fun with history

Go check out Damn Straight, especially the comments to Feb 25ths entry. Get edumacated.

bollocky bollocks

I was going to post pearls of wisdom garnered from my work amongst the lesser peoples today. But I've just gotten back from the restaurant and have now been guilted/browbeaten into going and getting drunk with Goatboy, his lovely girlfriend, and Bex.

Sigh.

All my flatties are away for the weekend and I was hoping to spend some time with just me, my cat and my 'puter.

As Blackadder so wonderfully put it: the path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devil's own satanic herd...

fish tale of woe

I have a pair of injured thumbs today. Due to my own idiocy of course, which is not unusual. The unusual part is that I was digitally (as in fingers not 'puters you geeks) slashed by an eagle ray in the process of trying to extract her from her tank.

The most dangerous part of a stingray is the tail with the rather nasty serrated barb. So as she was flapping about in her consternation I grabbed the tail to prevent getting speared through the face and having my tongue turned into a kebab (yes I have an overactive imagination). Upon grasping the aforementioned tail I discovered almost immediately that I had the business end of it. My lightning fast reflexes taking over I quickly released the spike impaling my thumb. Thus allowing the tail to swish around like a really sharp thing on a frantically thrashing tail (so I'm overly literal, sue me).

Quickly realising that this was a bad situation to be in I again leapt for the tail (rather than running the fuck away, never said I was smart). This time I used my other hand, preventing further injury to the already damaged thumb and allowing a fresh thumb to be violently lacerated (refer to previous disclaimer of intelligence). From there it was a simple staggering lurching run to the quarantine area to unceremoniously dump the bastard in the pool.

So other than dripping blood from both hands the operation was a great success. Hope the swine dies.

mental condition

My malaise/depression has now been down(up?)graded to melancholy. A condition I am far more comfortable with. This has come about by the simple act of wallowing for a few days. Listening to slash-your-wrists music, watching sad movies, thinking about death and impermanence. Never fails to cheer me up.

Some of the music that has helped me through this has been by the astounding Interpol (about whom I shall continue to rave, frothingly), DJ Shadow, Neil Young's creepily wonderful soundtrack to Dead Man, Belle and Sebastian, and the not-of-this-world Flaming Lips. Rounded off by hearty doses of New Order, Joy Division, the Wiseguys, the JPSE Experience, the Eels, Minisnap, Moving Units and Lemon Jelly. Plus a lot of listening to rdu (of course).

Music defines my life. I'm better these days and can go some hours of urban existence without musical input but I used to be unable to sleep without the radio on (to my girlfriends' annoyance). Of course these days I don't sleep at all but that's a different story.

Anyway, mental state = upbeat melancholic. Which for fishboy = happy.

PS Did I enthuse enough about the movie Last Night? (rhetorical) I don't believe I did... See. This. Movie. Beautiful beautiful beautiful. Although I dreamt end-of-the world dreams after watching it. But that wasn't too bad after all, and actually made me feel ok with the thought of all life on the planet being snuffed out. You'd love it Frank! :-D

how moral am i?

From the Morality Test here are mine and Eroica's morality scores:

Check out my Morality! 82% liberal, 18% conservative - compared to 78% liberal, 22% conservative!

Since I'm more liberal I can call her a reactionary dinosaur. Ha! Nyah nyah nyah.

(via Green Fairy)

fucksticks

Just found out that the 10th anniversary of Bill Hicks's death was yesterday. I'd always intended to smoke a cigarette and insult someone to mark his passing. On my to-do list for tomorrow I think...

quote of the day

From Radar's new column in the New Zealand Herald:

I comforted myself with the thought that I was not a man with a rat problem, but rather the inadvertently successful breeder of a small urban game reserve.

Forking hilarious. I absolutely love Radar's stand up comedy - somewhat like Eddie Izzard, only worse clothes and better drugs.

