Working from home, while an enticing concept, is effecting me strangely. At first I was worried I was beginning to hate the whole no-human-contact hermit idea, but… like a mate of mine said, it’s actually enticing me to get out and about a lot more. Even just walking to the shops this afternoon after work, it was like I’d been looking forward to going on holidays all day. I’m guessing the key here is to get out for lunch more often. Who works in Melbourne CBD? Let’s hook up and have awkward disjointed conversation over a dodgy sandwich.

Another upshot is that I can begin working pretty much immediately after I’ve showered. This has proved somewhat problematic as I’m sometimes still half-asleep and I still haven’t come to grips with the cutlery we bought in Melbourne yet. Oh, you may laugh, but the new teaspoons and tablespoons we have appear deceptively identical in size. This usually results in me either sleepily trying to wade my way through chomping down a bowl of muesli with a teeny little teaspoon, or dozily lumping a heaving tablespoon of coffee into a regular sized mug and nearly choking on the consequences.

Going to the gym is proving successful thus far. Our new gym is extremely empty in the morning - there’s only been two other people there when I visited over the last few days. The problem is that it’s always the same people, and because I’m still getting into the swing of going to the gym regularly, it’s obvious how crap I’m going. And let’s face it, when you’ve got a choice between watching what indeed appears to be a growing cult with eerie undercurrents on breakfast TV or a sweaty, swearing bastard wheezing in agony on an exercise bike with only a dodgy “inspirational” metal playlist to spur him on for your morning in-gym entertainment, it’s not a difficult choice.

This all, of course, means no more junk food. I’m a bit of a snacky person during the day, so I’ve been agonising over healthier snack ideas… crap like the chips I’ve been inhaling over the last month of holidays are definitely out of the question now, though.

It’s a safe bet that Adam and I have been scared off chips for the time being, though. You know how everyone’s had that experience where you drank something ridiculous, like, er…. Passiona and gin, ahem, and got so utterly titting wasted that you can’t even go near the soft drink again, because it brings back such vivdly vomituous memories? We had something like that two weeks ago… except with chips.

A mate of mine was recently banging on about how great those special Smiths “Sausage Sizzle” chips are - “like eating one thousand sausages at once!” he exclaimed. (Although he’s a homo, so maybe that was the reason he was so into it). Adam and I couldn’t help but hoover up a bag from the 7-11 while we were tanked and stumbling on our way home.

Now, these chips were awesome at the time. But we had this horrible, disgusting kind of chip hangover. Every time we burped, nay, inhaled with force - this horrible sausage stinkflood overwhelmed our gullets. This continued for over two days and we were even obsessively washing our hands, because the sausage stink wouldn’t come off. I’ve never wanted to get a sausage out of my hand and/or mouth so much in my life. Has anyone suffered a similar fate?

After this incident, Adam is now flavourphobic and literally refuses to eat anything but plain salted chips.

Adam’s rightfully picky about where he works - hanging around at a shitty advertising agency probably doesn’t do any favours for your resume, so he’s searching for a really good job at a really good agency. He’s had a few bites here and there, including one extremely promising job - until he found out via the recruiter that they were specifically “looking for a female only”. I guess that’s the benefit of recruiting through recruitment agencies, so they can deal out that bullshit from a protected distance.

He’s been doing some freelance art direction here and there at a few agencies, but the work’s not really that regular. And let’s face it - when I’m working from home on a lesser wage and thus delegated with the task of cooking dinner each night, I am definitely the housewife and not the breadwinner. (Hell, I may as well buy an apron while I’m at it. Probably with plastic knockers on them).

As you can imagine, my wage isn’t really enough for both of us to live off alone. So, Adam’s come up with an idea: he’s going to start bouncing again while he’s looking for a fulltime job. This isn’t really such a bad idea - although he hasn’t done it for five years, I’m pretty sure he really enjoys it. Then again, he also really enjoys kicking people’s heads in utilising various martial arts on a daily basis, so that could just be a coincidence.

