| nearly a year has passed... |
[Jul. 3rd, 2008|03:52 pm] |
... since i last posted...
what's happened in that time? ooh, a whole bunch of stuff; saw some movies, bought and sold some guitars, got some dvd's... life goes on... |
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| a glitch in the matrix? |
[Aug. 29th, 2007|01:25 pm] |
recently i ordered a copy of "12 days of terror" on dvd, along with some other bits and pieces; i'd had my eye on it for a while, but only just decided that the time had come...
everything shipped the next day, except "12 days..." which shipped a week later... it arrived on monday... i forgot to take it home that night, so ended up bringing it home on tuesday, and watched it that evening (it was ok, although many liberties were taken with the actual facts) ...
today (wednesday), while walking through a food court, i noticed out of the corner of my eye a scene from it playing on a ceiling-suspended tv; one quick double-take later, and it was confirmed; a movie i'd hummed and harred about buying for probably close to two years, and then finally bought, and received slightly later than the rest of my purchases, and forgot to take home when it arrived and so didn't watch it until a day later, was playing as a midday movie on a free-to-air station the following day... |
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| moved house again |
[Mar. 24th, 2007|02:29 pm] |
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about a month ago, to a two-storey townhouse near the south-east corner of adelaide... |
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| wtf |
[Jan. 30th, 2007|05:07 pm] |
today there were a couple of weird looking chaps in town - they looked like they might have been doing a promotion for sovereign hill, or a pirate movie...
a german buddy tells me that they're journeyman carpenters, who undertake a three-year-and-one-day travelling "apprenticeship", in which they have to travel beyond a minimum distance with a tiny amount of money and wear this amish-looking uniform, and do carpentry stuff...
supposedly, carpenters (and possibly anyone else) who know of this guild tradition in europe have an obligation to provide them with (carpenter) work, for little or no pay but provide them food and shelter... oh, and they wear earrings, and if they behave improperly and their "master" gets to hear of it, he rips the rings out...
if they can keep this up, then they are pretty much guaranteed a job and an enormous amount of old school respect for the rest of their lives...
my geramn bud talked to them briefly; apparently they were one year into their trip, and they'd tramped to adelaide from germany via indonesia...
man, those guys are doing it hard... and good luck to them... |
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| happy new year |
[Jan. 8th, 2007|10:43 am] |
christmas was ok...
new year's was quiet, which was nice...
much money has subsequently been spent on new toys, including one of these and some of this as well...
also, shortly before christmas, my sister got a kitten; he's a ginger norwegian forest cat, named rollo, and he's an unstoppable meat-powered wrestling machine... |
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| jeff martin at hq |
[Sep. 4th, 2006|11:43 am] |
saw jeff martin (ex-tea party) at hq last night, backed by the toronto tabla ensemble and supported by rob sawyer ...
first, rob sawyer: i'd never heard of him, and thought he was pretty good; kind of like a countrified john frusciante ... seemed very down-to-earth (in fact, looked like he'd just got off the bus from some dirt farm in the centre of australia) ... sat in his chair, drank his water, and blazed away on his acoustic guitar (which he retuned before each song) ... in general, i liked him, although i thought the really fast picking bits that made their way into every song were a bit self-indulgent...
jeff martin was a different story; backed by a bass player, a keyboard player/dancer/percussionist, and three tabla players/percussionists, he changed guitars (or instruments, rather; he pulled out all sorts of oddball favourites like a hurdy-gurdy, some kind of chinese xylophone-like affair, and some north indian and middle eastern stringed things) after every song except one (and that was one of those resonating cone guitars; but after the first song, he sat down, laid it across his lap and played slide on it, so it was almost like a different instrument) ... he chatted quite a lot with the crowd, talking about his life and family and embracing the past (i.e. justifying the inclusion of tea party songs in his set) ... he opened with "silence", which was the only tea party song (and in fact, the only song of the whole night) that i'd actually heard before... like arctic monkeys though, there was a fucktard in the audience who decided to show everyone around her what a big fan she was by dancing manically; it then occurred to me that the last show i'd seen at hq (back when it was "heaven") was rollins band, back in 1996 or so, and at that show, there was a jerkoff with long dreads who moshed frantically BUT NOT IN THE MOSH PIT; instead he chose NEAR THE MOSH PIT, even though the mosh pit ACTUALLY HAD ROOM TO ACCOMODATE HIM...
i seem to have strayed a bit from my original topic; jeff martin was really good, even though i didn't know any songs after the first; the keyboard player did some interpretive dance for one song which was quite good (although she messed up one of her spins and ended up facing the wrong way; she giggled, bit her tongue and kept going with a big grin on her face) ... the tabla is a weird instrument; it almost looked like you play it by stroking the tips of your fingers on it; most peculiar...
ooh, and i saw honey boy jim in the audience, and had a brief chat about what the loving tongue are up to these days... apparently they play the odd show at the gov, but mostly he's doing raven black night at the moment... still, good to see he's still around and making the scene... |
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| recent stuff |
[Aug. 21st, 2006|10:09 am] |
- buying a new amp; a vox pathfinder, which has some cool features
- saw arctic monkeys a few weeks back at thebarton theatre; they were pretty good, although:
- for a sold-out show, there were a lot of empty seats; like, at least 50...
