SYDNEY is shedding 22,000 citizens a year to all parts of Australia, and for the first time the people deficit covers all key groups, from students and young singles to families and retirees.

(Just a personal note, you couldn't pay us to live in Sydney. Literally. Andrew has been headhunted by Google more than once and the pay and compensation package is impressive, but there's this huge drawback, and that is that we'd have to move to Sydney. He and others have suggested to Google that they should open an office in Melbourne because this is where all the good information retrieval people are, and almost none of them are willing to leave Marvelous Melbourne and move to (sucky?) Sydney. It's interesting to see that lots of other people feel the same way. I mean, people prefer Hobart to Sydney, what does that tell you?)

I'm not normally a "resolution" kind of person. Generally, when I decide to do something, I do it (or I try, anyway), regardless of the calendar. January 1st isn't any more special to me than any other day, really.

Anyway, this year I do have a resolution, but I've already started it. On Boxing Day (that's the day after Christmas for those of you who are not in a Commonwealth nation), we observed our usual "day trip" tradition and we ended up at Wilson's Promontory and we just had the best time of it (there are a couple of new photos already in the photo gallery, but I haven't documented them, and I still have more to add). I was so very happy on that day, just really, genuinely happy. It was a perfect day out, and it was also a spiritual experience in ways that I can't really explain without sounding like a lunatic (which I may already do, but I'll take that risk).

Now I've been working on healing and attitude and a lot of spiritually directed things for a long, long time now, and to put it into a nutshell, I realised that there's no real reason why I can't and shouldn't be happy every day. So that's my resolution. From now on, I'm going to be happy, every day, for the rest of my life.

Now... I am not insane. I am more than aware that life is full of all kinds of twists and turns and unforseen tragedy and so forth. I don't expect to be happy every moment of every day. I think that's probably impossible. But I do definitely believe that it's possible to rise above stress, pain, grief, sorrow, fear, and other stuff that gets in the way of being happy. I know from long experience that if I can just manage to climb on top of that stuff, I can touch the joy, and experience it. And I know that I can know joy even when I'm sad or tired or irritable, because I've done it. The trick is just going to be to do it all the time, or at least most of the time.

There you go, my resolution. And isn't it just a doozy...

It's stinking hot. Well, it was hotter earlier in the day. The maximum got to about 30° C. (which is around 86° F. for you North Americans stuck in an outdated and rather silly measurement system, no offence intended). Tomorrow, however, the forecast high is 40° C. (which is about 104° F.). Ugh.

We're going to the movies in the afternoon, to be where's it's dark and cool in the heat of the day (we're going to see Bee Movie in case you care).

Oh, and in other news, I finished the first draft of an actual client website. Woo. Actually, it's a friend of the family who needs a website for her new business (music typesetting and notation, if you're interested). Well, what the heck, I'll give her a link. It might get her some business, who knows: Copied Right Music Services.

Fear of ending up like this kid is the reason I almost never use txt type abbreviations. *shudder*

I just read this in an Australian forum:

we live in a democracy .. free speech is our constitutional birth right

Uhm, no. Well, okay, we do live in a democracy. However, free speech is not guaranteed by the Australian constitution. No, it's not. Australia does not have anything like a Bill of Rights such as the United States has (and argues about constantly).

Australia, being a democracy, has the implied legal right of free political speech. We do not, however, have the right to say anything, any time, anywhere, as this person would have us believe. They're even posting this on a privately owned forum, they could be banned at any time and have no recourse whatsoever... So much for their God-given, inborn Constitutional right to spout off at will, hmmm?

Australia does have a strong history of allowing free speech, but Australia also has laws against sedition (a term of law which refers to covert conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority as tending toward insurrection against the established order), so if you say stuff about the government that the government doesn't like and can show to be "subversive", you can go to prison for it.

And furthermore, this whole "right to free speech" thing does NOT give you the right to use my resources to make your speech. In other words, you can get your own printing press, I'm not obligated to let you use mine.

Mind you, this is totally lost on the sort of brilliant mind that can't tell the difference between free political speech and bitching about their host.... Anyway, people like this are the reason I don't have a guestbook, a public forum, or comments turned on (okay, technically, I have comments turned off because our server kept crashing because of spammers targeting the comment form, but it's actually fixed now and I haven't bothered to turn comments back on; I don't think anyone particularly cares, though).

Enough ranting. I'm actually in a good mood. I was just momentarily annoyed. I'm over it now. Really.

