if i disappeared, would it matter so much?

oh man, it is so nice to be able to wear a hoodie.
the last few weeks, victoria has been melting in the ridiculously unbearable summer heat. in fact, in the past few days, victoria has been burning in the ridiculously unbearable summer heat. we've had some crazy bushfires, with some crazy casualties, and it's all closer to home than i'd like to believe.
thankfully the temperature has dropped fantastically the past two days. it hasn't stopped the bushfires, but we're getting there.

yesterday was mum's birthday. it was great!
this thursday is my orientation day for tafe. i'm fully expecting to be bored off my tits. ash has confirmed the validity of my expectations.
and on friday, pat and brendan are playing at a benefit gig for the CFA in fitzroy. so that'll be good, and for a good cause. plus, yelka and al rogers. you just can't say no to that.

i'm in a pretty stupid sleep pattern at the moment, staying up till 4 or 5am and getting up at 1 or 2pm. i really hate it, and yet i keep doing it. i think i'm gonna have to fix it rather forcefully.

but hey, good news: i set up the flash file on my myspace so that instead of just playing whatever random crap i've got in there at the moment (ie. box head man, spinning blue thing), it randomly chooses one of a few different animation loops every time you visit the page. there are only three at the moment, but you can bet your arse there'll be more soon. the only problem is that myspace, with their stupid security concerns, wouldn't let me load an external swf into the flash file. so all the animations are in the one file, meaning that instead of just downloading the animation you see, it downloads all of the animations and just plays one of them randomly. this sucks, but at least it works.
brendan's response to this information was "i can't believe i never noticed you were supernerd". isn't he just the sweetest?

weather and noise.

it's the blog that's been coming for two weeks!

so, i had a big week, and then i spent a week recovering from it. and i've been putting off writing this, mostly cause there's so much to cover. but i think i'll just try to sum it up briefly. here we go, day-by-day.

wed jan 21st: i woke up to discover that some men from the council had just been around to tell us that the backyard we've been playing in for the past 10 years doesn't actually belong to us, and they'll be putting up a fence and building units there soon, so could we please dismantle our back deck and move all of our belongings, because they're on council land. so that was SUPER GREAT. spent most of the day helping dad cut the deck in half and getting ready for that night - pat and brendan gig at bar open, in fitzroy! there was free entry, good times, and A MIRROR ABOVE THE STAGE. so that was a super great end to a shitty day!

thurs jan 22nd: i probably slept most of the day? gez and i were going to have a statics rehearsal (with jay of public address fame on drums, filling in for the gig i'll tell you about on the next day!), but it was WAY TOO FREAKING HOT. it was somewhere around here that a massive heat wave started. the kind where people were celebrating when the weather forecast said the temperature the next day would be a minimum of 38. ...degrees. ...celsius. but anyway, i ignored all that and went out to see celadore at ruby's! with leo! and then there was a maccas convoy, and then we went back to coops' and watched school of rock for some reason! then i went home and slept off the beers.

fri jan 23rd: as i said, i slept off some beers. then i got up! and went to the city with jay and gez, so we could play a gig! it was the 21st birthday party of my good friends mike and karl. they're old now! and they supplied me with free beer! it seems they just can't stop doing dumb things. so we played a set, at about 1:30 in the morning. it started okay, i drank a few beers somewhere in the middle, and it ended with us being told to get off stage cause our time was up, and us playing a medley of AC/DC riffs instead. so yes, DGT.

sat jan 24th: a toboggan ride of fun times! first i had to get up real early (after several beers, remember? yay!) to get to camberwell by 9:30 to practise with yelka, cause i was singing some harmonies with her at her gig at the noise bar that afternoon. i'm not going so great at keeping these summaries short. anyway, i woke up to discover that i had no car to do this with, as dad and kev had gone to torquay or some such nonsense. which is probably a good thing, seeing as i really shouldn't have been driving with my head the way it was. luckily, yelka's good friend and resident keyboard genius joel, who is a super great awesome guy, was able to pick me up on his way to yelka's. so i went there with him and mel (who is also a super great awesome guy, despite being female), practised on up, hung out with steph (also a SGAG - i'm hoping this acronym will catch on), went to the noise bar, ROCKED THE MIC FUCK YEAH, drank some ginger beer (non-alcoholic), went home intending to have a nap, did not have time to have a nap (some words in parentheses), and headed out to brendan williams' 21st in croydon. i'm not sure what i expected to happen there, but it was pretty much like school - i hung around with brendan, and we walked around annoying people who didn't really want to talk to us. but there was one fantastic difference - basty likes me now! i don't know how it happened, but i will buy whichever god did it a bag of musk sticks.

sun jan 25th: colin! aka the gig on the remaining half of my deck. it was pretty awesome. there was a hot lineup. brendan kelly music god, captain brickwell, al rogers, g-pop, yelka not playing anything, baron von mudflaps and the fireflies of doom, and daniel with a slab of strongbow! pretty much the perfect day if you ask me.

mon jan 26th: australia day! and you know what that means - beers! but also, the triple j hottest 100, and sweet barbecue times at jo's house! it was great! daniel came for a while, and then he left! and i got to hang out with kc and dave for the first time in a while, which was cool. i had good times. i also say "good times" a lot. good times!

tues jan 27th: this could be a contender for gig of the year: yelka and al rogers at manchester lane! al rogers was a two-piece this night, with coops on guitar and vocals, and dave on percussion. it was amazing and it was meant to be. these are the things that i believe. yelka was amazing too! she got her superband on! i think throughout the night there were at least ten people who got up on stage with her. it was awesome fantastic, especially since i was one of those people. and i got to be backstage at manchester lane, which was pretty great too! i had - you guessed it - good times.

that was the end of my crazy week. it was CRAZY! can't you tell?
in response to your query, i've spent the last week being REALLY BORING because i have exactly zero money. no, scratch that, i have exactly minus $1.38 money. and that's good for doing one thing: oh wait nothing. however, the following super fantastic things happened during the past week:

- pat and brendan have learnt six new songs. SIX.
- the apparently annual fist2face meeting happened. it's great cause it's the only time we ever get to all be in the same room together.
- i went to the retrostar warehouse sale and the vic market with daniel and jo. i bought three pieces of fruit.
- i am currently not wearing pants.

so as you can see, i am the winner.

PAT WINS
COMBO 3200
BONUS 5000