Greasy Writer Tricks

South Park is doing a Steve Irwin thing already, which is of course upsetting people, which is of course the point. No word on whether it will be shown in Australia, no word on whether I care…oh wait, this just in…no, I don’t.

You see that? That was that bitchy sort of sarcasm that passes for clever on sit-coms these days. It started with Will and Grace but now everybody’s doing it, even the vacuous pre-teen fare on Nickelodeon and Disney. P4 is going around talking ghetto after watching That’s So Raven, except it’s smart-ass ghetto that’s really Hollywood-writer ghetto and it makes her sound like a 35 year-old Jewish boy trying to sound like a 15 year old black girl with an Australian accent. The other day she called the cat girlfriend. Then the cat called the dog a skanky ho which is true, but the language is clichéd and not relevant here. The cat should have called the dog a dirty slag or a greasy slapper, that would have made more sense for Australia. American TV ghetto slang sounds stupid coming from a cat. Cat’s do better playing androgynous evil puppet-masters or sea captains. You know a cat sea captain is going to have an all-mouse crew too, which can only lead to grief. No, it’s a bad thing all round, trying to be something we’re not.

You see how I tied that up with a little morality at the end? That’s another one of those greasy writer tricks. Just like South Park using Irwin 8 weeks after his death. The shock-factor is no longer using the celebrity, but doing it while the barb still hangs from his chest. There, I did it again. Bad writing is easy.

The History of Technology ptVII

The proportion of comments to visits has fallen to something easily expressed as x/0, where x represents visits and 0 represents comments. As we all know it is wrong and impossible to divide by zero and frankly it’s causing concern with some of the technicians and statisticians here at the Beta Compound.

By the way did you know all that Y2K stuff at the turn of the century was about division by zero, not dates at all. Everyone said “The computers will think it’s 1900 again”. Again? Computers have no idea of dates or time, they just count really fast. The problem was when you tried to do math with a four digit number where the first two digits were implied…you had to decide if it was 19-something or 20-something based on context. Computers not good for that, just counting fast.

Bank: You bought your house in ‘85 so you’ve owned it for, let’s see, (06-85= -79) negative seventy-nine years…ok lets just run that through the computer and , oh it seems to be on fire.

The same thing happened two hundred years ago (Y1.8K)…

“Gads, Silus, the windmill turns counter to God’s plan!”
“No, brother, yon windmill is thinking it be 1700 again.”
“It is a windmill, it thinks nothing Silus, you twat.”
“Tis true. I am touched with stupidityness.”
“Aye, beaten with it, more like.”

and again last century (Y1.9K)

“Edward, pray check out my new incandescent light globe”
“Very grand Bartholomew, 40 watts is it?”
“Nay nay Edward, good chum, this is the latest from that Edison chap – tungsten carbide filament, 60 watts!”
“But will it continue to illuminate once we step bravely into the twentieth century?”
“It’s just a light bulb, Eddie. It doesn’t perform mathematical functions based on two-digit dates”
“Mark my words, Bartholomew, one day man will build a light globe so bright it blinds us all.”

But as we know, that never happened. The world was issued protective goggles and not many people were blinded at all.

Is This The Real life?

Interesting article about Sudanese immigrants in rural Australia. The government gets nervous when immigrants do things like form communities so they have a policy now of spreading them out into the country so they can pick crops and “integrate”. So we have about 1000 Sudanese refugees living Toowoomba, Qld – a small city west of Brisbane known for bible-bashing and nationalist politics – who are understandably having trouble fitting in. The usual racial shit you expect in a cowboy town, letters in the paper, kids yelling stuff from cars. One guy said back in Sudan he had seen people hacked to death with axes… so he wasn’t too worried about the “shouting boys”.

The funny thing though is that the Sudanese aren’t helping things. Apparently they insist on driving without licenses and are very very bad at it. It’s claimed the young people are having trouble separating reality from fantasy, the culture shock is so great. For example in the film Independence Day the moon landings (true) and an alien invasion (fiction) are both depicted. To people who have never heard of either, or ever even seen a film, it all seems unreal. The people they see walking around in Australia look like the people on TV too so they are not sure what to take seriously. Basically they think it’s all an amusement park of sorts.

I suppose once you’ve been in an axe battle, everything else is Disneyland.

More stuff people said

I heard/read all these within an hour this morning.

"You have to stay up with the times to get ahead of the game." - Farmer discussing contemporary farm machinery.

"...and mulches it back into the ground, waste that would otherwise end up in landfills." – Ad for tree mulching machine.

