| FML? FMT. |
[Jul. 17th, 2009|02:51 am] |
Fuck my town.
I've been involved in two assaults in Melbourne now in the past ten years, neither of them my idea. (...)
If they'd happened five or so years later than they did, I could be dead, or worse, and that's just how it goes, right?
~ ~ ~
I stopped for a moment there because I was about to type 'fault', and, well, fault and blame and cause and effect are all interesting things to talk about aren't they. The first one, at Camberwell Station, a staffed, 'Premium' station, resulted in me filing a nice wordy police statement with the Plods, nothing. Anything on the station cameras? Dunno. Did he have any priors? Next please. More paperwork.
So this CUB is staggering around the platform, mouthing off, with a mate a few paces behind, his minder perhaps, his social conscience? Ready to hold him up if he falls towards the platform, or to hold off anyone this cretin might fire up seriously enough to overcome him. I interject verbally when he starts to get stuck in to two Gothy kids, who are, it seems, moments away from a couple of fast fives.
So, I pipe up, pick on someone your own size, and pick on someone else he certainly did. I recall the cops saying well you should have stood up before he came over and punched you in the face, well, stand up, that's body language for come on then ya cunt isn't it, not exactly the Adamsian I don't suppose you want to talk about it a little more first I'm looking for, but then again, no, he doesn't want to talk about it actually, he just wants some smart-arsed, four-eyed dickhead, who doesn't know when to shut up and mind his own business, to show who's boss, and well, shit, I'll do just fine.
After his first dusting of jabs, which send the glasses flying and damage my septum, I have the 'presence of mind' to grab the trouser around his knee and yank it up to throw him off guard, and eventually have him pinned on the platform just as a Flinders Street train accidentally, awkwardly rolls up. He's choking me, his mate's trying to drag me off, my blood's filling my nose and mouth, and I spray it all over his face, and that fucking stupid polo shirt. Hope you have a good night with the ladies now, you oaf. They run to the end of the platform, jump off, and clamber up to Burke Rd like the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. The goth kids shrug and step onto their train. I ask the driver to radio the cops, No radio the reply.
What is this shit.
What do you think this is, a prank?
~ ~ ~
Is this meltdown some kind of subconscious, semi-literate, systematic eradication and decimation of people who don't want to see their suburbs, and city, turn into something like a cross between Stone and Mad Max? Push me, push you. Oh yeah, says who? Says me, that's who. Who steps in when they're all shot, choked, or run over?
Who are the players in this? The media, the cops, the judiciary (currently deluged by a tide of nitwits and thugs through their chambers), the local councils, the state government, the federal government (whoops, bashed one too many Indian student, but it's okay, that expat says they have it coming), 'real' crims fuelling the whole shebang with e, ice, coke and speed, bikies helping them with their drops ... ? Pop that tinfoil hat on for a moment and ask yourself who is in bed with whom.
I watched 'The Signal' the other night. A signal, beamed into peoples' minds via TV, radio and mobile phone, gradually sends people insane, through varying degrees of psychosis, delusion and jealousy. Imagine a zombie flick where you can't instantly tell who's 'infected', whether or not they're about to kill you, whether or not you should kill them. It redefined a real mindfuck of a film and had eerie parallels to this sorry state of affairs. Is it Sherriff Root's 'martian niggers' doing this, like I first presumed? Whom the gods (must be crazy) (chariots of) would destroy, they first make mad. Or is it ... Kalle Lasn's consumerist dystopia, only with a Shaun of the Dead twist?
What are some anticipated outcomes for this predicament? More power to the cops, more toys, more tasers, more pepper spray, firearms, more fries with that? 'Tougher' laws, 24/7 blanket surveillance (didn't do much for that guy in the HJ now did it), (easily compromised) RFID drivers' licences or other 'mandatory' ID? Moar power to the police union? O HAI MULLET. 'Law-abiding' and 'peaceful' citizens begging to the State for more shackles, more punishments, longer sentences, more jails? A street 'arms race', with tonfa and homemade firearms making an appearance?
