Trysting Fields

Stuff I Did This Year

In a nutshell: systematically climbed the fuck out of hell. Again. (See previously: 2005; 2007; 2009.)

And it's good! Can't complain.

:)

"Friends - you know who you are; you know we're grateful." - Blur, 1993. (Seriously. If ever a year was about Who Your Real Friends Are, it was 2011.)

Similarly, those who have fucked me up and fucked me over this year most likely know who they are also, and possibly how I feel about this (hint: angry, bewildered and sad) - with the possible exception of the Rt Hon Lord Mayor of Melbourne Robert Doyle (note contact details), who I strongly suspect does not have any idea who I am.

(I also doubt he reads this blog. But since it just can't be said often enough I might as well take this opportunity to (re)state, for the record: Robert Doyle, you're a fucking cunt. You really are.)

The bulk of this year's SIDTY post I rendered in audio format at the coast a few nights ago. It goes into a bit more detail (although, to be honest, not all that much). Enjoy:

Vale 2011. Viva 2012.

Happy new year!

Christmas

Sam & Sar's

~ Occuparty ~

Saturday, 17th December.

Tentmonster Rally

Saturday, 10th December.

Footage of (failed) police raid the same night here (207 MB).

Occupy McFarland St Treehouse aka Sarah's Housewarming

Friday, 2nd December.

Surprise K!P Gig @ The Evelyn

Thursday, 1st December.

Luke Hand's Opening

Wednesday, 30th November.

Chez Hagakure Cohabitative Arrangement VI Official Housewarming Shenanigan / Karl's Birthday

Friday, 21st October.

As anomalous Chez Hagakure parties go, I'd rate this one as anomalous out of ten. We didn't even do Russian Cocaine in the end. But it still went off.

At an advanced stage of the evening I even shot a video. Don't say I never do anything for yiz.

Obligatory Birthday Party Post

Saturday, 24th September.

An epic time was, needless to say, had.

The Patrick Porter award for the best present and best guest overall goes to Kirrily. The prize for the most perverse guests goes to the Keith! Party crew - comprising on this occasion Talkshow Boy, 2-SHEE, Hot God, Gezus and entourage including Ms C. C*ulter (alias unknown) - who turned up unfashionably early, immediately occupied what would normally be the dancing room and systematically set about turning it into a chillout room. WTF. (NB: And it was *great*.)

Prize for the most long-lost-but-pleasingly-now-seemingly-regained former CH party regular goes to Vicwie. Prize for the best guest who wasn't able to attend physically but who came in essence goes, as always, to Wads. Prize for the best autographed copy of Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and best Tasweigan mafia attaché goes to Doktor Midnight aka The Dan Cross Revolution. Prize for the best drug by almost universal consensus goes to nitrous oxide.

Prize for the most gobsmacking act of delusionality - not to mention the most concerted but nevertheless pathetically unsuccessful attempt to ruin a birthday party of mine in the history of the world - goes to the profoundly fucked in the head disappointing Ms G. Rouse. Prize for the most departing housemate of three years goes to Grim$ha.

Prize for the most heroically tenacious still-recovering-from-her-own-birthday-shenanigan-the-previous-night attendee and all-round best MC-Ren-would-you-please-give-your-testimony-to-the-jury-about-this-fucked-up-incident regaliousness goes to Toots.

Special award for the mouthiest ho goes, as it generally does, to Kat (see audio, below).

Extra special thanks to, y'know, everyone else. Seriously.

(Previously; previously; previously.)

Second Day Of Spring

Hand-made Thing From Luke Hand

:)!

Click for larger.

He blogged about it, also.

Last Day Of Semester One

Handmade Thing From Nada

Gathering

Saturday, 14th May.

The first Chez Hag social event since the somewhat abortive dinner party marathon in November, and the first real party since my birthday in September.

Went off.

UPDATE (Sat 21st) - I thought no audio had been captured, but upon checking my phone this afternoon I found this recording, captured at 4:51am, of Johnny "Liable For Nothing" Coburg performing Knockin' on Heaven's Door, accompanied (IIRC) by Ford on the acoustic guitar and featuring Grimsey scatting at the very end, which is something you don't hear every day:

Today Was A Good Day

That is all.

Birthday Party

Friday 17th September.

It started out as the intended convivial quiet gathering.

Suffering some uncertainty as to whether I was being terribly rude - but hey, it was my birthday, and moreover Luke forced my hand. As in literally picked me up and carried me out the door - I abandoned said gathering temporarily to go see these people play a venue down the road with a roomful of balloons at around 11pm.

(Due to a combination of behind-scheduleness and licensing restrictions, they very nearly didn't. But in the end they beat the odds - and the law - and totally did.)

