Logic

Well, that was fun. Turns out that the trains aren’t running for some reason (I don’tknow what that reason may be yet, but I’m going to watch the ABC news to find out – thephrase ‘commuter chaos’ is almost certain to be used). So I had to get a bus home.

Happily though it turned out that I could get a bus from Subiaco train station straight toMercy (that is Mercy Hospital which is just round the corner – I like to call it ‘Mercy’because it makes me feel like I’m living in an episode of ER :). And I was only 15minutes late home, not too shoddy!

Anyway, I’ve got a fair bit of stuff to blather on about tonight, so I might as well getstarted. I’m going to rant on about a somewhat controversial issue here, so anyone whomight be upset or offended should probably skip on to the bit about my referrer logs(although I would prefer people to read what I have to say, I wrote it after all).

It’s about the Prime Minister. He’s annoying me again. He pretty much annoys me on adaily basis, but from time to time he does something particularly annoying and I have norecourse but to get absolutely p’d off. Like his statement yesterday on gay marriages. Iquote…

“Traditional marriage is one of the bedrock institutions of our society and I don’t want anything to occur that further weakens it. Marriage, as we understand it in our society, is about children, having children, raising them, providing for the survival of the species.And I think if the same status is given in our society to gay unions as are given to traditional marriage we will weaken that bedrock institution.”

OK, I’m not going to mount an argument here in defence of legalising gay marriage. Forthe record I’m in favour of it. I can see no reason why committed gay and lesbian couplesshouldn’t have the same rights and protections available to heterosexual couples. Somepeople may agree with me, some may not, that’s not what this is about. What this is aboutis our Prime Minister being either terminally stupid, or blatantly deceptive.

Why do I say this? Because his so called ‘argument’ is completely and utterly flawed.

Let’s have a look at it logically. According to the PM, the purpose of marriage is theproduction of children, the perpetuation of the species – therefore since gay couples can’tproduce offspring, they shouldn’t be allowed to marry. Fair enough.

Except that if the only reason gay couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry is that they can’tproduce offspring, then a whole lot of other people shouldn’t be able to get married either.A whole lot of straight people.

Let’s see. Post-menopausal women for a start. Men with a low sperm count. People – ofeither sex – who’ve come down with a variety of cancers either directly affecting thereproductive organs or that have required aggressive radiation therapy. People born withcongenital defects of the reproduction system. People with other fertility problems. Peoplewho choose – for whatever reasons – not to have children. If these people can’t orwon’t reproduce, why should they be allowed to get married?

Now, you may say that that’s taking things to a ridiculous extent. But the point is that thatkind of thing has happened in the past, and it continues to happen.Typically in particularly Catholic countries in south and central America. There have beennumerous cases in recent years of couples being refused marriage licenses because one ofthe partners (nine times out of ten the woman of course) is judged physically incapable ofproducing offspring. So, they can’t get married. And what makes it worse is that the kindof societies in which this kind of thing happens are innately conservative – living togetherwithout being married is out of the question – so there’s no way for these people (peoplewho care about each other enough to want to get married) to be together. If you ask me, that’s completely monsterous, and it’s all because of precisely the line of reasoning put forth by our PM.

Would John Howard support implementation of that sort of policy here I wonder? It’s onlylogical.

The point is, that if we allow people, any people, who can’t have children to get married, then marriage cannot by reason of simple example be about about popping out kids. And indeed it’s not. It’s about two people – people who care about each other – making a commitment to each other, and having that commitment accepted, recognised and celebrated by their community. If they have kids, great. If they don’t, then that should in no way invalidate their feelings for each other or affect their status in society.

If Mr Howard has a logically defensible objection to gay marriage, I’d be willing to hearhim out (I seriously doubt he could convince me to change my mind, but it would at least be polite to listen). But I am not willing to accept such a clearly flawed, faulty and downrightridiculous argument. I mean even Peter Costello’s (the Treasurer) comment (that marriage is defined as a relationship between a man and a woman and therefore gay or lesbianrelationships cannot constitute marriages) makes more sense from a logical perspective.

There are only two reasonable conclusions from Mr Howard’s comments. The first is thatthe leader of our nation is incapable of following through the simple logical consequencesof his own arguments. The second is that he’s lying about his reasons for opposing gaymarriages. I leave it up to the reader to decide which.

(By the way, once logical arguments are exhausted, one may fall back on moral or religiousreasoning. I’m not going to argue that. If a particular religion wants to prohibit certainbehaviors or withhold certain of its services from certain groups of people, that’s its right. You can’t stop people from believing stupid things, and no one has to belong to a religion after all. But no one’s talking about making any changes to any religions. The issue is civil ceremonies.)

Now, if the PM has a religious objection, then he should come out and say it – and acceptany consequences – not hide behind a screen of blatantly false logic. But after all he’s apolitician, so why should we expect any better from him? πŸ™

OK, rant over, on to my referrer logs πŸ™‚

My favourite over the last few weeks has been “animated floating grain elevator”. Ihonestly cannot even begin to comprehend why someone might search for such a thing. Ican’t even begin to comprehend what such a thing might even be. But much moresurprising is three separate queries that seem to follow a common theme. Specifically”vigo mortenson email address”, “phone number of Liv Tyler” and “Jorja Fox’s house”.Well, quite clearly the Wyrmlog has somehow become the number one destination foronline celebrity stalking.

Now I don’t object to this, any traffic is good traffic, but c’mon people! If I had Liv Tyler’sphone number do you think I’d be posting it on my weblog? And do you think she’d bekeeping that phone number for very long? Honestly! πŸ™‚

(And more seriously, what kind of idiot thinks they’d be able to find that kind of infoonline anyway? Sheeze!)

