Not going nowhere

Well.... hello there.

2009-09-10T12:22:00.001+10:00

I thought I'd give all the homies in the room a couple of words. I am of the understanding that Dudes and Chicks Who Read Blogs think words are pretty freakin' fantastic. So let me indulge the homies.

First word "Updatation".

This word refers to the veritible sledge hammer of personal facts I am about to unleash on your house.

Second word "House".

Oh. Crap.

We are buying a whole freakin' muthafreakin' homestead of a house to call home freakin'.
Our landlord offered to sell us the house we've been in for 2 years. Having missed the housing boom, I pretty much gave up the idea of ever actually owning any property. I was totally cool with that, it seems like an entirely too mature thing to do. Plus, owning stuff means you can't just get up and go. That said, we got a great deal on it, the landlord got a good deal, the crapola real estate agents lose out, and while the next few years might be a little tough financially, it should all be pretty rocking. I'm excited about paying it off and then living for free while the little red rockstar is excited about replacing carpets and putting things in walls. All in all, everyone is happy. I am still pretty freaked, but I'm sure I'll get distracted by something soon enough.
It's a great investment and a good homestead for us, all in all, win.

Next word "Boxing".

What the?
Um, yeah, tonight my friends have convinced me to try out some boxing classes because pretty much they don't want to go along. I always thought boxing was for the braindeadbraunheads, but I will admit The Power of One always stuck with me. I'm excited to give it a try even though I don't believe I'm actually going to give it a try.
I'll let you know how that one goes.
I'm still doing Kung Fu but we accidentally didn't go for 3 months. We went back two days ago and were totally crap. Fitness is currently at zero.
Also, it looks like in 6 weeks I will be attempting a 100km bike ride. Currently 13kms kills me, so I'll be looking to rapidly improve through the motivational tool called Fear.

This time two words "Champions Online".
This is a computer game. I'm usually crap at all computer games, and am crap at this one, but I love it. It gets released in Australia today but I was so excited I ordered it from America.
YOU CREATE YOUR OWN SUPERHERO! Holey crap. Awesome. So awesome.
I have become so enthused that I've actually created this but well, damn.

Um, any other words?
Hmmm, probs "Rockin', "Hi", "Catch ya later Bill 'n' Ted", "etc".

HB to me.

2009-04-22T13:14:00.002+10:00

Today is my 31st birthday.

While I think I can be quite the attention seeking laughwhore, I'm always a bit shy around attention that has been thrown upon me rather than me going out and grabbing attention with ridiculously humourous and impeccibly timed qwips.

The walk along the corridor to my department filled me with supershy, knowing that my workmates were going to make a fuss as soon as they saw me.

I have, however, survived, unscathed and had some cake to boot. Getting older rocks.

One thing that doesn't rock, is getting older (confusing no?). I would say my greatest fear in life, is not public speaking or dying, but getting old. Not old like 35, 40 or 57, but old old. Old where you start to become quite unaware of what's going on around you, where you are deafer, blinder, non working of knees, where you're frustrated with the failings of your own body and start getting grumpy/crotchety but secretly know that any of those youths could break any of your feeble bones just by swinging their iPod at your hip. Damn youths.

Obviously I've got quite some years before all this happens in earnest, but for me, 31 signifies the start of the unstoppable slide. Already, my fast twitch reflexes are slower than a dude half my age. Also, I can describe people, virtual adults even, as half my age. Already, my energy droops and I can make old person noises when I get out of a comfy chair, also some chairs are now becoming comfy.

So, my point to this post is that I'm having a slight freakout. Not because I haven't achieved particular things to tick on the list, but because my dream of becoming a hardcore vigilante dealing death and/or embarrassment to drug dealers is picking up momentum to speed out of my grasp.

My one saving grace of thoughts is that I'm still the youngest and most hopeless dude in my Kung Fu class. Everyone else is better, faster, fitter, older. I wish I was all those things. There might be hope for me yet. Watch out doers of evils!

Friday the night

2009-01-19T10:29:00.002+11:00

On Friday night, we did something totally different.

Cara organised a couple of friends to come over, sit on the couch and watch TV with us.
Social engagements to me have always been about doing something, this was the first time I was in a show about nothing, and I tell you, it was pretty freakin' rockin'.

The kids were sitting on our doorstep when we got home, waiting with their sad little abandoned faces. Cara and I used to live with Danielle, and we've come to know and love her partner Bruce, with them they brought a backpack of wine, biscuits and dips.

We chatted and chilled and laughed so much and did the hang out for ages before it was totally time for dinner. Cara and Bruce decided not to take their cold hard cash transportational devices, and I tried my best to hide Danielle's purse so I could pay for dinner. Cara and I had so far provided just the couches. Danielle, being quite the wiley hunter easily found her purse and I psyched myself up for the oncoming battle of payment to be held at the Thai Takeaway register.

We headed into the DVD place first, and Bruce and I shortly abandoned The Quest To Find The Perfect Movie to be all efficient and stuff to pick up the food down the road. With Cara being supersmart and pre-ordering, Bruce and I walked into the resturant to be greeted with so many smiles. A box of kittens has long been voted the cutest thing ever, but sometimes I think a box of Thai people would come a close second.

Anyway, battlelines were drawn. Two men. One bill. Bruce pulled out his cash, a $20 and a $50, I pulled out mine, also a $20 and a $50. The bill was $45. I suddenly and inexplicably reached down in my pocket and realised I only had my wallet. No house keys.

In my distraction, Bruce fiented to the left, parried and thrust the $50 at the waitress. My brain running several seconds behind I chucked my $20 at Bruce and left the resturant. Confused, he grabbed the food and followed.

"I think...." I started, checking all my pockets.
"..that we're locked out of the house."

Dudes are awesome. Instead of chucking a spazz, Bruce just smirked and asked the usual questions; does Cara have a key, do you have a spare somewhere, is the back door unlocked?
No, no and no. Cara didn't bring anything, I don't think.

Bruce and I, in all our smirkingness, went back to the DVD store where the girls had narrowed down to two. They asked our opinion, and we virtually ignored them as I hugged Cara and sneakily checked her pockets.

"What are you doing?" - Is she immune to ninja sneakiness?

"Just checking if you've got cash" I lied and smirked "To pay for the DVD, we're going to go back to the house."

Danielle objected, wanting help to make a movie decision, but we were out of there so fast. Cara didn't have her keys, and we only had minutes before the girls would be home. We walked with comical haste.

Sometimes when I leave the house, to go to the milkbar or something I don't lock the door. I was hoping this was one of those times. It was not.

We live in a townhouse that is surrounded by other townhouses. The backyards are all next to each other and are completely enclosed by other townhouses. I didn't remember opening the backdoor, nor leaving it unlocked, but to get to it, we'd have to be let into a neighbours house and climb over their fence to get in. It wasn't the best plan.

Being dudes with a problem, we took in all the details. Cara had opened the bedroom window a crack to let some air in after the hotness that had been the past few days. Her balcony door didn't look like it had been opened for a week or so. The front window wasn't unlocked at all.

"Try that top window." Bruce said as he grabbed the wheely bin. He helped me up on the bin, and then held his hands on a wall thing to give me a boost upto the next level. I pulled myself up. Before trying the window, I climbed over to the balcony to check that door, no dice.

Climbing back over to the window, I stuck my hand in, and was able to unwind it out further. It didn't go far, but being athletically trim has it's advantages. I was just able to squeeze in, my bum nearly got stuck, but all my body parts thought skinny thoughts and we pulled through. Bruce cheered from the ground level.

Expecting the police at any moment, I quickly ran downstairs, let Bruce in and we went about setting up for dinner.

Time to break in to our house: 25 seconds.
Police called: 0.
Gnarly cool scratches on chest, stomach: 3.

The girls, in their indecision got both movies and rocked up as we grabbed cutlery and drinks for some couch action.

Dudes solve problems.
Proud of our skillz, we regailed the girls with stories of heroics, physical feats, swift action and the fragility of our security.

The girls, impressed with our awesomeness wanted to know more.

"Why didn't you use my keys?"

"Ah, that's why I was checking your pockets, you didn't have them."

"Yes I did, in my back pocket."

Beat.

"What?"

Gah! Who keeps keys in their back pocket?
You can't sit down with that junk in your trunk.

It might be the hard way.
It might be unnecessary.
But Dudes solve problems.

What bleeds my barracas this week.

2008-12-31T16:48:00.000+11:00

Souvenirs.

Why do I need a memento of your holiday?

"Hey, I see by your socks you've enjoyed Tasmania."

"Ahhh, no, my girlfriend's aunty enjoyed Tasmania, I haven't done the washing for a bit."

ARC has ruined me for bands.

2008-12-29T08:20:00.000+11:00

I've never been much of a spectator.I can watch a whole football game a couple of times a year, but really, it just makes me want to kick some balls, tackle some dudes, way off-time screamers, etc. Bands is the same deal, watching other dudes totally bang out some tunes is fun for like, a couple of minutes, before an overwhelming urge to kick one of them off and rock out on stage takes hold and does not let go. Freakin'.

With Cara's new 2nd band gigging, they asked me to do the lights for one of their shows, and now I've done lighting for almost every one of their gigs. It's awesome! It totally connects me with the band, with the audience and is superfun. I have no idea if I'm doing a good job or not, but I've yet to be punched, so either I'm okayish or peeps are too polite these days.

With the awesomeness, comes the non-awesomeness, which is watching non-Cara bands. Cara loves it, she gets to see what everyone else is doing, gets ideas, inspiration, motivation, makes friends, gets to enjoy music without the luggin' and the setting things up. For me, it's just a bit of standing and being still. Does anyone even like standing?

One of Cara's bandmates little brother posts notes on facebook with a religious ferver about bands he's seen and how much he enjoys it. He seems constantly moved or superimpressed. I just don't really get it.

Of course, I'll still go, I'm more than happy to support the little red rockchick while she does something she loves, I just wish I enjoyed them as much as I enjoy her gigs. Maybe I just need to bring my own lights. Surely the bands won't mind.

One gig I am excited about is Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova doing/being/playing The Swell Season. It's a sit-downery and their songs are so freakin' awes. Maybe I just like bands that I know all the songs of.

Doesn't matter if you're black or white. Doesn't matter, yeah, yeah, yeah.

2008-12-28T13:40:00.003+11:00

I've never really done a shot like this before, but it was ridiculously easy to pull off. Light behind the young lady, light in front/slightly above and bang. Photoshop helped me convert to black and white and I upped the contrast. The only I'd like to improve in this shot is more light on her eyes. Something to keep in mind next time.

Adventures in the dirts

2008-12-28T13:36:00.002+11:00

I'm not sure why we did this, I think everyone was so super over being ridiculously good looking all the time. Anyways, the models loved it, crazy kids.

You have 5 messages (of lurve of similar - surely).

2008-12-27T08:17:00.000+11:00

I've become quite concerned about the lady who did the voice for the messagebank on my phone. I don't know what the market share of the different phone companies are, but there must be a few million Australians who hear her informative yet slightly excited tones each day. What kind of life must she have? Do people subconciously press 1 when she mumbles? Does she find that dudes and chicks press 3 (or 5) halfway through a totally boring sentence? Can she even leave her house? Talk in public? Messagebank lady, are you okay?

What damages my determination this week.

2008-12-24T16:52:00.001+11:00

Driving me mental this week is that at work I seem to have become the focal point of every person's question, comment, ventation, etc. I cop a heap of questions that people could really figure out themselves, comments that I don't really need to hear and ventation that really, isn't particularly relevant to me.

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO READ BLOGS ALL DAY WITH THESE INTERUPTIONS?

Honestly, people.

Work is awesomes.

2008-12-24T11:15:00.001+11:00

This week brought me my greatest achievement in my working life thus far. I'm really quite proud and would like to share this with you all.

Two days ago, I managed to convince my colleagues that my nickname is Captain Awesome. This moniker is totally getting more airtime than a 10 year old's rubberband.

Greatest. Achievement. Ever.

Thanks Internetz.

2008-12-24T08:14:00.000+11:00

Thank yous via e-mail? What say you, are they necessary?

Being a Knight of ITness, I've always been about the paperless office and the non-surpurflous e-mails. I link to a document rather than send it, I don't CC anyone unless they absolutely must be included and I'm happy to just chat to someone instead of sending a potentially misunderstood message. IT peeps tend to me on the lazy side and don't read all the words, which leads to confusion, yadda yadda yah.

If someone does something for me, I'll say thank you next time I see them, or I say thank you at the top of any further e-mails I might need to send, but I don't just send a thanking e-mail. Am I a rude sob? I never really thought of it until recently where maybe a 3rd of my e-mails are just the two words.

In the days where you had to open each message, I found that annoying, but since most e-mail programs have that view pane thing, I dunno...

I don't want to be impolite and it's not hard, it just seems like a bit of a waste of their time to read the e-mail. I just totally don't know.

Overheard in NYC/Melbs.

2008-12-23T08:05:00.001+11:00

Shop lady "Well that sounds like a nice day planned."

Customer "C'mon sir, let's go."

Sir jumps up.

Shop lady "Hee hee, he's ready, he's ready. Okay, see you later."

Customer "See you."

Whoa! Adam, your blog is awesome, all these stories of amaze. Wait, the reason I wrote this is because Sir was a guidedog. The shop lady never even gave the phrase 'see ya' a second thought, whereas I'm totally sure I would have been all suave and "Okay, see you later... um, I mean, ah, I'll see you later but ah, you'll um, hear me later or um, ah, what a nice doggie." Grr blind/shop people, making me feel ackward about throwaway farewell words.

Festive Bullies

2008-12-22T12:25:00.000+11:00

The method of operation of the Festive Bully is to heap on the obligation to suspecting friends and relatives using any festivities or celebration as an excuse, ie, "Oh, it's May Day,the day that celebrates the social and economic achievements of the labour movement? YOU MUST COME OVER TO MY HOUSE FOR DINNER, BRING PRESENTS!" Festive bullies don't allow the myraid of creative excuses one may use to not spend time with them that the bullied have been perfecting all year long, and alas, society actually sides with the bully by removing all possible excuse derivation mechanisms. Working late, funerals, studying for exams, washing hair, being hungover as all get out are disallowed on many festive occasions under the We're Scared of Festive Bullies too Act 1812.

Elevator at the end.

2008-12-22T08:03:00.002+11:00

Man, I do this every time I'm in a hurry. I run into the building and bolt into the elevator, without checking to see if I'm running into the elevator that really should be avoided at all costs.

This morning, I pressed 10 without even realising I was in the wrong elevator, and Whammo! I'm there hanging with my 10 year old self instead of getting to work on time. Stupid time machine, different colour doors just aren't enough for dumbos like me.

Anyway, waiting for the timemachine to come back round, I thought I'd talk to the kid (ie, me) to kill time. Usually I just ignore him and mutter quasi cursewords.

"Duuuuuuuude, I'm from the future, whoooOOoooOoo."

"Cool, can you come back later, I'm watching Inspector Gadget?"

"Young Adam, I'm from the future, I can tell you amazing things, I can answer any question you have."

"What happens next to Go Go Gadget?"

"Um, I dunno, the dude causes an accident that Brain has to solve. Hey, ever notice that Brain seems a lot like Gromit, as in, 'Wallace and'?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind dude. Man, look how little you are, how do you ever reach anything? Can your arms even lift those hands? Can you possibly have any economic value at that height?"

"Nuh. I can jump real high and run real fast. Wanna see my Batman cards?"

"Heh, I remember those. Anyway, never mind that, I've got some things to tell you."

"What?"

"Hey, whoa! Lego! Man, I loved this so bad, let me build something."

"Hey, stop taking things apart, that's my flying surfboard... stoppiiiittttt, I'll call my Mum."

"Alright, alright, geeez. Anyway, my advice to you is...... play sport in highschool and learn to swim."

"I love going to the pool!"

"Good, make sure you learn to swim. It's a good skill to have, and that way you won't have to pull out of a triathlon when you're older because the sea was crazy rough."

"I also like going to the park. And playing frisbee with my Dad."

"Um, okay, yeah, that's swell."

"Anything else?"

"Um, let's see, maybe do the Violin for more than one semester."

"The violin? Can't I play the drums? Hee hee, An...i..mal hurr hurr hurr."

"Kids are crazy. Later dude."

DING.

"Wait, will we have flying cars and dragons as friends?"

"Nuh man. The future is a total ripoff. We'll have crazy small computers and carry around phones."

"We have a computer, it takes a long time to load Double Dragon."

"Yeah, they still take a long time to do stuff, but the graphics will be much better. So long kiddo."

I got in the real elevator, pressed Level 10 and did the usual round of excuses. Waiting for the machine to boot up and connect to so many networks, I realised that apart from being a bit more sporty as a kid there isn't really anything I'd change.

I think I could have been heaps freakin' good at footy and basketball and whatever else, but by the time I wanted to give it a shot, everyone else had already been playing it forever and had mad ace skills of awes.

Also, just a word of warning, 10 years olds are exactly like talking to a simpleton. I'm sure I remember being smart. Hmmm, maybe I just caught myself at a bad time.

Nothing else has really changed in two decades years. Cars are still pretty much the same, computers are smaller, but still break and take ages to do things, people don't even have any superpowers or laser fingers or anything. There isn't a single hoverboard or death robot in sight. We still have to work and emotions are still running rampant, making all our decisions. Food is still edible and totally required and really not much different.

Am I expecting too much?
C'Mon 20 Years, do something!

What hurts my hummingbird this week.

2008-12-17T16:47:00.000+11:00

People who can't possibly comprehend why you wouldn't want to join their mailing list.

What suits my salad this week.

2008-12-10T16:46:00.000+11:00

People at work who just land at my desk and launch into whatever it is that they want to talk about without checking to see whether I'm busy or not. Being a dude, I really only have brainspace for one thing at a time.

Huh hrm

2008-12-04T10:18:00.001+11:00

Happy Birthday that Cara!

30 years old. That is hard to the core.

Bring on this recession y'all, what's taking so long?

2008-12-03T17:15:00.000+11:00

I had a part-time job from an early age and was super rich for most of my early teenage years. These jobs dried up and by the time I was in uni I was as poor as poor can be. Well......., okay, maybe not ditch-living, bug eating poor, but living on say, $10 a week.

I didn't really need money, I was at uni most of the time, my hobbies weren't expensive and I was too young to go out on the weekends.

As me and my mates neared 18, I painted up some fake IDs and we'd hit the nightclubs. A group of four dudes, maybe not The Dukes of Hotness, struggled to get in to these clubs filled with so much promise. I'd usually get in as I perfected the art of just walking straight through the door, mostly though, one of my mates would get KB'd as they had perfected the art of hovering nervously near the door hoping the bouncers would need an emergency coffee at that very second.

After getting knocked back from pretty much evey hot and not-hot nightspot, we'd end up at Pancake Parlour until the wee hours of Sunday morning recounting tales of how we nearly got in that time, and for such adventures a dude need moola.

I looked in our local paper and found something in the city. I was lucky. We were in the tale end of the recession, but no one knew that at the time. I only had one item that wasn't a black t-shirt, it was a white shirt that had no collar, I was the coolest young adult when I wore it that one time to a cousin's baptism or similar.

I was nervous and the only candidate being interviewed at that time. The offices were small and near the Victoria Market back when the area was still fairly run down and dodgy.
For my first ever interview, I think it went well. I was polite, I was intelligent and enthusiastic, my potential boss seemed pretty suave and gave me the run down on the type of employee the company was looking for. The interview was going so well that I almost forgot to ask what it was that I'd be doing.

The boss dude leaned back on his comfortable office chair, he tapped a flouresent yellow pen on his desk and told me.

"You'll be walking into individual businesses and offering staff a great opportunity. They can purchase a pen like this and a scratchy lottery ticket for $2." Being the ever polite and strategic young man, my smile didn't betray my thoughts. What a scam, this interview - what a waste of my time and bus fare.

