The Rest of Your Life (v3.0)

Hey Gang,

Some VERY exciting news to report ! I found out on Friday, that a short film I made a few weeks ago has been short-listed for Sony Tropfest 2007 ! W00t ! Now of course, a short-listing doesn’t necessarily guarantee me a share of the prizes, general adulation, and short-film groupies which the 16 Tropfest finalists enjoy, but it does guarantee AT LEAST a screening in the ‘Best of the Rest’ program, and limited national + international distribution. So I’m VERY stoked, to say the least.

Now for those in the know, it’s basically a new animated short featuring Frank & George, the two characters you’ve come to know and love from our ostensibly weekly (even though I’ve been to lazy to put up a new one over the Silly Season) serial Juiced. So if you haven’t checked out the first two episodes already, I suggest you have a bit of a squiz now – one way or another, I think you’ll all be seeing more of Frank & George over the coming year

You know, I can’t be arsed doing my usual “quote of the day” and “current horn factor” bullshit before the post proper today … and that is perhaps indicative of how I feel about this blog in general. I’m trying to be honest here, kids. Part of it I think is to do with the perenially shitty Sydney weather at the moment. If anyone needs confirmation about the reality of climate change, there it is staring us all in the face. It’s supposed to be summer in Australia at this time of year. A time for Christmas Day barbeques on the beach, and sweltering forty degree heat. Instead, it keeps f*cken raining every other day ! My boss put it best a few days ago when he said “What’s up with this bloody weather ? I might as well have stayed in f*cking England !”

It’s not that I’ve lost the creative spark, either. I’ve been putting some serious time in @ the home studio lately, cranking out new tunes. I’ve animated two episodes of Juiced (my ‘weekly’ flash serial), with another eight or so scripted and ready to go. I’ve started trying to write a new novel, and I’m actually planning to finish this one (unlike all the previous ones gathering dust in the proverbial bottom drawer). I got a shiny new digital video camera (go Mini-DV, f*ck that DVD-Cam arseshat !) for Christmas from my parents, and already have a few (non-porn) ideas that I’m itching to film once I sort myself out a copy of Sony Vegas + DVD.

I’m just not feeling particularly inspired to blog these days. Is it something in the air ? My best friend stopped blogging a while ago now, with the intention of starting up a quasi-portal site instead. That’s not a bad idea … as Baz from Random Rant tells me, it’s good to have at least a loosely ‘themed’ site rather than a personal weblog per-se, because that way you can often score ‘freebies’ from people like Warner Brothers to review, give away to readers etc. Sure … a bunch of bloggers recently scored free laptops courtesy of Microsoft, but I can’t help but feel that a certain ‘buzz’ is slowly departing the blogosphere, and I feel it draining out of myself as well.

Apart from my best friend, my fiance is no longer actively blogging (just posting occasional snippets to her myspace page), 3 other people who used to be on my blog-roll have disappeared off the face of the ‘net, and one long-time blogger acquaintence pulled his blog offline to give himself the possibility of reusing old material for his new (paid) writing gig on behalf of Newscorp.

As for TROYL itself, the only comments I seem to get these days are from a small handful of loyal offline friends, and a self-confessed fame-whore (I’m looking at you here, Steph). Whilst I certainly appreciate those of you who are still persevering with this blog and my sporadic update policy, I haven’t the time or patience to whore TROYL out to new readers via mass commenting the blogosphere as I did when I first started. All of which means my comment fields aren’t likely to get any fuller. I’m not single anymore, so I have no further ‘dating horror story’ material to draw on, except for the increasingly distant past. I’m depressingly sober most of the time these days, so the amusing drinking anecdotes aren’t there to draw on anymore. I’m happy at my job, so I have no reason to bitch about work. Apart from the incessant incursions of assorted creepie-crawlies, I love our new apartment, so I can’t even bitch about my living conditions.

