Sunset. Retreated into bedroom dragging essentials. Essentials include: computer. Psychological impact of larger spaces in house is beyond my coping-ability. The other rooms have windows. The windows have no blinds, curtains, shades or drapes. Feel like I am being watched. (I am being watched.)
Considering subletting the other two rooms to help cover cost of additional psychotherapy sessions.
Moving went extremely quickly and smoothly. Curly, one of the cleaners, decided to help me. I said, no, no it’s okay, I can do it, but she would have none of it and did all the trolley work. The little man driving the truck was much nicer than the one that I had help me a year ago, however I feel that I am still paying too much considering how short the trip was.
In any case, I am here now, as I was this morning, vaguing-out. I sat here waiting for KT Man to arrive and marvelled at the trees (at this point dormant) outside the window and a certain amount of mountain peak at the top of the W-SW window.
Things that one can immediately like about the place
In between moments of vagueness I tried to get my head around the concept of living in a place that has more than one room. For a lot of people, one room in this country is the standard, but the little bungalow that was my last abode in HOJU was the same, albeit long and carpeted. The last two places in three years here also featured one room, totalling 5+ years of one room. I don’t know how I break my stuff up across the three rooms here. It’ll be strange for there not to be a computer one roll and a bit of a stretch away from the bed. Suddenly, I feel like I don’t have enough furniture.
I just calculated that when I move house tomorrow it will be the 19th place I’ve lived in during this short 33 years of lifespan completed.
I got overzealous with the packing and so am eating ice-cream with a knife instead of a spoon. I guess it’s not that bad. The plan was to have toast for breakfast tomorrow before the guy with the truck shoes up at 9, but I packed the toaster so a sandwich will suffice.
Geographically it’s not that far away but the joint is significantly roomier. It shall be dubbed Pacific Palisades—got a nice ring don’t you think?
Yes, I’ve been watching a little of Dr. Katz again thanks to the modern wonders of the internet and how every tv show and movie ever made is now available to be watched at anytime, provided you have the bandwidth.
I like that show’s laid-backness. It’s relaxing to view banter like that.
I have also been looking at Twin Peaks, again. It stands up to time surprisingly well. I have been reading this book about North Korea. Something about the guidance of the loving father. It’s a long book; 800 pages. I got to page 16 and thought – that’s 2% done.
It’s funny to think about the underlying sentiment in the post that lies directly below this one. The other night I was at a cafe with a friend, showing her pictures from my childhood, via the modern wonders of the laptop computer. There were several class photos from primary school. for each, she picked out which kid I was and then asked me which girl I liked. And indeed each year there was some girl I had a secret crush on. It’s funny because other times I’d looked back at them in intervening years, that hadn’t occurred to me. After about four class fotos, and four crush-girls, my friend commented that they were all very different styles of girl. What she was getting at was the look of each. A blonde, a brunette, a girl with caramel-coloured hair.
I don’t knw that it really has anything to do with anything but it does remind me of a pattern where when one choice turns out to be the wrong one, I can often vault over in the other direction, thinking that must be what I need.
when I thought Laura from Dr. Katz was the sexiest woman on television.
I am going to write about music I listened to last year. There was one album I listened to last year that was made last year. That was Amon Tobin’s Foley Room. It was alright. I like his earlier stuff better. He recorded the sound of a tiger growling on one of the tracks. It came with a DVD of how the album was made. There was a scene of him going to a zoo and recording the tiger getting angry.
I listened to a few Joy Division songs a lot. Particularly No Love Lost. I like it because it sounded begrudging, so it suited how I often felt when around on public transport. I like Joy Divison because they had a strong set of basslines paired with shitbox guitar sounds. I liked hearing Ian Curtis’ accent coming through here and there.
I listened to these Hall & Oates tracks a lot: I Can’t Go For that, Out of Touch, Private Eyes, and to a lesser extent, Say it isn’t So. I listened to them so regularly in relation to other things that it almost qualiifies me as retarded. Retarded for ‘I can’t go for that’—that about sums up the second half of 07 for me.
These things are often about place and time though. This nineteen eighties thing is an ipod-specific thing.
I also liked the Dead or Alive track, You Spin Me Round (like a record).
I liked the Bowie songs China Girl and Let’s Dance.
I listened to Shaun Ryder’s solo album Amateur Night in the Big Top a lot, but usually only the first half.
