Addendum Issue 084

eZine lover (@eZine)

Published in 

Addendum

 · 25 Apr 2019

  

 
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                          Comprehension? Understanding? Bah! 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 http://members.optushome.com.au/steak/addendum/ 
 21st November 2002         Issue 84 
 I've got a perfect puzzle for you 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Contents: 
1. Steak's first thought 
2. Countries of the world untie! By Steak 
3. Dull, by Gir 
4. Road dust and red eyes, by Steak 
5. Governmental decisions, by Steak 
6. U2 Live at Red Rocks “Under a Blood Red Sky” Review, by Steak 
7. Switch, by Steak 

>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------< 

1. Steak's first thought 

And now it's time for my first thought. 

Nobody wins when you put aside your artistic moral and rush your hardest to get an  
issue of your zine out to the reading public. Nobody wins when you spend most of  
your time in altered states of consciousness and forget to write that article you’ve  
been meaning to write for a week now. And it’s in nobody’s interest to fill your  
zine with sub par crap that could have been written by a five year old in a prep  
class. 

So in today’s modern textfile society there are certain responsibilities that you  
must take on if you decide to forgo your sanity and become the main journalist and  
editor of a free and mostly ignored magazine. These responsibilities range from  
making sure that what you write is of interest to people to making sure you don’t  
accidentally include a free gift copy of the ‘I love you’ worm virus with each issue. 

And there should be a further understanding that making sure all these responsibilities  
are met with exactly the right amount of professionalism and dedication to duty is a  
taxing task. So it’s a great help when your friends and associates like Trunk and  
Gir, make contributions to your magazines, even (in some cases) when they have  
magazines of their own to produce (Gir runs the local rag ‘angstmonster’  
http://www.angstmonster.org) Thank god for decent people. 

And if you think about it, everybody wins when I go to a party to pick up Trunk's  
submission and forget, so in the time before I next see him I write a couple of  
articles, one on a U2 concert and another on those apple switch adverts and both  
of them get finished in time for inclusion with this issue, even if  trunks  
original article never got to me in time for publication. 

Oh well maybe next time. 

Enjoy the magazine, and remember, "take care of your elf, and peach cover." 

 
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------< 

2. Countries of the world untie! By steak 

I haven’t been to many countries in the world, but with the ones I have been to have  
lead me to a few conclusions about the world as a whole. 

England (my home country) would be a great country if only the English could truly  
abolish the class system and if they could get over their fixation with motorcars and  
football. 

France would be a great country if only the person who said “Hey lets make an entire  
language for this new country called France based on movements of the Jaw that are  
totally unnatural” was shot before he got to say it. 

South Africa would be an exquisite country, if only I didn’t fear for my life the  
moment I stepped off the plane. 

Spain would be another great country if only it wasn’t so, well decrepit. 

Australia would be a great country if its government weren’t so fanatical about  
mirroring America and trying to make everyone think that Australia is God’s chosen  
country. Also it would be a much better place if the guy that said “hey lets make  
our own version of football, just because we can and because Australia is so special  
that it needs it’s own sport that no other country has and hell, we’ll even put the  
world ‘Australia’ in the title” was shot before he got to say it.  

As for America, any country that legalises and encourages the purchase, use and  
enjoyment of killing machines by average Joe citizen and his fourteen year old son 
is just got something seriously wrong with it. 

 
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------< 

3. Dull, by Gir 

"Son, I noticed your blade is painfully dull.  When's the last time you took it 
to a smith?  You know the one at the corner of the market, he takes care of 
my blades.  He's a good friend too.  Next time I go, you'll come with me." 

His dad thought that the blade had gone dull due to laziness.  If he'd taken a 
closer look at it, he would've seen the marks of intentionally worn out blade. 
It started out as a joke, just like all this started out.  But through and  
through, the joke proved really effective and a reputation began to swell up. 
And when a reputation swells up around you and the enigmatic dull blade you  
carry by your side, you try not to live it down. 

