Democracy: Brought To You By Capitalism!

Day 23, in which I am hungover. Or, at least, I was. Then I had an omelette with chorizo, potato, spanish onion, capsicum and roast tomato & buttered Turkish toast. Now I feel more human.

Got this in my first TeeFury grab bag. I normally would not have picked so overtly political a shirt, considering that as a foreigner in Australia, I'm not allowed to have an opinion.

By the by, I've worked out all but one of the letters: D: Disney E: Dell M: McDonald's O: Target C: Coca Cola R: Toys 'R' Us A: ??????? C: Cineplex Odeon Y: Subway If anyone can work out the A, let me know.

I Enjoy Drinking Beer.

Day 11, in which I scribble on a pad.

Digest.

I got quite a bit of reading done today.

We headed up to Tanja's folks' place for Mother's Day. Since CityRail bosses seemingly do not have mothers, they scheduled trackwork from Blacktown up to the mountains. I, imagining a long trip, grabbed several digest-sized books from Oni Press that I had purchased in a 50% off sale at Kinokuniya. Later, after gorging myself on steak, cheese, potatoes, bread, crackers, wine, beer, and cake (and then unceremoniously falling asleep in a recliner), I got to read again on the way back. Then, once home, I went back to the sale-pile and read some more. This is what I read:

Hopeless Savage, Vol 2: Ground Zero (By Jen Van Meter & Bryan Lee O'Malley, with 3 other artists helping out)
A really fun and well-written story of a child of two rock stars, her interactions with her family, her friends, the trash newsmedia, and a guy at school. Very sharp and funny (though I was glad the use of made-up slang mostly dropped away after the first few chapters), and using a lot of the teen romance tropes while subverting them at the same time. Like in my other favourite book, Scott Pilgrim, O'Malley's simple art and fantastic facial expressions tell so much with just a few lines. One thing I want to comment on in this book was the strong relationship Zero (the main girl) has with her siblings. It's so nice to see a family of siblings that seemed to genuinely like one another, help one another out, and are supportive. The only disfunctional family relationship is Zero and her mother, and that's treated as an odd occurance. As someone who's read about the Weasleys in the Harry Potter books and the Stantons in the Dark Is Rising Series, I'm wholeheartedly sick of large families that seemingly destroy each other's lives on a day to day basis, only to band together in the end. I don't know, I just don't seem to have patience for that. Fred and George Weasley, for example, drove me mental in the Potter books. But back to Zero's story. Something else interesting is that flashbacks, television and chapter breaks are done by the guest artists, providing a clear shift from the day-to-day lives/art-style. Very cool, and I want the 1st and 3rd volumes now.

Moped Army, vol 1 (By Paul Sizer)
This book makes me a) want to get a moped, and b) make a tshirt/get a patch for my backpack and show Moped Army solidarity. Rich girl forsakes life in upscale super-suburban futuristic city to hang out with the nicest biker gang on the planet. These aren't your Bandidos, though. They're essentially nerds and outsiders of various stripes, a "survivor clique", as coined by one of the characters: punks, hackers, hippies, gearheads, (there's a girl named Chu Toi, pronounced Chew Toy, but she'll freakin' end you if you comment) riding kitbashed mopeds and trying to cobble together a sense of community in a world that's mostly forgotten them. I REALLY liked this. That t-shirt might be in the making soon.They own the skies, but we own the streets!

One Bad Day
Zero character development, flying-by-the-seat-of-your-butt-because-you've-lost-your-pants storyingtelling. It's pretty much a Run-Lola-Run-style action movie in comic book form. Girl sees old acquaintance. Old acquaintance. is hit by car. Girl suddenly being chased. People get hurt. Things get scary. Bad birthday parties are attended. Riveting stuff.

Clockwork Angels: Texas Steampunk Vol. 2
And the big disappointment of the day... I just can't get into manga art. It's the comic-book equivalent of the Wii controller.There are people who adore it and worship it, but if you can't get past the controls, you won't dig the games. I couldn't get past the art style, so found myself unable to pay attention to the story. Everyone looks alike,speech bubble don't point to the right characters, they seem to say things out of the blue and without reason, like an avant-garde French film. And I was really looking forward to this! I love steampunk, and the story that combined mysticism, parlour magic, intrigue and mystery seemed really cool. Too bad I only made it about 15 pages in.

