New Thing Of The Week: Start driving

[She may not be pretty or fast or reliable... but she's mine... kinda]

I've been awaiting my birth certificate now for a fortnight. The Dept of Births, Deaths & Marriages have buggered up the application three times now.

The reason I want the birth certificate is to get a replacement driver's license. I lost it when I moved many months ago.

But to first get my birth certificate I had to get a replacement Medicare Card (which I also lost when I moved). To get that I had to give them my new address and wait three weeks before asking for a replacement card (those are the rules) and then up to a fortnight to receive the card.

I need an ATM card, a Medicare card and my overblown mobile phone bill to get the birth certificate.

I need all of the above, plus a signature from mother dear to get my driver's license.

Tomorrow, before TAFE but after I leave work early, I head to the said department and get my birth certificate. On Saturday I will wait for hours on end and get a replacement card.

I hope to begin my first hours of learner's driving that afternoon.

The car at the top of this post is my car that Mum owns but is lending to me. Hopefully by my next birthday I will get my P's and be able to drive by myself.

People have put me down for not being able to drive. I choose not to drive because I have public transport - but currently the PT I take ends up being up to 4x the time it would take to drive there.

The time has come for me to take this big big step. I am scared of driving the car over 20km/h as it doesn't seem natural to me. Certainly, my ancestors didn't have cars.


[Why not take a crazy chance? Why not do a crazy dance!]

However, there are opportunities out there that require me not to be suckling on the Cityrail teat - so it's time to turn a new leaf and take a crazy chance.

Videos videos videos!

[Jay & Silent Bob in crystal clear pirated video]

So there I was at "The Run" (an op shop factory) today looking for some golf clubs (for my birthday project - the mini golf course) and I found a shit load of good videos.

Videos, you might say, what's so good about them?

Well back in my day, which is still today I think, videos were awesome. They still are. They're cheaper than DVDs and that means I can get more videos for my already large collection.

Today I got:

• Saturday Night Live best of


• Winfield Cup best of


• Moonraker


• Super Mario Bros.


• Crocodile Dundee II


• Top Gun


• The Virgin Suicides


• Clueless


• Good Will Hunting


• Porky's Revenge


• Mr Holland's Opus


• 25 Years of Australia's Best Ads


• Mallrats


• Sliding Doors


• She's All That


• Waterworld


• The Rock

I found that I already had The Rock so it will be passed onto some semi-desperate person, but finally I have a copy of Mr Holland's Opus to call my own.

Mr Holland's Opus is one of my top five movies of all time and echoes my own life: will I ever finish my own opus - Waiting For Tonight.

Waiting For Tonight is seen as a pre-cursor to Earthquake Tonight, the show I have been working on for 12 years. WFT is a story of the bringing together of the people who make up the show - essentially a story of me bumping into people and asking them to partake in the show as well as helping out one depressed lad with his problems.

The movie was three quarters done but there wasn't enough time to do the last couple of scenes.

But I digress, I have already watched one of the videos (after coming back from beach cricket today) and it happened to be Mallrats. I have heard a lot of good things about Kevin Smith and other than watching him on MTV in the 90's (as part of his Jay & Silent Bob sketches) I hadn't seen much of him - til now.

First off, the video I got from The Run was pirated - I didn't know that it was. The sound was a bit patchy at times and the video went in and out every now and then but it was alright. It looked like a legit video from the cover though.

Mallrats was great - the timbre of the dialogue was in a similar vein to that of WFT. For me, the best parts of the movie consisted of the action around Jay & Silent Bob. I plan to see some more Kevin Smith movies in the future because after reading about him he has inspired me to work more on my personal projects in the future.

It's time to finish my Opus, otherwise my life will be Clueless!

New Thing Of The Week: Play more sport

[Earthquake always wanted to bowl a maiden over at the beach]

Okay, I have decided that the excercise that I do is not enough: I need more.

I bought a beach cricket set from Rebel Sport today which includes a pitch mat so I can bowl my famous spin bowling without it plodding in the sand.

I plan to use it tomorrow at the beach and play the best that I can.

It's all about family, friends and fun as I continue bettering myself this year!

Life's pretty good actually

[The Beatles couldn't've said it any better...]

On Valentine's Day I felt happy for the first ever.

I've never had a Valentine but yeah, on that day I decided to give Anne-Marie a gift and yeah, she loved it. She was so surprised.

That felt good.

I hear that half her family now knows about the gift and I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not, but it can't hurt.

Life's going so well that as well as the above I just got a semi-promotion which gives me more responsibility as well as taking me off the phones for half the day.

In a few months I will go for a raise as well and hopefully hit that sweet number that I want for my salary.

And I just did my first full week of TAFE and while a lot of it is revision to me I am learning stuff and there are some nice people there also.

So, overall life is pretty good. All I need is to see Cass more often and get my little brother out of this rut he is in and things will be pretty much perfect.

New Thing Of The Week: Be Positive

[No I didn't say B+!]

I guess this could be a variation on the whole "smile it confuses people" new thing that I did.

I have been told by a good mate that lately I have been feeling a bit down and as a consequence have been a bit negative.

I have even be told at work by my boss that I haven't been that happy at work.

I can think of one reason why. But right now the negative person is out of my life. I am no longer under the thumb. I can be who I want to be without being forced into things I don't want to do and without having to be a slave.


[Both me and Tina Arena are not in chains anymore.]

"You broke my world; made me strong, thank you, messed up my dreams; made me strong, thank you," Jamelia - Thank You

So, this week I will do as my good mate says and be positive. At work, at home - wherever.

It's time to be positive! It's all part of being HAPPY.

Life is for living - it shouldn't be a funeral.

Words of Wisdom: Harold Hill (The Music Man)

"You pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays."

Words of Wisdom: Gary Johnston (Team America)

"We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are an inch and half away from assholes. I don't know much about this crazy, crazy world, but I do know this: If you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!"

PC update

[Earthquake could be the next Joe Hachem thanks to getting back Win XP!]

Just letting you all know that the PC is now up and working thank God!

In the end it was only one DLL file that was corrupted in Win XP and once that was on the system it was all good.

The strange thing though is how much quicker Windows ME was. I would've kept using it had it not been for my favourite game right now not working on Windows ME, so I'm back to Windows XP.