Brevity, at its best

Many moons ago I won second place in a creative writing competition. I was beaten by a plagiarising girl who exceeded the word limit, ripped off a Roald Dahl short story. I'm confident she is wracked with guilt and a hollow feeling till this day.

I've always entertained a fancy to be a writer and were it not for the need to eat occasionally and pay bills, I would've committed my self to that road years ago. I found this article (courtesy of the New Yorker) that put me in mind of the afore mentioned writing competition.
It is a review of a gimmick book. A collection of stories 25 words or less. They are rather a nice example of the old trick, 'Don't think of White Horse'. You inevitably  do and often picture its surroundings or the weather or the time of day.

Have a read HERE

My RE Teacher may have laughed

It's funny because its funny.
F#ck Off Jesus HERE

May cache a little slow, hang in there for the Freedbird one...

Awesome Flow Chart

How to explain the Internet to a 19th Century Urchin.
Link HERE

And now the calming...

The end of the Winter sports season has passed. In Melbourne this means the end of pointless (to me) AFL news and the welcome pause before irrelevant inter-state cricket competitions. But in our house the sporting rivalry is alive and well. CJ has taken to playing with balls of all sizes and shapes, while CJ is asleep Evie and I have taken to competitions of 'Donkey'.
(for those who came late or who live in barren cultural wilderness of America; Donkey is game where people chuck a ball at each other. Whoever drops the ball gains a letter in the word Donkey. First to earn all the letters in the word wears the appellation for the rest of the day)

Needless to say the competition is getting more heated the more we play. Sanity however may have been restored this evening when we both agreed to quit while we were each on 'DONKE'.
I think sport is the winner this evening.

If it works, do it

The past couple of months I've been laid low by a series of bugs picked up by CJ from child care.Both of us have been crook as a dog. An effect of this has been not going to the gym. Which isn't all bad to tell you the truth. But as we all started to get better I did notice that unlike previous absences from exercise I was not gaining weight. In fact when I restarted my gym ambition I discovered I had lost another 3Kg's.
Most surprising!

But what did stand out was the low energy levels and sapping strength. I ran about with a ball with CJ for a few minutes and I was exhausted. Not the kind of Dad I want to be. Thankfully CJ seems to be through the worst of it all. The headline there is that Evie and I have been improving and I've been able to get back to exercise.
Starting to feel a little bit sore this morning, but glad to have the positive benefits.

DB's I have known

Last month was very hectic and I have been chastised for not keeping the blog up to date. It's a case of real life chewing up all my bandwidth.

++++++++++++++++

So I was in Canberra last week, for work, doing a flying visit. Dropping off something before turning around quickly to head back to Melbourne for some other stuff. Well I bumped into a DB I had known from a previous life. Exchanged some pleasantries but I was reminded almost instantly what a complete and utter Richard Cranium this DB is.

So in a way it forced a comparison of the people I know in both cities. Up in Canberra I had several circles of friends and even more circles of acquaintances. This particular DB was in a social intersection of two of those groups. While down here in Melbourne I actually have a number of friends and people I like.

What I am trying to comment on is how people or personalities of a like nature group together (in a vague and untested hypothesis). In Canberra I had these dear friends who were this amazing social contradiction. Most of the people I met through them were complete and utter DB's. People who were just uninterested and uninteresting. The phenomenon is one I can really only address in retrospect. Looking back I recall that any of their social  gatherings I attended mostly comprised people who worked together with no scope of conversation and a limited interest in people outside of their work environment. They had no discernible charm beyond self flattery and thrived in situations where they could self actualize with the same people they saw everyday.


So having moved on, these memories are what last weeks encounter stirred up. I defend Canberra as a location because I liked living there and I like visiting it, but when analysing this rich seam of DBaggery I am confounded that so dominant a personality trait could be so concentrated. But perhaps that is the focus that objective distance can produce.

