No, not the music festival - it’s the direction we’re moving in sometime in the next few weeks. Yep, we score d a nice new place that I think qualifies being described as ‘nice’ ’cause it has carpet, is relatively new, open-plan, roomy and as far from the noisy neighbours as possible without being in West or South Auckland.

Well, I hope. I delivered the notice to our property manager today, and her first words were ‘but they’re moving out!’ and I replied, ‘well, so are we…’

Too little, too late I suppose. But really, we do need a much larger place - I can’t see Parker learning to walk when within one metre in any direction is a table, a chair, a bucket, a pile of shoes, etc. It’ll be warmer, quieter (I asked about the soundproofing, in a subtle yet sly way of working out if I’d be able to record vocals there), cleaner, etc etc.

I’d be 100% excited if it weren’t for two things: firstly, and least importantly I suppose, I’m afraid I’ll damage my wrist again packing/moving. Physio costs too much, even with a piddly bit of ACC, to keep going back. And secondly, most sadly, we have to give up the cats.

The place’s front door shares a corridoor with other building tenants, and the landlord owns all the apartments, so there’s no chance of smuggling. It’s sad to let them go, but it’s for the best of us humans, particularly Parker.

So if you know anyone cool who wants an awesome cat… let me know. We need to find good homes for them before we move, which will be in the next two weeks most likely. They are really awesome cats, and make good LOLs. Would be good if they went to someone we knew.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

I suppose instead of posting silly pics and random bits it's about time I should actually make a classic LJ entry with what's actually happening in my life, etc etc. As boring as that is.

Well... after months of bitching, I finally did something about the taxi situation at work. Basically, up until recently, everyone in the news dept got company-paid taxis home if they were working late, and us in the online dept didn't, despit the fact on most nights we're the last ones to leave, usually between 12am and 1am, and at least two of us at any one time have 5am starts. I was at the company orientation day (seven months after starting!) on Wednesday last week, and the bigwigs were giving their 'online is the future and vitally important to the business' speeches. I didn't want to stick my hand up and make a scene during the presentation, but when one of them wandered over to our group during morning tea, with the encouragement of the other online people there I decided to speak up.

I simply asked her why, if we're so important and the future of the business, were we paid the least and not given carparks so are basically forced to walk home in the middle of the night...? And to my surprise, she said when the taxi system was rejigged a couple of months ago, we were meant to be included - funny, cause we all remember when the system was rejigged, and how we were first told we had taxis, then when we went to claim them we were told it was a mistake, and we didn't get them.

But now we do, and it's awesome - no more dodging drunks and oddballs in the middle of the night on the way home!

So that's pretty boring to anyone but us online people I suppose. I suppose I've also been a bit reluctant to write recently because we've had a few baby-related headaches, which is nothing any of you need to know about in any specific detail. We're pretty confident it's all worry and stress over nothing, but it's been a reminder having a baby certainly isn't the easiest thing in the world. It's the kind of thing that would never have been noticed before ultrasound was around, and the docs don't really know too much about, but reading about it on the net it seems the overriding vast majority of experiences end in completely normal babies, so yeah. Don't stress, cause we don't need anymore of that.

The house is slowly beginning to show signs of an impending mini-Dan though. Unfortunately, the cats seem to think the house is slowly beginning to show signs of cat domination, as you can see to the right.

tariqa  went and saw The Phantom of the Opera the other night, so you should tell her to post something about it.

TOP TEN ALBUMS OF THE LAST 3 WEEKS!

1. Chinese Democracy - Guns n' Roses (I never thought I'd be able to write that)
2. LadyHawke - LadyHawke
3. Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
4. Dig Out Your Soul - Oasis
5. Only by the Night - Kings of Leon
6. Dear Science - TV On the Radio
7. Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
8. 808s and Heartbreak - Kanye West
9. Electric Arguments - The Fireman
10. Day & Age - The Killers

Despite the ridiculous autotuning on the Kanye West album - even when he's rapping - there's something about it which makes it all work. I suppose it's the singular, consistent vision of the album, it kind of exists in its own world or something. Best track? 'Paranoid'. It's full-on electro-pop, but without sampling Daft Punk or anything. I tried the autotune on my own vocals for the new stuff, but as it's not as electro as Kanye's stuff, I couldn't really get it to fit in.

And Chinese Democracy? It's a good album, surprisingly enough. And perhaps even more surprisingly, it's not overly compressed and brick-walled like 99% of other hard rock albums nowadays. You can actually hear how brilliant the production is, and the songs ain't bad either - particularly 'Sorry', 'Better', and the Beatles-esque 'Catcher in the Rye'. And the guitar solo on 'Shackler's Revenge' is bizarro - I assume that's Buckethead's work.

