derekandkong

Reasons to hate my neighbour

2011-09-24T20:06:00.006+09:30

You know that Little Britain character, "Computer says no?" That's who she looks like.
The first thing she ever said to me was "you're a Bad Man!" Then never spoke to me again.
The reason she said "you're a Bad Man!" is because I reported her for mistreating her dog.
She insists on throwing her local paper out of her front yard onto the footpath.

End of Financial Year Report

2011-07-16T13:24:00.000+09:30

For the first time in over a decade I am completely up to date in all of my dealings with everyone. Even the tax department!

I don't owe anybody a cent, I have no unpaid bills, no unfiled tax returns.

I've even paid the ATO all the money I DIDN'T owe them but they wanted anyway as tax on money I didn't even earn but hadn't bothered to fill in their bloody forms to say I hadn't earned it. They say I SHOULD get some of that back (and we're talking $12,450 that I had to pay over the last 12 months so it's not insignificant) but I'm not holding my breath. I'm sure they'll find a way to keep all of it because they seem to love to screw me over.

By my reckoning, the ATO owes me about $8000 back from the above plus 3 tax returns totalling about $2500 = $10,500. A boy can dream.

What's the bet I get nothing? I'm putting the odds at about even.

Sick clothing for kids dressed to kill

2011-06-13T15:26:00.003+09:30

AN Australian company is selling baby clothes featuring Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden and Ivan Milat.
The range of garments, in sizes from 000 rompers for three-month-old babies to T-shirts for children up to 12, has sparked international outrage.
The Ivan Milat baby romper has a picture of his face and the slogan: "Australians Just Love Backpackers"...

Link to article & comments

Grumpy of Norwood Posted at 3:43 PM June 11, 2011

If I saw a baby wearing a Charles Manson T-shirt it would undoubtedly be the funniest thing I had seen that day. Seriously, the kids don't know who these serial killers or, worse still, politicians are. The images are meaningless without knowledge of the background story. It isn't corrupting them. It only means something to an adult viewing it and if those adults are offended then it only shows how thin skinned they are.

Comment 49 of 55

Smoking

2011-04-01T19:35:00.000+10:30

I'm 50 and have been smoking since I was 15.

I love smoking. I love thinking that my body cannot regain full consciousness until I've had several cigarettes and a coffee in the morning. I love cigarettes with coffee. I love cigarettes with whisky, wine... or any other alcohol. I love gathering with other smokers to chat and gossip when everyone else is stupidly working at their desk. I particularly love it when ex-smokers at work are having such a stressful day that they ask me for a smoke. I love that a lot.

I hate smoke. The smell of it disgusts me. I hate ashtrays, nasty smelly ugly things. I hate walking into my house and having to open all the doors and windows to get rid of the smell. I hate that all the white painted walls in my house are now a streaky, unattractive buff colour. I hate that there is so much tax added to cigarettes that it's almost unaffordable. Almost. I hate that I keep having to redefine what I consider to be "affordable". I hate feeling anxious when I'm down to the my few and having to decide what I can go without in order to get another packet. I hate that I can no longer smoke where I like - in pubs, restaurants, workplaces and, here in Australia, apparently, soon, in pretty much any public area at all even if it's outdoors. I really hate people who complain about smoking too. A lot.

I had a heart attack at 45. I'm still smoking 5 years later. Although this sounds like a stupid thing to do I am perfectly capable of justifying this with the argument: It took 30 years of smoking to block one artery, that artery has been unblocked now with a stent, my other arteries have all been checked and are fine. If it takes another 30 years to block another artery I'll be 75 and that doesn't matter because, being a smoker, I'll be dead from cancer before I get to 75 anyway.

See? Makes perfect sense.

Does anyone even use this shit anymore?

2011-01-27T18:13:00.001+10:30

No he answered incongruously.

Ask me anything. Yes, anything!

Life Tips

2010-10-28T19:39:00.004+10:30

If a woman says she's upset about X, it's not about X. It dates back to Q and you don't even know what Q is.
Obey the laws of mixology. If nobody else drinks Gin & Coke™, there's probably a good reason why.
When drinking, remove your cigarette from your mouth first to avoid ruining both your cigarette and drink.
You can forget things as often as you like - as long as you remember it when you actually need to.
Ibuprofen + codeine painkillers washed down with tequila are your friends.
It's tricky to drink while dancing in your chair to 80's pop, but not impossible.
To avoid hangovers, drink enough to wake up still a little bit drunk.
If you have long hair, tie it back before using a power drill. Seriously scary if you don't!
When crossing the road, look not only left and right but down, around, and possibly up.
Have just the right amount of alcohol that won't make you violent but enough to block out reality.
I forget
An empty glass is nature's way of telling you it's time to check the stuff frying on the stove.
Ginger Ale makes a nice change of mixer, from Coke™, sometimes.
Get pissed before you have your Drivers Licence photo taken so if you ever get pulled over drunk, they think you look normal.
If you would rather that dirty old men such as myself didn't gawp at you, try tucking your genitalia up inside your "shorts."

Thanks for the box of keepsakes Mum but it might have been nicer if you'd taken your suicide note out first

2010-08-03T11:28:00.000+09:30

Since Dad died a few months ago, Mum's been giving me lots of the stuff she wants to get rid of, sort of like I'm an Oxfam that collects from the door. Stuff of mine from childhood, stuff of Dad's she wants out of the house, general stuff that's been cluttering up display cabinets for decades...

A few weeks ago I was given a cardboard box that even she didn't know the contents of.
"It's something I packed for you in 1994 when I was going to kill myself and was wanting to sort out things for you to have that were important", she said, as if this wasn't in any way a disturbing revelation.

I'd left it in my car boot for 3 weeks. I mentioned it to a friend, Nat, a couple of weekends ago and she referred to it as an "Emotional Timebomb". I didn't really give it much thought.

I opened it the other day, mainly because I wanted it out of my boot.

Inside are lots of things wrapped in tissue paper held together with sticky tape that has gone brown.

First I found a couple of nice coloured glass wine carafes, then a china cup and saucer with, I noticed, a bit of paper stuck to the bottom explaining that it had been given to her by a lady in the flats we lived in when I was born. "Love this Derek, it's important" it said.

Then I unwrapped a brass pot that again had a note on the base saying it had been her mothers and that there was a lid "Dad might find later when he's sorting through everything."

Inside the pot was a piece of paper, folded, which turned out to be her 1994 suicide note.

"Please don't hate me" it said. "I am with my parents now and one day we too shall be together again".

It said other things too but I don't know what because I chucked it back in the box along with the half dozen things I'd taken out and the whole package got put out in the garage.

Isn't that a pip.

How much do you expect for Sigma wagon sale?

2010-05-16T10:46:00.001+09:30

I suspect I'll be lucky to get $2500. I also suspect it'll cost me close to $1000 in repairs before it's even able to be sold at all.

I'm not very happy about the Sigma.

Quick background for anyone else reading this. My father owned a 1983, 2.6L, 5 speed manual Mitsubishi Sigma station wagon. It only has 52,000km on it but that's because it's been sitting in a garage, unused, for about the last 10 years. It appears to be in nearly showroom condition.

Dad died about a month ago and Mum gave me the car. I collected it on Friday - had to jump start it but that's to be expected. So far I have discovered the following things in need of attention:

Tyres - plenty of tread but the rubber appears to have gone hard and cracked in places and so will need replacing.

Battery - although having been replaced a couple of years ago and never used, it now seems to refuse to hold a charge and needs replacing.

Gearbox - seems to have no synchro on 2nd.

Engine - sounds like a bucket of bolts being hit with a hammer when started. Once it gets going it sounds great but I'm worried.

Steering - Even accepting the fact that it doesn't have power steering, I'm sure it's not meant to feel as heavy as it does. It's almost impossible to wrestle around tight corners. This might possibly be related to the tyres. It also might not.

Fuel gauge - doesn't work properly.

There is also some problem that causes the car to stall when trying to go uphill, especially when the engine's cold. It just won't do it.

All of this I have discovered in only the first 48 hours of ownership. I don't feel like I've been given a gift so much as had a burden palmed off onto me. If I tried to sell it as is I'd be lucky to get $500. If I get it all fixed I might get up to $3000 if I can find some Sigma nerd. I suspect there's no such thing as a Sigma nerd.

Ask me anything. Yes, anything!

“I’m gonna frappé fuckin’ egg whites!”

