To tell the truth, I have been up to a fair bit. And when I say 'a fair bit' I really mean that I haven't been up to all that much, but enough to warrant a new post on my site to keep all my eager little site readers happy.

 

Essentially after getting the general impression that you guys did not like it when I used my own site to talk about when I had a bad run and was feeling down I decided to bugger off for a while and deal with it alternatively, ie, alcohol and semi-solitude. I also have done a lot of work at the fruit shop and bought a couple of DVD's and video games to take my mind off things.

It is not required of you to point out that I should have been studying for exams, and I know that it is true, I am a lazy bastard who really slacks off in exam period and if I get a higher mark than anyone who tried at all it is both a testament to my amazing knowledge retention and the other persons sheer inept.

For the record I have already failed one unit, passed one and am unsure about another. I have my last exam tomorrow morning and hence I am NOT out drinking with my brother. It is worth noting that if I am posting on my site that I am not studying either. I would rather be drunk.

 

Just because I know you all love my bagpipe news articles and that you all just read my site to catch the occasional news from the Newtown Pipes and Drums so I will put the pipe news first and the rest of the news after it. I played at the St. Alban's Uniting Chuch fete last Friday and that is why I missed my regular gig at Irish Murphy's. Nobody I know came along to see me play so I will assume none of you are up to date with the local bagpipe gig calender and if you really give a shit send me a pile of money and I will write out all our future gigs for you.

The gig went OK with the exception that I took a fall at work prior to leaving for the gig and did my left shoulder in temporarily, which resulted in my hurting myself whenever I played the pipes but I still did the whole gig. A lesser man would have wimped out and gone and cried to their mum... wimps.

 

Some wonderful events that have gone on at the pub include the Halloween night and Timmy O'Toole's Toga party, which I am pretty pissed off to inform you that bugger all people showed up to.

To clear things up early, Nicole did come to the Halloween night before her final bus left and she did have an exam the next day so that earns extra credit, but the rest of you have zero excuse.

There were not too many people dressed up, but there weren't many people there anyway so it ended up being quite a high percentage.

Most people went to more effort than me. I simply chucked on a balaclava and wore an army coat and carried a big club with me. I did get commended for my entry later in the night. Apparently it was impressive to kick the doors open and stride across the room swinging a club.

Trent sorted the whole night and there was fake cobwebs (there were real cobwebs too, but I really can't be arsed cleaning the WHOLE pub every week especially then they hire a cleaner to do that kind of shit), there were Jack-O-Lanterns, a coffin, lollies, beer, tools dressed up and horror movies on the big screen.

The night went pretty good except for when they chucked the Exorcist on. It was a bit too slow and non-gory for the event, but the highlight of the night happened at the end when Bad Taste was put on. I highly recommend you buy me a copy of that movie.

 

The toga party wasn't very highly advertised but I decided to give it a go simply because I promised Timmy that I would put in an effort. I had Rhiannon with me that night so we just got some old bed sheets and made togas out of them. None of my other mates toga'd up so we were slightly individualistic for the group, but all the staff were decked out and Jibberish was playing so the night went pretty well. We even managed to get Trent to go up to Cameron Ling and tell him he loved all his movies.

 

Thats all from the pub.

 

Other news has to do with a job on the side that I did. It was little Lara's birthday the other weekend and Kane and I had to be bouncers for her party and frankly, it shocked me. I am not going to talk about it on here since half the crap was illegal and since it doesn't directly involve me I don't want to drag others down. In a short sentence, every party my social group has had has had nowhere near as much uncontrolability as this party and that includes both the times when everyone upped and left Damo's new years party and the time I drank the bottle of Beam at Manny's.

 

Before the party was a different matter though. I got a call the day before asking for my help with a bit of pre-party fun.

Last year we abducted Kane and made him do a heap of embarassing stuff in town before his party and Lara wanted a bit of the same stuff, but obviously she would know about it so it would take the whole 'you need to do this stuff or you can't get home' aspect of it away. Couple that with the fact that I only had ONE night to come up with ideas really left for an uneventful afternoon. It took four people and three weeks to come up with all the dares for Kane and he was more or less forced to do them. All the ideas that Lara's cousins could come up with involved actual harassment or the outright assault of other people, and considering my criminal past, I decided that since I was the driver that was out of the question. I also did not want to try and park in town in the middle of the day on a Saturday especially since I didn't have much money with me also limited the location events.