A new study shows the vast majority of people (70%) who opposed to the "anti-smacking" law do not understand it, while a slim majority of people who support it do. The same study also shows of the 41% of parents who do smack, only 9% think it is effective - that equates to less than a measly 4% of all parents.

Of course, Larry Baldock (that guy I called a cock) thinks the survey is "crap", because parents are afraid to admit they smack their kids for fear of prosecution - which I suppose places him firmly in the aforementioned 70%.

But how do you punish a cat who's deaf? Kosh pisses me off sometimes.

First I got hardly any sleep, then when I did wake up it was damn cats banging and crashing around, but there was no food for them and they kept getting in my way so I kept tripping over them, but here was no food for the cats so I went to the supermarket, but everything on special was only on special with a OneCard, so I get what I could but was already past halfway over my budget after the first aisle, and there are like, ten aisles, then Tariqa called and I got angry because she keeps eating things like Nandos which is a stupid thing to get angry about, then I got to the counter and began unloading my trolley when she texted and said she'd put more money into the joint account but the lady had already started scanning the stuff, then I went outside and there were no taxis so I had to walk home and the bags were heavy, so heavy one of them completely fell apart and I had to load everything into an already full bag, and its handles started breaking so by the time I got home I was pretty much carrying the groceries in a carefully constructed pile in my arms, then when I got inside the cats were being dicks and Kosh was lying on my digital studio thing, and they were being annoying cause they were so hungry, and I went to put some of the cat biscuits in the cat biscuits container but something went wrong and some went flying all through the kitchen and lounge, so I cleaned them up then gave the biscuits to the cats, and they didn't even want them, the dicks, so I got my scone and a glass of water and went into the computer room and accidentally spilled water on the keyboard, then wiped it up and logged onto the Herald's website and found out the police have adopted tasers, which sucks cause now they're just going to taser everyone instead of doing their job properly, and I'm really tired and grumpy.

Otherwise, things are great. How are you?

Help me claw my way out of poverty: buy some shit (not literally shit, but stuff I can bear to part with in exchange for cash).

The real estate industry is blaming the media for the housing 'slump'. Good to know we're doing something right, huh? Even if the stats saying the average family can no longer afford the average mortgage are while technically true, mean absolutely nothing. Still, if it weren't for the fact there are no real jobs we'd be interested in, Hamilton would be looking good for the future. I came across my old bandmate's real estate website, and after chuckling at his still, let say 'creative' English, I wept at the size of the places you can get for what buys you a hole up here in Auckland.

Anyway, I've done loads of housework this morning, and lost the cats. They're outside somewhere, being free and all that. When they get hungry, there will be a fairly clean house for them leave their fur all over, and some new blinds to tear down.

Yes, we now have "trendy" (tradesman's words, not mine) new blinds, which make our little flat look more "modern". Seeing as all the flats in this block are owned by the same people, I just hope our neighbours don't get jealous, particularly when our lawn is also supposed to be getting mowed at some point. He said the property managers are having some problems with the folk in one of the front units. "Because it seems there are about 10 of them living there?" I asked. "Pretty much."

After watching the 'indie' episode of Seven Ages of Rock last night, I blasted Definitely Maybe and Parklife this morning, I forgot how awesome those albums are. They're always popping up in best-album-ever lists, of course, but if you don't listen to something in a while, you can forget why.

Sorted the insurance stuff today, as you can see, and read. But check out those sexy axes above. Ooh yeah. Ebony and ivory.

I jsut watched Outfoxed, on the Documentary Channel, was quite interesting - nothing I didn't already know/assume, but the level of detail and extent to which Fox are, um, evil, was pretty eye-opening.

Been a long week - not even finished unpacking (tomorrow is the target date), had some windows replaced, stove replaced, the plumber around twice, and the day before we moved, or the day itself, Kosh managed to get himself bit real bad, and for a night we thought he might have Cat AIDS, but luckily the test came back negative. He's had a pink bandage on the last few days, had it taken off and a thermometer stuck up his ass today, but he's doing okay.

Alright, I'm off to read cracked.com's entries for the past week.

Poor cats.

Scully was hit by a car on Wednesday afternoon and found by a family down the road. They gave him a little funeral and buried him, not knowing where he was from, which was nice. I delivered a bunch of flyers to letterboxes last night and this morning, and they just called tariqa to let her know.

