I thought I should qualify my previous angst-ridden blog post with this one, which should be less so. Perhaps it could even be contradictory, who knows? Future me will know. Hi future me! How’s it going? Why haven’t you turned Las Vegas off yet? That show suxors!

The Killers come from Las Vegas. I always thought their music had a cowboyish quality to it. Not like those old Western movies, but more like Deadwood. The gritty, real, gold-panning, gun-slinging, blood-letting west.

Then I think perhaps that’s more Kings of Leon. Those boys suddenly became all good-lookin’. When did that happen? I saw one of their film clips the other day. They really have metamorphosed into hot rock n’ roll dudes. The lead singer’s soulful, mournful, raspy voice seems somehow out of place coming from that mouth with the head with the deliberately tousled hair.

Speaking of metamorphosing, I’m still haunted by that book. The metamorphosis, that is. Not the animorphs, or the mighty morphin’ power rangers. *cough* rip off! *cough*. Though it’s hardly reasonable for me to have nostalgia for a tv show that I barely remember, I still feel the urge to defend Voltron from all the half-assed successors that kids have been fed over the last fifteen years.

I’m getting tired. I mean, I already was tired to begin with. Now I’m exhausted. Anyone have anything to add? No? Ok, cool.    

I’m currently at mum’s place (which is soon to be vacant – this weekend!) sorting through piles of old papers and other things in my old room. At the moment, I’m taking a break (me being an opportunist, I waited until mum had gone to drop Rosie back home before I had a rest).

Even though I’m not lifting or carrying anything, the sifting through old bank statements and birthday cards does get tiring. I find it takes a long time simply because whenever I come across something of interest I stop, read through it, then place it carefully on the ever-building pile of papers to be stored and then sifted through at some unknown time in the future (whenever I get around to it again). I’d love to have a real filing system.

I came across a few interesting things – old photographs from when Lauren, Ruth & I lived in Balmoral, when People and Dinna were just kittens; old christmas cards from people I’m not even in contact with anymore (not deliberately, just through time and continually moving house and workplaces etc); old notebooks (lots of these) with the beginnings of stories in them, old poetry from my angsty days as an angsty teenager…

Probably not interesting to anyone but me I guess.

Settlement is tomorrow!!!!!

I’ll write more later. There are lots of things I need to do an update on – my time off work (over 3 months now), my walking stick, the operation, the process of buying a house…. lots of things!

For sooth! The precipitation hath foiled our intent for an excursion of merriment and mirth in the parklands of Roma Street! That’s okay, because we’ll just to go Russell & Glynis’ house for lunch.

Tonight I’m going to cook things for us to have at Krity’s birthday lunch tomorrow. I’ll need to go grocery shopping some time today. And also, I will be speaking to Tim tonight (yay!) so I want to make sure I am home for that. I have been far lazier this weekend than I intended, but I’ve done some laundry, changed the bed linen, and tidied things up a bit. Last week I remembered to buy more coathangers, so I was finally able to put all of my clothes away. I’m so domesticated! I wish I had more things to iron – that’s my favourite of all household chores.

We might have gone to the movies this weekend, but I had my movie fix from watcing fullmetal jacket (which I hadn’t seen before). It was good.

I don’t like the second scar on my wrist (on the underneath side). The first one, on top, healed up so well. But the other one still looks stupid. I suppose because the skin is paler there it’s going to be more obvious, but also, scars formed from where the stitches were, so the whole thing looks like a big row of divide-by signs (not the forward slash ones, the ones which are a little horizontal line with a dot on either side). But I guess that’s what you get for being a daredevil! NB. for those joining the story now – I did not slash my wrists. GOSH. What do you think I am? Some kind of depressed, suicidal person? I’m so not even going there right now.

Here are some video games:

Chip’s Challenge. I first played this on a computer that we got second-hand from the Catholic Education Committee (my mum was the representative for our region). This is a puzzle game. You are chip, a little blonde person in blue overalls, and you have to figure out the puzzle in order to get all the chips and step into a vortex which takes you to the next level. I ruined it for myself by looking up the passwords to the levels on the internet (when the internet became available in Wooloweyah).

