does it really matter anyway?

first, this blog is dedicated to mark collins. he doesn't have to read these but read's half and gives up.
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okay, today i'm grumpy.

so i wanna change what i'm doing at JMC from the hard stuff to the easy stuff. i was told over the phone "yeah, just come and fill in the forms". i went in there on thursday keen to fill out some forms and be on my way.

the people were then like "yeah, we're not sure if you can do that" and got some woman who's the manager of the place to come out and talk to me about it. they ended up giving me the forms and taking my phone number and saying they'd call me back.

today they finally rang me back. they said "well, we've got new gear that you haven't used and we don't want to put you through without using that gear". at first you might think "yeah, sounds fair enough", when when you realise that in 3rd year you don't actually touch any of the gear and i've already got my advanced diploma saying "yes you passed 2nd year so now you can do 3rd year" it's really crap. now i have to go in on friday to have an interview with them all. i'm going to take my advanced diploma with me, and also point out that some students would have gone though without using the new gear too.
oh yeah, they want me to take 'private tuition' to have time using the new gear. i think they just want more of my money.

why does this have to be so much trouble! i can do sound stuff, just give me a smegging degree already!

and whats this rubbish about Thomas The Tank Engine i've been hearing?

turns out in america (their attention spans SUCK) they had to add this bit on the end of each show where these people live in a jukebox and play songs! i've bee trying to find a clip of this abomination all afternoon.

to all those people who i owe cd's/dvd's to, i'll mail them out asap.

i bought tickets to see this at the Sydney Film Festival today:

i'm amazingly excited, though i think they gave me bad seats.

i've finally got some work this week. tomorrow and thursday. i'm VERY happy about that. bad thing? my rego is due, which means: rego, car inspection and 3rd party insurance. all this while i'm meant to be saving for a holiday! i can't win!

get another job people would say, but i'm trying to hold off until i get this JMC stuff sorted out. also, if you can think of good ideas for a job that pays ok and after 6 months if i quit it's not big deal? i don't care how boring it is anymore, i just need a job.

in summary, i'm not having a good day, and welcome to my blog for anyone that read this for the first time. it' not very interesting i know.



massive edit:
ok, thanks to info from Mike, i've tracked down the american version of Thomas The Tank Engine.
be prepared and make sure you're sitting down, cause you're about to see some of the worst television ever made, and you'll be screaming for the original british version again.


and here's a clip with those guys in the jukebox i heard about:


way to ruin my childhood memories America. this time you've gone too far.

we're gonna take this city by storm

so i'm starting to get a bit worried about out nations police powers.

ever since 9/11 (argh, it should be 11/9, you know it) there have been news laws bought in for counter terrorism forces to arrest anyone they want because they're a suspected terrorist, even when there is no evidence for it.

now, they've just bought in new laws to stop people protesting.

Crackdown On Nasty Summit Protesters

basically they allow the police to arrest you if they think you're "suspicious". that could mean you're standing in the city during APEC holding a sign saying 'Bush Go Home' and be arrested with no bail.

did you know that everywhere Bush goes, there's gonna be a helicopter with signal jamming devices in it following him everywhere?
what that means is that if you're on your mobile phone and Bush is nearby, so long phone call. oh, that also means no more 000 if you need it either. i have a suspicion they'll simply use it over the city over the protesters, but hey, we'll see.

in other news, David Hicks is back in town (finally). nice t see him back, but he should have been back to serve his sentence after being charged 5 yrs ago. pity neither thing happened. "Honour Bound to Defend Freedom" huh . way to be hypocritical.

oh yeah, i'm also pretty keen for this:
Rudd Stand on Whaling is Piracy says Turnbull

enough of this crap, what did you do on the weekend owen?

funny you should ask.

saturday i didn't do much, i washed my car and bummed around a bit, but that night i saw Sick Of It All at Manning Bar in the city. it was a brilliant show, totally wort the money.
after that it was off to watch Chelsea beat Manchester United in probably the most boring F.A. Cup final i've ever seen. argh.
it was still fun cheering for own goals and that the umpires would win.

sunday was AFL day. my day consisted of:
wake up
drive to esther's house
pick up her pass
meet megan at SCG
watch footy
go to after match
see esther for 1/2 hour
go to church
go to YAM
type blog entry

the swans played pretty well in the beginning, holding off port adelaide for awhile and getting a nice early start which set them up for the win.
megan was laughing for most of the match because she is a fremantle supporter so she just laughed at all the dumb things players did.

had a nice walk home from the SCG with esther's dad. it was a bit weird (he can be a bit of a formidable guy sometimes) at first but it was alright in the end.

