buggery.org

We posted out the invitations for the wedding a week ago tonight. Several people in North America and Europe report that they’ve already received theirs, but other friends in Tighes Hill (less than a mile away) haven’t. Monday was a public holiday here, but that doesn’t explain the phenomenon. Curious.

“A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never sure.” So goes an old proverb what I just made up, so what do we say of the man with two computers running five different operating systems?

A week after the iBook came into my iLife, I have few, if any, iComplaints. There is an interesting learning process associated with alternating between the parallel Windows and Macintosh universes. So many things work in different ways — often only small differences, but they sometimes present a challenge.
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Some notes from the weekend’s camping excursion.
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Photos from the weekend camp are online in the gallery. Text to follow tomorrow or thereabouts. Stunning weekend, just perfect.

We’re heading up to the Chichester State Forest area in a wee while for a jolly weekend’s camping with the dogs. So no posts until Monday (unless we find a hotspot, which doesn’t seem very probable in the outback).

Tipping to date: 25/32 (78%). This week’s tips…
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OK. “Wintel Chauvinist” is a bit strong, but I’ve been a Windows user since I stepped up from MS-DOS, and I was dead keen on MS-DOS from the point I grew tired of VMS, and VMS seemed so cool after punched paper tape… but I digress.

I’m writing this post on my brand spanking new Macintosh iBook. It’s only a few hours old, and I can honestly report that typing on this keyboard is, for whatever reason, like wading through a shark-infested lagoon, but generally I’m loving my new toy.

More in due course.

If they can arrest one architect, why not all of them?

(Apologies to 1970s feminists).

Mark Latham’s plans to put the republic back on the agenda are encouraging, sensible and logical:

• If Latham becomes PM later this year, in 2005 we will have a plebiscite on the question “Do you want an Australian Republic?”
  • If that passes (and it certainly will), in 2006 we will have a plebiscite on the proposed model(s) for a Republic;
    • Then in 2007 a final constitutional referendum to adopt or reject the preferred model.

The plan is simple, leaves the voters in charge of the process, has -plenty of time for informed debate and discussion, and proceeds logically from each stage to the one following.
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Next: Republican Party campaign ads from the Madison Avenue offices of Pavlov & Pavlov:

Instead of asking the subject — a Democratic voter — what he thought of the use of Sept. 11 images in the first Bush campaign commercial this year, the researchers noted which parts of his brain were active as he watched — and that they were different from the parts that had lit up in earlier tests with Republican voters.

The researchers don’t claim to have figured out either party’s brain quite yet, since they haven’t finished this pioneering experiment.

But they have already noticed intriguing patterns in the way that Democrats and Republicans look at candidates.

Researchers zeroed in on 9/11 images and their particular effect among Democrats on the amygdala, the part of the brain that responds to threats and danger…

“The first interpretation that occurred to me,” one scientist conducting the test tells the NYT, “is that the Democrats see the 9/11 issue as a good way for Bush to get re-elected, and they experience that as a threat.”

(Drudge)

In an open letter to William Kristol, Richard Perle, and President Bush’s other noeoconservative puppetmasters, John Warner wonders why the US invaded Iraq and not, say, Australia:

I’ve been playing Risk: The Game of Global Domination since I was eight years old and never, never have I seen someone win the game by massing their forces in the Middle East at the beginning of the game. Too many borders! Impossible to reinforce! Enemies from all directions! Australia, on the other hand, is easily conquered. Start in Western Australia, make a straight-line march through eastern Australia, then on into New Zealand and New Guinea, and finally up to Siam, sealing the entire continent and guaranteeing an extra two armies per turn for the duration of game. (Ask Secretary Rumsfeld if those would come in handy.)

Environmental protection regulations are forcing the US government to replace the rocket motors on its 500 Minuteman III nuclear missiles with less polluting versions, at a cost of $5.2 million per missile. This is being done so that, should global nuclear war break out, the missiles will not pollute American skies with smelly exhaust as they wing their way towards creating a nuclear wasteland in whichever country America has designated as the ennemi du jour.

Doublethink? NIMBYism? Or just plain bizarre?

(Via Boing Boing)

Some news from our part of the world, apropos of nothing…

• The government of Nauru is broke — so broke they don’t have enough money to buy fuel for their one-plane airline and government offices are not able to make outgoing phone calls. The country’s major assets — all of which are real estate investments in Australia — are about to be seized by financiers, and the prospect of all of Nauru’s 10,500 citizens settling in Australia is being openly canvassed. In the 1970s, Nauru had the world’s second-highest per-capita income; today it’s a slum nation.
• The former Fijian Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, is dead. Ratu Mara was the country’s first PM and Australians will remember him as a key player in negotiating a peaceful end to Fiji’s military coup in 1987. The Fijian public has not been told of his death yet due to traditional protocols which means the country’s chiefs need to be informed first.
• The impoverished government of East Timor has offered to pay Australia’s costs to negotiate an agreement over the maritime boundary between the two countries. The sticking point is the huge oil and gas fields which lie on East Timor’s side of the likely boundary and which are currently under Australian control under a shonky deal between Australia and Indonesia drawn up during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor. Australia claims it can’t afford to meet more than twice a year to discuss the boundary; East Timor — which is losing $1 million a day and which doesn’t have the money it needs for schools, hospitals and other basic services — wants monthly meetings in the hope that the matter can be resolved in five years.

