I recieved bad news from my doctor today: he strongly advised me to give up crack. I wasn't too keen on the idea and I told him so. He started to tell me all about how dangerous it was! Balderdash, I riposted. If it was dangerous then they'd put little warning labels on the bags like the cigarette companies do. That was the main reason I changed from smoking tobacco in the first place. I tried to tell my doctor all this but he invariably treated me with disdain.
Cloud City, Bespin: Main Dining Chamber.
Han Solo: Why you...!
Lando Calrissian: I had no choice. They arrived right before you did.
Han fires three times at Vader. Vader blocks the bolts with his hand and uses the force to grab the blaster.
Darth Vader: We would be honoured if you would join us.
Pause
Princess Leia: Well? Aren't you going to take us away?
DV: I asked you to dinner.
HS: If you think we're going to sit down and eat with y...what's that?
DV: This? Fried Ewok.. Quite a delicacy, or so I am told.
LC: In all candour the Ewok is quite good.
Chewbacca: Rooowr!
PL: Actually it has been quite a while since breakfast.
HS: I'll try the..what did you say it was?
DV: Fried Ewok. On a bed of wronshyr leaves.
PL: (suspiciously) Where did you get Ewok from in the first place?
DV: Endor. (to himself) Blast!
PL: What? Did you say Endor? As in the forest moon?
DV: No.
HS: Why is the Empire hanging around Endor?
DV: Um, the Emperor wanted a change from Bothans. Look, can we change the subject? Here, try the gourmet duck!
PL: General Reekian was telling me the other day about something called a Waldorf Salad.
DV: (blankly) Er, I think we're all out of Waldorfs...
Boba Fett enters.
DV: Ah, Boba, good. Can you fetch the roast duck please (aside) Look out, they're rebels. Don't mention the war! I did once, but I *think* I got away with it.
Boba Fett: Que?
I bear important news.
On my last trip to sample the artistic delights of Melbourne I purchased a red shirt, because it looked similar to that worn by The Bandit in "Smokey and the Bandit".
It now appears that I am not the only one who bought one. The shirt has a distinctive cut, with square pockets, epaulettes, odd buttons and seams down the centre of the lapels. It is also a very vivid red hue. In the latest Womens Weekly magazine I noticed an interview with Gordon Ramsay, foul-mouthed chef that he is, in which he was wearing, beyond a shadow of doubt, the same shirt.
The odd thing is that i've never seen them anywhere other than one little clothes shop in Richmond, and Ramsay was in Melbourne over the same weekend to promote something or other, I seem to recall.
Freaky. Not only do we have a similar taste in clothing but we may even have bought the shirts at around the same time. Still, it could have been worse. It could have been Peter Russell Clarke...
We are now officially living in the future. Today Honda opened it's new production line for the Honda FCX, a car which runs on hydrogen and produces only water as a by-product. Now, it is possible to fill your tank with hydrogen instead of petrol. There have been hydrogen vehicles along similar lines in the past, and both Japan and California have hydrogen filling stations to cater for these But previously these have been bespoke vehicles from BMW or Honda, made to order and handbuilt. Today Honda have taken the step to mass-produce them.
There are teething troubles, of course. These vehicles are only available in California and Japan. But to say that they will not spread further due to a lack of hydrogen stations is like saying that no-one would buy a Model T because there were no petrol stations. If there is a public need, the system will change. I have little doubt that at some point in the future Mr Shell of Miss BP will be offering hydrogen at the pump, or maybe they'll be beaten to the market by Sir Caltex or Dame Liberty, but the day will come when I can buy a hydrogen car and run it quite comfortably. As with the demise of the horse and the livery stable, one day the 'oil burner' will be a thing of the past.
Perhaps I am just being naive. Maybe it is wishful-thinking-induced hubris, but I really would like the sense of hope I feel today to not be misplaced. I feel today like I imagine Gottlieb Daimler must have felt in the late 1890s, having successfully harnessed the internal combustion engine to a rolling chassis. I feel that the world of personal transportation has changed, and changed for the better.
Roll on the future: a future full of non-polluting, non-fossil-fuel using vehicles. A world in which petro-dollars are not financing a militant Islam, and a world without smog.
