July 2007 Archives

"Yeah... i'm pretty much close to perfect now."

"haha no ones perfect you mong!"

"True... i could be a little taller."

Yeah, humility has always been a strong character trait of mine...

...well, maybe i'm not the most sensitive person around. In fact, I would say that I am about as sensitive as a warm block of cheese. It is something I really should work on... later. For now I present you with an MSN snippet to prove my sensitivity.

"Haha I just went through all these pics i found of mum... she was so beautiful I cried! haha."

"You cried? Is she really ugly now? Is that why you cried?"

Which one of those conversation lines belongs to me huh?

"hahah yeh coz she looked happy back then and now she just looks so sad and angry all the time."

"Is she sad and angry, or does she just look that way?"

Sensitive Will... Sensitive...

In another life I think I would be a stripper. I mean, you just take your clothes off a couple of times a day and then your oversized pimp daddy in the bowling cap and fur coat hands you $1000 in rolled up notes, spanks you on the backside and you are on your way. Everybody wins.

I mean, normally I take my clothes of a couple of times per day for sleeping, showering and gardening, and never get any money for it. Something tells me I need to negotiate a new workplace agreement and get a better deal.

In some upcoming posts, I might detail some of my mad stripper moves. Or not.

Unlike most people that receive spam in their email inboxes, most of mine is no longer about pornographic websites, dodgy pyramid marketing schemes or even fake cheap viagra pills which don't work by the way. Surprisingly the vast majority of the spam in my inbox comes from an unlikely source - Christians.

I kid you not. The vast majority of spam emails come from random pastors, churches and christian marketing networks in the USA, none of which I remember signing up for, and it sickens me. I remember signing up for a youth pastors mailing list years ago when I was actually a youth pastor -which then stopped mailing out, but since then my address has obviously been passed around to a whole variety of Christian capitalists, hoping to guilt me into a hefty donation for some pastors new slush fund, or to invest in the latest 'uplifting' set of hymns on sale, or more worryingly, urging me to get up and protest with the American right wing about some law that doesn't effect me one iota. In fact, I should protest according to this site because it will affect my right to hate and discriminate against another person. Thank you Christian America for being the moral compass of us all.

Seriously. The latest crap I have been receiving has been from an American right wing groups called "Christian Response" and "RightMarch.com". If I lived in the USA I might consider legal action against them about the constant unsolicited spam, but I am pretty sure some Christian redneck would shoot me for it, because, you know... thats what Redneck Christians do. Shoot pro-abortionists, gays and people telling them to be reasonable. Because last time I read the bible, that was exactly the same thing Jesus did, although he had way madder ninja skills.

Their latest rants have been about complaining about giving equal rights to homosexuals in the USA, and providing them special protection against 'hate crimes', because as an American, my right to hate and discriminate other minorities should be protected by law right? Jesus said "You should love your neighbor - except if they are gay or lesbian, a democrat or pro-abortionist, an atheist or a Muslim - other than that, love pretty much everyone." I guess it is ok for right wing Christians to become Xenophobic, insecure and hateful...

They go on to protest an upcoming bill that provides amnesty to the thousands of illegal immigrants already living inside the USA in abject poverty. To be honest, I don't know the ins and outs of American policy regarding the illigal immigrants in the USA, but they seem intent on stemming the 'tide' of illegal immigrants attempting to invade and destroy the American way of life.

Finally, they rant against the "propaganda" that is global warming. Oh, the world isn't heating up? I'm pretty sure that the uneducated redneck masses would know better than the worlds scientific community right Cleitus?. I believe that the world is heating up, but at the moment there are far more pressing ecological and humanitarian issues that need adressing first, like pollution and overfishing and disease in Africa. But I'm pretty sure that the Right Wing Christians are more intent on saving their economic interests and investments in their industry than diverting attention away from global warming to other humanitarian issues.
Rightmarch, please stay away from the keyboard if you have been drinking.

I mean seriously. Once again it seems that the right wing fanatical Christians are more interested in protecting their own rights, economic interests and status in the USA rather than putting others first the way Jesus instructed, and they are set on using the same types of scare tactics that the Bush (and Howard) administrations used in convincing us to go to war with Iraq... oh wait - you still believe that stuff huh? And you have a video telling us all that George W was right about Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction?

