Sunday, December 31, 2006

Blackbeard (the Space Pirate)

Same details as per the prev. post:
"Blackbeard (the space pirate) found the tutu to be a rather comical fancy dress outfit for the gala..."

"The hawaian pirate was laughing as he was pioneering the pirate business in the space."

"Hawaian pirate, Skeletor "Tropiocalia" No-beard, considers interstellar travel and associated conquests in a tequila-worm hallucination."

HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL MY VALUED READERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Indiana Jones as Santa Travelling via a Flying Turd...

EPYC-style, with the same playerz as the prev. post:

"Indiana Jones was very excited about being Santa; the children didn't seem to be pleased with Santa's choices of presents though."

"After travelling via a flying turd, the Mexican gangster in the stupid hat took the xmas tree hostage, confusing the onlooking midgets."

"A Mexican cowboy took a Christmas tree hostage and flew away on a Christmas Poo."

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Ginger Wine can Cause Headaches if Consumed in Excess

Eat Poop You Cat - style...
not sure if i'm allowed to reveal the artists of this one. stay tuned and i'll see if i get clearance... it could be related to my bros.

"Ginger wine can cause headaches if consumed in excess."

" "Dan" spewed from both ends after having a ginger wine watered down with 'bad water'."

"Womby complains yet again of Bad Ginger Wine and poor quality drinking water as he is forced to ride the porcelain basin yet again...."

"Matt is sich again from drinking all his dad's ginger wine."

Meat-Wagon Hound was Sad

Yeah, haven't blogged in ages, was too tired to think of something to rant about. but thought i'd post this picture of a game we play sometimes, sometimes called Eat Poop You Cat, and other peoples' games can be seen here, here adn here... of course, i can't vouch for any bad taste shown on those sites. and the last one seems to be an on-line game, so that's 'interesting'.

anyway, here's our latest, and possibly least-crude:


the playerz were myself, my wife KT adn our good friend Timmy T. perhaps later i'll go back and translate some of the text.
yo

so here's the translation:

"Meat-wagon hound was sad."

"Slump the sausage dog was so depressed about being poo-shaped that he had to be pulled along on a trolley."

"Ethol the stupid hat farmer was looking forward to showing his wife, who he called Daniel, the steaming flat turd that would spice up their marriage. "

"The buck-toothed scoutmaster was clearly confusing viagra and colonic irrigation advertising, thought Jeremia, dressed as he was in a french maid's attire and still trying to avoid the horny cows. "

Thursday, October 12, 2006


couldn't sleep late one night a few months back, and came up with this. it freaked me out a bit, but by then i was tired enough to get back to sleep.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

music videos



geez most 21st century music video clips are shite and overproduced

but i should stop there for fear of sounding too old and jaded

adn i do love seeing the odd one, badly-produced but actually interesting and different, usually around 3 or 4am on Rage when i've lost all hope in sleeping properly and have carried the screaming monster downstairs to see if there's anything we can both enjoy, now that we're totally awake and luckily it's a friday or saturday night and there's all-night music videos on tv...

and dont'cha love hte words adn and nad - you know exactly what they mean, and who cares if ya spell checker isn't on. you shouldn't need to spell everything out to people. it's pretty obvious in context. adn it's the same with teh. as if i want to backtrack adn fix that up when it's bleedingly obvious. anyway. thank god it's friday tomorrow.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Illustration Friday - Safe



i love hiding indoors, at home, safe from the horror.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Illustration Friday - Run



wanted to draw something far more artistic for a change(!), but haven't had the time. subsequently, i've rediscovered the fun of crayons after a couple of decades...

also, i was inspired by the showname: Run Like You Stole Something, on Triple R, the best radio station in the world.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Illustration Friday - Match



Blah. Blah blah blah. Too tired to write anything. Our baby daughter has a cold and has been keeping us up all night. But it gave me an opportunity to finish this in the middle of the night.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Illustration Friday - "Capture"


Well, this was an interesting topic, and i haven't seen other entries yet, but i wonder if anyone else did a variation on photographic capture? anyway, this is a bit of a cop-out, my sketch of my daughter looked terrible, and i really have to work on trying to draw living things...

so, like, this is a little 7 month old girl extremely excited with capturing both her right foot and a strange monkey/possum thing with a zebra-striped tail. and my fingers don't really look that disproportionate in reality (but my nails do need some attention).

