Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
Isuzu = Suzuki
The ‘Isuzu’ truck company does not in fact exist. All ‘Isuzu’ trucks are manufactured by the Suzuki car company, but the shame of being seen driving around in a Suzuki causes truck drivers to prise off and discard the ‘K’ from their truck’s nameplate, and reposition the ‘I’ to the start of the word.
Would I lie to you?
Nocturnal ramblings
The phrase “Stitch Cloud and Cleanse Feather” popped into my head as I was falling asleep last night. I have absolutely no idea what it means (well, a cleanse feather could be some kind of feather that cleans things I suppose) but I like the way it sounds.
You see, now it’s quick and easy for me to blog things you’re going to get a whole mess of pointless Twitter-like entries like this…
We are go for launch!
I’ve been hinting a bit lately that change is coming to the Wyrmlog. Well today it’s arrived!
If you’re reading this on the old, iNews powered Wyrmlog (the one that’s all green) it’s the last post you’ll ever see here. Maintaining a custom blogging application may have given me almost 10 years of smug independence, but it’s become increasingly annoying as time has worn on. Added to that is the fact that I’ve never had the time to set up a robust commenting system, which in this Web 2.0, wired, user generated content world made the Wyrmlog even more irrelevant that it would otherwise undoubtedly be. So a few weeks back I decided to damn it all to hell and set up a spiffy, new, open source WordPress blog – the Wyrmlog 2.0!
(Actually it’s probably about 6.8 with all the revisions the old one went through, but hey, who’s counting?)
The old Wyrmlog will be maintained in it’s current location, although no updates after this one will be made.
So where can you taste the literary rainbow that is the new Wyrmlog? Here!
Now, the new Wyrmlog is still being set up. All the content (9 years worth! I’ve been spewing out this crap for 9 years?!) has been ported across but some of it (particularly the old stuff) is looking a bit dodgy. I’ve also got to get it all sorted properly into categories. The skin also needs a complete revision (what’s with that tree?) so don’t worry about the messed up menus up the top. But hey, it makes blogging a lot easier for me, and it has comments! Yes! Comments! Wow!
So yeah, it’s the start of a new era. Or something. Enjoy my children!!
Once again I am undone by food
I suppose it’s a bit redundant now that the show’s finished but I just wanted to say that the titles to the Chaser’s Yes We Canberra are some of the best I’ve ever seen on TV. The city of Canberra converted into an array of nonsensical infographics is a genius concept, and it’s brilliantly executed as well.
But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. Here to talk about chips.
Different countries have different flavours of chips (crisps, potato chips, those crunchy things you buy in a bag). Which is fine, except when your country doesn’t have the really good ones.
In the magical land of the United Kingdom for instance they have two flavours of chips (or at least crunchy, nutritionally void snack foods) that don’t exist here in the colonies. These flavours are a gourmand’s delight, the kind of chips they’ll serve you in heaven. They are Smokey Bacon and Pickled Onion.
Oh the delights of smokey bacon! The subtle (oh, alright, completely overwhelming) vinegary goodness of pickled onion! No snack food in this benighted nation can compare to their greasy enchantments! At least, none could until now…
Just recently the Red Rock Deli company has released a new flavour of their gourmet chips – Sea Salt and Balsamic Vinegar. While not quite as delightfully devastating to the taste buds as the fabled pickled onion, they’re actually pretty good. The one bag of chips I allow myself to indulge in each week has rapidly become completely monopolised and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, or at least until the sour receptors on my tongue burn out completely. Well done Red Rock Deli!
That’s all I have to say.
I guess this means the Chaser are Fred and George?
This is sheer genius…
Australian Politics: A Harry Potter Primer
Make sure you check out the entire cast list to find out who Dumbledore is.
Election round up (of sorts) and things I must get done
Well that was a bit of an anticlimax. A hung parliament with power in the hands of a bunch of rural independents and one Green. Both Labor and the Libs are doing their best to cosy up to them, so it’ll be interesting to see who ends up forming government. At least the Greens managed to get up in the Senate – once the change over happens they’ll pretty much have total control of disputed legislation which can only be a good thing.
Bah. Politics.
There are a number of things I really have to do.
The first four are at least feasible ;D
Regular readers (if there are any) will have noticed that I haven’t been updating on the weekends recently. There is a reason for this but I’m not yet ready to reveal it. I will however quote the Child and say “Things are going to change!”
Here we go again…
I’ve avoided blogging about tomorrow’s federal election so far, mostly since the campaigns have been pretty lacklustre and the differences between Labor and Liberal policies minimal at best. That said I’d prefer Gillard to get back in if only because Labor has made some kind of commitment to fighting climate change, whereas Abbott is on record as describing it as “a load of crap” (not that Labor’s policy is great, but it’s better than the Libs’).
There’s also something about Abbott I just don’t trust. I can’t pin it down but he comes across as sinister – as if he’s playing nice for the cameras but rubbing his hands and plotting something nefarious in the shadows. Sure, I wouldn’t trust Gillard as far as I could throw her, but being alone in a room with her wouldn’t give me the crawling heebie-jeebies the way Abbott would.