Oh, not quite. You just said he was right, but forgot to mention all the bits where he wasn't actually right, and was in fact proven to be quite wrong. I'm guessing you didn't mention that the administration mislead the public and lied about 'weapons of mass destruction', but hey it's just a case of "the end justifies the means" right? I have no doubt that Sadaam was bad for Iraq, the same way that Mugabe is bad for Zimbabwe. Oh wait? Do the right wing Americans even know who Mugabe is, and where Zimbabwe is? Of course not, Zimbabwe doesn't produce nearly enough oil to be included in an American atlas.

I guess what I am trying to say in a nutshell is to keep your naive right wing fundamentalist uninformed misleading twaddle to yourselves and to stop emailing me, because the more you complain and protest, the more I want terrorists to win less I like you...

Some of you may know my pet Siamese Fighting fish named 'twitch' on a first name basis, and for those that don't just take my word for it... he is pretty much awesome. He studies algebra and astronomy and can colour with crayons all while he lives in a vase on my desk just to the left of my computer screen.

He is a strange coloured mongrel fish, but he has some character and some fight about him. In fact, he has so much fight, that if you have food sitting on the end of your finger, he will jump out of the water, roundhouse your hand and bite the end of your finger in his hunger driven fury. He is the Chuck Norris of the fish world.

But I believe I have been neglecting poor Twitch... so much so that recently I actually had forgotten what I had named him in the first place, and so had to invent an alternate name 'Boston', to pretend like I really cared and looked after him so the RSPCA wouldn't come and take him away...

Lately he just hasn't been himself... I don't know if that is just the colder weather and water temp that is playing havoc with him, or if he just isnt getting enough food. Either way, he has been all off balance, like a drunk on the sidewalk, swaying from side to side, doing little vomits in the gutter. Only Boston doesn't vomit, he is way too high class for that.

So I did what every good pet owner does when their animal is sick, dying or covered in some kind of coloured fungus. I hit up google, and read somewhere a suggestion by one fish owner that if the fish eats a pea, their condition often improves. I don't know why, or how, but peas are definitely magic beans to fish, so I decided to try it.

Only I had to do some pea preparation. The pea needed to be skinned, and slightly warmed, so here I am at 2am in the morning, slowly heating a grand total of one pea in a plate of water in the microwave, carefully shelling it and placing it back into the bowl to take downstairs to feed to my fish. Do you have any idea how stupid I looked cooking ONE pea in the microwave? The answer is very.

Then, just as I held the pea aloft with a pair of tweezers with surgical precision to entice Boston to eat and recover, someone msn'ed me, and I took my eyes off the pea just for a split second - my attention drawn to the flashing message of one Mr Steve West.

I looked back only to see my pea sinking like stone to the bottom of the bowl, out of reach well under the rocks. I spent 5 minutes carefully selecting, shelling and heating this pea, and then West distracts me and sends my pea to the bottom of the tank. Not even my randomly decorated chinese chopsticks that were given to me as a present by one Pam Lee could save that pea. And seriously as an aside, who gives a 20 something year old white guy painted chopsticks for his birthday?

Anyways, Mr Steven West, let me lay it out for you like this. Because my pea is now -thanks to your untimely distraction- well under the pebbles in my fish vase, and as a result Boston cannot get any of the required nutrients from aformentioned medicinal pea, I will hold you personally responsible for any harm that may come your his way from your irresponsible distraction, and may hold you liable for any funeral costs that arise from me flushing the remains of Boston down to the 'fish heaven in the toilet bowl'.

You have been warned.

Todays sunday sacreledge, not quite as bad as a few weeks ago, enjoy. Smile. Don't stone me.

As for the weekend roundup, don't forget to catch up on reading about the connection between my father the scrooge and Justin Timberlake, as well as a debate of the potential benefits of the financial investment in children, as well as a strange site about a new toilet seat for your bottoms...

An odd couple of posts indeed!!

...alternately titled 'what goes around, goes around, goes around, comes all the way back around'. Thankyou Mr Timberlake.

You may be wondering why I would come out calling my father a scrooge, and randomly quoting Justin Timberlake lyrics, especially seeing as though I get on well with my Dad most of the time and am still locked in a legal battle with JT about his claim to be bringing 'sexy back'. We all know that I beat him to that years ago... But none the less, I feel it necessary to explain myself now for my actions in say, around 20 years time.

