Senator Cade

So today marks the beginning of revision 2.0 of my app's design document. Several thousand words while drunk on liqueur coffees and power.... POWER AHHHH.

Some current thoughts on the iPhone:

I spent a lot of time planning this program – particularly before the iPhone's SDK came out – and while I'm quite familiar with the capabilities of the device, I'm frustrated by some of the negatives about the iPhone. I hate the interface lag, I have a love/hate relationship with Objective-C and it's MVC style of design. MVC development is supposed to be quick and in some ways it is. But I hate that it's a bit faster to whip something up in most other languages than in ObjC. I really wish I could port my work across instead of building proof of concepts and then recoding them later on. I would really like a MaxMSP runtime for the iPhone because that would turn this whole thing into a walk in the park.

Haha, whinge whinge whinge. Waaaah.

I hate the fact that in order to exhibit this next year, I'm going to have to jailbreak the exhibit devices in order to strip the iPhone of unnecessary processes and applications. I haven't read the SDK agreement in full, yet, but I'm concerned about the implications of having to jailbreak the phones in order to present these instruments as an exhibit, rather than letting people wander around the phone's OS. Will I negate my Developer status? Will I open myself up to legal action or blacklisting from Apple's revered App Store?

I'm going to the Apple 'World Tour' iPhone dev conference on Friday and will get to ask someone, at some point, about all of these problems. Hooray for that.

I think I'm going to mirror some of my work musings between here and my also-significantly underused blog on cade.com.au. I'm thinking of posting some odds and ends for anyone interested to test and yeah I'm running out of words now.

• • •




• • •


Hilarity of the day

A US woman has discovered her husband using his iPhone to send raunchy pictures of his genitals to a lover, which he tried to explain was caused by an Apple bug. The embarrassing high-tech domestic dispute quickly became public after the woman, Susan, made a post on Apple's discussion board for iPhone technical support.
[...]
Susan did not publish the photograph online but described it in G-rated language for the benefit of the morbidly curious onlookers.
"It was a close-up shot of him pleasuring himself taken at the exact moment of maximum pleasure ... It's such a good shot that one must wonder if he actually practiced it a few times before getting it right," she wrote.

Unbelievably hilarious and a bit sad at the same time. But mostly hilarious due to the complete ineptitude of the husband. What a winner.

Thread here:
http://tinyurl.com/5ck3dm

Reasons for why I haven't posted here very much:

• LiveJournal has been bought and sold as often as a slave in The Capital Wasteland and so I hate posting anything current.

• Working and studying and thesis'ing and radio.

• Blogging can be a little banal sometimes.

• Writer's block.

• Fallout 3 / Red Alert 3 / Left 4 Dead / Team Fortress 2

• FFSdjflsdflsdjflk I'll be damned if I know, really. I'm not sure anything reads this at all actually.

i'm on holidays in north queensland for the next two weeks.
which means lots of interface design work and writing.

i'm kind of over livejournal and am thinking of building a new blog @ cade.com.au on wordpress or moveable type or maybe my own software. who the fuck knows.

but anyways.
i'm off to program conway's game of life to c-major scale. later, kids!

I woke up this morning to find this parked on the street next door to my apartment:


(This is a freedom destroyer.)

Someone had a dingle yesterday/last night! Not too exciting, right?
( Oh, how wrong you are. The car had this wonderful handwritten note tucked under its windshield: )
God this is amusing. But whose side am I on? I am torn! See, if the note is to be believed, then the drink driving, scene-fleeing J is a total piece of shit who should pay for the woman's¹ now-totalled car (as well as all subsequent cars hit/totaled). But on the other hand, the note is so passive-aggressive, so asinine, that I want to punch it and it's author. Mainly because her biggest concern is how her FREEDOM HAS BEEN DESTROYED!!!!! and now she can't do things on a whim (like she loves to do). Instead of, you know, the fact that drunk drivers have a well-known reputation of killing people in collisions and surviving without a scratch. Drink driving is wrong, but seriously. Shut up and get on a bus, you privileged warthog.