TV Turnoff Week starts today.

Seven days of liberation from the tyranny of the flickering box. As a precaution I’ve put some masking tape on the screen to prevent impulsively switching on (also note the symbolic antique shackles next to the set).

When I suggested we get on the bandwagon and eschew the idiot box for a week, Brent’s biggest worry was missing the SBS World News. I suggested to him that he’d grow to love ABC Radio PM by the end of the week.

It’s my bithday today, so I’ve composed a little doggerel in my own honour…

Happy Birthday to me,
I’m two score and three,
I look in the mirror, and what do I see?

My hair’s going grey,
Face covered with lines,
When it comes to aging,
I’ve got all seven signs!

My butt is all droopy,
My ears sprouting hair,
I’m past making whoopie,
I’m beyond repair.

But despite the decades,
There’s good news instead—
I may have the AIDS,
But at least I’m not dead!

P.S. Yes, I do have an Amazon.com Wish List. Doesn’t everybody?

Darren James, the star of such fine films as Booty Bandits, Up Your Ass #21 and White Trash Whore #9, tested positive for HIV on Wednesday, a fact that has sent the pr0n industry into damage control mode, apparently.

One can only wonder how Mr James feels, having his HIV diagnosis treated as salacious grist for the media mill in this way. I guess if you’re famous for what Mr James is famous for you get used to being treated as a piece of meat (and what a piece of meat it is! boom-boom!) but the whole scenario seems depressingly unhuman to me.

Apparently a second “exotic movie actor”, the improbably-named Lara Roxx, has also tested positive now.

Her agent, Daniel Perreault, now claims that he urged her not to do the job, arguing that at 18 or 19 (reports of her age vary) she was too young and inexperienced to take part in a group scene, including a manoeuvre known in the pseudo-technical jargon of the industry as a “double anal”. (The Independent)

I wonder if they qualify for workers’ compensation.

It’s time I outed myself as a closet football fan. And by football, I mean Australian Rules, which while not the code of choice here in rugby-crazed Newcastle is the one that gets my juices flowing.

Aussie Rules is nothing like any other kind of football, unless you happen to be a fan of Gaelic Football, in which case it’s surprisingly similar. Athletic, fast-moving, and decidedly easy on the eye.

My team? The Sydney Swans, of course.

You can’t have footy without footy tipping, of course. Footy tipping is an institution in this wide, brown, gambling-crazed land. As well as providing a helpful pre-weekend opportunity to

I’ve been planning for a while to post my weekly tipping competition tips on here; so here’s Round 4. My tips are shown in bold.

Tipping from previous weeks: 19/24 (79%). This week’s tips…
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The wheels on the train go ’round and ’round…

I’ve spent too many late nights on the train coming home from Sydney this week. I’m in danger of becoming a regular on the 21.17 from Central (arrives in Newcastle 00.01). But it’s been a moderately productive week, so I won’t complain.

I did the Sydney trip on Wednesday so I could attend the historic first meeting of the new Marrickville Council. Following the local government elections late last month, Marrickville is now distinctly viridescent* — the Greens took five of the twelve seats on a Council which has been Labor-controlled since its inception in 1952. Labor has four, and there are three independents.

It’s great to see the Greens doing so well in my old stamping ground, and I used the opportunity to write a story which will appear online here eventually (we’ll see if someone wants to publish it first).

It was a worthwhile journey, but by the time I got there and back it took ten hours out of my day, which left me tired and depressed by the time I crawled into bed about 00.30. I was even more depressed when I woke up a few hours later to find that Brent had already left for an overnight in Sydney of his own.

I spent Thursday at home, working and writing, then did the Sydney thing again on Friday, as I do every week. We decided to go to Planet Positive (social event for positive people) at the Positive Living Centre, which meant being on the 21.17 again last night. There’s nothing like being slightly drunk on a long slow train home in the middle of the night to fuck with your head, but we made it.

* - viridescent, adj. greenish or becoming green. Obviously I have my thesaurus handy.

In the couple of days since I posted about the “Jew” Googlebomb, the Wikipedia entry is now at the top of the Google rankings, and the neo-Nazis have neen relegated to second place.

Google’s explanatory page no longer appears in the sponsored links area, either. Instead there’s this weird eBay listing:

Chilling.

UPDATE, 13:19: In the time it took to post the text above, the rankings have reversed again. Does Google’s ranking algorithm update in real time?

UPDATE, 13:20: And reversed again. I need popcorn.

