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30 September, 2003

Ankle injuries: tricky little bastards. What with the shitty weather last weekend, I managed to slip on some wet pavement and twist my ankle a bit - nothing serious at all, but you never know that at the time do you? My leg went out from under me, I felt my ankle buckle as the other one tried to keep me upright in direct contravention of the laws of gravity, I went down, I bounced back up again, and everything felt fine. No obvious compound fractures or horrific bleeding. I can stand on it. I can hop up and down on it, so there would seem to be two possibilities:

1. I'm fine and it's only a minor injury.
2. I've actually horribly injured myself, but the pain just hasn't kicked in yet -- a very real possibility with ankle injuries, as is my understanding.

(See, my flatmate managed to royally fuck up his ankle a few months ago (stairs and alcohol were involved), and while he knew from the start that Bad Things had happened to his anatomy, it wasn't until he was off the streets and inside and horizontal that the shaking and the "maybe hospital would be nice" set in. I remember years ago hurting my ankle at the downtown bus depot, and not feeling anything until I had walked all the way up Queen St, caught my own 30 minute bus ride home, gone to bed and slept on it for a few hours. At which point I woke up to find a blood vessel had been compressed or something, and that the veins on the top of my foot were bulging ominously while my foot throbbed almost visibly.)

So you never know -- there follows a (psychologically) agonising period where I'm forced to just stand there and wait for the shooting pain that heralds a jaunt to A&E, which may or may not be coming. After a minute or two of nothing I assumed the best and set out to the shops with flatmate (having told him that if I can't walk by the time we get there, he's bloody driving home). Ankle's getting a bit sore by the time I'm back home, but no obvious swelling, and everything's the colour it should be (or at least the colour it normally is), so it looks like I'm OK. Slap an ice pack on it for an hour or two, just in case.

Once the practical aspect is out of the way, there then follows a period of theoretical research, as I attempt to piece together exactly what happened to me in the half a second in between happy vertical and concerned horizontal, based on what forensic evidence I have at hand, namely the collection of minor injuries I ended up with: "Now, I can remember that my left foot was the one that slipped initially, but it was my right ankle that buckled, and here I have grazes on the outside of my right knee and the palm of my right hand... a slight strain of the muscles in my left hip..." A scenario in which my body was in a position to sustain these injuries (and no others) still eludes me. Time to watch more CSI, I guess.

30 September, 2003

Oh, and if you don't know me socially or read Slashdot, you may not have heard that The Fanimatrix has been released. So, here's the link, Mum.

27 September, 2003

So I'm reading through the little CSN pamphlet the guy at the comic shop gave me:

"Is that a picture of Alan Moore? Oh no, it's Rob Zombie."

At least three people out there should find that funny.

21 September, 2003

Hitcounter's disappeared again, so fuck it. I was getting a bit bored of the "humourous search terms" gag anyway -- did plenty enough of it in the old journal.

And now Warren Ellis has started doing it, so if I start again here, it'll just look like I'm copying him. When in fact I copied the idea off Siobhan (whose site appears to be no more), after she noticed the number of people who got to her site by searching for naked pictures of Rebecca de Mornay.

19 September, 2003

Arr...

16 September, 2003

This is the most fun I've had in a while.

15 September, 2003

Oh right, the sheep-fucking thing.

Saw an editorial in an Aussie paper last week commenting on New Zealanders taking exception to Waltzing Matilda being sung at rugby games or something. The article suggested that New Zealanders wouldn't be able to understand why the swagman would want to get the jumbuck into his tucker-bag, when with a bit of sweet-talk, it could be coaxed into bed. For fucking. On account of how we New Zealanders all fuck sheep.

