Fahrenheit 72 Is Up At The Agency Site. Or You Can Hit The Link Below (Lazy)

Oh no. It's Number 13!

Hello... NRMA? I'm Un-Dead. Can I Un-Worry Too?

Now, If I could just find my Un-Derpants.

Wheelie Good

Please recycle responsibly

Where Are Your Buccaneers?

Hippies must be killed. Everybody knows it and Cartman has been saying it for a long time, but I can prove it, and it starts with a crossword.

One of the clues in a crossword this week in the SMH was simply, “Cerumen”. The answer had to be (3,3).

I had an ‘E’ at the start of the first word and because of its similarity to albumen, I kept on being falsely led back to the idea that it may have something to do with egg.

It turns out that it means ‘ear wax’. Idly thumbing through my desktop Wikipedia, I looked up cerumen to learn more, and I did!

There are two major sorts of the stuff and different types of people have different proportions of the two. Tracking the differences has been instrumental in anthropologists tracking the migratory habits of indigenous people.

But the first sentence to really catch my eye was:

“The primary components of earwax are the final products in the HMG-CoA reductase pathway, namely, squalene, lanosterol, and cholesterol. It has a bitter flavour.“ (my bolding)

Eeeuuuuuwwwww.

But I read on because this is science. I am discovering without prejudice. I am broadening my horizons… and after the following sentence, I am stockpiling weapons to go out on a hippy killing spree.

“A small but growing fan base, committed to the use of all-natural products, touts its use as a superior organic alternative to other varieties of lip balm.”

Fat Cat

The Kitty in the Car Park









Sometimes there are little intrusions from a far more interesting dimension, into the one that we inhabit.

The picture above is of a cat that lives around my work. The lads out the back in the warehouse made him a Hi-Viz safety vest, so he doesn't get skittled in the car park. He was doing pretty well for a stray, too. A whole bunch of people were feeding him. I haven’t seen him in a while, which made me worry a little, but an email from our security guard this week has put my mind at ease.

Subject: Small Set of Keys Found in Car Park

Good Morning All,

If you have lost a small set of keys, please contact security on ext: 2201.

Regards,
Michael.

Kitty in the Car Park must be commuting now.

Puritanism: noun. The Fear That Someone, Somewhere, Is Happy

In a humanist and thoughtful way, I don't care what you do with the internet. And that's the way it should be. 

(Try not to organise pogroms, jihads, paedophilia rings, or any other life threatening stuff, and we should get along just fine... but I suspect the fans of that kind of gear would do that - Clean Feed, or no Clean Feed.)

Other people should care about what you do with the internet as much as they should care about what you do in your closet/cupboard/bedroom/toilet.

One of the things that so many Australians felt some real hope about at the close of the Howard Era (or the Dark Age of Oz) was that it was time to open out and breathe again. It was time to stop the reactionary, conservative fear mongering. To stop the faux moral panics. Time to end the politics of division and have a crack at behaving like we're all not slavering idiots, hell bent on each others' costly and untimely demise.

I should state my leaning before going on. I'm not overly impressed by my new government either. I already feel let down. I was always going to be disappointed, I knew that. But I'm sad at how little time it took. I became faintly suspicious about three months before the election. There's a worrying amount of tight lipped control from Plastic Man, and precious little real movement on things of any consequence. 

Back to censorship: the fact that Kev so unthinkingly waded in on Bill Henson should have been a cause for national embarrassment. I'm not a fan of Bill's work either, but I'm not a fan on aesthetic grounds. Let's try and keep our heads and stop handing over more and more control to the least deserving people - the ones who crave it.

If you are under any illusions as to how bad it got under Howard, I recommend you pick up the Quarterly Essay # 26, 2007. His Master's Voice - The Corruption of Public Debate Under Howard, by David Marr. 

It's a nauseating ride into an Orwellian vision, and you know what? It wasn't fiction and it wasn't East Germany. For my money, not enough has been changed, repealed or deemed as crap behaviour, in the maintenance of a free press and free public debate, since Howard's long overdue exit. This preposterous 'Clean Feed' garbage being peddled by the current government is more of that. Click on the icon above if you want to find out more and do something about it.

A Grey Area will return to the regularly scheduled pap and sillyness, just as soon as possible.

The new Fahrenheit 72 is in. Use link below.

Fahrenheit 72 Part 11

A Grey Area Detective Agency has needed to separate out the Fahrenheit case from AGA. For tax reasons, you understand.

Nerds Of A Feather

I mentioned to an overseas colleague, who was asking me a lot of technical questions, that my nerd quotient wasn’t very high and therefore couldn't help much.

