Better Than Kittens

I find my life radically changed this week, with new routines, new perspectives, and a newfound sense of responsibility.

I go to bed earlier. I get up earlier and actually go outside for a walk before breakfast. I've even cleaned the house, probably better than it's ever been cleaned before.

I'm more focused, more determined. More... um... maybe the expression I'm searching for is 'grown-up'.

The diet's changed too. Less chocolate. More fruit. Less KFC (though on that, it is perhaps a little too soon to make the call). More fresh cooking. Less chips. More... (what are these things? They's supposed to be 'good for me" but they taste disgusting... ah well).

All this on account of one little puppy.

I know. Dr J has new kittens, and they're sweethearts. But I'm a dog person... always have been... always will be. Even my cat Stranger thought he was a dog.

When the kittens joined the family, it was always the intention to get a puppy too, and when Dr J called me on Saturday afternoon and said "I think we need to get the puppy in here before the kittens are too grown up", it was inevitable that we'd have Zac by the end of the weekend. I don't actually think she meant "lets get a puppy today", but events have a way of unfolding on themselves, and all outcomes are predetermined.

Actually, it was when she followed "...grown up" with "Have you thought about the type of dog you'd like?" that the wheels really set themselves in motion.

"A Spoodle" was the reply. All the personality of a Cocker Spaniel, and all the street smarts of a Poodle (without the neuroses carried through life by most Poodles in their typically French "you call this dinner?" attitude).

It took me about 10 minutes to find a litter of Spoodle pups, and about 10 minutes more to call the breeder, bundle Dr J into the car and set off for what would end up being a very long trek into a wilderness that seems to exist on the edge of any big city anywhere... that undefined place where rural and urban collide.

Camden is a town about an hour's drive south west of Sydney. Well it would have been an hour's drive if I hadn't missed the turn off.

We'd set out at 5ish. It was well after 8 before we finally navigated our way through back streets and country lanes to the semi-rural acreage that the breeder called home. It didn't help that it was pitch black by the time we arrived, but it was worth it.

So... back to the change of life...

There's a responsibility now... this little bundle of fluff is my responsibility. He needs to eat well, exercise often and learn stuff. All of that is my responsibility.

So far, the eating and exercising have been no problem at all. Leaning's been easy too, for the most part. It took him less than a day to learn his name, and only about an hour longer to learn to play fetch. But the house training... Little Zac just doesn't get it. He thinks the absorbant mats scattered around the house are extra Zac beds, and he'll actually get off one to go and wee. He doesn't get the whole "yes, we're outside, I can do it here" thing either, and this morning, he actually waited until he got back into the house.

Proper sleeping arrangements are yet to be codified too. He just gets separation anxiety if he's more than a foot away from me for more than ten seconds. On Sunday night, I slept on the lounge, so that he could sleep on his bed on the floor next to me. Last night, I tried a night in my own very comfy bed with the same intention. It didn't work, and the elabourate step construction to help Zac get up and down is a fine work of engineering.

Ah well. We start puppy pre-school next Tuesday, "Toilet Training" is the second lesson on day one, and "Separation Anxiety" is the fourth. I hope they can do a better job with those than I'm doing.

The kittens, by the way, think this new fluffy thing is a bit of a curiosity. They just sit there when Zac wanders by, tilting their heads as if to say "what the?". Scooter lets him get closer, but Mini isn't so sure. Zac pretty much ignores them most of the time.

A Most Excellent Game

This post will be about as interesting to most of you as a story about dust on my bookshelf.

I don't care, because the miracle I'm about to describe made me feel pretty bloody good for at least ten minutes afterwards.

You see, dear reader, I bowled my highest ever official league score last Wednesday. 210. And in that, I closed EVERY FRAME. If you don't know that that means, don't worry about it.

For those that do, here's the scoresheet...

[ X ][ X ][ 9/][ 9/][ 5/][ X ][8/ ][ X ][ X ][7/X]
[ 29][ 49][ 68][ 83][103][123][143][170][190][210]

And it means that new ball works a treat.

It felt good. I just wish I could remember how I did it, because the previous two games were less than average and I don't actually recall doing anything different, other than just relaxing a bit. Maybe that was the secret.

Kitten Caboodle

I've always wanted to name a cat Caboodle, just so that I could show off the Kit 'n Caboodle. It would be funny the first time. It might even draw a smile the second time, but I suppose, after that, it would get a little tiresome.

Sort of like the guy in England who murdered his parents, Mr & Mrs Russel, for calling him Jack. With him, tiresome led to unintended consequences. Go HERE. Fortunately, when it came to naming the kittens, Dr J said "I don't think so".

We've had them more than a month now and they're still kittens. I find it amazing that two little furry things raised in the same house at the same time with the same games, food, litter tray and bed can have such radically different personalities. Scooter is an explorer and bit of a loner, and Mini is a sook with a daredevil streak (yesterday, she leapt from the top of the lounge, across the metre and a half wide canyon to the dining table).

Just for fun, here are a few pics...

That's Scooter bringing a whole new meaning to the term "comfortable shoes".

For kittens, happiness is a brown paper bag. Sadly, there's only enough room in there for one, and Mini got there first.

Scooter did get her turn in the bag, and took the opportunity to chew carpet.

A rare pic of two small furry animals being still and together for long enough for a photo to be taken. That's Mini in the front.

Terrorists Strike In Second Life

I'm sorry. I thought I was kidding with my last post. I thought that talk of virtual terrorists detonating virtual bombs and destroying virtual buildings was... um... just a very bad joke.

Apparently not.

THIS happened, and Auntie's island in Second Life was decimated by a terrorist bomb.

(For those non-Aussie's among my readers, "Auntie" is the term of endearment we use to refer to the ABC, our national government owned radio and TV broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.)

Here's a pic of the devastation...

Inset is how the island looked before the attack.

And I promise, this is my last Second Life rant.

Crime, Money, Terrorism And The Need To Get Out More

Following on from last week's quest for sexuality in a Second Life comes a warning from Scotland Yard about the way this and other virtual worlds are becoming the new homes of crime gangs, money launderers and terrorists.

And I still don't get it.

Ok. I understand the money thing... well... actually... I don't understand the money thing, but if what I've read is true, about US$1.8million Lindens (that's 2nd Life money) are exchanged for real US dollars every day, and apparently, there's even some woman in Asia somewhere who became a property development millionaire by developing virtual 2nd Life land.

Yesterday's warning from Scotland Yard even suggested that the laws as they apply in Real Life ought also to apply in the other place.

Now I'm getting REALLY confused.

Um... I know there have been movies about this sort of thing, going way back to Tron in the 70s. There was an episode of Star Trek when the holodeck goes haywire and the crew is stuck there with the 'safety' off, and even an episode or two of Stargate where one or other of the team has their consciousness taken over by some super computer or other, but I have never, not even for a moment, suspected that it might really be happening.

But apparently it is, and at such a dangerous pace that law enforcement feels the need to have a presence there.

What I want to know is what do the crime gangs do when they get there, and why is this a problem in Real Life? I mean, how do you do virtual crack or set up a virtual crack lab? Does it make your monitor go all psychadelic?

And how do you send 'da boyz' around to rough someone up, or break someone's kneecap for not paying 'protection' or gambling debts?

Then I want to know what the terrorists do there? Or maybe I don't, because I can't get an image of camels out of my head.

