Better than a Knife in the Eye

Yes, its a new tagline folks.

Not that I have any regular visitors who might care.

I also opened up a store, where you can buy goodies, starting with aargh-my-eye/beter than a knife... shirts.

I need the money. I also want the money.

Cafepress is cool for this sort of thing. They must be raking it in though.

I'm not the world's best artist, but that hasn't stopped any one making a buck before.

Its more fun than Adsense anyway.

PS -

Finally on Google

Just thought I'd share that.

I'm still not sure if I should add more to the sidebar in terms of links. Might add somemore webcomics I frequent like (ZZ pays no heed to any problems you have with external content, hell, I don't particularly care about your problems with internal content* - that said anything except PHD may occasionally offend the sensitive, ranging from sex, furries, mentioning sex, the occult, sex toys, violence, lesbians that hold hands etc.):

• The Robman Show
• [Title Pending]
• Piled Higher and Deeper
• Girly
• Fur Will Fly - if this wasn't furries I'd say it was pretty family-safe as your average episode of Friends
  
• Krakow 1.0 (The original Krakow)
• Tang's Comic
• Tang's Adult Vision
• Burgundy Comics, INC.
• Ghastly's Ghastly Comic designed to offend
  
• Sexy Losers offensive by design
• Slow Wave
• Making Fiends (Flash recquired)
  
• Demonology 101
• Fabulous Corpses is dead (bad pun) - but this is great (and a few others, but the Klan has it coming)

You might also like to check out my rants I put up at Hi-5 and MSN for their useless blogging systems.

*Unless its factually incorrect

PS - SAVE THE ANTELOPE!!

But its so hot...

Today went out driving with Dad to Waterpark Creek - which additionally to being Yeppoon's watersource, is a nice place for a swim and jumping-out-of-trees - which should have swelled quite a bit since we had a lot of rain the last couple of days. Lately its been kind of dry (with the drought and all...), so it was good to see the small barrage at the campsite/day area was overflowing. It wasn't over the road, but it was still pretty strong.

It was also bubbling foam all over the place. It was kind of gross. But i don't think it was pollution, I think that plant oils and other natural crap has just been accumulating a lot due to the lack of flow in the creek, and after all of a sudden being stirred up from the rain-surge has produced great mounds of foam. I should've brought my camera.

Getting cool outwayed the fear of freakish foam giving me infection. Foam didn't seem to put anyone else off, the marked swimming sites were pretty full. Its soooo hot. I hear its very cold in America/Nth Hemisphere, you poor freaking bastards. Awww, snow.

Last night I was kept awake by some stupid freaking dogs that wouldn't shut up somewhere down the street. They started at one, stopped for about 10 minutes, and then went on for the next half hour, stopped, started, stopped, started and so on, until around 3am. Not fun. I tried closing the windows to block out the sound, that just made it hotter. Its not much better being unable to sleep comfortably on my right chest yet, and my bed being the most uncomfortable hand-me-down mattress in the world. Must get to sleep before 12pm tonight.

PS - How to tell if your prostitute is an alien I'm sure we'll all sleep better for it

The sound of lawnmowers about the nation...

So the rain has stopped.
My brother has left home, and moved to a place in Rockhampton near the school he is now teaching at.
So along with many other Queenslanders I spent this afternoon mowing the lawn.

In other news my Visa application is making progress (yes, I am bgoing overseas - pay attention). I now need to organise some flights, if only Singapore Airlines would hurry up and get their prices up already. Apparently no-one is flying from Australia to Osaka on May 14th to arrive before 6pm. I either get there on the 13th, or possibly try an overnighter in Hong Kong. S. Air may have a direct arriving around 4pm, so I'm gunning for its availability.

Other things on my checklist

• IDP (International Drivers Permit) $20 and a visit to my local RACQ is all it takes apparently
• Luggage. Sydney baggage handlers broke the handle off my only large-ish suitcase last year
• A phrasebook. I'm going to start upping my Japanese vocabularly starting next week. I thought I had stored some old schoolbooks in my drawers, but apart from basic character sheets of hiragan and katakana, I found nada.
• A few necessary items of apparel (especially socks and jocks - oh and shirts, everyone is telling me I won't be able to get shirts in Japan)
  
• A credit card, but it'is still on the maybe list
  

Hopefully most of those (except the IDP) will be sorted in the next week-month.

