Sunday of my Life

OK…I realise it’s only been a few minutes since my last entry, but I can’t be buggered editing the last one, so I’m going to put this here.

Another of my sisters moved out this weekend. That’s two down, out of the three. It’s strange. This particular sister could be the most abrasive person at time, but, goddammit, she is my sister. I’m not happy about the fact she isn’t here, but I’m not entirely sure why. It could have something to do with the fact that everything in my life that I accepted as normal is yet again changing. It means I’m going to have to get used to a whole new concept of the world, and I don’t like shifting my views if I don’t have to.

I dunno…I feel like I’m whining over nothing right now, but, it means something to me, and that’s what really counts.

Just a quick note for this message.

I hate having sinuses.

I really do! I’ve never had sinus problems in my entire life, but I have just spent a week and more with a headache, and a great feeling of pressure in my head. About the only concession, and this is not much of one, is that a couple of hours after I take my sinus medication everything becomes funny. And I mean everything. Someone could blow up a dog in front of me and I would probably find it funny.

Isn’t Pseudo-effedrine fun? Main ingredient of both speed and extasy, and they sell the stuff over the counter in pharmacies. It’d probably be understandable if it actually fucking did anything!

*Ahem* I’m going to go and sleep now…I hate having sinuses

One of the things that makes life bearable in this strange and wacky world I live in is cooking, and so I spend as much time doing it as I can. here then is my take on the standard ol’ spaghetti bolegnese sauce.

Obviously, it’s your choice here to use pasta, tagatelli, spaghetti, fettuccini, whatever.

OK, to make this sauce you will need:

At least 800g of minced beef (well defrosted)
3 cloves (that’s c-l-o-v-e-s, no doves, like it looks) of garlic
6 medium basil leaves
2 sprigs of oregano
1 bunch of fresh parsley
1 400g can of crushed tomatos
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
Olive Oil
Sweet Chilli Sauce
Plum Sauce
Salt
Pepper

OK, and to make it you do this:
Peel and crush your garlic, finely chop your basil and oregano. Place them all in a mortar and pestle with a good pinch of salt as an abrasive. Crush them all together to get the oils out of the leaves, and then add as much olive oil as you would use to cook your meat, and then a little more for good luck. Mix all of this together, and leave to stand for half an hour so that the oil will take up the flavours of the herbs.

Divide your meat up into 4 equal portions, strain your oil into your saucepan and heat it. When the oil is hot, but not smoking, put the meat in, one portion at a time. Break up the meat, stirring it until it is all browned. Once the meat is browned, add the herbs, the can of tomatos, the tomato paste, salt and pepper to taste. Stir it all up until it is well mixed, and fil lthe tomato can 1/3 of the way with hot water, adding this to the sauce too. Add the sweet chilli sauce and the plum sauce. Let the whole thing simmer, stiring ever 3 minutes or so, just to stop the meat that is in contact with the pan from burning, and keep this up for a half hour to an hour. The longer you cook the sauce, the more developed the flavours will become.

Skim off the oil that will be floating on the top, as well as a good portion of the liquid. The liquid is necessary for coking the sauce, but I feel it takes away from the flavour of the sauce to have it there when serving. It makes the sauce kind of watery. Serve with your choice of italian dried-flour-and-water shapes, and enjoy. It’s good with a bit of parmensan or cheddar cheese, and a class of white wine.

Come to think of it, don’t drink the wine. Put it in the sauce when you start to simmer it. It’ll add to the flavour.

Just finished watching the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala (boy, that’s a mouthful). For those Aussies reading this, if you missed it, you missed a great show. For those who aren’t priviledged enough to have Australian television…you poor, poor deprived people. The cream of international comedy was on there. Greg Fleet, Will Anderson…uh…several other people who names I can’t remember.

I may not be able to remember their names, but I can remember the laughs.

My favourite one-liner for the night (and this is something probably only Aussies will get, so I apologise to anyone from anywhere else who may be reading this): “Television is a powerful tool. But, then again, so is Eddie McGuire”. If I was at all inclined to do net-slang abbreviations, then I would probably be writing “ROFLMFAO” or something along those lines.

Channel 9 was trying to compete with Channel 10 tonight (10 had the Comedy Festival Gala), and so were showing Rush Hour 1 and Rush Hour 2. Something slightly spoiled this on their digital station, where they had a slight fuck-up, shown (sort of) in this screenshot: http://www.geelongforums.com/wp/ninebooboo.jpg

Well, I’m laughing. That was up on screen for about 90 minutes until they finally managed to solve the problem and get it off.

Heh

Thank you! That is offically my bad pun for the day.

Let me tell you what happened to me on Wednesday.
Note for the unwary: Names of people and institutions/companies/dogs have been changed so that I cannot be sued for defamation. Thankyou.

OK…so I, as part of the current course I’m doing, have to take a class on Hardware Fundamentals.

