Clearly Not Giving Him Enough To Do

Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, is on Facebook. Commonly accepted as the worlds foremost procrastination tool. He has 4462 friends, of which two are mutual friends of mine (for anyone unfamiliar with facebook, the PM has added two of the same people as I have), he is [unsurprisingly] a Rudd and Labour supporter (see the fans and supporters application/groups on facebook) along with a few posted items and notes (more facebook jargon). He does not, however, have a wall, superwall, funwall or any other kind of wall for people to write upon. Probably a wise move. I am able to send him a free gift (small picture of a gift that I might possibly like to give to someone, though generally not the sort of thing people actually give as gifts ie. a llama) and after careful consideration I have settled on a magic eight ball and a note that reads: to help with those important decisions.
The Bush administration continue to demonstrate their incredible ability to appear incompetent. This being A LOT of the reason the GOP is going to have so much trouble getting John McCain elected in November. In fairness to the republicans the American people chose to elect Bush for a second term and so really have not a whole lot of right to be indignant about him, they knew what they were getting.

Two Minutes Turkish

I just watched Lock Stock, for the second time apparently. I thought I hadn't seen it yet but on watching it I discovered that I had seen it and it must have been Snatch that I had not seen. Which means that I still need to see Snatch but I have Lock Stock on automatic loop, apparently.
"Too late, too late will be the cry, of the man with the bargains as he passes you by." Jason Statham does some shite films for some reason but then he makes his way into genius stuff like this and Snatch. Brilliant black comedy, a web of awesome twists, and one heck of a sound track. This kind of class is why British film has such a good reputation. The closest things to it I've seen are Inside Man and Big Nothing.
Going to see Hancock at the cinema tonight. There was some debate amongst my friends as to whether it was a Marvel film or based on a comic book or just fresh stuff. There's a whole heap of really great indie comics and unknown graphic novels out there and in face of hollywood's phobia of new material and a rapidly shrinking list of things to re-make they may just turn some indie and cult material into some mainstream teen-fad films.
I also just killed the sexy lady. Not good. Mums favourite mug has a picture of a sexy lady on it and I just broke it. Luck likes me so she's in Perth at the minute giving me a day or two to replace it before she gets home!

Of Holidays, Weekends, And Other Things I No Longer Get To Enjoy

School holidays kicked off this weekend, marked by late bed times and extended absences from the boys, and the imminent departure of Father for the footy trip. O, and by the standard Saturday and Sunday evening shifts at work which, combined with a single shift on Wednesday, make for a really irritating roster. The double slap on the face means you can't go out on the weekend, nor can you take off to Perth for a week coz you have to be around on Wednesday, lets make it a triple slap, you also earn bugger all money for your irritation.
On the upside I have three job offers to stroke my ego. One of them is in England and pretty darn tempting but not going to happen. One is in Perth and looks a safe bet for next year. And the other may just be the answer to my roster problems while I'm still down south.
Geelong kept up their form with a great win over the Crows. I missed the game as I was using one of my rare Friday nights off work to socialise and spend money at Smiths Beach, but I'm told it was fun to watch.
The Wallabies thumped the French last night, that I did get to see. They look good. The forwards seem to have found some form at last after getting schooled by the English pack at the world cup last year and Matt Giteau was magnificent. George Smith was impressive which bodes well but to be honest, we've only played Ireland and France. The real test will be whether we keep our form against the Springboks and the All Blacks.
I nearly forgot to mention..! So you have some perspective on the thrilling, busy, and challenging job that is currently my employ: last night we had two tables in the restaurant, drank about six cups of coffee, and counted how many individual sprinkles you get in one gram of hundreds and thousands. 1150. So in a 1.5 kilo catering pack of the stuff there is roughly 1,725,000 sprinkles meaning you would need about 580 1.5 kilo packets to make up one trillion sprinkles. We need to verify the data with a few more tests but our hypothesis that anoyone trying to tell you that they ought to be called "millions and trillions" is a moron is looking pretty good.