poor esther. not only did she miss seeing the swans win to lose a soccer game 3-1, but she's getting a throat infection when she has 3 assignments due this week and a singing concert to perform at. you'd think that just not doing the singing concert would be a good idea, but thanks to her nanna coming all the way up from narrandera to see her perform she's in a bit of a weird position.
the thing that sucks for me is that i'd LOVE to help her out in some way, but i'm not magic (though she probably wishes i was) and can't make throat infections or assignments go away. kind of makes me feel helpless. argh.

oh yeah, my uni work.
so i've tried looking around to see who can help me with electrostatics and maths, but EVERYONE is busy. Hugh can help me out with electrostatics, but only on saturday morning. thats a whole week or not doing much at all. BORING. also, hows that for suck: me sitting around with nothing much to do while esther is sitting under a pile of work with a throat infection. if i was her i'd be pretty angry/annoyed with me right now.

i get to call JMC tomorrow to see whats happening with my course.
basically i'm going to change from what i'm doing, but i need to see if i can jump straight into second semester in july and do first semester in march (meaning i'd be finished in 13 months time) or if i have to wait till march to start (finish in 18 months time).

if i need to wait, i'll need to find a job in the meantime. anyone offering me one?

actually, i'll need one on weekdays anyway because this course i'm changing to is on every friday from 9am-4pm and some thursday nights.

i'm getting tired now and my train of thought is quickly being derailed, so i'll leave you with this:
http://www.postsecret.blogspot.com
bookmark it, read it every sunday afternoon, make yourself feel normal. it works for me.

a moment has left the building

ok, so i decided to head on over to 'http://www.hometownthrowdown.com' for old times sake just to see if the website was still chugging along and whether the forum had been devoured by spam and bots yet.

there was nothing

it seems the hosting and domain name have expired and it's gone.

it got me thinking about all the shows we put on and all the people who enjoyed the shows. i think its been a year and a 1/2 since the last show, but people still ask whether another one is going to happen anytime soon.

i hopped on google to see what it had to say, and it turns out that when you type in 'hometown throwdown' it comes up the link to hometownthrowdown.com as the number one result.

when we started putting the shows on, John and I called them Hometown Throwdown's as a reference to The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, who we both love and were still around and touring like crazy. all the search engines used to be full of the Bosstones when you typed those words in to search engines, but since then both the Bosstones, and us have moved on, and now our humble site is there at number one.

it's a pity the shows don't happen anymore. i used to love seeing all these people turn up and have a great time listening to bands, hanging out, skating on the ramps and just having a good old time without alcohol or drugs involved in any way.

most people who we'd try and tell about the shows (people from school for example) weren't interested and didn't want to go, but the ones that did come along had a great time.

it was so much hard work though, and when less than 300 people turned up i was disappointed, but when we managed to pull 500 people it made it very worth it.

since starting to put on the shows, i've learnt many things. audio production, event management, advertising, lighting and staging setups, OH&S laws/risk management etc

hopefully i can find a way to use these skills i've acquired over the years to do something else worthwhile. not only use them to get paid and support myself, but to do something socially practical and ethical, and above all have a whole bunch of fun.

to all of you that like to ask:
-will Hometown Throwdown's ever come back? who knows.
-will i be doing something sometime in the future? yep. just you wait and see.
-will it be anytime soon? maybe not, but when it does happen it'll be brilliant.

fun fun fun

ahh, what a great night

tonight i went to church and played some sweet tunes. i decided to go to the band practice so that i could practice playing guitar along with other people and have songs to play to. i ended up playing during the service and had HEAPS of fun. it was great! that was the first time i'd played in front of more than 1 person before, so while i stuffed up heaps, i still had lots of fun. i was turned down pretty quiet anyway :p

after that i went to gloria jeans with people from church and had tasty overpriced hot chocolate. after scooping the froth off i only had 3/4 of my drink left, so i'm debating wether to bother buying drinks from there again, just cause i really can't afford things like that. i probably still will though as i can't resist chocolate.

back it then was to the west's house to watch the Formula 1, play some poker and then watch Sheffield United vs Wigan. Raikkonen went out early in the race unfortunatly (some engine problem). Lewis Hamilton came 2nd, which means he's coming first in the championship! quite an acheivement for the rookie of the pack.
the football was very exciting. basically it was a playoff to see who would get relegated down to the lower division and who would stay in the premier leauge. both teams just happened to play each other in the deciding round, which mean both teams really wanted to win. it was brilliant as both teams pushed hard. a few players were knocked out (the united goalie punched and headbutted a wigan player while attempting to punch the ball out and also heskey went down and swallowed his tounge after someone looked at him funny) the final score? United 1 - Wigan 2. poor United got relegated.

