sunday : 30 jan 2005

thursday : 27 jan 2005

Another weekend approacheth, and I still haven't written up last weekend. Bar hopping! The Eva Cassidy tribute show! Mooching around in my bed­room! Tomorrow evening I'm meet­ing up with Australia's cool­est web journal­ists for drinks, but before that there's a project-related and funded soiree at 4:30pm, which I might have to leave behind early to make my ren­devouz. Satur­day night probably involves a birth­day cele­bration for some­one at work, but I have to make sure I was formally invited. You see, I was a bit too enthu­siastic during a recent work e-mail inbox purge.

wednesday : 26 jan 2005

11:30am. Not much activity going on in here because I have been a clockwork orange ensconced in room 237, reading and re-reading tens of thousands of words about Stanley Kubrick and his movies. Your Humble Narrator is preparing to watch again everything from Killer's Kiss (1955) to Eyes Wide Shut (1999), though not in that order. For some bizarre reason I am also reading Vincent LoBrutto's tombstone of a Kubrick biography 'backwards' after getting 150 pages into it two years ago. Besides that monolithic tome, I highly recommend Inside a Film Artist's Maze by Thomas Allen Nelson. In a few moments I'm going to avoid the rampant Australiana soaking all media and watch Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures on DVD.

If I could install a fridge, bathroom and home cinema in my bedroom I'd probably never leave it. I wonder if Bi-Lo would deliver boxes of Savoury Shapes to my window?

12:18am. Just saw a good movie – jump over to Sinema to see what it was. I've also removed the 'Love Life' rating scale from the Life-o-Meter after reflecting upon some practicalities. I seem to be getting more members of the opposite sex expressing interest in me of late, albeit covert and flirtatious interest. I'm so slow on the uptake that sometimes I don't even realise it. For instance, someone chatted me up in the cinema this evening as we waited for the trailers to start. That is, until her boyfriend arrived. Thanks a lot! What is the custom these days – arm wrestling, butting heads, pistols at 20 paces, or does the old trading livestock gambit still work?

thursday : 20 jan 2005

For a change of pace, a pub crawl has been organised by Michael as a means of checking out various CBD venues we have not tried yet. The list is seemingly endless. I might be going along, heh heh. Then on Saturday night I'm off to see the Eva Cassidy (RIP) tribute show courtesy of Marylu.

Which reminds me, the presentation went okay, except that I forgot to take my glasses along. I thought the projector image would be big enough, but no dice. I asked Chris if I could borrow his glasses for an hour, since his prescription almost matches mine, and he also has prescription sunnies. The exchange was made and we both took on different personas for a while. Naturally the obligatory technical glitch occurred during my demo as well. Aarrghh!!

tuesday : 18 jan 2005

Just a short entry because Your Humble Narrator is a bit tired (cue violins of sympathy). I watched The World at War: The Final Solution Part II last night from midnight till 1:30am, then had trouble falling asleep. Holey Holocaust, Batman! Is it any wonder why?

My plan to catch some pleasant snoozy Z-time on the train tonight was derailed when a bogan nightmare, freshly released from prison, walked onto my carriage with his bogan nightmare girlfriend, sat on the seat behind me and lit up a cigarette, much to the vocal disapproval of a female passenger further down. This nasty character, who was incredibly obnoxious and so past reform that he made Chopper Reid look like Darrell Sommers, loudly threatened the heckler thusly: "Lady I've seen your fuckin' face and I'm gonna fuckin' hunt ya down and kill ya. Hear me, cúnt?" And so it went. Although I had my nose half buried in an engrossing film book about Stanley Kubrick, I found it impossible to tune out this little maggot's gangrenous rhetoric, which included recollections of random fights, boasts of the 100 break-ins he'd pulled in Melbourne, how much he hates "fuckin' Gooks, I just fuckin' love to bash the cúnts", and various other autobiographical skidmarks from his proudly misanthropic affairs. Quite frankly I was happier when he was blowing acrid smoke into my sinuses, rather than being forced to overhear his endless macho sewage. I mean, compared to this monster, the filthy skater kid sitting beside me who'd begged for "50 cents mate" when I first sat down, suddenly looked like an angel worth taking home and adopting.

Anyway, work is bubbling along despite the rampant sleep debt. I cleaned my desk and intend to keep it that way for as long as possible. Tomorrow involves presenting a one hour demo of reporting software to some internal business reps. More importantly, the social calendar is booking up nicely. Gotta love that.

saturday : 15 jan 2005

Well I woke on Friday morning not exactly feeling 100%. I have to remember that being an old fart means having less health mana at my disposal. At least the hearing has returned to normal.

