Month: October 2003

You know it’s bad enough that Delta Goodrem was nominated for eight ARIAs, let alone that she won seven of them! For crying out loud! >:-|

Although it’s not all bad news from the ARIAs, the Waifs picked up two, so that’s OK then 🙂

Anyway I had today off work, yey! You see my brother Andrew flew off to Vegas last night at some ungodly hour, and since I intended to go out to the airport to see him off I arranged to have today off, so I could sleep. Then at the last minute he informed mum and dad that he didn’t want anyone to see him off because he hates airport goodbyes. So I didn’t need to sleep, or go to work, which is great. If only every day could be like this!

Why is he off to Vegas you ask? Two of his friends are getting married there. By an Elvis impersonator. Which is kind of cool in a weird American movie way. Actually Mark (ie Buster Stiggs, who’s still working with us) wondered if it’s the same Elvis impersonator who married one of his friends from Midnight Oil* when I brought the subject up. Personally I doubt it. It’s a big city after all. With lots of Elivises (Elvii?). Anyway I almost asked Andrew to say hi to Grissom for me, but I didn’t because…

a) He’d have no idea what I was talking about.
b) If I went to the trouble of explaining the reference, he’d think it was stupid.
c) He’d be right 🙂

So, what did I do with my day off? I spent most of the morning re-vamping a post-apocalyptic play by mail game I knocked up a few years ago and which some of the guys expressed an interest in playing some months back. Basically you control a small number of people and, well basically just have to survive after most of the world’s population have perished in a devestating plague. Very 28 Days Later. I’m so way ahead of Hollywood that it’s scary 🙂

Then I did some long overdue cleaning up, including the bathroom, where the sink is still blocked. It’s actually draining now, after the last vicious plungering I gave it, but I don’t know how long that’s going to last. Then I went across the road and bought some bread. So exciting this life of mine!

Pleasingly (to change subject completely) it looks as if the powers that be have finally decided to do something about the heritage-listed art-deco building next door, which is in the process of being slowly destroyed by vandals and the weather. Well, they haven’t done anything about the weather (not much you could do apart from sealing it in a perspex dome or something), but they have erected a tall metal fence (nicely topped with barbed wire) around it. They put up the first bit (which just ran along the street front) on Monday. I thought this was a bit dodgy personally as you could still just walk through the gate, but now they’ve finished the job and extended it right around the building. So, hopefully this means something is going to be done about restoring the place. Either that or they’re going to demolish it. Hopefully the former.

Here’s a photo I took on Tuesday (look at that barbed wire gleam!).

Helen I see is taking the opportunity to cook a caserole because she and Ali are having people round. I know exactly the problem she’s refering to, although I tend to run into it with Dolmio Pasta Bake. This, for those not in the know, is a range of pasta sauces you can buy at your local supermarket. You cook up some pasta, stick it in a caserole dish, pour on the sauce, then bake it in the oven for fifteen minutes or so. Most of the flavours are pretty good (although avoid the cheese and onion) but the jars are huge. So if you live alone and you cook it, you’re eating pasta bake for the next three days. Which is extremely annoying. I usually eat it for two days, then get so fed up with it that the final portion sits in the fridge until it goes off, and then I feel all guilty. *sigh*

OK, I’m gonna go now. It’s time for Wheel!! Of!! Fortune!!!

(Just kidding 🙂

Intransigent DNA Influenced Cute Woman of the Week: That girl with the black turtle neck and Lisa Loeb-style glasses on the train last Thursday 😉

PS: Elliot Smith is dead!?! Since when?? :((

Well that was an eventful weekend. I not only saw Pirates of the Carribean (cool film by the way, Johnny Depp is hilarious and Orlando Bloom is surprisingly non-annoying:), but tried to do some cartography (which was defeated by the fact that my GPS isn’t great on elevations) and almost got arrested for trying to smuggle a pocket knife into the airport.

Well OK, I wasn’t almost arrested, just looked at very sternly. And I wasn’t trying to smuggle it in, I just forgot it was in my backpack. But I still had to take off my belt and shoes and get glared at, which was fairly embarrassing. Hmmmm.

(We were there to pick up the aunts by the way, they were getting back from their QEII trip)

That’s about all I’ve got to say 🙂

Congratulations to the People’s Republic of China! Yey! 🙂

Well, the server was down all of last night. How about that then?

Anyway yesterday I made a momentous discovery. The Red Orchid does home delivery!!!

WOO-HOO!!!

