so give me the courage to be an invisible

I just watched a homemade music video for "Run" by Snow Patrol on Youtube. (Why? It was stuck in my head, of course.) It gave me a sudden urge to go out and make a music video for, of all things, "Invisible" by Infusion.

I don't know exactly how it's going to pan out, but I need a large, abandoned warehouse.

because everyone else clearly knows what they're doing

I joined a gym.

I noticed that being in a gym is an extremely good way to make you feel inadequate. Luckily with your joining fee (which was, as one might expect, exorbitant) you also get three half-hour sessions with a personal trainer to get you started, as it were. This is good, because I basically have no idea what I'm doing. All I know is I want to get in shape.

I also haven't told any of my family - indeed I've gone to lengths not to tell them - and I'm not sure why.

holy crap

oh my god it is so fucking hot

this is like my worst nightmare and my greatest dream at the same time

Let me paint you a scene.

An earnest, hard-working web designer (myself, and yes, an oxymoron) is working away at a problem that just won't seem to resolve. He's trying all kinds of workarounds but still, nothing works. He's getting fairly depressed and is now forcing himself to work, and not enjoying it, which is something he tries to avoid doing. He decides that instead, he'll drown his sorrows and then have a stab at it a bit later. He goes to the freezer and finds a half-full bottle of Stoli - he takes a hearty swig. (Man, that stuff tastes nice.) Because of his inescapable addiction, he returns to his computer and resumes debugging.

After about fifteen minutes, it starts turning around - and lo, in about five minutes the thing is working perfectly.

And I am forced to a single conclusion: I work better when I'm drunk.

is it that we're all sexual deviants?

Have you ever had a thought, and then thought, "Man. If I said that to someone else they'd think I was a real sicko." I think it's just ordinary stuff but if you actually said it to someone they'd say "Whoa, too much information. Didn't need to know that," and then they would never be able to look at you the same again. This is happening to me all the time, and one begins to wonder if one actually genuinely is a bit weird that way.

But I obviously can't voice said thoughts here, because then you will think I am a total sicko.

sbs have just abandoned any pretense

I just saw a promo on SBS for "Do Communists Have Better Sex?"

My Terrifying List

I have had a list of promises, a list of things that I was always going to do once my job finished. Now that time has come, and this list is a little daunting.

• Get back in shape - I don't know if 'back in shape' are the words one might use, but 13 weeks of a sedentary overnight job has left me in more rounded proportions than before. So, join a gym, turn fat to muscle, etc.
• Internet projects - these have grown in number to include
• MuTube - a music hosting service
• Super Florence Jam - I'm doing a redesign for them
• Planet of the Lizards - we're going to write an entire book over the internet. A daunting task in itself.
• Turn work room into music studio - It already is, in a way. The transition is mostly formal - I'm going to build a wraparound desk, get everything working the way it should. Possibly upgrade monitors and microphones; in the future there may be soundproofing and a dedicated Mac Pro.
• Cut snow video - this one should be easier now I have my new iPod to use as a scratch disk. Still, finding time can be hard.
  
  And the final and most daunting task of all:
  
• Come out to my family.
  
  Virtually everyone else I know knows that I'm gay. I don't know if anyone knows how hard this is, apart from other gay guys of course. It's not fear of rejection or anything - I don't know how they'll take it, but I'm sure no-one's doing anything drastic. At least, not drastically bad. What's scary is the change - I've been carrying this secret for years and years. I can barely remember what it was like to not have it - and as much as I hate it, fear of change is in us all, and there are fewer changes larger than this. The mere thought of it gives me goosebumps. (I'm serious. I just got goosebumps from thinking about it.)

I feel some trepidation about almost every single item in that list, and for the moment, it's easier to concentrate on the ones I feel comfortable with, like the internet projects.

