The Remotely Creative

Huh.

2006-04-07T07:26:00.000+10:00

Up and moved my arse to Livejournal, didn't I.

http://kissplease.livejournal.com

Tomato...

2005-03-26T17:24:00.000+11:00

Haven't seen it yet, obviously. But from what I can see on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie is absolutely killing the opposition, well, quality wise. It's got a perfect "Fresh" rating as of now. Damn, I can't wait!

Linkage

This is football...

2005-03-26T14:08:00.000+11:00

Much has been said about the effects leading up to and following the Nick Riewoldt incident. To sum up what happened briefly - Riewoldt tried to take a tough mark (catch the ball), but clearly it didn't work out. He fell badly and broke his collarbone. When Riewoldt recovered somewhat (stood up), and was headed off the field, two players from the opposition (Brisbane Lions - Mal Michael and Chris Scott) decided it would be wise to bump into the area around Riewoldt's injured shoulder. When off the field, sitting on the bench, no doubt shaken by what just happened, he started to cry.

Taking the acts of force by the two opposing players out of the equation, there have been two fields of thought on this subject. On one hand, it's a show of weakness to have Riewoldt (the captain of the team) crying. On the other hand, the incident was tough on him, and he has the right to let his emotions out.

Now personally, I think that he has the right to cry. Crying on the field may be taking it a bit too far, but when sitting on the sidelines, knowing that the next six weeks will be spent recovering instead of playing, would be devastating. Just because he cried doesn't mean he can't perform as the captain of the team.

There is an idea among many people that crying is a sign of femininity in men, as is a sacrilege to see on the football field. If we're going to discourage crying on the field, then I for one think we should discourage the other femanine traits in football. Just because you're on the football field, it doesn't mean that touching or hugging another male is right. If crying is to be discouraged, then all other acts of emotion should also be discouraged.

Linkage (AFL)
Linkage (AFL)
Linkage (Related forum thread - Australian inFront)

Feel Good.

2005-03-25T22:53:00.000+11:00

Gorillaz have a new single available to listen to online, you can stream it through either the iTunes music store, through Real Player, or through Windows Media Player with this here .asx link. It's pretty hot, I must say. I was a massive fan of their first album, and this a welcome joy to mine ears!

I've also been listening to a lot of Tahiti 80 lately, their Wallpapr For The Soul album is special.

The new Ford Shelby Cobra GT500 (the original version of which would be familiar to all Gone In 60 Seconds fans) has just been unveiled to the public, and it's reasonably hot. The front view is especially mean, and the profile shot isn't bad either. They definitely should have maintained the vents from the classic, but whatever. The arse - as with the standard Mustang - is fucking terrible and needs a makeover ASAP.

A mate sent this MMS to my phone this morning. Beautiful.

Today I had a major lapse of sanity, and attempted to teach the average forum goer about the benefits of grammar and punctuation.

And.. That's about all I can be arsed with tonight.

The Office (US)

2005-03-25T19:20:00.000+11:00

I started watching it with an optimistic mind. But no doubt, if you've watched the original series then you'll be disappointed. The boss is decent, same with the receptionist, and the US alternatives to Tim and Gareth. It's just not as funny as the original, with everything seeming more forced. I mean, the jello joke is funny, but not twice in one episode funny.

Linkage
Linkage (TvTome, The Office (US))
Linkage (TvTome, The Office (UK))

What is this, 1980s New York?

2005-03-24T10:39:00.000+11:00

My younger brother just recited to me a story told him by one of his friends (whom we shall call "Sally") recently. Apparently she was getting the train home from work late one night, and when she boarded the carriage closest to her on the platform, she didn't like the look of a couple of idiot drunkards in the otherwise empty carriage and quickly moved to the next one along. Here she found only three girls and nobody else. Two of the girls were sitting quietly, and in the seat between them was another girl with her head in her chest, seemingly asleep. It was late at night, so no biggy there. Didn't warrant a second thought. Five minutes later, the train rolls into the next station and sits there longer than usual. Suddenly one of the doors opens, and in works the train driver. He walks over to Sally and asks to see her ticket. Sally figures it's a little odd that he's picked her specifically - not to mention coming out of his cabin to do it, since it's usually only transit police who check tickets - but she pulls out her ticket and hands it over. The driver declares the ticket invalid and tells her to get off the train. Sally is a bit shocked, as she'd only just bought the ticket, and says so to the driver. He refuses to listen and makes her get off the train.

Once they're outside the carriage, he walks her away and then stops her. He turns to her and says "Look I'm sorry about that, your ticket's fine. I pulled you out of the carriage because I just saw those two girls strangle the girl in the middle. I've called the police".

That's about all my brother bothered to share, and I was too busy to probe for more info, haha. Still, you'd think the driver would stop the train the moment he saw it happening, right? Though maybe the camera had only just switched onto that carriage the moment they were finishing up. Either way, hell of a story!

Hot like that.

2005-03-23T16:50:00.000+11:00

By sheer dumb luck - in so much as I took the unusual (for me) step of actually applying for a job that I'd like to make mine - I may have scored a regular freelance writing gig. I'd be covering the latest news in Anime for kids, as well as reviewing upcoming releases and what not. I've been offered a trial spot right now for the June issue of the magazine in question, which means I have a few weeks to get my shit together. Hot! Adding to that, my first freebies from Australian anime distributor Madman rocked up in the mail this afternoon.

Did Ooda mention that Yahoo! are buying my much loved Flickr? I think he did. Truth to tell, I don't read his posts. Gives me a headache every time. I kid I kid, you're a good sport. So I wonder though, what will this mean for those of us who make bigtime use of Flickr? I admittedly do not have a premium account, but that's mostly because the free account was fulfilling my needs. What am I going to do with a gigabyte of space and bandwidth? Flickr this week assured their users that Yahoo!'s buyout will not spell doom for the website and its free accounts, nor would it result in an influx of morons into the community. Time will tell, I guess.

I was always a big fan of the photos that would flow like so much flowing stuff out of New Orleans (or wherever) every year during their Mardi Gras festivities. But hot diggity damn, It may be fair to say that Rio cannot be beat. Check out these shots. Definitely not safe for work or in the company of prudish prudes.

There's been another school shooting in the US. At least they're still number one for something.

How to find MP3s and what not, via Google's search engine.

Adidas are apparently considering - thought it's a long shot at best right now - manufacturing a limited run of Zissou's; the fake Adidas runners created for Wes Anderson's (brilliant, if not a little slow) movie The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Seems they've been getting literally swamped (truly - they had a major plumbing problem) with calls asking where folks can buy the shoe and have had to tell each caller that the shoe does not in fact exist. Huh! It's okay though, relax. You can make your own.

Movie/Television roundup #2...

2005-03-22T20:57:00.000+11:00

The promotional posters for Sahara - based on the book by Clive Cussler - are out. I was sceptical about the movie, as to be honest, I'm an absolute whore for Clive Cussler books. Matthew McConaughey actually is probably the best actor they could have picked as Dirk Pitt, though I would have liked a recast of Steve Zahn as Albert Giordino. What he's supposed to be is a stocky Italian; This guy looks nothing like it.

Looks like Mr Tarantino is planning to make a martial arts movie, with Donnie Yen (Hero) and Li Xin.

The American version of The Office is set to air in the US on Thursday, after the always interesting The Apprentice. I just got around to watching the original The Office, and of course, it was great, as I was told for a long time. The new series will have the exact same first episode, and then branch off to originals. Hopefully it works out.

Looks like Kojak is back on. Latest episode of The Contender was good, with a great fight, and a note on the suicide of one of the fighters. Finally, Woody Allen (that twisted f*ck) has broken his losing streak and has made a good movie.

Rantage...

2005-03-21T22:13:00.000+11:00

Sigh, I figured university (or college for you American folk) would be busy, but now I'm getting a good feeling of it. Got a few essays due in the next two weeks-

Should parents have the right to physically punish their children?
Is homosexuality biologically or psychologically determined? Is the answer different for men and women?
There are people in the world who are happier than we are, while possessing far less. (Skinner, B.F.) How can this be?

Questions aren't too bad. Got another assignment for Philosophy, not that hard, but means thinking for a bit.

Rantage over.

Failage...

2005-03-21T19:04:00.000+11:00

Somewhat interesting read about all the pilots which failed this year. Big number of them.

Linkage

Flickr...

2005-03-21T17:27:00.000+11:00

Looks like Flickr, to no big surprise, has been bought out by Yahoo. I know Van's a fan of it.

What is going to happen to Flickr?

Flickr will be continuing on the path it's on -- to Flickr 1.0 and beyond. We'll be working with a bunch of people that Totally Get Flickr and want to preserve the community and the flavor of what is here. We're going to grow and change, but we're in it for the long haul, with the same management and same team.

Are you going to become Yahoo Photos?

No. Yahoo Photos will get a lot of Flickr features, and there are alot of other areas around Yahoo that will also be Flickrized where Flickrization would be good. Yahoo Photos and Flickr have different kinds of users with different needs, and will remain separate for the foreseeable future. Flickr would also suffer from a sudden deluge of LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! omg! so we're going to grow it carefully.

Linkage (FlikrBlog)
Linkage (Flick)

$10 or the pussy gets it...

2005-03-21T16:10:00.000+11:00

Would have loved to have seen the Jack Johnson in concert, picked up his latest last weekend, following the recommendation by Van. Following the advice, I think that Van meant to say "the man with the godlike wang", but I'll pretend that demi-god is a compliment...

When their beloved 2-year-old kitty went missing last month, Katherine DePasquale and Alex Martinez thought she was just lost somewhere in their Hell's Kitchen building.

Then a note arrived saying that Penelope was OK but that the couple would never see her again.

Their kitty had been cat-napped.

"There are so many strays out there, so why would somebody take her in and not give her back?" a distraught DePasquale asked yesterday.

How stupid are some people, I mean people who kidnap cats. The other pussy linkage is, ah, interesting.

Linkage
Linkage

Jack Johnson @ The Sidney Myer Music Bowl

2005-03-21T13:21:00.000+11:00

So last night, as the title of this entry somewhat highlights, I saw Jack Johnson perform at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl here in Melbourne. Scud and I arrived a little after the gates opened, to be greeted by a massive - truly, truly massive - line, but we were cool with it because it was a nice warm bright evening and the surrounding view (read: girlies) was terrific. It was only until we'd eventually reached almost the front of the line that we began to wonder if we could actually pick up our tickets at that particular entry. It turned out we couldn't, so we had to wander around to the other side of the venue to join the queue for picking up pre-purchased tickets. Hoorah! Some signage advising of this would have been nice, but I suppose we should have had the commonus sensus to think of asking before lining up.

Once we'd gotten in, we made a b-line for the gents. All that standing around had been too much for Scud's bladder I guess. The view continued to be nothing short of sensational (read: girlies), so I didn't mind the waiting.

We then proceeded up onto the main hill, where we discovered that our chances of finding somewhere to sit in plain sight of the stage were about as hot as the odds of me sprouting rockets out of my arse and visiting the moon - not too flash. After standing around umming and ahhing, we eventually caved in and sat on one of the two side hills, where we had a beautiful view of not a whole lot. But gosh, the scenery was great (read: girlies).

The Support Acts

G. Love & Special Sauce came over from the US with Jack and Donavon, and they were quite good - in a slightly unorthodox and perhaps slightly unsuited-for-the-day kinda way. I quite enjoyed them though, and might get their album (AKA download it).

Donavon Frankenreiter is a good mate of Jack's, and so it went without saying that he'd be somewhere on the supporting cast. I've been a fan of his for a year or so now, and it was great to see that his show lived up to expectations. The quality of his performance had me thinking of the evening as a bit of a double-header Johnson/Frankenreiter gig rather than it being all about Jack. The ladies loved his massive 'stache and cowboy outfit too. Hell, even I was a little excited.

Xavier Rudd is shit, end of story. I would boot him off a cliff if it came down to that or listening to his endless and annoying songs with no variety and or interesting.. bits. Yes.

The Main Man.

Jack! Brilliant. Offering up a varied selection of tracks from all of his albums, mixing and shuffling songs into each other, performing duets with Donavon and G. Love, inviting Kram from Spiderbait on to play drums - it was all great. Well worth the 70 bucks. He has a special air about him I think, in that he's very calm and easy going, and that permeates and melts into the crowd, spreading out up to back of the hill and making everyone relaxed and happy to sing along.

The let down? Some drunk teenaged dickhead was singing along in a death metal voice. He then proceeded to urinate where he stood in the crowd. Top guy! I'd have loved to give him a smack in the gob, but unfortunately he was in a larger group and my odds would not have been too hot! Still, it wasn't enough to ruin the show. Great night.

Click for photos.

Where'd all the good people go?

2005-03-21T13:06:00.000+11:00

When I first began reading this Wired article regarding the Aggressive Takeover of The Brain by The Right Hemisphere (as I prefer to think of it) in the 21st century (boy), my first thought was something along the lines of "excellent, now us (remotely) creative types will be revered as gods (except for Ooda, who will be viewed heretofore as a demi-god)". But the more I thought about it, creativity is no less vulnerable to Asian outsourcing than IT and various related industries. The amount of times I come across websites for Indian design groups offering to create your company logo for 20 bucks - often displaying work on par with any western artists - makes me a sad panda. More power to them - if it means they're finally going to be recognised in the west as a viable and welcome proponent of the international business community - but shit... It also spells major personal underselling for my future.

