if it's owən | it's probably awesome

Friends

Dec 8th, 2007

Ash’s 23rd; queer as folk

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!

Dec 4th, 2007

Hello y’all

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.

Oct 9th, 2007

I WASN’T BORN WITH ENOUGH MIDDLE FINGERS!!!

Sep 2nd, 2007

Midnight Juggernauts Riverfire Fathers’ Day Weekend (MJRFDW!)

Woah!

Fucking top shit. It was excellent.

Firstly, on Friday afternoon after work, I made my way via public transport (two buses and a train to travel 7.8km from Aspley to Northgate – oh my!) to Northgate, whereupon I met with Soph, Brett, Kate and Annie, in preparation for one of my best weekends ever.

The plan was and happened as follows:

Friday night – Midnight Juggernauts @ The Tivoli
Saturday morning – recover, chill out
Saturday night – Riverfire!
Sunday – rest and relaxation

Good plan, eh? I thought so. I don’t think that’s an unfair self-assessment.

After arriving at the girls’ house Friday afternoon and getting changed into my new clothes, we hung out for a while and waited around for everyone to show. After much mucking about and waiting around and generally piss-farting about, we departed their house around 7.30PM; by the time we’d negotiated QRs Brunswick St Station refurbishments, Bruce and Ash’s hunger, and the streets of the Valley, it was around 9PM when we arrived finally at The Tivoli.

Unfortunately this meant that we missed the first support act, Young & Restless, who it seems would’ve been quite good live. Damn Arms were pretty good. Although initially, I didn’t particularly like any of their songs, as they basically sounded like tryhard Midnight Juggernauts impersonators, by the time they played through their headline track Homewrecker, I was jumpin’ and thumpin’ just as hard as the next indie-synth-rocker.

Indubitably, Midnight Juggernauts were the show stoppers, stealers, and wreckers. With their first LP, Dystopia just released, they have a veritable lengthy playlist to rock through.

We all went pretty crazy, me especially.

Owen-Bruce-Brettsfinger@TheTivoli

It was fucking awesome.

Not eating all day, combined with my drinking and few hours of non-stop jumping around makes for a fucked up Owen! Hell yeah!

We made to back to Northgate just fine, and hung out for a bit before people started to droop one-by-one like unwatered plants, only the strongest surviving into the early hours of the morning to keep the chattering and the good times rolling.

Saturday morning everyone woke late, except for Carly and I, who stupidly woke up around 8.30AM, after being asleep for at least four hours. We sorted ourselves out and a short few hours later, we all headed to the RE for a wholesome hearty lunch. I had the RE burger, which was awesome, and filled my empty, gurgling stomach just nicely. Bruce and Ash peeled off to go see The Bourne Ultimatum (which is pretty damn good), while Scott, Soph, Annie, Brett, Kate, Carly and myself headed to the Brisbane river, whereupon we happened across some ice cream and general mucking about.

Kate and Annie went to meet a friend of theirs at West End, Soph and Scotty went to meet Soph’s family somewhere else, and that left Brett, Carly and I to our own devices. We decided to head to our usual Riverfire enjoyment spot, and along the way we picked up a doughnut or two from Dreamy Doughnuts and enjoyed them thoroughly. I had a Lindt chocolate covered doughnut, and it was fucking awesome. Two thumbs up!

We arrived at our spot for Riverfire rather early, around 5PM. We had two hours to kill before much of anything happened, or so I thought. Fortunately for our sake, the RAAF Roulettes made some interesting flyovers; I never realised just how awesome the turboprop engines sound.

In between conversation, and entertainment provided by small kids and some helicopters, the time flew by, until Bruce and Ash arrived, and it was almost time for the main event. The first F1-11 flew over, rather high I thought. In years gone by, the dump and burn was executed at a lower altitude; one year, I swear I could feel the heat from the flame! This year, not so. However, the fireworks display was brilliant; they must have implemented some new techniques, or used different fireworks, because it seemed to be a lot more spectacular than last years’ display.

