24may2014
before i go on with this, it's happy birthday to b.d. it's also the birthday of an old kindy classmate, one of the pot thieves, reds mate. we used to celebrate cracker night on 24th of may , that guy was an orphan ,and he love that his birthday was on cracker night, that's all he had. then they moved it to june for the queens birthday weekend, which isn't her birthday anyway. then they banned crackers in favour of fireworks. now they let off fireworks every other day , except queens birthday, they might remember some years for a political purpose. that pretty much sums up the 1990's.
26may2014
i'm not surprised no one as yet has viewed this blog ,excepting for the usual spy eyes, all 3 of them. what a fucked decade that was, maybe it was just my age at that time. i would not have liked to be born, or have grown up ,or done anything i had done before in that decade. thinking about the year 1990. firstly my lifestyle had changed dramatically. i was now living in a car, well a van actually , more than less in a state of depression. i still had a few possessions scattered about the place. it was drive here , crash out there, shower where. gypsy? not relating to many people. there's one incident that stands out, among a few, that year. i had driven halfway round australia, 3 states and a territory, the year before. the van was playing up. every time you'd get to a certain speed or a hill, it would die in the arse. i took it to one bloke, he reckoned i needed a tune up, so i paid $128 to get a tune up, ripped off. the fucking van was sitting there for 2 days , he changed the spark plugs, i could have done that. the problem was still there. next, i went to this other bloke . he put all this testing equipment on things, he reckoned the carby was sucking air or some bullshit, so i went and got a carby kit , gaskets and such, $30 something. i remember trying to get up this steep hill and the van clagged out halfway. i put the hand brake on and changed the carby gaskets there. the motor was under the front seat. i got up the hill okay, but the problem still returned. after talking to a no hoper, he reckoned i should change the fuel filter, a $6 part. that fixed the problem . since then i've known a least 4 people who have had that same problem. i've told them the fuel filter , most think what's he know, one guy said yes that fixed it.
27may2014
living like that was taking a toll. i had a cb radio in the van, which i used and made some new friends, that was okay. the so called girlfriend's father, suggested i put some of this coolant in my radiator, very good he said, being greek. i said no worries. driving round over the next couple of weeks, i noticed the temperature was high on the dash gauge. i went to one bloke at a garage, he said, you've blown a head gasket. i said how much, he said $1600, i thought , wtf. i decided to fix it myself. i worked it out at around $160. the gasket kit $90 and a head shave $70. i had the tools necessary. it took me two days to fix . parked outside the girlfriends parents house. after fixing it, the problem was still there. when i changed the gasket, i thought the old one wasn't that bad. i had to take out the radiator, water pump , hoses , tapids rockers a lot of shit. i got it going again , but the temperature problem was still there. a no hoper suggested thermostat. the thermostat is used for heating, when at a certain temperature it opens , the water is at a temperature and can be used to heat the interior , keep you warm like. i took it out and the high temperature problem was fixed. so what happened, the coolant had stopped the thermostat from opening, stopping the circulation of water. i thought fuck it. i never put the thermostat back, come winter not much of a heater. while i was fixing the head gasket i walked into town one night, a few miles, i was noticing change then.
28may2014
i could go on about life in a car, stuff like paying for petrol , then the cops trying to track me down for not paying, cause the jerk at the garage didn't like the look of me. or driving to canberra to see public image, or other ditties. i had had enough. i knew some people who had a small farm, they said i could stay there and help fix up the place. there was trouble there , they were on a methadone program. the trouble there is one day their okay, then when they got their done fix, their personality changed to up themselves. i had to get away. i think i stay there a few weeks or months. i was pushed into selling my motor bike and trailer to get bond for a flat in wollongong. i eventually did just that. things still weren't right though. it was like a game of how low can you go.
7june2014
once in the flat, i had to get rid of the van. i sold it for $300, i bought it for $3200. i was just glad to be done with that life in the van stuff. the van would have been handy for some moving things type of stuff. i was glad to let it go.the shithouse girl friend moved in also, i don't know if that was a good idea. i had friends all over at that time, but time at being down, didn't help me none. this is where fate had came in , very much so at this time. i got into playing the lotto, i had played before, but now i was putting all energies into these same numbers which i thought would pop up. i also had an nintendo addiction at this time, just playing and wasting time, i thought someone should have a song called no time for nintendo. actually, some of the money from the van sale went on nintendo games. i had a friend in sydney, who had a screen printing business. he was moving shop, i was asked if i could give a hand. i said i would. on the train up i meet an old unanderra friend, i had a couple of cans of beer for the journey, i said do you want one? he said he'd given up and was sober. i told him i was trying to win the lotto, and i was doing it tough.
