Shyzer.com

I am still up at 0332, which means that I’ve been following the election of the new pope since the story broke. And I only have one thing to say.

How does the name Joseph Ratzinger get changed into Pope Benedict XVI?! What kind of crap names does he have to chose from? Is there not any way we can get some new names added to the selection? Pope Goob VI would sound pretty cool if you ask me. Even Google is throwing me goose eggs on this subject. This is a thousand times worse than the old James to Jim switch that some people try to pull on us. IT’S NOT THE SAME NAME! That’s like me going from Ryan to Robert and then saying “eh, they start with the same letters. Close enough.”

Seriously, how do these types of questions go unasked and unanswered in the world?!

I should have taken the safe odds and placed a few bets on Ratzinger.

Seriously though, I was hoping to see a more moderately liberal Pope elected. Guess I’ll have to wait until next time. But it’s good to see a new Pope elected without much trouble. Hopefully he can be as strong a leader and moral force as Pope John Paul II was.

[deleted due to being against Google TOS]

In fact, there are so many things that I would love to buy for Shyzer (like, say, renew my Tag-Board license that is about to expire, get an advanced stat tracker, upgrade my hosting plan so that I can host more videos and pictures, and buy some discounted advertising space on a few big sites through my connections) but don’t have the extra money to spend. Which is why advertising is a helpful tool. I’d never want to rely on donations to Shyzer or force people to pay for the drivel I put on here, because I’m not even sure I would pay myself to write for a living.

And now, in keeping with my recent theme of jumping from one topic to the next, how about some baseball related news. It looks like I’ll get a chance to play 2nd and 1st grade this weekend since hardly anybody is here over the break. Any good luck sent my way will definitely be appreciated, because I sucked it up at the plate last weekend. I liked to blame it on the fact that we use wooden bats, but I can’t really pull that argument off since I didn’t keep my head down or take any pitches. They say that hitting is a skill that must be practiced year round. The general rule of thumb is if you take over a month off from baseball or hitting, you loose 6 months worth of progress and unfortunately for me, it’s been over a year since I’ve faced live pitching. The batting cages are about to become the next character added to the Aussie Cast section.

And speaking of baseball, it’s been ten days and I’ve somehow not talked about the Mariners. I had somebody actually ask me in a recent e-mail if I followed the Mariners anymore and I was stunned. As I wrote them back, I let them know that while I sat there typing to them, I was wearing a Mariners hat and T-shirt while tossing a baseball to myself in-between paragraphs. Just because they had an off year (if you can even call 99 losses an off year) does not warrant dropping ten years of blind allegiance. How can one not be excited about a team that signed Beltre and Sexson this past off season? Sure, Sexson brings with him health risks, but we got the best 3B in Beltre when you consider the fact that he’s only 25 and has been playing in the majors since he was 19. Oh yeah, and he led the league in homeruns last year. You know, just a fun little stat that some people follow. Sure, the Mariners will be lucky if they can win more games than they lose this year, but Seattle was clearly in rebuilding mode after last season. And I’m not talking about one of those Cleveland Indians 5 year rebuild modes either, I’m talking about the 1-year speed rebuild. The hitting is finally there. Grab a pitcher this off season, move Moyer and Boone off the books, bring up King Felix (#1 minor league pitching prospect whose currently in AAA…AND NINETEEN), and make a race for the playoffs.

But does that mean I’m not interested in this season since they have no shot at the playoffs? God no. I sat on MLB.com yesterday for a good five minutes watching the same video clip over and over. Listening to the crack of the bat as Sexson hit a double into the gap against Texas sent chills down my back. Watching the ball fly off this bat and drop between two helpless fielders was like was staring at my version of Van Gogh. Baseball is finally back and I can’t wait to be in Seattle with Chong this July to see a game. It’s been too long since I’ve been to Safeco.

Looks like I’ll be playing baseball here after all. I won’t bore you with the details, but I basically found out that my International Student health coverage that I was forced to purchase will cover my baseball insurance, so I then worked out a deal, money-wise, that suited me. Now I just wish I had actually brought my cleats and other baseball equipment with me instead of only my glove.

