I don’t bother writing much here anymore for three reasons. One is that I used to comment about politics, now I would rather pay the fine (yes, Australia penalises people who prefer not to vote). Two, I now live in Brisbane which inspires nothing but tobacco and alcohol consumption. Three, I have a 20 month old who likes to pull keys off my old iBook G4 and swallow them before pooping them out a day or so later. And yes, I put them back onto the keyboard. Shhhh. Don’t tell mummy. If you happen to be a sewer plant worker in Brisbane, Australia and find a missing plus/equals key in the poo skimming process be sure to let me know. I can’t buy one on eBay so if anybody has a spare please let me know.
The Horse’s Mouth
A blog written in Brisbane, Australia predominantly dealing with Australian culture, news, politics and sport.
I had the good fortune recently to spend some time with some old family friends who I haven’t seen for a while – a married couple in their mid 30s. I was excited about seeing them. That excitement lasted about 30 minutes after I discovered that they had turned into a prime example of Howard’s Battlers.
Traditionally Howard’s Battlers are considered to be the traditional Labor voting low-income workers that started voting conservative out of aspiration. My take on it is different though. Howard’s true battlers were the silly people that were coaxed into taking out massive home loans, massive home renovation loans, car loans and loans for holidays. These people then had no choice but to become conservative economically and socially out of pure greed – to protect what they thought they had worked so hard to gain.
Well, the bad news is that they didn’t work hard for it at all. They just borrowed hard.
Many of my close friends, as well and myself and my wife have practiced prudence. That is we work, save, purchase what we need, live simply and are happy to reap the rewards later on.
With warnings from global financial institutions that we’re basically headed toward another 1930s style depression I just get pissed off with the whining and wailing coming from over-indebted fucktards who earn $100000 a year but claim to be doing it tough. They really only have themselves to blame.
Battle on in your BMWs folks!
Just letting everybody I know in Brisbane that I will be an hour early this summer for everything due to me adopting daylight saving personally. If you are coming to my place you’d better leave an hour earlier please. Thank you.
Today I was listening to the radio and there was a discussion about blogs and their irrelevance. The presenter continued on saying how blogs were cumbersome to navigate, they were boring and full of useless information. At the end of the conversation she gave her station’s twitter id out and then encouraged listeners to friend the station on Facebook. Huh?
Update: Sept 30, 2011 (http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/rip-blogs-lapsed-bloggers-last-post-20110921-1kjzn.html)
It’s interesting that for information to be considered useful by many people, it seems that it has to be brief or disseminated via their friends only (as in Facebook friends).
I have a twitter account – can’t be fucked trying to figure out how to use it honestly. I reactivated my Facebook account while fully pissed – I wish I didn’t. The thing shits me up the wall. I have opted for Google plus. By the way, I can’t type the plus symbol because I spilt beer on the upper right hand side of my keyboard and have lost all use of the equals and plus key, as well as the square and curly brackets. So apologies must be made for the lack of complicated mathematical formula on this site from now on.
Not much is new since the last post except that the little man has way more teeth and is running everywhere. He also loves the word NO.
Just in the case that anyone still reading this is wondering why I have so little time to blog, ( jeez, that sounds so old fashioned to say now ….. blog…) below is an image that says it all. My little boy Joe is crawling around the house having just found Bea’s Boston Redsox hat in an easily reachable spot.
Yes Adrian. If you read this you can see he is wearing his Richmond FC all-in-ones that you bought him underneath the green jumper and yes I still haven’t removed the green paint from the old floorboards.
So, that’s yet another reason not to post entries to the blog very often. I’m too busy getting shat on, pissed on, bitten, kicked in the cods, screamed at, having food thrown at me and generally being assaulted minor ways by a 14 month old.
Apart from that fatherhood is pretty cool, especially on Fridays when I don’t work and while he sleeps peacefully in the pram on our afternoon walks – I buy a bottle of beer and sit in the park enjoying the winter sun. Mmmmmm beer in the park……..
Via the null device I came across a link that describes an entire town in China that is meant to be a mini re-creation of a English village/town. Thames Town has hardly anybody living in it at all.
So much for the chinese ‘boom’ that is supposed to be propping up Australian and other western businesses.
I like the comments on the exposé, particularly – “Tis a shame. Could film an awesome movie there. Or have a massive game of paintball.”
iPricks.
That’s what I call people with iPhones. Sorry if you happen to be one of my friends reading this, or somebody I have previously been friendly to – but the friendship is over now because I won’t talk to iPricks anymore.
I did think that I had invented the word but it seems there are others who have beaten me to it (Urban Dictionary entry for iPrick). There’ll probably be a Facebook fan page about iPricks too. But Facefuck is yet another modernity that I have shunned.
“Hey Tony”, one of my customers said to me today. “I have an app on my iPhone that tells me which football team that my football team is playing each week.” I feigned a surpised look and said something like “Wow, that’s handy!” Really I was thinking how handy my piece of cardboard from the TAB is. It has the AFL draw on it and it sits next to the toilet. It sits there all winter and it makes great reading while stuck in the toilet for extended periods.
One of my wife’s friends showed off all her iPhone games to me and also her compass. What surprises me is that a busy working mum actually has time to play games on her phone and why the fuck would she need a compass in this day and age? All she has to do is turn on the GPS app and I have no doubt that her iPhone would guide her toward where she wants to go with Steve Jobs’ voice directing her. Or maybe I am discounting the fact that she may indeed sail to work?
