Dodgiest Joke Ever

Check it out, I just came up with it!

Why did the psychic cross the road?

To get to the other side.

Rock Off!

What a great night! Here's to many more rock offs to come!



















Heaps more great photos of the night can be found here. You shouldn't need a Facebook account to see these, but if you're having trouble, let me know. It's so much easier to upload photos to facebook than this blog, so from now on I'll probably just put most of my photos up on my Facebook profile. So you should all get accounts chop chop!

P.S. George, check your facebook. It's your turn in our scrabble game.

Worst. Cocktail. Ever.

You will need:
- 1 Large Hungry Jacks Coke
- Remainder of an almost-empty Johnny Walker Black Label bottle
- Remainder of an almost-empty Jose Cuervo Tequila bottle
- A dash of gin


Method:
Mix carelessly


Tasting notes:
It doesn't taste as bad as it sounds, but every sip makes your soul cry out in shame. By the time you've reached the bottom of that paper cup, you've died a little inside and your self respect has been obliterated. Cheers!

Quote of the day

"A small town that can't support one lawyer can almost always support two."

[Edit: I just realised this quote has added significance on the day that the C7 Judgement was handed down. The case has reportedly generated more than $200 million in legal fees. Go lawyers!]

A momentary diversion...

Wow! It’s been a while! There are so many things I could mention in this blog post:

I could mention the awesome Beautiful Girls concert I went to last week, but since there’s only this one dude who reads this blog - and I’m fairly sure he was at the concert - there’s little point.

I could pull a news story at random from The Australian’s web site and use it to illustrate how silly the Government and/or The Australian is. But that would be too easy, and I promised not to talk politics.

I could mention this game, but I think it’s just too addictive for you guys to handle.

I could talk about what a beautiful day it was yesterday, but when I start blogging about the weather I know it’s probably time to turn in my keyboard and join a hippy commune.

So instead of any of that I’m going to share with you the wonderful story of my first purchase over the Internet. Yes, tech savvy as I am, up until about a month ago I’d never actually bought anything online. This was mainly due to the lack of a payment facilitator, a deficiency which has now been resolved in the form of a Visa debit card.

Wanting to test out said card, I went post haste to the Achewood site, where I ordered all seven volumes of the Achewood comics in print. Transaction was effected through PayPal, and just a tip for all you non-Americans: don’t choose the ‘I want PayPal to rape me by way of their ridiculous exchange rate’ option. Choose the ‘I’ll take my credit card’s mystery rate’ option. Your card might still rape you, but at least there’s a sense of adventure about the process.

After I’d placed my order, the wait was an anxious one. Would my delivery reach Australia? Would it get through customs? Would Australia Post use it as a football in a game of parcel soccer (a sport I imagine they play in their warehouses)?

Then, on Monday, I got a note saying that the comics were waiting for me at the Post Office. Hooray! I retrieved them, took them home and read the first of the seven volumes straight away. Achewood is one of those series where the characters are really developed – it’s often hard to get the humour if you don’t have the back story. As an experiment, check out this comic, with the explanation that Lie Bot = George, and Philippe is basically a small cute child.

Achewood is gaining a lot of acceptance. One of the characters wrote an article recently for the Sydney Daily Telegraph (funny, funny shit), and they’ve been featured in Time magazine.

Graham Linehan, creator of Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd, is also a big fan: "[n]ot satire, not parody... Achewood is my current favourite thing. My friends are divided between those who love it, and those who stare blankly at each last panel like a horse being presented with a banjo. Those latter friends are under review. Sometimes I look in their eyes and I feel I never really knew them."

So jump on the bandwagon. Read Achewood from the start. Your brain will love you.

Another productive day at the office

I work hard. Today I read the entire 142 page transcript of the first AFP interview with Mohamed Haneef (warning: 22MB pdf(!)). What does that have to do with my work, you may ask?

Actually, if you DID ask me that, I'd give you a punch on the nose. It has nothing to do with my work, but it was quite interesting. Some observations:

- Haneef really doesn't come across as a terrorist. If he is one, he's also an incredible actor. It seems his greatest crime is to be related to some dodgy second cousins before an Australian election.
- The AFP interviewer treated Haneef fairly and with respect. No waterboarding here.
- How did this get leaked? Who stands to benefit? I doubt it was the defence team, as implied by the Mick Keelty.
- Taking away his Visa so he remains locked up is a fucking joke. If Allah wills it, we'll only have to suffer another few months of this ridiculous government.

Sorry for getting a bit political on yo' asses. I promise my next post will involve silliness and frivolity and/or a link to a softcore porn video on youTube (hooray for Dizzy Banana!)

Har Har Har

This is pretty funny, for those of you who are into the whole Takeshi's Castle-type thing.



Why don't we have any TV shows like this in Australia?