My one burning question, however, is what kind of mascot is representing us? I’ve stared at the hat in the current cam picture and for the life of me, all I can come up with is that we are the Spitting Camels? The Spittin’ Cams? The Smoking Joe Camels? The Double Humpers? What kind of team uses a spitting animal as its mascot? I’m a bit baffled here.

Right now, however, is Week 1 of our two week break. About 90% of the student population has gone home already, which means that this place is practically dead. Josh, John, and Dave are all here though, so we tend to hang out every night and watch movies or just goof around. Josh and I are probably heading up north to Aiden’s, Emma’s, and then Memma’s hometowns later this week. So it looks as if I’ll be taking Shyzer on yet another Road Trip, just as long as I can find an Internet connection while I’m gone.

And ignore the post below this one. I’m trying to see if I can “optimize” the Google Ads I’m using so that they start showing more profitable ads instead of the Dermatologist ones they are showing now. But it doesn’t really matter what ads it shows if nobody clicks them! *hint bloody hint*

Today is Day 4 of “The Aussie Cold From Hell.” I have approximately 18 pounds of mucus crammed in my nostrils and lungs and most of the day I walk around coughing and hacking as if I started chain smoking when I was three. Let’s all take a moment and thank the inventors of Ny-Quill however, because otherwise I wouldn’t sleep at night and you wouldn’t be getting this lovely Shyzer update. The cold itself isn’t so bad, but it simply has drained all my energy. I’ve never actually had just a common cold sap my energy like this and if this is how other people experience colds, then it must suck to be them. I’m up and walking around for an hour or two and then, WHAM, all of a sudden I’m sleepy. In fact, I’m walking back to my dorm and taking a nap just as soon as I hit that little “Save” button down there.

Two days ago I saw the latest episode of LOST (or, at least the latest episode at that time since we’re about a week behind in downloading them over on this side of the pond.) I won’t give away any of the details since I know Waynus hasn’t seen it yet, but I will say this. Somebody needs to give Terry O’Quinn an award. Fast.

In fact, last week’s episode was so amazing that this week, people here at Uni speed rushed the download of the latest episode. So instead of waiting close to a week, I was able to watch it last night. All I’ll say is that whoever gives O’Quinn an award needs to give another one to Matthew Fox.

And is it just me or does the music seem to be leaps and bounds beyond most other TV shows? It seems that almost every week I’m ripping at least one orchestral track off the show onto my iPod and usually I end up ripping the closing song they play as well. I fell asleep last night listening to the end part of this week’s episode just playing over and over on repeat and the night before I had done the same with last week’s episode. If anybody would be interested in rips I’ve made, let me know and I’ll get them up onto the media page.

And I know I’m a bit late on this, but one of my favorite comedians, Mitch Hedberg, died on March 31. He made his living through mainly one-liner jokes instead of the usual monologue or drawn out style that most comedians use. In fact, I found a copy of one of his CDs on the net, so I’m putting it here on Shyzer, but you need to download it within a day or two, because I’ll be taking it down soon due to bandwidth limits. If you like it, go check out his website and buy a few CDs. They’ll keep you laughing for years to come.

And with that, I’m off to bed.

For the next installment of “What Goob’s finally gotten around to fixing here at Shyzer,” I present you with a new nested album in the family section, titled “Back in the Day.” It’s basically just a collection of scanned photos of me and my family that are quite a few years old. While making this album, I realized that there were some photos in the “Old School Photos” gallery that probably should go in my newly created album, so I moved went ahead and redid the “Old School Photos” and equipped each picture with a caption. I also folded “Man Weekend” into “Goob’s Life” since the weekend in reference was over a year ago. This, of course, led me to f*#&ing reorganize the”Goob’s Life” gallery by captioning each photo and ordering them chronologically.

Sometimes my anal retentive side is excessively annoying even for me. But at least it gives you, the good reader of Shyzer that you are, something to do for a few minutes at work besides play solitaire.