~ ~ ~
the next one, perhaps, when it's not nearly four in the morning.
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| Kottke, games, and family |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|01:38 am] |
Earlier this week Jason Kottke mentioned the addictiveness of Crush the Castle, a game hosted at Armor Games, a 'casual gaming' site. The title of the game is a misnomer, as the goal of the game is to kill all of each castle's inhabitants. After a few games I realised this theme was not dissimilar to that of The Onion's recent FPS parody, Close Range - 'Here's some people. Kill them. Now kill these people. Now these.' And I lost interest. I wouldn't play a game where you had to hit kittens with a hammer - flinging rocks at royals started to look the same. Flying shopping trolleys, on the other hand ...!
I wonder how palatable a game based on clearing slums or demolishing houses might be, either as a straight-out 'bad taste' exercise, or as a political act like MolleIndustria's Mcvideogame. PacMan with a bulldozer. Or Bomber Man. Once it was ready, of course, I'd want to let all my friends know about it.
After my mind drifted back, I noticed another game, also hosted at Armor, Morningstar. It's pretty polished for a point-and-click adventure, and if I had more time (and self-control) I wouldn't have referred to to the readily-available walkthrough. Having a fellow space adventurer, pinned to his seat by a metal beam in the crash, available on the radio for the occasional hint, was a nice touch.
It reminded me how I used to play old text adventures collaboratively with my sister, me on the keyboard (are you kidding me? I was older! and a boy!) and her riding shotgun, providing advice, reminding me where I'd taken a wrong turn -- first Mindshadow on the C64 and then The Hobbit on the XT/AT. (I ended up working for Melbourne House, albeit briefly.) I'll have to tell Fi about it.
I wonder if anyone will ever embarrasingly lament the clichés of alien interaction in videogames and fiction -- (start/stop the reactor!) -- or will they instead thank the authors for helping us overcome the alien menace?
Zzz.
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| cat abusers lynched |
[Feb. 16th, 2009|10:06 am] |
DV camera - $299 at best buy
balaclavas to hide identity - $9 at the local disposal store
getting lynched by the internet hate machine - priceless
there are some things money can't buy...
digg.com/pets_animals/Idiot_abuses_cat_on_YouTube |
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| uncle |
[Dec. 8th, 2008|10:08 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  cheerful | ] |
imma uncle.
Thomas Aubrey (still not 100% apparently on the middle name) SurnameTBA born 5.20am 7.12.2008 ... which makes him a Capricorn? Or a Sag? Or ... the sekrit thirteenth sign, Ophiuchus ... if you're into that kind of thing ... dan dan dannnn o/` o/`
According to the Wik, if he's a Sag he'll get on well with Aries and Leo ... like a house on fire? ;-)
Burnt the facebook account. Funny, because half of youse LJ frieeeends are in there as well. I just wanted out, that's all ... but still feel the need to share occasionally, obviously.
Alex |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 18th, 2008|09:09 pm] |
Not me
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24038715-661,00.html
I am buying a tatts ticket though.
