blog

Happy Black Saturday!

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 04:04:37 +0100

A friend of mine posted this on the Facebooks today and I just had to share it.

I'm not usually that into electronic music that isn't Jackson Jackson, but the music and the animation in this video are absolutely fantastic.

Another thing I learnt today is the name of the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I always thought it was weird that it didn't have a name, and was happy to find out that it did. For those playing at home it's called Holy Saturday or Black Saturday. Growing up I liked to call it Really Horrible Saturday, because it was the time Jesus was dead between the dying on the cross on Friday and the resurrection on Sunday. According to some, Black Saturday is the day that Jesus was down in Hell kicking the devil's butt so he could change the rules of who gets into heaven or something like that. I also like to think he was freeing the prisoners who were sent to Hell based on the old rules.

These are the sorts of things you learn when you participate in Lent when you're not Catholic. I also blame Wikipedia, they're always making me learn things :(.

Since the Pope and Ricky Gervais got to have their own Easter messages this is mine:

On a final note, my Ravenclaw got me the best Easter present ever!

Be good, do good and be safe over the Easter weekend,

Dan

Pinch & a punch for the first day of the month!

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:57:36 +0100

I had a lovely day today; it's good to be back in Australia and back at school. It was also good to miss the heatwave we had while I was away. The only down thing about today is that it's Mick's birthday and once again we're separated by the ocean.

I'm obviously feeling happier than I have been, because I've started doing some poetry and I'm blogging. Note to the three people subscribed here, when I blog I'm happy and confident :D. Anywho, the poem I've started looks like it will be a nice song, so when it's finished I may get a friend to help me put some chords behind it. I won't tell you what happened that inspired me today to write it because I want the words to speak for themselves.

Adios amigos!

So many time to do it in, so little things to do

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:57:15 +0100

Strike that, reverse it.

What's goin' orn? Mick's concert is on in a couple weeks. The 19th of September to be exact. If you went to the home page before this here blog you would have seen this:

Very exciting stuff.
Everything is going along swimmingly. If you come along you'll even get to see ol' Danjanon sing a couple songs. How about that 'ey?

The club I'm involved in on facebook 'The Random Club' had their first not so anual photography competition. Congratulations to all the winners! You will get your prizes very soon if not sooner. 3rd prize gets theirs tomorrow actually. Fun was had by all and there was some pretty random photos entered. I wish I could have given out more prizes to be honest.

What else? What else? I killed 3 guys the other day! It was so intense, I totally sliced one of their heads off! Have I told you I've started playing Dungeons & Dragons? It's great fun and I'm really enjoying hanging out with some new people :D

That's all that's happening in my life at the moment. Except work and that's either too top secret or too boring to blog about. You can pick :D

As a sign off, I propose a toast. *Raises his glass*.

To the Queen! May she line our pockets!

Sorry seems to be the hardest word...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:56:52 +0100

So, at the moment in my life I feel like on more occasions than usual, the word 'sorry' would make things easier. When I was younger my parents instilled in me the importance of apologising. Here is a regular situation involving my brother, my mum and myself.

Mum: Dan, did you hit Matt?

Spoken quietly while avoiding eye contact
Dan: Yes Mum

Mum: What do we know about hitting?

Dan: It's not nice

Mum: So, what do we say?

Dan: Sorry

Mum: Sorry who?

Dan: Sorry Matt

Mum: Sorry for what?

Dan: Sorry Matt for hitting you

Mum: Why are you sorry?

Dan: Sorry Matt for hitting you because I know it's wrong and I don't want to hurt you.

Mum: Now give your brother a hug and go play.

So hopefully, you can see from all that how important apologies were in my childhood. It was important that we said all of it in the one sentence and we couldn't leave until we'd apologised properly. Saying the word sorry was never enough and I still feel that way in my adult life. I feel, as an adult and you wish to apologise, you should know how to do it properly. It shows respect not just to the person, but to apologies. You need to say sorry, who you're sorry to (Matt), what you're sorry for (hitting him), and why you're sorry (I knew it was wrong and I don't want to hurt him).

Look, I'm also a proud person. In situations where an apology might help the relationship with the person I've upset, I may not do it. I'll only do it if I feel I can honestly apologise the way I've been taught how. I'd rather you be angry with me for a little while than have reason to think I'm a liar or a hypocrite.

New eyes, old fear.