It surprises me that people still make sheep-fucking jokes about New Zealanders. No, I'll rephrase that -- it doesn't surprise me at all that people still make sheep-fucking jokes about New Zealanders, not if they still make jokes about Canadians being boring or the French being surrender-monkeys or the Irish/Polish/whoever-lives-in-the-country-next-to-ours being stupid. I guess it's just that since I have long since outgrown this level of humour, I expect the rest of the world to have done so as well. How egocentric of me.

The thing that gets me is the logic that must be behind such accusations of farm animal abuse. I haven't travelled abroad enough to have been called a sheepfucker to my face, but I wish I had, just so I could ask the person why they thought New Zealanders fuck sheep. I can only assume it'd go like this:

"You New Zealanders fuck sheep!"

"Why would you think we fuck sheep?"

"Because your country is full of sheep."

"So?"

"So you're surrounded by sheep all the time."

"So?"

"Well if I was surrounded by sheep all the time, I'd certainly... um... never mind."

It seems to me that levelling accusations of Flossy-bothering is a sure sign that the accuser would be out with the velcro gloves the first chance that they got. Which means they're probably just jealous. Sad, really.

10 September, 2003

For the benefit of the two or three people reading this who don't move in the same social circles as me, and who therefore may not have heard of The Fanimatrix - go there, watch the trailer, say "yowza!"

7 September, 2003

ACTION FILMS: KNOW YOUR ROLE!

So last night, with girlfriends otherwise engaged, flatmate and I rented two mindless action films and sat down for an evening's entertainment. He's probably going to give them a thorough going-over on his journal, but they also moved me enough to expound on a problem that too many would-be action films fall into: not knowing their role.

The two films were Half Past Dead and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever*. I hope that right away you can make a good guess at which one turned out to be an enjoyable piece of throwaway cinema, and which had no idea that it wasn't actually a serious film; which got on with the obligatory violence and mayhem, and which got bogged down in twisted plots, "surprise" revelations, and character development; which film, in other words, didn't know it's role.

In fact, let's look at those titles. A good action film title should consist of two or three single-syllable words forming some sort of meaningless hard-ass sound bite that has almost no relation to the actual plot of the film whatsoever. Half Past Dead - check. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever - you on the crack, boy?

Moving on, a good action film should have a plot that can be easily summed up in a single sentence. Let's see:

Half Past Dead - "Steven Seagal is an undercover cop posing as a prisoner in a newly refurbished Alcatraz, when commandos invade and hold visiting dignitaries hostage, in an attempt to get at the $200 million in gold one of the prisoners managed to squirrel away before being caught."

Short, easy to understand, and bonus points for use of the word "squirrel". Now, for contestant number two:

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever - "Antonio Banderas is 'Ecks', a former FBI agent who retired following the death of his wife, who is coerced into going after 'Sever', a Chinese-trained death machine and former DIA agent (played by Lucy Liu) who's out to get the evil head of the DIA who killed her child years ago, and who also made Ecks think his wife was dead when actually she wasn't so he could marry her instead (because he'd also tricked her into thinking that Ecks was dead) and who has also gotten hold of some sort of nano-frog injectable death robot which he smuggled into the country by injecting it into his son, who Sever has kidnapped and is keeping safe because he's actually Ecks' son, fathered just before his parents were tricked into thinking that each other was dead."

I couldn't follow that, and I fucking wrote it. But I'm pretty sure I got all of the plot elements in there. Do you see though? This film doesn't know it's role -- it's like when celebrities get interviewed; they're all good fun to watch and snigger at while they're doing their thing, but all of a sudden they expect you to care what they think? Fuck that shit.

So there we go - Half Past Dead was a rip-roaring, gun-toting, Ja Rule-costarring fun ride (which even prompted me to add a new Rule of Death when the fat prisoner predictably bought it), while Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever was a letdown from the title on in. Let this be a lesson:

ACTION FILMS: KNOW YOUR ROLE!

* Normally I don't include extraneous sub-titles when I refer to films, but that one is just so entrancingly awful that I can't resist including it every time I mention the film out of some kind of sick fascination.

