Ursarkar E. Creed’s Favourite Song

Kell on the other hand can’t stand it…

(With profound apologies to Pig with the Face of a Boy)

I had a little stormbolter,
He was my only friend,
I took him to the holoshow,
And loved him ’till the end,

I had a little barking toad,
On my windowsill,
And he ate all the flies,
That came in my room,

Please don’t tread on my stormbolter,
He’s my only friend in the whole wide world,
Please don’t tread on my stormbolter,
Or I’ll have to cut your head off, with a blunt chainsword,

I had a little plasma gun, I shot it at a Tau,
I fired off six shots and I burnt my hand on the grip,
I stole a Sister’s laud-hailer and used it to do this,
CREEEEEEED!!!
But then a Necron broke it so I damaged all his face,

Please don’t tread on my stormbolter,
He’s my only friend in the whole wide world,
Please don’t tread on my stormbolter,
Or I’ll have to wipe the remnants of your insides off my face,

Please don’t tread on my little barking toad,
He’s my only, only friend in the whole wide world,
He was little, and green, and he kept me free from flies,
Until someone trod on him, and he exploded, destroying everything for a radius of approximately one kilometre,
And it was very, very sad,

Please don’t tread on my stormbolter,
He’s my only friend in the whole wide world,
How would you like it if I stole your cogigtator?
And I gave it to an Eldar in exchange for spirit stones?

Please don’t tread on my stormbolter,
He’s my only friend in the whole wide world,
Please don’t tread on my stormbolter,
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,
Ha! ha! ha ha ha!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,
Ha! ha! ha ha ha!
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA,
Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh,

Good!

An Earful of Shins

Channel 73 (I refused to call it “7 Mate”) has started running repeats of Scrubs in the afternoons, which makes a pleasant change from repeats of That 70’s Show. Not that I have anything against That 70’s Show mind you (apart from perhaps when Laura Prepon dyed her hair blonde)  but variety is the spice of life and so on.

One of the great things about Scrubs has always been the music, a fact of which I was reminded when last night’s episode featured New Slang by the Shins. I haven’t heard that in ages, and enjoyed it so much that I immediately headed off to YouTube to listen to it in full. Then some other Shins tracks.

So, today you’re getting an earful of Shins. Not as painful as it sounds, I assure you…



It’s Budget, It’s Budget Time!

It’s budget day! The one day of the year when being a single, childless, mid-thirties, fully employed, tax-paying, caucasian male doesn’t actually pay off.

You don’t think that maybe next year you could include some kind of stimulus payment for people who quietly contribute to the economy without demanding child-care, educational support, unemployment benefits or family payments? Just a few dollars? Please? ;D

Introducing Corvus Jyones

Introducing Corvus Jyones

I’ve recently – for my sins – become involved with a play-by-post role playing game on one of the forums I frequent. It’s a science fiction game and we had to write a passage to introduce our characters. This is mine, introducing Corvus Jyones, maverick engineer…

(Note: Contains adult language)

Corvus Jyones, recently engaged engineer of the freighter Gaunt’s Promise was finalising the post-touchdown system checks when the Captain entered the engine room.

“Corvus, have you got a minute?”

“Sure thing Cap!” Corvus sharply saluted and put down his clipboard.

The Captain awkwardly returned the salute “Look, there’s no easy way to say this. You’re a great engineer and you’ve kept the ship running like a dream, but the crew have had a meeting, and they’ve decided – well – they’ve decided that they don’t want you on the next trip. Or any trip, actually.”

“You’re firing me?”

“I’m sorry Corvus”

Jyones turned away. He picked up his clipboard, then put it back down. He picked it up again, turned it around a few times, and put it down again. He picked it up and turned back to the Captain.

“Is it the razor thing?”

“Partially…”

“I told him, don’t use it for more than two minutes straight or it’ll overheat”

“It exploded!”

“Technically they’re the same same thing…”

“It’s also the food”

“I needed parts to fix the razor”

“And they had to come from the refrigeration system?”

“Hey, who’s the engineer here? I made sure there were plenty of non-perishables…”

“Doctor Goodhealth’s Complete Nutrition Paste?”

“Nothing wrong with nutrition paste! It’s nutritious! And delicious!”

“The crew beg to differ. Look, just leave without a fuss, please?”

“At least let me get my stuff”

“Your boiler suits? They’re out on the tarmac.”

“What? How you can you treat them like that? The boiler suit is pinnacle of human sartorial development!”

“So you keep insisting…”

“So, that’s it? Six months of loyal service and all because of one minor, disfiguring explosion I’m cast adrift into an uncaring galaxy without so much as a penny to my name?”

“You were paid yesterday”

“And how do you know I haven’t spent it all on comic slates and moon pies?”

“You haven’t been off the ship yet!”

“I could have been. You don’t know everything I do!”