"Of course, ..." He continued, "You can't approached any business with a sign out the front."

"A sign?"

"You know, 'No Hawkers' that kind of thing."

"Oh yeah, of course."

I thanked him for his time. I did do alright, he asked me back for a second interview. Despite knowing I wasn't going to touch this job with a kabillion million foot barge pole, I did honestly smile. It's nice to do well at something.

"One word of advice though..."

I turned back, almost alarmed.

"For your next interview, wear a shirt with a collar, you'll need to be professional."

Yeah.

I'll do that.

A mate was telling me recently that when he first moved to Melbourne his first job was to walk around approaching people to sign up to a new mobile phone contract. Who would change their mobile phone providers to a random dude in the street? Needless to say, he lived on just plain rice for fair while.

With a cyclical recession coming, I'm looking forward to the opporunity of maybe getting a dodgy job. I never realised my destiny years ago to be a hawker, swooping down on unsuspecting retail staff to make 1, maybe 2, sales a day. I think I'm ready now. Maybe a dude can follow me around selling 'No Hawker' signs. So much opportunity.

What kills my kissinger this week.

2008-12-03T17:13:00.000+11:00

People who ask a question, who then ask the exact same question of someone else. I'm happy to answer anyone's questions, hit me up, but it's a totally waste of so many things if people are just asking questions so they can get so much attention. It does feel like a total slap in the face too, didn't my opinion slash advice solve all your problems?

Bee Lee Ben Len

2008-11-27T09:28:00.001+11:00

I should like Ben Lee.
After all, we have a number of similarities; thinking dudes trying to make it in a boys world, slightly nerdish appearance but not without some charm, worried about that environment thing, etc.

Despite these things I find it very hard to like him. My first intro to young Mr Lee was through the movie The rage at Placid Lake, which I really liked. I didn't know he was a muso until much later.

I was all set to like him, and may have until 'Catch my Disease'. It was popular here, it broke him in the US and was an incredibly strong marketing move, but he just wasn't a cool person to like. That song never sat right with the person I thought he was.

I heard his new song 'I like Pop Music' and it's all starting to make sense. I think the dude has dumbed his music right down to appeal to the masses so he can talk them out of being retards. This as a move is pretty freakin' smart, he gets the mega wads of cash and might be helping out a planet or similar, but I found myself liking him even less.

I can't really pinpoint why I don't. On some level I admire aiming his music at the masses to communicate thereto, even if it then excludes me. I also admire his putting some strong words in his songs. I think it was smart to tie in those strong words with a fluffy, fluffy chorus so that it does appeal to so many dudes and chicks. I should admire that he could even be trying to trick people into hearing such words, and I tire with songs that just have lyrics that are just words tied together. I totally think it's smart to try and appeal to the wider mainstream market rather than just being a musos muso.

Maybe it's a tall poppy thing, maybe I find the fluffiness too fluffy, maybe he's a bit too smug or thinkery, maybe even too nerdy, but I'd like to like him, I just can't. I should like him, but don't. I feel a bit bad about that, the dude is trying after all.

What assaults my arteries this week.

2008-11-26T16:41:00.001+11:00

People at work who should know better but who don't provide anything close to enough information when they want you to solve a problem for them.

Aaarrgghh!!

2008-11-19T20:25:00.002+11:00

While I don't advocate piracy, hah! who am I kidding, I so do, I think the pirates who hijacked a supertanker full of oil were pretty freakin' genius.

Honestly, who is going to shoot at anyone on an oiltanker. One stray bullet and bye bye pirates, shooter, ocean.

I do know that today's pirates aren't as awesome as I think. There are no parrots, no peglegs, no sailing under the skull and crossbones with plenty of deserted islands to hide behind, no yo, no ho and probably not even a bottle of rum. I do admit that I miss those olden days, all you needed was a good ship, a couple of good canons, some scurvy dogs and a captain smarter than anyone else. Corporate office life just can't compete.

Supertanker pirates = two thumbs up.

What stabs my salami this week.

2008-11-19T16:40:00.000+11:00

The guy at work who asks questions that he knows the answer to, and everyone knows he knows the answer to because he wouldn't ask otherwise, just to try and trip you up.

Schmoneymoon Number 1.

2008-11-18T14:39:00.002+11:00

You may or may not know that Cara and I had a rockin' combined 30th birthday/Not-Wedding a few months ago. We got some massive cool presents, a couple of which were weekend away type bizos. The ARC has rehearsals most Sundays so it's taken a while to take advantage of such gifts.

We decided to rock one gift called 'Private Hot Springs Bath For Two' down at the Mornington Penninsula last weekend (renamed from 'weekend' to 'schmoneymoon'). The gift originally included a stay at the gift givers parent's holiday house, but due to some random holiday house using cousins that fell through, instead, I found the only room left in the area; ~~a barn with a manger~~ a golf resort.

I was late from work on Friday so with Cara at so much rediness we were able to jump in the car mere seconds after I got home. I was the navigator which is a much simpler job since Eastlink rocked Melbourne with a road that goes everywhere (mostly East). Unforts the Melways we have was invented before Australia was settled and so the potential for mishap was given a High rating.

Our house has improved a lot since our Not-Wedding, we were given so many crazy awesome presents that we live in near royal luxary. As the King and Queen of Australia, the room at the resort was not up to our royal standards, quite frankly, it's not as nice as our place. There was nothing wrong, it just was quite small (so much space wasted on manicured grass), the TV was supertiny, there was no DVD or CD player and the lights didn't work and were a bit ugly. I guess I was just expecting a bit more from the word 'resort', as in 'really nice' not as in 'last'.

Saturday was brim-filled with massages and hot baths, Sunday was brim-filled with waking and moving slowly.

See how I was writing the whole story and then just summerised 2 of the 2.2 days in 1 sentences? So unpredictable.

The staff at the resort were great, they were all young and cool and they had a werewolf manning reception which was ace because it meant he was there waiting to service our every need 24/7. I would hotels to employ werewolves on reception.

Obvs the Schmoneymoon meant that young Cara and I spent a whole lot of time together, way more than the usual crashing into the same bed at about the same time, and I think we like each other more for it. She really is a big bit of ace.

What gobbles my gizzard this week.

2008-11-12T16:39:00.000+11:00

My boss who asks me a question, then his eyes glaze over when the answer isn't what he wanted it to be then he asks me the same question the next day.

Photographies still going strong

2008-11-10T20:14:00.001+11:00

Makeup and photographies by a young Adam, modelling done by someone else.
A nice girl called CinaC, she could go far that one...

What crams my collage this week.

2008-11-05T13:14:00.001+11:00

People who laugh uproarously at the slightest thing.

And/Or at their own sentences which may or may not have contained a humourous statement. Cacking yourself is not a full stop.

Everyone loves a good update

2008-11-01T09:57:00.000+11:00

Yo dudes, what up?

We've been going through some interesting times. One of our good friends has been going through a post trumatic stress syndrome thing from a couple of events she's repressed for 20 years. It's been a terrifying, fascinating and frustrating experience for us all. She doesn't have many friends and me working has meant that I've been available to help her much less than I was. The tricky thing is that she's also not such a nice person. She can be lovely and superfun, but she can also be incredibly mean, manipulative and aggressive. Her husband is totally grouse, but she treats him the worst. It's hard to help someone whom you only like some of the time.

I think I've been working for a month, after my four months of unemployed bumness. I am struggling. My workplace is great. The people are friendly (of course, there are notable exceptions), the hours are great, the travel to and from is carefree, but despite all this I've been exhausted, unenthusiastic and to be honest, kind of lazy. I don't really like the workerbee I currently am, but it's hard to work harder, longer, faster, better when you're just not interested. I'm so hoping I get over that pretty quick, I don't really want to let these people down, they so looked at me as the Saviour Of All.

Cara is currently silent.
Totally without voice.
It's weird and it's kinda fun.S
he had a day procedure on her vocal cords to remove a thing. It was a membrane something filled with fluid who had moved onto her vocal cords. The operation was relatively painless (there was some slight discomfort) and she's currently hanging out at home surrounded with Gilmore Girl DVDs and girly magazines. She isn't allowed to talk for 3 days and isn't allowed to sing for 3 weeks. Hopefully after all this, she won't lose her voice everytime she goes out or has a glass of wine or beer. She's also hoping her singing voice gets stronger and more awesome.

I've been doing Tai Chi and Kung Fu the past couple of months. I am so bad at it. When I was doing Ninjutsu, it and me kinda clicked you know, whereas Kung Fu I just can't seem to really get it. Since I've been working, I've had little energy for it which means it's just not sinking it. I probably would have given it away a million times if I didn't have a mate pushing me. He is the husband of aforementioned PTSS chick and he's right into it. His brain is working, so he's loving it.

Tooths

2008-10-31T09:19:00.001+11:00

I have the very lucky fortune of having perfect teeth. I still have my wisdom teeth, no fillings, no sensitivity, never had braces, I've got one crooked wolf tooth which is apparently somewhat attractive.

The only problem I have with them is that they have a yellow tinge. Not super obvious, and they come out white in photos (reflection of the flash) but I've never really been happy with the colour.

I've tried whitening products twice; one worked quite well but wore off pretty quickly. The last one I got from my dentist, didn't even work.

So, in order to nip this in the bud once and for all, I went to one of those Laser Teeth Whitening places instead of a dentist.The process is pretty interesting; you make your appointment for the following week and they get you to brush your teeth with a tooth mousse for that week to help desensitise your teeth. They'd also make the plastic trays that are moulded to your teeth, but I already had some.

At the appointment, they put the stuff on your teeth and then stick a lazer pointed at your mouth for an hour and a half while you watch a movie.Sounds pleasant, but holey moley! It's a bit freaky having all this stuff in your mouth and almost impossible to swollow, and of course, because it's hard to swollow, suddenly you need to every 2 seconds. Apart from choking on my own saliva, after a while your teeth get super sensitive and your nerves seem to spasm or something. It's incredibly un-nerving and totally painful. There's nothing you can do about it.
They did go superwhite and looked great, but I honestly nearly cried on the way home, these shocks of sensitivity were amazing. I've done martial arts forever, and have quite a high pain threshold, but usually when something hurts you can do something about it. If you've busted your ankle, you rest it. If you walk on it, it's going to hurt. With this whole tooth thing, there was nothing I could do, everything would be fine, then suddenly a shock of nerve pain would hit. Biting down, moving your head, closing your mouth, opening your mouth, nothing would work.The rest of that day I was in massively weird pain, Nurafen Plus helped a bit, but it was still there.I had to put tooth mousse in my trays and wear that, that helped also.

I don't want to sound like a wuss, because I don't think I am, but it was probably the most surreal pain I've ever faced, and because it was completely self-induced and vanity related I felt foolish.I didn't tell anyone, including Cara, until the pain subsided. That was easy enough, I think it took Cara a couple of days to notice the brightness. In her defence, we were both pretty busy, we may have only hung out at bed-time.

They gave me a heap of the bleach and asked me to use it after a couple of days to secure the colour, but honestly, even a couple of weeks my teeth were really sensitive and I'd still get random jolts of tooth pain. Also, they were pretty bright already, I didn't want to blind people.
After about 3 weeks though, my teeth were back to their yellow tinge but still fairly sensitive.
I used the bleach on Thursday night for an hour and they went straight back to white, but the jolts of sensitivity came back also.I've been using the touth mousse and a sensiivity toothpaste pretty much the whole time.

Honestly, I think I regret the whole process and honestly wouldn't wish it on an enemy let alone recommend it to a friend.The yellow came back too quickly for the expense and the pain of the whole ordeal. I honestly wish I had photos to show y'all, but I never even thought about it until right this second.

Strangely, my teeth look totally white in some light, and totally yellow in other light, so I can't even be outraged and all IT DIDN'T WORK AT ALL RARRR!

What pushes my potato this week.

2008-10-29T13:08:00.000+11:00

I don't want to sound easily annoyed, but biting my bottom this week are peeps that call you because they didn't listen to or read the instructions you already gave them.

It happens all the time, calling to find the time of a party, the address of a gig, we seriously has a friend who asks directions, then glazes over after the first bit, then calls when she's driven that first bit, calls again after the next bit and then calls from the front of the resturant, etc to see where you are. Freakin' kills me. I've learnt now; Step A. Say directions, Step B. Turn off phone, Step C. Turn off Cara phone, Step D. Wait a little longer, but she'll figure it out.

What chucks my chicken this week.

2008-10-22T13:03:00.000+11:00

Bugging me lately is the diet of the youth. Honestly, who munches chips and twisties all day long in an office, rrrrarrrrrr! So loud! So irritating! It's not even food.

P.S) Coke is not water.

What grunts my gears this week.

2008-10-15T12:58:00.000+11:00

I love stories, they are pretty much my favourite thing. What's been killing me lately are peeps who argue over the trivialities of a story or conversation. I don't care what the guy's actual middle name is, just tell me how he fell into that brothel.

My 'bahhhhh!' goes doubly so for dudes and chicks that argue over a inconsquential details of an example. Okay, okay, sure the computer goes 'dooo dooo' instead of the 'beep beep' I said, but could you maybe concentrate on the fact that it's on fire and levitating?

What spears my salmon this week.

2008-10-08T12:49:00.000+11:00

I'm not much of a shopping person. I like all shopping expeditions to be carried out like a military operation. Storm in, extract the hostage, storm out. 35 seconds.

That said, I seem to collect so many coins, in the quest for transaction speedation I chuck the closest monetary note at the shop person instead of counting out coins I've saved. I then toss all my coins into a bag and take that bag to the bank just before it's too heavy to lift.

So, what's spearing my salmon these days are shops that charge that extra 20 cents for an item. Why must anything be $10.20 or $5.10? Clearly the shops are trying to scab that extra bit of moola, but surely the administration of such coinage isn't worth their while.

Even though I don't like the coin, I totally hand over $20 for a $10.20 item to make them coin up, in the hope that these places learn to charge a normal price freakin'.

My curtins are fading...

2008-10-07T18:12:00.001+11:00

Awesome, for the next 3 weeks, my phone is going to ignore the fact that it's day light savings. Usually it's awesome when everything flicks over automatically, but since we've decided to hit +1 hour early without consulting all our devices, it's going to be problematic. I put my phone clock a hour forward, it's good for a few hours then flicks it back. Good times, good times.

2008-10-05T12:36:00.002+11:00

Hi everyone, I'm like back or similar.

As an enjoyable read for everyone, here are the reasons I've been a nonblog.

Prior to May 30th 2008, I was too filled with Hate of Everything to inflict my acursed thoughts onto any other person, including the fictional characters that roam the internet.
Between June 01 and Sept 30, I was too filled with 'la la la I don't have to anywhere near a computer because I am an unemployed bum hey I wonder what is happening on facebook'.

While in the past I may have promised things like 'hey I'm back or similar' in the past, this time I could actually be back or similar because I am once again a dude of employment who may need to look busy at times and writing in this here start programs applications notepad to be posted on the internetz later is a good way to seem busy but without having to use workbrain.

I'm sure you'll be quite unpleased to know that within two days of being a Dude of Work the RSI is totally back after 4 months of some mighty fine hand restage. While this does blow somewhat, I am looking forward to having some gnarly claws within a year or two. I intend to use said claws for scaring children and being mocked by teens.You're just not cool unless you're being mocked by teens.

Since I don't imagine anyone would check this here blogage after so long of mistreatment, the first person to read this might be doing so many years after it was actually published, in which case, I bid you a lovely 2024. Also, watch out! There is a massive monster* behind you.

* Or similar.

Life as a bum (Part 1 of a series of 1,000,000)

2008-06-18T19:41:00.002+10:00

Yo dude, you seem not to be reading our blogs very often these days, your comments have been highly missed. What's with the lack of love?

Seriously, you're an unemployed bum now? Whoa! What does that mean, what do you do all day, how do you earn the crust or similar?

Cool. So, you're not really an unemployed bum, you're more like a self-employed bum who isn't taking any further work....huh...

Alright. Alright I'll call you an unemployed bum then, geez, no need to get ansy. Oh, you've put it on your business card? Let's see that. Weird.

Started skateboarding? That's so midlife crisisy dude, I guess a skateboard is cheaper than a lambo - but honestly, can't you midlife better than that.

So what have you been doing during your days?

That many photoshoots, whoa, you're the worst on holidays guy ever. What about the relaxing, the 2 minute noodles and daytime TV?

Photoshoot - Rosie

2008-05-19T11:05:00.002+10:00

A model I worked with a long time ago has asked me for a glamour styled shoot. Something like you'd see in FHM magazine. She actually wants images that she can send into the lads mags so they can say things like 'whoey whoa whoa, may we photograph you and put you in so many magazines'.

I agreed, but I actually have no idea to shoot or pose someone in that style. I really do prefer a darker, shadowier, interesting, fashion style. Glamour on the other hand, is all bright and no sublety. No cool shadows, no playing with light, no interesting shapes, just girls and their bits presented in the most alluring/seductive manner.

I contacted Rosie who is an established model to help me figure out what the heck glamour is, how to do makeup for it, how to light it and how to direct someone into poses that suit the brief.

The below images are what we came up with. I think it's closeish. Rosie was great. She drove from Ballarat which is so very crazily far in the biggest, loudest doof doof automobile and helped. We sat down and sorted out her makeup by looking through an FHM I got for the occasion and once that was settled we worked on the lighting. We'd shoot a few frames then she'd tell me if we were getting warmer or colder.

Rosie was patient and kind and totally not shy. It really is a pleasure to work with someone like her. In the type of photography I'd like to do and get paid, I'm unlikely to work with someone as comfortable as her though, I'm sure it comes from experience.

She taught me a few poses and facial expressions which should work. I've now got a number of shots of Rosie that I can show this other model to help with her posing.

I think my post processing could still use some work though, or maybe blogger is graining them up or similar. I think I've still got to go heavier on the makeup for these photoshoots.

Feelin' Ugh.

2008-05-16T14:57:00.002+10:00

This has hit me in the guts today. I know that sometimes she feels this way but I didn't know she was having such thoughts last night.

I don't believe that our little rockchick would have kids regardless of whichever Dude of Rad she had hooked up with, but the whole marriage thing is quite a different story. It's not the declaration of life-long commitment so much but The One Day All About Her that she feels she might miss out on. I don't imagine at all she'd say no if I asked.

So why don't I? It's not that I don't want her to feel special nor loved. Most days I make sure knows she's fairly adored, and most birthdays and christmasi I usually go above and beyond. It's just that I feel that weddings are a bit silly, a bit old fashioned, antiquated and not really representative of the proposed meaning. I totally don't like that it's a massive industry, a massive stress and a complete distraction from the goals we're both striving for. Given the choice between a 10k wedding or a 10k album launch, 20k wedding or 20k international tour, I have no doubt the actual life goals would be hit first.

Buuuuuut, I also understand this is about emotions, dreams, being completely celebrated by friends and family, not watching your little sister, cousins, previously eternally single friends get hitched, etc. Understanding this basically leaves me with the choice of feeling cruddy for enforcing my wishes upon the person I care about most or feeling hypocritical for instigating something I just don't believe in. Lifelong repurcussions either way.

Dreamteam - Going into Round 8.

2008-05-16T11:01:00.002+10:00

I was a bit distraught the last couple of weeks and wasn't able to post about dreamteamness.

My master plan is in tatters, but I've realised inhindsight that it was slightly flawed. Going into Round 12 with 18 trades left means that you completely don't take advantage of cash cows and cheaper than usual superstars. Sure, you go into the finals choc full of tradesready to beat everyone who usually only has a couple left, but ultimately you don't have as much money as they do, which means some superstars aregoing to be somewhat out of your reach.I've used 7 trades so far, and am pretty happy with my team.

