Seasons greetings and all that

Have been on holidays the last couple of weeks so haven't been very active here. Went up to Brisbane to see the folks and the usual whirlwind of catching up with my family and Sweet Thangs meant that there wasn't much other socialising this year. Then it was back down here for a very damp New Years Eve where we stayed in a swish hotal in town and ate out a very good Chinese restaurant before watching foreworks in the rain...

Oh and I forgot to mention lots of French champagne being consumed!

The rest of the time has been spent going through recipe books and trying new dishes every night just to keep our hands in - Jamie Oliver's new America cookbook is now very highly regarded in this household - especially breakfast tortillas.

The other night caught up with Barnes, Struggers and Kevin who is down from Cairns - so of course there had to be a movie (Avatar), Sichuan food and a session of L4D2. Havock couldn't make it because he had already seen the movie. But so had everyone except Barnes. But that didn't stop us all seeing it again.

I am interested that this movie has created some sort of controversy amongst the American right who are all frothing at the mouth about it's supposed lefty agenda. While I had some criticisms of things like the poor script and bad acting, as well as issues with the tactics used by both sides in the final battle - overall it was a fun romp and could stand a second viewing.

Since then it has been getting around to view some art, eat some nice food and catching up with Kevin again before it was back to work on the hottest day of the year (which apparently set several records). The rest of the week is getting ready for property settlement next week and then gearing up for moving house at the end of the month. This will probably entail some building work as well. So we will see how that eventuates...

In the meantime do you have your go-bag ready in case it is actually TEOTWAWKI today?

Christmas Reading

I was in Sydney on the weekend for my little sister's 40th birthday party and was wandering around in the enormous Borders bookstore in Bondi Junction when I came across this little display shelf of best-selling non-fiction. As my phone camera is pretty crapulous at taking photos you may not be able to make out the author's name on the last book on the right - Manthropology by Peter McAllister.

Those of you who know JB from the old days or have read the Felafel books will know that Pete makes quite a few guest appearances in those books...

He has also surfed on my couch many times and is a great guy and a talented writer. He dropped into Melbourne from his current digs on Chaz's side of the continent as part of the publicity tour for this book.

At the time I picked up a copy and only recently got around to reading it properly. In it he examines how modern man would compare to his ancient ancestors in areas such as brains, battles and babes, and guess what we don't do to well...

I used to live in the most awesome bachelor pad in Brisbane with a couple of guys and we had the best ever SPACE PARTY to launch his last book - the sci-fi thriller Cosmonaut - which unfortunately never did as well at the bookstores as he had hoped. But who would have ever thought that when Pete said he was at university studying archaelogy and anthropology he really had a far more cunning plan in mind then becoming a modern day Indiana Jones. Instead he has turned it into a series of columns for Ralph Magazine (or one of those soft pron mags), a new book and maybe even a television series is on the cards..

Anyway I fully recomend this book to you guys - Chaz, Havock etc - it is funny and full of facts.

Plus you are supporting a proto-Burger from the days before the interwebby thingie...

Kicking ass and taking names... old chap!

One of my last posts was about how I was setting up a team called The Burgers to grow a mo and support the Movember thing. I sent out an email to all of the usual suspects (Barnes, Chaz, Naut, HAVOCK etc) only to find that I had been pipped at the post by Naut who had set up a team called the Tom Selleck Allstars or some such name...

You can click on the link above to see how this lame-ass group of girlie-men have managed at their pathetic attempts to grow some facial hair - it almost makes me laugh out loud!!

The silly thing is that not only have I grown more manly whiskers in the time so far but I have also raised over THREE HUNDRED BUCKS for supporting men's health issues such as prostate cancer - the illness we all wish never to see or hear from...

This is more then that entire team of reprobates has managed combined.

So now is the time for all of you people out there to either show them or myself the colour of your money!

To make a (sizable) donation to my mo - please click on this link here or for those Tom Selleck people click at their link above. I mean it is embarressing that some of them have no donations at all!

After all (jokes aside) that is the reason that we are all looking like strange guys who think the seventies are still happening - it is all to raise money for a very worthy cause...

In the meantime I will be chowing down on the free hamburgers that you get from Grill'd when you raise over $25 in donations - see I knew there was a reason I called my team The Burgers...

This one is for Barnes...

Article on weird show on the ABC about Robot Wars which was actually pretty interesting...

Are we men or are we MICE?

I was going to get back on this bike of a blog and talk all about my recent trip to Cairns, how great it was to get out and feel that humid tropical sunshine hitting me and my melanomas and the emotions of catching up with longtime friends after a prolonged departure.

But instead I am here to see if you will join me brothers? Can this ragtag crew of Burgers get-together and grow facial hair for men's health?

Yep - it is that time of year again when men throughout Australia start sprouting the unthinkable on their upper lip and Sweet Thang has said that facial hair won't have any effect upon our sex life as long as it is for a good cause. So I am joining the ranks of the brotherhood of Movember...

It is scary as hell but I can do it if you guys are with me... Join the The Burgers here and stop shaving! Or if you lack the testosterone to make a real mo then you can always just donate to the cause at this site.

Go The Burgers!

Been busy

I was just reading JB's blog post about blogs and realised that I have been most remiss in my netizen duties here, so will post a quick update about a few things.

I finally found a house whose owners were prepared to sell it within my budget - it wa spassed in at auction and I was the highest bidder. After a starnge three way discussion with the Real Estate guys they agreed to a price which suited me and before I knew it I was signing a contract... Settlement isn't until January though and the place needs some work so now my weekends are spent looking at renovation and kitcehn displays and worrying about money again...

I have also gotten a mild addiction to Company of Heroes at the local net cafe and find myself sneaking away there after work to take on whoever I can in an online game way too often.

While I have been lurking around Cheeseburger and Bluntie without making much of a contribution but have been spending a lot of time over at Facebook posting whatever inanities I can think of but am finding it hard to get into the whole Tweet thing...

By the way I just neded to post this - hilarious in-joke!

The more things change...

Last week we had a spectacularly succesful Burger get-together here in Melbourne with JB, where we were joined by an old uni-mate named Mr Dave Sag who also happened to be in town on a bit of a suprise visit. Apparently he is now involved in some sort of carbon trading company which sounded too good to be true.

However for those of us who have known Dave for a while, nothing would ever suprise us. Although today I was surprised to see that Dave was quoted in a front-page article in The Age on 'Carbon Cowboys' ...