Hot diggity there were a lot of bracketed comments in that paragraph.

This crowd claims to have developed software that can almost instantly bring full colour (more like Technicolor though, if you ask me) to black and white images, with nothing more than a few strokes and scribbles in the appropriate areas. I am a little dubious, but it'd be pretty sweet.

I don't know how reliable these figures are, but in a recent article, this website offers up some pretty damning statistics as a counter to the United States' too oft bandied around claims of being the number one country in the world.

The owner of website Milka.fr has been ordered by the courts to surrender her domain name to Kraft, who are the international owners of the trademarked product and name "Milka". Apparently the fact that her name is Milka is less relevant than we might have thought! Legally, I can understand and somewhat accept the ruling; but that said, it still smacks of corporate bullying.

Australian readers (particularly from those states that follow AFL footy) may be familiar with Sam Newman and Rex Hunt and their ongoing shit-slinging matches. It all came to a head this wek when Sam called into Rex's 3AW AM radio show and gave him the verbal beating of his life. I am confident that even his wife doesn't give him this much stick. Sam pulled no punches, other than to keep his language in check - and that was an admirable effort on its own. Anyway, check out the call right here via streaming audio.

Open wide...

2005-03-20T22:38:00.000+11:00

US Congress fights to keep comatose woman alive

United States politicians have invoked emergency powers in their bid to see doctors resume feeding a heavily brain-damaged Florida woman who has been kept on life support for the past 15 years.

Terri Schiavo, 41, has been in a persistent vegetative state since a cardiac arrest sent her into a coma in 1990.

Doctors removed her feeding tube yesterday after a protracted legal battle that pits the woman's husband, Michael Schiavo, against her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler.

Mr Schiavo insists Terri should be allowed to die because she would not want to live in her current state. He says that was her wish communicated to him when she was well.

But the Schindlers argue their daughter should be kept alive through life support and have questioned Mr Schiavo's fitness to serve as his wife's guardian.

Now, congressional leaders will summon the Senate and House of Representatives back into session from its Easter recess to vote on a bill which would give a federal district judge jurisdiction over the case, setting the stage for a new round of legal battles.

In this case, I have to come to the defense of the husband. I mean, its been 15 years, it's not like she's going to suddenly wake up. I don't know this medically, but when someone is brain dead isn't it a definite that they won't wake up?

Seems like a big waste of time for all parties to be caring for her in the first place, and letting her stay alive in the, ah, second place. The courts should rule that if you can't sustain yourself (I'm only talking about food, not oxygen or the like, and not related to infants) then the patient should not be given sustenance in the form of food. Wouldn't the bed/room she's taking up have served someone else a lot better?

Just makes the parents seem like they're very greedy individuals.

Linkage

Gimme wang...

2005-03-19T16:39:00.000+11:00

Ah, looks like the battle of the blog has begun! Anyway...

Doctors cut man's micro-penis off and grow it on his forearm

Needless to say that there is no normal man in the world who would agree to bid farewell to his genitals and have his penis cut off. It is an open secret that the male organ is considered to be the object of eternal pride for all normal men living on Earth. However, if there is an experienced surgeon, who guarantees a considerable increase of the penis size after such an execution, some men would probably take a risk to experience the miraculous genital reincarnation.

Russian doctors from a Moscow hospital have recently performed such an operation on one of their patients. They cut his tiny penis off in order to grow the organ and attach it again to its natural place. Furthermore, the doctors were growing the phallus on the man's arm.

On another wang related note, did any of the so called penis enlargement techniques ever work? I know the pills were a definite bust, but does the good old fashioned penis pump do the job?

Linkage

Windows Evo VIII

2005-03-19T13:52:00.000+11:00

I have to make this a quick entry, my dim sims are almost ready!

So, what release version will Longhorn be? If the early ones were 3.1 and 3.11 (or whatever), then what are these 95/98/ME/2000/XP versions? I calculated that Longhorn will be version 8, but don't you dare hold me to that.

Anyway, the reason I mention Windows is due in part or in whole but definitely in some form to the fact that the 2006 release of this monopolising grandeur will ship with 6 new typefaces. THAT'S RIGHT. NEW FONTS! All I really want them to do is remove Comic Sans, but I guess I'm probably asking too much there.

This guy thinks he's developing a machine that can make anything you want, right there on the kitchen bench. Well, anything except toasters apparently. I think he's been watching too much Star Trek.

The new War of the Worlds trailer is online. It's quite a bit longer, and it gets me excited in my shirt. Honestly, I had to take my shirt off, there was that much excitement happening. I'd show you pics, but.. Well.. Nobody deserves such a cruel punishment.

Wes Craven has two new thrillers on the way, one being Red Eye and the other being Cursed. Christina Ricci turns me on in a weird I'm-not-happy-about-it kinda way, ya know what I mean? 'Course you do.

I think Ooda and I are racing to see who can post the most shit lately. Do you suppose he's trying to take over my blog? I think he's plotting something. I'M CALLING 911 BITCH.

No I kid, keep posting. Those Bob and McE guys have proven to be disappointing! I will eat their children. With honey soy, that shit has proven to be delicious!

Spore...

2005-03-19T13:51:00.000+11:00

I've been aiming at keeping the amount of game related posts down due to the inevitable geek factor it brings. But this is one game that really needs something said about it.

Spore is a new game being created by Will Wright, the guy who created "The Sims". From what can be seen, this will be the game that will define what an epic game is. You start the game off as a basic microorganism, where you can add basic "body" parts like claws and the like. Eventually the being will evolve...

Over time your creature will evolve in a basic being, then a pseudo human being. Different cities will be created(using a sort of Simcityeske style) all around the world, and when required, battles will occur. Eventually the level of knowledge will be so great that your society will be able to create a spaceship, which means colonizing or battling other worlds.

I hope this game ends up being good, and it's nice to see something other than a generic first person shooter.

*Images in gallery from Gamespy/Gaming Steve

Linkage (Spore Gamespy article)
Linkage (Spore screenshot gallery)

I thought you were hot...

2005-03-19T10:30:00.000+11:00

There is no escaping the naked lens of High-Definition TV. The picture is so clear that aging signs and skin imperfections are clearly visible.

This site has a list of celebrities that will look better and worse on HDTV, which explanations for each. Interesting.

Linkage

Hook nosed jew bastard...

2005-03-19T02:33:00.000+11:00

Went and borrowed some DVDs, and finally got around to watching Private Parts. Must say I was quite impressed, interesting and funny, though no doubt it will appeal most to Howard Stern fans.

Linkage

And in the left corner...

2005-03-19T01:35:00.000+11:00

I have to admit, I've always been a fan of Rocky. There have been whisperings about Sylvester Stallone doing Rocky 6. I'm somewhat happy about this, but still, what is the impulsion to mess with a winning formula from the past (Yes, I do realise it's because of the money).

Well, to get to my point, last week The Contender started to air. It's a new series revolving around boxing, made by Mark Burnett, so obviously follows the Survivor/The Apprentice formula quite closely. Hosted pretty well by Sly Stalone and Sugar Ray. The shows ratings, to be blunt, are not amazing, but to their defense, NBC has f*cked around with the show airing time quite a bit.

I'm really loving this show. About half of the show revolves around the two teams, who have to complete one task against each other, the winning team being able to choose who fights who from each time.

The second half of the show focuses on the fight, and this is where it really gets interesting. Fights are professionally ranked, with a healthy crowd at each fight. First two fights have been great, with somewhat smaller (in stature) guys choosing to fight clearly larger opponents. Best thing is seeing the little guys win out. The slightly enhanced camera work/effects during the fights really adds to the experience.

Linkage
Linkage (TvTome - Show Information)

Water out of air? Brilliant!

2005-03-19T01:30:00.000+11:00

This is a nice development. I know it's nothing new, but the fact it's in a convenient, small factor form is what really sets it apart. This device is called the "Air2Water Dolphin", which is a dehumidifier combined with a water purifier. To put it in simple terms, you plug it in, and it harvests water from the air. Apparently it can create 20 litres of water a day in a 70% humidity environment. The fact you don't need those inconvenient water bottles is a huge plus.

This would be convenient for places where there's a problem with water pollution/contamination. I promise my next post will be somewhat less geeky.

Linkage (Treehugger, also quite a good blog)

Tell them... Bring more Pocky!

2005-03-18T22:39:00.000+11:00

You have to check out these Pocky commercials, straight outta Japan. They're so stupid that they're awesome!

Bang.
Bang.

(I shot my baby down)

Also, this short video of the Nintendo DS in action is hilarious. I didn't realise what I was supposed to be watching, all I was seeing was some dipshit drawing clouds and butterflies and what not. Then the third thing he draws ends up with an interesting result, and even the user himself was shocked - as you'll see yourself (1.3mb .AVI).

These guys have a goddamn jet powered remote control scale F-14 Tomcat (3.4mb .WMV), and it looks like.. Well.. A lot more exciting than I ever thought RC airplanes would be.

The dochebags way to make a million dollars...

2005-03-18T22:37:00.000+11:00

If I wasn't so go damn attractive, I'd start to take offense at some of Van's comments. Anyway, looks like a fool who dived off a road bridge into shallow water will be awarded with $1m in damages...

A MAN who became a paraplegic at 14 when he dived off a road bridge into a New South Wales river was awarded more than $1 million in damages today.

Mr Dederer, from Newcastle, claimed the RTA and the council were negligent despite there being signs prohibiting diving, because the signs did not say diving was dangerous.

Justice John Dunford agreed and today awarded Mr Dederer $1,050,000 in damages.

He ruled the RTA was 80 per cent responsible for the accident and should pay $840,000, while the council was liable for 20 per cent of the damages to a total of $210,000.

The judge ruled the signs erected were inadequate because young people continued to dive from the bridge.

"I am satisfied that the signs were not effective in the sense that large numbers of young people continued to dive, do somersaults, etc from the bridge," he said.

Usually I fully agree with people getting reasonable compensation for accidents - when they actually deserve it. This is one case where the kid deserved what happened to him, and I don't mean the compensation.

Linkage

Van's movie roundup.

2005-03-18T22:10:00.000+11:00

Pfft. Ooda. What does that guy know about movies! I kid, I kid.

I have news, news, news. You need to be geeky to be interested in my news. If you are not geeky (and no Kerri, dorky is not geeky!), you'd best move along on account of there is nothing to see here.

The official website for the The Watchmen movie is now online. You can register for updates, you can join and participate in their message board, or you can download their wallpapers. It's all very exciting, truly. If you're not familiar with The Watchmen, it was (and still is, I guess) a short series of comics written by Alan Moore - also famous in the mainstream for authoring the comic upon which the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentleman was based (a movie he made no secret about hating, but one that I quite enjoyed) - and it's quite good. You can learn about it a little here at Amazon.com.

A prequel to Ang Lee's amazing 2000 epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is to begin film very soon, and you can read about that very special news right here.

The first poster for the upcoming Aeon Flux movie - based on the MTV animated series about a femme fatale assassin going about her business 400 years into our future - is now online. You can check it out here.

Yahoo! Movies has posted an 11 minute behind-the-scenes video from the Sin City movie.

IGN FilmForce has some news regarding which new mutants we ought to expect to see in the X-Men 3 movie. Fears that Angel may be a female instead of a male have also apparently been put to rest.

That oughta do for now.

Kerri called me today, she's so cute. For some reason, whenever she calls me we get this crazy 2 or 3 second delay, and it's terrible! It doesn't happen when I call her though, so I think she may be engineering this occurence so that she can get out of having to call... No no, I kid! Don't kill me woman!

That's a 5 dollar shake...

2005-03-18T20:48:00.000+11:00

Gosh I loved Pulp Fiction. I was about.. what.. 15 when I first saw it. Maybe 16. Made shit all sense to me back then - though at the time I probably thought I had it all figured out - but it was such an eye opener for a young lad. From there I moved away from Back To The Future type movies, and onto the gritty Hong Kong and nasty anti-Hollywood movies. Everyone has their eye opening moments I guess.

I always knew that the cost of living in Japan was ridiculous by western standards, but I also knew that it was a case of supply and demand. There are 127 million people living in Japan, on a couple islands with a total land mass of 377,835 sq kilometres. Compare that to the USA ( 293 million folks sitting around in 9,631,418 sq km of land) or Australia ( 20 million Aussies kickin' around in 7,686,850 sq km of sunburnt country), it becomes pretty clear why everything in Japan costs a wee bit more than what we're used to. That said, AU$12 (US$9.50) for a freaking burger with the lot?! Pass me the rice, please.

Is this about the cutest 404 page you've ever seen? That's an accomplishment that is. (Link courtest of Adam Berry).

The following link is extremely unsafe for viewing at work and/or in the company of prudes. This is quite funny, but.. I can't help but think that no guy is ever going to go down on this girly again! I know if it were me, I'd be like "Oh, go down there and kiss that demon-looking guy? Sure!".