Hmmmm, I’m sure I had more to talk about. Just all ranted out I guess. Oh well, maybe I’llwrite something tomorrow then πŸ™‚

Over and out!

PS: Damn ABC news – no mention of the trains at all! Useless!

The Return of Pimp Daddy!

THE SCANNER!!!!! πŸ™‚

Why I didn’t look there in the first place is completely beyond me πŸ™‚

Well, once again it’s been a while between entries. This is down to me being sick, depressed, and busy at work trying to make up for the time I’ve spent being sick and or depressed. Worked ten hours yesterday, just plain brutal it was. And I’ve got a GURPS campaign to run *sigh*.

But anyway I’m back, with lots to write about. And lots of emails to write to people, which I should get done tomorrow. I hope πŸ™‚

So, to start off with, the season finale of Charmed. Concerning which I have only one question…

WHAT!?!?!!?

They broke up Leo and Piper? Then KILLED Leo? What kind of drugs are the writers on? I mean the whole second half of the episode was like a bad fanfic! Even down to the dialogue! I dunno, maybe they’ve started raiding fanfic for plot ideas. It’s a real shame too, because up to that point things were going pretty well for a late series episode. Cataclysmic end-of-the-world stuff, lots of references to classical mythology, and a villain played by…. whatsisname, Eddie Fiori/Alien Bounty Hunter/Stupid Terminator Street Punk number Three – yeah him, Yahoots Magoondi. And then they go and do that to us. Bastards!

Mind you there was one slightly off note in part one, the name of that female Titan. Anyone who knows even a little Latin does not want to watch some guy snogging a girl and then calling her “Mater”*At least outside of a David Lynch film πŸ˜‰. I mean, urrgh! OK, the ancient Greeks had some weird approaches (by our standards) to family relationships, but that’s no excuse. That character definitely should have had a different name! Urrgh!

But yeah. They killed Leo. Boo!!!!

In other TV news though I happened to discover that Stargate is back on. Hooray!*It’s best if you imagine this in the voice of the little man driving the multi-axeled car in the Whacking Day episode of The Simpsons

Homer: Woo-hoo!
Man: Hooray!

Yeah, like that πŸ˜‰. Of course, Channel 7 (in their infinite wisdom) have put it on at 9:30 on Thursday night, meaning that I can either watch it, or be sufficiently awake to go to work on Friday. So, obviously I’m taping it. I watched it last night after work, completely forgetting that there were new episodes of Jonathan Creek on the ABC – I was rather annoyed about that 😐

Anyway, after Stargate it turned out that there was an episode of Angel -you know, the Buffy spin off? Since I didn’t feel particularly like going to bed once Stargate was over I decided to watch a bit of it. Needless to say (never having seen an episode before in my life) I had no idea who anyone was or what was going on (some previously decapitated woman had come back from hell to inform Angel and his associates that they were inheriting an evil law firm as a reward for inadvertently destroying world peace, huh?) so got bored and turned off after about 15 minutes. But I was struck by two things.

Firstly – Does that theme music rock or what? I mean, this eerily moaning gothic violin (with cello backbeat in the best tradition of Bach) followed up by a semi-techno remix and finished up with a desolate, fading piano scale. It’s as good as the theme from Kindred.

Secondly – One of the guys Angel hangs around with appears to be some kind of demon. Green, scaly skin, little horns, bad eighties suits, the works (there was a shot of him in the credits performing on a stage – an obvious rip-off of Blake’s Ghost of a Flea ;-). Now I don’t have a problem with that (you see stranger things on Charmed each week), but this guy seems to be wandering around in broad daylight with no-one noticing. C’mon, what would your reaction be if you say a scaly green demon in a Tom Cruise Cocktail style combo walking down the street? You’d run off screaming, or at least grab for the holy water. I presume there’s some kind of magical explanation, but still.

Anyway, speaking of denizens of the underworld it turns out that my ten year high school reunion is tonight. I would have written about this sooner, except I only found out on Monday when Fabian called to say he’d been given the invites for our group. He would have had them earlier, except the girl responsible had delivered them to the wrong address. Hmmmmm.

I have to admit that I’m suspicious about this. The Geeks only get their invitations a week out from the event? Sounds almost like some kind of deliberate plot… πŸ˜‰

But seriously. I don’t really mind the possibly of missing the reunion. I can honestly say that at no point in the last ten years have I actually thought about it without either snorting in derision or shuddering with horror. No, what I’m annoyed about is missing the opportunity to send an RSVP.

Call it symptomatic of an unhealthy obsession with high school*C’mon, you show me a geek who hasn’t got an unhealthy obsession with highschool πŸ™‚, but for the last few years I’ve been entertaining myself (from time to time) with thoughts of exactly how I’d reply when the invitation to the ten year reunion plonked down on my doorstep. I could ignore it of course, but I figured it would be much more fun to send back some kind of bitter diatribe. You know, really confuse and freak out the person responsible for compiling the guest list. Something like this…

Dear Whoever*I expect that the invites were organised by one of those really enthusiastic types, the kind of people who were always up the front leading the chants at the swimming carnivals, and joined the ex-students association as soon as they set foot outside the gate on graduation day,

Thank you for your kind invitation to the ten year reunion. Thank you also for reminding me that this is a great opportunity to catch up with old friends, and find out what everyone has been up to for the last decade. I’m quite sure that without your gracious assistance there is no way I could have figured this out on my own.