He came back wanting to know how nerd-quotient is calculated and I ran off a set of ground rules.
It was quick so, you know, feel free to help out.

Nerd quotient is calculated by starting with a base of 100

Subtract 1 point for every girlfriend kept for longer than a year.
Subtract 3 points for every one night stand with a partner of equal or better beauty rating 

Subtract 1/2 a point for every night spent hiking/dancing/sailing/gun running

Subtract 10 points for all of the following:

Having represented your country in a sport
Having more than one knife-fight scar
Being arrested for any of the above

Add 10 points for getting all of XKCDs jokes
Add 1/2 point for every Battlestar (new) episode watched
Add 5 points for needlessly quoting Buffy/Python/SG1/Underground uber nerd sites/Firefly/Penny Arcade/Star Wars.... and on and on and on
Add 10 points for beard covering multiple chins
Add 10 points for every time you've had a LAN party
Add 50 points for learning Shakespeare in Klingon

You Need To Get Out More Sunshine

Centennial Park has provided me with a bit of material in the past 

Didn't You Kill My Brotha?

Park Life

She's With The Band

It turns out the Centennial Park Effect is universal. Or at least consistantly detectable internationally.

The second last time my two-up-boss (and therefore someone whose anecdotes I am duty bound to listen to) went to Thailand, he came back with this little gem that I actually enjoyed.

A bit of a fitness fiend, he found a jogging track in Bangkok that was the equivalent of Centennial Park. 

It has a two and half kilometre return track complete with distance measurements every hundred metres. He went out for his morning jog before work, and was pleased to see lots of fit people out there, jogging along as well. 

He was particularly pleased that the fabled Thai friendliness even extended to exercise.

On his way around the track he was regularly handed a drink and a sponge by a smiling local. 

It wasn't until he had accidentally placed quite favourably in the local charity marathon that some smiling official told him he should be wearing a number, and therefore could not be awarded a place until he had attached the number to his shirt properly.

I enjoyed that little story when he told me the first time. He just got back from smiling Thailand again, and it appears that the park has worked its magic one more time.

 

He was jogging around and getting into his stride (competent long distance runner) when he came up behind a tightly huddled group in matching outfits. They were totally blocking the path, with no way to pass. Trailing them for a few minutes and getting annoyed, he eventually elbowed his way up and 'ran through' the crowd. (This is a polite phrase used by distance runners to make you believe that it is anything other than barging. Akin to shouting "Fore" the third time you drive into the group on the green on a par three.)

When he got to the head of the troop, he could see why they were shuffling rather than raising their rhythm. There was some dickhead with a bull horn, squeezing it made a quack noise in metronomic time, setting the lazy pace. He had heard the sound as he was approaching, but it had blended in with the wildlife ambiance of the park, so didn't think anything of it.

 

Second lap around, he caught them again and barged through, much less politely than the first time. They were just hogging the park and not making any allowances for people to pass. The normally taciturn boss had the shits.

 

The third time around, as he approached the slow moving crowd from behind, he decided to go through them like a Wallaby fullback at a four-year-old's birthday party. Just as he was about to drop the shoulder, the man with the duck bull-horn pulled over to the side of track. 

The group immediately and obediently followed him, and the boss watched as they all bent down and started their post jog stretching routine, which involved searching around with their hands for their white canes.

If It Doesn't Work, Well Then, What's The Point Of It?

A couple of mates took me and Emergency Contact out for a lovely picnic and some ‘messing about in boats’, up and down the Lane Cove River Park on the weekend.

For those of you unfamiliar with the park, it is in the middle of a pretty busy part of Sydney, but has cliffs and currents and trees and wildlife and a weir and all sorts of exciting stuff. The playground even used to have a retired steam powered tractor you could play on. I remember a birthday party there once where, I think I’m right in saying, there were about four fatalities and 18 serious injuries. It was brilliant.

I really enjoy water skiing too. The wind in your hair, the incredible sensation of speed, Emergency Contact in the boat in front, rowing for her life… anyway, I reminisced that there used to be a paddle-wheeler on the river. I had been told, as a kid, that it wasn’t a traditional type of paddle-wheeler. That it was, in fact, attached to a rail beneath the water line to keep everything under control.

As usual, I said this before thinking about it, and then settled down to think about how likely that would be. A paddle-wheeler steered by a rail. The more I thought about it, the more I considered it unlikely.

So when I got home, I went straight to the net to find out about the paddle-wheeler on Lane Cove River Park, and how it was steered. I felt certain that there would be some club site, owned by anorak-wearing dweebs, who would have scale models and an action plan for the reinstatement of the boat to its former glory and all the rest.

No.

The internet has failed, you can turn it off now.