I'm currently at the top of my ladder, even though my overall standing has fallen fairly considerably from the start of the season.My supercoach is going well too (I'm participating with dudes at work) and Igot my best and the league's best score last round without any help from Gary Ablett and Chad Cornes.

Back to DT, here are my current stats:
Round 7 Score: 2,152
Weekly Ranking: 116 of 181,124
Overall Score: 12,702
Overall Ranking: 6,652 of 181,124
League Ranking: 1
Rounds Played: 7
Avg Score/Round: 1,815
Team Value: $8,344,900
Change in Value: $894,000

I am at the top of my ladder, but that's only on percentage. Interestingly,the entire Top 8 in the ladder are all on the exact same points and is onlyseperated by percentage. Here are the game results that got me to the top:

Round 4 - LOSS
def by Lovemachines 1735 - 1753

Round 5 - WIN
def Stallions 1607 - 1542

Round 6 - WIN
def The Matt Damons 1740 - 1632

Round 7 - WIN
def Gerrys All Stars 2152 - 1312

As you can see, it's the last game that did it. Unfortunately, Gerry is theonly real easybeat of the league because he's overseas. I'm glad I hit him when I did, but pretty much each person that hits him until a couple of weeks after he gets back to a computer is going to cycle to the top.

Apparently my opponent in Round 8 is throwing our game and not using his trades. I couldn't be happier to hear this as I really want to rack up as many wins as I can to try and ensure my place in the Top 8 early. Apart from Chad Cornes, my team isn't suffering too many injuries or outs.

My forwards have two playing emergencies as does my rucks. I have Geary (StKilda) not doing much but Craig Bird (Sydney) covering that spot. Like everyone else, my backs are in a bit of chaos. Chad is out and Pffieffer (Carlton) may not make it back along with Nathan Brown (Coll) not scoring particularly well. I am actually thinking of making a cash trade this week, trading J Geary for Sam Browne (Carlton). Browne has a break even of -95 which means that even if he plays and gets 1 point he'll go up heaps in cash this round. His average is 75 which is really very good and should play for at least the next month. I'd be looking to make $100,000 from him in that month which Ican then downgrade him to some no name dude and use that spare cashage to upgrade someone in my playing 22. I'm intending to leave that as the only trade made this week, but if Scott Thompson (Roos) doesn't play it means I'm going to cop a 0 in the backline. In that case, I may trade Pffiffiffier (Carlton) to Harry Taylor (Geelong).With Egan (Geelong) out for the rest of the season, Harry Taylor should almost be a sure thing. I could survive with coping a zero, my opponent has Riewoldt who is injured for 4 weeks or so and my score was 300 points higherlast week so I've got some leg room.

Here are my trades so far:

Round 7
OUT Bowden ($389,800) IN Bock ($319,600) OUT Dyson ($243,400) IN Corey ($437,800)

ROUND 6
OUT Hill ($230,700) IN Riewoldt ($167,200) OUT Tuck ($217,300) IN Masten ($152,100)

ROUND 4
OUT Johnson ($376,000) IN Hill ($175,600) OUT Edwards ($83,500) IN Osborne ($285,500)

ROUND 2
OUT Lucas ($384,200) IN Chapman ($445,200)

I am very, very, very glad I picked Chapman instead of J Brown. Lordly. JBrown has been appalling and is now only $300,000. Chapman hasn't beengreat, but none of the forwards really have been. Every week I nearly traded out Brad Johnson and only now am I glad I didn't. Everyone is now jumping on his bandwagon and even though he is still injured, his last score shows promise. The only one I might regret was Steve Johnson, but that trade did allow meto pick up Hill and fix up my woeful backline. I also made heaps of moneyon Hill and traded him out before he had yet another shocking week.Bowden was another one I was struggling with for weeks, and I feel like Imade the right decision. Once I decided to get rid of him, I had a very,very tough decision to choose either Bock (Adelaide) or Bradshaw (Brisbane) and then upgrade Dyson (Ess) to either J Corey or Gary Ablett (both from Geelong). I fluked it good because Bock got 114 and Bradshaw got 34. Corey got 112 and Ablett got 0. Booyeah!I'm still unsure whether Jack Riewoldt (Richmond) was the best decision, but he still might be... only time will tell.

In other news, I just realised I've been wearing the dry cleaning tag attached to my business shirt all day. I am the smarts.

Update : Also traded in Garrick Ibbotson (Fremantle) for Darren Pffifffifffiffer (Carlton). All that stuff about Harry Taylor (Geelong) I mentioned above? I forgot it all when I was trading. Ibbotson should be cool though, he's playing in the Centre rather than the backline so that can only help his scores. I've put Kane Cornes as Captain. Since then (and now it's too late to change the teams) I read that Kane will be tagging Sam Mitchell but will also be tagged by Brad Sewell, which means he'll have two opposing players on him the entire game. Ouch.

Wednesday Whingin'

2008-05-14T08:48:00.003+10:00

Still at level Gripin', but I'm definitely working on it.

Today's complaining is about peeps. More specifically it's about peeps who tell angry stories. In the conversational pie-chart, angry stories definitely have their place. It's a good way to vent and share your experiences. What I'm finding is doing my head in are those people who are playing their own part with increased venom. I don't mind audiencing up someone's ventation, but when, as your audience I'm getting verbally spat at and hit with a battering ram of negativity then I'm affronted, and pretty much be hatin' to the same level them as the actual mortal enemy they be talking about.

Angry peeps with angry stories should pretty much get themselves The Internet and take it out on hump day. Yeah, that's where it's at.

Have a good week.

Photoshoot - Priscilla

2008-05-12T09:22:00.004+10:00

Pricilla is a lovely, lovely girl, but man this was a hard shoot. Firstly, 10pm the night before the shoot she wanted to reschedule, which I was able to do by moving some stuff around, then she had a car accident right near my house. Her car was pretty crashed and I did a massive cool job of duct taping it back together, but we didn't shoot that day. We shot later in the week and she was a good two hours late and actually one of the hardest people I've had to shoot.

I quite liked her and we got along quite well, but professionally, she was quite difficult. She had these massively huge breasts, that's right, massively huge that she was really quite self conscious of and didn't really want in the shots. The breastal area is really quite central to a young lady's image and so the task at hand was tricky. Everyone I've shot so far I've contacted through modelling websites. Eventually when I am Full Of Awesome As Photographer I'll be lending my services for a small fee to the general public, and Priscilla was a very good example of the problems I'm likely to face.

I'd love to say that I thought outside the box and came up with photographic gold, but to be honest, her restrictions somewhat defeated me. I still ended up with 251 shots, which Priscilla culled to 150. We actually sat together and deleted the shots, which killed me, I'm a hoarder of photos, but there really is no point in having shots the model cringes at.

I honestly don't really like many of the shots and struggled to find some for this post. I went a bit bolder with the makeup, and I think it worked okay. She has a great smile which is pretty easy to work with.

One thing we did try was to max out all the lights. It totally overblows everything, which in turn, smooths out the skin. It gives it a slight orange tinge, but could well be something to play with more later.

Wednesday Whingin'

2008-05-07T09:00:00.001+10:00

Why hello there.

Now that I'm officially 30 years old as recognised by the International Federation of Aging I feel that it's totally justified of me to have a bit of a complain every now and then. I'm currently at status Griper and will be looking to advance through the stages until I reach my utimate goal of Crotchety. It's bold, I realise, but I think I'm up for it.

Future gripes may include such characters as; the youth of today, work peeps and general citizenry.

Today's gripin' is titled : The Youth of Today That Sit Right Next To Me Not Quite 50cms Away At Work.

Dear Bec,

I know that this is your first ever job, but here is a list of things that are a bit dodge. You can tell everyone thinks they are a bit dodge by the way everyone kinda always says 'dude that is a bit dodge.'

1.) Donuts, chocolate and Coke every morning for breakfast is gross. You're a little bit huge.
2.) You're a two pack a day potato chip eater. That's some loud muthachunking snackage.
3.) You = Worst work ethic ever. You can't be serious.
4.) Yelling into your mobile at your Mum is disruptive and disrespectful.
5.) Hoping your work will go away if you complain about it doesn't quite gel with mankind.
6.) Neither does sighing loudly.
7.) Getting angry if your work takes you past 5:00pm isn't the usual Climb Corporate Ladder.
8.) You're actually a bit of a slob.
9.) Working 3 months in a row is tough, only 45 years to go.
10.) Other people actually do exist.
11.) A sulky voice really shouldn't be someone's entire method of communication.
12.) Going from 0 to Blaming Of Others in 0.009 seconds is actually not a great longterm strategy.

Photoshoot - Elise

2008-05-05T21:00:00.000+10:00

Elise was absolutely great to work with, oh my lord. I actually dilberately organised a semi-professional model to help me out with posing and various lighting techniques and Elise made things really easy. I've really noticed that the more I get along with the model and the more I find their personality attractive the better the actual images come out. I was really happy with the different lighting styles we were able to develop and the overall look to the images. These images haven't been photoshopped or colour corrected or anything. I did the makeup for this shoot and the only thing I'd change would be that I didn't do the makeup heavy enough for photographic. It hardly looks like she has any makeup at all on. I find this tricky because in the makeup area the light is great and makes everything look okay, but under the studio lights it all gets lost. Practise, onwards and upwards.

Dreamteam - a week in regret.

2008-04-11T00:16:00.004+10:00

I promise I will post about other things, just as soon as I stop spending 60+ hours a week at work.

After so many decisions to be made last week, Josh Hill and Nathan Bock scored very well and rocketed up in dollars and points averaged.

Okay, okay, that's cool. I researched them and both will raise significantly monetarily so it's not too late to grab them, they haven't peaked yet. My new plan was to forget about Bock and trade Tippett (Adelaide) for Hill (WBD). That way I can still cash in on Hill and improve on a 30 points scoring player to a 100 points scoring player.

With this plan, I settled into the week, calm in the knowledge that I still had more trades than anyone else I knew. I was in a very good spot for the very first round of our Broadyboys competition. I am playing Bev, who scored about 100 points lower than me in Round 3. Not significant, but enough to make me feel pretty good, especially since I had chosen badly captain-wise. We made a bet for 6 Crown lagers on the outcome of the match, and while I'm not a massive drinker, winning is something I don't mind so much.

The team lists came out. I still had no emergencies in my backline, that's okay, my backline performed fine without them. Then disaster struck, I couldn't at all afford Hill. I could my spare money confused with my Supercoach, Josh Hill had skyrocketed out of my grasp. At the same time, word on the street was that my most expensive Backman Joel Bowden wasn't going to play. A player down, time to take action.... Goooooo trades.

What to do? I couldn't afford Hill, I could swap one of my emergencies with Harry Taylor (Geelong) who is another rookie set to play this week and make a fair bit of money, but I wasn't convinced.

Instead, I did something that I'm already regretting, something I've never done before. I traded one of my guns (expensive high scoring players) for a rookie. I traded Steve Johnson for Josh Hill, allowing me to trade Jake Edwards (Carlton) for Michael Osbourne (Hawthorn). I basically went against my strategy, all guns and rookies now has a mid-priced player. Both Josh Hill and Michael Osbourne just have to play to make money, and both are listed to play. Steve Johnson was bugging me, he was scoring so badly that he had gone down $40,000 in value, and he had to get 174 in Round 4 just to maintain his current price. Not going to happen.

What probably is going to happen is that he might take a couple of weeks and start getting good, real good. He was awesome in my team last year. Oh well, I can always buy him back and make a profit. I'm not happy that my team is now very similar to almost everyone else's, but I've now got emergencies covering every position, making it unlikely I'll score a zero.

I've chosen Money and Points over Trades. This time.

Round 4 Captain: Chad Cornes
Round 3 Score: 1,919
Overall Ranking: 3,957 of 162,898

Dreamteam - Before the prices change

2008-04-04T19:55:00.001+11:00

Firstly, thanks to Keeks who convinced me to get Paul Chapman instead of Jonno Brown. Chapman scored more points in Round 2 and is looking very likely to score more against Melbourne in Round 3.

I won my first pre-season match, and then lost my second. It seems like everyone else had surpassed me in scoring. I put it down to Port Adelaide playing Sydney with the Cornes brothers being kept very quiet.

My starting plan was to pick a good team with some superstars and some hopefully well-chosen rookies. I was then going to use 2 trades just before Round 3 to capitalise on whomever was about to make lots of money, then sit on my team until about Round 12 (10 rounds to the Grand Final) and then start trading so that I'd have a monster team going into the finals.

My advantange is that most people trade a fair bit and end up going into the finals with injured players. Knowing this, I'm intending to restrain myself.

Anywho, I had to use a trade on Scott Lucas - 12 to 12 weeks is just too long out of the game to keep on the bench. My plan wasn't going so well.

This week I had to make some decisions:

I wanted to use trades to improve my side. Currently my backline is my trouble spot. I put 4 rookies in to boost my money making abilities, but the backline rookies very rarely play. Going into Round 3, Jake Edwards isn't playing, neither is Scott Thompson but Pfeiffer and Nathan Brown are. So I have no emergencies.

The prices of all players are established by their average from the last three rounds they've played. The price will change at the completion of the round - this makes right now the perfect time to trade in some injured or underperforming players and pick up some players that have played much better than their average (or starting price as rookies) and my intention was always to use the full trade allocation (2 trades) this round.

Josh Hill (Western Bulldogs) is set to make the most money in the forwards. Michael Osborne (Hawthorn) and Bret Thornton (Carlton) are set to make a lot of money in the backs. There has been a bit of talk around that these backmen are flash in the pans, and will be out when other players return, others see them as dudes that should be in for the long haul - I have no idea.
My plan was to trade Dale Thomas (Collingwood) for Josh Hill and then Scott Thompson (North Melbourne) for Nathan Bock (Adelaide).

Josh Hill and Nathan Bock are both set to go up in price fairly dramatically. Both can potentially score more than 100 in a game.

Dale Thomas has been slightly underperforming but is a good, proven player. There are many different views on how many games Scott Thompson will play, anywhere from 15 to 5.
In the end though, I'm just not sure there is enough long term benefit in this move. My backline will miss Bock for sure but my forward line is solid and doesn't need to make space for any fashionable player. I've decided to keep my two trades and go it alone with what I've got. All my emergencies are playing except for the backmen and I do expect the rest of my backline to play. It's a gamble, but I now have more trades up my sleeve then anyone else I know which could just win me a final.

I've chosen Trades over Money + Score. This time.

Round 2 score : 1812

Ranking : 4,934 of 157,249

Dreamteam 2008

2008-03-26T12:21:00.003+11:00

Obvs, most people reading this will not have the slightest interest, but since I am organising the little league thing I've been playing in for years, I hope writing about it will keep things a bit clearer in my head. There is entirely too much going on inside head.

I'm going to list my team below. I actually have a team in the Herald Sun supercoach competition, but it is the AFL website dreamteam that is the important one.

In the dreamteam competition you play against your mates from rounds 4 to 18 to establish a ladder. Rounds 19 to 22 of the footy calender then become a finals series until you've got a grand final winner. Last year I was beaten in the grand final, which isn't bad seeing as I know pretty much nothing about football. My only real exposure is through this dreamteam thing.

Since the competition doesn't start until round 4, we set up a little in-house pre-season competition in which we all bet 6 crown lagers per game. I won my first round with a score of 1744.

This is my team:
1. CORNES, Chad
2. MILBURN, Darren
3. SHAW, Heath
4. GUERRA, Brent
5. BOWDEN, Joel
6. EDWARDS, Jake
7. THOMPSON, Scott D.
8. CORNES, Kane
9. JACK, Kieren
10. STEVENS, Nick
11. TUCK, Travis
12. DYSON, Ricky
13. PALMER, Rhys
14. COX, Dean
15. WHITE, Jeff
16. JOHNSON, Brad
17. O'KEEFE, Ryan
18. PAVLICH, Matthew
19. THOMAS, Dale
20. JOHNSON, Steve
21. GAMBLE, Ryan
22. LUCAS, Scott
23. BROWN, Nathan J.
24. PFEIFFER, Darren
25. GEARY, Jarryn
26. BIRD, Craig
27. LEUENBERGER, Matthew
28. KREUZER, Matthew
29. RIOLI, Cyril
30. TIPPETT, Kurt

You have 10 million in which to buy your players initally. Throughout the season, you have 20 trades so you can get rid of underperforming players or injuries.

My overall strategy has been to bring in some very expensive but solid players and then complete the team with a whole heap of rookies. Players have their value change each week based on the results of the last 3 games. Picking the right rookies is essential for me because they have to increase a lot in value, which can only happen if they play quite a few games during the year. AFL teams tend not to choose many rookies because they are an unknown risk. Later in the season, I will trade a rookie for someone very cheap and with the money saved trade another rookie for someone very expensive so that by the end of the year I should have an expensive killin' it team.

Most people who play this game choose a couple of expensive good players, mostly average players and a couple of rookies. This means they'll get good scores throughout the year and can upgrade their average players to very good players if their rookies make them money.

My strategy is that I've purchased lots of very expensive players who I intend to keep all year and lots of very cheap players who I hope hope hope will play enough games to be upgraded substantially. My strategy is risky for too reasons; 1.) I may never make a lot of points early in the year so that I end up too far down the year to end into the finals when my team is good and 2.) if the rookies don't play, it's all over red rover. I don't have trades to waste on swapping rookies over each week.

I intend to trade a couple of people at the end of round 3, because the system changes the price after 3 games, that's the best time to pick up a player who is about to explode in price. Prices are established from their averages (mostly from last year). After that, I don't intend to trade at all until Round 12. Again, a risky strategy as I could very well fall down the ladder too far to ever recover. Since there are 20 trades, this means I could make 2 trades per game until the grand final. This has worked well for me in the past since most people actually have no or very few trades going into the finals. Finals are established at the end of Round 18.

The exception to my own rules are expensive players who have long-term injuries.

Going into Round 2:
I'm playing the team that beat me in the grand final last year. My team is sitting pretty except for Scott Lucas who may be out for 10-12 weeks. I may have enough players to cover him until the end of Round 3, but I might just replace him now and score the big points.
I'm tossing up between:
1.) Trading Scott Lucas now for Johnothan Brown.
2.) Trading Scott Lucas now for Paul chapman.
3.) Not trading him and thinking about it later.

The other choice I need to make is regarding Captain. Captain scores double points, so it's important to choose well.

The Cornes brothers are usually excellent choices, as is Pav but this week I'm either going to pick either Dean Cox, Brad Johnson or Chapman if I get him. This is mainly because the Cornes brothers are playing are playing against Sydney who are going at shutting the top players down at the SCG which is not a highscoring ground. Brad Johnson is playing against Melbourne who were dismal against Geelong last week.

Photographies Number 1.

2008-03-18T23:15:00.004+11:00

I'm going to start posting my photos on this blog.

I've only recently felt like I'm starting to get better. The initial learning curve was big, but for the last year or so I've been a bit stagnate. To be honest, I felt like I've gone backwards. It seems like the things I've learnt in the last year or so have actually introduced constraints that I was free from before I knew, it seems like I can't quite get back.

So, I want to record where I am and I how I get to wherever it is I'm going photographically.

Writing about it will hopefully enforce lessons learnt.

Ideally, because of the below post, I would like to become a half IT guy/half photographer guy so I'm aiming to get to a point where people would totally pay me money to take photos of them.

One thing that has held me back has been my choice in models. I've always chosen models who have fairly shabby portfolios so that anything I produce for them is exciting in comparison. While this has been good ego-wise, it's been terribly learning-wise because it's hard to learn off people less experienced than you. I have no contact with other photographers and am heaps not good at absorbing words via internets. Mainly I've been learningby trial and error, but my photographic excursions have been too few and far between to retain learnings.

That all ends right now. Forevs or similar.

Below is Kat. She's an experienced model, totally hilars and is very willing to share what she knows. This photo is as is, straight out of the camera.