Fila Brazilia’s Another Fine Mess. The DJ Food remix of the Fila Brazillia song, A Z & 2L’s. Some tracks from Beasts of Bourbon’s compilation—but not all of them. I like Drop Out, Psycho (in fact all of The Axeman’s Jazz, but that’s a different story) Hard For You, (I likey very muchy) Let’s Get Funky, Finger Lickin, Chase the Dragon, Just Right, and Execution Day.
I like Scientists compilation for the same reasons, but it’s more of an ‘in principle’ thing with them, not as much in practice. I like them because they are Australian. Australian men with pub-rock tight jeans and big cocks.
Boards of Canada – The campfire headphase is a Steady Seller in the tapeshop of my mind. Everytime I take the bus out of the city I listen to that. I can always doze listening to it. Lesser played but just as effective to completely lose consciousness to is the commercially unreleased set of tracks by Dark Network called Lost Time.
Congratulations on your purchase of the A330 – 200 Airbus.
Please note the predated wallpaper in the loos as you stand there waiting for something to come out.
If during take off / landing you notice the superstructure shaking violently, do not be alarmed, it’s just the inner plastic panelling. At altitude you may also become aware of a difference in cabin air temperature around the emergency exits. This is because they are doors, and well, there’s no such thing as a closed system.
To the crew, we hope that you take every opportunity to make use of our special, built in Turbulence Simulator™. Use Turbulence Simulator™ to keep cargo pacified for optimum periods of time. In case of fire style self as early-80s prog-rocker.
To the driver, if you happen to forget your video of ‘Transformers’ don’t worry! A330-200 comes with built-in back up tapes of DeGrassi Junior High.
I was googling ‘the year of the rat’ on limewire and was puzzled why I kept coming up with songs that were not the song I had faint radio memories of.
The Year of the Cat.
Hi,
Happy new year n all that.
Wow, I just watched this movie and really, really liked it.
I mean, I’m not usually into german movies but this drama/thriller kept me interested for the whole four hours.
I mean, it was subtle. Really bloody subtle.
Hats off to the dude playing the main stasi agent – great acting, great character. He looked a bit like he was out of Kraftwerk and wore this totally minimalist looking grey jacket.
I wish I could get a jacket like that. I mean, I’d like to say I identify with someone like William Wallace in Breavheart, but the truth is I identify more with Weisler in this movie. A shortish, balding man who had a habit of clenching his fists and holding hiss arms ridgid while walking. The plain grey shirts. I identify with all of that.
It was about him spying on a writer. wikiapeddy has a bit about it.
Like it says, lots of subtle bits. Like, the guy is walking on a shiny hard lino floor into just about to interrogate the only woman in the film – fairly good looking (and you’d certainly fucking hope so if she was the only one) and you can hear one shoe squeaks each time he stand on its heel, walking five or six steps. Excellent. You ever have that happen to you? One shoe a bit squeaky or makes a noise? I have.
It’s a bit funny when you think about it eh? East Germany. Strange to think about it now—just faded right into the background.
Back in ‘89, christmas – I got this fender copy bass guitar, by the brand ‘Action Bass’ The guy in the shop, in the process of assuring me of its quality and in a way of not-saying it was made somewhere in Asia, said it was made in East Germany.
I sometimes think about that – wonder if he was just pulling my leg. t’was a solid instrument though.
What was once here is now gone. Yet we durst not say you why. Tarry not here for a day or three. Thither! Go thither, yon goodly reader!
“Do you like animals?”
“Oh, no.”
“Why is that?”
“Eh?”
“Why?”
“Too many legs. People have two legs. But ah … horses and cows have many legs. I don’t think it’s good.”
I am flying out of here for a pre-christmas and just a bit after christmas break back in Australia, the fabled land of HOJU. For the first time ever the flight is direct from Incheon to Melbourne and am expecting big things due to this directness. The expectation is to have the feet back on the ground ten and a half hours after those big scoops of metal/petroleum force driven turbines drag-off here. Expect to be fresh as a motherfucken daisy at Tulla.
a mere trifle
Chon gi chon
chon gi chon
chon gi chon chon chon
cha chon chon chon
cha chon chon
cha-chigga
cha-chigga cha-chon chon
chon gi chon
chon gi chon
chongy
chongy
Chon gi chon we walked along
on a day rather warmer than this
We saw saw these two
I whipped out my
digital camera (Di-Ca)
Man in orange without being asked
you stepped behind to hide from view
why did you assume
that the picture I wanted to take
was not of you?
