a dog & his money are soon retail therapied — sure, there’s the rent, & all those bills, but apparently there’s also one of these, & if there’s one of those, then surely there’s just gotta be one of these as well… sail on, little model kits! speed your way across the seas to me!

australians repel assault by fucka! — the australian men’s basketball team have made the semifinals of the olympic tournament after resisting a second half comeback by italy, who went down 65-62 despite an inspirational performance by Gregor Fucka…

australian women’s basketball team will play brazil in semifinal — the australian women’s team cruised past poland 76-48 in their quarterfinal & are yet to be beaten in this tournament…

words to live by from they might be giants

a claw is a claw & nobody has seen a talking claw
unless that claw is the famous Mr Klaw
Mr Vanity Klaw
Mr Lightning Bulb
Mr Dental Flaw
Mr Vanity Klaw

baldur’s gate 2: shadows of amn — oh hurrah! an updated version of the game once described as digitised crack…

space webzine yamato — i know i probably shouldn’t be surprised…

star furious — still no pics of the starfury i built a couple of weekends back, but i started working on the second kit last night, so maybe i might hang fire for a couple of days & just take pictures of the two of them together… (gosh. i hope everyone can stand the suspense…) i’m doing the second one with a paint scheme loosely based on my recollections of world war one biplanes… (uh, recollections from childhood books, that is… i mean, i wasn’t there…) of course, someone’s already had a similar idea, but my scheme’s gonna be quite a bit different… & not just in terms of much lower quality…

modelling madness webzine

something to ride down memory lane (a.k.a. nostalgia tripping) — maybe what i really need is another italian motorcycle… the other day some guy rode through railway square on a silver le mans mk III, identical to the one i used to have… except, of course, his moto guzzi appeared to have paint, & his clutch wasn’t making the evil rattling noise that eventually convinced me to part company with mine…

filmed in panoramic clear-o-vision! excellent… the world isn’t dominated by my built-in gaussian blur today… it was amazing how much more foreshortened everything was yesterday, the horizon had contracted to a circle with a five or so metre radius… today i can see what’s happening on the other side of the street again… hey! you kids stop that!

today’s token link (but what a link!) — the titanics

the return of my life in soft focus (tedium in 5 parts)

1. the driveway: have i forgotten something? things look different…
2. the bus stop: here comes the… what the… oh crap, my glasses!
3. the bus stop, cont’d: hey, no problem, i’ve got my spare pair in my bag!
4. the bus: oh look, the empty case for the glasses i left at home.
5. railway square: wow, everything’s really blurry…

so i’m sorry if you feel like i’m invading your personal space today, but i just hafta sit really close to my text editor or i can’t see what i’m typing… which, now that i consider some of the things i’ve typed (& am about to type), may not be such a huge problem after all… uh, what was i talking about?

lame robots r us — spent some time on the weekend putting together Breastchaser, the SUPER REAL TYPE robot… the kit turned out to be a bit disappointing, partly because it turned out to be kinda tiny, & partly because the paint job i gave it looks kinda dull… i might hafta grab some brighter colours i think… (i knew i should’ve immediately retired from modelling when the starfury turned out not to suck too much… back to pov-ray for a while, i think…)

spot the famous blurry person (an educational & fun lunch time sport for those without their glasses) — famous people i may have seen at lunch time… dutch swimmer pieter van den hoogenband! french mountain biking gold medallist, miguel martinez! russian gymnast svetlana khorkina! at least, i think it was them… they were on the other side of george street… but i definitely saw what appeared to be a blond man, a small, dark haired man on a mountain bike, & an athletic-looking blonde woman… & then, on the way back to work, i saw a UFO! (or it might’ve been a pigeon… i guess it was kinda indistinct…)

important information about the banana splits

• one banana…
• two banana…
• three banana…
• four…

milk & cheese — an unofficial homepage for the wedge of hate & the container of spite…

the house of fun — official home of Sarah Dyer and Evan Dorkin’s Action Girl, Dork!, Fun Strips, Hectic Planet, Kid Blastoff, Milk & Cheese, Mad Planet, and much, oh so much, more…

monkey business homepage — possibly the most important thing ever linked to… well, okay, no. but still… space monkey!