So yeah. Books, huh?

What I done did on my birthday.

1. Woke up. Drank coffee.

2. Schlepped a heapin' helpin' of parcels (like two huge bags full) to the post office to send off to eBay folks.

3. Sat on the sidewalk outside a cafe stealing their free Wifi and twittering.

4. Meeting not one but TWO people from my team on the street, one of which tried to ask me a "quick question" about work. LALALALALA it's my day off! Ask me Monday!

5. Went off to Harris Farm at Broadway to get supplies for Sunday dinner. Contemplated getting fancy rum at Vintage Cellars.

6. Realised that despite a huge revamp and renovation, Broadway Harris Farm is still (despite wider aisles) full of choke points where people pile up and have to wait.

7. Realised that Swiss Brown mushroomns are expensive. Like 3.99 for 200 grams. Tanja's list said 600 grams, but I thought she must not have meant THOSE mushrooms and got regular ones instead (hint: she did want THOSE mushrooms).

8. Stopped in a Vintage cellars on the way back to get my fancy rum (after having, like a wuss, discussed it with Tanja, who said it was okay). Then noticed that the Monty Python's Holy GrAil (tempered over the fires of burning witches), which usually costs between 7 and 10 dollars per 500 mL bottle, was on sale for $2.50 per bottle. So I grab 6 of those and bring them to the counter, along with a $50 Origine Caribbean rum (I told Tanja how much that was later and she went "Oh, I thought you were going to get on of those 80 or 90 dollar ones." Argh!). The guy behind the counter looks at them and says "Listen, mate. I'll tell you what: if you take the lot, I'll give them to you for $1 per bottle." Me: "How many are there?" Him: "Well, two more in that cooler, and then another 9 over there." "So 17." "Yeah. Do you want them?"

9. I make a rash decision.

10. I struggle out of the shop, holding a box with 8.5 litres of beer, plus the two shopping bags. After 5 steps try to flag a cab. No good, all full. I spot one empty, who makes an incredibly expressive gesture that I should go further down the block. I struggle down, take too long, and he leaves. So I call a taxi. And wait. And wait. It's stinking hot. I have no hat, no sunglasses, and dairy products in the bags. It's stressful. I eventually grab a bus that gets me closer to home, and struggle to the house, having to stop twice to rest.

11. Once inside, a realisation occurs: the beer was in the fridge at the shop. I was only able to fit 9 in the fridge. Short-term solution? I drink one. Longer-term solution? I call Craig and Adrian. Adrian can't make it, but Craig's conversation went like so:
"Hi Craig. Due to a confluence of circumstances, I've ended up with 17 bottles of Monty Python's Holy GrAil for $1 per bottle and I can only fit 9 in my fridge."
Craig: "I'm on my way." *click*

Gotta love friends that'll take booze off your hands.

12. Cleaned up.

13. Once Tanja got home, headed to Bentley Bar for tasting degustation menu with matched wines. Wonders. Delights. Almond gazpacho with caviar, something-something berries and an oyster. Squid-ink kingfish with seared scallop and coconut custard. Sesame dumplings (which tasted like peanut butter made from vegetables. but in a good way) with mint, sweet pea and other things. Smoked, deboned, then rolled quail with perfumed fruit. Roast duck breast with... okay, I don't remember, because of all the wine, but it was rich and lovely. Their version of lemon-lime-and-bitters (butterscotch toffee, whipped lemonade froth, and lime gelato, which all together, looked shockingly like a fried egg). More things. And stuff.

14. Got up to leave an realised, whoops, all that wine had gone to both our heads. Stumbled into a cab and home. Nearly fell asleep on the couch.

And now I'm 27.

At last.

It took a surf and turf and three beers at the AB Hotel to get up the courage, but it finally happened.

I bought a second-hand softcover trade of Watchmen.

With the film coming out and everyone reiterating how it's one of the greatest books of all time, I figure I need to have a better opinion than "I got it from the library and disliked it so much I skipped to the end, then returned it early."

So now I have it.

