Archive for June, 2005

Chooseday.

Hooray! It’s chooseday!

Chooseday is my favourite day of the week because I watch the Mythbusters episode that I taped the night before. Apart from any AFL match, Mythbusters is the only watchable thing on tv all week. There’s just a little something about watching adults explore, create and destroy, that makes me love the show. Tonight the Mythbusters blew up a house using insect spray. Heh.

Growing up in an urban-fringe area of northern Brisbane, my childhood mates and I had a great time doing just what Mythbusters do (from the ages of 11 until 16 or so). We lived near bushland where old cars would get illegally dumped. We disassembled car engines to see how they worked, blew up oil drums, made explosives out of household chemicals, put aerosol cans in fires to see how far the tops would fly when they exploded, filled plastic soft drink bottles with butane and raised hell, you name it, we probably did it. We didn’t manage to hurt ourselves or any others, but we sure as fuck worked out how things work. To a lesser extent, how to make things not work.

I find myself sounding even more like my father these days when I compare the way kids grow up now, to how I grew up. Things seemed more relaxed 20 odd years ago. Crikey, I could even buy .22 air gun pellets over the counter at K-Mart at age 13. No questions asked. All the dude at the K-Mart ammo counter said was, “be responsible mate.” By the age of 16 we all discovered alcohol and fishing, so no more exploration was conducted on the flammability of gases, liquids and solids. We just studied amber liquid while dipping fishing rods in salty water. Any do-gooder would have you believe that such destructive children were bound to end up being jailbirds. But no. I build gardens, another mate builds artificial limbs, another builds boats, another runs a powder coating works. We all build stuff. All I can say is thank god we never played with calculators when we were young. I couldn’t imagine myself or any of my friends being accountants.

Whale of a time.

The picky-choosiness of Australians when it comes to killing living creatures is strange. It’s ok to eat fish. It’s NOT ok to eat whales. It’s ok to eat pigs. It’s NOT ok to eat cats and dogs. It’s ok to eat lambs. It’s NOT ok to eat monkeys. It’s ok to eat chickens. It’s NOT ok to eat parrots. So where am I going with this? Buggered if I know.

Eat dust.

Momo is the latest person to can the blogging caper.

It’s very interesting. There is many a blogger who has been at it for some time now who has just decided to pack up the old kit bag and move on. One of the first blogs I ever read was meish by Meg Pickard (previously notsosoft.com) in London. Recently Meg wrote an interesting post about how, at a certain point, a person has to distance themselves from their site.

“…it changed the way I approached this blog, and blogging, and the whole concept of web personality/personalities.

Bit by bit, I drew away from all that had kept me amused and energised for the first few years - not the friendships I’d made through blogging (they stayed, mostly) - but I became more uncomfortable with putting myself on the web, with letting there be that much information and personality and identity out there, pinned down and claimed only by my lousy web design skills.

Maybe it was the first time I found my content on someone else’s site. Maybe it was the first time I received a personally abusive comment. Maybe it was the first time someone used their own blog to twist my words back at me. Maybe it was the first time a stalker tracked me down and called me at home. Maybe it was the first time I censored myself on my own site. Whatever caused it, the whole experience was souring, and I didn’t like it.”

Momo’s pictures.

A few weeks back I was getting bored with blogging and needed a kickstart. So I started Pictures on Request. Momo was my first customer. Here’s the happy snaps I took for her.

Roy boy.

Bounced.

Someone in Brunswick had a bad night out at the pub.

Jigga jigga.

Public holidays. They’re generally the only weekdays I have time to eat breakfast…so I did.

Misguided tool.

What a miserable crunt (sorry for the use of the ‘c’ word, I only use it to describe particularly mean-streaked individuals).

By the way, is Andrew Bolt is hot or not. Heh! (Thanks Abbey)

Goodle.

Via The Fix comes Goodle. Good news only. Graham ran something like this a few years ago as an April Fools Day joke. Graham’s 2 years ahead of the rest of us.

Land of the living.

For a while there I almost forgot I had a blog. S’ not a bad thing in some ways, but below is an example of why I forgot about everything for a few weeks. Phonemic analysis of Macedonian was my pet project at university over the last 6 weeks. Sounds fun doesn’t it? I dreamt of phonemes the other night. When study enters the unconcious mind you know you’re in trouble.

Now that I actually have some time to spend with my Mrs. in the evenings instead of analyse a langauge that I don’t know, she’s off watching Tom bloody Cruise getting interviewed by Oprah in the living room. I know she’s actually watching it because there’s a steady stream of invective echoing down the hallway. Much of it relates to colourful descriptions of a certain religious belief involving aliens. Religion’s OK. It’s all about whatever floats your boat I suppose. I just wish those frigging dudes from the church of latter day saints wouldn’t sail into my front yard every second Saturday. I don’t know what it is about Northcote, but they must think there’s a few souls in need of saving around here. Their latest tactic is to bring their kids and wife along with them to try and stop people from just telling them to ‘FUCK OFF.‘ I’ve never told them to take the f-train (yet) because I just see no need to spoil someone else’s day by being an arrogant prick. Anyway, if I did tell them to take the f-train it would give them even more ammunition to try and save the world from foul-mouthed antichrists who like to sleep in on Saturday mornings.

I’ve got into theological chats with a few door-to-door preachers. Once I talked for half an hour about how the bible is just a bunch of great stories, and shouldn’t be taken too literally. After about 32 minutes the preachers’ kids started begging for ice-creams. They obviously bribe their children to come and listen to their door-to-door godspeil. Hey, at least I didn’t invite them in and feed ‘em hash cookies!

More that you could agreed with.

Many other leftorium dwellers like me were surprised to read Andrew Bolt’s take on the whole Schapellgate episode.

I sent Andrew Bolt an email for the first and probably only time. It went a little something like this…

Andrew,

I rarely agree with the views in your articles, but I have to give credit where credit is due.

Your article /Corby and the mob/ , Herald-Sun 1/6/2005, was spot on.

I sent that email at 2.10 in the afternoon today and never expected a response. To Bolt’s credit I did get a reply only one hour later. I think he needs a sleep though. His grammar is worse than mine after two six-packs and a game of football.

Thanks, Tony. I may have written more that you could agreed with than you believe.

Andrew Bolt

I don’t believe so…but at least the bastard replied.

Haircut 100

Tonight a rare occurence struck the streets of Richmond. Yep, I got meeself a haircut I did.

I now have the shortest hair that I’ve ever had since birth. Yeah!

The drive home to Northcote was the best part of my day though and much outweighed my follicular pride. I listened to Karen Leng (Triple R Melbourne) interview Sam Fogarino (from Interpol) while sitting in peak hour traffic. Karen Leng always brings the best out of the musicians she interviews and this time was no exception. I just might have to go and see Interpol at the end of July (but it’s at the Metro…yuk).