No... focus Chester...
... do they use immaginary explosives to blow up buildings that don't exist? Do they hijack non existant 767s belonging to virtual airlines and fly them into buildings that aren't really there?

I say "great... maybe they can all move there", and then we can pull the plug on the game and send them effortlessly to After Life, which is where they belong (sans virgins, of course).

The geeks already there have the ultimate advantage, of course. They can click faster, type faster and cut code faster than any suicide bomber, and with a little hacking practice, they could conjure up their very own WMDs (Weapons of Matrix Destruction) that would fix the problem once and for all.

People... Second Life is a 'virtual' world, which means it doesn't actually exist. There is no money. There is no land. There are no clothes. There are no children (or adults, for that matter) to have sex with. There's no food. No life. No plants, buildings, trees, earth, or anything else. There are no explosives, soft targets, hard targets or any other kinds of targets.

There is no airline either, though I do wonder if it's possible to lose my virtual luggage when I take a virtual flight on a virtual airline, and does my travel insurance policy cover that?

I think I need a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down.

Actually, what I really want is to know is what the game's creators put in the water at the pitch to investors...

"So, we're going to create this world that doesn't actually exist, and people will pay real money to buy land that doesn't exist, food they never get to eat, clothes they never get to wear, drugs that have no effect on their brain, and sex they never get to have (with avatars that may or may not be children)."

And the investors apparently must have said "Oh. Ok. We're in."

Second Life... bringing Descarte into the 21st century.

Also Brilliant...

My dad was given one of these chocolate bars by the importer today.

I LOVE great marketing, and companies with immagination. Here's more chocolate from the fab range at Bloomberry & Co...

Beats a plain old Cadbury Dairy Milk any day.

Simple Life 5

I see Paris Hilton's sentence has been cut to 23 days. Isn't that roughly the same number as episodes you need to have to make a series?

Co-incidence? Or is A Simple Life : Behind Bars coming to your little screen soon?

Brilliant.

For those of you who appreciate really great marketing and advertising, there's this...


and there should be more of it!

Life Needs To Be More Like This

Of Course He Was Bloody Naked, You Ass

Journalists are really starting to piss me off.

There was a story today in one of our papers... it doesn't matter which one or where it was because they're all the same everywhere these days... and it's the sort of journalism that my editor, back in my 'cadet' days, would have thrown me out of his office for.

The headline reads "Police seek naked lawyer's mystery visitor", and the story goes on to describe how a lawyer was found naked and unconscious in his hotel room.

Bloody hell... come around to any hotel room I'm in at 3am and you'll find me naked and unconscious too... that's how I sleep. Actually, that's how most people I know sleep.

Was it the truth? Yes, I suppose it was. He was probably naked, BECAUSE HE WAS ASLEEP you idiot! (Not you... the dumb lazy talentless journalist who wrote the piece.)

It would be like me writing about going to a business meeting or the local supermarket 'fully clothed'. "Man Shops Fully Clothed At Local Supermarket"

There used to be rules in journalism...
First, report only the facts.
Second, report only those facts which are relevant to the story. No. That doesn't mean you leave out the facts that don't work for your story... it means there's no need to say stuff just for the sake of a headline if what you want to say isn't relevant.
Third, check the facts again.
Finally, it's the news. It's not your opinion of the news.

Sadly, none of those rules seems to apply. What do they teach in journalism school these days?

I Want!

Sunday mornings are normally a bit of a quiet time at my place... time I can spend catching up on some of the more interesting work stuff that I usually don't get to during the week. This morning, I was doing some real and rather important product research and found myself HERE, at PerpetualKid.com.

"How did you end up there?" I hear you ask. "Didn't you say you were working?"

Yes. Working. Trying to find the minimum size for a barcode, a quest that went seriously pear shaped as soon as I found the Barcode doormat. From there, it was pretty much all down hill. I decided I must have this...It's called "The Ex", and this fine voodoo knife holder comes with 5 sharp kitchen knives for the bargain price of US$59.99. (Am I still bitter and twisted... you bloody bet!)

Then I found these standard ballpoint pens, and decided they're the perfect executive accessory for those important "suit" meetings...
I MUST HAVE some of these emoticon paper clips too...

And I know more than one of you will want one of these...

I love this idea too...

It's Eau de Play Doh, from the exceptional Demeter Fragrance Company, where the scents are a little more fun than you'll find at Channel... fragrances like Fairy Floss (that's what Aussies call cotton candy), Laundromat, Salt Air, and even Car Vinyl.

And just to prove that I really was looking for stuff about barcodes, go HERE, where readers like me who need to get out more can play Barcode Bedlam on line.

Ah well. At least it's Mothers' Day, so I have an excuse to go outside a little later.

What Kind Of Sex?

I could pick up this "girl" at a Second Life party. Sure, on the surface she's cute I suppose, but I have absolutely no idea how I'd have sex with her, or even if I'd want to. In fact, I know nothing about her. She could be Stephen Hawking or George Bush for all I know.

There's an interesting, and rather weird legal case coming together in Germany, and it's got this Bear's brain cells frying.

Police in Germany are trying to track down people whose avatars had sex with other avatars that looked like children in the on-line game "Second Life". Apparently, in Germany, having virtual sex with a virtual minor is a criminal offence.

I want to state this up front... anybody who even thinks about having sex with small children is a very sick individual who ought to be taken out the back, flogged to within an inch of their life and then locked away on the inhospitable and very cold Heard Island for the rest of what remains of their pathetic life.

But...

This case troubles me on so many levels, I'm not even sure I know where to start.

"Virtual Sex"? What the fuck is that? You either have sex, or you don't. Call me old fashioned, but the way I see it, for two people to have sex one of two conditions need to exist. Either, they have to be in the same room together, or they have to be able to see each other, the latter being way less fun than the first, and it was only once and we did meet for real sex... oh... no... too weird.

When your avatar has sex with someone elses avatar, neither of these conditions exists... and how does an avatar have sex anyway? Unless the graphics capabilities of Second Life are Star Trekesque, I can't even begin to imagine how two 2 dimensional cartoon figures get down and dirty with some horizontal folk dancing.

All right. It apparently happens. So let's just assume, for the sake of the argument, that there is some weird sex act performed here. Then we have to deal with the whole business of that being a criminal offence.

Now as my opening statement might have demonstrated, I'm no friend of the paedophile, but thinking about committing any crime is NOT a crime. Is it?

IS IT?

And is getting your avatar to hit on some other avatar any more than just thinking about it? Yes. It's sick. Yes, the thinker clearly needs help... but come on people... it's only THINKING!

Let's put it in perspective... nearly every time I drive through the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, I think about doing it at 200kph. If I actually did it, that would be a bloody dangerous and criminal offence, and by the time I got to the end of the freeway, the boys in blue would be getting ready to introduce me to Bubba, and reminding me not to drop the soap in the shower.

But I only THINK about speeding through the tunnel. If Second Life rules apply, I have committed a criminal offence and you'd have to wait until I get out to read the next installment.

Not the same? Ok. Then what about all that time I spent in my teens fantasizing about having sex with Marcia Brady? There's no statute of limitations on sex crimes, so I hope I can serve the sentence concurrently with that for the driving offence.

Or what about the time I spend thinking about creative uses for nuclear weapons when I read about the latest terrorist atrocity. That would make me a war criminal, and all I can do is pray that they have TV1 in my prison cell.