So far, Kayun hadn't let his reputation down.  In fact it was common to find  
him in between sword play and adventuring intentionally dulling his blade any 
way he could.  Most of his friends didn't understand why his blade was so much  
more important than their bows, but they also didn't have a reputation to deal  
with. 

"Your ranged weapons are nice, but what about melee?  How do you handle that?" 

Kayun'd ask all of his friends, and there'd be very few replies.  At this age, 
you never thought about if your primary weapon failed you.  It was all or  
nothing most of the time.  Kayun was one of the few his age that dealt with the 
failing of his blade.  Of course this was because the attribute of his blade  
that made it so effective was dullness that, if he were lucky, when he thrusted 
into an opponent the blade would become hung up in meat and guts putting the 
opponent at a disadvantage while Kayun drew his dagger. 

"But one shot of my bow Kayun, and your sword's no good." 

"Oh?  Is that what you think?" 

"Well, I'm not one to brag like others we know." 

Oh, he's getting clever. 

"But?" 

"But, if you and I were to meet in the forest, I would've had you put down with 
multiple arrows before you could so much as draw your sword." 

"So then, it is a challenge?" 

"Only if you're up to it Kayun." 

But those were the last words Kayun hear him speak.  Kayun, was always up for a  
challenge.  It was his opponent that needed to confirm the challenge before a 
blade could be drawn.  That seemed like confirmation enough for Kyaun as he 
drew his blade and lunged it into his friend's chest.  He twisted the blade 
around once or twice, to make sure it'd be caught up on something.  Then he let 
go of it and stood back. 

"So what I'll do, is start walking backward and allow you the chance to shoot 
me.  If you haven't shot me within the first couple of minutes, I'll come back 
and remove my sword from your chest.  But that won't be so pleasant.  So I 
suggest you aim well.  I won't run, or make any sudden moves.  But in the end 
it'll be your skillful shot that gets me, won't it?" 

Kayun stepped back and continued to do so, waiting for his friend to shoot at  
him but there was no bow to fire.  Kayun, a master of surprise like any good  
rogue, caught his friend unprepared and had gotten that vital blow.  His friend  
fell to the ground and Kayun came to remove his blade and loot his friend's  
purse.  But upon grabbing onto his blade, Kayun felt a shocking sensation 
throughout his entire body and his eyes widened as he looked to his friend who 
smiled and evil smile. 

The reason he never had to worry about his bow failing was because he was one 
of the best sorcerers of their township.  Consumed by his reputation, Kayun had 
forgotten all about this.  But his reputation wouldn't do much for him now, as 
he was quickly electrocuted and fell to the ground with a crispy thump. 

 
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------< 

4. Road dust and red eyes, by steak 

We were winding around a mountain bend at eighty kilometres per hour when I noticed  
something interesting. My immediate demise was so near, yet I hadn’t even noticed.  
Just off both sides of the road, a tremendous drop out into the blackness of death  
itself was making itself well known. Fatality was sliding past me on the hard shoulder 
 at speed. Whether or not you died depended solely on the reapers aim for the night. 

It didn't matter, I thought. If it came, it would be pretty much instantaneous. The  
car might of smacked into a tree trunk and the engine would have probably forced  
its way inside the car’s compartment by the shear speed of the impact, killing all  
inside instantaneously. Or perhaps the car would put too much faith in a certain  
rock and it would give, letting us drive off the side of the road to our doom,  
ironically enough probably hitting another different tree trunk before the ruined  
hulk of the car finally gave up on defying gravity and smashed into the waiting open  
arms of the ground. By which time we would probably already be making our acquaintances  
with Elvis or JFK due to the hart attack we would have suffered on the way down due  
entirely to pure fright alone. This would all probably happen a long time before I  
noticed anything painful, so there really was nothing to worry about. But then why  
did I still feel worried? 

