Why I am better than Stephen King

Recently, I have been told by a number of people that they actually read this blog, think it is lovely and wonderful, and want me to post more crappy pictures. However, my problem is that I have many unfinished posts waiting to see the light of day which I just can't make into proper long posts. So I'm going to do something drastic (not really). Remember when Stephen King was releasing a bunch of shitty novels, like Cell and Lisey's Story, but then he released a book of short stories that were really good, and then after that his novels became good too? I'm going to try that. Welcome to the Stephen King method of blogging. Except I don't think Stephen King illustrates his short stories. OH WELL. This is why I'm more awesome than Stephen King.

01. A tribute to Vlad


The most recent person to say that I should post a new story was Vlad from Interference.com. Since he seems to actually like my posts, I thought I might draw him a picture. Since he's never posted a picture of himself on the Superthread, I thought I'd draw one of him, so that we can at least all have the same image in my mind. Until he posts one, this is what we'll all think of when we think of Vlad.

I really tried to draw a glorious motherland bear in the background of this picture, but alas:

What even is that. It looks like a fucking hand puppet. And that red thing is meant to be its mouth, not a slash wound/vagina.

Anyway, tribute to glorious motherland Vlad! We drink much vodka and borscht in his honour!

02. The creepy Liberal candidate for the Victorian election


His name is actually Ted Baillieu. He ran a woefully uninspiring ad campaign for the Victorian election (which it actually looks like he's won, boo and nay). This ad campaign consisted of him standing there and the words "Vote Liberal". See:

However, the boyfriend and I reckon that it's actually quite clever after all. The undertones are all in his facial expression. Do you see what I'm getting at here? This guy is fucking creepy.

You get the idea, right? Implied. Very clever, isn't he?

Bloody paedophile.

UPDATE! I just saw this on The Age! I think he just did flash someone, and he is very VERY happy.

One of the other candidates for my electorate was equally terrifying. She used the same picture for every single ad. Does this woman here inspire confidence in you, or does she look like she's about to eat your family, your pets and everyone you've ever loved?

Ahhh! I'll never sleep again!

Of course, the ALP candidate for Melbourne itself is called Bronwyn Pike. Her election slogan?

"I LIKE PIKE."


How long did that take you to come up with? No, seriously, I would have never ever have thought of that by myself. Well done.

I just wanted to change all the billboards to read "I like pie".

Speaking of which:

03. In work news ...


For those who came in late, I work in a pie shop and I start at stupidly early o'clock.

Now, at work, we offer an upgrade with your pie. For two dollars more, you can get your delicious pie turned into death and sadness served with mashed potato, peas and gravy on top.

As much as I love mashed potato and gravy, they do not belong on top of a pie! Peas, on the other hand, don't belong anywhere. Ew, peas. Anyway! Generally, if you wanted to know if a customer wanted this, you'd ask something like "would you like mashed potato, peas and gravy on top of your pie?", wouldn't you? Well, some of my staff member don't have quite the right idea. They think this is appropriate:

THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO DO IT.

Other than that, customers are fairly uninteresting. Though there is the guy who comes in almost every day, asks repeatedly if we have curry pies, then goes on about how "it's only 9:30, way to early for a pie!" and then hangs around for ages asking for curry pies. One day he is actually going to leave without a face.

04. As if I didn't learn my lesson the first time ...


Many of you will remember the post in which I tried Russian-style tea. Obviously this didn't end well, and I vowed never to drink awful foreign teas ever again. However, as part of the amazing Crowded House trip, we stayed in a beautiful hotel in Brisbane. They gave us a lot of complimentary teas. Thanks to my morbid curiosity and my natural instinct to take everything in hotel rooms that isn't actually nailed down, the teas came home with me. There was a selection - Earl Grey, peppermint, green tea and chamomile. I made the Earl Grey for the boyfriend and he actually liked it! That's weird, because here is how Earl Grey tea is made:

Anyway. I never tried the green tea - I left that for my friend Helen to have when she visited me - but I did brave both the peppermint tea and the chamomile.

The peppermint tea was just all kinds of wrong. Another friend of mine described it quite accurately as drinking boiled mouthwash. She wasn't far off. I couldn't even get through a quarter of it! At least it cleared my sinuses - it was also akin to Vicks vapo-rub - but for fuck's sake, does anybody ever actually drink that shit voluntarily? If so, WHY?