Brief movie roundup...

2005-03-18T17:36:00.000+11:00

A new pseudo-interview with Quentin Tarantino is up at Moviehole. Answers some of the questions that have been raised lately...

Kill Bill : The Whole Bloody Affair
QT is also going to release both "Kill Bill" films as one uber-long movie. "Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is definitely getting a wide release," says, "actually, that'll probably be the first movie that Miramax, under their new company, will be releasing theatrically. It's the Japanese version, that's why I call it that, you know, it should probably come out in the next few months. It's going to be NC-17 in America. We couldn't do that when Disney owned the place but now Disney's the fuck outta there we can do anything we want! It's gonna be off the hook!"

In other news, a new Batman Returns poster is out. I haven't really watched many Batman movies, and haven't read the comics at all. I have to admit though, this movie looks like it may be good. But on my list of comicbook/movie adaptations, Sin City is probably topping my list, with Batman Begins second, and Fantasic Four taking third, even though it's showing signs of suckage.

Linkage (Quentin Tarantino pseudo-interview)
Linkage (Batman Returns poster)

Well that tears it.

2005-03-17T17:57:00.000+11:00

Gomez are touring Australia for the second time since I took a liking to them about 5 years ago, and just like the first time, I'm going to miss this one. Where the hell did they advertise it, on a tiny sticker plastered on the back of a seat in the back row of a dark theatre? I have not seen a single poster or heard one solitary radio announcement about it. Suffice to say, I am not pleased. I was extremely upset that I missed the last one a couple of years ago due to being less than broke at the time, and now this one too. BLAH!

I think I'm becoming addicted to pink Fanta™. Holy shit this stuff is the goods. It tastes like Calpico (AKA Calpis in its native Japan), which is - from memory - a delicious soda fermented with a little milk. Sounds ridiculous, but it's yum-diddily-umptious! Yeah, you heard me. Getting back on track, I've had about 3 bottles of it in the last 2 days, and that's not cool by any standard! On the topic of Fanta, here is every flavour of Fanta ever. Some folks gots just a wee bit too much time on their hands.

While scoping out the competition, I came across Sydney's surf/skate/snow brand InSight. Their website is goddamn hot. Look at the way the graffiti moves! I guess I'm easily pleased, but damn there would have been some work involved in that.

Did you like Ice Age? The trailer for the sequel can be found right here mates.

I know this link has been getting around, but it must be shared all the same. Rockstar have created the Beaterator, and it begs the question - do these guys go out? Whatever the case may be, if this is the result of those lads having no social life, kudos to them. Absolutely brilliant little toy this one.

Ewan MacGregor really likes motorbikes. Read about it.

An Illinois lawmaker wants theatres to be required - by law - to advertise two sets of times for each film. One for when the trailers start (which is the time you would normally see in the paper or online), and one for when the actual movie itself will begin. Is this a joke? ARE THERE NOT MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO BE MAKING LAWS ABOUT? Whatever.

Hey boy...

2005-03-17T16:49:00.000+11:00

Heard a strange thing on yesterday's Howard Stern. A Simpson's creator phoned in a gave an interesting tale about the episode where Michael Jackson was featured.

Simpson's creator and Jennifer Tilly's ex-husband Sam Simon called in today with a bizarre Michael Jackson story. Howard was reluctant to take his call at first because he sometimes isn't the greatest storyteller, but he decided to give him a shot. Sam said that he actually worked with Jackson years ago on a classic Simpson's episode. It was the one where Homer meets a fat white guy in the mental hospital who thinks he's Michael Jackson. Sam said he brought the script over to Jackson's place to see if he'd be interested in doing it and Jackson was. His only reservation was that he wanted more scenes with Bart Simpson, his favorite character on the show. He demanded the script be changed so his character could spend more time with Bart. According to Sam, they changed the script, giving Jackson a scene where he spends the night alone with Bart in his room. Jackson agreed to the change and signed on to do the show. Sam also added that during the voice recording, someone gave Jackson a giant Bart Simpson doll and when he thought no one was looking, Jackson started to kiss the doll. Again, this is all according to boxing guru and dog savior Sam Simon.

The guy really doesn't help himself with all these wierd doings. Well, I guess we'll see in a few months if our worries are warranted or not.

Linkage (Howard Stern Radio Show Archive)
Linkage (Howard Stern Radio Show)

No, I ROCK!

2005-03-16T23:46:00.000+11:00

A Cedar Rapids service station attendant's penchant for "air drumming" has cost him his job.

Last summer, Christopher Garcia began working at the Hawkeye Downs Sinclair station and convenience store in Cedar Rapids.

Soon after he was hired, customers complained to store manager Judi Moorman that the 46-year-old Garcia was constantly playing an imaginary set of drums - using real drumsticks - while listening to music through headphones. Some of the customers reportedly said they were fearful of being struck by an errant drumstick during one of Garcia's air solos.

"My customers were feeling threatened by it," Moorman testified at a recent state hearing to determine whether Garcia was entitled to unemployment benefits. "They didn't feel comfortable that these sticks were flying around. And, you know, he would get rather close to people."

I can understand getting a bit into the music at times and playing the air guitar or air drums, but I must say, this guy really has proven that he is a complete loser, in all senses of the word. But then again, I've always thought that the air guitar competitions were for losers as well.

Well, at least I'm still f*cking awesome.

Linkage

Jake in Progress...

2005-03-16T21:15:00.000+11:00

John Stamos has a new series out on ABC, Jake in Progress. The show seems okay, but nothing amazing. It doesn't suck entirely, and seems like it is one of those shows which could improve with time. I must say, John Stamos has aged incredibly well, looks good for a 42 year old. I'd hit that.

He had a good interview on Howard Stern as well, worth a listen.

Linkage (Jake in Progress)
Linkage (Jake in Progress Torrent)
Linkage (Howard Stern Radio Show)

Now that's what I call a wang...

2005-03-16T20:47:00.000+11:00

"A Chinese man has lifted a 75-kilogram barbell for 10 seconds - with his penis.

Zhan, 55, attributed the skill to a branch of kung fu, the Yangtze Evening Post said.

He said his father taught him the skill to help him get fit after a serious illness when he was 18.

He started training by lifting small bricks with his penis, then gradually added weights and extended duration.

Zhan, a director of the Hong Kong Chinese Culture Development Fund, said he had no interest in applying to Guinness World Records."

Damn, that's some ultimate wang action. Impressive, I guess.

Linkage

The Entries of Master Bobwise

2005-03-15T23:34:00.000+11:00

Well I bet every one of you has been chomping at the bit to discover what I, the newest member of theremotelycreative, has in stock for you, the wide-eyed reader. I'm delighted to tell you - NOT MUCH!
No no, I jest. I have much to share, but until I manage to get a website up (featuring my work), I'll just be sharing other people's discoveries which, if all goes to plan, will all be news to you. I'm a bit of a science man, I dabble in politics, I enjoy photography, so I'm hoping all the hot linkage action that you'll experience when you skim over my entry might amuse or interest you for a minute at least.
**
This had me hooked for quite a while; a website of cartoons inspired by spam.

Meanwhile, I often enjoy the photography found here. Not always, but you know, as a photography student, I'm expected to hone my snob skills. So there.

Oh Quentin...

2005-03-15T21:58:00.000+11:00

I love Quentin Tarantino. I really do love him.

That's why it hurts me so much when I hear rumors about him directing the next installment in the "Friday the 13th: Nightmare on Career Street" series. Thank god the rumour has since been debunked. His next movie is supposed to be Inglorious Bastards, centering around a bunch of guys in WW2 who did some bad shit. To be honest, I can't really remember what the movie's about.

There was another rumour about him having a prequel to Pulp Fiction (best movie of all time in my book), but all seems to have gone quiet on that front. Looks like he had some involvement in the new Sin City movie, Van may be able to clarify that point, he seems like the resident comic book guy around these parts.

Linkage

More car woes

2005-03-15T21:10:00.000+11:00

My midnight driving sessions are slowly getting the better of me. Last night, before I'd even left the driveway, I had an interesting interruption to my plans strike me. After turning on the heater to demist the windscreen, I copped a loud mid-pitched whirring noise from below the hood. Seconds later, all the alert lights on my dash flared up and the power steering took an unauthorised leave of absence. Brilliant! I slowly slide it back into the driveway, and due to the lack of light in the atmosphere, decided to sleep on it. I go out this morning, and it seems the serpentine belt has come loose somehow. Weird! Well I figure I'll replace it in the next day, and go back inside to check out prices and what not. Later on, I elect to go for a jog - as I've been doing a lot lately; finally sick of being a fat bastard - and what do I spy lying on the driveway? One of the bloody pulley wheels that the serpentine belt would normally encircle. Great! So there's going to be a bit of work involved in sorting that one out.

Anyway.

There are a couple of notable new blogs worth checking out, the first being Cinematical - devoted to covering the news across the whole moving film spectrum of rainbow flavoured flavours, and the other being TV Squad, who have taken it upon themselves to watch a million hours of television every week, and then tell us how fat they've gotten. I mean tell us what's happened. You know, on the TV. I don't watch TV at all really (honest, no exaggeration!), but I don't mind reading about it. It's how I stay hip and with it. I might also take this opportunity to offer my support to a long time favourite of mine: John Stamos. He has a new TV show! Apparently it's good. I will perhaps download it, since I can rest assured that if it ever makes it to Australian television, it'll be in 2012.

Apparently Hyundai are fast becoming one of the most reliable car manufacturers. What the shit is the world coming to? Next thing you know, Microsoft will be creating popular gaming consoles. ...Oh. Well shit. As a side note, this also marks the first time I've ever bothered to visit Hyundai's website.

I've got no idea how old this is, but Maxim magazine have a gallery of pics from Iraq, focusing on soldiers holding a copy of Maxim, or other various poses. It's nice to see there's a bit more to the job than just killing folks!

Well, I've recently scored a contract to design a website interface for a special project that the Victorian state government are working on, and it's very hush hush top secret. I have to get back to it, so good night to you all. Drive safe, and see how many beers you can get down before you make it home or into a pole. Hooray!

I will leave you with this sterling quote:

[21:32] [flipswitch] cock is another name for rooster, dick!

Billy, shows us what you brought in for show and tell...

2005-03-15T18:14:00.000+11:00

"A gun in a bookbag discharged in an elementary school classroom Monday and the second-grader who brought it was shot in the hand, police said."

I wonder what the kid was thinking of doing with the gun, I'm pretty sure he didn't bring it in for show and tell. Strange thing is that his mother said that she didn't know where he got the gun from. I don't know how it is in your neighborhood, but a handgun isn't something you usually see lying in the street.

On a side note, I hope everyone enjoyed the Gran Turismo 4 review. Also, it's nice to see that The Remotely Creative is growing, welcome to all the new contributors. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing one of the fairer sex entering the fray...

Linkage

The Remotely Creative Presents: Gran Turismo 4 Review

2005-03-15T01:53:00.000+11:00

Gran Turismo 4

Platform: Playstation 2
Developer: Polyphony Digital
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Verdict: 9.5/10

When I originally started writing this review a few days ago, my opening statement was along the lines of, “Well, I guess it’s good…”. That was after only playing Gran Turismo 4 (GT4) for a couple days. Sure it was good, but it just wasn’t blowing me away.

After playing for a more considerable length of time, I am glad to say that I was wrong. Gran Turismo 4 is an amazing game, coming so close to perfection only to miss it by the faintest margin.

It’s big, right?

Gran Turismo 4 was the first game in the series I have played. I had heard that the game was big, but I had no idea just how big it would be. What I expected was a few cars, and a spattering of tracks, really just the standard fare as far as racing games go.

The game is huge, literally of epic proportions, and only the absolutely dedicated will be able to finish it. Don’t take that as a negative, the amount of content in Gran Turismo 4 is simply mind staggering, with more than enough to satisfy one for months of solid gameplay. Included in the game are over 700 exquisitely modeled vehicles, from over 80 manufacturers, from every corner of the world. The feeling of immersion is only aided from the fact that cars are not only from the current generation, but ranging from the turn of the century, to the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.

The real world tracks are another aspect that makes GT4 stand out clearly from the competition. Tracks from all around the world are incorporated, all recreated in exact detail, including Laguna Seca, and the beautiful Nürburgring course.

But is it fun? (Gameplay)

Gran Turismo 4 consists of two main modes, “Arcade” or “Gran Turismo”. Arcade mode consists of singles races, time-trial, two-player, and multiplayer (LAN) races. Singles races are a great way for beginners of casual players to quickly jump into the GT4 experience. Time-trials and two player modes are the standard fare. Multiplayer, LAN play in particular, is one area of contention, mainly due to what was left out – online play. I’ll cover this point in greater detail later on in the review.

To no particular surprise to anyone, Gran Turismo mode is where the crux of the gameplay occurs. Here you begin as an amateur starting out in the world of racing, with only 10, 000 credits to your name. What follows is your slow progression up the racing hierarchy, earning money and skills, and trading up vehicles until you finally reach the top.

