World Wide Jeb

Mario Kartquarium

February 26, 2006

It appears that I have reverted back to the don’t-post-for-weeks phase of this blog. I’ll have much more time on my hands once we move to Melbourne in two weeks, so expect more substantial posting then. Don’t abandon me or I’ll commence relentless, heartless Jessica Rowe-style cackling!

There really will be a lot more spare time in my day in Melbourne, though. Considering I currently spend three hours each weekday commuting to and from work, I’m owed some serious commute-time karma. Working from home will mean I can force myself to be a lot more hardcore about the gym every morning… it also means I should really start being more of a housewife and have dinner ready for Adam when he gets home each day.

Although I suppose that’s the problem - I’m totally arse at cooking, having been accused of actually ruining cereal on more than one occasion. My current plan is to get a cookbook and see what happens. Note that I’m going to be extremely metal about all this and there will be no wearing of aprons or shit like that. Dinner will strictly be put together to angry hardcore… in fact, you’ll be able to taste the metal in the meal.

Oh, and then there’s the footy, too… *happy sigh* No words can describe how happy I am about being able to see the Cats play in person all the time again.

When we were down in Melbourne last weekend apartment hunting, a mate of mine who was tagging along for the day decided that we should visit the aquarium in a spare moment. I’d never actually been to the Melbourne aquarium so agreed this was a good idea. And it was, until the final exhibition…

After viewing a “deep sea dive simulator” sign with some curiosity, we decided to give it a shot. And I’m sure you’re familiar with these sorts of simulator rides - remember that crap animated “rollercoaster” intro to Full Frontal those years ago? That, except being thrown around a lot in your seat as well.

So after a lot of promises over how this ride would help us experience a deep sea dive - a tenuous grasp at theme-park excitement already - it ended up not having anything to do with a deep sea dive at all. Instead, we raced through a bad CGI racecourse of the arctic. It was not entirely dissimilar to watching someone play the ice level of Mario Kart while being shaken like a disobedient, wailing child.

There’s a whole lot of packing I need to do today. Moving interstate is possibly my most loathed activity in the world, followed closely after pulling mysterious pubes out of your toothbrush, suffering through our neighbours’ taste in Mix FM music, and viewing porn where someone begins kissing directly after they finish rimming.

In Which I Ascend Further Towards “Total Wanker” As a Job Role

February 11, 2006

A series of interesting events and conversations has lead Adam and I to decide we’re moving back to Melbourne at extremely short notice. Like, less than a month short notice. Why did we just move back to Sydney again?

There’s a number of reasons for the pending return to Melbourne, mostly job-related for Adam, and also the fact that we can actually afford real estate in Melbourne which isn’t the size of your average fucked up anywhere-within-50km-radius-of-Sydney-CBD “living cube”. I mean, Sydney’s morphing into one of the expensive places in the world to buy a house, and we can only pretend to be a true “world city” at best.

This is probably where I choke back on my words about Melbourne’s weather… but in all honesty, Sydney’s stifling humidity is becoming far worse than Melbourne’s endless winter rain. Global warming in Melbourne, bring it on! But after careful consideration… there’s a lot of great reasons for us to live in Melbourne over Sydney. Most of our closest mates are down there, you can actually see gigs within a local distance of your place on any night of the week, the gays are far saner, friendlier, and don’t have any equivalent of Oxford Street to scream around; everything’s more affordable, my family’s down there, I can see Cats matches live every fortnight rather than once or twice a year… it all just feels right.

There used to be a lot of internal undecided Melbourne vs Sydney in my head, but as you can see… I’ve pretty much firmed this up now.

So - the plan is to rent in Melbourne’s CBD for a little while, then go for a mortgage and (gasp) … buy a house. The thought’s crazy.

And how rad is this - I’ve let my bosses know that I’m moving to Melbourne, and gave them four weeks notice… but they’ve managed to work out somewhat of a promotion for me. I’ll be working from home, spending half my time on my current role, and the other half working on business development. I almost want to stab myself for actually saying that “I’m working on business development” - in my experience, this is a role seriously filled by wankers… but I guess that’s what I’m doing now. And it’s exciting.