8june2014
it was a strange time, this being between late 1990 and 1992. i've mention parts in former blogs, jester. with the fuckwit girlfriend , things were drifting. she was going out to these fucked out discoie type places, i was never into that shit. i liked live bands. i could go on about her, these short paras are too much for that speck. a nut from the start, no more said. so, i helped out with the moving the screen printing gear. i had a strange relationship with them artie type people. they helped me in life, but their politics was somewhat different. i think art has a connection between the top and the bottom. it's a ladder. the trouble is there's a lot of fakers. while sorting through some old bits of clothes , we came across the clash t shirt. so that's how i got it. i helped out a few weeks, staying over some nights, others times catching the early trains up. i was getting better with myself. then i felt i was being taken for granted , not used, cause i was happy helping out. we had a fall out over trivia , silly really. i was in a fragile state, sometimes you'd catch the early train up, and hang around til 10 or 11 from someone to turn up. i ended up parting from that with a few dollars. i bought nintendo games. not long after that the witch fucked off. with the key, things went missing. it was hard to trust people at that time.
9june2014
been thinking about that time lately, things you forget about. when i was fixing the head gasket, i thought about asking the girls mother if she'd like from me to put her lotto on. i didn't worry about it, i thought mind my own business. a couple of days later, she was spewing. she didn't put her ticket in with the same numbers. she would have won a million , no one won it that week. when i think about it now , i'm sort of lucky in a way, i didn't ask her. when the fuckwit left the flat she took most of the blankets and stuff. i tossed all the crappy bed in the van out. all i had was a woolen blanket i stole years ago, out of a car. it was freezing the middle of winter. i often see them type of blankets on tv shows, maybe it was karma . i thought that, i was just happy she was gone. it was hard, paying rent and living without work. i was slowly getting better. i was visiting a bloke, simon, and jester lived not far. simon reckoned she was fucking with my spirit. maybe there is some truth in that. her old man was having some medical problem , test after test they couldn't find nothing wrong. he even forked out a large sum of money to a greek witch doctor, he had to throw some things in the ocean. he took some pictures to the witch doctor , and they said there was trouble with that one, the girl friend. years later i was watching this tv program about the golden fleece, jason and the argonauts . they landed on this island , lemnos . there was no men on the island, apparently the men wouldn't have nothing to do with the women cause they had smelly feet. the fuckwit was from that island and she had smelly feet. around this time there was phonecards just coming out. i liked the pictures on them and started collecting them .
10june 2014
tonight i switched on the telly , and there was the blanket , big bang theory , on the lounge. i don't watch that show at all, it was just on when i switched on. i've seen them type of blankets on other shows, i can't explain them , it's like all coloured squares joined together. maybe i should throw it away and then i'll win lotto, probably had that blanket for about 35 years or more. i thought about the golden fleece and that blanket, there's no real connection excepting it's wool. anyways , getting back to this, when i said about fate in that time, it was like things were coming to a head, or some shit. maybe i should split this blog into parts, it might end up being long, compared to the earlier decades there was a lot more stay home . the phonecard thing caught on, all over the place. i started collecting the cards cause i liked the pictures. they were in phone boxes in like a little card disposable bin, you put your hand behind and grab the cards if there was any there. i didn't know it was happening at lots of places and they were worth money, i just wanted to have a small collection of the things for later on. at first i only kept the ones i didn't have. you know you'd go to the pub and check out the band and on the way home check for cards. them first ones were starting to be worth a bit of money . i thought i should have kept some of them first ones. then i found a shop that actually gave you 10% of the face value, so that helped support my tobacco habit . for a time it was getting crazy the prices of the things went up and up. people were actually keeping used phonecards in safe deposit boxes.
