Big. Red. Balls.

Morgan Avery

My eye really hurts, please let me know if you think I should go to hospital tomorrow, or if I should sit tight and hope it’s nothing.


I’m sorry if you’re squeemish, just think how horrible it is to have that thing stuck in your face.

It feels worse than it looks (well, I think so, anyway), like I’ve scratched my eyeball or something, must have been either when I was swimming or when I mowed the lawn. Now every time I move my eye or blink, it hurts, and my eye is watering so much I’ve got tears coming out my nose.

Cast your vote by email.

Hot BBQ Action

Morgan Avery

Had another nice BBQ with the couple tonight (David & Laura) featuring snapper (which I made even more delicious with a marinade of lemon & ginger), chorizo sausage, Limoncello di Capri (very nice), and a few bottles of Corona – oh, and of course the usual suspects of potatoes (with butter and rosemary) and a nice salad with a balsamic vinaigrette, and some sort of bread things.

Preceded by some sort of excellent corn chips and hummus / red pesto / etc, and followed by dessert featuring strawberries, cream & christmas pudding for them, and icecream for me. I’m not a fan of puddings.

After our meal we went for a nice walk through Balmoral and down to have a look at the new Satya in Sandringham. The couple walk very very slowly.

On an unrelated note, Claire has created a wonderful sunny new office in the sunroom, leaving me with a lot more space, so I’ve changed my layout, so much room, it’s wonderful, so now I’ll fill it with a bunch of crap. 🙂

(I see a new desk and perhaps another wonderful big LCD screen on the horizon.)

Happy New Year!

Morgan Avery

Welcome to the year in which I’ll be owning your ass — or at least trying some new business ideas I’ve had, the owning of your ass might take a few decades, and I promise I’ll take good care of it when it’s mine.

Also, thank you Hennessy and Cuban cigars, you’ve made my new year pretty happy so far.

w00t. I love living in the future! 🙂

(Oh, whoever is responsible for dishing out the flying cars, I think you must have misplaced mine, can you please deliver it to the new house? Thanks.)

Oh, also enjoying Jelly Belly Gourmet Jelly Beans, my favourite is Buttered Popcorn (second place goes to Coconut Macaroon (2 x Coconut + 1 x Very Cherry)) — no ear wax for me!

In which I break my neck.

Morgan Avery

For today’s trick we’ll be balancing a 13-year-old boy on my head.

After travelling around the city for much of the day buying plants and construction materials we found ourselves in Australia (or was it Albany) and in the vicinity of a lovely swimming pool, perfect, we though, and promptly jumped in.

Boys will be boys, and before long we were playing a game of break-Morgan’s-neck, a good game, unless you’re the Morgan in question.

Forgive the image quality, photo was taken with yet a different digital camera – this one in Claire’s phone.

Pre-Christmas Dinner, Drinks.

Morgan Avery

The other night we had our most successful pre-Christmas/Mammonmas dinner so far, with a few people over for a wonderful meal — and some wonderful drinks made with 42 Below vodka (given to me by one of my clients), apparently one of the best in the world — made in New Zealand, whats more. Wellington, sadly. Oh, we had some bubbles as well as the voddy, of course.


David enjoys ravioli, and pulling faces.

Started with breads & dips (from David and Laura), with the cunning addition by Claire of some of the wonderful, delicious, rosemary & feta dip from a Mt Eden deli, it is, quite simply, perfect.

Main of a couple of variants of ravioli, with a couple of kinds of sauce, salad (from Loo-loo & Karl), and some sort of chili bread thing (which was also wonderful).


Claire, being hot.

Then dessert: various fruits and berries, served in a biscuity wafer bowl with cream & ice cream, followed by coffee with espresso biscuits (as made by Claire, starshaped and dipped in melted chocolate), and a cheese board for anyone not already stuffed.


Karl, sitting down to be less of a tall’un.

We feel horribly mean, in some ways, now anyone inviting us for dinner has an almost insurmountable effort in order to top us. Welcome to try, as many times as you like.

