The Gospel According To Trjn

Bunny Puppy Lives!

2008-08-12T17:47:00.004+10:00

I finally got around to making a new Bunny Puppy comic. . . and made a new blog to start posting the things.

Not that anyone reads this to see my little notice, or that anyone will read that one.

Yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

2008-05-01T22:10:00.002+10:00

Time for a long needed update to this blog.

First of all, everyone playing The Game, you just lost.

Secondly, and more on topic, I finally found a copy of The Godfather and whilst I'm not disappointed in the purchase, I am disappointed in how absolutely fucking useless the rating on it is.

You see, it's rated R18+ for medium level violence and only medium level violence. Not high level violence, not strong violence like The Wrong Man (aka Lucky Number Slevin for those in America) which is rated MA15+ for strong violence and strong sex scenes, which I presume are only strong because nobody really wants to see Lucy Liu having sex anymore. Medium level violence is enough to make a movie R18+.

Yet somehow The Incredibles is rated PG for medium level violence mature themes and low level course language.

Inconsistent much?

The same theme carries over for all R18+ movies I own: Fight Club is R rated for adult themes Clockwork Orange is R rated for medium level violence, Pulp Fiction has high level coarse language motherfucker, medium level violence and drug use and Orgazmo has sexual references.

I think it goes without saying that if anyone has seen any of those movies, the only one that comes even close to accurately describing why it has an R rating is Pulp Fiction, because you can have sexual references, medium level violence and adult themes in a PG rated movie.

The whole system is broken and useless yet for some reason they've decided that this R rating that they so happily apply to movies without reason cannot be applied to games. Despite the fact that all the MA15+ rated games I own have strong violence.

The OFLC and Attorneys General need to pull the stick out of their asses and apply reason to their ratings so that I can shove baseball bats up people's asses in videogames.

OH ZE PAIN

2008-03-13T17:50:00.002+10:00

I've been lazy.

I shall continue to be lazy, at least in regards to my blog.

Exercise causes pain by the way, remember that kiddies, but it also gives you arms like a fucking gorilla. Are gorilla arms awesome enough to be worth the pain? Probably not, but they're amusing.

Also, support awesome people who hate the recording industry.

Sit Down, Shut Up & Play

2008-02-26T17:36:00.002+10:00

It seems the current trend in gaming right now is MMOs and other online gameplay styles intended to draw people into use of the same product over and over and over again until they burn out and start a new game. Which is okay, but it means that games will be hit or miss, for every World of Warcraft and Halo which will get millions of people using their online services bringing in quite a large amount of subscription revenue, there's hundreds of games designed with the same intent that barely sell at all.

Obviously this style just doesn't work for everyone, a lot of people who enjoy video games can't invest 20 hours a day into gaming and the two or three hours a week they can spend isn't enough to justify the cost, not to mention you fall behind every other person in the (typically very competitive) communities.

The other trend is the "casual" mini-game, which you can play for only two or three hours a week and feel like you're getting enough out of the game, or you can dump hundreds of hours into them as well. Basically, they revolve around simplistic gameplay meaning that. . .well, they lack content.

Those are the two main types of games that companies are going for, the hardcore time-investment or the cheap gimmicks, on top of that there are the "real" games, like Bioshock or the Baldur's Gate series, which are great,and are based on delivering one big-ass bundle of entertainment (typically the games range from 10-40 hours of gameplay, but can go well over 200 hours in some cases) yet really do require that you invest a lot of time into them.

I don't want any of that shit at the moment, if I want to play a game, I either have to invest quite a few hours to make a dent in progressing through it, or have some inane mini-game which can wear thing very quickly. This is meant to be a form of consumable entertainment, so why are there so few options that can be completely enjoyed in two or three hours and feel like you're getting a full experience?

It's obviously a great market to try and exploit, if there were more games out there that I could beat in the time it took to watch Shaun of the Dead, then I'd really be happy because it means I could enjoy a medium I like without having the major downsides. There's only really one current game title out there that fills that role, Portal, easily the best game of last year.

Imagine the possibilities of a market where there were games out there which you could enjoy without a heavy time investment that weren't just cheap mini-games? It's a perfect market because the average age of gamers in Australia is 28 years old, and somehow I don't think there are too many people that old who still live with their parents, have no job and no social life. Especially seeing as by then people tend to be starting families so they really can't invest the 40 or so hours some games like Mass Effect demand of you in order to get the most out of your purchase.

Not to mention that there are many forms of entertainment out there specifically designed to be around two to three hours long because it can be enjoyed in one sitting, or a few short periods of time. Movies, television, quite a few books . . . yet the emerging form of consumption has failed to realise that if you put out content that can be enjoyed properly in a reasonably short space of time. If developers could just take advantage of this instead of insipidly trying to churn out the next WoW, gaming might be seen as something other than just something for 16 year old boys with long greasy hair and pimply visages.

Nintendo knows that if you make gaming accessible, people will do it, the "non-game" releases such as Brain Training on the DS is proof of that, so why doesn't anyone want to take the next step?

I haven't done any blog entries in a while because I've been busy. . .and I just didn't feel like it, so consider this a half hearted attempt to get back on track.

VROOM

2008-01-28T10:42:00.000+10:00

Yesterday marked a famous day in human history, sort of a sequel hallmark to November 12.

Yesterday marked the day in which the streets are truly no longer safe, because I bought myself a shiny old car. A 98 Lancer GLi Coupe, with a mere 32000km on the odometer, quite the steal despite the ridicule I've copped so far for buying a Lancer.

Everything is being sorted out now, there's some paperwork to sign and I have to fork over practically all of my moneys, but the important thing is that I'll have me some wheels.

Bookkeepers Rejoice As Guitar Hero Wins

2008-01-26T18:42:00.000+10:00

So the Triple J Hottest 100 is over with for the year.

Regina Spektor's Real Love came in at a paltry #29, which is disappointing and of course practically everything else I've voted for did poorly as well. I think the highest ranked song I voted for was Soko's I'll Kill Her at #9, everything else came somewhere between #21 and #72 or didn't rank at all in the case of Sonata Arctica (which is pretty expected).

Although that's nothing, considering the big news from the day.

Silverchair's Straight Lines came in #2 instead of winning, like everyone expected (matter of fact it was the strongly backed favourite to win, and if it did win I'm sure the bookkeepers would have had to pay out a fair bit of money) and was beaten by Muse's Knights of Cydonia, a song which had practically no radio play and isn't even the best song on the album (which is in fact a good album, go "buy" it. Now.).

So how did a song by a British band which didn't see much radio play and is practically unheard of in the mainstream audience manage to win the world's biggest music poll?

Why it's quite simple. They cheated.

You see, Knights of Cydonia is one of the tracks playable in Guitar Hero 3, one of the my favourites in fact, despite it being one of the more difficult songs. So, like many other songs from GH3, they've experienced even greater success after the release of the game, meaning they got paid money to make more money.

Sudden Realisations Can Suck

2008-01-26T07:07:00.001+10:00

Everyone surely knows what a "Eureka! moment" is. What most people don't realise is that a sudden great idea is not the only way things can happen, the reverse of the "Eureka" or as I like to think of it "Akerue" is when you have a sudden realisation about something and see that it's all just going wrong.

I had one about that little story I was putting together, as much as I thought it would be a good story and that it might have even been genuinely interesting, it was a love story at it's core and I wouldn't write something that I wouldn't want to read. Obviously, this means my little "Akerue" moment was that I had wasted all that time thinking of developing the story.

Sure, I'll keep the fun stuff from it, but the core of the story needs complete revision so for now I'm just going to go develop random characters so that I can work a story around the new characters as something that I want to write.

Simpsons Already Did It

2008-01-21T21:01:00.000+10:00

So I was watching the Simpsons the other day and I came to a sad realisation. If you pick and mix a few key plot points from the various Simpsons episodes to have aired in the last god knows how many years. . . you get the story I was putting together.

I don't know if this is a bad thing, that I'm really stretching for excuses not to continue on with my little project or it just means that because the Simpsons has been on the air for so damn long you could string together various plot elements from the 410 or so episodes thus far and you've covered every story ever told.

Considering their penchant for parodying pop culture, it definitely means a lot of stories are covered, throw in the fact that occasionally they actually think of a good original plot and the fact that most stories can be boiled down to base elements which could be seen anywhere. . . it's probably safe to assume that stringing together plot elements seen in the Simpsons is pretty much akin to stringing together any random plot elements that come to mind is about the same.

Originality is dead, I blame Matt Groening.

So That's What A Car Is!

2008-01-20T20:01:00.000+10:00

This weekend was spent looking at cars. I looked at a grand total of two cars, both shit, but on the plus side, I have a baseline for Civics and Lancers, they're good cars it seems, I just need to find one that isn't due to die.

You know what? I just can't be bothered going into detail on this one, cars are just too much effort for me, the sooner this is over the better off I'll be. Plus, I'll have a car.

And yes, I am deliberately making this post a lot shorter than the last one to balance out the tl;dr from last time.

