Everything I learned was wrong.

If I was to cast my mind back less than three years ago, placing myself at a table with IG and Matt, the conversation would always invariably turn to cars. (Yeah, I know, thats where most guy conversations go to eventually - but in the case of IG and Matt the subject was almost afforded pornography status.)

Normally I can hold my own in most conversations, including car conversations; but compared to these two, my car knowledge is infantile.

"You know I really love the [insert car here]" said Matt.

"Yeah, thats a great car, and a really good buy right now. You really need the [insert specific model here] with the [insert lengthy specification] engine produced from [insert obscure data here]", IG would retort.

"Yes", Matt would say, in an almost James Bond way, raising his eyebrow and bourbon in appreciation.

I swear, it was like watching that TV program Mastermind, with a specialist subject in Car-ography - a wonder to behold, at least in a train spotter kind of way.

I was warned...

Thought their verbal jousting I came to learn that every car I ever liked (or brought) was really a pile of shit. Even my current car; a SW20 3SGTE Toyota MR2 with a 2 liter turbocharged engine was a poor choice; especially when IG went to great pains to inform me that CAR magazine led their front cover review of my Toyota with the subtext "How Toyota ruined the MR2".

Classic Beauty of the Karmann Ghia

Matt always wanted a Karmann Ghia, and Ian's latest car is a cool old Mercedes. I once wanted a 2.8 Injected Capri. So went those summer days all those years ago; they laughed at my uninformed lack lustre choices, and all was right with the world.

At least until this week.

I admit I've been worried about Matt since he started talking about family cars. I understand owning a family car is important - I understand you have to be practical about these sort of things - you really cant judge a person because of his "situation" [read: kids].

The chatter didn't stop though... it's as if the cars he once dreamed no longer have no meaning.
Just the other week Matt told me he was looking for an 1600 cc car for the family; his car would probably be a 1000 cc variety. There was no warning - I was waiting for a punch line that was never delivered.

He was SERIOUS.

I have to tell you I was concerned. I immediately rang IG and he confirmed my fears; I didn't know what to say - I still don't. It was then that IG admitted to me that he was looking to buy a Holden Commodore.

There's an interesting livery behind today's Commodore

It is finally the beginning of the end. There's no point of getting up tomorrow.

Case in point? I wouldn't buy a Commodore - because even I know how uncool that would be.

Artist impression of IG's new outfit.

Sap alert - # 4 - You have been warned

There is no reason for this, except to say I hate special limited versions of albums that contain extra tracks that cant be downloaded off iTunes - and can't now be brought.

It turned out I actually have Pete Yorn's "Music for the Morning After" - but as you've probably guessed, not this particular song which is (sometimes) Track 15.

Time out for clarity

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)

Sweet as

Sweet as - Kiwi translation "Everythings great"

Ca

Don't worry. There are no rules. Sure there will always be someone better, but rest assured also someone much, much worse.
The important first thing, is to make a difference for yourself.

I've blogged before about people who give up because they think they don't have enough talent. My soul lifts a little when I see someone sing horrifically at karaoke; not because he or she sang poorly, but because regardless, they got up and sang - their joy in the song is the important thing to behold.

Sure - it's hard to find your stride, but like a baby's first steps turn into a wobbly run, so too should we expect a rocky road to our success. And how, after all this, do we measure our progress? Simple: from where we started.

California - You have a great insight, and even better taste in the blogs you visit. :)
I hope you start writing online soon, and send me a link.

Unwedible

I'd like to think the delay between posts lately is more a case of quality over quantity, however the truth is a little closer to me having nothing important to say.

I wonder if I'm becoming a little [read a lot] boring, and perhaps instead, a little too eccentric. My works "do" is tomorrow, and I'm not attending. I really hate playing the "networking" game - frankly along with all the other bullshit reasons for not going, I live in fear of boring my workmates to death. I don't know about you but I'd imagine someone is infinitely more interesting, before finding out in fact they're not.

There is a definite sliding scale to boredom. My mum would probably argue that my Dad is the litmus test; thankfully thus far I am not surgically attached to the couch watching golf on Sky TV day after day being cursed at.

I count my mercies where I can. :)

All this aside, I often hear that my male friends are also boring. Their wives tell me these sorts of things all the time; true, often when I'm out and about doing stuff with them.

According to the girls - "he" (never the boys name - always "he") never takes them anywhere, buys them anything, or says anything interesting any longer . I always wanted to ask if they ever did (take/buy/say) - and if "he" hadn't changed so much as their expectations of him.

Then - just as I'm starting to think I might be higher on the sliding scale than I first thought, I realize the horrible truth: I actually belong to another subset of humanity all together. Singledom.

