This journal has been discontinued. In it's place is the blog. What's the difference? I'll tell you when I've worked it out myself.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...
31/03/2003

By my crude reckoning, this is my 100th post. And according to my abacus, it comes just over two years since I started at this "regular" column malarkey. Not a bad effort, and a good place to call it quits, I feel.

Time, as Warren Ellis would say, to be someone else. I've an idea or two for new projects to work on -- they won't involve as much writing, that's for sure, but they'll show up here at some stage with any luck.

The site's not going anywhere -- it'll stay as is (I've made a few small updates around the place), but there won't be any new epistles turning up, so don't go looking. If, on the other hand, you've just arrived here, having taken a wrong turn in your search for kung fu lesbian vampires, do feel free to have a look around. A trawl through the archives should keep you amused for while.

Before I go, a few updates and summaries:

• When is a door not a door? I don't know, because mine is!! Under threat of rent-withholding, landlord showed up and fixed stuff. Not all stuff, and the lawn is still home to bush pigs and tapirs, but it's a start.

• Nope, the hitcounter really seems to be gone for good. Tell you what -- how's about you would-be mindfuckers just e-mail me all the humourous and disparaging search strings you came up with, and I'll e-mail back telling you you're a funny bastard and ooh, you had me going for a while there and whatever will you do next?

• Monkeys: still as funny as ever.

And with that I bid you adieu -- if you want me, you can still e-mail; otherwise you'll find me at the KAOS Forums, where some other bastard took the name Josh, causing me to resort to an alias. See if you can guess which one.

Toodles,

Josh
March 31, 2003

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I'm on my time with everyone.
26/03/2003

I'd have put something up sooner, but I've been working on my screenplay about a Mafia family that opens up an Indian restaurant. I call it "Badda-boom, Badda-bing, Butter Chicken". Thank you, I'm here all week...

Well, I've been making an effort to do something about my posture this week, and you'll be happy to know I'm now in constant pain. Don't worry, though, it's the good kind of pain. No, the other good kind of pain -- the kind that means muscles which have been getting an easy ride are now being forced to do the job they were supposed to do (namely ratcheting my spine into a shape slightly less Cro-Magnon than is usual for me). This is of the Good.

Also good is the news that bastard old landlords have conceded that we are actually entitled to some of our bond back. This has been tempered by the fact nice-guy-when-you-can-get-hold-of-him current landlord hasn't shown his face around here for months, prompting leaseholder to threaten withholding of rent if he doesn't get his arse around here to fix up various sundries. Sundries including the overly sharp tongue on my door latch that has twice drawn blood from my left forearm. I like to say I'm a person who doesn't make the same mistake twice, and this bastard piece of metal has made a liar of me. And then there's the little matter of the light switch to my room being outside my room. And the lawn being a foot high and climbing. And the inside wall made of roofing steel. Actually, that's quite cool.

The flat, for those that are interested looks like this. Only less hillbilly-ish, now that we've moved some of the chairs and boxes. Cow skull's still there, though. A-hyuck.

Oh, and it looks as though my hit counter, which went away a couple of weeks ago, ain't comin' back. This will come as a great disappointment to the few of you who were loading my logs with all sorts of humourous, paranoia-inducing search terms. Sorry lads, never got to see them.

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Opinion piece! Yaaaay!
19/03/2003

Mmm, them's some good monkeys. Anyway.

They say opinions are like arseholes, which I feel does something of a disservice to arseholes. Arseholes, at least, serve a vital function -- ridding us of the effluent that would otherwise turn us into great bulging man-sacks of percolating ordure. Although possibly opinions could be said to do the same, I dunno.

What was I saying? Oh yeah.

With this in mind, and since everyone else has put their oar in, and since I better make my predictions now before everything starts, here is what I think of the upcoming war in Iraq:

First of all, I'm writing this the day after Dubya made it clear that he was going to war, with or without allies. Well, duh. I don't see how this can come as a surprise to anyone -- the amount the US has already spent on moving troops and equipment into the region, they could never have afforded not to go to war.

