Yes, well…

The frequency of my blog entries getting back to normal eh? So much for that idea 🙂

There’s been a lot of stuff to get done at work before I finish up, and there’s still a lot of stuff to be organised for the trip, and as a result I’ve been busy as all get out. And as a result of that I’ve been too tired to do much in the evenings except throw something in the microwave and collapse in front of the TV (and an unremitting diet of microwave dinners is probably not helping anyway). So keeping up with blog entries has sort of fallen by the wayside. But they should pick up sooner or later – maybe 🙂

A few quick notes on things though.

Justin and Marika

I caught up with Justin and Marika last week. We went out to dinner at Kailis Brothers in Leederville (where I had a very nice salt and pepper squid) and then walked up to the Luna to see some film I’d never heard of but which Justin and Marika said was a documentary about a family who’s house was stormed by the police and FBI in the middle of their thanksgiving dinner – sort of a social justice/abuse of power by the authorities type thing. In actual fact it turned out that the police and FBI stormed the place because the father of said family was a paedophile trading in child porn, which was frankly not what I’d been lead to expect. But it was interesting anyway, in a somewhat unsettling way. I’ll probably have more to say on it later.

Oh and it turned out that the reason Justin and Marika didn’t turn up to my birthday dinner back in February/March was because they’d just found out Marika was pregnant – and were in severe shock at the time. They’re extremely happy about it now, so congratulations guys!

The Charmed Season Finale

Gideon is dead. Good. You do have to wonder where Leo picked up the ability to shoot lightning bolts from his hands Emperor Palpetine style though. And since when was Chris telekinetic? They did a very good job in the adds of suggesting that Piper was going to die (not that I figured she’d stay dead of course, name one Halliwell sister who hasn’t been dead at some point or other) but in the end it turned out that they killed off Chris, which is fair enough because the entire temporal paradox of his very existance was rapidly becoming an embarrasment. Ummm what else? Oh yes, Barbus. It’s good to see him back. Every TV show needs a demon of fear who looks like a cross between David Bowie and Tom Waites and speaks with a Tennassee accent (Tennasse? I dunno, somewhere like that). And his turn as the Demon of Hope in the mirror universe was hilarious. Actually speaking of the mirror universe it was nice to see that they kept to the convention of the guys all having pointy little beards and the girls done up as goths – just so we could tell who was who 🙂

(Oh yeah, normally I’d regard Rose McGowan done up as a goth as a dream come true, but they went way overboard with the hair – it looked like she was wearing three wigs on top of each other – so no dice 🙂

Ummm, sure there was some other stuff I was going to write about, but I’d better get on with some real work (I’m in the office early again today) . So, farewell until I get myself together enough to write again, which could be sometime in November at this rate 🙂

Cool Air

It’s 7:22am and I’m in at the office trying to figure out what the heck is happening with one of our clients (I’ve managed to track it down to a problem with the mail server). But that’s not what I’m here to write about, I’m here to write about the totally insane bus ride I just had getting here.

When I come into work early I catch the first number 97 bus of the day, which leaves Subiaco railway station at 7:00am – at this time of year just before sunrise. It was particularly chilly last night, and by the time the bus arrived even I (who generally prefers the cold) was looking forwards to getting inside where it would be a bit warmer. So I step into the bus and BLAM!! Struck down by a blast of icy cold from the air-conditioning. It was colder inside the bus than out!

Now when I say it was cold in that bus, I mean cold. Not cold like a chilly morning, cold like the air that comes rushing out when you open your freezer. Everyone flinched getting on, and a few muttered about it quite loudly under their breath, but the driver (who may well have been named Dr Muñoz) completely ignored them. He set off with the air-con still on full blast – it was like travelling in the back of a refrigerated goods van.

OK, I’ve just checked a weather site which suggests that the temperature at 7:00am was about 4C. Which means inside the bus it must have been down around freezing.

Now I don’t expect bus drivers to be the most sane of people, but c’mon! That’s just ridiculous!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

I planned to make a lengthy entry today. In fact I planned to do quite a few things today. Unfortunately I haven’t really been able to do much. This is down to a combination of two things.

1) The play I saw last night (which I shall write about in due course) which meant I didn’t get home until 11:00pm (oooo! so late! 😉

2) The alarm (house? shop? car? I dunno) down the street that went off at 11:30pm and wasn’t turned off until about 6:00am.

The problem with the alarm wasn’t volume, as long as it’s dark I can sleep through almost anything (as living at this place has proved ;-). It was the fact that instead of going “beeeeep beeeeep beeeeep” continuously, it would go “beeeeep beeeeep beeeeep” for about ten seconds, then pause for ten seconds, then start up again. It’s impossible to sleep through that because as soon as it stops you lie there hoping it’s stopped for good but waiting for it to start up again. Which it does.

I think I got about an hour of fitful dozing (featuring some very odd dreams about the Baldwin brothers) in during the entire night. Then, when it finally stopped at about 6:00am I fell into a deep and dreamless slumber that lasted until almost 12:00.

Even then I was still dead tired, but the light and noise outside was too much to sleep through.

So, I’ve had a very truncated day. And not done a lot. And I have to go to work tomorrow. *sigh*

I’ll write more when I’ve had some sleep 🙂

The Pornographers were ripped off!!!

