Blog Hiatus

The Wildebeest Asylum will be quiet for the month of February, on account of me taking another crack at FAWM. Here's hoping I'm more successful than I was last time...

Mind you, I do really want to write a post about seeing Nightwish...

Merry Festivus

Happy holidays everyone, don't expect to see much appearing here for the next couple of weeks!

Unbelievable Awesomeness Is Suprisingly Believable

So I was looking at this the other day, and it got me thinking about what search terms might bring the Wildebeest Asylum up as the first result on Google. I couldn't really think of any (other than obvious, dumb ones, like my name), but I tried 'unbelievable awesomeness', since that's a phrase I use frequently and one that I thought came straight out of my arsehole. Turns out that this blog is on the second page of results for that term. 'Unbelievable awesomeness' is all over the blogosphere, and I have no recollection of where I got it from.

A Good Day!

Today marked the release of:

• Big Day Out tickets for Sydney
• Half-life 2 Episode 2
• The new Radiohead album

My internets have been very busy!

Upcoming Concerts

• Yesterday: Battles (post coming tomorrow, or maybe the next day)
• Early October: Motorhead
• Late October: Nick Cave/Grinderman; Mammal (again)
• Early November: Machine Head with Arch Enemy
• Mid November: Would be Muse, but I'll be in London; Would have been Dillinger Escape Plan with Meshuggah, but they cancelled.
• January: Rage Against the Machine!
• March: The rumour has it that this is when Tool are planning to return...

What I Did In My Weekend

There will be no instalment of this feature this week on account of J.'s birthday party being too hot for the internet.

Wildebeest Asylum Birthday Extravaganza!

Today is the third birthday of the Wildebeest Asylum! A blog's birthday is a special occasion deserving of celebration, and I've never said anything different.

Lets take a walk through memory lane and share some of the special times we've had here since that fateful day in August 2004.

Greatest Hits

I trawled through the archives and retrieved a few of my personal favourite posts:

• My Sonic the Hedgehog post was pretty much bullshit as a review, but it made me laugh.
• I prefer to leave political coverage to those more angry and self righteous than me, but I do indulge in it occasionally. My rant from the 2005 election is one of the better posts here on the subject.
  
• My Calvin and Hobbes review was popular too. With a record number of compliments in the comments section!
  
• It wouldn't be a proper retrospective if I didn't mention Buffy, the season seven posts are probably the best.
  
• I used a review of the new Muse and Thom Yorke albums as an excuse to make fun of hipsters.
  
• I really fucking hate Dragonforce.
  

Nine Inch Nails

I wrote a trio of posts about Nine Inch Nails earlier this year and I think they're probably the best things I've written here:

• Year Zero review
• Live show review
• The Sydney show cancellations
  

Tool

It wouldn't be a proper retrospective if I didn't mention Tool either.

• I saw them live twice this year.
• My 10,000 Days review garnered a record seventeen comments.

I Lol'd

It's poor form to laugh at your own jokes but I honestly laughed out loud at a few of the posts I came across in the archives:

• I've tried my hand at parody a few times and Metal Cop Outrage was easily the best attempt.
• It's funny because it's true: Conversations with Drunk Women
• “[...]if I were to give an interpretive dance performance to demostrate my opinion of Killswitch Engage, it would involve me vomiting on a pile of my own faeces and then wiping it all over my face[...]"
• "'So this is what it has come to.' I thought to myself, 'One of the meanest fucking death metal bands in Australia literally reduced to playing for a handful of fifteen year old girls.'”
• "They also had hot girls in sexy black outfits dancing on stage and throwing giant black beach balls into the crowd. Believe it or not this is actually pretty typical for what passes as goth culture in Australia."
• “At the beginning of the year, it looked like the album might be out soon. Every week or so Trent would post a picture to nin.com of the three of them working in the studio, or a blurred out tracklisting, or Trents dog."
• “Notice also the rubbish tin stuck to the side of the kit. That's for beating with a baseball bat, or alternatively, one's head."
• “[...]it turns out to all be about believing in yourself and perservering through hardship. Surely there's room for just one song about a demon that wants to eat your soul?"
• "If Nietzsche was alive today, I think he'd make a good rapper."
• "Sweet! The girls boyfriend just got eaten by a rubbish bin, and replaced with a mannequin! This is more like the Dr. Who I remember!"
• "Now it's the news (the real news). Apparentely it's raining. Thanks Prime News!"
• “[...]sandwiched between Mariah fucking Carey and Bono's Generically Uplifting Happy Clappy Band"
• “Crazy old people in the moshpit: Drunk, high on P or just plain mental? Modern science remains uncertain.”
• "Whoa there Jon, I'm the 'Don't Take Too Many Drugs, Dance Around Like A Gimp All Night, Make A Total Idiot Of Yourself And Then Lie In Bed All The Next Day Wishing You Were Dead Panda', and I've got a song to sing to you called 'Don't Take That Second Pill'"
• "Afterwards the Brain Eater sat weeping, knowing that it had become an addict but unable to ask for help, having driven all its friends and family away by being emotionally unavailable. Don't be like the Brain Eater. If you or someone you know has an unquenchable desire for human brains, act now."
• "Apparently being a cop (A commando cop! Called John Blade!) in the future means that you drive around looking for suspected drug dealers, and whether they're in a warehouse, a cargo ship, or a big office building, you kick down the door and blow everyone inside to fucking pieces."
• "It was good to see the Wellington ten year old community getting in to the hardish stuff."

