y2ok — yikes! end of the year already… i’m gonna meet up with keri later this afternoon & we’re gonna head into the city to see if they can finally manage to blow up the harbour bridge this year… sure, it’ll inconvenience the people living on the north shore, but everything i need to get to is on the south side… <grin>

news from townsville — andrew called a little while ago to say his trip with anna went well… he picked up some kinda chest infection, but also managed to fit in some snorkelling & film making while they were there…

important things to remember about linux — the root password for starters… sigh… lucky i don’t have anything important living on the linux partition… i can boot into my user account, but it looks like i’m gonna hafta take the scorched earth approach & start again… it ain’t too much of a hassle, i never did manage to convince X to run at anything over 800×600…

quicken & the dead — tried to install quicken last night… found the CD, then spent an hour looking for the manual (where i’d written the registration number)… couldn’t find it, but i figured i could always register it later… good plan. well, it might’ve been, except i’ve got a really old version of quicken (version 4… i think the current edition is version 8) & the installer won’t run under win98… hurrah… back to excel…

self portrait (ideation/idealisation)

uh oh! 12.50pm — i’d better start thinking about getting organised… hope you have a great new year’s eve… see you in 2001.

empty head, full day — gosh! an evening update! (well, it was when i started… now it’s the 2.00am don’t hafta go to work until january 8 update… holidays, ya gotta love ‘em…)

harsh but fair — constructive criticism from my brother in the deep north:

kevin: what’s all that crap on your website?
me: anything in particular, or all of it?
kevin: all of it.
me: <grin>

karen may (or may not) be pleased to see i’ve added her name to my (still incomplete) list of birthdays… which is, of course, no guarantee i’ll remember it, but it’s a start, right? (& if you know of anyone whose birthday needs to be amended or appended, feel free to email me & let me know…

important news about my new desk — i bought a new computer desk yesterday afternoon! hurrah! keri dropped over & gave me a lift to ikea & i picked it out from thousands (i didn’t like the others, they were all too flat)… it’s kinda tubular (woah! tubular!), & kinda piney, & quite compact, but the computer fits on it real good… woohoo! now i can use my other desk for writing & working on model kits… & i bought myself a cool little halogen desk lamp for my worktable as well, so i’m pretty much good to go…

important news about faking the dandy warhols — after spending a couple of hours hacking around on the squier telecaster that’s taken up residence at jimbo’s place in cannnbbbrrraaa, i dragged out my ibanez yesterday & spent a few hours hacking around on it… in the midst of my hackdom, i managed to pretty much shred the fingers on my left hand, but! i also worked out a couple of songs off the new dandy’s CD…

solid: this is pretty basic. the verse & chorus use pretty much the same chords, & there ain’t no bridge to speak of… most of it just sits on D then goes to G… then there’s the roundabout bit (careful readers will note the very impressive technical guitar expert terminology there) that does the D-G thing then goes A-C-G & back to D… easy as… have a play along & you’ll see what i mean…

bohemian like you: this is way cool… the stonesy bit at the start & in the middle is basically just B-Bsus4-D-Dsus4-A-Asus4-E-Esus4 (well, i think they’re suspended fourths - they’re definitely some kind of sus the way i play ‘em…) & then the rest of the song pretty much repeats the same pattern without the suspended chords, so it’s just B-D-A-E, etc… again, have a bit of a play along & you’ll pick it up pretty quickly…

guitar tab resources — so i’m all enthused about playing my guitar for the first time since i’ve been in sydney… & i guess if i’m gonna start playing again, i’m gonna need some new tab… hmmm… what a bit of luck! here’s some likely looking places…

