I F--king KNEW It!

It alllll makes sense now.

Apple causes ‘religious’ reaction in brains of fans, say neuroscientists


And no. They're not talking fruit.

OMFG! I WANT ONE!

Superhero fliers. Radio. Fucking. Controlled.

Check 'em out.

God DAMN I could have some fun with one of those things...

The End Is Nigh

Yep. This is the last night in which I sleep quietly, in an otherwise empty house. (Ignoring two pet cats, three pet rats and two fish, of course.) Tomorrow evening, Nat and the spawnage return to the fold, and levels of noise and chaos rise appropriately.

It's been a good break. Sunday night, for example: I invited a number of the older ju-jitsu students to turn up and watch some classic films with me. (Okay - they're classic to me, all right?) See, while the boys would watch anything if they had the chance, Natalie has seen The Princess Bride and Blade Runner often enough that she'd just roll her eyes and groan at me for watching them again. On the other hand, it turned out that the posse of teenagers in the martial class hadn't seen either. (Barring the redoubtable Amy, who had actually seen The Princess Bride, but was completely happy to see it again.)

It was a good evening. I made pizza and popcorn, and we watched The Lost Thing first, in the grand old tradition of cartoons before the main feature. Everybody enjoyed The Princess Bride appropriately (although April used the word 'ridiculous' so often that eventually, I replied to her with the Montoya Response to an overused and potentially incorrect word. And if you don't know the Montoya Response... no. That's just inconceivable!) and the encounter between Inigo and Count Rugen, with all the repeats of the famous "Hello! My name is..." speech went over exactly as it should.

Blade Runner also provoked the right responses. I have to admit: I really like the current crop of young students. There's some wit and insight there. It speaks well of their families, and of a community that can bring up young people like this, even when the economy and the long-established customs are faltering.

And what else? Well, I've also shopped for a replacement computer for the boys. They've got my old one, but it runs on XP, and it's about five years old. It's slow to start, and it's reaching its capacity in terms of functionality. Natalie is particularly cranky with it, because she likes to use it to consult the Internet, rather than disappearing off to her study.

On the other hand, it really does look as though replacing it with a useful faster model will cost at least $600, which is more than we want to pay for mere convenience. (And six hundred will only get a machine with Vista. There is no conceivable way I will permit another Vista-driven machine into this house, so I'd have to load one of my copies of XP onto the thing... and really, that's not much of an upgrade, given that their current machine operates under XP.)

Hmm. I've also bought and planted four apple trees. The species is Malus gorgeous, believe it or not, and it's theoretically a crab-apple. However, there are a few mature trees in Launceston, and Genghis and I raided a couple. They fruit very heavily indeed, and though the apples are small and tart, they're quite tasty. The trees are genuinely gorgeous, and the jam I made from the apples -- flavoured with clove, cinnamon and honey -- was wonderful. Oh, and Genghis ate an entire bagful of the things. So, yes: I think that putting four of them in the ground around the Giant Killer Playground Fortress is a good plan.

What else? Oh, I've slothed. And it's been good. I watched a couple movies I'd picked up ages ago, and never managed to find time for: Zombieland and Taken. The former was quite entertaining: Woody Harrelson's turn as the redneck master zombie-killer 'Tallahassee' was lovely, and the little knife the writers stuck in with the backstory of the death of his son was unexpected and affecting. Bill Murray's appearance as himself was comedic platinum.

Taken, on the other hand, didn't do nearly so much for me. Liam Neeson did what he could with the material, but it was... not pleasant. Annoyingly patriarchal. Irritatingly xenophobic. Depressingly prone to racial and cultural stereotyping, and underpinned with that godawful American righteousness that Hollywood loves to jam down our throats. Corrupt French police, vicious Albanian drug- and slave- traffickers, decadent, cowardly, salacious Arab sheikhs... and over it all, Neeson's Righteous Fatherly Rage.

Fuck it. That is really not a movie I needed, and I'll be glad to get it out of the house.

The break from cooking has been nice too. Other than Sunday night's pizzaganza, I've subsisted on leftovers and toasted sandwiches. The fridge is now down to a state where I can meaningfully clean it out tomorrow, and restock it. I'm not looking forward to that, I admit. Eyyeuch.

Of course, there's been the inevitable irritation from those mindless pricks at Telstra Bigpond. Those of you who read this regularly know it took me nearly five months to get NextG broadband here, owing to reception problems. You may also be aware that in order to minimise the cost, the account is linked to Natalie's mobile phone number.

