Tag: Youtubery

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Checking In

Back from Europe (which was awesome, except for the bits that weren’t). Back at work. Writing my last workshop of the year, THE SUBMISSION CRASH COURSE, which will be running at QWC this Sunday (spaces still available). Once that’s done, I have to go find a new place to live. And, you know, move. And I have to write some things. Which means I’m still prioritizing the juices squeezed out of my brain-meats for things that aren’t regular blogging for a little longer, although I expect to be about regularly in 2014 after scaling back my extra-curricular activities a little. Until then, have approximately nine minutes of early nineties AWESOME to tide you over.

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Hot for Teacher

If you looked at my buying habits, as a kid, you’d be fooled into thinking I was a huge fan of Van Halen. I owned a copy of 1984 on cassette by the age of twelve, acquired primarily ’cause I thought the smoking cherub on the cover was kinda awesome. My first CD – acquired, begrudgingly, when cassettes ceased being available – was a copy of the Van Halen. We were deep into the nineties by this point, long past the age where the distorted guitar of Nirvana had put hair metal to death, and there was something deeply uncool about liking Van Halen at that point. And, if I’m honest, Van Halen, as an album, did nothing for me. I’d picked it up ’cause I was collecting guitar magazines at the time, and kept coming across references to Eruption and the rest of Eddie Van Halen’s solos. I learned something really important from that CD: don’t front load your album.The three

Smart Advice from Smart People

You Have Great Taste: Ira Glass on Creative Journeys

This week has been a lesson in the ways of the internet. I put a handful of links to a brilliant Ira Glass video on creativity and taste in the middle of my post about On Writing and only 3% of you fuckers went and watched it, despite the fact that I talk the damn thing up ’cause it really is that useful and awesome. I put one link in a post about Robot Jox where I mention that the writer is shitting on his own project, and all of you motherfuckers go traipsing off to snicker to look at Joe Haldeman being all “yeah, this film is a dog, man. What were we thinking.” You people, you people worry me. And I know the excuses that people will throw my way. I hear you sitting up the back, being all, “”No, Pete, it’s not like that, we swear.” To that I say: “bullshit, motherfucker. I’ve got goddamn metrics. Three fucking percent.” “But it’s

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Men Without Hats

Some mornings you just need to rock this joint. Also, the eighties were fucking weird.

Journal

Leaving, on a Jet Plane

It’s been about twenty years since I went on holidays with the rest of my family, but it seems we’ll be breaking that streak on Tuesday when all four of us gather and fly down to Adelaide to spend five days at the Fringe Festival. We fly back Sunday night. And on Monday, I turn thirty-six.  It wasn’t until tonight, looking at a calendar and planning my work week after I get home, that I realised that last bit. Birthdays are weird. I expect, this year, I’ll be reducing my celebrations down to the absolute minimum: sleeping in, re-reading Murakami’s Birthday Stories anthology, getting on with things. I mean, what little celebratory energy I usually have is going to be burned out by five days of awesomeness as the Fringe, and any reserves are going to be needed to get me through the week that follows at the day-job. In theory, the coming week is a holiday. I want to

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

I’m Hot and I’m Sticky Sweet…

Some days need a bit of Def Leppard. Some days do not. Today, well, it’s one of the former. Weirdly, I missed the period when Def Leppard was actually a big deal. Hysteria came out in 1987, which means I was both 9 years old and living in the middle of nowhere, far from the pop cultural embrace of TV and cinema and popular radio. I was far more likely to be reading books back in those days, getting exposed to music through my dad’s LP collection (although I wasn’t yet allowed to play records on my own) or the soundtracks to the handful of movies we saw when we came to Brisbane for the holidays. Basically, I didn’t even really process that Def Leppard was a big deal until they became a lyrical riff in Bloodhound Gang’s Why is everyone picking on me in the mid-nineties. They weren’t a band by then, not really; they were a pop cultural reference that

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Unicorns from Hell

Once upon a time I was obligated to know all things unicorn the moment they appeared on the internet. These days, not so much, but occasionally the world points me towards things that are truly deserving of being shared. Like this. Oh, dear god, like this. BEST UNICORN THING EVER IN THE HISTORY OF UNICORN THINGS.

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Wuthering Heights

Sometimes, my brain, I tell you. No, wait, none of that actually makes sense when it’s written as a sentence. Let me try that again. So on the way out of the house this morning, I passed my CD rack and thought to myself, you know what I feel like listening to right now? Fucking Bombtrack. It’s been ages. So I pulled the first Rage Against the Machine disc out of my collection and took it out to the car and rocked the fuck out on my entire drive to work. It was awesome. I mean, even the pub with its motorized esky races and its double-exclamation points on pretty much anything they’re trying to advertise didn’t bother me today. I was listening to some old school RatM and I was at peace with the fucking world. Then I got to work and I parked the car and I started whistling as I walked upstairs to the QWC office where I’d

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Doll Parts

I’ve been listening to this a lot today. Back in the nineties, when grunge was still a thing, I listed to a lot more Hole than I did Nirvana. Sharing it here ’cause I’m in a retro kind of mood, and ’cause I’ve apparently never seen the clip.

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Makin’ a Racket

I’ve been worrying my flatmate recently, ’cause I seem to have developed a jaunty whistle of late. This is not, as a general rule, the sort of thing that happens around our house, least of all to me. ‘Course, historically speaking, this isn’t actually true. I spend a great deal of my day with little fragments of music running through my head. I always have, one way or another, and I’ve always been fond of having music on while I work. What’s really happened is that I’ve inherited my sister’s stereo with it’s five-CD turntable and I’ve moved it out of my bedroom and into the study where I write, surf the internet, and occasionally play computer games. Up until this point, all my music had to run on either Fritz the Laptop (which meant he couldn’t do anything else) or play on the DVD player attached to my TV. Neither of these have been particularly optimal, so my music

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

For what it’s worth…

…I still maintain that this is the sexiest two minutes and seventeen seconds to ever exist in music. If you can resist dancing while you listen to it, you’re a better person than I. The second-sexiest thing ever done in music is Nouvelle Vague’s cover of Guns of Brixton. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what this says about my psyche.

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

This is the song I keep humming while I work…

I’m kinda pinned down by the crushing weight of my to-do list this week. Apparently running a convention will do that to you. In my absence, I leave you with some vintage Beastie Boys to keep you company: See you all Friday.