2010-04-19T18:56:00.005+09:30

I could tell from the sound of him that he had The Look.
    Usually it’s hard to tell what they really say, I’m sure he didn’t really scream “frappé” or “egg whites” but it doesn’t matter. I could just tell from the sound of him that he had it, the stare which was both vacant and intense, focussed on a thought you could see would cause him a lifetime of pain and anger. The look of being somewhere else. A scary look, one you try not to get caught observing too closely.
    I went to the window, peered out through the curtains, past the locked front gate, and saw a solitary silhouette staggering away up the road towards the pub. I could hear the word “fuck” and its variants a lot, standing out among other words I couldn’t make out as they faded away.
    They always pick me when I’m out. The person who might understand them, the person to whom they should explain, or ask to explain to them, something they have now decided is happening. The person who might give them money for a phone call or cigarettes or alcohol, who offers no threat because I’m passive looking, the person who might not judge them badly because I look like a hippy. The person who might be a soft touch because I guess I must look like one.
    There are some regulars with The Look that I see almost every day. Until recently I knew none of their names and so I gave them my own, which I would share with friends, who laughed. The Dwarf and Lurch were the most visible. I needn’t bother describing them, the names already do that.
    One evening a friend and I were having a beer, alfresco, among a group of empty tables and chairs on the pavement between a pub and a busy intersection. The Dwarf staggered around the corner, spotted me and headed straight in my direction in his own peculiar swerving way. I was, as usual, smoking while gratuitously looking like a non-threatening hippy, so I saw it coming.
    “Fuck off Milo!” came a female voice from behind me before he had time to speak. I looked at my friend Nat and knew at once that it hadn’t been her. She was laughing at something behind her. I looked further around and there, stopped at the side of the road was a police car with a young female officer leaning out of the passenger side window. She yelled, again, “Fuck OFF Milo!” as I stared at her, open mouthed and dropped of jaw. So now I know that The Dwarf is called Milo.
    He asked me for a light, I gave him one. The lights went green and the police car drove off. Milo weaved away. Nat went inside for another round of beers. I walked three doors down the road and hid the glasses from the last round on my front lawn, came back and resumed my seated position before Nat returned. The perfect crime.

formspring.me

2010-03-04T19:36:00.001+10:30

If you could be anyone famous who would you be and why?

Princess Diana because she's dead and yet still manages to tweet.

Ask me anything. Yes, anything!

formspring.me

2010-03-04T19:34:00.001+10:30

Chat roulette or Cam4.. which do you prefer?

The former made me feel dirty and the latter I've never heard of. I'm old. Must I keep up with every new thing?

Ask me anything. Yes, anything!

formspring.me

2010-03-04T19:32:00.001+10:30

have you done anything that you are truly ashamed of and if so, what is it?

Yes I have, three things and I'm not really sure I can share two of them because they involve genuine crimes and, in one case, astoundingly disgusting behaviour.

The third, which is the worst anyway, was telling my girlfriend, with whom I was living in England at the time, that I had to come back to Australia to sort a few personal issues and that I'd be back in 6 months... and then dumping her on the phone when I was safely back at home.

I've never forgiven myself for that one, even though she has.

Ask me anything. Yes, anything!

formspring.me

2010-03-04T19:27:00.001+10:30

Pot or Booze? What makes you more jovial?

The trick is actually striking the right balance of both. It also depends a lot on WHAT pot and WHICH booze.

For example, some smokes put me to sleep, others make my giggle and some lead to guffaws. To further complicate things, the delivery technique also has an effect. Joints mixed with tobacco lead to a heavier eyeliddedness than pipes or bongs without tobacco. Cookies bring on a more all-over body stone experience.

Gin makes me happy but wine just makes me tired and often headachey. Usually I stick to spirits because I can drink those endlessly without too many visible effects unless it's Tequila, in which case I come over all Neanderthal.

In answer to your actual question though, I guess it's Pot. I've had some of the silliest times of my life on the stuff.

Um, not that I smoke it of course. This is purely an intellectual exercise because otherwise I'd be admitting to something illegal.

Ask me anything. Yes, anything!

formspring.me

2010-02-02T21:58:00.001+10:30

have you ever stuck anything up your nose? asking all the hard-hitting questions aren't I? :P

In the 80's, yes. It was quite the thing to do. I loved a certain substance that went up my nose so much that I decided never to do it again. So, after the next couple of times, I didn't.

Ask me anything. Yes, anything!

formspring.me

2010-02-02T20:25:00.001+10:30

aside from brandishing a meat cleaver occasionally, do you consider yourself a violent man?

Nope. Not to people or animals anyway.

I do, however, have a habit of smashing mechanical or electronic devices to smithereens when they malfunction often enough to annoy me.

I even made a very nice sculpture out of the bits I swept up of an old portable CD player by bolting them to a plank and framing it.

Ask me anything. Yes, anything!

formspring.me

2010-02-02T20:02:00.001+10:30

indulgence of choice?

Hourly indulgence: cigarettes.
Daily indulgence: crisps. Love 'em (except Salt & Vinegar or BBQ)
Bi-daily indulgence: Whisky & Coke™.
Half weekly indulgence: Marijuana.
Weekly indulgence: Everything above plus chocolate and ice cream.

Ask me anything. Yes, anything!

formspring.me

2010-02-02T19:00:00.001+10:30

Would it be wrong to contra off the neighbour for a bang?

Look, we've had this discussion and I don't fancy her! I just don't. Honestly. I stand aside, she's all yours.

Ask me anything. Yes, anything!

formspring.me

2010-02-02T18:50:00.001+10:30

oh crap this isnt a chat thing...

Would you care to state that again in the form of a question?

hello?

That's a funny sort of question.

Ask me anything. Yes, anything!

formspring.me

2010-01-31T10:35:00.001+10:30

is there any food which is not improved by deep frying?

My initial reaction was to respond: yes, salad. Then I thought of Chiko Rolls and realised that such an answer would be wrong!
So, no. There is not a food on this planet that does not gain something from the process of being boiled in a mixture of Beef Dripping & Lard.

Ask me anything

formspring.me

2010-01-30T17:16:00.001+10:30

If you could look like anybody, who would it be?

Apparently I used to look like Dave Stewart of The Eurythmics in the 80's. In the 90's I looked like John Lennon, at least according to the annoying teens who followed me around Liverpool screaming "LOOK! It's John Lennon!" outside Wimpy's. Now I just want to look like myself - but 20 years ago.

If you had to give up one favorite food, what would the most difficult?

Crisps!
Not chips. Chips are hot things, crisps are not. We need different words for different things. Only the British understand this.

Ask me anything

Internet Filtering

2009-12-18T12:04:00.001+10:30

Dear Senator Conroy,

While there are very few people who would complain about action being taken against the availability of child pornography, it seems the vast majority of informed people agree that the proposed internet filter is simply not the way to go about it. To proceed with this action will have very little effect against the obvious primary target, as such material is apparently spread largely though Peer to Peer (P2P) networks and other methods which would be unaffected by the filter.

It is also reported that targets for the filter are to include other material deemed unfit, or "unclassifiable" by the government. I'm afraid that most people, myself included, do not consider censoring material available to the rest of the world to be part of a democratic government role. In fact it would be a disgusting perversion of the that role to start bocking access to anything that it considered unfit without first gaining absolute agreement from the citizens it is elected to serve on what exactly this material should be. And I mean 100% agreement from all citizens.

Nobody is going to publicly support blatant child pornography, so you'd think the blocking of such material would gain this absolute agreement but, as evidenced earlier this year with the outcry against legitimate, artistic photography of children, even this broad heading contains grey areas. It is extremely important, essential even, that the arbitrary judgements of a few do not become entrenched as an absolute ruling on what is and isn't suitable for the entire population.

Governments are elected to run things. Finance, health care, infrastructure, etc. They are not elected as a moral minority bent on promoting ignorance on matters such as euthanasia, drugs, religion or any other topic you may consider yourselves qualified to decide upon. Nor should it be governments' role to act upon such judgements by restricting access to any side of any debate. No government, or minority group of any kind, is qualified to make such decisions except in the most obvious cases which everyone agrees on. And let's face it, there are very few things that everyone agrees on, if any.

There are also the widely argued points of the slowing down of the internet which this filter would cause, and other technical aspects which I freely admit I am not qualified to argue about. The problem is, however, that neither are you. Testing of the system has been limited and the promised public consultation process has been limited to a few details which do not include the central issue of whether or not to even have a filter at all. This is unacceptable and I remind you that this is a democracy. You are our elected govenrment, not our nanny.

Yours sincerely,

Derek Armsden

Mr & Mrs Bogan do a backflip

2009-11-17T17:47:00.003+10:30

So far this year, from January to October, we have averaged 33.34mm of rain per month. The long term average for this period is 39.48mm per month. That's 84.4% of average and, given the nature of the word 'average', that isn't such a huge discrepancy. Not enough to continue to warrant the label 'drought'. Last year, over the same period we only had 24.74mm average per month, only 62% of the long term average. So that was a drought. The drought is over and has been since March when we came within a few buckets of the average, and we've been nearly at, or even comfortably above, average rainfall levels almost every month since.

