I always win when it comes to ‘who has the worst timetable’ comparisons over drinks. Not only do I manage to have two 8am classes a week and no day starting later than 10, but I also have the pleasure of being part of a FOUR HOUR chemistry lab, on Friday afternoons no less. When everyone else’s weekends have started, Pete’s mixing chemicals. Actually the lab itself is quite interesting – last Friday my lab partner and I ran a gunshot residue detection prac, which made it a little bit CSI-ey, but I digress – I have a shit timetable. Now that you’re all feeling sorry for me and my timetable of doom, just try to imagine the rage that filled me on Friday when I discovered that the trains had been cancelled, at least long enough to make me spectacularly late if I waited around for services to resume or catch the -`gasp – replacement bus service. So instead I did the lazy thing – walked back home and pinched a car for the afternoon.

Now I don’t know about you, but I feel that four hours is a long time to go without food. Considering I also didn’t eat lunch on Friday, by the time 6pm ticked by and I wandered back to the carpark to drive home in the peak hour crush, I was famished. Fortunately for me, there happens to be a Red Rooster on the corner of Ferntree Gully and Stephensons roads, which just so happens to be on the way back to the freeway from uni.

And it was there, sitting outside the drive-through service window at the Notting Hill Red Rooster that I first heard this song, “I’ll Kill Her” by SoKo.

Angry, and just a little bit psychopathic, but suuuuch a beautifully French voice. For the studio recorded version, with guitar, drums and tambourine (yay!), kindly refer to grannytunes at the top of this page.

Pete

I’ve only very occasionally been embarrased by my own nerdy antics – unfortunately for me not so much because I hide my personality but more due to the fact that I’m fairly confident and difficult to shame. However, I’m pretty sure that tonight’s effort of taking twenty minutes off work in an office building so as to walk over to Faulkner Park, singing slightly altered (as in one word different) Bonnie Tyler lyrics will haunt me until my death.

If it’s any consolation, the eclipse was very pretty.

Pete

Although I’ve always considered myself a bit of a beach bum – I have a holiday house on the beach, love to surf and whinge constantly throughout winter in anticipation of warmer weather – for most of my life I’ve lacked at least two vital prerequisites to truly becoming a surfie.

Firstly, I’ve never been able to wear sunnies properly. My head is relatively long and narrow (apparently much like a horse, an animal I share other anatomical similarities with ) so any sunglasses I put on appear like novelty oversized ones. To be honest it’s been perhaps ten years since I last tried a pair on, and I am quite aware that I am quite different to the 12 year-old Pete I remember, so maybe it’s time to give sunnies another shot, and more importantly my squinting eyes a break.

Secondly, due to a gap between my big and second toes, thongs have always been clumsy on me. They would never stay on for long, as the gap meant that the thong wouldn’t actually sit snugly under my foot, but rather loosely flop about, occasionally flying off while I was in full stride, hitting the person in front of me in the back of their head. As a result I’ve become a huge fan of bare feet shenanigans, something that some people clearly find unnatural. My then-girlfriend (there is no way to phrase this sort of a sentence in a way so as to not sound bitter about the whole ex bit, but I promise you I’m impartial to the entire experience) was so perturbed by the fact that I liked to stroll around in bare feet that she bought me a pair of thongs for Christmas, urging me to actually give them a proper shot before throwing them out. After a few weeks they and I were inseparable, and since then I have worn little else on my feet. It took the freezing temperature of July to force me out of thongs full-time, but the sunny weather of last week saw the return of the thongs around campus, on my feet as well as dozens of other shoe-liberated folk.

Anyway the actual reason behind this post is the ugly stepsister of the thong – the phenomenally successful and similarly ugly Croc. Although Ele (and my own mother) will disown me for speaking out against Crocs, the fact is that they are unsightly, stupidly coloured and clumsy. Although they may be made from ultra soft rubbery crap, gently massage your feet when you walk in them, fetch the paper in the morning and drive the kids to school, they remain stupid, as do their owners.

