So I've had my first day at my first 'proper', 'grown-up', 'career' job, and yeah. Was pretty sweet. Mainly involves adapting stories from the wire services and the broadcast for the website, at least that's what I've been shown so far. I'm told there's much more to learn. For now I sit a couple of metres from Samantha Hayes, and in the afternoon I saw Hilary Barry and Mike McRoberts doing their thing in the lead-up to the 6pm news on the other side of the room. All this star-struckedness is bound to wear off by the end of the week, I'm sure.

If you needed another sign that record companies are insane, check this out: Universal are now saying that if you receive a promo copy of an album to review, then throw it out once you're done, you are illegally 'redistributing' the album. To your rubbish bin.

They're getting worse than insurance companies, huh? We've noticed a few things more that vanished on Friday, like two sets of headphones and once again, the washing basket. What is it with thieves and washing baskets?

As a going-away present, Mark got me this book. It's pretty damn hefty.

TOP ALBUMS OF THE LAST WEEK

1. Duffy - Rockferry
2. Supergrass - Diamond Hoo Ha
3. REM - Accelerate
4. Muse - HAARP
5. Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely

I won't go into too much detail about our Wellington trip this weekend, but I will show you this, spotted on the luggage conveyer belt this morning, all on its lonesome, and it made me laugh...



Okay, anything would've made me laugh at 9am after getting up at 6.15am for an 8am flight back to Auckland, but this I thought was pretty deep, and in a way, kind of melancholic. I don't know. I'd had about two-and-a-half hours' sleep. It seemed poignant. And fucking funny.

Anyway, saw loads of bands, my favourites of the night both played early on - Alex the Kid and Thought Creature. Good stuff. Moron Says What? were good in that chaotic kind of way, I'd have no idea how to write/not-write-but-make-it-up-on-the-spot or whatever it is they're doing that kind of stuff, it's not really my thing, but hellishly energetic and fun to watch at the time, you can't help but get into it. Wouldn't want to subject myself to it at home though, ha.

We played an all-ages show the night before, and oddly enough, it was impossibly to not have a beer. I asked some kid who can't have been more than 14 where I could get a drink, meaning a glass of water, as I'd been at work all day, and he leaned over and whispered, "You want some alcohol?" A few minutes later, I went to the backstage area to check on my gear, and was given a can of Ranfurly by one of the DHDFDs. There are some bars which not only refuse to give you a beer for playing, but won't even knock a dollar off the price of one as a token gesture, but at an "alcohol-free" all-ages gig, beer was flowing almost literally on tap. I should have guessed earlier on; Freyburg Square was full of mid-teens, five-to-a-Chardon, in some kind of glorious fuck-you to the man, or something.

I've got my TV3 contract, so I suppose I'd better call an official end to my illustrious end to my retail career, again, hopefully for the last time. About time too - gotta move house and all, bla bla bla.

Tariqa is away on a course till Tuesday, was good to get back in Aucks just in time to see her off (I still find it weird that I can be fast asleep in Wellington at 6am, and in Auckland waiting for the 224 bus to Mt Albert at 9am). I thought I'd record four or five acoustic songs today/tomorrow and put them out as a luna spark release right away over the net, but I didn't have the house to myself tonight, and the soundcard on this computer stopped playing anything out of one of the channels. I worked out there's no tamper seal or anything, so installed my old soundcard I bought for the last computer (when the same thing happened) and it worked fine, thank god. I still have yet to work out why Audition won't play files in single-wave file-view mode, but it'll do for now.

Anyway, I recorded a backing track for a cover version which I won't tell you what it is yet in case it turns out shit, and a basic guitar track for an original, based on a forgotten demo I found on the mixer as I was going through it looking for things to delete last week.

I'm listening to H.A.A.R.P on headphones, the DVD version - through the TV - and it sounds awesome. I think perhaps even more so than the CD.

Well, probably not, but I've been offered a job at TV3. Wooo! Finally, the job hunt seems to be over.