Things Delivered To My Block Of Flats: November 2008

4 x carts - coal

3 x bushels (dry) - antimacassar starch

18 x units - Whitepages Telephone Directory

1 x hammer

1 x anvil

1 x hundredweight - horseshoe nails

1 x Fringelifter's Steam Powered Hat-Blocker

3 x automatic pre-heating ice-cream scoop

1 x elephant (white)

18 x Yellow Pages Telephone Directory

Midlife Crisis? Me?

Sometimes, important life facts are pointed out to me in such a way, they cannot help but goad my contrarian nature, and thereby elicit a completely inappropriate response.

I recently celebrated a birthday that , by the old rules, would have me in the middle of my term here.

To which I internally said, “Pah!”

Mother Nature heard me and laid out a glaring hint or two.

A few days ago, I managed to throw myself out of the shower in such a way that I broke the shower curtain, the wall mount for the shower rose, electric hair clippers, the top of the toilet and very nearly my ribs.

Nature continued to give me the hint by gently suggesting throughout the week (with red hot pokers) that maybe I hadn’t just bruised myself a little, maybe there was some more going on with my torso than what you used to bargain for when you came off the footy field.

So I scheduled a day off work. I could live without the stress of going from doctor's waiting room, to x-ray clinic, back again etc, whilst fielding calls and generally clock watching.

The leave day arrived. 

And I went out and bought a ute.

In your face, Father Time. 

Credit to LOLCATS

Source: icanhascheezberger.

I just needed a photo to go with the previous blog. I'm all out of ones that I have the rights to.

Schoolgirl Bitten By Panda

The ABC reports that a Schoolgirl was bitten by a panda today.

How, in the name of all that is right and holy, is that even possible!?

I am here to tell you, as a world reviled expert, that apart from the attack on a denim jacket of a Chinese man ten years ago (footage regularly screened on Australia's Most Violent Home Videos) pandas have been unable to muscle up the energy to even move from their own disappearing bamboo patch, let alone attack a fast moving schoolgirl. Plus, they are vegetarians. The old saying does not go, "Bamboo and spice and all things nice." (They wouldn't know it anyway, it's an English saying. Pandas are notably monolinguistic and too lazy to learn any other languages.)

If this unlikely story does turn out to be true, can you imagine what a hard time that girl is going to have explaining the interesting scar on her arm?

"How'd you get that?"

"A panda bit me."

"That is the silliest thing I have ever heard and I will not be seen with such a pathetic liar. You are fired and I will not marry you now. Give back the car."

Reference and research articles.

I Hear They're Not Even Good Eating

Pand On The Run

I'm Not The Only One

You are not alone. You don't have to take your frustrations out on a sign. You can win. I feel your pain, but let me be a beacon to you.

I assume you are young, as graffiti tends to be a young person's method of annoying people, so you've got time on your side.

Start your war now, and you should prevail somewhere circa 2011.

There's something else going on here as well. If I'm not mistaken, that is a stencil (note support struts that leave a blank bit, there to hold the centre of the "A", "O" and "p"). This means there's an organised campaign. Whoever "I" is, they're really shitty.

I would like to thank roving reporter, Sticky, for sending this in to the AGA News Bureau (Aus. Domestic Desk).

Obama-rama or Baracknaphobia

In no particular order, my observations on the election in the States.

Economics

The US has the right to be hopeful about Obama’s economic sense. As we learned yesterday, he promised his girls a puppy if he won.

That is really sensible considering he could have said ‘pony’ or 'Pennsylvania’.

Social Stability

It used to be said that whenever Mohamed Ali won a fight, crime rates in black ghettos would plummet. The disaffected felt that they had a voice and visibility.

Now, if winning a fist fight against one opponent can do that, becoming the most powerful man in the world should make Los Angeles, Shangri-L.A.

Respeck to Your Fathers, MF

He didn’t get there on his own, though. In an uncharacteristic fit of churlishness, Obama is yet to thank all that have helped pave the way, or as we say in the business, “Softened up the crowd.”

Dennis Haysbert, Sammy Davis Jr, Danny Glover and Morgan Freeman. They have all played black US Presidents (or are playing them).

The Rudd = Dud Effect

You can be as happy as you like tonight America, what with your well mannered, diplomatic, youthful, intelligent, socially progressive leader. We had one of them for a while. What’s that sound? Yup, that’s the sound of soggy rhetoric hitting the floor.

The Speech

I got a little misty when I was listening to the tail-end of his victory speech on the evening of his win. He introduced the final theme that underpins the big idea, thus:

“This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the colour of her skin. And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.”

He used the refrain: “Yes we can,” as he named the challenges to overcome, and related them to historic events that had occurred during Ann Cooper’s life.

