smug · as · a · bug · in · a · rug.

In no particular order, things I plan to do in the next couple of months:
*See Wilco supported by Glenn Richards at the Enmore Theatre.
*Read the books I just got in the mail today from Amazon.
*Run the experiments I've got ready to go.
*Write thesis.
*Play some gigs with Sliced Bread.
*Put recorded songs up on the Sliced Bread myspace.
*Go to a conference in Cambridge in England.
*Become a world famous rock star.
*Annoy Jadey by continuing to listen obsessively to "What A Fool Believes" by the Doobie Brothers, over and over again.

At the moment I'm reading Lauren Slater's book "Opening Skinner's Box", listening to the album Blocked Numbers by the Crystal Skulls and having been watching Life Support, which I got the first season of on DVD the other day.

I'll expand of some of these points if you ask nicely.

tim.

I thought I should make a rare entry into livejournalland to inform youse all that my band Sliced Bread is playing its first show in ages and ages. It'll be fun. We're playing at 10:30pm at the Hopetoun Hotel in Surry Hills.

Sliced Bread is piano pop kind of stuff. It features me on piano and vocals, Bill Gibson (who used to be in the Lemonheads, and may be known to fans of Sneeze and Bernie Hayes, amongst other things) on bass, and Casey from the Reservations on drums. We have a myspace but don't have any songs on it yet. We're working on that though.

Anyway, we're playing at 10:30pm. Improbably, we seem to be headlining our first show. Some form of Cameron Bruce ensemble (piano whiz known to those who've seen the Fantastic Leslie/Dave McCormack + Polaroids/Pinky Beecroft + White Russians/Gud/Sneeze) is playing at 9:30. Then there's Johnny V at 8 and Alec Eiffel at 8:45 or so. before that.

I'm sorry about this being all spammy. I've been very busy, as per usual. This week I've largely been at Sydney uni at a conference. Sancta Sophia college has pretty grounds. I'm about to move house soon, too. Next weekend. The new house is very very awesome and I can't wait to have moved in. It will have more space, which is a really good thing. It's kind of a unit on the groundfloor with courtyards and it's really lovely. I just patted Jadey on the head.

Um, tomorrow I'm signing the lease for the new house. Sunday I'm recording demos with Paul Andrews for Sliced Bread - we've done the bass and drums already, now it's time for piano and vocals.

Oh, I saw Elton John on Wednesday night. It was really good. Rocket Man was the best, though Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word was very good too. Was very nice to hear Take Me To The Pilot and Tony Danza.

So busy!

tim.

tim

Current Mood:	cheerful
Current Music:	Lazy Susan - Every Night

There are pictures and random bits and pieces behind the cut.

( This is a livejournal cut. )

Lots of things have happened.

Jadey is sitting on the computer next to me, at her desk, trying to type a resume up. I hope she gets the job, she is putting lots of work into it.

This week I have been making a poster for a poster presentation. I have also thought about stimuli, read papers, planned future experiments. In two weeks I am off to Bologna in Italy for a conference. I will have fun, I think.

One band I am in is basically ended; Danny who sings in the Reservations is going overseas for an extended period of time. Bye bye Reservations! Sliced Bread are itching to play shows at the moment, but between Casey getting married, my Bologna jaunt, and his imminent jaunt to Mexico for a couple of months, we haven't had much time. I have also been jamming with Tom who I met at that Elliott Smith night a long time ago and seem likely to join his band, which is somewhat blues-psychedelic in tone, which will be interesting.

I have tickets to Augie March and Ben Folds One Hundred And Seven (or so). This weekend is my anniversary with Jadey, and we are going to the South Coast. Jadey will not see the delights of Wollongong at its best because it's raining and pouring and we need to get to a laundromat, STAT, otherwise we will have no clothes, because they were left on the line! Whoops.

However, on the other side of the ledger, my uni laptop appears to be broken. The other day, it decided it didn't like starting up very much. It gets to the login screen, and doesn't get much further (though how much further varies - I've managed to back up all the important uni stuff). My laptop is now in the hands of the uni IT department.

More Mr Bright Side: our house got pest controlled today, and the spectre of those damn German cockroaches will slowly fade away and die soon.

On the dark end of the street, my girlfriend is still on the Gold Coast and hasn't said when exactly she's coming back (though I assume soonish) and I miss her.

On the bright side, at trivia last night we won, and I won a JB Hi-fi voucher for correctly guessing the answer based on the following: "Who am I? I was an American pioneer of rockabilly music, a mix of rhythm and blues and country music that evolved at Sun Records in Memphis in the early 1950s."

On the dark side of the force, I woke up this morning feeling very ill, and I wasn't in a state to go to uni (trust me on this one, you don't want to know the details). I took some pills, got a bit of rest when I wasn't in the bathroom feeling sorry for myself.

