Fall

3 kids, married, own a house... Was going alright. Sort of come to a halt at the moment though.   Did work underground on $125,000 a year, for almost 8 years... but that job went out the window with 299 other blokes' jobs when they shut the site down and forced redundancy. I'm back in the Retail industry now, back where I started all those years ago, lol. Everyone has had the ups and down over the years, though I feel I've done alright... the only problem we face now is the massive income drop. It's sad how we get so used to an amount of money we earn every week and take it for granted, and once we lose it, all our happiness is lost with it. Pretty sad, but it's an unfortunate fact.   Aside from that, I've acquired a massive interest in the modified automotive scene since I was last pretty active on OtakuBoards... it's like a damn disease, I cant get rid of the obsession, haha. I remember when I used to sit in front of my old desktop running Windows 95, at my desk with a "super-fast" 56k dial-up modem, and post on here when I was 14... arguing with my brother because he wanted to use the phone, haha. Funny, now I'm in the office on my lunch-break, on my laptop with wireless.   How times change. :rolleyes:   

:blink:  I registered in... 2002, I think... under the name "Squashed Snail" (couldn't tell you what the go was with that username). Sort of just... forgot about this place, hey... more so the 'net in general, lol. I got more and more into the modified automotive scene, built up my own Commodore (Australia's version of the North American Pontiac G8, albeit a lot older than any model under the Pontiac name), and eventually got right into it. I now regularly attend many Holden-orientated car shows and events, the big ones being Summernats and Street Commodores Cruise4Charity. Have won a few awards and the like. My occupation for most of my working life has been a fitter machinist at Ulan Coal, which is an underground coal mine nearly smack-bang in the middle of nowhere. At the start of this year three hundred of us were made redundant and the site was shut-down, so I'm currently back in the profession I was in during the good old school days... Retail. Oh the joy! I do, however, enjoy the amount of extra time I have at home (home basically every night). I've been missing it for a long time. ...and then the marriage. I got married a year and a half ago, have been with her for the best part of seven years. We have three kids; two boys and a girl... and they are doing my head in, haha. Nearly ready to hand the house in with three free kids, lol. I'll give you some insight; it's now 12.40AM in the morning, and it's the first chance I've had to sit down since lunch. :sleep: ...crazy boys.   ...so yeah... something just popped into my head a couple of days ago and I remembered this place. Funny how so many forgotten memories are remembered when you've been away from somewhere for so long, and then come back... I even remembered my password, haha. This place has really changed. A lot. It's crazy... though it looks really good, really modern. I would like to try and make an effort to hang around here from now on... Hopefully any future work commitments allow me to have the time to do so. :unsure:

Bullet For My Valentine, Demon Hunter, Spineshank, Silent Civilian, Disturbed, All That Remains, War Of Ages, Dry Kill Logic, Slipknot (sometimes :blink:).   A little less on the heavy-heavy side, Metallica, Lost Autumn, Burn Season, Adema (their first two albums are like a completely different sound to what they are now, the latter not even worth listening too :blink:), and Seether. ...as for bands that are no longer together, The Blank Theory, Lifer and Reveille (I believe they are back under the name "Genuflect"), are all unreal. Getting a bit long in the tooth, but still sound awesome. I love any music with heavy grinding guitars, and a good mix of grunge-type screaming/yelling and actual singing. Too much screaming can ruin a song, but sometimes a track actually needs it... and it's sometimes really hard to find a good artist or band that can produce music that mixes both screaming and singing and can come out with a great-sounding track.  

Bury My Life by Deligma. They've got a great sound, one that I haven't been able to really get away from.

Currently playing StarCraft 2: Heart Of The Swarm online, pretty stuck on it at the moment though... PS3, I'm playing Fallout: New Vegas (trying to clock it in Hardcore mode, nearly there), and GTA5. Pretty damn hard to get some free time to enjoy the gaming-side of things these days, especially when you have three kids running around the house.  

I keep having short dreams where I'm falling, and it's in a city and at night, because tall buildings are surrounding me and all I can see is little windows lit up by light flashing past me as I fall to the ground... It's always exactly the same... And I've been having it ever since I can remember... I never hit the ground, ever, and I always wake up in shock just before I [I]do[/I] hit the ground. :smoke:

I only know of soy sauce from chinese shops. Every chinese shop I've ever been in has had a bottle of soy sauce on every table. I don't even know what it tastes like but I still always put it in my short soup. Doesn't change the way the soup tastes, but I still do it.

