I did it to secure the name before someone else nabbed it.

That’s all.

It’s purely a redirect to the website I run here. Just so if anyone thinks to type it in, they’ll find us.

I guess I should put at least one pic up there. Not of me, but of something appropriate.

And maybe a bit about (censored) . But that’s all. No more.

Actually… it looks a bit weak with one pic. Maybe I should just upload a couple more.

OK, 10 is enough I think.

Good.

Hmmm.

Maybe I should just add my freind. He’ll laugh.

Come to think of it, I better add those guys too. They might be put out if I don’t.

Hehe, it’d be funny if they saw a pic of them selves in my gallery. Lemme see… I must have one somewhere on my hard disk. Aha! Now to just upload it…. yeah! Cool.

Gee there must be a way to change this background from the default. Must be some help somewhere… or maybe a forum. Hmmm.

( looks at the time)

Oh Jesus! What tha???

What the hell am I doing?

Is this how it begins?

Is this how people fall prey to it???

How they become hapless victims of it’s qualitive vortex???

Say it isn’t true!

Say I haven’t….

Oh god…

I feel so dirty….

Say I don’t now have a MySpace presence!!!

NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tags: general by admin
12 Comments »

 It might not be immediately apparent from reading newtrix, but I actually enjoy having a chat in real life ( sometimes a bit too much… but I digress! ). I guess that tendency toward narrative and story telling transfers easily to blog space, but it’s something I also do offline. I don’t do it in a Grandpa Simpson sort of way, where I self indulgently ramble on, inflicting some tedious anecdote upon a hapless victim, but I certainly do it among friends and people who seem to enjoy it. It’s a two way thing for me - if it’s obvious to me that the person listening has no interest or is not entertained in some way by what I’m saying, I’d rather not do it. I stop.  Maybe when I get nearer to Abe Simpson’s age that will change…

I also enjoy hearing other people stories - how they got where they are, traveler’s tales, or people who have done anything truly extraordinary or clever. I don’t necessarily have to be amazed, or “blown away” to enjoy what they are telling me. The most important thing is that I relate to it on some level, but more importantly, that I seem like more than just some strapped in passenger to the conversation. If there is one thing I have become increasingly intolerant of recent years ( oh christ… I wish there was just ONE thing LOL ) it’s people who seem to have no comprehension of feedback.

You know what the serial offenders are like - the guy who stands behind you in the bank queue and launches into some annoying diatribe. He clicks his tongue, and no-one notices… so he strikes up a conversation with…… nobody. “Banks, eh?”, and he pauses and looks around to see who might have noticed. “You’d think they’d put more people on at lunchtime, wouldn’t ya?”. Your fatal mistake is making eye contact - and in an instant you’re his bestest friend. You try and ignore him, even keep your attention focused away from him - but he doesn’t shut up. He moves on to bank fees, then interest rates, then the cost of houses, then he starts on politicians, and the cliches fly like a swarm of crapping pigeons. “Why won’t he shut up?” you ask yourself, “why does he think I care?” you ponder, momentarily before imagining removing your left shoe and slapping him in the forehead with the heel.

I came across a guy at a party last year, he’s a very good friend of a friend. Initially conversation was jovial, and centered around downhill mountain biking, but after a short time the hostess appeared and asked if we’d met, and we both nodded and said yes. Then the hostess said “I bet you guys had plenty to talk about being in the same line of work and all”, which was funny, because at that stage it simply hadn’t come up. For the next few minutes we scanned each other to determine how much overlap there was, and found plenty, and before long, the usual sizing up began. At this point I tend to become quiet. I stop, and I listen carefully, and I try to figure out if a) they might be more accomplished than me and I might learn something from them, or b), they are blow hards trying to fool everyone else. After 10 minutes, I determined my new friend belonged squarely in the latter category, after he tripped up on some fairly basic technical details. But that didn’t stop him… when the conversation shifted to surfing later on, he re-appeared… and soon revealed himself as an expert in that field as well…

Well, fist me quietly if this guy doesn’t turn up at the evil empire one day. They wheel him in, and there’s that mutual moment of recognition when he’s introduced to me. But does he recognise me? No! Do I mention the evening I endured his faux knowledge for nigh on half an hour, knowledge he is now using to secure work with my keepers? No. Do I keep that fact to myself? Absolutely.

Sometimes I like to talk, but there’s a lot to be said for listening to someone who knows next to nothing. It might come in handy one day.

Knowledge is power.