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Illustration Friday - Clean


Well, I was trying to finish this profound bit of artwork involving hospital cleaning products like glutaraldehyde and the dangers of being overly clean vs. the germ theory of disease. But I'm still not happy with it yet.

I was playing around with a silly cartoon...here it is instead.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Illustration Friday - Opposites



Apologies for the rather pretentious concept and naive presentation! What I had hoped to contrast here is the great simplicity of the universe at large, empty aside from a few curved structures and the complex angular world we have created for ourselves...

It's my first attempt at Illustration Friday and I'm hoping to be further inspired by these topics. I don't do much art, aside from dabbling in music, and I certainly need all the practice I can get.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Birthdays, Disinformation, Freedom and the Like

been so tired and vague lately; the world cup and a teething daughter have been partly responsible for this. but yeah, have had a few thoughts that have seemed like really unique viewpoints on things that i've always held, and wonder if anyone else has, and thought, 'i should blog that' but then promptly forgot, but here's one i've just remembered, whilst meaning to write about something else.

it's the whole Birthday Thing. i've never liked being the centre of attention, i'd rather heckle and annoy from some safe vantage point, with a good exit, and it seems like the during last decade in particular i've become very anti my own birthday, and have had some success in hiding it's actual date from a number of people. ha! that, these days, is a special skill in itself. disinformation and the like. but, well, i turned 30, like sometime in the middle of this month. and it was actually alright. i guess i've been dealing with it for the heavier side of the 20s and during this time, i've actually been the happiest i've been for a long time (like since school, which certainly had it's ups and downs, but seems like a good era, looking back on it) and since those dark mid-20s things have steadily improved. i mean, getting 'a real job' after uni, and then getting a 'real retrenchment' and stuff have been 'character building', actually, even finishing uni was a big achievement after 10 years, but since then things have been on the improve. marriage, our little kiddo... well, that's the pinnacle, obviously, but not the point of where this entry was meant to go.

it's occurred to me in the past 5 years that the thought that the whole perspective of the 'best years of your life' being are around that 18-21 age as absolute bullshit. but perhaps that depends on the individual. i, for one, cannot imagine having my shit together at that age, it's a time to be crazy, grasping unsuccessfully at what it all means, where you are going in life, are you on a good path?, is it where you really want to go?, etc, all the big stuff it seemed at the time, whilst having a 'good time', which was really good in that you could hide from all of those sorts of questions. i think this perspective must be a residue from previous generations - where people did have to become responsible at a younger age, get a job, get married, have a family, etc. and that now people on average seem to not have to deal with many of those responsibilities until much later, like in the mid- to late-20s, like myself. before that was possibly too much freedom, and i'm certainly a person who needs some boundaries. i bet my parents would nod at that statement. but the whole reason i started typing this observational/crapping on stuff was to eventually get to the point that i am actually quite relaxed and indeed happy about being 30 it could be considered as something of an achievement, yeah, i'm not a rock star yet, and i did miss out on joining the 27-club, but really it's more about learning to enjoy the present and not needing to look back and reminisce about the 'good old times', sure there were some great times, but things keep getting more interesting and as you get older you seem gain just a little bit more wisdom and can hopefully learn from learn from your experiences and also just feel more comfortable with being yourself and shit. i'm so sick of the image thing, how you are judged from your appearance, and i'm sure most people would also worry about that, but it's fun to be old enough to not care most of the time, like wearing a pink floyd t-shirt to an opeth gig (but maybe i was trying to prove somethign then?). but yeah, life certainly gets more tough as you leave those easy, cushioned periods of secondary and tertiary schooling, when you know you've got a few years before facing too much of 'the real world' and don't have to make any lifechanging decisions (but it's funny how those subject choices and results back at high school really seemed to matter at the time, when really, you can always re-invent yourself, it just might cost some time), however, once you're through all that, it is amazing what you could do if you put in the effort. it's exciting and daunting. like a big game, ala shakespeare's Life's a Stage, and you're playing for keeps, or losses. everything matters, but then there's endless possibilities. and this is sounding far too optimistic -i'm not high on anything besides lack of sleep- and i keep losing the point of this post. so, yeah, i guess, i've decided that it's good to be 30 and i hope i'll still have this perspective when i'm 80, assuming i watch that cholesterol and eat a balanced diet and cut down on alcohol and coffee adn do all those good things adn get fit again one day and avoid random accidents and don't become a rock star and take it all too seriously and demand frozen gerbils in my rider and stuff.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Freakin Smileys