So, I have no kids to tie me down, I have no mortgage to hold me back, and I have no partner to disappoint - yet here I sit, at home in front of my iMac, postulating the meaning of boredom on a Friday, while it turns out it was here with me all along.

Boredom and Irony; laughing with me - right?

Doctor Horrible

So love this. I cant get the song "My Freeze Ray" at 3:45 out of my head.

Disclaimer - I am not Doctor Horrible (although the similarities are scarily close).



Sing along with me ?

Laundry day
See you there
Under things
Tumbling

Wanna say
Love your hair
Here I go
Mumbling

With my freeze ray I will stop the world
With my freeze ray I will
find the time to find the words to

Tell you how
How you make
Make me feel
What’s the phrase?
Like a fool
Kinda sick
Special needs
Anyways

With my freeze ray I will stop the pain
It’s not a death ray or an ice beam
That’s all Johnny Snow
I just think you need time to know
That I’m the guy to make it real
The feelings you don’t dare to feel
I’ll bend the world to our will
And we’ll make time stand still
That’s the plan
Rule the world
You and me
Any day
Love your hair

Good Love

And so the John Mayer Lovefest continues :)

Mixed Dates

I don't often talk about dates in this forum. Those who know me well could attest to my over zealous privacy when it comes to others in my life. I'm *very* old fashioned when it comes to this sort of thing - I don't even talk to my closest friends about my love life - in my mind there are only two people who should know - if you know what I mean.

Last night however didn't really count, because it wasn't that kind of date.

I picked her up at seven, previously explaining the plan was to go to my place, and grab a couple of takeout pizza's, watching some DVD's at home.
I should have known when she stepped into the car: she was dressed "to the nines", even wearing high healed shoes.

On the way to my place she asked what we were having for dinner - I explained we would go home, call up a pizza and relax on the couch to watch a DVD or two with a nice bottle of wine. "I don't like those sort of pizza's", she said, perturbed. I asked her what sort of pizza she liked, she responded "Authentic Pizza, From a real Italian Pizza place".

Right there and then I wanted to turn the car around, and take her home. Instead I mentally counted to ten. We went to a proper Italian restaurant, before heading home to watch a movie.

In the end, the evening went OK, even though it's fair to say alarm bells went off all night. Complaints over the wine glasses at the restaurant, coupled with issues with the manager over a mistake in the wine order didn't make for a relaxing evening. Fawning over my Television, asking if it was the latest model was the last straw.

She may be a stunning girl, but she can be stunning for someone else. The girl I love will have an inner light that touches everyone she passes - she'll be stunning in more ways than one - she wont give a care for the size of my television set, and will love the wine, and not the glass in comes in.

Part of knowing what you want, is knowing what you don't, I'm thinking.

Noiseworks

Sorry about the quick trip back to the 80's - You can blame Jacie

You had me at Hewn

Hewn is a lovely word; a word that conjures up images of hard work and beautiful outcomes. Not much is hewn these days. In a world of disposable items and standards you really have to search hard for your inspiration.
Part of what makes me me is a desire to bring things back from the edge of disrepair. I'm not alone here; many people restore furniture, cars, and motorcycles in an attempt to bring something old (and possibly unloved) back from the brink.
Within this ethos there often lies a belief that everything new isn't as good as what came before it. But this is not always the case.
Just last week I discovered that the most recent Apple Macbook's were hewn out of a solid block of aluminum. The reason for Apple doing this, (apart from the obvious sexiness),was the resulting increased tensile strength. Tensile strength aside; it's still a bloody sexy idea!
I am so in love with the idea of making something from a solid block of metal - a modern day corporate sculpture for those who appreciate the exercise.
Thank God there are still companies out there building quality non disposable products. One day thirty years from now - I wonder if some geeky twenty year old will dust off an old 2009 Macbook pro he found in his Dads garage and marvel at how they did things way back when people actually took pride in what they built.

And that's today we're taking about here people :)

Meanwhile, back in the more immediate future, my Raleigh Chopper build is reaching it's final stages. In a wild fit of recklessness I have thrown logic to the four winds and have replaced all the old imperial nuts and bolts with new stainless steel metric equivalents. One wonders if one will be struck down for such heresy; perhaps my saving grace being the extensive re-chroming work undertaken in the last week. I cant be certain, but I suspect that the bill for this rebuild, if spent wisely, would have purchased a pretty nice motorcycle from the late 80's.
I take a certain solace in the fact that that said motorcycle restoring would have probably cost me as much as a pretty neat 1966 American Ford "Pony" notch-back in original condition - and thus the cycle would have perpetuated ad nausium, culminating in night terrors with me waking up screaming "What the fuck am I doing! ". {1}

The one remaining question yet to be answered is what the hell I'm going to do with the bike when it's finished; given I'm not actually going to ride it .....kidding...... I hope.

