Is 12" really enough ?????

I'm in the market for a new computer, preferably a Mac.

Though I haven't used one in a while, I have very fond memories of my first computer, a Mac Classic which is incidentally, still residing at the top of my wardrobe waiting to be
converted into a MacQuarium (a cliche perhaps, but a cool cliche).

But now I'm lost. I'm confused. And while tchick has provided me with lots of sound advice re this conundrum, I'm putting it out to the greater nerd community. I need help (mostly psychological) deciding which one - ibook v powerbook.

I need something light and small that I can travel with, play around with graphics on, watch some bad DVDs whilst in bed, study (ugh..homework), allow me to open and use multiple programs without crashing (I hate you Windows...), will last me at least 5 years without being 'old', be able to withstand some impact (I walk into walls a lot and occasionally drop things), oh and last but not least, something that looks pretty. Hey - come on, I am a chick. I don't have a lot of cash, but the good doctor is willing to buy me one for my birthday...and for other services rendered.

So, any advice would be mondo appreciated - remember that I am a computer civilian and can only understand small words.

Do YOU feel like Chicken Tonight, like Chicken Tonight?

This is a link to an article in which wunderchef Gordon Ramsay decries the poor culinary skills of today's Woman. He's making a new TV show featuring Britons in their home kitchens, and he's gobsmacked and a little bit disgusted to discover that some women can't cook, have no intention of learning or even trying to cook, and that they subsist on frozen meals, take-aways and the like.

I wonder whether this will cause a ruckus? Some sisters might be upset, interpreting Gordon’s Ramsay's disdain as implying that a woman’s place in the kitchen, goddammit!, regardless of whether she has been operating on brains or overseeing the m+a of multi-billion multinationals all day. Has he no idea exactly how busy the 21st century superwoman actually is?

Maybe modern raunch culture biatches don’t care about cooking, eating and nutrition as much as they care about attracting attention from men? Sounds like Gordon hasn’t noticed that cooking is old-skool, an antiquated life skill irrelevant in an age where Girls Go(ne) Wild! and enter wet t-shirt competitions because they are empowered and in charge of their own sexualization! Yay!

Am I supposed to hate Gordon Ramsay because he hates it when people can't and won't cook? I hate this too. It's just that my hatred doesn't distinguish between the genders. I love to cook, and more importantly, I love to eat, so I don’t care how snobbish I sound.

I was in the kitchen once when a woman of my acquaintance found it funny that I was making a tomato sauce from scratch, because (you’ll have to imagine the nasal bogan whine here) "tomato sauce already comes in jars at the supermarket."

Actually, tomato sauce doesn’t come in jars from the supermarket . What’s in those jars is an overly sugary one-dimensional substance vaguely reminiscent - but at the same time completely unlike - sugo.

We both learned something that day. She learned that tomato sauce doesn’t have to come from the supermarket. And I? Well, I discovered that spaghetti Napoli is made by dumping a jar of Dolmio on top of a plate of pasta over which you then grate Coon cheese. It’s apparently great because you don’t even have to warm the Dolmio up first!

Men can be equally disgusting. I would routinely throw up after a weekend at an ex’s place because - among many other crimes against my finely calibrated digestion - he laboured under the misapprehension that curry flavoured Continental Pasta & Sauce was a vegetable. I’m sorry, but how many things are wrong with this putative foodstuff? It's pre-parcooked pasta in a bag (wrong) with a dehydrated sauce (wrong), which you bring to life by adding margarine and low-fat milk (both of which are abominations; ersatz products, masquerading as proper, nourishing foods = so wrong). It’s ‘pasta’ in a 'creamy' 'curry' sauce (how many types of wrong is this?), which would usually be served alongside a thoroughly (and likely purposefully, the bastard) overcooked steak bought from the supermarket (don’t get me started on how wrong this is). And that’s it. Bon appetit, baby. I still feel bilious thinking about it seven years later.

It’s not funny or cute to not know how to cook. It’s very wasteful to buy ready meals and prepared products - with your hard earned cash, you’re purchasing lots of packaging and some tasteless and bland substitute for a real meal. Something that is kinda like dinner, but its relationship to actual food is like the relationship of nu-metal to actual music. Or a Matthew Reilly novel to a book worth reading. Or - given this is a food themed post - a Big Mac to a burger from Andrew's in Albert Park.

In case you didn’t know this already, convenience foods are full of chemicals necessary to keep them from spoiling, caking, separating and being rendered otherwise inedible, and also to colour and season them to resemble the actual food being parodied. It is unlikely that these additives are necessary for the overall health and wellbeing of humans.

