meh...

Kinda sums up my current state of mind.

I was going to post on the sad and lamentable retirement of leto since her absence is lengthening and the likelihood of a return diminishing. But I haven't the energy. Actually that was probably all I was going to say, 'cept for more along the lines of how she was so cool and hers was the first blog I read and how it was such a quality piece of interwebness. There's some blatant sycophantcy for you Sarah, more where that came from if you come back! Alternatively I promise to stop sucking-up if you do return, whichever appeals more :)

I've also been thinking about writing more in the way of movie reviews, and have made (paper) notes that might form the basis of more fully-fleshed blog entries. Note the use of the word 'might'.

I'm just suffering from a little ennui at the moment. The shift to Sydney has been a good one in many ways, but I've been a bit poorly over the last week and although I'm over the worst (past the swollen throat, through the dizziness, into the buckets-of-snot stage now) I am lacking the will to even leave the house much. I've no friends to visit and meeting new people just to sneeze on them is not a great way to make friends.

I haven't even been surfing the 'net much since this 'puter here is so old it's carved out of wood and driven by an elderly hamster in a poorly-oiled wheel. He keeps on stopping to have a puff on his asthma inhaler too.

So - meh...

But here are a few links to things that have kept me interested lately, I've been too annoyed with this abacus to search out my own stuff so apologies for the link-whoring and thanks to those who I haven't remembered to credit.

Punch a Celebrity! Hours of fun, and some of them make their own cute noises of dismay. Admit it - you've always wanted to punch out Celine Dion, P Diddy or the Teletubbies haven't you? You know you want to...
(via Green Fairy? I think...)

Skeletor, the Mummy cat! Warning, contains messiah devouring undead beasts...
(thanks to Tam, as always a provider of quality linkage)

The guy who modeled his ex-wife's wedding dress on ebay. Very funny. Example:

This dress cost me $1200 that my drunken sot of an ex-father-in-law swore up and down he would pay for but didn't so I got stuck with the bill. Luckily I only got stuck with his daughter for 5 years. Thank the Lord we didn't have kids. If they would have turned out like her or her family I would have slit my wrists. Anyway, it's a really nice dress as you can see in the pictures. Personally, I think it looks like a $1200 shower curtain, but what do I know about this.
(via Peter M)

Another example of how right Frank is about artists. I mean what the hell? Props to her for putting her flesh where her mouth is (so to speak...), but to call it 'art'? Sigh...

Finally a bit of US politics, always good for a laugh...

Later gaters.

hee hee hee

fishboy is a Kebab-Eating Rhesus Monkey ...with a Battle Rating of 3.9 To see if your Food-Eating Battle Monkey can defeat fishboy, enter your name:

Loving The Surrealist!

bring it on!

fishboy is a Giant Blob that swats Aeroplanes like Flies, and Freezes Solid when Cold. Strength: 10 Agility: 1 Intelligence: 2 To see if your Giant Battle Monster can defeat fishboy, enter your name and choose an attack: fights fishboy using Strength Agility Intelligence

Come on, try your luck against the fearsome blob...

online tests

And the accuracy (or not) thereof. I enjoy doing these things because I'm a compulsive form-filler. Not that I tend to fill out forms for anyone else with any thought to giving actual factual information over. Oh no, I tend to like to fuck with statistics and spanner up any works I can get my grubby little answers into.

But online tests, since they are solely for my interest, I tend to try to be straight with. Not that this means that the personality types they give have much relation to the real me (usually only facets of my splintered psyche but they fix a point in time when I might be described that way. No-one (barring a few abject morons, perhaps some of my erstwhile workmates...) has a personality so simple that can be described so easily by a computer algorithm.

And, like IQ tests etc, the results are only indicative of a persons ability to manipulate the given system to achieve results that they like. Even when trying to be entirely honest.

This is all by way of a warning and my trying to explain away what some might consider a damningly accurate reading... I just completed the okcupid.com test and the results are in:

I'm a Hornivore.

Technically a Random Brutal Sex Master. (link)

A little harsh I'd say, but then can you trust me? heh heh heh...

(via Sarsparilla)

movies

I've been wondering to myself why it is that I don't blog about movies.

Anyone who knows me will know how much of a cinephile I am, and how my tastes in movies are on the whole fairly removed from what most 'normal' people go see. Barring BoBo of course, although the whole vomiting-at-the-mere-glimpse-of-a-handycam-shot she goes through provides our greatest parting of the cinematic ways.

