If you made a badge of it, you could be an Emo...

For the sake of making Google PageRank slightly more friendly to our little blog (Or at the very least, not attracting people who search based on certain keywords), I've decided to self censor this post. Hence, Smiley!

So we had a party...

...and now I have a hangover. Such is the way it has always been.

I present for your enjoyment a timeline in pictures: I call it 'George's descent into drunkenness'. It should prove edutaining.

For some reason, no matter how the night turns out, no matter how bad the hangover, George will live to drink another day. That's why he is a good person to drink with.

Here are some other photos from the party:

Valentines Wake tradition in danger?

I think we all remember the first valentines wake: there were glasses of vodka, much vomiting and George attempting to travel through the city home the next day smelling and looking lovely... This night started a now 3 year running tradition of Valentines day wake. Why was this night such a success? There were no couples to depress the single people!

The next year on the 14th was a similar occasion (except I was allowed to come this time) - again the secret to its success was NO COUPLES!

But this year there seems to be an exception to the rule and frankly I've decided to speak out against this abomination of the Valentines day wake tradition.

I put this to you: If a couple are going to be attending this evenings 'wake' then we may as well forget about calling it
"The Valentines Day Wake" and instead rename it to "The Valentines Day Gathering" which in itself defeats the whole purpose of this day.

George is still soft

You all know it's true. But while we wait eagerly for his second post, we should steel ourselves for the months ahead.

I wouldn't disagree that Adelaide's a pretty sleepy town for the majority of the year. But every now and then, massive heavenly bodies align, planets composed entirely of culture. Their pull cannot be resisted; the only way to survive is to submit and hope you wake up in April with a slight headache and a considerable hole in your savings account.

These orbs of which I speak - The Adelaide Fringe, Womadelaide, The Adelaide Film Festival, ringed with moons - the Whitlams, Dan Kelly and the ASO - are gathering even as you read this. I've compiled the beginnings of a list -

Dan Kelly with Holly Throsby - 23 Feb

The Whitlams - 3 March

Rod Quantock - The John and Janette Howard Story - 8-18 March

Late Night comedy @ The Rhino Room - 8-31 March

Womadelaide - 11 March

Jazz at Fringe - 16 March

Tripod - 16-18 March

Ardal O'Hanlon (aka Father Dougal) - 27-31 March

Dylan Moran (aka Bernard Black) - 29 March

- and I haven't even had a chance to decipher the theatre section of the Fringe Guide yet.

For Julian:

I present my review of Heroes. It's a show that I really should like - all the elements are exactly where they should be - a winning formula by any assessment. And I think that's the problem.

After watching the first five episodes, I get the distinct impression that I'm being manipulated. Heroes comes across not so much as a hip, semi-cultish labour of love, but a precision strike at the heart of the 18-35 audience demographic. I have visions of a boardroom in California: old men sit around a table while a recent university graduate with a stylish but non-threatening haircut pitches the next sure-fire hit. "It'll be huge. We've done extensive testing. People want a show with a cheerleader, a stripper, and a couple of caricatured Japanese office workers. We'll chuck in a bit of quasi-philosophical tripe and some bad science, and get an Indian guy to narrate it. But don't worry: he won't be too Indian."

I'm going to stick with it for a few more eps, despite its tedious pacing and shameless product placement. It's lucky that advertising has no effect on me.

P.S: Did anyone else wake up today with a burning desire to buy a stylish new Nissan Versa?

Andrew's final thoughts: George, blog!!

My favourite writing dude

There are a lot of authors that I hold in the greatest of esteem. If I had to pick a favourite it'd probably result in a four-way WWF-style cage match between Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Stephen Donaldson and James Clavell. The two 50s sci-fi writers would probably have an edge because they've been dead for a number of years and would therefore be possessed of some super zombie powers. Though, come to think of it, when you hold people in great esteem, you probably shouldn't exhume their corpses and reanimate them to amuse the lowest elements of American 'society'.

Even hypothetically.

