wow.

just listened to Carpathian playing live on JJJ. Sounded fucking rad. Sucks if you missed it, I'm sure it'll be floating around the internet soon enough anyway...

You know you've done too much maths when...

you see someone write 'directionless vector' on their blog and you instantly get annoyed at how it really makes no such at all haha. (For those that don't care enough for mathematics to understand what I'm on about, a scalar is just a number but a vector has a direction. for example, speed is a scalar quantity (ie. 30km/h) but velocity is a vector quantity (ie. 30km/h NE), meaning a vector without a direction is really not a vector at all). /end smartguypost

Decent weekend.

It seems I only ever update this blog when something somewhat negative happens, but I had a fairly good weekend over the last couple of days so I thought I should probably document it before it's lost forever. It was also a pretty tired weekend because I had work at 5am Friday morning, 4am Saturday morning and 6am Sunday morning. Ouch. But my nights were pretty good so I guess it all evens out.

Friday night we went out to dinner for Sean's birthday. I bought him a Violent Minds picture mud cake from Michel's Patisserie. It was rad. Even though Sean barely ate any of it he was still pretty damn excited by it haha. I'd put up a link to it but for some reason blogger doesn't want to let me do links at the moment? Who knows. Suss Sean's blog (Skullfucked. yeah, nice name I know) in my blog list if the idea of a Violent Minds logo on a mudcake excites you.

Overall dinner was rad, we got to hang with a bunch of rad dudes at a rad restaurant called Garuva in the valley. It's pretty damn rad. Would definitely recommend it to anyone else looking for a nice place to eat mad food. The rooms are like cordoned off so you have your own personal space, I think that's cool for a restaurant. Like alone in a crowd type stuff haha. My vegetarian stir fry was rad, hangouts were rad, cake was rad, Sean got the waitresses phone number haha and the dinner only cost $30 each. Good life. We went and sussed dollar peeps after dinner, where in my usual tradition, I managed to unintentionally greatly offend a member of the female species. Good life GB. We headed home afterwards, Scrad got thrown in the boot for a bit, Thomas crashed on our couch for a few hours, Sean crashed on the other side of my bed (and we ended up discussing my issues instead of sleeping) and I headed to work at the amazing hour of 3:45AM. Only one good thin came of that morning and that is this picture, the view from my car after I parked at work: (Note the fact that it is still fucking nighttime haha and that my phone camera sucks)

Saturday wasn't the most interesting night but it went alright. I went home and slept after work with the intention of waking up about 5, hitting up my housemates girlfriend's 19th in the city for like an hour before heading over to the other side of the city for a friend from uni's 18th. Turns out I slept in till about 6 and had to bail on going into the city beforehand. I felt a little bad about it, but thought they wouldn't mind. I don't think they did that much, but I got a msg about 9:30PM asking me where the fuck I was haha. Oops.

Anyways, like every other party I have ever been to in my life, this one felt quite frustrating. Just like every other party I have ever been to in my life, the only people I talked to were the people I knew before the party and to make things worse, I didn't even know those people and I had fuck all to say to them. There was probably a lot of awkward silences, but I wasn't really keeping count. The only person I really knew there was the girl whose party it was, and I daresay she had better things to do doing at her 18th than talking to me haha. I stayed for a couple of hours, enough to see all the formalities (cake cutting, people saying speeches, family made powerpoint presentation etc.) and then headed home. I felt maybe I should have stuck around for the final hour anyway, but hey. I jammed Gaslight Anthem all the way home and somehow managed to get myself into bed before midnight.

