gutsy voice helped make the Chooks such a unique band. And imagine my even more surprised surprise when I found out that the band were going to re-form for a tour of Australia and New Zealand.

So along we went. The venue was the Powerstation in Mount Eden. The last act I saw there was Beats International, one of Norman Cook’s pre-Fatboy Slim guises, about 20 years ago. I was also there the night they ignored fire regulations and crammed 1400 people into the 600-capacity venue for a Deborah Harry show… now that was a hot night. It all seems so long ago now. Because it was. But this is 2008 and so we went in to see the support band Brand New Math giving their all to a few interested spectators. They made a decent noise, but I prefer their recorded output. Anyway, people came in throughout the evening so by the time the Chickens strolled on stage the Powerstation was full. And they started.

Chris Matthews has a unique voice that belies his average-Joe appearance. He can convey an insistent, unrelenting menace one moment and move to fragile vulnerability (or even vulnerable fragility) the next. During the “I’m much too tired to think” part in Gaskrankinstation I actually thought he was going to collapse in despair and exhaustion.

The sound was clear and loud but not too loud. I brought earplugs to muffle the inevitable feedback and lo-fi distortion, but it turned out to be evitable after all — I took the earplugs out for half the songs. Technically it seemed to go well, though Chris seemed to have some microphone problems once or twice.

Photo: Wonderferret

The highlights were Gaskrankinstation and Donde Esta La Pollo because those really got the crowd rocking, and Juice because of Fiona’s excellent performance. Donka was a pretty good rendition of an excellent song, and I was pleased they did Mr Moon, which is yet another of my favourites. And it was great to hear Monkey Jar again, and their “more Garbage than Garbage” number George, and Railway Surfing was another high energy stomper. And… well, you get the picture.

We had to leave at the end of the main set because Jo was actually pretty unwell. I never heard Do the Headless Chicken or Expecting to Fly, so I was sure they would play those songs in the encore. I found later that I was right. My obligatory song-I-wish-they-had-played is Inside Track. I especially love the dub version of that track. Good thing I have the CD.

Actually I don’t need the CD or the iPod, because Donka, Gaskrankinstation, Juice and Mr Moon have been playing continuously in my head since the gig. If I don’t make it to the Big Day Out to see them again, at least I’ve got the music in my brain.

Song titles such as Feels Like Rain, Trouble Rides A Fast Horse and Bush Fire Sunset make this sound like good ol’ country music. The first of these songs does sound pretty much like that, with its lazy drawl and twangin’ guitar, but the rest of the album shows some nice variation. The opening song Off The Rails has just the most irresistible chorus — I find it tremendously uplifting, in a minor-key sort of way. The driving Carry The Weight is another of my favourites, with powerful guitar and nice male/female harmonies.

I heard a couple of these tracks on the radio a few months ago, and liked them enough to write a note in my notebook: “The Bads(?) Earth From Space”. One morning a few weeks ago I glanced at the notebook and saw that cryptic scrawl. That afternoon I stumbled upon the CD in a shop — I felt this was a sign that I should buy it.

The Bads’ sound reminds me a bit of a couple of slightly less obscure bands: The Murmurs and Dusty Trails. In fact maybe Earth From Space sits halfway between The Murmurs’ strident singalongs and Dusty Trails’ languid and gentle Americana. While The Murmurs don’t really maintain my interest throughout a whole album, I could easily listen to the Dusty Trails album all day long. And Earth From Space is that good too — I’ve got it on repeat in my retro CD player right now.

I was looking forward to buying this CD, since I enjoyed Anna Coddington’s performance a few months ago. Even though it’s been quite a long time since then, I still remember quite a few of the songs. The songs worked really well live, with Anna accompanying herself on guitar; the fuller production on the album adds another dimension without ever overwhelming the basic voice and guitar structure.

Lots of highlights for me. Hold You Here and Sweet Sweet Nothings are both melodic and easy (but not too easy) to listen to. The jaunty Sentences opens with what could be a nice summary of the album:

I know it for sure
I think too much
About this guitar
And my feelings and such

T-Shirt is a darker song. The sound reminds me of the Australian power-pop band Clouds, one of my favourite groups; the guitar has a very slightly edgier sound, at least during the verses. The song starts with the beautifully evocative lines “I blew my brains out / Butterflies came out”. This reminded me of the title track from Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral: “Everything’s blue in this world / The deepest shade of mushroom blue / All fuzzy / Spilling out of my head.” The NIN track is of course far more depressing, but I still like the thought that I might be the first person ever to compare Anna Coddington to Nine Inch Nails.

In contrast, The Long Way Home features just voice and guitar; it took me back to that solo performance. Ah, the memories. Good times, good times.

Apparently Anna hangs out with a bunch of other Kiwi singer-songwriter women like Anika Moa and Bic Runga. You can hear this on the album — I never noticed it live, but on The Lake I can hear a few Bic Runga-like vocal stylings. Anna’s enunciation is not quite as mannered as Bic’s though. That’s a good thing. Still, her voice is sweet enough to confuse one local newspaper reviewer, who couldn’t reconcile Anna’s voice with her day job as a karate instructor. That was one weird piece of music criticism — on the strength of this album, Anna’s clearly nothing less than a renaissance woman.

I had a great time at this big, fun and loud film about a big, fun and loud elephant. The story of Horton and the Whos is one of my 2-year-old son‘s favourite stories, so this was a good choice as his first ever cinema experience. He enjoyed it, and so did we. In the manner of kids’ films these days, there were lots of jokes for the adults. During the anime sequence I was crying tears of laughter. That doesn’t happen to me that often — maybe because I don’t go to very many films.

Anyway, this is definitely worth seeing. And it confirmed to me that any film is improved by watching it with a 2-year-old.