I mention all of this because I'm sick of hearing the word drought bandied about as an excuse for water restrictions, which I'm also sick of. In fact, I'm not only sick of water restrictions, I'm angry about them. It's not that I care about watering my garden, I rarely bothered even before I wasn't allowed. It's not about cleaning my car either, who cares about that? It's simply that I always get angry about stupidity, and deliberate and misleading stupidity by people in authority makes me want to start growing a rain-forest in my garden just to be conspicuous in my displeasure.

We can't use sprinklers, we can only use hoses in certain hours on certain days, we can't wash cars... we can't 'waste' water. It seems fair enough until you bother to look at the statistics and discover that domestic use accounts for only 9% of total water usage. Less than 1 tenth. If every household in the state obeyed every restriction there might be, oh, let's be generous and say a 25% saving, which would mean a whopping 2.25% saving to the total usage for South Australia. In other words, not enough to have any effect. At all.

Read any of the reader's response columns on the news sites and you'll notice what I think is An Interesting Thing. When the restrictions were put in place the overwhelming response was anger at the inconvenience. As the 'drought' went on and more restrictions were placed upon us some people still grumbled, but they were increasingly met with hostility from those who were doing as they'd been told. An almost vigilante mentality crept in against those who were seen to flout the regulations, or even simply complain about them.

This week there was an announcement that some of the restrictions are being lifted and the dominant reaction to this was, again, anger. Anger at the Government for letting us use more water!

This represents a complete 180° turnaround in the attitudes of Mr. & Mrs. Bogan. So brainwashed have they become that, instead of feeling pleased at being thrown a small morsel of fruit from the whole tree they used to own outright, they are now convinced that using water for things like gardens is frivolous and should never be allowed, no matter how much water is available. It's absurd. The reasoning seems to be that they are now being robbed of their right to feel superior to those who ignored the restrictions all along.

They've not been given more water, they've had their moral supremacy kicked out from under them.

NASA ready to 'bomb' moon in water search

2009-10-09T17:49:00.002+10:30

SCIENTISTS at NASA will tonight discover whether their unorthodox approach to discovering if there is water on the moon will pay off.

The space agency will slam a satellite into the moon and study the resulting debris to see whether there is water near the surface.

The spacecraft will hurtle towards the moon at roughly 9012km/h, with a second satellite following it to record data from the ensuing celestial dust cloud.

Full Story

This is pathetic. America gets its nose put out of joint because someone else claims to have discovered something that, for reasons I don't understand, is considered to be important. To save face, they throw millions of dollars at it to be able to claim ownwership of this discovery. It's pointless. Who cares? Speaking of ownership, who or what gives them, or anyone, the right to go around shooting projectiles into the surface of something that they don't own? It's not their moon, why should they be allowed to go around vandalising things that don't belong to them? Annoying bloody Americans.

Call to end free news

2009-09-11T11:56:00.006+09:30

Article from: The Advertiser

DREW CRATCHLEY
September 11, 2009 12:01am

THE "misappropriation" of online newspaper content by rival media companies and internet search engine providers is the major challenge facing print media.

APN News & Media chief executive Brendan Hopkins also yesterday joined global media giant News Corporation – publisher of The Advertiser – in saying publishers should charge for access to online articles generated by newspapers.

Mr Hopkins said charging for online content would not be controversial if publishers offered high-quality unique content...

Mr Hopkins singled out search engines for particular criticism, saying their business models had been key in promoting the notion that journalism content was "free".

"To use an analogy, I see search engines as breaking into our homes, itemising the contents, walking out and listing everything for everyone to see. And they get money out of that process," he said.

"The only problem is, I don't see any revenue being paid directly from Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft in our company profit-and-loss accounts."

Full Article

Grumpy's Comment:
I expect we'll see a lot more of these 'stories' on Rupert's media outlets as they prime us for the concept of paid access to their sites. Sure, today they're only saying other news sites should be paying but they have already expressed a desire to make their news sites paid subscription based to the public as well.

However, if Google etc. are to be accused of breaking into their homes and taking the contents, surely providing RSS feeds amounts to leaving the key in the front door under a sign that says "come in and take our stuff". I know aggregators don't need RSS feeds but if you've already left the front door open, obviously it's no big deal if people come in through the windows as well.

Also, if this site and its sisters are to claim property rights over their contents, they should likewise be paying YouTube, Twitter, etc. for the huge amount of content gleaned freely from those sources. There are plenty of much better sources of news than this groups sites. In fact, almost every other news site has better content than this one.

I only come here for a laugh at the stupid stories anyway so I can do a Grumpy rant about them!

Kidnapped Californian girl kept as a sex slave for 18 years

2009-08-29T09:43:00.004+09:30

A CONVICTED rapist accused of kidnapping a girl and keeping her hidden in his backyard for 18 years has told US media he's turned his life around, and has pleaded for people to hear his "most powerful, heart-warming story"...

In an interview with local TV station KCRA 3, Garrido asked people to wait for his side of the story about what happened in the house.

"You are going to be completely impressed," he said.

"It's a disgusting thing that took place with me at the beginning. But I turned my life completely around and to be able to understand that, you have to start there."

People close to Garrido, who owns a business called God's Desire, said he became increasingly fanatical about religion, bursting into song on random occasions and claiming God spoke to him through a box.

"What's kept me busy the last several years is I've completely turned my life around," Garrido said.

"And you're going to find the most powerful story coming from the witness, the victim - you wait. If you take this a step at a time, you're going to fall over backwards and in the end, you're going to find the most powerful heart-warming story."

Full Story

If someone claims that "God spoke to him through a box", religion is undeniably a part of the story, although this is most likely a case of an insane person latching on to religion as part of his delusion. From what is quoted of his TV interview, "you're going to find the most powerful heart-warming story", he's probably a born-again Christian with a story to tell about Jesus becoming his personal saviour. If this led to the victim being freed, this might just be one of the very few examples of religion leading to a positive outcome. Do not, however, interpret this as me supporting religion, this story actually illustrates the sort of person who gets sucked in by it - unstable nutjobs.

Secret Gardens 3

2009-08-08T13:40:00.005+09:30

Photographed by holding my phone camera at arms length to peek over peoples anoyingly high fences.

Large Hadron Collider to restart at lower power

2009-08-08T11:57:00.004+09:30

THE giant particle collider built to probe the origins of the universe will restart in November at a lower energy level following its shutdown last year.

The announcement is the latest in a series of delays in restarting the Large Hadron Collider after it overheated just nine days after its inauguration last September.

The $11.2 billion machine is designed to reproduce conditions just after the Big Bang that scientists believe created the universe.

Full Article

In 100 years time the Big Bang Theory will look as naive as Creationism does today. I have no idea what the real answer is, nobody does and I doubt we ever will. Does it matter? No. We're stuck with a mentality that says there has to be an answer, and that if something exists it must have started to do so at some time. I'm sure that's a flawed starting point because you get obvious and simple arguments like "but what was there before that?" It's like the idea of an infinite universe, "but what's beyond it?" Again, does it matter? No. But I have no issue with people trying to find out, that's what we've always done and always will. We're just nosey and I like that about us. Whatever they manage to work out with this great big toy probably won't solve the riddle of the universe but hey, it might inspire a great new iPhone Application, or an oven... or, more likely, a bomb or something nasty.

Organic food - fad or phenomenon?

2009-07-31T10:47:00.008+09:30

THE organics industry has been dealt a hefty blow by the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency's declaration that organic food is no healthier than ordinary food.

The ruling follows the world's largest study into the subject.

It also backs up the view of other bodies, including the British Nutrition Foundation and numerous Australian organisations, that organic products are no better for us than other foods.

Full Article

What everyone seems to have failed to mention is the one factor that I, and many others, find to be the most important in our choice of produce. It's not about nutrition or health at all. It's about FLAVOUR! When was the last time you ate a cheap supermarket tomato that actually tasted of anything? I couldn't care less about the nutritional value of the slices of bacon and the egg that I put in a sandwich, I just want the result to taste great - and that's not going to be the case if I choose the vacuum sealed cheap bacon in slime from the racks and the cage eggs. I buy organic or free-range for items that have to stand up and be tasted, because where's the pleasure in eating textureless pale rubbish that tastes of nothing?

Secret Gardens 2

2009-07-25T15:07:00.008+09:30

Yes I do realise that this could constitute a gross invasion of privacy, but it's fun!

