Your Hubcaps Cost More Than My Car

Never Got That Cash.

2008-10-29T23:13:00.003+11:00

http://applecrosswc.blogspot.com/2008/02/australia-vs-qatar-gooda-ruck.html

So North Melbourne did end up finishing in the top 8 but I never got my cash. He bought us a round of drinks and then made the same bet again for the next year. So I guess if he is right next season I'm not paying him!

It's In The Mail...

2008-10-13T20:23:00.003+11:00

I was driving to work last Friday when I noticed a postie bike parked on the grass on the side of a main road. There was mail all over the grass and I noticed the postman was on the inside lane of the road trying to pick up all the mail he had dropped. There was packages on the ground and letters blowing along the road. I guess the mail isn't as reliable as I always thought.

WELCOME TO THE FUTURE.

2008-10-09T20:13:00.004+11:00

My favourite emoticon ever invented is definitely from the somethingawful.com forums

Well the good news is that the poster "International Log" has made a 3d version of it

Christmas Party Time.

2008-10-08T20:11:00.003+11:00

So my boss came around and asked if I'm bringing anyone to the Christmas party this year so he could organise numbers for the booking. I looked down at the desk and he could immediately see it was a bad question. My eyes welled up and I started screaming that she broke up with me, I had been dumped for Jesus, how could a mere mortal like myself compete with the messiah? Plus her new boyfriend's father is our all powerful creator where as my dad's biggest achievement was drinking an entire slab of VB one afternoon. Apparently she can also communicate with him anytime by simply speaking in prayer, which means he is always there for her. Unfortunately I can't offer the same because I'm limited by my mobile phone $300 cap.

To top it off I then began vomiting uncontrollably everywhere while apologising profusely. It was a bit embarrassing but it meant I got the afternoon off work.

98 Years Young.

2008-10-06T19:18:00.004+11:00

My grandma is pretty old. She just turned 98 on the weekend and I went and saw her. Usually I'm not alone with her and I was worried I wouldn't be able to think of much to talk about but we got along just fine. Although sometimes it is tough to think of topics of conversation when you are speaking to someone who was born in Glasgow in 1910.

I'd always wondered how come her Scottish accent wasn't very strong where as my grandad could be quite difficult to understand. I found out that when she talks to Scottish people it's stronger but she deliberately tones it down for us Aussies. She's living in a retirement village and I think it's awesome and want to move in ASAP. It sort of reminds me of living in a nice motel. You have your own lounge, separate bedroom and bathroom and all meals are provided. You can have them in your room or down in the dining room with everyone else. They also hold events for them, my grandma was telling me about an upcoming Scottish night for St. Andrew's Day or Burn's night or something. Best of all... they've got a pool table too!

I doubt I'll live anywhere near that long even though genetics is on my side. My grandad, her husband, lived till he was 100 and I have a funny feeling that she will make it too. I also have a funny feeling that I will buck the trend and die before I'm 30.

HELLO LADIES - PART 2

2008-10-01T18:59:00.003+10:00

Hello Ladies! I believe I have concocted the perfect outfit! First I found this shirt in my dad's wardrobe and followed it up with my favourite pair of shorts and a pair of comfortable sandals. The red tie adds a touch of class yet this wacky addition also reflects my wacky, zany personality - the same personality that makes me the life of LAN parties! When it comes to headwear, you can't go past the fedora, I think sometimes that the rapper Usher wears one. No offence Usher, but I think you should stick to what your name suggests and just be an usher (I came up with that one myself LOL). And to top the outfit off, there is just a *adjusts transition lenses* hint of belly button.

Got a spare $2000?

2008-10-01T18:46:00.003+10:00

Well turns out I actually only owe 2 grand to the ATO. What a relief. Also it wasn't only because of my HECS debt. It's because I'm a foolish boy who saved a lot of money in a high interest account and now I have to pay tax on that. Plus because of this extra interest that I didn't pay HECS on, I now have to cover the HECS I should have paid on that, I might have even jumped up a HECS bracket because of the interest I earned. I'm thinking I should have just paid my HECS off completely when I could have seeing as I haven't invested in property or anything. An even better idea would have been to spend all my money so this won't happen again.

I guess I should be cheerful that I'm paying all this tax because it's all going to good causes like politicians superannuation payouts, antique furniture for the lodge, first class flights and of course all those magnificent lunches they enjoy.

HELLO LADIES - PART 1

2008-09-30T20:44:00.004+10:00

Hello my darling Internet lover. Would you care for a glass of this wine I found in my parents kitchen?

Got a spare $1400?

2008-09-30T20:16:00.002+10:00

Just saw an accountant and apparently I might owe FUCKING $1400 to the fucking tax department. It seems like they mysteriously haven't been taking out enough tax at work to cover my compulsory HECS repayments. Just the news I wanted to hear, I'm over the moon!

Actually, there is a factual mistake in the previous paragraph. HECS has had an extreme makeover and is now known by the acronym, HELP. Good work government, what a stunning change, I can honestly say that the switch in name was money well spent.

A Jesus Mixtape.

2008-09-29T18:54:00.004+10:00

Here are my favourite songs about Jesus Christ.

Supergrass - Jesus Came From Outta Space.
Ministry - Jesus Built My Hotrod.
Ugly Kid Joe - Jesus Rode A Harley.
Soundgarden - Jesus Christ Pose.
Slayer - Jesus Saves.
TISM - Jesus Pots the White Ball.
The Fratellis - Jesus Stole my Baby.
Bad Religion - American Jesus
Pump'n Ethyl - Jesus Was A Homo.
NOFX - Leaving Jesusland.
NOFX - Dueling Retards (This one isn't about Jesus but I like the idea of dueling retards).

I put this on a mix CD for my car and now I listen to Christian music I am 77% more likely to go to heaven. Plus having the holy spirit as a passenger improves my driving.

Lame Valentine's Day Presents.

2008-02-16T18:50:00.002+11:00

Someone told me that their friend was bragging about the gifts she got for Valentine's Day last on Thursday. It turned out she got a Simple Plan CD. Now that is pretty lame in itself, but what could you couple that with to make it even lamer? A crossword book. What an amazing combo. I don't think you could any lamer than that no matter how hard you try.

100k For Hootie. A whining sack of Hootie.

2008-02-09T22:55:00.000+11:00

I found a site that tells you how much it costs to get bands or comedians to put on a show. Of course I can't guarantee it's accuracy but some of the figures were interesting. It seems to be for shows at colleges.

Bob Saget - 35 to 40k.
Everclear - 25k. Thought they would have been more!
Jimmy Eat World - 100k.
Kings Of Leon - 25k. No way, much to cheap!
Lynyrd Skynyrd - 150k.
Pauly Shore - 15 to 20k. Amazing that people would pay that much.
Reel Big Fish - 15 to 25k. Seems cheap seeing as there about 24 guys in the band!
Sum 41 - 25 to 30k. Once again, seems way too cheap for a band that's still popular.
Third Eye Blind - 50 to 75k. It appears that washed up one hit wonders are more expensive!?
Hootie And The Blowfish - 100k.

Hah! 100k for Hootie And The Blowfish!? That can't be right. Either Hootie know they are shit and are playing a joke or the figures on that site are made up. I remember when Tim Rogers was performing one of his solo songs when "Hey Hey It's Saturday" was still on TV. The show always had 2 musical guests on and he was on halfway through the show with Hootie And The Blowfish finishing up on the same episode. The song he performed had the line "just to remind myself what a whining sack of shit I am" in it, but of course he wasn't allowed to say "shit" on a family show. Therefore he did the next big thing and replaced it with "Hootie". What a whining sack of Hootie I am indeed.

Australia Vs Qatar (Gooda ruck!)

2008-02-08T22:05:00.000+11:00

On Wednesday I went and watched Australia Vs Qatar at Telstra Dome. Now that Australia is in the Asian confederation they play a lot more games to qualify for the world cup. This game against Qatar was one of the world cup qualifiers.

A mate and I went straight from work into the city and grabbed a beer at Young and Jackson's while waiting for a couple of friends from uni to arrive. The place was full of old blokes with Iron Maiden t-shirts on. A lot of beards were also present that night. The reason being that there was an Iron Maiden concert on that night. After a couple of beverages we caught a tram down Collins St to the dome. What is it with people standing in the doorways of tram when there is a tonne of room down the end?

As we were walking through Southern Cross station (formerly Spencer St Station, thanks Bracksy), I noticed an Asian girl walking along among the hundreds of Australian soccer fans. Twenty seconds later she came up to me and asked something like "is the soccer on tonight?" Her English was really bad so she was hard to understand. She kept following me as I was walking to the stadium and I asked if she was from Japan. She seemed so excited that I knew she was from Japan and asked "do you know I'm from Japan by my lips". I have no idea what she meant by this. The real reason I knew she was from Japan was because she pronounced her "L's" as "R's". She ended up following me all the way to the stadium and then got me to take a picture of her in front for the stadium. Of course she was doing the peace sign thing that the Japanese are so fond of. Before leaving she wished me "Gooda Ruck!"

Australia ended up killing Qatar which was a pleasant surprise. Even though they should have killed a team like Qatar there seemed to be a lot of excuses made before the game just in case they happened to draw or lose. There was 50,000 at the Dome which was a great crowd. Even though it was great to see Australia win, it almost seemed too easy with the game basically over at the 30 minute mark.

After the game I went with my mate from work to meet one of his friends. We meet him at Transport in Fed Square and I ended up getting sucked into $100 bet. He went for the Sydney Swans and was bagging the crap out of North Melbourne finances and saying they would fold. I could accept that because I knew he was wrong and we would reverse our finances, but once he turned to on field performance it really annoyed me. He kept saying that North wouldn't make the final 8. Fair play to him, he put his money where his mouth was and we made a $100 bet that North wouldn't make the final 8. This was a pretty risky bet on his behalf seeing as North finished 3rd last year.

I can't wait for my $100 in September!

The Doors Won't Open.

2008-02-04T22:56:00.000+11:00

So I went to get off the train tonight and the doors made this funny beep but wouldn't open. Sometimes the doors don't open for a while so I stood waiting for the correct beep while a woman on the other side stood waiting to get in. Then I noticed people walking down the platform and it slowly dawned on me it was only this door that wouldn't open. Just as I realised the train started to pull away meaning I missed my stop. At the next stop I went to the next door along where some people were waiting to get off. The train stopped and this one wouldn't open either until some guy forced it. Some more fantastic work from Connex!

Worst Game Ever.

2008-02-03T19:13:00.001+11:00

Reading about the game, Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing, gave me a laugh. I laugh even harder when I imagine people playing this game for the first time after having paid money for it. Here are some excerpts from the Wikipedia article for what is considered one of the worst games ever.

Additionally, they pointed out, the computer-controlled opponent vehicles have no AI and never move from the starting position, making even the description of the gameplay as a "race" questionable

There are technically no obstacles for the player to negotiate in Big Rigs, as the truck may freely be driven on and off roads without any loss of traction, straight up 90° inclines, through structures, simply falling right through bridges (there is no collision detection whatsoever), and even out of the boundaries of the map into an endless grey void. No matter what the player does, it is impossible to lose the race. When the player's truck is put into reverse, the truck will accelerate infinitely; however, the truck will halt instantly when the reverse key is released.

Upon completion of the race, the player is presented with a large, three-handled, on-screen trophy cup overlaid with the text "YOU'RE WINNER !" Due to a developer oversight, the game occasionally fails to distinguish between whether the player is starting or finishing the race when they pass through the starting checkpoint, and so this screen may appear to end the race before it even begins. In addition, one of the game's five maps causes the game to crash altogether when accessed.

Stellar Stone released a patch that fixes some of the game's glitches. With the patch, the opponent does participate in the race, but stops before it reaches the finish line. The fifth map that caused the game to crash when selected was also fixed. However, the patch replaced the broken track with an exact mirror image of the first track.

Sounds awesome!

2008 is here.

2008-01-31T21:12:00.000+11:00

I can't believe it's already 2008. It seems that not so long ago the decade was just starting. 2007 seemed like a bit of a waste of a year to me. I did nothing of note and therefore nothing stands out worth mentioning. Either that or I have just forgotten anything good that actually happened.

Nothing fantastic has happened since I last wrote in here. Basically I watched some cricket, played some guitar hero and browsed the net. Exciting stuff. For Christmas we had the family over plus four of my sister's Scottish friends who are living in Australia. We ate lunch out on the balcony and it was a pleasant day but wasn't too hot and sunny. One of the Scottish lads started putting sunscreen on and we had a bit of a laugh about it because the sun wasn't that strong. It turned out the joke was on me because when I was at a friends house that night, they pointed out how badly burnt I was. That will teach me!

In between Christmas and new year I saw Built To Spill, an indie band from Ohio. It was at the Corner Hotel in Richmond which is a decent venue, I had been there once before to see Stephen Malkmus. We managed to get quite close to the front in the centre but I still always somehow manage to get a 6'4" giant standing in front of me. The actual show was great and they played everything I wanted to hear including Time Trap which is the one I was really hanging out for. The only song they didn't play that I would have loved to have heard was Distopian Dream Girl. It was loud yet extremely clear and you could easily pick out the 3 different guitars and bass unlike some concerts where it all melds together. Before the show I had heard that they like to jam a bit and they demonstrated this throughout the show extending some songs. This was all well and good and throughout the set it was enjoyable. The encore was a massive disappointment though. They played one song and then jammed for about 15 minutes to end the show. If it was good I wouldn't have minded so much, but it seemed almost experimental with a lot of feedback and weird sounds and just kept dragging on and on. My friend summed it up best when he asked me, "do they even realise we are still here?" It was a disappointing end to a great show.

I also saw Muse at Rod Laver Arena in November. Despite seeing them earlier in the year at Festival Hall I went because they kept saying this time it was their "full show". I enjoyed the concert but at the same time was a little disappointed because it was pretty much the exact same show as the one earlier in the year. I'm not sure what the "full show" business was all about. The other disappointing thing was the crowd didn't get into it at all. I was standing in general admission and barely anyone was moving.

I really can't remember much else that has happened this summer. This Friday I was meant to go to the 20/20 match at the MCG to see Australia Vs India but tickets have sold out and I am shattered. I had been planning it the whole summer and it would have been an awesome experience to be in a crowd with the 80,000+ people they are expecting. Plus I was hoping the crowd would be giving India some stick for being some of the biggest sooks ever.

One other kind of amusing thing that happened a while ago was on the train. A girl I liked in high school got on the train. In year 9 we had talked a fair bit because we had sat near each other in class but after that we didn't have much to do with each other. Anyway, she came and sat directly in front of me in the seat facing me. Our legs were basically touching. We looked at each other and I think there was recognition in her eyes. So what did I do? I grabbed a book out of my bag and started reading it daring not to look up at her the whole 25 minute ride. She got out a book and did the same. It was so damn awkward. I'm such a dork, a simple "hi" at the start would have made it all better!

I'm A Broadie Boy.

2007-12-05T22:11:00.000+11:00

It sure was an adventure getting home tonight on the train. There was excitement, entertainment, fear and frustration involved during the train trip. I was listening to my Ipod and heard a bit of ruckus coming from the other end of the carriage. It sounded like someone shouting but I couldn't hear it clearly. The next stop the man causing the ruckus had reached my end of the carriage.

I am not sure exactly what was going on but a tattooed man with a cap and blood shot eyes who was obviously drunk or on drugs was shouting at someone at the opposite end of the carriage. He was swearing and carrying on and another guy was trying to calm him down. Down my end of the carriage was all women and two other guys, one whom looked like Billy Corgan when he still had hair. I was hoping that guy wasn't going to do anything crazy as I would have had to do something. The guy with him kept telling him to calm down and the next thing I notice they are grappling with each other near the doors and kind of choking each other.

People started getting a bit scared and someone said to press the emergency button which someone did. So we pull up at Melbourne Central and the doors open and stay open, everyone on the carriage assumes security will come and get rid of the nut. We wait 5 minutes and people start to get impatient, it's amusing because the only time people seem to talk to each other on trains is when something bad happens. The train driver finally made an announcement which was "can the man in the red cap please calm down". Yeah real helpful. By this time he had spotted someone on the platform and was now shouting and swearing at him, I remember hearing the phrases "I'll kill you" and "I'll shoot you". Security had still not arrived and some women were telling him to sit down and calm down and we could get going again to try and get the guy to shutup.

Amazingly the doors shut and the train took off leaving this nutcase on it! Some fantastic work from Connex leaving an unpredicatable lunatic on the train scaring people and making everyone feel uneasy. We went 2 more stations to North Melbourne and by this time the guy had calmed down and was sitting down quietly when security staff finally got on and told him to get off. This obviously set him off again. Once they had him off the train and on the platform we had to wait another 5 minutes for some unknown reason. Everyone on the carriage was disgusted with the late response by Connex but I guess there main concern is sending 8 massive guys in trench coats to catch and intimidate fare evaders. The best quote from the nut was "I'm a Broadie boy", it actually gave everyone on the train a bit of a giggle because he was just stating the obvious.

Once I finally got off the train at my stop I had to ring someone to get a lift from the station. I went to get my phone out of my bag and realised I had left it at work. There is one public phone at the station and some Indian guy was using it. I stood near him for 5 minutes and still he kept going. 10 minutes and still he kept going. 15 minutes and I'd had enough and went asked how long he was going to be. He told me he was going to be half an hour because he was calling overseas! Due to the previous events on the train and the delay in getting home I wasn't in the mood for bullshit and nearly lost it at him. I did manage to keep my calm and say "I need to use it, tell them you will call them back, its a fucking public phone." A minute later he hung up and let me use it so I could finally get home.

The Dream is Over.

2007-11-18T11:21:00.000+11:00

Last night, Italy scored in the 92 minute from an absolute embarrassing joke of a free kick against Scotland. Sounds familiar doesn't it? Italy did have a goal disallowed that should have stood earlier in the game, but that doesn't take away the pain of such a crap decision made by the linesman! Since when does the linesman ever bother making decisions? So that ends Scotland's chance of qualifying for Euro 2008 in a group that contained France and Italy. It was still a fantastic effort to almost qualify.

Here is my favourite picture of an Italian player. Sums up the Italian team nicely.

Parking Difficulties.

2007-11-12T19:43:00.000+11:00

Wow, I haven't written in here for a while. On Saturday night I went to see another scoreless draw at the Telstra Dome when Melbourne Victory took on Sydney. It started off well enough meeting someone from work for a couple of beers but then I got a call that someone else from work would be late. Then my friend from uni arrived and his girlfriend was coming but his phone had gone flat so he had to borrow mine so she could call him while we went in to get seats. Another friend who was meant to call the friend meeting his girlfriend once we got seats forgot to call and didn't notice my other mate trying to ring. This meant he sat on his own with his girlfriend till we finally realised he wasn't there and no one had called him.

Yet again, I watched a 0 - 0 draw at the Dome. Since becoming a member this season I have only seen scored 2 goals scored at home (I missed one match) and we are half way through the season!

After the match I met up with about 7 different friends throughout the night and went to 4 different places around the CBD. The night ended with a friend and I walking around the city in the daylight looking for his car that he had "misplaced". After 15 to 20 minutes of walking around we decided to get in a taxi which took us around the CBD looking for his car. Luckily we found it after 5 minutes and arrived home at about 7:30 am. Sunday was absolute hell. I woke up at 2pm and felt terrible so fell back asleep and amazingly woke up at 8pm. It is probably the latest I have ever slept. The problem with sleeping that late was I couldn't sleep on Sunday night so today has been hell as well. Thankfully work wasn't too busy.

My other parking story is from a few weeks ago. After Melbourne vs CCM, and a few drinks and some late night Chinese food we walked back to the car park where my friend had parked. I have to admit that a mate myself started laughing hysterically when we noticed the car park was locked. It got a little less funny when we found out it cost $85 to get the car out. The most ridiculous part was the security guard was sitting in his car out the front as if he was waiting for people who have mistakenly left their car in there too late. I always thought the reason it cost so much was because you had to call them out. In this case the guy pulled out his key chain and pressed a button and the gate opened. The fact it cost $85 was made even funnier by the fact if you pick it up first thing in the morning it is still $75! Although the best thing about those car parks is you usually can't see the sign saying what time it is open till until you turn into the driveway and can't get back out again. It was still funny though.

What is wrong with people?

2007-07-06T23:43:00.001+10:00

I can't guarantee that this is 100% authentic but apparently this video shows the results of some scum who have given their daughter an extacy pill. If it is real then it gives me the urge to cave their faces in with a crowbar. How anyone could do such a thing is beyond belief, I just can't comprehend it. Video is here.

