We got in around just about 1:30pm after waiting in line around 20 minutes. We went straight to the boiler room where Salmonella Dub was setting up to do their set. My ears went ‘spick’ at the start and they played some banging tunes with loud bass and live instruments and it was all very kiwish. I enjoyed them. 4/5.

After that, Friendly came on. Friendly is an Aussie DJ who used to make some fun/cool dance stuff but now has moved on to breaks, which is good, because he was the only breakbeat dude there. He started off with some dancey stuff and got the crowd into it and mixed all right. He then started playing some breaks and chose some good songs to begin with. However, after mixing in Zer0’s rockin’ tune "Emit/Collect" for a good two minutes he managed to skip it right at the peak of the songs real start, which absolutely sucked. He looked pretty embarrassed too. Then he played a breakbeat remix of Born Slippy with "Satisfaction" as an acapella which was kinda lame because everyone thought he was going to just play "Born Slippy" but the breakbeat remix of it was slower and more flat. He closed his set by playing the hip hop classic Jump Around, which I thought was pretty cool until he fucking skipped again. I thought he was supposed to be a resident DJ at some high profile London nightclub but the skipping pretty much ruined his set. He was using house decks, but... everyone else used them and no one else skipped at all. Good songs, poor delivery. 2/5.

PNAU started up but we decided to go and checkout the rest of the Hilltop Hoods set. We got there and the hot house stage was completely full and people were crowding around outside trying to get in. We could hear fine though, and listened to the last 15 minutes of the set which sounded pretty tight. They closed with "Nosebleed Section" which the crowd went off at. Then we moved on to Gerling which could have been all right, had it not been so fucking loud that the only thing audible apart from the reverb was some screeching. So, we went back to the Boiler Room where PNAU were just finishing up and Pee Wee Ferris came on to spin. We were in the first 10 rows, and after ten minutes we sort of realised that we were the only people in those rows who was under the influence of something solid and seeing that that’s about when hard trance sucks, we decided to go rectify the problem.

Two $7.50 Jack and Cokes and a urination later we arrived to see the start of Sonic Animation, who honestly did rock the fuck out of the Boiler Room. Live electronic drums and computer everything else but the basslines where huge and the guys know how to put out a song that people will love. They did it really well, playing an old song which everyone knew and could go nuts too, followed by a new one off their upcoming album which would rock, then an old classic again and repeat. Excellent set, one of the day’s best. 5/5

Straight after Sonic were the Audio Bullys, one of the main reasons I’d spent so much money on a ticket in the first place. I got down to the front and watched the two dudes DJ. They played a good set with solid mixing however the audio levels were kinda crap so I couldn’t hear the majority of the rapping/talking done. They played a lot of new songs too, in fact they could’ve taken a leaf out of Sonic’s book by playing a similar combination of old then new songs. Basslines and tunes sounded good, it just was hard to get into them. One stage they played their remix of “The Sound of Violence” by Cassius and everyone sang along but other than that it was just enjoying the basslines. 4/5

After Audio Bullys we went and bought an overpriced yiros and skipped David Holmes, which turned out to be a good thing seeing as when we got back with 10 minutes left of his set no one was even dancing, everyone was just standing around waiting for Aphex Twin and Luke Vibert to come on. They did, but the yiros made me sick so I went outside and got some air for a bit and missed the first thirty minutes of the set. I got back filled with fresh air and enjoyed the rest of the sit though it was a bit trippy and drum and bass isn’t my thing. However, you could tell it was good stuff and by no means did I not enjoy it. High energy and well professional. 4/5

Felix Da Housecat then DJ’ed for ninety minutes while Basement Jaxx set up in the background. Felix Da Housecat played some funky electronic tunes, with a mix of just beats as well as a few classic anthems to keep everybody interested. It was a long set but enjoyable. He did have a habit of breaking the beat down quite a lot, but I didn’t mind that too much. 4/5

Basement Jaxx then spent another 10 minutes to finish setting up. They had full live instruments including drums, percussion, guitar and bass and the two dudes using the computers. They put on a theatrical show with lights and pyrotechnics and around about five different singers who had costume changes and bounded all over the place. They played songs off Kish-Kash mainly, with a few of the old favourites to make the show complete. There was only two tracks off Kish-Kash that they didn’t play. They used the same singers for all the songs, obviously, as all their celebrity guest voice stars wouldn’t be available to sing in Adelaide. It wasn’t at all noticeable though as the singers did a good job. The only weird thing was when they did Lucky Star and they got a woman to sing the part of Dizzee Rascal, which was confusing because hearing a female rap reminded me of Eminem and I realised it and laughed. The show continued and the Boiler Room was so packed they stopped letting people in. At some point they played a cover of "Seven Nation Army" which the words told me was called "Get your club on" which rocked the bass socks. They ended the set with a small, dark, suspense building silence before playing "Where’s your head at" really loudly, which every sang along to and went nuts. Then, in the obviously pre-planned encore they did Jump’n’Shout and the guy from Arika Bambaataa came from nowhere and did the vocals and it was cool. Very good, high energy show. Great way to end the night. 5/5

I went to University today. It wasn't so bad. I got a really good park straight away. My good luck continued as not one, not two but three of my lecturers turned out to speak English as their first language. Also I could be in for a bit of extra cash this semester because apparently the videotapes of Databasing lectures are pretty hard to get hold of in the library so I must start bringing a handicam into lectures and selling bootlegs. Unfortunately my main mission for today's uni excursion was an utter failure. I was not able to set my tute times for any of the three subjects I had today because the lecturers all failed to have the tute time organising system things running ahead of time (I've since done one). If I can get the other two subjects done perfectly, I will have an extremely kick arse timetable that reads like this:

It's weird, today I've felt like Summer was over and I'd been at university for weeks. This was particularly surprising considering it was 37 degrees and I didn't actually go to uni at all.
The Foxtel's working out pretty well. I get Fashion TV now. They have a show called "Models Talk" which I used to watch a lot because I thought it was called "Model Stalk"
I found a moulded piece of black plastic that's broken off something today in my room. I don't know what it's broken off of, which scares me.
This marks my 100th day straight of Journaling. Today on ESPN a commentator commented that Dallas was on a winning streak because they'd won 17 of their last 21 games. Stupid. Summer Journal 3 was 185kbs.
I think I'll go to bed now, I have to wake up at 8:45am so I can log onto the Internet, steal a good tute and prac time for programming, and then go back to sleep again. Uni starts at 2pm tommorow and at some point after I have to get into town to pick up my car. Stupid car. Stupid Britney Spears song which I like now because I keep hearing it on Fashion TV.

I got my car back today, it should be on its way to being best. I wish that Ultra Tune had turned it into a truck though, because I want to be a professional truck racer now.
In my 3 lectures today the only thing I did was try not to fall asleep in the first one and then spent the next two making an ad for 1st year uni books. I could make up to $140 bucks if I sell all three of them. I used a piece of pad paper and a pen and I wrote *SALE* and *BARGAIN* on them in big letters and put my phone number at the bottom. I also wrote that it was ok for hot women to call me. Seriously, my ad was so good, I think people who don't even need them will want to buy them.
Also, I think my lecture theatre wouldn't notice if, during the boring lecture of Software Engineering, John Edwards came in and started doing a taping of crossing over.

Weekend: Over.
One week of uni is also over. Now for week two, when all the tutorials and pracs and earlier starts and extra days begin. For example, tommorow is one of those "days" at uni. One of those days where everything I've had to do at uni but have been putting off, can be done in one day. Unfortunately it means getting there an hour earlier so I will have to be there around 2pm.
Today on Foxtel they did a "Best of Skithouse"; I missed it because I was taking a slash.
Speaking of pissing, it's going to rain down soon. It's got to. I think it's a little premature, as it's only just gone March, but I want the rains to be here. I like it when the Earth gets that whole "cold rain on warm, dry dirt" feel/smell and then the roads get all slippery because it's the first real rain in a month and then the leaves turn green and it's just lush and wet for months and months. I love winter. I mean... Autumn... Autumnish...

This morning Angry Beavers was hilarious. Maybe because it was 5:20am, but when Norb was looking at his underwear and Dagget saw that it said "Wednesday" on it and Dagget said "That's funny, mine say 'October'" it was hilarious.
I have to stop watching Angry Beavers, it's completely fucking up my sleeping pattern.
Did you know you get $500 dollars *just* for sending in a video to Australia's Funniest Home Videos? FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS! If I sent one video in a fortnight, hell, I could stop working. If you win the week, you get ten thousand dollars. This is an UNTAPPED GOLDMINE. I now have a new calling.

What a lame day. After I managed to get my car started I got to uni 10 minutes late. Unfortunately when I arrived there I realised I didn't actually know what I was there for. I discovered I had a programming tute and went to PHY007 like the website said I should to catch the last 40 minutes. However, after my search did turn up PHY007 it was actually some Janitors office and so I spent another 20 minutes trying to find PHY007 and then gave up and went to my databases tute at 12:00pm and got there early and was pleased that I'd managed to get to a tute on time for the first time this semester. After sitting there in the room alone for 5 minutes I remembered that we don't have database tutes until next week and that left me with two hours to kill until my next lecture, and essentially meant that I'd woken up 3 hours earlier than I needed too. So, I went to Marion and bought a printer and killed an hour there. I came back and talked to Baker and he said that the programming thing *was* in PHY007 but when he showed me where it was it was PHY0007! What bullshit! Then, after two boring COMP lectures we decided not to stick around for software engineering and so I didn't go to the prog tute repeat either and got home at 4:00.
In the end my long day was only two hours worth of learning, and half of that was spent trying to stay awake in databases.
So, when I got home, I made a cake. IT was very hard to make but it turned out nice. Nice because it was free. I had my cake, and ate it too. Umm, lame joke. Lame day.

Man my English Workshops are painful. The one dude wont shut up and keeps bringing up inane, irrelevant points which always end with "I'm talking too much again, I'm sorry" and the workshop leader is some doddering old technophobe who I can feel free to write whatever I want about on this, the Internet, as he'll never read it because he still uses a type writer! HAHA! Guess what old man, I don't really dislike you actually!
Anyhow, some point today I decided that I really, really wanted some Sizzler. Unfortunately as far as I can tell the nearest Sizzler is in Toowoomba in Queensland which is over a day's drive away. So, I figured "Hell, if I want some sizzler that bad I'll drive there and get some next holidays."
I might even take my girlfriend... if I have one, which I probably won't. Or maybe even get a girlfriend there, if I recall correctly Sizzer was all

Today was my longest day of uni sofar. I got there before 11am (on time, THANKS CAR!) and managed to vulture a parking spot after about six minutes of looking. From there I spent two hours doing work on the software engineering project which i'm doing presentation on. It sucks, because people think I'm not doing any work for it but as a matter of fact I am as I am project manager! PROJECT MANAGER! I'm project managing and nobody realises it because they're either blind or I'm not project managing properly. However, seeing that I was the only person I recognised from my group that bothered to attend the Software Engineering Lecture today, I'm guessing I've got project managing down pat and really the next 2.8 years of study are merely formality.
After six hours of univeristy and dropping my car of at yet another car place for more fixing, I found myself at work where I faced up for three hours after I had a Crunchie Shake for lunch. I spoiled myself, and it wasn't even that great. Letdown++.
After working home from work I was pleased to discover the cricket was on, immersed myself in that for a while before deciding to go to bed in about negative five minutes.
Tommorow is my day off, God Bless my awesome timetable. I'm going to have the hugest breakfast I've ever had. On Monday I had the hugest breakfast I'd ever had (forgot to mention it) and tommorow I'm going to try and beat that. Wish me luck.

Had my day off today, and all I really did was play some basketball and watch a lot of cricket. So, here is some content about the hijinx of work last week.
See there was the lifesize cardboard cut out of Jon Bailey in a tuxedo that was next to this front end display of sunsilk shampoo. He was wearing a tux, so when you looked at him from the corner of your eye he looked like Steve (the boss). So, on the Monday night I was moving him around and leaving him at the end of aisles so people thought Steve was watching them. After that got boring we decided to put him behind the service desk so that the checkout staff would come in the next morning and think he was alive. Well, that was fun, so the next night we decided to step it up a notch and we gave him a trolley full of stuff and put him in a checkout with some stuff on the checkout. That was very funny looking, but the checkout staff obviously didn't laugh and instead tried to hide him in the express lane after trade the next night. However we found him and that night we stuck him behind the meat window. It was such a larf, and we had such plans for Friday night. We were going to put him in a cubicle upstairs in the women's toilets. We were even going to carry up a trolley full of shopping for him to stand next to again. However we couldn't find him on friday and even though we searched and searched it appeared evident that the poor cardboard fellow had been crushed in the balepress. :(

Very little of interest occurred today. This seems to happen a lot when I don't have uni. For some reason, when I don't do anything I don't end up doing anything.

I'm not positive, but it's possible that my time table is so good that it's irreputably the spawn of the dark lord Satan. I mean, just yesterday the weekend was over, and now after tommorow afternoon it will be the weekend again. SERIOUSLY, weeks now only have about nineteen minutes in them, which makes doing assignments and stuff difficult.
Tommorow I will probably drink an ice coffee again.

I think the enthusiasm for learning is on a downward spiral. I got to uni today at 10:50, got a reasonable car park and got to the programming prac where I stayed until the end despite the last ten minutes being used to discuss the first stage of a prac which I'd already done. After that I went first to the library to find books on my english topic, then to the IST building to work on programming and databases. I made progress in both. An hour later, towards the end of the databases prac I started losing interest in trying. Sat through databses lecture with my iced coffee, considering going to programming, decided to go home, missed software engineering. It's the weekend now, again. Played footy for an hour in the evening. Got hit in the balls real, real good. Unfortunately didn't get it on tape, so there's $500 down the drain. Sigh...
To make up for that, tommorow I'm digging all afternoon and filling all night. Oh yeah?

Ah, the night we wait all year for, the end of daylight savings and one extra hour of sleep. Now, when I go to bed this morning at 5:45am, it's actually 4:45am. What a sleeping I'm going to get!

I tried to get through databases today without caffeine. It was a close, well fought game, but I survived and stayed awake for the whole thing.
I also fixed my mouse. It wasn't letting me click on stuff and then I realised that there was a huge chunk of gunk that kept getting rolled by the scroll wheel which pushed it down making the mouse think I was already clicking. Scrolling is so much easier now, so smooth and rolly. Good times now, I was planning to format.
Also I had the funniest convo with willy last night, about his beard, and why he's now called willy bear.

I did dig for 5.5 hours today, then nightfilled. It was tiring work, but at some point in between I went to the Belair Hotel and had dinner. They have shitty food there, but nice mousse.

It's April. I've never had an April journal before. This is interesting, I'll have to add a calendar.
Worked this evening, went to town after, came home after that... Yep...

Kind of a bad day today:

Dear Western Bulldogs,

How many men does it take to carry a fireplace down a path?
Six. Apparently. After that we played some football.
Things to do at Marion tommorow:

It's Holidays again! And not a moment to soon. I don't know if I could have gone another week. Those six weeks were hell, thank God we had three months to prepare for them. Now, 18 days off.

