Facebook is ruining everything.

Here is a list of things I'd be good at it if it wasn't for facebook:

- Making photos superawes in Adobe Photoshop.
- Writing blogs.
- Having freakin' abs.
- Stacking and unstacking the dishwasher.
- Doing fitnesses.
- Organising photoshoots.
- Going to random gigs spontaneously.

Instead, here is a list of things I'm currently good at:

- Beating up hobos.
- Training and then fighting once a day.
- Having armies kill me good by Heroes with more time on their hands than me.
- Buying and trading virtual people.

If I calculated the hourage of facebookness I'd be appalled. I could have all sorts of mad skillz otherwise. Obvs, I'm aware this isnt' actually facebook's fault. If I had like, strength of character, determination, massive hair this all wouldn't be a problem.

Tonight I'm totally going to delete all those little applications and just leave the wall and photos. This is my pledge to you internetz.

bike bike bike bike

Today was Radical Day as for the first time ever I rode a bicycle into work. Craziness. I've been riding my motorbike to work ever since I bought it, but I've still been jealous of the bicycles squeezing past the impossible and singing with butterflies while I've been muttering MMM Delicious at so many exhausts.

From the city to Northcote there are a few bike tracks and super sneaky ways to avoid the main roads. Cara got her bicycle out last week and loved it, so I thought I'd give it a burl today.
Since my job is All Perception No Substance I like to get there earlier than most, this was doubly important as some dude told me the Totally Secret Bike Shed of Mystery fills up pretty early. So, I left the house this morning armed with Cara advice and directions. On the obvious bits Cara's advice was all 'Follow the other bikes'. Obvious, ha!

I set out at first light (not really) and met my first travel companion a few hundred metres from my house, a lanky old gentleman attired in an ill-fitting business suit and a old-fashioned helmet. Across the lights we acquired a new travelling companion, a flashy lycra'd speed dude with a racer. Following my new friends I went gaily into Uncharted Territory. The Business Suit was flying ahead and Flashy couldn't touch him but was totally pulling away from me. Not to lose my guiding stars, I tried a little harder, my totally unused and newly WD-40 drenched bicycle slipping on each rotation.

I went along the Bridge Of Cara Fear, it was fun.

I caught up to my friends, as they slowed to traverse a tricky bit/fork in the path and then one went left and the other went right.

Um.

I didn't plan for this.

Old Business Suit went right that went under a train station. Flashy went left. The tunnel under the train station had confused Cara in the olden days last week and so I thought it was the way home but not the way to the city. So I turned around to follow Flashy - who was gone. Everyone was gone, grrrr my indecision. I checked the signpost. Left = 8kms to Southgate. Right = 8kms to Southgate.

The path was lovely. It followed the Yarra and it wasn't long before I realised Cara had never descibed Even Scarey Wooden Bridges and lovely trees, but I thought maybe I singlehanded invented a brand new way.

20 minutes pass. I am rooted. So many hills. So many not curvy paths of not really going in the direction I hoped.

5 minutes. Signpost = 14kms to Southgate. If I had energies, what the?

After freakin ages I get to a staircase. Not really what I was after. Scenary is still lovely though.
Struggling with carrying the bike up so many stairs, I see another dude who wheels his bike up the side, smart. In so many huffs and puffs I ask him which way to the city. Continue on the scenic path or go down this street which I reckon leads to Punt Rd? Either way he says, want to go along the river? Why not I reckon, come this far. Heading over a new bridge, I follow my new best friend who soon leaves me for dust, and on a path soon headed well away from where I want to go. So. I do some abandonment. Head back and get onto Punt Rd, swap the trees and tranquil chirping for so many massive buses.

Another 20 minutes I get to work. The email version of Cara says she did it in 35 minutes, I took well over an hour. She is possibly smarter than me.

In 5 minutes I'm going home, swallowing so many prides and stubborn 'I'll be Right's and riding with my beautiful girlfriend along the path she nominates.

I've never really cared before...

Sunday started of superdodge, with The Corporate Entity Named Adam getting up early to go to work but it fairly quickly became awesomerad when some system was down and I was forced to get the heck out and join all my homies at Mich's beachhouse. The night before a few of us met Mich at some bar after all her friends had been at the Caulfield Cup. It had been ages since we'd gone out to a night of dodge and everyone was so dressed up and so completely trashed, it was seedier than anyone could have hoped for.

Anywho, we all made friends on saturday night and then hung out together again on Sunday. It was fun. I haven't made new friends for ages.

After the sun went down and the chips got eated all up, a few of the peeps scattered homeside and just the stayers remained. Since there were 3 girls and 2 boys, the TV got switched to the on position and we flicked between Australian Idol and that Election Debate something.
As with pretty much everyone we know, we're all heading down the vote Not John Howard path of politics, except for Mich who said that she didn't know she was going to vote for. Fair enough, but as I was hilariously bagging out our Prime Ministers gitters, his constant licking of his teeth and his Economy First Environment Somewhere After speeches, Mich was hacking into Rudd. Comments that I thought were overly agressive given that we don't know that much about him, about how much he bores and irritates her.

