A Nada World

2004-01-21T13:15:00.000+10:00

Want future fashion trends? Look no further than A Nada World, your one-stop shop for all things fashion related, and then some.

1. Smart Jeans.
In a first for literary fans and trendsetters alike, Stephen Hawking has signed a deal with a prominent fashion label to reproduce his best-seller "A Brief History ot Time" on jeans. By contorting themselves into knots, jean-wearers and their friends can read up on the exciting theories put forward my Dr Hawking, exploding the myths about the constructs of space and time. Great for appearing smarter than you are.

In response to the announcement of this cross-media deal, several other authors have found themselves bombarded by contract offers with fashion labels. Look out for clothes from Stephen King, Patricia Cornwell and for the racier fashionistas, Jackie Collins.

2. Evolutionary Clothing

In an age where there's a fine line between being a fashion maker and a fashion follower, it's important for people to know that you were there first.

Introducing Evolution, a line of fashions that evolve with time.

Witness the Evolution Business Shirt: Your initial purchase of a crisp off-white shirt with a hairline pinstripe seems extremely orthodox. Surely this can't be the fashion choice of the future? But observe: after a day of wearing the Evolution, in repsonse to body heat, moisture and UV light, extra embellishments appear in the pattern: swirls of design around the collar and cuffs. After a third day of wear, further hairline squiggles appear in the material. As time progresses, and the shirt is worn regularly, the patterns of the shirt increase in conplexity, until what was once an off-white shirt with a hairline pinstripe is now a gloriously patterned, fashionable work of art.

And who could honestly say you follow the fashion pack when the evidence is right there on your fashionably patterned chest. Your Evolved shirt tells the world "I've worked long and hard to get this design, I'm no fly-by-night blow-in, I'm the real thing! I am the Trend-Master!!"

3. Receptive shirts – the “Vegas”

It's amazing what they can do with nanotechnology these days. Witness the next step in individualised fashion: the Vegas.

The fabric of the Vegas contains two types of receivers, designed to accept impulses from certain frequencies. Thus, when the shirt is in close proximity to a source projecting the right frequency, certain receivers turn off, projecting clear, or white, while others turn on, projecting black, colouring in the shirt design. The effect means a constantly updating design on your shirt.

Could be used by shops to alter customer's shirts on the footpath outside, turning people into moving billboards.

With the addition of home projectors, shirts can be custom-designed by the wearer.

Version 2.0 gives you the ability to freeze your favourite design.

4. Penis Pants.
Jeans especially sewed to enhance a visible schlong line.

Or introduce one.

5. Pixels are in.

The pixel look is king, which means that boxy is cool. Spicing up the retro look, the design for the next season works on making the wearer look like they are a pixellated character from a distance: we're talking shoulder pads to block out the shoulder, the "Flock of Seagulls" to square off the head, large ruffs at the extremities and the large blocks of colour on all apparel.

To complete the image, this year's fashionable move is a rapid high-kneed strut rather than walk, emphasising the resemblance to simply-animated pixellated characters in computer games.

6. Thick/Thin Woollen jumpers.

Whereas old style woollen jumpers had the unfortunate effect of making you look several sizes larger, the new range of woollen jumpers are designed to sculpt your body to look its best in the colder months.

The female jumper accentuates the chest, while minimising the stomach, creating a more pronounced curve. The men’s jumper widens the chest and thickens the arms, while reducing the look of the stomach, creating the classic triangular shape.

Finally, a few notes on what's in this season:

Breathing through the nose.
Extending the "ur" sound in the word "purple".
Talking about the Can-Can.
Making associations between totally foreign objects.
Cheese as a promotional item.
The Welsh.
Post-Modernism in Magazines

And what's out:

Breathing foreign objects
Making associations between the Can-Can and Post-Modernism
Purple Nose
Extending the "ur" sound in the word "cheese".
The Welsh in magazines

And a final thought on being a hospitable host or hostess: Don't give people the Plague. It's so 1666.

And with that, you're up to speed...

2003-12-21T10:53:00.000+10:00

In the hopes of saving people from Christmas heartache, I would like to pass on some information that may be useful to others in this festive time.

People should be made aware that messing with Christmas tradition can be harmful to your health and the health of others.

One tradition that is a very common occurrence these days is the hanging of the Christmas Wreath on the door of your house.

By creating an inviting door, you can create the illusion of an inviting house behind it, and thus the Christmas tradition of sweeping all problems under the rug for the festive season is continued.

The thing about Christmas traditions is that they didn't become Christmas tradition by people just screwing around with it hither and yon. Christmas traditions must be followed to the letter. Muck with them and they will come back to haunt you threefold. Read my words: Don't muck with Christmas traditions.

Several years ago, I was bedecking the halls with dried tinsel moose skins and decided that what my abode really needed was some decorative addition to my front door.

So off to the Christmas shop, the hastily titled Hall's Bells, I go to pick up a dainty Christmas Wreath for my knob.

Snigger if you must.
I must, so give me a sec.

OK, snigger if you must, but little did I know how important my decision to buy a Christmas Wreath really was, and I came unstuck when the Wreath bin was found to be empty, Ms Hubbard-style, and I was forced to make a decision: leave my front knob unwreathed (heh heh) or choose an item as a replacement.

And so instead of decorating my front stoop with a Christmas Wreath, I chose to decorate with what I thought was the next best thing:

A Christmas Wraith.

Well, was that a bad idea? Yes, the answer you are looking for is yes.

While Dickens may find the appearance of ghostly apparitions at Christmas both entertaining and highly metaphorical, the carollers that turned up on my doorstep weren't quite as thrilled to see a ten-foot grusome skeletoid netherbeast, dressed in a tatty cowl and threadbare robes, rattling chains in front of their faces and beckoning them to their doom.

And less said about the postie the better.

And I didn't do very well at all in the Street Decoration Competition: three judges dead and seven onlookers in hospital. And I only came third.

After about a month I'd had enough. Sweeping the inwards of rosy-cheeked children off my stoop is one thing, but risking my life everytime I went down the shop for the paper is another. I had to throw gold rings into the garden and bolt for the door when he went scampering after them.

So in short,
Christmas Wreath: festive decoration for the front door.
Christmas Wraith: ghostly demonic hellspawn that enjoys shrieking and disbowelling. At Christmas.

Just because they are almost spelt the same, doesn't mean they are even remotely similar.

You'd think I would have learned my lesson after that whole fiasco with the Easter Rabbi...

2003-12-08T14:34:00.000+10:00

Has it really been a year since I told you all the heart-breaking story of the tinsel moose?

Well, I think it's time that we stopped and had a good hard think about the real meaning of Christmas. It's time you thought about someone else instead of yourselves. It's time you thought about Billy.

You see, Billy has had a hard life. He was born in an alleyway, with a stray cat as a midwife, to a drug-addicted prostitute, who then left him in a bin, to be found by a pack of foraging dogs, who took him in and raised him to the age of two. They taught how to raid bins for food, bark at nothing and sniff butts. While marking his territory around a butcher shop, he was found by welfare workers and put into an orphanage, never to see his canine mother again.

The orphanage was a cruel, cold place. Unable to speak, Billy cowered in the corner of the bunkroom at night. Finally, Billy was adopted by a family of sea folk, who put him to work on their boat, struggling with the heavy nets full of smelly fish and pointy crustaceans, sea salt rubbing into his blistered hands, seagulls pooping on his sunburnt head.

After seven years, Billy ran away from the boating family, living in trees for six months, eating nuts and berries and drinking water from a polluted stream. His best friend was a piece of sponge he found in one of the fishing nets, stuffed inside an old boot.

Billy and Spongeboot travelled north into the harsh realm of the outback, with deadly snakes and pointy spinifex, until they came across an open-cut mining project just outside Alice Springs, where Billy took up a job checking odd bits of rock for stuff, using a pickaxe and some sulphuric acid. After 18 months, Billy's arms were nothing more than stumps protruding out of his potato sack shirt.

The final straw for Billy was when Spongeboot ran off with a doctor who promised to make him into a real shoe.

Billy went on a rampage, drinking alcohol-related liquids, knocking things over with his stumps and cursing. He stole a truck and crashed it into a pylon, causing the open-cut mine to explode. Charged with public indecency, he was thrown into jail, where he now resides, serving the remainder of his 212-year sentence for malicious wounding of an open-cut mine.

But it doesn't have to be this way...

At this special time of the year, when everybody's thoughts are about presents and giving and receiving of said presents, and gifts and receipts, and return of gifts you didn't want, and those free gift-wrapping counters at the shopping centre, they never do a good job do they, and how do you get that curl in the end of the ribbons, and so on, it's about time we thought about giving to someone else, rather than the someone else you're giving to already.

It doesn't take much: some spare change, a couple of coins, some folding if you got it, cheques work for me, electronic banking is even better.

With your help, we can make the world a little brighter this Christmas. All of your donations will go into the official A Nada World Charity Drive.

But how will my donation help, I hear you ask?

It's very simple: All money raised in the official A Nada World Charity Drive will be used to ENSURE that no-one will have to listen to the depressing story about Billy again. All the money will go towards stopping anyone from even mentioning that guy's name at all on this website. Forget him completely. No longer will anyone have to listen to his namby-pamby, cry-baby story about his hard life and his stumps-for-arms.

And surely, isn't that what we all want for Christmas? the opportunity to get pissed, rip into some presents, and fall asleep in a kiddie pool in your undies, without having to listen to some sad-sack story about someone who has had it tough.

We're not asking for millions, all we're asking for is enough to stop having to listen to Billy's unfortunate life story.

Please give generously. With your help, we'll never have to listen to stories like Billy's again...

Now wouldn't that make everybody's Christmas just that little bit brighter?

Well, everyone except Billy of course...

2003-12-07T20:24:00.000+10:00

As many people would know, I'm not impressed by much. I rarely take delight in the minutia of life, or even the word minutia .

To prove my point, I'm going to be completely underwhelmed about my new ice blocks.

You see, in my travels through the supermarket, I came across a new type of bag from Glad, makers of things made of plastic to put over other things.

These new ice bags replace your regular, common or garden ice cube trays. You pour water into them, seal them, then bung them into the freezer. Give it a bit of time and pKow! Ice blocks.

OK, continuing to be underwhelmed so far.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to explain the concept of freezing water in little pockets to produce ice cubes, and anyway, what's a rocket scientist doing wasting their time talking about ice cubes when there are more important things to think about, like where the cool fins go.

So why am I still writing about a plastic bag full of frozen water?

Because of the smarts that have gone into this ice block bag. For example, after you have filled it with water, to seal it, you just turn it over. The bag has a very simple self-sealing mechanism, which works exceptionally well. Basically, when turned over, water fills sacks on either side of the opening, effectively sealing it.

It is a simple idea but it works, and it doesn't require extra parts to be incorporated into the design of the bag.

Another cool idea is once the water is frozen (how you say... it is ice?) you can either snap off each piece separately, in its own little plastic parcel, or, by pulling the sides of the bag, you can snap the partitions between the blocks and come up with a bag full of ice blocks. Very smart.

So in my humble opinion, it's really cool, and since I'm not a rocket scientist (and know nothing about fin placement), I will just give it two thumbs up.

And I like the thought that someone thought it through: how to reinvent/replace the regular icetray, how to design the bag to seal itself, manufacturing the bag to allow for single packets or whole bags. Three cheers for smarts!

That's about all I have to say about frozen ice for the moment.

2003-12-07T20:06:00.000+10:00

Hey everybody!

My new toothbrush rocks!

No longer the dull uninteresting brush for my toothypegs, no sirree!

These teeth of mine are now tripping the paste fantastic with the coolest of the cool toothbushes.

Think I'm kidding? Check it out!

I'm not mucking about with just one set type of bristle, not even two or three. I'm talking FOUR DIFFERENT TYPES OF BRISTLE!! Some blue ones on the outside, followed by two lines of long white bristles, and in the middle two rows of backward-angled bristles interspersed with two rows of forward-angled bristles. One angle is blue, the other is yellow. I'm not sure which is which, and it doesn't matter. What matters is that I now have FOUR TYPES OF BRISTLES cleaning my teeth.

OK, so the head is looking pretty cool huh? But hold on, check it out: it's got highlighter-green/yellow bits! And they're curvy! There's a grip on the front and the back is the same cool stuff.

Want more? Sadist! Meanwhile, the handle is SEE-THROUGH baby! Blue AND see-through! You can see through it, and whatever you can see is tinted blue in colour! Tasty!

Is that it? Mostly, and no.

On top of all the cool stuff that is on my toothbrush are other little touches and flourishes that make it look more like a particularly long and groovy car and less like a stick for cleaning pieces of food from the mouth.

Like little stripes at the neck, circles on the shoulders, and some little growths on the ankles.

Bring this all together and what do you get? Well, you get my toothbrush, and it rocks.

ROCK N ROLL TOOTHBRUSH!!!

Ok, that's enough then...

2003-11-19T08:57:00.000+10:00

I have a reputation for putting my foot in it, saying the exact wrong thing at the worst possible time.

All lies, of course, but you need a reputation for something, and it could be worse. I could have a reputation for gargling in social situations. Or being Swiss.

And in the end, it's all about interpretation and context, and usually mine doesn't link up with other peoples. So who's right?

Case in point:

When I was in high school, I played cricket for the school with a guy called Alastair Jones, who was a year above me. Alastair was your standard tall, weedy, red-haired, over-freckled kid, obviously some UK-based genes somewhere in there. Anyway, I couldn't really tell you anything more about Alastair. He was an ordinary guy, he hung in a group of guys who played sports, although he always came across as the guy most likely to "snap in half", rather than "deliver the pain".

A year or two later I was living in Perth, going to university in an ill-advised bid for a journalism degree. I went around to visit some friends at St Thomas More College, a residential college across the road from University of Western Australia, and while I was walking through the grounds with some friends, I came across Alastair. He was recognisably Alastair: same red hair, same over-freckled features. However, in the intervening years, he had stocked up, added beef, something about him seemed more matured, like a cheese, but with beef. A beef-cheese if you will.

Either way, he wasn’t the weedy little bloke I remembered from school, so I said (roughly remembered):

"Jeez, Alastair, you've filled out. How are ya?"

The response was a startled gasp from everyone present and a stunned hand shake from Alastair.

After a short conversation, we went our separate ways and I was told that I can't go around saying that sort of thing to people.

"Why not," I said, "he looked good!"

Despite them explaining something about "etiquette", which I then had to go look up, I still didn't understand.

You see, in my mind, I had given the guy a compliment, yet everyone else (possibly included Alastair) didn't have the same context as I did, so to the untrained eye, I just called a guy a fat fuck.

So who's right?

Well, it's me, innit, you stupid dolts.

Who's blog did you think this was?

The end.

2003-11-03T11:41:00.000+10:00

It seems that calling the dog Freo is surprisingly apt.

I mean, at first he was a novelty, then he was frustrating. Now, he's a mix of confusing and funny.

Just like the Dockers.

He will look at you when you say his name, but he won't come unless he's interested in what you've got. He knows to poo in the garden, but he'll piss anywhere. We bought him an activity ball that drops treats out of the side when he plays with it, he's running around with the pooper scooper in his mouth, whacking chairs.

I'm sure there's something going on down there in his slightly-too-big-for-his-body head, but I have no idea what it is.

Is this what all puppies do?

It has taken the Dockers several years to get to where they are now: a fair-to-middling football team, and it will probably be a couple more years before they compete for a flag, let alone win one.

Which makes me wonder what our dog is going to be like down the track. What exactly is the dog equivalent of winning a premiership?

I'm really hoping that we're talking dog years, because I don't wanna wait for ten years before Freo starts acting like a fair-to-middling dog.

It's unfortunate for him that he's taken after me: short attention span, attention-seeker, easily swayed by treats.

On the other hand, we're both cute, so that's a plus.

2003-10-29T09:51:00.000+10:00

Factoid regularly repeated on the net:
"The average human eats eight spiders in their lifetime at night."

Creepy, innit?

Think about it for a second: an average person eats eight spiders in their lifetime at night.

Firstly, I don't even know how they can up with this number. How you do collect the data?

Secondly, if that's an average, then logically there are numbers of people on either side, and I hope for your sake that you are on the lower side.

Which means that for every person under eight spiders a lifetime, there could be someone who eats more than eight spiders in a lifetime.

So, possibly, for every person who only eats two spiders in their lifetime, there is someone who eats 14.

Alternatively, there could be one person who is somnabulistically voracious when it comes to spiders. Thus, there may be twenty people who eat only three spiders at night during their lifetime, but they are balanced out by that one person who eats over a hundred in their lifetime.

Ewwwww...

I take it snorers eat more than non snorers, mouth open and all, although they didn't say anything about spiders entering the nose and accidentally getting eaten.

Heavy sleepers probably fare worse than light sleepers, who would wake at the touch of a spider's bristly legs on the corner of their mouth.

Meanwhile, the results could be skewed by someone eating a female spider that is carrying a brood of baby spiders on her back. Does that count as one spider, or three dozen little soft sticky baby spiders skittering around inside your mouth and down your throat while you sleep?

Are you creeped out yet?

OK, I think I'll stop now, before I start talking about waking up in the middle of the night and feeling something stepping across your tongue...

2003-10-29T09:50:00.000+10:00

I'm slightly in awe of anyone who can get up early in the morning. Anyone who can constantly wake up with time to spare before work.

Not me.

I am not a morning person. I set my alarm for 7.33am, hit the snooze at 7.33am, 7.42am, 7.51am and occasionally 8.00am, get up, have a shower and get out the door just after 8.30am to arrive at work by 9.00am. Approximately.

Very occasionally, I will get up early for a particular reason. After the sleepiness fades away, there is the stunned displacement of being in the right place in the wrong time. Outside, the air feels wrong, or the the wind isn't working, or something. Usually, everything's colder, but it's a energetic chill, like the lightning bolt of diving into icy water.

There's a blueness about everything, like Romper Stomper without the skinheads.

Could I do it everyday? Not bloody likely. On the occasion I do get up early, I'm usually knackered by about 2pm, vowing to never get up early again. And maybe it's a good thing, because if everyday was unnormal, then what would normal be?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......................

2003-10-27T16:36:00.000+10:00

GO FREO... THE CALM

There are few things in life that elicit unwanted advice than getting a pet. I expect how to raise a child would be up there, but at least with that you don't have to choose what breed your child is.

Jen and I have decided to get a puppy. Originally we were going to get two puppies, because I was loathe to leave a single animal alone in a yard during the day with no-one to play with.

Unfortunately, our backyard isn't big enough for two dogs, so we settled on a puppy and a kitten, because they can keep each other company and I've always been intrigued as to how a puppy and a kitten would rub off on each other.

Which leads to my other concern: am I getting pets because I want pets, or am I getting them so I can conduct weird social experiments on them?

I've always grown up with cats. They've always been around, occasionally being interested in humans, usually just bearing their existance. We had a dog when I was a small child, but I don't remember it. All I have are photos of me as a small blonde curly-haired cherub with a dog in the background which apparently lived at our house.

Whenever I asked Mum and Dad about our dog, they would explain how the mean kids in Kojonup used to throw sticks and stuff at our dog, until one day it ran away.

When they finally told me the truth, that our dog had bitten the postman, and others, and had been put down, I was mortified. It was bad enough that the poor dog was put down, and that my childhood fantasies of my dog travelling around the countryside, Huck Finn style, were pure fabrications. What was worse was that I found out in my mid-twenties. For 20 years I believed a lie, what else had my parents not told me?

Can ya tell I'm bitter?

Anyway, since then we've always had cats, so it seems as good a time as any to finally get a dog of my very own. Well, a dog of our own, since it will be half Jen's dog as well. She can have the back half.

Ever since I've told people we're getting a dog, there's been a constant stream of advice and hints on what to do with it. Don't let it out of your sight, Don't berate it when it poos in the wrong spot, don't dress it up like a doll, don't draw numbers on its back and race it against other animals... and so on.

Treat it like a member of the family, don't let it have it have the run of the house. Give it toys. Don't give it too many toys. Let it play with other animals. Don't let it play with unclean animals. Don't attach it to electrodes.

Make your area puppy-safe. Give it positive feedback when it poos in the right place. Rub its tummy to assert dominance. Don't give it anything you don't want it to eat. Earrings on dogs aren't cool.

Collected advice on cats?

Ginger cats grow real big.

Male cats piss everywhere.

I'm starting to understand why we always had a cat. They are relatively self-sufficient and therefore don't need as much assistance in staying alive as dogs.

Still, I'm looking forward to getting a dog. Not because I want a more interactive toy, not because I need a subject for scientific experiments, not because I'm practicing for a child (ala "If I break the dog, I'm not ready for kids"). I'm not getting a dog for all the reasons that people have been telling me I'm getting a dog for.

I'm looking forward to getting a dog because... I want a dog.

And if I hear the phrase "child substitute" one more time...

GO FREO... THE STORM

Anyone want a puppy?

GO FREO... UPDATE

So anyway, we picked up the puppy, after some confusion if it was (a) male nd (b) chocolate (coloured, not made of chocolate. I'm not having a dog that melts in the sun. That's just stupid. And especially not a male one, because I don't like chocolate with nuts).

I held him in a box on my lap on the way home, and we ran through the list of names we could use.

The dog's name is Freo, not that he knows. Like the football team, only this one has no ball-handling skills. Quite apt really.

So, roughly 48 hours down the track, I've spent some time with and without Freo. The bits with have been... well the bits without have been decidedly peaceful.

The problem with puppies is that I have absolutely no idea what they do. As I have no experience with dogs, I couldn't tell you whether it is supposed to yelp and whine and howl and bitch like a motherfucker for 48 hours straight. It, however, does anyway.

OK, not straight. The times when we are paying all our attention to it, it's fine. It only whines a bit.

All the other times it whines. Unless it's alseep. Then it just whimpers.

Is that what they do?

OK, so I haven't bonded with the dog yet. It has successfully avoided responding to its name. Just when I think that I'm going to be impressed, something happens to disappoint me.

That's Freo for you.

2003-10-23T12:02:00.000+10:00

Do your bit for those who do their bit.

Charity by Proxy

2003-10-17T14:26:00.000+10:00

Kill God, Volume One.

There's a lot to be said for faith. The catholic church is built on it. Faith in the existance of God. Faith in the understanding that God is the New Testament rather than Original Flavour God. Faith that there is an afterlife, and that we don't just... stop.

And it's a pretty good thing too, because if we had evidence that God actually existed, then the first thing we would do is try to kill Him.

Because, let's face it, that's what we do.

Look at the atom. First we find out what it is, then we smash it.

Look at the Aztecs. First Western Civilisation finds them, then they wipe them out.

Look at the internet. First we discover it, then we trash it, so it's full of spam, crap, bumph and pop-ups.

And if you think I'm casting my net a little wide, how about this: What would we do if we discovered aliens?

That's right, we'd try and kill'em.

Because, let's face it, that's what we do.

Give us evidence of life on other planets, and man's first thought isn't "Hmmm, let's make harmonious contact with our brother life-forms and share ideas.", it's "...gonna smash'em...".

If an alien race came to Earth with technology advanced as our own, we'd probably shake their hands (or something similar) and say "Let's talk", while at the same time sneaking around the back to steal their futuristic hubcaps.

If they arrived with superior technology, we'd freak out and try to blow them up, because frankly, aliens shouldn't be going around with that sort of machinery and not expect us to take a potshot. No sirrrreeee!

Which leads us to war, which leads us to God, eventually.

So, God has got a pretty sweet deal, because he has a system of belief that actually requires him to not manifest to his followers.

And this guarantees his survival in the cut-thrust world of International Deities, amongst the messiahs and the crackpots, because you give us one iota of proof, one single skerrick of evidence, and we're coming after you, God.

Because, let's face it, that's what we do.

Discuss...

2003-10-15T17:18:00.000+10:00

Here at A Nada World, we pride ourselves on being just that little bit more cultured than those other tossers. To that end, we look to provide our readers with items that broaden the mind, give our readers the edge, be it in the boardroom, the backroom or the bedroom.

Of course this notch above doesn't come without a price. It's an unfortunate aspect of the web that nothing is free, and if there is anything free, it's usually just the idiotic rambling of nutters with more time than sense. And some crappy clip art.

Other than that, everything costs money. Because of this, I've needed to hunt around for sponsors in order to produce items of interest and knowledge a cut above the rest.

So I am very proud to introduce a new segment on the A Nada World website, something that expands the boundaries of what we do here. Whatever that means. And at the same time, I'd like to welcome our new sponsor to A Nada World, and I look forward to a long and enlightening partnership.

Some readers may be concerned that by introducing a commercial aspect to this website may skew the information contained, cash for comments as it were. Well, let me put you at ease right now: No commercial entity will ever affect or alter the content of A Nada World. No censorship will be invoked at the behest of a sponsor, and no information will be incorrectly delivered to present the sponsor in a more favourable light. OK, maybe some.

And with that, we present:

Selections from

The Karma Sutra

2003-10-14T10:03:00.000+10:00

I was down the shops the other day and passed through the fruit and veg section. On my way I happen to notice some new signage scattered throughout, to catch the attention of shoppers and maybe interest them in the purchase of some fruity ingestibles.

I applaud anyone who finds a new and novel way to entice people to buy things, but I feel that maybe the Fruit and Vegetable Corporation (if that is what they're called, probably not, and who rightly cares?) could have been a little more thoughtful in the planning of their new promotional strategy.

It starts off well, aiming the spotlight firmly on the kiddies.
Kids love gross things, so these should appeal. Children will always be a soft market for advertisers, and an easy way to get through to the parents, and if the kids are eating their veggies, who's going to complain?

Although I think maybe this one goes a little too far.

And this one is just plain strange.

One for anyone who loves a mystery.

I think this one probably misses the mark by a couple of years.

And this is plain misleading.

But my biggest concerns are the message behind this promotion, and this one, which I think target the singles audience.

Let's hope this promotion doesn't reach the meat section.

2003-10-14T09:55:00.000+10:00

Shall we just agree that I had a brilliant holiday to Tokyo, New York and Florida and move on?

I've been trying to put together a little presentation on the trip, but in the process I've been holding everything else up.

So here's the deal: I continue like nothing has happened, and you can hope in your little heart of hearts that I get around to finishing my presentation entitled "What I Did On My Winter Vacation".

Suffice to say I could have stayed in any of the destinations for at least another week and still not seen anything.

Fingers crossed.

2003-09-02T12:08:00.000+10:00

You must excuse me if you don't hear from me for a bit. I'm in New York. You know, you follow a white rabbit into a hole and look where you end up...

I've just spent several days in Tokyo, seeing things from a skewed caucasian perspective. Now Jen and I are in the Big Apple (that's New York to some), enjoying soggy skies and increasingly artificially-flavoured food. We've got a couple of days here, before driving down to Florida.

Should be an adventure. Hope nothing untoward happens...

Meanwhile, I've still got a TAFE assignment to finish by Saturday. Somehow.

So, don't expect too much and you won't be let down.

I'm sure when I get back to normality in a bit you'll hear alllllllllll about it.

2003-08-18T11:52:00.000+10:00

----::---- WE BREAK FOR A NADA UPDATE ----::----

The Thunderbolt, the concussion-inducing roller coaster at Dreamworld, has been closed, and is awaiting demolition.

Huzzah!

(See blog detailing my 30th birthday weekend at Dreamworld in March 2003 ( <-- look left for archives) for more details.)

----::---- THIS CONCLUDES A NADA UPDATE ----::----

2003-08-16T12:16:00.000+10:00

I've just found out that the comments at the end of the blogs are reading zero, despite there being comments there.

It's a like a lucky dip! For the sad!

Will endeavour to sort that out.

2003-08-16T01:03:00.000+10:00

The Vatican has uploaded a site that lets people view a virtual version of the Sistine Chapel, the famous panorama painted by Michelangelo almost 500 years ago.

Just a cut from the news article on theage.com.au:

"Now, at the click of a mouse, they will be able to zoom up to the recently restored ceiling, under which the painter spent endless months between 1508 and 1512."

BTW: If they were the months between 1508 and 1512, how can they be endless?

Tautologies aside, it is interesting to note that the internet is becoming an increasingly rich historical and research tool.

a couple of months ago, Einstein's working notes were published online for everyone to see. Which didn't help many people around the world, considered it was all written in German or Swiss or something.

Now, the Sistine Chapel, in all it's partially restored glory can be seen online.

