Again

Got rid of the amazon links to the things I am watching/playing/reading etc...AGAIN. They annoy me, then I wan't to know what I was reading in July, then I realise the links tell me nothing, then I decide to write a program that will tell me and store these things for the sake of prosperity, then I don't bother sitting down and writing the thing as I am too busy watching/playing/reading, then I get bored and realise how boring everything is. I think I need to visit The Seer. Being omnipotent must be the most boring thing ever. The Seer tells a great story of his first (temporal) viewing of The Empire Strikes Back. At the climactic revelation scene, he screamed "Well, duh!". A 12 year old threw his Coke at him, but The Seer was ready with an umbrella. So the kid and a few of his older mates beat The Seer to within an inch of his life. I asked The Seer how one can measure the distance of one's life and why he doesn't use metric, seeing as he's omnipotent and all. He said he could do these things and more as he is omnipotent. I hit him with a spoon.

Which is all besides the point, really. Halo 2 multiplayer takes most of my time at the moment. The single player campaign is about as over hyped as Halo 1's. I wish they had a Story mode where you couldn't die and could kill everything in one shot with unlimited ammunition. It's not that I am bad, I don't have much trouble killing everything that moves, it's that I get sick of moving from room to room on what essentially room clearance. Boring! Eventually, I just start running through rooms ignoring everything. But the game often REQUIRES you to clear every enemy in a room before you can continue. For fucks sake, I just want advance the plot. The multiplayer is the arena for constant killing. But anyway, the multiplayer is great and sucks hours out of you. I especially like killing the dicks who constantly scream "suck my balls" through the communicator. Satisfying. My two favourite games so far (out of 50 or so, see the link above) were

a) the one where I jumped onto the gravity lift on Collossus right after a guy I was chasing, sprayed him with bullets at 100 feet up and finished him off at the apex of my jump (just as he was coming down) with a rifle butt. I actually landed on his dead, twitching body and emptied the rest of my SMG rounds for the hell of it. Satisfying.
b) in the pre game lobby of one session, a bunch of dicks called one of the players a bunch of asinine names based on his handle. He slaughtered the lot of them, winning the 25 kills within the time limit. I looked at the player v player stats at the end and he single handedly mopped the floor with the lot of them. Didn't touch me. Satisfying. I came second, by the way, by sticking to killing everyone else. It is best not to get involved when in gets personal.

Wonko the sane

Terrorists are being compared to Kubrick, thousands of people around the world are dying of war and hunger a day, Bush is pardoning chickens and assaulting Chilean security and most depressing of all, France loses to Argentina in the rugby…at home…in France… in the homeland of French rugby, Marseille…to Argentina…and all the news I can hear, read and download is about a soppy, delusional, career destroying talent show.

There are some at work who are claiming to be depressed at the outcome. So, a disgusting shift to conservatism, a war, countless dead, people being beheaded, refugees being interned in concentration camps, human rights going the way of the dodo and only NOW are you depressed? Simply because Anthony didn’t win Australian Idol? Because Casey will get the record contract? Let me tell you about depressed. I have not watched one episode of that hackery, nor engaged in a single conversation about it and have done all that is humanely and supernaturally possible to avoid any contact with it and I STILL KNOW THE CONTESTANTS’ NAMES. It’s criminal.

And the next person who asks if I can enter The OC competition for them, will get ninety thousand, two hundred and ten Australian idols shoved up their Melrose place. You know what I am saying.

It's a rant, I know, but so what?

A Texas (where else) man plans to set up an Internet Hunting Service.

The idea came last year while viewing another Web site on which cameras posted in the wild are used to snap photos of animals.

"We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that.' A little light bulb went off in my head," he said.

What on Earth can we do to stop these idiots? Why is the killing of sentient creatures for SPORT even tolerated in the 21st century? It is totally insane! Kill for food, kill for culling purposes, kill out of control pests. But why make a sport out of it? And before some intolerant, ignorant redneck tells me it is tradition: it is tradition on Pitcairn Island to rape minors, it is tradition in Sri Lanka for tribes to rape and pillage their way through villages, it is tradition to provide wealthy dowries with brides in India and in Saudia Arabia you need 7 witnesses to get a rape conviction. Just because it is tradition, it doesn't mean it is not completely and totally STUPID.