Today's entry will be in dot point form:

Aye. Today I spent $245 on a new starter motor. Goddamn car. The reason yesterday I wrote that I was documenting my progress through life is because I keep discovering things about myself and writing "today I discovered that". Like, today I discovered that I didn't know how to gel my hair properly. Alex showed me. He's 14 and he knows how to gel his hair properly, and I didn't. But now I do. Another step towards self discovery. I'm glad I remembered that, I'm having trouble remembering stuff that has happened earlier during the day, I think i'm getting premature alzheimers or something. Hopefully not. Obviously.

I went to Harbour Town today and bought $100 worth of four pieces of clothing. A jumper (hoodie), two shirts and a t-shirt. Jeans are for another day. After that I went to work, and now I'm home and want to sleep. Problem is there's a huge pile of clothes on my bed which I have to put away, or more realistically, put on the floor so I can sleep.

Pretty good day today. Got up at midday, played basketball, football with the guys around blackwood. Then went home, went to Sam's house and played basketball/football/pool into the hours of the morning then went home.

Today, in particular the 24 hours that made up Sunday the 18th of April 2004, were pretty damn good. In fact, I'd say they made up the best day of the year, and the hours before and after them were good too.
Anyway, the day started with me at Sam's, where I'd had not too many drinks, won a few games of pool and marks up with a mini football. I got home and watched Angry Beavers, which made me laugh. I then slept for 8 hours, woke up and watched the bulldogs win. During the first quarter I ate a chicken roll which Mum both made for and brought to me which I ate in bed. Then the Bulldogs won, which pretty much made the day perfect.

Nothing is happening. Nothing interesting is happening. Kind of. Well, I didn't get to sleep until after 7am so most of the day was spent sleeping. I worked at night then ate a decent as steak for dinner. Oh, I'm not sueing my Dad anymore either. I probably should do some homework. Especially that group work thing.

Today, after work, I played pool. And I won.

Today I had to get up at 10:40 fucking am to interview Janet for our software engineering thing and it was shitty. Still, Mark gave me a piece of chewing gum before he abandoned me, and I put it in my pocket and will eat it later this week. Thanks Mark. Spent most of today in my car again working on the stereo. Oh, I bought a lockable petrol cap, for $25, but apparently the manufactures confused "lock" with "stays shut unless you just jiggle it a little". Then, at basketball practice I killed my thumb TWICE before sitting out, got bored, decided to play with my hand in my pocket and drilled the index finger on my other hand. It's swollen to twice it's size. It's the size I imagine Cowan's penis is. I wonder where Cowan is in New Zealand...

I, um, spent another few hours in my car today, than five hours at work. Over a kilogram of smarties in total were broken and I ate some of them. It rained, which was peachy. I smiled.

It rained a lot today and I worked Elliot's shift because he had concussion. Today was a good day to end the holidays, because, well, the holidays have two days left and everything has fallen into place. I bought clothes and I have finished installing the car stereo and have found a girl who likes me. That's really cool, because she's sweet and mad and goes pretty loud and still sounds good. The girl's ok too. Tommorow I'm going to a Bulldogs game, if they win, well, it might just be the best Christmas ever, Jimmy.

I went to the Bulldogs game today and saw them kick 7 goals in 110 minutes. I would have taken some photos, except I'm a Bulldogs supporter, so I'd probably have missed.
At work yesterday I noticed that it's Mother's Day soon. There's a side end of those Enjo cleaning gloves and a sign that says "The perfect gift for any Mum".
Ok Woolworths, how the fuck is that the perfect gift for any Mum? What? 'Hey Mum! Happy Mother's Day! Here, you can use this to clean the house. Oh, it's great isn't it! So, do you want to try it now? Why not?'
Perfect gift for any Mum my arse, what about Mums who don't have any hands?
Woolworths... Morons...

The strangest thing happened today. You see at the start of the day I had a 750 word English story and a 1500 word SE thing to write and I hadn't started either of them. Yet, somehow, despite going to Sam's for a BBQ at one and not starting any work until after 7pm, I finished both of them with plenty of time to spare and now face the prospect of getting 8 hours of sleep. I mean, these holidays have been great, but to finish 2 weeks of homework in one afternoon without even trying, well that was just nuts!

Why is it that I get called in to do dairy fridge work during Autumn and Winter but never on the hottest day on record since 1939? Why is it so hard to believe that an Asian IT student named Bob could be one half of a dynamnic crime fighting super hero where his partner and him were spiderman alternatively each day and every second sunday and on the fifth sunday of a month they would flip a coin? I bought my Thomas the Tank Engine Muffins like 50 days ago and I still haven't baked them. Basketball starts on Saturday! Life is good.

At work tonight my boss called me "Bugalug". It was incredibly confusing. I think it's because I explained to him that I fill like a turtle travelling down hill, I start off slowly and then build up speed. He actually said I was "Value for money" today, I think, it took a little while to sink in because I just assumed he said "Hurry Up" and wondered why it sounded so different.
Programming Test on saturday... dammit...

We're getting new people at work next week! One a week for four weeks. It's how exciting! Second Exlamation Point. Seriously, I'm pretty sure that I've got Aisle 6 cemented completely these days so I won't lose any shifts, and there will be new people. It's like we're expecting a baby. I hope none of them are called Brad, or else we'll have to make up a nickname for him/her. Also, I hope that because I'm so good at Aisle 6 that I get a newbie to be my apprentice. Also, I hope that person is Josh Ryan Evans.
Oh, and did you know it's possible to talk on the phone for 30 minutes?

Today had some very good moments. CASE IN POINT:
Woolworths, 12:20am, The night is almost complete and the majority of nightfillers are assembled in aisle 3 either facing up or pretending to face up. Then, from the corner of my eye I notice movement under the shelves of the aisle. I then watch, amazed, as Pete squeezes his whole body under the aisle from aisle four into aisle three. It was fucking g-old. All in all worked 6 and a half hours today and I'm working three more tommorow. I'm getting a fat, fat pay check on Tuesday because of Anzac day I haven't been paid for last saturday either. It rained a lot too. And I got my stereo's antenna extionsion installed so now I have radio. And the first game of Basketball is tommorow. I'm stoked! Like a fire! Problem is, I have a programming exam in 6 hours. Shit!

I'm being secretive, however, today did have a dodgy programming exam, the bulldogs winning, us losing basketball and me discovering after the game that I'd grabbed a bathmat and had been using that as a sweat towel. And I bought the "Princess Superstar" CD from JB for $8. Fucking Bargain.

Today, I scored, I FUCKING scored. It was awesome. Totally awesome. I mean, seriously, awesome. Minesweeper. Intermediate. 38 seconds. That's more than a mine a second people! Also at some stage Lori came over and we watched something on tv I don't remember what.
And the Bulldogs won by a point yesterday, so I'll wear my Bulldogs singlet for the next couple of days while I revel in our awesome position of "11th".

At some stage I missed a day and there's a spider in my room.

The other day at uni I bumped into Brad Spiel, my old friend from primary school. Unlike most kids in primary school who have the same name and thus don't like each other, Brad and I were good friends for most of the early days of Primary school. Then we drifted apart and I think Brad thought we were fighting about both having the same first name but I was like "Nah, man, it's cool, I'm Bradley". Then in 1996 he went to a new school and I was Brad once more!
Anyway, I saw him on Thursday, which is the day I dress the worst for uni. I mean, it's four days into the week, so I haven't shaved since the weekend or at best Tuesday night for day shift. It was raining on Thursday morning when I got up so I didn't put much effort into my dress. I was wearing unclean baggy jeans, a t-shirt, my black "it's cold today no time for style" hobo jacket and because i'd been too lazy to do my hair that day I was wearing a hat. My Japanese "Wet Dreams" hat. As well as the aforementioned facial hair. I was in humanities at the time, but Brad must've thought I was a bum/IT Student.

It's almost Wednesday. It's almost the 1 year anniversary of me getting my stereo. Wow, where does all the time go? My guess, it goes in here.

So... uni... Funny thing. I woke up at my usual time of 9:50 for a school day and turned my glaringly loud and painful sounding distorted trance music off. I usually just sit and watch Fashion TV for a few minutes after that to give my brain a few minutes to wake up. Unfortunately today before I could even reach for the remote I fell asleep again. I woke up at 10:28 and very calmly assesed the situation. I was not going to get to uni in time for programming, Database Tutorials are an absolute waste of time (like tutour like tute I suppose). So, I set my alarm forward two hours from 9:50 and went to sleep with plans to get to uni at the start of my normal hour gap before DB, do some programming and then go to the DB and Programming lectures. After doing this, I was asleep again before 10:29. However, after waking up at 11:50 I thought "No, I really should go to a repeat of the prog tute, so, I'll sleep another hour, go to DB and prog, hang around an hour doing some prog prac until the 5:00pm prog tute repeat starts. It was a good plan. I set my alarm forward another hour and was asleep before 11:51.
I woke up at 12:50, a little tired, after 10 hours of sleep. I got up, showered, watched a drunk asian dance his way to $1000 on Channel V and got to the DB lecture on time. After sitting through that and the prog lecture I realised that I'd left the notes for the prog tute at home and decided I couldn't be bothered printing them out again so I decided not to go the prog tute repeat and decided to go home.
Now I'm sure that was hard to follow, so let me put it this way: uni is good because I sleep in and then go home early and only am there for two hours. Uni is bad because I don't learn anything properly.
I got a distinction for my English Essay and SE1 Phase 1 Assignment.

What a larf! 69!
I hate programming. In the practice exam today I did as well as I expected to. Which was badly. Doesn't matter though, because after that we played basketball and beat Brighton with gusto. Total gusto. It's the first time we've ever beaten them and it felt good. Also, one of them scratched me deep in a line that almosts travels halfway around my arm.
After that I went to work, came home, went out and saw "Van Helsing" which, all things considered, is a cross between "Men in Black", "Shrek" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Movie producers must've run out of ideas a few years ago and are now just combining stuff in a cauldron. Didn't turn out badly though.
After dropping Lori home I called up Josh and found that he was in town so I drove to town, got told we were going to Magill, drove to Magill, got told we were going to Goodwood, drove to Goodwood, sat around in a house in Goodwood for an hour, then drove home. My poor, precious petrol.
Also Goodwood makes me laugh, because it reminds me of the train driver saying GoodWood every morning when I used to cattch the train. The drivers pronounce it "Gdwd". It's funny.

Well I have a little bit of homework to do. Just a bit. 50% of Databases, 50% of English, programming and SE all need to be done by the end of the weekend. And seeing I want to do stuff on the weekend, I have to do them before the weekend. So, since I got home from work at 9 that's what I've been doing. Well, after talking on the phone for 75 minutes (my god). I knew I'd need energy and motivation, so I bought 250g of M&M's at work and I made a pudding. The plan was that I'd eat a few M&M's each time I made some progress and when I finished my ERD I was going to watch "There's something about Miriam" and eat some pudding.
I spent the first hour doing homework. Which sounds good, until you realise that homework was the name I gave to this game which basically involved me throwing an M&M behind me and then rolling back on my chair fast enough to catch it in my mouth. Before I knew it I'd eaten most of 250g of M&M's inside an hour. When I say most, I mean, there were a fair few that rolled to places on my floor. After that I forced myself to do most of my ERD before I went and watched "There's something about Miriam" (Hilarious, I laughed my arse off) and ate pudding for tea at 2am. Mum came and watched it with me for a few minutes, constantly saying how she found the concept disgusting. Then she toddled off and I went back to my computer and did more homework so I'm actually pretty happy with the amount of work I got done today. Now I have to clean my teeth really well.

I discovered today that it was probably about time for me to take some of the keys off my keyring. Namely, the padlock keys from year 12. My keys are much lighter now.
Yesterday it was discovered that Marius was being replaced by Graham. Most likely because A) Graham speaks English and B) Graham isn't grossly incompetent.
Then I discovered jogging home from work.
So much discovering.

I almost think I shouldn't have driven to uni today. Mainly because after I drove there I sat down and couldn't stay awake for an hour. I was at uni until 6pm tonight. I did programming. Databases suck. Homework suck. Richmond suck... hopefully.

At Woolworths last night I spent 15 minutes re-arranging the planogram for the snappy tom single serves so that the ref numbers were in lexicographical order to make filling them easier. It was a nice night. I ate some raspberries.
TONIGHT Cheryl was in charge and went batshit crazy and forced everyone to fill the huge load in 3 hours no matter what and it was all done rather poorly and I wished for thursday night. Some Snappy Tom single serves came in, but they were all full anyway so I didn't get to use my cool new system. I ate nothing! Fucking AutostockR.
Not only that, but the one time I do get out of work at 11pm and I've got nothing to do after. So I did homework on a friday night. Yay.

I have a new phone. My ringtone is the Pac Man theme. It's inspired me to play Pac Man and listen to ”Mope” by the Bloodhound Gang.
I bought Petrol yesterday for 95.5c a litre. This is compared to the $1.08 it was last week. It was cheap on the weekend too. Petrol purchasing is like riding the stock market. You gotta take risks to make money. Thing with petrol price riding is that it takes so long to actually make any money. 98c a litre compared to 94c, when you fill up 30 litres say, that's only a $1.20 saving. And that's in Australian dollars. So it takes a lot of work through the whole year to save up big cash. And that's why when you run red on an expenisve day it sets you back so far. But then you're like ”Ayy, Stock Market” and you start wearing a business suit everytime you fill up.

I spent 12 hours today memorising 144 pages of my Software Engineering Resource Manual so that I may regurgitate it onto a few sheets of paper at 1:15pm tommorow. After that I'll have passed all of my subjects for this semester. Another semester down. Memorising stuff is so easy. I've used this strategy without fail since year 12 exams and it's bombing. I don't even feel like I could possibly jinx myself right now about tommorows exam with this little ego-driven post because Software Engineering exams must be the easiests toss-off exam in the university calender. I pity and mock those who actually spent time in the lectures for this subject as they were completely useless and have probably had a negative effect on their learning for serious reasons that I won't gointo. In my DB exam I claimed that ”Normalisation dissolves data redundancy”.
So after my exam I'll essentially have 4 weeks off. (I will go in on Tuesday for the repeat of the programming exam to see if I can improve my grade of 72% some more). My plans:

• Buy an adventure game for the Nintendo 64, put the 64 in my room and finish it
  
• Go Camping
  
• Watch Cricket
  

Oh my exams are easy. Too easy. It's suspicious. Now for a month of well deserved rest and relaxation. The best thing about uni is the three month summer. Not only because it goes for three months, but also because it means that the rest of the year only goes for nine months. And then, there's a whole month off during that nine months, which is now, all I can say is ”holy shit we're halfway through the year”. Which is scary. I was remembering back to November last year like it was yesterday.
Yeah anyway after the exam I bought an ”Element” jumper/jacket, which I call a jumacket. Apparently I'm allowed to wear it because I say ”Bust” and ”Devo” during conversations.

No Update: At Josh's

I worked 7 hours today, without being afforded a meal break. Thanks a lot Woolworths. After I got out at 11pm it was the foggiest I've ever seen it. It wasn't raining but everything was glistening. For about 2 metres it was crystal clear and looked awesome and after that you couldn't see jack. There was so much light though that the fog was illuminating everything it was almost like day, it was so cool. I didn't almost die on the way home.
Then tonight I made: this
Holidays are fun.

Oh my, I didn't do anything too noteworthy today.

'Twas a better day today. Got up a little earlier and played some football for a while. Then the evening was spent setting up the VCR and Nintendo in my room so that I could begin part of my holiday plans: Play Mario 64. I have 6 stars already! I'm going to buy a new TV now. Oooh, new financial year... Shit I didn't do anything too noteworthy today...