(Thanks to Leto)

human contact

Just finished watching Last Night. Wow. I'd heard good things about it and it had been on tv a number of times when I'd only managed to catch a few minutes. See this movie. I nearly cried, but in a good way. Quietly moving, poignant, touchingly funny, dramatic, tragic (Hell, everyone dies! You just don't get much more tragic). That one's got it all. See it.

insomaniac...

Well, it's not just the inability to sleep tonight, my slapper flatties are also having drunken fun with the downstairs boys which would be keeping me awake if there was any chance I'd be sleeping.

I fear that Bananny may shag Tom.

Ick

That girl... love her as much as I do I despair at the type of guys she's attracted to. I mean Tom is an 18yr old blondie who would probably be considered good looking and 'cool' by many young females of the white pants type. But the guy (a) is as thick as pig shit drying in the sun, (b) thinks he's hot shit, (c) smells. And he's the kind to be all smug and act 'studly' because he shagged a hot chick. Pillock.

But hey, it takes all kinds and Annie needs to get laid. If only so she'll stop going on about it! Not that getting some will make any difference though, she's just constantly hyper-sexualised.

Oh well, at least it's still generally amusing. And she is a lovely girl, just has far too conventional and boring tastes in people.

hmmm, I'm getting far too into this blog thing...

Just read that D and Pix have split up. And felt as bad for them as I would for someone I actually know and would call a friend.

I guess it's good to feel for someone who you 'know' and like through their writing but have never actually communicated with in a real way. It is just a bit strange to me. Am I perhaps getting too sucked into the whole interwebnet world? The dreaded 'blogosphere'? I love the reading the journals of people from all over the world but is this coming at the cost of distancing myself from my fleshly friends?

Must think on this more...

banned!

Eek! I've been tossed out by Jennifer Government! I know I haven't attended to my nation for a while but what have my miscreant populace been doing in my absence?

things that make you go "what the fuck?"

A few bits that have perked up my day...

10 worst album covers, got to say that I love Devastatin' Dave!

Making Fiends. Fantastic. Just fucking brilliant.

The worm game. Peurile I know, but I laughed. So sue me.

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. Someone showed me this a couple of months ago. Great music and funny-as words some of them (check out 'Samsung means to come'). Not for those who can't read quickly though.

More later as they appear to me.

crazy penny texts #378

She's a mad one:

Learnt 2 headbutt while keeping both hands free 2night. Sensei said it would help us not spill our beer

Followed by:

We also covered groin kicks- apparently if u do it right it will turn purple & he wont b able to pee... But how will I know if Ive done it right?

Then, inexplicably:

Also - how do you get golden syrup stains out of your gi?

The mind boggles...

anti-valentine's recap

Just to jump back a week or so, our anti-V Day smash-up went off very nicely. A brief meeting but plenty of mindful violence. Eroica and I gathered a bunch of instruments of destruction (mostly my karate weapons, plus a cricket bat, wicket, and a large concrete block), and with some very willing participation from Mel and the boys downstairs we set about the evil printer of doom (liberally adorned with names in a pseudo-voodoo-esque kinda way).

Lets face it, the thing didn't stand a chance. Most satisfying destruction.

I'll post pictures as soon as I figure out how (Frank, we'll email them to you as soon as RoBo brings the cd over and I'm not a zombie).

That was the night of the Stag/Hen parties so Bo & I went to our respective do's. The Stag night was pretty relaxed - no stripper, although we did watch porn. Drank far too much gin and tequila (as per fucking usual) and found myself wandering homewards at about 3am. Well, actually I found myself running (coz walking is too boring) in the freezing cold and pouring rain. Whilst texting people all over the place (or so I'm told - I have only hazy recollections of the sending of text, and imagine they didn't make a great deal of sense!).

It's possibly a 30 minute run from Mark's suburban abode to my inner-city 'hood, and about 10 minutes into it I got a call from Claire who was having a party that night also. So around I turned and ran back to the 'burbs to her place where I was quite obviously the most smashed person, not to mention wet from the squalling southerly. Met a lot of interesting people who I couldn't tell you a thing about if you tied me to an electric fence by my nipples, but Claire was good value as always. Crashed out there at 5ish (I really have no idea), and woke the next day to not nearly as much of a hangover as I deserved. Although someone had put socks on all my teeth, and there were what appeared to be a family of badgers excavating my skull.