Avril is Taking Over the World

2007-06-24T12:37:00.000+10:00

German

Chinese

Japanese

Now a further combined 1.6 billion can enjoy her manufactured faux-punk, pop crap! The Chinese version is the funniest.

Taking the Englishmen to the Footy.

2007-06-13T20:08:00.000+10:00

North Melbourne Kangaroos vs Melbourne Demons, MCG.

On the 27th May I headed to the footy with 3 Englishmen. Two were from work and one was one of their friends visiting from England. We had tickets on the 2nd level right behind the goal which proved to be a fantastic spot.

The first 3 quarters of the match were quite forgettable with the Kangaroos beating Melbourne quite easily. In the last quarter everything was turned on it's head. Melbourne kicked 6 goals straight and I wasn't happy at all. This put Melbourne 5 points up with not long to go and I was about to explode. Seeing as you don't have a countdown clock at the actual match, a North supporter in front rang a friend who was watching it live on TV. I heard him mention there was still 2 minutes left so this put me a bit more at ease.

Shortly after, North has a shot on goal but Corey Jones nearly put it out on the full. North manned up so Melbourne had no one to pass it to and the kick out was bad and came off hands and went over the line. At the throw in, the 19 year old Andrew Swallow roved the ball and showing great composure ran to the 50 metre line and banged it long towards the goal. Luckily I was right behind that goal so had a perfect view of it. The ball just made it over the line before the defender could touch it. I am normally a quiet guy but some things get me worked up. The 'roos leading by over 30 points in the last quarter and then losing that lead had fired me up. A supporter in front of me was feeling the same way. This resulted us being on the same wavelength, so when that goal went through I jumped out of my seat screaming and he was also out of his seat. He turned and looked at me and without a word we executed a perfect double-handed high 5.

Above you can see the miss and then the winning goal.

It was just about the perfect match for the visiting Englishman to watch and he had a great time, as did the other 2 who have been here longer. After the match we went to the pub and I was wearing my North scarfe and people wouldn't stop talking to me. A girl from the Gold Coast started talking to me about the match and said it was the first time she had been to the footy. She was hoping they would move to the Gold Coast where as I dread that possibility. She also said there was hardly any blonde people down in Melbourne which, after visiting my brother on the Gold Coast a few times, I can say is true. But the real question is, how many of them up there are real blondes?

60th Birthday + Chinese Restaurant + the Haka.

2007-06-13T19:42:00.000+10:00

A couple of weeks ago my dad turned 60. It's a bit weird thinking how old he is getting seeing as I can still remember when he was in 40's. I guess I am just getting old as well. For his party he booked out a room in a Chinese restaurant and invited about 40 people. My dad knew the owner so he allowed us some concessions like bringing in alcohol. There was also music provided by a guy with a guitar, a woman singing and a drum machine playing all the oldies.

The food was great and there was plenty of drinks so overall I had a good night. There was something weird about watching oldies dance to old rock n roll songs in a Chinese restaurant. Amazingly it was also the 2nd time I have seen someone perform the haka in a Chinese restaurant. The first time I experienced the Haka in a Chinese restaurant was when a New Zealander on my Contiki tour did it in a restaurant in Amsterdam. At my dad's party there was a Maori guy there who did it for some reason. Not sure why, I was pretty gone by that point.

At the end the owner opened the bar and was giving out free shots. My dad and his friends were having them but I was too weak to keep going. It's a bit worrying when your parents party harder than you do. They often stay out later than me also, I really have to pick up my game!

Kangaroos Vs Essendon, Telstra Dome

2007-05-14T18:31:00.000+10:00

On Friday night I went to see the Kangaroos play Essendon at Telstra Dome. I met one of my mates at the Charles Dickens Tavern which seemed like a decent place for a beer. I have a certain knack for strange people talking to me and it took only 10 seconds after walking in for this to happen. I walked up to the bar with a mate from work and this old bloke standing there goes "Hey mate how are you?" I said "Hi, I'm good" and he kept sort of looking at me, a bit confused. I looked back at him confused wondering what he wanted me to say next. Then he said he thought I was someone else because I had the same haircut. After that he started saying about how everyone has an identical twin and something about how he has one in Canberra. While this was going on my other friend turned up and I managed to get away from him.

There was no reception in the Charles Dickens and another friend was running late but everytime I went outside to call him it said there were no lines available. I already had my ticket but had to end up waiting in line and buying his ticket for him. Someone had been minding a seat for us since 6:30 so we had fantastic seats on the 3rd level directly side on at the halfway line. Two of the people I was with were Essendon supporters and one was a Hawthorn supporter.

The game was quite close in the first half but it seemed the Kangaroos had the edge and in the 3rd quarter they got 6 goals ahead and it appeared to be over. Essendon staged a bit of a comeback in the last quarter but the 'Roos ended up doing it pretty easily by 22 points. It was great to see a very healthy crowd of 42,000 people there. I had a few dickhead Essendon supporters in front of me who were calling out garbage during the match and were picking on a 13 year old Kangaroos supporter down in front of them. It turned out this made the game better as everytime the Kangaroos kicked a goal I made a lot of noise. The further the Kangaroos got ahead the quieter they became. I was looking forward to giving them the appropriate send off once the match ended but they were too weak to even stay and left about 15 minutes from the end. Nothing was happening on the field when they were shuffling out of the their seats but I was clapping anyway and as they walked out the exit I gave them a little wave and said goodbye. Of course I didn't get a reply, I guess they only have the nerve to make stupid smart arse comments when they are winning. It's always great to beat Essendon!

It's Your Turn Darren Hume!

2007-05-05T15:06:00.000+10:00

Seeing as I am on a roll of posting and love to spout bullshit I thought I would post about what I post about best, Darren Hume. This is taken from his myspace blog.

The wildlife shows won't be the same with the loss of Steve Irwin. My deepest sympathy goes to his family. I guess most people have heard my song Crocodile Man or watched the video. This was a fun song mostly for young kids that watched Steve's show.

You should have thought about that before you made that pisstake video of Steve Irwin! I am really curious as to why you would fly to New York to film a video about an Australian who was involved with Australia fauna and spent most of his time out in the Australian country. Oh so you make kids music as well now! A man of many talents!

As for my other song and video Wizards Drum people often ask - do wizards have drums? Who cares, wizards can do anything they like. I'm sure a wizard would enjoy beating a drum and having a good time like everyone else!

Beating drums is fun but I know something that is even more fun to beat. But seriously, who asked that question, the 3 people who have watched the video doesn't constitute "often." Also why would a wizard enjoy beating a drum when they can do wicked stuff like Gandalf does? Gandalf has the choice of smoking the Shire's finest pipe-weed or beating a drum, I am pretty sure he would choose to smoke the pipe-weed rather than beating a drum. And I know he would rather fight that Balrog and die or whatever the hell happened than listen to the travesty that is the song entitled "Wizard's Drum."

And for the busker who is singing my songs in Melbourne - good on you mate!

Fantastic to see you still read my blog and are up to date with the breaking stories about Darren Hume on this very blog!

So yesterday i went into my brother's room to check out the new fish he had just bought for his tank. the tv was on in his room, and coz he'd just left for work i thought no one was home. so i sat on the bed to check out the fish tank and turned the tv off. lo and behold a strange noise came from the bed. i was so shocked i fell off the bed........little did I know my brother had left his girlfriend at home when he left for work!!!!

Thanks for posting this gem of a story, it had me ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing for those not "down" (familiar) with Internet lingo).

Watched the new little britain movie and had a really good laugh. quite like that sort of stuff. one of my favourites was when they dressed up as nude women and were so huge and so gross i have never seen anything so ugly in all my life! when daffyd dresses up as the only gay in town, with his pants up his ass, he looks so hilarious. and then vicky pollard dressed in pink rabbitting on with a whole lot of bullshit that no one can understand! check out the website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/littlebritain/. If you have never seen it before i'd really recommend it!

Way to miss the whole point of it. Sounds like you are one of those guys that misses the whole point of jokes and laughs at some stupid visual thing that people got over within about 5 seconds. I can imagine you elbowing your mate while going "HAHAHAHAH LOOK HIS PANTS ARE STUCK UP HIS ARSE." Then David makes an actual joke and you miss the entire point of the joke and start slapping your thigh while saying "HAHAHA CHECK OUT HIS SHORTS, THEY ARE STUCK UP HIS ARSE YOU CAN SEE HALF HIS ARSE HAAHHAHAHAHAHA THIS IS THE BEST SHOW EVER!!!!!"

Paris is going to Jail!

2007-05-05T15:00:00.000+10:00

It seems like money and fame can't get you out of anything in America. Paris Hilton is going to spend 45 days in jail! Haha!

Celebrity socialite Paris Hilton was given a 45-day prison sentence by a Los Angeles court today after being found guilty of a parole violation.

The 26-year-old heiress to the Hilton hotel empire will begin her sentence on June 5, the court ruled, following a three-hour hearing at the Metropolitan Court House.

Hilton's parole violation came after she was caught driving on a suspended licence following her no contest plea to driving under the influence.

Prosecutors told the court Hilton had been stopped in her $US190,000 ($A231,045.18) Bentley Continental GTC on January 15 by the California Highway Patrol and told she was not allowed to be driving.

On that occasion, Hilton signed a police statement acknowledging she was not supposed to drive. But just over a month later she was hauled over again in Hollywood when spotted driving at night with her headlights off.

How will she ever cope in jail! Surely someone with such a privileged upbringing does not belong in jail. Have the Californian courts gone mad!?

Good, Bad and the Fugly.

2007-05-05T14:20:00.000+10:00

Last night I was catching the fantastic Connex train service to Flinders st in the city from work when the train got delayed in between Richmond and Flinders st station. Just what you want on a Friday night when you have a splitting headache and have already stayed at work late! The train was quite packed because there was a football match on at Telstra Dome and there was a 5 year old kid with his grandma sitting in front of me all decked out in Saints gear. The reason for the delay was a "trespasser on the tracks" which is a new excuse, usually the reasons they give are faulty trains, sick passengers and various other crap.

Anyway, there was one of those free MX newspapers propped up on the seat in front of the grandma and her grandson. It was open to a page with an article entitled "Good, Bad and Fugly." The kid was obviously just learning to read and he was pronouncing the words to his grandma... "Good, Bad.... and Fu...g..ly." Is that right Grandma? Then she read it back out to him. They kept reading it out for a bit and I was half cracking up. It was a case of her being too old to know what it meant and him being too young to know what it meant. If you don't know, Fugly is short for fucking ugly.

The day before I had to deal with more problems. Two of the trains I was catching to the city got canceled so by the time one arrived it was packed. It's always amusing when people try to force their way on and shout out "CAN PEOPLE MOVE DOWN INTO THE AISLES!?!?" despite the fact everyone is already packed in. This happened on the train I was on and another interesting thing about when things go wrong is it is the only time people will talk to strangers. A businessman sitting in front of next to me took of his headphones and started talking to this girl crushed up against me saying "where do they want us to move to, maybe you can sit on my shoulders?" Then the girl started talking to me which is the first time in about a year since catching the train that I have had a conversation with a stranger. I wasn't complaining because I was actually hoping that she might start speaking to me because she was pretty cute. All we did was bitch about the shitty state of the trains in Melbourne which is enjoyable for anyone who is unfortunate enough to rely on their service.

Once I got to the city I found out the fantastic news that a train had derailed on the line I catch out of the city out to work. Then the train I was catching was delayed due to the police having to talk to someone on the train. I forgot to the mention the train was one of those fantastic Hitachi trains from the 70's that Connex was meant to get rid of ages ago. Once we finally got going the furtherest I could go was to Caulfield where they had a bus service. I walked past the poor people who had to catch the bus and the line was going from the bus stop down the street and around the corner. I felt bad for those people, if it was me I would have just called work and said I am not coming in today. Lucky I could walk to work from Caulfield. But no, that wasn't the end of my adventurous travels to work.

I came up to a street I had to cross and the pedestrian man was red so I had to wait. There wasn't really any pedestrians around but lots and lots of traffic because it's a main road. As I am standing there someone came up right beside me to wait to cross the road. I did the natural thing and turned and looked at him. He had a beard and at the start I couldn't work out if he was some crazy weirdo or a normal guy. My question was soon answered. I turned to look back ahead of me and out of the corner of my eye I could see the guy with his head turned facing me staring at me from only about half a metre away. I turned to look back at him thinking he was going to say something but that didn't happen. He just kept staring. After turning back to look at him twice and realising he was still staring, I started to feel incredibly uneasy. Then he started doing this thing where he would look ahead and then turn his head to the side and look at me once about every 2 seconds. I started to think bad thoughts like I hope this guy doesn't do something insane like push me out into the traffic which was flying past about 1 metre in front of me. Once the light changed I let him walk ahead and hung back a bit but I had to deal with him walking the entire way to work because he kept dropping the 2 plastic bags he was carrying and I would catch up to him. He also kept turning around and looking at me. Finally I arrived at work about an hour and 40 minutes after I left home. I would like to give a big thank you to the Victorian state government for privatising the train network and a big thank you to Connex for doing such a fantastic job after being awarding the contact. You guys are awesome keep up the good work you bunch of fucking muppets.

The Death of Fitzroy.

2007-04-25T17:53:00.000+10:00

I was reading the North Melbourne Kangaroos forums and all the talk of the team being relocated to the Gold Coast reminded me of sad memories from back in 1996. That was the year that Fitzroy were screwed over by the AFL and "merged" with Brisbane which, in reality, was more of a takeover by Brisbane. The sad thing is the team I know support, the Kangaroos, are looking more and more like they are going to be forced to move to the Gold Coast. The low membership figures, the recent poor on-field performances and finally, the media turning on them, are all reminiscent of Fitzroy. It appears that some journalists have an agenda such as that snide bitch Caroline Wilson who constantly churns out articles about the Kangaroos moving to the Gold Coast and seems to put a negative spin and throw in cheap shots in any article about them.

In 1996 it looked like Fitzroy were going to merge with the Kangaroos, an outcome which I would have been happy with. Instead the AFL sold them out right at the last minute and they were forced to merge with the Brisbane Bears which was basically just a take over. This situation resulted in the best banner ever made which was unveiled at the last game they played at Victoria Park.

Seduced by North (Melbourne), Raped by Brisbane, Fucked by the AFL summed it up perfectly. Reading about Fitzroy also lead me to a video of my best live football memory ever which was from round 11, Saturday 30th of May, 1992. It was a match against Collingwood at Princes Park and at this stage Fitzroy still had a pretty good team. Fitzroy were leading all day and back in those days you used to be able to get in for free at 3/4 time to see the last quarter. We headed down for the last quarter and Collingwood started coming back till there was only a goal in it.

Then disaster struck when Collingwood went long into their forward line and the ball ended up at the back of the pack. None other than Gary Pert, a champion ex-Fitzroy full back who was arguably the best fullback of his era, was waiting down at the back in front of goal. The ball dropped to him and he turned around and kicked an easy goal. It was ironic that a player that was much loved by Fitzroy fans had put the hated Collingwood in front.

Once it got down to under a minute left with the ball on the wing it appeared that all was lost. Then Fitzroy kicked long into the forward line and a pack of players formed but no one could mark it and the ball dropped to the front of the pack. Paul Abbot picked the ball up and tried to crash through some Collingwood players but was tackled by 2 of them. This resulted in the ball dropping into the arms of Paul Roos who snapped a goal with his left foot with only about 13 seconds left. It was fitting that the Fitzroy captain and legend kicked the winning the goal.

I was quite young at the time and all I remember is the crowd going nuts and jumping up and down and my dad literally throwing me in the air. It still ranks as my greatest live sporting memory along with a massive comeback by Australia against NZ in a one day international at the MCG.

Someone has posted a video of the match on youtube, it's great to see the fans running on the ground after the match patting him on the back. Things sure have changed.

Back To The Footy.

2007-04-18T20:47:00.000+10:00

On Sunday I went to the Dome for a twilight match between the Kangaroos and the Hawks. It was the first time I had been in 2 years and was organised by my mate Dean who barracks for the Hawks. He knew I was a Kangaroos supporter and he goes nearly every week so invited me along. John, an Englishman from work, also came along with his girlfriend.

Hawthorn and the Roos haven't been doing too well lately and the match turned out to be one of the worst matches I have ever seen. The skills on display were terrible and the crowd was constantly groaning at some of the mistakes made. I found myself groaning at Hawthorn's mistakes even though they advantaged my team. The problem was the Kangaroos didn't take advantage of the oppositions mistakes and made plenty of their own. The first half was very low scoring and riddled with errors such as poor kicking, handballing to the wrong team and indecisiveness resulting in players constantly getting caught with the ball. Top that off with pathetic kicking for goal and terrible, inconsistent, soft umpiring and it results in a frustrating and forgettable half of football.

As usual the Roos were overrun in the 3rd quarter and despite a brief glimpse of hope in the last were beaten pretty easily in the end. In about the 3rd quarter I declared to my mate that this was the worst match of footy I have ever witnessed and the Hawthorn supporter in front of me turned around and said "that is one thing I will agree on." It was just that kind of match.

It looks like it is going to be a long season for the Roos. They just don't seem to have the players and I think they need a new coach by the end of the season. The Hawks weren't much better and if they were playing against decent opposition would have lost by 10 goals. Football seems to have lost some of the excitement it generated for me when I was a kid. Part of the reason is the team I used to support and was brought up with, Fitzroy, "merged" with Brisbane in 1996. It was more of a takeover by Brisbane in actual fact and they are now based in Queensland, miles away from me. Even after Fitzroy were no more I still enjoyed football but the game just seems to have changed so much and I really find myself longing for the old days. It has become much softer due to soft free kicks being paid and some of the the best aspects of it seem to have disappeared. Big scores aren't as common and the days of big pack marks and forwards kicking bags of goals are in decline.

I hate to say it but I think I am starting to prefer soccer more than AFL football which is something I never thought would happen.

The Best Music Video Ever Made.

2007-04-15T21:45:00.000+10:00

What is the best music ever made? It is a tough question that has now been answered. I proudly present to you the best music video ever made.

50 Cent gets what he deserves at Reading.

2007-04-09T12:42:00.000+10:00

God bless the UK. Check out this video of 50 Cent getting hundreds of bottles thrown at him.

I don't normally condone people throwing stuff on the stage but in this case it was totally appropriate. I am not sure why they would have some corporate gangsta rap bullshit (or whatever he is classified as) at a music festival like Reading but the crowd certainly let everyone know what they think of him.

Apparently one of the "G-Unit" got hit by a camping chair and they left the stage after only playing a couple of songs which meant Green Day played a longer set. Good work Britain, fight to keep that crap across the other side of the Atlantic where it belongs.

Fantastic news for Darren Hume fans.

2007-04-06T17:09:00.000+10:00

I haven't updated in a very long time but this news was far too important to keep to myself. The man behind the hits Crocodile Man and Wizard's Drum, Darren Hume, now has his very own Myspace account. Myspace was already ridiculous enough but it certainly has raised the bar with Darren Hume in the Myspace "music" section.

Darren lists his music as Country/Techno/Alternative. It appears he is trying to cover all bases but he isn't fooling anyone. Let's take a look at his biography shall we?

I enjoy watching science fiction movies, like Star Wars, and I also like Merlin and Lord of the Rings. The special effects in these movies were fantastic. I also acted in Dark City. The song Alien was inspired by that movie. Lord of the Rings and Merlin inspired Wizards Drum. Vampire was written after watching Tom Cruise, who acted so brilliantly in this movie.

My only question to Darren about Dark City would be, did you get be on the set for the filming of the Melissa George nude scene? I am glad to see that movies inspire him to write songs but just imagine the director/writer of Dark City hearing the news that Darren Hume's song "Alien" was inspired by their movie. I think after listening to the song phrases such as "What have I done!?" would be screamed while people tried to comfort them patting them on the back uttering phrases such as "It's not your fault, you didn't know the horror it would result in." It would be kind of like when the black guy, Dyson, in Terminator 2 finds out that he and the company he works for, Cyberdine Systems are responsible for billions of human deaths in the future. He thought he was doing good but when he finds out what he is ultimately responsible for he slumps to the ground with a blank look on his face. This is the kind of reaction I would expect from anyone if they found out one of their movies inspired Darren Hume to create a song, basically it's like finding out you are responsible for the deaths of billions of people when the software system you designed and named Skynet became self-aware and started lobbing nukes around the earth. Only this time Arnie isn't available to save you because he is too busy governing California.

It disappoints me greatly to see that Lord of the Rings inspired Wizard's Drum. As much as I love the Lord of the Rings books and movies, I am going to have to hold this one against you J.R.R. Even if you did die before Darren was even born.

I like songs with weird sounds and music, so I tell the keyboard player to put in all the weird sounds he can think of in my music that he has never used before! Probably this is why I like Pink Floyd. Dreamcatcher gives you an example of this. That is why I created the album Wind and Fire.

