HEREIN

Tuesday, December 31, 2002

lo and behold
or
low and behold? Visit Simon's blog to see more.
I think it's the former, but only cos a Smashing Pumpkins song tells me so.

So - the Earth has revolved once around the Sun. Cool, eh? It's the symbolism that's important though, eh? From here on in, I want EVERYONE who reads this blog (that even includes you, Simon - my one and only reader I believe) to call 2003 "20-0-3 (twenty oh three)" and see how far it goes. I kinda tried to kick this off in 2001 (read "twenty oh one") but everyone INSISTED on calling it 2001 (two thousand and one). Damn Stanley Kubrick and his science fiction popular culture. Wait. Did I just say that?

On another note: it's official. I suck. I have officially been working at Kmart Forest Hill for 5 years and received a certificate of 5 years Service today in a very sad little ceremony. Our store manager, the one with the eye patch, called over the PA: "All available staff to the Service Desk" (my post at work). One member came. How discouraging. That definitely promotes long service in the ranks of Kmartians, doesn't it??
I jest.
She did it again, and used a more forceful voice and more people came. Then we were given our certificates. Only to go back to the mindless monotony of work. "Strange things are afoot at The Circle K" - quote from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

,sehceeps ytterp ekam uoy elihW
.sderhs ot tuc gnieb m'I
,snoil eht ot em deef uoY
ecnalab etaciled a

setalp gninnips ekil sleef tsuj siht nehW
.dnal ookcuc duolc ni gnivil m'I
setalp gninnips ekil sleef tsuj siht dnA
.revir yddum eht nwod gnitaolf seidob ruO

Something else: friends Erica, Will, Luke, Beck, Joel, Joel, Eug and actually a lot of my other friends all play musical instruments. Well. I play a musical instrument. (Not Well.) Here are some ideas for bands that I may or may not be involved in. Most likely the latter. They are copyrighted of course under Devine Enterprises and may only be used with the express and prior consent of I, Andrew J Devine.:

here goes with what I'm sure is a misquote: Be ware: "we need a name that is funny at first but gets less funny each time you hear it":
"ACCORD PROGRESSION"
I like it. It 'fits'

Also a name for a cocktail that I think could really take off (both literally and figurativelly - you'll see what I mean):
"TEQUILA MOCKINGBIRD" Actually that may also be a great name for a band. Or a drunk band. Or a band of drunks. AHA! Go the language!

Anyway, less of my ramblings. More of your sanity.
One more quote on this last day of 2002. See you in twenty oh three.

"Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. To-day, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient short comings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion."

[reprinted in The Works of Mark Twain; Early Tales & Sketches, Vol. 1 1851-1864, (Univ. of California Press, 1979), p. 180.]

posted by AJ | 6:21 PM |

Monday, December 30, 2002

After seeing The Two Towers on Saturday night at the NEW Hoyts cinemas at Eastland, one scene in particular reminded me of the Cathedral I visited in Ulm, Germany. At Helm's Deep where you see the stairs leading up to the top of the fortress, it reminded me very much of the Cathedral in Ulm, which incidentally has the world's tallest church spire (161m, 768 steps). I can verify this, as my host father and I climbed all those winding stairs to the very top of the church. My host father told me the very reason for such tight, winding stairs (you could only go single file) and also the reason why the stairs wound to the right. Allegedly they were built for that reason so when attackers were climbing the stairs, they would need to use their left hand to wield the sword. This of course is the unpreferred hand for many, thus providing an advantage to the protectors of Ulm as they retreated up the stairs.

The scene in Two Towers of course looks nothing like this, but reminded of this city and this building nonetheless.

Some facts:
Ulm is the birthplace of Albert Einstein.
The word for cathedral in German in Münster.

Moon rises over Ulm Cathedral Ulm - how beautiful is it - check the view of the river! I saw that!

eight cents to Germany
but
seven seconds away or just as long as I stay - I'll be waiting

posted by AJ | 4:01 PM |

Friday, December 27, 2002

Phew.
Christmas is over for another year. SOOOO many unwanted presents at the Circle K (Kmart). Sheesh.
And Zimon - I taped both The Amazing Race AND Star Trek: Voyager. I then waited two hours for my brother to come home and watched The Amazing Race at 1:00am on Christmas Day. Verrry verrry good.
Oh and I went to a place that the Amazing Racers went to - Schloß Neuschwanstein in Fussen, Germany. Very beautiful place. The whole time I thought I was inside a postcard.

