Monthly Archives: September 2003

Low voltage

Posted on by
Reply

I had dinner with my Dad tonight at La Porchetta, which I picked based on other people’s positive comments in LJ.

I discovered that La Porchetta is part of an Australian-based restaurant chain. It’s very much an Australian Italian restaurant, which is different from American Italian restaurants and, of course, Italian Italian restaurants.

From what I can tell, the Australian La Porchettas are going for a kind of warmer, friendlier family restaurant, but the ones in Auckland are a bit more urban and sophisticated. The decor at the Hobson Street one was quite stark with lots of flat surfaces, so the sound was bouncing off everything, making it kinda noisy.

The food was good. I had fettuccini with a salmon and sundried tomato sauce and a side salad. I got the appetiser size and that was really filling. I’d hate to have to tackle the main size. For dessert I had a baci bombe, which was (I think) a chocolate and hazelnut ice cream concoction. It’s good food at cheap prices. And the best thing was I didn’t leave the restaurant feeling like my pants were going to burst.

Rock rock rock

Posted on by
Reply

Hey, you know how when people write about their dreams in their LiveJournal it’s really boring because essentially it’s just fiction? Yeah, shut up. I had two dreams last night featuring musicians, the boys from Nesian Mystik and Alex James, the bass player from Blur.

In the Nesian Mystik dream I was driving down the road I park my car on, looking for a parking space. I saw a big van filled with guys and parked near them and asked if they were going to be moving soon. I noticed it was Nesian Mystik in the van. They said they would be moving right then. I asked if I could have their parking space. They said it was actually going to be used by someone else. I thanked them and parked my car in the space right in front of them, then went back and told them how much I loved their album. For the record, I have not heard Nesian Mystik’s album.

The Alex James dream was… well, it was exactly the right kind of dream that should be dreamed about Alex James.

The WBC possibly have a new logo. I think it may actually be a prototype, open to refinements. The new logo has: roses, dice, flames, tattoo-style wavy lines, stars, a microphone and the band’s name. Are there enough elements in the logo, or is there room for more? I think a Coop-style devilwoman should be resting her arse on the top of the W.

<stuuu> omg the dice are on fire. thats new
<stuuu> the dice werenty on fire in teh prototypes

I went to the King’s Arse to see the Shrugs play. I got there just as they were playing the final notes in the last song of their set. Dammit. But I was able to pick up the special CD commemorating the evening that included a new track from the Shrugs. Oh, but then when I got it home and tried to play it I discovered that the CD was blank. I took it back and politely yelled at the munter on the door and made him give me a new one. I did stick around to see a bit of the next band, The Feds, but they were very boring so I left.

The rest of my day has been somewhat unrockin’.

My Fashion Moment

Posted on by
Reply

The Face magazine has a regular feature called “My Fashion Moment” where a reasonably styley person supplies a photo of themselves wearing something that defined a kind of fashion moment in their past.

I was trying to think if I had a fashion moment and was almost going to declare that I had no fashion moments, when I remembered this photo:

It was taken in 1991, when I was 16. There are two important elements to this photo.

1. Yes, I am voguing. I jumped on the voguing bandwagon when Malcolm McLaren released his 1989 album “Waltz Darling”. His attempt at mainstreaming voguing didn’t work, and it slunk back into the gay underground, only to be gloriously and triumphantly resurrected the following year when Madonna released her superb dance tune “Vogue”. So there I am, standing in the kitchen, striking a pose.

2. Check out the top I’m wearing. Yes, it’s a hoodie, but more importantly, it’s a baggy hoodie. This was about a year after the Happy Mondays had released “Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches”, which included the song “Loose Fit” and along with frontman Shaun Ryder’s personal style, created the baggy culture. Incorporating elements of rock and rave cultures, baggy fashion had even made it to Glassons. It’s probably also worth noting that that top is the only yellow item of clothing I’ve every voluntarily owned.

So, punk svengali Malcolm McLaren, pop high priestess Madonna and lazy pop poet Shaun Ryder. These three icons have all, in their own special way, helped mould and shape me into the person I am today.

Only, I didn’t actually know that back in 1991.

The bee and the spider

Posted on by
Reply

I was about to take a shower today when I noticed a bumble bee was hanging out on a hand towel by the corner of the bath. I didn’t want to run the risk of the bee stinging me on my arse when I was on the shower, so I knew that the bee had to be exterminated.

It seemed very groggy and was doing a really lazy buzz, possibly because it was dying. I picked up the hand towel and tried to shake the bee off it into the toilet, but the bee was hanging on. A spider who had also been hanging out in the environs of the towel fell off and into the toilet. I wiggled the towel more, and eventually the bee fell into the toilet.

I flushed the toilet and the bee was swept away, but amazingly the spider remained on top of the water. Once the flushing had stopped the spider was left just swimming around. I decided that he’d earned a bit of freedom, so I helped him out and put him back on the towel.

Later when I was in the shower I noticed the spider walk around the edge of the bath to visit me. Bloody pervert spider!

Keeping the English language alive

Posted on by
Reply

I was bored, doing a search for my web site and found a mention of it on the Oxford English Dictionary’s website.

Also during 2002, and largely unnoticed, the OED itself has begun to include quotations found on the Web as evidence in its entries. The first batch of such entries, published in June, included quotations from web sites such as www.secret-passage.com (for the rare word miserabilistic), and newsgroups such as sci.chem (for miscoloration ). While of course there are cases where a word’s first known occurrence is in an online source, the Web has also proved useful as a source of evidence that words which have not been found in conventionally published sources are in fact still in use: for example, both miscoloration and miserabilistic would have required an ‘obsolete’ label were it not for these postdatings from the Web.

Yes, it’s true. If it weren’t for my use of miserabilistic (to refer to Morrissey, of course), then the OED would have put in a little note to indicate that it was obsolete. I feel like I’ve helped save an endangered species.

This has got me thinking. Maybe I could go through my copy of the OED and pick out some obsolete words and start using them to see if they’ll get taken off the obsolete list.