Recently my parents and family went down to Moruya on the Australian South Coast to visit my grandfather for a weekend, which is fine of itself, except my Dad really didn't want to spend all that money heading down for a 3 day weekend vacation trip... for the record, the holiday ballooned out from two days to three days faster than a fat kid eating cake when my mum decided to force my Dad to take a day off work on a Monday to spend more time away.

So in my fathers mind, not only did he have to spend money on the trip, he also lost money from days that he should have been working. Needless to say he was complaining to me on the way home from work that he "Didn't really want to spend all that money and time seeing his father - that he really couldn't be bothered".

I informed him that in around 20 years time he can expect the exact same treatment from me, and that he is going to have to learn to love it or deal with it.

"Why don't you come visit me anymore son?"

"Eh... couldn't be bothered, and it costs too much."

"But Will, I only live 15 minutes away in that nursing home you stuck me in!"

"The one that gives you warm kerosene baths?"

"It burns my fragile aging skin..."

"Ahh well, learn to love it"

"Why won't you visit me?"

"I think we covered that already... what *static noises* I think you are breaking up!"

*Call ends.

Funniest thing was, I actually acted out the phonecall to him when we were unloading the work van. Just so in around twenty to thirty years time, when we finally have that conversation for real, somewhere in the back of his slowly declining mind he will remember that somehow, in some small way Justin Timberlake is to blame for his children refusing to visit him.

Apologies to all, for my severe lack of inherantly funny LOS material over the past week... but there has been good reason for this. I have been sick with the flu... that stupid virus that makes you very sore, very stuffed up, and has the added advantage of turning you into a germ that snots and coughs over every surface in the house. Charming I know.

Even today, a whole week later I still wake up coughing up chunks of lung and having my brains leak out through my nose faster than Tutankhamun. On the upside I had to take a whole week off work... downside was it was all wasted coughing and snotting and sleeping.

Anyways, a few little shoutouts to Josh, Christiaan, Narika and Jordo who all had birthdays over the past week, (although Jordo was 2 weeks ago)... and also to my two sisters Elissa and Rach who had birthdays on the 13th and 14th respectively. Obviously something went on with my parents in November... eww.

Finally a little update on Marisa... apparently her condition is fluctuating day by day, up and down in the Mount Elizabeth Hospital critical care unit. I'm still unsure as to her ability to talk or move just yet, but she has been in the critical ward for over 3 weeks now, so keep her and her mother in your thoughts...

Will out.

I really don't know if I ever want to have children. Those little creatures that have dried trails of snot that extend from their nose to their top lip, and if one is exceptionally gifted that trail of snot continues across the side of their face and all the way down to the sleeve of their school jacket. You know the ones right?

Children. Those little creatures that begin life as little more than an elementary feeding tube... food goes in one end, and out the other. Clean and repeat. If you are unfortunate, those children will still need cleaning well through until the age of 6 or 7. Then eventually they hit the teenage years where they suck money like air, and if they are male, still need to be reminded on a regular basis that cleansing and personal hygene are not optional components of ones day to day life. If they are female they need to be reminded that a hand towel and 2 kilo's of make up does not constitute an outfit.

And then there is the cost... apparently the overall costs for raising a child in todays Australia is around $1 million. One million dollars for a child. Seems a little steep to me, especially since I am a child in a family of six kids, and there is no way in the good lords green earth that we had one million dollars spent on each of us. I mean, for the first 4 years of my life I received nothing but coal from Santa Claus on Christmas morning. All my clothes were second hand from the neighbors. I was forced to wear second hand school shoes that had the soles worn down on a strange angle by the kid next door who walked funny, and when I wore them my knees hurt when I walked to school each day. We were not $1 million children. But apparently one million is the average.

Now lets look at this rationally, do children really bring $1 million dollars worth of joy and happiness to the lives of the sleep deprived parents? Mothers, is the joy of being woken up at 3am by the screeching of a child - to change a filthy nappy that smells like death, and then feeding the afformentioned child, which for the life of me I imagine would feel like having a rodent chewing on your nipple, only to have that same child vomit said breastmilk down your back - really worth one million dollars? Is it really worth having children? I often tell my parents they should have stopped after me... I mean, I was the perfect model child, and you can't improve on perfect.