Note well: I'm the one who set up the account. Me. Personally. At the Telstra shop in Launceston. I created the account, and with the help of a Telstra functionary, I linked to Natalie's mobile.

So - the first time I tried to contact Bigpond to ask about account details, I was told I had no access. Because, of course, it's Natalie's mobile. And even though I'm listed on the home phone, I'm not on her mobile account. No matter that the existence of the Bigpond account was down to me: because it's linked to Natalie's mobile, I can't ask about details, or do basic maintenance.

Here's a note for you Telstra: no way NATALIE is going to check the basics. She doesn't know how, doesn't have time, and depends on me to handle that shit -- as I told you when I set up the account. You cretins.

Anyway, Natalie finally got around to ringing Bigpond, and adding me to the account. She did it on Tuesday last week. And yesterday, I rang Bigpond to adjust the password to the account, because for some reason it doesn't respond online - so I can't check our data usage.

Guess what? The Indian-accented woman at the Telstra Bigpond call centre informed me that I'm not listed on the Bigpond account. Apparently Natalie needs to ring Billing and tell them to add me...

... gosh. I wonder what she actually did on Tuesday? And more to the point, I wonder what f__king drugs the Telstra employee she talked to was on when they told her that they were adding my name to the account?

I am so f__king tired of Telstra and Bigpond that I would pay twice as much money to any other carrier for an equivalent service.

Shame there aren't any other carriers out here, eh?

Looking Out For The Kids.

In 2009, a man in Bakersfield, California bit out his four-year-old son’s eyes. He may have eaten one of them. He was under the influence of PCP at the time.

In 2005, China Arnold put her 28-day-old baby Paris into a microwave oven, and cooked her to death. She’d had an argument with her boyfriend.

New Jersey, February 2010. A 21-year-old man kidnapped his three-month-old daughter from his estranged wife. He wrapped the baby in a sleeping bag, and threw her off a bridge into the freezing waters of the Raritan river.

January 2009: in Melbourne, Arthur Freeman threw his four-year-old daughter Darcy off the Westgate bridge to fall something like sixty metres into the Yarra river. She lived long enough for the ambulancefolk to try to revive her. Freeman had been arguing with his ex-wife, apparently.

I’m not going to go farther into the details of these incidents. You can if you want. I’ve included the necessary links. I’ve had all the horror I can handle for the moment.

This meditation is triggered by page eight of my local newspaper, which featured an article on China Arnold and her dead baby, right next to another article about a man who shot his wife, then his three small children, and then himself. Currently, my kids are in Perth with Natalie, visiting their grandmum. I’m enjoying the solitude, and the ability to sleep as I see fit... but the gap the kids leave is enormous, even if it’s a relief to be on my own for a while.

It’s an increasingly overpopulated world. Nearly seven billion people. I’m old enough to recall when it was four billion. Since I’m not a geriatric yet, it’s pretty obvious we’re breeding at a terrifying rate. And every new human has needs, and — in theory at least — rights. At the very least, every new human being is exactly that: a human being, and if we treat them in any lesser fashion, we demean ourselves. More importantly: the creature that can voluntarily hurt or kill a dependent, defenseless, innocent child is a thing that has at least temporarily given up any possible right to be viewed as a human being.

And yet the horrorshow rolls on. I listed only four incidents, and I deliberately limited myself to the US and Australia. I hate to think what the list might look like if I really did some research, and considered the whole world.

What I’m saying is this: we have to be licensed to drive a car. You need a license to fly a plane. You can’t practice law or medicine without going through all kinds of training and oaths and examinations and licensing. You need a license to wire up a house for electricity. You need qualifications to teach at school. You need certification to handle food in a shop or restaurant. You’re even supposed to have a license to get married.

So how the fuck is it that we collectively don’t have the stones to step up and ask for some kind of goddam evidence that people can be fit parents before we put them in charge of children?

Right about now, there’s a whole bunch of people reading this, collective sucking in wind, getting ready to bleat about human rights and freedoms. Right about now, if I could, I’d slug each and every one of those people in the solar plexus to make them cough, whoop, and shut the fuck up while I ask the obvious counter-question: what about the rights of the kid whose eyes got chewed out? Where were Darcy Freeman’s rights in the last, terrifying, flailing three-and-a-half seconds (‘cos yes, folks, that’s how long it takes to fall sixty metres. It’s high school physics. Check your watch. Count it off. Three and a half seconds. That’s how long Darcy had to think about what was happening to her, before she hit.) of her life?

