Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
Status updates and more on the Quornimal
I’m probably not going to have much time to blog over the next few weeks as I’m preparing for the next session of my infinitely prolonged Wild Southwest roleplaying campaign (there you go Helen – a chance to catch up! :). In the meantime however I’m finding The Worst of Perth highly amusing – it’s well worth a read (if you live in Perth, don’t know if anyone else would enjoy it).
News of the Quornimal continues!
The numbers! They all line up!
I’m slowly working my way through the photos I took on my trip to the UK and posting the best ones (or at least some ones) to my Flickr account. This isn’t as easy as it might sound because in a fit of abstraction I forgot to reset the time on my camera on arriving at Heathrow, and as a result all my photos are timestamped seven hours later than they were actually taken.
(Hmm, did I blog about this before? Mind like a…. one of those… straining…. things)
Anyway I’ve had to go through them picture by picture correcting the EXIF data which is annoying in the extreme and taking quite a long time.
The reason I mention this is I’ve spent this afternoon fixing up the photos I took in and around Avebury on September 9th. That is to say the 9th of the 9th 2004. And what’s today’s date? the 4th of the 4th 2009. Spooky! 😀
In other news I happened to run into Lyndah on the train yesterday. For those coming in late Lyndah is a friend (or possibly ex-friend – long story) of my brother’s who I had a devastating crush on for years and years (I’m much better now, thanks for asking). Anyway we had a semi-decent chat (I’m not great at small talk, we don’t have a great deal in common, my hearing is dreadful in noisy environments – particularly in my right ear, and her left ear was blocked after going swimming) and, well, that’s about it. We had a chat. I guess this is notable because back a few years ago I would have been a gibbering mess in her presence. Hooray for personal development! 🙂
OK, I’m going to bed now. I’ve got a new mattress which – although it stinks a bit, presumably still outgassing from the factory – should vastly improve my posture. Or something. Well, it certainly won’t hurt it anyway.
woooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkk
Just worked a 10 hour day, and I’ve got another one lined up tomorrow. Just to make the point that I’m not abandoning the “try and write something every day” thing.
In the meantime, try this… (not by me by the way – just so that’s clear)
FRIEND OR FOE?
RISE OF THE MAC-
HINE OR BEGGINING
OF THE ANIMAL
FARM
Why can’t we just eat out of a trough?
Oh! How I hate to wash up in the morning,
Oh how I hate to wash up at all!
But the unkindest cut to date’s,
When I run out of cups and plates,
You’ve gotta wash up!
You’ve gotta wash up!
You’ve gotta wash up this morning!
You’ve gotta wash up!
You’ve gotta wash up!
You’ve gotta wash up today!
I composed this charming ditty some years ago when once again faced with a gigantic heap of cutlery and crockery piled up on my kitchen sink. It is based (of course) on Irving Berlin’s Oh how I hate to wake up in the Morning which itself is based on the traditional reveille of the US Army.
(Irving Berlin, there’s an interesting fellow. Coming from a poor and Jewish background (in a time when being Jewish was a major social disadvantage) he managed to create a career as America’s best loved songsmith. He fell in love with a non-Jewish girl whose wealthy father was scandalised at the thought of her marrying not just a Jew, but a working class Jew, and sent her off on a round the world cruise in the hopes she’d forget about him. Irving kept in touch with her via letter for the whole journey and wrote Always one of his biggest hits for her. They got married almost immediately on her return. Irving was pretty much persona-non-gratia with his in-laws until the stock market crash of 1929 when his wife’s father lost huge sums of money and found himself heavily in debt. Irving was still pulling in cash hand over fist despite the economic collapse (or perhaps because of it – it can be argued that the worse things get the more people need songs) and paid off all his debts, refusing to hear a thing about being payed back. From that point on he was a welcome member of the family. Or at least that’s the story I heard. But I digress.)
The reason I detail this rather awful parody of an American classic is that, once again, I find myself confronted with a sink piled high with used plates. This is because (as the song suggests) I hate doing the washing up. I hate spending time on a menial and slightly disgusting chore when I could be doing other far more interesting things. Which means that I tend to use every bit of crockery and cutlery I have (eating my dinner off saucers is by no means unheard of) until I completely run out and have no choice but to buckle down and do it.
Now yes, I could get a dishwasher, but frankly I’ve never liked them. They’re big, noisy, use criminal amounts of water and (in my admittedly limited experience) don’t do a terribly good job anyway. You have to wash down the plates and cups and things before putting them in, and then have to finish the job by manually scrubbing off tough stains and dried food bits that the machine missed. This is frankly not very efficient, and I won’t have a bar of it.
