Category Archives: LJ

Posts which originated over on my LiveJournal site.

Page 123, prescription drug abuse

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The Page 123 meme was flying around LiveJournal tonight and I was tagged twice. Demands were made that I ought to…

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag 5 people.

I was at work when I first read it and tried to have a go during my break. The nearest book to me was the Concise Oxford Dictionary, but while page 123 offered much in the way of words, it didn’t really do sentences.

I wandered off to find the next suitable book that came my way. Time Atlas, no. Maori dictionary, no. Trinny and Susannah’s “What You Wear Can Change Your Life”, er, OK. Except page 123 of that was a picture of the pair wearing nice clothes.

So at home I tried again. The nearest book was “We Could Have Been The Wombles: The Weird and Wonderful World of One Hit Wonders”. It sounds like, right, it could be a goldmine of choice sentences. Except page 123 offered up these three sentences:

Bud. Wise. Er.

This is an absolute shemozzle.

Instead I will muse upon the news that Robbie Williams has checked himself into rehab for addiction to prescription medicine.

Now, I’m not a Robbie fan in the traditional sense, but I bought his last album, Rudebox (and it’s really good, in a born-in-1974 kind of way).

One of songs is called Good Doctor, and it’s a cheerful, yet slightly dark, celebration of abusing prescription medicine. The song ends with this spoken bit:

Know what, doc? It’s not like I’ve been doing any research or anything, but if you could give me any of the following pills, I’d be very very grateful cos I feel poorly. So that’s codeine, morphine, opium, methadone, meperidine, hydro- and oxycodone, buprenorphine, butorphanol, Adderall, Doral. But not St John’s wort, cos I can get that at Boots.

See, Dr House is addicted to Vicodin, but he has a gammy leg and is a fictional character. Now, I’m not a doctor, but having just looked up all those drugs on Wikipedia, I can officially state that if you are a real person and write a song about desiring a shitload of powerful opiates, then rehab is probably a good choice.

More blending

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Last night was another Public Address Great Blend event. This time it was held at the brand new venue atop the Auckland Museum. Initially the splendid panoramic views of Auckland city offered consisted of grey, rainy streets, but once the sun went down, the city lights looked completely awesome.

First on the evening’s programme were Matt Heath and Chris Stapp, who did a look back at a good 10 years of “Back of the Y”. I was delighted to learn two things:

1) The first film Matt saw on video was probably “Clue“. This is one of my favourite films and one of the few I can quote dialogue from. (“Communism was just a red herring!”)

2) The first “Back of the Y” TV programme on Triangle TV was based on/inspired by the Mega Memory infomercial from the mid-’90s. The infomercial was centred around “The Danny Bonaduce Show”, which seemed to exist for the sole purpose of promoting Mega Memory. The house band, The Critics, were the vile inspiration for Deja Voodoo, and history was made.

Then it was time for the panel, this time discussing online media. The panellist were Ben Goodger from Google, Kristine Garcia from the Herald Online, Rob McKinnon of TheyWorkForYou.co.nz, and Rick Ellis, CEO of TVNZ.

So it was an interesting discussion, but a lot of the time it was Rob hassling Kristine and Rick. There’s a bit of a gap between the geek idea of how online media would ideally work and how things happen when big companies make it so, but it seems that people are moving in the right direction, albeit rather slowly at times.

After the panel we were treated to some dancing! The lights went down and a small group of dancers came out wearing LED suits, looking like something out of Tron. It was completely awesome and tickled the arty and geeky parts of me.

And then it was time to stand around and talk with everyone, which is often the most fun part of these events. The evening wound down and I wandered off into the night, inspired and stimulated, and with renewed motivation to work on my new website thing.

But, hey, where were the saussies this time? It just isn’t a Great Blend without a barbecue!

Isle de Waiheke

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I spent the last few days on Waiheke Island with the whanau. Man, it was hot. It didn’t feel like Auckland – more like a tropical island.

