Voting is well underway. Don’t screw this up America!
Later: Oh for fuck’s sake
Category: News and Events
Underwear Perverts
It’s great that DC and Marvel have lost their trademark on the word ‘Superhero’, but I’m still going to refer to Superman and friends as ‘Underwear Perverts’.
Thoughts
1: It was pretty much inevitable.
2: It will not make anything better in any way.
3: I’m ashamed to say there’s a part of me that’s sorry he missed.
4: It’s Richard Simmons I feel sorry for.
I hope his pants get caught and a bloodbath ensues
Man there’s not a week goes by, not a week, that I don’t hear about a dingo attack on K’gari involving some bastard tourist that could have been easily avoided had some parent – I don’t care which one – but some parent conditioned them to fear and respect those dingoes!
Correcting the Record
Willie, Willie, Harry, Mattie,
Stephen, Harry, Harry Bratty,
Dick, John, Louis, Harry three,
One two three Neds, Now let’s see,
Richard two, Harrys four five six,
Edwards four five, Nasty Dick,
Harry VII, Harry VIII,
Ned the sixth who turned up late,
Lady Jane Grey, Philip and Mary,
Bessie, James and Charles contrary,
Ollie, Ricky, Charles restored,
James the second (most abhorred),
Will and Mary, Anna Gloria,
Georges (Four), Will Four, Victoria
Edward, George, then Nazi Ted,
So George the sixth stepped in instead,
Elizabeth, her reign unanswered,
Now Charlie III who has the cancers,
Me in Golden Shoes
I happened to catch Planet America last night and was extremely pleased that Cheeto Mussolini’s stupid shoes provided the perfect excuse to repeatedly play clips from Herreys’ 1984 Eurovision winning Diggy-Loo Diggy-Ley – a song that I am inexplicably and entirely unironically fond of.
Behold the official English version, which includes some classic 1980’s CGI – the creation of which probably took several weeks in Quantel Paintbox.
And if that’s not charming enough for you, here’s Herreys’ performance 31 years later at the Eurovision 60th anniversary concert. They’ve still got it! (Or at least still had it back in 2015).
The Voice and Other Matters
Well, the Voice referendum was – as predicted – a total shit show. I’m a big fan of democracy and so should support the will of the people and all, but I can’t help but feel that the vote was affected by huge amounts of people simply not understanding what we were voting about.
I disagree with the opinion of No voters who understood the proposal and rejected it, but I respect their right to have their say. And if their view was that of the majority of Australians then it’s democratically correct for the referendum to have failed. But how many voters said No because they thought the Voice would result in them having to pay rent to local indigenous bodies? Or that they’d have to hand over their house to the first indigenous person who called dibs? Or even that the entire thing was a nefarious scheme by the United Nations to destroy the white race? All of that bullshit was circulating (and being actively spread by bad actors) and all of it would have distorted the vote to some extent.
The Yes campaign seemed to have been blinded by their own comprehension of the proposal and concentrated on aspiration rather than the much more needed education. A goddam one minute explainer video on what the Voice is and what it could and couldn’t do would have been worth a thousand ads with an indigenous kid dreaming about a brighter future.
Anyway, it’s done, and now we have to live with the consequences. I can at least take some small comfort that my electorate voted Yes, and that Western Australia did not turn out to have the lowest Yes vote – the ever reliable Queensland hitting the bottom of that particular barrel.
But on to other matters.
The Saturday of the referendum also turned out to be the day of my 30th Anniversary High School Reunion at the Breakwater at Hillarys. I was not intending to go, but got badgered into it by a couple of friends. Overall… it was alright. I didn’t recognise half the people there but had a few decent catch ups. I also got a hug from the second-prettiest girl in our entire year, and the prettiest refused to let me leave before we’d had a quick chat – both very gratifying to the shy, damaged nerd that still lurks in the back of my brain. I did bail a bit early though as I felt myself starting to get a bit maudlin – which is the reason I wasn’t inclined to go in the first place. I am far too prone to maudlin nostalgia and if not controlled it can wipe me out for days. I got out before it got too bad and merely lost Sunday brooding on lost opportunities and the merciless passage of time.
(On the subject of the merciless passage of time, one of my classmates could have passed for 60. I don’t know what he’s spent the last 30 years doing, but it definitely hasn’t been kind to him…)
On Sunday, just to make my crappy weekend complete, I ran out of money. Which is not to say I had no money, I just found myself completely unable to access any of it. I misplaced the debit card for my standard bank account a few weeks back and was holding out on reporting it lost in the hopes it would turn up, living in the meantime on the hardly-ever-touched card for my savings account. As I was already feeling crap on Sunday morning I decided to bite the bullet and report it lost. With that done I decided to ease my troubled mind by downloading some truly embarrassing music from iTunes, for which I had to set up and use the savings account card.
It was in the midst of purchasing music that I got an SMS from the bank telling me that said card had been blocked because of “suspicious online transactions” and that I needed to call them right away (in hindsight I suspect that Erasure’s Blue Savanah was too much for the bank computer to handle). I did call them right away (after checking that the number in the SMS was in fact their real number and not that of a Belarusian scam artist) and was immediately connected to a recorded voice that told me I’d called them outside of business hours, then hung up on me.