She taught me about hotspots.
I had heard the term but didn't really understand.

Say you're taking a photo of friends on a night out. Looking back, you might notice that their nose, or their forehead or their elbow has a bright white spot on it from the flash. While this is usually okayish, if I'm going to be ace, I have to try and eliminate hotspots.

One way is by further diffusing the light (softbox, bouncing it, moving it further away) and another way is by putting translucent powder on the model. If the skin is a little shiny (which happens quick under lights) then the shiny bits will pick up hotspotsmuch more than the not shiny bits. Powder fixes this.

I did the makeup in this shot. I was aiming for natural looking makeup because she had a casting straight afterwards.

The foundation didn't go great, I put it on two heavily in parts and too sparse in others. Evens Stevens is so the goal in so many makeups.

I totally forgot to contour the face and to highlight just below the eyebrow.

I also feel like the colour of the lipstick didn't fit the 'natural' brief,too bright, too pink.

Things I'd do differently:

- Pay more attention so that the black dress or jacket don't fade into thebackground.

- Think more about colours to fit the brief.

- Make my own dagnam decisions makeup-wise instead of asking my model everystep of the way.

- Do the makeup faster, 1 hour 30 minutes is not going to get me any gigs.

Adam vs Forces Karmic

2008-03-18T14:58:00.000+11:00

For many, many years I didn't do any work. I was at work, I went to work everyday, but I seemed to have picked up a crazy knack of being desperately required by this corporate monstrosities, who then would have not much for me to do. So, for years I entertained myself with so many e-mails, blogs, internets, generally mucking around and charging entirely too much for it. While I continually feel like a fraud, and knowing karma hates unappreciated good fortune, I've made sure my little artiste is fed, housed and supplying the world with so many musics. Being a contractor though, equals little job security and so in an effort to save up some money to create myself an emergency buffer, I asked Cara to work again. At the same time I set up my own contracting company and so plans for the buffer were all set.

Officially titled 'The Buffer Plan', it did and continues to work very well. Lady Karma, though, wasn't real happy with the change of plan. She's not my favourite, instead of a polite 'Ahem, excuse me for the interuption, but could you explain your plan so that I might ascertain whether so many punishments are required.' she got all uppity and took matters into her own hands.

AP started more like normal than usual. I didn't have a computer for the first week, the first couple of months I did approximately 10 minutes of work a day. I kid you not, sometimes not even 10 minutes.

Then, The Project started.

The Project was being managed by another company, who had won the contract by offering a fixed price contract and under cutting everyone else. A fixed price contract means that you get paid for finishing the project (or developing the product) regardless of how long it takes you. If you do it quickly and cheaply, you make so many monies, if it takes you a long time, you end up working superhard and losing money for your trouble. A gamble for such, especially since this was the company's first venture into a project of this nature. I wasn't contracting to AP, I was contracting to the company, and they got me in to fulfill a role I often just fall in to... The Golden Child, the One Who Can Do No Wrong. The peeps at AP seemed to take quite a liking to me, especially since I was quite different from the previous people who had done my job. The peeps though, took an instant dislike to The Company once The Project started. The Company resolved this situation by being demanding and bringing on highly incompetent staff (possibly to replace me with a cheaper version) and 'fixing' the project plan to make it look better. this 'fixing' was pretty smart, it involved asking me how long a task would take, taking my estimate and halving it. To motivate everyone, the company then told us that AP quartered it and we had to produce the goods. Activities were skipped because they didn't look rad on the project plan and I was caught in The Position Of Ackwardity. I liked the peeps at AP and wanted to do a good job for them, but The Company was requiring very, very long hours and weekends to try and meet it's deadlines. I don't think I'm afraid of hardwork, I was actually excited by it going in, but because The Company was truly crap, I started to resent having to bail them out time and time again by working the hours craziness.

The Company clearly tipped the scales too far into crud and Lady Karma felt I learnt my lesson.

After 6 months, today is the last day that The Company works at AP. They have effectively been fired and AP have asked that I continue on to actually do the job required. I am relieved no end.

AP is determined to manage me properly and adjust the project plans to ensure I am only required to work 40 hours a week, I indeed get to live again and work like a normal. Not too much, not too little.

Updatation

2008-03-17T15:20:00.000+11:00

Hey kids.

I am actually intending to be more acer of blog from here on. I know I've said this before, but I got plans baby.

I've got a few things that I want to sort of keep a journal on, so for fairly selfish reasons I intend to blog up. Before I do that I should give you all a brief overview of where things are at:

- Africa is north of Antartica. Not so relevant, but that's where that is.
- Been the busiest ever, overwhelmingly so.
- Work has still be craziness, I was hoping to get fired at one point so I could just walk away, but they've sorted themselves out.
- While work was an idiot. I started a makeup course to complement my almost, nearly starting photography business. It has 12 contact hours and assignments and required practise hours - freakin' me out a bit.
- We're going to Brisbane on Thursday night and meant to organise a nerdfest... except I'm the most unorganised ever, we don't even have accomodation yet.
- Photography has been going okay, but it seems like the more I learn, the harder it all gets.
- Cara's band has been doing her head in. The've mastered their album but no one wants to tour or fund good artwork.
- To compensate, Cara has this week been creating a new band. A nine piece where everyone swaps around and different people feature in different songs. She is the boss.
- I still haven't got my contracting company good. My Dad is coming over tonight to beat it up a bit.
- For many years I've been in something called an AFL Dreamteam competition. It's where you pick players who play the game of football, and if they do good things you get points. With those points you want to beat the points your friends got. If we are feeling confident, we bet beers. The day of the AFL Grand Final we all get together and receive the beers we won and give out awards for hilarious bagging e-mails throughout the season. This year, I'm organising the whole thing so I might be blogging my team and the challenges so I can recap at the end of the year.
- I want to take more random ace photography photos, so hopefully this blog will do many motivates.

It is I, Adam, The Not Smart

2008-01-14T01:10:00.000+11:00

Why hello there,

I've been at work for approximately 17 hours. Can I make it to 24 hours straight? Only time will tell...

Adam the photogs.

2008-01-11T14:45:00.000+11:00

Here is my photography portfolio. It's on another website, but if you're ever interesteds, this is where you can see where I'm at (photographing-wise, not location). Since I'm really still very much learning the whole bizzo, I'd be totally interested in any shots you way hate or don't mind.

http://www.modelmayhem.com/pics.php?id=569683

I'm surprised Chester Copperpot didn't get further than he did. Didn't really put his back into it...

2008-01-08T09:24:00.000+11:00

I read this meme over at Enny's and I liked it, so I thought I'd give it a go - a retrospective on 2007.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?
Um, nothing.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next this year?
Nup, ummm, nup.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
I dunno.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Probs not.

5. What countries did you visit?
None.

- Meme after one proton energy pill giving me the strength of 20 tigers for a period of 20 seconds -

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?
Actually made and saved monies. Has honestly never really happened before apart from that 4 months of my first job when I was still living at home with parentals or similar.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next this year?
My new years resolutions for 2007 were to become 8% more hilarious and eat 32% more vegtables. It was a tough year and they were hardcore resolutions. During the year I peaked at a hilarious rating of 13% up on the previous year and at times also slumped to a rating of -4% on the previous year. The average ended up being a rise of 7.89% on the previous year - which is an improvement to be proud of, but not exactly the result I was looking for. The vegtables one I failed dismally purely because a large portion of 2006 I was living in Brisbane by myself and the usual nightly meal I would prepare was a mountain of meat and vegtable heaped on a plate. Early in 2007 I moved back to Melbourne and had normal person meals that incorporated more than 2 types of food groups, but meant that the actual quantity of vegtables dropped...

My resolution for 2008 is to have 6% more fun and make 12 more friends than I had in 2007.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not superclose no, I wasn't standing next to a single person in 2007 who dropped a childs on my shoes. One of my good friends' wife (can't believe I know married dudes) kidded up on the 3rd of Jan 2008, does that could as 2007?

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Well, actually, yes. For the first time ever someone I was good friends with died while he was in London. He was totally fine, then got sick one night, fell into a coma and died a fair bit later. It was quite an emotional rollercoaster, especially when word got around that he had died, then we found out that was incorrect, then a day later he did.

There was also little Chester, which one ARC still misses him terribly.

5. What countries did you visit?
Totally none. 2007 was a building of finances and businesses year.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
Not excited about any products or services, I feel I've got all the toys and essentials I need. Wouldn't say no to a hoverboard. Freakin' abs.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
July 1 - my company starts operating and my life instantly improves.
April 22 - my birthday and Cara organised a nice thing that was nice.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Moved house twice but only totalled a random dude's car once - actually, that wasn't even me, it was Caras. Um, I must have achieved something big, um, I didn't unleash any plagues onto mankind, I didn't build the tallest building, I didn't acquire any TVs and surround sound that would transform my place into suburbia, I didn't acquire a single henchman the entire year. Maybe I can achieve something this year, ie, an army of legs with nasty kicking shoes.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I didn't get all the golden coins from One-Eyed Willy's Ship in the cave. I mean, I did grab some gems in my marbles bag, but to be honest, I didn't exactly take advantage of the situation.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
The RSI was definitely my biggest concern and 2007 was the year that I tried to punch it right in the top of hands. Unfortunately I was completely unsuccessful and currently quite discouraged. I still have options but I'm just not emotionally ready to tackle it again just yet.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A new company to call my own. I'm now not lining any of the pockets of the man and wish I had done it years ago (although I wouldn't have appreciated it as much if I had). All my contracting goes through my own company that I'm also setting up to be a management company for others. I totally done with so many peeps making money for nothing off contractors who don't work very hard at all. I intend to run them all broke by charging just enough to cover costs. Cara was also able to contract through my company which meant I could totally buy my employee a laptop which was a super ace macbook that she's been music'ing up a storm with. Also iRiver X20 - musics and TVs in my pocket - makes me the non-boredest ever - may hev forgatten how to read.

12. Where did most of your money go?
Into this and this and food, movies, rent.

13. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
I'm not sure I did in 2007, maybe about the first two links in question 12.

14. What song will always remind you of 2007?
Anything from the divinyls, who we saw at the Forum, anything from Midnight Juggernauts or Plastic Palace Alace.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier
b) thinner or fatter? Fatter
c) richer or poorer? Richer

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?
In 2007, I don't really have any regrets at all. It wasn't the most exciting year at all, but it was pretty important to buckle down and earn up - the difference in stress levels at the start of the year to the end of the year was huge.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Work with goofs, doofs and crazies... but there isn't a lot I could do about that. Apart from skitzing out and leaving, you can't do a whole lot choosing who to work with.

18. How did you spend Christmas?
If you scroll down a littles, you can probably read so many words on this very topic. If you can't be bozed, so many family things.

19. Did you fall in love in 2007?
I'm pretty much always falling in love with inanimate objects, animate objects, peeps, pets, clouds, rocks and foods, but yes, I find myself falling for young Caras on a fairly regular basis - damn unmanly emotions!

20. What was your favorite TV program?
2007 was the year of Scrubs. I had never seen an episode before and have now watched all 6 seasons.. Season 5 twice...

21. What was the best book you read?
No real standouts for me, I read million (or poss. a billion) books earlier in the year, but I didn't become a Ravey Rave McRavey holding bazookas to dudes and chicks heads/genitals demanding they read any particular collection of fictional or pretty true words bound by human skin or similar. Shame.

22. What was your favorite film of this year?
Transformers. I'd say "Surprisingly good".

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I totally turned 29, it felt like such a lame age to be turning. It's totally like getting second place in a schoolyard sprint. What's the point, really? If I saw 29 in the street, and I was driving, and had some mates in the car so no one would beat me up and the lights were green, I'd totally yell out the window at 29. Cara organise a nice dinner with friends that inlcuding gorging on meat and meat related desserts. It was grand.

24. What kept you sane?
The simple fact that I'm way better at skateboarding than old people who live in nursing homes in countries where concrete is banned. Unfortunately, I am worse at most things than most people including arts and crafts and playing the guitar.

25. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Bumblebee, Ironhide, Jazz...

26. Who did you miss?
29, if he ever crosses the road, I won't miss again... Also good friends of mine who think I'm ace but went overseas anyway. Selfish.

27. Who was the best new person you met?

Since our friend Mich is totally single in the sea of coupledom, she's made some new friends who are superfun. There is a whole gang of them and we very much enjoy their company. It's grouse finding whole new gangs of friends. They haven't heard my jokes before.

Was there totally a mouldy bit on my breakfast burger? That's not good.

2008-01-05T08:16:00.000+11:00

Dan's 30th birthday - A Dude's Review.

Dan's 30th birthday started at 9:30pm on Friday the 4th of January 2008 at the pub called Transport at Federation Square in the city of Melbourne.

Unfortunately this reviewer arrived much later than the start time in the hope that the heavy drinkers in the group may have achieved an uncatchable alcolholic lead. He had also imagined that he would arrive instantly, completely forgetting to allow for travel time and the 'does public transport even exist these days, if so, in what manner' moments.

Therefore the Dude's Review will begin from approximately 10:30pm:

Venue: Beer = expensive , lighting = good, view = river, staff = quick. 'Transport' is probs a better name than 'Walking Quickly', 'Bus' or 'to carry, move, or convey from one place to another'.

Venue Patrons: Full of yupogans.
2 parts yuppie, one part bogan, these dudes wear designer t-shirts, spend all not-working time at the gym, have textured hair and expensive mobies but still seem dumber than a box of rocks.

As I approached the venue, the doorman/massive beefster of bounce, gave me the obligatory 'hey, how you doin', welcome to our lovely establishment, come right in and we'll look after you'/grunt-nod. I was nervous, I used to hang with these homies every Friday & Saturday night for most of my pre and early 20s. Adventures had been plentiful, jokes had been in, laughs and also playstations had been loud, but I hadn't seen any of them for years, which was my fault and knew I'd cop a hard time about. What if they had changed into balding, fatcats who spoke mainly of investment schemes and private schooling for childs?

Of course, I am idiots because once I found all the tall dudes of lank in the room, curse my normal person height, they were all exactly the same as the olden days, with slight variations in haircuts and shoewear. Although, some of the dudes have bought or are looking to buy property. Huh? Since when does turning 30 mean growing up? Property owners are usually only barons who charge the serfs too much for toiling the land. Anywho, the dudes weren't so keen for drunkeness like I remember, but that was cool seeing as I am at work right this very second 'n' all. Dan had a good birthday, but for a dude who was usually out cold, sleeping in a mate's brother's car before midnight most parties, he was quite the normal. I did a bit alright with the catching up, and the excuses for non attendance of anything for years, and the getting past the ackward gap of all the big things being spoken of to bring yo convo to the small important things of fun.

All in all, I give this event a 7. Could have used more adventures/accidental hilarity.

Cherry Ripes should be longer

2008-01-03T16:35:00.000+11:00

Hi kids, I have been the Slack of Blog, and it's because my head has been buzzing with so many things that I haven't been able to chuck any single thought onto internet paper and thusly have brought nothing to the interwebs.

I guess the second reason is that my boss of work is so houndingly that I don't really have many spare, non-interuptive, blog moments.

Anywho, hi. Cara and I came back from working at the Falls Festival for New Years. I don't reckon I've ever had such an understated midnight. The headlining band, Kings of Leon, did a quick 10, 9, 8, at 11:56pm and then quickly continued with their rocking and their rolling. We did the pash, hugged our new friends and then it was all done. We were exhausted, working at Falls was probably the hardest, longest, most frantically I've ever worked in my life and the hot days were hardcore, with little respite. That said, I've come out the other end, super content and planning to do it all again next year armed with hindsight aplenty.

Christmas was actually ok. For the last few years it gives me an almost unbearable stress that makes me want to hide away from the world for two days. I think I don't cope with the way that it becomes Not About Me, or more specifically, all about what totally old dudes and chicks want. I was especially getting anxious because I've been having totally no days off from work, and was all set to spend precious, precious freedom sitting on various couches at various places waiting for hours until it was the socially acceptable time to leave.

There were four family things; the first one was with my Dad, his partner and his new, tiny little childs, my sister and Cara at Yum Cha in the city. My sister was all eye-rolling when the little childs came along, I think she wanted Dad's attention all to herself, but having the kids there meant that the whole thing was wrapped up in an hour. It is hard to converse when kids are stabbing things with chopsticks, but I was cool with that, talking is totally overrated.

The second thing was lunch at my Mum's place. I was totally not looking forward to it because my Mum used to be a bit of a psycho. She's totally been alright the last few years, but 34 million times bitten, twice shy, etc. It was cool though, she cooked many foods (usually I have to grab something to eat on the way there and the way back), the convo was tension free and it was actually kinda fun. Whooo! Cara and I escaped just when it looked like they wanted to settle in for the afternoon so we had totally gotten out while everything was still sweet.

The next two things were Cara's things. I'm usually not a massive fan of these things either, mainly because they usually go for 10 hours and once everyone has done the appropriate small talk with me, I'm usually discarded by all - which is fair enough, why small talk a non-blood when you can hang with your cuz who used to be your very best friend until they moved interstate (for example). It's a huge cliquey family. This year though, I actually had an alright time, we were still there from 10am to 6pm which is crazy long and a bit boring, but obvs I've been in the family long enough to be in the gang now and there were some family peeps that didn't have their usual gang there so they hung with me instead. Cara's family things are Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Christmas Day was the long one, Boxing Day is usually harder as the family numbers got from 20 to 40 and the dudes I should hang out with are super occa/boring. Luckily, Cara also felt a bit out of place, we got outta there after the appropriate time so we could live LIVE! Boxing Day had a few more family peeps that are falling out of the clique these days, so I had friends again, it was cool.

The other thing I don't really like about Christmas is presents. I find it a bit frustrating because we all have monies to buy things that we like, and the peeps I should buy things for I don't know well enough, so everyone gives each other random token things that nobody likes. It just seems silly to me. Anywho, Cara is one unemployed bum right now, so she did it all. WHOAAA! How much does she rock? So much!

So, that was rad also, giving this Christmas the highest rating since I was 11 years old: 7.5

Interviewed like just another scraggly celebrity

2007-12-06T08:23:00.000+11:00

Young Enny has been kind enough to fire questions at me on the topics facing Australia's kindayouth:

1. What was one of your past jobs, what is your current job, and whatis your realistic dream job?

At one stage I was a candle wrapper, at another I was a rollerblade pamphlet guy and at another I was a podium gogo dancer but mostly I've been a computer dude extraordinaire. My continued Not Being Found Out As A Massive Fraud can be mostly attributed my ability to talk a whole lot of possibly legitimate sounding guff and me constantly telling people I'm a terrible IT guy. No other IT contractor I know talks themselves down with such gusto for fear of never being employed again, but I find it lowers expectation so much that if I do happen to accidentally do something correctly everyone is impressed. Mostly, permanent staff are out to highlight the limitations of any contractor so as to not be outshone, I've never had that problem.

As the pages of this blog may have noticed, I do have RSI in both my hands from computering, which means they ache pretty much all the time. I'm very much looking to get out of the computer industry, but I'm finding it hard to jump into something else without going back to uni to type so many essays, and I'd struggle cashola-wise. My currently plan is to improve my photography skills, find a niche market and reduce the computering to two or three days a week. Pretty much any dream job is one where I get to hang out with cool people who make me laugh.

2. If you weren't living in Melbourne, where do you think you would be living?

Apart from the Caras, there isn't anything keeping me in Melbourne. I totally think I could live in so many worldly places and would very much like to try my hand at living wherevs. Unforts Cara's band is very much keeping her in Melbourne, but once they start touring I would very much like to go with them. Could be fun.

3. If you were to have three bloggers for dinner, who would they be, what would you serve and what would y'all talk about?

