Get Behind Me Satan

Oooogh! there's a new White Stripes album... OOOH! this makes me ever so happy.

Otherwise i'm not in a pleasant state of conciousness. I had 2 exams today, will have another tomorrow, and another the next day. Not pleasing prospects. What's worse is that almost everyone else has almost finished theirs. damn them! Still.... they're fairly painless so far.

Art today was fun, the image analysis question was so easy a blind pig on stilts could have done it, about saving the environment and other such twiddle. of course that's important... but writing about it a lot perhpas isn't. Stupid hard left arts community.

Well, new album from my favorite band this week, and whilst exams have prevented me from buying it yet, I swear I will within some days, and then review and talk about it at length here. Any comments will be more than welcome. I've heard 2 tracks... and well... thye're sexy enouhg. Let's wait and see.

My collected randomworks comic "Garbage Collection" is finally finally published and out, so you can buy it for $5 off me, or from the delightful people here: http://www.phasetwocomics.com

In other news, clockwork orange is gonna be SOOOOOOOOOOOOO sexy. photo shoots last week were fun and soon tickets! cant wait to see posters. yay.

well, more later, now attempted study.
be my friend! xoxoxoxo

.

www.seizureandy.com/stuff/guts.html

Whatever you do, for your own safety, try and stop yourself and others from visiting the link above. You WILL regret it.
There are some things in literiture, some things in this world, that just aren't talked about. This short story by Chuck Palahniuk is the first hard line proof and evidence that there is something on earth that disturbs me. I cannot re-read this story. Even if i was paid. It's beyond words. This is the highpoint and low point of the genre. It's astounding. I am in shock. read it.... if you want to be physically nauseated. or like graphic, unfortunate tales of unimaginable human pain and disgust. Apparently at a reading in New Jersey several people physically passed out. I can almost understand why. Don't mail a print out to your grandma. She wil DIE. ewww *shiver*

So onto more beautious and bountiful things.
I am now on exam leave which is good and bad. Good because it means no structured learning. I can study what i want, attend classes when i want, and work 11am-1am hours. On the flipside (switch... turn it over now... Will smith sucks) it means I have to do exams. And semi-important exams worth lots of marks that will result in my future being planned. so it's all sexy. I'm more than a little worried about my Drama performance exam, though. Normally i'm confident in drama, but i'm a little shat out becuase Ibsen scares me with his brilliance. Also it's not really showcasing my ability enough to get lots of sexalishous scores.

Whilst I advise against reading the above link, I strongly recommend Sun Tzu's "Art of War." It's really really fantastic and will bail you out of any situation where you need to find a wise sounding power-quote. It is soooo deep. I've been quoting from it perhaps just a little too much during the past few weeks, but hey, that's what ancient Chinese literiture is for. It really is very intelligent and applicable. Unlike applicable maths. which is about as useful to me as a fully loaded shotgun aimed at my face.

If i get time, remind me to review the Dandy Warhols album 13 tales of urban bohemia. I intend to, i just can't be bothered right now. I have to listen to all of it a few more times. In the mean time, pretend I made really extensive and intelligent comments about it that you weren't going to read anyway.

And now for something completely different.
Hardcore badger sex!

Actually better.
I write comics. But i haven't put one out in a long, long LONG time. I think Gus #3 was the last time I published anything. So now i need to again. Which is good, becuase i'll get paid tomorrow, and I am going to go to officeworks and bust out some printing glory. I should get out Issue 1 and 2 of my mini "The Chronicles of Jimmy, the annoyingly depressed homicidal chimp" and also a few mock-ups of my master-epic-slap-dash Garbage Collection, which includes Elvis II, a bunch of one panel cartoons, and my personal favorite "10 Minute Pants" short strips. It'll cost $5 to get yourself a copy of one of those and will be available through me and hopefully http://www.phasetwocomics.com in a few weeks time. Cheer loudly! Also I'm putting together a Gus trade paperback, collecting the first four issues - roughly 175 pages - as soon as I put the final touches on issue 4. that'll have lots of goodies and extras and should be around the $12 mark. maybe $10. anyway, comics = me = production = likely.