6 September, 2003

This is pretty fucking clever. Stereoscopic images -- they've been around for ages, but you always needed either some sort of goofy-looking goggles with a different image over each eye, or the ability to go just cross-eyed enough to overlay the two images when they're side by side. This clever bastard has instead made them animated GIFs with the two images swapping back and forth. The effect's not as good as, say, a Viewmaster, but it's the closest I've yet seen to 3D photos on a computer screen.

And also the guy's an "artist", so there's "3D" pictures of naked chicks. Go nuts.

2 September, 2003

All spelling mistakes faithfully preserved. And highlighted!

I remember the day I got my first Nigerian e-mail scam -- the day I truly became a citizen of the Internet. Now that Liberia's hitting the news, it seems the scammers have moved country. Now a battle-hardened recipient of scams, spams, viruses and Tubgirl, my initial reaction on receiving this gem was "Amos J. Wreh -- that's gotta be some sort of smart-ass anagram of something".

Unfortunately, the best Wordsmith's anagram finder can come up with is "JAM WHORES" -- funny, but hardly damning. Ah well. 'Least now I know that SHOWER is an anagram of WHORES -- that's bound to come in useful.

31 August, 2003

Professor Stephen Hawking says:

"I'LL KICK YOUR FUCKIN' ASS!"

28 August, 2003

Don Hertzfeld continues to be a funny man, who, on a single page, manages to provide hours of entertainment. Go on, follow all the links.

Personal fave: punchlines for sale.

27 August, 2003

I'm starting to become immune to my alarm in the morning. When I first started having to force myself to rise regularly (some time around University), I actually conditioned myself to react to it -- the sound of my wee watch alarm going off first thing would trigger an immediate adrenaline surge, propelling me out of bed quickly enough that by the time I realized I'd been tricked by my own endocrinology, I was already up and about. But it's wearing off.

I'm a light sleeper (for "light", read "fucking terrible"), and I'm almost always awake by the time the alarm goes off (I just wish I wasn't). Nevertheless, the aforementioned Pavlovian response would snap me out of my lethargy as though I'd just awoken. But not so much any more. Sure, I get up when it goes, but not until I've thought and then said "fuck" and laid there for a minute or so, waiting for my eyes to focus. The conditioning has been replaced by habit, and habits are much easier to break. Something must be done. I need a new alarm.

It'll need to be bigger, better, faster, more -- I want an alarm that causes me to scream "Sweet Jesus!", dive out of bed, and hide under my desk for a good thirty seconds before I realise where I am and what's happening, and I want it to be able do this to me every fucking morning. I'm thinking maybe some sort of intricately rigged-up Warner Brothers setup whereby an air-horn sounds, my bedding spontaneously combusts, ice water is splashed on my head and giant steel spikes are driven through my pillow the instant after my head leaves it.

I could hire someone to wake me each morning in new and creative ways I guess, but eventually I'd have trouble hiding the bodies.

26 August, 2003

"Let me tell you the truth. The truth is what is. And what should be is a fantasy, a terrible, terrible lie somebody gave the people long ago."

—Comedian Lenny Bruce, who was charged eight times for obscenity in the 60s, and died a junkie.

Strange world.

25 August, 2003

I am so goth.

22 August, 2003

Reality TV porn -- the inevitable has occurred.

"Pornstar Academie will be a great web-based underground porn show where local pornography will take center stage. Every Sunday, the future porn stars will be challenged by the public. Viewers will suggest a challenge to the contestants facing elimination. Sketches, challenges and role playing relevant to the x-business will be featured in every episode."

That's right -- log on to the site and you can follow the fortunes* of the hopeful contestants as they compete for a chance to break into the porn industry (an industry noted for its exclusivity and pickyness when it comes to hiring). You can "witness their doubts, lack of confidence, and triumphs over adversity!" See them "infatuated, tired, exited for the coming performance as well as euphoric and drained after them!" Download wallpapers and screensavers of your favourite contestant! Vote for them!