Hmm, obvs I've got my favourite fun friends who I had many funtimes with in Brisbane, but to choose different people I'd probably go with IOYC, That's Mister Nora To You Sonny and Jobe. I think that would be superfun. I can't really say I'd know what we'd talk about, I assume many tangents, however I think the main topic of conversation would be my kickin' skills of serving, my massive food on a plate and my fairly okayish haircut. Yeah, probably it would accidentally get steered to topics about me until my guests cracked it, left and staged a rival dinner party with even bigger kickin' skills of serve and more massiver food on a plate. Then I would be sad/eternally seeking revenge.

4. Do you think you and the little red rockstar will be wed one day?What the LEAST likely way the proposal and wedding would go down?

We have quite decided to never, ever do the marrying for reasons thusly; not excited, monies could be spent on funner things. Cara does get jealously of friends at times, but when we do think about it, we'd much rather put that same cash towards recording an album or travelling. Both our sets of parents are quite supportive of our decision which is nice. It they disagreed it wouldn't change my mind at all, but would make family gatherings more awkward than they already are.

So, since anyway is the least likely, I'm going to push the envelope further and say that even leaster is us arriving in a cavelcade of white BMWs. Cara jumps out in tracky daks and a mexican poncho while her bridesmen rock down the aisle first in brilliant white dresses and trains. Not one but nine priests are presiding over this marriage in the Vatican while my divorced parents stand next to each other good naturedly chatting about how each wronged the other. My sister is arm in arm with my grandfather who she recently married herself. I conduct all my parents solemly and with respect while Cara continuing cracks jokes until her Mum runs up and piledrives her into the altar. The crowd claps and the Wiggles perform the leaving church bit.

5. Where do you see yourself at age 35?

Like totally carrying amps off a stage in Norway after taking awesome freakin' photos of the bands. Possibly with a crazy cool handlebar mustache that joins with my sideburns and goes around the back of my head like a sunglasses band.

Now it's your turn. If you want to be interviewed, leave me a commentincluding the words "Interview me." I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions. If you don't have a validemail address on your blog, please provide one. You will update yourblog with a post containing your answers to the questions. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in thesame post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will askthem five questions.

2007-11-24T14:46:00.000+11:00

C'Mon Not John Howard, you can do it!! This wait/weight is killing me!!

If JH gets back in, I'm moving to freakin' Switzerland.

I freaked out this morning because the internet at work was down and I still couldn't figure out the best voting strategy to get me what I wanted. I basically want JH out but I always want the Greens to have superawesome powers, after all, is a strong economy really that good if the country ends up being underwater? I would happily go through a whole heap of recessions if I had some confidence we were doing our best not to kill every living thing and I'm very sure that putting effort and monies into better sources of energy would drive employment anyway, changing everything has a habit of creating so many jobs.

So, I want JH out and KR in, but with the Greens ready to beat up dudes and chicks who were playing silly buggers. I'm a bit frightened that the ALP might not get the exact seats they need to take over government, but I freaked and panicked and voted the Greens in both bits of paper. I figured that since it was close, people might not vote for the Greens and they'd be left beind. If the ALP didn't get in I wanted Bob Brown to have many powers instead. I just did on over the line too, and I now think I should have done the 1-68 thing to ensure the Coalition were at the bottom. So, yes, I'm slightly wracked with non-preparedness despite having a kabillion years to look this stuff up.

C'MONNNNNNNNN!!!!

2007-10-30T10:25:00.000+11:00

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

2007-10-29T16:58:00.000+11:00

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...

2007-10-25T10:06:00.000+10:00

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...

2007-10-16T08:05:00.000+10:00

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.

2007-10-15T11:21:00.000+10:00

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.

2007-10-12T09:28:00.000+10:00

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

2007-10-02T09:00:00.000+10:00

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.

Today's new toy for the boy.

2007-09-26T09:39:00.000+10:00

Have to say good-bye to Very Fast Red 750 though... it's been a heaps good 5 years.

Still pluggin...

2007-05-05T09:44:00.000+10:00

Hey kids,

The RSI has gotten worse, freakin'. Tell you what, I'm hardly a violent person (despite being an IT Ninja) but I'm totally set to walk up and kick RSI dead set in the nuts. It's kinda getting to a point where I'm not sure how much longer I can be an IT Ninja for, each day is pretty freakin' full of pain in the top of hands variety. A week starts to look like a very long time....

Anywho, I'm seeing a Chiro about it, since I've already had my funness with Back School, a Naturapath, A GP and a Accupuncturist. Like all the others, the Chiro is confident he can get the pain right down, so we'll see how that goes.

In other news, we moved house to Northcote. It's pretty mad. We've got like double the space that we used to and everything seems to be in walking distance. We had a heaps fun day of moving with lots of Friends of Rad carrying a box or a kabillion or lugging, fridge, etc. We've still got two weeks to clean up the old house, but really, now that we've moved that junk just doesn't seem the funnest. Again, I find myself putting the word out for any cleaning slaves to come a ringin'. Why, oh why, do they never ring?

We went to a funeral yesterday, in Sydney. I've never been to a funeral of a friend of mine before, I've only been to family ones of very, very old people. Our friend had been totally fine, and then had a slight cold, then suddenly was in a coma. I think he was in a coma for 65 days, with some brief forays into conciousness but eventually his body had a stroke and he never recovered. He fought a tough fight, he had contracted some bug that there have been only 13 other cases world-wide, and lived much longer than the doctors expected. He left behind a heap of good friends and a fiance. They had been working in London, so it all feels a bit surreal for us here. Despite the saddness, it was good. His sister did a great speech thing at the church thing and the wake was good. They made a photo montage that was excellent. We've known his fiance for years and while she was clearly gutted, she was okay. I haven't seen her for a while so I was worried that she might be a shadow of her former self, everything was going along swimmingly and then suddenly she's spending all her time at a hospital, but she was okay and was totally herself whenever we spoke about safe topics. It was all interesting for me, I've never had to deal with something like this before. I seem to emotionally detach myself when I see that everyone else is upset and go into lookeraftery mode, I guess everyone handles these things differently.

Anywho, Cara's just woken up, even though we have heaps of room here, we still need to figure out where everything goes. The storage for junk isn't great. Fun, fun.

Have good times kids,
Adam.

A Message from the President from Not Going Nowhere.

2007-04-20T15:44:00.001+10:00

Bloggeagues,

Just a short note to inform you that my RSI in hands has flaired up to Way Crap Levels of SuperCrapness and totally hurt all the time. Thusly I will be refraining from typing, type-casting and tipping at all as much as possible until I find a solution or workaround. Please leave a comment below if you or you know someone with any spare tops of hands.

Keep in good health,
Adam Awesome.

2007-04-11T15:18:00.000+10:00

Dear Diary,
Sorry I've been ignoring you of late, but I have been quite the boring crouton in an otherwise zesty italian chicken breast with salad.I haven't really been ignoring, Dear Diary, it's not like you've been sitting on the couch with me occasionally turning the phrase 'Ahem' during the ads, you've really just been sitting here waiting patiently for my return, which should be soon if not now.

Anywho Dear Diary, I am still amidst my feelings of displacement. We're still looking for an awesome large house close to the city for cheap and I just kind of feel real life won't start until we can declare ourselves Moved and Unpacked.I'm still doing an absolute ripper job of sucking portions of a rich mining company's profits in exchange for not much, but they recently purchased a clue and have made many hand motions signifying they won't be continuing my contract once end date hits. Smart.

Our little doggie Chester died on the weekend. Our little family feels littler than ever before. It does fill me with many saddnesses especially since we're probably not going to have such a cute pet for a long time... our lives just don't really fit with anything that might even slightly require regular human intervention via feeding.

RIP Crazy Robot Dog Chester The Cute.

This Body For Life thing isn't really producing the results that I was after yet. It's been a solid two weeks and I haven't put on or lost any weights at all, not even a skerrick. I've been eating maybe twice as much and gyming every day with many inclusions of a protein. The distances I can job or cross train on are steadily improving which is super cool, but I still have no freakin' abs. Is being massive within two weeks too much to ask?

Thanks Dear Diary, how are you?

Regards,
Adam.

The Most Massive Anti Climax the World Has Ever Seen!!

2007-03-30T09:21:00.000+10:00

This is my 300th post and my only thought is:

The more time I spend in the gym, the more I think that dumb luck is the only thing that seperates the attractive from the unattractive.

Probably my best 300th post ever.

Told by a cartoon to update this 'ere blog.

2007-03-27T22:02:00.000+10:00

Sheeesh. You turn a computer on to wish a young lady 'happy birthday' only to find that so many typed and drawn demands for updatation. Blogwords are like a drug dude, and I think you're all addicted, but, but, but what if I don't write anything meaningful, or entertaining or full of wise? Will you all be so disappointed?

Anywho, I like left Brisb a while ago. The little red rockstar and I spent a whole day and a half cleaning a one bedroom apartment, I swear installing a mudslide was a heaps good idea at the time, but not the greatest for retaining one's bond.

I was unemployed for one day, a sore point for my Dad who tries to encourage the unemployed bum in me. I have however, renewed my plan to contract to ridiculously large and environmentally disasterous companies and then only do very shabby work at best in order to suck them dry from the inside out and redistribute those funds to support Melbourne live music. It's a dasteredly plan and one only a ninja can hope to succeed. No nunchucks or ninja stars required, my main weapons are Smiling When Spoken To and Pretending to Look Busy.

This company I'm contracting to for the next couple of months is ridiculous. In Brisbane I was working under ground in an office known throughout the public sector for it's old fashioned decore. Now I'm on some upper, upper, upper high floor in Southbank, overlooking a river and everything else. I look down on helicopters. It's as opulent as hell. Everyday I wonder at it's ridiculousness.

The only problem so far is that I've been hardcore restrained at my internet usage because the big boss keeps walking behind me. Instead I've been moving Excel cells around. I realised today that all the work I've been doing the past week has actually made the thing I'm trying to do maybe a hundred times worse so tomorrow I'm going to have to undo all my crud and then start again. Watch and learn ninjas.

I do realise I'm making way no sense, but I'm really freakin' tired. I've been arising at hardcore o'clock to hang out at a super poncy gym. Most people seem to have full makeup on when they treadmill at 6am. The rockstar and I have started a 12 week course thing to become even more superheroey. It is quite tedious and uncomfortable and requires many thoughts and thinkings, but we're doing it together in a loving coupley way, which means I have try and win.

Can someone buy a four bedroom house for us to rent? Close to the city and local shops? I don't really fit back into this house. To type out this blog I'm standing in a corner between an amp and a fold up mattress.

Oils ain't oils

2007-03-05T11:24:00.000+11:00

So like, now I'm confused.

A while ago, a friend of mine who works in the airplane industry said that the world only has about 10 years worth of petrol left. She's very environmental and smart and I quite trust the things she says.

On the weekend, one of my friends partner is an engineer who has worked on oil rigs and the like, said that actually heaps and heaps and heaps of oil left, that the world is actually covered in oil. He explained that the sands in Canada alone (which has been untouched because it's a hard and expensive process) have enough oil to keep the US going for 20 years. He basically said all these words about running out was to keep the price up - no one wants to flood the market.

So obviously, different organisations provide different information based on their own vested interests. Which I understand how that is happened, but surely in a whole planet of people measuring stuff, a completely independant research group has accurately calculated how much oil is still in the earth. Does anyone know of where I could find such information?

Funky Friday Funness - Too Many Freakin' Fs.

2007-03-02T17:17:00.000+11:00

So like, when trapped in an office underground you pretty much assume that the world outside is super rad. It might be cyclonin' out there but it's all sunshinin' in my mind.

I have two problems. 1.) My segues need work. 2.) My imagination has a fairly common but fairly damaging overactive issues. Instead of dreaming about getting up from my desk, walking outside and wandering through the streets and shops, I've invented some games I would like to play:

Game 1: 500 metre Crowd Dash

A number of competitors are lined up. An official starts the race with a clear loud "GO!"
Competitors dash to the finish line where an official officiates. Only competitors that were not disqualified are eligible for the winnings.

Allowed movement types: Running, sprinting, hopping, jumping, duck + somersault, diving, wall running, hurdling, twirling, dodging.

Disqualifying moves: Causing members of crowd to drop cool refreshing beverages or food.Making little kids cry.Touching any members (or members of members) of crowd.Getting arrested.

Gold Star moves: Seperating Interactions of Wrong, ie, creating a distraction so a chick or a dude can escape from some clown trying to pick them up or running between someone asking for money and their victim.
Subtling barracking for the exact opposite thing a crowd member loves, ie, "Go Essendon", "Enjoy Coke", "This goes with that at Sussans", etc.Pulling out a Toyota freezeframe jump in the midst of dash.

5 gold stars = Massive Massive Belt Buckle of Achievement.

Arenas of Dash:Shopping strips, Straight after concerts or sporting events, lunchtime foodcourts, anywhere where crowds are walking in different directions at different angles and speeds.

Game 2: Biggest Gainer.

Competitors walk around clothing stores trying on clothes. The person who managed to get the most number of clothes on without being told off wins. Note: Disapproving looks from teenage staff do not count as a 'telling off', just existing is enough to get a disapproving look. Side note: I still feel like a teenager, I'm just not emo'd.

Game 3: Reversal Busking.

Competitors put 2 dollars of 20 cent coins in a hat each and then must create songs or dance performances that results in the public removing said coins. The winner is the competitor with the least amount of money in their hat. Winner gets the total monies from both hats.

Any worthy competitors out there? Anyone? Anyone?

Agony Adam

2007-02-28T12:13:00.000+11:00

I've got a couple of friends who don't have a blog, or used to have a blog or otherwise need a space to rant ahoy. Being quite crap at rants myself, I'm more than happy to play host...

Dear Letting Me Rant Adam,

I work on a reception desk with another girl, we share a desk about a metre and a half long and things have gotten so bad that we can't even talk to each other anymore.
She's such a fn idiot! She keeps people on hold while she types out her personal e-mails, she always sends faxes the wrong way so that the receiving party finds a blank page, she giggles and snorts on the phone to the girls upstairs while account managers and sales reps are waiting in our foyer. She says things like "I have no idea what she's doing." to our boss, she always writes that items cost more and then keeps the change from petty cash. She's super nice to everyone until they ask her to do something that she doesn't want to do, then she's a pain to be around. She's downright repulsive. I know I can be stubborn and cross sometimes, but she makes me out to be a massive witch to everyone. Seriously, she's not in on Wednesdays and so I spring out of bed. Every other day I dread going in. I so want to quit, but then she'll win. God, I hate her so much.

Dear Agony Adam,

I heard you were opening your blog up for people who were unable to rant so I've got a rant here for you.

I have a friend who has a friend who I can't vent about because she reads the blog (thought promised she doesn't anymore - ISP tracker states otherwsise) so nothing can be said there (any more).

This friend is in a toxic relationship and refuses to acknowledge it - as clear as it is to everyone other than her. There are many, Many, MANY examples of this, but here's two quite recent ones.

It was the night before she (girl) was to leave for an international holiday with the other half of her toxic relationship (boy) and girl's housemate arrived home to find girl bawling on the couch. This was particularly unusual as girl has been taking extreme steps to ensure that only the good side of her relationship is made public - everything else happens in the privacy of her bedroom, the privacy of boys parents house or the privacy of girls group of pro-marriage friends that refuse to see anything 'unhealthy' about the relationship as their entire existence is built around marrying their first boyfriends, kitchen teas and living their lives as kept women.

Anyway, girl is on the couch bawling. Girls housemate remembers that after all the other fights they've had about this toxic relationship she vowed to NEVER get involved again. Girls housemate heads upstairs to her room and then sneaks down to the loungeroom almost an hour later to find girl still bawling on couch. The story eventually unfolds: It was boys turn to cook dinner (at his parents house because even though he lives at home and girl lives in her own place, they predominantly hang out in boy's bedroom at his parents house) and she arrived to find that it wasn't ready. She sat in boys bedroom for an hour and he wasn't ready, so she decided to storm home in a flurry of tears. Not much of a story, right? Right! BUT this sort of bizaarre to-and-fro, one-extreme-to-another thing occurs AT LEAST once a week.

So, the fact that we only ever hear about the awesome perfectness that is the union of these two is annoying. Particularly when we hear (through other sources) about this sort of craziness just as often. If she could just be normal, realise that every relationship has issues and that people have faults, and stop allowing herself to be brainwashed by her enabler friends who only encourage her to 'try harder', my life would be so much easier.

But instead? Instead I hear about how they spent the drive to the airport 'practising' how they will spend time together if they feel they need 'a time out'. This is AFTER hearing about how girl spends a few nights a week at boys parents house sleeping over (against boys parents conservative wishes) so that they can 'practice' cohabiting... Girl has her own house, but boy will only stay there one night a week on the night that he chooses as some sort of bizaare power play. But that's another rant for another time.

While just thinking and writing about this is making me angry again, I do feel a little better!

Yours in anger, ~Anon.

2007-02-26T10:27:00.000+11:00

Just like every single other person in the world, I like nothing better than to jump into a reclining armchair with a snifter of brandy and read up on common law cases. I personally like to try and figure out exactly how far I could push the law in any given situation.

Higgins vs Higgins.

Higgins was suing Higgins because Higgins wrote details about Higgins on the internet. For 35 days, the court heard the pros and cons of detailing ones partner's pros and cons on a public forum and afterwards the judge ruled...

"Dudes, it's the internet, you can totally go hack!"

Ha ha ha - sweet!

Pros and Cons of the Little Red Rockstar:

Pros:
Has a cute smile, purdy eyes, makes me laugh, seems intelligent, excellent at pashing/snogging/kissing, good at screwing (in lightbulbs), good at pumping (water from a well), good at (de)sexing (cats), finds me amusing, provides opportunities to work on my lugging muscles, looks cute and/or hot, works well with others, is good at spelling, doesn't feel the need to solve all problems with maths, is cute and pathetic when sick, is all nursey when I'm sick, outrageously passionate, good taste in music, writes well, can rollerblade, talks good, talks plenty and has nice hair.

Cons:
Not my cousin.

2007-02-25T09:49:00.000+11:00

Questions people are asking this week.

Which supermodel's appearance in a perfume advert needed body doubles for her hands, shoulders, legs, hips and stomach, including one 14 year-old girl?

Is it possible to cut yourself with soap?

Which two bloggers drank 3 bottles of wine, 3 bottles of bacardi, a bottle of gin and 6 strongbows and then spent all night pashing?

Who named Wrigley's Eclipse Mints? What does spearminty fresh breath have to do with blocking out the sun momentarily thus providing religious zealots the signal they need?

Is it a little bit weird that shop people call their customers 'darling'?

Will Nat forgive Adam for not wanting to be a feature of Hotness of the Week?

Is a smoking city motorbike courier destined to live forever?

Run like fun.

2007-02-22T11:35:00.000+11:00

This new Embarkment of Exercise has required some cardio every second day. To tell you the truth, I'm totally struggling with it, I'm just really totally uncomfortable with jogging, it totally goes against The Perfection Of Slothly Sitting I've been training for the last ten years.

But this wasn't always the case..

[CUE MOTHERFREAKIN' REMEMBERING FADEOUT BLACK AND WHITE BIT NOW]

My mates and I spent our entire before school, little lunch, lunch, after school playing games and generally outdoing each other in all things. I spent pretty much the last three years completely caked in dirt and grass stainy.

On this particular lunchtime that the motherfreakin' remembering fadeout bit landed on, we were playing cricket. We only had a tennis ball so to get the dude out you had to catch the ball and then chock the batter dude in the back of the neck with the ball before he made it back to home. The batsman would therefore aim to slog the ball into the trees. If the batsman got it past the trees and over the barb-wire fence onto the neighbouring sportsground then he was out because we weren't allowed out of schoolgrounds.

When it did go over the fence, I'd always volunteer to go fetch. Our grounds were higher than next doors and so it was heaps easy to get over. There was even a poorly mended section that I could run and jump over. Getting back was much much harder and required some tree climbing and massive leaping.

