Damn you, you crazy helicopter!

Yesterday when a colleague showed me this helicopter game I thought it was a little bit boring. But this afternoon I developed a strange compulsion to play it again. It's seriously addictive, and I think the reason is that when you crash you usually know that it could have been avoided. You always know you can do a little bit better.


Now you too can waste an afternoon at work! See if you can beat my high score (an unbeatable 3315). Click on the picture to be transported to the site what has the game that is the game that it is. It's the magic of the Internet.

A little dose of stupid

In a rare, incandescent burst of productivity, my co-worker just contributed the following comment to Fundies Say the Darndest Things:

"We at OverwhelmingEvidence.com call upon evolutionists to either justify their beliefs in the harsh light of these truths or give up their racket as soon as possible. These matters are far to important to be entrusted to credulous fools who believe everything they read in a 200 year old science-book."

Hmm...

A Quickie

Not too much time to write anything write now, but I thought I'd share an interesting little tidbit that I discovered with you all. If you happen to visit the Liberal Party of Australia website, and select "Our Achievements" from the "About the Liberal Party" menu item, it'll take you to a list of the achievements of various Liberal governments, from Menzies to Fraser.

On that page, it won't actually contain any of John Howard's achievements, but will rather invite you to click on a separate link at the bottom of the page to see what the current Coalition has managed to achieve. Well, I had a click, and was fairly surprised. Why don't you have a look too?

Kate got Crabs

I went on a lovely trip to Pt Vincent this weekend which involved a lot of visiting the beach, drinking, resting and eating (all of which are key to a successful weekend away)

One of the highlights was going crabbing (my virgin experience) and it’s definitely more fun than it sounds. For everyone not familiar with crabbing you get yourself a rake thingy (metal is the best idea) and start raking the sand in the shallow water until you hit something hard.

Then an angry crab comes out and tries to bite your feet (if you’re smart you’d be wearing gumboots or similar but all I had was a pair of thongs) then with a bit of skill you scoop the crab up with the rake or get it to let go of your toe and grab on to the rake (whichever comes first) and throw it into a bucket.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds and the one and only crab I caught had snuck up behind me and grabbed my leg. Between the six of us we caught 25 crabs and had one mighty feast.

The only problem with Pt Vincent is that it’s a one pub town. This means they can charge what they want, serve what they want and be as rude as they like.

We visited the Ventnor Hotel for dinner which is the only place to go on a Saturday night and it was a nice enough place except we stuck out like sore thumb not looking particularly local. The real trouble started when we mentioned we had a vegetarian amongst our group and since they didn’t have a single vego menu item could this person just have the salad bar?

We were promptly told ‘You can’t just have salad bar’ and it’s a minimum $12 just to sit at a table (in a half filled restaurant). In the end we came to a $10 salad bar agreement with the rest of us paying an $18 ea for a fairly sub standard chicken parmy.

An hour later all the other patrons had their meals, including at least 4 tables that arrived after us but we were still without food. Just as we queried where our meals were out they came with cardboard flavoured chips and Dee’s medium rare steak very well cooked.

There are two morals to this story:
1. Don’t be a vegetarian in a country town
2. Wear shoes while crabbing

Know Thyself

When I think of my political outlook, I tend to see myself somewhere to the left-of-centre. Then again, some days it seems that the ‘centre’ of Australian politics lies somewhere between the Ku Klux Clan and the Exclusive Brethren, so being on the left may not mean as much as it used to.

Living in a country with a socially conservative government, I’m constantly bombarded with Governmental decisions I disagree with. At these times I cringe because I think that’s way too conservative. As a result, I have a healthy sense of how conservative I’m not.

But living in a country with a socially conservative government, I find it hard to get a sense of just how (small ‘l’) liberal I am. I know I’m not over there on the right trying to ban university education or demonise the coloured folk, but does that mean I’m a gay pinko commie? [that’s a rhetorical question, George – I know you’re aching to make the obvious comment. For the record, the answer is no.] Where are the moments in political life that allow me to work out where I draw the line to the left?

To find some answers, I devised a thought experiment: Imagine a hippy has just entered the room and espoused a social or economic policy that provokes you to respond, ‘that’s unfeasable and ill-conceived, you crazy hippy!’ What was the suggested policy?

