beneath the underdog

been reading Charles Mingus‘ “autobiography” and man was he one weird cat…

good read though

there goes the neighbourhood

so we have been in Germany a week and are starting to settle in, i could get very used to the food and lifestyle here…

check out my other blog for updates on our travels around (there’s alink on the side there) and i will still make sporadic entries here as i feel the urge.

the tupperware cupboard effect

so the house has been packed up and shoehorned into a storage shed.

with a combination of strategic placement, dumb brute force and scant regard for health and safety concerns it is truly amazing how much crap you can fit into a relatively small space.

the most disturbing thing i have to begrudgingly admit was the realisation that by far most of the crap is mine and not J’s. i know i’m something of a pack rat but it kind of gives you pause for thought when you notice that some of the book boxes are labelled not just as ‘books’ but by specific author and when you pick up the seventh box in a row labeled ‘CDs’ …

oh, and many thanks to the invaluable assistance of Kami (who was gracious enough to not make too much fun of my truck driving ability)

how to almost cripple yourself

ingredients:

take one mofo heavy bastard wardrobe with a broken stand on one corner so it pitches to one side when you remove the half a brick that keeps it upright

take one damn fool who doesn’t listen to his wife’s warnings and decides in some brainless macho showoff dickhead moment to move said wardrobe out of the house while she is interstate (without asking for help from anybody else when he knows full well it took two burly blokes a lot of heaving effort to bring the friggin’ thing into the house originally)

mix liberally. hilarity ensues (for anyone watching).

me i’ve ended up with bruises, abrasions, a nasty twitch/spasm in my shoulder and a very sore arm/back, just in time for moving day tomorrow… 

when sub-cultures collide

overheard in the corridor at uni, one preppy looking girl screwing up her face and saying disdainfully to another: “Her! she’s one of those emus” (pronounced as e-mooz).

which apart from making me laugh and think that an emu (as in the bird) was a pretty good, albeit unintentional, metaphor for an emo also reminded me of when I was in high school (1980’s) and it was rockers vs skins. in my school that basically came down to wether you wore black jeans, black socks and black sneakers (rocker) or blue jeans, red socks and white sneakers (skin) and not much more beyond that (certainly not the racism and violence usually associated).

being the complete dork that I was I of course didn’t fit in with the ‘cool’ group of kids who all thought of themselves as rockers (which in hindsight is hilarious as they all had band names like Australian Crawl and Dire Straits written all over their schoolbags).

i also wasn’t academic enough to be one of the squares either so ended up on the fringes largely for 3 main reasons:

1) my mother volunteered at both the school library AND the kiosk

2) I had a HUGE crush on the Malaysian exchange teacher who taught the ESL kids

3) I liked bands like Dead Kennedys and Motorhead

it was hard going at the time but looking back I figure fuck peer pressure who wants to be sheep anyway (which is much easier to say and think at 36 than when you’re 14). and besides I still think I had better taste in music than the rest of ‘em

my expanding fan base

yeah more half-assed self congratulatory blogging about myself, what the fuck else are these things for anyway 

so i can’t sleep and for want of anything better to do i googled myself (as you do…) and came across a page for some 16 year old emo/goth living in melbourne who as part of her profile has listed:

“Favourite poet or writer: i have a few: E.A Poe, Michael Hier and Fido hehe”

and so i move one step closer to becoming a household name….

Party Party Party and packing packing packing

well, the time is really ticking along now – a farewell party has been held. Andy made most excellent snacks. And heaps of people turned up. I drank too many Gin Mint Julips (I was trying to reinvent the Kentucky derby in my kitchen), kami got so drunk he fell asleep on the couch and left some time between 8 30 and 11 am the next day. And one individual (not Kami) didn’t leave until the very end when really they should have gone a lot earlier. Its not appropriate to be 36 years of age and still have your mother  some one chaperoning you. Thanks to Sol and Liz for coming all the way from Melbourne – married life is clearly treating you well. And Watson has a girlfriend who is finally worthy of the title. Ahh all is well in the world. So well that I am blogging from work… he he he.

JLSD