The angelic lips of feeling too damn good

I recently had to listen to a lot of commercial FM radio.

There wasn't much choice: when the two of us are in the car, I don't have control over the radio and we were staying at Boycat's Mum's sister's place in Melbourne and she listens to a station called "Mix 101". A mix of all the same old crap, I guess.

In country New South Wales, there is a series of stations called Star FM. They are interchangeable - they all play the same music and their announcers all sound the same. Unfortunately, they don't play the same music at the same time which means that when you drive too far from one transmitter and have to find the next station, you get to hear all of the same songs all over again.

And boy, even different bands are starting to sound the same. There is a song around at the moment called (I think) "The Lips of an Angel". Because FM radio doesn't back-announce you don't get to hear the name of the band, but I was pretty sure it was Nickelback. It took a week and a half to discover that it wasn't. (I can't remember the name of the band now, it's something like "Fester". [I've just checked online and it's 'Hinder'; I knew it had six letters.] I know their album has -- get this, how novel -- a chick in a bikini on the cover because I saw an ad for them on TV within about, I don't know, 10 seconds of getting home.)

Although at one stage - between Goulburn and Yass, I think, there wasn't much on the radio that we could pick up, so Boycat's Mum let me listen to Matthew Sweet. She must have listened to about 8 out of 15 songs on Girlfriend, plus Sick of Myself (twice - she likes it) and Scooby-Doo Where Are You. That's pretty good, as she tends to be a Nova girl. (We did try listening to Vega in Sydney, but there were a few too many '70s songs for her liking, so we'd changed that to Nova before we'd even made it into the city.)

Random Comments on current "Popular" music.

• I hate Nickelback, all of their songs are sub-grunge garbage. And get the damn frog out of your throat and sing, Chad.

• When I was an ASO3, supervising the ASO1s, they used to listen to the radio. I had a rule that they could listen to commercial radio until one of several bands came on - guaranteed to be within an hour or so. Barnesy or Chisel, Billy Joel, Dire Straits. These days I'd have a new list. These are songs I'm very sick of after the past few weeks. I don't know the proper names, because there's no back-announcing:
• - "The Light Surrounding You" (Evermore?)
• - "How to Save A Life"
• - "Lips of an Angel"
• - anything by Nickelback
• - The new Avril Lasagne song. Avril must have worked out that "I'm With You" was a big hit so now her new song "Keep Holding On" is just a remake. Is this what the kids today call Emo?
• -I'm sure there's more I just can't think of them at the moment.

• I notice the trend of people just singing over other people's songs and calling it their own continues unabated, although I do like that "Falling in Love Again" song, even though they break into "Head Over Heels" by Tears for Fears in the middle.

• I don't mind the current Gwen Stefani song, it kind of has a 50s feel; but, I'm sure I'll be sick of it soon.

• Who are these "Fall Out Boy" people?

...well my batch job is coming to an end, so I'll finish now...

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Well, I'm back...

From driving to Melbourne, with a 4-hour stopover (yesterday) in Sydney. Danny's well, if anyone's interested.

I took some photos, which I'll post if they turn out any good (it's hard to tell on the screen of a mobile or cheapie camera, so I'll have to download them to see.)

I feel like I'm ready for my liver to be made into foie gras, even though we didn't go out to eat all that often while we were down there. Although we did spend $299 for lunch for three, but that was at Fifteen Melbourne and I had some lovely pork with lentils, a nice pasta and a cheese platter. And most of a $50 bottle of wine - after sharing a $40 bottle - because I wasn't going to leave a single drop undrunk at those prices.

The trip was more for the benefit of Boycat's Mum's sister (it was her 35th birthday, the first since her separation) so I was a bit superfluous a lot of the time. Which was kind of okay, because I like catching trams and looking around but Boycat's Mum likes shopping.

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Do proverbs make sense?

"Waste not, want not"

What does this mean? If you don't want it, you don't waste it?

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The Sanity Assassins - #1 on mp3.com.au

...on the "Grunge" chart.

Yes, the denizens of mp3.com.au must have questionable taste.

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Apple, Inc. Vs Apple Corps - who cares?

So Apple and Apple have come to an arrangement.

Why did they have to fight in the first place? Apple (Computer) could so easily sell its music stuff under the brand name of "iTunes" (i.e, drop the Company's name altogether) which is probably better-known than the name "Apple" anyway.

