Monthly Archive for December, 2003

The Concert

Published
by
Mitch
on December 12, 2003
in Music
. 0 Comments

Well I posted the other day about going to see Powderfinger in concert. I went, I saw, I conquered enjoyed. What a terrific night, I was honestly enthralled. We arrived in Newcastle after a 4½ hour drive and quickly had a shower, then found a pub to have a few beers before the show. We sat down and had a New each and ate a really nice dinner and headed to the venue – The Newcastle Entertainment Centre.

We arrived at about 7:25pm and saw the last few minutes of The Tremors. These guys were pretty average, but good on them for getting up there and giving it a go at such a big concert. Their only saving grace was a pretty cute trumpet player / singer who was wearing a belt short skirt.

At 7:30pm The Tremors departed the stage and gave way to The John Butler Trio. These guys have long been a band that I have admired, they produce great music and are technically among the best musicians there are. Anything I knew about them before this night was nothing compared to what they showed me. They were just unbelievable. The only bad part about their 50 minute set, was the fact that John was hidden from me behind a lighting rack, which from a musicians point of view, really sucks a little bit not to be able to watch him strumming away on his 12-string guitar.

At about 8:30pm – 9:00pm (I can’t be certain, because I was simply having too much fun to care what the time was) Powderfinger came on stage. By this time if I had of been forced to leave, I still would have gotten my moneys worth – The John Butler Trio were just *that* good – but Powderfinger made the night even more memorable.

The last time I saw Powderfinger play live was at The Big Day Out in 2000 and I thought they were awesome. At this time they were a little unheard of and a lot of extremely rude people were jeering at them because they were anxious to see KoRn (”KoRn, KoRn, KoRn, KoRn, KoRn, KoRn”). This concert was not long after they released their first major CD, Double Allergic, which I owned and loved, so it upset me a little to see such a terrific band copping crap of assholes in the audience.

Since I saw them in 2000, Powderfinger have definitely worked a lot on their showmanship. They really rocked and even encouraged the people with seats to stand up and rock the place – in fact, by the end of the concert they had the entire audience on their feet, not a small feat. Hahaha, feet, feat… Synonym anyone? *shrug*

The two highlights of the nights would have to be the extended performances of “Betterman” by the John Butler Trio and “These Days” by Powderfinger. Both of these popular songs were extended with drum/guitar solos nd so forth, both equally impressive.

All in all, the entire night was 3½ spuds out of 4 and I would like to personally give it two thumbs up. If anyone in Australia is lucky enough to live close to one of their shows, I strongly recommend going along and having a listen – you won’t regret it.

      

Shakey Start

Published
by
Mitch
on December 8, 2003
in Personal Blog
. 2 Comments

Well the holidays officially started on the 1st of December and it’s already been a roller coaster ride. After two great nights with some Christmas partying, I have just received one of the worst Christmas Presents I could ever ask for. Just this morning I got a phone call informing me that one of my really good mates had passed away. It really hurts and my face is still wet with tears, but I will try and re-cap the two Christmas parties and give a little story about my friend.

Christmas Party
Every signle year, my family has a “Tree Trimming Party”. Pretty funny considering our tree is fake and doesn’t require “trimming”. Well this year was topped with the fact that my best mate, Jeremy, was going to be home for it. It was terrific to see him, because since he joined the Army I have only seen him a handful of times.

Basically the part starts out with a wonderful meal from my mum - dude, she is like a gourmet chef, this meal is just so awesome! Then after the meal and quite a few beers, we all decorate the Christmas tree. It’s a great bit of fun.

After the tree trimming party, Jeremy and I went off to the Macquarie Inn - a local haunt from when Jeremy and I were in our later years of high school - and had a few more drinks and a few games of pool. This was a great deal of fun, we reminisced over times gone.

Well we all went out and my memory is a bit shabby from this point on, but I do remember giving a slightly hard time to the cab driver, it went something like this…

* Taxi driver hauls on the breaks and nearly crams 4 parked cars *

Me: Jesus mate, settle down! I wanna get there alive you know.

* Jeremy appologises for me, but also laugh *

Me: Christ buddy, you tryin’ to kill me?!

