A Sunday spent down the hungry mile

Today I went for a walk down the ‘Hungry Mile’. The Hungry Mile is the name workers gave to the docklands area of Darling Harbour East, in Sydney during the Great Depression. Workers would walk from wharf to wharf in search of a job, often so no success. Its a very historical part of Aussie history since the Millers Point (its official name) was a working dockyard since the word go. Most of the stevedoring operations have moved north up to Newcastle and down to Pot Bontany. Now the wharfs are undergoing massive developments as its prime harbour real estate.

Not far away, is the Lend Leased Design, concept – The Bond.
The Bond precinct combines three heritage buildings, the earliest dating back to the 1840s; The old bond stores, the original gasworks and the wharves.

The complex has won over 30 industry awards for design innovation, heritage adaptation and sustainability.

 

Life on Mars

I know the media have done this to death over the last couple of days, but if you didn’t experience the dust storm this week you missed a potential ‘once in a lifetime’ event. I was awake to see (or more accurately not see) the sunrise. I’d estimate visibility at 100 to 150M, and while most photos you’ll see show a deep orange, at that time of the morning everything was literally blood red.

I couldn’t see the water from the train when passing over the Harbour Bridge, and on arriving at work, I couldn’t see the bridge at all until maybe 10:30 in the morning. (The ‘Godzilla’ picture that went viral was taken from a couple of buildings away from my office.)

That the storm coincided perfectly with the start of the G20 in the US is obviously nothing more than coincidence. Was the storm proof of climate change? No. It was a freak occurrence. The question that I think we should be asking is that if we remain inactive on the issue of environmental protection – will this become a more frequent phenomenon?

Perhaps we should start paying more attention to Peter Andrews.

 

iPhone’s new killer app – ‘Blue Balls’

A few months ago the love of my life decided life was not worth living without an iPod. Not an mp3 player. No no no. Must be iPod. Why? It’s hot pink. And it’s an iPod.

I P O D !!1!.

All the cool kids have them. At $200 it’s an absolute steal.

I am not cool. I am a leper. I have an mp3 player that cost $30. It plugs into my USB port, I open my music folder and drag & drop what I want onto it, take it out & plug it into my DVD player and listen to my music. Way too simple.

The cool kids with iPods must install iTunes in order to interface with their awesome jealousy generating device. If they don’t have a Mac they are likely to encounter compatibility issues, and are odds-on favourites to find that half of their music isn’t recognised. They must charge their iPod via USB while iTunes is open, which seriously drains system resources. They must sync their entire collection or have to re-sync every file they have previously selected every time they want to add a single new track. In short, the iPod sucks balls.

But for all the sucking the iPod does (which is a great deal – a veritable wheelbarrow of sweaty, hairy testicles’ worth of sucking), the worst thing about it is that it leads to harder gadget addiction. Barely a week of happy iPod ownership had passed before my angelic little consumption monster uttered that most dreaded of words – iPhone. *cue Beethoven’s 5th*

Of course I put my foot down (as the man of the house), and said no. MMoC already has a phone that cost more than my first car and does everything but make and receive calls easily. On the matter of iPhones I thoroughly concur with Maddox. End of argument. No. Ever.

A few days ago iPhone arrived. fkn hurrah. It is lovingly stroked. It is spoken to in hushed and loving tones. It has a name, and sleeps on a pillow beside its adoring mother. Gibbot is relegated to the lounge.

All conversation is now centred around the divine beauty of the iPhone. Its applications and potential usefulness are cause for unbridled enthusiasm and devotion. Gibbot’s amorous overtures are disdainfully dismissed as base and demeaning intrusions into iWorld. Not in front of the baby.

Should fate happen to place Stephen Jobs on my path I don’t know if I would kick him in the crotch or strap him down and hand him over to my less discerning friends. Either would be fair.

 

My partner is a mutant monster of consumption

The latest in a long list of silly stuff that my wonderful girlfriend discovered she could no longer live without is the ‘Pandora’ bracelet. I don’t pretend to fully understand the concept, but it seems that some marketing genius worked out that grown women will actually pay (or more accurately, get some schmuck to pay) for a strip of base metal designed to be adorned with little craftsey baubles. These are of course sold separately, and expensively, the purchase of which is supposedly meant to coincide with important or memorable occasions. Collect a whole bracelet full of these jangling arse beads and you too can look like a Romanian gypsy spell caster.

Having acquired the bracelet under her own steam, the length of time before the first request for me to purchase a charm could probably only be measured in a laboratory, but the word ‘nanoseconds’ seems appropriate. When I pointed out that said purchase is meant to mark a special occasion, I was informed that a monumental event had in fact taken place. I was being granted the freedom of retaining my much cherished pickled walnuts on the proviso that I coughed up pronto. As the man of the house, I put my metaphysical foot down and steadfastly refused to be a participant in this costly and frivolous fad. Ever. Full stop.

