Spiderman - Turn Off the Dark

Dear Mr Bono and Mr The Edge:

Your music is uninspiring. Really. Truly terrible. The cast tried, bless them, they fucking brought it - but your score! OMFG, talk about amateur.

I'm no expert, but I know what I appreciate in a musical. Let me tell you, Messrs Bono and Edge, you need to spend a little less time trying to look like spokespeople for Raybans and a little more time watching Rodgers and Hammerstein.

That's all I'm saying.

Disaster at LAX

Disaster! With only 1 hour at LAX to clear immigration, collect my baggage, pass customs, re-check my baggage, pass domestic security and get the fuck onto my New York flight; I made it to the gate with fully five minutes to spare before the scheduled take-off time.

This was despite the total lack of helpful signage, flight information screens and even escalators to take you from the ground to the 4^th floor as required. (LAX is getting some renovations and, apparently, commuters don’t need all these fancy trimmings.)

Naturally, the gate was closed, locked and abandoned by all airline staff.

Lucky for me a surly janitor was able (though apparently unwilling) to point me in the direction of the United Airlines customer service desk.

Unlucky for me the service desk was clogged with approximately 100 other people who had variously missed their connections or had been booted off a flight to Denver that had been unceremoniously cancelled, leaving 200 people in the lurch. Apparently this is what flying domestic in the USA is like All. The. Time.

Joy.

At this point I would like to make special mention of the lack of organised ground operations. At no point during immigration, customs or domestic security processing was any attempt made to identify and/or fast-track commuters with a time critical connection – I am pretty sure this is a standard activity in Australian airports.

So I get in the queue and I wait, and I wait, and I wait, wait, wait, wait. I miss the next available flight while I am waiting. Finally I reach the front. I am put on the stand-by list for the next flight and I bugger off to the gate to await my milky doom.

While I am sat typing this – Success! My name is called and I am on the flight. It’s two hours later than my original, and jeebus knows where my bags will be, but I am one step closer to getting where I needed to go.

Post script: it turns out, presumably because this sort of shenanigan happens all the freakin’ time, UA were competent enough to get my bags switched on to the actual flight I was actually moved onto. So it all turned out for the best in the end.

And now I am in my hotel in Manhattan watching Adult Swim and waiting for the sleepiness to kick in. There seems to be quite the happening club on downstairs, which I would totally check out if I had not only had 5 hours for intermittent doze time in the past 24.

Please sleep, take me. Take me now!

Birds with arms

Seriously, you NEED to look at this.

Things is OK. Just normal and boring etc.

I go to work, come home, drink too much wine and go to sleep. Have put on weight – oops!

My sis is moving to Byron Bay in about a week. He partner’s brother and his young family live there. They were both bored of their Melbourne existence and hated their rental house but had no luck getting a fresh one, so they decided to bugger off for an adventure. Good for them.

13 working days until I got to Port Douglas!

I am full of exclamation points today.

Suck it

I want to write more, really I do - but what is there to say?

I've been a bit down lately. Also, sick.

I got this virussy thing before Xmas, which turned into an infection. Then I got a whole new infection on top of the first one. I had no voice on Xmas day; which was not necessarily a bad thing.

My dad was all, 'Haha! How are you going to be able to get all drunk and expert now?'

And I was all, 'I still can, only you won't hear what I said and I'll stay out of trouble - Score!'

It worked a treat.

Clearly I am my own worst enemy

I did not make any New Year's resolutions because they are for chumps; but I find myself attempting to ingest less alcoholic fluids, less sugar and less food generally. It's been going OK for the past week or so - which is as long as I have been at it - but it is soooooo boring.

Why do my only hobbies involve wine and cheese?

In Thailand I patted the kitties!

R&R = FTW

So I'm off to visit the lovely Miss M over Easter, followed by a flying trip to see the monkey-husband's brother in Maroochydore.

Yes. That is a place. Sadly, despite it's awesomely ocker name, it is a place without a Big Thing.

BUT!

It is only 17km from the Big Pineapple.

Oh yes, I will definitely be going to the Big Pineapple.

more crazy-sister shenanigans

Following on from this post, here's how my little-sis managed to leave a bad taste in my mouth post-Bali:

1. Existential crises characterised by late-night tears and monologues about utopian fantasies after lights out.


2. Fiscal conniptions regarding hypothetical credit card fraud.


3. A melt-down in customs that would have done anyone on Border Patrol proud.

All this happened in the last 2 days of a 12 day trip, effectively spoiling any good will I had built up during the holiday.

