It’s hard rub­bish col­lec­tion time in our street. Here’s the crap­ola we man­aged to throw away.

But all is not always as it seems on hard rub­bish piles. For exam­ple, there were a few items on our pile that were hid­den from my cam­era lens.

I can’t help but get emo­tional around hard rub­bish col­lec­tion time.

It has started again. This week I have kicked into gear mak­ing notes, draw­ing up plans and ‘brain­storm­ing’ ideas for book num­ber next. I put ‘brain­storm­ing’ into quote marks because when­ever I try to ‘brain­storm’ all I can think about is a flurry of brains rain­ing down from the sky and how it’s really not a help­ful thing at all – a full-sized human brain drop­ping from even just 20 metres above would kill any­one it lands on. Kill! So I avoid the term ‘brainstorm’.

Plus I think you need to be a math­e­mat­i­cal genius who writes on intra-office win­dows in black texta to really per­fect the art of ‘brainstorming’.

Instead I just think a lot and take notes in my lit­tle note­book and occa­sion­ally blurt at my housemates:

Me: Omigod, I just realised I don’t even have to let the fire hurt any­one if I give Balt­hazar tightrope-walking skills.
House­mate (over bowl of cereal, bits of sleep falling my eyes): Huh?

This part is pos­si­bly my favourite part of ‘the writ­ing process’. I put ‘the writ­ing process’ in quote marks because when­ever I try to use a process to write I end up with a time man­age­ment plan, a house full of tea leaves and, for some rea­son, the laun­dry done and hung out on the line.

It’s a lit­tle tricky to read but April 20 says:

Today Jenny Stoot (real name Stott) took her­self, Andrew Stoot, Alisa Stoot, Deanne and I to the movies to see Home­ward Bound The Incred­i­ble Journey.

What’s Home­ward Bound, you ask? Well, allow me to embed:

So despite think­ing that blog­ging every day of April would be a fun and easy thing to do, turn’s out, it is not. I didn’t blog yes­ter­day and I don’t have two posts in my head today to make up for it. But that’s not to say I’ve got noth­ing left to say. And I will def­i­nitely not let the con­tent on my blog wear thin. Any­ways, today’s post is a photo of the giant jar of oil that we keep in our kitchen for when we use our deep fryer. It looks like urine don’t you think?

Record Store Day is a good thing. It gets lotsa peo­ple into lit­tle record shops when lotsa peo­ple swing in and out of JB Hi-Fi too often these days. So it is with bemuse­ment that I see  www.recordstoreday.com.au fea­tur­ing in-store apper­ances at JB Hi-Fis, Vir­gin Mega­s­tores, San­i­tys and HMV. Surely this is not the point of Record Store Day? So what’s the story?

It turns out that AMRA (who rep­re­sent those big music chains) was told it couldn’t par­tic­i­pate in Record Store Day because the day is sup­posed to be an excer­cise in pro­mot­ing inde­pen­dent shops. But of course AMRA and the big chains pushed on any­way and are pro­mot­ing their ‘unof­fi­cial’ involve­ment in Record Store Day. And guess who owns and runs www.recordstoreday.com.au? Yep, AMRA. Sticky Car­pet in the Age touched on this today but con­tin­ued to pro­mote both the indie shop events and the AMRA shop events (#AMRAfail, #HMV­fail, #JBHi­Fi­fail, #Vir­gin­Mega­S­tore­fail, #San­i­ty­fail, #TheAgefail).

So please visit www.recordstoreday.com/Australia for the com­plete, authen­tic list of inde­pen­dent record stores to sup­port tomor­row. After all, the lit­tle guys only get one day. The chains get Christmas.