All in all, I think the ‘problem’ is I’m ‘suffering’ from a general level of contentment. This is of course a very good thing in terms of my personal life, but not so good in terms of The Rest of Your Life (blog). At the very least, I reckon updates are going to get even more sporadic here, and I’ll have to think about an overhaul of the site. It’s fairly likely I’ll be starting up one (or more) new sites in the near future too (probably after my wedding next month), steering away from the ‘blog’ formula. Given my surname will be changing post-wedding, I’m unlikely to keep using this domain name as my main port of call as well. I’ll hang on to it of course – until I die or the ‘net goes down permanently – whichever comes first I suppose – to ward off ’cyber-squatters’ – but I’ll set up redirects and start pimping myself out at a new cyber street-corner sooner or later.

There you have it folks … please do let me know what you think of all this, and don’t say you haven’t been warned

Listening To: Servico Publico : Valete (Footmovin’ Records)

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day
Panzurfaust I love stupid ass people.
Cade You’re so damn conceited.

Today we’re going to discuss what some people have called “a (wallet) draining, antisocial addiction, which effects many people at some stage of their lives”.  It’s especially prevelant among guys and girls in my own age group i.e. around the mid to late twenties. That’s right gang, I’m talking about the very same thing Chuck Palahniuk discusses in some length via the characters of Cornelius & Tyler in Fight Club. The so-called “IKEA Nesting Instinct”

Personally, I don’t really understand the problem the ‘ole Chuckster has with this supposed addiction. Before I finally found the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, I used to go out and easily blow $150 on alcohol, cover charges and taxi-fare in one night going out. Now, I blow the same amount of money in one afternoon buying a small dining table and chairs for our apartment.

Is this so bad ? Granted, it means I’m not going out and getting fucked up as often as I used to. Actually I’m not going out and getting fucked up at all anymore, coz I’m trying to save for our wedding as well … but … ummmm … that’s not a problem, riiiight ? I mean the Ikea purchases aren’t a catalyst for the ‘mellowing out’, they’re merely a consequence of it, and mellowing out is a good thing, isn’t it ? Plus … you know … we needed furniture after moving apartments.

I actually used to go to IKEA with my parents a fair bit when I was younger, and we were struggling migrants that had recently moved to Australia. Granted back then (in the 80′s) the furniture you’d get from IKEA wasn’t just cheap, the general build quality was a bit on the nasty side as well. I didn’t realise that until a few years later though, and the Seven Hills store we used to go to had a good play area for kids, so going furniture shopping was always a bit of an adventure for me

Truth be told, I did go off the furniture from there for a few years during my teen years, as the cupboards and other things my dad had put together (or in many cases I’d put together, coz dad was never much of a handyman) in the early years started to weather and show their age. The 80′s IKEA furniture had a particularly nasty habit of losing it’s ‘foil’ finishes, which would peel off and/or dent around the edges, plus the drawers would often start warping. However, my faith started to become redeemed when I went to live in Sweden (the birthplace of IKEA - for the ‘late bloomers’ among you) for a year in ’97-’98 and saw the great stuff they had there.

Nonetheless it took a few more years for the quality range from there to make it out here … in the interim I made do with incredibly nasty (but incredibly cheap) furniture from Op-Shops and the occasional Freedom hand-me-down or upscale retailer Xmas/Birthday present from my folks. Successive moves and flat-shares saw my furniture needs anyway being stripped down to what would fit in one bedroom, until my fiance and I finally moved to this new apartment, free of our old flatmate (whose furniture dominated all the ‘common areas’ in our old place) and ready to decorate just for the two of us.

We knew we’d need furniture, and given the need to save for the wedding, we thought we’d check out IKEA together, and I must say I was very pleasantly surprised. Build quality has gone up, and most of the range I remember from Sweden has made it over her now. So now we’ve got a nice ‘Beech Effect’ coffee table, a funky dining table which seats 4, a couple of contemporary (and comfy) chairs to go with the table, a set of stylish placemats & coasters, a groovy/unconventional dark red peanut-shaped study desk, a set of wire drawers also in red to complement said desk, a shoe-rack (OK … it’s from Howards Storage World … but it’s part and parcel of the same instinct I think) … all after only a few trips.

Now we just need some outdoor furniture for the balcony, perhaps some new cutlery coz our current set is looking a bit mismatched, a couple of prints for the study until one of us can be arsed doing some new paintings, perhaps a new couch as we’ve both got couches in storage which are too big …. hmmm …. maybe Chuck’s got a small point somewhere ….

