News flash

Here's a couple of pieces of news

Mischa Barton's dead
Or rather her character Marissa Cooper is. Very dead. There's no resurrection in the OC I'm afraid.
My feelings towards this piece of news: great, she's dead too bad the other characters are still alive and kicking. Can't they be all dead so that the whole show's gonna be finished. This is just another meaningless show that has every intention of promoting sex in highschool. And promoting what I call the little-school-bag syndrome. What's with the school bags? They're in highschool for god's sake. They should be carrying something. All I saw was tiny little bags that look like they don't contain anything. What sort of school is that? Oh, I forgot. This school only promote sex. You need no books for that. Stupid me.

Stupid or sadistic?
This is a piece of local Australian news. A single mother left her kid in the care of her boyfriend. The genius boyfriend spilt some liquid on the kid and to dry the kid off, he put him/her in a tumble dryer. The result was a very dry kid with bruises and burns.
What I don't get is: Is the boyfriend stupid or what? Hasn't he heard of paper towels or towels. Nah, no one's this stupid. I think the guy is a sadistic. A stupid sadistic at that. He's in jail and the kid's in hospital. The mother, well, I don't know where the mother is actually. She should really stop trusting her boyfriends until they can be proven trustworthy and sadistic + stupid-less.

IVF shambles
This is worse than normal babies mix-up that we've heard of in the past of course. Usually babies are given to the wrong mother after their birth. This time it's more like a sperm mix-up. The couple who tried to have a baby through IVF got twins. However, the twins aren't the products of their eggs and sperms. This is of course devastating. You can't just go back to the clinic and demands your money back. I just hope that this is only an isolated incidence.

X-men 3 - a review

Aren't you excited X-men 3 is out? Aren't you?
I was. I was very very excited considering how good the first 2 movies were. The third movie is a flop. A very big disappointment.
Of course Jean is back but how does she get back? The movie offer a very lame answer to that. I was thinking along the line of she got abducted by Magneto but maybe that's just me. What's so bad about this movie is that it doesn't use any of its potentials. I love the character Rogue. Isn't she cool? In the comics she is cooler that cool, hyper-cool. In this movie, she's a teenager who just wants to be a normal teenager ie. she wants to lose her power. And what's with the guy with the wings. I thought he's gonna play some moderately major role in this movie, as it turned out, he's only in less than 5 scenes and has only about a dozen lines.

Warning: major spoiler ahead

All that was ok with me because I like Jean. However, by the end of the movie, she's dead again. This time it's final. Jean's not gonna be resurrected. Oh, by the way, Scot and Xavier's dead too. Maybe it's so that they don't need to hire all those extra characters for the next movie which is gonna be a spin off movie with only Wolverine.
And heaps of character's gonna lose their power. Heaps.
The plot was a disaster, of course, the special effects were great. Too bad it can't be substituted for the plot.
My ratings: 1/5

the death and resurrection of my copy of windows

My windows died yesterday. Not the hard-drive, the OS itself. It died and I almost cried. It felt like the end of the world to me when there's one line on the screen of my laptop that says "windows cannot start, please reinstall windows" or something like that.

So I had to reinstall windows and I lost every damn thing on my C drive. Everything including those pictures I post on this blog. Everything including all the software I've installed through out 2 years. But at least the laptop's running now. I'll never install those skin programs in my windows ever again. That probably messed up my windows in the first place.

Luckily, I've been using my D drive more than my C drive so nothing of importance apart from the softwares was lost. I still have all my mp3s in my laptop. I can definitely relate to the joy Christians feel after Jesus resurrected now. Definitely.

 

on the topic of attracting Google

You probably notice my ruse to direct traffic to my blog via Google. Not a very successive ruse I must say so I've abandoned that altogether. However, I've been having a lot of fun monitoring search phases that has my blog in the result.
If I really want to attract a lot of traffic to my blog, I can just start my post topics with the word "sex". Apparently, that's the most searched for term in google. But who wants to start every freaking post with the word "sex" or anything sex related? No, not me.
I stumbled across this blog yesterday. The owner seems to be very successive at directing traffic to his blog through use of very weird post topics like:

• only the good DIARRHEA young, or
• wine her, dine her, PORCUPINE her

I must say I'm impressed. If you have time read the DIARRHEA post. It's hilarious.

12 painless way to *cough* litter *cough* evangelize

I found this on catholic.com:,

 

12 painless way to evangelize

1. stuff bill payment envelopes with catholic tracts
2. volunteer to take charge of your parish literature rack
3. play a video or audio tape for door-to-door missionaries
4. place tracts or booklets in the pews at your parish
5. write and answer messages on your service
6. go door to door, hanging leaflets from doorknobs
7. write to the editor when the press misrepresents the faith
8. place catholic literature on the windshields
9. give away photocopies of articles from periodicals
10. send a friend (or a stranger) a book or a tape
11. call radio talk shows
12. leave catholic tracts and flyers in conspicuous places.

