Author: Purple Wyrm

Damn it’s good to see Doctor Who again!

As a result of recent budget cuts the ABC has been wildly scrambling through it’s archives for the last few months or so looking for things to take the place of dozens of suddenly axed shows. Someone obviously remembered that they had almost 30 years worth of Doctor Who episodes stored away, and now they’re screening them again (starting tonight), from scratch! Woo-hoo!

You see (and we’re plunging into the murky depths of my disreputable past here), long before I was into Stargate, I was a massive fan of the Doctor. It was my absolutely favourite TV show, and naturally enough all these years later I still have a soft spot for it (despite the often dodgy sets, premises and acting :). So the re-screening of the original episodes is fantastic.

The question that must (well, ok not really, but I’m going to ask it anyway, so there!) be asked at this point is of course who was my favourite Doctor? For my money it has to be Sylvester McCoy, Doctor number seven (I will spare everyone a long fannish monologue on why and just list the rest in descending order :). Probably Tom Baker is next, then Jon Pertwee, then William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Peter Davison and Colin Baker (I haven’t seen much of Davison or Troughton’s episodes, thus explaining their low ranking, Colin Baker though was awful)* 😉

Anyway I’m extremely happy to see it back on the screen, and am particularly looking forward to the debut of the Daleks (next week in The Dead Planet if my once encyclopedic knowledge of the series still serves) and – if they keep it running long enough – the Jon Pertwee era (I didn’t get to watch them first time round because my parents banned us from watching it when my brother got nightmares about the giant maggots in The Green Death).

So, yes, enough blathering about Doctor Who 🙂

It occurred to me today that I haven’t got around to providing more detail on our data entry person who may or may not be Buster Stiggs of the Models and Swingers. Well, he is. He initially tried to fool us by himself Mark (the fact that that’s his real name is a poor excuse at best), but his email address and business card gave him away. So, yeah, I’ve spent the last week or so sitting next to the guy who co-wrote Counting the Beat (and until recently was making a nice little income from K-Mart adds). How weird is that? Well, at least I now have a better “brush with fame” story than “my cousin dated the sister of the girl who got thrown out of Bardot” 🙂

Right, going now.

PS: Blonde?? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s been a while since I’ve done a decent update hasn’t it? I suppose I’d better set that right.

OK, I’ve had an insanely busy month. Not only was there the big-ass project at work, but my aunt from the UK was in town, my other aunts were heading off on a round the world trip, and Mars made it’s closest approach to Earth in a good 60,000 years or so. All of these factors made various and differing demands upon my time, meaning that I haven’t had more than a few minutes to myself, most of which were spent playing Civ III as a form of stress relief. But things have calmed down now (I hope) so I suppose I should write about what I’ve been up to in detail.

Let’s see. Well a few weeks back I took the folks out on our yearly excursion to the Witch’s Cauldron to celebrate Mum’s birthday and father’s day. I had the garlic prawns for my main course (naturally) but decided to try the pate for an entree. Frankly I think this was a big mistake.

When the pate arrived it was in the form of a foot high mountain, surrounded by about three-thousand triangles of toast. You could have served it as a main course and no one would have complained! I managed to finish most of it, but was hampered by the fact that it was ice cold. I don’t know, maybe that’s how pate is meant to be served, but it didn’t exactly make for pleasant eating. Overall I suspect that the pate is some kind of joke dish, and the kitchen staff have hidden cameras that they use to laugh at people who order it.

On the subject of gigantic servings I should mention that in recent months Rebecca, Dom and I have been out to La Porcetta in Morley twice. This is an Italian chain restaurant with fantastic food, but (from both of our experiences) rather dodgy service. For instance, the first time we sat around for at least 15 minutes before anyone turned up to take our orders. Then, once we’d finished our entree (a sun dried tomato pizza), one of the waitresses tried to settle our account and kick us out, at which juncture we had to point out that we hadn’t actually had our main courses yet. The second time round we were served a lot faster initially, but then had to wait twenty minutes for our deserts, which only turned up when we collared one of the serving staff and asked them what the heck was going on (my theory was that there was a serial killer hiding in the freezer room, killing the staff one by one as they went in to get our gelatos). But we did get one of them for free, which was nice.

