And How!
25/10/2002

Goddamn, but stuff is good! I came home the other night to find oodles of stuff waiting for me on the kitchen bench. The video I ordered from overseas (I finally now own this Good Shit classic), the comic I bought on eBay, my, um, gas bill. Yes, material goods are the greatest good, and truly the only way of becoming a happy and fulfilled person.

My consumerism is not, I must admit, all that it can be. (For instance, I have allowed my desire to buy one of the many shiny new X.XGHz PCs I see in brochures everyday to be curtailed by the piddling technicality that the one I already have performs perfectly well and lets me do everything I want to do on it.) But I'm getting there.

The only reason I got a credit card was so I could order stuff off the Internet and have strange and interesting packages delivered to my door. And now I have strange and interesting packages. When one arrives I cry to all in earshot, "Come! Come and look at my strange and interesting package!" Strangely, they don't very often. Jealous, most likely. As with most things, it's all Richard's fault - if it wasn't for the strange and interesting packages he kept receiving (all the more strange and interesting since he discovered an online army surplus store in Christchurch - mmm... Swiss army stomach pump...), I'd never have been motivated by jealousy to start acquiring my own.

But now I have, making me by far a better human being than the rest of you filthy communists.

The name's Janus - Hugh Janus.
14/10/2002

Going for a bit of self-improvement, then. Walking to work, lifting heavy objects, doing the closest approximation of standing up straight I can manage, eating less blatantly carcinogenic food. Fuck me, I'm in pain. Actually sitting here writing this, I'm in pain. But that's not what I came here to talk to you about today.

Nope, today it's religion.

Like most cynical young atheists, I went through a phase of "religion is everything that's wrong with the world -- look how many wars started because of religion, all that intolerance and stuff -- bunch of arse, it is." This was when I was 15/16-ish, and I grew out of it eventually, but I still see the view expressed by seething, hormonal young proto-intellectuals in real life and in this spiffy electronic medium through which I now address you. And it's largely arse, isn't it?

Much as I hate to sound like Charlton Heston¹, but religions don't start wars; people start wars. Religion is just a way of choosing sides. If it wasn't there, people'd just pick some other arbitrary distinction as an excuse to break heads. Hell, they already do - wear the wrong coloured scarf in the wrong part of the British Isles and you're going 'ome in a fooking ambulance. Football ferfucksake -- that's all the excuse some people need.

And those fundamentalists, well they're just nutjobs who've seized on an institution with widespread authority to get in charge, aren't they? Sharia law has fuck-all to do with Islam, and I seem to recall some bit in the Bible about "thou shalt not kill" -- doesn't stop Christian fundies for killing in God's name, does it? And I'm not aware of anywhere in the Torah that says it's OK to chuck missiles at Palestine, either. Not to mention that bit where Jesus wanders around telling everyone to love each other and act like decent human beings for the entirety of the New Fucking Testament -- still seems to get lost on a decent chunk of supposed Christians. Long story short: people -- any excuse to act the prick. Big revelation there.

Obviously, I'm still not in favour of organised religion, partially because it seems a way for folks to give up responsibility for parts (or all) of their lives, and largely because I just don't get the whole notion of worship at all. I mean, even if I had definitive, irrefutable proof of the existence of The Big Fella Upstairs, you wouldn't find me in church the next day. I'd say "ta for the universe, big guy", and get on with my life. And possibly masturbate less.

No point to the title, by the way -- I was just in one of my moods.

¹Not entirely true -- any excuse for a "damn dirty ape" spiel, and I'm there.

OK, so why DOES it feel so good?
25/09/2002

Why does chicken take so goddamn long to cook? Potato wedges, too - I stick 'em in the oven at hotter than it says to, and still takes a fucking hour before they're even remotely edible. The only sensible explanation is that my flatmates sneak up when I go away and turn the oven down, sneaking back to turn it up again when they hear me coming to check. Those bastards. Revenge shall be mine - facial beatings for the lot of them. Oh yes.

Then I can get back to forming an abusive relationship with Kylie Minogue's Love at First Sight. I know it's bad for me, I know it'll never treat me right, but I keep coming back for more. Every time I hear it I'm like the female lead in a western/period drama who's just been grabbed by the bad guy - all I can do is beat my fists feebly against its chest and scream "Oh! Oh, you brute! You beast!"

This battered wife approach to popular music that I should know to avoid can be traced back to the time another flatmate (now in England and well out of range for facial beatings, bless her) got home at Three O'Clock In The Fucking Morning one night, blitzed out of her skull with a pair of equally sauced acquaintances, and proceeded to put on Spiller's Groovejet. On repeat. For a good half hour. Did I mention this was in her bedroom, which is on the top floor of our flat, directly above mine? Only the bottom-floor-dwelling among you fully know my pain. The pain of EVERY SINGLE FOOTFALL, EVERY TINY NOISE being amplified and reverberated on its way down to you.