Like a good wifey, I’ll probably worry my arse off that he’s getting knifed every night, because it’s not like bouncing is really that much of a risk on a daily basis. In fact, after I mentioned that article to him this afternoon, he piped up - “Oh, actually, Crown’s my #1 place I want to bounce at!” I’ve never actually seen Adam bounce, but I imagine he’s the biggest smartarse ever. Smartarsery plus drunken pissheads stumbling out of Crown nightclubs, I’m not sure that’s such a great idea.

Then again, he may end up pounding the hallways of a shopping centre, or an AFL match (now that I’d truly enjoy - he fucking hates the game). I’m personally hoping he’s assigned to a fairly normal city pub, so I can come along and have a beer or two when he starts his shift.

Is it wrong that I’m plotting already, planning on how I can initiate bar fights with other patrons, so Adam can swoop in like a hero and save me in his arms? Answer: yes, because Adam’s already bellowing with laughter over my shoulder that he’d just turn away and leave me to “learn a life lesson”.

The washing machine in our new place lasted one rumbly week before it began barking out sputtering explosions whenever the spin cycle commenced. Thankfully, our landlord has weathered callouses on his thumbs from twiddling them for days on end, so ten days later we’re still without a working washing machine.

This made the decision to sit inside and slob around on my holidays quite easy indeed (just change your trackies whenever you spill too much beer on them, or when they can stand up of their own accord). For Adam, who is working, this became a little tricker. We ran out of clothes to wear a few days ago and had to plead with our landlord for him to reimburse us for a laundry service (there’s no way I’m paying for that out of my own pocket when it’s not our fault). All I’m left with at the moment is a pile of smoky jeans as faithful reminders from the gigs I’ve seen over the last week. (New South Wales smoking regulations, I miss you).

The most recent gig of which was the Funeral for a Friend gig at the Palace on Sunday. The only other previous Sunday gig I’ve ever attended was Team Sleep, which set a very high standard for Sunday gigs. In my eyes, it’s no longer a decent Sunday gig unless you meet the Team Sleep production values: non-sex scenes from seventies Italian S&M porno playing on a projector while you’re belting out your songs.

Really, I was only going to see the support act, Fightstar. I’ve become quite smitten with their debut album, and, well… I do have somewhat of a soft spot for Charlie Simpson. But as my mate who came along to the gig observed, he’s not really the kind of bloke either of us would usually go for - far from it. It’s just that by having a cool voice and playing in a pretty bloody good band, he gets 50 bonus points and therefore becomes hot. Funeral for a Friend were okay, but I think they’ve slightly overestimated their fanbase - you don’t have license to demand the crowd sing along to almost literally every single song if you’ve never even achieved rotation on Triple J, matey. In addition, I swear they’d muffled the sound on the support acts, which in my eyes is completely unforgivable.

After the gig, we had the good fortune to witness a terrified McDonalds manager trying to close his restaurant at the precise moment the gig ended. The sight of 100 angry and hungry hard rock fans pounding against the windows was inspirational, but still ended up in a McFoodless night, so we retreated to the nearest 7-11 for that great modern invention: the Traveller Pie (as, er, not pictured to the left).

The Traveller Pie is manufactured a long, sausage roll shape… bloody perfect for those hiccuping, drunken, stumbling home moments of hunger when you know you’re going to get a regular pie all over your shirt and splattering out on the ground. Strongly recommended. The only blog I found mentioning the Traveler’s Pie is the Empier’s blog, which I’ve fallen in love with. The world needs a laser-sharp blog focused on Australian pie news.

Speaking of synthetic convenience store product: Adam’s hysterically branded my childhood, Today Tonight red-rubber-stamp style, as deprived. He is of the firm belief that living a life at 26 years old, without ever having ingested Slurpee content into my body, is abhorrent. There was much poking until I attended our local 7-11 to purchase a Cola Slurpee and inhale it.

See, I didn’t need any extra shitty food to encourage me on my month off work. Now I’m fucking hooked on the things and hastily making up for my previous unslurping existence. At least I’ve only got one week left of bad food and sloth, then it’s time to instigate my New Daily Routine of hardcore gym and cooking dinner every night. Which, frankly, will be hilarious: I’ve already burnt four toasted sandwiches in the three weeks we’ve lived here, destroyed a baking pan by warping it in the oven, flooded the kitchen floor with scalding hot water from an overflowing pan, and dropped a saucepan on my bare feet.