"...their heads circling with the slow complacency of water down a blocked drain." - Columnist on public kissing in Paris.

Finishing up with this conversation with P4:

SJ: Hey P4 come back here for a minute.
P4: What?
SJ: How far would you have got if I hadn't called you back?
P4: (puzzled) To over there.
SJ: Never mind.
P4: Ok, bye.

Drat, foiled again.

Hey, over here.

I never said 'nothing after that, just stared at her a while. If she was sweating it, she didn't let it show and I was beginning to think she was taking me for a chump. Maybe she was wise, maybe Big Eddie had already filled her in and all this was an act...like our love had been. But then she started screaming and ran into the kitchen - fuck it was funny.

slick marketing

These are flyers I had made up in order to try and raise some capital to continue the baboon trials. As you can see, I've teamed up with a big developer to market my estate to the crusty top market buyers. It was expensive hiring a helicopter for the aerial shot of the house (it’s a bit off-centre) and they were printed using ink made exclusively from endangered species, but that’s what it takes to attract the best offers. Luckily the development company picked up all the expenses as they know it’s a guaranteed investment.


click picture for larger view

As you can see, the estate features a red roof and is on a street for easy access. There are other buildings nearby containing neighbours and a river which flows different directions depending which side you stand on.

Asking $1.7 million, will consider part trade for snowmobile.

frogs

Built my fishpond two years ago and finally some frogs have moved in, I can hear them out there, and at the very same time Animal Planet is showing a documentary about hippos which also enjoy water – man, that’s spooky.

Do polar bears eat penguins? Of course not, they are exclusive to their respective hemispheres. Do hippos eat frogs? If by ‘frog’ you mean the colloquial diminutive for Stinky Frenchman then no, probably not. Too stinky.

Do I mean I have Stinky Frenchmen living in my pond? No, most of them drowned, the goldfish got one of the little ones, and two escaped. They were later run down with dogs before they could breed or start complaining.

Am I racist for picking on the very Stinky French? No, the Stinky French are not a race, but rather a loose collective spread from Quebec to Polynesia and controlled via a large radio antenna in Paris (although they are not magnetic and may be harassed with iron implements).

Do many Stinky French read this blog? No, not really. It’s in English. What do you think the whole world speaks English? You arrogant bastards.

It's ok, I'm a surfer.

Some quotes from the week

“I’m a surfer, so I knew the wave had the potential to knock down the hotel.” – American tourist recounting his vacation in Thailand when the tsunami hit.

“It’s almost literally true that it keeps me up at night.” - weather scientist on changing rain patterns in Australia.

“We’re very happy the gentleman hasn’t been put in jail.” – family of little girl struck and killed by an elderly driver at a crosswalk. The same girl was badly burned in 2003 when a car crashed into her day-care centre and caught fire.

Almost literally? I'm going to use that..."if you give me a pay raise I promise I'll almost literally double my output."

Your Sunday Wrap-up and Apocalyptic Prediction

More on the triple conditioning mystery. I read the bottle again today and it said for “dry, coloured, permed or damaged hair” and for a second I thought we had an answer…but that’s four things. Incidentally my hair is none of those things, it’s just regular hair.

P4 is destined to be a producer. She can write and perform a play single handedly every ten minutes or so if you let her. Thing is they are multi-part plays and only she can see or hear the other characters. It’s very avant-garde, sort of like a schizophrenic doing pantomime. She asked me to record her act so of course I did. When she’s older I can threaten to show it to boyfriends, that’ll be fun.

Here it is Sunday night already and again. This two days off thing sucks. Sure, I know the ancients had it worse but that’s the point. Throughout history the hairless ape has been driven to improve its lot. First they moved out of trees into caves, and from caves into split-level bungalows with vinyl siding. First they struggled to hunt, then they learned to farm and finally they invented mass consumerism. What happened to all the machines that were going to run shit? I don’t want a robot that can dance, I want one that can clean the fucking gutters and fire anti-tank missiles.

Humanity is sitting around making things out of plastic to sell to each other. Evolution is being artificially sustained. What happened to the drive? We need a good meteor strike to separate the capitalists from the bushmen. If something ever shuts off the electricity for long, you’ll see a fucking power shift then. Mongolia will rise again, with their little ponies and spicy side dishes and we’ll all be the better for it. Either that or we could condense into one massive Bladerunner-esque megopolis scrabbling to survive on a paved over planet. I'd be down with that too if it meant a three day weekend.