• on-line guitar archive
• active guitar
• tabcrawler
• guitar notes

that little lot oughta keep you occupied… i know what i’m doing for the next few hours… & then i might work on a model kit. or not. what’s that? go to sleep? hmmmm… decisions, decisions…

wired’s vapourware 2000 — ten products not brought to you this year…

increase in capital — i’m kinda warming to cannnbbbrrraaa, although for me it’s still a nice place to visit, but i wouldn’t wanna live there… i had a great few days, & it was great to see everyone again… what did we get up to? (oh c’mon brain, it’s not like it was weeks ago…)

welcome aboard the sleepy train — staying up all night seemed the only sensible way of ensuring i made it to central by 6.15 on xmas morning, so… one weird, semi-conscious (but in a different way) train journey later & a taxi was dropping me off at linda’s place in waramanga, where the decoration of the tree (well, the shrub. well, okay, the tiny house plant) ensued. then i went to sleep for the rest of the afternoon. exciting house guests r me…

c’mon party people — dave, fiona, jimbo & greg turned up anon, & much hilarity & swapping of presents ensued… & lo, the watermelon-flavoured bacardi breezers did flow like water… ooh, my head’s all dizzy… good food, too, with el davebot’s famous vegetarian lasagne & jimbo’s proto-famous chicken wings in plum sauce… then the usual swapping of scurrilous stories started, & then fonzie came over on his motorbike & jumped some cars in the backyard, &, uh… aaayyyy, sit on it.

kickboxing day — brunch at the pancake parlour before a trip to electric shadows with the usual bunch of suspects & meaghan to see
crouching tiger, hidden dragon… beautifully shot… amazingly choreographed kung-fu… mmmm… highly recommended… the rooftop chases, the fight in the bamboo grove… (no, i mean, in the bamboo grove…)

mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaah — & then, to celebrate the true meaning of xmas, we went back to jimbo’s place to watch… wait for it… battlefield earth! oh lordy. everything you’ve heard about this dog of a movie is true. don’t watch it without lots of beer & a large group of friends with which to mock it thoroughly… it’s that bad. no, really, it’s a shocker. & it ain’t the kind of bad that moves through bad & achieves some kind of the sublime way out on the other side of awful, like maybe plan 9 from outer space neither… it’s just plain ol’ regular bad. & if anyone ever asks me to watch it again, i will refuse. rudely.

december 27 — a late start, then shoppinge, & a trip to the post office with jimbo & linda, where linda collected the videos she’d ordered from the UK… the shrieks of joy were quite possibly audible wherever you happened to be on december 27, so if you were wondering whether or not those stranges noises were some kind of air raid or possibly a riot in the howler monkey enclosure, then wonder no longer… jimbo & i dropped linda off at her place to fire up her VCR & i went back to jimbo’s to do some washing… (one day i’ll manage to travel with clean clothes… yeah, one day… one day i’ll live in a big house…) jimbo had to go to work, so i headed back to linda’s place & we made toasted snacks in her new toasted snack maker & watched reservoir dogs… i’d read the script, but never actually seen it… it was great, but wow, talk about bleak…

hard core breakfast logo — watched hard core logo on thursday morning… it’s very good… think of a punk spinal tap, but with the intelligence turned up to eleven… funny, & sad, & very clever. & beautifully constructed… well worth seeing if you can track a copy down… [there’s an official hard core logo site, but it seems to be down at the moment…]

the lion sleeps tonight. & most of the day — then it was off to the national aquarium & wildlife park with jimbo, linda, greg, hamish, & a new fiona (well, i hadn’t met this particular fiona before) to see the lions & grab some sunburn… lions are kinda sleepy… as were the tigrons. & don’t even ask about the tiger. but how good were the wombats?!? they were great! (okay, they were sleepy too, but hey, wombats!)

mallrats — after watching the lions get fed (keeper: “c’mon lions, here’s some food! c’mon! food!” lions: disdainful stares) we figured we’d better some food before we all curled up & went to sleep as well, so we headed back to the canberra mall for lunch… i stopped in & exchanged the gift voucher linda had given me for a copy of scary monsters, & picked up a copy of the hounds of love & you am i’s latest single, thereby topping off a big CD buying couple of days (i scored the latest dandy warhols CD the day before, as well a copy of screamfeeder’s rocks on the soul)… & then it was pretty much train time again, & gosh, here i am back in sydney…

with my new transforming robot!!! the simonster comes through with a great xmas present yet again!