- - -
¹ _{I'm not being sexist. You can tell that it's been written by a woman. Just look at that handwriting.}

because i hate writing dull works about life, here are some pretty pictures





























and something people have particularly liked:


hope you're all okay still. even those of you i don't talk to as much as i should. <3!

It has rained it's little heart out tonight and the sky is falling in. Although I hate cryptic livejournal posts a lot, that's all I can think of to describe what is going on right now. I can be described accurately as selfless and / or witless.

Hey.

Long time no see.



I've been working on a commercial project entitled 'Muso.'
The first incarnation is up as a demo. It's pretty neat.

Also started work on a new album.
It could be called He Should Smile More.

A lot of things+people I care about have died / are dying.

A quick one:

Spent some time away and recharged – something I needed to do since finishing Halos in the Sky. Now I am back with this silly optimism that makes me grin spontaneously and spend money on vinyl again. I have a copy of Seasons of Glass by Yoko Ono and this is something I am slightly proud of. I'm engaging the creativity drives again and am writing music. I've spent most of today building a recording studio and am sitting in it this very minute. It's missing a few pieces but it will do for now, and it looks gorgeous. Photos soon.

I love my parents. I love my hometown. Gosh, what an odd entry.

Melbourne isn't my city, but you know; I'm going to make the most of it.

An interesting day in Melbourne – some halfwit malfunction opens fire on three people in the middle of rush hour, killing one and gravely injuring three others. While that incident was quite shocking, the media coverage is even worse. Take the front of The Age, for example:



Check out that huge three-panel graphic. Looks like some kind of storyboard for a detective film, doesn't it? The gritty, worn-around-the-edges detective peeks at a corpse, unknowingly flanked by establishing shots on either side. I especially like the third panel, which shows that same detective, moments later, standing in the middle of the intersection. It's all a bit film noir. In fact, I realised just how perfect this opportunity was to add my own little touch:



The text is best read in a gruff deadpan voice.

Hooray for Australian media. Also hooray for the dysfunctional people who have so little going on in their lives that when they manage to – by luck – be a spectator to some tragedy in this city, post excitedly about it repeatedly online. The best part is the few internet spectators who post barely-comprehensible comments full of typos and flaws, as though they're posting from the Gaza strip, and can't correct their sentences because their house is being shelled. Tyops equal desperation and drama, friends.

* * *
So much to talk about. So little time. I will be updating properlike soon. I promise.

Just a quick one to say that I am having a small housewarming get-together this Friday night at my new apartment. And if you're in Melbourne and a friendly, you are invited!

Where: St Kilda. Ask me for more details
When: Friday, April 13. 7PM till late!
What to bring: Alcohol. This is gonna be BYO unfortunately!
More information: Again, email me and stuff. We don't have a lot of space, so RSVP soon so we can get an idea of how many people are coming! And having said that, please do! It will be a friendlywarm night of music and fun. You will enjoy it. At least, I hope so. You should.
RSVP: As soon as possible here in this thread or to senatorcade @ gmail dot com

* * *
I have a new design for my WEBSITE coming. Also I am thinking of restructuring my livejournal and incorporating it into my site, although I am not entirely sure this is a good idea. Hurray!

The title is catchy isn't it? Anyone who knows anything about me will know that I have an appalling track record with North Americans. Wait – that’s a lie. I’ve had an appalling track record with exactly one North American and that was my own stupid fault. If you care enough you can dig around a little and you'll probably find bits and pieces of that story, but it's not really interesting and it serves no part of this story except to link two completely separate tales together in some kind of original and witty fashion. Because I like to keep my blog interesting.

This is the story of how a close friend destroyed a friendship, sabotaged my relationship, and nearly ran me out of my own home. Pretty dramatic, I know, but it's all true. I'm writing kind of an open letter to the perpetrator, with a bit of backstory so you can call play at home. Are you ready? Go!