Now today (Sunday) Scrad, Sean, Jimmy, Dan and I may have just headed to the raddest show ever, the maybe final show at QLD's best venue, Sam's Shed. Seriously, it's literally a tiny industrial shed that bands play in. Like the size of a bedroom. Rad kids show up, rad bands play, good times are had. Kids went mad for pretty much every band that played. Skyway, Street Youth from Byron Bay, Ghosttown, Third Strike, the War and Against. (I'd put in links to all thoe bands myspaces, but as I said, blogger is hating me at the moment, plz go suss them yourself). It was crazy to see so much mosh and stagedives in such a small area haha. Scrad got on the wrong end of the craziness and now has some teeth issues, but I hope it turns out well. I was particularly blown away by Street Youth, fuck, probably the best Byron Bay band I have heard in forever. So heavy, so fast and the singers voice is crazy. I wish they'd had demos there tonight, I'm still kicking myself for not buying one when I saw them in Byron last month. I got to shoot the shit with some dudes I hadn't seen for a while during the show as well so I was siked for that. I picked up Ghosttown's new EP but as my PC has no CD drive atm, I haven't been able to listen to it yet. Hopefully I'll get a chance to jam it tomorrow.

I think that's enough blog for one day, phew haha.

cats are rad pt2: the fluffening

cats are rad

Capsized

Someone on my myspace friends list posted a bulletin with the amazing lyrics to this song, which got me listening to it again and now I feel like posting the lyrics on my blog too.

'Capsized' by Samiam.

I hate you still
yet i imitate you
you're in my dreams
pushing me around
i move my mouth
i watch her cry
its killing me
and you wonder why
always said i wouldn't be that way
i always said i wouldn't be that way
capsized
cut down to size
Capsized
like colors bleed
now they're all the same to me
i feel his hand
and i know
i'm damned
a puppet on a string
and the man behind the screen
this is the last time i treat you like that
this is the last time i act like a man
this is the last time i drink myself to sleep
this is the last time i act before i think
oh, but the things kids say

the song is off the Samiam album I wrote about a few posts ago. Here's the filmclip for anyone who is interested:

Fuck it's a great song. The emotion in the vocals, the intensity of the instrumental buildup in the middle, the desperation of that last chorus. Fuck.

Anywayz, I should get back to studying. 

Still Ill

I had a dream last week that kind of haunted me, I guess I don't really write/talk about this kind of shit very often, but I was reminded of it tonight, so I thought I may as well share it. 

I think it may have been Wednesday morning? During my early morning snooze (ie. waking up to my alarms and then falling back to sleep haha), I had a car accident in my dream. I was driving through an S bend, going a bit too fast, I lost control and crashed into the front of a barrier on the side of the road. A girl I used to like was sitting in the passenger seat. Time stopped for a second, I said to myself 'what the fuck have I done?' and I woke up. It was almost 8AM. There was no point getting up and going to my 8AM lecture. It was weird, I've never had a dream where I've seemingly killed someone before and I'd never dreamt of that girl before either. I'm sure it means nothing but it annoys me a little bit when I drive sometimes. I looked a barrier on the side of the road on my drive home from work tonight and I kind of shivered. Weird. /end emoness

also, go listen to this:

What a fucking killer set of tracks. A sterling example of a sterling band. 

Genimi

Says he will, meaning he might.
Takes his pills, doesn't swallow.
Medicate double rations.
Passes out, candlelight.

Appetite,
nausea
Paralyzes him.
Yeah.
Gemini,
heart beats fast.
Double time,
breaks like glass.

Solitary, socializing.
Covers bets, wakes in ___.
Built to kill, hosts a mansion.
Give a choice, he'll choose both.

Trust no one,
screen all calls.
One on one or
none at all.
Gemini,
follow through
Just a sign.
It's only true.

Masturbates, then feels guilty.
Scrubs his hands 'til they relent.
Smile expresses strong resentment.
Shakes until morning next.

Appetite,
nausea
Paralyzes him.
Yeah.

Gemini,
heart beats fast.
Double time,
breaks like glass.
Gemini,
follow through
Just a sign.
It's only true.

I thought I might take a few minutes out of my day to give props to one of my favourite Jawbreaker songs, Gemini. It's a bit of an obscure track, only ever released on their final LP 'Live 4/30/1996', an LP that was extremely limited at the time of it's release (although it has since been re-issued by drummer Adam Pfahler's Blackball Records, you can check it out here if you're interested. Anyway, Gemini is a rockin' little number, the live recording gives it a really 'raw' feeling, kind of like Jawbreaker's pre 'Dear You' material and I think the song benefits from it immensely. It's got a really punk vibe to it, decently fast,a bit heavy, catchy and with a lot of cool bass work going on (or it might just be a bass heavy live recording). The lyrics seem pretty hopeless, but that is typical Jawbreaker. Blake's voice seems to give out in a few places, but that's half the fun. GEMINIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.

