June 19, 2003
Midwinter Madness
I hate shopping for clothes.
I'm a guy, so I guess it comes with the territory. In fact, I hate shopping in general. Don't get me wrong: I don't mind buying things; in fact, I quite enjoy buying things. It's the process of shopping that wears me down. The problem is, I guess, that I don't want something like 99.9% of what is available in stores. I'm just not interested in pawing my way through 300 different items that I wouldn't take if they were free before I find want whatever it is that I'm after. The ideal transaction for me would work like this: I walk into the store, which is clean, well lit, and is most definitely not playing rap music. Or Celine Dion, for that matter. I find what I want, clearly labelled and in plentiful supply, sitting on a shelf. I take it to the cashier, who takes my money and puts my purchase and my receipt in a sturdy bag. Then I take my goodies and leave. Total elapsed time should not be more than five minutes. I wear Levi jeans for a fairly simple reason: I can buy them off the shelf, and they fit. I know exactly which style I want, which colour (well, I'm willing to vary the colour), and my size. The Levi's store in Sydney's Pitt St mall delivers on this about half the time, which is significantly better than the odds I've found elsewhere. Not today, of course. The mid-year sales are on, which means that the tables are piled high with dozens of identical pairs of 30-waist, 36-leg, indigo-grey bootcuts. (How the stores manage to land themselves with that sort of junk in the first place is another question entirely, and I'm not going to go into a discussion of focus forecasting right now.) Anyway, the Levi's store didn't have my size in that style in any colour whatsoever. Nor did Grace Bros. Nor did David Jones. (Though DJs did prove once again that some people will buy anything: Three hundred and nineteen dollars for a pair of jeans?) Just Jeans don't even carry that style. Jeans West don't sell Levi's. (What?) They sell Jeans West brand. (Oh.) But they will sell me two pairs for the price of one pair of Levi 504s. They're a little long, but but this point I was willing to buy anything that had two holes at one end, one hole at the other, and a zip. If there's one thing that's even worse than buying clothes, of course, it's buying shoes. About fifteen years ago I found a style of shoe that was comfortable, smart, hard-wearing and not too horribly expensive. Every so often my existing pair would start to look noticeably scruffy even to me, and I'd go to the store and buy another pair. Same size, same style, though sometimes I bought black and sometimes brown. Unfortunately, the last pair I bought had had the hard-wearingness taken out for some inscrutable marketing reason, and they fell apart in short order. Scratch a decade and a half of shoe-buying expertise. So here I am looking for a new pair of shoes, because the hole in the toe of my sneakers is starting to get kind of obvious. But it's not like you can stop at a random shoe store in the mall, immediately find something you like, guess your size right the first time and discover that they fit perfectly. And it's hardly likely that they'll be on sale at half price, and that the store will have a second, identical pair on hand... I guess you can call me Cinderella.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:45 PM | Comments (74) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Creepy Susie
Book of the Day is Creepy Susie and 13 other tragic tales for troubled children by Angus Oblong.
Now, normally in recommending a book I'd include a carefully selected quote of some of the author's finest prose. In this case, however, this amounts to:This is Helga.Take a look at the sample pages on Amazon's site. Then buy the book. You can also read The Cutie Bunch Friendly Pal Pack. There are a bunch more books here too. So if you know a child with a birthday coming up... (via the cheese stands alone via Tiger)
These are the Debbies. The Debbies all tried very hard to be the same.
Helga was an endless source of amusement for the Debbies...
Even though Helga was different, she had somehow convinced herself that there was a place in society for her.
The Debbies sought to destroy Helga's glimmer of hope to one day fit in.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:02 AM | Comments (78) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
June 18, 2003
Strange and Unusual
Web Site of the Day is Strange and Unusual Dictionaries. Though it mostly consists of links to books and other web sites, it provides three valuable resources: The White Queen's Dictionary of One Letter Words (with over 700 entries!), The Dictionary of All-Consonant Words (I got rhythm, I got music... What? They don't count rhythm? Foobie bletch!), and of course the indispensible Dictionary of All-Vowel Words (running from a'u to Yu).
From there, adoxographers might choose to study The Grandiloquent Dictionary, though aabarists might prefer The Pseudodictionary. For the rest of us, there's always The Foolish Dictionary, presented by Aaaugh! Confound your friends and amaze your enemies with your new-found Scrabble-power!Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:53 PM | Comments (72) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
This does free up a fair bit of my time. Road Trip
I'm off on a road trip this weekend, and busy busy until then, so I don't know when I'll be blogging. On the other hand, I'll be taking both my notebook and my digital camera with me, so expect a serious update when I get back.