I've (mostly) stopped inflicting my movie tastes on my friends. Which has meant a fair amount of going to movies by myself lately. Film festivals especially - I adore these events! Last year I seriously considered taking time off work so I could see the flicks I wanted to. In the end I went to about a dozen in the space of 2 weeks, and didn't regret a single one.

I used to write reviews about the movies I saw that touched me, or intrigued me, or annoyed me - the ones that got a definite reaction. I still do that, to an extent, in my (paper) diary. But I've never managed to get the writing up here. I think it may be the fear that once I start using this as a medium to wax lyrical about movies I may not use it for anything else...

I'd like to start a separate blog to deal solely with movies but I'm not sure I have the time, energy, ingenuity or perseverance to run two of these things. But it may be a good way for me to keep records of my thoughts on certain flicks - and to track my changing ideas about them.

Hmph. Must ponder more on this...

PS Saw 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' last night and was favourably impressed. Jim Carrey can do good work when he's made to rein in the mugging and slapstick. Go see.

new me

So I got a new tooth.

Well, an advance on a new tooth. This stop-gap (quite literally) face-saver (ha! It'll take more than that!) that they've rammed into my mouth is supposed to hold me for 6 months upon when they'll furnish me with a new pearly-white (or dull-yellow-with-coffee-stains to match the rest at least). It's going to take some getting used to. Not the look of it, which is pretty passable unless you look closely or manage to glimpse the stitching around the gum.

It's that my mouth doesn't close properly anymore. The bridge behind the tooth prevents my front teeth from meeting where they normally would so my mouth can't close fully, the molars don't meet and there's no relaxing way of holding my jaw. I'm sure it'll come right in time - my face will get used to it and the muscles will develop to do whatever is necessary. But in the meantime I feel like a mouth-breather.

And my speech is different. Probably not noticable to anyone else (especially those who don't know me) but I feel like I'm slurring a lot more than I used to ('cept maybe after a few gins, and I guess that wasn't exactly an unusual occurrence...).

Kissing feels different too. Clumsier. Bah. Probably just paranoia... I hope! (One of the best complements I've been given in recent years was from one of my now-lesbian ex-girlfriends (yes there are a few, stories for another day perhaps...) who said I was the best kisser that she'd ever met. It's always nice to have something to imagine that you're good at, and distressing when considering that the source of your powers might have been that magic tooth... Snort)

Meh. I'm just rambling, life's pretty damn good right now. Ignore the angst, it's not indicative of my mood.

Nighty night my pretties.

i always suspected...

Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me with Fishboy's Disease
Cause:	secret military experiments
Symptoms:	mild facial paralysis, occasional chest pain, tufts of hair
Cure:	infect someone else
Enter your name, for your own diagnosis:

(via Michelle)

gidday maaate

By jingo, by crikey! Cobbadiggamate.

So. Yes. I'm ensconced in the leafy suburb of Mosman, here in sunny Sydney.

So far it's been pretty groovy. Eating good food, sleeping late, doing some homey-type shopping (Ikea... crappy, but necessary). Spent nearly the entire day today in bed which was quite lovely :)

Tomorrow Sas is taking me to do some touristy things... I suppose I'd better get them out of the way. I'm looking forward to visiting the museum and art galleries, and the beaches and parks too. The fewer malls we have to enter the better tho...

Hang on.

Ick. First cockroach encounter. 5 cm long pale brown scuttler - not big enough to mount but I might press it into my diary as a keepsake. Our place is pretty nice tho and they're pretty infrequent visitors, or so Sas assures me... Hmmm...

Anyway. Posting may be infrequent since I'm typing this on a 'puter so old it probably has "property of Alan Turing" written on it somewhere. And I'm unsure of what to write about these days. Too much going on in head and in life.

Will try to keep up (down) to previous standards (or lack thereof) but this is very much a work in progress at the moment.

Later.

byeeeeeee

Ciao NZ, it's been real.

anxiety, thy name is fishboy...

An hour and a half from now I go under the knife to get this munted tooth removed and a titanium screw drilled into my head. I think I'd prefer to scoop my eyeballs out with a spoon.

Anyway, if I survive I'll recount all I can remember in vivid, gory detail to satiate all your prurient & ghoulish interests. Sickos. Or I may just wish to forget the whole ordeal as soon as possible. Most likely the latter.

Wish me luck...

past and future

This whole moving away biz has dredged up a lot of old memories - through the very mundane method of unearthing some old diaries. I spent some hours the other night flipping through 15 years of angsty crap. And then burning them. Which wasn't as cathartic as advertised really but extinguished the chance that my mother (bless her nosey soul) might come across them and have all her suspicions about me proved true...