So, am I for or against? Obviously I agree that Hussein is a nasty piece of work, and the sooner he's out of there the better. I'd like to think there'd be a better way of doing this; one that doesn't involve bombing a bunch of people who don't really deserve it, and there probably is, but the reality is that it's war or nothing right now, so there you go.

So, am I for or against? I would support a war on Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein if I felt confident that it would leave Iraq in a better state than it is now. A war will kill thousands of innocent people, but tens of millions of innocent people will be better off without him. This whole "better off without him thing", though -- it assumes that whoever replaces Hussein will be better than him, and given the US's past record of installing people who turned out to be nasty bastards (Pinochet, Pol Pot, Noriega, the Taleban, Hussein - hang on...), I'm less than confident.

So, am I for or against, for fuck's sake?! I guess I'm against. There are so many people who supposedly know what they're talking about predicting all sorts of conflicting scenarios: US forces will be greeted as liberators/Iraqis will never accept American occupation; the war will stabilize the region and spread democracy/the war will plunge the region into chaos and spread fundamentalist rule; the war will fight terrorism/the war will encourage terrorism, and on and on and on. Given the level of uncertainty this leaves me with, combined with my general distaste for the thinking behind the whole affair (e.g. the US insisting that Hussein had WMDs, then insisting that we must attack him -- surely the one thing that would be most likely to provoke him into using them), I don't see how I can not be against it.

All I'm predicting is that whatever happens, everyone will be saying how it proves them right. If everything turns to custard, you bet the pro-war types will be blaming the peaceniks for it -- if they'd just let them get on with it, etc. And if it all turns out OK, there will still be a bunch of dead people and bombed buildings -- plenty of ammunition for the doves to claim the cost was to high.

Fortunately, who gives a fuck? At the end of the day, what effect do the opinions of a single New Zealander have on any of this? I'm as irrelevant as the US says the UN is. (Incidentally, I the claims that the UN is now irrelevant to be like saying that politeness is irrelevant, on the grounds that it's usually easier to just punch people in the face to get what you want, but that's another argument.)

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Monkey magic. Oh yes.
12/03/2003

I hate every ape I see, from Chimpan A to Chimpan Z...

Wouldn't you know it? Just when I'm thinking "ooh -- about time I put something new up", along comes Ape Escape 2. So it's either justify my online existence by producing something worthwhile and entertaining for my doubtless impatient readership, or chase monkeys with a net. Obviously you know where my priorities lie.

There will be a brief break in transmission, in which time I invite you to ponder the significance of these few gems from my web logs:

• poetry with nasty and bad words like fuck, shit, etc. in them - ooh -- someone's being naughty!
• can cyclone bola kill you? - well, considering it happened over a decade ago, no.
• toaster components tungsten - ha! Got you, you fucker!
• yutani nut runner - <head explodes. Again>
• the americans are fucking bastards, and that's swearing! - it sure is.
• pun pun geek pun - dunno why, just makes me laugh.
• does josh addison have a sex life - one of you bastards is fucking with me...
• princess leia fuck fest - now you're talkin'.

And from the "Extra Scary" file:

• nicely lubricated and left handed - what? And what?
• split rivet machine deep throat - what?! And WHAT?!!
• arabs get fucked - this one all the scarier for the fact that that's not the first time I've seen this.

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Gnnnnngh. Hnnnnnnnnnh. *snap*
04/03/2003

OK! Alright!! I like Kylie Minogue, OK?! Is that what you want me to say?! Is it?!! Well??!!!

My cellphone rings with "Can't Get You Outta My Head". I'm seriously considering buying Fever. I'm listening to "Love At First Sight" right fucking now.