He was such a friendly cat, and always out exploring, but always home for tea, cause he loved to eat. He was getting so big.

He had a bit of a hard life though, jumping off the balcony and breaking his leg, continually making me angry when he was little by chewing electrical leads, and his entry into our household seemed to be the catalyst for Sophie moving out, cause she didn't like him at all.

But once we got Lando, he grew up real fast and became something of a big brother, always playing with him and licking his head. They'd often crash out together, which was cute.

Lando's been doing his anxious-meiow a lot the past couple of days, and being real cuddly. I hope he didn't witness the accident..

Not something I wanted for my 10,000th day of life, but at least now we know. (yes, it's my 10,000th day).

-------

EDIT: Here's the last photo of Scully - taken on Tuesday. He's being a clown as Kosh looks on. Pretty much sums up his entire life!

Hi everyone. Our cat Scully had breakfast yesterday (Wednesday) morning, went out to play and didn't come home! He's a one year old ginger, shorthair, has a white patch on his front, really friendly and loves to eat, and went missing from Grande Avenue in Mt Albert.

He's not wearing a collar at the moment, but knows his name, and likes to go on adventures - but he's usually home for tea.

That's him on the left of both photos, with his little brother Lando who misses him lots!

If you see him, can you email me - motorcycleemptiness@gmail.com - or call me on 0276990958. Thanks.

The black one is Lando, the ginge, Scully. No points for guessing how they got their names. Brilliantly captioned by May Lee, she who won the Auckland photo competition thingee that I got a published story about last semester...

Watched Depeche Mode's Touring the Angel DVD last week, was awesome.

You know what I haven't done in ages? I can really see my end of year geek-o calculation going horribly astray this year.

TOP 10 ALBUMS OF THE PAST TWO MONTHS (I THINK)

1. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
2. Smashing Pumpkins  - Zeitgeist
3. Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger
4. Norah Jones - Not Too Late
5. Bat For Lashes - Fur And Gold
6. Dolores O'Riordan - Is Anyone Listening?
7. Brunettes - Structure and Cosmetics
8. Manic Street Preachers - Send Away the Tigers
9. Ryan Adams - Love Is Hell
10. James Dean Bradfield - The Great Western

I think I've found the greatest music video of all time, just happens to be by Mike Nesmith, one of the Monkees. It's short and sweet, check it out.

Another one in the Waikato Times, this one with a pic but not on the front page - in the arts section. Link goes to the Stuff.co.nz version without the pic. The subs didn't seem to think it was ironic that a deaf mute is being played by a choral singer, and took out the key word of that entire sentence. Ah well. That's their job.

Got a fair few CDs on trademe at the moment, will be adding more when I get the time. Tariqa's probably going to be bringing home a new cat any day now, so we need the money!

Well, I spent most of the day at work, but made some progress on another track this morning, This Means More, as well as finishing off a mix of what I was working on yesterday. Not sure how much I'll keep of this morning's work, but I've got plenty of time at this stage. I layered on guitar after guitar, in the absence of any other ideas, but have had some today so may rework it tomorrow a bit more minimally. The bass sounds fat and there's an awesome Smashing Pumpkins riff in it though, so I shouldn't lay off too many axes.

That's if I don't spend the day noodling with this new laptop I'm typing on at this very moment... it's got Windows Vista, and is all pretty and stuff. There's loads of options and buttons and things everywhere to play with, and folders to explore. And half of it looks like Mac stuff, haha.

But it's fast, so fast. At least compared to the other laptop, which is probably feeling a bit like an old pet who's been replaced with a younger, flashier model. In this case, I hope the younger, flashier model doesn't get sick, like our younger, flashier cat has been. Scully hasn't spewed today at least, which is good, but also means he's due for a big one.

Now, I'll leave you with the strangest thing I've seen on Youtube recently.

So on my first day of break from uni, I began by popping out to Dick Smith to buy a USB hub. Having problems with the front ports on the desktop, and there are only two at the back which are taken by the mouse and wireless key. Need more so I can plug in the portastudio and MIDI keyboard permanently, while I do some music stuff you see.

Anyway, I get back, set it all up, and the net won't connect properly... I call Dick Smith's helpline to figure it out (turns out when I plugged the wireless key back in it reinstalled, and lost the password), and half way through the call Scully begins meiowing oddly...

Then he spewed everywhere, masses of it, like some kind of disgusting fire hose. I told the guy I'd call back, and set to cleaning it all up. Then he does it again... so took him to the vet, and now he's on a special diet. Might have an 'obstruction' in his system, who knows. And guess what he did at the vet? Yes, again...