Dear Diary

2008-01-16T20:17:00.000+10:00

For those that don't keep track, for the last week or so I've been jotting notes down in a notebook I keep in my work bag whenever I'm bored or have nothing else to do. Which basically equates to when I'm on the bus. The little notebook I normally write in has already filled up, and the A4 book is just too awkward to write in on a bus so I bought a new handbook to jot down thoughts and observations. Obviously this is essentially a journal, but I prefer to call it my "mini notebook" in the case of the little book, "not-mini notebook" for the A4 one, and the new A5 one is "not mini but not 'not-mini' notebook".

Today, I'm feeling lazy, so I'm just going to write what I wrote on the bus home. With some comments tacked on. Italics for what I wrote, normal font for comments.

And so the experiment continues with the mini notebook effectively full (to the point I can't be bothered writing anymore in it) and the not-mini simply too large and inconvenient for my general usage.
Introductions are rare, but I had this blog entry in mind when I wrote this.

Thus, I have purchased this not-mini but not "not-mini" notebook to see if it holds up any better. Admittedly, with the huge spirals, I have low expectations for it's use, but there doesn't appear to be much paper in this thing, so I don't think this will last long enough to be an issue.
Note to self, buy non-shitty notebooks in the future.

Of course, the purchase of this notebook delayed me after work, meaning I missed both the 155 & 135 buses, leaving me to catch the infamously overcrowded 130. Which also has the side effect that I have to walk home from Mains Rd instead of ending up right next to my house.

It's not that bad aside from being terribly late.
Late buses are evil.

Anyhow, after filling up one notebook, I feel urged to comment on how effective this venture has been so far. All-in-all, I'd say it's pretty good; the brain juices are flowing, for some (probably unrelated) reason I'm more focused at work (for the better part anyhow) and it's almost like there is progress being made on that little novel I was concocting. Some might say "great success!" and I'd be obliged to smack them for quoting Borat.

BOOYAKASHA!
Self-observation and ironic quoting helps pass the time apparently.

Still need to look for a car though, need to get in contact with the owner of the '01 Lancer, what with me somewhat interested in making that vehicle mine, and mine alone.

Possessive be I, says you? Only for possessions!
At this point the guy next to me was playing his PSP and my iPod had run out of batteries, so I decided to resort to cheap, simple jokes to have something to write about. For some reason it really helps me if there is something on in the background, like music.

Looks like this book be slightly easier to write in too. Now I only have the bus and my handwriting to blame.
Took a few tries to work out what this one said. My handwriting sucks and ever tried writing on a moving bus? It's hard. Hard like a rock! Not to mention that the mini notebook was impossible to write on because I held it in the palm of my hand, which is a pain and a half, and then another half.

As a completely random observation, as many of the things in these notebooks are, putting pen to paper seems remarkably effective for making thoughts almost remotely good. . . er. Instead of drifting from one thought to another I focus on the one, revising it mentally as my pen races to catch up.

It does mean less of the interesting points are jotted down, but at least what makes it down is "refined".
It's true, but I have to admit, the random thought process I have it more fun. Hopefully as I get more used to writing, I'll be able to keep up with what I'm thinking and have my normal thoughts on paper instead of these highly revised editions, which are somewhat dull in comparison.

Buses are too much hassle, all this sitting and waiting, standing and waiting. . . very dull. Not to mention the long walk home afterwards.
Buses suck.

I've already walked from Queen St to work to Adelaide St to work to Adelaide St to Queen St to work to Post Office Square to Queen St. Oh, and there was the sprint to the bus this morning too. Far too much exercise for this little rabbit, especially in this hot, humid weather.
I can't be bothered to work out the exact distance, but Queen St to work is something like 750m. I'd say it's roughly 4.5km though. I'd like to note the "X to Y to Z" format was deliberate in order to make things seem worse than they were towards the end of it. Is there anything wrong in making text look like it's dragging on and on to convey the point of something dragging on and on? I think not.

It would be fun to just get myself in the mindset of a character and write away like this. Forcing different perspectives out of meself for fun and profit. Could even be a useful tool in getting ready to become an aspiring author. Which is, of course, the next step for me before the final stage of "dejected, talentless hack".
I make no assumptions that I have talent, but every once in a while I have an idea that I think might help my writing. In this case, writing things like this in a random character's perspective helps give the character depth and I personally believe that every action a fictional character takes has to be understandable, even if the explanation is given later. Basically, people shouldn't do things "just because" but because that's who they are and the readers understand that.

Come on bus, take me home. I has me some chocolate in my bag. Rich, dark, tasty chocolate. Go bus, go!
Buses really suck.

Dark chocolate does not.

I always seem to associate a familiar environment with a person, typically someone I know who lives near there or I've been there with many times. The top of Kessels Rd makes me think of Jane, Parkway St reminds me of Carlos, the bit near Mac High or Rob etc. Come to think of it, landmarks or areas I frequent solo/with multiple people don't get that association, so there is no thrilling conclusion to the observation.
Sometimes random observations and realisations I have lead nowhere, this is why a lot of my jokes fail miserably, because it all works the same. Although obviously in cases like this, they don't work in any way, shape or form. Of course, I'm just writing whatever I'm thinking at the time, so in the other notebooks there's quite a few bits like this.

With that pointless remark over with, I'm getting off the bus soon so I'm done with the writing.

Aside from this last bit whilst we're stuck at traffic lights.

Availability of places to spend moolah = empty pockets. Willpower is for chumps!
I always seem to be running out of money whenever I go places where I can spend money. . . I generally do. My willpower does not compare at all to my spending power.

And with that, we're done. Hope you've enjoyed this insight into me noggin and tune in next time where we return to regular programming.

Interstate Wanderings

2008-01-14T10:50:00.000+10:00

A lot of things are happening rather quickly at work right now. Seems we're working on the whole expansion thing, so interstate offices are being opened.

More specifically, we're renting suites to use for meetings because the cost of serviced meeting rooms is getting expensive and having something more reliable may be the go.

This means that someone has to go down to Sydney next week to oversee the installation of signage and the delivery of furniture. That someone will be me, a person with no other use in the office but to sit around a vacant room telling guys to dump furniture in certain areas whilst tapping away on my laptop looking important.

Because I will be taking my laptop down with me to work on my little writing attempt. . . which is finally starting to take a real shape. Got meself a good idea of how the majority of the plot will work, decent character outlines and various other things that might be useful in writing a book.

Some of it has even been written down!

At this rate, I may attempt actually writing in the next week or so.

Whilst in Sydney, being paid to do nothing in particular.

Real Love

2008-01-12T14:46:00.000+10:00

A short simple entry today.

The Triple J Hottest 100 voting opened recently and after reading a shitty little article in mX about the current betting on which song would win, I realised something had to be done.

You see, Silverchair - Straight Lines is the current favourite to win, and let's face it, it's going to take a lot of effort to knock that song off the top, despite the fact that it sucks. Silverchair has really fallen from their previous awesomeness with songs like Ana's Song, Anthem for the Year 2000 and of course, Freak, quite simply their new stuff is terrible, almost like an entirely new band.

Powderfinger will no doubt be successful this year as well, despite their latest album sucking.

I could go into detail about how since Daniel Johns no longer lines in a world of pain (dude has as pretty messy medical history) and Bernard Fanning is no longer a heroin addict, but that's I'm not an American politician, I won't make my candidate look good by slandering the others, especially seeing as they made their best material when they were at their lowest as human beings.

No, instead I wish to draw everyone's attention to Regina Spektor's magnificent cover of Real Love, which she has performed at numerous concerts and live on the "Like A Version" segment of Robbie Buck's program on Triple J.

It is by far the best song I've heard in recent memory, Real Love just grabs my attention and holds it, you believe the vulnerability, the fragility, the haunting emotion that Regina projects so perfectly . Quite simply, it's beautiful and no other song eligible for entry in the Hottest 100 comes close to it in terms of pure brilliance.

Now, far be it from me to infringe on your freedom to think for yourself, but Real Love is an outsider to do well in the Hottest 100 right now, you see the general formula for success is that it is highly played/requested on Triple J (which is is) and also receives equal amount of support on commercial radio. That's why Silverchair is the favourite, because they've pretty much saturated all radio stations with their latest album, and it's also why Powderfinger normally dominates, because it's basically unAustralian to dislike them. Regina Spektor, despite her ridiculous talent does not get any commercial radio play that I know of and from what I can tell is virtually unknown to the greater majority of Australians, to their obvious loss.

So back to not infringing on your freedom of thought.

Go to the Hottest 100 page, click on "Vote Now" and then create a shortlist of songs (it's all listed on the site in enough detail to sort it out). Make sure that Regina Spektor - Real Love is on your shortlist.

Select up to 10 songs from that shortlist, make sure Real Love is one of those songs and vote for them.

The rest of the process is pretty simple.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

2008-01-09T19:16:00.000+10:00

Apparently this blog is too pessimistic and full of complaints.

Somehow I should have seen that coming, but oddly enough, despite the fact that most of this blog contains somewhat negative views that's mainly because I find it a) funnier, b) easier and most importantly c) more interesting to write. Honestly, I'm not that negative in reality, it's just how I like to present things.

So because of this observation, today's entry will be all happy, sunshine and flowers and puppy dog tails and other things associated with youthful joy.