Since sleep was not an option, due to what I later learnt was an impromptu drunken pre-shower striptease that involved a large amount of drunken stumbling/falling on arse¹, I could do little but lie back and let Sophie Ellis Bextor's disdainful lyrics wash over me. Again and again and again.

Since that night I've tried to walk away from her, I know she'll do me wrong, but I keep coming back, fool that I am...

¹I was amazed to find out that the cause of this disturbance was a young lass who weighs about as much as my ponytail - the thumps and crashes she was generating put me more in the mind of heavy construction work. But anyway.

An update for the sake of it.
04/09/2002

No, I'm not dead - just alternating between being too busy, too tired, too lazy or too uninspired to put anything up. Had a few ideas for posts, couldn't be arsed developing them. Ach, well. Maybe a suggestion or too from you lot would get me going again?

Nexus recently put password-protection on her site, on account of "too many weirdos sending weird mail" (which means there's probably little point in following that link, unless you've asked nicely for a password). Now, as far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as too many weirdos or too much weird mail - so make with the correspondence, damn your sweaty thighs!

Hitometer went away last month, so I have no more amusing webstats, but last I looked, I had at least a couple of regular readers that I don't actually know in real life. Confirmation would be nice. And while I'm at it, if anyone can suggest a hitcounter service which A) is free, B) doesn't want me to put any stupid logos on my pages, and C) tells me amusing search keywords, I'd be mighty grateful. So far, the ones I've looked at only manage two of the three. I long for the days of "Japanese anime rape monster download" and "suicide giraffe porn" in my logs. And I know you do too.

You will going to expect their funny lovestory.
21/08/2002

I don't pretend to understand the Japanese, but I like to think I can appreciate their aesthetic.

First there was Hello Kitty, then there was Mashimaro (say it with me - "MASHIMAROOOO!") Now we have Pucca.

Pucca and Garu. Garu and Pucca. Funny Love. Awww...

Note: I notice that Mashimaro's site appears to be Korean, as do the Pucca animations (although the main site is Japanese), so that may well be that theme buggered.

Garg.
17/08/2002

"Yes, but we're all philosophers, aren't we?" he says.

Gah. This old chestnut. Well, no, we're not, if you define a philosopher as a person who has actual training in philosophical issues, argumentation and reasoning (as I do). On the other hand, the layperson definition of philosophy is just "thinking about stuff", and hell, everyone can think, so yeah, we're all philosophers. So what do you say?

On the one hand, one never likes to sound like an arrogant arsehole - "no no, my dear boy, you couldn't possibly understand the implications of such a statement, not without the sort of expertise I have - it's like I was saying to Professor Bishop..."

On the other hand, one never likes to be told that one spent five years at university studying something, and yet is no more qualified to do it than the man on the street.

See, anyone can paint, just not necessarily well. It's even possible to produce a masterpiece of high technical quality without any sort of artistic training or experience, so what's so special about artists? Well, they can analyse a work, and tell you exactly why it's technically good, and, being able to do so, they're more likely to be able to produce something as good themselves. Same thing with argumentation - anyone can argue a point, and maybe do it well, but it's the training the allows a philosopher to analyse an argument fully, and be more likely to come up with good ones themselves.

And another thing: by letting this "hell, anyone can think" view to propagate, you end up with these writers who think they're philosophers - people who are good at stringing sentences together, and think that's all you need to make a good argument. I'm thinking Dave Sim here - he obviously thinks he has some well-reasoned watertight argumentation going (pity it's mostly rhetoric and bollocks). Or, better example, Ayn Rand¹. While many of her arguments (and the arguments of her Objectivist followers) sound plausible, it takes some degree of experience in philosophy to know that materialism and free will don't really mix - and why. But the average Joe doesn't get that.

"Yeah, I guess," I say, "*mumble mumble* but some of us have training *mumble mumble*"

¹Ayn Rand's ethics seem to based largely on the idea of treating people as rational beings who are ends unto themselves. This is very similar to the reason-based ethics proposed by Immanuel Kant (whose name, when pronounced properly, will get you in trouble in polite circles), only Rand takes it a bit far. The point we can draw from all of this is that Objectivists are a pack of Kants. You know, this whole post was just an excuse to use that joke.

Grr.
06/08/2002

I am not an angry person. Or rather, I am very seldom given cause to be an angry person. This annoys me sometimes, because it's natural to want the opportunity to deliver a really good threat of physical violence, isn't it? Or, you know, kick the crap out of some sonofabitch who's really asking for it. Never had the opportunity, though. Sigh.

In fact, only once have I even screamed obscenities at another human being, and that was down the telephone. The story:

It was 3AM (otherwise known as as "Three O'Clock In The Fucking Morning"). I was in bed. I was not alone (a fairly new experience for me at the time). I was asleep, until the phone rang. At 3AM. Which is what time it was.

I have this rule which says that being in bed is the same as not being here at all for telephone purposes (handy on weekend mornings), so I let it ring. And it did. The full eight or so times until the answering service picked it up. But then it rang again. And I left it again. And the answering service got it again.