Stunt Cycle

In summary, went back to drinking some coffee, election uncertainty and a long time between guitar playing.
Re Coffee, no good reason there. After managing almost 3 weeks I tried a cup of tea and felt really good for having drunk one. So a few days later it was half a cup of flat white. Mostly this was brought upon by a work trip to Canberra. In Canberra coffee is drunk at ever opportunity and when one is going from meeting to meeting a cafe is the natural meeting place...
So I have drunk coffee, not necessarily back on the coffee wagon.

The election occurred without an immediate result. The counting continues with results swinging back and forth on the tiniest of margins. It's becoming apparent there is a growing divide between the city and country, especially Queensland and WA. Easy to make fun of people who don't read and hate learning, but they do vote.

Haven't had the chance to play the guitar much lately. In the evenings it wakes up CJ and first thing in the morning is the same. During the day (on the weekend) we are usually rushing about so much that it's just impractical. I'm looking forward to this Sunday arvo and a jam with my buddy.

It continues...

We'll Bubbas we are through the looking glass on this one, it's almost two weeks since I last had a coffee.
I'm over the headaches and other withdrawal symptoms. But being back at work coffee consumption is so much of a habit, 10am, 2pm, meetings with clients etc. Overall though my body seems to have adapted, I'm not snacking as much (which is good) and my afternoon alertness is about the same.

Found this article about coffee HERE a bit of fun and timely...

No Caffeine

Well my Bubbas last week I was struck down with a vicious tummy bug. How bad you ask? I lost about 5kg's, which in my book is pretty bad. However there is an upside 1) I fine and can eat again and 2) I couldn't drink coffee or tea during my recovery (just didn't like the taste). I've been without caffeine now for a week.
What I notice most of all is my level of hunger has risen. Before with the coffee (2 or 3 a day) I did not need an afternoon snack. Today I had a pie and I still managed to have room for soup, salad and eggplant lasagna for dinner. If there is a connection (coffee is rumoured to be an appetite suppressant) it is more surprising than I would have thought. I intend to keep this caffeine free period up for as long as I can. I'll report back in a weeks time...

Awesome Info Graph

Actually really good

I found this via the Daily What, it's a very clever (ultraviolent) short based on those games hacks one see's now and again. Tres gammer nerd chic, enjoy!

The Goon

Oh my Bubba's, as you are all well aware I am a sucker for a good trailer. And each good trailer I recommend does not necessarily translate to a good movie.
However, this time I know it's going to be awesome;
1. Clancy Brown
2. Paul Giamatti
3. It's a violent cartoon
4. With zombies
and the clincher
5. Any movie that plays Southern Culture on the Skids "White Trash" is a stone cold oscar winner.

Open to your thoughts after you witness it HERE

Soccer Milestone

So last weekend (the one before last) I played my first game of soccer in like ages! To be honest it was only indoor soccer (mheh) but still... My old flatmate talked me into it and our competition was a bunch of young people who had fine falling down in front of the ref acting skills (SKILLZ).
I swear to Bubba those little shits where hopeless (at falling down) but they did score a shit load more goals than us.

And I learnt an important truth about my fitness, my cardio is way down on where I would like it. After 7 minutes (I think) of playing I was exhausted, sweat pouring off me and energy drained.
The good news story is that my knee held up. The next couple of days my legs were sore, which I was expecting, but my knee was fine. So at least my gym work is paying off in one respect.

Super Melody

This guy is probably a one hit wonder, but what a hit (HERE).
I first heard track while stuck in traffic on the way to work this week. It just caught my attention with it's melody and retro sound.
RRR is the station to blame and thank you to the breakfast crew that I heard it again this morning and remembered to repeat the artists name 10 times so I would not forget them...

Distraction

After some consideration we went to Lake Mountain on Sunday. Lake Mountain being a cross country ski run just up from the devastated (but recovering) ruins of Marysville. It was our wee girls second time to the snow and she didn't do too bad. She didn't cope with the slope we had her on, but to be fair her boots we not a perfect fit and I think we can all claim to have had trouble on the snow the first time we walked on it.

So after a half hour or so we took her back down to the carpark and played amongst the snow there. Built a snowman threw some snowballs around and generally had a grand old time of it. I think she started to get the hang of it all on a level surface.