Dangerous Dave. This was another game from back in the days of Windows for Workgroups (3.1 or something). Not run through Windows, but through a separate start-up screen from which you could access other functions and applications. Basically (for anyone who doesn’t remember or has never played the game) you are Dave. You collect various jewels and pretty things, and you have to get a golden cup in order to go through the door and finish the level. There are bonus levels as well, with lots of jewels to collect if you can find the portal to them. Pretty exciting stuff.

Time to go get ready for Mother’s Day luncheon. More on this later! (maybe!)

I’m in love with Dashboard, Modest Mouse’s new song. I forgot how much I liked their music, because I listened to it too much when I first got into it and then I got bored. BORING! It sucks that their new album isn’t out yet. I want Red Riders album “Replica Replica” as well.

It’s so hot. I have vague memories of different ways I’ve coped with the heat over the years. It’s really only been an issue since I’ve moved to Brisbane, because Yamba doesn’t get this hot since it’s coastal, and if it does, then there’s the coast right there and you can just go for a swim.

I remember living at the beach during summer holidays. Sometimes we’d go to the Tea Tree Creek (true name: Mara Creek), just off the track to Back Beach. The water there was the colour of cola, and it was really good for your skin and hair. I used to be afraid that there were dead bodies hiding under the surface because you couldn’t see the bottom of the creek since the water was so dark. Sometimes a ghostly white tree branch would lodge itself on the opposite bank, looking exactly like some cadaver’s arm or leg protuding from the water. Eeek!

Other times, we’d sit at home with the fans on high, soak tea towels in water and then freeze them, and lay with the frozen tea towels on our foreheads. When we went to school, mum would put a frozen washer in a plastic bag in our cooler bags so that we could cool off after running around at lunch time. They were good on the bus home from Grafton when we were in high school, because most of the time the bus didn’t have airconditioning and we were packed in like sardines.

Sometimes, driving home along the road from Grafton to Maclean, after the Shark Creek Deviation, you could see dolphins swimming up the river that ran beside the road.

So anyway, speaking of places which should have had air conditioning and didn’t, I’d like to express my severe and total disappointment in work right now. Is that too specific? Have I said too much? Are the googlers going to come and get me now?

Due to circumstances beyond my control, Casbot blog has been down for a while. But it’s back up again, and hopefully will remain up FOREVER (said in a booming, ominous tone). I felt disenfranchised, and I was going into blogging withdrawal. It’s a very serious condition – symptoms include depression, a general feeling of uselessness, severe boredom, and an uncharacteristic desire to log off the internet after five minutes of pointless surfing. The only cure for me was to reinstate my site, and edit all the content that could possibly get me into hot water.

So, what you see here is not the original, but the censored version of the original. It did make me quite sad to have to cut out entire sections of blog entries, but I suppose that’s what happens when you integrate yourself into a bureaucratic society. I don’t think I’m cut out for a censored life.

Yesterday, Calum and I went to Currumbin Sanctuary, on the Gold Coast. As you can see in the following photos, we had a grand old time.

On Friday night, Christian had a dinner at his place and invited me, Lauren and Nathan over. The reason for the dinner was so that Lauren and Nathan could meet Neo. I, of course, have already met Neo many times. I have also been bitten by him many times (no hard feelings, Neo!). Christian cooked a delicious meal of chicken breast stuffed with spiced gouda and avocado, and wrapped in prosciutto, on a bed of cous cous and steamed vegetables. Yum! Then we had banana fritters and vanilla ice cream for dessert, which was a special treat considering banana prices at the moment.

Mum and dad are selling our house in Wooloweyah. You can view its entry on Realestate.com here. It’s quite sad that it’s being sold, especially as, if it were fixed up a bit, the price it could go for would be a lot higher. Mum has already asked me to help out with settlement once she finds a property she wants to buy up here, but there’ll be no need for me to help out if she’s going to borrow money in order to purchase it – the Bank will take care of settlement for properties it takes security over. We’ll be living here in this house for another year yet, or at least until the Wooloweyah house sells.

This post is inspired by my new DS Lite. (No, Nintendo are not paying me. They’re just stealing all my boredoms).

My interest in video games, however, was inspired by our Townsville cousins, The Towlers. Anna, Noelle, and Clare would come to visit us each Christmas, and one Christmas they received something that would shape our lives to come: a Super Nintendo (or SNES).

