Big Night Ahead

Currently listening to: Ministry of Sound 2007 Annual - intended as good pump music but not hitting the spot

Currently Drinking: Vodka and Orange - fuelled by the bargain find of 3Ltrs of Orange Juice for 50cents. It has to be used by tomorrow. I thought yep, I can do that. Oh yeah, Vitamin C intake!

Current status of readiness: Approx. 80% - Shoes and socks to go plus a lot more pump-up drinking/music.



Future plans:

1. Spend most of the night playing pool and listening to the band that half the band I'm in is in when they're not playing with me. Didn't make sense? Doesn't matter. There will be brass, disco and heaps of fun.

2. Try to avoid wanting to sleep with Z, I know she'll be there...

3. Wake up around midday having slept through the worst of the hangover.

4. Eat Black Eye Peas and hope not for a better year but for a better feeling in my stomach. Reality bites.

The Stock Pot

Decided to make a stock today after pulling apart the leftover chicken. It's part of a new attempt at less wastage. I've been living off one six-dollar chicken since wednesday night and I reckon I'll get at least half a dozen more meals out of it (in frozen bits of course).

So I've had the stock going for ages and it's all nice and tasty. I strain it and decided to kind of wring out as much as I can from the vegies that were in there. Of course, I have a munch on one of the bits of carrot when I'm done squeezing it out and am fairly surprised to find that it tastes just the same as the stock does. It lost it's carrotness and became part of the hive mind....

I've just finished reading Steven King's Cell - which I found similar in the opening doomsday thing to The Stand - but he goes into telepathy a bit in Cell, where the 'phone-people' actually share a hive mind. I love Steven King. Mostly it's good, fast reading. He does panic really well, and is one of those writers that can have me laughing aloud with his descriptions of things during a crisis.

Anyway, the hive mind. It's where there's no individuality any more. The 'phone-people' in Cell, my stockpot. I see the connection clearly.


No, I'm not still drunk blogging.

NaDruBloDa

which, for those who don't know better - is National Drunk Blogging Day.

Firstly, I'm going to whinge. Get it out of the way, and on to the good stuff...

Why the Hell is it National Drunk Blogging Day? How about International? Or has the blog community become a nation of itself?

7:48pm
So, I'm attacking this thing with a plan. I've already had four post-work beers at the pub and still haven't won a friday raffle tray (there were only about fifteen people there yet I still couldn't win one). I'm about to have some tea so I'm not too sick tomorrow. Then I'm going to drink steadily and come back to write whatever I think of and I'm not going to post until I feel I need to sleep. Ha.





8:17pm

It starts like this:





And then progresses to this:












Found at Damn Cool Pics, which has some shit days for pics but mostly has really clever things going on.




8:45pm
I like this font. Just for the numbers. See how the bottom of the four and five are in line with the stem of the p? Cute.

Anyway. Found these q's at Who Said Life Wasn't Funny?


1. Do you sleep with the door to your room open or closed? Open mostly.

2. What was the weather like on your graduation day? I was hung over.

3. What kind of winter coat do you own? I like the ones with fleece around the collar.

4. When was the last time you spoke in front of a large group of people? At Friday Night beers last week. Does ten count as a large group?

5. Where do you keep your change? In a stubbie cooler. It gets sifted through until no gold coins exist and the thing is near full before I cash it in somewhere.

6. Describe your keychains? I have a clip on promo beer keychain with four house keys and two car keys. They are all necessary. I rationalised my keychain some months ago from this hulking thing with spare keys for in-laws house and cars and remnants of keys to about four other share houses to today's slimline edition. I feel liberated.

7. What is your favorite flavor of jelly? It's not fucking jelly! Jam! Anything dark berry is good.

8. Some things you are excited about? Tragic. Drinking with friends.

9. Do you re-use towels after you shower? Hell yes! My house isn't a hotel!

10. Have you ever been in a planetarium? Once. It was in primary school and I wish I hadn't wasted the experience buggerising about with my mates and not listening.

