I've just realised that Green Day is just over 2 weeks away. Where the hell did this year go?!?!?

Anyway, just felt like saying Hi. My Journal has been very neglected lately. And I really should remember to get those Bodyjar tickets soon.... Probably could have done it this morning, but it was too hot. Well, probably not, but that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

This is the first Thursday night I've worked in months, and I'd forgotten how god-damned boring it is. See how bored I am?!?!?

But I better get back to work. I have some stuff to do, like the wonderful monotony of burning slides to cd.

Slide goes into film carrier. Adjust colours. "Processing. Please wait. Do not touch the carrier or film until the film is fed out." Repeat ad finitum. Oo, look. I've done 22 of them! Only 55 to go. Which is not so bad. At least it's not 357 to go..... Anyway, on to number 23. Hmmm, remove some cyan, add some yellow. That'll do. Here comes number 24. Urrgh, very green. Pop in a bit of magenta, take out the cyan. That's better!

See why I don't write in my journal very often? :P

Sorry Journal. I have been very slack with the posting lately.

I could say that it's because nothing's been happening, but that's not really true. There's been plenty happening, I've just been too lazy to write about it. And the only chance I'll get to do it now is when I'm at work, because my home computer has viruses, and I have to convince my dad that we actually do need more that just the trial version of the virus software. :(

So, Adelaide is having a heatwave. The forcast for today is 39C (102F), it's been over 36C since Sunday, and it's supposed to be 39C every day till Saturday, when it will go down to.... 35. Any of you overseas may think this is normal Aussie weather, but not for November. Aparently, this is the first recorded November heatwave ever. Or something. Fun times. Hard to think that just a few weeks ago, we were having record rainfalls, which made all the plants happy, but now they're being dryed out by the early heat and causing a big bushfire risk. Yay!

Don't worry, my life isn't all doom and gloom at the moment.
(You might think so if I told you about all the family crap that's been happening, but I'm not ready for that yet.)

So, remember how I said that Sam and I were aiming to see 52 movies at the cinema this year, and then never mentioned it again? We're still going, and we're doing very well with it. A couple of weeks ago, we caught up on the weekends that we'd missed earlier in the year, so we've been to the cinema 45 times this year! Only 7 to go!

(Which is slightly depressing - another year is nearly over. Time for me to get moody because I haven't achieved anything this year.)

But who cares, cos there's zombies on the telly! Dead Set started on Monday, and I'm enjoying it so far. Most of the characters annoy the hell out of me, but that's what they're supposed to do, so I'm happy!

Last weekend, I wrote a big long post about all the fun we had at longlongwaytogo's Scavenger Hunt, and Sam and I seeing NoFX and Bad Religion, and some other stuff. But LJ somehow deleted it when I tried to preview it, and I haven't had a chance to re-do it till now. Let's see if I can remember all the stuff I had to say....

The Scavenger Hunt was very fun. I was on a team with samelthecamel, schubomb and Linda. We came second (out of two teams!) but we still had a great time.

There was some strange dancing, I climbed a tree and scared a horse, Schu juggled Bumblebee & a cow and rode a horse (not the same one that I scared, a kiddie ride!), Linda flashed in a playground, Sam hugged a manequin and rode in a shopping trolley, and all sorts of other shenanigans occured! I'm guessing various strange photos will show up about the place soon. Meanwhile, here's all 4 of us squeezed into a photobooth!



Afterwards, Sam and I went to Thebarton Theatre to see NoFX and Bad Religion, which was great! I'm know I wrote more about it last time, but I have no idea what I said, other than the dance that Mike, Melvin and a few other guys did at the end to Everyone's A Little Bit Racist from Avenue Q as brilliant! Sam took a video of it, so maybe if your pester her, she might upload it.

Also, here's the only half-decent photo that I managed to take, because my camera doesn't like taking photos in the dark.



And I think that was about all I had to say...

I've finally gotten started on researching one of the German sides of my family, and I thought this was pretty cool:


Name History and Origin for KIESEWETTER

Last Name
KIESEWETTER
German (found mainly in Saxony and Silesia): apparently from Middle High German kiesen ‘to choose or test’ (see Kieser) + wetter ‘weather’, hence a nickname for someone who forecast the weather.
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4

I'm descended from weather forecasters?!?!?