It really irritates me when people are selling things (on eBay or elsewhere) and they really have no clue what they're selling. For example, there was a pendant I was interested in and it was listed as "German Silver". Now, German Silver can mean that it's a silver-coloured base metal made of some alloy of tin, zinc, nickel, etc. OR it can mean actual silver which is simply below the standard for sterling (such as .800 or .900 as opposed to .925 purity). To me, it's important to know what it is, because I have real problems with costume jewellery (my skin is very acidic, and base metal tends to turn black, green, and other nasty colours, and the jewellry is ruined very quickly).

So I wrote to this seller to ask what is was. I was very polite. This is the reply I got:

When I list an item for auction I am obliged to list it as it is. When I purchase items that are sold to me as German Silver I have to state that is what it is. I am not an expert in metal and therefore am not able to comment on the standard of one as opposed to the other.

Uh, right. They might as well have said, "I have no idea what I'm selling." Seriously, that's precisely what they're saying. They don't know anything about jewellery, they don't know anything about precious metals as opposed to base metals. I mean, I'm no metallurgist, but it's not all that difficult to learn basic things like whether the item you're selling is base metal or actual silver, is it?

People like this are the ones who make online trading such a big risk, particularly through eBay or similar sites. And yeah, it does irritate me. No, you don't have to be an expert, but you could at least have some damned clue what you're offering the public!

Rant over.

I just want to give a public thumbs up to Amazon and their customer service. Several weeks ago, I ordered four books and paid for expedited shipping. I wasn't in any particular rush, mind you, but it's not that much more for the expedited and I get very bored with waiting for them to get around to shipping. I'll take my chances with the actual postal services, but if I can give Amazon a few extra bucks to pack my stuff and post it sooner, well, sometimes it's worth it.

Anyway, they split the order into two packages for whatever reason it is that Amazon does these things (presumably, it has to do with shipping weights). The two packages were supposed to ship on the same day. I got one of the two packages, which contained two books. I waited patiently for the other, thinking that perhaps it just got mixed up in the Christmas scuffle or something like that. Eventually, I realised that the package was way, way overdue, and I wrote to Amazon's customer service department to politely enquire.

Well, they did whatever they did (checked the tracking? looked up various information? who knows...) and refunded my money AND sent the two books to me via international express courier. Wow. I would have been happy with EITHER of those options, but they promptly gave me both of them. Money back AND reshipping of the order. Just... wow. That's what I call customer service!

 

 

Festivus: For the Rest of Us!

(And yes, Britney Spears does have a pregnant sixteen-year-old sister, in case you weren't aware.)

First, you need earphones to appreciate this comparison of Nickleback songs, described by the reviewer as "recyling your hideous dirge and selling it over again to your deluded fan base". Go on, have a listen, it's kinda cool. And very telling. (No, I'm not a Nickelback fan, but I don't hate them or anything; I never cared about them one way or the other, but now I care about them even less and just that much less likely to buy any of their albums.)

Then, have a listen to:

I haven't got a WTF category on this blog. Maybe I should. Here's the video, you can see for yourself (and you'll probably say or at least think something equivalent to WTF?!)

I'm so glad to find out that tabloids have finally broken through the ''legitimate'' news- source barrier. Whew! That means I'm reading real news when I learn what color baby ugg boots Nicole Richie bought or that Britney Spears has been banned from yet another hotel or that some random entertainment person I've never personally heard of is queer.

It's news I'm telling you! News! And M&Ms and Cheetos are real food!

Apparently, this week marks the ten year anniversary of the death of Chris Farley. I'm posting this, one of my absolutely favourite Saturday Night Live bit, partly in honour of that anniversary, but mostly because I just really like Bill Swerski's Super Fans.

Python lovers will absolutely love this (especially those of you who are familiar with all of the controversy surrounding Monty Python's Life of Brian):

And then, in case that wasn't enough Pythonesque humour:

One of the most beautiful love songs ever written, in my opinion. First time I heard this song, I was in my early teens and I remember thinking, "Wow. Some day I hope I have someone I can sing this song to..." (As it happens, I did, but I don't think I've ever actually sung this song to him to the best of my recollection.)

Hearing this song makes me a bit sad now. I'm surprised by how deeply affected I feel by the death of Dan Fogelberg, but there you have it. I am.

Goodbye, Dan. May we one day meet in the most perfect of circumstances. And bring your guitar, okay?

A NEW Zealander who invented a toilet that used worms to produce compost had to prove the worms were not traumatised before authorities would approve his product.
 
An Auckland Regional Council official told Coll Bell to get an expert's report on the psychological impact on the worms.

Now this is entertaining!

