A Blog Darkly
Saturday night: All about the FA Cup
Very strange night last night. Had planned to meet up with the lads for a few beers and a chat, but Micheal (recovering from hospitalisation) and James (hungover) pulled out. Damian ended up taking me to a party with people he knows through Peace Action Wellington and the Palestinian Group. Not bad, some interesting people who I wouldn't normally get to hang out with - and very friendly and generous when I turned up without beer (only because the stores had closed).
We staggered out of there around 1am to go watch the FA Cup final. Damian got a text from his ex-girlfriend in London and I spent about 10 minutes demanding that he give me the phone so I could "sort his life out for him". He refused because he didn't know whether I was going to declare his undying love for her, or tell her to piss off. I didn't know myself. I'm sure it would have come to me. He's tossing up whether to agree that she come over here for a few months and see how things work out. Problem for them is the long term - he doesn't want to live outside NZ for a long time, and he doesn't think she'd want to live away from England for a long time. (Which is really the hardest thing about the long-distance relationship - it's not physically being together, it's finding somewhere that you both WANT to be).
So we hit the pub and it's full of drunk Brits in their football shirts. Lot of banter and chanting going on, and I'm just drunk enough to join in. Get my ear talked off by a crazy Welsh bastard (he looked and acted like Begbie from Trainspotting) who was going on about how great the Liverpool hooligans were, and boasting about Heysel (when 39 Italian fans died in a fight/riot after the Liverpool fans pushed a wall over onto them). Luckily he left me alone after a while, and his seat was taken by an older guy who was less of a cunt.
United played brilliantly (apart from some of the finishing) and I can't believe they lost. On another night the finishing would have been slightly sharper, and we'd have won 2 or 3 nil. Credit to Lehman though, he had a great game, and the Arsenal defenders did manage to cover back and make the tackles or blocks that they needed to. A bitter result, but at least we looked like a decent football team. Here's hoping next season is better...
Home at 5am and stayed in bed till around 1pm. Should really try to do some schoolwork...
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20th May 2005: "marijuana is rarely injected"
I have to stop my research project soon - it is making me stupider. (Is 'stupider' even a word? You see what I mean?).
Today's readings: a DARE workbook. It contains such lines as 'marijuana is rarely injected'.
It invents a whole new class of drugs - 'polypills'. This is basically a catch-all term for every drug that isn't alcohol, tobacco, cannabis or solvents. (Yeah, you and I know that most of those drugs don't come in pill form....DARE, however....)
Polypill users, apparently, are "a very distinctive breed. They tend to identify with groups such as cults, or they are isolated beings ("loners"). They usually have many more [than what?] emotional, behavioural, and psychological problems". "They risk accidental death, because the drugs they use can be addictive". [right...addictive drugs make it easier to OD - like tobacco...]
Signs that your child might be a polypill user include "magical interest or belief".
Oh yes indeed.
Off on the town in about 45 minutes when I finish typing this junk up. Going to grab a few quiet beers with Michael and Damian, maybe Paul, and then hopefully noisy things up a bit. It's FA Cup final night, and I have to admit I'm not sure I'm looking forward to this one - everything has been going wrong for us this year and I think Arsenal will have the edge. Plus Mike now supports Arsenal because his girlfriend lived near their ground for a while....
On top of the Hurricanes losing 47-7 last night, I think this is going to be a bad weekend for sport.
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18 May 2005: Wellington is number one
And number two....
Fat Freddy's Drop, debut album into the charts at number one...in the same week, Shihad go in at number two. And the Phoenix Foundation have their second album out this week.
All this, and a Toy Love retrospective too . Life is good.
Spent today at an IT conference, sweet as I didn't have to do any work or any thinking and got to eat loads (the best thing about conferences is the food, for sure).
Took Rhonda to dinner (Planet Spice, Indian) last night. Twas good, we both ate far too much and drank Kingfishers and generally had a good time (and my credit card didn't get declined this time).
