I just bought a freakin’ cross trainer. Lol, wut?

Yeah, I know.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

Here... loads, I tell thee...

I rearranged the lounge, so now I can look out the window as I while away my days in front of the computer. Stupid WINZ didn't care about how many jobs I've applied for, they just kept going on about me missing the stupid meeting they never told me I had to go to. Then they put too much money into my account this week, but fuck 'em, I'm keeping it as payment for the hours I have to go in each week till they get me a trolley job at Pak'n'Save.

I keep seeing errors in the SKY TV programming guide, and can't work out why I've been turned down for that job like six times. I've applied for everything even remotely related to anything, and can't even get an interview. Nor can my friend Ange, which is surprising considering how brilliant she is at...  stuff...

tariqa had her exam this morning, so wish her retrospective luck and stuff.

I listened to Easy Tiger for the first time in ages last night, and it was better than I remember. I listened to some of the leaked Chinese Democracy this morning, and damn, it's not like old school G'n'R but it's still pretty damn impressive. Why doesn't he just release it already?

Our car just reached 200,000km, and we're celebrating by getting it serviced.

I bought a tent off trademe yesterday. I was going to try it out on the front lawn today, but instead the lawn is covered in building materials, as it seems we are getting a fence, which means we'll have a front lawn we can sit on without the street seeing. I'm not entirely convinced this means I'll actually spend time outdoors, but it might help to that end.

Why did I buy a tent? Camp, of course. It seems like it was ontly a few weeks ago we found out we were playing, and now it's only a couple of weeks till we head down. We're determined to have some new songs in the set by then, so I can only assume we're going to be practising to hell in the next fortnight. We had our first practise outside of Kent's old basement last week, in some guy's skody place where he's got a room for band practises set up. Cheap as chips, but I'm definitely bringing my own bottle of water next time.

I've been playing a bit of Sims 2 on the laptop, as difficult as it is. I thought real life was hard, but no... My characters get into this loop where they end up dying - they can't sleep because they're hungry, but they can't eat because they fall asleep before they get to the fridge. I tried to solve this problem by installing a grill in the bedroom, but it caused so many fires and contributed to the death count more than anything. In the end, the house was so full of ghosts and everyone just stood around pissing themselves over and over I had to restart.

In my current family, I started with a couple who quickly gave birth ("woo-hoo" was the first thing they did in the new house) to a boy, then a set of twins. I've had two nannies on the job, one of which continually takes one of the babies out of the high chair, puts him on the floor, picks him up and puts him back in the high chair, over and over. There's another death loop though - the mother puts the baby in the high chair to feed him, but notices he's tired, so takes him out. Then she notices he's hungry, so puts him back in the high chair... and over and over. None of the babies have died yet, I saved the last one when the mother fell asleep after taking him out and putting him on the floor - I got the baby to crawl away...

So otherwise I've been enjoying my new computer (2ghz duo core, 2g RAM, 450g HD) in all its things-happen-when-press-the-button awesomeness. One flaw I've noticed is its graphics card is some kind of Intel onboard thing, but the RAM seems to handle it fine anyway - Civ 4 plays fine, which is all I really ask for, hehe. For some bizarre reason however Age Of Empires 2 has glowing, nuclear grass, which visually is atrocious and makes the game near unplayable. I hardly ever played it anyway, so no worries.

Music software-wise, I had some hassle getting all the bits and pieces in place and working, as is to be expected when you're not only shifting old versions from one computer to another, but one operating system to another that insists on triple-checking everything. In the end, my Waves L2 VST plugin was rendered unusable, but somehow the later, flashier L3 popped up just fine, albeit in the Direct X set rather than VST, but ah well. At least it's there! And another essential tool in my mastering chain only works in 44 second pieces, but mastering's last in the process, so that's okay.

And working with FL Studio/Audition is such a breeze, everything works quickly and smoothly, especially now I've installed the ASIO audio drivers. One quirk is that I can't run two or more instances of FL Studio at once - if I do, only one has sound - I assume this either has something to do with the development status of the ASIO driver (only just has secured Vista functionality) or the particular way the soundcard on this computer is set up. No biggie anyway.

I've been working on a few demos though, trying to write upbeat, catchy things... here are a couple I've bashed out in otherwise empty afternoons: Name Deficient - Anti-Human Nous. Of course, they're extremely rough sketches and barely even songs, though I surprised my self at the Arctic Monkeys-ness of the second of those two, at least in some of the guitar. And I like the bassline in the former, probably more KittyHawk-ready.

What else? Oh yeah. Applying for jobs. Over and over.

Oasis and Jamiroquai are considering following in Radiohead's footsteps, and offering their new material for whatever you wish to pay. And so it begins... the traditional music industry just might be screwed for real this time. Hehe.

We're hard at work putting together the last issue of Te Waha Nui for the year. So glad I don't have to go to shorthand class in the mornings... though I wish the bus drivers would decide once and for all how much it costs to bus from here to town and back. I seem to get charged a different amount every time.

And when I say I wish they'd decide, I wish they'd decide to stop charging altogether, of course.