They also had two games: Spy vs Spy, and Super Mario Bros. 3. Spy vs Spy was a good time-waster – look in some filing cabinets, get blown up a couple of times; but Super Mario Bros. 3 was something else entirely. Any list of my favourite video games must start with the game that started it all:

Super Mario Bros. 3: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

I don’t know why I like this game so much. It’s a million times better than the other mario games. Nothing in the mario range has come close to being this good, even with the increase in quality of graphics and better controls, they still can’t compete. There were so many awesome things in this game: the map, the mini-games where you have to choose a box, or where you have to make the little spinning pictures line up… Or all the secret levels that you could get to if you only had either a raccoon or a tanooki suit… Check out the Wikipedia article. They know what I’m sayin’.

 Mario in his super-leaf Raccoon suit.
 Mario in his Tanooki suit.
 Mario in the kuribo shoe. This is my favourite level, just because of the shoe.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Nintendo 64 (N64)

This game came with the N64 console when we bought it from some kid up the street, along with James Bond 007 (I think, though I can’t remember ever playing it), and Rosie somehow acquired Pokemon Stadium or something. Despite the fact that the Zelda series is pretty old, I had never heard about it before. It quickly became the number one game played on the N64 in our household, and Lauren, Rosie and I took turns in beating the bosses and playing missions. It was a team effort, but I was especially good at beating monsters and then collapsing in tears from the stress of it. I love this game. I think I had a secret, unacknowledged crush on Link for a while there. Or maybe I’m just making the connection between Link and Legolas. They do look pretty similar. Check out Wiki on this one too.

 Link and the cuckoos
 Link being all moody.
 Link in Legolas mode

Zelda:Ocarina is an in-depth multi-layered puzzle/adventure/RPG. There are side quests that span across the entire game, through shifts in time and location.

Still TBC

How bored am I right now?

Seriously.

I know that you can’t answer that question because I’m the only one sitting here, knowing how bored I am and feeling the boredom. I can tell you how bored I am but I’m kind of occupying myself at the moment so I’m not as bored now as I was a minute ago before I started this entry.

So, how boring is this entry?

Well, that’s difficult to answer too, since it’s only just starting out. At least I think it’s only just starting out, though if I ended it right here it would sort of not be just starting out, it would have pretty much been almost to the end right then. But now that I’ve written some more it’s more like halfway. So I’m confusing myself. And maybe people who can be bothered reading this. Who are you, by the way? Just thought I’d include you in this entry because people like being included in things.

A note from Chris in an old book:

“Fishermen kill fish everyday! Fuck off Fishermen!!”

“Good words:
* Cutlets
* funk
* advocado
* flippant
* heinous
* ruche”

“Panda bears everywhere like bananas”

“Your stupid u hair! FUCK”

Lauren found the book under the house I think, and just brought it in to show me because it was so random and weird. I got a message from Chris the other day saying “is your email address still (blahblahblah)?” I messaged back that it was, and he messaged that he was going to send an invitation. But I still haven’t got one. I’d like to invite him to birthday drinks.

From a fathers day card Ro & I made for dad (also found under the house by Lauren):

Dear dad,
I hope you have a great father’s day. Hey, they don’t call ‘em chats for nothin’, ya little potato.
Love Cassie

Dear Fatty
I want you to have a wonderfull Daddy’s Day this year unlike all your brothers.
Love Roseanna Brisbane

I also really like the pictures in the card, one of dad’s hands reaching out for a block of cadbury’s chocolate, one of a cityscape, and one of dad with this caption “Dad with his favourite haircut (bowl)”. Except that he’s been drawn with breasts. He looks like a woman. When you put all of that together, it’s really not a very nice Father’s day card. I guess we were hyper that day and just went crazy… we did that a lot. The front of the card has blue swirls all over it drawn in texta, and a heart and a star and “DAD” in big letters of red & black.

When I was younger I had a dream that dad was a piece of ham on the bench, and his eyes were spinning swirly things, like a psychiatrist would use to hypnotise you, and I was terrified that someone was going to come along and cut him up. And I was so upset because he was a piece of ham, and how can you stop someone from being a piece of ham once they are one? So anyway, it terrified me and I woke up crying. It was a really bad dream, and left me with a bad feeling and haunted me for weeks afterwards. I still feel slightly uneasy whenever I recall the memory.

