.. oh god .. pardon the disparity of this entry.. it’s coming from a man who feels like their throat is on fire.. and knows he has to wake up at some un-Godly hour to get to Uni.. at.. some un-Godly hour.

Firstly, i have to mention my lil MP3 thingo up in my “Currently” section.. it’s a hybrid of a winamp plugin and a php script i wrote.. it’s great. So as soon as ANY song is played in winamp, that little title is updated. (yay me.. i’m becoming more like waferbaby every entry!

Now for a little whinge.. as u may or may not know, i have a Livejournal.. unfortunately, i mainly use it to follow a whole list of friends.. just .. something i do. .. but lately LJ has been suffering from DDOS attacks.. which is REALLY crap. Making the site completely un-visitable, and just difficult! I understand a DDOS of microsoft.com or some government site (if your into that sorta thing), but why would someone want to (temporarily) bring LJ to a halt?.. It’s not like they’ve ever done anything wrong. Bah!.. stupid script-kiddies!

Lastly, orbiting-star.net is no more. Steph changed location to the new + wonderful petisa.net.. check her out!

Changed the top graphic..

What do u guys think?. . keep it or trash it.

.. just before waking I had the most curious dream .. and I feel in reality it was probably no more than a second of my synapses slipping up and feeding memories or emotions buried deep within, up to some higher level of awareness.

Content: Tool concert, somewhere small and strange. For some reason Maynard was missing, and Danny Carey looked more like Garth from Waynes World.. not to mention neither Justin NOR Adam looked anything like they do, and I was sitting round really close with Justin, and was talking to him mid-show. Like he was on a stool just next to me, being able to hear me etc. I remember Adam brushing past me and i whispered in his ear “play H. .. please play H.”.. Justin laughed at me and told me that “Danny Hates playing that song”.. whereby Danny/Garth got up from his drum-kit, to stand behind this collection of what looked like electronic drum-pads, except made by Apple (you know.. with the annoying lil Mac Symbol all over them).. and started doing this very melodic drum-solo. .. Then my mobile woke me up. Possibly I should change my ring-tone from 46&2.

I’m not entirely sure of the correct title of that feeling you have if you wake from a dream (or even just sleep) with a start, and you jerk up-right and your heart is beating at a thousand bpm’s, but i’ve been thinking about this feeling (sitting near Bj when he talks about the uni/multi-verse, and the whole god icon vs god encapsulating entity) and I’ve come to this feeling that possibly that moment of fright+excitement, that moment when you think you could almost die and it’s so seizure-like, that in that instant, your body is conscience of just how fast that it is spinning round on our tiny little globe, and that our globe is also in-turn spinning around our sun, and that our Solar system is spinning around some ethereal, gooey centre of the milky-way, which in turn spins around some cosmic event. And that all times, even in stillness, we are going faster than it’s safe to think about.

Btw, thanks to ikki @ hyperviolence.net for the great cam-still

oh.. and this is interesting. (Specially because that’s MY city people… my lil isolated city!)

Just wishing everyone out there in wunder-land a happy v’s day! For the couples, i hope u guys spent it romantically, for the singles.. i hope it wasn’t too bad. Though, i feel, most people would’ve just gone through the day without even realising it WAS a day of sorts.. with the candy.. and kissing. Question: Does the US have a 3 day weekend because of Valentines day??

I’ve found lately that my whole conception of time has been changing. I think as a child my times of the day really circulated around the appropriate feeding-times. Breakfast time pre-9am. Lunch time around 12-1.. dinner time 6.30-7.30ish. As i’ve gotten older these 3 small items have shifted around, so much so, that i eat now really when i feel hungry, or when i wake up (which could very well be traditional lunch-time (like today)), etc. Naturally with these feeding times not being so stringent and uniform, the 3 poles of my day don’t really exist anymore. So what does time really mean to me now, as an adult, who exists through the day that DOESN’T follow the menu? It’s tasks. My time-system is no longer broken up by seconds, minutes, hours etc but by items on a calendar. By set-points. By tasks and places i have to be at a certain time-frame. 2.30: office. 3.00: Rehersal. 5.15: Television. 7.45: Emily’s. 9.00: Copulate. 11.00: Watch SBS. 10.00am: Shopping. Eventually i’ll no-longer see time as numbers at all. I’ll find myself checking my watch telling me i’m due at a meeting in 30mins, and that in that time i have to send 4 emails. I’ll find my face lighting up when my calendar-sys advises me that designated freetime has begun, and won’t end for another 3 hours (so i better quickly put on my boardies + go for a swim)..

I’m not sure if i find this depressing or not. Perhaps interesting.

Time is now nothing more than a collection of dots+points on a map of infinite possibilities+tasks.

Must advise everyone to go check out echoica.net.. because it was down for a while, but as u can see, the site is back up in FULL swing!

Secondly, another very nice site i’ve been following lately, it’s femmegeek.org.. go check it out (some VERY great photolog entries there too!.. if i had the technology at hand, this would be the direction i’d want to take un-excogitate!)