Here we see Darren Hume trying to slip one past us again, like he has on many occasions! In this instance he is trying interchange the word "shit" with "weird". Nice try Darren but you can't fool me! How wacky and zany telling they keyboardist to put in weird sounds that he has never used before! Darren is truly a pioneer telling the keyboardist to use number 113: sound of ball bouncing on his Casio keyboard despite it sounding like complete crap and only being available so the keyboard manufacturer can put a big title on the box saying "Now comes with 434 different sounds!" Of course they fail to mention that most of them sound like complete arse and are only funny to use to piss off your teacher in year 7 music class. I am just going to leave the reference to Pink Floyd alone.

The album Lightning Woman was written because I wanted to create something different in country music, that was not about heartbreak. And write about different subjects, such as Ghost Piano, Rattlesnake Rose and Stereo Man.

I also like mucking around with my car. I clean it so much the neighbours all tease me!!!

I am glad that Darren chose to wrote about something different in country music because there actually is a big gap when it comes to songs about Ghost Piano's, Rattlesnake Rose(s) and Stereo Men. It's a simple case of supply and demand except he didn't realise that no one wants to hear songs about Ghost Pianos. I do have an idea for Darren though and I have accidently switched to the country music channel on Foxtel many times so like to think of myself as a bit of an authority on country music. How about you write a song about a ghost ghost piano!? That's right, its a song about a piano that was a ghost that died and became the ghost of a ghost piano! What's that you say? Ghost pianos can't die because they are already dead? Well that is where you are misinformed because I asked my uncle who is an authority on everything and he said ghost pianos dying and becoming ghost ghost pianos has been widely reported. After divulging this information to me he promptly passed out while watching the midday episode of Dr. Phil. I think he may have a drinking problem. There you go Darren, you can educate the public by dispelling any myths about the non-existence of ghost ghost pianos.

Darren has also listed Crowded House in his influences for country section. Pretty cool how a rock/pop band can influence his country music. You can also listen to some samples of his songs but just make sure no one else is in the room because it turns into one of those really, awkward embarrassing moments where you both look at each other for a few seconds and then try to avoid eye contact because the sound that is coming out of the speakers is just beyond embarrassing.

PS. I love bananas lots because they are yellow and delicious.

Memories - The One and All.

2007-03-03T15:47:00.000+11:00

I was cleaning my room today and going through old computer CD's and came across the first CD I ever burnt. It had various files on it like old applications, files relating to the game Quake and some film clips. Although, the most interesting directory I found contained old school work.

In year 10 I went on a school trip to Adelaide where we embarked on a tall ship called "The One and All." We spent a week on this ship doing all the activities associated with the running of a tall ship which included getting sea-sick and throwing up over the side. On the CD I found an essay I wrote about the trip. I think it was written in year 10 but am not 100% sure. Obviously all the best parts were left out because I handed this in to be assessed. It was funny to read something I had written so long ago.

We arrived at dusk not sure what to expect. The tall ship, the ‘One and All’, stood in dock bobbing up and down gently. We, the students of Overnewton Anglican Community College, wearily exited the bus that had transported us from Melbourne to Adelaide and got our first glimpse of the ship. The ship that we were to spend a week on.

The first thing I noticed was that the ship looked a lot shorter in real life than in pictures. Many other students agreed and commented on how it was a lot smaller than they had expected it to be. “We have to spend a whole week on that!” some people exclaimed.

The ship’s crew greeted us and we proceeded to cautiously clamber down on to the deck. The entire ship was made from wood and consisted of a galley that was above deck, the main cabin where we slept, the workshop and the crew quarters. We moved into the inner bowels of the ship, the main cabin and were allocated bunks. The main cabin was dark and dingy. It seemed like bunks had been built in every confined corner to cram in as many people as possible. Privacy was in the form of a ragged curtain that became a makeshift barrier between your bunk and the next.

We slept on the ship that night and most people discovered that the bunks were as uncomfortable as they looked. My sleep was interrupted often that night as I kept hitting my head on the wall next to my cramped bunk.

In the morning we moved out from the dock, down the river and into St Vincent’s Gulf with assistance from the engine. We had been taught a bit about the sails and how they work but by the time it came to actually putting what we had learnt in to action, it was a different story. Luckily the crew realised we had no hope of remembering everything and helped us out otherwise anything could have happened.

For the next week we did many extraordinary things on the ‘One and All’. Getting up in the early hours of the morning to go on watch or steer the ship and climbing to the top of the mast to set sails were some of the things we did. Not very extraordinary tasks for some people but to us they were. Getting up early in the morning consistently for a week was torture for me. Some of the things I missed most about home were the little things like having a shower. In the ship, turning around in the shower was a struggle so having a long, relaxing shower was impossibility.

One of the most exhilarating tasks on the ship was climbing to the top of the mast. Climbing up a rope ladder to lofty heights with no safety harness is an experience I’ll never forget. It was even more frightening scaling the ladder at sea while the ship was rocking from side to side. One moment, the deck is below you, the next time you look down the sea is directly under you. Climbing right to the top took a lot of courage. Once I had made it to the top and back down safely I felt like I had really achieved something because I had overcome my fear of heights.

The only unfortunate part about the trip was getting seasick, another experience I won’t forget quickly. Once we had been out sailing for two days everyone was fine and we thought we must not get seasick. Once it started getting a bit rougher, things changed. Everyone was seasick for one whole day. The worst thing about it is there is nothing you can do about it and you don’t know how long it is going to last. In the end you just want to go home. Luckily our seasickness passed after only one day.

The most exciting part of the trip was when it got rough and I was over my seasickness. Standing at the bow of the ship during heavy seas was a lot of fun. I don’t know if getting drenched through a waterproof jacket and two layers of clothing is considered fun by some people, but to me it was. The bow was lifting right up out of the water and slamming back down into it and the salty spray drenched me. Trying to walk along the deck was challenge even with assistance from the railing.

After finally getting home after an overnight bus trip from Adelaide, I fell on my bed exhausted. I thought about what a great time I had had before falling asleep in a comfortable bed.

Tommorrow, It's On...

2007-02-17T09:57:00.000+11:00

Melbourne Victory Vs Adelaide United - Telstra Dome, Sunday 17th of February, 2007

I got the above image from the Melbourne Victory forums. It shows the infamous incident between the Adelaide coach, John Kosmina, and Melbourne Victory captain, Kevin Muscat. A friend managed to get tickets so 6 of us are going tomorrow. Let's hope Adelaide choke! The funny thing is that Kosmina couldn't keep his big mouth shut after winning last week and abused the referee so is coaching from the stands again!

Muse at Festival Hall, Melbourne.

2007-02-13T18:48:00.000+11:00

On Wednesday the 31st of January I went to Festival Hall to see Muse's 2nd show in Melbourne. When tickets first went on sale I couldn't find anyone to go with and am too much of a pussy to go on my own. Luckily after a month I found someone I know to go with so rang up ticketmaster to book tickets. The automated voice on the phone said that Muse on the 30th of January was sold out but failed to mention there was a 2nd show. I pressed a button to get put through to an operator and to my great joy found out there was still general admission tickets available.

We arrived and had a couple of drinks and got to see the last 6 songs of the support band who sucked pretty badly. It was the 3rd time I had been to Festival Hall (had seen the Offspring and the Strokes previously), and the 1st time I had been in general admission. The amount of floor space in general admission surprised me as it looked nowhere near as big when viewed from the seating on the sides.

Muse started with the perfect opener, Take A Bow and then went into Hysteria which is one of my favourite songs. The set list for the 2nd show was a fair bit different than the show the night before and I think it was better. They played the 7 minute+ Citizen Erased which was one of the highlights of the night, right from the rocking start down to the spacey, chilled out sing-along ending. They also played Sunburn from their first album which was a rare treat to hear live. The screens on the stage showed some cool videos, especially during the track from their new album called Invincible which was one of my highlights.

During the uplifting music at the start with the military style/marching drum rolls accompanied by the lyrics "Follow through. Make your dreams come true. Don't give up the fight. You will be alright. Cause there's no one like you in the universe. Don't be afraid what your mind consumes. You should make a stand. Stand up for what you believe. And tonight we can truly say together we're invincible." the video screen showed videos of massive marches and protests and people united. Just over halfway through the song when the music gets a bit heavier, faster and more sinister the videos changed to people rioting, smashing things, throwing stuff at the police and the police fighting back. This led into the kickarse solo in its all finger-tapping glory which was fantastic to see him play live.

The other highlights after that were Plug In Baby (a crowd favourite), Starlight and the insanity of Stockholm Syndrome. Lucky for me, one of the best songs was to come last, none other than the epic, 6 minute Knights Of Cydonia which rounds out their new album, Black Holes and Revelations. It was the 2nd time I had seen it live and this time it was even better with the crowd really getting into it. I am glad they saved it to finish off the concert rather than playing it first like they did the night before. They even had the horse hoof and laser gun sounds at the start like on the album, after all, the song is meant to be a "space western." It was an awesome finish to one of the best live shows I have ever seen. If you ever get the chance I would recommend you go and see them. There are rumours they might be coming back in the Australia winter with their "full show" and if that is the case then I will definitely be there! This was the 3rd time I had seen them but the first time all on their own and it was definitely the best with the new material going down a treat.

I forgot to mention that towards the end they released massive, clear, inflatable balls filled with confetti. They were hit around the crowd until about 3 or 4 people would manage to grab on to it and rip it apart sending confetti everywhere.

Set list for Muse, 31/01/2007, Festival Hall, Melbourne:

1. Take A Bow
2. Hysteria
3. Supermassive Black Hole
4. Butterflies And Hurricanes
5. Map Of The Problematique
6. City Of Delusion
7. Citizen Erased
8. Sunburn
9. Apocalypse Please
10. Invincible
11. Time Is Running Out
12. Plug In Baby
-------
13. Soldier's Poem
14. Starlight
15. Stockholm Syndrome
-------
16. Knights Of Cydonia

Also, you can read a blog about the first Melbourne show by Yossarian. Her's will be a much better be read because she actually knows how to write ;)

Drugs.... four times a day!

2007-02-13T18:42:00.000+11:00

I was at my 97 year old grandma's place and noticed this on the table...

Morn, Noon, Eve and Bed are all great times for medication! When you have one of these medication containers with compartments to store drugs for four different times in one day you know you are old. Maybe getting old ain't so bad because you can spend your entire day in a drug fueled stupor!

Big Day Out.

2007-02-12T20:06:00.000+11:00

This year was the first time I had been to BDO at Princes Park rather than the Melbourne Showgrounds as I missed last years due to being in Jakarta. Interestingly the place where I stayed in Jakarta at this time last year requires a boat to get around the streets so thank god it was last year that I visited. The first band I saw was Trivium at the stage that was covered by a tent. I tried to listening to a Trivium album before I went to BDO although its not really my style of music. Nevertheless, once they started I didn't recognise any of their songs except one. Being a metal band, the pit down the front was a bit of fun. I bumped into another friend and his brother and we had fun jumping around like idiots and getting slammed into. It was funny watching the stream of young girls leaving from down the front once the band started and they realised how rough it was going to be down there. Despite not enjoying the music all that much, it was still a good experience to start the day off.

After Trivium we went and got something to eat and sat down a while. Next it was into the D-barrier where we would stay all afternoon and where I would get badly sun burnt. The first band I saw in the D-barrier was My Chemical Romance. The crowd was full of annoying emo kids and they really lapped it up. The singer from MCR, Gerard Way actually stopped in between songs and gave a speech about mosh pit etiquette, specifically how if someone falls you should help them up. I'm not quite sure how anyone fell because it didn't look that rough in there from where I was standing. Gerard used the word fuck quite a lot in his little speech. I think he was trying to impress all the 14 year olds in the audience. I saw one girl in the audience with her red Chuck Taylor Converse shoes on which had writing in texta on them. One shoe said "MCR saved my life" and the other said "I <3 Gerard Way." Yes she actually had written the heart as she would, no doubt, had done on her myspace page. I was also confused as to how writing shitty music saved her life, but then again I don't understand the younger generation anymore.

Next up came the Eskimo Joe shitfest. What saddens me is that their older albums were actually pretty good! Since they entirely changed their image they have become terrible. I can't believe that was the 2nd time I had to sit through their boring set in under 6 months. The John Butler Trio was up next and they were quite good. I enjoyed his guitar work but tuned out when he started rambling on about politics, specifically, no nuclear power for Australia. Needless to say he failed to offer any other viable solutions.

Next up were The Killers, whom I had really been looking forward to seeing. I managed to get about halfway from the stage but unfortunately the crowd didn't get into them as much as I hoped. They played most of the songs from their new CD plus all the old favourites. I got to hear everything I wanted to hear so I was happy. After they finished we got down the front for Muse but still had a decent view of Jet. Jet were decent enough, nothing spectacular.

Unfortunately I had to miss my favourite band, You Am I, because Muse were playing at the same time. It was such a shame that my two favourite bands were playing at the same time but seeing as You Am I are Australian, I will have a lot more chances to see them in the future. After Jet's set, Muse came on and kicked arse. The singer, Matt Belamy was decked out in a weird red Adidas type tracksuit but I forgave him because he is such an awesome guitarist and pianist. The Knights Of Cydonia finale was fantastic with flames shooting upwards in front of the stage to finish it off.

Just before Muse had started, two long haired, bearded gentlemen pushed through the crowd to end up standing to my right. Amazingly the guy next to me was the EXACT SAME GUY who had sat to my right at the Strokes concert at Festival Hall last year sometime! This time he was with his friend who I finally realised was the comedian Dave Callan from Triple J. I should have realised a lot sooner due to his thick Irish accent when he declared the song Supermassive Black Hole to be a "pile of shit."

Next up was Tool who I was semi-familiar with and was looking forward to seeing. Their show was great with the lasers and the mohawked Maynard Keenan standing in front of the screens showing weird videos and images. At the end of the day I was totally stuffed from standing up for so long without much room to stretch. My sides were killing, I could barely walk and my back was in worse shape than a 98 year old. If someone had put $100 on the ground in front of me I would have had no chance of bending over to pick it up. Even so, all the pain, sunburn and peeling I was to experience in the next few days was definitely worth it.

Quilt Monthly.

2007-02-12T19:54:00.000+11:00

Wow, it's been a while since I have written anything here. So much has happened in the past month as well. For example I was catching the train to work late one morning at about 11am. Being 11am it was full of old people and students. I noticed an old woman across from me reading a magazine but it wasn't just any magazine. It was a magazine about quilts. I can't wait to get old so I can find joy in objects such as quilts and fun in activities such as making quilts. In other words, please let me die before I reach that stage.

Paula Abdul is Exhausted.

2007-01-13T14:15:00.000+11:00

Check out this video of Paula Abdul. According to her publicist she was "exhausted". Anyone who has had a lot of experience hanging around drunks such as myself can tell that she is definitely toasted. How long are publicists going to keep giving the lame excuse, "my client was suffering from exhaustion." One day I want to turn up to work totally off my face, slurring my words and stinking like Scotch and tell my boss I am not drunk but simply suffering from exhaustion.

Australia - The Lucky Country.

2007-01-10T21:10:00.000+11:00

Australia is often referred to as the the lucky country. Well at least this is the case in Australia. It is probably most definitely self-proclaimed as someone from overseas would never understand how lucky we are. I have often pondered why we consider ourselves the lucky country and sat down and wrote a comprehensive list detailing the reasons us Australians are so lucky. That simple list turned into a 10,000 word essay examining Australian culture and would no doubt receive honours or a distinction (or whatever its called, I only experienced passes and one credit at university) if presented as a thesis at any leading university around the world. Seeing as most Internet readers aren't "up to speed" (this is a smart people phrase, if you don't understand then don't ask) with intellectuals such as myself I will put it in "layman's terms" (that's you!) As the famous phrase says, "when in Rome do as the Romans do", and that is what I shall be doing but instead of Rome it is on the INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY! (which possibly leads to Rome because as the phrase says "all roads lead to Rome." ) Anyway, on with the list!

Riots limited to Sydney: A great advantage of Australia is that our riots are generally limited to the harbour city. The Redfern riots, Macquarie Fields riots and Cronulla riots all took place in Sydney. Sydney hosts the biggest riots in Australia so if you enjoy throwing shit at police like rocks and smashing up cars then Sydney is the place for you! If this it not your thing then you can live in the much nicer city of Melbourne.

Binge drinking encouraged: I know binge drinking is apparently bad for your health and can lead to dangerous situations and blah blah blah, you know the usual talk you got at school about drugs and alcohol. Well guess what? I wasn't paying attention because I was drunk! Despite the risks, getting shitfaced is fun and more often than not leads to hilarious situations rather than dangerous ones. How are men meant to pick up a girl without binge drinking? Talk to a girl sober? No way, thats crazy talk! Walking up to a girl who has caught your eye and talking eloquently with her won't impress her. Before approaching any female you should down 10 beers. Then you can stagger up to her and slur out a few words possibly including the words sugar and tits (preferably in succession) while spilling beer down her top. That is sure to knock her socks off!

Shane Warne and David Boon: Two Australian cricketing legends and characters of the game.

Shane Keith Warne: Look at him. He's beautiful. Apparently he is addicted to sex.

David Clarence Boon: Boonie is beautiful in his own way and has a moustache that cannot be argued with. Boonie once drank 52 cans of Victoria Bitter on a flight between Sydney and London. Apparently when he arrived in London he could still walk with a bit of assistance from some team mates. Inspirational stuff. That's really what sport is all about.

Always winning the cricket: Growing up watching cricket in this era I have become accustomed to Australia constantly winning. This is great because it gives all Australians an opportunity to gloat in front of the English. Being beaten by their own colony must really hurt the English. It must feel something like when you have a son and constantly beat him at sport when he is young but then he grows older and stronger and kicks your ass and humiliates you every time you play against him. Sorry old chaps.

Burger King is called Hungry Jack's: In Australia we have taken Burger King and improved upon it. How have Australian's improved Burger King? The answer is "Hungry Jack's." This is definitely the coolest name for a fast food place in use. In the United States they have a place called "Jack in the box." Well American's can keep their "Jack" in "the" "box" and we will keep our "Hungry Jack's".

Laid back attitude: Apparently we have a laid-back and "she'll be right" attitude to life. Well I am going to prove this by deciding I can't be arsed writing anymore and going to have a few stubbies.

My happy little world from the past shattered over dinner with parents.

2007-01-08T21:16:00.000+11:00

Tonight I went out for dinner with my parents and they dropped a few bombshells shattering some primary school memories in the process. The main one was that my mum's best friend who I have known forever is splitting up with her husband. Somehow I never saw it coming but apparently they haven't been happy for about 5 years and he has been really depressed. He even had a talk to my mum once saying he knew that one day she was going to leave him.

I also found out that a girl I went to primary school has had a baby and is now cutting and mutilating herself pretty badly and her mum has custody of the child. Another husband and wife I knew from primary school have split up and he has started drinking a lot. It's so weird realising how naive you were as a child and how obvious things are in hindsight. One of the things that slipped right past me was my sister's friend's mum was a stripper which I also found out tonight. Even when I was 11 year old I realised that woman was tall and hot for a mum. Looking back on it she does strike me as someone who you would pick as a stripper. She was the first MILF that I ever saw. Her son was also my buddy, a system we had in primary school where a grade 6 would be paired up with a prep as a "buddy." We would spend a couple of hours a week with them. I remember the first time I met my buddy and he said "at lunchtime we are going to play and you're going to buy me an ice cream." Yep, hot mum or not, he sure was a little turd.

Chinese boy hangs himself after online meeting turns ugly.

2007-01-07T22:31:00.000+11:00

The following article is from inquirer.net

BEIJING -- A 17-year-old boy in northeastern China was so disappointed with the looks of a woman he met over the Internet that he hanged himself after seeing her face-to-face, state media reported Friday.

The unnamed teenager first contacted the woman -- known by her chat moniker "Qunjiaofeiyang", or "Flying Skirt" -- using the popular Chinese online messaging software QQ, Xinhua news agency said.

The girl described herself as a beautiful 19-year-old and the pair chatted on the Web for weeks before arranging a December 26 rendezvous in the nearby city of Mudanjiang, in far northeastern Heilongjiang province.

The boy arrived to discover the woman far less attractive than advertised and 10 years older than him, Xinhua said.

The boy immediately returned home, lost his appetite, and four days later hanged himself from a tree.

I have heard some stories of people meeting someone off the net but this one takes the cake. Imagine how the girl, "Flying Skirt", must feel after she heard the news. A 17 year old boy killed himself over her looks. I wonder what something like that would do for your self esteem. That really has to be a knock to the confidence if you find out someone hangs themselves after seeing your face. Obviously the kid had other issues, but still...

