Andy Cocker

It’s cold here. It takes two minutes outside for our ears to start hurting so we have to keep ducking into shops to warm up. The air is extremely dry and thin so we can’t run much without panting and being thirsty. It also means that the snow is always powdery and dry, which is good when you want to run straight down hills and ignore the paths. It makes snowmen harder to make though.

No, we haven’t found jobs.
No, we aren’t going to the pub because we can’t afford to.
No, we don’t smoke and don’t have any lighters/matches/cigarettes.
No, we don’t want to talk to you crazy Canadian loonie who can’t understand us. Please just leave us alone to play 500.

And finally to address some rumours about me falling through some ice into the river. I did get wet but only up to my armpits as I stuck my arms out to either side of me onto the ice. I was at no point in any danger because I am an amateur stuntman and I had Jackson, an experienced stunt coordinator to help pull me out.

Some pics of Canada. Can you spot where the jobs are?

So does anyone know where I can find a job here? Nevermind.

Canadian skiing is more fun than Australian skiing, even judging by the number of Tom’s bruises.

The Burgers of Beef launched their new cd, Bingo, last Saturday at the Carlton Hotel in East Perth, in one of the best performances I have ever seen. They played their new tracks as well as the favourites from their first cd. The new music was a big hit with the crowd with an impromptu mosh pit forming at times. The band made up of Chad, Blaine, Pete and De, showed just what experienced performers they are. They used many classic dance moves such as leg kicks and hand claps to keep the crowd entertained. The performance wound up with an encore and a cd signing. The only thing that slightly marred the evening was some controversy about a cd case that was sold without a cd in it. Aside from that everything was fine. There was no rain, no power cuts, it all went pretty smoothly.

But enough of the once-in-a-lifetime launch. I know you want to hear about the songs. They lead one’s soul on an emotional roller coaster ride while retaining an upbeat feel. First is the poignant nostalgia of ‘Palmerston’, quickly followed by the cheerful ‘Hooker’. Then there’s the short and punchy ‘Breakin’ tha Noo’s’ containing relationship angst and the happy ‘Never Kick the Dog’. The essence of wanting to fit into a crowd and isolation is captured perfectly in ‘Penguin’. The sad tale of a penguin in a rock’n’roll band who can only play the kazoo because he doesn’t have hands is one we can all relate to. The final track is ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’ which unexpectedly only contains the words yeah yeah yeah.

The songs really showcase the multitalentedness of the band, as each member has a variety of skills. All four sing to varying degrees and do handclaps. Chad is on guitar / bad inbetween song banter; Blaine is on bass / rock kicks, Pete plays the trombone / keyboard / big hair; De plays drums / pilates. The Burgers are obviously not afraid of a gimmick as their performance suggests, for the cd features a humorous reversible cover.

At only 13:10, some may criticise the short length of the cd, but every track is pure gold with not a note wasted. Fans will be left wanting more and if the newly written but unreleased song, ‘Satellite’, is any indication, the best is yet to come.

It’s about time for another entry I guess. Otherwise I might look like certain other webloggers who don’t write entries.

There’s new TAOKJ up. I would have had this up earlier but I wasn’t sure of what the batman scene change looked liked so I tried to download an episode. It took a while to get one, as they’re not that popular and there are too many bastards with not enough slots open. I then decided to make a movie with it using voices, however my video editor can only see the starting image of certain avi files and I wasn’t able to edit it. I fiddled about for a month or so before giving up and making a gif and then my gif animator would crash sometimes or my saved file would become corrupted so it’s taken a while to get started again. Enough of my excuses.

ok, own up. Who put up an old version of the main page after I had updated it with TAOKJ news?

I’m not a fan of washing dishes. It’s not a horrible job, it’s just slow. You’d think someone would invent a machine to do it. A dish washing machine. What’s that? They have? And it only took four days to get one? Amazing. Finally. We’ve been saved from a life in the dark ages. Let’s have a look. It’s still at the shop? And I have to go get it because you won’t pay $88 for delivery and installation when you’ve got a lazy son you can bully into doing it for free? And the only car that it will fit in is the one I have to buy the petrol for? Fine.