My ankle hurts.
This afternoon I watched cricket. Then I worked. Now I'm watching more cricket. I also got 6 more stars.
I'm wasting my holidays, and it's good fun. It feels like summer.
I'm pretty pissed off at work. On Tuesday during my day shift I took a few minutes out to fix up the few remaining problems with the tinned cat food planogram. It became perfect, flawless. I was so stoked with it and it was going to solve so many of the capping problems down there.
Then, on Wednesday, the person who's arse I'm covering who keeps making the bad planograms ordered an entire replanogram of the cat food section.
Now normally they replanogram sections when they're adding new lines or taking old ones out. But they didn't do either of those. They just completely re-arranged the cans and changed the amount of facings each line had for NO REASON. They made the most ludacris decions I couldn't even have come up with myself even if I was Forrest Gump on dope. The amount of capping is going to fucking triple now. I was so pissed off. Whoever did it doesn't deserve to live after that effort. I'm going to planogram them a new arsehole. Fucking angry.
*sigh*

Work.
If you work at Woolworths for Five Years you get a badge that says ”Five Years”. I don't see how that's that appealing seeing as you can just by birthday cards for a similar end still it's something to think about. Regan got one on Wednesday and I'm now going to talk about him in my journal. He's worn it every night since. He knocked a jar off the shelf while facing up and then caught it before it hit the ground. That's five years of experience right there.
After we all got out and I said Bon Voyage to Nick.
For some reason the flat top I was spotting at the start of the night had an apron on it. I wore it like a cape the majority of the night and said I was captain Woolworths.
Jack worked down my aisle and we ate a packet of Wagon Wheels biscuits.
I used my packing knife as my blade of fulfillingment and go green shopping bag as my shield of injustice.
See it's a shield of injustice because it shield me from injustice. It's like a double negative.

No Update: At Craigs.

Yesterday: Craigs tooth broke at basketball. In half. So he got it capped and we went to his house to drink to its memory. I got drunk. At one stage I had just finished paying out Cowan as I changed seats during Warlords and Scumbags and I sat down on Craigs chair and it imploded. Before it even hit the ground I said ”Craig this chair's almost as weak as your girly teeth.” I don't feel so bad about paying people out when I'm drunk because I'm usually either saying dumb things or spilling stuff on my jumper when I do it so I doubt that anyone takes it too seriously.
That afternoon I bought a whole carton of Crownies for $38. That was cool. I lined them all up on my shelf in some sort of display. Not because I'm especially proud of the fact that I almost own all of a carton of a moderately priced beer but just because it looks shiny and cool.
Then today I put the windscreen wipers blades on my car. Later, I drove, it rained, and I wiped. It was good.

Oh :(
(Wednesday 7th July, 5:09am)

Don't bitch about it not being installed until the weekend, at least you have an airconditioner and you'll get to use it soon. :/

There are starving kids in etheopia who would love to eat that air conditioner.
Also you know how when your foot is dangling in the air for a while and then you put it down quickly all of a sudden it really hurts? WHAT THE FUCK IS IT WITH THAT?
I get so angry.

No Update: At Craig's burning my fingers:
”I'm getting $1600 dollars for my tax return. Do you think it would be wrong for me to spend it all on lego?”
”PEOPLE SHOULD CARE ABOUT MY LIFE GODDAMNIT!”

No Update: At Jarrad's Drinking:
Amusing Drunken Story

No Update: At Mark's LAN:
no additional lines of material.

I should have mentioned that it was going to probably be a busy weekend, but I didn't know what was going to be going on, and for how long, until during it.
Anyway, after going to Hahndorf on Friday and then working that night I went to Craig's house where he was having a bonfire and bullshitted with the guys. ”The Guys”, I don't know if that needs to be capitilised or if you're allowed to be subtlely generic.
There we made plans for Saturday night, during which a few of us went to Jarrad's, I drank the majority of a bottle of Jack (as well as 3 tia maria Tim Tam's) and then wrote the above mentioned drunken tale. Jarrad told me previously that he wanted me to write him a story and, yes, it is supposed to be an extended, barstardised version of a simple joke. At around 2:30am I stumbled out of the living room and went straight to his computer, couldn't find word quickly so ran notepad and began typing. About halfway through I had to urinate, so I saved it as ”gotta pee.txt”, shimmied to the bathroom, got back and couldn't remember writing half of what I was re-reading. Nevertheless, it's quite amusing, especially for me, because I don't know where half of the stuff I wrote came from (the other half I recognise as half-ideas and recycled ones that I already had upstairs, but my brain's like a hypercube.)
Got back from Jarrad's and then had only 4 hours sleep before waking up to watch the Bulldogs get mauled by the lions, which was predictable and unpleasant. Then I left to go to Mark's LAN and overshot his house and got lost in the maze of sidestreets in his suburb. It was like a spiderweb. I can't even find where I was again in the street directory, that's how much of a maze it is. Not to mention the fact that it's split up into the corner of four fucking maps. I don't think I want to talk about that anymore.
Then on Monday I finally got to sleep around 5:30am and slept all day until Happy woke me up when he came to my house at 5pm wanting a lift to Goolwa.
From there I went to work, begrudgingly, came home, watched King of the Hill and then went to sleep again.
King of the Hill was about Christian Punk Bands, said Hank:
”Can't you see what you're doing? You're not making Christianity better you're making rock and roll worse.”
Hilarious and true. Well played.

Slept most of this day away again. Let Erin beat me at Mario Kart, which was painful and boring. Steve's girlfriend came around last night with Steve for dinner. Steve and I had the following conversation about my Khaki Pants:
Steve: Hey, khaki pants, nice.
Brad: Yes.
Steve: Did you buy them yourself?
Brad: I did. And I feel comfortable wearing them, not physically comfortable, but socially comfortable.
Steve: That's great, you're getting some style, but be careful.
Brad: Yeah, Khaki pants are a big step up from jeans. By wearing them you're saying 'Hi, I'm wearing Khaki pants and I know about it. I'm not even in the army.' That's a big step up for me, seeing all I used to wear was jeans. When you wear jeans you're saying 'Hi, I didn't come here naked.'
Steve: This is my girlfriend, isn't she hot and girly?
Brad: Well done.

I bet I'm sick. I woke up this evening and my pee was orange.
I also figured out what makes men and women different:
There are lots of different reasons and observations about what separates men and women, but last night I think I discovered a very fundamental difference:

What is a belt buckle for?
Her: Show
He: Buckling

Fashion versus practicality. Where's my Nobel prize?
I'm going to go to bed now, at 3am, so I can maybe not oversleep, which might be making me tired and pee orange.

This morning I had a dream and got up. But more about the dream. It was an interesting dream, and it involved being shrunk and then put into an exactly to scale room which was also the room you were shrunk in and you couldn't really tell exactly how tiny or huge you were because everything was still to scale and also for some reason the room was inside a car boot. That's unimportant, later in the story, possibly after returning to normal size/remaining in a to-scale model of my house I had my arms and legs cut off, and became a torso. This was quite sensational, particularly because I was at one point walking into the kitchen to grab something and I remembered I had no arms and legs and then I fell onto the floor in a heap and was kinda mopey about it.
Went to the dentist for the first time since High School. My teeth are still perfect, bitches.
Was filling up with petrol today at Woolworths Plus, and the dude who served me was AN EMO! Yes! An Australian Emo! I thought Craig was the only one.

Today Brad tries to live out his life like a sitcom, with hilarious and unexpected results.

Going to Goolwa for a few days as of this entry until Wednesday. Bought $40 worth of snacks and $60 worth of booze for it, as well as taping 3 hours of Fashion TV. On the way home from the shops the ”Brake” light on my dashboard started flashing, but ignoring it seems to have worked and I'll be driving to Goolwa and back with the goals of ”not dying” and ”avoiding trucks” as well as playing loud electronic music next to Angus' brain.
I'll also be driving without an indicator stalk, because they apparently cost fifty fucking dollars.

No Update: At Goolwa

No Update: At Goolwa

No Update: At Goolwa

No Update: I, Uh... At Goolwa

Well, Goolwa was an interesting and enjoyable time, more on that later. I'm back now, my throat hurts like fuckery and it's kind of been a sad week. You see, Dr. Russell says that Timmy has internal bleeding and there's nothing they can do. He looks so weak and he's going to die. It's omigod so sad. Also I broke up with Lori. Poor Timmy :(/
”I'm so white, during the riots I went out and bought a television.”
Ah, king of the hill. Goolwa write up later.

I got pulled over by cops today, it was exciting.
After work I went to drop the last of Lori's stuff off at her house. I wanted to leave a letter for her along the lines of ”I'm sorry, don't be sad, drink less booze, we can still be friends.” Unfortunately I didn't finish writing it before I left for work so I took the pad and pen with me and on Marion road I parked in the middle of the empty and well lit BBQ's Galore car park and wrote the rest of the letter. Satisfied that it was done, I started my car and left, pulling onto Marion road just as a cop car drove by the other way. They obviously saw me leaving the empty car park (it was around 12:30am now) and I saw them indicate to pull a Uturn so I drive nice and slow in the left lane and then through my fogged up rear-windscreen I see red and blue flashing lights. So, I pull over, and in true cliche form I've got a tail light out. They tell me there's a lot of break ins in this area and ask me why I was in the car park. I tell them I was writing a letter, and I'm not a terrorist. They believe me after they look up my name on their chunky-as palm top, take my license, caution me for the tail light and off I go. Thank God they didn't see my broken indicator stalk dangling next to the steering wheel. After I dropped Lori's stuff off, I was driving back and then right near BBQs Galore I'm stopped at some lights and I see the cop car again stopped on the other side of the lights. How amusing. And Exciting.
Also, the deaf girl says ”Whoops” too, when she makes a mistake she says ”whoops”! So WHY DOES SHE SAY OOPS WHEN SHE SEES ME? Goddamn Deaf Girls. I'm going to watch todays tape of Passions while I fall asleep now.

No Update: Too sick to write.
That's right, too sick to write stuff with a keyboard. Not lazy.

Oh Lord, my ear. It's blocked with pain, and I've eaten 50 lozenges since thursday. All I've done today is wake up and sit around until the cricket started. That was after last night when I spent the night falling asleep watching the cricket. I woke up at 3:30am with a lozenge half dissolved in my mouth. I finished that and cleaned my teeth and then slept. Being sick sucks. I did write a cooking with Brad article though. It was average.

I had uni today and sat behind a girl with a hot neck and amos is a fucking jazz loving clown but more on that later. There's more pressing issues.

Holy shit it's August!

I watched "Super Size Me" today. It was pretty disgusting. Why, if I hadn't given up fast food in year 10, I would give up now, or more realistically some time shortly after the time I gave up in year 10. The last hamburger I ever ate was a big-mac from McDonalds Hindley Street during the work education trip to centrelink in May 2000.
Last night, sigh. I hate drinking at my own house because I was under the impression that I found it difficult to get drunk there. Because everything's so familiar I don't get as many of the warning signs that I normally do at unfamiliar places. It was either that or all those shots of tequila that I'm blaming last night for. Eitherways I'm pissed off and frankly frustrated by my behaviour. I'm sick of jackassery and missing out on half the events of the night because I was sleeping on a couch or in my car during them. Maybe it's because of my new sleeping pattern or my alcohol tolerance has changed but excuses out of it I'm getting less drunk from now on (for a while).
So God help all your parties you'll have to find someone else to be your entertainment.

Oh, man, this is a good feeling.
I've spent hours today fixing up the journal. Some stuff I haven't been able to fix, like the css not workin in mozilla, but I've fixed up a few of the bugs, got the calendar working, finally (learnt how to spell calendar, finally). I've taken out the client pull script because while it worked beautifully on my pc using IE, it caused allsorts of problems in Netscape/Mozilla and probably a whole bunch of other shit.
Remember that photos of the month thing I mentioned a month back, that's right. Well, I did that as well. The link to July is here.
Obviously that's the only month that works, but I'm expecting a fair few more photos for August and the rest of the year.
Apart from that today, I had my teeth cleaned for $160. That's right, $160 to have my teeth brushed and flossed for thirty minutes with a whole bunch of stuff in my mouth. Boy am I glad I have private health insurance.
Today, inspired by last night's viewing perhaps, I made cheeseburgers. Awesome fucking cheeseburgers. I'm really getting into this whole "high complexity" cooking shit and the amount of ingredients and techniques I busted out on these babies was awesome. Could have been better though, too rainy to go outside and use the BBQ for grilling.
Yep, I'm feeling pretty good about that calendar, and I'm pretty darn happy it's over now. Time to fall asleep.

Today nothing funny happened but I did buy some sandshoes and a lot of beer.

What the hell happened to today?

I'll do a 50th day update tommorow because i have to go to sleep now so I can go to comm skills.
Actually, I can't sleep, so fuck Comm Skillz, here is...
Traditional Day 50 Nostalgia Entry!
Now, as precedents go, this usually involves me finding the update from the same date during the previous year and then analysing it, if I missed that day then I'd go back a month and do that day. However this is the first time I've ever had a journal during August, and the closest I came last year was June 9th which was a pretty crappy update with no real material to work with. So instead I'll do day 50 from last years Wintry Journal, which is dangerous, because if I use day 50 next year as well then I'll be left reviewing a review of the year before and it would suck. However, of all 222 days this year so far I've only missed journaling 53 of them, and 11 of those are "no update: x" ones which I could probably expound a bit on during the nostalgia entry anyway but anyway, anyway.

Day 50 Monday June 16th 2003
Today exciting stuff actually did happen, so any 'material' updates will be saved until I can't think of anything else to write:
Exciting Happening Number One: Whilst playing Super International Cricket against myself, I had a draw. India got off to a slow start but still posted 168 for Pakistan to chase. Pakistan then proceeded to get off to a flyer and Ahad got a century on their way to what would seem a strong victory. However, Karpal bowled two very tight overs which left the Paki's with 12 to get off the final over. With two balls left that figure had dropped to 6 to win. On the second to last ball Ahad mistimed his drive and the ball hit his pads, the two batsmen then quickly ran a leg bye. With one ball to go a six was still needed to win. Hammad played an almighty cover drive and it landed two feet within the boundary to go for four. I was shocked, but the game ended in a tie.
Exciting Happening Number Two: I was downloading 'Eple' by Royksopp (The Fatboy Slim Edit) at a steady 4.7kbs. The time remaining on the download, as it came to my attention, was about 10 seconds less than the amount of time before I got disconnected. A nailbiting 15 minutes was had watching the time remaining on the download go down and my elapsed online time creep towards 5:00. Fortunately for me, in the final stretch the download picked up to 4.8kbs and I finished with 40 seconds to spare. To ruin the story, the remix was poor, no where near as good as the shakedown mix of the song, which I listen to currently with enjoyment.

The world would be a better place if everyone adhered to the same principles that I think I do.