I had a rather weird dream last night. It was an episode of a new sitcom about a bunch of people taking a university course together (actually I think it might have been the second or third season premiere, since there were some implications of some cast members having left and other new ones joining). It was kind of like that old Head of the Class show, you know the one that featured Billy Connolly for a while? Anyway the weird thing was it had an ensemble cast of characters from other sit-coms. The class was made up of Dr Frasier Crane from Frasier, Phoebe from Friends, Linda from Becker and… well Andy Dick (no matter what he’s in Andy Dick only ever plays one type of character and they’re all completely interchangeable, so we’ll just say Andy Dick). Lisa and Beth from Newsradio and Finch from Just Shoot Me might have been hanging around at the back, I can’t quite remember. In any case the teacher was the guy from According To Jim.

Not a lot happened really. Frasier acted like a pompous ass, Linda and Phoebe got into a prolonged and bewildering conversation about some inane subject, and Andy Dick made some stupid Andy-Dickesque comments about the teacher’s new PDA. Oh, and the teacher accidentally spilled the contents of his bag on the floor, and Frasier leapt from his seat and started picking them up in a blatant attempt at currying favour. But that’s about it. WIERD no? 🙂

I suppose all the Newsradio stuff had to do with a documentary on the archeology of Alexandria I watched before going to bed (one of the Archeologists looked surprisingly like Maura Tierney), and this week’s TV guide has a photo from the last episode of Friends which would account for Phoebe, but the rest is completely beyond me.

Anyway I had a pretty busy week socially (for me that is). On Tuesday night I went to the Sunset Cinemas at King’s Park with Ryan, Justin and Marika. They were playing that French bird film that everyone’s been raving about for the last years or so, so after work I caught the train down to Victoria Park and walked to Justin and Marika’s new place. As usual with Justin we were a bit delayed getting going (we had to make pizzas so as to have something to eat which took a while to cook) but we only missed the first ten minutes or so, so that was OK.

The Sunset Cinemas are held in the open air, you sit on the grass and watch the movie on a big screen held up by scaffolding. It was really good actually, the weather was perfect (although it got a little bit chilly by the end) and the film was amazing. Three bits in particular stuck in my mind, a gaggle of geese wandering around the Arizona desert (on their migration from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, they didn’t just truck geese out to the desert for the shoot – or at least I hope they didn’t), some grebes running across a lake in Oregon (they looked like penguins speeded up five times, it was hilarious!) and a baby snowy owl waddling across the tundra looking like a disgruntled overweight hobbit with a backpack. The pizzas were great, Ryan bought a gigantic heaped platter of grapes (some of which we fed to the ducks while packing up, they couldn’t get enough of them!) and all in all it was a really fun night. I even got a pot plant as a belated Christmas present. It’s a succulent, which is great because it only needs to be watered about once a year which is about as often as I’d remember to 🙂

On Saturday night I headed down to the Red Orchid with Rebecca and Dom, just to catch up. We ended up sitting outside in the little courtyard at the back, which was great because it wasn’t as crowded as out the front, but didn’t have the appalling acoustics of indoors (in order to look cool and trendy the interior has a whole lot of bare concrete and girders, it echoes like crazy). As usual the food was excellent, although the service was a bit sloppy. We were asked for our orders twice, had to ask for a carafe of water twice, and the lemon lime and bitters I ordered with my meal failed to appear until I asked for it again. Oh, and we were offered desert and coffee menus three times, but by that point they may have been trying to get rid of us 🙂

The weird thing is that people kept coming out to sit at the table adjacent to us, then changing their minds and moving indoors. We figured we were doing something to drive them away, although we couldn’t quite figure out what.

So yeah, that was my week socially.

Today of course is the Australia Day/Invasion Day public holiday, depending on how you look at it. There’ll be the big firework display over the river tonight, but I’m not going. To get a decent seat you have to go in at about nine in the morning, and then spend the entire day sitting out in the sun surrounded by even increasing numbers of other bored people, all for fifteen minutes of fireworks choreographed to mindless top 40 tunes which you just know will feature Guy Sebastian. Then you’ve got the hassle of getting home through the thousands of other people all trying to get home. I can do without it frankly.

There was some kind of fireworks display last night as well, to judge by the noise. Either that or an artillery attack of some kind. It was probably over at Gloucester park or something, although I did entertain myself with the thought that the barges for tonight’s show might have caught on fire and the display was going off 24 hours early with no-one to watch it. Haven’t heard anything on the news though, sad to say 🙂

This being Australia Day means that yesterday was of course the Triple J Hottest 100 countdown. All in all it wasn’t too bad, although once again Powderfinger got way more placings than they actually deserve. The New Pornographers didn’t get in at all which annoyed the heck out of me, we could have taken out a few Powderfinger tracks to make room – no one would have missed them!

