Dwarf death's are ALWAYS funny...

... Last night KS called to see if I wanted to do something. Of course, being both lazy AND indecisive, our conversation followed the usual track of "What do you want to do?" "I don't know, what do you want to do?" "I don't know either."

So after doing that for half an hour or so, I drove over there and we got some fish and chips and a DVD to watch. Seeing as we'd seen just about everything that was in the story, we ended up selecting "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe". We'd both seen it before of course, but it's one of those films you can watch over and over and you don't really get sick of it.

Of course, with films like that you're really in it for the battle scene in the end. I think we talked almost all the way through it, commentating the whole thing. In fact, I think we did that when we saw it in the cinema as well. It's no wonder no one wants to go to the movies with us anymore.

Here's the conversation we had.

KS: I know that The Lord of the Rings had better battle scenes, but there's just something about watching a giant rhino gouging a polar bear, isn't there.

Me: I know, it's like poetry. Pure poetry.

On Screen: Edmund gets stabbed by the White Queen

KS: Ouch! That must have hurt!

Me: They're not pulling the punches.

KS: No shit! They just stabbed one of the main characters through the stomach!

On Screen: Edmund lies on the ground, wheezing and clutching the grass

Me: You know, for a thirteen year old he's doing a pretty good job of acting like he's dying of a stabwound. Of course, he's acting more like he's got a sucking chest wound, but I'll overlook it.

KS: How the hell do you know what a sucking chest wound looks like?

Me: Too many episodes of MASH.

KS: Oh! Here's the good bit!

On screen: The Dwarf gets shot in the chest with an arrow and falls backwards

Me: Yes!!! Hilarious!!!!

KS: It's not politically correct, but damn that dwarf's funny when he dies!

Me: I know! It's like "I'm gonna kill you ... sweak ... thump!"

KS: I can't believe we're sitting here laughing about a dwarf being shot by an arrow. We're probably going straight to hell, aren't we.

Me: No probably about it...

Hmm, a frosty glass of toilet water...

... I don't know how many of you know it but BrisVegas is in the middle of a terrible drought. It's gotten to the point where even if it's just drizzling for a few minutes, we all get excited and log onto the internet to see just how much rain we got. I guess you could say we're all becomming a bit obsessed with water.

Our dams are down to 28% capacity and we're all starting to get a tad worried about where our next tall drink of water is going to come from. And so, in an act of what can only be labelled desperation, the government have now begun to talk about using recycled sewage water to suplement until we get some decent rainfall.

Lets just say that if that happens, I think the following comic strip will pretty much be my reaction.



Logically I know it will be safe to drink. I know that animals probably are crapping in the dams on a regular basis anyway. I know that they would treat it within an inch of it's life before they start pumping it into our homes, but I can't help it! They're saying we'll end up drinking poo water!

I think it's a safe bet that the bottled springwater companies are going to make a killing. Perhaps I should buy some shares...

Movie Review: The Lakehouse...

... KS and I went to see The Lakehouse last night. I normally don't like to see films on the opening night ( I prefer to wait until the crowds die down), but I really wanted to see this one. Any film that combines romance, pseudo time travel and Keanu Reeves looking all pensive and sexy is bound to get my attention and I was willing to brave the throng in order to see it.

And I did enjoy it. I loved the whole "ill-fated lovers" concept. It reminded me a lot of an old Hallmark film I saw once called The Love Letter where a man from the present writes letters to a woman in the Civil War era via a magic writing desk. He'd put the letter in the little cubby hole and she'd take it out, then vice versa.

The Love Letter was based on a story by one of my favourite writers, Jack Finney, and I think that was the main difference. Finney always made sure that there were absolutely no plot holes in his stories. I guess when you're dealing with something as fanciful as time travel you have to be extra careful about stuff like that.

Of course I know how intricate he can get with his stories. I remember thinking how complex Time And Again and From Time To Time were. With him everything is considered, every possibility, every option, until he has an airtight plot and a faultless timeline.