We're off to Perisher in August, hopefully for some good weather, so we can all experience the fun of wall to wall snow. This weekend got us thinking that perhaps we need to go somewhere decent for a ski trip. That Australia has snow at all is incredible, but for the most part the resorts are mediocre at best. We've been lucky in the past couple of years with the weather but typically there is as much mud as there is snow.

Perhaps I'm trying to justify this to myself more than to you Bubba's... So we're thinking either Japan or Canada. To be continued.

Forget and Recall

This past month and a bit has been a collision of the old and the new for me. I feel on the one hand that I'm continuing a phase of my life I thought I would not reconnect with here in Melbourne. On the other hand I see a continuation of another life via Canberra while at the same time watching my new life open out before me.

What a wonderful place to be in. All these threads of my past lives (Melb mk.1, Canberra and Melb mk.2) are coming together. I'm loving it, I feel more complete for the experience. My old flatmate and I were shooting the breeze and we both confessed how much we had unconsciously missed the others company. when you live with someone in a share house you get to know them pretty well. But flatmates are very hit and miss, one of the reasons I never went down the shared house route in Canberra ( I figured, with some justification, that there would be more zero's than hero's).

But it's also important to remember that people change and that evolving and growing and accepting of changes and challenges can help you become more than the sum of your parts or experiences. Perhaps this is what they call growing up?

Pillow qUEST

I had this great pillow see (have just started reading 'The Lady in the Lake') it was a perfect balance of soft with just enough form to hold my head in place. Delightful is the only word to describe it.

One problem though - it smelt. Stank is the way Evie described it. I went down the path of denial for a while. How can you say that, it just needs and airing, I really like this pillow, it's the only one you haven't stolen from me etc But the truth of the matter was, it did smell.

It seems that the filling was a synthetic kind of material, but one that absorbs human sweat. By way of background being bald means my head gets cold during the chilly winter evenings, I usually combat this by draping a t-shirt over my head. Seems that we had some warmer than usual nights and I found myself waking up bathed in sweat. The comfy-comfy pillow soaked it up. You know I defended that pillow but when I read that last sentence I understand the position of my loved ones. (the pillow was not even allowed to be on the bed during the day.)

Well things came to a head (chortle) a couple of weeks ago, even I could smell the pillow and our daughter was playing on our bed. I struck a deal that any pillow I got was mine and would not be appropriated. With both parties in agreement my daughter and I headed off to our local Spotlight.

There are pillows and then there are pillows. Most are too hard and shapeless or perhaps more accurately unable to be shaped. Most of the hotel pillows I have ever used fall into this category (true story, when traveling for work, if I was going to be in a place for more than a week I would pack one of my pillows for the trip). But this variety means that people have a wide variety of preferences.

I settled on a duck feather pillow that combines softness and shape. I have slept like a log that is very tired every night since. Mission accomplished.

Old Flatmates, New friends

So one day not long ago, as I was walking out of a place I bump into the (deep breath) the brother-of-the-mate-of-an-old-flatmate whom I flatted with when I lived in Melbourne during last century. Still think that is fun to write it that way.
So we swapped cards and said let's catch up for lunch. Usually with these sorts of things it takes a while or two or in fact I don't follow up. Well this time I did follow up and a couple of weeks later we're having lunch at docklands. It was great to catch up so we agreed to catch up again next month and invite my old flatmate.

Not having had much contact with my flatmates since having moved to Canberra I was surprised how quickly we picked things up. I guess we had both grown up some but also kept a core of what was good about ourselves. After lunch I was invited to join an online game evening with some of the boys.

To be honest I was thrilled, I love playing computer games - I know the women in my life don't get it, that it is Girl Kryptonite - but I love it. Short story I had a blast and over the next couple of weeks I've managed to catch up and meet some old friends and new ones.

Melbourne is making a good case for residency.

Haven't written for a While

My excuse this time is more about opportunity than subject matter. In the past two months I've written 3 things. Which is not to say I haven't had only 3 things to write about but more I haven't had the time to write.

