So anyway…

The finished untooned Jessica Rabbit is also online (warning, it’s a bit big, but it’s worth it, in my opinion).

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I just bought someone a pair of chickens, and bought someone else a mosquito net. There are all kinds of cool things you can buy for poverty-stricken people all around the world (Africa, India, etc.), ranging from AU$5 to AU$5000. (Note: The exchange rate is currently very close to even, with 1AUD equal to about .95USD)
I love to shop online, and I love to donate to charity, so shopping for charity was super fun and now I feel all happy to know that someone, somewhere has a supply of eggs now, and someone (possibly an entire family) is going to be that much less likely to contract malaria.
You can purchase school supplies, stoves, tree seedlings, mosquito nets, goats, toilets, HIV awareness plans, fund a literacy program or a women’s self help group and other interesting things. I really recommend people check it out. It’s a fun way to send tangible healing and help to people who really need it.
(Oh, and before anyone is concerned, the charity group is Christian, but they do absolutely ZERO evangelism. None. Nada. They save their evangelism for churches and other Christians, trying to get them to donate to the cause. They do this charity work because they just plain believe it’s the right thing to do, and I agree. It is. And it’s fun to buy chickens and goats for people, yeah?)

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Today is Anzac Day. I’ll let Wikipedia explain the details of this particular holiday, but it’s a veterans/war memorial holiday with strong, sombre overtones. And biscuits. And by “biscuits”, I mean “cookies”, but you’re not allowed to call them cookies. They’re Anzac Biscuits.
Miranda asked first thing this morning if we had Anzac Biscuits for the holiday. (We didn’t. We did go out and get some. They’re pretty tasty.) Later in the evening, I pondered aloud the origin of Anzac Biscuits and whether the story I’d heard about them (something about soldiers on the battlefield making cookies with the stuff in their mess kits) was even remotely true (I didn’t think it was. Turns out I was right.)
In fact, the actual origin of these tasty bickies (that’s short for “biscuits”) is still somewhat mysterious. Thankfully, Allyson Gofton did the research on their origin, and it’s a pretty interesting read.
Oatmeal cookies, with an interesting history and a lot of popular myths surrounding them. Lest we forget.

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(In case you don’t know, a theremin is an electronic musical instrument; you can hear one in the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations and in the original Star Trek theme, and you can make your own if you’re so inclined.)

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A 19-year-old Saaarf London girl has been advised to use the Queen’s English on the phone after her hunt for a cab to whisk her to Bristol airport ended less than satisfactorily. (But extremely humourously for those of us who actually speak English.)

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Occasionally I get mail from people whose email system (usually work, but sometimes universities) automatically appends a little stern warning to the mail. I’ve posted a couple of those here, when I find them amusing. I just got this one and thought I’d pass it on. Note that the email and any attachment (which was an invitation to a party) have been kept private as demanded by the notice.

It’s also important to note that email IS NOT PRIVATE. Anyone on any relay between the sender and the recipient can read the mail. It’s super easy to hack mail, to put a sniffer on a port, and various other means of snooping. Putting a “you must keep this confidential” disclaimer on email is like putting one on a post card stating that anyone reading the post card is obligated to keep it private!

Anyway, on with the notice, which I found particularly obtuse and laughable:

YOU MUST READ THIS NOTICE
This email has been sent by Charles Sturt University (ABN 83 878 708 551). This email (and any attachment) is confidential and is intended for the use of the addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient of this email you must not copy, distribute, take any action in reliance on it or disclose it to anyone. Any confidentiality is not waived or lost by reason of mistaken delivery to you. The views expressed in this email are not necessarily those of Charles Sturt University. It is very important that before opening any attachments to this email you check them for viruses and defects. CSU does not accept liability for any corruption or viruses or any consequence which arise as a result of this email transmission. Email communications with CSU may be subject to automated email filtering, which could result in the delay or deletion of a legitimate email before it is read by its intended recipient at CSU. Please tell us if you have concerns about this automatic filtering. The Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students (CRICOS) Provider Number is 00005F (NSW), 025973E (QLD), and 01947G (VIC) for Charles Sturt University.

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GenX deconstruction of an R&B seduction song. Probably not entirely safe for work, but very funny.