The Phantom mysteriously got raves in my local TV program as "one of teh better comic-film transitions" -- nu-uh -- it is crap. Utter shite. The attempts to portray South East Asia as an imaginary African jungle is pathetic. What the hell are colonials doing in black-run Bengalla (hell, where are the Black people?). ANd Kit doesn't wear sunglasses in the city - NOONE looks into the eyes of the Ghost and lives, and the sunglasses he does wear momentarily are totally uncool and un-Phantom. The only comic-film transition worth watching was The Shadow. It has a globe conquering Mongol with telekinesis, and an atom bomb. Who knows ...The Shadow knows.

PS - Seismology in Person

Castrated Mouse and Five Tortured Kittens

Torturing kittens seems to be the new thing for kids here on the East Coast. Not that its really a "new" pastime. Honestly its sickening enough to make you a hippie. 5 cats (4 dead, the other in need of putting down) were delivered in a sack to a charity bin. C'mon kids, people live in those...

In other news, I bought a castrated mouse. Meaning an optical mouse for my computer. The old one (with ball) was just giving me too much trouble yesterday to make web navigation feasible. Everyone knows eunuchs don't give you trouble (it also shines blue).

This face morphing tool is the gosh-darndest coolest thing I ever saw. It does wonders for the self esteem by showing, yes, you could look worse you utter freak.
.. ........ ......
Damn, missed Bootleg this morning, and now I can't seem to download the next set of torrents for Naruto (ep 41-44) from Toriyamaworld. I need my Ninja goodness.


PS - Chimps, looking the other way

Ouchies...

I'm in the kitchen about to set the table for my mother's dinner party and I see a window is open letting in the rain. "Someone is going slip on that". 5 minutes later I'm on the floor writhing in agony because I managed not only to slip, but catapult myself over a bench (slamming my ribs hard), and skid to stop four or so feet away. Nobody closed the window.

At the sugestion of possibly, maybe taking me to the hospital just to be on the safe side, "It would be kind of inconvinient", ah, the love of a mother.

I'm pretty sure its only bruising and a bit of skin lost (somehow my right bicep and ankle also managed to get slightly skinned).

This incident also brought to light the alarming lack of first aid supplies we have at home. I have definitely got to make sure I have a decent First Aid pack set up. Bandages and antiseptic are kind of minimum requirements.

PS - (Late) Johnny Carson on Democracy

Teaching kids the importance of drugs and breaking the law

Bootleg is showing once more on the ABC.

Its a kids adventure mini-series which shows the importance of breaking the law and starting your own clandestine operation when something you like suddenly becomes illegal. Just beautiful.

I'm noticing that a lot in kids' shows these days, all these anti-fascist undertones. Its seems to be the new pro-environmentalism (remember the Planeteers?).

Its Australia Day. And its pouring rain. I doubt there will be fireworks. Just don't eat lamb.

Oh yeah, my mouse (computer mouse - I had a confusing mix-up earlier) is acting spastically. I think the middle button/wheel is broken. Its making very hard to use applications as it decides to scroll up and down with its own free will.

PS - Everything I ever told you is a lie. Including that.

You funny guys at SBS programming, you...

Now SBS could get away with a slogan like "fair and balanced".

Last week they showed the documentary, 9/11 Didn't Happen, a blatant propoganda piece dispelling the conspiracy theories about the events of the 11th of September 2001.

This week they just showed the documentary, Conspiracy Theory: 9/11, a look at the conspiracy theories about 9/11 and how there is definitely something fishy and questionable about the US governmental actions.

Now which one do you think was more more crap. Conspiracy Theory, of course, did bow down to governmental policing by declaring definitely that "we have contacted airplane authorities and they concur with the government's official line" and other stuff. And they seem to place a lot of emphasis on non sequitor bin Laden links, like the Carlyle group and Osama's brother in law. They off course had documentary's most loved ex-CIA man Robert Bauer too.

My personal favourite 9/11 doco has been the one where a guy just meets up with the bin Laden's. There cousins, brother's in law thrice removed, old roomates from college etc. It's interesting and an eye-opener into what sort of caused the monster that is Osama bin Laden to come into being (as well as the real guy).


PS - Some Interactive Goodness - Have some fun - comment what you think the world should think...



