My So-Called Friendster

Hi Folks,

During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I’ll be growing a Mo. That’s right I’m bringing the Mo back because I’m serious about helping to change men’s health and the fight against male depression and prostate cancer. Why? Well apart from it’s obvious…

Along with piggypigpigpig, sebthecat, Rockie, Catherine, TC, Gary, domesticmouse
and a number of others whose names (at the moment) totally escape me
(although we weren’t all together)… it was an stunning evening with
Chris and Neil. The Pet Shop Boys. I had heard many stories of just how
good they were at the V-Festival, and to be honest, I think we had the
better part of the deal last night

I can only sum the evening up with one statement (yes I know I SMS’d one like it to people during the show - but it’s SO apt):

Song #2 - "Left to my own devices…" and I became a dancing, cheering, gibbering fanboy for the rest of the evening.

…and proud of it

It seems that I am only putting ‘relevant’ posts out after a weekend - and then they seem to be full of "I did this…".
Gosh, maybe this is indeed a ‘journal’ of sorts. I’ve been reading the
Samuel Pepys diaries and all-in-all they can be pretty dry reading,
although I find them fascinating from a historic context. They’re also
filled with the minutiae of Pepys’ daily life such as "I went to see a
friend", and "had dinner with the wife", as well as great occurrances
such as The Great Fire Of London.

Anyway… thought I’d muse…

So, there was a weekend just gone, where I did little but it seems to have been more than that. I’m not sure why, but it did.

Friday day
was work (the last day of being the boss, whilst everyone else was away
in ’sunny’ Adelaide, where I’ll be in 2 weeks) and sourcing a new
accountant - which I have finally done - he’s calling by on Wednesday
morning to pick up the sorted paperwork.

Friday evening: was little, well OK - there was one good thing :). Work finished, then I went off to sophronia’s birthday drinks at the Marlborough Hotel. Got there early, and happily met up with vena_trix.
Took a quick side-trip with her to Industrial Strength to see some
clothes that she was thinking of buying (and made a date to do the same
again this week - also at Reactor), then back to the Marlborough where
we had a few cocktails before the birthday girl herself arrived and
then we plied her with alcohol. (Note: Green Tea Liqueur tastes like
Purple jelly-beans.) Saw a few more people arriving, chatted to some,
lived well in front of others :). Then, finally left at about 11-ish,
after having a quick hello chat to Eric… yes THAT Eric ;). Went off
home, plugged in the new power-supply to the ‘old’ router (a D-Link)
and everything came up roses on the Home Network I have NO idea why
the D-Link works and the Link-SYS and/or NetGear wireless routers don’t
work. The configs are correct, the firewall settings are the same as
for the D-Link, yet they don’t connect through to Bigpond (and DON’T
crap on about Bigpond being bad and being the problem, I KNOW how bad
they are, but they are the supplier I have until November). It’s just
tough when they (Bigpond Technical ‘Support’) give you all the server
settings, yet when the router configuration fields are filled, the
routers STILL don’t see internet connectivity. Not sure where to go
with that one - though I DO have an Optus-compatible wireless router
now and a Bigpond-compatible wireless router. I just have to find out
why they don’t connect. Anyone know a friendly Bigpond-approved
contractor so I can ask some obvious questions? So, that was Friday
night. Nope, no going out to Blink or anything else, was a little tired
by that point.

Saturday, was catching up on Wrestling before Wrestlemania 23 on Monday night (tonight!). Then, I was at a loss. What was I going to do? I tried the V-Festival,
but tix were all gone. I heard of some people’s ninja-escapades to get
into the Festival free, and I know that 4 were caught by Security and
handed over to Police (nope no-one I/we know). So, I decided to waste
some time with my remaining Movie-Money ticket and see the new Mr. Bean
movie. It’s a Cable-watcher, not a cinema watcher. Funny in places, but
really - not the best film of the new season. There are others which I
initially wanted to see, but when I got into the city, I was just not
‘in the mood’ to see them. Mind you, I will happily see some of them
when they come to cable, or for that matter I will also, probably,
happily see them with people, just (at this juncture) not by myself.
Got back home to find several bag-ladies had exploded both inside and
out the back of the house (in other words razorgirl_au
was having a prop-building day for a Camarilla Roleplaying Convention
(to be held in Canberra) which she is running (pretty much by herself
with allegedly little local ACT support). Still, I got home (just a
little behind time) to shut off the power for Earth Hour,
yep the PC and all power went off for that hour, just like so many
places DID do on Saturday night - even (and I was impressed) at the
V-Festival where Beck announced his support and killed the lights on
his stage and did an acoustic number for about 8 mins, at least he made
an effort. More than I can say for The Empire Hotel, which had all it’s
lights blazing when I went past at 7:40pm. The pics of the CBD
were a good indicator of the effort we went to. I wonder what the
actual outcome was, though. What ’saving’ did we actually make? SMH
says: "The 10.2 per cent fall in CBD energy consumption was more than double the expectations of Energy Australia." Will others follow suit? After all, next year they want to take it global.