The state already acts like an extended nanny-system to kids. The state demands the kids participate in an education system which is, quite frankly, fucked up. The state demands all kinds of censorship to ‘protect kids’. Including that idiot Conroy’s Great Internet Clusterfuck — and, of course, the lack of an R-18 classification for computer games. The state insists kids can’t drink or smoke. The state tries to mandate minimum levels of exercise for kids. The state prescribes where and how childbirth is to take place, and under whose observation. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of all this shit, the state instead tried to insist that people becoming parents demonstrate reasonably sound judgement in the first place?

When you decide to become a parent, you agree to put your whole world to one side in favour of someone else. You have to, or you’re worse than a fool. A child doesn’t have any choice about being born. The choice - limited as it may be by religious idiocy on birth control — belongs to the parents. Sperm and egg have nothing to say about the whole process. Neither does the foetus.

If you’re not ready to reshape your whole existence so you can nurture a new human being — do not fucking well become a parent. If you find this has happened to you accidentally: either get yourself straight, or admit you fucked up, and allow the kid to be adopted. There are a large number of eager, well-qualified couples desperate to have kids who can offer the child a real life.

And finally: the political group that steps up and says “Yes. We need to impose some kind of education, licensing, and restriction on parenting, and we’re going to do that. We’ll match it with improved support for new parents and their kids, of course,” is going to get my vote. And I don’t give a flying fart in a windstorm for 'the devil in the details’, or ‘the rights of the parents’, or anything similar. Because no kid should ever, ever have to answer a police inquiry with the words "My daddy ate my eyes."

419 Scammers Alive And Well... But Behind The Times

So, I just got this in the spambox of one of my email addresses:

Dearest in Christ

With Due Respect And Humanity, Let me first of all inform you, I got your email address from a mail Directory and decided to mail you for a permission to go ahead.I am Mrs. Rachael James from United Kingdom. I am married to Mr. Tom James who worked with a construction company in Asia for
twenty Years before he died in the tsunami disasters, we were married but without Any children.

I am now suffering from long time breast Cancer and Cancer of the lungs, from all indication my condition is really deterioration and it is quite obvious that i won't live more than 2 months according to my doctor, this is because the cancer stage has gotten to a very bad stage;Since his death I decided not to re-marry. I deposited the sum of (Two MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS) in a bank and now i am willing to donate this sum to the less privileged and to contribute to development of church in Africa, America, Asia, and Europe.

My late husband was a very wealthy and after his death, I inherited all his business and wealth, Presently this money is still with the bank and the management just Wrote me as the beneficiary to come forward to receive the money or rather Issue a letter of authorization to somebody to receive it on my behalf If I cannot come over. I am presently in a hospital where I have been undergoing treatment Cancer of the lungs in a hospital , I have since lost my ability to talk and my doctors have told me that I have only a few months to Live. Please i want you to note that this money is lying in the Bank.

I want a person that is trustworthy that will utilize 90% of this money to fund churches, orphanages and widows around the world but in my name Mrs.Rachel James"As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the bank.I will also issue you a letter of authority that will prove you as The new beneficiary of this fund. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I stated herein and Keep this contact confidential till such a time this funds get to your Custody,this is to ensure that nothing jeopardizes my last wish on Earth.

I await your urgent reply.

Yous In Christ,

Mrs.Rachel James

I'd just like to point out a couple things. First, it looks as though the 419-ers have finally got the hang of punctuation. Except for random Capitals, of course. Words like Keep and Custody are definitely important enough to need capital letters, right?

Next there's this Cancer stuff. I think Mrs Rachel James would have been more convincing if she'd had only one cancer, not two at once. But hell, who am I to argue? Maybe she collects cancers. Everyone's gotta have a hobby.

Finally: why are these eejits are still working in USAnian pesos? Haven't they heard of the recent rude health of the Aussie Dollar? When are we going to see whining Nigerians trying to convince us to send a lot of money and personal details to free up a massive hoard of good old Australian cash, eh?

It's not good enough, I tell you. Something should be done!

Edited to add: You know, I find it fascinating how so many of these 419 letters I see cloak themselves in Christian greetings. You don't suppose they have some reason for thinking that loudly religious folks might be... I dunno... more gullible than the rest of us?

Nahhh. Who'd think a thing like that?

Mother's Day Weekend.

I didn't do much useful writing this morning. One would think I could, what with the kids catching an 0800 bus, and me not having to go shopping or anything until 1400 or so.

Truth is, I was mentally wasted. The weekend was Not Easy.

It probably started Friday sometime. I had to make sure all the kids were packed properly for a weekend on the road. And I had to ensure that the double bass and the cello and the violin were waiting in my car for the changeover after school. And of course, I had to be packed myself, yep.