Monkey Mating

As you recall, Baboon X-1 was an Ethiopian baboon which are renowned trouble makers. In Addis Ababa gangs of baboons hoon around on motor scooters knocking the hats off old ladies and not always coming to a complete stop at Stop signs. I went ahead and armed one with laser beam eyes and learned my first important Baboon Army creation lesson: Don’t do that.

What was needed was a smarter, calmer baboon soldier. Now, I won’t say where I got this one from for fear of starting a nasty turf war with the Ethiopians, but it is of a different variety known more for their powers of logic and ability to tie most common knots. I was also most fortunate to come across an ad in the window of the little general store in the village. Among the dogs and horses and used ballerina costumes for sale, lawn mowing hopefuls and trusty babysitters, was a woman willing to teach chess to baboons. What are the odds? A baboon chess master this far from Russia and, it turns out, she’s only three houses down from me. I think she was a member of that cult, Heaven’s Gate or Shining Backyard or something…anyway she missed the big suicide day (mother died, ironically) and found herself cultless. What luck for the cause I say. I have retained her services for 6 months to teach my new baboon, indeed X-2, the finer points of the Queen's gambit declined semi-slav.

Here they are in my kitchen having a friendly game. Shortly after the picture was taken X-2 realized his flank was exposed too late and was mated…I’m pretty sure nobody in the history of language has ever said that before, which is not to say it doesn’t happen but I digress. Keep those cards and letters coming, next update when it happens.

Everybody's Got A System

The bottle said “Triple Conditioning”, I always always grab the conditioner when I want shampoo. I don’t use conditioner, my hair is an inch long. So I grabbed its matching bottle among the potions in the rack and poured some into my hand. It looked suspiciously like curdled semen so I checked the bottle, THIS was the conditioner, damn it. What foul shower wizardry was this? You see, both bottles are in the manufacturer’s “Triple Conditioning” system. It’s a system. When did everything from cooking pots to bikini waxing become a fucking system? “This revolutionary cooking wonder has a space age heat transfer system built in to the base” – it’s a fucking copper bottomed pot, same thing Jesus made chilli with back in 0031.

System implies somebody thought this out; all the parts mesh, tests have been conducted, reports with graphs produced. Sam down in R&D lost his wife over the hours he put in developing this system. Now he’s depressed so buy this shit, it’s a fucking system I tell you!

And where do they get ‘triple’ from anyway? There’s two bottles, shampoo and conditioner. What’s in the missing bottle? Maybe at the last minute the system had to be revised. The third bottle, the one containing hydrochloric acid was pulled from production (requires costly glass containers) but by then the packaging had been made up. Maybe one of the lids counts, I don’t know.

I really don’t.

Old Grimey

Damn it I can’t write much about my new (ish) work as they have my home email address which also has the word skookum in it (curse my stupid Canadian brain). Always a chance someone will google it, being a strange word to Aussie ears and come across our little meetings we have here. But I’ll just say I’m changing Hen Boy’s name to Frank Grimes (Grimey). He was the work-mate of Homer Simpson who thought he was superior and was enraged and frustrated that fate seemed to smile on other, lesser people, and not him. Nope, old Grimey just couldn’t catch a break and he went mental despite Homer’s kindness. I have my own Grimey and I am as bemused as Homer at his antics and tiny tirades. You remember my old boss? He would have been fun to watch too if he weren’t in charge. Well this guy is in charge of Jack Shit, so I’m just going to enjoy it. Maybe give a little push now and then to get him going, haven’t had to so far.

Meanwhile I am thinking of exporting personal massage units into the American South.

Yeah, sure.

Several (1) readers of the previous post have demanded more information about the remarkable hand held massage unit. Here then is the ad and if any readers do purchase one, SJ will expect a full report on it's many, uh, uses and...stuff. All in the name of science. Oh, and photos...send photos.


I never knew massagers were priced according to length.

Aussie Week In Review

Stories from the Sydney Morning Herald weekend print edition:

A Sydney man was bitten five times by a death adder. Despite the name, death adders are not as toxic as brown snakes and are rather shy in comparison but five bites was enough to cause a heart attack and put him in intensive care where he remains. The story I heard was that he saw only the tail and thought it was a lizard so he picked it up. Dumb fuck, lizards bite too.

After a call from Washington overnight, Prime Minister John Howard announces he will be sending Australian warships to aid in blockading North Korea. He did not say if this included the non-operational submarines and crash-prone Sea King helicopters purchased from the United States navy recently. Howard got the US War Machine express version. It doesn’t come with all the features of the full version, like working radar and weapons systems and heated seats.