Taxi Driver: That’ll be $9 and 25 cents.

Me: Righto, here’s 10 bucks, keep the 75 cents for getting us here alive… HAHAHA!

Yeah, so basically I was a bit of an ass, but in my opinion Taxi Drivers expect it. If you sign up to be a part of the public transport system, you should expect assholes like me.

For Eags
Justin was a great mate to myself and everybody else who knew him. I have lost count of how many great times and good laughs we had together, but I can safely say that he was a terrific mate. Justin and I had backed each other up in dozens of silly fights - yes, we’re just typical bloody males - and bought each other more beers than I could count. I once spent a week of the Christmas holidays with Justin and his family and I know that they will miss him.

To Justins family and all his other friends - especially Bill, Yeti, Big Doug, Little Doug, Patto, Parame, Aidan, Ryan, Bernie, Robin, Sam, and Jess, I know I have forgotten people and I am very sorry, I am just a little upset right now - I send my best wishes. When I found out this morning what had happened, it took the heart out of me. I truly can say that Eags was a terrific mate and he shall be missed by all.

I hope that no one thinks it is innapropriate for me to write this here, but I just really wanted to get a lot of it off my chest. Just contact me if anyone has a problem.

Let the holidays begin!

Published
by
Mitch
on December 7, 2003
in Personal Blog
. Closed

Check this out, it is such a cool idea I think.

View my own Mr Picasso Head, right here.

My second attempt!

The Empty Game

Published
by
Mitch
on December 4, 2003
in Insignificant Crap
. 0 Comments

Everyone has played The Empty Game before. It’s that game you play when you are a little short on cash and you don’t want to fork out for fuel. When the needle is finally pointing to the red “E” you start telling yourself, ‘hey man, she’s got at least another 10 kilometers in her’. The problem is that 10 kilometers passes by and you find yourself saying, ‘maybe another ten?’ And so the game is named The Empty Game.

The reason I bring this up is because so many things in life go back to the rules of The Empty Game, seriously. I don’t think anyone has ever considered this before me, which means I either have too much time on my hands or I am smarter than the average bear. Personally I wish it was because I am smart, but I know better. I am going to show you a few things in life that closely relate to The Empty Game.

When will he call - Girls play this game after *every* single date they go on. They don’t really mind who calls who, but if they are going to be the one doing the call, they play the game. They wait as long as possible without calling their date. After about 16 hours, they really want to call their date, they want to find out if they were a good kisser or if their hair smelled pretty, all that stuff, but they are too scared to call him. So they don’t and as it becomes closer to 48 hours, they get anxious again, but by this time they are just certain he’ll call any minute and before they know it; it is 4 days after the date and the only reason they call is out of desperation and fear of rejection. Of course once they call, they realize how silly they’ve been and that the only reason he hasn’t called is because out of nerves they wrote their phone number down wrong.

When will he be home - Parents play this game when the kids go over to the park and they are told to be back by 4:00pm. The parents are fine until about 4:10pm and they start pacing around and getting a bit of a temper. They start yelling, “He better be home soon or I’ll kick that kids ass.” Now this game is played on two levels, let me explain both.

Level One: There is a certain time that parents will wait before going to pick their kids up and abusing them in front of their friends. This time usually starts at 10 minutes and works it’s way close to an hour before they actually go through with it. Then there is hell to pay.

Level Two: Deep down inside, I think parents want to be just about at the point of leaving, or, at the very least, half way to the car. This allows for maximum stress release onto the child and allows the parent to really go haywire and vent all their work related frustrations.

If you really sit down and think about it, The Empty Game applies to so many situations in life. For married women; they sometimes play the “When is he gonna tell me he loves me, it’s been 4 days” game, this is closest related to the Level Two of the When will he be home game, because they want it to be a long time before it happens so they can really blow up. I’m certain that there is nothing more disappointing for an old married woman then being 5 minutes from blowing her head off at her husband and he says, “Honey… I love you! Nice pancakes!”

bancing darefoot

Published
by
Mitch
on December 3, 2003
in Geek
. 0 Comments

As you may well know, I am a huge Wil Wheaton fan. Not only do I admire his work on Star Trek: The Next Generation, his best-selling book Dancing Barefoot, but I also admire him as a person and I enjoy his weblog as much as anything else I can think of. Well a long time ago I ordered a copy of his book, Dancing Barefoot, from Amazon dot com and I also promised a review of the book.