Love y'all.

What's it going to be then, eh?

Ok, before I begin tonight's rant, there are some serious revisions necessary to last night's review of Hey There Bomb.
1) It's actually Last drag with the slow bluesy intro, track three, not track 2 at all. Just switch my comments over about those last two.
2) More importantly upon review I have decided this album is a complete rip off. Every mood, every moment is reminiscent of another, better song, except for Hey There Bomb. I guarentee it is like listening to a really good cover band. And they come from really odd places. Track 2 intro sounds EXACTLY like a weird al yankovic song with serious lyrics. Even the vocals are similar to his in their tone and pitch. It's sooooo been done. The rest of that song sounds like Jet. exact copy. Now the intro to track three is basic keyboard jazz riff. It's so cliched. However, the rest of this song is just Hard Act To Follow with different words. It would be absolutely fantastic if only Grinspoon hadn't beaten them to it. Then there's princess pie, best sing along song ever written but it seems to be that way becuase it's lifted from another song i can't quite put my finger on. The verses sound like guns n roses and then the chorus of ba ya baabaa badaa bah bin you sounds fantastic but like a broadway musical dance number. And finally track 5. I can't belive i didn't pick this up before. IT IS AN EXACT RIP OFF OF YELLOW LEDBETTER. 67 have clearly been listening to too much eddie vedder. The exact tone and style of the into guitar is replecated, i think in the same key, the second guitar comes in exactly the same, even on the same chord, the drum beat is identical, with exact copied style. We even get drawled vocals for the verse. All it needs is the words 'make me cry' before the solo and it could be on Lost Dogs. for shame.

So i've had a good day. I just finally finished my history research essay and i had a 5 hour rehearsal. now it is raining but i aint sad.
Its actually really funny because our dog is a bit of a moron, and he tends to run around in the rain and then jump on my sister which disgusts her to no end. i like it.

I might write more later, depending on inspiration. <3

Shoot the fluffy thing. Kill it dead good.

Last post was kind of dark, so i promise that this one will be all jolly and about bunny rabbits wearign waistcoats to make up for it. KILLING RABBITS IN WAISTCOATS THAT IS!

Nah i'm over it.
I had a good day today, productive it was, yay. rhyming words with Nick O'Shea, like gondolay, or monterey, i'll have my say, I say I say, half of Sydney is gay, or acting in a play, often swings both ways, like Cassius Clay.

And so ends tonights demonstration on how not to become a hip-hop legend. Tune in tomorrow for a 4 part course on burning tacos!

So right now I'm designing costumes for a Clockwork Orange, at my delicious director's delectable request. There's a lot of leather and i just searched the internet for some various inspritation ideas. Note to all: NEVER DO THIS. You'd think i would have realized what typing in punk, leather, tight, goth, bondage etc...into google would come up with but NO! Anyway, assuming I had remembered to put safe search on, i leant something about the 80's. They came up with one really really sexy good looking piece of clothing that was horribly misused and misrepresented: Shoulder Pads!
The greatest masculine phallic symbol that can look amazing and does wonders to a leather ensemble, and then Billy Idol had to go and ruin them for us. I will try and get them into my costume somehow. I will. You just wait.

Music Review of the Week: Hey There Bomb EP, by 67 Special.

Track one, Hey There Bomb: It's good, I'll give them that. Let's have some background though. I bought this CD becuase I saw them live at Rockit '04 and they were amazing. They were easily in the top 3 acts of the whole day and they were in the little intimate tent so it was great. So I am slightly biased in that I've heard all of these tracks live and they are, truth be told, better in that format. The lead singer's hair is just fantastic and their energy makes up a large part of their act... this discussed later. For now, this is the best track and obviously their leading single that will be pushed to the world. And it rocks. It's sing-alongable really easily and has a basic theme you can't go wrong with. It's jumpy, it's sexy, it's a little cliched, but who cares, i say hey there 67 special.