And I don’t mind if you call me a communist, but I’m not that interested in buying food from multinational corporations whose interests are profits before purveying quality products. Who conduct cost/benefit analyses to determine whether there’s a buck to be made out of poisoning you. Have you read Fast Food Nation and Seeds of Deception? Maybe you should; you’d be much less inclined to unthinkingly purchase foods that are likely contaminated (literally) with (actual) shit, or contain genetically modified ingredients, or scarily enough both.

The challenges facing modern youth. Part II

Two young boys talking on the Johnston street bus this morning as we trundled past the Nicholson Street Commission flats:

"do you have to be poor to live in commission houses? or can you just pay, because they're in a pretty good spot."

"Nah I think you have to be really poor to live in them"

"does being a uni student count? 'cause I can't afford to buy a coffee this morning"

I wonder how many of the people in those housing commission flats can afford to go to Uni?

A day at the colon clinic

Since the stir created by Kissa’ blog on colonic irrigation – and want of a good maiden blog, I decided to try it out. Yes folks, I had a colonic irrigation session.

Upon arriving at the clinic, I had to fill out the mandatory form, detailing any ailments etc and lastly: what I would like to achieve out of this session. I didn’t think ‘for the sake of journalism’ would be appropriate.

Whilst filling out the form, a couple of recent ‘irrigated’ female patients settled their payments and organised their next sessions.
“Next week OK - can I buy another ten pack?”
Can it really be that good?

I was led into the room. The soothing ‘nurse’ instructed me how to lie down and position my bottom and straddle my legs between this large blue potty looking object on a bed. Protruding from this object was a long thin tube which she lubricated and offered to insert into my rectum.
Nah, I’ll be right said I, all tough-like.
She left the room and I spent the next couple of minutes trying to insert that goddam tube up my arse.
She returned and gave me the talk on how she will turn on the tap and that liquid would fill my abdomen. I was to push down and expel all the water and waste into the ‘potty’.

“Ok I’ll stay with you until you so make sure you do it correctly” (that is - pushing liquid out of my arse).

I tried to be cool and gave a lame push. Nothing happened.

“Ok to give you some incentive, if you don’t push all the water entering your bowel will overflow and you will need to vomit,” she said.

I pushed harder; OK this was starting to become really humiliating.

I did a tiny squeaky fart and felt something ooze between my legs.

“Push harder!”

Can I have some privacy please, I stammered.

She left.
I exploded then rang the bell.

She returned and congratulated me on my satisfactory ‘flow’ .
“And you can observe it in a mirror to your right.”

Fantastic - I spent the next 45 minutes cramping, pushing and observing litres of crap floating down a large pipe. After a while I got bored just when I thought I’d seen last week’s pizza, and picked up the ‘propaganda’ they had lying around.
Wow, Coffee enemas, how woudda thought?

After 45 minutes she returned with a cup of some liquid.
Great I’m thirsty.

Nope, that electrolyte substance was poured into a funnel and right back up my arse.
After holding and releasing for two minute I was able to de-tube, clean up and get out of there.
I felt dizzy and light-headed.

“That’s because you’re detoxing” they told me…I thought it was just cos I was dehydrated.
I have to return for a follow up session to loosen the harder wastes.

Hmmm…treatment for skin disorders, terminal diseases and digestive disorders, or plain old money making scam ? Jury’s still out. Let me know if I’m looking more glowing next time you see me.
Right now I’m off to eat some blended mush for the next 24 hours.

Watch the fur fly!

So Anna Wintour has copped another pie because of her devotion to fur and to increasing the advertising revenues of her mag. A tofu pie no less; at least PETA are ideologically consistent.

Some people think this is great because she's not a very nice person. Apparently she's the Devil and wears a lot of Prada. And she's intolerant of fat people.

Anna Wintour works for probably the most powerful fashion magazine in the world. It's the flagship mag for an industry that hates fat people. An industry that generates bazillions of dollars by making people feel inadequate then enticing them to spend! spend! spend! on consumer perishables they don’t really need in order to feel better about themselves. Is anyone really surprised that she’s an unpleasant, underfed bitch?