Two answers came to mind quickly. The first, predictably, was the legalisation of marijuana. Being a left-leaning Adelaidian university student, I rarely come into contact with someone who isn’t a regular marijuana user. That’s cool. They tend to be very chilled, reasonable people, and they usually possess a ready supply of snacks. I have no problem with the decriminalisation of the use of the drug. At the same time, though, I think it would be a bad move to legalise the production and sale of weed.

A less obvious that’s way too liberal proposal would be a law making it illegal to discriminate based on attire. By this I mean that posh restaurants couldn’t refuse to serve people in tank tops and thongs; you could wear a footy jumper to the ballet. Perhaps you could go to a job interview nude and be assured of equal consideration, or walk into the Qantas Club in a loincloth hastily assembled from 97 of those moist refresher towlettes you receive on international flights.

I am not down with any of the above – that’s too liberal for me. On the face of it, insisting that people should dress for the occaision and in accordance with convention is an ideologically conservative viewpoint, but it’s a view I subscribe to. People discriminate based on other people’s dress every day, but there’s a reason we do it: it’s a shortcut that allows us to categorize the type of person we’re dealing with.

If I see a guy get out of a Commodore dressed in thongs and sporting a mullet, my brain tells me to stay away – this person is a bogan and is unlikely to share your interest in 1950s Science Fiction novels. It’s a reaction that arguably saves me considerable hassle, despite the fact that it may be unfair to mulleted, thonged Salisbury residents who also have a phD in English Liturature.

That's all by the by. The point I’m trying to make is that as a result of my thought experiment, I now know more about myself, which I see as a positive result.

I’m interested to know if you’ve ever had a that’s way too liberal moment. If not, try the thought experiment and let me know the results. My underlying assumption is that you, Gentle Reader, are also a lefty. If you’re a conservative, I’d LOVE to hear your viewpoint. In your case the thought experiment you should undertake reads thus:

Imagine a Halliburton executive (who is also a noted pro-life activist) has just entered the room. He espouses a social or economic policy that provokes you to respond, ‘wow. I’m a conservative myself, but isn’t that a bit too…evil?’ What was the suggested policy?

Nuts to your white mice.

So I'm home. And by 'home', I mean 'Melbourne'. Which is too scary to think about, so I won't.

Hobart is small. Really small. There are only about 7 or 8 places in the CBD where you can buy dinner, which made the lack of cooking facilities in our hotel room problematic. The weather was surprisingly nice, and as a special treat on our last night we had about 30 minutes of pouring rain, followed by 3 or 4 hours of lightning and thunder out over the bay, which we could view from our bed. 'Twas sweet.

One thing I did to occupy myself during work was listen to my swanky new iPod, and in particular the original Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series. Given that every incarnation of HHGTTG varies wildly in terms of content, it's always fun to find new jokes in familiar situations. But upon our arrival home I decided to pop in the HHGTTG movie DVD, to see if it was as average as I remembered.

Sadly, it's worse. I accept the need to change things in order to fit the basic idea into a 2-hour film, but when almost every change is not for the better, then it becomes frustrating. The only two areas where they improved on the original were the graphics (the Magrathean factory floor is stunning) and Trillian (Zooey Deschanel is ohsocute). Some of the actors do a decent job, but none better the original. And when they add in jokes which are unfunny at the expense of removing jokes that are funny (even on the umpteenth listen), then things are seriously wrong. I could go on all day, but I shan't. The original TV series is playing at the moment, so I'll let that wipe any bad taste from my mouth.

Now, I'm going to reply to George's recent post, though so I don't offend any delicate sensibilities, I shan't actually use the word. Happy people?

Where the problem with swear words lie is in the fact that the listener (or reader) are the ones who give the word any power or effect. What matters most is the intent behind the word - that is where the offensiveness really does lie. You can hear a young child using swear words, but to them there's nothing rude or wrong with them, they're just funny sounding words. Conversely, people can be immensely offensive without using a single swear word or slur.

My point? Just 'cause someone's using a swear word, it doesn't mean they're being offensive.

Though I must add that George is always offensive.

And Andrew, I feel I must rebut your Heroes review:

My experience of Heroes is *completely* different to yours, with the possible exception of the product placement (though the only bit I've found annoying is the Nissan Versa, and, oddly enough, I don't feel like buying one this week).
After 15 episodes, I've yet to feel manipulated by Heroes, not regarding the basic manipulation that all fictional work does, and in fact needs to, contain. The show has some of the best comic book and TV writers of this generation (including Jeph Loeb), who pool their talents to achieve the best episodes they can; the show is the brainchild of one guy (Tim Kring (who also created Crossing Jordan), not a group of TV executives). What makes Heroes different from so many shows is the fact that it takes many of its cues, both narrative and visual, from comic books - multi-stranded, multi-episode arcs which belong to a larger overall arc and its own universe. The characters are partially archetypal, but all veer significantly from the stereotypes to make them full, interesting characters. How can you not love Hiro?? Or Claire? Or Ando? Or Matt? Or Peter?