There were big bushes next door and so I was struggling to find our ball. Alex climbed over to help and looked in a whole different section, but it wasn't long before he sprinted way past me, closely followed by some dudes in our year level chasing him on the other side of the fence throwing rocks and sticks. Alex was going to have a tough time of it, he was heading for a sparce part of the grounds with only one good tree, he was going to need a totally big headstart.
I had been behind some bushes looking for the ball and so did some mighty fine crouching while I figured out what to do. Unfortunately, sticks and stones to break my bones landed all round me. Damn.

Bullying wasn't really a problem at our school, but these dudes got all Lord of the Flies on us this one time. I started running the opposite direction from Alex, hoping to split them up and bore them with the running and chasing.

They did not get bored.

I was in a tight spot.

Being outside the school grounds was big trouble and my chances of being busted by a patrolling teacher too freakin' good.

Everytime I paused, projectiles of all sorts were launched at me and soon I was running out of grounds. I decided to exit the next door sports grounds and cross the road to the park opposite. I had run out of good trees to climb back over and so my only option was the main gates. The main gates were for cars, so they could drive for a kilometre or so, go round the roundabout drive a bit more and park near the offices.

I was hiding around some bushes in the park opposite, I was across a big main road so I didn't have to worry about rocks, but being busted this far from the school would have sucked. Also lunchtime was nearly over, I was pretty well screwed. There were 6 dudes all yelling and looking for me, but they didn't leave the school boundaries.

I popped out of the bushes across the road from the main gate and they saw me and sprinted to intercept. I had to cross a big road, a hilly grassy median strip and another road and only just beat them to the gate.

I was heaps tired, I had run much further than these footy and soccer stars and had to dodge a whole heap of rocks when I came through the gate. We were all now two full football ovals away from our classroom and the first bell had sounded. The chase was on.

I was always superquick at sprinting but distance I had no interest in. I didn't know what these dudes were going to do, but I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be good. Not one to let myself get bullied, I wasn't going to make it easy.

They all gave chase. One dude caught up right beside me. He didn't try and grab me but was looking at my feet. I had no clues until he tried to soccer slide at me to trip me up. Since he projected so damn much I just jumped over and kept running.

Other dudes came close but all those Saturday mornings of weaving around the Queens Victoria market crowds provided the mad skillz to get around little kids quicker.

Eventually I made it to the main school bit before the second bell. I was wreaked and slowed to a walk. Before I got too far, one of the dudes, grabbed me and held me. I asked him what he was doing and he just ignored me and looked back the way we came. Soon all the other dudes rocked up and surrounded me.

"Why run away?"
"'Cos you were chucking rocks."
"Yeah, that's 'cos you were running."

The second bell rang and we all had to go to class. They let go and with all the menacing their exhausted bodies could muster left me with chilling murmurs of 'don't run next time.'

That second bell changed everything, the UN really should just get some school bells all over the shop and tell conflicting countries to get to class.

My next subject was with the soccer dude and I was all like 'haha dude, you missed' and he was all 'yeah mate, I tried to chop you and you bounced away like a bunny rabbit.' Thinking about it later I was impressed at his quickness of reducing my supreme athletic evasion to something cute and fluffy.

Alex told me what happened to him but I don't remember. I do remember that we never found that tennis ball.

The deadliest of all shoe securing systems.

2007-02-16T14:58:00.000+11:00

If there is any one type of person who is totally ruining the whole world completely singlehandedly, it's people who put effort into things.

If people didn't get all crazy and accomplishary, we could all just lie around getting drunk and reading half written trashy novels. Guilt of winning the rat race would be banished to the past and the world would be super good full of rainbows and deep fried cheese sandwiches.

Since I like to declare war on familes/individuals of effort, the first on my hit list for people I'd push to the ground if they were standing right in front of me kind of already leaning forward is Ian.

Reading this website soon left me as dead as a door. The autopsy found the cause down to an overdose on shoelaces with suspect traces of knots. My corpse was in need of a massive massage bigtime.

Ian, dude, just so you know, that's a lot of effort in website designs and also graphics just to achieve your lifelong dream of hanging out with that quite replaced Superman actor to see if we believe it or not. I'd just put scorpions in my mouth and call it a day.

Additionally, if there is one thing I just won't stand for is people using maths. If the Brothers Grimm taught us anything it's that heroic characters scoff at dudes who count the total number of variations of tying one shoe.

Feet Escapees : 0. Shoe Prison : 2 Trillion.

War and rising from the dead has given me a pain in the head, time to ingest a heron.

How many nerds can a nerd nerd nerd if a nerd could nerd nerd nerd

2007-02-14T12:51:00.000+11:00

Those who know me better than I know myself (ie, so many people) will have guessed that lately I've been thinking a lot about nerds.

In the olden days nerds were dudes who liked computers and hated sports and were no good with the ladies. Now, the term 'nerd' seems to have been expanded to any action that someone is overly enthusiastic or passionate about. 'Like, whoa, I love footy and chicks but I'm such a computer games nerd' or 'I totally did a triple back flip through a ring of fire on a bike, sexed some hoochies and read about science. I'm such a nerd.'

So I think anyone who isn't a total bogan has noticed they might have a nerdish tendency here or there, which makes me wonder if the whole term needs to be revisited. What if the dudes loved computers and hated sports and are crap with girls feel like they have no place in the world? No label to call their very own? This is probably the world's greatest current concern.. who can we turn to?

Anywho,
Do you have a favourite type of nerd?
Do you have a least favourite?

My least favourite nerd is dudes with beards and long hair in pony tails who place emphasis on too many words in their sentences and tend to use sound effects and hand movements in their jokes. My favourite nerds are TV nerds (Hi Bevis) who can tell you interesting tidbits that might be useful at Trivia nights but whom you can lock in a box if they start to share too much of their obsession. My sister is definitely one of these.

I'm getting more comfortable with music nerds. I didn't even use to know anything to even ask any questions about anything, but I'm picking up tidbits here and there so I've finally replaced my usual response of 'Gaaah.' with 'Oh Yeah, so what's that thingy for?'.

Writing nerds are pretty awes and computer game nerds aren't at all fun because they beat me in everything.

I've met a heap of footy nerds; dudes who can reel off player statistics and number of championships per team. I've met one dude who was a massive sports nerd, who could tell you every horse that won the Melbourne Cup or similar.
Could we call a player a chick nerd? Is that no good?
Is a fashionista a labels nerd? A fashion nerd? Is nerd purely the term we give something that doesn't have a cooler name, like movie buff, sports fan, fashionista, rock guru, etc?

I tried to read about nerds on Wikipedia but it got so boring that I was forced to go and stare out the window. Am I a windows nerd?

Airing the dirty laundry

2007-02-13T09:56:00.000+11:00

When I get back to Melbourne, we've decided that we'd like to move into a bigger house. We've got plans and dreams and hopes and lice and our little place is feeling a bit crowded.We want a place that's fairly big but close to the city that isn't too expensive. I've been wondering if anything big enough for us will be crazy expensive so my thoughts have started to turn towards building a place that is perfect for our current and future wants and needs.

Architectual Floorplan

Cara was massively excited about the plans and so we were discussing it in detail:

Adam the adventurous: "... and here's a plus, we can hire monkeys to build it for us."

Cara the concerned: "Con! You can't motorbike up a branch."

Adam the awesome: "Pro! Can throw stones at our neighours, if we get their help getting them into the massive treehouse. Stones are heavy."

Cara the country girl: "Con! I can't lift my equipment up into a treehouse."

Adam the amazing:" "Pro! If we want fruit, we can just reach out the window and grab a peach or an apple. If it's a fruit tree."

Cara the curr: "Con! Builder Monkeys?"

Adam the adamant: "Pro! Wombats can do our chores and Possums can magic our errands."

Cara the complainy: "Con! We'll be blown down in the first gust of wind."

Adam the articulate: "Pro! We can poo in a bucket and pulley it down, then collect fresh water from a nearby lake or swimming pool. Efficient!"

Even though we were both very fierce in our ideals, we're a totally strong and loving couple and so eventually decided on a compromise of doing exactly everything that I wanted.

You're all massively invited to our housewarming. BYO beers/bonfires.

It's a great day for people/treehouse relations.

Monday, I got game, my words aren't lame.

2007-02-12T10:58:00.000+11:00

Got into work early this morning to do some urgent work that wasn't actually ready for me... so I went for a bit of a walk around the floor. There was a smattering of earlys here, but not a single one was actually doing any work, every single one was playing with the internet or photos or otherwise mucking around. That's so the last time I let anyone get away with the ol' 'yeah, well I've been in since 7'.

In other news, Blogger beta has finally caught up with me. Try as I might I wasn't able to log in without converting. The stupid thing is, when I tried to post this earlier, it broke.

In other other news, do men trim down there? Should men trim down there? It's never occurred to me until Jac's post about accidentally seeing her housemates boyfriend. Instead of saying anything like 'whoa, he's a monster' or 'whoa, how does she find that in the dark' her only comment was that he needed a trim. Is everyone taking up some scissors except me? Is this service only available in barbers if you ask? Is there a codeword?

I haven't been in a public changing room for some time, but I've never noticed anyone looking particularly tidy. The only thing I've noticed about change rooms is that the really old men don't mind a bit of convo while their all standing around starkers. I have noticed that these same old men seem to be on quite smaller side, Oh My God, does it shrink as you age?!? I'm so hoping it's some kind of optical illusion as the gut gets bigger.

Does anyone have any answers for me on this bright cheery monday morn?

Joining the gang of 5

2007-02-09T20:41:00.000+11:00

Some time ago I was tagged by D'Jen... which I promptly forgot about, but then I noticed that almost every single blog dude and chick have had a shot, so who am I to be way too cool to play?

5 things that you don't know about me.

1.) I don't tell people things. I don't know whether I'm shy, or uninterested, but I tend not to tell people stuff about me. I'm pretty sure you, the internet, knows more about me than most of my friends. It took me 2 years to tell the mates I was hanging out with that my parents were divorced, I wasn't embarrassed, it just never occurred to me to tell them. All week I've been in crazy pains of back and skipping out to see doctors and I forgot to mention it to anyone at work.

2.) I didn't know until recently that you put cordial and then add water. I always thought it was cool to watch the colours filter and flow through the clear liquid. Who knew that everyone else on the planet chooses taste mixation over pretty flowingness?

3.) There are no weird things about me. I'm totally struggling to get to five. As far as I can tell I'm awesome in every way. I just don't have any quirks.

4.) I secretly work on plans to end 95% of all human life without getting caught. Nothing personal, I'm just constantly impressed and disgusted by everything we've built and done. It's amazing to think of the difference from cavemen to now and our complete taking overness of our environments. I'll be walking through the city smiling at people thinking "so if everyone was wiped out in a flash, we might need some people to turn factories and stuff off, I don't want there to be too many fires, hmmm, there is a lot of concrete around, what should I do about that? Are there any bugs that eat concrete?" I call this condition nintyfivepercentacide. How much fun is that to say?

5.) I'm currently teaching myself photoshop so that I can take photos of my friends and then trace them and paint them into way cool pictures. For example, I might take a photo of a friend at a BBQ and with that, paint a picture of them in a snowboard race with an avalanche. Currently it's going terribly, but in all honestiness I've only put in 2 hours since starting from scratch.

In other news: Who wants to see this with me? http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/movie.html
In other, other, other news; my rant about my workplace is killing my blogation. I like, need to get it out of my system before writing much else, but I'm pretty sure workpeeps have worked out that I read blogs all day and they're all smart and bored enough to try and track mine down. Freakin'! You'll get it but I can't promise it'll be before late March.

Mixed interviewness

2007-02-05T19:38:00.000+11:00

Yeah, cross bloggage event, check out Meva's blog for some more of the questions of ace.

Dear Meva, have you ever jumped into a convertible with sunglasses, a headscarf and another chick or otherwise entertainingly roadtripped up?

Much as I want to be Susan Sarandon when I grow up, I'm afraid that the headscarf just ain't my style. And I've NEVER been in a convertible! How did this happen? I was born to drive down the Great Ocean Road in a convertible looking like a goddess (from a distance!). I have ridden pillion on a bike with my second boyfriend, though. And I've been on a girly roadtrip across the Nullabor in an 80's campervan. Now that was FUN. And no truck drivers were killed in the making of those memories. I'll post some pics one day.

Okey-dokey. Your turn! And my question might be because I'm stuck with drudgery in a windowless office.

Young Adam: What's the very best holiday you've ever been on?

Well, I've actually been on very few holidays. I've always been one to offer to owrk over the Christmas break, because traffic is super quite, no one is using public transport, people are happier, foodcourts are less frantic and it is, by all accounts, the very best time to be not be tackling any crowded beaches or supposedly serene countries. Every year, my plan was to work during Christmas and then take time off during ski season or whatnot, and every year work was too frantic to let me go... so I accidentally went 7 years without taking any time longer than a week off. So, my bestest funnest holiday was exactly this time last year, when four of us took on Japan and Central America. We totally took on Volcanoes and Mammothly lighty department stores and hot springs and kareoke and winter and summer and the nicest people in the world and the craziest people in the world.

One of my favourite bits was trying snorkling for the very first time ever in a massive dolphin enclosure. Cara was totally looking after me and I was only massively freaking out slightly, it was crazy deep and when I needed a rest all these dophlins came to check that I was okay and finding that I was demanded we all play fetch. I like playing fetch. I'm surprised the WII hasn't caught up with that one.

Ms Meva, apart from these questions of awesomeness, what was the last thing to totally make you smile all chesirely?

Well, it certainly isn't this new haircut I've just got! Paperbag territory, definitely!

I'm actually a BIG smiler (but usually my body is still visible around the smile). The last time I couldn't stop grinning for absolute days and days and days would have been last Christmas/New Year. Big smiler and big family girl, me. We had fam who moved interstate last year and came stay for the best 10 days ever.

Adam, if you could invite any 6 people to dinner, living or dead, who would they be?

Whoa!

As a question that seems to be asked of people a lot, I don't think I've ever answered this one ever. Whoa! You are a good cross-interviewer.

Um, okay. 6 people over dinner.

Hmmm, I'd like to see Caras there so that we can lie in bed for evermore starting sentences like 'whoa, how funny was it when...'

The dude who invented the hoverboard that Marty used in Back to the Future 2, it shouldn't be too far away now. I have some ideas I'd like to discuss with that guy, and I'd like to treat him sweet early.

Bill Phillips who does a lot of exercise programs, there are some gaps that I'd like to get some answers on.

Any of Charlie's angels.

A Templar Knight, dudes, what was it that you were up to? Also, bummer about the whole Friday the 13th thing, but good sword work by the way.

Our friend Sophie who we require many good stories from since she moved back to England and whom I would pay many pounds to see her attempt a hoverboarding.

Young Meva, have you ever been in a scrag fight over a carpark in Altona Gate shopping centre?

You were there? You saw it? Then, OMG, you KNOW I was sooooooo there first! Stupid bloody fool thought she could take me on, eh? NO ONE GETS MY PARK, BITCH! Thank god I had the crowbar handy. Thought she was safe just 'cos she's 85? Ha! Sucker!

The muthafreakin' realness or similar.

2007-01-31T11:27:00.000+11:00

Hi, is this That's Mister Nora to you Sonny from http://cremated.blogspot.com? How are you today?

'Tragically sober', thanks for asking. Apart from that, today I am obviously pretty pumped about the upcoming Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Conference (www.ttcus.com/uav) in Arlington. Like I don't want to brag or anything but "This comprehensive conference will examine the gamut of UAV programs, platforms, and missions and identify the hottest issues in the industry that are calling for your organization’s involvement."

I don't know about you but my organisation has totally been ravaged by epileptic seizures of excitement in anticipation of the Hottest Issues in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Whoa! You just came back from Adventures in the Lands of Not-Australia, did you catch anything?

Not much, just some Racisms, Liver Diseases, and a bit of Fondue. I tried to catch some Street Urchins and the like for Souvenirs of Abroad, but those little fuckers run like they have six legs/modern engines/Nuclear Powers etc. Basically I was just glad not to catch Herpes and/or Ebolas.

Any Lands/Populace you and The Dude thought were fairly rad?

OK Germans are not on my list of Great Peoples of the World right now due to various "VEE AVE LOZT YOUR BAGZ, HAHA!! NOT SO SMUG ABOUT ZE WARZ NOW, ARE YOU, DIRTY LEETLE CONVICTZ!! HAHA!!!" type incidents....but Berlin was pretty fucking awesome. Overall, though, for an unbeatable experience involving heaps of Sheer Horror, a bit of Civilization in Decline, and some Excellent Neon Signage, it's hard to go past America, which was basically as Crazy as you could ever hope a place could be, only more so.
NB I should note that my findings about Foreign things generally might be in danger of being 'Grossly Untrue and Wholly Unsubstantiated' given that for quite a lot of our Holidays me and The Dude just sat around and investigated Alcohols of the World (our research in that department was fucking thorough though, you know. I could write a motherfucking PhD in that shit).

Did you travel to the Northcote Wine Monkey's country of origin to spread vicious lies about him selling merchantable products at competitive prices?

Sadly I did not have the pleasure of visiting whatever Stinking Two Bit Backwater spat out the Wine Monkey approximately 600 million years ago, but I'm pretty sure it's basically just like any other fetid Paleozoic Era swamp home to Bloated Rodents and Foetus Like Creatures armed with fangs, glowing genitals and SCANDALOUSLY MISLEADING SALES PITCHES.

In other news, I have it on good authority that the Northcote Wine Monkey now lives either somewhere beneath a Portaloo, or at home in the Villa of Satan. Wherever it is, it's sure to be completely decked out in the manner of Franco Cozzo.

I.E. LIKE OLD SCHOOL HELL ONLY HEAPS WORSE.

Please fess up, who is better at the Getting Of Drunk; you, A Medieval Bishop or The Dude?

Oh, man, The Dude is like a super fit Marathon runner of Drink. I don't like to compete with him in these events, he makes everyone else look amateur. I guess sometimes he has an off game but most of the time he is like Dorothy Parker and I am stuck being Lindsay Lohan.

The Medieval Bishop is a wildcard entrant but he probably beats the shit out of both of us at all events involving the Blood of Christ.

Those childs you call The Cats seem to be more hairy and slothlike than most childs. Are they actually teenagers?

OMG how did you know. I like to call them "Cats" because obviously it doesn't look good for me that I am old enough to have teen childs; also this small deceit prevents DHS Child Protection Agencies from getting too interested in what some really uptight cunts might refer to as "negligent substandard and abusive child rearing practices". I guess now The Cat is Out of the Bag (HA HA), I will just have to deal with it.

Would you mind dispelling a rumour for us? Is it not true that the website called IOYC is just you writing in a girly voice? You both seem to have a similarly awesome command of English, as childs did you have the same Dean of Expressions?

Hah! That's very kind of you, but unfortunately it is probably more accurate to describe me as 'petty thief of stylez' than 'alter ego of genius'.

Also, obviously IOYC deals in Facts, whereas I am pretty much limited to 'rumour and innuendo'.

How many jobs do you currently have? Are you a hardcore Private Investigator or a Professional of Lore?

I used to have several jobs, but having Multiple Places of Employment was kind of getting to be about as much fun as having Multiple Schlerosis, so I have cut down to just the one. I won't go into much detail as it would fully make you implode with Self-Annihilating Envy about how Amazing and Exciting my life is, but basically I sit in an office with some cunts all day and wish I were dead.

AWESOME.

Who is your favourite friend in the whole world? What is their favourite colour/shape?

Well it used to be Claudie the Roach who lived in my bathroom, but she seems to have packed it in and fucked off to a more tropical climate, so I hardly ever see her any more, ungrateful little bitch. Luckily I still have quite a few lovely fellow drunks and some Other Upstanding Citizens who are happy to hang out with me and The Dude, but I can't really choose between them any more than I can choose between The Rich List and 1 v 100. Like, sometimes even Deal or No Deal has it's place.