Hoo boy. You know, it's actually not a coincidence that I played a 10 over game of SNES Cricket today to celebrate this very draw. This time Pakistan opened the batting, and once again Ahad made a century as Pakistan amassed 2/172 from their 10 overs. India got off to a slow reply, Pille made 69 and several others made starts but it looked out of reach when they needed 61 to win from the last three overs. Enter Krishna, who, after Pille got out at the start of the 8th over, slogged 33* from much of the remaining 11 balls to seize victory for India off the last ball. Conclusion, I still play SNES Cricket, a little bit less than I did last year and it's gone through some intense changes. First it changed to the 20over format, which was excellent, then crowd participation dived so the Turbo Cricket format was invented where I tripled the frame rate and played 10 over games which usually took about 4 minutes per innings to complete. Occasionally I go back to the classic 10 over games, like today, and it is enjoyable.
Also the fatboy slim remix of Eple is funky and actually quite good.
Boy have I learnt many things and changed since that day 14 months ago. Probably for the better. That last comment I thought up while I was at a church service. Hah. Like the world would be a better place if we had more Brads.

Update: Nah, at Sam's.

So despite releasing enough snot to fill an olympic sized plastic bucket, I had a pretty good saturday olympic. First we won basketball against a depleted Hawthorn by a large amount. Then I went to Sam's where he had I bonfire, I reamined constitutional and we sat around doing stuff and having a good time.
And every now and again I just think ”I'm so glad I don't have a girlfriend”.
Girls are annoying when you're in a relationship with them, I realise this now. It may be the introvert in me, but after a small while the enjoyment of having someone care about you and wanting to know what you've been up to becomes taxing. Feeling required to communicate with someone is a responsibility I don't care for. Don't get me wrong, women are ok/fine to have conversations with, but there are better things to do like watch sport or play Freecell.
This is why until I find a Brad-like woman who understands this about me I will have personal relationships with women in only two categories:
Friends.
Sex.

And, as I'm relatively hopeless at convincing women to get down and dirty with me, combined with the fact that women remain opposed to becoming close friends with me (possibly through fear that I will hopelessly try and convince them to get down and dirty with me, unfounded fear that it is) I feel that I will be spending many more nights in the company of men having a good, relationship-responsibilities free times. Ace, olympic.

Karl was this middle aged, grey bearded, portly, tall painter that was painting a lot of rooms in my house last summer. Because I did jack shit last summer, I would often get up around 2pm and encounter Karl down the hall as I made my way to the shower. He seemed like a quiet guy who was maybe jealous of my sleeping pattern and carefree lifestyle but never said anything mean about it. I told him that I worked nights and so that seemed to satisfy him. I never let him know that I finished work at 11pm though.
Karl used to listen to this little radio he brought with him. He listened to one of the feel good music stations. One day, unbeknownst to Karl I was in the kitchen while he was down the hall painting. On the radio was playing Avril Lavinge's hit song "Complicated". I grimaced in disgust, then listened closely. Karl was singing along. Singing along in a sad little voice. Then the bit where Avril sings "no, no, no" he was singing out of time "no, no, no".
I laughed to myself and went back to doing fuck allery. Later, I told Mum about Karl's hilarious patheticness and she told me that Karl's wife left him a few months earlier and Karl was currently working seventy hours a week because he was lost and didn't know what to do with himself. Now his woeful singing continually haunts me, and I have to try not to cry when I recall him singing to those words "why did things have to get so complicated?". Then I got a copy of the Weird Al Yankovic version: Why'd you have to go and make me so constipated?. It's pretty funny and clever, and now Karl doesn't seem important anymore.

I went to an IT Craplications 2 Lecture today, God help me I done bad.
So I designed this shirt as my big ”fuck you” to fashion.

No Update: Hah, it's Saturday

I was at Craig's last night, the Bulldogs won and I was in bed today until 1pm.
Because nothing interesting's happened today I'll just share with you what I ate today seeing that despite being irrelevant, you are already reading my journal and you'll probably keep reading this entry in the hope of a joke somewhere.
For breakfast I ate a large bowl of seven Weet-Bix, Sports Plus, Muesili and a Banana. I finished that off at around 2:30pm and I was quite full. However, by 5:00 I was hungry again, so I made three hot dogs after discovering that we had no pita bread left to make mini pizzas with. After eating the hot dogs I realised I was again quite full, and after being told to make my own dinner I decided I didn't need it and it wasn't until 11pm that I felt hunger again. So, at around midnight I had a bowl of Weet-Bix crunch. I bought that box on Tuesday night and I finished it off today. It took four bowls. After eating that I was very full, and didn't eat anything else between then and writing this entry, although I did drink four litres of water.
Now this information may seem trite, but for those who feel this entry has been dissapointing I ask you ”how many people in the world know what you ate for breakfast this afternoon?” That's what I thought. Oh yeah. I'm popular on the Internet.
I think I'll make a bumpersticker that says exactly that.

I haven't driven my car since Saturday night. I'm saving so much money on petrol lately. I walked to work and back today. That's pretty much all else I did. I looked at the IT Craplications 2 assignment and figured it would be pretty easy so I went back to playing FreeCell.

It is way to warm to be winter right now. There are little bugs in my room. I used to call these ”Summer Bugs”, but, well, now they're here in winter too.

No Update: BLACKOUT

Well it was my birthday yesterday. Crap. Fuck, shit, darn, crap. I turned 20. Next stop, death.
For whatever reason my thoughts keep turning towards my own mortality. I don't want to die. I really, seriously do not want to die. Up until a year ago I was ok with it but now I really don't.
Up until yesterday I was a teenager. People who recalled with mournful nostalgia about their days of youth were not me. I was still in my childhood. Now the things I've done isn't ”stuff I do as a teenager” it's ”stuff I did as a teenager.” By name, I am older than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I feel somehow responsible for not doing enough to prevent this change to adulthood. After all I did have two whole decades to prepare, but alas I've done nothing to stop it. Now everything reminds me of my days of yore and I feel like I've wasted some opportunities. Then again, I have so many fond memories that make me depressed that I have to recognise I did a lot of things right during those first years. But I want to do it again. I want to collect all the Tazo's again. I want to come home from school and watch the COPS cartoon and let it inspire me for upgrades to my magnificent Lego town. I want to spend hours playing basketball against myself in the neighbours driveway night after night. I want to play Pokemon cards with the guys who I wont mention here because they'll feel ashamed to have their names associated with Pokemon cards. I want to bounce on the trampoline with my brother for hours pretending that it's a SNES/Sega/Nes/Computer entertainment system combined. I want to go back to reading 15 books a week because I didn't have a computer. I want to watch a new Simpsons episode that's good when I watch it as well as being good five years later when the jokes don't go over my head anymore. I want to play the original Grand Theft Auto again for the first time. And Warcraft 2, and Command & Conquer and Duke3D. I want to go back to hanging out at Timesavers near the skill tester and eating a pie and laughing about stupid shit. I want to go back to playing basketball on Monday nights before I had a job and a car to worry about. I want to spend hours and dollars collecting and organising shiny, worthless basketball cards. I want to go back to ETSA and enjoy those three months again as a child in a man's world. I want to return to the year where I suddenly decided Tuesday night was good now because I would make four slices of vegemite toast and a hot quik and watch Blue Healers followed by the X-Files. I want to go back to the Comm Skills tute and put on a play with Dan that would be better than Mark and Ryans. My precious childhood. Why? WHY? WHY? do we have to grow old?
Is it because I am cursed with such a strong memory and interesting imagination that I feel so strongly about this? Because I remember it all so vividly is why I have problems letting it go? Is it because I find that six hours of university and night fill is about all the adult commitments I can really handle per week and this is my way of avoiding real work?
Sure, I can relive the things I used to do in my own special way. But I don't want to relive them, I want to live them. Being scuttled on whiskey doesn't make you young and waking up with crazy lego bits stuck to your face just isn't the same.
For the last few days before my birthday I was trying to evaluate what my goal in life was. While my time is spent mainly being a student (mainly as in tax purposes mainly) my goal in life, I think, is to be an entertainer. To make people laugh and at the same time avoid doing physical or mental labour. For the past week I've been writing out the script for an episode of BMG, which will have its name changed eventually. I wanted to finish the whole episode before my birthday and say yes, this is my goal. This is soil from which my future will overdramtisedly grow. However, I didn't finish the episode before my birthday, I did 2000 words but I didn't finish it. I did get my Freecell percentage up to 85% though. Maybe that's my goal for life; Play FreeCell? Who knows? Will it matter once I'm dead? I want people to give me attention now and remember me when I'm dead. When I'm dead will it matter if I'm getting attention or whether my FreeCell percentage was 85% or, hypothetically, %15 (hypothetical only). Maybe if I'm famous and dead it will just make dying harder because I'll be dissapointed about being famous while not being alive to enjoy it.
And you know none of this self-involved whining was helped last night where, after returning home from work (where I was given a birthday shout out on the PA while the store was open) I was forced to rummage through my entire room trying to find my NAS from Tax last year and along the way overturned docuements detailing my life stretching years back, which made things even more depressing. Then (while files were still scattered all over my bed) there was a blackout for two hours. And so I had to clean my bed off by watch light then, after I realised the power wasn't coming back on, I had to decide what to do. Going to bed at 1am would be pretty early for me, but there was nothing to do without power at night. Especially bad about going to bed early is that I usually drink a few litres of water after I get home then gradually piss it out until I go to bed at 3 or whatever. In fact, when the lights went out I had to go pretty badly as was. I felt my way to the toilet and, as the situation required, sat down to pee. This wasn't gay. As the rule goes you're allowed to sit down to pee when there's no light, there's a UTI or you're smashed on booze. Sitting down however seemed to be an indication to my bowels that they were good to go as well, and there was a panicked moment when I realised that shitting in the dark was not something I wanted to do with the toilet paper visibility to be considered and toilettalketc. So with that done I step outside to see if the blackout is located within my house or is affecting the neighbours too. I step outside into the unseasonably warm night. [Now, it hadn't rained for about 14 days up until yesterday. August is usually the wettest month of the year, so 14 days without rain is very disturbing, and made my birthday quite bizarre because it was 26 degrees and warm the whole day, giving my birthday a tropical feel which I could appreciate but also was disconcerting.] I stepped into the warm night and walked up the path to the street to confirm that, yes, the street lights were out and the blackout would be going for a while it seemed. My eyes had adjusted by now, and it was very light outside. Disturbingly light. The clouds were all out and they were hued red. I could see pretty far and it was difficult to comprehend that it was 1am smack bang in the middle of the night and it was so light. Also adding to the creepy was the spatters of rain spitting down for the first time in a fortnight. I went back inside, resigned myself to an early night's sleep and soon found myself being woken up by cats screeching at each other a few feet from my window as well as an intense need to urinate. I slashed, scared the cats off then went back to bed. The power then came back on at 2:45am while I was trying to return to sleep, and my monitor came back on and displayed a huge, bright ”No Signal Detected” thing that didn't dissapear automatically and required me to get up again to turn the monitor off. I fell asleep again and woke up at 10:50 with the intention of going to uni. But I didn't, despite having slept for 9 and something hours I felt lethargic and decided to skip, well, everything. I did read the SP lecture while I ate my huge breakfast, and understood it. My birthday ramble is pretty much run out of steam now. I think I'll recap my life over the weekend.

I'm not ready to be an adult, when facing up on Monday night steve wanted a good face up and wanted stuff from the back of the shelf pulled forward. Whoever in the next aisle wasn't putting enough effort into it, and I overheard Steve so ”no, I want it deeper.” And God Help Me I laughed.

Checking my journal today it appears I didn't update it for this day. All that I acheived during it was to make a period joke in front of two girls, one who was deaf and the other who was offended.

It's great when you win basketball on a Saturday afternoon, it just sets the rest of the weekend up to be more fun. That said, after basketball I spent a few hours watching cricket before going to Heath's 21st for a few more hours and then coming back home and watching the rest of the cricket. So it didn't really set the weekend up to be good as much as it, well, we won basketball. I think what I'm trying to say is ”I'm updating on a saturday night! Ha Ha Ha! Sixty Nine!”

”If you say you love the soup when you actually want to puke, then isn't that sign of... ...”
A sign of what? WHAT? WHAT!?
Today was not kosher. I ate a lot of pork, twice, and on this, the sabbath. Also if getting a nice jacket isn't kosher than that makes it even worse.
I discovered the new Freestylers album was released in July and upon seeing it for sale I seized it up quickly and purchased it and it was good.
I invented a drink last night. It's called ”Ultrapunchula”. First it was called ”Fruit”, then ”Fruit Punch”, then ”Ultrapunchula”. A journey which saw its name lose relevance to the drink and become more representative of an Armand Van Helden song title. Being drunk at the time I don't really know a) where ultrafunkula came into the picture and b) if it actually tastes good, but it sure is fruity. And Alex agreed it was good.
As usual, the Brad sized serving of drink is made in a large glass tumbler. Ice is acceptable I suppose.
5 parts Vodka (Citrus Vodka may work and add to the fruityness but there was only Smirnoff available)
2 parts Midori
1 part Malibu
1 part Cointreau
A small amount of tropical fruit juice
A squeeze of lemon juice

Australia beat Pakistan in the cricket last night too, and I ate a lot of cheese.

Now here's something that's quite alarming, it's Spring.
This is more alarming than all the assignments that I have due during the next week, some of which have questions I can't comprehend.
This year has been going fast. I think I can divide it up into segments pretty well. First there was summer (January 1st to March 1st) then there was last week (March 2nd to August 31st) and now there's today.
Life is moving on, the seasons are changing once again. Spring is a time for new life, new chances, new opportunities, new... uh, months. Spring is actually like Winter in pretty much every way. I like South Australia. "I bought a jacket just in time for Spring" people will say, because in spring it rains. But it's also a heavy indication of what's to come: exams, summer, the end of another year, questions about where life is all leading, worries about the future. It all leads to an important question. Should I start a Spring Journal or keep going with the wintry one? Having a green colour scheme for a journal could be cool, but I'd like to get to one hundred entries in a journal again and this one seems to be going strong (no emotional rock bottoms for a while, hooray). I think I'll go with wintry still. After all, it's going to keep raining until november and I can't be bothered creating a new template. Maybe I will be keener this summer, after I memorise the entire IT Apps 2 topic guide the night before the exam and learn about html again!

I got up at 10:50am today to attend lectures at it's now 3:15am so today's one of those days where I can't remember the start that well because of the amount of events that have transpired during the course of the day. Usually when days are shorter and involve less doing things they don't get quite as blurry.
Nevertheless after four hours of uni I went to Black Forrest Primary for basketball practice. I volunteered to take Alex down there too and next thing I know I'm driving all around the hills and far away to pick up little kids and taking them to basketball practice. My car was full of them. I made their trip comfortable by playing funky breaks at louder than necessary volumes next to their brains thanks to my rear-parcel shelf 6"x9"s. Then, while driving home and approaching a McDonalds I turn the stereo down and say "Who wants me to buy them a soft serve from McDonalds?"
"Me!" they all scream.
"Hah, well fuck off." I reply, then turn the stereo back up louder.
I'll be making an awesome father.

No Update: No Update.

It was Fathers Day and I went to Dad's for lunch during which I made the freudian slip "whack cunt" when I wasn't trying to say "whack cunt" at all I was just trying to think up homeboy names. Stupid brain doesn't work when I have to get up early for lunch and skip breakfast.
Then for dinner I ate two pork chops with roast potato and vegetables. The meal looked very appealing, and I was grateful. So I said grace. To car park god.
Last night at Craig's I had the numbers for two chicks, one called Stella, the other called Debbie. They were older women.
At midnight I called up Stella. I got her answering machine. I said: "Stella?.. STELLA? STELLA!"
Then I rang her friend Debbie, she answered. I said "Debbie?" She said "yes?" I yelled "DEBBIE?, DEBBIE?! DEBBIE!, STELLA!
Also today: Completed the piece of work I'm handing up as my Psych Assignment.