The Lakehouse, however, wasn't anywhere near as diligent about that sort of thing. There were plot holes, and inconsistancies, but somehow I didn't mind as much as I would normally. What it lacked in precision it made up for in emotion and angst (and you all know how much I love angst).

Of course it's difficult to tell a story where the two main characters, and romantically linked characters at that, are in different places (both physically and temporally). How do you have a romance when the two can't even be in the same shot? They managed to get around it by having the characters "talk" through their letters, although if I hadn't been so emotionally invested I might have been annoyed by the assumption that I'd accept their flowing conversation.

But as it was KS and I sat in the back row and oohed and aahed over it, nudging each other and giggling like a couple of fifteen year olds every time Keanu looked off into the distance with a thoughtful, longing expression on his face.

What can I say! No matter how bad an actor he is, he's still damned gorgeous...

Yep, I was overreacting...

... Well I managed to get the whole ancient history major bro-ha-ha worked out last night. I descended on that administrative guy in the Arts office like an avenging angel. I was all ready for a battle of wills, pure logic in one hand and biting sarcasm in the other.

I was, as I'm sure you all suspected, overreacting. It turns out that the change only applies to people who enroll from next year onwards. My major is safe, I don't have to try and scramble to complete another one to fill it's place, and I DON'T HAVE TO LEARN LATIN OR ANCIENT GREEK!

You see that was the major they'd created to replace the ancient history one, something called Classical Studies. It's going to have a lot in common with the old major, but one of the things you have to do is take beginners and intermediate ancient greek or latin. Call me kooky, but I prefer to read the translated versions of ancient sources rather than decyphering it myself.

But it's all a moot point anyway. I don't have to learn a dead language, my subjects all still count for my major, and I'm right back on track. Good thing too, I'd have really been cutting it close if I had to start over.
My Monday night class is deadly dull, but I'll keep it anyway. It starts at 5pm, a perfect time for a part timer, and the assessment seems pretty self explanitary. I'll just have to take a book or something to read and sit in the back for when the lecturer starts to get boring.

Last night's class looks like it'll be a lot more interesting. It's an archaeology subject and according to the course outline we're going to do a lot of practical work in the second half of each class. Should be fun! And to think I only signed up for that one yesterday morning after I cancelled the other class I'd selected which was taught by my Monday night lecturer too. I just COULDN'T face the idea of two nights in a row of that guy...

Invaded by the U.S...

... I don't think I heard anything in the news about it, but I have a funny feeling we might have been invaded by the United States.

I started back at Uni last night, first night back after a break of a couple of years, and when I got into the lecture hall for my first class I realised I was surrounded by American accents. Completely surrounded. As in I was possibly the only Australian in the room.

It was astounding! In a room full of eighty students, it turns out only two of us were Australian. The rest were American, with one Canadian and one from the Netherlands. Since when did University of Queensland become a United States college campus?

I mentioned it to my father last night and, as an employee of the Uni, he told me that they're really focusing on overseas enrollments these days. I suppose it makes sense, foreign students pay more for he course and they do it upfront, unlike the Australian ones who get to defer their payments.

And it's no doubt a good deal for the foreigners. A university course in a highly respected school that costs less than the colleges in the U.S. Add to that the fact that they get the "overseas experience" and it's not surprising so many people take up the offer.

But I also found out something disturbing last night. They're cancelling one of my majors! I'm enrolled for a major in Archaeology and one in Ancient History, but for some reason yet to be divulged, they've decided to discontinue the Ancient History major as of first semester next year.

How can they get rid of Ancient History! You'd think it'd be one of the standard streams, wouldn't you. And, on a more self involved note, what the hell am I going to do now? I've already finished my Ancient History major! If I have to start a whole new one from scratch I'm going to be ropable.

Oh, I'm sure they've got it covered. I'm sure the ancient history classes will be absorbed into another stream, but it still bites.

Just incase it's not completely obvious, I don't deal well with change...

Romance for Dummies...