So rather than do 1 big brain dump I will share a collection of short blogs to follow...

Feeling good is good enough

Boy howdy Bubbas, last month has been a blur... of sickness!!
I lost a week or so plus to a lurgy (See previous post ) that was diagnosed (by SCIENCE) as laryngitis. I lost my voice for a couple of days and spent my birthday curled up on the couch covered by a blanket watching 'The Empire Strikes Back' and 'Kelly's Hero'. Not all bad.

But I'm feeling better now and ready to go for June.

Karma is a funny thing

In think the theme for the past few weeks has been karma or perhaps the benefit of being in a (spiritually or mentally) healthy work environment. I've been struck with a throat lurgy that only gets worse when I'm at a particular location. It gets so bad that I go home and start to feel better almost immediately.

In conversation with a friend at the gym we got to discussing yoga (as you do) and the kinds of energy a state of mind can conduct. Mental energy affects physical energy, I believe this to be true. So when I get physically sick from being in a certain building, do something that I no longer enjoy... Perhaps there is a metaphysical cause at work. My friend asked me about the lurgy, I said that I didn't know what it wanted yet (meaning that for colds and flu's get to a point where I crave a food or a smell or a location. And once I get said want, the lurgy starts to dissipate). then my friend said something really odd, 'Have you got what you want out of the lurgy yet?'.

It got me thinking. The answer is no, not yet (it will have by the end of this week).

Speaking of the lighter side of Karma, I liked this story HERE

Space Awesome Radio

When I've been on the radio, doing my thing, I would play a piece from the Brandenburg Concertos and introduce it with an anecdote about the Voyager space probes. As these craft leave the solar system they are broadcasting music from Earth to anybody who is able to hear it.
Just imagine what sort of impression you would get from hearing music as the first introduction to our civilisation. Hopefully a positive one.

Thus below we find the complete play list of both Voyage 1 and 2. An excellent selection, I'm sure you'll agree.

Too Soon?

A flash game from Miniclip re the Icelandic Volcano (whom we call Davo) HERE

Animated Gif's - some are better than others

The Future of Books

Kindle, iPads and whatever... an intersting article HERE

I would hope in the future the printed word still has a place. This move to putting them on screens fills me with no enthusiasm for the medium. Books have two advantages for me at the moment, they don' t need batteries and I can read them on the loo.

Your move technology...

Listening to Lou Reed makes you do stuff..

Last night at band practice we had a really cool moment when we were in the GROOVE. We had this tight sound and headspace going on. I started off mucking about with some chords (I was trying to recall the sequence for "Across the universe". We managed to keep a rhythm and lock in a beat and energy that was fantastic.

So I happened, for an unrelated reason, to be listening to The Velvet Underground's "Waiting for the Man". The thing that strikes me the most about that song is the simple 3 chord structure (3 1/2 if you count the Suspended 6th in the chorus). Mr Reed himself described the recording of the song as seeing what happens if you keep up 3 chords for as long as you can.
Listening to the sounds and various instruments on the track you can hear people experimenting with effects and emphasis and contribution but still managing to stick within the songs structure. All in all a great example of a jam working well.

Sell the Swindle

Others might not care but the passing of Malcom Mclaren is the passing of Punk's Nixon. Forever dispised by the Indie music scene for always selling the swindle and having a swindle to sell.

From the John Lydon website HERE probably the most honest obit you will ever hear about the deceased.

An interesting Article

In my last year at Uni (last century) I did an anthropology course Anth 101. (Sounds like the name of a BBQ CD Best of...)
One of the (many) useless things we had to do was write a story about a tribe (creativity!!) from the perspective of one of the tribal members. I picked a tribe from the Amazon called the Yanamanno or Yannimato or whatever. The name roughly translates as the 'Real People' and yes they ingest an ungodly amount of drugs. They also had an interesting counting system.
One
Two
More than Two

That was it. They also wandered around vandalising the jungle and stealing (way big on stealing stuff. From everyone and anything).
After a while reading about these wild men of the jungle I got the distinct impression that the anthropologist who was visiting with them just really wound up loathing these guys with every fibre in his body. The whole counting thing was only the tip of the iceberg. Numbers for these guys = just not that important.

