Month: May 2006

A slight addendum. Melbourne did end up doing its own zombie thing. I’m not going to link to any of the photos because it’s just poserish nonsense. They hassled a Greek family reunion or something, which is the height of bad manners.

I am watching the previously mentioned ‘Charley Says’ dvd of English TV public announcements. Trying to find a computer program that’ll allow me to show some shots of it. I recognise one of the Charley commercials as being sampled by Aphex Twin.

One of the co-teachers has taken to using a trad. bamboo flute as an instrument of discipline. Well, not much whacking, mostly just hitting it on hard surfaces to cause attention-getting noise. I’ve heard that at one time Japanese samurais had their swords taken from them and they became experts at killing wid de bamboo flute.

I’ve been doing these few extry classes a week which has been pushing the committment level to dangerously close to their not being enough time for fun and goofing off in the week. It’s conversation I’m supposed to be teaching them but it’s surprisingly hard and to take a step back and think about it, it’s funny that I should be the one attempting it given my poor skillz in such area. Since I’m not being supervised by THE MAN the way all the normal classes are, I’m thinning the convo in favour of vocabulary which is more fun.

For instance today apples were mentioned and I took the op. to let them know that there’s more than one kind of apple. Here, for all intents and purposes there is just a mongrel oversized red delicious, know as ‘apple’. I showed them a picture of a Golden Delicious and told them the name. They were instantly impressed because surely something with the word delicious right there in its name must be good.

to make a t-shirt that says,

YES I’VE HAD LUNCH

PS. I decided I’m going back to bass guitar. It feels right for me and this time I will eventually get a little drum machine to bop with too. I went to Jeongno-sam-ga again yesterday, but this time I touched the merchandise. I have money now for the first time in my adult life but no real sense of …uh geez I don’t even know the word — ‘drive to be tight, to save’. I am saving, but I don’t know why, just because everybody else does.

I was looking at Rickenbacker basses online and eventhough they’re dear, I’ve always wanted one. I saw one yesterday but it was way overpriced. The reasonable thing to do is buy a korean-made job. I really don’t know much about guitars, and I had this idea fixed in my head that heavy = more good. I went from one little shop to the next asking to see the heaviest guitar they had. Ash is the heavy wood, but as I eventually found out, “it is the nature of ash to be unpainted”. Before I heard, each time they’d bring out a woodgrain thing that looked like y’mumma’s kitchen table and I was instantly disappointed.

I had a little list of specs in my head. Rosewood fretboard, fender body shape, pleasing colour, only 4 strings please and all the machine heads in a row– not one on the side. Preferably more than one pick-up. Heavy.

I gave up on the heavy ash after having a go of a ‘Swing’ (it’s a korean make name) bass that was made of ‘basswood’, which reminded me of unspecified meat; found in some foods. But it’s shorthand for some kind of tree. It had active electronics, which was groovy and goes on the list. I almost bought it but it had this woodgrain covering on the front which I wasn’t too fond of. I’ll have another look next week, but may go grab that one because it checked out in all the other areas.

As a sidenote, two out of the three sales-guys I spoke to had surprisingly good English.

For posterity’s sake, here’s a list of the guitars, amps n efx that sonic youth had pinched.

GUITARS                         SERIAL #        description
-------                         --------        -----------

Kimberly Hollow Body Accoustic                      day glo tiger
sticker, spring
held in place w/wire
Gibson Les Paul Jr. Tobacco Sunburst    5789        Snoopy sticker
Fender Jazzmaster White                 126646
Fender Jaguar (leopard paint job)       33          custom paint looks
like leopard spots
Fender Mustang Orange w/racing stripe   259425      Chrome tuner low E,
white knobs all others
Fender Telecaster Thinline F hole       370090      Semi-Hollow Body
Fender Jaguar /blond refin              L98559      w/clover sticker
Fender Jaguar dark stain bare wood      12570       deep scratches on
body; DDA, Humbucking
pickups
Fender Jazzmaster Burgundy mist refin   44364

Travis Bean Koa Wood                    102
Gibson Les Paul Red Sparkle             512510
Travis Bean Red Flat Top                375         Target sticker,
only two knobs,
wood broken around knobs
Fender Jazzmaster Sunburst              176211
Fender Duo-sonic White W/blue pickguard
Fender Jazzmaster Blue                  SY 006
Fender Jazzmaster Sunburst              L68761      Japanese Neck #K625188
Drifter 4 String Guitar                 NA     	    Four string, obvious
fractures, drumstick
under strings
Fender Jazzmaster Sunburst              100958
Fender Jazzmaster Black refin           614960      28 sticker, chrome
humbucking pickups
Gibson RD Artist                        71218092    Controls removed,
holes showing in
body
Fernandez Sustainer guitar              89802       Dark red, Fender
bridge
looks like
threaded rod
Fender P-Bass                           L64305
Gibson Les Paul Special                 400357      Possibly SN 503202
Yamaha Pacifica Red Sunburst Mod.312    NA
Fender Jazzmaster Red                   145507      w/Squiggly Pen Lines

