The Squids Are Awrigh'

Caution: This is written with right-hand-drive bias. If you are a reader from a country that drives incorrectly, please follow the instructions below.

1. Press [ctrl + f] on your keyboard. The “Find and Replace” window will be displayed (unless you’re on Mac. Find your own way.)
   
2. Click the “Replace” tab.
   
3. In the field Find What: type “left” (not “self esteem” or “glory days”).
   
4. In the field Replace With: type “right” (rather than “security” or “respect”). 
   
5. Repeat process for right and left.
   

I’ve been seeing trusting yupster-types on underpowered scooters lately. 

I ask; why would you venture out in Sydney traffic with so little going for you? You’ve got no protection, no carry space, no roof and let’s cut to the heart of the matter, you are on a motorcycle with no power and therefore, no cool.

 

There’s a name for them too, apparently, Squids. Maybe some clever contraction of “kids on scooters” or the like. I dunno.

I usually leave the lights quickly when I’m in the left lane. Sooner or later there will be a parked car. If you drive the right sort of vee-hickle, it’s easier being first out of the blocks and choosing when you’re going to change to the right lane rather than hoping for a gap and trying to fit in somewhere further back in the queue. 

And let's face it, the right lane doesn’t want you there. You’ve nicked their place. If they see you miles ahead and having nothing to do with their spot in the traffic jam, it doesn’t affect them. If you bully your way in front of them because you misjudged a launch at the lights, you’ve just done something rude… and impotent. If you make the pushee miss a set of lights because of this - road rage should rightfully ensue.

 

My driving habits are honed (Tainted? Formed? Accreted?) from years of driving public transport in this city and I tend to drive… uhm… efficiently.

Taking my usual course up the inside recently, a straight backed man in a light-cotton suit and chinless helmet decided turning right in front of me as the lights went green was a good idea. If he’d been on a real bike, it would have been no contest. He would have been across the intersection and halfway to the horizon before I could get the clutch fully engaged - and I wouldn’t even mention it. But he wasn’t. 

He was a Squid. 

Gooby and I have decided it’s the sound they make when you hit one and it gets caught up in your driveshaft.

Wouldn't Want To Meet a Meat Ant

I have attempted to make the world a slightly safer place by warning you of some of the less obvious dangers out there. (Kyle Sandilands, juggling crystal balls and ibis poo, to name a few.)

I need to add a new menace to the list; and if he keeps going the way he is, he’s going to knock pandas off the top of world’s most useless, yet dangerous animals list.

I give you: Professor Rick Shine.

We have come across this joker before when I mentioned his fine work in Citizen Cane Toad. He’s back and I think I need to institute a new “watch” to keep us up to date with what the half-wit is hatching. I think I will call it the ‘Rick and Shinola Report’

In his previous escapades, he suggested releasing sterilised ‘teacher’ toads into the wild. They were going to make the animals that ate them sick, rather than dead. This would teach them not to do it again.

Well, Ricky “the Fifth Horseman” Shine has changed his tack and has made a splash in the media this week with his next answer to the cane toad problem.

Meat Ants.

Let’s mine a little Shine gold here. My help is in parenthesise.

He described them on the ABC recently as:

“… quite large ants, up to about a centimetre long.” (WTF!)

”They don't have a sting like the bull ants, but they've got a very powerful set of jaws.” (as in, “You're going to need a bigger boat.”)

”They're probably the kind of ant that causes problems if you leave your bit of chicken on the ground during the picnic.” (By sneaking up behind you, pistol whipping you and stealing it.)

Shine wants to encourage the ants to forage into areas they aren’t currently in, to help control the toad population. Yet again, we at the Grey Area Institute of Fuzzy Things and Monumental Balls-Ups need to remind you of the dangers of the “She swallowed a fly” method of fauna control.

If nothing else, isn’t the name a warning? Meat Ants. For god sake Rick, children are made of meat! Have some sense, man.

Time Is On My Side - After It Stops Fighting Amongst Itself

I am perfectly in control and arriving places when I should be. The Sydney Morning Herald incorrectly told me to put my clocks forward, which cancelled out my phone company "3" putting my clock back by an hour, a week early.

Thus nature balances itself.

Backing Out Of The Church Slowly And Avoiding Eye Contact

For a while now, I’ve had a hunch that the Church of England is trying to back out of the deal.

I’ve mentioned before that there’s an almost resigned air of defeat to their communications. (Specifically in Organising Atheists...) It’s like they know the jig is up, and just want to leave quietly so that not too many people are embarrassed.

