Hi all,

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and seasons greetings to all!

I hope you’re all having a good one!

Today marks six months to the day that Carly and I had our first date.

To celebrate, on Saturday eve just passed, we had ourselves a casual dinner at Birches restaurant — located at Mt Mee, the scenery on the drive there was wonderful, the scenery there was wonderful; quaint, nostalgic though not too rustic — and the food was good to boot! We both had an excellent time; capping the evening off by watching Mulan, as part of our recent effort to relive childhood memories through classic Disney films. Not particularly romantic some might say, but what’s not romantic about snuggling up to each other and watching an all-time favourite movie that we both enjoy? After all, being romantic is about sharing each others company.

The day after, we were headed for the beach. Bribie Island surf side beach, to be exact. With my brother, Brett, his girlfriend Kate, Carly, and our mutual friend Annie and Jamie (and of course myself); in part it was because unfortunately Carly could not make it to next weekends friendly Christmas gathering, so we opted instead to have her open her from-friends prezzies a little early, likewise her gifts to Kate and Annie! Everyone was thoroughly delighted with their gifts, and we had ourselves a not-so-healthy deep fried fish & chip lunch to celebrate. Hey, that’s what we do in this country, alright?

After that, we headed down to the beach for a few hours, where we all mucked around kicking wahu balls, building sand walls to stop the inevitable tide, and running around madly acting like morons. It was great fun!

(I like how they automatically arranged themselves by height in this photo, haha)

Hi all,

Went out last night for Ash’s 23rd birthday celebrations, and I had a great time. Although many people couldn’t make it, due to prior commitments and in some cases sheer poofterism, Ash, Troy, Bruce and I still had a good time, with Bruces friends Tom and Josh, and Ashs’ friend Nas joining us later in the evening. First we hit up O’Malleys where Bruce and I had ourselves something to eat; the chicken burger I had was nice but I think they overdid the chilli sauce. I couldn’t taste anything but chilli. Bruce had a Guiness pie, though it looked more like soup than a pie, but he enjoyed it nonetheless.

It’s here we also ran into the lead singer of Ponyloaf, who is a cool guy. If you recall, I saw them a few weeks ago at the Brisbane Powerhouse Museum, and they were just as awesome then as they had been when I first saw them support Midnight Juggernauts at the start of o-seven. On stage, he acts pretty fucked up. Jumping around, hitting himself in the head, falling over on purpose, that kind of thing. Brett reckoned he was on drugs, but apparently he just really gets into it all. Haha, sick.

We had to leave O’Malleys at 9 o’clock because Troy’s a fuckwit and wore shorts (grow a cell and evolve you phillistine), but we were able to hang out at the Pig’n'Whistle for the rest of the evening, having quite a few drinks and a good chat about which of us was gay, and which of us was gayer than that. Ah, drunksdedness. As a side note, the Pig’n'Whistle has a slogan along the lines of having a “genuine British pub” atmosphere, and perhaps it was coincedence, or perhaps they really do try hard with that, because all the bar staff had British accents. Haha.

Then Nas drove us all home as Troy and I sat in the back having hot gay man sex yelling at random passersby, simply ’cause we’re just that fucken tough.

It was a great night out and I hope Ash enjoyed himself, happy birthday mate!

Hi everyone,

What’s doing? Not much? Yeah, no, uh-huh, of course.

Haha, not really.

Had a great weekend just gone. Visited Alma Park Zoo with Carly and Annie, which I’ve only done twice in my entire life, surprisingly even though it’s a mere 10 minutes’ drive from my house. Saw some pretty cool animals, the baboons are mental. They look kinda like a cross between a human, a pig and some kind of long-snouted dog. Perhaps German Sheppard. It amazed me to see animals doing things that were entirely “human-like” in appearance; with the baboons picking at their food to get rid of seeds and other undesirable parts not unlike your average human would pick at a hamburger to remove an unwanted pickle.

The marmosets were cute; being the smallest primate in the world, and measuring about 15cm from head to butt. They reminded me of squirrels, but I reckon the marmosets would win in a fight. Stupid squirrels. And your nuts.

The camels were large and ugly; we didn’t hang around long as we expected them to spit on us at any moment.

The highlight of the day would’ve been the baby chicken pen at the Friendship Farm, literally a hundred or so baby chickens running around in a little pen, you could stick your arms in and hold as many as your hand could fit. The cool thing was if you tapped on the floor of the enclosure with your fingernail, they’d mostly all run over towards you at lightning speed. It was like watching the ebbs and flows of some kind of chicken river, except I was in command of the direction!

The ostriches were cool too. You don’t realise how fucking big they are until you see one standing next to a fully grown rooster. Why the rooster was in the same pen as the ostrich I’m not sure, perhaps it was placed there by the park to ultimately illustrate the point I’m making: male ostriches are huge. They also have huge penis-like things, which we had the (dis)pleasure of being able to view in its full glory, as the thing stopped right in front of us, let it all out, and took a huge dump. Hahaha. Apparently it’s all part of the same organ. Imagine that on humans…

Enough about ostrich dick.

There were heaps of other cool animals like the kangaroos, wallabies, emus and koalas. It’s strange, I live in Australia, but I don’t recall ever having seen an emu before, so it was a nice experience. They’re pretty awesome animals. Koalas are cute and a lot smaller than I thought they were, and kangaroos are really a lot bigger than I thought they were. Oh god, I sound like a shut-in.

After that, we joined with my brother, Kate, Bruce and my mum and dad, and headed to the local RSL for Jamies 20th, which was pretty damn awesome. Despite the RSL being a money-pit for pensioners, and with my wholehearted disagreement with poker machines, I did manage to have a good time. The bar did double shots of bourbon in a pint of Coke, which many bars in the city won’t do, so I was stoaked with that. You go RSL, keep “supporting the community” and “helping our war veterans” by enabling all of the local pensioners to waste what life (and money) they have on the poker machines. That’s real community spirit. Fuckwits.

On the Sunday, ’twas rather lazy, Carly and I went to the surfside beach at Bribie Island and had ourselves a good time. Ah, the beach. So sandy (shut-in alert!)

Sunday evening Carly and I visited Annie and Kate, and we had chicken salad for dinner, expertly made by Kate, followed by chocolate cream cake, expertly made by Annie, followed by watching the Disney Hercules movie, which I haven’t seen for years. I don’t recall the main female character, Meg, being quite so obviously “sexy”. Honestly, I’ve watched a few Disney classics again recently, and I’m only just realising how sexual some of the female characters are. It can hardly be unintentional, but kids simply don’t notice that kind of thing. Or maybe they do…

PS: Pics coming when Nokia can make a fucking USB key function like a fucking USB key. My Arch Linux usb daemon can’t seem to maintain a solid connection, the phone keeps resetting it.