... I think I'm pretty lucky with the people I work with. There might be times when I rant, but in reality we're all good friends, not something that happens all the time in the workplace. Personally, I think it can mostly be attributed to the fact that we've diligently held a Friday morning "Bonding Ceremony" (or as Tr likes to call it, a Bondage Ceremony) that involves eating ridiculous amounts of cake and bun during our smoko break.

So when one of the girls suggested that we should do it for real one weekend, the rest of us jumped on board. In no time a table was booked at a northside establishment called High Societea and we were set for a Saturday afternoon of eating wee little cakies and drinking tea out of fine bone china.

And we had a ball! We ate, we drank, we laughed ... I think we were the rowdiest table in the whole tea house! But most of the laughter revolved around Tr and her stories about her newly reignited dating life.

You see, T just recently split up with her husband, and in an attempt to begin meeting guys again, she signed up with that online dating site RSVP. She regaled us all afternoon with tales of different guys she'd met from the site, both on the net and in person.

One in particular we all had a giggle over was someone who called himself "Randy As Hell". According to Tr, that's was both his screen name and how he signed off his message, "I hope we can meet up because I'm Randy as Hell". Charming, no?

But Tr keeps looking, and so she should. She says she has met some nice people, just no one who's "right". It's no easy task in today's world. But hey, it's as good a theory as any other.

Take KS for example, she doesn't go looking for guys in an obvious way, but she still seems to find plenty of them. I remember when she told me about a crush she was developing on one of her workmates. Not exactly a recommended activity, but whatever works I suppose. But then she went on to describe the guy and I was astounded. He was TOTALLY not her type. She goes for younger, he was older. She goes for lean, he was more thick set. She goes for romantically attractive, he had more of a "characteristic face".

At first I though she MUST really like him, given how different he was from the guys she usually goes for, but then she told me some of his history.

He had been engaged about ten years ago, but his finace had died. Ever since then he'd gone into a self imposed exile, working most of the time. She said that he had a lovely personality, but he was still so sad. He hadn't dated anyone since.

Oh my god! Well who WOULDN'T fall immediately in love with a guy like that! Jezus, I fell in love with him just HEARING the story. It's the stuff that romance novels are made of, the idea of finding a guy like that, totally dedicated to his dead fiance, and teaching him to love again. Call him Blake or Scout and toss in a few verbose love scenes and you'd have a best seller...

You suck, Steve Allison...

... I've always been rather proud of the wide variety of spam mail I receive each morning. When I get into work, the first thing I do is log onto my hotmail account and see message after message asking me if I'd like to enlarge my penis (I'd have to get one from somewhere first), to buy viagra (still lacking that appendage), if I'd like to help out the Nigerian royal family by laundering some money for them (assuming I'm willing to send them a little assurance money) and horny mothers who are apparently waiting to please me (by all means, horny mothers, you can please me by doing my laundry).

But today I had a real treat. Apparently the FBI are on my tail.

Yep, I've made the big time, kids! I'm on the most wanted list! The men in the black swat uniforms will be breaking down my door any minute.

You see, this is the message I found this morning.

Dear Sir/Madam,We have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.Important: Please answer our questions! The list of questions are attached.Yours faithfully,Steven AllisonFederal Bureau of Investigation-FBI-

Curses, foiled again! And I would have got away with it too, if it weren't for you pesky FBI agents!

But seriously, does anyone fall for these things? It doesn't take a genius to work out that the FBI aren't going to send a polite note to tell you you've broken the law. What next? "Dear Mr Terrorist, we can see from your recent correspondence that you're planning to set off a big old bomb. Please complete the attached survey and turn it in, along with yourself, to your nearest law enforcement office. Have a nice day!"

Of course, once I did a bit of a websearch I saw plenty of warnings saying that the message had a worm attached. Lucky I keep my virus scanner updated and it isolated it. Otherwise mr Steven Allison would be getting a little message from me, delivered in person via my boot and directly to his rear end...

Unfamiliar...