So we ended up with no ideas that didn't involve thuggery or my arrest and no real place to do anything.

So I took the kids out to Deakin. More specifically to the Deakin ponds region just for a muck around.

They found George the goldfish who used to belong to Lara. George was relocated from a fish bowl to one of the ponds and has since grown quite large.

We found the club in this area that I later brought to the pub on halloween.

Due to the Irish and Scottish background of Vince and I we took a few photos around a pillar at Deakin that has little plaques representing all the countries students have come from.

These photos are up in the gallery in the shiny new Deakin album.

 

I have also added a photo of the Barwon River that I have taken to the Scenery album.

I also plan to shave my beard off when I get home tonight so I put a new photo of me at my hairiest in the My Beard album for you all to marvel at its brilliance.

To keep with my recent trend of updating my profile picture every month I have once again changed my profile picture to a more recent photo of me. This photo is also in the Old Photos of Me album just so there is still a continuation of photos in there. As far as I can tell, all the photos in that album are in chronological order.

 

Thats all I can be stuffed putting up tonight. Expect a comment response some time soon. I leave for Gippsland soon so expect some news when I get back.

 

Also, note that I now have $100 towards my Western Australia holiday. I can smell the jet fuel now.

 

If you didn't read to this point you suck. If you did, why?

I had the single coolest restaurant experience ever. I can't beleive I haven't been there before.
I am talking about the Rheingold restaurant. I will start at the beggining because it is what I want to do and if you don't like it you can go and shove your own fist up your arse.

 

I went to a Christmas dinner last night. That might seem odd in August, but it doesn't when we missed our Christmas in July dinner. When I say 'we' I am referring to the collctive group of arse kickers known as the Newtown Pipes and Drums.

 

We had nibbles around at a house before heading out to the Rheingold and it was a matter of minutes before I fell in love.
A cozy little underground restaurant that looked ready to cram about 800 people into it AND it had TWO bars. True love.
It didn't hurt that I had a seat that lined me up with a table of girls on a hen's night. Wonderful scenery.

 

It took me a matter of seconds to remember that Germans love beer (or shall I say bier?). I went to the bar and asked what beers they had and what sizes they serve them. After a bit of talk to the barmaid I ended up with a STEIN of local beer. They had one of the best beer deals I have ever taken part in. $7.50 for a stein of beer and $2.50 to get it refilled for the night. $2.50 is what they charge for a pot to be filled and the stein was a hell of a lot bigger. It didn't hurt that the barmaid only charged me $5 for the stein and first refill, especially on a night when they weren't meant to be running that deal.

 

I wolfed down a few steins and enjoyed the first course. I had a delicious cream of potato soup.

 

I had a chat to Bart, Debbie, Stewie and Al for ages while waiting for the main course. Stewie and Al told me of their adventures in Hawaii and Bart told me the differences between German and Beverian cultures. It turned out that the Rheingold was a Beverian restaurant as opposed to a German restaurant. It seems that Beverians are very fond of beer too.

 

The main course blew my mind. They turnes the lights off and then proceeded to bring out a spit roasted pig and run it around all the tables. The bloody pig even had a sparkler coming out of its arse.

 

By the time our table was called up the pig was nearly completely gone. Eric the owner had the solution to this. A bunch of waitresses grabbed the fully carved pig corpse and swapped it with ANOTHER roast pig. Perfect. DUe to my arse kicking place in line, I was the first person to have their meal entirely of the new pig.
This restaurant kicks so much arse. Vegetarians blow in comparison. The vegetarian meal option was roast vegetables and potato salad and I didn't see any waitresses running those around the room. Vegetables just aren't as exciting as two giant dead pigs that lay down their life just so I could have a kick arse meal.
The meal did in fact kick arse. The meat was perfect. I even went back for seconds.
After my seconds I went up to the cook to congratulate him on the best roast I have ever had a restaurant. It turns out the cook was the owner and we had a chat. During which he talked me into having another plate of roast with some beef stroganov. I was forced to have another beer and he offered me a job.
Not only does this place shof off giant dead animals that we can eat and provide the best cheap beer I have had the honour of eating, but the offer to let me work there too. This place kicks arse.

