Tuesday, April 30, 2002

yes pls mr siger siger sputnikson! it's a h w ( a t ) m i r a . n e t ... 


Lisa Lopes Died With Her Paul Frank PJs On.

I wish I could find the screen-capture of one of the palestinian suicide bombers'
video statements ... the one with the dude in his Alien Workshop hoodie. Now
there's something the kids can identify with!

Monday, April 29, 2002

This item via the memepool -- Richard has hidden an image of his ugly mug (well who else's could it be?) //inside// track 2. You need a spectrograph utility thing to see it.

On a personal note -- if you're into the old C64 SID files ... load up Martin Galway's theme to 'Parallax' and listen to song 1/5 *all the way through to the end*. The man is fucked up! Is he still alive? aahh ... here's an old interview. Memories ...

Pol, send the article to me....
And kind of related, the trend in the USA for treating the symptom not the cause is something that is really irritating me at the moment - there was a council somewhere in the states that was awarded something in the region of $160,000 to "stamp out" gothic culture, as everyone knows, wearing a black trenchcoat clearly indicates that you're a fledgeling spree killer.
I know that there are plenty of sensible people there (even though we mainly only hear about the ones that aren't) - it's just very worrying that people are wandering around major airports looking for shoe bombs, people with long black coats and liberal voters with the express intent of locking them up cause, well, they're suspicious, aren't they?
*grumble grumble*

Friday, April 26, 2002

Damn Windows 2000 - I was quite happy on NT - well, until my drive melted. They've replaced the "Find" option with the rather less optimistic "Search...". Have you ever tried to find "Find"?! Aaarrghhh!!

In unrelated news, scientists think they've found the cause of the bubonic plague to be bacteria whose genes were swapped during bacteria sex. (And you thought normal sex was dirty...!) The article went on to say that about 15 people die each year from the black death in the USA alone. I thought that was one of those things that was totally eradicated, like smallpox. Out of interest, did they ever destroy the last remaining smallpox bateria? Or did the USA keep it for... reference?

Monday, April 22, 2002

Double whammy. I done fuckered it up with a broken 'a' tag so -- repost.

*THAT*'s not the end of the world! *THIS* is the end of the world! via Boing Boing.

Passport for National ID service, just shoot me
The sixth seal is open, the antichrist rides o'er the land, and the Feds are talking about using Microsoft Passport as a National ID system. Allow me to say: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. Link

Saturday, April 20, 2002

Skinhead Hamlet.

ACT II SCENE I

A corridor in the castle. Enter HAMLET reading. Enter POLONIUS.

  POLONIUS: Oi! You!


HAMLET: Fuck off, grandad!

(Exit POLONIUS. Enter ROSENCRANZ and GUILDENSTERN.)

ROS & GUILD: Oi! Oi! Mucca!

HAMLET: Fuck off, the pair of you!

(Exit ROS & GUILD.)

HAMLET: (Alone) To fuck or be fucked.

(Enter OPHELIA.)

OPHELIA: My Lord!

HAMLET: Fuck off to a nunnery!

(They exit in different directions.)

Thursday, April 18, 2002

What the hell?? Right, I suppose at least the British contingent will remember Mr Benn, the children's TV show where this guy goes into a shop and tries on a costume and has an adventure in the genre of his costume. I'm not sure whether that is very similar to having a party in one's pants, but there you go. Anyway, they're making a film of Mr Benn! With - get this - John Hannah as Mr Benn, the romantic hero, Jane Horrocks as his girlfriend and Ben Kingsley as the Costume shop owner!!
It's official: the world has gone completely mad.

Wednesday, April 17, 2002

This is the funniest thing I've read all day - Hanleyisms - a website dedicated to the strange goings on in the head and miscellaneous faux pas of one of the testers from Eidos... if you do one thing today, just follow that link.

Humerous posting regarding the passing of HRH TQM - via alt.slack.