Fashion And Photos

I've been getting into this fashion blog lately. I don't like everything on there, in fact I probably really like only about thirty percent of the stuff, but it's an interesting site to look around and I've picked up some interesting ideas. Up until recently I really didn't give a fig about fashion, but there is potentially some cool and funky things to take from it and I'm up for anything that makes me look cool and funky, so...
My two outfit combinations based on what I've learned from the site:
Top Down - Grey waistcoat over (darkish) red t-shirt OR black v-neck jumper over grey stiped shirt with the cuffs sticking out of the jumper turned back and pushed up the forearms. THEN jeans (either loose fit light coloured or straight leg darker) OR hurley black pants, baggy with red label. Standard leather belt OR matt-black studded. THEN converse; the only choice of footwear. ALSO throw in a canvas (or in my case- hemp) shoulder bag and a nixon watch (the banks for the jumper, the duke for the waistcoat) and maybe a beanie.
I'm banking on no one reading this really, at least no one who knows me!

It Could Only Ever Happen To Me

I have a long history of misadventure and an uncanny ability to take a normal every-day situation and turn it into a source of pain and/or frustration for myself. For instance, today, walking down to the field to kick the football around I (mis)kick it into the gap between a low hedge and a tennis court fence. The hedge is to large to step over so I, in my infinite wisdom (I really do need one of those little voices in my head. Or perhaps a carer) decide to jump the hedge and slide down the wire-linked fence in order to retrieve the football and look really cool. Here's where things go wrong: I somehow pick the one spot along the whole fence that has a blunt stake sticking up right where I'm going to land. I tear a nice new hole in my converse, my sock, and my foot, which has the courtesy not to bleed everywhere but now is swollen and sore and burning away inside a pressure bandage. I am now limping and annoyed and grumpy and tired. Apparently these are common side effects of stupid injuries and despite a couple of hours at the pub to distract myself from everything I am still pretty sore.
One slight source of relief is Presidential Front Runner Dave Barry whose answers to questions affecting life in America are well worth a look! I especially enjoyed Q. Does anyone actually believe that soy cheese tastes good, let alone like real cheese? A. we need to find out who the hell is growing and selling this "soy" and we need to SHUT THEM DOWN.

Going Somewhere... Maybe

I'm investing quite a bit of time into the new site but this is often a fruitless and frustrating exercise. iWeb is very good, but there are a few things you can't change for no explained reason, so I spend quite a bit of time trying to do things which apparently can't be done. I have some choice feedback for Apple next time I run into them. I have plenty of ideas of things to do but whenever I have the time to do it I tend to sleep or get sucked into doing something else or spend fruitless time working on it. Management as ever is the key. I need a secretary. And an office. A whole house with a couple of friends, one of them can be the secretary, and an office, over-looking the beach, with a motorbike thrown in.
A new possible plan has developed in my mind for the first few months of next year. It involves a motorbike and the following cities; Paris, Barcelona, Morroco, Rome, Croatia (not a city, I know), Volos, Athens, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, London. Plus whichever other ones I pass through on the way. A few more months free of responsibility and the chance to do Europe proper!

One of Those Nights

Last night was just one of those nights. I was at work for all of five minutes before I realised it was going to be a weird one. Everyone was good, but tired. And tired wait staff make mistakes. They also fail to communicate. And often fail to recover. The best way to handle "one of those nights" is to step it up. So the night is going to be tough, fine, if it's going to go down one way or another then man up, cop it on the chin, and go down in a guns a-blazing glory! What you tend to do though, is to accept defeat and offer tired (read: lousy) service and get out asasp. Or you get signed off early, go home, get changed, pick up a case of bear and a bottle of port and head back to work to get the others. Then the fun really begins...
Back at work the GM has decided that a quiet night is a good chance to sort some shit out. The chef who should have left months ago decides to pull everyone else down with him and walks out instead of heading into the meeting and the proverbial camel is now a paraplegic. You of course are not exactly involved in any of this and so proceed to help with the clean up whilst watching an hour of your time vanish into the drama (probably more like two hours once you take into account the fact you dont make it to the bar in time to keep it open and have to head back into town to get pizza and the rest of the beer) From there the rest of the night is awkward conversation and drinking and bitching and then eventually just drinking and laughing about whatever else distracts us from the rest of the tripe.

*I haven't posted anything for ages in an effort to force myself to focus on the new site, which I've been doing and will have up and running soon, but I felt like writing something and I don't really care if anyone reads it or not.