On January 1 2007 – while I was still in Singapore – Sydney's tourist population increased by one. This in itself is not too unusual (Australia is somewhat of a tourist destination), except for the fact that that this

Matthew Bugnaski, in a photograph that looks strangely like a mugshot.

newfound tourist was an incredibly close friend of mine named Matthew B. Bugnaski. I had known him for over three years, but had never met him in person. Being from the United States kind of makes that whole in-person thing hard to accomplish. Anyway, during the course of our friendship, Matthew had often talked about how difficult a young, misunderstood creature like himself had it in his country, and how he needed to escape. See, Matthew was gay and extremely spiritual and worked as a coffee slave in Baltimore. Over time, he got hired, got fired, got hired again, got rejected a few times, developed a huge crush on me and was told upfront that I wasn't really into him like that. This sent him into an understandable but pretty bad stretch of depression – one that ended up lasting nearly the entirety of our friendship. He got attached to another boy from Australia, a french speaking asshole that we both knew, and was rejected. He got attached to another Australian – one of Liam's friends – and was rejected by him, too.

Life, according to Matt, was pretty tough. He wanted to get out. I urged him to - either to Europe, or to Australia, because it was pretty clear that Baltimore just flat out sucked. Liam and I often suggested places for him to periodically escape to, and both of us urged him to come and visit us. We wanted him to spend time in Australia because, we figured he'd find Australia – particularly Melbourne – a welcomed, more liberal change to the US.

Unexpectedly, he did. He came.

Matt spent a lot of time in Sydney and Brisbane. I flew back to Australia,

Cade and his beloved father on their way to Jewtown, Victoria. If you squint and look closely, you can see Cade driving and writing a 2,000 word Master's proposal on his laptop at the same time! This kid's got talent!

drove from Brisbane to Melbourne with my Dad while writing a research proposal for my shiny new Masters degree and spent two weeks finding and securing a place to live before luring Liam down from Sydney and convincing Tanya to move in with me. While I was busy living out of a suitcase in Melbourne, my life in relative uncertainty – Matt moved about New South Wales and Queensland, picking fruit occasionally to make money and save enough to come down to Melbourne.

I don't remember the exact date of his arrival in Melbourne, but I do remember the day I saw him. March 14. It was the first time I had ever met Matt and it was a pretty overwhelming experience. Matt was quirky, sheepish and fun. We met at Flinders' Street station and spent a bit of time at E Fifty-Five. He was pretty shy and a little awkward and it was absolutely clear to me that he was still unbearably attracted to me. Still. Three years later. Walking back to a tram from the lounge, Matt made a point of singling out boys he thought were more attractive than Liam, and then announcing them to me. In retrospect, I was being subjected to mind-blowing passive-aggression. This should have alerted me of what was to come.

Unfortunately, it didn't.

Matt was staying in a shitty little backpackers' hostel in Flinders Street. I was feeling generous and I wanted to help him.

Cade, James Figurine, most foetuses and the disabled: Full of horrendously messy mistakes.

It was here that I made Mistake #1. Despite this unbearably obvious passive-aggressive behaviour, I really wanted Matt to stay in Australia and be happy here. So I offered to let him stay at my apartment – for one or two weeks – while he made some money and then moved into a sharehouse or some other kind of accommodation that didn't cost $30+ a day. In exchange, Matt agreed to drop me $50 each week for the duration of his stay to cover food, bills and the eventual costs of running him around. A fair deal.

The first few days were all right. Matt and Tanya got on fairly well and he didn't seem to be too upset by the fact that Liam and I were a couple. Matt got a tour of the city, of Brunswick St and of some markets in the Melbourne area. But as a week rolled by and turned into the second, I started to notice some concerning things about Matt, mainly that he was:

• Using a lot of water. A lot of water. As in, spending an hour or more in the shower in a state with heavy drought restrictions,
• Drinking. A lot,
• Getting up extremely late and,
• Not looking for work,
• Eating an obscene amount of our food, and thus costing us an extra $25-$35+ each time I went grocery shopping and,
• Spending his small amount of money on trivial things. Like drinking.