Today I tried out the video function on my new iPod, and watched Alan Partridge's Knowing Me Knowing You while on the bus. Awesome. It really is the future, except the bus was on the ground, running on fossil fuels, and it still costs a fortune.

I've composed a massive rant against ticket scalpers for the Te Waha Nui blog Citybeat, but it hasn't been posted yet. I'll keep you, er, posted.

EDIT: PS. I'm not sure why, but our dead 40gb iPod on Trademe is going for nearly ten times our still kinda working 30gb one, at least at the moment. Weird.

I'm such a nerd. But hey, it could have been worse. I originally adapted the entire sketch, only to be told to remove 2200 characters. Luckily I have my sub-editing hat on for the next week or so.

My new iPod is the shizzle. And my new Koss headphones fit snug when they're hanging around my neck. Which is totally the best way to listen to music...

I did start writing something on the topic of MacGyver, then realised it was the kind of "blog" entry I'm being asked to produce in my New Media blogging class at uni. I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. My planned first-week-back Uni entry on people scalping Muse tickets has kinda been scuttled by Ticket Direct and the Trusts Stadium making such a royal screw up of things that people are pretty much justified in selling tix on TradeMe, at least for now.

How royally? Well... lets just say at the ultra-super-fan presale, held a few days before the C4 presale, they only had seated tickets available, but the website was kinda messed up and led people to believe they were purchasing GA/"go anywhere" tix. Of course, they didn't announce the mistake, and people who received their tickets by courier early quickly noticed they were seated only, and began selling them on TradeMe. In my research into ways to stop scalping, I spotted this trend, and we soon enquired about the two tickets Tariqa and I had purchased - it turns out they were of the seated variety, which we didn't mean to purchase. Who the hell wants to sit down to watch the best fucking live band in the world? It's not exactly Ryan Adams, now is it?

Ticket Direct said to call the stadium, blaming them. The stadium were ambiguous on whose fault it was, saying something about the wrong floor plan being supplied, etc etc. The first few times they promised to call me back about it went unfulfilled, I even went a little crazy at one girl who said she couldn't find out why our original (incorrect) tickets hadn't turned up because she didn't have access to a computer... Eventually they called back and said the couriers hadn't found Tariqa's workplace, despite the fact they had the address ALL the couriers who pick up and drop off magazines EVERY FUCKING DAY go to...

Apparently we're getting new tickets sent out, ones that allow us to stand. WOOO! Standing. Will they arrive? Who knows. There's a small chance we might be meeting the band after the gig (relative of a friend on road crew, ie a TINY chance) and although the last thing they'd want to hear is how useless their management's selection of ticketing agency is... okay, I'm sure I'll have better things to talk about... I fucking hope...

I have other things noted on my hand to write about, but have to write a review of the new New Pornographers album. I'll Be Back.

It's almost been too long since the fact to talk about the Ryan Adams concert hasn't it? Ah well. I've written a massive long review which I'll link to once I know what I'm doing with it (probably using Graham Reid's advice and cutting it in half somehow).

Uni is still hella busy. Hence the lack of posts...

My iPod died on the weekend. It's had a good two-and-a-half-year run, but now whenever I turn it on, it has a sad face. I can't make it happy again. Went to buy an 80gb video iPod cause I can't live without one anymore... but even offering to pay a deposit, the finance company declined me! Grrrr. I've never missed payments on an HP or anything ever. Sucks. Now I have to wait a few weeks and save up. But then we're considering moving, so if we do I'll have to wait a bit longer...

But moving if it happens will be to a cheaper place, which is good. With a lawn too, so the cats won't have to journey across the roof of the building to get into the great outdoors, as they currently do.

If you haven't watched the video I linked to the other day (previous entry), I highly recommend you do.

Got another story in the Waikato Times - this one about a high school surfing championship. Mmhmm. This Thursday they're publishing my Brunettes review, and also a review of Scud Of Freedom, my latest recording... which is appearing next to Chuganaut again, as it did in Nexus (a few posts back).

I've got another metric assload of CDs and magazines for sale - loads of guitar/music mags, some computer ones, Top Gear, Listener/Time/New Statesmans, etc etc.

More on the way later in the week. The ones that say "buyer must pick up" I'll make an exception for friends if there aren't too many (postage costs will be included then of course).

Sweet.

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!

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.

I'm at work on perhaps the deadest Friday ever, surfing through trademe, and I found something ridiculous - there have been 28 bids upon this particular item, which is now up to $52... it's a Roger Waters DVD, of which we have nine copies in stock, selling at $15. I think I have an idea...

Sophie (the cat) was playing with the cords hanging down from the blinds in the lounge this morning, and got herself a little tangled. At first it was amusing, but then someone outside started up a ride-on lawnmower, and she freaked out. Trying to unsuccessfully run away, she only made things worse by jumping in the air, only to be dragged back in a semi-circular kind of arc. Eventually she lost it completely, and became this ball of fury wrapped in a tornado, pulled the entire blinds structure off the wall, knocked everything off the coffee table and scampered away. In a way, it was hilarious. Dang lawnmower.

I want my new stereo. Damnit.