It makes me wonder: what would it been like if the internet was around 500 years ago? Would Michelangelo have kept a blog and updated it everyday, talking about his latest piece of work ("Today I touched up Ezekiel. LOL :D"), or maybe a portfolio of his sketches as he worked.

And with that truly specious basis, I decided to look for other famous people's websites...

It shouldn't come as any great surprise that Nostradamus has a website; he's always been quite the forward thinker.

It doesn't take a genius to put together a webpage. In fact, just become you are a genius, doesn't mean you can use FrontPage.

Not surprisingly, here's the homepage of Casanova.

Meanwhile, Sigmund Freud's page is here.

Here's Moses' site. Methinks he's going with a bit of a theme here, possibly watersports perhaps?

I tried the webpage of Helen Keller, didn't have much luck.

Piet Mondrian's site comes as no great surprise. Nice use of frames though.

I also found the homepage of Leonard Cohen.

Finally, to those people who are wondering, yes, I found Jesus Christ's webpage. And no, I can't show it. It's looks all right in Netscape, but the formatting is all out in Internet Explorer.

I guess it's not cross-compatible.

Why yes, I am going to Hell, why do you ask?

2003-08-10T18:11:00.000+10:00

It’s been blowing a frigging gale in Melbourne recently, up the corridors of the CBD. There’s plenty of wind at street level, so it must be pretty windy up top.

What I want to know is this: why don’t they put wind power generators on the top or buildings to generate power for the building? Surely it’s pretty windy up there most of the time. You could supply some of the building’s power needs with one of those things, and the days it doesn’t blow: that’s what mains power is for. But when the wind blows, that’s good electricity-making power going to waste, that is. Stick a battery downstairs and you’ve got the opportunity to save a bundle on your power bill.

So why not?

Well for one, it’s supposedly noisy as well.

Who would have thought wind would be that loud?

But seriously folks, those propellers make a lot of noise. If you worked in the top floors, there would be a constant hum in the background that would either lull you to sleep or kickstart a psychotic episode.

The other problem is that the wind is neither constant nor from the one direction, which means that the power will be fluctuating more than the fortunes of the West Coast Eagles (particularly naff display of football last week from the boys in the blue and gold).

And to get building owners interested in sticking a turbine on top of their building, it would need to be relatively inexpensive, produce a decent amount of power and not require people going up-top to handle continual maintenance.

So, silent propeller, that runs in both high wind and dead squalls, will produce enough power to run an entire building and requires no maintenance.

How hard can it be to get energy from thin air?

2003-08-03T18:14:00.000+10:00

It's finally become apparent to me what I've been doing wrong.

All this time I've been buying books to read, when I should have been offering my services as a book reviewer.

Book reviewers get sent tons upon tons of books, through which they can pick and chose the ones they want to read and discard the rest, supplying some poor orphans with a substitute for firewood for a year, or possibly giving to their relatives for Christmas.

The best thing about being a book reviewer is that people actually listen to what book reviewers say, rather than some guy who's got a website and a belly full of angry bees who talks crap about stuff and things. Call yourself a reviewer and suddenly all the spite, pith, vinegar and somesuch actually has merit, to point where you can make words up, like "unputdownable" (can you tell I’m still not over that?).

So, I officially declare my availability as a book reviewer. Send me any book and you'll receive a review about it. Be it big or small, fiction or non-fiction, long words or large print, send me a book and I'll tell the world what I thought about it.

I’ll show that you don’t have to have finished an English degree to dismiss someone else’s hard work.

No Trixie Beldens allowed.

2003-08-01T16:25:00.000+10:00

"ALA PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICHES!!!"

I've been in the position of going out for dinner at restaurants more often lately, particularly down Lygon Street in Carlton, which hosts a long line of restaurants catering to every taste: Italian, Thai, Italian, Nepalese, Italian, Greek, Italian, the list goes on. and Italian.

I've dined at a couple, and frankly the food and the service are all pretty good, I can't complain about that. But (and I'm sure everyone saw a but coming there - I don't blog much about stuff I think is really OK) one of the things that really shits me about Lygon Street are the restaurant spruikers.

I don't give a crap about it being a part of the heritage of Lygon St, or that that's just the way it's been for years, restaurant spruikers shit me.

"Goodev'ninsirnmad'm.
Wouldyouliket'hevalookattaomenu.
Wehevatebblerighteerforyou."

All in under three seconds. That beats the Macdonald's chant, and without the "picklesonionsonasesameseedbun."

(Sidenote: they've changed the MacDonald's chant, so now it's more detailed about the ingredients that go into it, including "cheese made with cheddar". So they've made their cheese out of other cheese? And what else has gone into the cheese, apart from other cheese?)

As soon as I come in contact with restaurant spruikers it puts me off that particular restaurant, the same way I get put off by spruikers in the front of fruit stalls at the markets or guys in front of strip clubs. I don't want some guy yelling in my ear, I just want to check out the melons.

So why do they do it? Why do they have these guys out the front of their restaurants chasing customers off with feigned delight at men's dress sense and lewd comments about women? Does anyone respond by suddenly swivelling around and entering the restaurant?

Would you change your mind about eating at an establishment because a fat guy in a suit got in your way as you were walking past and told you that your suit looked very nice and have you seen this menu here, right in front of your eyes?

Give me a bit of credit. Not only can I read words on a page describing food, I also know what I look like in the clothes I am wearing. I don't need a total stranger to tell me these things.

Alternatively, if there isn't a guy spruiking out the front of a particular restaurant, why would I notice it amongst all the other restaurants along Lygon St?

So here's the dilemma: I'm a restaurant owner along Lygon St. I am sandwiched between two other similar restaurants on either side, let's say for the sake of the argument, there's an Italian restaurant on one side, and on the other side... hmm, let's see, an Italian restaurant.

What's going to make me stand out from the other two restaurants in a good, spruiker-free, way?

We all have similar food and similar service. So what's going to make people want to come into my restaurant and not my neighbours?

In a word: animal magic tricks.
You wanna get me into your restaurant, have puppies that disappear into hats and come out as doves.

You want my business, you better find some juggling monkeys who explode and turn into handfuls of glitter.

You want me to peruse your menu, give me a babe in a sequined bikini and feather in her hair who miraculously turns into a gorilla... in a sequined bikini and feather in its hair.

You've already got the guy out the front in the gorilla suit, so you're halfway there!

At least this way some of the people might stick around to see what happens next, and just as long as you use only cute animals, you shouldn't have too many problems, except from the Hygiene Squad maybe.

Sounds like a stupid idea? Well, yes, it's a stupid idea.

But so is having a guy out front scaring your customers off.

"POOOF!"

2003-07-15T15:43:00.000+10:00

You know I'm a big fan of automation and cool gadgets, things that make life a little sweeter, easier, cooler or neater, right?

I stopped off at a service station over the weekend to put air in the car tyres. Thye had their little air pump stall set up off to one side of the car park, seemed normal enough.

But when I jumped out of the car and grabbed the air hose, I noticed that the nozzle section was missing, as in the foot long bit with the gauge and the handle that you press and it makes the air go PSSSSSSSSST!. Fair enough, I thought, they must keep it in the store so it doesn't get nicked.

However, just before I left to go into the shop, I noticed that the stall the hose was connected to had a little LCD screen with a pressure gauge on it. After reading the instruction, I realised that the air pump was now automated, so all you had to do was connect the hose to the tyre, key in your desired air pressure, and it will do all the work for you.

So I set the pressure on the screen, unscrewed the tyre valve cap, connected the air hose and waited.

The hose blew several jets on air into my tyre, until it reached the optimum pressure, then the stall beeped at me. I unclipped the air hose and screwed the valve cap on. Done. Next. Done.

Done and done. And I was done.

Now as much as I was happy that my tyres were now at optimum pressure, I was a bit saddened by the whole experience, because I didn't get to make the air go PSSSSSSSSSSST!

I didn't get to grab the air hose and press the handle and make the air go PSSSSSSSSST!

There's a simple pleasure in making air go PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSST! Just ask anyone who thinks that farts are funny.

But it also applies to air hoses. You never just connected up the air hose and pumped up your tyres. You always had a press of the handle and made the air go PSSSSSSSSSSST! It's as natural as giving a drill a test burst whe you pick it up. ZIIIIIZZZZZZZZZ! You made the air hiss, you're in control. You have the power.

Now, sadly, you no longer have the power. You don't make the air go PSSSSSSST! It's simply a by-product of an automated function. The air makes it's own rules now.

Sadly, the human element is sapped out of another experience by the power of automation.

Damn you Progress! DAMN YOU!

2003-07-02T10:27:00.000+10:00

And now here's my recipe for the movie HULK:

(spoilers may be present, if you don't want to know what happens, turn your computer off, put it back in the box, tape the box up, sit down and stare at the wall for several hours instead.Dont say I didn't give you an option.)

Bruce Banner is the son of David Banner, genetic scientist, who is working for the US army on regenerative tissue. When his research is threatened, he injects himself with some genetic stuff as a human guinea pig. Soon after, his wife gets pregnant, so he has passed it onto his unborn son. Rather than killing his own son, who begins to display bizarre symptoms, instead he accidentally kills his wife and is dragged away by the army cops. Little Bruce and fostered away and 30 years later is a genetic scientist, just like the dad he never knew.

Zzzzzzzzz

During an experiment, Bruce gets bombarded with gamma radiation, which turns something on inside of him and then, whenever he gets angry, he turns into this green monolith, which gets bigger and bigger the madder he gets.

Cool.

Meanwhile his dad turns up again to hassle him out.

Zzzzz

So Bruce gets angry and smashes stuff.

Coool.

Meanwhile…

Zzzzzzzz

But then....

Cool!

Sadly…

Zzzzzz

…so he gets mad....

Cool!

And so on.

Mix for 2 hours or so and serve.

Add neat art direction to taste.

2003-06-11T17:00:00.000+10:00

I didn't think it was possible to get two tunes stuck in your head at the same time, and yet, I'm thinking the Darth Vader theme while whistling the theme from "Man About the House".

Now doesn't that paint an interesting picture??? *

*The answer is no, it doesn't.

2003-06-03T11:20:00.000+10:00

Upon watching "Return of the Jedi" over the weekend, it occurred to me that there really wasn't much chance of Darth Vader NOT dying at the end of the movie.

Yes, yes, I realise that the movie needed closure, and that it's not right if the lead villain, even if they have a sudden change of heart, doesn't die, occasionally through some noble act of self-sacrifice, but I'm talking about it on another level.

I'm talking about a personal level.

What if Darth Vader had lived? What would have happened to the once Great Lord of the Dark Side if he hadn't had that asthma attack at the end and carked it?

Well, it would have been all bad really. For a start, Christmas time would have been a bitch.

Ten years on from the destruction of the second Death Star, and everybody's over at Han and Leia's place for Christmas. Luke and his brood have rocked up, and the kids are out back getting horsey rides from Uncle Chewbacca. Lando and Han are gabbing on about past escapades, and Luke and Wedge are out front admiring Luke's new speeder.

Meanwhile, someone points out the guy sitting forlornly in the corner.

"Oh that's Grandpa Vader, he's Luke and Leia's dad. We don't see him much, except Christmas, and occasionally Easter. He's a bit creepy, worked for the Evil Empire, until he was bundled out during that whole "Endor Incident". Never been the same since I hear."

It would be like that uncle that turns up at Christmas who doesn't speak English, and sits in the corner mumbling to himself and occasionally making crab-hands at the littlest kids.

And what to do with the black duds, huh? He couldn't go around wearing the old black helmet and cape. He'd freak people out wherever he went. And just swapping over to white's not going to do it either. An all-white helmet, armour and cape? He'd look like a Lemonade Dark Lord popsicle.

Behold! Milk Chocolate Vader!

So, ultimately, Darth didn't really have a chance in the Star Wars universe. Let's face it, no-one would take him seriously. When Luke unclips his helmet and we get to see our first (pre-prequel) glimpse of the man under the mask, all I could think of was “Humpty Dumpty”. Some bulbous pasty-white bald head of a man.

Once they saw that, no-one is going to treat him with respect.

Forget the whole pure evil and fearing nothing - the New Vader would be wandering around, ever-wary of people carrying spoons.

And you can forget stormtroopers - the only armed forces this guy is leading would be leading is a squad of toast soldiers.

Poor old Grampa Skywalker...

2003-05-27T09:48:00.000+10:00

And now it's time for the "A Nada World" mailbag segment...

We get lots of mail sent to the ANadaEmail address at the top of the page, and it's nice to see that people still take the time to jot down their questions and post them off to us.

For example, here's a letter from John Anderson, from cashcow.com, who writes:

"Make Money Fast!!!! What are you waiting for?????"

Thanks for your letter John. Well, John, you ask a very simple question, but the answer is a lot more involved. Like everybody in the capitalist society we live in, I indeed would like to make more money, and particularly, fast. So what, as you say, am I waiting for?

Well, I believe that while money can help to make life more enjoyable, it is not in fact the be-all and end-all. Making money will solve the short-term problems such as the accumulation of property and wealth, but will it save the Amazon from being destroyed, or saving the endangered fairy penguins of Kartoum?

Of course it will. Throw enough money at the problem and it will go away.

But what about the soul, John? What about intellectual fufillment, or the love of a good woman, or even several bad women? What about these things, John? Will making money fast make the moral dilemmas of life that much easier to decide?

So, to answer your question John, I'm waiting for the time to come when I can use my abilities, as a writer, artist, designer, musician or possibly devil-may-care flying fool, to make a difference in this world, and if I can make a bit of money out of it on the side, all the better.

Now, let's move on to the next letter, from Marci, who writes:

"Wanna bigger penis?"

Hi, Marci. Thanks for your charming letter. Usually, I wouldn't discuss such frankly personal topics on this website, but I'll make an exception just this once.

It may surprise a lot of women out there, but would you believe that a majority of men would like to have a bigger penis? It's true!

Men have traditionally linked the size of their penis to their level of masculinity, therefore, the bigger the penis, the more manly the man. Scientists would scoff, explaining the link between testorone and masculinity as overriding the connection to the tackle department, but psychiatrists and psychologists would probably see the reasoning as the man's ego being cystallised by his physical form, and therefore the maleness of the man being categorised by the size of his schlong.

Say what you will about your sciency types, your Curies and Einsteins, your Hawkings and Pasteurs, they know little about love (except for Marie Curie of course, who was a firecracker in the sack). It's an inexact science, like golf, and to an ever-greater degree, federal elections. Few people can claim to understand love, and fewer of those people actually get regular action.

What men in general rely on is their attractiveness to the opposite, and occasionally the same, sex. And for men, who don't have the intimate knowledge of their close friends that women do, their understanding of attractiveness is relatively basic: women like a nice package.

However, only a few men actually realise that this "package" that women like extends beyond the toolshed, but involves the rest of their physique, the dressing of said physique, the accompaniments to that physique and general demeanour of guy who inhabits said physique. In other words, women like a guy who looks good, wears nice clothes, smells clean, has fancy things and is a nice guy.

As I said, a majority of guys don't get it, and so if you asked a guy if he could change something about himself, a large percentage of them would probably say they would like to extend the basement, rather than say less hair on their nose, or a better understanding of shoes.

So, with that in mind Marci, to answer your question: Yes, Yes I do.

Finally, our last letter comes from Candi@LoveBoxUniversity.com, who writes:

"I've made a movie. Would you like to see? cxdaegc nhtyhnfrf gsd"

Thanks for your generous offer, Candi, and good luck with the Tourette's.

Unfortunately, I've found over the years that anyone who goes to the trouble of advertising their movies without the backing a major motion picture company or even the credentials of a big name star is generally a no-talent, wannabeSpeilberg, witless hack.

Sure, there are the occasional brilliantly inspired shorts from unknown directors, who have scrimped and saved to finance their low-budget epic about two people who might possibly maybe like each other, but have issues, but generally these people are chewed up by the high-powered jaws of the movie-making machine, and spend their lives laying electrical cables on the sets of movies starring the likes of Dolph Lundgren and Nia Peeples, while dreaming of being the next Kubrick, although without the face-engulfing beard and googly eyes.

Indeed, for every movie-maker who aspires to be the next Dawson, there are a thousand filmmakers who are just that pretentious and annoying.

So, thank you for the offer Candi, but I'll pass for now. Maybe you'll have better luck with Tropfest, or even Sundance?

That's about it for the "A Nada World" mailbag, but feel free to drop me a line, because I'm soooooooooooooooooo interested in what you've got to say....

2003-05-23T10:57:00.000+10:00

I like my coffee. I'm not a rabid coffee connoisseur, but I like drinking coffee.

I drink a lot of instant coffee, which automatically cancels my subscription to "Uptown Coffee Drinkers" magazine, but frankly, who gives a rat's arse: their articles are sub-par, their typesetting is haphazard and their cover price is overstepping the boundaries of fair trading.

But enough about fictious magazines, I'm here to talk about coffee.

In particular, why I drink coffee from Starbucks.

You see, Melbourne is full of pretentious coffee snobs, and the people who serve them.

A "barista" is an accomplished coffee maker, someone who has studied the fine art of coffee making. I only learned this when the newspaper ran an article on Starbucks coming to town.

Melbourne baristas were up in arms, claiming that the introduction of the American franchise would destroy the reputation of Melbourne as a "higher class of coffee" town, or we would gain a spot on Mr Blackwell's Worst-Dressed Coffee Drinking Towns List:

"Number 6: Melbourne. If Marilyn was squatted on a peacock, she wouldn't have looked worst than this collection of neolithic grounds-sippers! Heavens to Betsy!"

Sidenote: I hate that old tool. Who the hell decided to give any credence to some old tosser who appears once a year with some list he's concocted about who's good and who's bad? I mean, Father Christmas does exactly the same thing, but no-one goes around asking his opinion on who looks hot!

...and I'm back.

So Melbourne baristas were complaining Starbucks would lower the standard of Melbourne coffee.

What's your problem, baristii? All that means is that us ignorant coffee drinkers will vacate your premises and go somewhere else, leaving you and your sycophantic poser customers to sip beverage and proclaim "Maaaaarvelous!"

And that's what it comes down to: all the customers who were putting up with so-called "maaaaaarvelous" coffee will head out and score their caffeine hit elsewhere, leaving you with a handful of customers who sit on a macciato for three hours while talking about Wim Wender's new movie.

So you baristas, with your aprons and funny hats and hot-milk-scolded hands, you don't give a fig about Melbourne's status as a high-brow coffee-consuming capital, you're just worried that your cashcows mooing in someone else's field, huh?

Ahem.

This didn't actually start off as a rant against baristas, it started as a quick blog about Starbucks. But the two are linked.

Because the truth is, I'd never had a truly enjoyable coffee in Melbourne before Starbucks opened.

Any coffee shop, restaurant, bar or place of business that I went to in Melbourne that served coffee always left a bitter taste in my mouth. And say what you like, an enjoyable coffee shouldn't be bitter.

Or have sludge in the bottom of the cup. If I want bottom of the barrel sludge, I'll call Mr Blackwell (booya!).

When I drain my cup, I don't want half a mouthful of grounds, so my next half an hour is spent rolling the sand around my mouth, wishing this bitter taste would go away. I want to enjoy my last mouthful of coffee, without having to guage where to stop drinking in case I imbibe coffee-enriched dirt.

And apparently, the optimum temperature for coffee is lukewarm. So, in other words, when you finally get your coffee and it's almost cold, you should be happy.

Piss.

Off.

Finally, and I think possibly most importantly, when I ask for a Long Black, I don't want a fucking thimble.

I don't even know what the "Long" in Long Black pertains to, but to me, it means having a coffee that isn’t battling to reach the halfway point of a cup.

And by cup, I mean those tiny recepticles that appear in most places that could barely fit a party pie.

Give me a mug. That is the standard coffee drinking tool. Cups are for tea, mugs are for coffee.

Starbucks has provided me with strong, tasty, non-bitter, hot coffee, with a minimum of grounds, served in either a decent-sized paper cup, or a proper-sized mug, something that no-one else in Melbourne has managed in pull together up to this point.

You can keep all your pretences about being connoisseurs or coffee. You can drink all the small, lukewarm, bitter sludge you like. You can also blow me.

I'll go for the one that actually tastes like a decent cup of coffee.

2003-05-21T11:27:00.000+10:00

Well, the last couple of months I’ve been going to class on Monday nights. The class has been on Copyright, looking at ownership of designs and creations and all the legal ramifications of that.

And yet, it was a surprisingly interesting and informative class. As dry as it sounds, at the least the lecturer had some interesting class studies to make the information absorbing.

So anyway, that class is now finished, and we’re onto our next Monday night class – Screen Studies.

Sounds interesting huh? Maybe looking at movies and television and seeing how they tick?

Last Monday night was the first night, which was all about animation.

Animation right? Cool huh?

I didn’t seriously think it could be possible to suck any sense of enjoyment out of animation…. until last night.

This guy spoke for two hours about film techniques and crap before even showing us any shorts. On top of that, he didn’t want to show us the films on video, because that ruins the aesthetic – instead, he’s got a projector. And he threads the film into the projector, then he runs the projector, then he rewinds the film, then he pulls that one out and puts the next one in.

For three and a half hours….

We had one ten minute break, the rest of the time, we were sitting there listening to him prattle on about him and his friends and how they made experimental films and isn’t it fun and aren’t we kooky?

We’ve got six weeks of this.

I was thiiiiiiis close to telling him to shut up about his stupid anecdote about some crap experimental filmmaker from Prague and roll the fucking movie.

By the end, I was pissed that I hadn’t been forced to stay back at work!

Grrrrrrr……..

That said, if anyone says they've got a copy of Len Lye's "Rainbow Dance", have a look. It's really catchy.

2003-05-15T12:07:00.000+10:00

So, I went to the Doctor Who convention in Sydney a couple of weeks back. What can I tell ya, I'm a fan, and it was an opportunity I thought was too good to pass up.

Living in Perth for most of my life meant that most of the really cool things didn't show up on my doorstep, and while I had been to a small convention in Perth, it was more a collection of fans than an event.

So, now living in Melbourne, it is so much easier to tootle up to Sydney for the weekend and go to a science fiction-based convnetion. As you do.

Or, more correctly, as I did.

So what did I see?

You know how they always talk about the working class plebs as "The Great Unwashed"? Well, let's just say that there were many working class people there.

One of the things about Doctor Who is that it collects two major types of fans: the bodily-hygiene-impaired and gay boys. How it is possible for two almost totally mutually exclusive groups of people to become a crowd is beyond me, but Doctor Who does it.
I fit into neither category, being, as I am, a regular-showering straight guy. So I have tried to distance myself from the idea that Doctor Who fandom is solely made up of these two groups, but the reality is, if I am to wear my fandom like a badge, I am a member of this crowd. Even if I am the clean-smelling one who likes boobies.

Right. Now I've reinstated my manliness, back to Doctor Who.

Whovention 2003 was originally supposed to have Peter Davison (the fifth Doctor, known as the guy after the guy with the scarf and the jelly babies) appearing. Unfortunately, he got a job, so he couldn't make it. So, the Whovention panel rustled up another guest, Terrance Dicks, a name which means absolutely nothing in the general community, apart from a slight titter of inappropriate humour.

In Doctor Who fandom, Terrance Dicks is a god. Mr Dicks (even now a sheepish grin is rising on my face - another story, another time) not only worked on the show back in the sixties and seventies, but produced the majority of Target novelisations during the 70s and 80s.

If Doctor Who has elder statesmen, Terrance Dicks would be one, the other being the guy who played the Brigadier, Nicolas Courtney.

So, Australian fans, horrified by the loss of a real, live Doctor, were placated by the inclusion of the legendary Terrance Dicks.

Until Terrance couldn't fly to Australia due to medical reasons.

So, who did we get? Wendy, Janet, Katy, Dudley and a bunch of other guys.

Wendy, Janet and Katy all played companions of the Doctor. Wendy Padbury played Zoe Herriot way back in the 60s, when space and time was black and white; Katy Manning played Jo Grant alongside Jon Pertwee in the 70s; and Janet Fielding played the Australian Tegan Jovanka mostly opposite Peter Davison in the 80s.

Dudley Simpson composed some of the music for Doctor Who during the 60s and 70s, and was actually more interesting than that sounds.

The other guys were from various parts of on-going Doctor Who-related productions: the Big Finish audio adventures, the Restoration Team who are working on the DVDs, and several high-profile fans (that is, people who are well-known within the fan community, not celebrities who like Doctor Who. If only...).

Wendy Padbury looks fantastic, considering she appeared in the 1960s and it's now almost 40 years later. The thing is this: she is tiny. She is the smallest, petite little thing you could ever see. You could pick her up and spin her over your head.

When my partner pointed her out across the room, I thought it was a little girl. It wasn't. It was Wendy Padbury.

When she was on telly, she looked small, but young-small, not just small.

Now, she still looks young-small, but apparently, you're just not allowed to mention it.

Katy Manning is a born "Capital A" Actress. She is the epitome of the spotlight-loving diva of the theatre. Hell funny, but after an hour, you feel like you've been listening to her talk while jogging upstairs.

Janet Fielding was very honest and open about her time on the show, giving straight answers to questions like "Is it true that when you started on the show, that Tom Baker didn't like you?"

The other guys (I won't go into detail, mainly because you don't care and I'll get the facts wrong anyway) were also interesting speakers, namely because they were approaching Doctor Who from a different angle to the rest of us: while we mere fans read or watch or listen to the show and bitch about what could have been, these guys are stepping up and making the decisions about the show itself, something every fan would love to do.

But you don't wanna here about that stuff do you? You want to know if people ran around yelling "Exterminate!" at each other, don't you?

Well, no, they didn't. Well, I didn't see anyone do it, so... maybe...

But speaking of daleks, Whovention had some locally-produced, full-scale daleks on show, which looked excellent. Even the guests said that they were better quality than the original BBC daleks.

And the TARDIS stood sentinel beside the guests dais at all times, which was a nice touch.

And I can't go any further without saying a few words about K9......

The Saturday night's entertainment was a trivia night (during which I was surprised to realise I had retained a lot of useless knowledge about Doctor Who, which might explain my inability to learn trig), and at half-time, there was a costume contest, during which the unmodest presented themselves front and centre with their renditions of such costumes as the Brigadier, Adric, The Master, a UNIT soldier, and "pregnant bubble wrap".

Not entirely sure about that last one, but the heart was there...

During the weekend, the foyer was packed with people selling all sorts of Doctor Who related merchandise, and quite a bit of non-related. But where else are you going to find a "Goodies" t-shirt, or a Captain Scarlet doll, or a model of a Borg cube that you can attach to your windscreen?

By the end of the weekend, I was pretty Doctor Who-ed out. I had had my fill of the nostalgic travels down the space-time vortex. And that was what it was, a journey backwards through what had been my obsession throughout school and beyond.

And I think that sums up what was missing from the weekend: the future.

The Doctor Who that was celebrated over the weekend was the one that the fans grew up with, not the current wave of audio stories or books, and definitely not the future productions. We sat and watched compilations of episodes from 1963 to 1989, and occasional glimpses of the 1996 movie. We listened to actresses from the 60s, 70s and 80s regale us with stories, we sifted through the stalls of Who paraphernalia to find missing copies of Doctor Who Magazine from 1983.

I find it hard to think how it would have been going to a convention in 1983 and waiting with baited breath to hear about the NEW SERIES that would be airing in a couple of months, about what NEW ADVENTURES the Doctor would be embarking upon.

Instead, we focus on what's been, rather than what's ahead.

But I guess a convention isn't really the forum for heated discussion about the new season, or the new movie, or Playstation game...

...that's what the internet is for...

Overall, Whovention 2003 was a lot of fun, obviously put together by a group of guys who really love what they're doing. It's a pity that being on the other side of the world precludes having lots of guests flying over, especially when the target audience is so small.

But hopefully, despite war, SARS, financial upheavals and distance, another Doctor Who convention will “materialise" in the near future.

(By the way, if you’re good, I’ll post some photos of the weekend in the near future.

If you’re not, I’ll post up more photos of the weekend.

Consider ye warned…)

2003-05-02T10:52:00.000+10:00

Word of warning: If you're seated at a restaurant and the waiter/waitress comes up to your table and, rather than giving you menus, tells you that the chef is going to take you on a gastromical journey through the various regions of (insert European province here), be sure to ask how much the trip will cost, otherwise you'll be taken for a ride.