$14 in Australia for a pack of Winfields in the 25s. I remember when you could buy the same pack for $9.90. People are going to keep smoking though, and tobacco companies are going to keep making money. It's not going to go away, no matter how many "quit smoking" ads they want to put on tv.

I'd buy one, if I had the money, and set it up in my kitchen. I love pizza. I do agree though, on the other hand, that pizza does tend to taste alot better when hand-made, if the cook knows what they're doing.

:laugh: You're alive a short time, you're dead a long time. Live every day like it's your last. [quote name='Lunar'][COLOR=royalblue]so if you died tommorrow and you just got a new car today, you wouldn't care? you underrate death, Fall.:smirk:[/COLOR][/quote]I don't believe in life after death, or "afterlife", or whatever; I don't believe I will have the ability [I]to[/I] care after I'm dead... But; if I [I]could[/I] care, then yes, I most likely would care about the fact that I had bought a brand new car the day before the day I died, because I [I]dare[/I] say I would have had big plans for it... Though you can't change the past-- And I strongly stand by that point. ...What I do is a hobby as you might say; though I have a very deep passion for it, it's what I love to do... And once I'm dead, I'm dead, and my passion dies with me. My ideal death would be to die doing what I love doing. For some reason, I'm just not too bothered about when I'm going to die... And I take that as a good thing. :smoke:

[quote name='Lunar'][COLOR=blue]Stupid decision, that car would probably end up in a scrap heap 20 years from now.:animesmil I said it with a smile.....[/COLOR][/quote]:crying: Nah... Never. But hey, if I die before those twenty years are up, there won't be any car to scrap. ;) See, I'm not really worried about what's going to happen in twenty years from now; probably helping the reason as to why I don't care for when I'm going to die...

I don't really care [I]when[/I] I'm going to die... I don't really look after my health enough [I]to[/I] care. If I was to find out one day, I'd probably forget within the first week of that day. As for how; ...in my car. Why not die with the one thing in life that has kept my pay-packet empty? ...[I]yeah[/I], for sure. -_- ...My sole interest in life (apart from the mrs.). --Everyone has some sort of passion in life, some sort of "[I]life[/I]"... Mine is my car. And with over fifty grand spent on it as of present, it [I]will[/I] be dying with me. :smoke: [I]My[/I] money spent is for [I]my[/I] life's fulfilment. :demon:

[quote name='Nerdsy][color=deeppink]People don't have to. They [i]want[/i'] to. There's a sizable difference there.[/color][/quote]May be a difference... though think about it. [i]Why[/i] do they want to? ...[i]wanting[/i] to is just a decision, there's always a reason behind it. Whether people say there is or not, that reason can't always be so blatantly known, even to the user themselves. Some people might want to do drugs just to fit in, still a reason. They can't accept not being "cool"... Just 'cause everyone else is? They don't wanna be left out. Stupid little reasons that need to be covered up because someone can't handle them. Of course you're gonna [i]want[/i] to do drugs, otherwise we wouldn't have the prodlem illicit drugs are causing amoung us today in the first place. But there's gotta be something making you want to... And when you look further down the track, it becomes clearer and clearer that [i]that[/i] [i]something[/i] is related to not being able to accept something. [quote name='DeadSeraphim][font=Arial][size=1][color=#4b0082]I don't know about the drug users you hang around, but I've never been around someone who's a 'total ********' when they're just using it for recreation. See, it comes back to that 'your friends aren't standard drug users' thing. [i]They're not people you should be using to measure all drug users, everywhere[/i]. Meet my friends without prior knowledge they're on drugs, and you'd never know.[/color][/size'][/font][/quote]Yeah, drugs affect everyone differently. I've been around a girl I once held close to my heart, who would use drugs as "recreation", she couldn't sit down for 5 seconds, couldn't shut up, couldn't sleep for 2 nights straight, and couldn't stop her own teeth from shivering, as if she was sitting in a walk-in freezer. That would happen from one happy-pill, or one line of gas... But it was all for "a good time" to her. ...Maybe she was having a good time, but most of the time I, aswell as alot of other people, were left having the time of our lives, laughing our throats out at how much of a clown she had turned in to. It's not that we wanted to ruin her... Its that she made the decision, and we had to see the result. It was as if she was in extreme-partyland, and noone else was there. If you were so totally blind drunk you couldn't even stand up, you'd still know she was bent up. You can notice it. And if I met your friends, I would know. Maybe not if they weren't on it right then and there, but if it was fresh in their system, I sure as hell would know. It's not that hard to realise someone aint themselves; even if you don't even know their name, it's not hard to realise they're not normal. Drugs aren't just gonna go straight through someone without touching them. While that drug(s) is active, it's gonna change them. Maybe slightly, maybe dramatically... But its damn unatural. And its for everyone around them to see.