I have an extraordinary knack to buy discount fast food. It's probably related to my years of "service" in the industry, but it appears that somehow the majority of the time I'm buying fast food it's for less than the full price. Oh, and this is without vouchers, vouchers are for less lazy people.

The odd thing about this innate ability of mine to get crappy non-food for cheap is that I only really noticed it yesterday, after I worked out the reason I didn't pay full price on Monday for my Subway was not because of an error by the guy at the register but because he gave me 10% deliberately. A realisation that came after it happened again. Nearly managed to get a free upgrade to a meal at Hungry Jacks the same day as well when the manager misread the screen, if I wasn't honest I would have had proof that I don't need to be directly involved for this discounting to occur. . . but alas, I didn't want the guy who took my order to get in trouble (and I had a bus to catch so I didn't have time for more than a burger *insert shifty eyed emoticon here*).

Discounts like these tend to happen more often at places I've worked, Subways, Hungry Jacks and that kebab store in Sunnybank Plaza . . . although I've got myself discounts at various KFCs as well somehow (I think that most have a "centre employee" discount and they thought I worked at the shopping centre we were in). So I'm drawing a bit of a blank why this regularly happens. . .

Must be my startlingly bubbly personality I guess.

Rain, Rain, Go Away.

2008-01-06T14:07:00.001+10:00

It's a little bit wet today. A lot bit wet, if you want to be precise but let's not bother with details, the important thing is that I woke up this early afternoon to some high humidity and a clingy dog who could apparently see this coming.

That's right, my dull-witted pet seemed to know the water was incoming and decided that was a good excuse to come say "hello" and get a little attention. It would have been better if he just closed the windows because there are now several extremely wet patches of carpet around the house, which is normally a sign of a house member with a weak bladder but in this case means a lot of rain got in very quickly.

Overall the best part of this little sun shower is that my sister's car was getting aired (don't ask me, I didn't decide to do it) so the windows were open. In the 30 seconds that I was outside stopping the liquid from penetrating her vehicle's interior my body was soaked to the bone. There really was quite a bit of water.

Torrential downpours do have a nice upside though, because most of this week has had similar weather the dams may actually have some water in them. . . I can shower for more than 43 seconds without worrying bout draining the last of the city's water supply. Now my showers can be an amazing 47 seconds in length!

Well . . . fuck

2008-01-05T16:47:00.000+10:00

I had something lined up, it was witty and not actually complaining for once.

But for some reason when I got to the writing, it just didn't come out. Maybe I'm only good at the negative stuff.

We'll see what happens later on when I try again.

From The Brink Of Boredom. . .

2008-01-02T22:18:00.000+10:00

Comes another rant.

So it turns out that another number has ticked over in the planetary odometer and this means only one thing. People are making fleeting new year's resolutions in plans to improve their lives for no particular reason other than the fact that the year is no longer the same as it was.

Nothing else has actually changed for them, but still, people will decide to lose 30 pounds, take their religion more seriously, read more books, work out more often, stop eating babies, stop smoking and all other sorts of crazy things that they'll only really work on for a week or two before forgetting they even planned to do it in the first place.

The way I see it is, planning on self-improvement is incredibly hard to make stick at the best of times, you need a good solid reason to do it because people are instinctively lazy. I know I am. I wouldn't work to lose weight unless I knew I was about to get a heart attack, but then again, if I worked to lose weight right now I'd be diagnosed with some sort of eating disorder. There have been plenty of times where I've decided, for no good reason, to learn a new skill. The random books about learning Mandarin, including CDs and flash cards, are testament to that failed endeavour. It didn't work because I had no motivation to actually learn and that's why most new year's resolutions will also fail.

Probably a big factor in the failure rate is that people simply forget the resolutions a little while after they've made them. Which also helps explain why people persist in making new resolutions every 365.25 days, they forgot had badly it failed last time. So if only people kept a record of their resolutions, then they would stop making them after realising that for the last umpteen years they've tried to kick some habit or make some minor improvement to themselves and completely failed to do so.

Howells, I guess I'll just be resolute in my decision to only take on tasks of self-improvement based on needs and boredom, not the old galactic odometer. Sure the ones made from boredom are never successful, but they help kill the time.

Why Should I Be Caring Right Now?

2007-12-28T20:25:00.000+10:00

Someone explain the world's fascination with celebrities to me.

Seriously, I don't get it, they're famous so suddenly we need to know that they stole a cigarette lighter from a gas station? If a normal person did that we'd wonder what the big fucking deal is, but if Britney Spears does it we get interviews with the gas station owner, Britney Spears and her agent.

Fuck that.

How about instead of making a big deal about people who are complete trash like Britney, Lindsay and Paris, because they didn't wear panties and a hoard of cameramen that follow them to make big money selling the pictures to shitty magazines that feed on the hysteria of fame, how about we try doing that to normal people and seeing how the world takes it.

Logically there's no real reason to care more about someone who's father owns a multibillion dollar hotel empire than someone who's father mooched off of the government his whole life? If the resulting child is as much a complete waste of oxygen, why should there be any difference between the entertainment provided by the publication of the two people's lives?

I actually don't have anything against celebrities, there are some out there that I think genuinely aren't douchebags. Mainly the ones that don't feed into this gossipy world and try to hide from it, who are then in turn ridiculed by the gossipers for wanting some fucking privacy. What gives these whoremongery parasites the right to assume they can invade a person's privacy and publicise it to the world? And furthermore by what logical reason do they assume that people should care other than the reason that they tell people they should care (and thus they do for some stupid reason).

It just baffles the mind.

There was an article in the free newspaper/rag that gets handed out around Brisbane (it's called mX and I think most Aussie cities are infected with it's worthlessness) which actually listed the "celebrities of the year"

The winner was Britney, runner up was Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan were on the list somewhere as well. Having seen all the useless bullshit printed about these people, the only thing I can see that they used to determine "best" celebrity was the one they were able to make the most money out of publishing their faults, because they definitely haven't done anything worthwhile in recent memory. . . actually I can't think of anything they've done ever that's worth making note about and I'm really struggling. Being a failure as a mother, committing suicide, being in a craptcular porno and turning from a "wholesome" girl to a coke addicted whore. . . that's what I seem to associate with these people. Nothing out there about them makes me think of them as anything worthwhile or anywhere near classifying as "best" at being anything.

Oh, and before anyone feels to point out the hypocrisy of me knowing anything about these celebrities, I know because this shit is force-fed into the media and mainstream culture, resulting in it being unavoidable to know something about these people. I'm sure you're all aware of it too, I probably wouldn't need to list names and you'd still be able to know who I'm talking about.

In conclusion, I too want people to just leave Britney alone.

Writer's Block

2007-12-27T17:01:00.000+10:00

Generally I update this little blog when I have an idea stuck in my mind and feel like writing about it to kill some time.

But right now, I'm sitting on nothing that really fits this blog and unfortunately I know exactly why.

You see, that last entry I made which mentioned the whole "writing a book" thing actually stuck with me, except writing a book that is an extended version of this blog just isn't interesting. Sure it might have a few things that people would enjoy but overall a lot of it would be complete and utter trash. Knowing this, I had to think of a better way to try my hand at writing a book and instead of this extended rant thing I thought maybe a more standard novel would be more fun.

Getting something published would be a complete nightmare and I doubt there would even be any point, but I'm not above mental masturbation. I would gladly write and entire novel and not show it to anyone just so that I knew I could do it.

The fact that I know I'm a bad writer means that I know the odds of me showing it off after it's done is pretty slim.

Anyhow, I did have a point I kinda wanted to make this time, even if I am devoid of my usual material and that point has to do with Bunny Puppy. I'm sure most of the people who venture here are aware of Bunny Puppy, but for those that don't remember, I used to do a little comic with a toy named Bunny Puppy that looked a little like this:

Clicky Clicky

As you can see, it relies more on cuteness than my artistic ability, but nonetheless there has been quite a bit of demand for BP to make a return.

This combined with my fascination with Terry Pratchett's characterisation of Death gave me an interesting idea for a story that I can actually turn into something worth reading. Of course, I don't want to copy the Discworld Death, that would be plagiarism, but the actual character of Death is just a goldmine and there are so many ways it can be taken that when combined with Bunny Puppy and my own natural need be negative or "realistically cynical" does seem to be an interesting mix.

Now I just need to learn how to write a story and I'm going to really do this.

It also means that in order to come up with ideas I may do BP comics (which I did kinda promise would return next year) again. But that does require me getting Photoshop back so it may be difficult to pull that bit off.

All in all, I have me some grand plans ahead, none will probably ever come to fruition, but it's enough to keep me occupied.

Nobody Reads This

2007-12-19T09:31:00.000+10:00

It's annoying, I write this blog and I'm sure that I have some readers out there who have stumbled across my ramblings, but I can't tell and from all the evidence I have right now, nobody actually bothers to read this.

Makes me wonder, are my opinions just that pointless? Do I go on too much without having a clue why and illicit the good old "tl;dr" response? Or do I have a bajillion readers and nobody wants to comment?

It's a weird little conundrum because I've been thinking that it would be amusing to write a book on the same lines as this blog. A couple hundred pages of opinion, backed by faulty reason and pop-culture references. In terms of marketability I think there's something to it, there are people out there who will read anything if they think it benefits them in some way, so if I played it off as a explanation of the thinking of a "child of the internet" it could probably sell to the older generations who want to understand their kids. Of course, everyone else can just go read a better written blog for free, but who cares about them?