Then, with a few new guests in tow, we returned to CH an hour and a bit later to find the former quiet gathering had unexpectedly hit critical mass in our absence and was comprehensively going OFF. Omg!

The universe, in effect, threw me a bitchin surprise party.

Big thanks to everybody who conspired with the universe to make it such a happy one.

Spring = Sprung

Official fact. Doesn't quite feel like it yet, but it's unquestionably getting there.

So, Em came to visit from Sydney a few weeks ago. Hadn't seen her in almost exactly a year. It was excellent. Here's a picture of us her, and me in half-eaten pizza form at Bimbo:

Amongst other things, we talked blogs. She pointed out that my F$%book accounts have pretty much completely supplanted the more here-is-the-newsy kind of role my blog used to play back in the day, and told me she'd blog more if I did. Which seemed like a good deal, especially since I'm finally starting to feel kind of over F&#b!@k.

She also opined that TF should go back to being more writerly and less overwhelmingly audiocentric. Quoth TAFKALJ, concordantly: "TOO MUCH AUDIO".

I dunno. The blog has to do what it wants!!! *stamps foot petulantly on behalf of blog* It can't be forced, let alone by the audioantipathetic whims of sundry ex-girlfriends. Well, it probably can up to a point. But it shouldn't be. That said, I think Em made a strong case.

Blog bloggety blog.

We'll see what happens.

~ SPRING! ~

How was your winter? Mine was harsh. Although I've certainly had worse. And yeah - it's over now.

Which is good.

Surprise SRC Gathering

Wednesday 12th May.

4/5.

Night At Twyllan's

Monday 22nd March.

Random Encounter With AG

Thursday 4th March.

Entertaining Budini

Tuesday 2nd March.

Dinner Party III

Friday 12th February.

Starring Henley & Adele; 2003 & Danny (sans promised cheese platter, but I just can't stay mad at the guy); Lady GrimGrim & Jacqui; the fantastic Mr Kav; the ex-operative formerly known as Li Han, Blog Boy From Space (who hopefully won't object to me linking him old-school like that - because although Exaggerating Rumours is now four years old and obviously he's grown as a person since then etc blah blah, it's still genius which deserves wider exposure) - and of course Toots, who opted to turn up after everyone except Kav had gone home, because that is the way she motherfucking rolls.

Fair to say, went OFF.

No obligatory formula picture of everyone in the back garden, because for whatever reason (quite possibly because it's the way they motherfucking roll), the guests all opted to stay inside this time - a trend that, with the encroachment of winter, we were going to have to adapt to sooner or later anyway. But there's these ones.

In contrast to last time, when I accidentally deleted the audio directly after recording it, we successfully captured over sixty minutes of vox, much of it gold. Unfortunately that means I'm having a really hard time choosing clips. Maybe I'll put some up retrospectively & link back to it in a later post. We'll see.

In other news: if you happen to be in the region of the Abbotsford Convent at any point over the next week, I strongly advocate checking out the Prismatic Audit currently being undertaken there by Torie Nimmervoll & intended DP III invitee and amazing genius Jason Maling (who couldn't come, because he was too busy getting ready for the Prismatic Audit. That's okay, we'll get him next time).

I did today; it was great. I came home exhausted and collapsed at 6:30pm into some of the weirdest and most awesome dreams I've had in months. Now it's 2:30am and I'm blearly eating a pizza at Bimbo. But that's beside the point.

Where was I? Oh yeah; I'm starting school on Monday, which will be well weird. But before that I'm off to a quasi-hippy festival in a field near Schnozzie's hometown.

There will most likely be bloggage about both of these things. Until then: stay in the groove. Or, y'know, don't. It's Entirely Up To You (tm)! See if I care, blog readers. SEE IF I GIVE A FUCK.

:)

(Previously; previouslyer.)

Thailand (One)

Chiang Mai, 26th January.

The DP I Audio Is Finally Up

Here.

All of V*cw*e's parts have been edited out - which is a shame IMHO, coz they're golden. But so it goes.

(She got kind of shitty at me about the whole thing, which was a bit upsetting. This is the first time anyone's ever gotten pissy at me over blog audio. There's an interesting post in all of this. But methinks it's a story for another time.)

In happier news: I found out on Tuesday that, against all expectations, I got into art school.

Wo0t!1! etc

Happy New Tenth!!! [*]

([*] Trope courtesy of D. Soybean.)

So, my 2010 has pretty much rocked so far. How's 'bout yours!!!?

I think my epic backlog-killing spree (mostly effected down the NSW coast, where I spent an actually not at all unpleasant festive perenium with Toots and the parentals) exhausted me a bit, blogwise. Maybe that will change; maybe not. We'll find out!!!