[QUOTE=DeadSeraphim][color=indigo][size=1][font=Arial] How about [i]I[/i] go on the people I see everyday. I see one of my best mates, one of the most level headed people I know, use marijuana and occasional harder drugs to enhance his experience (say, at a concert). I see my cousins - men in happy families, with children and wives - take pot just to relax after a hard day. **** it man, I see some of my more party-hard friends take an E occasionally just because. Are they doing it cause they're trying to escape 'even slight emotional pain'? No, far from it. I'm sure there's plenty of people who fall into your narrow world view, but it's not a stereotype you can apply to everyone who takes drugs. Some people are crackheads to escape the reality of their situation, some people are hooked on heroin cause they can't feel happy any other way, but for every one of those, there's many more who never let addiction take hold of them, and never take them to escape. They're not weak, they're just out for a good time, and you shouldn't judge [i]them[/i] as weak because your friends (or ex-friends) took them for the wrong reasons[/font][/size][/color][/QUOTE]How should I judge them then, buddy? Are you saying that taking an "E" occasionally for no reason at all is alright? That taking an "E" just to have a good time is [i]so[/i] much better than those that take drugs because they are incapable of handling emotional stress? ...its all make-believe when you're on drugs. Nothing is as real as it should be... A "good time" aint drug induced. Nobody should have to take drugs just to have a "good time". Obviously there's something there that you're trying to escape from, even if you [i]think[/i] its just for a "good time"... You just don't know what it is that you're trying to get away from... So it's masked up into a mad party drug to give you a buzz... It's the same **** that gets you away from eveything. Quite obvious. If you can't have a good time without putting yourself into a mellowed-out hyperactive psycho state, there's something there that aint right. There is no reason that compensates the taking of illicit drugs. Whether its for "a good time" or not. The minute you swallow, smoke; inhale, snort, inject, whatever you wanna do with that "little piece of magic". --The minute you take that drug, it cuts sick with your normal, everyday bodily functions, and it turns you into a complete ********, unable to realise that your walking around in a make-believe world that has been projected by your very own paralysed and drug-diluted brain. Same kinda story that alcohol writes.[quote name='FALL']So call me a hypocrite.[/quote] I don't judge people. Bit hard to judge when it's for truth.

Through my eyes, illicit drugs are an immediate "remedy" for pain or emotional strain, for the weak who cannot bear to cope with even slight emotional pain. Plain and simple. I'm not going on the "facts" or whatever people like referring to these days, I'm going on the people I see everyday. I have known [i]alot[/i] of people my age, and it's safe to say that drug-ran lives are not so easy to hide, you can see it a mile away. I've watched too many people have their lives thrown around by drugs, and drugs only. Thrown around so much that they end up being a completely different person all together. My friendships have been broken, what I've had with who were once real friends has been torn in half. And its all because of drugs. Drugs can have a short-term and "fun" effect for users, but the long-term effects are far more destroying than anything compared. Alcohol can have the same outcome, if the drinker isn't careful. Though alcohol hasn't had near bad an impact on my life as drugs. I'm a regular drinker, infact, I tend to drink alot. Because I want to. People use drugs, because they want to. Though the reasons behind the usage of [i]can[/i] be very different. I disagree with drug usage, completely, so much I have a hatred for it. Alcohol is an entirely different issue to me. So call me a hypocrite.