If, by some random and very unlikely sequence of events, you happen to see your own Secret Garden posted here and would like me to remove it, just say so and I will.

Secret Gardens

2009-07-25T14:42:00.004+09:30

In an older blog on another network I would sometimes post pictures of things I couldn't see on walks around my neighbourhood.

"How does that work?" I hear you ask in your eternal search for knowledge and understanding.

Simple really. Lots of people have really high fences and walls so their front or back gardens, yards or tips can't be seen from the outside. I found myself wondering what was over these fences and realised that a phone camera held aloft as far as my arm would reach could easily photograph the hidden scene. Then I could just look at the screen on my phone to see what was over there and, if it was interesting enough, I could post them on my blog!

So I've decided that I miss doing this and am starting again from today. First up is the view over the fences either side of my own back yard to those of my neighbours, and then a couple of others I shot on the walk down to the shoe shop at the end of my street and back. Then I'll repost all the ones from my now defunct old blog in another series of posts after that.

Enjoy!

Sporting groups cry foul over alcohol sponsorship ban

2009-07-18T12:16:00.006+09:30

The Daily Telegraph

July 18, 2009 12:01am

No solution ... AFL boss Andrew Demetriou says a propsed ban on alcohol sponsorship would cripple football.

* Plan would devastate sport, say codes
* Wouldn't make a dent on problem drinking
* Government tight-lipped on proposal

BANNING alcohol sponsorship and advertising would devastate sport and not make a dent on problem drinking, major sporting groups said yesterday...

Full article

I'm sick to death of living in a nanny state where those in charge concentrate so much effort on trying to modify human behaviour with regard to products that are perfectly legal to produce, purchase and consume. The role of government is to administer the finances and laws of the land, not to tell us how to live our lives. They seem to think, naively, that if you keep information from the public as to what choices are available then they will cease to seek out the things that they want. This is obviously not the case. Everyone knows alcohol exists, everyone knows where it can be purchased and anyone who wants to avail themselves of it will continue to do so. All that will be changed by banning alcohol advertising is the amount of time people spend in bottle shops choosing what they want to buy. If you know what you want you ask for it, if you don't, you browse. By causing people to spend time browsing they will actually have the reverse effect of what they are trying to achieve. It's a retailers dream to have uninformed customers wandering about looking at their wares. The more time people spend looking, the more they buy. So sport suffers for no positive outcome. Stupid.

VIDEO: Hoon drag race

2009-07-03T11:17:00.010+09:30

Look at this video:
VIDEO: Hoon drag race

Link to the story:
Hoon drivers post illegal street race videos on YouTube

HOON drivers are laughing in the face of authorities, posting an internet video showing an illegal street race in front of a southern suburbs police station.

A video posted on website YouTube just four days ago shows a young male driver street racing in front of the Christies Beach police station on a wet and slippery Dyson Rd at night.

The video creators and hoon driver reflect precisely the dangerous drivers Road Safety Minister Michael O'Brien describes as a "cohort of highly irresponsible, predominantly young, male drivers" who are responsible for causing a "bedrock" limit to reducing the state's road toll.

The video shows two high-powered cars at traffic lights directly outside the police station, revving engines in a bid to entice a drag race.

Cars and a truck pass in front of the ready-to-race vehicles, the red light holding them on their start line. The road ahead is wet from rain, is poorly lit and narrows to a single lane shortly beyond the intersection.

The camera records an expression on the face of the hoon driver before turning to the opponent's rear wheel – which spins madly as the lights go green and the race starts with a screech and roaring engines...

My (Grumpy of Norwood) comment:
Rubbish! That video shows nothing more than a great demonstration of how to make something seem more exciting than it really is with the use of sound. At no stage did the other cars wheel "spin madly". It merely started to rotate as the car went forward and we hear a squealing noise that suggests a spinning wheel. The car in which the filming was done never appears to go particularly fast, it just makes a lot of noise - and I'm not convinced that sound wasn't added later either. Total beat up story based on absolutely no evidence of anything actually going on. Watch it again with the sound turned off and see how exciting it seems then.

Email scammers target taxpayers

2009-06-28T00:19:00.006+09:30

A link

Email scammers target taxpayers
By Eoin Blackwell
AAP
June 26, 2009 02:03pm

* Emails promise $250 with tax return
* ATO says it "never sends these emails"
* Online scammers in stimulus grab

CYBER criminals purporting to be the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) are using a sophisticated email scam involving personal tax returns to fleece consumers, a computer security company says.

The scam ATO email, which promises a $250 bonus on top of a tax return, links the taxpayer to an online form that asks for personal details including ATM pin, credit card details and tax file number."

My (Grumpy of Norwood) comment:
Oh My God. This article cannot be serious! I got that email and it was the least sophisticated attemp at fraud I've ever seen. It was in Courier, badly centred, English was obviously not even the writer's 2nd language. I laughed. I called people in from other offices to show it to them so they could laugh as well. And the link didn't even work! Nobody is going to be fooled by this silly scam.

My job is now keeping me awake at night

2009-06-18T01:21:00.003+09:30

It's after 1am and I can't sleep because I'm so frustrated, bewildered and angry about a ridiculous thing that's going on at work. It's entirely caused by ignorance, at least it's not malicious or intentional, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm stuck with it.

OK, so let's try to sort this out. I've been asked to do a logo design for a housing development. Great, I love designing logos. They are the most challenging and rewarding task for a designer. Get the logo right and everything else becomes easy. The logo sets the type, colour and style basics for everything that follows - stationery, advertising, website, brochures - they are all so much simpler to design if you nail the logo first. You get to create a consistent look for the client that becomes recognisable in the marketplace, which helps everybody. It makes it easier for the client to reach the target audience for their product, it makes it easier for the audience to recognise the client's brand, it makes it easier for the designer to produce everything required because the logo sets the style for it all.

When a client comes in and says "I've got this new product, I'm going to need a brochure", the correct response is, "OK, we'll first need to sort out the logo then so we can get started on your brochure". Not, "OK we won't bother the designer with that yet, instead we'll have our production guy knock up a brochure layout and worry about things like the logo later".

If the client has, say, $5000 to spend on a logo, brochure and website, you allocate at least a few days worth of solid time, perhaps $1000, to producing logo options, refining and editing down to the final result until it's perfect. It makes sense because then the brochure and website will only take half the time to design because you already half know how they should look.

What you don't do is, again, get the production guy to produce a single brochure visual, with no logo, present that to the client and get their approval, do nothing for a week and then tell the designer he has to design the logo and the website in a single working day. That would be nuts, right?

That would mean that the logo now has to be something that will fit into this already approved brochure design, which makes the job both far more restricted in scope and therefore infinitely more difficult. And it means that this riddle has to be solved within a few hours, so it's never going to be anything special, or going to work as well as something that was designed solely for the purpose of representing the product. It has to be a compromise before it's even begun.

I'm sure you've guessed which route they've taken at work. I have 1 day to not only design this logo and the website, but also the website layout for another job as well. Obviously we're just not a company that rates quality of design very highly, which is a shame because, as a designer, I do.

Killer Kong

2009-05-06T15:18:00.001+09:30

It's a miracle!

2009-03-05T16:22:00.009+10:30

My sister, Missy, age 45, was admitted to hospital on the 28th December 2008, and wasn't expected to live beyond a few weeks. That's what the doctors told us, that's what the nurses told us, it's what common sense told us. She'd abused her liver to the point where it was "running on fumes", she had blood clots, internal blood leakages, her waste disposal system was all backed up and there was ammonia burning away at her brain cells. She was fucked.

Then she got better!

After more than 2 months in hospital, with lots of care and drugs and rest, she got to a stage where it was decided that she could leave and go home. Last time I visited her the nurse said, "Oh, you want to see the miracle woman!" Everyone was shocked that she had got better. Except Missy.

She never knew she was dying you see. Nobody told her. They all told us, the family, but on visiting her it was obvious that she was under the misapprehension that she was going to recover, so we went along with it and wondered about the ethics of her not having been informed, since it was such a certainty, apparently.

Then 2 weeks ago a nurse told me she might be getting out soon. I was stunned and demanded to talk to her doctor, who confirmed that things had indeed changed. A meeting was arranged to discuss Missy's progress and imminent release, which I attended. There were 2 doctors, the head nurse for the ward, a health & safety woman, a physiotherapist man, 2 social workers, my sister, her supposed boyfriend (I say supposed because I'd never seen or heard of him prior to this meeting) and me, in a boardroom around a big table that we all filled. A serious meeting. Everyone gave their reports on my sister's progress, I asked the odd question here and there, and then the lead social worker made the comment that Missy had been given a very big scare and was expected to be committed to remaining sober and not damaging her liver again. I didn't agree and proceeded to tell the lot of them off.