Man, Nature, Technology
Chon gi chon.
Okay, this is the last thing I will mention about Japan.
I don’t know that I ever got around to saying how bad I thought Lonely Planet guide books are but that was my conclusion. They’re not fun anymore. They’re made for your granma. On the other hand, the Time Out Tokyo book did have plenty of interesting things to do and see. In the music shops section there is a small personal recommendation by a guy called Cornelius, who’s a Japanese musician. I don’t know his stuff but I do seem to recall that Amon Tobin may have remixed one of his songs. Anyway, Cornelius mentions this shop, Fujiyama and as luck would have it, it was just down the road from where my sister is living.
It’s a smoky little joint full of offerings from young indie musicians. From all genres but all tending to be on the raw side.
The guy running the place is really nice. The hours the pllace is open are irregular but if you go past and it’s open, it’ll be open all night. It’s a shame there’s not really anything like this in Seoul.
Here are a couple of sample tracks from the bunch of stuff I lucky-dipped on and bought. I can’t reproduce the track names properly because they’re in Japanese. the first is from Izumi Kunihiro, his album, Siesta and Walk and Music. Track [3.5Mb].
The second was from a compilation of artists recorded in 2001, the title of the album being Tone Poem Archives. The track selected is by Labcry, it’s name is in Japanese and is here [8.4Mb]
Man I can’t catch a break. The other day I went to the bank to shut down one of the accounts. I did and it all went relatively okay. Later in the day the guy rang to say that he’d made a mistake and that could I come back down to pay a forty dollar fee they’d neglected to charge me. I said sure, thinking about karma. Also he said he’d give me a gift. The gift was a collapsible beach bucket.
When I think about karma and try and make a deal with it, I think that something good should happen to me right away. It should but it doesn’t.
Today I was informed that with another bank, another bank account, they’d accidentally paid me too much overtime, it was my workplace telling me this but it was a fault f the bank’s. 250 bucks too much. They wanted me to pay the cash back. I did. I then realised I had to go to that same bank branch to pay some money into a business’ acct because I want some carbonated mineral water. Carbonated mineral water is hard to come by here (they don’t like the bubbles) and there appears to be only one supplier. The supplier’s website, for some mysterious reason, rejects my korean credit card.
I normally buy mineral water from the chang-dong e-mart but some weeks they don’t have any. Some weeks they don’t have any breakfast cereal. In short, the chang-dong e-mart needs to be nuked from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.
At the local branch they didn’t realise I was the person who’d just voluntarily rectified their $250 mistake. I’d written down one digit wrong in the acct I wanted to deposit into and for this they treated me like a regular arsehole.
I am looking forward to getting my boxes of mineral water, 6-8 weeks from now.
It’s getting cold here. This morning when I woke at the god-awful time of 6am, as I have been sentenced to for the remaining three weeks, the apple weather applet told me that it was -8 degs centigrade outside.
The floor heating has beeen difficult to regulate. In the evening as I unwind it is chilly of my feet but by midnight the heat ramps up and I cook where I lie on the thin mattress.
Last night I dreamt of a deluge and the things that sprung therefrom. I was on my little bike that I have here, riding through the muddy water with tires completely submerged but somehow managing to stay upright.
A moment later I was standing on a garden path with a large (knee-high) toad in front of me. It appeared to be smiling in a subtle way. Its skin was covered in lots of rough bumps that glowed like lava and slowly change colours across the spectrum. I turned to see another had hopped up behind me.
Wasn’t. Wasn’t included. Was excluded from the invitation list to the soiree. He’d once told rj he had a baboon/gorilla heart black as the Congo jungle. The reason, he suspected.
A highly suggestible type of fellow. Had been carrying around pairs and pairs of shoes, still boxed, for what seemed like a week or more.
Had sat up late each night preparing the coffee for percolation. He’d put several beans at a time between pieces of newspaper and smash them with a hammer. What it produced was still not fine enough so he’d role it with a soup can. Had said it was becoming a chore but could not think of another way around the situation.
I just found this little promo for Transformer at the end of a digital version of it. Neat.
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