AM - Sorry this post is lacking in links you try typing keywords like "bin Laden" "Conspiracy Theory" and "9/11" into a search engine. That's why you get a pretty picture.

Alcohol makes you girls smarter

Moderate alcohol consumption protects women from cognitive decline.

Or at least less stupid.

from News@Nature.

Spank Me and Give Me a Job (I'm a Man!)

So in boredom I decided to retake the SparkNotes Tests. Pleasantly greeted most results.

Except the Death test. My increased driving appears to have knocked 4 years and a month of my expectancy (now 17 May, 2035 from July 23, 2039). I've been exercising more too. Maybe its the strangers with candy I need to start avoiding...


Anyway top points has to be the MAN (erhem, Sex) Test - which correctly identified me as a MAN. Albeit only 24% MAN, but given that almost everyone I know has been ID'd woman (and most of them were men) and my previous result was 67% woman, I'm happy with the amount of butching up I've done over the past few months. It also has me in the top 93 percentile of manliness.

Apparently I've switched from Politician to Mentor - which I think is a Extrovert -> Introvert switch for the most part.

You are a Mentor!
(Submissive Extroverted Abstract Thinker)

You are a MENTOR (SEAT). Some would call you the most powerful and influential of all people. Those people are wrong.

The reality is that you DON'T really WANT to impose personal views or beliefs on others. Yet you are extroverted and intelligent, and you like to get involved. So you help others with the pursuit of knowledge.

You're the reason that people say teachers are also students. You are as much a learner as a master, and this satisfies you.

You won't die a lonely death, but towards the end you'll grow introspective, wondering if your life meant anything. This will last for decades, and you'll die after your spouse.

Additionally I've redeemed myself slightly on the Untelligence test. Still not back at 98%, but I think that's due to my mislaid humour. I can take a joke. Up to 78% from 61%.

The subject shows an astounding level of intelligence, and his sense of observation is one of his best qualities. Considering this, he shows a lot of potential, but that's only part of the equation.

The subject is brave, however, and shows real strength in that department. Courageousness is a large part of untelligence.

Finally, the subject displayed a pathetic and useless (seriously bad) sense of humor, a down and dirty sense of morality, and a hot-shot level of self-confidence. The balance of these three traits is important; high levels of confidence, medium levels of morality, and a good level of humor make for the strongest individuals.

Other scores:

• Stress - 17% from 21% "get a job you hippie"
• Jerk - 46% from 51%
• Lazy - 53% from 55% 93rd percentile
  
• Greed - 48 % still 85th percentile
  
• American- 43% still

Didn't have time for much else. Now I need to sleep. Ja mata ne.


PS - OREOS ARE YUMMY BUT WIZARDS ARE MAGICALLY DELICIOUS

Having fun?

I've been whining too much.

Here's some fun:

• A-Team meets the Trampoline club (watch the movie)

Mozilla kicks ass so much. I had to use IE for around 4 hours last night/this morning. It was hell. Most of traffic seems to be using IE - stop - get firefox now.

PS - POLO: SMALL BUT TOUGH

RSS - Really Sort of Shit

I really can't see RSS in the same light as these guys do.

I've worked out what RSS is, and how it works, thanks to RSS in Plain English and Wikipedia.

So I need a "reader". I tried to find one compatible to Mozilla, and found Newsmonster, and innocently clicked on the Install button. Big mistake. Mozilla was fucked. I sent an e-mail and tried to contact via AIM (crappiest IM platform ever) to no avail.



Here's a short list of what happened.

1. I could only start Firefox 1 time out 5. I'd have to ctrl+alt+del "End process" Firefox.exe the other times because nothing would actually open up.
2. It didn't let me register NewsMonster.
3. No features of NewsMonster worked.
4. I still couldn't actually use RSS.
5. I couldn't send a bug report.
6. What Newsmonster did was take up half my Mozilla space with a list of unusable crap.
7. I couldn't uninstall NewsMonster.
8. A lot of Firefox's features such as bookmarks, help, extensions etc. just ceased to exist.
9. Everything slowed down.
   

In the end I played some AnarchyOnline (now working smoother than ever since that BSoD incident).

Then I tried just installing NewsMonster again. Didn't do much. Again... asked to me reset computer. Did so. Nothing.

This morning I tried deleting all files NewsMonster installed. Something must have been important to Firefox, because it wouldn't load pages after that. So I just uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox. On Bob's advice didn't try reinstalling NewsMonster.