On the bright side, by about noon, I was feeling a whole lot better, and could go to band practice with Sliced Bread, who, I might add, aren't sounding too bad these days and wouldn't mind playing some gigs after the drummer, Casey, gets married in late July (he is understandably slightly busy before then).

tim.

One of Jadey's friends recently discovered a restaurant in Surfer's Paradise called "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe". We went there with Jadey's friend Mandy of lil_witchy fame and her boyfriend Luke, who were kind enough to drive us around and so forth. It was awesome. The staff were amusingly nerdy, and spoke in sci-fi speak. There were glowing ice cubes, and bizarrely shaped cups.

The bill for the night had, written on it: "6 million flying saucers ....... $10.90". Not a bad price. I had a chicken salad, while Jadey had a pasta with what was "a Turkish bread-like substance". Jadey had some mocktail concoction that not only had red cordial syrup, and lemonade but a pretty damn big sugar cube in it. I now know what it's like to have a speed freak for a girlfriend. Yes, there was a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster on the menu, and it was $37 and the menu claimed that it was lethal and should be shared between three people minimum. Maybe I'll try it next time.

We also saw "Cars", which was a load of fun. Very much "Doc Hollywood", but very cute. Make sure you wait til the end of the credits if you see it.

Last night I saw Belle & Sebastian. I dragged my housemate, Tim of tyreswingtigers fame along, and we played a game of trying to pick the biggest twee pop indie nerd in the house. In the end it was decided that Russell from the Virgin Mobile ads, who was in attendance, won. I very much enjoyed Belle and Sebastian and their crazy but somewhat sedate music. The most fun I had was when they got a girl from the crowd up on stage; she'd drawn a cuckoo with the words "I Love B&S" written on it (Stuart's words - "are you aware you could have drawn that when you were 8? what's your profession......a graphic designer? really?"). The song after that exchange they pulled her onstage to dance onstage to "Jonathan David". That's a song about a love triangle, and Stuart and Stevie (who mostly sings this song) took turns dancing with the girl, and jealously pulling her away from the other, in between singing the song. Hilarious! The girls doing the interpretative dance to Judy and the Dream of Horses was awesome too, and I very much enjoyed hearing "Electronic Renaissance" and "The State I Am In".

I should have done more uni work today. I did however get in the mail from Amazon an APA Publication Manual (which it's high time that I got), The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, which I feel like I should own, and Leonard Meyer's Emotion and Meaning in Music, a music theory book. I have to kind of start writing my thesis now. This is kind of scary. But at least the opening couple of chapters should be easy. I have to write about what evolutionary origins music has, and what impact that has on my arguments.

Other things I did since I last posted include seeing a choir sing medieval madrigals (which was stunning), heading up to the Gold Coast the first time (I really haven't posted for ages) to look after Jadey, when she really needed looking after, reading The Singing Neanderthals by Stephen Mithen, Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno and most of Wicked by Gregory Maguire (this month's bookclub book). There was a gig, a couple of rehearsals for this and that, the purchase of a CD or two (yay Laura Nyro! yay Verlaines!), some Annandale Hotel trivia (yay winning JB Hifi voucher!), some sleep, some Australia vs Japan soccer match, and hmm. This and that, I'm sure.

Jadey came to Sydney on the weekend, and spent most of Sunday listening to me practise an oral presentation. I was writing up and practising for a practise talk on Monday (the practise talk was talking to MARCS, the research institute within UWS in which I study,  which is about 30-40 people). The practise is for a conference in Brisbane I'm going to on Thursday.

Monday, and the practise talk went off smoothly - there were questions and I apparently answered them well. Still lots I need to change, because the talk was 5 minutes too long. Don't know what I can get rid of!

Anyway, I got a phone call from my housemate Tim about 3pm on Monday, saying that our house looked like it had been robbed. I rushed home and yes, it had been robbed. They'd come through one of the windows, which Tim had left unlocked but closed. My digital camera was missing, and Tim's iPod was missing. And they'd also taken the big easter egg that my Mum had given me. And left the remains under my sheets. Along with one of Jadey's bras. This very much creeped me out. They'd obviously just went for all the small valuables they could find. Police forensics came the next day and found some fingerprints. So we'll see where that goes, but we have serial numbers for the iPod and camera, so you never know, they might turn up. The policewoman told us that we didn't really need bars on our windows, but that another lock on the top of the window and a security screen on the windows would be good to have. What chance do we have of getting the real estate to do this?