I went to Da Noi (with possible missing accents) Restaurant a week ago with some friends of Jen's that had newly arrived in Melbourne. With a name like "Da Noi", I was thinking possibly Thai or Vietnamese. Upon entering the establishment, I though maybe French. It was only when we were told about the journey our stomach were undertaking did I find out that it was actually an Italian restaurant (to be more precise, a restaurant encompassing all the flavours of Sardinia... And you thought all they did was sardines...)

Five courses were laid out in front of us. I struggle to remember any of the ingredients, so obviously the trip around the island had an impact on me. Overall, the food was pretty good, but delivered in the smallest portions available at the time, so that, after 5 courses, you were fed, but not well-fed.

A reasonable night was then turned on its head when the bill came out.

$366

OK, some of you might be thinking, that's not that much to spend on a meal for four.

And some of you may be thinking "Fuck me!!"

I would fall into the latter category.

I am my father's son, so I have picked up on his rather miserly habits (thankfully I've resisted his tendencies to try making his own lycra bike pants at home), so I am admittedly a little frugal at times.

But on the other hand, if I like something, and I think it's been produced/performed/provided well, I'm more than happy to foot the excessive bill.

On this occasion, I just thought it was excessive.

And what it comes down to, strangely enough, is theming...

How in the world did I make that leap, from bitching about a meal ticket to talking about theme design!?!

Well...

Da Noi promotes itself as "A gourmet tour through the regions of Sardinia" or some such. In this way, by providing something a little different from the normal routine of having a range of dishes for you to pick, the restaurant distinguishes itself. This theme sets this restaurant apart from the average Italian restaurant, as the patron has a vested interest in the abilities of the chef to produce meals with a traditional Sardinian recipe.

So, the food is based on Sardinian recipes and ingredients and whatever.

Fine. I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with the idea that Sardinians like to starve themselves by eating the barest ration of food, but that's a side point.

To recap, we are eating traditional Sardinian food. OK, so that trip through Sardinia thing is working out. What else have they done to give us the traditional "Sardinian" journey?

The decor? Bunch of tables and chairs, fireplace, slightly crappy yet overpriced paintings on the wall? Could be Sardinia. Could also be France, Brisbane or New York for all I know.

Geo-cultural explanation on the food? "Here you are, something on a bed of something, with something and something sauce. Enjoy."

And exactly how is this connected with Sardinia? How am I supposed to know where in Sardinia this special something dish was derived from?

If the original location of the recipe is so important, why then just plonk it on the table without some information about how it fits into the "Sardinia Experience"?

I'm not asking for much. A tidbit here, a mudmap there, some idea that I am actually travelling through the island regions (on my tongue it seems), rather than the idea that telling me I'm eating traditional Sardinian food is enough information to serve me any old slop.

The thing is: What do you know about Sardinia?

I've never been to Sardinia. I'm guessing that a major percentage of the customers wouldn't have been to Sardinia. So, when I am told that the restaurant offers a chance to experience a little piece of Sardinia, I expect an experience that lets me enjoy what it's like to be in Sardinia.

And not only did I not get to experience Sardinia, I didn't enjoy it either.

You're thinking that I'm just having a bitch about an over-priced meal, right?

Yes. Yes I am. But I'm complaining more about the way that Da Noi offered an "experience" as a reason for the inflated bill, yet failed to deliver.

So what could they have done better? Well, after mulling it over for a bit, I decided to have a go.

Here's some suggestions (quotes will be from sources on the net, most often www.sardiniapoint.it Errors with names of cities, towns , regions or whatever are mine and not theirs) :

DECOR

While little could be done in terms of the size of the room (long, thin, fireplace in the middle), there are a few points that could be addressed.

Being an island, there would be a lot of seaside influences throughout, therefore, there should be qualities throughout the room that mirror this idea: a quiet background soundtrack of waves (not loud enough to be corny, or induce frequent bathroom usage), or simply using scents (seabreeze, sandalwood) in the air to infer beachside seating.

The room is currently dressed very haphazardly, with paintings and hangings and whatever cluttering up the place. I would suggest keeping adornments to a minimum: a series of uniform-sized photos or prints running along the walls showing the sights of Sardinia. Use a simple paint scheme to give the room some texture: off-white walls, blue roof, dusty orange floor.

Rather than remove the fireplace, it could be used as a talking piece by having a map drawn on the flue detailing important or interesting facts about Sardinia. The mantle piece could be used as a timeline of the history of the island.

FOOD

As each course of food or wine, an explanation must be given, to show the link between what is being served and what is being experienced.

BREAD

Starting in the capital city of Cagliari, the diners are served several types of bread to begin their meal

"Cifrasciu and su Coccoi are typical types of bread from the Campidano area. Cifrasciu is a very large, round, loaf with a crisp crust. It weighs about 1 kilo. There are two different kinds of Su Coccoi (also called Pasta dura). The first one is su Pan'e Scetti, which is made with high quality flour, the second is su Pan'e Simbula, a super-fine bread. Su Coccoi was once eaten only on special occasions, but it has become an ordinary type of bread."

The diners are served a dish of various bread rolls from the region, each wrapped in a sliver of paper identifying the type of bread and its attributes.

APPERTISER

After a round of bread, the appetiser is served.

"Sebada: fresh cheese mixed with bran and lemon peel inside a thin layer of pastry made with lard. Round with notches, it is fried in olive oil and then covered with cane-apple honey."

Sebana comes from Barbagia, which allows a story to be told about the journey between Cagliari and Barbagia, whether by car or bike or train etc. The story could be delivered in various ways: verbally by the waitstaff (which leaves a lot of the emotion up to the individual), a journal extract documenting a highlight of the trip, or simply snapshots of the journey, displayed for the diners to show the scenery and people encountered between locations.

WINE

The wine is from the Cannonau region, famous for its rich reds.

"...red ruby colour, which tends to garnet red because of ageing. A fruity smell of ripe plums and blackberries sometimes spiced; an ethereal fragrance, which tends to resinated, rich, floral, of faded rose. A dry, rich, tasty, soft taste..."

The choice of wine gives the opportunity to provide historical pointers. For example:

"Cannonau is almost certainly a Spanish variety, imported during the Spanish Domination between the XV and XVI cent.
It is the most widespread black berry vine in the Island. It is grown in the entire Sardinian region, but especially in Ogliastra, in the Baronie, in the province of Nuoro and the surrounding areas, in Romangia and in other minor areas (Mandrolisai and Burcerese deserve special mention).

Gabriele D'Annunzio celebrated it in the preface of the volume Osteria, by the German journalist Hans Barth.
The Calabrian poet, who was 19 years old at that time, witnessed the drunkenness of one of his travel fellows in Oliena: "a te consacro, vino insulare, il mio corpo e il mio spirito...Possa tu senza tregua fluire dal alla coppa e dalla coppa al gorgozzule. Possa io fino all'ultimo respiro rallegrarmi dell'odore tuo, e del tuo colore avere il mio naso sempre vermiglio..." ("I dedicate my body and my soul to you, Island wine ... May you unceasingly flow to the drinking cup and from the cup to the gullet. May I rejoice at your smell till my last breath. May my nose have always your vermilion colour...")"

How to provide this information? The written word would be the best option: recorded voiceover would be unmanageable, and the waitstaff would be pushed to repeat the quotes throughout the night as each new group of guests came through.

A simple card could be presented with the bottle, detailing it's history, plus allowing a geographical location to be shown.

MAIN DISH

Diners are given the option of mains: Pasta, Seafood or Pork (A small selection I know, but with the limited research I've done, that's all you get):

PASTA

"The culurgionis, the true symbol of Ogliastrine cooking.
They are little "bundles" of fresh pasta filled with potatoes, sheep's cheese and fresh mint.

Try them with a bit of simple laurel sauce or a little oil and freshly-ground pepper or, as they do in Arzana, with a tasty mushroom sauce.
But always with a generous sprinkling of dry, spicy sheep's cheese, grated directly onto the plate."

SEAFOOD

"The wine routes lead us along the coastal road from Bosa to the Alghero Nurra and Romangia areas, rich in ancient traditions."

Local delicacies include: "Polpagliara: boiled octopus with a spicy sauce, or Pesce all'agliata, fish seasoned with garlic, parsley, oil and lemon juice."

PORK

"Go towards the mountain and you come to Arzana and Villagrande. Here they make the best ham in Sardinia. The acorn is a philosopher's stone for pork: it transforms it, makes it lean, tasty, intense, compact and sweet."

See now I'm getting hungry.

Just by having this sort of information available, the meal becomes that much more special, by involving the diner in the "story" of the meal, not just the taste.

How to get the backstory across with a main meal? Not as straight forward I admit, especially if everyone is having something different.

There is a lot of information to consume, as well as the food, so it may pay to have something like a guidebook on hand to help with the meal.

It sounds like a strange idea, but having a small handheld, leather-bound journal on the table could work. Having pages set aside for the particular mains dishes, the "author" could wax lyrical about the ingredients of the dish, the aroma, the origins, the surroundings, the textures... once again, the "story" of the dish.

Having a journal for each diner would mean cluttering up the table with books as well as food, so a single journal for a table of four should suffice. Plus, individual binding would make each table's copy unique.

Diners would have to take turns skimming through the journal, so text should be light, but evocative. Imagery should be used in place of words: maps, diagrams, sketches, photos.

DESERT

"Crossing the province of Nuoro from Gallura, we arrive in the heart of Barbagia.

Su pan'e sapa (or papassinu), a traditional sweet made of concentrated must, nuts, pine-seeds, almonds, honey and raisins, found in different forms all over the island. It was offered to guests on All Saints' Day and to commemorate the dead."

Being the end of the meal, this would be a perfect time to remind the diner about their dining experience and the restaurant's name.

Therefore, with each desert that is delivered, I would present a small (matchbox-sized) booklet to each diner. Inside, I would have the recipe for the desert, along with various photos and sketches from Sardinia. The back should be a magnetic rubber strip, and the front should show the restaurant name and logo.

Thus, this keepsake serves several functions: It restates the name of the restaurant, it provides visual stimulus to remind the diner of Sardinia, it gives the diner some knowledge to take along with them (ie the secret to making papassinu), and as a fridge magnet, it serves as a daily reminder of the restaurant.

So, overall, the diner has had the chance to experience four or five regions of Sardinia over the course of their meal, through the tastes, the sights and written memories and the artefacts associated with the various locations around the island.

By giving the diner the all-encompassing package, the restaurant can deliver the "full experience" of "a gastronomic journey through the regions of Sardinia".

“But surely you don’t expect us to spend all this money on trinkets and baubles, just to remind the diner that we’re a Sardinian restaurant?” cries the restaurant owner.

“Surely you don’t expect me to spend an excessive amount of money to eat five tiny courses of vaguely Italian food on the pretence of experiencing Sardinia?” I reply.

If a restaurant put the work in to give me an experience of travelling around Sardinia and tasting the flavours of the island’s many varied regions in one night, and I came out of it well-fed, more knowledgeable, entertained, and generally feeling like I had enjoyed a "full experience", then I would be happy to pay $90 a head upwards.

And I would tell my friends.

In the most verbose fashion, of course…

2003-04-14T17:34:00.000+10:00

Been a while, huh?

Tell you what, when I get back to blogging, remind me to tell you all about going to Whovention 2003, the Doctor Who convention in Sydney.

Shut up. I am still cool!!

2003-04-14T17:28:00.000+10:00

War is Bad.

Now there's a statement to get people jumping up and down.

Blah blah blah, I hate war. Blah blah blah, war's OK. Blah blah blah, can't get the cheese.

The thing is, there are so many other options to war that could be so much worse.

Consider:

International Interpretive Dance.

I am a mushroom cloud. Do you not see me? I spread my pestulent arms above the world and cling to all life, choking and hampering people. And birds.

I represent the AK-47, with my rapid tippy-toe movements and shuddering arm movements. These handfuls of rose petals represent the spray of bullets I fire.

Hark! what is that sound? It is the moaning yawn of a thousand tired refugees. Let us form a circle around them and move our arms to resemble peaceful waves.

Scary. No? What about...

International Food Fight.

"We take you now to the frontline, where our own Nigel Smith is with the coalition forces...

Thanks, Tom. As you can see behind me, US, Britsh and Australian forces are setting up emergency kitchens. Just over there, men and women from the 19th Royal Division are frantically peeling spuds for a variety of offences, including boiled, mashed and an initial barrage of french fries.

And just two kilometres south of our current position, the Australian contingent of the ground force are rolling into position, armed with the latest in high-tech barbeques.

Oh course, not everything has gone the coalition's way. Several miles to our east, a line of human shields, in demonstration against this war, have set themselves in front of opposition forces, wearing novelty aprons, emblazoned with anti-food-fight slogans, and fake boobies.

Reports have come in from sources in Baghdad that Iraqi forces have stored away several thousand eggs for up to eight months, for a possible offensive strike, which of course contravenes UN chemical warfare policy.

While the task at hand is grim, the men and women of the coalition forces remain high-spirited. Visits from dignitries such as Nigella Lawson and Gabriel Gate have kept morale high, and Jamie Oliver's war-cry "Pukka!" has echoed through the dunes in defiance of the sound of the Iraqi Bamix.

Troops have been repeatedly performing drills while waiting for deployment: shucking corn, making little radish flowers, using the "bang and twist" method to pull the core out of a lettuce.

For this crack squad, it takes just 30 seconds to strip and reassemble a food processor.

At the moment, the men and women of the coalition are simply watching the pot, but when this food fight bubbles over, they will leap into action.

This could be the equivalent of a quick snack, or a five-course meal, and the question remains, at the end, who will own the dessert?

Back to you in the studio, Tom."

International Marbles

The atmosphere in the International Assembly Room of the United Nations is tense. As sides jostle for position, it seems that the final battle will be taken place between G. Bush of the United States of America and S Hussein of the Republic of Iraq.

Bush showed exquisite skill in the opening rounds, putting his opponents off with a fey Beachball, before swapping to a Steely to close out the match.

Hussein's Glassy struck fear into his opponent's hearts, shooting with impeccable precision. His excursion with a Bird's Cage left many onlookers scratching heads, and his use of the oft-overlooked Cat's Eye had commentators reaching for the history books.

So, now it comes down to just two leaders, one an international Tom Bowler, the other a mysterious Smokey.

Who will stand, Atlasque, under the giant Marble Trophy?

In closing, war is hell, but finding suitable replacements for war is... also just as hard.

2003-04-04T12:16:00.000+10:00

Am I the only person in the world who thinks that Carlos Santana is not an interesting guitar player?

If I wanted to hear the same signiture Carlos Santana guitar sound over and over again, I'd just repeat the same song on my MP3 player.

I don't need to buy the album. I don't need 12 versions of the same song.

And for the record, "branching out" doesn't mean getting Michelle to come in and sing vocals over the top.

Doesn't anybody notice that the songs being played off his new album "Shaman" (oooh, mystical!) sounds exactly like that other song "Black Magic Woman" (oooh, also mystical)? Anybody?

I'm sorry Carlos, I won't be coming to see you live. I just don't think I could sit there and here that rapid "tulutulutulutulu" thing you do in every song.

Nothing personal, but your guitar playing shits me.

That is all.

2003-03-27T15:57:00.000+10:00

While it took us several thousand years to come up with "Survivor", animals have been doing it for eons. It's just that some have gone about it the wrong way.

Consider the salmon...

While male moose lock horns, and male peacocks display giant plumes of feathers, the females do little but be courted.

In the salmon world however, even the female salmon have to do their two cents worth.

Those eggs ain't getting upstream by themselves you know!

Every mating season, a brace of salmon go hammering up the creek to get a bit of action. While some are happy to swim a little inland and find a spot of calm serenity to call their own, for several species, their mating migration includes jumping the wrong way up white water and the like.

Not only is it survival of the fittest, in the sense that only the ones who are strong enough to get to the spawning grounds get to carry on the salmon name, but once they drop their loads, the salmon die.

Bugger the black widow deal. These guys have only got one shot in their pistols and then it's fish heaven. Any fish with premature ejaculation that reaches the top of the rapids would have to be pissed!

"Ah made it! Ah made it urpstream! Quick! Where's d'ladies? Where's d'ladies? Quick quick quick qui----ohhhhh! Dang it. Ah messed m'self!"

(croak)

But think about it: isn't the whole swimming up waterfalls just a little bit much in order to procreate?

Sure, girls run guys through rings in order to cop off, and guys run girls through rings to get one (a ring, that is). But there is some logical reasoning behind it. Apparently.

Where along the evolutionary trail did the salmon suddenly think, "I know what will impress her: I'll swim up a raging river."

Because chicks dig that…

Not that did the salmon's revolutionary evolutionary thinking stopped there. So chuffed was he that he could frisbee-flop over the rapids, he thought: "You know, if the chicks want me, they can come and get me."

And with that thought, the mating ritual of the salmon went "boink!" and the absurd seasonal upstream migration began.

Silly. Silly. Silly animals.

2003-03-26T09:18:00.000+10:00

I was cleaning out my cupboard this weekend, because I was trying not to do something, and amongst the too-tight jeans and too-loose jumpers, I came upon a cache of old t-shirts.

These shirts weren't ugly or ripped or shrunken (actually a few were ugly or ripped or shrunken. They were usually the ones that I loved and wore to fabric death), but had simply fallen out of the t-shirt rotation.

I wear, on average, a t-shirt a day. I wear one while I'm riding to work, then swap it for a work shirt when I arrive.

Because I have a bunch of shirts in the laundry basket at the end of the week, I wash them. And because I have clean shirts sitting, unfolded or unputaway (What? It's like "unputdownable"...) in my (full of clean) laundry basket on Monday morning within easy reach, I go for the same t-shirts week in, week out.

So, it's only when you do a clean-out that you find all these old shirts that you once loved, but got lost in the back of the wardrobe, in the shadows of the newer and funkier t-shirts.

It was quite interesting pulling out old favourites and reminiscing. Ah, yes, the two-tone blue shirt with the red piping! Those were the days! Ah, the long sleeve shirt I bought at the markets that looks like a Joan Miro vomit! Isn’t that… interesting? Ah, that shirt with the thing on it! My my, weren't things big back then?

And so on.

I happened to find a particular shirt that brought back some memories. It was the shirt that was stolen from me about ten years ago.

Way back when, I used to work for Pizza Hut in Northbridge, doling out the pizza pies and the garlic breads with youthful abandon. My mode of transport was a shit brown Mazda 626 station wagon.

When I say shit brown Mazda 626 station wagon, I actually mean shit to encompass the whole car, not just the colour. It was the most beat-up, ugly-as-sin beastly car that ever carted a student from one class to the next. But I digress...

Oh the times! The age of Deep Forest! BloodSugarSexMagik! Vic Reeves and the Wonder Stuff!

Dizzy? My head is spinning.

Ballyhoo, one night I was delivering oily fare to the locals, and it was bucketing down, like the proverbial thing with a spout. Drains went into shock and Northbridge started flash-flooding. Meanwhile, I was out in it, delivering important aid.

In the middle of it all, my car conked out under the shade of a closed service station overhang. Wouldn't start. Wouldn't go, completely nova. I called in to the shop (public phone, no mobiles back then) and told them I was out of the loop until the RAC turned up.

And up they certainly turned. And he had a look at my engine, then asked me to try it. It turned over first time. He didn't even touch it! Seems my engine got its bits wet and was just having a sulk until they dried off again.

So, me and my sulky car headed back into work and continued doling out said pies and breads, with the threat of sudden dead sulky car hovering ominously over my head, like a pigeon with a vendetta.

I stopped delivering around 1am and assisted in closing and cleaning the shop, finally getting out of there around 3am, and I crossed the street to my car, wondering if I was going to be stuck in the middle of Northbridge at 3am with a dead car.

As I thought about this, I traced the empty car space in the parking lot.

I was really worried about my car not starting. As I did a circuit of the empty car space, I dug in my pocket for my keys.

Idly staring at the ground where my car had been parked, I wondered if my car was going to start.

And for another thing, my car is not here.

I'm standing here, and my car was parked there, and that's not my car over there, and neither is that car over there, so my car should be here in the middle where I'm standing.

Just recapping so I understand this, I'm right about where my car should be, except instead of my car being here, there is a large expanse of air.

(beat)

Someone's stolen my fucking car...

My beat-up, poo-brown, ugly-as-sin, shit-heap of a car...

...stolen!

After five minutes of standing in the empty parking space, just checking that, yes, my car should be here but it's not, I went back to the store with the manager and rang the cops. 20 minutes later I was down the local station filling in details, a hour later I was home, sitting in front of telly, watching dross and chewing on reheated pizza.

My car, my lovable shitbox of a car. Gone.

At least it was insured. I could afford to buy another shitbox.

At around 4.30 in the morning, while I was sitting there on the couch, the phone rang. It was the cops. They had found my car.

Not only that, but they caught the guy who nicked it.

Not only that, but it was about a kilometre from my house.

At the time, around the corner from my house, there was a big swamp, with a road circling it. The guy who stole my car had tried to drive along this road, not realising that, due to the large downpour of rain, it had turned into a lake, and all he succeeded in doing was stalling my car in the middle of said lake.

So what had this enterprising young thief decided to do? Steal anything out of the car he could find.

The stereo, the speakers, some tools and a blue t-shirt that was sitting on the backseat.

So engrossed in pilfering my goods (oo-er), he didn't notice the security guard from a local building come over for a sticky-beak. The guard subsequently restrained the guy until the cops came.

Upshot of all this:

$11 to tow my car home.
Engine badly in need of a tune - no difference there.
Inside of car looked disgusting - no difference there.
Stereo and speakers ripped out - stereo wasn't working anyway, one of the speakers was also dodgy.
I had my crappy shitbox back.

The guy went to court and was let off. I'm guessing that the judge took pity on him, because he obviously wasn't right in the head.

And I got back my blue t-shirt that I had forgotten was lying in the back seat of my car.

And now, as I pull out that very same shirt (and it still fits!), I think about that night and its subsequent results and ponder:

What the hell was that guy's name?

And what possessed me to buy that Joan Miro vomit shirt?

2003-03-24T14:20:00.000+10:00

Yes, thank you Blogger for making a liar out of me...

2003-03-24T14:18:00.000+10:00

There's a very good chance that you won't get to see this entry, due to Blogger eating my entries.

We'll see how we go...

2003-03-18T10:35:00.000+10:00

There are few things that can truly produce a panic reaction like standing in a cubicle watching the toilet back up and overflow.

Seriously, who goes to the toilet then doesn't flush, huh? I happened to walk in, did my worst Austin Powers impersonation: "Urrgh, that not right!", flushed the toilet, and suddenly there's water(plus) everywhere, and I'm getting flashbacks of "The Party" with Peter Sellars.

Ain't good. What's this world coming to?

....and I'm spent.

2003-03-18T10:02:00.000+10:00

Best. Birthday. Ever.

Finally, I had a birthday that I can look back on with totally happy memories, rather than thinking "I'll laugh about this some day".

Being a special event and all, with the turning of a corner and reaching another milestone and so on, I decided that for my 30th, I would go to Queensland and spend my birthday weekend riding roller coasters.

Previously, when I've organised something swellegant for my birthday, it's ended badly. Or sometimes started badly.

For my 21st, I organised a party at a friend's house at the last minute, verbally invited people to come along, with little planning or forward-thinking. Just rock around, everything's cool, 9pm onwards.

Come the day of the party, I arrived at my friend's house and preceeded to imbibe heavily various things.

I passed out. At 8pm.

I vaguely remember some friends waking me up to wish me a happy birthday, followed by me vaguely throwing up in the garden.

At some point, someone stuck me in a beanbag in the lounge room.

Other than that, I have no idea.

Next morning I woke to find the house clean, the beer gone and everyone else asleep. I tottered to my car, went home and went back to sleep.

Happy 21st me.

My friends still find that story funny.

I think it was my 27th birthday, and I decided to throw a party at a karaoke restaurant and invite a bunch of people and cut sick on the groovy tunes.

The three course meal was laid on and alcohol was consumed. Renditions of songs were strangled and cigars were passed around.

Meanwhile, I'm out the back ralphing into a cardboard box in the car park after too many red wines and cigars.

I hear it was an OK night.

As long term readers will know, the people at work completely forgot my birthday until two weeks later, when the secretary was updating the birthday list.

So, I decided to plan a big one for my 30th, because history dictates that it’s gonna be one hell of a shemozzle, and if it's all going down in flames, I'm going down swinging.

If chaos ensues, I'll be the one the big guns blazing.

Miracles upon miracles, my birthday was an almost 100% complete success.

Of course, there were a few hiccups, like peak-hour traffic causing a few stressed moments on the way to the airport on Friday night. Or driving around Brisbane with no regard for traffic laws.

From here, for sake of brevity, I'll try to keep it down to point form:

BRISBANE

There are too many one-way roads criss-crossing each other in central Brisbane.

Southbank is fantastic at night. Good use of low-level lighting gives it a really sophisticated feel.

The man-made beach on Southbank looks brilliant and very relaxing.

Brisbane is not as tacky as I thought it would be.

XXXX beer is not as bad as universally thought.

SURFER'S PARADISE

SP has the tackiness that Brisbane is missing.

SP is tourist city. Everything is set up to court the tourist dollar, or to provide "entertainment". Not all of it is bad, but it's like taking a whole state's tourism budget and blowing it on one suburb. It’s like one big casino.

Those ticket inspectors in the gold bikinis? Stroke of genius.

Pokie machines at casinos are no longer fun, they are for people with no interest in betting. At least with the old machines, you selected the cards from the hand you were dealt and played on, now, all you choose is the amount you want to bet, then press the button.

Sure, you've got all these whiz-bang graphics and special effects, but essentially the person sits there and hits the button. If it's that simple, why not just make it totally automatic? Put all your money in, and the machine will tell you if you get any back or not.

MOVIEWORLD: A selection of points

Very quiet, probably something to do with the overcast conditions, which meant we had 10 minutes maximum waits for rides. Sweeet.

Name: Batman: The Ride 2
Type of ride: simulator
Rating: Shit.
Comments: Decent work on the theming outside (although painting everything onto a flat wall does kill some of the feel), nice library set, opening into the small batcave set.

Turns out that Batman's alter ego isn't the enigmatic Bruce Wayne, but actually Brains from Thunderbirds.

Ride itself was a long time coming, and then it did come, it was brutal, in the bad way. The simulator didn't so much roll or pitch, it just seemed to shudder everytime it supposedly hit something, so even when you're speeding through the cityscape, you're just sitting there, until you hit something and then the carriage shakes the occupants around for a bit.
As an added bonus, the projectors for the ride need some recalibration, as each time the carriage shook, the blue projector would separate from the rest of the image, meaning you never forgot that it was just a movie on a screen.

Name: Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster
Type of ride: dark ride (indoor rollercoaster)
Rating: 7
Comments: Well-themed front section, could do with a little more mist and mystery.
First section of ride is themed but a little dull, second section is fast but very lightly-themed (if the theme song in the background counts as theming). It seems very strange that they would have two such completely different style rides in the one attraction. It almost seems like they ran out of money to theme the rest of the ride.

Name: Harry Potter Movie Magic Experience
Type of ride: Walk-through of mock-ups of sets from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Rating: 5
Comments: Surprisingly clever, but essentially just for kids who are Harry Potter fans.

Name: Big-River-Water-Danger-Something-Something-Rapids-Thing (see what happens when you don't have a movie to link it to?)
Type of ride: water ride
Rating: 7
Comments: ride the river into the mountain, fall out the back of the mountain, drift through a ghost town, complete with ghosts, ride back into the mountain, climb through the darkness, then drop 75 feet at a sharp angle into a big splash, complete with cameras to remember the trip.

First drop is cool, drifting through the ghost town is slow and boring, final drop is way cool.

If they could find a way to make the middle section fun, this would get higher marks, but overall a good ride.

Name: Lethal Weapon: The Ride
Type of ride: Suspended rollercoaster
Rating: 9
Comments: Great rollercoaster, but very tenuous link to Lethal Weapon. The intro is just watching a scene out of Lethal Weapon 2, then they let you on the ride.

The ride itself is awesome, but as ever, too short.

Name: Road Runner rollercoaster
Type of ride: rollercoaster
Rating: 6
Comments: Short but neat.

Name: Loony Toons River Ride Thing
Type of ride: indoor flume ride.
Rating: 6
Comments: Quiet but cute

Name: Police Academy Stunt Show
Type of ride: Stunt Show
Rating: 6
Comments: Not as bad as it sounds. A decent way to spend half an hour sitting down.