AMPLIFIERS/SPEAKER CABINETS
---------------------------

Peavey Roadmaster                   3A-01673927 In White Hardshell Case
Peavey Roadmaster                   4A-1798945  Black Calzone Hardshell
case
Mesa Boogie 400 Plus Bass Amp       B 2589 or 1664
Fender Bassman Guitar Head          22111       Black face amp in black
roadcase
Fender Bassman Guitar Head          A12534      Black face amp in black
roadcase
Fender 2x12 Speaker box             NS
Marshall 4x12 Slant Cabinet         A13762      Pink Hardshell Case
Mesa Boogie 1x18 Speaker Cabinet    SY020       Self contained in road
case with heavy
duty casters
Fender 4x12 Cream Color Speaker Cab.LO-436025  Blue roadcase for same
Fender Concert Amplifier            N/A         Combo amp,
Red/Blue/Yellow
target painted on grille
PEDAL EFFECTS UNITS
-------------------

Sovtek Big Muff Distortion Pedal (two)
ProCo Turbo Rat Distortion (three)
MXR Phase 90 (two)
MXR Blue Box Distortion (two)
Jimi Hendrix Octave Fuzz (three total)
Mu-Tron Volume Wah                      5806
MOOG Moogerfooger Ring Modulator        #00608
Korg EXP2 Expression Pedal
DOD PDS1002 Two Second Delay            FX994837
Maestro Ring Modulator RM-1B            AE-914248   2 prong black cord,
LED and
Footswitches (custom
mod)
Maestro Ring Modulator                              3 prong white cord,LED
and footswitches
(custom mod)
Hughes and Kettner Tube Factor          244117
Hughes and Kettner Tube Rotosphere      229974
Ibanez AD-80 Analog Delay               121817/111519
18 Volt Power supply
soldered in
Mutron Bi Phase Effect unit         1321           In wedge shaped suitcase
w/pedal and templates
Mutron Expression pedal             1197           In suitcase W/above
Electro Harmonix Hot tubes                         Vintage pedal, some wear
Electro Harmonix Micro Synth pedal                 Re-issue fairly new

Wow I don’t know how a week goes by like that.

I had to ditch the, ‘The Red Shoes’ project. After a year and a half it just wasn’t working. I’d only done two posts and it wasn’t getting links or comments. Not even spam-comments, which leads me to the suspicitn that it wasn’t really on the internet at all.

Often I would see people on the street or in the subway with red shoes on but I wouldn’t have the camera. Or I would but then not feel like approaching them and mime/hand gesture ‘can I take a picture of yr red shoes and you?’. That kind of thing Andy Warhol might’ve got away with but not me.

I stuck a clean install of Pivot there because I’d been considering switching back to it. I asked a question or two about database transferral at their support forum but typically, the bastards didn’t answer.

Here is a short list of obscure things I want or have recently ordered.

Charley Says… The Best Public Information Films In The World [1970]
THE MIKE FLOWERS POPS MEETS THE APHEX TWIN DOWNTOWN IN ‘THE FREEBASE CONNECTION
The Golden Age of ATARI Game Musics
King of Woolworths – Ming Star

Cosmo Vitelli – Clean

Right now I am listening to Gustav Holst The Planets. Cassical music is like the ambient section of olden days. Work has been pushing my needle into the red so the ambients is good.

sports day 05.

I secretly wish that they would propose an impromptu race among the teachers so I could show them that I would whip their arses if I had the opportunity. I had a bunch of ace reporters walking around interviewing participants for the school hompagey and even got them to ask the question, ‘which teacher do you think would win in a race?’, but most of them said their home-room teacher.

Must be verging on a full moon or something because during their semi-final, a grade 2 (year 8) class volleyball team spontaneously wept en masse. That’s how piqued they were, but they went on to win the final, so go figure.

Fittingly, that’s Lord Nelson on the right in the first pic. If I know my hanguk-ohh (and why the hell shouldn’t I?) the sign they hold says ‘No sleep til Brooklyn’. Focus on facial expressions this year.