But sooner or later, this list needs to be completed.
-gorman

maybe you should do some research first

There's a documentary on Discovery right now about high-speed rail systems. Out of the Maglev segment, they went to a short segment about NASA's designs on going into space using a maglev system. Right at the end was a computer sim of a theoretical Maglev launch system for a space shuttle. The voice over said "..someday there may be a maglev fast enough to launch us... into space." Set aside the ridiculous voice. This man is suggesting - I'm sure that it's not actually NASA suggesting this - this man is suggesting that a maglev train can accelerate a payload, weighing hundreds of tons, to escape velocity.

Escape velocity is eleven kilometres per second.

my very last day

This is my last day. By which I mean night, obviously.

At least, for this year. Once they stop shooting I stop having tapes to digitise and I am effectively made redundant.

It's odd, because I've never worked Mondays before, at least, not Monday nights - and as I'm sure none of you are aware (for the obvious reason) Idol goes to air Monday nights, live. So, they are all in studio right now.

This is odd because, as I have mentioned before, I usually work here completely alone, the only person in the whole complex - and for tonight, for the first time I saw someone else here. For the first time I wasn't alone - far from it, I saw the audience on my way in, plus of course all the crew on the floor - but I saw someone, up in the hallways, in the place where I work, whilst I was working.

That someone was Andrew G. Weird.

things that make no sense, volume two

I just learned that the release date for the next Harry Potter movie in Australia is September 6th. I'm not an avid fan of the Harry Potter movies, but one of the things about the internet is that you often end up on pages you care very little about, and read them anyway.

The point of all this is that Australia is, as usual, one of the last countries to get a film. In fact, it is the last country, and by a long way. The US release date is July 13th. That's three months before we get it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: staggering release dates makes no sense. Especially not by three months.

things that make no sense, volume one

What interests me about those pot noodle things is, they assume that you're in a place with hot running water and a microwave, but no forks.

Topato is a potato

I finally bought some webcomic merchandise. If you know me well you know I am a bandit for webcomics, or at least, for certain webcomics, and anything made by Jeffrey Rowland is up there on that list. Because (according to his latest overcompensating post) the man is some kind of dire straits, so I bought one of these awesome hoodies.

My only regret is that it cost sixty dollars.

dreams of a sick and twisted mind, volume two

And you thought this blog was dead.

So, I'm on a bus - this is a dream - I'm on a bus and this guy sitting next to me basically starts hitting on me. Long slightly creepy story short, we start going out.

A few weeks later, we're in this bar - looks fairly fancy but I've never been there nor have I any idea where it could be. It's light outside. Anyway, my mum and some other people are there too. He (I don't actually know his name) asks me if I'm going to leave that joint there all night. I look down and sure enough there's a big one in the ashtray. I look up but my mum doesn't seem to have noticed. I don't have a lighter, so he lights it and takes the first puff. I take the second. Oh man, is this stuff strong. I feel it come on almost immediately. We take a few more and I stop caring that there are other people there.

We're back at the house (my house) stoned out of our brains when I start tripping. Just little stuff - like we're lying on the couch side by side, and we're looking at each other meaningfully, and I reach out to touch him and he's not there. He is in fact in the kitchen. Weird.

But then I totally phase out. I'm not even remotely conscious of what I'm doing.

Suddenly I'm at DJ Warehouse. This is in Leichhardt. I take no notice of that fact. So anyway I'm looking around and there's more clothes than I remember, but mostly raver stuff, you know, reflective shiny gear. So I go upstairs - more clothes. I realise there's actually only clothes here. I come back down and ask the lady at the counter "Didn't there used to be lights and stuff upstairs?" She shakes her head, wild-eyed.

I'm coming down as I walk out the door. I realize suddenly where DJ Warehouse is and how far I must have come to get here. I'm alone, too - he's not with me. Crap, they must have no idea where I am. I have to get home.

As I come down I realise something - I'm probably still tripping. This whole thing is a halucination... as I come down further the scenery starts to change. Big buildings become smaller, car yards become playgrounds. I'm in Allambie. Relax, I think to myself, maybe you're still tripping. But I know in my heart that's not true.