Two days later I dutifully handed over the bauble. As a qualifier against the inevitable charges of emotional cowardice that are to follow, I would like to mention that our lounge is rather uncomfortable.

Much joy followed. I was not only showered with affection, I was again able to be showered, having been instantly readmitted to my en suite. All was good with the world. Happy ending. Story over?

Not likely. Fast forward two weeks and three more baubles. The apple of my eye and I are riding the escalator in our neighbourhood temple of consumerism. The following exchange is reproduced verbatim (to the best of my recollection):

G: “Are we done here, or is there anything else we need?”
MMoC: “I need another charm for my Pandora bracelet.”
G: “Need? I don’t think so. You have four.”
MMoC: “But I need one more.”
G: “You do realise there are children in Ethiopia that only have three charms on their Pandora bracelet, don’t you?”
MMoC: “Yes, but they’re rich in other ways.”

How can you defend yourself against an animal like this? I am bested.

 

Some things from the US that amused me this week

Mentally retarded R&B star with Magna-Doodle haircut meme goes viral.
Seriously.. Is there something in the water over there that turns you into a douche?

US conservatives even more stupid and dishonest than normal.
Only 1.43 million people short of claims of 1.5 million, but hell. Who’s counting?

US wing-nut gets a dose of his own medicine.
I don’t think he did it, but why isn’t he denying it?

 

All purpose bullshit thread

It’s a scientific fact that most of what I might happen to say – let alone anyone else – is probably totally irrelevant to anything, and certainly not relevant to any one of my rants. Let this be the place where anything can be said about anything.

I’m open to suggestions for future posts, as well as any contributions that you may want posted. I’d like to think of this blog as a benign dictatorship.

On that note, a little gem from the past:

 

Porchdroid

One of the great pleasures of being a substandard musician is that occasionally you get to perform with real musicians. Their abilities, rather than eclipse yours, actually elevate your own playing – providing you with a platform with which to exceed your expectations of yourself.

Eric Camilleri is such a beast. He is an uncouth, lumbering, overweight philistine with poor health and a long suffering, beautiful wife named Jennifer. While notoriously intolerant of stupidity, he has an innate ability to nurture and develop the smallest spark of talent into something beautiful to behold, then harness that beauty to create something much larger than the sum of its parts.

A big part of my role in the cubicle world is to help people utilise their strengths to do their job to the best of their ability. It’s probably my favourite part of the job, and I believe I’m good at it. If that’s the case, then the mentoring of Eric’s plays no small part. I have learned much from him.

Anyway, this is his blog. I will be annoying him over there pretty regularly, and advise you to do the same. Eric plays keyboards and sings. He also has the rare ability to play a whole band.

UPDATE:

I didn’t mention that Sirloinist is my favourite drummer because this is a post about musicians. I’ll look to correct the oversight in the near future.

 

I will take away your pain

With this.

If you don’t own Le Fil yet you are socially handicapped and have no comprehension of beauty.

(OK, that’s a bit harsh, but you get my point.)

 

Twitter is a dick in the mouth of the internet

Let me begin by saying I have a twitter account. I tweet.

I chuckle at the musings of fake Steve Fielding, catch news headlines as they break, and follow a handful of domestic bloggers whose work I enjoy reading. (They’re being added to the blogroll as I think of them. Check them out for yourself.)

It struck me today as I was signing in what an incredible douche I am, and how totally retarded twitter really is. One problem lies in the assumption that the people who use twitter are in some way remotely interesting. Some are, but they make up an incredibly small percentage. Most are as boring as bat shit, and nowhere near as useful. You can at least make gunpowder out of bat shit, then use that gunpowder to fire bullets at boring twitter wankers (hitherto to be referred to as ‘twankers’). Hell, kill a few and you might even have something interesting to tweet about. Maybe.

Another problem is that the sole goal of twitter seems to be to get as many fellow idiots following you as possible. People become the most base internet prostitutes, spending hours following every stranger they can find in the desperate hope that they will be followed back. If someone follows you there is almost a moral obligation to return the favour. This is generally rewarded by becoming privy to the inside scoop that said followee is cooking bolognaise for dinner, or thinks ‘dancing with the stars’ is essential viewing. This copulating drivel starts, like lantana, to overgrow your once pristine stream of useful information. Eventually you don’t know what’s news, you’ve missed both really funny things that were said on twitter today, and you’ve somehow digested a tureen’s worth of shit flavoured mediocrity.

Nobody gives a rodent’s left bollock what I’m doing right now. It just isn’t urgent information. I have made my peace with that and wish others would. If everybody with nothing interesting to say just decided to say nothing – Twitter might actually be useful.

It ain’t happening in a hurry, though. There’s too many twankers like me out there.

 

Some noise of my own (with Brutus)

This is a couple of years old, but I thought I’d share it anyway. I recorded it with a mate in his loungeroom.

Bear with me. I’m learning as I go. Hope to work out how to embed a player shortly.