Tags: general by admin
9 Comments »

How’s everyone enjoying Blogger’s forced migration to the *new improved* Blogger?  I like the way some regular commenters now display as Anonymous ( with no link to their profile ), and the way the stupid login breaks when I try and post a
 comment on someone  else’s blog and I’m not logged in.

Better still, here’s my attempt at contacting the individuals who rigourously  tested everything before forcing us to ”upgrade”, to report my issues.

See the ”Your account is not able to post at this time” down the bottom?

Ha… that’ll teach me! Certainly explains why nothing get’s fixed! Idiots…


 

Tags: general by admin
11 Comments »

Taken from GBoy’s beach, 9:17pm, 24 Jan 2007 

Tags: general by admin
8 Comments »

 It’s funny… she thought I hadn’t noticed her… that like most of the other people walking past I was in my own little world. But 100 paces earlier I spotted her… you tended to spot girls like her from some distance away. Most guys do. She had neatly trimmed medium length honey blonde hair that curled gently under at the ends, a carefully trained tan, and an outline that men’s minds automatically tend to photoshop clothing from and save to disk. Sure, I saw her. I just pretended I hadn’t.

20 paces away I felt her eyes lock onto me, but I continued at my steady gate, refusing to acknowledge her. She singled me out. She saw the gap… and lurched foward into it.

“Can I ask you a question?”

I looked up, and got a good look at her face close up. Yep, she was cute allright. Some guys might say hot, but I have been set upon by the best of them - and consider myself a fair judge of quality - and she was obviously not at the top of her game. But I pondered her question. What could she possibly want to ask me? Did I think her arse looked big in those figure hugging black slacks? How do you spell Zinbarbway? Are grain tariffs relevant in the free market? Do I think zero point effect adequately explains the formation of singularities within the thermal lattice? Did I believe Toulouse-Lautrec’s contribution to post- impressionism overshadows the work of less conspicuous and possibly more talented artists such as
Henri Rousseau? What?

My attention was drawn to the lanyard around her neck - a crude attempt at legitimising the useless dross she was peddling. She no doubt assumed I was examining her hood ornaments, and that may have been true… at least in part… but not entirely. Her french pedicured fingers held a small handful of pamphlets in their crab-like grasp - and I saw the telltale checkered blue pattern of a home security company printed on one of them. She was prepared to lunge into her sales spiel. She maintained eye contact, she smiled, she purred. She knew guys like me love that stuff. We can’t say no. I held up my flattened hand to her face.

“No”.

( and that was Time wastin’ Tuesday! )

Tags: general by admin
4 Comments »

• Good sized Mullet were jumping out of the water this morning, which would be great news if I was out in a 16ft tinny or fishing off the beach. But alone at in murky water at 6:30am, floating above a reef 150m offshore waiting for a wave, it was kinda nerve wracking. Large fish often jump to avoid even larger predators…

• This Australia Day holiday caper has really messed me up. Not only does it mean I have to work on Time Wastin’ Tuesday, it also means I have Friday off with the long weekend holidaying hordes. I like my quiet weekdays - all the stores are quiet and my beach is peacful and uncrowded. What’s the point of a 5 day break if I have to spend more than half of it dodging crowds? Grrrr…
  

• What happens to “casual Friday” this week? Does it shift to Thursday instead, or do we dress as per normal? I dunno what’s worse… turning up in office attire when everyone else is wearing jeans and tee-shirts, or arriving at a meeting in a tank top when everyone else is in suits… eep…

• Yesterday gave me pause to reflect on the lyrics to I love a sunburnt country. We are in the midst of a drought, yet half of South Australia is underwater. To make matters worse, 99.99% of that water is utterly useless…
  

• I’ve been trying to track down a toon by mid nineties New York band Nancy Boy on Bit torrent, but can’t find it anywhere. Johnny chrome and silver was an uber cool song - despite the rest of the album being very mediochre indeed. I also never knew that the band’s two founding members were sons of two 1960’s ledgends - Jason Nesmith ( son of Michael Nesmith from The Monkeys ), and Donovan Leitch ( son of Mr Mellow Yellow himself, Donovan ). The search continues…

• Why does my right shoulder seem to want to blow up every year in January? Thank jebus for Voltaren is all I can say! 

