It's dusty in here...

... and that is entirely my fault. Sorry for neglecting the blog everyone. I have been busy with university and work and all the other poo that life throws at me. Not that any of you, my wonderful friends, are poo. You're all great. It's the other poo, like sleeping and eating, which fill the precious moments of my day that I could be blogging.

Anyway, I figure the only way to make it up to you all is by posting something super-mega-awesome: Naked photos.

...

...

KIDDING! I don't ever actually get naked. I've been wearing the same underwear for the last seven years now. So comfortable. And also, what is up with that girl's head? What did she get bitten by, a fucking vampire wasp?

But seriously, the super-mega-awesome thing is... me, doing stand-up!

This is like my blog, but done live. So it's heaps more exciting. Just like how a live birth is more exciting then just seeing pictures of a woman's 7cm dilated cervix.

Too far?

Pazzwizzle does his taxes.

I discovered this yesterday while I was looking through my e-mail inbox.

I am a silly bitch.

from: janice.hayes@prudential.com
to: Lynchtr@gmail.com
date: Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 1:36 AM
subject: Relocation


Tracey,

In January 2010 Prudential sends out Tax Information regarding your
relocation move that you may need for your Income Tax. We need to have
your new address so you will receive this information.

Please respond with the new address to this email.

Thank you.

Janice Hayes
Marketing Property Specialist
Phone: 480-778-6732
Fax: 480-778-7067 or 866-597-4171
Email Address: Janice.Hayes@prudential.com

Naturally, I responded.

from: Tom Lynch
to: janice.hayes@prudential.com
date: Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 12:08 PM
subject: Re: Relocation


Janice,

Just between you and me, I do not planning on paying any Income Tax.
I disagree with a lot of the government's decisions this year.
So I have decided to protest in my own way, as is well within my rights.
As such, do you think you could just send the tax information to whatever address you have on file?
I'll delete this e-mail and just pretend the forms got lost in the mail.

Thank you for your help.

Tracey

I didn't hear any further from Janice, no doubt because my response probably included "from: Tom Lynch" in the e-mail, but it was fun none the less.

I felt a bit like David Thorne.

I secretly want to do more of this stuff in the future. Preferably while listening to this song:

Spoonful of sugar.

Woah, it's dusty in here.

Sorry for abandoning you all. I have been working full-time over the past few weeks and as such my free time has taken a hit. But I'm back at university now, so I'm only working part-time, which means I'll be able to devote some time to the more trivial things in life, like this blog.

One thing I have been doing a fair bit of is public transport travel. And since I'm not a fan of reading on the bus, I have to busy myself with anything else. Otherwise I go a little mad. I don't handle inactivity well. I get bored sitting on the toilet. So much so I start making myself go cross-eyed and then I look at the bathroom tiles and they go all warpy and 3D/Magic Eye-like. You should try it.

Unless you're no good at Magic Eye. I used to be like that. When they were all the rage when I was in Grade 5, the other kids at my primary school used to bring the books to school and marvel over the dolphin or dragon or cheeseburger that emerged from the nonsense on the page. I could never do it. Sometimes I would pretend and lightly stroke the page like a retard going "Oooh, ahhh, it's so cool!" But once I made the fatal error of outing myself as Magic Eye-incapable, no one believed me. It wasn't until I hit puberty and things with my eyes started to go horribly wrong that I picked up the Magic Eye skill.

You may or may not know that I have some fairly odd eye problems. My left eye is short sighted and my right is long sighted. This is due to the fact that the muscles in my left eye don't work, so the muscles around the eye are doing all the focussing. Which was fine when I was young and fit, but as I got older and computer use and reading increased that my left eye started going "Wow, all this focussing is really running me down. I'll be able to manage for, like, half a day, but after that you're on your own right eye." And then the right eye said, "But without you I'll lose all depth perception. Can't we compromise?"

The left eye thought on this for a moment and then said "Okay, you get glasses for reading and staring at a screen and I'll help you cover the day-to-day activities, like walking and driving and shit. Deal?" The right eye was in agreement and so I got glasses. They didn't consult the rest of my body, namely my teeth (at that point covered in metal) or feet (at that point rocking some subtle orthodics) and as such I went through a rather awkward phase where my eyes kept getting death threats from the rest of my body. But that's all sorted now, my cadaver is in harmony.

Anyway, the point of that is that if I'm not wearing my glasses, I can essentially emulated the effect of going cross-eyed by simply... well, I'm not sure exactly what I do with my eyes, but I assume it's got something to do with not focussing properly, and I can turn it on and off like a switch. A completely useless skill, but a skill none the less.