We were going to go home for Easter, but now I don’t think I will. It might depress me. Seeing the house as it is in all it’s … what’s an antonym for glory that could be applied in that sentence? Well by saying that, you should know what I mean. It’s just… when I go back there it feels like everything’s shrinking around me. I dont know how to explain what I feel about it. I love the beach, I love the backyard and the sky and the leaves and the birds and the place in itself, I just don’t like seeing the house the way it is right now. It’s sad.

Anyway. I want to buy a keyboard for my laptop that has a numerical keypad, because I’m so much faster at typing numbers in on a numerical keyboard than by going to the ones in the row above qwertyyuiop. According to some standard that Nathan has set, I am a nerd. Requirements include: wearing glasses, using a computer every day (at least five hours – which isn’t difficult since I use one all day at work), reading books often, hating TV but watching TV shows on DVD, blogging, being too cheap to buy a wireless router. Blogging = nerd apparently. When I said that lots of people blog, he said a lot more people are becoming nerds.

Franz Ferdinand’s latest CD is awesome. As is The Strokes, but I’ve listened to it too much now and so I have to leave it for a while so I don’t start hating it, like you do if you constantly hear a song on the radio. Even if you like it after a while it starts to irritate you and it gets boring. But I hate most of the songs they play on the radio anyway. Pop music is irritating, and not because it’s popular, just because it’s shit. If someone wanted to torture me all they’d have to do is tie me to a chair and force me to listen to Jack Johnson, James Blunt, Pete Murray, josh kelley (why are they all the SAME????), or something like pussycat dolls or chingy or … just shit music. All that crappy RnB & HipHop and Rap they have in the charts at the moment that is not original or interesting at all. BORING.

Lauren has asked me what I want for my birthday. I’m still thinking about it, because at the moment I really don’t have any idea what I’d like. Apart from some cons, maybe chuck taylors.

God there’s a horrific garbage smell coming in through my window…

Okay, I guess I’ll go be bored again.

Yeah okay so I think I’m over it.

A broker came to collect documents yesterday and said to me “Aren’t you going to ask for ID?” And I said, “Yeah, like someone’s really going to pretend to be a broker and steal loan documents.” I told Kirra and she was astounded. Apparently that was a little too sarcastic. But I then said “alright then, show me your id.” and he was who he said he was, so what was the problem? I think I missed the point. I think I’m getting a bit reckless.

A continuation of sounds that dominate and annoy:

1. Vaccuum cleaner (especially at work while doing overtime and I’m trying to listen to my MP3, or on Saturday mornings when you’re trying to sleep in and someone starts vaccuuming and it’s another way of saying “get out of bed and get cleaning!”)

2. Mowers (especially on Sunday mornings when you’re trying to sleep in. This noise is really irritating. It’s like the least relaxing sound in the entire world).

3. Tuneless whistling (especially early in the mornings at work when you’re trying to concentrate, and they go on and on and never stop)

4. Bass beats from distant parties at night (especially if it’s on a school night. But this is just annoying any time)

In case you weren’t paying attention, this is a “continuation” as I previously mentioned that TV was dominating and annoying. So I guess that wasn’t really a “sound” thing, but I’m continuing on with a sound theme, because people were just vacuuming in here and I was inspired.

My Iriver is the best thing ever. It’s like listening to a radio station that just plays all your favourite songs all the time (because it’s on shuffle) and you don’t know what it’s going to play next, just that it’s going to be good.

Things remembered:

* being in a TV ad with Noelle for the sale of Dad’s property.
* Going on a treasure hunt at the beach, where the adults had hidden little slips of paper with different amounts on them ($2.00, $1.00, $5.00 SCORE!) and redeeming them for coins that for some reason were either held in paper bags or wrapped up in butchers paper like fish n chips.
* going cane toad hunting with big hessian sacks out on the ranch, and ending up at the sewerage works with Mark O’C, because he thought there would be heaps out there but there WASN’T and we had to put up with the stench for NOTHING!
* taking the bags of cane toads back to the hall for the tally. how gross was that?!
* The time they held a sausage sizzle at the Sewerage works. Whyyyyy???
* Camping at Lake Ainsworth, Lake Arrawarra, Dundurrabin (actually that wasn’t camping…) which was SO MUCH FUN!
* Camping at Broadwater & going down the rapids on inner tubes and lilos (that was SO MUCH FUN! also)
* The wolf man at Broadwater (aaaarrooooooooOOOO!!)
* Ro making pig noises in response to the wolf man
* Drinking hot milos from the campfire late at night.