Track Two, Lost That (the way that you do): Nothing really that different from track one actually. Except the slower, nicer introduction. Shows a little musical appreciation once in a while. Not a winner though. These guys need to work on honing down the lesser parts of their act to support the energy, becuase it's coming off not cool on cd. Live, it might be a much needed break, but recorded, i can take more fellers.

Track three, Last Drag: Didn't love this song. It clashes with me. But it's strightfoward, no nonsense rock of the good kind. everything it has should constitute a great song, but it doesn't.

Track four, Princess Pie: So this is the best song live ever. It just works so well. Listen to it with a live context in mind, hair and guitars flying everywhere and an audience shouting along. it works. This at least manages to successfully blend heavy with light and good pop sense with full on rock.

Track five, Curious Mind: This track is the most interesting of the EP in that it is a break away from the rock ethic and a foray into the kind of music that was the introduction to track 2. Basic keyboard riffs. For some reason the chorus chord combination and words reminded me a lot of that Elvis song "suspicious minds" for both obvious and subtle reasons. At 5.05 it's the long, experimental track that all EP's tend to have (sometimes live long experimental tracks) and it's expected, but still kind of boring. All in all a good effort though from a band i'm really starting to like.

Extra Note - The cover design and inlay bit are better than usually seen on EP's. It's a fairly creative effort from an obviously interested designer.

And so it must end once again. I must leave you to your un-funny existences, only for you to wait to be re-humourized next time by something wittier than you could ever know.
lots of Love.

Melancholic

It's a wednesday, and it's cold, and raining, and there's counting crows playing, and I'm slain with work, and sometimes you just have to wonder if you died tomorrow - what the hell have you accomplished? What have i really done that people will care about in 50 years time? 100? Did I even make an impression on the long forgotten memories of people i cared about?
When it's all blue, mix with yellow and relax.

I haven't seen head nor tail of the sweet sweet social life in too long. My weeks are getting repetitive, as is usually the case in lead up to exams. There are assessments for everything, and we have to learn this stupid steven sondheim musical in a week. He's so darn human condition representative. WHY? Why must you insist on metaphorically representing my condition? I could tell you in two words : Bogged Down. You don't need a lithograph of Andy Warhol and a sung-thru musical about red-riding hood to express that. Still, he is good.

I hope i get caught up in some form of international conspiracy. Or scheme. Even a plot would do. Maybe even interstate. that'd do. Just give me something different. Give me a challenge.

Give me the non-moebius version of life's pathway.

Wow. deep.
wild monkey sex on the pool table. :D

"It's good for defence against territorial agression, that's what it's good for."

Hi Everybody!
Aren't you all so lucky tonight, two posts in a few hours! Wow. feel at peace. I wholly reccommend it.

So I'm bored, and feeling creative, what's the lowdown with you fellers?
I'be decided that I'm going to write a play about boredom, and the power it has, especially in forcing someone to procrastinate. If only schoolwork was interesting!? Then we would do it, and not put it off, like i'm doing now!
The main character could be called Spencer and he would be a genius writer trapped in a obese woman's body. Destined to be bullied in school, and a failure at curriculum decree, s/he decides to embark upon a journey of internal understanding by road-sailing her way across New South Wales and keeping a daily journal of her thoughts and encounters. But she meets up with Morgan Manaheim, a multiple-persona'd masochist who is trying to spank himself into the Blue Mountains. They're witty conversational banter constitutes the bulk of the play and thier relationships with each other, their pants-wearing-wombat friend and the wide variety of non-sterotypical characters they meet along the way. Eventually Spencer's memoirs are eaten by Basil (the wombat) and they are forced to kill him, and then themselves, to retrieve the manuscript. This heartfully rendered final scene will be a theatrical triumph, destined to become more overdone that Cosi, Richard 3 and Grease COMBINED.

I hereby copyright that information, becuase all who read it will realize just how damn good it is. Well it's mine bitch. ALL MINE.