Now, I'd never actually bother to write a book like that unless a publisher approached me with a big sack of cash, but I do think that there is some merit to the idea even if I'm probably not the best person to execute it.

Which brings me back to point, I don't know if anyone reads this so all I have to work from here is assumptions on what I think the response is. This book idea could be a source of millions or it could be completely stupid.

On the other hand though, the only reason I ever started doing this was to waste time rambling on about subjects that I felt like talking about. An open-ended rant with no purpose or direction other than to see how far my brain takes it and to possibly entertain a few people who are more cynical than I am and are amused by the fact that my views are stupid, bias and devoid of reason.

In short people, if you're reading this blog, let me know. It may not be well advertised, the views of the writer may be moronic and excessively long, but sometimes it's nice to know that I'm not completely anonymous and wasting my time.

That being said, I realise that asking for feedback defies the original purpose of this blog, but this book idea. . . I really want to see something published with the title "LAWL BEWBIES!" and anything that even hints that could be a reality would amuse me.

Why Do I Bother?

2007-12-16T17:40:00.000+10:00

I don't get clubbing.

Every time I go I end up having a pretty dull time, and lose a lot of money paying for overpriced drinks and the inevitable taxi ride home.

There are just so many things about clubbing that just don't work for me, matter of fact, if it wasn't for the scantily clad women dancing and the alcohol, I probably wouldn't have bothered even considering going clubbing ever. Oddly enough, a lot of things about clubbing are just plain fucked up.

Let's start with the obvious.

Dancing

I hate dancing. With a passion.

Not only do I completely suck at it, but I think it's a completely pointless exercise that would be considered completely retarded if you took it out of context. Think about it, you've got a group of people making somewhat random movements to music (although a lot of the time it's not in time to the music, especially in cases like mine) that would look absolutely stupid if done independently. Especially the whole shuffling thing.

Although the pants guys wear whilst shuffling are highly amusing, but that's another issue for another rant.

A lot of people who can dance manage to look like complete pricks whilst doing it too. When I last went clubbing (on Friday night) there was this one guy who made a habit of standing in the middle of the dancefloor and pointing at the DJ booth for no apparent reason for some period of time. Then you have the guy who had the orange shirt who was obviously high on something, or the three girls in what was essentially their underwear and a cropped little tutu. . . thing who got onto the raised platforms at the same time and started dancing together.

Okay, they didn't look like pricks, but it was definitely worth mentioning as a weird little event.

Then there's the music.

The majority of the time it's half-assed remixes of shitty pop/hip hop music that listening to is only slightly better than sticking an ice pick repeatedly up my nose. The rest of the time it's some weird techno shit I just don't get. I guess it's unreasonable to expect to hear Sonata Arctica in a club, but seriously . . . damn.

There's a reason the only time I listen to the radio is when there's nothing else whatsoever to listen to, and even then I listen to Triple J so I don't have to put up with the complete and utter shit that plays on most commercial radio stations, even if a few things manage to sneak onto Triple J that suck as much, if not more than shit on stations like Nova.

Then there's the whole socialising thing. I just don't understand how people are able to socialise properly in a nightclub when it's so loud in there you can barely hear what's being said. I'm sure an experienced nightclub goer might be able to comprehend the complexities of conversing in a place like that, but more I think it's just a lot more likely that conversational skills are not what people are looking for. Seeing as I much prefer a girl who can talk about topics that interest me, or at least talk about topics in a way that interests me, seems a little hard for me to see how my normal methods of approach exactly work.

Actually, they don't work outside of nightclubs either, but there is slightly less failure outside of nightclubs.

Throw in various complaints about taxis sucking and you get the general gist of why I hate clubbing. Maybe I should try something else that's slightly more enjoyable and also involves alcohol. How about I replace the venom in some cobras with tequila and see what happens? Sounds a lot less painful and probably has better music.

Fashion's Fight Against Common Sense

2007-12-10T09:48:00.000+10:00

In my daily wanderings to and from work, I observe many things. A lot of them baffle me.

Right now the one that baffles me the most is how many fashion trends just don't make sense. They look bad and look incredibly uncomfortable or at the least inconvenient.

The most obvious current example of this is the standard "fashionable" approach to belts. Instead of using them as a practical little tool to keep your pants from slipping down and revealing far too much ass crack, I tend to see a lot of women parading about with hipster jeans and if they're wearing any belt, it's up somewhere around their mid-riff like some sort of giant leather waistband. The kicker is that when these women bend over/sit down/take any action, their pants slip down, revealing a very unsexy portion of their ass crack, or at the very least a less than spectacular view of their underwear.

I even spied one girl who had take this to the extreme, wearing hipster jeans and a way too small tank top, showing off her somewhat podgy midriff. In the middle of her midriff there was a huge belt. So her clothes went something like this: top - inch of flesh - giant belt - inch of flesh (including ass crack) - pants.

So very not sexy.

Another one that baffles me is puffy shoulders on shirts. That doesn't look cute or nice or anything it just looks stupid. There's no practical reason why it's bad (unlike the belt trend) but really, puffy sleeves just aren't for the win.

Yet another strange fashion trend that simply looks stupid but isn't exactly impractical is those skirts women tend to wear that instead of stopping at a logical place like the hips or waist, go either to the bust line or in most cases, stop somewhere up along the lady's ribs. The part that really gets me about this one is that it looks like they've gotten into a long skirt and decided they wanted to show off some thigh. . . so just kept pulling the thing up until they were showing enough leg.

These are usually coupled with thick straps to hold it in place, so it's more of a design flaw than user-end stupidity. But the thick straps only add to the retarded nature of that look if you ask me, making them look like a dress/overalls combination (and we all know overalls are the height of fashion) where the wearer has decided to tighten the straps as much as possible so that if they were wearing traditional overalls, they would have a gigantic wedgy.

Don't even get me started on anything emos wear. That's just too easy of a target, especially those long net glove things.

Men are not exempt from stupid fashion trends, although luckily because out clothes tend to boil down to shirt plus pants, it means that there is a lot less variations that lead to retardation.

The most obvious target (as obvious as emos and just as easy, but I feel it warrants mention anyhow) is anyone out there who hangs their pants below their ass. I don't want to see people's $2 KMart underwear and it really just looks like you were taking a dump and forgot to pull your pants back up afterwards. Moreover, I've tried this myself (in the spirit of inquiry) and discovered that it's incredibly uncomfortable because it feels like your pants are constantly falling down.

Only one thing can explain how that trend became popular though, because it's largely coupled with baggy pants, I believe that the reason a lot of moronic males wear their pants so low is because that is how far they fall before they can do up their belt to stop them going all the way off. It's the only reasonably explanation.

That or people who dress to fit fashion trends are complete and utter morons.

In other news, Bunny Puppy shall make his triumphant return in the near future. If I ever bother to get Photoshop again.

The Cake is NOT a Lie

2007-12-08T17:03:00.000+10:00

I finally got around to beating Portal today.

I had bought it pretty much straight after it came out, then I heard rumours that it was damn short so a few hours in (as in 2 or 3) I decided to put it aside so I could "savour" the experience.

In reality, I completely forgot about it and moved on to other games. Then today I felt compelled to try beat it.

Very shortly afterwards, I was listening to the ever so brilliant Still Alive and considering myself a very happy man.

Now that I'm looking back on everything, there was a lot of well-deserved hype for this game. But there are some problems with the common perception of this game that I don't really agree with.

Well, there's really only one problem I have.

People complained that the game is so damn short and I know I've made a bit of a point of it too, but I don't think that it's really an issue of length because the pacing, atmosphere and general gameplay is just pure fuckwin awesome so making it longer can tinker with the awesome. It does seem to have a small problem of appearing like an extended tutorial, considering the way the levels are staged in manner that seems to back that up, without really being a tutorial. Sort of a "do it yourself" tutorial. Weird, but it works.

On the plus side, looks like there's more to come, so I'm just thinking of this as the build up to the second one. But if the second one lacks GLaDOS or the various rat holes with "the cake is a lie" scrawled all over them in blood . . . or even a lack of Companion Cube, then there will be chaos, outrage and sheer bedlam!

There is one thing that really bugs me though.

Everyone seems to think that the cake is a lie.

I don't think the cake is a lie.

You may get *GIANT SPOILER* at the point you're meant to receive cake but pretty soon afterwards there is cake.

CIGARO CIGARO

2007-12-04T17:12:00.000+10:00

I have a weird compulsion.

When it comes to video games I have some weird combination of ADD and OCD (without actually being like ADD or OCD, but it's fun to misapply labels). Games will either hold my attention to the point where I am actively completing every minor task possible or they don't and I toss them aside in seconds.

My approach towards gaming is just plain weird, I'll find a game, get completely and utterly hooked up to a point where it's almost an obsession. Then for no good reason I'll toss it aside and probably never touch it again. I can't explain it, it really doesn't make sense, but it does seem to apply that I have both a terribly short attention span and an addictive personality.