I would list the top ten here, but Triple J haven’t seen fit to put the results on the website yet. I can say that number one was Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet, and two was Hey Yah by Outkast. The Royskopp (which is not how you spell it I’m sure) remix of Coldplay’s Clocks was at about five, and… um I can’t quite remember the rest. A full update when Triple J does one I promise 🙂

As for the songs I voted for, a big chunk of them failed to get in alltogether. That’s what happens when you limit people to ten songs I guess, stupid policy that it is. Let’s see…

Biftek – Read To Me – Didn’t make it in!
Downsyde – El Questro – Didn’t make it in!
Eels – Dirty Girl – Didn’t make it in!
Electric Six – Gay Bar – Got in at about 26, which is good
Nofx – Franco Un-American – Made it in
Screamfeeder – Ice Patrol – Didn’t make it in
The Herd – 77% – Made it in
The New Pornographers – All For Swinging You Around – Didn’t make it in!
The New Pornographers – The Laws Have Changed – Didn’t make it in either!
The Waifs – Lighthouse – Got in at about 12, yey!!

Of the other four I would really have liked to vote for, they all made it in except for Spencer Tracy. They played the ‘Armageddon’ version of ‘Bomb the World’ I’m happy to report by the way, which is the far superior version of the song. A lot angrier than the normal one. Oh, and two songs I maybe would have voted for if I’d remembered them are Growing on Me by the Darkness, and Man of Constant Sorrows by the Soggy Bottom Boys. Now they rock!

Well that’s that for another year then *g*

Finally I should mention that Wyrmworld has undergone a major revision and re-arrangement. I’m aiming to reformat the entire site over the next few months, lord knows it needs it. Next on the horizon are the Tales of the Geek Underclass, I’ve got a design worked out, it’s just a case of finalising it and converting all the files. *sigh* so much work, so little time.

OK, I’m shutting up now 🙂

Songs, Songs and more Songs

I’ve had a rather rough week all told. First of all the ridiculous heat, then the huge problems upgrading my computer at work, then the lunatics who decided to move their party out into the carpark last night. You’ve got to love it when you’re woken from a very pleasant dream about Rose McGowan (not that kind of dream, get your mind out of the gutter!) at 1:00am by people shouting, laughing, smashing bottles and screaming just outside your bedroom window. Happily they decided to call it a night around 3:00, and I was able to get back to sleep, Ms McGowan however was nowhere to be seen. Oh well.

Anyway, computer problems.

Ever since I inadvertantly dragged the windows directory into the wrong place on the hard drive – and then panicked and reinstalled Windows 98 over the top – my work computer has been acting fairly erratically. Rather than erase everything and do a complete re-install (not smart since most of our sites are backed up on my machine) we decided to get a new hard drive, set that up as the master and install Windows on it, while keeping the old one as a slave. Good idea no?

No, not really. The installation process (which took the better part of two and half days) went something like this…

Take off case and install new hard drive.
Spend a good two hours trying to get the correct master/slave settings.
Spend several more hours trying to match the office’s many copies of Windows 98 to the office’s many Windows 98 registration codes.
Find a CD and code that will work together. Spend about two hours installing Windows 98.
Spend a further half day re-installing all my software and configuring Windows.
Realise I’ve installed Windows 98 First Edition when I need Second Edition to recognise the new 80 gig hard drive as an 80 gig hard drive instead of a 2 gig hard drive.
Spend an hour searching through office for Second Edition CDs.
Spend two hours trying to match Second Edition CDs to second edition registration codes.
Find a CD and code that will work together. Spend an hour trying to get the installation to upgrade without crashing. Fail miserably.
Despair.
Convince Dale to buy a copy of Windows XP.
Spend an hour trying to convince the Windows XP CD to recognise the correct hard drive. Eventually force it’s hand by taking out the wrong one.
Spend two hours installing Windows XP. Spend a further two hours reinstalling all my software and settings. Again.
Realise I don’t have enough memory to run Windows XP properly. Canabalize chips from other computers until I have enough.
Go home.

So yeah, not the most productive week.

I’ve had a pretty productive weekend though. I’m not going to go into details just yet, but expect some big changes to Wyrmworld. And maybe to the Wyrmlog too if I can muster the energy 🙂

About the only other thing I’ve got to mention is that I did my patriotic duty today *g* and voted in the Triple J Hottest 100. For reasons best known to themselves the powers that be down at the J’s have decided that this year each person can only vote for ten songs, which was a bit of a problem for me personally since there were at least 131 songs listed that I would have voted for. But I eventually whittled the list down to the following ten tracks – my official ten favourite songs of 2003 (in no particular order)…

Biftek – Read To Me
Downsyde – El Questro
Eels – Dirty Girl
Electric Six – Gay Bar
Nofx – Franco Un-American
Screamfeeder – Ice Patrol
The Herd – 77%
The New Pornographers – All For Swinging You Around
The New Pornographers – The Laws Have Changed
The Waifs – Lighthouse

There were four other songs that almost made the cut, specifically…

Hilltop Hoods – The Nosebleed Section
Michael Franti/Spearhead – Bomb The World
Magic Dirt – Watch Out Boys
Spencer Tracy – Ocean

And I suppose I might as well list the rest of the 131 songs. You know, just for the sake of completeness 🙂 (the best of these are bolded).