Movieworld overall: Due to the quietness of the day, we got to ride all of the rides we wanted to at least once. A single day will do it for this park, and it could do with some lovin'. The facades need some paint and crack-plastering, but as destinations go, it's definitely.... one of them.

DREAMWORLD

From the get-go. Dreamworld offered more attractions, with less theming, and on this particular day, had larger crowds.

While Movieworld had movie to theme to, Dreamworld only had vague ideas to associate to a lot of rides.

Still, a rollercoaster is a rollercoaster is a rollercoaster.

Name: Tower of Terror
Type of ride: um...
Rating: 7
Comments: OK, the tower of terror is essentially a track that runs parallel to the ground, then angles 90 degrees up a tower. Your carriage is propelled along the track, then up the tower, stops for a moment, then falls back down backwards.

Pretty simple. Very cool. And very short. The whole ride takes roughly 15 seconds. My sister and I waited for 20 minutes to ride it.

Name: Thunderbolt
Type of ride: Rollercoaster
Rating: shit
Comments: This ride is terrible, the worst of the weekend, even worse than Batman. Why? Because it left me in pain. Actual, physical pain.

Obviously, this ride has been there since they made the park, going by the architecture and the rusty track. But it has become so rundown that the carriages shake like the bejesus throughout the whole ride, to the point where the four of us had headaches afterwards from being concussed on the restraints.

There are few rides that I would say, "That is just plain dangerous!" but this is definitely one.

And it's not even like the ride is set up correctly. From the initial rise, it immediately goes into the double loop, then spends the rest of the ride dragging it's sorry carcass around the track. The double loop is something you build up to, not start with, unless something even better is coming later.

This ride deserves to be torn down. Full stop.

Name: Cyclone
Type of ride: Rollercoaster
Rating: 7
Comments: A bit half-assed on the theming, this ride still kicks ass. Purportedly concerned with the powerful forces of a cyclone, that is just an excuse to go really fast.

The wait area winds around what looks like a turbine of some description. The only problem is that, apart from blowing some air around, it does nothing. It's not like it spins around or anything. So, for 20 minutes or so, you stand there watching steamers flailing around. Could be a lot more interesting. At least it gave us some time for our headaches from the Thunderbolt to dissipate.

The ride itself is very cool though.

Name: Something-About-Water-Rapids
Type of ride: Flume ride
Rating: 6
Comments: A quiet little water ride, a little on the underdone side. There's a long stretch where you are in almost complete darkness, which in itself is pretty creepy, but could at least do with a few scares.

Name: Log Ride
Type of ride: Log Ride
Rating: Log Ride. Sorry, 7.
Comments: Log Ride. You ride in a log. Simple.

This ride is cool simply for the drop at the end, similar to the ride at Movieworld. This one also has stretches of darkness with occasional dinosaurs thrown in.

Fun for what it is.

Name: Rugrats Rollercoaster
Type of ride: Suspended Rollercoaster
Rating: 8
Comments: Surprisingly fun little coaster with some really nice turns, and, as always, over too soon. Probably one of my favourites of the weekend, despite the whole Rugrats mini-theming.

Dreamworld overall: A lot of fun, and my preferred choice out of the two parks. I would be happy to spend another day there and ride the attractions I didn't get to on Sunday.

So that's my 30th birthday story. It was a little while coming, but like all good things... it.... came..... lately.

And BTW, for all those people who knew me in my other life as mild-mannered, sober bass player: I drank quite a lot of beer, and didn't throw up once.

It truly was a magical birthday....

2003-03-03T14:33:00.000+10:00

The rule of three:

Quick quick slow.

Have you ever noticed that when you have a fresh new artist in pop music, who is leading the field of catchy, poppy, "young people" music, the record company always sticks to the rule of three?

Quick Quick Slow.

If you have an artist who has a fast-paced debut single, the follow-up single will be something along the same vein: fast, poppy, upbeat.

Then, a couple of months after the release of the album, the third release will always be a slower, more thoughtful, more emotionally-charged, or even balladic song.

Quick quick slow.

Look! We can do fast, crazy songs! But look! We can also do quiet, emotional ballads! We're multi-dimensional!

Looking at the latest crop of pop creations, it happened to Avril Lavigne and Good Charlotte.

The question is: will it happen to Kelly Osborne? Is she "wild enough" to break from the rule of three? And if she does, will she succeed in carving out a name for herself as a rock chick, or will she be labelled as two-dimension, unable to break away from the fast-paced pop angle?

2003-02-26T14:09:00.000+10:00

After the last couple of months of to-ing and fro-ing, the question has to be asked:

Is Michael Jackson's new album worth all this publicity?

"New Album?" you say? "What new album?"

What, you think this stuff happens by accident?

It was only late last year that we got not one but two separate documentaries on Michael Jackson's face, airing almost back to back on different stations.

In the last month, we've had the case against and the rebuttal, between Jackson and Martin Bashir, the British TV journalist who got to stay with the popstar for eight months and compile a report. The report basically said that Jackson is living on some other plane of reality, that his kids are in perpetual danger, if not from mobs of fans or kidnappers, but from Jackson himself, and that he still has kids sleeping over in his bed.

All that aside, when they produced MJ himself, he sounded like he's had one too-many hits of the yellow acid: vague, confusing, contradictory, bizarre.

After the press about the original doco, out comes Jackson's own take on the Bashir interview: all that stuff was just mean editing, MJ really is a nice guy, Debbie Rowe is the one pulling his strings, etc, etc...

An interesting tangent to the whole uproar is the difference in coverage between the UK and Aussie press and the US journo fraternity.

While in Britain and Australia, the documentary was seen as proof that Jackson is a fruitloop, and deserves all the bad press that he gets, the majority of the US reaction was spent attacking Martin Bashir for attacking Jackson. Despite covering themselves was small asides stating that they "know that Jackson is a loon", the US press criticised Bashir for making Jackson out to be a crazy weirdo, even while admitting quietly that they realise the fact already.

Essentially, "He's a loon, but he's our loon, and you have no right to call our loon a loon!"

So, Bashir 1 - Jackson 1, roughly. To be honest, the Jackson camp would have to be living in denial if they think that either documentary made their king out to be "normal".

But on the other hand, all this publicity does do one thing right for Jackson: it gets it all out in the open. And from there, it gets easier.

You see, Jackson has been living in a miasma of seclusion, hype, hysteria, mysteria, half-truths, lawsuits, fabrications and lies for a long time. A long long time. Way before "Invincible" or "Dangerous". Keep on going back past "Bad", "Thriller" even "Off the Wall". Go back to his Jackson Five days. Ever since then, Michael Jackson has been living in a world that doesn't exist, and with that world comes the press, and if they don't have a story to tell, they'll concoct one.

Jackson has lived with the hype surrounding him because he has had the music as an outlet, his venue for personal expression. While people have been talking about his Elephant Man capers and oxygen tents, he's had a string of number one singles and top-selling albums. People would gasp at his ridiculous lifestyle off-stage, but still tap their feet to his tunes in the meantime.

It's been going on for a long time. But the time seems a lot longer when you haven't got a hit album...

Throughout the 80's and early 90's, there was a balance between the news about Michael Jackson and the music of Michael Jackson. People were interested to hear the gossip, but they were just as interested in hearing the music.

From the mid 90's, interest in his music waned, due to a number of reasons, but mainly due to the same thing that has caused the drop in popularity for another great artist of the 80's, Prince. In short, both Jackson and Prince had their heyday in the 80's, and while public music tastes have moved on, they've continued to churn out music that is dated and recycled from their own old sound.

So, in short (when have I ever done that?), Michael Jackson's public image has been extremely lop-sided since the mid 90's, as his music has slipped away into obscurity, and the hysteria about his private life has taken over as his calling card.

Thus, it's documentary time.

Here is how it plays:

The public Jackson is one of hype and scandal, not the musical monolith he once was.

In order to redress the situation, Jackson has to give the public what they want, and then some.

By over-saturating the market with "horse's mouth" documentaries, highlighting his bizarre lifestyle and surroundings and family and friends, Jackson is supplying all the hype that anyone would need for the next year, packed into a couple of months.

By April, everyone will be thoroughly sick of "The Michael Jackson Hypalooza Experience".

Then suddenly, here comes the miraculous return of Michael Jackson: the entertainer.

"Finally, Michael Jackson returns to what's important: the music.

He's gotten that monkey off his back, and he's singing and dancing like there's no tomorrow, free of the struggle to explain his personal peccadillos.

His new album is a blend of high-action, high-kicking', hard-dancin' hits, and smooth sultry ballads...."

And so on…

By then, the public will be so sick of hearing about Jackson's private life; they'll be looking forward to hearing what made him interesting in the first place: the music.

It's reverse psychology meets nostalgia meets publicity machine.

Remember when... it was all about the music?
Remember when... we were amazed by what he did on the stage, not off it?
Oh, those halcyon days, those days of yesteryear, when Jackson was just an entertainer, and we were putty in his single-gloved, yet-to-be white hands.

Well, they're back!

Jackson has carried a very large bucket of lawyers around with him for years, a large enough bucket to stop anyone from making him appear foolish, disgraceful, ignorant or criminal. Why suddenly has he allowed such close scrutiny by the media?

Because Jackson v2.0 is just around the corner.

Just because he was out of the spotlight, doesn't mean he's forgotten how to use it...

2003-02-17T11:38:00.000+10:00

GET YOURS NOW!

2003-02-11T14:52:00.000+10:00

I hate quitting smoking.

Quitting smoking is such a con.

You see, I like smoking. I enjoy it. I like sucking back on a lungful and feeling it tickling the back of my throat.

I like the feeling you get when it's just you and the cigarette: For that five minutes, you can sit back and meditate on life's struggles, or the weather, or anything you like, because this five minutes is YOUR five minutes, just you and your cigarette.

And before anyone complains that I'm painting too romantic picture of smoking, I do realise that it's bad for you. It makes you stink, it stains your teeth, it makes you wheeze at night, and wastes a lot of hard-earned money.

But DAMMIT, I enjoy smoking.

Which is one of the reasons why it's such a pain in the ass to quit.

You see, I'm an old hand at quitting. I've quit several times, so I know how it's done.

I've tried patches. I lasted about three weeks.

I tried acupuncture. That lasted about two and half years.

I've tried cold turkey. So far, that's lasted about two weeks. Two long, long weeks. So long, I told someone that I had not smoked for a month, until Jen corrected me. And that was a week ago.

With the quitting comes the newly acquired appetite, which has seen me voracious consume anything that passes by with a percentage of fat in it.

Which of course means that I have now acquired several new percentages of fat myself.

Shits me, yes, but that's not the worst. I can eventually get to a gym and work it off, or at least work it into a shape that looks better in the mirror.

I'm crankier now than usual, which is pretty cranky. People are idiots, and I'm surrounded by people. The people that surround me are the fools that they mean when they say "he doesn't suffer fools gladly". Gladly make fool suffer? Yes, Suffer fools gladly? No. Gladly fools suffer he? Stupid. Doesn't make sense. Get a grip.

All inanimate objects should know what I'm thinking. Why don't they? I know it doesn't make any sense, and yet it should. That's how cranky I am.

But that's not my biggest problem with quitting smoking. The urges will go away, and with that, the crankiness will... well, probably won't change, but it will be annoying to me at least.

And the inanimate objects will breathe a sigh of relief...

Not even the Quit Cold is my biggest problem. Most people who have quit smoking will tell you about their Quit Cold, the couple of weeks after quitting, where all the gunk that was sitting comfortably in your lungs makes its way out of your airways. This is partially because cigarette smoke stuns the cilia in your respiratory system, which usually clean out your airways of gunk. Thus, no smoke, cilia start working, ferrying lung gunk. Suddenly, you're coughing up three year old gobs of phlegm (what is it about phlegm that someone thought it deserved not only the "ph" at the beginning, but also the silent "g"? It's lung gunk people!).

Damn I Loved Human Biology!

I've got a Quit Cold every time I've quit, except for this current time. However, I actually got the flu before I quit this time, so I was coughing up the big buckets of "flem" already, so I may have missed the QC symptoms and just lumped them in with the flu.

Nevertheless, Quit Cold: annoying, but not my biggest problem. After two-three weeks, it goes away.

No, My biggest problem with quitting is this: the world smells.

Whenever they have one of those Quit Days, where they do the big push for people to quit, they always promote the idea that after a week or so, you start to be able to smell better. All the flowers in the world are yours to sniff.

Sounds nice huh? Being able to detect that hint of lilac, or that smidge of rosemary, or that smell that little babies purportedly make.

Well, it ain't all flowers and herbs and baby heads. In fact, it's none of those things.

You see, when I quit, I gain the ability to smell bad smells better.

Car exhaust, dog shit, smelly garbage, sour milk, wet cigarette butts, yesterday's socks. All mine for the smelling!

It really is amazing how smelly the world is once you stop smoking. You think you stink when you're smoking? Try it from the other side. You'll be back onto a pack a day in no time.

I feel gypped because all the good things to smell (the fore-mentioned flowers and herbs and baby heads) I could already smell fine. They smell the same as they always did.

Anything that stinks, on the other hand, has got a whole new lease on life. It's like getting a brand new nose. In my armpit.

So, to all those people out there considering quitting the smokes, I say go ahead, it's your choice.

But consider this: Is it really worth adding those twenty years to your life if they smell like crap?

2003-02-05T14:08:00.000+10:00

Bring on the monkey butlers!

errrum... excuse me...

You would be amazed to know the amount of times I have been asked the following question:

Chad, how can we intice more young people into the heady arena of cigarette smoking?

Well, I don't want to appear politically incorrect, because, dagnammit, that's just not cool, and people look at you a little weird, but I think I have the answer.

You see, kids today are stupid. Don't get me wrong, when I say kids today are stupid, I don't mean kids today are stupid. I mean they're idiots.

Kids today are idiots. Stupid idiots. Idiots with ingrained stupidity. And so on.

I can say this because in my day, kids were also stupid. We kids were the stupidest kids on the block.

But kids today have more reason to be more stupid, because kids today are bombarded with even more stimulae than we were when we were kids.

We didn't have mobile phones and DVD players. Computers were used for games of Pong and the internet was unheard of. Records were made of delicate vinyl, or on hissing magnetic tape, not the glorius surround sound in headphones that the kids can carry around with them today.

All that equates to the reason why kids are stupid today: because while being flooded by all this data, through every pore of their body, they don't have time to think.

Life for the young-uns has become hyperinteractive. And in turn, kids today expect their life to be interactive.

Hence...

Interactive Cigarettes.

I want that cigarette with the personal touch.

Give me cigarettes where the used filter end is discoloured by tar and chemicals, not in a random smudge, but in the shape of a heart, as if to say "You have finally finished smoking me, and I love you for it!".

Give me cigarettes that produce different coloured smoke.

Give me cigarettes where the little gold band glows as you smoke.

What about a cigarette that plays a song as you smoke it? Light up, and you get "Smoke on the Water", "Smoke gets in your Eyes" or any anything from the Smokey back-catalogue.

Nothing like sucking down a B&H Ultra Mild with "Come on Baby, lay ya love on me!" playing in the background.

No?

OK, what about this...

When I was a kid I remember reading about secret messages being written in lemon juice, which dries clear, but when warmed, becomes visible again. Cheap invisible ink, as it were.

Now, surely they could put a pattern onto a cigarette with lemon juice, or some highly potent chemical equivalent, so that as you smoke it, a pattern or picture appears.

You could have a range of different flavours, each with their own particular image that appears as you smoke them.

Just think: The Matrix: as you smoke it, lines of numbers appear up the length of the cigarette.

Or a cartoon where the panels appear one by one along the cigarette.

Or for the educational among us, how about a cigarette that asks a question.... then gives you the answer! It's like a Fantale you can smoke!

In the end, maybe that's what we should be aiming for. If people are dumb enough to smoke, why not make them learn while they're at it?

And if anything that might put kids off smoking. After all, why would kids ditch school to go smoke, when they're going to be learning anyway?

Now, what about those monkey butlers, hmmm?

2003-02-03T16:06:00.000+10:00

Bush announces "War on Space"

Following the deaths of seven astronauts in the explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia at the weekend, the United States has declared war on space.

In an official statement from the White House, President George W. Bush announced that America's forces would do everything in their power to conquer the evils of space.

When queried over troop movements into space, President Bush said that it was too soon to announce strategies, but White House officials and military commanders will be working around the clock to ascertain the best possible course of action.

"For too long, space has believed it is above the law, legally and physically. The time of negotiation is over," announced President Bush, "Now is the time to get tough on space."

2003-01-30T13:58:00.000+10:00

I was reading an article about the new movie S1MONE, with Al Pacino, in which he plays a producer or director who creates the perfect, computer-generated, leading lady for his movie.

Here are my tips.

HOW TO TELL YOUR FAVOURITE ACTRESS IS COMPUTER GENERATED

All her movies have a Flash intro.

Refers to retakes as “v2.0, v3.0, v4.0 …”

She’s got an "intel inside" tattoo.

Her lips don't move.

Has won three Oscars, and two ASCIIs.

She dances like that baby from "Ally McBeal"

Only appears on talk shows "via satellite".

While other actresses advertise slimming products, she promotes broadband.

Refers to plastic surgery as “upgrades”.

Gets homesick watching "Tron"

Quoted as saying that her life-long dream is to work with the greats: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese and Linus Torvalds.

Her grandmother appeared in "Leisure Suit Larry".

Refers to rehearsals as "beta-testing".

Despite living in Hollywood, she keeps popping up in Bangkok.

Refers to a lesbian kissing scene as "cross-platforming".

When she's asleep, flying toasters appear.

When she hiccups, her face goes blue.

No freckles, just "artefacts"

Bouts of illness are always attributed to "a virus".

Calls Mario "a pioneer".

She brings out a movie, then brings it out again two months later with half the plot holes fixed up.

Hates schmoozing, loves networking.

She refers to her children as “applets”.

She loves “walking down the #FF0000 carpet”

Can’t speak french, fluent in binary.

When she was a kid, she had a turtle called Logo.

Likes cookies.

Has a brother called Gollum.

Every time she appears on screen, so does an ad for the X10 camera

According to gossip columns, she is dating the ex-boyfriend of ananova.

Her autograph comes with links.

Her middle name is %20.

Explains her character's motivation as: "Agility 6, Strength 8, Energy 9..."

When she says she's being paid six figures, she actually means $32.

2003-01-29T10:29:00.000+10:00

I spent the Australia Day weekend in South Australia. Kinda weird I know, but the chance was there to see some more of the country and I did. See some more of the country, that is.

Jen and I flew into Adelaide around midday on the Saturday and spent the afternoon wandering around the CBD, which was extremely quiet. This may have been because it was the long weekend and people left to go other places. Or maybe it was the 44 degrees. Take your pick.

Went out to Henley Beach at 10pm, which was packed with people. You would think there was some kind of shindig on. Actually, it was just the locals coming out of hibernation after the unfeasibly hot day.

Sunday we went to the Barossa Valley and drank things, as is the custom of the time. Sunday night we stayed at the Novotel Barossa Valley Resort. Pretty swish. Hot and cold running everything. Very nice restaurant, overlooking the valley and the Jacob's Creek estate.

Monday we picked up stumps and headed over to the Clare Valley, another wine-making region, as evident by the multitude of vines around.

Now, apart from their income from making wine, these places make a bit of dosh on the side from wining and dining tourists who come through and sample their wares. They are the three bears to our Goldilocks.

And just like the fairytale, when we arrived at their door, they were out.

It seemed like the Clare Valley had closed down for the day. We tried five different places for lunch with no success, despite the tourist booklets telling us that these places do lunches. Nup. If they weren't closed, they just weren't doing lunches.

Granted, there were very few tourists around, but if you're gonna offer lunch, the least you can do is deliver.

Finally, we found somewhere that was offering lunch, AND serving it. And it was packed.

Eldredge Estate, just outside Sevenhill, my stomach salutes you. Good nosh, nice view, good staff, reasonable price. That's all I'm asking for.

In total, I couldn't complain about the weekend. Some good, some crap, seen a bit more of the country...

And then I became an attempted terrorist...

It wasn't my decision, I became a rebel through the sheer force of my convictions. And a couple of tools.

As I was going through the metal detector at the Adelaide Domestic Airport, I was stopped by the security guard because he saw that I had a set of allen keys in my backpack.

Allen keys are a no-no according to the security guy. I could not take allen keys onto the plane in my carry on luggage.

To add insult to stupidity, he asks me if I have already checked in my other luggage. No, thinks I, it's all here sitting next to me, I thought I'd smuggle my invisible luggage onto the plane.

Meanwhile, the guy behind me is told he can't take his package onto the plane because it has sharp screws inside.

What exactly happened in Adelaide to make it a hotbed of terrorist activity?

Finally, the guy suggested I could stick the allen keys, symbol of the "smash the state" ethic of terrorist organisations worldwide, into a postpak and send it to myself in Melbourne.

So, after wasting a couple of dollars I could have spent elsewhere, like on pinball, on a postpak to send myself a set of allen keys, I returned to the metal detectors, who let me through with but a brief wait.

I grabbed my stuff and started to hoof it to my plane. The guy called after me. It seemed I had left behind a box of wine. I thanked the guy, grabbed it and again hoofed it, while over the tannoy they were calling my name to go to Gate 13, the furthest gate they could find.

So, to recap, I no longer had my allen keys, with which I may have possibly hijacked the plane and maybe loosened it to death. Instead I have three bottles of wine, which, if smashed, could have dangerously sharp edges.

I feel so much safer now. Many nights I have lain awake worrying about being attacked by a maniac brandishing a set of allen keys. Or the police finding my body stuffed in a dumpster, riddled with little hexagonal holes. At the very least, coming home to find all my Ikea furniture dismantled on the floor.

What people must remember is this: allen keys don't kill people, people kill people.

What has really got me worried is that I've been through airports in Melbourne and Perth with that set of allen keys in my backpack, and no-one has picked up on it, except for one guy in Melbourne who told me they were "just allen keys".

Just allen keys? JUST?

Doesn't he know that these are "Instruments of Disaster!!"? Doesn't he realise that in the wrong hands they could cause the downfall of the Western World?

Because allen keys are where it starts. First, you loosen a tray table. Next, the guy next to you gets cranky because you're making a fuss over a loose tray table. The the steward passes out alcohol to calm the tension. Suddenly, in a fit of alcohol-induced air-rage, someone throws in airplace blanket. Chaos erupts. Plane explodes. Panic strikes the Western World, buttons are pressed, nuclear attack, end of civilisation.

You think I'm over-reacting? You think I'm getting bent out of shape just because the security guy made me pull out my allen keys? You think I'm blowing this all out of proportion? Do you? Do you?

Yes. Yes, I am.

But I don't think I'm the only one.

2003-01-22T11:57:00.000+10:00

Christmas Hammock of Fate.

Some people don't deserve presents.
And then some people cosmically don't deserve presents.

So I decide to buy a Christmas present for Jen, being that she is my partner and she would scream blue murder if she dropped off my very exclusive Chrissy shopping list (currently standing at two, me and 'er).

What shall I buy for the bird in my life? What object would bring greater joy into her already cluttered comfortable lifestyle?

Sod it, I'll buy her a hammock.

A hammock is the sort of thing you can give anyone and they will immediately appreciate, but may or may not ever actually use. Everybody says, "I've always wanted to get one of these", yet how many people actually go out and but themselves "one of these"?
And just for the record, yes, it had occurred to me that I could be buying a hammock for myself by default by buying Jen something she hasn't explicitly asked for, such is the nature of woman, so I will explain the decision to buy a hammock.

You see, Jen has an excellent memory, and thus, if I ever mention anything, she stores it away for future reference. This includes every complaint, apology or nasty remark ever made in her direction, and occasionally the compliments. Nature of woman and all that.

Along with all the remarks, Jen can remember every single object I have ever mentioned wanting to buy. So, when she needs to buy me a present for birthday/Christmas/Valentines Day/Feast of Barnabas, she scoops into the memory pot and pulls out a tasty morsel.

And so I am always surprised by the present I get from Jen, because they are something I wanted, and then had forgotten about.

On the other hand is me. If I was in a memory race, I would forget to turn up on the day.

It is rare for me to get Jen a present that is a total surprise. I usually get my cues from heavily-dropped hints in the days preceding the big day. For example, just before Christmas, Jen "mentioned" she would like to get the new U2 Best of compilation, which I then bought, which then turned out to be the wrong compilation, because she had her eye set on the DVD, not the CD version, which led to me having to go back and exchange it, only to have no stock available of the DVD, leading me to have to hunt around the stores for a DVD copy... and so on.

Around which time, I was watching telly and an ad came from for Copperart. Usually, I would mentally turn off and instead maybe rate the Disneyland rides I could remember, or picture Angelina Jolie naked, or any one of a thousand things I could do for 30 seconds.

Instead, I watched their stupid ad and decided to get Jen a Copperart Free-Standing Hammock, because Jen would like a hammock, had never asked for one, and therefore, would be surprised, yet pleased, when she got one.

Flash forward to the Thursday before Christmas, and I'm at Altona Gate Shopping Centre with Jen. We agree to split up so I can find her present. She wanders thattaway, I go to Copperart.

ME: Have you got any of those free-standing hammocks?

Middle-Aged Bird with Nose Stud: No, we've sold out.

ME: Do you think you'll be getting anymore in before Christmas?

MABwNS: Well, we're getting a shipment of stuff in on Saturday, there might be some in there.

ME: If there are, can you put aside one for me and I'll give you a ring on Saturday.

MABwNS: Sure. No Problem.

Flash forward to Saturday:

(click)

ME: Hello. I came in on Thursday chasing a free-standing hammock, and the lady I spoke to said that there might be some coming in on Saturday.

Harried Worker on Phone: Yes, we got some in today, but we've sold out.

ME: She said she would put one aside for me?

HWoP: Hold on, I'll check...................... No, sorry, we're all out.

ME:........ for f........ sake........

(click)

And so I ring around Victoria. No one has the free-standing hammock.
I try WA. Nup.

Finally, I try the Copperart website, which cheerily informs me that they have freestanding hammocks.

Fine, thinks I, I'll just order one and get it delivered whenever they get one in stock.

One problem: I'll leaving to go to Perth in a couple of days.

No problem: I'll make the delivery address my parent's place in Perth. In this box here at the bottom where it says "Special Instructions", I'll write "If the product cannot be delivered before January 6, please deliver it to the billing address, rather than the delivery address. Thank you."

Everything's good. I've ordered the hammock, Jen still has no idea what it is, and even if I don't get it to her before Christmas, I've still got the back-up DVD gift.

Several days later, my credit card is docked the required amount. Super.

Several days later, my hammock hasn't turned up. Bummer, but everything's cool. Jen enjoyed the DVD.

Several days later, we're leaving to go back to Melbourne. No hammock. But no problem, Copperart have my details and special instructions. Even if it turns up in the period between us leaving and getting home, it's got my name on it, so Mum and Dad will know it's for me.

Back in Melbourne, I check the automatic confirmation email that has been sitting in my email inbox for the last two weeks. All my details are correct. At the bottom, the special instructions space is empty. I email Copperart to tell them my special instructions and tell them to fix up their data fields.

Finally, several days later again, no news from Copperart. No hammock. No nothing.

So, to recap, I ordered a hammock, had the money taken out of my account quick as a flash, yet received no product, nor email explaining the hold-up, from Copperart.

Several days later, Jen called me into the lounge room to listen to a message that my Dad had left on our voicemail while we were out the previous night.

He was just calling us to thank us for the wonderful present, and that he was going to put it together and try it out right away...

And the saddest thing was that he sounded so chuffed, I didn't have the heart to ring him back and tell him that the hammock wasn't for him.

OK, I'm glad that my dad is enjoying his hammock. Due to the fact that he is keeping an eye on my house in Perth, he deserves something for his time and trouble.

What I really want to know is what have I done to deserve getting the shaft from Copperart?

And more importantly, what has Jen done to be shafted out of getting a hammock?

Somewhere along the line, we have enraged the spirit of Pete Smith and, verily, we have been smote...

2002-12-21T18:54:00.000+10:00

Hey Ladies!

Do you want a bikini that covers al of your most intimate areas, but still want that all over tan?