Song of the minute: Nick Cave 'Breathless'.
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[15 May 2005] Visiting Dave
Finally left the house today, went to visit old workmate Dave, who now lives just down the road from me. Lots of coffee (he's l33t enough to grind his own beans - delicous) and a little weed (which is more than enough for me) and a chat about old/new work times, German techno-dub, and the music he's been making (heavily influenced by German techno-dub).
Then I staggered down to the store to buy a replacement light bulb. Ended up buying loads of snack food, and the wrong lightbulb. So as I'm typing this the only light in my room is coming from my screen.
Forgot to mention I saw Nick Cave on Thursday. The latest in a whole string of decent bands who've played here recently. Life is good. Nick himself didn't play the best gig I've ever seen, though there was nothing wrong with it and I enjoyed it overall. It seemed like he was getting a bit old, and some of the power was going from his voice. Also the crowd seemed a little flat - but I was tired as fuck so maybe it was just me. Not saying it was a bad gig, by any means, just not earth-moving.
Went with Rhonda and James and some of Rhonda's friends.
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[12 May 2005] Pay rises!
Hmmm....could have been better. $2500, which equates to 5 1/2%.
Nothing to complain about really, but when I took the job they strongly hinted that I was looking at $2-5K. So this is at the bottom end of the range. Oh well.
I got a decent night's sleep last night! On my list of things to do, this was beating sex, food and hanging out with my friends by serious margins. (I was so tired at work that my boss told me to leave a meeting and drink some coffee ). Now I just need to spend all weekend writing this fucking thesis.
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[8 May 2005] So, Goodbye
Just got back from the Salford Lads Club farewell tribute night thing. I am feeling nicely wasted after taking 4 Frenzy (Frenzies?) and a few beers. No chance of sleep for the next few hours, so I hope some people are online.
The gig was good as always, Adrian managed to forget the words a few times and got some heckling from some idiot English guy as a result, but other than that things were sound. They played for over two hours, which was almost too much Smiths, even for me, but all good.
Very loved up from the pills and thinking and reflecting about life. All good....found out today that my ex-girlfriend's father is one of the top advisors on drug policy in this country (I knew he was a drug/alcohol counsellor, but not that he was this high up)...funny thing is that she's quite a druggie herself (one of my abiding memories is doing ketamine on a boat in India to celebrate her birthday - she wasn't actually doing the K herself, but still....).
And another ex-girlfriend gave birth yesterday...after a 29 hour labour, with no drugs. Girl called Kathleen apparently....
Back to the gig...there was a very messed up woman dancing near me for a while - I got all chivalrous and resolved that I'd probably have to put her in a taxi to make sure she got home (she couldn't dance straight, she kept falling into me)...but she disappeared so I assume she had some friends with her, or something....
My kitten is going hyperactive and trying to eat my hand, the cord of my alarm clock, anything really...
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[1 May 2005] We should all live so long
I've spent most of this weekend in Christchurch at my grandmother's 90th birthday celebrations. Was a pretty good time, even though it was being organised by the male members of my family (which means it wasn't really being organised, they were just randomly doing stuff and hoping things worked out). That's a little bit unfair, but not completely.
Anyway, I'd seen her about three months ago, so I know how she's doing and stuff, and she's still fairly sprightly - she's quite deaf but sharp mentally, she knows what's going on and her memory is great. She's getting a bit frail though and tends to need help walking.
Spent time with relatives I haven't seen in a long time - some of them not since my grandfather's funeral, probably - and that was in the mid 1980s. Surprised to find out that I actually enjoyed interacting with some of them.
So the trip was bit chaotic, but everything worked out pretty much OK. The major sour note for me was my uncle deciding to involve us in the church service without bothering to really mention it to us, or ask if we wanted to be involved. So now I'm not going to disrespect the occasion by acting up in church, but I felt it was a bit out of order. He wanted us to read out some prayers. And both my brother and sister and myself are completely atheistic and have no interest in such things. So I'd rather not have been involved in all that, but it wasn't toooo painful so no big deal.