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:56:33 +0100

Hey you!

As you may or may not know, I had my eyes checked last week by an optometrist. Turns out I need glasses, which I wasn't expecting which was stupid because I knew I couldn't see as well as I used to.I picked up my glasses and started wearing them straight away. The eye doctor said it may look a bit weird and a little disconcerting to start with, but even having heard that I wasn't prepared. Apparently, what happens, is that your brain is still correcting the bad eyesight that the glasses have already done before the image you are seeing gets to the brain. So, the result of this was that things like DVD cases, which usually look rectangular, became rhomboids. Not only that, but flat surfaces were at an angle and I kept expecting my food, or coffee to slide. Having said that, only a day and a half has passed and things are already starting to look normal. I also think they look pretty if I don't say so myself. You may have already seen, I'll put a photo on the front page.

Over the weekend, I was at my girlfriend's house and by the time I went to take a shower, there was no hot water. This is completely fair, as she has two housemates, one of who has a girlfriendand two other friends stayed over. Suffice to say, I wasn't too keen on a cold shower and I planned to have a shower and next morning instead. My girlfriend would have none of this, and she decided to wash my hair in the bath. But some reason, firstly not known to me, I really didn't like this idea. I knew the fear was irrational, so I decided to show my trust in her and let her do it. As I kneeled over the bath waiting for her to pour water over my head, I felt a great dread in the pit of my stomach. As she poured the water over my head, I began to shake with fear. As soon as I recognised that this fear was exactly how I'd felt when my hair had been washed as a kid, the shake of fear became an uncontrollable shake of laughter. Seems it was a fear that was never fully faced since I got promoted to washing my own hair in the shower.

Well I thought it was amusing anyway. Guess you had to be there.

Carry on

Possibly a bomb, probably a half eaten pie.

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:22:52 +0100

Greetings & Salutations,

Today was generally a good day. Did well at work and got something done for Mick's concert which should be a major help. The launch date keeps creeping closer and closer. Before we know it, it'll be be September the 19th and 'Sincere Journey' by Michael Cook will be available to buy. He was in the local newspaper this week too. You can find the article on their website at

www.riverlandweekly.com.au

So, from that link go to their latest paper, which as I type this is the 16/7/09, and go to page 4

Last night at work I was dropped off at my usual public transport punnet and I had a quarter of an hour to wait. So I'm waiting by the stop and I see a paper bag and I thought to myself "huh, someone's left their lunch on the seat.". So, I'm listening to my ipod and looking at the little paper bag outta the corner of my eye and wondering "what are the odds that that bag has a bomb in it?".

I edged a couple metres away.

The next thought that crossed my mind was "If that was a bomb. Of course hypothetically speaking. I don't really think it's a bomb, that's silly. But, hypothetically, what would its blast radius be?"

I edged a couple more meters away.

Although only a maximum of 5 minutes had passed according to the clock on my phone, it had felt like an age.

Slowly but surely I edged myself further and further away to the end of the station until I was as far as practically possible I sent an SMS to my girlfriend telling her I loved her and was proud of her. I had actually managed to convince myself that I might be blown up waiting for the frickin' tram by a half eaten pie!

In other news...

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 05:57:13 +0100

Hello everyone,

I know that there are millions of people all over the world reading my blog weekly for important updates of my life and the world around me. So when this happened a little while ago I found that it was important enough for me to talk about. This is something that I feel has effected pretty much everyone around the world in some way or another. Whether they felt it touched them personally or not at the very least they would be hearing people talk about it non stop. It's in the media like a virus and I feel it could be something that is never going to be stopped being talked about in one way or another. When I heard the news, like many others, I was shocked. I know that people will agree that initially they felt it physically how important an event this was for the world.

Then of course, there is the other side of the coin. People who didn't and don't care. People who made light of the importance of the whole situation. These are the people that continue to make jokes, that are both offensive and insensitive. I figure that if you don't care about it, why do you have to be a dick and belittle the people who do?

When I first heard the news I was mortified... No wait, I'm confused. That's not the word I'm looking for at all. I was ecstatic and I was so happy that I cheered for joy. I told everyone that I met about the great news. My flat mates thought I was a little weird for such a strong emotional reaction. There weren't many people who shared my enthusiasm either. I only know of one person who felt the same way as I did. People have continually told me that it's unimportant, but I refuse to admit that as I know it to be false. When I was younger I loved and admired him and as I got older I missed having what I remembered around.

