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Twisted Hamster is bigger, better, faster and prettier. It also comes with a free Diet Coke.

The URL is:http://twistedhamster.net




*Now, how do we export posts from Tripod?*

Commercial Radio Sucks
Today in the car I was listening to some commercial radio and I heard announcer say the following sentence:

'Now for some more variety on 94.5 with John Mellencamp!'

This has to be the most illogical sentence in the English language. How long has it been since John 'Cougar' Mellencamp made a radio record? About 15 years. Yet he is still played *every day* - more than the Beatles and the Stones combined, I reckon. So, given that commercial radio in WA is intent on ramming JCM down our f**king ears, how is that MORE VARIETY?

HOW?!!

Also went and saw the Volcanics today (Barry works with the bass player). They were ultra-tight, but I didn't find them particularly interesting.

Yyyaaay!! The new site is up!!

It is: http://twistedhamster.net

It works with or without the www. It's not so flash now because I have *heaps* of work to do customising Wordpress, but it's the cgi that counts. Once I've got a decent 'about' page, and a place to put the Twisted Hamster logo, it will be time to kiss tripod goodbye :)


Today we played a couple of shows - one at Murdoch Rockingham and one at Murdoch South Street. The Rockingham show was really bad because Tomas's computer was spitting out garbage from its new sound card (fifty bucks - you get what you pay for), but luckily nobody showed up. The actual South Street show was OK,if a litle out-of-practice. My guitar was out of tune for the encore (Christian's House) but managed to make a joke of it by tweaking the tuners and making it sound progressively worse.

Uberfaust, by the way, who were on first, were f**king wonderful. A kind of satire of German industrial rock with really pathetic humour. "You are not dancing. You are all cowards!!" Most of the songs were in German, but the incredibly limited vocabulary meant you could understand just about everything. They also made 'lost his hosen' rhyme with 'panties are exploding' which gets you everywhere with me.

See them.

See them with me & Tom on the 17th at Mojo's. Free entry for people who arrived late tonight :P

Yesterday we had a bunch of indigenous types come in and start making hassle just as we were closing. They went over to the spirits section and were eyeing stuff off, then one of them found his way into the cool room and tried to stall me in there. Another one tried to start a fight with David because he was watching them so intently. Luckily no one was hurt, but we think they took a couple of bottles of bourbon.

Scary stuff, but you gotta admire the skill involved - creating diversions, nicking the bottles without making a noise, then passing them and hiding them, all while playing the race card as if we were the dodgy ones.

OK, no more depressing work-based stuff for while. When I get paid, I'll post up my bank statement :) Oh, and THIS THURSDAY AT MURDOCH UNI - COME SEE MY BAND. We're on at 6-ish 7-ish.

Scroll down. You do not want to read this.

Thanks to Lisa (Among the Narcissi) for this one.

Aren't dollar stores just the shizz-nit?
I once bought my girlfriend a scarf from the two-dollar shop. She said it was the best one ever. Which just goes to show that you can't trust girls. What was the question?

What three words best describe you?
Make Me Pie.

What would a Ph.D. do fo-r your care-r?
Start it, hopefully.

If a book were being written about your life, what would the chapter you are currently in be called?
Extricating the head from between door and door jamb.

Bob Dylan said everyone must get stoned - but why?
Simple: we are all infidels.

Don't you hate that?
Not as much as I hate that.

How can they possibly expect you to go to work on a day like today?
Actually, work has a cool room. Think about it.

If you could change the color of your eyes, your hair, or your skin at will - what would you alter your appearance to?
I would have eyes with irises made out of tv static. That would so freak people out.

Pick a movie or a book or a television series that you know fairly well - now, what character would you like to see their point of view from? (eg, Harry Potter from Draco's perspective, or Snow White as strictly told by Sneezy, etc)
I wanna hear Hamlet from the perspective of the Skull of Yorick. Probably a bit shorter and more sensible.

What song do you currently have in your head?
REM's Let Me In. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyaaaaa letmein yeahyeah

What have you learned today?
Shit always happens. It's how you deal with it that matters.

I love the sound of a Pepsi can opening. Also, certain sirens are cool. What sounds do you find appealing?
That sound fluttery-hummy sound you get from an old fridge. I like that.