What kind of a holiday is it when you seem to have caught the flu? I’m unsure whether to view this either as a result of the majorly excessive drinking over the last fortnight, or simply as a drinking challenge for the next two weeks of my holiday.

Regardless, I am holing up for the time being - I’ve got tickets to the Funeral for a Friend gig on Sunday and I’d like to sufficiently recover before then. Although, as with many gigs lately, I’m actually mainly going for the support band (in this case, Fightstar, perhaps better known as the Charlie Simpson Eyebrows Extravaganza and his Orchestra).

So as if the flu-related symptoms weren’t enough, I chanced eating a Weis bar last week, which for someone with a citrus allergy, is like playing Russian Roulette with an automatic. On top of liquidious sneezes I’ve now also got a bulbous mouth of ulcers to contend with.

Still, there’s far worse allergies out there - at least I’m not allergic to nuts, like a lot of other members of my extended family are. I’m partially convinced that this is due to allergy by osmosis: my parents banned us kids from going near anything with nuts until we’d reached age 12, for fear we’d promptly choke and cark it.

Of course, by the time my 12th birthday rolled around and a platter of peanuts was unveiled with great ceremony, I was too shit-scared to consider putting one of those grenades in my mouth. Although cashew nuts appeared as innocently kidney-shaped delights on the outside of my body, I was convinced they’d swiftly expand to fourteen times their size once they entered my throat, pufferfish-style, promptly choking me and ending my youthful life.

It’s two weeks ago now, but we had a great send-off from our Woolloomooloo crew the night before we flew down to Melbourne. Our mate Julian hosted the do - he used to be a barrister. Fortunately, for the sake of the entire postcode region’s safety, Adam managed to find Julian’s old barrister gear, and decided he wanted to try it on. As you can see on the right, he’s now morphed into some combination of Judge Judy and an Australian Chuck Norris. Australia, you can sleep safe at night.It’s almost time for my bi-annual dye-my-hair-a-ridiculous-colour event. I’ve already scratched blue, green and purple off the list - I’m thinking of perhaps getting a little homo and getting tips this time (I dunno, bright red with purple tips? Something like that). All I need to do is shave lines into my eyebrows and I’m probably a fully-fledged member of a 90s alternarock band.

Usually I go to a hairdressers to get this kind of shit done, but frankly, hairdressers scare me. There’s only two hairstyles in my repertoire - a $10 short back and sides at the barbers, then I just shave my head when it gets too long, then repeat. Simple, and doesn’t require the intervention of hairdressers at all.

Getting my hair dyed by hairdressers usually proves to be really freakin’ expensive, though. Perhaps I should let one of my sisters experiment with it all. Hmm.

Even if I do decide to go with a hairdresser, by default I can’t bring myself to attend the closest hairdresser to our place. They’re called Curlz, which I wouldn’t normally hold against them - but they use the Windows font called “Curlz” as their logo. Can’t anyone else see a bored designer flipping through a list of fonts trying to think of a business name, and farting out a logo in five minutes? The Quick Brown Fox clothing chain is also guilty of the using-font-name-as-font-in-your-logo offense. There’s more out there that I’ve seen around the city, and you shall all be named and shamed!

NATIONAL WARNING, I REPEAT, A NATIONAL WARNING - AN EX MEMBER OF THE MAVIS’S HAS SIGNED TO ROADRUNNER. Beware of the infiltration of Beki and the Bullets. The first single hits radio in less than two weeks - take cover! And, oh my god, check out this journal entry from their site:

The Melbourne Roadrunner party KICKED ASS!!!!…The Bullets doing Slipknot and Nickleback was wicked!

Egads, can you think of any stronger entertainment cancer than an ex-Mavis covering Nickelback?! Actually, yes, I can:

The popular TV series “Desperate Housewives” has always seemed to take place in a slightly altered universe, where perfect lawns hide the perfect murder (or three or four), and the infidelities and twisted social lives make suburbia look as dangerous as any scene out of “World of Warcraft.”