Sadly however over the last ten years I have kept in contact with most of the people from high school that I actually wished to keep in contact with. Now, while I freely admit that there are some people I would like to catch up with, there are also a lot of people I wouldn’t particularly like to catch up with, and my not wanting to catch up with the people that I wouldn’t want to catch up with more than outweighs my wanting to catch up with the people I do want to catch up with. All clear?

In fact – may I be blunt – if given the choice of attending the reunion or lying dead in a ditch by the side of the road, Saturday night would find me dressed in black from head to foot and playing on the freeway.

So, I hope you will understand if I do not attend this event, and instead spend the evening ritually burning your invitation while muttering obscure curses over the photos of my enemies in the 1993 yearbook.

Yours with vague and undirected malice,

D.P.Wyrm

Now that would be classic! πŸ™‚ But once again cruel fate has denied me the opportunity to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting minds of my former associates. Oh well, I’ll just have to wait until the 20 year reunion. Roll on 2013!

Who knows, I might have a life then and actually attend πŸ˜‰

So, tonight I’ll be playing around with my brand new Raster 250k CD (the entire Australian 1:250000 scale topographic map series on CD – hey, I don’t give you grief about your weird interests πŸ™‚ and reading my brand new signed copy of Terry Dowling’s Rynosseros (thanks for the tipoff Ryan).

Geek Central over and out!

Fronline news from the Auto-Divide

Gah! This society is so auto-centric. If you don’t have a driver’s licence you’re a bloody second class citizen.

Not only can I no longer cash my paychecks at Bankwest without providing a driver’s licence, I was unable to close down my Commonwealth bank account on Friday without having one either. Oh, sure, if I had my ATM card they would have shut it down, but I handed in my ATM card about four months ago the first time I asked them to close it. They didn’t do it then apparently because there were still payments coming out of it for Greenpeace.

Now in this situation I would have though the sensible thing to do would be either send me a letter advising me of the situation, or just cut off payments to Greenpeace, and let them contact me about. But no they just let things run on until I was more than $100 overdrawn, and then sent me a nasty letter about it. You’ve got to admire their devotion to the environment, but still.

So now I’ve got to traipse in again on Monday with sufficient ID to prove that I am in fact me and not some devious criminal planning to take over the world by paying off people’s overdrafts. Sheeze!

Combine all this with the fact that under new anti-terrorism legislation you can’t send parcels overseas without photo-id and someone who doesn’t drive is well and truly screwed πŸ™

OK, OK, I know the sensible thing to do would be get my licence, but why should the fact that I’m not particularly interested in driving around a big stinking chunk of metal make me unable to carry out ordinary day to day functions? And I haven’t got a licence by choice, what about people too incompetent to obtain one?! It’s f-ing ridiculous!!

Gah!!

Anyway I’ll make a more coherant (and less furious πŸ™‚ entry tomorrow. Probably. In the meantime I thought I’d padd this out by posting the lyrics to my latest favourite song The Laws have Changed by Canadian popsters the New Pornographers – chiefly because I can’t seem to find them anywhere else online. So, here goes…

The Laws have Changed – The New Pornographers

It was crime at the time but the laws, we changed ’em,
Though the hero for hire’s forever the same one,
Introducing for the first time,
Pharaoh on the microphone,
Sing1, all hail,
What will be revealed today,
When we peer to the great unknown,
From the line to the throne,

Awaking to cheers after years on the faultline,
We are shocked to be here in the face of the meantime,
Pharaoh all your methods have taught me,
Is to seperate my blood2 from bone,
And we’ll all fail,
Feel what I feel today,
When we peer to the great unknown,
From the line to the throne,

La-la-la-la la-la la-la la-la,
Form a line here3,
La-la-la-la la-la la-la la-la,
Form a line here,
Na-na-na na-nana na-na,
Form a line to the throne,
Na-na-na na-nana na-na,
Form a line to the throne,

La-la-la-la la-la la-la la-la,
Form a line here,
La-la-la-la la-la la-la la-la,
Form a line here,
Na-na-na na-nana na-na,
Form a line to the throne,
Na-na-na na-nana na-na,
Form a line to the throne,

Alone in the chain it remains to be seen how,
How well you can play when the pawn takes the queen now,
Introducing for the first time,
Pharaoh on the microphone,
Sing, all hail,
What will be revealed today,
When we peer to the great unknown,
From the line to the throne,

Sing all hail,
What will be revealed today,
When we peer to the great unknown,
From the line to the throne,

La-la-la la-la la-la-la la-la,
Form a line here,
La-la-la la-la la-la-la la-la,
Form a line here,
Na-na-na na-nana na-na,
Form a line to the throne,
Na-na-na na-nana na-na,
Form a line to the throne,

La-la-la la-la la-la-la la-la,
Form a line here,
La-la-la la-la la-la-la la-la,
Form a line here,
Na-na-na na-nana na-na,
Form a line to the throne,
Na-na-na na-nana na-na,
Form a line to the throne,

It was crime at the time but the laws have changed yeah,
It was crime at the time but the laws have changed yeah,

1: Sounds like “sing” but could well be something else.
2: Prevailing opinion is that this word is “blood”, which would match up well with “bone”. However the initial ‘b’ sound seems to be missing. Hence it could also be “love” or possibly even “life”.
3: Thanks to Mark James for pointing out this lyric change (from “From the Line”).

(In case you’re wondering, it’s apparently “a parable linking primogeniture of pharaohs and the collapse of democracy under the Bush dynasty” – so there you go πŸ™‚

PS: When I turn on the TV in the evening I do not particularly want to watch footage of babies projectile vomiting to the sounds of Rage Against the Machine. Thank you Australia’s Funniest Home Video Show!

PPS: Don’t go searching for anything including the word “Saxon” on Google Australia at the moment. You end up with nothing but Big Brother sites.