Listening To: The Best of NWA : NWA

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day

VenomX Morgan Fairchild is scary
VenomX she is like 70 and she looks 25
Trimangle would you do her ?
VenomX im a sexualy deprived male working on thanksgiving
VenomX and chatting on IRC – what do you think

One word – yyyYYYYyyyyyyYYYYyyyyyyAaaaaaaaaaayyyyyYYYYYyyyyyyYYYYYyyy

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for all your encouragement and well-wishes gang, and for sending your happy thoughts my way ! I’ll post more about it in more detail later (when it all sinks in, and I get the email outlining the finer points of my ‘offer’); but I just wanted to let y’all know the ‘waiting game’ is officially over, and I’m very very VERY happy thrilled frikkin ECSTATIC !!! to report that very soon DB shall indeed be entering the racey world of advertising.

Viva la Bam

Listening To: Ultimate Trance 3 : Various Artists

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day

blazemore LITTLETON, Colo. – Colorado officials plan to
blazemore try a 15-year-old boy as an adult for allegedly
blazemore offering a Sony PlayStation to have his aunt killed.
FlipTopBx is it modded ?

OK, I should probably clarify that post title. No – I don’t want to be doing the wild thing with Vince Vaughn. Nor do I want ‘Victor Kiriakis’ as my real-life dad. I don’t want to have Brad Pitt as an ex-husband, I’d rather not have a history of having swapped bodily fluids with Ben Affleck, and I think the trademarked ‘Rachel bob’ hairstyle would just look stupid on me. I do however want to be the kind of character that ‘Jen’ has played in virtually all her acting roles.

Again, I should probably clarify. I don’t mean that I want to be a plucky, creative careergirl with ‘old-fashioned’ values at heart, who has a history of being attracted to the wrong guys, but eventually ends up with the ‘nice’ guy in the end, after a series of amusing miscommunications, mistaken identities and other comedic pratfalls. For one thing I’m not a career girl, and for another thing I’ve already gone through all the not-so-comedic pratfalls and found Ms.Right. Rather, what I simply mean is that I want to work in advertising.

Have you ever noticed that, gang ? Virtually all the ‘romantic comedy’ vehicles that Rachel … I mean Jen … and her contemporaries star in, always seem to have the heroine working in some capacity within an advertising agency. Ditto the fellas in popcorn-fare such as “How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days” and “The Truth About Women”. Halle Berry and her alter ego Catwoman also work in an agency, as does Mike Brady of the eponimous Brady Bunch Darrin Stephens the TV husband of the small screens hottest witch before the Halliwell sisters (only a madman would even rate the … thing … that is Melissa Joan-Hart AKA “Sabrina”) Samantha. I could go on to name countless other movies and TV shows in which the chief protagonist(s) work within this field, but I think you get my point. For better or worse, we’re all bombarded with so many images of how ‘exciting’ and ‘dynamic’ this industry is, that sooner or later the desire inevitably arises to see if working in an ad agency really lives up to the hype.

Now those of you who know me in person may not realise this, but I’m actually very superstitious about some things. So I’m in two minds right now about writing this whole post at all. I don’t generally like talking about things before they happen, in case I ‘jinx’ myself somehow. On the flipside though, I want as much ‘good karma’ flowing my way with regards to what I’m going to tell you as possible – and I can’t ask y’all to send your good wishes my way without giving at least a little bit of detail on what you’re sending me ‘happy thoughts’ for.

Our regular TROYL readers would know, I’ve posted numerous times about the need to leave where I’m working at the moment. Most recently (and pressingly) a few weeks ago. Without going into too much detail at this stage, lets just say I’ve been working hard behind the scenes, chasing various opportunities and trying to make things happen. It may (or may not) surprise you guys to know I’ve wanted to work in advertising for a long time (it’s one of my many ‘dream industries’). Assuming the universe decides to give me a break for once (instead of kicking me in the teeth again as it often seems to enjoy), I may hopefully very soon (knock on wood) get a chance to taste that dream. I could be Jennifer Aniston

For this to happen though, I’m going to get all mystical on your arses for once and ask you guys to ‘please send me all your good vibes’. I really want this – the agency job I interviewed for the other day – so I’ll really appreciate it if you all cross your fingers for me, and I promise I’ll let you know how it goes in a day or two !