And I have to laugh at how the government's only response to things they don't understand is to ban it or place warning stickers on it - Mp3 players 'destroying' your hearing. A big part of why listening to music for long periods of time on headphones is bad for you isn't even mentioned, presumably because no one involved in writing the story or doing the talking at parliament has ever heard of the 'Loudness War'. Basically, instead of listening to music which has troughs and peaks, meaning the loudest sections of the music are only heard for short periods of time - be it a few minutes, surrounded by quieter sections like Pink Floyd, or microseconds (yet still with variation) like the Beatles - people are listening to highly compressed modern pop/rock, for hours presumably, meaning everything is always the same volume - loud - and loud enough to drown out whatever it is they're avoiding by listening to music in the first place.

The very way in which the music is produced leads the ear to believe it's also more dynamic than it is though, so the effect can be hard to spot. In the "quieter" sections, it's not as compressed - doesn't need to be - but the signal level is just as strong. When it gets "loud", it can't actually get any louder, but it sounds more compressed - and the ear's natural compression (used to protect against unexpected, loud sounds like explosions and whatnot) detects this as being "louder" - much like an explosion still sounds loud to us, even if the ear has dampened its volume to protect itself. It causes fatigue in the ear, and some say this leads to damage being done easier.

If all headphones were noise-cancelling, people wouldn't turn them up so loud, and the problem would be largely erased. It would also help if music wasn't so compressed. It's okay as an aurally aesthetic choice if you want it to be, but it generally only works for singles - music designed to be listened to as a single piece, not in the context of a whole album. But people are listening to these single blasts of compressed pop all day long, at volumes to drown out their surroundings, which is causing the problem.

NOT Mp3 players themselves. Are they going to do the same thing to stereos and computers? And phones? And record players and television sets? Because they all have exactly the same capabilities to destroy your hearing as Mp3 players.

I handed in my last essay this morning - a light piece on the convergence of the computer gaming industry with other forms of media. Probably my last ever uni essay... ever. Yep.

Now everyone's across the road having celebratory drinks while I'm down in a basement selling Fergie and Gwen Stefani CDs to German tourists. Greeeat.

We've got our first gig in ages tonight though, which will be fun, but means I'm pretty much going to miss out on the last get-together. Ah well.

And I'm getting real anxious about what's next... you know, I did this course to go somewhere other than boring stupid-ass jobs... and I'm nervous about wherever I'm going to end up next. It's scary not knowing - and staying at home every day isn't good for the brain. I end up afraid to leave the house or something.

Okay, this entry went off the rails pretty quickly...

Yesterday was pretty much the best day ever. It was tariqa's birthday, and as she's never liked her birthdays I thought I'd make at least this one memorable and ask her to marry me... and she said yes! Wooooo! So we're now officially engaged. It's pretty awesome.

I got her what Wikipedia calls a "promise ring" - being a poor student still, a proper bling-ring's a little out of the question for now. It's still pretty nice, and has some tiny little diamonds that I'm sure no Africans would have been killed for.

I foolishly updated my Facebook status before getting to uni, so was ambushed by a gaggle of female classmates wanting to know the full story... hamymonkey said it's a genetic thing. Tariqa had a similar situation at work apparently, after one of her workmates caught a glimpse of the new mini-bling on her finger...

I suppose the next step is telling my mum and her dad...

So um, yeah. There was lots of icing on today's cake too! (that sounded like something Alan Partridge would say, I've been watching far too much).

I handed in two assignments, leaving only a couple more till I'm done... I passed the phone interview and got an in-person job interview at Netguide... I found Civilization IV Complete (with all the addons) has been released, so finally bought it...

Then to top it all off, on the way home, I got to ride in one of them Diplodocus-length bendy buses!!!

What an awesome day.

I'm skipping Movember in preference of my own invented facial hair month gimmick, Novembeard. You don't have to start on Nov 1, you don't have to follow any rules, and best of all, you don't have to donate to a charity if you don't want to. Best of all, you can substitute Novembeard for any month ending in -ber. Like Septembeard, or Octobeard, or Decembeard. Pity they all fall in spring/summer months here, huh? (Okay, a quick google shows that I'm perhaps the 69th person to come up with the word Novembeard. But that's okay. I know for a fact I used the word indietronic a year before it showed up on the internet.)