I think not. It is either a child, or an investment property and the ability to retire to the highlands of NZ on your own winery estate. A family and a mini-bus, or childless and a Porsche. At least you won't find crushed cookies mashed into your leather upholstery. Hmm... it really is a tough choice.

Still, little children can be cute, and even as a male I get all 'maternal' - and I know that term refers to females - when I see little babies wrapped up in their little sheeps wool blankets. Sure they smell and make too much noise and cost ridiculous amounts of money, but when I die, I'm pretty sure that no matter how expensive my car is, it won't miss me. Like a true hussy it will simply move on to the next cashed up old man. Children and family just might miss me a little. Might.

What is measured in monetary investment terms nowdays anyway? How can you not know that you are onto a winning investment when you catch your little sister sleeping with a tissue stuffed up her nose to stop the snot flowing onto her mothers pillow? Laughing at her distraut little face as she carries around a dead frog. Wincing in pain as she shows me that she learnt how to "punch boys in their privates". That stuff is priceless.

Besides, if I don't have children, who will be left to fight it out over my inheritance, just to find out that I have spent it all on jacuzzis and cocktails in the nursing home huh? I guess despite the pricetag and the sacrifices, children are family and are therefore a good investment. Having said all that I will let you in on a little secret I learned over the past year, that might save you a lot of trouble and effort.

Children would be much easier to flush if they were fish.

I like to think of myself as a person with a rather thick skin. Nothing I see really shocks me, or really shakes me up anymore. I've been around long enough and seen enough things to know that the only things that make me squirm are pain, torture, sometimes blood and always spiders.

But recently I came across a website that made me laugh and squirm at the same time. It isn't a site with those viral images or funny stories or videos, oh no... this site takes itself very seriously. The site is cleanishappy.com and it became very apparent VERY quickly that a LOT of money has been spent on building this website to create something lively and 'interactive' for their potential customers. Although, I am not sure that 'interactive' is really what I would be looking for if I was shopping for a new toilet seat, I mean I'm not George Michael or anything...

I mean really, I was eating toast with vegimite when I came across this site. Where are the warnings people? Where are my warnings? The warnings that say "Creepy middle aged people talking about squirty toilet seats ahead - stop eating and put your food down NOW!".

Would listening to someone tell you about 'how good a toilet seat that squirts water at your butt feels first thing in the morning' put you off your food? Would listening to a middle aged man list the benefits of the toilet seat with a creepy grin on his face make you a little nervous?

I mean, my toast was INSIDE MY MOUTH and I hear the words, "We're here to introduce you to a new way to be cleaner and happier every day of your life - its called the 'washlet' and it makes personal hygene better in every way!"... And here I was wondering if when they said 'personal hygene' they were also referring to brushing your teeth. I hope not.

Honestly, it's worth a look and a laugh... especially when you play the game in your head of "match the persons butt to their face", and turn out to be totally wrong. Would make for another interesting yet useless website I guess.

P.S. Spot the girl with the pinstriping and tell me that her eyebrow raise when you mouse over her face isn't a whole new kind of creepy.

Last week we took the children from the vacation centre to Fagan Park in Galston. I forgot how beautiful those gardens really are - the views are wonderful. Go there.

I was shocked to discover that a busload of 40 odd children, aged between 6 and 14 have no interest in African or English gardens. Not even Chinese gardens get their little pulses running. But then again, we didn't take a busload of kids to Fagan park to look at flowers and marvel at the little miniature houses.

We took them there to fly their kites that they had made.

And oh golly! The wind was blowing a gale. I swear I spent 4 hours replacing broken kite frames, re-attaching missing kite tails and untangling at least two factories worth of string. Stupid kids don't seem to understand that when you decide to run around in a tight bunch flying kites in a gale, then those kites are going to go all "Voltron" on each other and connect to form one giant kite... that doesn't fly.

The other thing that children don't understand is that you can't let go of the string in strong wind, and not expect your kite to fly away into the middle of a cow paddock. And while they are at it, kids should learn that if they make a carer trek out into the middle of said cow paddock to retrieve their kite, they better bloody well fly it, and not decide that they have had enough of "kite time" 30 seconds after you scramble back over the fence. Punk.

But the thing I potentially feel a tiny bit bad about, was laughing at a child as he desperately tried to fly his kite INTO a tree. And then laughing twice as hard as he came to me rather upset because he couldn't get it out again. I mean, not really my problem if in all of your 7 year old wisdom you decide to aim for a tree, and then complain that you hit it. That is like flirting with a girl for a whole month, and then complaining when she kisses you on the cheek! Stupid.