Subject: Re: Queen Mother Pushing Up Daisies

Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 14:24:21 GMT
From: ##REDACTED##
Reply-To: ##REDACTED##
Organization: ##REDACTED##
Newsgroups: alt.slack
References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

#REDACTED#

As far as the queen mum and what a sweet old dear she
was: WHAT THE FUCK? She is the mother to a woman who
has MORE MONEY THAN FUCKING BILL GATES, LITERALLY!
And what does she do with it? She plays the ponies
and gets drunk! FOR 70 FUCKING YEARS!

Now that's a fucking humanitarian for you. How many
children did she help in her life? How many adults?
How many medical clinics did she set up? How many
empty bellies did she fill? Shit, Diana did more in
three months WITH NO BRAIN than the queen mum did in
70 FUCKING YEARS!

So she lived to be 101 years old, and kept the ruddy
peasants from abolishing the monarchy after the Nazi-
loving Edward decided (like Charlie), that he wanted to
choose his own horn scraper rather than one picked for
him by Sir Humphrey Applebee. Wow. I'm fucking
impressed. So England decides to keep its ZOO of
INBRED MONKEY MONARCHS instead of Sid Vicious on the
Labor ticket. Now THAT'S an accomplishment.

The only way I'm gonna respect any of those gorks is
if Charlie gorks his mom, then establishes a Lord High
Protector to root all the wogs out of England while
he's vacationing in Canada and tells the EU to bugger
off.

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

Ahh, bronchitis. The only thing that cured that for me was drinking a brew of the world's most horrible tea (this coming from a girl who will throw almost anything into a pot of boiling water and drink it - adding honey to taste) made with wood and rocks and liquorice and general forest floor type stuff. Oh, and acupuncture. Tea - it's horrible, but it works.

Glen Miller style sex - umm... wouldn't the brass section get in the way? *mind boggles*

Girl in Brisbane - huzzah indeed that you are on - not so huzzah that she's also on with a girl in every port, unles she lets you watch. Ack, now I'm trying to draw a Venn diagram in my head of all the odd sub groups this young lady must be part of - bisexual witchy acrobaty type - why she must be one in a million - at least that way, there's three more like her in Melbourne alone. (Although it has to be said that once somebody mentions they're bi, the chances of them being polyamorous, pagan and vegan increases dramatically - at least from the mailing lists I've been on there's a large number of bi poly pagan wiccan vegans out there.... strange but true. Oh, and bi-polar figures a lot too.)

Jiggery pokery - all staff are required to remember that a car parked in the street has more gravitational pull than any of the planets in our solar system, and if you want another flaw in their argument, since when have planets been able to fit into your house, let alone move right through them?

Saturday, April 13, 2002

from dark horizons:

"The Wraith: British author Graham Joyce's psychological suspense novel "The Tooth Fairy" will be adapted into a film under this name with the author himself doing the screenplay."

i *love* this book. it's about a boy who captures a tooth fairy, and the fairy is forced to stay with him. it's all fine and good, until he grows up and starts to notice girls at which the tooth fairy gets jealous and starts to do some very, very weird things :)


Friday, April 12, 2002

I'm Dream!
Which Member of the Endless Are You?

Cool, now we can be anti-semitic fairy butt buddies, Pol!

The only organ donation I intend to make is when I strangle John Howard, Phillip Pillock, Alexander Downer, and any foolish APS goons that dare stand in my way ... with mein own entrails.

This just in: "If it wins its case, then Britain can officially say that the working class is extinct."

Court in the UK to decide: "Yes, Veronica, there is a working class." It is not known if Billy Bragg has been banned from entering the courthouse.

The legal action will not just settle a political argument between Thatcherites and Marxists. It could also safeguard the future of thousands of "affordable homes" in some of the capital's richest areas.

But the prospect of an aristocrat riding to the rescue of the poor has been greeted with scepticism locally. After all, the Cadogan family built its fortune through hard-headed investment in the property market.

Now that's property news! Via alt.slack. Praise "Bob"!