Hate tan lines, but hate men ogling your goodies even more?

Don't want bikini lines ruining your brown skin, but don't like the thought of old slobbering malcontents salivating over your naked bouncy nubile flesh?

Sure you do!

That's why you need THE PIXELKINI !

From the deep dark recesses of our laboratories comes a new space-age revolution that maximises your protection from prying eyes, but also maximises your tanning potential!

Simply slip on our 100% transparent overshield, press the button and PRESTO! Your naughty bits are covered with a fine layer of glance-reducing LCD pixels!

Our fantastic summer garments harness the power of microscopic liquid crystals and a super-tiny inbuilt solar-powered processor. When turned on, the pixelkini (1) absorbs the colour range from underneath the garment, then (2) reflects a calculated range of flesh tones to mask your private parts from view (3) !

Meanwhile, the overshield display allows light to pass through, allowing the skin underneath to tan.

The result: Your skin gets that great all over tan that the Cancer Council says you shouldn't have!

It's like you're not wearing a thing, but you are, but other people think you aren't, but you are, while looking like you're not wearing a thing, but you are!

You really are!

Here's what other people thought about the Pixelkini:

"It's choice!" - Karen.

"It's like wearing nothing at all, except you're wearing it?" Karen's friend Shauna.

"It looks like that thing on TV, where they do that thing to those people so you can't see who they are, but you kinda can, if you quint?" - Donna

"It's like they made nothing into a bikini!" - Brianna

With responses like that, who needs a guy in a labcoat with a clipboard to tell you Pixelkini is a winner?

Get your Pixelkini now!

It's the tan you get without assholes gawking at your goods!

2002-12-20T11:31:00.000+10:00

In a Christmassy tone, here is another word for the day:

geegaw

I think it's pronouced jee-gor or maybe jee-gee. I don't know. I haven't heard it, I've only seen it written on webpages.

It is a variation of gewgaw, which makes it all the more understandable.

It means "trinket or bauble".

See, that's sort of Christmassy.

Oh shut up.

2002-12-19T14:07:00.000+10:00

When is a "best of" album really a "best of" album?

I bought the new U2 album, the best of 1990-2000. It has a rundown of songs produced in that time period. I don't have any U2 albums bar All You Can't Leave Behind which I picked up in a bargain bin at Cash Converters for five bucks or something, so it seemed like a good buy.

But in retrospect, I feel a bit gypped, because this definitely isn't the best of U2 circa 1990-2000.

Let's have a look at the line-up:

1. Even Better Than The Real Thing
2. Mysterious Ways
3. Beautiful Day
4. Electrical Storm
5. One
6. Miss Sarajevo
7. Stay (Faraway, So Close)
8. Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of
9. Gone
10. Until The End Of The World
11. The Hands That Built America
12. Discotheque
13. Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
14. Staring At The Sun
15. Numb
16. The First Time

OK, now, Achtung Baby is represented by 1,2 and 5 at least, but what about "The Fly"? One of the best songs off the album, but do I see it here? No. Why? Probably because that album is already represented by the other three songs, but surely you could drop “Even Better Than The Real Thing” for "The Fly"?

Zooropa has a couple on here, 7 and 15. But "Numb" is a new mix. New Mix"? As of when did the song need a new mix? And if it's new, what's it doing on a compilation of songs from 1990-2000?

I love the original "Numb" for the same reason that I love "The Fly". They were both first cuts off the respective albums, and showed that U2 were taking giant leaps into new fields. Achtung Baby was a complete leap from everything that U2 had done previously. "The Fly" got released. People hated it, then loved it. Then people were acclimatised to the new album, which had some great tunes.

"Numb" was from completely left field and people naturally hated it, but I thought it was fantastic. Out with the old sound, in with the new, yet there were sprinklings of the U2 flavour throughout.

I don't want a new "Numb", especially when it does nothing new.

But at least "Lemon" isn't on this compilation. It was crap and uninteresting, and of course was a big hit.

I only recognise 9, 12 and 14 from Pop, so it's hard to judge the album, but once again, "new mix". Why bother?

And speaking of new things, this compilation has two new songs, 4 and 11. It's 2002! If it's new, don't put it on a compilation called the best of 1990-2000! How hard is that to understand?

On top of that, "Electrical Storm" is dull. New and dull.

If they could take 3 and 8 off All You Can (Can't? dunno) Leave Behind, why not "Elevation"? It was just as big, if not bigger? That's probably the reason. Too popular, too recent. Of course, didn't stop the new songs huh?

I don't like 6, it ain't my cup of tea. And if you wanted to be pedantic about it, they released that as Passengers, not as U2.

I give it a 5 (that's five out of ten, not track 5: "One". That's just a little too harsh).

I swear I have this same problem every time they pull out a Cure compilation!

2002-12-12T13:53:00.000+10:00

I really do hate myself for this, but...

There's a movie or TV show with Jon Lovitz in it, with a scene were he repeats the same phrase over and over again, in a droning manner of a man concussed with a special case of stupidity.

He says it, then he says it again. Then, after a pause, he says it again. And again.

And it's kinda funny.

What the hell is that show?

2002-12-12T11:01:00.000+10:00

Here's a question for all you hair buffs:

If you've tried dying your hair, say black, and your scalp goes black along with it, which of the following helps to get rid of the dye on your scalp quickly:

Water and lots of scrubbing
Nail Polish Remover
Toothpaste
Sandpaper
Metho
Vodka
Eucalyptus Oil
Cigarette Ash
Nose Goblins
Soap
Perfume

Answers in the form of a comment...

I'll post the proper answer later.

2002-12-12T10:22:00.000+10:00

I don't want to harp on about Disneyland (actually I do, but people have started rolling their eyes at me {word up Jen!}), but I've suddenly become aware of references to Disneyland everywhere.

It's the same result as saying "Close your eyes and think of the colour red, then open your eyes and look for red things." And suddenly, everything red jumps out at you.

Or even when you've bought a car, and then start seeing your make of car everywhere.

Or giving up smoking, then noticing every single little cigarette butt in every inch of everywhere you go.

Something like that.

Anyway, since I've been reading up on Disneyland, things have popped up everywhere: In news reports, in magazines, even a Great Outdoors piece on a couple of Home and Away cast members going there.

I've been reading Notes by Eleanor Coppola, which is her journal of the making of Apocalypse Now by her husband Francis Ford Coppola. In the middle of that, she talks about a visit to Disneyland and later she balances it against the events during filming.

In the strangest places, I've seen references to Disneyland, usually as an allegory of overindulgence or a symbol of realised fantasy.

While one person views it as a geographical location of all that is warped and overbloated about the capitalist system, another uses it to embody the ultimate fantasy to dreams coming true.

"They were the biggest fireworks this side of Disneyland.", he muttered grimly.

"They were the biggest fireworks this side of Disneyland!", the young girl exclaimed.

In a way, both points of view are valid. Disneyland was designed as the place where dreams come true. The park was designed so that when people entered through its gate, they literally walked into another world, even to the point of designing the berm around the park so visitors can't see out of the park into the surrounding suburbs.

Attractions were designed to access children's dreams: flying through space, riding through the wild west, entering a cartoon, even driving a car.

Huge amounts of resources were poured into the little details, like the manicuring of the gardens, keeping the pavements clear of rubbish and giving workers classes on how to speak and act in front of visitors. These small points added up to a more wholesome, more enjoyable experience for visitors coming to Disneyland over similar visits to amusement parks.

However, Disneyland today can be seen as a testament to the fickle days of the 80's and 90's, when the accounts department ruled the roost in the Disney Corporation.

Rides that seem a little outdated have had a little work done to them, some paint here, new vehicles there. No E-ticket rides have been added for ten years, and the imaginative new designs of old Disney have been replaced by formulaic off-the-shelf rides with theming stuck on at a later stage.

Prices are high, from entering the front gate to food to souvenirs, and the actual time on rides in minimal compared to the time spent waiting in line to ride. Meanwhile Disney continues to push out more merchandise to off-load on parents with bawling children.

As the years have gone by, Disney has laid off more and more of its Imagineering staff, those responsible for the creative work behind their greatest attractions.

Whereas the original park with designed with the belief that the more money spent, the more people will enjoy it, the current trend is to check the books before anything resembling creative thought is begun. Cost-effectiveness is paramount.

The Disney Corporation is an example of a company that expects more and more from its employees and facilities, whilst giving them less and less to work with.

It's not like they're the only company doing this. Most companies worth their salt always run new ventures through the chequebook to see what trickles out.

But the difference is that Disney's stock and trade is dreams. It can't afford to look bad in the eyes of the public, so the publicity department continues to put out press releases explaining its decisions in a light and fluffy corporate manner, even while it's legal team are letting loose the dogs of war on anyone who even mentions infringing on the good name of Disney.

Capitalist PigMouse Headquarters or Magic Kingdom? Depends on where you're sitting on the totem pole.

In conclusion, Disneyland is a part of our cultural heritage, even as Australians, as is suddenly clear when you look for it.

Think I'm kidding? Try this one: Pick out all the references to Elvis in everyday life. You'll be surprised where he turns up.

2002-12-12T09:42:00.000+10:00

And so ends the Great Squash Experiment...

I've decided to stop playing squash on Monday nights due to repeated visits to the sick room following play.

Out of the four weeks I've played squash against the fore-mentioned "advanced" player, I've ended up lying on the bathroom floor, shivering, sweating and occasionally being sick, twice. And another time I went to bed with a dehydration-led headache.

Enough is enough, and I think I passed that point a few weeks back, so I've finally decided that my body doesn't want to play squash to that extreme anymore.

Which is a pity because I was enjoying the squash, just not the ramifications.

AND I finally won a game. Fourth week, ten games, I won number nine, and I just missed out number ten, so at least I can walk away knowing I won something.

29.5 games to one in four weeks. At least I was improving.

2002-12-09T12:19:00.000+10:00

NEW PANTS

a poem
by chad

I have new pants,
They might be grey,
I wore for the first time
to work today.

They have a button
And a zipper discrete
They sit on my waist
and dangle to my feet.

They have these patches,
that look like they're faded,
a little worn through
And dilapidated.

They’re the height of fashion,
I am assured,
By people around me,
Who are true to their word.

Because all around me
In the busy city scene
Are young fashion victims
With faded grey jeans.

In the world of street fashion
It seems the current thought
Is to have brand new pants
That are worn before bought.

But only in places
That seem a bit crap,
Like the sides of your ass
Or the bits on your lap.

But I’m not that worried
About this fashion trend.
It’s here today,
But tomorrow it ends.

We’ll wear something else,
That’s “totally cool”
Despite the fact
That we all look like tools.

So I cherish my pants,
With designer wear,
So I look all stylish,
(But don’t really care.)

And I’ll just be happy,
That we’re not at the stage,
Where fashion is dead,
And the Bedazzler’s the rage.

2002-12-09T09:44:00.000+10:00

There is something very disconcerting about walking into work and finding that all your Internet Explorer Favourites have disappeared.

2002-12-06T11:09:00.000+10:00

Haven't blogged. Been working.

How selfish is that huh? Making me work AT WORK. Dunno sometimes.

Just to prove that I'm still here, I will now tell a joke:

A man walks into the psychiatrist's office and tells the Doctor that his wife sent him.
"Why?" asks the Doctor.
"She thinks I'm crazy because I love sausages." says the man.
"There's nothing wrong with that?" says the Doctor, "I love sausages too."
"Really!?" says the man, "You should come around to my place! I've got thousands!"

Thank you, thank you.

and now, a quick exit...

2002-11-28T11:41:00.000+10:00

Some of you may have noticed the new edition to the Nada Family, a little offshoot I like to call "How To Recognise Things".

HTRT grew from discussions I've had with people pertaining to perception and reality. Questions like "How do you distinguish a kangaroo from a doughnut?" arise occasionally, and it's about time someone came up with a definitive answer.

HTRT will be a continuing series, every expanding our distinguishing horizons. People need answers, and dammit, I'm going to give them something similar.

If you have a question about things, or even things and stuff, feel free to drop me a line, and hopefully, I'll provide your questionable needs.

That didn't come out right...

2002-11-27T11:28:00.000+10:00

We have a charity chocolate box in the office, for all the lost wayward chocolates with no mouth to call home. Poor little blighters. Makes me just wanna sweep them up and cuddle them with my warm and inviting teeth.

Amongst the pile of Picnics, Bountys and Mars Bars, I happened to spy a forgotten little chocolate, the Chokito.

How long has it been since you had a Chokito? For me, I haven't had a Chokito since I was a kid. In fact, I didn't even know they made Chokitos anymore. But, as with the superfluous Polly Waffle, the Chokito is still around.

I don't even remember a jingle or slogan for the Chokito. while the sexy chocolate bars like Mars and Snickers get million-dollar advertising budgets, the Chokito gets bugger all.

So, does Chokito deserve to be shoved aside in the confectionery aisle of life?

No it doesn't. The reason: it is the shopping aisle's closest approximation of chocolate crackles.

Chocolate Crackles are what God invented mouths for.

I wasn't aware that chocolate crackles are an Australian tradition. I would have thought that they were a worldwide phenomena. Chocolate, rice bubbles, what could be easier?

Then there's the copha.

Copha is a partially-solidified shortening made of coconut oil.

On occasion, people have tried substituting vegetable shortening, with dire consequences. A mixture of butter and coconut has been put forward, but as to what measurements, I am unsure.

Copha comes as a white block in the dairy section of the supermarket, similar to a block of butter. There seems to be only one supplier of copha, supplying all the supermarkets of Australia with its white, partially-solidified greasy goodness. And why not? People don't buy copha except to make chocolate crackles. It's not like there is a great competition in the copha game.

The copha is used to make the chocolate crackles solid, and to also give them their slight coconut taste.

Is there anything else that copha is used for other than chocolate crackles? And why would you make anything else with copha when you could be making chocolate crackles?

Copha, it would appear, is unavailable outside Australia. If anyone from outside Australia is reading this, tell me if copha is available in your local supermarket.

A friend of mine is big into cooking gourmet food. He reads all the Nigella books and has all the jars with different herbs and all.

He's a great cook. I know, because he made chocolate crackles.

If you can size up your respective audience and give them what they want, that makes you a great chef in my books.

Of course, my partner told me off because I said that chocolate crackles should this guy's signiture dish.

With all the gourmet dishes this guy can create, chocolate crackles seems like a step down, but, as I explained, "You can never lose a friend over chocolate crackles."

You can make the best gourmet dish in the world, and there will always be someone who doesn't like it. "Too fishy", "Too small", "Too raw", "Too cooked", "Too square", "Too blue"...

But people love chocolate crackles, despite them being small, brown and irregular.

Chocolate crackles don't discriminate. People do.

There is nothing wrong with being "the guy who makes chocolate crackles".

In closing, Chokito's rule.

The end.

2002-11-24T19:44:00.000+10:00

There are some things that just sound better coming from 1950's educational films.

Here's my example

2002-11-20T16:17:00.000+10:00

"A Major Motion Picture from the Studio that bought you "Drek" and "So On"...

Does anyone remember the last Minor Motion Picture they went to?

2002-11-20T16:11:00.000+10:00

"I'm Thor."
"You're Thor? I'm so thor I can hardly pith!"

For anyone who doesn't know what a bloodbath is, they should come and see me play squash.

I have recently started playing a guy who can actually PLAY squash, rather than hack the ball around, as I like to do. Whereas I come into it with the idea of venting my frustrations out on a little black ball, he goes in TO WIN.

Six games to nil.

Bythe end of that hour, I was almost blacking out from exhaustion. I ended up taking the next day off work because I was in such bad form that I spent half the night lying on the bathroom floor.

That was week one.

Yesterday was week two. Seven games to nil.

This week I actually felt good about it afterwards. Not the losing, but the fact that I was still standing unsupported. And I got a lot better in that one week.

I think my problem in the first week was my belief that squash was a game that anyone could play.

It's a simple game: Two players take turns hitting a little rubber ball around a court. First person to let it bounce twice on the floor loses.

For me, squash has always been a game for the masses. Anyone can play that. Anyone can pick up a racquet and slog a ball around.

But there are intricacies in squash that I never thought about until I played a real player.

Like the sections of the floor you should let the ball bounce, or the different types of let (like when someone is between you and your stroke) and the difference between a 9 and 15-point game.

And that's without talking about talent.

There are people who play squash, then there are people who know how to play squash.

My mistake in the first week was thinking we both were simply playing squash. The second week, at least I knew that I was playing someone who knew how to play. That's the next step towards being able to play myself.

Roll on week three.

...barring crippling muscle spasms...

2002-11-11T16:41:00.000+10:00

Hey you, Put down that crack pipe!
It's time for Word of the Day!

The word of the day is: minutia

Five interesting things about the word minutia:

1. Minutia is one of those words that you can't say without sounding just a little bit brighter.

2. After saying minutia three times, it sounds silly.

3. If you had a friend who was a bit of an artsy tool who liked aura reading and colonic irrigation, Minutia would be one of their dog's names.

4. That's about all I have to say about minutia.

5. I said that's all I had to say about minutia!.

Well, you try coming up with interesting content about the word minutia...

2002-11-11T11:34:00.000+10:00

Now here's a horror movie and/or computer game waiting to happen.

This is from the Age website today.

It just goes to show what you can do with a house, a lot of time, lots of shotguns and explosives and a maniacal drive.

Avenging pensioner killed by own booby-trap
November 11 2002

Police thought Louis Dethy had committed suicide until they opened a chest in his house in Charlerois, Belgium. Kim Willsher reports.

A reclusive pensioner who booby-trapped his home with the intention of killing his estranged family, died himself when he inadvertently triggered one of his own devices.

Belgian police have revealed that Louis Dethy, a retired engineer, had hidden a number of booby traps in walls, ceilings and household objects throughout his three-storey home. The traps appeared to be a revenge on the children and grandchildren he claimed had abandoned him.

At first Belgian police assumed the 79-year-old had committed suicide and bled to death from a gunshot wound to the neck after finding him at his home near the town of Charlerois. It was an assumption that nearly cost one detective his life as he searched the house and opened a booby-trapped wooden chest. A shotgun hidden inside went off, missing the policeman by centimetres.

The detectives called in military mine-clearance experts who, after unravelling a series of clues left in scribbled notes, uncovered a total of 19 death traps, among them an apparently harmless but lethal pile of dinner plates, the TV and even an exploding crate of beer.

"We have never come across anything like it before," said one of the experts. "It was all fiendishly clever. The house was booby-trapped from top to bottom. We've had to take everything apart."

To his neighbours in French-speaking Wallonie in the south of Belgium, Dethy appeared a harmless, God-fearing and taciturn character who spent his retirement pottering about in his garage. He had built his chalet-style brick and timber home in the 1960s and installed his family there.

Here in the heart of conservative, Catholic Belgium, few were surprised that the churchgoing couple produced 14 children - 10 girls and four boys. But his strong religious beliefs did not prevent him from committing adultery and when his wife caught him in bed with another woman 20 years ago, she walked out, taking the children. Dethy then retreated into a reclusive existence.

"Good morning and good evening was about all you'd get out of him," said one neighbour. "We only saw him when he left the house to go shopping or church or when he worked in the garage."

Relatives say he never forgave his wife for divorcing him, or his 14 children and 37 grandchildren for having little to do with him. His bitterness grew into a desire for revenge when even his mother became estranged from him.

The family house had been built by Dethy on land and with materials paid for by his mother. When she turned against him, she bequeathed the property to one of his daughters, Jeanne, 49.

Four years ago he lost a lengthy legal battle to overturn her will and at that point, the detectives believe, he set about installing the traps, most of them using concealed 12-bore shotguns triggered by barely-visible nylon threads or fishing line. His thinking appeared to be that if he were evicted, he would ensure that the new owner would not live to enjoy the house.

The military engineers found that Dethy had numbered and catalogued each device and left coded notes for the whereabouts of each.

Whether the notes were reminders for himself or cryptic clues for his family or police is not known.

One scrap of paper containing the words "le vin est tire", a play on the French word tirer (to pull or shoot), led to a trap in the cellar, while another was discovered in a crate of beer, designed to set off a shotgun when a certain number of bottles were removed.

Dethy's daughter Jeanne, said family members were convinced they were the intended victims. "He hated us," she said.

"Father was a strange and cold man, but he was very ingenious and he put his ingenuity to bad use.

"He wanted to kill us all. Instead he was caught out by one of his own traps."

2002-11-11T11:30:00.000+10:00

Go Beekeeper, go you beautiful meat pie on legs.

I got a third place in the office sweep for the Melbourne Cup. I was going to put a bet on, didn't, and therefore missed out on the big bucks. Still up, can't complain.

A day at the races has never been a big thrill for me. I've only been to the horses a couple of times in my long and luxurious life, but it's never had the draw for me that a lot of people find so unavoidable.

It's not that I don't like gambling, I just don't feel the need to pour my life savings (all $54.16) into a nag running around a track.

I guess I don't have a gambler's heart, the one that is covered with IOU notes and back-dated checks. Sure, there is a thrill that runs through the veins when one of your longshots comes in, but the wider your bet, the better your odds, the less chance of it coming in, the more chance of throwing good money after bad.

I think I think too much.

I find the annual racing event very funny, at least for the people who turn out at these events, dressed in their finery, walking around in $200 shoes and double-that hats, primping and preening and being the object of admiration, all the while standing in a well-manicured courtyard that smells of horse shit. If I wanted to be seen, I could think of better places than somewhere that reeks of poo.

But I guess I don't want to be seen. I don't do these social engagements, cup day, theatre openings, art galleries, gala festival nights. Mainly because of three reasons:

1. Socialising is one of my worst talents, in that I can't hold up my end of a cogent discussion in pleasant company without throwing in copious amounts of the f-word;

2. I can't dress stylishly to save my life. I don't have an ensemble that doesn't come a woolly jumper and/or thongs, and I find anyone who cares that much about how you look over who you are extremely arrogant, egocentric and shallow;

3. They won't return my calls.

That said, I'm not big on the horses either. For a distance, the big lumbering mammals can look distinguished, sleek even. Up close, a horse is just a cow with a better personal trainer.

I've only been horse-riding once, and I didn't hate it. True, my horse was an old nag called Troy. It was only after taking it for a stumble down to the beach and back that I realised that this horse wasn't named after the wooden horse that led to the Fall of Troy, it was the actual horse.

The only time the horse went into anything above a fast walk was when one of the tour leaders came by and whacked it was a riding crop. Once they'd gone, Troy went back to looking at its shoes and contemplating eating things.

I wouldn't mind going riding again one day, but I'd want something that wasn't cross-bred with a lawnchair.

If I had to trace back my aversion to big stupid dumb animals, it would probably go back to when I was a five-year-old, when the world was one big adventure, the days were long and full of fun, and you could buy five lollies for one cent. I got bitten. By a dolphin.

I was on a half-around-Australia trip with my family, and we stopped off at some oceanarium in Adelaide. In one of the tanks they had a pod of dolphins, swimming around, being playful and shit, enchanting all with their mirthful gaiety. There was a group of people standing along the edge of the pool, all watching the dolphins, holding their hands out to pat the lovely sleek silvery creatures as they rolled past and interacted with the public. So, being a member of the public, I felt compelled to put my hand in the ring, so to speak, stick it out there, and give the dolphin a bit of a pat.

Meanwhile, the assailant, whom I'll call Dolphin X, was thinking that it was in stupid people heaven, and decided that the small pinkish blob at the end of my arm was in fact some small pinkish blob OF FOOD at the end of my arm. Thus, when it came to the point when Dolphin X went swimming past my outstretched hand, it did not glide past, allowing me to rub its smooth, shimmering skin, instead, it went me.

Before I knew it, I had a fair-sized piece of dolphin attached to my little blob of pinkish hand. I screamed, it let go. I burst into tears, it swam away. My father tried desperately to console me, it disappeared into the blue depths. No amount of telling me it just wanted to pull me in to play with me could banish the psychological damage that that aquatic terrorist did in those few moments.

So I point my reticence around animals firmly to that day. Never again would I trust the blank stare of a large mammal.

And neither would I trust the deep, dark recesses of the sea.

And I would no longer trust oceanariums.

Or Adelaide.

And I'm not too fond of pinkish blobs for that matter...

2002-10-29T15:59:00.000+10:00

Do YOU have spoons?
Have YOU met celebrities?
Have YOU met celebrities with spoons?

A Nada World is looking for YOUR pictures of YOU meeting YOUR favourite celebrities, with either YOU or YOUR favourite celebrities holding spoons (theirs or YOURS)!
For every picture YOU send, YOU'LL receive a prize!*

If YOU have pictures like these, send them to us at:

A Nada World
People with Spoons Competition
here

(All entries must be real and/or genuine events occuring in this continuum, containing real spoons and celebrities, not that guy from that carpet commercial. No manipulation will be allowed, except for making yourself look taller next to celebrity. No pasting of celebrity head on top of other person's body will be allowed, although celebrity fake nudes will not be frowned upon. Spoons of any description can be used, although plastic spoons show you weren't prepared beforehand. Entrants must send proof of really actually meeting this celebrity pictured, not just shooting them from a distance and pretending you were standing next to them. Sample dalogue from your supposed exchange will be considered enough, although please use correct punctuation when quoting speech. Forks are prohibited from entry.)

*denotes fingers-crossed

2002-10-28T17:23:00.000+10:00

There are important questions that need to be answered, questions that will provide us with the answers that will change the world, eradicate hunger or global debt, fix the environment or generate boundless, clean energy, change the way we live and work and think and play.

Meanwhile, there are questions like this:

Vanilla Coke: Is it any good?

There's a saying: "If it ain't broke, don't bugger around with it, chump!" Coca Cola found this out in a big way when they decided to muck around with the recipe for Coke back in the 70's or 80's.

After years of testing, they decided that people would appreciate a new Coke taste, one that was more refreshing and invigorating and so on. Surely, they thought, if "Coke is it", than this new coke would be “it” even more. "It" squared, as it were.

The factor that they totally discounted was that people don't like other people messing with their drinks. People had grown up drinking Coke, and darn hell, they didn't want no lily-livered varmint coming through and mucking up their cola-flavoured beverages.

In short, New Coke was a dud. Short time later, Coke came out with Coke Classic, just like the old coke, but newer.

Overall, it was a pretty expensive exercise for Coke, and all it did was divide the Coke-buying community, rather than make inroads into the Pepsi market.

So now, Coke is asking people to "reward their curiousity" and try drinking new Vanilla Coke. The refreshing taste of vanilla, blah blah blah blah blah....

So how does it taste? Actually, not as bad as I expected. In fact, I've consumed quite a bit of it in the past couple of weeks. But is there room for another cola beverage?

Vanilla Coke is Coke's version of Pepsi, without ripping off the recipe. It's Sweet Coke, much like Pepsi. The Pepsi taste is primarily sugary with a touch of cola, while Coke is primarily cola with a lot of sugar (it does makes a difference).

Vanilla Coke belongs at the Pepsi end of the spectrum. Lolly-Coke. But you can’t just foist a new Coke onto people and expect them to drink it. Well, not twice anyway. So, Vanilla Coke comes with extra flavour - vanilla (surprise surprise). Fortunately, Coke has realised that people aren't buying Coke for the sweet taste of vanilla, so the vanilla flavouring isn't overpowering to the point that it becomes dark red creaming soda.

That said, there's no mistaking that vanilla tang. After a glass or two, it really does start to overpower you.

I don't really understand the allure of vanilla. As an icecream it's a little lame, as a room freshener it's cloying and as a rapper it was damn annoying. But I guess it's one of those spices, like cinnamon, that people generally react to in the positive way.

And Lemon Coke has been done. As Pepsi Twist.

Mint Coke? Errg.

About the cleverest thing about Vanilla Coke is the advertising campaign. "Reward your curiousity"? Brilliant line. Making the audience buy the product as their prize for their own curiousity? Excellent.

Bottom line: Will I drink Vanilla Coke? Yes. A bit.

It's not Coke, but it's pointless trying to be Coke when Coke is available.

Just ask Pepsi.

2002-10-24T09:57:00.000+10:00

Went to the Melbourne leg of Livid on Saturday. I got to see Motor Ace play on the big stage, then followed some friends around the bar area while they tried to find their other friends, then went to see Gerling set up, then decided I was sick of having this headache and went home.

The last couple of days in Melbourne have been dry and windy, and coupled with my lack of hayfever meds in the last week, meant that my sinuses were imploding. Ahhh... Spring.