The next day, Jadey's parents came down to Sydney to see the Rolling Stones with us at Telstra Stadium. I'd have taken pictures, and put them up here, but...hey. Jadey told me that I cannot under any circumstances tell her parents that the house she's about to move into had just been robbed. We had very good seats, and Jadey's parents paid way too much money for them. They played lots of songs I wanted to hear (Paint It Black, Can't Always Get What You Want, Sympathy For The Devil) and a great cover of "The Night Time Is The Right Time" by Ray Charles. When Keef spoke introducing a song or two I immediately understood how obviously Johnny Depp's Captain Sparrow in Pirates Of The Caribbean was based on Keef. It was interesting when the stage detached and went along the runway into the middle of the stadium that when the band were, you know, 5 metres away, that it was obvious that the band were actually playing what they were playing about 200ms before we heard it, and I had a new appreciation for how hard it must be to play in such arenas.

Jadey's parents (Wendy and Matt) were extraordinarily nice to us, and before that had taken us to lunch at Doyle's, in Watson Bay, which was awesome, and then I showed them around the specialist CD stores in Sydney - Wendy has a jazz radio show where they live, on the Gold Coast, and so I took her to Birdland Records, just off Pitt Street, where she bought a whole bunch of jazz CDs, and I went to Mojo Music with Matt, who likes the classic rock, and found much in there that he had to have. So I think they were happy with that. The next day after some Yum Cha, they and Jadey went back home, and I still feel very spoiled; Matt told me not to complain that they were being too nice, I'm part of the family now.

Recent CDs I've purchased include "Live" by Randy Newman, "New York" by Lou Reed, Bert Jansch's "Self Titled" and I'm obviously turning into an old man. But I also got the Simpsons season 5 boxset, which is just great episode after great episode. Bobo!

Today I rearranged my room and stuff, so Jadey's stuff had a little more chance of fitting in it when she moves here in, oh, just over a week. I probably still have to move this computer desk a little to the right, and to move my CDs out into the (big) hallway.

tim.

But, I have been very much focused on the PhD recently, having finished collecting data for my first experiment and having analysed the results (which found pretty much exactly what I wanted, except for one thing, which I think I can analyse in a very interesting way which shows up one of the major findings in the field to be wrong. And which sets up the need for another experiment). Also, I've finished designing the second experiment, and have in fact collected the non-musician data for my second experiment, and now need to go about finding musicians to do my experiment again (though, this time, I think I will be able to offer participants travel expenses of $20, and can use the same musicians again if I need). I might analyse that for a lark to see how things are going. In addition, I've been preparing to write a 3,000 word (or so) journal article based on my first experiment which I intend to publish in the journal Psychology Of Music. I will also soon be changing rooms at uni (I think the new one will be a slightly better atmosphere - that kind of thing), and preparing paperwork to get the uni to pay for a trip to a conference in Brisbane later this month.

In addition, music has been on the top of my mind, between a Reservations gig this Friday 7th of April at the Lansdowne Hotel with I Love Space and Degrees K (for free! - HINT HINT COME ALONG LIVEJOURNAL PEOPLE), and organising a rehearsal this Wednesday for my other band, Sliced Bread, with a new bassplayer, Bill, who, it seems, was once in the Lemonheads. And I've seen my girlfriend's band, Jane Vs World, in two states, and seen all the trials and tribulations that band seems to go through.

And also, Jadey's moving to Sydney, and moving in with me, in order that we may live in glorious, glorious sin. This will happen at the end of this month. The other night there was a phone conversation where we tried to figure out how much of Jadey's stuff would fit in my shoebox of an inner west townhouse thingo (most of it, it seems, except maybe the alpaca farm) - never lived with a partner before, so it's somewhat surreal and scary and exciting. Tonight, she's playing keyboards, doing session work. Her parents are coming down from the Gold Coast in a week and a bit to see the Rolling Stones at Telstra Stadium here in Sydney, and I suspect, to check me and my house out further and make sure we are of high enough standard for their daughter to be living in/with. I do like Jadey's parents, though, and I can see them both in her personality.

My grandfather passed away almost two weeks ago now, while I was in Melbourne, on the day of Jadey's big EP launch at the Tote. Which was inconvenient, but I guess...yeah. The funeral was on the Thursday afterwards, and was interesting, and I learnt things I didn't know about him (and wondered where his collection of old jazz albums was going in his will). It was a nice service. My father's, and uncle's obsession with cars seems very much a rebellion against their father, who could barely drive (and I wonder whether my liking jazz and not having a drivers' license despite being 24 is a rebellion against my father). At the wake, I think I got food poisoning, and had fun for 24 hours, if by fun you mean stuff that probably doesn't fit the dictionary definition of fun. Interestingly, I think I've drunk more alcohol in the last few weeks than I ever have since I got glandular fever a couple of years ago.

