Victorii

Figures for the 12 months from April 07 to April 08 really puts this whole console war in perspective.

In publishing only, Nintendo made over $2 billion! Meanwhile Microsoft lost almost $600 million and Sony lost over $1 billion.

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/07/29/console-makers-profi.html#comments

Picture in your mind's eye the dude who works at the local video game store, who looks at me with pity whenever I buy a Wii game, who told me the console was dead three months after release, who seems to believe that owning a Playstation 3 is a condition of entry into the store.

Picture me saying "nyah, nyah, nyah".

Nintendo has aced this generation folks, and it makes me very happy.

Twitterling

Well, after a morning of techno-wrangling, I believe I've got this Twitter thing sorted.

Over on the right you'll see a section called twittering. If all goes to plan it should start holding my last few twitter posts.

Twitter, for the uninitiated, is kind of a micro-blog. It's designed for making short posts throughout the day. If that doesn't work there's a link to my page over there as well.

So, if you've been visiting this blog and thinking, "gee, this is cool and all, but when does he have lunch? WHEN?" Well, now I can peel back the curtain on such exciting inanities.

Technology is allowing my to gaze further into my bellybutton than ever before, and share the contents within!

Free potato bake! Awesome.

My old chum Ciarne came to visit me last week. In a somewhat unexpected turn she made me a potato bake. It was awesome.

Ciarne was literally the Girl Next Door during my childhood. When we were young we would while away summer holidays in each other's imagination. On reflection, it was a colourful and, frankly, batshit crazy place to inhabit.
Days would often follow a common template - I would head over the Ciarne's place and we would play, getting progressively more involved in our world as the day wore on. Late in the afternoon someone, often my reality-attuned brother, would remind us of the universe's laws, and we would call it a day.
Activities often occurred at Ciarne's house because she had a trampoline and a see-saw, whereas my house didn't. One did not enter Ciarne's house but her yard was full of wonder - cubby house, guppies, empty sodastream bottles.
My house, on the other hand, was an internal affair. We had a table with those green lego mats inset in it at a tub in the middle for all the pieces. Ciarne would make intricate houses and creatures out of our random lego blocks and then, when her back was turned, I would destroy it with my lego robot, and consume the pieces to grow my abomination.
Once we started in on the business-end of primary school and gender roles reared their ugly head our relationship retracted back into a "at home only" affair. Boys and girls could not be seen to fraternise in school. Fear of cooties reigned.
During high school Ciarne moved away. To be specific, she moved about 800 metres away. Even though she was only around the corner it seemed much farther, and I recall visiting her new abode on only one occasion. Luckily we shared the same bus stop to school and our friendship was preserved despite the usual teenage drift.
After we all finished school she moved to Adelaide and we see each other rarely. I enjoy it when we do though and she seems happy. This is good.

Here's some scattershot recollections of my childhood time with Ciarne.

Marrying Cats

The girls across the road had acquired two small kittens. We decided that, as they were going to live together and were of opposite sexes, they should be married. Despite our grand plans the ceremony amounted to two kittens being placed in a cage as we spoke aloud. Following this tear-jerker we gathered around the "chapel" and cooed as they cuddled each other. To us, their close contact was a result of their boundless love for one another - not the result of being shut in a small cage. The reception involved us learning that the cats were brother and sister and the wedding party running as fast as they could for an as-yet-to-be-determined honeymoon. Romance was in the air.

The Ultimate Solvent

A sizeable portion of Ciarne's back yard was taken up by her father's shed. From my bedroom I could see the roof of the shed and, for five-odd years, the Toxic Avenger action figure I had thrown up there by accident one day.
Running across the back of the shed was a line of empty Soda Stream bottles. One day, putting our own spin on the timeless "mudpies" pastime, Ciarne and I decided to fill the bottles with, well, everything. We filled the bottles with water from the tap and then jammed dirt, rocks, dust, leaves, buttons and whatever refuse we could find in there. Shaking the concoction well, we poured it on the side of the shed and behold! The dust was washed away like a repentant hooker's sins! To our surprise, we had invented the ultimate solvent! Capable of cleaning any surface and cutting through even the toughest stains! Surely we would ride this powerful elixir all the way to millionairedom! Huzzah! With little time to waste we began filling the rest of the bottles with our powerful formula. We had enough to start a modest lemonade stand-sized operation before, again, reality crashed in and we realised a basic property of water - it is wet, and washes dust away from sheds.