Of course, most common addictions don't seem to hold with me, I've tried two of the most common addictions out there (WoW and smoking) kinda enjoyed it and then moved on with my life vowing never to bother with that crap again. Yet you give me something like Pokemon or Trauma Center and they'll hold my attention until I've completely raped them of any further content.

This has some weird repercussions when it comes to choosing games to play, because of my need to compulsively do everything (until I'm bored) in a video game means that I prefer the games that have more little pointless tasks to complete. By default, this means Xbox 360 games thanks to the Achievements they offer. I've actively gone through a game solely with the intent of collecting achievements, admittedly enjoying the gameplay but my focus was not the plot or the "fun" but getting my grubby little gamerscore ever so slightly higher.

Which finally brings me back to the point that will hopefully explain the title.

Everything is a fucking dick measuring contest, as a society we are always actively seeking to prove that our metaphorical penises are larger than every other person out there. Oh you can say the spirit of competition is the boon of mankind, the spirit of invention and the driving force behind society, but that's a load of bullhonkey, those are all just excuses to justify people going out there and trying to prove that they are the big man because some number they have accumulated is larger then someone else's. Cars, phones, clothes, pretty much everything cosmetic, video games, sports, science, even charity and humanitarian work, everything is done in the pursuit of proving your own greatness.

Don't think females are exempt from this dick measuring contest thing either, just because it provides a disturbing image to most to think of it that way (and an even more disturbingly erotic image to a select few others), the term is mainly used to point out the ridiculousness of the practice. It's definitely not because I have some phallic fixation.

So, my solution to stopping all the pointless competition?

Free random sex for everyone.

If you can get laid any time, you wouldn't bother trying to exceed in life, you've already got everything you really want, which means that people can be left to focus on what they need.

That or spend the rest of their lives in a giant orgy.

Either way, it's all good.

Your Car Says A Lot About You

2007-11-27T09:25:00.001+10:00

It's common knowledge that your car says a lot about you, and because I'm trying to find myself something with 4 wheels and a working engine to run into signposts and trees, I've been putting a lot of thought into the subject lately.

See, normally I just don't care about cars, they get you from A to B and that's all there is to it as far as I'm concerned, but on the other hand there is the whole "masculinity thing". Which I like to think of more as your car being a representation of your penis (unless you're female, expect in rare unfortunate circumstances rarely seen outside of hentai). So here's my breakdown of different vehicle types and what they really say about you.

Utes: Big manly vehicles, indestructable, they just keep going and going and going and going and going. There's plenty of fun to be had in them, but you're really driving it around to impress the lads, ladies aren't likely to care about the size of your car in this case because you're busy parading it in front of the guys trying to impress them.

Sports cars: Low to the ground and will give you the ride of your life, but they'll almost always run out of gas before you've finished having your fun. They're all about image and won't truly satisfy you.

SUVs: They should be the same as utes, rugged machines built to really show off your manliness. But then soccer mums found out how roomy they are so instead of bringing out the image of the sporty man willing to adventure into the unknown, any guy driving it is likely to be a middle aged married man tied down with 2.5 kids and a dog, not very exciting and you'll probably feel a little guilty about using it.

Drifting Cars: They're small, normally pretty weird shaped and do some crazy things. Like many things out of Japan that you find lots videos on the internet about it looks like it could be fun and if you give it a try you might get hooked and not be able to go back to normal driving, but on the other hand just like the other things you see videos about it can just leave you feeling feeling sick.

"Chick cars": Those girly little cars that no manly man would ever be seen dead in. They may not make your cock look big, but there is probably a reason why women prefer them over those overtly masculine vehicles. If you ask me, that reason is probably because they're reliable, do what they're told, get you exactly where you need to go (provided you know what you're doing) and will go until they get there. Plus they can normally do a few neat little tricks too.

So all in all, if you're looking to get a car to make yourself look good, don't bother, it's saying more about you than you think. If you really want to impress, ignore the machismo and get yourself something that shows you're in touch with your feminine side.

Odds are you'll save money on gas too.

I Blame The Non-Liberal Media!

2007-11-26T11:15:00.001+10:00

We all know that the cause of every single major problem in America, nay the world, is the fault of the evil, devil worshipping, baby eating LIBERAL MEDIA. And the non-liberal media, such great non-bias sources such as Fox News have done the world a great service by helping to highlight this gross misconduct.

Unfortunately, in helping the world, I think the these great journalists have accidentally pulled the trigger on some of their international allies. Namely the Australian Liberal Party, a conservative group who (as I noted in an earlier entry) suffered a magnificent defeat at the hands of Labor, their inexperienced left wing counterpart.

I don't believe that the defeat of the Liberal Party, formally helmed by John Howard, is reflective of their policies, which were truly representative of what was best for the country of Australia and indeed, the world, but instead due to a confusion caused by the use of the term "liberal". Whilst the Liberal Party had been using the term long before liberals were determined to be the source of all evil, they failed to correct their name to reflect that they were not in favour of such pathetic communist views, something which has definitely cost them.

Don't believe for a second that the "controversial" work choices legislation or the failure to sign the Kyoto protocal was the reason for their defeat, nor was it the supposed charisma of Labor leader Kevin Rudd that lead to this massive landslide result. John Howard failed to have a single bad policy during his entire run as Prime Minister, the man was a political genius and such an inexperienced, pro-communist moron like Rudd is not fit to wipe his boots, let alone usurp him, in fact the sheer "me too"ism of Rudd's Labor party should be reflective of how strong Howard was and how weak Labor will be, yet because of this simple confusion thousands of Australians have been robbed of their right to be governed by the best available people.

Some could argue that it is indeed the fault of the Liberal Party for not acknowledging this confusion earlier, or the leadership concerns with Howard's pending retirement, but let's face it, Australians are meant to be smarter than that. Instead of seeing through the bullshit and knowing that the only right way to vote was to the Right, they folded to cheap parlour tricks revolving around Rudd's plan to "get every kid in Australia wired".

That's right, amongst all his other faults, Rudd is also apparently pro-drugs.

I whole heartedly expect the Liberal Party to take action in the near future so that they will not suffer the same fate come the next election. Especially knowing that under the Union thugs that run the Labor party Australia will suffer.

So in conclusion, thank you Fox for the great service you have done the world, but please be considerate of your international audience in future, even actions done with the best of intentions can backfire.

Election 07

2007-11-25T16:12:00.000+10:00

So it turns out John Howard and most of the Liberal party is out of the job.

Can't say I'm complaining about that. Not in the slightest.

The part that amuses me most out of all this though is that as a result of the Liberal party being decimated, and Labor already controlling all the states, the highest ranking elected official in the Liberal party is Lord Mayor Campbell Newman. That's right, Lord Mayor of Brisbane is now the highest office held by a Liberal in this country. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

I could go on, but I'm not really in the mood. The important thing is that now the Chasers are going to have to think of new material instead of just bugging Howard on his morning walks, although they're bound to get a few more episodes out of that anyhow.

A Day Of Awesome?

2007-11-23T08:12:00.000+10:00

Yesterday was a weird day.

There were many awesome little tidbits throughout, but quite a lot of boredom and physical pain.

In terms of awesome, Dave the backwards talker (ie, a guy who talks backwards on the radio for the fun of it) said a couple of palindromes I submitted, including "Devil never even lived" which is just pure awesome.

Randall Monroe inspired me to create a ballpit somewhere in my house, or at the least make plans to have one when I get my own place (check out his blag for all the fun little details and some pictures. The little sketches I made for a dedicated ballpit/recreation room are impossible to decipher, but include a raised platform at the back for cushions/beanbags/couches, a fridge tucked away in the raised platform, a 2.5m x 2.5m x 0.6m ballpit, with a little platform on the side for the TV and well . . . despite costing several thousand dollars would just be pure awesome to have as a room in a house. I envy whoever gets the joy of living with me when I get one.

But then you have the not so awesome things that happened yesterday. I suffered numerous papercuts thanks to the latest batch of mailouts, and I still can't work out why papercuts sting so fucking much. I had to arrange discussions with a couple of guys who had no idea what was going on, and because all I knew was that they needed to have discussions with one of the mediators I couldn't do much more than "lolidunno, when can u talk?" There was the sheer joy of sending out masses of rejection emails to people who applied for jobs for a company we recruit for, and now I'm sifting through people saying "thanks for telling me that" and "wtf, i r so gud u must hav had orsm ppl apply cos i r teh greetest!".

Then getting home I was just completely out of it, something that is happening increasingly often for some odd reason, because I was never like that after working at Subway. I may have hated the world coming home from my shifts but I was never out of it, but coming home from working here I just feel . . . drained. It's incredibly weird because my workload is pretty minimal, hell, I spend a large portion of my day browsing Gaia and watching the occasional YouTube clip.

Maybe my body is just in desperate need of adjusting to doing next to nothing again.

Genocide is FUN!

2007-11-21T20:23:00.000+10:00

If video games have taught me nothing else, and they haven't, it's that if you make things bright and colourful with a happy sound track you can get away with anything, including mass property destruction and genocide.

You can destroy whole continents, squash endangered species and abduct small children, and once you're done with it shoot the collected mass with GIANT EYE LASERS! OF DOOM!