So, the service may be a bit hit and miss, but the food is excellent. I had the mushroom gnocchi both times, and it was fantastic. The servings are huge too. I ordered the main course the first time round, and couldn’t finish it, so the second time ordered the entree serving, which I only just managed. The twenty minute gap was probably an advantage really, I might not have been able to get my desert down if I hadn’t had some extra digestion time.

Finally, in addition to the great food and gigantic servings, one of the waitresses is really cute* *g*. So I heartily recommend La Porcetta, so long as you don’t need to eat in a hurry or anything :)(Oh yeah, almost forgot. They don’t accept EFTPOS or Credit Cards for some reason, so bring cash. But they do serve ‘Dude Deserts’ 😉

OK, so that’s covered dining out over the last two months or so. I could talk about Mars, but everything I tried to do associated with it ended in disaster, so I won’t. Instead I’ll talk about what I did yesterday.

I decided during the week that I could do with some new clothes, and that I needed a haircut. I was also wanting to buy some CDs, so I decided to make a major expedition over to the Galleria, and into the city. The most sensible way to go would be by bus, so I waded through the absolutely interminable Transperth website* and eventually managed to download a PDF of the appropriate timetable and plan my day accordingly. Everything pretty much went to plan, and by 11:00 I was getting off the bus in William Street in the city, with my ridiculously short new haircut (it does look ridiculous, but it looked equally ridiculous long, and this way I won’t have to get it cut again well into next year 🙂

I was actually trying to track down a copy of Sibelius’s Kullervo, since I caught a documentary on him a few months ago, and I really liked what they played of it. I managed to find a copy (performed by the Stockholm Symphony Orchestra and National Male Choir of Estonia no less) at Wesley Classics, which was convenient. I then went over to JB’s Hi Fi intending to buy the New Pornographers’ Electric Version. I’m not quite sure what happened but I found myself back on the street fifteen minutes later clutching a copy of Spencer Tracey’s Ocean, b(if)tek’s Frequencies Will Move Together and a Stargate SG-1 DVD. I think they must be putting subliminals through the music down there or something 😉

I then realised that I’d just missed the bus home, and the next one wasn’t due for an hour. So I went for a ramble along St George’s Terrace down to the Concert Hall, then down onto the foreshore and across the Esplanade. I was aiming for the Bus Station which I’d last visited about five years before while playing the role of psychopath stalker in one of my brother’s various film projects (The final scenes were shot at Jacob’s Ladder in King’s Park, resulting in the heroine shooting to death a very out of breath and sweaty villain 😉

OK, here’s the thing about the Perth Bus Station. It’s a nightmare. I don’t know what they were thinking when they designed it, but imagine the departure lounge of an eastern European airport at three in the morning stuck on top of a World War Two submarine pen, and you’ve got some idea. The main concourse is a grimy hall filled with uncomfortable chairs (most leaking stuffing) and decorated with a variety of departure and arrival boards, about half of which will actually be functioning at any given time. A variety of small shopfronts poke out to the side, offering questionable magazines and even more questionable pies and sausages preserved pharaoh-like in a thin patina of grease. Staircases and escalators lead down to the various platforms – follow one down and you’ll find yourself in a strange subterranean world of pre-stressed concrete and orange fog lights. There are seats down there, but I strongly suspect they’re provided for the use of sewer dwelling mole-men who may occasionally stumble up through the storm drain system and like what they see enough to hang around.