Nice to know I'm not the only one, HERE.

Always good to know...

Action!!

Many upcoming action infused adventure movies will be coming to a cinema near you soonish. Just about all of them will suck completely and utterly, rendering my will to care (about crappy action movies) paralysed.

All except, perhaps, possibly for this guy HERE

Background data Here and Here
So yes it is another SNL straight to video movie, but it could be worth a larf or two (as a video).

*******

In other news the weather has finally turned into Autumn, which means we cannot be too far away from that first dump of snow!!!

On the nature of Food

We watched 'Julie/Julia' last night and was not impressed. I think the concept is great, take a cook book and cook every recipe (assumes that every recipe is worth cooking or that in the process you become more proficient).

One of the things that struck me about the film (have not read the blog) was the absence of endorsement from Mrs Child for the project. In fact I later discovered that she thought it was a completely facile project. She also noted that the food was rarely commented on (in the movie the only adjective is 'Yum') and never addressed the flavours or textures.

I felt overall that the movie did nothing for cooking and was a missed opportunity. I did feel however that Meryl Streep did a fine turn as Julia C and it is always a pleasure to see Stanley Tucci. But there was so little emphasis given to the cooking in the movie, so little attention paid to ingredients, to ovens, pots, pans, frying, blanching, steaming or roasting. Poaching does get a mention but the emphasis is on the reaction of the protagonist to the finished product. Given that the idea of the film is cooking it becomes a movie blog with a character who has no language to communicate the raison d'etre of the cook book.

If I were to recommend the reader to any good food movies I would simply start and finish with 'Big Night' (thank you, Mr Tucci). Here the meal is important, the ritual of preparing the meal, concentrating on the available time for dishes, guests and music all follow in order with finality being the mouthfuls of this amazing feast. It's a movie that takes food seriously, its about people who are serious about food, it's a recognition that food like music has an audience. Its a lovely movie.

I mentioned at the start that to cook every recipe in a book should in the least improve your proficiency in the kitchen. The movie implied the Julie character cooked dishes blind without having tested them first. This I find hard to swallow as they had just moved into a new place and had no experience with the oven. Every oven is different, they cook differently, they heat differently. Some have an uneven heating distribution, some heat from above but not below, one side more than the other etc. The variations are endless but the upshot is - you need to know your oven because only then will you know how to adapt recipes to suit it's behaviour.

But I will finish by acknowledging that all this started with a blog (like this one) that took off and got turned into a movie. So firstly, well done. My Blog is my personal ramblings where I am the main character. Occasionally I'll look at something else, but it will always be from my viewpoint. The movie (not the 'Julie/Julia' blog) is intended for an audience whereas the blog can be entirely personnel. If the movie was looking at the herculean task of cooking recipes it treated it like pressing each key on the keyboard of a piano ('Today I cooked aspic', 'Today I pressed Middle C - Yum').

Versus the Wasps

Well it was an exciting venture, I tell you whut Bubba's. Me against a whole mess of angry wasps. I was wrapped up like a environmentalist standing before the riot police, rock poised my hand.

*******

A few days ago we noticed an ever increasing presence of wasps around the house. Being mindful of our beautiful child we looked about for the nest. It transpired that there were two nests nearby, one at a neighbours and one out the front of our place.

I do not like wasps. I grew up with them in NZ, they are aggressive, they hurt like hell and can sting multiple times (unlike a bee). They also scare me, I have a scar on my left thumb from an encounter with a wasp.
But that nest had to go. Traditional methods include tipping a jerry can of petrol down the entrance and blocking it up with a rag and a brick. Not having a jerry can I called on my neighbours who lent me a tube of some kind of 'DeathKill' powder for bugs.
When dealing with wasps one has to wait until it's dark when they go to sleep. Alternatively you can wait until it's cold. Both have the effect of limiting their activity.