Sydney 0 - New Zealand Knights 1

2007-01-07T20:01:00.000+11:00

Just finished watching the soccer and the commentator on Foxtel summed it up best when he simply described the match as a "a night of embarrassment for Sydney." As a Melbournian it is always great to see Sydney get beaten, especially in the soccer and especially when its by the worst team in the league by far!

Was also fantastic to see the English cricket supporters at the game. They had renamed themselves from the Barmy Army to the Kiwi Army. At least the poor poms finally got to see a win after watching the English cricket team get humiliated in a 5 - 0 whitewash in the Ashes series!

Hey you look familiar... and rude commuters.

2007-01-06T01:03:00.000+11:00

At lunchtime today I left work to go and eat lunch in the Chadstone food court. While I was enjoying my beef wrap thing I glanced up from the table and noticed some girl standing with a guy. She was about 15 metres away and I was thinking to myself she's not a bad looker. After a couple of minutes they both came over and sat at a table under 10 metres away but there was a small barrier in between us. She was still in perfect view and I got a better look at her face, up close she looked even hotter than before. I chuckled to myself thinking "wow she looks a bit like my ex-girlfriend." After a minute or so she stood up and then it dawned on me, it was my ex-girlfriend. While getting out of my seat, I quickly stuffed the rest of my lunch into my mouth and with a mouthful of food told my friend that I thought it was time we headed back to work. I am not sure how I didn't recognise her straight away, I think she had a new haircut or was wearing weird eye makeup or something. Luckily I got out of there without her seeing because she is one person I really don't want to talk to. It was bad enough seeing her without her noticing me.

After the unpleasantness during lunch I also had a massive headache to contend with which makes catching a packed train home even less fun. On the way home, the train started to slow down approaching a stop and an old Chinese lady suddenly realised she was meant to get off. She jumped up and and proceeded to start pushing a woman who was standing up in the middle aisle to force her out the way. She didn't say excuse me or tap her on the shoulder or try to squeeze past, she just stuck her hands out and started shoving her in the back and side until she let her through. It was absolutely bizarre and the best part was there was another door 1 metre behind the Chinese lady with a clear path to it. Instead she chose to get up and starting shoving one to get another door that was about 5 times as far away.

Irn Bru.

2007-01-04T21:20:00.000+11:00

When I was in Scotland they had their own soft drink that was very popular called Irn Bru. It is pronounced Iron Brew but if you pronounce it as Irn Bru and slightly roll your r's it almost sounds like a good Scottish accent.

I drank it quite a bit while in Glasgow and the flavour is quite different to any other soft drink. You used to be able to get it here but it was very expensive, probably because it was imported. Although recently I have seen it in major supermarkets and its cheap! My sister got addicted to the stuff after living there for nearly 2 years so this was great news for her.

I read some interesting things about it on the Wiki.

It has long been the most popular soft drink in Scotland, outselling even Coca-Cola, but recent fierce competition between the two brands has brought their sales to roughly equal levels (perhaps leaning to Coca-Cola).

When McDonald's restaurants first opened for trading in Glasgow they did not serve Irn-Bru. This was seen as an insult by some Scots, and a campaign to correct this oversight was launched. After many of their restaurants were picketed, McDonalds relented and began to stock Irn-Bru alongside their other soft drinks.

Over the years, advertising campaigns for Irn-Bru have caused upset. One billboard featured a woman with the words "4 1/2 inches of pleasure". Another featured a picture of a cow with the slogan "When I'm a burger, I want to be washed down with Irn-Bru". This billboard received over 700 complaints but was cleared by advertisement watchdogs. A billboard which featured a depressed goth was also criticised for inciting violence.

I can't believe 700 people would complain about a cow on a billboard mentioning it would be a burger one day! There advertisements sound pretty funny and I managed to find a couple on youtube including this "Wakey wakey" cuckoo clock one featuring an angry bird, I love the accent. The other ad is a hilarious one from the 70s or 80s featuring some kid building a ship with his bare hands.

Shawn Rees and Google.

2007-01-03T21:23:00.000+11:00

I mention a porn star on here and I get four times as many visitors from Google with people searching for things like "MILF Hunter HIV", "Shawn Rees HIV" and "Cumfiesta HIV"!

Anyway I can't find the thread where I read it originally anymore but I am pretty sure it was bullshit anyway. I edited the original entry about a minute later saying "EDIT: After reading more it appears this could very well be bullshit. The MILF Hunter lives to hunt another day!"

I was quoting a forum which was quoting another forum which isn't very trustworthy but despite this someone sourced this site on the Shawn Rees article on Wikipedia! A blog! It has been deleted now but you can see it here in the article history. I guess that is the joy of anyone being able to edit Wikipedia.

The only reason I posted the original update in the first place was because in some strange way I found it funny and plus I think I was drunk. I found it especially funny (and creepy) that a site called cumfiesta would have forums but it looks like this was a lie as well as I can't find these forums.

Plane still missing.

2007-01-03T09:08:00.000+11:00

Well despite reports about the wreckage of the Indonesian Adam Air jet wreckage being found with 12 survivors yesterday, this is not the case.

The Age have this article today...

A passenger jet carrying 102 people that vanished two days ago is still missing after Indonesian officials said reports of wreckage and survivors were wrong.

Reports emerged yesterday that wreckage and many bodies had been located in a mountainous area of Sulawesi island, and that 12 people has survived the crash.

But regional military commander Major General Arif Budi Sampurno told MetroTV that, after checking the reported location, they had not found the wreckage.

"News from the village head reporting 12 survivors was also not true," he said. "The village head said that he never made that report."

"The local commander, the police chief and the governor went to the location and they found nothing, so earlier reports about the location, number of survivors are all untrue. We don't know where that information originates from."

The mix-up will cause further distress to relatives of the passengers and crew awaiting news of the flight's fate.

The Adam Air Boeing 737-400 had sent distress signals an hour after taking off from Java island en route to Sulawesi.

How does a false report like that even get started?

Bringing In The New Year In Style.

2007-01-02T18:22:00.000+11:00

Well I certainly welcomed the new year in style with perhaps one drink too many. The reason I say this is because, according to friends, at one point I was throwing up black stuff that appeared to be blood. Now that is when you know you have taken it too far. Thank god I don't remember it because it makes me feel a little uneasy just thinking about it. I am getting worse with age, I have never been that drunk before in my life and don't plan on getting that drunk again.

It was back to work today and it appears most smart people are still on holidays because the train was basically empty on the way to work. Once again I got some nutter talking to me at Flinders St Station, I am some sort of magnet for these type of people. I couldn't really hear her at the start but I thought she was just complaining about the train being late but then she started talking about how she is on her way to a church for some reason and then something about methadone money. I don't know why she would find it necessary to let people know she is a recovering drug addict.

A while ago at about midnight in South Melbourne I encountered a strange man. He was standing on the street with one of those bags with a suit in it, counting out wads of 100 dollar notes and then as I got closer to him he started singing what sounded like opera to himself. As I walk past him he continues to stare at me the entire time I am walking past while singing opera looking into my eyes. Then as I waited out the front of my friends apartment down the street he walked past and stared at me even turning his head as he walked so he could stare as he went past. I have even funnier stories about crazy people hanging around me in Paris but they can wait till another day.

Last year when I went to Indonesia, I used a domestic airline to fly from Jakarta to Bali called Adam Air. All I remember was it seemed a bit dodgy and on the way back we hit the worst turbulence I have ever experienced and I was the most scared I had ever been on a plane before. Anyway, it was a bit disconcerting to read this news story today. Over 90 people dead, what a waste.

In other more local news, a woman accidently hit the accelerator while trying to park her car in Footscray and reversed into people eating at a cafe killing one man. How do these people get their license if they can do something as stupid as mistaking the accelerator for the brake and managing to hold it down for long enough to mount the gutter while reversing and hit someone with enough force to kill them. Boggles the mind.

An Announcement.

2006-12-31T18:39:00.000+11:00

Another edit: I think the following is bullshit and cannot verify the source.

Shawn Rees, a popular Canadian porn star known primarily as the star of the MILF Hunter website, announced that he is HIV positive on the members' forums of CUMFIESTA.

This was originally posted on that freaky 4chan site. I never even knew CUMFIESTA had a members' forum. I wonder what they talk about on there?

Here are some comments that I enjoyed from my favourite forum, Somethingawful.

Dot_matrix said: "Milf hunter sucked anyway. You can only watch a guy fuck older women with fake raisin tits and smokers wrinkles for about a minute before you lose your hardon."

iKickDogs said: "With their population unchecked, the MILFs are going to overrun our quiet mountain community."

Hey! said: "God the thought of chatting with people on a site called "cumfiesta" is grossing me out so hard"

The Finn said: "First Saddam and now the MILF Hunter... Damn you cruel world!"

EDIT: After reading more it appear this could very well be bullshit. The MILF Hunter lives to hunt another day!

2006 Roundup - Music.

2006-12-30T15:39:00.000+11:00

I actually didn't buy very many albums in 2006 and really struggled to come up with any sort of list. I am also really bad at describing what is good about an album. Anyway on to the list...

You Am I - Convicts: I consider this a return to form after their previous two albums weren't up to their usual high standards despite being great albums. There really isn't a bad track on this CD but my favourites are It Ain't Funny How We Don't Talk Anymore, Friends Like You, Thuggery, Gunslinger and Explaining Cricket. Explaining Cricket always makes me grin as the chorus says "It's like explaining cricket to Americans." I once had to try and explain cricket to an American and it was extremely frustrating so I know exactly what Tim means by it!

Muse - Black Holes and Revelations: What an awesome album. Favourite tracks are Take a Bow, Starlight, Map of the Problematique, Assassin and the 6 minute Knights of Cydonia which has been described as a Space Opera/Western.

NOFX - Wolves in Wolves Clothing: Although not as good as previous efforts, it's still a strong album. My favourite tracks are USA-holes, Seeing Double at the Triple Rock, Leaving Jesusland, Cool and Unusual Punishment, Wolves in Wolves' Clothing and Doornails.

Beck - The Information: A great comeback from Beck after the disappointing Guerro. This album is more like the Beck of old and even reminds me of the classic Odelay. My favourite tracks are Elevator Music, Think I'm In Love, Cellphone's Dead and Strange Apparition.

The Killers - Sam's Town: Never really liked The Killers but this album is one of my favourites this year and I hope to catch them out at Big Day Out. Favourite tracks are Sam's Town, For Reasons Unknown, Read My Mind and Bones.

Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit: Favourite tracks off this album are Act of the Apostle, Another Sunny Day, The Blues are Still Blue and We Are The Sleepyheads.

Wildlife in my Backyard.

2006-12-29T21:52:00.000+11:00

There are ducks,

birds,

possums,

Holden Blimps

and this cat who always tries to get in the door when you are going inside the house. Once it got inside.....

My Favourite NOFX Song Titles.

2006-12-24T00:37:00.000+11:00

So its about 12:40am on a Sunday morning and here I am on the Internet. I figured I would post some of my favourite NOFX song titles. Yes, a lot are immature but I wouldn't have it any other way.

NOFX - Go To Work Wasted.
NOFX - Please Stop Fucking My Mom.
NOFX - Murder the Government.
NOFX - There's no Fun in Fundamentalism.
NOFX - Insulted By Germans (Again).
NOFX - Jamaica's Alright if you like Homophobes.
NOFX - Hobophobic (Scared of Bums).
NOFX - You Drink, You Drive, You Spill.
NOFX - Everything in Moderation (Especially Moderation).
NOFX - Clams Have Feelings Too (Actually They Don't).
NOFX - Jeff Wears Birkenstocks.
NOFX - Monosyllabic Girl.
NOFX - Dueling Retards.
NOFX - The Irrationality of Rationality.
NOFX - Idiots are Taking Over.
NOFX - Re-gaining Unconsciousness.
NOFX - Whoops, I OD'd.
NOFX - Please Play This Song on the Radio.
NOFX - 100 Times Fuckeder.
NOFX - Fun Things To Fuck (If You're a Winner).

And probably my favourite:
NOFX - We Threw Gasoline on the Fire and Now We Have Stumps for Arms and No Eyebrows

Rich douchebag crashes Ferrari in Perth

2006-12-22T19:07:00.000+11:00

It always gives me some sort of perverse pleasure when someone with too much money crashes their extremely expensive luxury car. In this case some wealthy man in Perth has crashed his $300,000 Ferrari, run away and then been apprehended and charged with drink driving. The best part about this story is the way it all links together.

I first read about it on the Whirlpool forums which provided a link to this this news article.

Colin Zampatti, crashed his Ferrari 360 Spider outside the Windsor Hotel, on the corner of Mends Street and Mill Point Road in South Perth, about 7pm (WDT) on Sunday.

Mr Zampatti, 42, has now been charged with driving under the influence, a charge which only applies over a 0.15 blood alcohol level – three times the legal limit.
He now faces a minimum six months disqualification from driving and fines of between $800 and $5000, a police spokesman said.

It is also understood Mr Zampatti's insurance will not pay for the damage because he has been charged.

A receptionist at a luxury car dealer in Perth says her business sold Mr Zampatti the second-hand car – worth about $300,000 – just last month.

Photos of the crumpled red vehicle taken by witnesses are circulating widely on the internet.

Some posters on the forum also mentioned they had seen him hooning around Perth and generally being a tosser showing off. Someone also posted this link to a thread written by Antiloop entitled "Oops my Ferrari!" on another forum. You can read the full post at the link but here are some choice paragraphs.

So i'm @ my work having a beverage with my mate in the beer garden when I hear commotion going on out the front. (Cnr Mends St/Mill Point Rd) I leap to my feet and heel-toe to toward the action when low and behold I see a Ferrari (2004 355 Spider?) hugging a traffic pole. I laugh, run, grab my mate - run back to the scene and take some photos for good measure. Meanwhile the driver pops out of his vehicle and the bouncers take him to one side. My friend and I leave the scene: back to our beers - and start having a good chuckle at this poor blokes expense.

Also turns out he was trying to show off to the people at the pub "look at me i'm in a ferrari" - pulled the finger, planted it and lost traction straight into the pole.

It seems like the guy is an attention whore. Well putting his Ferrari into a traffic light has worked well, he has gained all the attention he could ever want! Congratulations Mr. Colin Zampratti!

Warney, say it isn't so!

2006-12-20T20:18:00.000+11:00

Earlier this year, Ian "The Pink Thorpedo" Thorpe, retired and now we have another major retirement in Australian sport. The magnificent king of spin, Shane Keith Warne is going to announce his retirement tommorow. The plan is he will play the 2 remaining matches in this Ashes series before retiring. Thorpey I didn't really care that much about but this is a whole different kettle of fish. Warney is a true legend and his off field performances are as good as his on field performances.

If you aren't upset by this news and drowning your sorrows with can after can of VB then you are unaustralian. It is a scientific fact that 98.4% of Australian's feel something more than a deep down love for Warne and the other 1.5% are bitter Englishman with Australian citizenships, communists, women that Warney has made sweet love to and then ignored, people who think baseball is a good sport and neglected Australian leg spinner Stuart MacGill. The other 0.1% is a rounding error.

What I am really curious about is whether the sultan of spin let them know he was retiring via SMS because if he didn't then I would be greatly disappointed. His message should have read something like, "Hey m8, retiring after ashes k thx bye. PS. I am tapping your wife. Daughter also ;)" SMS would be the most appropriate way for him to retire. At least now he can smoke all the cigarettes he wants. In New Zealand whilst he was being sponsored by Nicorette nicotine patches some kid took a picture of Warney sparking up. Warne ripped the camera off him and called him a c***head. Super stuff that, after I heard he had used that word it entered my vocabulary. I am sure someone has combined the words c*** and head before but I am willing to credit it to Shane, a true wordsmith.

Let's take a moment to ponder the greatness that is Shane Warne with a photo of the legend himself...

You know what worries Shane Warne? According to those advanced hair advertisements for hair replacement, nothing worries Shane Warne more than hair loss. But take a look at that picture. Look at that beautiful golden hair. Drink it in. You have nothing to worry about Warney. Thanks for the memories and enjoy the baked beans and cigarettes in retirement.

Casino Royale

2006-12-19T13:28:00.000+11:00

On Saturday I went and saw the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale, at Northland. First I packed my guitar and amp (damn it's heavy) into the car and went to my friends house for a strawberry fruit preserve known as a "jam". That proved to be quite fun but was interrupted by the need to meet another friend at the cinema to sit for 3 hours viewing a movie.

After some Nando's we headed into the cinema and watched 25 minutes of advertising. Yes, that's right, 25 minutes! They even repeated 2 advertisements twice! No, I do not want a fucking Toyota Yaris ok? This unprecedented amount of ads was followed by trailers and then... more ads! Finally they decided it would be a nice idea to start the thing people paid to see otherwise known as the main feature. Why don't they show cartoons before movies anymore? Those were the days.

As for the movie, well it was quite good despite going for too long. There was an excellent chase sequence at the start which rated quite high on the bullshit meter. I have to admit I kind of stopped paying attention towards the end of the movie because I think it went for too long for what it was, therefore I was kind of confused at the end. The soppy love story section went for too long and if I want to see that crap I would have watched Days of Our Lives instead. Overall I give the movie 3 stars.

Melbourne Victory, Victors for 2006.

2006-12-19T12:37:00.000+11:00

So I haven't updated for a while, the reason is that I basically can't be stuffed. I have plenty to write and plenty of time to write about it but I just don't have the motivation.

A couple of weeks ago I got to be part of the biggest crowd for a domestic soccer match in Australia ever. It was Melbourne Victory vs Sydney and 50,000 people turned up at Telstra Dome. What a fantastic crowd which makes it more of a shame the game was so defensive and boring. It ended in a 0 - 0 draw which was very disappointing as I wanted to see what kind of noise the crowd could make if Melbourne scored.

On Sunday night Melbourne played NZ knights and scored 4 goals in 10 minutes to secure top spot on the ladder with a few games left thus wrapping up the minor premiership. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend but watched it on Foxtel. The crowd sounded awesome, I have never heard so much noise even though it was only 17,000 people at Olympic Park. While watching the soccer I kept switching back to channel 9 to watch cricket and luckily I switched back to see Glenn McGrath get 2 wickets in one over and swing the balance back Australia's way. Anyway, its on to the soccer finals and hopefully Melbourne will be participating in the grand final. Last year Adelaide finished top but got knocked out of the finals before reaching the grand final. It would be a disaster if this happened to Melbourne.

Angry train drivers.

2006-12-04T22:19:00.000+11:00

Tonight on the way home from work I got a Connex train driver that sounded pretty damn angry. When I first got on he said something about people forcing the doors. Then when people were getting on at Parliament station he came back on the speaker and said something like...

"People need to realise that there is more than 3 doors on this train. Everyone is trying to get in the first 2 carriages when there is plenty of room in the carriages up the back. Move to the back, we are trying to run a train service on time and how are we supposed to do that when you people all get on 1 carriage."

He cracked it! Besides, Connex don't need any help in making the trains run late, they already manage to do it themselves very well. I catch 2 trains to work and 2 back and usually there is at least one delayed/cancelled 2 or 3 times every week. Good job guys!

Sandwich

2006-11-30T12:10:00.000+11:00

Today at work for lunch I ate a salami, cheese and pickle sandwich. It was delicious.

Victorian state election.

2006-11-25T19:03:00.000+11:00

So I went and did my duty as a Victorian citizen and voted in the Victorian state election. This year I actually voted early with plenty of time spare arriving a the polling booths at 5:30pm. Usually its about 5:55pm with the booths closing at 6. It's amazing how many people I know that I bump into each time I vote. This year I saw 2 girls I used to work with and a girl from primary school who I haven't seen in a good 13 years. Whoever I voted for doesn't really matter because where I live is a really safe Labor area. I remember there used to be a party called "The shooters party" or something similar but that may have been in the federal election. I didn't see them on the ballot paper this year which is a shame because guns are cool and they kill people and stuff. They also are featured prominently in the movie "Lethal Weapon" starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. That movie is sweet.

On Friday I went to Chadstone for lunch and my friend from work and I got to experience some nerds and Nandos. When I sat down I could hear the table next to us loudly discussing Star Trek. They went on to discuss strategies they could use in online games. I think they were talking about the first person shooter game Counterstrike because I think I heard the word smoke grenade. They then went on to discuss something about spaceships and which one was better which may have had something to do with Star Trek. It was the stereotypical nerd conversation and would have been made perfect if they threw in a someone vs someone debate, such as Robocop Vs Terminator or Batman Vs Spiderman (after mentioning that I just can't help myself - Robocop would win because he is cooler and Batman would beat Spiderman because Spiderman is a pussy).