Oh I love camping.

Today is a memory day.

* I remember having blond hair and brown skin and going to the beach every single day

* I remember going for a drive with dad out to the Point during a hurricane. I was afraid. Dad told me about how when he was younger and lived in Sydney, he’d go down to circular quay when big storms came in and ride the ferry just before they cancelled it due to bad weather, because it was fun being on the ferry in the huge waves and pouring rain. I remember thinking that our car was going to be blown off the road, and not being able to see two feet ahead of us, and everything was grey. We went home.

* I remember church on Christmas Eve being so crowded that people lined up outside, and all the kids were outside running around in the yard and everyone was friends with everyone else, and it didn’t matter if we all ran off to the park, it was still counted as being there because we showed up and couldn’t get in, and all the parents stood around outside talking about parent type things.

* I remember when the circus was in town, standing out on our balcony late at night and seeing a drunk guy passed out in the church yard across the street from our place, and hearing the circus music in the background.

* I remember going to the library almost every day after tafe (NERD!), or going to the library in town every second weekend and sitting on the beanbags in the kids section and reading the new kids books, until I turned 11 and started reading from the adult section (and got told off by the librarian – “you can’t read that! Your section is over there —>”)

* I remember going to a party with Chris, and Noelle came too because she was staying with us for the holidays, and we left and met some random guy called Dan, which reminded Noelle and I of an ad for prune juice (Dan Presser, managing director of sunraysia natural beverages, is talking to his mum ruby about a new drink he’s created…) and then we walked down the main street of town and a girl was walking along with a guy, and he was drunk. He pushed Chris into the wall and said “Watch where you’re f**king going!” and the girl who was with him said “Go. Just run.” And we did.

* I remember using the metre-rulers from the blackboard as skis in year six, just before we went on our holiday to the snow, and being strongly reprimanded by the teacher for it (”these aren’t skis! they’re school equipment!”)

* I remember a boy from my class going missing at sea during a storm just after we had started high school. His own father found his body two weeks later at the docks. We had a memorial for him at the church behind our old primary school, and they arranged for all those who had known him to take the afternoon off school and provided a bus from high school to the primary school. It was a sad start to the year.

* I remember going up to the sports field of our village one night, and seeing glowing lines on the ground. One of the parents told us that the glowing stuff was left behind by slugs. I never actually saw any of the slugs.

* I remember going into the bushland surrounding the sports field, and finding paths cut through the scrub that you couldn’t see from the outside. They led to secret hideouts and clearings, and places where other kids had dragged sheets of corrugated iron or cardboard and made shelters and stored things there.

* I remember Noelle, Anna & Clare coming down for Christmas holidays and playing Super Mario Bros 3 and Spy Vs Spy on their Super Nintendo when they stayed out at the farm.

* I remember a Christmas when all the cousins came down to visit, and we put on a show for the parents, and we had tents in our backyard because there were so many people staying.

* I remember taking a kayak out on the lake and discovering what was on the further edges. There were islands and a huge black skeletal tree.

* I remember feeling content.

Why can’t a day just be nice on it’s own merits? Whenever I feel happy, or melancholy, or sad, I have to rifle through memories of a similar day and superimpose the old one over the new one, so that I am feeling the old feelings but in a different circumstance. I’m always trying to pinpoint what it is about a day that instills in me these feelings, or brings something up from the past.

It’s like how the smell of PVC reminds me of when I was little and we went on a trip to Crescent Head, and we had blow-up air rings for swimming with. Mine was clear with pictures disbursed haphazardly over the tube. So when we were in the water, I could look through the tube into the water underneath, and see all the tiny painted lady shells and baby fish swimming beneath. And that was a really nice holiday. PVC also reminds me of new pencil cases, which meant the start of the school year. And I loved that – buying all new stationery … new books, pencils, sharpeners, highlighters, rulers, contact… and that meant a new year of school. It was good when the school year ended because that meant holidays and Christmas, but a new year meant new subjects and teachers and everything was fresh.