I'm off to go stare at some patterns around QUT. Stay tuned, I have some exciting events coming up and some cool ideas for this blog. Hopefully things start coming to fruition.

*snicker*...coming...*snicker*

Circle of life.

Previously on Pazzwizzle...

"NacBook is dead... my beautiful, black, second-hand MacBook... 'HAHA HAHA NACBOOK!!!'... I spilled its entire contents over my Mac... my Mac came crumbling down around me... the cancer had spread... I dropped it into the MacHospital again (this time Mac1 on James St)... what a mistake that was..."

I checked NacBook in on Saturday November 7th. The geeky Mac shop assistant assured me that their technicians would have a look at my laptop within the next 2-3 working days and get back to me, and if anything needed to be replaced, that'd take about 5-6 days. I was upset but I knew they were going to fix NacBook. Well, I thought they would. They seemed to think it was just a power button problem, and those are cheap and easy to fix. I thanked them for their time and headed home, Mac-less.

2-3 working days rolled past. Nothing. Not a peep. I began to worry. I spoke to some of my friends who also owned Macs. Some of them had used Mac1 before and none were impressed. Long wait times, poor customer service, high fees. I began to regret my choice of MacHospital.

Friday November 13th dawned and it was now into the 5th working day. I was pissed. I waited until lunchtime and then called Mac1 to see what was going on. A smarmy Mac techie answered. Put on your best "I'm an elitist MacTard and I'm better than you because I know about computers" voice and let's have a conversation. (Mind you, this is abridged for convenience.)

Tom: What's happening with my Mac? You guys said you'd call me within 2-3 working days?
Mac1: Hmm, let me have a look. No, we haven't checked your Mac yet. It usually takes 5-6 working days. We'll get to it.
Tom: Right, well, I kind of need my laptop back, so when do you think I'll get a call?
Mac1: Ahhh, probably not today, so definitely Monday, since the weekend isn't a working day. (Oh really? No shit, Sherlock. Did your Mac tell you that or are you just naturally gifted at knowing what happens on certain days of the week?)
Tom: Okay, I guess I'll hear from you Monday then.

I sat through my second weekend without NacBook. Tortuous stuff. I was using my mum's mini-laptop and it was like trying to make a phone call on an Etch-A-Sketch. Anyway, Monday arrived and still no phone call. Now I was mad. It had been 5-6 working days and that window had passed.

I didn't know what was so difficult about my problem. it's not like there was a program on the Mac that wasn't working, the whole thing wouldn't turn on. How long did that take to test? I can tell you, about five seconds. Once they'd identified the problem, all they had to do was solve it. Surely there are only so many things that can cause that problem. Yet somehow I was at the bottom of their list of things to do.

Tuesday November 17th and I finally got a call. Once again, get your "Elitist MacTard" voice ready.

Tom: Hey, Nice to finally hear back from you.
Mac1: Hey Thomas, we've had a look at your Mac and there isn't anything wrong with it.
Tom: Sorry, what?
Mac1: It's booting up fine. I've run a full diagnostics test on it. There is nothing for me to fix because there is nothing wrong.
Tom: There is, or else I wouldn't have dropped it in. It wasn't turning on.
Mac1: Well I've turned it on a number of times. It's working fine for me. (At this point, he is implying I don't know how to turn on my MacBook.)
Tom: Right, well I guess I'll pick it up then. So there is definitely nothing wrong?
Mac1: Nothing at all. If you do have any further problems we can look at it then, but for now it's good to go.
Tom: Okay, excellent, I'll pick it up as soon as I can.

I picked NacBook up the next day (well, my sister did as I was at work, bless her soul) and was excited to use it again. Due to prior commitments however, I was not able to properly test it until Thursday night. Thankfully, Mac1 had not charged me anything to look after my MacBook for 10 days, so I was not out of pocket. Lucky for them too, as what was about to happen would not have been so easy for me to handle if I'd given them so much as a dollar.

NacBook wouldn't turn on. I tried for at least half an hour, yet nothing worked. I did this thing that the Mac1 guy recommended, I prayed to various deities, I even got someone else to try just in cas I had actually forgotten how to turn NacBook on. Zip, zilch, nada. Not a sausage. I was furious. Mac1 had wasted ten days of my life. I felt like hunting the MacTard down and ramming my laptop up his over-clenching anus. Then I realised he probably already pleasures himself with Apple products so I'd just be doing him a favour.

I picked myself up off the floor and committed to getting NacBook fixed. I owed it to him. No doubt having to spend nearly two weeks in Mac1 would have been like shooting yourself in the face repeatedly. On Friday at lunchtime I dropped into Next Byte on Adelaide St. I explained to them the problem. I covered the whole Mac1 saga and pleaded with them to have a proper look.

