Holiday time...

Well... Thump and I are off for 5 days in the south of WA in a little touristy town called Busselton. Busselton is famous for (amongst other things) its Jetty. The Busselton Jetty is the second longest Jetty in the Southern Hemisphere. It was built in 1865 and is 1799 metres long (5902 ft). It has an underwater observation area and is a favourite dive spot.

I did production for a music festival down there last year and looked around for a pet friendly B&B and scored a lovely little place in a forest.

Poor Jake knows somethings up and he keeps looking sad. Last time we were packing suitcases and the like we went to Bali and he went to a kennel. He was not happy!

So... I hope you all have a great New Year celebration and we'll be back next Wednesday to hear about your stories. We're making videos and taking heaps of snaps so I'll work on a slide show thingy!

Have a good one y'all

Opening the present.

Thump and I had a peaceful Xmyth and it was fun to watch our little boy open his present after being so patient...



Hope you all had a good break.

Who is Benny Lava?

I was over at Aardvarchaeology and cracked up at this... one of my favourite things is a good pisstake.

How can you go past the lyrics...

"Have you been high today?
I see the nuns are gay
My brother yelled to me
I love you inside Ed!'"



Reason's Greetings

Seven Things

The evil overlord Sean the Blogonaut has tagged me AGAIN!

I have to list seven random and/or weird things about me. There's nothing unusual or weird about me... what are you talking about?

1/ I was born on the same day (not year) that Bertrand Russell, Pope Clement XIII and Sid Vicious died. It's also Ground Hog day in the US.

2/ I'm a redhead with freckles and choose to shave my head. (Actually it's cause it was receding a little bit and the sides would grow fastest so I kept getting called "Crusty the Clown)

3/ I have acute senses and can tell what soap someone used to wash their hands with from 20M and flourescent lights drive me batty 'cause of the flickering.

4/ I lived in Bali Indonesia for 12 months in a "haunted" house.

5/ When I was 15 and learning to drum I found I could get my Led Zeppelin records and observe where the songs started from the label position and then "scratch" a permanent count in to all the tracks by pushing down on the tonearm so I could drum along . It was cool.

6/ Most people that know me or of me believe I can fix anything electronic.

7/ At around 12 or 13 I dismantled my parents TV set, a brand new valve black & white unit and one of only a few in the street. They were very upset by this but I did manage to get it back together and working.

I tag...

Fiery
T&A
Bender01
Evolveintobirds
TBA

The Perfect Present

What a gift idea... USB Wine.
This is awesome. The French really have got their technology together to be able to deliver this... I mean it's got Star Trek Replicator written all over it and it's available now for only 9.95 Euros. It comes in three colours and is PC or Mac compatable and the choice of French wines is amazing.




I think you need faith to make it work however!

The Four Horsemen

If you've a couple of hours to spare this is a very good watch.

"On the 30th of September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion.
All four authors have recently received a large amount of media attention for their writings against religion - some positive, and some negative. In this conversation the group trades stories of the public's reaction to their recent books, their unexpected successes, criticisms and common misrepresentations. They discuss the tough questions about religion that face to world today, and propose new strategies for going forward."

Part 1 (1 hour)

Part 2 (1 hour)

The Great Rubber Chicken Shortage

Our dog Jake loves rubber chickens...

He goes through one in around 3 weeks. Usually the arse goes first 'cause that's where the squeaker is, then the legs and finally the head until he's "loving" a small piece of yellow rubber.

Recently they have been hard to get and his piece of yellow rubber got very small. He was very happy when they were back in stock as you can see.

There's even a new one wrapped up under the tree for him.

The (not so) Unexplained Meme

T&A has dobbed me for a meme. SO has Poodles and Fiery :)

There just aint enough of me to go around.. This is for all of ya...

The rules are as follows:

1. You should post these rules

2. Recall and relate a time when you experienced a "paranormal event"

3. Explain it rationally if you can

4. Inflict this meme on 5 other people

In my early twenties I was a bit of a rockstar in my hometown down south in New Zealand. I was playing in 4 bands, pulled $1500 a week (not band for late 70s), owned a house, had a lovely wife, and we had serious parties. I enjoyed making wine, especially Sake and Elderberry in one gallon jars...

One night after a few we (three bandmates and girlfriends) were having a session when we were all alerted to an alarming news story on the radio... There was a UFO flying around the city of Christchurch. WTF? We all heard it and me and boys decided to get in the car and follow it... as you would.

We jumped in my 1964 Datsun Bluebird and listened to the radio for where it was last seen. We drove around and followed it for hours... it would try to land behind buildings and suddenly screamed of again and we followed again... It went on for hours...

