Help! My Girlfriend's a Hedge!

Dear Diary,

I read an article in the paper the other day about the "death of the weekend." Clearly, they were talking about me.

However, I have had a mighty lot of fun this weekend (culminating in evildoom_bunny naming her latest Sim City "I love the white stuff in the middle of an Oreo") and indeed I expect to see some fireworks out my window - the MCG is directly south of here, I can see the light towers. The commonwealth games end tonight, thank fuck.

Friday, I had a three hour lunch at work. Looming deadlines be damned. We went to a meat emporium - it's the only way to describe it - called Blue Fire Grill in Melbourne Central. We had chicken, followed by lamb, followed by beef, followed by more lamb, sausages, then some calamari and some fish. They come around with skewers and carve chunks of it off. I ate so much I wasn't hungry again till 11PM.

I often drop emails to the guys at Crikey.com.au with little tidbits I think they might like. Friday, I sent an email about Martin Ferguson and his stupid ramblings of late about nuclear power. I quoted a line of Tom Lehrer's - "We'll try and remain serene and calm, when Alabama gets the bomb!" They're political editor was very amused, and said "Note to self, quote Tom Lehrer more often." There you go, I've spread some culture!

Fireworks! Fireworks! Geeze, shitty el-cheapo fireworks. Must only be the start of the thing...

Saturday night, Sara and I went to the last drive in in Melbourne - the Village Drive in in Coburg. Man, what a trip, I've never been to one before - it was like going into a time warp! There are three screens, so if you're in the centre "cinema" as we were, you can turn left and right and see bits of other films, without the sound. So we went to see "Aeon Flux", but we also saw bits of "The Pink Panther" and "The Shaggy Dog". Aeon Flux was CHEESY, I was a huge fan of the animations back in the day, they were gratuitously violent and mostly incomprehensible. Rent 'em on DVD if you can find them, the later episodes had actual talking and plots and so forth, which detracted from the whole effect. Anyway, the live action film had been given the hollywood treatment, everybody had a moral posture, they tried to explain everything, there was a "plot" and some more of that quality, quality dialog the hollywood script writers are so good at. But going to see a crappy adaptation was part of the fun - I just enjoyed the whole drive in thing. You had to tune your car radio in to hear the sound track (so my radioless car was out of the question :-) and all the parking spots were angled up slightly to get just the right viewing angle.

Just before the film started, the guy in the next car came over and said "Is this Aeon Flux?", the place is not well sign posted. I said "We hope so!"

Afterwards, we popped into the 24 hour McDonalds - sorry, the Macca's in preston, maaaate - just to watch the Mutants. Damn, who could possibly think that hanging around the car park of a McDonalds at 1am on a Saturday night is fun??? The place was packed with "yoofs" eating shitty burgers and admiring each others cars. I've never seen so much spikey hair, so many mag wheels or so many skanky teenagers in tight jeans. Will, so much for my once every decade trip to the Golden Arches... BTW, evildoom_bunny does a frighteningly good impression of a coke-drinking petrol head macca's mutant teenager voice, ask her about her "Fully sick Comeedoor, mate" next time you see her.

Saturday we did Brunch, visited an environmental community park thing called CERES in an attempt to buy organic vegies, but we were too late for the market. I did enjoy their wind power generator, though, things like that fill me with a mild hope. I popped over to my Aunt's place and attempted to fix her PC. I need one of these t-shirts, or I shouldn't have let on that I know a thing or two about the ol' computers. Seriously, a week ago I had to go over to my dad's place to resize his Netscape window for him!!!!

Fireworks! Fireworks! About five minutes worth. Damn, what a gyp.

Saturday night we had a Northcote House of TISM reunion. Yes, we were the only shared house on earth that I'm aware of that had its own Yahoo group and mailing list!!! It was the only way we could keep track of each other! Anyway, I thought it'd be fun to gather together again as many of the seven people who lived in the place. Rebecca, the country lass with the feral ute, we lost contact with yonks ago. Luna is in Japan, Ben was in East Timor. But me, George, Barbara and Richard rocked up. (BTW, here's a picture of us all at the "house cooling" party at the beginning of 2004. From left to right: Richard, George, Luna, Ben, Barbara, me!) It was loads of fun, we reminisced about all the great parties we had there, the crazy design of the house, Barbara's Poppadom related attempts to burn the place down, etc. etc. What a weird house, it was painted pink, there was a huge bungalow out the back, a barbecue connected to the gas mains. Best place I ever shared - the dishwasher being a wonderful way to reduce housemate disputes.


My quote for the evening: "I'm waiting for the porno version of Aeon Flux, they could just call it Aeon Fucks! It writes itself!"

Anyway, George, who provided the venue for this get-together, lives about ten houses down the road from the old place! So we took our drinks, wandered down to have a look - and got invited in by one of the present tenants who was hanging around the front door! It was so weird stepping back into the place! We exchanged stories about the weird landlord, comapared party notes, noticed that they had the same kinds of shitty furniture that we'd had in the place. The place appears to be full of vegens. Vegens who smoke like chimneys - how does that work? They're still getting our mail, so were pleased to put a face to the names on all the envelopes. They even invited us back for a party in April.

Fireworks! Ok, I'm over it now.

And we drank a bottle of the Best Wine on Earth. Have I mentioned on this blog about my aunt and uncle, down on the Bellarine peninsula, who grow grapes and make their own wine? I had a bottle of the 05, red of course, which was one of a batch with dodgy corks, so it had to be drunk soon. What better excuse :-) Man, I don't know wine, but this stuff.... Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... 15% alcohol, so dark in color it stains your tongue purple, as someone said "chocolatey overtones". Best wine ever! And they only make about 400 bottles of it each year - most of which they drink themselves! What a life!!!!

Barbara, the ex-housemate with fewer boundaries than me even, announced to the whole room that she'd like to shag George, the other ex-housemate. His girlfriend took this news rather well, it being obvious to all that that was never ever going to happen!

Ok, so, this morning, Sunday, I woke up a bit groggy - I rarely drink, so the three I had last night were hard work for me. It was rather great to see all these people again, we must have been a great household - although not now having to deal with their hairs in the shower plug hole probably makes it a bit easier.

Sunday, we slept. I cleaned my flat a little - by the way, I'm flogging a rather nice bed in the trading post, if you know anyone interested.

There was a women with what must have been a serious case of Tourettes syndrome at a petrol station I visited. She walked into the place yelling random stuff at the top of her lungs, then when she was in the queue in front of me she turned around and yelled "Fuck you!" to no one in particular. It was kind of unnerving - get back on your medication woman!!!

Then it was off to see evildoom_bunny and stillbeing being part of a... Hedge... It's a bit hard to explain. I tried very hard to spot The Girlfriend based only on her body shape - everyone wears a hedge mask. But she was too well concealed.

Ok, that's all the interesting stuff from today, this must be the longest blog entry ever!!!!!