Falling behind

Ack! I've been meaning to update this thing for the last week. First I wanted to blog about the terrible morning I had, then about how I tend to subconsciously boobytrap myself when I'm stressed, causing me to try to grab things, misjudge, and knock other things over, stressing me more. Then after a few days I still wanted to blog about the morning from hell and was starting to wonder why I wanted to blog about that so much. Then I thought about blogging about how I tend to hang onto bad experiences, turning them over and over in my head. But I didn't.

So now I'm blogging about how I didn't blog about all that.

The fires in Victoria are terrible beyond belief, and watching the newscasters hovering like vultures waiting for someone to step out of the wreckage to say how it feels to have all your belongings burnt to a crisp makes me a bit sick. On the plus side, I found a bottle of Gold Wasser which tastes lovely and will allow me to make Duck and Covers.

Inconvenient Weather (reposted from The Lucas Letters)

"Dear All and Sundry:

The weather was very disagreeable today. Early this morning, it was overcast and misting lightly, but did not either rain, or stop misting. Then the sun came up more, but the low overcast cloud made it hot, but stuffy. And just bright enough to make you squint, but overcast and dark enough that if you wore sunglasses, it'd be impractical. Then a wind would come up and it would feel cold enough to need a jacket, but if you had the jacket, you'd be too hot when the wind wasn't blowing. And the wind was JUST hard enough to blow your hair in your face. Something must be done about weather like this. Perhaps some sort of committee. In any case, I'm chucking a crateful of hateful at this weather.

Had a bunch of people over for a Halloween movie marathon/dinner. Ted, Craig & Mel, Adrian & Tommy, Casey & Ryan all came and showed support for my addiction to having people over and hosting. Was fun. We watched Shaun of the Dead, and Scream, and Ghost Ship and Deep Blue Sea. Tanja made an Asian pickled salad and honey-and-soy chicken, and I made Szechuan beef and an apple cake (styled a "Granny Pudding" in the recipe) for dessert. It was proper marathon length, too. First guest arrived at 6:30 pm, last guest left at 1:50 am.

Less than two weeks until the big day!

-Lucas"

Bunnies!

Enjoy the many and stalwart rules of this King of Drinking Games. Read through to the end if you have the patience. The rules, of course, are to confuse the hell out of n00bs, or "freshers" meaning more hilarity and drunkenness.

Sensory cocktails?

Strange, but interesting.

Check it out.

See, that's just wierd.

Tanja and I stopped at the Marlborough Hotel for lunch today and had a bottle of beer and then a schooner of beer each with our food. Then on the way home we bought a six-pack of beer. Upon arriving home, we each had two of those in the backyard. Tanja was admittedly a bit tipsy, while I retained my hard-drinking untouchable air. I then made us each a couple of cocktails (Kiwi & Coconut Caipiroska: 1 shot vodka, 2 shots Malibu Rum, half a kiwi, half a lime, 1 tsp sugar, muddled, then shaken with ice) with more alcohol in than the beers, and Tanja is suddenly sobered up. Completely. She could juggle knives if she could, well, juggle knives. Wierd.

Oh, and Soundwave is happening so close to our house we can hear Atreyu or some other Screamo shit from the backyard.

And Edlinger beer has created beer bottles where you can use the bottom of the bottle to open the TOP of another bottle. Brilliant!!!

Musings

I took a different route to work today, and as usual when I do this, I found myself wondering: what if I just kept walking around looking at things and didn't go to work. I never got the urge to skip school at any time in my academic career, but I've had this sort of urge since I've begun working in Australia. There just seem to be so many interesting things to do and I just want to wander and see them. I don't know if it's sad, but a lot of those things revolve around food, wine, beer, and cocktails. Not the doing any of those things to excesses, but the enjoyment and interesting nature thereof. For example, I want more Innocent Bystander Shiraz Viognier. We had some and it was great, but I felt we rushed it a bit.

It seems I've become a magnet for gossip at work. Not the usual who-shagged-who gossip. More like oh-no-that-special-project-we're-working-on-is-ending-we-might-get-pwned-on-hours-and-supervisor-infighting-and-it's-all-coming-down-man gossip. It's giving me an unsettling sense of impermanence with everything I'm doing. I miss the illusion that managers know what they're doing and have things under control. And our back-of-house work has ceased being about quality of work lately and has just become a race to make your quota for the day. It's fair demoralising.