I was intending to write a bit titled, “Missing Link online mail order: fails it” – but they’re not that bad. I have to give them a partial credit. I’d been in the process of ordering a few things off them. To be honest, there were difficulties. They didn’t seem accustomed to sending stuff overseas. There is a (now finished) email volley totalled at (11) sitting in my inbox.

But the package did get here, and with a hand written note, which is always endearing. The stuff was wrapped in old punk-rock gig posters. The stuff is B(if)tek’s 2020 album, and The Church’s double compilation, Hindsight. Both are known and well liked here at Sunny B’s. On the Missing Link website they were offering 2020 on vinyl with a bonus B(if)tek t-shirt. I wrote and asked if I could get the t-shirt with the CD. They said yes.

* * *

I’m reading material from the text book for the next linguistics assignment. Study reading isn’t supposed to be interesting or at magazine-level reading-difficulty. I feel like I’m not getting my money’s worth. For instance, did you know that at one time, ‘girl’ was used to mean any young person, not just girls. The assignment is on how langauges change through time — interesting!

*   *   *

Oh, um I could dig this too. I’m always doing that, damn foreigners.

I was getting these daily injections of antibiotics the whole week. They’re a strange thing, this I might’ve already said. To pop in a pop-culture reference, “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure”. This is antibiotix philosophy. I can’t complain too much – they worked on me, I am not dead. The whole thing was worth the thought of -> what if I’d received this sickness 100 years ago or 400 years ago? What state would I be in right now? What chance is there that I’ve have klercked off? I am indeed the kind of person who has in the past suffered from acne, and still do now and then. Part of this is always having the odd red spot on my chest. Getting a suntan can sometimes alleviate this but it’s obviously not a solution. But y’know after the treatment of antibiotics I didn’t have a single blemish or impurity on my skin. Weird.

For over half a week I was travelling up to the metropolis to get the shot. On the Sunday the main parts of the hospital were closed and I was told to show up at the Emergency Room and they would stick the thing in. It was a one per day thing. It was quite hefty; a small bag of liquid that’d be attached to something overhead which would drain into one of my veins. The ER was kind of interesting – lots of things going on to watch.

At the end they’d pull it out and I’d be asked to hold a small wad of wet sanitised paper over the puncture hole until it stopped bleeding. On this day maybe I didn’t hold it there long enough, over the vein they’d hit between my index and middle finger knuckles on the back of my hand. I chucked the paper thing in the bin and headed out, stopping at the can on the way.

Sometime the next day I noticed the vein was swollen in the way they do when it’s really hot or you’ve been running hard. Except neither of those things were happening and it was the only vein behaving this way.

At different times a golden brownish or purple-red blotch would appear on the back there.

I was a little concerned. Hospitals are great places to get sicker than you already are. For some reason ‘Golden staf’ came to mind. I don’t really know if it’s short for Golden Stafford … sounds like a dog. That’s just the way things are in Australia — everything gets shortened. I think mostly I’d only heard it reffered to as staf or staffy. Through vague association I knew this guy who’d had his whole fucking arm amputated because of some hospital fubar involving this doggy-sounding, institution-lurking disease.

But I’m sure if it was that then something like that would’ve happened by now. Something like the opposite is happening.

It taps. My right hand taps and thrums of its own will. It seems to like latin rhythms – rhumba, pachunga, samba. It only does it now and then but it’s perturbing. This morning I woke and found my arm hanging half out of bed, a stadtler 2B cradled in the hand, which seemed to be asleep. The matress is on the floor so it’s not like it was hanging down a long way. There was a scrap of paper under the pencil tip. Scrawled on it, I could decipher:

Plastic swords are no match

or jasmine records always

solar green and partial

as authors klercking chickens sharks

sharks are beaten, wake up.

The rhythms are one thing, but I’m hoping the bad poetry was a one off.

As a former member of the activist Left  have to say that these zombies are really fucking shit up for old-style political action. No longer will it be passable to do a regular demo or march about global warming — oh no, the participants will also have to be dragging a leg or spassing it to get noticed by the media. A hunger strike on the steps of parliament in support of an independent Kurdish state will mean nothing unless it involves quantities of raspberry sauce and the pronounced abstinence from human flesh as well as other kinds.

From where I’m at, May Day didn’t get a mention while the zombies did.

Notice the permutations too; like, ‘I’ll be a zombie, but I want to be a princess zombie’. And how the the the small groupings of goths gravitate to the mass, as if looking for kin. Lastly, it’s not surprising that so far, this has happened in Sydney and Brisbane, but not Melbourne.