Friday, October 27, 2006

Some Spiders Are Our Friends

I've hired some spiders. I rent them out space on the roof of our toilet. Well they don't actually pay any rent, but neither do they drop on my head when I'm in there either, so we're square. They do some work though. We have a minor problem with silverfish and it's not uncommon to find one or two running along the bathroom floor or in a sink early in the morning. The spiders however eat the silverfish, or at least suck the nutrients out of their bodies, leaving lifeless husks, which are much easier to pick up with a vaccum. The only spiders I don't like are the vigilantees. Big, fat, poisionous to humans varieties, such as wolf spiders or the dreaded white tail. These often crawl on clothing, or along the floor and I'm certain they actually try and hunt humans. Cute daddy long legs or any other non threatening species are ok by me. So give a spider a job.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

I had a ball

Last friday I went to a ball. That's right, I put on my beautiful, sequined ball gown and went off to dance. Well not quite. I actually wore the same suit I'd been wearing to work that day. Having arisen at 5:00am to do so that morning, and coincidentally at the same time on the morning before. Foolishly I am not able to go to bed early either, so needless to say I was pretty damn tired by the time I got home and found my wife ready to go. Oh, and did I mention we were bringing the baby to the thing as well?

Upon arriving there was a row of flaming torches leading up to the building, as the theme was 'Fire and Ice', which blew black smoke all over us. Inside, the decorations were pretty nice, but I found out later that they had planned some huge theme related decorations that hadn't worked out and so had been abandoned. Why the MC mentioned this in his intro I don't know. The other inspiring thing he said was that the hilarious person who had been scheduled as MC had not been able to attend so we were stuck with him, ie. without comedy. They did have a live band which, played soul music for some reason. They were quite good except I wasn't a huge fan of the song selection. I mean they didn't even play 'I like big butts', by Sir Mixalot!

Amazingly even though the place was very loud, the baby stayed asleep...at least until the wife woke her up to change her...but mostly to show her off to people. She handled it well considering that she'd dozed off in the car and woken up to loud music and people dancing around like idiots. As usual people doted over her which allowed me to pickpocket them while they were distracted (kidding!).

Now the point of a ball is to dance. Well....I didn't dance. I was too bloody tired I tell you! Plus someone had to look after the baby. I rather enjoy watching other people dance anyway. For instance there was this one guy (late middle aged), who almost literally flew around the dancefloor like a gazelle! He and his partner (he mostly danced with two women) whirled around at great speed, spinning like a fricken whirling dervish. It was clear that he'd done quite a bit of some weird dancing style before. It was very funny to watch, but I had to take my hat off to him. Most other people gyrated around with a varying degree of skill.

For me the night was pretty crap based on my condition, but I swear next time I'll haul my arse off the seat and tear up the dance floor....mostly cause I'll have a nail in my heel.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

David Blaine Street Magic Spoof

Check out this hilarious David Blaine street magic parody. I find it very funny, but I do have a strange sense of humour. Warning there is some swearing in this clip!

Saturday, October 21, 2006

The Good,The Bad and The Garbage

This week was my first week back at work after 2 weeks off on holidays. When I left there were various problems going on, both externally and internally. When I got back, bugger all had changed. You’d think that as an organization got bigger and earned more money, it would have the resources to cut out the people who were causing the problems or not providing evidence that they were trying to fix them. Anyway that’s my gripe about work and it’s only taken me a few days to become jaded and annoyed about stuff. Otherwise it’s still a good job.

In much better news, yesterday I finished the last subject of the course I was studying off-campus. Although off-campus study sounds good in theory, it is a real prick to manage while trying to balance work, family and staying sane with some socializing and hobbies. I now have to wait a few months in anxiety to see if I have passed this damn subject or not. I feel that I will just scrape by which I wouldn’t mind, but am terrified of the possibility I may not have had enough time to put in the quality. Time will tell.

We went to a place called Collingwood Children’s Farm the other week to show the baby some farmyard animals that she hadn’t seen before. I gotta say that it was a bit of a crap hole. Perhaps if you go with a school group or something, they give you an interesting tour, but otherwise you just wander around a fairly small farm type environment with dilapidated buildings, few animals – goats, pigs, few horses, couple of cows, some sheep, guinea pigs, chickens, ducks and geese as well as a couple of peacocks. Oh, and two cats I think. I don’t really know what I expected, but perhaps more hands on opportunity or something like that. For $16 to get in, I like to think that I’d get more than what I could see from a drive through the country.

The other day I saw the Di Vinci Code on DVD. In 98% of books that get made into movies, the book is much better. As most people probably already know, this film demonstrates this fact to a high degree. The book is high paced and hard to put down, while the movie really drags in some parts and skips over some interesting details. If you want to see this type of movie, go rent National Treasure with Nicolas Cage instead. The Di Vinci Code only gets 5/10 in my opinion. And is it just me or does Tom Hanks act almost exactly the same, no matter what role he is playing? With some actors I really buy the character they are playing and forget ‘who’ they really are in a sense, but with Tom I can’t help but see him as just Tom Hanks.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Magician Profile/Review - Criss Angel

For those of you who don’t know who Criss Angel is, let me describe him. He looks something like a reject from a 90’s rock band and in fact he has a band and thus obviously does like music…if yelling like a freak is what you consider music. If you want to see some photos of him, go here. This is not his claim to fame however, nor why I am writing about him. I’m writing about him as he is quite a famous magician. This might sound like an oxymoron, particularly if you don’t really pay attention to magic at all and couldn’t name a magician other than Houdini or Copperfield if your life depended on it. However Angel has done a couple or seasons of his own magic series, “Mind Freak”, and put out a few dvds and made quite a bit of money. He has also paid his performing dues and didn’t become a success overnight. So what’s so good about him, you may rightly ask? Well let me describe a couple of his tricks. On his tv show he has done stuff like put a piece of thread into his mouth and then pull the thread out of his eye….yes I said eye! As a prelude to this he had a coin signed and placed in his mouth, then apparently swallowing it, he showed some people on the street the coin moving down the inside of his arm…under his skin, where he made an incision with a knife and removed the signed coin! Other memorable effects include seemingly floating himself and others in an open area, setting himself on fire and walking on water.

