I got burgled

Wankers.

dead dojo

the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire..

Along with most of the rest of the building.

So RIP Sydney Yoshukai Dojo (aka The Sports Pit Gym and General Bogan Centre).

Hence why I'm not at karate right now - the fact that I'm hung-over, it's raining and I only got up a couple of hours ago have nothing to do with it I swear..

Now we're on the hunt for another space to train - anyone know of a cheap (preferably free - but we're realistic) space in the Inner West that has a polished wooden floor and doesn't mind half a dozen weirdos knocking the crap out of each other twice weekly?

shock! horror! dismay! fishboy blogs about rugby!

If you didn't see the game on Saturday watch this: the ABs new haka Kapa o Pango.

Ka Mate was/is an great haka but this.. this is real deal. Awesome.

Apologies for the lame Aussie commentators - and WTF is going on with that uber-mullet that Eaton is wearing? wrong wrong so so wrong...

And here's Ali Williams tossing Gregan around like a doll. Ahh, poetry in motion.

Yes, I've finally discovered YouTube.

listmania II: the bookening

Look at the list of books below:

Bold the ones you've read.
Italicize the ones you might read.
Cross out the ones you won't read.
Underline the ones on your book shelf.
Place parentheses around the ones you've never even heard of.
Add one word (where possible) reviews following entry.

Or do some of the above until you get bored and just post the damn thing.
Appropriated from Sleep Evangelist. From back in May. Yeah, I'm late. Again.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown – never nope nuh-huh no way
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger - oblique
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams - scintillating
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - interesting
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - timeless
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger - moving
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman - sublime
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling - annoying
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel - haven’t finished it yet
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story by George Orwell - important
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - essential
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien - fun
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon - pacey
Lord of the Flies by William Golding - depressing
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - worthy
1984 by George Orwell - bleak
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling - disappointing

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut - surprising
(The Secret History by Donna Tartt)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - frustrating
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis - thin
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – didn’t finish it, lost interest

(Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - dour
Atonement by Ian McEwan

(The Shadow of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon)

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway – forgettable
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - immersive
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - enervating
Dune by Frank Herbert - epic

Sula by Toni Morrison
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo – self-important

White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien - swirling
Don Quixote by Cervantes – quixotic (heh)
(The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster)
Illywhacker by Peter Carey - overlong
(The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov)
(if on a winter's night a traveller... by Italo Calvino)

The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter

Perfume by Patrick Suskind - gripping
The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks - beguiling
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende - fluffy
(Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin)

The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

My additions:

The Scar by China Mieville
The Arabian Nightmare by Robert Irwin
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
Beauty by Sherri S Tepper
The Star Fraction by Ken McLeod
Pyramids by Terry Pratchett

I'm not tagging anyone for this because I hate pressuring people. And I'm not sure anyone actually reads this site anymore..

Here's my start of a list of non-fiction books following similar rules. Or not. Whatever, I do what I want..

Almost Like A Whale by Steven Jones
Cod by Mark Kurlansky
A Short History Of Almost Everything by Bill Bryson
Longitude by Dava Sobel
The Botany Of Desire by Michael Pollan
The Devil's Cup by Stewart Lee Allen
Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don't Care by Lee Server
Uneasy Ethics by Simon Lee
Climbing Mount Improbable by Stephen Dawkins
Leviathan: The Unauthorised Biography of Sydney by John Birmingham

umm.. still nothing

I know, I know, I promised. Shows how much you can count on my promises, blogly speaking.

Bollocks, I've only got whinging so I'll spare you and furnish another cartoon.

Conversations can be continued in the comments as usual. Hell I could just take this site down and replace it with a forum, no-one'd notice.. *grumbles*

From gapingvoid.

place holder

I've got nothing interesting to say, I'm just sick of looking at the whinging garbage that was my previous post so here's one of my favourite Wondermark strips.

I'll cudgel my brains and attempt to come up with something personal this weekend. Promise.


Visit Wondermark (currently being guest-stripped).

things that annoy me #4278

People.

But more specifically (this time) my immediate boss

While she's a reasonably good person to work for, she's picked up an irritating habit. She's one of these people that imitates other people's accents and speech mannerisms when she talks to them. Which is kinda amusing usually: she'll end up with an attempted Irish accent when talking to a couple of the temps here and she doesn't realise she's doing it.

But recently she's developed this habit of hissing her s's (esses? 's'es? How are you supposed to write that?), probably from hanging out with someone who does the same.

Perhaps she thinks it sounds a bit more posh or something.

To my ears she sounds like that creepy old guy with the walking-frame from Family Guy..

Worse still, despite the fact that I've lost a fair amount of hearing - due to a misspent youth listening to loud bands in tiny rooms - I still have good high-range hearing, this means that all I can hear from over in her corner of the office is this whistling/hissing whenever she talks. And
she's always talking.

It's like working with a budgie. Or a dolphin.

She's driving me insane..

Rumours of this blog's demise have been greatly exaggerated

As most things on here are.

So I'm back. Ish.

Not that I have anything much to say, I just missed saying very little. Very occasionally.

As always I can't finish anything. So this blog, much like my life, will limp along in fits & starts - that's the rhythm I seem to have settled into.

So, brief recap. I went to NZ for my 2nd Dan grading. I passed. Despite being comprehensively body-slammed in the fighting (thanks Darel!). Thank god that's all over for another few years..

NZ was lovely. Christchurch was lovely: autumn is the *best* season there. Caught up with many of my friends and their spawn. Fortunately less of the spawn-flaunting this time - I think the novelty is wearing off. So much so that some of them are having to have a second sprog to keep the interest levels up..

Now I'm back in Sydney, back at work, back into the grind.. Wheee..

On the plus side, in three months time I'll be winging my way to France to spend a month hanging out in Paris. Eating baguettes, drinking Beaujolais, and smoking Gauloises. Well, maybe just pretending to smoke.

So, yeah, not much to report - 'cept that I am alive. More soon.

Oh yeah, and May the fourth be with you.

the end of effing?

I don't know. Maybe.

Sorry for the lack of posting. Or replies to comments or emails. I just can't seem to get words out these days.

This has all become far too much hard work so I'm calling an end. Or at the very least a hiatus. Hell it's been so long since the last post it shouldn't be a surprise.

If I never come back, well, it's been grand and tragic and excruciatingly painful in equal portions. More than two years of blogging is far more than I ever expected. Given that I'm a nearly pathologically private introvert running a blog was a pretty crazy idea. I blame Eroica.

Anyway, after all this grand farewelling I may well return in a few weeks. After my 2nd dan black belt grading in Easter. Assuming I survive I might well have something to say about that. Assuming that I have the use of my arms..

Also, I plan to keep on posting random crap to the Third Drawer and on Flickr, just not much personal stuff (if any).

Ciao lovelies.