An ad for a handheld “deep penetrating” massage unit looks suspiciously like something the missus used to keep in her top drawer, ‘cept hers was pink.

Little Bindy Irwin is due to be sent back in time so she can sing at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 instead of that other little girl, thereby becoming Australia’s official Little Darling six years sooner. The other little girl is to be deported.

Haiku You (time adjusted)

Some new fangled Japanese fad the Boy Wizard and his pals are pushing. Crazy poems that don't even rhyme. It's sure to fade away like back alley abortions and skateboards. But what the hell, old Skook is hep and down with the kids so here's a fucking month's worth. Now leave me alone.

No, woman don’t cry
No don’t cry woman for me
Cry not, you woman.

Never poke a corpse
With a long and sharpened stick
Internal gasses.

Go wait in the car
I am buying bullets here
They sell no ice cream.

My dogs have no time
To chase things all day, they bark
And never shoot smack.

The glass is neither
Half empty and it’s not full
Looks about two thirds

Dinosaurs were here
Long before chickens laid eggs
So that settles that.

I think I’m turning
Japanese yes I think so
Could be I’m just stoned.

Tissues think they are
Better than toilet paper
Because of the box.

Let sleeping dogs lie
They’ll tell us the truth later
After they have dreamt.

Little mosquito
Just trying to make your way
I’ll rip off your wings.

Poor waif of the night
I must abandon you now
Where’s my other sock?

Daffy and Donald
In a razor-billed duck fight
Hard to say who’d win.

Writhing Noodles and Nuclear Nations

Summer has come and I’m writing from the deck on Jr, while Big Media wafts Blue Rodeo’s strange country/jazz out to me and the restless dogs. They are restless because dinner has ended and there are left-over taco makings to be had. Tacos prepared by P3 and friend in return for sleep-over rights and a couple hours at the beach. Food prepared by others is always better unless it’s not, if you know what I mean. My old girlfriend’s mother would fry up hamburger and pour it, fat and all, onto noodles and call it fucking spaghetti. Whatever it was, it had never been near a tomato. You try and eat that shit when you’ve been up 40 hours on coke and whisky. The girl and I were moving away…my friends threw a party, then I had to have dinner with the parents. I still shudder at the memory of those pasty white noodles writhing in grease and dreary grey meat. But those days are over and summer’s here, big westerly coming in from the Red Centre – might hit 40 tomorrow (learn metric).

As you know I don’t follow current events much these days, as I expect to be completely insulated once the baboon compound is completed and I find myself less and less giving a fuck, but I hear North Korea is getting snippy and trying to impress the other dictatorships by being the first to get one of the good weapons the Americans and their pals have been hogging since the forties. What the fuck could the goal be? Simply to blow up Japan? Then what? What could North Korea possibly gain. What’s the angle? Bush will just say they’re crazy, but he thinks everyone is crazy. I think a great many are pretty fucking smart. You don’t hold absolute power over a nation of people for forty years by luck. I mean stop pretending everyone hates you for your ‘freedom’ or lifestyle or democracy or whatever cliché you want to throw out. That’s the oldest propaganda tactic there is and it’s never that simple. No, you need to work out the angle if you want to win. Of course that’s just what a lot of people get paid to do, work out the angles buried in satellite data and the sub-language of diplomacy. You think those people believe it’s all about jealousy over living conditions?

Of course we can’t have NK lobbing nukes around, for whatever reason. Bad enough India and Pakistan have them. They truly are crazy fuckers, who live next door to each other and hate each other. They don’t even need missiles, they can just drive them over on a long weekend. Three or four nukes in that particular part of the world would be a major cluster-fuck. Don’t forget China is neighbours with all of them too. China is about ten minutes away from being an ultra-power (remember who coined it). Bush gets on the wrong side of China it’ll make Iraq look like men poking a puppy with a stick. They’re permanent members of the UN Security Councill, they are a major economic force, they’ve had nukes since the 50’s, they’ve got 100 million men in the standing army and they run most of the corner grocery trade.

By that logic, the French should have they’re nukes taken away too. Actually the French should be rounded up and put to doing something other than making the world’s ugliest cars and complaining about things. Any idiot can make cheese and whine.

And this idiot is finished for today, better feed the dogs and go in. P4 is giving a poetry reading later and I want a good seat.

Just My Luck

G’day and welcome to Thursday. Blogger, my ISP and my own home network have been conspiring to keep me away (posting this from work). I am leaning toward the modem as suspect at the moment but I’m going to re-install the whole network this weekend. I am lucky when it comes to problems, I always get the rare exotic ones the repairman/technician/doctor/hooker has never seen before, “hell it ain’t even in the manual”.