I know. I'm being a little flippant... or am I? Second Life is a GAME. Despite what some of its inhabitants might think, IT'S NOT REAL. Each day, millions of people all over the world play games, and each day, many of them break the law playing those games. They drive too fast, commit horrible and violent crimes or go to war for no better reason than they could.

Dig a little deeper into the Second Life story, and it turns out that the child avatars these sickos "paid" to have sex with weren't actually children at all, which makes this all the more puzzling because if I'm interpreting this right, under German law (and, I believe, under laws in at least one state in Australia), a person can be prosecuted for "paying" for "sex" with a "child", even though the money doesn't exist, the sex never actually happened, and the person controlling the avatar it didn't happen to wasn't actually a child at all. And let's not forget that the alleged offence took place in a world that doesn't actually exist either. Um... what crime your worship?

Take it one step further. What if the avatar the person had "sex" with was a child that was pretending to be an adult. Is that statutory rape?

I don't know about you, but my straw brain is starting to hurt, and I have some very loud alarm bells ringing in my left ear.

And Speaking of Dogs, There's This...

Also in today's Herald is a story from the Excited States about a 13 year old Golden Retriever named Alex. The custody battle for Alex, who's owner had commited suicide, was so intense that the judge appointed a lawyer to represent the dog's interests.

Ge HERE.

Brave George

Readers of my blog will know I have a very major soft spot for dogs.

THIS STORY in the Sydney Morning Herald about brave Greorge, who received postumous bravery award for his action in warding off two pit bulls who were attacking his family, really touched my heart.

I know. The Bear's just a big sook, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Barbarians At The Gate

There are a few things that drive this bear crazy, and one of them is a call from a foreign call centre trying to get me to switch my telephone account.

First of all, I don't have a "home phone" in the conventional sense... I use VoIP because I can call just about anywhere in the world for a few cents.

Second, I don't have a degree in quantum mathematics, so I am unable to work out how a phone bill actually works,

And third, my hearing's not so great, so I have a little difficulty understanding anyone trying to sell me something with a heavy Indian or Asian accent.

Enter the "Do Not Call" register, launched by our Federal Government early this month. That ought to have been the end of it.

But last night, there was a knock at the door.

"Who is it?", I shouted. No answer, just another knock.
"Who is it?" I shouted again.

"Good evening sir, I wonder if I might be having just one minute of your time."

I opened the door.

"Good evening sir, my name is Sanjay, and I would very much like to be talking about your telephone service, because the telephone cables in this area have not been very reliable."

"WHAT?", I said, somewhat taken aback by the appearance of a call centre person on my very doorstep.

"Perhaps you might be liking to switch to our new telephone service," he replied, following the same tired old script he was using when he called a few weeks back.

Dr J quipped that what we're going to need now is a "Do Not Knock" register.

Dishwasher Safe

I looked down at my keyboard the morning, and am overtaken by this urge to put it in the dishwasher.

You see, I work from home, or maybe that should actually be 'I sleep at work' because the time that I spend at home seems to be spent bowing down at the altar of my 19" flat panel and stroking the Holy Keyboard in vain supplication to the gods of Word, Excel, php and Outlook. My faith is strong, and one day, I know, these gods will reward my devotion by filling my bank account with the fruits of my labour. You seek evidence of such a reward? There is no evidence. Only faith.

So I'm eating a bowl of Just Right this morning while I type the Holy Formula to the god of Excel, when I accidentally drop the spoon. It was Excel's way of punishing me for using just one hand for my devotion.

Splash. There's bits of milk and cerial splattered inconveniently around the Holy Tab Key. Yuk.

But what's even more yuk is that this caused me to take a good hard look the other detritus... crumbs from a Vita Wheat, fragments of peanut from a Picnic, a tiny splash of sauce from last week's Carbonara, a sticky bit that may or may not have been either Iced Tea or Coke. It's enough food to keep a colony of ants very comfortable through the long hard winter ahead. Fortunately, there's a great abundance on the surrounding floor... truly a Land of Milk and Honey where Bounty rains from the sky... so the ants need not be bothered with the climb up Desk Mountain as they can grow fat off the surrounding timber plain.

I'm not really a disgusting pig, but this morning, the scene around my keyboard seems to tell a different story.

The Real Cause Of Global Warming

Thanks to Si for sending me this. Love it!

Click on the image... there's some animation!

Where Can I Get Me A Gun?

Today marks a real milestone in this bear's life. Today, I had my first up close, personal experience with The United States Postal Service. Faarrrqque! It makes me want to move to America just so I can buy a gun and go and shoot someone there. Seriously. What a bunch of bloody useless pencil necked bozos. I mean, we have some inept government agencies here in Oz, but NONE of them even come close to the uselessness I experienced today.

Here's the problem...

We have a number of US suppliers who send us stuff. The trouble is, via UPS or FedEx, sometimes it costs more to send than it does to buy it. USPS International Priority Mail costs less than half, so we went to the USPS website and set up an account.

The account creation form let us create an account at our address, right here in Australia. It even let us enter our credit card details, with the card holder's address right here in Australia.

If you've ever used Click'n'Pay before, you'll know that you create a label, then print it out to stick on your package, and on the way, you pay for it.

And that's where my evening got interesting.

You see, their stupid credit card form, like credit card validation forms on just about every website you buy stuff from, asks for the card holder's address, and when you get to "State", up pops a list of 50 familiar states, none of which are here in Australia... and that's that. You can't go any further.

"Must be me", I thought, so I picked up the phone and called the USPS "Customer Service" 800 number. "Customer Service"? Not.

First, I had to negotiate my way through one of those bloody infuriating automated call routing systems. "No, I DO NOT want to hear about your bloody new postage rates."

When I finally got to talk to an operator, she was clueless. More than capable, I'm sure, if I'd had a question about the new postage rates, but as for my issue, clueless. She transferred me to the Internation Package Tracking Desk. This operator was even more clueless, if that's possible, in that she didn't even know there were new rates, and the best suggestion she could make was to give me the numebr of the USPS Post Office nearest the pick-up address for the package we're trying to ship.

My second call got off to a better start, once I'd negotiated the automated call router. "No, I DO NOT want to hear about your bloody new postage rates." The operator still couldn't help, and did offer to discuss the new postal rates before she finally transferred me to "Technical Support".

"Yay!", I stupidly thought. Finally, someone who can help.

He listened to my problem, and then said "I'm sorry sir, you can not send packages to the United States. The USPS can only be used to send packages FROM the United States."

"No, you IDIOT. You're not bloody listening. I am NOT trying to send a package to the United States, I'm trying to send one FROM the United States." Of course, I didn't actually say that... but I desperately wanted to.

I explained the story again, and he then said accounts could not be created from outside the United States, which he stuck with until I explained, for the fourth time, that the account creation page specifically allowed non-US accounts.

In the end, he told me to make other arrangements.

I am not easily defeated. "I'll email someone." I went back to the USPS website and clicked "email us". I filled in the form to the best of my ability, and just about the only personal imformation they didn't ask for was a Social Security Number.

There was a teeny weeny little space to "type my question", which should probably have been "Are you people serious?" because that's just about all the space was big enough for. Then I had to select the subject from a list. My subject wasn't there. I picked another subject, and then had to pick a sub-subject from another list. Not surprisingly, my sub-subject wasn't there either. No problem. Send. My email was rejected.

Perhaps I should have selected "Tell Me About The New Postage Rates" from the subject box.