One difference between GT4 and other racing games is the requirement to earn licenses – A and B class, both national and international, and a special license. I guess this is a good addition due to Gran Turismo striving to be “The Real Driving Simulator”, as quoted from the GT4 logo. Personally, I’m not the greatest fan of the need to learn licenses, but this doesn’t mean that it’s not a good addition. For new players of Gran Turismo 4, the lessons are quite beneficial as the game requires considerable more skill than other games on the market, but for players used to Gran Turismo, the prerequisite to complete the license training is just plain tedious. Earning the different licenses opens up different parts of the game world. When you start the career mode, they’ll be a few races which you can race without needing a license, but the higher up races obviously require the higher up licenses.

While there aren’t really any different types of races, liking drag or drift racing, the standard lap races are more than sufficient. The great range of tracks in GT4 means that you’ll never get bored, or stuck with constantly playing the same track with just a slight variation. Once you complete a good chunk of the game, then endurance events are opened up, which include such daunting races like a 24 hour (literally!) or 1000 mile race.

There’s a great range of different tracks types represented in the game – city courses, world circuits, original circuits, dirt, snow, and driving park. The city courses feature an assortment of courses from all around the world, including the beautiful streets of Paris, or the bright, neon-filled streets of Hong Kong. The world circuits are accurate reproductions of famous circuits from all around the world, including, like previously stated, among others, Nürburgring (Germany), or the Twin Ring Motegi (Japan). Original circuits, like the name describes, are courses designed by the creators of GT4, and wouldn’t seem out of place on the world circuit. The dirt and snow tracks add a more challenging and scenic mix, with tracks like “The Grand Canyon” worth checking out. The driving park consists of tracks that let you practice your driving skills.

During the course of the game (Sigh, what a sad pun) you’ll be able to buy and win a whole assortment of vehicles, both used and new. Cars can be purchased from a huge range of manufacturers, over 80 in total, from a huge range of countries, like Japan, Germany, America, Australia, Germany, Italy and Belgium. Car modifications can be performed at general car tuners, or the official manufacturer’s tuners.

The car modifications range from the basic, like different rims, and rims, or the more intricate, like turbo systems, or exhaust systems. For players new to the car modification scene, the whole range of upgrades will seem daunting at first, but quickly you’ll start becoming versed in this fine art. I won’t bother explaining the whole list of upgrades you can perform, but trust me, it’s big. Take into account that not every vehicle can be customized in exactly the same way, depending on the make and model.

Before beginning a race, a simple looking, but intricate car configuration is available. In this mode you’re able to change many aspects of each part of the vehicle, if you’ve purchased the appropriate modification. Here the whole profile of the car can be changed, and if you know what you’re doing, the performance upgrades can be quite significant.

The physics of Gran Turismo 4 is one of the big differences between this great game and the competitors. It feels great to drive around, feeling the rubber melting away from the tyres, seeing the tyre indicator display the amount of wear. Corner physics also seem quite accurate, or at least appropriate. It’s a lot better than many other games on the market, where physics consist of nothing much at all. Traction on the snow and dirt courses gives a good change of pace, but is liable to have you throwing the Playstation 2 against the wall.

Almost not worth mentioning is the much talked about B-Spec mode. Included within Gran Turismo 4 are two modes for each race, A-Spec and B-Spec. A-Spec is just the normal way of driving in a race, as in, you control the car. B-Spec, on the other hand, is disappointing. What is consists of is a camera that tracks your car from a distance, using a camera style similar to what you’d expect to see when watching a real race. From that perspective you order the car to do what you want it to do, which simply consists of telling it to go faster, slower, or overtake. Driving is handled by the AI. As you win money from this mode, it’s worth going from this mode once with each car on each course to see how it handles against the competition. That’s how the game makers expect the feature to be used. In reality, as the mode requires basically no user input other than initially telling the car to go fast, it means that it’s an easy way to make money quickly and easily. Basically, it’s cheating. There were rumors that the B-Spec mode was going to have an entire game dedicated to it. Luckily, this rumor didn’t eventuate.

How’s the eye-candy? (Graphics)

Graphics is the area where Gran Turismo 4 really kills the competition. The cars are modeled exactly like their real life counterparts, and the textures are just as good to match. The real-time reflections on the cars add so much to the realism of the game, it’s just beautiful. Tracks are handled just as well. The design of them is amazing, following the same design as the real tracks, and the textures are simply amazing. The small touches like used rubber on the track in the appropriate parts just adds so much. The off-track scenery is also beautiful – when you see the track with the mountain and forests in the background, you’ll be awe struck.

What truly makes the graphics amazing is that so much has been done on so little. The Playstation 2 is quite an aging piece of hardware, so old that the successor is expected to come out late, or early next year. Even the X-Box, which is known for its graphics has no racing game that looks this good. The fact that the game suffers from no slowdown, even when all six cars are on screen is something to be impressed by.

For the lucky readers with better hardware, Gran Turismo 4 supports both 480p and 1080i resolution. Unfortunately, due to my, ah, financial limitations, this isn’t something I was able to test myself. I can just assume that it’s even more breathtaking than standard 4:3 display.

Of special note… (Logitech Driving Force Pro)

Accessories aren’t usually talked about in game reviews. This is one exception. For the release of Gran Turismo 4, Logitech has released a special edition steering wheel, the Logitech Driving Force Pro Force Feedback Wheel.

The main thing to note about the wheel is the fact that it has a 900 degree wheel rotation. Take into account that 900 degree rotation is only in games which support it which basically means that, well, only Gran Turismo 4 can handle it. The wheel locks off to a certain rotation angle when used with games which support less rotation.

The force feedback is strong, and is immensely satisfying. There’s a gear stick which is a sequential gear stick, and there’s F1 style shifters on the wheel.

All I can say is if you have the money, buy it. I bought one just for GT4, and am not disappointed.

Okay, so what’s bad? (The Negatives)

Obviously, no game is perfect. Gran Turismo 4 comes so close to perfection, so close there was a chance it could have been perfect with just a bit more tweaking.

The main complaint about Gran Turismo 4 is the lack of online play. Almost every racing game these days comes with online play built in, and when GT4 was announced, this was one of the features many people were waiting for. Unfortunately, this feature has been cut from GT4. On one hand, this is disappointing, but on the other hand, GT4 does so many things well, that trying to add online play would have meant delaying the release by a considerable margin. Considering that the Playstation 2 is in its dying days, this really would have been a bad move.

The lack of damage modeling in the game is also disappointing. No doubt this is one reason why so many vehicles have been included in the game, it’s sad that when you hit other cars, basically nothing happens. I’m not asking for a “Burnout 3” level of destruction, where the car is completely destroyed at the slightest touch, but at least some basic body damage, and broken windows would add a lot.

Some basic cheats or exploits also exist, and from what I’ve been led to believe, this is something which has been around since the early days Gran Turismo. If you run straight into an opponent at a corner, you turn quickly with no apparent disadvantage.

The AI in the game is good, but nothing amazing. What would be good to have is that opponents would try to box you in, barge you off the road, or other devious acts.

One final thing that I’d like to bring up is something that disappointed me quite early on in the game. One nice touch that has been added to the game is the inclusion of 3D crowds, where a spectator will run across the road. The very disappointing thing is that the rest of the crowd it just a simple flat image, meaning that if you go slow around a corner, or make a mistake, you’ll see the ugly presentation of the crowd. The invisible barriers also are annoying, as at points they’re just too close to the main track.

And finally…

There’s a spattering of extras included in Gran Turismo 4, such as the ability to take photos of your car in different locations. While it’s nice that you can change the camera shutter speed, angle, etc., the photos occur in prerendered scenes. It sure would be nice to be able to take in game photos. Photos can be transferred onto USB memory, and then printed off. Nice for a desktop wallpaper I guess.

In summing up, all I can say is that Gran Turismo 4 is simply a great game. While it does have a few rough points, the game is still the best racing game to date. The game has been delayed numerous times, but ends up being worth the wait. Considering that GT4 will give you months of enjoyment, the value factor really makes it a must buy. I sure can’t wait to see what they’ll be able to do with Gran Turismo 5 on the Playstation 3, but other than a graphical, physics and online improvement, there isn’t really much that can be improved, Gran Turismo 4 is just that great.

2005-03-14T01:22:00.000+11:00

If only the NintendoDS were as good as that image suggests...

Some buddies and I went down to our local football field an hour or so ago (around midnight) to shoot spuds at trees. Yes, that's right. On a Sunday night before a public holiday, the only thing we could think of doing was grabbing some PVC piping, shoving a spud in one end and hairspray in the other, and then igniting the spray in order to launch the spud at a tree. Jesus, I feel like I'm 15 again, and that ain't cool!

Although I did get my first shag at 15...

SonyEricsson have officially announced (albeit a couple of weeks ago) the successor to the K700i; the K750i. While the 700 is a truly brilliant phone - and I own one! - the 750 looks like it'll be an absolute pocket rocket. Sporting a 2mp camera and a MemoryStick expansion slot, I may well be in love. If it were to say to me "Does my arse look big in this dress?" my response would verily be "Let's shag".

Who loves the chocolate?

2005-03-13T21:31:00.000+11:00

This is six months old, but because I haven't seen it until now, it's brand new.

From the team that brought you lions & tigers in Kenya, here's a rather addictive ditty about chocolate, which is rather fitting with Easter only a fortnight away.

ps. hello! ooda

I take my pants off to you, my good lady.

2005-03-13T00:07:00.000+11:00

Yeeeah I don't know what that meant.

I spent most of today sitting on a grassy hill overlooking the beach, drinking Coronas with some good friends and shooting the shit. Awesome day. That's about all there is to say on that subject!

scud: what happened to your blog?
scud: did you get other people to help you out?
van: yeah, opened it up to some friends
scud: coo.
van: i thought so too
scud: I thought you going for the broncos and calling nrl the greatest code in australia was a bit weird
van: hahahah
van: haha yeah

Funny stuff! Jamie can cook, and now so can I. Hooray for male evolutionary progress! This auto site has a million car and bike blueprints. How hot is that? I'll tell you, it's bloody hot. If your religious education is lacking, get yourself a headstart with the untold story behind the bible. I think you owe it to me to purchase these Daft Punk figures for me. Gawn, do it. DO IT. Whether you like comics or not, this page is universally hilarious. Do you enjoy internet fiction about Roy Orbison being wrapped in cling film? I know I do!

Anyway. Coffee & Cigarettes was a piece of shit movie, as was I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. Worst DVD-selecting effort I've ever made.

That's just nasty...

2005-03-12T11:37:00.000+11:00

"One of our customers, an Irish Catholic priest, who had not washed his genitals in probably living memory, came in for a hafada. It took almost three days to get rid of the rank smell from the treatment room. I had cleaned him using Phoraid iodine based cleaner which was a very gentle but effective antiseptic. He cam back again a year later, and that time I used Jeys (carbolic acid) cleaner. There was never another visit after that."

"I had a guy in his seventies wank himself as soon as I finished putting in a PA. It only took him about five seconds to reach the short strokes, but fortunately I had taped a rubber glove over his dick so I did not have to clean up after him!"

Here are stories from piercers about some of the wierd - stinky, perverted, suicidal, and angry client stories. Four parter, it's a good read. The stinky one had me a tad uncomfortable though.

Linkage (Stinky)
Linkage (Peverted)
Linkage (Suicidal)
Linkage (Angry)

HEARKEN TO ME.

2005-03-12T00:19:00.000+11:00

I don't give a flying falafel shit what you people say, online comics don't get quirkier (in a good way!) than Scary Go Round. Just.. Freaking reading it!

Intermission is a superb movie. It opens with Colin Farrell talking to the girl behind the counter in a diner, suggesting that for all they know, they may be meant for each other. Kismet and Serendipity and all that sort of thing that most of us desperately wish would strike us but hasn't yet. She's totally into what he's saying, and you can just see in her eyes that she's about ready to believe that she's found The One™. Shit, I was totally into it myself. I was sitting there thinking now damn shit fuck, why can't I get this kinda luck?

Then he socks her one in the mouth and robs the register! It was brilliant. Not because I'd do it - it's a little too fucked up to be my kinda work - but hot diggity split, it was funny. In a mean way!

That's my team.

2005-03-11T21:33:00.000+11:00

The best football code in Australia (otherwise known as NRL) kicks off tonight.

I would like to take this opportunity to simply say -

GO THE BRONCOS!

Come on Springfield, do you feeeel?

2005-03-11T21:31:00.000+11:00

It's Friday night, and I'm at home. That's alright though, because I got home from the pub last night at about 3am, and then spent the next 3 hours chatting to Kerri. Which is cool, because she's awesome and it didn't feel like wasted time at all. Did I mention she's hot? Like BAM!

Tonight I've rented a few DVDs, actually make that four. Coffee & Cigarettes, InterMission, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, and Envy. I anticipate a lazy weekend!

Adidas have released a commercial directed by the brilliant and renowned Spike Jonze, and it's quite a trip. I mean, I've had a couple of beers this evening and all is relatively shiny, but still. Worth checking out, and it's only 6mb or so. Click for great justice and the American way.