i’m thinking blah diddy blah blah blah to your trip — home from cannnbbbrrraaa (countrylink would like to advise passengers on the explorer service from canberra to sydney that we expect to arrive at central station, uh, you know, eventually…) & kickin’ back with the latest dandy warhols CD…

typing skills destroyed by bacardi & beer! or maybe by sitting on my arse in a train for four & a half hours? whatever… my fingers have suddenly disconnected from my brain… (which is probably something of a relief for them…)

hey, cool! winston’s world! live from japan! (well, from japan…)

crouching tiger, hidden dragon — went & saw CTHD while i was in cannnbbbrrraaa… it’s amazing! you’ve gotta go & see this at the kinema…

& i feel woah-ho, wooo! more news from the canberra trip tomorrow… i’m gonna grab some sleep…

’twas the stinky hot day before christmas — hmmm… did i say ’twas? (did i really say ’twas?) because i mean, obviously, still ’tis…

’tis the linky hot day before christmas

• funny! the story of curious george w — via camworld…
• visual-text art archive — via metascene…
• welcome to the new deal

alrighty then — i guess i should go & wrap some presents, pack some clothes, & start trying to figure out how i’m gonna get to central station by 6.30 tomorrow morning so i can pick up my ticket & catch the train… 6.30? sheesh… <grin>

or… i could surf around for a bit longer & try to find some more cool things to link to… hmmm… packing? or surfing? ummm…

• superbad
• the celibate rifles
• keith haring
• the butthole surfers
• roy lichtenstein foundation
• dinosaur toys!

okay, okay, i’m going to go & pack now… are you happy now? sheesh. what a grouch… i’m going, i’m going…

mystery poet cartoon #1

packed as i’m gonna get — it’s 9.30pm & it’s still hot. & i’m still not looking forward to getting up early tomorrow. hmmm…. maybe if i whinge about it some more i’ll feel better?

wise words from marge simpson — “not every evil robot is a killer…” that is just so true…

travel plans — well, the hire car plan (henceforth to be known as the hire car fiasco) went kinda pear-shaped, but one moderately panicked call to countrylink later & the good news is i managed to book myself a seat on a train to canberra… the bad news is, the earliest seat i could book was on the 7.05am christmas special, so i won’t get to canberra until about 11.30 on christmas morning… sigh. yet again, planning & forethought pay off… i keep forgetting there are about a squillion other people in sydney who might be interested in doing the things i might wanna do… like hiring a car, for instance…

still, holidays! one of the good things about being on holidays is having the time to find new & interesting things on the web…

• photomontage.com — via zeldman…
• eye candy from the underground

another good thing about holidays — having the time to finish some of the things i’ve been working on (like the new site design), & just generally having more time in which to write…

• TV BROADCAST - THE #1 FANSITE!
• notes for poems
• & one last time (for xmas)… the 12 robots…

deliverance! the tv and vacuum cleaner eventually arrived some time after six this afternoon… the tv looks great, & seems even bigger than it did in the shop… & the remote control for the video works on the tv as well, so now i only have to wrestle with one control that i don’t really know how to operate instead of two… & the vacuum cleaner? well, it’s so strong that it got stuck to the floor in the kitchen & i had to turn it off because i couldn’t budge it… i guess some more practice with the adjustable airflow control is called for… <grin>

sydney by night — keri won a car in a game of poker (uh, that is, one of her friends left their car with her when they went on holidays) & she came over this evening & took me for a tour of the eastern suburbs… we grabbed some pizzas in potts point & ate them at nielsen park (no relation) then headed out towards south head… sydney’s very pretty by night… we drove out to vaucluse & had a look at the gap… it wasn’t too freaky at night, although i suspect my vertigo might have made more of a contribution during daylight hours… but the view back down the harbour to the cbd & bridge is just stunning…

flat out like a lizard drinking blue cordial — note to brain: now that the blue cordial’s almost finished… DON’T BUY ANY MORE. sheesh.

what, me miss the point? important news from el davebot in cannnbbbrrraaa, who writes, amongst other things:

…stop passing off my hideous emails as ‘content’. It’s most unbecoming…

yeah! right on, davebot! uh… by which i mean, hey, why should your emails be any different to all the other stuff i try to pass off as content? [shuffles feet, tries not to make eye contact…]

hot — sydney’s kinda bake-tacular today… i was thinking about going into the city to deliver some christmas presents, but it’s just too warm… so i ventured up to the shops at dulwich hill, paid the rent & then caught a nice air-conditioned bus to marrickville instead…

card, mastercard — & now my immersion in the world of ever-spiralling debt is complete! a brand shiny new vacuum cleaner (oh, yes, & a tv) will be arriving at some point tomorrow… should i try to claim i only bought the tv so i could have the vacuum cleaner delivered for free? sure, why not? you see, i only bought the tv so i could get free delivery on the vacuum cleaner…

today’s consumer product section — i was only gonna get a small tv, a 34cm one or something, but i finished up with a 51cm instead. (i figured i may as well get something i can see from the other side of the room.)

• cx51k3 — now with “Remarkable Hyper-band Tuner”!

& the vacuum cleaner? well, it’s a low-end LG something or other in a lovely shade of mustard… in fact, it’s so low-end, the LG website doesn’t even bother to show it on their vacuum cleaners page… although, now that i’ve visited the LG vacuum cleaners page, i’m kinda wishing i’d spent the extra money & bought one of their translucent models… uh… that’d be an iVac, right?

gosh! anecdotes about vacuum cleaners? so this is holidays, is it? i think things are gonna get worse before they get better… <grin>

today’s second hand home office section — on the way home i found a new second hand furniture shop in dulwich hill, & scored myself an only slightly tatty office chair for $40… it’s kinda pink, & the seat base is a little frayed, but i figure for forty bucks i can re-upholster it… i was looking at a new one that was $100, so…

next up in the world of retail therapy — a post-christmas visit to ikea for a table, some chairs, & some bookcases… & maybe eventually a sofa bed or something… oh, & a cheap digital camera… i just want something i can carry around in my bag, drag out, press the button then scamper home with before i set about defacing the images in fireworks & posting them here… at the moment, i’m looking covetously at the agfa ePhoto CL20… harris technology are selling them for $335… hmmm…

today’s non-shopping-related section — telematic art, etc…

• robert adrian
• roy ascott - appartional aesthetics
• tom klinkowstein & scherrie rabinowitz
• aspects of the aesthetics of telecommunications
• frank popper
• jonathon ross holographic collection

hmmm… what are rock stars doing today?

what i did on my holidays (this evening)

• apply compression until the bleeding stops
• the gauguin question
• iamlisteningtotheradio
• show me the money shot
• how would a purely mechanistic analysis…

testing, 1-2 — testing the new design… bear with me for a little while… there might be some intermittent breakages… [sounds of hammering]

alrighty then — brand new wrapping just in time for christmas! i think everything’s in its right place, but there may well be some things i’ve overlooked… feel free to email me if you find anything i’ve broken… & if you really miss the old design, well, at least you have your memories… oh, & i guess there’s this pale shadow of its former self…

so what’s new? well, there’s a couple of new poems, & a new page of miscellaneous robots, & i’ve updated the page that talks about my book… there might be a handful of other things, but my brain’s experiencing some sort of out of memory error just at present…

incensed — well, the microwave still stinks, but the rest of the flat… uh, well, it stinks too, but in a slightly less repulsive way… my new plan is not to shower for a few days, my thinking being that if i can generate enough body odour i won’t be able to smell the microwave or the incense…

poetry link type thing — the latest issue of overland express features an interview with john tranter…

radiohead link type thing — climbing up the walls is a radiohead news page…

late afternoon fiddling while the template burns in — made some minor changes to the template for magicdog vs sydney… the drop down list control i was using for accessing the archives looked okay under windoze, but on macOS it was just too wide, so i’ve ditched that & gone to a graphical map kinda thing…