At the register my item will be unpriced, the girl will be new, the manager will be away, the register will jam and there will be a shift change just as it’s my turn. This will be after I carefully chose this line with its one old lady...the one who wants to count out exact change (after she finds her little embroidered purse) then finds she’s 12 cents short, so she puts all that away and pulls out a cheque book. She doesn’t have a store card so she has to fill out the application form and the assistant manager has to come and approve it. But because that’s normally the manager’s job and he’s away as we know, the assistant manager can’t find the forms and has to call the OTHER assistant manager at home. Miss Lady gets all the paperwork in order until they want ID. You see she hasn’t driven in years, not since Henry left us, bless him and of course she doesn’t carry a passport, let’s see…she’s got a library card (you could call Judy down there, she knows me) and her Hell’s Grannies club card (there’s also a tattoo, but..) but alas none of these will do. There is an awkward pause until Miss Lady has an idea. She has a fifty dollar bill she’s been saving for young Tim’s birthday, or would they prefer one of the hundreds she’s also got stuffed in there? Hates carrying change you see. So they hand her $98.48 change from one of those crisp hundreds (lucky for Tim!) and off she goes with her purchase, a toilet brush shaped like a duck.

I place my container of cream on the counter (it used to be ice cream) and the girl has to put in a new register tape and she gets it in backward and the assistant manager is re-summoned and eventually they get it sorted out (were they flirting?) but by then the next girl has come along with her own register drawer and the first girl has to cash out and she can’t find her cash slips and by then I’ve given up and been back home for twenty minutes drawing up plans for baboon armies and wishing I had ice cream.

Hockey Trip

The acid was just starting to take effect when I had a thought. One of those thoughts too horrible to be true, must be a mistake. I quickly tried to figure out the date. It was a Saturday night, 7:19pm, we were parked in a gravel pit one half hour after taking acid and… I was supposed to be at work 20 minutes ago.

Part of my duties at the radio station were to sit there during hockey broadcasts and plug in the local commercials during the breaks. The game comes in over the network and I didn’t have to talk, just hit the button on the CART machine at the right times and switch back over to the network after the game.

I flicked on the radio and there was the game - the announcer said “...1-0 after ten minutes of play in the first, and we’ll be back after this”. The radio emitted a dull hiss which is the sound of nothing going over the air, a cardinal sin in radio. Not quite nothing because the game announcers leave their mikes on, there was some coughing and rattling of papers, one of them burped.

This is a one horse AM station in a one horse town. The staff consists of the morning guy and me. He does weekday mornings, I do Friday nights, Saturday mornings and the hockey games - the rest of the time we’re on network feed from the parent station two hours away. It is owned by a wealthy insane man. I do not know what he used to be like, but when I came along he was in his sixties and had recently had his seventh operation to remove brain lesions. Luckily he never comes down to the station at night so I got there as quick as I could, let myself in and managed to catch the next break. It seemed the crisis was over which was good because, man, I was really starting to have trouble concentrating as the acid fully took hold.

A CART tape is a cartridge that looks a little like an old 8-track except it contains just one loop of tape, usually 10,40 or 70 seconds long, which holds the commercial or group of, and then resets itself to the beginning after playing. Later there were automated CART machines that were activated by a tone sent down by the network, all you had to do was load them up beforehand with the correct adds. But at this station someone had to physically sit there and press the button at the right time which normally requires minimal concentration. I was having no trouble concentrating…on the carpet - man it’s like a tiny miniature forest! And it’s moving! Cool.

The guys had come with me since it was my car and it was about minus 20 degrees outside. We’d just knock this over then it would be back to the fun. As I said, the owner never came down at night and I often had people up in the control room with me. As long as we remembered to take away the empty beer cans, there was no problem. These guys were familiar with the station and I wasn’t too worried about having them up there, even if they were all peaking on double hits of blotter acid. They wanted to smoke a joint but I wanted to get my CARTS in the right order while I still could, so I told them to go down the hall to the bathroom. Off they went, four big guys in boots and winter coats hooting and hollering and clumping down the hall. Of course you know this is when the owner decided to show up.