ADDENDUM

I sent them an email. They wrote back saying something to the effect that the internet is a wild and evil place, full of foreign bad guys out to do harm to every American, and that they only accept US Credit Cards to "protect their customers from fraud". I wrote back asking them how a foreign credit card might expose their customers to fraud, but there has been no reply. I hope they're thinking about it. I desperately wanted to write back that the foreign bad guys weren't out to do harm to every American at all... just USPS workers, and in that, they're joined by most Americans. Fortunately, I didn't. Instead, I'm writing to Jack Potter.

No Limits To Stupidity

Do these look the same to you? I hope not. The one on the left is a sheep, yes? And the one on the right? Come on, you know this... that's right, it's a poodle.

Not, apparently, in Japan, where an enterprising company called Pets as Poodles has been selling the left hand side animals, passing them off as the animals on the right hand side... at $1,600 each!

They were caught out when one of the buyers, Japanese film star Maiko Kawamaki took her new poodle on a TV talk-show and wondered why the animal didn't bark or eat dog food.

She was shattered when she was told it wasn't actually a poodle, that it was, in fact, a sheep. Not embarrassed, or ashamed... but very upset.

Once the dog was off the leash, more women began calling police complaining that they, too, had been delivered the ovine substitute. According to the story, in News Ltd's on line site today, one couple was distraught when they took their "poodle" to the vet to have its claws clipped and were told they weren't claws, they were hooves. "Distraught". Really?

Seriously Icky

I learned new stuff today...

There are about 100 trillion living cells in the human body.

90% of them are NOT human.

Those cells belong to all of the symbiotic or parasitic organisms that live in/on us.

For instance, there's a little critter who lives on the edge of your eyelid. That's his world, and his job is to keep the the base of your eyelashes clean. No-one has the slightest clue how he got there, but there he is.

There's another one, a bacteria, that lives inside your mitochondria. That's the little battery inside every (human) cell in your body. His job is to repair your DNA when it gets broken by free radicals.

Your gut hosts 490 known species of "good bacteria", which makes the one or two they stick in yoghurt look a bit lame. Their job is to help you break down your food. The problem is, they're at war with the "bad bacteria" who just want to come along for the ride, and in most of us, it's a war the good guys always lose.

One of those good guys is responsible for the production of lactase. That's an enzyme the body needs to break down lactose. Without those particular good guys, you'll be lactose intolerant.

There's another couple implicated in your propensity to get fat or stay thin. A coroner somewhere in the Excited States spent 20 years taking samples from the guts of each autopsy he did, and he correlated species with the weight of the individual. He found that naturally thin people have lots of one kind, while obese people have lots of another kind.

Another of those bad gut guys secretes an enzyme that some scientists think is a neurotoxin, and if you have enough of them, that toxin starts making symptoms that look remarkable like MS.

And if there aren't enough good guys in your small intestine, it can get overgrown with Candida, and THAT's bad, because the shape of the intestine wall means the fungus makes holes allowing partly digested food to leak into your bloodstream.

One parasite has been shown to make girls promiscuous, and men stupid. I thought that was what beer was for.

Personally, I find the whole idea a bit icky, and it makes me ask... if 90% of me is not really me, then who am I? Ugh! It makes my head spin!

Stunning

With a tear in my eye, I've just watched the last of the stunning ten part mini series, Band Of Brothers.

For those who haven't seen it, it's a dramatisation of the true story of Easy Company, a unit of the 101st Airborne in WWII, from their training camp in England, through the Normandie landings, Operation Market Garden and the Siege of Bastonge, and then all the way to the end of the war.

This film is a moving tribute to a small group of men... men without whom our world would have been a very different place... so much so that at the end, I found myself spontaneously standing in ovation, as much for the 'real' men of Easy Company, who are interviewed at the beginning and end of each episode, as for the brilliance of Speilberg and Hanks who co-produced the series.

It's not so much a war story as it is the story of extraordinary cammeraderie and bravery, of human tragedy, survival and the senselessness of war. It conveys an unpaletable truth, that sometimes war is an horrific, necessary evil.

If you haven't seen Band of Brothers, put it on your 'must see' list.

Vegetarian Goose

We were at the Chinese Reataurant near my parents' place the other day, and I spotted this dish...

Maybe it says something different in Chinese.

Kittens

This is the hyperactive Scooter, top, in a rare moment when she was still enough to pose for a pic, and above, this evening, after a very long day.

This is tiny little Mini. She's actually spending the night in hospital tonight... four out of the five kittens from her litter have all come down with some mystery bug. She's eating, drinking and generally comfortable, but it is a bit of a worry.

I did try to take one of the two of them together. Not possible I'm afraid.

And here's one way you can identify someone who's just acquired a kitten or two... this cut was inflicted when we first cuddled Scooter at the Pet Store. Sharpest claws I've ever felt, and probably just as well the pic's blurry.

A Damned Good Book

I've taken a bit of time out over the last few days, to re-read The Walled Orchard by Tom Holt.

There's something about books written in the first person... I loved Interview with A Vampire and The Seventh Scroll, so The Walled Orchard is a real pleasure.

It's a narrative set in the glory days of ancient Athens, a funny, very human portrayal that's more personality than event. It probably helps that I did a little Ancient History in high school, but don't be deterred if you didn't. Walled Orchard is a bloody good read. Witty, sophisticated, sarcastic and a lot of fun. It gets four paws up from this bear and if you spot it in your local bookstore or library, you're in for a treat.

Kitten Shopping

I know it's only been a few weeks, but Dr J has been an empty shell without a furry animal in her life, so yesterday I managed to bundle her in the car and take her out to Windsor, which is about 50km away on the fringe of Sydney, to visit a cat rescue shelter. It was an idea with noble intent... in that we could rescue a little pussy cat that otherwise wouldn't have had a great life.

The trouble is, the cats at the shelter were all fully grown, and part of the bonding process between humans and their animal friends is being there through the formative years so they can properly take on all of your neuroses.

Sadly, the cats at the shelter, beautiful as they were, were a bit too grown up. I'd actually expected that, and the purpose of the drive wasn't necessarily to find some new friends (Dr J had decided she wanted two), but more to try to ease her into the idea that a new animal is never going to replace Sooty, but will, nevertheless provide companionship and a whole new personality to boss her around, as cats do.

We set off for home, but decided that the 500m we spent on the new tollway wasn't worth the toll so we'd take the alternate route.

...which is where the plan seriously came off the rails.

About a kilometre down Windsor Road past for fork where it joins Old Windsor Road and the freeway, we passed a pet megastore.

We'd just had the discussion about kittens v adolescents, so we thought "let's just wander in and see if they have any kittens. That way we'll have something to compare the cats we've just seen with."

I should have understood how dangerous that might be. Kittens, you see, are irresistable. They're tiny, fluffy, and extremely cute, with huge round eyes and tiny little squeaks when they're trying to meow. And, of course, the very first thing we saw, right at the entrance to the store, was the giant cage with about a dozen of the fluffy buggers in it, climbing all over each other vying for either our attention or the food and water bowls.

"Aaaawww, look! Kittens", we both said.

"They're Bermans, or Berman crosses", said the young shop assistant. "Except for that one." She pointed to a kitten slightly larger than the others, with light in her eyes, an over abundance of legendary feline curiosity, and an athletic ability of Olympic standard. "Just a domestic", she said with classist disdain, as though the lack of one or other parent with the right 'papers' somehow made her inferior. That probably sealed it there and then, and it's just a shame the store assistant didn't understand the psychological manipulation.