:D


Anyway, you may have noticed that I haven't really been around much lately. Today is the first non-Sunday that I've had off work in about 3 months, and when I have been home, I haven't felt much like posting or replying to things. I might feel more like it in the near future, but we'll have to wait and see.....

I've had some strange songs in my head recently. And usually, I can figure out why they're there, but not at the moment.

Last week, for no reason at all, The Rainbow Connection showed up and didn't leave for a couple of days. Yesterday, Dr Worm came to visit, which was slightly annoying, because I couldn't remember the words.

Today, I woke up with Love Cats in my head, which made a nice change from the oddness. Then while I was on the bus, the book I was reading mentioned David Bowie, and I thought "Woo! I'm gonna get Bowie in my head!" But no. For absolutely no reason, Love Will Tear Us Apart pops in and says "Hello, can I have a look around?" But Love Cats is jumping up and down going "No, that's not fair! I was here first!"

They've all buggered off for now, but I bet later on I'll be bombarded by something else....

Yay, Billy Talent's here! Please don't leave me alone with them, Billy....

EDIT: Muse has joined the party too! This is brillian! I love listening to Triple J at work. Also, I don't believe I've mentioned how excited I am about Muse's upcoming album. I'm very bloody excited!

I guess Shihad got sick of Adelaide after coming here 3 times in 6 months last year. They're playing in Perth twice in September, but they're not coming here. :(

Oh well. I'll just continue to be excited about Soundwave.

I just had a very amusing ride home with Dad.

He just got an ipod, because his fishing buddy has one, and he doesn't like feeling left out. So, after a couple of weeks of him talking nonsense, he finally bought one, and his friend put music on it for him. And he's got "everything".

"I've got Pearl Jam, I've got Green Day."
"Dad, I'VE got Green Day."
"I've got Blink 182."
"..... You're not even gonna listen to half this stuff."
"I have been listening to it."

He starts telling me that he has to work out how go get it off of shuffle, so he can choose an artist to play. I keep my mouth shut, because I know he has to figure it out for himself. Run Like Hell by Pink Floyd starts to play. After about a minute, for no reason, it changes to another song.

"Dad, do you even know who this is?"
"I don't need to know, it says it on the screen."
"It's the Foo Fighters."
"I've got everything."

Welcome to the digital age, Dad.

Nothing. Nothing. And more nothing.

Hang on, I bought some new socks. And I went to the zoo. And I saw Ross Noble.

Ok, so I'm a liar. That shouldn't be a surprise by now.

All of that exciting stuff (yes, even the sock buying!) happened on Thursday. Sam was getting her car serviced, so we met in the city really early (about 9:30am - slightly early for me, super early for Sam), and went to the zoo.

Because we there so early, it was pretty cool for the first hour - no screaming school kids. I've been looking through the photos I took (all 318 of them - is that a little excessive?), and there seems to be a theme to some of them - Sam meets a cow, Sam meets a goat, Sam meets a rabbit, Sam meets Steve Irwin. Maybe I'll post a few if I get them uploaded before I finish with this.

( Hey look, photos! )

Then, other stuff happened, most of which I can't recall right now. Ross Noble talked about hilarious, nonsensical things, and then we went home. The End.

Except it's not, because I don't feel like ending there.

Here's a question: is it so strange to buy a David Bowie CD at the same time as a NoFX CD? You'd think I'd be used to the odd looks I get when I buy strange combinations of things, or borrow them from the library, but I still find it weird. So what if I like completely unrelated things? I'd get pretty bored if I always listened to the same sort of music, or read the same sort of books. Plus, I think the ladies at the library are snobby literary types, so they would probably look down on me no matter what I borrow. Well, I don't care. I like having unpredictable reading habits!

More questions!

Is the plural of Mongoose:
a) Mongooses
b) Mongeese?

According to some dictionary, it's both.

What is the collective noun for a group of Lemurs?

Well, this is boring. It's "group". Surely you can come up with something more interesting than that?

Anyway, I love collective nouns. I'm also amused by this:

Venery can refer to the following:

* The practice or sport of hunting game animals, or the wild animals so hunted.
* The practice or pursuit of sexual pleasure, or the indulgence of sexual desire.