So the point, when I finally get to it, is that everything reminds me of something else. The reason I like rainy days so much is because of all they remind me of, and the way I feel when remembering things.

And so therefore they’ll go on being my favourite type of day because I always feel good on rainy days because of the memories associated with them, so when I look back on rainy days I’m always feeling good, and always because I’m looking back on rainy days. I wonder if this makes sense to anyone other than me.

I usually wait until the day is over before writing a blog, just in case something else happens and I don’t write about it. I don’t really think anything else is going to happen today. I just have to clean my room, do another few loads of washing, read, maybe I might go down to the shops and buy food to make dinner tonight. I don’t know. I’m not sure who will be home to cook for, and if it’s just me then I’ll just have a bread roll or something. So maybe I should walk down to the bakery…

I got to work so late today and so because I wasn’t able to be home by lunch time, I had some noodles from a box in my drawer. A good thing about work is that you never have to wait for the kettle to boil to get boiling water, since they have a tap coming out of the top cupboards above the sink that always has boiling water. I wish we had one of those at home. It’s not true that a watched kettle never boils, because I’ve stood waiting by the kettle and it always boils. Mum made porridge this morning while Clare & Noelle watched and offered advice. While it was cooking in the microwave mum was watching it and said, “Oooh it’s never gonna be ready!” like a little kid. Well, because I didn’t know porridge was being made, I missed out as I had already had toast for breakfast much earlier. And there is no point to this whole paragraph so you can give up on looking for one.

I keep hearing the gate open & close, and I think someone is going to come in through the front door but no one does. And at work today, I kept hearing the door to the internal lift and stairwell opening and closing but never saw anyone all day until at about 1:30pm when Phone Guy said to me, “Come on, let’s get out of here.” And when I didn’t move to agree, he said, “you’ve done enough work haven’t you?” And I said, “Not yet!” He said, “Yes you have, let’s get out of here.” and then left through the internal stairwell! That was strange. So that must have been who it was. Another strange thing about work is that the last toilet in the ladies bathroom has been engaged for the past week or so, and no one is in there. I would have thought that if there was a problem with it, they would have fixed it by now. But I guess not. Oh and another thing – there was a big huge can of milo in the kitchen for a while, which was the subject of many tea-making conversations, and then one day it just disappeared. Nathan K said that they put the milo in there as someone who doesn’t drink coffee or tea had complained (because work supplies huge cans of coffee and boxes of tea bags as well) and so they had provided milo. But I think milo is more of a treat than a cup of tea or coffee. I never had any because I prefer tea (odearodearowhatshallido??) but i know that quite few people had some. It must have gone quickly too because of all the overtime being done by everyone, which is the reason that the snackbox has been emptied so fast lately as well.

I think overtime might be on again next week, and I’ll keep doing it until they don’t offer it any more. It’s hard starting off, because I really resent having to do something so tedious, but once you get going it’s okay. You get into a rhythm. And because it’s such mindless work I can listen to my MP3 player without worrying that it’s distracting me – the distraction is welcome. I’ve listened to the new Strokes CD lots now. It’s far easier to pick the songs you like best when you’ve listened to it a few times and the songs become familiar.

I hate the taste of the water in our house. It tastes like dirt (Nathan M’s observation, very true). I don’t know if that’s the same in everyone’s houses and it might be because of the drought, but it’s just foul.

I’m glad work has a water cooler with bottled water (And after watching Thirst last night? Shame on me!!!). It’s almost as though someone threw some clods of soil in our water supply. We need a purifier on the tap or something. Maybe I should get one. I just bought two new pillows today because the one pillow I have on my bed is so flat that there’s almost no point in having it, it’s almost as though I have no pillow at all.

Mum is having a baby shower for someone from her work. I can hear occasional peals of laughter floating out from the living room through my closed door. I don’t want to put any music on in case it annoys them, and I could listen to it on headphones but I’d rather not. I guess I’ll just get straight into cleaning up.