This just in from Bill, as he's currently unable to blog this himself...

She shoots, she scores!! I am Eve of Destruction! *bounce bounce bounce*
Destruction!
Which Member of the Endless Are You?

Thursday, April 11, 2002

this is my only quiz recommendation.

I'm Destiny!
Which Member of the Endless Are You?

Other interesting donations can include:
Hand donation (remember the dodgy guy who had a hand transplant, and then wanted it removed again because it was an evil hand? Ok so I made that last bit up...)
Digestive tract donation (human body exhibition on at Melbourne Museum)

If you have a pacemaker and you die, do they recycle it? Or is that just taken as a sign that the pacemaker no longer works...

Speaking of donating yourself to charity post mortem, there was an article in the Age today regarding brain donation. My first instinct was to laugh because we used to call the stupid kids "brain donors" in primary school, but apparently, donating your brain can help spot differences in diseased and healthy brains, paving the way for cures for all manner of afflictions - depression, alzheimers, schizophrenia, as well as studying the effects of drugs and alcohol.

Hurray, because I am...




which children's storybook character are you?
this quiz was made by someone with too much time on their hands



which children's storybook character are you?
this quiz was made by colleen

Hmm.

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

Panic Room: I've read the Slashdot review of it by the infamous John Katz, as well as The Onion's A.V. Club review, so a few more spoilers here aren't gonna rain on my parade. I've heard there are a few, let's say, technical inconsistencies in the plot, not to mention the daughter's sudden ailment. I'd certainly keep a few ventolin and flixotide inhalers in a room like that -- oh, and a mobile phone too. Or as we say in Deutchland -- Der Handy!

Saw Metropolis last night -- and I saw someone else seeing Metropolis last night too ;). Starting to get a little tired of anime plots making insufficient sense to actually enjoy the eye-candy. Hey Pol, want to see 'Exodus' at the Astor? I'll shave my head too. We can wear the brown shirts (^_^)

I've been aware that things ain't right on the Left Bank since I read the Crisis/Amnesty tie-in from `89 that featured an article on the first Intifada. It had some great little vignettes, including accounts of IDF troops systematically breaking the arms of young men and children, even as young as 8, to stop them from stone-throwing, and gas attacks that left children bent the wrong way, just like what happened to the kids at Waco after they inhaled too much CS gas. It was interesting to read how at even that stage, Israel depended on low-waged workers from the occupied territories, who bussed through checkpoints for the privelige of sweeping streets, emptying rubbish bins and other menial, character-building duties. Keep 'em in their place, I suppose. Viva UK comics! Viva Amnesty! Bumper sticker reported in alt.slack: "Boycott the Holocaust." Speaks volumes.

I can't actually remember the last thing I saw at the Hastur, but I know it was with Bignose. Nothing in his blog. It is a mystery!

Congratulations Mr Harry. If I do the next nanowrimo thing, does that mean I'll be doing a Nanowrimo Noodle Doodle? Hurray, I've managed to make it sound like I'm going to be writing about childhood spaghetti and scribbled poultry.

Tuesday, April 09, 2002

i've just finished my novel.
69,866 words, 136 pages, and a happy, if slightly obscure, ending.

but it's over, and printing out now.

i was thinking about it though. i wrote a pretty substantial, albeit convoluted and not very coherent, novel in less than 6 months. if i do some research for the victorian ghost story one, i reckon i can get it done before this years nanowrimo doodle. in my head, the next one'll be a bit shorter.

bed now.

therapy in the morning.

speaking of David Fincher, this interview has him say this about Mission Impossible 3.....
"DFN: Last question, might you be doing Mission Impossible 3, or is that horseshit?

DF: Its not horseshit.

DFN: Thanks again.

DF: Thank you."

Channelling Barry Norman:
Panic Room - Pol and Alex, you have to go see this, because then we can all talk about it...
Series 7 - Only a matter of time... very black, very funny.

What a week.