In fact, always being one to borrow a good idea when I see it, I’ve copied Angela’s idea and created an updated page for Shyzer as well, which you should check out weekly or so. You can find a link to it over on the left under the newly created Heading “Shyzer.” I update the sub-pages on Shyzer more than people realize and with the soon-to-come new section that Fellner has been waiting for since September, I’ll be updating stuff twice or thrice a week.

But if you’re too lazy to look through the photos, at least look at this one followed by this one. That second photo kept me laughing for at least an hour. Thanks Clay =)

That’s it for now guys. Time for dinner before they close.

In an effort to keep busy for numerous reasons which will never make their way onto Shyzer, I’ve spent a bit of time lately working on Shy. Every member of the original cast received a major overhaul and I added a few people who were missing since I realized it was far too outdated in its previous form. The Aussie cast section was updated as well (mainly Rachael’s and Emma’s. The addition of RA Sarah was supposed to go up as well, but I seemed to have lost the damn bio I typed for her.) The pictures from Gender Bender have been uploaded as promised. I also uploaded ten new pictures to the first page of the Bad Taste Party gallery. And finally, I added a few pictures from Rubix Cube Night in the Other Functions Category. Anyway, if you’re bored and have some time, go check out all the changes.

I was looking for something in the archives this weekend when I found myself reading old entries I made instead of searching for whatever it was that I needed. You know what I realized? There’s some halfway decent stuff in there. I began reading about the Fall Break excursion that Fellner and I took in October ‘03 and an hour or two later, I found that I had read everything I’d posted up until now. For the most part, I can’t stand my writing for I think it’s quite amateurish compared to my favorite blogs, much less my favorite authors. But while reading through my archives, I realized that I had forgotten well over half the stuff I had ever written and for the most part, I enjoyed reading the half-assed commentary I wrote. I honestly felt as if I was reading this stuff for the first time.

This delve back into Shyzer’s past got me thinking about other things I’d written and filed away to spend years deteriorating before ever seeing the light of day again. I used to debate on message boards under a few other names besides Goob and a quick Google cache search found me staring at old arguments I’d heatedly defended. Oh how times, fears, and cares change. Before I knew it, I had found an on-line folder I used to keep of all my old essays, articles, and debates. I found old e-mails, journal entries from when I used to save them to computers instead of printing them out every day like I do now, and countless other things that I’d written and completely forgotten about. As I feverously started copying and pasting thousands of words into a blank text document, furiously editing things as I went, memories began to come flooding back from my younger years. With each old event that I remembered, new memories seemed to spring forth with them and eventually entire chapters of my life that I had utterly looked past were brought back to life.

Who knows, I might just be able to turn some of this stuff into future Shyzer material, where it too will slowly make its way into Shyzer’s archive, thereby one day completing the circle when I sit down and start reading through the archives just like I did yesterday.

Sometimes it’s fun to take a journey back into our past, if not to simply see how far we’ve actually come. Or in some instances, how little progress we’ve made. But the other day made me realize that for as priceless as my journal is to me, as valuable as having an entry for each and every day of my life for the past 9 years is, I can’t rely solely on it to. Sometimes the best ways of remembering something in the future is to just sit down in the middle of the day and write whatever comes to mind.

Kinda like how I do here with Shyzer. Trust me, you’ll thank yourself down the road.

remember us when you post on Shyzer from time to time. we all feel so neglected. - Fellner

Well here’s your shout out Fellner. Fear not, for I have looked and looked for a Replacement Fellner, but I simply couldn’t find anyone over here as cool as you. Or who would let me call them a whore all the time.

Thanks to all those who commented on the entry below. I’ve already started typing the next edition, which should be up early next week.

I can’t believe that it’s already April. Before I know it, I’m going to be forced to leave this wonderful country and that is simply unacceptable. Anyway, after next week, Uni lets out for a two week break and if all goes according to plan, a few of us International students are going to hop on a train and start traveling around. Most of the Americans here are doing the normal touristy stuff, but we figure that since we’re over here to live, why not go and see how other Aussie people live? So in an attempt to do just that, we’re gonna try and hit up a few of the everyday, normal hometowns of some of our mates. Screw Cannes, Sydney, and Melbourne. Give us Dubbo, Nambla, and COFFS HARBOR (BECAUSE LIKE OMG IT’S THE BEST) any day of the week.