1200 Techniques – Eye Of The Storm
A.R.E. Weapons – Hey World
Amiel – Love Song
Andromeda – Something White And Sigmund
Architecture In Helsinki – The Owls Go
Audioslave – Show Me How To Live
Beastie Boys – In A World Gone Mad
Ben Folds – There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You
Billy Bragg – The Price Of Oil
Bob Evans – Friday Come Five
Bob Evans – Turn
Chemical Brothers – The Golden Path
Chumbawamba – Jacob’s Ladder (Not In My Name)
Cody Chesnutt – The World Is Coming To My Party
Coldplay – Clocks
Curve – Want More, Need Less
Dallas Crane – Ladybird
Dallas Crane – No Through Road
Dan Kelly – Counter Meal Kim
Dan Kelly/The Alpha Males – Summer Wino
Dandy Warhols – I Am A Scientist
Dandy Warhols – We Used To Be Friends
Dandy Warhols – You Were The Last High
David Bridie – Hotel Radio
Dirty Lucy – Nothing Is Free
DJ Format – Ill Culinary Behaviour
Dropkick Murphys – The Outcast
Dsico – Smells Like Electro
Eels – Saturday Morning
Electric Six – Danger! High Voltage
Epicure – Armies Against Me
Freeland – We Want Your Soul
Frenzal Rhomb – Hippy Song
Frenzal Rhomb – Russell Crowe’s Band
Full Fathom Five – Built You A Gun
Futureshock – Pride’s Paranoia
Genshen – Nothing Quite Like This
Givegoods – We’re Here About The Budda’s
Gorgeous – Air Balloon
Gorgeous – Do Do Do Song
Grandaddy – Now It’s On
Hedrock Valley Beats – How Do You Feel?
Hot Hot Heat – Naked In The City Again
Idlewild – A Modern Way Of Letting Go
Jack Johnson – The Horizon Has Been Defeated
Jack Planck – Fit, Slender And Attractive
Jet – Are You Going To Be My Girl
Jewtown – Jewtown
Junkie XL/Peter Tosh – Don’t Wake Up Policeman
Klonhertz – Three Girl Rhumba
Ladytron – Evil
Layo And Bushwacka – Love Story
Lazy Susan – Sometimes
Le Tigre – Deceptacon
Legends Of Hip Hop – Fifth Element
Liam Lynch – Still Wasted From The Party Last Night
Liam Lynch – United States Of Whatever
Living End – One Said To The Other
Living End – Tabloid Magazine
Magic Dirt – Plastic Loveless Letter
Mark Ronson – I Suck
MC Honky – 3 Turntables & 2 Microphones
Mclusky – There Ain’t No Fool In Ferguson
Michael Andrews/Gary Jules – Mad World
Michael Franti/Spearhead – Everyone Deserves Music
Mint Royale – Show Me
Nick Holder – No More Dating DJ’s
Nina Simone – Sinnerman
Nofx – The Separation Of Church and Skate
Nokturnl – Woomera
Offcutts – Break It (Down James Brown)
Outkast – Hey Ya
Panjabi MC – Jogi
Panjabi MC – Mundian To Bach Ke
Placebo – Running Up That Hill
Radiohead – There There
Rancid – Red Hot Moon
Relaxed Muscle – Billy Jack
Sahara Hotnights – On Top Of Your World
Salmonella Dub – Slide
Screamfeeder – 1 2 3 4 5
Screamfeeder – I Don’t Know What To Do With Myself
Scribe – Not Many
Sir Veto – Underneath A Burning Sun
Sodastream – Blinky
Sonic Animation – (This Is Not) A Love Poem
Spearmint – Left Alone Among The Living
Starky – Girl Talk
The Bumblebeez – Pony Ride
The Casanovas – No Time For Love
The Cat Empire – The Chariot
The Fergusons – Sinner Is Red
The Fiery Furnaces – Don’t Dance Her Down
The Go! Team – Ladyflash
The Guild League – Jet Set…Go!
The Herd – Burn Down The Parliment
The Libertines – What A Waster
The Mountain Goats – See America Right
The Postal Service – Such Great Heights
The Postal Service – The District Sleeps Alone
The Raveonettes – Attack Of The Ghost Riders
The Raveonettes – That Great Love Sound
The Shins – Mine’s Not A High Horse
The Spazzys – Lets Get Spazzy
The Strokes – 12:51
The Thrills – Big Sur
The Weekend – 80’s Rockstar
Trash Palace – The Metric System
Turbonegro – F.T.W.
Two Up – Why Do I Try So Hard
Underworld – Dinosaur Adventure 3D
Vassy – Cover You In Kisses
White Stripes – Girl U Have No Faith In Medicine
White Stripes – In The Cold Cold Night
White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
Youth Group – Shadowland
Yunyu – A Prayer

Whew! That’s that over for another year. Oh, and my tip for the winning song? Either “Hey Ya” by Outkast or “Gay Bar” by Electric Six. I’d be very surprised is neither of them ended up in the top 10 anyway.

OK, I’m all typed out now, so I’ll shut up 🙂

Intransigent DNA Influenced Cute Woman of the Week: I happened to see some of a repeat of Undercover Angels yesterday. It’s an apalling show, but ex-Popstar Katie Underwood? Wowee! Actually she bears a slight resemblance to a certain someone else, which may have something to do with it 😉

PAAAR-TAY!!!! Or something.

I had a frightening experience last night. I turned on the TV (without checking what channel it was on) and found myself watching a whole bunch of people renovating someone’s garden. The thing is I couldn’t tell if it was Backyard Blitz, Ground Force, Burke’s Backyard, or Renovation Rescue. It was only when Joanna Griggs put in an appearance that I realised it was Auction Squad.

There are way too many renovation shows on Australian TV.