netscape weirdness — if you’ve been here before today & you’re looking at this page in netscape, you might be getting some weird results with the navigation link rollovers in the left hand column… it’s because i’ve used the same image names in this design & the previous one, & netscape’s cache doesn’t believe the images themselves have changed. you could try holding the shift key down & clicking to reload the page, or you could try going into your netscape preferences & clearing your cache. i tried that on keri’s mac this afternoon with mixed results… i imagine it’ll settle down eventually, but in the meantime you might have to put up with some bonus, unintended ugliness. (don’t worry, there’s no extra charge…)

limp bizkit makes me wanna listen to radiohead — kickin’ squealin’ gucci little piggies r me. without quite so much gucci perhaps, but still… been listening to the radio a lot since the tv was taken away (sob!), but even i gotta draw the line somewhere…

minor archive weirdness — call me quick off the mark, but i just noticed that blogger builds archive pages from the first of one month to the first of the next… so if you click on, say, the link to the dec 1999 archive, the first post you’ll see will be for 1 jan 2000. hmmm… nope, there don’t seem to be no way around it.

mail art — at ARTNETWORK…

enter space capsule — find out more about those children of telepathic experiences…

what do idiots attempt for lunch on tuesdays? just in case you thought yesterday was all sleep deprivation & web surfing & furniture removal & playing with my graphics programs…

important safety tip (or how to stink up your flat but good) — first of all, the microwave popcorn people aren’t joking when they put that Don’t Leave Unattended warning on the outside of the bag…

one stench-filled charcoal popcorn briquette later — so i’m feeling hungry but can’t be bothered making anything worthwhile. a quick inventory of the pantry reveals a hitherto unpopped bag of microwave popcorn. so far so good. set microwave to upper limit of recommended time. press Please Saturate With Scads Of Radiation button. wonder how computer is going. wander into other room to check. get distracted by shiny picture on computer screen.

notice smell of rancid smoke. panic. run back to kitchen. open microwave door. cough on smoke which now fills kitchen. remove crispy bag of charcoal. choke on fumes. retreat to lounge room. open door to balcony. retreat to balcony. stare hopelessly at smoke-filled flat. listen to klaxons sounding in dork zone. wait ten minutes for worst of smoke to clear. spend half hour trying to clean burnt popcorn butter from microwave.

how it didn’t actually catch fire i’ll never know. & i dunno if the microwave’s busted or not. given the way it smells, i’m not in any hurry to try it out… sigh. domestic idiots r me.

still, holidays! woo! [cough, splutter] — escaped the newly fragrant premises late in the afternoon & met up with keri to see cunnamulla, the latest documentary by dennis o’rourke… it’s an interesting, though unsettling, film. worth going to see if it appears at a cinema near you.

bought some industrial strength incense while i was out, & spent the remainder of the evening waging an as yet unsuccessful war against stench… still things aren’t all bad. i mean, i haven’t locked myself out of the flat in days…

woohoo! holidays! today’s my first official day of leave! & what am i doing to celebrate? well, first of all i thought it’d be a fantastically great idea to stay up all night last night working on a new design for magicdog.com… a couple of candidates are showing early promise… get ready to say goodbye to the humble orange & blue design in the next few days… unless, of course, i get distracted by something shiny in the interim… (hee hee hee! that dog’s got a puffy tail!)

radio userland — if you’re using userland frontier 5.0.1 to manage your website(s), do yourself a huge favour & check out radio userland… it’s currently in free beta, but it’s stable, & oh so much faster than 5.0.1… it’s built on the frontier 7.x codebase, & it’s got a heap of features i haven’t even begun to look at yet… but! (& this is the best part as far as i’m concerned) it properly supports guest databases &, because it’s built in frontier, all your existing usertalk macros & scripts will run in radio userland.

