I just paid my cable internet bill online. The reason this is good is because for me, it's always such a luxury to be able to actually pay bills when they're due. I spent so many years barely surviving (in every way you can imagine), and now I have this pleasant middle-class existence and I can pay my bills when they're due. I'm so glad I can appreciate stuff like this. Makes life much more pleasant when you can take such joy in typing in your credit card number and knowing it's all good.

The soap I have on in the background (okay, okay, I know, it's a soap opera, what do I expect) just had an unplanned unattended childbirth. They used every screwed up and erroneous concept about childbirth in it, and it just ticks me off that they're still pushing these misconceptions on the public!

Labor was extremely sudden. She had "a few contractions" that she didn't say anything about and then suddenly dropped to her knees shouting, "The baby's coming!"

She gave birth sitting on the floor on her tailbone. Argghhh!!!! It seems to be generally totally misunderstood that sitting on your tailbone actually compresses the available pelvic area for the baby to pass through and it's about five times as painful as, say, kneeling. Why on earth would a woman having an unexpected birth attended by her worst enemy (because it's a soap) get into the most uncomfortable position possible?!

The baby was about two months old (I know the difference between a newborn a one several weeks old).

And, my personal favorite, there was no umbilical cord and no placenta, let alone any blood or other fluid on the nice carpeting.

Grrrrrr. I wish I hadn't seen that. It ALWAYS ticks me off when I see these horrible dramatic renditions of childbirth (in movies, on tv, they almost never get it right).

Then again, I think the problem here may be that I was actually watching a soap... Like I said, what can you expect?

I miss Halloween. I mean, okay, it's techically the 31st of October here, and some Aussies do celebrate Halloween, more or less (costumes, candy, etc.). But it's spring. It's SPRING! You can't have Halloween in spring! Part of what makes it Halloween is that there are blowing leaves and your mother makes you wear a sweater over your cool ballerina costume (even though you insist that ballerinas do NOT wear sweaters) and it gets dark fairly early.

Just imagine trying to have Halloween around the first of May. That'll give you an idea. The trees are getting all lush and green, there are flowers in bloom all over the place, and today I went out and it was pretty darned hot outside. It's just NOT proper Halloween weather, dammit.

Then again, at least you wouldn't have to put a sweater on over your cool ballerina costume...

As the veteran of a long and successful internet relationship, I can think of more than a few possibilities for this technology.

"An Examination of Lynard Skynard's 'Freebird' as a Masterful Existentialist Treatise, Using an Adapted Version of the Encyclopedia Britannica's 'Existentialism' Entry" is most entertaining, but you may appreciate it more if you're a child of the 70s. Personally, I think Freebird is one of the defining songs of my generation.

Wanna see some kitty porn?

Spammers never quit. Now they're spamming people's referral logs. All spammers should be taken out and beaten within an inch of their enlarged, Viagra-enchanced penis and larger breasts, regardless of their fabulous money-making opportunities and ability to track anyone via the internet.

Also at Wired (where this information appeared): Spam Masquerades as Admin Alerts, Spam Blocker Has Opposite Effect, and Porn Spam: It's Getting Raunchier.

This article at Salon is very political and very biting, but I thought it was a good read. Sums up a few things I could say if I were inclined to be political in a public forum. About as far as I'm willing to go is, "I don't like George Bush's policies on several things, including the environment." The author of this article went just a tad further, though...

And I've just seen that there's a followup article. Apparently, other Salon readers liked it as much as I did.

I just got a spam that went directly to my inbox (because the address, which had previously been spam-free, wasn't being filtered). I happened to be online and I got the email and reported it within five minutes of them sending it. Woohoo!

I don't know why I take such strange and perverse pleasure in this sort of thing, actually...

I also put that email address through the filter now. Pity, but if that's the way it's got to be...

Boston's first album, from 1976. Real "air guitar" music. When they first appeared on the scene with their remixed, double, tripple, quadruple tracked sound, they were completely fresh and it blew everyone away. Real innovators in the world of pop rock, if you ask me.