You know what ground my gears this week? Talking to people who not only owned eight houses, but thought paying $300 a year for full cover on each was unfair. Not to mention as a 'good customer' (ie. lucrative) they had discount upon refund upon arselicking over and above what everyone else has. You want a first step to take in solving the house price problem? Prevent this kind of property abuse, to begin with! That is all on that. For now.

I made a friend at work outside of my immediate team, through a mutual admiration of Arrested Development. She goes out with one of the guys from pop/punkers Sommerset, who happen to be the band responsible for denting one of my el cheapo dynamic microphones, during a gig above Tracs in Htown, in 2002. It still works, for what its worth.
Something else that grinded my gears this week was NZ Post, or whichever company it is that manufactures their generic bubbly post bags with the orange writing. It seems, to me at least, they've ever so slightly reduced the dimensions of their $1.25 bags so you can't comfortably fit a CD case in them. It used to be that you'd position it correctly with a little effort, then it would slide right on in. Today, it took great struggles, then it would end up taking half the bubbly with it as it went into the bag.

It's like they KNOW we were using them to send CDs, so decided to take a millimetre off the width, forcing us to use the $1.50 bags. Grrr.

The Black Caps selectors need to take a leaf out of my Shane Warne Cricket '99 playbook, and open with Daniel Vettori.

TOP FIVE ALBUMS OF THE LAST FORTNIGHT!!!!
1. My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade
2. The Killers - Sam's Town
3. The Datsuns - Smoke and Mirrors
4. Kasabian - Empire
5. Depeche Mode - Playing the Angel

Seriously, I'm as bemused as you are. The My Chemical Romance album is truly good. If you're doubting me, check out 'The Sharpest Lives' for something like a cross between New Order and Nirvana, 'Cancer' for something like a cross between the Beatles and Queen, and best of all, 'Mama' for something like a cross between The Wall, the Living End, and David Bowie. Even tracks that don't grab you right away manage to throw all kinds of cool stuff into the mix - 'This is How I Disappear' combines the expected pop-punk sound with some Master Of Puppets palm muting and an epic arrangement I'd expect is beyond the reach of most of their peers, and 'The End' is like Bowie's Five Years gone way of recent Green Day via the aforementioned Floyd's In the Flesh. Even the obvious 'next singles' 'Dead!' and 'Teenagers' manage to fit in some unashamed Cheap Trick guitar noodles and T-Rex riffing (saving the latter from being the worst track on the album, which would otherwise have to be the nondescript and by-numbers 'House of Wolves').

To think, till now whenever music recommendations had passed between my little sister and I, it had been from me to her... this is probably the first time I've got into something she liked first :) She's growing up! Or vice versa, in reverse... It also helps that the album happens to be the exact length it takes me to walk to work and back again. I like it when shit works out like that.

But speaking of Bowie, I'm sure there's a bug or something in last.fm. Every week, he seems to appear in my top ten plays, whether I listened to him or not.

Working seven days in eight sucks, working seven days in eight in a job you find kinda boring sucks even more. Consolation? Next week will seem pretty short, as it'll be three days long. YESSSSSSSSSS.

Consolation (I suppose) is I'm doing pretty well at the new job, I think. I was one of only two from my team who got to make the sunflower sing today (I'm pretty sure I've explained already exactly what that means), and was only a few bucks off making it sing a second time. The week before's stats put me at a respectable third in the team (and on target) for calls per hour, and about the same (but off target) for sales per call. Everything changed this month targets wise, rather undramatically it seemed, so we'll see how we go now.

I've decided the new Datsuns album rocks. Better than the last one.


TOP 10 ALBUMS OF THE LAST FORTNIGHT!!!

