Random Doobings

"There!" cried Captain Doobie in triumph, flamboyantly scribbling the last letter in the last box and waving his pen with a flourish, "That's that."

"That's what?" mumbled Goodtime Slim from the couch, engrossed in the latest Phantom comic*.
"I've finished the crossword in the Advertiser."
"Goodtime Slim looked up. "I've always wondered why you bother with that thing. You start off ok, but then you're always in a mad panic to finish it."

"Of course. If I couldn't finish it, it would mean that someone at the Advertiser is smarter than me, and I can't be having that can I?"

Goodtime Slim looked at him dissaprovingly. "I don't think anyone at the Advertiser ever actually does the crossword," he told him.

Captain Doobie looked indignant. "Of course they do!" he cried, "How else do they have the answers in there the next day?"

*The Sengh Brotherhood Cops A Right Bloody Belting; Frew Publications, 2008.

Random Doobings

Captain Doobie, Goodtime Slim, and the Merciless Merchandiser of Morphett Vale.

Captain Doobie popped his head around the door of Goodtime Slim's room. "Can I borrow your engraver?" he asked brightly.

"What engraver?" asked Goodtime Slim, sitting up in bed and blearily wiping the sleep from his eyes.
"You remember, the one you got when the dog from up the back kept jumping the fence and you said you were going to change whatever was on it's tax disc into a rude word."

Goodtime Slim remembered now. "Oh, that one," he said, "It's on top of the wardrobe."
"Ta," replied Captain Doobie, reaching up, grabbing it and leaving.
Goodtime Slim was slightly troubled by all of this. He had no idea of what might be about to happen, and this worried him a great deal. If sharing a house with Captain Doobie were compared to cruising on a yatch, then Goodtime Slim spent a lot of time being swept over the side.

His sense of unease was only deepened when he heard the engraver fire up in the dining room. Goodtime Slim lay in bed for several minutes until curiosity and a fart best described as a Breakfast Maker caused him to venture out into the kitchen. There he found Captain Doobie hard at work with the engraver in one hand, and a jar full of small metal things beside him.

Goodtime Slim made himself a cup of milo rather conspicuously, but Captain Doobie didn't turn around. Goodtime Slim took the drastic step of boiling an egg and making some toast soldiers, but even this extraordinary activity didn't make Captain Doobie look up. Finally, Goodtime Slim had to resort to poking his nose in.

"What's that then?" he asked, settling himself down at the opposite end of the table from Captain Doobie. As he cut the end off his egg he heard a piece of metal shaving plop into his Spiderman mug. He sighed pointedly. Captain Doobie looked up. "They're cotter pins," he told him.

"I can see that," replied Goodtime Slim, "What on earth are you doing?"
"This is my new job. I was thinking how much money there is these days in merchandising for television, so I thought i'd create some of my own."

Goodtime Slim did a small doubletake, flicking egg around. "How?"
"I'm engraving 'Welcome back' on all of them."

sniffIMPERTINENCE

HOLDEN UNVEILS PLANS FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY COMMODORE WHILST SMIRKING

LIZABEFF: Holden chief Hyman T Spunkfelcher today unveiled plans for Australia's first 'green' Commodore by talking in vague terms about future plans but not actually saying much, and sort-of giggling. "By 2010 there will definitely be an environmentally-friendly Commodore," he chortled, "Whether it's petrol-electric, diesel-electric or just plain diesel, we can't say."

Given that at this point in a new car's development small matters like the choice of powertrain should have been long locked in, industry experts have concluded that Mr Spunkfelcher is simply talking out of his large, flabby, pasty yank arse. "We suspect he's not telling the truth," commmented Ms F Rigid, anti-car reviewer for Choice Magazine, "Perhaps if Holden want to decrease the emission signature of their sales catalogue they could drop the V8 and make a small four-cylinder vehicle instead?"