Four guys driving around all seeing and hearing the same thing... must be true!

We gave up after a while and went home, the girlfriends/wives had all crashed at my place and laughed when they heard our story.

The bass players girlfriend had put six trips (LSD) in the jar of Sake we were drinking.

My 64 Datsun Bluebird didn't even have a radio, we checked!

Hey it was paranormal to us!

I will tag...hmmmm...

1/ Bender01 A new (soon) blogger and a tech friend of mine...(come on mate!)

2/ Thump Thump Eyes... my beautiful partner

3/ Reg Golb cause it would be interesting

4/ Delise cause I've lurked but never said anything but I think she is very cool (Sorry Delise)

5/ You!



Aye

CUNTS but not what you think

I’m an annoyingly honest person. I call a spade a fucking spade and can’t conceive ripping someone off! Simple.

This becomes a problem because in what I do I always seem to upset customers by being brutally honest about the choice of gear they own and their ability to understand what it does. A knowledge of the principles of recording, playing mixing etc will allow you to get the most from your gear even if it is cheap and featureless… but it certainly isn’t my job to train people… or explain sound principles or basic fault finding… perhaps the salespeople should do that or at least confirm the person has a brain slightly larger than their ego.

Our (Thump Thump Eyes & I) business is quite specialist in what we do. We repair and service professional audio equipment used in studios and nightclubs and bands and theatre… anything that plugs in and makes noise so we get a huge range of customers that are using very specialist equipment that often requires years of experience to understand the music/acoustic/sound theory … let alone how to actually operate it.

So… 40% of our business is professional recording studios, TV studios, radio stations, location sound recordists, production companies, touring bands, international acts, professional DJs etc all “Calmly Using New Technology Successfully”. No problems. Everyone's happy. Nice earner… CUNTS…

40% of our business is repairing cheap, crappy, poorly made, 600 parts supplied by the lowest bidder JUNK… I’m talking DJ mixers, turntables, soundcards, keyboards, guitar amps, speaker systems, etc all used by wannabes or weekend warriors that have no concept of how to patch, mix, play, edit, master etc and for some reason whenever that wonderful piece of equipment doesn’t make them sound like a million bucks… it’s my fault. “Consumers Using New Technology Stupidly”… Always a drama, hours of trying to explain how it works… CUNTS…

20% is the frigging churches… these are worse than wannabe rock stars 'cause they “believe” the equipment is faulty… they “believe” they know how it works…they “believe” they have all the experience in the world… they “believe” it’s good ‘cause they’ve been on the xwad forums and purchased (tax free) the best quality gear they can… but…whoops… they’re fucking stupid… and it sounds like shit… “Christians Using New Technology Stupidly”… Always a drama, hours of trying to explain how it works… CUNTS…

You know I’ve been blessed three times this week already by pastors because I explained how something worked, proved their gear worked and suggested perhaps the fault was possibly not in their gear but in the way it’s wired or being used…I tell them perhaps “Christ Understands, Not The Sheep”… CUNTS… baaa

Everyone wants their gear fixed today… Oh yes they knew it was fucked last Saturday and it’s Thursday already but “we really need it for the weekend”… “Crazy Unorganized No Talent Shits”… CUNTS…

I have a pile of jobs that are a little difficult for various reasons and get put back… ie.. Parts hard to find, very intermittent faults, customer can’t decide if it’s worth spending $200 to repair his $100 turd… This pile I call the “Can Usually Not Today“ pile… yes you guessed it, the CUNT pile.

I actually really enjoy what I do… I’m just a grumpy old cunt I guess!

And yes I have been gluing more today…

ya know what shits me?

Customers Using New Technology Stupidly. These goddamned idiots, if they didn't need to shit they'd lose their own arse, it's enough to drive a man to drink. Which I am, or will. Actually at the moment I don't need beer because I'm gluing speakers and.... glue.... it's good glue. good stuff I tell you. wow.....

Shit! I almost started writing poetry about glue but I slapped myself silly in time to spare you.

So.... where was I.... before I giffed the snue I was talking about... what the fuck was I talking about???? No it wasn't nothing, it was something.... CUNTS!!!! That's right. CUNTS...How many times do they have to ask the same stupid questions? Were they not listening to the answer the first time or do they just like the sound of my voice????

Well let me tell you, pissed off Kiwi is NOT something you want to wake up to in the morning.

I've had about all the workshop I can handle at the moment, the dog needs to take a shit and I'm tempted to mark territory along with him. And what the fuck is up with the heat????

Where'd I put that damn glue????