Poor cat. And poor bank balance!

His spew was at least the same colour as the carpet, which means it mightn't stain. I think that's how it works anyway.

So apart from that, I got all my music gear and stuff set up, so will start mucking about tomorrow. Been a while since I played electric guitar, so I'll probably spend a day just getting used to playing it again, breaking in some new strings (well hopefully not breaking them), and learning a few covers.

There's nothing worse than taking the cleaning the cat litter tray outside for a clean, than returning it to the bathroom and finding the cat in position to take a dump on the floor where the tray would normally be.

I'm home today, feeling a little bit off. I've been entertained by a grade-A flamewar on Htown.co.nz, and setting up a page on Sellaband.com. Basically, people pay $10 towards artists they like, and when that artist gets $50,000, they get to use the money to make an album, and the proceeds go towards not only the artist and the website, but the fans who "believed" in them.

If I get $50 by the end of the year, I'll eat my hat. I don't own a hat, but I'll purchase one for the purpose of eating.


TOP ALBUMS OF THE MONTH!!!

1. Manics - Send Away The Tigers
2. Blonde Redhead - 23
3. Tom Morello - One Man Revolution
4. Good, the Bad and the Queen - S/T
5. Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero
6. James Dean Bradfield - The Great Western
7. My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade
8. The Rapture - Pieces of the People We Love
9. Smashing Pumpkins - Melon Collie
10. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

I've been waiting all day for calls from various people, and had kind of given up on hearing back from anyone when, as I've literally got my hands in the toilet bowl giving it a scrub, who else calls but the person I least expected to hear from - Matt McCarten. Talk about timing...

I'm assuming real journalists don't find that kind of thing amusing.

So I was cleaning the bathroom, and suddenly the drawers beneath the sink suddenly flew open, a la Ghostbusters. I thought, huh? And pushed the top one shut. It flew open again. I seriously freaked for a bit, so decided to pull out one of the drawers (cause that's what you do when a ghost possesses your bathroom drawers - you aggravate it).

Turns out it wasn't a ghost - no, it was Scully posing for a cat image macro (click for bigger).

I know it sucks, but I'm trying to be busy tidying the house. Suggest a better caption if you want.

The past week... okay. We played a couple of gigs, at the Wine Cellar and the Kings Arms (supporting Motocade). Both went pretty well, with interesting moments... during the Cellar gig I almost impaled Kent on the end of my bass, and John dropped a stick during the Kings Arms gig - at first I thought he'd missed a beat, so continued playing. He didn't recover the beat, so I turned around to see him playing one armed, Def Leppard style. He normally has a backup pair of sticks, as drummers do, so I thought, why the hell is he trying to show off like this? Considering it wasn't really working and all... then a drumstick flew past my head, John fumbled, recovered, then got back to playing the song properly. Turns out he hadn't a backup pair of sticks, and one of them had escaped his grip and flown into the crowd. Someone with a quick mind threw it back at him, luckily.

That won't happen when we're headlining the Big Day Out, that's for sure...

Scully had his balls cut off a few days ago. Hehe. Hasn't stopped him trashing the house though, as tariqa explained. He must still have some testosterone in his system. We took him for a walk in the park across the road yesterday, and he tried to climb a couple of trees. Ten years ago I was a master tree climber, once making it to the very top of this massive tree in Memorial Park, Hamilton, which not even my friend's insane brother would attempt, but not now. Instead I stayed firmly on the ground, restricting Scully's ascent to the length of the cat harness.

You want pics? Once Tariqa has got them off the camera.

I won't say much about the cricket, except oh yeah... bring on the semis! If we beat Australia this weekend, then we'll face either South Africa or England - which is a much better prospect than losing to Australia, and probably facing the in-form Sri Lanka. I can't believe I'm saying 'bring on South Africa rather than Sri Lanka' but that's how it is at the moment. Hell, I'd be a little scared if we were playing Ireland.. this World Cup has shown the leaps some of the minnows have made in recent times.

I watched Children Of Men again, this time on DVD... such an amazing movie. If you haven't seen it yet, I recommend you do as soon as possible. Personally, it didn't quite hit me this time around - whether that was because I was watching it at home on DVD or because I was prepared, I'm not sure. But still, its portrayal of a future 'dystopia' beats nearly every other I've seen for realism. Okay, so a future 20 years hence where no one has had babies since 2009, and all the world's major cities have collapsed into war and anarchy except Britain's  might not seem realistic, but the film is done so well, you don't question the premise for a second. And the action sequences are pretty much worth it alone.