While Waiheke is rapidly being overrun by holiday homes and vineyards, there is still a core of residents, many of whom look like they live there because they cannot, for whatever reason, live in a city.

Waiheke has several Old Waiheke Men. Their look usually consists of a long grey or white beard, messy hair, a threadbare singlet, rainbow-coloured shorts, tanned, leathery skin, and bare feet.

While there is a parking warden, locals do not like getting tickets. One guy dramatically ripped up his parking ticket on the main street (or at least attempted to, because it was made of that thick plasticy paper. Another guy attempted to sweet talk his way out of getting a ticket for an expired WOF, but when that didn’t work, he switched to verbally abusing the warden, before angrily driving off. Yeah, that’ll work.

There are lot of Waihekeans sporting tattoos that were en vogue in the mid ’90s. I saw one guy with an elaborate Nine Inch Nails tattoo, another guy with a Celtic snake wrapped around his arm, and many many of those thorny armband tattoos.

But for both locals and visitors, there was Sculptures on the Gulf. I trekked up and down and around looking the 2007 selection of sculptures, and I was very impressed. See hot pics at Flickr.

Hi

YouChoobage

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So I’d been wanting to upload a video to YouTube – or YouChoob, as we say in Aotearoa New Zealand – but I didn’t have anything suitable.

But then I realised that among my bits and pieces, I had a short film dating from 2001. It was the result of Dylan and Ryan and me mucking around at a hippy festival in Basque Park. Dylz was on camera and Ryan was the roving reporter and I did some improv, and then later Dylan edited it together.

So here it is. (And, yes, the video is out of synch with the sound).

But obviously just posting a video to YouChoob isn’t nerdy enough. I had to up the nerd factor, so I decided to add some accessibility and used my day job skills by captioning it. So if you are deaf or hearing-impaired or just curious, you can watch it with captions here.

Rock on

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It has been brought to my attention that Prime Devastation, Hamilton’s hardest working metal band, who also take time out for family/work/sporting commitments, are now on MySpace.

Fans of the ‘Dev have been asking for this for a long time, so it will be good news to both PD fans and the metaller community in general.

So come and join the Prime Devastation MySpace community. They’ve even newly posted the lyrics to their upcoming single Rock n Roll Terrorist: www.myspace.com/primedevastation

No good advice

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At a moment, a search on Google for “how to please your man” brings up one of my old webpages as the fifth result. It’s also showing up all over my web site stats and is the most visited page.

The page itself is sort of a parody of a typical relationship article in a women’s magazine, complete with pseudonymous case studies and experts who just happen have written a book on the subject.

So it seems that women are ending up at this page looking for advice, but even after reading the article, things are still troubled. And lately I’ve received two emails seeking more advice.

Mary Kate* writes:

I have been married four years. We have stopped having sex. It has been a year and a half. I have tried “you can stick it anywhere” and I’ve even ask him what he would like. All I get is “I’m tired.” So tell me something new to try, please. I’ve even tried the open marriage thing.

And Ashley writes:

My guy is 12 years younger than I with a very large pennis and he does not cum during sex. What can I do to please him or his he just not sexually attracted to me and yes I have tried oral sex, we are really great together and want to be together. He thinks that his job is to only please me not to be pleased. Tell me what can I do?

My advice-giving capabilities are just limited to the Dan Savage-ism, DTMFA, so I thought I’d throw this open to the interwebs.

So, guys, what advice should I offer Mary-Kate and Ashley?

* Some names have been changed.

!!M

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This is a sort of novelty post because I am composing it in a very belaboured manner on my Wii. Oui, I have a Wii and it is awesome. I spent over two hours today working up a sweat as I played one of the dancing (i.e. arm-flailing) games on Rayman Raving Rabbids,. My arms ache. What I like best about Wii is that it’s possible to either work up a sweat or just flick your wrists about depending on how lazy or active you feel.