I waited until it was dark. I also bound myself up with gloves, a thick shirt, heavy boots, my work pants (tucked into my socks) and had my head covered by a hat, t-shirt and tea towel around my face. Angry wasps go into a stinging frenzy, take no risks.

At the entrance to the wasp nest were a few sentries. Holding my Zippo lighter at arms length I fried them with a can of Baygon and ignited a tree stump nearby. Needless to say my adrenaline was up. I quickly dumped the contents of the 'DeathKill' powder into the hive entrance, blocked it up and slammed the rock in place just as the first wasps were teetering their way out of hole. Another burst of baygon napalm.

Which is about when I heard the buzzing near my ear.

A wasp was on me trying to get inside my protection and sting me behind the ear.

I ran inside (calmly)

I calmly called to Evie to spray me with Baygon (this engendered a robust debate about baygon).

Some more buzzing and then quiet.

I stripped off washed myself and sat shaking on the couch for a half hour.

By then I recalled I set fire to a tree stump and I had to brave the dying wasps nest again to put it out. Thankfully I seemed to won the battle with my first strike. The fire was extinguished successfully.
It was then and only then did I feel I needed a beer.

Does not seem that long

Realised today that I've been blogging here for 4 years (now in my 5th). Not bad I must say.

It was interesting to go back over the older posts and see what I was doing and what I thought was worth recording. I know I've left some stuff out, but it's been fun to be reminded of some stuff.

I have to confess I enjoy jotting down my thoughts here and I only hope that every know and again people enjoy my writing. Even the short little notes like these.

They look through your rubbish bin

This will be one of my more bizarre posts.

For a couple of weeks now the on ramp of the Eastern Distributor that I take coming home has had a suspicious looking red plastic bottle on the side of the road. The more I noticed it the more the more I realised 1) The council doesn't clean up the side of the road often enough and 2) it began to look more and more like a male genital enhancement device (a P$nis Pump).

Which got me thinking. What if it was? Why is there on the on ramp? Who threw it out the car window (or truck or bus or taxi...)? What if it was a gay guy on a date, had been talking up his endowerment (I made that word up) and was afraid of the moment of truth. So he goes to the porno store, gets the pump and is furiously trying to 'fix the problem' while driving. Then has to throw it out the window 'to hide the evidence'.
Or maybe its a hens night.
Or maybe an enraged lover flings it from the moving car.
Or the Bishop is driving a Nun to the church. She finds it asks what it is...

The possibilities as a story are great! But today, while driving home I saw it had gone. The street cleaning machine had been and swept it up. Whoever flung this device onto the on ramp may have had to drive by it every day. The shame like the beating of the Tell Tale Heart as he passed it, accelerating to join the rush of traffic on the motorway.

And now it is gone.

A very, very good article

Have a read of THIS. Possibly the best example of the reduction of literary discipline in the Blogsphere (via the Boston Globe).

But having said that, recall if you will the tenants of 'Here comes everybody', don't confuse your ability to find content with the intended audience of the content.

New Talent

The more I think about this young man, the more I think this may be the saviour of Rock and Soul for this country. I see he's playing at the CMC Rocks the Snowys festival coming up early next month, so maybe that's got me thinking...

The artist is Dan Sultan, he is fantastic and his voice has an incredible energy!! Check out his performance on Rockwiz last year HERE

Check out his website HERE

I think Dan is going to be huge, he ought to be. Get on the bandwagon early children.

Exercise/Diet update

Well its been 3 weeks since I began my well-being challenge to lose my excess Christmas weight. 3 weeks of watching what I eat and drink and exercising. My goal was to drop the 4kgs I'd picked up and improve my cardio strength.

The results are in, I've done it!! And the effort was totally worth it. I feel back to normal and in possession of my normal energy levels.

Very Awesome!!

Beware: New Rap God Alert

Before you watch this, be sure to encase your head in solid titanium concrete or it will splode baby!!
(Can you name the tracks covered?)

