The Rest of Your Life (v4)

Remember Gaelan Walker from BB06 ?

Now compare to Emma Cornell from this year’s series –

Uncanny resemblance, or what ? We definitely have a paper-bagger here, gents. Although she’d snap anyway, once you got a decent rhythm going with the old in-out

Listening To: A Crime For All Seasons : My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day

Cndz what would jesus do ?
Josh probably get crucified and die

So how did you guys spend Easter ? We went down to The Bay to stay with IG’s best friend for 3 days. It was nice to get away from Sydney for a change and we didn’t get into any fights outside the Soldiers Club this time, so it wasn’t a bad trip. I did find myself slightly annoyed on the Saturday night, when the girls decided to walk back home from the town’s only pub because they couldn’t be arsed waiting for one of the town’s three taxis. It was freezing cold, we had to walk for over an hour when it was already past midnight and we were all in various states of inebriation, IG had painful shoes on, and if I hadn’t been there I wouldn’t have been surprised if the girls hadn’t got into a spot of bother with the pair of drunken ‘frat-boy’ types we passed on our merry way home, and who displayed a particular interest in trying to strike up a conversation with my fiancé. Still – all turned out well in the end, and we didn’t even end up sick the next day from the cold, as I feared we would … I’m just not doing the walk next time, now I know how bloody far it is !

Speaking of The Bay, we have a freaky example of ‘synchronicity’ happening this year with BB06. Y’see gang, Karen & Krystal (the mother/daughter pair of housemates, and BB’s disappointing “world first” drawcard) happen to come from … you guessed it … the little South Coast surfey town that I like to call ‘Summer Bay’, and which the rest of the world knows as Batemans Bay. Not only that, but it’s fairly likely that one of them (I’m not sure which at this stage) is actually the very recent ex-girlfriend of someone who works with IG’s best friend at one of the local car dealerships. So there you have it … last year we had a housemate who looked like my fiancé (the much-maligned Gianna), and this year we have not one but TWO housemates who come from the town my baby grew up in, and probably know some of the same circle of people that she does. Is BB trying to tell us something ? One thing’s for sure – we won’t be making any plans for Sunday night for the next 3 months !

In other news, it was my birthday last week. The scary one – the big two-niner ! One year off 30. One more year till I truly start looking like a bit of a sad-bastard when I’m out at clubs. Not that it will stop me going out, even when I do hit that three decade threshold, I’m sure. Doesn’t change the fact the young ‘uns are gonna think I’m a sad-bastard though. After all, there’s only so much that Loreal Men Expert ‘Anti-Wrinkle Serum’ can do !

Worse still, I’ve only got one year left till I miss my goal of becoming a millionaire before I hit the big Three-Oh. Given I’m trying to save for our wedding, achieving that goal is looking more and more unlikely. Hell … I think at this point in time, I’d be content with landing a job I’m actually happy with before I’m thirty, and never mind the non-existent ‘riches’ it increasingly looks like it’s not my destiny to attain.

Perhaps it’s time to sit down and do another of those self-involved mental-masturbation exercises wherein I try to figure out what (if anything) is my ‘true calling’, and what I actually ‘want out of life’. I’ve finally got the relationship I always wanted, and (much to my own initial surprise) I really like where we live , so it would be nice to get that last little niggling loose end of my life (i.e. career) ‘sorted’ in the next year.

Yep … I’ve got a lot I need to do this year, before I hit 30 – the use-by date for ‘cool’ !

Listening To: Pure Cult : The Cult

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day
Raven I tried setting my hotmail password to penis.
Raven It said my password wasn’t long enough. A week to go till BB06 auditions, and I’m having a bit of dilemma gang. Y’see, I’m not entirely sure I want to audition anymore. Part of it is to do with the lukewarm response I’ve received out in Sydney blog-land to my ‘Bloggers for Big Brother’ idea i.e. that a bunch of us Sydney bloggers would congregate in Newtown on the Saturday night before the auditions, and proceed to audition as a group on Sunday morning.

To my mind this would have been a great social evening and pop-culture experience rolled into one – but with the exception of the divine IG and the sympathetic Steph, it seems like everyone else has poo-pooed the idea for a variety of their own twisted reasons.

What’s wrong with Sydney bloggers ? Here’s a chance to get right into the thick of pop-culture, and everyone is like “we can’t be arsed”, if they’ve dignified my emails/comments with a reply at all !

While I’ve auditioned on my own in previous years, I thought going along to the auditions with a group of fellow bloggers had the potential to be heaps of fun … so I’m surprised that the majority of you out there don’t seem to share this view. As such, unless I get a sudden torrent of emails / trackbacks / comments in the next few days telling me it is a good idea, I’m definitely not going to bother organising any pre-audition meetup. If I end up going at all I might post something the night before with a photo / telling y’all what I’m wearing on the off chance any other bloggers out there decide to come the auditions ‘on an individual basis’ … but that’s it. So if you wanna meet up peeps, let me know SOON !