"Do not pass go, do not collect $200"
We had to collect Purdey and Kudra from the pound on friday afternoon. Not only had Purdey escaped and bounded over the road to play with another dog (who didn't want to play) on thursday, both Purdey and Kudra decided to escape on friday morning too, and were picked up and hauled off to the clink, after making their merry way down to Merri Creek park. Twice in two days! I was absolutely mortified.

Their escapes basically stem from the weird and scary man next door, who not only has the audacity to live in the granny flat next door, but must also have been having a good peer over the fence from time to time, causing Kudra to freak out, and Purdey to dig under the fence in order to go through and explore. I also keep finding odd bits and pieces in the garden - we know not from whence they came.

I'm now really paranoid that they'll escape again, and get either maimed or killed of knocked up by a small but persistent dog that wouldn't look out of place being used as a bath mat. As a result, we've been trying to make the yard a more interesting place - more bones, toys, and things to play on/in, as well as early morning walks so that they're too knackered to dig once we've gone to work. We finally found them a play tunnel in one of the pov shops in Northcote central (it would appear today's affluent child has no need to crawl through anything other than a simulacrum of Thomas the Tank Engine - go figure). They got the hang of going through the tunnel as a result of two things - food scattered liberally through the tunnel, and, yes, you guessed it, I had to crawl through it myself. (I also had to sit in the kennel to get purdey to figure it out.)

Fingers crossed it all works.

Saturday, April 06, 2002

Today I went to a park in Balwyn to see a slinky. It wasn't just any slinky, mind you, it was a Sliiinky - 21.73m in length made from a number of slinkies that have been soldered together by its creator, Robin.

I didn't just go there to see the sliiinky though, I went there to wriggle it, to watch other people wriggle it, and also to listen to it. I found out about the sliiinky via Slashdot, and I was rather surprised to hear that of 55,000 hits that Rob had received on his website, only one Melburnian slashdotter bothered to turn up -- I might not be one in a million, but at least now I know I'm at least one in fifty-five thousand!

The presence of Rob and Ian from The Curiosity Show (bless their cotton socks, I know one of them has popped his clogs but I can't remember which) was felt this evening. I had visions of an empty fish tank full of mouse-traps pre-loaded with ping-pong balls. Were they demonstrating fission? I can't remember. There was one youngster letting off home-made rockets, one of which spiralled off towards onlookers, only to peter out before doing any real comedy value.

The party started at 3pm and was billed to finish at 6, but recording eerie noises such as the wind rushing through sliiinky and the 'chirping' generated by tapping sliiinky from the 'other' end with a coin kept the proceedings going until well after dusk. This made 'bumping out' a little more difficult, but this was tempered by the many hands present.

One of my high-school teachers spend a few minutes one day elaborating on how there's science in maths, politics in geography and history in english, that is, there's bits of every subject mixed up in every other subject. Today was no exception, and it was amazing to see how many aspects of other fields of study manifested themselves. Sliiinky is as much a demonstration of art as it is of science, but watching children, teenagers and adults alike queue up for and play with sliiinky was almost as edumacational as sliiinky itself. The live music was nice too.

Friday, April 05, 2002

Frank Gehry's been using that for years....

Thursday, April 04, 2002

Non-Euclidean Lego


Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.


Bored with 3-dimensional orthogonal Lego constructions? No more!


With Arlington Wolfe Non-Euclidean Lego you can build the Cthulhoid contrivances of your most fevered
imagination! No longer must your Lego constructions be confined to the standard linear spatial dimensions.


You can now build houses with all the angles greater than 90 degrees, to avoid attracting the Hounds of Tindalos.


Put together your very own cyclopean blasphemies with sanity-sapping geometries. Span immense interstellar gulfs with nothing more than a handful of 2x4 bricks.