And woo-hoo, people will now be able to buy Beatles music to stick on their MP3 players. They've been able to do that for years, they're called CDs. (And there's no pesky Digital Rights Manglement on MP3s you rip yourself.)

On another note, I'm probably going to buy my first MP3 player this week; Aldi is selling one for $70... I hope it handles WMA files.

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You can probably skip this one

The Qld Police Union are "extremely angry at the treatment of Senior Sergeant Hurley."

Yes, imagine being held to the same standards as a regular member of the public. It's a travesty, I say!

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Bog Water

I'm for drinking recycled water, by the way. I mean, do people think birds and fish and things don't already crap in the dams.

9 News had a poll which showed only 55% support; but it was a phone in-poll which means the more motivated people (the ones who are against it, given that President Pete's decision means those who are for it have lost motivation) have more incentive to ring and vote. Clive Berghofer
probably voted a thousand times.

9's just done a story on Vista. Given that they're in partnership with Microsoft at Ninemsn, it's not surprising that they gave it a positive review. But we can do without the falsehoods in the story, thanks - 95% of computers use Windows, ha!

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Government also stops caring about its heritage

Another government department name change that escaped my attention last week -- because, let's face it, it's not very riveting stuff -- was the name change from the Department of Environment and Heritage to the Department of The Environment and Water Resources.

So, in one reshuffle, that's multiculturalism AND our heritage gone.

Also, that brings the total of departments with the acronym of "DEWR" to two. Although they added the word "The" to the name, so maybe they want to be "TEWR"

And in an update, the DICs at Immigration have allowed some agencies to use the acronym DIAC. I don't have a pronunciation for this one yet, although "DY-AC" seems to be the only thing that would work.

I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath.

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Immigration department to change name to a bad acronym.

Public Servants tend to refer to their own and other departments by acronym. Thus the (old) Department of Family and Community Services was referred to as "FaCS" (FACKS).

Now that they're Family and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, one person I know insists on pronouncing FaCSIA as though it were spelled fascia (i.e., FAY-SHA), but most people still just call it FACKS, or FACK-SEE-A.

Whether or not the D -- for 'Department' -- is pronounced depends on whether or not it makes a good acronym. Social Security was always called "DSS", not just the "SS". If the D in FaCS had been pronounced, the acronym could well have sounded very much like "The effing Cs".

Still, the Department of Primary Industries and Energy has -- or at least had -- an acronym (DPIE) that is pronounced "Dopey", so not everyone thinks about the acronyms before naming the department.

And it shows. The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DEE-MA) has changed name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. It won't stop them being dicks, though.

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RSS feeds and new Blogger

If anyone monitors this by RSS, you might have noticed that the feed has gone weird recently. I'm going back through old posts and putting labels on them and the feed updates with the latest one I've done, no matter when it was originally published. Hopefully, this post will fix things up.

But if not, meh. I'll be doing it for a little while longer, but I'm not going to do them all. I think.

And, yes, I did send him Hindu Love Gods.

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This is so disgraceful, I'm going to have to use the c-word

Centrelink.

There, I said it. I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've used it here.

If you go into Centrelink to lodge your dole form and you have what used to be known as a 'breach' - they have some new-fangled euphemistic phrase for it now, 'participation failure' or something - they won't process your form. They tell you that no one in the office can help you and they send you over to a phone to call some other place. The problem is you can't get through to the other place; you sit listing to hold music for a half an hour, or sometimes an hour and a half.

Sometimes there is someone in the office who can help you, but instead of getting to see them, they make you go over and ring them up. They make you sit out the front of the office talking on the phone to someone hiding in the back of the office.

You have to do this, or you won't get paid. Ever.

Centrelink used to pride themselves on 'customer' service. Now it seems they just don't care. They used to want to help people, now they make you talk to people sitting 10 metres away from you by phone. I'm sure it's so the staff don't get to see the people on the other end as people, just annoyances they can hang up on if they feel like it.

This is symptomatic of the contempt in which the Howard government holds unemployed people. It matches the contempt in which they hold employed people. (c.f. WorkChoices.) If you aren't an employer, they don't give a crap.

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21st Century Etiquette

If you buy someone a CD, is it okay to rip it before you give it to them?

LATER: Thanks, Syme; just the answer I was hoping for. (See comments.) I don't think my brother would mind, after he doesn't believe in paying for music anyway. It's easy to tell he's never forked out money for a recording session or to get a CD pressed.

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ABBA, Buck's Fizz, Morrissey???

Morrissey is reported to be in talks to write England's next Eurovision entry.