After Earth hour, a quick shower and change and then off to see Crackwhore, with sweetypie_die, at The Mandarin Club (upstairs in The Oriental Room). I DID have a plan to drop by The Oxford Tavern
and see Mandi, yes my God-daughter, who was working there, but time
slipped away. Hopefully we will catch up THIS weekend. Now, as to Crackwhore.
The band was not too bad, really, I expected something… er… more
uncontrolled and crazy, but was pleasantly surprised to hear them being
quite damned good. The support bands were … all right, very 70’s
pub-rock in sound (although one band was very X-Ray Spex fused with Sex
Pistols). I do have one major criticism about Crackwhore, though (and I did chat with matt_hell about it afterwards). They need a sound engineer/mixer. The guy that they did have sound-mixing (supplied by the venue) appeared
to be either incompetent, or just didn’t care, or something - not sure
what. It was a pity as the performance ramped up well, stage presence
was quite good, and got better as the set went on, and as hexyhex
arrived… there were groupies and flashing of breasts and grinding on
the dancefloor and guitar-hero-stances, and it became a good night
indeed. I especially liked the nice tribute to The Who at the end where
the drummer was buried under his drumkit, and several other pieces of
furniture (I think sootica
got some pics of that. From there, it was off to The Townie, where more
drinking was had and catching up with the Black Planet guys. Heard
stories about their regular venue, and why the club wasn’t on this
month, caught up with a few others, had an alleged ‘bomb-scare’ with a
few police cars outside (obviously not taken too seriously as no-one
was evacuated). From there, off to The Fortress for more drinking with sweetypie_die and arradius. Made an appointmentfor portraiture on Friday (which I have off - and that is good - with pay). Then there was sleep.

Sunday:
was a day of rest Although I did do one thing last night which
surprised the heck out of me. I hadn’t seen a specific episode of Dr
Who, "School Reunion". And so, waiting for the ABC schedule to resume
for 2007, I decided to watch it. What I didn’t expect was the emotional
reaction I had to watching The Doctor seeing Sarah-Jane again (not to
mention the farewell at the end of the episode). All-in-all the episode
suffered for this milestone, as the storyline, whilst standard and well
done really did come a distant second place to the reunion of The Dr
and Sarah-Jane (not that there’s anything wrong with that - as it was
for this very reason I watched the episode). You know, I think Mr
Tennant is a very under-rated actor. His reactions just reeked of
honesty (it was as if he honestly HAD seen her last 20+ years ago) and
it put an entirely new spin on the last episode of the 2nd Season.

Since
last week, I haven’t caught up with a lot of LJ - but I hear wind (and
perhaps that’s an apt description, really) of more drama. Everyone
should take Rule #1 to heart

This week? It’s a short week, thanks to that religious festival ;). The week will be  consisting of work, maybe a film, definitely Wrestlemania 23 tonite (for those who will be there) - and for those overseas peoples (or those not at work) please remember… NO SPOILERS!!! Thanks

As
for the rest of the week? I’m somewhat unsure. It really does depend on
work. Tax on Wednesday morning; Wednesday night might be The Oxford Tavern if Mandi is working; Friday midday-ish is the photoshoot and Friday night is The Pet Shop Boys! (who else is going?); Saturday will be The Easter Show; I do know that Ascension
will be a happening thing for Saturday night (although the website
seems to be down today?). Sunday is Easter Sunday and I don’t know how
long the clubs stay open under licensing regulations, and is there
anything on that evening? Monday is another public holiday (with pay),
and then next week? … It’s another short week cumulating with a
flight to Adelaide (on Friday 13th no less) for a week of interstate
work (yes, Adelaide people, I’ll be down there from the 13th until the
20th - working of course - but still available ;))