In happier news I won $70 dollars on a horse race yesterday. Not quite a boodle but a reasonable amount still.

There’s something else happening today but I can’t remember what.

8:30 am Alarm goes. The piercing shriek triggers a conditioned reflex and my body springs out of bed, turns off the alarm and is back in bed before I wake up.

11:30 Wake up and wonder why I bother setting an alarm.

12:15pm Watch hired Dark Angel DVD while eating breakfast.

2:42 Jaffles for lunch and some Futurama.

3:35 Exhausted. Follow Megatron’s example; time for a nap in the sun.

4:20 Enough time for some Hitman 2 before work

6:02 Realise what the time is. Better go to work.

6:15 Arrive at pizza shop, 15 minutes late for my shift. Slip in the back and hope the boss, Bruno, doesn’t notice.

6:25 I think I got away with my late arrival. A quick check for spare ribs. Sweet, there’s no boxes of spare ribs in the fridge this week. These have to be washed and cut into individual ribs. A messy unpleasant task which thankfully doesn’t need to be done this week.

8:10 Emile arrives, he’ll be the manager until 2 as Bruno usually leaves at this time. Emile looks like Mike Lovell.

9:20 I take a delivery that takes only 30 minutes not the 40 we told the customer. The woman answering the door says “You’re early” in an accusatory tone as if it’s a huge inconvenience for her to get the pizza early and I’m to blame. I bite back a sarcastic remark and hand over the pizza. She doesn’t tip.

10:25 Sit down with my pizza for my two hour break. Most nights are quiet around this time and there’s a chance to relax. Once upon a time, the X-Files was on about now and even though it was a bit dodgy in the last season it was on at the right time for me to watch it. Nowadays there’s nothing to do but wait for the paper.

11:10 Tomorrow’s paper arrives. About time, I’ve already read the past week’s papers back to front.

11:40 A game of magnets starts. The aim is to throw a fridge magnet so that it sticks to the fridge from the furthest distance.

12:35am Deliver to drunk guys. One of them manages to read the slogan written on the back of my shirt and thinks he’s made a joke.

12:45 Back at the shop the aftermidnight rush has started. It’s made up of the usual suspects; drunk guys, people on their way home, people with the munchies.

2:05 Everything is cleaned up, packed away and we’re about to close the shop. Two phones start ringing simultaneously. I think people deliberately wait until we’re closed and then ring.

I was going to try and post only game related entries but I had to post about this.

If you look at Nedlands Yacht Club website and click on results, then on consistency race on the 19th of Oct you’ll find that my dad and I came second with handicap in the Hobie 16 combined division. Of course, we’ve got a sizeable handicap, thanks to better handicap management this season. We decided to hang around until the presentations to collect our pennants because we’re not awarded them very often. They took much longer to do the presentations than usual that day and after hanging around for an hour with no sign of anything happening we had to leave empty handed to make it to the rugby on time.

Last weekend we almost came third outright, as the weather was so bad that the rest of the B fleet and all but two of the A fleet retired. Unfortunately we had to retire 20 minutes from the end because my Dad had to catch his plane to Melbourne. The wind was so strong that we managed to get blown over while pointing up wind going about. I’ve got a picture here of the wind strength and I know you’ll go ooh! and wow! because you understand the significance of 25 knot winds.

In other news, two more days until TAOKJ comes back. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, I understand. I wouldn’t bet on it either.

The rugby world cup is almost upon us so you know what that means.

Is that the date already? I haven’t got time to hang around here.

A mac parody. This has already done a tour of the web but it’s worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet. Best of all, it’s in windows format.

I finally got around to looking up what work means. hmm, I guess I’d better reload this year. I think I have a save game from about the beginning of March. Which is the button to bring up the options menu? It must be one of these.