Morgan Avery | Morgan Avery

This happy life.

2004-12-26 Morgan Avery

Christmas kicked ass. Seriously.

Pavlova. Makes dogs drool, or something. Me too.

We had such a good time zooming around the city to the various places we had to make appearances, with pretty clear roads, which is luxurious in this usually congested city.

A sample of the many many many pressies.

As well as the incredible haul of wonderful gifts (the house is now literally full of boxes of cool new things, I’m standing outside, reaching in the window to type this, we’re quite worried – not knowing where we’ll sleep, what with all the MP3 players, digital cameras, and milkshake makers, not to mention the), we had a great dinner at my mother’s place, same as last year, only even better. Claire thinks the improvement was down to the cranberry sauce with the turkey, I’m not so sure.

I’m told you shouldn’t take photos at this angle. Don’t care.

George was well behaved, if a little gassy (and it was truly horrific blister-your-skin sort of gas, thanks to Callum feeding him about a kilo of ham) and entertained the party by trying to learn a new trick – jumping through a hoop. He did it a few times as well,not bad for an old dog (okay, only 19 months, but that’s like 25,000 in fruitfly years).

George plays a game of "I could bite your arm right-
off, if I felt like it."

Anyway, we’re stuffed, and busy playing with our toys, so I’m cutting this off right n–.

The Unwashed Christmasses

2004-12-24 Morgan Avery

I think I might start giving people "be aware I’m going to be giving you a cool gift in January" chits for Christmas, out and about tonight amongst the nightmarish hustle and bustle of the Christmasses, looking at piles of ‘some thing I want to give one of to someone’ and knowing that if they’ve got this much stock left now, the price is going to be down 40% post-Christmas.

It’s depressing.

Thank you Lord for giving us this day our daily bread, Ramen.

2004-12-23 Morgan Avery

Claire sold her hot gold topped 3SGE powered ’86 Toyota Celica, I hope the new owner has as much fun driving it as I did. It was a nippy little car. A mechanic who had a look at it described the engine to the buyer as "a monster." He also said things along the lines of (and I’m paraphrasing here, even if I am putting it in quotes) "it kicks the arse off all the modern ones."

I’m sure that helped the guy make his mind up — it didn’t hurt that he also got a bargain, I’m sure.

In other news, I’m not giving out as many Christmas gifts as in previous years, I guess I’m kind of over being Santa to so many people who won’t make a single bit of effort to maintain our friendships. With all due respect, fuck y’all.

In yet further news, I’ve been eating completely ridiculous amounts of kimchi ramen and teriyaki noodles, I’m considering trying one of those lame ‘eat this stupid thing for a month’ gags you see around the web in various places, don’t think I could stand it, a packet a day for lunch is more than I can stand, hence the occasional omlette or sandwich (or going out for Wendy’s or whatever). I’ve definitely been paying less for lunches since I’ve been running my own business, the whole thing with jumping across the road to Annie’s to grab a tray of rice and dumplings, or curry, or a pie or whatever was so convenient, but so very very bad.

Maybe I should try a month where I can only ‘eat’ what I can drink. Would it be cheating to have Complan or something?

Doing anything along those lines is probably just flirting with the disaster that would be my (satan loving) ulcer making a return, dirty bloody bastard. It really hurts.

Anyway, if any of you Auckland denizens I haven’t seen for a while want to come over for a BBQ or go out for a drink or something, drop me an email.

(Speaking of people I haven’t seen for a while, François, do you read this? I always enjoy your missives, and I can’t wait for you to get the fook back.)

Another note to people overseas, and you know who you are, for future reference if you’re buying food products for people’s Christmas presents, it might be a good idea to NOT have them delivered at the BEGINNING of December.

Jeeze, what a mess of a post, but there you go. Obviously I’ve had too much flavour enhancer 621, 631, and ginger.

I might well be a liar, but Liv Tyler is a big load of goat anus.

2004-12-19 Morgan Avery

That post was rubbish. If you didn’t read the footnote, you’re silly.

When I did finally see RotK, I thought it was okay. But Arwen should be fired out of a canon, Liv Tyler is a big load of goat anus.

Robert ‘Stick’ Rakete

2004-12-15 Morgan Avery

Hot on the heels of Theresa Heinz-Weta comes the newest addition to my tiny little menagerie: Robert S. Rakete. (No relation, and he tells me that the S stands for Stick.)

He’s a lovely little fellow, I was standing at the back stoop contemplating my impending demise when I noticed a little green stick sitting precariously on my environment changing Remuera tractor, I wasn’t fooled for more than .5 of a second though, pieces of tree don’t generally have 6 legs and a propensity to sway around in still conditions. Or look at you with tiny little beady eyes.

I grabbered him and stuffed him in my gob, as I understood that insects favour a nice warm and moist environment, like my underpants, armpit, or aforementioned mouth. It appeared I was wrong, he started struggling and wrestling with my molars, did a wee on my uvula and tagged my tongue with some appallingly insensitive graffiti (she is not a "ho!"), so I spit him out onto my gentle waiting palm and proceeded to fire off about a thousands frames of digital love.

Unlike Theresa, Robert doesn’t appear to be sick in any way, so I’ll just hold onto him for long enough to give Claire a good old fashioned scarifying then deposit him in a tree of his choosing.

P.S. Does anyone know how to get Texta™ permanent marker off the skin of one’s tongue or tooth enamel?

Blinkenlights.

2004-12-07 Morgan Avery

Amongst all the many many other things we’ve been doing lately, the most recent was to promenade on Franklin Road with cups of hot chocolate, enjoying the fairylight decorated houses that abound.

Here is one of the photos with which I’m most delighted. No compositing, no special effects. Believe it or not.

The incredible fastness of nerd.

2004-12-06 Morgan Avery

My latest hobby, aside from scaring myself in my sleep, is downloading stuff I don’t really want or care about just so I can watch my ridiculously fast transfer rate.

Oldbies like myself must get a real kick out of this that kids just don’t understand. Anyone else remember watching your zmodem download of some crappy crap from some dodgy 12 hour a day (except when the sysops mum wants to use the line) BBS at 2400… or 9600… or even 14k4?

Now we can grab whatever we want from anywhere in the world at multiple megabits for cheap! (I mean, we’ve been able to do it for spensive for ages, or in the office, you know, on someone elses dime, but I own my company, I’m the boss, so when I do things on the companies dime, who am I screwing?)

Amazing. Wonderful. Etc.

Braaaiiiinnns!

2004-12-01 Morgan Avery

Last nights rib elbowing was brought on by the somewhat more alarming sleep talking of "No! Get away! Don’t come any closer!"

Did I mention I’ve been reading a Zombie book lately? I don’t see any possible connection. Ahh, zombies!

Claire says: "No more monster books for Morgie!"
I say: "Don’t call me Morgie."

Night Music.

2004-11-30 Morgan Avery

Apparently, trying to keep the merry-go-round running by playing Star Spangled Banner on your trumpet gets you an elbow in the ribs and a "Shut up, you’re asleep!"

Spun

2004-11-17 Morgan Avery

When not being incredibly busy lately I’ve been enjoying Spun. Packed full of cameos and crazy antics. It makes speed (not the movie) look the opposite of cool, but is very cool doing it. Like Trainspotting with less scots and more fucking. And lesbians. And a green dog. And John Leguizamo beating off into a sock.