nastybun

It’s been dark and overcast today, barely raining. Cars had their headlights on. I still wore my sunglasses. A conversation with myself follows.

“Why are you wearing sunglasses?”

“It makes the world seem darker, more oppresive, dark like my heart. It keeps people from seeing my eyes, seeing the tortured soul inside them. Keeps the anquish within, from spilling out into the world and bringing everyone down. It’s a sacrifice I make for the unwashed scum out there, though they don’t deserve it. No-one understands me. If my hair was longer, it’d be in front of my face.”

“… Are you taking the piss?”

“Yes.”

The nice thing about talking to yourself is that the responses are always timed right for comedic purposes, and always attuned to one’s own humouratic senses. Funny how many more people stare at you when you’re smiling for no obvious reason…

Apparently the price of butter has risen 700% in the last 4 years. This is bad, because it’s the reason why I couldn’t get some tasty, properly made pasta today. I shake my fist to express frustration!

There’s a bagel joint near my place. It’s called Bagel House. A bagel and cawfee lunch is possibly the greatest lunch I’ve had. If ever you’re in Rozelle (it might happen..) go there.

I thought there was more to put here.. oh well.

Remember this? Turns out someone is actually making a pac-man film. Horrifying, I know. It’s not the guys that made that frankly brilliant trailer, which I think is a mistake. Anything else would only be unfavourably compared to the masterpiece that is the original, frankly. I think it’s time for a letter writing campaign, on a scale the world has never seen!

I am now going to gush about a bit o’ softwares wot I stumbled upon recently. Upon discussing the drab and dreary boredom putting up with having the same imagine on all screens in a multiple monitor setup, a googling of different wallpapers on each screen led me to stumble upon something I had found. Bing bong billy bong. It was DisplayFusion, software that not only allows one to have multiple background images, but the sheer power of it conjoins words together. It goes beyond that though, there are hot keys to flick your programs about monitors, tile things, resize things.. alla that funky shiznat. More funky though is that it integrates into flickr (for those wot got an account there) and if you cough up the measly ten bucks for the pro version, you can have your images randomly selected on timed changes. So yea, if you have multiple displays and suffer from the not so rare and surprisingly deadly ‘Gee, having the same desktop background on each monitor is so boring, I wish there was a way to have a different image on each one, maybe two images that complement each other, maybe even two completely different images, wouldn’t that be zany, I’d be the talk of the town and the ladies really dig that shit, maybe I can put sanskrit on one of them too’ syndrome, then this is the product for you!

In other news, is it just me or does healthy eating really not satisfy the hunger pangs. I ate two oranges and an apple for lunch yesterday and I ended up hungrier than when I started. Not sure if that’s my body rebelling against it or if that’s just what happens, but a dosage of steak and Coopers down at the pub fixed me right up. Tuesday night is cheap steak and trivia night! Lotsa fun, last night we join forces with a couple who wandered in and sat at the end of the table we was at. Unfortunately our combined forces didn’t help as much as we were hoping and we only ended up coming fifth, but it was fun anyway.

Anyway, I’m off.. going to get 6 oranges and 14 apples… that’ll learn my stomach..

Orright, innit, insofar as hello, whatup, sandwiches.

I just ate some lovely spicy pasta what I did make the sauce for. Next time you make pasta sauce/nachos/chunky mincey stuff hunt down some (malaysian) sambal balado, in hot guise, and put in 2/3s of the jar. Dayam that’s tasty. Ugh. Groinal thrusting ensues. Hwhuh.

Whomsoever it is that engineers light fittings is a sadistic prick who gets off on making life difficult for others. Especially the domed ones that are pretty much flush with the ceiling. I have one here that blew, obviously it’s the main light of the four that are in my little joint, and it took me three separate attempts over three days to uncover the mysteries surrounding the inner workings of the mythical systems that retain that thrice damned glass dome that contains the light emmiting bulb which sustains my megre eyesight whilst sitting here in the dim corner of my pad. Turns out that one of the three retaining hasps is spring loaded, allowing me to yank it outwards, barely giving me enough room once the recalcitrant arm has moved to remove the cover. Shame that initial explorations by nimble fingers suggested a nut/bolt retaining system resulting in time wasting with sockets that are all too large and pliers that won’t fit between the dome and the ceiling to manipulate the fanciful hardware, and the only personal height elevation device I have is the dodgy as all hell plastic stool that seems to have been a free gift with the joint. (I found it in the fridge nook once I rented the place…) I’m sure you can now imagine the frustration I have towards light fittings now, and the elation I felt once besting the Laytonian puzzle presented to me by said fitting. Now, considering the fact that I have a spare bulb all ready and waiting due to the fact that I purchased a twin pack o’ light bulbs to ensure a lighted kitchen upon moving in, I should be in a position to beam wond’rous light upon all that I shift to ‘neath heinous light fitting. Not so! Due to hated fuckwittery, the light fittings in the kitchen and bathroom are bayonets yet the other two are screw fittings! Fie! I have but four ceiling lights in my humble abode, not a hard task to ensure compatibility ‘tween such units, yet the pettyness of idiots has ensured I go another night without the advantage of complete perception. I put it to you, light fittings are the realm of sadists and arseholes.