you know, i really hate those elaborate moving yellow smiley f*cking faces on the web, and i'm sure i'm not the only one. who downloads that shit? pre-teens i suppose. actually, i can't stand that stooopid 'green card' one - i think i always get it on my yahoo or at allmusic.com. i don't want to go and work in the US, ok? and i'd really appreciate it if you didn't keep showing me some stupid photo of some fortunate chick who won the lottery for that. good for her. and as for those banners that hover right over what you want to read and float down the screen with you like some freakdog at a party, yeah, they don't really impress me. i wonder if there's a software ap that can kill them, like those pop-up destroyers...

i was trying to remember something else that really pissed me off earlier this week, to rant about, it's been a while, there must be a lot of sh!t that has annoyed me. but as i return to this post after a day out and about, i still can't remember and don't care anymore.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Finishing Things

Yeah, I’m an INTP, if you know what that means. I don’t really, but it gets thrown around a bit. Basically, along with other things, I’m sort of a big-picture person, but can get lost in the details? That doesn’t sound quite right. I think it must be more the details thing. So it’s really hard to be happy with anything and actually get to a point where something is actually considered ‘finished’, unless there’s a deadline, like on that horrid thesis. Then there’s those paintings, which “could have a bit more work, but then I don’t want to ruin them further”, and my ‘songs’ which generally get to some point where I’m sick of them and just want to play around with track orders on my Demo Album #1 or #2, which are contentious in themselves, and I’m not entirely sure if #1 is really finished, the artwork has been at an ‘almost-finished’ stage and in limbo since 2004… and then of course, I go back on some songs a year or two later and add something, enhance some levels, or decide it’s crap.

I don’t know how normal people do stuff like write books – imagine all those pages of writing, where every sentence could be re-worded… I started writing some sort of horror/sci-fi/I’m not sure what sort of book a few months back (and I think I’ve even got a few pages of it somewhere, it’s definitely beating the manifesto!) but I don’t even know where it was going. They say you should have an ending in mind when you’re writing a book, but I couldn’t think of one, but I could think of a pretty cool start, so I started and am waiting to see where it will go. Actually, that’s how most of my songs start too, like with a riff on guitar/keys/drum pattern/violin/other noise-making object, and I play it for a while, try to spruce it up with some variation, and then add other layers on top of it. And rarely, rarely ever re-record that initial idea when I can play it properly. That’s far too boring! Oh, I also started a comic like that too, and got a few pages, but got bored of it, I just wasn’t sure where it could go, lots of ideas, most horribly stereotypical and then I got sick of trying to draw these complicated pictures in blue pen with pretty un expressive stick figures. That was gruelling.

So i've got a day off today, an RDO, the last vestige of my company which was once government-owned, and we're off to get our wills and life insurance settled, but before then it's a lazy weekend morning, which i'm a real big fan of. and so i decided to move the rest of my blogs from the old place to here (it was actually my splendid wife, Katy, who set this up for me, again, knowing that I would probably "never get around to it", also she's recently learnt how to use that funky webscript stuff), due to various reasons of annoyance and numerous recommendations. i did like the old place though, and had links to several of my 'songs' there, which i haven't worked out if that's possible here. but then i've been dabbling in myspace for both myself and the Erotic Mules, a sort of muck around 'band', and i've been exploring other places to upload mp3s - there's stax of them, i love this internet community thing! but then, yeah, i've drifted off topic. and i really should have a shower cos we have to go in 15 or 20. time for a quick coffee then.

so basically, every post beneath this one was written during April sometime. and then this would make this my first real post in like a month. i've been too tired and busy to rant. but i've got some more stuff up my sleeve, oh yeah!

Later Note: you can do an easy (probably reduced version of the) Myers-Briggs Personality Test here (they call it the Jung Typology Test) - obviously it's pretty rough and sometimes a couple of different answers (for those you might sit on the fence for) could change your type.