Speaking of that, some friends of mine who are equally obsessed with the Amazing Race are hoping to get married in the Stonehaven Castle in Scotland merely because it was featured in the show, and the fact that they will be living in Scotland for 3 years... :)

Hmmm, what else? Oh I really wanna see The Two Towers when it comes out - should be really good. Don't have much more to add. Seeya later

posted by AJ | 2:57 PM |

Saturday, December 21, 2002

Howdyhowdyhowdy.
Today my bro and I are hosting a Christmas BBQ - the 1st Annual DEVINE Christmas BBQ to be precise. SHould be a bit of fun and a good chance to see all of my friends in one spot. Hope the weather holds out - 36 degrees! YIKES!
Much better than the previously predicted 40 degrees though....

Haven't been up to much. Been a Slave to the Wage at the Kmart though. But I need the money - I have been officially accepted to become an Intern up in Canberra in May 2003, which is very exciting news... What I'll be doing, I have no idea, accom = also up in the air. I'm sure it'll all get sorted in due time.

Crazy topsy turvy times we live in.

posted by AJ | 11:17 AM |

Friday, December 13, 2002

Visit Simon's blog to see what I got up to yesterday. Re-enrolment.
BAH! Nightmarish. Non standard enrolments are a bitch. Then lunch and Bond. Overall a productive day of not a lot.
And uno at Erica's with Mark, Joel and Abid. I lost. Severely.
I'm really bad at Uno but no matter how many times I play (and lose) I still love playing. And I've noticed we actually have little slogans / mottos for the cards we play

REVERSE = r-r-rr-rrrr-rrrr Reverse or sometimes "Cleopatra (comin atcha)"
SKIP = "Ooh, Skip You. yo' Momma too (and yo Daddy)

Purty funny. I have to work today. 7 hours on the Service Desk. The money will be good though.
The customers, I am thinking, will not....

posted by AJ | 1:34 PM |

Thursday, December 12, 2002

Everyone else's blogs are so much more interesting than mine.
Visit Simon's, Lucy's, Matt's or Jo's and Jess'. They're better.
Funnier.

Fitter Happier More Productive

posted by AJ | 10:01 AM |

What up?
I'm at RMIT Uni right now. In an hour I will re-enrol. But good news everybody - well at least good news for me. I got my results for German. Impressive. Worked my ass off and it paid. Good good.
As you Bloggers out there may or may not know, I am reading a trilogy of books in the Mars series (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) about the colonization of .... (yup you guessed it) Mars. It is the "ultimate in future history" combining political commentary with science, views on religion, culture and is generally just a bloody unbelieveable read.

Anyway, there was a term in there that I thought might be of interest to ya'll: jamais vu.
At Skepdic.com they define Jamais vu as "the contrary of déjà vu. In jamais vu, an experience feels like it's the first time, even though the experience is a familiar one. Jamais vu occurs in certain types of amnesia and epilepsy.".

At The Word Spy: The illusion or impression of never having experienced something that has actually been experienced many times before (cf. déjà vu).

Strange, eh. I like the term though.
My friend Jen says she loves the feeling of déjà vu as she believes her life is following the right path when she experiences it. Cool

posted by AJ | 9:46 AM |

Wednesday, December 11, 2002

Hey
What up?
Wow. I gotta re-enrol for third year BA (International Studies) tomorrow. Sheesh. Do I know what to enrol in?
Yeah, sure, why not.
And have to figure out soon what to do for my Field Study! Even more of a sheesh!!! :-S

Meanwhile, I have been watching more of The Amazing Race. Team TnT, Dennis and Andrew and now Heather and Eve have all been eliminated. Best show ever.

Futurama continues to be shown on Thursdays Ch 7 10:25pm. Tune in. Or Die.

Oh wait that's The Ring or something right?

Gotta do more than watch TV and movies. Really do
Books are good. and music.
Damn all this great popular culture.

posted by AJ | 9:33 PM |

Saturday, December 07, 2002

A big Birthday blog goes out top Herr Zimon! Happy Birthday! Sorry I couldn't be there for your BBQ. Have a good one!