That’s it – thanks in advance guys !!! DB

——————————————-

UPDATE: 06/09/06

So we’re playing the waiting game guys – I was supposed to hear back this morning, but a quick call at around 11am to the company in question revealed they still haven’t reached a decision. This is always the worst part of the recruitment process … the purgatory of ‘will-they-won’t-they’. Keep those good vibes flowing, people !

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: Sexplosion : My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day

goferdude What’s “hockey” ?
zamros REALLY YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT HOCKEY IS ?
Funk It’s like boxing, except it’s on ice and there are teams

Hi gang, you may have noticed a pretty major change to TROYL today – I’ve done away with the ‘teaser’ format for all existing posts – i.e. where you previously had to click-through on a ‘read more’ link to get the full text of a post.

I need your feedback on this – do you think removing the ‘teaser’ format makes the site look too ‘bloated with text’, or do you prefer NOT having to click through, and getting the full text straight away ? I’ve got the original database backed up, so I can always restore the ‘teasers’ to the way they were before, if the majority of consensus is you guys would like the posts the way they were originally.

PLEASE REPLY VIA COMMENTS !

The Rest of Your Life – listening to it’s readers

Listening To: Fear Of A Black Planet : Public Enemy

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day
DemonEater wtf
DemonEater ESPN is showing 2003 national jump rope championship
DemonEater who the hell watches jump rope competiti— ooh bouncy

Hi Gang,

It’s another one of those weeks . . . I drop in only briefly to hit you with a plug for some stuff I’m selling on Ebay. This time though, we don’t just have computer parts (although those are present), we also have some original artwork by yours truly. So step up, step up my friends . . . who wants a piece of ‘tha man’ ?

 Radeon 9200 Graphics Card
* SOLD *

 MSI Wireless PCI Network Card
* SOLD *

 Angry Sarari Man Is Not So Happy Fun-Time
* UNSOLD – XUNTS ! *

 Roach-Boy Likes Bondi/The Barbecue
* UNSOLD – XUNTS ! *

Listening To: I See Good Spirits, I See Bad Spirits : My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day

Graeme yeah, don’t be nasty. my grandad died in a concentration camp……!
Graeme he fell out a guard tower. broke his neck

You’re probably wondering friends and fans, why DB hasn’t been posting much of late. You might even be thinking I’m a lazy git who just can’t be bothered with regular posting anymore. Sadly, this couldn’t be further from the truth. For the most part I’m still full of new ideas and the same enthusiasm I had when I started this blog more than a year ago.

Unfortunately guys, I work in a far from ‘blog friendly’ workplace I already had one run-in with my old supervisor about spending “all your fucking time on the internet”, and a few weeks ago at my annual review my new supervisor also mentioned that there are apparently “concerns” about my online usage.

My PC screen faces an area of “heavy traffic” within our floor, so a lot of people walking past have a chance to peer over my shoulder and see what I’m up to. I’m also being saddled with ever more shit I have to do for everyone as the days wear on, meaning more people have a ‘stake’ in seeing me spending my time “productively” i.e. doing their shit instead of my own.

All of which sucks arse … but it does mean unfortunately, that I’m finding it extremely hard to blog regularly these days. My sincere apologies to all you readers – I promise I will make more of an effort to try fit regular blogging somewhere else into the daily schedule (perhaps after I get home from work and before I start cooking dinner), since doing it at work is becoming increasingly out of the question.

Sorry guys – I’ll try to write a ‘proper’ post soon !

Listening To: Wanastowi Vjecy : Wanastowi Vjecy

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day
Fulgore whats the complement to a 43 degree angle ?
sparks My you’re looking “acute” today
Fulgore fuck you

Guys – just selling some stuff on ebay – check these out and please bid if interested -

* SOLD *

* SOLD *

Rock on