There -- are you happy? Don't judge me -- don't you fucking judge me!! I can feel it -- you're looking at me with your accusing eyes and indignantly-pinched nostrils. Well fuck you! You don't have to face New Order fans when you mention the "Can't Get Blue Monday Outta My Head" remix! You don't have to figure out how to get your girlfriend to buy you the "Can't Get You Outta My Head" DVD without actually asking her to or giving in and buying it yourself, do you? You people make me sick...

Here, look at the funny GIF:

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If the Internet was a man, he'd be a bad, BAD man.
24/02/2003

Right, well it's been a month or so since I put in the new hit counter. Let's see what you filthy bastards have been searching the Internet for, that brought you to my virtual doorstep.

Oh sweet Jesus.

<has minor embolism>

Right, well that's out of the way -- how to sum this all up? Depressingly, the most common search items are Don Hertzfeldt films (buy his DVDs you wretched, sponging vermin) and videos of Annabel Chong. The remaining search terms can probably be divided into a few broad categories, starting obviously with:

People Looking for Porn

Lotsa people searching the web for porn -- who'da thunk it? The searches that brought them to my site ranged from worryingly graphic (gay shit arse pictures, male shit holes, world's biggest pussy -- thank you Mr. Timberlake) to worryingly specific (nasty heterosexual movies with good looking male and female bodies, naked chinese women no pop ups, unfeasibly big breasts) to worryingly graphic and specific (download mojo jojo fucking powerpuff, lesbian dwarves shit porn, capoeira gay fuck) to just plain worrying (mexican wrestler movies rape? clay animation porn?? meerkat porn???). And I'm really not sure what to make of the person searching for oooooh fuck me pussy. I'm really not.

People Who Frighten Me

See above, plus the following:

• mr mosquito nudity -- what?
• guys getting punched in the testicles (pictures) -- why?!
• donald sutherland male naked -- WHO??!!
• killer animation bunnies evil -- wh- actually, no that's fair

This category also contains a sub-section I like to call What Can That Possibly Mean?, which includes such gems as:

• teaching manner of fuck photo
• security proof anime porn
• nope. yer dead or at least have had a severe ass kicking

Answers on the back of a postcard to:

Josh Addison
Just follow the screaming
Auckland
New Zealand

People Who Seem To Be A Bit Confused

Some folks just seemed to be a bit bewildered, resulting in one poor soul looking for jenny from the block by christina aguillera - not quite, mate. One also wonders what would have prompted a person to search the Internet with the phrase what does giraffe pussy mean? What indeed? I know, but I'm not telling.

People Searching for Things Giraffe-Related

Understandably, a good amount of people showed up looking for things to do with giraffes. Fair enough (good giraffe, giraffe rhymes, perspective of the giraffe). Although (giraffe ufo, giraffe birthday man, where's the giraffe in the box) some people (giraffe porn, giraffe pimp, giraffe shit) had me a bit worried (stupid giraffe fucking, giraffe penis pictures -- giraffe face shots?).

Still, no amount of rampant perversion could remove the pride that comes from knowing that Google considers my site to be another word for giraffe.

People Who Think Just Like Me

Continuing in the theme of pride, it also pleases me no end to discover that there are no shortage of folks looking for the more obscure kind of pop culture reference that's close to my heart. As well as several Evil Dead/Army of Darkness search terms, I (or rather, my hit counter) encountered folks looking for Al Leong, Dolph Lundgren, Rutger Hauer, Matthias Hues (never did him) as well as a bunch of references to films themselves (chaank, naked space chick, graboid, and yes -- necron 99). Life is good.

People Who Make Me Glad To Be Alive

Obviously I consider it a good thing that people found my site searching for no more than good shit, and an even better thing that fucked up shit strange crap got them here as well. I choose to believe it's a compliment that freaky-deaky sex land showed up in the logs, and who wouldn't want their site to be a source for fisticuff techniques?

Still not sure what to make of the fact that someone got here with the almost Zen-like search term of goat, though.