Good times... good times.

all about my crazy sister

My little-sis gets anxious about pretty much everything; and when she gets anxious - apart from quickly escalating straight to full-on inconsolable panic - her core body temperature goes up, resulting in nausea and vomiting. She also suffers from chronic motion sickness, inevitably resulting in nausea and vomiting.

At the time of traveling with me to Bali she was also suffering from an ongoing bronchial and ear infection resulting in - guess! Nausea and vomiting, dizziness and a general feeling of uneasiness about all things bodily.

You can imagine how awesome it was to undertake international air travel in her company. It wasn't the most expedient way to ensure a relaxing break from my currently less than ideal daily life.

Bali Hai

I went to Bali to get:

1. rest
2. peace
3. perspective
4. warm
   
5. drunk

I achieved most of those things; hampered only by the fact that my sister is freakin' insane and the fact that the Balinese aren't very big on wine.

Don't get me wrong - beer has it's place in a warm climate, and cocktails are always an excellent medium for the transmission of plastic mermaids and naked-lady swizzle sticks; but I'm a piss pot who likes her fermented grape juices.

No matter. The shopping was fun and the accommodation more than acceptable. And we went to a water slide park. The awesomest water slide park I ever went to (and I've been to at least two others - oh yeah).

I have to admit that I was a little reticent about international holidaying with my sis... and I was correct to be concerned.

More on that in the next post.

The holiday has finally arrived!

It's been a massive slog to get to it but I do feel I've left the office in some semblance of organisation whilst I'm away. Surely 2 people between them can do what I do, right?

We'll see.

I have my doubts about one of them.

Anyway, my little sis and I are fucking off to Bali and I fully intend to chill out. Sadly, I know it will all be over too soon.

Valium = FTW

In possibly some of the least excellent timing ever, I'm off to Bali in a week.

Damned terrorists - why can't they focus on being pissed at their parents and maybe stick to blowing them up?

What sense of universal entitlement encourages these people to blow themselves up in public places? Maybe it's my generations-old British heritage, but I don't even like complaining to my waiter if there's a hair in my food.

The original plan was to spend a couple of weeks relaxing and soaking up the value for money; but when I told my mum about it she was all "Ohh - your sister needs a holiday..." So now my sister is coming with me.

My sister suffers from some kind of anxiety disorder.

It gets worse in aeroplanes and when she's out of her comfort zone.

I will be visiting the doctor tomorrow for a fresh Valium prescription and at the first sign of trouble, it's 5mg for her.

Bogan, bogan, bogan. Oi, oi, oi!

I spent the long weekend (happy birthday EII, even though it was in April) at Seacombe with one of the Monkey-husband's employees and his immediate family.

Those readers not familiar with the Gippsland Lakes may be wondering whether it's a worthy tourism locale. I can give you no greater advice than that found on the official Gippsland Tourism website which suggests that whilst there you might like to "visit the largest concentration of open cut mining and power generation activity in Australia."

Would I! Where can I sign up?

But I digress.

I did not, as it turned out, see any open cut mining or power generation activity. But because the monkey and his coworkers mix the bogan with a healthy dose of geek, I did witness the spectacle of a bunch of blokes destroying old computers with 4 kinds of firearm and ride dirt bikes around a disused paddock. Observe:



Film credits belong to Rob-the-coworker. It's not enough to do these things. You're not a true geek unless you film them and cut together your own shorts; thanks Rob.

And thanks for letting me ride your GF's postie-bike.

Almost a month to the day

...but I have an excuse. Well, several actually.

I've been in far north Queensland and Vietnam, respectively, for the better part of the last 33 days.

Queensland you know about, of course.

Vietnam will require much gushing and many photos; just as soon as I can locate the Monkey-husband's picasa album.

"holidays"

...as in: Dear "blank", I'll call you on Monday as I am on "holidays" at the moment.

The reason I am on holidays-in-inverted-commas and not merely on holidays is that I am too freakin' busy with work to actually be on break at all.

And yet.

Here I am in a 5 star apartment on the Fraser Coast.

The catch is, I'm doing work. I am such a sucker.

But! I did get this awesome stubby holder for $2.95. It says "Ooo... I got tanned in Banana-Land!" and the hot chick is riding/languishing on a giant banana.

It's very classy.