Kids CD Goodness

Growing up is a lengthy process, I myself am still a work in progress. When I was much younger TV was a relatively new product. When we got a TV it was black and white and rarely on (only one channel with a second added later). When we eventually got a colour TV only some shows were actually in colour! Most were still in black and white.

I listened to the radio a lot. From Casey Kasums top 40 countdown (where all Sunday afternoon he would count down the top 40 charts from the week and from the corresponding weeks in the 70's and the 60's) to the kids shows Radio National put on during school holidays. My earliest memories are associated with music and radio. I deeply treasure the stories I listened to while sitting in my dressing gown eating marmite on toast.

So for my daughter I would like to share those experiences. Which is problematic. In the first instance the majority of children's entertainment is on TV. So it's visual and colourful, but the kids are starring at the screen. Secondly when I have found a CD of stories or songs the production quality is low and calibre of the artist is lower (ABC I'm singling you out and that dreadful Georgie Parker). Tuneless records accompanied by the Freeware version of Garage Band as far as I can tell.

But every now and again I find a winner. As usual for Australia this release slipped right under the radar in this country. Probably because they didn't sign a marketing tie in with the ABC (the CD's are release by the artists in conjunction with Disney. This means Channel 9 here, which means no one at the soulless corporation would have a clue who they are).

I speak of They Might Be Giants and their CD's 'Here come the ABC's' and Here come the 123's'. Absolutely magical is my two word summary. I really enjoy the work of TMBG and these two CD's are perfect. The songs are inventive and humorous and full of wonderful imagery. In fact I was surprised to learn that at least one of the tracks was mixed by the Dust Brothers (Beck, The Chemical Brothers, Fight Club soundtrack etc).
Go looking for these CD's and find them if you can. I found our copies at an independent music store in their bargain bin. I encourage you to search them out. The TMBG albums are just superior in every way to the community theatre crap the ABC produces.

TMBG website HERE
My favourite song about 7 HERE (from the album 'Here come the 123's')

Take it off!!

I love food, as regular readers will know.
Some people like food, they way they like music (eg Coldplay, any U2 album NOT produced by Brian Eno and Rob Thomas) . By which I mean cardboard and fancy free range French cardboard will taste about the same to them. They have a narrow range of flavour and sensations and have aspirations of only slightly broadening their pallette depending on which News Corp or Fairfax media outlet they preffer to tell them what to do and think.

I love food. I agree with a passion with Brillat Savarin that a the discovery of a new flavour brings greater joy to mankind than the discovery of a new star. Replace the word 'mankind' with 'my tummy' and we are entirely of one mind. In fact definately replace those words because I hate being hungry, ordering a food favourite, only to be told that some cardboard loving-Coldplay listening-drone has eaten the last one.

I love food, but as I get older my ability to expend the delicious food energy I consume becomes challanged. Especially over Christmas, with its barbies, beer and chips and rich flavoursome meals 3 (and somestimes 4) times a day. Recently I showed some friends a picture of me 20 something years ago and we all laughed at the curly haired youth with the Pixies t-shirt. That person was about 25kgs lighter than I am now.
Some people might be upset y such a difference, I am thrilled. Growing up I was pale, skinny and nerdy. Nowadays I've filled out (still nerdy) and I am happy about that. The difference is I now have to watch what I eat and exercise regularly to combat the sedentary lifestyle of working in an office.
Awesome dosen't just happen people!

After this Christmas I gained 4 kgs, so I am on my second diet ever. Cutting back on sugary foods, processed foods and fried foods (includes beer). As I've stated previously, I love food. My challange, and I am meeting it, is to cook wonderful food from good ingrediants that meet my dietry requirements. Thankfully its easier than you think.

Hope all you Bubba's are off to a good healthy and fit start to the New Year!! Will keep you posted on my progress!

Honorable Mentions

Over the Christmas break I read a couple of John Mortimer 'Rumpole' case files. Jolly fun reading (though no exercise in the interpretation of the law). Rumpole spends his time in the courts of London and its environs, defending his clients by providing a reasonable alternative series of events that can in the very least provide grounds for reasonable doubt in a jury.