 

After having three big plates of delicious dead animal and about 6 steins of beer it was time to get up and play the pipes. It went off. No real errors and it sounded great. The resident musicians even sang along for a few tunes.

 

The musicians at this place were great. Joe the Polish guy was playing the piano accordian and it was brilliant. A true entertainer. After all the food and drinks were done with I spoke to him for a bit and it turns out that my boss, Tony, from East Fruit Market taught him how to play the piano accordian.

 

I had to walk home after they stopped serving beer for the night. While wondering where all the girls from the hen's night went a bunch of girls asked what I had in my case. When I told them they were bagpipes I had no choice but to play a couple of tunes on the way home. I don't know if playing pipes at 12:30 in town is an official gig, but somehow even after all the beer, still no mistakes were made.

 

Long story short, I better mention that the Rheingold kicks major arse and everyone should go there and eat a dead pig and drink heaps of beer. It is compulsury. If you are a vegetarian I have to apologise for making fun of the fact that you can't enjoy the greatest thing in life (eating an animal that has died just so you can have a good meal). Rheingold kicks arse. I rule.

I have decided to add a bit more stuff to this site and I feel that I need to justify it for some reason.

 

The first thing I put up was the list of things I am boycotting. Right now it’s just Maccas and Domino’s Pizza.

Reasons for the said boycotting of McDonald’s are as follows:

1)      The food isn’t really that good, especially for the amount they charge for it. Everyone knows that it’s crap food and people keep buying it. I have decided to stop.

2)      An ex-girlfriend of mine works at a Maccas and I have no particular desire to ever see her again in my life and boycotting the place where she works kind of means that I am no longer giving her any money in a round about kind of way.

3)      My surname is McDonald and I am sick to death of hearing McDonald’s commercials and the idiot general public mispronounce my surname. NOTE: there may not actually be an ‘a’ between the ‘M’ and the ‘c’ but it is still pronounced as such. DO NOT pronounce it with an ‘i’ sound. Under no circumstance is it MicDonald’s. Look at the menu for Christ’s sake. When there is a ‘Big Mic’ hamburger for sale I will concede my point, until then you can all get my name right.

 

Domino’s Pizza simply gets boycotted because they bought out my favourite pizza venue in Geelong. Domino’s is nothing compared to the most awesome pizza take away shop. Long live Pizza Lovers!

 

I was checking out some of my mates spaces the other day just to notice that some of them had linked my site to theirs, so I added a little area to just return the favour. There really isn’t much to read in anyone’s except Alysha’s.

 

I have made a few new photo albums just in case anyone actually wanted to see things.

I made a gallery for bagpipes simply because bagpipes kick some major arse, and being a bagpiper I was a bit shocked when I realized that I had ZERO pictures of bagpipes on my site. Expect that to change. Currently there is only a picture of my Piper Major in there, but he is one of the best pipers in Geelong, so that’s got to count for something.

 

There’s another gallery for birthdays and special events that I didn’t take enough photos of to get their own section. Right now there is Aislinn’s ill fated 18^th and Chandler’s 21^st.

 

And finally there is a scenery gallery which just consists of places and things I have taken photos of that I think are particularly cool (and non-bagpipe related).

 

One thing I am getting overwhelmed with is the speed at which I am getting comments from people I don’t know. Personally I think that kicks arse and I am going to keep trying to respond to the comments, but right now they seem to be taking up my entire posts and I can’t spend too long working on this site or my studies will start to fail.

 

Here we go with a few quick responses:

 

To Dontcrycutebaba2 – I am 20. I don’t mean to question your intelligence or your ability to find things, but the big box in the top right of my page that contains the basic info about me states that. Also there is a big gallery about my 20^th birthday. If you are interested I was born in April.