Lyrics provided by the amazing Jawbreaker fansite, loosecharm.

blahhh

my good friend Sean has a new zine out, I think he's picking them up tomorrow? I'm gonna organise some big plot to make sure I get one as soon as possible haha. He tells me it's better than the Sharpend zine, I'm sure it will be great. here's the 'advertisment' for it, in true cut'n'paste stylez:

I really should have done more study today. I went back to the coast last night to see my family and I didn't get back till about 1:30PM. I had work at 3. So I fucked around, ate some food, printed out some shit to study and went to work. Got home at 9, downloaded/watched porn, watched Garden State again, fucked around a bit more and now here I am, listening to the Garden State soundtrack that I downloaded the other day (even though the only two songs I seem to really like on it are the Shins songs anyway haha. I've been told the Iron & Wine song is good though) and fucking around. I've got a couple more things I want to read through and then I'm going to bed. Here's to a more productive day tomorrow. Over and out...

Yesterday was an alright day.

Yesterday was my last real day of university for the year. It feels amost surreal that the year has gone so quickly. Shit, I can remember the very day that I moved out of home... that was like 8 months ago now. It's crazy. I have next week off to study, 2 maths exams the week after that and then thermodynamics and mechanical engineering exams the week after that. So pretty much, the unimportant part is over and now the important part has began haha. I don't need to do well on the maths exams to pass, I've passed the course for my last exam (the mech engineering one) already, so the thermodynamics exam is the big issue. I need to study it hard.

I went into the city yesterday afternoon with Sean to buy shit. He bought a heap of stuff, he actually posted 3 blogs about the shit he bought today haha, click on his name to check it out if you really care. I really wanted to go pick up the Dirty Money/Trapped Under Ice 7"'s Kill the Music were meant to have for us, but they didn't arrive so I am still recordless. I picked up another Promise Ring album though, they didn't have either of the albums I really wanted ('Electric Pink' or 'the Horse Latitudes') but I bought 'Very Emergency' anyway. It's supposedly similar, I wouldn't know, I haven't listened to it yet as my computer has no CD drive at the moment and my laptop ran out of battery as I was trying to rip it. Dang. 

I managed the to get I think my favourite purchase of the last few weeks from a massive secondhand CD store in the city. I finally got a real copy of 'Clumsy' by Samiam (the album with Stepson and Capsized), that is far superior to the album most people usually seem to jock/be familar with 'Astray'. As far as I know, 'Clumsy' has been out of print for years, so I'm siked to finally own it. Also, for those that don't know, Samiam were an amazing 90's emo band. Really melodic, really emotional, with a bit of a rocky edge. They're still around today, but supposedly the new material isn't anywhere near as good. Look up the filmclips for Stepson and Capsized on youtube, you won't be dissapointed.

We were going to go to the movies in the city but instead we decided to go home and watch Pulp Fiction instead (because while I own a copy of it, I had still never seen more than half of it before yesterday haha). It was fucking rad. So many amazing sketchy parts/one liners. We then to get dinner and ended up getting free fish and chips (thankyou random people with too much food, the chips were great). 

We also watched a movie called Garden State, written, directed and starring Zach Braff (JD from Scrubs), I'd been told to watch it by a few people because I love the Shins, and there's a couple of Shins songs in it, so I bought a copy yesterday from Target and we watched it. It was rad. Kind of romantic, but with lots of quirky parts and I guess a really cool serious but also not serious vibe. And Natalie Portman is a babe. Even hotter when she's listening to the Shins and saying 'this song will change your life...', while she hands her headphones with New Slang playing to Zach Braff. Overall, it was rad.

Anyway, I'm out, I gotta head back to work for another 2 hours. I think I might end up being late, oops.