As if all this isn’t bad enough, they’re currently constructing the Perth Convention Centre around the bus station, so add in all the noise, dust and inconvenience of a building site. For instance, access to the station is via three pedestrian walkways from the buildings opposite. Thanks to the construction work, only one of these is actually open (and you can’t tell which one until you’ve climbed the stairs up to them all). The only halfway pleasant area of the station, the roof garden, has now been fenced off and taken over by demountables and shipping containers – making my brother’s film a notable historical record of what the place originally looked like.

The Roof Garden -Click to Enlarge

Anyway, so I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to find my way into the bus station. During my endeavors I did however make a fantastic discovery. Or fantastic at least for someone with as great an appreciation of decaying post-industrial landscapes as myself.

Directly opposite the bus station there’s a swamp. Right there, smack bang between the two blue glass skyscrapers that support the pedestrian walkways. It’s deep pit, obviously dug to provide the foundations for a new skyscraper – in fact there are stained blocks of concrete and rusted metal girders poking out all over the place suggesting construction actually began – but it seems to have been abandoned for years, and has been reclaimed by nature. A ruptured water pipe, still bubbling away in one corner has filled the bottom with water, and weeds, water plants and great banks of rushes have taken over. It’s amazing! A full on swamp right in the heart of the city!

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

I presume that it was the intended site of the old Westralia Place tower, which was launched in a blaze of glory about twelve years back, but never got built. I also presume that sooner or later someone will come along and redevelop the site, which personally I think would be a great shame. Secure any loose concrete, remove any dangerous waste, make sure the foundations of the surrounding buildings are secure, and let it be! Not only would it provide a haven for birds and other aquatic animals in the heart of the city, it would be a daily reminder of the fragility of human accomplishment and civilisation. Or something like that 🙂

Anyway I eventually found my way into the station, and spent about fifteen minutes sitting in a darkened bus down in the subterranean realm of the Mole People before being delivered to the bus stop right outside the building. Excellent.

OK, I’m going to stop writing now. Got a rent inspection next Friday, so I’d better get theplace cleaned up.

Over and out.

Man this is surreal. We need someone to do poorly paid data-entry for a big project, so we contacted an employment agency. They’ve sent us back the resume of a likely candidate, who we’re probably going to go with. And the candidate? Well I can’t say for certain (because I can’t remember the name on it) but it looks like Buster Stiggs. “Who?” you say? Buster Stiggs! Of seminal Australian/New Zealand eighties new wave acts The Models and The Swingers. Like, one of the guys responsible for Counting the Beat! And we’re hiring him for data entry!!

Hold my calls people, I’m in the Twilight Zone here!

TROGDOR!!!!

I thought I’d better make an entry this morning, since Helen is getting annoyed at no-one updating, and Ryan is sending me emails asking me if I’m still alive. I would promise to make a longer entry tonight, but I need to make a shopping trip after work since I’m not only out of food, but even the basic elements of food (no salt, no margerine, no tomato sauce – it’s a wonder I haven’t starved!)

Anyway, in the meantime everyone sing along! Burninating the countryside! Burninating the peasants… 🙂

Sic semper tyrannus! 🙂

A while back now there was a movie out. It’s not a movie I actually saw, I just caught the adds for it, played incessantly during prime time. It was some kind of chick flick featuring an ensemble cast playing a mother and her daughters or a bunch of sisters or a group of childhood friends or an exclusively female cult or something all coming to terms with their complex lives and relations with each other. You know the kind of thing, it usually stars either Sandra Bullock or Michelle Pfieffer.

Anyway, a recurrent theme in this movie (to judge by the adds) was one or other of the cast talking on the telephone, getting annoyed with the person on the other end, then repeatedly and viciously smashing the earpiece against a convenient table or benchtop. BASH! BASH! BASH! BASH!

The reason I mention this is that I’ve had the kind of week where screaming down the phone then smashing it against the desk until it broke into tiny little pieces would be a wonderful stress reliever. Regardless of whether there was someone on the other end or not.