Now using Awasu to get my RSS feeds from the awesome Technorati. Awasu isn't imbedded, which I think aftr the disaster with NewsMonster I'm seeing as a plus. Additionally it does have some step-by-step help, and quite a few pre-collated feeds you can choose to subscribe to.

As for RSS, I still don't really see the big deal. Yes its useful. But surely a whole new format didn't need to be invented for this to be implemented?
It seems a whole lot of bother to suit these people who can't work out how not to get spam. I have a hotmail account, and barely have to deal with spam at all. If you are at all interested, you can find out about the History of RSS.


PS - ARIGAMI

Trying to sell Powerade, Use a Killer Whale

(ORCA!!!)

The video

The real story

I'm not sure I see the connection.

Well at least it was faked.

Can't say the same about 100% increase in bear attacks in rural Japan.

Or the usual earthquake + tsunami deal.

Yay!


DID YOU KNOW: Mercury Make Mad Hatters

PS - Festival

Hunky Munkys Getting Funky and the Everpresent Fatal Error of Doom

Before somebody gets "all up in my face" about my rhyme -- I am aware gorillas are apes, a sifferent clade of primates separated from monkeys (or munkys for that matter).

The sweet story of Lisa the gorilla and her new toyboy Makoko in my local paper today was cheery enough for me to want to share it. I didn't quite realise gorillas had such quite long life spans, 33 seems pretty old for a gorilla. My paper had only the top part of this story, so I didn't realise her previous mate had been (non-fatally) wounded by some crazed German gunman. Thanks, depressing.

My computer has been so shit lately. I have been having to start Anarchy Online twice to get it working, this morning three times and I got in. I tried it four times this evening, and still no banana. So I chceked Soph-Os, Ad-aware, Defrag, DskChk and Cleanup and all seemed rosy. So I thought I should just reset. Press the "turn off computer" button (XP) and ka-pow I'm smacked with a "Serious Error" Blue Screen of Death - System Dump of Memory. Fuck you too. Restarted with no hiccups, so I don't think I'll turn of my computer again 'til April.

Another thing that is niggling at me: RSS feeds. How do these work. I'm trying to negotiate Technorati, and all I've discovered is the only Michael Zimmer worth reading about is my ninja of an uncle. If someone wants to explain (or link to an explanation) how exactly I "subscibe" to RSS: e-mail or comment below (that way other people can learn too). I use Mozilla Firefox (recent convert - so should you!) on Windows XP.

Still can't find this site with google yet. Damn you internet!!!


PS - GAY

The weird shit people type - and the matter of scoring FREE! hits

Not 24 hours after using the keyword "porn" in my second post, a shameless bid to earn extra hits to a hatchling blog, I find this article (via Lindsay) explaining why my endeavor was a failure from the outset. I used the wrong words - PORN is but one of MAGIC words YOU can use to get FREE hits. I don't think associating it with tentacle and potato helped much at all either... that disaster aside I still can't find my blog on google. If you can please e-mail me. I'm desperate for the attention. And google needs to have more than me on Sparknotes, Wikipedia, a few random gaming & nature boards, and this NSFW oddity. (Also missing keyword MAGIC)

I've also decided until I get a job, I guess I can quite easily blog each day, or twice each day, or hell, every six hours if I wanted to. Which means I can fit in a lot more crap, and not try to be so intelligent.

I've also been reading random and not-so random blogs - mostly through looking at who shared interests with me - to get inspiration and see who to sign up with for listings. Here's a few select gems and mudholes:

*First I do have to mention Lindsay's Bificurated Rivets is about the only blog I officially stalk out an watch. And I have to admit I found it while looking for information on The Weatherwoman (it is slightly more intelligent than it sounds). He's a god of finding stuff which is funny, entertaining, informative, odd and simply fantastic.

*Truth = Trouble younger brother of a guy I went to school. His first post has him branded as a "freaking legend for your Public Domain talk" buy some guy called Baz. Personally I'm not that impressed.

*You find the best one-liners in blogs such as at Down By The Fence written by the lovely handle Cut my heart in half and discard the evidence who says " To those of you who talk shit, keep it up and see what happens.Fucking hypocrites."

*Rivaling the above was "Kill me now!" if only my dog wasn't having sex.

*Then I got totally freaked out by this story. And I warn you, don't read it if you are a fan of Korean food.

