Life has returned to normal. The Blues are back to losing, exams are over for another semester and I’ve joined a gym.

Hold on, that last one surely can’t be classified as normal. Pete the lazy, unfit layabout? Joining a gym? Don’t make me laugh.

Pete

Those of you that have been reading this blog for a while will have noticed the distinctly higher-than-usual post count over the last week or two, which can mean one of two things. Either its exam season and Pete is procrastinating more, or he’s suffered a spinal injury and is in bed for 20 hours a day.

Fortunately for my mobility but unfortunately for my sanity and social life the former is true. My first exam is tomorrow and in a bid to fend off last minute study this morning I took my sweet time with the newspaper, then realised that last night in San Francisco there was some wanky Apple developers conference, widely tipped to unveil plans for the iPhone in Australia.

Normally I wouldn’t care a huge amount. Although I’d love to have an iPhone (my little brother has a jailbroken one) and I probably will look into buying one myself eventually, I am by no means an Apple fanboy and I don’t really salivate over new tech, but with exam study the only other option I must admit I’ve spent the morning reading up on last night’s announcements.

On the surface it’s all good news. The new iPhone will support 3G networks, meaning it’ll be good to go on all Aussie networks, and the price has dropped significantly – almost by half – to USD$199 and $299 for the 8GB and 16GB gadgets. There’s also a host of other revisions like the addition of GPS, but they are all secondary issues. What seems to be getting everyone’s juices going is the price drop – but when you look into it it isn’t a drop at all.

Firstly the phones can no longer be self-activated via iTunes. You have to sign up to a plan and get your phone in-store. This means cracking the phone and using it on other networks, while still potentially possible will be futile as the owner will still be paying monthly fees with a specific carrier. This also means the current market for selling phones overseas will most likely dry up.

Secondly, the cost of the cheapest plan for US owners has increased by $10 a month, and this is part of a 2 year plan, effectively increasing the overall cost of the package by $240 – more than the price drop on the initial phone purchase. It should be noted that I’m basing this off US plans – pricing for the Aussie iPhone rollout, due for release on July 11 is still unreleased.

Finally (and I’ll admit this isn’t really a direct influence on the cost of the phone) is the current list of providers in Aus – a choice of Optus or Vodafone, neither of which have a pinch on Telstra’s range or other’s affordability. I’m a 3 user myself, which in my opinion couples affordability ($29pm for all the calls + SMSs I make and then a little 3G content thrown in) with coverage (once outside 3′s limited coverage the service automatically seamlessly switches over to Telstra’s 2G network for calls and messages at no extra cost) quite nicely, so I’d love to see the phone on more networks.

I don’t know – it is after all just a phone. Maybe when this current contract dries up I’ll think about launching myself into the iPhone’s loving arms, but until then there’s just too little information and too much cost to seriously consider or warrant any real excitement.

Pete

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this in the blog yet – the parental units have been overseas for over a month now, leaving the three now-adult Hay kids to frollick among ourselves. It’s actually turned out really well – far better than I had thought we’d manage couped up together – maybe its the pressure of exam season or the fact that we’re rarely all home together…

Anyway the reason I brought this up is Sunday has become our regular shopping day. Yesterday afternoon it became abundantly clear that we were running out of household necessities right about the same time that the Carlton Vs. Port Adelaide match started to play on telly. Now there, my friends is the mother of all predicaments – watch the football and go hungry that night, or go shopping and miss the footy?

I chose to go hungry, figuring one night of cup-a-noodles would be fine, however by quarter time it became clear we were going to get drubbed, and so I abandoned ship and drove down to the supermarket. An hour later, all supplied up for the week, we were 40 points down, and I was quietly pleased with my choice of activity for the afternoon.

However, early into the final quarter, led by Murphy, Kruezer and Simpson we kicked the first two goals. All of a sudden there were less than 20 points in it, and the Carlton boys (with the exception of Fevola strangely enough) started to play real footy.

Splitting my time between the kitchen and the TV in the family room I managed to get a 1.5kg chunk of beef into the oven to roast as well as potatoes par-boiled and roasting aroung the meat. The final siren sounded, Fevola kicked his second goal and the Blues won the game by 12 points.

However easily the best part of the match was that the fridge was full, dinner was less than an hour away and best of all I hadn’t witnessed the very ordinary, slippery play of the middle hour. Win/win!

Oh just a comment on our streak – WLWLWLW – that’s quite a pattern in anyone’s books. If only we can string a couple of wins together, then all of a sudden we’re in contention for the eight.

Bring on the pies (for the second time this season already??!?!)