Come this fall, players of a new interactive game based on the show can create their own scandal — or work to uncover their neighbors’ secrets. They can even do a little shopping on the side.

More info on the game here. I may, ahem, be prone to watching a few episodes here and there of the show; but this game will only be cool if you can make that hot gardener guy bang all of the husbands.

I’ll leave you with a long-lost Disney cartoon which will leave you devoid of any desire to ever have sex again (found via BoingBoing).

My blog turned seven years old last week without me even realising. The traditional gift for a seventh anniversary is wool, so… please send nana-worthy gifts my way.

Last night was spent in one of those modern horrors: pubs entirely enclosed in shopping centres (to my credit, at the behest of a hot girl I haven’t caught up with in months). This particular pub scores even more points of infamy for attempting to recreate a beer garden indoors. Please, please stop with the hurting.

Conversation of the evening would have to be notched up to a random girl I used to work with. Upon realising I was a homo, she piped up gleefully: “My best friend, Simon, is gay!” This was followed by awkwardly expectant nodding and smiling from her, while I gave her the quizzical glare of someone realising there’s now a mint sauce flavour of chips. (Which there is, horrifyingly enough).

So to cut the silence, I hesitantly asked: “Er… Simon?”

The vigorous nodding of her head would have set more than a few neurons loose. “Yeah, Simon! You must know Simon. He’s gay.”

Seriously. She thought I personally knew her best mate because he happens to enter a room through the beef curtains as well. Then again, I suppose you can’t expect much of someone who populates an intra-shopping centre hotel on a Friday night.

We’ve landed safe and sound in Melbourne. Although I’ve got three more weeks of holidays which I’ll refer to as JEBFEST for the time being, I shall endeavour to post far more regularly now that we’ve settled down.

My attempts to save a coupla hundred bucks on our removalists backfired. Instead of reverting to the somewhat tried and tested method of packing removalist cartons upright, our genius removalists packed everything on its side. This resulted in many cartons bulging open and spewing out our possessions - I could see that they’d attempted to reseal everything back up. Yet I can’t help but feel the joke’s on them - a dildo was packed near the top of one of the boxes and quite clearly would have sprung forth in a jiggly, wobbling comedy surprise for an innocent removalist.

They also managed to break a few bits of furniture - yet, strangely, everything we insured arrived totally unscathed. Makes you wonder.

There’s a big list of gigs I’m planning to attend while I’ve got time off work. Previously, I would hide the fact that I’m a fan of certain bands, but Last.FM has kinda blown that wide open - so I’m not ashamed one bit to admit I attended the 28 Days CD launch last week. Now, all I need to do is attend a Testeagles gig (seriously, they’re still around) and I’ll be a fully fledged, er… undergraduate student in 1998.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FIVE YEARS AGO

Read it and weep

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The concrete in our courtyard is not entirely unlike Kylie Minogue: from afar, there’s an apparent sheen and urban glamour to it. Upon closer inspection, it actually has many wrinkles and cracks. Oh, and it has cancer.

Seriously. Our courtyard has concrete cancer. Apparently it’s causing problems with the pipes underneath the courtyard. So, this coming weekend, our strata are pulling down our beautiful palm trees, ripping up everything in the courtyard and pulling out the pipes. Not just us, either - half the residents in our complex are doomed to the same problem.

They’re going to put back any plants less than 2 metres, which would be great, except that’s… none of our plants. We just have these nice honking big palm trees which I’m quite fond of. Apparently the owner of our apartment isn’t keen to shell out for a new garden, so it kinda sucks.

The real problem is that they’re ripping out the fences in between everyone’s apartment. Everyone has to walk past each other’s apartments to get in the front door, and we’ve got massive glass sliding doors for everyone to see in our lounge room. I’m not sure if I should heavily reduce or increase the amount of time I spend sitting on the couch in a pair of bright green Bonds jocks scratching my balls.

But - losing our palm trees and our privacy I can deal with, when confronted with a much bigger issue. The major problem is that we’re about to endure three weeks of our goddamn Lifestyle Channel-viewing, Dancing With the Stars-VCRing, Dido-obsessive-squealing, Bay Swiss-grocery buying tryhard yuppie neighbours sashaying past our front window every five minutes. And with a lack of any boundaries between the apartments, they better fucking not start creeping over the invisible line if they’re having one of their fucked up yuppie cocktail parties. Oh god, or even worse, trying to instigate complex-wide parties.