At the time, I was supporting Liam financially and essentially paying $880 a month in rent because he was having trouble finding and keeping work. Being the only one out of us two with some form of stable income meant I had to also budget for everything that Liam needed. It was hard but we were able to budget and still enjoy life even with the harshness of our financial situation. And yet, Matt would wake up every morning and take packets of instant noodles – he would buy these – then cook them with at least half an onion, carrots, spring onions, broccoli and whatever else he could find in our fridge. He would drink at least dozen cups of tea or coffee a day, all with milk. This kind of thing seems so trivial but for someone literally living paycheck to paycheck, it spelled disaster. I was being forced to spend money I didn't really have at the grocery store. And Matt was oblivious. Like a child about to be splattered to the four winds by an oncoming automobile, it was rapidly becoming clear to us three¹ that Matt not only wasn't going to pay but in fact couldn't. I was facing the prospect of having Matt become financially dependent on me. I freaked out and Liam and I together made mistake #2.

Liam pushed me to say something. I confronted Matt half-heartedly, because I am terrible at being an assertive asshole sometimes. I told Matt that I couldn't afford this and his insightful retort was to call my parents and ask for more money, because they're loaded, right? Instead of instantly ordering him out of my apartment, I patiently explained the concepts of bills and how I had no money and how my parents couldn't just send money to me on a whim. He dismissed all of my complaints and just simply said – and this part's kind of important – "Don't worry. Money will come your way. Just relax. I have never spent a day without enough money to sleep or feed myself. You'll be fine. You know I'm always right." An attempt to be mystical or insightful or something.

Soon after that awkward confrontation Matt began to change. He became a lot more withdrawn and quiet. His passive aggression increased to the point where he would scowl at me constantly, roll his eyes whenever I would talk, walk over to me randomly and lightly slap me in the face with body-language that screamed, "I wish I could do this harder," things like that. He would demand to use my cell phone and, when I probed him about why he needed it, I found out that he wanted to call dealers to buy weed and so flatly refused². He ignored my protests for him to stop eating and drinking so much of our food supply. And yet, whilst filled with passive aggression and thinly-disguised contempt, he continually showered me in trinket 'gifts' that were attempts by him to proclaim some kind of 'love' he still had for me. Beads, bracelets, badges, necklaces. It was a daily occurrence that reeked of manipulation. If I denied his gifts, he would get utterly despondent and not talk to me, instead bitching about my 'ingratitude' to Tanya. And speaking of Tanya, he would oftentimes corner our poor, impartial flatmate while she was alone in her room and proclaim things like, "My father always said, 'Never tell people you're from Baltimore, they'll think you're a con-man,'" which meant absolutely nothing to her, or anyone else in this Australian household. His corner of the apartment was covered in mess and every time Liam and I tried to be affectionate, Matt was there, hovering, watching and complaining about the sheer injustice to Tanya when we were out of earshot.

In fact, according to Tanya, Matt had a lot to say about the two people whose generosity he was living off. He would routinely curse us for "being inconsiderate about our relationship," he would call me a hypocrite behind my back when I tried to buy furniture for my completely unfurnished house after lecturing him about how I wasn't prepared to let him leech off me. He came out with quotes such as, "I want to hate Cade, but I just can't. It would break his heart." Matt had a lot to say about a lot of people and reeked of a staggering inferiority complex. He told me many times how much he hated coming to Melbourne, and that the only reason he was staying was because of me. Whenever he ventured outside by himself, he would return with stories of meth addicts wandering the streets like zombies. He would talk in great length about being accounted by crazy religious people for doing tarot readings on the street. It was soon obvious that, in his mind, he was interacting with crazy subhumans, and began to despise Melbourne because of it³.

Here's one of my super-scientific graphs to illustrate my terrifying/disgusting situation:

Matt's visit to Melbourne, Australia.