Some days later, I'm still taken aback.I've become personally concerned that one of my closest friends might vote Liberal and for the first time in my life I understand why Religion and Politics don't make polite dinner conversation. I totally admit that the Adam/Cara combo were probably far more forceful in our dislike than Mich was, and therefore probably annoying to anyone who might barrack for The Brow but I just can't make the jump to why anyone in our stage of life/intelligence/world views would think differently to me. I'm probably more thrown with how much her comments effected me and I've been coming up with plans to not to just deal with it, but to change her mind.

Mich is highly suggestable and can be OTT agressive about pretty much anything, so I'm merely thinking of offering to buy her dinner to vote Not JH. Obvs, this is so freakin' illegal that if I don't write blogside for a while it's because I'll finally be able to add Political Prisoner to my resume, but if she likes food and I like Not JH then we're all happy, right?

Of course, I shouldn't even care. Each person should be free to vote for whomever candidate they think will do the best job. I guess I'm just freaked that one of my closest friends must think fairly fundamentally differently to myself and I never picked it up until now. Or maybe she's just mimicking comments her parents or someone attractive made...

I used to have an awesome memory for faces, and a not too shabby memory for names.Unfortuantely, years of slipping through the cracks of the corporate wastelands have transformed my brain from speedily hilarious to quite the idiotic dullard. Even this phrase, 'idiotic dullard' has taken me 25-30 minutes to come up with, in my uni days, I would come up with something far more creative, descriptive, imaginative and crude in mere mini-micro seconds.

That Corporate Entity Called Adam leaves the elevator this morning with almost a suave swagger, with all the time in the world to walk to the cafe three metres away. In the mornings I like to get a bit of a swagger in my walk, because every other time I'm desperate to be away/get food/be hateful of slow walkers, etc.

Another elevator opens and I glimpse another output of the corporate machine. She's well dressed, good posture and looks familiar. My faces brain kicks in, but I now can't tell if I worked with her for 10 years or shared a crowded tram once. So I ignore it. Did she live with me?

She follows me into the cafe. I didn't make breakfast this morning, and I need foods like nothing else. The staff has recently learnt my name and my one order, it's cute. I ordered at the food section, while this maybely familiar young lady ordered at the coffee section. I have no idea if she has seen me, knows me, or whatevs, so I go to the papers table to pretend to read while I try to remember who she is. Was she that chick on that breakfast show?

By the time she joins me at the papers table, I think I've got it figured out.I'm sure of her last name, I think I've got her first name. She looks more professional and is laughing less than I remember. I worked with her ages ago. I remember dudes I worked with after she left lamenting that someone so good looking was gone. That wasn't so important; she was a hilarious story teller, man, she has us in tears.

That Corporate Entity Called Adam was dressed nice, but had helmet hair. So I didn't say anything to her, didn't even look up, soon the staff called my name and I Early Morning Adam Strutted outta there. I had no idea if this girl saw me, or would remember or would care.

I assume I'll bump into her again if she's in my building. If so, I should tell her that she changed my life back in the day. Changed. My. Life - Freakin. Every week I receive an e-mail that makes me laugh so much, grosses me out and gives me all sorts of stupid tidbits that I drop into so many random convos.

I can definitely improve someone else's life the way Emily improved mine...Subscribe to www.popbitch.com You may or may not regret it.

I reckon I've actually had RSI of the top of hands for about 15 years. I remember seeing a doctor about it in 2002 who told me I had to not touch computers and that every keystroke was doing me damage. Freaked me out. There really aren't many occupations that don't use computers, even less that I can just slot straight into without going back to study, even less that could potentially provide a similar salary.

So, instead of giving up my day job, I just bought all the ergonomic squishy things.Kinda helped maybe... hard to say really.

A couple of friends I know also got hit with RSI stuff, so they gave me a hint. Grab a 3kg weight, rest your hand on a table so that your wrist and hand are hanging off, hold the weight vertically. Hold that for 90 seconds. Change your hand to hold the weight horizontally so that you see your top of hand. Hold for 90 seconds. Change your hand the other way so that your top of hand faces the floor. Hold for 90 seconds.

I haven't done this exercise for ages, I remember it took a couple of weeks to have an effect, and you had to be really persistent. I think it had a slight beneficial effect but it certainly didn't fix anything. I might start that up again though, can't hurt.

When I went to Brisbane last year, for the first two months I was putting in crazy hours, actually working hard (but not making any difference) and the RSI really became a problem... my hands were sore all the time, whether I was on a computer or not.

First I saw a Natrapath. She was lovely and always excited to see me, which was nice in a city where I didn't know anyone. The downside was that, she kept putting me on different pills and remedies that were crazy, crazy expensive.

Her approach was two-fold. RSI is an inflammation, so she tried to reduce the imflammation and also get my body in top condition to heal itself. She changed my diet and gave me rules on digestion so that my blood was good, so that I'd soon gain Wolverine-like healing powers.
She also did the Bowen Technique which is a form of deep tissue massage that I think is supposed to be good for scar tissue and the like. She worked the hands, arms, back and neck. She wasn't happy that I was a gym dude at the time, I guess it tightened everything up. The massage was quite nice on the back but painful on the hands, and the RSI would superhurt the day after. I'm not really sure if it felt much better in the following days.

