The new guy at work is a complete dick. Tonight he crept up behind me and wrote on my neck with a felt-tip pen. He thought it was really funny, but I did not. Later he poked me in the back with a wet mop. Not funny either. He’s one of those guys who want to kid around all the time, and then look at you like you’re boring when you get sick of it.

So I have to think of a way to get him back. Something better than poking him with a biro, but not as serious as stabbing him to death with the paper spike. (Not yet, anyway.) Here are my ideas:

1) squishing his packet of chips
2) dropping his mobile phone into the tank safe
3) wrapping his keys up in sticky tape

Do you have any other ideas? I’d love to hear them.

Maple are officially the crappest band in Perth. They are also high up on my list of favourites (possibly at the top - I’m in that kinda mood.) Here’s why:

1) All they play is a drum machine and a guitar.

2) They can’t play either of them very well.

3) They break everything.

4) They make up most of the lyrics as they go.

5) and their jokes are only funny if you’re drunk or stoned.

So yep:

Crap is the new black

Seeing Paul and Heartbreaker carry on a pointless, pornographic, half-sung conversation in ‘How’s the sex life, buddy?’ for about ten minutes (while Michael noodled annoyingly in the background) is making me think about music. Where Tomas and I have tried to mix superficial stage antics with a bit of conceptual complexity, these guys are running with superficiality pure and simple. They are almost, but not quite, the ultimate hollow statement in music - there is very little point to their act other than the fact that it is an act.

For a while I’ve been thinking that if I were to go and write a song, then I would not bother singing it. Much of what I’ve written in the past has either not been understood, or has fallen short of my intention. I also think that I have picked up many bad habits over the years - fear of coming to the point, and courting universal appeal by unnecessary abstraction are some examples.

I can feel what I’ve done becoming one more brick in the wall and I don’t think it’s any good. I’m happy with the work, of course, but it will go down in history as being not very unusual - a minor reaction against rock and roll music’s poetic stasis ending in a repetition of the underlying structures of that stasis. (The blatantly obsessive concern with girls and relationships is unconscionable)

So something has to happen. I like the bands that I play in, but when I go home at the end of the night, I’m not satisfied, and I don’t think I’ll find satisfaction by following the music industry path. If, in the end, songwriting is a tangle of arbitrary fashions and repeated ideas, Maple will have the last laugh, and I don’t think I can let that happen.

So, like, we were on first, which isn’t that bad. There weren’t many people there but it was better than being on last when everybody was tired and wanting to go home. Gotta say we played pretty well, though there were the usual computer hiccups. I remember at one point I missed the start of a chorus because I was too busy posing for the photographer, lol.

Of course, we didn’t win the competition, but this time it was OK, because the other bands were really good. There was Faith in Plastics, who had a kinda brit-rock / indie thing going on (honourable mention), Black Heart, or the Black Hearts, who were kinda the same but with some piano songs (runner-up: the lead singer’s stupid hairdo pushed them over the line) and Micadelic, who were an a-capella hip-hop group. Gotta say, Micadelic were pretty damn impressive - the way they way they improvised and always kept the audience engaged was brilliant, although if I had to listen to them for more than twenty minutes I might kill myself.

Idea of the Week:

It’s called Band Survivor. You take a bunch of bands and have them play a gig together. During each performance the audience gets the opportunity to vote one band member ‘off the island’, and the band has to continue playing without them. This will give the audience some idea of how good the band is at coping with emergencies, and provide a chance for some of the other members to show off their skills. Extra points are awarded for losing a lead singer or anyone with talent.

Now, I gotta start making some posters…

Tonight I’m working on a remix of a song by local band Uberfuast. Their gimmick is taking the piss out of German industrial rock music, and they’re really good at it - go and see them because they’re breaking up soon. The song we’re doing is Disco Faust, and it’s going to be waay better than the original.

Just for the record: The ‘Disco Faust’ Rap Verse:

Uberfaust say to me “Das ist some funky Function”
Some say we’s crap, but no - I say we’s German
Uber-Uber Faust-Faust electric techno poppen
There is no answer - there is only Function.

Count Dieter shreds efficient, General Gunther lose his hosen,
Uberfritz is sexy man - mein panties are exploden
Professor Heinz is Function mit his mad keyboard scienz,
every single German man is super-reliant.

Function Uber Alles!!

***Hey there. Did you know Twisted Hamster now comes with Highlighted Posts? That means you can have the greatest, as well as the latest! Just go to the ‘book’ page.

1 Friday (25th) @ Mojo’s Freo
2 Sunday (27th) @ The Seaview, Freo (with Maple)
3 Next Friday (1st) @ Mojo’s again

Shows start around 8pm. Come see!! You like!!

