General ill dark feelings on Thursday evening.

By Friday evening, feeling like crap and went to bed with a headache, cough and runny nose.

Saturday started to feel better, but by the afternoon was getting feverish with coughing fits, vomiting and general crappiness. (yay)

Sunday, raised tempertaure and still slightly delirious. Persistant motherfucking cough.

Monday, a little flem.

Today, alive and well.

Nice try Death.

Flu is over. Feeling much better these days. Just really hungover is all.

An ad I shot a while ago is now online here with a write up about it in the times here.

Meh, my brains not processing much else right now. So here’s a way more awesome ad campaign with a digital Bruce Lee using nunchucks to kick ass at ping pong and light matches in the air. The man is so awesome.

My desk is currently a graveyard of snot covered tissues and empty chicken soup bowls and cups. I love the fucking flu.

Am sick. Brain isn’t functioning well today either. Was gonna do a nice witty post about this and that and how being sick sucks like a hooker at a gangbang, but right now all I’ve got is this ridiculous throbbing in my skull and my nose is all stuffy and I’m sure there’s a reservoir of snot behind it. Awesome imagery eh? I’m going back to bed.

Mammoth magazine interview with me regarding our 48 Hour film and the finals is now out. Did the interview late last night, or early this morning via the sensual Matt Scheurich, where we had a general gander on the film and general stuff and he pretty much printed it as I said, which made for a more ‘personal’ interview and hopefully one not too offensive or weird. Pick up a local copy now or check it online here.

Meanwhile, I’m still recovering from this annoying as fuck flu that just wont go away. It’s not crippling and I’m not bed ridden, but it’s dropped my energy levels and everytime I think it’s going away, it comes back, throws up a banner, blows some really annoying loud whistles and then kicks me in the nuts for good measure. Doesn’t help I haven’t actually been resting much or drinking over the weekend, but hey… I got nothing. Almost nothing. Bought several seasons of Arrested Development, the Neverwhere TV series (score!) and the Tarkovsky box set which is pure awesome and will provide lots of good viewing when I get the time to.

Several film projects coming up, and quite a few that need finishing as well, but that’s for a later post. In the meantime, here’s Michel Gondry following up solving a rubiks cube with his feet, with solving it with his nose.

God I love him. Oh, and just to end on a hilariously gross note… Clitter!

So it turns out I’ve been generally sick most of this week, which would explain why I’ve been sleeping ridiculously long hours all week, the headaches, the sore throats and not doing most of the things I thought I’d be up and able to do. Strange I didn’t really put two and two together properly like that. It’s also part of the reason I’ve not blogged as often as usual recently, so here’s a beach whale to make up for it…

Winter has officially come along and for the last several years, every year, bar one, I get really sick during a season change. Don’t matter which season change, it just happens. The rest of the year, I’m immune to all flu and sickness that could possibly afflict me, which isn’t so much a boast, but more of a strange fact that I’ve come to appreciate and anticipate.

Woke up in the morning with a raspy dry throat. Figured it had something to do with pushing a goddamn car uphill for nearly half a kilometre. But over the day it got worse till near the end of work, I had a headache, rising temperature and sniffly nose (which is now blocked). Reckon I’m getting sick? I think so.

And this once again proves that karma, God, Jebus, Greyskull and the hobo down the street have such a wicked sense of humor about my life that I’m being struck down by that damn flu at a suddenly busy point in my year. Aside from work and teaching, I’ve got a couple of filming gigs to do, have to make some short mock-PSAs, mark some soon to be overdue assignments, attend a birthday party and do other various little things which I know I have to do really soon, but can’t recall off the top of my head cause my brain is spinning and this screen is starting to give me an eye-sore.

So thanks a lot karma, God, Jebus, Greyskull and the hobo down the street. I just love a challenge.