They were great. I actually spoke to the technician who was going to look at NacBook. He told me what the problems might be and assured me he'd get to the bottom of it. In fact, within the 20 minutes I stood in that store I learnt more about what was wrong with my Mac than I had in ten days with Mac1. I did have to pay a $75 fee to get it looked at, but at that point, money was no longer an issue. They said they would get back to me in 2-3 working days. I believed them.

Two hours later and I got a phone call. No "Elitist MacTard" voice necessary this time. The technician informed me that he had opened up my MacBook and discovered water damage on the logic board. The logic board was basically the motherboard and it controlled everything in the MacBook.

It was going to cost about $1900 to replace, but I hadn't lost any data. He then suggested that a new MacBook would only cost $1300, so it'd be far more economical to just get a new one, considering NacBook had water damage. He even offered me the opportunity to turn NacBook's hard-drive into an external hard-drive for a small fee, and that way I'd have all my old data, as well as a shiny new empty Mac.

Once again, in two hours, Next Byte had done more for me than Mac1 had managed to do in nearly two weeks. Obviously I was upset at the prospect of having to pay for a new MacBook, but knowing that I was going to have all my old data made me happy. I did not want to have to re-download all my porn.

So here I am now, using my sister's computer to post on Pazzwizzle and check my e-mail. I am faced with the exciting yet expensive task of buying a new Mac this week. The moral of this story is fairly simple: Don't go to Mac1 on James St for anything Apple related. However, if you want to burn down a shop or rob somewhere, then its the place to be. I do, however, highly recommend Next Byte on Adelaide St. Not as an arson or burglary target, but as a place to get Apple things.

Smell you later!

Death of a salesman.

It is the end of an era.

NacBook is dead.

"What is a NacBook?" you ask? Simple. It's the name I lovingly gave to my beautiful, black, second-hand MacBook. After a solid 2-ish years of faithful service, it has finally shuffled off this mortal coil. It will never more play another iTunes track. It will no longer be host to my gigs of pirated TV shows. It has gone on its last Safari.

Firstly, a bit of history. A eulogy if you will. The name NacBook arose not too long after I bought the MacBook. I bought it second-hand off Facebook Marketplace. Having never purchased anything online before, I was terrified I was going to get played. So much so I actually had a nightmare in which my MacBook arrived, but when I opened it up, I discovered it was actually a cheap Korean knock-off, called a "NacBook".

In the nightmare, the keyboard had random symbols written on the keys. When I turned it on, it powered up and looked like a Commodore 64 and the screen stayed locked on an image of a monkey laughing at me as the tinny speakers pumped out the following on repeat:

"HAHA HAHA NACBOOK!!! HAHA HAHA NACBOOK!!!"

I woke up in a cold sweat. It made the wait for my purchase brutal. However, when it arrived, the MacBook was perfect. A powerful, sleek, black machine that, once I got used to using the thing, was a dream to use.

The beginning of NacBook's demise was a few days before Christmas 2008. I was in London with my family, and they had all headed out to the shops. I stayed home, wanted to jump on the internet and catch up on the viral web I'd missed over the last few weeks that'd I'd been schlepping it around Ireland and Spain. I had a big glass of water at my side, and in what I can only assume was a fit of laughter, I spilled its entire contents over my Mac.

I'm sure they heard me scream across the English Chanel. I couldn't believe my stupidity. I turned NacBook off and wiped off as much of the water as I could. I placed it over one of the many heaters in the house and prayed it'd be okay.

Two tense days later and the big test came. I tried to power it up. And it worked! Oh joy of joys! I practically peed myself in excitement. There appeared to be no issues. NacBook had looked death in the face and laughed. "HAHA HAHA NACBOOK!!!" I assume.

Unbeknown to me, I had done more damage than I thought. Like a cancer that sits quietly in a man's testicles before it one day surprises it's owner with blood filled urine, the water slowly began to eat away at the inside of NacBook.

First to go was the hard-drive. In about April of this year as I watched an episode of Weeds, my Mac came crumbling down around me. It was running a marathon with a bad hip, and that hip had just disintegrated, taking with it all my music, movies and uni assignments.

I dropped NacBook into the MacHospital (Next Byte on Adelaide St) and hoped I wouldn't be apart for long. That same afternoon I got a call. They had the part in stock and would replace it for me right now. I peed myself for the second time in 6 months. $300-ish later and I had NacBook back. I rebuilt my music and movie collection, and restarted two uni assignemnts. Once again, I thought everything was fine.