An app exists to tell you what the weather is like wherever you happen to be. How about actually stepping outside? If you are hot it is hot. If you get wet it is raining. Pretty simple ‘eh?
Now all I need is an app that tells me how many beers I have chugged at a barbeque while watching and listening to everyone talk about their apps and the superior quality of their phones.
Lately I have seen a few cars driving around Brisbane with a sticker on the back. That sticker has ‘www.mikehunt.com.au’ on it. I thought it was a joke (say it quickly!) until I finally decided to put mikehunt.com.au into my browser’s address bar this morning. Either that is the car dealer’s name or he has a dirty sense of humour.
So. The city I lived in flooded 2 weeks ago. I was OK. So was the family. If fact we were bored shitless because every TV channel (even cable) had FLOOD SPECIALS on. It was cool seeing million dollar yachts get smashed up though. But not so fun seeing some of the poorest people in Brisbane lose what little they did have.
Still, it doesn’t stop some people from having fun though.
Here is a yobbo floating in the park while sitting a spa bath.
And here is an intrepid suburban explorer rowing his bath down the street.
So I have this crazy plan which I am going to endeavour to complete. A Google Street View of every house I have lived in from birth until now to the best of my memory (for my parent’s privacy reasons I will skip their place).
From birth until 4 years of age I lived in this pub in Kyneton. Unfortunately it recently went broke and its days as a pub have finished after more than 150 years selling beer.
From 4 years until 13 years a of age I lived in this house in a place called Kippa-Ring.
From 18 to 20-something I lived in an old shack at #51 John St. Redcliffe. I thought it was gone but I was surprised to find that it is jammed in between 2 large apartment complexes. I’m surprised to see the back garage still standing. My friends and I burnt half the wood that held it up one night while having a bonfire – back in 1991.
I lived here from February 1995 until October 1995 (and shared the house with the woman I am now married to!).
I existed in this house from October 1995 until March 1996.
My first foreign home was here for the month of April 1996 (the black door).
I lived here in Willesden for 2 years on and off from April 1996 until March 1998 whilst travelling around (the red fence).
I also stayed here in Golders Green from February 1997 until March or April 1997. I lived next to a Synagogue. It was interesting trying to park in the dtreet seeing as my work vehicle was a big van. There were guards in the street while prayer meetings took place and they always wanted to check my van for bombs. Not much has changed in 14 years huh? It does have a new door though. I burnt the crap out of that door with fireworks while drunk one night.
I did pop back to Australia and share this house with a friend and his crazy partner for 2 months too long in December ’97 and January 1998.
Richmond in Melbourne was my favourite place to live. I lived in the raised loft bit just to the right of the centre of the image (you can just see it). I drank beer on the roof often from April 1998 until August 1999.
I had a fight with my housemate in Richmond then moved in with my second favourite housemate Fiona (2nd favourite after my wife of course…ahem!) in Clifton Hill. I stayed there from August 1999 until September 2000. It’s the place slightly to left of centre with the big Jacaranda tree in the front.
We were evicted from the previous house after I fell through the floor. We moved a few doors up the road with wheel barrows to this joint. Fiona and I shared with various alcoholics from September 2000 until February 2002. Fun times.
My future wife returned from England and this was our first Love Nest in Northcote from February 2002 until mid-2003.
We then rented in what we describe as our favourite street ever. Barry Street, Northcote (The last of the Cream coloured terraces to the left).
We made the move north to Brisbane and rented this shit heap for $300 a week from December 2005 until December 2006. When they jacked the rent up to $350 a week we bought our own house.
I won’t show my current house because I am am scared that if I reveal my location Julian Assange might come over and steal my blog to put on Wikileaks. I’m sure he knows that I keep my blog in the drawer underneath my socks, jocks and handkerchiefs. Achoo!
It’s been a while.
My posting to this blog was prolific until I moved to Brisbane (from Melbourne) and started working 10-12 hour days. At that stage fiddling around on the web became a luxury and blogging became especially luxurious. Things have changed a little now. With an 8 month old son in the house and my lovely wife returning to work I have had a chance to ‘kick back’ somewhat. I have a 6 month break from my day job for the first half of 2011 while still operating a small scale business of my own. I don’t know if I’ll return to my job or not – but it’s looking increasingly unlikely that I’ll go back to the daily grind.
I regret leaving the pages of this blog fallow for so long. Over the last 5 years I have had some very strange experiences and met some fantastic people through working with them. I should have written about all these people and occurences – if not for your reading – for my own personal reference.
One of the nicest people I have met in the last few years is a bloke called Saulo. He’s a very genuine man, in fact more genuine than anyone I have met in a long while. We have one thing in common, which is beer, and he is blogging for the first time right now on his holiday in New Zealand. He is a pretty good writer too. Being an ex-English secondary school teacher it’s no surprise. I find him particularly inspiring because he was born in Samoa, moved to New Zealand at the age of 10 with no English speaking ability and within 12 years was teaching English in the New Zealand education system. I try to learn something from every single person I have the good fortune to befriend. From Saulo I have learnt that there is no bad time to move on, to change or to commence a new adventure in life. The most important thing his life reminds me of is the importance of adaptability. That’s something that tends to fade away as one gets older. I do think that if there’s one thing to make sure is held on to as you age it is the ability to never be afraid of change.
Most of us complain abouit poor service from government officials – but this little sign outside a government office reception area in Brisbane’s CBD takes the cake. I just about crapped myself laughing when I saw this.