I won’t go into details, all I really want to do is go to sleep and not wake up for… two or three months would probably do it. But suffice to say I’ve been working on one of those projects that’s so insanely massive that no matter how much effort you put in it never seems to get any smaller. And to make matters even worse, it’s got a completely non-negotiable deadline swooping down on me – talons extended – like a harpy eagle, and I’m an overworked keyboard monkey on an exposed branch.

As if this isn’t enough the client keeps adding minor changes – that is to say changes that appear minor (like changing the background colour of a page, or moving a heading by a few pixels) but in fact require hours of re-working. They’re so fiendishly devised to require the maximum amount of effort for minimum effect that I’m starting to suspect he’s in league with some sort of diabolical cadre of evil web designers committed to my ultimate downfall. Thoughts like this seem perfectly rational when you’re working ten hour days and drinking way to much Red Bull (ie: any at all).

Things really came to a head when I arrived at the office this morning at 8:00am. Someone usually turns up to disable the alarm system at about 8:15, but not today! I had to sit around outside until 9:02 before one of the sluggards we rent a room from decided to turn up. And I’d already had a Red Bull, so my usual casual and relaxed demeanor was coming under severe attack from frenzied legions of caffeine, taurine and glucuranolactone molecules. Needless to say, I was not a happy web designer.

So, if you haven’t heard from me for a while, and don’t hear from me before mid October, I’m not dead. I’m just horribly horribly overworked and strung out on cattle-urine derived amino acids. What a world! What a world!….

PS: I’m sure many people will have seen these rather unfortunate URLs by now, but hey, who am I to refuse a ride on the latest pop-cultural bandwagon?

http://www.powergenitalia.com
http://www.gotahoe.com
http://www.classicalbums.co.uk
http://www.ringtoneshits.com
http://www.expertsexchange.com

Oh what a difference a hyphen could make! 🙂

All right! I’m the number three listing on MSN search for “rose mcgowan navel pictures“!! ;-D

I had a pretty active day yesterday. Surprising isn’t it?

I went down to Freo. I had a vague idea of getting off the train at Fremantle station, having a bit of a wander around, then walking back to North Fremantle. You see I walked along the coast from North Fremantle to Cottesloe a few months back, and I quite like the idea of having walked the entire length from Fremantle up to Cottesloe. I also had vague plans of catching the train from North Fremantle to Cottesloe, getting off, and walking up to Swanbourne, then cutting inland to Claremont.

All of this of course was in aid of getting some exercise, so it’s highly ironic that I didn’t get any of it done at all and went to the new Maritime Museum instead 🙂

First of all though I headed down to the Esplanande and Fishing Boat Harbour. My usual route from the train station down to the Esplanade is via Henry Street. However this posed something of a problem, since the Moores Building is on Henry Street, and the Moores building is currently being managed by Lyndah (you know, her). And if there was an exhibition on, there was a chance she might be there, supervising things. And if she was there then she might conceivably see me going past. And she might then step out to say hi. Which would of course be insanely awkward.

So, I decided the sensible thing to do would be walk down Mouat Street instead. Then I decided that that was ridiculous, and I would walk down Henry Street. Then I panicked and headed down Mouat Street anyway. Then I decided that I was being stupid, and cut down High Street onto Henry Street. I triumphantly scuttled past the Moores Building on the opposite side of the road, and dashed out onto the Esplanade in a cold sweat.

So, Me – one: Crippling neuroses – about two hundred and fifty *g*.

After so successfully stuffing up something as simple as walking down a street I needed a drink. So, I cut across the rail lines to Fishing Boat Harbour and bought an apple and cranberry juice. Then I wandered around the Bather’s Beach/Rouse Head precinct reading historical plaques and things. I thought about heading up to the Round House, but there’s nothing there I haven’t seen a hundred times before, so I headed over towards the new Maritime Museum to have another look at the HMAS Ovens, the big-ass submarine they have sitting outside.