... We keep getting all these new people here at work. Every time I go upstairs now (where all the "suits" live) all I see is a room ful of strangers. Actually, it's a bit disconcerting. I'm so used to knowing everyone's name that having all these unfamiliar faces wandering about gives me the heebejeebes.

And it's even worse in the mornings when I'm letting people in. You see, whenever someone comes early to work who doesn't have a security card to unlock the door, they ring a bell and someone has to go and let them in. Usually, that someone is me due to the fact that a.) I start at seven in the morning and am usually here before anyone else, b.) I sit fairly close to the front door, and, c.) everyone else in at that time is too damned lazy to get up and let them in.

But what ends up happening is I'm letting people in I've never seen before and who could be, for all I know, international terrorists who want to plant bombs in the reference section and blow up all our precious, precious books. So I do the only logical thing, if I don't recognise them then I ask them who they are.

You'd be surprised just how many people become insulted when you do that. Even if you've never seen them before and you know they've never seen you, they still are highly offended that you didn't automatically realise that they're the new secretary/librarian/janitor/sandwichlady.

And then there are the people who are actually visitors, but who resent the fact that they have to sign in at the reception visitors register. "But I'm here all the time!" they exclaim, thinking that's going to make a difference if the place burns to the ground and we have to identify the grizled remains without their name on the register to compare dental records to.

But I think the worst is when, like the other morning, you let in a member of the board who's here for an early morning meeting. I mean honestly, if you're going to schedule an early morning meeting with people as important as board members, you'd plan to be there before them, wouldn't you? Apparently not the person who scheduled the meeting the other day. Oh no, she didn't turn up for at least half an hour and I was left trying to entertain some old fellow whose name I didn't know and who wanted to talk endlessly about comparrisons of traffic now to traffic in the fifties.

Of course, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for the little old board member who told me I had a "nice set of ankles". Now that was the most gentlemanly sexual harrassment I've ever encountered...

Scenes from Kelstar's Office...

... So what do aspiring comic strip artists do when they realise they have absolutely no artistic ability? Why, they go to Strip Generator, of course!

Will you be my neighbour...

... I'm a blog tennant!!! For the first time ever, someone chose me! You like me! You really, really like me!

So a great big thank you to MC at Culture Kills ... Wait, I Mean Cutlery.

And now everyone, I'd like you to meet my new Blog Explosion tennant, Chocablog!

Now HERE'S an idea that was long overdue! A blog reviewing all those old chocolate bars that we loved so much as kids. It's like taking a stroll down a chocolate dipped memory lane.

I was especially thrilled with the Marsbar/Milkyway translation made especially for the American readers. It's no wonder we can't understand each other, we're talking different chocolate languages! I wonder why no one has noticed before?

But in all seriousness, it's a wonderful new blog and everyone should go have a look. Go on, the link is over there on the right...

Whalesong...

... You know I realised this morning that I've well and truely missed the Egyptian exhibition at the museum! The damned thing finished god knows when, and I was just wandering around in a fog of unconcern, thinking "Oh, I'll go later. It's going to be on for so long I'll have heaps of time". I'm not even sure WHEN it finished, maybe April? Well, whatever date, I've missed it and that's the first big museum exhibition I've ever missed!

I'm a bit of what you might call a museum tart. I just love museums! I'm intimately familiar with the Queensland Musuem, even though it has to be the most pathetic attempt at curation on the planet. I just love the dusty old displays, the little nooks and crannys where some long gone curator has stuck a teeny little display and then everyone else has just forgotten about it until twenty years later.

It's daggy, but I can't help it. I even love going to the Aviation display and listening to the sound recording of some bloke who crashed his plane and got stuck in the desert. It plays so softly you have to stand right up close to the barriers and lean precariously over to hear what's being said, but I still do it every time.

But the thing I love the most, I think are the giant fibro whales hanging in the underpass that leads to the front door. As you walk through there, they pipe whale sounds into the underpass and the echo is really quite eerie.