As for the chamomile, well, it just tasted of nothing to be quite honest. I put honey in it and it was marginally better - I actually managed to finish it this time. But still! My quest to find a good herbal or fruit tea still remains futile. They smell of everything and taste of nothing. If you love being continually disappointed, herbal tea is for you, I suppose.

05. And finally, the news you've all been wanting - shit buildings update


Recently (and by recently I could mean anything from "yesterday" to "in 2008"), I made two extensive blog entries about all the weird and shitty buildings around where I live. Since then, I've found out a couple of things.

First of all, the Patra House. I am VERY let down. It really does just seem to be a club for Greek people from the Patras region. Still, the rather intimidating "Members Only" sign still arouses suspicion in me. How the fuck DO you become a member anyway? Also, I had a dream a couple of nights ago that the Patra House was actually a bar and they were doing $5 jugs. Stay classy.

In other more important news, remember the shitty drug house? Yeah. Guess what? The fucking thing is for sale. That's not the big thing though. The big thing is how much they want for it.

Just look at that piece of shit! We couldn't believe it. It was originally up for auction, but now seems to be up for sale proper. Ok, I know that's a bloody big plot of land and all that, but $1.5 million? WOW. Also, click here for a big version of that picture. I want you to be able to see all the shit in the back garden properly.

So there you have it! Hopefully, by the Stephen King theory mentioned above, my next post will be just phenomenal. Hopefully I managed to create one before the end of the year (how the fuck did THAT happen, by the way!) Until next time, enjoy this huge collection of turds.

Oh my fucking god I win at life.

Since last time:


Well, the last time I started writing a blog entry proper, I received a phone call from New Zealand informing me that my grandma had passed away, so I popped back home for a bit. Though the circumstances weren't the greatest, it was still lovely to be back. I even managed to catch up with Lena for a bit, and had a massive love explosion all over her face.

When I returned, well, I can't remember if I posted before about how my work had been messing me around. Basically, I was hired in August and was told that I would be starting in mid-September, when the store was due to open. Do you want to know when I started? Do you really?

October 29th.

So I'm bloody poor and stressing hard about having to pay my uni fees upfront next year. Oh well, such is life. I'm sure I'll get by somehow.

Other things happened also, but let's get all this preamble out the way so that I can tell you about one of the best trips of my life. Yeah, italics means Serious Business.

CROWDED HOUSE TRIP OF AWESOME AND WONDERFUL!

I fucking love Crowded House. They're almost my favourite band, in fact on days like today they ARE my favourite band. So Ax and I had made plans to follow them on part of their Australian tour - Melbourne, Sydney and two Brisbane shows. I very nearly lost my job over trying to acquire leave over this trip, but all was well in the end and nobody had their eyes stabbed out. It was a close thing though.

Melbourne, 5th November, Rod Laver Arena


This show was seated, but by god did we have amazing seats. Dead centre, front row. The seats were about as comfortable as sitting on a pincushion, but that was ok because we only spent about two milliseconds sitting down anyway. As soon as we heard the opening notes of I Feel Possessed, we were up on the rail, and there we stayed for the entire show. I hardly even remember leaving my seat. It took fucking ages for everyone else to stand up though, it wasn't until It's Only Natural, just before the encore, that everyone actually got up. Case in point:

Can you see us? The whole fucking arena saw us, dancing away like idiots. It was awesome! Set highlights included, oh, everything. Impromptu Chocolate Cake, Private Universe with most of Black and White Boy included in it, the hilarious banter. With three more shows to come, well, how much more awesome could it get? WELL.

Sydney, 6th November, Horden Pavilion


This show was GA, thank goodness! Our flight landed in Sydney at 2:30pm, and then it took us ages to get to the hotel, so I was freaking out a little bit about getting a good spot in line. We were absolutely determined to get front row! So we walked from our hotel to the venue, during which time I discovered that the city of Sydney can't stand pedestrians and wants them all dead. The idea of a pedestrian crossing seems like a very novel concept to them, and they like to tuck them away in the most inconvenient places. So it seemed to take about 9 years to actually get there, and I was convinced that the line was going to be a mile long! But no, of course not, we were about the 7th people there. We met lots of lovely Frenz in the line, and passed the time quite happily. When the gates opened things were rather chaotic, but we still managed to basically stroll down to the front and secure the front row.