Two nights ago at dinner, Casey out of the blue mentioned that he liked the Shyzer Shuffle. After getting rid of the “oh dead God, kill me now” thought that I initially had, I asked if anybody else had seen it. 15 minutes later we were in Keeley’s room watching and laughing over the “dance” and the seizure given to our poor dog. By the end of the night, I’d given a few live performances and taught Karen the correct way to do it as well.

[web master / nerd talk]
I’ve grown extremely tired with the current layout I have up. I’ve already begun looking at a few other sites whose layouts I want to mimic somewhat. I’ve also gotten the inkling to upgrade from MovableType to Wordpress and start using php instead of the shtml that I’ve got running now. The only problem is that I know absolutely nothing when it comes to php and I’ve already tried teaching myself once before. But now that I’m about to have Internet in my room, I think I’ll give it another serious go.
[/web master / nerd talk]

I received an e-mail yesterday from the Uni’s baseball team containing the rosters for this years teams. I only attending one practice (back in late February) and I was extremely hung-over seeing as how it was a Sunday morning. I played like shit, saw that it was going to cost me $300 to play just for three months, and decided that I wasn’t going to pay $100 a month for baseball. Well, apparently my hung-over, one-attendance practice was enough to place me on the 2nd grade team. (The grades go 1-6, with 1 being the highest.) I say this not to try and brag, since there is no way I should be on the 2nd grade team, but to show how few Aussie’s actually play the sport of baseball over here! It’s depressing actually. Thankfully, I’ve got opening day to look forward to. Looks like the ESPN channel over here is carrying the Red Sox-Yankees game at 1000, which you can be assured I will be up and watching.

And finally, tomorrow night is a night I’ve been looking forward to a bit too much. Gender Bender, where the guys dress as girls and vice versa. Needless to say, I can’t wait to see and upload any and all pictures that are taken. I’ve already lined up a purple dress with white polka dots to wear and a few of the girls on my corridor can’t wait to apply my makeup.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to this just a bit too much…

I need some help from my Shyzerlings. This is y’alls chance to have some direct input as to what goes up here on Shyzer, because I’m struggling. One of my main goals in coming over to Aussie was to write about all the difference, large and small, between The Outback and The States. Once I’d spent some time over here, however, I soon realized that order was a tad taller than I had expected. There are so many small, minute differences between the two that it’s not even funny and I don’t even know where to begin.

So what you see below is what I plan on doing. Instead of writing one drawn out post about a large difference, I’m going to start picking a category and listing all the small differences. And hence, this is where it’s your (yes, YOU!!) time to shine. Of course I can think about the normal categories. Classes, Women, Dorm Life, Women, Food, Ladies, Sports, um….Women. But if anybody else can think of anything I’m missing, then fire off a comment and/or e-mail and let me know! Heck, even if you have any specific questions, just ask away and I will answer. I have no idea what y’all want to know about this country, so if I get absolutely no responses to my request here, I better not hear any bitching from the peanut gallery!

Dorm Life

Initially, I was going to make the first category I did “classes,” but then I realized that A) I haven’t really been to enough to accurately explain them and B) I should probably wait until I receive a few grades back before commenting on how easy / hard they are. So I thought about where I spent the majority of my time here and realized that “Dorm Life” was by far the best way to go with this post. For, when you break it down, I probably spend a good 75% of my time here in the dorms, either sleeping or conversing with my fellow Cutler-ites.