Tags: general by admin
13 Comments »

A - ABC, Adam Ant, Air, Alice in Chains, Alpinestars, Altered Images, Ammonia, Art of Noise, Arrested Development, Atomic Swing, Audioslave, The Avalanches

B - Beck, Butterfingers, B52’s, Bergerac, The Buggles, Blur, The (English) Beat, Blondie, Bad Manners, Bad Religion, Pat Benetar, Bloc Party, The Bravery, Bis, Bowie, Frank Black, Big Audio Dynamite, Blancmange, Berlin, Beastie Boys, James Brown, Butthole Surfers, The Bee Gee’s, The Breeders, Bloodhound Gang, Jeff Buckley (some), Gnarls Barkley, Julie Brown, MC Paul Barman, Bertie Blackman, Basement Jaxx, Belly, Graham Bonnet

C - Cabaret Voltaire, Cake, Camille, Captain Sensible, The Carpenters, The Cars, Johnny Cash, Celibate Rifles, The Chemical Brothers, Nene Cherry, The Chills, Citizen King, The Clash, Classix Nouveaux, Coldplay, Concrete Blonde, Alice Cooper, Cody ChesnuTT, Elvis Costello, The Cult, The Cure, Cut Copy, Claire Bowditch

D - The Doves, Devo, Datarock, The Damned, Ian Dury, The Dugites, The Dukes of Stratosphere, The Dresden Dolls, Dead Kennedys, Deadstar, The Decemberists, The Dandy Warhols, The Dears, Depeche Mode, Death Cab For Cutie, Donovan, The Donnas, The Darling Buds, Disposable Heroes of hiphopracy, Thomas Dolby

E - Elastica, Editors, Electronic, Elbow, The Eurythmics, ELO, Ed Kuepper, Electric Six

F - Franz Ferdinand, Faker, The Futureheads, Falco, Fischer Z, The Fall, Foo Fighters (some), A Flock of Seagulls, The Fixx, The Falling Joys, Fatboy Slim, Michael Frante, Fiction Factory

G - Gus Gus, Gorillaz, Goldfrapp, Grand National, Green Day (early), The Go-Go’s, Peter Gabriel (some), Golden Earring, Grandmaster Flash, Garbage, Generation X, Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes, Gary Numan, The Great Temptation

H - Heaven 17, Hilltop Hoods, Hole, Bill Haley & His Comets, The Human League, The Headless Chickens, Hot Chocolate, Isaac Hayes, Henry Rollins, Haircut 100, The Hold Steady, The Hives, The Howling Bells

I - Icehouse, Billy Idol, Interpol, Imperial Teen, Iggy, INXS (pre 1985)

J - The Jeevas, Jack Johnson, The Jam, Jane’s Addiction, Joy Division, Joe Boxers, James

K - Kings of Leon, King Trigger, KC and the sunshine band, Kylie (some), The Killers, KISS (some), The Kinks, The Kaiser Chiefs

L - Ladytron, Lloyd Cole & the commotions, Loverboy, Leona Ness, Landscape, Lene Lovich, The Laughing Clowns, L7, Lemonheads

M - Madness, Mint Royale, M, Machine Translations, Maximo Park, Machinations,  The Mountain Goats, Mr. Floppy, Mclusky, The Magnetic Fields, Moby, Massive Attack, Muse (some), The Models (early), Bob Marley, Madonna (some), Morrissey, Midnight Oil (early), Modern English, Men Without Hats, Marcy Playground, Mercury Rev, Machine Gun Fellatio

N - The New Pornographers, New Young Pony Club, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, N.E.R.D, NIN (some), New Order, Nick Cave and the bad seeds, Nash the Slash

O - OMD, Oasis, OK Go, Old man River

P - The Pixies, Peaches, The Police, Liz Phair, Pink Floyd, Placebo, Polyphonic Spree, PIL, Primus (some), Painters and Dockers, PULP, The Presets, Phoenix, Psychedelic Furs, The Primatives, Pollyanna, The Pursuit of Happiness, The Pretenders, Porno for Pyros, Pearl Jam, Robert Palmer, The Presidents of the United States of America

Q - Queen, Queens of the Stoneage

R - The Ramones, The Rakes, Stan Ridgeway, Redd Kross, The Ruts, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Rolling Stones, Roxy Music, Rebeccas’s Empire, Regurgitator, Romeo Void, Lou Reed

S - Severed Heads, Spoon, Space, The Specials, Sterolab, The SEEN, Suicidal Tendencies, Regina Spektor, Single Gun Theory, The Screaming Blue Messiahs, Strange Tennants, Soft Cell, The Selector, Shooteez Groove, Soul Coughing, The Stranglers, The Stone Roses, Spandau Ballet, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Siouxsie and the Banshees, SPK, Stone Temple Pilots, Simple Minds ( pre 1985 ), The Smiths, The Strokes, The Scissor Sisters, Snow Patrol, Split Enz, The Sneaker Pimps, Simon & Garfunkel, The Squirrel Nut Zippers, Shriekback, The Sex Pistols, Skunkhour, Nancy Sinatra, Snakefinger, Boz Scaggs, The Spazzys, Sisters of Mercy, Shakespear’s Sister, Spearhead