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[1 May 2005] Life in One Chord
Fuck.
I saw the Straightjacket Fits on Friday.
And they were fucking great.
A voice from the past that I'd given up all hope of seeing again, come back and playing the music again.
The venue was packed, enough to bring my social anxiety into play but I drank a few beers and stood at the back and dealt with it that way. They started with APS and there aren't many songs I'd choose ahead of that to hear first up. 100% predictably, someone then called out for Down in Splendour. Shane just told him 'look mate, asking 'where's Andrew?' was old last week', and after that no-one hassled him. It's a shame, it would have been magnificent to have Andrew back in the band, but that just isn't going to happen. So no Down in Splendour. No Sparkle That Shines, no Roller Ride. Shame, but I can cope.
Shane had a refreshing attitude to the gig "we're going to play this song, because we like it - even though everyone else hates it. We're just going to play what we like" - which got a fairly good round of applause. I guess it's better to watch a band doing what they want than a band playing the same greatest hits set at every gig, whether they like the songs or not.
Funnily enough for me, some of the songs I don't particularly like on record were the highlights of the gig. Mainly the stuff off of Blow. Hearing it now, in context, it's a clear link between the earlier Fits stuff, and Shane's later work with Dimmer. It makes sense.
The real highlights were Bad Note for a Heart, a maginficent version of She Speeds (I think the first time I've heard them play it), and Dialling a Prayer (maybe the first time they played that). 12 or so songs and then off, but a pretty damn good night.
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[30 April 2005] Morissey, Morissey, Morissey!
I'm unable to fill the request for a photo of my smashed CD. I have such a photo, but my PC refuses to recognise that my camera is plugged in, so I can't upload the photo.
Yesterday was a good day. A very limited amount of work, good coffee at morning tea and then good wine and snacks from 4pm. All work days should be like that.
Just before heading home I got a call from my brother inviting me to a Salford Lads Club gig. The Lads are probably the world's finest Smiths tribute band, and they have a loyal following in Wellington from those of us who never got to see the real thing.
A few vodkas and some BZP at Drake's place and a bunch of us head down. Was in a good mood but Drake and Casey fighting over money was a bit of a buzzkill (this happens so often). Rhonda and I ended up buying them drinks and things were OK I guess.
The gig was pretty much non-stop dancing and singing along, then staggering home and trying to sleep. I managed OK but apparently I was tossing around in my sleep and kept Rhonda awake. Not so lucky for her...
Today, as a consequence, was shit. I'm too old to mix three kinds of alcohol and not drink water and expect to get away with it.....
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[26 April 2005] My computer just destroyed a CD
I mean completely destroyed. I was burning it to my hard-drive, and all of a sudden it started spinning real fast and banging away. I couldn't work out how to stop it so I did a manual reset, which worked.
For a while I couldn't open the CD-drive. When I did, there were nothing but shards of the disk left. And I mean shards. The biggest is like 2x1 inches. Most of it is still stuck inside the case.
Never seen anything like that before. Kinda scary. And I lost a decent CD.
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[16 April 2005] Hell of a week
I don't have net access at home, I can't get on at work (other than for work); and I can't get on at university until today because they charge us for usage (other than their own library databases and my student workspace/Blackboard). Finally coughed up some cash and made it back online.
Been a true week from hell. We had our busiest week of the year - my brain hurts. But we got through it.
My weeknights are spent studying except for Wednesday (spent helping my friend Vanita set up her weblog on the Wellington reggae scene). Went to a party at her place on Friday, got all paranoid (probably not helped by the pills I'd had) and came home early - which at least meant I got to go to sleep at a reasonable hour and get up and study today. Woo Hoo. I have such an exciting life.