"How has she had a scare? As far as she is aware she came in here, woke up some time later and proceeded to steadily improve until this day where she is now almost ready to go home. At no time did any of you bother to inform her that she was 'absolutely, definitely' going to die!" I looked straight at her and said "You were 'absolutely, definitely' going to die, apparently, as far as we were told constantly right up until yesterday. I'd even arranged your funeral for Christ's sake. You were never going to get out of here alive and nobody ever told you".

That shocked her.

The doctors looked sheepish, the nurse and the rest of them took special note of whatever was written on their pads and books in front of them. I felt like a school teacher telling off a class of wayward children. It was weird and wrong but at least they did then confirm what I had said to Missy. Yes, it was nothing short of a miracle that her liver had responded so well and that she had come extremely close to not getting another chance.

Arrangements were made for Missy to be released, pending a successful procedure the next day for Gall Stones. She would be escorted home by the health & safety person and an assortment of social workers, her flat assessed and appropriate equipment to help her would be installed. A very nice plan, but it didn't work out that way.

There's a whole lot of back story to this tale that I can't be arsed going into detail about but the basic gist of it is that some old guy, Trevor, who is her drinking buddy (and claims to "own" her), had taken up residence in her flat while she was in hospital and I had no luck in getting him out and changing the locks. He had also announced that he was holding Missy's dog to ransom and that he would kill it if she didn't go back to him, and he had cleaned out her bank account to the tune of over $2000 as well, since she'd given him her ATM card and password to pay her utility bills. Nice guy.

So what happened yesterday is that Missy was discharged from hospital with Matt, the "boyfriend", and they were to meet the health & safety woman and her "Home Care" crew at her flat later in the day. But she didn't. Instead she vanished... Phone calls from Home Care people to Mum, Police alerted, calls from Mum to social worker lady. Panic. Blah blah blah, turns out she was just at this Matt person's flat around the corner. Tomorrow Housing Trust people arrive to kick out Trevor, they intend to have a "good talking to" Miss about who gets keys to her flat in future. Once Trev's out the equipment installers do their thing and my bloody sister ends up back in her old flat, in her old life surround by the same old people and she's expected to stay sober or die.

I give her a week.

Officially over Petergordge!

2009-01-17T14:10:00.004+10:30

I don't think I'm overreacting. I really don't.

Last night Petergordge came to my house after work. We went and played pool, drank some beers, went to dinner, drank some wines, back home to watch a DVD and then he caught a taxi home, leaving his car parked in my driveway. All fine.

This morning I wanted to go out, but couldn't because Peter's car was behind mine so I couldn't drive out. He hadn't left me a key to move it so I was stuck waiting until he turned up. I could deal with that. I expected him to turn up some time this morning but it wasn't until 12.15pm that I saw Donna's car pull up and park in front of my house. No worries, at least they'd finally showed up, right? Not quite. Peter, Donna and her son Liam never made it to my door. I was waiting but minutes went by with no sign of them. Having parked right outside the window I was watching them through, they'd wandered off to lunch without even bothering to ask if I'd like to join them, and without thinking to ask if I needed Peter's car moved before they walked off. Both of those neglects pissed me off, and upset me.

An hour and a half later I noticed Donna getting back into her car and driving away. Not even bothing to say hello even though she was right at my house. I went outside and saw Peter already in his car with Liam in the process of getting into the passenger side. They fully intended to simply drive away, again without bothering to come to the door and say Hi. Now I was angry.

"Oh what, so am I invisible now?" I said through the still open passenger door. "Not even going to say hello? That's bloody nice".

"Hello, how are you?" replied Peter, having been given no choice but to acknowledge my existence at this stage.

"Pissed off! How dare you come to my house, ignore me and just wander off. I've been waiting hours to get my car out!"

"You could have rung me."

"I didn't think I had to after you'd pulled up outside, I didn't expect you to just wander off to lunch, without even inviting me, and make me wait yet another hour and a half, and then just leave without even coming to the door. How RUDE!"

I walked back inside and he drove away. So that's it. I'm so over Petergordge.

Yellower and angrier

2009-01-09T12:11:00.003+10:30

Missy, my sister, was conscious when she arrived at the hospital last week but they sedated her while they plugged her in to the system that's currently supporting her existence. After a couple of days they stopped the sedation but she decided to stay asleep for a couple of days more.

Then she woke up. It wasn't very pleasant for anyone so now they've knocked her out again after only two days.

She's angry. Not happy about something, possibly everything really. During those two days she was rarely responsive to much by way of answering questions with nods or shakes of the head or finger squeezing - these being the only options for someone with a throat full of tubes. Instead she preferred to respond with expressions of pure violence and hatred and attempts at ripping things out and off of her. So they had to restrain her arms and then she did pretty much nothing at all.

So now the question is, is there anyone home? My (very) basic understanding of the situation is that the blood which is meant to flow to her liver is finding that route impassable and heading off in other directions. Also, somehow, blood that's meant to flow to her brain isn't getting there and a lot of it is ending up in her esophagus. I don't know why or how. Anyway, the crucial bit is the fact that it's not been feeding her brain and, on observational evidence alone, she's getting worse in that department.

Initially she was conscious and distraught. Then she was unconscious for several days, then awake and partially responsive, going through to awake and hostile, then just awake. As I said, now she's been knocked out again so there's no way to tell.

I'm not visiting her today because, well, she's asleep. I'm not even certain she was aware of me visiting when she was awake so right now I can't see the point at all.

I have a yellow sister

2009-01-07T12:46:00.005+10:30

People aren't supposed to be yellow, well, caucasians aren't anyway, so this colouring was the first visible sign that something was seriously wrong. The great stack of machines and monitors plugged into her was another clue, and the fact that she and the machines are all in the Flinders Medical Centre's Intensive Care Critical Unit is yet another.

Yellow is the colour of jaundice, and that's what you get when your liver is fucked. "End Stage Liver Failure" is the proper term for it, and that's what my sister has. Years of drinking and drugs + Hepatitis C = 0 Liver. There were lots of miserable sounding words and terms flying about in my discussion with her nurse this morning, none of them nice. Cirrhosis, Internal Bleeding, Encephalitis and Brain Damage among them. There are others I can't even remember right now.

I can only see this ending one way. A person can't live without a functioning liver, and she hasn't got one, and she's not going to get a new one with her history and the Hep C. There aren't a lot of ways that can go.

I saw her on Saturday following an email from Mum telling me what was going on and where Missy (my sister) is. She wasn't conscious though, having been sedated since admission. I think that was the first time I'd seen her for about 8 years. My folks were there and it was the first time I'd seen them in over 6 years. Oddly, they haven't aged a day in that time, which is more than can be said for Missy. I didn't recognise her.

Today she's awake, but not really "there". Sometimes she responds with a nod or shake of the head but mostly she doesn't. She's got tubes down her throat so speaking isn't an option, but they are hoping to be able to remove those later today, but they said that yesterday and the day before as well. Mostly she just lies there being disturbingly yellow with patches of bluey black.

She's got a shocker of a black right eye and bruises all over various other bits, her lips are swollen. Apparently she's been falling down a lot and unable to walk without the aid of a walking frame for months. She lives upstairs and has passed out several times part way up and fallen down them as a result. She's probably also been beaten up once or twice lately because that's normal in her life.

What a fucking mess.

I want a ladder.

2008-11-28T23:23:00.002+10:30

At any given moment, with absolutely no warning whatsoever, anything in my house has the capacity to amuse me. Tonight it was my step ladder. I was passing through to the back of the house in which I live and, sitting by the back door, there was MY stepladder. Mine. I own it. I went to a shop and I paid money and bought it for me to use on those occasions when something is marginally too high to reach by precariously balancing on a chair of dubious stability. Adults own things like that. Not children, they use their parent's stepladder. Ergo, I am an adult for owning a stepladder. Hoorah.

Among the plethora of things that I own, a proper grown up ladder, of more than 4 steps that you can reach the ceiling with, is not among them. I shouldn't own one because there are rules about such things and the rules say so.

I rent. That's it in a nutshell. Further among the things I do not own is a house. I was never inclined towards, or financially capable of, such a feat. The fact is that people who rent have no business owning proper grown up high ladders. If something needs doing in a house that is rented that requires the use of a grown up high ladder then it is the landlord's job. That's the rule, the line that needs to be crossed to get from "tenant's job" to "landlord's responsibility." The ladder is that line. I don't know if that's how it's worded in the tenancies agreement but in practice, that's how it works.