11. Have you ever received one of those big tins with three kinds of popcorn? No. Don't want to, either.

12. Do you like what the ocean does to your hair? In some ways, yes. I like the wild feeling that it has but as soon as I try to make it civil I can't even get a comb through it and need a shitload of conditioner to make it healthy again.

13. Any plans for Friday night? I always say I'm going to have a quiet one, but as soon as work is finished there is the lure of beer...

14. What is out your back door?At the moment a huge post-hailstorm cleanup job but it has the potential to be a semi self-sufficient garden. I have plans that way anyway.

15. What's the most painful dental procedure you've ever had? Not exactly a procedure, but having to wear a plate off and on. When you're a forgetful idiot, the time that you do remember to put it in hurt like all hell.

16. Do you draw your name in the sand when you go to the beach?No. The girl I copied these q's from joked that somtimes she wrote angry letters to god. I'm jealous that I haven't thought to do that.

17. Who did you lose your concert virginity to? Oh pride! The first Homebaked Festival at Byron Bay - before it became a touring festival! It rained all day and there were massive mudfights. We were frozen.

18. Do you ever leave messages on people's answering machine? Only to a select few, where I try to be funny. I leave messages because I know they won't answer the phone and I try to be funny because I think I already sound like a dickhead on an answering machine, so why not go the whole hog?

19. How many different beverages have you had today? Too many already.

20. Last thing you received in the mail? A Christmas card for a previous tenant, but I opened it anyway.

21. Have you had to take out a loan for school? No. Well, I guess HECS is. Crap.

22. Do you have any famous ancestors? Don't think so!

23. Your prom night? Prom?

24. Do you know all the words to the song on your MySpace profile? I don't have a MySpace [yet?]

25. Are you any good at math? I like to think I am.

26. What were you doing 15 minutes ago? Noticing that my 'unbreakable' wine glass - kept for most special occasions, such as blogging drunk - has sprung a leak. It is a slow ooze and I've managed to suck up the excess so far, but I think she be going down on the near future.

26. What were you doing this morning at 8 AM? Having an Oh Fuck! moment getting ready for work.

27. When was the last time you shaved? This morning but it was a rough run-over.

28. Explain what ended your last relationship. Lack of sex among other things.















9:37pm



It's official. If I wasn't before, I am now. Drunk that is. I've been mucking around playing guiatr and some part of mind is saying Vic, that's really shithouse. But the rest is saying 'Woohoo! You rock!'











9:54pm



This is just for the Cap'n. You asked for it...

10:01pm

I've just realised what's not right with tonight. I haven't had a cigarette tonight since coming home. Normally I have one per drink. Fuck, but it's too cold outside.

10:09pm

Another one, a little closer to home:

10:13pm

iTunes random hits:

At the moment I'm listening to the Jackson Five's I Want You Back. I love it! It's all about the bass line in this song. Stuff Michael, I mean he's cute and very talented, but the bass playing is great. It just drives it. And there's the 2/4 bars which absolutely stuffed our drummer when the band sat down to learn it. Maybe that's why I respect this song so much. We never had the chance to master it.

10:42pm

Yes, I'm listening to Pink Floyd now.
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
Its good to warm my bones beside the fire

Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.


11:17pm

So, down to nitty gritty.

Let's talk about exes. The latest one - she came over to watch movies last night. Our relationship lasted only a couple of weeks and I think that it was only based on alcohol consumption - that we could actually call it a relationship....

So she mentions that a friend she hadn't seen for a while said that I'm nice and we should be together. Cool. What do I say? Yeah, Z. You should never have left. That's not right - I asked her to go because she was an abusive drunk.

How about Z, I miss you but I can't seem to please you in bed.
Let's see if we can change that.

One of my friends watched me playing guitar and said I'm watching your fingers, and you can't be bad in bed.

But Z is just hard to please. We're always drunk, which doesn't help. But she's got more stamina than me which means I just end up falling asleep and she's not there yet. I go off like a rocket straight away because I'm waiting for it...

\

She's not right for me but I can't get away.


11:31pm
Wow, this is hard. Typing and drinking just don't mix very well.