But still a world with Top Gear :o)
Firstly, i'd like to thank D C White for letting me publish this on his blog. I like to write but getting stuff published is, to be frank, a bit of a pain in the Archangel Gabriel. I mean Dad managed to get two books published a while back but no-one really seems interested in giving me a go. Someone suggested the Gideons but they told me they're not taking on new material at this point in time.
Anyway, to business. Being quite high up in the religious pantheon does tend to have it's little perks and one of them is being able to test drive new cars at will. Having the same initials as Jeremy Clarkson doesn't seem to hurt either. Anyway, below are my thoughts on some of the current crop of motors on the market.
Lamborghini Gallardo: Nice seats, colours a bit garish. 4-wheel-drive helps keep it on the tarmac through the twisty bits. Not too keen on the badge though. Looks a bit like that minotaur chap.
Bugatti Veyron: I was really excited about driving this one but when I got in it was a dissapointment. Staggeringly fast but my feet kept slipping off the pedals and someone had left a Beatles CD in the player. I couldn't figure out how to turn it off so the entire test was performed to 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. I shouldn't have worn my sandals.
Dodge Viper: For a car named after the physical manifestation of Dad's archenemy this was surprisingly good. Well sorted and grunty in all the right places. The extra-large drink holders went down a treat when I stopped off at McChucks.
Ferrari 460GT: If there's one thing i've always got time for, it's a Ferrari. They're about the best things ever to come out of Italy, and i'm including the Holy Roman Church in that. I tell you, if the Pope doesn't start driving one of these soon he'll confirm my suspicions that he's a jumped-up little oik.
Porsche 911GT3: I don't know why I even bothered with this one. Porsches have no souls whatsoever and frankly, I should know. Dirty little arse-engined Nazi slot cars. It might drive well but that's no substitute for people not thinking you're a wanker.
A bloke here at work is buying a new car for his wife and I suggested he look at the Honda Jazz. He got a brochure from Honda and I had a look at it today. Aparrently the Honda Jazz with the rear seats folded down can fit "4 suitcases, 3 golf bags, or a tall shrub".
I don't know about you, but I always purchase my cars pursuant to how much shrubbery they can carry, in case I unexpectedly run into the Knights Who Say "Ni!"
Whether it was a metric or an imperial shrub was not mentioned.
Goodtime Slim would not have believed, in the last minutes of the breakfast meal, that his fruit and spice muffins were being watched from the timeless places across the table.
He could not have dreamed his breakfast was being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
For he had never even considered the possibility of greed on other chairs and yet, across the gulf of tabletop, a mind he considered immeasurably inferior to his regarded his breakfast with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, it drew it’s plans against him.
It may be a symptom of getting old, but as the years go on I find myself siding more and more with Palpatine's Galactic Empire. I'm not talking about the politics of destroying planets or shooting force-lightning from my fingertips, but rather about the more mundane tasks that coincide with my own specialty of logistics and supply economics.
Consider the Galactic Starfleet for example. We're told that Palpatine only hired humans because he was speciesist, but was that really the case? It's certainly what the Alliance propogandists would have us believe, but from a logistical standpoint I don't believe that it was. Say you're building a Star Destroyer at the Kuat Drive Yards. What sort of toilets would you install? It's a pretty fair bet that different races are going to need different shapes and sizes of pan. And the waste itself: what happens if some race's output is highly alkaline while other's is highly acidic? A septic tank explosion in mid-space is going to put a crimp in everyone's day. On an Imperial ship however you don't even need female toilets, unless Ysanne Isard, Mara Jade or Admiral Daala are aboard of course, but even then they could make do easily enough. It would be easy enough to say that you could crew each individual ship with a different species, but what would that do to your manpower flexibility?
And uniforms! I'm not even going to start on the impossibility of trying to fit an Ithorian's head into a Stormtrooper helmet. Can you imagine the quartermaster's store in the New Republic? It's be about as big as the warehouse from Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and that'd just be for the hats.
Mind you, the Alliance can put about all of the propoganda it likes about the Empire's predilection for humans, but how many aliens are there in Rogue Squadron? Sweet fanny adams, that's how many. In fact in the entire Rebel Alliance I can spot three non-humans: Admiral Ackbar, Chewbacca and the little Sullustian chap with the wrinkly face who co-piloted with Lando Calrissian. Bothans were mentioned, but they generally seemed to be employed as the espionage equivalent of cannon fodder.
"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.
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."
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."
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