I stole a lobe off a cactus on the way to work today. I felt no guilt, as the cactus was about the size of a volkswagon, and I had no worry about storing it until i get home, knowing that succelents like cacti can survive for up to two weeks off the plant, then grow new roots. This particular cactus had no needles that I could see, so I had no trouble handling it. What I didn't realise is that its needles are 2-3 mms long, half the thickness of a hair and fall out on their own to coat what's nearby. In this particular case, what was nearby was the inside of my right sleeve. I spent the following half hour to work attempting to tweeze (with no tweezers) these little spines out of my wrist. They didn't hurt, but would twinge whenever they caught on something. Which was whenever I moved. So I got pwned by a plant.

Been listening to a lot of Spoon and the New Pornographers. Melodic power pop. Recommended, but not for Ted.

Tanja and I are about a third of the way through the 7th season of Star Trek TNG. Tanja's become a nerd to the point of discussing with someone at her work whether a colleague is a Ferengi or a Cardassian. I vote Cardassian. Oh, and I forgot how good the episode "Lower Decks" is.

29 things to be happy about.

Here. Go read. Made me smile. Especially #20.>

Light from the heavens

I was struck with the strangest urge this morning. About a block from work I was suddenly and irrevocably hit with the need, NEED, mind you, to sit at home, drink Belgian beer (preferably from Delirium Tremens or Chimay), watch Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and play video games.

This urge struck with a force to stop me walking.

Keep in mind, this was at 7:42 in the morning.

*sigh*

Oh, and after her 14 days off work and 1 day back, Tanja has decided she wants to retire. Heh.

And when I got to work, my schedule was screwed. First I was put on 7 am starts this week (outside my availability, which starts at 8) but they've put me to work the weekend next week. Let me put it clearly: I don't work weekends!

Supervisor's sorting it out, but still.

Short Fuse Misfire

Reposted from the TikiBar Forums:
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So I had my first Short Fuse at the bar on Friday and loved it. I the bought the ingredients this weekend to make it at home.

And I did.

And I hated it. Sickly-sweet, verging to sour instead of clean toffee flavours.

What could have made the difference? Well, there are a few things:
1) The bar had no Cherry brandy, so we used Strawberry Schnapps instead.
2) The beer used was Coopers Sparkling Ale at home, Tooheys New lager at the bar.
3) I used Pepsi Max at home, and Coke (full strength) at the bar.

I'm going to try it again tonight without the Cherry Brandy, just to see, but ugh. What a letdown.

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(About an hour and a half later)
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Success! Go the scientific method!

So, deciding that the only way of controlling the circumstances would be to control the variables, I set out to the bottle shop. I got a stubby of Toohey's New lager and a can of Coke. Once home, I recreated the Short Fuse with the steely calm of a scientician. A third of a shot of cherry brandy was the third change made. Created the Kahlua and amaretto shot (even layered it perfectly), and dropped it in.

Heaven.

The sweeter Coopers ale and sugary Pepsi Max combined with the Cherry Brandy was just too much for my palate. The dry and more structured Tooheys New controlled the flavour of the drink.

Phew! I thought I'd bought Cherry Brandy, Amaretto and Kahlua for nothing (although, admittedly, I would have gotten rid of them somehow)!

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Short Fuse Attempt AKA "My God, It's Full Of Booze!"

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For those of you who don't know, a Short fuse is 8 shots of beer, 4 shots of cola, 1/2 shot of cherry brandy, and then a shot glass with Kahlua and Amaretto is dropped in.

It's wondrous. Like drinking a toffee, but not sticky.

Mongeese, Cocktails, and Missing Wonga.

For the first time ever, I’ve gotten a bike for Christmas*. Dad bought Tanja and I Mongoose Rockadile bikes. We’ve yet to try them out, but they look pretty fancy. They have (depending on which website you go to) 21, 24, or 30 gears (it says s-30 on the gear shift itself, so I think I’ll believe that). Considering I found my 18-speed over-geared when I was 15, I think that’s a lot.

My bike:



Tanja’s bike:



And we went out for cocktails at the Rose and I somehow misplaced $20. I had $180, then Dad gave me $60 for some shirts, making $240. I then bought myself two cocktails (totalling $20), Tanja’s and my dinners (and a beer for Tanja, totalling $30), and another beer for Tanja later ($5). I now have $175 in my wallet. WTF? I know I had a third cocktail, but Cecil was kind enough to buy me that. I hate when this happens.