Ms Rigid's comments were greeted with a distinct lack of sobriety by Holden management. "Holden as a company is totally committed to green technology," chuckled the VP in charge of Media Deflection, whilst wiping his eyes with a tissue, "Only this week we painted all the robots a lovely emerald colour. All of them! We even used this cool lead based paint and then washed the brushes out in the dolphin tank at Seaworld."

Frippery

Adventura, Belmont, Charger, Dino, El Camino, Falcon, Galant, Hi-Ace, i30, Jackaroo, Kingswood, Lexcen, Monaro, Nova, Octavia, Premier, Quintet, Roadpacer, Starrion, Tarago, Uracco, Vitesse, Wagon-R, XR4, Yaris, Zephyr.

There was no point to all that, just wanted to see if I could do it, is all.

Neil Young Has Spider Named After Him

TEXAS: In today's biggest news it was reported that Canadian folk/rock singer Neil Young has had a spider named after him. The reasons behind this are relatively uncertain, but it would appear that the spider reminded the scientist who made the discovery a lot of Neil Young.

This may be less than complimentary. According to standard operating procedure, spider species are differentiated by their genitalia, which may mean that the genitalia of this particular spider (a member of the trapdoor genus) made the scientist exclaim, "Hey, that looks just like Neil Young".

The singer/songwriter has not yet officially commented on the honour. However, he is reported to be interested in buying several hundred very small guitars in order than any spider who wishes to follow in his footsteps may be allowed to. The Canadian popster is also rumoured to be recording a new album, a follow-up to 2006's "Living With War", entitled "Living With Baygon". The known track listing at this stage includes:

1. Hey hey, fly fly.
2. Pea-Beau The Killer
3. Web Of Gold
4. Venom Delivery
Meanwhile, some industry pundits are underwhelmed. "He's just copying the Beatles," an unknown spokesman named Stephen Stills told reporters this morning. Neither of the surviving Beatles could be located for comment, as Ringo was busy at a Yasser Arafat look-alike contest and Sir Paul McCartney was taking his daily bath in virgin's blood.

The Crying Of Lot 49

I have now read 3 of Thomas Pynchon's novels and am working on the fourth. I know of no-one else on earth who can match this feat.

The problem is that this achievement is less than admirable when one of the novels, The Crying Of Lot 49, is little more than a short story, clocking in at 127 pages. I read it last night, and was somewhat underwhelmed. It was written in 1964 and I guess things have changed since then. I got told it was all about conspiracies and government agents and was a page-turner par excellence, instead it was dreary, dull and plodding. There was some clever wordplay and the stucture was a bit 'out there' but nothing that you wouldn't encounter in any of a number of 'modern' novels.

Still, the story was solid and i'ts not like it took more than a couple of hours to read, so i'm satisfied.
I'm now working on "Against The Day' which is shaping up to be fantastic.

The Pile

Everyone who reads books sooner or later accumulates A Pile. You know how it is: you just tend to buy more books than you read, then 10 years later you look around and you're knee-deep. You read some, but then you get more books, which go on top, and the whole cycle starts over again.

I'm very pleased to say that yesterday due to an unfortunate brush with the flu, I read 3 books from THE VERY START of my pile! In a fit of madness I started at the bottom, not the top, and started reading my way up. The thick heavy dust got blown off, and they got read. "Apocalypse: The Musical" by Robert Rankin (which I hated); "Lord Of Light" by Roger Zelazny (fair to middling); and "Involution Ocean" by Bruce Sterling (fantastic). I can't remember buying Apocalypse, but Lord Of Light was one of the first books I ever bought from the book club, and Involution Ocean I borrowed from a friend. Seeing as how I first joined the book club ten years ago, this was something akin to archaeology. Archaoliteracy perhaps?

Your Attention Please.

D C White would like to advise the general public that as of 3pm on Wednesday the 30th of April 2008, pomegranates have officially been added to D C White's list of Things That Can Go Get Fucked.

I don't care about it's status as a superfruit, I'm not interested in it's free-radical scavenging properties, i'm even less concerned about it's advantages as an anti-viral, and I couldn't even care less that it tastes a bit like cherries.

Pomegranates can Go Get Fucked.