We were on our way to a small piece of land up in the mountains, well I say ‘mountains’ 
but that’s really just pulling your leg because Australia doesn't have any mountains.  
The things they call mountains are just not high enough and rank along side  
‘large hills’. Anyway this place was pretty much out in the middle of the outback bush.  
At least it seemed that way to us town folk. Our aboriginal friend out in the desert  
with only a stick and a loincloth to survive might call this place civilised but we  
certainly didn’t. A thirty minute high speed drive to the nearest small backwards  
redneck town for some poisoned sheep’s milk was more than enough to push this place  
into the 'bush' category for us. 

We were about half way through the drive to get up there and the surrounding  
enviroment was looking more remote by the second. Ham (the car) was easily cruising  
the corners at break neck speed, apparently unaware of the oil drum thick, fifty  
foot high, wooden poles lining the road every three or four meters. 

I was sitting in the front seat with Spud driving and Toast passed out in the back.  
The journey had been fairly uneventful, except for a moment just outside Alexandra  
when Spud had stopped the car for an echidna that was sitting in the middle of the  
road.  

We had started beeping our horn to get the thing to move but instead it freaked out  
and had literally started to head-butt the road every time the horn had sounded. We  
stared at it for a few minutes, beeping the horn at regular intervals and annoying  
the locals all the time watching it do this insane little dance, and then we drove  
off.  

I looked down to see where I had put my jumper, not finding it I looked up again  
and saw a tree heading straight for my face at some insane velocity, thankfully  
it swerved left just at the last minute. 
   "Holy fuck that was a close one" I said 
   "Nonsense” Spud said, " I always do that, the grit on the road is just right  
for a power slide at the crucial last second before impact" 
   "If you say so,” I said, though I didn't really believe him.  

Sitting there, I knew that he thought that he knew that he didn't have a hope of  
crashing. I knew he thought that it was beyond him, that it was something that he  
just didn't do. Unfortunately I didn’t have the same amount of faith in him, it’s  
a shame really because I think I would have enjoyed the trip so much more if I had. 

We ended up getting to our destination just as the sun was rising. In fact the sun  
was just letting it’s light spread over the land when Spud and I got out of the car 
to lift the gate off its hinges to break in, and it was completely out by the time  
we had parked the car next to the shed.  

The shed was a fairly large corrugated iron double garage, which was most of the  
year used for storage of a large number of empty beer bottles and bedclothes. We  
didn’t have the keys so we had to use the alan key and the screw driver to take  
the lock off the door and get in to set up camp. We took our bags and the esky  
into this garage and set them up in strategic locations. I opened the esky to  
check that everything was still ok and nothing was broken. The eggs, bread, milk,  
bacon, steak, red eyes and beer were all ok. Which was a good thing, men deprived  
of beer are dangerous things and should be avoided at all costs. Not that I would  
need any of the beer of course, as I didn’t drink. But I had five red eyes and  
plenty of the rotten green stuff in my bag, which I brought in with my laptop  
and sleeping gear. 

Once we were settled in we set up our beds and started about the job of finding  
paper and wood to start a fire with. Wood wasn't a problem; it was simply  
everywhere, if you walked six yards in any direction in this place you could  
pick up a large amount of wood that would serve as perfect fuel for a fire. As  
for the newspaper, we were already a few steps ahead of ourselves as we had  
left a large amount of newspaper in the shed just for this reason last time we  
came. Before long we were cooking bacon and bits of steak (not me) over a nice  
roaring fire. Toast didn't get any breakfast, he spend most of the morning  
passed out in the back of the car. 

The flies were out in full swing so as soon as I had my bacon off the hotplate  
I took my milk and wrapped my bacon sandwich up in a paper plate and headed  
into the shed. After breakfast I made a smoke and set about trying to type some  
shit onto the laptop that I had brought with me. 

Toast woke up around ten and went over to the long table that we had taken out  
side to serve as somewhere to put our shit. A simple three-or-so man human  
society is never complete without a table, it serves as somewhere to put things,  
its very important.  