Probably the easiest and most visible difference between the dorms here and back home is the fact that the dorms here are co-ed. And by co-ed, I’m not talking about males on the top floors and females on the lower ones. There are 20 people on my corridor, ten of which are male and ten of which are female. I’m not sure if every other corridor has such an even split, but I do know that if not, it’s only one or two off. Since both the showers and toilets are community, that means that we also get to share the three shower and toilet cubicles as well. Personally, I like this change much, much better than the way they do things back home. There’s just something about having females around that make things much more laid back. Back home on the all-guys floors, they tended to be wild, smelly, uncontrollable environments. And while I’m never one to turn down getting wild and smelly from time to time, it’s not too fun to have to live 24 / 7 in a place like that.

Another difference is the number of dorms they have on campus and their difference in size / commodities. The size of Newcastle Uni is relatively the same as USC’s (20k compared to 26k). Yet here, there are only 4 real dorms. TEDS, International House, Evatt, and…um…something else. I can think of 12 dorms right off the top of my head back at USC. So naturally, since there are fewer dorms here, they don’t rank them like they do back home. There aren’t Freshman, lower class, and upper class dorms, with the freshman dorms being just a notch above living on the street and the upper class dorms resembling a Suite at the Hilton. Here, they are all pretty much the same and they are actually quite nice. The size of my room is slightly bigger than the freshman rooms back home, yet this time I don’t have to share it with anybody, which is a HUGE plus in my book. Both my years back home I was forced to share a room with another person, but over here not only do I have my own room, but it’s fully carpeted, equipped with a heater, and comes with linen service among other things. Every Tuesday, for those of us using the sheets that came with the room, we get a fresh set. In fact, the rooms here come surprisingly stocked. A pillow, three blankets, 25 hangers, two glasses, two spoons, two tea cups with saucers, a desk lamp, a phone, etc. These dorms are definitely better than the crap I had to live through my two years back home.

As far as the actual dorm life itself, that too is pretty different than back home. At USC, pretty much every student has a TV and computer. Whenever you walk into somebody’s room, you could bet on the TV being turned on as well as the computer. But over here, I only know two people with TVs. Aiden has one, but he can’t get reception worth shit. The rooms here don’t come equipped with a cable slot for the TVs (which might be explained by the fact that they don’t really have cable over here, but that’s for another post.) Memma has the other, but that’s only because she’s in North Wing, which for a little extra comes with a TV, A/C, and a private bath. It’s kind of weird not seeing a TV every three seconds, but at the same time it’s nice. Besides the four or five shows I watch, I rarely used my TV back home. As far as the computers, pretty much everybody here has one, but people aren’t on them all the time. The only IM service used over here is MSN, which is a far cry from the AIM that everybody back home uses. But IM just doesn’t seem to be nearly as popular over here. Sure, there are a few people who get on to chat with their friends from time to time, but they only tend to talk to one or two people at a time. Whenever I sign onto AIM, I get about seven or eight IMs immediately and usually end up carrying on six conversations at once. Therefore, the lack of excessive IM on here equates to people not being on their computer as much which equates with more conversing out in the hallway and general hanging out, which again is a difference I greatly enjoy.

However, for all the variations that I appreciate between the dorms at Newcastle and USC, there is one that I absolutely hate; the way the food system is operated. Back home, you have the option of purchasing a meal plan to eat on campus since it’s basically the only way you can eat day in and day out if you live in a dorm without an oven and stove. Well it’s no real difference here at Newcastle. Since we live in TEDS, our room and board has 16 weekly meals built into the cost. Yet over here, there’s only one place we can eat and we have to go by their hours. Breakfast from 0745 until 0900 and dinner from 1730 until 1930 during the weekdays. On the weekends, breakfast / lunch is served from 0900 until 1300 and dinner goes from 1730 until 1830. That’s it. I mean, seriously, who the fuck gets up for breakfast before 0900??? And what about those of us who eat dinner at 2100?! Back home, you eat what and when you want to eat. If I get hungry around noon, I can go eat Pizza Hut, Burger King, Chick-Fil-A, Subway, or go to any of the 15 or so cafeterias across campus. Also, if I do chose a cafeteria, I can have my pick of what to eat. Burger, chicken, sushi, sandwiches, stir-fry, Mexican, etc. as well as being able to choose from 15 different side dishes, 10 different drinks, and 5 different deserts. Over here, we get two choices of a main course, two choices of drink, and one desert. Whoopdi-fucking-doo. It feels so much more like I’m staying at a camp or something since I’m eating when they tell me to eat.