But I want one. I covet them. Years this has been going on. Honestly. I'm that crazy, really. I'm mad me. I don't own a house but by God I shall have my ladder. A ladder with a gimmick, obviously, because if a person who isn't strictly qualified to own something insists on having one anyway, there must be some other, less practical aspect to it's operation that opens its usability options up into hitherto unexplored vistas. Something a practical, house owning grown up with a need to maintain his or her ceiling wouldn't absolutely find essential to perform normal grown up ladder type tasks, in this particular case.

A bendy ladder, perhaps. Hmmmmm,...

On the Subject of Myself and Other Creative Persons Wot I Know

2008-10-14T23:48:00.006+10:30

I just worked out a thing about myself which may go some way to also understanding several of my friends, acquaintances and business associates. This revelation can be compressed into a simple sentence which, obviously, me being me, I shall then expand upon at length in the form of a rant. It's what I do and this, I guess, is the point.

Creative people are difficult.

There, I said it. We're difficult. Let me explain (I warned you!).

For the last few weeks I have been required to work extended hours to achieve certain goals that have been thrust upon me by my employers. Usually I only have to work 20 hours per week under relatively stress free conditions for an (almost) exorbitant rate which nets me more income than a lot of people have to work 40 hours to match. It's a doddle. However, as the hours have grown, so has my temper. This afternoon I had my boss promising to buy me a bottle of Scotch as a reward for just doing my job. I had become so scary that he thought the promise of free alcohol was the only thing that would calm me down.

Now, I like the idea that I can scare people because I genuinely think that I'm among the least threatening beings on the planet. But then I finished work, came home and found myself thinking about it, over a good deal of the very substance offered to me earlier, and I realised what I like to call... "A Thing".

This must be the very reason why I have worked alone in my own home or rented private office since the age of about 28. I'm actually not fit to work and play with others. It's the way I function: pressure + stress = anger + shouting. What I realised today is that this is what I need to do in order to be creative under pressure. It has nothing to do with the task in hand, it has nothing to do with the people who are dumping this annoying shit in my in-tray all day. It's not personal. There is simply a direct correlation between what is required to be done and the amount of shouting that is necessary for me to be able do it.

I'm sure there's a link between creativity and anger. Another day, when it's not after midnight and I don't need to be back at work in less than 8 hours, I might do some research and add some statistics and/or facts to my postulation but, alas, it's time for bed.

Goodnight.
And GRRRRRRRRR!

Do I LOOK like a spy?

2008-06-14T12:49:00.002+09:30

I always enjoy a day when my synaptic functions operate well and I manage to formulate intelligent and amusing thoughts and express them clearly in the form of coherent sentences. Some days I'm doing well to grunt.

Today I did well. At lunch everyone laughed at all the right times, my opinions were sought on a wide range of topics and my responses treated with respect. Much wine was consumed, the sun went down and I was later left alone to contemplate dinner which, I decided, had to involve a stroll up to the supermarket for onions. I like a night stroll.

Standing in the queue, basket in hand. The man before me, who I didn't recognise, looked back at me, sheepishly said "Dirk Gently" and expectantly smiled.

"Hello, yes" I replied, assuming he must be remembering that my name is something like Derek, well, exactly like as it happens, and Dirk was as close as he could get. I'm crap at remembering people so perhaps he wasn't a stranger after all I reasoned.

"Do you know what I'm saying?"

"Yes, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency"

More smiling, "Ah! Someone who understands what I'm talking about!"

"Not really. Knowing what you're saying and understanding what you're talking about are two completely different things and I'm only managing one of them at the moment."

He turned and walked forward to be served and I was left wondering if I'd just failed to respond with the appropriate reply in some clandestine meeting of spies. "The pigeons fly at midnight". "Yes, it is very unexpected at this time of year"... but at least I'd sounded intellingent while doing so.

Use of flashing lights by Police vehicle

2008-05-21T22:59:00.007+09:30

I sent the following, last Saturday afternoon, to the Police Complaints email address I found on the website of my local Police force. It's self expananatory:

"Earlier this afternoon, at about 1.30pm, Saturday 17/5/08, I was waiting to walk across X Parade., a few hundred metres west of the intersection with XXX Terrace. There was quite a lot of traffic queued facing east at a red light and, at a break in the centre island on X Parade. A police vehicle facing the opposite direction was waiting to do a U-turn, but this was obviously not being facilitated with as much ease as the driver wished as there was no break in traffic to allow this manoeuvre.

So on came the flashing lights atop the vehicle, causing other vehicles to stop as they approached to let the police car turn and then, with lights still flashing, vehicles were persuaded to either pull aside or close up to others in front of them to create a big enough gap for the police vehicle to cross 2 lanes and enter a car park to their left. I watched, assuming they were going to cut through the car park to avoid the lights and carry on down XXX Terrace about some business, but no. The vehicle was then parked and a uniformed officer got out and went into the Subway takeaway to order himself some lunch!

I was left wondering about the legality of this sequence of events. Surely the flashing lights are meant to be used in emergency situations and the power to make other vehicles get out of the way is something that should be reserved for some sort of police business, not to speed up entry to a takeaway to buy a sandwich. Consequently I took note of the registration of the police vehicle, which is XXX-XXX, and decided to bring this matter to the attention of some appropriate authority.

To be honest, I'm getting a bit sick of this sort of thing. It feels like bullying, throwing weight and authority around unnecessarily. As a resident of XXX Terrace I quite often witness police vehicles travelling up the road in the wrong direction (ie. on the wrong side of the traffic island opposite the X Hotel) for something like 20 to 30 metres in order to perform nothing more important than, again, access the Subway store across the road there, but this usually just causes me to laugh, being fully aware that should they see anyone else do exactly the same thing then the driver would be pulled over and fined. The use of the flashing lights to facilitate the same objective, however, seemed one step too far for me to be amused by it.

Regards,
Justified Ancient of Mu Mu"

I got an official letter in the post today, informing me that my complaint had been referred to the "Internal Investigations Branch" and that I would soon be receiving a phone call from an officer to initiate a "conciliation process".

I'm scared!

What moron invented money?

2008-04-09T15:35:00.003+09:30

Every day there are dozens of things that annoy me. They start first thing with the alarm clock which just shits me on principal, reminding me every morning that we as a species are completely fucked. What other animal sets up their civilisation in such a way that nearly all freedoms of the individual are voluntarily given up? I’m not talking about ants or bees, they don’t really function as individuals in the first place and besides, they have the simple, basic, shared purpose of survival to take care of. We humans are perfectly able to look after ourselves as a hunter/gatherer species and yet we have chosen to delegate those tasks to others in favour of each pursuing a single, self chosen task for the purpose of acquiring small rectangles of a paper-like substance that we exchange for the goods and services we can no longer acquire or do for ourselves because we’re too busy doing the crap thing we decided to do for the rest of our lives. Whose bright idea was that? What fucking idiot thought that life would be better if we shared tasks and exchanged money to balance out everyone’s efforts? That person was wrong. Yes, civilisation as a whole benefits, we progressed, and we get a bigger, brighter, more complicated choice of stuff we can have, and I love stuff more than most, but it’s a pretty rubbish system from a personal satisfaction, enjoyment of living perspective. Take me for instance. I work on a computer and will happily admit that, as a task, this is a hell of a lot easier than building my own shelter, growing my own vegetables, hunting the occasional wild animal and trying not to to get myself killed in the process, but I can’t help feeling that life would be a lot more interesting and fun that way. The biggest challenge I face each day is heaving myself unwillingly out of bed each morning, cursing the moron who invented the concept of money and who is responsible for each of us having to be up and dressed and off out to our daily job at a set time every day. Cunt.

Earth Hour

2008-03-29T17:43:00.002+10:30

Bah Humbug. I've been shopping for spotlights and power boards this afternoon and at 8pm my intention is to light my house up like an airfield. Landing lights, that's what I need and lots of 'em.

Fucking hippies.

Nano Silver Technology????

2008-03-29T16:46:00.003+10:30

They're making this shit up. What the fuck is Nano Silver Technology? No idea. It was just on an ad I saw on tv, for something... no idea, again. I was too distracted by the magical sounding words, Nano Silver Technology. It might have been a washing machine although, having now searched for the term (yes I "Googled" it but I prefer the more generic term "searched") I've discovered that this alleged "technology" is being applied to everything from wet wipes and cosmetics to food storage and, as mentioned, washing machines. It does things to bacteria they say.

Hmmmmmmm. Sounds like crap.

Things that don't work #1

2008-03-15T18:56:00.000+10:30

Adding Whisky to a Coke Slushy

I am NOT an ineffectual idiot!