(ab)normal service resumed

Sorry about the paucity of posts from fishworld, life got in the way.

Yesterday was a special day, being the wedding day of two of my friends. Steve and Virgenia have been together for about 6 (7? Seems like a looong time) years now and got married first about 3 years ago when in the UK so V could stay and work there (Steve being of English extraction). But this was the real deal. And the largest gathering of the 'clan' for some years, nearly the entire NZ/Oz contingent were there barring Ginge, Greg and Craig (who hasn't been seen for years in fact...). Great to see everyone again, made me remember what a fantastic bunch of people they are (on the whole. Minor irritants aside!).

Wish I'd been feeling better and could have enjoyed it more, but then you just can't force happiness on yourself. Managed to have a good time anyway, and it was great to see Steve & V so in love. That was really beautiful. I often scoff at the whole 'wedding' thing but when it's such an obviously sincere union like theirs you can't be cynical. Joyous occasions, happy couples, loving bond and all that - sometimes it's actually true. Thank god.

Blah. I hate to compare but it makes my emotional state seem very beige by comparison.

Anyway, perhaps more on that later.

34. yay.

Another year older.

Yippee.

Am suffering from a huge case of... Shows how tired I am - took me several minutes to remember the word 'insomnia'.

This would have to down as probably the worst birthday for at least 12 years. Not because of any outside thing - my wonderful flatmates (well, the good two thirds of them...) baked me a cake, made a card and gave me an awesome cd (The Black Seeds, "On The Sun"). I went out to dinner with my folks and the ex-wife last night which was good (despite my sincere wish to be dead in a ditch at the time...). The girls in to coffee shop next to work were all lovely. Bronwen from work sang happy birthday. As did crazy Penny with her flatmates, leaving weird messages on my phone. Got text and email from many others too (including my brother which was great).

But I just feel like nailing my door shut and curling up in a ball in the corner of my room.

Haven't been this low since the bad old days.

Nuff. To bed, perchance to sleep...

more junk to fill the night

Apparently I am an Intellectual:






From Which America Hating Minority Are You?

anti-v-day preparations

Watched Office Space last night and loved it (thanks Frank!). There are a number of similarities with my current work situation - although if I were to be honest then smashing a fish-tank would be more apt than killing a printer, actually I have a couple spare... hmmm.

more tests

So I'm home sick, this gives me time (when not feeling like I'm going to hurl) to fill out pointless but amusing online tests. Here's my Political Survey results:

left/right -8.7369 (-0.5259)
pragmatism +1.9541 (+0.1176)

Which seems to indicate that I'm a lefty but kinda in-between on the pragmatism/idealism scale. Sounds about right - not that I don't hold some very idealistic viewpoints about some things, just that they're counterbalanced by very pragmatic views on other things.

The Political Compass on the other hand gives these results:

Economic Left/Right: -8.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.33

Which again points to my lefty nature and socialist outlook but also shows what an anarchist I am. Actually I appear to have become even more extreme over the last few months, last time I was around -8 for left/right but only -4ish libertarian/authoritarian. Got to remember that I'm sick and grumpy today so that'll be skewing the results a little.

how fucked up am i?

Here's where my head's at according to the Personality Disorder Test:

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Low
Schizoid:	Moderate
Schizotypal:	High
Antisocial:	Moderate
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	Low
Narcissistic:	Low
Avoidant:	Moderate
Dependent:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive:	High

Believe what you will.

Eroica did this last night and came up with a similar schizotypal reading (hers was even more extreme I think) and that's the one that resonated with me at the time. Now having done the test myself I'd have to agree with the two disorder readings that reached above the generally normal: I've always asserted that I'm a lazy perfectionist (or as has been referred to elsewhere a perfectionist with the habits of a sloth), and schizotypal suits me. I'm happy with those labels. Well, not happy but they fit.