 

This sounds extremely like littering to me. Especially number 12 which basically means leave leaflets on trains, trams, buses, public places and pretend that you didn't put it there. And what is with number 1? Stuffing bill payment envelopes with catholic tracts so that people can't throw your tracts out when they've just gotten it out of the mailbox? I don't know about other people but I expect bills in bill payment envelopes, not some tracts from some unverifiable sources.
I have only this to say to those who really want to evangelize: action speaks louder than words. I hate lectures. Especially lengthy lectures on something that can be easily demonstrated.

 

someone's got the surprise of their life

I went to check the traffic to my blog today. And according to the records someone's got the surprise of their life. That person searched for "picture of vertabrates" and I don't think I'll have to say what he/she got from my blog. That picture of "the duck" with the longest thingy in all vertabrates.
If that poor person is a highschool kid, that would be extremely funny. What if he/she actually put that picture in his/her science project hey? I think I've created an evil highschooler.

Dear Bertwood eat fish

I know that this post doesn't deserve to be a post, more like a reply to a comment but, I think that Bertwood eat fish never really checks out all the comments so I'll make it easier for him.
Dear Bertwood eat fish, I think you should eat more red meat. You obviously need it considering you went through 200 google search results to find one of my posts and didn't. I'm touched. However don't go alienate those people who as you said

someone is really sad to go through all those web sites and more to get to your site just to find out what you think about it

I have already alienated them enough I think. Those poor unsuspecting people who went googling for some dirt on da vinci code and got my hateful ramblings. My blog is probably on their I'll-never-visit-this-shithole again list.
Damn

celebrities not-so-new gossip

Yeah, how utterly uncool I am. The 3vil g3nius following celbrities news? Whatever.
Since I have utterly nothing to write about today. I'm gonna write about what everyone usually want to read, gossip. Or more like my opinion on some gossips. Can you count gossip? No, you can't. Pieces of gossip then.

Britney Spears is said to have filed a divorce.
Yes, she's done it again. Got married again, got pregnant, again, and now getting a divorce yet again. And that poor kid Sean Preston something. He's practically lives in the tabloid. You can actually see how much he's grown. Poor kid indeed. Britney seems to be dropping him head first to the ground everyday. And what's with holding a baby while driving? And not fastening his seat belt? I thought Britney wasn't a blond. She's been gradually turning blond.

Gwyneth's 2nd kid's name is Moses.
When I heard Gwyneth was pregnant. I thought she's gonna name the kid Pear or Avocado or Durian or some exotic fruit, how about pineapple? That's gonna make everyone knows that he/she is the sibling of the poorly named Apple. Anyway. Gwyneth's gone biblical and named him Moses. Moses! Well, at least it's not Judas. Nobody's named Judas ever since, well, the first Judas.

If you're wondering about my sources for these pieces of gossip. I don't know. That's why it's called gossip.

Something to do with the Da Vinci Code at last: Dan Brown doesn't know sh*t

I'm pretty sure by now everybody has either read the damn book or rushed to see the movie which isn't that good anyway. If you haven't done either and planning on doing one or both of those (reading or seeing the movie) there is spoilers ahead in this. Don't read on. The rest of you. Read on.

In the book/movie, Professor Langdon was supposedly bugged with tiny GPS transmitter "dot" that is accurate to 2m. Apprently, at the moment the smallest GPS transmitter is nowhere near that size. Way bigger in fact. Hence the myth of GPS dot is completely busted. Dan Brown doesn't know shit about GPS.

Secondly, said GPS transmitter was supposedly thrown out of a toilet after having been stuffed into a bar of soap taken from said toilet. Now, where can you go and find a bar of soap in a toilet these days? Has Dan Brown heard of liquid soap in those liquid soap dispenser that is much more hygienic?  Certainly not the Lourve. Even if there is a bar of soap in the Lourve, I suppose it is on displayed somewhere NOT in the toilet. Hence second myth busted. Dan Brown doesn't know shit about soap.

Want to know more proof of Dan Brown doesn't know shit. Go to this page on Howstuffworks

 

this is just too wrong

Tell me if you can still eat free sausage sizzle every other week at uni after this ok? This is just wrong. But why do I post it then? It's like a car accident. You know it's bad. You know it's ugly but then you can't turn away from it.