Unfortunately this plan was stymied by the fact that they’ve fenced it off. So I wandered arund to the front of the museum, and up a set of stairs to a large balcony they’ve got overlooking the harbour. There’s some pretty nice views up there, so I took some photos, particularly of the RAN ship a bit down the docks in the hopes that someone would arrest me as a terrorist. No luck though, so I came down again.

Then I checked out the admission price for the museum. It was only $10, and since any plan to walk up to North Fremantle was looking increasingly shaky I decided what the heck and went in.

It’s not bad overall. A lot of ships hanging in the air (including Australia II, which is surprisingly small really) and a whole bunch of historic artifacts. Particularly interesting is the Whaling gallery and WWII gallery up on the top floor, which includes a window looking out onto the Ovens. I spent about an hour and a half wandering around before deciding I’d seen everything I wanted to see, and heading back to Fishing Boat Harbour for lunch.

I went to Kailis Brothers, because there was a queue at Cicerellos. They’ve made some major changes since the last time I was there (which isn’t surprising since I haven’t been there in a good ten years). Now when you order and pay they give you a little electronic pager, which lights up and beeps when your food is ready. I did consider running away with it, but then I wouldn’t have had anything to eat *g*. Instead I just spent my time glaring at a man who grabbed one of the two vinegar bottles (clearly marked “please do not remove”) and took it back to his table. Bastard!

Eventually my chips and crab sticks were ready (I presume they probably contained some crab *g*) so I grabbed a seat and dug in. Then, my hunger satisfied, I wandered back to the train station (down Mouat Street since I no longer had anything to prove 😉 and came home, all thought of walking along the coast abandoned. Then I ironed some clothes for the week.

So, that was my Sunday. Apple and cranberry juice, domestic chores, maritime history, fish and chips and incipient paranoid psychosis. Not bad at all I think 😉

PS: I happened to catch the clip for Watch Out Boys by Magic Dirt on Rage the other day, and have one question. Adalita, will you please marry me? *g*

The Justin Timberlake poster I mean of course. In the scanner. Look, do you read this blog at all or what!?

So, yes I said I’d blog about something today, so I’d better follow through. For once 🙂 So I’m going to blog about Woolworths in Subiaco, and how evil they are.

Why are they evil? Because they short changed me $6.00, that’s why!

On Tuesday evening I stopped into Woolworths to do a bit of grocery shopping, as is often my wont as there’s a 15 minute gap between my bus arriving and train departing. I purchased two 3 litre bottles of orange juice, some Don’s English ham (Is Don. Is Good.), a loaf of bread, a bag of jelly babies (which I didn’t intend to buy, they just lept into my basket), a set of coloured pencils (because I need to colour in some photocopied maps) and a pencil sharpener (for the pencils naturally). Grand total $23.26.

At the checkout (the first 12 items or less line to the right of the cigarette counter) I was served by a short brunette girl named (according to her badge anyway) Leah. She scanned and packed all my goods extremely effaciously, and I gave her one ten dollar note, and one twenty. She gave me 75c change.

Lets just run that over shall we? Ten dollars plus twenty dollars is thirty dollars, minus twenty three dollars and twenty five cents (rounded down from twenty six because the government won’t let us use one and two cent coins anymore because of the general copper shortage*) is six dollars and seventy five cents. So what the heck happened to my 6 dollars?!?!?

When Leah poured the change into my hand I thought it seemed a little light, but my inate social awkwardness provoked me to get away as soon as possible. So it wasn’t until I made it outside and double checked the docket that I realised there were three small gold coins missing from the pile. What a gyp!

I suppose I should have marched straight back in and demanded my money, but that would have taken time, and effort, and all sorts of messing around and demanding to speak to the manager and so forth, so I decided to chalk it up to karma and let it slide. Either that or shoplift $6.00 worth of items next time I’m in there *g*.