Nonetheless I believe I can speak with confidence when I say that their favourite colour is "faeces" and their favourite shape is oblong.

Since you're the only person in the whole world covering the threat that is squirrels teaming up with the rats of the sky, what are we to do? Aren't they are too little to be hurt by bazookas and/or nuclear missles filled with computer viruses? Do we throw armadillos/emos at them? Cry "Anyone for a game of baby Seal Tennis?"

I think the nuclear missiles filled with computer viruses option is the clear winner, although they might need to be supplemented with some "UN Peace Talks" and the like for the sake of appearances. Also, I am currently in talks with the Pentagon re harnessing an army of Genital Warts to take down the more Hardened/Adorable of these militant critters, but those dudes are like constantly distracted by their latest War on Air Conditioning or whatever it is that they do. Sometimes I feel so alone.

Thanks heaps for this interview of awesomeness/the rad. Do you have any parting words for the gazillions (if not thousands) of readers out there?

"OMG WTF LOLZ!!1!"

you totally can quote me on that.

xoxo nora

While the guy sobbed, our friend was robbed (ps, he didn't really sob)

2007-01-30T13:23:00.000+11:00

Hey kids,
Thanks for all your way awesome comments in the post below. Instead of responding in the comments section, I might write a whole new post on my thoughts but I'll do that later.

I watched TV last night, I didn't really want to, but I got an sms telling me too.

We had a mate on the new game show One vs One hundred.
The premise is that one person and a group of a hundred people answer questions. The hundred people have 6 seconds and if they get a question wrong they are out of the game. Each question eliminates more and more people and for each person eliminated, the one person gets money added to their total winnings. The one person has heaps of freakin' time to answer and has a couple of lifelines but if they get one question wrong the money goes to those in the hundred that have not been eliminated. The contestant gets to decide after each question whether they are taking the money and running or answering another question with the possibility of losing out completely. If the whole 100 people get eliminated, the contestant takes home a cool million dollars.

It was a bit retarded, the questions weren't interesting, the talking the answer through thing is totally painful, Eddie just isn't likeable and the contestant last night was a bit of a doof. Our friend told us some inside goss when we went rollerblading with them on Saturday.

Last night, the contestant had answered quite a few questions correctly and the One hundred had been whittled down to 18, our friend had done awesomely and was in that 18. Struggling to eliminate the stragglers, the contestant decided to take the money, a nice 132 thou, and scoot.

What our friend told us on Saturday, over a lemonade icy pole, is that the contestant got the last question wrong and lost all the money. The One Hundred won and the prize money was to be divided between the remaining 18. Eddie, however, stopped the taping and asked the contestant to choose A instead of B. the contestant won, the sob story retold and everyone is happy. Everyone, obviously, except the One Hundred, the studio audience, me, you and the law.

You got a question for me?

2007-01-29T14:48:00.000+11:00

Whoa!
Whoa! Whoa!
I got totally slammed on the weekend.
I had to justify my non-excitement about getting engaged so many times,
it was pretty hardcore. I don't mind people elbowing me and asking when
I'm going to be popping any questions, but I wasn't expecting such emotional
responses when I answered with "probably never".

The responses seem to vary between trying to talk me out of my
non-excitement to the more condesending, 'I used to feel that way,
you'll change...' type retorts.

We really seem to have hit that spot where everyone we know is looking
aisle-side for their future and I can see the division between babied up
and non is just a couple of years away.

I'm happy for people that are truly excited to follow The Script, car,
chick, married, house, kids, but I would like a bit of uncondescending
understanding if I'm just not that excited. When I'm eventually
interviewed for some inflight magazine, I don't want to be saying that
the best days of my life were my wedding day and the birth of my child, I
want to be all like 'well, holding Cara's hand when she was nominated for an
Aria/Cara was pretty awes, or just beating my little half-brother down
the slopes was way righteous, or getting photos published was excitement
plus more excitement or you know, I'd even be happy not to have one or two
standout days in trade for lots of days to qualify for Pretty Freakin'
Coolness status instead'.

The Script is totally fine, but I just feel that anyone can follow it,
which makes it less fun for me.

I am excited for my friends and their decisions about between arriving
in veils and humvees, but it just all feels a bit cliched and daggy to me.
I just can't generate any funness about the process. I'm still not sure
if I believe that people should spend their entire lives with one person. I
get that it's awesome to share the journey with someone, someone who knows
where you've come from, but I also think there is heaps to learn off
other people too. In my head I've got images of people who have just been
married for far too long versus an excited loving couple in their
fifties who had just found each other. We've way steered away from jobs for
life, is this not at all similar? That said, I do love the Caras muchly and I
adore the thought of her being my partner in crime for life... but I
would want that to be because every year, or every decade or whatever, we both
decided we were better off with each other than anyone else and not
together just because we were all ringed up.

I feel a bit bad for Caras, she was all 'I don't have time to get
married, I have to be a rockstar' for ages, but I think she's slowly getting
caught in the excitement of wedding photos and nice makeup and a year of people
being excited for you.

It's a shame, and I totally don't want her to be unhappy but I'm
starting to feel like I might be alone in my circles of my rejection of The
Script.

Uh, and the child thing. People of late have been quite upset to hear that I don't want kids.
Like the engagement thing, a few just figure I'll grow out of it, but some people have actually felt fairly affronted and have put in good efforts to convince me kids are the way to go. I do wonder if it's a survival of the species thing, but personally I think the human race is surviving plenty fine, selfishly, I'd much rather concentrate with what I want out of life than raising people. I find it a hard conversation to have, because I don't want to upset future parents to be with my reasons, I don't really want to say "well personally, I'd be embarrassed to bring a child into the world only to say 'well son or daughter, here's the world, you should be able to squeeze a couple more years out of it' but good luck with your and yours."

I totally understand that people find their weddings and their kids the happiest bestest things of their lives, but I would love for people to understand that I'm excited about different things.

Thorin' out.

2007-01-25T16:19:00.000+11:00

Whoa! Freakin'! Hot diddly doodily hot.

I'm working up a sweat just walking around at lunchtimes now, how cool gnarly is that?
Anywho, as fascinating as the weather is, I really wanted to write about people... in particular, star struck people.

My usual passage to work has been interrupted by dudes talkin' on their walkies. Someone has been filming something at the QUT campus that I walk through, I've been quite interested in the amount of hardcore lights and people just standing around and not so interested in what they were actually doing. There has really been some kind of filming going on sparatically for months.

Anywho, this morning I saw inside the building they've been lighting and it was filled with cool gold statues in glass boxes. I was way keen to cat burgler in and steal stuff but I was late for work so left the theft of the century for some other time.

Anywho II, there was more people loitering than usual and the catering table seemed bigger and better than ever. When I got to the bit right outside my office, I was stopped by some chick who was on traffic control. They were filming a street scene and had a whole lot of extras purposely walking around.... has anyone noticed that extras smirk a lot? The chick had 'Thor' written on her coat.

What is the story with these superhero movies moving in on my turf? I'm sure the shorts for Ghost Rider show him riding over the bridge at Southbank Melbourne. Now, when I was allowed to walk, across the street were a million kabillion people all peeking and then all went absolutely psychotic, with the screeching and the yelling and the mobile phone videoing. They were all screaming "Matthew, Matthew" and while I don't know exactly who they were talking about, but I was a bit embarrassed for them. Why do people go so nuts for famous people? I can imagine it's exciting to meet someone who you feel like you know, but to go so so nuts? I thought Australia was a bit cooler than that? I thought we were all a bit aloof and not phased when it came to this kind of junk. Shame.

How did Brisbane score a movie thing? Are these people aware there are other cities in the world?

P.S) When I'm Emperor of the world, I'm banning celebrity-inspired hysteria, banned for daggniess. BANNED!

The Hottest Skills for 2007

2007-01-16T11:32:00.000+11:00

There are many differences between myself and the little red rockstar, but I'd say the biggest difference is straight up hotness.

I am daaaaaaamn hot.
She is not.

For a coupling though, this works a bit alright for us.
I heat her up and she cools me down.
They always say the really hot ones always go for people far less hot than themselves.

When Cara was up in Brisbane she was totally doona'd up why I could manage a sheet at best. If anyone wants to invent a half-sheet/half-massive-doona, you have my blessing.

So, now that you know the back story, I want tell you that I sleep in my underwear, and it was in my underwear that I leapt out of bed last night. Leapt, I tells ya!

At midnight last night, a big fatty boomba alarm completely startled my everything. I knew at once what it was, chucked all the lights on and ran to grab a broom.
Stupid, goddam smoke alarm.

Since I am so hot, I usually have all the external doors and windows open and living in a way high density, hugely apartmented area I imagine every man and his little fluffy apartment dog was watching me wave the broom around and trying to hit the retardedly small hush button.

Cursing my unglasses'd eyeballs and moving like a 90s superdude I grabbed a chair and tackled the dectector on the ceiling, elevating my undied form for everyone to see.

Son of a Damn, it was fully wired into the ceiling.
Stupid, goddam smoke alarm.

The hush button didn't work, and the alarm was so so loud. Shockingly loud. The front section wouldn't twist off, I couldn't get to the battery. I wrestled with it for ages, which in loud piercing noise terms is superages and couldn't affect it.

Eventually it turned off itself.
Whoa! Like, phew, totally.

And turned straight back on.Taking me by surprise, I nearly fell off the chair and nearly ripped the whole thing from the ceiling. In my desperation, I nearly thought about it anyway, but then I remembered that I need to look decent if I'm going to risk electrocution.

By hitting it hard, I managed to turn it off, but then a second later it would turn back on. After a while of trying to wrestle the casing off, the hush button started to work, then it stopped working.

During one pause, I chucked some clothes on.
During another pause, I grabbed my phone.

It got to the point where the best I could do was press against the speaker so it only deafened me and not so much my neighbours.

My arms were getting sore and the smoke alarm was so hot I was getting burnt on the palm of my hands. My building manager didn't answer his mobile.

I could now smell smoke, I think the wires in the smoke dectector were burning.
I was exhausted and out of ideas when I heard a soft knock at the door. 6 floors down the building manager happened to be awake and detectively went out side to see which was the only apartment had their light on.

He managed to remove a clip which removed a wirey plug and got it off the ceiling. It was still going. I wanted to chuck it in the pool but the manager broke a bit to get the battery out. It was still going.

He threw it in his tool bag and it finally ran out of juice. Now it was just making loud 'battery dead' sounds - it was freakin' invincible.

Ears ringing and with burnt hands I went back to bed.

I do have a quick message for smoke detector manufacturers: Good Invincibility, maybe make them less internally flamable.

Old time good times

2007-01-14T16:53:00.000+11:00

I was bored at lunch.
I usually go for a walk in the park, eat my lunch and go straight back to my desk, but this time I went for a walk into the city. Unlike most people I know, I don't really like stuff and I'm heaps not excited about things and as such our current enforced pauperism to get back in the black has been much easier for me than the little red rockstar. So, walking around shops is pretty freakin' boring for me, I just can't get my enthusiasm on. This time though, I was curious about this post from Deb just because I do like the X-Men and lately TV has been the crap.

So I walked to JB Hi-Fi.
Pretty much as soon as I went in I wanted to leave. People were just so into things, and buying stuff. So much so I was a bit embarrassed to be sharing the same floorspace. Slinking sideways against the walls, diving over the cheap DVD table and crawling between aisles to avoid suspicion I went over to the TV show DVDs and had a look. I didn't find it but I saw something I got very excited about.

Not understanding my emotions, I ran.

My Dad's favourite thing in the whole world is hooking people up.
Not for smoochy smoochy, lovey lovey, bouncy bouncy but 'to share conversations on your mutual passions and/or circumstances'. Tell a story, any story and my Dad will know a guy you should meet.

The first (and I think only) guy I did actually meet was the dude who gave me my first job. Now, this very post could land me in jail but since I trust the internet not to nark on me and because it's not at all integral to anything I worked at a candle wrapper well before the age you're actually allowed to work. I think it's 13 and 9 months.

This meant I was the youngest, richest dude anyone/my family had ever met and I became a bit of a bank to my parents, I think there was a recession on, I wasn't really paying attention. Anywho, when I wasn't lending currency to the parentals I was buying up big on comics.

Yes, I was a nerd.

Yes, was. Want to take it outside?

My comic collector status lasted for about 5 years and there were so many that I really liked. I liked the Australian-made Phantom comics and I liked the the UK joke comics but I never really got into the American ones. They were just heaps confusing, how many X-Men and Batman titles were there, freakin', and how did they all link in to each other. How many Spidermans can there be? They were always so much more expensive and glossy and filled hardcore with ads.

My distaste changed a bit when my Mum was up late one night and saw a show about a superguy or something and even though she didn't know how to use the video player she managed to record half of it. I watched it the next day and heaps loved it.

My parents were always very complimentary and impressed about all my drawings and big Lego cities and stories about skateboarding but they weren't totally interested, you know. That's not criticism on them, if a kid came up to me and was telling me all about Pokemon or shooting up or whatever kids are into these days I'd listen and ask cool questions but I personally am not into Pokemons/The Fat Controller/winning thousands on internet poker.

First up, my Mum was proud that she introduced me to something cool so she'd watch the weekly taping of the superdude show with me. It was a pretty fun show so after a few episodes we'd both be totally hanging for the next one. It was called The Flash and was about a dude dressed in red who could run really, really fast. Like, even faster than me and I won blue ribbons. Whoa! Too freakin' fast.

Unfortunately, like all good TV shows it just disappeared in the middle of a season without explanation and I scanned the Green Guide for like a year looking for it. I was still in my comic phase and that's when I found The Flash comics.

It started off pretty confusing because the dude in the comics wasn't the dude in the TV show. Piecing together little clues in the comic, I worked out that the comic dude was, like, the nephew of the TV show Flash who had been killed in comics land years earlier.

The comics were good but still not as interesting as The Phantom and whatnot... but then they starting getting better. Like, Better x 100. They changed writing staff and drawing guys and the stories became so much more involved and awesome and just hardcore good.

Just hardcore good. Freakin'.

By this point I had been replaced by a candle wrapping machine and so now I was totally awesome at doing my chores for pocket money. Our cats got fed every day now. The comic would come out once a month and I've devour it in like 3 minutes and then basically savour it for that month. I used to set them out in order on my desk with a clean spot ready for the next one.

Was a nerd.

Eventually, the main writer left and the drawing guys moved on and it got more expensive and it wasn't as good and I got a pair of rollerblades and the comics are in a box in my Dad's garage somewhere (I hope) and I totally forgot totally about it totally... but thinking back I don't reckon I've ever been that excited about a fictional character since.

Until I went back into JB Hi-Fi a couple of days ago and bought this:

I've only watched a couple of episodes but I goddam love it so much. It was made or released or something in 1990 - it's even daggier than Bill Cosby always overhearing his family's plans to trick him, daggier than a serious Cool As Ice. The peeps be wearing crazy print shirts all the time and when they dress up spiffy they look like Chandler dressed like Miami Vice and when he dons his superdude suit he looks far more like a cherry flavoured Ninja Turtle than anything else. The acting is terrible, the jokes are baaaaaaad and the whole thing was so poorly done and I don't think I've ever been so excited.

Assume the crash position

2007-01-14T13:53:00.000+11:00

So, you all know I came out recently.
Cara was a bit surprised but a bit excited too.
After the initial excitement of a whole new world opening up to her, it got a bit emotional.

There were things about her in my blog, especially in the early days, that I've long forgotten and forgiven. It was a bit rough on both of us, we had a couple of discussions that we never had at the time and neither of us were expecting to visit now.

After Cara got a bit upset with some of the posts, she decided to only read the now and not worry about what had been. I could only remember interviewing bloggers and telling stories about riding on the footpath so then I started to read my own blog from the start and it didn't take me too long before I had to give it away, it really did dredge up old, old emotions, ie, ancientness, fear of starting a meal without my pillbox/circle cushion, etc.

Have you guys ever re-read your old posts?
Tell you what, I'm glad I have it all, as a marker of time and a snapshot of the rollercoaster of emotions but it's totally not easy to tackle.

At the start I really only created posts to vent, to get crap out of my system so I could move on. When I'm upset about something, I really, totally focus on it until it's unleashed. It consumes me and I can't focus on anything else. Venting via blog allowed me to expel and refocus on work and eating.

After a while I stopped writing it and started telling Cara. I actually got betterer at putting words like 'I don't like...' into sentences which is way hard for boys that are lovely. I also started not venting in my blog because I was gearing it up to be read by my friends when we traveled. In the end I didn't use it as a travel diary and just kept it to myself.

However, in the same week as my coming out of the blog shadows to Cara, the brilliant writer TT who is marrying our awesome friend Sophie across the globe found my blog too. I really wanted to tell Sophie about my blog because I've loved hers for months and just as I went to leave a comment with 'Adam' instead of 'Anon' I noticed one of our Melbourne friends had left a comment on Sophie's. Which means he may know about Cara's. Then TT linked to both of us in his blog and in an e-mail I thought Sophie had said she given our bloglinks to this Melbourne dude (but she hadn't) who knows all our friends and in the same week the most excellent Bevis gave Cara a bloggy Christmas present that detective types could have used to worked out who she was. Since he is awesome like some awe, he changed his post. Quite lovely, that one.

At the same time I've been writing a post about my workmates and unable to do so because they keep interrupting me at my desk... and I couldn't write any other posts until I expunged that one. Then I got a new dude sitting next to my desk who kept busting me reading everyone's blogs and who hinted that he knows a bit about the blogworld himself. Unrelated, yesterday I found out that the lovely Deb's boyfriend knows a dude in my team at work.

So, this blog that I've kept totally secret to each one of my friends, family, work dudes and chicks for 2 years has been nearly totally outted like a million times this week. Maybe even a billion.

I think I'm good now.
It's not really a big deal, but there are bits in this blog about work people or my friends that I don't want them to read, but I don't want to delete the posts either. I like the opportunity I've created here to share or vent various things in a way that is completely one-sided in my favour. I like to blog and then forget about it. I don't want to receive e-mails from friends who didn't like how I presented something or have to justify my posts at the pub or at a party. I don't want to tell stories in a way that is totally not offensive to every person I know. I'm happy with my little gang here and I'm especially happy to extend that gang to include Cara, Sophie and TT. I hope they stay and enjoy a little visit here, because, with their blogs I now feel closer to them than evs.

All this has totally shown me the value I place in this little html code. It is more than $6.00AUD.

Feel the fear and stab it anyway.

2007-01-08T15:43:00.000+11:00

We were trapped!
Rooted to the spot by the horror of the moment, each person experienced the same emotion but felt their fear differently. Each person's horror stories, their personality, their experiences, their revulsion and the reactions of everyone else intermingled into one big bubbling black pot of 'Yuk'.

We were all witnesses and yet we could all change the course of what was happening. We all could have walked away, but we couldn't. We all could have gone on a murderous rampage, but we couldn't. We were scared. Scared of the horror, scared of the perception of the general public of our actions, scared for ourselves and scared for the horror that could unleash if we made it worse.

Then Jac just hit the damn spider with a large pole, it disappeared and we were all okay. I wished I had a large pole and Deb sniggered.

Other witness accounts can be found here and here.

42

2007-01-04T13:16:00.000+11:00

Why hello there, this post contains spoilers about life, the universe and everything. Please don't read if you know you get offended about religiony and non-religiony stuff.

This post is really, purely for myself, to write down all my ponderings of late and to order my own views and opinions. They are only opinions and I'm way totally happy for every single person to have their own take on things. That said, I do apologise if anyone reading this feels affronted.