Last night involved what we in the IT industry call "scope creep". I was only planning to attend the work social function at the Portland Hotel, and perhaps see other friends afterwards in town, then catch the train home. As things turned out, I did catch the train home...from Seaford. Yes I fell asleep on the 3:30am Night Rider bus again and missed my stop. This time I drifted off somewhere between St Kilda and Seaford, since I woke up precisely as the bus pulled up at what my snooze blurred vision recognised as my second home, Seaford station. The train back to the city came 60 seconds later so I didn't need to lie down on one of the benches like a homeless wretch this time.

What happened earlier? Needless to say, drinks went down well. We didn't have much room reserved for us but the bar service was fast anyhow. The finger food was okay too, although I skipped most of it. Beer is food too, right? One complete surprise was meeting a new female recruit to our organisation who was also a metal head. This happens, oh, like, roughly never. Everyone from Chris to Tim (who left early but why?) and Damian were all in good form. With residual symptoms from my cold I was doing well enough considering the extant noise, smoke, alcohol, loud talking, standing up and limited nutrition factors.

After that I hooked up with Tonia, Jorgen and a bunch of others (mainly Swedes and Norwegians) at Altitude for drinks and dancin'. I actually rolled my ankle going to stand up once and thought nothing of it. But by the time I was walking home at 5:00am it was painful enough to impose a slow hobble back from the station. Somehow I squeezed in more dancing at a trendy club behind Cherry Bar on Flinders Lane, where I chatted to a post graduate student for a while after my friends left. Before leaving with her friends she asked me for my phone number (no call yet). It was all very casual and easy. We'll see, huh.

Today I exhausted myself with lifting and aiming remote controls at my wall of beautiful audio visual equipment – if only life was that easy to manipulate. Tomorrow I have to catch up with Chopping List updates. Last one was in September. Shame shame shame. There's no shame about the Titan space probe landing today. This is an incredible event, Titan being only the fourth planet or moon in our solar system that a spacecraft has landed on. Apparently Titan has continents, oceans and rivers. Amazing!!

thursday : 13 jan 2005

It was weird. At about 10:00pm this evening I felt my head cold lift and dissolve. I know because at the time I was listening to early Metallica with headphones, while reading the bit in Lord of the Rings where Gandalf explains what happened to him before reaching Rivendell. When you have a cold or flu, music sounds muffled due to altered cavity spaces and other fleshy mutations that occur when your body plays host to virulent microbes. Anyway, within a period of 30 minutes the metal assault grew louder and clearer, and my skull felt less like it was filled with cement. Testing my voice, I found that it had lost its Tom Waits rasp. When I wake tomorrow morning I expect to be 100%, which is great timing with a work social function on tomorrow evening.

On a sadder note, my remaining grandmother passed away on Tuesday night. We weren't close so I feel worse for dad and his siblings than for myself. The funeral is probably being held on Monday but it's not easy to get a good flight at short notice. I'll drink a toast to you grandma tomorrow night. I will always remember that distinctive laugh of yours...

tuesday : 11 jan 2005

Cough, splutter, sniff: I'm home sick today. According to my own diagnosis, it is thankfully at this stage just a bad head cold and not the dreaded flu. Last night I got about three hours of mediocre sleep and it feels like I have cocktail onions in my eye sockets. I've tried to get some Zzzzzs but no dice. It is stinking hot outside too – I am missing that aircon. May return later to append more bitching to this entry. Must resist daytime television...

7:38pm. I am marinating nicely in my own feverish sweat. I'm hoping that my corporeal mutiny ends by the time I wake tomorrow morning.

sunday : 9 jan 2005

Friday night was marvelous. It was good to go clubbing again because it had been a while since the last time. The occasion was the birthday of three brothers, two being identical twins. I met up with Tim, Michael and John from work at a bar on Little Collins for an after work glass of medicinal vodka. Then Tim and I had to rush off to receive friends of his at his apartment. Cue Asian take-away food, sake sipped from a tea cup, beers, music, making conversation with tenants in the lift on the way out, and so on and so forth.