The final trailer for Star Wars Episode III is floating around the net, and let me be the fourteenth to tell you; it is hot shit. There is actually a scale for measuring something's hot-shit-ness, a veritable hotshitometer. On that scale, this trailer comes in at a whopping seriously hot. We all dissed Episode I, and Episode II was - while being a marked improvement - still fairly ordinary. Third time's a charm as they say. If you know how to use BitTorrent, get ze trailer here. If you don't, tough titties. Wake up and smell the intarweb!

This dude is auctioning off the flag that was flying outside the Pentagon during 9/11. How he got it, I'm not too sure, but anyway. Some lad posted it on a forum I frequent, adamant that the guy was nothing more than a capitalist profiteer willing to make a quick buck off anything. A couple of us pointed out the fact that he's dying from cancer and needs the money for treatment, but apparently that just means that he's a liar and a scammer. Hokey dokey!

Some absolute champion of a man put together this image based movie trivia, whereby he has removed the heads and hands of the people in each scene (brilliantly, I might add), and left us the task of guessing which movies they are. I'm up to about 32 correct answers out of I think it's 55, so I'm not doing too bad...

Watch me draw! A buddy linked me to this site, it lets you draw something on their canvas, and then share the link so that friends can watch it all come together from the start. Tres cool!

Teacher, f*ck you...

2005-03-11T10:48:00.000+11:00

This link is stolen from huebert on the Australian inFront forums.

The link is one of the funniest things you'll probably see for a long time. It's a paper from a student on the "Story of Oedipus". Yet the most amazing thing is that the kid gets a 61% for the paper, and the nice note - "Mr Freeman - please see me after class to discuss your paper."

Linkage

Last one, I promise...

2005-03-11T10:22:00.000+11:00

Game post I mean, well, at least till I put the Gran Turismo 4 review up.

The latest trailer for the Legend of Zelda for the Gamecube has been released. All I can say is that it's very damn impressive, surpassing what I thought the Gamecube would be able to do. I still hope that Nintendo will be able to so day return to it's former glory, and games like this give an inkling of it, but most of everything else they do, Gamecube wise, seems to have ended pretty lackluster.

Linkage

nananananana... Batman!

2005-03-10T21:38:00.000+11:00

I went shopping this evening and bought a new outfit. Needs more crotch room.

Woooe, is me.

2005-03-10T17:29:00.000+11:00

Ooda you are a very unattractive man. Probably. Well, maybe. I haven't actually seen you, but I prefer to think of you as this little goblin-like man who sits all sweaty at a desk somewhere over in Perth, typing away at your brilliant entries and shaking your fist at Supra drivers everywhere. If you think that's bad, you oughta be hearin' my thoughts on McE and Westy.

Anyway, I was (in a very roundabout way) getting to the point somewhere there. Said point, is that I can't afford GT4 as I am presently unemployed. Your options are to either go without your copy and send it to me via registered mail (which I think is a sterling idea), OR to handle the official TRC LOVES GT4 review. Since I suspect you will choose option deus (you bastard), get busy!

In other not-so-news, I want it noted in the records that this Supra is the slickest Supra of all time. It has need of a few changes, most noteably the immediate removal of the shopping list (the stickers down the side), and the mirrors must be returned to their previous stock glory. That aside; ladies and gentleman, we have a winner.

In his much underrated but highly impressive opening post, young Westy linked to a website featuring.. Well.. big stuff. I now decree massively oversized computer keys and chinese takeaway lamps to be the epitome of get-them-for-me.

My man Keanu has a new movie coming out soon (well, I figure it'd be soon, I didn't actually check), called A Scanner Darkly. Hot scanning tip: If your images are coming out too dark, make use of the brightness and contrast settings in your scanner's packaged software. Also, the movie looks okay I guess.

Tiger Woods won a Ford GT when he swept the shit out of some recent Ford sponsored event, and then gave it to his caddy. While it is most likely that Tiger simply needed to get rid of it due to his being sponsored by rival manufacturer Buick, I'd still goddamn love to be his caddy.

Caddies should be sponsored by Cadillac.

PS. Kerri desperately wishes for me to mention her in my blog more often, and the girl makes a fair point too. When you know someone so outstandingly gorgeous, why not mention them more often? THE MIND BOGGLES A BIT.

Gran Turismo 4 f*cking rocks!

2005-03-10T16:13:00.000+11:00

Thursdays are my day off, so after pleasuring myself in the morning, I happily dropped into Electronics Boutique to pick up GT4. I really must say, I'm hooked. Mind you, I also gave into temptation and bought the Logitech GT Force steering wheel that Van had linked to a video of.

I'll keep the official "The Remotely Creative GT4 Review" to Van, as I know that he's in love with the game, and cars in general.

Recommended.

Ah, Dad...

2005-03-10T10:43:00.000+11:00

"TOKYO - Police on Tuesday questioned three siblings after it was discovered they had been living with the decomposed corpse of their father for nearly a decade, an official said."

In an extreme case, I may be able to understand a week, maximum. But how do you suppose someone is alive for 10 years when they're laying there decomposing. I would have thought that the smell would have given him away. Argh.

Linkage

One bite won't hurt...

2005-03-10T10:29:00.000+11:00

"Nearly 30 elementary school children in the Philippines have died after eating fried cassava balls obtained from a vendor, a local official told CNN."

Fourteen children died Wednesday before reaching hospitals and 13 died upon arrival, a spokesman for Ubay Mayor Eutiquio Bernales said."

My heart goes out to these kids, as it's not even like they were doing something risky to cause their deaths. Though it's funny that the vendor tried to disprove the poisioning by eating a couple of the balls herself, now she's in a critical condition herself. Basically this was a big case of unintentional cyanide poisioning.

Linkage

Hi, I'm a banker!

2005-03-09T22:37:00.000+11:00

van offered me some free t-shirts (read - cybersex) if I posted my witty prose here instead of on ransom notes using newspaper cuttings. He's so cute when he's desperate so I relented. I'm a Blogger virgin though, so be gentle, at least until I get used to the girth.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the World's Greatest Shave 2005, where both young and old shave their head to raise funds for the Leukaemia Foundation. Sadly I don't have the balls to shave off my hair due to its already worrrisome trend of retreating to the back of my head, but I'll be there in support for my fellow co-workers who do have the guts while trying to raise as much money as we can. I will be colouring my flowing locks though, and I've been told by many that fluro orange and green hair gets all the girls randy, so don't expect any posts from me Friday night. Or Saturday morning. And probably Saturday night.

If your skin is like mine and attracts anything with sharp pointy ends, imagine the horror when I discovered that you can buy 7 inch long thumbtacks. No need to be alarmed though, you'll be pain free after taking the giant aspirin and choking to death on it. Or preoccupied with your year long erection thanks to the huge viagra pill.

Speaking of things oversized, why don't shops sell small loaves of bread for us single people? Your insightful answers to this conundrum of mine are welcome...

Skin my world...

2005-03-09T22:23:00.000+11:00

Don't mind Van, he's going through the "questioning" period that every young man goes through. Well, except for me of course - I'm a fucking stud (I will stop the unnecessary cursing from now on)

Here's a great site, ShuffleArt. The concept is a pretty straight forward, art for your iPod Shuffle. Some great vinyls are up for purchase, but I heard somewhere that the skins cost about $12, a bit heavy on the wallet me thinks. Still cool though.

Reminds me of the HP+iPod tattoos. Still be meaning to give that a try...

Linkage (ShuffleArt)
Linkage (HP+iPod tattoos)

Enough with the movie posts!

2005-03-09T21:35:00.000+11:00

...Right after this one.

It's time for the trailer round up. Fever Pitch looks like a cute enough romance, slightly out of left field (baseball gag, geddit?!), but I love Barrymore and I'm a fan of Fallon's work on SNL so I'm willing to give it a shot in the arse. While I was at the NBC site linking y'all to SNL, I stumbled across and was hence reminded about America's fucking stupid remake of Britain's hilarious The Office. Check it out.

The Sin City trailer is worth a look for the tenth time. This time around I came to the conclusion that the soundtrack is going to unload all over my face - in a good way. I anticipate it being as phenomenal for me as The Matrix soundtrack was way back in.. what? 1999? Something like that. Maybe it's even older than that. God that's a long time ago.

I can't recall if I've already linked Kung Fu Hustle. I probably have, it looks great and I can't imagine not having linked it ages ago. So why am I linking it now? Eeeeeh screw you guys.

Be Cool has a kickarse cast, but I'm not too sure about the story. Being the simpleton that I am, though, I expect that I will wind up being highly amused either way.

Now, House Of D looks like a gorgeous movie, and I'm surprised to be saying that since it's directed by and stars (to an extent) David Duchovny. Still, I've said and there's no going back now (pretending of course that the delete and backspace keys do not exist, hah!).

The beast is emerging, Part 2...

2005-03-09T21:29:00.000+11:00

Following up from the previous article, part 2 of the Gamespy article on the Xbox 2 is up. Not as earth shattering as part 1, it does offer some good insight on the next generation of Xbox Live.

Linkage

Fat Actress...

2005-03-09T20:42:00.000+11:00

Is actually pretty good. Have to give Kirstie Alley credit, she fits to role well, and that isn't a pun, well, not totally. Have to subtract a couple points for its ripping off Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is easily one of the best shows on television, well, also taking

Worth a watch, at least once.

Linkage (Tv Tome)
Linkage (Torrent)

Movie Roundup #2...

2005-03-09T20:06:00.000+11:00

In part two, or volume two, or whatever of "Movie Roundups" the first shot of the Doom movie has been released. Personally I'm not a fan of the game, though the technical achivements are something I guess I should be impressed by. Meh, Halflife 2 looked better.

Now it looks like they've decided not to go with Mars as the setting. I hope I'm just wrongly speculating on this, and a Mars romp would still be fun (Sue me, I still watch Total Recall everytime it's on).

I still hope the movie turns out being good, but I don't think I have to remind anyone about the dreadful "Game to Movie" disasters...

*cough* Alone in the Dark *cough*

Wait, I just looked at the score Alone in the Dark got on Rotten Tomatoes, now that's laughable.

Linkage

Movie Roundup #1...

2005-03-09T19:56:00.000+11:00

The final poster for Star Wars has been released. By final, this is literally final in more ways than one, unless George Lucas decides to rape the cash cow one more time. The big flare next to Darth to the Nizzles helmet is killing me though.

I'd so like to fuck Natalie Portman.

Linkage

The beast is emerging...

2005-03-09T11:05:00.000+11:00

It looked like the PlayStation3 was going to cream the competitors with the power of the console, but today Gamespy came out with part 1 of its article - "Xbox: We Got Next", which is full of previously unknown information on the "Xbox 2" (Name of the console has not been revealed yet).

All signs point to the Xbox 2 being as big a beast as the original (comparatively speaking). It's no surprise that it's powered by PowerPC processors, as developers were/are developing the games on G5s, But 3x 3.0ghz processors - w00t! Something really big about Xbox 2 Live is supposed to come out tomorrow, should be interesting to see how they improve on the service.

Linkage

Look at all these jerks postin' on my blog...

2005-03-08T22:41:00.000+11:00

What have I done!

I felt compelled to revisit Snatch tonight, but I did not own it. Such potentially unfulfillable compulsions can lead to only one outcome; I went and bought it.

Policeman: So, what you doin here?
Turkish: I'm taking the dog for a walk. What's the problem?
Policeman: What's in the car?
Turkish: Seats and a steering wheel.

Is that not golden? I love you Turkish. I know your real name is Jason Statham, and you recently appeared in such trash as Cellular, but you will forever be Turkish to me. Hang in there my man, the right role will come along soon enough!

That's about all I have tonight. I have shamed myself.

Oh, one last thing. Good luck sweetheart (refer to filename).

We are legion, kinda.

2005-03-08T19:37:00.000+11:00

....So I said to him, "if it smells so bad why did you..."

Oh, hello there, I'm James McEwan, you may remember me from such sites as defuser.net, jimbot.org, viathewire, dsf and umm, god this was a bad idea. I asked Mike to add me to add me to this blog for the sake of having one to piss around an link to stuff from.

First up is the current Funky Winkerbean strips which follows the protagonist being arrested for selling an adult comic to an adult. This is based on the alarming real life case of Jesus Castillo documented here. If you're a comic book fan, I encourage you to donate to the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund when ever you can.

Second is the Forbidden Planet Blog, my local comics shop has launched a blog that reviews and provides news on new comics and books on a regular basis as well as instore promotions. The blog is run by Joe Gordon, writer of the Woolamaloo Gazette. The blog is pretty informative and may prove a good resource for finding out what's happening in the comics/sci-fi world.

One for the geeks...

2005-03-08T11:03:00.000+11:00

Side note: damn I hate colds, argh...

"An episode of the new series of sci-fi drama Doctor Who has been leaked onto the internet. A 45-minute episode, called Rose, has appeared three weeks before the series is expected to begin on BBC One. "

Like the linked article says, the latest episode of Dr Who has been leaked on the internet. Personally, Dr Who isn't my cup of tea, and I don't know if that's a pun or not.

But this is bad news for BBC, as the main target audience is geeks, and the people who torrent stuff the most is, clearly, geeks.

Linkage (BBC Article)
Linkage (Torrent)

Got the money?