11:34pm
I bought some new jeans yesterday. I've gone from being a size 18 about a year and a half ago to being a (close) size 12. These jeans were on sale so I got a couple of different styles. Bt they're just slightly too small for what I am. Just a litle bit more to lose. I spent today feeling like I was pushed into a funnel but that my ass looked great. Sadly the weight loss thing has led to me checking myself out in shop windows. I just look and think wow! You hated yourself before! You're pretty hot! But the confidence boost has been amazing.

11:45pm
I'm making spelling mistakes. I'll never be able to read this post. No regrets, NaDruBloDa. But Oh Hell. I just hope all the rudimentary HTML matches up because at the endof this I won't be able to comprehend it.


12:10am
I hate to admit it, but this is far too hard.
Nighty nights people.
I'm still awake, but on a major UTube run and I don't think I'll come out the other side real well;.\\

I think I feel more free now I've told myself I don't have to [pst

On Body Modification...

I installed a toolbar called StumbleUpon! which I've found some interesting stuff through. It's causing a few seemingly random problems with my browser and will probably have to go - so I'm not going to link to it on principle. It's a bit of a you wanna fuck with me? huh? I'll fuck with you! going straight out to that toobar. Haha. Suck on that, browser-messing loser.

So I find this site talking about the dangers of corset piercing. What? Define the point of having two rows of rings placed vertically, with the most popular placement being on your back, where you can lace a ribbon through and tie them together. I guess there isn't much point with any piercings except aesthetics, however this just seems to trigger a 'too far' alarm in my mind.

Apart from that, the site was talking about the logistics of the piercing itself, saying that the rings were almost certain to be rejected, leaving a row of scarring where the rings were. So you get a couple of photos wih ribbons and lacey thing tying it all up, probably get bored with it after that and don't know what else to do - and then the rings reject. You don't worry about them anymore and you've got the scars to prove you've done it! It seems like that might be viable to quite a few on the idiot side of the fence.

Online dating

I just joined Lesbotronic and after a thousand drop-down menu questions, I had to fill in the 'bit about yourself' box. I hate them. What do you say? So I decided to cut and paste this one because I actually thought I did a good job [for once].

"I like playing pool in small pubs. I teach music and play in bands - guitar, bass and percussion depending on the situation. I have cat who plays fetch and is very protective of me, while seeming to view me with utter contempt. She is a legend! Eventually I would like to find someone I can feel complete with at the end of the day - not totally reliant upon, but secure in the knowledge that she is there. If you can't spell and don't know about the use of the apostrophe, I'll try to be patient, but it won't be easy."

Trash Art

The people at Wooster Collective are right. There should be more of this sort of art around. If it's garbage anyway, why not make it amusing or thought provoking?

Seeing this immediately inspired me to think about raking the rest of the leaves from my hailstorm struck yard into a large word - 'stripped' is a thought, or maybe 'hell'. Or then again, there is so much detritus out there that I could probably spell out 'IT'S NOT WINTER SO WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE IT?'

But I love street art. Not tagging - that doesn't really say 'artistic' to me. Some spray graffiti is cool, but mainly I go for stencils and object stuff. It gives a new perspective to public space. I'd like to do some of this myself. I like to write things - just little snippets mainly - in spaces where a person may see them. The comments are either positive or confusing [as in designed to provoke a why? reaction. They are never political or hurtful.

Just in from the front line:

Yesterday afternoon there was a a hailstorm that hit my side of town pretty bad. I was at work at the time, so two hours after I'm driving home, watching the debris on the road go from leafy stuff to icy stuff to a foggy misty zone with four inches of hail on the road - right where I live.

The back of my house - note the clothesline was full. The clothes are all there somewhere underneath.

My back room had a perspex roof. It is now non-existent. The amount of hail it dumped inside is incredible. Luckily I've only lost four windows.

The wall underneath it got hit hard.

There's about a foot of this stuff piled in there - it all funnelin of the roof of the house and through the perspex.