Ah well... I guess that's how Dr J eneded up adopting (which is a nice way of saying we paid what seemed like way too much money) the domestic, Scooter, and one of the Berman crosses, Mini, a tiny little thing who seemed the most curious of the other kittens in the enclosure.

And then we got them home.

Oh dear!

Scooter has ADHD. Really. She does... actual, real, attention defitic hyperactivity disorder... which is how she got her name... every few seconds she'd scoot across the loungeroom, or up the stairs, or back down the stairs, or in and out of any one of the dozens of little hidey holes modern decorating can create. Her attention on any one thing in the loungeroom could not be sustained for more than about 5 seconds before something else caught her eye. She approached the task of soaking up the her new surroundings with more enthusiasm than is possible for any human without the assistance of very powerful recreational drugs.

Mini tried ever so hard to keep up, but she's a couple of weeks younger, in cat terms, a very long time, and after an hour or so she was content to just curl up on Dr J and go to sleep, waking every fifteen minutes or so to have another crack at tagging Scooter.

Scooter, in return, would give Mini hell, probably because dear little Min is that week or two younger, and just a little smaller than Miss Scooter, so she's fairly easy pickings. Dr J's Idea was to have this 'happy family', but I suspect she's forgotten that she didn't actually get on much with her brothers and sisters either.

For a few hours last night, the place was chaos. Mini would hide, not hide, attack, roll over in submission, or curl up. Scooter would just do what, we suspect, Scooter will always do, which is to explore, chase, run about, jump on Mini, tackle Mini, stalk Mini, and generally go beserk. Later in the night, she couldn't decide whether to keep running around or curl up and have a sleep, so she draped herself over the arm of the lounge, positioned just right so that she could observe the room, yet comfy enough to doze off every now and then. She only settled when I dimmed the lights, which was a beautiful thing because by bedtime, Dr J could just plonk her in her igloo bed in the laundry with Mini (who'd retired at a much more civilised hour).

This morning, they were curled up together, oblivious to the routine of mornings, but once they were up, the chaos started all over again, only this time, it was daylight outside so they could actually see what was on the other side of the glass. Birds. Given Scooter's hunting practice, I suspect their days of leisurely flying into the courtyard are numbered. That's Ok. They're African Minor Birds, not welcome in our country at all.

I'm not going to get obsessive about writing up their formitive years, but I will post a pic or two of Scooter and Mini in the next couple of days.

Evil Dihydrogen Monoxide

Thanks to my former global travelling work colleague, Si for sending this to me this morning.

What more can one say?

Spare A Thought...

I don't know why, but the story of Titanic has always had a very special place in my heart. No... not the Cate and Leo version... the real story, and it's been that way for as long as I can remember.

I'm a little better now, but there was a time when I'd just have to see a photo of the ship and I'd burst into tears. I will admit that I sobbed through Cameron's movie, from the moment the ship appeared on the screen, right through to the very end.

So spare a thought then... for today, 95 years ago, the unsinkable Titanic stood perpendicular with her stern facing the stars then slowly, deliberately, plunged forever into the deep of the Atlantic.

1503 people lost their lives. Maybe I was there.

2.10am, April 15, 1912.

Oops! Damned Decimal Places!

Ok. I promise that this is my last rant for a while about global warming and carbon emissions, but I need to give you some stats, because there's some confusion about exactly how much CO2 25 billions tonnes is, and I might have put a decimal in the wrong place last week.

So I whipped out the trusty Excel spreadsheet, and this time, I figured it out as a proportion of the total of the world's atmosphere. I did this because a)I was bored, b)I need to get out more, and c)I was filling in for Amanda, our brilliant retail manager, on a day when nothing much else was happening.

Whatever. I'm sure there could have been a more productive use of the energy consumed by my braincells, so I'm sorry, Al Gore, if all that thought energy has contributed to global warming on Titan.

Ok... here it is... for anyone remotely interested, and get ready for some numbers so big they're incomprehensible...

The total weight of the world's atmosphere is around five million billion tonnes, which is the number 5 with fifteen zeros on the end. Of course, you already knew that, didn't you?

Depending on what part of the world you're in, I think you can call it five thousand trillion tonnes, of five quadrillion tonnes. Or not. Let's just call it "a lot". You can work it out by multiplying the surface area of the earth, which is 510 million sq km, by the air pressure (which is the weight of the air, 1kg per sq cm (14.7lb/sq in), or 10,000 tonnes per sq km.).

Which means the total man made CO2 going into the atmosphere every year (if you were paying attention, you'll remember that as 25 billion tonnes a year) is 0.0003%, or 3 thousandths of one percent of the total volume.

This is about 3% of the total CO2 pouring into the atmosphere from all sources, which means natural CO2 accounts for 97%.

Here are some more stupid meaningless comparisons...

If I wanted to show it on a graph, the line would stretch from Sydney to LA, and the man made CO2 would be the first 40cm (about 15.5") of that line.

If it was a proportion of total Government spending in 2007, it would run whatever country you live in for about a hundred and three seconds out of the year.

People, these numbers are about as easy to understand as your mobile phone plan.

Here's a thought though... breathing by every human on earth produces about 1kg of CO2 a day each, which, given our population of five billion people, accounts for a staggering 7% of the total man made CO2 emission around the world...

...so if we could just get rid of some people... now wouldn't THAT be an inconvenient truth!

Oh Pewk! Bloody Al Gore Again?

This Bear is really starting to get worried about Global Warming. No, I'm not worried about carbon emissions, or heat sinks, or greenhouses. I'm worried about "Global Warming - The Issue".

This, people, is something spinning out of control, whipped up by ignorant journalists and opportunistic politicians, and backed by pseudo science of the very worst kind.

I've been saying for a while now that, even though we've treated our environment and resources with reckless disregard, and there is the strongest of arguments for changing our ways, this "Humans Did It" Global Warming thing is at best, total bullshit, and at worst, an attempt to manipulate and control us for some as yet unknown political end.

Today I discover that the ultra hypocrite and champion of inconvenient truths, Al Gore, has organised "Live Earth", 7 simultaneous rock concerts around the world to "raise the awareness of global warming". It's called 7/7/7 (that's the date), and a bunch of so-called celebrities get yet anotehr stage from which they can lecture us on something else they know little to nothing about. Maybe, if they really wanted to save energy and cut down on carbon emissions, they'd turn down the power on those amplifiers.

Sharp perspective time people...

FACT: The world's climate is NOT stable, has never been stable, and never will be stable. It gets hotter, it gets colder, it gets hotter again. Ice sheets form. Ice sheets melt. Ice sheets form again. Coral reefs grow. Coral reefs die. Oceans rise. Oceans fall. Boo bloody hoo... it's just part of a natural cycle.

FACT: Climate change has happened before, and it will happen long after humans are extinct fossil remains in the bedrock.

FACT: A miniscule immeasurable increase in solar radiation... that is... the heat from the sun... is going to do more to heat up the world than we ever could.

FACT: All of the other planets in the solar system are currently experiencing global warming. Um... wow... I didn't know we had the technology to get to any of them, let alone cause global warming on them. Maybe Star Trek really is a documentary.

FACT: The other major contributor to global warming is an accelleration of tectonic plate movement. A what? You know... I've talked about this before... the plates move apart at the bottoms of the oceans, spewing the molten innards of the earth out into the sea. Plates that, 20 years ago, were moving apart at a rate of 5cm a year are now moving at 15cm a year. Why? It's probably because in 1974, the earth's rotation got the wobbles. For 30 years before '74, the world was cooling down... so much so that scientists were warning of a coming catastrophic ice age. Since '74, we've been heating up again mostly thanks to a change in our aspect to the sun. Damn. That wasn't in Al's film... how did he miss that?

