My bowels have been punching me in the bowels. It's quite a spectacle. And now learning that Michael Clarke Duncan is dead! I loved him in the Green Mile! He will be sorely missed.

I have this weird feeling I will be out of a job soon...

Damn, I hate being right all of the time.

Wow. I've never been laid-off before. I have no fucking idea what I'm going to do.

I think I'm going to stow away in one of Devin's guitar cases tomorrow night.

[Keeker]

I have this weird feeling I will be out of a job soon...

Damn, I hate being right all of the time.

Wow. I've never been laid-off before. I have no fucking idea what I'm going to do.

I think I'm going to stow away in one of Devin's guitar cases tomorrow night.

Sorry to hear that. Kind of in the same situation in our house right now too. Major bummer.

I have this weird feeling I will be out of a job soon...

Damn, I hate being right all of the time.

Wow. I've never been laid-off before. I have no fucking idea what I'm going to do.

I think I'm going to stow away in one of Devin's guitar cases tomorrow night.

Shit Paul, I'm sorry All the best man, hope you find something soon.

I have this weird feeling I will be out of a job soon...

Damn, I hate being right all of the time.

Wow. I've never been laid-off before. I have no fucking idea what I'm going to do.

I think I'm going to stow away in one of Devin's guitar cases tomorrow night.

Shit Paul, I'm sorry All the best man, hope you find something soon.

Somehow I always manage to land on my feet, even if it is waist-deep in a pile of shit. I know things will work out, I just haven't figured out the "how" part yet. Thanks for the support. It means a lot right now.

[JuZ]

I have this weird feeling I will be out of a job soon...

Damn, I hate being right all of the time.

Wow. I've never been laid-off before. I have no fucking idea what I'm going to do.

I think I'm going to stow away in one of Devin's guitar cases tomorrow night.

Shit Paul, I'm sorry All the best man, hope you find something soon.

Somehow I always manage to land on my feet, even if it is waist-deep in a pile of shit. I know things will work out, I just haven't figured out the "how" part yet. Thanks for the support. It means a lot right now.

Big love from me too, buddy (in the least icky way possible). I'm sure you'll sort something out. All the best mate.

[Octillus]

Paul, I've already seen you go through a couple of big changes with what you've shared on here, and you always seem to come up ahead. My stepdad went through a lot of this too for a while, and he's got a decent job now. I'm sure you'll be fine, man.

[JuZ]

"Roller Derby Xtreme" is pretty un-awesome right now.

Fremantle Media (they of Idol, Got Talent, Biggest Loser, X Factor and all those other wonderful shows) have put together a touring banked track roller derby show in Australia with two awesome US teams. Sounds great, huh?

Problem is they've been booking out venues at times that really screw with local derby leagues' plans. They've also been all over the national papers with a bunch of incorrect "facts" and fabrications. And they've told everyone that they will be featuring a "selection" of the best Australian derby skaters (one of our own local star's name is even used in a headline), intimating that they'd be skating at these events and presenting them as drawcards. They've insinuated that there is cooperation and discussion with Australian derby leagues. Problem is that through all of this they haven't spoken to anyone about any of this. At all. Leagues, individual skaters, no one. I know that one local league's made repeated requests for contact, only to be fobbed off with a media release.

I realise that this is a minor, decidedly first world problem. Regardless, fuck you Fremantle, you suck severely.

Thank you, I needed to get that off my chest!

Hope everything goes well for you Paul.

I have this weird feeling I will be out of a job soon...

Damn, I hate being right all of the time.

Wow. I've never been laid-off before. I have no fucking idea what I'm going to do.

I think I'm going to stow away in one of Devin's guitar cases tomorrow night.

Good luck Paul. With finding a job, not with the guitar case thing.

I love you people. All y'all.

Well, my plain UN-Awesome: meeting my first set of purely douche Dev fans last night.