Freedomnomics: A Review

I was initially attracted to Freedomnomics because it purported to offer a riposte to Freakonomics, a book I read about 18 months ago. The more I saw of it on Amazon and suchlike convinced me that it would be a bit of a giggle. The author, John Lott Jr. is also the author of "More Guns, Less Crime" and several other right-wing tomes. Here, thought I, would be misinformed comment masquerading as economic analysis.

I could not have been more wrong. Freedomnomics is a plethora of contradictions. At once correct and incorrect, it suffers from the bias of the authors politics.

To use it's full title, "Freedomnomics: Why The Free Market Works and Other Halfbaked Ideas Don't - A Response To Freakonomics" is in it's primary aim successful. It looks at the claims made by Stephen Levitt in 'Freakonomics' and demolishes them in well-thought-out, logical analysis. In essence, it points out where Levitt overlooked several crucial factors, including prior statistical research, in reaching his conclusions.

I get the feeling that if John Lott Jr. had left it at that I would be hailing this book's praises from the rooftops as it is remarkably perceptive. Unfortunately, John Lott Jr. did not leave good enough alone. Not content with tearing the left-leaning Freakonomics to shreds, he then embarks on a journey into right-wing politics, attempting to prove (among other things) that big business is a force for good, that politicians are honest and that the death penalty is an effective deterrent for crime. He makes good cases for these but, as in his own rebuttal of Freakonomics, there are gaps in his logic. In the section on big business he shys away from any investigation of monopoly forces, in his article on crime he never even mentions the effect of insurance reporting on the rise in crime rates, and his piece on politicians simply compares apples and oranges (judges versus politicos).

This is not to say that the entire book is rubbish, because it isn't. The author is obviously quite intelligent but he suffers from the common ailment of academia in that he fails to rigorously test his own hypotheses. This would be merely unfortunate if he wasn't spending half of his book upbraiding another economist for doing the same. In this case, it becomes tedious.

The best I can say about this book is that it's got me back into some serious economic thought after far too long away. Like riding a bike, you never really forget, you just can't be bothered anymore...

Why I didn't Get Invited To The 2020 Summit

Ladies and Gentlemen, Citizens of Australia, thank you for the opportunity to address the historic conclave that is Australia's 2020 summit.

Upon this occasion delegates such as yourself and myself were invited to table proposals pertinent to improving Australia, in particular the Australian way of life, and the lot of the Australian people. In accepting the honour of making a recommendation I had a very hard look at Australia, it's environs, it's hopes, dreams and its place in the world, so that now I feel I can fully address one of the premier problems confronting Australian society.

Ladies and Gentlemen, why can Australia, as a nation, not find the droids it is looking for?
It is not that Australia's droid-searching apparatus is deficient. It is not that it's personnel are incapable, nor is our equipment faulty. I have thoroughly reviewed all aspects of the recent Tatooine-wide search for droids and cannot find a single report of incompetance.

And yet the evidence is incontrovertible: we failed to find the droids.
There are those in Australian society today, in particular the pundits in the media who doubt that our search was as thorough as it could have been. To those people I say this: if the door is locked, it is imperative that you move on to the next door. This is logical: if the door is locked for you, it would obviously have been locked for the droids you're looking for, and thus they cannot have passed through to the other side.

Additionally there are those who claim that our landspeeder roadblocks were simply staffed by incompetent, weak-minded fools. I have personally interviewed all staff involved and I can assure you that any droids seen  WERE NOT the droids we were looking for, that the citizens COULD go about their business, and that the officers acted in full cognizance when telling all traffic to move along.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I hereby charge this task to this august body, comprised as it is of some of the finest thinkers, sportsmen and entertainers in this fair land, please, please help us to find the droids we are looking for, and in doing so let us, as a nation, move on and find some measure, however small, of closure.

Thank you.

Belvedere! Come here boy!

Last week a friend of mine complained that he had become a statistic when through no fault of his own he found himself blogging in a coffee shop. Well, I believe I may be able to top that.