T - The The, The Cops (Aus), TISM, Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, The Teardrop Explodes, Peter Tosh, TZU, The Three D’s, Tenacious D, Tears for Fears, 311, Tool, Thompson Twins, Tubeway Army, They Might Be Giants, Tripping Daisy

U - Ultravox, The Undertones, Underground Lovers

V - Visage, The Vines, Violent Femmes, The Von Bondies, Voice of the beehive

W - Wall of Voodoo, Ween, WAH!, Weezer, The Wonder Stuff, World Party, The White Stripes, Waikiki

X - X, XTC

Y - Yazoo, Yellow, You am I

Z - Zazzie, Frank Zappa

Tags: about GB, general by admin
12 Comments »

How many times have you struck up some sort of dialogue with someone you’ve never seen or met… only heard?

Many, many times over the years I have come to know people, and all sorts of things about them, through relationships developed purely over the phone. Sometimes they’re suppliers, sometimes customers, sometimes a person in a media agency or specific organisation you deal with regularly. The first few times you converse it’s all business, and any nicities are typically non-comittal and impersonal. “Soooo, is it still raining in Sydney?”, “Yeah, I heard you guys have been flat out”, or “OK, enjoy your weekend!”. But over time, little bits of the person you are speaking to fall into place - and more about their life outside work is slowly fed into conversations. If you find common ground, you’ll often drift off enthusing about some passion you share - golf, fishing, horse riding, opera… before you both remember it was supposed to be a business call!

Througout the development of such relationships, and as you get more of a feel for what the person on the other end of the line is really like, one thing remains constant - their voice. Subconciously, it is without doubt the very first thing that attracts you to them… and they to you. How many times have you spoken to someone for the first time, and had this vision in your mind of how hot they must have looked based on their voice? We can’t help making all sort of assumptions about the person based on how they sound. Our imaginations run wild. She’s blonde, has a devilish smile and is into fitness: he’s tall, dark and mysterious… yet playful.

Blogging turns this on it’s head.

With the exception of people brave enough to post actual pictures of themselves on their blogs, our opinion of how a blogger might look is based entirely on what they write about themselves. It’s not only based on what they write though - it’s also how they write. Have a read of some of the dross on MySpace - even disregaring a 90% Emo liklihood, and the fact they have used a picture of either Homer Simpson, Angelina Jolie or Jessica Alba as their avatar, you can still get a pretty fair idea of the sort of look the “Spacer” might posess. You certainly know it’s unlikley they will be between the ages of 16 and 50…

But even if you have an impression of how the blogger looks, or a picture of them to study, you can only guess at how they sound when they speak. It’s an experience all too familliar to practisers of all but lost art of pen pal freindship. You might reasonably predict an accent to their english speaking voice - especially if they come from a country where English is not the mother tongue. Even where English is a common language you can make educated guesses - a Glaswegian… a Californian… a Christchurchian. But what of the less predictable, and perhaps less desireable attributes or idiosyncrocies? How could you predict, for example, a lisp? The distictive and unfortunate sound of a cleft palate? What about a voice damaged by illness, or abuse of some sort?

These are of course the downside to what one might discover when they hear a bloggers voice for the first time - there’s every likelihood that instead we find something unexpected, revealing… captivating. The utter surprise at that moment of discovery can be elating, and is sure to permenantly colour the individual’s writing thereafter. It will subtley change the way you imagine that person to be in real life.

So what do I sound like? You could probably guess… not too broad an Australian accent, very little ocker, neither quietly nor loudly spoken, fairly laid back I guess. I generally speak in a fairly low, clear tone - but have an extra loud setting I can switch to to get above noise or if I’m addressing a crowd. I occasionally have a tendency to (over) pronounce the “t” in words ending in it, and also often lampoon accents in conversation ( and, it seems, have a bit of a repuatation for it ).

But what about you? What do you sound like? What little idiosynchrosies about your voice might someone never guess had they not heard it? What have other people noted about your voice? What do you like, or really dislike about your voice?

I’d love to hear! 

Tags: general by admin
14 Comments »

Well, I guess I really spent my Monday in the true TWT spirit, barring work around 11am and disappearing off to clock up some hours in the surf. This morning it quickly became apparent that the surf god had taken the day off, and I reluctantly toyed with some minor tasks that might almost pass as work. I said almost. Around this time the technology started to rebel again - first my printer, then the FAX machine, then my websites began to slow down again, and then finally, my ISP suddenly saw fit to throttle my 8Mb connection back to 238bps. The call to helpdesk was a waste of time, the queue was so long the automated message couldn’t even tell me you are two thousand, three hundred and forty first in the queue. The e-mail to support was also a waste of time, as evidenced by the 7 hours that have since passed with no reply.