Or you could just have a wank, I guess.

Whatever you do, don't forget the 10 Golden Rules...

* I was going to put "ups and downs", but thought better of it.

20 August, 2003

The legends were true...

That sound you hear is thousands of IT support staff's heads exploding, accompanied by thousands more nodding sagely, then quietly sobbing into their Mountain Dew.

Also: Do you have your PhD in filth yet?

16 August, 2003

16 August, 2003

I'm sure Cousin Jamie won't mind me making him famous...

Cousin Jamie lives in Korea. He shares with me the family trait of being a funny bastard. Unlike me, he's a funny bastard who sometimes drinks a little too much. And by "a little" I mean "a lot". And by "sometimes" I mean "compulsively". And then he sends me e-mails:

> No no no - you misunderstand: it's not that I *hate*
> you, it's that I'm *ashamed* of you - big difference.
>
> Re: Christmas time - bring it on, bitch. I'll beat
> you like a red-headed stepchild.
>
> Your loving cousin,
>
> Josh.
>

Here's lookin' at you, Cousin Jamie. Seriously -- like a red-headed stepchild.

13 August, 2003

In other news: sky blue; grass green.

Well, duh.

13 August, 2003

Yeah, so I bought the Transformers: The Movie DVD. Failing in my quest to find someone to tell me not to (et tu Jack?), I was instead egged on by people wanting to vicariously reclaim their childhoods, people insisting that as Orson Welles' last film it had profound historical significance, and no small number of people who wanted to rekindle their old masturbatory fantasies about Arcee. I assume.

Having finally given in, I feel that I have crossed some sort of line -- the sort that has "normal, well-adjusted person" written on one side and "irredeemable anorak-wearing freak" on the other. I get this feeling from time to time, like when I find myself sniggering at "There's no place like 127.0.0.1". Invariably, however, I quickly find evidence that there are many more geeks out there who are so, so much more geeky than I. The 54,377* people who voted for Star Wars Kid to be included in the new Star Wars movie, for instance.

Or the folks who compiled the DVD I just bought. I was mightily impressed at the level of obsessive behaviour that went into making it. These poor schmucks have scoured video archives to come up with:

• Original theatrical trailers and TV spots.
• Original TV ads for the toys from the early 80s with ugly, ugly 80s children mouthing "robots in disguise". This is America's big secret -- pre-1990s, their teeth were just as uneven as everyone else's.
• International versions of the ads (you haven't lived until you've seen Japanese Transformers ads, and you haven't laughed until you've heard them in French).
• A music video featuring the mulletted caterwauling of the 80s rock icon who sang the theme song.
• Bios of the characters (including rather morbid entries of all the ones who die in the film, with little links to their death scenes -- I don't recall being horribly scarred as a child by seeing a bunch of my favourite Autobots buying it, but that could just mean I've repressed the memories).
• Bios of the voice talent (I regret that I was to young to know who Orson Welles, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle and Robert Stack were at the time I first saw this).
• Bios of the 80s metal bands who did the soundtrack (also Weird Al Yankovic).

No way would I ever go to such lengths for the sake of completeness -- I don't really rate that high on the geek scale after all. So the cause of my aching self-doubt ends up being the antidote for it as well. See how it works out?

And the movie itself? Well, it's fairly shite obviously -- 80s-quality animation, 80s-quality hair metal soundtrack, and Orson Welles' voice is all distorted and electronic-sounding, so what's the point? Not to mention the fact that it was clearly designed to pass the torch to a new generation of merchandising (all the old characters getting killed and replaced with new ones). But, just for a minute, I was a child again. Which makes what my girlfriend did to me later that evening a very bad thing indeed.

* At time of writing -- by the time you check that link, there'll be even more of them...

10 August, 2003

"I like eugenics, but I thought Annie Lennox was better when she went solo..."