I remember once having a conversation with someone about what would happen if those wires holding them up ever snapped and those enormous whales fell onto you. I think that'd have to be the worst way to die. The tragedy of your death forever marred by the hilarity of the way you died...

One red paperclip...

... Like all of us Internet Nomads, I'm always fascinated with the way people can do things here in cyberspace that they'd never be able to do in the real world. Like that guy who sold the piece of toast with the picture of the Virgin Mary on it for some ridiculous price on E-bay, or the young bloke who bet his girlfriend that he could get two million hits on a website about nothing and if he did then she'd have to have a threesome (he ended up with hits somewhere in the THIRTY millions!). So when I came across this guy's site, I was all over it like whites on rice.

Now THERE'S a genius! This guy's managed to turn a single red paperclip into a house! A friggin house!!! When he made that seriously disasterous trade of an afternoon with Alice Cooper for a KISS snow globe I would have thought he'd destroyed all his chances, but he recovered spectacularly by trading it for a role in a Hollywood movie!

I was always rather fond of the wedding dress guy myself. Any guy who's bitter enough to say all those things about his ex-wife and STILL man enough to wear her wedding dress himself for the photos, well he's alright in my books. And he ended up getting twice as much back for the dress as he said he paid for it, so everyone was happy ... except the ridiculed ex-wife, of course.

But the point is, these are all such simple ideas, and they've all payed out in varying degrees for their creators. Don't you wish you could come up with a scheme like that? I'd love to try the whole haunted painting/doll/knickknack/toiletseat concept, but it seems that since the original haunted ebay picture was sold every man and his dog is trying that one. I've seen haunted bracelets, haunted photos, and even a haunted WWII helmet! Nup, I think that particular cash cow has been well and truely milked.

Now I know what you're all thinking, that you could have done that too if you'd only thought about it first. Still, as my old high school art teacher used to say whenever we'd say that about famous artists who basically did nothing more than throwing cans of paint at canvases, the point is you DIDN'T think of it first. He did. And now he owns a house for the princely investment of the cost of a paperclip, around 10% of a cent, if my math serves me correctly...

Having crappiness thrust upon me...

... You know, I always thought that "white trash" houses were the sort of places that I wouldn't have to deal with. Not that the fibro shack is a particularly fancy place to live, but I've always considered it to be respectable, if not elegant. The gardens are always manicured (what's of them anyway), the lawn is always mowed, the house facade is neat and presentable.

Unfortunately, as a great man once said, some people are born to white trashiness, some aquire white trashiness, and some have white trashiness thrust upon them. I fear, gentle reader, that I may be becoming one of the latter.

Okay, storytime. So my Next Door Neighbour has always been someone I've enjoyed sharing a wall with. She's quiet, friendly, willing to chat when we see each other but not pushy about it. Essentially, she's what I'd call the perfect neighbour. Even when her son moved in with her it didn't change. Perfect neighbours.

Then, one morning, I came out the front door to find that NDN Jr's little clunker of a car was parked in the front yard. Not exactly a huge shock, NDN always parks her car there too, but as the days, weeks, and months passed and the car remained there, I realised that it wasn't going anywhere in the near future.

Okay, I'm not an unreasonable person, I can understand that when a 19 year old kid's car breaks down, he might not have the money to get it fixed. I just assumed that eventually he'd get it towed away. But that never eventuated. Oh no, more than a year later and it's still there, it's tires all flat, it's doors warped and it's paintwork scratched. There's only one word for it ... ugly.

But then one morning about a month ago I heard NDN Jr out in the front yard, this time in his NEW clunker, trying desperately to get the engine to turn over. WRRRRRRRR klunk .... WRRRRRRR klunk .... Yep, he'd broken another one. And now, a month afterwards, it's still sitting there RIGHT NEXT TO THE FIRST PIECE OF CRAP!