The great thing about working from home is that it’ll free up the 3 hours I currently spend commuting to and from work each day (telecommuting interstate tends to… cut this down quite a bit). This will be the year that the Metal All-Homo-Star band comes one step closer to actuality… one of the first things I do in Melbourne will be to finally get my bass and start lessons.

Sydney will never be too far away, either… I’ll be flying up to our Sydney office every two months so will still have plenty of chances to catch up with my Sydney mates.

I really was feeling a bit meh about how this year was panning out, but now everything’s happening. See you soon, Melbourne! See you soon, actual blog entries of substantial content!

Gleecoffeemorning Androidbian

January 31, 2006

So I’ve whittled all the opportunities down to one of the best jobs I can think of: penning the lyrics to teen punk songs. Because really, this job now needs to be outsourced to generate the maximum angst-impact and ensure your music is stolen as much racking up as many sales as possible.

Simple Plan have got this down to a fine art. Then again, it’s not exactly contributing to the cause of pushing the likes of Australian Idol offcuts out of the realm of popular music, is it?

As I preface most of my favourite musical artists: “Embarassingly, I’m a fan of…” the Australian group Insurge. They’re at least politically aware in their lyrics (if not a little tree-hugging), which is a nice bonus to some fairly decent pop-industrial. This was why it came as a complete surprise a few years back to discover that one of the members of Insurge was penning lyrics for Bardot songs (that’s one of the many faceless Popstars winners, in case you’re fortunate enough to have purged them from your memory - myself, I’m not sure which of the senses they offended the most). Which, despite the band’s protestations, doesn’t quite ring with me.

Speaking of not quite ringing with me, that brings me to the subject of Jessica Rowe’s humanity. Let’s face it, she always had shades of Tennews Readerbot, but now she’s Voltron-ised into Happysmile Supermorning Todaygiggle Ninelogowoop Ilovebert Gleecoffeemorning Androidbian. Bitch is getting electrode shocks whenever she stops grinning like a schoolgirl. Who could’ve thought there was something worse than waking up to Sunrise?

Bosnia, NSW, 2000

January 22, 2006

This is one of those life-lesson factlets you expect to pick up along the way, but this continues to allude me: how the hell are you supposed to wash a strainer?

You dip it in the water… all the crap stuck to it is hard to get out between the mesh. And it’s too hard to scrape off anyway. Aaaargh. AAARGH. Listening to Meshuggah while I’m trying to wash up doesn’t get me any calmer, either. It’s only now that I’m truly missing having a dishwasher.

Apparently, John Howard is expected to hint at what he’s got planned for himself, employment-wise, in his Australia Day address. Let’s face it, any prime minister is going to cause protests here and there, but I’ve noticed that different pollies attract fairly different flavours of protestors. Drastically differing in hotness, which of course, is the important factor here.

On the one hand, you’ve got Alexander Downer foppishly flailing about in response to the growing evidence that the government indirectly was financially contributing to Saddam Hussein’s regime. That tends to draw out only the scummy, malnourished university student type.

Then you’ve got people like Donald Rumsfeld flitting into Adelaide, and magnetising the HOTTEST COLLECTION OF MUSCLE PUNK DUDES I’ve seen in one place in a long time. More of that! I need to get amongst the angry muscly punks, and help to… I dunno, soothe their anger in whatever way possible.

The demolition of our front yard is now complete, and I’m currently apreciating the boutique odour of fine concrete dust spreading throughout the house. Here’s a quick snap of our courtyard right when we moved in - there’s a couple of trees obscured in the shot, and also slate tiles:

And here, a shot of war-torn Bosnia. I mean post-demolition courtyard.

Note the favour they’ve done us by ripping out the fences - we’ve now got one gigantic courtyard to share with everyone else, with the added bonus of being able to spy into each others loungerooms. This is all going to continue for another month, hooray!

In the meantime, I’ve managed to get my Last.FM account working, so if you’re on there too, gizzus a hoy.

Your Favourite Phone Sucks

January 17, 2006

Goddamn if I don’t hate mobile freakin’ phones.