Advice to other cyclists: Maintain your bike, know your limitations, know its limitations, bike bright, etc
Sad :(
Ambos said they went to three other accidents involving cyclists that day. Rego for bikes and licencing for riders imminent. All hands prepare to repel motorists! |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|10:19 pm] |
i am a bit sick
urti woo. so no work tomorrow. might go to the quack and see if i can get a referral for some new specs. i remember reading somewhere that was getting sick of one day weekends anyway. had training saturday. world's happiest call centre :D http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/544004.html
for the record . . . the organisation used to occupy part of the g floor for training, the 1st for bigp0nd, and the 5th and 9th floor for bigp0nd and other mobile related stuff at ### bourke st . . . but now they've lost the lease on the 1st and 5th floors, half the staff are off to sekrit base in sth melb - a former hutchison telecom location - and the rest have been shoehorned into the 9th. it's no wonder i'm crook, the place is overcrowded to the max. Anyway I'm going to start trying to write and talk like a real human now so bear with me. . . . when I arrived at this place, I was ferreting around beneath the desk and found a medical certificate from a former staff member . . . from seven years ago. Seven years and they hadn't cleaned the place thoroughly. blah blah words words. Is this thing on? |
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| alleycat melbourne february 22 scavenger hunt |
[Feb. 24th, 2008|01:17 pm] |
I promised I'd write about the Alleycat that took place on Friday night. It was a fuckin' blast. Alleycats ... I dunno - let's see what the intertubes say about them, and then I'll get into my version. Thanks, wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleycat_races -- Once again Canada brings something new and shiny into the world (^_^)
It started at the Public Bar ... wait, how did I find out about it? Word of mouth. I bumped into a friend earlier in the week at LaDiDa, (http://www.bar-secrets.com/BarNone/BarNoneMelbourne/LaDiDa.aspx best $1 coffees in Melbourne btw, if only they opened before 9! Suits my 10am shifts and it's just close enough to get there and back in a 10 minute smoko. But I digress) who informed me that there was a 'cat coming up on the Friday. My sphincter puckered and my mind raced, should I have a crack at it, what would it be like, etc etc. $10 entrance fee. Fine. It's a scavenger hunt. Also fine. Thanks for the tipoff Steve!
So I rock up to the Public after another boring day on the phones. There's quite a throng milling around outside, bikes everywhere, pretty, shiny, expensive, cheap, and at the end of the day there were 53 entrants, don't know how many finished. I decide to indulge in some pre-race melburn courage and neck a couple* of pints. Caught up with Steve and had a round each of pots as well, so I'm well lubricated by the time they call the start. The-Other-Steve also came good on his promise to pay for two conti gator tyres - cursed perhaps, they were off the 300 that I totaled in the prang - and handed me $50. A sign! An omen! I register too late for a spoke card, and they were quite shmick too. Poo. I want my consumer culture instant gratification and I want it yesterday! The organisers were waiting for the cover of dusk ... sneaky fuckers.
What really made it for me though, loitering at the pub, was deciding to have a yarn with the old codger at the bar. I guess I was hiding from the trendsetters outside but it was a good call in the end - heard some amazing stories about Guy's dad mustering sheep from near where the Kensington stockyards are/were over to Richmond/Abbotsford - down Melbourne's roads - in the 1940s. 'Fingers' lost most of the digits on his right hand when he was 17 and has a rather impressive 'craw!' left. On account of the noise inside the bar, and our relative states of inebriation, I was probably better off for not hearing what he was saying right at the end of our chat - but the grin on his face and the slightly disturbing hand action he was demonstrating informed me that his love-life obviously didn't suffer after the accident, and may have been improved by it ... *ahem*.
After an explanation of the rules and a brief lecture about noisy mass starts, 'last time the venue got blamed and they don't want a fine' or words to that effect, the first manifest pickup location was revealed - 200m away in the Vic Market carpark. The first set of items were related to takeaway food, in particular, a chinese takeaway menu, a fish-shaped soy sauce packet, and the discarded packaging from a meal. I'm still shaking out the cobwebs that the pots and pints wove in my brain and am almost ready to declare it all too hard.
Another omen! Another rider decides to chuck it in an hands me the items she's already collected - and that's the first leg taken care of. No fish sauce packet - but I rip a page out of the Monthly http://www.themonthly.com.au/ I'm carrying and cobble together a passable origami 'fish-shaped soy sauce container' and load it with a squirt of soy from a nearby restaurant. Done and done.