Around 1pm I tried my best to process an order through our store, but after about 10 attempts at getting the invoicing page to load I decided that too was a waste of time. I got up, walked out the back door and felt the heat rising off the brickwork. I walked back inside, snorted at my half loaded page, changed from my work boardshorts to my beach lounging boardshorts, grabbed a towel and a bottle of water, and got the hell outta there.

And that was TWT. How was yours?

 

Tags: general by admin
6 Comments »

** warning… sensitive content! **

A few years ago, I lodged for a few days in the loft of backpacker friend turned Neurosurgeon Jurg’s 450 year old residence, located in a village 30km outside a large, industrial city in Northern Germany. At some early stage I noticed a funny sign on the toilet door, and I assumed it was just some whacky German toilet humour. During one of the many opportunities during my stay to empty my bladder of Jever, the local white beer, I emerged from the smallest room of the house to find a slightly bemused Jurg standing by the door. It can only be presumed that Jurg had made an assessment of my standing position behind the closed door, based purely on the louder than usual sound of my bodily purging. “You take the piss standing?” he asked, in a deadpan, Teutonic fashion as the sound of gushing water echoed down the hallway.

“Sure” I said, zipping myself up.

“Oh”. He replied, in that “oh, really?”, raised eyebrow sort of way your mum might have done when you came home late for dinner from the neighbour’s house.

He then went on to describe the cautionary tale of a friend who had a radiator they kept in the bathroom, and how the splashes of poorly focused urine over several years had caused it to rust to pieces.

“So”, he concluded, “the women…. they have… ummm….”, and he tilted his head in that European way and raised his eyebrows once more, and added, “chopped of our pricks”.

He waited for me to respond. I didn’t.

“So”, he said most affirmatively, “we sit down”.

I paused for a moment.

“You sit down?” I queried.

“Yes”, Jurg nodded.

“Because you have lost the ability to aim?”

Jurg looked annoyed.

“It’s a skill you have surrendered, my friend”, and I placed one hand on his shoulder and shook my head.

Now Jurg looked really annoyed. Deciding that I might suddenly find myself and my rucksack deposited at the nearby airport in the middle of a Northern European winter at 11pm, I quickly retracted my right arm and switched to a conciliatory tone.

“I’m joking“.

Of course, I wasn’t joking…. I meant it. Nonetheless, as a guest in his home and for the remainder of my stay, I grudgingly adopted “the ladies position”.

As the years passed, I’d all but forgotten about it - until last night, when amid conversation with friends over a few Cerveza’s, Daniel slipped in something unexpected. Don’t ask me exactly how talk turned toward the toilet, I couldn’t possibly explain, but turn it did nonetheless. Mercifully, the turn was brief, and very quietly executed. Basically, he said “apart from those of us who sit back to front”. This instantly got my attention… and then his friend Tim, whom I don’t particularly well, looked toward his wife then back at Daniel, flashed him knowing smile and they both laughed.

It suddenly occurred to me that they were alluding to were orders that had perhaps been given to them by the Lady of their respective houses, to perform their number onsies not only seated on the toilet, but also facing back to front. Having heard one reasonable case for the “man sit down wee” I was almost prepared to concede, but this was just too much.

I started to wonder what was happening to the once proud, strong willed male of our species. Is this how it begins…. the henpecking… the submission… and eventual resentment many married couples fall prey to? That before long once upright weeing men, turn to miserable, pot bellied, squat piddling shadows of their former selves? Is this a recent development… or has a groundswell of upright weeing disapproval been quietly building in my utter ignorance, possibly for years? Is the time honoured pleasure of creating swirling patterns of liquid gold now a paradise lost, reserved only for back lanes and pub carparks at the end of a particularly messy buck’s night? Is it possible I have fallen out of step with world’s best weewee practice, and if so, how could I have let this happen?

I hope this isn’t the thin edge of the wedge, and that one day I will be forced to queue outside a small bathroom with 40 other men, waiting for our chance to access one of the three available cubicles - once evil, impure, dangerous urinals have been outlawed.

Men may well look back, and wonder how they surrendered to the sitdownista so easily, and feel the deep displeasure of the wet, warm, seat.

And dissent will set in, and before long, revolution will come.

And when it does, the streets will surely run yellow…

Tags: general by admin
7 Comments »