*I’ve gotten a bike for a birthday once, but never for Christmas.

Peterson's Champagne House Sparkling Pinot Noir.

Which has a bouquet that smells like dog. I'm serious.

See, now you're giving me the same looks that the guy at the cellar door did. It freaking does! Not like bad dog or wet dog. Just dog.

After a furious conversation with my better half in the car, I realised that it smelled like dog fur, specifically, the lanolin that is released when you brush a big dog, like a rottweiler or a golden lab. Which is a nice warm smell.

I'm not crazy. It's my palate, not his!

Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related families of wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera.

So I've learned something. In the small area of the Hunter Valley that I visited (just around the cottage) there are five seperate species of ants. Wikipedia was no help in identifying them, though. There were huge black ones, hugeish red ones with black heads and abdomens (which I learned are endangered Sugar Ants!), medium sized reddish-purple ones with elegant N-shaped legs, little red ones with big heads and tiny black ones. I explained these interesting facts to Tanja, who called me a schoolboy and didn't understand my enthusiasm.

I found a boll weevil too, but they're not meant to be here in Australia.

Oh, and we got seven-and-a-half cases of wine (each of which seems to be more costly than last year's cases, proof that my tastes are improving) and had some fantastic meals.

But the ants! Wow.

That Hound Dog's a mean wine....

Yesterday was the farewell party Ops support had for the coaches (who are returning to being regular-joe CSRs as of Monday). I had three or four little cups of champagne with the others, and when another bottle was sent for, I asked for a bottle of wine. I asked for a Hound Dog Cab Sav, which I had drank before and knew was *ahem* affordable. They came back with a Hound Dog Shiraz. I had two cups of that, and all of a sudden I couldn't focus. It wasn't drunkenness. It felt like I imagine a concussion must feel. I made it home, couldn't eat dinner, and promptly passed out on the bed. Two hours later I woke up with a huge headache, a queasy stomach and muscles quivering and weak. I was able to eat a bit then, with Tanja helping to keep me conscious. After downing some tablets, I had a shower and went back to bed. Twice during the night I had to take more headache tablets, and the second time a Valerian root pill to put me to sleep.

This morning I took yet more tablets and had a big breakfast, but I still felt queasy, tired, and headachey. I had a short practice with Ted, but then begged off. I still feel like crap, even after a shower, food, and still more tablets.

Tanja reckons it was the preservatives in the wine that are screwing with my system. Ugh. I dunno.

Halloween, but not Hallowe'en.

So it’s Halloween (I always hated putting the apostrophe in between the e's. It was a thing they only did at school). And for the second year in a row, I’ve done nothing. Admittedly, last year I came to work dressed as an undertaker, Craig came as Zoidberg and Rick came with a knife through his head. But we were the only ones. This year I didn’t even do that. The extent of my Halloween dress-up was to wear these shoes to work. They made my feet greener, and me taller but really weren’t all that Halloween. Sigh. On the TikiBar forums, people are posting Jack O’Lantern Tikis and on Neil Gaiman’s blog, someone posted a photo of a Neil O’Lantern. I miss punkins, even though watching them get gutted makes me throw up.

Tanja and I drank some fancy beers on the weekend. I had the idea after watching too many Diggnation episodes. We went to Vintage cellars and got some beers (mostly Belgian, one British and one German). The list was as follows:

-Two bottles of a random German doppelbock of a brand that we’d had before. Ok, not spectacular.

-Two bottles of Chemay Trappist White : A Belgian Trappist blond beer. Quite floral, but very dry as well. 8%, which is getting towards proper beer strength. Good. Thumbs up.
Two bottles of Chimay Trappist Blue : A Belgian Trappist dark beer. Quite sweet. 9%. Fuck yeah. Got the seal of approval from both me and Tanja for the next time we’re there.

-One bottle Delirium Tremens Belgian Strong Pale Ale . Apparently, the shop only gets in one case of it at a time. It’s 9.0% strength and cost $8 per 330 ml bottle. But it was smooth as silk, floral, and just really really nice. Plus the bottle was opaque ceramic. Which is awesome. Plus, it’s named after the shakes that hit when you’re detoxing. Cool.

See what happens when you try new things?