Well, when brakes wear down they definitely create small particle pollution. I'm doing my bit.
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
BRAKES CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING
Well, when brakes wear down they definitely create small particle pollution. I'm doing my bit.
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Horses and Courses
Historically, weekends are supposed to be times of rest (unless you're the founding director of Jewish Services Limited and you're busy pressing traffic light buttons on the Sabbath) but the last weekend I had was far busier than I planned - the Metro Screen Documentary Making (Intensive) course I found myself on was rather interesting. The more I think about the "prize" awarded to the second place winners of Stinkwater 24! 2008 the less I feel they should be lauded for their dodgy marketing ploy. A prize should be a prize and not a debt in disguise. How can an institution "give" away a voucher for the use of their services when the majority of those services are far less than the value of the prize given? Yes, $200 is $200 but when that prize can only be redeemed by spending an extra $200 it seems to me that there's something fishy going on. And don't even get me started on Fitness First's slimy marketing schemes (if you are the winner of a draw in which 10,000 people entered do you really think you should be paying for anything when redeeming that prize? A more substantive rant will be sure to follow on that ethically bankrupt organisation (which I would presume can be extended to the entire fitness industry - but hey, if you feel the need to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in order to get off your fat arse and do some exercise, please, go ahead). In any event, the course had its good points - teacher was a bit of a wanker but no more than any of the other tutors I've had over the years - and we did get a pretty intensive crash course in the use of equipment and some pointers on interview techniques (very useful considering that all of my interviews were done nigh on two years ago). Was a little uneasy at the fact that the treatment we studied, "Speed City", seemed to be very similar in scope and nature to "Shooting The Messenger" or "Bikeanomics' (name still undecided) - still, interesting enough. And eight years is plenty of time in between documentaries on the same subject (got to get it out before that SBS guy finishes his ... doubtful, but labours of love often are). A bunch of movies, a rugby game and a few sessions of other activities broke it all out. Also, it's nice when your boss isn't in.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Cherry Crowns
Do you remember Cherry Crowns? I remember Cherry Crowns ... was it the best biscuit the good bakers at Arnott's ever produced? Can't be certain of that due to the haze of years between now and the dreaded date when they were taken off the market. Biscuit base (did it have coconut in it?), a thin layer of cherry jam (or was it raspberry), pink marshmallow (nobody knows what flavour 'pink' is) immersed in a dark chocolate shell. If a company takes a product off the market are they entitled to the intellectual property of that product? I think not. If Arnott's refuses to re-release this biscuit back into my belly then I will be forced to take drastic action and will have to recreate this piece of confectionery from scratch.
Monday, 19 May 2008
All Grown Up
As I started a weekend with the symbolic growing up of another ... the iconic Pretty Boy of London Sydney fame is shuffling off the immortal coil and moving into a more domesticated arrangement somewhere south of Sydney. Whilst I wasn't too keen to participate in his send off race me and a few of the checkpoints had a very fast and occasionally sketchy ride back to the end where I proceeded to drink far more than is good for me - was escorted back to Woollahra for the Last Night of Freedom™ that had a few more visitors than was preferable for an early morning trucking and moving journey. Took another withdrawal from the Moving Karma Pool™ and gathered up the troops, all who contributed in their inimitable way (spatial awareness and space time continuum bending from El Binna, brawn from the Small But Doughty Man, well timed belligerence from The Rider of Rowan and something from Dave) – after a particularly smoove moove relaxing beverages were spoiled by a road raging Subaru driver who wanted our James Bond parking space and was prepared to drive through our human shield to get it but all worked out in the end. Unpacking not nearly as painful as it could have been and the oestrogen laden household is proving to be quite amenable to a boy growing up.
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Growing Up
A weekend of excessive consumption of meatses with alternating calorie burns preempts the crunch week of a symbolic week of growing up, a rather expensive all-you-can-eat-brazilian-meat in the wildfire have provided a very likely prospective location for a future caper and the usual stresses of moving have been slightly delayed and perhaps even displaced to another but am sure they will come by the end of the week. Racing P-platers up Oxford Street offers a welcome respite from the grind of the confidential world and, surprisingly, corporate enforced bonding sessions proved to be far more entertaining than it might have been (the Scales of Justice provided adequate amusement). More to come.