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I have a new camera. Okay, it’s actually a second hand camera, but it’s new to me. My old one, which I wasn’t very happy with any more anyway (it had a lot of issues that bugged me, including the fact that it went through batteries like some sort of very battery draining thing and the fact that it had a completely crap white point and it was known to have utterly horrible purple fringeing), broke, and I wasn’t going to pay to repair it. So I got a different one. And my new camera is smart. Smarter than I am, actually.
Tonight I took a few pictures with it and it actually could tell it was a night scene and set itself accordingly. Pretty cool. I even did a little short movie and it was set on night scene and it’s not too bad at all. It’s a pretty smart camera. It’s a Canon PowerShot S3 IS, just for the record, and I’ve only begun to explore it and figure out how to use it well.
Anyway, we went to see Spamalot tonight, which I found to be typically Eric Idle-ish, in that it was clever, but not funny. Okay, I don’t want to say the show wasn’t funny. It was tremendously entertaining, and real spectacle, and I knew a lot of the lines and a few of the songs already, so that’s always good (hey, I’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail quite literally hundreds of times, okay? After a while the lines sort of become a part of you!) It was funny, and it was clever, but the second act was better than the first. Or maybe it’s that I had a glass of sparkling white wine at intermission and that made it just a bit better… Nah, I think it’s that the second act really was better, and a bit more coherent.
The show takes lots of Python bits and lots of bits from other Broadway shows, and mixes them into a hodgepodge of campy, noisy, very entertaining stuff, and the ending is better than that of the film of Holy Grail. So it was good. I enjoyed it. No complaints.
Before the show we had dinner at a cool little Japanese restaurant we found in Chinatown. Yummy food (I mean seriously yummy), good prices, great service. The place is Meiji Japanese Cafe and it’s at 105 Little Bourke Street in Melbourne, so give it a try sometime if you want a nice Japanese meal (but not between 3pm and 5pm on Friday or Saturday, because they’re not open then. Yes, I have their business card here. I don’t just go around memorising the hours of restaurants where I had a nice meal. I do, however, take a business card from them. So I can blog about it, obviously.)
I feel I should now interject and note that I don’t like driving in the city. Any city (and yes, I’ve driven in several, from medium sized to Chicago at evening peak *shudder*). I want to emphasise that I really, really don’t like it, and when I have to do it, it really wrecks my nerves. Not only do I hate city driving, Melbourne has this thing called a “hook turn” which is very, very nerve wracking. You basically have to drive out into the middle of the intersection and sit there until the light changes and then finish turning, while the oncoming traffic has no choice but to let you. In other words, you turn right from the leftmost lane. (This is done to keep from delaying or blocking the trams; it is not because Melburnians just find it fun to make a right turn from the leftmost lane.) So, I don’t drive in the city. When I need to go into the city, I take the train, or I get someone else to drive me. (This is generally Andrew, but on a couple of occasions I’ve roped other people into taking me.)
My vision for the trip into the city today was that I would, as usual, get on a train and read a book while I rode happily to Flinders Street Station, there to disembark and walk over to St Paul’s Cathedral and take a few pictures and say hello to God (well, I’m told it’s His house, so it seems polite to say hello). I planned on meeting Andrew there around 5:30ish, and since the show wasn’t until 8pm, we’d have lots of time to wander around, take pictures with my cool new camera, and pick somewhere to eat dinner. Then we’d take the train back (I was going to leave from a station a bit closer to the city in order to ensure there were plentiful trains running late at night, and on any ordinary night there would have been. Yes, this is foreshadowing.)
However, it was very windy today, and later it rained quite heavily. It was storming all day, in other words. Like, branches and trees flying into power lines type of storming. The power in our home kept flicking on and off, and power was out in many other places, as well, including traffic lights. It did occur to me that it was possible that the trains wouldn’t be running on time, given the problems with the electricity, but I didn’t check prior to leaving in the car.
Basically, there were no trains running. At all. It was a big clusterf**k, if you’ll pardon the implied language. There were buses brought in to get people home, but none were going all the way into the city, I found out eventually. When I finally found someone who appeared to have some idea what was going on and was willing to offer advice, I said to him, “I’m trying to get into the city. Any suggestions?” The look on his face clearly said, “You’re so f**ked!” He didn’t say that, of course. He answered, “Pray! And take a bus to Box Hill and take a taxi into the city from there.” And that, of course, would have cost a great deal of money, which I wasn’t willing to expend.
So I just decided, “This is insane. I’m going to drive.” Now this whole time at the train station I was calling Andrew every few minutes to tell him what was going on and ask him what he suggested we do. I called him back and said, “Okay, where shall we meet and how do I get there?” I ended up on the freeway (which I can handle) and then in an extremely slow-moving line of traffic going into the city, but it was a part of the city I’m quite familiar with, so other than being tedious, it was okay. I changed lanes when I needed to, no worries, no hassles. Handled the roundabout at the end of Alexandra Parade okay, and then made my way down Swanston Street, which was a bit more nerve wracking for me, because, well, I don’t like driving in the city (I’m sure I mentioned that), and there are always a bunch of pedestrians and there are trams and so forth. By the time I reached Andrew, I was quite tense. Okay, a little giddy because I’d done something totally new and kicking your fear in the teeth is fun, but still tense. I parked the car, he got in the driver’s seat, and we continued on because there’s no way I’m driving around the heart of the Central Business District when I don’t have to.
I think I told the story slightly backwards, but that’s the way I wanted to tell it. And here are a couple photos (one is a little blurry; I was using a parking meter as a place to steady the camera and it wasn’t a very good steadying object) to show off my cool new camera that knew it was night time and automatically switched into that mode for me. Oh, and a movie, in which you can hear Andrew ask “What’s the red flashing light mean?” and me answering in a slightly silly and weird voice, “I’m filming!” (because I was so excited to be doing so). Click small images to open the full size one. Also note that the video is hosted on YouTube, for bandwidth reasons; comments there, however, are turned off because comments on YouTube generally make me despair for the future of humanity.

Click to open larger image

Click to open larger image

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