There's a stage I can't really remember - one piece of info required was 'what time does the last session of Rambo screen at Melb Central cinemas?' and I see something sad half-way up the escalators - a fairly beefy guy being pinned to the ground by security. There's a security guard at the bottom of the escalators, who tells me I can't go up - but he only blocks the up escalator so I zip up the down side instead. BICKETY BAM and then see why they were controlling access. If I'd seen the 'arrest' and known what he'd done, if anything, and felt he needed to be liberated, I could have bumped into the guard pinning him down. But just in case he's high on a Ben Cousins happy meal (no burger, no fries, just ice and coke - boom-tish!) I leave him burbling rapidly into the ground. "pleaseletmegopleaseletmegoididn'tdonothin'pleaseletmegopleaseletmego." Hmm. Probably speeding off his chops. I leave via the stairs and emergency exit - the door is alarmed but only for as long as it's open. Bike's still there, the escalators are still blocked, and a divvy van has been summoned. A day in the life. I think the next bit was a Flagstaff station raid - I fang it up Swanston and left at La Trobe. A quick squirt and I'm at the station, and I need the time the ticket booth opens at Southern Cross, a train timetable, and a ticket with the Flagstaff stamp on it. Didn't know about SX but the checkpoint marshall is cold or bored and decides it doesn't really matter at this point. Wee we're off again!
By now it's starting to rain a fair bit and I get into my 'riding in the wet is fun' state of mind. The roads are slippery li'l suckers and I did put the bike down once, I think on Elizabeth St in the 'tall buildings' stage - a bit of cross-town riding to make checkpoints at Rialto and Eureka Tower. The ET checkpoint is moved after security arc up, so that took a bit of finding.
At one stage of the race I'm zipping past a couple of security goons out the back of their building having a fag, watching riders go by. "Is this a race? What are you doing this for?" one asks, in between drags. I don't really have time to ask smart-arsed questions, eg "how's that smoking working out for you?" ... but I was certainly thinking about cute things to say for the next ten minutes.
I don't have the checksheets on me but the last stage was a pisser - a take-away coffee cup, a milk crate, and a business card from a Club X store (might have mixed some of these up, sorry). The cup and crate aren't a problem, although going to the coffee shop at the GPO that late in the day resulted in me having to buy a frappe instead of a hot brew as the machine's off. Turns out a cold coffee was just what the doctor ordered, (protip:easier to scull!) even at $5, and I was on my merry way. The milkcrate magically appeared in the second or third lane I looked in, and that was quickly laced through my bag strap. I stopped off at the only Club X I've ever been to (honest, Mum!) - the one on Russell St. Had a fun chat with Ocean who didn't have any business cards in the first place - she was just handing out Club X flyers which did the trick anyway. Ask me about the time I had to collect a pair of (skating!) kneepads from that store ...
There's a fair pile of crates under the cow at docklands and I realise that I'm well behind in the pack. I'm just in it to be in it at this stage - especially after my false start. Last checkpoint is back at the Vic Market carpark - I placed 35 out of 53. Not bad for starting off the pace. I rode the whole thing with my bag full of random crap, and the polo mallet strapped to the crossbar. Might see how I go without so much luggage next time - but it was handy having the Mary Poppins carpet bag, and a pump wouldn't hurt.
Good fun. A quick 'meal' at DacMonalds, another beer or two at the PB and then off to bed. A tired li'l rabbit was I.
Now all I have to do is work on remembering what road goes where - and get ready for the 3rd Melburn Roobaix...
Alex 4.o
* three. I think. Plus two pots = 8 x 285 = > 2 litres of beer. No wonder I'm schlaggered at the start. |
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| I like my old posts better than my new posts |
[Jan. 14th, 2008|12:59 pm] |
WHY HELLO LIVEJOURNAL
You are the Hanged Man
Self-sacrifice, Sacrifice, Devotion, Bound.
With the Hanged man there is often a sense of fatalism, waiting for something to happen. Or a fear of
loss from a situation, rather than gain.
The Hanged Man is perhaps the most fascinating card in the deck. It reflects the story of Odin who offered himself as a sacrifice in order to gain knowledge. Hanging from the world tree, wounded by a spear, given no bread or mead, he hung for nine days. On the last day, he saw on the ground runes that had fallen from the tree, understood their meaning, and, coming down, scooped them up for his own. All knowledge is to be found in these runes.