Every single day since the day they decided to bring back my beloved Barney Banana has been better than the preceding one.

In other news that I'm sure you've all heard, Michael Jackson has passed away. I think the world has lost a great talent and as his family doesn't know me for a bar of soap, my condolences goes out to those fans who are devastated. Also to the families of the fans so devastated that they decided that they would rather take their own lives than live in a world without the king of pop.

Links, Pr0n & Mick

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:16:11 +0100

So, when I put all the links up on my link page I realised it'd be the polite thing to ask some of the more official type websites (eg ones that aren't youtube accounts and sites for people I don't personally know) for permission to link to their site. I got onto the people at Questionable content, icanhascheezburger, Least I can Do and Cyanide and Happiness. XKCD has something on their FAQ giving people permission as long as you give them credit. I had a couple of prompt replies and I'm still waiting on the others, but I figure I've done the right thing by asking. The interesting one was from the guys at Cyanide and Happiness. Their reply said:

"Totally fine. Thanks!"

and the next day their comic looked like this:

Coincidence? Probably... But it's funny to think that I was the inspiration. I'm famous :D... no wait, I'm confused :(

In other news, Mick has a date set for his CD launch concert! All the details are on a group he's made on facebook.
Link here : http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=95698448738&ref=ts

If you don't know already, I'm incrediblly excited about this :D. If you can make it, I highly recommend it. If not, don't worry you can always order a CD after it's launched.

Fare thee well! and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well.
~Lord Byron

Thoughts on comments and a Gnomeling

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:01:22 +0100

I've been enjoying playing around with this little site of mine and as you can probably tell I'm still working out some of the kinks. One thing that's puzzled me since its creation had been irking me. My counter on my front page has been showing a handful of people visiting the site, but it seemed that no one thought any of my stories or blogs were interesting enough to comment on. It made me a little sad, ya know? A couple of days ago I thought to myself "maybe comments aren't automatically put onto blogs. Maybe I have to find some sort of widget or comment code". Tabaneske confirmed this for me. So now, my friends, you can comment on any of my blog posts or anything I post in 'Poetry and Prose'. Please do so :)

Yesterday, I was the only guy at my cousin's Hens night. It was a million miles of awesome! The first activity of the day was painting a plaster mould. We were enjoying ourselves so much that we totally skipped the second activity. We stayed for over 3 hours! Anywho, I painted myself a garden gnome who I have decided to call Francis Gnomeling. I thought it'd be a funny idea for him to have adventures (like the gnome in Amelie) which I could then post up here. So, keep your eyes on this here blog to see what ol' Franky gets up to.

Over and out

The duality of blogging and Sincere Journey

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:00:26 +0100

Hello to everyone out there on the internets who read my blog, (Seriously, it would have been quicker to have said "Hi Tabaneske and Mysticskeptic!"

I'm of two minds regarding this here blog. On the one hand I don't want to go around telling people about it, cos I kinda feel that it's a little like shameless self promoting. On the other hand I know I'd like it if I saw the counter on the front page go higher than 5. The funny thing is, the reason that it's a 5 is that I've viewed my own site on multiple computers. The frustrating thing is, that since I don't want to self promote, I'm not really telling people my site exists and thus no one is looking at it.

Once I begin to add videos, I think there'll be a little more traffic. I guess I want the traffic to come here on its own accord, not because I've hounded my friends to...If that makes any sense. I've discovered lately that you can do video reviews for books et all on Amazon.com, so I might do that on top of my music vids. Right now I have two or three songs that I can play off by heart, which is new for me. When I used to play clarinet I was pretty good at sight reading, but when it came to memorising a piece, I was shite. Anywho, the reason I haven't done any videos yet is that I wanted to get Mick to do the harmonies of the first one that I put up.

Speaking of Mick, I found out last night that his first album is completed! This is very exciting stuff people. Mick has always been incredibly talented, but now he has something physical that can promote his music. Before he only had himself to show for all his years of dedication, don't get me wrong, that's still good. What I'm saying is, that his music can now be all over the world at once. It's like he's cloned his creativity! You'll be able to order "Sincere Journey" by Michael Cook pretty soon or download them from Amazon or possibly itunes. I'll keep you posted on the progress.

Before I go, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TABANESKE! Her site can be found on my links page

Ev Love <3