Ghostbusters

Ciarne, myself and a few other kids from around our street would play Ghostbusters all the time. If memory serves, we'd fall into the same old tropes every time. Ciarne had a device (a radio?) that could detect ghosts. She'd point them out and we would attack them or run away. I, irritatingly, would always pretend to be killed and then resurrected as a servant of evil. I had a blast, but suspect it grew quite predictable by the fourth time. I often wonder how we appeared to observers - a girl fiddling with a radio before pointing at empty space, her friends screaming and then falling down, only for one to get back up and walk slowly towards the rest.
As a sidenote, I convinced everyone my glasses allowed me to understand what dogs were saying. I could never come up with that today as the flawed logic of an eyes-based device enhancing hearing is like a splinter in my geekdom.

The Clubhouse

My yard had a shed at the back that was used for nothing. We decided it should be a clubhouse. My definition of clubhouse was "somewhere you sit in" but Ciarne had broader ideals. One month it was the Animal Club so we each got hand-drawn posters, membership cards and newsletters. This was repeated for the Monster and Ghost clubs. She would draw three copies of a four-page newsletter, make the place look awesome, and then I would sit in it. I can't remember why this particular pastime ended, but suspect I wasn't quite pulling my weight.

Rollerblades

For some reason every kid in our street got rollerblades for Christmas at the same time. Cue three months of awkward rolling. We lived in a street two blocks long. It was a quite little stretch almost devoid of traffic, and that was where we were allowed to roll. At the end of a street was what appeared back then to me an epic mountain, which we would repeatedly walk up and roll down at imagined breakneck speeds. Passing by there today, I realise the slop is barely steep enough to see an egg roll down it without listlessly stopping halfway.
At the time though? We were on the edge.
I, sadly, never learned how to stop. Ciarne's concrete driveway provided an uninterrupted path to the front of her house, which I could use to brake by slamming into bodily. If I had to stop without the benefit of a wall, I had to fly around in tight circles until coming to a stop. I. Looked. Awesome.
At the end of those particular holidays we put the blades away and never got them out again. Not sure why, but my unbroken bones are happy.

There's also an entirely unrelated tale in which I ate half a potato bake for dinner on Friday night. I was a bad idea, but tasted too good to stop.

Snippity

DSCF0972.jpg, originally uploaded by obscene_pickle.

See this photo? In which I am flanked by two flagrantly attractive dudes within the nexus of good times which is the Democratic Club?

Well, a significant portion of the hair pictured resting upon the head of that smart-looking be-speckled gentlemen in the centre is now gone! Swept away like cobwebs in that cupboard through to Narnia. And like that cupboard, my seemingly smaller head will lead us to a new world! With five minutes saved each day now there is no need for knot-ripping brushstrokes, we can achieve great things!

For example, this evening I ingested half a barbecue chicken and made my phone sound like the Master Sword.

Great things.

Classy

Yesterday we passed by a shop that sold:

* Erotic items;

* Cigars, and;

* Inflatable AFL paraphernalia.

Skeezieest store ever?

'Cause ya just might get it....

Man, that new Pussycat Dolls song is awesome.


"When I grow up, fresh and clean
Covered in bees when I step out on the scene"

However I was disappointed that one of the lyrics is "I wanna have groupies" after I spent a few days belting out "I wanna have boobies". I prefer my version.

Masculinity -10

Ability to sing, flail and embarrass passengers while driving +15

That, my friends, is a net gain.

Banks

Banks do not open until 10am! What the hell?!?

Excessive exclamation aside, that's crazy.
Granted, my up-to-the-minute discovery of this fact is a testament to my rare desire to attend a financial institution at 9am, but still. We go to all this trouble to build a society entirely dependent on the regular exchanging of brightly coloured pieces of paper, and the people who hold on to them for us can't be bothered getting out of bed until an hour after the rest of us?

Yesterday I learned my tax return cheque was ready, which was enough to have me out of my comfy pants at 9am on a non-work day. Getting money out of the Government always puts a spring in my early morning step, much like the promise of a free McMuffin.