So, at the show in Phoenix. Got there and went right up front to be able to see Dev as close as possible. Me, my girlfriend, and my friend who drove up from Tucson (first Dev show!) stayed on the gate while my other friend stood behind us. He's a big guy and tall, and he didn't want to block anyone's view. So we get through Stolen Babies and Paradise Lost's sets (although PL was only two songs long, poor guys) and I run to go get a drink with my tall buddy. I get back and there's this group on about 8 people that had just gotten back from the VIP and were congregating behind where we were standing on the gate. So I go back to my spot and chat with my friends waiting for the show to start.

About ten minutes later the ZTV visuals start and suddenly this one girl wearing a "I Heart Devin" shirt puts her hand between my girlfriend and my friend (a really small blonde girl), trying to shove her way between them on the gate. I'm used to this happening at shows, but this is before Dev is even on and I totally didn't expect someone who was an obvious Dev fan to be doing that. So we just tighten up and make a wall to not let her in. She and her scrawny, pony-tailed boyfriend kept dancing wildly and irritatingly to the pre-music too, purposely banging into us constantly trying to get us to move out of the front. They had obviously had a few so while the behavior was irritating it wasn't unexpected. Finally, though, right before Dev comes on the girl goes over to the other side of my blonde friend and physically shoves her out of the way and squeezes in next to my girlfriend, hip checking her trying to get her out of the way too. That's when it went from mildly irritating to infuriating.

I do a really quick switcheroo with my gf to get next to the girl, as I'm bigger and will probably have a better chance of keeping her from weasling in anymore. When we try to do this she then tries to drag her boyfriend to the front, but I throw myself back at him to keep him from the front too. At this point this old guy behind the girl is congratulating her on "how hard she fought to get to the front," to which I respond, "Yeah, congratulate her on being a total bitch." To which she and her boyfriend say, "What do you care, you don't even know this band. We know all about them."

Seriously? I'm wearing a shirt with a giant fucking Ziltoid on it (the VIP shirt from last year). So I say, "Uh, he's my favorite artist." Comeback Kid Boyfriend's retort is, in a mocking tone a 5 year old would use, "Oh, he's my favorite band, look at me." Then the girl says, "Oh yeah? Well did you get VIP? Because we paid $140 to meet him, I bet you didn't."

Again, Am I hearing this shit? Is this real life? People like this exist, but DEV fans like this exist? The flying fuck? So I say, "No, but I did last year." The girl sort of pulls back and goes "Oh... uh..." and clams up. Which is beyond stupid. Like suddenly the fact that I did VIP at some point makes me on her level? So I turn around, happy to be done with this bullshit, but then the girl starts slamming her hip into me. I didn't want to get into anymore shit so I try to start having a meaningless conversation with my gf just to distract us both from it. Scrawny Boyfriend, though, isn't done. As his chick keeps slamming into me he starts listening to my conversation and repeating everything I say in that mocking 5 year old voice. Again again,

Allow me to preface this by saying that I am a self-proclaimed pacifist. I don't think violence solves anything. I don't like violence. With the adrenaline pumping last night I came about this close to reaching behind and drilling this guy in the face. Which, for me, is huge. But I didn't, and I'm glad I didn't give into that baser of my human emotions. I decided I didn't want to get kicked out, especially after driving 7 hours to see Dev, and that this guy wasn't worth my energy. So I settled for looking behind me and staring the guy right in the eye and saying, "You're pushing your luck, bro." Yeah, an odd choice, but hey-- I'm not used to near-fight confrontations, right? He responds, "Uh, what luck am I pushing?" which in terms of stupidity waaaaaay outdoes my threat Seconds after that, though, Dev came on and I made a conscious decision that I was not going to let these people ruin my night.