(Can I just add at this point that I love my digital camera? Point and click-click-clickety-click. OK, so two out of three pictures are duds. No problem, since I take ten times as many pictures as before.) Meanwhile, The International Squirrel Conspiracy has further squirrel terrorism updates, and helpful notes on how you as a citizen can help.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:29 PM | Comments (70) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
June 17, 2003
Retromingent
Word of the day is retromingent. [If it is, it can bloody well clean it up itself. &mdash Ed.]
(from The Wall Street Journal via Instapundit.)Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:36 AM | Comments (67) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
June 16, 2003
Forwarded Without Comment
(Though I'm having to restrain myself.)
From the CD Japan J-Pop mailing list:Sugizo, the former guitar player of the super rock
group Luna Sea, has been active with his solo project
Sugizo & The Spank Your Juice since the summer of
2002, and the upcoming single will be the third. http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=CRCP-10046 At the same time, the lead singer of Penicillin, Hakuei
will be releasing his second solo single. http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=IOCD-11036
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:23 PM | Comments (68) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Hello Polly Heater
The sky is blue, the sun is shining; there's a gentle breeze playing with the leaves in the trees. It's cool enough to wear that new jacket if you want to look stylish; warm enough to wear a t-shirt if you want to be comfortable.
Yes folks, another typical Winter's day in Sydney. Last night, though, it was cold. Not cold cold, I admit, but still cold. So I turned my little heater on for the first time this year. Ah. Blessed warmth. The smell of burning dust. Splut. Splut? No warmth. No anything, in fact. Click off, click on. Nothing. The best heater in the district. It's so clean. Well, at least the dust is all burnt off. So today at lunch time I went to Grace Bros. (for readers who remember that show, yes, it's real) and bought myself Poodle Hat, Spirited Away, Lilo & Stitch, and the new Bond flick, Halle Berry's Navel. Oh, and a heater. This heater cost me $25. Now, late last year, just before Christmas, I gave up on my old air conditioner (which was also going splut, but would at least unsplut itself if you gave it a chance) and bought a new one. My new air conditioner works very well and I'm quite pleased with the purchase, but - how shall I put this - it cost a little more than $25. Not quite two zeroes more, but in that general vicinity. So my question is - I did say there was a question, didn't I? No? Well, there's a question. My question is, why can't I buy a compact, efficient, portable, $25 device that cools my house rather than warming it? Well, OK, apart from the Laws of Thermodynamics, why can't I buy such a thing? It's almost enough to make me want to move from the comfortable sub-tropics to one of those nasty places where frozen water falls from the sky at certain times of the year and no-one thinks it odd. But only almost.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:15 PM | Comments (76) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
You Feel A Sense Of Loss
George Goble's web site is gone. Gone!
Curse you, people in charge! But blessings be upon the Wayback Machine, for they have the true web site. Or most of it, anyway. Don't do this at home. Unless you have someone filming you.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:54 PM | Comments (73) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Tiger: Raggin' & Rantin'
Blog of the Day is Tiger: Raggin' & Rantin', for his fine sense of grammar and his judicious use of language, as approved by 7 out of 10 alien species:
Anyone who is offended by my review of their entry, remember I am merely stating my opinions and they may not necessarily be the opinions of any other single person [on this planet, as I have been contacted and told that my opinions were officially adopted by an entire alien sub-culture in the Ming Sector and most of the species in the Gamma quadrant.]Tiger has a fine review up of the entrants in N.Z. Bear's New Weblog Showcase. If you're interested in Blogging (as opposed to just individual Blogs), or if you're looking for new Blogs to read, it's well worth the time to read Tiger's review and take a look at the Bear's showcase.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:38 AM | Comments (78) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Secret Project X Update
Well, the server seems to have utterly failed to melt, and Secret Project X is nearing completion. It actually seems to work, but needs a little fiddling before I unleash it on an unsuspecting world.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:14 AM | Comments (77) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
June 15, 2003
It Isn't Easy...
The headline in The Australian says it all, really:
‘Extinct’ bum breathing turtle backI'll just give you a minute to let the glory of that line settle in. ‘Extinct’ bum breathing turtle back. That's our national newspaper, that is. No country but Oz etc. etc., and we're proud of it. As for the bum-breathing turtle:
SCIENTISTS were beating a path to a plastic tank in Brisbane yesterday to examine a shell-backed beast they had presumed to be extinct. The young male Lavarack's turtle was captured in a creek at the Lawn Hill National Park in north Queensland a week ago and flown to the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service in Brisbane. As well as its journey back from the dead, the shelled beast has another unusual characteristic scientists are keen to investigate: it breathes through its bum.Which I suppose is preferable to talking through it, as is so common in the world these days.