Ooooh, but my performance review is due next week and that is bound to mean more dollars - more dollars for me!
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[2 April 2005] Fucking big birds
Went down the Taeiri Peninsular to visit the Royal Albatross colony. Pretty fucking cool, it's the only giant albatross mainland nesting ground in the entire world (the others are all on deserted islands that humans can barely reach). Those birds are big (3m wingspan) and majestic. Until you've seen them you wouldn't really understand. Got to see three fledglings nesting as well as a few older ones flying (the nesting birds don't really do anything except lie there though - maybe tired out from having Prince Charles visit them a few weeks ago).
Also saw seals and sealions up close. Seals absolutely stink but swim beautifully. And the weather was the best it had been all trip.
Just chilled out the other two days and back home now. A very pleasant trip, and my mother and step-father got on well with Rhonda, which is always good.
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[30 March 2005] The one that got away always looks better than the one you have
Always.
Rhonda and I are in Dunedin visiting my mother and step-father. It's been a good trip so far, we've been doing nothing but laze around reading and chatting, and done the odd bit of strolling along the beach when the weather's OK - it's as cold down here as I remembered.
So yesterday we're walking through the student quarter and someone calls my name. It takes me a second before I recognise her because the hair's a completely different style and colour. She's a fomer workmate of mine who I had a long-standing crush on, years ago. I never did anything about it because she was about to leave the country (not wanting to start a relationship with someone who was about to be on the other side of the world, and who I wouldn't see for many months - those of you who know what happened about six months after this may see it as slightly ironic).
So, of course, we hooked up at her farewell party. I think she might have been interested in me as well, but not done anything because she was leaving. So she took 16 months coming back, and when she did she came back to Dunedin, not Wellington, and I only ran into her a couple of times by chance. So nothing happened between us.
And still, I've got a thing for her. Ridiculous, because (a) she's a long way away; (b) I haven't seen her in months; (c) I have a girlfriend. And yet, I can't help wondering what might have been, hoping that I'll see her again (I'm in a cybercafe next to the cafe where I saw her yesterday).
The reasons are pretty obvious: it's much easier to idealise someone who isn't there than to deal with the flaws of the person who is with you, to have to negotiate what you're doing tonight, whose friends you'll spend time with, everything. Better the one that you hardly ever see.
Ah, we all make fools of ourselves, don't we? Go watch 'Closer' (the film or the play) and see how people ruin perfectly good things all for desire of what they don't have.
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When you're old and lonely you will wish you'd married me
- The Magnetic Fields.
Big weekend. Good times. Friday went out with Matt, Damian, James, Paul and Kim to (continue) our celebration of Matt being back. Started at his aunt's ad agency where we drank their alcohol for 3 hours or so, then headed out to Vespa. Very cool, stylish evening, made less stylish by us drunkenly ranting and swallowing party pills. Lots of broken glasses. Matt and Damian desperately trying to score. Me chilling and chewing my cheeks half off.
Saturday was Pauline and Dave's wedding. Very, very weird - he's the last of my schoolmates whose wedding I thought I'd be invited to. Good times, very relaxed (they played the Pixies as the bridal march). We got very drunk and proclaimed it the librarian social event of the year, thanks to the presence of Pauline, a couple of the young and cool lecturers from the university, various other National Librarians and Parliamentary librarians, and of course the random elements like me. Much bad dancing to well dodgy 80s music with the occasional bhangra hit mixed in. Downed some more party pills (Kandi) which didn't have the best effect, I was nearly sick at the party (then started feeling great) and Rhonda ended up throwing up the next morning (which spoilt any chance of a romantic post-wedding moment, but never mind).
Drunken ranting of the best kind included a gay librarian discoursing on his lust for schoolboys and on the clothing faux pas of straight men, and Pauline hugging me and trying to predict that Rhonda and I would get married next. Um. OK. Let's keep that one on hold for a little while, anyway, shall we?