After Riverfire, we all headed awkwardly home, with QRs rail transport flailing under the strain of transporting the several-hundred-thousand-strong crowd out from the Brisbane CBD. Ash, Carly and I did eventually make it back to Northgate station, after which we bought ourselves some Maccas and chomped heartily while having a bit of a chin-wag. On account of our late-night-drinking-and-partying-then-trecking-around-Brisbane-induced-tiredness, Carly and I opted to get a lift home with Ashley, to save ourselves the walk from Petrie station. We said our farewells and headed back to my place.

Sunday, Carly and I hung out for a bit, and generally spent time relaxing. We had lunch with my family for fathers day, which was an excellent mixture of freshly cooked mackerel, fresh prawns, salads, breadrolls and softdrink. It was a good lunch, as my family don’t oft have time for each other these days. I thoroughly enjoyed myself today, despite the lack of action-packed-ness as compared to previous days this weekend.

All in all, I had a hella good time, and I have all my friends and family to thank for it! You guys fucking rock!

Aug 9th, 2007

A Small Boating Expedition

Went out on my dad’s boat weekend just gone. There wasn’t any real point to the trip; just to get out and get some fresh air, spend some time with some quality people, and give the boat a bit of a run. Although the morning got off to a slow start for some; with Bruce getting up at some crazy hour around 7AM to make it to my place on time for us to leave in an early fashion that never eventuated, we had some breakfast at the local Coffe Club, then headed back home to collect Brett, after which we collected some supplies for lunch, whereupon I was utterly confused by the ancient ATM facilities and the purchase requests of some people…

That was a long sentence!

The Boys, from left to right: Brett, my dad, and myself

MC Bruce and I

Ashley and I
MC Ash and I

Carly and I
Empress Wierd and I

We had a good run across Deception Bay and into Pumicestone passage; it was a little choppy on the way over, with a moderate breeze churning up the water. Dad’s boat handled it beautifully…

This is an old photo, but it illustrates my point

Whence we reached Pumicestone passage, we motored along a short while to the jetty at Bribie Island, whereupon dad dropped us off for a few minutes so we could buy some ice cream!

On the way back, Bruce had a go at captaining the bridge, and well enjoyed himself:

It was an excellent day!

Jul 31st, 2007

Cupcake Mondays

Ah, I love Cupcake Mondays. Last night I headed over to the girls’ place, and was treated to beautiful cupcakes. Beautiful, wonderful cupcakes. They were so good. If I hadn’t eaten them, I’m sure I would’ve moved to Texas and married them. They were most satisfying; exquisite, wonderful, incredible. When I buy food, I expect it to taste a lot better than anything I’ve made myself. Although I obviously didn’t make these cupcakes, I expected them to taste about as good as any other home-made food; good, but, not prepared by a professional, so understandably not amazing.

Oh how wrong I was with Annie’s cupcakes.

They’re even beautifully presented!

There were three types. Lavender cupcakes, which I wasn’t a fan of. They tasted like the scent. My brain was confused, it kept saying to me, “you’re supposed to smell lavender, not eat it!”, plus they were quite strong. I’m not accustomed to powerfully tasteful food.

The other two… ohhh… there was a passionfruit cupcake, the beige coloured one, which as far as I can tell was a slightly passionfruity cake, with wonderful passionfruit icing, and a strawberry to top it off. The icing was amazing. It had all the sweetness of icing sugar, but carried with it the strong conviction of being wonderfully passionfruit flavoured. It was incredibly good. The third, was a sort of mudcake cake, but inside it contained cream and wonderfully prepared rasberries, which.. oh my goodness, they were incredible too. I couldn’t believe how good these two were, they were great!

Annie makes awesome cupcakes. Bruce approves.

Bruce gives the thumbsup for Cupcake Mondays

Jul 30th, 2007

Updates

Don’t happen very often.

I could write about my life on here, but nobody reads it. Besides, my life’s mine. Get your own.

My life’s though.

If it ever turns shit again, I’ll probably come sobbing back here, no doubt. Though, as they say, you make your own fortune. I won’t come sobbing back here.

See ya’s ’round.