Now, for a computer nerd who’s being taking computers apart for as long as he could operate a screwdriver, this class is a riveting experience, filled with information that is all totally new to me and is not boring in the least.

Sorry, I guess I really am a compulsive liar.

Now, thankfully, I have managed to make a number of friends in this class, something which, and this is me actually being truthful, I doubted I’d do this quickly. One of them had an accident that could have been potentially fatal the other day. Brett we’ll call him. We were in hardware, and another student was putting a computer together (a requirement for some reason, God only knows why as none of the hardware in the room actually works properly, as you’ll see in a minute) and was having some troubles with it. He called Brett over to see if he could see what was wrong with it.

Brett hit the power button so he could see which point in the boot sequence it got up to, and got the shock of his life as power arced out of the case and into his hand. That hand has clamped down onto the case and, with the locking of muscles which commonly occurs in an electrical shock, his other hand has come down to join it, providing the power with a course out of his body.

So, at this point, Brett has a full power (240 volt, 10 amp) charge going right across his heart. Not the most survivable of situations. Brett is lurching around attempting to put this case down. The things he said don’t bear repeating.

Ah, what the hell, I’ll say them anyway. I believe they went along the lines of ‘fuckshitcrapshitfuckfuckfuckhelpfuckcrapshitfuckinghellcrapshitfuck’.

Now, some of you may be thinking ‘My, that young man has a foul mouth on him’, but what do you expect? Someone’s getting electrocuted and they say ‘Oh dear. That tingles.’

So, after about 20 seconds Brett manages to throw the computer down. The strength with which his hands were gripping the case means that he has sliced his hands in several places when he threw the case down.

This is regrettable, but we consider it a good move in the long run.

We manage to get Brett sitting (not as easy as it sounds as his muscles don’t want to obey him at this point), and ask our teacher, we’ll call him…uh…Fuckrag…anyway, we ask Fuckrag if we could have some bandage or something to stem the flow of blood from Brett’s hands.

Now, you’d think a teacher, who’s primary responsiblity is his students, would be more than willing to allow this student to leave to go get his hands bandaged/stitched/amputated. No such luck. Upon Brett throwing down the computer, Fuckrag has gone over to it and started examing it (shame it wasn’t plugged in anymore). He’s more concerned with seeing if the computer’s OK than if his student is OK! I mean, hello, obviously the computer isn’t OK, if it was, it wouldn’t have just electrocuted one your students!

Wanker

So, after a while, Fuckrag has allowed one of us to go get some bandaids for Brett. Fuckrag starts joking around, trying to make it seem like this situation wasn’t at all life-threatening. Eventually, a group of us have had enough of this, and we take Brett off to go fill out first-aid and occupational health and safety forms, and to go register a complaint against Fuckrag.

The man is a teacher for fucks sake. He’s supposed to be primarily concerned with our wellbeing, and he is more concerned about the wellbeing of a piece of faulty hardware. I dearly hope this man doesn’t have an children, becuase if this is compassion he manages to show ordinary people, I doubt children are safe around him.

So the school had an electrician out the next day to check the surge protectors and safety switches on the room. Thye turn out to be faulty (is it just me, or is that another ‘well, duh!’ situation?). Fuckrag wasn’t any too happy with the group of us when we had class with him next. Gee, I wonder why. But, suddenly, now he’s all concerned about how Brett is. Idiot, does he think we don’t notice how false his concern is? The only person he’s really concerned about is himself, becuase now he’s in deep donkey excrement becuase of his lack of action.

To wrap this up, a message: if you’re a teacher, remember who you’re primary concerns are supposed to be. If you aren’t..uhh…party on dude!

Now, those who’ve read my first couple of posts may remember me mentioning Mr. Annoying, my next-door neightbour. He’s a rather strange old guy, who lives all on his own in a house built for 6 people. Go figure. I do feel sorry for him sometimes, but not today. Not when he does things like this:

Mr. Annoying was fixing the fence between out properties. Rather nice of him I thought, saves us having to pay for it. So, he’s a half-hour or so into it, and I hear his voice from around the corner

“Hello, is anyone there?”

So, I get up from my computer, and head off outside to see what he wants.

I never get there.

As soon as I step into my lounge-room, there he is. He let himself into our house to see if there was anyone there. With almost anyone else that would constitute breaking and entering.

That, and me coming around the corner to just
find him there kinda scared the crap outta me, but that’s beside the point

Not that this is an isolated incident, either. He borrowed a bin from us a while ago, as we had a spare wheelie-bin we weren’t using, and he needed to borrow one. That’s all fine and dandy, he actually had our permission. When he returned it about 18 months later (this was 2 days ago), he didn’t drop it off out the front of our place and let us know it was there. That would have been thoughtful, and logical. No, instead, he let himself into our backyard and wheeled the bin over to where the others are.

This is not the least of his strangeness, but most of the rest of it you have to experience to understand.