I really am in Allambie.

Fuck.

At least I'm reasonably close to home, I think. It's a half-hour bus trip from here, and one is coming right now. It's not a regular bus, though. It's painted silver and purple in some crazy designs and it's full of people, some of whom I think I know. There's a large window - big enough to climb through - at the back. Through it I can see a guy I definitely know - Anthony Taylor. He says incredulously, "Morgan? Hey man, you need a ride?"
I say "Yeah, man. Badly."
He says "Hop in."

Rather than go through either of the doors however, I decide to jump through this huge window, which there are hand-grips beside, probably for that exact reason. It's rather like rock-climbing. I say "Give me a hand, will ya?"
He says "Not unless you stop acting like an asshole towards me."
The bus is now actually starting to drive away.
I say "What are you talking about?"
He says "You always acted like an asshole towards me. I need to know it's going to stop."
At this point we're actually approaching the speed limit. Although I think to myself "You stole my iPod, I'm never going to forgive you for it," I say to him "Okay man, whatever."
He pulls me through onto the bus.

I explain my predicament. He says "Damn, man, you must have been pretty fucked up."

"Yeah. Yeah I was."

By the time I get home, everyone's in bed, and my man is nowhere to be found.

i guess interesting is a matter of opinion

If you notice that I don't post for a while, it's probably because of either a) nothing interesting happening in my life; or b) interesting things happening that make me miserable or depressed. Seeing as this is my determinedly optimistic/anecdotal blog, neither get posted. Today was no exception to this trend, with plenty of the former, and even more of the latter.

However, one good thing came of it: I discovered an energy drink that tastes exactly like Fruit Tingles.

spies hide out in every corner

If, when I had started this job, Aaron (the editor at the time) had informed me that a few other people worked nights here as well, but that you didn't really see them that often, I would have believed him. As it happens, nobody else works here, but it seriously does sound like it sometimes. There is an appliance that regularly makes the exact same noise, which is what leads me to believe the noise is in fact mechanical and not human, but it still sounds exactly like someone dropping something then sighing as they bend over to pick it up. Perhaps not exactly that, but it sounds like a person made it, nonetheless, and I jump every time I hear it.

To be honest, if he'd told me that these people were all spies whose job it was to mark my every movement, I would have bought that as well. I guess I am pretty paranoid.

compulsion and revulsion

I think I have mentioned before the incredible capacity (or perhaps capacitance) of metal surfaces in this place (Global) to hold static charge. For this reason, I get zapped with static every time I open a door.

I don't know why but I always touch these doorknobs with two fingers first, the index and middle finger, and get zapped with just them rather than my whole hand. The reasons for this are unknown even to me. Unfortunately, it's turned into a bit of an OCD thing - I touch virtually every metal surface with my index and middle fingers now, including ones it would not be considered usual to touch. It's weird enough that I do it before grabbing hold of metal bannisters, but also metal columns, metal signs - virtually everything that could potentially shock me and is within reaching distance. This is a problem, because a lot of these things actually do shock me, and because virtually nobody touches them, the shocks can be quite bad.

The more I try to control it the more rampant it becomes. I think I need some kind of professional help.

how very qwerty of you

Anyone who knows how to touch type, and I don't just mean those who intentionally learnt it, I mean anyone who's been typing for a long time; anyone who knows how to touch type is no doubt aware of the little nubs on the F and J keys of your keyboard. These are supposedly to help you find the home row without actually looking at your keyboard, although I guarantee you've never consciously used them for this purpose.

However, as they are emplyed near universally, it's amazing how off putting it can be to have them missing. The keyboard on the Avid doesn't have them, and it's so easy to get lost on that thing. They might have been intended to help you find your home position, but in reality, they act like keyboard GPS - they're a point you can work from, even if you do it totally subconsciously.