He said an attendant would retrieve shot animals for the shooters, who could have the heads preserved by a taxidermist. They could also have the meat processed and shipped home, or donated to animal orphanages.***

So, now we have a new tradition. Shooting animals over the net. Live animals. Because some redneck dickheads can not be bothered to get off their arse and go out and hunt for themselves. What's more, they are pointing out that this is a great idea for helping "disabled hunters". DEAR FUCKING GOD! Did I read that right? It's a good idea to allow remote murder because there are those who are disabled who want to hunt? Now, I am 100% certain that we are not talking about disabled people who want to take up hunting. No. We are talking about hunters who are now disabled.

"Oh geez, I really wish Billy-Bob hadn't shot me through the spine, making me a quadraplegic. OK, I was wearing my female billawoppalus camouflage suit at the time. But thank the Lord Almighty for technology, now I can be a hunter again. With just one twitch of my left eyelid, I can sportingly kill a deer from 1000 miles. I feel like a gentleman again." - Dwaine Johnson, Misouri.

"Man, I thought my life wuz over when I crashed me pickup after getting on the booze at the end of a productive day's shootin'. I lost both my legs and despite some scienteest fella saying that one day they'd build a wheelchair that can go cross country, I thought my huntin' days were over. But thanks to Worldwide Hunting Internet, I feel like a man again" - Jayce Armstrong, New Mexico.

What do we do? These idiots are the same ones who vote other idiots into power because of "values". What happened to the value of life itself? Why do we allow these idiots to kill for fun? Why is that not considered a sin? WHY IS THAT NOT ILLEGAL? There must be something we can do. Surely, we who are educated, we the scientists, the artists, the educators, the lawyers, the doctors, THE INTELLIGENT can do something to eradicate this stupidity from this world. Why do we sit back and suffer these fools? We can see the psychological shortcomings, we can counter their every argument, we can point to how things can be better with proof to back up our assertions. FOR FUCK'S SAKE, we know how to build nuclear weapons! These redneck, illiterate, ignorant, bigotted, hate-filled, gun-toting fuckwits are toting guns that we built for them. Why did we do that? What conscienceless fucktard was intelligent enough to design and build these weapons but so lacking in scruples that he gave them to those who only have enough intelligence to control one finger?

Oh, how it shits me. This destructive behaviour is so incomprehensible. The reason we can't do anything about it is that we would become like them. We would need to use hatred, destruction and murder to destroy hatred, destruction and murder. If there is a God, he is laughing about that one. The most beautiful paradox in His creation. To rid the world of evil, we would need to hate it and turn off our compassion and empathy for these clueless people. We would have to hunt them and kill them.

Perhaps we could do it over the internet?


*** Let's all put in to offer a reward to the first hacker who gets into this site and shoots the attendant. Who's in?

Another completely lucid post

I need to fill up some space. I use this site as a bookmark store, and quite frankly I am sick of seeing that picture I did with the guy shooting up. I hate needles, and I think the point has been made, in my mind at the very minimum.




But how to take up space with absolutely nothing to say? Why talk to myself at all? This post is not designed to be read, it is designed to be worn. Like a cashmir. From Cashmir. Or Ungutu.




The timetable for moving into the ChasDigs (that is, the new abode) has been bumped forward to December. I don't want to get stuck in a year lease that won't run out until 2006. I may be in Melbore by then. Or I may not be. But in the latter case, I will be unemployed again. It took 8 months to find work last time (although 4 months of that was detox/mental recovery). 8 months! Fucking ridiculous. There is nothing more soothing to the soul than not being offered even an interview to the lowest paid menial local government job. Makes one feel good. Great even.





How much space is too much about the right amount of space? How far in not too far enough? How dyslexic am I? I type what I am thinking, read over it and find complete words are wrong. So, instead of writing "right", I have somehow written "having" or something. And it is never a word I was about to right that slipped in there as I think a few words ahead of what I am typing. Doesn't make sense. Which is the way I like it. Sense is for those uncomfortable with entropy. Not having an answer or a theory or an opinion about somthing is bliss for me.