Thought I'd be higher on the avoidant scale though, and lower on the dependent one. Guess that's the thing about these tests, they (purport to) tell you something about your own personality that you hadn't figured out fully for yourself.

text conversation with Claire #492

Re: proposed movie viewing and my insistance that we see 'Mystic River' rather than her preference, 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre':

...
J: A little more cerebral than our usual flicks I kno, I'll bring tissues 4 u
C: Alright, I'll bring my brain then
J: Damn, I'll hav 2 find mine
C: I sometimes leave mine in a shoe
J: Oops. thought there was somethin squidgy in my shoe this mornin
C: I'll bring an extra 4 u then shall I?
J: Choice! A red 1 if you can luv

Well I was amused.

fish tail #278

I'll be posting a collection of my most interesting and bizarre experiences of working at the 'quarium over the next wee while. Things that I never imagined I'd be paid to do (or do at all in some cases). Here's one from just the other day:

Having to give the Heimlich manouver to a Koaro that had gotten a piece of squid stuck in it's mouth. Poor wee begger was beginning to float and roll upside down when I noticed, so I pulled him out and gently squeezed his jaws and the chunk came out, put him back in and within a few seconds he was happily swimming about looking for more food to kill himself with. I felt like a true Fish Whisperer.

Who'da thunk it? Not I, for sure.

return of the blog

So I got sick of Eroica harping on at me about the blankness of my interweb life. Here you go Bobo. Don't say I didn't warn you...

There have been a number of reasons why I've not been keeping up with the cyberjoneses, primarily it's been lack of time. But the other reasons are just as crippling really. I've been way over-thinking this thing - that's why they call me overthinking fishboy! Well, no, they don't. But they would if they knew what was going on in my head all the time. First they'd be running and screaming though, secondly trying to capture me with nets and tranquilizers... hell, I'm just proving my point here... *Anyway* Eroica pointed out that I was thinking about it too much and overthinking is bollocks and I should just sit down and do it so I'm trying to take her advice and this is the result. Crap init?

There're a lot of things I'd been meaning to write about over the last while, feels like a long time since I've been properly blogging but it's probably only a couple of weeks (I have an aversion to going back and reading my previous posts, except to spell- and grammar-check, so I don't know how long). Much has been happening. Some of you may know that I'm preparing to move countries (don't actually think I've mentioned it here before) and this is turning out to be a bit of a logistical nightmare... Or what I imagine a nightmare would be, since I don't sleep much I seldom have dreams that I remember and almost never experience bad dreams. I sometimes wonder if I'm missing out... But I digress (which should be my title really, given that I am congenitally unable to stick to a topic. I blame my parents and the free-flowing after-dinner conversations we have always had. Someone shoot me please...).

Fuck, completely forgot what I was talking about.

As you may be able to tell, I'm a little distracted at the moment. Nothing too unusual is going on ('cept we're being evicted but I'll cover that later) just that I have a deadline - move out of the flat on the 7th April, leave NZ on the 18th. And I've got a house full of crap to relocate.

And a cat.

Especially the cat. Very upset about that. Makes me sick to think about leaving him. Several of my previous girlfriends had commented on how I love my cat more than them, and I've come to agree with them really. But in a lot of ways he's been better to me than they have (but then I treat him better than I treat anyone else it's true). On the whole Livingston hasn't tried to fuck with my head and the injuries he's inflicted haven't been nearly as scarring. Hmmm.

Right, lets avoid thinking about that till closer to the date shall we? Lovely.

But back to my main point (and I'm sure I had one somewhere...), I'm just feeling the pinch of time and deadlines and the fact that there are too few hours in the day and too many of those hours spent doing things I'd rather not be doing and the free time I have is spent procrastinating and avoiding actually doing anything because the job of sorting out my stuff and getting it all moved is so enormous that I'd just prefer to burn the house down and run naked and shrieking into the night.

There. I think that sums it all up nicely. Night night.