So I finds myself striding blearily towards the bank at 9.15am, with cheque in my hand and head full of three-days-away-spending-spree dreams [I intend to finish paying for a couch I "bought" in 2003].

Sadly, rather than being embraced by the cool surroundings of a dozen workers behind soaring plastic, my head thunked against toughened glass in the way it only can when a man attempts to walk through a door he expects to open automatically.
As I stood dazed and disoriented, I started to notice the telltale sign that a business is not yet open - old people. All around me were greying smirks - my elders sat in warm their cars, joyful at youthful hubris being taken down a peg.

I could feel their thoughts.
"Look at that young man, wanting to jump the cue. The sound of his glasses clinking against the door fills me with satisfaction .. . satisfaction bested only by me having outlived my contemporaries. I bet he plays loud music near my neighbourhood. Bastard."

I was hurt. I did take comfort in the fact that, even though this crowd possessed superior knowledge, they were also waiting for the bank to open 45 minutes in the future.

As I got back into my car and left, haunted by the lingering guffaws of people who would soon be in front of me in line, I had a vague recollection of this happening before. This was no isolated occurrence - banks opening at ten had thwarted me before, likely at the end of a previous financial year.

Why is this not discussed? Does this not inconvenience many? I have been doing my banking on the internet for years - allowing me to avoid attending the premises and dovetailing nicely with the bank's desire to keep me out of building while still charging me for monopolising their time with my pesky business.

This is why banks are so rich: Between 9am and 10am each day, they have free reign to dream up new and interesting charges. This is why I am broke, and they are still in bed.

The Dark Knight

As previously discussed, I recently watched The Dark Knight.

The movie's been percolating in my brain for a few days, and really? That thing is awesome.

I wanted to write a review, but the internet is already choking on praise for the film, and any review I would write would just be more of the same. 

Even all the little shout-outs to cool things - the Joker's reptilian momentum, the pencil, Bruce's bevy of babes, Dent's tendons - have already been done.

Honestly? Chris Sims said exactly what I wanted to say.

Oh! I have one thing to say: The [deserved] focus on Ledger's performance left Aaron Eckert's excellent performance and centrality to the film a total surprise. Harvey Dent was a magnificent character. One of many.

So yeah, that movie was great. Great great great.

Mysterious contributor "B" sounded off on his thoughts in the comments to the previous post - giving away his age in the process. Anyone else got some thoughts they'd like to share?

And Ledger? He really was that good.

Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh

I'm going to see The Dark Knight tonight.

I'm so excited I could explode.

Chainmail bikinis

My non-work related writing time has today been consumed by a thread on the Hordelings message board.

Hordelings is a forum for enthusiasts of the Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures game. I am members of said community, which takes me a few short steps to the other side of awesome.

There's a thread on there at the moment discussing how, in the books published for Dungeons and Dragons, heroes are mostly represented as white males, and women are largely presented as scantily-clad, gravity defying objects of ridiculousness. It's a cool discussion about why this is not a good thing, with a few people chiming in to say 'well, I just think it's awesome'.

I couldn't help but chime in about my favourite, most pushable barrow, white privilige.
http://hordelings.com/forums/postView.php?viewPage=0&post_id=156603

Neeeerds!

Last week I went to Genconoz., cementing my status of total nerd with a road trip.

I haven't seen the below movie because I'm shaped into oblivion, but hopefully it isn't a crazy mess of suckitude.

I have to go now because this internet connection makes me feel like I'm trapped in an undersized jungle gym.

Hello world!

So ... I don't know if anybody knows this .... but .... I totally have a blog.

Sorry all! recreating my bedroom consumed my life for two weeks, wiping away my softened, calloused brain in the process.

That excuse doesn't cover the month-and-a-half lack of posting since then, but, uh, look over there!

At left you will see a picture of my bedroom as it stood a few weeks ago. Notice the lack of walls! A magical portal to the outside world! Wood not where wood should be! A house corner unsupported!

FYI - House Corner Unsupported will be the name of my boy band. For realsies.

Anyway, the renovation went reasonably well, with one hitch: When we thought to outselves "let's demolish everything in our bedroom", little did we know that wood-consuming white ants had concocted the exact same plan months before!

Blog muscles slowly returning. Will write more tomorrow. Believe me! At your own risk!