Saturday

“Saturn dies” (Part 1)
Well my Saturday was BIG. I did a day shift in the bottlo. At about 6pm when I was about to finish I went to take a stack of cardboard boxes out the back of the pub to the big bin (cause recycling isn’t very popular in Perth, but that’s another blog). The flattened out boxes get stacked up on this strange, tall and unwieldy 3 wheel trolley. I decided to try riding it like my skateboard. It worked surprisingly well. I skated it back up to the bottlo and then thru the driveway to amuse the casuals who are a bit younger than me and cool guys and I guess I was showing off a bit, so I turned around and yelled out that I was gonna tackle the steep hill off the back of the hotel on my new mutant skater. It got real fast downhill real quick and I tried to bail out by stepping off the side of it, but I got into a tangle and flipped the bastard…hard. Banged my right hand, elbow and knee up pretty good. I had to stagger back up to the bottlo with the ridiculously unwieldy 3 wheel monster. My young co-worker Neil, who was in hysterics, wanted to go and see if the ‘stack’ was visible on any of the security cameras. I managed to convince him to not reveal my stupid stunt to everyone…I’m supposed to be the older experienced, responsible one! Hehehe.
I iced up my knee, whilst hiding out in the back storeroom for a bit, then knocked off. Went to Nin & Tim’s house in Wembley for a fireside bbq and a few beers. A few hours later I left the bbq and headed back to The Stadium (the pub where I work), to make an appearance at one of the staffs birthday get-togethers. Kicked on there for a bit, then against my better judgment, I went into Northbridge with the party people.

West. (Part 2)
“The cardinal point on the mariner's compass 270° clockwise from due north and directly opposite east.”
A massive nightclub called The Paramount. Drank way too much, got bought shooters, watched Australia get beaten in the cricket by Bangladesh, watched a hyper-professional cover band, with a DJ playing between sets. Ran out of money went out to find an ATM, saw a road rage fight, some guy nearly got bumped (and that’s about all) by a ute trying to turn left and he’s charged up to the car window and got right in the face of the driver. Then he’s staggered off diagonally across the intersection (read: theatre-in-the-round) He must’ve said something that really got to the driver because a few seconds later the brakelights went on and the driver and passenger bolted across the intersection (read: the dress circle) after the guy and the driver king hit the bloke who’d obviously had too much to drink, and he went straight down like a “long streak of piss” that wasn’t enough for the driver because then he mounted the prone guy and started belting him in the back of the head, like a UFC knockout, then some brave soul pushed him off the prone guy. The passenger and the driver then decided they’d attack this person, but at that moment police descended from everywhere, including two coppers mounted on fuck-off-massive white horses…The ute that had just been sitting doors open in the middle of the road now drives off…the invitation just too good to miss for some opportunist…and perhaps I should be slightly ashamed to admit, but I’m on the corner opposite laughing heartily at this latest development and right next to me some friendly looking chap of East African (I think) descent and he too has been watching in amazement and now he’s talking loudly to nobody in particular, that he’s gotta get home to his kids and what-n-earth is he doing out here amid all this 4am craziness…been trying to get a cab for 2 hours…and how’d he get so fucking wired…well he didn’t say that, but he should’ve, he was buzzing off his head. I got back to the club just in time to be bought a slippery nip shooter by some friendly English bird and see a cat fight break out between two groups of woman throwing punches spitting and hissing (so that’s why they’re called cat fights). The bouncers seemed to get confused and 3 of them became completely distracted dealing with one very angry chick, pushing her back and back, as one of her mates outflanked them and came straight on in to attack some other woman, I managed to stand in her way, (again all smiles, I’m not sure why), as the bouncers regained control.
Despite all this, the general vibe in the place was quite friendly, you can tell a lot by the way people pass you in tight crowds, the way they touch your arm or pat your shoulder as they try to get past. A little bit of eye contact and a quick smile.
There is however a wild frontier-ism at work in Northbridge…out on the street, the atmos was a bit like a steamy B&S ball or a big Saturday night in the centre of some country town… make that a really big centre in a really big country town. Wild West.

A girl kindly skippered us all to our various homes. She had a bit of freakout when, having dropped everyone but me home, and having just gone through a McDonalds drive-thru, she’s realised she didn’t have her handbag. So she retraced her footsteps as it were, back through all the stop offs, but after a couple she was ready to give up…freaked and desperate, and exhausted with it…somehow it'd become 6am.
I was so drunk and I was eating the McDonalds which we’d just bought. I was quite unconcerned and ebullient as she drove around and I ate all my hash browns, then all her hash browns, then as a kind of drunken after-thought I urged her to go back to the very first stop she’d made. Sure enough she found her bag there. I looked like a hero, despite having been fairly disinterested in anything other than keeping her busy while the mad eating frenzy sorted itself out. Booze-munchies-from-hell. So very drunk…
I woke up Sunday arvo with a throbbing hand, a knee that didn’t want to bend and a championship hangover. Sick as a mongrel dog as they say in the classics. Great night though, felt a sense of warmth and well being toward my fellow man, but booze aint really my shtick, tougher comedown than any drug I’ve ever known…so sickening.