Turns out a pair of worn out thongs (footwear) are not the best things to go running in Who’da thunk it?! Still, due to my amazing adaptability, I managed to do it without damaging myself. If anyone asked, I’m brilliant. And that’s important.

Today we went on a guided foodish tour of Cabramatta. This comprised of a super tasty Vietnamese luncheon and wandering past various food shoppes. We were also assured of being offered drugs (decline, the quality is poor and prices high…) and one of our number being stabbed. Neither occured, which was of great disappointment. I feel we missed out on the full cultural experience on offer from our destination, and I hope that next time our hosts can organise the locals to come out and really show their full worth. Still, I’m told the next food related jaunt will be here in Balmain, which means it’s coffee, coffee and coffee to start with, followed by the 13 pubs that are within staggering distance of my place here. Should be a good day…

I’ve been watching a lot of Scrapheap Challenge lately, which makes me feel a lot happier with being a part of the human race. Teams of people who can create, engineer and construct things from crap to acheive targets all within 10(ish) hours. Massive <3 to thems, they is the peoples what are awesomes. Innit. Watch it, anyway. To the aussies, ABC2, 6:30 every day (weekends included). To the rest… if you can’t find them, lemmie know. I can provide if required.

Happy birthday to spam this month! Turns out somewhere around here marks the 30th birthday of spam. Ain’t that something worth celebrating! To mark the occasion, I’d like all of you to pass on any chain mail you receive this month to any and everyone you can think of, and make up half a dozen addressess at popular domains to see if you can spread the love even further! Remember to attach a link to the article (or to here!) to them all to make sure you spread the love properly!

In all honesty, who has ever heard of someone replying to some spam or at least gleaning some useful information from some? Someone must have done it at some point to warrant so much traffic (I’ve heard anywhere from 60-80% of all internet traffic… that includes all the porn), but besides that first bit of success, when has it been useful? What have you done for me lately? It’s just mental.

Car decision: I’m selling it.

I have GTAIV.. it’s great. The city is more immersive than any other digital creation, the characters are engaging and the gameplay is lots o’ fun. And no, I didn’t import the UK version to get hookers, although I think the OFLC (bunch who rate games here) are fuckwits for not having an R18+ rating for these sorts of games, the average gamer is in his late 20s, so on average they ‘protecting’ people who are either old enough to know better or who are already complete wastes of space so really seeing a car rock back and forth due to someone else getting into it isn’t going to change anything anyway. And before anyone mentions the fact that kids under 15 are probably playing it anyway, that’s a parenting FAIL. I’m all for heavy fines preventing the sale of these things to yoofs, doesn’t bother me at all. I object to being told that I’m not able to discern these things as being fictional. Ergo, fuckwittery.

We went and saw I, Ron Man today. I enjoyed it rather a lot. It’s not groundbreaking at all, and I’ve no idea how close it sticks to previous Ron Man cannon as I know nothing of it (except all the words to (one of?) the theme songs) but they did a great job of containing all the tech to believable levels within the fictional reality, inserting the CG into the live action, and giving acceptable levels of both fun and amusement. If you want some fun afternoon fluff, go see it.

On a similar level is Shoot ‘Em Up. That is the title of the film, and everything you need to know about it. The story is ridiculous, the bad guys farcical, the disregard for the laws of physics immense, and the one liners plentiful. Recommend to watch over beer and pizza. I even managed to enjoy it without those.

Hawaii’s Mt Waialeale is the wettest place in the world. It rains about 90 per cent of the time (480 inches per year).

That’s pretty damn wet. The driest place on earth is in Antarctica…

On walking about yesterday, about a third of the way in I somehow managed to damage something on my foot. Being a prefect specimen of blokeitude (guffaw) I continued on, but soon enough everytime I put weight on it it felt like someone wearing a stilleto heel was standing on the outside of my foot. It’s still somewhat painful, not sure if it’s any better because I’ve not tried to walk anywhere. Still, there’s a pub luncheon planned, so I guess I’ll find out on the way there. And then have something to numb it. Although it does seem to be better if I walk on my toes, that looks ridiculous. And it gets irritating. So I’ll just continue to ignore it and assume it’ll go away at some point.

There’s something wonderfully surreal about seeing someone in a faerie costume doing her grocery shopping, sitting at a bus stop and enjoying a coffee and cigarette at a cafe. It’s something that should happen more often.