i installed it on sunday & had dogcom out of frontier 5.0.1 & into a guest database in radio userland in about five minutes… it took me about half an hour all up to chase down some macro errors (mainly address issues, since things were no longer living where the scripts were expecting them to be), but wow… easy as… did i mention it goes like a rocket? the last time i rendered all of dogcom in 5.0.1, it took around 15 minutes… radio userland knocks the site over in about a minute flat… & the outliner’s been enhanced, &, &, &… <grin> it’s eventually gonna be a commercial product, but it’s already got my money… no word on pricing yet as it’s still in development, but i believe it’s gonna be way cheaper than the US$899 frontier licence…

uh oh… i ordered some new PCs for work yesterday… entry level, bog standard, office work type PCs… which at the moment apparently means 800MHz pentium IIIs… sheesh… speedpig runs a 400MHz celeron, & i was thinking it was plenty fast. nope, no need for expensive upgrades here, i was thinking… but that was until i saw this… waiter! a new graphics card, if you please! maybe with a side order of motherboard & processor…

holiday links! well, this is the kind of thing that happens when you have a not so young person with too much time on his hands…

• the warhol museum — via metascene
• www pop art
• past issues of a list apart (for people who make websites)
• t-rex bookends… no, really…
• toy robot initiative
• gomez (the band, not the addams)
• slappy the robot!
• space robot icons!
• j-pop - new japanese pop culture
• 321KAOS

2br apartment, partly furnished — well, the buff young men from the rental company just came & took away the television, video & dining setting… now, if my mastercard arrives this week, i can make a serious assault on ikea… & then, i can blow the entire apartment up & start making soap in a ramshackle old house somewhere… or was that a different web page? i mean movie. different movie…

in the meantime — beanbag & radio… & a plate balanced on my lap! hurrah! uh… did i say a plate? i meant, of course, a pizza box, or a plastic takeaway food container… <grin>

the secret life of meat

for Adam Aitken

the political system as miracle cure
collapses into the harbour,
ripples tracked by satellite
caress america as we turn over in our sleep.
genomes deciphered this morning
don’t evince a cure for cancer this afternoon,
asking if art’s job is to complicate
what science would simplify as
air new zealand 747s rise out of mascot
like a mirror image of the dollar,
backpackers waving nostalgically
at a full scale mock up of the tourist brochure.
what’s history’s place in all this?
your motivations tire of waiting
for the next magic bullet
& send you out for a walk,
news crews camped outside cabramatta
& lakemba, boilerplate tragedy
& the neighbours’ pat reactions
are what shifts advertising,
the problems of the self reduced to
what’s in it for me, what can we screw
out of you, & high overhead, vapour trails,
ephemera of the future,
each package guided by avionics
to destinations unknown,
the notion of work constantly revised
by the disconsolations of philosophy.
seven o’clock eastern summer time.
the day dissipating like dreams of a big finish.

hi cait! cait called me up out of the blue last night… we spent our undergraduate years getting drunk together at uni, then cait moved to sydney after we finished our honours year… the admittedly lame part of this anecdote is that we used to see each other more often when i was still in townsville than we’ve managed since i’ve been in sydney… but now that we’ve swapped email addresses, we can send each email like this one…

this [the earth, at night, from space] is pretty neat. craig and i spent ages trying to pick out particular cities. not to mention trying to work out where those lights in central australia are coming from. we decided secret alien bases.

i’ve been checking out magicdog, and now know what you’ve been doing with your time. now i have something better to do than playing tetris at work.

cool. magicdog.com. the site that’s officially better than playing tetris at work. <grin> but maybe still not quite as good as standing next to the water cooler & trying to figure out how you could fill it with sea monkeys…

time flies when you’re waffling on — was it really twenty years ago today that sergeant pepper taught the band to play? uh… i mean, twelve months ago that i started this page? apparently so. not so much an attempt at world domination, & not merely an extension of my continued efforts to stink up the web, but really because, let’s face it, i’m pretty much crap when it comes to writing letters to my friends…

from the well, it amused me at the time department — so what have been some of the highlights?