Anyway it’s been a while since I last made an entry, so I suppose I’d better say what I’ve been up to. A fair bit (for me anyway) all things considered. Much of it to do with Michael and Nat getting engaged, and holding a party to celebrate said event last Sunday.

(Oh, by the way the Waifs won at least three Arias, and 28 Days Later is of course a British film – just thought I should clear that up 🙂

So, when we last left off the fascinating saga that is my life I’d taken a Wednesday off work. In retrospect this may not have been a fantastic idea as it meant having to work two nine-and-a-half hour days Thursday and Friday to get all the changes on www.seasideholidays.net done in time for the weekend. As you can imagine this left me fairly wiped out, and instead of going over to the Galleria Saturday morning I slept in and went over in the afternoon instead.

Why you ask? Two reasons. I’d decided to buy some new clothes for the party, and I needed to get an engagement present. For the present I’d conferred with Ryan and decided to go for booze, specifically Wild Turkey which he assured me Michael liked (he on the other hand went for vodka which Nat likes – always trying to impress the ladies is Rybo 😉

So, I had to negotiate a bottle shop. This was more difficult than you might think because…

a) I don’t drink and am therefore unfamiliar with the layout of such places and can’t find anything without a detailed sector to sector search, and…

b) I was wearing my large, bulky backpack in order to carry everything home and have a tendency to forget I’m wearing it and crash it into things, which can get pretty expensive around wine and liquor displays.

There was also the vague worry that the counter staff might (against all common sense) mistake me for a teenager and demand some photo ID, which of course I do not possess. However in the end it all turned out OK. I found the Wild Turkey with little trouble, didn’t knock anything over and didn’t get carded, although the people in front of me did which momentarily raised my stress levels sky high.

Then it was off to K-Mart for clothes. I have to admit that I buy most of my clothes from either K-Mart or Target, fundamentally because they’re cheap (and because I refuse to wear anything with a label as a matter of principle – I’m not paying an extra $120 for some stupid Nike tick on my jacket damnit). Sure, it makes me extremely unfashionable, but I seriously doubt wearing designer clothes would have the slightest affect on my popularity or sex appeal anyway – they’re both well beyond help 😉

I’d decided to go for a new, slightly more sophicated look than my usual black t-shirt and jeans – namely a Johnny Cash/Coffee-Shop-Waiter type of thing. Black trousers, black button up shirt, I even threw a black tie into the basket just for completeness’ sake. Naturally I didn’t try any of this on, as I have an aversion to taking off my clothes in public with only a flimsy half length curtain for privacy. This was to bite me in the backside quite firmly later on…

So, with my shopping done I had an hour and a half to kill before the next bus (the weekend bus service in this city is appalling). So I went for a wander around – to Sanity, the ABC Shop, Dymocks, but was suddenly sucked in by the massive gravitational pull of a discount book sale on the top floor.

Ah! Discount book sales! Is there anything like them to provoke questions like “Do I really need a copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle?”. This one was being held in the shell of a closed down sports-clothing store, the irony of which made it even more enjoyable than usual. I spent the next fifteen minutes wandering from table to table glutting myself on rejects and remainders before finally whittling my pile down to $54 worth (not, sadly, including the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which was very impressive but fairly overpriced for a “discounted” book).

While waiting at the checkout (behind one woman who seemed determined to have a lengthy conversation with the clerk despite the book-shoppers piling up in a holding pattern behind her and her friend who couldn’t remember if she’d got a receipt for her tarot cards so could she please have another one?) I had time to reflect on why some of the books hadn’t sold first time round. Particularly obvious were two of them 50 Ways to Find a Lover – Proven Strategies for Meeting a Partner and No More Head Lice! – A Natural Solution. Someone would have to be pretty desperate to walk up to the counter in a bookstore holding out either of those. Making matters worse they both had extremely bold and colourful cover art – the words “HEAD LICE” virtually jumped off the cardboard – so you couldn’t just conceal them in a pile of other books and hope the clerk wouldn’t notice. Honestly, who designs these things?

So, heavily weighted down with clothes, books and alcohol I staggered off to find somewhere to sit, which isn’t easy since Westfield ripped out most of the benches and replaced them with body piercing booths, feng shui vendors and nut sellers when they took over the Galleria a few years back. I eventually found one they’d missed (probably because it was concealed behind a table loaded down with discount John Wayne videos) and spent the next half hour flicking through my new acquisitions before heading over to the bus station.

On arrival back home I went to try on my new ultra-cool clothes, which is where I ran into problems. The shirt was fine – fit like a very loose glove – but the trousers… Embarrassment precludes me from mentioning my actual trouser size, but these turned out to be a full 15 centimetres too small, which was odd since in the store they were hanging from a coathanger clearly marked as being my size. I ranted and raved about the infernal incompetence of K-Mart employees for a bit (hopefully the bogans were in downstairs and got a taste of their own medicine) but eventually got tired and watched some TV instead.

Luckily I did have another pair of black trousers that I could wear, even if they were a bit shorter in the legs than I like, so it wasn’t as big a disaster as it could have been. But I’m never going to trust K-Mart again!

At least not on their sizing.