So,

Having gotten pretty much most of the tax-documentation
together to lodge (yes yes I know it’s a leeeetle late) and just
waiting on the accountant to get back to me with a day/time (and them
being aware that I am outta here on April 13th for the wilds of
Adelaide for a week or so) I think I am just about at the point (this
is where mslucyblue laughs her arse off - probably joined by nikkicat13) where I am either going to ’store’ some things or just toss them.

Let’s
be straight-up for a moment… I’m not going to use some of the
clothing I have anymore, I don’t do the role-playing thing so I won’t
need them as costumery, so some of them can be hoiked. As far as
paperwork (necessary paperwork) is concerned, it can be put into
storage boxes and kept … somewhere… methinks. No, I’m not going to
’store’ (read: dispose of) photos or important things, I am
just going to continue and finish the sorting thing (now coupled with
"tossing of unnecessary ’stuff’"[tm]), started last month with about 3
garbage bags of useless ‘paperwork’ consigned to the great recycler in
the sky.

This also now leads to the question of what is
happening this weekend. Yes, I DO see the irony of me asking that
question. I know what is on - just not sure what I want to do is all.

Tonight? Well, after a brief sojourn to celebrate birthday shenanigans with sophronia, perhaps I can head to Blink and pick up my membership card from Andrew and perhaps run into drayven and/or Mandi.

Tomorrow? I WAS going to Black Planet with my God-daughter, but seeing as the venue has canned it in favour of a [shudders] Drum & Bass night (at allegedly $26/head entry  - what IS
it with that venue???) that’s SO not an option, I’m not really in a
‘House-Party’ kinda mood, so it seems that on Saturday it MAY be the V-Festival - depending on current ticket availability - (though I had a ticket offer and it was yanked ‘last minute’), perhaps seeing the guys up at Abduction X
(haven’t see Skeeta in a while), or even going in and chatting to Jamie
Leonides at ‘Sounds Of Seduction’ in their new USyd digs.

Hmmm… so on Saturday, is anyone from here going to the Sydney V-Festival?

If
I do that - I think I will be non-compos-mentis on Sunday, which will
happily mean just slothing about the house gibbering some random trash,
and possibly throwing out some random trash as well. Sounds like the
thing to do on a Sunday (unless I’m out at one of the 2 Film Festivals
[Silent or Newtown]).

Does ‘Finding Nemo On Ice’ sound like a ‘bad Sashimi Restaurant Nightmare from Disney’ to anyone else?

A Muppet Christmas Carol;
Jingle All The Way;
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation;
Die Hard;
Bad Santa;
The Santa Clause;
It’s A Wonderful Life;
White Christmas;
The Polar Express;
Scrooged

…and apart from unfortunate things like the absence of:
Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer;
The Little Drummer Boy;
and other 1960’s-1970’s Christmas staples… It’s a GOOD evening

It was a full weekend, though I thought it might be even more full… I
do have a couple of biting comments and they are aimed at (primarily)
technology. Apart from that things went kinda OK

Thursday
night was the instant swell-a-thon of Lighting the Xmas Tree in Martin
place. If this year is any indication… I state: Never Again. I saw
the ‘tards and the imported rude @sswipes I was a little disappointed
wit the Xmas Tree Lighting this year as it was a real circus (and not
in a good way). It’s very disturbing just how positively awful people
can be when they feel they have a ‘right’ to be in a place (moreso than
others). Shoving and jostling and swearing to get through a bunch of
like-minded yokels who act as if they rarely get into a city, let alone
know how to act in polite company. I would recommend that they have the
Martin Place tree again next year (after all it IS tradition) and have
another one in Parramatta to divert the influx of cretins and
sub-humans. It might make all our lives that little more bearable when
the tree-lighting happens next year. Still, it looks fabulous. No I
didn’t stay for it I’ve seen it since - I wandered off to save my
sanity and my self from several assault charges. Pedestrian-rage
anyone? Missed seeing goldfishgeorge, though.