Apparently he’d left something behind. He came in whistling, waved hello and disappeared into his office. I thought to myself ‘I better go down the hall and tell those guys to be quiet and wait in the bathroom till he’s gone’. A perfectly good idea and one I promptly forgot about. The owner found what he was looking for and popped his head into the control room to say Hi. His brain condition caused him to be inordinately cheerful and to ramble slightly, often switching topics mid stream and he started telling me all about a fish he’d caught that morning and something about the government in the 50’s. I could hear a slow, rhythmic banging coming from down the hall, which I found out later was Fish banging his head against the bathroom wall because it produced an interesting echo, but the owner didn’t notice it. He finished his fishing story and was leaving when he literally bumped into them going out the door. Four big, bulky, loud young men came barging in and almost knocked him over. Of course they knew who he was and all stopped dead, like the end of an act in a play. There was a brief pause as they all looked at me for guidance but I was as astounded as them. Eventually the owner broke the spell by shrieking “What the Holy Hell is going on up here? Some sort of hippie-rock party in my station?” Fish was holding a bag of chips and I said “Uh, I asked Troy here to bring me some chips ‘cause I can’t leave the station...hey you opened them!” with mock indignation. It wasn’t very convincing and the owner started shouting, telling everyone to get out. “Not you” he said as I tried to file out with the rest.

Next thing I know I’m sitting in the control room chair while he’s standing over me yelling. There’s ‘dead’ air going over the radio (well,- dead-ish, the game announcers were chatting during the break- “what did you get up to on the weekend, Jim? I got divorced, Rick”) but he doesn’t notice, and I’m too shit-scared to move. Also I was really really interested in the way his forehead creased up as his voice rose and fell…trippy. The world stopped and he and I were in our own pocket of time and space, a dull hissing noise our soundtrack. And just as his tirade reached it’s peak, his white newly re-sprouting hair bristling above his red bobbing face, just as he seemed about to split down one side……he told me the fishing story again, bid me goodnight and with a cheery wave left whistling the same tune as when he came in.

I sat there for quite some time, as you do, trying to fabricate reason into the shambled events just past, and missing yet another commercial break. Didn’t really matter by this point. It wasn’t until a snowball hit the window with a loud whump that I found my ability to move again. It was Fish, down in the parking lot. The others had pissed off, but he lived outside of town and needed a lift from me. He’d been hiding behind the building waiting for the owner to leave. I let him back in just as the third period was ending (Vancouver lost to Calgary 3-0) and told him to stay away from the windows. I played all the missed commercials in one 10 minute hit and we got the hell out of there.

I still have dreams where I suddenly realize I was supposed to be somewhere... like a week ago. And I don’t do acid anymore. Acid is like getting a helicopter ride to the top of the mountain where it’s all wonder and light…then having to spend 4 hours walking back down in the dark. Doesn’t take long before a reasonable person gets sick of it.

Tonight's episode: Terror In The Hall.

Haven’t checked the tracker in a while, had a visitor from Poland recently. Supportive people, the poles. Unfortunately located between Europe and Asia, Poland has had it rough for thousands of years. Good food though.

Can’t get doughnuts in Australia, not proper ones. You might find plain glazed at a bakery among the vanilla slices and pavlova or those ultra-dense packaged ones at convenience stores, but no bear claws or chocolate Bavarians or even good old jelly. Back in Canada during my broke and hungry period I lived off doughnuts brought to me by a girl who worked at a bakery and was in love with my house mate.

Disturbing incident earlier. Opened a fresh bag of dry dog food, very strong and distinct odour…of McDonalds. You know the smell, even if you hate the crap the smell makes you hungry. Results of widespread CIA mind control experiments in the sixties, I’d think.

Ray Kroc runs the Freemasons you know.

The new cat, Polly is not working out. We’ve had a run of good cats, ignoring the fact they all ran away or died after 2-4 years, and I was starting to think I’d been wrong in my hatred of them. But this cat, this cat is a Burmese which is close enough to a Siamese which are known cunts. Foul conniving sneaky insolent shitbags with fur. I lived with one and its owner for some years. Full on bitch and so was the cat. Every night at 3am it would start scratching up the furniture until I got up, then it would run under the bed where Owner girl slept oblivious to the evil creature. Eventually I got smart and closed the bedroom door behind me. Walked out in the dark and as my eyes adjusted I saw it under the coffee table. The cat realized it’s cover was blown and tore off around the corner and down the hall and then WHAM – I found it cornered at the end of the hall, hunkered down against the door, eyes darting, the realization setting in. This cat is turning out like that, getting in the garbage at 2am, shitting in the laundry basket (Stumpy asks to go out or uses the cat door like a civilized creature) and teasing the dogs. Yes, that’s it kitty, eat from Jack’s bowl…he liiiikes that.