Ah, the parabola of life. It must be sloping on a positive gradient recently. Hopefully the local maximum is far away, or possibly y = x and things will get better continuously. Unlikely, if things kept getting better forever life would end up being boring and I'd never die. UNLESS death was like ascension, in which case I suppose it would be a continuation of the upwards slope and approach infinity positively.
So as I was trying to convey, maths is horrible and is the cause for much concern. The current Systems Programming is a bigint calculator in C and from the cheating we tried to do it seems that a bigint calculator is actually pretty hard to make. Proof of this was that it seems bigint calculator programs are sold. Mark and I think this because the Chinese release no-cd cracks for them. We're assuming that means that commercial bignt calculators are being released onto the market, or maybe the Chinese just like cracking things a lot and are cracking for the sake of it. Maybe my bigint calculator will be cracked by the Chinese! I could only dream of the joy, mainly the joy that would come from knowing that my bigint calculator actually worked and was therefore worth cracking. It would be great.
Yes, it was a warm, sunny day today, which further enhanced my mood. Nary a cloud in the sky when I arose around 11. The perfect weather for spending hours trying to program indoors.
Then I got home and cleaned my room.
Ah, cleaning your room. When you do this by choice it's such a cleansing activity. I discovered pieces of paper on my desk from October last year. Most of the stuff was more recent but that was cool. With the room tidier everything just seems brighter now, maybe because I got rid of that thick layer of dust...
(On my things or on my soul, you decide!... *hayfever*)
That said, Sam has a journal! I discovered the link to it from Ryan's Rants. The comment I made on it was "It's confirmation that Sam's life is what you thought it was like" - Brad. Which made Sam defensive about how he wasn't recording everything that happened to him. Then, to spite me, he refused to tell the Internet that I said goodnight to him. So I'll now stick it to him by telling the Internet myself:
[01:18] Sam: well, yeah. i'm going to bed.
[01:19] Sam: seeya later.
[01:19] Brad: "Then after talking to Brad online for a while about the site I went to bed at 1:20"
[01:19] Brad: "Brad said goodnight"
[01:19] Sam: none of this will be mentioned.
[01:19] Brad: Brad, one d
[01:19] Sam: i only mentioned ballard because, well, it was ballard. and we were talking for quite a while.
[01:20] Brad: oh i see how it is :(
[01:20] Sam: indeed.
[01:20] Sam: goodnight.

I walked to work and back tonight as well, I feel so healthy. It must be the Spring spring.
And that's the journal entry for today, I meant to share the tale of Hyuck Woman tonight but that will be saved for later.

I have so much shit to be working on and organising and getting out the way. It all has to be done by this saturday by 8pm. Examples include:

• Comp Org Assignment
  
• IT Craps Assignment
  
• Systems Programming Test
  
• Basketball Semi Final
  
• Make a cake
  
• Work Friday night
  
• Make a costume
  
• Decorate
  
• Quiver in anticipation of ICC Cup.
  

Today involved way too much learning and uni. Other than basketball practice from 7-9pm I was doing uni and/or uniwork between midday and 2:30am. I did the IT Apps assignment. Mark and I spent four hours completeing the comp org assignment. We think we've completed it. We've completed it in the "all the questions have answers written next to them" sense of the word. Dan helped us, he's our new friend. He's a good kid. If you read this Dan, you're a good kid.
Today I went into uni for the midday lecture, something I do occasionally. Sure it meant getting up early, but I just had a fresh feeling and I felt like getting out of that rotten old, yet fresh and clean sheeted bed. Maybe it was because I was feeling so young and free that I decided today was a good day to get up early; maybe it's because I have an exam for that subject tommorow, who knows? It was worth it though, because I saw the aftermath of a car crash on Ring Road and watched a goon (in the tool sense of the word) push his hammered Selica off the road after he went too wide around the corner and smashed into the heavy bull bar of a loop bus. The loop bus was fine, I think I saw it driving around later that day.
Also of interesting note whilst driving into the uni was signs saying "information session" being held down by rocks and pointing, as I discovered along my journey, to the IT carpark. Now, being so flimsily attached to the ground I was contemplating how easy it would be to redirect whatever traffic was following these signs to somewhere of my choosing. Say, for example, a fucked up Selica. However getting up at 10:50am for a lecture means I'm damn well going to a lecture. And for all I know some BA student who only has completely worthless lectures to attend may have already done it and there was a chance I might accidently point the signs back to where they were supposed to be. Nevertheless, considering that the IT car park is usually full as a boot when there aren't signs guiding people too it, and as it was the middle of the day I decided that parking in the far car park was my best bet for a park. IT probably was full, but my mistake was regretted as I passed through closer parks during my frolic between my car and the lecture theatre and noticed a plethora of parks available. However, to my great joy it all worked out in the end. For, as I trundled from the IT building at 5:30pm back to my car it was during this longer than it should have been voyage that I was inspired. I baked up a short story concept on that trek that blew my mind in a non-literal sense. When I get a chance not to do coding for a while I will write this story. I already wrote a few paragraphs to get my existing ideas on paper and I tell you I'm quite excited about it.
The reason I was at Mark's working on the assignment is because we had another blackout.
And now it's time for me to [yet another adjective for walk] to my bed and lay my weary head to rest. First I'll rip the batteries out of this God forsaken devil clock as it's irregular ticking is driving me to flowery-language levels of insanity. Good night!

Thank. God. It's. Friday.

OK.
To evaluate here:
2002: Broken Leg.
2003: Unconcious.
2004: Neither.

Yeah, I'd say all up this has been the best boozing birthday to befall me. All things considered. Nevertheless it's 6:30am now and I'd say that's about time to go to sleep.

Well there's plenty of stuff to detail but I only got five hours sleep last night so it can wait. I planned to do some writing today but instead I installed the new hardware into my computer, or more accurately, took some of my old hardware out of my computer and put it in a new one. Now I should probably invest in some software that actually makes use of this hardware... Ah well.
Yeah, I'm pretty tired, and because I've got a break from assignments for a while I'm also pretty relaxed so I'm just going to go to bed now and hopefully be more alert tommorow.

I notice that when I don't have any assignments that are due soon the days are much more boring and drawn out. However if you'd think that makes it easier for me to do the things I want/need to do you are wrong.
Also why is it always the fat people who ask me at work why we don't have a particular product in a tube?

Things to write:

• Domain Name Reigstration Form
  
• Party Wrap up
  
• Goolwa Wrap up
  
• In the Kitchen With Brad: Novelty Cakes episode
  
• 'Catch it' romantic short story
  
• assignments and shit, probably
  
• Amusing, SE Inspired Tale
  

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that as of 5:30 yesterday I'm on mid-semester break. Incredible.
Last nigh at work also exhibits the complete disdain in which the roster change forms are held in. This formal document, which requires a name, date, start time, finish time and then a signature has to be filled out every time you work a shift. After about three weeks you quickly realise that your signature doesn't really have to resemble your real signature, or even a believable signature. Usually people just do a squiggle, and the people who use this sheet to determine how much cold hard business cash we get just accept that. This night, however, yielded funnier results as Mark began, and everyone followed by signing their names with their singlet number in pro-athlete signature style. I signed off with my aisle number: ”#6”. The world doesn't get treated seriously anymore.
Also I found out that I finished in the top 5 players for the season in Basketball. I don't know where exactly, I could possibly win it. Winners are announced tommorow. That shows how poorly my team did in not voting me best and fairest. For shame. The umpires have always been the best at making decisions I've always said.

Last night I was at a LAN, today I have a pink thumbernail, tonight I was at Josh's house doing hilarious hi-jinx with Craig's morals, the events of which can't be represented accurately via print.

Midsized Rant on patheticness of Adelaide nightlife would go here had the Sims 2 not been an addictive game.
Uhh... the two subjects in that sentence should be read as related.

No Update: The Sims 2 is an addictive game.
Although I will mention that I overtook an L Plated driver tonight. He was driving 40 in a 60 and braking unnecissarily around corners. As I overtook him I leant out my open window and yelled 'Learn to Drive!'

I was the only person to turn up to work on time tonight. Afterwards I bought a box of OT's because they were on special. I buy cereal pretty regularly after work on Tuesday night. I think it confuses the checkout staff. When asked why I always buy so much cereal I'd reply ”sometimes bathing in milk gets boring”.
Otherwise today was spent on the Internet and watching cricket. I need to do some homework these holidays but I keep treating stuff like Summer and just staying up late watching movies and then sleeping until 2pm. Stupid 30 Degree day are tricking me into a false sense of security.

I realise that the more recent journal entries have been short and shitty. Fact of the matter is, I've been doing crap all this week. Pretty much every day has consisted of getting up about 1, doing some weights/exercise, shower, breakfast + passions, shooting a basketball for a while, work, internet, bed. I know realise why the last summer journal did so poorly in terms of content. I need to start doing stuff. I'm working nine hour days next week for four days, then on Friday it seems like I'll be going on a road trip for the weekend. So, considering, I should probably have started doing some of the five assignments I need to do these holidays. I looked at all of them today and said ”no, that's easy enough to put off for another day”, which is what I said yesterday. The unfortunate thing about my brain is that when I know I'm putting off big things I refuse to undertake any other projects either, because I get conflict errors saying ”this time investment could be better spent doing assignments.” So I just fuck around, even when I realise I'm sitting at my computer and I have absolutely nothing to do nor do I have anything I want to do. In the Sims the house I'm managing has a Brad Representation character. He is like me. While the other people have aspirations like ”Get promoted”, ”Gain a level in mechanical skill”, ”make friends with Poppy”, ”Buy a Fridge worth over $1000” the Brad character has aspirations like ”Eat a bowl of cereal”. My God. Sometimes when I eat the bowl of cereal it generates another aspiration randomly and it's ”eat a bowl of cereal” again. HOW DOES IT KNOW? I have the urge to play some cricket again. Good news is it's raining again, so my brain should get untricked about which holidays it is now and start doing some homework. And do it well. Fortunately I haven't played FreeCell or SNES Cricket very much at all in the last few weeks so procrastination could be low, or at least more diverse. This journal is now 250kb so sorry about that diallup people. I'll use new coding for the next one. Stay sharp.

No Update: Early Night.

Last night I went to bed at midnight. I don't know why because I got up at 1pm but I was just feeling tired. I fell asleep, woke up at 2:30pm, thought ”crap, I'm not going to be able to get back to sleep”, looked at the clock again and it was 5:30. I usually go to sleep at this time and here I was half way through the night. I then spent another 40 minutes trying to get back to sleep. I had some seriously fucked up dreams, lots of them. Nothing worth noting though. Oh, except that Vivek came to my party a few weeks ago and I hugged him though he was displeased by that and he gave me 15 M&Ms.
I slept 10 hours and probably would've slept more except Steve came round and yelled at me to wake up and let him in, so I did. Then I watched some episodes of Micallef Programme Season Deux then went and played Cricket in the nets with Mark, Happy and Chow. Ah, so poor.
Then I worked 3 hours of perishables followed by 3 hours of nightfill. After the whole day my feet hurt. Here are some nightfill insights for my benefit more than yours:

• Tuna cans make good aisle lawn bowls.
  
• When you crash your flat top into someone elses flat top which they have left untended on the side of an aisle it is polite to leave a note with your name and insurance information.
  
• Don't believe it when someone is doing a deep face up and has their hand reaching to the back of the shelf and then pretends to get ”sucked in” by a creature and knocks a whole fuckload of cans onto the ground.
  
• Finding all the products in the store that cost 69cents isn't immature. Neither is taking them all to a checkout, waiting for the receipt that says ”69” 31 times and then winking suggestively and saying ”how about it?”. Running away giggling without paying is also the responsible thing to do.
  
• Permanent-Part Time? Fuck that Shit you Mother Fuckers.
  

No Update: In the Black

Fun night yesterday. First of all Port won the premiership and though I usually hate Port, man, they really wanted it. It was a good game and Port were deserved winners. Nice on them.
The night began at home, where I watched the start of the ICC Champions Trophy Final. Whilst watching I got a call about going into town so I set up the tape for the rest of the match then went into town. At the Wakefield there was Jarrad's band, Goedecke's gathering and $3 pints. Josh and I were sharing rounds. He bought the first which revealed their immense cheapness. I went up to buy the second, give a $20 note, receive $44 change + two pints and realise that luck is smiling on me tonight. 9 Pints + a free one from Josh later and an entertaining time in the Wakefield comes to and end and we decided to get a Yiros. I use the beer as an excuse to act like a twat and generally amusing events follow. Also I have no idea how to light a ciggerette even though a bus driver told me how. I taught Chow to sing the Bulldogs theme song, the others got their Yiros' then we left town, I with more money in my pocket than when I had arrived. At the end of the night we sat around at Craig's and I ate some of his Special K and then I went home.
Today I went to Burrett's for a while, came home, watched the end of an awesome game of cricket and then went to bed. Good times.

Oh man I was so close to doing some homework today. So close. Goddamn you StickCricket.com!

I worked for twelve hours today. Filling stuff off flat tops pretty much the whole time. There are a large amount of strange people working in the store for the refit. I don't know why, but I hate them. I'm aware that they're doing a good job and they're probably completely normal people, but I despise them and I have to make an effort to restrain myself from undermining them for no reason. Why do I hate them? My guess is it's something purely instinctual. They're in my territory and the animal left within wants them out.
They're slowly, cancerously making their way through the store. They've started and finished work in Aisle 1, 2 and 3. Today they worked more in aisle 3, 4, 5 and 8. Aisle 6, my aisle, is still there. When I left tonight it was still as it'd always been. It's a stronghold, a final refuge from the sweeping plague of refit. It will not be able to hold out. I already know that when I arrive at work tomorrow, it will not be the same.
Cracks are already appearing in the fortress walls. Two trolley's worth of lines that have been deemed unneeded for the new, refut Woolworths were taken off the shelves and put towards the back of the store near the fridge with reduction stickers on them. When I saw those mayonnaises and salad dressings piled in that trolley I suddenly knew what it's like to be the commander of an army and to see hundreds of my soldiers die at once. It's like a graveyard there, in between the yogurts and the cheeses along the back. Trolleys and racks of unwanted stock or stock being transferred piled up in innumerable trolleys with big ”Reduced!” signs on them. Customers were picking through them all day; Scavengers.
Is this what my life is for? To place too much importance on shitty nightfill whilst listening to the Matrix: Revolutions score? Everything I try and do these days seems to be categorised into things for now and things for tomorrow. When I turned 20 it did become tomorrow, and now I'm doing things for tomorrow and things for the next day. It seems less and less likely that I'm going to achieve anything prolific in my lifetime. Thing is, that just motivates me more. Motivates me to want to achieve more, not motivates me to strive to achieve more. I should probably do something about that. Thing is, I'm actually only writing this dramatic journal entry to avoid doing homework.

I got to work today at 9pm and my aisle was still intact. Every other aisle had been attacked, some were wounded, some killed. Some of them were corpses beyond recognition. Mine was fine though. Perhaps... perhaps this was the miracle I'd spent hours praying for to car park god; that somehow I would be spared.
It was all a cruel joke. They were just waiting for me to get there so they could tear her apart while I watched. They gutted her, pulled out her insides and did so while laughing and listening to upbeat music. It was all I could do not to just go home and hang myself.
I also did homework today, which I suppose is good but just makes today worse.