So here are my recommendations of the week

Books to read:
1) A Clockwork Orange
2) Tigana
3) Anything that isn't by Tim Winton

Movies to see:
1) The Royal Tenebaums
2) Citizen Kane
3) Harvie Krumpet
4) The spongebob squarepants movie
5) Fear and Loathing in las vegas

CD's to hear:
1) Kings of Leon Youth and Young Manhood
2) REM Murmur
3) Counting Crows Recovering the Satellites.

People to Watch:
1) Ben Cousins
2) Pope Benedict XVI
3) Hugo Chavez
4) Chris Taylor and Craig Rucastle
5) Kofi Annan
6) Matt Birnie
7) Morgan Manaheim

Well, some crap film is on tv with some good looking teenage women in it, so i'm gonna go watch that. Much love.

Matt Birnie is sexy

It's about damn time we had a good looking politician in this great land of ours.

I have had a great week.
State debating squad meet was deliciously relaxed and I even got home in time for numerous hours of sleeping. That made me feel bad becuase I am fundamentally opposed to the idea of sleep, but it is still nice to get. Like sex before marriage. But i'm fine with THAT.
So how's everyone else?

For your own sake, go now to http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/ and read the blender settings list and the names of sermons list. I am amused beyond wiggling. and also the lines after famous quotes one. test your general knowledge!

So I recently viewed the steven sondheim play A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, when WAAPA put it on a while back. It is still the funniest performance I have seen all year. That and Steven berkoff's one man play Shakespeare's Villains were fantasitcally witty and well written/directed/acted/received. I have seen an alarming amount of theatre recently, ranging across the board but these two were the best. Here are the plays I've seen with the really really good ones in bold and the really really bad in italics.

Shakespeare's Villains
The Playboy of the Western World
Year 12 performance perspectives.
Saturday Night Fever
A Funny thing happened on the way to the Forum.
Influence (by david williamson. (!))
The Lightkeeper
The Lion King

And that's about all the live theatre in Australia right now. I'm yet to see War of the Roses, but i intend to. it looks semi-interesting. Yay for Bell Shakespeare company.

I've updated the site a little you'll see. There's the 24 hour comic challenge banner up and waving, i intend to take part, so support me. Also, ALL OF YOU TAKE PART. else i will look angrily in your general direction. There's also some stuff in the margin bit, like a visitor counter. YAY.
The other thing I've done is work. TOO MUCH OF IT. Year 12 sucks so much in terms of work, and i'm going to go and do some right now, becuase it needs doing, ALL THE TIME.

My undying love to y'all.

We are all epic heroes of the mundane.

Yawn
I am really really rather tired, because I've spent all night working on my History Oral and just remembered that History is the only subject I don't have tomorrow. You may start calling me Mr. productive. Proddsy for short.
The problem with the cold war is that it's so damn long. You look at World War 2, you got 6 years. WW1, 4. Then you've got big cold stupid United States are greedy twats war which had to go on for 36 bloody years. That's a LOT of dates to remember.

I'm doing an Ibsen monologue for my performance exam this term. stupid midyears. I'll show them who can be in the 5th week of term as if that's midyear I MEAN HONESTLY.
So it's this really great patronising sexist one, just before Torvald gets his rightful come-uppence in A Doll House. He acts like an absolute dick, and then claims property of his wife after he just said it wouldn't matter if she died. Plus he thinks he's in the right the whole time.
The best thing about Henrik Ibsen is that his plays give you the best of both worlds. They show you a really educated writer. Up until about 1875 all his works were epic religious symbolic progressive poetic pieces of theatre. Then he went back to Norway for a year and never wrote another line of poetry in his entire remaining life. Just like that.
Ibsen suddenly switched over to realism, but really amazingly good realism, with lots of metaphors and underlying energy. That's why he's called the father of modern realism. But it's so weird. It would be like voting Republican until the age of 55 and then stopping and joining the anarchist movement. Or yodelling non stop for 6 years before never speaking again.
But A Doll House is a great play. Allow me to elaborate.
Torvald and Nora Helmer are married with children and the play begins on Christmas eve in their household. Over the course of the next two and a half acts, it is revealed that Nora has borrowed money from a man named Krogstadd (i think it's spelt like that) and had to forge some signatures to do so. He then threatens to besmirch their family's honour by blackmailing them becuase of this. Nora convinces him not to, and to send back the IOU, but not before Torvald finds out and blows his goat at Nora for destroying their life. Then he finds out that it's all ok, and that he's not going to be besmirched (that sounds dirty) so he acts nice again to Nora. What he doesn't realize is that he's been an absolute asscock the whole time and Nora is about to leave him to go off and find herself.