So, Sunday rolled around. I got all dressed in my black attire and examining myself in the bedroom mirror thought I looked quite adequate (when it comes to looking cool, stylish or attractive ‘adequate’ is about the best I can hope for :). I wrapped up the Wild Turkey and waited for my lift to arrive. I’d been fairly smart all up and managed to get a lift with Mum up to Michael’s place in the valley via an art exhibition in Mundaring – curated by Travis and featuring my brother Andrew, currently living it up in Vegas. There was a bit of confusion actually finding Michael’s place because I haven’t been there for several years, and not only had a large limestone wall been built around the house, concealing it from the road, but they’d abandoned said house (at the front of the property) and built a fancy new one down back, above the river (it’s pretty fantastic, only one storey but with fantastic views up and down the river and across the fields all the way to the DOLA offices in Midland).

Fabian was already there, and Ryan arrived soon afterwards (bearing vodka and cranberry juice – most of which he was to consume himself as the afternoon wore on). So we settled down at a table with Fabian’s folks and a ridiculous quantity of snack food, most of which I was to consume as the afternoon wore on 😉

As parties go (and keep in mind that as a Geek I have a natural aversion to the things) it was pretty good. The weather was fantastic (once I changed chairs out of the sun anyway), the music was good and the food was laid on in quantities sufficient to sate a small force of invading visigoths (they’d killed and spit roasted two whole sheep and done in at least one entire flock of garlic breads). The flies were a bit of a problem, but that’s just the time of year and couldn’t really be helped.

Ryan (as usual) provided much of the entertainment, once sufficiently lubricated. His first comedic triumph was to suggest that Nat resembles Joanna Lumley. This provoked much ribbing, although to be fair there are some noticeable similarities. They’re both women for instance, and they’re both tall. Not long afterwards he mistook Don’t Mug Yourself by the Streets for 77% by the Herd (understandable since 77% is angry political hip-hop where Don’t mug Yourself is poppy, British, ‘Geeza’ hip-hop – they’re both hip hop you see 🙂

After some small scale melodrama involving people stealing his chair whenever he went to get another drink (which was actually true, people did keep stealing it) he continued by comparing Michael to comedian Paul McDermott. This wasn’t as funny as it could have been since (particularly with Michael’s current haircut) there is a resemblance, he really should have compared him to Mikey Robins instead. The moment was saved however by Fabian’s dad (who was matching Ryan’s vodkas two for one with beers) stepping in to say he though he’d meant cricketer Craig McDermott.

The best was definitely saved for last though. When the conversation strayed onto the problems facing smokers trying to quit Ryan suggested that the real addictive feature of cigarettes wasn’t so much the nicotine, but the ‘power to hold fire in your hand’ and the ability ‘to blow smoke out your nose’. This was widely regarded as a tour de force, particularly when he started making demonstrative hand gestures. “You see, I’m holding fire in my hand” – holding up imaginary cigarette then taking a deep puff – “And now I’m blowing smoke out my nose” – exhaling heavily through nostrils and waggling fingers to indicate smoke. Fabian’s dad’s description of a boab tree as “a big fat trunk with bugger-all on top” just couldn’t compare.

So, a good time (and obscenely rich mud-cake) was had by all. I got a lift down to the railway station with Fabian (who managed to make about the only wrong turn possible on the five minute drive, seriously confusing Ryan who was following on his motorcycle despite the ridiculous quantity of vodka he’d consumed) and caught the train back home.

So that was my weekend. Last weekend.

Since then I haven’t been doing much. A fair slab of time over the last few nights has been spent recoding the Wyrmlog – again. The new version may or may not be up and running as you’re reading this (if everything is majorly messed up then it’s a fair bet it is active and I’ve screwed something up) depending on how active I’m feeling after writing this epic *g*. I’ve done my best to do away with tables and convert everything to CSS, since I figured out how to get Doctypes working properly while wrestling with the Dyslexia-SPELD website design this week. It’s amazing how easy CSS layout is once the browsers actually agree where to put borders and padding, made my job a whole lot easier I can tell you! Anyway, Wyrmlog version 3.0 should load faster and look slightly better than it’s predecessor, as long as you’re using version 6 browsers (and if you’re not, why not? Are you some kind of robot? And if so, what kind of powers do you have?).

As well as that I’ve been wasting a bit of time analysing the examples of the Dalek language detailed in Ben Aaronovitch’s Remembrance of the Daleks and putting together a webpage on such subject (it was obviously a mistake to start watching those re-runs of Doctor Who – my dormant fandom is suddenly becoming active again). I’ll probably get it finished sometime this weekend and upload it, thus making myself appear even more of a Geek to anyone who stumbles over this site 🙂

Finally, I suppose I’d better post that list of books from Helen’s and Ali’s blogs. The ones I’ve read are in italics…

Top 21:
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

22-100:
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

Damn that’s embarrassing, only 25. And a good slab of them kid’s books. Why couldn’t I have read Ulysses when I was eight instead of The Magic Faraway Tree? That’d look far more impressive 🙂

Anyway, better go. Got cleaning to do. And cooking. Sooner I win the lottery and can live a life of indulgent luxury the better!

Intransigent DNA Influenced Cute Woman of the Week: The redheaded suspect who got killed halfway through this week’s episode of CSI. Who cares if she arranged for a murder, she was pretty! ;-D

Back at Work. Bah!

Being back at work sucks.