See also

* Collective noun – terms of venery (words for groups of animals)
* Sexual intercourse

Words are fun!

Yeah, I have no other reason for posting than that it's my journal's second birthday, but I'm sure I can find plenty to ramble about anyway!

I'm quite enjoying Robot Movie Month. It's very amusing to see samelthecamel falling back into her Bumblebee obsession. :P But as well as Robots, June seems to be the month of Comedies Set In The Past. It's fairly likely that Sam and I will be seeing Land Of The Lost this weekend, and I can't wait until Year One the week after!

All this talking about movies reminds me of something: Last weekend, Sam decided it would be amusing if we saw 52 movies at the cinema this year, since we seem to go just about every weekend. Since we'd missed out on seeing a movie the week before, cos I was doing family stuff, we decided that we had better start making up for the weekends that we had missed, so we saw Terminator Salvation and Star Trek (It was a long weekend, and there's not much you can do in Adelaide on long weekends).

Anyway, I keep lists of lots of things, so the one that I've been keeping of movies that I've seen has finally been useful! I worked out that there have been 23 weekends so far this year, and Sam and I have been to the cinema 21 times. I was sure it was less than that, because it felt like we hardly went in March. (Actually, we went 3 times, it just felt like less because we saw Friday the 13th in the middle of the day on a Friday, instead of our usual Sunday night.)

So, to some people, this may seem a little sad, but I really don't care, because I love movies, and I love seeing movies in the cinema. Plus, winter is the perfect time for frozen coke. Maybe if I remember, I might document our adventures....

I've just found out that a Deluxe Heirloom Edition of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is being released! This is very awesome, as I was actually thinking while I was reading it that they should release a hardcover version! It's going to have colour illustrations too. Looky:

Because it's the 20th anniversary of the Hottest 100, Triple J are doing another Hottest 100 of all time.

But you can only vote for 10 songs. This is almost impossible for me to do, because, for anything that I like, I don't have a definite favourite, or even two or three things that I prefer above all others. I like loads of different stuff, and my favourite this week is almost certainly not going to be my favourite next week, or even tomorrow.

Nevertheless, I am trying to come up with some sort of list. I started by making a list of bands that could possibly have songs in my top ten, and without even thinking too hard, I've come up with over 30. If I start looking through all my music, that will expand exponentially. This is gonna be difficult.

Anyway, it's been a few months since I posted the list of books that I've been reading, so:

APRIL
Conjugal Rites - Paul Magrs
The Chronicles Of Blarnia - Michael Gerber
Tintin In America - Herge
Cigars Of The Pharoahs - Herge
Dearly Devoted Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
The Dark Tower: The Drawing Of The Three - Stephen King
The Book Of Lost Things - John Connolly
The Pirates! In An Adventure With Napoleon - Gideon Defoe

6 of those books I read for the first time. It didn't occur to me until I was actually reading Tintin In America that I was rereading it, and that it had broken my record of 7 months of reading new books. Oh well, that's still a very long time for me to go without rereading anything!

MAY
The Dark Tower: The Waste Lands - Stephen King
Doctor Who: The Eyeless - Lance Parkin
Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone: The Romantic Movement, Rock & Roll and The End of Civilisation as We Know It - Craig Schuftan
The Blue Lotus - Herge
Dexter In The Dark - Jeff Lindsay

I didn't read very much last month, I just couldn't motivate myself to do it, even though I was reading some very good books. The Waste Lands took me two weeks to read, and Hey Nietzsche!, I started in April. BTW, I loved Hey Nietzsche!. I reccommend it very highly, but I'm no good at putting things into to words, so this will tell you about it.

Wow, that brings me very neatly back to what I was talking about before, as Craig Schuftan works on Triple J, and you can listen to podcasts of his segments here. Check out the one about My Chemical Romance and Wordsworth - it's very short, but gives you a good idea of what the book is like (but the book is much more detailed). He also made his own top ten list for the Hottest 100 of all time.

Sam tried to talk me into writing about the Dragonball movie, but I don't want to! I want to reminisce about Dragonball Z!

But I will mention that you were wrong about Yamcha. He wasn't the one-eyed dude (who wasn't even one eyed, he was 3-eyed, and called Tien). But I do remember him now! And all sorts of other stuff that I'd forgotten.