Today is Wish Day in honour of the Make A Wish Foundation, and I find myself blogging from my desk at work decked out in complete Confederate Army battle-dress. Only a Private, of course. I will admit that i'm struggling to think of a reason why anyone would actually WISH to be a Confederate, but truth be told it was just an excuse to buy the hat...

...and make disparaging remarks about Yankees.

On The Set Of Star Wars: The TV Series

Good morning everyone, thank you for answering our call in the newspaper for extras today. I realise that some of you have travelled very far to be here today, especially those who took the 5 hour drive up from Adelaide. Don't worry about your cars, we'll have some of the locals park them for you properly later. We weren't really expecting this many, that's all.

Now, first things first: could I have the men on my left and the women on my right please? No, women on the right. WOMEN right, men left.

...
Are there any women here?
...
Alllllrighty. In that case, could I have all the men under 40 on my left, and all the men over 40 on my right?
...
Right then, could I have everyone who bought their own costumes to my left, and everyone who needs to go to wardrobe on my right.

...
Oh for fu..fine. Light side to the left, dark side to the right. What's that? Yes, i'll let props know that you've bought your own lightsaber. No, I don't need to see it now, thank you.

Now that we've sorted that out, there are some rules we need to get through. As you may be aware Lucasfilm is very conscious of security leaks regarding plot and characters. To that end could all of you who have brought your laptops please return them to your cars. Wait, I didn't say everyone return to your cars...oh, it appears that I did.

My Favorite Australian Similies

1. Busy as a blue-arsed fly.
2. All over the shop like a mad woman's knitting.
3. Silly as a hat full of arseholes.
4. Mad as a cut snake.
5. Lonely as a bastard on Fathers Day.
6. Ugly as a bag full of spanners.

You Might Be A Bogan Jedi If...

You use your lightsaber to take the cap off of a VB.
That "disturbance in the Force" was just last night's baked beans.
The inside of your house looks more like Dagobah than the outside.
You call your young apprentice Fucknuckle.
The Force isn't the only thing that runs in your family.
You call Jimmy Barnes "master".
Your landspeeder has the spoiler off of a late model Commodore.
 You have ever used a lightsaber to light your farts.
Your Jedi robe is camouflage colored.
At least one wing of your X-Wing is in undercoat.
You can't see anything wrong with how Yoda talks.
You have ever had your R2 unit use its arc welding torch to open a tough iced coffee carton.
You jump-start your lightsaber off a car battery.
You have ever beaten up Han Solo for lookin' at your sister.
You count B.O. as a Jedi power.
You have a Z-95 Headhunter up on blocks around the front of your house.

Compassion For The Less Fortunate.

If there's a section of society that I just don't 'get', it's amputees. Let's face it, how many times have you heard the phrase 'as busy as a one-armed paper-hanger in a gale', or 'as busy as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest'?

For crying out loud, are they all thick or something? If you've only got one arm *why* are you trying to put up wallpaper at all, let alone when it's quite windy??? I mean, anyone can see that's a recipe for disaster. Ditto the arse-kicking. Someone is going to get hurt and i'd lay odds it's going to be you, Hopalong.

I just don't understand. Is it a cry for help? Is it some macho thing to prove that they're just as capable as normal people? That's just wierd. I'm not saying that if you've lost a limb in some sort of ghastly fashion that you shouldn't be able to pursue the career of your choice but for goodness sake be a bit sensible please. I find the whole concept rather distateful, as a matter of fact.

Right, that's sorted that. Next post: Wealthy, Easily Shocked Socialites Who Choose Laurel and Hardy As Their Piano Removalists.

Random Doobings

"Papa."
"Grumpy."
"Um. Sporty."
"Smurfette."
"Sassette."
"Ooh. Brainy."
"Vanity."
One rainy afternoon, Captain Doobie and Goodtime Slim were entertaining themselves by having a contest to see how many smurfs they could name. Goodtime Slim, the last to speak felt (somewhat justifiably) that he had just won, and he waited eagerly for Captain Doobie's reply.