Meanwhile, here’s my first music tip for 2006. Remember there was that awful glut of girlbands and DJs throttling 80s pop hits by the neck and belting them into seriously woeful trancey pieces of shite last year? Someone even thought it was worth remixing that Australian Crawl song. Well, my prediction is that this terrible regurgitation will continue into some crap girl band bleating out mixes of Aussie pub rock. Come on, don’t tell me you can’t hear a hard house version of the Screaming Jets’ “Better” pulsing away at the back of your head. It’ll happen.

And for that, you have to suffer a picture of Dave Gleeson and co. Moohar.

Man, I’m happy that Nein lost the rights to the footy. No more of the Nein bullshit like Eddie, the skycam (which was totally ridiculous for a game which pisses about all over the oval, not up and down the field like league does), ridiculous juggling of live matches with the NRL - although I’m wondering what this means for the future of the Fox Footy channel. Living in Sydney and following what I’ll politely call not the most popular Victorian team in the league, quite often the only way I can see the Cats game of the week is on cable. Fox Footy was aligned with Nein, does this mean my drunken sports viewing this year will be relegated to the A-League? Then again, there’s always the reliable option of watching the WWE with a semi all afternoon. It’s not just me that does that, right?

Quite a few of you sent me emails about living in London, which I’m still going through and owe a few replies - but thank you so much for all the info! Everything was very helpful. From what I understand, the south of London is the best place for a mix of not-quite-as-expensive and not-too-unpleasant. Of course, it all looks like a fairly expensive city to live in generally, but I’m hoping that seeing as Adam’s in ahhhhdvertising dahhling, we might be okay if he can get a decent job (although I’ve warned him I’d likely be working as a call centre pleb for a company I’ve got moral problems with - a mate of mine was forced to work for British American Tobacco’s “health” advisory line in the UK to finance her trip a few years ago, sitting on her noisy moral compass and breaking it in the process).

However, Adam’s a UK citizen, which helps him job-wise - he only spent his first couple of years in the UK before immigrating to Australia. I’m not sure how things work in the UK as far as getting your partner over permanently as well (who knows, we may end up loving it and staying there for a little while longer), does anyone have any idea of what goes on here? We may have to get our Seriously Fearful Lesbian Lawyer on the case. I’ve not mentioned the Seriously Fearful Lesbian Lawyer yet, have I? I’ll have to write about her soon. She manages to get your legal work done while making personal jibes and polishing her soccer trophies all at the same time.

My new drinking policy seems to be working okay so far. Everything in moderation. There’s a bit of an internal conflict going on, though… spirits are far better while I’m trying to stay marginally fit, but I have a tendancy to get ridiculously blind on spirits too quickly. Beer, on the other hand, is delicious golden liquid lard but is more of a comfortable, cheerful, happy buzz. Not to mention far cheaper. Hrmm.

After years of struggling to produce sufficient ID to any major corporation or bouncer, apparently for fear that he doesn’t want the government to identify him, Adam has shrugged and gone for his learner’s licence, for ID purposes only. The last few days have consisted of me drearily bleating out mundane road rule questions and Adam spitfiring answers back like he’s going for gold on the Weakest Link or something.

After reading about drivers licences in NSW, it seems I’ve made a very stupid (and fairly obvious, in retrospect) error. I’ve still got a Victorian drivers licence from when we were living in Melbourne… it never actually occured to me to get this switched over to a NSW licence. In addition, while it can’t be disputed that most drivers licence mugshots look like you’re halfway between nicking a home theatre system and on the receiving end of a gob-job, mine has the added embarassment of looking far too overly dopey.

Adam succesfully obtained his new licence this morning, but is markedly depressed with the new mugshot (”My old proof of age card made me look like a really pissed off crim… *worldweary sigh*“) - it’s got me wondering what look I should aim for on my NSW licence. Dodgy geezer? Smirk? Wide-eyed surprise? Rock star bravado?

