Send My Conscience Home in a Taxi

Last Saturday I went to possibly the most brain-damaged thing I've ever been too. Actually, I shouldn't say that, it was actually surprisingly entertaining.

I'd planned to go to the Monster Truck's Australia Tour of Destruction! with my cynical hat on - to admire all the rednecks and maybe mock them quietly to myself. But I ended up having a surprisingly good time, and the place was largely devoid of rednecks. In fact it was mostly average petrol heads, and lots of families with kids. Needless to say, I'd failed to talk anyone into coming with me :-)

I drove down to Calder Park raceway, which is at least on my side of town. About five kilometres from the place, there was a massive traffic jam. I wondered what might have been causing it - till I realised it was actually a queue waiting to get into the place! I eventually ended up parking soooooooooo far away from the main entrance, that I marked my car's location as a bookmark on google maps on my iPhone so I could find my way back there!

I can sum up the whole evening fairly simply: Random destruction. There were a number of vehicles doing the destruction - six monster trucks, a jet powered ute, a jet powered van, and a really big crane. About the only thing that wasn't actively destructive were two motor cross motorcyclist, who did some jumping and free style tricks.

There really was a bit of a ritual involved, a set of things one expected to see.



(Some more pictures can be found here. Including a shot of the "badlands" around Calder Park.)

There was supposedly a competition going on between the various monster trucks. The first part was a "race", which was a very small circuit over some crushed cars - the best truck took all of nine seconds. The second part was "freestyle", trying to jump the trucks as high in the air as possible. Here's the truck "Scooby Doo", the eventual winner, doing the first race:


By the end, only three of the six trucks were still working. One of them got very bent doing a jump, there where important-looking mechanical bits dangling around the back of the thing. The back wheels (these things have four wheel steering so they can turn quickly) were pointing at an angle, but the guy managed to drive it at a sort of crab-like angle back to the holding area.

Other destruction that went on: A demolition derby. This included two makes of car I'm familiar with. There were two Subaru's and two Mitsubishi Magna's. I had a Magna once, it was a piece of shit. So I was pretty pleased when one of the Subaru's won - by being the last car moving! It was the yellow one in this picture:


The evening also included dropping a couple of cars from a crane, and ended with the jet ute and a jet van backing up to a couple of cars, turning on their jets and afterburners, and incinerating them! Which was then followed by some fireworks.

All in all, wanton random destruction. But I had a surprisingly good time, although I'm not sure I need to see another event like it. Maybe if I'm in the States sometime :-)

Kids, what you all need is to listen to the sounds of dying hard drives!

The events of this morning deserve an entry of their own... After they were done, I ended up on Lygon Street at Readings Bookshop - life is hard! I almost bought a book called "I Was Told There Would Be Cake".

I had a lunch date with The Girlfriend, at her office in South Melbourne. I thought it would take me ages to ride there - I've been riding my bike everywhere this week - so I got riding at about 11.15AM. By 11.35 I was next to Jeff's Shed already, about half a block from her office. Riding sometimes is weird that way. Lygon Street to Swanston Street, then along the Yarra and across the old Sandridge train bridge, along the front of the Casino, and you're more or less there. Cool.

Mind you, mighty hot day to be riding.

Had lunch with The GF, provided cuddling, then rode back into the city. I had to find a Sanity music store because I was given a Sanity gift voucher for my birthday... And you can imagine what a hard time I had finding anything I wanted in the Sanity store. I almost felt like messing with their brains, asking difficult questions like "Do you have any early Swans? How about Diamandas Galas?" Eventually I left with four DVDs, and yet I still have $30 to spend. The movies where "Dark Star", "Lilo and Stich 2", "No Country For Old Men" and one of the new Futurama movies. All things I could probably have lived without...

The next part of my day could be described thus:
I met up with an Asian teenager I met on the internet.
Or less suspiciously:
I met up with jedi_amara for a bubble tea. She brought along her friends Anna and Lex, and we talked about World Of Warcraft, or some earlier incarnation there of.

Bubble tea is cool.

I went and looked at laptops at Harvey Normans, decided that they were all too expensive and really I don't need one. I mean, I have (counts on fingers) three laptops here already, ranging from completely dead to mostly dead. Not to mention the other computers! Time to do a purge. Does anyone need an old server?

Came home and had a well deserved shower. Then I popped out to the Wesley Anne - which is a beautiful venue - to see Justin Heazlewood amoungst others. Justin is also known as the Bedroom Philosopher, and hence is the most famous person I know! We chatted a bit, I insisted he become more famous, since he's a great deal funnier than a load of other acts out there.

Here being an example:


Then I wandered home, got bitten by my cat, and wrote this!!!

I feel some Livejournalling coming on.

I've been doing a lot of random shopping lately. On the weekend, I went to Savers, where I rarely find anything I really want. The clothes never fit for example, or they're so painfully daggy even I wouldn't wear them.

This time, I hit something of a jackpot. I got a luridly bright red spatula, which looked like it had come out of a time-warp from the seventies. A pint glass from some micro brewery (which I plan to drink water from. Hydrated!), a passable t-shirt made from a dense woven cotton. Lets see... A greeting card for a friend how has had a baby, and finally... A Village People "60 Minutes of Non Stop Dance" vinyl album! Which I then gave to Deb. All of which set me back the princely sum of... $11.95.

We also came across at least three t-shirts advertising various Bear events... Not the "Wilds of Canada" type bears, more the "Hairy of Parhran" type bears! Weird. And a t-shirt which just said "Biotechnology for Africa". Took a photo of that one...

Then today popped into the Asian grocery store in the basement of Melbourne Central on the way home. Two soy bean drinks, something called "Sesame Mochi", which looks a bit like something you'd see at Yum Cha. Some Cod Fish Snacks, and a small bottle of "Basil Seed Drink with Honey", which looks like it has tiny eye balls floating in it!

I can report that Cod Fish Snacks are... disgusting. A bit like fish food, combined with the fish themselves :-)

Having seen The Drugs at the Espy tonight, I took the long way home, through Port Melbourne, under the Westgate bridge, onto City Stink. Quiet and pretty.

Random things popped into my head as I drove. Some of them are:

Software, creating software, which is what I do for a living, is rapidly becoming just a kind of manufacturing. It's not an art any more (if it ever was) now it's more like cranking the handle and the code coming out the other end. And increasingly the code factories are overseas, just like most manufacturing these days.

Everything has a number associated with it. Every event, every hospital admission, every speeding ticket, every book that gets loaned gets a unique ID attached to it. Everything is logged in a database so it can be billed or graphed or compared... I wonder if all these numbers are globally unique? I wonder if they resent being used just as some kind of index?

Ah, there may have been more, I can't remember now.

Stuff what happened.

Today, Thursday, marks the 4/5th point of my first whole week at work since early December. *grown* It's been hard.

I started reading another Primo Levi book today, only to discover that it's now a "new" book, but the American edition, which a new title, of a book I've already read. Dang.

I have 205 friends on Facebook.

My little brother turns 22 on Saturday! Egad!

I like Marvin the Borrowed Cat. He's very demonstrative when he wants to be, and big and sensible enough to stay out all day.

It was 40 degrees again today, and I still went to the gym. But, here's the trick: it has the best aircon in town! All them sweaty bodies need to be kept cool :-)

That seems random enough :-)

Christian Kerr sent me a Crab.

Antony Green is now a Zombie, after I bit him...

Hooray for Facebook!