Please look at this picture. Is that not the most amazing car interior you’ve ever seen. It has amazing exposed gear linkages, an astounding steering wheel, puffy smoking jacket inserts in the panels, and it’s just has this presence that makes it so brilliantly unique. And before you say ‘come on, that’s ridiculous, no car needs an inside like that’ please remember that this is from a Spyker C8, a Dutch supercar. Something to be seen in. I reckon that if you were in the line outside some exclusive nightclub being denied entry for four hours, you wouldn’t mind so much when some random bloke and is stunning bird (or the other way around) pulled up in one of them and wandered straight in. You’d reckon, if you were the type of person who’d consider standing in a huge line a wonderful way to spend an evening, that these are people who deserve to wander straight in. You’d be happy to be held up. You’d merely want to be them. Wonderful.

Please now see Exhibit B. Then pull out to see that it’s in an ‘SUV’ (I’ve always hated that idea). Techincally those links are to the concept, but if you head to the main Spyker page and find the D8 Peking to Paris you’ll see that it’s the same as the concept, only instead of vaguely inoffencive beige, it’s horribly vulgar orange. Ugh. I realise that these guys are Dutch and as such I’m contractually obliged to infer that they were influenced by some form of illicit substance at the time of designing it, but still.. whiskey tango foxtrot. Is that not the most ridiculous and vulgar interior to a car that you have ever seen? Stupid shiny chrome everywhere, only four seats possible due to the ridiculousness of it all, scaffolding to hold the roof up… If someone showed up to the aformentioned nightclub in this Spyker, you’d run over and punch him in the face. Hell, if Ghandi rocked up in one of these you’d punch him in the face. No question, he’d be in hospital shortly after exiting the vehicle. And no jury in the world would convict you. It’s ridiculous! We all know that these luxo SUV things are pointless, but this one really takes the cake.. and in the case my friends, the cake exists in all it’s moist, tasty goodness.

Apparently the guy that started the new Spyker (the brand originated in the very early 1900s) left due mainly due to the D8 SUV model. I’m with him. In all aspects C8 (the supercar awesome model) I’m with them, but the D8 should be spurned more than any other car available today. By all means spit on X5s, MLs, Q7s, all of those.. but scar and slash and D8 that you may see. Please, for the good of taste.

I headed out on my afternoon perambulation, as I am wont to do, but I got no more than 100 metres down the road before I was promptly rained on. Not being a ponce however, I bravely soldiered on. Also, it pretty much stopped after five minutes. What remained however were the soaked footpaths. For most people, this isn’t much of an issue. This is because most people are ponces, and wear sensible closed shoes when it’s raining due to some form of irrational fear of damp feet. I hate to think about what they do in the shower. Plastic bags and gaffer tape? Anyhoo, I choose to maintain my staunch support of the Thong. Ahh, so nice and free.. Just that small strip between my….

…

Sorry, I think you passed out there for a second. Not sure why, I was just talking about footwear. Anyhoo, the combination of my wonderful footwear and a damp footpath is usually nothing to be concerned about, except that the.. whoever it is.. council around here has decided to replace the good ol’ tarmac with these tiley things; nice, smooth, sleek, grey, very now. Very hip. Quite slick. If you’ve ever tried to walk on an ice rink… it’s not that bad. Essentially, I have nice smooth thongs (having worn then down nearly all the way through in some patches) and I’m walking on nice smooth wet footpath… I think you can see where I’m going with this. For the automotively minded of you, I’m essentially aquaplaning. This means that one must walk putting as little sideways force through one’s feet as possible, which isn’t all that easy. It’s all about momentum, which is fine until you have to stop or you come to a corner. Then one really looks like a complete tool. Then again, it must be said that anyone wandering about in the rain wearting inappropriate footwear and a giant pair of headphones probably looks like a complete tool anyway, so really.. who gives a toss. On the plus side, because they are closed ‘phones, I can’t hear what anyone is saying about me anyway, so even if I did care, I wouldn’t know. It’s wonderful. The other reasons to go with them rather than my little earbuds include not being able to hear traffic (extreme road crossing!), better sound quality, and not having to put up with a shitty little wire coated in super tenacious silicone stuff that grabs and pulls at everything it touches, and tangles itself so well that you’re most of the way through the hour long walk before you can actually use them.

The only plus side with this whole footpath skating scenario would be if I could actually skate that way but unfortunately, the sliding just isn’t predictable enough. On the plus side, if I fall over and injure myself due to my own negligence, I could probably sue the council people anyway. Except that I’m not a frivolous prick.

How awesome is this?! Here’s a t-shirt that contains a speaker that you can control from your pocket! Finally, life can have sound effects and background music! See for yourself:

Just imagine how classy you’d be! More excellent stuff here.

Just a shame they’re all made up…. I really want that door lock.