Pete

The new Pendulum album was released a few weeks ago, and although it has moved in a different direction to 2005′s ‘Hold Your Colour’, which remains one of my favourite debut albums, ‘In Silico’ has been played quite a bloody lot on both my iPod and in the car as I’ve been driving around the place.

Although ‘In Silico’ is undeniably still DnB based, its a lot edgier, a lot rockier, a lot live-er than its predecessor. And that in my mind is a good thing – its still definitely a dance album but it emphasises the live element of the band as well, and wonderfully.

The current single Propane Nightmares may sound like the song name from an upcoming Slayer album, but the track surprisingly shows off a Mariachi band (to awesome effect) alongside a stunning synth riff. Granite shows off Mario sounds for the first twenty seconds before the tempo breaks and steamrolls into a typical Pendulum DnB trip. The Other Side features androgynous voices a la Benni Bennassi’s dancefloor filler ‘Satisfaction’ as well as one of the best basslines on the album. And finally, The Tempest is perhaps the strongest final track I have ever heard on any album, save ‘A Day in The Life’ by The Beatles, from the stunning ‘Sgt Peppers’ record. That is perhaps an unfair comparison however, considering just who the Beatles were and how much truly amazing music they wrote.

Pendulum are certainly different from the norm, and by no means everyone’s cup of tea, however the band’s change in sound surely indicates at least a step towards more widespread acceptance, and – I assume – more listeners. It’s just a pity that the guys relocated from Perth to London a few years ago, because as a result the soonest we can realistically expect them back here is November, which is a shame.

Just to close, here is that final track I was raving about – The Tempest. It is one of the rockier songs on the album, and it does go for over 7 minutes, but if you do wait it out, the final 2 minutes (which are lyric-less) contain perhaps the greatest electro-rock chord loop I’ve heard in years, and all around it is a very solid song. That said, I’m a sucker for fake endings and electro-based crescendos. Ahhhh

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Pete

I’m sure we all have them – guilty little pleasures that we’d rather not admit to the world. There’s something odd about the human condition where we take great pleasure in that which we shouldn’t. The totally artificial, overly dramatic and brain-wastingly inane. Over the years I’ve congratulated myself time and time again for avoiding what could be considered guilty pleasures. Reality television never really hooked me, soap operas are just terrible, I can’t stand pop music and I’ve never been one for celebrity gossip. To make matters worse for what I’m about to admit, I’ve often looked down on those brave enough to admit their own weaknesses.

But this week I have to get something off my chest. Something that may disgust and disappoint many, many readers (who am I kidding – I don’t have readers to disappoint ). I have, over the last couple of months become more than just passingly interested in dodgy, American Pro Wrestling.

Just typing those last few words gave me the jibblies. I remember first hearing about wrestling when I was a little under 10. I may have seen one taped fight, and remember hearing that it was faked, and that was about it – free to air TV in Australia had the sense to not show wrestling, so I wasn’t exposed to it (apart from friends occasionally bringing it up at school) for the rest of my childhood or early adulthood.

However that all changed this year. One morning in late January I got up to find about 8 of Richard’s friends huddled around the TV for a live 10am start to some Wrestling pay-per-view. I’d heard of Royal Rumbles, but wasn’t aware that it was actually a once-a-year event that attracted over 50,000 people to a stadium show and millions more to pay for it on TV. I sat down with Rich and his mates and watched it out of sheer amusement (and not having anything more to do that day), and that should have been the end of it.

However, much to my dismay the exact same thing happened a few weeks later – I got up one Monday morning to find Richard and a similarly sized crowd lounging in the family room watching another pay-per-view. I resisted sitting down and watching with them, but later that evening heard all the details of the match and shocked myself at recognising names, moves and storylines. Although I hadn’t realised yet, I was starting to take an interest.

Sometime between then and now I started watching snippets of the three WWE weekly shows on the weekend, and then, slowly I started to take an interest in the ridiculous storylines, obviously choreographed fights and girls in bikinis. That humble pie was mine.

The worst thing is I don’t know how to stop. To be perfectly honest I don’t know if I want to stop – but something I can be sure of is that 6 months ago I spent 0 hours a week thinking about pro wrestling, whereas this week the only thing I could think of on Tuesday morning was to download Monday morning’s extreme rules PPV (that’s right – I’m too much of a tightarse to even finance my guilty pleasure) and watch it.

Oh on a sidenote the Undertaker was robbed, but it was a damn good match. Same for the stretcher match, although I’m much happier with the result, even though no-one seems to like Batista much. Oh god what AM I DOING?!@$#?!@

I hate myself.

Pete