2005-03-07T18:11:00.000+11:00

I want to make a movie about the different kinds of internet geeks. I mean "netizens". I'd have all the car geeks (like me!) organising cruises and illegal street races (not like me) and then accidentally mowing down a bunch of anime geeks on their way to a cosplay party. I'd have all the movie geeks trying to bust into a film set to take spy photos only to discover they've ended up in a bangbus.com scene. There'd also be elitist music fans, forum goers and bloggers engaging in a bloody fist fight that started when someone mentioned that they quite like the Spice Girls' early work. All this, before finally wrapping it up with all of the geeks talking about it on MSN and AIM. Perfect.

Shit these guys move fast these days. Explore Paris' Sidekick™! It's entirely faked of course, but I think this version is far funnier.

Suicidal bunnies have never been so funny. Some chap has conceived just about every half interesting way that a rabbit might choose to kill itself, and then drawn them. Gold!

It was pointed out to me earlier (by some Irish guy, so ignore it) that without Spider-Man, Jesus would never have made it as far as he did! Thanks a lot Spider-Man, you jackass.

Oh SNAP! (500kb .wmv) This poor dude fell victim to one of those 1 in a million chances, copping a pole vaulting rod in the sack.

From the same site, this odd looking guy (2mb .wmv) mimes out the lyrics for Natalie Imbruglia's song Torn. Brilliant!

Van went to the motor show

2005-03-05T19:32:00.000+11:00

I went to the 2005 Melbourne International Motor Show today (I specified the year on the off chance that you perhaps thought I'd actually gone to the 2006 show), and while not being amazing, it offered up some mildly impressive fare. Our show coincides with the more popular and internationally renowned Geneva Motor Show, so this year we missed out on a few of the more exceptional cars such as the McLaren Mercedes SLK and Mazda's SUV crossover; the name of which has stepped out of my head for a moment. What's important is that I took photos.

If you're into piracy, I've been using Novatina lately as a starting point and it's pretty hot. Not to look at - it's fairly bloody ordinary in that regard - but for ease of use and choice of gear, it's the goods.

PostSecret is a gorgeous idea, I'm really going to have to submit a card. Some of the secrets folks have shared on there are downright hilarious and I believe intentionally so, but then some are actually quite horrible. Still, that's the point I guess.

The FIA have threatened to strip Melbourne of the Formula One Grand Prix after a Victorian Supreme Court judge ruled in favour of the Minardi team being allowed to race their 2004 car this weekend, after FIA stewards declared that they would not be allowed to race that car. While it may be an extreme decision on the part of the FIA, I'm inclined to support it. Where the hell the Supreme Court judge had any right to overrule the decision of the appointed official within the scope of the FIA's authority (it being an FIA and not government run event), is well beyond me.

The Herbie: Fully Loaded trailer is now online, and uh... Yeah. I'll doubtless end up seeing this movie, because I see everything eventually, but I'm not excited. But hey, Lindsay Lohan's got some big ass titties.

Pixel Girl hosts the bestest wallpapers.

Corey Lewis - internet comic book favourite - has moved to a new website. Synchronise Swatches.

[19:58] [`Jamesy] An Italian journalist is freed from her Iraqi captors only to be shot and wounded by US troops firing at the convoy carrying her to safety.
[19:58] [`Jamesy] U S A
[19:58] [`Jamesy] GO TEAAAAM

Chuck Palahniuk - author of Fight Club the book which later became Fight Club the movie (awesome website) - has a new movie coming to the projector soon, based on his novel Survivor. It'd apparently already been in the works a number of years ago, but after a bunch of dicks started flying planes into buildings, I guess somebody decided that a movie about hijacked planes probably isn't the flashest of flash ideas. Well it's back on, so I guess it's all good.

Oh O.J...

2005-03-04T00:56:00.000+11:00

O.J. Simpson's brother, Melvin (nice name picking by the parents) was involved in a near fatal crash that killed one passenger of the shuttle bus which he was driving, and injured many others. Instead of reaching out and trying to comfort his brother, he's blaming him for the embarrassment HE has put on O.J.

"O.J. is furious with him," the insider told The ENQUIRER. "O.J. is so selfish -- it's truly remarkable that he sees everything in terms of how it affects him. Even though it was an accident, O.J. blames Melvin for bringing down more negative publicity on him. He told a friend, 'It makes me look bad!' "

Guess it's nothing to be surprised by, this is the same guy who is saying that Nicole (his dead ex-wife) is the bad parent for leaving his children without a mother.

Link

"Post-War" War...

2005-03-04T00:31:00.000+11:00

The death count for American soldiers fighting in Iraq has now passed the fifteen hundred mark, with deaths - on average - rising every month. I guess there's no point in going on about how ironic this is, but I'll let a fact outlined in the linked article do the talking: 1,362 of those 1,500 deaths have come in the time Since Dubya declared that "We Won!" - ala, the war is over.

Take into account that these statistics of deaths do not take into account deaths of non US troops (f*cktard countries like Australia) and civilian deaths.

Commiserations to the families of the dead.

Link

(Van is a tightarse, and he edited my grammar in this post. Pedantic fuck!)

(But ooda, to be honest, that really was some bad grammer)

Straight from the fool's mouth...

2005-03-03T22:12:00.000+11:00

LtDan: you know i was sitting here before going
LtDan: where the fuck is van
LtDan: am i ignored
LtDan: am i not interconnected into the virtual fabric of his inter-computer celestial shrofabaray
van: did you just make up shrofabaray?
van: if not, i want one
LtDan: but then i realised
LtDan: i know what!
LtDan: HE CHANGED MSN
LtDan: AND I WAS NOT TOLD
van: haha
LtDan: so
LtDan: i went on a mission
LtDan: an address hunting mission
LtDan: where fact
LtDan: meets fiction
LtDan: where truth, meets the outer realms of reality
LtDan: where the essence of who you are knows no limit except distrobraphy
LtDan: and this is where
LtDan: in this place of complete serenity and disentianality
LtDan: i found the thing that i sought
LtDan: and i called it
LtDan: van
LtDan: THE END MOTHERFUCKER

Nosferatu 2 on Nintendo DS

2005-03-03T21:51:00.000+11:00

Every time I see NSFU - the acronym for the Need For Speed: Underground video game - I always think it's a shortened version of Nosferatu. What the shit is up with that? If you can recover from that bout of stupidity in time, check out this advertisement (small .mov) for the aforementioned game's port to the Nintendo DS - an otherwise crap unit. This game could stop me hating it though.

In other news, Jack Johnson's new album In Between Dreams is gorgeous. I'm seeing him sometime next month - I think it's next month - at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl here in Melbourne, so a fair amount of excitement is taking place here in my shirt.

Buy it.

PS. Jesus ooda, way to take the Stamos theme too far! I kid I kid.

Full House...

2005-03-03T21:35:00.000+11:00

Continuing on from the theme at the end of Van's previous post, it looks like Season 1 of Full House has been released on DVD. To be honest, I can't really see anyone who's reading this blog actually going out and buying a copy.

The reason I bring it up is so that you can all point and laugh at John Stamos, not just his career. Check out the DVD cover for a good memory from yesteryear.

Link (Full House Season 1 DVD Cover)
Link (Full House Season 1 DVD Review)

Charlie says you stink.

2005-03-03T19:57:00.000+11:00

Tomorrow is my last day at my current job. My workmates have strongly advised that I not drive to work, on account of they will be ensuring that I am "very fucking smashed" before the night is out - to quote my good man Russ. Hokay!

I wouldn't go so far as to call this the ultimate garage, but it's fairly awesome. I'm not much of a mechanic, nor do I ever envision being one, but I do love driving and most things that that entails. Envy ensues.

Konami are pretty excited about their new Enthusia racing game (5.7mb .WMV). They might even be enthusiastic... Recreation of real physics!! OMG!

Wallace and Gromit are knockin' it up a notch, hitting the big rectangle screen this year in their first feature length fillum. I got your trailer right here, bub (5.1mb .WMV). Cheers to Jim for the linksky.

The Herald Sun website have got up a nifty gallery of pics from the build up to this year's 10th Anniversary Melbourne (Australia) Formula One Grand Prix. Some great shots in there, especially the girlies *cough*.

Sometimes you really have to ask yourself, what would Uncle Jessie do? I'll take a guess: After being so degraded in the public eye that you're left doing commercials for telephone carriers and then getting divorced by his hot buns wife, I'd say he'll throw himself off a bridge. Hoorah!

A Hanson movie/documentary thingy? Why man, why?

Zach does it again...

2005-03-03T15:55:00.000+11:00

I've always been fond of Zach Braff ever since seeing him starting out on Scrubs. His fame has gone up deservedly, especially when you look at who good Garden State, his premiere film, was.

Now Zach has flexed his directing muscle once more in the form of the latest episode of Scrubs (My Best Laid Plans, 4x19). Needless to say, the episode was excellent, and while generally sticking to the comedy formula as always, the slightly drama which was infused greatly added to the experience.

The Zach Braff trademark (so it seems) camera work, with the slowing and speeding up of the cameras, it worked amazing well. The kid really is something.

I'd say that for us living in Oz then there is probably a case were torrenting the episode is the only option. Channel 7 has really treated Scrubs badly, last year resigning it to late night TV territory. Do they even show it on Australian TV anymore?

How much will a penny get me?

2005-03-02T22:36:00.000+11:00

Something I've always wondered about, just never had the opportunity to ask...

How much does it cost to get serviced by a hooker?

Wah, more complaining, wah...

2005-03-02T20:37:00.000+11:00

Second week of my Bachelor of Psychology, and had quite an interesting Developmental Psych (which I'm finding out is an interesting field of study) lecture today. Half the lecture was spent watching some documentary from the BBC about conception and pre-natal development. Still have to say I'm not a fan of looking at photos of feteus' and the like. Makes me happy that I have a good old fashioned wang.

Came home and realised my "new" (2 months old) LG LCD Monitor had f**ked over and died - when I press the power button an image would flash for about half a second and then the picture went black. Worst thing happened when I phoned LG support, was told that there was only a 7 day replacement warranty, and am told that I'll have to wait 1-5 weeks for repairs. C**ts.

Now in a more civilised direction, an article to make you feel better about yourself...

"A 63-year-old Pole suffering headaches and lack of appetite was reportedly completely unaware a 12-cm-long knife blade stuck in his head was the source of his woes.

Physicians in Bialystok, eastern Poland, were shocked to find the knife blade lodged in the cranium of the unidentified patient."

This makes me almost ashamed to be of Polish decent at times. Wasn't the guy who cut his head off a few years ago as a dare also a Pole?

Link

You got a purty mouth.

2005-03-02T19:50:00.000+11:00

The surprisingly fulfilling Slashdong website plays host to a pictorial tutorial on turning one's Xbox into a "Sexbox". I'm okay with that. I... ultimately have no use for it, but nonetheless, I am very much okay with it. The world needs more chicks playing Xbox, and this could be the key.

This Megaman remix by Internet comic artist fave RedJ is pretty spesh. I very much dig the Deadpool and The Maxx megamen. Great piece!

Do you like to read? Are you immortal? You'll need to be if you harbour any plans for getting through this entire list of online e-books.

This is a very cute book, I'd like it if you bought it for me. On that topic, I can't help but notice that none of you are buying me the shit that I'm asking for (demanding). What's up with that? Don't make me strip.

Hey dude, did you know there's shit going on outside your door? Put the controller down son.

Jon Stewart recently did a sketch on bloggers (embedded quicktime .mov). Funny shit, as always. I'm not cool about the murdering of pandas though. ...It was a joke? Screw you Mr. Man.

And lastly, this site is running a bunch of .PDF docs analysing the patterns in product branding. Very, very cool shit.

Hey Now...

2005-03-01T19:22:00.000+11:00

Welcome all, I'm a new contributer here at The Remotely Creative, and I'll do my best to uphold the quality of this blog. My own blog, Mainly Generic is now going on the backburner, except for personal posts from time to time.

As before this blog is still mainly focused on Van's impending forte into the world of fashion design. From the glimpses of the upcoming collection, then it looks like the shirts will be well worth picking up. Once again, good luck Van.

Nice to see The Remotely Creative coming up in the blogging world.

What?

2005-03-01T19:17:00.000+11:00

My previous entry includes far too many references to Christianity. This post therefore acts as a disclaimer in which I denounce all and any benefits of organised religion short of the end result being the betterment of some people's lives. I don't think you need to believe in anything other than yourself to accomplish that goal, but whatever.

Moving on now.

Aaaall the colours of the rainbow

2005-03-01T18:44:00.000+11:00

Today I reckoned that The Remotely Creative shall move to a multi-user format, whereby I will invite a couple of folks that I respect to post. There's no special privilege or honour in that - on account of this is only The Remotely Creative, but nor is it a statement in regard to their creative talents either. Anyway, enough with the horseshit. Ooda and a couple of other yet to be decided folk may from time to time be seen posting, so expect that I guess. In the meantime, I suspect I shall relocate my personal thoughts elsewhere.

It's worth pointing out at this juncture that I really enjoy Bent, and I'm quite disappointed that it took me this long to give them the time of day.