A comparable stain on taste and fashion (albeit a slighly older one) is the proliferation and overuse of the Ugg boot, which may have its place as a slipper for indoor use, and even in surf/swim culture where they are remarkably comfy before and after bracing the water, however the unrestrained wearing of uggs while out and about – shopping, at uni, etc – is tacky and unneccessary. I shuddered whilst walking past a teenage male fashionista wearing uggboots while on the way to the footy yesterday. It took every fibre of my being not to find some fuel and set his feet alight.

So, after those last hate fuelled paragraphs, imagine my horror when presented by this: The Uggboot/Croc. Ugoc? Crug? CRUG BOOTS! Regardless of the snappy name (Copyright 2007, Dialagranny Industries Pty. Ltd.), if these take off, the world WILL implode….. or at least I will.

Honestly I feel ill. Also doesn’t that defy the original purpose of crocs – a thong/sandal substitute? Grrrrr.

Pete

Now here’s a news article worthy of some attention by the Tourism Council. A woman was killed this week by her pet camel. Apparently the male camel took a shining to his owner, and tried to…. err I’m sure you get the picture.

From the BBC NEWS website (link).

A woman in Australia has been killed by her pet camel after the animal may have tried to have sex with her.

The woman was found dead at the family’s sheep and cattle ranch near the town of Mitchell in Queensland.

The woman had been given the camel as a 60th birthday present earlier this year because of her love of exotic pets.

The camel was just 10 months old but already weighed 152kg (336lbs) and had come close to suffocating the family’s pet goat on a number of occasions.

On Saturday, the woman apparently became the object of the male camel’s desire.

It knocked her to the ground, lay on top of her and displayed what the police delicately described as possible mating behaviour.

“I’d say it’s probably been playing, or it may be even a sexual sort of thing,” the Associated Press news agency quoted Queensland police Detective Senior Constable Craig Gregory as saying.

Young camels are not normally aggressive but can become more threatening if treated and raised as pets.

Pete

On my eighth birthday I got up bright and early, all starry eyed and highly excited, looking forward to the next half hour of present unwrapping and centre-of-attention fun. However as I got to the kitchen it became abundantly clear that my mother wasn’t home, and there weren’t any presents left for me. Dad had no answers, and for a while I feared that she had run off to join the circus. Fortunately what had actually happened was she had gotten up at 5am, driven to the city and got in line at 6am for a special letting of tickets for that afternoon’s matinee performance of the Phantom of The Opera, which was on a 2 year long season in Melbourne. For some reason that I vehemently deny has anything to do with my sexuality, I had become obsessed with the CD my parents bought a year or so earlier when they saw the show at the Princess Theatre here in Melbourne, and mum thought that theatre tickets might be a novel but thoughtful alternative to Power Ranger action figures or a footy.

I remember mum coming into my grade 2 classroom, excusing me from whatever we were doing at the time and driving me into Spring Street to see the show. It was quite honestly the best birthday present I think I’ve ever received, only heightened (literally and figuratively) when one of the ushers plonked a couple of phonebooks on my 5th row, smack bang central seat so I could see the stage properly. From that moment on, I knew there could never be any other musical for me.

I’ve since seen the show on the West End in London, as well as in Cape Town while I was there during a GAP year in 2004. When I heard that the show was returning to Melbourne this year I thought that perhaps I’d seen it enough already, and perhaps I could give it a miss this season, but guess what I bought today? Matinee tickets to the Phantom in December. The lovely Katherine has been silly enough to agree to escort me. Maybe the ushers still hand out phonebooks…

Pete

What a spectacular weekend!

Amy, one of my harem from the bike ride last year turned twenty on Friday. Unfortunately, she lives in Shepparton, so Smellanor, Davin and I took a half day off uni and drove up to what I now like to refer to as ‘Boganton’, ‘Shepdiddley’ or ‘Bears With Machetes Land’ (I think that’s the official name). It was a very enjoyable night, due mainly to the fact that the pub was over-40′s karaoke night, and the local cool club had about half a dozen people in it. Still, fun is what you make of it, and the night was great. Friday morning wasn’t so great, as we had to get back to town for uni in the afternoon, but I think we all managed.