Pol, I'm not doing rude things to skater chicks, as much as I'd like to. However, you will all be delighted to know that I have indeed been doing rude things to an unspecified number of women over the past few weeks, as I am enjoying the slightly wider parameters the 'untethered and/or early relationship negotiation' phase allows. Nothing makes a man feel dirtier than looking at a driver's licence that says 1982 ... not that I consider myself a 'man'. quasi-mature meat puppet perhaps. Maybe that cup of sweet tea will improve that, Eve, maybe it won't.

Bill I do hope you don't have the Killer Strain of Flu that the Tube is currently screaming about. If it doesn't kill you, you'll end up with a bullet-proof immune system. If it does, dibs on the PS2 ...

... and speaking of thumb-twiddling, I must regretfully inform my fellow bloggers that while I am familiar with the alleged art of kokigami, the only thing Mr Happy is ever adorned with, other than my lonely fist, (or Stark Fist of Retrieval, if you will) is a genuine, Made In Australia, blue-wrapper Ansell. However, I have recently qualified as a Black Belt In Origami. I wonder if an aptitude in folding reasonably complicated (not to mention G-rated) origami models might instead translate to proficiency in other complicated and delicate (not to mention less G-rated) manual tasks. Anyone for a double-blind research experiment?

It was an interesting coincidence last night that, a year after I watched most of 'Michael Collins' with a friend from Tipperary, Ireland, (said friend pointing out all the historical inaccuracies and instances of artistic licence,) I should find myself watching that spooky German film that hypothesised Herr Mengele being apprehended and tried in modern Germany, in the company of a young German woman (of Romanian extraction, as it happens) who nitpicked with the SBS subtitles. Happy Easter, what what.

Finally I will share some sekrit 3RRR knowlege -- a member of a certain comedy duo now featured on Another Commercial Network bore such a scathing hatred of the late Royal Highness, Elizabeth the Queen Mother, that he wrote her performing the act of fellatio on a bull into one of his radio plays. Now *there's* something the Goons and Python would never have done!



"Bondage is my thing. Bow to me, bitch."

What's Your Fetish? Take the test at Nollykin's World

Wednesday, April 03, 2002

after talking to people, i feel i should clarify.

that thing about the girl was from the novel, so it actually reflects a lot of the themes present in the larger story. stuff like balance, and creating worlds, and going off on your own, and trying to make people see things. and failing, but going on anyway.

these are the BIG themes in my head, even outside of writing. or at least they are just now. and it's not about beautiful things dying, and it's not about putting girls on pedestals and them leaving you. part of the novel is about that, and so part of the substories are about that, but overall it's about finding reasons to live, and moving on, and about finding balance.

it works in context, believe me. and if it doesn't right now. then it will when i get round to the second draft.

*sigh*

i feel better now.

*tiptoes away*

Tuesday, April 02, 2002

hhhhmmm,

maybe i'm just like stephen king & chuck palahniuk. i've only got one idea that i keep recycling over, and over, and over.

still they've both got loads of cash & respect, so might not be a bad idea to keep telling the same story.

and anyway, you could argue it's a creation myth, or something, and they have to involve females in some way. unless you're christian, in which case some twat with a beard created the world in 7 days.

anyway, it's my story, and i'm going to finish this bloody novel even if it leaves permanent scars.


1. Erotic origami - see also kokigami in the big black book...
2. Queen mum - another one bites the dust. Thankfully. Nothing against her personally, except I've heard she was racist, not the most intelligent person ever and also rather banal. Time for a republic - we'll get Thom Yorke and John Lydon to compose a new anthem. Oh, and God save Quentin Crisp.
3. Harry - that's the same story as all the other ones! It's like trying to sell someone their own shoes! Or something... No more disabled women for you!
4. Pol - my guess for those teeth? Treacle and sawdust.
5. Alex - You're slipping, mate! Run off and do rude things with (more) skater chicks, and have a cup of sugary tea.
6. Bill - get well soon honey.
7. Eve - get back to work.

I'm very surprised that I had to find this myself. I would have thought that anything involving erotic origami would have been spotted by Mr 4.0 long ago, considering its melding of two of his favourite disciplines.