“In the past four years, America’s national debt has reached an all-time high,” the ad’s narrator said. “And who’s responsible? You are. You’re sitting there eating a big bowl of Fritos, watching TV, and getting fatter as the country goes to hell. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

(New Negative Campaign Ads Blast Voters Directly, The Onion 2004-04-14)

Straight man Grant Stoddard describes getting buggered by a dildo moulded on his own wanger. Film at eleven.

A friend of mine saw the Make Your Own Dildo kit at my apartment and asserted that getting fucked could “turn me gay.” That’s like saying that listening to The Commodores’ Greatest Hits would turn me black. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t. I’ve tried.) I can tell you that taking it from a hot woman with a strap-on will neither inspire you to contradict Thom Filicia’s decorating advice on Queer Eye nor flail your limbs upon hearing the opening bars to It’s Raining Men. I think the experience ultimately made me more appreciative of women, more secure in my heterosexuality and more grateful to the ladies I persuaded to let me “go there” over the years. I think most straight guys should take a leap of faith and try it out. If you’re trying to get your sweetheart to let you go Greek, offering to take it in the heinie first is a most egalitarian gesture.

Robbie Williams’ ex-manager sez:

“I don’t think he is bisexual, I think he is totally gay. It was clear to me that he is gay.”

(This is London, via QueerDay)

The word “Jew” has been Googlebombed by the antisemitic website JewWatch dot something. Enter “Jew” into Google and the first website returned is full of neo-Nazi ravings.

Numerous bloggers are linking the word “Jew” on their blogs to the Wikipedia entry for “Jew“, in an attempt to out-Googlebomb the Nazi GoogleBombers At the risk of becoming part of a global scragfight, Jew Jews Jew Jewry Jew.

(If this all sounds like GoogleGobbledyGook to you, read more about Googlebombing on Wikipedia).

• The Times of India has a story about the brouhaha.
• Google has posted an explanation on its website.

We celebrated Easter appropriate form by seeing The Passion of the Christ on Good Friday night.

What an awful movie. Overblown, fetishistic about violence and gore, lacking narrative and (with the possible exception of Pontius Pilate) lacking any real characters at all. Given that this is, essentially, “The. Greatest. Story. Ever. Told.” it was a pretty woeful performance.

The Pontius Pilate character at least displayed some human foilbles, a barely-competent governor trying to find a way to deal with the baying crowd not to maintain order but to save his own neck. But this could have been explored at lot more effectively, rather than devoting virtually the whole movie to Jim Cavaziel bleeding.

And bleed he did. Now, I know that Jesus Christ was (we’re told) the son of God and divinity made flesh and all that, but he was also (and I think the theologicians out there will agree this is a key point) human.

An average-sized (70kg) adult human male has approximately five litres of blood. By my reckoning, Mel Gibson’s Jesus had already shed at least four or five times that amount even before they nailed the poor bugger up. We see His blood everywhere — flying through the air, spattering the faces and uniforms of his attackers, littering the streets and coating everything it touches. Mel Gibson’s blood-and-gore fetish gets in the way of his message again and again.

Gibson should stick to what he does best — making bang-em-up action flicks and impregnating his wife.

I just cleaned out my desk drawer for(obviously) the first time since the late 1980s. Look what I found.

This may be the last remaining bottle of correction fluid in existence. It’s in the bin now.

Farewell, old friend.

Today’s date — 04/04/04 — is one of those rare moments when the arbitrary numbers we assign to the days of our lives align neatly to facilitate international communications.

The dates on this website are written in the format recommended by ISO 8601, which is not the standard here in Australia, where most people persist in using the dd/mm/yy format. That’s a fine, logical and reasonable approach, and one that accords nicely with my friends in Europe but it causes confusion to our American cousins, who are accustomed to mm/dd/yy. The ISO format — yyyy-mm-dd — is not only pleasingly logical but unambiguous. That’s why I encourage everyone to use it (usually without success).

There’s a Campaign for the ISO 8601 Format — that page lists many good reasons to think about this apparently peripheral issue.

Here endeth the lesson in comparative calendrics.

Should the U.S. pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage? USA Today wants to know what you think.

(56-to-44 in favour of decency, common sense and justice as at time of writing. But morons.org reports that the Xtians are mobilising.)

It’s official: dog owners really do tend to look like their dogs.

Researchers at the University of California (only in California can you get a grant to do this wacky stuff) took separate photographs of dogs and their owners and then asked volunteers to try to match dog to owner. Among pure-bred dogs, volunteers picked the correct owner in the majority of cases.

Mongrels, however, didn’t fare so well.

Researchers said it seemed owners of pure-breed dogs made a choice based on their physical resemblance.

“Once the researchers were able to confirm, with randomised photo-matching techniques, the high incidence of resemblance between owners and pure-breeds, and none for mixed breeds, they went on to conclude that the similarity was due to owner selection at time of acquisition,” Mr Christenfeld said.

(ABC online)