It was interesting to note the different members that consisted the group of 4 nerds. My friend from work had a little more experience with nerds so it was interesting to get his insights. In the group there was the senior nerd who was nearly 40 and probably knew the younger nerds through work or their "Magic: The Gathering" card nights. He probably still lives with his mum and is most likely a virgin. Then there was the stereotypical nerd with glasses and acne who was most likely bullied at school. He was the loudest of the lot and probably enjoys watching anime and wishes he had a Japanese girlfriend. He is definitely a virgin. The 3rd member of the group had nothing remarkable about him that stood out, he was just the stock standard nerd. The 4th member of the group was the most interesting and the one who didn't fit in, the anomaly so to speak. He dressed quite well and actually looked semi-cool. He is no longer a virgin and has touched a real live girl. He often recounts his stories of sexual experiences with the other nerds who listen excitedly. He is their real life hero whom they look up to when they aren't day dreaming about piloting the USS Enterprise in Star Trek. What made it even weirder was they were eating a bag of cherries in Nando's. I guess that's the only cherry they are ever going to pop ha ha!

Just to prove I'm not a total asshole I did a good deed on Friday! I had the pleasure of catching one of those crappy old trains from the 60s or 70s and an old man with a walking stick got on. The train was packed and people wouldn't even move so he could get a hold of the pole properly. He was struggling so I gave him my seat and he was so appreciative, it was like no one had ever done it for him before. The train was then subsequently delayed because of a problem in the city loop and I had to stand for an extra 20 minutes.

Make poverty history concert

2006-11-23T10:44:00.000+11:00

Last Friday I (reluctantly) went to the "Make Poverty History" concert at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne. Even though I wasn't that interested in going it turned out to be a decent night out. A friend had won tickets in a competition but couldn't make it so she gave them to me and another friend.

I went straight from work and got inside just as "Bono" and "The Edge" from U2 and Pearl Jam were finishing up the song "Rockin in the free world". Even though I don't like Bono much because I find him a bit self-righteous and think Pearl Jam are just alright, it was a shame they came on so early because half the people hadn't arrived yet. The highlight was seeing the former Soundgarden drummer, Matt Cameron, playing drums for Pearl Jam.

The rest of the bands weren't bad but I wish they played more of their hits. Especially at an event like that. Paul Kelly didn't even play dumb things! Eskimo Joe were pretty damn boring, I wish they played some of their old stuff but I knew they wouldn't. Jet were a bit disappointing as well.

As for the speeches, they all seemed a bit idealistic and had a kind of "in a perfect world this would work" feel to them. Some of the things that were said seemed a little naive. They loved to repeat the phrase "we are the generation that can make poverty history" but when the organisers came out it changed to "we can make extreme poverty history". They never really suggested how we can do this besides buying those wristbands and lobbying the government to donate more aid. The problem with pumping more money into some of these regions is that I am sure a lot of it never makes it to the people and instead goes towards African dictators and their cronies driving around in Rolls Royces and sending their kids to private universities in Europe. They never suggested how to fix the rampant corruption which results in a lot of overseas aid being squandered in those countries.

Another thing they kept mentioning was that 30,000 children die everyday. I don't want to sound cold hearted but if that many children end up surviving each day won't it make the overpopulation even worse than it already is and just cause more problems? My favourite story about Bono was when he was at a concert he started clapping and said "Everytime I clap a child dies." In reply someone in the crowd shouted out "Stop fucking clapping then!" Overall it was a pretty good night.

Recently I have been bringing a sandwich for lunch to work instead of buying it. This is all well and good because I save money and don't end up buying garbage like chicken burgers and chips but there is another problem. I just can't resist my sandwich. I put it to the side of me so it's out of sight but my eyes are invariably drawn to it. I delay as long as I can trying not to think about it but after a while I realise resistance is useless. This resulted in me eating a delicious sasuage and mustard sandwich at 11am. It was good while it lasted but now I have nothing else to eat all day.

Muse and Big Day Out!

2006-11-20T20:12:00.000+11:00

I got my Muse and Big Day Out tickets! Why do I have 2 tickets of each? Because I want to double my fun ha ha! It only took me 3 days to come up with that joke as well. I am quick witted, what can I say?

G20 Protests in Melbourne

2006-11-20T18:47:00.000+11:00

Well as predicted the loonies hijacked the G20 protest and started smashing things and assaulting police officers. It was an absolute disgrace and I am hoping more scumbags are arrested. The following gave me a bit of a laugh.

Dan Rae, from Christchurch, New Zealand, sustained a cut to the head above his right eye when he was struck by a policeman’s baton.

Mr Rae, said he was trying to push a barrier forward toward the lines of police blocking Collins Street, when one officer lent over the barricade and hit him on the head with his baton.

"He took a full swing at me as hard as he could… I wasn’t expecting it," Mr Rae, told theage.com.au.

The 30-year-old builder, who travelled to Australia to visit family and attend the demonstration, was treated at the scene by members of the protesters’ first aid team, who cleaned and bandaged the wound.

Mr Rae, who flies out of Australia tomorrow, has given a statement to a lawyer and is seeking advice on whether to take legal action against police.

"The cops seemed to be pretty aggressive from the start. I wasn’t really doing much, just pushing the barricades which was pretty harmless I thought," he said.

So he flies over from NZ to cause trouble and deservedly gets hit in the head with a baton and is surprised by it. I have a hot tip for you David, the police set up those barriers to stop you from coming through, pushing the barricades results in you getting hit. The police were getting pelted by bottles, others had been bitten and here you are trying to push through the barrier seperating them from a raving mob. Maybe you thought they would jump over the barrier and help you push it or offer you a cool, refreshing glass of water because you had been exerting yourself pushing this barrier. No they hit you in the fucking head but I think they should have done it even harder.

On with the pictures!

Here we can see the common, angry, purple hippo. Her habitat is normally McDonalds, KFC or Hungry Jacks where you can spot her frequently. Today she has given up an hour of eating time to smash a police van. I am not sure what she is protesting about but I hope it's not capitalism because that would hypocritical. The size of her thighs suggest capitalism is treating her well and that she has far too much food available to stuff in her face. In fact, it appears she spends too much of her money on fast food so cannot afford a jumper or stockings without holes in them. Although next time I really wish she would forgo that extra 20 pack of McNuggets so she can buy some new stockings to cover up her disgusting, flabby legs. Thanks a lot you fat bitch! I just love paying taxes so hambeasts like you can run riot smashing public property!

UPDATE: It has come to light that the purple lard was protesting that you only get 3 packets of sweet n sour sauce with a 20 pack of McNuggets. This upsets her greatly.

In this picture some dirty man with dreadlocks who probably hasn't showered since January cowers behind a barrier. The police stand tenatively back when everyone knows the solution to the problem is to cave in the dreadlock mans face with their batons.

Men so tough that they don't even have the balls to show their faces hurl bins into the crowd of police. Apparently the man agitators at this protest were a group from Sydney. Doesn't surprise me seeing as Sydney love a good riot like Redfern, Macquarie Fields or Cronulla.

A smelly hippie attemps to climb the fence but gets one of his best sandals stuck in the fence on the way up. After arriving home he mourns the loss of his favourite sandal by smoking a few joints while listening to Phish records.

Also I would like to thank you assholes for making me take the long way round when I wanted to get to somewhere on Russell St on Saturday night.

Hackley School Smells Like Teen Spirit

2006-11-19T21:13:00.000+11:00

I know they are only kids but sometimes kids do things best. Here a bunch of kids have successfully created the worst cover song I have heard in my entire life.

The guitarist and drummer are terrible and the singer somehow manages to be worse. Take note of the lack of a bass player even though the bass really drives the song through the choruses, the lack of distortion and the terrible timing. The guitarist's lead comes out at one point and then finally decides enough is enough and stops working with about 30 seconds left. Check it out here.

EDIT: Another contender. Just load this site and wait for the music to start playing. It's a cover of oh holy night, make sure you wait for ending, thats when it gets good!

Dwarfism "missing appendages"

2006-11-16T18:59:00.000+11:00

Since I set up a statistics counter I can view all the people who accidently stumble across the garbage I write. It also gives you a referrer which is the link they clicked to get here. I remember a long time ago a site I used to read, Aaronactive, had one of my favourite referring links. Someone had searched google for "large testicles with garlic sauce" and that site showed up as a result. Lately I have been getting a few funny ones but nothing of that calibre. Some of the referring links that have shown up are:

Victory Cheer Squad
Victory chants
Monash Ball
Hail kim
Hide behind the haystacks
Shitsheeting
Daddy once told me that to cross the road you have to look left then right then left again joke

And my favourite, dwarfism "missing appendages", by someone in Woodbridge, Virginia, USA. That is a quite a specific fetish that they have.

G20 - I predict rioting!
Looks like Melbourne might be in for a spot of good old fashioned rioting this Saturday. They have already blocked some streets in the Melbourne CBD and police are preparing to use new tactics. I thought it might be something cool like water cannons or distracting them by driving a convoy of logging trucks past so they will chase them ranting about "old growth forests." Similar to the way a tubby kid chases a Mr Whippy ice cream truck screaming about a soft serve dipped in chocolate. You can imagine how disappointed I was when I discovered their new tactics were as lame as...

deploying police officers within crowds of protesters to liaise between demonstrators and police, and erecting lower barriers which have proven effective at similar events overseas.

Talking to the protestors who most likely won't listen if they were there to cause trouble in the first place and erecting lower barriers. How disappointing. I am not even sure exactly what G20 is all about and, in this instance, am far too lazy to look it up. I think the G8 summit is meant to be a meeting of the 8 richest western nations in the world. Via my extensive knowledge of G8 I have concluded that G20 is the povo version of G8 which includes the poorer, rich nations as well as non-western nations. This allows Australia to slip into it.

Looking at the countries, G8 is like the prestigious "old boys" club and some newer/weaker boys on the block like Australia and Indonesia have been bugging them to join. To shut them up the G8 members decided to hold a less prestigious party to invite the less desirable countries along while keeping their own exclusive old boys club. If anyone out there is actually reading this then you probably should ignore it because I don't have the slightest idea what I am talking about if you hadn't worked that out already.

Australia played Ghana in a friendly in London earlier this week and once again lost their lead in bodgy circumstances. This time the Australian keeper, Mark Schwarzer, collided with a defender and dropped the ball and Ghana put in an easy goal to equalise. This resulted in a 1 - 1 draw. Bah!

Monday Monday

2006-11-13T21:48:00.000+11:00

On Saturday I went into the city for my mate's 24th birthday and it turned out to be a huge night. One of those nights where you somehow spend over $200 yet didn't have to pay any taxi fares or any entry fees. Needless to say I don't remember much of the latter half of the night. After the night was winding down and I was back at a friend's place in the city I drank an entire bottle of wine. I really have to start cutting down.

Sunday was absolute hell. One of the worst hangovers I have ever had. I was still feeling crap at about 9pm. Even this morning I still felt a bit seedy. Two new people started at work today which is quite a lot seeing as there is only about 15 or so people where I work. Well one started and one came in at around 11am and "resigned". Probably the shortest stint at a company ever.

The American company we have a contract with sent over some "team shirts". I was thinking we would just get polo shirts with a logo on the breast but we got bright, colourful Hawaiian shirts instead! They are the real deal actually made in Hawaii. I haven't summoned the courage to put on such a loud shirt just yet.

Melbourne Victory vs Perth Glory at Telstra Dome

2006-11-12T20:54:00.000+11:00

This was the first Thursday night match for Melbourne this season and it was also on Oaks Day. The upside of this was when I caught the train into the city from work and then walked to the Dome I had plenty to look at. There were drunk girls in very revealing dresses and high heels stumbling all around the city.

Before the match, the irrepressible mayor of Melbourne, John So, gave an awesome speech which I didn't understand a word of. The echo coupled with his strong accent meant he was very difficult to understand. I did pick out one word though and that was "championship". I think he finished off by saying something about Melbourne winning the championship. Even though I didn't understand what he was saying I cheered him along with the rest of the crowd. He was loving it as well. At the end he was throwing his arms up in the air waving to the crowd and they responded with more cheers. He certainly is an excitable fellow.

If I had to sum up the soccer quickly I would say it was basically an 88 minute shitfest followed by about 5 minutes of jubilation. Perth just decided to defend the entire game and it certainly was frustrating. They might as well have parked the team bus in front of the goals if they have one which I doubt they do. All they seemed to do was defend and it resulted in a frustrating game. Plus for the first half we had some backseat commentators. These guys just wouldn't shutup and kept commenting on every little thing. To make it worse it was all negative. I know Simon Storey ain't the greatest player in the world but I don't have to hear about it everytime the ball is within a 20 metre radius of him. Apparently he needed "some wog in him" to be a good player. Even two of Melbourne's best players this season, Brebner and Muscat, weren't spared and Muscat wasn't even playing!

This match I did the smart thing and went and got food and beer about 2 minutes before halftime so I didn't have to wait in line for 20 minutes. When I came back I was overjoyed to see the commentary team had decided to go sit somewhere else so some others could enjoy their fantastic insights. Finally in the 89th minute Melbourne decided to score. It was a cracker of a goal from outside the box and it was thanks to the Scottish "wog-free" Grant Brebner. I wish the commentators from earlier were still behind me. The crowd erupted once he scored and the 88 minutes of frustration were definitely worth it. It was so sweet to win in the 2nd last minute of the game. Was encouraging to see 23,000 people at the soccer on a Thursday night. The move from Olympic park to Telstra Dome has been well worth it.

Brebbers celebrates his 89th minute goal by running and pointing to the right side of the photo. Top goal Grant!

Someone lit a flare after Melbourne scored and it released this weird orange smoke that just hung around for about 10 minutes. It reminded me of my tour of duty in 'Nam. In this picture the Melbourne coach, Ernie Merrick, points out the left side of the photo. He is possibly pointing at Grant Brebner who is possibly pointing at him. Although, Ernie might be pointing to a Charlie mortar position.

Getting Hit By A Bus - A Proud Family Tradition.

2006-11-09T16:53:00.000+11:00

My dad started it in Melbourne a few years ago in Melbourne and now my sister has given this tradition an international twist. That's right, last week my sister got hit by a bus but this time it was a Scottish bus, a Glaswegian bus to be precise.

Before I go any further, it's ok to joke about it because she is now fine. Remember that little tip people, you can only joke about someone's injury once they have recovered. For example, if someone has just fallen down a flight of stairs and hit their head and are now in a coma then making a joke about it while they are on life support is NOT COOL and NOT ON. You must wait until they recover from their accident before unleashing such zingers as, "Did you have a nice trip???!! ROFLMAO!!!1" I am not sure about the ettiquete if the person dies, I think you have to wait until at least 3 hours after death, or maybe that's years, I really can't remember.

Anyway, my sister was standing on the gutter and buses like to come close to the gutter. She must have stuck her head out a bit and then BAM!, a faceful of bus! The old reminder you repeated to yourself as kids failed to mention buses. It used to say "look right, look left and then look right again before crossing the road." Well in my sisters case it was "look right, look left, look rig... *BAM, BUS IN THE HEAD*, catch taxi to hospital and never cross the road." The bus can't have been going too fast but it was enough to send her flying and to get a small fracture on her skull and a broken finger. A doctor happened to be on the bus and got out and hailed a taxi and went with her to the hospital that was 5 minutes away.

She had a few xrays in hospital and was released later that day. Unfortunately she didn't have her phone with her and didn't know any numbers off by heart. That means she couldn't ring anyone to come pick her up which meant she had to get public transport home. So after being hit by a bus she had the joy of catching one home. When is it my turn to continue the tradition? Time will only tell but no doubt I will do it in a much more spectacular fashion. I plan on being hit by a double decker luxury coach. My parents will be so proud.

A Big Weekend - Party, wedding and bowling.

2006-11-09T00:10:00.000+11:00

Well I created my own 4 day weekend and certainly did a lot compared to what I normally do. The best part is I still managed to get in my regulation 12 hours sleep on most nights!

Lunch...
On Saturday I was rudely awoken at about 11:30am and went to Richmond for lunch with my friend down from Canberra, his girlfriends sister and her boyfriend, plus another one of my friends. It was Derby Day and we drove through Flemington which was packed with traffic. We got a good look at plenty of girls wearing nice (and often revealing) dresses. One even gave me a wave! That is the best I can probably hope to get. After lunch we went to the shopping centre to buy my uni friend a present for the party that night. We settled on a framed socceroos 2006 poster and I wrote on his card that it could have possibly been a Socceroos world champion poster if it wasn't for those damn, diving, cheating Azzuri.

Pre-party...
The Chinese woman in the poster shop was quite funny and very talkative. She did ask one amusing question though. She turns to my friend who is quite clearly fully Asian and asks "Are you Asian?" I am not quite sure what else he could have been because he sure didn't look like anything but an Asian. She then asked him a few more questions including if he spoke Chinese, which he doesn't. Then she started talking about how her nephew can't speak Chinese because he speaks to all his friends in English and hates Chinese school on Saturdays. Poor little guy having to go to school on a Saturday, I know I would be pissed off! Then she asked my friend if his girlfriend was Chinese and when I was leaving she asked me "Do you have a girlfriend?" To which I replied "No, not right now." She then went on to say "Oh you meet and pick up nice girl at party tonight!" Well god bless her or maybe the lucky Chinese cat on her desk, because it sort of happened later that night.

Party...
After going home for a dinner of spag bol and garlic bread it was off to the party out north in Mill Park. We arrived fashionably early. That's right, I am a trendsetter and am going to start a trend of arriving early and pissing off the host who is, invariably, not ready. The birthday boy has his very own table soccer table. It is probably the coolest thing to do at a party after a few beers. After a few games of that people started to arrive.

It turned out to be a really cool party with lots of people from uni attending. It was great to catch up with them. Some of my friends brothers friend who I went to Meredith music festival with last year came as well. I had been looking forward to having a few beers with them again. A lot of the night is a bit of a blur and I just remember the Asian friend I mentioned earlier pulling out his "magic karaoke mic." And no, its not what you are thinking, it was an actual microphone for singing karaoke. The highlight was definitely when I say New York New York backed up by about 6 other people. All I remember after that is falling asleep in a bed somewhere and then getting home at about 4 or 5am.

Pre-Wedding...
On Sunday I woke up regretting how many drinks I had drank the night before. I had a wicked hangover which I would rate about an 7.5 or 8. It was at least at the point where I was rolling around holding my head as it pulsed with each heartbeat. I was even considering the forced, pre-emptive chuck before I went to the wedding. That technique can work wonders. After getting myself into a suit (2 times in 2 weeks!), I headed to the Botanical Gardens with my parents for the wedding ceremony.

Wedding...
The wedding was for my friends parents son who I have known since I was really young. We used to hang out together from when I was about 8 to 14 years in age but he was a bit older than me. I hadn't seen him in a long time and hadn't even met the bride before. The groom is in a heavy metal band and so were a lot his mates so I have never so many people with shaved heads and a massive beard in once place. The groom and about 3 out of 5 of the groomsmen had this combination going. The wedding took place in front of a lake and there was well over 100 people in attendance including a lot of spectators! At the end they said you could go up and take photos and some Japanese tourists went up the front to take pictures of the bride and groom. Made me smile.

Reception...
The reception was held in Collins St in hall/room that had beautiful, old style architecture inside. I still had a bit of a hangover but decided the best cute was some more beer. It worked a treat. Some of the speeches were extremely funny, especially that of the brother of the groom. Their whole family were from St Albans and he made some joke along the lines of "enjoy life in your St Albans paradise with junkyard dogs and lots of kids." The grooms dad also made a joke that kind of bombed but I thought was pretty funny. Maybe it was due to all the beer I had drank. He said something like "the groom and the bride look after each other really well, as half of Melbourne's taxi drivers could tell you." The groom was very nervous for his speech and kept reverting to the word "bloody" which resulted in a very simple, yet hilarious heckle from the crowd. When he was searching for a word to use someone from the table called out "Use the word bloody again!"

While I was at the bar I saw a guy that looked familiar but I didn't want to say anything in case it wasn't him. After a few seconds of staring at each other he said my name. It was my best friend from primary school who I somehow hadn't seen in 10 years despite him living a couple of minutes away from me. After catching up with him for a bit and scoring some Scotch off one of the groosmen I headed to my friends house in the city. One of the shoes I was wearing wasn't really tight enough and when I am drunk I tend to ignore pain or discomfort. I took the long walk through the city and boy would I regret it the next day.

At 11am I rose in a crumpled suit and headed to Flinders St station to catch the train home. The rubbing had taken its toll the night before and I had a massive blister/cut/graze on my heel that made walking an extremely painful experience. The best part was I got off the train it was a 30 minute walk home. Luckily I had some sweet Chinese food to look forward to that I bought at the station. That was all I had to keep me going through the pain.

