It’s raining today, there’re fucking umbrellas everywhere. Umbrellas are up there with Hyundais on my hatred scale. That’s pretty high up.

Inadvertists or just plain old bastards stalk the streets with umbrellas that I’m sure should be shading a table in a beer garden somewhere.

Fucking dozy bastards, it’s hardly raining, you’re blocking the footpath and you walk too slow.

No pedestrian licence for you.

My girlfriend also hates umbrellas. This is a trait I find particularly endearing.

I haven’t been posting lately due to extreme happiness. I’m either at work, which is busy and stimulating, or spending time with my beautiful girl. Either way, time flies.

When I do post, it is in idle moments (currently on a bus going home). But I feel a real motivation to write something big. It’ll happen soon.

Bought a shitload of new clothes recently–and two new guitars. Heading home to do my washing tonight.

In other news, and to the astoundment of those that know me, I’ve been waking up at around 6 every morning.

Almost at my stop, got to go …

I don’t believe in hell, but if I did, my personal hell would be:

A world where the only cars were Hyundais. I’d spend the day constantly cold and wet, ironing the same shirt endlessly. Screaming children would run about vomiting on me while LeAnn Rimes pumped ‘Can’t fight the moonlight’ out of distorting speakers.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner would be mashed pumpkin, and the only thing to drink would be Dr Pepper.

The phone would ring constantly, but if you picked up, it would always be a telemarketer.

Streets would be covered in dogshit and the only footwear would be thongs.

What’s your hell?

(written on a phone in a cafe while I wait for a store to open so I can buy a shirt to wear to work …)

Society is mad. Completely fuckin’ bonkers.

I’m all for seatbelts and airbags and all of those things that make death a little harder to slip into, but at some point people have to take responsibility for themselves.

If you are too stupid to wear a seatbelt, that airbag shouldn’t save you. Like that muppet who sued MacDonalds after burning herself with a hot coffee. It’s coffee, you moron, it’s meant to be hot.

Here’s another crazy bit of health and safety bullshit.

We need less health and safety–bring back natural selection.

I’m sitting on a pub veranda with a pint, watching the city move.

Today I had some rice paper rolls for lunch. I noticed something quite interesting–the texture of moist rice paper is near identical to the skin of a green tree frog.

So if you’ve ever wondered what a frog’s skin feels like, touch some rice paper.

Alternatively, if you’ve never felt the delicate cling of a rice paper roll, grab yourself a frog.

As you were–I’m getting back to my beer.

I’m on the bus heading home after a half day at work. I’m not really any more tired than usual; just feel a bit self indulgent. The world can wait.

Listening to ACDC sing about some girl who has rhythm. I have a girl at the moment whom I adore; things are going well–I’m so scared something will happen to fuck things up.

I over-analyse things too much and play out things too far in my head. It’s useful for creating believable characters for fiction, but so draining in day-to-day life.

I, like many people, strive to attain something close to perfection in the various aspects of life; thing is, it’s never quite achievable.

I can’t get the colours to match up on my dual screen set-up at work–I guess I should just be happy with what I have.

Here are some photos from my Nokia e71. The first is from a storm in the city recently. The rest are from an excursion to the beach today.

The e71 has a 3.2 megapixel camera; however, it has a tiny lens, and doesn’t take very good photos. These images have been put through IrfanView to adjust colours (and in some cases other things). There is still quite a lot of noise in the images, but they turned out viewable for the net.

I’m writing this from the back of a moving car. We’re heading interstate to go to a certain beach; the weather is sweet, and I’m pretty sure the birds are singing.

I’ve finally got this mobile internet thing connected and working, and at some stage I’ll find a mobile blogging client that will let me post pictures on the fly.

Technology is cool.

People annoy the shit out of me, particularly pedestrians—but yesterday, I found a new kind of wanker.

I was walking down the street to meet some friends for lunch. I was running a bit late due to a meeting that had run overtime. One of those guys that spend too much time in the gym stepped out of a doorway in front of me. He wore too-tight clothing and waddled down the street, massive steroid-boosted thighs crushing tiny balls, I expect. He had a phone pressed against his ear like he was trying to affix a poster to a power pole using only spit.

However, on account of being a wanker, he held his arm perpendicular to his head like some kind of fucked-up walking right-angle triangle.

‘Yeah, mate, yeah,’ he grunted into the phone. ‘I’m walking down the street now.’

And he was, being a dickhead, elbow jutting out, meandering all over the footpath. It wasn’t just the people behind him who were being impeded, people coming towards him were being forced into the gutter.

When I’m king, this fucker won’t be getting a pedestrian licence.

I was house-sitting for a friend of a friend, looking after a little wooden house filled with hundreds of cats. Pictures of cats, tapestries of cats, little figurines, stuffed toys, paintings, postcards, paw-print pictures painted by cats, and one real, live, old, grumpy and neurotic cat.

His name was Hamish, and he was mental.

I was there for a week. I sat around eating curries, drinking wine and reading books on the little sunny veranda out the back. I played some guitar and fed the cat.

It was quite warm, so I’d left the veranda doors open to allow a cool breeze and the schizophrenic cat ingress. I’d fallen asleep at about 11:00 and stayed that way until I woke up at about 3:00 am. Something had woken me up. Something was in the room.

It’s the cat, I thought. He’s lonely and wants some company.

‘Hey, Hamish,’ I called out towards the rustling noise in the corner of the room.

‘Come here, puddy cat.’

The noise in the corner of the room walked in front of the window. The silhouette was not that of a cat.

OK, I’m awake now.

I switched the light on, and there on the window sill was a possum. Its eyes twinkled and its nose twitched. Well, this is going to be fun, I thought.

I got on the other side of the bed, so that it had a clear path to the door, and grabbed a pillow. I threw the pillow at the possum, making a shooing noise—it bounced off and the possum just crouched there looking at me, twitching. I tried again with another pillow. Then some stuffed toys that were lying around. Bert didn’t work, either did Ernie. The possum sat in a pile of pillows and toys, glaring at me. It did not look very happy.

Careful not to turn my back on it, I sidled over the bed and went looking for fresh ammunition. What I found was a broom.

I went back into the room to face the possum, resuming my position on the far side of the bed. ‘Look, possum,’ I said. ‘It’s three o’clock in the fucking morning. Can you just, like, fuck off?’

It looked at me and its little pink nose quivered.

OK, here we go, I thought and reached out with the broom. I gave it a tentative poke—it did not move. I pushed it harder—the thing was just a ball of pure muscle—it pushed back. I had no idea possums were that strong, and despite its inherent furriness, there was no way I was going to try and pick it up. It had some serious tree-climbing claws.

It was about 3:30 now, and I was dead tired. I switched the light off and got back into my now pillowless bed. I tried closing my eyes, but I could sense the possum watching me. I opened my eyes and it was still in the same place, sitting on the window sill. Oh, fuck this.

I got out of bed, switched on the light and stared at the possum. It stared back.

Then I had a thought. Carefully, I reversed the broom and held it by the sweeping end. I got a bit closer, closer than I wanted to be, and used the broom to reach past the possum and fumble with the catch on the window. I could picture the possum running up the broom and trying to climb me like a tree, but thankfully it didn’t.

I got the window open and the possum launched itself straight out.