Month: March 2003

OK, I wrote a kickass entry over the weekend all about comparative linguistics and Bruce Willis in a bunny suit – but the computer ate it. Gah!!!! 🙁

I could post the kind of food eating battle monkey I am instead, but no matter which of my many psuedonyms I use I inevitably get soundly beaten by both Helen and Ali, so I won’t. I can whip cheese eating Luke Skywalker’s butt though! 🙂

Going now.

Could this war get any more ridiculous?

And so it looks like the war is begining. And of course John Howard is scuttling along in George Dubya’s shadow, nodding and drooling like the lab assistant in a Frankenstein film. “Yes master! Of course master! Whatever you say master! slobber“.

Anyone who thinks this war isn’t about oil is being naive. Oh sure it could be about liberating the Iraqi people – but in that case why didn’t the powers that be liberate them years ago? And it could be about stopping Iraq from supplying Al Qaida – except no one has actually shown any evidence to suggest that Iraq does supply Al Qaida. And maybe it could be about weapons of mass destruction – but in that case you’ve got to wonder about a country with the world’s largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction ordering other countries that may not even have them to disarm. This is all about oil, and how the petroleum worshiping, environmentaly dismissive, “we won’t play nicely with the UN unless we can set the rules” Bush administration can get its hands on as much of it as possible.

And why is little Johnny Howard so enthusiastic about it all? Free trade. It can hardly be a coincidence that Australia is negotiating a free trade agreement with the States, and that they’ve been rather reluctant to come to the party until recently. Oh Johnny’s going on about our international responsibilities and how he thinks this is best for our national security, but honestly – how can a small, comparatively poor nation on the other side of the planet be any kind of serious threat to Australia? Anyone with a brain in their head can tell that it’s exactly the opposite – an attack on Iraq will just provide fuel for terrorism, specifically terrorism against the US, the UK and us. It’s all political game playing, and ordinary citizens are in the firing line if it all goes wrong, which it almost certainly will.

Good luck to everyone. The ordinary citizens of the United States and UK, my friends in both countries, everyone here in Australia and most of all the women and children of Iraq, the people who always suffer the most from warfare, no matter how much the politicians say they’re going to try and ‘minimise’ civilian casualties. Heads down everyone, this could all turn very nasty indeed 🙁

PS: On a final note, during the last Gulf War the Allied Forces bombed and blew up numerous museums in Baghdad – destorying priceless artifacts – and ran a specialty line in dropping “bunker-busting” bombs on ancient mesopotamian ruins because their “specialists” couldn’t tell the difference between an underground bunker and a Babylonian ziggurat in a satellite photograph. How much more of the collective archeological heritage of humanity is going to get wasted this time round?

Busy busy busy.

Which is again why I haven’t been blogging. Or emailing people. Which is consuming me with guilt, so everyone (Ali in particular) should expect at least something over the next few days. Although Rebecca is staying for a few days, so we’ll see what I have time for.

Anyway, a few quotes I found amusing…

From a Spam – Australia’s very own Ultimate Safe is a totally new concept in personal, relocatable high security. The Ultimate Safe is virtually indestructible, being able to withstand incredible abuse – even attacks with a hammer!

Surely not attacks with a hammer!?! Good Lord! I mean – it must be made of metal or something!! Wow!!!! What a breakthrough!!! 😉

From our esteemed Foreign Minister Alexander Downer – Australians in Iraq acting as human shields have made their protest clear but it is now time to come home.

Kind of missing the point of human shields there Alex, doncha think?

On a completely different subject if you’re looking for a laugh, check this out. It’s the “Paranormal Gallery” section of the About.com paranormal site. Image after image after image of processing faults, overexposures, simulcras, reflections, jpeg compression artifacts, dusty lenses and wobbly-camera-hand-syndrome induced light streaks that people are convinced show spirits, demons, angels, “orbs” and all sorts of other paranormal weirdness. Really makes you wish that people would learn a bit more about how cameras and the human eye/visual cortex actually work eh? Having looked through the entire archive I can only find four images that defy photographic explanation and look worthy of further investigation.