It has been a reading exercise I have enjoyed so much I have had to put the books down before the character of Rumpole subsumes me. I should mention that I was meandering with out of town friends amongst the stalls and hippies of the St Andrews market when I spied a collected works bargin. Three books of Rumpole for $3, how could I refuse!!

Killer Robots

Don't know much about the guy who made this awesome short film.
It's 5 minutes of giant murderous robot rampage!!!

Link HERE

Could Giant Robots be the new craze to replace our waning interest in Zombie hordes? I hope so, roll on battling mecha hero's and villians!!

Housecleaning

Over the weekend we cleaned out the fridge and the pantry. I know it doesn't sound like a Epic Win for the weekend but we learnt a lot from an archaeological perspective.
For example:

• Once upon a time we had a problem with the house Alpha Male eating any and all chocolate biscuits that were left in the fridge as a votive offering to his AWESOMENESS. Thus denying the Alpha Female any gifts for visitors who drop by. Solution, buy these Griffins Orange Choc Biccies that are made entirely out of an inedible industrial grade orange substitute. Result: We have 3 month old foodstuffs to serve guests.
• We have doubled up on nearly empty tomato sauce bottles.
• There appears to be no rule for when to discard jam and other preservatives that both lack mold and were placed there last ski season.
• The Back of the Fridge is a place where food goes to become a permanent resident. Once its at the Back of the Fridge, there it stays. Immortal and undying in a sleep of a thousand years or until we have another power blackout.
  

The freezer section is a whole other realm of frozen curiosities. Therein lies a plethora of leftovers and soups, empty iceblock cartons and frozen blueberries from last year. We don't often eat the food we freeze as it turns out we don't own a microwave.

To be honest we cleaned out an enormous amount of foodstuffs unfit for human consumption (but not those horrible, horrible Orange biccies) and it was at least a cleansing process. Liberating almost.

So if you are in the neighbourhood, drop by and enjoy our hospitality and eat the last of those awful biscuits so we can get some new ones.

Good Advice

Good advice is something that you only realise when you don't take it. It's one of those moments of clarity where you smack the palm of your hand against your forehead and utter the immortal 'D'oh!'.

Then there are those moments when you do take someone's advice and wonder why you didn't do it sooner. In this particular instance I took my Guitar Mentors advice and got me a Lucinda Williams album (Car wheels on a gravel road).

Every song is fantastic. It just fits the mood I'm in musically at the moment. Now I see why we've been playing so much of her music at band practice. So while this may not be everyone's particular cup of tea, it is mine.

There is a lot to be said for giving advice, particularly good advice. So I owe a huge thank you to my Guitar Mentor.

Off to a good start

Welcome to 2010 Bubba's!! Who'd have thunk it. 2010 sounds (or sounded) so very futuristic. A pity then we don't have spaceships and moon bases yet. I'm only slightly encouraged by the current PM's funding of the Australian space industry. So probably highly likely we won't see such sights any time soon.

On the other hand we do have a lovelly baby girl who is getting bigger and prettier by the day. My lovelly little girl is also a seasoned traveller who handled a trip to Sydney with ease and a car ride to Canberra without complaints.

Which reminds me, as part of my ongoing and irregular rant about pub food, I would like to thoroughly recommend the kitchen at the Mittagong Hotel (in Mittagong, NSW) for their excellent Chicken Schnitzel and Lambs Fry and Bacon. I'll let you gentle Bubba's decide for yourselves who had what. Both dishes were superb, the chicken was wonderfully dry on the outside yet tender within and the Lambs Fry was frankly as perfect a dish as I would have liked it to have been.

So I recommend with extreme pleasure the Mittagong Hotel. Know this as well, the Mittagong Hotel also serves Catalan style Tapas and the dinning area is festooned with gorgeous flags from the Catalan region. Not bad for country-regional pub.

The Mittagong Hotel gets multiple well feed Ninja Stars of approval: ************