I spent the end of last week
stuck in Plymouth, testing a new web-based service for my place of employment. This post goes out to the in-house software development guy who left
http://goatse.cx in the browser history of my test computer. Sir, you are a credit to the stereotype of IT staff.
* Ten years ago it would have been either
Tolkien or Douglas Adams, but for obvious reasons both authors are no longer OK.
Experience the Ferocity of a Pyroclastic Flow!, by Translators from the Ukraine.
I woke in a cold sweat last night and had to get online to check my blog again, convinced that
somewhere in my discussion of Monet and Rothko I had used the word ‘diaphanous’. False alarm, thank god.
- Melbourne is so up for this.
- It’s very famous, I haven’t seen it.
- This is the precursor to what is going to happen next.
- It’s a tremdous opportunity to soak up the experience.
- They are what they are.
- Melburnians will come to watch any event.
Then, the broadcast suddenly stopped after half an hour and they switched to a phone-in about hosepipe bans.
Fun fact: the Australian national anthem was written by a Scotsman, who was paid 100 pounds by the government. I didn’t know that.
Today, I came in bright and early as is my usual habit, to find that
the Islamic-Chicos-cum-Ghostbusters-logo has now been removed, which I guess means that cheap laminated signs have seen off the Islamofascist threat for now.

Well done, everyone! Together, our vigilance and steadfastness has made our world only slightly less dangerous than it was before.
So it’s come to this. Lord knows there’s
enough crappy musicals plaguing the surfeit of fleapit theatres that infest London’s west end. Not content with Abba tribute shows, Queen tribute shows, Billy Joel tribute shows, and Joe Dolce tribute shows, the West End is racing to the bottom in a desperate bid to take more money from dazed tourists still punchdrunk from the currency exchange rate. I spotted this down the pub:

At first I thought, “Wow, two hours of
Eagle Rock played over and over”, but then I noticed the tiny print below the big title and my heart sank. Apparently it tells the story of a young man who hangs out with Rasputin, Ma Ba(r)ker, Ross Wilson and baby Jesus. Please note that it says “love and music”, not “love of music.”
Previews start on 26 April, so hurry! Australians will eat this shit up too. Americans are
less likely to get it (in more than one sense).
Worse still, it’s not just Boney M but other bands created by musical genius Frank Farian – this includes Milli Vanilli. Yes, the little blue flyer promises that punters will get to “Girl You Know It’s True”, but doesn’t mention that for the first time ever, you will actually see someone really sing it. Although this is true of all the blokey bits in Boney M’s oeuvre as well.
It’s worth reading
the interview with Farian about the show, if only for the choice quote, “I can’t make a comedy, it doesn’t go with our songs.” More importantly, it reveals the Boney M no-one remembers, such as their mid-80s attempt at prog-rock, and the long lost TV special…
which Farian says was called Boney M Lost the M. “What was the plot of that?” He shakes his head. “The story was Boney M lost the M. It was a very low-budget film.”
Think about it: it failed to meet Frank Farian’s standards. I need to see this.
England is a relatively cold country which gets snowed on regularly. Australia is relatively hot and 99% of the population must travel if they are to see snow at all.
England (although reluctant to admit it) is part of Europe, birthplace of all Olympic winter sports. Australia is about as far away from Europe as you can get without leaving orbit, and has no representation in most Olympic winter sports.
British TV has started showing winter Olympics events from Turin without much fanfare on the BBC digital channels. I have heard no speculation in the media about any British medal prospects. Australian network TV has been, based on past experience, heavily promoting its round-the-clock Olympics coverage for weeks in advance. There will be detailed evaluation of Australia’s slim hopes of fluking another gold medal, which is
regarded as a genuine achievement rather than a humorous anomaly.
The BBC is runing ads explaining to people what a luge is. Australians have known what a luge is for years and spent the past week debating Zoeggeler’s chances of winning.
However, Scottish TV will still skip episodes of The Sopranos to show the local curling playoffs instead.
“Are you going to be long in there?” Dude, she’s in an instant photo booth – I think you can wait.
The man seated next to me my first time at Tomsed was composing a message by the hunt and peck method. He pressed one letter on the keyboard, searched for the next, pressed that one, and so on. It was his one-fingered technique that attracted my attention, but when my eye alighted – not entirely accidentally – on his text, I caught my breath. The man was composing a 419 letter. A real-live scam artist sitting next to me. The words were as expected: “transfer”, “dear friend”, “deposited into your account forthwith.” So this was the origin of all that flotsam.
They don’t use your banking details, by the way. The idea behind the scam is to nickel-and-dime you on “unexpected” banking and legal fees to allegedly grease the wheels of Nigerian finance. You can find out more about the 419 scam, and some creative ways of dealing with it, here and especially here. Meet the person who actually got some money out of a Nigerian conman!