2008-02-26T21:18:00.003+10:30

OK, things go wrong. I know that. The interweb is a complicated thing full of plugs and sockets and wires and chips and hardware and software and general manifestations of the latest advances in technology that I have no understanding of, or interest in. I know that too.

Still...
INTERNODE I FUCKING SMITE YOU TO HELL!!!!!

I'm not happy. I go through the hassle of getting our Web Host to change the whole server thingumy to one that allows a forum to function (apparently it's complicated and requires database whatsists), spend most of a weekend, until 2am on Sunday, making it work and look pretty. I tested it all day Monday and on Tuesday I send out a launch email to almost everyone I ever received an email from, asking them to go forth and play with it, and several do immediately. They join as members, plug their businesses and generally do exactly what I hoped they would... then Internode crashes out our server for three hours and, when it starts working again, the database ends up reset to where it was the day before. New members gone, their posts deleted as if they never existed.

One step forward, two steps back. Grrrrrr...

The Planet's fine. Leave it alone.

2007-12-11T22:29:00.004+10:30

Hello.

Hi.

Have you got a minute for Greenpeace?

No, it's too nice a day for an argument.

Why would we have an argument? I just want to answer any questions about Greenpeace you might have and explain how you can help to save the planet.

Oh God, we are going to have an argument aren't we?

Why?

Well because, for a start, the planet doesn't need saving. It's just a huge compressed mass surrounded by molten rock with a crust on top. It's fine, been fine for billions of years and will continue to be fine for billions more. It's the environment that surrounds the planet that's in trouble and, quite frankly, I don't consider it worth saving.

Um, oh. What?. Why not?

Look, Greenpeace and almost everyone else takes this incredibly narrow view of things that says that what we have is worth saving. I don't. You know of the thing where you compress the entire history of the planet into the timescale of a single year? Earth somehow magically appears on the instant of New Years Day, becomes habitable somewhere on Christmas Eve and Human Beings don't show up until a few minutes before midnight on News Years Eve at the end of the year. The entire recorded history as we know it covers only the last few seconds and each of our lifetimes last less than the time it takes to even think about blinking, let alone carry out the action. And Greenpeace seems to think that these last few seconds are all that matters. As I said, I don't agree.

But what about the animals? What about the rainforests which mankind is wiping out at a rate of...

Sorry but I'm not interested in your statistics about how the rainforests or the animals are doing. They are doing badly, I know! Everyone knows. I simply have a different way of thinking about this that tells me that it's pointless trying to clean up the mess. It's a waste of time taking actions under the expectation that mankind will somehow stop fucking everything up. We won't! As far as I'm concerned, mankind is a virus. A virus with a finite future and the quicker we destroy everything in sight and make the environment unlivable, thereby making ourselves and, admittedly, everything else extinct, the better. In a million or so years from now everything will be fine and lovely again with a whole new set of, hopefully, more viable species than the lot we currently have running around killing, eating and flattening everything in sight. THEN the environment will no longer be under threat and the planet, which will have been fine throughout this whole process, can continue to be so without the need of Greenpeace going about telling everyone it's in danger when in fact it never was in the first place.

*The sound of a Greenpeace volunteer walking away*

Tis the season for mass murder, fa la la la la la la la lah

2007-12-10T16:05:00.001+10:30

A man went berserk in Woolworths today when a shopper apparently hindered his access to the Whiskas Tuna & Mackeral Bites in Aisle 12, pet food.

Having previously meekly pushed past a woman who was conversing with her friend in the vicinity of the Vine Ripened Roma Tomatoes in the marvellous Fruit & Veg Spectacular section, Mr. J. Ancient, of Mu Mu, later impatiently reached in front of a man quietly devoting his hours to choosing the exact packet of 6 Free Range Chicken Drumsticks he required.

Within minutes Mr. Ancient rudely shoved aside a shopping trolley carefully placed at exactly 90 degrees in the extensively stocked International Foods section, startling it's owner, Mrs. I. Dullard, who was talking to her 10 year old daughter Caitlan about the dangers of picking up packets of noodles from the shelves at the time.

Ancient later menacingly growled the word "move" to 4 staff employees who were conducting a long discussion as to whose responsibility it was to tidy the Ploughman's Loaf Bread rack of the non-aligned loaves therein.

Mrs P. Granny, interviewed later at the scene, said she spotted Mr. Ancient heading purposefully towards the knives section of the Kitchen Implements department, where he chose the largest of the range and placed it in his basket.

Mr F. Bastard was quietly contemplating the relative peace of aisle 12, surrounded by numerous attractively packaged, and excellently priced, boxes and cans of cat food, when Ancient killed him. Security camera footage appears to show the attacker speak to Mr. Bastard, walk away, put other products in his basket, return and speak again, wait and, just as Mr. Bastard acknowledged his presence, stab him violently in the head.

No motive has been discovered to date. Police have detained a suspect.

The Drug Eluting Stent Trial Checkup Story

2006-12-16T09:18:00.001+10:30

In earlier stories I described the heart attack that got me into hospital and the Angiogram and Angioplasty procedures that fixed me up, and now, 9 months later, it's time for another Angiogram to see how things are going. Grrrrrrrr.

As I said in The Coronary Procedure Story, an Angiogram is one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever had. It was scary and I really Really REALLY wasn't looking forward to having another one... especially as it wasn't something I actually needed. I was doing this basically just for the advancement of medical science, and, well, fuck medical science! What has it ever done for me? OK, lots of things probably, especially this particular stent thing I guess.

It IS amazing that they can shove stuff up your arm and fix a blocked artery. It is also excellent that the type of stent I agreed to have reduces the odds of having it block up again within the first year from 20% to 5%, in theory, and it is a new thing and they do need to test new things to see if they are working and, apparently, they don't have that many candidates who are eligible or willing for the trial and therefore any results they can get through the cooperation of the few who were would be extremely useful and blah blah blah. I just didn't want to go through it again, but I did.

I'd like to say I did it for altruistic reasons but really I just did it because:
A) It would be personally useful to find out if the thing isn't blocking up, and
B) I hate conflict and am too big a poof to tell the trial people I wasn't going to.

So at 7.15am (IN THE BLOODY MORNING!!!) I checked myself into hospital as requested and was led upstairs to the cardiac ward with a group of 4 other people who were also having various heart related procedures that day. One of them was a girl named Michelle, somewhere in her 20's, who has Downs Syndrome and who seemed to find me fascinating. Every time I noticed her she was staring at me, so I would smile and she would laugh, and I figured that wasn't a bad game to distract both of us from what we were going to be doing that day, so I did it some more.

The day was marred by two things. Firstly, as a good thing, the doctor said he would go in through my wrist and not my groin. That was great news but unfortunately, after about 10 minutes of unsuccessful and painful shoving and pulling it was decided that it wouldn't work. I was informed that after my earlier Angioplasty, that artery now had too much scar tissue to allow them to use it again. That's not very encouraging. Now I have fears of THAT blocking, causing my arm to die and drop off! They didn't seem too alarmed and everything they said indicated that this was fairly normal but at no stage did anyone actually say that my arm wouldn't die and drop off later. I guess I should have asked someone.

Now they shifted focus to my groin, gave me a quick shave and injected a local anaesthetic that made my right leg go hot. They also decided to give me some happy juice into my IV or whatever the needle thing in my left arm was called. It didn't exactly make me happy but I was fine. More blood thinners was also added to my system.

Last time I'd been in there I was looking at everything on the big bank of monitors above me but this time I just lay there and closed my eyes until it was over. After a while I was told, gratifyingly, that the stent was "as clear and shiny as the day we put it in". A success. Hurrah!!

Soon enough the doctors were finished and a collagen plug was inserted into the hole they'd made and I was wheeled back out to a holding bay, where a nurse disturbingly declared me to be "oozing". I was to hear this word a lot for the rest of the day.

It was about 11am when it was decided that I should have a heavy sandbag put on the groin to hold the plug in until I stopped oozing. At 2pm I hadn't, so a new plan was launched into action that involved haphazardly shaving more of my groin, half of my belly and a large portion of my upper leg around to my right buttock. A large length of bandage was rolled up and placed over the troublesome ooze and a 60cm length of non stretchy, very sticky, bandagey tape stuff about the width of toilet paper was stuck tight from my waist, across the groin and around the back of my leg to hold it tightly in place. An hour later I was still oozing.

When I asked why this was happening, especially as the other people I'd come in at the same time as had all gone home, including Michelle who had spend a good hour staring at me in bed before she left, even though I wasn't smiling back at her very much, I was informed that I must be "especially sensitive to the blood thinners". Great.

