When Desirée Bandle-Liebmann first mentioned a spinal tap I got a bit excited and asked her to get me a couple of tickets.  As it turns out, she was actually referring to some pretty serious surgery that Josh needed to have to have done to drain the excess fluid from his meningea (that’s in your back and brain).  For those who have missed him at The Rocks and online we thought it better not to mention anything until it was successfully resolved and, now that he’s back on his feet, we’ve all been able to look back and have a good laugh.

As a corollary to this, we have a new hand on deck!  Old school chum Rowan stepped in to share the burden of anxiety and to pick up Josh’s workload where he could, and liked it so much he’s going to stay as a permanent member of Team Firefly.  Until this all went down, Rowan had never had much to do with lamps or lighting but seems to have taken to it like a duck to water.  His CV revolves around the theatre, stage acting, writing and production, and he’s really quite bloody good at it.

The other upshot is that I found out about the EFDC blog that Josh had created.  Desirée mentioned it in passing last week and I was like, “what blog?” and she’s like, “do you mean you’ve never seen it?” and I’m like, “yeah”.  So I had a look and it would seem he’s been getting busy on this, along with a Facebook page and Twitter.  Now, I don’t even know what Twitter’s all about and I rarely ever check my Facebook page, let alone reply to group invitations, drug market world conquest games or the ‘what colour M&M are you?’  quiz that some friend of a friend of a friend sent me last week, or last month, or the month before.  I like it so I can keep in touch with dudes I went to primary school with and to see who’s living in whichever city my, ahem, jetsetting lifestyle has brought me to this week.

So Josh says, “why don’t you post a blog entry?” and I’m like, “no way, that’s for squares and communists” and he’s like, “are you calling me a nerd or a communist?” and I go, “I just mean like Soviet communists ’cause other than those I think communism is a beautiful philosophy.  It’s like modernity’s way of trying to recreate a feeling of togetherness that Europeans forgot about when they discovered that rationalism made them feel superior to everyone else” and he said, “just write about lamps dude”.

Now, I’ve been studying for the last few years so I’ve kind of lost touch with it all.  The last blog I looked at was in about 2005 and was called www.showuswhatyouhadforbreakfast.com and it was literally that.  How disappointing.  A whole bunch of photos of bacon, toast, bacon on toast, eggs with soldiers, empty plates (how funny!) and pictures of eggy-faced nerds with nothing better to do on a Saturday.

So, when it comes to my thoughts on lighting, I would just remind you that it’s the most important feature of your room / house / life and that if you don’t choose carefully then your friends will abandon you and you will die alone.

Choose life.  Choose Electric Firefly.