But I guess you’ve got to take the good with the bad. Despite the horrible food options, I’d still pick the Newcastle dorms over the ones back home any day of the week. But for now, that’s it on the dorm life. I’m off to wander the corridor in search for people to hang out with. And remember, if there’s anything you can think of that I could write about, drop me a line and let me know.

There’s nothing quite like waking up to “I heart penis” being written on your scalp. What, you say you’ve never had that happen to you? Oh, you’re missing out. In one ever need a reminder that they are living in a dorm, there’s nothing better than writing obscenities on the bare skin of a sleeping man. Needless to say, I was that sleeping man and that’s exactly what I awoke to yesterday morning courtesy of Sez and Memma. Guess I was asking for it when I left my door unlocked Thursday night.

And speaking of Thursday night. It’s Easter break this weekend, which means that we got yesterday as well as next Monday and Tuesday off from school. Therefore, about half of the people here left on Thursday and the other half were leaving on Friday to go home and spend the weekend with their families. Those of us that were still here on Thursday figured the night would be calm and docile since most people were leaving early the next morning. Hannah, Simon, and I spent some time Wandering (a favorite pastime of people in Edwards Hall. If you find that you’re bored, you go Wander and walk up and down the corridors. When you find an open room, you walk in, introduce yourself, and talk to the inhabitants. But you spend no more than 5 minutes per room. That’s key.) As we were coming back into Cutler House, we decided to have a little fun with somebody who wasn’t here. I can’t really say what or who because they may be reading Shyzer while on their Easter Break (although I doubt it) but I don’t want to ruin the not-so-funny-for-them-but-hilarious-for-us “surprise” when they get back. By this time, Sez had come out and we all went back into her room to talk. Then before we knew it, Dutch Dave, Alex, Casey, and a whole cast of people I’d never met before were all in our corridor, drinking, socializing, and having a damn good time.

And that’s why I love where I live. Only two people out of the 26 from USC who came here received on-campus housing. There was no rhyme or reason as to who or why, that’s just the way it was. To say that I was lucky doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface, for not only did I get housing, but I was placed on easily the best corridor in Edwards Hall (knows as TEDS). TEDS has two dorms, Cutler and Burnett Houses. Each has three floors (Ground, First, Second) and three wings (East, West, North). That means that there were 18 possibly corridors I could have been placed on and I just happened to stumble onto Cutler Ground East Corridor. If I ever meet the person who selected me to receive housing and then placed me on this corridor, I might just plant a big, wet, sloppy one right across their face.

Sure, we’ve got a few people on this corridor who we never see (ie. the two other Americans who do nothing but hang out with other Americans) but that just means we have a better impression of our corridor. We’re only seeing the people that we like. Take my example from the night before last. Almost every other corridor was dark and quiet. Anybody who was awake and wanted to have some fun was down here on our hall, hanging out and doing their thing. Noise curfew be damned because we didn’t have anybody sleeping! Each and every person who was still here decided to come out, be social, and have some fun.

And that’s what makes this place so much different than my stays in the dorms back home. Maybe it was the fact that I generally loathed all the people who lived around me my first two years of Uni. In fact, I’m sure that had something to do with it. I lived next to some genuine assholes during Year 1 and I know that helped make me jaded about the whole process. It seemed like all they wanted to do was get drunk in their rooms, go out and get drunk, or smoke some weed and then get drunk. I didn’t drink back then and therefore, I was more into the “let’s try and have fun not drinking” mentality, but that didn’t really work for those guys. During Year 2, I lived on a corridor that seemed to act like socializing was an act of Satan. I literally can’t remember a single person leaving their door open while they were home. I’m not exaggerating either. You could offer me a million dollars to name a single person off that hallway (of my Year 1 hallway for that matter) and let’s just say that I wouldn’t be making any plans to retire soon.