But hey, I thought to myself, I'm not a hard arsed neighbour. I'm not going to call the landlady and complain, nor am I going to talk to NDN about it. Of course, that's mostly due to my pathological fear of confrontation, but that's by the by. Oh no, I just ignored the growing resemblance to a junkyard that the front of my house was assuming and hoped (passive/agressively) that the gardener would mention it to the landlady the next time he saw her.
But this morning, well I've got to say even I have my limits! One junky car I could handle. Two junky cars I was willing to tolerate. But this morning I came out of the front door to find A CRAPPY OLD COUCH SITTING RIGHT IN FRONT OF CRAPPY CAR NUMBER ONE! Oh yes, apparently it's not enough to make our front yard look like a spare parts sale, they now feel the need to put ugly old furniture SMACK IN THE MIDDLE!

I mean really, can you get any more white trash than old cars and old furniture in your front yard? Next thing you know I'll find them sitting on the front steps playing banjo with their toes! I'm generally a pretty easy going person, but I really think I'm going to have to do something about it now.

I mean honestly, a couch in the front yard? Who seriously does that!

Theatre and Footy Don't Mix...

... Well last night was State of Origin night (the final game in a three game football competition between states) and I did what any self respecting footy hater would do ... I went out. But as it turns out, even going to something so different to football as a play by an independent theatre company wasn't enough to shield me from Origin.

Of course, planning a play in a theatre that shares a wall with an English Pub on the night of the State of Origin isn't the most clever of moves. They must have realised that there'd be a certain amount of "noise polution" from the hundreds of drunk footy viewers next door. Even so, I think it can only be considered bad luck that the emotional death scene occurred at EXACTLY the same time as Queensland's final victory in the game. Nothing puts a damper on an angsty death scene like the thunderous disembodied chant of "QUEENS-LAN-DER! QUEENS-LAN-DER!"

But in the true "The show must go on" style of the theatre, the actors soldiered on through it and still managed to have us all very emotional by the end of it. Well done, actors! And if there were a few snickers in the audience, they ignored them and played the scene for all it was worth.

I've got to say though, the play was great. Funny, emotional, and extremely relevant. It was about a group of thirtyish Brisbanites, friends from highschool, and the various relationships between them all set in the Pub Trivia scene. A couple of times I found myself relating a little too well though, for example when one of the questions in the play was "List all the names of the T-Birds in Grease 2", I immediately listed them in my mind. Of course, T tells me he did the same thing with the "Who were the actors who played The Goonies" question, so I don't feel so bad...

RIP DVD...

... Do you think they design DVD players to break the minute they're out of waranty? I bought my current one to replace the last one that broke just after waranty, the day after New Years Day. Amazing then, isn't it, that this new one should stop working on the second of July, six months to the day since I got it.

When I got home this afternoon I decided to slip a Star Trek DVD in the machine, but the machine had other ideas. It kept flashing up "bad read" over and over again. Okay, I though, perhaps I did a bad burn job on that one (Disclaimer: the blogger does not condone DVD piracy in any way. Stop laughing!) and threw a real disk in the machine to see if it'd accept something that wasn't produced on my laptop. No joy though, it wouldn't accept it any more than the first one.

So after trying one DVD after another, I gave it up as a bad job. I guess I'll have to go out and buy a new machine this week, and until then at least I can still play them on the laptop.

I can't help being suspicious though. Perhaps they program the little buggers to self destruct the minute the waranty's up!

**********

I got up very early this morning and did something I look forward to doing all year long. I got out of bed, turned on the computer, downloaded the software I'd need off the net and ... did my taxes! I'm sure I'm alone in this one, but I love tax time!

Perhaps that's because I always get a healthy tax return. I'm always excited to see what the program will tell me my return is going to be, and I love to see what lodgement number I get allocated (I assume it's sequential and tells you how many other people have lodged before you). Last year I was in the twenty thousands, but this year I was in the four thousands!

Yes, I'm perfectly aware of the fact that this makes me sound like an awfully boring individual. But what can I say ... some people sky dive, some people base jump, I do my taxes. We all get our thrills in different ways...