Anyway he went over to this table thing and he pulled out his half gram. He took  
my billycan and filled it with drinking water. (Which, incidentally is a precious  
luxury that we have to take with us bottled every time we go up there) He then  
unwrapped his herb and dropped it into the water. 

I thought that it was a bit of a waste so I went over to see what he was doing; I  
asked and found out that he was making 'herb-superb-al tea'. He went over to the  
fire and boiled the grass and water, stirring it at regular intervals. He then  
made himself a steak sandwich out of some left overs and ate it to pass the time  
before he had to take the billycan off the fire. This might be a good time to  
comments that toast will never eat bacon because he refuses to eat intelligent  
animals, so he only ate steak. After he tasted the tea he reckoned that it tasted  
foul but grinned and vowed to drink the entire thing. After a few cups of it he  
was asking me to "keep my head together and in one piece" 

To pass most of the day away we played 'guess the time' games. Which is a game  
where you (big surprise here) guess the time. Each person has a guess and the  
closest guess wins a 'weekend retreat point' and whoever gets the most at the  
end of the weekend wins overall. Its lame, yes but its fun in a stupid kind of  
way We discussed and debated most things and its brother until about late evening  
when Toast started to look really sick. Though I dismissed this as him just having  
a spook rook. We got out the sparklers that we brought to have something fun to do  
in the evening and for the next ten minutes or so the campfire was illuminated  
with the bright flashes of party sparklers. Then they died and all was silent again. 

That was at about eleven, soon after Toast went inside and wrapped himself up in  
a blanket on one of the couches and passed out again. Spud and I stayed outside  
for a little while watching the engulfing blackness until we got tired of it and  
went inside. We found Toast had puked up next to his bed. It was something about  
his herbal tea mixed with the beer he had drunk that day. 

No one wanted to clean it up so I found some of the newspaper we had brought last  
time and covered the vomit up. Toast apologised for making a mess of the floor.  
Said some incoherent rubbish and fell unconscious again. 

Spud and I lit the candles pushed into beer bottles that I had made earlier in the  
day and ignited the hurricane lamps. We then lit a small fire that would burn in  
the cast iron stove in the corner of the shed while I sat down to do some writing.  
I sat there for a long time writing the events that had passed us that fateful day.  
Spud was behind me looking for the tongs to fix the hurricane lamp with (he had to  
pull the wick through) while making sure that the meat and bread where out of the  
melted ice and the beer was submerged to keep it cool. 

Spud stocked the fire and gave it some more wood, he then checked on Toast. He was  
still totally unconscious; at least that smell of vomit has wafted off someplace else. 

Spud and I sat up on the plastic school chairs for a little while. He reluctantly  
gave up on trying to get the wick through the second older hurricane lamp and  
asked me, in a very nice tone I thought, if I would mind if he gave up. I said  
I didn’t mainly because I knew he was quite drunk at that point. He then got up  
off his chair and came stumbling over to me, nocking the table over candles,  
bottles, mix bowl and all at the same time. He was saying something about me  
being in charge now, and that he was going to bed. As he went off to bed he  
also mentioned that he liked to sleep talk a bit Later that night, in his sleep  
he went on about aeroplanes overhead and other mangled English. 

I remember that the bugs that night were terrible. I don't know what they were,  
Spud said they were grasshoppers but they looked more like huge jumping beetles.  
I found out later that they were crickets. Every once in a while one would jump  
up and hit me in the face. One ended up hitting me in the neck and falling down 
my jumper. I hate bugs. Fucking bugs. 

I realised around that point that I was not at all tired. With both Spud and  
Toast passed out from assumed excessive consumption of alcohol I was again  
left alone in this tiny little shed. 

'What the fuck...' I was thinking 'what the fuck am I doing out here, in a  
tiny little cold shed, in the middle of the Australian outback bush, with only  
a small cast iron concrete stove and a old psion laptop that isn't even a PC  
for company, at three o'clock in the god dam morning with tiny little jumping  
beetles attacking me and two past out people 'asleep' in beds. How the hell  
am I going to fill the time I thought, I have sod all to do. 