Some research has informed me that Dragonball Z premiered on Japanese TV in 1989, and finished in 1996. WTF???? I can't get that into my head, because for me, Dragonball Z was very much my mid-teens: 2001/2002. It just seems so odd that it's that old....

So now I have a question: When we start watching these again, do we start at Dragonball, or Dragonball Z? Looking at this made me realise that we probably saw Dragonball Z right from the start (which makes sense now that I think about it: Sam and I used to watch Pokemon before school, and we were kinda annoyed when it finished and Cheez TV started showing Dragonball Z, but then we got addicted to that.) So, do we go right back to the start?

Whatever we do, I'm really excited about seeing these again. I'd forgotten until last night how much I loved DBZ!

Also reminded me of what geeks we were in high school, with all of our plots to become Saiyans and Jedis....
We had a convulted plan that started with getting philosophy degrees, so that when we went to America, we would become Sorcerers (as proved by Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone), then we were going to do a whole lot of other things that I've forgotten about, and eventually become Jedis and/or Saiyans.

Or maybe I haven't forgotten, maybe it was like the Underpants Gnomes plans:
Phase 1: Collect underpants. Phase 2: ............... Phase 3: Profit.

No really, they are. Time said so. Take that, you shiny bastards!

Since it's been a long time since I've had anything to say on the subject (I blame Freddy, Jason and Michael), it's time for a zombie post!

I'm still waiting for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, to be released over here. One source said it was going to be the end of April, which I was slightly bummed about, until I realised "Oh hey, April is half over already!"

Sam, look: Zombie Honeymoon 2! Maybe we should watch the first one some time?

Dead Snow - Norwegian Nazi Zombies!

And Diary of the Dead is finally being released on dvd - I can't even remember how long I've been waiting for this. The world needs more Romero! Speaking of which, he's making a new movie which is supposed to be released later this year.

Why do I spend so much of my time looking forward to things that haven't happened yet? Oh well, anticipation is fun!

Meanwhile, I'll just laugh at the idiots at IMDB who think that they know everything. "If you wear a heap of layers of clothes, the zombies can't bite you!" Yeah, maybe okay for people who live in cold climates, but what about the rest of the world? Also, that thing that occasionally happens called "summer". Plus, if you're running away from zombies, you'll get quite hot in all those layers. And that scarf you're wearing? Quite easy for a zombie to grab hold of and either choke you or drag you back towards them... Not to mention all your other wacky ideas that may work on humans, or in the world as it is now, but no good in the zombie apocalypse.

(Did I mention that I have thought about this far too much? I have plans! Not to the point of stockpiling food and weapons, but I have a few thoughts on what I'll do when the zombies come....)

Cheap shops are a great source of dvds!

I was at one with my mum today, and not only did I see 3 that I already own, I was very tempted by two and ended up buying two 2-dvd sets!

You do have to wade through a lot of crap, like movies made by famous people before they were famous (my dad thinks that just by having (insert name here) in them, they must be good! I'm a bit more discerning. By which I mean, I like different crap to what he does!). But then you find the odd bit of brilliance, like classic 30's horror, dodgy 50's sci-fi, old comedies, or just great-but-not-well-known movies (like Time Bandits).

Today, I bought two Boris Karloff films, and a Fritz Lang set which has Metropolis in it - I've been wanting to see it for ages! There was also a Bela Lugosi set, but it had White Zombie, which I've already got, so I didn't get it.

I thought that I'd gather together all of my cheap dvds and make them todays subject for the photo challenge!

Books read in March:

Something Borrowed - Paul Magrs
On The Edge: My Story - Richard Hammond
Tintin In The Congo - Herge
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - Stephen King
Serenity: The Official Visual Companion - Joss Whedon
The Dresden Files: Welcome To The Jungle - Jim Butcher
Doctor Who: The Story of Martha - Dan Abnett, et al
The Adventures of Tintin Reporter for "Le Petit Vingtieme" In The Land Of The Soviets - Herge
Death of a Transvetite - Ed Wood, Jr
Doctor Who: Beautiful Chaos - Gary Russell

That's 10 books (all of them read for the first time - 7 months!), with 2 non-fiction books and 3 graphic novels.

Total so far this year:
29 books - 6 non-ficion (I think that's some kind of record for this early in the year!)