Lord of the Rings : Return of the King — (Spurious Review.)

Morgan Avery

Enter today’s entry in he ‘I had AIDS before it was cool’ category*:

I saw an advance screening of Return of the King last night, was given 4 tickets, but Claire didn’t want to go see such a long movie on a weeknight, so the 3 seats to my right were the only empty ones in the whole theatre.

It’s long.

It’s not that good – really. The CG is shit, it’s a flickery jerky mess, if anything it’s actually worse than Two Towers. And that Andy Serkis needs to stop being so utterly shit at voice work. Lastly, if they’re going to cut out Saruman, at least they can also NOT have the fucking ring talking!

The spider was so bad it was laughable, might as well have been a little plastic toy bouncing along on a piece of elastic.

Oh, and if it’s not crying little bitches, it’s brave hearted fighters who virtually have blue painted faces and cries of FREEEEEEDDOOOMM!!! roaring from their collective throats. (I’ve seen this movie before, I think, now what was it called?)

The one good thing was… There were no Asian’s translating for each other at full conversational speech volume for me to bash in the heads of.

Revolutions was about 7.4 times better.

What a steaming pile of shit. And I have to sit through it again tomorrow. Gah.

—

* Also, put it in the complete fabrication category, I didn’t really see it last night, just wanted to make young James squirm in frustration that I (a non-fanboy) saw it first, and didn’t take him, even though I had too many seats. Lame joke, I know. And it probably didn’t even work. Pssht.

The Matrix : Revolutions

Morgan Avery

We went out to see The Matrix Revolutions this morning (first session started at 3 AM, you see). The megascreen was definitely the place for it, it’s been interesting to see the "reviews" posted by a lot of armchair critics, basically panning it, but with so much hyperbole, so much venom, that it’s clear they had their eyes shut for much of the time for fear of it being good.

It’s quite funny that some people think that to critique something you have to be negative, but only when it’s not being sad.

The truth is that Revolutions pretty much hits the mark, ties up all the loose ends it needs to, and, importantly, picks up the pace greatly from where much of Reloaded languished.

It must be clear that it exceeded my expectations, which is always a good thing. Whether it exceeded your expectations, I care not a whit.

Lastly (you hope) I think the movies are fully cohesive only when viewed as a whole, so for example, if you don’t immediately recognise (The) Kid, and know his unique origins, you don’t have a high quality perspective on any part of Reloaded or Revolutions, IMHO.

Casa del Pino

Morgan Avery

Which would make this the first post from the new place. Though technically we don’t move in tomorrow, must say SmartGrrl did a great job arranging for DSL etc to be switched on over here, last time the whole thing was horrible, that’s what happens when you make the mistake of taking Telecom’s advice, rather than telling them how you want it done, I guess.

We’ll probably be having a BBQ next weekend (if not Monday night), people we like will be contacted.

The end of The Monkey.

Morgan Avery

It is with a heart heavy with sorrow that I inform you that the-monkey.net is no longer going to be updated.

… From Mt Eden. It will now be updated from Balmoral instead.

This is the last Mt Eden update.

Booyyaaaaa.

All these things.

Morgan Avery

So many things have happened. I’ll keep it short, and start at the beginning, except for the beer, which is well out of order, in a manner of speaking.

Okay, first, I’ve just had a beer. It was okay.

Second, we got a new scooter: a Suzuki StreetMagic, just like one Hotgirl had stolen a couple of years ago.

Third, we got a new scooter: a Bajaj Chetak, which is one of the Indian made Vespa clones.

Then, we got a new digital camera, a Fujifilm s304, we’re very happy with it, takes awesome crisp photos, makes movies, has a good zoom, etc etc.

Lastly, we’re moving house, not very far, but we hate moving, so we’re hiring a couple of burly men with a big truck to do all the lifting and driving. We have video of the new house, but not many photos yet. I might put some up once we’ve moved. Maybe.

Don’t ask how much this has all cost (except the beer, I’m happy to tell you that was free).