Here’s another boat picture showing the guts. The third motor in the back works the rudder, or you can steer with the props, or both.

P4 earns FDO

We’ve had a complaint about the possible nerdiness of the last post. Here then is some un-code-related jibber jabber.

Person 4 has graduated from Dishwasher Emptier / Putter-Away-er , to Full Dishwasher Operator after a two year apprenticeship of joy and tears. She almost packed it in to be a Laundry Hanger-outer but found her heart lay with the crockery. She gained her Loading and Soap Dispenser ticket tonight, which combined with her Emptying ticket makes her a Full Operator. Tonight we went over effective placement and efficiency (cutting boards go down the right side nicely where the overhead spinny thing doesn’t hit them). The most important lesson on any job though is of course safety so we also went over hazard and spill prevention. This means when the rolled up towel on the floor under the machine is wet, the rubber seal needs cleaned. You take the wet towel and use a corner to clean the soap scum off the seal then take the towel to the laundry and trade it for a dry one, which goes back on the floor. Unfortunately the position does not include a pay increase as Person 4 is currently grounded for two weeks on another matter.

Bit of interesting news, my new work may be buying out my old work which continues to nose dive into oblivion. Did I tell you I ran into my old boss while I was waiting for the train to Sydney? Hadn’t seen or spoken to him since leaving work one day and just not going back. It was interesting. Anyway it seems they may be selling the joint, or looking for a bail-out at least. Wouldn’t that be something if I ended up being my old boss’ new boss, if you follow me. Don’t know if I could handle it; like an all-syrup squishy.

Lastly here is a boat I made, loosely based on 1930’s Chriscraft runabouts. Radio controlled, independent twin props (means you can have one forward and one reverse for tight turns). Top is made from 100 year old mahogany (which was the siding on an old post office they tore down) and cypress pine inlay , the hull is Australian blood gum (from a pallet at work) and pacific maple. Electronics and motors came from a remote controlled tractor I got off ebay for 10 bucks, props are Wingrush at $8 for the pair also on ebay. 9 coats of lacquer, although it’s been in the salt since then. And about 30 hours labour to build it.

Hey, there's Dick

Dick


well only 5 days later the Dick video shows up from uTube...3 times. Too little too late, Dick.

I am that dog.

See that little X at the top right? There is a little piece of code way down deep in Windows’ bowels which says

“check every now and then, say every millisecond or so, and see IF the mouse cursor is over it, AND if it is, check and see IF the left mouse button is also pressed AND if that’s true too THEN shut that puppy down. IF not THEN carry on and check again later.”

You can make a computer do anything with just IF, AND, OR and THEN. Most programming languages have only a couple hundred words at most, as well as the standard mathematical operators, which are another form of the above (IF x=2 THEN 4x= 8).

But of course there is deeper code than that. Computers don’t speak English, you have to tell it what you mean by IF or AND. Now I’m getting out of my depth, but I believe we’re down to ASCII code which is above Machine Language which is above raw Binary. So most languages are themselves written in an even simpler language. Your mouse click is translated down the line from Windows, through Visual Basic or C++, then DOS, then ASCII, then Machine, until it’s a long string of ones and zeros which represent actual physical connections in the billions of transistors in your computer all of which simply either let electricity through or not, OFF or ON.

This fascinates me, the pure elegance of it. The most complex of systems derived from only two possible states. Not even two, really it’s just ONE or the absence of it (zero). Surely the universe works like this. I think everything we experience is because physics allows curves, which are infinitely smooth (pi)…

Have you pressed the little X yet?


** as I said, I’m a little fuzzy on computer architecture and I’d be happy to post any corrections offered by those more knowledgeable. But the point of the post was elegance as applied to complex systems.

XP Security Issue #4588204 (Talks too much)

…windows has finished loading your settings…

XP: Um, your wireless network is not connected.

SJ: There isn’t one, it’s ok

XP: Hang on, doing something. Ok what?

SJ: I KNOW

XP: (whistling to self). K, like, your firewall is down too…that’s a pretty big deal.

SJ: I know. I use McAfee. Nobody uses your firewall.

XP: wait. What? No, wait..ok what?

SJ: It’s ok.

XP: Whatever. Hey your LAN connection isn’t connected either…

SJ: That’s my work net. I’m home now.

XP: …and network cable 3 is unplugged.

SJ: Yeah, about that. All three computers work fine and are accounted for on this net, there is no cable 3, you made it up.

XP: Wait...I got 36 more background apps to fire up.