Ok, I know I haven't done this for a while, but I didn't listen to too much for a few weeks, bar Black Holes And Revelations on the way to work. Most specifically Knights Of Cydonia and Starlight. Both classics.

1. ELO - Greatest Hits
2. Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
3. The Datsuns - Smoke and Mirrors
4. Kasabian - Empire
5. Eskimo Joe - Black Fingernails, Red Wine
6. Martin Grech - Unholy
7. Cheap Trick - Heaven Tonight
8. Thom Yorke - The Eraser
9. The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute
10. Ryan Adams - 29


And now, this from the BBC: North Korean state media said the underground test had brought "happiness to our people".

ORLY? A more accurate description probably would have been, "the underground test had brought stained underwear to our people," but that wouldn't have struck as much fear into the Great Satan, huh?

Mythbusters on Discovery has reverted to repeats, just like the series on Prime directly before it, which pretty much ruins Monday night television. Stink. Still, gives me a chance to make entry number two of thirtyone I'll be making this month. Eventually I'll find something more interesting to talk about than how I'm making an entry every day this month. I hope.

Oh, yeah, I'll upload the gory toe pics tomorrow when I'm sitting at the desktop, where the pics are stored. Had the operation on Friday, the doctor managed to get the offending piece of nail all out in one go, unlike the guy who did it last time. That guy not only injected my foot with about 20 doses of anaesthetic, he managed to tear the nail into as many pieces in the process of removing it. Susan, the doc who did it this time, not only used the phrase, 'I LOVE doing toenails!', but managed it with only two injections and thirty minutes from the time I took off my sock to the time I put it back on. She couldn't believe the size of the nail that was uner the skin - seriously, it was huge. She questioned whether the last doctor had actually used any of the cell-killing poison (that in theory kills the nailbed so the nail doesn't grow back), and instead had used fertilizer.

Enough of that I suppose. How about whinging? I don't think I like my new job. Each morning when I arrive, I can't believe it'll be another eight and a half hours before I get out again, and dread the kinds of enquiries I'm going to have to (clumsily) deal with. It's not just that I'm new; something about working in a call centre where you can go almost a whole day without talking to anyone (in person) just doesn't strike me as right. That, and we don't get to deal with the fun stuff at all, like claims and things. It's not that as a newbie I'm yet to learn it - it's just not part of the job, full stop.

I'm getting the same kind of feeling I had when I worked for Digipoll. Complete and utter boredom, without the sense it's worth hanging around. Already. I don't know. Maybe it's just today, with daylight savings and all.

Speaking of which... We're heading into summer, we're already getting more daylight every day, what's with the need to save it? Do we get daylight interest to cash in later? Isn't global warming bad enough already, without adding more daylight? Shouldn't we be forwarding the clocks to fit more daylight in IN WINTER?

Anyway, Tariqa said if I wanted to get a new job, as long as I'm earning at the very least as much as I was at the CD Store, she'll be fine with it. My first idea? Go back to work at the CD Store. Muahaha. Speaking of which, I should ask Mark how the new Killers album is, and whether the Datsuns one is out. Their new song reminds me of Devo. A bit different to the last album, which is promising.

My epic game of Civ III I mentioned last night ended with the French landing thier spaceship on Alpha Centauri. WHICH REALLY PISSES ME OFF, cause I hadn't realised they'd even launched it! I'd built up a fairly decent nuclear arsenal, with the intention of bombing them back to the Merovingian age had they gone ahead with their space plan.  Of course, that would have resulted in my Okinawin civilization going the same way, but at least we'd still be game on. Fuck! Got my high score though, despite the loss. So many Modern Armours and Tactical Nukes gone to waste.

Saw Nacho Libre on the weekend - tis good. Ignore the reviews saying it's boring, I'm sure they must've been watching something else entirely. There was one point where it would've been completely natural for KG to make an appearance, pity he didn't, but Tenacious D apparently have their own movie coming out in January, so that should be awesome. Still waiting for Borat though... I hope the reviewers are right on that one.

I've been listening to too much Cheap Trick recently. I keep getting songs from their Heaven Tonight album stuck in my head.