Help!

Can anyone suggest why my recent comments widget is broken? The instructions are here and I'm pretty sure I've followed them correctly, but it just won't work...

I'm Back

End of message.

The End(?)

A pall of smoke hangs over the once tranquil field. The ashes of the Wildebeest Asylum still hang in the air, drifting slowly to the ground. Those assembled hold their breath, the unspoken tension pregnant with the memory of what they had just witnessed; the death of a mighty blog, once first among it's peers, now brought down at what would appear to be the moment of it's triumph.

One by one the onlookers leave, hearts made heavy by what they had seen. But a glimmer of hope burned still, for all had heard the prophet's words:

"No man can say when the day will come. But all know within their deepest selves that it shall. On the day when the sun stands still, the dead walk once more and Jonathan gets internet access in his new flat, then the Wildebeest Asylum shall return, born anew as a phoenix from the ashes. Though the way may seem dark and troubled and some shall lose faith, believe that this most wonderous of blogs has not forgotten you, and will return in your hour of need."

Some dismissed the message as the senile ravings of an old man, but others kept the flame burning in their hearts. Patiently awaiting the day that a new post would appear.

I Suck

My lovingly recounted tale of this years Big Day Out has been delayed until tomorrow. In the meantime, The Beast's 50 Most Loathsome Americans List for 2006 is required reading:

14. Britney Spears

Charges: Boozy celebrity bimbos are replicating at an alarming rate these days, but the difference is this bilious tramp has two doomed children, both cursed with the warped ribonucleic helices of a beer-chugging swamp princess with a defective larynx and a lucky low-rent wannabe hustler who may actually be the more responsible parent. Spears' marriage to a universally detested embarrassment to humanity was trashy in two flavors: showbiz in its brevity and trailer in its impressive babies-per-year output. But the worst thing about their unholy matrimony is that we ever had to know who Kevin Federline is. His fame is entirely her fault, and her fame has by far outlasted her initial perverse schoolgirl/jailbait appeal.

Exhibit A: If Britney had shown the world her bald crotch four years ago, it would have caused widespread rioting and possibly a national holiday. Today, even Madonna thinks it's gross.

Cliffhanger!

"Don't push the button Locke!" screams Charlie, but it's too late! The lights go out! An ominous hum begins! The woman from Jack's flashback comes riding out on the back of a polar bear! Then the screen fades to black...

A digital clock is ticking down to zero! There are only four seconds left! Jack Bauer struggles furiously with the controls, but it looks like nothing can stop the jetliner carrying four hundred passengers, ten nuclear bombs and a tiger with a rocket launcher from crashing into the Pentagon just as the President reveals his plan for curing cancer! Close up of Keifer Sutherland's terrified face before we fade to black to...

"Are you saying you never loved me?" cries Amanda, tears streaming down her face. Thomas opens his mouth to reply, but is suddenly distracted by a fantail flying into the car through the open window! Their vehicle swerves across the road, right into the path of the minivan driven by Tama and carrying Jenny with her newly born triplets, Tammy and Lisa on the way back from their Civil Union and the vaccine to cure tall poppy syndrome! Close up on the shocked faces of the passengers. Cut to the smoking wreckage of both vehicles, as a solitary, ethnically indeterminate hand reaches trembling outwards. Who has lived? Who has died? Fade to black...

The Wildebeest Asylum will be taking a break for the rest of the year. I hope the suspense isn't too difficult to bear!