Aisle 6 is dead to me. Dead! Long live New Sixtopia, aka aisle 7.
From there I can hear the new manager tell the nightfill manager that he doesn't like people who wear hats. And I can hear the guy in aisle 8 falling in love with the model on the hair colouring box and keep talking to her.
Going to Melbourne now...

No Update: In Melbourne.

No Update: In Melbourne.

No Update: In Melbourne.

No Update: I... uh, In Melbourne.

I finished my Comm Skillz assignment today. Haven't done much on the Comp Org one, which is also due Friday... It just seems so wrong to do work with it's such a warm night. Mmmm, pleasant and balmy.
I got two pieces of mail yesterday. I hate mail. I got a personalised, formal invitation from Blackwood High inviting me to the opening of the visual arts centre in a few weeks. It has my name printed on it. I've asked a large amount of people who went to BHS with me, and in the years before me, and none of them received invites. Why me? I need to know why I was the only one who was invited. I hate mail.

I'm ok, but can't think of anything to say.
Well, good night.

Whatup?
As you would know the journal, combined with the two images it has imbedded in it, is now over 300kbs. So today I spent some time learning perl. It seems pretty ok. I can see my summer journal being a lot more effecient. It will also probably have a ”Sportie.com.au” logo. That's an IT Applications 2 inside joke there.

Why is it that everyone that I know feels the need to tell me their boring stories?

I've noticed that my journal seems to detail nothing but the pissy events of my life. Especially lately. When I first began the journalling back in November 2001 I created it as a weapon of mass adventure sharing. Now I talk about piss all. And the best part is that when something big or exciting does happen, I write ”No Update”.
I was seriously considering becoming a cop today. I thought you had to become a street cop and then after a while you got to choose super cop skills/abilities and I could become IT Cop. I've been considering this for months now. Basically my idea was I could possibly redesign the police website whilst never getting a speeding ticket again. Now I realise that I can't, unless I become a federal police officer.

What will be a busy weekend got off to a start today with summer clothes shopping + ANGUS ANGUS ANGUS' BBQ.
Today in Baleti Sports Ginuwine ”Ride my pony” was on the sound system and some woman with three kids was bounce-dancing to it as she waited to be served and singing the words to the baby in her arms.
If you're horny lets do it
Ride it my pony
My saddle's waiting
Come and jump on it
If you're horny lets do it
Ride it my pony
My saddles waiting
Come and jump on it

Also discussed today, Adam's wealthy advantage in oral sex. That is one huge nose.

Yay.
Today we won basketball and my own points doubled the other teams score. We won 44 to 7. Then I came home and then went into town and saw Kid Kenobi at Traffic for $20. It was fucking worth it. Seriously, if Kid Kenobi wanted me to massage his balls I would do it right now, possibly because I can't hear very well and it's possible I misheard him. I danced for two hours. While $20 entry was expensive, $3 pints/vodka-mix at the wakefield and $2 Archers at Traffic were enough to make up for it. I've never drunk archers before tonight, but I had six of them, my god, so cheap and so vodka + softdrink. Woo! Tonight was great. I danced, as I said. Great, great great. Also I saw Craig's dad at Pizza Hut. Hahaha Cowan is dumb.
Peace.

Furthermore,
It's no secret that I have many social hangups, including Paruresis or 'pee-shy'. I have a reasonably mild case, so the internet tells me, because I can use public restrooms most of the time. However there are times when I go to use the urinal and there's already someone there, or I'm at home and I know someone's standing just outside the door or window, when I just can't make the magic happen. I'm mentally aware that it's ridiculous to have these feelings, and usually it's a matter of just closing my eyes and waiting a little. This usually ends up in the trickle-effect, where there's just a small leak, which then smashes against the water in the bowl causing what seems like a huge noise, which then just makes the bladder even more bashful and bam, back to where we started. The trickle cycle is definitely something to avoid.
I am going somewhere with this, be assured. Just in the course of the last few days I've discovered the cure. At the first sign of UTI (Urinary Tract Immobilisation) I just start singing in my head a classic rap song. Being forced to think of the next line relaxes the bladder and away we go. This weekend I've used Wyclef Jean feat. The Rock's 'It doesn't Matter' and House of Pain's 'Jump Around'. The best part is that it worked. Hopefully it will also work for my poo-shy too, although that's a condition I struggle with less frequently yet more deeply than pee shy.
And me having this kind of disorder shouldn't suprise you, coming from a man who is more than a little wigged out by his own semen.
More important matters and designing a website with perl is hard, especially when you A) haven't really read the assignment requirements, B) know perl and mainly C) When you can't decide on what background colour to use. This cripping disability is the reason that my room is tidy again today. I've found a solution though, I think I'll just use the background image from this site.

This journal has gone on or a pretty long time.
When I download random files from the internet, or install random things, or do random things, or am working on stuff, I usually just stick the files on my desktop. This works well, and I just delete the files when I'm done with them, or move them to somewhere appropriate.
I got really lazy in deleting the files that were on my desktop for a few weeks, and it got really cluttered.
Since getting back from Melbourne, up until last Sunday, my room was really messy and cluttered.
I can't remember which happened first, but by Sunday evening my room was tidy and my desktop was uncluttered.
Since then my room has got slightly messy again... and my desktop is getting slightly cluttered...

In unrelated news, I like the English language, especially how it's so ambigous sometimes. It makes life very funny. For example, the fact that the slang term 'wanna' can mean 'Want a' or 'want to' is cool. It means that when you're at work and a packet of dried fruit breaks open right when the new checkout chick comes down the aisle you can say ”wanna date?” and it will be smile-time when you offer her the packet.
The English language is also great in the way that you can spend an hour writing a 150 word introduction to an IT Apps assignment and then spend five minutes writing a 200 word journal entry.
Edit: 250.

It was a nice, warm night tonight so I decided to walk to work and back. Now it's 3am and I thought I heard rain. I paused the music (Zinc's most recent album: Faster) and my ears were greeted by the steady sound of water hitting the iron roof above me. I love rain. I swear, upon hearing it it's like my brain had a little mental orgasm. I didn't realise it until it was released, but my brain was feeling tight and taxed. Stupid assignments. I swear this was a profound moment for me and I'm not just procrastinating.

No update today because NOTHING HAPPENED.
Except I watched Dawn of the Dead which was pretty cool and it's also the two year anniversary of crashing my mother's car.

My Jesus, $1 Vodka's for an hour is a fucking trap. I was trapped. I'm way drunker than I should be and I think I saw Kai on the dance floor.
Fudge.
Ice T.
We won basketball today, I was reasonably succesful. Sam drove into the Marion car park like he was doing a layup. Too fast... and in the wrong direction...
Then we went to Subway then we went to Gus'.
Anyway I left Gus' and realised that I was far too drunk and I wanted to do something. Then, as luck would have it, I found a dog.
I looked at its tag, found out its name and realised it lived far away. So I went home, got my discman and looked up where it lived. Then I took it there, but no one was home. So I called the phone number on Benny's tag and they said they were almost home so they got home and I gave them the dog and then they drove me home.
I rescued a dog. Hurrah.

Slow news day. Only amusing thing to result was [url=INTERNAL-LINK..\images\dontswallow.jpg]this.[/url]
10c there for scale.
Oh, also today I deleted 10gig of Trance MP3s. Anyone who read my Wintry Journal last year will know why this is a notable event. Sunrise, Sunset.

It was a Monday today yet for some crazy reason I went to uni and then went down the hill to the plaza for the first time since about August. It was confusing and scary. After that, to Marion, where I bought a 6-pack of Bintang. Then after work I was supposed to do stuff on my IT Apps assignment but instead just screwed around with using my tv as a second monitor.

I don't know why but I really didn't want to go to work tonight. I was vehemently against it. I don't know why, perhaps it's because I wanted to watch the cricket, or because I'm lazy and I hate work, but I approached it with a sense of foreboding.
First thing that happens when I get there is that I can't find a manager anywhere. I walk in at 6:00, notice the balepress is making a funny noise, finger scan on and after not finding a manager I say ”hey fuck it, screw doing the extra stuff they make me do, I'll just face up like how this shift used to work and hopefully just chill out.”
Unfortunately by 6:10 neither of my shift buddies have arrived, and I decide it may be in my best interests to find out what's going down. So I go to the service desk and ask who's in charge. Apparently the highest ranking employee there is the checkout manager. Great, so it looks like I'm responsible for the whole freaking store.
She feeds me the list of what I'm supposed to do, drinks, ends, half a dozen flat tops to fill, bring in the bales and bin lifter and then face up the whole story. I kinda just laughed, no one would've been able to do that alone in fifteen hours, let alone the three my shift was scheduled for. I enquired about my two comrades and apparently one had been in a car accident and wasn't coming in and the other had been unrostered and was now being desperately contacted because Woolworths are idiots.
So I smile bemusedly and head to the drinks to find out what needs to be topped up. Within two minutes I've been called to the front desk twice to help customers. I get called a third time to go to the service deli, an interesting request, so off I trundle.
I arrive there at 6:15. I can still hear the bale press making noise. The checkout manager points towards the back dock and says ”can you check that out?”. I walk through the plastic doors into the back dock and instantly smell rubber smoke and notice the entire back dock is enveloped in a black cloud. So I walk up to the bale press, press the automatic shut down and then grab a flat-top from next to it and start stacking it with drinks. The woman comes in a few minutes later and I what was going on. I tell her the bale press caught fire and we probably shouldn't use it. I open the back dock door to let the smoke out and I bring in the soggy bales. Pete rocked up around 7pm. Not much happened after that except a pidgeon got in the back dock somehow and then got lost somewhere up near the rollerdoor gizmos.
There's so much Christmas stuff at work too. It's garish. It's been there for a few weeks now, since the start of october. I think Woolworths have been turning up the heater even on those sunny days we've been having because they want people to think it's really hot because they'll associate summer with christmas. The only thing they've got left is to just hire some huge dude to stand at the store entrance and just yell ”IT's CHRISTMAS! IT'S CHRISTMAS! IT'S FUCKING CHRISTMAS! HEY LITTLE GIRL... IT'S FUCKING CHRISTMAS! BUY SOME FUCKING SHORTBREAD!”.
I'm not sure if it will happen, I wouldn't put it past Woolworths, especially considering they've said they're rostering me on for extra shifts for Christmas.
No doubt all the nightfillers will be given a christmas goody bag full of shortbread that doesn't sell on Christmas Eve. I swear there's enough shortbread in that store to do something amusing and large. Gimme a break, it's 4am and I've been doing IT Apps homework since I got home.

Today's trip to uni bore two interesting occurances:
First off, during the SP Tute a zombie walked in. Now I watched Dawn of the Dead recently like I mentioned and, no kidding, this guy looked so much like one of those zombies. There was a single, gut wrenching moment when I just thought ”my god, it's an actual zombie... I'm going to die.” I realised he wasn't actually a zombie pretty quickly, about a short time after he started talking to Tiff about handing in some SP homework but, wow, it was scary.
Secondly while driving down I was having one of those deep, contemplative moments that I pretend to have. I was thinking about life, how it was going and what direction it was taking me. I just couldn't work out what I wanted to do with my life. What if I made the wrong life choice and ending up regretting it until I died? What on earth was I to do? As I was thinking this, sitting at the red light, I thought ”why can't I just be given a sign!”
At that very moment, as if intervened by car park god himself, the right turn arrow turned green and my windscreen was suddenly filled with a huge advertisement on the side of a bus. ”The Army is recruiting, Join up today! Whatever your walk is.”
Staring at it for a moment I realised it was the sign I was looking for and now I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Loudly I proclaimed it to myself: ”I'm going to become a bus driver!”
I worked for five hours tonight, and then busted home and spent another four working on my IT Apps assignment some more. I've all but finished the prototype though and I think it's looking and functionally is quite swell. I'm actually enjoying making it. In fact, if it weren't for the looming deadline of this assignment as well as the stress of all the other ones due soon I would have to say I'd want to keep on spending time doing web design, or at least telling other people how to do web design.
And yeah, it is a coincidence that I discovered what I enjoy in IT the same day as I thought up a joke about life directions.

I have a pink toothbrush. I'm going to go use it now so I can go to bed after a long day.

No Update: It's a Satu...
Wait a second, no it's not. You see Sam, this is why I hate you.

Today a hangover made the following things entertaining:

• Basketball
  
• Driving Steve home from Burrett's house after basketball
  
• Halloween Party at Josh's ex-girlfriend's house
  

Woo hey hey, it's Halloween. To celebrate apathy here are some amsuing quotes from this weekend in no order at all:

• ”I'm actually of the opinion that kissing is an unnecessary form of foreplay”
  
• ”Come on guys, we're losing to a bunch of hobbits!”
  
• ”You're crushing me!”
  
• ”Everyone trims their pubes. It's like a haircut... for your penis.”
  
• ”There is glitter in my stubble”
  
• ”What the hell, why did I bring my discman here? What the hell, why am I talking to myself. I think the neighbours are listening to me... Why the hell am I still talking to myself?”
  
• ”That's the worst thing about costume parties in Adelaide, you meet someone and you tell a really good ice-breaking story and then a few minutes later when you're both adjusting your costumes you realise you already knew each other.”
  
• ”Every night I'm drinking is like daylight savings night for me, because I lose an hour.”
  

This journal now spans six months. That's, like, half a year man!
So now it's November I've kind of realised how the last few days of last month sort of just... imploded. It's all so blurry and compact, even the parts (days) when I wasn't blind. I'm pretty sure even during it I was confused as to what day and time it was. Probably partly because everything was so ”go go” for those few days of assignments, shennanigans, and then back to assignments but i'm thinking it's mainly because Sam fucked with (non-summer) convention by having a big party on a friday night.
Anyway, it's a new month now, and even though Steve left work on Friday for the last time (I saluted him and he said ”yeah, you were alright”) the new nightfill manager doesn't start until next week.
In other work related news, the music has been restored and we have music again for the first time in two months. Just in time for Christmas. It's horrendous... I want to cry.
In other work related news, homebrand scourer sponges now have a yellow bit that is a far lighter and more opaque yellow than their previous design.
I can't wait until the Christmas Lights start appearing on every house, and when streets will go overboard in trying to become a tourist attraction and succeed. I'm going to go to one of those streets when they're in full swing, find children and tell them there's no Santa Claus. When their parents try and get in my way I'll tell them there's no God either.
I'm not really going to do that but boy does Christmas (before the 23rd of December) make me angry. I already have been told that I'm going to be attending a large, extended family gathering at this house on Christmas evening. And it will be boring and awkward for me, in my own house! On Christmas! Mum said the only way I'd get out of it is if I had a girlfriend that I had to go visit for Christmas or something.
Ladies, call me. We'll start going out on the 24th. We can go see some Christmas lights.
(I used brackets a bit in this entry).