And that was the funniest thing I said all night.

8 August, 2003

Have I mentioned my knives lately? God, I love my knives.

See, after moving flats, it turned out that the decent kitchen knives belonged to someone else. Cutting up chicken breasts with a bread knife works fairly well it turns out, but right tool for the job and all that -- we needed a new knife set. Fortunately, several home stores were having sales on utensils, so off to the mall we go.

Choosing the right set didn't take long:

"Those ones are cheap -- there's more in that set -- th- oooh...."

Up until that shopping expedition, I'd only encountered the usual sort of knife that has the black handle with the three little rivets holding it together (I believe they're called "tangs", which is funny). I wasn't aware you can also get ones that are moulded out of a single piece of shiny stainless steel, which are A) more hygienic, since there are no small gaps for bacteria live in, and B) quite clearly implements of death, no matter what they're sold as.

I can't draw one of them with feeling that it should be thrown. It actually feels wrong somehow to be slicing cheese with something that so clearly belongs buried in the neck of my adversary.

This is my paring knife. Once drawn, it cannot be sheathed until it has tasted blood.

7 August, 2003

"An order log left exposed at one of Amazing Internet Products' websites revealed that, over a four-week period, some 6,000 people responded to e-mail ads and placed orders for the company's Pinacle herbal supplement. Most customers ordered two bottles of the pills at a price of $50 per bottle."

Why do we get spam? Because the world is actually full of brainless ass-monkeys with tiny cocks!!! Clearly we need to round up and incinerate the physically underendowed everywhere, for the good of Inboxes the world over.

No, wait... don't do that.

6 August, 2003

As a comics geek, I am currently bearing witness to a new and disturbing trend (not that all comic book trends aren't disturbing, but this one is definitely new). Right at the moment, comic book adaptations are being made of just about every fantasy cartoon series of the 80s. GI Joe and Transformers came first; now I see Masters of the Universe, Voltron, Thundercats -- all new, yet all originally hailing from the years B.C.*

No big deal, you say? Hollywood has been making movies out of whatever recycled crap they can get their hands on (books, comics, old TV shows) for ages now? A fair point, but there is a difference: Hollywood's doing it because it's easier and cheaper than coming up with original ideas, and because they know they can get away with it. The comic industry is doing it because it's what the readers actually want.

Comic book readers are in large part geeks in their late 20s and older. Geeks of this age bracket are marked by a number of common characteristics, among them a hightened sense of nostalgia, and an income high enough that they can waste money in attempts to recapture their youth. Canny marketers see this and exploit it, and the geeks are only too willing to be exploited.

Try as I might to resist these impulses in myself, I can still relate. If I couldn't, why would I be downloading remixes of old video game themes right now? And while I still pour scorn on anyone buying the current crop of retro-comics, as soon as a Mighty Orbots one comes out, I'm there.

All of which brings me to my current dilemma: I was browsing in a local games shop (yes, GI Joe comics are pathetic, but my new Evil Dead PS2 game is kewl -- fuck off) and saw that you can get the Transformers movie on DVD. With extras.

Right now when I look in the mirror, I see a little figure on each shoulder. The one telling me to buy it looks like Kai, and the one telling me not to looks like Apathy Jack, but I can't for the life of me work out which one is the angel and which is the devil...

* For "Before Christina" - I measure time periods according to whether or not it was wrong of me to want to fuck Christina Ricci at the time. The Addams Family was, for example, several years B.C. -- The Opposite of Sex better have fucking been A.C. I predict that future generations will use the Olsen Twins Index in a similar fashion.

5 August, 2003

"...because what happened next was pure farce. But it was also kind of ironic, so that was OK."

He's a mad Irishman, but he speaks the truth: anything's OK, as long as it's ironic. Except that song about things being ironic, which, as another mad Irishman once pointed out, is just bloody stupid.