Dimensional Warp Generator Needed

From my inbox…

Dimensional Warp Generator Needed

Hello,

I’m a time traveler stuck here in 2003. Since nobody here seems to be able to get me what I need (safely here to me), I will have to build a simple time travel circut to get where I need myself. I am going to need an easy to follow picture diagram for a simple time travel circut, which can be built out of (readily available) parts here in 2003. Please email me any schematics you have. I will pay good money for anything you send me I can use Or if you have the rechargeable AMD dimensional warp generator wrist watch unit available, and are 100% certain you have a (secure) means of delivering it to me please also reply. Send a separate email to me at: [email removed because this guy is probably some kind of evil spammer].

Do not reply back directly to this email as it will only be bounced back to you.

Thank You

What the?!?

A Fleet of Chicken Tenders!

Well, first of all congrats to Helen *g*. I have actually congratulated her via email but I figured I’d better say something officially on my blog. Couldn’t happen to a nicer person. The only problem now is that I’m going to be all jealous ;-D

Anyway, I’m sure I had something to blog about, but I can’t think of it. So I’m going to blather on about other stuff in the hopes I remember πŸ™‚

Last week I watched the MTV Movie Awards. This was not because I think they’re of any importance or significance, but because I heard Yoda won one (for best fight sequence) and the people at Lucasfilms has done up a pretty amusing CGI of him making his acceptance speech. I wasn’t disappointed πŸ™‚ The two highlights were in the middle when he broke off thanking people to sob “Would not cry I promised myself!”, and then when the music started up before he’d finished. He looked up from his speech in annoyance and made a small gesture with his hand. The music stopped dead. “Play off Yoda no one does!” he commented and continued reading his list πŸ™‚

I was also fairly entertained by the Matrix Reloaded themed intro they knocked together. The upside was they’d actually got some of the real actors (or at least people who looked so like the real actors you couldn’t tell the difference) to reprise their roles, and then mixed in footage from the actual film to create a sort of alternative Matrix thing. The downside was it stared Justin Timberlake and that other idiot, the one from the American Pie films.

In any case the best bit (I thought anyway) was when the two aforementioned jokers found themselves in the middle of the big Zion dance sequence. After getting doused with a bucketload of sweat, they get talking to one of the dancers (played by Andy Dick of Newsradio fame). “Where the hell are we?” they ask. “You’re in Zion!” answers Dick, dancing around with glow sticks. “What is this place?” they continue. Dick replies “Well Duh! It’s obviously an underground city where the last humans live and the robots are coming to kill us! Doesn’t it make you wanna party! Wooooo!!!”. At this point footage from the movie shows Morpheus walking out onto his ledge. “Oo! It’s Morpheus!” comments Dick “I LOVE YOU MORPHEUS!!!”.

“ZION, HEAR ME!” shouts Morpheus. Dick chimes in sotto-voice “After the speech we’re all going back to his place for a big orgy. At least that’s what many of us have heard…”. We cut back to Morpheus “It is TRUE what many of you have heard!”. The crowd goes wild πŸ™‚

Then Andy Dick speaks up. “Morpheus! Hey! Morpheus!” he yells. Morpheus looks across at him. “What can we expect at this orgy of yours?” asks Dick. “MACHINES!” answers Morpheus. The entire cavern falls silent in concerned shock πŸ˜€

Well, I found it amusing! πŸ˜‰

Oddly enough though I have some other Justin Timberlake related news. Rebecca arrived out of the blue *g* to stay this week while she did some more management stuff at uni. During the week she purchased a copy of New Weekly which featured a remarkably hideous pull out poster of Mr Timberlake lying around in a car with his shirt off and holding a toy gun in the vicinity of his crotch. We had a good laugh about this and joked about her hiding it somewhere in the flat when she left so I’d stumble over it some time and get a nauseating shock when I least expected it.

The thing is she’s gone now and while the New Weekly is still where she left it, the poster is nowhere to be seen πŸ™‚

I haven’t come across it yet. I don’t know if Rebecca’s been particularly devious in concealing it, or if she was even more devious and took it with her, knowing that I’d suspect it was hidden somewhere and that not being able to find it would drive me mad. I may launch a full scale search this afternoon, or on the other hand I may hold her make-up bag and phone recharger (both of which she left behind) to ransom until she tells me the truth πŸ™‚

(Congrats to Dom on the kickarse new job by the way)

On the subject of New Weekly though I realy am stunned at my own stupidity. On looking through it I discovered that George from The Secret Life of Us is played by the same actress who played Chiana in Farscape (Perth’s own Gigi Edgley of course). How this escaped me for so long I have no idea. I mean she even has the same hairstyle (more or less) for crying out loud! The only explanation I can come up with is that George has normal human coloured skin (and hasn’t got an annoying, whining American accent *g*). So, if you want a disguise I can’t penetrate, painting yourself blue would be a good start, apparently πŸ™‚

Oh yeah, Barry White. He’s dead. That kind of sucks. In a weird twist of fate Ryan downloaded a whole load of his music off Kazaa the day before he croaked. For reasons of science I’ve asked him to repeat the experiment by downloading everything he can find by Tatu. Strictly for scientific purposes you understand πŸ™‚

He brought round a bunch of MP3s last week and I’m listening to them as I type. At the moment it’s The Raven by [Dr Evil] the Alan Parsons Project! [/Dr Evil]. Hmmmm, I think they would have been better off building a giant laser on the moon πŸ™‚

Ah, Sting. That’s better.