I narrowly missed out on an extremely embarrassing encounter on the train home on Thursday night. There I was, walking down the platform after getting out of the front carriage, when who should I spy, sitting in the rear carriage(The electric trains in Perth only have two carriages. Or four in really busy periods, but that’s really just two trains end to end.) but Lyndah (Her hair is currently dyed flame red, so she’s pretty hard to miss ;-)).

You know, Lyndah?

Yeah. She didn’t see me, or if she did she did (she did she did? That can’t be good English!) a very good job of pretending she didn’t. And I doubt she would have spotted me down the length of the train since she was right at the back. But of course this little incident raises the question of what would have happened had we ended up on the same carriage and she had seen me (I know what would have happened if I’d seen her. I would have turned as red as a lobster and concealed myself behind some large fellow commuter before scurrying out like a rat when the train got to my station :)).

It’s a very good question.

The hidden variable of course is whether she’s aware of what I wrote about her. I have no reason to suppose that she’s ever visited my website or this blog, but she could have been made aware of the salient facts by my brother, which would provide a very good reason for her to pretend not to see me under any circumstances, let alone a train 🙂

The problem of course is that I don’t know if my brother reads this blog either. In fact I only know of a few people who do read it, Helen, Ali, Stephanie, Rebecca and Ryan (and maybe Mark, in between all that police training). Of course there’s also all those people who wander in looking for the lyrics to the Drug’s The Bold and the Beautiful or after searching for “Billy Idol Religious Fanatics” (I’m not kidding. Two separate search engine queries over the last few months. The scary thing is not so much that people are searching for this, but that I keep coming up for it :)). But I don’t know about anyone else.

So, regard this as an invitation everyone. If you read the Wyrmlog, let me know! Drop me an email! You’re my audience after all!

I’ll get all depressed if you don’t 😉

(By the way, please note that this is not an invitation to send me offers for herbal viagra, discount ink cartridges, penis enlargement pills, human growth hormone, millions of dollars in unclaimed African slush funds or any other such crap. I have excellent spam filtering software and I use it, so your message will be bloody well bounced.)

Anyway, back to Lyndah. I naturally kept half an eye out for her on Friday, but there wasn’t a flash of sexy flame red hair to be seen. Which is probably a good thing all round. I can seriously do without the distraction 🙂

Anyway, on a completely different subject a fair few people have been visiting the Wyrmlog looking for the lyrics to 77% by The Herd. Since I’ve been looking for them myself and the only copy I can find online is woefully inadequate I figured I’d transcribe them and stick them up here. So (with all necessary language warnings) here they are. Enjoy…

77% – The Herd

(samples)

…seventy seven percent of Australians, um, agree with John Howard’s actions on the Tampa.
What happened to the others?..

…the thing is, to use military force, uh, against, uh refugees, isn’t that a little, overkill?..

…a spokesman for the line that owns the ship says Australian SAS Troops are in danger of breaking the laws of piracy…

…undoubtedly this is the most popular decision as far as the Australian public are concerned, the Government’s made during its reign…

…the Captain before entering Australian waters had sent out a distress signal…

…clearly our solution was um, well it wasn’t only farcical – it was um, immoral…

(John Howard) I wish, that this problem were not ours…

Well I’m left sitting here, staring into a beer,
Shaking my head at the same old loathing and fear,
Stranger in my own land, can’t understand,
How the very word ‘Australian’ has just been damned,
I f*****g hate myself, take Aussie from my name,
Erase this endless shame, forever casting blame,
If you don’t act the same will I destroy you?
Everyone looks the same beaten black and blue,

And so I’ve had enough of these redneck pricks,
When fact is the only real s**t that sticks,
Watch as I tear the very skin from my face,
So none’ll see my race, my deep disgrace,
You’re not even from here in the first place!
And those who are you wanna further debase?
Nup – no more – never again, whether by fist or pen,
I will defend – ’cause I’m at a loose end,

The shattered remnants of Aussie dignity,
I’m a skip, whitey, round eye, surprise me,
Use your shriveled brain to please explain,
How the clever country just went down the drain?
We rode the sheep’s back now the sheep ride you,
If this is how it’s gonna be don’t call me true blue,
I denounce my ancestors, wounds still fester,
If you say it ain’t so I suggest ya wake up!

Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up,
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up,
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up,
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up!

Talkback? Squawking hacks, won’t relax,
Until Jonesey, Zemanek and Laws are all axed,
Seventy-seven percent of Aussies are racist,
If you’re here – I’ll say it your faces,
Rich redneck pricks still hold all the aces,
I’ll buy you a beer – with a arsenic chaser,
Better off dead? Is that what I’ve said?
Tempting to take for all the blood you’ve shed,

No doubt you’re as bad as your dads and your mums,
Mainsteam media making me so f*****g bummed,
Anglo reality, intellectual cavity,
Channel Nine fostering prejudiced mentalities,
I won’t be a casualty, just mention casually,
I can’t stand for you s**t-eating bullies,
Preying on peeps without a mainstream voice,
Most of yous stay silent but I’ve got no choice,

Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up!