This show, Ax was most determined to try and get them to play Recurring Dream, his favourite CH song. We had prepared a number of signs for this purpose and had warmed our voices up (well I lost mine, but that's not the point) the night before. The whole show was almost finished, and we were about to give up, when Neil heard one of our yells and said something along the lines of "I'm going to try and play it for this guy down the front" (pointing at Ax). He made noises about how he "didn't know it very well", but as soon as he was past the first verse, he was off! He even managed to do the solo on his acoustic guitar, which was SO MUCH win. I think Ax probably could have died happy at that point.

The rest of the set was amazing. They did a special performance of The Intriguer with the girl who won the lyrics competition held on their official website, which was lovely indeed. In My Command fucking killed, as did World Where You Live. Also, Neil made up a hilarious song about this guy who told him that he was singing Something So Strong wrong. This guy was called Evan, and according to Neil, "Evan makes love to his bed".

We tried to meet the band afterwards to thank them for Recurring Dream, but alas, we only managed to get a wave out of Matt as he drove by. Never mind!

We now had a couple of days of rest, in which we got hideously drunk, saw a dugong and ate some amazing bacon, though not quite in that order. More details on the dugong later, too. Then, on Tuesday morning, we made our way up to Queensland, the state of humidity, toads and not much else. Ax and I had the best hotel room ever. I would totally understand Evan making love to his bed if he had been staying there. But anyway!

Brisbane, 9th November, Convention and Exhibition Centre


Alas, for this show we failed to get front row seats. We were about 18 rows back. Although the sound was very good, the audience was poo. They sat down for pretty much the entire thing, even the people at the front! I was hoping that having It's Only Natural early in the set would get people on their feet, but NO. I couldn't resist leaping up a bit in Whispers And Moans (how could you NOT?) but we didn't get to stand properly until the encore. The lame people in front of us even sat down during Elephants. Idiots.

There were some very funny moments, including an impromptu song about this girl at the front and her "lovely dress", pointed out to us by Nick Seymour. Tomorrow night I was to have my Nick Seymour moment, but wait! I haven't finished talking about this one yet. I had been hanging out for Neil to do the Split Enz song Message To My Girl, after hearing it in Auckland in April and loving in. He delivered, and it was beautiful. Twice If You're Lucky was very good, and as always, When You Come blew the roof off.

The set was very good, as always, but sitting 18 rows back is NOT ideal. What would tomorrow night bring?

Brisbane, November 10th, Convention and Exhibition Centre


I knew that this gig was going to be the best one from the moment we found our seats. We were front row again, but this time we were right of centre, just in front of Nick Seymour. This was awesome enough, but then I noticed the stage. There was no barrier, so we could walk right up to the stage and lean on it, and the stage was so nice and low! I could actually see everything!

For this whole trip, I had been hanging out for them to play That's What I Call Love, a song from their debut album which, to our knowledge, hasn't been played since 1986 or so. More specifically, a demo version exists which is the musical equivalent of tasteful gypsy wares. My hopes of them fulfilling my request weren't exactly sky high, but I made a number of signs, just in case. Turns out I didn't even need the signs ...

Just after Twice If You're Lucky, Neil made a comment about how Nick can't dance very well after his recent knee surgery. He then asked if anyone in the audience had "healing powers" and would rub Nick's knee for him. Of course, I did it! Nick then said "what was my end of this deal again?" My opportunity! "Please play That's What I Call Love!" I yelled. Come on, after a nice knee rub, surely they would oblige?

Neil just went "Oh, jesus!" but gave it a go! I freaked out with excitement, but then nearly DIED when I realised he was singing the gypsy wares lyrics! So now I have a very cool claim to fame - I rubbed Nick Seymour's knee, and got them to play a song that, as far as we knew, hadn't been played for over 20 years. FUCK YES. I hardly remember much of the following song, Pour Le Monde, because I was still on a high. Hell, I still am.

Hole In The River also dominated, as did the full version of Chocolate Cake. I wish we could have gone to more shows - they're playing in Adelaide tonight - but I really couldn't have asked for more. What a fucking fantastic band.

I know this blog has very few pictures. I'm so sorry. I'll make a proper one soon, though it'll probably just be crappy pictures of Neil Finn. I'm in that kind of mood.

I love you.