Considering I rarely drive now - maybe occasionally we’ll get a hire car, but there’s not much of a need for a car day-to-day in the city - I’m not too familiar with the more obscure road rules of the state. Adam, on the other hand, hasn’t sat behind the wheel of a car in years but now knows everything from clearway by-laws to how long the cops can impound your car if you’re suspected of street racing. Together, the two of us make one perfectly functional driver, although I don’t doubt Adam would be yelling and punching me from the driver’s seat every time I parked one metre too close to an Australia Post mailbox.

OF COURSE I’ll be back to drinking alcohol before the week is out.

I think the underlying problem was my insatiable need to get absolutely plastered to the point where I couldn’t walk or talk on a weekly basis. What’s probably required are some new ground rules: no drinking before I go out to meet others at the pub, and try to drink at the same pace as everyone else (I really do become rather thirsty sometimes). This, at the very minimum, should ensure that if I can’t remember what happened the next day, neither can anyone else.

I think that’s a more comfortable happy medium. I’ve already had to umm and ahh about catching up with two groups of friends today because of my dry spell, and felt like a bit of a piker.

The clincher to this decision was a mate of mine moving to live right near the infamous Marrickville RSL - the finest display of 80s optimistic futurism conveyed through every colour of neon light EVER - and I’ve a hankerin’ to visit there. Personally, I couldn’t come up with anything better than a club originally intended for retired soldiers to recreate in, somehow being morphed into inner west Sydney’s finest combination of booze, boobies and AC/DC cover bands.

That, and someone on the internet needs to shoulder the responsibility of watching Deal or No Deal while they’re smashed and getting a little too into it, while slurringly blogging about how fantastically stupid the show is. Don’t kid yourselves, I’ll be posting a pissed rambling commentary of a Deal episode sometime soon when the new series begins for the year.

Adam and I have been discussing the possibility of living in London for a year at some stage. It’s a bit of a toss-up between a living space the rough area of Peter Costello’s anus in London, or living somewhere about an hour’s train trip away and getting a flat marginally larger.

What’s frustrating me - and I’m really hoping some of you can agree with me on this one - is Adam’s wild theories of how we’d work out the money situation. I’ve been noting all along what an expensive city London is to live in - compared to Sydney, anyway.

Adam’s swift retort is always: “But you’re getting paid in pounds, so it doesn’t matter”. My argument is that the chunk of your wage used to pay rent every week will be much bigger in London than it is in Sydney. Same for the groceries, hell, everything.

“But you’re getting paid in pounds!” is constantly cock-slapped back in my face. I KNOW I’M GETTING PAID IN POUNDS! I’m seriously unsure of the reasoning behind this argument. Does getting paid in pounds make me magically English and rich? Adam, you are free to comment here and explain yourself, so that others can knock some good old-fashioned British financial sense into you, wot-wot.

But any folk familiar with London who happen to be reading this - what do you think we’re best to do? Live in London or somewhere else close by? Any suggestions on areas to live in which aren’t so pricey that they’re sell-my-body-to-the-night-inducing but still quite fun and/or pleasant places to live?

Things that excite me most about the idea of living in London: being able to buy Kerrang at the newsagents every week, fresh off the press; higher chance of meeting other gay guys actually into metal in the same city as me; everything being battered.

So I’ve succesfully managed my first day back at work without plunging back into the world of liquor. Even after someone belatedly pushed a Secret Santa present my way - a bottle of wine. Luckily, wine is not something I’ve ever craved or been particularly fond of, so it’s just sitting on display in the kitchen for now, cementing my faggotry. (No doubt it’s the wine equivalent of Melbourne Bitter).

But lo, I no longer rise my spirits with… spirits. This week, anyway. I’ve desperately latched onto a new form of deadly beverage: plunger coffee.

Okay, okay, it probably makes me a massive homo. But I was humbly introduced to the ways of the plunger in Melbourne last year by two (homo, needless to say) mates of mine.

What can I say? Just as drinking Malibu is to taste the sweet, festive, edible form of coconut oil; supping greedily at a mug of plunger brew is to ingest the ozone-tinged fumes of a CityRail Tangara train carriage in molten hot liquid form. I’m hooked. Seriously, I’m almost crying every morning watching the fucker painfully brew everything so slowly but beautifully.