The best part was I never told work I wasn't going in but I had excuses planned. I was going to go with I told you I wasn't coming in but you must have forgotten routine. The other planned one was I told the guy who went to America this week so he couldn't tell you. None of those excuses were needed because when I went in today nobody said anything! I also got called into the bosses office and was shitting myself only to find out I was getting a payrise! Score!

Bowling...
After having a magnificent sleep in till 2pm I got up and did nothing exciting till I went bowling later that night. We went to Crown and I won the first game scoring 149 which was one of my best scores ever! During the 2nd game the drinks started to take effect and I started to bowl gutter balls and it was all over. After Crown we dropped in at a friends place in Nth Melbourne for a while and then it was back home.

Wrong number fun - Apparently I'm gay, bra.

2006-11-03T09:43:00.000+11:00

I was at work testing out the phone functionality of a new product. I was testing out the SMS editor by sending messages to my mobile phone. I sent one to my phone and was waiting for the usual vibrating of the phone on my desk. The vibrating never happened and I realised I had sent an SMS full of gibberish to the wrong number. The number I had sent it to was one number different to mine. Shortly after I got a reply.

"Hey who is this?"
So I replied with...
"Sorry about that, wrong number."
45 seconds later...
"Haha ok. How did you get this number?"

Clearly I was dealing with someone who wasn't too bright and didn't even grasp the concept of a wrong number. Only a few minutes later they pranked my phone wanting me to reply. It was like something a girlfriend would do. I was bored at work so I thought I'd go along with it...

"I mistyped the number. You must be really bored?"
About five minutes later I got this in reply...
"Yep I'm bored at work. You must be bored too. What's your name?"

I guess that tells me this person is probably over 18. I decided to lie about my name so wrote...

"Yeah work is boring. My name is Matt."

Nothing really prepared me for the response but there are so many stupid people out there that I shouldn't have been surprised. The entire time I hadn't worked out if they were male or female. Well this was his response...

"Ur a queer cunt. Sorry bra dont take it up the brown. Throught u were sheela not some faggot rapin anal licker"

Such hurtful words, some random guy tells me that I lean towards the homo side of sexuality. I guess he was moronic enough to think he was going to pick up some hot chick and by being male and "deceiving him" I insulted his manliness or something. Clearly he was too stupid to consider the fact that I might have thought he was female. This fact was beyond his small brain and to him I was a raging homosexual who was coming on to him via SMS.

Unfortunately I couldn't write much more as this was a work SIM card and other people would be using it in the next few days. He had already proven he was an aggressive douchebag and I didn't want some workmate getting an SMS saying "haha ur a faggot, u like men u fucking gay poof." So I simply replied with...

"Right"

This infuriated him some more and he had to waste another 25 cents of his own money to remind me...

"U fuking fairy"

This story proves that sending an SMS to a wrong number results in hilarity yet at the same time confirms there a lot of stupid people out there. A few days before the incident above, this happened:

I was ringing a female friend at about 11:30pm. I rang and she answered. She sounded like she had been sleeping or crying or something. I said "Hi" back and asked what she had been doing. She said she had been doing nothing but still sounded upset. I asked if anything was wrong and she said "I don't know" and she kept repeating "I don't know" everytime I asked her. She sounded really depressed. After about a minute of this something dawned on me and I asked "Who am I speaking to?" Her voice instantly changed and she said "Vanessa, who is this?" I thought to myself oops, I don't even know a Vanessa, this is a bit awkward. I replied and said my name and "I've rang the wrong number." Then there was this awkward silence for about 5 seconds where we both realised we had just been talking to the wrong person for a minute without realising it. She didn't say anything so I said "sorry about that, bye" and she said "bye."

When she first picked up her voice did sound a little different but I thought it was because my friend had been crying or sleeping. Was a pretty big coincidence that she sounded like my friend and I must have sounded like a friend she knew and was expecting to call. I never did get to find out what was wrong with her though.

Another Streetfighter Movie.

2006-11-02T11:09:00.000+11:00

Someone has decided it would be a good idea to make another Streetfighter movie. I wonder what was going through their minds when they came up with the idea. Probably something like this:

Studio Exec1: How can we make a quick buck?
Studio Exec2: Well this great idea for a movie came to me in a dream last night. It was about a police officer who gets shot to death and they turn him into this kick-ass robot who shoots up criminals while dishing out witty one liners. At the same time he must deal with hazy memories of his human life and handle the emotional issues of making the switch from a human to a cyborg. I think I will call it "Robot Cop."
Studio Exec1: Dude, that wasn't a dream. Robocop was just on TV last night and you were in a drug-fuelled stupour after doing too many lines of cocaine off the chest of expensive hookers and thought you dreamt it.
Studio Exec2: Well I have to spend my money somehow. What else am I meant to do with the millions I earn from pumping out shitty movies?
Studio Exec1: True dat. So how can we make some quick money? I want to add a second swimming pool to my backyard, you know, to keep the kids out of my pool.
Studio Exec2: Wow you only have one pool? Times are tough. How about a movie aimed at kids? They have no taste and will watch anything.
Studio Exec1: I like your thinking. You know what kids love? Vid..
Studio Exec2: Chocolate.
Studio Exec1: You weren't meant to answer that question, I was going to tell you what they like.
Studio Exec2: But they do like chocolate!
Studio Exec1: But they already made a movie about Chocolate. What I was going to say is kids love videogames.
Studio Exec2: Like Mario?
Studio Exec1: Lol, you make me laugh sometimes, Mario is old-hat. Mario got popular with "Super Mario Brothers" back in 1985.
Studio Exec2: So we need something newer. How about Streetfighter?
Studio Exec1: Masterstroke! Streetfighter got popular in 1991 with "Streetfighter 2", that is a whole 6 years newer than Mario!
Studio Exec2: Plus now its 2006 we have the special effects to make Ken and Ryu's "hadouken" fireballs look top shelf!
Studio Exec1: Maybe we can even add flames to Ken when he does a "shoryuken" dragon uppercut!
Studio Exec2: The best part is even though all video game to movie translations are total garbage, kids will still see it!
Studio Exec1: Spot on! But the real beauty of this is the first movie sucked so badly that this new one will have to be better, even if it comes down to Dhalsim's "Yoga Fires" looking more realistic. Can you believe Kylie Minogue was in the first one?!
Studio Exec2: Yeah that was a well thought out move for her acting career. Well at least she was hot in it.
Studio Exec1: Another bonus is that Van Damme starred in the first movie and sucked bigtime. With some sequels you can't pull off changing the main actor but in this case people will welcome it! No one likes Van Damme anymore!
Studio Exec2: Speaking of sequels, did you know they made 4 Home Alone movies? Part 3 and 4 didn't even have that Culkin kid in it!
Studio Exec1: 3 sequels after the original! Well if they can do it then so can we, I really need to buy a Ferrari for my 16 year old daughter so she stops complaining about how Stacey down the street has one.
Studio Exec2: Kids these days are so expensive. By the way did you know Street Fighter was the last movie Raul Julia made? His last acting gig was playing M Bison and then he died.
Studio Exec1: I heard he actually died of shame after watching the movie he had just starred in.
Studio Exec2: Well who wouldn't? It's just unfortunate that Van Damme didn't watch it himself.
Studio Exec1: Well its settled, another Streetfighter movie it is!
Studio Exec2: Fantastic. I'm getting low on cocaine.
Studio Exec1: How much you got left?
Studio Exec2: 5 kilos.
Studio Exec1: Wow, times are tough.
Studio Exec2: Yep, foisting Big Momma's House 2 on the public only netted me enough cash for 3 kilos.

But seriously, the first movie was terrible. I worshipped Streetfighter as a kid. In fact, I think I may have even had a Streetfighter tshirt and I used to sneak around the milk bar to play the videogame. Even back then before I was young enough to have developed any sort of critical edge I could tell the movie was embarrassingly bad. All things said and done I will probably end up watching this new one.

Strange things happen when I sleep.

2006-11-01T13:31:00.000+11:00

For starters I have the most bizarre dreams ever, most of which I forget about completely. I really should write them down when I wake up. One that I do remember is I was at some sort of rock concert and everyone ran towards the front of the stage. I was lucky because I got to sit in a big grandstand up the back and I think the reason I got this special treatment was because I was related to Prince Charles who was also there. I asked my mum how come I didn't know this and she said it was because she didn't want to tell anyone. After watching the band play, Michael J Fox appeared. He was filming a movie about going back in time and I commented that he had made a movie about that before. He told me it was a sequel to another movie that wasn't Back to the future. He said I could be in the movie. In the next sequence I was in the Delorean car from Back to the future and my mate from uni was driving. We pulled up to fill it up with some strange fuel and I tried to go into some room but it had no door handle. Someone then said "hi" to me and it turned out to be my friends friend who I had heard about but had never actually met. I just created my own image of them in my head.

Now dreams are all well and good but a few times lately I have started doing strange things with my phone. I always keep my phone next to me and use it as an alarm. One morning at about 5am I awoke to find my phone in my hand and the screen displaying "sending." I realised what was going on and panicked but it was too late to cancel it. Turns out I had just sent what was in the SMS editor to my brother, it just said something about one of my friends being full of shit for supporting Brazil against Australia in the soccer. The same thing happened to me about a week later, I sent the contents of the last SMS I sent to a friend at about 6am in the morning. That's right, I don't sleep walk, I sleep SMS. It's only going to be a matter of time before I send someone something I shouldn't.

About 2 months ago there was a new twist to it. I got to work and went to send an SMS to my friend and my SMS editor already had text in it. I read what it said and like trying to remember a long faded memory I sort of remembered picking up my phone half asleep earlier that morning. The text said "last day of winter, first day of summer." I wouldn't have a clue what I mean by that but I guess that is what I was thinking when I was basically asleep. "Last day of winter, first day of summer" doesn't make sense and isn't even possible but I barely make sense when I am awake so that is no surprise.

Last night my late night phone shenanigans went beyond simple text messaging. It got dangerous. After plugging the phone in to the charger next to my bed I rang a friend at around 11pm. They were a bit busy so I was meant to wait 5 minutes for them to call me back. My body was having none of this and I fell asleep with the phone in my hand. At about 2am I woke up confused, like when you fall asleep watching a movie and then awake suddenly and are instantly annoyed because you realised you fell asleep and missed the end of the movie. Funnily enough the phone was still in my hand and I looked down and it had 3 missed calls on it. Oops. After realising what had happened I went to put my phone on the shelf. As I moved the phone away from me, something tightened around my neck like it was strangling me. Somehow during my sleep I had wrapped the phone charger cord around my neck. But not just once. Twice. It appears I tried to strangle myself in my sleep. Do you think my subconscienceness is trying to tell me something?

My ARIA awards round up for 2006.

2006-10-31T20:20:00.000+11:00

Do people still actually watch the ARIA awards? I think the last time I watched it was when I was waiting for You Am I to come on for a live performance. I waited forever. When I say forever, I mean forever. That's right, they never came on. I sat through the 3 hour shitfest of undeserved awards and embarrassingly lame jokes for no reason. I remember Dylan Lewis made the joke, "Have you seen the line outside the toilets? I think a fly must have shat in the orderves." And that was one of the best jokes of the night. Needless to say, I soldiered on and kept telling myself "keep watching, they will be on after the next ad break. If you stop watching they will come on." Then I started thinking to myself it's getting late, something isn't right here and that is when the credits began to roll. It resulted in this terrible sinking feeling that you get when you realise you have just been massively fooled and ripped off. It's not a nice feeling at all.

Anyway on to my roundup of this years winners where I will display my massive ignorance of Australian music these days and no doubt piss off one of the 2 people that actually read my ramblings. On to the winners.

Best Adult Contemporary Album
Bob Evans - Suburban Songbook - Why does Kevin Mitchell go by this Bob Evans alter ego? I don't get it, everyone knows he is just Kevin from Jebediah. I have no idea what the heck adult contemporary means exactly but I can't complain about this one too much. Although I did like "Bob" better when he was Kevin singing about Leaving Home.

Best Blues and Roots Album
Sorry I couldn't give a shit about blues, and I care even less about roots.

Best Children's Album
The Wiggles - Racing to the Rainbow - A deserved win. A catchy title and anything to keep those hussies from Hi-5 from winning. Does anyone know what the deal with Jeff is? I was browsing the site with my niece (I swear) and was checking out their bios. All of them were listed as married with multiple kids and then it gets to Jeff and it simply says "single." I have 2 theories. The first and most obvious one is that Jeff is gay but my second, more interesting theory is that he is just a massive ladies man and beds all the mums. That's right, I can see through your phoney falling asleep act Jeff. You actually are falling asleep. The reason? You are tired because you have been up all night banging mums!

Best Comedy Release
Lano and Woodley - Sing Songs - I must admit I really wasn't aware that people actually bought comedy CD's. Kevin "Bloody" Wilson should have won this, I don't know whether he has released a CD in the past 5 years but that is besides the point.

Best Country Album
Troy Cassar-Daley - Brighter Day - Bzzzzzzzz wrong again Australian recording industry. This blog's resident celebrity Darren Hume should have won this award.

Best Dance Release
TV Rock feat. Seany B - Flaunt it - That song shits me to tears and anyone who calls himself "Seany B" has to be a wanker. Plus 99% of songs with someone featuring someone are crap and I stand by generalisations with the obvious exception being The Baha Men feat. Lou Bega.

Best Group
Wolfmother - Wolfmother - Seeing as I am not very clever I am just going to go with the obvious joke and say its great to see Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath have formed a band and are still going strong.

Best Pop Release
The Veronicas - The Secret Life Of.. - dressing up some 5 foot, albeit quite attractive, hobbit twins and pretending they rock because of the rock clothes they wear and the guitars they occassionaly hold.

Breakthrough Artist - Single
Youth Group - Forever Young - This award is baffling. Youth Group have been around for 9 years or something and win a "breakthrough artist" award with a cover of a song from the 70s or 80s. Something just doesn't seem right to me there.

Highest Selling Australian Album
Human Nature - Reach Out, The Motown Album - This is just sad. The highest selling Australian album of 2006 was Human Nature covering motown classics. I really don't even know how to put into words how much of a travesty this is. Did everyone in Australia buy this for their mum for mothers day? That is the only explanation. Only females over 50 would even consider listening to this.

Single Of The Year
Eskimo Joe - Black Fingernails, Red Wine - And that just about sums up the ARIA's. A bland and boring single of the year matches a bland and boring night of shitty music.
>>>>

The Cox Plate

2006-10-30T10:00:00.000+11:00

On Saturday I got into the spirit of the Spring Racing Carnival and headed to Moonee Valley for the Cox Plate. After a few drinks at home, myself and 5 others got a lift to the racecourse a few suburbs over. Throughout the day I had two memorable conversations, the first one occured before we even got in the gate. As I arrived at the window with my mate to pay my $40 to get in the women behind the counter starts this conversation...

Woman: Are you fond of the "f" word?
Me: What?
Woman: Are you fond of the "f" word? I heard someone saying it just back there.
Me: No.
Woman: Are you sure? It sounded like one of you two.
Me: It wasn't us.... You fucking idiot.

Obviously I didn't say the part in italics as I probably wouldn't have got let in. I believe I will sum up the day in bullet points.

I didn't see a real live horse all day.
I didn't place a bet all day.
I only managed to catch one race on the screen which was the Cox Plate. It was thrilling as far as horse races go with it ending in a photo finish.
There were lots and lots of drunk, well dressed people there.
I spoke to a group of football players who were apparently from Tasmaia yet had New Zealand accents. I haven't worked out what is worse, being Tasmania or New Zealand but Tasmania is part of Australia so I guess New Zealand loses out.
I got punched in the stomach once I had left the races.
I drank far too much beer.

The 2nd notable conversation of the day was with a girl there for a "hens day".

Her: I already know what I want to do all day tommorrow. I have it all planned out.
Me: Oh yeah, what is that?
Her: I don't want to tell you, it's a bit embarrassing.
Me: Come on, don't be shy, just tell me.
Her: Well tommorrow I want to fuck all day.
Me: Oh ok, with who?
Her: Someone I meet at the races, any guy I meet.
Me: Ah cool.

Straight after "ah cool" I went back to enjoying my beer oblivious to what had just been said. I only realised the day after she might have been coming on to me. Overall a good time was had by all and by "all" I mean myself.

Its ALL your fault (women).

2006-10-26T19:07:00.000+10:00

So if I see a woman in the street walking down to the bakery or something and she is wearing a skirt and I can see her legs she is just asking to be raped. Am I right guys?

Oh and any girl wearing make up, it's like they have a giant neon sign flashing over them blinking the words "Rape Me Now." Any woman covering blemishes on her face with make up is definitely asking for a good raping.

For example, if you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? That's right, its obviously the meat's fault! It was just sitting there asking to be eaten. Pieces of meat are such whores and men are like cats, total animals who can't control their primal urges like raping any woman who walks by with bare arms.

If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred. Women are weapons used by Satan to control men because as I said before, men cannot control themsleves if they see a woman's hair. Hair = rape time. Am I right or am I right?

Hangover cure.

2006-10-22T18:07:00.000+10:00

Checkout this hangover cure, I would love to try it sometime. I think I first saw it on the somethingawful forums but you can look at how to make it here. It is basically a pizza made out of McDonalds, what a great idea!

In other news, the United States has banned vegemite.

The great Aussie icon - faithfully carried around the world by travellers from downunder - contains folate, which under a technicality, America allows to be added only to breads and cereals.

What a joke. They are even searching and confiscating vegemite from arriving travellers apparently. I wonder if it will now appear on the black market and when you are in South Central you can pick up some vegemite while making your daily purchase of crack. Ridiculous.

Putting my foot in my mouth.

2006-10-21T16:34:00.000+10:00

I seem to do this a lot, it is kind of a habit. None of them were that bad but still kind of funny none the less. Below are a few examples I can remmeber. The first time was at work and we were talking about superheros's and how their costumes are always made out of lycra.

Me: Yeah bicycle riders are fond of lycra also.
Some guy: Yeah but that is for wind resistance.
Me: It doesn't stop them from looking like wankers though.
Another guy: Oh thanks mate.
Me: I was just kidding.
Another guy: No you weren't.

Turned out that guy was into cycling and had all the lycra gear. Then yesterday at work we are all eating lunch at a restaurant.

Female project manager: When I went for singing lessons there was lots of people there learning to sing so they could sing at their wedding.
Me: *cracks up laughing* *thinking to myself how incredibly lame that would be*
Someone else: What is so funny?
Me: Was just imagining someone actually singing at their wedding.
Female project manager: I sang at my wedding.
Me: Oh.

Oh and one more at my old workplace when I was about 19 talking to a female manager who was about 20.

Me: So have you bought your dad a fathers day present?
Female Manager: No *smiling*
Me: Why not?
Female Manager: I just haven't.
Me: Aren't you gonna buy one?
Female Manager: Nope.
Me: Wow you are a tight ass! Not even buying your dad a present. So why not?
Female Manager: I'm just not.
Me: Ah its cos of your new boyfriend right? I know your parents dont like him!
Female Manager: Maybe.
Me: So what is it really?
Female Manager: He is 6 feet under.
Me: *Going red*.. I am so sorry!

She then started laughing and I kept saying why didnt you tell me, you were deliberately doing that. Boy did I feel stupid.

Australia vs Bahrain - Mark Bresciano!

2006-10-12T21:20:00.000+10:00

Well looks like the name change has paid off for Mark Bresciano. He was the highlight of an otherwise boring Australia vs Bahrain match. Australia won 2 - 0 but should have won by about 4 goals because, after all, they were only playing the Bahrain under 23 team. The match wasn't helped by Bahrain's pathetic and embarrassing antics. If they got the slightest touch they went down and I saw the stretcher come out about 4 times only for them to magically recover once they had been stretchered off. Was fucking frustrating and annoying to watch their time wasting. You can see the highlight of the match right here.

I was just reading through the Herald Sun today and realised that one of the music reviewers in it is quite funny. His name is Cameron Adams and he enjoys bagging anything he doesn't like and usually he is spot on. He writes a comment for each album in the top 20 chart and today for Fergie - The Dutchess he wrote:

Next single will be the repellent Fergalicious. Is she back on the crystal meth?

Good call Cameron!

Also, check out this Dillinger Escape Plan video. He runs across a crowd of people.

Poor little Kim isn't taken seriously.

2006-10-12T09:40:00.000+10:00

Another Kim Jong update! Here is a blog from The Age website that puts into words what I have noticed. There is no point in me re-writing it so here it is ripped directly from here.