Ben Mostyn asked me to go to his bucks party on saturday, which sounds like brilliant fun (go-karts at marrickville) but it's like $35 and i really don't have $35. i'm also seeing Sick Of It All on saturday night with little Ben (not engaged Ben) which is gonna be amazingly awesome as i really like that band and Ben hasn't been to a concert like that before.
oh, also F.A. Cup is on (as it is every year the saturday i'm busy) so who knows where i'll be watching that (either esther's house, church, my house or alex's house). it's Chelsea vs Man U so i'm gonna boo both teams just as hard as each other. for once i'm hoping a show will finish before 11:30pm so i can drive home quick to watch the match at midnight.

well, now it's off to bed because i have another exciting day tomorrow (not)

an explanation...

today i've been trying so flipping hard to work out what on earth these text books are telling me!

i've got this maths module to do for uni and i can't work it out.

so far it's been on quadratics, which i didn't understand at first, but mananged to scrape through that bit. now it's moved on to differentiation.

i don't understand it. i just simply don't get it.

i failed this subject last year at this point because i didn't get it then either, and i'm getting so frustrated at it all that when i even look at the smegging textbook or workbook it just looks like scribbles on a page.

i try and read stuff, but i just don't understand what it's trying to tell me. the worst part is it's not like i can just skip on over to the next bit, because you need to know the beginning of that bit to do it

i don't know what to do. maths just isn't my thing....

it all feels so darn hopeless!

i just wanna pass and be happy that i can do it and move on, but no, it's stuck in my face like a big fat loser sign. just sitting there staring at me while it's picking its nose and scratching its bum. going apsolutely nowhere and getting increasingly more annoying as the days tick by.

i missed out on handing in last weeks assignment (only 2%) but thats not what i'm worried about. what i'm worried about is that i need to know the stuff that was in the assignment so i can do the next assignment, which is due tomorrow. if i don't know how to do that then i don't know how to do the next assignment. if i don't know how to do all them, then i don't know how to do most of my exam at the end of semester.

then what?

big fat stinking loser of the century.

uni fees wasted. time wasted. all of it wasted.

ARGH

shut up maths

i just wrote a song called 'Shut Up Maths'. add gang vocals where appropriate. enjoy:

shut up maths,
shut up maths,
shut up maths i hope you die. (x2)

derivatives can go jump in the lake
along with functions too,
go jump in the lake now all of you
i don't know what to do

shut up maths,
shut up maths,
shut up maths i hope you die. (x2)

why do i have to do all this
why is it all so hard?
i just wanna record sweet bands
and sit on my behind

shut up maths,
shut up maths,
shut up maths i hope you die. (x2)

*solo*

shut up maths,
shut up maths,
shut up maths i hope you die. (x2)

cleaning

ok, so tonight i decided to clean up my room a bit

why?

cause maths sucks and i'd rather clean my room than do maths.

anyway..
so i found a place for that CD rack i've been meaning to put up (ontop of one of my speakers), put it together and put all the CD's and DVD's that have been floating around my room in it. it didn't make much difference to the state of my room.

i decided to throw out all the spare pieces of paper and stuff. usually this is the killer, i'll put it all in the recycling and my room will be tidy. that STILL didn't make much difference.

thats when i worked out what is killing my room. UNI WORK.

i have three piles of uni books. i have another pile dedicated to letters the uni send me. i have a pile of important papers i need to keep somewhere for tax and banking. i have a huge plastic tub thing that my parents bought me (meaning well of course) so that i could put stuff in it, but under my bed is full and it won't fit.

after moving things around a bit, i discovered i made a BIGGER mess. great.

i can't wait till i can move out. that way i can fit all my crap somewhere. i have a small room as it is, and when you're trying to fit uni work, billions of CD's and some audio gear in my room amongst my bed, cupboard, drawers, desk and stereo, there is NO room.

don't get me wrong though, i'm not complaining that i have lots of things, cause lets face it, i'm pretty lucky to have all the awesome things i have, i just need space for them all to squeeze somewhere.

oh, if you read this and know some friends who are in a band and want a recording, i'm pretty strapped for cash, so please pass my details on. i want to work, i really do.

thanks to having a very sore back, i've been going to the physio, and it's been slowly getting better. the physio has been stretching my neck and back muscles about every few days, and while it's painful, oh boy do i feel good afterwards. i've got one more session on wednesday morning, and hopefully that'll be the last.

if you like music doco's, be sure to watch "Some Kind Of Monster" on SBS at 10:10pm this saturday night for a doco about the making of the latest Metallica album. i'm not a fan of their music, but it's a behind the scenes look at the band, the recording process and the interpersonal relationships in the band. should be good

also, check out this doco called 'American Hardcore', which is about the origins of hardcore music. it's pretty good and part 1 can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0LHomP0SNE
the other parts are linked to on that page.

thats about it. nothing too interesting.