I got Jen to pick me up and we stopped off at a chemist on the way home to pick up some Sudafed. Ahhh, sweet sweet Sudafed. Went home, went to sleep, woke up a couple of hours later, seemingly buzzing a little from the psuedoephedrine, decided that I would go back to Livid and catch the final couple of bands.

Afterall, I still had my pass-out wristtag, my pass-out ticket and my wet area wristtag. All I needed was a stamp of some sort and I'd have the whole enchilada.

I got back in time to see Powderfinger and Morrisey, who both did very well. The 'Finger rocked it up on the main stage, played some oldies, new newies, and even a cover of "Total Control", a strange choice in my mind.

Morrisey has the cool down pat. The man has enough stage presence that he can just wander around singing and the crowd just hangs off his every word. And he doesn't look like he's aged in 20 years. Weird, weird old man.

Yes, I know it's not much, but at least it shows I'm still alive...

I'm sure that I'll get time to write some more amusing stuff in the near future, but at the moment all my free time is split between working on a "secret" project for Jen and trying to not work on said "secret" project.

It's a hard balance, but I can honestly say that the project is moving along in fits and starts, like a snail with flatulance. Possibly.

I'll keep you posted. Actually, when I say posted, I mean in the dark...

Just so you know...

... or don't...

2002-10-18T16:38:00.000+10:00

Speaking of tattoos, do you think it would be possible to get a fish, something like an angel fish, with a broad side, and imprint a company logo onto it?

Imagine having an aquarium in your shop window with fish inside that are swimming ads for your product.

Cool. Make It So!

2002-10-18T16:06:00.000+10:00

I don't have any tattoos. I've thought about them, but I'm too much of a wimp to get one. So far. Maybe years from now, when my senses have been dulled by years of... whatever dulls senses... I'll get a tat, to remind myself what pain feels like.

I know the design I want. It's a celtic-looking design that means something a lot to me, but would just look nice to anyone else. I'm not sure where it would go, but I think I would forgo the bum area. I don't see the point of a tattoo on the bum, unless you have a really excellent bum. There just aren’t that many reasons to constantly flash your ass. Pornstarring and Schoolie’s week are the only two I can think of off the top of my head.

I would probably pass on the arm tat as well. I have girly arms. They are a bit pathetic. The only time they have looked in any way muscular was when I was going to the gym three times a week, and that was a long time ago. My concern would be that if I got a tat on my arm, my arms would them go through some identity crisis, decide they wanted to be more buff/less buff/more flabby/"Reed Richards" long/whatever, and I would be left with some elongated parody of my original intention.

So, my back or my front. Well, my front is covered in hair, and it would be a little silly to put a painting in the middle of a forest, so the front is out.

Actually, my back is getting hairy, so maybe the back is out too.

Which leaves me with....?

And this is why I haven't got a tattoo.

If you've covered yourself with tats, don't you think that being buried or cremated when you die is a bit of a waste?

Say, for example, you've had an image of a beautiful naked chick straddled over a beautiful naked motorcycle, roaring down a beautiful naked highway, imprinted into the canvas that is your back.

Surely that is a one-of-a-kind image, a masterpiece of ink and needlework, the result of hours of blood, sweat, tears, pain, alcohol and ground teeth. Shouldn't that be preserved as an artwork, a piece of history, a signifying mark of an individual, the only person to have that image interwoven into their being? Or something?

If a hunter can have an animal stuffed and mounted, why can't you have the tattoo of a deceased loved one treated and presented as a memento? Why not? Because that's really sick.

Well, maybe to me, but other people may have a different idea. If you spent your life holding onto that person, looking at that image upclose, would you want to hold onto it, as a memory of the person you miss?

I’m getting the unfortunate image of someone with the skin of a loved one made into some bizarre human wetsuit, complete with zipper up the front. It’s like some obscene Father Christmas from a bondage video.

whaddayoureckon?

2002-10-18T15:38:00.000+10:00

There are three types of people in the world.

1. Those who write "BOOBLESS".

2. Those who write "OILSPILL".

3. Those who have no idea what I'm talking about.

Which type are you?

2002-10-11T12:58:00.000+10:00

I was watching the Today show this morning while getting ready for work, and they had a piece on a new generation of robots that moved using a technique that scientists had worked out after studying the movements of cockroaches.

As most people can tell you, cockroaches can move quickly over almost any terrain. Scientists attribute this to their walking pattern, in which they use two legs from one side and one leg on the other in tandem, this creating a triangular balance between the standing feet, allowing the rest of the feet to move forward to create the next stable triangular base, and so on.

They showed these tests that they ran with cockroaches running over objects and along conveyor belts and whatever, which seemed funny in a way, making them sweat for the prize.

Then they had a bit with one of the scientists talking about how this research would help them to produce the next generation of robots.

Enter the next generation of robots, jittering.

They have this flat board of circuitry sitting on six legs, with a cable of wires running up out of it's body.

And this thing is scary.

It's hopping and jittering and scuttering and generally freaking me out. It's like a caffeine addict. With Parkinson's Disease.

You know the video for “Berlin Chair” by You Am I, with that guy in the sequin suit, who looks like a crazy homeless guy, dancing like he's got ants in his pants? It's like him, except in fast forward.

They talk a little more about the next generation of robots, and I can't help thinking about homecare.

Imagine you are an invalid, stuck in bed, unable to do the simplest things, like make a cup of coffee or boil an egg.

Imagine you are assigned a home-help robot, who will cater for all your needs, able to assist you whenever you need it.

Now imagine that you are lying in bed, late at night, feeling thirsty, feeling tired, but you can't go to sleep, feeling like what you need is a nice glass of hot milk. So you instruct your nurse computer to make a mug of hot milk and bring it to your room.

Now imagine the door opening and some skittering cockroach-thing scrabbling and jittering across the floor towards your bed, like a crab on speed, armed with A SEARING HOT MUG OF MILK, white froth flying all over the place, while this mechanical monstrosity clatters nearer and nearer, jittering and scrabbling, up alongside the bed, up a small purpose-built incline, half-full container of hot milk still on its back, sloshing erratically, jittering, scrabbling, clattering, RIGHT UP TO YOUR FACE!!!!

Feeling sleepy now?

Ain’t technology grand?

2002-10-11T11:48:00.000+10:00

Universal Studios, makers of movies such as The Scorpian King, Patch Adams and Undercover Brother, are part of an organisation called Vivendi Universal.

According to Yahoo, out of the 11 subsidiaries listed under Vivendi Universal, at least four subsidiaries are involved in the treating wastewater and/or solid and hazardous waste.

Is it just me, or is that ironic?

2002-10-11T11:29:00.000+10:00

When you think of wordsmiths, you would rarely think of the football fraternity, would you? At the end of the day, whether they've put in the hard yards, taken each game as it came and won more than they've lost, or come up short on their way to that one day in September, and are instead staring down the barrel at the wooden spoon, footiers don't seem like the sort of guys who would favour some new parley over some well-worn cliche.

What is why I was surprised to hear a strange word uttered in not one, but two "football industry people" comments regarding the upcoming annual "Dump, Bump and Trump", the player draft.

The word is: desirous

Use it in a sentence: Peter Jackson: "An offer has been made, he is a good footballer and we are desirous of keeping him."

Here's another one: Jim Tsagalis: "Peter is a professional, he won't go on and play if he doesn't think that he can really add something in the role that they are desirous of him playing"

Apparently, it means the same thing as desiring, I'm just not sure of the tense.

It's not that I'm particulatly wordly, but I don't remember ever hearing that word before. It's a real word. I looked it up. Because I'm a little finicky about people who aren't me making up words, and attempting to pass them off on the general public as just plain clever. Correct wordliness is my Everest.

Here's another word to remember: retentive.

2002-09-27T23:10:00.000+10:00

The Legend of Tinsel (according to christmasstories.com)
Mary and Jesus were leaving the city to hide from King Herod. They grew very tired so they stopped in a cave to rest. The soldiers came by but did not look into the cave because it was covered in cobwebs. That night as they slept a spider had covered the entrance to the cave to keep them safe. When Mary and Jesus awoke the cobwebs shimmered in the morning sun and they new God had kept them safe. So when you see Tinsel on a tree it symbolizes the spiders web that saved Mary and Jesus.

It's coming into that time of year again. The time when old fat jolly men in red suits come down your chimneys and leave presents under your tree, which doesn't sound at all like a euphemism for sex, does it?

With the return of Nick comes a barrage of extraneous packaging materials and wrapping for the wrapping. It is also time for the annual explosion of that most traditional of Christmas decorations, tinsel.

Tinsel has been a firm family favourite for decades now, awash on Christmas trees, hanging precariously over curtain rods and doorframes, bursting outside into the gutters and curling its way across the roof.

But few people have stopped to think about the damage that this holiday tradition is causing to the survival of an almost unknown mammal that lives in the wilderness of Northern Europe.

The Tinsel Moose (Alces Alces Merri Alces).

With its massive body proportions, giant robust antlers and teased twinkling coat, the tinsel moose was once the mighty symbol of the boreal and subarctic zones of the entire northern hemisphere.

It thrived in areas of dense mixed forest or open tundra, and occasionally volcanic lavapits. In past centuries, where ever you found a wild smattering of conifers, you could find tinsel moose, or a spangle of tinsel moose.

The Tinsel Moose is famed for its lustrous coat, which sparkles as the animal moves through the forest. The natural ability of the shedding strands of the moose's coat to cling onto branches and outcrops as the animal brushes past has led to the introduction of tinsel as a hanging ornament around the civilised world.

Standing two metres high at the shoulder and weighing almost half a metric ton, this giant commands respect. A tinsel moose in its prime has little to fear from most natural predators, for few animals apart from man possess the ability to kill it. This is not only due to it powerful kick and dangerous antlers, but few predators can stand the taste of tinsel. Indeed, the act of biting into a tinsel moose’s hide is similar to chewing a mouthful of aluminium foil.

In fact, the only natural predator the tinsel moose fears is the coyote. The coyote circumvents the uncomfortable tinsel hide by chasing and killing the tinsel moose in more elaborate ways, such as rolling boulders off cliffs, pouring a pile of “Moose Chew” in the intersection of a busy road, or occasionally dressing up a stick of dynamite up as a female tinsel moose and imitating her mating call.

Apart from a little rustling, moose are relatively silent animals. However, during the breeding season, the rut, their silence is broken. Moose courtship is elaborate, consisting not only of intricate vocalizations but also of subtle chemical stimuli and elegantly tinselled visual displays. For two weeks a year, everything goes all 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Unfortunately, the global demand for tinsel has seen the numbers of wild tinsel moose diminish over the last twenty years. In the early part of the 19th Century, tinsel moose were common in most Northern Hemisphere countries. Except Belgium. In the early 1970’s, tinsel moose numbers had fallen by up to 60%, and sometimes even higher. By 1978, sightings of tinsel moose were extremely rare.

By the late 1980’s, the new romantic era was over, and Spandau Ballet were no longer the chart-topping force they once were.

Hunted almost to extinction, only several thousand wild tinsel moose exist today, mostly around the Black Forest in Denmark and Cicily, Alaska.

For a while it seemed that the tinsel moose would go the way of its related brother, the Crepe Paper Elk, when new hope sprung suddenly, like a rake underfoot. In 1993, a pair of explorers, Herve “Pork Fingers” MacKechnie and Julio “Two-Tone” Brownsmithston, searching for the famous Lost Playground of the Pharoahs, in Kent, stumbled across a spangle of tinsel moose. This surprising surprise surprised anthropologists around the world, who labelled Kent “Tinseltown”, until some lawyers from Hollywood told them to stop that.

Several spangles of wild tinsel moose have since been pointed at in various parts of Europe, including Majorca in Spain, the Postdamaplatz in Germany and even one sighting in the town of Tul of Norway, although the Tul sighting was later found to be a White-Crested Glitter Sloth.

Meanwhile, several tinsel moose farms have appeared throughout Europe and North America. They enjoyed a healthy interest in the late 90’s after their appearance in “The Top 100 Tax Dodges Ever” in the annual publication Fraud Quarterly.

While tinsel moose farming has become a lucrative industry, the tinsel shorn from these beasts is of a lower quality than that harvested from wild moose. The tinsel from so-called “battery tinsel moose” is mainly used for smaller, cheap garnish and those crappy tinsel wigs that they sell at Coles.

Recent attempts have been made in the field of “free range” tinsel moose farming, allowing the tinsel moose to roam free in large acreages, with the farmers seasonally tracking, tranquillising, shearing, and only occasionally sodomising, the half-wild animals.

So what, you ask, does this mean for the populace of the world who need their annual fix of shiny decoration? Even now, scientists are working on the world’s first synthetic tinsel, to be available in the next couple of years. Sources believe that it has almost the exact texture as natural tinsel, with the same ductile properties, and also has the same recognisable flavour when eaten. The new synthetic tinsel, called Tinsel©, will come in as many colours as the original tinsel, but without the strong smell of musk.

Hopefully the success of this synthetic variety means that the tinsel moose won’t end up on that sad, sad list of make-believe extinct animals, like the Chocolate Roc, and the Disco Gryphon.

Have yourselves a merry… and thoughtful… Christmas.

2002-09-26T16:27:00.000+10:00

Well, finally, A Nada World has hit the big 1000 hits, and it's only taken 9 months.

OK, so there are sites out there that get that sort of traffic during a lunchbreak, but I'm proud of my meagre 1000 hits, as a majority of them came from word of mouth (and one from someone searching for +"rob lowe" +"hotel room". And they would have been so disappointed).

So, thanks (sorry, I meant to say "props") to everyone who has clicked, wandered or just plain fallen over A Nada World in their day-to-day sojourns around the net.

Here's to the next thousand. Now I just have to find something interesting to write about...

Topics? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

2002-09-26T16:20:00.000+10:00

Went to the Show.

The Royal Melbourne Show, as distinct from the Common or Garden Melbourne Show (it's not like the Queen or Prince Harry is coming down to open the thing. "We have rode upon the Gravitron, and we are AMUSED...").

Luckily, some friends of mine had media passes, so I didn't have to fork out $20 to get in.

I haven't been to a Royal Show in years, in fact since I was about 5, so it was hard to judge if this show was bigger and better than my last experience, in 1978 or 9.

Never has the word “plethora” been so well used to describe the range of showbags on offer. A veritable shitload of showbags were displayed. Although, no Doctor Who Showbag. Must be said, for a show that has only been out of commission for 13 years, I was a mite disappointed. Rant over.

As you wander around the showbag pavilion, you start to notice vague similarities. Like three different showbags offering the same Phantom comic. Or blow-up alien, or FM radio. How all the lolly bags tend to blur into one. How the bags that proclaim to be “Jumbo”, “Giant” or “Sumo” Showbags, aren’t actually offering more lollies or toys, but are just physically larger bags. How some really nasty things have been done to Muppets, all in the name of showbags.

I didn't end up buying a showbag, despite my strongly-felt conviction that its is not a proper day at the show without purchasing a bag of crappy keepsakes. Unfortunately, there was nothing there that took my fancy, not even the Buffy Showbag, which had a couple of stickers and a blow-up dagger. The bags that appealed to me most were for FHM and a computer game magazine. I couldn't make myself buy a magazine just because it came in a showbag, with a copies of back issues, some Asian cup noodle and some muscle bars.

I still don't understand the relevance of the cup noodle. "Come buy the FHM bag, it's got cup noodle!"

The only things I bought at the show were a bucket of fairy floss for Jen and a toy pen with an alien on the top that punches the air when you press a button at the back, just like Rock'em Sock'em Robots. I bought the fairy floss because I was told to. I bought the punching alien pen because it was funny.

I went on one ride during my time at the show: The Ghost Train. When I was a little tacker, this was the one ride I went on at the Perth Show, and I thought then that it was good, but not fantastic, and I remember drawing up plans for my very own ghost train that would piss all over it.

And now, in my later life, I had experienced my first taste of serious themeparkery with my trip to Disneyland, so I was interested to see what the humble Ghost Train had to offer.

So, how does the Ghost Train compare to rides such as Haunted Mansion Disneyland? Observe the following points:

Haunted Mansion: Has a large waiting section that doubly serves as a first step into a spooky, forboding immersive environment.
Ghost Train: Has a stall outside where you buy your ticket, and some stairs up to where you board your carriage. Oh, and some animatronic figures that look a bit crap.

Haunted Mansion: Has themed carriages, called "Doombuggies".
Ghost Train: Has a chair on a track, loosely based on a train.

Haunted Mansion: Uses a vast array of special effects to achieve spookiness.
Ghost Train: You get a pair of those glasses that make everything "sorta spooky" in a blurred way.

Haunted Mansion: Uses low lighting to produce a feeling a moodiness and spooky terror.
Ghost Train: Hits you with a strobe light as soon as you enter, thereby disorientating you for the remaining of the ride. Epileptics beware.

Haunted Mansion: Promises "99 ghostssssss haunt these hallsssssssssss"
Ghost Train: Has a couple of guys dressed in hockey masks who mess with your hair as you go past (One of which said "Boo!" in my ear. the other said "I like your T-shirt." I kid you not).

Haunted Mansion: Including pre-show, lasts about 15 minutes.
Ghost Train: Including climbing up the stairs, lasts about 60 seconds.

alternatively:

Haunted Mansion: In a themepark on the other side of the world, produced by a large team of Imagineers and a cost of several million dollars.
Ghost Train: Located down the road, probably the size of a large truck, costs a couple of thou to build, staffed by a maximum of four, able to be pulled down and dragged around the country.

It's all about balance. And economics. Oh and "Field of Dreams", somehow.

2002-09-19T18:00:00.000+10:00

I guess to start off, I'm not big on giving to charity. Sure, I understand the ethics behind giving to charity, but I guess I've just never been comfortable with people begging me for money. Philanthropy just ain't in my blood.

Maybe it is due to my belief that, when I was a young'un, our family wasn't very well off. In hindsight, we probably had more than a lot of people, but we didn't have ALL the mod cons that other families did. I think some of it was simply because they were mod cons, and Dad didn't look too kindly on mod cons. Things like VCRs. He only bought a VCR when I had moved out. Meanwhile, he had a boat in the shed that he rarely found the time to take out on the water. Go figure.

(I'm getting a little side-tracked at the moment because I just had my father ring me about some stuff, when proceed to tell me how I(I!) should be building an emergency nest egg rather than using my (MY) money to buy things. Basically, sticking his nose in, which he can't help, firstly because he's done it all his life, and secondly because he's got a big nose. It's like second-nature for him to tell his kids what they shouldn't be doing. Actually, he doesn't have another nature, so I guess it's like first-nature for him.)

I don't have a problem with charity, it's a good thing that helps people and gives you a warm feeling in your heart and good karma points. I just don't like people trying to emotional blackmail me into giving money.

This rant stems from a phone call I got last night from someone calling on behalf of Yooralla, which is a charity that helps disabled kids in Victoria, I think. Firstly, I don't like phone solicitation. Never have, never will. People ringing me, interrupting my private time, asking for my money, has never been on my list of "Things I Like Happening to Me". At least with people at your door, you can say to yourself "Well, this person has walked around the suburb in the name of charity (or a football team). I can at least give them some change."

Secondly, I don't like people who push this whole emotional blackmail crap on you, like it's your fault that this organisation is doing so badly. This lady last night finished her spiel with the line "Please, won't you help us!” like she personally was just one boat-trip away from a sweatshop in the Indies. Even if I was considering buying some raffle tickets, at that point I was just about ready to give her certain pieces of my mind regarding her demeanour. Instead I politely declined, thanked her for her time and put the phone down. Because I was brought up believing that you should always be polite, even when hanging up on someone.

OK, so I sound like a hard bastard, but it's not the charity that I'm dissing, it's the people themselves who ring you up, out of the blue, and ask for money. People generally don't like lending money to their friends, let alone people you don't know, who get all whiny because it's not as much as they were hoping for.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you should donate to charities, because I don't. Then again, I’m not going to tell you to give in to the emotional blackmail proffered by someone who has pulled your name out of the phone book at random (or worse, pulled it off a list of past suckers or gathered your information from some form you filled out on the net).

If you want to give to charity, go right ahead, just do it for the right reasons: because you want to, not because someone shamed you into it.

But then again, I'm a heartless bastard. Don't follow my lead, it will only end.

2002-09-12T17:02:00.000+10:00

Quick!

Name ten songs that feature whistling...

I've got six...

2002-09-12T12:50:00.000+10:00

There's something a little satisfying about getting a brand new keyboard.

I don't know if it's the way the keys feel different, or working your way around a new set of buttons, but a new keyboard can make you feel just that little bit closer to the future.

Or maybe it's just me.

I recently got my hands on an optical mouse, with scrolling thingy. The way of the future. No more unclogging the crap off the rollers inside the ball chamber for this user. Get one. If you can, get one without a cord.

At present, I am working for a company whose computer network is falling apart at the seams. We have a server that doesn't serve, workstations that don't work and a fax that is completely faxed.

Our outside computer guys are putting together a report for us, which basically says "Press CTRL-ALT-DELETE on your whole network.”

We have a small network of computers, maybe 20 in all, which between them are running Windows 95, 98, 2000 and NT.

We have computers that take 10 minutes to boot up, and all they run is word processing and email.

We have four laptops in the office. Well, when I say IN the office, I mean we have one IN the office being used (with problems), two offsite being fixed, and one in Vietnam (on business). We also have one laptop that was sent to IBM two months ago. Or should I say, IBM have one of our laptops that was sent to them two months ago. Its present position could be anything from “awaiting service” to “awaiting pick-up” to “propping door open in canteen”. Take your pick.

We have a modem connection that takes 10 minutes to squeeze a 1Mb email through. If you try sending anything larger through, the modem picks up its ball and goes home.

I love computers.

Thinking back to the days before computers, when everything was done on typewriters, I appreciate the abilities offered by computers. Simple deletion or correction, for example. And sure typewriters didn't always work all the time: you occasionally had to change the ink ribbon, or get in and pull the little storks with the letters on them apart when you went too fast and jammed them all together.

If only it was that easy these days. It's like comparing old cars to new cars. Sure you can go faster in the new cars, but with everything being computer controlled, you need a electronic engineer's degree to fiddle with the donk.

Not that I know one end of the donk from the other, but you get my metaphor.

I am in the unenviable position of being the most computer-literate person in the office, despite knowing only the bare bones of what happens in those little beige-coloured boxes. I am the guy they call when something doesn't work, and 75% of the time, I have no idea. That's a pretty high bad-call rate.

It's lucky I did that degree in computing.

Hold on, that was in Graphic Design...

Now I know where I went wrong.

The money is definitely in fixing computers, and you don't even have to worry about service. People can call you and you can say "Oh yes, that's the transdermal fibrillation conduit. They're expensive, I can fix it on Sunday." and people just go "Oh, OK."

I guess I'm down on computers because they are increasing giving me grief, at work and at home. I'm used to things working correctly, and fast, and when they don't, and I don't know how to fix them, I get pissed off.

And yet, I should be over the moon at what computers and the internet offer me, because it has entertained me and provided me with usually useless and occasionally useful knowledge than any other appliance (excluding telly. It’s got a long way to go to make up for a childhood of cathode ray fun).

When I was in Grade 6, I did a project on Japan. I consisted of me going through encyclopaedias and source books, finding information, writing in out (by hand!!!) and copying pictures from said source material in lovingly rendered pencil and texta. I probably had a couple of weeks to do it.

These days, something like that takes one night on the net, typed up (or more honestly, just cut and pasted), insert images, do up a cover page, print it out and BAM! One project on Japan. And I'm sure even now, there are students who bypass the printing stage and just email their projects in.

The only thing these students have to worry about is sorting the truth from the bumph, and there's a lot of bumph out there. Just because it looks like a real report, doesn't mean that's it's 100% kosher. Just because it's on your screen doesn't make it real.

So, I love computers, and yet I hate computers, and yet I really do love them.

So far, I think they just hate me.

...but I love my new keyboard...

2002-08-23T16:51:00.000+10:00

Scientists have been attaching electrodes to the antenna of cockroaches, then made them watch scenes out of Star Wars to guage their reactions, in an attempt to invent a process to stop cars running into each other.

Of course, if it works, if two cars are hurtling towards each other, they'll just turn and run under a fridge. In the case of an accident, at least you'll feel safe in the knowledge that, even if you've ripped the front off your car, you can still drive it around for a couple of weeks.

Nice idea, but I think more research should be done, possibly using the following movies:

Yellow Submarine - or just give the cockroaches some acid.
Pink Floyd - The Wall - or just give the cockroaches some more acid.
Magnolia - Maybe they can work out what the hell it's about.
The Naked Lunch - think of it as Cockroach Porn.
Anything starring Jon Lovitz - well someone has to find it funny.
Trainspotting - Like a home movie really.
Starship Troopers - and they can look for each other's cameos.
and finally
Attack of the Clones - so the researchers can observe cockroaches sleeping.

2002-08-23T16:34:00.000+10:00

It is said that "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings." Apart from the lack of rhythm, is this a true statement, and if so, what is the ratio of angels and wings?

Each day millions of bells are rung, whether it be for festive reasons, or simply to denote the opening of a door. If the above statement is true, there are millions of angels getting wings all over the place every single day. But does this mean an equal share of wings among angels?

Take, for example, the case of Bladriel. Coming from the lowest order of angeldom, Bladriel was required to go through the vested trials required to proceed to the next level of angelism, that being "The Getting of the Wings".

"In prehistoric times, an angel had to work for millenia to attain their wings, because bells weren't invented." Bladriel began, "So I think they were quite pleased when man invented the bell. But being such holy objects, belts weren't rung in great numbers, so those angels who did get their wings were very lucky indeed."

"Of course, during the Renaissance, bells were big business. Churches rang bells for almost any reason: religious festivities, holidays, mongrel hordes... the humans would give'em a tug any old time. That's when wings started dropping on angels in bundles. Piles of angels would suddenly receive a whopping great pair of wings in the snap of the fingers.

“It was great, especially for the cherubs, bless’em. Up til then, they were just heads, little baby heads, sitting around, singing praises and whatnot, couldn’t do nothing. Looked a little silly to the rest of us, couldn’t work out why anyone needed a baby head sitting around for. Then suddenly, poof! Pair of wings sticking out of their stumps and they were off, swanning about. Funniest thing I’d ever seen, those cherubs learning to fly, little baby heads lolling back and forth, all the while singing their praises and such. Great days. Great days.”

Bladriel got his first set of wings during this period. "I remember the day like it was yesterday. There I was, dancing on the head of a pin, when suddenly, Voom! Sodding great big wings, on my back, as you please. I was dead chuffed. Fell off the pinhead though. Centre of balance goes right out the window. Couldn't go near a pinhead for ages after that. Had to practice on thumbtacks for weeks."

While the ratio of wings to angels remained quite level during the middle ages, once the Industrial Revolution began, things began to look a little top heavy.

"There were a few small incidences at first," noted Bladriel, "A couple of seraphims started to notice one or two extra pairs of wings sprouting on their backs. Nothing too bad, although they had a few problems with updrafts and such. Poor sods would take off after giving someone some good news or pronouncing a virgin birth, catch a thermal and shoot straight out of the atmosphere. Nobody saw it to be a big deal, as there was always going to be the odd... discrepancy.

"Then more and more angels were having set of wings piling up on their backs. And those poor cherubs, they looked like little puffballs!

Bladriel believes that the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was the beginning of the modern epidemic sweeping across angeldom: Multiple Wing Syndrome.

“Once they started mass producing bells, everything went out the window for us angels. Everything had bells on: typewriters, bicycles, telephones, elevators, the lot. Someone calls someone else on the phone and Blam! Gabriel’s got a new set of flappers. Some kids rides down the street on his new bike and Shazam! Rubiel’s got another pair! There’s angels out there with four dozen sets of wings! I mean, they look like chickens!”

In an attempt to counter the bell-ringing orgy, angels instigated a new rule to balance the existing “bell=wing” statement. Unfortunately, the introduction of “Every time you cough, you knock a feather off” coincided with the Whooping Cough Epidemic of 1968.

“A terrible year.” Bladriel nodded, “Great piles of feathers all over Heaven. And Earth. The news reported huge snowfalls across all of Europe. It wasn’t snow, it was tons of tiny malted feathers. Still, we made a pretty penny on down quilts.”

Not all angels have been struck down with this problem, something that geo-theologists put down to “Wing Hotspots”.