Take that, George C. Scott!!
19/02/2003

It has been suggested that the Marquess of Queensbury was a bit of a poof (largely due to the fact that he was called the Marquess of Queensbury). I believe this to be untrue, however -- only a hard bastard would come up with rules for fighting that prohibit blows to the groin. Oh no, hang on, turns out the "no touching the bathing suit area" rule was around even before him, in the days of bareknuckle boxing. Hard men indeed, so my point still holds.

Let me explain: the blow to the groin is the Great Leveller -- no matter how big and how strong, one swift whack in the canastas and any guy will go down like an altar boy at a priest convention. Which means it's in the interests of a big, strong man to have it blackballed (pun intended -- oh so intended), since it's basically the only chance a lesser man has of putting him on his arse.

Never having attended one of those American high schools we always hear about where the "jocks" are constantly beating up on the "nerds", I can only really speak hypothetically here, but I'm assuming this conspiracy starts good and early in a young man's development. Right from the start, the weedy academic types are put and kept in their place by the hulking sporty types, against whom they are helpless to fight back. Only of course they're not -- one in the family jewels would show any one of these bulging misanthropes who was the bitch of whom. So to cover their Achilles Heel (Achilles Groin?), they perpetuate the "rules" of fighting. Knocking the shit out of a guy half your size is fine, but a kick in the nuts? Oooh -- that's just not on. That's against the rules.

Although... you know what this reminds me of? There was this old game I used to have on my Amiga 500 called Megalomania -- one of those god-sim games where you control a little tribe of people through the ages, developing weapons and doing in the other tribes. It was all good fun while you were controlling little cavemen throwing sticks at each other, but by the time you got to the later levels and nuclear weapons came on the menu, the game turned into a mad dash to be the first to build nukes, with the winner then obliterating all opponents in a couple of seconds. Which, obviously, was fun if you were doing it, but it made the game less enjoyable overall. Ironically, the most technologically advanced weapon of war was the one that caused you to resort to the most direct, brutish tactics. Sigh.

Relevance: the blow to the groin is basically the A-bomb of the mano-a-mano milleu -- over-proliferation of it would make any altercation into a simple race to see who could connect toe with teste first. Which would take... all of the... fun? strategy? skill? out of willfully... injuring... another... human being... nope, ignore that last bit.

I was talking bollocks.

"We goin' out on that one?" "Looks like it..."

My T-shirt says "kung fu monkey".
15/02/2003

"Britney Spears makes men feel baaaaad -- 'hit me baby one more time?' No!! If they find out about the first time I'll lose my job..."

The "virgin-whore" dichotomy is a concept that's fairly widely used today -- widely enough that I can't actually find an origin for the term. As a concept it's used to discuss the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation that women still find themselves in today's society -- if you're not a naive, inexperienced virgin, you're a filthy slapper. It's also used in reference to the idea that mean (well, some men) want their women to be pristine and untouched and yet at the same time knowledgeable, experienced and enthusiastic in the bedroom department. Such observations inevitably bring up the topic of Britney Spears and her ilk. No, really.

They all play up to this dichotomy (hence their popularity, I guess); none more so than Ms. Spears herself -- "I'm Not a Girl, I'm Not Yet a Woman"?! Ferfucksake. Anyway, the thing is, as a marketing ploy, it can only end in tears. These wee pop tartlets end up either disappearing back into the obscurity from which they were plucked by record company execs (whence Mandy Moore? Jessica Simpson, anyone?), or they get to the point when they can no longer credibly hold on to the virgin bit, and all they're left with is... Christina Aguillera. She was the first to fully go The Way of the Skank, but it's on the cards for the rest of them, unless they can successfully reinvent themselves as grownups.

But enough post-feminist discourse. This post is obviously little more than an attempt to boost my site's hit count by name-dropping some of the more common paedophile bait out there -- let's see if it works...

