Archive for September, 2004

Schwing

Meat pies and steak sandwiches are my favourite fare when driving long distances. Recently my wife and I drove from Melbourne to Brisbane via the Newell Highway, and returned to Melbourne via Sydney on the Pacific and Hume Highways. All up, including the odd pee/fuel/meat pie/steak sandwich stop, we drove 3700 kilometres in a total driving time of 44 hours (Ok, I know, I love statistics). The best pies are in Albury, at a bakery near the KFC. The best steak sandwiches are in Parkes and Gundagai. As for Parkes’ steak sangas, well, there must be a big problem with heart attacks in Parkes because I’ve never eaten a more deliciously fat laden steak sandwich in my life.

On the rotten side, Inglewood, (deep inside One Nation territory in South Western Queensland) hosts the worst friggin meat pies on earth. You CANNOT microwave a pie in 3 minutes and serve it to a customer without giving them a spoon to eat it with. I wasn’t the most popular man in town when I actually asked for a spoon to quote “eat this slop.” As I drove out of Inglewood I half expected to be escorted out by old Toyota utes with beard wearing, gun toting motherfuckers riding in the back. That’s the feeling I get in most Queensland rural towns.

By the way, if you’re running Wordpress and have a problem with comment spam, go here and update the comment moderation box in your options menu.

Booth is a funny word

Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth. Booth.

If you say it a few times in your head, the word booth sounds ridiculous. I was thinking that today as I stood at a cardboard mini-booth thing and pre-polled for the upcoming federal election. I don’t have to pre-poll because chances are that I’ll do what I do on every single Saturday anyway. That is, get up at 7am, go for a walk and get the paper and then fart about until it’s bedtime all over again. I’ll probably have plenty of time to vote, but there is the off chance I’ll be somewhere else.

There were 9 candidates on the ballot paper for the seat of Batman (my electorate - which is the safest Labor seat in Australia). Apart from the obvious candidates there was a CEC nut and a Family First dude. Where did this Family First Party come from? Sounds like a very suburban Sydney type of Christian bullshit brigade thing to me. I declined all how-to-vote cards and voted using my usual ‘right to left’ numbering system. That is, 9 for the most conservative and working my way down to 1 for the most progressive. As for the senate ballot paper, I swear it’s got even longer. You could wrap a good feed of fish and chips in it!

We’ll see what happens I suppose. If your looking for something to do on erection night, I always have a monster of a BBQ and a piss-up.

Brisvegas

NO. I haven’t quit this crazy blogging caper. I’m just on a holiday of sorts right now. Last Friday the good lady and I jumped into the Toyota and drove 1780 kms up the Newell Highway from Melbourne to Brisbane.

Back soon.

Around and about

While I make my around Melbourne each day, I keep my eye out for a good photograph opportunity. I had time for 3 such opportunities today.

This plumber has a sense of humour.

I spied this on the wall of the North Melbourne Institute of TAFE, just up the hill from The Tote Hotel in Johnston St. Collingwood.

Maybe the young liberals are getting smart with their election campaign.

Religion

Somethingawful.com gets a visit from me every now and again. But only when I have the time, because when I get started I cannot stop reading the insanity that gets published. This week Something Awful ran the “Completely Factual Primer on Modern Religion”
(part 1 / part2). My favourite facts from the posts:

Based around the study of Scient, Scientologists are similar to atheists in that they do not believe in a divine creator. Interestingly, they do believe in an arch-fiend who goes by the name of Xenu and was trapped in a volcano by hydrogen bombs. They also believe in a form of Original Sin similar to Catholicism but involving possession by incorporeal aliens. The entire religion was created by L. Ron Hubbard as a combination of joke and moneymaking scheme and has proven to be one of the most lucrative religions second only to Judaism.

Presbyterians vehemently oppose the development of a space elevator out of fear that it will reveal their heaven is actually just an obsolete Russian communications satellite.

Islam - A beard is not required for the male gender, though any man who does not grow an impressive pudding-catcher must then don a great big black tent with eyeholes and pretend to be female. There are no female Muslims

Instead of giving live birth, Catholics lay eggs.

Watch your mouth

The BBC technology section has an article discussing the issue of online publishing and the law. A couple of years ago the Australian High Court allowed Joseph Gutnick to sue Dow Jones over an article it published about Gutnick in an online newsletter. Now a former British MP has sued a newspaper over comments posted by members of the public in an online forum. Watch that comments section!

One simple question

Heh! Here’s a good little website from the US. There’s a bounty (currently US$1000) to collect for the first person to ask George W. Bush how many times he has been arrested. I know he was done for drink driving after getting pissed with John Newcombe in the 70s but I’d be surprised if he was arrested for anything else.

The day my blog disappeared

At about 10am last Saturday morning I had had enough. I looked at my blog and mumbled into my vegemite covered toast, “Fuck you. Fuck you. Did you hear me? Fuck you.” I was talking to the monitor. While my blog was being burnt onto the LCD screen by minute electrical charges (that’s how LCD screens work don’t they?), I decided to pull up the stumps, burn the bails and refuse to add any more detrius to the already information-overloaded web. I deleted everything from my root directory. I executed a database dump and deleted the MySQL database. I even deactivated my email alias in the tamesapien.com site admin page. That was it. Game over. See you later. Kaputski. I commited online suicide.

As with most suicide attempts, it failed, which is now no surprise to you because you are reading this. I just didn’t dig the stanley knife deep enough into the wrists of my weblog. Well, that and I also later realised that I could restore the database. I couldn’t go all the way.

Didn’t have the guts!

I’m suppose I’m lucky that my blog is the only ‘issue’ dangling over my fairly simple brain. I’m not in debt up to my eyeballs, I don’t have to worry about where the next meal is coming from (just the next beer), I don’t need to walk 5 kilometres to get some drinkable water and I live a comfortable life in a great city.

As for the cause of this angst, well, it was petty. But not petty enough to prevent me from an online suicide attempt. I might elaborate later. For now though, it’s back to normal (intermittent) transmission.