There was a Friday night which was a sprint to Bar Ace, from the office, a quick drink to say hello to yar_daft_willie
and to prove to myself that she isn’t a figment of my imagination. From
there, a super-fast turnaround at home and high-tailing it to Surry
Hills to meet up with barbarianplates at Tabou
restaurant. Oh. My. Gods. OK - the wine was pretty damned special (not
an awful red at all - but at that price I would expect no less). Hey! master_flea!
What WAS that wine? I think it was Santenay `Champs Claude` Pinot Noir
2002. I want a case! It was so good we drank 3 bottles. Ordering was
easy as the menu was small-ish, which in no way reflects on the quality
of the food, because the food was stunning. I went for the Specials
Board Entrée of sliced Duck breast in a mignonette sauce, which just
melted, the sauce was piquant and the red-wine richness was not
overpowering but set off the sweetness of the duck breast fillet
perfectly. nerdi
had the HUÎTRES AU NATUREL, half-dozen freshly shucked oysters with
Pays Basque sausages and sauce mignonette which looked awesome. mslucyblue
ordered SALADE DE CALAMAR which was a calamari, saucisson, baby beans,
nicoise olives and rocket mix. The Calamari (of which I stole a small
portion) was just firm enough to have texture and yet creamy in the
middle. Quite brilliant and something I’d like to try more of warmed in
that manner. Most others went for the SOUFFLÉ AU FROMAGE, a twice baked
gruyere and goat’s cheese soufflé which was brilliant, though probably
needed a tad more salt for my personal taste, it was wonderful and
creamy and the others were raving about it. I managed to grab a quick
taste of spiteful_elf’s
CASSOLETTE DE RIS DE VEAU which was a sautéed mixture of veal
sweetbreads, wild mushrooms and snails which was surprising in it’s
flavour - I couldn’t quite place it. Though I am a fan of most
sweetbreads, I had not tasted snails - and I don’t know if I did or not
as the texture of all of the entrée was similar. Very strong yet subtle
mixture of tastes which were set off by the mushrooms. The main courses
were equally as stunning. I opted (as did most others) for the CÔTE DE
BOEUF which was about half a kilo or aged beef rib cooked to a Medium
rare perfection in anchovy and lemon butter. It fell off the knife and
melted in the mouth. As this course didn’t come with any vegetables, we
opted for lightly blanched snow peas and PURÉE DE POMMES DE TERRE AUX
TRUFFES (a mixed truffled potatoes). Together the overall mix was
excellent. mslucyblue
ordered the CANARD which was a Roast duck breast with rosemary,
picholine olives, caramelised onion and sarladaise potato. The sliced
duck breasts were as tender as the entrée which I had and the sauce
seemed similar as well. The penultimate surprise was the dessert of
which I had the Chocolate Parfait. Naively, I expected it served in
that time-told Australian tradition of a glass, but it was served as a
slice of what I can only describe as soft, iced chocolate ganauche,
with an almandine wafer and small amount of iced cream on top. It was
(to be blunt) perfect. This pretty much made the meal for me. Of course
I finished with a Frission VSOP and coffee. The meal overall was
pricey, more than the set menu price, actually, but I felt that it was
absolutely worth the cost and the time (as did the other attendees).
The service was brilliant, timely, professional, yet with character,
the waitress got her 10% tip as it was well deserved and I am certainly
putting that restaurant on the cards for a return visit next year.
Afterwards we all waddled into taxis and went our own separate ways. mslucyblue and I wandered up to Blink to meet up with broken_daniel
and company, and then after a couple of hours headed off home. It was
an excellent evening with great company Of course an evening with mslucyblue is always worthwhile - and she seemed to enjoy herself immensely.