The other thing I love about Heroes is the fact that is it so wonderfully planned out - unlike Lost, where the writers admit they don't know what was going on, everything on Heroes has a point, and an effect the to the overall story. And what excites me most is the fact that not only is the first season exquisitely mapped out, Tim Kring has gone on record saying he has plotted out as far as a potential fifth season, which gives the opportunity for rich, immensely detailed storytelling. I have, on occasion, gone back and watched earlier episodes of the series and been amazed at how it all threads back into stuff that happens later on. You may not like it yourself, but that's your loss. :o)

And lastly: yesterday Immy bought us some tickets to see Dylan Moran at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Now we just have to get Ardal O'Hanlon tix. Can I get a hell yeah?

P.S. - anyone who can pick where this entry's title comes from gets a feeling of superiority to those who don't.

If you made a badge of it, you could be an Emo...

For the sake of making Google PageRank slightly more friendly to our little blog (Or at the very least, not attracting people who search based on certain keywords), I've decided to self censor this post. Hence, Smiley!

So we had a party...

...and now I have a hangover. Such is the way it has always been.

I present for your enjoyment a timeline in pictures: I call it 'George's descent into drunkenness'. It should prove edutaining.

For some reason, no matter how the night turns out, no matter how bad the hangover, George will live to drink another day. That's why he is a good person to drink with.

Here are some other photos from the party:

Valentines Wake tradition in danger?

I think we all remember the first valentines wake: there were glasses of vodka, much vomiting and George attempting to travel through the city home the next day smelling and looking lovely... This night started a now 3 year running tradition of Valentines day wake. Why was this night such a success? There were no couples to depress the single people!

The next year on the 14th was a similar occasion (except I was allowed to come this time) - again the secret to its success was NO COUPLES!

But this year there seems to be an exception to the rule and frankly I've decided to speak out against this abomination of the Valentines day wake tradition.

I put this to you: If a couple are going to be attending this evenings 'wake' then we may as well forget about calling it
"The Valentines Day Wake" and instead rename it to "The Valentines Day Gathering" which in itself defeats the whole purpose of this day.

George is still soft

You all know it's true. But while we wait eagerly for his second post, we should steel ourselves for the months ahead.

I wouldn't disagree that Adelaide's a pretty sleepy town for the majority of the year. But every now and then, massive heavenly bodies align, planets composed entirely of culture. Their pull cannot be resisted; the only way to survive is to submit and hope you wake up in April with a slight headache and a considerable hole in your savings account.

These orbs of which I speak - The Adelaide Fringe, Womadelaide, The Adelaide Film Festival, ringed with moons - the Whitlams, Dan Kelly and the ASO - are gathering even as you read this. I've compiled the beginnings of a list -

Dan Kelly with Holly Throsby - 23 Feb

The Whitlams - 3 March

Rod Quantock - The John and Janette Howard Story - 8-18 March

Late Night comedy @ The Rhino Room - 8-31 March

Womadelaide - 11 March

Jazz at Fringe - 16 March

Tripod - 16-18 March

Ardal O'Hanlon (aka Father Dougal) - 27-31 March

Dylan Moran (aka Bernard Black) - 29 March

- and I haven't even had a chance to decipher the theatre section of the Fringe Guide yet.

For Julian:

I present my review of Heroes. It's a show that I really should like - all the elements are exactly where they should be - a winning formula by any assessment. And I think that's the problem.

After watching the first five episodes, I get the distinct impression that I'm being manipulated. Heroes comes across not so much as a hip, semi-cultish labour of love, but a precision strike at the heart of the 18-35 audience demographic. I have visions of a boardroom in California: old men sit around a table while a recent university graduate with a stylish but non-threatening haircut pitches the next sure-fire hit. "It'll be huge. We've done extensive testing. People want a show with a cheerleader, a stripper, and a couple of caricatured Japanese office workers. We'll chuck in a bit of quasi-philosophical tripe and some bad science, and get an Indian guy to narrate it. But don't worry: he won't be too Indian."