Not lunch time yet. Just past pistachio time. In amongst Green Tea time. Must get some work done, even though I spent the last two days in a flurry of activity and don't really have much to get on with. I work like that. Like a typhoon. Or a hurricane. Or a marmot.




Speaking of marmots, do I need any stationery? Could I be any more stationary? I haven't moved in 2 hours. I hate my chair. My phone will ring soon, I can sense it. It is its des-tin-y. "Produce wireframe mockups" is due from our web developers today. Where is it? Huh? I don't mind not having anything to do, but I do feel anxious when I am sitting around doing nothing waiting for others so I can do something. Oh well, good chance to get some meditation in. Ahhh, that's better. The trick to any ailment, especially anxiety is to target it and stare it down. Much like knotted muscles can be relaxed once you realise the pain is giving your mind an excellent pinpoint for sending the relaxation drones.



Why do I even bother writing this shit down? Why do I feel the need to write at all? I don't, but I find it intersting to go back and read what I have written. It seems to act as a placeholder for mental states. I never manage to write what I want, but the words do trigger the thoughts again later on. That is interesting. And given I have the memory of a bullet riddled, swiss cheese, sponge like sieve, memory aids are allright in my book.




How about you?

A new park for Sydney,

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting on plans for a new park for the centre of Sydney. Great idea. I especially like the artist's impression, it looks lovely. However, with my intimate knowledge of the area, I felt there was a couple of oversights in the picture, which depicts a vibrant 1920's era Sydney. For a start, the corner of Park and Pitt Streets does not and will never have so few cars. Even at 3 am, that corner is a miserable nightmare. I also took offence at the bright, sunny blue sky and the lack of drug addicts. Any park in Sydney is a great place for tourists to see our local wildlife in action. A positive will be that the traditional Sydney meeting place can now be a nice, brown, water deprived park, rather than the nice, brown Town Hall Steps.

Here is another artist's impression of the park at its opening in 2014:

This might come across as pretty strange.

It's Friday, and I have let the mental processes run amok. I don't know where I am, who or what I might be. If any of those.

Yasser Arafat. The Fat. Yasmin. What do I think about his passing? Not much. I defended and condemned him in two separate arguments with two or three (maybe four) different people in the last 24 hours. What does that mean? Two things:

a) I don't really have an interest either way. To be brutally honest, I could care less about Israel and Palestine's commitment to kill each other. To paraphrase some rapper guy, "I'll see you when you get there". But he said, then I said, then he said, then I threw a rock, then he called me a cunt, so I called him a fucking, fucking cunt and it was on. Where's the entertainment?
b) I like to argue.

And then what? Huh? You don't know, do you? You are expecting some kind of witty, well-written political rant with copious links to other sites and holier than thou, the pope and techno union cyber sloths attitude mixed in with some cutting insight into the nature of navel lint. This is a blog, after all. Well, give up your expectations, remove your attachments, run naked through city hall 'cause it aint gunna happen here, folks. Not on my watch, even if it is analogue. This blog plays by no rules, follows no leader and is less an aim. In fact, if it wasn't for the 18th Armoured Batallion of Angel Ants, this blog would have been torn down and shredded by now.

Who? Not you, I can guarantee that! This blog is the all singing, all dancing, plastic coated, digitally enhanced, cyber walled, automatically generated window into the portal into the viewing hole of your formatted, reinitialised, booted into a linux/windows NT hybrid created by Dr. Frankenstein's love child with Bram Stoker soul.

Lunch time.

Double Snake Eyes

Well, it's my favourite day of the year. 11/11. It could be a good day, or I might get killed. Who knows? Perhaps The Rapture will begin. All I know is that 11:11 triggers the obsessisive section of my brain. It is small, but for one day of the year I encourage its growth.

To kick off, here is a wonderful story of Australia's oldest man who turns 106 today. Plenty of other 11 references, as well.

Expect China to build a better missile, now that our venerable leader intends to continue with the ignorant missile defense shield.

Lest we forget. But what happens now that we have forgotten? We have forgotten why those before us died for our freedom - SO THAT IT WOULD NEVER HAVE TO HAPPEN AGAIN. That was naive.