Another reason I’m rethinking the auditions is because IG and I have now set a definite date for our wedding. It’s going to be late July 2006, it’s going to be in the Czech Republic, and it’s going to be in a castle (yup, you heard right – a castle !). As such in the unlikely event either of us were actually to get on Big Brother, this could present a problem because we would need to leave the house by the start of July for the wedding to go ahead as scheduled. Right now it’s still in the planning stages and a venue hasn’t been booked yet (the Czech Republic has numerous castles to choose from), so conceivably if ‘worst came to worst’ and we were successful during the early stages of the audition process the wedding itself could be put temporarily on hold. One of us would still lose out by just over two grand though if we didn’t travel in July, because the airfares have been booked already.

Yet another reason for my current indecisiveness about trying to get on BB again is that I’ve been giving some serious thought of late to the nature of celebrity itself, particularly BB celebrity. Y’see, for most of my life, before meeting my fiancé, I was convinced that I wanted to be famous. It always thought it would be nice to be famous for a creative reason e.g. writing or music, but at the end of the day the reason wasn’t as ‘desirable’ to me as the celebrity-status itself – I just knew I wanted fame as an end in and of itself. I suppose you could say I felt like there was a void in my life, and I thought only fame could fill that void. Just as I was conditioned to think by the media, I suppose. Since meeting Lisa though, I no longer feel like my life is ‘lacking’.

Sure, I still have money problems (and saving for a wedding is gonna be fun). Yes, I still feel underwhelmed by my job, wish we had a bigger apartment, suffer problems communicating with my family at times, and have a desire to do something ‘more’ with my life in terms of writing / painting / recording music. However, despite all these things I no longer feel like ‘there is something missing’ – these days they are just ‘challenges’ to overcome, rather than a ‘void’ which ‘fame’ will fill. Given the above, ‘celebrity’ no longer holds the same appeal it once did.

Couple this with the fact that any level of fame leads to a corresponding loss of privacy, and you can see why I’m suddenly hesitant to expose myself and my wonderful fiancé to the kind of media circus being a BB participant brings. There’s still a part of me that does want to be famous despite all that, but these days my attention has shifted and if I’m ever going to be famous then dammit the reason has to be a good one (such as the aformentioned writing / art / music) and not simply for the sake of fame itself. Being a contestant on Big Brother, unfortunately, doesn’t fall into that category. Sure – it can be a springboard for launching other creative ventures later on – and if I end up auditioning again it will be with that end in mind – but essentially, BB contestants’ fleeting ‘fame’ doesn’t spring from anything more than being on the program itself.

So there you have it folks – do I audition for Big Brother 06, or don’t I ? It’s a dilemma …

(Update 29/11/05) :

Ok gang, it’s official – IG and I are pulling out of the running this year. The final nail in the coffin were the persistant rumours doing the rounds of the message boards that the 2006 season may run for as long as 6 months. Not only would this definitely prevent us from going ahead with our wedding as planned, but also while 3 months apart would be hard enough (especially going on past experience with Lisas one month overseas trip), a six month separation at this stage in our relationship is virtually out of the question. The upside of this is you can expect the usual armchair commentry from me again in 2006 concerning the latest BB season … and I’ll try to do an even more thorough job this time around.

That being said – good luck to everyone auditioning this year – I’m looking forward to watching those of you who make it on BB in 2006 !

Listening To: Sarssipius’ Ark : Infectious Grooves

Current Horn Factor :

That’s right folks … the BB machine is already getting ready to rev up again … according to the official site, Sydney auditions for Australian BB06 are being held December 4th-6th at Sydney Uni. For the first time this includes a Sunday – which means there’s a strong possibility of me going out clubbing till the wee hours on the Saturday night, then rocking up to Sydney uni to camp out for the remainder of the night and trying my luck (again) on the Sunday. I just hope they don’t have the same stupid rule they had last year about (ostensibly) not taking people in steady relationships – since I’m very much “taken” and quiet happy with that fact, thankyou very much !

Watch this space !

16/11/2005 Update: ‘Lo again … so … I’ve hit on a cunning plan. Let’s call it “Bloggers for Big Brother” shall we ? Basically, this involves a bunch of us Sydney bloggers meeting up in the city on Saturday the 3rd of December for a night of drinking and whatever else takes our fancy. No doubt starting somewhere in Newtown, and working our way from there. Some time later during the night we will migrate en-masse as a group to the Sydney uni campus, and all audition together on Sunday morning @ 9 a.m. (more like 10 or 10:30 if last year is anything to go by) for possibly the last (depending on how ratings go, and if TCN 10 renews the contract with Endemol) series of Australian Big Brother, BB06. Surely at least ONE of us should be interesting enough to get in ? So – whose with me guys ?