Professor Rosco P Coltrane, leading partner in a study into ultra-winged angels, believes that certain crosspaths between regions of high bell usage and heavenly bodies collect “latent wing energy”, an increasing mass of energy that attaches itself to the first celestial being that crosses the threshold into that space.

“It’s freaky stuff.” said Professor Coltrane, “It’s a completely new and highly complex combination of science and religion. It’s a step towards a new understanding of “higher powers”. And I’m a Buddhist!”

While studies are progressing into the field of Multiple Wing Syndrome, no final answer has been found to combat the crippling overloading of angel’s backs, but at least one voice of reason can be heard in the mutters between scientists, scholars and theologians. That voice belongs to Harvey Q Pjuthery, regular man on the street, who said the following:

“Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me.”

Bullshit indeed.

2002-08-19T17:33:00.000+10:00

I did something rather silly last weekend. I went to the Wrestling. Nothing like seeing a bunch of grown men behaving like schoolkids.

The WWE (Not the WWF now, the WWE. Since the court case, they've changed their name so people don't think they're the World Wildlife Fund. Still, world... wildlife... fund... not that removed really) were in town as part of their Global Warning Tour. Tickets sold out within 24 hours, so when a ticket came my way, I had to think long and hard about it. It was pricey, but it's a chance to see something you don't often get, so I went "Yeah".

Colonial Stadium was decked out in chairs everywhere. The footy ground was covered in plastic chairs and rubber walkways, with the ring in the middle, surrounded by a ton of scaffolding for the lighting rig. And the place was packed. A Colonial Stadium record crowd of around 57,000 people turned up.

Our seats were on the "FightDeck", wrestling lingo for "the floor of the stadium". Can't complain really, we were 10 metres away from the ring and five metres away from the passageway from the wrestler's entrance stage and the ring.

The night began with an appearance by Stephanie McMahon, daughter of bigwig Wrestling supremo Vince McMahon, who thanked anyone for coming (thanks for the moolah, chumps!) and quickly disappeared again.

The first bout was announced as a "Kiss My Ass" bout, where the loser had to kiss the butt of the winner. Classy. The thin Yank loser ended up having his head sandwiched by the giant sumo winner. Once again, classy.

There were a few more bouts between people I'd never hear of, a lot of grunting and pounding, curiously muted without mics. That was one of the things that was strange about the night, there were no sound effects from the wrestlers, just the occasionally echoed slap of skin. By the end of the night, the audience were making their own sound effects: a forceful belt got a low "oof!", while a slap (and boy do they guys like to slap?) got a higher-pitched "whoo!"

A pleasant departure from all this was some girl wrestling. Of course the rules for girl wrestling are different. No "three-pin" here, instead, the winner is the girl who successfully strips the other girl down to her underwear.

Do these Americans know entertainment or what?

Finally, the big bout, a triple-way fight between Lance Bosner(?), triple H and THE ROCK!

Everyone knows The Rock. He's everywhere, doing everything these days. Saturday night was Dwayne's night. He won the bout, soaked up the crowd's adulation and walked out a king. Possibly even a Scorpian King.

Was the night over? No, sirree it wasn't. We had to leave now, but what happens when 57,000 try to leave Colonial Stadium at once?

I stood in a crowd of people for 20 minutes, shuffling along every couple of minutes, just to get to the bridge that extends over the railway from the stadium.

So, worth the money? Probably not the full price I paid, but certainly a large majority of it. I think just the experience of being there made it worthwhile.

But I still wouldn't pay $100 to see the Chilli Peppers at Colonial.

BTW, does anyone know what exactly the Rock is cooking? And what does it smell like? And why is he so interested to know if we can smell it anyway? Is he like a Jamie Oliver wannabe?

"Tonight, I'm making

The People's Toasted Steak Sandwich!

Let's start! Chop those onions! Don't be a sissy, crying like yo mama!
Take this piece of steak and POUND it like the beast it is (simulated poundings)!
Then throw it in the frying pan at

TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTTTTTTTTY DEGREEEEEEES!

Now grab the bread and BANG! Two pieces in the toaster!
Now, the cheese. Grate it! Ram it into the grater! Make it hurt!
Now stare at the steak and onions. Watch itttttt! Give it the People's Eyebrow. Pop!

THE
TOAST
IS

DONE!

Slam that toast on the plate and spreeeeeead that butter. It's TIME for the STEAAAAAAAAK! Flip it onto the toast, pile on the onions, finish with the cheese, get it all gooey and put the other piece of toast on top!

Can you
smellllllllllllllllllll
what the Rock is cooking?

YOU have your very own People's Toasted Steak Sandwich!

Pukkaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

2002-08-14T12:38:00.000+10:00

Favourite ad-line of the moment:

I saw an ad for Beck's beer in the window of a liquor store yesterday. All it had was a closeup of the beer bottle, and the line:

"You don't have to be Posh to swallow Becks."

Funny.

2002-08-13T13:20:00.000+10:00

Finally, my trip to Disneyland and California Adventure, in point form.

1. It's full.

There are a lot of people who go to Disneyland. I made the mistake of going on Saturday, Sunday and the first day of the local school holidays. There were people everywhere. You could not find three square metres without someone else being there. And it is stroller heaven. There must have been at least 200 strollers rolling around the park, which can make travel a little slow. If you're going to go to Disneyland and California Adventure, try going out of peak times, ala non-school holidays and weekends.

2. It's a different world…

Once you get into Disneyland, you enter a completely different universe. Everything around you tells you that this is not your average playground. The theming of each "Land" inside DL is extremely detailed, right down to the rubbish bins, which have different paint jobs and decals to denote the land you're in. When you enter Adventureland, home of the Indiana Jones ride, you are suddenly standing in an old-style bazaar, with rundown frontages and tall greenery. It really is like stepping into a different time, except for the teaming hordes of tourists.

3. Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye

This ride is the coolest, just in terms of its decoration. Outside is set up to look like an archaeologist’s dig, in the dark reaches of some jungle, and the inside of the temple is unreal. There are little details throughout that make you believe you are inside some newly explored catacomb.

The ride itself is what any Indy fan would love, with all the little scenes you would want all packed together into a three minute package.

My favourite part would have to be the giant boulder scene, which is actually more interesting once you start researching its creation. There are neat little tricks that work together to produce an overall feel that you are facing a real threat.

Loved it. Went on it a lot. Want to ride it again.

4. Tomorrowland is the Futureland of Yesterday.

I liked Tomorrowland, with its Star Tours and its Space Mountain, but it feels a little dated. I guess its no wonder: how are you supposed to gauge what tomorrow will look like today, and how do you make it feel futuristic when everything that you conceived to be from the future is in the present day?

Tomorrowland is the one land that causes the most problems for Imagineers, because it is constantly being upstaged by progress. The architecture in Tomorrowland is made to look funky and futuristic, but if you take a look at today's architecture in the real world, it is far from breath-taking. Space Mountain may have looked stylish when it was created, but have a look at examples of modern sporting arenas and cathedrals these days, and it looks positively 1970's.

Some thought needs to go into the revamping of Tomorrowland, primarily how to set the land up so it can be constantly updated and refreshed. The buildings need to be able to accommodate changeable facades that are replaced to reflect what's just around the corner.

Of course, the world of tomorrow needs to be upbeat and exciting, not Blade Runner. It's a fine line, but surely the bods at Disney could come up with the goods.

5. Space Mountain

Space Mountain is a dark ride, literally. It is an indoor roller coaster that runs for the most part in darkness, except for the occasional strobe light or nebula flashed on the walls.

It is a lot of fun, being hurtled towards the unknown in the dark, not knowing which way you're going to be thrown.

Rates very high on my WannaRideAgain Meter.

6. Autopia blows.

It's cars. On a track. That crawl along at 0.5 km an hour.

I lined up for this?

Blows. Takes up a lot of space that could be used to construct uber-scary ride. Doubly blows.

7. Bring food.

If you are going to spend the days at DL and CA, you need to decide which is more important to you: lugging around a backpack or bag full of food and drinks, or paying out handfuls of your hard-earned coinage for a little snack. Food and drinks are expensive at Disneyland. A small bottle of coke with somewhere around 3 bucks US, which is roughly $6 Australian.

I didn't go into the restaurants onsite, but I'm sure that prices were probably similar.

My decision? I bought a Subway on the way, got them to wrap each half separately, bought a large bottle of Powerade and another bottle of water at 7-Eleven. That pretty well kept me going for the whole day, except for some frozen lemonade. That was imperative at the time, because it was hot out there, but when you start forking out big bucks for an ice-cream or popcorn, it starts to add up quickly. And it was very nice frozen lemonade.

8. Wear comfortable shoes

During a nine-hour visit, I would say I was on my feet for 80% of the time, either walking between attractions or standing in line. Wear comfortable shoes. Wear thick snuggly socks. Try wearing those liquid inner sole things.

Take the chance to get off your feet whenever you can, even if your feet feel fine. You'll last longer.

9. Wear comfortable shoes

This point is so important, I thought I’d mention it twice. Everyday I spent at DL and CA I hobbled home, my feet were aching. Once I lay down on my hotel bed, I couldn't walk on them for hours.

Your feet is your friends. Without them, people would point at you and call you Stumpy. Treat them well.

10. California Adventure is a theme park about California, in California.

I couldn't help thinking that there was something a little weird about a theme park celebrating California based in California. It felt like having a theme park called VictoriaLand in Melbourne, celebrating the wonderful diversity of Victoria.

If you've come to California, why visit a theme park about California, when you can visit ACTUAL California?

The other thing about California Adventure is the lack of Disney paraphernalia in the park. There is a surprising lack of overblown Mickey ears and Buzz Lightyear dolls and Tinkerbell balloons. Sure they were there, but the not in the numbers you would find in Disneyland.

Overall, CA is a one-day park. You could comfortable see everything you wanted to see in one day, like Universal. There are a lot of things that I wasn't interested in, like the Wine Tour (visit California's lush winery region - virtually) and the Sourdough Bakery (visit California's lush sourdough region - or something), and there are not a lot of big "E ticket" rides at CA.

That said, their one truly huge roller coaster is awesome. California Screamin' is great. It twists, it turns, it does the loop-the-loop, it's fantastic. The start of the ride launches the carriage forward and up the first slope, rather than chugging slowly to the top, so that it is speeding along from go to woah, except for one small incline, where you get to look over the whole park, before dropping in a 80 degree angle.

I rode California Screamin'again and again. And then I took Jen on it, and rode it again and again.

And I didn't puke once.

11. If it says you might get wet, you're going to get wet.

I didn't get to go on Splash Mountain at DL, as every time I went to get a ticket they had closed down the FastPass and the standby lane was clocked at 180 minutes. However, I did get to go on the wet ride at CA, called Sniveller’s Gulch or something like that (That's not the name. I can't remember the name. From what I can remember, Sniveller’s Gulch was the town harassed by Cowboy X.... anyone? anyone? Bueller?) Something about a gold mine. And water. ANYway, it's a flume ride, themeparkese for water ride, so you get in the giant rubber ring and get thrown around washing machine style for five minutes. Lots of fun, especially on hot days.

Now, remember the sign at the front that says "You May Get Wet"? Well, that's just a formality. You WILL get wet, it's just the level of wetness you achieve that varies. I, for example, got water up my shorts and straight into both my shoes. I was pretty well wetted. A little uncomfortable, but for the next hour it was a nice balance with the warm Californian air and hot sun.

So, in conclusion, ride in the warm afternoon if you need to cool down a bit, and also if you are going to be standing around somewhere you can drip dry afterwards.

12. Mickey is King.

If you have a phobia about cartoon mice, do not go to Disneyland. Everything has mouse ears on them. And then there are hidden Mickeys throughout the Park. 80% of the merchandise is related to Mickey. Winnie the Pooh is big, as is Goofy. Minnie gets a look-in. Tinkerbell is all over the shop (have a look at the Tinkerbell helium balloons and tell me they're not spooky). Donald Duck barely gets a mention. Uncle Scrooge is MIA.

Mickey is King. Don’t you forget it! (Moot point: you can’t forget it, you have no choice.)

13. FastPass

FastPass was introduced several years ago to combat ridiculously long lines for rides, and it succeeds to a degree. You still have to wait, but only for 15-20 minutes in most cases.

The FastPass system works like this: You go to the FastPass machine of the ride you want, put your Park card in and get a little card saying "Please return between X time and X time, usually in an hour or two. The thing you have to watch out for is that you can't get another FastPass ticket until the time on your present ticket is available (eg, at 11am you get a FastPass for Star Tours for between 12.30 and 1.30. You can't get another FastPass for another ride until after 12.30.) Sometimes, your FastPass will give you a time to return in about five hours time. In this case, they may let you get another one in two hours time.

The best way to use the FastPass is to get your ticket for Ride A, wait until it is time for you to go on Ride A, get another FastPass for Ride B, THEN go to Ride A and do that one, then you don't have to wait so long for Ride B. Get that?

14. Haunted Mansion

There's a Haunted Mansion in every Disney theme park, and there's a reason for that: everyone loves a ghost train.

Of course the haunted Mansion is a ghost train to the nth degree. Most carnival rides don't have landscaped gardens surrounding a turn of the century villa, with little spooky details all over the place. Haunted Mansion is one of the older rides at Disney, but even using such outdated methods, it still has the ability to creep you out in a really fun way.

The stretching room rules. It's a simple yet great idea. And the portraits remind me of a lot of modern illustrators macabre drawings, and yet they've been there since the sixties.

And the graveyard tune was stuck in my head for weeks.

15. Star Tours

I was surprised that this LucasArts-based rides was still in TomorrowLand, considering that the new Star Wars movies were out and about. Star Tours is based around the time of Return of the Jedi, as the droids involved talk about a trip to the moon of Endor (oooh those cheeky ewoks!). That said, you never get there, because your droid captain is a boob. A boob-droid.

This ride is a motion simulator, so you just sit inside and it rocks you around, and you come out a little seasick. But overall, it's fun, if a little rough.

16. It's a small Park after all.

There's a train track that goes around Disneyland so you can get a feel for the place. During the ride, you stop off at three different sites around the Park, Main Street, New Orleans and Tomorrowland.

At the moment, they're redoing the "It's a Small World" attraction, so you can get to see behind the scenes while they are refurbishing it.

There's also a section where you go through a long tunnel and inside there are several windows looking into vistas of the modern landscape, with animals and such, and then the prehistoric version, with other animals and such, like dinosaurs.

I presume that this section has been there for many a year, as it looked like it could do with a little revamping. After Jurassic Park and various other monster movies, an old animatronic dinosaur just doesn't cut it anymore. It's a step back into the past that is uncomfortable and clunky.

17. Spend a penny. Actually, spend a penny worth 51 cents.

I don't know what it is about flat pennies, but Disneyland obviously loves them. You can buy a passport to put all your flat pennies in. Collect the set!

All around the Park, there are these little machines where you can stick a penny in and it will flatten it into a long oval and imprint a design on it. Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Tinkerbell, Buzz, Woody, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and so on.

There must be maybe 50 different imprints you can get on your flattened penny. Collect the set! They're only pennies! They're next to useless in the real world, so flatten them at Disneyland. Who cares about that old law about not defacing currency? It's Disneyland!

BTW, it costs you 51 cents for very penny you squash. One penny, plus two quarters, so a set of 50 pennies cost you just over $25 US, plus the passport itself.

All for a bunch of flat pennies.

18. Down the Front in 3D (oo-er!)

There are a couple of 3D movie deals at DL and CA, one with muppets, one with Rick Moranis, so they are pretty interchangeable.

"Honey I shrunk the Audience" is fun. The Muppet one was all right, but probably aimed at a much younger audience.

Either way, when you go see these things, remember to sit towards the front. The effects are much cooler than when you're in the back.

19. What the f*ck are churros?

I repeat: what the f*ck are churros?

20. The funny thing about smoking.

Throughout Disneyland, every sign pointed anyway is themed around the style of the particular Land you are in. In Frontierland, all the signs are set up to look like old Wild West carnival signs, while in Tomorrowland, all the signs are set up p to look like, er…, signs from tomorrow.

All except the smoking signs.

There are little sections off the main thoroughfares where smokers can go for a little break from the crowds to drag one back. The signs are designate these smoke stops are very plain white signs with a smoking emblem on them.

Here Lies Nicotine!

I guess Disney decided that there is no good way to involved Disney characters with such a filthy disgusting habit.

I’m a little surprised though. I would have thought a scaled-down SmokeLand would have gone down a treat. Ride the Corrupted Lung! Fly through the Secondhand Smoke! Walt’s Hall of Carcinogenic Oddities!

Opportunity missed.

21. The Disney bug.

I well and truly caught the Disney bug at Disneyland. Since I've got back, I can't stop looking on the web at stuff about Disneyland, theme parks and imagineering. I want to go to the other Disney parks in Orlando, Paris and Tokyo now. And I would love to get a job designing a themed ride, from concept to opening, just to be involved in something so interesting and REAL, a physical property you can touch and immerse yourself in. That's what got me about DL, it's a different universe, where all the stimuli around you tells you that this is not your everyday environment, this is a fantasy land come true.

The ability to construct a new world is a powerful one, one that takes a lot of energy and time and manpower (personpower?), but if the results are like those I saw at DL, all the work seems worth it.

Thus ends the tour.

Please deposit any coins, notes or tokens in the slot provided.

Although you can sod off with your flattened pennies...

2002-08-07T13:02:00.000+10:00

It's funny how the smallest things can remind you of things in your past, and then suddenly, there are giant kettles of fish everywhere.

the smallest things: CASE STUDY 1

I can never pour honey onto toast without thinking of Kate Hedley.

I went out with Kate for at least several weeks when I was in high school. It was a long distance relationship, me in Bunbury, she in Mandurah, neither having a car, both having school.

She had broken up with her long-time boyfriend, who also lived in Bunbury, and was regarded as our class clown (He went on to become a lawyer. You never know...), and I had recently broken up with my first girlfriend.

She asked me, I said yes, so it goes.

It was a little down the track when it may have come to attention that I was not the ball of fun that her ex was.

And to make matters worse, her parents separated while we were going out.

And then, behold, the crystallising moment, the point that epitomises the relationship and what went horribly, HORRIBLY wrong.

I like to call it Weekend at Hedley's.

Well, there's not much to tell really. I went to Mandurah to stay at her place for a weekend in Mandurah. We went for walks and met up with friends and did all that stuff you do. But it was clear that there wasn't the kind of chemistry between us that we were hoping for.

Then along came Sunday Breakfast.

I came down for breakfast, said my good morning to the assembled Hedleys and grabbed some toast. I picked up the honey and proceeded to squeeze it out onto the toast, marker pen style, nozzle directly on bread.

Kate asked what I was doing in an astonished way, and proceeded to show me the correct way to pour honey onto toast: holding honey maybe 15cm above burnt bread, allowing honey to fall onto toast and make little wiggly criss-cross lines that melt into each other.

The fun way to pour honey.

I, it seems, was not fun.

I tried to save some face, scooping up honey on my knife and mimicking the action, but it just doesn't have the same sense of frivolity when it's crusted with toast crumbs.

Here was the moment, when it became obvious to Kate that I was not the guy she thought I was: I wasn't the fun guy who made his honey dance, I was the guy who only ate serious honey. Or something like that.

The relationship pretty well went bung right there. We broke up. I wrote bad poetry. She... I don't know what she did, I never really spoke to her again in any detail.

Sad story, I know. It's not even like it's a particularly powerful story, just a little sad.

But now, anytime I have honey on toast, I always pour from on-high, and I always think of Kate Hedley, and how much fun I wasn't.

the smallest things: CASE STUDY 2

I'm not even sure how it started, but I was talking to someone about clocks or rotating thing or something and I suddenly remembered way back to my childhood, when we used to go camping at Mandalay Caravan Park in busselton, Western Australia.

Of course, our family didn't own a caravan, so we had a giant tent that we set up in a stall, standing incongruously between the caravans. How I wished we had a caravan. They were cool. But no, they cost too much money, said Mum and Dad, and besides, we've got a perfectly good giant tent!

My uncle used to camp at Mandalay as well, but he had a caravan, so we would visit often and bask in it's wooden veneer glory.

He used to have a friend called Smithy, who had various fishing boats, named Smithy, Smithy II and Smithy III. He was an imaginative sort of guy. On my first meeting Smithy, he offered me a "smack in the gob". Funny family story I hear. Thinking back, I'm not sure if it's the appropriate thing to say to a three year old.

Anyhow, speaking of clocks and things reminded me of sitting in a tent watching telly (country telly - nothing like it, luckily.) and watching the countdown to the news.

Way back when, TV channels had clocks on the screen leading up to the 6pm news. Occasionally they had music and some scenery, but a lot of the time, for the final thirty seconds leading up to 6pm, you sat and watched while the second hand ticked its plodding way up to the twelve and the news would begin.

It was a tradition: the countdown to the evening entertainment, the start of the good shows.

I don't know why they did this. It wasn't like they had to synchonise with a national news broadcast. It was just the done thing at the time.

I don't know when they did away with the clocks. Probably when they decided they could fit more ads ins.

And thus abruptly ends that story.

I know that wasn't really a story, more just an abstract memory, but you've read this far! What's going to stop you from reading this next line? Huh? That's right. You can't drag your eyes away from this line of test, just in case I say boobies right? It's inevitable that you read the rest of this line.

And it was the same with the clock, because, no matter how often you watched it, day after day, you got caught up in the powerfully addictive force of those.... last.... five ....seconds.......to..............news........................time.....

Finished.
You can sit back now.

2002-07-31T16:39:00.000+10:00

I think I've been lied to.

Ever since I was a kid, I've watched telly and movies, and it has come to my attention that there is something that happens in movies and on telly that never happens in real life.

The Love/Hate relationship.

Take, if you will, a movie like "You've Got Mail", a witty little trip down
Banter Lane, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

Tom is a prick. Meg is less of a prick, but has certain issues which make her prissy.

They don't like each other.

Meanwhile Tom and Meg exchange emails over the internet. eTom and eMeg like each other.

Love/hate relationship.

What happens? They grow to love each other and get it on (maybe not in the movie, but down the road a bit, just
after the credits).

Cruel Intentions.

Ryan Phillipe is a prick. Reese Witherspoon is a priss. They don't like each other.

What happens? They fall in love. Of course, he then gets hit by a car and dies and she destroys his half-sister's reputation by blabbing everything in his secret journal, but you get the picture.

Any Molly Ringwald movie.

Molly really likes the good-looking guy, who doesn't notice her. Her best friend, who is always snide and cutting in his comments, harbours a secret passion for her, despite hiding it behind snide and cutting comments.

Molly and best friend have a volatile relationship, with much cussing and fighting and generally bad relationship behaviour.

What happens? Molly sees the error of her ways and ends up loving her best friend, while the good-looking guy ends up with some troll, thus providing all us normal people with the reassurance that being good-looking won't always mean you win. Supposedly.

So, in the real world, does this happen?

No.

Really, how many of your friends say something like "Oh my girlfriend/boyfriend is fantastic, we're so in love, hard to believe, isn't it, considering that when I first met her/him, speaking to them made me want to rip out their under-nourished frontal lobes with my own bare hands and beat them to death with it!" ?

A couple? One or two? No, none, because in real life, you don't continue to strike up a conversation with someone who you want to slap, again and again.

This is what happens in real life...

Guy, we'll call Albert, because it's such a mediocre name, meets Girl, Yolanda, because that's a name I haven't heard of since primary school.

Albert introduces himself to Yolanda, who condescends to shaking his hand, despite wanting to be over there somewhere.

Albert tries to break new ground in conversation by asking Yolanda about movies, television, employment and nightclubs.

Yolanda holds up her side of the bargain by answering his question about same.

Albert flexes his massive intellectual prowess by making witty cutting japes about her choices of lifestyle.

Yolanda's jaw clenches and unclenches spasmodically. Yolanda asks in response what Albert's favourite past-times are.

Any response he gives results in Yolanda announcing that he's obviously either a misogynistic prick or a mummy's boy.

Albert, after bawling Yolanda out in a witty and self-deprecating self, notices a slight chill in the air, centred around Yolanda. Deciding that discretion is the better part of valour, or pissed about the creepy bitch vibe, Albert mentions his need for a "top-up" and proceeds to disppear to the bar/fridge/esky.

Yolanda turns to her friend and asks who the egotistical cockhead is and what the hell is his problem.

Albert navigates a path as far away from Yolanda as possible, knowing that he would have a much better time if he just didn't argue with that annoying woman.

From there, if Albert and Yolanda belong to the same rough circle of friends, there is a pretty good chance that they will take the time out to not speak to each other again if they can help it.

The end.

At no point do they suddenly turn around and think "Hold on! That person really really shits me! I must really like them!" Instead, they think "When I meet the person of my dreams, they're going to be exact unlike that person who really really shits me!"

What would the point be if people who didn't like each other fell in love? Why would guys dress up nicely and wear aftershave and buy flowers, when all they really had to do was argue with everything that the woman said, then turn around and walk off, and the woman would "suddenly come to their senses" and be swept up in the moment?

Then again, I guess that's why every girl has always just come out of a relationship with "a complete bastard".

Hmmm...

2002-07-24T17:54:00.000+10:00

Where the bloody hell have you been, you all cry, wailing and weeping and crap.

Well, I'm back, sorta, after what seems like months and the holiday was pretty rockin', in a non-music way.

So, where did my travels take me? Me, who has never been out of Australia before, with the exception of Tasmania (boom boom)?

Here's a hint:

One word: Disneyland.

More words: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego.

Even more words: I went to California baby!

Give up?
That's right, I went to Adelaide.

My dilemma since my return has been this: I wanted to blog and I wanted to write about my trip to the States, except I haven't had a chance to put down in text form my experiences on the trip, and I didn't want to just go rushing into crapping on about scientific breakthroughs and the unreality of love/hate relationships, and have all these people saying "Gee Willickers Mr Lockwood, you went on a jaunt overseas and you ain't blogging about it? I should smack you upside the head, fool!" or words fundamentally based on that point, so I held off until I had a blog about my trip to the US.

And so, read on...

And here are my dot points regarding my trip to America, sans Disneyland (which is a whole different ballgame of fish):

1: Everything is far away.
No matter where you went, whereever you were going was always a lot further than you originally thought it was.

The 12-hour flight. Nuff said.

2.Greyhound Coaches can blow me.
We travelled from LA to San Francisco and back by Greyhound. We missed the first coach, despite being at the depot 30 minutes beforehand. No information boards, no notices, no announcements. We joined the line of people who were waiting for the San Fran bus, only to be told that the San Fran EXPRESS scheduled for 9.10pm had left already. Not that they seemed all that worried. they just stuck us on the next San Fran coach leaving 45 minutes later.

The way back:
9.45: Arrive at depot, in plenty of time for coach leaving 10.30pm.
10.30pm: coach arrives, people get on. then people stop getting on, leaving half a line of people waiting to get on.
Coach leaves.
Half-line of people wondering what's going on.
Greyhound Desk Staff explain that the coach was overbooked and they have to get another coach and driver.
Far enough, say half-line of people, we'll be on our way soon.
Midnight: Desk announces that there isn't another service to LA until 6.15am, and that we are welcome to stay in the terminal overnight.
Half-line of customers complain. A lot. Loudly.
12.30am: Second coach finally turns up. Half-line of people have to wait while an enormous old woman in a wheelchair is hydraulically lifted into the side of the bus.
1am: Coach leaves San Francisco.

Greyhound can blow me.

3. Universal Studios suffers from being in the same city as Disneyland.

After spending three days at Disneyland, I guess anything was going to run a far second, so Universal did.

The Studio Tour was cool, although it appears to be a little dated. They have little scenes where they shows you some of the movie making magic:

"This is an old mexican town set that is used in all old mexican town pictures. If we turn these sprinklers on, it looks like it's raining. And what happens when it rains? Look out, it's flash flood!"

"As we go inside here, we can see an old subway set, like the one used on all those disaster films. Oh boy, look out, that trains going crash! Hold on everybody! It's smashed the water pipes! Flash flood!"

"Along here are all the facades that we have used over the years as suburban homes. To our left is the house from the Hardy Boys, while to our right is the house from one of my favourite films, The 'burbs, starring Tom Hanks. Just up here is the house from the TV show Providence and - Look out! Flash Flood!"

I guess I was a little spoilt at Disney with all the rides and such, so when I got to Universal, I thought their rides sort of sucked.