- they could perhaps use some diversity in their light show; strobe is cool, sure, but apparently they shot their whole load coming up with that one...
- the middle-aged lady in front of me should act her age and SIT THE FUCK DOWN AND NOT DANCE DIRECTLY IN MY LINE OF VISION; and i don't particularly think those two guys in the very back that she kept bothering for drinks and smokes were terribly interested in her either
- and she should also have not drunk quite so much
- and couldn't she tell that her two friends weren't enjoying themselves, because they kept having to help her up and take her back to their seat? what the fuck was wrong with you, stupid lady?
- hoodwinked - budget animation starring regular actors; didn't live up to its potential; extreme-sports grannies aren't funny
- pirates ... 2 - wasn't as fun as the original, afraid the best i can give it is a solid "average"
- fun fact: when searching imdb for all movies released in 2006, about 40% of the entries returned appear to be pornos
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| crazy japanese tv soundly beaten by u.k/german co-production |
[Jul. 18th, 2006|04:27 pm] |
last night on sbs, i saw the most FUCKED UP WEIRD television program i've ever seen:
a german in surgical greens and a black fedora was DISSECTING a REAL CADAVER (which had already been SKINNED) and explaining what the bits were for, along with a british doctor in a white coat... oh, and there was a totally naked man standing nearby, and a lady was painting muscles on him...
there was also a studio audience...
WHY WAS HE WEARING A BLACK FEDORA??? IS THIS STANDARD SURGICAL ISSUE IN GERMANY???
...
but anyway, after the show, they ran a preview of the next episode (apparently it takes longer than an hour to complete disassemble a human being!), wherein the german promised us we'd meet "the pancreas, the small intestine, the large intestine, and HERR ANUS!!"
i, for one, cannot wait...
the show is available on dvd if you don't believe me...
but back to the show: after the initial shock had passed, it got quite amusing; that wacky german was manipulating tendons and shit with his hands, making the cadaver's toes and fingers wiggle about...
oh yeah, and he had to use a hammer and chisel to prise off the back of the skull... and then taped it back on...
my favourite part was when herr docktor pulled out the entire spinal cord all the way down to the nerve in the tip of the corpse's toe, and held it up LESS THAN AN INCH from the naked man's back, and had him wiggle his toes... it was the single best thing i've ever seen on tv, and can only possibly be surpassed by next week's meeting with HERR ANUS!!! |
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| over the hedge |
[Jun. 27th, 2006|10:24 am] |
saw over the hedge last night - more gratuitous animation, an unoriginal story, and leading voice performances by a number of celebrities, while professional voice actors are left dangling in the wind... ok, i get the joke of having william shatner</a> as the possum who hams up his fake deaths, but you can't tell me that avril lavigne was a better choice for his daughter than a professional voice actor...
still, she was probably a better choice than ashlee simpson, whose talents are skewed more towards mime HAHAHAHAHA |
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| cars |
[Jun. 16th, 2006|11:00 am] |
last night's movie was "cars", which i enjoyed... lots of good visual gags, and some impressive animation: some of the aerial views of the car racing scenes were incredibly realistic, and reminded me of this one shot of kadaj escaping the city on his big-ass bike in "final fantasy vii: advent children" - just the right amount of "camera" shakiness and unsteady zooms to make it look that much more authentic...
however, "cars" was also a little troubling... so there's these sentient cars, right, and where they live, most things are named after cars and car parts and so forth, and they all seem to love car racing, and there's a state called california and a route 66 highway... but no people! where are the people? show me people! there must have been people at one point, since the hippie combi van is a big fan of jimi hendrix, and there are a farms with crops and stuff on them... so did the sentient cars rise up and overthrow their human masters? for that matter, there appeared to be no organic fauna at all, as all the insects were tiny winged vw beetles...
so, in conclusion, "cars" is a funny and visually excellent animated movie deemed by the censors to be suitable for kids, underpinned by a secret tale of global genocide on a previously unheard-of scale... |
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| more movies, and auspicious bank accounts |
[Jun. 9th, 2006|10:11 am] |
last night, i went to see the remake of "the omen"... i thought the original was better; it was grimmer somehow, and created more of a feeling of uncertainty one way or the other throughout as to the child's nature... this new version seemed to leave very little doubt; i also found the dream sequences to be a little bit unecessary, the burned and disfigured priest was completely over the top and played all wrong, the "unfortunate" deaths were a bit contrived (the decapitation? give me a break!) and the dogs: how come the evil dogs were all rottweilers EXCEPT THE FIRST ONE, which was a german shepherd or something? that bugged the hell (heh) out of me...