I'm pretty sure it was because I knew the movie, to be honest.

I was invited out to play Buzz on the weekend, but it was too far away and the night before the NZ v South Africa match. But I so want to play the dang game again... is there like a Buzz LJ group, or a Buzz pub quiz night? The one night I really got to play it properly I kept coming second, cause I was playing with other music store geeks.

I'm sure there were other things I was going to write about, but I've forgotten. I might edit this post later on.

The organisers of the cricket world cup are stupid. They're complaining of empty grounds, not realising the costs of going to a game are so astronomical, that, err, no one is going. For example, it costs $2.65 in NZ money to buy a bottle of water - which taking into account the average wage of someone in St Lucia or Jamaica, equates to about $15 or $16. Would you pay $16 for a bottle of Pump? The tickets themselves are equivalently extravagently priced. When the drinks cost the equivalent of an average hours work, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out the tickets to get in cost about a week's wages.

Anyway, tonight I hung out with some folks directly downstairs, but once again I'm going to explain later. I will say now though the one who lives there, Tina the German, said that when she is in, rarely as it is, she likes the music I play up here...

And she knows Scully, cause she saw him after he fell, and it was apparently her sister who called Tariqa (her number's on his tag).

Oh! And her place is EXACTLY the same as ours, but so much tidier. Going inside to pee was one of the most surreal things I've ever done - it was like the bizarro or evil twin universe version of our place. I don't mean just similar, I mean EXACTLY the same layout, design, everything. But instead of Oasis, Floyd and Clash posters, she had flowers and postcards from Berlin. And no trail of cat destruction.

Ok, anyway, I said I'd talk about it later. So later.

I got home half an hour or so ago, trying to find something on TV interesting enough to watch, yet dull enough to put me to sleep... I know I'll end up on the Nat Geo channel or BBC News, but you never know.

Scully is destroying the Franz Ferdinand (the band, not the man) poster we have up by the second couch tower. And now he's drinking the water out of my glass on the end of the couch!!! AHARGRAHGHGH!

Anyway, had a cool night, we ended up in a chaotic game of Cranium, which I hadn't played before, and don't think I could play again without instruction from someone who had. And I was given a knife! I'll give the context later.

I still hate Jesus' followers.

Public Address has been doing a bit on s59 recently - including this awesome piece, which points out the folowing:

How far can Mr Smith carry his logic that: "... scripture declares it is so, therefore I am obliged to believe and practice it"? I'm thinking of other bits of parental advice in the Bible, such as Deuteronomy 21:18-21 which states that parents should put persistently disobedient sons to death; or Deuteronomy 13:6-9 which says that you must kill your children if they try to convert you to another religion.

Hard News done a piece similar to mine of a couple of days ago, tearing apart the arguments some of those posting on the NZ Herald website have been making - including the following awesome burn:

Stace
I will just have to smack my kids so hard that they cant tell anyone about it.

You know what? Never mind whether you'd actually do that. You're a fucking scary freak for even forming the thought that let you write that sentence.

Very nice.

I High-Fidelitied our CD collection last night, into three sections. Firstly, the best CDs, which occupy the entertainment unit's CD holder whatsit; so that way, visitors who want to check out our CD collection will see all the awesome stuff first. And criminals will find it easier to steal the not so good CDs instead of the good ones.

The best CDs section spills over into my little CD holder thingee. The second section is all the NZ stuff, which happened to fit nicely and alphabetically into Tariqa's CD tower thingamabob. And lastly, everything else is alphabetised and sitting in the book case. The CD boxsets are being used to block off the bottom of the entertainment unit, to stop Scully getting in behind everything and chewing the stereo speaker wires he so loves to munch on.

I didn't realise how many double ups we have though! Two copies of Absolution, two Franz Ferdinands, two Garbages... but only one copy of the Divinyls' "I Touch Myself" on CD single.

Anyway... speaking of Scully, the feline tornado, he managed to jump off the balcony again. I found him whimpering down the park beneath a tree, scared out of his pants. He doesn't seem injured oddly enough, so perhaps he climbed down the tree that encroaches upon our balcony. Or maybe he learned how to land the first time. Either way, his daredevil Randy Campbell antics haven't cost us a couple of hundred bucks this time around. We're gonna have to get his balls chopped off pretty soon, if he keeps this up.

NZ beat the Windies! Woooo! Alright! Yeah! Uh-huh.