But if anyone would like to phone up the manager (P. Nahas – 9388 3199 local, 08 9388 3199 interstate, 61 8 9388 3199 international 😉 and either abuse or bewilder him on my behalf, please feel free! 🙂

So, what else can I blog about? Well, I found this page quite amusing. It’s a review of the game Blood Rayne by some Bulgarian guy. I stumbled across it tracking down some of my search engine rankings, zero points for spotting the similarity between his review and the Wyrmlog *g*.

(OK, it starts with the line “Mom made me a….pervert” but stick with it 🙂

I was also amused by this. I mean who wouldn’t willingly race into battle backed up by the theme from Match of the Day? 🙂

Ah, what else? Oh, the trains. Apparently some idiot decided to cross the tracks at West Leederville and (predictably) got totally cleaned up by an oncoming commuter train. Or at least that’s what I overheard on the 7:15 Fremantle service this morning. I don’t see any reason to doubt it, people are stupid.

That’ll do for now 🙂

PS: Criminal Intent is back. Yey! (It’s the poor man’s CSI you know)

Well, that was fun. Turns out that the trains aren’t running for some reason (I don’tknow what that reason may be yet, but I’m going to watch the ABC news to find out – thephrase ‘commuter chaos’ is almost certain to be used). So I had to get a bus home.

Happily though it turned out that I could get a bus from Subiaco train station straight toMercy (that is Mercy Hospital which is just round the corner – I like to call it ‘Mercy’because it makes me feel like I’m living in an episode of ER :). And I was only 15minutes late home, not too shoddy!

Anyway, I’ve got a fair bit of stuff to blather on about tonight, so I might as well getstarted. I’m going to rant on about a somewhat controversial issue here, so anyone whomight be upset or offended should probably skip on to the bit about my referrer logs(although I would prefer people to read what I have to say, I wrote it after all).

It’s about the Prime Minister. He’s annoying me again. He pretty much annoys me on adaily basis, but from time to time he does something particularly annoying and I have norecourse but to get absolutely p’d off. Like his statement yesterday on gay marriages. Iquote…

OK, I’m not going to mount an argument here in defence of legalising gay marriage. Forthe record I’m in favour of it. I can see no reason why committed gay and lesbian couplesshouldn’t have the same rights and protections available to heterosexual couples. Somepeople may agree with me, some may not, that’s not what this is about. What this is aboutis our Prime Minister being either terminally stupid, or blatantly deceptive.

Why do I say this? Because his so called ‘argument’ is completely and utterly flawed.

Let’s have a look at it logically. According to the PM, the purpose of marriage is theproduction of children, the perpetuation of the species – therefore since gay couples can’tproduce offspring, they shouldn’t be allowed to marry. Fair enough.

Except that if the only reason gay couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry is that they can’tproduce offspring, then a whole lot of other people shouldn’t be able to get married either.A whole lot of straight people.

Let’s see. Post-menopausal women for a start. Men with a low sperm count. People – ofeither sex – who’ve come down with a variety of cancers either directly affecting thereproductive organs or that have required aggressive radiation therapy. People born withcongenital defects of the reproduction system. People with other fertility problems. Peoplewho choose – for whatever reasons – not to have children. If these people can’t orwon’t reproduce, why should they be allowed to get married?

Now, you may say that that’s taking things to a ridiculous extent. But the point is that thatkind of thing has happened in the past, and it continues to happen.Typically in particularly Catholic countries in south and central America. There have beennumerous cases in recent years of couples being refused marriage licenses because one ofthe partners (nine times out of ten the woman of course) is judged physically incapable ofproducing offspring. So, they can’t get married. And what makes it worse is that the kindof societies in which this kind of thing happens are innately conservative – living togetherwithout being married is out of the question – so there’s no way for these people (peoplewho care about each other enough to want to get married) to be together. If you ask me, that’s completely monsterous, and it’s all because of precisely the line of reasoning put forth by our PM.

Would John Howard support implementation of that sort of policy here I wonder? It’s onlylogical.