So I am once again doomed to spending the next forty minutes or so with my hands submerged in soapy and increasingly filthy water, trying to find drying space for the huge piles of cups, knives, forks and plates that have accumulated in my kitchen for the last week. And once again I will promise to myself to do the washing up on a nightly basis. And once again I shall immediately break that promise and start the whole process over again.
I’m gonna need a bigger sink.
Communist infiltration of my taste buds.
For about the last year (as part of a half hearted health kick) I’ve been buying my lunch most days down at the local branch of Edens Salad Bar. This is one of those places where you make your own salad or roll by selecting foodstuffs from a buffet like arrangement and as a consequence of doing all the work yourself pay far more than you would for a pre-prepared meal. But hey, the ingredients are fresh, you get exactly what you want and they seem to have a policy of only employing extremely cute and friendly girls to operate the counter, so I’m not complaining 🙂
Eating at Edens has introduced me to an extremely delicious and previously completely unknown culinary treat – the Pine Nut. They have these in a large shaker and for the past year I’ve been liberally dosing every roll or salad I make with them. Which has been fine – they’re meant to be quite good for you – and has presented absolutely no problem of any kind at all. Until this week.
The pine nut shaker was getting a bit low, so they topped it up. However instead of the large, yellowish pine nuts they’ve been using, they’ve switched to smaller, browner ones. This may have to do with the economic crisis, pine nuts are after all pretty expensive. This didn’t bother me at first but as of early this week I’ve been struck down by the Curse of the Pine Nuts! Oh the horror!
I quote from the source (and destination) of all human knowledge, Wikipedia…
“The eating of pine nuts can cause serious taste disturbances, developing 1-3 days after consumption and lasting for days or weeks. A bitter, metallic taste is described. In general, a minority of pine nuts on the market present this problem. Though very unpleasant, there doesn’t seem to be a real health concern.
This phenomenon was first described in a scientific paper in 2001. Since the article, experiences of the phenomenon have been reported by hundreds of people worldwide (US, Canada, South Africa, Finland, Iceland, Germany, and many more).
The pine nuts involved typically contain triglycerides formed by 16-18° unsaturated fatty acids. No contamination with pesticide residues or heavy metals was found.
Some of the pine nuts involved were imported from China. However, in many countries packaged pine nuts are not required to state the country of origin or the species, and thus it is impossible to conclusively link the effect to a particular species or source country.”
My taste buds have been assaulted by the horrors of (presumably) Chinese pine nuts! I am cursed with a bitter, metallic taste that affects everything I eat! Oh woe is me!
I’m swearing off Pine Nuts until they switch back to the big, yellowish ones. Hopefully the effect wears off before the weekend when I’m heading out to dinner (twice!) for my birthday.
Some general updates
Every week I like Miki more and more. Mind you, she’s been my favourite FreakAngel ever since her first appearance, it’s just that the more we see of her the more my initial opinion is confirmed.
Of course Kait is growing on me too.
I do have to ask though – in the last frame is that a tentacle?!
OK, enough FreakAngels (except to say that the Google Earth file has been updated).
I’ve finally bitten the bullet and put Abandoned in Perth out of its misery. It’s been sitting in a state of abandonment (how ironic!) for almost five years, and I while I’ve been taking photos of plenty of derelict sites I just haven’t had the time to process them all and get them up.
I haven’t abandoned the concept however, as almost all the photos from the site (and a whole lot more) are now up on my Flickr account. Flickr makes everything so much easier, so expect the Abandoned in Perth collection to grow and grow! (Assuming that is that I can find more places to photograph).
OK, that’s all for now.
(Ah! It’s art!)
I drank the slab that Bon Scott drunk…
As all should know, Bon Scott was the original lead singer of ACDC and is famous for shuffling off this mortal coil by choking on his own vomit after a marathon drinking session.
The reason I recount this sordid tale is because last night I almost managed the same feat – albiet without the aid of alcohol (and of course the very fact that I’m writing these words shows that I didn’t shuffle off any coils – unless Edison has finally got that spooky telephone working).
It happened thusly. I was woken in the early hours of the morning from a particularly unpleasant dream about my tax return by my stomach deciding it would be fun to void its contents through my throat. I managed to avert this plan by reflexively jerking upwards into a sitting position, clamping my jaws shut and (and yes, this is an unpleasant detail, but necessary) swallowing for all I was worth. This avoided one catastrophe, but started a second as I suddenly found myself completely unable to draw breath – some of my liberated stomach contents apparently having decided to head for my lungs rather that back to where they belonged.
After a good deal of coughing, choking, wheezing and gargling I was able to free my airway and resume normal respiration. The slight shortness of breath and mild chest pains I find myself subject to today however suggest that I may be in line for a bout of aspiration pneumonia, which should be plenty of fun.