I have divined their plan to achieve this quiet withdrawal.

Smurfy sent me an email with the title, “Is the Archbishop of Canterbury secretly one of us?” At first I was confused. I was expecting to see a picture of the Bishop painted blue. It would make sense, he’s already got a pointy hat. But when I read this article God Will Not Give Happy Ending I realised Smurf meant atheist.

If you don't read the article, here’s the summation. The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that God can’t help us with our environmental troubles. What is He willing to help with?

So far they’ve said that; He doesn’t intercede on a trivial personal level of folly or sin. He doesn’t intercede on man-made acts of evil and now He won’t do anything about the planet. According to the Church of England, all we can count on, even in the worst disaster, is His love. Great. Stick that in your survival kit and send a flare up with it.

See what they’re doing? See? They’re incrementally removing the advertised features from the product until there’s nothing left to sell. It’s a recall by attrition.

The greatest trick that God ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn’t exist – gradually.

Curios Chiaroscuro

I’m lying out in the desert, the midday sun beating me in the face. I’m testing how tight the ropes are tied when I’m plunged into sudden and complete darkness.

I’m on my back in a city street. Labouring bystanders give me mouth-to-mouth and heart massage but I’m suddenly in the light. I have reached the heavenly brightness. As I am about to bask in God’s love, I am cast out. Total, aching darkness.

The spaceship engine has failed and we are plunging back into the arc-welding brightness of the exploding space-station. As we hit the flaming penumbra, darkness engulfs the ship. The light of further explosions hit us again and again. And then darkness.

At 7am, my alarm goes off and I roll over to flick the switch. I am almost blinded by a sudden, intense light. I rear up and the culprit of the dreams falls off my cheek. 

I had fallen asleep on my Smiggle Book Light and the tiny bastard had glued itself to my face. Every time I rolled over I had switched the thing either on or off and as it had been resting on my left eye, it had really given the lobes of my brain a workout. 

(I don’t care if it happens again and again, though. I have a Smiggle Book Light. The only thing that doesn’t make me the envy of 9-year-old girls everywhere, is mine is black, not pink.)

Good Times

It's good to mark the important milestones in your life. You all remember your twentyfirsts and graduations. I would like to mark some of the smaller moments as well.

So, as an insomniac, I would like to present a selection of great times in my life and what they brought to mind when I was there.

I wonder why I'm so hungry, I musn't have had enough dinner. I keep thinking of Pi.

I wonder if those crazy Jacksons will get back together. I mean, Michael's going back out onto the road. They must be jealous.

Fibonacci time. I wonder if they'll make Tom Hanks wear that wig in The Da Vinci Code Part II?

Collect the whole set, and you have witnessed what I like to call "Goldilocks and the Three Mazdas."

We Were A-Mazing

Above is a 3D maze with a small ball-bearing inside it. There are various twists and turns you must navigate to get to the finish which are all numbered, and they go up to 100. There are 90 degree and 180 degree turns, swinging arms, flip floppy buckets to drop the ball into and all sorts of other devilish little tricks to confuse those who prefer a 2D world. It is utterly brilliant. Because I'm not at all a nerd, when the bloke who owns it brought it in to work, I wasn't at all forced to finish it before anyone else and did not feel inordinately proud of myself, at all, for doing it. Not one little bit. 

I will admit to one thing, though. And I'm sorry to say you are either going to get this, or not. There's no explaining it. Through the entire exercise, I was singing, "One two three four five... six seven eight nine ten... eleven, twelve, Do do do dooo do du du.

Joss Doin' Some Whedon

Emergency Contact was given a box set of DVDs recently. I think the show’s got a good chance of being a big success when the networks air it on the telly. 

The actors are very nice and the script is snappy. It doesn’t require so much attention that you can’t relax and enjoy it, but it still provides some take-away lines for the next day at work. The look is fresh and new in a quaintly under-funded 90s way, and I don’t think I’m endangering my credibility when I say that Buffy The Vampire Slayer could be a hit. Watch this space.

However, no positive review can exist without some avuncular advice. Vampires are supposed to be sexy and smart and sleek. So, if there must be special-effects dentures for the fangs, they should be supplied for both the upper and lower jaw. Giving vampires only the top set of choppers just gives bad-guys a crook look. Evil lairs end up looking like badly lit roadside-diners when there are a bunch of chinless guys with chronic overbites, groaning and leering around a spunky, blonde stranger.