howie’s halfpipe

We have been trying to work out how to clear some space in the dining room of our house so that Oscar can have a more permanent play area set up. One option we thought was to get rid of our chunky old TV because it takes up a fare bit of space. This is the sort of idea that excites me because i love technology and was hoping it meant I would get to go and get a new TV.

I was in westfield getting some bats for a TEAR simulation and thought i would pop in to a few TV shops just to look at prices.

The space we have for a TV is quite small so i went to look at all the small TV’s in the stores. The cheapest i could find was $500 and that was in Kmart, some brand that no one in the whole world has ever heard of.

I went to several differnt shops, Bing Lee, JB Hi-Fi, Kmart, It seemed that the new tv idea was a lost casue, I’m not spending $500 on a tiny tv.

I thought I would give David Jones a go, so I went in and looked around at their TV’s, then I found this ugly white one that was $549 but on sale now only $349 Bargain. So i rang Jenny to see if she thought it was a good idea. We did lots of umming and arrrring. Then Jenny said i needed to put forward a better case. So I spun my magic and walked to the register with a TV in a box.

The man scanned it in and it came up at $249, that’s $300 OFF!!!! I had to buy it now.

So we have a new little LCD tv, it even picks up fuzzy 10, 9 and 7. Unlike our home theatre that only gets ABC and SBS.

We put our old chunky TV out on the footpath and jenny made a sign that said “FREE!!! Works fine, includes remote”

Some smart arese came along and stole the remote so I had to tear that part of the sign off. A few hours later the TV was gone.

MJ had number ones all the time and became the King of Pop.

I have number two’s all the time so am becoming the King of Poop

I went in to the office late this afternoon to do some printing, get my laptop and grab some flyers.

I got back to Central just in time to get the 5pm express home. I got a seat next to a business man and near some load girls whoe had just been to NZ on a skiing trip.

The train chugged along like normal, then suddenly there was a loud bang and a smash. The window in front of mine was hit with a big rock, it shattered the ourside pane of glass and broke a hole in the second one. There was some shouting and a few swear words. It was pretty crazy, a bit more force and the lady in front of me would have a different shaped head right now.

After letting out a few more naughty words she called the cops on her mobile.

It was as we where going past the brickpit skate park. But the Lady didnt tell the cops that.

When the train pulled in to Hornsby I went and found a cityrail worker, he was standing there with his flag, I told him what happened and he asked which carriage, So I pointed at the window. He then said “ok” and put his flag up so the train could leave, he wasn’t the slightest bit interested. I would have thought a rock smashing a window would be a serious deal.

I then decided to call the cops myself and tell them that i was on the train and that the rock was thrown from the skate park.

that is all.

I got to throw up in the gutter outside the RSL club this morning.

It was still there when Jenny and I walked past later this afternoon.

I’m sick of being sick, i’m putting in for a full body transplant.

this is some super cool advertising.

I’m not a celebrity yet

The bearded cold is very different to your average cold. Most of you would not be familiar with it’s characteristics especially if you are a woman (excluding some southern European women).
The bearded cold comes on like your normal run of the mill winter time delight.

Stage One:
Firstly the sore throat in the evenings and mornings when it’s coldest. Then after a day or so the sore throat increases to being an all day all night affair.
And this is where the bearded cold leaves the regular cold and takes it’s own path of viral destruction.

Stage two:
The nose begins to clog up, not super runny yet, but defiantly blocked. You go to bed for the night and discover that breathing os going to be harder than normal so you implement the ‘mouth open’ nasal bypass. In cases of non-bearded colds this bypass causes slight issues in regard to increased dribble flow onto the pillow and sometimes you will wake up with a cold wet cheek. In the bearded cold this is taken to a whole new level. Instead of waking up with a small cold patch on one cheek and a ring of drool on the pillow you wake up with an entire wet face as the dribble must make it’s own path through the Forrest of facial hair, rarely making its pillow destination.
The result is a cold wet face, or if has been a long night then a cold crusty dry face with the odor of a wet dog.

Stage three:
The snot begins to flow. During this stage there is often an urgency when it comes to avoiding nasal disaster. Tissues are a great way to relieve the flow for a while, you blow your nose the snot is clear and you move on. In the bearded cold however you blow your nose with all your might into the nice soft tissue. When your nose is clear you remove the tissue only to find that the tissue is still in it’s original state and could easily be placed back in the box. All the snot you have removed is sitting, dangling, resting in your mustache. It normally requires the use of 2 tissues or more to clean up the junk in amongst the shrubbery. If you happen to have a bearded cold on Clean-up Australia Day this is a much easier process as you can just send in the local scout troop to clean up the mess.

the last few days have comprised of headaches,  doctor visit, blood test, throwing up, back door explosions, coughing, lack of sleep, more headaches, more throwing up, laying down, sitting, laying down, sitting.

I haven’t even had a coke for 3 days.

I really hope tomorrow is better

As you know I sent off a silly item for a church bulletin through a church website.

It didn’t make it into the Sunday bulletin, but I did get this response.

I assume that you are aware that you have contacted ‘Platypus’ Church
in Sydney, Australia.  Maybe you are trying to reach ‘Platypus Church’ in the
USA.

We don’t keep cake tins in our church kitchen, I hope you find the ones you
have lost.  