Wasn’t
sure what I was doing on Saturday evening - though I got many messages
from Mandy (my God-Daughter) to head out to Le’Erotica later in the
evening. I had in my mind that mslucyblue
was working, so I decided to head out to Fox Studios at about 9pm and
meet up with them. Mandy was already there and Aussie was on his way
from work. Mandy looked stunning in her three-quarter coat and top-hat.
What she was wearing under the coat was equally as stunning. MANY looks
and MANY appreciative comments were made. I caught up with morphine_alice
who hightailed it from The Rocks to apparently escape a stalker, and
she arrived, looking quite spectacular in her fur-coat with only a mesh
bodystocking underneath. Trust me, photos abound. I saw a great many
people there - though I think it was one of those nights when my vision
was crapola (blame the recnt hot weather), as I couldn’t really see
distances - so I was spending time in one area and then going to the
stage to see what was happening with the shows. Apologies to anyone I
didn’t say hello to - or ignored. I just (probably) didn’t see you at
all. I DID see Mistress Felina (my old house-mate), master_flea, felix_femme, grey_evil_twin and a few other non-LJers. Le’Erotica was quite fabulous, and I throw my hearty congratulations to the people of DV8 House for raising money for Sydney Leather Pride
and for a great night. The first show, being Satomi in a
self-bondage/self-suspension was great, this was followed by a double
hook suspension by two performers whose names I don’t know - however,
having the hogtied girl suspended from the hook-suspended boy was
pretty damned fabulous. The next show I saw was yoursutor performing a lightning fast suspended hogtie on tizzytinka
which was (in my opinion) the overall best performance scene of the
night. there was a connection between them that was palpable and the
total scene (including the pudendum-pounding spread-legged toss against
one of the supports) had her smiling throughout the entire performance.
Very damned cool performance. Next was a suspension within a suspended
cage by Satomi and Midori - but to be honest I thought this was
somewhat messy looking. The cage that the suspension was performed in
was suspended off the stage, but the ropes all over it (for binding)
were obscuring the overall view. It was long (or seemed to be that way)
and it didn’t seem to have a real feeling of being a scene. The second
best scene of the night was a catsuit/burlesque suspension, which was
quite brilliant the connection between the two performers was palpabale
- and I think that makes a performance - the connection. Unfortunately
Bridgit Harrington had all her off-stage performances interrupted by
ill-briefed security (not sure what happened there, but I bet someone’s
head will roll for it). There were roaming performers throughout the
night and overall it was a great evening. Yes, overall it was a little
under-attended, but the music was quite fab, and the performances were
damned fine too. I went there with some friends and it was very much
their scene - kind of like what Burlesque CAN be (without all the
feathers etc…) though that has it’s place too. To be honest some of
the Burlesque I have seen around Sydney recently has been VERY much
more performance art - and I think that it you want to go avant-garde,
then don’t misrepresent it by saying it’s something else.

A BIG congratulations to missdissent and Non-LJ-Master Tom on their engagement on Saturday night! ABOUT BLOODY TIME!!!

Anyway, as I said, Le’Erotica was excellent and I look forward to seeing the next one. Afterwards, morphine_alice, myself, _tripitaka_
and 3-4 others went off to The Exchange Hotel, which had no bathrooms
because it was under renovations/ What sort of licence allows a public
bar to run without bathrooms?? From there I headed off home. Where I
SMS’d people and was online for a few hours before falling over asleep.

Sunday was sleep and pottering about the house. that was kinda it apart from some interweb workings and cable chilling.

That was the week/end that was. This evening was WWE Survivor Series - and for the results go to wwe.com Was great to see selkiss and kanika tonight… HUGE hugs for you both.

OK
- on the work front - we had 2 people leave today - I posted about one
already - so there are TWO positions available. Why did they leave?
Well, one had a family issue, and the other got offered a job where
they could work in Networking more than Support - in other words, they
didn’t live up to the contract. That is an important thing to me. if
you sign, you make a committment. Still, that leaves 2 positions where
I work - look to the earlier post for details - a Microsoft environment
- call the number IF you have the experience and can commit to the
contract - and if I know you, it would be better.

I did get a
couple of messages about me not getting messages etc… I think
trillian is stuffing me around so I am going to dump it and see if I
get the messages. Also I am getting the new phone this Thursday - so
maybe I can get all the SMS things fixed too - yes I haven’t gotten my
phone firmware upgraded at all since I got it. So to those people who i
have ‘ignored’ - bear with me for a couple of days… I will have a new
phone and MSN will be all OK.

Now - a little more cable - getting the Household Xmas card working - and then sleep. Tomorrow is another day.