And then it rang again.

"OK," I thought, "maybe it's important - maybe someone's dead or something. Surely it would take an emergency of some description to make a person ring so persistently at Three O'Clock In The Fucking Morning."

So I disentangle myself from an inexplicably still-snoozing girlfriend, haul my arse out of bed, find pants, stumble into the lounge and pick up:

"This better be good." (You have no idea how long I've wanted to answer the phone like that.)

"Is Eleanor there?"

"Oh FUCK OFF!!" <click>

What was the emergency? Pissed bastard thought he'd ring up and hit on my flatmate. At Three O'Clock In The Fucking Morning. So intent was he on getting the chance to slur sweet nothings into Flatmate Elly's shell-like ear that even after being personally rebuked my me (my profanity doubtless bouncing harmlessly off his ethanol-fueled state of semi-awareness), he rang another three times before giving up. For all I know he went on to try the upstairs phone that's plugged into the internet line, but I can't hear that one ring, so it doesn't exist.

Our roly-poly boozer (workmate of Flatmate Richard's) I have only met once before - he seemed harmless enough. This incident, plus another one involving a nocturnal visitation and subsequent despoiling of our couch (which I was lucky enough to have had no part in), left me with the strong desire to punch him in the face the next I see him. Or at least threaten to break his legs if he ever steps foot in our house again. I could deliver that well, I'm sure - I could really make that threat work.

But he's left the country, so I'll never know. Bastard.

Beware, I bear more grudges than lonely high court judges.
31/07/2002

So I got a new CD burner a little while ago. Tried burning my meagre collection of MP3s onto a CD I could listen to at work. Everything worked well, with the notable exception of the fact that I went and burned the Sarah McLachlan single I downloaded at my girlfriend's request onto it as well. And then listened to it. Over and over again. As a person whose musical tastes have been described as "girly" (by my girlfriend, no less) this woman is like crack to me. I am once again comforted in the fact that I don't drink beer; this time because there's no danger of anyone catching me crying into it.

FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS LISTEN TO SARAH McLACHLAN! Are we clear on this?

That song of hers in Toy Story 2 was bad enough - I should have known what I was getting into I suppose. Still, at least now I have more ammunition for the "Songs to Slit Your Wrists To" compilation I'm working on. With a little tweaking it could be modified to a more focussed "Antipodean Songs to Torture the Recently Broken-Up". The playlist so far:

• Fur Patrol's Lydia - Will be more effective if the song hasn't been tarnished by the memory of dozens of drunken teenagers tunelessly drowning out Julia Deans' sublime vocals during the chorus in the first and only fucking time you'd seen them in concert. I'd imagine.

• Splendid's Stop Buying Things - A bit more obscure, this is one for the comfort buyer. "Some day I'll stop buying things/ that don't give my the high I'm missing/ Some day I'll stop buying things like I'll stop missing you" Can't you picture it? The trembling lip, the misty eye, the latest purchase still clutched in a trembling little hand and now I sound like a sadist. Ah well.

• Pretty much anything Bic Runga's released - Hit them with the warbling strains of New Zealand's darling, then sit back and buy stocks in Kleenex.

• Dave Dobbyn's Loyal - "If it were different/ but you know it ain't/ let's get on with it girl..." If this song doesn't raise a tear, they aren't human. Shoot them in the face and parade their corpse around the central city as a message to their kind that the people of Earth will not fall victim to their duplicitous plot for world takeover.

And then I got bored of thinking up sad songs and went to cheer myself up by listening to more music. The only thing that saved me is my firm belief that The Smiths must have been taking the piss.

P.S. Tuesday, July 30 - Own up - which one of you fucks was looking for "evil expletive crap" when you found my site? 'Cause you're my kind of person.

Two things.
25/07/2002

Been a while. Arse. The latest column isn't exactly writing itself, as others tend to do once I get going. This is usually a sign that it's crap. Anyway, until I get myself going again, two things:

1. Wednesday, July 24 - "wisdom teeth and fellatio" in the Hitometer logs. Pays to do your research, I guess. One wonders exactly what they were wanting to know - do they make it better? Do they make it worse? How long do you have to wait after having them out before you can do it, perhaps? And another word I didn't realise I'd actually used here until someone else found it. Funny old world.

2. The plural of "virus" is "VIRUSES"!!! Saying "viri" (or "virii") only makes you sound like a pretentious pseudo-linguist twat. Those of you with qualifications in Latin or Ancient Greek may have a thing to say about word roots and suffixes and the like - as for the rest of you, you're speaking English, pluralise it like any other English word, damn your beady eyes.

   Sorry, pet hate.

Guts, and black stuff.
15/07/2002

By far, the question which is asked most frequently of me is: "Josh, what does the inside of your oesophagus look like?"

Now, thanks to the wonders of modern gastroscopic technology, this question can be answered. Didn't scan too well - I'm not really that scarlet, you know.

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