   "what’s the point of being out here?" I wondered out loud to an unconscious  
audience. "Am I out here for my own fun and enjoyment or am I here to try and  
cover every aspect of this getaway in some vague kind of story form?” I had the  
laptop in may hands, I was typing at the keys, but was what I was writing  
really making any sense, and passing that, was it even on topic? 

All I knew at that point was that reality had been altered. It was no longer a  
primary rule that every event had to be followed by it's own repercussions, no.  
An event would occur, and it would be filed away in some unconscious recess of  
my mind until I got to writing about it, indeed things didn't really seem real  
until I had noted them down on my computer. 

I was jolted out of my moment of insight into my situation by that sound that  
sounds like somebody pouring some thick lumpy porridge down a porcelain pipe.  
Yes, somebody was vomiting again. 
   "Toast is that you?" I called out 
   "All clean" said the voice belonging to Spud “I can't sleep" 
   "Well that’s ok" I said "just vomit all night, I’m easy" 

I turned my head back from the falling unconscious Spud to my typing. But before  
I returned to hitting the keys I noticed the strange shape of the wax on a candle.  
Earlier Spud had nocked one of the candles off the table and it had landed onto  
the dusty ground head first, which caused it to go totally flat on the one side  
and fill with dust and dirt. The wick was pointing out at a ninety-degree angle.  

I had tried to clear the candle of the dust and dirt but none had wanted to come  
out, it was stuck fast, what with the end of the candle being melted and everything  
when it hit the ground. So I had decided to just light it and see what would happen.  
It had spluttered a bit and sparked and had created this intricate and interesting  
wax sculpture, I sat there for a few minutes trying to comprehend this strange piece 
of natural art.  

I got bored off looking at the melting wax and decided to try, for the time being to  
sit down with some textfiles and read, but for some reason I just couldn't concentrate  
on reading anything. So I went over to the fire and added some wood and paper, and  
soon there was another roaring blaze to keep me warm. Toast said something in his  
sleep and I went back over to my chair. 

What was I to do now? My gaze drifted around the room for something fun and cool to  
do to take my mind off the smell of vomit and the snoring. My line of sight drifted  
down to the table where my pipe was situated. An idea floated through my head and  
gained immediate acceptance. 

But before I further dug into my bag I went outside and took a piss, got the two  
fire buckets (I thought there might be a possibility of these coming in handy later)  
and retrieved my sleeping stuff that I had left in the car. This was all shit that  
I had to go outside for and I knew going outside in the cold with all the trees and  
darkness swallow me up would freak me out if I did it stoned so I thought ahead  
and did it before hand 

When the doors were shut it was more or less completely sealed off from the outer  
atmosphere. Add to that a stove with a smoky wood fire in it and you can imagine  
that the whole place was getting a bit on the misty side of things. It's always a  
bad sign when you turn your torch on and you can’t see three feet in front of you.  
Every single bit of my skin felt saturated with black smoke. All I wanted to do  
was run home to a shower or some other water source like a pristine mountain lake  
and just wash all the smoke out of my body. But instead I found temporary relief  
by putting my hands in the fire buckets then wiping them dry on old newspaper.  
With every single breath I could feel the hot rough texture of the smoke filling  
up my alveoli. It ended up hurting and it tasted like crap but shit man, I’ve  
put worse things in my lungs.  I opened both doors and tried my best to get as  
much of the smoke out as possible, but it didn't do too good and I was glad to  
put the fire out later in the night. 

I think it was all the smoke but for some reason I was really starting to feel  
incredibly tired so I went over to the pile of foam that was pretending to be my  
bed and lay down. I chatted with Toast for a little while who I found was still  
awake and had been listening to my typing on my keyboard. We talked about red dwarf  
and spend a good hour or so quoting our most memorable scenes. Then I went told  
him it was sleeping time for me, he stayed awake until sunrise. 