Monday, 12 May 2008
Separated At Birth???
Sam Neil(l) Diamond ... have you ever seen them in the same place at the same time?
Saturday, 10 May 2008
The Food Wars Commence
Well, nowt of any excitement for quite some time on my front although the procedures of growing up are continuing apace and the oft muttered platitude that freedom is never free has never quite seemed to real. The confidentials are still going with small victories and potentially valuable HR things but I'm really hesitant about the value of freebase sculptures between 9-5. Potentially the last of the famous BBQs at Chez 2021 was a relative success - I shall miss this place and I don't envy the replacement company if Herr Jacob is anything to go by - overeducated, over-achieving, probably exaggerating toffs are not my idea the ideal person to share a roof with but that is just me.
Puck's speed is proving to be quite enviable - if only he could get a friend to take him somewhere. Still, have burned off one night's worth of calories - let's hope it's enough for a second night of mass consumption of animal product.
Comments should be directed at relevant posts and should only be considered if they're as legible as the thing they're being posted about. The standard is not that high so I'm hardly asking a high price.
Puck's speed is proving to be quite enviable - if only he could get a friend to take him somewhere. Still, have burned off one night's worth of calories - let's hope it's enough for a second night of mass consumption of animal product.
Comments should be directed at relevant posts and should only be considered if they're as legible as the thing they're being posted about. The standard is not that high so I'm hardly asking a high price.
Evil Melon by OrangeGhost on MojiZu
Should I be suing for breach of copyright???
http://www.mojizu.com/artist/OrangeGhost/Evil%20Melon.aspx
http://www.mojizu.com/artist/OrangeGhost/Evil%20Melon.aspx
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
The Worst Is Yet To Come
The Fritzl cellar case, relatively hot on the heels of the Kampusch cellar case, seems to be prompting many Austrians to ask themselves whether there is something fundamentally wrong with them as a nation (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7375382.stm). The world's media is lapping up the tabloid sensationalism of the latest house of horrors and op-ed pieces are springing up everywhere wondering what is so special about Austria that could enable or encourage these kinds of events.
But is this an Austrian problem? Is there something fundamentally wrong with the Austrian people in that they could "allow" this kind of thing to happen. Perhaps, but it's not limited to Austrians (or southern Austrians as the northern provinces would like to think as they distance themselves from this disturbing crime) and it's not limited to Europeans or even the western world. Japan has had it's share of long term child kidnappings involving terrible sexual assaults, Germany is apparently plagued by repeated high profile cases of infanticide; The Jamie Bulger case with its 10 year old killers shocked England to the core; the stories of American children committing mass murder upon their school mates seem to happen so regularly and we scrabble to find some thing American that could be the cause (is it either violent video games or other entertainment? Oppressive parents? A culture of bullying? Or maybe, just perhaps, it's that's impossible to escape the plague of guns that are in the hands of anyone and everyone in that enlightened country).
And before anyone comes to the dubious conclusion that it's a western phenomenon - just about every country from liberal Canada to the watched societies of Russia and China and even Iran has sociopathic serial killers living amongst its populace and sometimes they're caught.
Any country with a large population is going to have a mix of people - for the most part people are generally good but some are bad - for every saint there's a madman - and in more complex a society and the greater the imagination we have the more creatively good and more creatively bad we can become. The depravity to which the human being can descend is only limited by his imagination. Joseph Fritzl's crimes have already been mirrored in fiction - the Australian film 'Bad Boy Bubby' bore striking similarities to his case - it was apparently not based on any true story but we now know that people can lock up their children and commit the worst crimes upon them imaginable. The depravity of life is imitated in art constantly with the barrage of serial killer films and other tales of the worst of the human condition. And life follows right back with copy cat events - the enviable Hannibal Lecter didn't create any real killers but he sure may have given some real killers some good ideas.