After a while of that, I also went to Back School, where they taught me the Alexander Technique for standing, walking, sitting, etc... That was hardcore superhard exhausting. The technique is all about posture and using the right muscles for the right movements. The only time I felt relaxed and rested was when I could lie on my back. I did it for weeks and weeks and still hadn't trained the muscles to these new ways. Standing felt very unnatural so I had to concentrate all the time.

I gave them both a couple of months but didn't find any improvement.

Then I took up with an accupuncturist. That actually felt better the first few times, I definitely noticed an improvement in the first couple of weeks, my hands felt less sore, but after a while, the accupuncture sessions had no effect.

Around this time I moved back to Melbourne, and started seeing a chiropractor. I also had a job that was a bit less busy. I also got one of those pen tools at home that replaces the mouse. The chiro was good, it got to a stage where my hands didn't hurt at all when I wasn't touching a computer but I do think that was because he had me on tablets called Arthoguard (designed for arthritis) which specifically target inflammation. I went to the chiro for ages and ages, and the pains did come back, the tablets didn't work as well as they did and he didn't think there was much point in continuing.

My current options are to see a Rumatologist, an Oesteo my Dad recommended or an Oesteo INC recommended. To be honest, although my hands are in pain all the time, I'm just not really ready to go through the emotional journey of highs and lows, hope and disappointment that I've been through a few times already. Each medical professional I've seen has been totally sure we can fix it, I've handed over so many monies and then after a couple of months they break up with me. It's tough on a young man.

I did find a mouse thing that doesn't hurt me at all, it's design is quite clever, but IT DOESN'T ACTUALLY WORK AS A MOUSE, freakin. I sent the first one back as a defect, the second one developed the same problem and the support staff seem to bit over it. It's a bit crap. The mouse pen thing is pretty good, but I still get sore from using it, although in a different bit of hand.

So yeah, it's not debilitating or anything, but I guess I am worried I'm making things worser and worser, it's definitely become more painful in the last 2 years.

Hey kids,

Just thought I'd do some updates of life as we know it.

Enny will be pleased to know that Cara got us BDO tickets at 9:07am this morning. She is more excited than a red cordialed drummer trapped in a 360 degrees drum kit setup. After reading Enny's So Many Complaints Cara was onto it the second the clock tick-tocked to 9.

Deb will be pleased to know that I caved and got a Canon 5D to be an even better portrait maker. This here blog is going to be rammed solid full of awesome pictureness.

B will be pleased to know that the bike is going surprisingly well, it's super different to the VFR but it does seem to be the perfect traffic combatant. It's light and nimble, I can see everything and it's quicker than all things if it puts it's mind to it.

Kiki will be please to find out that I still think he's ace. Probably one of the acest dudes forevs.

D'Jen will be pleased to know that I'm trying to set up a mate with so many ladies, but he has the most rules ever. It's impossible, but I have always quite enjoyed The Challenge of Lurve. Maybe I'm a meddling old lady at heart.

INC will be pleased to know that Cara's band is nearly, nearly about to release their album. Nearly.

Bevis will be pleased to know that the little red rockstar and I are about to hit a massive 5 years of togethering in 2 weeks. I'm still good at listening and lugging and she's still good at making foods and wearing underwear. Everyone's happy.

Meva will be pleased to hear that I'm still awes at taking down massive companies from the inside by Doing Not Much. It's becoming my best skill.

I'm sure most of you will be still gnashing of teeth that RSI is still being an idiot. The dude is freakin' invincible.

Deb & Jac, could you send me a blog password via facebook or something? I have no clues how to read your words of wise and wacky wickedness.

Have a way rad weekenders.
Adam.

'woe is I', etc

Dear you / hi,

One of the main reasons I wasn't up to the grand actions of persons called Updating This Here Blog was because I became quite the ugger. I don't usually use this term, 'quite the' but in this situation I feel it's warranted.

Lower mouth, right hand quadrant, either a pimple, a coldsore or leprosy.

I can understand if pashing/licking utensil parties are now out of the question, I've never had such an obvious mulfunction of face before and so can't say that I coped with it very well, and would sob loudly whenever anyone greet me with a 'Good Day Old Chap, bit of an ugger eh?'.

Luckly, due to Da Brain only ever being used to develop world domination strategies I was able to flip it and turn it onto Coping Strategies For the Modern Day Ugger.

Everyone knew I looked more attractive than usual, but thought I had a new tie (I don't even wear a tie, haha)... luckily I don't hang out daily with those meddling kids Sherlocko and Watso. I'm so done with their skillz of observations.

Further excuses for not Updating This Here are:

- Still sore of tops of hands

- Kidnapped by facebook and forced to purchase my friends as pets

- Had work computers visible to all

- Cara fighting with highly trained commandos

- Cara's band requiring an amp to be moved to the other side of the stage

- Required sustinence in the form of food and cool refreshing beverages

- Forgot

Have a lovely day dudes and chicks,

Adam.