I'm going to stick with it for a few more eps, despite its tedious pacing and shameless product placement. It's lucky that advertising has no effect on me.

P.S: Did anyone else wake up today with a burning desire to buy a stylish new Nissan Versa?

Andrew's final thoughts: George, blog!!

My favourite writing dude

There are a lot of authors that I hold in the greatest of esteem. If I had to pick a favourite it'd probably result in a four-way WWF-style cage match between Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Stephen Donaldson and James Clavell. The two 50s sci-fi writers would probably have an edge because they've been dead for a number of years and would therefore be possessed of some super zombie powers. Though, come to think of it, when you hold people in great esteem, you probably shouldn't exhume their corpses and reanimate them to amuse the lowest elements of American 'society'.

Even hypothetically.

Anyway, I feel like I'm losing the thread of the original point I wanted to make. And that point is this: most of the authors that I admire write in a style that I could never hope to emulate. I'll never have the effortless knack of 'clear glass' writing that Asimov does; nor could I build tension or evoke sympathy for an anti-hero like Donaldson.

But then there's this guy, Chris Onstad, who's responsible for what I think is the cleverest writing I've ever seen on the 'net. He's the creator of the Achewood comic strip (awesome in its own right), but like a lot of online comic writers I actually enjoy his blogs even more than his comic strips. His style is idiosyncratic, but I can't help thinking it's achievable. I could write like that if I really wanted to, and made repeated concerted efforts. At least, that's my theory. So have a read of his stuff, particularly this amusing little golf memoir, and revelations about his ancestry

A final thought: what a dynamic, thriving little blog this is turning out to be! My favourite alliteration for today is "predeliction for this particular pleasantry". Possibly the best thing that Alice has ever written; my earnest hope is that she somehow managed to slip that phrase into her thesis.

Two posts in as many days? I'm turning into Andrew*!

So I return, yet again, only a short day later.

Hobart has really put on some nice weather for us this weekend - it's been quite sunny, but not over-hot, so pleasant overall. True, it gets colder at night, but that happens. It's kind of like Adelaidean spring, if that makes sense.

But there's a lot going on down here - The Violent Femmes and Sarah Blasko are doing gigs over the next two weeks, as well as comedian Akmal Saleh, whilst there is a Shakespeare-in-the-Park version of Taming of the Shrew on too. May as well keep cultural, y'know? We also finished the first season of Arrested Development last night, so we bought season 2. But to string that joy out a little longer, first we're watching some Farscape, which is fun, if only to catch the Aussie actors in what superficially appears to be rather American sci-fi. Though Im tells me that soon it gets very good, and I have reason to trust her.

But the main purpose of this post is yet for more reccomendations, even after my last post's incessant raving, but this time for the newly released movie Stranger Than Fiction. You may have heard of it - I cannot praise it highly enough. It is the most textured, lush, heartwarming film I have seen in a long while. Will Ferrell is not everyone's taste as a leading man (Imogen in particular is not a fan of his comedies) but we both absolutely loved it, as he gives a superb, restrained performance, whilst still being genuinely amusing. The less you know about the movie when you see it, the more I think you will get out of it, so go see it now. It's worth it. Oh, and it also features Maggie Gyllenhal, Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman, who's always entertaining (I ♥ Huckabees, anyone?).

Oh, and another movie to see is Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, which is awesome in the very literal sense of the word - awe-inspiriing. It's also (at times) quite violent, so beware if you're squeamish, but it's worth it if you can stomach it. One note: del Toro has stated that despite the lead character being a child, it's not a child's movie, but rather 'a movie about being a child'. He actually wrote an interesting article on the movie (and some of his other films) in the latest issue of Empire magazine, so maybe have a look if you see copy.

But we're not planning to engorge ourselves down here on just films and DVDs - I'm about to re-read Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Im is currently reading her new purchase, 'The Pirates! in an Adventure with Communists' - how can it be bad??

But for now, auf wiedersehn, and we shall all meet again...

*except not.

Why oh why can't I remember my uni email password??

It's strange that I post on this blog more often when my only chance at the net is when I find a netcafe. So feel special. Or something.

So, Hobart. Still cold. Still windy. We did find different accommodation - thank feck - which makes work all the more palatable. Except, of course, when yesterday my 8-day old iPod froze. Thankfully, we work right next to an Apple store, so the kindly folk in there fixed it.

But at last, we can relax with the arrival of the weekend. We've spent most of our evenings this week watching the first season of Arrested Development (which is fantastic and I never realised how gorgeous Portia De Rossi is until now) and Tasmanian TV.