I put up the Christmas Tree on Friday. That was a bit of fun. At had LIVE playing in the background. Dad was coming in every few minutes saying "tinsel here and here, baubles here and here, it's empty in the guts" Gotta love Aussie language.
Soonafter I had a fun 7 hour shift at the Kmart. It's Christmas, people, and don't you bloody forged id.

Have you ever done those ego searches on Google or Yahoo? Just typing in your name and seeing how many hits you get back. It's really quite fun. From what I could gather, I'm some sort of sports personality in another life (or part of the world!). Really very interesting.

Meanwhile, I almost forgot to mention the all new Thursday Channel 7 Comedy lineup. I choose to refer to it here as the "all new Thursday Channel 7 Comedy lineup". Wow. Sooo glad to see some new Futurama. Been waiting 3 years for that moment. *exhale*
Gotta love "8 Steps..." purely for Katey Sagal. (LEELA!). And Peggy of course. Funny funny lady and voice...

sometimes you feel it and then it goes
I guess you might still call it stereo

posted by AJ | 9:11 AM |

Thursday, December 05, 2002

I think I may have figured out some of the errors on page that the Menu I inserted was creating.
Almost all fixed. Just need to see why the menu does not sit exactly on the right side of the screen before expanding it. Hmm. May need Herr Zimon's Help.

You should be able to find the following music files accessible now on the menu. They are all cool songs that I enjoy listening to and hopefully the severely bored out there can take some time listening to them too:
* The Smashing Pumpkins' UGLY
* The Smashing Pumpkins' TAKE ME DOWN
* Bis' EURODISCO
* george's TO THE VOID
* Mary Beth's SPARK (ACOUSTIC)

posted by AJ | 4:16 PM |

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

The link to Bis's EURODISCO - cool cool song should work. Should
That's the only one in my menu that should work (so far)

stay tuned for more cool tunes courtesy of AJ

posted by AJ | 6:20 PM |

WOW>
That's all I can say really. WOW.
Does anyone else here watch The Amazing Race? Without a doubt THE best reality-based TV show (and to all you naysayers and soothsayers, yes it's better than Survivor AND Backyard Blitz ;) ). The premiere of the third season of The Amazing Race came back onto free to air TV on Monday night and it was great! If anyone else watches it, take note of the twins slash male models (maybe not in that order) - Derek and Drew. They looked like Zoolander!??!?! Need I say more?

And their names - wow, talk about nominative determinism, Zimon! Tell me Derek and Drew's parents did not consider a future in male modelling with names such as those. Yikes. It's a great show. Informative and Funny.

Monday night I went out to dinner for a friend's birthday and the service was really strange.... Those who went with me will agree (if they read this.. (Hello, anyone out there?! Wake up McFly!! *Knock knock knock*!) Not only did we not get our meals for maybe over half an hour later than expected, but we had to give over our money to a militant cashier. She insured us "[she was] not ripping [us] off", but for the purposes of this Blog, and later life, I will refer to her as The Cash Nazi.

****NEXT!****

posted by AJ | 5:56 PM |

Monday, December 02, 2002

Hmmmm.
'Twas hot today. Very hot. And I've found that people like to tell each other just how uncomfortable they are when it is hot. I don't really know what point that serves, and merely reminds the speaker that it is hot. And they are hot. Very hot.
On the bus home from an excursion into the city to start to organise transfer of credit for doing German and organising enrolment yadda yadda yadda, the silly people on the bus were whinging to the bus driver that they were hot. Because of this fact, they wanted the bus driver to leave the terminus instead of waiting for the designated time for departure. People can be so demanding. Just imagine if you were running late getting to the bus station, only to discover the bus had come by minutes (even seconds!) earlier because the poor people in the bus were hot, very hot, and demanded that they be shuttled to their destination - post haste.

Meanwhile, today I was FINALLY able to log on to ReciproCITY - our department webpage at uni, to discover that a photo of yours truly was gracing the front page with two friends while we were studying in China.
I also found I passed Global Risk! *relief*

A big hello goes out to everyone within the state, interstate and overseas that I haven't emailled or spoken to recently - mainly uni friends. Hope everything is going well and see you all soon!

posted by AJ | 3:58 PM |