Yet the cancer had spread. It hit NacBook's lungs (I've never felt a laptop heat up as much as mine could), brain (the logic [read: mother] board was slowly corroding) and liver (NacBook was a cheap drunk). It struggled on, like a rapper with a sore throat, but the audience know it was only time before this rap battle was going to end in a technical knock-out. Well, I didn't, but I was the ever-optimistic coach.

I began to notice that if I turned NacBook off, it sometimes didn't like to turn back on. It seemed that the power-button was faulty. Usually it would just take a few tries. But each time it took longer and longer. I was having to leave NacBook on permanently so I wouldn't have to boot up. This band-aid could only stick for so many showers.

Finally, on Friday November 6th, NacBook loaded it's last Facebook page. It seemed to be struggling so I turned it off, against my better judgment. And when I tried to reboot, nothing. NacBook was out. I tried all night but the poor thing was done. I hoped it was just a superficial power-button issue, and so I dropped it into the MacHospital again (this time Mac1 on James St).

What a mistake that was...

Coming soon: MacBook Medical Negligence

Sweat it out.

What up y'all?

I am entering the last Swotvac of my BA, and as such I will be hitting the books. Don't want to fail now, if I do, I won't graduate. And that would be shit.

Which means, sadly, that posts on Pazzwizzle will be sparse, at least until next Thursday.

I promise though, once I am through the veil, it'll be back to regular updates. No doubt I will have much to talk about.

As an interesting aside, according to the Wikipedia page for swotvac...

The term Swotvac derives from the Scottish word swot (or less commonly swat) originally meaning to sweat, which found use as a slang word describing a student paying careful attention to his work. Swot as a verb suggests acting like a swot, studying for one's exams. Vac is generally considered to be a shortened form of vacation, indicating the period free of classes. The use of the uncommon and outmoded word 'swot' has led to the backronym Study Without Teaching Vacation. There are many other different backronyms that can be derived.

Isn't that fun.

See you in a week.

Gold medal position.

I'm going to skip the obligatory first post "OMG I got a blog you guys! I know I totes said I'd never do that but I was totally bored to DEATH and I just had to do it... so... New Moon is out soon, OMG!" because frankly, you don't want to read it and I don't want to write it.

What I will discuss, however, is the name of this blog. Pazzwizzle. Here is an interesting fact. If you Google (take that grammar, I'm using a proper noun as a verb) "pazzwizzle" it should return no results. Maybe one if this blog appears on the list. But other than that, nothing. You could say that I am the first person on the internet to use the word "pazzwizzle". It seems unlikely, considering all the weird fetish sites and kids who can't spell properly, that pazzwizzle doesn't appear in some form, somewhere. But it doesn't. Or if it does, Google (noun time!) doesn't know about it. Perhaps in Laos they are discussing pazzwizzle. Maybe it's the national drink, or it's the name of some glorified TV character. Does Google's reach extend into Laos? I guess we may never know. What we do know is that for now, this is the only website that will appear if anyone Googles (and we're back to verb usage... grammar nerds hate me right now... assuming they hadn't already left in disgust after seeing the blog title) "Pazzwizzle".

Pazzwizzle has a funny origin. I was stuck for a blog name, and after brainstorming a bunch, I was just getting sick of the whole idea. I tried song titles ('Royal in the Afternoon' was taken by both a shitty Whitlams cover band from England and some tool who had a LiveJournal), references to my career ('Statement of Loss and Damage' while kind of cool would have meant I'd turn into a blathering emo wanker), old ideas I'd had for other creative things ('stop. watch.' would have pigeon-holed me as one of those bloggers who just posts YouTube videos for the LOLs) and even random nonsense ('The Adventures of Hand Dog' was a brief favourite but fell from grace after I realised that Hand Dog might become the highlight of the blog and would have to start his own blog, leaving me to go it alone and ultimately crash and burn without his creative talents at the helm). Nothing was working.

So I went back to the drawing board. Or at least my old notebooks where I used to scribble ideas for things. I came across a list of names I had used in an audition many moons ago. At the bottom of the list, a "Carla Pazzwizzle" was written, with the last name crossed out. Don't fear, her name wasn't actually Pazzwizzle. Her parents weren't from the Lollipop Kingdom. Her actual name was noted beside the correction. However, this recorded gaff on my part reminded me off one of my embarrassing traits. I am prone to mishearing words, names, even entire sentences. Instead of asking, "Could you repeat that?" and not sounding like a crazy old man, I regularly end up saying, "Did you just say *insert ridiculous sentence here*?". For example, at work today I was convinced someone had said, "I put everything in Veronica Small-cock so she can check it later." It didn't seem to matter to my brain that what I thought I had heard was completely ridiculous.

So that's where Pazzwizzle comes from.