So as I sat in Sez’s room, listening to Dave sing a hilarious drunken rendition of a Dutch children’s song, I began to think that being placed on this corridor was a bit of Karma balancing itself out. I think I earned it after my two year sentence in Larborde and Capstone.

But back to Thursday night. Like I said, Dave was again up to his antics and Hannah managed to record him using her camera. In fact, I managed to snag a copy of the videos and find a place for them on Shyzer’s new Media page, so if you want to hear a drunk Dutch guy sing, here’s your chance. Anyway, around midnight Sez, Alex, and I got the munchies. Somebody mentioned cereal as a possible remedy and so we ventured down to the Tea Room. There was only enough milk for two bowl, so I just started throwing the cereal up and catching it in my mouth. Soon I had Sez and Alex doing it in an effort to see who could catch the most in a row without missing. The competition soon grew into throwing cereal at each other’s mouths and before we knew it, we had constructed mini-catapults to launch cereal at Alex. It was around this point where I deemed grabbing my camcorder might pay off and my intuitions turned out to be correct. A Cereal War quickly ensued where all three of us did nothing short of shoving two boxes worth of cereal in each other’s hair and down our pants. An hour later we were all in the three showers laughing and talking of how much cereal was in places cereal wasn’t meant to go. I managed to grab 35 minutes worth of footage, which is sitting on Alex’s computer. Only problem is that it’s about 10 gigs, so compressing it is in order before I can get it up here on Shyzer.

I think the capper of the evening was when I climbed into bed. It was close to 0600 and I had just started to drift off to sleep when the phone rang. You know the feeling when your on the verge of that wonderful, intoxicating feeling of sleep as its warm grasp envelopes your body only to have a loud, piercing noise scare it away? Well imagine that, only twenty times worse when I heard that phone ring. I grabbed the receiver, picked it up, and started off with a pleasant “Okay, which one of you moth^*( f$*#ing bastards just work me up?! I’m going to kill you!”

Imagine my surprise when I heard my mom laughing her head off on the other end. I wish everybody had such a great sense of humor as my family does.

After reading my previous post again today, I must apologize for its sheer level of craptitude. That was just pure boringness to anybody who read it and I feel ashamed for it flowing from my own fingers. So in order to make up for it, I give you this. That’s right, I finally finished the Aussie bios for all the people here. I was being hounded by the people from my corridor to finish it and “not say anything bad about us and make it funny.” I must say, I was certainly feeling the pressure. I don’t think I’ve strongly conveyed the fact to these people that not everything on Shyzer can be gold!! I know I spoil you all with my witty insults and my clever penis jokes, but unfortunately, writing is ten times more difficult.

Not to spoil you all at once or anything, but my flash drive finally arrived in the mail yesterday, so you know what that means. You don’t? Oh, well then let me spell it out for you. I have many pictures here on my hard drive. Until yesterday, I had no means for transferring them over to the Shyzer Gallery. But now that I have my flash drive…So go have a gander if you have some free time and check it out from time to time, because between all the digital cameras here and my newfound 512mb of USB drive deliciousness, I have a feeling the amount of pictures I collect is going to increase ten fold. I haven’t put captions on all the pictures yet, but I put enough on some as to identify most of the main people so that you’re not staring at them and going “Uh…who the hell are these people?” Also, most of the current photos uploaded are from Hannah’s camera. I’ll get my photos up soon.

Also, the Radio Blog has been updated. I realized that I had the program on my laptop to make the files necessary for making the radio files, so I converted a few of the new songs I’ve found recently. The ones currently uploaded are Bush mashups that some guy did. They’re quite brilliant if you ask me and if your little heart desires to download them, they can all be found here.

But I am off to watch movies and eat cake. It’s Josh’s 24 birthday today (Hahaha, he’s old!) and even though he busted up his leg in a rugby game last night and then was subsequently forced to endure Luke’s unrelenting attempts to blind him in the hospital using a pen light and a magnifying glass, his spirits are high. So wish my fellow American a happy birthday and enjoy the pictures / bios / music.

I told y’all I hadn’t forgotten about Shyzer.