It's raining outside, it's very wintry weather, which is something that makes this decision so hard.
Everyone likes the simpsons, it's a good show. However the time where it was good came to an end, and it subtly yet surely disintegrated into the retarded adventures of Homer the chucklefuck. Sometimes creative, funny and sexy people just need to realise that it's time for a good thing to end.
This is the last update in Brad's Wintry Journal 2. I think it's been a rather successful adventure. I've also realised that there are some fundamental flaws that have been creeping into the journal process over the past 12 months and they need to be rectified. When I first began the HCT, the first incarnation of this website which had the original journal on it, it had two purposes. Firstly it was supposed to document all the events that occurred within our group. Because, back then, we spent pretty much every weekend on the internet with only occasional voyages to each other's houses. This was invariably an easy task to keep up with, and so occasional events were partnered by articles and amusing happenings at school were documented. No one read any of it and everything was good. Secondly it was supposed to have a horrible colour scheme and once-and-for-all top anything Ryan could possibly make in html. It achieved both these goals quite well.
Since then times have changed. Everyone goes out more, with different people, all the time, and nothing funny happens. When events do happen write ups are hard to do because you can't really remember much of what happened and you have a couple cuts on your hands that you don't know the origins of.
The flaws in my journal include: not ever documenting the interesting/important things that happen; not working in mozilla properly; and being almost a third of a megabyte. Right now it's sort of become my personal notebook for thoughts I have. Which is cool, chill, you know. But it's time for a change. And I have exams to study for now that the week of hell has, through a combination of hard work and good fortune, managed to become like a well played round of Tetris - all the pieces are coming together. I'll be going now, I'll be back at the start of summer (November 24th) to begin what should hopefully be a new era in the world of me writing stuff and putting it on the internet where no one will read it.

Holy Moly it's Summer Holidays.
God did I want to use that expression so badly. It's officially summer holidays. I had my last exam this morning, the third day of exams in a row. In all I did five exams in a week and a bit and I did pretty well in them all I'm guessing. I then drove home and spent a few hours trying to remember just exactly what it was I usually did when the first day of summer holidays came around.
See, the last 3 weeks have been fair intense. I suppose this is the kind of thing you expect when you try and cram 3/4's of a 5 subject semester of second year university into a 21 day period. Nevertheless it all did turn out to be quite succesful and did end up proving a low corellation betwenn "success" and "getting up before midday and going to lectures". Because pretty much all my waking time during this period has been devoted to last minute assignments, last minute learning the entire course before exams and procstinating about the first two, little time has been available to actually think about summer itself. I sort of had this definite pre-conception that summer would be good and that I would make it a lot better than last summer, which I basically just wittled away because for some reason I thought that sleeping for 12 hours a day and then making jokes about it would somehow make me have a bigger penis. This is like my Bryan Adam's summer of 1970, because the Summer of 69 is over, I've learnt from my mistakes and my record sold pretty well so I can now focus on developing myself rather than appeasing the public. Whether that anology has more/less relevance than the reference I made this evening about enjoying Eminems' new music ("It's like gay sex: On a foccused, concious level you're thinking 'this feels kinda good' but surrounding that is the subconcious mind just screaming at you 'What the fucking christ are you doing?'"). Yeah anyway more about analogies and anal sex in future entries I'm just trying to get the summer journal introduction done here and then I'll clarify my summer goals further on in the piece.
And this journal looks like crap. "lol, it's a blueprint for the design of the future journal, that Brad sure is a card!". You're not saying that, you're not even reading this. I have lots of goals this summer, but one of the most important ones is 'Develop a scripted online journal program to use for my online journal'. My current deadline/expectation is to get this completed before December 31st." This is basically just a simplified sub-goal of my main goal of summer: "acheive stuff". Things started off well this afternoon when, after trying to work out just why all those things I'd been distracted by during exam revision seemed so much less appealing, I played 14 games of Solitaire Showdown in a row.
However after that I did do some coding, obviously not on the actual scripted journal sheesh no instead I tried to put useless javascript into this thing. That will also develop more as the days progress. After that I walked to work, worked for four hours then met up with Cowan and we organised a night of poker and drinks in my living room with Ballard, Sam and Mark. An enjoyable time was shared by all. It was a good start to the holidays. It's probably the best start to the summer holidays in the last three summers. If the average summer day and night for the next 100 days averages out to be like today and tonight then I'll say it's been a pretty good time. More disclosure later.

I'm going to the cricket tommorow. Then work, then probably going out again.
I actually really hate this journal design. I really hope that you're using firefox because in IE it looks retarded. It's serving as intense motivation to design the real site.
... That said and I didn't do any work on any code today. I suppose my brain's still "cooling down" from the workload of the last few weeks but I promised myself that I would acheive a lot of things these holidays and one of my main aims was to reduce the "cooling down" period from uni to a very short time (from, what was it last summer?... three months?). It's going to be really good. I feel like I've changed a lot since last summer. I don't know how or if it's noticeable to others but I pretty much don't enjoy how I was like when I read back over my wintry and summer journals from 2003. Not that much but I remember that towards the end of March this year I made all these decisions about getting some of my shit together and since then my shit has, indeed, been slightly more centralised. Good stuff.
So yeah, my holidays (and basically today) can be summarised by this list of my goals for summer:

1. Procrastinate about writing my list of goals for summer
   

I went to the cricket today. It was a pretty entertaining experience and the cricket was also good to watch. I sat in direct sunlight for 9.5 hours, then worked, then had a spa at Craig's. I haven't slept for more than 6 hours in a night for over a week, so I'm going to try and do that now. Bonus points if I wake up and I'm not sunburnt.

Played basketball today in sweltering heat, and won. Then swam. Then after going to a house until midnight I fell asleep at 2:30am. So tired for some reason, possibly due to sweltering heat and swimming.
Today we also put up our Christmas tree. It's not even December yet, but the weiner kids are here this weekend for the last time until Christmas Eve and they wanted to decorate a tree. You know people would see this and say that it's bad. People say that Christmas is being overcommercialised and it's bad and that all these shiny things are taking away from the real meaning of Christmas. I don't think that at all, I don't think that mass commercialism has made us lose sight of the true spirit of Christmas. In fact, I love Christmas. I think it's the best six weeks of the year.

I worked a Sunday shift today for the first time, for 3.5 hours. I did very little work during it; I didn't do anything with any urgency the entire time. Tomorrow at work I'm going to wear the Santa hat I got from work last year. I'm doing it because on Friday night I was told I couldn't wear my cap at work, even after the store was closed. Apparently it's not part of the "uniform policy". I'm pretty sure that completely walling off the fire exit in the back dock may also be against one of those Woolworth policies too, except it seems that me wearing a hat is slightly more pressing than the prospect of a fire starting while we're all signing off and fifteen people burning to death.
However, as you might remember, last Christmas the non-nightfill staff were wearing Santa Hats, and on Christmas Eve I was told not to wear my hat and told that if I wanted to wear a hat I could wear a Santa Hat. BAM! Precedent! So now I'm going to wear a Santa Hat every shift I have. The best part is that last year the other staff didn't start wearing their Santa hats until December 10th. Assuming the same sort of schedule is in place I'm going to be representing Santa Hat two weeks before anyone else does. Think that's good? Wait until I keep wearing the hat after Christmas! Hah, my passive-aggressive crusade will break new boundaries.
After work tonight a fair whack of us went into town to see of Ballard before he heads to India this Friday morning. Unbeknownst to use, Adelaide is actually almost all closed on Sunday nights. Fortunately the Empire was open so 9 of us sat up there playing pool and listening to Ministry of Sound CDs that the Empire were playing in lieu of actually having a DJ. After that we went to Brighton Beach and watched bugs get killed in a bug zapper and then went home. I asked Ballard if he'd like to do a special guest journal chronicling his Indian Adventure but he seemed uninterested so he agreed to my suggestion that I just make up a journal about what I think he's doing in India. I'll start writing that this Saturday, it will be called "Ballard's Indian Journey of Self Discovery and Venereal Diseases".

Monday is now "Cleaning Day". Man was my room dusty. Now it's not. This knocks off one more thing on my list of things to acheive this summer. 'Dust my room'. I'm setting my goals high alright, and that reminds me, I should actually write out that list.
So the wearing the santa hat to work didn't cause any conflict, but it was festive. If wearing a Santa Hat is ok and deemed appropriate then by Friday I am probably going to step it up a notch and glue on a fake cotton-wool beard before work. I wonder if that's covered by the employee policy. Actually, I do wonder that... maybe I should have read and signed that policies booklet they gave me and told me to read and sign last year...
Now a list of things that bug me about summer but I always forget until the start of summer:

• Mosquitos
  
• Prickles that get in your socks
  
• The itchiness of grass
  
• Not being able to eat hot meals
  
• So many tiny little moths
  

It's been a week of holidays, and now it's December. Time to start things happening.
I've got a brand new doona cover and pillow case set as of today. I hope it's not all crisp when I get into bed and watch the latest episode of Desperate Housewives in a few minutes. Meaningful Insight: After Mother and Father got divorced and Dad got his new house we all got to choose a new doona and doona cover for sleeping at Dad's house. I chose a Simpsons one. It was crisp and sharp and not soft like a well used doona cover is like. We only slept there 2 nights a fortnight so the doonas never became well used and also were infrequently washed. So they always remained unwelcoming. Then I stopped living at my Dad's house.
I had a day shift today and walked in with my Santa Hat on like yesterday. Yesterday Kylie Nightfill Manager didn't seem to have any problems with it. However as soon as I walked in today Dragan, Grocery Manager (aka a manager above Kylie) saw it and said "Brad take that hat off you sh...oush". I'm not exactly sure where he was going with that, maybe he was going to say 'shithead' and then pulled out of it. He does swear a lot. Eitherways I'd prefer shoush to 'The Bradster'. I kept the hat on though, to spite Dragan (who was the main reason I wasn't allowed to wear my normal hat to work anyway). I just walked away after the shoushing and started working. Later on I was filling off a flat-top in aisle three and he saw me again and he said "Brad take off that Hat!!" and I yelled "NO WAY GRINCH!" and I didn't take it off. Then while going through the flour capping a lot of flour fell on me.

Santa Hat Update - December
Arriving at work tonight Kylie, previously immune to any feelings of distrust towards the Santa hat, decided that I wasn't allowed to wear it. This was apparently because Dragan had told her during the day that I wasn't allowed to wear it. Which means they'd talked about it during the day. I told her that Dragan hadn't forced me to take it off on Tuesday, which is technically true because he said 'take if off' but I didn't and then he never said anything after that. Then some checkout manager told me to take it off as well and I said the Dragan thing again. She said I had to ask Dragan if I was allowed to wear it. So I said "OK, I'll check with Dragan next time he's here and until then I'll wear the hat".
Then I told nearby friends that if they forced me to take it off then I would take my story to Today-Tonight and get Aussie Battler justice. I think Kylie may have overheard this, because she came down my aisle later and said that she personally had no problems with it and that it was all Dragan's fault.
She must of told the Checkout Manager too, because she came down and said she liked the Santa Hat and asked why I wanted to wear it. I thought saying "to piss off Dragan" would be a bad idea so I made up this story about how the first Christmas I worked at Woolworths all the checkout staff got Santa Hats in December but I never got one until Christmas Eve and I got so much enjoyment from wearing it that one day that I decided I would wear a Santa Hat all of next Christmas season. She was like "awwww" and it made me feel better about the people at Woolworths (except Dragan) and made me want to be passive-agressive less.
So I got home and then emailed Today Tonight and A Current Affair about my problem. Then at 10:30, watched Arrested Development which was great.

Update: Apparently Today Tonight and A Current Affair don't feel quite as passionately as I do about me not getting to wear a Santa Hat.
Apparently, judging by the last few entries, if I didn't go to work then I would have nothing to talk about this summer.
I'm going to stop starting each entry with "Update" too, no shit it's an update. How Redundant, like my plans to do stuff. I AM GOING TO WRITE UP A LIST OF THINGS TO DO TOMMOROW I PROMISE.
(The list will force me to do things I swear.)

Well I am a little worried that we've already had 10 days of holidays, they've gone very quickly.
Today I had my post-uni binge as usual, here's the spoils. I do not know if this bodes for a good summer or a bad one...
Whilst in JBs at the mall today Sam picked up the Garden State soundtrack and wouldn't you know it later that day we were watching Garden State and drinking a lot of juice. Garden State was good. Someone told me it would be the Fight Club of my generation but I don't think it is. It did make me remember those things were you have to tilt them to get ball-bearings into little holes, they're cool.
It was weird going to the cinema to see a movie, I haven't done that since I became single again. I suppose the Internet really is the tool of the single man. Good old Internet.

No Update: Dusty's party, which still didn't shed any light onto if that booze bodes for a good summer or a bad one...

I think I'm getting far too accustomed to getting home smashed. It used to be that when I looked at the floor after I woke up the morning after and saw my shoe laces were still tied together that I'd know it'd been a big night. These days I get home wasted, untie my shoes, set my phone a-charging, clean my teeth and shut down my computer.
When I woke up this morning my phone's outgoing call register was a veritable who's who list of people that I shouldn't call when drunk. Even though I'm a hilariously (relative) annoying drunk, one of my (only) saving graces is that I'm not a drunk dialler, so I knew that shennanigans had gone on the night before. Unfortunately I didn't remember them, or pretty much anything that happened the night before, after some point. I think I probably passed out for a while towards the end because I had one of those 'deep-breath-of-air-a-you-surface-from-the-murky-depths' moments in my memory where I start remembering things clearly again.
Dusty's party was a night of ha's, good ha's.

• Hats
  
• Ham
  
• Halfwits
  
• Hahaha's
  

• Hangover
  

Cleaning Day today, and so I cleaned, dusted, vacuumed and sheened my room. At least it's nice to see that I can stick to one of my repetitive goals this summer. Actually, walked to work and jogged back too, so that's two.
After getting back from work, where new guy Daniel alternated between helping me out and doing my bidding, I tried to do some writing, but I'm blocked. Creatively constipated. I got nothing. Too many distractions probably, like, Internet. I don't know how I'll resolve this. Until then apologies for the lackadaisical update. Hey, yesterdays update was pretty long? I knew I should've saved some content for Monday.

I had a five-hundred dollar day today, mainly car.
Something else that will be costing me money in the coming months will be Burrett. In light of recent drunken events I have decided to, instead of becoming more responsible, drinking in moderation and being less of a sloshed retard to, instead, hire Burrett as my drinking caddy. He'll be responsible for staying sober and documenting everything I do while drunk and then driving me home. The next morning he will tell me, hopefully through a nifty powerpoint presentation or something, exactly what I got up to the night before. In return I will pay for his World of Warcraft account. Although I think he should do it for free because me drunk is entertainment on its own. I make some great jokes when I'm drunk. I often make the same joke nine or ten times, so logically that's nine or ten times the funny. I'll resist the urge to write that line another eight or nine times and instead just be satisfied by the fact that eight or nine is about the number of commas I used in that previous sentence.

Well look at this, how's this for progress?
bradism prototype
I worked on this between 11pm and 4am, before that I worked from 7. Earlier than that I honestly can't remember what I did this afternoon. Oh wait, I just had a hazy memory, I woke up, showered and then sat down to eat breakfast and the cricket was on. Woah and Cowan was here too, I forgot about that as well. I must have watched cricket until Work. Wow, cricket is like alcohol for me this week.

Today was a... quiet day.
It was Steve's birthday today and it was raining all througout, with rolling thunder and low hanging, grey skies. I think we switched birthday weather, because on my birthday in August it was a warm 30 degrees and very sunny. I made that interesting comment during dinner. In fact if I was to rate all the mild chatter that I partook in at the Duck Inn during that meal I'd say this one was the most impressive, as far as mild small talk goes.
After that I played Basketball and we won. That was quite fun.
Also the prototpye for bradism will now work in internet explorer now.