The Hanged Man, in similar fashion, is a card about suspension, not life or death. It signifies selflessness, sacrifice and prophecy. You make yourself vulnerable and in doing so, gain illumination. You see the world differently, with almost mystical insights.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
I only dropped back in to see what ratio I used to ride at. Just wondering what would have happened if I knew about the Derby at the Derby last Fri night instead of going oot and getting whacked at the Mitre.
In other news, I have today and tomorrow and wed free until I return to teh employment. What shall I do ... oh yeah, sit around reading the internets. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 4th, 2008|07:02 pm] |
broke my lockring. fixed 15t slips now. riding free 17t x 42t ... and using a shoe at the back, like that twit on the bianchi in that Film Festival short (O_o)
in other news, found two pairs of pants and some nice windsor smith boots by the side of the road. won't tell you what else i found. well i will. a small ziploc bag with two condoms and an ad for www.club80.net (NSFW) in it ;)
Wee! Queerboots!
in other news, brb |
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| 2008 |
[Jan. 2nd, 2008|08:54 am] |
Hmm interesting night!
I'm running away from the home I ran away from home to. Or something. I've been cat sitting for a week. Good fun. Mew
Hi everyone. Thought I'd come back to LJ land for a bit. Yay. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 17th, 2007|05:02 pm] |
bicycle polo is the shit
melbourne bike polo plays a tech and non contact version compared to that played elsewhere
charging and ramming are discouraged
any bike collision results in a halt of play until all riders are back in the saddle
so you can take your new york hardcore shit and stick it in your arse
we play to include not exclude.
amen |
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| accident |
[Oct. 29th, 2007|11:46 pm] |
hit a car thursday before last. or did she hit me. anyway.
smashed windscreen with L hip, went over the roof, spun [DO A BARREL ROLL] and then hit the ground. hugged the driver and then walked to hospital. three stitches L shin wham bam thankyou ma'm public hospitals rock.
just posting to see if my cycling-literate stalker still gives a shit ;)
xo
yes still riding 52/17 fixed. 19 free flipflop while the knee and shin recuperate! |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 22nd, 2007|01:02 pm] |
For my friends in heengerland: via popbitch:
----------------------------------------------
James are playing a secret gig at the Hoxton Square
Bar and Kitchen on Monday.
----------------------------------------------
Laaaa-iiiiiiiid (radio edit) .... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkqIHWAMSJ4
So how secret is a sekrit gig again? |
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| popbitch scores a point |
[Jun. 15th, 2007|12:00 pm] |
Interesting comparison in the recent www.popbitch.com mailout:
>>Black day for justice << It's good to be rich in America
Two court cases in America this week - two very different defendants.
Paris Hilton
* Drifted through a variety of private schools. Left with few qualifications.
* Home sex video made when 19 brought global fame.
* Caught on camera enjoying what appears to be gak and weed.
* A series of DUI arrests and driving while on probation lead to 23 days in jail.
* Released by LA sheriff after three days. Now back in a correctional facility but still able to call TV presenters with her story.
* Found God on the day her agents sacked her.
Genarlow Wilson
* Star athlete and honours student in Georgia.
* Convicted of consensual oral sex, aged 17, with a 15 year-old girl, at a New Year's Eve party.
* 10 year prison sentence, plus lifetime on sex offenders' register.
* This week US judge overturned the ruling, after he'd served two years.
* Ex-President Jimmy Carter has written to Georgia's attorney-general to question whether his treatment was racially motivated.
* Georgia's attorney-general appeals against new ruling, Genarlow is still in jail.
FYI: As the law stands, Wilson cannot return to his own family if released, as he has an 8 year-old sister and he would be forbidden contact.
http://www.wilsonappeal.com/update.html
FYI 2: In Georgia until 1998 oral sex even between husband and wife was punishable by 20 years in prison.
"The goal was to make her the Martha Stewart of her generation. It just didn't work out that way." - Paris Hilton's ex-agents.
On a lighter note:
At a recent photoshoot for Nike the only thing Ronaldinho did between takes was play Fifa football on Playstation against himself. |
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