Pretty terrible, right? There's more. Other anecdotes include:
• When asked to purchase food for the household, Matt proclaimed that he was in fact doing this. His evidence: bottles of disgusting sesame seed and black seed oil, along with $19 worth of spices and the occasional loaf of bread or milk. To put things in context, A kilogram of carrots cost $1.79 in Australia.
• Not doing any clothes washing, and developing a noticeable sensory aura because of this.
• Violently opening my car door against

An actual photo of Cade's bank account during the last few days of Matt's fiscal vampiric romp.

a pole, and then blaming me for it for parking too close to the pole. Result: a large dent and paint missing on a car that was less than a year old.
• Asking to use my home phone, then calling a dealer from it despite knowing my specific requests to not do this.
• Getting a lift into the city to set up a tarot card reading stall in the street so that he could make money, Matt dragged his metal chairs out of the boot of my car, leaving a $200⁴ to-the-metal scratch in my paintwork. When I freaked out in the street, he rolled his eyes at me and sneered down his nose.
• Tearing a hole in our wallpaper which we may lose our $1344 bond over.
• Doing at least one thing a day that, if we didn't catch and fix immediately afterwards, could've caused us to lose our bond.
• Demanding Tanya stop having sex in her own room because he was disgusted by it.
• Not working. Still.
• Getting fined by South Yarra Trams, twice, for not having a valid ticket. Despite spending nearly $100 or more on various mood-altering substances.

The final straw came with the tram fines and the car-scarring. Although a lot of these things seem petty, their effects were compounded by the fact that I was singlehandedly feeding this parasite and supplying it with new music, water, a roof and a very-occasional clothes wash. And despite his rapidly increasing contempt his three suffering housemates, he continued to shower me in little gifts of 'love.' As if this would placate me. One Sunday, four weeks after his arrival, the three Australians decided we'd had enough. We sat Matt down and told him a few truths – he had overstayed by three weeks and that was a pretty big offense under our rent agreement. My brother was coming to visit, an escape after having his heart broken by his now ex-girlfriend. We needed him out by eleven o'clock the next morning. The reality was, he had cost us over $450, made our house unbelievably unhappy and unpleasant, had bled me dry of money and energy, sabotaged my relationship with Liam through passive aggression, guilt and continuous-but-subtle passes at me – and occasionally Liam – showing no signs improvement or care.

The next day was awkward. He first demanded that I drive him an hour towards the northern part of Melbourne, near the highway. When I refused, he dragged his feet, taking hours to gather his things. Finally, twenty minutes before I was due to collect my brother from Melbourne airport, Matt left – but not before giving me a tiny, bronze oval of copper with the words, "I Love You" engraved on it. Completely inappropriate and a final confirmation that throwing him out was the right thing to do.

And then, he was gone. Or so we thought. As it turned out, he left most of his luggage in our second bathroom. We threw it into the street – macbook and all – and left it there. We didn't hear anything from Matt for over a week. His tram fines turned up. I called the Department of Infrastructure and let them know what was going on. This was followed up by returning the tram fines along with a neatly typed letter explaining everything I knew about Matt. The response hinted at him not being able to leave the country without paying his $300+ worth of fines. We considered selling his laptop to recoup the costs of his abuse and the tram fines, but didn't. Instead, Liam and I spent a lot of time with just each other, to recover from the suffocation of Matt. We both became closer to Tanya, too. My planned purchases for University and artistic personal projects were put on hold while I recovered financially. A month has almost passed and I am still feeling the effects of Matt's visit.

And yet, I can still hear his prophetic words, like a hollywood flashback, complete with tunnel-echo: "Don't worry, money will find it's way to you."

It hasn't.

Epilogue
About a week and a half after Matt first left, he buzzed our intercom, looking for his stuff. Liam answered it with, "Oh, its you. Have you come to collect your garbage?" He came upstairs to talk to us. We found out that he had been homeless for four days before finding another host to feed from. He blamed us for this, telling us about being soaked by sprinkers in Melbourne's central park at four in the morning and how deathly cold Melbourne was at night. Liam and I responded with silence. Expecting an apology, Matt said, "Is that it?" and we stared at him. Sensing no sympathy, apologies or pleas to return, he turned away and sighed, "Goodbye," before walking back down our stairs and collecting his things. I wanted to shout at him about his stupidity – emergency hostels are plentiful in Melbourne and there was a Salvation Army within walking distance of my apartment that would gladly help him out. I wanted him to know how disgusted I was with him and how defected his personality really was. Instead, I said nothing and he probably thinks that I threw him out, leaving him broken hearted and homeless. All I saw was a manipulative and vampiric parasite husk that worked its poison to the very end.