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Blogtagging?

Hmmm, I'll have to investigate this.

Because someone's linked to me on their site, I'm supposed to write down five things that people don't know about me and then link to five people who aren't linked to by the person who linked to me, is that about it?

I'm the sort of person who lets chain letters die, did people know that?

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Christmas Greetings

I'm a slack bugger and I never think to send out Christmas cards until it's way too late. So thanks for the cards, those who sent them.

Merry Christmas, y'all

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How to make it rain

1. Plan a BBQ

2. Leave the windows open when you go to work

3. Leave something not quite waterproof outside

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Meta Haiku

five, seven and five
is the structure of haiku
nature is mentioned

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Misc 061124

- You've got 10 friends?

- I hope the CD arrived, I never heard.

- It's only half-time, but what a bunch of crap. Apparently, you can't lift your foot while kicking the ball, because if someone runs into you, you'll get sent off. Also, as a keeper if you're committed to diving at someone's feet and you're late and you try to make yourself into as small a target as possible so as not to interfere unduly with the attacking player, what the hell else are you supposed to do?

- My new bike is just being registered, I should be able to fall off that one very soon. (I bought one of those bright yellow safety vests; let's see the next fucker try to say he can't see me.)

- Oh, get it now, we're allowed to have penalties given against us, but not given to us.

I was at the dawning of the new era last week, Frank Farina's first match as coach. (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.) There was a girl in front of me who seemed to spend the whole game texting; my god, watch those thumbs move! All these young kiddies will end up crippled, unable to use their hands.

Well, gotta go - it seems like social club/poker night is ending early for Boycat's Mum. I'll have to watch what I'm sure will be a depressing end the the Roar game when I get back from the city.

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Misc 061108

We can all forget about horse-racing for the next eleven months.

Yep, the bike's a write-off. The radiographer who did my chest x-ray (for my asthma) gave me a new way of looking at things - he's a biker rider, too - instead of thinking that no-one can see me, think that they can see me but everyone's trying to kill me.

Dog bites Man? Saddam found guilty, sentenced to death. The reason for the question mark goes back to the origin of the phrase "dog bites man" - dog bites man isn't news, man bites dog is news. But the verdict in Saddam's first trial is news, even though it's news that almost everyone would have guessed.

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What do you get if you cross a 50cc motor scooter with an old model Ford Laser?

Pretty much the same as last time.

I'm frickin' cursed.

Same type of accident - someone in a car "just didn't see [me]" and pulled out across my path. This time, I didn't get the bike caught between the wheel and the car; I hit the panel behind the wheel pretty dead-on.

So, this one, I hit straighter. I don't seem to have anywhere near the bruising that I had last time, but this time I hit more with my knees than my upper legs; but the bruising, although it is much less than last time, is in almost the same places.

I haven't been to the doctor. Luckily (!?!) I already had holidays booked for next week -- yep, this happened at 4.55pm on a Friday afternoon before a week off -- to watch the U.S. mid-terms, so I don't need a med cert and I don't hurt too much. I'm planning to go to the doctor next week anyway, since I've done four of the five pathology tests for my asthma, so if anything still hurts unduly I'll talk to them about it then.

At least I can cancel the bike service I have booked for Tuesday.

The bike might not be a write-off. The front wheel doesn't seem to have been knocked out of alignment like last time. A lot of the plastic panelling has been destroyed, but there's funny stuff, like the front headlight assembly is hanging by its electrical wires but nothing actually appears to be broken - the bulb is intact and the casing isn't busted either.

But I'm getting really sick of this.

I think I got off really lucky this time, even though I was probably going faster; but, next time I could get crippled. Which is a shame, since climate change is so obvious that even the four-eyed fuckwit acknowledges it now, because I'm thinking of giving up the bike unless driver attitudes to those of us on two wheels change really quickly.

You can't slam on the brakes doing 53km/h on the little wheels on a scooter. You'd be just as likely to end up under the car as on the bonnet. And unfortunately, these people pull out when you're so close to them that the instinctive reaction of letting go of the throttle doesn't help much. The only solution is that people will have to start SEEING US.

I propose mandatory jail time for anyone who is at fault in an accident involving a bike. Not that any legislation would have to be passed; just proposing it should do the trick.

So, it might be goodbye to my 3l/100km transportation device.

[Although who am I kidding? They'll either fix the bike or replace it again and I'm still paying for it, so I'll use it rather than have it sit in the garage while I walk a mile to catch a bus. ]

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