About six songs down for the concept album about the robot politician. Started laying down backing tracks for an acousticy kid of album too, takes SO MUCH LESS TIME than the other one. These songs consist of one maybe two acoustic guitars, and one or maybe two keyboards, and a tambourine or light click track... and voila, ready for vocal and finishing. Feels good to do though, as opposed the year and a half I've spent doing the concept album. That's a little more complex though, so yeah. Understandable. Probably doesn't help each of those tracks has been through about five incarnations before completion. In a way I'm glad it's taken this long though, as there's no way it would have been as strong had I finished it a year ago. My production mojo is pretty good at the moment, and the tracks are getting better and better. IMHO. Until I lay the vocals down of course. Muahaha.

Tariqa's saying I shouldn't blow my load on the second day of my month of posting, so that'll be all for tonight.

So that's two weeks of training over. We got paid for the first time on Wednesday, and it was good to see I'll be earning about hundy a day after tax, student loan, and tributes to nations more powerful than I have been taken out (yes, I'm still playing Civilization on a regular basis). Of course, I haven't yet chosen which union I'm going to join, but I'm pretty sure it won't be one of the ones who stalled the Boobs On Bikes parade for so long we didn't get to see any of it. As you can imagine when communists and porno collide, everything ended up running miles behind schedule, ruining every guy in my training group's plan of getting off lunch early to catch it.

Speaking of training, to the left you'll see a clickable jpeg thumbnail thingee that illustrates in a capsule what our time is predominantly spent doing. Actually, I lie. Our trainer, K, claims to have asked every group in every class for the past few years at some point to do a rap, and then offered chocolate to any group that did, and apparently no one ever tried it. T, N (initials? see later) and I took up the challenge, wrote what you can see on the left in five minutes, then performed it to the amusement (and cellphone video cameras) of the rest of the class. Surprisingly enough we managed to include not only enough hip hop cliches to fill a jacuzzi, but, as K put it, all the key points of the particular insurance policy we were meant to write about. Fucking eh.

There are about 12 of us in the training class, as opposed to last week's induction thingee which was for all the departments of the company, at which there were 30 or so. I was kinda worried that all the cool people I befriended last week would disappear to the other departments, but I think we've got a pretty amusing bunch. I sat next to an ex-army Timor veteran last week who I got on with pretty well, about my age/similar sense of humour, which was lucky considering I was the last one to arrive on the first day and had no choice but to sit there... he's off to some other division now (no pun intended), but otherwise my new work buddies are pretty cool. I won't name them, but I'll describe them anyway, as (a) it'll be more interesting than any thing else I've written in the past month, and (b) I have no social life.

So, from where I sit in the training room, heading clockwise... first, there's N (first initials will do for the purposes of this whatsit). She's pretty onto it, but is forever complaining about her computer - perhaps because it permanently has an epilepsy-inducing flicker, and even after a week, no one seems interested in fixing it. I seem to have a knack for pressing random buttons and making it work for 30 seconds, but that's not much use. Next is M, who used to work at Bond & Bond, and has apparently written off five cars in his lifetime. C is one fo the young'uns every induction group has to have, and has acquired the habit of bemoaining his loss of innocence at our hands; usually due to the rest of us talking about the 'good ol' days' of clubbing and getting shitfaced, and how nowadays, it's just not the same, etc etc. M is more often referred to as G (buahaha) for reasons only known to the training group, and once applied to be on 'So You Think You Can Dance.' N is probably gay. R is French, and plays a mean foosball game. V is Indian, and has a better command of written English than some of the NZers in the group. D has the oddest accent I've ever heard, is perfectly nice, and I've no freakin' idea where she's from, like Fez. S at first meeting is the stereotypical know it all Indian call-centre guy, but has developed a dodgy reputation ever since coming back from lunch twenty minutes late on Wednesday... J has only been in class twice this week, so I'm not even sure if she's kosher and/or legit... T is obsessed with monkeys, and has a mom who writes science fiction novels... and G is the quiet one of thr group who'll probably be the first one of us get promoted.