Naturally I decided to take advantage of this fact (mainly because I couldn’t be bothered cooking anything) and ordered myself up a serve of chicken and crab spring rolls, and squid with cashew nuts. Oh, and a serve of deep fried squid to bring the order up to the $20 delivery threshold.

The squid – both serves – was of course great. The spring rolls on the other hand – well, pretty dissapointing. Dry and unpalatable would be the best description. Naturally I ate them (I paid for them damnit!) but I don’t know if I’ll be ordering them again. I’ll just get the deep fried squid instead 🙂

In other news I’ve decided to follow Helen’s lead and establish my own Nation State (several months late – I don’t even know if her one is still running :). Mine is the Federation of Zurvar Areana. Our motto is “Kebronal tagas mon dolfin holbeshikla” which is of course Zurvar for “On condition it doesn’t frighten the Dolphins”. So far I’ve decided that voting shouldn’t be compulsory, and to start a space program. Could be kind of fun. For a while 😀

Hmmm, nothing else to report. I’ll shut up now 🙂

Friday Night: The first really warm night of the year, combined with removalists working late into the evening. Result? Not enough sleep.

Saturday Night: Not quite as warm, but pretty humid. Also a full moon riding high and shining through the blinds. Result? Not enough sleep.

Sunday Night: A cold rainy day, with thick cloud cover. Low temperatures, no moon, no removalists. So what happens? A car thief being pursued by the cops decides to try to ram them – right outside the building. So the cops open fire – also right outside the building. So then there’s some kind of collision – again right outside the building. Result? Nowhere near enough sleep.

GAH!!

There’s been a faint but unmistakably nasty smell hovering around here for the last few days. Normally I’d attribute this to the bin needing emptying, but this particular miasma seemed to be strongest in the second bedroom (which is a good distance away from said bin). It only occured to me today to have a look out on the balcony.

The smell was indeed coming from the balcony. Specifically from a very deceased pigeon which had decided to ring down the curtain and join the choir invisible just outside the second bedroom window. By the looks of things several days ago.

Ack.

Luckily by some fluke of fate I happened to have all the equipment necessary to deal with this situation right at hand. Namely a pair of heavy duty, lined rubber gloves, a painter’s facemask, plenty of plastic bags and a spray can of Glen 20 hospital grade disinfectant. So I suited up (so to speak) and dealt with my ex-pigeon visitor in a highly efficient manner. He now rests in peace, bereft of life in several plastic bags at the bottom of the bin in the rubbish room, and the balcony (and most of the rest of the flat to be honest) smells nicely of disinfectant.

Germ phobic – Me? 🙂

In other second bedroom news, the Bed of Doom is no more! Or at least it’s no more at this address. Dom came around on Saturday and we disassembled it for transport to South Fremantle where he and Rebecca have found an apparently fantastic place to rent (which doesn’t mind the cats). The whole disassembly process went fairly smoothly, and we managed to get it down to the trailer without the caretakers wailaying us for the heinous crime of moving furniture on a weekend. We also managed to get it past the bogans downstairs without incidnent, although they did apparently comment on the quality of the wood. Dom’s theory is that they were interested in burning it.

And speaking of the bogans, they had a major falling out the other night. Not their usual late night screaming match, but a late night sobbing/swearing fest in the carpark. Sobbing by her, swearing by him. It was hard to figure out exactly what was going on, but apparently he was pretty upset with something she’d done. Sufficiently upset in fact to weave the f-word (and variations thereof) multiple times into every single sentance. “Don’t you f****** tell f****** me you’re f****** sorry for f****** f***’s sake because it’s f****** your f****** own f****** fault, f***!!!” for instance, all backed up by her sobbed apologies and professions of love. I did feel kind of sorry for her – whatever she’s done – but I must admit the thought that might be a relationship breaker for them was a somewhat pleasant one. If they have split up then there’ll be no more screaming competitions at 3:00 in the morning. Ah bliss!

Finally, Helen has suggested that the third of the frightening real estate men bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain Armin Shimerman. The truly frightening thing is that he does!! 🙂

Intransigent DNA Influenced Cute Woman of the Week: That Kelly girl who got kicked off Australian Idol. I have never watched an epsiode of that show in my life and I never intend to, but wow, she’s cute. Actually she kind of resembles Alison Mack now I think about it. *sigh* I’m so predictable 🙂

PS: I remember this show! I remember this show! 🙂

You know it occurs to me that I’ve been mentioning a lot of “cute” women in my posts lately. The waitress at La Porcetta, the accountant over at West Tax, and probably others that I thought about mentioning, and then stopped myself from. While it’s possible that there has suddenly been a massive increase in the number of attractive young women wandering around Perth a much more likely explanation occured to me while watching a particularly fetching comedienne on Rove Live the other week. I reckon it’s down to genetics.