FACT: The total increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the last hundred years is measured in double digit parts per million... that is, an almost undetectable 50 or 60 parts per million. And, of course, there's still argument about this, because the measured increase might be partly, or even entirely due to an improvement in measuring technology.

FACT: And here's the bit Al Gore et al inconveniently ignore most... human CO2 output is a TINY fraction of the total CO2 output around the world. The vast majority of CO2 entering the atmosphere does so by "natural geological release", that is, it seeps out of rocks, or is released by seismic or volcanic activity. Humans and their CO2 emissions could vanish from this world, and the planet wouldn't notice.

Do you really want to know how much carbon dioxide we're pumping into the atmosphere? Ok... stick with me through some very scratchy arithmetic here... The total amount of carbon dioxide output by humans is around twenty five billion tonnes a year. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? 25 with more zeros than Pearl Harbour. It's a bigger number than most of us can comprehend, but how much is that, really?

This might put it in perspective for you... a cubic metre of the stuff at 25degC at sea level weighs about one and a half kilos. Through the magic of some really shonky rough cut maths, I will tell you that if you scooped it all up and put it in one place, it would make make a cube of gas around 2.5km on all sides.

You think that sounds REALLY big, don't you? Actually, as a proportion of the total of the world, it's so tiny you'd have trouble seeing it from space without a good spy satellite. It would be a dot that wouldn't stretch from the The Sydney Harbour Bridge to Darling Harbour, or from Battery Park to the Statue of Liberty, or from St Pauls Cathedral to the Houses of Parliament. It isn't even three quarters of the length of the runway at LAX. To understand how staggeringly small this is, go to google earth, zoom in on any one of the landmarks I've just mentioned, and then zoom out again. You have to zoom out a long way before you can see the whole world.

Real scientists are speaking up though. Professor Ian Plimer is Dean of Geology at Adelaide University. He gave a lecture yesterday that wasn't widely reported, in which he described the total contribution of humans to global warming as "miniscule" and "insiginificant". Geologists have a much better handle on this whole thing than climatologists could ever have. That's because geologists have seen it all before, and Plimer added his considerable voice to the chorus of real, but largely ignored scientists who are challenging the merchants of panic by trying to bring some sense and science into the debate.

Just to finish off, here's some more useless information for you...
If you could gather all of the fossil fuels consumed in the world and dump them in one place, they would bury greater Los Angeles to a depth of about 70cm, or, in the old money, 27 inches. That sludge is barely over knee height for an average out-of-work actor, and there are many who might think that there is no more fitting a dump for this stuff than LA.

Ok... so we've got 27". Now I want you to put that in perspective... burn it. Go on. Imagine a huge fire covering all of Los Angeles (which, as you'll have seen from google earth, really is just a tiny dot on the globe). That's a 12,000sq km fire that has to burn through 70cm of fuel. And it has a whole year to do it. The 2003 Victorian bushfire consumed more than 56,000 sq km, four times the area of Los Angeles, and it did it in two months, consuming a fuel density far greater than 70cm.

Oh... and I nearly forgot to mention... wildfires in the USA burn an area slightly less than the size of Los Angeles every year, pumping... yes, you guessed it, nearly the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere as all of the activities of human fossil fuel burning world wide. That's just fires in the USA. Bushfires in Australia consume around 5 times that each year, generating 5 times the amount of CO2 as the burning of fossil fuels. And I haven't even mentioned fires in Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and everywhere else.

Finally, here's Al Gore's most inconvenient truth (and thanks to CAW for this)...
That 20 room mansion of his consumes 20 times more energy than the average American home. It's only 5 times larger than the average American home, but it's so poorly designed that it's an energy guzzler. "Do as I say", says Al, "not as I do."

Are you getting the picture yet?

Day Off

Bliss! I've just spent an entire day NOT working. No email. No internet. No reports. No sales. No work at all.

I didn't actually think it was possible and I really wasn't sure how I was going to get through the day but rescue came in the shape of Henry, Dr J's newphew and a pro golfer.

Henry's down in Sydney from his home in Brisneyland, lining up for a couple of minor tournaments in the next few days. As a part of his preparation, he took us out to the Castle Hill Country Club to scope out the course.

I'm no golfer, but it was interesting to spend a few hours out in the fresh air and sunshine with a pro, checking greens, fairways, hazards and treelines. Henry even has this very cool little range finder... just point it at the flag, press a button and it will tell you how far away it is, how many degrees elevation it is, and what that means to the distance of the shot. To explain... let's say the flag is 120 metres from the tee, but it's at a 5 degree down angle. That means it's a 110m shot away. For me, that's not going to make the slightest difference... the last time I played a round, the course marshall came up to me on the fourth hole and asked me if I was sure I had enough balls. (Bastard!)

I got to putt on some of Australia's best kept greens too, and I'll tell you, it's quite a bit different to trying to get the ball in the hole in the side of the Pyramid at King Tut's Mini Golf.

And I got to drive the golf cart, mostly because everyone thinks my Smart Car is just a cart on steroids anyway.

By the way... in his spare time, Henry's an amazing magician, AND the world master of trick shots (he holds world records for things like bouncing a ball off a club, and spinning a ball on a putter head). If you're interested, his website is HERE.

Say A Prayer For Sooty

I don't know if you believe in this sort of thing, but if you do, please say a prayer for Sooty, Dr J's wonderful cat and faithful companion for the last 17 and a half years.

We took Sooty to the vet this morning. He was having difficulty breathing, and I'm afraid the diagnosis couldn't have been worse. He has lung cancer, and may not last through the night. It's amazing that we've seen few symptoms until now, but that's how it is with cats, apparently. They're masters of masking, and just two days ago this guy was seemingly in perfect health.

He's back with Dr J now, trying to sleep at the end of her bed, but his breathing is laboured and the fire's gone out of his eyes. I suspect the Doc and I will spend the Easter long weekend remembering a wonderful friend, one who's stuck by her, who's been there for her, though the good times and the bad for more than half her adult life.

Fat Mouse, Thin Mouse

Our little pilot store and physical office are closed on Mondays, mainly because we run a mostly virtual company anyway, and the store's open the other six days of the week. That also means Monday is supposed to be my "day off", but I find myself sitting here at the office waiting for a delivery. Bloody tedious.

So I'm wrestling with being productive or not, and right now 'not' is winning so I thought I'd share this little piece of advice with you...

It's not so much what you eat that makes you fat, as when you eat it.

The basic proposition is that you can eat whatever you like during the daytime and not gain weight. It's got something to do with the way the body decides what to do with the food you eat.

People who need to get out more figured it out by looking at shift workers. That's because workers transferred to shiftwork inexplicably gain weight, even though neither the type, quality nor quanity of food they eat changes.

To test the proposition, a researcher in Japan ran an amazing experiment with little white mice.

He divided them into two groups, one fed during the day time, and the other fed at night. In every other respect, the mice were the same... the same activity level, the same amount of sleep, the same food, same little mouse exercise wheel... the only thing that was different was the time they ate.

And after just 3 days (not 30 days, or 3 weeks... THREE DAYS), he weighed the mice. The little daytime mice weighed in at a healthy 35g each. That's normal weight for these fellas. But the night fed mice weighed 40g each, an incredible 15% more than their day-fed cousins. In just 3 days.