You see, Jane came round yesterday the ease my emoness, and we spent a good amount of time playing We Love Katamari. A game I bought ages ago, had lots of fun with then completely forgot about until yesterday.

With all the shit people give videogames about being a bad influence of children, teaching people to murder and in general being the cause of all evils in the world (aside from America's need for Arabian oil and conspiracies involving Jewish movie producers) . . . I can't believe they missed something so unabashedly evil. Awesome for sure, but evil.

Sure there aren't guns to teach children how to shoot (because movie an analogue stick and pressing a button is just like firing a sniper rifle, and using a D-Pad is just like driving a car) or make them want to beat up hookers with baseball bats, so it is a less obvious target. But it doesn't really make a big deal of hiding the fact that you are rolling up entire cities merely to please the king of the cosmos, who (if not entirely pleased with your efforts) will shoot eye lasers at your happy little ball of destruction, turning whole ecosystems into stardust. Pleasing the king doesn't exactly help your victims either, they get flung into space to form a new planet, enjoy your lack of oxygen children!

I think it was the soundtrack that stopped people from thinking it was evil, something so happy and random just can't be evil. Nothing in the history of the world has ever masked evil behind a happy facade. Ever. In the history of the world.

Ever.

So . . . Damn . . . Bored. . .

2007-11-20T13:40:00.000+10:00

It's been a slow couple of days at work, matter of fact, aside from the break up I've had nothing at all to do in the last two days.

So I've been browsing Gaia, smacking people with my mighty mod powers, watching Top Gear on YouTube and playing a little Winterbells.

None of those options held my attention for that long either, Winterbells in particular got boring fast after I remembered that I broke the high score playing it on my Wii one day using the Opera browser.

And now I've just had a meeting to "catch up" on how I'm going etc. Looks like things are going well, but I'm still probably going to be bored.

I'm Single Again

2007-11-19T17:23:00.000+10:00

I can't be fucked going into details, but Su and I broke up. So long and thanks for all the fish etc. . .

Bad Idea

2007-11-18T20:12:00.000+10:00

I've learnt today that my stomach capacity is not what I believe it used to be.

I managed to eat a whole pizza for lunch, something I used to manage a few years ago without any problems. But today, it seems to have completely exhausted me.

That's right, I've been incapacitated by a pizza. Somehow, I think this may be considered a somewhat lethal blow to my machoism, but then I look up and see several stuffed toys next to my clock, so I guess that isn't an issue.

How Am I Meant To NOT Make Fun?

2007-11-16T10:50:00.000+10:00

I watched the "So You Think You Can Dance" finalle last night whilst flicking between various sitcoms.

I don't know how someone can watch that show and not make comments about how ridiculous and stupid the majority of things on it are. Between guys in skirts with the whole slit thing along one side bit going on, guys in heels, people doing random cartwheels/flips/whatever, and the guy in clogs making random clicking noises with his feet, thrusting his hips and twirling. . . I just can't see how the point of the show is anything other than humour.

Probably the highlight of the show for me was what I like to think of as "whore in a box." Nicole (I think she was the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls, a group I think is completely without merit, not that anyone needs to really have me tell them that to work it out) in a box singing her little song very badly, coming out and spouting random little whoreism like "I will do anything" (repeated several times so people would get the point that she really will do anything), making the odd dance move and then of course singing badly, especially in the bit where she deviated from the song to get the crowd involved or something.

There are just so many elements of dancing that I think are essentially retarded. Especially dance routines that are supposably telling a story or whatever the hell the point is to them. Explain it as much as you like, you're just making a string of ridiculous motions in an exercise that does not result in anything. Sort of like playing with a Wii, but without the fun.

Sure there are occasional things that look cool, but they're so heavily surrounded by weird shit that all you can do is stop laughing for a moment to go "not bad. . . oh god why the hell are you thrusting your stomach with your hands held out???"

In other news. . . I have no other news, good day all.

Here's Something To Complain About

2007-11-14T11:01:00.000+10:00

I've been trying for the last few days to sort out the issues with the monthly newsletter I'm meant to be sending out for work.

I think I've nutted out the problem and solved it, but the problem is that it's slightly too late for this run, so next time I should be able to fire it off without any issues. . .

This time though, I have to sort through the list of error messages that bounced back to me and send them a newsletter, in batches of ten to avoid killing the mail server for the third time. It's a long list.

Howells. It's going to be a long and painstaking process, the perfect thing to bitch about in a blog, no?

Oh that's right!

2007-11-14T08:49:00.001+10:00

I'm meant to be updating this thing regularly, aren't I?

Oops.

Well, nothing at all is really happening in my life worth blogging about. There's been no interesting turn of events, nothing so mind bogglingly dull that I had to tell the world in order to ease the pain. . . nothing.

Okay, maybe something, but amongst all the monotony of the world, forgetting my phone this morning probably doesn't rank up there with what I'd normally bother writing about.

GET OFF THE ROAD YOU JACKASS!

2007-11-10T11:46:00.000+10:00

So I went for my license today, second try and all that jazz.

It was horrible, I fucked up so many times, forgot to signal, didn't work the clutch smoothly, I even managed to stall the thing. Yet for some reason I managed to pass, so now I need to go get me some wheels.

Finally, I Be Doing Things!

2007-11-09T13:22:00.000+10:00

Well, it looks like I'm done with the first 1301 letters that I had to send off. Yes, 1301 letters, I did work out exactly how many letters I printed, signed, folded, stuffed into an envelope with a brochure, sealed, stamped and for about 100 stuck a sticker on the back of.

Now I'm progressing into other tasks that are part of my job. The "important" things. Like reorganising the stationery cupboard, calling a few people to arrange mettings, booking flights, placing orders and taking quotes. Oh, and the occasional bit of bludging.

It's actually not that bad, I've even devised a system to keep track of what I'm meant to be doing. It's a little complicated but I think you'll get the basic idea. . . essentially, I write what I need to do on a post it note and stick it to my desk.

Dozens of post it notes have served their purpose and expired already this week because of this practise, but it's most definitely worth it.

In other news, I'm going for my license tomorrow morning, as well as going out with Su tonight and probably a few other things.

So I'm a busy little beaver who shouldn't be wasting time posting boring old blog posts like this one. But I'll still do it because it's better than actually earning my paycheck.

Xbox ASPLODE!!!~

2007-11-08T08:13:00.000+10:00

Dag nammit, I buy myself two games I was really looking forward to, and what do you know, the 360's high failure rate comes to kick me in the ass.

I was rocking out on Guitar Hero 3 when all of a sudden the console resetted and the disk drive apparently jammed. With a little help from a screwdriver and a paperclip I managed to recover the disk, but methinks I need to send the damn console in for repairs.

Which does have a nice bonus of letting me possibly upgrade to a HDMI model for free, but on the other hand, it has the downside of no delicious cake until it gets fixed.

I swear the gaming gods just don't want to shine on me, but at least I have Super Paper Mario to keep me entertained for a few more days. . . the rest of the time I may have to actually find something to occupy meself with.

Print, Sign, Fold, Stuff, Seal, Stamp, Stack. . .

2007-11-07T12:12:00.000+10:00

So, turns out what I do at work right now is direct mail advertising.

For those playing at home who have no idea what that is, basically I take a letter (in the form of a word document), do a mail merge with one of our little databases of potential customers, print out the letter, all nicely individually addressed etc on some pretty paper. Then off I go spending hours upon hours signing them all, before folding them neatly and cramming them in an envelope with a brochure.

It sounds more interesting than it is, and I don't think it sounds that interesting.

There are other duties I have to do as well, arrange quotes for things, do orders for stationary. . . all of which I have no real clue about but can fake well enough until I get a good idea of the real way to do things. Except with those quotes, I'm still not too sure how the hell I'm meant to get a quote for something when I've only been given vague instructions of what the thing is. But that's just me.

Oh sure, there are other things that I can actually do and am meant to be doing, but essentially my job right now is filling envelopes with the paper equivalent of targeted spam.

Not bad seeing as it's easier than Subway and pays better, plus they didn't lie to me about the chair.

Hell, today, because the other two aren't in the office (yes, two other people work here, it's a bustling place but I somehow manage to survive the chaos), I'm all alone with my letter stuffing. So I brought in my laptop to have something to keep me sane.

Time to watch the first seven episodes of Heroes season 2 again. . .

Unabandonisedish

2007-11-04T18:51:00.000+10:00

I'm so incredibly bored that I figure I might get around to doing something that I haven't done in months.

Or not, rearranging the furniture in my bedroom is a boring activity and there isn't much I can do now that I've got the whole cable TV thing forcing me to leave the TV in the one spot.

Terrible jokes aside, I'm going to try blogging again, if only because I have a strange feeling that life will become incredibly boring in the next couple of weeks and I might as well record the really dull stuff for the world at large to read. Because nobody wants to read blogs about interesting things, now do they?

So, what's happened in my life since I abandoned my blog? Apparently quite a lot, but in reflection not really that much, but let's make a list for shits and giggles.