So... once again... am I bad for laughing at him? Am I bad for telling him that he lost his kite because I can't get it down? Am I bad for making him jump to try and get a kite stuck 20 feet in the air - telling him each time he failed that he "almost" made it?

Yeah. I know I'm bad. You love it.

Facebook seems to be a more 'teenage proof' social networking tool when compared to myspace. Every teenager creates their myspace account, uploads some hideous photos of their friends drunk at a party somewhere, and then sets about cramming as many stupid videos, images, jokes, bulletins, surveys and glittery things onto their page as they can.

As someone who has done just a little design, I can begin to appreciate the clean design of the facebook site. There will be no blaring music, stupid glittery snow falling, or twenty three slide shows all trying to hijack my computers memory, slowing my computer down so much it literally has trouble breathing. Its plain and (relatively) simple.

It also has this nifty feature that allows you to specify how each person in your facebook list is connected or related to you... which leads me to my facebook fight.

Many of you would know Mr Steve West. He apparently has been spreading the love over the past, oh lets say, 30 years or so. I know what you are thinking, Steve is still mid 20's, so how could he have been spreading his love for the past 30 years? Well, I for one will not get drawn in on specifics, but I have evidence.

You see, a huge majority of Steves contacts are listed on facebook as his 'children', either a son or daughter. I decided to add myself to the system, and become a facebook grandfather by default, simply by reversing the facebook relationship balance. No longer was I listed as Steve's son, oh no... I switched it. Now he was MY son, and I apparently had grandchildren.

But Steve fought back. In fact, this facebook battle raged back and forth for a couple of weeks, one minute I was Steve's father, the next, he was trying to claim paternal rights over me. Back and forth we struggled... Reason was -and is- on my side, as I am the older of the two, and eventually Steve admitted defeat, and listed me as his father.

Needless to say, this post may fire the facebook fight up again, seeing as though ever since Steve has been throwing food at my via the facebook food fight. I just find it funny that a virtual social engineering site can cause such a strange set of social interactions... Just thought you might like to know what is going on in my life at the moment.

While I am running with the whole theme of 'confessing' my sins before you all, and thoroughly laughing about some of the lesser ones, I figured I would just keep adding to the "Am I Bad?" list. You read what I did, and then decide if it really qualifies as bad, mean or just plain funny.

What about this latest one. As you know, I have been working with Dad for the past couple of weeks, and I think he is in two minds about having me around at work with him. For starters, I think he likes the company and the whole 'father son' thing. I mean, really - who doesn't like hanging around with me. I'm more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Well, maybe more fun than a jar of pickled monkeys at least.

And sure, apart from the company, I think that the fact that I waste time every day eating breakfast, making my lunch, and later on eating my lunch comforts him in some small way. No, I don't make him breakfast or pack his lunch, but because I spend time doing it, he is forced to do it too... without me he would often skip meals which isn't good for an old person. Me eating makes him eat, which I think he likes.

Although, it does present a problem. You see, my Dad hasn't been all that well of late... his cholesterol level is higher than Snoop Dogg puffing away in the back of a limo after a concert. And he has been banned from eating certain foods. All the good ones actually. Fatty foods like hamburgers and pizzas are off the menu, along with all kinds of chocolate. Which just happen to be my fathers favourite foods.

Just because Mum has banned him from eating those foods, doesn't actually mean he has stopped eating them. He just hides it - at work. So every now and again he splurges on hamburgers and pizza for lunch. And pretty much a few times a week he sneaks chocolate into his work bag on the way home when he picks up milk.

And where is the problem in all this? His name is Will. (ME). I steal his chocolate, and when he complains or tries to bust me over it, I just tell him in front of all his work mates that I will eat his chocolate - and enjoy it, and he will say nothing about it, otherwise I will tell Mum what he has been eating. So far I have managed to steal about 4 chocolate bars in two weeks. Not bad. Similarly, when he tries to bust me at home for something, I just raise my index finger in warning, and say 'Tut tut tut - don't make me tell mum on you', and all of a sudden he is my best friend again.

So, my question, am I bad for exploiting my fathers secret vice (and doctoral disobediance) for my own personal gain? Should I feel bad about it, or should I boast about it on my website?