Then they ran some blood tests and isolated a hormone that we all secrete at night that sends a signal to your body's insulin and fat receptors to tell them to store excess nutrients as fat (because without that message, those excess nutrients just get filtered back out of your system). When they switched that hormone off and repeated the experiment on a new batch of mice, there was no difference between them.

It makes some sense. In a time when food was not plentiful, there would be a real survival advantage for any animal that was able to store away whatever nutrients it hadn't used by the end of the day. That's great, unless you live in a rich western country like Australia, the USA, Canada or most of Europe where food is plentiful, cheap and easy to get.

So the moral of the story is... next time you head for the fridge at 2am, just remember where that slice of cold pizza’s going to end up.

Drugs

Anyone who reads these rants will know that I have adult ADD, which means that when it's really important, I have the attention span of a fly, and when it's not really important, I can get lost in whatever I'm doing at the exclusion of the really important things.

For example, I have a meeting at 10 tomorrow with some big name TV producer... an IMPORTANT meeting. It takes 20 minutes to drive from my place to my office. And I can guarantee that 25 minutes before the meeting, I'll decide that it's a great time to clean out the inbox on my home office PC, which is, of course, much more than a 5 minute job.

Now the rational part of my brain just beats me up and tells me I lack self discipline. The other parts of my brain gang up on it, and point out that as four doctors have now reached the same diagnosis, then that's an awful lot of medical school to contradict. The rational part of my brain is right, of course, but hey... this is the 21st century... a wonderous time when any notion of self responsibility is about as quaint as black and white TV.

So I get to blame ADD, and thanks to the miracles of modern diagnostic medicine, I have the brain scans and psych profile tests to back me up.

Adult ADD, of course, can be a great gift. We "see" stuff... usually the stuff happening in the background of life, while the things right in front of us sometimes pass quietly by. For example, if I met you at a party, I'll remember the watch you were wearing, and that you had a scar on your wrist, but I won't remember your name, no matter how much I enjoyed your company. It makes driving interesting too... I'm much more likely to notice the "We Close" sign on the door of the Chinese restaurant I just whizzed by, than I am to notice the red light ahead. And trust me... you don't want to accept my invitation to play "white horse" on a drive in the countryside, because even though I'm driving and you have much more time to look around and find white horses behind farm houses or at the back of some paddock somewhere, I WILL win, because my ADD guarantees that I'll spot that damned horse first.

It also confers boundless creativity, because the breadth of stuff that we do see means we're more likely to think outside that tired proverbial square.

The downside, though, is that I suck at personal organisation, and frequently forget even the most rudimentary things. It can get so bad that I'll spend 10 hours, like I did today, on some meaningless programming task, while there's a whole bunch of invoices that haven't been sent out.

In other words, if Rome was burning, I'd decide it was a good time to practice the violin.

Therefore, occasionally, I need to resort to some very cool and extremely hard-to-get drugs to centre me a little. So hard-to-get that the prescription needs to be signed off by some faceless bureaucrat in Canberra, just to make sure I'm not getting three prescriptions at once from three different psychiatrists. (Regular doctors like Dr J can't prescribe it, which is a bummer).

You see, Dexamphetamine has a very high street value, and I'm told that it can deliver quite a kick if one doesn't actually "need" it. I was "warned", when I got my hands on my first 'script, that a simple $20 bottle of pills has a street value of around $1500. Strange advice to give someone suffering from mental disease, but hey... at least I know I have a guaranteed alternative income source if the business ever falls down.

Sadly, I don't get the kick. For me, dex just creates clarity. I'm told it does that by simultaneously speeding up one part of the brain, while slowing down another, so for a few days after I start taking stuff, the world can be a very interesting place indeed.

The downside, I know, will be a loss of some of life's colour for a little while. I just won't "see" quite as much next week as I did last week.

The upside is that I might remember to pay the electricity bill, buy a new toothbrush, and actually go out and see a client or two.

AND... Dex is a fabulous appetite supressant, so I can expect to shed more than a few kilos in the process. Ah well. If that's the price I have to pay for being a functioning human being, then I guess I'll live with it for a while.

Good Dog!

If, like me, you think (most) dogs are better company that (most) people, go HERE.

League of Nations

That's what my bowling league is called.

And each of the teams is named after a country (that usually reflects the country of origin of the team members). There's Greece, Lebanon, Syria, Italy, England, Greece II, Lebanon II & III, New Zealand, Fiji, Hong Kong, Korea, Vietnam and even an Australia.

...except for my team (which I joined long after it was formed), and which is named "Dream Team". I have no idea why, and it's embarrasing to play in the only team that doesn't have a real name.

Therefore, I have informed my team mates that this week, we're going to change our name. We have a shortlist...

• Burundi
• Botswana
• Moldovia
• Tasmania
• Senegal
• Togo
• Monaco
• Hutt River

The front runner is Derkaderkistan.

Team America: World Police, saved the world from the evil terrorists of Derkaderkistan.

Nominations, though, have not yet closed...

There's A Bear In There

Our coathanger is 75 today, and to celebrate, it was closed to cars yesterday (Sunday) so we could wander across like ants. They reckon around 500,000 people took the opportunity, but given that it looked like this for much of the day, I suspect it might have been more.

The bear was there, though by the time Dr J and I joing the throngs, they'd run out of free yellow hats.

Doctors Prefer Camel

Dr J sent me this earlier in the week.

You have to admire the Tobacco Industry. It's a real ad from the 1940s, and the copy writing is brilliant. Every doctor in private practice was asked "What cigarette do you smoke?".

"Not a guess, not just a trend, but an actual fact based on statements of the doctors themselves to 3 nationally known independent research organisations.

"Yes, your doctors was asked, along with thousands and thousands of other doctors from Maine to California.

"And they've named their choice--the brand that more doctors named as their smoke is Camel!"

Not one research organisation, but 3, and not just any old research organisations, but "nationally known" research organisations! Brilliant! But there's more... not just any old doctors either, but your YOUR doctor! I love it! If these guys were around today, they'd be writing infomercials, or speeches for presidential aspirants.

Apparently, the proof is all in the "T Zone" (bottom left)...

"The 'T Zone' Test Will Tell You"

"The 'T Zone'--T for taste and T for throat--is your own laboratory, your proving ground for any cigarette. For only your taste and your throat can decide which cigarette tastes best to you... and how it effects your throat. On the basis of experience of many many millions of smokers, we believe Camels will suit your 'T-Zone' to a T."

Fabulous! "...proving ground". So bloody anachronistic. And to think... this was created in the days when advertising and marketing were more dark arts, and less the evil sciences they are today.

Creepy II

While you're still wondering what to do with So Truly Real TM Hannah, you might consider adding one of these to your apartment.

It's described on eBay as "This is a removable pole that fits most apartments. It is 2nd hand and the nut at the bottom is getting a little worn; however just needs a strong hand to secure it tightly. It comes with a spirit leveller and spanner. Pick up only from Toorak, Victoria".

The highest bid is A$100.

Just Plain Creepy

Every now and then, just when I'm starting to get the feeling that the world is a little humdrum, I trip over stuff that restores my faith in that old Vulcan philosophy of "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations".


The loose translation of that would be "it takes all kinds to make a world". Yup. All kinds, though this morning, I am struggling to understand the mind of a person who would buy something like this...