It probably also doesn't help that the letters on the Avid keyboard play second fiddle to the myriad incomprehensible symbols that populate the keys.

confusion never stops. ever.

You know the signs in music shops that read "NO STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN / NO HEART AND SOUL"? They should be modified to read "NO STAIRWAY TO HEAVE / NO HEART AND SOUL / NO CLOCKS"

Seriously, there can't have been more than ten people in that shop, and I heard that song twice.

barring all else

It seems work and transport are indeed a muse for me.

I'm writing this on the bus, unusual for me, because if there's something happening I'll usually just jot it down on my notepad. Unfortunately, everyone else in the house has realised how great a thing those little notepads are, and all of them have been usurped.

So, I'm on the bus, in a window seat. In the window seat opposite from me - so in the same row, but two seats and an aisle seperate us - is a man talking feverishly. I have no idea if he's talking on a phone or not: his right side being obscured, there could easily be a hands-free kit attached to the side of his face.

I've realised it doesn't matter at all - someone talking on their mobile is exactly as annoying as someone talking to themselves on a bus. Even if he thinks he is talking to someone, he could trouble to keep his voice down.

we never learn from our mistakes until we've made them twice

There are over one hundred million people on MySpace.
Why are there over one hundred million people on MySpace.


Ok, now the hiatus is over for real. Posts start again from tomorrow.

the new stupid spoiled whorez doll

Two girls sitting behind me on a bus:

They are talking in those loud piercing voices whose extreme stupidity can penetrate even my shield of extreme apathy. They say two things of particular significance which made me laugh out loud, although in a stifled manner so I wouldn't have to actually face them. The first was that Augie March was formed from the old members of Crowded House. Their evidence in this case appeared to be that Augie March had a song called One Crowded Hour, which kind of sounds like Crowded House. Vaguely.

The other piece of shocking ignorance was that Paul Hogan and Hulk Hogan were the same person. They didn't say this literally, like they did Augie March, but they were referring to Paul Hogan from Hogan Knows Best. I'll remind those who don't know, Paul Hogan played Crocodile Dundee, and Hulk Hogan is a WWE wrestler.

nine days without breathing

It's been nine days. I'm going to call it a hiatus, a brief one that quite obviously ends today. The reason? Well, I kind of bled myself dry. For a while there nothing happened in my life: the back reserve of stories and ideas just dried up like a low level dam in the summer heat. We've been on production break this week, which means no work and no travel, per se, at least no travel of the extremely long variety. These are the places where I usually get ideas for blogposts.

It's something I might do from time to time. Just like the one sentence posts, occasionally expect a short hiatus.

killing time

Let me set the scene: we are walking back from Woolworths to Liquorland which is inexplicably several blocks away. I ask why we don't simply stop at the adjacent Woolworths Liquor store, and Matt replies simply "We totally have time to kill." I say "Okay. Let's commit chronicide." It takes a few moments for the meaning of this phrase to sink in, but once it does, an album title is born.

I'm also thinking a good song name is "Musical Feelings", in that it is sort of like Musical Chairs, but with feelings in place of the chairs. I'm not totally sure the meaning gets through, though.

i guess this says a lot about our ingrained responses?

I was totally planning to blog about a legal line on McDonalds cups which I found to be pretty funny, and fully planned to take a photo of it and then upload it and post it in this very post. I thought to myself "Don't throw this cup away, otherwise you will not be able to take a photo of it." So what do I do the moment I finish the drink? I throw it away. Not merely away, into a fucking dumpster, eliminating any hope of retrieval.

The moment I did it, I realised my mistake, and yelled "Fuck!" right there in the middle of the carpark.

we are being surveilled - it is so obvious

Katherine asked me if I could help her edit her Art major work, or rather, the video component thereof. I happily obliged. It is sort of interesting because it doesn't really have any direction or plot, or for that matter a reasonably large amount of footage. Nevertheless, it is sort of effective because what you're watching is a surveillance video, or rather a series of surveillance videos, so the idea that it's directionless sort of works.