I posted a while back about TomCruisIsNuts.com (no, I am not a Tom Cruise fan, and yes, I think he's nuts; I lost all respect for him when he dumped Nicole Kidman without warning and tried to get out of paying her a fair division of assets by saying they'd split up before their tenth anniversary, when, in fact, they'd renewed their vows on their tenth wedding anniversary!). But enough about Tom.

Now there's the very entertaining, PoorBritney.com, a site which "is not your typical fan site that tries to convince us all that everything is perfectly fine." In fact:

I just love those sites that continue to talk about shit she did when she was 18 and play her old videos over and over like everything is just fine and she is on top of the world.

I feel like I am going crazy when I visit those fan sites because they make NO mention of all her crazy antics in the last few years! This is all that is that crazy-ass Britney, good or bad - real Britney!

From post baby VMA performances, to shaving her head, to driving like a maniac all around town in a convertible (tryin to hide y'all!) to her custody troubles, to her hotel hopping and all the other Brit antics- we cover it and we say "Poor Britney!"

So, well, if you dislike Britney Spears as much as I do (honestly, I never cared about her one way or the other until she became the train wreck that would not shut the hell up and go the hell away!), go have a read at PoorBritney.com. I think you'll enjoy it, y'all!

Singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg dies

Don't think I can find any words at the moment. I have lots of things I could say about Dan Fogelberg and what his music has meant to me an my life, but I'm not really feeling very eloquent.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how

"Do you seriously have nothing better to do then put people down? Most people who make fun of people on the internet are fat, lazy, people who have no friends." - Anonymous blog commenter

This comic made me literally laugh out loud (and I am using the word "literally" correctly, by the way).

(I can't help but think of Monty Python's Philosopher's Song, though. See below. Oh, except the clip, although extremely funny, is NSFW.)

Major General parodies are funny no matter what they're about. (Note: Rude word toward the end. Just thought I'd warn you in case you're easily offended.)

First, a bit of explanation, in case you're not up on the latest internet memes:

Lolsecretz is the meeting of two of the internet's most famous memes– anonymous confessions a la PostSecret (the blog where people anonymously confess their deepest darkest secrets) crossed with Lolcat Macros (the phenomenon where people ascribe poorly spelled human emotions to animals). Lolsecretz is satire. Enjoy!

I've been reading PostSecret for some time now (thanks for the tip, you know who you are), and Andrew, for some weird reason, really got into the whole Lolcat thing, and he sort of turned me on to it. He's done a bunch of LOLCat things, but they're mostly geeky and most people wouldn't get them (although this one is kinda funny). I have likewise been reading Lolsecretz for some time. (RSS feeds are soooo wonderful; I highly recommend Google Reader for what it's worth.)

Anyway, the other day, I finally managed to capture a picture that I thought was suitable for use as a LOLSecret, and it's been published. W00t! (And that's a real word now, I'll have you know.) The cat, by the way, is Miffy, short for Mephistopholes (yes, the name of the devil). She is the cranky old lady cat who owns my in-laws (or maybe she pwns them, you can never quite tell with cats).

South Korean scientists have cloned cats that look reddish under ultraviolet light by modifying a protein gene to change their skin color.

(Because the world needs more red flourescent cats!)

More than 100 customers enjoyed those Monday morning, lining up in an unbroken chain of motorists playing "pay it forward" at the Starbucks in the Greengate Centre in Hempfield.
 
For two hours, drive-through customers were informed that their lattes and other drinks had been paid for by the customer in front of them, employee Rebecca Hack said. They were offered a free beverage and asked if they'd like to pay for the driver behind them or to pass on the cheer in another way.

Merriam-Webster Online has officially added "w00t" to the dictionary. Kthxbye.

This guy's sitting on an airplane and the old man next to him pulls out a giant, leatherbound King James Version Scofield Reference Guide Study Bible. Guy says, "Wow, that's a huge Bible, I take it you're a Christian, too?"

Old man says, "I am a Southern Baptist. What are you?"

Guy says, "United Methodist."

"I see," the old man says disdainfully, wrinkling his nose.

"What?" the guy says, "You think only Baptists are going to Heaven?"

"No, of course not," the old man says. "Not all Baptists."

For the past three nights, we've been spider wranglers. The first night, the night they hatched, there were a couple dozen of them that we caught and put outside. Last night we caught about eight more. Tonight we caught about that many again. There are still a couple hiding in the cracks in the panelling in the room (we tried to coax them out to catch them and put them outside, but they weren't cooperating).