Hmmmm, I haven’t been up to much else. I whiled away a couple of hours last weekend when I should have been doing other things tracing a photo of Alisen Down in Illustrator to make a graphic novel style wallpaper for my computer. I (no doubt looking through the eyes of love, or at least persistent infatuation ;-D) think it’s not bad. Ryan on the other hand maintains it looks like a guy (although he has since amended his description to “frighteningly androgynous” :). I will let you the readers, form your own opinions…

There you go. See, if you squint and pretend it’s a photo, it looks nothing like a guy. Right? Right? Oh c’mon! Bah! I give up with you people! πŸ™‚

Hmmm, the Alan Parsons Project strike again. Ammonia Avenue. This is slightly more listenable. Sort of like Queen meets Ben Folds meets Goodbye Yellow Brick Road meets Little Mouse. Sort of πŸ™‚

Gah! This pasta I’m eating for lunch is burning my mouth. It’s shell shaped, and while the sauce surrounding the pasta has cooled to a quite edible state the sauce trapped inside the shells has maintained an infernally high temperature. Ah well, it tastes good. On those parts of my tongue that haven’t had the taste-buds scorched off πŸ™‚

OK, I still have no idea what I was going to blog about, but it’s probably covered in there somewhere. So I’ll shut up now πŸ™‚

The KLF have now left the building!

PS: I bought some frozen “chicken tenders” from the supermarket the other day, this led me to make up a really pointless joke.

PPS: “What’s a chicken tender?”

PPPS: “A boat that resupplies chickens!”

PPPPS: See, I said it was really pointless πŸ™‚

PPPPPS: I swear I’ve heard Neko Case’s voice before. But I can’t figure out where! Grrr! πŸ™‚

Back at Work. Bah!

Being back at work sucks.

I narrowly missed out on an extremely embarrassing encounter on the train home on Thursday night. There I was, walking down the platform after getting out of the front carriage, when who should I spy, sitting in the rear carriage(The electric trains in Perth only have two carriages. Or four in really busy periods, but that’s really just two trains end to end.) but Lyndah (Her hair is currently dyed flame red, so she’s pretty hard to miss ;-)).

You know, Lyndah?

Yeah. She didn’t see me, or if she did she did (she did she did? That can’t be good English!) a very good job of pretending she didn’t. And I doubt she would have spotted me down the length of the train since she was right at the back. But of course this little incident raises the question of what would have happened had we ended up on the same carriage and she had seen me (I know what would have happened if I’d seen her. I would have turned as red as a lobster and concealed myself behind some large fellow commuter before scurrying out like a rat when the train got to my station :)).

It’s a very good question.

The hidden variable of course is whether she’s aware of what I wrote about her. I have no reason to suppose that she’s ever visited my website or this blog, but she could have been made aware of the salient facts by my brother, which would provide a very good reason for her to pretend not to see me under any circumstances, let alone a train πŸ™‚

The problem of course is that I don’t know if my brother reads this blog either. In fact I only know of a few people who do read it, Helen, Ali, Stephanie, Rebecca and Ryan (and maybe Mark, in between all that police training). Of course there’s also all those people who wander in looking for the lyrics to the Drug’s The Bold and the Beautiful or after searching for “Billy Idol Religious Fanatics” (I’m not kidding. Two separate search engine queries over the last few months. The scary thing is not so much that people are searching for this, but that I keep coming up for it :)). But I don’t know about anyone else.

So, regard this as an invitation everyone. If you read the Wyrmlog, let me know! Drop me an email! You’re my audience after all!

I’ll get all depressed if you don’t πŸ˜‰

(By the way, please note that this is not an invitation to send me offers for herbal viagra, discount ink cartridges, penis enlargement pills, human growth hormone, millions of dollars in unclaimed African slush funds or any other such crap. I have excellent spam filtering software and I use it, so your message will be bloody well bounced.)

Anyway, back to Lyndah. I naturally kept half an eye out for her on Friday, but there wasn’t a flash of sexy flame red hair to be seen. Which is probably a good thing all round. I can seriously do without the distraction πŸ™‚

Anyway, on a completely different subject a fair few people have been visiting the Wyrmlog looking for the lyrics to 77% by The Herd. Since I’ve been looking for them myself and the only copy I can find online is woefully inadequate I figured I’d transcribe them and stick them up here. So (with all necessary language warnings) here they are. Enjoy…

77% – The Herd

(samples)

…seventy seven percent of Australians, um, agree with John Howard’s actions on the Tampa.
What happened to the others?..

…the thing is, to use military force, uh, against, uh refugees, isn’t that a little, overkill?..

…a spokesman for the line that owns the ship says Australian SAS Troops are in danger of breaking the laws of piracy…

…undoubtedly this is the most popular decision as far as the Australian public are concerned, the Government’s made during its reign…

…the Captain before entering Australian waters had sent out a distress signal…

…clearly our solution was um, well it wasn’t only farcical – it was um, immoral…

(John Howard) I wish, that this problem were not ours…

Well I’m left sitting here, staring into a beer,
Shaking my head at the same old loathing and fear,
Stranger in my own land, can’t understand,
How the very word ‘Australian’ has just been damned,
I f*****g hate myself, take Aussie from my name,
Erase this endless shame, forever casting blame,
If you don’t act the same will I destroy you?
Everyone looks the same beaten black and blue,

And so I’ve had enough of these redneck pricks,
When fact is the only real s**t that sticks,
Watch as I tear the very skin from my face,
So none’ll see my race, my deep disgrace,
You’re not even from here in the first place!
And those who are you wanna further debase?
Nup – no more – never again, whether by fist or pen,
I will defend – ’cause I’m at a loose end,

The shattered remnants of Aussie dignity,
I’m a skip, whitey, round eye, surprise me,
Use your shriveled brain to please explain,
How the clever country just went down the drain?
We rode the sheep’s back now the sheep ride you,
If this is how it’s gonna be don’t call me true blue,
I denounce my ancestors, wounds still fester,
If you say it ain’t so I suggest ya wake up!

Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up,
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up,
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up,
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up!

Talkback? Squawking hacks, won’t relax,
Until Jonesey, Zemanek and Laws are all axed,
Seventy-seven percent of Aussies are racist,
If you’re here – I’ll say it your faces,
Rich redneck pricks still hold all the aces,
I’ll buy you a beer – with a arsenic chaser,
Better off dead? Is that what I’ve said?
Tempting to take for all the blood you’ve shed,

No doubt you’re as bad as your dads and your mums,
Mainsteam media making me so f*****g bummed,
Anglo reality, intellectual cavity,
Channel Nine fostering prejudiced mentalities,
I won’t be a casualty, just mention casually,
I can’t stand for you s**t-eating bullies,
Preying on peeps without a mainstream voice,
Most of yous stay silent but I’ve got no choice,

Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up!

Well I’ve yelled my lungs out, but to no avail,
Well I’ve yelled my lungs out, but to no avail,
Well I’ve yelled my lungs out, but to no f*****g avail,
That you’re a stranger yourself, now that’s the sting in the tail,

Captain Cook was the very first queue jumper,
It was immigrant labour that made Australia plumper,
Enough is enough, whiteys go pack your stuff,
Don’t wanna live in England? That’s f*****g tough!
I’m sick and tired of this redneck wonderland,
Most of yous stay silent and I can’t understand,
I just can’t understand,
It’s time for you to,

Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up!

Well that’s a cheery way to sign off isn’t it? πŸ™‚

We’re off to kill Saxon, and everyone’s happy!

Prairie. Thanks Helen πŸ™‚

Well it’s been a long while hasn’t it? This is down to a number of factors…

  1. Rebecca staying for a few days and dragging me out on healthy walks and things rather than letting me sit at the computer and lay down more layers of cholesterol πŸ™‚
  2. My working day and night on the aforementioned (I think I mentioned it?) role playing campaign set in a post-nuclear version of the south-west of the state.
  3. I’ve had a killer of a cold for the last week.

But I’m writing now. More or less.

A consequence of not writing a decent entry for so long is that I’ve got a lot to write about. So lets get into it.

THE QUIZ NIGHT: Yes, Fabian’s Dart/Bowls club quiz night rolled around again two weeks ago. This is the same quiz night that I’ve attended for the last two years, and I’ve complained bitterly about each time due both to the absolutely inane questions, and the absolutely inane markers (who think the Statue of Liberty is on Ellis Island, and consistently forget to carry numbers while adding up). Well, this year things were much improved, because…

A) The questions were actually decent this time, with no mention of either elephants or Hercules (they did ask about the Greek Goddess of Victory, but it was a valid question about shoe manufacturers πŸ™‚

B) We won! Yey!!

Yes! We finally got our due and left the opposition limping and weeping in our wake! Ha! About time!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!! πŸ™‚

Excuse me while I recover from my temporary megalomania….. OK, thanks, I’m fine now.

So we won, which was great. But the prizes, well, they were a bit weird truth be told. They’d obviously gone around to local businesses and asked them for… well anything they were going to throw out I suspect. I ended up with…

  • A large plastic box that I’m currently using as a recycling bin.
  • Three cans of Solo. Fabian gave me his three so I actually ended up with six.
  • A throwing ball thing, you know like a football with wings that you throw to people. I gave it to Fabian for his son Jayden in exchange for the Solo.
  • A jar of Salsa.
  • An economy bag of sour cream and chive chips.
  • A box of water crackers.
  • Two stubby holders. One from Dulux Paints, the other from Carlton Breweries.
  • A sparkly party whistle thing.
  • A set of lacy padded coat hangers.
  • The most ridiculous terra-cotta thing ever made.

I include here a picture of the most ridiculous terra-cotta thing ever made, just so everyone can appreciate just how ridiculous it is.

So, what’s it for you ask? It’s for hanging off the side of a pot plant. What does it do? Just hang there, apparently. I completely fail to understand the purpose of this πŸ™‚

The strange thing about all this was that a girl at the next table was absolutely desperate to get her hands on my coat hangers. As I wouldn’t be able to sleep with such monstrously feminine things in the house *g* we came to a quite equitable agreement where I handed them over in exchange for a floppy hat, two more cans of Solo and a proposal document for building a Formula One race track just outside the city (like I said, the prizes were weird πŸ™‚

So yeah, that was the quiz night.

REBECCA’S VISIT: As I said, Rebecca was down for a few days. We actually managed to pack an awful lot into them.

On the Friday afternoon we went for a walk along the cycle path down by the river. Our basic aim was to mock the various tiny houses that are being built down there, particularly the ones where the owners seem to think they’re living in a Tuscan villa, rather than a cramped little shoebox. Our secondary aim was to get Rebecca some fresh air after her hellish stinking hot hour long bus trip from Fremantle, for much of which she was stuck sandwiched between her huge backpack and a man so obese that he could have happily taken up two seats on his own. Which probably isn’t really his fault, but still, you wouldn’t want to sit any closer to him than necessary would you?

On getting back from that we proceeded to walk into Mount Lawley where we had dinner at the Red Orchid, the same place we did last time Rebecca and Dom were in town. This time we sat inside, and were served by a very sour young woman who we decided was either a vegetarian who was disgusted at us for ordering meat, or an art student who was disgusted at having to lower herself to actual work. Or maybe both. In any case I took the plunge and had the crocodile. It was surprisingly like slightly chewy chicken. Once we finished up there we walked up to the Astor and had ice-cream at the Gelare place before walking home.