I’ll keep an eye on it.
In other news, how did I not know that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day? Happy (late) 200th birthday Mr Lincoln!
Noooooo!!!! My sideburns!!!!!!!!
Among various other bits of running around I had to do yesterday, I went and got a haircut – as the top of my head was starting to resemble… well something hairy and puffed up. I don’t know, a polar bear with a perm? Anyway it seriously needed cutting back.
So I went to my usual budget quick-in/quick-out haircut place where my hair was – in defiance of the trend established by every other visit I’ve made there over the last decade – cut by some guy, the place usually being staffed exclusively by women.
He did quite an adequate job – adequate is the best that can really be expected with my hair – but, as I noticed with horror in the mirror this morning, he shaved off my sideburns! Without even so much as a ‘by your leave’ he massacred my carefully cultivated semi-eccentric sideburns! Inconceivable!!
It’s going to take me at least three weeks of carefully not shaving near my ears to get them back to even a semblance of their former selves. Which is frankly a lot to ask at 6:30 in the morning when I’ve just stumbled out of bed and only my hindbrain has successfully completed its bootup sequence.
Bah!
(Oh, the title. Well I spent a few hours yesterday reading through Darths and Droids, and hence my opinion of Jar Jar Binks has been elevated slightly. Give me a few days and I’ll revert to passionately hating him like every other sane person in this world.)
Oh I’ll be a good boy, Please make me well, I promise you anything,Get me out of this hell
Well, I’ve been holed up ever since 3:30am Monday morning with a really nasty and persistent case of gastroenteritis. I’d write about what it’s like not being able to eat or sleep for four days straight, except that John Lennon did it so eloquently for me back in 1969 with Cold Turkey…
Temperature’s rising
Fever is high
Can’t see no future
Can’t see no sky
My feet are so heavy
So is my head
I wish I was a baby
I wish I was dead
Cold turkey has got me on the run
My body is aching
Goose-pimple bone
Can’t see nobody
Leave me alone
My eyes are wide open
Can’t get to sleep
One thing I’m sure of
I’m in at the deep freeze
Cold turkey has got me on the run
Thirty-six hours
Rolling in pain
Praying to someone
Free me again
Oh I’ll be a good boy
Please make me well
I promise you anything
Get me out of this hell
Cold turkey has got me on the run
Amen John, amen.
Ah! Activist chicks!
OK, it’s again been a long time since an entry. I’ve been oscillating between not feeling like writing, or feeling like writing but being plain too tired to do so. End result? Decals for turning lego men into the Freakangels, and no blog entries.
But I’m pulling myself together today and actually getting some writing done (it’s 35 degrees outside, so it’s not like I’m doing anything apart from cowering under my air conditioner).
So anyway, yesterday there was a nationwide protest over the Government’s plans to force a mandatory net filter onto everyone. This is an absolutely terrible idea on any number of fronts both technical and social, so I figured I’d go along and make my voice heard. Ryan was also sufficiently motivated to go along, so we met up at Stirling Gardens for the rally at midday.
It wasn’t huge with about 300 protesters turning up, but that’s reasonably successful turnout for a city the size of (and apathetic as) Perth. There were a number of speakers, most of whom were pretty good once they abandoned the farcical PA system they’d bought along and switched to a megaphone (the one exception was a 911 conspiracy theorist who wouldn’t give his name and tried to tell us that the net filter is the work of the Bildenburg group, as are laws forcing children to wear bicycle helmets and restricting when you can water your lawn). I even got interviewed by a journalist and quoted in today’s paper, which is pretty gratifying on a personal level 🙂
(There were also a number of rather cute activist girls around the place, one of whom kept glancing at me. I’m not sure if she was glancing at me because I noticed her glancing at me once and kept glancing at her to see if she was glancing at me again which prompted her to keep glancing at me to see if I was glancing at her, or if she was actually glancing at me. She left before I had the chance to go over and say hi, which is convenient, as it meant I didn’t have to walk around cursing myself for being too timid to go over and say hi ;))
We also ran into Sam who I used to work with (actually I’m surprised there weren’t more people there I recognised). She and I had a quick chat while Ryan distracted one of the 911 Conspiracists who was trying to force pamphlets on us. Then we all cleared off before the riot cops arrived.
(That’s a joke by the way, we’re not quite a police state yet although this proposed filter is a good first step)
Apart from that I haven’t done much else lately. That should change as Christmas draws near, I’ve still got plenty of gift shopping to do at least. Watch this space for Astounding Tales of Holiday Commerce!
That’s about it for today. Expect more entries soon! (I know, I always say that… 🙂