Something very odd is happening in Australian news and current affairs. Yesterday, the story of North Korea's nuclear test was all over the news. Fair enough, it's a big story and probably the biggest event in world affairs since the US invaded Iraq. But here's where it gets weird - at least three serious news programs opted to throw the marionette version of Kim Jong-il from Team America into their coverage of the story.

This wasn't the Glass House or The Panel - the clip appear on SBS World News, Nine's Nightline and even ABC radio's AM program. AM even asked Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to comment on it!

It's just not Australia either, as shown by the front page article in the UK's Sun (scroll down for the picture). The media just aren't taking him seriously, he is like the clown character in a sitcom. You know the one who tries really hard to be noticed but it always ends in hilarity. I can just imagine him in a room with other world leaders trying to make himself look cool talking about his movie collection which is rumoured to number 20,000. Then when someone asks if they are all DVD's he has to admit that half are on VHS which upsets him so he responds with threats of nuclear war. While grandstanding about having nuclear weapons he falls backwards over a chair and somehow gets a bucket or something stuck on his head. He then starts running around screaming angrily into the bucket while bumping into things. Everyone else in the room starts laughing and someone says "Don't worry, he'll tire himself out soon." Kim then blindly falls down a flight of stairs to uproarious laughter and someone says "Oh Kim, what are we going to do with you?" This is greeted by more laughter and clanging bucket sounds and muffled shouts coming from down the stairs. Fadeout and cue end music and credits.

Best headline/picture combination ever.

2006-10-10T21:39:00.000+10:00

That's right, they combined the puppet of Kim Jong Il from the movie Team America: World Police with a Sound of Music reference which results in - absolute genius.

Just Call Me Mark

2006-10-10T16:17:00.000+10:00

I found this mammoth article on the Foxsports website:
AUSTRALIA midfield player Mark Bresciano confirmed today that his first name was Mark, not Marco, as had previously been widely reported, and quoted in official Football Federation Australia releases.

Yep, thats it. Short and to the point. I hear what you are saying buddy. Although I rarely get Marco I do often get Marcus which is funny in moderation. Mostly I get Marky from females but if males use Marky it sounds awfully strange. It is only ok to be called Marky by a male if they are taking the piss out of me. Thus ends this post.

Kim goes nuclear!

2006-10-09T19:57:00.000+10:00

Everyone's favourite Korean north of the 38th parallel is at it again! Not merely happy with his massive dong which is also known as the Tapedong-2 three-stage ballistic missile, he is now setting off nuclear bombs! I wrote an update about him during his last weapons test and posted some cool pictures of him.

Today North Korea carried out its first test of a nuclear weapon underground. Basically Mr Kim Jong Il has given the finger to the rest of the world and appears to have even pissed off his closest ally, China. More worrying is the fact that this was carried out underground. If Lord of the Rings has taught me anything it is that:

Elves display a lot of homosexual tendencies. Just like certain hobbits.
Dwarves often provide comedic relief and are fond of beards.
You must roll both r's to pronounce Mordor correctly.
Dwarves speak with something resembling a Scottish accent.
Dwarves like to live underground.

What does that have to do with anything? It has everything to do with everything, that's what. If you are confused, the keyword in the above bullet points is the. Without the, none of those sentences would make any sense watsoever. Actually re-reading my fantastic lessons reveals that I somehow avoided any use of the word the. Therefore the most important word above was underground. That is correct, Kim Jong has been testing his nuclear weapons in the same underground that dwarves like Gimli are so fond of. First the Balrog and now this - a little Korean with glasses and funny hair testing his weapons in their home. Apart from being blown apart the dwarves will have to deal with birth defects caused by radiation like extra appendages, missing appendages and dwarfism. Something must be done to protect these stocky, bearded bringers of comic relief.

A 96th Birthday at the Windsor...

2006-10-08T21:23:00.000+10:00

that was also a joint 40th. That's a 56 year gap! Today we celebrated my grandma's 96th birthday and my cousin's 40th birthday at the Windsor hotel in Spring St, Melbourne. We don't normally go to fancy places like the Windsor but my cousin organised and paid for afternoon tea for 20 people. It was fun to pretend to be rich for an afternoon, I even had to wear OMG a shirt and proper pants and shoes! When we arrived I noticed all these little girls waiting out the front and then a Mercedes 4wd pulled up and a girl got out. It was the birthday girl and she looked about 14. Who has afternoon tea at the Windsor for their 14th birthday? Around that age I went with the Timezone supersession followed up by a whopper meal at Hungry Jacks. Looks like this girl prefers sandwiches and unlimited tea refills by a waiter. Maybe I just don't get it because I'm not from Toorak or Brighton ;)

The funniest moment of the day came up when my cousin and I went to grab some dessert from the dessert table. Just before we got there about fifteen 40 year old woman kind of pushed in front and then took ages. Admittedly there were many delicious selections available but they took far too long. Whilst my cousin and I were waiting we were talking about the scene in The Blues Brothers when they go into the really expensive restaurant and act like slobs, leaning over to this rich guys table and putting on some weird accent saying "I want to buy your daughter, how much for the little girl?" While discussing this, we noticed a "chocolate scuplture" on the table and my cousin suggested it would be funny if I broke a massive bit of it off and started eating it. One of the staff must have heard us because shortly after a female staff member came over and told us we probably shouldn't eat it because it's a not really edible. It's a couple of months old and really hard. I noticed the woman in line in front of me looked a bit agitated and defensively asked "Well what is it on the table for?" The staff member replied "It is just a decoration." The woman in the line looked even more pissed off and after the staff member left she stealthily took a piece of chocolate off her plate and threw it back on the plate of the sculpture. The reason she got so defensive was because she tried to eat part of it, funny stuff.

The nicest moment of the day was when my brother and 3 year old niece came in and surprised everyone. He had flown down from the Gold Coast for it so it was a nice surprise for everyone. I already knew he was coming so no surprise for me. My cousin's boss was also there and he told an interesting story during his speech. My cousin is his personal assistant and he needed a button sewed on his pants and there was no time to take off his pants and do it so she had to do it while he was wearing them. So here is she is down on her knees sewing a button on to his pants with her back to the door when the biggest office gossip walks in. She did the kind of "Oh I'll leave you alone" thing while backing out the door. It didn't look good!

Anyway its a good innings by grandma, 96 years old. My grandad, her husband, lived till 100. Looks like longevity might be in the family so I might have a long life in front of me. Knowing that means I don't have to feel guilty about acting immature well into my 30's. Sweet!

I also watched Australia Vs Paraguay last night. Looked like it was going to be a fairytale ending with Popovic scoring a goal in the 88th minute in his last game for Australia. That was until the person who replaced him with 2 minutes to go, Michael Beauchamp, put in an extremely retarded own goal. Thanks for ruining my night and the entire vibe of the match you arseclown. I have no idea what you were trying to do heading it like that. Oh well. Melbourne Victory also won 2 - 0 against Newcastle with Danny Allsop scoring both goals. I didn't get to watch it because I was still pretending to be wealthy and successful eating $50 sandwiches.

In other soccer news, Scotland beat France 1 - 0!!!!! Well done boys! They are in what is arguably the hardest Euro 2008 qualifying group that includes Italy, France and Ukraine but the way they are going they can qualify. If Scotland and France qualify and Italy doesn't I will be in heaven.

Well that's one way to avoid talking to someone...

2006-10-06T20:55:00.000+10:00

Tonight when I was coming home from work on the train I looked up and saw a familiar face. I couldn't quite place who it was but then happened to glance up at the guy standing next to her. It took me a few seconds but I recognised him as someone I used to hang around with when I was about 10. I hadn't seen him in 5 years and really couldn't be bothered talking to him. So I did what any anti-social prick such as myself would do. I turned up the Pennywise on my Ipod and pretended to be asleep. I even did the dozing thing where my head slowly moves down then I awake with a start and lift it back up. I had to make it look genuine.

Then something happened. My face, and most notably my mouth, began to betray me. I began to realise the idiocy and ridiculousness of my ploy. I couldn't believe the extent I was going to just to avoid saying hello to someone. It was like something George Constanza from Seinfeld would have done. Once this struck me my mouth began to form a smirk. Not just once. Many times. Here I was pretending to be asleep on the train while listening to Pennywise at full volume while smirking like an idiot. All this just to avoid a short conversation. If you are wondering, yes I am a gigantic asshole. Well that clears that up ;)

Someone built their home outside my back door.

2006-10-05T22:24:00.000+10:00

So I came home one weekend to discover this right outside my back door.

At the time I had no idea what made this mess and no idea why.

A few nights later I turned on the flood light for the backyard and it illuminated this.

A silly bird decided it was a good place for a nest. If I stood on my toes I could touch it. There was no sign of this foolhardy bird.

The next night I turned the light on and it shone straight on to the culprit. She froze completely like a shitty comedian in the spotlight.

After this picture I removed her from her nest and devoured her eggs. They were delicious. Let this be a lesson to any other foolhardy birds who think its extreme to build their nest where humans can easily reach it.

Melbourne Victory vs Queensland Roar at Telstra Dome

2006-10-04T10:46:00.000+10:00

After getting home at 4:30am I woke up surprisingly early on Sunday morning at about 10:30. To prolong my time in bed I watched a story on the TV show Sunday about the different methods the Chinese government are using to try and steal the knowledge to the Australian designed weapons system, Metal Storm. The US department of defence controls access to the technology and one way to get around this and patents was to get the Australian inventor to move to China and personally tell them how the technology works. He was offered 50 million to move to Beijing and then another 50 million after living there for a year. He refused.

The soccer was 1st vs 2nd on the ladder, Melbourne being on top after winning 5 from 5. This was only the 2nd A-league match to ever be played at Telstra Dome so hopefully a decent crowd was going to turn up. We sat in the same spot as the previous match, on the wing, but one bay down. First I will get my major gripe about the match out the way - the announcer who announces the players names at the start of the match. He has really dropped the ball and it's about time something was done about it. The first time he announced the players name I awaited for Alessandro's name to be read out. It came and went and could only be described as disappointing. I turned to my friend from Canberra and told him, "Don't worry, he is just saving it up for the second announcement." Once the 2nd announcement began I awaited with anticipation for the little Brazilian's name to come up. "Alessandro", the announcer read out unenthusiastically. Yes you read correctly, only 1 'r'! In the past he has given it some real pizazz and it has come out as "Alessandrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooo" with the 'r' rolled just like a boxing announcer. Disgusted, I gave my friend a sheepish look. Maybe the announcer thought it was inappropriate to get too excited about Alessandro seeing as he had been relegated to starting on the bench for this match. Hopefully a strongly worded letter by myself to the Melbourne Victory can rectify the situation of the rolled r's.

Despite the above leaving a bitter taste in my mouth like the time I accidently ate an ant (they are surprisingly bitter or maybe it was more of a burning sensation, I forget), the match was great. Fred opened the scoring with a nice piece of working wrong footing the defence and slotting it in nicely. This sent the Melbourne cheer squad, "The Blue and White Brigade", into raptures. This didn't last long as Queensland scored not long after. Thankfully, shortly after Kevin Muscat scored another penalty this season, something that seems to occur nearly every match. Melbourne does seem to get a lot of penalties but this one was definitely there as the Queensland defender decided it would be a good idea to touch the ball with his hand in the box.

At halftime I went to get some food. More specifically a hotdog and a coke which came to over $8. Actually I am lying, it was a superdog. After congratulating myself on such a fine purchase I took it out of the paper bag to put some sauce on it and realised it was just a regular hotdog and there was nothing super about it all. I guess the $4.40 price was pretty super. Speaking of sauce, has anyone tried using the sauce things at Telstra dome? It is a real challenge, you can't get you food in under them.

After the break, Muscat scored yet another penalty and then Queensland put in a hilarious own goal. Danny Allsop put in a cross only for it to go straight off the defender's legs and into the goal. So the score at the end was 4 - 1 to Melbourne which means they remain unbeaten after 6 rounds. The attendance at 25,000 was quite good seeing as the AFL grand final was the day before and the NRL grand final was that night. After the match we went to a Korean restaurant called Kimchi - Grandma. I shit you not, that is the name of the restaurant, you would think they would ask some English speaking people whether their new restaurant name sounds funny before choosing it. I kept looking out for Grandma while eating but couldn't see her.

Below are some photos from the match at Telstra Dome.

The top shows the crowds entering the stadium from Spencer St Station.
The middle shows the Melbourne Victory cheer squad throwing a lot of streamers on the ground after the first goal.
The last is a picture taken at the start of the 2nd half.

The AFL grand final led to Gaylords.

2006-10-02T22:50:00.000+10:00

On Saturday it was the big one - the AFL grand final. It was a repeat of last years grand final with Sydney Swans playing against the West Coast Eagles. This meant that once again there was no Victorian sides playing which is really starting to become worrying. On Saturday I invited a few people over to watch the match and eat a few pies and sausage rolls and drink a few beers. We were thinking of having a BBQ but decided it was too much effort which was very un-Australian of us. This year I decided to keep it low key after having massive ones the previous 2 years.

Two years ago I went to a house somewhere in the south eastern suburbs that my friend from uni was house sitting. A mate and I jumped on a train with a slab and headed across the city and after 2 trains and some walking we found the house. I only knew my friend from uni but after many drinks by the end of the day everyone was friends. After some unmentionable shenanigans we headed back home satisfied with a good day yet disappointed that those turds from Port Adelaide won.

Last year I went to a different friends house but I sort of a knew 2 or 3 of his friends. I have a semi-followed rule about no beer before midday. This time the rule was well and truly broken with the first beers of the day being opened at approximately 11:15am. Grand Final day is an exception you see, so its all above board. After many beers at half time we headed to the shop and someone was buying cigars and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea. Two cigars and $35 later, we headed back to watch the match. I still have one of those cigars in my drawer a year later. Unfortunately I was the only one going for West Coast and they ended up losing to Sydney by 4 points in a thriller. After some roo on the bbq and some cards in which I won for the first time ever despite being extremely inebriated, I was fast asleep by 9pm.

This year the game was just as exciting with West Coast winning by only 1 point. After the match it was time to go to Gaylords. Twelve of us met up at Gaylords Indian restaurant in the city near Chinatown. Most of the people who attented went to RMIT with me. I really enjoyed the food, I think I ordered the Rogan Josh and ate some of my friends chicken dish which was superb. After having a gay old time at Gaylords (ha ha get it! gay old time, ha ha!), we went out for some drinks at a place I cannot remember the name of where I bumped into my cousins friend. I had a long chat with him and his Irish friend who has been here for 3 years and the Irishman's sister who was visiting from Dublin. Next I got a call from a friend who was a friend's party and didn't know anyone and wanted me to go along. It was interesting to say the least. The music was full on shit which some people like to call rnb, and I really stood out in there wearing my Muse tshirt. Overall it was a pretty cool grand final day and the team I was going for won for the first time in 3 years. Hooray!

My Mornings.

2006-09-29T13:33:00.000+10:00

My mornings run to a finely tuned schedule. The reason for this is I like to sleep into the last possible second. My mornings go something like this...

Alarm set for 7am:

Good Case: The alarm goes off waking me up and then I set it to 8:30am, this is so I can enjoy some "sleeping in" time rather than having to get up as soon as I wake for the first time. I also have some whacked out dreams if I fall back asleep in the morning. The last one involved me looking for a pair of jeans in a shop but they didn't have my size. Did I mention the shop assistant was Samuel L Jackson? After leaving the shop through a back exit my sister was talking about her pet platypus and then it ran away and I chased it through a park and into someone's backyard. After leaving their backyard a pitbull dog came out the front and bit my arm and wouldn't let go. I must point out that is one of the more normal dreams I have.
Bad Case: There is not often a bad case because even if I sleep through the alarm I usually wake before 8:30am.
Worst Case: I never hear the alarm because I have died in my sleep.

8:30am Alarm:

Good Case: I realise it is actually a Saturday and I can sleep in as long as I want which usually means until some idiot rings the phone or door bell 30 minutes later. Failing that, I wake and jump out of bed looking forward to a hard day at work (this never happens).
Bad Case: I turn off my alarm while im half asleep and then wake up later pissed off because I'm running late.
Worse Case: I never hear the alarm because I died in the hour and half between 7 and 8:30am.

Breakfast:

Good Case: I have time to eat leftover re-heated Hawaiian pizza from the night before.
Bad Case: I have no time eat anything and go hungry (the usual case).
Worst Case: Excited at the availabilty of 3 day old pizza for breakfast I forget to chew and choke to death on the pizza.

Shower:

Good Case: I have time to shower for 15 minutes.
Bad Case: I don't have time for a shower due to sleeping in or I realise I am going to be late anyway so whats the point of rushing and take a 30 minute shower and arrive really late to work.
Worst Case: I slip on a bottle of Pantene Pro-V shampoo in the shower and hit my head resulting in death.

Getting Dressed:

Good Case: I have some clean, ironed clothes to wear.
Bad Case: I have no clean clothes and have to wear my "I rode the Thunderbolt roller coaster at Dream World on the Gold Coast" tshirt that I got on a family holiday in grade 4. Failing that I have to wear a dirty tshirt with McDonalds sweet n sour sauce stains on it. A case that isn't as bad is having to waste time ironing ridiculously creased clothes.
Worst Case: To save time I attempt to iron the clothes while I am wearing them resulting in 3rd degree burns which then become infected causing my demise and by demise I mean death.

Driving to work:

Good Case: Traffic ain't too bad and I get pissed off by idiots less than 5 times on the way to work. I make it to work in about 40 - 45 minutes.
Bad Case: I get stuck behind a truck transporting a shitty, weatherboard house or a series of trucks who think they are cars sitting in the right hand lane of Dandenong Rd. I get pissed off by idiots 5 - 10 times on the way to work. I make it to work in 50 - 60 minutes.
Worst Case: I crash my car into a petrol tanker after some idiot cuts me off and am engulfed in a ball of flame. I am too dead to be pissed off at idiots. I never make it to work.
Worse than Worst Case: I have to catch the train to work.

Listening to a CD in the car:

Good Case: I have a CD in the car I enjoy. I put it in the CD player and it works flawlessly and I enjoy the music.
Bad Case: I put a new CD in and on comes my favourite track only for it to be the only track on a 27 track CD that repeatedly skips. Another annoyance is when the speakers start cutting in and out.
Worst Case: When the speakers start cutting out I lean forwards to reach under behind the head unit to wiggle the cable connection on the back of it. Whilst I am distracted doing this a semi-trailer in front brakes because the driver thought he saw Hotdogs from big brother waiting to cross the road and I plough into the back of him. I die in the ambulace on the way to hospital.
Worse than Worst Case: Somehow the "My Humps" single is stuck on repeat in the CD player or any other shite by the Black Eyed Peas or the ex-meth addict Fergie. I drive my car into a solid, brick wall but this time I welcome death.

Arriving at work:

Good Case: I arrive with a minute to spare.
Bad Case: I arrive between 5 and 20 minutes late (the usual case).
Worst Case: The employee car parks are all taken due to some douchebag from another company parking in our spots. I then must do a precarious U-turn on Dandenong Rd to get to other parking. I manage to make the U-turn and park in the service lane. I get out and as I am crossing the service lane I get hit by a Subaru WRX STI with 19 inch gold wheels, blow off valve, milo tin exhaust and dragon sticker covering most of the side of the car. I manage to survive only to have an Asian woman reverse out of Dick Smith over the top of me as I lay with 2 broken legs and no ribs left intact. That finishes me off. But hey, at least I get out of going to work right?

A Tribute to Bill Paxton.

2006-09-28T09:59:00.000+10:00

Bill Paxton has been in some pretty big movies such as True Lies, Apollo 13 and Twister. While he may consider these some of his finest moments, the real reason Bill Paxton should be remembered and celebrated is much more of an achievement than floating around in space with Tom Hanks. Bill Paxton is the only person on earth to have been killed by a Terminator, Alien and Predator.

Bill started off being killed way back in 1984 by everyone's favourite govenor and cyborg from the future, The Terminator (also known as Arnold Schwarznegger and some lame people even refer to him as govenator). Bill was a "Punk Leader" and right near the start of the movie the Terminator throws him up against the fence and it is assumed he kills all three of the punks including Mr Paxton. That is 1 out of 3.

Fast forward 2 years to 1986 where Bill is now Pvt Hudson, a gung ho marine sent to a planet with an outpost that has been overrun by Aliens. Bill lasts a lot longer in this film and goes down in a blaze of glory before an Alien comes from under and pulls him down into the floor below. That was the end of his stint in Aliens.