For Andrew

I decided you needed some extra practice in the finer points of Rock, Paper, Scissors, so I present to you this site - the World RPS Society.

Apparently, they've been "...Serving the needs of decision makers since 1918". No, really.

The site also makes mention of my Rock, Rock, Rock gambit, referring to it as the Avalanche gambit - "a relentless and devastating offensive maneuver, which requires bravado bordering on recklessness to execute".

No, really.

It's on, Donkey Kong!

I know you're all as excited as I am about the impending Rock Off. Here is the final line up of songs:

Chris:
Surrender - Medium
Less Talk More Rokk - Medium

Andrew:
War Pigs - Hard
Killing in the Name Of - Hard

...and of course Free Bird on medium to finish it all off and make sure we develop juvenile arthritis. Game on!

A Dilemma

Man, first blog post in ages... Where to begin...

Well, for starters, I'm a bit drunk... I also have a moral dilemma.... Just thought I'd let everyone in on that... Earlier today, I was quite ill, but a bottle of Canadian Club fixed that right up. Yep, a bottle. Technically, I shared it with a wisp of a girl, but she was very little (Hence, wisp), and so I poured her less and less as the evening went by. The logical flipside of that was that I poured myself more and more.

Given that I find her attractive, not necessarily the best solution in the world, but ah well...

So, I was driving home, from said girl's house, and I happened to take a bit of an odd route home (Flagstaff hill road, for the geographically inclined), and I happened to come across a roundabout. I stopped, as is the custom, and happened to notice a dog.

Or rather, the dog noticed me.

Namely, it attacked my car, several times. I beeped my horn at the dog, but this seemed only to encourage it, and flashing my head beams (it was attacking me head on) did the same. After a while, the dog got bored (I wasn't going to drive anywhere with the thing in front of me). It wandered off, and I decided to follow it, to make sure it went home. It got to the Hub Shopping Center (Home to the poor and infamous), and decided it was going to make its stand there, attacking my car again. I switched off the car, and the lights too, hoping to see if the dog gave up. This time, it didn't.

For one hour, I stayed at my car, waiting for the dog to leave, it kept on attacking the car. After the hour had passed, I switched on the car, and the dog retreated further inside the shopping center. I decided to hop out of the car, in the vain hope that I might simply be scared by it - it attacked me instead. I quickly got back in the car, and drove home.

My dilemma now is what to do. A normal person would just report this to the RSPCA. Those of you who know the story know that I have a checkered past with the RSPCA, at best. Nothing I want to go into on the bog, but I trust you all enough that, if you speak to me about it, I'll tell you the story. Anyway, they're not my greatest fans, and I feel the same about them. Nonetheless, someone needs to know about this dog, and they're the perfect people to help it (And punish the owner - no dog would be that violent without some massive abuse at home).

By dilemma, I don't mean dilemma exactly. I've already decided I need to call the RSCPA, and bear the consequences of my actions. I'm just searching for opinions on this... So, my question to the group is as follows:

If you were in my situation, and needed to report something, because it was the right thing to do, would you, knowing that you might somehow get in trouble as a result? Or would you leave the problem to sort itself out? Give reasons for your answer.

Until next time, adios!

Holy Cow, Batman!

Did anyone else just watch The Great Climate Change Swindle and subsequent debate? It was certainly an interesting night's viewing. I didn't think you could pack a studio audience with such a high concentration of flat-out whackos. Presenter Tony Jones looked seriously embarassed as he searched for someone - anyone! - that wouldn't say something off the planet.

For example, we learned that, much like the transformers, environmentalists are more than meets the eye. Apparently environmentalism is a cover for nazi eugenicists. This was a view seperately advanced by three different audience members. There were some left wing hippie nut jobs saying some pretty random things, too.

Still, at the end of the day, I think the climate change supporters came out looking like the more reasonable people. The real winner was the coal industry lobbyist, who said exactly the right things. She should get a big raise and a big energy-inefficient mansion.

Hopefully the entire program, or at least the debate (which was more interesting than the silly doco) will be up on the ABC web site soon. If it is, I'll post a link to it here. It's well worth a look. Even Kate stayed up for it!

Mmm... nachos

It was cold last night in Adelaide. It was so cold that when I got home from work I couldn't face the prospect of braving the elements again to secure some dinner. So I did the unthinkable: I tried to prepare a meal.

Unfortunately, it's been a while since I've been shopping and I was forced to work with only the ingredients I could pry from the darkest recesses of the pantry and the fridge. Having seen a fantastic episode of Iron Chef on the weekend, I dubbed my struggle to prepare an edible meal the 'share house empty fridge battle'. I knew I'd be racing against the clock. Soon enough my own laziness would get the better of me and I'd give up, settle down on the couch in front of the Simpsons and consume a packet of uncooked two-minute noodles.

