We stayed up late and downloaded some fundamentalist beheading videos just to see what that was all about. I thought they looked kinda fake, but E said they were realistic. I felt a bit uncool about not being grossed out or shocked by it, actually. Like I should totally grow a soul or something.

We also had tacos.

In the morning it was nice and warm and I sat on the steps in the sun for a bit.

Blame Winter:

This has left me with 8 pairs of jeans, about ten assorted long and short sleeve t-shirts (most of which are black), three blouses, five tank tops, some uberfancy dresses, two fleeces, a sweater, and socks. (Yes I still have bras and underwear, but I kind of figured that it was a given and didn’t need to be brought up).

Being bored, I decided to compare my wardrobe with Winter’s and make mean remarks if hers was still bigger than mine after the cleanout. I was tragically disappointed.

Jeans - Winter: 8 / Mark: 5
T-shirts -10/15
Blouses - 3 / shirts -8
Tank tops - 5 / Polo shirts - 3
Uberfancy dresses/awesome jackets or suits - some/6
Fleeces - 2/2
Sweaters - 1/3

If regular trousers were counted the jeans category would be a tie, so it looks like I’m only trailing in the polo shirts vs. tank tops department and I intend to rectify that soon enough. So I guess I do have a pretty big wardrobe at the moment.

List: Mark’s Favourite Garments!

1) Smelly old thermal shirt. I lost my virginity in this thermal shirt, but it’s gone smelly and yellow so I only wear it in the depths of winter when no one else is around.

2) Sydney jeans. I used to wear nothing but cords, but then I found the world’s coolest pair of jeans for $4 in an op-shop. Great fit with a traditional cut so people don’t see your arse when you bend over. I won’t tell you how long since I’ve washed them.

3) Blood Donation Jacket. I went to the Red Cross Store after I’d donated blood one day and scored this awesome brown army-style jacket. You can do it up double-breasted so you look like a soldier and it has lots of silver buttons. Proof that no good deed goes unrewarded.

4) Descend Here overalls. When I joined my first band I needed to look a bit weird, but I didn’t have any weird clothes. I devised a blue tie-dyed set of overalls with patches and tears and metal bolts hanging off so I didn’t have to think up a new outfit each time. Here’s an mp3, if you missed our brief career.

5) PUCS t-shirt. Official shirt of the Perth Undergraduate Choral Society, with a picture of Puck himself prancing across the front. Obtained at a performance of Miserere Mei at Hackett Hall. My girlfriend at the time was an alto.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed the tour of my wardrobe. Peace out.

Friday I went to Notre Dame and did my paper. There were copious quantities of ROCK in the air, and it went well. There were no crazy old guys present, and the discussion was super nice and friendly. People asked me for my opinions on stuff and didn’t even act condescending because I was so young. Then we all went to Little Creatures and got rather smashed, then to the orient where we watched Freo get trounced in the last quarter.

On Saturday, Ross and I went to see the new movie of Macbeth, which is Australian and has Mick Molloy and Bob Franklin in it, among other people. It looked nothing like this:

“Liver of blaspheming Jew?” This is some racist shit innit?

And much more like this:

It was dark, violent and, in places, completely rampant.* I do think they should have cast Tex Perkins as Macbeth because he’s such a stylish guy, but the person they had was pretty good. And those witches - don’t get me started on those witches.

After Macbeth I went round to Eleesha and Tomas’s place since they were having a Xena Warrior Princess / tequila night. I had a tequila sunrise and chatted with Wade, who for some reason had turned bright red the moment he started drinking. Oh, and Tomas let me try on his black straightjacket, which is the most stylish piece of clothing in the world and totally worth the three hundred bucks.

And tonight was band practice / pizza night. What a sweet weekend. This is why I came back to Perth, and it’s what will keep me going when I’m away again.

*That’s Scottish for horny.

Today was a boring day. I sat and did lots of work. Well not lots, but a respectably boring amount. Tomorrow I will go to Notre Dame and be impressive. I hope my hair is good. I also hope my ultracool ideas won’t be ridiculed and lampooned by the old geezers there - God knows I won’t be able to stop them going on and on like grampa Simpson about onions on their belts and such if they think I’m not making sense.

Another thing I will do tomorrow is apply for conferences. Because I LOVE networking, and shelling out for my own travel just revs me up in the trouser department.

The patient is often worried about having a broken rib, and may have a sensation of bony crepitus or abnormal rib movement. Breath sounds bilaterally should be normal unless there is substantial splinting or a pneumothorax or hemothorax is present. There is point tenderness over the site of the injury and occasionally bony crepitance can be felt.