For as long as people creatively imagine the good we can do others will be imagining the worst we can do. And without a shadow of a doubt - there are people who live amongst us who are imagining and committing to things that most of us could never conceive until it's shoved in our faces by a waiting media. It will happen again in future and it is happening now and it's happening in every country in the world regardless of whether it is a liberal democracy, a repressive theocracy or a militant dictatorship. Who knows what further horrors lie beneath the normal facade of human society? The one thing we can be sure of is that we haven't seen the worst of it.
But is this an Austrian problem? Is there something fundamentally wrong with the Austrian people in that they could "allow" this kind of thing to happen. Perhaps, but it's not limited to Austrians (or southern Austrians as the northern provinces would like to think as they distance themselves from this disturbing crime) and it's not limited to Europeans or even the western world. Japan has had it's share of long term child kidnappings involving terrible sexual assaults, Germany is apparently plagued by repeated high profile cases of infanticide; The Jamie Bulger case with its 10 year old killers shocked England to the core; the stories of American children committing mass murder upon their school mates seem to happen so regularly and we scrabble to find some thing American that could be the cause (is it either violent video games or other entertainment? Oppressive parents? A culture of bullying? Or maybe, just perhaps, it's that's impossible to escape the plague of guns that are in the hands of anyone and everyone in that enlightened country).
And before anyone comes to the dubious conclusion that it's a western phenomenon - just about every country from liberal Canada to the watched societies of Russia and China and even Iran has sociopathic serial killers living amongst its populace and sometimes they're caught.
Any country with a large population is going to have a mix of people - for the most part people are generally good but some are bad - for every saint there's a madman - and in more complex a society and the greater the imagination we have the more creatively good and more creatively bad we can become. The depravity to which the human being can descend is only limited by his imagination. Joseph Fritzl's crimes have already been mirrored in fiction - the Australian film 'Bad Boy Bubby' bore striking similarities to his case - it was apparently not based on any true story but we now know that people can lock up their children and commit the worst crimes upon them imaginable. The depravity of life is imitated in art constantly with the barrage of serial killer films and other tales of the worst of the human condition. And life follows right back with copy cat events - the enviable Hannibal Lecter didn't create any real killers but he sure may have given some real killers some good ideas.
For as long as people creatively imagine the good we can do others will be imagining the worst we can do. And without a shadow of a doubt - there are people who live amongst us who are imagining and committing to things that most of us could never conceive until it's shoved in our faces by a waiting media. It will happen again in future and it is happening now and it's happening in every country in the world regardless of whether it is a liberal democracy, a repressive theocracy or a militant dictatorship. Who knows what further horrors lie beneath the normal facade of human society? The one thing we can be sure of is that we haven't seen the worst of it.
Friday, 2 May 2008
Something that goes with salmon ...
Oh my, how lapse am I ...
Well, if there was anything worth reporting perhaps I wouldn't be ... or perhaps I'd have even less time to be reporting on it and actually doing it (and this makes as much sense to me as it would to anyone who actually reads this). A very long absence from the world of pub trivia was ended with Hippo Campus' (aka the Bike Courier Mafia) taking out third (or was it second?) place with a grand prize of some probably unnecessary jugs of beer (which I the beer snob had to wrest away from the VB swilling proles in order to get something palatable). Do I recall much from the ill advised day at the races? Other than the fact that I didn't win anything and knocked myself out for any activity for the rest of the week's end - not much. Did I get much out of the stand up comedienne who entertained us at the beginning of the long weekend? A little - perhaps an inspiration for a caper? I think there's definitely a calling for such activity. Not long to go now ...
Well, if there was anything worth reporting perhaps I wouldn't be ... or perhaps I'd have even less time to be reporting on it and actually doing it (and this makes as much sense to me as it would to anyone who actually reads this). A very long absence from the world of pub trivia was ended with Hippo Campus' (aka the Bike Courier Mafia) taking out third (or was it second?) place with a grand prize of some probably unnecessary jugs of beer (which I the beer snob had to wrest away from the VB swilling proles in order to get something palatable). Do I recall much from the ill advised day at the races? Other than the fact that I didn't win anything and knocked myself out for any activity for the rest of the week's end - not much. Did I get much out of the stand up comedienne who entertained us at the beginning of the long weekend? A little - perhaps an inspiration for a caper? I think there's definitely a calling for such activity. Not long to go now ...
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