On the Saturday we went into town to look for MP3 players. At the first place we tried, the Myer Megamart, the sales assistant told us that we wouldn’t have much luck finding any solid state units in Perth, because there wasn’t much demand for them. We refused to believe him and went looking elsewhere.

We should have believed him. After four or five hours tramping around the entire CBD we managed to track down two solid state MP3 players. Two. And neither of them were very good ones. Is it just me, or does this seem really really stupid? Surely Rebecca and I aren’t the only people in Western Australia after the things? Sheeze!

Anyway we had lunch at Croissant Express (I can highly recommend their BLTs by the way) and went on to do some less technology oriented shopping at the David Jones foodhall, which is apparently shutting down because it’s unprofitable. Which sucks, because it’s possibly the best place in the universe to go for a browse. I mean the food they have down there! It’s nuts! And they’ve got a live piano player entertaining the shoppers too (not actually in the foodhall mind you, on the next level up – it just impressed me that’s all πŸ™‚ Rebecca practically went into retail/cooking ecstasy -living in Kalgoorlie doesn’t give you much in the way of creative cuisine options apart from roo-meat and feral goat. She limited herself to some feta cheese and insanely expensive (but insanely good) chocolate though. And some cards. And a pen. And maybe some stuff I’m forgetting πŸ™‚

Anyway once we’d finished there we headed back to the Megamart, since they had hardback copies of The Order of the Phoenix for $22.00, the cheapest price we’d found. For the last few weeks all over the city there’d been big signs warning everyone to pre-order their copies or miss out, but we couldn’t walk ten feet without tripping over big piles of the things. On the news that night they had footage of people lining up outside stores for hours and practically beating shop staff to the ground in order to get a copy, and then said everywhere was sold out within minutes, but I don’t know where they got that idea from. From what Rebecca and I could see every store in town had massively over-ordered and couldn’t shift the damn things πŸ™‚

Anyway, back at the Megamart I purchased a CD stand since my old one is overflowing. The funky orange one I had my eyes on turned out to be $250, so I decided to be slightly less funky and get a $50 one instead. Then we caught the train back.

OK, I should point out at this point that Rebecca has a plan. A plan for me. This involves my getting a place of my own, a driver’s license, a car and a girlfriend, preferably all before I turn 30. To this end she insisted that we look through the property listings in the newspapers at Croissant Express (getting a look of sheer evil from a bearded street person – who was reading one of them and seemed to regard the other as his personal property despite the fact he wasn’t reading it at the time – in the process). It turned out that there was a unit for sale in the local area in my price range and it was being offered by the Real Estate company just across the road from the Gables. So it was a pretty foregone conclusion that we were going to stop in there on the way back. The Agent was very enthusiastic and gave us a list of other properties in the area which we decided to check out either that afternoon or on Sunday. So then we came home.

That afternoon Rebecca went off to see her friend Tammy and get the latest updates on her spawn of Satan boyfriend who I seem to recall is named Tim but should actually be called Beelzebub the Opportunistic Bastard Exploiter of Emotionally Vulnerable Women May a Large Truck End His Days Soon. I busied myself assembling the CD rack and sorting out my CDs. Here (for purposes of general edification) I include a photo of how the nicely ordered collection currently looks…

Snazzy no?

Anyway once Rebecca got back we had a stir fry and watched Momento, which she’d given to my on DVD for my birthday and much to my shame and embarrassment I hadn’t got around to watching yet. I really should have, not only is it a totally kick-arse film but it also features Carrie Anne Moss and Jorja Fox (Jorja Fox, you know, Sarah from CSI? πŸ™‚

Anyhoo, on Sunday morning we went out for a walk to look at the properties. The first one turned out to be down near the river amongst all the ones we’d had so much fun mocking on Friday. Happily though it didn’t look particularly mock-worthy. It actually looked very nice, based on what we could see through the insanely tight security. The next two were in the same block, and while I had some idea of where to go, we ended up getting slightly lost. In a burst of serendipity though we emerged from the back streets not only on the correct road, but standing right outside the very building we were looking for. Sweet.

The final block we were looking for was across the railway line, so we stopped in at a supermarket to get drinks before continuing. The block turned out to be pretty run down and insecure though, so we decided not to bother about getting an inspection – despite the fact it was very convenient to the local fetish-clothing/bondage-equipment store πŸ˜‰

It was starting to rain at this point, so rather than walk back we decided to catch the train. Unfortunately we just missed one and it being Sunday the next one wasn’t due for another half hour. So we sat around on the freezing, wet platform which seemed to have been designed specifically to provide absolutely no shelter against wind and rain whatsoever -possibly to discourage loitering. But we ended up back home relatively dry.

The rest of the day was spent just hanging around until it was time to call a taxi to the airport. There was a bit of confusion over this, since the taxi that turned up was from a different company to the one Rebecca had called, so we assumed it was for someone else, and the driver eventually drove off in disgust. So she had to call another one and deal with the dispatcher who seemed rather irate that we were too foolish to figure out that a Yellow Cabs taxi would obviously be working for Swan Taxis. It worked out in the end though, although we did make the disturbing discovery that Swan Taxis can tell your physical location just from your phone number via some arcane phone-tracing matrix-like technology – obviously not the people to make prank calls to πŸ™‚

So, Rebecca went off to the airport, and since she’s been emailing me from her work, presumably got back to Kalgoorlie in one piece *g*. All in all it was a very enjoyable three days, even if I do have to go and buy a flat now πŸ˜‰

VIDEO CLIPS: I think I said I was going to talk about some video clips. This is because a few weeks back I happened to catch some of Rage, and amongst all the dismal repetitive R&B and auto-lobotomising pop there were actually a few really entertaining clips. So, I thought I’d bore everyone by carrying on about them.