I’m beginning to think I really do have a cracked rib. Of course, I don’t have any bony crepitance - hell, I don’t even know what bony crepitance is, I’m just assuming it means ‘crunchiness’ because of the sound of the word - but the other bits fit the picture, such as how I tend to yell curse words in a gruff and manly voice whenever I sneeze. Judging by what I’ve read on the internet (and since when was the internet ever misleading or wildly inaccurate?) things like this tend to be caused by blunt force trauma, such as sports injuries. I guess I could go to the GP’s office next door and tell them how painful it is and score some prescription painkillers, plus maybe some cool X-rays, but I don’t know if I can be fucked and stuff like that tends not to have any effect on me. All I know is, with my mum bringing me groceries in her car on account of how shopping sucks when you can only lift things with one hand, the ‘take it like a man’ option has well and truly passed. I think I’m down to ‘whine like little sissy boy and hope for sympathy’. I must be bored. I should get of my arse and do something useful.

Here is a picture of me rehearsing with my band. I am turning into a monster, doing an impromptu cover of Coolio’s ‘Gangster’s Paradise’ to the tune of Johnny B. Goode while we teach our keyboard player how to do the 12 bar blues. I know it sounds like shit and I can never get to the last line of each verse because the other four bars are missing, but I’m happy because I can spit the words out in a nice angry way. I start to sound a bit like Leon from Beaverloop.

Speaking of, I saw Leon yesterday at the Swan - he did a bizarre comedy routine using a fish puppet projected onto a big screen via video camera. Piss funny. Says he’s planning a puppet show dealing with the theological problem of evil, though don’t tell any puppeteers because they’ll totally steal his idea. Or laugh at him. Oh and if you’re in Perth, go and see The Plastik Scene: they are even better than they used to be.

Oh, sigh. Not looking forward to work this week. I think it will involve editing the first 20,000 words of my thesis and fixing the enormous hole that I left there when I had a problem that I couldn’t solve. My sore arm will probably turn purple and fall off at some point. Everybody say YEAH.

Howdy, donut tamers.

This week was largely sucky. There was the hassle of shifting over to the Macbook and pirating a whole new bunch of programs, combined with the hassle of knowing I was being way too serious about the whole thing (ie. HAHA! YOU WOULDN’T LET ME DOWNLOAD ROXIO POPCORN BUT NOW I HAVE ROXIO TOAST! MUHAHAH. I WILL EAT YOUR UNHAPPINESS!!!!!) Added to that was the hassle of my favourite audio workstation now running in something called ‘Rosetta Mode’ because of the new Intel chip and being too slow to use - iLife GarageBand here I come… :|

Also sucky was parts of my arm turning yellow and some other parts of me being generally red and gooey. Stupid bicycle I need a fucking car.

But there was good stuff too. I met up with a mate I hadn’t seen since high school and we went for a drink in Freo. He brought his baby girl along (he and his wife just built a house together - fucking hell, people, since when were we adults?) and she was cute as all hell despite being, as he confessed, completely mad. She laughed at everything, especially me laughing at her for laughing so much, and we had face-pulling competitions. Babies are fun after a few beers.

Hey. Can’t type for long due to hand falling off. But I’m feeling better - I’m almost over my cold, and I’m not bleeding everywhere any more from the bicycle accident. I’ll limit myself to point form then:

1) Firefly is awesome when you have to waste time. Just awesome.

2) The day after I twisted my forearm and rendered myself incapable of typing, I took receipt of a new laptop - a Macbook. It’s a bit ‘bling’ so I’ll post a photo later.

3) My mum came round and helped me get the pot off the stove.

4) An old friend from highschool just messaged me and asked if I wanted to get together and have a beer. He’s married with a kid now. Funny, I don’t even have a pot plant to heap my cares on.

5) My dad sent me some messages at 2 in the morning. Pretty garbled and obscure ones. I think he’s going insane, which is kinda cool. He also said that he wanted to retire and buy a charter boat, although I don’t think he’s been on a boat since the seventies.

6) Firefly is awesome. Did I say that?

I fell off my bike and sprained my wrist, so I can only type one-handed. Please forgive my tardiness with reciprocal comments this week - I shall be sitting watching Firefly and feeling sorry for myself.

Today Lu is getting married. The ceremony will start at two, which is more or less when I’ll be finished writing this.

I could waste a lot of ink, or a lot of bytes I guess, explaining about Lu but there wouldn’t be a point. It would only be predictable and embarrassing: boy meets girl, boy likes girl, a whole bunch of things get in the way and all of a sudden it’s ten years later and she’s about to marry a sailor.

I will say, though, that I did love being with her. That’s the important part.

And if I have some leave today to feel resentful and melodramatic, I might take it. Girls like her are uncommon, and I don’t think any other will have such a hold on me. It’s in the history. So allow me to bring forth the cliches: let me tell you how I still look up to her and want to be like her. Let me tell you how no one else would see her that way, which is why she should have chosen me. Let me just go on and on…

But look, it’s two o’clock and I should go and get some groceries. She’ll probably be saying ‘I do’ at the same time I’m wandering around the store looking for the Fantastic noodles. Life goes on, though hearts tend to remain inert.

It reminds me of a quote: “Never fall in love with a woman, it’s just too complicated.” That’s one of her lines.