This is no Wintour apologia. Besides, she's not even my favourite international fashionista. Anna Piaggi has it all over her in terms of signature style and personality. Likewise, Italian Vogue has it all over the US version. My Italian may be limited to ordering dinner and asking for the location of the toilet and the post office, but just look at the pictures and you'll be transported

Here's a picture of Anna P. so you can compare and contrast - I reckon it says it a lot about the cultural differences between the US and Italia:

I eat meat. I wear leather. I am a Leatherwoman who fetishes the stuff. I am unconvinced of the alleged health benefits of vegetarianism and especially of veganism. The human body is designed to eat meat. Please don't tell me that red meat festers undigested in your guts for up to seven years; it’s not true. While you're at it, do some research on the adverse health consequences of the overconsumption of unfermented soy products before you offer me a delicious meat-free alternative to chateaubriand.

I have also worn fur. And will likely do so in the future.

*waits for the horrified, self-righteous gasps of leather shoe-wearing 'vegetarians' who eat chicken and fish to die down*

I’ve long coveted my mum's old jackets, gilets and coats from the 60's, 70's and early 80s. She's too scared to wear fur now in case someone gets aggressive with her about it. We had a stand-up argument about my borrowing a mink jacket to wear to a wedding last year – I think she wanted to hire me an unnecessarily large posse of bodyguards, J-Lo style, to ensure no insane animal rights activist could attempt to convince me of my vainglory by slashing me up.

Maybe my mum is the type that believes you should avoid sitting in an aisle seat at the cinema, in case a white slave trader wanders by, jabs you full of heroin and shanghais you into a life of drug addiction and prostitution somewhere in the Third World? Basically, she loves a good worry about things that are incredibly unlikely to ever happen.

I hate the holier than thou pose of those who argue that fur is bad, but take their animal rights logic no further. I was once lectured about the horrors of fur by a remarkably stupid girl wearing leather shoes, chainstore 'fashions' and eating McDonalds. Clearly fur is wrong, but leather, meat obtained by intensive farming and processing techniques, sweat shop labour in the Third World, anti-competitive business practices and a poor human rights record are OK and quite the thing this season!

PETA might be mental, and I'm afraid that animal rights defer to scientific research in the name curing and treating HIV and other deadly and debilitating diseases and conditions, but I give them props for being ideologically consistent. I enjoyed gawking while the high and mighty Ms Wintour received the pastry-equivalent of pantsing as much as the next person with an overdeveloped sense of schadenfreude. My scorn and derision are reserved for those, like Little Miss Happy Meal, who would rather go naked than wear fur; their lack of furs representing the entire extent of their commitment to animal liberation.

nude poo

ok who's been talking about nude poo on our blog? Someone found us by searching for nude poo last night. No less than TWO people found us by searching for boobs and willies, and less interestingly, 13 people have found us by searching for kleri tea.. The majority of search results have been related to dr. natura's infamous cleansing procedures, although no one has found us by specifically searching for death that was inside me ... yet.

I'm a retarded agoraphobic

I was emailing a friend of mine yesterday who two seconds after telling me that he'd just read my blog, felt compelled to send me this:

I'm so over blogs and bloggers... Bloggers, I have come to realise, are only a rung above those dipshits who hang out in chat rooms wasting their lives, calling themselves stupid names like "Savannah" and "Princess" and typing shit like <Princess ggls> ...

Seriously dude, I know we've had some interestingish chats about the medium but as a topic for analysis it's over. And as a passtime? Who the fuck has the time? And of those who do, surely only those chronically lacking in imagination and creativity would choose to blog. I'm not saying that nothing blogged is worthy, nor am I saying that there aren't whole blogs that are worthy (these tend to morph into actual "websites"). I'm just saying that there are better avenues for expressing information of worth than blogs which tend to degenerate into crappy little online cliques of retarded agoraphobiacs talking about their pets.

</rant>

I was mildly alarmed (and amused) to discover that my friend feels that I am "chronically lacking in imagination" or that I'm a "retarded agoraphobic", but he assures that he is referring to all those other bloggers out there and not me. I guess I've never really thought for a second that this site couold be a serious place for analysis. As for having the time? what can I say? I have no life.

So why am I posting my friend's rant here?

Firstly I want to prove how endlessly creative and imaginative I am (not). Secondly I want to make sure that this anonymous friend of mine lives on the blogosphere that he hates so much and finally because it made me laugh. I am after all a very shallow (retarded agoraphobic) person.

Oh and finally, this isnt a picture of my cat, but for some absurd reason people keep finding our blog by searching for "the world's ugliest cat" so darn it, I thought I'd give them something to look at.