- Quit Subway
- Got a real job (I actually start tomorrow)
- Abandoned the ideals of being a teenager and turned into a desperate early 20s . . . thing
- Killed my old laptop
- Bought a new one for less than it would have cost to repair the old one (whilst still buying a Mac, which shows JUST how expensive fixing the old one would have been)
- Failed my driving test
- Some other minor things not really making note of

Oh yeah, there was also this thing with this girl named Su, won't bore you with the details but looks like I abandoned the whole single thing as well as the teenage thing, at about the same time too.

Moving right along, it turns out that the real job I got requires me to travel into the CBD every morning to get my ass in by 9am.

Not a problem in the slightest, seeing as Subway (before the whole management thing) required me to do that except instead of getting there at 9am I had to get there at 7:30am. The main difference between TRC and Subway is that TRC is about 750m (call it half a mile to the Americans) from Naked Coffee whereas Subway is pretty much two streets over from it. On the other hand, to avoid walking the 750m WITH coffee, I'd have to walk almost 1km without coffee to catch the train.

So my options are bus from outside my house and get coffee then walk, or train from 1km away and take my chances operating without caffeine.

It also means I can buy myself breakfast from places I know, at least for the initial period until I get used to the stores around my work then I can just catch two buses instead of one, barely walk at all, and get fat and lazy because my job requires very little moving from a comfy chair. At least, so I've been told, unless they lied to me.

They probably lied to me.

S-M-R-T!

2007-07-25T17:04:00.000+10:00

Dear lord I'm a moron sometimes.

I went to KMart after work today, thinking to pick up a microSD card for my R4 figuring that I had a reasonable chance of getting it in the mail today. I did get it in the mail today actually, as well as Jane's and Carlos'.

The important problem is that I went to KMart and first thing I did was see a Hot Fuzz & Shaun of the Dead DVD pack dohickey and my thoughts immediately turned to buying a DVD or two (including that pack). So I checked out the DVD section, picked up Austin Powers and the two previously mentioned bits of awesomeness, looked at the games section because they had a sale and didn't buy anything, even though it looked tempting to pick up Gears of War and Dead Rising (for my inevitable 360 purchase). . . then proceeded to the front counter.

Without the microSD card

The whole point of the excursion was to get a microSD card so that I could use my R4 as soon as I got it, but howells, if the world balances out I'm probably due a moment of brilliance now.

Didn't realise that I'd forgotten the card until I got home and saw a package with a Chinese address on it either.

Much headdesking.

Still, come on universal balance!

Seems I Forgot Something

2007-07-23T10:36:00.000+10:00

I kinda forgot this thing existed in the last week, I've been exhausted.

Let's see what has happened in my life since last I blogged. . .

- TV has yet to arrive, I'm lying in bed awaiting the phone call.
- Had my first driving lesson, didn't kill anyone.
- Read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows off of my computer screen.
- Went to HP&DH launch.
- Been completely exhausted.
- Went into the city and had both Nando's AND Naked Coffee, things I have so dearly missed.

So, if you need comments on any of those things, prod me with a comment, but seeing as nobody reads this, I doubt that'll happen, hence the lack of extrapolating now.

Waiting. . . Waiting. . . Waiting. . . Fucksticks!

2007-07-17T17:46:00.000+10:00

I waited all day yesterday for the new TV to arrive.

It didn't.

So around 5 o'clock I gave the store a call to find out what was going on, they said they'd call me back.

They didn't.

Called them again today after work, finally got it all sorted out. It's being delivered next Monday (they offered to do it tomorrow, but the problem is that the only day they deliver that I'll be home is Mondays, hence the initial first week break), which just isn't cool, seeing as I'm waiting another week for something I bought a week ago. Not cool.

But eventually, I'll get a new TV.

Eventually . . .

Trjn in HD

2007-07-09T17:21:00.000+10:00

Today, I am finally a man.

Well, not really, I'm pretty sure that day came and went a little while ago, but I'm now officially getting myself a HDTV. A Samsung 32" HDTV.

It was marked as $1849, which is reasonable, but other places sell it cheaper. Went shopping around and managed to get the price down to $1639 (including delivery).

So long story short, new TV comes in a weeks time.

A Summary Of Points

2007-07-06T22:37:00.000+10:00

Since last I blogged, here is a few points in my life (in order):

- Pen haet Trjn
- Still paid more for doing less
- SLEEP
- Attack of the curtains
- penis! Penis! PENIS! PENIS!!!
- Bitchslapped
- My friends suck
- BAIL!

I Had A Good Run

2007-07-05T18:19:00.000+10:00

Work was incredibly boring today.

With the exception of one bitchy customer who wanted to "tell the manager" about me, because I didn't wrap her subs perfectly.

So looks like I'm going to have to fire my sorry ass, seeing as the whole point of me going there was to weed out shit employees and train the good ones, so if I'm one of the shit ones, I might as well sack myself else be rendered a hypocrite.

Well, That Was Easy

2007-07-04T19:20:00.000+10:00

Just started at Market Square today.

The store is a shit heap, it's going to take a while to get things in shape, but the actual workload is easy. I just need to retrain the current staff, train the new staff (which at the moment is one Korean dude, but will be more once I start hiring) and get some system in place to bust heads and whatnot.

Shouldn't be hard, give me a week and I'll have the place running okay, give me a month and I'll have everyone doing what they're meant to be doing.

Failing that, I can just go get a new job.

Diregard the last bit

2007-06-29T20:07:00.000+10:00

So, they finally had a little chat with me.

Starting Wednesday I'm going to be working at the Market Square store as . . . well, they didn't say the exact title, but I'm going to go with "Day Manager." As in the guy who manages the store during the day.

I gets me a payrise, Same hours, but significantly less work. A new job title to stick on the resume and a greater sense of power to abuse.

As far as I can tell, the basic idea is that I go there and try and get the employees there to stop sucking. Possibly train them so that they're good enough to work at Queen St/QUT should the need arise or failing that, get them good enough to not suck. I can hire people provided they speak fluent English (that is quite literally the only thing that I have to make sure of aside from thinking that they'll be good), and I have to do all the paperwork, which is quite minimal.

The only downside is that until the end of September, I have to work Saturday mornings, so no Friday night fun for me, looks like I have to make up for it on Saturday nights. Oh, and after the end of September, I can decide to stay on as a full manager, part-time manager (and go back to studying), go back to Queen St (although why I'd do that is beyond me) or quit.

Either way, more money, less work.

Oh yeah, and I don't think I'll be able to go to Naked Coffee in the mornings anymore.

Fernando . . . STFU por favor

2007-06-28T19:28:00.000+10:00

My biggest irritation at work right now is the fact that they're failed to promote me for way too long. For the last 3 weeks they've been telling me that they'll talk to me about promotion either soon, tomorrow or next week.

For 3 weeks.

And it just gets worse with Fernando constantly prodding me and saying "you'll be doing this banking stuff soon" or pretty much anything implying that I'll be made management very very very soon.

Is it so hard for them to just spend 5 minutes to tell me "congrats, you get a new shirt, now get back to work!"? Or do they need to keep dragging this along. Hell, the only reason I've stuck around so long is because for the last 2 months I've been expecting some form of promotion and the majority of that time they've given me good reason to expect it.

Maybe they'll keep their promise and talk to me tomorrow -.-;;

Probably not.[/emo]

Blag Post

2007-06-26T18:14:00.000+10:00

*statement*

*inane drivel*

*topic loosely related to statement by inane drivel*

*nerdy reference*

Gaming Time For Me

2007-06-24T14:52:00.000+10:00

A bit over a week ago, I found a copy of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. A kickass game that it appears many people didn't know about because it's a Gamecube title.

Didn't get around to playing it until just now, and the problem is that it's one of those games you have to get into the mood for. Dark, freakish games can't be played whilst you're waking up, or during the middle of the day. You have to really want to be in that sort of headspace and it's much better if it's dark. the biggest problem that I face with trying to play it is that it's very dark, and glare on the screen just makes it all not shibbeh. Then again, the biggest problem is that I'm more in the mood for Super Mario Strikers Charged.

Which I went and played for a little while, but it's somewhat hard to get to the point where I can unlock Diddy Kong, so I can kick further ass, because I loves the fast captains, and Peach, as much as I love her slutty ass, is just not as good.

Oh, and then there's the whole Pokemon thing, meant to be doing something on that (both Emerald and Pearl), still got to finish a few other Wii games (Eledees and Sonic and the Secret Rings come to mind) and find out when Trauma Center: Second Opinion gets released over here.

It's somewhat sad, with a full time job and modly duties on Gaia, I may have to cut back my gaming time, and I've already been doing that. . . on the plus side, looks like I won't bother buying a 360 any time soon, although the HD TV definitely still appeals. . .

Well fucksticks

2007-06-21T19:08:00.000+10:00

You know, with a title like that only one possible thing could have happened.

Actually, many things could have happened.

But today my alarm didn't go off, so I was awakened by my phone making a buzzing noise then going "let's play some Tetris motherfucker. do do de do do dedo dedo do dedo dedo do do do doo." About 45 minutes after I should have been out the door. Thank Christ Jane and I has some sort of system for obtaining caffienation in the early hours.

So I made a frantic call to work telling them that I'd be late, to find out that I was absolutely needed for the opening, because the other two people opening didn't know how to do pretty much anything. Lesigh.