I spent most of my time today working on the site. And from there I got a pretty reasonable skeleton up which I liked. According to pretty much everyone it's too green, too simple and too amatuerish. So I am going to do more work on it. At least I'm enjoying it. I'm getting some books for Christmas on CSS, PHP and MySQL which I'll read and use to boost my knowledge to new levels. I'm just glad I've found something I like to do in IT, what with me doing a degree in it and all. My plan is to completely nut myself out in web creation, and then use that as a platform for my voyages into writing and comedy. It's like in movies where they're trying to get to the asteroid so they go to the moon and slingshot to the asteroid using the moons gravity.

No Update: Relieved.

Ah it's good to be back. This weekend was average in that it wasn't bad but wasn't great. Basketball on Saturday was quite fun. Then on Saturday night I went to town and met up with, well, pretty much everyone. It was basically like Town is supposed to be, where you go to some place, you see people you know, you go "hey!" you all have a few drinks, then the groups divide and go to another place and there you meet other people you know and you go "hey!" and etc. Not that this is the greatest or funnest thing to do in town it just seems right. Being right is always good.
But anyway.
Today I worked an almost four hour sunday shift, the length is important because I get paid time and a half on Sunday so it was quite pleasing to go 50 minutes over. I got to help lots of people find things out the back that weren't on the shelf. I felt like doctor who was constantly performing surgery because usually I would come back with the thing they wanted and give it to them and they'd be happy but then occasionally I wouldn't and I'd have to go back to them and see their expectant faces and go "I'm sorry..." and watch their face fall and it was kind of depressing. Then tonight I did some writing so that was good too. My plans for Monday are to continue doing beneficial things for my future.

Lately I have been trying to improve my mental-social abilites by decreasing the amount I overthink and therefore overcomplicate situations. This includes, but isn't limited to, improving my ability to say hello to someone I know when I see them, instead of trying to avoid them. Yeah, I suck at initiating conversations, but every day I make progress.
Today while at Dads house digging a retaining wall I was pushing the wheelbarrow back to the dig site and looking down the hill I saw the neighbour, who I don't know, walking towards his shed. Without thinking, and I mean spontaneously, I lifted my hand and waved at him. Then I quickly faced forward and didn't look for a reaction. But I was friendly to a neighbour! Later I remembered that Dad had been reporting him to the council for noise complaints and stuff and they were effectively mortal enemies but I still felt a little more self-assured.
Thing is, I've always been prone to seriously over-complicate things. I'm constantly mentally arguing with myself and lately its gotten worse and it's starting to get more agressive. I hope that they can get along soon because it would be a messy divorce for me and I already went through one of those!
I was thinking today, overthinking as usual, and I figured that considering the amount of mental aerobics and fight-dancing that goes on, my brain must be very unique. I wonder if I have a tasty brain.

Today was a expensive yet productive day. After waking up at 11 and then snoozing three times through haze, I got up at 11:30 with plans to do more digging at Dad's. Fortunately yet unfortunately it was raining, and right when I was going to leave it started pouring down. It seemed that digging would not be on the cards today, so I set about organising how I was supposed to enrol for uni next year, what with facing the double degree and the associated overlap dilemma I was in over my head and I didn't want to do any work myself so I got down to uni, found someone to find the right person for me, found him and asked him to send me an email with specific instructions as to what I need to do. In amongst doing that I went to Marion and paid for my rego, worked more on making Bradism look better (and in actual fact made it look worse though arguably niftier), worked at Woolworths where some kids in costume talked to me for a while and gave me a flower which actually turned out to be a cut up silk hanky or something. I also filled up with petrol, wrote a little and finally wrote a very boring journal entry.

I got a blister on Monday from using the splitter at Dad's house on a stubborn stump. I tried to take it like a man, and it didn't actually hurt. However last night I noticed that there was a bit of liquid still under there. So I decided to cut it completely off, and dug a huge hole in my hand to remove a tiny, practically healed blister that wasn't causing me any discomfort in the first place.
I did it because I have been watching Stargate Atlantis and I wanted to find out if I have above average powers of re-generation. I did this as an experiment and I was hoping that I would awake and find a fresh, new layer of skin over it. Instead, I kept waking up during the night because my palm was trying to open up completely for my hand to straighten and it was hurting the wound because it is right below the middle finger. And it didn't heal, then I couldn't find any band-aids that would fit in such an awkward position. And I don't have alien like regeneration powers, how lame.
I was woken this morning by the window cleaner that replacement dad hired to clean all the windows of the house. I don't mean I got woken up when he was splashing and wiping outside my room, I mean he opened my door, popped his head in and said "Hullo!" Disturbing indeed (no pun intended), but it did get me up at 11am, which is the earliest I've been up these holidays. Maybe he could become my permanent alarm clock.
I also got uni results today, which I'll copy and paste now.

Ah, lectures, words can not express what a slight chuckle accompanied by a lowered-head, closed-eyed, head-shaking from side to side in bemused dissapointment can. I actually have a positive correlation between lectures skipped and positive results. For IT Apps 2 I didn't even go to the tutorials or effectively participate in the subject at all for nine weeks of the semester around the middle bit. The only result I haven't got back yet is comp org. It's probably not up yet because Amos is lazy and is probably drunk, or maybe crunk? I don't know, I could imagine Amos doing something like that. He seems like kind of a wild guy.
I bought some expensive clothes yesterday too. On top of my car rego that was what made it quite the expensive day. Fortunately I have more than one job to work in the coming week, and I'm work 40 hours at woolworths alone next week. Unfortunate though, because every day is a bubble of possibilities for me where not a moment is wasted. And I like it, and I could go to the beach.

While I didn't go to the beach today, or, in fact, anywhere else (except Old Reynella Town accidently), today was still an excellent day. I didn't do much, at all, other than accidently ending up in Old Reynella Town in a 60 minute detour on the way to basketball in blackwood. Today I enjoyed doing nothing, and it was, enjoyable. However boring again, so I'll dot point what I did so you can go "mmm, ah..." and then move on.

• Woke up in time for Family Guy for the first time and watched it as it was the only episode I hadn't seen yet.
  
• Played Max Payne 2, for the sake of playing a computer game, and enjoyed it. Ah, a linear first person shooter adventure. Good to play every now and again.
  
• Lay on the couch and alternated between napping and watching the cricket
  
• Played and won basketball, then worked out
  
• Had some cold BBQ chicken, salad and a corona whilst watching Arrested Development and then Stargate
  
• Lost starcraft, fortunately, in about 20 minutes, which saved a lot of time considering how long those games can go for.
  

Well this weekend can basically be considered a total write off.

I got up at 4:30am today, which provided me with enough time to let the Internet teach me how to make scrambled eggs, make scrambled eggs, eat scrambled eggs and drink orange juice and watch an episode of "House" before work, at 8. The scrambled eggs were very nice, so I think the Internet is a good cook.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to say "Thank You" to Cricket. Cricket watched over me and kept me safe yesterday, and I know owe it a debt of gratitude even deeper than I did before.

When Woolworths say there will be Christmas lunches at midday and three for day staff, and then at six for Nightfillers, what they mean is that there will be Christmas lunch for day staff at midday and three, and then at six if there is anything left that has not gone off or gone cold since then, nightfillers can eat it.
Dragan also provided every staff member with a Cadbury Christmas stocking. I asked him if they hadn't been selling well, but he said they were, and that in fact he had been visited by three spirits the previous night. To further prove this he then ordered fresh pizzas for us, despite the fact that only three nightfillers had actually turned up the hour early for the Christmas lunch, and two of them were by accident. So instead Christmas lunch was spent learning that the new nightfill manager doesn't like to eat meat, and then trying and failing to think of a way to use that fact to improve our working relationship (because I think she's a bit weirded out by me). I was unsuccesful, and I do believe my suggestion that "lunch meats like ham and salami count as vegetables really because they are cold" was rightfully unappreciated.
The other guest at this dinner was the Checkout Girl who will from now on be known as 'talks with her mouth full'. She talked a lot, and I don't think she said one thing when she wasn't in the process of chewing. Not just once or twice, but it was as if she had to micromanage some concurrent flow of food to words in order to participate in conversation. In the time sheet page where she signed out there were crumbs on it. It's possible that, if we were to ascend to some higher level where interpersonal communication was possible via telepathy, thoughts from her would still be accompanied by munching interference.
Also the girl with no inner-monolouge said "Far Out, Brussell Sprout" to me in a completely non-sarcastic, legitimate fashion. I was shocked, it really was a far out, brussel sprout moment for me too after that.

Well this week can basically be considered a total write off.

I was sent home from work at 5:30 today because Woolworths said I couldn't legally work anymore hours this week. I assumed they meant "unless we pay you extra" but left it out. I was dissapointed, because I hadn't worked a nightfill load all week and Christmas Night Nightfill is kind of a tradition for me because it's a festive load. Nevertheless, 40 hours of wearing a santa hat that week was over, and although I feel I would've been fine to work the extra five hours to make it a 12 hour day, Woolworths may have been justified in sending me home before I cracked. As it were I did yell Merry Christmas at everyone in the store as I left the break room, found some bean sprouts in the fruit and veg section, and then left. Other than yelling "Merry Christmas" I also told the new checkout girl from uni to smile more, because she looks kinda grumpy. Then I walked to my car, which was actually parked in Coromandel basically because supermarkets are kind of busy around Christmas. As I carried my bean sprouts to my car, under a cloudless sky, I was smiling because I like Christmas, I really do. And I won't and can't qualify that.

You can tell Christmas is a completely man created event, devoid of any relevance to a higher power. It’s the animals that give it away. The animals don’t get excited. They don’t send Christmas cards to each other in November. They don’t treat Christmas Day differently to any other day.

The implications of knowing this, though, are less easily distinguished. I mean, it would be very hard to prove that everything man has created is bad, quite the opposite. Christmas is more than just a day, even more than an event. It’s a mental finish line for consciousness. You have to stop thinking sometime. Christmas is an annual life goal that helps keep time in perspective. Christmas keeps things interesting for people to prevent them from going insane. Interestingly though, animals also work every day of the year without any future holiday to anticipate.

After you leave childhood it’s hard to tell whether or not Christmas is that great though. When you hear the first Christmas carol on the shopping centre sound system in late October, and find Christmas decorations dangling around the products on the shelves, it’s difficult not to want to conform with the non-conformists, discard your plans for the holidays and announce that Christmas is too commercialised: the true meaning is lost on the ignorant saps; and it’s only purpose is to make money for big businesses.

I’ve been there; I’ve struggled with losing hope for humanity. I’ve wiped my arse with toilet paper that is printed with colourful Christmas emblems on it. If I wanted to shit all over Christmas I’d buy Marilyn Manson CDs and copies of the Koran for the people I’m obligated to buy gifts for.

But Christmas isn’t that bad. Sure it’s heavily commercialised, but seriously, what isn’t these days? It’s a time when humanity is nicer to each other and says “Merry Christmas” instead of goodbye. Like a disease, the Christmas Spirit, be it goodwill towards mankind or Jack Daniels at the workplace Christmas Party, brings people closer together.

Ah, the modern day Christmas. These days I spend them with family, sort of. This year, after gifts and breakfast, I went to lunch in the Royal Botanical Gardens with my Step-Mothers family. Ah, it was nice to meet them all finally. I mean, nice to meet them finally again, because I meet them every Christmas for the first time. As I walked towards our picnic spot, carrying a few chairs, I passed my step-grandmother and, as it was our first intersection for this day and year, I smiled and said “Hello, Merry Christmas, how are you?” because I am courteous and polite.
She hesitantly replied that she was ok, then, as it became apparent that we were both approaching the same picnic spot, it dawned on her that I was actually there to have lunch with her and she apologised for not being more personable. I said it was alright, because I am courteous and polite. I understand it’s confusing, Christmas is a time where, when your extroverted father starts friendly small talk about weather to the people he parked next to in the gardens’ car-park, it is hard to tell whether these are friendly strangers or interconnected family members with whom you are about to share a meal and eventually a game of cricket with.
So I could excuse this behaviour, even from someone who had the effrontery to give me a gift with the tag “Love Grandma” on it. I mean she did give a gift after all, a similar one to my gift box of chocolates that confectionary companies sell as nice gifts you can give to people you don’t know or really like.

Then we had lunch, and it was quite nice. I had pork, chicken, ham, turkey and some roast-beef. These foods were all of course accompanied by sidings of salads, sea-foods, condiments and the like. It was quite a delicious, sunny meal that made small talk easier because you were allowed to fill the awkward pauses with eating. Then I went home, somewhere after finding out that the laundry basket of random groceries that I carried from Crazy Step-Auntie Debbie’s car was actually her gift to five people, including me. And there was a crazy free for all as five of us harvested the basket for takings, passing over water crackers, pasta mix and dried fruit to find some good stuff. I was satisfied by the amount of intrigue that present gifted my psyche.

Once home I was faced with another onslaught of people who are family of the person who is married to my parent. Within hours the house was filled with Wellingtons, and they all brought food. And so I ate lamb, pork, chicken, ham and more potato salad and vegetables while discovering that pretty much all of Marks family look identical except they all have varying levels of baldness. It was like that episode of the Simpsons where Flanders has that barbeque with all his relatives. Except instead of all the different social stereotypes it was, yeah, the baldness.

Finally I escaped the throng of people and got to Josh’s house, where eating all day, kicking arse at Jenga and hitting my head twice made me sleepy. And as I lay there, with practically the cooked contents of a children’s petting zoo in my stomach, I realised why it was that the animals don’t like Christmas, and why I do.

Well I regret yelling Merry Christmas at everyone at work last week. I used up all my extroversion, and now feel pressured to say hello to people who's names I now know. At least people have name tags. I wish people had name tags in real life. I have two name tags actually because Dragan ordered me one when I already had one, because I didn't wear my nametag once and he assumed I didn't have one. So one night I wore two. That was a good night.
Today I worked 8 hours straight. When I close my eyes, I see boxes of drinks.

While I struggle to succesfully make small talk and greet my peers, I do notice, and theoretically in fact am trained to, when people struggle to talk back to me. And it's interesting, because when I notice people are uncomfortable around me, are struggling to decide if they should say hi to me as they walk past or not, or are considering making small talk but then decide to and then stall and just murmur something under their breath. When I see these signs, I actually become more confident and socially agressive. I don't know what this indicates about my submissive/dominance stance in relationships, but it says something. I prefer for others to be in control of the communication, because I feel inferior in the communication arena (possibly due to continual over-analysis of communication). However, when it becomes evident that I'm the superior in the situation, I became more friendly and outgoing. In conclusion, it appears I am deep and when people don't know whether to make eye contact with me and then they start to say hi but stop, I will say hi to them.

At the strike of midnight, as the new year came to pass, I was in the middle of my two shots in pool. This might be symbolic. Maybe this year I will have two shots, two chances, and if the first chance doesn't go so well I'll still have another chance. What this chance could be I don't know, it may or may not have something to do with Josh fucking up, because that's why I had two shots anyway.
Sam had a BBQ, and we played backyard cricket, swam, played pool etc and it was a good night filled with good areas. Then the time came to leave, and I decided to walk home instead of accept a lift. This was a good decison, because along the way I encountered many drunk people who entertained me to the soundtrack of Mint Royale which I had put in the discman accidently.