Edit: So after writing this crappy stream of consciousness drivel I obviously forgot to post it and got increasingly annoyed at Blogger for not updating my site, which I'd been checking to see if it all looked ok, until I actually went into the site and saw that it's all my fault really and consequently feel a bit of a tit. Sigh.

I'll back-date it to last night in the interests of chronological consistency.

anti-valentine's

Frank has come up with this wonderful idea of 'celebrating' valentine's day in a much more realistic and bitter way.

Now I know I'm supposedly on the other team for this one (being that I'm heading to Sydney to live with my beloved, or "following the poon" as has been somewhat less delicately put...) but, as far as annual occasions go, my deep dislike for Valentine's is only exceeded by my loathing for Xmas.

No, I tell a lie, Mother's (and Father's) day just beats it.

But the point is Valentine's day = big pile o' steaming crap.

So, following from Frank's suggestion I will be hosting a soiree at my humble abode on the night in question, kicking off around 7:30ish with the ritual smashing of a printer to be included in the festivities at some stage. Most probably after an unreasonable amount of gin has been drunk but before hand-eye co-ordination becomes impaired to the point of endangering each other. (Sad to admit I haven't even seen the movie Office Space, will rent it this week to fully understand the mindless destruction)

If anyone is interested please get in touch. Or just turn up. Whatever.

Some rules apply though: the usual ones about not alarming my cat, injuring my pot plants, or damaging my books. Also, don't let me drunkenly lend you books ("Fuck, you gotta read thish one. Fuckin' brill'nt. Or thish one, love thish guy. Besht author ever. Fuckin' 'mazin'. Should read thish one firsht though. Give you some background. And thish one'sh shimilar too. I'll get you a box") , or at least remind me about it the next day.

And if you drunkenly agree to take some of my crap, *ahem*, I mean fine accoutrements, once they leave the house you can't bring them back.

super ninjas

We had a grading for a couple of yellow belts last night which was fun. Despite my turning up late and as soon as I had my gi on having to take the class for jack-knife sit-ups (aaarrrggghhhhh!!!). Considering I haven't done any real exercise for about 6 weeks now I think I didn't embarrass myself terminally...

On the whole the standard was good, perhaps I'm a little too harsh in my opinions of how the lower belts generally do kata (ie badly) but I have to remember that they're new to it and it'll come with time. The fighting was good though, given that the two being graded were female and tiny. I wonder if I ever had that enthusiasm for trying to hit people when I started. Well, actually I know I did, and was far more uncontrolled and a danger to myself and others for many years. These days though I'm slowing down a little (lot!) and the control is significantly better.

So I'm actually beginning to think about going to summer camp this year... Not that I think I'm in the condition that I should be for my grade or anywhere near the fitness level I'd like to be. But the experience would be fantastic and a definite boost to my enthusiasm for karate.

Got to see if I can afford it though, see how things go when I get to Sydney and if I can find a decent (or any) job, how much rent costs, etc etc.

Hmmm.

bollocky bollocks

I am still quite obviously new to this blogging thing and keep fucking up my blog entries on a regular basis. Lost yesterday's entry, but that's no biggie coz it was all rambling shite about how I haven't had the time/energy/inspiration to write lately. So just whinging really.

I'll try not to be too self-indulgent from here on in. Can't promise anything though.

balls to that

Journalists obviously have far too much time on their hands...

Swearing and offensive language ratings

(thanks Green Fairy)

a winter's tale

Oh my god that's funny. Once again I've fallen off my chair in mirth and gained disapproving looks from my cat from a Late Bland blog entry.

Go. Read. Laugh.

one more thing

So Splarkey has a blog now! Not that there's anything interesting on it yet, but I'll keep you posted. Well done goatboy!

rain rain rain...

So we did Dunedin. At 3am on a rainy sunday morning it was all rather amusing really: drunken students lying on the pavement, a guy drunkenly riding a mini-tricycle through town, slappers and mulleted drunks in the one club we went into, drunk students wanding all over the road in front of the car. Yes there was a lot of drinking going on...

Coffee calls, more later - possible including some thoughts about the actual exhibition!