There were nine plum trees, an apricot, a fig and a grape vine in the yard - all stripped. It looks like winter out there!


A friend came round to help and we decided to make the most of a bad situation:

News from the front line:

My back room has been totalled by a hail storm. I'm going to put pictures and descriptions up later. Merry frickin' Christmas indeed!

Bared

Yep. This is me. For once I actually asked someone to take a picture of me. Normally I would shy away from the camera, but I was pretty proud of the way I was looking (dress wise, anyway).

Merry frickin' Christmas the sequel

for the perfect end to the evil Christmas Party.

On consumerism

Why is it that everybody goes nuts on food at Christmas? I mean, bring on the Christmas parties - I'll come eat your food - but how come so much extra gets consumed? Our sales today were pretty much tripled on the same time last week. Just for food.

But if I go to your place and eat, that means you're preparing extra, true - but it also means that I'm preparing less. Shouldn't things even out and be relatively the same with regards to overall consumption?

Also thinking about consumerism - I've packed away that many orders for specific weights of turkeys today that it makes me think of the poor turkeys who miss the cut.
-Sorry buddy, everyone's after a No.38 this year. You're under.
-You've got too much fat on ya, mate. Go run it of in your crappy tiny cage for a while.

And so many people just want the breasts. What happens with all the other bits? And is the demand for breast meat really about it being the low fat option or is the something a little more primitive going on?

Sage words

Some very truthful words from slantedvision.

"Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."

Merry frickin' Christmas

found at the Sprinkle Brigade.

More on that washing machine.

So I've narrowed it down to being either the pressure hose that leads to the water level switch being blocked or having a small hole in it, or the switch itself could be busted.

Customers...

Wednesday is for some reason "Idiot Customer Day". It happens more on Wednesdays than any other day. S, the guy I work with today has also noticed this fact. We looked at each other this morning after a few freaks and just said Yep. The parade begins.

We've got prawns on special. Whole cooked prawns. And old buddy at the counter says to me:
How do you cook em?
You don't have to, mate. They're already cooked.
Do I just zap em' in the microwave?

And then you get a whole family walk in, three generations all at once, all so fat they have to waddle and stinking the place out because they don't know how to look after themselves. What do they do? Buy cartons of Pluto Pups and all the other frozen deep fryable goodness you can get. As a friendly customer service representative who is obliged to offer advice on food preparation I feel that maybe I should at least tell them their deep fried meals should be accompanied by a salad at least once in a while.

Time to return from lunch and catch the late entrants in the parade...

Return of the Wannabe Mechanic

Tried to fix my washing machine this morning. What it does is keep on filling. Over the top of the bowl and all over the laundry/bathroom floor. There's carpet involved so it's been messy a couple of times.


I'm unwilling to get someone to look at it for two reasons:

One major one is that I can't really afford it. I got the washing machine for fifty bucks and I really don't want to get a bill equivalent of a new one to get it going. That will be a little too depressing to go near for a while because I'd rather know I got a bargain that needed a little fixing up than a big mistake that I shouldn't have trusted.

The other one is dammit, I want to be the person that fixes things. The one that comes up with the household solutions. Maybe it could be a little feminist, but I really want to be able to cope on my own rather than get a man to do everything for me. I love looking at something and figuring out how it works and then being able to fix it. Maybe its just getting in touch with my own sense of dykeness.


So this morning I'm sitting on the bathroom floor with the washing machine on it's side peering underneath. I really have to find out how to test electrical connections because all I could do was check the hoses weren't blocked and look at all the bits going Well... I can see what it does. It doesn't look obviously busted.... But I don't know for sure.

Then I sat it back up and looked underneath the controls. Whoa! Wires everywhere and all I really could do was look at each bit and think Okay, I know which knob you belong to... and wiggle a few connections but again nothing is particularly obvious. It doesn't have a big burn patch around a connection that cries "BUSTED!" to me.

I do have a theory that the switch thingy that lets the water in and out is a bit tired and won't switch off and that since I'm operating one hose only I could swap that switch thingy with the one for the hot water that I'm not using. But that'll be next time I get the urge to fix things, as I've got to go to work.