• the very first entry
• almond croissants, ants, licence plate
• dinosaurs, spiders, fightin’ robots
• the crabulator plus the battle of the horoscopes
• metaphors to increase your productivity
• why can’t we teach our robots to love?
• two sonnets
• how the simbot got his spots
• a brief history of fishbotboy
• the lividiad
• linda birthday edition
• another email of rare genius

all of which probably makes you wonder why i bother… <grin> what can i say? it’s cheaper than buying stamps for all the letters i’m still probably never gonna get around to writing… & you know, i’m thinking of you, even if your mailbox is empty… (& for anyone thinking that now i’ve been reduced to retrospective it’s all downhill from here, well, i have to ask: wasn’t it ever thus?) <grin>

thank you — & a big thank you to all the people at blogger, without whom this page would still be possible, but wouldn’t be anywhere near as easy to do.

full meta jacket — hey, cool! john tranter’s jacket magazine has accepted one of my poems for issue 14… but don’t let that put you off! if you’re interested in poetry, put on the jacket…

better? spent most of yesterday afternoon asleep & woke up around seven o’clock last night feeling much improved, not least, i think, for getting some sleep… after two days of dry toast & vegemite i decided a pizza would be just the thing (hey, i know it’s not much, but it’s the only brain i’ve got) so thirty minutes later the intercom buzzes, i grab some cash & head off downstairs to meet the delivery guy. & i’m halfway back up the stairs when there’s a loud bang, & i think to myself, “gosh, i hope that’s not what i think it might be…”

but, of course, it’s exactly what i think it might be. the door’s blown shut. hurrah. so after a couple of minutes of standing aimlessly in the stairwell with my freshly delivered pizza, i went back downstairs where one of my neighbours was good enough to let me use her phone to call a locksmith.

after three attempts (”we couldn’t be there until well after midnight…” “we can be there around ten o’clock, & it’ll cost you $140…” “we can be there in about two hours, & it’ll cost you $140…”) i managed to find a locksmith who could be here in about half an hour & would only (this is all relative, you understand) charge me $90…

vegetarian pizza & bottle of diet coke deal: $105 — so i’m claiming a new world record for the most expensive pizza ever bought. i’m trying to figure out how you could possibly improve on my attempt, & i think you’d either have to go with one of the more expensive locksmiths or else pick up a pizza & trash your car on the way home… in either case, i wouldn’t recommend you try it…

the dork zone — the radio newreader just informed me that a group of vaguely identified neuroscientists have located what they’ve christened the dork zone, a part of the brain that’s triggered when you realise you’ve made a mistake… after last night’s effort (ted to dork zone: “oops!” dork zone to ted: “awoogah! awoogah!”) i’ll be endeavouring to give that part of my brain a bit of a rest over the next few days…

anyway, i eventually managed a few slices of pizza without further incident, & the locksmith (who i guess is used to dealing with idiots) was quite pleasant & not at all condescending, & this morning i’m feeling stupid & still a little fragile but otherwise okay… certainly the worst of whatever it was i had seems to have passed…

exciting weekend plans — which is good, because i wouldn’t want to have to cancel my appointment to see the accountant this afternoon… gosh! how exciting is life in the big city?!?

one year old tomorrow — magicdog vs sydney turns one on sunday… i was gonna take it out to a family restaurant & get its face painted & have a big party with a lame clown & everything, but really, after the last few days i just can’t be bothered… i mean, it’s not like it’s old enough to know the difference…

other things to celebrate? hmmm… i wonder what’s going on over in marrickville? there appears to be some kind of resurgence in the jewellery trade…

token purple robots — hey, like the sign says…

the truth about subliminal messages — & for those of us who needed a gentle reminder to plug the speakers back into the soundcard so that we can actually listen to our musical greeting cards…

“Scottish tits”, despite its title and techno beat is actually “Amazing Grace”. Maybe it was a bit too subtle for your present state of (un)consciousness.

Anne

subtlety? uh oh… next you’ll be using sarcasm! uh… right. nothing to see here, move along please…

magicdog vs sydney: protest pending — fans may be in for a long wait before the result from the most recent matchup between these two fine teams is ratified. the magicdog team manager has allegedly vowed to lodge an official protest over the sydney team’s continued use of viral tactics during their latest contest.

magicdog officals were unavailable for comment, but sources close to the team report a higher than usual level of disturbing noises emanating from the locker rooms. more news as it comes to hand.

aw, youse guys… hey, cool! anne sent me a musical email greeting card (uh… “scottish tits” by mangoo? is there some kind of subliminal message there that i’m missing?)