To round it off in 1990, Bill manages to get killed as "Jerry Lambert", a smart arse police officer who is fond of wearing silly hats. Although Predator is clearly superior to Predator 2, the sequel was more memorable for me due to my grandma. My sister and I were staying at my grandma's one night when I was about 9 years old when she suggested we watched a video. A few nights earlier my 15 year old cousin had asked her to tape a movie off TV for him which happened to be Predator 2. She assumed it was a kids movie so put it on for me and my younger sister. I thought of pointing out that it wasn't really aimed at kids but I kept quiet. The movie started off violently with crazy Columbian drug lords having a street war with the police but my grandma persevered. It only managed to last about another 10 or 15 minutes when she declared "I don't think you should be watching this", right after some Columbians started getting ripped apart by the Predator and a naked woman ran across the screen.

So there you have it, Bill Paxton has done what many of us can only dream of and I would be the first in line to congratulate him. The one letdown is that he wasn't killed by Robocop because Robocop kicks arse. An honourable mention goes to Lance Henriksen who managed to be killed by the Terminator in the original and a Predator in the shitfest entitled "Aliens Vs Predator." He nearly joined Bill Paxton's elite club but he was only ripped in half by an Alien in Aliens. Even if he had of died from being ripped in half it probably wouldn't count because he was actually a droid. Sadly Lance is the only one of us who will ever come close to Bill Paxton's amazing triple-feat.

Darren Hume Fan Spotted!

2006-09-26T14:20:00.000+10:00

So I get a call from my mate Matt at 3am on Saturday night while I was on the Gold Coast but I was asleep so I didn't answer. I wake up to an SMS explaining....

I was walking down Bourke St and heard a busker playing the Darren Hume classic, Crocodile Man. I called out "Darren Hume" and the busker acknowledged me while continuing to play.

What a development! Darren's Hume's music has made it's way across the Nullabor from Perth to the streets of Melbourne! The gospel of Hume is spreading like wildfire. Matt said the peformance put on by the busker was fantastic and he did the song great justice. I was really disappointed I wasn't there to witness it but next time I am in the city off my head in the early hours of the morning I shall go searching for this busker. He is a visionary and a supporter of great Australian talent and deserves one of my few shiny gold coins.

Paintball. The answer is spaghetti's.

2006-09-19T20:44:00.000+10:00

On Saturday I went to paintball for someone's birthday whom I don't really know. It was the birthday of a friend of a friend who I went to high school with. The only people I knew were my friend and his girlfriend and another friend from high school who came. Basically it was those people, 5 or 6 other Australians and about 50 Filipino's.

My friend was coming to pick me up at 5:30am and luckily my friend in Sydney who was still out sent me an sms which woke me up. I picked up my phone to read it and saw the time was 5:30. No time for a shower, I jumped out of bed and got ready in about 5 minutes. We only had to travel for about 5 mins to get to the location tbe hired coach was leaving from. The trip up there was pretty boring but the bus driver was quite entertaining. His name was John G and he had the perfect wog accent. On those comedy skit shows on TV or those skits on the radio if they have someone playing a wog of some sort they put on this stereotypical wog accent. The bus driver's was perfect, he sounded like a parody of a wog but it was all real. He loved to entertain and get on the mic and make jokes so I wasn't complaining.

Once we got there we had to wait. The waiting went on for far too long. We had to split up into 2 groups because there was around 60 of us and our group got jerked around. Then I think we had to wait for a few people that drove instead of catching the bus and they rocked up an hour late. Thanks for keeping us waiting. When we finally got going I noticed the first of a few changes since I went last time. Instead of buying cards to get more paintballs you now bought these token coin things to redeem more paintballs in the field. You also had to hand in your license and sign some bit of paper when you got your gun. This resulted in lots of stuffing around and waiting. Because we got their late we didnt get the cool ammo belts and and to carry out paintballs around in plastic bags which you shoved into your pockets.

The first game we played was junkyard in which one team defends and the other team must try to get close enough and touch a water tank. When we were attacking I managed to sneak up beside the other team so I had clear shots at them while they were ducking behind things to avoid being shot from front on. I managed to shoot about 5 of them, they didn't seem to want to move. I got one guy right in the hip and saw him jump and shout out. Was quite satisfying. After that area, we took a break in the Oasis which is a big tent with vending machines. It seems they rely on vending machines for everything now. Last time guys in little truck things used to bring around extra ammo at the end of a round, now you have to buy it from vending machines in the field, so if you are out of tokens or dont have the right change you are stuffed. Vending machines are all well and good until they start fucking up, which they inevitably do. I saw one guy put in $5 for a drink and then get nothing back. Then another time someone put $20 in a paintball machine and got nothing for it.

Finally we got out of the tent and went to play at this course where all you have to hide behind is haystacks. Then our marshall guy decided it would be a good idea if we all played against another team. The other team happened to be all 6 foot plus guys who looked like footy players. Our team had a lot of girls on it. We got thrashed, they got in close and just kept pounding us with paint and even though I had clear shots at them the guns are so frustratingly inaccurate I never could hit them with the few shots I had a chance to shoot. Once the whistle went and we all started walking they kept firing and I got hit in the back. Paintball seems to attract a lot of bogan idiots. I have been twice and the majority of the people there seemed to be Asian uni students and bogan idiots on both occassions.

We didn't really get to play any other good maps, although the last one was fun. It was quite a wide open area with a lot of trees and logs to hide behind. Once again I got around to the side of the other team and wreaked havoc. I managed to shot one guy in the back of the head twice from a distance and then get another guy in the side of the head. So funny to see them jump in shock then grab their head before putting their gun up in the air. Overall it was a pretty enjoyable experience but was really ruined by the waiting. Even just to hand our guns back in it took 20 minutes. To get my license back took about half an hour. It is ridiculous to have one person at the desk serving 50 people. They should really hire some more people but after talking to one of the staff it seems like they are doing the opposite.

The ride back was funny with John G taking centre stage although he should really concentrate on driving. I was sitting on the left side looking out the window and me and the guy behind me were looking at cars waving and doing stupid shit like that. One time we were watching some lady and John G actually drifted half into the inside lane forcing her to shit herself and move half into the emergency lane. Anyway John G had this competition, he said if we could answer a riddle we would win a free trip to the Gold Coast next year on his bus. I couldn't quite work out if he was serious or not. The question was, what goes in hard and comes out soft and always dripping. He clarified the answer wasn't dirty. Someone came up with the answer ice but that was incorrect. The answer, of course, was "SPAGHETTI'S!" That's right, not spaghetti, SPAGHETTI'S!

Mein cat looks like mein fuhrer.

2006-09-19T20:42:00.000+10:00

http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/

The URL says it all. A site with lots of pictures of cats that look like Hitler. Possibly the greatest site on the Internet.

Another Australian icon dies.

2006-09-11T20:50:00.000+10:00

On Friday I stayed home from work and a bit after lunch I got a message on MSN saying "sounds like Peter Brock is dead." As I was reading that I got an SMS on my phone simply saying "Brock is dead." It was strangely reminiscent of the death of Steve Irwin, nearly exactly the same time during the day and I found out the same way, via MSN and SMS. Even though I am a Ford fan, Peter Brock seemed like such a nice guy I could never really get pissed off when he constantly won. He was a bit like Steve Irwin, in that he was always just there but I never paid a real lot of attention to him. He was just Peter Brock and he was there. Sure was a shitty week for Australia. The race at Bathurst will take on a whole new meaning this year. I am sure there were a fair few Chap Laps completed down Chapel St in Holden Commodores in honour of Peter Brock. I was thinking of getting out the black masking tape and putting a massive "05" on the Bonnet of my old man's white, VS Commodore station wagon and going for a cruise on Friday night but I think I got drunk or something instead. I can't really remember.

In other news I had this hilarious MSN conversation with one of those random people you add to your MSN but forget who they are. Please note that she is Australian and this conversation took place 2 or 3 days after Steve Irwin died.

charlie says:
who steve irwin
Mark says:
crocodile hunter...
charlie says:
oh that tosser
Mark says:
are u kidding me?
charlie says:
yeh
charlie says:
no
Mark
says:
u havent watched the news the past 2 days?
charlie says:
i watch news
Mark says:
so u know what happened right
charlie
says:
all time
charlie says:
what happened what

Mind boggling. I can forgive not knowing who Steve Irwin is, well actually no I can't. How does someone not know about the biggest Australian celebrity death in the past 20 or so years? With the massive media coverage I just don't understand how you couldn't not hear about his death. I guess this just proves that some people do, in fact, live under a rock.

This article on the age website was quite interesting. It is about how after his death, he basically consumed the web thus the title of the article "Croc hunter news consumes the web."

The official Crocodile Hunter website rocketed to number one entertainment personality website yesterday in Australia and number 3 in the US, according to Hitwise. On the previous day it was ranked 36th most popular in Australia and 516th in the US. It also claimed 18.32 per cent of local web traffic within that category.

Compared with last week's weekday averages on smh.com.au, yesterday's traffic statistics showed a 40 per cent spike in page impressions and a 70 per cent jump in visitors.

I guess this proves he was the most popular crocodile hunter ever! Quite a feat! RIP Steve. RIP Brocky. Hopefully no other awesome Australian's die for a while. Germaine Greer feel free to die because you aren't awesome. You are just an annoying, old bitch who spouts garbage to get attention. Do us all a favour.

"Justice" in Indonesia.

2006-09-07T21:31:00.000+10:00

It can't get much funnier. Recently a few members of the Bali 9, a group of Australian's who were caught smuggling heroin out of Indonesia, had their sentences upgraded from life in jail to death by firing squad. One of the people to be put to death is only a 19 year old boy. While they are in shock at having their sentence changed to the death penalty, this is going on...

THE super-rich son of former dictator Suharto is due for parole this month, just four years into a 15-year sentence for the murder of a judge who had convicted him in a multi-million-dollar land deal.

Critics allege that Tommy, 43, who often flew by private helicopter from his island jail to a luxury Jakarta hospital for treatment of an eye tumour, bribed judges and prison and government officials to get out.

That's right. You have a judge murdered and get only 15 years and then are out on parole 4 years later. Although if you are a lowly drug mule getting paid very little to smuggle drugs out of the country you have the honour of being shot to death. I knew Indonesia was corrupt, especially after visiting, but the more I read about it, the more it disgusts me as a nation.

40,000 for soccer in Melbourne?

2006-09-05T22:26:00.000+10:00

After the ball on Friday night I stayed in the city and got up at about 5pm on Saturday and headed to the soccer (with a wicked hangover). The match was Sydney vs Melbourne Victory and was being held at Telstra Dome which has a capacity of about 50,000. The usual stadium they play at, Olympic Park, only has a capacity of 18,000 so they were hoping for a big crowd and they sure got it.

As I was catching the tram down Swanston St I saw the Sydney cheer squad on the footpath chanting crap about Melbourne calling it a shithole etc. They probably should take a look at Sydney, the only city in Australia to have a proper riot. In fact they have managed to have 3 riots, Redfern, Macquarie Fields and then Cronulla. Good job Sydney! Once I arrived at Telstra dome I met my friends outside and we went in and found out seats on the 3rd level, side on with the pitch. I was a bit worried people weren't going to turn up but right before the match a lot more people turned up. The Melbourne cheer squad was pretty massive and was on the 3rd level behind the goals. The tools from Sydney were down the other end on the bottom level behind the opposite goals.

The actual match was very entertaining with Melbourne scoring 2 goals and a Sydney player being sent off within the first 15 minutes. Then Sydney got one back so the score was 2-1. The atmosphere was great and the Melbourne cheer squad had plenty of good chants and would throw streamers all the way from the top deck down onto the ground each time Melbourne scored. The match was quiet violent for soccer as well with a Sydney player sustaining a broken collar bone from a hip and shoulder by a Melbourne player. One of Melbourne's new players from Brazil called "Fred" also elbowed a Sydney player in the throat and he had to be taken off on a stretcher. I guess Fred had been watching a bit much AFL and thought that kind of stuff was cool in Melbourne. Well it was cool with me but he will probably have to sit out for a while when they view the footage and suspend him. It's been nice having you on the team, Fred.

Melbourne scored early on in the second half which made it 3-1 but then Sydney got one back about 15 minutes from time. Melbourne blew a few more chances and it was pretty tense before the ref finally blew the whistle for the end of the match. Overall the atmosphere was great and they even got a mexican wave going. My first mexican wave at the Telstra Dome and at a sport besides the cricket. It sure was a touching moment. Hopefully Melbourne keep winning and the crowds keep coming.

Monash Pharmacy Ball

2006-09-04T22:41:00.000+10:00

On Friday night I went to the Monash university pharmacy ball at Carlton Crest in Albert Park. Was quite a good night with the highlight definitely being the amount of people throwing up. I guess pharmacy students can't handle their alcohol.

I left work early at about 4pm and headed staight to my friend's apartment in South Melbourne. After a sleep I put on my suit and 3 of us caught a taxi to Carlton Crest. Once we got inside we headed upstairs where they had a band playing jazz or something, I don't really know what sort of music to call it. They also had this chocolate fountain which was pretty damn cool. After watching about 30 photos of people I don't really know get taken they opened the doors to the main ballroom. It took a long time because we had to stop every 2 metres for another photo.

Once we got inside there was a "showbag" waiting for everyone on their chair. Seeing as it was a pharmacy ball they had various drugs in there, all legal though so nothing very good ;) Unfortunately I left my showbag at the place. I ripped the above picture off some other blog which I have forgotten now. After chatting with some of the people on my table and a couple of beers, dinner arrived. The choice was chicken or.... chicken. After eating our chicken we headed to the bar for something to drink besides beer and wine and were confronted by a ridiculously packed bar. After waiting in line for a ridiculous amount of time and being crushed I finally managed to get a couple of drinks. I spent most of the time speaking to some Indian guy. A girl who was on the committee had a special purple wrist band so was allowed to go to the front of the line. She did this once and then was coming back a second time to go in front again and I said "hey you have gone in front twice while I have been waiting." She was cool about it and let me go in front and then proceeded to crush me into the bar, but I wasn't really complaining.

Shortly after I got my drinks they decided to open the second bar. In the end I had a good night but this had to be the worst value for money ball I had ever been to. As a non-student it cost me $90 and the major problems were:

Two courses. For $90 you usually get an entree or at least soup.
No choice of the main course. Usually you get to choose between chicken or beef but on the menu all it said was chicken.
The main was tiny. Yeah I know that is usually the case but a piece of chicken with 2 small carrots and 2 beans seems to be taking it too far.
The bar. I thought seeing as I was ripped off in the food department I would drink my money's work. This is impossible with beer so I went for some spirits to the bar. They clearly didn't have enough people working behind the bar and took much too long to open the second one. Then to make it even worse they closed the bars very early but I am not sure if that is because too many people were throwing up.

The other thing that should be mentioned is the amount of throwing up. It was like being at some high school event! The people attending really couldn't handle their booze. I walked into the toilet and some guy was hurling in the sink and I stood having a conversation with his mate and the guy who was actually throwing up. As this was happening a guy came in carrying some girl who had thrown up down her dress and then she began throwing up in the sink. Lovely. There was also vomit on the dance floor and sand covering vomit on the carpet next to the dance floor. I don't know why there was a high occurence of chundering but it may have something to do with the large percentage of Asians there. In my experiences they don't seem to be the best at handling alcohol and this was confirmed by some of the people I was talking to including some of the people actually throwing up.

Apart from the above problems (the spewing was more funny than a problem), I had a really good night which was helped along by along by plenty of drinking. After the night was over they had a bus going into the city but as I was getting on he said there was only 2 spots left and there was 3 of us going. So I had to get off and catch a taxi. We went to Amber lounge and I don't think I had to buy one drink. Guys kept buying me drinks. The Indian guy I met earlier bought me a couple of drinks and then I got chatting to this Asian guy with a cool beard. He must have been late 30s and had a beard sort of like Mr Miyagi. He continually bought me and my friend drinks. Originally he was from Burma and then later on in the night he was from Afghanistan. I think Burma was the correct answer but who knows.

After Amber lounge we went back to my friends apartment where I had to do some unscheduled "cleaning." The next day I slept till 5pm before getting up to head to the soccer at Telstra dome. Overall i would rate the night an 8.5/10.

R.I.P Steve Irwin

2006-09-04T15:57:00.000+10:00

Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, died today after being stung in the chest by a stingray. I can't believe how fast the news has spread. About 10 people messaged me on msn within a 10 minute period, I got 3 emails from people and then the boss mentioned it. He may have been a bit of an excitable fellow who was over the top but at the same time he seemed really genuine and appeared to love what he did.

It is a bit ironic that the news has spread so fast because half the world knows but his wife who is trekking in Tasmania is yet to hear the news. RIP Steve.

Update: Cashing in on it. Already there are tshirts for sale on ebay! This has to be some kind of record. It must have been maybe 5 or 6 hours max after it has been announced he is dead and already someone is selling a Steve Irwin tribute tshirt on Ebay. You can check out the auction right here.

Coolest. Car. Ever.

2006-08-31T18:52:00.000+10:00

So I was driving home from work and see what is possibly, actually scratch that, I see the coolest car ever! Now I know you are wondering what could possibly be the coolest car ever and are probably thinking it was a Ferrari or a Lamborghini or some other "exotic" car. You might even be thinking it was some classic V8 muscle car. Well I can tell you right now that it was none of those. It was a station wagon built sometime in the 70's or early 80's when cars weren't made out of plastic. Not that impressive right? Wrong. This originally blue station wagon had the greatest paint job in existence. It was a dedication to the TV show, Thunderbirds. He had painted pictures of thunderbirds characters and their rocketship on the exterior of the car. A tribute you can use to go down the shop to pick up a loaf of bread. If you are in Melbourne (specifically North Melbourne, Flemington) then look out for this work of art.

Thunderbirds was the artist's inspiration and a 20+ year old station wagon was his canvas. Together they have resulted in one of the coolest forms of transportation known to man (the Back to the future Delorean, Batmobile and Ghost Busters car are also up there). Now all we need is car with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on it and I will be a happy man.

The age of deprivation.

2006-08-30T23:52:00.000+10:00

It seems like I am the perfect age for missing out on things or getting screwed over. Here are some examples:

"Oh I know lets build a sweet new playground at kinder and have it ready the year after he leaves"
"Hey we should grow some grass on the oval so the kids can play football the year after he leaves"
"Mrs Jordan says: They were taking money out of the history budget so I said no we can't have that and cancelled drivers ed for that year. Then the year after he left we brought it back in"
"Hey lets get into an argument with the coke man so the coke machine in the common room isn't filled up for half the school year"
"How about we finally sell coke instead of shitty pepsi at the school canteen for the first time while he only has half a year left at school. He only had to put up with pepsi for 5 and a half years"
"Let's go against all the school policies we have promoted previously and introduce inter-school sports on a weekly basis the year after he leaves!"
"I think we should cancel muck up day for the first time in the history of the school"
"Hey now he has his license lets raise petrol prices to record highs"
"While you are screwing him over for petrol, put a toll on the Tullamarine Freeway. Even though his parents tax money paid for it 25 years ago! Brilliant!"

That's all I can think of right now although I know there is plenty more.

Dear Darren,

2006-08-29T21:45:00.000+10:00

I know you are still out there reading my site. I will post another update about you soon. Do not fret, I haven't forgotten about you.

Love,
Your Number 1 Fan

xxx ooo
(www.darrenhume.com)

Just another Tuesday

2006-08-29T20:30:00.000+10:00

Nothing much been happening lately. The house is a mess but I am far too lazy to tidy it up. I accidently left my wallet in a friends car so I am surviving on change till I see them again on Friday. I could just drop in at the their house on the way home from work one day but trying to survive on change is much more fun. Luckily I have a lot of it. On the way home from work today I paid for $22 of petrol with coins. That will probably be my biggest purchase till Friday.

Tommorrow night I am going to my cousin's place for dinner, I've only been there once before so that should be fun. On Friday I am going to a university ball for Monash university. It is for pharmacy students so I expect it to be full of dorks and international students ;) The meal and unlimited alcohol should prove to the be the highlights. On Saturday I am planning on going to the soccer to see Melbourne vs Sydney. They are playing it at Telstra Dome because last year the match vs Sydney filled the 18,000 capacity Olympic Park. I am hoping for at least 25,000 - 30,000, not sure what the league is expecting though.

One other thing I have to look forward to is lunch next Tuesday at work due to someone leaving. I wish people would leave more often because I love going out to lunch. Luckily where I work it happens quite often because people are just contracting. The company doesn't pay for the food but they pay for the drinks so drinking up is usually a good idea. Only problem is drinking beer at lunch makes me terribly sleepy so I usually nearly fall asleep in the afternoon. Maybe next Tuesday I will actually try something different to eat besides "old faithful", the chicken parmigiana. One good is reason to stick with the parmigiana is that they have to try really hard to screw it up and ruin the enjoyment, rarely you get a crap parmigiana.