Office Administrator

you will notice I have very cleverly hidden the identity of the church with the word ‘platypus’

I was just looking at a church website that a friend goes to. I noticed there was an online form for adding notices to the church bulletin. How could i pass up an opportunity for silliness like this?

So I have submitted the following.

Attention all kitchen users.

There are several cake tins missing fomr the kitchen. If you have borrowed a cake tin could you please return it ASAP, especially the pretty floral one.

And I sent it all from the email of Abby Graham

Here’s hoping this Sunday has a special notice in the bulletin.

Chk Chik Boom girl - One bogan girl gets on TV and the whole country goes crazy and experts start analyzing her and how did she get onto tv..blah blah blah. There are plenty of other bogan women on TV  that shouldn’t be and why are we not complaing about them. Gretel Killeen, Susan Boyle,Therese Rein,Reggie Bird, Pauline Hanson,

Malcom Turnbull - Boring!!!!!!!!

John Farnham - Staging a comeback tour. He had a big ‘last time’ tour which was followed by a national tour with Tom Jones.  Then his boss Wheatley had to go to jail, so John took some time off too. Then he announces yesterday he is back and the media goes crazy. But ‘you said you had retired’ . Who cares we have no right to dictate someone elses career and what they do. if he wants to sing sady one more time he can, if he wants to sing it 50 more times he can. He’s the voice, try and understand it!

Sol the Telstra man - Boring!!!!!!!!!

Swine flu - media beat up. So far it seems the swine flu has milder symptoms than your stock standard flu, is treated the same way and infectious the same way. So what do we do? How about as chopper would say ‘Harden the F%^& up! and suck a butter menthol if you feel sick.

I have found the greatest game on the entire interweb.

poo throwing monkeys.

Remember in the super duper old days, floppy disc and DOS days there was 2 killer games. Nibbles and Gorilla, well this one is like gorilla.

Last night after a romantic dinner at the RSL club Tom and I went to the pictures.

We saw ‘Observe and Report’

It was very very funny. In some ways it was quite similar to Paul Blart - Mall Cop. Only this was the adult only, politically incorrect version. I really liked the absurdity of Paul Blart, but this one was 1o times better. I had a great time, it made me cringe, it made me laugh out loud.

5.5 / 7

Waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of a dog licking it’s bits and pieces only about 45cm from your head isn’t my idea of a good night.

Today I was visiting a Church camp to be part of a panel discussion on service.

Before the panel discussion there was a service. To start with it began 45 minutes late, I think just because that’s the norm on a christian camp.

The service began with a bit of worship. The worship leader began by pointing at people in the congregation and saying “come on Tony get up here and sing with us”. She kept going until he had 6 or 7 people up the front with the band. I made sure i was well slouched in my chair.

The band fired up and we began to sing. Then part way through a song the worship leader put down her mic and began walking up and down the centre isle. Just before the next line of the song she would shout “MEN” or “WOMEN” depending on who she wanted to sing the next line. I remember when i was a younger chap that this was common practice in church but never with such military delivery. “MEN!!!!!”

My favorite moment was towards the end of a song when it was fading out she shouted “AGAIN!!”

It was an interesting experience.

After the service it was time for the panel discussion with me and a few others from different organisations.

I had to go first in introducing myself, who i am, what I do etc.

I began with a joke about how normally i just speak to young people and that a lot of the people in the room where far from being young. I didn’t mean to begin with such a gag it just came out. As it was falling out my mouth my brain started slapping me on the inside of my head, this could go down the wrong way big time, especially as I hadn’t warmed up with less offensive jokes to test the water. No one knew if I was going to be witty or not they had never seen me before.

Well It looked like i was right to be internally slapping myself as there was dead silence for what felt like 3 and a half hours.  But thankfully the dead silence was followed by a loud wave of laughter. I managed to put in a few gags whilst answering the questions of the facilitator. At one point a man in the congregation laughed so much it looked like his head was going to snap off his neck. His head fell backwards with some serious force.

The guy next to me in the panel did some funnies too, in fact his where much better than mine.

I found this website today that rates childrens artworks, you the ones that you see up above your doctors desk.

very funny.

I am better than your kids

Wife was going through my blog archives the other day and she stumbled across this old post from 06 about my dreams.

A few of them have come true.

I’ve received an Oscar

I’ve held a new born baby that i am the father of (see above completed dream)

I have pet turtles

Well that’s it. Not a huge milestone if you look at how many dreams I have, but you have to start somewhere.

Tonight was the first episode of Top Gear Australia - Series 2. The first series was really bad, Well I assume it was bad I only stomached a few minutes of a couple of episodes. There is no chemistry between the presenters, their jokes are all scripted and none of them are natural presenters.

Anyway I thought James Morrison could bring the show up a bit, I never thought he could save it or bring it into the league of it’s UK master. I was wrong, I lasted 10 minutes of tonights show. It was appauling television.

they wanted to prove the Stig was Australian so James peeled back the collar of the Stig’s racing suit to uncover a tiny stuck on aussie flag. What dramatic television. The logie is in the bag with on screen antics like that.

It was like a community televison car show but with a big budget.

Bring back re-runs of old Top Gear UK series or even just show colour bars for an hour with frecnh subtitles.