I awoke around about eleven o'clock in the morning. It had been a restless sleep,  
full of nightmares about people wanting to kill me. This time it was the teachers,  
and they also wanted to, for some reason get me locked up. Using the FBI and  
everything. It was strange because it felt like the whole thing was being played  
out inside the game grand theft auto three. My entire life was inside the game as  
well; I knew I had exams and that I was angry that I wouldn't be able to do them  
in jail. 

I was surprised that I had managed to wake up at my own accord actually, the other  
times I had been there I had been woken up by either rocks thrown on the corrugated  
iron roof, or somebody wheeling a squeaky wheel barrow round the outside of the  
shed over and over again. But when I rose, both of my esteemed colleges were  
still past out so they didn’t get the time to devise such fun japes. 

I walked out of the shed into the blinding light. It was a nice morning as far as  
they go, the sun hadn't come out yet, it was still a little overcast, the  
temperature was probably just a little too cool to be one hundred percent  
comfortable but at least it wasn’t raining or anything and what was left of the  
fire from the night before was more than enough to keep me warm. 

I looked around. Jesus, we had made a mess of the place. Bits of wood, bricks,  
car parts, plastic bottles and beer bottles were scattered everywhere. No less  
than twelve beer bottles all thrown in one pile were lining the campfire site.  
Though all the blame can’t be placed solely on my alcohol-swigging comrades as  
my red eye bottles also adorned the local flora  

I sat there on a plastic chair with that fresh kind of morning feeling for a  
little while all the time contemplating throwing rocks on to the shed roof in  
an attempt to get some kind of immature revenge. I ended up not bothering,  
because Toast was asleep in there, with a big night behind him, and he had never  
participated in that particular 'practical joke' against me. But if it had  
been Meat and Spud, I would not have hesitated to 'repay the favour' 

I added some more wood to the fire and soon it was blazing again. In fact it  
was blazing pretty high, and I decided that not even I wanted a bush fire, so  
I went inside and grabbed my two special pre-prepared 'fire buckets' and brought  
them to the fire place. When I went in, the general consensus from those who  
were compos was that they would be sleeping in this morning. While I was there  
I grabbed my textfiles again to see if I couldn't concentrate a little better  
this time. 

I read a few of them, noticing along the way that I was extremely hungry. Both  
the other guys were still in bed, so I guess that it was up to me to cook breakfast.  
So I got the hot plate out and stated cooking my bacon. 

The smell of meat must have woken Toast up because he came faltering out. He  
found the billycan and started re-boiling last night’s coffee. It turned out  
that Toast had consumed only three beers while Spud had drunk the rest of the  
slab. Toast reckoned that it might have been the steak that had made them both  
puke. Spud came out a little later saying that he was feeling on top of the world 
   "not enough to run a marathon or anything, but just, you know good" he said. 

I later discovered him to be lying; he wasn’t feeling great and after we left it  
took him a few red eyes for him to completely rediscover himself. 

The bread had been in the esky all night, and when the ice had finally melted  
sometime yesterday the bread had fallen into the water. Spud had tried to do  
something about it the night before but he must have fucked it up because our bread,  
and almost everything else in that big plastic box was completely soaked. So if  
we wanted bread we had to toast it over an open fire. Even then the inside was  
still wet and my toasted, wet bacon sandwich was rancid, so I just ate the bacon  
in the end 
   "Was my punning all right last night?" asked Toast "did I even pun?" 
   "Yes you did, and it was good" I said 
   "It was something about meat, then bricks" said Toast "you said.." (Pointing to  
Spud) “’I thought there was more to it’ and then you said something really  
ingenious I thought, what was it? I don’t know; hold on…. yes that was it,  
‘mortified’ about something. Pure genius, you just didn't even think about it,  
it just came out, genius" 
   "If you say so Toast" said Spud 
   "Will the sun ever come out today?" I wondered aloud 
   "The sun’s gay?" asked Toast “I never knew that, well that certainly gives  
new meaning to the phrase 'where the sun don't shine' or for that matter 'the  
sun shines out of your arse', personally I would be more worried about the sun  
shining into my arse. But it’s all academic really" 
   "No Steak" said Spud “I don't think the sun’s going to come out today 

It did in the end, around the time that the whole thing started getting a bit  
monotonous. So we packed up are few remaining possessions that we hadn't burnt  
in the fire and drove off. It was two o'clock and the temperature was mild,  
the sun was out and the view was wonderful across the valleys to large water  
features between mountainous hills. 