Friday night will be remembered for years to come. Festival Hall is by no stretch of the imagination my favourite venue in the city, in fact it rates quite low on the old Peteriffic-scale-of-awesomeness, but I had a much sought after pair of tickets to the Bloc Party gig, and made my way there with Sarah for doors at 7:30. The Juggers were good, but I felt like the only one dancing around me – the crowd clearly hadn’t come for them. Incidentally, I went out and bought their debut album ‘Dystopia’ on Saturday (release day!) – it’s spectacular.

There was an extended break inbetween acts as the roadies had some difficulties with what appeared to be one of the foldback speakers on stage right. By about 40 minutes, the crowd was getting impatient, but about 5 minutes later the lights dimmed once more and the cheer was quite honestly one of the loudest I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing. Bloc Party started with ‘Song For Clay’, from the new(ish) album, and continued onto a 90 minute set showcasing the best of ‘A Weekend in The City’ and all the gems from ‘Silent Alarm’. It was easily the best gig I’ve been to all year (even better than Muse in January!) and could quite easily take one of the top spots for best-gigs-of-all-time. I wasn’t even drinking, as I was still feeling queasy from Thursday night.

Saturday morning came far too quickly, although it was the first good nights sleep I had managed for several days, and with it Kel’s 22nd. Her mum took Kel, Smellanor, and myself out for lunch (don’t I feel privileged!), followed by a birthday party at the newly appointed party house on Lygon, which was themed ‘Burlesque Circus’. Having no idea what the hell that was supposed to mean, I dressed up as I saw fit – A top hat and permanent-marker moustache. Surely there is no classier alternative.

Good weekend. If only Carlton hadn’t tanked yesterday!

Pete

I’m off to see Bloc Party & The Juggers tonight at Festy. Checking up on metlinkmelbourne.com.au to find an appropriate train-jumping-on time, I came across this ‘little ditty’. It sounds an awful lot like Frank Woodley if you ask me, which in itself is enough to take the ad’s advice to heart, but as the song explains, Melbourne’s new buses have ‘anti-occult force fields’, which is very handy for getting home late. Next time you’re out late, keep buses in mind – they may just save your bacon.

Pete

I’m a big fan of donating blood. I remember dragging mum along to the blood bank when I was about 16 to give my first donation, and for the next few years I donated as often as I was
able to. Last year the blood bank invited me to try donating plasma, which involves bigger, awesomer machinery and takes about twice as long. This of course appealed greatly to the inquisitive little nerd inside of me, and before I knew it I was coming in every few weeks alternating between plasma and platelet donations.

I donated again on Tuesday, for the first time in months. The blood bank rang me up on Monday requesting an urgent platelet donation for Tuesday, as a patient in critical care somewhere had been identified as having a near-perfect protein antibody match to me. Although the 70 minute marathon donation didn’t take a single red blood cell, I left the bank feeling nauseated, achey and very cold. Apparently these are classic reactions to the sodium citrate that is used as an anti-coagulant, but I’ve never experienced such discomfort from a donation and I’ve donated for years.

That said, the feeling of extraordinary self-worth that comes with donating blood is incredible – especially when singled out specially, for a single patient. The short term reactions are far outweighed by the fact that someone out there is feeling much better as a result. The blood bank also makes the best milkshakes in town, which, when you consider that they are free, are even more amazing.

In Australia, unlike the US donors are not paid for their blood (ie they are DONATIONS), which means that only 3.5% of the eligible population actually donate. The need for blood is expected to double within ten years, and with synthetic alternatives to blood still a long way from becoming a reality, this basically means that the number of donors needs to double. So if you are aged 16-70, fairly healthy and not pregnant, why not sign yourself up and donate? The needle is hardly felt at all (I swear the haemoglobin test prick is more noticable) and the aforementioned milkshake and good karma is one hell of a pick-me-up.

giveblood.com.au

Pete