So where the hell have I been? Everytime I wake up in the morning, I ask myself that same question. Usually followed by what the hell is a traffic cone, orange wig, empty cases of import beer and one pissed off monkey doing in my room? But enough about how I cured cancer, on with the update…

The deadly life threatening flu that I contracted has all but gone and has dropped down to orange alert, annoying tickling cough. Would have been over it faster, but have been keeping myself way too busy, mostly with video store work and helping out on a wintec short film, which has been interesting to say the least. Lots of very cool gear being used and at one point, there was a 30 ft crane on set that had me changing my pants several times from pure delight. But the set is on a farm that was at first stinking to high heaven of sheep shit and now after some wonderful winter weather, reduced to a mud field of very squishy proportions. Its not so bad, but for some reason, walking around the dark at night, the constant squishing sounds of the mud just gets to me, even though no said liquids are in contact with my person. Washing machine is getting its run for its money though.

Best part about this is the fact that to both of our surprises, my friend Rob who disappeared from my life years ago to Wellington, turned up out of the blue for this film and he’s awesome and reads this blog. But yeah, its an interesting shoot and only being a helping hand on this one, it’s always still facinating to me to watch how other people’s productions run. Especially the other low budget stuff, its almost overkill how professional this shoot is, there are a couple of industry professionals here and the set ups are being rigged in a very industry professional manner and that on the level of this kind of production is making for facinating sideline viewing for me. Details another time no doubt.

At the same time, I’ve been juggling my work and pulled off the ridiculous amount of hours at the video store this weekend (28ish in 48 hours), but meh I say. Worst off is the fact I have a couple of corporate videos that need cutting and the deadline is only a few days away and the time to do so is getting tight. Oh and forgot to mention earlier, but the damn computer with Pictures of You on it is now sitting in my room waiting for me to start chopping into it as well, that’s my job on it now, but that’ll have to wait just a bit longer as I vainly attempt to clear up my workload.

Also to mention, I finally got myself a copy of Auckland’s international film festival booklet and as thought, the list is sweet. Already planned several times to just go up and watch as much cool stuff as possible. One particular weekend has about nine films pencilled in as “yeah, I’d really like to go to this one and that one and oh, this one will be cool” blah, blah, blah. Fact that I’m working this year will probably mean I’ll be seening more festival films in Auckland than I did last year when I was living there. Go figure.

Oh yeah, and the national winner of the 48 Hour competition was announced tonight. Hamilton’s entry didn’t win and to my disappointment, Lemonade Coup didn’t get Cinematography (though they still get a nice panasonic dvx102… dastards), but it was a very interesting line-up of finalists. Auckland’s finalist was a surprising winner and it’ll be interesting to see how it actually compares to their finalists. My bet was on the Christchurch entry that come in second and was just great, but in the end, Lease, one of Peter Jackon’s wild card entries took the top spot.

Now its off to some much needed sleep, been getting so little in the past week, and that’s not gonna let up for a few more days, so here is two highly amusing videos of street magic and stuff.

Been cripplingly sick with the flu for the last few days and feeling like a totally unmotivated dead member of society. One night had me going with restless sleep and occasional vomiting, but I’m now through the worst of it, so happy fun times lie ahead of me. Only major victim was my room that turned into a sea of snot filled tissues and mugs filled with leftover soup, tea and other congealed liquids that were beneficial to my well being.

In saying that, here comes the happy fun times of knowing that the schedule for this year’s international film festival is out. I’ve been having issues with the site today, probably because of the new design and some obvious bugs going on with its layout, but not before catching a glimps of at least a few films of worthy note… David Lynch’s Inland Empire is topping the charts, so is Satoshi Kon’s Paparika, Ghibli’s Tales from the Earthsea, Hezrog’s Rescue Dawn, Tekkonkinkreet and the indulgently fun looking Daywatch. No doubt there are a lot more, but having such issues with the site at the moment, I can’t really see the whole list. But hopefully it’ll fix up soon, or even better, someone in Auckland can be a good sport and send me a few copies of the booklets as opposed to be being a selfish biach (you know how you are you whore).

Other than that, I really have nothing much else to report, so it’s off to bed with me and if luck is going my way, I’ll be well enough to go join in on the festivities for Shirow’s birthday party. But until then, here is more examples of the awesomeness that is the Japanese and human tetris. I miss that Naoki bastard.