I read Tintin in the Land of the Soviets a few weeks back, and the thing that struck me most was the huge improvement in the artwork that Herge made between this (his first Tintin story) and Tintin in the Congo (his second).



(Don't you just love his suit!)

I find it really amazing that by the second story, it looks like the same Tintin that I've been reading for years!

Which isn't to say that the more simple art of this story doesn't have its merits. It's not the most complex of plots, mostly about various Russians trying to kill Tintin so that he can't tell the world what's going on there, so they go well together.

( Cut for the benefit of Sam )

Now I'll finally be able to do something I've wanted to do for years: reread the rest of the Tintin books in order! Next up: Tintin In America!
(If you remember the end of Congo, there was an important story for him to cover in Chicago.)

- I cut my hair, and it's all curlified! I like it very much.

- I have some new socks! Some are normal, and some are long and shiny. I think I might wear some of them today. Only problem is, now I need some skirts that are about knee length, so that you can still see the shiny socks. Maybe Kevin will buy me some. I can't spend all of his money on bras!

- Sam and I saw Frenzal Rhomb last night! They were awesomely awesome. And wow, that was the most violent pit I've seen in a long time. Not to say that they haven't been around, I just haven't been able to see them, since they weren't directly in front of me! HQ was really not built for that sort of thing! Stupid nightclub.....

- I really need a shower. Stupid sweaty drink spilling people.

- I'm sure there were other things I had to say.

- I've read Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Now I'm just trying to wrangle my thoughts into some sort of order. Will be rather different to what I wrote about Congo though.

- I'm going to a wedding tomorrow. Maybe I should go look for my shoes. Parents won't be impressed if I can't find them and have to wear my Cons. Or pirate boots.

- There should be more pirate weddings!

- Punk Week only lasts for one week, not one week and one day! Because what is the point of starting it on Wednesday this week when there was no punk then????
(For those who don't know: Punk Week consists of Frenzal Rhomb last night (Thurs), Die Roten Punkte tonight (Fri) and Rise Against next Wednesday.)

- Bugger it. I can't think of anything else to write, so I'll just have to finish on this anti-climax.

Have you ever seen a Japanese astronaut?
I'll tell you why you haven't seen one.
I'll tell you why...

Because you can't do,
A Japanese tea ceremony,
When you're an astronaut.
It's those damn fat gloves.
Fat gloves...

And you can't do,
A Japanese tea ceremony,
When you're in zero grav.
'Cause the tea goes everywhere.
Tea goes everywhere...


Fringe shows seen so far this year: 5.

Tripod were brilliant as always. And maybe one day I will get around to buying their cds!

When I told my parents I was going to see Tripod, my Dad asked "Is that the one where the guy stands on his knob?". o_0

On Sunday, I took my Mum to see Chopper's Fuckin' Bingo for her birthday. She had a lot of fun, even though she didn't get any numbers, and Dad was laughing a little bit too!

It's one thing to watch bad movies. They're over in an hour and a half/two hours, and they're fun to laugh at with friends.

But reading bad books? I must be mad!
(Especially when I can tell that it's bad, because I usually like everything I come across.)

Which isn't to say that I'm not enjoying it, because I am. It's hilarious!

The book in question is Death of a Transvestite by the infamous Edward D. Wood Jr.

Glen, the main character from Wood's film Glen or Glenda, has become a transvestite assassin, and is now on death row. His last request is to be allowed to die in drag, and in exchange he tells his story to the warden.

Really, it makes sense. Because the perfect disguise for an assassin is as a woman, especially when you look as hot as Glenda does.



Bet you wouldn't have known she was a man if I hadn't told you!

Music meme stolen from everybody!

You guys know the rules, no googling, etc ,etc.

(These aren't the first 50, I had to skip a few, because no-one would have got them!)

( Lyrics here )

I started making a family tree at Genes Reunited just over an hour ago, and I may have already found out some cool information! This is awesome!

It seems that my great-great-great grandfather was born on a ship off of the Cape of Good Hope. Which is really cool, because I've been wanting to know for ages when my family came to Australia.

I'm gonna contact some people and see if I can come up with some more info. Whoo!


EDIT: Grrb! That sucks! I can't send messages to other people on there unless I pay for a mebership. Oh well. At least I've found somethng out!