If you could visit 83 years in the past, or 83 years in the future, (for one week, with no time paradoxes resulting) which would you choose and why?
It's gotta be the future. If I went back to the past, I'd just try to lecture people. At least in the future they'll have some neat shoes. And hover-cars.

and finally...

Invent a new word right now....please?
Grundine: that shade of browny yellow that everyone hates. For eg. "she took off her grundine jumper and puked on it."

First Friday at the bottle-o.
You'd be surprised how many people will come in and buy a beer, then crack it open and drink it as they drive away. I don't know how many statues this violates, but it's gotta be a few.

And then there's the mother, who doesn't speak much English, ordering drinks for her kids sitting in the back of the station wagon. She asks me for a 'goon bag', obviously not knowing what one is, and I show her the cheapest Fruity Lexia we have. In the end, she settles on three packs of mixers and comes in to pay by card, but (sadder still) her card is declined and she can only pay for two packs - her kids have bled her dry of her last fifteen bucks to get drunk on cheap fizz. What a life.

These are highlights of course, but the festival of vice never ends down at the bottle-o, and there are a few things I can't even tell you about. Not even *you*!

Meanwhile, I gotta gather my wits with a good eight hours of sleep. Oh, and I have Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday night off, so someone ask me out lest the drunks become my only friends.

today I bit my own nose.

The thing I hate about cooking is that it's not eating. I hate being stereotyped as this white Aussie male who thinks that cuisine begins and ends with frozen fish and chips, but it's *so bloody accurate*. Honestly, I eat because I'm hungry and the rest of the food experience is lost on me. Home made soup? Buy it in can.

I do, however, like to eat healthy, and I also care deeply about a few special foods. Here are the foods I care about:

Cheescake
Water

That's about it.

When I'm cooking, I get bored. My time could be better spent screwing around while my fish and chips warms up in the oven. In the future we will pursue efficiency and get our cooking done by third-world immigrants who will be happy just to be a part of this great, big, tasty country we call Australia.

Ew, visitors. Better clean up around here...

Hey!! Mark is first to Blog the WA Weblogger meetup!! Seeing as how it only finished an hour ago, you might wonder what kind of fanatic I am.*

We had about five people show up - no Ferals, nicely. I won't say much, except for I have a lot of reading to do and here are the relevant URLs:

notthewest.blogspot.com
barkingowl.com/middle~path
www.richardgiles.net/blog

BTW: We know there are heaps more WA bloggers, so make sure you sign up for the next meet.


OK. Now the business crap is over, let me tell you 'bout my day. Today was my day for my seminar presentation, which basically meant 45 minutes of reading a paper to academics and postgrad students from MU and UWA, then a discussion. Normally I don't mind this kind of attention (hello!!) but I was really nervous this time and I was doing all those stupid nervous things that I hate other people doing, like muddling my words and fidgeting in my chair, and losing my last page in a pile of already read pages.

But the whole thing came off OK in the end. Someone even sat in the staff kitchen listening to me through the wall when he found himself locked out. Beleive that. As paranoid as I am, it was a successful first step toward becoming a boring intellectual twat. Now, where's my leather jacket?


*See future entry 'Having No Life is a Way of Life' for further discussion.

Yesterday I gotta job at the bottle shop at the beach. I just went in there for an interview, but they gave me the job right then and there - sweet, seeing as I have no experience in these things. The idea is that all the navy officers and contractors come off the island at 3 or 4 pm and want booze, so they park outside and you run out fill the order while they're waiting in their cars. Like a petrol station for beer.

Bonuses of the impending mega-cashflow-experience:

1. I will be able to purchase more booze at cheaper prices.
2. Still Got Butterflies will be moving to a new and infinitely more awesome domain, with a complete web redesign and a *new name* which I am greedily keeping under wraps.
3. A car maybe? A better chance at moving to a state where I can do my PhD?

AND I have an induction with Skilled on Friday, so maybe I can even get a *better* job in a few weeks :D

GET RID OF MEANING
YOUR MIND IS A NIGHTMARE THAT HAS BEEN EATING YOU
NOW EAT YOUR MIND


-Kathy Acker, 'Empire of the Senseless'