The study of Wilfred Owen at high school opened my eyes to the power of poetry. I haven't come across a poet since who is quite as skilled. He was shot trying to cross a canal exactly one week before Armistace Day.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
-Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Here's a thought

Apple has been training those of us with iPods to be able to navigate efficiently using their scrollwheel. What if they replace the mouse for their computers with an iPod? The mice are already Bluetooth, the iPod will surely be Bluetooth soon. Instead of a dock, you flip a switch on your iPod when you are near your CPU, and it turns into a mouse. You move it around like an ordinary mouse, but you use the scrollwheel instead of a button. Apple, to me, has always wanted to have more than one mouse button, but the PC world thought of it first and Apple was miffed enough to be stubborn about it. Thus, they would welcome a new paradigm.

And surely the time will come when the iPod will be the location of all your files. You move from computer to computer, link your iPod up. I know the world has been going away from the thin-client paradigm, but that is a mistake. In the not-too-distant-future world everything will be computerised: walls, chairs and pets. It makes sense that the data would move with you, rather than relying on data moving any distance.

Blah, blah, blah.

Thank you Apple

The iMac G5 has arrived. It's all good...except it has wiped my iPod.

You see, there was never enough room on my old laptop to keep the iPod synched. So I was obliged to "manually organise iPod". But this new computer has more than enough room to keep the iPod synched. So, in iTunes, I copy the contents of the iPod to the Library. Except, iTunes doesn't let you do that. In case you are a pirate. Ok...

So, I try to download iPod Downloader, a piece of software that gets around this crazy system of control. Except Apple has gotten the developer's ISP to turn the guy off. 'Cause pirates might use the software.

Ok, I would really like to be able to burn a DVD backup of my tracks. It makes me worry that the iPod could be broken or stolen and 6 months of ripping every CD I own followed by 8 months of rating EVERY track, ALL 25GB of THEM would be lost.

So, I go to iTunes preferences and select the Automatic updating option for the iPod. It tells me that if I click OK, everything on the iPod will be replaced with everything in the Library. The wording is ambiguous, does it mean it will overwrite the same songs or everything? Now that I have the space, I want all songs on the Library, so I don't have to plug the iPod in everytime I want to use the computer to play music. It seems likely that when I press OK I will lose everything on the iPod. I have no choice, I figure, if I can't get the songs off the iPod I am going to have to rip all the CDs again anyway. But wait. Surely Apple engineers wouldn't write software that wholesale deleted 5000 songs only to replace them with zero? Surely they wouldn't punish a legitimate user in order to stop illegitimate users? Who are going to get around the blocks anyway? Nup. Its all gone. Over a year of ripping cds, 5000 songs rated. Gone.

Well, on the up side I have a use for this new iPod killing monster. I was going to waste my time editing some video, making my own songs, living the good life. That would have been an improper use of my time. I'll spend the next 6 months doing what I did for the last 6 months. It seems almost spiritual. At least this new bastard is quick.

Thanks, Apple. That's the last time I try and do the right thing by you. If you are going to punish me for being a pirate when I am not, then I might as well give you a reason.

Cities and Reunions

Reading this article on the importance of Global Cities like New York and London has got me thinking. It mentions Sydney as a Global City, the reasoning being that Matrix was filmed here. It also makes the point that New Yorkers see themselves as New Yorkers first, Americans second. Parisians are the same. Yet, I am not sure whether I see myself as a Sydnian (what is the collective noun for someone from Sydney, anyway?) and an Australian second. Of course, I am half French as well, but that would come third anyway. Given the natural interstate rivalries between NSW, Victoria and Queensland, I certainly feel I am NSW before Australian. In fact, when it comes to sport my priorites would be Sydney above NSW above Australia. I have no idea what I am trying to get at here. I suppose it doesn't matter anyway, as there is a good chance that come 2006 I will be Melbournian, or Mexican - the preferred collective noun for those folk.