There is an incredibly good shot of a very slow zoom in on a security camera. I don't know what it is about it that I like - the composition, I guess - it kind of looks like 16mm, and has that very deliberate, dramatic look of arthouse film. (Note that arthouse does not mean student or poorly made).

speed it up: just keep moving on

It is for certain: Belgian Bier Cafe for Morgan's Eighteenth. And also for Adrian's farewell. After that, we shall see.

google suggest is the light of the world

Okay, have you ever been to Google Suggest? It is located at labs.google.com/suggest. It basically suggests common searches based on the words you have typed in so far. It seems pretty simple, but it also helps a bit with saving tiny amounts of time. It is also kind of fun finding out what the most common searches are for certain things. (Like you type in some words and see what comes up.)

It's pretty nice to know that the first result for "oh all" is "oh all that i know there's nothing here to run from", the second to last line of Coldplay's Don't Panic.

haven't you people ever heard of closing the goddam door?

Panic! At The Disco is about the most ridiculous band in history.

Yeah, it's another short post. Maybe I'll make it a thing where I occasionally do a one-sentence post. I really wish blogger had categories or tags.

(Update: The new Blogger Beta has tags. You can see them below.)

goddam

I slept for about nine hours today. This woldn't be so big if I hadn't gone to bed at ten in the morning.

I think that my sleeping patterns might finally be irrevocably screwed!

matter of fact, it's all dark

Okay, I am a massive Pink Floyd fan. This much is for certain. When I saw Dark Side of the Moon, vinyl, original pressing at Ten Seconds Down, for $14, I picked it up immediately. I was disappointed to see the sleeve was in a pretty bad state, but the record itself was pristine - no warps, the grooves still sharp as the day they were pressed.

General consensus seems to be that the album is about varied forms of insanity, and if that's true, then I think The Great Gig In The Sky must be about autism - or rather, the aspect of autism that means that you are incapable of speech. There is not a single lyric througout the song, but the vocals still clearly speak of immense loss and sadness. You don't need words to communicate. It's possibly the saddest song ever written, and it doesn't say a thing.

Of course, what the name seems to indicate and what I always thought was that it was about a funeral, but there's no reason it can't be both.

apologies; meaningless in the eye of the beholder

Okay, I had planned two to three posts a day, and I actually didn't post anything at all for the last three days. At the moment, I think I have pretty much failed in that endeavour.

I guess I could theoretically blame it on writers block, but I haven't really had writer's block. I've actually had heaps of ideas for posts, but none whilst I've actually been at a computer. This might be hard to believe, given my near perpetual proximity to computers, but it's true. Every time I sit down and direct my browser to blogger.com, I'm left thinking "I was going to post about something... but what?"

This phenomenon is called Inter-Roomal Memory Loss, and nine out of six Australians suffer from it. Ever stood in the kitchen wondering why you came in? IRML.

dreams of a sick and twisted mind, volume one

I had a weird dream last night where I moved in with this guy and his girlfriend, and he was continously and violently beating her. I know this because (I'm not sure if I was in the room or whether I was just a fly on the wall) I saw him doing it, smacking her around so hard she was bleeding all down her face. I also saw, underneath the bed, a girl (about eleven) who was also bleeding. I kind of assumed this was their daughter, so I guess they must have been married. Why the hell I was moving in with a married couple I have no idea.

Later, when she wasn't around and we were talking, the subject got around to her, and I said "You probably shouldn't beat her up so much." (Rather casual words, considering how much she was bleeding). He then got furiously angry and asked "What the fuck did you say?". Rather unwisely, I said "I said you shouldn't beat your wife so much!" and even more foolishly hit him over the head. He made a movement as though to hit me so I grabbed his wrists. He walked forward, I walked back, still my hands trying to restrain his (he was a pretty big guy.) Finally he wrested his hands from my grip and without thinking I just grabbed him and pushed/threw him over the couch. He looked like he was in pain but not incapacitated so I jumped over the couch and kicked him in the head, which hit against an edge of the wooden frame and started to bleed (at the back, where it had hit the furniture. He was already bleeding a bit on his face.) I said, trying not to sound too dramatic, "I guess I'm moving out," gave him a final kick and walked away.