I'm a big fan of the irony excuse -- why just the other day I was defending my movie-going habits (saw 2 Fast 2 Furious, Charlie's Angels 2 and Terminator 3 and I loved them) by pointing out that mindless twaddle they may be, but I enjoy them on an ironic level, so that makes it OK. Yes, as long as you let people know you're being ironic, you can act as much of a twat as you want. The question is, how do you let people know? On this here Intermonet thingy, people generally use smilies.

Let me say right now that I fucking hate smilies.

:) - whee! I am happy as a loon!

;) - see how I wink slyly at you? Surely I am sly and humorous.

+<:{ - I am the Archbishop of Canterbury and have a moustache!

OK, that last one was kind of funny, but I just made that up now. Most of the time, smilies are just one more step on the slippery slope to signing up for online quizzes and saying "LOL" out loud.

Yes, smilies are crap, and you're a dick if you use them -- unless, of course, you use them ironically. The real question is: how do you show that you're using a smiley ironically?

4 August, 2003

Wasn't this the plot to an old episode of The New Statesman?

Piers: "But it's only got one --"

Alan B'Stard: "Exactly..."

1 August, 2003

I got yer fearful symmetry right here.

And now the makers of the Tomb Raider movies are blaming the makers of the Tomb Raider games for being shit...

29 July, 2003

OK, so let me get this straight:

1. New Zealand invents Popstars (TrueBliss forms; puts out an album; splits up).
2. Australia does its own Popstars (Bardot forms; puts out an album; splits up).
3. The format moves to England, with UK Popstars (band forms; is indistinguishable from S Club 7; members raped and killed, I assume).
4. UK Popstars goes across the Atlantic and becomes American Idol (Kelly Clarkson a national hero; mortal soul now owned by recording studio. American Idol 2 -- Clay and Rueben both national heros; souls similarly forfeit).

And now "Plans are underway to find New Zealand's answer to American Idol".

When I invent my time machine, Foucault is gonna be the first to get it...

27 July, 2003

I'm listening to 70s-pastiche geek pop in a language I don't understand.

My flatmate is listening to the kind of dance music that goes "doooo do-do do-do do doooo do-do do-do do DOO-DO DO DO-DO-DO" and has guys talking about Ecuador.

We're in a race to see who goes to hell first, and I'm afraid he's winning.

26 July, 2003

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."

The fact that I nod knowingly when I read this marks me, I fear, as a wanker.

24 July, 2003

Hmm... ninjas.

23 July, 2003

Turns out I have a whole bunch of one-liners that never warranted a journal entry by themselves, but which make perfectly good blog-fodder. Let's start with the opening line of A Sci-Fi Story I Will Never Write:

They say, in space no-one can hear you scream. "They" being movie trailer copywriters, not real people. They're wrong, anyway -- there's always someone to hear you scream. The aliens shoving stainless steel golf umbrellas up your arsehole, for one.

Also, this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

21 July, 2003

John G Raped and Murdered Your Wife

Memento is one of a small number of films that I A) acknowledge as a work of cinematic masterpiece, and B) never want to see again as long as I live. I saw again it last night with my girlfriend, who hadn't seen it before. Now she too never wants to see it again as long as she lives.

Most films are there to be enjoyed; a few are to be "appreciated"; and a few more are, if anything, to be endured (I'm told Irreversible is such a film -- good, but you really have to will yourself to sit through it). And then there are a few, such as Memento, Seven and Twelve Monkeys that are to be enjoyed the first time around, and endured thereafter. The thrill of a plot where you really don't have a clue how the hell it's going to turn out disappears once you do know how it's going to turn out, and it's going to turn out badly. At least in my case I had someone seeing it with me for the first time, whose reactions I could watch, and whose impressions I could share afterwards.

Interestingly enough, I have similar feelings towards The Big Hit, although for the opposite reasons -- I know it's going to turn out OK in the end, but the thought of watching Marky Mark getting shit on for the two hours before that is a little too cringe-worthy to bear.