Well I’ve yelled my lungs out, but to no avail,
Well I’ve yelled my lungs out, but to no avail,
Well I’ve yelled my lungs out, but to no f*****g avail,
That you’re a stranger yourself, now that’s the sting in the tail,

Captain Cook was the very first queue jumper,
It was immigrant labour that made Australia plumper,
Enough is enough, whiteys go pack your stuff,
Don’t wanna live in England? That’s f*****g tough!
I’m sick and tired of this redneck wonderland,
Most of yous stay silent and I can’t understand,
I just can’t understand,
It’s time for you to,

Well that’s a cheery way to sign off isn’t it? 🙂

The Total Lack of Quality Theatre

On a Friday night, after a hard week’s work I like to take it easy. Cook a simple dinner,watch a bit of TV, then fall into bed. So naturally I was not pleased when I found out that for my Aunt’s birthday the whole family was heading off last Friday for an evening of amateur theatre in the vast, arid, expanses south of the river*.

This was apparently going to be a good evening out because chicken and chips were being provided under the cover charge. Also it wasn’t going to be “a late night” because it “finishes at ten”.

Now being the pathetic sociophobe that I am I usually plan on being curled up in bed by ten on a Friday night. Or at the very least slumped in my recliner rocker* in front of the movie of the week – but hey, family is family. So it was off to a venue that (in the grand tradition of Dave Barry) I shall refer to as “The Total Lack of Quality Theatre”.

So, how was it? Well, you know things aren’t going well when the highlight of the evening is an Elvis impersonator.

Mind you the guy was pretty good. He sounded like Elvis (apart from the high notes where he lost it a little bit) and he looked like Elvis (or at least like a fat guy with sideburns in a sparkly jumpsuit, which is Elvis as far as most of my generation is concerned). Apparently he’s put on weight since last year*, but that only served to make him look more convincing.

The rest of the night was of variable standard. In general varying from merely boring to excruciatingly painful. The girls danced and danced, the adults performed a variety of sketches, many of them pre-dating the Flood, and occasionally someone would stumble out and perform a Benny Hill song, forgetting the lyrics halfway through and having to hum.

There were two girls however who could actually sing, and sing quite well. The brunette did a great job on Memory from Cats (although I’m pretty sure the streetlamp “gutters” not “sputters”), and one other song, the name of which my mind completely failed to register. The blonde had a more powerful voice, but less control,tending to waver a bit and go off-key on the higher notes. Her diction was also a bit sloppy (not that I’m one for draining the soul out of song by enunciating every single ‘t’ and ‘p’, but neglect it too much and you end up sounding like you’ve got a mouth full of custard*), but overall she wasn’t too bad.

The finale was a series of “French” set songs in a “French” cafe, which might have been bearable except for the fact that it dragged on and on and on. There were at least three repetitions of The Night They Invented Champagne, a song I’d never heard before, but quickly learned to hate with all my soul. Add in the Can-Can sequence (just because the techno Can-Can on the Moulin Rouge soundtrack goes for ten minutes doesn’t mean you have to dance through the whole thing girls) and a rather disturbing song by a fat, old, bald man about how much he loves little girls, and I was well ready to get the hell out of there when it finished.

At 11:00.

I wasn’t pleased.

Once I woke up the next morning (far later than usual but not late enough), I spent most of the day, and Sunday cleaning the place up, since Andrew was planning to bring Emma and Lyndah around to see it. That however fell through when their car broke down, so I was left sitting in a spotlessly clean flat all by myself. Which was mildly annoying,particularly as, having got the place so clean, I was extremely reluctant to do anything that might mess it up again. Like cooking. Or eating. However my basic biological needs soon overcame what few domestic instincts I have, and the place is now rapidly descending back into it’s normal squalor*.

Apart from that nothing much else has been going on. The most exciting event of the last few days was getting absolutely drenched in a torrential downpour on the way home last night. I had an umbrella, which was doing a fairly adequate job, but turned out to be powerless to protect me from the gigantic tsunami produced by a Transperth bus indulgently smashing it’s way through a deep pool of road run off as I waited to cross the street. My sopping state was made worse by a series of speeding cars, all apparently out to imitate the bus as I uncomfortably waddled my way home. I did avoid another complete soaking though, by managing to drop and crouch beneath the umbrella like a riot officer under a plastic shield when a passing truck threw up a cascade reminiscent of the Trevi fountain.

Finally I must announce my joy that the ABC has finally come to it’s senses and realised that launching an exclusively digital channel when set-top decoder boxes come in at around $700 each is not a viable economic proposition. Hence it has shifted some of the content of its “ABC Kids” channel back onto normal broadcasting, including new* episodes of Daria. Please excuse me for a second….

WOOOO-HOOOO!!!

My elated mood is only dampened by the facts that they’re on at 5:30, when I’m still on my way home from work, and I only discovered this by chance tonight, meaning that I’ve probably missed dozens of them.

This is what happens when you move out and don’t arrange for delivery of the weekend papers. TV Week here I come.

———————————————————–

* Perth is neatly divided into north and south by the Swan River. North of the river is the vibrant, cultural heart of the city, inhabited by intelligent, witty, well educated sophisticates. South of the river is a cultureless wasteland roamed by packs of wild-eyed,mullet-headed, banjo-playing knuckle walkers who inexplicably think the exact opposite is true.

* I am so old

* The fact that there was a “last year” and people still came this year makes me seriously concerned about the state of humanity

* Like Shaggy

* A humourous exaggeration Becca, I promise 🙂

* Like, from 2000