It's All Glorious HorsePoo

Those freakin' annoying 9-letter word games in particular (i challenge anyone to use even half of those words in sentences), but this category also includes sudoku and especially cryptic crosswords. Occasionally i have a go at them, but do i really need to risk extreme frustration for some infinitesimally small feeling of satisfaction of completing some stupid game? i think not.

Light/ Random Font Changes/ Malls

Believe it or not, I have big issues with light. usually that it’s too bright. i've been wearing my sunnies at work a bit lately, you know, with those nasty fluoro lights (and a rare high computer work : low lab work ratio) and people tend to consider this odd. it just works for me. surely there's more out there like that?

I hate freaking computer templates and stuff that’s designed to make things easier, like auto-formatting in word in particular which you tend to have to muck around with much more than doing it in the old-skool manual way. Like why does it decide something is heading 7 all of a sudden, or decide to start numbering from the start again half-way through a document, or on this blog page why does some of the stuff randomly come up in a larger size or different font? and why does the page start so far down? It’s weird and annoying.

Re: people not staying clear of the Escalator Exit/Entrance Area, e.g. in shopping centres. i've decided the only way is to ram them. i've had it. also the same at airport baggage collection conveyor belt areas - people don't move for you when you lean over and pick up that heavy bag, all heaving and unbalanced (when their stuff is obviously no where in sight, yet they must maintain their position), so why try and avoid them? i've found that motion occurs when you just do your thing as if no one else was there. and i'm learning not to even apologise. people've got a lot of learnin' to do.

Metal [heavy]

Yeah, we’re not talking Cd, Hg, Pb, etc, although I think we shall at a later stage. It irks me the way people get overly scared about stuff like that – everything is bad for you at some level, but people just freak out and get fooled by all this advertising and scaremongering and it’s really crap. Generally, we need trace amounts of almost everything, although I’m not sure how much plutonium is good for you and those first three aren’t known to be very helpful. And even something as simple as water can kill you. Reminder to self to finish writing that spiel about the dangers of organic food and ignorance. Yes the dangers. It’s underlined.

OK, onto “Metal” [music]. Like with many things there’s some great stuff and some really horrible, unspeakably bad stuff in this category. Sure, it’s a genre that generally attracts a young male crowd, full of aggression, but the best stuff can really be timeless. I don’t listen to much these days, comparatively, but there’s still some great music coming out of the genre I’m barely in touch with anymore, eg. Opeth. And I still find Cradle of Filth funny and actually even better musically compared to their cheesiness 10 years ago (they have more of a HI FI cheesiness now). But I was lamenting that I never got to see an extremely cheesy metal gig, you know with all the blood and stuff , like how Cradle apparently used to be, I only saw them a few years back, alone and without my long hair also, a very daring move I thought, and it was a very tame gig. I was more concerned for my wellbeing when Ween played the Evelyn.

But anyway, I’m meant to be mourning the lack of quality metal these days, in an uninformed, grumpy old man kind of fashion. I heard the new Darkthrone song “Too Old, Too Cold” a few weeks back and it’s just plain horrible. Sure, the trademark, minimal sound with extreme distortion is ok (although not very adventurous after how many albums?) but the lyrics were so embarrassing. And I actually have some of their cds. Maybe they’re sick of pretending to be EVIL and are trying to get into some humour ala Cradle? And then there’s another band I used to listen to a decade ago, Cannibal Corpse, who don’t sound like they’ve changed one bit. It’s a great sound, but surely hardcore fans can’t keep buying cds where every single song sounds the same as everything else they’ve ever done. Well, I guess a lot of uncompromising death/blackmetal is like that. Maybe I’m just not metal enough anymore. and, yeah, I’m sick of this subject already.

Cats [not the musical, 'Miaow' to you too]

Why were these ill-natured beasts half domesticated? Is Cleopatra to blame? Why is it a crime to rid the planet of them? What’s wrong with the people who own them? (apart from everyone I know with a cat or two of course- y’all obviously didn’t know what you were doing at the time, your drinks were spiked, right?) Hmmm. So many questions, so little time. Thank god my wife is allergic to the nasty critters. I want to meet that dude from country Australia somewhere with a cat-pelt hat. I love the fact he’s marked out his own kingdom, too [find & insert link]. What a legend! Up there for thinking.