& anne was also good enough to offer an alternative explanation for my continued bout of ickness…

You know WHY you’re sick again don’t you? The lo-o-o-ord hath struck you
down for your blasphe-ee-emous story about the 12 robots of Christmas.

Everyone knows Christmas is about getting presents, not saving the
world! Shame on you.

But to help you along that path back to righteousness and good health, you can start by boppin’ to this catchy number.

P.S. The [spoiler deleted] had BETTER be in the mail this week.

Her Royal Bitchiness Anniekins.

hmmm. i must admit, i hadn’t given the divine retribution angle a great deal of thought. i was blaming the couple sitting behind me on the bus on tuesday morning who kept coughing & sneezing all over me… the outlook for boppin’ is kinda bleak just at the moment, but i’ll see what i can do… & what’s with that postscript, anne? sigh. i don’t wanna give too much away, but the future of the future isn’t looking good, folks.

important news from cannnbbbrrraaa — seeking illumination but not quite sure why the search isn’t going well? well, help is at hand. study, if you will, the following public service announcement courtesy of linda, who recently received a free gift from her personnel consultant…

Troubleshooting for the unlighted torch

…

3. Check if the each joint is tightly connected (otherwise, the fault sign like flickering or fightly to light up will present). In this case,
lock each parts tightly and test again.

…

Something there for all of us I think. This one (of four) hints was in a box to make it clear that this is the most likely solution for an
unlighted torch.

Nice work on the 12 Dogbots too.

Linda

so there you have it. remember kids, if each joint is not tightly connected you might have the fightly to light up… uh… what were we talking about again? i think i’m gonna go back to bed & read the instructions for my new fightin’ robot model kit again, dagnabbit…

sweet chalk dulls the yurk — i’m feeling a little closer to human today, but still not great. i bought a bottle of Delicious Medicinal Gunk^TM from the chemist yesterday afternoon, so i’ll see how that goes… at least it’s cooled down a little… it’s overcast again today, & the triple j weather’s predicting showers & a maximum of 25… waiter! more dry toast, if you please!

feelin’ hot hot blurk — looks like sydney might be in for some rain today… i’m hoping that’s the case, as i’m having a second lurgy-beriddled day, & really, sickness & summertime make strange bedfellows… (uh oh… am i coming on to myself?)

attempts to change the subject — still, it’s not all trips to the bathroom & writhing about in bed… uh…

attempts to change the subject again — which is to say, the reviews have started flooding in for the 12 robots of christmas…

Wow, Mister Dogbot

That sure was one crazy story! I sure am glad that you was able to come back from the future to tell us about the 12 Bots of Christmas, and warn us not to [spoiler deleted], otherwise there would be some sort of storm of litigation that would just end up with some cracker psycho deathrow junkie in the Oval Office! I sure am glad about all that.

Now where are my [spoiler deleted], you Tandy-arse muthafucka?

Th’ wack-ass Davebot

although i can’t quite help but feel that the moral of the story might have been lost amongst all that shocking profanity… wash your mouth out with degreaser, young davebot! don’t make me come out there…

old news is good news — well, old at least… the model kits i ordered from japan arrived on tuesday… one of them (the gunship from nausicaa of the valley of wind) looks fairly straightforward, but the other one (the fightin’ robot type thingy) has about a gazillion parts & looks like it’s gonna be a bit of a challenge… (that’s not an exaggeration, by the way… the instruction sheet quite clearly says “this kit contains about a gazillion parts.” right below where it says “this model is disrespectful to dirt.”)

at least, i think that’s what it says. i’m not too good at reading kanji characters… & quite possibly not too good at spelling “kanji”… look, let’s just assume that you know what i mean, & i’ll just assume i’m making some kind of sense, & i’ll just get back to feeling crappy & waiting for the delivery van to show up with all the lovely christmas presents that you’ve sent to me, okay? hello…? anyone…?