We stopped off in the little redneck town of Alexandra to buy something to eat,  
they had no red-eyes in the milk bar so we didn’t get anything to drink but  
they bought more beer from a bottle store manned by an attendant with only  
one arm and Toast bought a sausage roll from a lady who had more masculine  
characteristics than most males I’ve seen. As we were leaving a small group  
of maybe eight to eleven year old girls said ‘byeee!’ to us in a highly  
flirty manner. Honestly, there must really be a shortage of good-looking  
guys up there if even the little girls are trying to flirt with us, and  
we are pretty ugly. (spud wants me to point out here that it is in fact  
just shane who is ugly) 

Further on during the way back we stopped in at a pub and ordered a few  
coffees to wake us up. It was a really great bar, there were actual sofas  
just spread about the place with little wooden tables in between them. We  
sat and just chilled there for a little while, enjoying the coffee and the 
music coming from a small candlelit section just beyond the reach of the  
window light. The whole place had a sort of shack atmosphere, the sort of  
place where you would expect to see some overweight smelly man in the corner  
playing saxophone, while smoking a big fat cigar in between notes. 

The weekend wasn't one of the best, nothing monumental happened and it wasn't  
as much of an eye opener as some of the previous weekends have been, but the  
spirit was there, and it felt good to be able to bond with two friends that  
I don't get to see all that often. 

>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------< 

5. Governmental decisions, by Steak 

I don’t believe it, this is so horrible that I don’t even know where to begin. I  
guess the best place to start would be from the as they say, start. 

I was reading the news on the Internet as I normally do and I came across some  
information relating to the three girls who were arrested over trying to takes out of  
Ho Chi Minh City and into Sydney, Australia. They were arrested on charges of  
carrying 656 grams of heroin. They will face the death penalty. The death penalty, 
they will be murdered. 

It went on to say that “Vietnam has some of the toughest drug laws in the world.  
Possessing or trafficking 600 grams of heroin or 20kg of opium is punishable by  
death. Last year, 55 people were executed by firing squad on drug trafficking charges” 

My mind retreated back to an earlier evolutionary stage in horror. What the hell?  
How can this be allowable in a so called ‘civilised world’ How is it possible that  
any government can get away with shooting fifty five people every year for any reason? 

What were those people doing that was so bad in the over all scheme of things? So 
they could have made a few more junkies get high. Now I don’t like junkies as much  
as the next person but now instead of getting high they’ll spend their time wandering  
the streets looking for old ladies to mug and young girls to rape. 

What kind of un-holy degenerate person gets off on shooting innocent drug addicts?  
Is it some kind of immature (maybe even a necrophilia fetish) side that the Vietnamese  
government is trying to throw into relief, or do they just enjoy being degenerate  
retards? I now hold absolutely no respect for the Vietnamese government, and I will  
never give them any of my tourist money. And I further wonder wether it truly is  
Afghanistan that the Americans should be concentrating their war efforts on, but  
then again I wouldn’t be surprised to see America itself mimicking this action. 

Today’s world is a sad one, an unjust one, maybe even a just plain bad one. I will  
hang my head in shame with the knowledge that somewhere back along the ancestral  
ladder I am related to these jerks. 