He is a character that people often love or hate. Love because he does some amazing illusions and is far from the old top hat and tails magician of yesterday. Hate because he doesn't smile much and perhaps comes across as a bit of a poser. A lot of other magicians are probably just jealous of his success and might say things like, "If I had a huge budget and access to the magic constultants (yes there are magic consultants) that he has, then I could do all that stuff." That may be the case, but he is the one who has put in the effort to make it all happen. My personal view is that I enjoy the majority of the magic that he does, but don't really like the stunts that he seems to love doing. For instance the other night I was watching his show and he performed a stunt where he got into a box that had explosives on one side of it and stayed in the box while it blew up! You may be thinking that such a thing sounds like a trick, but that was not how it was billed. His idea was to feel what it was like to be as close to an explosion as possible and he did it. Personally I think it would have been better that when the box exploded, he had vanished, but no, the box went all over the place and there he was, lying curled up on the bottom of it. Love him or hate him, he has certainly done a lot to raise the profile of magic...at least in the US anyway.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Happy happy, joy joy

I went to the hospital today. It's ok though, I wasn't injured, sick or anything bad like that. I was going for the benefit of my wife. It's ok though, she's not injured, sick or anything bad like that either. We were going to get her 12 week pregnacy ultrasound! That's right, we're going to be parents again! As if one wasn't enough! The difficult part for the woman with this ultrasound is that she has to drink a lot of water and then not pee for a while so that her bladder is full. Apparently this makes it easier to see the womb, or something like that. If you have ever tried to prevent a pregnant woman from peeing when she needs to, it's not a good idea.

The guy who did the ultrasound verified that the fetus has two legs, two arms, a heartbeat and a brain, which is much like our earlier model and slightly more than I actually have. Needless to say, we're pretty excited to have our second on the way, but there are still much of the same nerves and worries associated with having a baby. While on the topic, congratulations to Bevis on the birth of his son.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Crap Movies

A while ago, a friend of mine complained about my posts being too whiney. So to shut that whinging bastard up, here is a post where I am being positive and talking about something I enjoy. Bad movies. That’s right, I like really bad movies, particularly the horror genre. There is nothing better than sitting back and watching something that perhaps 10, 20 or 30 years ago was supposed to scare the dickens out of people, and laughing your head off. Only by watching these classics can one really appreciate how far movie special effects have come. One of my favourite bad movies is called ‘Troll 2’. It is obviously the sequel to ‘Troll’, which featured Julie Louise Dreyfus and Sonny Bono (who ironically also dies in the movie). Now Troll is about a, err Troll who with his magic powers is trying to turn an apartment building into a gateway to his own dimension by killing off the people in each apartment. However Troll 2 takes bad films to a new extreme. Firstly it is about goblins and not trolls. Secondly the actors are the drop-outs from the acting school where acting school drop-outs go after they first drop out of acting school (trust me this sentence makes sense). Thirdly the costume special effects are of a worse quality than if the film makers had gone to a local novelty store and picked up some bad Halloween masks. This film is so damn awful, it’s great. If you're lucky you might find the Troll/Troll2 DVD in your local video store. It’s a must see! I can almost guarantee you won’t see a crappier feature length movie this year!

To prove that I am not the only nutcase to like this sort of crap, check out this fan website!

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Baby's First Birthday


It was my daughter's first birthday yesterday. Happy birthday princess!

Sunday, October 01, 2006

10 pieces of advice and wisdom for aspiring or soon to be dads.

  1. Are you nuts! Seriously, really think about it.
  2. The Geneva Convention prohibits torture by sleep deprivation for extended periods of time….babies disregard the Geneva Convention! You may have heard from other parents that kids don’t sleep for normal periods of time. However, only when you are woken about 8 or more times during the night for months on end, while having to get up and go to work everyday, do you really understand the horror.
  3. Babies smell fresh and clean right? WRONG, they smell like vomit, poo and urine until you wash them, and that’s if they even tolerate being washed. Oh, and get used to smelling like baby vomit, poo and urine yourself.
  4. All babies are supposed to be good and free from evil, but that’s a myth too. Case in point, Stewie Griffin from ‘Family Guy’.
  5. In Australia you get a bunch of money for having kids. This is true, but after the plasma TV, Xbox 360 and leather sofa to keep the wife happy, the money is all gone.
  6. Q: “Babies aren’t that expensive are they? I mean, I’ll still be able to afford to go out the pub every weekend with my mates right?”

A: “Hahaha, you crack me up hypothetical guy! If you want to be single again soon, sure go ahead.”

  1. Q: “It’s worth it all in the end, for the love you get back from them isn’t it?”

A: “If by ‘love’, you mean resentment and anger that you don’t give them everything their greedy little hearts desire, then I suppose so.”

  1. Q: “Will my love life suffer from having kids?”

A: “Yup. And only when your wife/partner wants more vermin..I mean children, will you be allowed to enter the forbidden zone again.”

  1. Q: “I’ll be raising another human life, surely I need some sort of license or training to become a parent?

A: To operate heavy machinery, fire a gun, or take part in most professional occupations you do, but any psycho can have children.

  1. Q: “Oh no, I’ve already gone and had a baby!”

A: “Then my friend, you are doomed.”

NB: Javatari is a happily married father who may or may not be qualified to give parental advice. If children persist, stop having sex or use protection.