Proposal for a name for a new Gold Coast region: SoTal.

“South of Tallebudgera”

It encompasses Palm Beach, Currumbin, Tugun, and Coolangatta, along with the Currumbin and Tallebudgera valleys.

In a sentence: “no, I can’t meet you in Burleigh for drinks, I don’t leave SoTal.”

🐄

Sunday

Real talk, it's been 17 months today since the first restrictions on what I call, the Australian Beforetime. Since then our every day has simply been different.

How long until we all collectively lose our minds?

I keep on seeing signs of the dam wall breaking.

Hey, does anyone know how Sia feels about cheap thrills?

#shotoniphone

Scientific evidence that social media makes us sadder and angrier. Why do we do this?

Hey, if masks are going to be a thing, could we at least use them to remind me who you are and how I know you?

The most ignorant thing I read these days isn’t from conspiracy theorists or anti-vaxxers.

It’s the phrase “believe in science.” As if science is a belief, a faith, or religion.

Science is a pursuit, an experiment, an adventure. I love science. It requires not, my belief.

For most Australians, before March 2020 we’d never identifed as a Queenslander or a West Australian, outside of the odd game of sport, or in a fleeting moment of pride.

We identified as Australian.

Will the new Covid-lead state-based patriotism continue after Covid?

A few hours on Magnetic Island, Queensland

🧲 Island

Thursday morning // Brisbane

Whatchulookinat

Yo

Alright, real talk, how far from an airport can you be and still call yourself an airport hotel?

Everyone has their little covid skill they've learned. Some of you might have sourdough, or knitting. I have the ability to clearly and concisely respond to emails from the Office of Fair Trading in under 6 hours.

On ABC radio this morning I predicted that the cost of weddings will rise post-covid because the wedding industry has been one of the hardest hit by Covid and received the least amount of support, financial, or political.

I haven’t got a job because of a resume in over 18 years (thanks Ali and Sea FM Mackay!) but I made one today because I think the pandemic has fired me from being self-employed ¯_(ツ)_/¯

When consumed moderately, whisky’s many medicinal benefits include preventing the “head from whirling, the tongue from lisping... the hands from shivering, the bones from aching.”

— Sixteenth-century English chronicler Raphael Holinshed

As the Gold Coast left lockdown today

Recreating the After Dark screensavers in CSS is a strong, super strong, nostalgia kick. I’d pay good money for a Flying Toasters screensaver today just to steal my mind away from 2021 for a minute.

Luna Hawk Amateur Skater

Friends often ask what it’s like to cross the border from NSW into Queensland so I filmed today’s border crossing after collecting essentials from Tweed Heads icon, Bread Social (I have a permit to cross the border)

I'm studying for a Certificate IV in Real Estate at the moment, and there's a whole section on how real estate agents can be human.

Must be a new section.

Meme, circa August 2021.

“A writer—and, I believe, generally all persons—must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”

— Jorge Luis Borges

Toying with the idea of flushing my entire digital identity down the toilet for my 40th birthday later this year and starting a fresh. New phone number, email, domain, Apple ID, Google Account, blog, all new social accounts. It feels like a grand idea.

I’d pay money for an iOS upgrade that acknowledged swearing in autocorrect. I’ve never in my almost 40 years wanted to get tucked or ducked.

Please check surroundings

Good news, I finally get to leave the quarantine I never went into, but have been texted about every day for 14 days, despite calling the Victorian Dept of Health to let them know I left Victoria an hour after arriving and never even came from a hotspot and they said all good …

Failed to save a spider

James Gandolfini, aka Tony Soprano, was paid $3M by HBO to reject a $5M offer to be the new boss on The Office. We should really be paying people like @darrenhayes to not sell out our high school memories for food mountain.

Forty years ago today, August 1 in the USA, 1981, MTV launched by playing Video Killed The Radio Star.

Everybody, through this lockdown, please think of the birds

The lockdowns will continue until morale improves

You used to call me on my landline, late night when you neeeed my love

She’s my daughter

Hey Siri, are there less people believin’ these days because there are less midnight trains goin’ anywhere?

Tugun

It's been made aware to me that some of my social media broadcasts over the last year might paint me as some sort of person, politically etc.

Please do not look to me for epidemiological advice or policy. I am a hurting man who has lost much and continues to lose more.

I'm not the one to look for on whether borders should open or close, or if you should alter your DNA to survive a pandemic.

However, if you'd like specific advice on how to not look like you're crying in public please DM me. It's basically about pretending you were laughing instead.

Hey, do you remember that time our Australian state and federal governments drove us all so far apart to the point of madness and hatred of those we love and even strangers we’ve never met?

Pro-vax, anti-vax, pro-lockdown, anti-lockdown, everyone's trying to join a team, but so few people are understanding the hurt that others are feeling. Whilst you might be annoyed by wearing a masking, or other people not-wearing a mask, all whilst your income, stability, and quality of life hasn't changed in the last year, many have lost more than they'd care to mention, or even have the words to describe.

We don't need to be right. No-one cares if you're right.

We need to care, we need empathy, we need consideration and understanding.

Because in 300 years when we're all dust, no-one's going to be telling stories about how right you were. But they'll speak about our legacy of empathy and care.

JQ133 to Auckland this morning. I think the sun was rising as well. @jetstarairways

The @iocmedia: The winner is Brisbane!

Brisbane: Sheppard, put us down for one opening ceremony.

#Brisbane2032