"Whenever there is a new specimen that people have read about but never seen everyone comes down for a look," he said. "That's especially true with a handsome turtle like this. Most turtles have a plain cream colour underneath but this one is pleasantly mottled."Yes, that's right, butter the poor turtle up and then -
Scientists will stick a camera-headed fibre-optic cable into his cloaca to see how his breathing apparatus works.Bloody hell! What have I ever done to you! How'd you like it if I examined your breathing apparatus, mate? Right, I'm off. (via Fark)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:43 AM | Comments (77) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
June 14, 2003
Secret Project X
Light blogging today and tomorrow because (a) I am feeling blah and uninspired, and (b) I am busy working on Secret Project X. If SP X doesn't melt my server, it should be up for the world to see in the next few days. If it does melt my server, well, it's been nice talking to you.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:37 PM | Comments (74) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Klapka?
Amazon tells me that it's Jerome Klapka Jerome. No wonder he only used the initial.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:01 PM | Comments (75) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Knick Knacks
Over at misinformer.com, Marcus is asking the important questions: Knick Knack's Breast Spheres: Where Are They Now?
"The girl!" I gasped, "She's got no boobies!"These people have to be stopped! Remake or no Remake, movie revisionism is evil - especially when it involves boobies. (Thanks to Segnosaur on JREF Forums for the link.)
The guy sitting next to me cuffed me in the back of the head.
"Shhh! Of course she's got no boobies. It's a kid's cartoon."
"No," I explained, "I mean... she used to have boobies! They're gone!"
"Shut up you pervert. There were never any boobies."
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:44 PM | Comments (75) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
June 13, 2003
Uncommon Knowledge About A Sunset
Is it found on a desk? I say Probably.Play Twenty Questions at 20Q.net and learn all sorts of things that you never knew you didn't know.
Does it break if dropped? I say Yes.
Does it have keys? I say Probably.
Is it originally from Canada? I say Probably.
Can it jump? I say Probably.
Can you order it at a restaurant? I say Yes.
Do you open and close it? I say Yes.
Was it used over 100 years ago? I say Doubtful.
Does it stand on two legs? I say Probably.
Do the rabbits eat it? I say Probably.
Does it have arms? I say Probably.
Is it a type of bird? I say Probably.
Is it normally planted in gardens? I say Probably.
Is it originally from Africa? I say Probably.
Is it red when ripe? I say Probably.
Does it have a hole in it? I say Probably.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:02 PM | Comments (73) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Collinization
Blog of the Day is Collinization:
So here I am, 22 years old with the house to myself for 10 days, and a huge bag of frozen peas covering my face. Of course the painkillers they gave me (which don't work) don't mix very well with alcohol, so I get to hear all my friends get drunk while I suffer in the darkness of the green giant's bounty.Scroll down to the entry Life tells me, 'Grab your ankles!', and after you read that, work your way upwards. (It's at Blogspot, so permalinks aren't very useful even when they work at all.) Make sure you put down any beverages before getting to Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?, as the management will not be held responsible for the consequences. (Thanks to Susie at Practical Penumbra for pointing me to this one.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:20 AM | Comments (77) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
June 12, 2003
Because It Was There
Whoa.
If you have a broadband connection (or are very patient) and have Quicktime installed on your computer, go here. Now. This view of Petra is also good, if not quite as breathtaking as Everest. Then go to the site's home page to read more. (Found in a comment on Little Green Footballs, though unfortuntely I've now lost the comment.)Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:11 AM | Comments (74) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Planarian
Word of the day is planarian. (Yes, but it wouldn't be if — hang on, that's a noun! You cheated! — Ed.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:15 AM | Comments (75) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Poodle Hats
My colleagues at work returned from lunch today to taunt me with their copies of Poodle Hat. I have been somewhat paralysed the last couple of days and haven't had the opportunity to go out and purchase my own copy. Grrr! Oops, time for my meds.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:11 AM | Comments (68) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Hackers, Old Style
Web site of the Day is the MIT Hack Gallery. As they say:
The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!). Note that this has nothing to do with computer (or phone) hacking (which we call "cracking").Some favourites:
The Great DroidThere are many more, with pictures. There's a Best Of page too, which might be a good place to start.
Trogdor the Burninator in Post-It Notes
The Elevator in the Basement
The Gnome Infestation
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:05 AM | Comments (75) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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