Wow, wasn't that boring. For you.

I have the most ridiculous amount of differing drum samples, I think it's actually hindering my musical progression more than it's than helping it.


WEEKLY TOP TEN!!!  (for the last fortnight)

1. Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
2. Thom Yorke - The Eraser
3. Trans Am - Red Line
4. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
5. The Beatles - Revolver Yep.

My entries have been sucking a bit recently.

I went on another bike ride on Saturday, this time to 'Auckland's Beautiful Onehunga', where I visited a proper independent record store, ate a ham bun and got lost in Dress-Smart. Really, that's about all I found to do. In Dress-Smart, I walked past the ECM store three times, and still found more stores I hadn't seen before. It was weird, and nothing was really that cheaper at all. I'd draw a map, but it would just be a straight line in both directions.

I got a scanner/printer, and have found some classic old stuff that just needs to be preserved for future generations to admire. Rob and I went with a couple of others, I can't remember right now who, but we ended up giggling like fucking schoolgirls afterwards.

So far in my new job, I've done little other than slowly assert my authorita as the class clown/brainiac.

Now, from Tariqa. Fill it out here (in the comments, like) and post it blank in your journal so your friends can fill it in there. Please do. :)

1. Name:
2. Age/Birthday:
3. Single or Taken:
4. Favorite Movie:
5. Favorite Song:
6. Favorite Band/Rapper/Artist:
7. Favorite Book/Comic Book:
8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:
9. Favorite TV Show:
10. Favorite Video Game/Board Game:
11. Do we know each other outside of Livejournal?:
12. Would you give me a kidney?:
13. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
14. If you could change anything about your current life, would you?:
15. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?:

Yep, I start my new job today. In 3/4 of an hour, in fact. Though I doubt I'll be starting any work today. I remember when I began at Sitel in April 2004, our first day was spent playing games and eating food at SkyCity, so that's what I'm looking forward to today.

Well, that and earning real money... Oh, and here's the second leg of my epic journey, finished it off on Tuesday. Bussed back out to Unsworth, got the bike, rolled down a hill most of the way to Devonport (pink) then caught the ferry back to the city (yellow). Ferry was weird - no one told me who I had to pay or anything, and no one seemed to want to take my money.

Ok, so it's not the last Friday night ever (wouldn't that suck), it's just my last Friday night standing around in an empty CD store updating LJ and listening to the Super Furry Animals. Been a busy week though - with the store down the road closing and all. We've been doing about twice the business we normally do, except today which has been kinda... normal.

Recorded a nice song for tariqa. You can read about it at her LJ. You know what kind of sibilance problems you can have when you're recording a three part harmony beginning with the word 'sometimes', and the first sentence also contains the words 'just' and 'someone'? Lots, that's what kind.


WEEKLY TOP TEN!!!

1. James Dean Bradfield - The Great Western
2. Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
3. Thom Yorke - The Eraser
4. I Love You But I Have Chosen Darkness - Fear Is On Our Side
5. Decemberists - Picaresque
6. Dimmer - There My Dear
7. Lily Allen - Alright, Still
8. Nouvelle Vague - Bande A Part
9. Black Seeds - Into the Dojo
10. Ryan Adams - Love Is Hell

That fourth band is NOT an emo band, by the way, despite their name and album cover (an upside down cross inside a heart - how fuckin' lame-o can you get?) Instead, think if you crossed the latest Dimmer album with Interpol and the Secret Machines. Something like that.

Arrested Development Season 2 arrived in stock today! About fucking time! Roadshow have been so slack the past few months. I bought our store copy before it even made it to the 'to be loaded onto the system' pile.

I went on an epic bike ride yesterday to the North Shore. Epic, cause you can't just go across the Harbour Bridge on a bike, you have to go via Waitakere. Here's an approximate map of my journey.




So yeah. One epic bike ride, one new job, two tired legs and forty kilometres of hilly volcanoes.