As he left, Liam slowly closed our door, allowing it's creak to echo long and loud before slamming the door shut at the last minute.

He always had a way with words.

--
¹ _{Tanya, Liam and myself. Not Matt. That kind of thought seems to be way above his head, I'm afraid.}

² _{I refused for many reasons, one of the important ones being that I am not really a fan of Melbourne drug lords. I know that weed is small time, but there are always connections. Melbourne is a particularly crazy place like that.}

³ _{Since I have moved into this great city, the only addicts I have seen have been in the city, and they're the same people I see every time I go into the city.}

⁴ _{It's probably going to cost more. I need to get the car detailed and I haven't had a quote for the damage that he has done, yet.}

Liam and the old G4 Powerbook in the corner of our new place.
Sunday, March 18, 2007 @ 11:03pm

I am post-udon, post-pancakes and post-influenza and I'm planning a more serious post in the near future. Or rather, two of them. I haven't been on livejournal much but that doesn't mean the time between the last two posts hasn't been interesting. No siree. There's been more drama than you could even imagine.

Who would've believed it. I am graduated. I get to insert a _BMM at the end of my name. The first of many varied tiles, yes? The degree worked out, in the end, igniting a previously unforeseen love for film and animation and possibly kick-starting a career as a film maker. I could not have asked for a better end to my year and my degree than to walk away with an astonishing amount of work completed. It makes me pretty happy. Please check out my final graduation film, Halos in the Sky. Courtesy of youtube.



My last post was hurriedly made from Coolangatta Airport only moments before I got to see Liam again. He stayed for nearly ten days. We grew stronger and closer. I spent a night in emergency with a middle ear infection and a case of exhaustion. He spent a night being the worried gay partner. I got prescribed to some painkillers. Liam threatened to hide them if I got addicted to them again. I made sure I didn't. I went out with Sayke to Montville and had a blast (click for a highly-biased account of what went on on that day), although I regret not inviting Liam. Liam helped me pack my apartment up and it sunk in that I was more than likely leaving the Gold Coast for good.

It now seems set that Liam will be moving to Melbourne with me for a short period next year. And by short, I mean, he'll be spending six months living with me. C'est la vie.

After he left, I spent days madly packing the last parts of the apartment, a task that I was still completing at four in the morning on the day I was due to leave for Singapore. I slept for two hours, then spent 5 hours in Brisbane airport, waiting to get on an aeroplane to Singapore. Then another 9 hours waiting for said aeroplane to land. I had an irritating, oblivious 8 year old next to me who spent all of her time kicking me from under the arm rest. Every joint in my entire body ached from the move, which was possibly one of the most unbelievably taxing things I have ever done.

And now, here I am. In Singapore, recuperating from the past four months of madness. I've had inklings of new songs here and there and some possible job offers. So we'll see.

I'm ending this entry with a modest little photo post of some dumb light experiments I tried with Liam. Enjoy.













Take care of yourselves.

So in the end I worked my ass off, and everything got done in a kind of happy-ending Disney way. Everything previously posted is now completed. Halos looks magnificent. Everybody is happy with what I have done. I am quite pleased with myself.

I ended up being awake for three days straight. By the end of the first, I was shaking and my body's internal clock was already disturbed – something that I am no stranger of. Mid-way through the second, I briefly fell asleep while writing one of the soundtracks. By the end of that day, the day and night cycle ceased to be of any concern whatsoever. It's hard to describe what that feels like, it makes the world feel surreal and like some kind of stable rock, with the universe shifting around it, instead of the reverse.

I have 1 minute and 20 seconds left on my wireless login here at Coolangatta Airport. Liam is coming to visit me. He is only a few feet away now. I am so glad he's here.

More soon.
xo