11june2014
i am sort of all over the place with this blog. with this, it's just a thought and build on it, it's not a boast. you can't really mention 1990 without the iraq build up, and eventual wars, talk about never ending story. still going on isn't it some 24 years later. we had an end of peace party back in 1991 just before the big secret invasion. it was a strange time, all glued to the t.v., seems like that 's all people do. gulf war til you're long sick of it, o.j til you're long sick of it... etc, etc. new world order. i tried to think where to go from here. i had a bit of time to do stuff i couldn't really do before when working the railway job. i started buying cds, that became cheaper . things i never really listen to before, chuck berry for instance . i never really heard much of his stuff til i bought this cheap cd. i knew things like johnny be goode, but the promise land, i thought was dave edmonds and rock and roll music was the beatles, and roll over beethoven. el cheapo cd had a lot a good songs, original studio . although you had to be careful of chuck and the different versions. another was leonard cohen . i had these unanderra friends around 1975, they said i should hear leonard cohen. i remember we went to town and the record shops and no leonard cohen. so i never really heard him. i bought the songs of leonard cohen on el cheapo cd , just to hear it, from back then. i played that a bit around 1992. i even started playing songs on guitar, i just wanted to play one song. a neighbour had a song book with leonard cohen song, suzanne. i played that song. it made me happy i could sort of play one song.
14june2014
with the guitar, maybe other instruments or anything really, it becomes work. and with that work comes uniformity. and once uniformity is achieved, what happens then? boredom .i couldn't just keep playing suzanne. i had a few song books with songs i liked as well as easy chord changes, that kept me occupied . it's not like i just picked up the guitar, i never really persisted with it. i had a few guys around me and they helped me a bit . with transposing and shit like that , sometimes it made it harder than the book. with the nintendo, i meet this art student through another art student i knew. he said he had 100 games on one cartridge, i didn't believe him . he showed me and lent me the thing , just early games. around this time, probably 92, seemed like a lot was happening. maybe 93, 94 as well. i found out bozo won the lotto . bozo, the guy on the train. apparently around the time of seeing him on the train, he played lotto and won a million . i thought the cunts stole me luck. my grandmother won a lottery in the 50's, 3000 pounds. my old man won the lottery in the early 60's. i thought i was destined to won the fucker. i caught up with boz . he was back on the piss, he drive me to his posh house in mt posho. he had a $7000 rolex watch he threw against the wall, indestructible he'd say . he told me he won not long after seeing me on the train. they had a big party everyone was getting pissed except him. then he busted and got back on the piss. he used to come and visit me around that time a lot, even just crash on my lounge. i used to think , here i am trying to win the fucking thing. a mate won it and was happy just crash on the paupers crappy old lounge. i thought about that.
15june2014
i got bitten by the lotto bug, around 88. i'd played before when it first started, but soon didn't bother after a while. so, i had this little note book , i had it for a couple of years. i decided to play the lotto and keep the results in the book. i'm looking at the book now. i drew up a nice chart, with boxes for the results , money in, money out. i had selected certain numbers, as i remember it was more of a coupon type of thing, with carbon paper sort of thing you kept that bit, not like todays type of ticket. it cost me $5.20 a week. i never won diddly squat until week 19. i won $8.50 , but money in was $98.80. by week 25 i'd had a couple of more drops, up to that point, in $129.80 out $36.30. then week 26 i got 5 numbers, $862.60. i had to wait 2 weeks for the check, then a week for the check to clear, in which time i had to think about what to spend it on. i ended up buying the first nintendo games machine. at week 52, in $271.20 ,out $950.60, so i made a profit, but take the 5 numbers win away and it's a different story. in 1991 i picked 6 numbers, thinking they would all come out. i've played them same numbers for 23 years and i'm still waiting, had a few drops . nothing to write about. with the nintendo i'm pretty much over, it's just a waste of time, as you get older time gets shorter, no time for nintendo
18june2014
i thought it should end there. i decided to have a part two. there wont be nintendo or lotto. if you wandering what happened to bozo, last i seen him, was about 3 years ago , he was living in a caravan park behind figgy pub. you know them things ain't cheap to live in anymore, i think they call them trailer trash in america. you know australia is a big country with not that large population and rents and property is bullshit. even if you own it's bullshit. during the nineties i seen a bit of an x file episode about this bloke , he saw peoples death but couldn't figure the lottery . i never watched that show much , i never liked that grizzly shit or fucking ads. the twilight zone was much better, in that it made you think. the x files and them type of show had a bit of that, but the grizzly shit seemed to overtake it and stick.