At least the blackout came in the other day, which means the TV and radio waves have been free of the endless campaign ads that’ve been driving us all mad. I tell you, if I hear one more scaremongering spiel about THE BOATS I think I’ll knock someone’s hat off with a cane (I’d have to procure a cane first of course, but I’m so sick of it all that I’d be more than willing to do so).
My ideal outcome tomorrow? Labor in the Lower House, Greens in the Senate. But honestly any outcome where the Mad Monk isn’t PM is OK with me.
Geographical musings
Maps are funny things. When you create a map you’re creating a version of a physical space that people move through, live in and interact with, so there’s genuine potential for strange things to happen. Such as Swanland.
Back when I was in highschool (some time in the Cretaceous era I think) my friends and I – for reasons that escape me but were probably to do with intense boredom – went into the school library and looked up ‘Australia’ in all the encyclopaedias (an encyclopaedia is a big book that people used to use to find things out before there were iPhones). In one of these – an American production – we discovered that the south west corner of Western Australia is called ‘Swanland’.
This was something of a surprise to us, all having been born and brought up in said area and never having heard the term. We toyed with the idea of writing a letter (a message written on paper that people used before there were iPhones) to the publishers to ask them what the hell they were doing, but never got around to it.
Jump forward to yesterday when I was examining a map of submarine telephone cables (you don’t need to know why). What do I spot written across the bottom of Western Australia? Swanland!
It’s back.
I can only speculate on the origin of the name. Perhaps the region was once known as Swanland, and ended up on some American map before falling out of use. Perhaps the area is called Swanland, and I’ve just been prevented from coming across it by random acts of fate (although a Google Search suggests it’s not in common use on the internet at least). More intriguingly however is the possibility that it’s a massive misinterpretation of a very real but very obscure instance of governmental organisation…
You see, there is a ‘Swan Land’ in Western Australia. It’s an official government Land District existing since at least the 1820’s and covering a chunk of territory roughly between the Swan and Moore rivers, including the city of Perth. I daresay hardly anyone living in it is aware that it exists, but it’s there on the books.
So, I can see a series of theoretical events that could lead to this comparatively small area of the state getting conflated into a title for the entire south west, and that title being circulated around between maps, encyclopaedias and geographic computer programs without anyone from Australia really noticing ever since.
So here I state it once and for all. The term ‘Swanland’ is a geographic anomaly not used by anyone who lives within it’s supposed borders which should be permanently struck from the records! Down with Swanland!
Later: I’ve now realised that in my enthusiasm for an explanation of the Swanland enigma I’ve confused the “Land Division” named “Swan” with a “Division” named “Swan Land” thus completely invalidating my hypothesis (unless the cartographer responsible is as foolish as I). In any case, the main argument still stands – there is no such place as Swanland!
The world of the fashionable is once again trying to kill me…
One of the more noticeable characteristics of autistics is that we like routine. We like doing the same thing the same way at the same time as we last did it. Change is strange and threatening and we don’t tend to adapt well to it. In my case this is probably most obvious when it comes to clothing. I wear jeans, Doc Martins, and black t-shirts. That’s it. Depending on weather conditions I may add a hat or coat, but that’s what you’ll see me in 99% of the time.
(The black t-shirts will often bear some kind of geeky design, but they’re still black t-shirts)
Now clothes wear out. And black clothes wear out fairly quickly as the colour fades with each wash. This (combined with the fact that my belt buckle tends to poke holes in them) means that I need a constant supply of new black t-shirts, maybe two or three new ones every 3 months. And this is where we come to the problem.
For the last 6 months it has been insanely hard to find any black t-shirts.
Or at least any black t-shirts I’d be willing to wear. Sure, there are plenty of trendy $35 black t-shirts with odd designs (a map of the world for instance with the word “ALTERNITY” and a skull splayed across it) on them, but I refuse to pay an extra $25 for a bit of cheap screen printing and post-modern nonsense. Plain, simple black t-shirts seem to have gone out of fashion, and I’m suffering for it.
That said I actually did manage to locate some shirts over the weekend. Good quality, plain, black ones for only $6 a pop. Excellent! Except for one thing…
I like my shirts baggy. You may call it a pathetic attempt to deal with deep seated body issues, but I call it comfortable. For years XL sized shirts have done the job admirably, but this has suddenly changed. Why? Well it appears that baggy clothes have gone out of fashion and XL t-shirts are now tight and body hugging.
Yes, at this point you’re laughing and saying “you’ve just got fat you idiot”. No, my body mass is pretty much the same as it’s been for years. In fact my prolonged bout of flu a few weeks back actually knocked off a couple of kilos. The proof? My old, faded, holed XL shirts are still comfortably baggy, but these new ones are all tight and clingy.
So, it appears that thanks to the wild and inane vagaries of fashion (and despite the fact that I’ve lost weight) I’m now going to have to start buying XXL shirts just to feel comfortable. What I want to know is how is that even remotely fair?
Bah!
An inane report on my daily life to keep this blog thing going…
Forgot to buy bread yesterday afternoon and was thus was forced to choose between having none for breakfast or making my own like some kind of peasant.
It didn’t turn out too bad really, especially considering I didn’t follow any kind of recipe or have any yeast.