And while we're at it, speaking of musicals, which we weren't, i'm really not a big fan of them. and that goes for dance-stuff, too. i just don't get into it. although one day i'm gonna see Swan Lake - for the music only. really hope my daughter doesn't want to do ballet. soccer's much more fun.

"Alternative Radio"

Triple J was once a great station when I was finishing high school in Brisbane in the early 90s, but it’s really sucked since the mid-90s. Maybe I’ve grown up, and/or we have such great public radio here in Melbourne (Triple R and PBS) that JJJ can’t compete, but geez, I usually prefer to listen to golden oldies in the lab at work if I have to choose b/w them and JJJ.

Most people I work with don’t really have the patience for public radio, it is a bit out there, which is why it’s so good, mostly. I mean I don’t love every segment, some of the stuff about computers or architecture I find really boring, and sometimes I’m not in the mood for general bullshit chatting [some is hilarious though] or can’t face various genres like country/rockabilly/rap/an d even metal – see maybe I am growing up, but the majority of metal these days seems pretty lacking – this will have to be tackled in another blog entry.

But last week, I was home babysitting, and since we were moving house (and are still unpacking, yay!), all the CDs were packed, I wanted some background music on to keep the lil’ girl asleep (she loves music, like her parents) and the preferred station had too much talk going on. So I turn to JJJ for curiosity more than anything, and no surprise, the first song I get is the Arctic Monkeys. I mean, I feel sorry for them, it’s a catchy song (the one about the dancefloor etc) but it’s not great. It’s not 5 out of 5 whatever stupid scoring things you use [you stupid over-hyping british rock mags]. But those guys will cop it all and will struggle to be heard in a year, probably, unless they do something really daring and groundbreaking for their next album, if they get that far.

I should note that later on I had JJJ on to hear the metal show for the first time in probably a decade, and that was amusing. Heard some new releases from bands I used to listen to a decade ago (and occasionally still chuck on now) and they were really boring. The highlight of an hour of listening was hearing a Metallica song from Master of Puppets. Haven’t heard that album in years. Haven’t seen it in years. Actually, just got it back from my bro, Dan and had it on last night, after a family catchup/dinner - it was the perfect end to Easter Sunday...

And don’t let me start about freakin’ rap metal. JJJ’s audience obviously is aimed at the finishing-high school-almost-at-uni-stag e, but I like to think I had more taste back when I was that age. Maybe there was better mainstream music, like Nirvana back in the early 90s, maybe that’s a dangerous topic to get into. Nowadays one has to search harder for ‘quality’ music, but in the end, that’s what makes it all the more worthwhile, hey?

Vegans

I wanna see a reality TV show with a bunch of ‘em eating nothing but vegetables and fruit and nuts and fungi and nothing from an animal and see what becomes of them. It could be like a survival of the fittest type thing, over a few years, with a show being like a month’s summary of their downfall. I predict that half of them would probably turn into cannibals. But good on the vegans anyway, doing their thing for nature/the planet/ethics/themselves and their high horses/animal-kind or whatever. Each to their own, I totally agree. Sort of sucks though when your menu choices are compromised, but then you shouldn’t go to those funky, overpriced places anyway. Although, some places do make amazing vego stuff though, I’m not dissing the vegos. But what I really really hate (not a-zig-a-zig-ah) is when people decide what’s best for their kids, and deny them meat. That’s downright evil.

Ranting

I love this forum for a quick rant. It gives me time to crystallise my ideas and even back them up with links for anyone who gives a shit. I’m generally too slow to get all my ideas together in an argument/discussion, and so I’m often ready to say something just when the conversation moves on, or when I’m brushing my teeth later on I think, ‘oh, yeah, why didn’t I think of that?’ which is rather frustrating to say the least. I’ve been saving up a few rants in a word doc on the home computer as I think of things, and pondering whether or not to start a blog and foist this stuff on the world (I really love the word ‘foist’ and i've just googled it, to find after all the dictionary definitions that a band - from Gippsland - already have this name... damn). Well, now it is done – actually my wife Katy read some of my newer articles this morning, including one about never being able to finish stuff – which of course, isn’t finished; there’s even a few articles that need more info to them, or don’t particularly go anywhere – and so she actually set this thing up, reckoning (probably correctly) that I’d probably take all year to actually ‘get around’ to setting it up. So that’s great. Everyone can thank her for your newfound amusement on the web. I don’t think I’m going to manage to do an entry every day – I don’t intend to even try. It’s more of a soapbox than a diary. Hopefully, I’ll be the next Happy Noodle Boy. Moo!