First of all is Gay Bar by Electric 6, the same people who (in collaboration with Jack White from the White Stripes) brought us the truly deranged Danger! High Voltage a while back. As it turns out their new song (and associated clip) is even more deranged that this previous effort.

It opens on a cartoon of the White House. As the music gets going we zoom in to a window, where a silhouette of a figure in a stovepipe hat can be seen. We then cut to live action where, sure enough, one of the band members (I presume, it could just be an actor, I don’t know) is sitting behind a desk dressed as Abraham Lincoln.

“Girl!” he announces seriously “I wanna take you to a gay bar! I wanna take you to a gay bar! I wanna take you to a gay bar!” He stands up to reveal that although he’s wearing proper 19th century garb on his upper body, his legs are bare except for a pair of spangly boxer shorts. “Gay bar!” He points right where an identical Lincoln in boxer shorts appears, “Gay bar!” he points left and another Lincoln appears.

We cut to a fairly staid looking 19th century room/hall. In the centre are the three Lincolns dressed in shorts and singlets with towels around their necks (but still in stovepipe hats), pumping away on exercise bikes. “Let’s start a war!” suggests the central Lincoln “Start a nuclear war! At the gay bar!” he gestures right and several Lincolns on various bits of exercise equipment appear. “Gay bar!” he gestures left and more work-out Lincolns materialise, “Gay bar!” even more Lincolns appear, lifting weights and working on rowing machines.

The clip continues in a similar vein with ever increasing numbers of Abraham Lincolns engaging in a variety of highly cliched homoerotic activities such as pole dancing, weight lifting and climbing ladders in skimpy tool belts, all while wearing stovepipe hats. It’s one of the stupidest things I’ve seen on TV in ages, and therefore (naturally) I think it’s fantastic. πŸ™‚

Although for some reason they beep out the words “war” and “nuclear war” with whip cracks. Hmmm, weird.

The second clip that caught my notice was for the Herds’ 77%, which for those not in the know is a scathing hip-hop/rap song attacking the Howard Government’s policies on indigenous affairs and refugees. The clip involves a cardboard cut-out John Howard having a number of “adventures”, including waking up one morning as an Aborigine and being beaten by the police, and finding himself suddenly turned into an Afganistani refugee and being abandoned in a detention centre. The only slightly disappointing thing about the clip is that it’s not true πŸ™‚

In a similar vein No-FX’s Franco Un-American is another politically motivated video clip done with cutouts. It has some great images, the one that particularly sticks in my head is a map of Iraq dripping with blood which drains into a petrol can and fuels up a number of giant American SUVs. The appearance of Michael Moore and a map of Australia are just bonuses πŸ™‚

Finally I wanted to mention the very surreal and creepy clip for Radiohead’s… well to be honest I don’t know what song it is, one of the new ones off Hail to the Thief I presume. In any case it features a man staggering through a very dark and creepy moonlit forest stumbling over a number of strange little tableaus involving woodland animals. Such as a tiny house built into a tree root which contains two mice wearing fezzes and quilted dressing gowns sitting by the fireplace in rocking chairs and smoking cigars, or a banquet attended by rabbits and hedgehogs, or a cat wedding. All of the animals are stop motion animations like the old Wind in the Willows TV series – in fact I’d swear the entire clip was inspired by the series, it could almost be the Wild Wood the guy’s stumbling through.

Eventually he comes over a bright, white, glowing coat hanging in a tree. He puts this on, then notices some shoes sitting in a fork of the same tree, which he proceeds to don as well. The crows sitting in the tree then attack him, and he goes racing through the forest, pursued by them. His flight is in vain however, as he’s suddenly transformed into a tree. It’s all very weird and creepy and doesn’t make any sense, but wow, it looks good πŸ™‚

So yeah. Those are the clips.

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS: Is The Laws Have Changed by these guys the catchiest song ever? Or is it just me? πŸ™‚

OK, going to go now. I’ve got to go inspect some of these properties. Rebecca wants me to post images of them here so people can vote on which I should buy. Don’t know if I’m game to whip out a digital camera and start photographing people’s homes though. Or leave such a major life decision up to the kind of weirdoes who wander around the net for that matter πŸ˜€

No offense ;-D

Sand in your Coffee!

Um yeah. It’s been mighty quiet on the prarie lately…

Is that how you spell prarie? Doesn’t quite look right to me for some reason. Hmmmmm.

Anyway this is really just an entry to say I’m in the middle of two weeks off from work, and as such I’ve just been sleeping in and lazing around the house and so on, so have little to write about and even less inclination to do so *g*. Well, that’s not strictly true, I had a rent inspection on Wednesday and Rebecca’s coming down for a few days (she’ll be here any minute in fact – or hour more like since the trains aren’t running and she’ll have to get a bus), but apart from that not much has been going on. Well, there’s been a few things, OK, but I’m not going to write about them now, that clear? Good!

I will direct everyone here though. It’s a stupid little online test I whipped up to see how well YOU (my loyal readers) know ME (your semi-loyal intermittant writer). So go ahead! Find out what you know about me! And what you don’t! In percentage form! Can you stand the excitement?!? πŸ˜‰

Course you can. It’s only a stupid test πŸ™‚

I’ll write a proper entry, including full details of my quiz night success and observations on currently charting video clips soon πŸ™‚

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