Yeah, my parents have been in the country, which doesn't happen very often. They went home yesterday, after five days here in teh Melbourne. Ergo, amongst other things, I've lately been eating out a lot and experiencing a generally higher material standard of living than that to which I'm accustomed. It's all been very nice!!!

I set a prospective date today for DP III, which is Friday, February 12th - although I haven't told the prospective invitees directly yet, coz I'm still figuring out exactly who they are!!!

The audio from both DP I and the SRC Xmas Post-Party is being held back pending the resolution of some content (in the former case) and clearance (in the latter) issues, but I'll post an update when it's finally up!!!

What else? Oh, yeah - I'm going to Thailand for ten days in two weeks!!!

To this end, I was vaccinated against Swine Flu (amongst other things) the other day and consequently, I think, came down with a very minor case of Swine Flu. But I recovered!!!

And I think that's pretty much all for now!!!

Here, randomly, is a picture of A, DA, G and myself at Prudence last night, playing the Trivial Pursuit Toots gave me for Christmas:

Stuff I Did This Year

This year was all about recovery. It started out in the absolute pits of hell, slowly got better, and - a few ickle problems here and there aside, but whatcha gonna do - ended all up in unmitigated gnarley.

Result.

As per last year I feel more like talking about people than doings or accomplishments. Specifically, and without wanting to get too gushy, all the people who've helped me in all their various ways to remember what the whole circus is about. Really forgot for a while there. Fucken' sucked.

So couldn't have done it without yiz.

Thanks. Seriously.

• Mum, Dad & Jess.
• Ben.
• Despite - and partly because of - some serious difficulties, Liv (and co).
• Henley.
• On an obscure tip: Martha, Dolly, Magnus, Tim, my secret admirer, and the other Barn*by Ev*ns on Facebook.
• Li.
• Nada A.
• Nada Z (nb not technically a person, but we'll let it slide).
• Em & co.
• Kav. Georgie. Twyllan. Kinkel. Vicwie. Sims. Brendan. Zanella. The Major. Freedman. 2003 & co. And all the countless other people at/from my thankfully now-former work who are fucking awesome. But most especially them.
• Relatedly: motorscooting Keith! Party and associates - most especially Bourkie, and Carol. We don't really know Trajstman yet - but you may rest assured we intend to.
• Cel.
• Freakley.
• Mr Ad*m F*rd (not the poet), and Mr D. Allan.
• Grimsey.
• Gab, obvs, and associates not previously mentioned, especially Pets & Dech (+ Scott, Ewan, Chirsp etc etc etc).
• And last, but the exact opposite of least: Ms M. F. "prog081" Evans and associates, esp. Kat, Hayley, Fran & co, Ange & Chloe.

The admittedly sometimes finite limitations of my resources notwithstanding, these people can - at any time, and to whatever extent they may deem necessary and/or desirable - stand the fuck under my umbrella.

I'd also like to extend a really colossal, biblical-epic-stylez "fuck you" to one or two other individuals whose selfish, infantile cuntishness and astonishing lack of Vision (tm), conversely, reeeallly hasn't helped. Anyone. But I won't. It won't help. We can only have faith that in time they will grow the hearts, brains, spines and souls they surprisingly appear to lack.

Having A Soul: It's Good.

:)

Happy new year.

Bar Open With Toots

20th December.

She initiated this audio. That never happens. Crazy festive timez FTW!

Day After G's Birthday

13th December.

"I feel a bit like I'm on drugs but I'm not." - me, on CC's status

Ange's Bad '80s Beach Party

5th December.

Birthday

Went off.

Admittedly not to quite the full extent of last year's - but on the upside no one wound up in hospital this time, and no string of events which will lead to me being effectively completely shut down for the best part of the coming year were set in train. Which is always good.

On the downside, my Ixus disappeared - I won't say explicitly that Wouters stole it because, however plausible, this theory can't be proven beyond reasonable doubt - so there are no pictures. But a lot of audio was captured, and it's great.

This bit is my favourite. The core of it is Grimsey asking various people if they think Facebook is dead, and Henley's impassioned rantsponse:

I've produced a full transcript of the above clip, in the vague hope that this might help others to appreciate it almost as much as I do.

And this is me the morning[*] after:

:)

[*] Morning, afternoon, whatever.

Hooray For The Existential Condition

I think we just Realised something. Finally.

It's quite good; could be a keeper.

Thanks to the weird amalgam of Toots, 2003 & Wads that I dreamt about last night. And also former operative Hawthorne, in an incredibly perverse but not unpoetic kinda way.

4/5, etc.

Teigan's Subconscious Has A Plan

I don't entirely understand it RN, but it seems solid. It'll work.

So stop digging and chill the fuck out, man.

Give your brain some credit.

We're gonna be okay.

FTW!

It'll come good.

Yup.