The 10 year high school reunion went as expected in the end. It was a great piss-up, but completely bereft of enlightenment. My main goal of the night was to be less boring than the average, a goal I only JUST succeeded at despite the level being well above the normal level for a piss up. I suppose it was interesting seeing the defensive behaviour that alot of people seemed to have. Many seemed to have the attitude of "I dare you to even THINK about judging me". I judged no-one and took pains to say as little about myself as possible. I chose mirth as the mood. I think 10 years will be exactly the right amount of time to wait for the next one.

The Seer is detached.

It may have been Gonzo the Magic Frog who once told The Seer during a bog-based meditation session that the biggest problem with being left wing is that politics is a system based on fighting. To convince voters you have what it takes, you need to be ruthless, uncompassionate and willing to trounce others under your foot like so much cat vomit. These are good, solid right wing virtues. You can't win in politics by being fair, compassionate and full of sharing. It may have been Pongo, the vigilant penguin. The Seer doesn't remember. The Seer sees forward, not back. But anyway, at that insight, The Seer gave up all reality-based, left-wing behaviour and joined the Light on the Right. The compassion, fairness and sharing wasn't working for The Seer, anyway.

Which is why The Seer is hopeful of converting Chas to the Light one day. He's all Monky calmness and compassion and help othersey and doesn't do anything the help himself and make himself rich and powerful. The Seer tells Chas that unless he gets with the program and starts thinking of himself above all others, the oncoming apocalypse will crush him under foot. Wanko, the right-god of Hand, tells The Seer that the cleansing of the unjust is upon us. The Seer tells Chas that all Us-Thinking will be expunged from this realm leaving only the Purity of Me. The I. The One.

Chas tells The Seer to fuck off out of the bathroom 'cause he has to go.

Finally, I feel hate.

Absolutely, unequivocally, totally, fucking, completely, goddamned, spot on RIGHT!.

I may have mentioned this on this blog before, can't remember, but I tell a story of how throughout my psychological development I created a mental zone where I would place the people I hated. I constructed an entire continent, surrounded by guard towers, barbed wire, dogs, a moat with crocodiles and a sophisticated satellite laser system that vapourised any who dared contemplate escape. The largest psychological concentration camp for those who deserved hatred ever. It had divisions the size of states for separating the inhabitants into easily defined borders of bigotry. The workforce consisted of billions of people: guards, cooks, cleaners, dog and crocodile wranglers. On every corner was a torture booth, ready to dispense incredible pain on the evil inhabitants at any opportunity. The only law was my will and, in this section of my mind, all forms of depravity would be unleashed. Once completed, I hosted a gala opening ceremony, attended by all the dignitaries of my psyche and the gestalt cheered and cheered. It was open for business and my mental agents were hard at work finding suitable candidates for entry. Except they couldn't find any. Long and far and wide they searched, desperate in their attempts to find people to hate. However, despite bigotry, prejudice, ignorance, intolerance and hate being found aplenty, none deserved to be hated back. Eventually, I placed one inmate to justify the enormous cost of the facility. This man didn't deserve to be there, yet was condemned to wander the nation sized camp, twiddling his thumbs.

I may have to alter that story soon. Given the direction the world is heading, I may not have planned a big enough cage.

Am I missing something?

Why is Bush being associated as an elephant and Kerry as a dog? If you look at the graphics behind the Electoral Vote numbers on CNN and SMH, you will see what I mean.

Update:

The Seer is prepared to call it.

The Seer, reeling from his miscalculation about the capture of Osama, not realising the portents were simply indicating an appearance from The Beard, is prepared to call the 2004 US Presidential election in favour of George W. Bush. The Seer does not belong to the reality-based community. The portents and vision guides have indicated the spirit realm's affinity with George and his belief-based community. "Without faith, I am nothing", God says. "Without Tru Calling, I am Faith", says Eliza Dukshu. "Denny Crane", says Denny Crane. "CNN called it at 8:30pm USEST 4 years ago and was wrong, what makes you think you can do better, The Seer?", asks a small militant leprechaun from the Valley of Gold Pot(s). "What's USEST? Sounds like reality to me. I want nothing of it", says The Seer.

The Seer is also prepared to call the 2008 US Presidential election, FOUR YEARS BEFORE CNN!!!! The Seer calls it for Jebidiah Bush and his running mate Diebold Vice Presidentbot 8.0b.

The Seer has seen.