Got this pictures from Gizmodo. This thing is actually being sold on Ebay. Who would want this I wonder.

ancillary labels for lecturers

I think lecturers should have ancillary labels for a few reasons:

• So that students know what to expect
• So that students can just stuff themselves with books at home instead of dragging their bums into the lecture theatres and be bored to dead there
• I'm going crazy studying for midyear exams so I'm entitled to rant a bit about ancillary labels

Ok, I've think up some ancillary labels for some lecturers that I won't name. Unlike my mentor who told us who's the most boring lecturer of first year so that we can skip his/her lectures.
The following apply to those extremely boring lecturers:

• This lecturer may cause sleepiness and may increase the effect of alcohol. If affected, do not drive a motor vehicle or operating machinery.
• This lecturer can be used to aid sleep.
• This lecturer replaces your sleeping pills. Do not take both.
• Adjust your caffeine intake before taking lectures by this lecturer.

The following apply to the good lecturers:

• Do not stop taking this class abrubtly. Might have an effect on your undestanding.
• Take on a full stomach [so that you can think]

Who wants something funny?

I found something funny in my iPod yesterday: Bach - Air on a G-string.

Isn't it funny? Maybe before they invented the G-string that wouldn't be as funny.

If you don't find that funny then you don't share my sense of humour!

Anyway, if you didn't find that funny. Check this clip out. It's called: "10 things I hate about commandments"


Hat tip to madguitarist @ youtube.com

a little reassurance

I know I tend to go crazy with my phone camera at lunch time. How can I resist pissing people off big time? Especially someone who's almost always pissed off already like... well, I won't name names.
So let me put this straight. You all can rest assured that I won't put any picture that has your face or any of your body parts on my blog. It has a lot to do with the anonimity of the internet that I enjoy! Who knows how many atheist hate groups there are on the internet. What if I inadvertently pissed some of those people off and they use the picture of my pissed off friend(s) to trace me? I am horrified!
Yes, I know I'm so vain, everything is about me, me and ME.

NO, no more Beacon field!

Remember the 2 miners stuck in the gold mine in Beacon Field who got out some time last week? If you haven't heard of those two I can only think of 3 reasons:

• you don't live in australia
• you live in australia but you don't watch the news
• you live in a hole somewhere, without access to TV, the news or the internet (hey wait a minute, how can you read my blog then?)

Anyhow, those guys got stuck in a real hole for 2 weeks and we outside the hole got bombarded with information about those 2 got stuck in the goddamn hole for 2 weeks. Yes I know it's not nice to say so but, why can't the people get enough of those two already. I can sympathise with those two got stuck in a hole without TV or internet for 2 weeks but my sympathy is limited. News about those two is just all over. They even cut the weather segment on breakfast shows to show the two-week "rescue" live on TV. By the time they got those guys out of the hole, I was thinking "thank god those two are out, now those bloody TV channels can get to the normal program". Please don't point out the paradox of an atheist thanking god. It's just a habit of mine.
And now, after getting 3 million dollars to tell their story on TV, is there nothing else we haven't known after 2 weeks of bombardment from every possible news programs in Australia? This time it's a two-hour interview on Nine. Two-hour! What can they possibly talk about? How they grew up? What's next? The autobiographies of 2 guys who got stuck in a hole.
Nothing against those two but there is such a thing that is called too much publicity. I have had enough. Is there anyone that feel the same?

my idea of a pet

I am not an animal hater. I love animals as long as they don't smell too bad, don't shed their fur/hair all over the place and they don't make too much noise. I have enough problem cleaning up the mess I make and I really don't appreciate cleaning up after some animals. What do you get when you buy a dog or a cat? You pay the money just to clean up after them.
So my kind of a pet is a gold fish or a turtle or a snake but I really don't want the latter. Snakes, somehow just seem nasty to me. Probably because of Catholic upbringing. Didn't a snake persuade Eve to eat the fruit of knowledge or some such thing?

the weirdest connection

I checked my mail today, as I always do everyday except for the days I don't do that. And in my mail, apart from the usual junks and spam there's an email from a travel blog site. I don't recall registering with a travel site so that was weird. The email basically invites me to visit a travel site and the reason for them contacting me was this:

I am contacting you because I was browsing your blog and saw you had an interest in swimming so thought you may be interested in our site.

What kind of twisted logic do they have? Is there a connection between swimming and travelling? Well, if I'm a whale then there might be a very strong connection. I might have the same ancestor as whales a few million years ago and that's a very short time! I might be interested in swimming but I only go swimming about once a year, average. But then again, this might just be another of those computer generated emails and computers can't think.

this post has absolutely nothing to do with "The Da Vinci Code"

So if you're looking for some dirt or some treasure on the upcoming Da Vinci Code movie, you probably should go somewhere else.

Having said so, this post has something to do with Da Vinci himself. I came across this quote from Da Vinci and I thought it is great.

 

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
Leonardo da Vinci

 

So that's what this post is about. Did anyone get to this post by googling for Da Vinci Code?