The point is, that if we allow people, any people, who can’t have children to get married, then marriage cannot by reason of simple example be about about popping out kids. And indeed it’s not. It’s about two people – people who care about each other – making a commitment to each other, and having that commitment accepted, recognised and celebrated by their community. If they have kids, great. If they don’t, then that should in no way invalidate their feelings for each other or affect their status in society.

If Mr Howard has a logically defensible objection to gay marriage, I’d be willing to hearhim out (I seriously doubt he could convince me to change my mind, but it would at least be polite to listen). But I am not willing to accept such a clearly flawed, faulty and downrightridiculous argument. I mean even Peter Costello’s (the Treasurer) comment (that marriage is defined as a relationship between a man and a woman and therefore gay or lesbianrelationships cannot constitute marriages) makes more sense from a logical perspective.

There are only two reasonable conclusions from Mr Howard’s comments. The first is thatthe leader of our nation is incapable of following through the simple logical consequencesof his own arguments. The second is that he’s lying about his reasons for opposing gaymarriages. I leave it up to the reader to decide which.

(By the way, once logical arguments are exhausted, one may fall back on moral or religiousreasoning. I’m not going to argue that. If a particular religion wants to prohibit certainbehaviors or withhold certain of its services from certain groups of people, that’s its right. You can’t stop people from believing stupid things, and no one has to belong to a religion after all. But no one’s talking about making any changes to any religions. The issue is civil ceremonies.)

Now, if the PM has a religious objection, then he should come out and say it – and acceptany consequences – not hide behind a screen of blatantly false logic. But after all he’s apolitician, so why should we expect any better from him? 🙁

OK, rant over, on to my referrer logs 🙂

My favourite over the last few weeks has been “animated floating grain elevator”. Ihonestly cannot even begin to comprehend why someone might search for such a thing. Ican’t even begin to comprehend what such a thing might even be. But much moresurprising is three separate queries that seem to follow a common theme. Specifically”vigo mortenson email address”, “phone number of Liv Tyler” and “Jorja Fox’s house”.Well, quite clearly the Wyrmlog has somehow become the number one destination foronline celebrity stalking.

Now I don’t object to this, any traffic is good traffic, but c’mon people! If I had Liv Tyler’sphone number do you think I’d be posting it on my weblog? And do you think she’d bekeeping that phone number for very long? Honestly! 🙂

(And more seriously, what kind of idiot thinks they’d be able to find that kind of infoonline anyway? Sheeze!)

Hmmmm, I’m sure I had more to talk about. Just all ranted out I guess. Oh well, maybe I’llwrite something tomorrow then 🙂

Over and out!

PS: Damn ABC news – no mention of the trains at all! Useless!

THE SCANNER!!!!! 🙂

Why I didn’t look there in the first place is completely beyond me 🙂

Well, once again it’s been a while between entries. This is down to me being sick, depressed, and busy at work trying to make up for the time I’ve spent being sick and or depressed. Worked ten hours yesterday, just plain brutal it was. And I’ve got a GURPS campaign to run *sigh*.

But anyway I’m back, with lots to write about. And lots of emails to write to people, which I should get done tomorrow. I hope 🙂

So, to start off with, the season finale of Charmed. Concerning which I have only one question…

WHAT!?!?!!?

They broke up Leo and Piper? Then KILLED Leo? What kind of drugs are the writers on? I mean the whole second half of the episode was like a bad fanfic! Even down to the dialogue! I dunno, maybe they’ve started raiding fanfic for plot ideas. It’s a real shame too, because up to that point things were going pretty well for a late series episode. Cataclysmic end-of-the-world stuff, lots of references to classical mythology, and a villain played by…. whatsisname, Eddie Fiori/Alien Bounty Hunter/Stupid Terminator Street Punk number Three – yeah him, Yahoots Magoondi. And then they go and do that to us. Bastards!