Oh yeah, I started and hosted a book group with my housemate Tim. We read "American Psycho" and talked about it for 3 hours last Sunday. It went surprisingly well, and the next one is in a month's time, reading "The Life Of Pi". If you're interested in joining up, let me know.

So yeah. That's my excuse for not posting in this livejournal thingo for a few weeks. I've either been drunk, at a funeral, reading a book or talking about a book, playing music, studying, had reservations at Dorsia, singing karaoke, talking to my girlfriend or just plain not in the mood.

At the moment I'm visiting my mum's.

tim.

He came up the stairs and sat in the seat in front of me, and said "mmmmwhat mmmhave moumgot in ymmmmour pmmmockmmmet?" He had a severe speech impediment, the kind you get when you're mentally retarded or a boxer, and was only semi-understandable, so I asked him to repeat what he said. I still couldn't really understand it, so I shrugged and he repeated it and I finally understood it. "What have you got in your pocket?" he was asking, pointing at my pocket.

"A wallet," I replied. "Can I have a look at it?" he asked. "No, I don't think so." I said. "Show me your wallet," he said. I shrugged and pulled out my wallet, showing him my various student cards and so forth. He made a reach for the money in the wallet, and I pulled it away out of his reach, and he mumbled something I didn't understand. He stayed there for 30 seconds after I did that, then walked back down the stairs. I put my headphones back on. I think I was too bemused by how bumbling and retarded he was, how hard he was to understand, to actually be scared or angry at the time.

He stood down at the stairs and when he caught my glance, put his fingers in the shape of a gun to his head and grinned at me.

Later, the bottle of chocolate milk I had forgotten about fell off my chair, and he rushed upstairs to pick it up and handed it to me with another grin.

He got off at Punchbowl Station. The guy sitting near me warned me to be careful, that he was part of a gang and that if there was nobody else in the carriage he would have tried something. At Bankstown I told the station guards about the incident, and they seemed unconcerned either way because nothing had been stolen.

This was all a very strange experience.

tim.

As we stood in the front yard talking to our neighbours for the first time, we could see why they'd closed off the road. There was a man standing on the roof of the Lodge, shouting obscenities and abuse at the police. Apparently he'd been throwing bricks at them and the Lodge owner, who was trying to reason with him. We heard screams of "I'm not believing anything you say until you put it on paper! Go on, put it on paper, you fucken hypocrites!" and the like. Eventually the neighbours said "this kind of thing seems to go quicker on The Bill," and the policeman talking to us said, "oh, it could go for another 6 or 10 hours, probably...we'll see." It was all over by 1am, about 2 hours later. We saw the police getting the Police Rescue ladder and going into the lodge, and then later in a group talking and laughing.

Basically it seemed like they were making a bunch of fuss about nothing, the guy just kind of seemed drunk and wanted attention. If they'd ignored him he probably would have come down quicker. But I guess they have reasons for doing stuff. And I got to meet my neighbours.

Ah, sieges. They draw the community together.

But, in between the piano teachers and the seminar, I had an unlikely adventure. There was a random phone call from Joel of cockfoster fame suggesting that I go to Tropfest, which is the biggest short film festival in the world, or some such. I'd never been before, but seen the DVDs of the entrants a few times, and liked the quality. I suggested that rain might be an issue. They said they had a gazebo. Sweet. So I headed into the city, with laptop, and found the Domain. They (being Joel plus other friends of his and Ben's) had a gazebo. It occasionally lightly rained. We watched about half of it (I thought the best entry was 'The Twins' by Rob Carlton, which eventually won - very cleverly done, funny, and had the right vibe about it), and then it just started pouring torrentially - the gazebo was no use, everything was getting completely soaked.

Eventually they stopped the film festival because of concerns about lightning, and we made a run for Martin Place station, eventually meeting up with some others at Central Station. Everything was completely soaked (I discovered that my laptop bag is luckily quite waterproof). Because it was still pouring down, and Joel had a) a lift home and b) a dryer, I ended up going out to Currans Hill, near Campbelltown, and staying the night there, my clothes going into the dryer, sleeping in the spare room. In the morning my clothes were dry (not so my shoes, though) and I made my way to uni.

tim.

There was this Personal Wellbeing Index thing which apparently found that people were unhappiest in my federal electorate, Grayndler. The Daily Telegraph came up to me and two friends at dinner in Leichhardt and asked us "do you like living in Leichhardt?" We said we kind of liked it, really. The headline and what they asked us  seemed to be completely divorced from each other. Ah well, I'm amused by it all rather than being horrified.

In any case, whoever wrote this blog here read the actual report and found that they didn't find any statistically significant difference between the most and least happy electorates. So the whole kerfuffle is overhyped and useless.

tim.

tim.

This woman may only have seconds to live.

tim.