Real Estate Companies and the Agents Who "Work" for them

Does anybody like them? Can they do nothing right? Do they sort of live in their own time-space continuum and do what’s best for them in the laziest possible way, completely bereft of any consideration for their so-called ‘customers’ on either side of the renting/buying/selling aspect of the business? We really should all get revenge on them somehow. Are their employees merely idiots who couldn’t get into marketing degrees or some sales area for a decent company and just do the bare minimum to get their wage? Have you answered YES to all of these questions? Well, then why not join the Coalition of Down with Real Estate Agents today and help us all exact our much-deserved revenge on these scourges of humanity. But then we all probably know someone who knows one of ‘them’. Like someone with bad BO.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Frustration on the Roads

Yeah, I’m sure we all get a bit annoyed on the roads, it’s always a long way to go and not everything works in our favour. But aside from giving people a reasonable chance to wake up (hey they could be lost in some amazing zone listening to 3RRR) or get up to speed, some people are really asking for it – like that guy in front of me who or almost stopped in the middle of an intersection for no reason at all, but in an upshot, it was inspirational: . I just tend to play some nasty music a bit louder and try to lose myself in that. Maybe sing along with Mike Patton [link] or something. My wife, though, sometimes wishes she had a long spike or ramming rod device attached to the front of her car, to get revenge or something. I think that’s a bit over the top, but that’s why I love her. I mean, look at the following cartoon site, par example, which she and our friend Timmy T developed.

Faxed Head

My wife and newly born daughter never really got into this amazing band. I can sort of understand why, they’ve released several extremely challenging masterpieces, which, on initial hearing, even I found little enjoyment in. Sure, they were very amusing. But the skill of creating such painful music full of dropouts and random distortion that probably does damage to your speakers is amazing. And then you’ve gotta check out the lyrics, my fave is probably from their second album, Uncomfortable but Free which has a song on it about them not loving the hick country town they live in and the lines “I'm never going to leave Coalinga, I love it here, it is my home. Also, I cannot get up, or my bones will puncture through my skin.” How good is that? Such a poignant sentiment, which I’m sure we can all relate to at some point in our lives. On their 3rd album there’s a great song about getting food poisoning in a Mexican restaurant. You know you should check it out. Warning: it’s kindof low-fi quirky death/black metal at times. Here’s their story. I’m not sure if I believe ALL of it.

Dolphins

So what’s with this extreme fascination with dolphins? Sure, they can do some tricks, maybe they’ve rescued a few people [although might just be a nice story or playful coincidence], but they have their shortcomings. Perhaps they’re more friendly than sharks, but c’mon us humanoids are the best – forget all the rest. I can tell ya, I for one wont be getting any sickly grey tattoos on me! And as if you’d want to eat them anyway. I’ve often joked about biting into dolphin flesh, from a purely academic viewpoint of course (I think in their terrain they’d probably overpower me anyway), but I tend to think it would be rather slimy and rubbery. I could be wrong. I’m not really an expert on cetaceous things, but one’s always allowed to speculate. There’s the beauty of blogs. They’re full of quality hypotheses and crap. This guy’s clearly messed up [insert link to Mudloch comic on web somewhere, below's a teaser]:

Friday, May 05, 2006

Manifesto

There was a rather ill-fated manifesto I started to write maybe a decade or so ago. It didn’t go down so well with the critics, even though it was short and to the point. Mostly it just gathered laughs and for this reason cannot be repeated here. It was only one sentence, and this blog will endeavour to get the same message across, albeit in a more subliminal, less punch-in-the-face kinda way. Also I was a much angrier young man then. Now I’m a jaded almost-30-something with my très avant garde [insert link to snippets of my songs somewhere, somehow] rock career still waiting to take off.