Hot days....

This is called Hot With A Chance Of A Late Storm by The Glue Society.

From the listening lab...

KT Tunstall is occupying my listening headspace at the moment. I'm completely fixated. I love the quality of her voice and the combination of raw acoustic guitar sounds.

This track in particular is a favourite. I can't seem to go past it. Everything is right for me with this one. Percussion, E minor, just belting it out on a steel string. Love it.

Struggling Through Friday [again]

So the short-term ex comes back to my place last night. We're both plastered, as we have both tended to be whenever we've been around each other, ever since we met. Anyway, as tends to happen when plastered, we end up in bed. The same thing happened last Thursday night also.

She's knocked me off my own private 'sex god' podium. I can't do the right thing. It's so goddamn frustrating and I'm sure it's worse to be on the recieving end.

So again, I'm struggling through Friday with a massive hangover and the impression that I suck in bed.

Puzzles I Cannot Solve Are Evil.

A student gave me a Sudokube last week. This thing is a Rubik's Cube with numbers on it.

He's one of my best students - after being a slack little mongrel for ages, he's pulled his finger out and is learning buckets extra each week. So basically I feel an obligation to him that because he puts in so much effort I need to actually give this thing a decent amount of time. I'd get cranky at him if he didn't give much time to something I gave him to work on, so fair's fair.

But this thing is hellishly difficult. I never got Rubik's Cubes anyway. So I pick this thing up, spin the bits a couple of different ways and get frustrated. I put it down. I pick it up, reminding myself that anger at inanimate objects might be satisfying but certainly not productive. I am better than it due to the pure fact that I have a brain and can move on my own. I spin it a bit more and try to execute some plan of attack - "Vic, we have to be systematic about this thing." - and then spin the thing a few more times and put it on the shelf.

I'm letting a piece of plastic be symbolic of mental inedaequacy. Shame.

Internet Radio

Pandora is the best way to find new music.

Swiss Cheese

This is fantastic! I want one.

Apparently you can order them not only in aluminium but also in steel, stainless steel or painted. And you can get them in any size. [If you have a spare $15000, that is...]

The sculptor is Bruce Gray. He's done some really cool mobiles and stuff with magnets, but what brought me to his page while surfing was a table shaped like a giant guitar pick. I actually didn't like that one, but his other stuff is cool and the cheese made me laugh.

On procrastination...

Thanks to Blue Gal for some healthy advice:

I really don't believe that there are "creative types" or "non-creative types". There is fear and there is ignoring the fear and doing it anyway.

Nothing better than to make me think I've got no balls in a situation! Blue Gal has uttered exactly the words I needed to kick me out of being to scared and apathetic to say exactly what I want.

No more thinking "Does that make sense?" or "That's not really interesting enough..." or anything else like that.

A friend recently told me that being too scared to put yourself out there and thinking that you're not good enough at something is a form of arrogance. I'm not really partial to calling it arrogance, but I'm coming to the realisation that it's pretty gutless. Let's fix this - right here and now.

"This far. No further."

9BeetStretch

I read about Leif Inge, this Norwegian composer who has taken Beethoven's 9th Symphony and streched it so that it lasts for 24 hours. Interesting concept. He's done it so that there's no distortion to the original pitches and the bits I've heard are pretty trancey. Nice. Here's the link: http://www.notam02.no/9/


Maybe I should experiment with the opposite - speeding things up. There's two ways I think I could go about it:

One is to take something quite slow and condense it's performance time. This might be interesting to see whether any dance style beats emerge. Maybe that could lead to some sampling. Or it could just be crap.

The other idea is to take a multi movement piece and adjust the length of the movements so that they are exactly the same. Then play all the movements simultaneously (thus drastically reducing the length of the piece). It would be really cool to go multiphonic - have a seperate speaker dedicated to each movement and place the speakers in seperate areas of a room so that as you move about the room you experience different combinations of sound levels.


Really it shouldn't be too hard to do?

If I don't get too frustrated I will post some results!