Human beings are (biologically speaking) only meant to live to about the age of 30. In the paleolithic for instance, the average life expectancy was around 28-34. In the Roman Empire the commoners only lived to about 22-25 (the upper classes were another matter entirely). Now, I’m twenty seven and a half (well, twenty seven point six six six continued to be exact) and have never even had the faintest hint of a relationship. So, I reckon my genes are getting itchy.

The problem with evolution is that it takes a long time to happen. It’s only in the last few centuries that better health care and nutrition have allowed us humans to have long lifespans. Our genes are yet to adapt to the fact that we (in the western world at any rate) now tend to live into our seventies. As far as they’re concerned if we don’t pass them on to the next generation before the age of 30, they’ve had it. So, my genes have taken a good look at my pathetically single life and are doing the DNA equivilant of screaming “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?!?!???!??!!” – the practical upshot of which is that I’m suddenly perceiving any even halfway attractive woman that comes my way as the girl of my dreams.

Well – if my genome thinks it can push me around like that, it’s got another think coming! I’m not going to start making life decisions based on the opinions of a bunch of uppity little nucleic acids! They can shut up and crawl back into their chromosones as far as I’m concerned. I’m the one in charge of this organism damnit!

Right, with that insanity out of the way, onto other business 🙂

Email. I got a great email today. Or at least an email with a great subject line. Imagine my delight when I opened my inbox at work to find – hidden amongst all the spam – an email promising ‘Wight Loss’.

I just about fell out of my chair.

Predictably it turned out to be nothing but a misspelled spam promoting yet another miracle weight loss system, but I was momentarily distracted by the concept that someone (possibly tom@bombadil.com 🙂 was promoting their services to help rid subscribers of those unsightly undead spirits of Angmar just in time for summer. Oh well, I can dream 😉

In closing I should mention that there was a documentary about the murder of Julius Caesar on the ABC last night which concluded (among other things) that he suffered from temporal lobe epilesy. Now, what I want to know is did Caesar ever reported being abducted by aliens? ;-D

(Believe me, if you read Fortean Times you’d be laughing yourself stupid at that!)

(OK, maybe not stupid *g*)

Good Lord I hate Batfink.

What is Batfink you ask? It’s some dark-ages five-minute-an-epsiode cartoon series the ABC have dug up out of their vaults and put on just before Dr Who. It seems to be a parody of the Adam West Batman series – a really bad parody. A bad, unfunny, offensively racist parody.

The hero is some kind of humanoid bat. Where this freak of biological science came from is never actually explained. His sidekick is a buck-toothed funny-voiced Asian man named “Karate”, who’s attempts at both heroism and humour consistantly fall flat. Naturally they live in a cave … (I have to go off on a tangent here and quote one of my favourite lines from The Drew Carey Show – “Batman’s car has a morals clause? He kept a young boy in a cave!” *grin* OK back to complaining about BatFink).

Every single episode features pretty much the same plot. Some unlikely criminal mastermind commits some insanely unlikely crime. We cut to Batfink’s “split-level” cave where he and Karate engage in some spectacularly dull and unfunny dialogue. Then the Police Chief (who looks so like Elmer Fudd I’m surprised the animators weren’t sued by Warner Brothers) calls them up on “the hotline” and lisps the details to them. Batfink orders Karate to get the “Batilac” a volkwagon beatle with really lame wings on the back, and they go driving around for no obvious reason.

Eventually they reach the crime scene where Batfink uses his “Supersonic Sonar Radar” to find the bad guys (this is apparently a sentient animated ‘beep’ that does all his work for him). Once the beep returns and the bad guys are located Batfink and Karate head off to catch them, only to be trapped in some patently stupid fashion. Karate then steps up to free them using his karate. Naturaly as a simple oriental he fails, and it’s up to Batfink to release them, usually by use of his “wings of steel”. Once free they locate the evil doers again who shoot at them. Batfink then delivers the line that any sane viewer soon comes to dread…

The epsiode soon wraps up in some tired fashion (usually involving Karate smashing down a door which lands on top of Batfink temporarily crushing him), and closes with a really lame visual gag, which the entire cast laughs at as if it was Kreskin*No, ‘Kreskin’ doesn’t make any kind of sense in this context, but c’mon, it sounds good 🙂.

Arghh!! Is the ABC that strapped for content?? Bah!