I'm not sure who put me onto this, but this browser based font browser is great. It scans the fonts on your PC and then lets you go through them, previewing text and what not. If you don't already have a font manager, this is sensational. It's very light too, since most of the work is happening on your PC, not the website.

Whu.. What kind of person do you need to be in order to find this Firefox skin appealing? Bling is bad mmkay?

The BMWFilms.com short films are a bit aged now, but not everybody's seen them and I just had a 'blast' watching them again. Jesus.. "groovy".. "blast".. I'm getting too old for this.

The new Mazda MX5 Miata is uglier than my grandma on a monday morning, can I get an amen? The headlights need a headbutt, and the flared guards that they shoplifted from either the RX8 or the Mazda6 MPS are not cool. Just like the VCR to DVD evolution, this is one of those times when the last model of the previous generation is far raunchier than the first model of the new gen. Balls to you Mazda! On the subject of new cars, this Honda Civic concept can go jump too.

I stopped giving a shoot about Korn when I grew out of my angsty teen stage, but it's still funny to note that guitarist Brian "Head" Welch has ditched the band in favour of JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR (come and get it, Googlebots). The amusement is plentiful.

Now, bugger off.

Bastard son of a wet bitch.

2005-02-28T22:33:00.000+11:00

It seems that the Primitive tees will now not be ready until Wednesday. But, you know, I guess it's okay really. We hadn't had a single hiccup until now, so all in all I think that even with this delay - we've done seriously well. But having not yet seen the final product, that remains to be seen!

This is my last week at my current job, I am stoked. I look forward to a week of blatantly slacking off and pilfering as many office notepads and markers as possible. I kid I kid, I'm still filling a fairly important role and my workmates are relying on me to do that as best I can. After all, it's my job I'm not fond of, not my workmates.

Why does gmail say I still gots emails...

Oh, I still had emails.

Hokay! The esuvee.com website is groovy. I use groovy sparingly, on account of it is a word from well before my time and thus I feel a bit like.. Well.. Your parents whenever I use it. Buuuut, watch the commercial, it's... Groovy. Fuck!

What the shit is that noise... Oh, I still had the esuvee.com site open in another window. HA! *cough*

You buy me these figurines ya? Do you like D1? I like D1. Extravagance is the key to success in a sport dedicated to being over the top.

Argh!

2005-02-27T13:02:00.000+11:00

My feet are sore. I bought some new Nikes for jogging - as you do - but I have a slightly wider than usual foot. So my options when buying shoes are to buy shoes a little too long but subsequently wider, or to be shoes the right length and then wear them in, stretch them. That's what I chose to do this time. Ouch!

PS. Buy me this.

That is all.

The Empire Struck Back

2005-02-27T11:34:00.000+11:00

Bastard karma! I was going to have Subway the other night, but as I was driving up to the store, I could see the line inside was about twelve and a half miles long - I was not cool with this. So I rolled on, and came across Hungry Jack's (Australia's name for Burger King. It's a long story). I figured, what the hell, yeah it's about as unhealthy as junk food gets, but what's one time gonna hurt? I pull in behind some other guy and we both move into the drive-thru. The lady on the other end of the speaker takes his order and he rolls around to the next window. I move along to the order box microphone thingy, and the lady advises me that they've just closed. I briefly considered arguing with her and demanding service, but I just figured karma is telling me to stay away from the fatty foods and go back to Subway. So I roll around and end up behind the other dude who is still waiting for his order. Exactly twelve (count them; 12) minutes later, he's still sitting there waiting, and I'm still sitting stuck behind him. When the lady - nay, little slag of a whore - finally brings his food to him and he takes off, I roll up to the window and give her a piece of mind. I'm sorry, but when food is going to take that long - and you've just told somebody that you're closed and that somebody is now forced to sit there twiddling his thumbs for twelve fucking minutes - you ask the customer to move their car into a parking space and offer to take the food out to them when it's ready, you don't let them and everyone else sit in the drive-thru for twelve goddamned minutes.

So when I finally took off, I was so pissed off (and when it comes to driving, I virtually never display road rage) that I flew off up the road and ended up taking a corner hard enough to swing the arse of my Supra out and take a massive chunk out of my rear wheel against a gutter. So I'm fairly pissed at myself right now!

Anyway. Interesting weekend. I spent virtually all of yesterday (Saturday) talking to a girl by the name of Kerri, and it might be fair to say that I'm somewhat smitten. Smart, funny, thoughtful, cute as all get out. So of course, it comes as no surprise to those who are familiar with my luck when I say that she lives in Dallas. Fuck! I give up. She's uber impressive though. I talked with her right through lunch without realising it, and didn't even bother with tea until she eventually had to get to bed. Good times! Why can't I find girls like this in the same fucking city as me? Funny shit.

Free money! As long as you can break the glass...

I've now seen Fred Durst's wang, and I'm not cool about that. Link is definitely not safe for work - or at all.

I would gladly trade my Supra for this Datsun 240z.

Primitive shirts should be ready for pick up tomorrow (Monday). I spoke with Marc yesterday and he assures me that we are most definitely on target for a Monday pick up, so that's brilliant news. We need to get some photos taken as soon as possible, so that we can finally offer the damn things for sale!

Why would a mental patient kill themselves?

2005-02-24T23:34:00.000+11:00

"...That's just crazy."

I saw Constantine tonight with my chums Monica and Louise (whom collectively I like to refer to as monlou. Okay, I very rarely do that. Okay, I never do that). It was brilliant. We all know that I am somewhat easily pleased when it comes to movies, but even on those occasions that I dig movies that others hate, I can at least see why others would hate them. This time around, I am determined that if anybody hates this film, it's due to nothing more than them being whiny little hate consumed bitches with nothing better to do than chew their own toes and say shit like "at least it's not your foot, freak". Shit example, but valid point all the same I feel. The scenery was brilliant, and their approach to representing Hell as a barren wasteland version of our Earth was tremendously simple yet sensational. Reeves was great, and I'm usually not comfortable saying things like that - it's sort of like requesting a cock in the arse, I just do not say things like that - but the fact is that he was perfectly suited to a role that I had no confidence in him pulling off. Rachel Weisz was suitably hot, as always. She's an unorthodox beauty, but gorgeous nonetheless. Do you want to eat some of her pie? I know you do.

Samurai Champloo - the brilliant anime follow up effort from Cowboy Bebop and Macross Plus director Shinichiro Watanabe - now has a western release. Since I was only up to episode 11 of the current 20-ish episodes, I think I'll stop watching the fansubs and just get the DVDs instead. I'd much rather buy and watch them in DVD quality with professional editing rather than watch some cruddy Divx version. PS. Thank your sister for last night, I had a blast.

Agassi and Federer played a bit of tennis in the sky recently. I think that's fairly cool.

Anyway, screw you guys, I'm tired.

Primitive... It's gold.

2005-02-22T23:22:00.000+11:00

Exciting times, for serious. Hopefully we'll have the finished shirts by the weekend.

I took some photos tonight of the first experimental samples, just to get a kick for how they'll look and make any last minute changes. We're all sorted now, after 3 hours of dicking around!

Click here for pictures!

Tee Minus 5 days

2005-02-22T00:14:00.000+11:00

I'm pumped. Are you pumped? Well screw you guys, because I am.

I dropped into Chris' studio tonight after work to hand over the final print-ready EPS files for my tees, and took a few photos while I was there. He was in the middle of cutting the chocolate coloured tees for my Ape Love design, so I was pleased to get a couple shots of that in action. The studio is a total mess right now, he's having it refitted so that it can accomodate a couple of other desks for his friends. I need to weasel my way into a space in there I think. Oooh if only I knew how to weasel. I know how to ferret, but it's not quite the same.

sarah 4BG: BAM!
van: soooo... are you going to be a model for me when i get to girly tees?
sarah 4BG: haha
sarah 4BG: depends
sarah 4BG: can you make me one that says KISS ME I'M SHITFACED
van: hahaha
van: i probably could actually
sarah 4BG: WOO
sarah 4BG: then i will
sarah 4BG: I'll stick my boobies out so girls buy them cause they think it will make their tits look big
sarah 4BG: and boys buy them for girlfriends 'cause they like my tits.
sarah 4BG: how's that?
van: hahaha
van: sold!
sarah 4BG: mad
van: i might post that on my blog
van: HAH

Anyway, I must away to bed.

I TOTALLY FORGOT.

2005-02-20T19:17:00.000+11:00

How the hell did I forget to mention Mario Kart Arcade GP? With a name that long, it can only be totally amazingly awesome!

Link 1, Link 2.

BANG.

2005-02-20T16:36:00.000+11:00

Remember Primitive? That clothing business that my good man Marc and I lord it over?

Well, Thunderbirds are go.

The initial order for shirts and printing went in this afternoon, and over the space of the coming week there will be much of the ol' hands-on as we visit the screen cutters and run some samples, before then heading to the printers to scrutinise their work to the best of our ability to be annoying.

Photos will be available as early as mid next week so long as nobody cocks anything up, and then they'll be available for purchase.

In other news, my Supra made it to 100,000 kilometres today. It's a 1995 model, and it had roughly 83,000km on it when I bought it in October of last year. 100,000km isn't the death of the car though, I fully expect this girl to go another 150,000km or about 10 years (not that I expect to own it that long) before a rebuild would even have to be considered. It's just a significant number I guess, if only for the fact that it's a one followed by a whole lot of zeroes! Is it "zeroes" or "zeros"? Fuck it.

If you remember that VW Golf GTI commercial that I linked a number of posts back (come on, who hasn't seen it? It's all over the television), you may also remember the snappin' remix of Singin' In The Rain playing in the background. It was put together by Neil of Mint Royale, but unfortunately only a minute or so of it was ever made - purely for the sake of the commercial. However, after shiteloads of requests from around the world, Neil is heading back into the studio (refer to news date 19/02/05) to try his hand at a full track. Excellent sauce. Cheers to Westy for the link.

If you're like me and have a serious envy for Jay Leno's money and the fact that he spends it on all the cars you wish you could buy with his money too, then you might enjoy reading these articles he's written for Popular Mechanics. I couldn't find an actual menu or section on the site for his articles, so the link above is just some in-site search results on the string "Leno". Works fine though, bunch of links on that page.

Do you want to snowboard? Do you live nowhere near the mountains? Me too. I want to Freebord.

A fellow by the name of Chris - Chris Larson in fact - is running an exhibit in NYC titled "Pause". As I understand it, it's something of an homage to the couch-going movie fan's newfound ability in the 80s to pause what they were watching on their VCR. Something we so readily take for granted today was presumably a massive thing back then. Aaah time, what a funny bugger you are.

I like tour posters. Do you like tour posters? Also, this has been linked to death, but it's worth hitting up Microsoft's guide to leet speak. Serious.

That'd be right.

2005-02-18T15:04:00.000+11:00

I think I've already made an entry with that title... I wonder if the world will blow up now? I guess we'll know in 5 or so minutes when I hit submit.

Word to the wise: Eating Nutella straight from the jar will cause you to die in your sleep. At least, that's what I anticipate happening. I'm sitting here at work with no bread and nothing else worth eating for lunch, so I'm forced to snack on some nutella on its own. Urgh! I love it and hate it all at once.

I had my second interview for that job this morning. It seems that the pay is shit - though I won't say what it is - so I guess if I decide to take it, it'll be because I need some night work and not because the pay is awesome. Woe is me.

Hitchhiker's Guide full trailer

2005-02-17T00:50:00.000+11:00

Surprisingly it's not on apple.com, seems amazon.com got themselves the trailer premiere.

Anyway!

I would like it known that I defended this movie from the beginning, and that all naysayers and detractors can go watch the bloody trailer, and then sod right off :)

Click for trailer

Also, Monica and I saw The Aviator tonight, and it was quite good. A lot bloody longer than it needed to be, but quite good. And what an all star cast! Cate Blanchett especially. Mmmm mmm!

Now, I best get to bed as I have a job interview in the morn'.

MSNENENEN

2005-02-16T13:11:00.000+11:00

Microsoft's search engine came online a couple weeks ago, and well... It's pretty I guess. Is it good for much else? I'm also a little worried about anonymity. Microsoft are well known for their love of security and I find myself wondering; If I go off on one of my child porn* searches, are they going to report me to the relevant authorities. More to the point - from a realistic point of view, since child porn ain't quite my thing - I'm simply concerned that if I decide to search for something not entirely wholesome, such as the anarchist's cookbook for example - do I need to be fearing Microsoft's penchant for monitoring shit?

At least there are options - like Google and other search engines - to choose to not have your search results filtered.

*or whatever!

Best plan ever?

2005-02-15T19:27:00.000+11:00

[19:24] [van] also i love your mother
[19:25] [van] but whatever
[19:25] [van] i'll make Primitive work
[19:25] [van] even if only for a little while
[19:25] [van] pay up my debts
[19:25] [van] get some new ones
[19:25] [van] buy a boat
[19:25] [van] fuck off to south america
[19:25] [van] meet a nice cute latina girl
[19:25] [van] call my family once a year
[19:25] [van] and that'll be that ;)

I think so!