>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------< 

6. U2 Live at Red Rocks “Under a Blood Red Sky” Review, by Steak 

U2 have always been known for larger than life performances, take their ‘popmart’  
for instance, huge lemons and cars crashing together over the heads of a live  
audience can defiantly be put into the ‘larger than life’ category. Although “Under  
a Blood Red Sky” is still an awesome spectacle, it doesn’t come close to some of  
their proceeding performances in terms of extravagation. That is not to say that it  
isn’t a great concert, it is, but I’m just saying that if you have seen popmart  
and have bought this based on your perception of that concert, then you are in for  
a bit of a surprise. This show is more about the music itself then about special effects. 

“Under a Blood Red Sky” was shot on the fifth of June 1983 and it shows. All of  
the band sport youthful appearances and big hair that fits in perfectly with the  
period. The crowd all exhibit the same overall early eighties stereotype form and  
it’s a wonder that the world ever really looked like this. The whole young image  
really goes all out on Larry Mullen, Jr who looks to be about sixteen or seventeen,  
and it is actually quite amazing to see that even at that age he still had an  
uncanny ability with the percussions. 

The entire concert is filmed outside, on a very rainy day, situated on what looks  
like the side of a mountain. There are huge fires burning on all sides of the stage  
and Bono makes quite an impression on the fans. With the crowd diving and the  
flag waving he really gets each and every member of the fan population into the  
general rebellious spirit of the gig.  

Some of them develop so much of a fixation with the band that those same frantic  
fans, desperate to touch a super-star, sometimes invade the arena. Bono manages  
to intercept the diversions and handle them nonchalantly before buff security  
guards quickly disperse with the intruders. 

In this concert The Edge doesn’t just play the guitar but the keyboard as well.  
Until I saw this video I didn’t know that he played that particular instrument,  
so to see his magnificent performance during the beginning of ‘October’ and then  
the further transition into ‘New Years Day’ combined with his fast handy work with  
the switching from piano to guitar was quite a pleasant surprise. 

The camera work for this show is acceptable though could sometimes be a little  
infuriating; this is due mostly to it being filmed by cameramen with individual  
cameras. There is no stedi-cam used that I could see so a lot of the time the  
picture appears at a strange angle. This, at times can be a little disconcerting  
and off-putting, but it is a small worry. The only other drawback of this style  
of camera work is the fact that throughout the video there are raincoat-clad  
cameramen running on and off the stage filming the group, these people can distract  
your attention from the band as you try to identify who these people actually  
are, but again this is a trivial hindrance. 

There is one other irregularity that I feel deserves a mention, it’s a fact that  
seems to show up again in later concerts. It’s all about the strange compulsion  
Bono has to act as if each track that nears the end of the concert is the  
finishing song. He will say good night to the audience and act like he is  
departing the stage just before turning around and coming back for a few more  
tracks. I guess it keeps you guessing when the concert is supposed to come to  
an end, but with the track listing printed on the back of the video’s box it  
is of questionable significance. 

Overall this is a very enjoyable performance, I would highly recommend this  
to even the casual U2 fan such as myself. If by some strange strike of  
coincidence you see it, as I did, sitting in the ex-rental section of the  
video store for five bucks then I would defiantly propose that you pick it  
up (and purchase it). 

>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------< 

7. Switch, by Steak 

So there I was with this, like computer thing and it was like,  

“What the fuck am I going to do with this? Due to my utter stupidity, retardation  
and total lack of ability to comprehend something as simple as a windows PC, all I  
see is a whole load of buttons and plastic that I have NO IDEA how to work. Even  
that big round button, on the front of the case, shaped strangely like a babies  
press-button toy, the one that says 'POWER’ confuses the hell out of me”  

So I went down to my local computer store and found myself an Apple imac. I got it  
home and I was like "WOW! This is amazing, its shiny and its translucent, and I  
don't need to do any actual brain work!” I had always thought that thinking was  
for losers, how right I was.  

I had endless fun banging my head against the monitor for the next three days. 

 
My name is John Harding and I’m a standard, stupid, ignorant wanker who needs  
everything given to him on a silver platter and I can’t be bothered to think for  
myself so I need Steve Jobbs to do it for me. 

apple.com/switch 

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