oh, i had to go to the bank to get out money for a ticket, and my balance before withdrawing was $666.87 - i thought that was pretty funny... |
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| movies |
[May. 22nd, 2006|02:51 pm] |
saw "the da vinci code" last week - meh... it was ok, a nicely paced action-thriller, but i don't see what all the fuss is about (the general fuss, not the fuss over the suggestion of a massive conspiracy within organised religion); i think it's a victim of "jurassic park syndrome", which means it'll probably be forgotten in about ten years time, after some wretched sequels have ruined the franchise forever...
another film i recently saw was "basic instinct 2" - i was pretty sure it was going to be bad, but i didn't think it would be quite so bad... here's a tip: if you're watching this film to see boobies and screwing, then you'll be bored about 99% of the time... |
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| my family is evil and awesome |
[Apr. 26th, 2006|04:04 pm] |
my family paid the FULL BALANCE of my new guitar as a birthday present, despite my telling them not to because it was too expensive... i am very angry and grateful... |
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| new rhcp video |
[Apr. 10th, 2006|10:00 am] |
managed to catch the new red hot chili peppers video for "dani california" on the weekend... it's a tried and true concept (dress the band up like a different act in a different genre/time period) but done with a large number of different sources... the ones i picked were:
- elvis presley
- the beatles
- thin lizzy
- parliament-funkadelic
- new york dolls
- sex pistols
- the misfits
- poison
- nirvana
it's hard to be sure of some of them; it's been suggested on teh interweb that the elvis act is actually ricky nelson, and that the beatles act is one of a number of other early '60s pop bands, and i suppose a lot of them are fairly generic and appear to mix up a few different period cliches (eg it looks like ziggy-bowie is playing basss for the new york dolls, so perhaps it's just a typical '70s glam act? also, thin lizzy might be hendrix fronting cream) but p-funk, sex pistols and the misfits are so specific that it's hard to decide on way or the other... |
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| creepy |
[Mar. 22nd, 2006|11:47 am] |
picked up some meat from the local butcher's last night; as he handed back my credit card, i noticed he was missing two fingers... i wonder what happened to them, and where they went...
the meat was delicious, by the way...
*shudder* |
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| bad days |
[Mar. 8th, 2006|09:21 am] |
you know you're going to have a bad day when:
- you miss the bus
- the next bus that comes along doesn't stop because it's full
- the next bus after that is nearly full, and you spend the ride on the bus having a face full of underarm
i hope today gets better soon... |
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| MORE SPIDERS |
[Mar. 3rd, 2006|09:23 am] |
so, i went for dinner at my sister's place last night, and when she dropped me home, her headlights illuminated AN ENORMOUS HUNTSMAN SPIDER on the wall opposite our guest parking spot...
we both mildly freaked (she more than i), and she suggested i should get the spray and kill it... i put it to her that outside was a goddamn good place for the spider, and that i'd kill it if it came inside or got in my way...
so then, i got out of the car and went to go inside... it was then that the SECOND EVEN BIGGER FUCKING HUNTSMAN moved from its vantage point near the front door, and scuttled across above it: WHY DO THESE FUCKBAGS DO THAT? WE'VE HAD HALF A DOZEN OF THESE BASTARDS AT THE HOUSE NOW, AND THEY ALL SIT ON OR ABOVE DOORS LIKE THEY GET SOME SEXUAL CHARGE FROM IT!!!
i freaked again (a bit harder this time) and reported this evil development to my sister, who hadn't left yet... i said she could go, that i'd be fine, so she left, at high speed... and then began the battle...
i threw shit at it; bark chips, small stones, anything i could get my hands on; all it did was dodge and weave, and beckon for more mockingly...
and at that point, he got the hose... i blasted him with high-pressure water, and knocked him flat... but undeterred, he remounted the wall and sat glowering over the front door again...
after more hosings and throwings, he crawled across the underside of the verandah and tried to hide, giving me lower-risk access to the door, which i used... once inside, i locked the security door and wedged open the main door, and tried spraying him through the mesh; it didn't work very well, and i had to actually open the door and stick my whole arm out to spray him effectively...
i don't know what became of him after that; there are enough tears in the security door mesh that i felt the need to close the main door, and then checked every room inside the house for any more of the obnoxious little creeps (there was one inside; not a huntsman, i think it may have been a whitetail or black house spider; whatever the fuck he was, he got the underside of my boot) ...
and after that, i checked the time, and discovered that the whole ordeal had taken almost a whole hour... how utterly ridiculous... |
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