So a little after three, Natalie zooms up the drive in her little blue machine. She's got the boys. They jump into the Earth King (now chucky-jam with musical instruments, as per instructions) and zoom off.

Roughly twenty minutes later, I collect the Mau-Mau from the bus stop, get her changed into civvies, and we zoom off after Natalie. Once we hit Launceston, I have time to grab some sandwiches for the kids, and some sushi for Nat. Then I refuel the car, and zip round to the orchestra zone to meet Nat and the boys after their practice. We convoy from there to the house of a friend who is supposed to look after the Earth King and the cello and the bass for the weekend.

It's now roughly six pm. The kids are eating in the little blue car, and I'm driving. Two hours later down the midland highway and left, and we're at Hatchers' Manor, near Richmond. I won't go on at length about the place, but I will say this. I stayed there once, about five years ago, with a friend, and I've never forgotten it. Neither has he. We spent most of the weekend laughing at the mad architectural quirks of the place (a toilet placed under a sloping roof meant I actually had to lean sideways when I went for a piss!) but at the same time, it was wonderfully comfortable, great value for money, and the people running it couldn't possibly be nicer. I've been awaiting the right moment to drag the family down there... and this was it.

Yes. It is modelled after somebody's idea of a Swiss alpen chalet thing. And yes. The tower/turret has an apartment in it. And that pink trim? All over the interior too. Yep. But trust me: comfortable, friendly, spacious - brilliant place.

Mind you, after a two-hour drive all any of us wanted was bed. I ducked out to Richmond, found beer, cider and pizza, then returned to feed everybody and then more or less crash.

Next day we took in breakfast. Then we zipped down to Hobart, and dropped Natalie at her music thing - a chamber music workshop, as it happened. Guess it's a change from the Irish stuff she usually does. In any case, that left me and the kids for the next six to seven hours. I made a call to an old friend, and then we took off for the Salamanca Markets.

That's the main lobby of Hatchers Manor, by the way. Just in case you thought I was exaggerating when I said the place is peculiar. But fun.

Hobart's Salamanca Markets are good value. We met up with my friend Pete, shopped for Mother's day presents (we found some flowers and a really nice scarf in Lao silk) and bought a whole bunch of different apples. One stall had twenty-eight varieties! We're still tasting them, and arguing over which we like best.

The Mau-Mau got involved with this gentleman's sales pitch. She enjoyed naming the pewter animals.

Jake in a pensive moment

Genghis racing leaves down the Abel Tasman Fountain.

Lunch was fish and chips and woodfire pizza at a very acceptable little place near my friend Pete's residence. And then, since we still had hours to kill, we went to a big park in Sandy Bay with a very fine playground, and followed that up with a long beach walk. Finally, roundabout four in the afternoon, we made it back to Natalie's music zone so we could listen to her concert.

Only to discover we were locked out.

Ah well. Par for the course, really. We found a nearby paddock, and the kids ran around and wrestled even more, and we ate more apples, and listened to the car radio, and finally, finally, Natalie came out and joined us. Whereupon we promptly went BACK to Pete's place so Nat could have coffee. And then we went to dinner at a place called "Written On Tea", which gets a big Flinthart Food Tick for anybody looking for a decent Chinese/Japanese fusion feed in Sandy Bay at a very reasonable price. (The spicy pork with rice vermecelli was great.)

And then it was back to Hatchers Manor.

Next morning, the kids practised their ninja concealment skills. Happily, the multitude of cupboards in our spacious rooms gave them plenty of help...

That would be Jake.

And of course, the Mau-Mau and Genghis.

Naturally, being Mothers Day, the whole presents-and-flowers thing was done. And breakfast. Did I mention that among all the kid-wrangling on Saturday, I also stopped at a supermarket and collected fine cheeses, deli products, bread and fruits? No?

Well, I did. And a mighty breakfast was made. And then?

Why then, I drove us all back to Launceston. We went back to the House of Instrument-Minding, and Genghis and I hopped into the Earth King. We went to the supermarket, and then headed home. Seeing as how it was still Mothers Day, I promptly created a duet of charcoal-barbecued chicken and duck, along with a fine salad, and a bottle of excellent bubbly (courtesy of Chaz.)

And in keeping with the nature of things, I was the last one to bed... stayed up to make lunches, catch up on email, etc.

So: that's why I didn't have the necessary mental focus to churn out 3000 words this morning.

I Think I'm In Love

Please take care. The video to which this is linked is not at all work-safe, due to the language. And it's even less work-safe if you happen to work for Steve Jobs...