I have way too much study to do.
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[8 March 2005] Embarrassment is...
Taking your girlfriend to dinner for her birthday, and then having to get her to pay when the machine declines your EFTPOS card and it turns out the restaurant doesn't take credit cards, so both of yours are useless.
Heh.
Having one of those weeks where I make the most obvious basic mistakes. And do difficult stuff easily.
Still, ran 6km today and barely felt it. Fitter than I have been in a long long time.
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[6 March 2005] Babylon's burning
I'm sitting in a cybercafe in-between sets at the Lambchop gig. I thought I'd arrive while the support band was playing, instead I got there before the first support band. It's going to be a late night. And I've got work tomorrow. I'm too old for this nonsense
The night's been made more interesting by a major fire on Vivian St...right on the corner by Cuba. This is the heart of the red light district - the fire is across the road from a strip club and next door to a punk bar, which is itself next to the all-night bar that all the sex industry workers drink in. Huge crowd s standing round watching, though unfortunately no naked hookers or johns running from their rooms in fear. Looks like no-one in danger, either.
Last night was Rhonda's birthday barbecue. Paul and Kim and James came along and we got very drunk (well, I did, the others didn't now I think about it) and continued to develop our plans of buying a farm together - latest thinking is either buy heaps of wild pigs and just let them look after themselves (I"m not sure how we make money off that) or else force Paul to live on the farm and telecommute to work. It beats our original plan (taking turns to drive out there each night) anyway. A good night, all said and done. Drunkenness and my friends and the Ramones on the stereo, and lots of food
Spent this morning visiting Michael in the hospital - it's not looking so good. He's lost 20kg and is on a drip-feed, poor bastard. He was bearing up OK for a while while I was there, but after about half an hour he just had to tell me to leave because he was in too much pain. Poor kid. [Luckily he has totally recovered now].
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[2 March 2005] the gym, more cricket
The highlight of my day was the gym. I've been building up my time on the treadmill from 15 minutes to 30, and my speed's gone up from 10kph to 11.5. Which means I'm running close on 6km. And without too much effort. I'm pleased with myself, naturally. After a good few months when I didn't exercise properly and put on a lot of weight, I'm winning again. I'm down 3kg since I started this job (about 4 months ago) - slow progress, but real.
And I'm noticing the changes. After the gym I walked home up Bolton St, which is an insanely steep hill. I didn't even notice till I'd finished climbing it that I wasn't out of breath at all. And Rhonda tells me I'm looking slimmer Good results, then.
The newspaper coverage of the match yesterday was scathing. Fleming complained that petty people were making unhelpful comments. OK. Simple. Here's something constructive.
There's no point in picking Hamilton, though he bowled wicket to wicket with a fair bit of heart. He's 31 years old. We're building towards the World Cup in two years, why not pick someone who might still be around then, and give them some experience?
Paul Wiseman. He's taking wickets and bowling well. Vettori's our best bowler at the moment, so why not play two spinners? The medium pacers are just cannon fodder for the Aussie big hitters.
Hitting the ball along the ground is a good way to avoid being caught out.
Bowling line and length makes it harder for the batsmen to hit the ball. At the least, bowling one side of the wicket means it's easier to set a field.
Not running when you've hit the ball directly to a fielder, or when your partner has fallen over, is a good way of avoiding being run out.
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[1 March 2005] 2nd in the world, you're having a laugh
Spent today at the most picturesque cricket ground in the world watching New Zealand get absolutely hammered by Australia. It's beyond depressing, to the point where the home crowd was just enjoying watching the Aussies bat, and not caring much about the result. They are in a different league to us, and it's painful. Sure, if only we didn't have Oram, Vettori, Bond, Butler, Tuffey and Styris out injured, our bowlers would have a chance. But we don't get to play 'if only'.
And I got sunburnt once again even though the sky was overcast all day. I just love the hole in the ozone layer.
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