Given the conditions, I'm reasonably proud of the result. I name this dish 'Nachos Improvisar'. You too can cook it if, one night alone, you find yourself missing a range of ingredients.

You need:
- 3/4 packet Doritos Nacho Cheese (open packet several weeks in advance for appropriate level of staleness)
- Chunk of gourmet red wine & garlic metwurst, expiry date unknown
- A sizeable portion of your flatmate's expensive fetta cheese
- 1/3 Jar of salsa. (whose is it? when was it opened? will it give me a horrible disease if I eat it?)
- American mustard to taste

Method:
Get a fairly large bowl. A clean one if available. Sprinkle a layer of corn chips into the bowl. Cut metwurst and fetta into cubes. Sprinkle some metwurst, fetta, salsa and mustard over the corn chips. Add more layers and repeat. I've always felt the secret to a good nachos is multiple layers. You don't want to enjoy the top half of your meal only to discover a bleak desert of chips waiting for you at the bottom with no accompanying topping. You should have left some topping to go with the chips at the bottom. But you didn't, did you? And now your whole evening is ruined.

Anyway, once layering is done, place bowl into microwave and heat until hot. Serve with that one bottle of Toohey's Old that's still in your fridge after your last party.

Needless to say, any variation on the above ingredients will improve the result. Plain corn chips would be better than cheese flavoured ones. Normal grated cheese beats the pants off fetta in this context. Metwurst- ...well, you get the idea.

The result:




The tasting:
It's certainly not the worst thing I've ever eaten, or even the worst thing I've ever cooked. True, the fetta clashes with the sweetness of the salsa. There's something just a little bit wrong about having metwurst in a dish like this. And in retrospect, adding mustard was just a mistake. But I ended my meal feeling happy, both because I was full and because I felt as though, in spite of the odds, I had used my own resourcefulness to triumph over nature.

Mixed Bizniss

I've been cooped up in my room like the timid introvert I am recently, and it's the fault of two fascinating diversions. I've created a 2007 edition of the famous Andrew Roff Best Songs Ever compilation, and it's pure listening ambrosia. (aside: I tried to export the tracklist, but iTunes will only spit it out as a poorly formatted .txt file or a poorly formatted .xml file. I need a stylesheet to get it on to a web page).

The other demand on my time is a new mod I downloaded for Civilization IV. It's called the 'Realism mod' and it's meant to give players a more accurate simulation of combat, diplomacy and technology advancement.

So far it's been fun if a little anachronistic - in 400BC, playing as the Chinese, I used my generals Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein to invade Japan. That's realism for you in this post-modern world, I guess.

In other news, I got the reading list for my elective uni topic 'Law and Literature' yesterday. It seems we'll be spending a couple of lessons discussing Isaac Asimov's I, Robot stories. That is so wicked. We're studying a lot of other cool stuff too, and other law students have said the topic's basically run like a book club. I already know what I'm going to do my assignment on: Arthur Miller's play The Crucible.

Guitar Hero News
Seems I got some dates mixed up in the rules I posted a while back. Song selections have to be in by Sunday 15 July, and the contest will be on Saturday 28 July (I'd said Saturday 29 July, which is just wrong). I've made the appropriate changes to the rules.

I was feeling confident about my chances, but my Playstation's broken and I won't get it back until next Monday at the earliest. So Chris has a golden opportunity to get a headstart on me. Song selections should be interesting...

I did this thing, so now you have to, too.

So I got an email from one of my cousins inviting me to create a Facebook profile. You may have heard of this site before. It's the usual social networking thang - think of it as a cooler, less ugly version of MySpace. It's good 'cause you can upload all your photos and people can look at them (I am aware of no other site that lets you do that.)

Anyway, I had a spare 5 minutes so I created a profile. Upon reviewing it, I found out the terrible news that I only had one friend (two if Kevin Rudd responds to my invitation to be friends). This is not ideal. So now you guys have to create facebook profiles so we can all be friendly. It's easy and fun.

Go here. Do it now.

I know I've said this before

But who said my Archaeology degree would lead to nothing. Today I got a phone call saying my job application for salvage archaeology work had been accepted and would I please like to start work as a sub-contractor early in August. So off to NSW I shall trot to excavate an old township first settled in the 1830's and abandoned in the 1860's, which shall soon be consumed by development work being done to the Hume Highway.

Not to fret though at this stage I'll only be gone for 4-6weeks depending on the weather.

Here's a thing

I've talked about the idea of nerdatious synergy before, but this really takes it to a whole new level. I like guitar hero, and in my weaker moments I like the Power Rangers, but would I ever let these worlds collide thus?



I'd like to think not.

I am a man

You probably know that already, but my manliness was reinforced today when I fixed my car all by myself. It wasn't easy, I can tell you, but being a man never is.

Now I'm gonna go drink a beer, make love to a woman and... do the vaccuuming. Thanks Kate and Laine. Thanks new chore roster.