Mobiles used to be fine. Bleeping, kermit-green-screened Nokias which actually emitted ringtones that sounded like ringtones, not the latest Sugababes single reinterpreted as 80s Casio-goth-synth. When having Snake on your phone was an awesome, mindblowing extra feature.

And now what do we have? Blurry cameras which take useless drunken photos of your mates and have become the new millenium version of waving your cigarette lighter at a gig. Java games you wouldn’t normally be caught dead playing on your PC, yet happily shell out $7.50 for to play on your phone (I mean, you can buy second-hand NES and MasterSystem games for less, and they’re actually GOOD). Handsfree speakers with the thoughtless volume of a sports stadium’s PA system, so everyone thinks they’re a contestant on The Apprentice running around the city with an incredibly important life, barking commands into a phone being held a two full metres away from their ear.

ALL I WANT TO DO IS MAKE AND RECEIVE CALLS. Sometimes, if I want to continue to develop early arthritis, I might be fucked to tap out a dinky little text message. These are the only two functions I want from my phone.

Now, I’m not one for blatant product placement, but this is the precise reason I love the idea of Vodafone Simply. It’s just a pity the phones being offered look like arse, but hey - it’s better than carrying around an overpriced phone shaped like a lipstick, or a dildo or whatnot.

There’s only one extra feature on my current phone that I initially dismissed as a stupid gimmick, which has since proven to be bloody useful: a torch. Mostly because it means I can scavenge clothes from our floordrobe (ie the permanent pile of clothes that’s gathered as a result of our mutual laundry-related laziness) in the morning without rousing Adam from deep sleep, to get my key in the door at night, or to find stuff we’ve stacked away under the stairs. Or to put in my mouth and gaze at my tonsils for hours, or turn on directly pressed against Adam’s eye for fun. (And subsequent running away from impending doom).

Still, I’m determined not to give up my phone until it actually physically dies. The relentless pressure to “upgrade” is such a freaking waste of perfectly good old phones. If it still fits in your pocket, you can read the screen and everything works fine, you’re a loser fashion slave.

Coming up next: I rage endlessly against flavoured food while intermittently screaming that there’s nothing wrong with bran.

I’m Way Too Pissed Off To Update Properly

January 16, 2006

The grand demolition of our front yard has begun. I’ll try and take some photos shortly - the whole living-in-a-fishbowl factor is proving worse than I thought. Builders suddenly materialised in our front yard halfway through Adam and I almost getting it on. Worse still, I can’t slyly pick boogers from my nose without fear of being busted by a neighbour.

And woe, worst of all! I can no longer dance to metal in my jocks when I’m pissed. :(

Because I’m way too annoyed about the whole lack of privacy factor today, I’m afraid you’re only getting some dot points which I probably intended to flesh out a bit more, but can’t be arsed.

1. I’ve finally worked it out: Guy Sebastian’s face looks like it’s an example of facial .zip file technology
2. I’ve got OCD when it comes to walking around, and will go to pains to walk a different route if it saves mere seconds from my day. Every day I walk through shady back streets of Punchbowl to get to work instead of along a busy highway, to save about…. one minute from my (upon consideration, now slightly lower) life (expectancy)
3. How fucking awesome would this be: velcro-dot shirts with purely decorative buttons. You could erupt into Hulk-rage and tear your shirt off at any given opportunity
4. After my fag metal band becomes huge, I’ll begin my first side project: Beasts of Bacardi. All of Tex Perkins’ various bands’ songs deconstructed into shitty Casio cover versions

Wanna Feel Old?

January 15, 2006

SURE, then. Alien Ant Farm’s cover of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” was released almost…

FIVE YEARS AGO

Read it and weep

The <3 of Cain

January 14, 2006

Last night I excitedly galloped down to the Gaelic Club to see the Mark of Cain on their first tour since… forever. Man, I’ve been looking forward to seeing them play live - never seen them before, even though I’ve been a fan since I hosted a seriously dodgy community radio show as a teenager. That radio show was unfortunately flung over the airwaves at a crucial turning point in my musical taste, when I was undergoing a serious conversion from top 40 pap to a developing fascination with all things heavy. This all meant that quotes such as “Wow, that was Ace of Base’s new track, hooray! And now, Machine Head, with Deaaaaaaath Chuuuuuuuuuuurch” were not that uncommon.