Anyway, I feel like I'm losing the thread of the original point I wanted to make. And that point is this: most of the authors that I admire write in a style that I could never hope to emulate. I'll never have the effortless knack of 'clear glass' writing that Asimov does; nor could I build tension or evoke sympathy for an anti-hero like Donaldson.

But then there's this guy, Chris Onstad, who's responsible for what I think is the cleverest writing I've ever seen on the 'net. He's the creator of the Achewood comic strip (awesome in its own right), but like a lot of online comic writers I actually enjoy his blogs even more than his comic strips. His style is idiosyncratic, but I can't help thinking it's achievable. I could write like that if I really wanted to, and made repeated concerted efforts. At least, that's my theory. So have a read of his stuff, particularly this amusing little golf memoir, and revelations about his ancestry

A final thought: what a dynamic, thriving little blog this is turning out to be! My favourite alliteration for today is "predeliction for this particular pleasantry". Possibly the best thing that Alice has ever written; my earnest hope is that she somehow managed to slip that phrase into her thesis.

Two posts in as many days? I'm turning into Andrew*!

So I return, yet again, only a short day later.

Hobart has really put on some nice weather for us this weekend - it's been quite sunny, but not over-hot, so pleasant overall. True, it gets colder at night, but that happens. It's kind of like Adelaidean spring, if that makes sense.

But there's a lot going on down here - The Violent Femmes and Sarah Blasko are doing gigs over the next two weeks, as well as comedian Akmal Saleh, whilst there is a Shakespeare-in-the-Park version of Taming of the Shrew on too. May as well keep cultural, y'know? We also finished the first season of Arrested Development last night, so we bought season 2. But to string that joy out a little longer, first we're watching some Farscape, which is fun, if only to catch the Aussie actors in what superficially appears to be rather American sci-fi. Though Im tells me that soon it gets very good, and I have reason to trust her.

But the main purpose of this post is yet for more reccomendations, even after my last post's incessant raving, but this time for the newly released movie Stranger Than Fiction. You may have heard of it - I cannot praise it highly enough. It is the most textured, lush, heartwarming film I have seen in a long while. Will Ferrell is not everyone's taste as a leading man (Imogen in particular is not a fan of his comedies) but we both absolutely loved it, as he gives a superb, restrained performance, whilst still being genuinely amusing. The less you know about the movie when you see it, the more I think you will get out of it, so go see it now. It's worth it. Oh, and it also features Maggie Gyllenhal, Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman, who's always entertaining (I ♥ Huckabees, anyone?).

Oh, and another movie to see is Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, which is awesome in the very literal sense of the word - awe-inspiriing. It's also (at times) quite violent, so beware if you're squeamish, but it's worth it if you can stomach it. One note: del Toro has stated that despite the lead character being a child, it's not a child's movie, but rather 'a movie about being a child'. He actually wrote an interesting article on the movie (and some of his other films) in the latest issue of Empire magazine, so maybe have a look if you see copy.

But we're not planning to engorge ourselves down here on just films and DVDs - I'm about to re-read Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Im is currently reading her new purchase, 'The Pirates! in an Adventure with Communists' - how can it be bad??

But for now, auf wiedersehn, and we shall all meet again...

*except not.

Why oh why can't I remember my uni email password??

It's strange that I post on this blog more often when my only chance at the net is when I find a netcafe. So feel special. Or something.

So, Hobart. Still cold. Still windy. We did find different accommodation - thank feck - which makes work all the more palatable. Except, of course, when yesterday my 8-day old iPod froze. Thankfully, we work right next to an Apple store, so the kindly folk in there fixed it.

But at last, we can relax with the arrival of the weekend. We've spent most of our evenings this week watching the first season of Arrested Development (which is fantastic and I never realised how gorgeous Portia De Rossi is until now) and Tasmanian TV.