I wish my laptop was hewn.
It isn't ....
But it is the next best thing, in it's aluminum skin.
And that, my friends,
Is the story of this lads life. :)

{1} I'm only saying this because I've been there before - and it's only now I realize all these years later - I haven't really learned a fucking thing.

The Kill

Apologies for the ongoing musical motif - It's been a bit of a long grind lately with some long hours at work. It's frustrating when the words only seem to come when I'm tucked up warm in bed, and not when I'm in front of my iMac.

I have an idea for a post I'm working on, but it's not really taking shape. Perhaps after tonight I can make some headway on it.

I have been listening to the following song of late. I only mention this because 1000km away the other day I found IG listening to it too - which is odd given its low airplay, and the fact I don't listen to commercial radio at all.

I'd like to say I was this bitter, but truth be told, although I can identify with the tone, right now this isn't exactly me. Enjoy...

I tried to be someone else
But nothing seemed to change
I know now, this is who I really am inside.
Finally found myself
Fighting for a chance.
I know now, this is who I really am.

Things that matter

Because it's always important to remember the small stuff, as well as the important days.

Starlight - Muse

We should all dance more



Even if you dance like me.

Repetition

Yeah - some might know I've posted this song before.



But it's almost like I don't listen most days.
Maybe if I hear it enough times? :)

The Youth of Today

This photo [1] speaks volumes.

This guy may accept a new toy every day; even a regular diaper change, not to mention our unequivocal love and attention.

But don't let that sly smile fool you. This guy, and his crew have a plan.

And it's not gunna be pretty come the revolution.

Forewarned is forearmed guys :)

[1] Photo from Mum

Man in the Mirror

After George Michael - I really didn't have a choice did I?

The changes that will make the most difference to our world
Will never be made by the few doing more
But by many, each playing a small part.

Off the hook.

After a hectic couple of months at work, a super secret long weekend away in Dunedin seemed like a good idea. A few hours after stepping off the plane I found myself driving down the Green Island Motorway, thinking how clean the windows on my Dad's car were. Upon reflection I believe it's just that the air down here that makes things seem a little sharper. You cant beat Dunedin in spring.

My trip was well timed. IG had recently banned his wife from reading my blog - because, he later admitted, my posts had been rather depressing of late. We agreed to disagree, especially around my whole "end of the world" posts a few weeks ago. I explained my concept of grabbing pizzas while waiting to get through the pearly gates - as there would be a bit of a crowd. He didn't buy it. His fix the walk, fix the man philosophy hard at work.

Like Di, IG must have thought that living and dropping off one by one would be preferable to dying at the same instant in time. Our family cat of 18 years is slowly dying. He was a fierce great loving beast of a cat, but when I come back at Christmas he wont be here. What's great about that? I wouldn't miss him so much if I wasn't here to miss him at all. That must make sense in some twisted way - right?

I suppose IG was just relieved that I was not visiting Dunedin to return everything I had borrowed from him over the years. [1]

[1] In his mind, this step being one of the first on the road to "ending it all"

Trips to Dunedin can have serious undertones it seems.
This is much removed from my shallow Auckland existence :)

When I moved to Auckland, I was introduced to a much younger social circle, and thus was thrust into many events I had already experienced previously in Dunedin. In Auckland there were still 21st's and weddings to be had, whilst in Dunedin many of my friends had already followed the path to domestic bliss: in short they were all old. :)
Conversely my trips back to Dunedin involve more grown up - adult situations. My friends kids are getting older (as are we all). The problems faced here seem somehow much more more serious than those I remember ten or fifteen years ago, with more far reaching consequences to boot. I find it odd to discover in the intervening six years I have become more cut and dried (perhaps more dried), and less flexible in more ways than one.
I'm not sure I don't mind it either - there's some comfort in being certain about stuff: even if you're completely wrong!

I think my biggest epiphany of all the weekend, is that the answers to all these issues don't lie in one particular life. There are no absolute truths - it's a matter of finding your own truth in your own space and time. And if your truths are different to mine - so be it. [2]

[2] Except if the "different" physic doing my Mum's "reading" on Thursday pops up the same "name" where I'm concerned once again; in which case, all bets are off.

So dont worry IG, you may receive all those DVDs after all.

Oh - and for those of you I've depressed, this should keep the tone of the post a little more balanced.....

Why we may be worthy

I saw this story linked to on Dooce.

If you ever wondered what we are here on the planet to do, this would have to be an excellent start. Stuff like this restores my faith in humanity.

I hope you have a lovely day.

Read this.

The Rocket Summer

This is a Colin Hay song.



but I think I prefer this version.