But who doesn’t love the Mark of Cain? Well, a lot of young’ins, I guess - there weren’t too many people under 25 last night. In fact, the entire crowd seemed to be made up of everyone in Sydney aged over 30, on steroids, and still listening to Triple J.

Now, I’m all for moshing (god, what a 90s word that suddenly seems to be). But why is that I always get stuck behind the dude with the sweat glands of Iain Hewitson who moshes in the most annoying, disruptive way? I’m more of a “bobber” - I’ll bang my head along to any awesome songs but I’m fairly stationary most of the time. In fact, so are most of the people around me. But I always get stuck near some ugly dickwit (note that if they were hot, any bodily contact would normally be fine) who moshes in really freaking stupid ways?

Last night I was stuck behind someone who was composing a method of diagonal moshing that I’d never seen before. He’d spread his legs apart diagonally and just whiplash back and forth. Jesus Christ it was annoying.

As for the Mark of Cain, bless their souls, as my friend Kate remarked - do they really need to continue being such angry men? I mean, angry dudes playing heavy music is always hot, but I at least expect to see them crack a few smiles or jokes at a live gig. I’m now absolutely convinced that after 90 minutes of angrily glaring at each other, the Mark of Cain lurch offstage, stare at each other for five seconds, then roll around on the floor laughing and pissing themselves that they kept up the we-so-GGGRRRANGRY! act for another night. Either that, or they seriously all need some hugs.

My car licence has now been renewed, and although I did attempt some Mark of Cain angriness, regrettably I was also being hammered with a pulsing migraine at the time my photo was taken… so now my new licence photo looks like I’m angry, but have also taken a bottle full of downers and am slipping away from conciousness. Fantastic.

Meanwhile, America is now sentencing kiddy-fiddler priests to 100+ year sentences. Because those fuckers be invincible with their uber-priest-powers, y’know.

Meat Your Maker

January 11, 2006

Y’know how there’s those food facts people gleefully let loose… things you really didn’t want to know? I’m not talking about bullshit like KFC serving rabbit, but queasy facts that put you off your dinner quicker than Channel 10’s bright idea for Monday-to-Friday primetime viewing (an Australian version of The Biggest Loser? Five nights a week? Do I really need daily updates on what flabby, wobbly, sweating, grunting hefty folk have been doing all day while I tuck into my meat and veg?)

Adam does a lot of advertising work for a Major National Supermarket. Part of his job is creating those gleaming, shiny, slightly scary “food porn” ads in the newspaper. He was chatting to someone responsible for managing the supermarket chain’s butchers department, who was explaining part of the meat preperation which occurs in every store.

Namely, THE MEAT IS SPRAYED RED TO MAKE IT LOOK TASTIER.

Now, I really didn’t need to know this little cutlet of a fact. Vaguely disgusted but still suspicious, I cut into a defrosted steak we’d bought this week, and what do you know? There’s an eerie, scary, layer of flourescent red on the outside layer of the meat. Which makes sense - meat is grey! I understand the reasoning behind the move, who wants to buy grey-looking meat after all, but red spray? Holy crap. I feel like I need to obsessive-compusively wash and scrape off the spray before I cook everything now.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, after recounting the revelation to my mate Julian, he turned in surprise. “How could you not know that, don’t you read the internet?”

“I’m sticking to chicken,” I assured him.

“Oh, supermarkets bleach chicken,” he corrected me. And I’m sure they do. God knows what they do to mince, do they freaking let it mellow out in a bucket of paint for a day?

Can’t trust the freaking deli. I’m off to eat Saladas for tea. :(

Blind In One Eye, Stung In The Other

January 10, 2006

First, I was busy having an unexplained anxiety attack. Then a arrogantly career-climbing mosquito just stung me ON THE EYLID. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not my evening.

I’m off to continue playing The Movies until I can work out how to turn my studio into a polygon-tastic gay pr0n mecca. I’m sure there’s a way.