Speaking of TV, Andrew reminded me that I didn't blog about Heroes the other day. Most (if not all) of you got an SMS, but in case you missed it Channel 7 are doing an encore screening on Tuesday evening. But I cannot praise this show enough - everyone, and I mean EVERYONE I know who has seen it absolutely loves this show. Imogen had downloaded the first 6 episodes, and convinced me to watch the first one at about 11 o'clock one night before bed. I didn't get to sleep until about 5am. It's that kind of show. So watch it! Please. :o)

Keeping with the random ping-ponging of this entry, Im and I are likely coming back to Adelaide soon for both the Adelaide Fringe and WOMADelaide. There'll be a whole raft of stuff on at the Fringe, and bands such as Lior, The Waifs and Augie March (yes Andrew, Augie March) are all playing WOMAD this year. So we'll be over on the weekend of the 9th of March, so we should organise to do things. Indeed.

And lastly: Hobart is the home of the Errol Flynn Society of Tasmania. Bet you didn't know that, huh.

And so I yet again bid you adieu! Next time Gadget, next tiiimmmeee!

Sharing the love

Here is a piece of gold which I just had to share, especially given our predilection for this particular pleasantry. Does anyone see the similarity between the talking penguin and George?

Losing my (Blogging) Virginity

Yes, your eyes don’t deceive you, I have actually posted to the blog. I realise I’ve held off for a bit, and I apologise to everyone. Except Andrew. This is something of a novel experience for me, being the first blog I’ve ever posted. The only issue I have is that, now that I’ve actually started writing it, I have no idea what to talk about. That’s always the problem with blogs, the first entry needs to be full of introductions, and witty remarks on the nature of the Internet, and all sorts of things like that – when, really, all you want is to just finish the damn thing so you can get onto actually discussing things that you’ve recently seen that you happen to find interesting

In a way, it’s a bit like high school essay writing, all over again. You’ve got all these absolutely fantastic ideas that you’d love to include but, before you can start, you still have to go through the motions of writing a suitable introduction. My problem then is that I was never any good at introductions. So, I think the solution to this problem is simply going to be to ignore the entire concept of an (good) introduction, and just dive right in.

I figure my first post should mention the place I spend the majority of my days which, unfortunately, happens to be my work. I currently work full time as a Helpdesk employee for an ISP. Since I’ve just deferred my University studies for one year, so that I can save up a bit of cash, I’ll probably continue working fulltime for this ISP for the conceivable future

Working in Helpdesk is a little bit like being a dole bludger. Technically, you have a task that you need to do (Taking calls, answering customers emails, and generally being a good employee). Practically speaking, though, your entire day is filled up with various activities that you think will distract you from actually doing your job. So, if anybody happens to ring a helpdesk employee, and they sound a bit irritable, chances are, it’s not your fault, it’s just that you’ve interrupted their latest game of Sonic the Hedgehog.

If it sounds like, usually, we do no work; it’s balanced out by the occasional ‘special’ customer that we get. You know when you’ve got a ‘special’ customer, because there’ll be certain hints that they give – their phone number will have an area code of (07), they’ll say they’re from Mackay (Stretching out the ‘ay’ sound at the end for longer than should humanly be possible), and their name will either be “Dazza”, or something that rhymes with it. Customers like this are the sort of people who the Information Age forgot about. They don’t really understand their computer, and they’ve got no idea what the Internet actually is but, God bless them, they really need to have it. Unfortunately, it’s usually up to us to help them, which generally turns out to be a cathartic experience for all concerned. It’s nobody’s fault but, by the end of the conversation, we’ll have both shouted ourselves hoarse, cried, contemplated hanging up, and generally drained ourselves completely. During the course of the call, I’lll gradually turn into shallow imitations of myself, only capable of occasionally muttering obscenities under my breath in a vain attempt to solve the problem through scaring the customer into developing some basic level of computer literacy. It’s a hellish experience, and when the call finally finishes, I’ll often wonder why I bothered taking this job...

Then I’ll start playing Sonic again.

Hmm. I think that’s about enough writing for my first post. It’s not really what I wanted to blog about, but at least it’s over now. At some point in the next couple of days (or weeks, or months), I’ll blog some more, this time about some interesting things that I actually want to talk about. Till then, hope you’re all doing well, and I look forward to reading some of the other blogs that people put on here.

George is soft!