Most, if not all, cultures have a religion or belief system that imparts values on its people and tries to explain the unexplainable. Throughout the ages, people have looked to older or more learned people for guidance and these people used stories as a medium to impart that guidance and other lessons. I do reckon this might be where religion started.

Stories were used to console, entertain and explain, but they were also used as a tool to admonish and control people. 'Why should I not kill, you are not strong enough to stop me?' 'Because you will be punished in the next life.', etc.

In any society, physical strength and aggression most often is a person's most valuable assets, but I think less strong or elderly people found another way to power, utilising the power of the unknown, the power of religion and basically making up new rules to suit their situation.
Our brains are hardcore cool and as survival became easier for peoples and less taxing on our energies and brainpower, the search for answers filled that space. More people had bigger questions and those that were willing to offer an answer would have become more powerful, you can see this in any group of people, and this, I'm guessing, was the start of organised religion.

Everyone believes something different, each shaped by their own perception and how strong their faith is. Without meaning to offend, I do feel like the measurement of someone's faith is how strong they are willing to suspend their disbelief and how willing they are to accept someone's story.

Religion is a big business and while the Catholic church may not have the power it once did, religion as a whole is still very much on everyone's mind... but I think that all belief systems have muddied the waters and have confused people. A lot of people seem to spending their time sorting through the stories they are willing to believe and the stories they aren't.

I think that Religion has it's uses; it makes people feel less alone, it motivates them to act correctly, it makes it much easier to console someone who has lost a loved one and gives people something to think about that is a bit bigger picture... but I personally feel that it's time to give it away.

The simplest answer is often the correct one:

There is no divine.
There is no afterlife.
There is no plan.

This planet has a million kabillion wonderous and horrifying things on it, but that is all down to our perception. The complexity and amazingness of it all can be explained by evolution, what doesn't fit in, dies. The concept of transferance of souls is overly complex and is just born of our own fear of death.

Humankind doesn't understand a lot of things, but I think that is the greatest thing that it needs to understand is that we don't actually have to have answers for everything. There is nothing wrong with confusion and there is no shame in not understand something - and I feel all and any religions may have simply made up answers instead of simply admitting they don't know.
Life is random and confusing and really has no point - which might be upsetting for people, but I think there is also a freedom there; we can make it what we want it. We can decide what the point is and I think it should be to leave this world better than how we found it.

With freedom comes responsibilty. I feel that mankind's insistence on a greater power with a plan helps people accept events out of their control, but it also passes responsibility to someone else. No gods are ever going to come down and teach/save/condemn mankind.

The rest of our little planetary coinhabitants would probably see us as gods, ie, we can help them or destroy them.

I don't feel that religion has caused wars, because frankly if it wasn't that excuse it probably would have been something else - mankind is just another aggressive animal. However, without the concept of an afterlife, soldiers on ever side might be far less likely to throw their lives away or take anothers so easily. Or maybe not, who knows... Justifying things is our best skill.
We each only get one shot at this life thing, and then all that is left of us is any legacy we leave behind; be it objects, projects or memories.

With all this in mind, the whole preparing for the next life does seem a bit selfish, I know most people don't really think about it, but how rockin' would it be if the same energy that was spent in leaving the world/our communities a better place than worrying about praying enough or concerning ourselves with an omnipotent watchdog.

And this might be oversimplified, but if peoples all shared the view of 'it is best to leave the world in a better state then when you rocked in', mankind might have been far more in tune with the rest of our little planet.

I guess I would be labelled as an atheist, but I reckon that this term implies a cynicism or jadedness that I don't feel. Could I be an 'Everythingatarian' or believe in 'Aderism' if a label must be used?

Tagation.

2007-01-03T11:54:00.000+11:00

Four jobs I’ve had:
Candle wrapper
Rollerblading phamplet deliverer
IT Ninja
Photographer

Four places I’ve lived:
North, South, East and West of Melbourne
Sydney
Brisbane
In the realm between sanity and waiting for girls to get ready

Four movies I can watch over and over:
Zoolander
The Incredibles
The Blues Brothers
Sin City

Four TV shows I love:
Family Guy
Simpsons
Rockstar: Supernova
Robot Wars

Four places I’ve vacationed:
Honduras, Central America
Kyoto, Japan
Lyon, France
Ararat, Australia

Four of my favorite dishes:
Manly meals
Meals that are manly
Substantial meaty meals
Big ol meals of manliness

Four sites I visit daily:
Gmail
Hotmail
Blogger
Cara's blog (that's right, uh huh, I told her, go say hellos)

Four places I would rather be right now:
In the Secret Suburb
On the Brisbane Balcony
On the Skimmin' Surf
Under a doona with the chick

A Brand New and Improved Year.

2007-01-02T12:35:00.000+11:00

...and a top o' the new year to you dudes and chicks, I do hope it was a bit alright.

The ladeez and I travelled down to Byron Bay for the pashfest that is New Years.

Now, I personally can't wrangle too much excitement out of that one night, since everyone is so desperate that it be The Very Best Night Ever. I'd almost rather go out every night but.

That said, we had a great time. Byron didn't have the big raves of yesteryear that close off the town, so we were able to drive in, park, hang at the beach all day and then dress up and drink up.

I designated driver'd up so I accidentally had more lemonade than I have ever, ever had. I was nearly hungover on sugar before midnight. None of us got trashed, it was a bit packed at the bars so it was actually too hard to drink too much, which works.

The place we went to was great. It is exactly called The Byron Hotel or the Balcony or the Beach House or something - it was full enough to be fun and friendly but you could totally grab a quiet spot when the crowd got a bit much. The music was totally daggy dancy 'I like big butts and I cannot lie' which can be a whole bit of fun on The Very Best Night Ever and when the crowd was daggied out, live music took the stage. The band was called True Live - hip hop with an orchestral string section and they were brilliant. Freakin'.

In other news:
Adam = Survivor.
I've survived the 7 Days of Mich, but not, bah, completely unscathed. I'm not sure that we'll be good friends furthermore. I totally like her one on one, but around everyone else, I just find her dishonest to everyone and to herself and so I now rate myself : OD'd.

In way groovier news:
Adam = Fully Awesome.
The other dude in our gang of nine asked, no, demanded, no, actually just asked that he teach me to skim board. Skimboarding is where you chuck a smooth board on a centimetre of water and then jump on it and slide along. Think socks on a shiny floor.
I tried it for a bit and I sucked more than the suckiest sucker that ever did suck. Then later I tried again and, impossibly, I sucked even more. The next day I tried again and I was the best skim boarding dude the world ever did see. Seein' my sweet skimmin' skills, I said I was 'bodacious to the max', the ninja turtles said I was a 'cowabunga' and Cara said I did 'very well'. You can't get bigger praise than that, my friends, you just can't.

For New Years Resolutions I'm going to make the following changes:
- Teach myself Parkour.
- Replace offensive sentences that I say like 'Those Citizens of a Different Birthplace Whom Share Our One Beautiful World' with 'darkies', etc.
- Read either more or less blogs - still undecided.

Massive Update (with unnecessary sensationalising)

2006-12-29T15:10:00.000+11:00

So, I've been at work for the last three (3) days and I've achieved many things:

(a) Thought about a small, tiny person covered in hair with a tail that I would like to cuddle.

(b) Watched a dude of drunk be nice to an 80 year old lady at the traffic lights <-- didn't wait around to see if he scored.

(c) Ate a protein, a fish and a dead cucumber.

(d) Stared at a windows both old fashioned and technological.

(e) Yours is the only version of my diversion that I could ever subscribe to, etc.

(f) Got another haircut, hair is such a stupid.

(g) Banished 'coins' and 'currency' from my vocab/country.

(h) Put the words 'necrophilia party lolz' in a friend's wedding vows.

(i) Became Learned of Dance Moves from Fergie.

That's it.
You can see that no keywords such as 'work' or 'worked like a muthafreakin hoe(tm)' were a feature presentation and so now I am simultaneously bored and PACKING IT.

Why, oh why, did I do no works and now have heaps of works to do and will have all sorts of peeps/corporate directors saying 'Whoa! Freakin'! Show us your presents/spreadsheets' and I will have to start a veritible avalanche of excuses with 'I need a hero, where have all the good men gone?'.

Please advise.
Signed,
Freaked.

Lunch with Adam

2006-12-29T11:09:00.000+11:00

Adam: So, Tracey, cute little Asian girl who is almost too nice and lovely, do you have any new years resolutions?
Tracey: Not really, I do want to lose some weight and get a promotion, I want to build a house and really improve my knowledge about my job. I'd like to become a much better dancer and eat a lot more healthier and ....
Adam: Whoa! Whoa! I didn't ask for a whole page. How about you Brian, Tracey's friend who I only just met right now at lunch?
Brian: Ahhh, you know, the usual, getting fit and stuff.
Tracey: Do you have any New Years resolutions Adam?
Adam: No, to have a resolution means that you admit that you have areas that need improving...
Tracey: Oh, and so you're perfect?
Adam: Not just me, boys in general tend ....
Tracey: Boys aren't perfect, in fact, you listen but you don't really hear what I'm saying, you can tell by your responses.
Adam: Wait, are you talking about me or Brian?
Tracey: Brian. You know, I often feel that on the phone you just go 'uh huh', 'yep'.

Information Office, she's serious, what's going on here?

Captain, I think I noticed earlier that when he was saying something, he may have lent over and touched her leg, they might be a couple.

Brian: But I thought I was a good listener...
Tracey: You listen, but you aren't really thinking about what I'm saying.

Captain, he's going red, he looks stunned, should we help a brother out?

Information Officer, it's a tricky one, we've never met him before, she's our friend and clearly feels strongly enough about it to sideswipe him in public like this.

Adam: I think I know what she's trying to say, sometimes I reckon Cara is actually listening to the radio when I'm telling a hilarious story...
Tracey: Yeah, your responses don't seem like you're thinking about it.
Brian: I guess it's good to know areas I can improve...
Tracey: Well, I haven't told you this before.

[AWKWARD SILENCE]

Captain, he really looks upset, should we just sprint and dive over the balcony and away to freedom? We've already paid for our food.

Sir, legs are ready for action, sir.

Brian: But, I've been told I'm a good listener.
Tracey: You are a good listener, but you don't really think about what I'm saying...

Information Officer, do something.

Adam: Well, I'm glad I brought this up, how about that sporting team?
Brian: Yeah, very glad. {MURDEROUS GLINT IN EYE}

Jury on Juicin'

2006-12-28T13:04:00.000+11:00

A while ago, I went to a natrapath to combat this RSI thing and she gave me a whole bagload of life changes.

One of them was to drink beetroot, carrot, celery, apple, pear, ginger and lemon juice at least 4 times a week which I've been doing without fail for months and months.

At home in Melbourne we live near the beach where the soil is crazy sandy and she's wanted to plant some plants to make the back and front yard lovely. Pffft, in my day, rockstars were all about the music. To help her out, I made up a compost/worm farm thing to improve the soil. The worm sellerer mentioned that worms love to have their food mashed and cut up to aid the 'yo, break it down' process.

For my juicey needs I've been going to a little place, I way totally don't deal with franchises taking over the world, and noticed that the mashed fruit and vegetable pulp was going into a bin under the juicers.

Conversationaling with the owner, I mentioned that the waste would all be ideal for worms and enriching soil but the dude mentioned that they haven't found anyone interested so they just chuck it out.

Doing a bit of research (read: not working at work) I found that not only do these places just chuck out all the mashed vegetable bits but Boost Juices and another big franchise use cups that take, like, 500 years to break down.

Crap. Freakin'. Dammit.

We've beaten up McDonalds but forgotten to slap around the places that seem healthy. Damn them and their calming natural colour schemes. If you think about how many cups they sell each day in each city it's a bit hardcore.

'Any messages for the gr-gr-gr-grandkiddies?'

Thinking about it, juicing really is a terribly inefficient way to consume vegetables, they chuck heaps of food into those machines to get some juices flowin'. I've given the natrapath away a while ago when we weren't making any progress, but I'm now curious to why she was so big for juice - surely eating the vegetables nude would be better?

I'm now totally bummed, something I thought was really good for me I'm now rating as : SuperCrap since I need that planet to not be a big ol tip. High maintenance of me, I know...

2006-12-27T12:06:00.000+11:00

Hanging with Mich all of yesterday (I'm back at work today - been here for hours and haven't actually touched anything worky yet, ~~in your faces~~ sorry corporate world) taught me heaps about people and a bit about myself.

She taught me mainly through example of how I don't want things to be. Now, don't get me wrong, she's not supercrap, but she is generally unhappy with her life. She's more than capable of holding a serious conversation, she is able to be supportive and appreciative but I will say that the majority of random comments she makes are negative/complainy.

It's an unhappy place to be, where your gut reaction or instinct is bad. She's got a pretty awesome life; a good job and rad friends, no troubles and stress just should not exist but it totally does... I think she might be the unhappiest person I know.

She's 27 and does not have a boyfriend, and therefore no immediate prospect for marriage. This upsets her more than I can possibly comprehend. I think she wants to get married to
a) get her Mum off her back
b) have a dude provide her with more money and fix all her problems
c) have a massive big day all about herself.

She lives in a constant circle of dependency of attention from her friends, so much so that her friends are starting to get over it and withdraw, which is making things worse and worse, especially since her best friends are applying for visas in happyhappycoupleland.

The good thing for me, is that I get caught up in similar to her foibles but to a much lesser degree. Seeing the extremes really does highlight how completely unnecessary and destructive it all is. She knows that her brain isn't helping her, and so reads a lot of self help books and all that, but doesn't seem to take any of it in, the negative emotions always seem to take over, even when she logically knows she's being crap. Then she feels crap for being crap and so on and so forth.

She's hanging with us until the 3rd of Jan and Cara is flying up today. I'm thinking of basically beating Mich up everytime she's unnecessarily negative... do you think that'll help or will I become The Most Annoying Young Man of All Time?

Since I'm on the topic, and not that I'm here yet, but I'm probably the closest I've been in the 6 years I've known her:

Is it the wrongest to tell someone to go away and come back when they are a better person?

Hey googs, can I ask you a question?

2006-12-24T14:05:00.000+11:00

Hey Google, how ya doin'? This blog of Adam's is pretty hardcore awesomeish, but I really wish I knew more about him, the real him. Oh Google, the modern day oracle, can you tell me what Adam is like?

Adam is like Deion Sanders. If he ever messes up, you just know he's going to make sure he'll get the next one.
ADAM is like a textbook that is operated on a computer.
Adam is like the patriarch Joseph.
Adam is like Allah.
Adam is like so hott and with Melissa is better than ever. I so want to meet Adam!!!
Adam is like a brother to her.
Adam is like he is.
Adam is like a club president.
Adam is like a spittle in the ocean?
adam is like a dream come true!!!
Adam is like Tony Robbins.
Adam is like Jazz Rock's version of a fine wine - he keeps getting better with age.
Adam is like Achilles, Odysseus, and Aeneas — a man of wrath, exiled from home because he angered God by going beyond his limit as a man.
Adam is like a godfather of blogging.
Adam is like Christ who came later.
Adam is like a perfect book, which encompasses all possible words - sentences - ideas, waiting to be understood through its exposition.
adam is like my uber student even tho hes in detention lots lol :P
Adam is like the rainbow in relation to. the sun.
Adam is like Paris Hilton closing Britney's legs.
Adam is like the dry branch.
adam is like my hero because when i get too drunk to take care of myself, he makes the possessions i lost.
Adam is like Dad's twin.
adam is like living with the sister i never had so it can be a rather tumultuous ride.
Adam is like the brother I never had. He is pure muppet. Currently, we have plans to co-write a review book on public bathrooms of the world.
Adam is like he's got a virus.
Adam is like having your own personal designer.
adam is like the love of my life.
adam is like a cute teddy bear.
Adam is like a young energetic pup.

Unsolicited Sympathy This Way

2006-12-24T09:18:00.000+11:00

So yeah, I'm at work. It's Sunday. I was at work yesterday, it was Saturday. I'll be the only person on the whole project working in the 3 days between Boxing Day and New Years Day.

Am I being punished? No, lots of people had to organise a lot of things so I could have the opportunity to work.

Do I have work to do? No, not really. I have stuff I can do but it's hardly urgent.

Did I desperately want to work? Um, no.

Will I get paid overtime? No, but I will get paid for days worked, which is better than not being paid for days unworked.

So, um? Yes, exactly right. I'm here purely for political reasons, just so my department (IT) can say they are putting in an extra special effort and to prove once and for all that we are better than that other department (HR) in all things including arts and crafts and playing the guitar.

So, it's not so bad, Mich and Cara aren't arriving for a couple of days, so I didn't really have much else to do, and I am getting paid for five days which isn't going to hurt, but I nearly had to reject the whole thing for the pure retardation of it all.

'Haaaaaaarucken HR, hahaha!'

Drrrrurnkkk!!

2006-12-21T00:56:00.000+11:00

Godddam I'm so freaking intoxicatedinebriated. I'm listening to littel Cara on the radio via my laptop which is why I'm on the computer, leave me alone I don't spend the whole night/life on computers. I just got back from a work drinks thing. It was someones maybe tow peoples farewell last drinks thing and all through my professional life I've always made awesome awesome friends with people who are just leaving. Always happens. I had quite fun tonight, it was a bit random but i feel quite liked because people seem to like me or something or something. God, I'm so spinning like fuin.

Anywaho, what else, I think that all my blogger friends are qite awesome. I was surprised how nice eeveryone was not just polite and also D'Jen this is all fault I read your comment saying I had to blog and this is all I had to come up with. i hope that when I go back to live in Mlebs that I get to meet Keeks and Mars and Dave Mack and te others but I also very much livked the Bribsnae kids and also Canberra jukds were real fun too. Enny is the funnest. God I should be sleapping but somone has to look out for the young lady and make sre her radi oshow in the funnest. What an I going do to stay awake s for a whole hour, I think I'll just sit quitely in the chair. Love yas. mostly.

Blurgh!

2006-12-18T14:48:00.000+11:00

You have entered Meeting Room 1.
The early morning sunshine filters in through the window, you notice 3 white boards covered in little writing and 8 chairs.

You sit down in a chair.

You try to decipher the writing, you use item Glasses.

You recover 3 points of Tiredness.
You get hungry.

A Project Manager walks in and sits down on a chair.
A Director walks in and sits down on a chair.
A HR Team Lead walks in and sits down on a chair.
A Staff Member walks in and sits down on a chair.
A Staff Member walks in and sits down on a chair.
A Staff Member walks in and sits down on a chair.

A Project Manager fires a Question at you.
You defend with Answer, you lose 0 health points.

You look at Project Manager.
Characteristics:
Meeting Confidence (9)
Tiredness (1)
Care Factor (8)
Items:
Whiteboard maker
Skills:
Bulldog Expression
Furious Charge
Affected By:
-
Current Health :
100

You look at yourself.
Characteristics:
Meeting Confidence (3)
Tiredness (6)
Care Factor (2)
Items:
Glasses
Bottle of Water
Skills:
Charisma + 43
IT Ninja
Affected By:
No Allies
Team Leader causing Trouble
Hunger
Current Health :
25

A Project Manager fires a Question at you.
You fail to defend with Answer, you lose 5 health points.

A Director fires a Question at you.
You fail to defend with Answer, you lose 10 health points.

You use item Bottle Of Water, you gain 2 health points.

A Project Manager requests Work To Be Done.
You fail to defend with Reasons Why That Is Retarded, you lose 5 health points.

A Director fires a Sweeping Statement.
Everyone loses 5 health points.

A Staff Member fires a Question at you.
You defend with Answer, you lose 0 health points.

A Project Manager fires a Question at A Staff Member.

You leave Meeting Room 1.
You are hungry.

A Trouble Making Team Leader demands Reasons Why Work Should Be Done.
You fail to defend with Answer, you lose 2 health points.

You have been killed.
Would you like to play again (Y/N)?