my favourite athlete of the 2000 olympics — nope, not susie o’neill, & not inge de bruin, & not even the german guy who stopped for a moment to perform a particularly funky flag dance when he realised he was about to win the silver medal in the men’s triathlon… no, they’re all worthy contenders, but my favourite athlete of the 2000 olympics is… Gregor Fucka, Italian basketball player extraordinaire! (& no, i’m not making this up… here’s some more about Gregor…)

issue #88 of kaliber10000… check out powers that lurk by mumbleboy…

hmmm… thinking about heading up to bris-vegas to go to livid… i mean, why see lou reed once when you can see him twice? & i wouldn’t mind seeing the cure… & i wouldn’t mind seeing not from there again… i saw them at the tibetan freedom concert last year & they were great… they sounded like a plane crashing… (actually, they sounded like a plane crashing into the middle of a sonic youth show…) <grin>

printfont — cool fonts based on the handwriting of web designers… via eatonweb…

andrew reminded me yesterday about battlebots — i think i’ve pointed to them before (must… reach… search button… too… lazy… can’t… reach…), but if i did, well hell, i’m gonna point to them again… hmmm… it looks like they’re still a-feuding… if they don’t calm down we might have to send in the negotiationbots…

this is my brain on animals

• important news about wombats
• more important news about wombats
• important news about ferrets

they’re not quite fox force five, but still… form fiery phoenix! (don’t forget to check out the horror that is 7-zark-7, the badly animated robot from whence my hatred of Any Character Whose Only Function Is To Provide Annoying Light Relief & Who Is Not Pen Pen The Penguin did spring fully formed into being…)

the cyberpunk project — i think these people may be serious… of course, anyone who really wants to help hasten the arrival of a cyberpunk future could loan me a copy of gibson’s all tomorrow’s parties…

inside mac os x’s unix layer — the article that asks, “What do you get when you weld a sports car to a dump truck?” (you may or may not be relieved to know the answer is neither a sporty dumpster nor a dumpy sportster…) via camworld…

who is anna blume? & is she related to ana ng? the smart cookies say yes! the smart money shakes its head. the smart drink makes you realise you’ve been wasting your life.

magicdog vs sydney: your official page of freakish coincidence — clicking on either of the images above will take you a page that talks about my contribution to the Expo 2000 anna blume project… for some reason i was thinking about this project yesterday, & i was wondering what had happened since i’d last heard from the organisers… & so i spent ten or so minutes at lunch time surfing around the Expo 2000 site trying to find out… i found a brief feature on Kurt Schwitters, but nothing specifically relating to the anna blume project. “yes,” i hear you say, “congratulations on getting the incredibly dull part of the story out of the way… where’s the freakish coincidence bit?”

well, you see, i left work at four yesterday (which i never do) so as to (hopefully) miss the worst of the olympics/commuter traffic, & the bus dropped me at the stop in dulwich hill at around 4.40, which meant the post office was still open when i checked the post office box, & that meant i could exchange the little card that was in the post box for the bigger-than-post-box-sized package that was waiting behind the counter, &… what should be in that package but my copies of the books produced by the anna blume project!?! (gosh! aren’t you glad you persevered with this fascinating anecdote? wasn’t that a rewarding conclusion? yeah, well, if i am what are you?)

my next contribution to the glamourous world of modelling — you may think the bizarre name attracted me to this robot, or maybe you figure its over-compensatory cannon caught my eye, but no! three simple words did the trick: SUPER REAL TYPE. mmmm, isn’t it, though?

a concerned reader comments on yesterday’s “content”: “Why would I be interested in Aquaman? That’s putting the F back into FAQ.”

three excellent links i’ve ripped off from metascene

• live nude cats…
• songs that contain the word “monkey”, in what appears to be alphabetical order…
• f*ck the creationists - phat beats from mc hawking, king of scientific gangsta rap…

my life in the bush of ghosts — read a paragraph in the newspaper over the weekend claiming that more people have swarmed through departures at sydney airport than have meandered through arrivals… it’s certainly weird walking around at work - no students & the majority of staff on leave… at least the security guard who checked me into the building this morning had the good grace not to make fun of my id card photo… <grin>

in brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight… — we love you, green lantern! (& we promise not to use the colour yellow on magicdog.com unless we absolutely have to…)

important information about aquaman — make sure you don’t miss the answer to the most pressing question of all: why should i (meaning you) be interested in aquaman?

important olympic update for fred #2 — canadian men’s basketball team defeat australia 101-90… (we coulda been someone… we coulda been contenders…) australia led at half-time, but we lost our offence late in the second half… canada wound up their defensive intensity a little, & we couldn’t find an answer, & our own defence couldn’t come up with stops when we needed them… the tv commentators have pretty much written off the australians’ medal chances for yet another olympic tournament… they’re suggesting we’ll more than likely meet the USA in the quarter-finals…

canada-australia olympics grudge match score update — one-all. & no, i’m not gonna mention the men’s triathlon. what? oops. oh, all right then, canada-australia olympics grudge match score update — two-one to canada… are you happy now? well, fine. fine. no, really, fine. okay? okay. right. fine.

