Wednesday, September 26, 2007

MEGALODONTISTRY

Two teenage bonus sons, a cool documentary, access to eBay…… check out our new megalodon teeth!



2 1/2 inches long, serrated, and weighing a good 30 or 40 grams each. And these are the small ones! Having dino-loving boys is such a good excuse....


THE WEATHER HATES MY GLASS

So two weeks ago, we’re sitting down to TV of an evening, middle of a wild and woolly rainstorm, when the 6x4 foot glass screen door in our dining room decides it’s lost the will to live and BANG! Shatter city. A weird anomaly of the weather, ring the insurance company, get a guy out. One of those odd things that never happens again.

So Sunday I’m working in the garden, two feet away from our glass patio table….

What the HELL is going on with the glass in our house?

YOU KNOW YOU’RE OLD WHEN……

Your boss turns on his radio in the middle of the keyboard solo of the Doors’ Light My Fire and your 23 year old workmate asks “Is someone’s mobile ringing?”


ARISE, SIR CONNOR


Do you think Sir Lancelot started out with his sister's toy horse and twirling fairy streamers wand?

Hands up!

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

A SHORT, SHARP REMINDER TO THE HEAD......

It’s been a fairly miserable winter at the Batthome when it comes to health. One by one, we’ve all succumbed to lurgis of various descriptions: chest infections, ear infections, flus, colds, sniffles, snorts, bogies, and blurghs have kept us low and unhappy. As a result, writing has diminished to zero. For months, I just couldn't find any desire or passion in me to take it up again.

I literally couldn't find any reason to do it, not with the combination of my own illness, Lyn's, the *kids*, all the house stuff that needs doing, and on and on......

Until yesterday morning, when I returned to work after a week of sick, whereupon my fabbo team leader made me feel about as welcome as the Dalia Lama in a Chinese restaurant, and all of a sudden I had a big flash of "Ohhhh yeaaahhh, that's why I do it…"

Must escape, must escape, must escape....

Thursday, September 13, 2007

OH, HOW I LAUGHED THE LAUGH OF TRUTH

With multi-thanks to Martin Livings for sending this to Luscious and me, anybody with more than one kid has to recognise this as the funniest eBay auction description ever!

THE CAT-VACUUMING FILES, VOLUME 721....

For anyone who's interested and might want to join in, I've taken up bandwidth and precious minutes of my life playing about with a Facebook page. It's a bit of fun....

Monday, September 10, 2007

OOOOOOOOOOOH-LAAAAAAAAAAAAA

It came, we went, we were blown away.

Luscious and I headed to the Burswood dome on Saturday night to view the multi-million-dollar-multi-media-lots-of-singing-stars-and-orchestra-and-rock-band-and-bloody-enormous-video-screen-and-how-damn-cool-is-the-30-metre-high-Martian-fighting-machine-attacking-the-audience-with-lights-and-smoke musical spectacular War of The Worlds, and lets me tells ‘ee, we were not disappointed. Indeedy not. We wuz, um, appointed?

Lyn fell in love with Justin Hayward all over again because, well, he’s good looking and has a great voice and long hair and wears all white, I think. I fell in love with the giant tripod because, well, I don’t wanna talk about it….

The music was blood-stirring, the vocal performances were outstanding, and we were carried along by the thunderous narrative as if it was the first time we’d heard it. The original album is one of my favourites- I’ve owned it in three different formats, and to be honest, I half-expected to witness a simple recreation of the musical score. Instead, we were presented with an updated work, modified to accompany a theatrical performance, taking into account the characters who appeared live (as opposed to those who appeared via the multi-media portion of the performance). Rather than a simple re-telling, this was a re-imagining, bringing what was a purely aural experience into three dimensions with an aggressive bombast perfectly suited to the big arena in which it was played. It was vibrant, and fresh, and a magnificent theatrical experience.

Works such as this have always fired my imagination. I’ve always loved theatrical-style concepts albums: sure, there are some terrible examples of the form, but albums such as WotW and Alice Cooper’s The Last Temptation show what can be done if the vision is strong enough, and those involved keep a firm idea of their artistic goals.

I’ve always been attracted to works that carry from one form to another in that way, and recent advances in technology have made such interweaving of media accessible in so many more ways than in days past— Walking with Dinsoaurs Live; the Battlestar Galactica 'Webisodes'; the interactive Dr Who Invasion of the Graske episode…. and of course, there are countless other examples, both highly commercial and otherwise.

But as a creator, with an urge to flex my creative muscles, it’s inspiring. And as a geeky little fanboy with an inner ten year old who lurks thiiiiiiiisss close to the skin, who could ask for more than the total immersion such things offer?

Anyway: watched it, experienced it, loved it. What else can I say?



A teensy camera, a fair way away. But come on: how frigging

cool is that fighting machine?

B-13!

Okay, so it’s next weekend, but because a) he’s at his dad’s house then and we weren’t keen on our chances of getting time with him and b) nobody wanted to wait 2 weeks if we couldn’t get him, we held Blakey-Boy’s 13th birthday a week early this weekend!

He’d tell you how much he enjoyed heading out to our favourite curry house for dinner; scarfing mass quantities of his cheesecake birthday-cake-of-choice; and playing the Gross & Yucky Electronic Trivia board game he received, but we can’t get him to put down the copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys to tell us :)

I must say, though: it’s a tad disturbing to sit near a boy who interrupts your evening at regular intervals to inform you that he now knows how to fletch his own deer hunting arrows, or which is the most poisonous animal in the country……


The gathering hordes...

Kill the cake, kill the cake!





One head, much loot.

MY ‘JUST BECAUSE’ PRESENT

How much does she love me? Luscious returned from a shopping trip on Saturday morning, and presented me with a gift because “You never ask for anything, and we always ask you for things.” Awwww. And what did I receive? A damn cool book entitled Celluloid Serial Killers: The Real Monsters Behind the Movies by Paul B Kidd, an exploration of serial killer movies and the real-life serial killers who inspired them, and vice versa.

And bloody good reading it is, too.

BEWARE THE GIANT ECHIDNA....

As a way of getting your wallet ready to open, purchase of the upcoming Daikaiju III: Giant Monsters vs The World, the purposes of:

Have a gander at the cover art, by the ever-looney and talented Nick Stathopolous.

I mean, come on, it’s worth the money just to find out about the giant echidna, isn’t it?

Sunday, September 09, 2007

TRYSERRA TOPS

Named by my five year old daughter, impetus provide by my 14 year old Bonus son.... I've opened a cafe press store to provide a home for all the silly one-liners, cartoons, scribbled pictures of dinoasaurs, and sundry ideas that we think someone might like to have on a t-shirt.

So, as the title says: Tryserra Tops.

There's a link over there 44444444444

Right now I've put up one item, but I'll be adding more as I get the time, and letting you know, including some dinosaur designs and the odd bizarre thing involving Daleks.

JOKE OF THE DAY

You can blame Aiden for this one:

Q: What's the difference between 100 dead babies and a Ferarri?
A: I don't have a Ferarri in my garage.

Thengyew, thengyewwww.....

Sunday, September 02, 2007

101 REASONS TO LOOK SHINIER

Oooooohhhhhhh. 101 Reasons To Stop Writing, the ascerbic and hilarious anti-writing website run by my old pal Sean Lindsay, has undergone a bout of upgradey goodness.

Check it out.