Daresay if I’m not back on the booze next week, I’ll probably have a drip hooked up from my plunger to my clit. Yes! My clit.

Meanwhile, don’t fall for all those hokey, mysterious billboards and (groan) pavement graffiti for that odd Zero Movement website. A quick glance at the site’s registration details reveals it’s been registered by Coca-Cola. Are you really surprised? Someone with a bad ponytail was probably screaming out random buzzwords like “BLOG!”, “MYSPACE!”, and “HAPPYSLAP!” to an advertising agency. And here I was at first, thinking the site was Hillsong’s first eerie steps into the waters of guerilla marketing. Yeah, Coke Zero’s coming. Whatever.

Speaking of guerilla marketing, how are you supposed to keep a straight face when your boss is wildly struggling to find the right term to describe this form of marketing, struggling with the term on the tip of his tongue… only to announce loudly that he thinks the business should get into some “terrorist marketing”?

Most folks I know seem remarkably keen at what 2006 has to offer. Myself? Well, I’m feeling strangely ambivalent about 2006. There’s a little shakiness in the “what do I want to accomplish this year” department, I suppose. Most years I’ve grittily resolved to find a better job, but I’m pretty happy with the job I have now.

Perhaps it’s the new year’s resolution I’ve made. (Stop pelting me with fetid vegetable matter, I’m not normally prone to such pointless cliche). But this resolution will be a challenging one. I present to you… Jeb: Tastes Like Sober.

That’s right, I’m putting the sauce away for… well, as long as I can muster up, really. I’ve made somewhat laughable attempts at this before, but this time I’m giving it serious effort. If I really must guzzle booze, then I’ll stick to a few li… li… lightbeers (Jesus, it’s like someone finally invented a word more offensive than “cunt”).

What’s brought all this on? Well, I’ve just been noticing my alcohol consumption increase markedly over the last two years. It’s near impossible for me to just have one beer, I have to drink an entire 700ml bottle of bourbon in one night instead. Memory blackouts are regrettably no longer fashionable, and will surely result in me somehow ending up naked on the internet (most possibly on my own site in a drunken blog entry) if I don’t curtail all the boozing.

So perhaps this impending branding of being the sadarse who orders Diet Coke when everyone else has a beer is what’s causing me to view 2006 with a little disdain. Truth be told, I don’t plan on this dry spell lasting any longer than three to six months, but I’d like to think it’ll help teach me to drink a little more in moderation. (I honestly cannot believe my fingers are typing these words).

So, to summarise my final alcohol-related musings for the year… I was somewhat ashamedly fond of those Jim Beam & Vanilla Cola ready-to-drink cans which were around a year or two ago. They mustn’t have been able to flog too many at all, as they were yanked off the shelves pretty quickly. But goddamn me if that wasn’t a fine (and marginally more manly lolly-water than your average Bacardi Breezer) piece of piss. Those cans had the PERFECT level of vanilla that you could never quite match simply by using mixing Vanilla Coke with regular Beam.

So, I was somewhat saddened (yet simultaneously re-masculated) when these cans disappeared off the shelves. But, during my Christmas romp to Melbourne, what did I discover in a city Liquorland outlet? VANILLA BEAM. I had to buy eighteen of the fuckers to celebrate. Then, shortly afterwards, began drafting new year’s resolutions.

Still, once my Dry Spell™ is over, goddamn if I won’t be hunting those babies down in Sydney. Liquorland outlets must still be able to get their mitts on them somehow… it’s just that there aren’t really any Liquorland stores near me. I think there’s one in the city, so I’ll give it a shot. Or I’ll cry.

The only other Melbourne and alcohol-related note I wished to make, is the potential introduction of a horrendous scam to your fair state. I’m a firm believer that the staple beer glass size of New South Wales, the humble schooner, is far superior to Victoria’s pot - who needs all that faffing around with weary back-and-forth trips to the bar, or jugs of beer that go warm too quickly?