Best quote – “When I got the picture developed, there was an orange and black bolt of fire-looking thing. It seemed to be striking my younger sister in the head. This was not there when I took the picture.” No! Surely not!? 😀

Finally, there’s a reporter for the ABC News called Lisa Millar. I find this very amusing 😉

Ah, another long break between entries. I could make all sorts of excuses, but honestly I just haven’t felt like writing. I put it down to a heady mixture of depression at being yet another year older, and alternating boredom (at having nothing to do) and panic (at suddenly having way too much to do) at work. That kind of thing can wear even the most enthusiastic blogger down, let me tell you. And I’m hardly enthusiastic about anything these days 🙂

But things have worked out well today, because we’ve got an immune system impaired kid on work experience, and I seem to have come down with a mild cold (in the middle of a heat wave, typical me). Normally I’d down a handful of demazin, panadol and Allen’s Butter Menthols and just get on with it, but since this kid (the son of a major client) is hanging around the office, it wouldn’t be a good idea. So I’m taking a day off. Joy! 🙂

Oh yeah, another reason I haven’t been blogging. The heat. Hottest March on record so far. Saturday was about 40, Sunday the same and Monday, well. I went across the street to get some lunch at about 12:00 and couldn’t believe how hot it was. There was a wind gusting down Hampden road that felt like it was coming out of an oven – literally. It was just like the blast of heat you get when you open the door to check on your crumbed chicken breast. When I got home and checked the news it turned out that it was the hottest day in four years, at just over 42 degrees. Yikes! Tuesday was mildly better, at 38 or so but very humid, and today has been a positively freezing 29.

So yeah, with those kind of temperatures who can be bothered writing? It’s a struggle not to just lie on the floor sweating. Ack! I’ve been living beneath my evaporative air cooler – in fact it’s entirely likely my cough is a symptom of incipient legionaires disease.

Anyway, the major event of the last few weeks was my 27th birthday. I went over to Mum and Dad’s for a family dinner. I could harp on about that, but all you really want to know about is what I got isn’t it? 🙂 OK, from Mum and Dad one of those Map Mystery jigsaw puzzle things, which looks really interesting if I ever actually have the time or space to assemble it. From Andrew and Travis a copy of Californication, which I’ve been meaning to get my hands on for like years. From the aunts a box of chocolates, a bottle of champagne (they got me champagne for Christmas as well, they seem to have terrible trouble remembering that I don’t actually drink) and $25 (which I’ve already blown by ordering an extremely stupid card game I’ve had my eye on for some time from good old Warehouse 23 :). So not a bad night presents-wise.

Since then I’ve got a wall clock from my Aunt in the UK, and a DVD copy of Memento from Rebecca, which rocks because I’ve been meaning to see it for ages (you know, the one where Guy Pearce can’t remember anything so the entire movie runs backwards – or something :). I might watch it this afternoon actually if I run out of things to do. Which is unlikely since I have to clean the bathroom. *sigh*

Hmmm, apart from all that nothing much has been going on. Well, apart from nightmares at work building this site. No, your connection hasn’t dropped out, it’s just a really really crap site that looks like an accident in a metal foundry and takes forever to download. And (not wanting to sound pompous and no doubt failing miserably) I’m good at making sites download fast (when I want to 🙂 so you can get some idea of just how crap the design of this monstrosity is. Happily the designer who forced it on us has since gone out of business – you can see why 🙂

OK, gonna go now.

PS:What the????????????

Readers of the UK’s ubiquitous rock magazine NME have voted the Pixies’ Doolittle as the second greatest album of all time!

Damn straight 🙂

Feeling old and depressed (turned 27 on Friday – only 3 years to 30, gah!) and have hence retreated to my cave. This happens every year, I’ll be fine in a few days 🙂

Over and out.