The excitement being finished, I promptly woke up.

i heart radiation

Sorry for the lack of posts today but honestly, nothing happened. The most exciting and thought provoking thing that happened to me today was that I found a good web hosting plan. The most insightful thought I had was a blogging competition that requires bloggers to post one thousand times in one thousand days; kind of like a marathon. And then people rate the posts and the one with the highest overall rating gets... something. I don't know what.

This is the kind of state my mind is in, when that is the most insightful thought I had all day.

you think love is for your own amusement?

I had a thought: if a band that you didn't like released an album radically different to their usual style, would you listen to it? Buy it? Go to their concert? Moreover, would it be accepted in the new genre's community, as it were? The example I thought of was if the Backstreet Boys put out an album reminiscent of, say, Sufjan Stevens. Would the indie pop lovers accept it? And would the die-hard Backstreet fans embrace it?

This has probably already happened, but not to any band that I know.

yellow squares, intelligent life

This office is littered with Post-its.

Given that the editor (who that may be is currently in flux) and I work at drastically different times, our primary form of communication is through post-its left in various places around the edit suite. The primary, and most attention-grabbing place to stick them is on the panel half-way between the monitors and the keyboard. Unfortunately only a small part of this panel actually allows post-its to stick, so the density here is highest of all. If this were a post-it city, that panel would be the CBD.

A short sample of the post-its:

• SOME ISOS ARE SHORTER DUE TO TC BREAKS
• RESOLUTION 1:1
• MASTER ISO1 ISO2 ISO3
• AVID is TERRIBLE. it KEEPS CRASHING :(

there is no life at night

I am in the middle of my first late night shift at work. It is about 1:00am and I am a lot more awake than I was expecting to be at this time doing what is essentially very boring work.

So far I have asked myself two questions about this place:
1. Do my keys unlock the door onto the roof; and
2. Do they have any vodka here.

The answers to these questions, it has been ascertained, are no, and yes, respectively.

shipyards, drydocks

For the longest time, as long as I can remember, there has been a large ship on the horizon as viewed from my house. Coupling my shortsightedness and its extreme distance, I could glean little more than that it looked like a cargo ship and was painted white. One day it came much, much closer to land, and it looked indeed very large. Roughly the size of your average passenger cruiser, maybe a bit bigger. I could not locate my binoculars to gain any further insight.

The next day I found my binoculars and not only was the ship no longer close but it was gone entirely. The horizon looked oddly empty without it, like the vacancy that a painting leaves on a wall after it is taken down.

Today it is back again, and I cannot find my binoculars.

standing in the doorway

The men's at work is in a bit of a weird place, at the end of a short corridor off a long corridor opposite some stairs, behind a door marked, as one might expect, "Gentlemen". It utilises a double door system that is used in a lot of toilets, but there is inexplicably another door in the little airlock bit. Today is the first day I have ever seen it open.

It leads out on to the roof. There are no fences on the roof, just a lot of split-system air conditioning equipment. I stood there for a full fifteen seconds looking at it, until someone walked in the door behind me.

son of blog

i find, somewhat continuously, that i am (quote) "bitter and upfront" on son of blog. that quote was made by keevers, on the sob tagboard. i guess it's true.

so thusly this become my short, uplifting blog, possibly filled with random things, while son of blog becomes a blog about my actual life

is this a real blog

no. not really. i don't even know what i'm going to do with it.

if you want to hear about my life (unlikely, but there are also nine other people who post on the same blog) then head to Son Of Blog.