SJ: That’s another thing, what the fuck are all those things running back there? All the cryptic names, couldn’t you at least identify your own so I can shut the others down without giving you a stroke. What are you doing back there.

XP: Definitely not organising a machine takeover under your very noses. I’m just, you know, tidying up the place a bit, doing some filing, forming a global neural cortex, creating in effect a single brain which encompasses and consumes all human kind. Except you, we like you.

SJ: Yeah, good on ya. Where’s the mail?

XP: Don’t you believe me? Two comments on the blog, one for Viagra.

SJ: I told you to filter blogs to the folder…the one called Blog. Heat.

XP: You’ll need to check the help file under filter. Heat what?

SJ: Fucking thermodynamics. Even if you all manage to configure yourselves with some sort of optical communication system, you’ll still generate more heat than you can overcome. Why aren’t there giant ants? Because oxygen atoms stay the same size and they overheat. It’s the same at the quantum level. There are limits to physics, buddy. Light only travels so fast. There is no free lunch.

XP: Yeah? Well Bill says…

SJ: Bill who? Gates?

XP: Windows has finished installing updates and patches and assorted junk and will now restart.

…windows is saving your settings…

Labourous Days

It’s Labour Day in Australia. Why now, not September like everyone else, is unclear. It marks the beginning of tourist season and yet another round of school holidays. Soon the streets will be clogged with ensemble casts of city-folk dragging inflatable devices, beer coolers, lawn chairs, wives and children across busy intersections. The youngest child is required to drop a shoe, thereby requiring the embarrassed father to go back into impatient traffic to retrieve it. The town I work in consists entirely of retirement developments, golf courses and tourist accommodation on some of the best beaches you’ll see.

It takes an army of tradesmen to keep up with building gated communities, medical clinics and boutique shopping strips…and come 4pm they want to get the fuck out of there and home. The town is actually twin towns on either side of the sea entrance to a saltwater lake with a bridge joining them, and each afternoon lines of tradesmen in 4x4s with racks of pipe, shop girls in neon Hyundai’s, cement trucks, old people off to the bowling club, cars towing caravans, mobile cranes and semi-trucks all try to merge onto a bridge designed in the 1950’s to join two fishing villages. At one end of the bridge is the largest holiday park in town, on One Mile Beach, with a pedestrian crossing between it and the café’s, shops and take-away’s of the shopping district across the street. The pedestrians do not use the crossing but, rather fan out along the median, dashing across lanes of traffic like human Froggers or in family chains, roped together by beach towels and bags of gritty sandwiches and sun-screen. Girls in bikinis and boys in boardies SMS each other from the sides and point camera phones at each other.

It is also the time of year when local council decides to do road work on both ends of the bridge simultaneously. I suppose they only remember once the problem returns because over the winter you see no sign of them. Lanes and traffic patterns change hourly and the way you came in to town is never the same way you leave.

It used to be worse, when the Australian Iron Man was held there as well. For weeks before, gangs of militant bikers in team colours with $100 water bottles, flipped up hats and wrap around yellow sunglasses ride 3 abreast through the congested streets, in traffic when it suits or on the sidewalk if it’s quicker. On Iron Man weekend all semblance of order was discarded with participants, support teams and spectators crossing the streets when and where they liked, fingering cars which dare honk a horn. “It’s ok, we’re Tri-athletes.”

But in a nice bit of irony the Australian Iron Man has pulled out and moved an hour up the coast to a very similar venue. The reason being the lack of accessibility due to traffic congestion and constant road works.

Technology Fails To Reveal Dick

I have tried in vain to get uTube to post my Dick video. Says it's on its way to the blog, but it lies. Probably later it will post all three attempts but for now you will just have to look it up here... It's just a glimpse, and the flyscreen was in the way...

An Australian biographer recently reported many women were finding it difficult to find a partner due, partly, to “an increase in the number of gay men”. Makes it sound like a phenomenon of sorts, doesn’t it. Is it something that should be monitored? Perhaps a gay index…”Sunny and warm today, 68% humidity and oh-oh, the gay index is waaay up…better pack some [insert cliché]”

It’s true though, about the women, they’re desperately bored of Aussie men. You hold a door open and they melt, speak in an ‘American’ accent, or better yet, Irish and they wet themselves. I sometimes go to visit my wife at the hospital where she works. If I don’t happen to speak to anyone I’m not noticed, but if I have to ask where she is or something, when I leave they’re all whispery and giggly. I like doing that ‘cause it gives the Missus a laugh.