On request from Vicki in Canada, i have to mention how much i’m missing her. Not just me, but the entire Melange Crew (Daev, Bj, Moi). “U know we’re missing ya hon!.. hope that u don’t get too bored back at home, and if all goes well, looking forward to seeing u again sometime!!”

oh.. before i leave.. u must all do this survey.. so .. please please me!

Well.. the Melange show was great. We packed out mojo’s (270ish people) .. well.. not really “we”.. but .. most likely cos of stuart orchard (head-liner).. but anyway, somehow through the combination of 3 acts (Tom French + Band, Melange, Stuart Orchard + Band) and the huge amount of publicity, we filled up this great lil live-music-venue.

Our set was pretty good. Most of it went fairly flawlessly except for some guitar problems that we suffered on our end, but as far as i can tell, those problems didn’t translate out to the audience, so whilst we were hearing shit, they were still hearing it all orite.

I had a ball. Daevid might have been a bit boring + brooding on the bass, and bj might have been whinging about his guitar maybe an inch-too-much, but it all still went off quite well. We had quite a few bopping heads, and a handful of guys stand up the front and dance (if that’s what u call it) to some of our heavier songs. Supposedly from the audience our sound was quite large (some said it should’ve been louder) .. my bass-drum was very doof-doof which is great. Other compliments came from how well bj sang. I mean, he does have such a beautiful voice (as soon as i get some good sounding recordings i shall share with you all).

All-in-all, i had a great night, we got paid for standing on a stage and rocking out for 45mins.. great night. We learnt a lot of things, and found funny lil problems in some of songs too (should be fixed by cutting out some bits)

What else do i have to talk about?.. ohh yeah.. Bowling For Columbine .. a movie/documentary that EVERYONE should see. .. and i mean EVERYONE. The director,actor,producer(etc) Michael Moore is really really intelligent, some parts are just completely hilarious, other parts are shocking. Sometimes the imagery really grabs you and shakes you. Sometimes it’s the horrific (astounding) statistics that take a vice-like grip of you and shout in your face “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE??”.. great movie. (Besides all this.. it’s very Pro-Canada. Makes me wanna move there :) )

Okay.. hope u have a good week!

M?lange have our first show 2morro. I’m really really looking forward to it, it seems just a while back that i played with BLAST furnace, and now to be hitting the stage again. What’s better is that the pub we’re playing at is changing ownership soon (i think), so in theory it means it might be closing soon. Not to mention that it’s a place which i’ve seen heaps of great live music at (can anyone say Hotpants?) and has such a .. live-music feel to it it’ll make you want to jump out of your pants and into a cold beer.

I hope it all goes from either well-to-flawless.

Secondly, even though the site is actually down atm, i need to wish a very merry happy belated birthday to echoica.net.. Happy Birthday Echoica..

Last i need to mention this: animatrix? ring any bells? have ANY idea what i’m talking about? First check out here.. then head over to here to download the first short-anime-film based on the freakin’ matrix universe!! It’s pretty damn cool. Reeks of .. ancient pyramids, slavery, holocaustism.. etc. Check it out.

Erich Maria Remarque – All Quiet On The Western Front

URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Remarque%2C%20Erich%20Maria/104-6010549-8833503

Blurb: “Our life alternates between billets and the front. We have almost grown accustomed to it; War is a cause of death like cancer and tuberculosis, like influenza and dysentry. The deaths are merely more frequent, more varied and terrible.”

Why: Em told me to.

Thoughts so far: Eeek. It was alright as far as a semi-auto-biographical work goes. All that really stuck to me about it was how gory it was. There were many times during this novel that i seriously had to stop, and then re-read a passage to try and swallow the immensity of it’s sickness. A writer of fiction to have written some of these scenes would have been thought of as imaginary, because this author would have seen these things.. it really made me cringe, and my stomach do somersaults. Books like this make me fear any sort of war even more. Even though some may argue that war is just a thing that happens, and that it’s not actually that bad, that even though hundreds of possibly millions of ppl die, there are still just as many living homeless on the street. Even if this fact is so. Pointless and utterly disgusting death is just… very much not up my alley. The thought of a world without war almost seems comical to us now. But let me ask you… would u rather be living the large-life as a comic.. not even becoming great through something as powerful as a war. Or would u rather be remembered FOREVER as the great president who led his people into battle… that stripped so many people of their innocence, and of their lives. .. i don’t even feel a president should be able to make that decision.

Cartman
These guys are a local band, and for a band whom i’m sure have played with the GC boys i haven’t seen them before, so i thought this was the perfect situation. I wasn’t really blown away, but they were pretty good. Nothing really sticks out.

Augie March
On the same stage as Cartman, Augie March stepped up. The first thing i noticed was all their equipment looked ancient, i spose that’s where they get their really great sound, unfortunately for them, during their set the wind was buffeting quite a lot, causing the sound to kind of fade off, then fade back on. Overall (from what i heard of the first 30 mins) it was sort of messy, and ended up going over to the waifs with byron + daev. (Though, don’t think i’m downing augie march, i think i’m going to try + go see them later on with the dirty three later on this month)

The Waifs
Folk-rock is back baby. These two completely stunning sisters got up and gave us i think the best that Albany folk-rock can (i think it’s albany?!). Their songs were really great, and i was happy to recognise a couple from the radio. The crowd were also really getting into it.. and their lead-guitarist (ie: pink-shirt man) was great. I’ve kind of forgotten how nice an electric acoustic can sound, and boy could this guy play. .. Great tunes.. great feel. Afterwards we kind of wandered round for 40 mins, getting food etc etc.