I've finally acquired Flash MX, which means that I can now more easily vectorise any hand drawn art, or paint streaks and dirt, etc. etc. It's a bit of work figuring out the right settings, but christ it's good. Expect a positive change in Primitive's tees.

I hate that I know when I'm wrong

2005-02-15T14:41:00.000+11:00

Wouldn't life be a little easier if you could just ignore the fact that you're wrong and always make out like you're eternally right? My boss gave me a lecture this morning about not making a big enough effort around the office lately, which is certainly not untrue. I GAVE MY NOTICE. Marc was telling me yesterday something that makes some great sense. When you give notice, you're really only in the office in body, and hardly at all in mind. Your time is devoted to figuring out ways to steal things from the stationary cupboard next to the boss's desk, and how best to go about printing as many e-books as possible. Good point Marc! But I guess this is where the I-am-technically-wrong bit comes in. They are still paying me, and they do still have every right to expect me to do my job while I'm here for the next couple of weeks. Goddamnit. Let me be right!

I have an interview tomorrow with a company out near Melbourne Airport. I anticipate kicking a lot of arse and placing the employer in a position where he and/or she feel they have no choice but to look at each other, then at me, and utter the words "We must have you. How much do you want?". HAHA YEAH NO. I am not confident at all, and I don't even know what the hours or pay will be yet. What I really need is evening work, but I do believe they mentioned 24/7 availability in their advertisement. I guess we'll see.

The receptionist at the doctor's last night was hella cute. Heh, I said hella. I wanted to ask for her phone number, but a) I don't imagine being asked out by a patient (even though I was only there to get a med cert for work) is all that appealing, and b) I couldn't find the balls to chat her up right there in front of other patients. Do you blame me??

Maybe I'll go back later.

The Remotely Creative has now been linked on the front page of Australian In Front. Jesus' shit that's a lot of pressure. Now I feel compelled to make my entries interesting. They're legible (barely), isn't that enough?!

Umm aahh... Hmm.

2005-02-14T16:21:00.000+11:00

There have been developments with Primitive. Marc had the good fortune yesterday to make the acquaintance of a chap who runs his own high fashion store/studio in St. Kilda. This fellow is quite likeable - I know, because I was introduced to him today. Anyhowsies, he does all of the work that goes into his clothes himself, including the manufacturing of the tees. He has patented patterns for tees, sweaters, hoodies, jeans, etcetera and so forth. As a designer, this is all extremely cool. Cooler still - to the point of freezing even - is that he very much likes my designs and wants to be the supplier and printer for Primitive. He sees Primitive as being as good a moneymaker for him as it will hopefully be for Marc and myself, which is good because it means that his enthusiasm comes from his own interests as muc has it does from us being another customer for him.

The point to all of this is that - if we decide to use him, as he is a little bit more expensive - is that we now have the ability to crazy with patterns, placement (of the design on the tee itself), etc. Unlike our previous first choice for suppliers/printers, he prefers to print shirts in panels rather than as completed garments. That's the major selling point for us.

Anyway, I'm stoked.

Now I just have to worry about real life. Bills are overdue, I think my mobile phone might be cut off - though I was sure I was up to date - and my car needs a service that I can't presently afford. I need to find a new job, and my present job requires that I have a medical certificate for the Friday and Monday that I took off this week, which I need to organise tonight if I can.

Shit.

Ooooh yes, it's like that.

2005-02-14T09:32:00.000+11:00

WILL YOU JUST LOOK AT THESE MONKEYS?!

Them's some trendy monkeys.

Am I living it right?

2005-02-14T08:00:00.000+11:00

I've been taking way too many days off work. I took Friday off, and I've taken today off as well. The excuse is that I've got the runs, but we all know I died of a broken heart. Naw, I was just paraphrasing Grandpa Simpson then. I have no heart to break!

I really do hate my job though. I'm sick of the shit wage, I'm sick of the people (and they're probably sick of me, if I'm to be realistic about it), I'm sick of the inefficiency of the company and the fact that I'm the one who has to apologise to our clients about it. It's like being a doctor having to tell a woman that her son has died! Well, it's not really anything like that, but I guess it just shows how much I hate my job that I'm happy to make the comparision. Jesus, I'm such a whiner! It's a good thing I've given notice. Now all I need to do is find another job! I wish I could be one of those people who are satisfied with being an office monkey for the rest of their lives, then I wouldn't have such a hard time staying in a job. I really need to pull my finger out and focus on my design work. Primitive must work! The best inspiration I can think of is that if I can't make Primitive work, I'll never be financially secure. And I won't stand for that outcome, so I have to make sure it works. Woo! Pressure!

I had pizza from Crust a few nights ago. Good golly little Miss Molly, that shit is divine. Their pizza is the gift from the Gods that could actually make me believe in God. Almost. I still don't, but I almost could now! The Crust Supreme... Bellisimo!

I really want this ring. I don't wanna sound girly or nothin', but I really want it. It is apparently a woman's ring, but... I want it. It's cheap too, so if it'll actually fit me (I don't know how to translate ring sizes into an actual measurement worth shit), I will get it.

Ren is insane.

I applied for a membership at one of those super exclusive we-are-better-than-you design forums early last week, and they apparently get back to you within a couple of days. I think that perhaps I have been unsuccessful. Remember what I said about not having a heart to break? I lied. I have one. It is now broken. HAHA YEAH NO.

Ong Bak has finally made it into western theatres, about a year and a half since I first saw a trailer for it. It's just that I totally forgot it existed until now. Still, it looks bloody brilliant and I will most definitely be attending. You ought to do the same if you've not seen it yet.

I really need to get to work on my CV. I want out! But for now, it's just over and out.

What god?

2005-02-11T19:28:00.000+11:00

There is no better example of internet celebrity than these two guys.

They have an entire fucking expo. They write a comic. It's an amazing comic, but... It's two guys. Who write a comic! AND THEY HAVE AN EXPO.

I'm cool with it though, it's quite inspiring.

Find me in the dark of the matinee

2005-02-11T19:10:00.000+11:00

I love that I got season 2 of MASH on DVD today for AU$25 bucks. 3 discs! So pleased.

I love that a very cute and addictively alluring girl put me onto Lior (who apparently did rather well in the JJJ Hottest 100 this year, but I was out on a Supra cruise and missed out on listening), and I bought the album today. It's gorgeous!

I love that I put in the order for Primitive's business cards today. I love that I'm going to have the hardest time not just handing them out to anyone who talks to me for more than a minute.

I love this Beastie Boys poster, this PJ Harvey poster, this Radiohead poster, this RATM poster, this QOTSA poster, this Pink Floyd poster, this Franz Ferdinand poster, and this MOS poster. I will buy them all.

What else... Oh yeah, I'm quitting my job. My bosses couldn't confirm a payrise (to go with my new and very increased workload) or when it'd happen or how much it'd be, so I told them I'm not the kind of person to work with a much higher workload simply on the potential for internal advancement. I made it clear to them that a career in that company was not on the cards, so I have no interest in proving myself by working harder for the same pay. RISKY BUSINESS.

This bird is brilliant. It even makes farting sounds! No surprise that farting sounds were the most appealing part of the show for me. Cheers to Marshy for the link.

He's very clever

2005-02-11T07:37:00.000+11:00

I saw Closer tonight.

Hold on have 2 type with 1 hand am cumming right now ohohohoohohohoohohohohohohohohhooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh
oohohohoh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!@#)!!@)&*!@#)!E!#!)_$*
%()&amp;amp;$*&$)#(dninfeirhsifndsibndfb

Best scene in any movie, like ever.

Ways & Means

2005-02-10T19:58:00.000+11:00

HAHA YOU THOUGHT I WAS DEAD.

I'm busy working on Primitive and being social.

That is all for now!

Oh Alfie!

2005-01-30T18:55:00.000+11:00

Last night my good man Scud and I headed to the theatres to see Alfie, starring the striking Jude Law. He's a handsome lad if ever there were one, as much in personality and presentation as actual physical attractiveness. By the way, I'm not gay! We'd intended to catch the 10:20pm session at The Jam Factory (a trendy-ish mall which was once, yep, a factory for making various preserves), but I didn't realise that I was meant to pick Scud up. So when I spanked into the venue at about 10:15 and called Scud to ask when he'd be arriving, I was a bit surprised to hear that he was at home waiting for me! But it was all good, we just caught the 11:50pm session at Southland instead. Thank shit it was a Saturday night!

Anyway, 'twas quite a good movie. That is, up until the especially weak sauce ending. I did very much get the impression that neither the writer nor director remembered how long a film generally runs for, and when they realised they'd gotten 2 hours into the story with no clear resolution in sight, they slapped a whiny monologue in the form of an epiphany on the end and thanked us - the audience - for our money. Still, disregarding that, I quite enjoyed the rest of it.

On the way home, we visited the site of the Melbourne Formula One Grand Prix circuit, which is presently in the process of being converted from city streets into an international motor racing hot spot; Just as it has done annually for the past 10 years now. It's not yet blocked off from public access, but it is rather empty, and so at 3am this morning we took the Supra for a couple of very hot and fast laps. So hot and fast in fact that my poor unfortunate non-slotted or cross drilled very standard (for a performance car anyway) brakes began to really suffer after only two laps. I'm not surprised though. They aren't designed for stopping 1400kg of Japanese performance car so dramatically and so frequently. They exist merely for stopping it in regular traffic from regular speeds. I shall upgrade my braking and suspension systems before unleashing my weak skills upon the open track nights at Calder and Sandown.

After I dropped Scud home, I resolved to head for bed myself. While driving home though, I passed through Doncaster and happened upon one of those little food vans that vendors park outside concerts to sell their overpriced hot dogs and kebabs to tired and starving audiophiles. It was sitting in the car park of a shitty little auto workshop on the corner of Doncaster and Wetherby Road - two fairly busy roads; open and serving a bunch of import drivers who were hanging around on tables and chairs under a couple of flood lights enjoying their dogs and kebabs while checking out each other's cars and talking shit like only import drivers know how to do. Phew, that was a long sentence. I called Kit (aka Mossy) and upon discovering that he was still wide awake, told him I was coming to get him. We then returned to the kebab stand and mingled with the other drivers there. It was actually quite cool in a really weird way, and I reckon it'll probably become a weekly thing for us!

Anyhow.

One of my little sisters, Hayley (who turned 12 only a couple of weeks ago in fact), went into hospital today with some stomach complaints. She's been suffering from constipation and such lately, which I know from my own childhood experiences is a fairly painful and embarrassing malady! I paid her a visit this evening, and snapped a few photos. She should be home tonight though I think, so hopefully it's all good!

The new 7 Series BMW is fairly boring. It's a very... Safe design, I guess. After Chris Bangle's outta-this-world approach in recent years - which I might add, I have enjoyed - BMW have obviously opted to play it safe with the new 7. Probably not a bad idea, considering most 7 drivers would be in the older bracket. Do old folks really want an audacious looking car? Shit I don't know, I'm not old. Also, the wheels appear to have been borrowed from somewhere in 1943, which I'm not too cool with. My good man Raj pointed me to this bit of photoshoppery, and it seems entirely appropriate this time around! You know, in hindsight, I quite like the back and the profile, but the front really is the weakest of sauces.

This post is too long.

Are you a slut?

2005-01-29T19:29:00.000+11:00

Are you a slut? A skank? A total misbegotten WHORE? Prove it.

I only just made it into slut territory with 59%, which is saddening in some ways, because I thought my answers would demonstrate me as being quite the slut! God knows I've become one in the past year. Apparently though I am simply not adventurous enough. That's okay though, I don't mind admitting that butt plugs and anal sex are not all that high on my list of things I like about sex!

The rocking in my head!

2005-01-29T11:55:00.000+11:00

Dropped out on the town with some workmates last night, after first indulging in a few (or 5) free beers at work. I will say this for my employer; they're quite generous with the Friday night after-work drinks. Anyway, we also took a couple of travellers into the first pub we hit up, but a power-hungry waitress soon confiscated those, which left us forced to actually pay for our drinks! The nerve of some people. If she were alive in the early 20th century, she'd have been a German POW camp warden. She had the perfect look. After that, we grabbed a spot of gourmet pizza for dinner and then headed to the Great Britain where we partook in further consumption of the amber and played a bit of pool as well. I bumped into Karsten and a friend of his, and when my workmates headed off to their next venue, I stuck around the GB with Kars and crowd. Whence we'd become sufficiently drunk and they closed the beer garden, we headed back to Miles' place where we abused his friendship by waking him up and sleeping on his floor. Actually he may have already been awake... GR8 NITE M8.

Volkswagen recently commissioned a TV commercial for the new Golf GTI, in which the producers recreated that all too famous Singing In The Rain scene, with a bit of a groovy modern twist. Read about it here, and watch it here. 'Tis a 5mb QuickTime vid. Damn, I just had to watch it again, it's that good. I wonder if the club mix of Singing In The Rain is available to buy/download? It's a seriously worked track, quite noice.

Anyway, I'm off to T's to share some lunch and get some more Primitive stickers sorted out, as well as some SupraForums.com.au stickers. Gotta promote the place, you know? 'Course you know, you are not twits.