The Captain sighed heavily and buried his face in his hands,

“Corvus…”

“Can I at least say goodbye to the crew?”

“They’ve already said all they want to say”

“When?”

“All over your boiler suits”

“Fuckers”

“Just, go. Please.”

Corvus set down the clipboard.

“All right, if that’s the way it’s got to be. But I’m not going to go quietly!” He lunged for the nearby intercom panel, mashing the ‘All Channels’ button with his fist.

“I’M A FARMER DADDY!! I’M A FARMER!! DADDY, I’M A FARMER!!”

“GIVE ME THAT YOU INSANE BASTARD!”

“I’M A FARMER!! I’M A- GET OFF! GET! Oh fuck it, have it your way…”

Five minutes later Corvus Jyones stood alone on the spaceport tarmac – except for a pile of soiled boiler suits. The lights of the colony beckoned, promising excitement, adventure and (hopefully) dry cleaning.

Hopes for the Leviathan

Ian Edginton and D’Israeli have released their 2000 AD comic strip Leviathan as a graphic novel. It’s about a gigantic ocean liner, a mile long, that set out on its maiden voyage in 1928 and has somehow been lost in the middle of the ocean for 20 years. A structured society – based on ticket class – has evolved on board, but is being disrupted by a series of murders, which may or may not be being carried out by a semi-mythical being (a ‘stoker’) that stalks the lower decks.

Sounds like a great read – except that I feel like I’ve already read it.

James Lovegrove published a novel named  The Hope back in 1990. It’s about a gigantic ocean liner, 3 miles long, that set out on its maiden voyage and has somehow been lost in the middle of the ocean for decades. A structured society – based on ticket class – has evolved on board, but is threatened by a series of strange and terrifying events, some involving a semi-mythical being (the ‘Compass Man’) that stalks the lower decks.

Leviathan was first published in 2000 AD in the early 2000’s, just over ten years after The Hope. I don’t want to accuse anyone of plagiarism – but I do have to wonder at the similarity.

Neglect

I’ve been feeling so run down this last week that I’ve pretty much been neglecting everything – both online and offline. I didn’t even make it to the local dawn service yesterday – something I normally never miss – because I couldn’t drag myself out of bed.

On the subject of ANZAC Day, this photo of mine has had over 9,000 hits today, all of them coming from various utility pages on Flickr. I guess they must have put some kind of gallery up, but damned if I can find it.

Hmmm, over 9,000?

Sorry 🙂

THE WILL OF THE GODS

You could turn up and ambush me I suppose. Please don’t 😀

Catching up with the guys this weekend at that Brazilian barbeque place. Naturally I could not send out the details in any normal fashion, no…

REJOICE AND BE GLAD ALL YE PEOPLES OF THE MEATOSPHERE!
FOR THE DATE AND TIME ARE SET FOR THE FESTIVAL OF MEAT!
YE WHO EAT OF FLESH ARE SUMMONED TO A TABLE FOR FOUR
IN THE HOUSE OF LAPA IN THE GOODLY STEAD OF SUBIACO
ON THE DAY OF SATURN, TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY THIS APRIL
AT SEVEN AND ONE HALF OF THE EVENING CLOCK
MEAT SHALL BE EATEN, FLESH SHALL BE CONSUMED AND LAXATIVES SHALL BE REQUIRED!
FOR SUCH IS THE WILL OF THE GODS!
(OR AT LEAST THAT OF THE PEOPLE WHO MOST LIKE MEAT)
OM NOM NOM! SO SAY WE ALL, OM NOM NOM!
MEAT!!

😀

Requesting the Impossible

Client: Our website went down for two hours yesterday! What are you doing to ensure that this never happens again!?!

Hmmm, well, how about nothing?

If you own a website, sooner or later it’s going to go down. It’s the nature of the beast. I mean Amazon went down for a full 11 hours last year, and some of their cloud services were down for three days. If Amazon can’t run their website with 100% reliability, how the hell do you expect us to?

It’s not like we play with server cables for entertainment’s sake. We didn’t sit down yesterday morning and say “Hey, you know what would be funny? Taking down a bunch of websites for two hours!”. Our severs aren’t sitting in a cupboard, prey to custodial staff who disconnect them to plug in their vacuum cleaner, or in a leaky attic where rats and possums can nest in the cases. Our systems are secured with all  the industry standard protection and backup systems to prevent outages. Despite this, outages will sometimes occur. If you can’t understand that, you shouldn’t be operating a website. And if you think that there’s some other company out there who’ll keep your website online 100% of the time guaranteed, please feel free to go looking for them.

(And if you find them, please take a look at how much they charge you compared to us)

But hey, I’ll tell you what. If you pay us 48 billion dollars a year we’ll guarantee to be as reliable as Amazon. This means we promise that your site won’t be offline for more than an additional nine hours this year.

How’s that for a deal?