Deftones
WOW!!.. Deftones were number one super-mega-highlight of the day. Holy shit. Got right into the middle of the mosh, and met up with ppl i always seem to meet up with mid-mosh, includin’ Christy, Josh K, all these guys a yr younger than moi. Deftones sounded fucking spectacular. I was super happy to hear they played heaps of stuff from their first couple of albums, so a lot of it i recognised, and from what i gathered, the “white pony” stuff they did play.. was also great. Byron and I got quite mental during the set, but mid-way, he seemed to disappear (later i learnt he had to crawl out to save himself from.. himself).. wow. Mid-way through all their classics, i just kept on having to pinch myself, telling myself, yes. I am seeing the Deftones. Yes, i loved these guys. Yes, i used to cover these songs.. but BOY do they do it better. The bassist was completely insane. It was great to see Chino come right up to the front of the crowd, get up on the bannister and kind of scream/sing whilst leaning basically over the crowd. A few times mid-song he kept on telling everyone to pick people up, and right near the end actually ended up pulling some poor bastard up off the ground. Great atmosphere, great music. They were.. .. wow. No words.

Sparta
After deftones, made it back to the JJJ stage to catch the end of Sparta. Great sounding set. Didn’t recognise any of the tunes, unfortunately, but did recognise the feel of the music, very at the drive in. When the 2 guys sang up the front, it really sang out.. great sounding band.

Jimmy Eat World
On the same stage as Sparta, i didn’t have to travel far for these guys (:P).. Great tight band. Weren’t as plagued as the other groups who’d played on the JJJ stage, and it was quite funny to see them play there, because the crowd they drew was huge (don’t know why they weren’t on the main-stage?!).. The songs that i recognised went down a treat. Had a slightly sore arm for a while, whilst me + daev held up vicki so she could see (short-ass). After this we quickly got some food, and got ready for the last 4hrs of mahem.

Queens of the Stoneage
.. Wow. By this stage, we’d all kinda gotten ourselves into a nice middle spot of the main-mosh-area, so we could easily see both the left + the right main stages. The queens for me where the band i was very interested in seeing, but didn’t really know what to expect. They completely rocked. And wow. How they rocked. They sounded great, they just, completely knew how to rock (:P). I soon lost count of how many times i’d turn my head to daev with a sort of “Holy shit, how fucking good is this” look on my face.. Great group. I should go out + purchase the cd.

PJ Harvey
The only sort of solo artist on the main-stages (i think), and though i knew quite a lot of her music, i wasn’t that interested in it. Her and her band (2 other guys) just didn’t seem to fill up the stage as much as they should’ve (i felt), and the crowd didn’t seem as interested as they could’ve been. She did rock though. Great guitarist/singer. But i dunno, there was just something missing.

Janes Addiction
Glam rock lives on. A bit like PJ i wasn’t that interested in the music of this band, just a general .. curiosity. They certainly did make the entire place rock with a “stadium” sort of feel. The singers voice occasionally got on my nerves, but the guy had crazy amounts of energy, and was constantly posing (really funny!) and drinking his wine :) The last thing that kind of ticked me off about these guys was their encore. They all walked off stage 20 mins before the end, when everyman and his dog had a timetable, so they knew they still had timeleft on the stage, when they reappeared (no duh). Luckily, the vocalist by this time had changed into his super glittery glam gear, so the pretentious encore was saved by this .. freakin’ funny lookin’ guy. (still wailing). Ps: i’ve forgotten to mention that the lengths of all their songs seemed a bit too long, and mid-song, i found myself wondering where any of the melodies, bits, riffs (etc) of the songs had gone.

Foo Fighters
Highlight of the night.. naturally. They couldn’t have NOT been the highlight could they? Everything about their set reeked of.. excellence. The lights were amazing. All 4 of the guys were rocking hard. They sounded great (though not nearly as loud as i believe it should’ve been). Dave Grohl, holy shit. It was just all so perfect. Glad to recognise EVERY song they played (all their singles etc etc).. they were all super tight. .. I can’t really do the show justice. .. Just know that i felt it was easily the highlight of the night, and i had NO troubles with standing for the last hour + 15mins even though i was sore + burnt to shit!

AHHH.. done.

.. big day out today.. i’m so freakin’ excited! I don’t really have anything to post that’s ANY different from my lj entry .. but i can tell u now.. already at almost 10am.. i can hear them doing their warm-up-set-up sounds.. god…

today shall be great.

timetable:
cartman… then the end of 28 days.
augie march then the last 45mins of the waifs
millencolin
deftones
last 25mins of sparta
jimmy eat world
queens of the stoneage
pj harvey
jane’s addiction
foo fighters..

it’d better not rain today.. and if it does.. it’d better just be a drizzle.