As many Sydneysiders will know, the dreaded schmiddie (somewhere between a full-size schooner and its smaller cousin, the middy) has been creeping into trend-ay bars over the last few years. In far too many Sydney pubs of late, you’ll order a schooner and end up with a pissy schmiddie instead.

A bar at Crown Casino managed to escalate this farce to a new level when I visited them in Melbourne last week. After asking for a beer, I was offered a schooner. This struck me as quite odd - schooners aren’t generally served as a standard beer size in Melbourne - so I accepted. And THEN I was presented with a schmiddie - and charged five freakin’ bucks! Most Melbourne folk wouldn’t be able to ascertain the difference, nor be familiar with the cost. Watch out for this nasty trick spreading like a virus throughout your local bars, Melbournites.

But - to encourage my lack of booze in the coming weeks, I’m planning to begin Project Get Fucking Huge tomorrow. I lost 25kg last year, so if I managed to put down the Doritos and stop being a fatarse, surely I can Get Fucking Huge. Minor problem is that my whimpering-in-pain threshold is similar to that of Dave Mustaine coming into contact with anyone remotely connected to Metallica, but I’m sure I’ll overcome this with time.

Just last hour I found out that Threshold got cancelled - bummer. That was one slightly crap show I was enjoying downloading. I suspect I loved it simply because the army dude in that show looked a bit like Angel, but had a flooring lack of personality. It was amazing to see him react so blandly and suck the life out of crazy action scenes, like some sort of X-factor vortex; yet still remain so blandly attractive in a generic porn actor way.

Woo, I managed to post! Let’s see if I can keep this up every day. Without the aid of alcohol. Meanwhile, chat me up! There’s only so much work a fella can do each day without getting distracted by random instant messages. I’m jeb at tastes like drunk dot com on MSN, filtercore on AIM, or filterdude79 on Yahoo Messenger. Word.

Somehow, I managed to get away with only posting on here almost once a month for the latter half of the year. Any long-term readers will be more than familiar with my Daryl-Somers-career-esque attitude to posting (read: all over the shop, then disappear for long-term period, then reappear posting wildly like an Australian journo on speed).

So I’ll once again vow to post on a daily basis come the new year. As I’ve sure I’ve mentioned already, my new role at work has seen me mostly working seven day weeks for the last few months. I’m sure that I’ve probably morphed into the manager I’ve vehemently blogged against over the last few years, but I’m really enjoying working with a great team and being in control of things. Even if it means I’ve been overworked to the point where I’ve paid no attention to any new major metal releases over the last few months, which frankly, really says something.

So next year: a return to five day working weeks, posting on here about which metal singers I currently have a bone for, and detailed documentations of the many ways I’ve humiliated myself in public on a daily basis.

Before I sign off for the year, I’ve been meaning to post this for quite some time: does Australia’s Brainiest Kid freak anyone else the fuck out? There’s this eerie undercurrent - you can almost feel the pushy parents willing their children on with mental threats of beatings if they don’t get all the questions right. On top of that, Sandra Sully looks like she’s about to whip out the cane if the kids’ performance isn’t up to scratch. Crikey.

Oh, that’s right. I HAVE A BLOG.

I’ve kinda been working 10 hour days, 7 days a week - so I don’t usually feel like coming home and sitting in front of ANOTHER computer. But I think work’s on the up, so I’ll start posting again next week like a motherfucker.

In the meantime, download Shutdown by American Head Charge and thank me later. Their singer’s grunty-metal-to-soaring-beautiful-Burton-C-Bell-harmonic vocal changes give me a rock-hard boner to the extent that I’m too scared to Google any information about the band in case he’s a total mug. I’ve been obsessing so much about this band lately, it’s reaching Andrew WK proportions (and even though he’s posing as a drag queen lately, I’m still his only overly-obsessed Australian fan). So if AHC ever tour Sydney, I’ll be going sick at a gig, to hysterical levels not seen since I was 19.

And fuck me dead, THE MARK OF CAIN ARE TOURING NEXT YEAR. If any of you are reading this in Sydney and buy tickets to the gig in January, I’ll buy you an honorary FIVE BEERS at the gig for having such top shit taste in heavy music. I’m totally serious.