They managed to get someone to come from another store to cover me for the half hour, but it turns out they didn't do anywhere near as much as I would have done, so it took me about 2 hours of frantic running around, bossing peoples and various other things which might be illegal in some countries to get things on track.

Then Luis asked me to stay back until 6 because he wanted to go home early. . . I like money so I said yes. The only problem is that all that running around made me a little buggered. Convinced Jeffer to start half an hour early and bailed.

Coming home wasn't great either, because I came home to a mass of buttons.

I should probably fill in more details and make more sense, but I'm letired. So take a nap, THEN FIRE ZE MISSILES!

Bad Mistake There. . .

2007-06-19T20:18:00.000+10:00

The admins at Gaia Online really fucked up this time, normally they make the occasional mistake and people seem to like to bitch about how stupid it is when it's not a huge deal.

But they made a huge mistake today, seriously, something that may result in the site going down like a cheap Vietnamese prostitute.

They made me a moderator.

When will people learn? I'm not good with authority, I like to be malicious, petty and cruel, not to mention thick-skulled, dull witted and probably a few other negative qualities. I also smell, but that might not be a huge issue in this circumstance.

A Lousy Student and Worse Teacher

2007-06-18T22:17:00.000+10:00

A while ago I decided to teach myself Chinese. Invested in a few text books, downloaded some useful files (including the full Pimsleur set and a handy book about learning another language with some useful tips).

There's just one problem with trying to teach yourself something, it's always better to be taught by someone who knows the subject.

Seriously, being self-taught has huge disadvantages, the biggest being that you can't immediately spot your mistakes without external references.

Anyone want to bother tutoring me? Because I have all the tools but the most important one.

Also, shortest blog post to date, go me!

I Didn't Know Cars Went That Slow

2007-06-17T17:38:00.000+10:00

I'm going to buy myself an Xbox 360 sometime soon, my decision was made final last night when I crashed at Carlos'.

We played some FORZA 2 (I won't buy it, but that's beside the point), and after a series of 3 races, we decided for the last one we were just going to ram the shit out of each other, forget winning, whoever takes the least damage by the end of the race is probably the winner.

I lost dramatically,

It all came undone when I saw Carlos careen into a wall. . . so I lined him up and hit him like the fist of an angry god. Oddly enough, I came off worse in that collision and for the rest of the race (this was on the second corner) my car struggled to get up to 70kph.

The worst part was on the final stretch before the finish line (I assume it's referred to as the final straight or some such thing, but who cares about being correct with racing terminology?). . . where I was crawling along to the finish and Carlos (who had long since finished the race and had the CPU controlling his car) absolutely hammered me.

My top speed was reduced to 12kph, the car would start veering left and then for no reason veer to the right. . . it was fucking hilarious, but the downside was that it took me a further 2 minutes to finish the race, and I was lapped twice after that.

Matter of fact, to prove how fucked I was, I rammed into a wall and my car didn't get even slightly damaged (as far as we could tell, it was pretty fucked up), the downside to that manoeuvre was that I ended up taking another 30 seconds or so reversing away from the wall, and then another 30 seconds after that getting back to my astounding top speed.

Good times.

There's nothing left for me to do in that game.

But now I need a 360 and an LCD TV that displays in 1080i. Looks like I won't be buying a car anytime soon.

Oh, I also saw Ocean's Thirteen, went to Nando's for dinner (Carlos' brother, Oscar, referred to it as a terrorist convention because everyone but us was Muslim), found a copy of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for the Gamecube and probably some other minor things, but who cares? The important thing is I destroyed a pixelated car.

The Many Problems With Too Much Time

2007-06-15T22:03:00.000+10:00

Another Sonata Arctica related entry today.

I'm a very sad strange little boy, and I feel like sharing a story about this.

My iPod gets constant use, on the bus, during breaks, wandering around, basically any time I'm not at home and not working, my iPod is on and 90% of the time, it's just playing through the Sonata Arctica discography. The reason I mention this? One particular song (White Pearl, Black Ocean from the album Reckoning Night, which is many levels of awesomeness I might add) always reminded me of Pocahontas (also awesome, but mainly because of this section which could never be put into a movie these days, well also because it's a good movie, but I love that song).

Until recently, I couldn't work out why an epic song made me think Disney. . . until I pressed a friend of mine who has similar interests and amounts of free time, told her the exact line which made me think Disney ("Everybody killed me with their eyes." approx 3:30 into the song) and then she trawled through the Pocahontas soundtrack and discovered that (after singing the lines to herself a few times to see how the SA line sounded with a female voice) the whole reason for this mental link was because the line "or ask the grinning bobcat why he grins" (from Colors of the Wind, conveniently linked above) was sung the same way.

There's probably a few other points in the song that are sung similarly too, I haven't actually listened to Colors of the Wind for a while, despite watching Pocahontas every once in a while and tracking down the song on YouTube for anyone foolish enough to read this blockage of intraweb tubes.

All that really matters here is that through wasting my time, someone else's time and listening to various forms of awesome music, I proved that I wasn't completely insane. . . that or that I some sort of ear for details in music. . . or that I have enough time to find this kind of thing out.

Okay, not too sure what was proven, but something must have been.

FRANTIC LAST SECOND EDIT!
Lilly (my friend who did the "research" on this piece, finding the line in Pocahontas that matched up etc) was wrong . . . having just actually bothered to listen to the song, the line "ask the grinning bobcat why he grins" does not match the SA line. Although there are numerous points in the song where she sings a note progression (is that the right term) identical to the one in White Pearl.

I'm not insane, but I think I've finally found what point has been proven. . . that I really need to check this stuff myself before going and announcing to the world that there has been a great discovery.

My New Goal:

2007-06-14T21:11:00.000+10:00

Making little children cry.

Come July 8, there shall be a great event in the Garden City shopping center. A Pokemon Connection Tour dohickey.

The important part is that there's a tournament. Some basic rules apply, lvl 50 max, no legendaries (except the sucky ones) and no duplicates (of items or pokemon).

I plan to use this tournament to further my current mission in life, making children cry. I have a slight advantage over the majority of people who will show up, because I imported my copy of the game which has yet to be released here. Also, I can cheat and make my team without effort, but odds are I'll just do it legitimately because I just have that much free time. Or not do anything at all. . . that's more my style.

The important thing to remember is that if I succeed, I will annoy people.

Now to just design a kickass team, make it, learn to use it, then get on with the child abuse. Here's hoping there aren't too many sad cases like myself at the event, otherwise I might miss some of the fun.

Buttsecks?

2007-06-13T16:58:00.000+10:00

You know how there are misheard song lyrics? Great fun and can lead to high levels of amusement such as in the case of Nightwish's Wishmaster. . .

Well, I've found something better. Just in a slightly different way.

Don't worry, I've done this before,
It'll hurt like hell and leave you sore.
Those are actual lyrics from Sonata Arctica's Fly With The Black Swan.

Now, completely devoid of context, even those with pure minds should be able to have a giggle at the sexual connotations. For those who are completely depraved, beings such as myself who have been raised by the internet, there's more than just a giggle available for such great lyrics.

For those wanting full context, you're going to have to apply your Google-fu to this one, or go buy the album Unia.

Now for more Sonata Arctica related goodness, because I spent an unhealthy amount of time last night researching them on the source of all knowledge, as well as watching some hilarious videos of Tony Kakko (that's the lead singer) doing an imitation of a muppet.

I seem to have a little thing for insane people. Here's hoping it's not a case of "like attracts like" because my interest in Sonata Arctica, Terry Pratchett and my habit of dating woman who seem to fall under the categories of "batshit insane", "los loco", "jibbawut?" ,or "just plain odd" (in some cases all four), not to mention the amount of time I spend on online forums. . . I'm starting to get worried, a blog post about Sonata Arctica's awesomeness has made me come to the realisation that I might very well be truly insane. That doesn't seem right. I can't be insane, it must be the rest of the world.

Random Quote edited in for fun:
God Squad lady: Praise Jesus! You won't be saved without Jesus! You have to start believing in Jesus to be saved! Jesus will always be there for you!
Suit #1: Would it be so awful if we pushed her out when the doors open?
Suit #2: No. Jesus will save her.

A Temporary Addition

2007-06-12T17:11:00.000+10:00

I've been told that I need a blog.

Jane even went to the hassle of making a DS Lite in photoshop for me to use as a layout, but that means I have to learn how to work out how to make a layout.

Give me time, and this place will look pretty and shiny.

In other news, I went exploring today. Well, the bus driver went exploring after arriving ten minutes late, then taking ages to get everyone on board (evidently, he was new, which isn't a good thing when you're doing a busy route). Anyhow, the exploration took place around the hospital, because someone managed to crash their car at the intersection, meaning the cops decided to block off the road the bus is meant to travel along.

It was fun watching the people waiting at the bus stop realise we were turning along Kessels Rd and start sprinting so that they could catch the bus. Then there was the whole navigating around the hospital in a banana bus, which was fun enough for me to put down my book for a few minutes to see where the hell I was.

Eventually I made it home.

One last thing, the new guy at work is a Kiwi, I spent a fair part of my day making him say "fillet" (it's not a challenge, but hearing him say "fullot" hasn't gotten old yet).