It looks like the boss is coming back at the end of this week, so I’ll be able to cut back my work hours. Yay. Unfortunately, this period of job satisfaction is going to be short-lived because Mr W has just handed in his resignation. Since he works the same hours as the boss, I’ll be covering for him instead until they hire someone new. Dammit. And then I’ll have to put up with someone new. Double dammit.

Mr. W is going to work at M&M Electrical as a storeman, which will be good for him because he’ll get more pay. He’s got two kids, and while the bottle-o pay is OK for me, I’m sure he could use the extra. The new job also gets him some free footy tickets, which he might like.* On the whole, a smart move.

J. (who has been very conspicuously trying to steal Mr. W’s job for ages) doesn’t know what’s going on yet, but I’d like to see the look on his face when he finds out. I think Mr. W wants to tell him in private though, so I’ll probably have to watch it on the store surveillance tapes.

*Real men like football, I think.

Today I had to wait around for the airconditioner repairman to come and tell me why the airconditioner only makes cold air, rather than also making hot air as it claims it can. So I slept in gratuitously late, and spent most of the day making a new website background patten out of small colourful squares.

Time well spent, I think. Then I listened to the Dirty Three’s untitled album (’Indian Love Song’ would have to be the world’s greatest makeout song, although you’d have to be the world’s greatest maker-outerer to do justice to it) and wrote half a letter to my Dad.

In the evening I went with my Mum to see her friend Alan who was in Freo hospital’s Coronary Care Unit - under the name ‘George’, surprisingly - after having a heart attack, although by the time we got there he had been discharged and was on his way back to Rockingham. He’s going to be OK, it seems. It’s not good when people get life-threateningly sick. A friend’s Dad has recently come down with MS or MD or whatever Stephen Hawking has and I’m a bit pensive, because it seems as though you can be struck down in the middble of life with a major incurable illness, even though you’ve done nothing wrong and you’re in pretty good nick otherwise. I find that fundamentally unfair, in much the same way I find love unfair. Anyway, I’ve made up my mind to start exercising more which, if not actually making me healthier in itself, will probably stop me from stressing.

I had something else to say, but for the moment, that’s all. Love ya.

Oh yeah, the aircon man won’t make it ’till Monday. What a crock.

~~PS:~~

a) Coming soon - Twisted Hamster random slogans!

b) Read the latest from Dirtyboots:

I wish I wasn’t wearing the pink flowery blazer at the time. Nobody seemed to mind vocally about it, but at the time I felt like Liberace wandering around in a Mad Max movie.

c) btw, how huge is the Perthblogs feed becoming? Shit.

A meme propagated from Kitta.net

1. Powderfinger - DAF. People may think that Powderfinger have gone crap since Internationalist, but this annoying aural pastel from c.1997 shows that they have always been the hard core of crap in Australian rock. There is no concievable reason why anyone would want to listen to this song twice.

2. Nickelback - Figured You Out. I wonder why a song this pornographic was considered for airplay. Probably because males aged 16-25 can’t get enough of it.

I like the way you still say please
While you’re looking up at me
You’re like my favourite damn disease

I don’t mind people saying that, I just wish they’d analyse it because the chord that it strikes in people is not always a good one.

3. Nirvana - Heart-Shaped Box. Kurt Cobain was a totally underrated lyricist, and this song annoys me because, although it’s the most boring thing he ever wrote, it’s one of his most popular songs. Listen to Tourette’s, or the sublimely transcendent Sliver for that sense of confusion and urgency that makes Cobain a thousand times better than Eddie Vedder.

That’s my three, now write your own. Oh, by the way, you can RSS this stuff with the link at the bottom of this page, guys.

Yayy. Tonight’s turnout was the best yet. Present were Bret, Leo, David, Richard, Anthony, Geoff, Robert, Carita, Chris, and some other guy. * It’s hard to get to know everyone nowadays, with so many people to talk to, but they sure are a nice bunch of folks.

We mostly talked about nerdy stuff; uni, IT, current affairs, et cetera. I made a few notes about ideas for the blogcon type event we’re thinking of having next year but, honestly, I can’t be arsed to post them up, because then I’ll have to explain them. And I can’t do that. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of interest at the moment, so if you’re doing blog-like stuff in Perth, drop us a line and get in on the action (whatever that is).

Oh, and you’re all cordially invited to see Descend Here @ Mojo’s, Friday the 25th. Double yay.

*As usual, tell me if your link is broken or your name is wrong.

Today I found a little blotch of ink in each of my palms. It’s like stigmata, but in reference to Sylvia Plath, not Jesus. I am obviously some kind of literary mystic.

Y’know, either that or my biro is leaking.