Well I have been slack and although I have written most of the review, I have not published it on my site yet. So here it is, along with some *terrific news* regarding Wil Wheaton’s book(s) and career; Wil Wheaton has just signed a publishing deal with O’Reilly and Associates. For anyone who is even the slightest of geeks you should know that O’Reilly is responsible a lot of the computer related books available to you and I. This is a huge opportunity for Wil* and I hope the books are as exciting as Dancing Barefoot.

And here is the book review:
I just put down Dancing Barefoot. Simply put, it was terrific. If you are a fan of Wil’s Weblog, WWdN, then you will love this book. It’s only 117 pages from cover to cover, but it is definitely worth getting.

Dancing Barefoot is a child of Wil’s project Just a Geek which he is still writing. In writing Just a Geek, Wil had to cut out 5 of the stories and rather than tossing them out completely he released them in a separate book, Dancing Barefoot.

This book is a collection of 5 short stories - 4 very short and one not so short - that are adaptations of Wil’s Weblog. The stories all originated from Wil’s Weblog, but have been elaborated on to create a full story for each. This has given readers of the Weblog, an “offline version” to put on the shelf.

I really want to talk about the stories a lot more, but I think it would be cruel to take away anyone’s chance to read it for themselves. I give the weblog 4 spuds out of 4. Enjoy!

      

* For those of you who read WWdN you should understand that this hasn’t come easily for Wil and just because he “used to be on TNG” doesn’t mean that this deal was just handed to him.

Haircut and a clean up for the straight guy

Published
by
Mitch
on December 2, 2003
in Personal Blog
. 2 Comments

Okay, not only is my hair in a shambles, but so is my bedroom, and I have a *severe* mono-brow problem! I live with my parents and I study at University, so I don’t have a great deal of motivation to tidy up that often. So I am going to put to work all the episodes of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy I have watched lately - under protest! That’s right, I am going to have a shower, get a haircut, tidy my room and get rid of my mono-brow. So for this task it will require a before and after shot of all these things.

Here is my bedroom:

      

Here is my shocking hair:

Here is my mono-brow:

Now all you have to do is check back for part two of “Haircut and a clean up for the straight guy.” Stay tuned!

Mitch’s Gullibility

Published
by
Mitch
on December 1, 2003
in Personal Blog
. 1 Comment

I have made a few posts recently regarding the laptop that I bought via Ebay. Well basically, it would turn out that I have been well and truly ripped off by the guy. The only problem is, that, even though I met the guy on Ebay it was not a proper Ebay auction that I bought it from. Here is a little story about what happened…

* scooby doo dreamy effect as we change into the past *

It started out when I decided that I needed to get a laptop unless my Uni work was going to suffer. I had bee spending a lot of time away from home which basically mean that when I got home I had to spend hours and hours in front of my computer studying my royal ass off to catch up. So I thought the best way to avoid doing this every day is to have my work with me wherever I am.

I found this laptop on ebay that was exactly what I wanted. It was a “Buy It Now!” auction and the price was within my budget. I thought hell yeah, I’m getting this. I went to the bank to get everything in order, but when I returned it had been sold.

I was devastated and I contacted the guy to see if he would be listing the same or similar item any time soon. He said that he had the same items in stock and to put $blah-blah-blah into his PayPal account. This is where the no-brainer comes in. Rather than waiting for the protection of Ebay, I went right ahead and put the cash into his PayPal account.

Now I know that every single person who reads this is now yelling at their monitor and screaming “YOU ARE A MORON MITCH!”. Well yes I am. And right now, consdiering I am $2000 down, I am kicking myself, hard! I don’t think I have ever felt so gutted by my own stupidity. How foolish could I have been to trust someone I had never met.

Update: Okay, so I am currently in contact with the guy trying to work shit out. I am so furious though because he is trying his hardest to weasel out. God damn I’m angry. I’ll post any updates to the situation here.