But my overly long tale doesn't end there. Oh no. So the chick keeps purposely hip checking me trying to get me to move to which I just shoved up against her, not moving. Dev comes out and the first thing he does is look right at me, recognize me, smile, and nod in recognition at me. I suddenly feel the girl stop hip-checking me and stare at me. To me, it was no big deal; If you've seen Dev live you know he recognizes and acknowledges tons of people. It felt really cool, sure ( ) but that's just the awesomeness of Dev. For this girl, though, I was finally elevated to her elitist level or something. Dev launches into Truth and she sees I know the song and I feel a tap on my shoulder. I begrudgingly look at her and she says, "I'm sorry I was so mean to you. I see you like this music, which means you can't be bad."

This, of course, made me vomit in my throat a bit. If I didn't know Dev's music I'm some piece of scum that is below her but suddenly I'm a fan and I'm her equal or something? I had to fight every urge to scream in her face but instead said, as I was ready for this to be over, "It's alright. Thanks." and let it go. She didn't push into me again the rest of the night.

So, yeah, that happened. That sense of entitlement just sickened me, and still does even today on the morning after. From a Dev fan too, but I guess they all can't be awesome as 99% of the other Dev fans I've met have. I talked to Dev about it a bit after the show and he said he was noticing that sort of fan coming up more often with the project getting bigger, which makes total sense. I just told him though that I wasn't about to let it ruin my night (and it didn't come close to it), and he was glad it didn't.

Anyway, thanks for allowing me that vent. And write an overly long transcript of my Un-awesome. Whew. Needed to get it out, felt like that energy around it was still in me or something. The skies are all rosy and clear now

If it is any consolation, there were douche bags galore at the SF show, too. And yes, many were Devin fans. I spent the entire show barricading my wife and son from the extremely aggressive people down on the floor near the stage. My back is still killing me. I make a pretty good wall, though. Maybe I'll add that to my resume. lol

Speaking of which, job hunting sucks the sweatiest balls known to mankind. That is all.

When Dev was doing an acoustic gig in Southampton last summer, we had a pretty interesting experience...my sister and bro in-law were coming, they had never seen Dev before but they only lived 30 minutes away and it was an opportunity to see me too. They turned up at about 6ish, Lily in a nice floral dress and Chris in a La Coste polo shirt and shorts, both looking like they were going to a garden party. Some moody metally twat all in black turns to Chris and says "Why are YOU here?" and Chris nonchalantly replies with "We're here for the gig!" trying to be friendly, to which the guy replies with "Do you even know who Devin Townsend IS?", then Chris says "Well my sister in-law knows him and she doesn't come down here often so we thought we'd check him out and see her...", the guy scoffs "I BET she does..."
Meanwhile while all this is happening; Lily had been on the phone to me to tell me they were outside (I had been indoors all afternoon with Mike) I told Dev I had to go because they were here, he told me to just let them in, I asked him what to tell security, he told me to tell them he wants them in there- so as Chris and metal twat are at the pinnacle of their dialogue; the door swings open and I shriek "OI. YOU TWO. IN HERE NOW, DEV WANTS YOU." and Chris makes the most troll-face ever and strides indoors. It's hilarious and pretty sad how some people get so nastily protective over their "thing". Regardless of what happened after their conversation, who was he to tell someone they weren't allowed to see a band because they were a pair of yuppies ironically looking different to everyone else there?
There was also a friend of a friend who had a massive rant at me because when I met him in Norwich, he was wearing a DTP tour shirt and I pointed at my SYL shirt- an attitude similar to your friendly gig-buddies, Sean. Jumping to an assumption that I probably only owned Addicted and that I didn't know any of his other material. I was like "WOOOOAH! Where did this come from?!?!?!!". If you truly are a fan of a musician/band; you wouldn't put down ANY fan, regardless of how they looked, how much of the music they know, how long they've been a fan or why they're a fan- because you know that these are the people who help keep the ball rolling.

[Octillus]

If it is any consolation, there were douche bags galore at the SF show, too. And yes, many were Devin fans. I spent the entire show barricading my wife and son from the extremely aggressive people down on the floor near the stage. My back is still killing me. I make a pretty good wall, though. Maybe I'll add that to my resume. lol

I had had several problems at shows in SF over the past year. Something's wrong with the new crop of kids.