*Saving the best 'till last was Acrix = Angel + Alcohol Addict ... we never got to see our guinea pigs before receiving their guts, I'm jealous. We did get to see our rats before taking out their kidneys and livers after injecting them with algal poison though, it wasn't all bad. On the side, Joe's nipples scare me.


PS - Save someone else's Seoul

Sweet Potato Tentacle Porn

So I mentioned yams on Tuesday. And I need to work out how pictures work.

These are absolutely freaky. I'm used to things in our cupboards (and sometimes the frodge) sprouting, sporulating and occasionally having legs... but this is ridiculous. My brother's actually screeched with a "What is that!?" when she saw this pair for the first time. And given that they are positioned such that one will claw at your feet when you open our cupboard, I'm not that surprised.

What I was surprised by was that if you google sweet-potato-tentacle-porn you manage to get 4,710. Although I am pleased no google-images appeared and the quote marked"sweet potato"+"tentacle porn" yielded a single reference, striking me from being the only blogger to actually bring up this topic. I'd give you a link, but I lost it, and google is telling me to contact them with the search I used to get the error I am now receiving. Call me stagnatingly clinging on to my prudish roots, but I'm not e-mailing so tech-support guy that I can't find vegetable hentai with google for a "project". (ah. working now)

Now you may be wondering what the hell is with the tentacle porn. I can honestly say I have only watched one piece of tentacle porn, and it was for kicks not kinks. But I do blame Hard and Ghastly for my odd interest in the subject for the last year (Unsuprisingly both links there might be NSFW). I really don't have good taste or bad taste, just taste. If its media I'll swallow it hook-line and sinker. Music. Film. TV. Opera. Documentary. Books. Anime. I love it all.

Seriously you cannot tell me that isn't freakin you out. Sweet potatoes are freaky to begin with, they don't need tentacles to freak you out.

Anyway. Working out pictures, resizing and messing with Google has taken longer than I thought. Lets see if this talk about sex will boost my random hits a bit, hmmm...


PS - Sex with my mates' football some languages do read vertically buddy

Happy Birthday to me

Well, this is a beginning ... of something new.

There is quite a lot I kept trying to think about to write today in a special inaugural musing for this blog (amazing Blogger's spellcheck told me "blog" wasn't a word?), so special in fact, that noone is probably ever going to see it unless they actually decide to backtrack through my entirety of my posts, when, if, in a 8 months time I'm attracting say 10 visitors.

So wa-hoo & Bwahoar. and enjoy. Now I just need something to write about to amuse you.

There is the absolute awesomeness of Anarchy Online's free subscription campaign which I thoroughly recommend. If you can't download it, or find the torrent, e-mail me and I'll send you it.

There are the yams in my pantry which have actually grown foot-long stalks, due to the nifty installation of a light that would perhaps be better suited for hydroponics. I'm waiting for them to flower, or at least daylight and then I'll take photos.

There is of course my birthday, today I am Twenty, I scored a new business suit, new glasses, strawberry cheesecake and a sponge bag (oh yay!). And it was all underwritten by the *shock* revelation of Mark Latham's resignation.

There is my job in Japan that I somehow scored. It's really odd that in order to actually get a job of my own accord that has some security attatched to it I have to change hemispheres. I leave May 14th and it is basically the reason why I am creating this blog.

There are two other places I checked out first before deciding this was better. Both were ditched for different censorship issues.

There is the fact I am not creating a webcomic instead.

There is the reinvigoration of general web-interest by restarting Sparking, and finding everything has changed. It sure looks cool, but how do I get to where I want to go.

There is the pretty cool launch of Project Greenlight Australia earlier this month (actually end of December). If you are an aspiring Australian writer: try your luck. And if you can't write, read and review. If they are all like the one I scored to read, its better than anything on in the cinema at the moment.

There is the trouble of trying to work out how to get a damned counter to work on this site.

And there is the torn efforts of commercialism that is likely to force me in a bid to get some sort of personal cash flow in this fading time of employment, by selling out advertising space to google. Its less effort than designing and pricing with cafepress.

Instead of heavily dwelling on any of those I'm just gonna mention them all and leave it at that. Maybe I might put effort in next time. And maybe I'll introduce myself... Whatever.

PS - NEVER BUY CHICKEN AGAIN

-Out