Not to seem like a daft whitey foreigner, but the rhythms and the cadences put me in mind of Martin Luther King, particular with the anticipated return to the chorus. “Yes we can.” The crowd obliged by ‘giving witness’ and chanting back the chorus as he went. There wasn’t the operatic soaring of the voice and tremulous dramatic tones that MLK would hit, but there was something to it that smacked of the delivery style. There wouldn’t have been a dry seat in the house.

The content of the speech was pretty bloody good too, if you adjust for the usual amount of American patriotism. I can only imagine how many times Toby Zeigler’s rubber ball must have bounced off that dividing wall, as Sam Seaborne laboured away at the finer points.

Two Paper Bags Please, In Case One Breaks

Sometimes it’s nice to limp through life without having certain aspects of your existence confirmed by professionals. 

Australian men make a habit of this by not going to the doctor. I’m not advocating that though. I say, go, get your heart and your other bits checked. Stop leaving your dependants in the lurch by suddenly dropping off the twig in the middle Martin Place, clutching a half-eaten ham sandwich and a mobile phone that continues to say, “Larry? Are you there?” as your eyes turn up into your head.

Still, there are other things that it is not important to know. How many times your lover has cheated on you is one of those things, I reckon. Don’t tell me - I don’t want to know. If I haven’t twigged, and you haven’t given me any diseases, my life is not improved by being in full command of the facts.

Another of those non-life-threatening facts that can be happily avoided is where exactly you sit on the beauty spectrum, particularly if you occupy anywhere between ’fugly’ and ’half-sucked-mango’. 

I have always been aware that I am no oil painting. People do not run from the room screaming, and I have other personality traits to help me grease the wheels of human interaction too, so I’m not crying poor. But I have had a couple of knocks over the years that tested the leatheriness of my skin.

As a 19-year-old, I accidentally overheard my girlfriend’s grandmother and mother in conversation, just after Granny had met me for the first time.

“He’s a handsome boy, isn’t he?” says the presumably short-sighted biddy.

“In an off-beat kind of way,” answers slightly better-sighted and pragmatic Mother.

I’m of an age where I’ve had enough license and ID photos taken to confirm that it’s not just a couple of ‘off ones‘… that’s how I actually look. On top of not being photogenic, I can’t smile. I’m not a natural smiler. I have no experience at holding a smile. My face looks odd doing it. I laugh a lot and I’m not an unhappy person, but the default setting on my face is not with a grin. 

Emergency Contact and I had a photo shoot yesterday that will hopefully yield something un-horrifying  to accompany an article we were interviewed for. The photographer took his first shot to confirm lighting and the rest, pulled the camera away from his face, looked at the screen, grimaced, and said, “Oh jeez.”

The honest, gut reaction of a professional photographer. 

Needless to say, I will not be trumpeting the release of the article. 

Puff 'n' Stuff

Scene 1: Interior. Counselor's office. Possibly a university, maybe a very expensive private college.

Student: I’m just really, you know, just really not liking it and a lot of the classes are when I’m doing more important things… you know… shoes don’t buy themselves, so, you know.

Counselor: Ok. So, just so that I’m clear. You want to change your classes, again. This is the first semester and it’s week two, and you wish to change your focus, if I can call it that, of study. Again. Yes?

Student: Ah, yuh! Hellooooo, that’s what I just said?

Counselor: I guess. Ok, so we’ve gone from Law, because it was “all lawyerish and really dull and stuff and there were thick books that ruined your YSL handbag shoulder straps, and you didn’t think the wigs would suit you.”

Student: The law gave me a big ass…

Counselor: …Indeed…, changed out of psychology to Early Childhood Development, because, “It didn’t have any of that stuff like in the TV show Medium, that it was supposed to.”

Student: That stuff is sooooo spooky. I’ve got a friend who’s a psycho, and she can totally read, like, what’s in my mind. I mean WTF!?

Counselor: I’m sure she can. Does it take long? No. Nothing. Now, if we can just get back to the point. You are dropping all of those courses in preference for… it says here Industrial Relations and other stuff. Is that right?

Student: Yep! OMG, I love that music. I danced, like, all night to some deep industrial trance relations. I was so wasted! If I don’t like it though, I might have to change. Sometimes I’m not so good at that stuff where you’ve gotta, like, know all this really boring stuff? I mean who cares, right?

Counselor: Excellent. And, uhm, the career path that you will be exploring with this qualification? Do you have any thoughts about this? Any thoughts at all?

Student: Oh, I’m totally going into HR. All my cool friends are there? And we can help people and make them do their jobs better and teach them all this really cool stuff? It’s going to be awesome!