(Why didn’t I log on to my account online? Because I’ve deliberately avoided setting up online access to my savings account to make it harder for me to spend it all.)
So until I was able to get them on the phone this morning and explain that no scammer would pay $2.99 for a digital copy of the 12 Inch ‘Summer’ remix of Baltimora’s Tarzan Boy I was entirely unable to pay for anything – including any more atrocious music.
Anyway, it’s all sorted now and I should soon be back on an even keel, financially if not psychologically.
So, how was your weekend?
Vale Ducky
David McCallum – famous as Illya Kuryakin in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. but better known to my generation as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard in the NCIS franchise – has passed away at the age of 90.
NCIS has always been fundamentally silly, but still quite enjoyable in a unthinking ‘hunt down the bad guys and shoot them pew-pew-pew’ sort of way, and Ducky’s appearances were one of the most enjoyable aspects. I don’t think he’s been in it much of late (I haven’t been going out of my way to watch since the classic cast were replaced), but he will still be much missed.
(I think McGee’s still there, but he has a beard, and McGee with a beard isn’t real McGee)
As it happens, one my earliest encounters with the works of H. P. Lovecraft was a set of books on tape of The Dunwich Horror and The Rats in the Walls that I borrowed from the local library. Years later I actually managed to buy them when the library decided they were past use. Examining them a few years back I was astonished to discover they were read by Mr McCallum. His reading of the description of Dunwich will always be the definitive version for me.
I’ve managed to find a copy of it on YouTube, although it’s a little faster and higher pitched that the version that I first heard creeping out of my tape player a good 30 years ago. But I’ll include it nonethless.
I’ve also found a copy of The Rats in the Walls, but be aware that the name of the cat (unfortunately common at the time of the work’s writing but appallingly racist) is not edited.
Vale Mr McCallum, and thanks for all the fun!
Not the Games!!
Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has cancelled the upcoming Commonwealth Games!! Say it ain’t so!!
Personally I think it’s approaching obscene to spend billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on a glorified sports carnival when the country’s in the grips of both a housing and cost of living crisis, but many people have a weird and unhealthy obsession with sports and are likely now losing their minds. They’re probably already tweeting (and/or threading) up a storm about how people need sports to make their miserable lives bearable, an argument with a real panem et circenses feel to it. Gotta keep those proles entertained!
The only reason people like the Commonwealth Games anyway is because Australians are the only people in the Commonwealth who can actually swim. Our swimmers reliably bring home a massive pile of medals and everyone cheers about how we slaughtered Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Then at the Olympics everyone is baffled when our world-beating team picks up maybe two golds and three or four silvers. Questions are asked about how our performance could have collapsed so far in only two years, completely ignoring the fact that the Americans preemptively quit the Commonwealth back in 1776.
Screw the games. Well done Dan!
Brains? Where we’re going we don’t need brains!
It is a fact well known to all that here at the Wyrmlog I expend great effort to keep abreast of the latest developments in science and technology (You! at the back! Stop sniggering!). As such I thought it was important to have a look at ChatGP, the AI chatbot that is – depending on who you talk to – either the greatest thing ever created by humankind or the harbinger of the collapse of civilisation.
As is my standard test for all AI systems I asked its opinion on the religious persuasions of dinosaurs, a practise deriving from the very first Googlewhack I ever found – the phrase “Mormon diplodocus” (What’s a Googlewhack? Don’t young people today read Dave Gorman?). It responded with the following…
In the ancient world of the dinosaurs, there were many different species with diverse religious preferences. Some, like the Stegosaurus, were devout followers of the Earth goddess, Gaia. They believed that the natural world was sacred and that all living things were connected. They spent their days meditating in the forest, communing with nature and giving thanks for the abundance of the land.
The Triceratops, on the other hand, were devout followers of the Sky god, Uranus. They believed that the god of the sky had created the earth and all its creatures, and they spent their days gazing up at the heavens in awe and reverence. They were known for their elaborate rituals, which involved sacrificing large plants and animals to appease Uranus and ensure good weather.
The Velociraptor, on the other hand, were not religious in the traditional sense. They were fierce hunters and believed that strength and cunning were the keys to survival. They had no need for gods or goddesses, and instead relied on their own skills and instincts to survive in the harsh wilderness.
Finally, the T-Rex, the king of the dinosaurs, was the most powerful of them all. He had no need to rely on any god or goddess. He was the god of the dinosaurs. All the other dinosaurs worshiped him and feared him. He ruled the land with an iron fist and was worshiped as a god by all.
Despite their differences in religious beliefs, all the dinosaurs lived in harmony and respected one another’s beliefs. They knew that the natural world was vast and mysterious, and that there was room for many different ways of understanding and honoring it.
In the end, these ancient creatures may have gone extinct, but their belief systems lived on through the creatures that inherited the earth. And their legacy of respect for diversity will forever be remembered in the annals of history.
I think we may be in serious trouble…