We're not talking cute clothes for baby here. People with babies lose higher thinking faculties and so whatever they do can be put down to a temporary failure of reason. No. This is a doll, described by its makers as "So Truly Real"TM that you'll "love him like your own".



I thought I'd better go to the website and see what other methods of money extraction this company has, and... um...

...I just don't know what to say.

I found Little Steve and a whole family of Little Steve's brothers and sisters, plus some other stuff that... no... I can't describe it yet... I need to think about it a bit, so let's get back to Steve's family.

There's Tiny Miracle Emmy, a premature-baby doll you can hold in your hand. Emmy's also So Truly Real TM, and she's "an amazing 25cm" long, which is a curious way to describe the size of anything that's not bigger than an Airbus A380 or smaller than a grape seed but I suppose we should cut the copy writers some slack.

What about "Jack the Little Rooster"...
"Jack, the Little Rooster" – a baby doll So Truly Real you'll love him like your own! "Jack" is incredibly lifelike, from his RealTouch™ vinyl skin to his hand-applied hair, appealing brown eyes and irresistible expression. He even has carefully applied fingernails and toenails. Pick him up and he looks and feels like a real baby! "Jack" comes to you in an adorable hand-tailored rugby league-inspired outfit, including cap, shoes and socks. Once you hold him, look into his happy face and love him, you'll be convinced he's So Truly Real! "Jack" comes with a FREE "Adoption Certificate".

"Love him like your own"??? "Looks and feels like a real baby"??? I'll bet he doesn't smell like a real baby, and scream in the middle of the night like a real baby, though I suppose if he did, unlike the real thing, at least you could send him back.

You can also get Ben the Little Eagle , Timmy the Little Bomber, Bobbie the Little Magpie, Bill the Little Eel, Tom the Little Raider, Sam the Little Bronco, Nicholas the Little Sea Eagle, Jamie the Little Knight, Liam the Little Tiger, Josh the Little Cowboy and Ryan the Little Panther, each dressed in their appropriate team regalia with certificates etc, and each with that (am I allowed to say 'retarded'?) facial expression, and a name so archetypally matched to the part of Australia the football team represents that my level of respect for the aforementioned copy writers has been considerably raised.

But then there's "Hanging Out With Hannah", and I think I'll leave it to the copy to tell you all about her...

Remember what it's like to have an eight year old around? Collectible doll artist Julie Fischer certainly does, and so she's created "Hannah," a long-limbed, lively strawberry blonde with bright eyes, unruly hair, and a non-stop, personality that will amaze you! To enhance the look of a real little girl, this vinyl doll wears cross-stich embroidered overalls over a pink blouse with lace trim. She even has tiny flower earrings with sparkling pink stones! Such a pretty girl! Best of all, Hannah is constructed and weighted so you can pose her almost anyway you can think of! Nominated for the 2005 DOTY Award, this exclusive Julie Fischer doll from Ashton-Drake is such a realistic doll that you simply must have her for yourself. One look and you'll love Hannah forever – order now!

So... um... are they saying Hannah is the doll of choice for paedophiles everywhere?

Or perhaps she's just the perfect gift for sad old tarts who forgot to have children. At least they didn't have to wreck their figures and surrender their social lives to have her, though I do have an image in my head such that I'm reasonably sure an excess of assorted comfort foods wrecked that figure a very long time ago, and there hasn't been much of a social life for quite a while either.

Are they serious? This is a life sized eight year old, um, no... what I mean is that this is a life sized replica of an eight year old. And how can a doll have a "non-stop personality"?

Does anyone else find this a little creepy? Except for the distinct advantage that having Hannah strapped into the front seat of the car would bring (when you were trying to get to the office in a hurry and wanted to use the T2 transit lane), why would you want one of these?

Ah well. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. The world would be a very boring place if we were all the same.

(If you want to see much more noice (that's not a typo, it's a pronunciation) and rather creepy "collactables", go HERE.)

Life Really Is A Lottery

Oh joy!

It seems I've won the "English National Lottery". THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS is, apparently, waiting for me to collect.

AND

In the same week, I've also won a MILLION EUROS in something called the Euro-PW Lottery Online.

I am just SO lucky. Actually, with this much luck, I'd better go and actually buy a lottery ticket. I mean, what are the chances of TWO of my email addresses winning lotteries within days of each other. All without me even knowing I'd entered. Astounding.

It must be true though. I got these emails that said so. My email addresses, it seems, had been "selected at random from the internet" and entered in the lotteries and they won!! BOTH of them! Woo bloody hoo!

All I have to do for one of them is contact some "barraster" in London somewhere. Or was that "barista". I can't exactly recall, though I do suspect that the average barista might have more qualifications than this "barraster". And for the other, I just have to send a note to "The Director Of Winning Claims Department", though I'm not allowed to mention the win to anyone because of "unwarranted abuse of this program by some participant". Gee.. I hope they're not talking about me.

Ah well. Gotta go. Have to write me a couple of claims emails and work out where/how to spend/invest all that loot. HooAh!

Kapow!

A Sydney Morning Herald reader, Mikey Wang, snapped this shot of a lightning bolt hitting the Coathanger during last night's storm. For more pics, go HERE.

The Delicate Sound Of Thunder

We're in the middle of the most amazing thunderstorm right now. I've been standing on my balcony watching for about the last 30 minutes, but decided to come in when a bolt of lightning flashed horizontally across the sky right overhead, acompanied by the biggest, loudest mother of all bangs I've ever heard.

The sky above me is lighting up like a flourescent tube, so bright it's turning midnight into daylight. And the flashes are coming every few seconds.

This is absolutely spectacular! Someone up there is very very pissed off.

Nice To Know

Anyone who's read this blog for more than a few weeks will know I'm no great fan of bureaucrats. I just have trouble understanding the bureaucratic mind.

Take this, from the Australian and New Zealand Food Standards Code...

15-Hygiene of food handlers
A food handler must, when engaging in any food handling operation -
f) not sneeze, blow or cough over unprotected food or surfaces likely to come into contact with food;
g) not spit, smoke or use tobacco or similar preparations in areas in which food is handled; and
h) not urinate or defecate except in a toilet.

Ok. Thanks for clarifying that, because until I saw that they needed to put something in the Government Regulations about it, I didn't know that people defecating in food preparation areas was a problem.

Seriously. Do they really need to write that up? I mean, isn't it just bloody obvious?

Are food workers so stupid that they don't know these things? Or maybe they're so unclean that this is natural behaviour to them, in which case, I don't want them preparing my food.

And if it's that important to state the obvious, why didn't they prohibit engaging in sexual activity near food, or exercising in a food preparation area? What about chewing gum? Or snorting cocaine?

I just don't get it. Bah!

Holiday In Hell

Photo Courtesy Associated Press

I was reading a story on the Sydney Morning Herald website tonight. It was a routine AP report about Italy's Stromboli Volcano erupting again. The piece talked about how Stromboli is a favourite summer vacation destination for Europe's glitterati, and how it was now a dangerous place.

"Locals fear a repeat of the events of December 2002 when a similar upsurge in volcanic activity caused a massive chunk of rock to drop into the sea, causing a 10-metre (33 foot) tidal wave that ruined houses close to the shore.

"Emergency sirens sounded on the island when the new eruption began and local authorities ordered all residents to move to at least 10 metres above the water line."

And at the bottom, an ad for local travel agency chain Flight Centre saying "book your holiday now".

Nice one.