The worst thing, other than reading some excreble poetry from my late teens (shudder), was reading about Rupert all the time (for those who never met him Rupert was my oldest and best friend, we met in 6th form (year 12 these days? Don't know. Second to last year of high school) and he died two years ago last October). Not that I don't like to remember him but it was annoying to read about all these things we did and not to be able to remember the event. I guess that goes with aging though.

One, rather excitable entry from 1988 was about us & the 'posse' (snigger, we were sooooo not a coherent group. All far too different) going to a 'punk' party in town (I was a pseudo-punk at the time I think) and drinking far too much, dancing wildly and running away when the police arrived. Actually, probably the reason I don't remember that episode is because of the regurgitations that were involve, I wrote about them in hideous detail...

More on this later (probably), I have wrinklies to entertain. This is the problem of not having my own house or using my own 'puter, lack of privacy/time...

Edit: The other problem is that my folks' (very nice) Macs only seem to run blogger in a format I'm not used to, hence not actually posting what I thought I had. One day I'll grow a brain...

the return of chaos boy

Splarkey has finally updated. He's as strange and nonsensical as you'd expect, of course...

Keep it up bro and I may add you to my sidebar! Which seems to be the death-knell for blogs... hmmm

His considerably better half also has a blog to call her own. These things are breeding. Is anyone else worried?

on the interweb no-one knows you're a cat...

Unless you give it away right from the start! Livingston has his own blog now. I always suspected he was surfing cyberspace when I was at work...

was it something I said?

I go away from the 'puter for a couple of weeks and what happens? (rhetorical) Leto signs off, perhaps for ever! Sarah, you will be missed... (but at least you left the naked lady there for us)

I'm baaaaack (ish)

Well the week from hell is now over and I slept for about 14 hours last night (woke up at 2pm to discover that I'd missed a lovely day but oh well, the sleep was needed).

A brief recap:

I've been suffering a little (like Andre the Giant, just little) tooth-ache for the last couple of weeks due to copping a fist in the mouth at karate. Left side upper incisor, one of the big front ones. Figured there was something seriously amiss but managed to sudiously avoid doing anything about it for two weeks by following my ignore-it-and-it'll-go-away method (tm). But when my gum started to abscess pusily (is that even a word?) I hied me hither to the dentist. Who, upon taking an x-ray (is anyone else bothered by the fact that the dentist always runs out of the room and hides behind a big lead sheet when they point the x-ray device at you? I mean talk about not inspiring much confidence...), declared that the tooth was broken at the jawline. He then went on to say that the reconstruction would probably take 6-8 months, involve multiple trips to the oral surgeon (doesn't that sound like they just talk about it? No? Just me then...), and cost around $6000.

Needless to say this was a little bit of a spanner in the works: having quit my job the previous week, was moving out of my flat that week and leaving for Australia the next. And had given most of my stuff away too. So I did what any red-blooded male in the same circumstances would do, I went home and went back to bed.

A visit to the surgeon the next day cleared things up a little (but only a little - I hope the guy is better at surgeoning than he is at explanations). Itr appeared that it would take a month or so for the ACC approval to come through but when it did that would cover all of the surgery costs and go towards some of the materials and after-operation care. So it would end up costing me in the region of $2500 which would wipe out my savings but was at least do-able. It also meant that I could stick to my schedule of going to Oz on the 18th, although I'd have to return in about 3 weeks for the op. I also go a bunch of antibiotics and painkillers for the current problem (which are both working a treat, yay penicillin! yay codeine!).

The initial operation would rip out the remaining bits of tooth and root, stick a titanium screw into my jaw, and cap that with a temporary fake tooth. There would then be a wait of about 3 months till the swelling reduced, and the fitting settled. Then another porcelain tooth would be fitted - this one sunk into the gum so it would look like a real one. This would then be allowed to settle for another three months by which time the final tooth would be made (by the Swedes apparently, they're your people for prosthetic teeth) and this would be fitted in the final visit. Of course all of this could be done in Sydney for a mere twice the price...

So all-in-all I'm looking at coming back maybe three times if nothing else goes wrong (fingers crossed). Which makes getting a job in Oz as soon as I get there a priority, and a job that doesn't mind me leaving for a few days very soon at that. Bang goes the relaxing holiday.

But then I get a call on Thursday from the surgeon saying that they're trying to fast-track the ACC claim and if successful they'll be able to do the op the next Friday (16th). So while that's a very scary prospect so soon it's a better idea to get it over and done with. Cuts down on my return visits to Chch at least. They're not sure whether it'll get approved but if so I go under the knife at 1pm Friday... Eek!