Mind you there was one slightly off note in part one, the name of that female Titan. Anyone who knows even a little Latin does not want to watch some guy snogging a girl and then calling her “Mater”*At least outside of a David Lynch film 😉. I mean, urrgh! OK, the ancient Greeks had some weird approaches (by our standards) to family relationships, but that’s no excuse. That character definitely should have had a different name! Urrgh!

But yeah. They killed Leo. Boo!!!!

In other TV news though I happened to discover that Stargate is back on. Hooray!*It’s best if you imagine this in the voice of the little man driving the multi-axeled car in the Whacking Day episode of The Simpsons

Yeah, like that 😉. Of course, Channel 7 (in their infinite wisdom) have put it on at 9:30 on Thursday night, meaning that I can either watch it, or be sufficiently awake to go to work on Friday. So, obviously I’m taping it. I watched it last night after work, completely forgetting that there were new episodes of Jonathan Creek on the ABC – I was rather annoyed about that 😐

Anyway, after Stargate it turned out that there was an episode of Angel -you know, the Buffy spin off? Since I didn’t feel particularly like going to bed once Stargate was over I decided to watch a bit of it. Needless to say (never having seen an episode before in my life) I had no idea who anyone was or what was going on (some previously decapitated woman had come back from hell to inform Angel and his associates that they were inheriting an evil law firm as a reward for inadvertently destroying world peace, huh?) so got bored and turned off after about 15 minutes. But I was struck by two things.

Firstly – Does that theme music rock or what? I mean, this eerily moaning gothic violin (with cello backbeat in the best tradition of Bach) followed up by a semi-techno remix and finished up with a desolate, fading piano scale. It’s as good as the theme from Kindred.

Secondly – One of the guys Angel hangs around with appears to be some kind of demon. Green, scaly skin, little horns, bad eighties suits, the works (there was a shot of him in the credits performing on a stage – an obvious rip-off of Blake’s Ghost of a Flea ;-). Now I don’t have a problem with that (you see stranger things on Charmed each week), but this guy seems to be wandering around in broad daylight with no-one noticing. C’mon, what would your reaction be if you say a scaly green demon in a Tom Cruise Cocktail style combo walking down the street? You’d run off screaming, or at least grab for the holy water. I presume there’s some kind of magical explanation, but still.

Anyway, speaking of denizens of the underworld it turns out that my ten year high school reunion is tonight. I would have written about this sooner, except I only found out on Monday when Fabian called to say he’d been given the invites for our group. He would have had them earlier, except the girl responsible had delivered them to the wrong address. Hmmmmm.

I have to admit that I’m suspicious about this. The Geeks only get their invitations a week out from the event? Sounds almost like some kind of deliberate plot… 😉

But seriously. I don’t really mind the possibly of missing the reunion. I can honestly say that at no point in the last ten years have I actually thought about it without either snorting in derision or shuddering with horror. No, what I’m annoyed about is missing the opportunity to send an RSVP.

Call it symptomatic of an unhealthy obsession with high school*C’mon, you show me a geek who hasn’t got an unhealthy obsession with highschool 🙂, but for the last few years I’ve been entertaining myself (from time to time) with thoughts of exactly how I’d reply when the invitation to the ten year reunion plonked down on my doorstep. I could ignore it of course, but I figured it would be much more fun to send back some kind of bitter diatribe. You know, really confuse and freak out the person responsible for compiling the guest list. Something like this…

Now that would be classic! 🙂 But once again cruel fate has denied me the opportunity to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting minds of my former associates. Oh well, I’ll just have to wait until the 20 year reunion. Roll on 2013!

Who knows, I might have a life then and actually attend 😉

So, tonight I’ll be playing around with my brand new Raster 250k CD (the entire Australian 1:250000 scale topographic map series on CD – hey, I don’t give you grief about your weird interests 🙂 and reading my brand new signed copy of Terry Dowling’s Rynosseros (thanks for the tipoff Ryan).

Geek Central over and out!