Tigers Eating Penguins

From the Apple University Consortium's "Wheels for the Mind" magazine:



















Many idealogues have argued for the merits of Linux as a desktop platform, but the UNiversity of Melbourne's Trinity College has been forced to look past ideology. After years of struggling to convince students of the merits of Debian Linux desktops, in July the college restocked its empty Linux computer labs with Apple iMacs that are proving both easier to manage, and far more populat with students.

(link to full article to follow)

And the picture of modesty too:

Problems getting it up?

Saw this in the Age today, only in Australia.














"DIARY" wondered how long Bob Filliponi, the priapic Dandenong fencing contractor, would get away with using the name of the world's most famous impotence cure. The answer is 18 months. Having registered Viagra Fencing in February last year and getting it up ever since, Filliponi finally heard from Sydney eagles representing Viagra manufactuer Pfizer, warning him to "cease and desist" by Friday. "they reckon they would be happy if I remove the 'v' and the 'i' but theat dedfeats theh purpose," Filliponi said. "I've been getting calls from all over the world. THey don't want fences. Just want to know if we are real."

Rambling post commenced as a displacement activity to distract me from thinking about important but distressing things.

I’ve noticed that the standard of post around here peaked a few weeks ago; Kissa's one about bowels - despite a lack of photographic evidence of her claims - being the apogee. At a S?ITYS general meeting informally convened over email (quorum = Kissa and myself), we lamented the fact that we had nothing sufficiently amusing but impersonal to blog about, and so S?ITYS would likely lay fallow for a bit, while we got our shit together.

This post won't really do anything to raise the tone and increase the level of traffic around here - in case you missed the title, I only started writing it as a displacement activity to distract myself from thinking about more important but distressing things. Well, maybe distressing is being melodramatic (Countess as Camille, anyone?), but some things that don’t really bear thinking about right now. And ‘important’ is an interesting choice of word, too… Clearly my work is not stimulating enough, or I don’t have enough of it. I reckon I just have an incredibly low boredom threshold, and my mind too easily wanders away from the human rights of others and onto the more salacious aspects of my personal life (and the personal lives of my friends, when they deign to share!).

I haven’t even got the same charge out of checking up on my favourite blogs today. Tho’ there’s a new tool on the block. I commented on a post he made about having a migraine for which he took aspirin (I know!), which was written in real time - as if he were blogging and suffering a migraine in the here and now. I'm a migraineuse, and there is nothing in this world more infuriating than some wanker complaining of a migraine when all they have is a bit of a headache. For future reference, if:

(a) the pain is relieved by aspirin; and

(b) you can perform other tasks like walking, talking and using a computer;

YOU DO NOT HAVE A MIGRAINE. YOU HAVE A HEADACHE AND ARE BEING A LITTLE SOOKY EMO-LISTENING BABY ABOUT A RELATIVELY INNOCUOUS AMOUNT OF PAIN. If you really did suffer a migraine, you would likely kill yourself if a headache makes you sob for your Mommy.

So I expressed surprise in his comments that he could in fact function while putatively suffering from a migraine, and that was not curled up in a ball in a darkened room somewhere trying not to stab himself in the head just for the modicum of blessed relief that would bring. And, as I community service, I suggested that aspirin was probably not the most effective medication to take, and mentioned that I had had some success with Imigran.

I promise I wasn’t being spiteful - I was genuinely trying to reach out and make contact with a fellow blogger. I received in response a bitchy - and dare I say defensive? - retort to the effect that he was in fact legitimately suffering a migraine, that the post was not written ‘entirely’ in real time and that he had taken something other than aspirin to relieve the pain, but didn’t want to confuse or alienate his international readers by namechecking a particular product that may have a different trade name in other parts of the world.

I’m not kidding. Is this guy a colossal tosspot for writing with an ‘international readership’ in mind or what?

PARTIAL RETRACTION: In the interests of probity, I revisited the blog in question and have discovered that my recollection of our brief exchange was clouded by the fact that I am delusional (and likely paranoid). For the record, the offending blogger was not bitchy or defensive in response to my admittedly belligerent comment. He was right, I was taking him too literally and I was in fact the defensive one, leaping to the conclusion that he was not truly migraneur because of my personal sensitivity on this issue.

However, he really did write of keeping his posts accessible for his international readers. And he has repeated this sentiment in other posts. I’ll apologise for everything else, but I still think that is really wanky.

Basically, mea culpa. My partial bad. Sorry for the vitriol, random dude who probably never stumble across my admission of regret.

What a pointless post. But it was a relatively effective as a displacement activity, for what it’s worth. You should try it some time.