Also of note is Love, Honour and Obey (there's some Ray Winstone for you -- "you're fat, and I'll throw you in the river"), a film I would gladly watch over and over, even though I know what's in store for Johnny Lee Miller at the end. Basically because the little twat deserves it.

FIND HIM AND KILL HIM

20 July, 2003

Never really liked Star Trek. Maybe I would've if it was more like Switchblade Honey -- summed up by the author as "Ray Winstone saying 'Bollocks' in space". It reads like the pilot to a TV show that would make American audiences vomit blood and the rest of the world say "about goddamn time".

Interestingly enough, I hear that the people who make Star Trek games are suing the people who make Star Trek for being shit.

20 July, 2003

On Blogs.

First of all, let me say that I use the word "blog" under protest -- as far as I'm concerned, it's only a few steps removed from "d00d! I 0wnz0r j00 LOL !!1!!!killme!!11!!!killme". But what the fuck -- that's what the format seems to be called so what can you do? And it's the format that I like.

Like I say, blogging's gone mainstream, which means that any talentless bollocks with a modem can put whatever shite they feel like online for all to see, thus lowering the standards of the browsing public worldwide. Which means that if a person who used to write a "journal", and who therefore felt obligated to put a substantial pieces of writing on a semi-regular basis were to instead take up "blogging", they may well feel a lot of expectation disappear, safe in the knowledge that even if all they do is post links to other people's stuff and the results of "Which Care Bear Are You?" online tests, that would merely put them level with 80% of what's out there already...

But there are other advantages apart from enabling laziness. The blog format is a lot more freeform, and a bit more multimedia (damn late-90s buzzwords), which does allow for more variety and creativity. In theory, anyway. Lots of options -- I can put up photos, links, one-liners etc as they come to me, without feeling guilty about wasting this week's post. And, obviously, I can work on longer pieces and put them up when I feel like it. Like Apathy Jack (inventor of the term "Christinagasm"), I can simply write down anything that affected me recently, be it observation, anecdote or favourite song lyric. Or I can simply scour the Net for foul and disturbing objets d'fucked and then post them in the form of links, summaries, or images -- see diepunyhumans.com.

There's nothing inherently bad about blogs (just as employing a webcam doesn't necessarily turn you into a cam whore, but...). Let's see how it works out for me.

17 July, 2003

"Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing and it becomes chronic in their sick minds."

Tried being someone different -- it didn't take. One of these days I'll be sufficiently inspired to do something in Flash, I'm sure, but until then I need to do something to get these dirty, filthy thoughts out of my head. Don't own a power drill, so trepanning's out -- back to the journal, then. At least I can try a slightly different format this time around: the blog. No wait, come back.

The thing that has always seen me quit in the past has been the pressure (albeit self-imposed) to do something regularly, and have it be worthwhile (read: longer than a paragraph). Fortunately, with the introduction of blogging into the mainstream, standards have lowered to the point where I can feel comfortable putting up any old shit, whenever the hell I feel like it. Hurrah! It also means I can get away with not thinking up clever titles for every post.

I figure there's little point in changing the updates page every time I post something -- that can be reserved for updates to the site in general. Dunno what I'll do about archiving older stuff -- probably just dump it into another page when the main one gets too cumbersome. Organized, me.

13 July, 2003

So my girlfriend calls me one evening - she's having a discussion with her flatmates about the suffix "-atrix", and wants to know if I know of any other words ending in "-atrix" apart from "dominatrix" and "Terminatrix" (it was a discussion of T3 that got this started). Think for a second; reply "aviatrix - you know, like Jean Batten?" Feel clever for having a large vocabulary. Continue:

"Presumably, any word where the masculine ends in "ator" could be made "-atrix" in the feminine. Which would make a female masturbator a masturbatrix."

I invented a word and it feels good.