Speaking of TV, Andrew reminded me that I didn't blog about Heroes the other day. Most (if not all) of you got an SMS, but in case you missed it Channel 7 are doing an encore screening on Tuesday evening. But I cannot praise this show enough - everyone, and I mean EVERYONE I know who has seen it absolutely loves this show. Imogen had downloaded the first 6 episodes, and convinced me to watch the first one at about 11 o'clock one night before bed. I didn't get to sleep until about 5am. It's that kind of show. So watch it! Please. :o)

Keeping with the random ping-ponging of this entry, Im and I are likely coming back to Adelaide soon for both the Adelaide Fringe and WOMADelaide. There'll be a whole raft of stuff on at the Fringe, and bands such as Lior, The Waifs and Augie March (yes Andrew, Augie March) are all playing WOMAD this year. So we'll be over on the weekend of the 9th of March, so we should organise to do things. Indeed.

And lastly: Hobart is the home of the Errol Flynn Society of Tasmania. Bet you didn't know that, huh.

And so I yet again bid you adieu! Next time Gadget, next tiiimmmeee!

Sharing the love

Here is a piece of gold which I just had to share, especially given our predilection for this particular pleasantry. Does anyone see the similarity between the talking penguin and George?

Losing my (Blogging) Virginity

Yes, your eyes don’t deceive you, I have actually posted to the blog. I realise I’ve held off for a bit, and I apologise to everyone. Except Andrew. This is something of a novel experience for me, being the first blog I’ve ever posted. The only issue I have is that, now that I’ve actually started writing it, I have no idea what to talk about. That’s always the problem with blogs, the first entry needs to be full of introductions, and witty remarks on the nature of the Internet, and all sorts of things like that – when, really, all you want is to just finish the damn thing so you can get onto actually discussing things that you’ve recently seen that you happen to find interesting

In a way, it’s a bit like high school essay writing, all over again. You’ve got all these absolutely fantastic ideas that you’d love to include but, before you can start, you still have to go through the motions of writing a suitable introduction. My problem then is that I was never any good at introductions. So, I think the solution to this problem is simply going to be to ignore the entire concept of an (good) introduction, and just dive right in.

I figure my first post should mention the place I spend the majority of my days which, unfortunately, happens to be my work. I currently work full time as a Helpdesk employee for an ISP. Since I’ve just deferred my University studies for one year, so that I can save up a bit of cash, I’ll probably continue working fulltime for this ISP for the conceivable future

Working in Helpdesk is a little bit like being a dole bludger. Technically, you have a task that you need to do (Taking calls, answering customers emails, and generally being a good employee). Practically speaking, though, your entire day is filled up with various activities that you think will distract you from actually doing your job. So, if anybody happens to ring a helpdesk employee, and they sound a bit irritable, chances are, it’s not your fault, it’s just that you’ve interrupted their latest game of Sonic the Hedgehog.

If it sounds like, usually, we do no work; it’s balanced out by the occasional ‘special’ customer that we get. You know when you’ve got a ‘special’ customer, because there’ll be certain hints that they give – their phone number will have an area code of (07), they’ll say they’re from Mackay (Stretching out the ‘ay’ sound at the end for longer than should humanly be possible), and their name will either be “Dazza”, or something that rhymes with it. Customers like this are the sort of people who the Information Age forgot about. They don’t really understand their computer, and they’ve got no idea what the Internet actually is but, God bless them, they really need to have it. Unfortunately, it’s usually up to us to help them, which generally turns out to be a cathartic experience for all concerned. It’s nobody’s fault but, by the end of the conversation, we’ll have both shouted ourselves hoarse, cried, contemplated hanging up, and generally drained ourselves completely. During the course of the call, I’lll gradually turn into shallow imitations of myself, only capable of occasionally muttering obscenities under my breath in a vain attempt to solve the problem through scaring the customer into developing some basic level of computer literacy. It’s a hellish experience, and when the call finally finishes, I’ll often wonder why I bothered taking this job...

Then I’ll start playing Sonic again.

Hmm. I think that’s about enough writing for my first post. It’s not really what I wanted to blog about, but at least it’s over now. At some point in the next couple of days (or weeks, or months), I’ll blog some more, this time about some interesting things that I actually want to talk about. Till then, hope you’re all doing well, and I look forward to reading some of the other blogs that people put on here.

George is soft!