 

To TheModalNodes – Yeah, I like TISM. I guess you assumed that by looking at my amazing play list that I have up at the moment. Is it that obvious that the only CD’s I copied to my computer were TISM and MGF? But yeah, I love TISM. If your interested, other music I like is REM, Celtic music, Metallica, Offspring. Well, they are just the major bands. I like bits and pieces of a lot of music. I have a soft spot for some ska, but if the tune has a good sound and interesting lyrics then there is a good chance I will like it. Oh, any more people tell me they like pissy little groups that whinge about everything (ie, Simple Plan) then I will be forced to unleash the fury of Pancreas & the Cheese Factory onto the world.

 

I have been told by my mates to stop doing long posts. Bite me.

Wow, I hae news regarding my personal life and I bet a whole 50c that none of you actually give a rats arse.

 

2 scenarios:

1) I know you (and probably drink with you) and you already know my news and don't need to hear it again

-or-

2) I don't know you (and presumably you don't know me) and you wondered onto this site and don't give a toss of my news.

 

All that said, here is my useless news.

I'm back at uni. I don't know whether I am being sincere or sarcastic when I exclaim 'GREAT!' It is now year 2 semester 2 and that means I am one day over the halfway mark of my basic degree. I've promised myself to do a bit more study this semester, and by saying 'a bit more' I of course refer to actually doing SOMETHING this semester instead of giving up on day one and trying to work out if its worth dropping out for a while.

Now that I am back at uni I would love to say a huge thanks to the chops doing the construction around Deakin. I appreciate nothing more than when you fuk up the whole science block and causing me to have lectures at 8am three days a week because no other rooms are available. I mean thats really cool. I didn't lose a whole 10 hours of work from my already reduced working week. I'm really going to enjoy having $20 as my entire budget each week, especially since the Howard government's welfare system doesn't recognise that a student working while studying full time unable to afford to move out of home is a financially disabled situation. I better calm down before I really start ranting.

Oh, more news, I'm single again. After a few months of non-stop fighting my relationship with Carolyn it was ended last Friday, but hey, thats a very personal story and I plan on keeping it to myself, if you have any questions feel free to ask Carolyn, if not, go cram your head up your arse.

On the good news front, Pancreas And The Cheese Factory might be a step closer to full reality soon. After being questioned by Mel to start rehersing I went out and recruited a drummer, two bass guitarists and I new lead guitarist. I have heard back from everyone except the drummer, so if the word is good all thats left is starting to organise rehersals.

Irish Murphy's had their 150th birthday on Saturday night. In reality, it was the BUILDING not the buisness that turned 150, but either way, its still older than me, so I had to pay my respects and start drinking at 5, and thanks to Nicole having her birthday and Trav working at HomeHouse that night I ended up drinking for around 13 hours. At a much easier pace than when we hit Melbourne. All I can say is that Trav is a bad, bad man, which makes him a very great bartender.

 

In regards to the comments posted in regards to my blog (I hate that word):

Mitch - I'll update my site whenever I feel like it. Odds are, if I'm not updating its because I am busy not lazy. Right now I am lying in bed at 12:18am (subject to change), with the only thing on TV being repeats of Ally McBeal. Trust me, I'm at my laziest when I am updating this shit heap.

 

Pete - Irish Murphy's ALWAYS serves alcohol responsibly, the main problem lies with me irresponsibly drinking 10 responsibly served drinks.

 

Jack - As funny as it seems (and was) I ended up getting a sore throat from drinking in Melbourne, which meant I had a lot of trouble playing pipes at band practice and was thus dropped from our RSL gig in which I would have scored a few free drinks in a piss easy gig, so in many ways I still hate everyone, but its not like me to be angry, is it?

 

Pete (again) - I hate you all. That means everyone. Including you, I especially hated Jack, Billy Baxter, Steve, Daniel, Kane and Bobcat's cousin (Mark, I think). For clarification purposes, by hate I simply mean that I don't like to own up to my own drinking misdemeanors and I just lash out at the people who essentially supply me with a largely kick-arse night.

 

In all my half-arsed blog surfing, I haven't seen anyone respond to comments, which means that this post could be a world first. If you kindly send me $5.60 I will have a pint for you next time I'm drinking.

 

Good night