"Chachi."
"Aha!" Goodtime Slim cried, leaping out of his chair and pointing, "got you! Chachi wasn't a smurf."
Captain Doobie looked hurt. "Yes he was."
"No he wasn't. That was Happy Days."
"No," replied Captain Doobie seriously, "they weren't all happy days. Remember that time that Richie lost all his money to Gargamel and Papa Smurf (Tom Bosley) had to go and get it back?"

Faced with this blatant cross-mojonation of pop-culture references Goodtime Slim's head exploded, and he had to have a cup of tea and a lie down.

Holden in April-Fool's Day Controversy

ELIZABETH: Car maker Holden has today admitted that its entire output since 1948 has been an April Fool's Day joke gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Whichever Seppo is currently the chairman of Holden admitted in a press conference held today that General Motors had originally been contacted by the Chifley government in 1947 to begin work on an April Fools Day prank for the upcoming year. Unfortunately, due to the post-war lack of irony in the Australian economy, lower-echelons of General Motors staff had interpreted the memo calling for local production literally, and while no-one was looking a factory was transplanted from Detroit to produce the last-year's Buick.

"It appears to have been a paperwork error initially," the anonymous-faced American lazily drawled, "then several of the office wags began to make quite an effort to ensure that no-one found out. In the end, they managed to keep it going for 61 years."

The error was only discovered when a filing cabinet was moved in GM's Dearborn global HQ, revealing a small door which enabled people to enter Larry Perkins' head for a period of 15 minutes.

Industry writers have expressed amazement at the magnitude of the prank. "I was totally fooled," commented Ged Bulmer, Editor of Wheels Magazine, "I mean, I know that their output since 1978 has been completely pissweak, but I thought it was just a temporary slump they were going through." Toyota CEO Konnichiwa Ohigazamus expressed similar concerns, noting however that "with the benefit of foresight it explains the VN, doesn't it?"

Ford executives were unavailable for comment, and all efforts to reach them on the 13 1/2 floor of the Geelong plant have so far met with failure.

It's Arrived!

Oh, excellent. I recieved my copy of the much-anticipated "Freedomnomics" today, and I opened a random page to see that the author is quoting Ben Stein, 'noted Actor and Economist'. As you may be aware, Ben Stein is currently embroiled in the PZ Myers/Richard Dawkins 'Expelled' controversy.

All signs point towards the book being both stimulating and educational, but probably not in the way that the author intended. Full review soon.

On Cravats

Recently, as a joke, I purchased a cravat from a secondhand clothing shop. My intention was to wear it to work instead of a tie for a bit of a laugh.

I've since bought a second, and am eagerly awaiting the chance to buy more. Far from just being a laugh, the cravat turned out to be an excellent tie substitute, allowing me to keep my top button undone while still wearing a 'tie' around my neck. It's more comfortable, easier to affix and I think it adds an element of grandeur to the office. Indeed, i'm wearing it as I type this right now, and I think we'd all agree that the tone of the blog has been raised considerably.

The only downside is that I suspect my nickname here at work has become 'Thurston Powell the Third'.

The Perils of Intergalactic Travel

"Where are we now?" whined Captain Doobie.
Goodtime Slim poked his head up over the top of the Gregory's he was consulting. "Hoth," he replied, in a sullen tone, which Captain Doobie completely ignored, preferring to look out of the viewport instead.

"Why is it all white then?"
"Because it's an ice planet, that's why."
Captain Doobie leaned back in the copilot's seat. "Wierd," he remarked idly, twiddling his thumbs.
Goodtime Slim put down the Gregory's and fiddled with the knobs on the dashboard, trying to look as though he knew what he was doing. "Why is it wierd?" he sighed.

"Because it is. I mean, where I come from we have...I don't know, a bit of desert here, some ice up near the poles, that sort of thing."

Goodtime Slim fixed him with a particularly icy stare. "And your point is?"
"A bit of moderation, is what i'm asking for," Captain Doobie told him snippily, "That planet down there is just being greedy, that's all."