So I get this message asking if I'm still interested at the job at IAG, and I suppose yeah, I am. Talked to Sophie (at work) about the ordeal of going through recruitment agencies, and she's had the same thing. I mean, you think five recruitment agencies in five months could find me a job, but no. Anyway... I call them this morning, and it turns out the HR person who interviewed me has left the company, so they have to interview me again. FARK!!!!

And it's meant to be an employees' market. Bah. Yous should see the number of retards who come along to the testing mornings at recruitment places.

Did you know... that PCs and Macintoshes have nothing to do with satellites? Or that the Middle East is owned by China, and has been for the past 400 years? Nor did I, till Daft Punk Girl told everyone on the bus I was on last night. I've mentioned her before - she was the batshiat crazy one who came in a few weekends in a row to listen to Daft Punk. For an hour at a time. Dang.

I just served one of the guys from Staind. Bought the Lostprophets album. As Mark said, that makes him even more 'gay' than he is already from being in Staind. Jebus, the post I was writing before that I lost was more interesting than this one. Dang.

I think I'm cursed to never see Deja Voodoo live. For perhaps the third of fourth time I've planned to see them, something's happened to prevent it occuring. I had an invite to the album release thingee this time too. Dang. The new album Back In Brown was supposed to turn up today, but hasn't, so it mightn't be out on Monday as quickly as some might hope... advance word is that it's better played and better produced than Brown Sabbath, which oddly enough isn't inspiring. Deja Voodoo are meant to suck, not kick ass. Dang.

So I'm still trying to decide what to do with myself, career-wise. There's a job opening at head office I think would be good (ie pay better than here). The powers that be want applicants (from the stores) to submit reviews they've written for the store as part of the application process, which is a good omen. I say so, cause since we lost our professional review writer guy, any old random staff members have been able to submit reviews for other stores to display, and on the whole, they've been pretty shocking. Proverbial sixth-form poetry puts a lot of it to shame, really. I'd offer to proofread reviews before they're sent out to the chain, but there's a 95% chance someone will get offended and complain (seriously). The guy whose decision it will probably be was in here earlier, and was keen for me to submit a letter of interest... I asked him if he wanted it in email or letter form, he hesitated, then replied, 'you can submit it ANY form you wish.' I suggested perhaps in a pie, and he enthusiastically encouraged this idea. Being a pretty big guy, I think he now expects me to bake him a pie; and I'm afraid if I don't, I won't be considered for the job. Dang.

Otherwise, I want to do the Nat. Diploma of journalism sometime soon. I was thinking of starting in the second semester next year in Htown, but they've moved it to the start of the year, which only leaves six months or so - I was hoping to get a proper paying job and pay off some things, etc etc before committing myself to ten months or so of noodles, but we'll see. Dunno if we'll even move back to the 'Tron in that timeframe anyway. Dang.

TOP FIVE ALBUMS OF THE WEEK! 

1. Muse - Black Holes And Revelations
2. Lily Allen - Alright, Still
3. Grandaddy - Just Like the Fambly Cat
4. The Decemberists - Picaresque
5. Thom Yorke - The Eraser

I've just been looking through seek.co.nz for a new job (yes, while at work - but that and me taking hour long lunch breaks are what my employer deserves at the moment), and came across some positions at MTV New Zealand. MTV NZ!!! It's back, finally. It would seem.

Just ran into my old mate Nate. He's going to the US with his girlfriend, i mean wife (that still seems weird) to live. I always planned when younger to go to England to live at some point, but it's looking less and less likely. Not to mention its less and less a thing I really care about.

I had this awesome dream the other night. It was short too, which is good, cause I suck at remembering dreams. So I'm on stage with an acoustic guitar, performing a gig with Rob, like the luna spark gig at the Circle Jerk. We see none other than Johnny Cash in the audience, near the back, and I say to Rob, 'hey, watch this.' I walk up to the mic, and impersonate the Man in Black himself, saying in a deep voice, 'Hi, I'm Johnny Cash.' I thought Johnny might get pissed off, but no. He cracked up laughing.

And that was that.