Did he just say "blindness"? Yeah -- he also said "if'n".
08/02/2003

You know that cellphone ring that goes "danala-na danala-na danala-na naaa"? The one that almost certainly qualifies for Most Annoying Cellphone Ring in the World, Ever? Turns out that's the "Nokia Tune" -- the signature Nokia ring tone, sort of like that default Windows startup ditty, or that little chord that Apple Macs used to make when they started. (Do they still do that? The last time I saw an iMac, I was too busy masturbating over the ridiculously pretty if not entirely functional GUI to be able to process sounds.) The fact that Nokia are responsible for the single most insidious and piercing item of noise pollution in the world today is almost enough to destroy my brand loyalty with them. Almost, but not quite (I discovered the name of that tune when I saw it on the list of ringtones on my brand new Nokia 3510).

The last few messages that Warren Ellis has sent out on his Bad Signal mailing list have talked about branding a bit - he seems to be in an anti-branding phase at the moment, cutting the logos off every artifact and item of clothing in his possession and what. I've nothing against brands -- if I'm not just plain ignoring them (as I am most of the time), I'm genuinely using them to inform my purchasing.

Now, anyone with even vague pretensions toward alternativeness (alternativity?) is obliged to ignore clothing labels, and fair enough -- I wear clothes I like the look and feel of. And cars (or at least, the sorts of cars that I am ever likely to possess) are all the same to me. I had to train myself to say "I-drive-a-nineteen-ninety-three-Nissan-Sentra" instead of "I have a red car".

Electronic goods are where brands matter to me. I like Nokia cellphones, Sony audio gear (and gaming consoles) and Compaq computers (see previous rant for why I buy computers out of the box from chain stores). I figure these things are kinda delicate and precise and maybe it doesn't pay to take chances, so I go by brands. It's about security; it's about trust; it's about not having to engage too many higher brain functions while parting with a shitload of money for something smaller than my hairbrush.

It's basically about habit. I'm actually in an uncharacteristic period of experimentation right now. Buying new phones, a big new monitor for my PC; I just switched from Internet Explorer to Opera (love those mouse gestures). In most cases, change is right off the menu, and the brand I like is simply the first one I tried, and when that worked out OK I stuck with it, rather than risk trying something new and having it turn out to be worse. Is that a metaphor for something? Probably, but fuck off.

Like Lord of the Dance, only with flies.
02/02/2003

Something strange is happening. It's summer, so the house is full of flies -- nothing strange there. Yet. Thing is, whenever I notice there's a whole shitload of 'em around I get up, go get the flyspray, turn around -- and they're gone. Not a fly to be seen.

It's an unsettling experience -- sort of like the first time you catch yourself in the mirror using an electric toothbrush. In that particular case, the realization that you're fellating a vibrating piece of plastic is fairly quickly sidelined by the realization that you can make cool sounds by opening and closing your mouth while you're using it, but with the flies... The obvious and only conclusion to be drawn is that they know.

Like those sharks on Deep Blue Sea that could recognize weapons and ended up eating Saffron Burrows -- that must not happen here! This house must always be safe for Saffron Burrows.

Having thought about it, I realize that this situation is not without its advantages. Dealing with super-intelligent flies as I undoubtedly am offers new possibilities of mental warfare, where previously only the usual physical and chemical varieties were available. In that spirit, I will be kicking things of with a propaganda leaflet drop in the kitchen, followed by food parcels in the bathroom, in an attempt to cause the flies to rebel against their leaders and surrender their forces to me. At this point I will be commander-in-chief of my own fly army -- a "Lord of the Flies", if you will -- and will, I don't know, take over the world or something.

In the unlikely event that that fails I'll just buy a shiny big fly swatter and take to stalking the flat dispensing bloody death to anything that is A) six-legged and B) in my fucking airspace.

In fact, fuck it, that sounds like more fun -- I'll just do that.

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