And while all of this is going on I'm having to move out of my flat - a place I've been in for 4 1/2 years. I'd collected so much stuff... Arrgghh... But not only did I have to move all my own stuff but since the whole flat was vacating we had to clear the collected junk of 10 years of flatmates. A big job to be sure, but not insurmountable for 4 people. Ah, that's the rub...

First off Stephen (whingey bitch-arse poseur of a wanker Pom) clears all his stuff on the Wednesday, turns up for about an hour to pull down a few posters, drinks beer with the downstairs boys, then scarpers. Without paying his bills of course, fuck-knuckle. And I find that he's off to the UK for 3 weeks the next day. Cunt. But I guess I expected that from him, 'cause he is such a tosspot.

My other two flatties spent the Wednesday night getting pissed in the lounge with the boys then went into town to drink more & play pool. I'd really no problem with that except that I knew that when they came to move all the stuff and clean the next day it'd be all dramas and not enough time etc... Prophetic really.

Thursday dawns, a crappy day which proceeds to get crappier. For a start the weather was appalling, pissing with rain and freezing all day, so shifting any of the big stuff on a trailer was off. I was up at 8am starting to sort shit out, took a load up to my folks' place & borrowed their (bigger) car so I could shift more, spent the afternoon sorting crap out and off-loading stuff onto people. Had a blazing row with the ex-wife when she came over to get some plants for the department and thought that I should be much more thankful that she was doing me such a favour. Not being in the most stable of moods I told her to either help or get out. Didn't go down too well.

The shining lights of my day were Lisa and Steve who came over in the evening and just launched straight into cleaning. They did a brilliant job, things would have been 10 times more shit without them. So at about 7.30pm I took my second (fist major) load of stuff up to the folks' along with moving Livingston to Mark & Kirsty's (much more traumatic for me than for him I'm sure). Got back to the flat an hour later to find my flatmates had fucked off.

This annoyed me a little.

In the end I was at the flat till 4am that morning tidying up, didn't manage to move much of my stuff at all. I couldn't even do a proper job of cleaning 'cause the bastard flatties had taken (my!) vacuum with them. It wasn't altogether awful - I was too wired on coffee & painkillers and sleep deprived to be capable of dwelling on how I'd been stiffed. Eroica came over at about 3am and cheered me up a bit (also took even more crap away with her, thanks Bo! hee hee hee).

Crashed at M&K's that night and was back at the flat to continue the clean/shift by about midday, got nearly all of it done then. Steffan came over and took away a bunch of stuff that I was looking to off-load and helped me carry some of the big bits. By the end of the day there was only my bed and a few plants left to go. Without my friends I would probably still be there...

So Mark and I shifted the bed yesterday and that's that. All done. No more Hereford Street. No more waving at the tourists taking photos of the house. No more blowing bubbles off the balcony. No more jungle library. No more reading books in bed with my cat (he likes Hemingway). Sigh.

Apologies for the length and whininess of this post, just needed to get some of it off my chest, there's more that's been going on of course but I can't be bothered with it anymore. The end of an era in my life...

Now - on to new adventures!

blogstipation

Apologies to my cyberpeeps for lack of postage. But I have a very good excuse:

I'm going insane.

Reason: I have to be out of my flat by thursday and I'm leaving the country in 12 days. I've been in this house for 4 1/2 years and have accumulated soooo much crap.... I have to decide which of the 1500 books I want to store at the wrinklies', what to do with the 100-odd plants, get rid of furniture, kitchen gear, pictures, general stuff... It's all a bit of a stress.

So there won't be much in the way of output from the fishboy for a wee while. Fear not, for I shall return weirder than ever sometime after thursday. Probably after I've slept for a couple of days straight.

Hope everyone is chuffing along nicely and has a great Easter planned. I've booked a lovely padded cell for the weekend. With a nice wrap-around jacket too - just like giving yourself a big hug.

and again:

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

i is very good at grammaticizing...

All hail the grammar fuhrer!


You are the grammar Fuhrer. All bow to your
authority. You will crush all the inferior
people under the soles of your jackboots, and
any who question your motives will be
eliminated. Your punishment is being the bane
of every other person's existence, because
you're constantly contradicting stupidity.
Everyone will be gunning for you. Your dreams
of a master race of spellers and grammarians
frighten the masses. You must always watch your
back. If only your power could be used for good
instead of evil.


What is your grammar aptitude?
brought to you by Quizilla

Now I must go invade Poland...