Back To The Future: The Ride is a simulation ride, rather than a roller coaster or somesuch. After the build-up of the introduction, it was a bit of a letdown not to be actually fanging around corners, but "simulating" fanging around corners. And dinosaurs.

Backdraft: The Ride was worse. Imagine if they made a ride called "Science Class: The Ride", would you go? Yes, you would, after all it is a ride.

Backdraft has three rooms. The first two rooms has guys talking to you about fire and how dangerous it is. The third room shows you how dangerous it is by letting you watch a carefully controlled fire burn in a factory, complete with mock-exploding barrels and... er more mock-exploding barrels. And I'm not going to spoil the ending for you, so prepared for A GREAT FINISH!!!

...and then feel let down when it doesn't actually materialise...

Jurassic Park: The Ride would have to be the best ride at Universal, mainly because the competition is pretty weak. The ride itself tells a story, from exploring the deep and mystical beauty that is the jurassic era, to the escape of the bad bad animals, to a final showdown with Mr T.

Rex that is.

And I'm not going to spoil the ending for this one, although just standing outside the ride, you'll get an inkling of what it might be.

That said, for me it was totally unexpected when it happened and was really quite cool. Literally.

Unfortunately, it seems like too little too late. The rest of the ride is a bit slow and ponderous.

Probably second behind Jurassic Park, as attractions go, I would say Terminator 2:3D. That's right, not ":The Ride" this time, because it's not a ride, it's one of those "sit down and put those funny glasses now" attractions. And it's quite well done, incorporating film footage and live action, crossed with some freaky 3D stuff. It even includes Arnie, Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong from T2, so it's like it's the real deal. See it.

What else? Hmmm.

Jen watched the Blues Brothers Show, which was a bunch of people dressed up like the Blues Brothers. Singing.

I went a had a look at The Mummy Returns: Chamber of Doom!! or something like that, which is actually a walk-through exhibit, which was a little different from usually being bundled into a carriage. It was OK, although over a little soon.

We caught most of the Waterworld Live Show Spectacular thing, which was one of the better attractions, complete with jet-skis and high diving acts and gunfights and stuff.

How could I forget - SPIDERMAN ROCKS!

OK, this sounded a little stupid: The story of Spiderman, as a 15-minute rock musical, and trust me, it was. But it was also quite good. It took itself way too serious, considering it had a cast of six and the lead actress/dancer/singer kept belting out "I Need A Hero" (originally a Bonnie Tyler song from, if I'm not mistaken "Footloose"), but it had a lot of energy behind it, which made up for it's shortcomings. Plus it had pyrotechnics, great lighting and sound and a Spiderman who actually flew (with the aid of ropes, similar in style to "Crouching Tiget, Hidden Dragon"), I came out with a smile on my face, not my usual cynical smirk, but a smile denoting my surprise at actually enjoying live theatre.

And there is something oh-so-very funny about the announcer continually announcing the shows as SPIDERMAN... RUKS!! in a broad American accent.

Overall, Universal Studios is good for a day. I could have spent a week at Disneyland and still been giddy, but by the end of the day at Universal, I felt like I'd done enough.

4. San Diego Zoo is... a zoo.

I like animals. I'm quite fond of pork. And chicken.

Live animals, on the other hand, I can generally take or leave.

This may be down to my childhood incidents with animals. Headbutted by a horse, chased by a cow, bitten by a dolphin.

So zoos don't do much for me, not in the way, say, roller coasters do.

That said, the San Diego Zoo is quite nice, as zoos go.

They have polar bears. Polar bears are nice. They frollick with balls in the water, They eat lettuce leaves thrown down to them by keepers. They will rips your head off and suck out your spine if you ever meet one face to face.

They have hippos. They are ugly ugly ugly. And cute.
They kill more people in Africa each year than lions.

They have panda bears, although what we saw was a black and white rug rolled up and stuck on a log, with a matching rug lying inside a hut. what's the point of going halfway around the world to see pandas when they don't do bugger all?

And they have all these signs around saying "No loud noises", "Speak quietly", "Don't frighten the pandas". Why not? what are they going to do, wake up? Stop lying about? Actually do something?

"If you frighten the pandas, they won't mate."

Gee whiz, that's working out well so far. How many panda cubs do you have?

I say go the other extreme: stick them in a hut and set fire to it. At least they might think "Well, we're dead meat, might as well get a final one in then, huh?"

Personally I reckon give them a vibrating bed, a handful of quarters and the National Geographic Channel on the telly.

We got to see a giant snake eating a mouse, so that made up for the crap pandas.

The bus tour is pretty good. It gives you the overview, showing what the zoo has to offer. At a few points, the guide stop the bus to say "these are a few of the remaining XXXX in the world." Hasn't anyone mentioned the word "animatronic" to these people? It's nice to say all these little nearly-extinct animals, but why don't they show us some of the extinct ones, to show what we're missing? And while you're at it, give them some nasty big long teeth and claws that could rip your lungs out, give the tour a little pep.

"...and to your left you can the see the last remaining Bokmonkeys, natives of the wilds of Borneo, while to your right, here is the Spotted Pigmy Weasel, which was hunted to extinction in the 1800's. Look at it's razor-sharp pointy teeth, ideal for gouging the eyes out of whelks and cuttlefish. Look out - flash flood!"

5. San Diego is not far from the Mexican border.

San Diego is not far from the Mexican border.

SD is quite nice, although we didn't really see much of it, as we were only there for one night. But it has a very nice shopping mall.

Sorry, not much help there.

6. San Francisco is a very comfortable town to live in, as long as you're fit.

We stayed in San Francisco for a couple of days and enjoyed many minutes of it.

SF has a really good vibe about it. The houses all look the same, but different, and I can't describe them any better than that.

The waterside section of the city is flat, whereas everywhere else is hilly, so don't take your wheelchair-bound grandmother, because she'll end up sailing off the end of the pier, either because you let her go and she rolled away, or she wouldn't stop complaining about you not pushing harder enough to get her up the steep inclines, so you let her go and she rolled away.

We walked up the opposite side of the crookedest street in the world. It's a 40 degree incline. It was at this moment I noticed that there don't seem to be many fat people in San Fran, and now I know why.

Tis a beautiful city, really green in bits, and in others, not. Some of the architecture is ugly, but not as ugly as suburban Los Angeles.

We did the city tour, which took in the tea gardens (pretty), Golden Gate Bridge (big), Height-Ashbury district (cool,dude) and Fisherman's Wharf (fishy). And then we jumped onto a boat to go to Alcatraz.

Alcatraz blows. It really does. It blows a frigging gale. And it's cold, dank, spooky, crumby, yucky and all those synonyms you haven't used since primary school. If you were sent here, it was because you weren't very nice. And it's quite apt, because it's not.

Did you know that they had small windows in some of the walls, through which the inmates could see San Francisco, to show them what they were missing?

There you go.

The Alcatraz tour is very well set up. You get a walkman-type thingy that you put around your neck and headphones, then you press a button and get a audio tour of the building, complete with ex-inmates and ex-guards talking shop, sound effects and historical trivia. A really well set up little business.

I wasn't that interested in Alcatraz. I'd seen the Clint Eastwood movie so I knew all about it, but the tour was very interesting.

Final note about San Francisco: Cold wind, bring a jumper, preferably one lined with another jumper.

7. Don't watch epic movies on a plane.

"Lord of the Rings" on tiny screen? Nuff said.

8. Food in the US is made from 100% unnatural substances.

Twinkies: Hated them, finally realised that comic books had lied to me all your years.

Chips Ahoy (chocolate chip cookies): When chocolate chip biscuits die and go to Heaven, this is what they taste like (that was supposed to sound better than it did). Excellent. Should be exported.

Beef Jerky: Possibly made from real beef, possibly just made from some jerk. Tough and tasty, except they have all these flavours to avoid: teriyaki, peppered, lemon (spelt limon for God knows why)

Potato Chips: Limon again. What's the story? Salt and Vinegar hard to find. BBQ tastes wrong. Messing around with good thing. Stop it. Give me traditional flavours or give me death. Or Chips Ahoy.

Subway sandwiches: taste superb, although nobody seems to know what chillis and capsicum are (jalopenos and bell peppers for those in the know). There are only so many blank stares I can take before I start pointing fixedly at ingredients and yelling "Just give me some of that! That!"

A foot-long Italian BMT - $6.50 - About $12 Australian currency.

Which reminds me:

9. A dime is worth 10 cents.

Just so you know.

Five cents is worth five cents, but is the size of an Australian ten cent piece, while the dime is the size of our five cent piece.

And when is America going to wise up to having a dollar coin?

And on top of that, when are they going to put some colour in their banknotes? Green and white, green and white green white. Dull, dull dull.

10. Los Angeles weather is diametrically opposed to Melbourne weather.

LA: It's warm, it's sunny, it's skinny-dipping weather.

Melb: It's cold, it's wet, it's windy, it's skinny-dipping weather, if you don't mind the skin on your dip turning blue and snapping off.

So, there are ten points about my trip. I'm sure over the next few months, you'll see me dropping in little lines like "When I was in the US..." and "Y'know, at Disneyland..." and "Well, let me tell YOU, Jimmy, how they do it in the States! Bahh!" so I'll stopping crapping on.

At one point or another I will tell you about my days at Disneyland. Just let me say this: it truly is a Magic Kingdom* (awwwwwwwwwwww!)

*registered trademark of the Disney Corporation

2002-06-11T22:30:00.000+10:00

Well, hello there.

So, you're thinking, Chad ain't blogging much these days. Chad must be off having a world of adventure otherwise he'd be blogging about albino matchboxes or keeping wardrobes as pets or something similarly stupid.

Fear not, idiots.

I have been kept busy at work, so not so much blogging from there, and unfortunately, television has been too addictive lately, so I have rarely reached the home computer to blog, which is a pity, as I have a new you-beaut computer to work on.

And, may I add, I have even more bad news for those of you who have enjoyed my rambling crap. I'm going on a holiday.

I'm off to travel, so I may not be in contact with A Nada World for a couple of weeks.

Think of it as a sabbatical. I must get in touch with my inner Nada.

Thank you to everyone who reads these pages regularly. Return in a couple of weeks and I'll show you some slides.

Yonder, here I come.

At ease...

2002-05-31T15:47:00.000+10:00

I got stuck on the way to work yesterday singing Mambo No. 5 by Bob the Builder. Weird.

Ever get that bit of a song stuck in your head that you just have to repeat over and over again?

Currently, "It's Raining Again" by Supertramp - the 'la's" just before the middle 8 ("Come on, ya little fighter!")

Last week, "Mrs Robinson" by Simon and Garfunkel - "doo do-do-do do do dodedodo do do do"

Come on everybody! Sing Along!

2002-05-31T15:37:00.000+10:00

Did you know?: They've bred a new breed of chicken that has no feathers. They are calling it the new generation of meat chicken, or something.

I'm not sure how they did it, but by the look of it, they crossed your humble chicken with a bat. Of course, that would mean no more garlic in your chicken recipes, and when it gets stuck in your throat, you are in serious, serious trouble.

Farmers are saying it's a breakthrough, as it saves tens of seconds defeathering each chicken carcass, plus they don't have to keep the temperature in the barn so low to stop the chickens overheating.

Also, the chicken no longer spends energy growing feathers. And that means more meat!

Next: Boneless Chicken! By crossing a chicken with a jellyfish, farmers can produce chicken that are ready to carve, straight from the barn.

And the chicken will glow when it's cooked through.

And can't be far off that we start producing Generic Meat Substitutes, "animals" that are produce by test-tube and incubator, that are just meat, without any of the nasty side-effects like having a brain, or pain receptors, they're just meat, tender, juicy, flavoursome, low calorie, inexpensive meat. Unwrap the biodegradable plasti-shell (unless they use that paper stuff that you get on nougat) and whack straight in the microwave. Delicious.

Disclaimer: No animals were hurt in the making of this meal*.

(*GeMS are bred without pain receptors, therefore they cannot feel pain, no matter how hard we shock them.)

2002-05-31T15:32:00.000+10:00

I've started taking some preventative medicine for my migraines. The only problem is that it causes drowsiness at the beginning, so I'm sitting here at work falling asleep.

Situation normal then.

2002-05-31T15:31:00.000+10:00

I still find it weird that one of the only places you can buy fireworks and hardcore pornography in Australia is the national capital.

The Australian Capital Territory: Home of Bangs, Bangs and Broad Economic Reform.

2002-05-30T11:44:00.000+10:00

I think I've calmed down sufficiently to finally write my review of the new Star Wars movie, Attack of the Clones.

I will start with a section that does not contain spoilers, then a section with spoilers, which will be in green, so if you don't want to read spoilers, you can read the black bit, then scroll past the green bit and keep reading.

So
Black - non spoiler review
Green - review, with spoilers.

OK?

Let's begin.

Attack of the Clones was fucking terrible.

For a movie series that reinvigorated a whole generation of science fiction movies, this particular episode was everything that is rotten about Star Wars.

Thank you.
And now the review, with spoilers...

In a way, I guess it was really my own fault. I've read quite a bit about AOTC, enough to know what's coming, without knowing what's actually going on. And during the weeks leading up to its release, I read a lot of good press about the movie, about how it was an improvement on The Phantom Menace. Of course this was coming from people who didn't like TPM in the first place, so anything was going to be an improvement. I thought TPM was a little childish and a little too clean, but episodes four through six were done for kids, and as I was in the demographic then, they appealed to me, so I can't blame them for trying to hit that market again.

Personally, I thought AOTC was worse than TPM. Here is a list of reasons, and I'll try to keep it short.

1. Hayden Christensen is terrible. He is really, really terrible. I didn't like Jake Lloyd, and yet Hayden had me pining for that little bugger who kept saying "Yippee!" at inopportune times.

Case in point: when Anakin meets Armidala for the first time in ten years, and tells her about how he thought of her everyday for ten years, he then goes on a spoilt-boy rampage about how Obiwan treats him like a child. I don't know about you, but if I had waited for ten years to see someone, I wouldn't go on a rant about how childish I am within ten minutes to seeing them again.

Hayden spends the rest of the movie chewing scenery, like he should have a cape held up over his chin and blurting out "Bra-ha-ha!" every few minutes.

"I'm a childish brat, I'm a childish brat! Can you see where I'm going to end up in a few years time?"

And the scene where Dooku lops off Anakin's arm? Pathetic. "Oh! Just a minute! It's like that scene where Darth Vader chops off Luke's arm! Exactly! Except without any sense of tension or horror!" There doesn't seem to be any feeling behind that little scene, it's like Dooku's chopped up Anakin's favourite shirt. Why you naughty ex-jedi!

2. Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson and Jimmy Smits are all pretty bad.

It's not like Jackson is a bad actor, but he does nothing interesting. His best line ("This party is over.") was also his worst, in terms of character. He ain't the dude from Pulp Fiction, he's a jedi.

Smits' best piece of acting was his final scene, when he's standing on the balcony watching the ships taking off. How does he show his annoyance at the scene in front of him? By hitting the balcony with his hand! If you could hear his dialogue, I swear he would have said "Dang!"

Portman was flat. Bouncing off Hayden Christensen probably doesn't help. Her worst scene was towards the end, when she's fallen off the helicopter-like vehicle and comes rolling to a stop at the bottom of a dune. She lies there, feeling like she's just fallen off a helicoptery thing and rolled down a sand dune. a clonetrooper runs up to her prone (PRONE!) form and asks if she's all right. She lies there for a moment, then suddenly she leaps up and dashes away. Crumpled heap to dashing action figure in under 2 seconds. Gotta be a record.

3. Ewan McGregor and Chistopher Lee are decent, but have nothing to work with.

Obiwan and Dooku are cardboard cutout characters. Obiwan is Sam Spade and Dooku is Bond Villain (actually Christopher Lee was a Bond Villain, Scaramanga in Man with the Golden Gun, so I guess that makes sense).

4. Yoda's big fight with Dooku.Fucking stupid.

Yoda is a complete prat, a completely CGIed prat. One second he's a crusty old gent with walking stick, suddenly, he's superfly (not the Samuel L. Jackson type, more Atom Ant). He bounces and hops and jiggers around, lightsabering Dooku and leaping off bits of CGI scenery like a frog on caffeine.

It was stupid. I laughed my box off. My friends laughed their boxes off. The whole audience in the cinema laughed their boxes off. There were mountains of boxes piling up in the aisles. It was box heaven.

It was pitiful. If Lucasarts wanted to make Yoda some saber champ, don't make him spin and dance around like some suped-up munchkin. Oompa-Loompas are scary at normal speed, there's no need to make them lightning fast.

And then, after the fight is over, he grabs his cane and suddenly he's moving like he's got his spare cane up his backside.

Oh, and he is not in the Matrix. There is no need for the martial arts stance either.

5. The diner scene. You'd think that after creating such fabulous vistas and amazing creatures, Lucasarts would find some way to spruce up the old "going down to the local greasy spoon to get some information" scene.

No.

6. Zam Wessell, the changling, for no apparent reason. See Obiwan and Anakin chase the assassin through Corescent. See flashes of the assassin's face as it changes briefly into another species while flying its ship. Hear Obiwan and Anakin converse about it being a shapeshifter. See them track it down to a bar, where they finally capture it and make it tell them things. See it die, then morph into another creature.

Why bring in the whole shapeshifter element, if all it does is dissolve into another species when it dies? It doesn't add anything to the story. It's just fluff.

7. The Romance Scenes.
These are the scenes that will be included on the DVD that extend the whole romance angle:
Anakin and Padme go out for Soda.
Anakin and Padme lock eyes while Anakin is tying up some ropes on his speeder.
Anakin and Padme go bowling.
Anakin and Padme wander through a carnival and, in a quick montage cut under an upbeat musical track (say "Something Good", ala The Naked Gun), try on funny hats, chase each other through a Hall of Mirrors and win a wookie at a coconut shy.
Anakin and Padme share a bowl of spaghetti, and slurp up the last piece of spaghetti together.
Anakin and Padme sing karaoke.
Anakin and Padme laugh at a mime.
Anakin takes a picture of Padme as she stands in a courtyard covered in pidgeons.
Anakin and Padme go to a ballgame.
Anakin rides a large animal to impress Padme, but falls off. Padme rushes over to Anakin's prone figure, thinking the worse, but, AHA! Anakin is only pretending to be dead, and grabs her. Anakin and Padme fall down and start rolling around in the grass.

Just a minute. That one made the final cut. What the?

8. Jar Jar Binks.
"Meesa? Jar Jar Binksa? Meesa no wanna go into the movieplay, but Mista Lucas, him verrry bad man, verrry bad. Heesa say Jar Jar have to be inna movieplay, so Mista Lucas can say to all loosas, "Hey! Meesa Mista Lucas! Meesa don't care what yousa loosas think of meesa's creation! Meesa correcta! Yousa all dimwadsa!"

Get. Fucked.

9. The plot.
I don't get it.

Maybe I wasn't listening hard enough, or maybe I just didn't care by about 40 minutes in. Here's the recap: There's trouble afoot for the Jedi boys! I think Bo and Luke, er Obi and Anni, better jump in the General Lee is rustle up some fillies.

Or something.

10.The Fetts : the Shoehorned Family. Ever feel like you've been added to a party list at last notice, because someone asked the person who's throwing the party if they can drag you along to the shin-dig?

You too could be a Fett.

Finally, there was a startling difference between the direction for the human bits and the CGI bits. The scenes with CGI figures used the camera to move around the action and get a feel for the space. Any time the camera had to focus on human characters, it became clunky and wrong. I realise that they had to tone down the movement of the camera so they could wire up the CGI stuff in the background while the actors were speaking, but combining this with the wooden performances meant that any scene with dialogue in it became dull and heavy-handed. And it didn't help that other scenes had grand camera sweeps and whatever. Even the placement of the actors in the frame was dull. There was no use of extreme closeups versus distant figures or prowling camera movement or any such devices that instill scenes with flavour.

So, what went right?

The Kaminoans were cool, very alien looking, and they even had Australian accents, so Americans would think they're from another planet.

Watto was good in the few scenes he appeared in. There was a particular moment, when Watto did a few quick lookaways, which came across as very natural. He seemed very much like an uncle you see at Christmas who emigrated from Europe forty years ago and still doesn't quite fit in.

Palpatine was good, smarmy as ever, but I think because I haven't seen him do anything else, I'm not reading anything into him.

BTW, surely he can't be the Sith dude. It's way too simple, huh?
There's got to be some twist. Surely?

Well done to Matt "Deathsticks" Dorant for getting the funniest scene in the whole movie.

There were some cool shots during the final battle, where the camera would focus on something in the foreground, then zoom away to something else happening in the distance. Nice touches.

The Jedi School was neat. and the little jedis were very cute. Awwwwww!

Overall, AOTC is better than Highlander 2, but not as good as The Mummy Returns.

It is the worst Star Wars movie out of the five, and I am so very pissed off about that.

Here's my tip for producing the next movie, the all-important segue film: Spend some time investing in a range of 90's comic books, like the Sandman series or even some of the late Batman series, to get an idea about constructing the frame. All the action in comic books is IMPLIED by the framing of the characters on the page. The reader draws information from the scene by how the characters are positioned, how their body are positioned and the angle of the camera in relation to the action.

Spiel done.

2002-05-29T22:15:00.000+10:00

Hi.

I'm around. I just haven't had much time to blog.

I'm not dead...

Just so you know...

Oh, and Star Wars Episode II was shit (sorry if I spoilt it for anyone).
Review soon.

2002-05-23T18:18:00.000+10:00

Worst. Star Wars. Ever.

2002-05-20T15:53:00.000+10:00

Some people don't deserve blogs, and for some people, the blog is the only thing holding them together.

The stench from some blogs can be absolutely fetid. Sometimes it's the prose, sometimes (god forbid) the poetry, sometimes the shithouse spelling (whether accidental or not, people who dO tHiS a lOt ShOuLd Go FiNd ThEmSeLvEs AnOtHeR fUcKiNg hObBy, boOoyaAzz!), sometimes it's just the pain and suffering that every citizen of the world goes through, everyday.

I've been reading a blog recently and regularly, written by a guy who is currently going through a divorce, and this guy is pissed, literally and figuratively. Granted, his wife has started seeing another man behind his back, but it's hard to gather a full understanding of the relationship from one viewpoint, especially the one viewpoint of a guy who is really really jacked off at his spouse and the world in general.

The interesting point of his blog is the level of bile being raised in this guy's writings. From the way he's been expressing himself, you can tell he's just about bursting out of his skin with suppressed rage. In this way, his blog is an outlet for his anger, and although it's into the ether, with a small chance of being read amongst all the other pages, it's out there, and off his chest.

A lot of the other blogs I've read have had similarities between them, namely that people keep wondering why they're continuing to live, but keep turning up the next day to blog again.

Teenagers and uni students blog about their dreams of relationships, although a vast majority don't seem to have significant others, instead just spending time fawning over idealised symbols of unrequited loves. It may have something to do with them spending so much time blogging and less time having a less-virtual life.

There are blogs of people who have developed friendships across the net, despite never meeting the other person(s). These blogs seem to be generally about dissing the others, and telling everyone else that A likes B, B is a stupidhead, A still thinks B is "kewl", despite stupidheadliness, and everyone has LOL ;)

But why has the blog taken off? Why has everyone gone from writing their own PRIVATE journal, to writing in their own VERY PUBLIC journal? Isn’t that almost the diametrically-opposed version of a private diary?

Is it the understanding that parents don't get the internet, so they won't read it? Is it so that people from around the world can hear what you're going through, and that it might resemble their lives?

Is it so that you can spill your secret, but retain a modicum of separation, anonymity, from the information? You can express your undying love, or your burning hatred, for someone, safe in the knowledge that people you don't know have as much chance of reading it as the person themselves?

Personally, I have mixed emotions over my blog. I find that I tend to write for this blog in the form of a column in a newspaper, extrapolating on events and objects that take my fancy. This also has its drawbacks, as I am always trying to think of something to fill the column inches, and I’m always one step behind the news articles, points that have been brought to my attention (thank you dear readers).

This blog also gives me an opportunity to edit myself. I have had a reputation for many years of saying exactly the wrong thing to exactly the wrong person. It’s a gift, if you like annoying, party-dissolving faux pas. So, therefore, in this arena, I have the ability to collect all the bumph that spills chaotically from my head and pound it into a shape more befitting the general populace. At least here, if I’m being crude and/or unsettling, it’s for a reason, not just an alarming personality quirk. Granted, some of it makes a mess, but more often than not, the words get put in the right order, the intention is made clear, and people’s feelings are left unhurt.

Which leads me to my next point. Despite being dross published to the ether, I still find myself in need of editing. As you find out about more and more people you know reading your works of art, cunningly disguised as these column inches, you become more careful about spilling your guts on the glowing page, for fear of doing the exact thing you were doing previously. That is, speaking before thinking and hurting people’s feelings.

So the blogs become less personal and more general, because the last thing you want to do is offend people who are taking the time to read your blog, the same people who tuned in because your blog were more personal and less general. So do you give the audience what they want, at the risk of hurting those you know, or do you placate those you know and turn away those you don’t?

Aye, bloggin’s a c*nt.

Er, case in point.

2002-05-16T13:01:00.000+10:00

Q: What's the size of a blood cell, weighs a tonne, and moves at 1.5 million kilometres an hour?

A: A space thing.

According to American scientists, once or twice a year, a space thing goes zooming THROUGH the earth at 1.5 million kph.

One minute it's hitting the earth at a point around Antartica, later on that minute, it's exiting around India.

And the name of these speed demons?

Strangelets.

You think that's a piss-weak name for a cosmic phenomena, how about this one:

Quark Nugget.

It seems those pesky scientists have succeeded in running out of cool names for stuff.

The really, really cool thing - they haven't discovered it yet.

These scientists believe that two earthquakes in 1993 were caused by these bits of cosmic flotsam.

Stranglets, or quark nuggets, a name which just invokes sniggers, are thought to be made up of subatomic particles called quarks (fancy that), and exist in dense stars (eg, the cast of Home and Away).

Meanwhile, an Australian physicist reckons that it's bullshit. and he should know, Australian scientists being the best-funded, least maligned and least-crazy-looking in the world.

Quote from Aussie egghead Anthony Thomas: "I don't think our knowledge of the structure of matter is good enough to know whether they (strangelets) do or don't exist."

In other words, "Pull ya head in, ya Yankee goose!"

And fair enough too. All they have is a little circuitous evidence, and they're already spouting silly names.

If they want silly names for space phenomena, they got it:

POSSIBLE NAMES FOR SPACE PHENOMENA

1. Starpoopy (Plural: Starpoopii) ("We believe that the satellite damage was caused by starpoopy.")
2. Cosmic Lint ("If you think of the universe as one big fat bloke who won't get off the couch and likes to watch telly and scratch himself, then you can understand the universal acceptance of the existance of large quantities of cosmic lint.")
3. Adelaide ("Our exhaustive search into super-string theory and the effect of quantum stars on gravitation has led us to believe that the matter within the nucleus of a black hole is, in fact, Adelaide.")
4. Crap Nebula ("To the left of the screen, you can see the majestic arms of the Crab Nebula, with its breath-taking hues and vibrant shimmering solar waves. Just next to that, see that pissweak little explosion over there? That's the Crap Nebula.")
5. NASA Goblins ("It's amazing what you can see with this new telescope. Just a minute, is that a before-now undiscovered binary cluster? Oh, no, it's one of Jenkin's NASA Goblins.")
6. Celestial Jiggery Pokery (Of yes, sounds stupid doesn't it? Dont forget, our current model of the creation of the universe is "The Big Bang". CJP doesn't sound so far-fetched now, does it?)
7. Lunarical Episode ("Sorry for being such a turdburger last week. I was having a lunarical episode.")
8. The Lucas Effect ("Despite space being a vaccuum, all cosmic events now have surround sound. We call that the Lucas Effect.")
9. A Space Thing (When scientists are asked about stuff that they don't know about, they should just say "Oh, that? That's just ... a space thing!")
10.Mystery Substance X ("We have made an amazing breakthrough in the field of quantum mechanics. By combining the forces of starpoopy and cosmic lint, we have created... Mystery Substance X! Bra-ha-ha-ha-ha! Bow down, you unworthy primates, For I am your new god! Bow dow-wait officer, I'm coming to the best part! Dang, this never happens to Hawking!")