And yes, I'm showing my age by being able to remember Boston's first album (which is self-titled, thankyou).

I understand about indecision
But I don't care if I get behind
People living in competition
All I want to have my peace of mind

Smokin',
Smokin',
We're cooking tonight,
Just keep on toking!
Smokin',
Smokin',
I feel alright, mama,
I'm not joking.
Yeah.

We're Friends of the Zoo, and that gives us an annual unlimited pass to two zoos/wildlife habitat centres in the area, plus reduced rates at a nearby open range zoo. So today we went to the zoo. We went to the one in Melbourne, which happens to be the oldest zoo in the Southern Hemisphere.

They have the most gorgeous grounds there. People actually have weddings in some of the gardens, that's how pretty it is. They also have a lot of really cool attractions and interesting displays.

At the moment they have a baby giraffe, one so young she still has her umbilical stump. They also have a buttefly house which is absolutely amazing. I got a few pictures of butterflies, but most of them didn't come out well at all, unfortunately. Butterflies are surprisingly difficult to photograph...

Anyway, I've got a nice lot of pictures of the zoo and some really nice new flower photos. I'll get them online soonish, but I'm getting ready to switch over to a different gallery system and I'll wait until I've done that before uploading more.

It was a good day. We had fun. Life is good.

The Hero Machine is seriously entertaining.

It's a nice day.

Every time I say that, I always, always think of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The scene has the protagonists in a very bad situation, on a spacecraft that's about to explode or crash or something (can't recall; it's been ages since I read the book). It is then observed in a typically Adamsesque tangental sidenote that human beings have the most extraordinary talent for stating the extremely obvious. As in, "It's a nice day. You're very tall. So this is, we're going to die."

Now every time I say, "It's a nice day," I have to add, "You're very tall. So this is it, we're going to die."

It is a really nice day, though.

It had to happen. I've started getting spam in languages other than poorly written English. This one was in Spanish, but unfortunately my Spanish isn't all that good and I only recognized a few words. I think they were telling me I could win (or had already won) a trip for the whole family to Disneyworld in Florida. Well, whoop de doo. Or should I say, felicidades...

Yesterday, I was visiting a new font site that I'd not seen before, anke-art, which offers lovely original fonts, art, postcards, etc.

Then, only a matter of a couple of hours later, I got an email from Anke, in regard to the blogs by women ring. She had no way of knowing I'd just visited her site, and I don't know how she got to mine. I was going to post this at the time, but I wanted to make sure that it was, indeed, coincidence, and you know what? It was.

It is a small world. I am always amazed by the way these things happen.

Melbourne has once again been rated the World's Most Livable City. It scored almost perfectly in every category. The only place it lost a point was the weather, which has a tendency to change rather rapidly and without warning (four seasons in one day).

We went to the Melbourne Museum today to see a visiting show called The Italians: Three Centuries of Italian Art. I had heard mixed reviews of it, but I'm glad I went. There were a couple of extremely impressive pieces there, including a very significant Caravaggio and a couple of Renaissance works that quite impressed me. Some of these paintings have absolutely luminous colors! I had no idea!

I got fairly bored by the end of the exhibition, but that's because we'd gotten into the Rococco period and the beginning of the Romantic (pretty much anything in the 18th century leaves me cold, with a few exceptions).

All in all, I'm really glad we went, despite the fact that we had to stand in the queue for an hour just to get in.

I also got some pictures of the Royal Melbourne Exhibition Centre and the Museum and a couple other odds and ends from in the city. I'll put them online in the next day or so (yes, that's the other eason my life is good; I have my camera back!).

You've probably heard of Am I Hot or Not, and then there came a whole slew of imitators (including "rate my implants" and "terrorist or not" just to name two). But the funniest one I've seen so far is Am I BIOS or NOT. *snerk* Geek humor.

Woman Smothered by Own Breasts. Granted, this article is in the Sun (not the most reputable of publications).