The tape was removed... actually, removed doesn't do the process justice. Ripped off would be more accurate, taking a good deal of hair with it and causing me to, alarmingly (judging by the shocked expression on the nurses face) scream in a blasphemous manner. Then the whole contraption was recreated with new materials and I was left to wait until I stopped this inconvenient oozing, which I did, thankfully, about another hour later, and I was allowed to leave. Mind you, I had to lie to do so!

The rules are that I wasn't allowed to leave alone. Someone had to collect me and had to stay with me overnight at home, I was told. No, I couldn't leave and phone my friend, Bronwen, to come and get me outside, she had to physically come to the ward and fetch me and she had to convince them that she would stay with me that night. By now it was about 4.30pm so I phoned Bron and she came and collected me and drove me home, which was nice of her. Then she went home, because I didn't actually want anyone around. I'd had enough of people for one day.

So that is my Drug Eluting Stent Trial Checkup Story. All good news. Yay!

Laziness

2006-07-23T11:29:00.000+09:30

I'm one of the laziest people I've ever known.

It's been months since I've written anything for this thing and, although I'd like to say it's because I've been screamingly busy, I haven't. I think it's because I like instant reactions to stuff and, well, nobody but me even knows this page exists, so nobody is reading anything, so what's the point of writing it?

Telling people about it might be a good start but that'd be cheating! This is sort of like an experiment to see internet osmosis in action.

So I shall start writing more and posting more pictures and just sit back and watch...

3 Days Later

2006-04-02T22:13:00.000+09:30

This is what bits of me look like 3 days after an Angioplasty through the groin.

Lovely huh?

Coronary Procedure Story

2006-04-02T18:24:00.002+09:30

You might want to read the Heart Attack Story below first

I woke up around 7.00am still not really knowing what had gone on earlier. You hear people go on about chest pain but I'd never heard about the sore arms thing, certainly not about the weird vomiting. I'm very good at ignoring things usually but this had been scary enough to prompt even me to go to a doctor.

It's a very nice place, the Norwood Medical Clinic. Brand new and shiny with marble and granite and enough seats and couches for a discount furniture warehouse. It's the sort of place that's free and you don't make appointments, you just turn up. It was also empty so I registered, filled in forms and took a seat in front of a huge plasma TV. After waiting for only 2 or 3 minutes a doctor hurtled past me, mumbling something about having learned his new thing for the day already and instructing me to follow him. We sat in a room discussing my medical history for a while before, almost as an afterthought, he asked me why I'd actually come there.

"Well, I had this chest pain thing at about 2 this morning, my arms hurt and there was this really weird vomiting like Linda Blair..."

He jumped out of his chair, raced to the door, opened it and told me to "quickly come with me... no, um, actually, carefully and CALMLY come with me, we'll do an ECG. Are you OK? Have you got any pain now? I should have asked you sooner why you'd come! Um... be calm!"

ECG's aren't very interesting... lots of sticky things stuck all over you, including the ankles, wires attached to everything, a machine that prints something out after you've laid still long enough.

"Nurse! Ambulance, NOW!"

Hospitals are places where you wait for hours and hours after a mad panic getting there. I was hooked up to The Machine That Goes Ping, blood had been taken and now I was just waiting for results of the tests. There's some enzyme level they want to know that tells them if there's been any damage to the heart. If there has been, it's a heart attack. My reading came back as the lowest possible number you can have that indicates that that is indeed what has happened so I got admitted and wheeled up to a ward for overnight observation.

Every hour or so I'd get asked if I had any pain, which I never did. Over and over again a different doctor or specialist would ask me to tell them the Heart Attack Story. I actually felt like a fraud, surrounded as I was by other people who obviously did have something wrong with them. I felt fine. I shrugged a lot with each re-telling of the story. People started to look sceptical, and it didn't help when a cardiac specialist said "there are bits of your story that are suspicious".

What he actually meant was not that he suspected I was lying, as I first thought. He meant that bits of it certainly sounded like a "coronary event" but other bits, like the walking around the neighbourhood at 3am because it made me feel better certainly did not. He didn't know what to make of the elephant thing! NOT moving is supposed to help, apparently. I can't help it if I'm odd.

So the suspicions were aroused enough to warrant an Angiogram. That's where they shove something up through a hole in your groin and spew blue dye into your system while you're parked under a fuck-off-huge contraption with lots of TV monitors and big glass plates between you and them while you get zapped with what would be 2 years worth of "ambient radiation" via something roughly the size of a fax machine that zooms around above your chest making whirring noises. It's scary and it made me cry.

Within half an hour, the specialist came out to where I was parked on a gurney and showed me a black and white photograph that clearly showed a bunch of veins and arteries, one of the biggest of which suddenly narrowed from 4mm to less than 1mm along about 10mm of its length. Proof! I wasnt a fraud afterall.

Hospitals can also be places where things happen fast. Within another hour I was back under the scary machine with them feeding something else (I didn't want to look) into me, this time via my wrist of all places! I would have thought that if you wanted to get to a person's heart, there would be more straightforward and logical paths to choose than via their groin or wrist but hey, what do I know?

This time they were doing an Angioplasty which is where they somehow shove a 3.5mm x 25mm "Stent" up your artery... with a balloon inside it. Honest! A stent is a cylinder made of hi-tech "chicken wire", as they described it to me. When they get it where they want to they inflate the balloon to expand the stent to open up the blockage. Clever stuff but Jesus it hurts! The sensation is basically the same as the heart attack that got you there in the first place but at least it's shortlived. Then they drag their paraphernalia out of your body again and wheel you away.

That's it. Then you're fixed!

Apparently there's a 20% chance the stent might block up and they'd need to do it again, possibly in around 6 months. They are trialing "drug eluting" ones that are coated with, um... something that hopefully discourages this and so far the 20% looks more like 5% with this method, so that's what I went for. Which is fine except that as part of the trial I am committed to another Angiogram in either 4 or 9 months anyway - which rather negates the advantages of possibly not needing one had I been in the lucky 80% to start with!

Oh well.

So, here's the before and after shots. Nice eh!

Heart Attack Story

2006-04-02T16:07:00.001+09:30

There's a saying, "Scary as a Heart Attack" but, funnily enough, I didn't find it as scary as it you might imagine...

2.00am Wednesday I woke up with a sensation in my chest that, although painful, I wouldn't necessarily describe as pain. More like the feeling I imagine would come from having some big-ass Scotsman using my horizontal breastbone as a resting place for his vertical caber. With that was the feeling that my arms were being asked to support a small Korean car each. Very odd. Sitting up making "AAAAHHHHH" noises did nothing to improve anything. Rather, this added the realisation that I needed to vomit, but without actually feeling nauseous which, at the time, made little sense but I didn't seem to have any say in the matter. There was all too much to try to process really so I just dealt with what seemed the most urgent thing, which was trying not to hurl all over myself in bed - so I focussed all my attention on making it to the bathroom.

Now, throwing up isn't something new. I thought I knew pretty much all there is to know about that but apparently I was wrong. First there is a feeling of nausea but, as I said, I didn't have that. Then there is a degree of physical exertion involved in the actual process but no, not this time. As soon as I had positioned myself and opened my mouth stuff just gushed out like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. It really was more like a special effect than vomiting. I wasn't even slightly physically involved in the process, I was not throwing anything up, it was shooting out of it's own accord as if from a fire hose!

Anyway, once that was done I was left to deal with the pressure on my chest and in my arms but I couldn't think of anything I could do about either. Whimpering wasn't helping so I tried louder exclamations. No help. Doubling myself over didn't help, stretching out did nothing, nor did sitting, standing or making myself into a tight angry ball on the floor. Walking was at least distracting because it was dark and I had to concentrate on not bumping into things, so I did that for a while, groaning because I felt entitled to under the circumstances. Gradually things eased up in my chest and I was left only with the aching arms, which felt better if I swung them around pendulously as if pretending to be an elephant for a small child. So, naturally, I did that.

Eventually I tried going back to bed but I just kind of ached when I lay down so I got up, got dressed and walked up the street to a new medical clinic which recently sent me a fridge magnet advertising it's Accident & Emergency department. I like fridge magnets so I'd kept it. I hoped it might be a 24 hour one but it wasn't. A sign on the door said it opened again at 7am and by this time that was only 4 hours away and I felt better anyway, so I walked home and went back to bed, having decided to drop in there again on my way to work later that morning. The whole thing, from waking to sleeping again took about 90 minutes.

So that is my Heart Attack Story!

Later: my Coronary Procedure Story.

Testing 123

2006-03-18T23:59:00.000+10:30

This is my first blog post... well, actually it's my second but I lost all the details to my previous account so I've started this new one instead. I promise to be more interesting than this in the future but this is just to test things out. Honest.