important spaceship news — hey, here’s a fun word i’d forgotten from childhood… cyanoacetate… mmmm, modelling glue… what? oh yeah… uh… oh, that’s right! my first starfury is officially finished! & it doesn’t look anywhere near as dubious as i’d feared… some of the parts don’t fit as well as they should, & the paint job lacks a little subtlety, but overall it’s not too shabby… i think i will buy another one after all… <grin> now, if i can just track down andrew to see if i can take some snapshots with his digital camera…

weird olympic experience #1 — walking home through dulwich hill last night just on dusk, the streets deserted, listening to the national anthem being played on television sets right across the suburb…

opening ceremony let down by lack of giant robots! once i made it home i couldn’t resist firing up the television myself to see what was happening at homebush… (i mean, by then i knew i wasn’t going to have to sit through “advance australia fair,” right?) & i couldn’t help noticing that the organisers saw fit to include only one of the ideas from the list of suggestions i’d helpfully sent them… & you know, even now i’m not completely certain that was truck-a-saurus…

important olympic update for fred — australian women’s basketball team defeat canada 78-46 in opening match… (don’t worry buddy, it was a close match right up until it started…)

magicdog.com’s olympics protest — alrighty then, it’s petty i know, but if they’re not gonna use my ideas for the opening ceremony then i’ll just have to show them up by providing my own giant robot fun… hark! the sound of the IOC quaking in their boots already! nyah ha ha haaah!

lack of opening ceremony robots protest item #1 — i hear tell robot books offer fun-filled books about robots…

lack of opening ceremony robots protest item #2 — & now, a cheerful robot-related song…

how much is that robot on the web page?
the one with the waggly tail?
how much is that robot on the web page?
i do hope that robot’s for sale…

sonnet 189: anchor

days of long ignorance & nights
of learning to refuse orders then thirty-two WHAM!
lactose intolerance! meanwhile
caryard monastery brewery sky &
a hint of cloud that fills you in (clouds,
you think, & the laugh track fades in & out
with your mood, like planning the future).
a ruptured syntax rubs you out & the drama queens
giggle nervously, bemused by breasts & the way
you hog the limelight, asthmatic wheeze notwithstanding.
is that the sea behind you?
who imagines semaphore? your tongue flicks
the tip of my nipple & we stick together,
vacant & toxic like a history of plague.

sonnet 195: 12 pages of loss

“Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you”

Frank O’Hara

olympic worker coughs up lung, ignoring
the no smoking sign taped above her booth
as a shiver moves across the city & the traffic,
glistening in the rain,
sounds like a group of puppies
speaking french at the next table,
white noise inventing history
with a story spelling bomb.

when drunkards hit the building site their haircuts
head for home, the surface of the living
addressing every worthy cause
with a phone call to the health inspector.
does the sun break through your argument?
possibly so.

lime, indigo or a slightly darker graphite? is it just me, or is apple beginning to mix its colour metaphors? of course, having said that, who really cares? i’ll take a 466Mhz model in key lime please…

mac OS X beta released — is there a lime iBook running OS X in my future? do space lizards come from space? mmmm… lime iBook running OS X… mmmm… lime… mmmm… iBook… mmmm… OS X… mmmm….

[magicdog.com apologises for this break in transmission. regular service will resume as soon as our technicians can find a great big bucket of really cold water…]

a few words from nancy vandal

this is a death metal song
yeah baby this is a death metal song
this is a death metal song

woah yeah death metal song
satan is tops
satan is tops
this is a death metal song
yeah baby this is a death metal song
satan is tops

clean out your desk loneliness, you’re fired — the email confirming my order through shock records’ web site never arrived, so they won’t be getting a cheque from me (& i guess i won’t be getting screamfeeder or tom waits from them), but i just happened to wander into fish records in newtown last night & what should i find filed under n but bikini high pool party massacre III: who invited the undead?

important information your receipt would like to tell you — for some reason (which is no longer — if it was ever — immediately clear to me) i put the cash register docket for death to the pixies inside the CD case when i bought it, & as a result, not only can i listen to the pixies reminding me that “there was this guy / an underwater guy who controlled the sea”, but i also know that i bought this album at 13:23 on 22 november 1997 from the rubber biscuit store at castletown, where i was served by clerk 7 on register 1… oh, & i paid using my eftpos card… (you may or may not be relieved &/or interested to know i’ve already thrown away the receipt from last night’s nancy vandal purchase…)

a few words from they might be giants

i like people, they’re the ones who can’t stand
i see smoke signals coming from them
they say “we are out of furniture”
stand on your head for a change
gimme some skin to call my own
you made my day now you have to sleep in it