We took two cars and burned rubber up to the venue, the Lotus Bar on Toorak Road in South Yarra – across the street and down a bit from the station. Only about a two years old, it features commercial dance tracks in a contemporary setting: lounges, a long bar, and trendy furnishings. The drinks were expensive. Either that, or January 1 price rises and salary hikes had filtered down to us customers. My standard test for judging booze quality is to order a Wild Turkey and Diet Coke. Firstly, a weak smell. A real bourbon shot will fume like aviation fuel. I actually had trouble detecting that spirits had been poured into the glass, although 90% of bars in Australia serve weak spirits. It's a given. Never mind, because I switched to bottled drinks after that and all was good.

What else? I got up onto the podiums a couple of times. Near the end this surly dickhead shoved me off one. I half toppled backwards and knocked two drinks from a table. I offered to replace them and the understanding dude insisted that I just get a Crownie. The crowd was otherwise well behaved – a smartly dressed mixture of South Yarra glamour and well groomed pub regulars. I spoke to a few women during the course of the night, which always makes the time pass sweetly. One called Kathy was my favourite, but her friends told me she'd left early to get the last train home. I'll go back this Friday if possible to catch up with her again. I have to say that the music was loud, making conversation almost impossible, so much so that my vocal chords were useless most of Saturday. Again, this is the norm for most clubs.

Then at about 2:00am Michael saunters in while I'm doing some soft shoe on a podium. I last saw him at Troika at 6:10pm. It was a pleasant surprise to see another familiar face, and I told him so outside in a sort of mate-to-mate gush, or at least from what I remember. Actually I was not drinking that heavily, just enough to maintain a buzz and stay coordinated enough for dancing on the tiny podium spaces (i.e. the subwoofers).

The club finished up at 3:30am. I rushed off to get a Night Rider bus home, but fearing that I had missed the 3:30am service, I hailed a taxi on St Kilda Road so that I could catch it at Carlisle Street, which I did. Unfortunately I fell asleep and missed my stop, and since the driver was not doubling back to town, I had to catch a train back toward town. I tell ya, Seaford train station is pretty desolate at 4:45am in the morning.

thursday : 6 jan 2005

Tomorrow night I'm off to a club in South Yarra to help celebrate a triple birthday bash – we should have an excellent time. Tonight I had steamed vegies mixed with cubes of ham, then mooched around the unit: web surfing, listening to music, writing another overdue movie write-up, et cetera. Sooner or later I suppose I should do some exercise, since the weights are not prone to lifting themselves.

wednesday : 5 jan 2005

monday : 3 jan 2005

Another long weekend is long gone. Mine was relaxed and laid back. I managed to keep money in my pocket and only spent it when I stepped outside the front door. Correct, I have made this year's first DVD purchases from JB Hi-Fi:

Chopper, special edition, $12
No Doubt: Rock Steady Live, $18

What else happened? I configured the speaker settings on my surround sound decoder again, guessing correctly that unplugging the power cord had reverted the parameters back to their factory settings. My Christmas food binge is over too. I'm back to healthy rabbit food that would make any hippy proud, although I've been sipping muscat over the last two nights...

saturday : 1 jan 2005

Here we go again, another trip around the sun. Old mother Earth has orbited its primary about 4,500,000,000 times so far. Scientists estimate that 5,000,000,000 more circuits can be expected before the sun expands into a super red giant star and swallows the inner three planets. All the while the Earth's rotation slows down a fraction each year, making the days slightly longer and longer, until only one side of the Earth will face the sun – just like the moon.

New Year's Eve involved kicking back on Fitzroy Street in St Kilda with Chris, Ky and some friends of theirs, sipping drinks at a leisurely pace and watching revelers stroll past. Being a warm night, the aforementioned revelers often sported minimal coverage. Either that or some of them couldn't afford to buy the rest of their outfits. At a quarter to midnight we ambled over to the beach and took in the fireworks, then headed off. Jack Black and Tenacious D were just finishing their set at Luna Park. At my suggestion we paused outside to see if the last song would be 'Tribute', but all we heard was crowd banter from JB that included the not entirely unexpected line, "Come on, we rocked you!" Funny.

So yeah, yours truly spent the night 95% sober, although on the way home I couldn't resist screaming out a few confronting and perplexing sound bytes to selected lucky pedestrians. By the way, I never hooked up with Damian in Brunswick. It was all together too cosy in St Kilda, and I made some new acquaintances. Be that as it may, it feels as though I still owe myself a big night out. It won't be tonight because I'm in sloth mode, but there's no rush. I have five billion years up my sleeve.