While I still find the presence of many baby spiders to be both amusing and a blessing (yes, I really regard it as a blessing and as a positive sign of some sort, but then, I rather like spiders; I would imagine if you didn't like them, you wouldn't take it quite so positively), I'm wondering just how many nights Andrew and I will be in our room with a jar and a small broom (to chase them to where they can be caught), wrangling spiders...

 

I admit, John Lennon is not my favourite Beatle (although as I write this, I am, interestingly, listening to a John Lennon song, She Said She Said, on my favourite Beatles album, Revolver). I have no particular dislike of John, but he just isn't my favourite (any regular reader of my blog knows I'm a George Harrison girl).

However, I do think John Lennon's death was tragic, for him, his family, the world, and the schitzoprenic who shot him (who will no doubt never see the light of day outside of a prison-hospital, no matter how well he responds to medication). The entire event is just, well, a tragedy.

Anyway, Yoko Ono has asked to remember John and his life by posting the above Christmas message for peace. So I am.

Just after midnight, Andrew went to bed. I stayed at my computer, listening to The Beatles (Revolver, my favourite Beatles album) with the headset. By the time Taxman was over and Eleanor Rigby had commenced, Andrew came out wanting my attention. I took off the headset and said, "What?" He said, "Come here," in that tone of voice that I know means "you have to see this for yourself", so I went.

In our bedroom were a couple dozen small spiders. All over the ceiling, a few on the walls. I don't know how many there were because we didn't bother counting. It was quite amazing, though! A room full of little spiders! We did have the window open, but we figure these must have been hatchlings, from a clutch of spider eggs somewhere in the room. Given the placement of the spiders and the probabilities of where some spider would have been able to lay her eggs, we figure it was the ceiling air vent (the one for the air conditioning, which we never use because it doesn't work particularly well and it's quite expensive to run).

So Andrew said to me, "What are we going to do?" Now, I know that most people would have just grabbed a can of bug spray or something to swat them all to death, but we're not like that. When we can, we catch spiders and we put them outside. It's not always possible, of course, but we make the effort. We'll do it with other insects, as well, when it's feasible to do so.

The only thing I could think of was to get some containers and catch the spiders and put them out. Which we did. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to coax them into a jar, and Andrew found he could get six or so spiders in the jar at once. We had two jars; I periodically took one of the jars outside to turn the spiders loose. Just in case you ever wondered about it, it's surprisingly difficult to get baby spiders out of a jar. They can be very tenacious little creatures and persuading them to go can be challenging.

We did end up having to chase some of the spiders with a small broom, because to catch them Andrew had to stand on the bed (so we chased them toward the bed). One did fall onto the bed (eek!) but we found it and caught it. We got the one that was on the ceiling inside the closet. A few were caught on the broom, itself (they run into the bristles, then slowly come out and we put them in the jar), one was caught on a shirt. Only one died, and that was certainly accidental, but overall, given the situation, I think we did pretty well.

There are probably a couple more hiding in the edges of the room (the walls are panelled), but we'll keep an eye out for them and with any luck we'll be able to catch them, as well.

I'm hoping this will bring me some good karma, but even if it doesn't, it kind of feels good to know I've saved the lives of a number of spiders. And it's kind of cool to think of my bedroom as the site of such an eruption of abundance and life. It's got to be some sort of blessing, right?

Ever wonder what they do on the International Space Station? They play with bubbles!

Amazing what you can do with 10,000 pieces of paper.

Sherri Shepherd appears to be a completely uneducated moron. And let's not blame this on Christianity. She'd be stupid no matter what her religion was. (Note that a few weeks ago she stated that she wasn't sure if the world was round or flat...)

This morning on the way to school, Miranda and I saw a whole lot of snail tracks, criss-crossing the cement footpath. The light must have been just right. It was actually quite beautiful, these silvery streaks from where snails had been crossing back and forth all night and into the morning.

This afternoon, I saw a whole flock of Rainbow Lorikeets in a gum tree not far from our house. These are my favourite bird. They're really noisy (parrots generally are), but they're just so beautiful (I wish we could attract them with the seeds we put out, but we only seem to be able to get doves to come around).

A few days ago, we had the most beautiful sunset. Happily, I had the camera handy. I have this on my desktop now, as wallpaper (I might upload the wallpaper to my wallpaper download thingy, actually; I should make some new ones, anyway, since I now use a weird monitor size and I know other people do, too).

In the meantime, though, click the thumbnail to view the full size photo:

 

But... is France a country? (Note: Kelly Pickler is not smarter than a fifth grader; she's not even smarter than a bowl of tapioca as far as I can tell from this clip.)