So what we can gather from that is that the whole play is about honour, and about duty, especially about one's duty to one's self, above all else. Interestingly enough in the character of Torvald this overpowering sense of duty to himself is protrayed as a negative trait, yeat in Nora, her best one. Such is the magic of Ibsen's writing.
It is easy to mistake every character in this play however as two dimensional. Nora can be seen as the opressed woman hero, Toravald as the dickhead, Korgstadd as the angry guy who's actually sweet inside... etcetera. BUT, it is ever so much deeper than that. Nora is imperfect and impetuous. She did break the law, she did lie a lot, and she ignored her children's welfare so that she could fit the 'tragic' structure of the ending. Nora must "go away" in the most fatal sense of the word for the implications and symbolism to gain full meaning. It is in fact her tragic flaw that she is so self assured and liberated.
Torvald on the other hand I like a lot. He is quite obviously not a very good husband, but he is only doing what is prescribed exactly by society around him and by the expectations of his success. He is also tragically flawed, but with self doubt, and with self conciousness. His character is intelligent and emotional, but sticking to every single law and regulation imposed by his context. It is in doing this that he seems uncaring and quite the tosser. But he's only partway there, patronising, but justifiably so.

Read the play. It's damn diddly good. I think there's a downloadable PDF file here: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dollhouse/

Also, if anyone would like to bitch extensively about Andrew OKeefe, leave a comment and i'll quote form it and elaborate heartily. He is sooooo my least favorite TV personality right now. I wan't to give him the opposite of a gold logie... like a Rust Logie or something.

I also went and saw the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy last Friday night, as all fans of the book, and all else anyway should. I'm not gonna talk about it too much here, except to say that it was better than I expected. Whoever directed it knew his text well, and Douglas Adams' personally pre-posthumously written screenplay helped too.
There was interesting imagery, and brilliant small subtle jokes, but for anyone who didn't know the book I could see it might be hard to follow. Luckily I did, so read, then watch people.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

You suck

Aww you guys suck so much.
Maybe they were all too hard. Ok, here are some clues. I've extented the song lyric out for you to make it easier.

1) Gillian, if you weren't my mother, I would make you my wife.

2) Hey, kids, rock and roll, nobody tells you where to go, ollie ollie ollie. (hint - read old post)

3) Look at them yo-yos, that's the way you do it, lemme tell you, them guys aint dumb

4) I said hey, hey, don't go giving all your sentiment away. Repeat.

5) One for sadness, two for joy, three for girls and four for boys, five for silver, six for gold and seven for a secret never to be told.

6) I called up the captain, said, please bring me my wine, he said, we haven't had that spirit here since 1969.

7) I'm so happy, cos today I found my friends, they're in my head, i'm so ugly that's ok cos so are you.

8) When you're weary, feeling small... when tears are in your eyes, i will comfort you...

9) I wanna move up and be a canadian or hang down low with the nice australians, i don't wanna be another i dont care again, whatdya gonna do Frank? go....

10) (this ones easy.) Last night i had the strangest dream, I sailed away to china, in a little red boat to find ya, you said you had to get your laundry clean... and i said... AINT NOTHING GONNA :

If you can't get them now you're never going to. God some are really basic.
have fun.