Listening To:
The Notwist
- Pilot
-This Room

Forever Ape

I was so sick at work last night, I’m amazed I got through the shift. Stomach ache so bad, felt like the whole thing was gonna turn inside out.
Ok today though. Must’ve been all that pineapple I ate yesterday arvo. I
Have just re-discovered the joys of chilled (fresh) pineapple pieces…..ooorrrr yeaahh.

I have just had the privilege of looking through Hugh Ford’s folio of published design and illustration work. It is full of original and outstanding work and I will ask him for permission to place a link on dis-here-blog so y’all can have a looksee…well worth it. If not I will post a couple of samples of his work whence I work out how to post pictures. Hugh is currently based in Sydney and is working as a Senior Art Director for a publishing firm and as a neo-urbanist, post-post, cutting edge design dilettante gun-for-hire.

As I write this I am also online at MSN Messenger, talking to Tone, trying to convince him to apply for a job with East Coast gig operators Jager Uprising.
They want some programming done on some online gig/function booking program….
He’s worried that it’s a conflict of interest because he’s already designed a booking program called Gigatron, which we used online for The Underpass last year.
Stupid boy. I am currently threatening him with excommunication if he doesn’t ring them today. He’s trying to duck me right now by hiding in his toilet…..stay tuned.

Reading:
A Short History Of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
Football Factory – John King

Listening to:
Triple J
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/

Fragments

Blitz training session this morning. Half as long but twice the intensity. After so much training it still astounds me that I can reach the ‘wall’ of total muscle fatigue after only a few minutes…if punished in the right way ;-)

Have recently had a little correspondence with an very interesting Sydney band called The Fragments. I highly recommend visiting their site and downloading the free mp3 ‘You Saw Me Fall’. Me and Anthony had a couple of great travel moments in Thailand with this song as a memorable piece of soundtrack
There are a number of other free Mp3s to download from the site, if your keen. The Fragments have an Album coming out soon.

http://www.thefragments.com/

Now having said that I find myself with little or no time to muse on anything else, as I have to go do my stupid, pointless and low paying job….
-“but whose fault’s that anyhow Den?”
-“Kids, stay in school!”

Stay Beautiful.
;-)


Listening to:
The Aislers Set
- The Walk (Peel Sessions)
- Long Division (Peel Sessions)
-Walk in Line (joy division cover)

Above the plateau

I had a great hard workout this morning, which I performed well in. This is especially important to me as I have been feeling very flat in all my exercising for 2-3 weeks. I have felt like I'm not getting any fitter, that I'm not able to see or feel any improvement in my physical performance...so much so that one starts to question ones own health- "Why is this young chick kicking my ass on this set of shuttle runs, which I must've done 80-90 times in the last 12 weeks? There must be something wrong with me"
Of course she could just be fitter than me! Or as a trainer kindly pointed out to me, having seen that I was quite disappointed with myself, "That was your second set of shuttle runs, and she was on her first set!!" So all this is what's commonly referred to as plateauing. So to feel like I broke through a little this morning was a real morale boost. To top off what was already a great session, I got to spar with a gifted boxer, Robbie Bryant who is a former W.A welterweight champion, Nationally ranked in Australia and a New Zealand Nat-Titles Silver Medalist. Do you think I was fuckin stoked?! :-) He even complimented me on how relaxed my shoulders were, which was very cool as it was one of the key things that my Melbourne training partner Jason "archie brown" spent a lot of time instructing me on. Left the gym on such a high. Went to a job interview on the 'moonlight' before I went to work in the bottlo, (have been looking to find a different job more befitting the experiences I gained in Melbourne). It went really well and sounds promising. I have punched, pushed, thought, bought, fought and worked hard today...and surely any moment now I will pass out...
What a fucking great day!

Listening To: Dappled Cities Fly - 'Battle Won'

In Retrospect...again

Its funny & sad, I'm at work tonight in this bottlo in Bentley WA and I'm finding myself reminiscing uncontrollably about my old job at the Terminus. A job that in December of last year, I felt like I was completely sick to fuckn death of. In hindsight I probably just needed two 0r three weeks holiday, (which I bloody well should've taken, as I am still trying to recover over a $1000 bucks in holiday pay outta the bastads). I find myself missing so many little aspects of that job. Tonight in the bottlo it was fucking cold, 12 degrees and sheets of rain cutting in sideways and everyone was freezing, and I'm privately recalling with intense pride, the long bitter Melbourne winters in the Termo bottlo. Nights when the temperature clock on High St in Northcote read 5 degrees...and how we'd cheer as we'd read it driving past, having survived another mind-numbingly cold winter shift. I can scarcely remember what I disliked about the job. my nostalgia tracks me like a heads-up-display with no memory...
no memory, but a revisionist passion for pasts that may or may not have existed.

I'm sure I will touch upon this theme again. These last few months have been dominated by such thoughts.....

And of former Terminus comrades: Congratulations to Heidi, who at 10:53pm on the 4th of June, became a mum with a son! ;-)

listening to: Combat Wombat - qwest

Normandy

Today was The 61st Anniversary of 'D-Day'.

http://search.eb.com/dday

"Nous restons ici" (We are staying here)

- Lt James Coyle in response to a Frenchman who asked if it was a "raid or an invasion?"
Pg 313, 'D-Day' by Stephen E. Ambrose.