Weird weekend. Well, not weird in a bad way - just weird in a ‘not much really on’ way. Not to mention that my mobile has been playing up again - so intermittency is all the rage on my hip right now. The replacement battery looks like it’s solved most of the problems I would hope - and there are apologies for anyone whose messages I’ve ‘ignored’ in the past week.

There was a Friday night which was filled with a quick stopoff at Bar Ace, followed by chasing down people at The Agincourt Hotel, followed by meeting up with Jow outside Blink followed by a quick sojourn up to Hellfire - actually that is an incorrect term - it was not a quick sojourn at all. I was on my way up there to catch up with all manner of people and catch up with a lot of them I did indeed Felicity, Robyn, Ultra, a vision of the visiting wonderfulness of Snikki, Mark, a very pleasant surprise visit from Shell who brought along the wonderful Kelly (who woefully has no LJ), saw an all-too-brief glimpse of Bekk, chatted for a short while with Steve, caught up with the Sis, Put Jow in touch with BadPauly, ran into an OLD friend Adam who was there with the visiting gorgeousness of Nadine (back from Germany), caught up with Vulpy at her last ever Hellfire (for the foreseeable future - living in Amsterdam will do that to one - I swear I shall visit), spent some time with Lisa and Leon, caught sight of the ravishing Crimsontide, was also hoping to see Donna there but must have missed her.

After Hellfire closed, a number of us (including the ubiquitous Piggy) headed off to Phoenix, but were refused entry due to… er… some reason. So we went up to Q Bar until THAT closed, then after running into a very friendly drag-king (from Hallfire) who took a liking to us all, we wandered back down to Phoenix Bar, where we were let in immediately. This is where we I half expected Shell to be, but she had left with Kelly (who was going to catch up with me on Saturday night at Dark Rhapsody). After Phoenix, we all trudged up to Judgement Bar (being let in by Security who knew me) and apart from drinking, and chatting, the highlight was tearing down a drunk patron who wanted ‘a piece of the freaks’. Poor woman didn’t know what she was getting into - and she was summarily kicked out for harassing patrons - no I didn’t report her I was too busy fighting her with wit and intelligence, a battle which she was so obviously ill-equipped to join.

From there (at 9am) it was home, where there was asleep until I woke up late (and I DO mean late) on Saturday evening. Waited to hear from Kelly and the others who were out at Bersek and was going to head to Dark Rhapsody… unfortunately heard that there was almost no-one at the Sly Fox and not hearing from Kelly, decided to stay in. Jow was off seeing SixFtThick and was out and about, but heard nothing from her when she’d finished. There apparently was a large party on - but I’m the kind of person who doesn’t crash parties, I just think that’s rude. If I get an invitation, or hear from the person/s running it that it’s an open house, then I feel Ok going. I don’t believe in just turning up because another attendee decides to Still, no real bother, watched some DVDs… This also meant that I stayed awake, dammit, and didn’t sleep until 6am. This made Sunday a short-ish day, my mobile kept turning itself off (which kinda explains where missing calls have been going) so I went out to buy a new battery for it. Updated Events In Sydney for a little - went on with the DVD/Book Cataloguing. Had a flying visit from Jess on her way from the markets. Totally forgot about The Glebe Street Fair… got disgusted about that - watched Enterprise (on both TV1 AND Channel 9 - different seasons, you know) then slept.

Yesterday was Monday, I worked, yes I also put out this weeks Events In Sydney, put out the last notices for this months Barbarians At The Plates, took back the now malfunctioning battery that I bought on Sunday and bought a new one (again) - I think a new NEW phone is on order now. So…this is Tuesday, I’m working… well trying to look like it anyway - I think we’re all just killing time for the next 40 days until SOM I starts in Canberra. Tonight is the night of Sydney Screening and then there’s nothing on until next weekend - until - Le’Erotica - and I HOPE that there are tickets still available for it.

I also have NO idea where I can get a damned spa for this year, as there are no companies who do it in Sydney anymore No, Bill & Tracy’s aren’t a working operation anymore - they only have an answering machine and don’t return calls. So that’s HIGH on my agenda right now - along with the household Xmas Cards and getting ready for Boxing Day (yes I must get the invitations out for that too)

Geez - THAT was a marathon entry which almost said nothing…. sometimes these entries seem like just noting down mundane stuff. Tough - sometimes life is like that