Heresy - NIN

he sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see
he tries to tell me what I put inside of me
he's got the answers to ease my curiosity
he dreamed up a god and called it Christianity
your god is dead and no one cares
if there is a hell I will see you there
he flexed his muscles to keep his flock of sheep in line
he made a virus that would kill off all the swine
his perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain
demands devotion atrocities done in his name
your god is dead and no one cares
drowning in his own hypocrisy
and if there is a hell I will see you there
burning with your god in humility
will you die for this?

OH DUH!

According to this article, Real Networks CEO Bob Gleiser said that iPod users steal music. What comment I have for him is DUH! The whole idea behind buying any mp3 player not just iPods alone is so that you can copy music you get illegally into small, compact players. Previously, before iPod became a phenomenon, music was still stolen and then converted into .wav format to burn to CDs. Now, we just skip the converting and burning parts.
And after forking out enough money to buy half a computer or about 20 music CDs, I don't suppose iPod users would want to fork out more money on the music which they can get for free. By the way, music you rip from your friends' CDs is also considered to be illegally obtained. Not that you can rip it easily with all the protection they put in these days.

Windows Live Mail beta - Review

I did a review, sort of, of Yahoo! Mail beta  a few days ago, if you missed that, well, I don't know what's wrong with your eyes.
Anyway, I received the invitation to try out Windows Live Mail beta in the weekend. That's really fast. I was on the waiting list for about 2 days. Previously Windows Live Mail beta was known as Hotmail Kahuna. I must say the new name is a much better one. What are they thinking when they named it Hotmail Kahuna?
The new Hotmail looks completely different. Same with Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail is striving for the feel and look of the offline email program like Outlook express or Thunderbird. And it did spectacularly. It looks clean and modern coz you can organise everything into columns.
I started my webmail experience with Hotmail ages ago. Eventually I changed to Yahoo due to the wacky spam filtering system Hotmail had. The system Hotmail seemed to had adopted was to put every thing into the spam box and the user can choose the one that is not spam. Yahoo, on the other hand, back in the old days, seemed to adopt the approach of putting everything into the inbox and then the user can choose what is spam. Which one is better? I suppose the Yahoo's way was better. At least you wouldn't miss anything.
So far I haven't received any spam in my Hotmail yet. Don't know if it's because of a new spam filtering system or because I'm not on any spammer's list.
Hotmail, surprisingly, works fine with dial-up connection, unlike Yahoo! Mail beta. So that is a big plus for it. However, I wouldn't recommend Hotmail over Gmail. Gmail is great! So far I haven't received a single spam. The stuff I've got in my Gmail spam is usually the spam I signed up for. Plus, Gmail works fine with dial-up and it works great with Firefox. Go Gmail!

PUSH but don't hold your breath

I'm a catholic turn atheist if you haven't quite figure that one out yet. I was unfortunately born a catholic and family tradition dictated that I would be christened as a catholic. No input from me on the matter whatsoever. No, you don't ask a newborn if it wants to be in a particular religion. Extremely inconsiderate of my parents of course. Why couldn't they just wait a few years and ask me if I want to be a catholic or not. I mean, if only you can test drive a religion before you decide to be a part of it.

I was still a Catholic, albeit a little skeptical, two years ago when I met this guy. He's a Buddhist-turn-Christian and he was fanatical about spreading the word of the lord to all his classmates. That's a bit scary for anyone in highschool. Just think what people might think gives me shudders. Anyway. He was way beyond enthusiastic and he had these wristbands with abbreviations on them stuff like WWJD or PUSH. The guy gave me a wristband, you know fellow Christians and all. Now that's what I call enthusiastic. Not like those Jehovah's Witnesses ladies who came to our house a few years ago and had an argument with my mother that Jesus died on a pole and not a cross. And I mean actually arguing. Their faces were red when they finished and I'm not even sure it was from exertion or humiliation or some kind of medical conditions. The whole thing was so wrong in so many ways:

• First, you don't go barging in other people houses and announce that they've been worshiping a wrong representation of your god.
• Second, you don't go starting arguments about anything that you have absolutely nothing back your claims up except some artist impressions of your vision. Even though the picture of Jesus dying on a pole can be artistic and pretty, it doesn't mean that it is true. Having said that I'm gonna say this too: Catholics don't have any proof that Jesus did die on a cross and not a pole. So it goes both way but those Jehovah's Witnesses ladies started it and that's what is wrong with this picture.
• Third, what kind of impression would you leave behind? Crazy fanatics trying to impose your religion on other people's religion? Way to recruit new members ladies.

Ok, back to the friendly Christian guy. I got a wristband with WWJD on it. It was cool. Not because I really believe in the message behind those abbreviation. By the way, WWJD stands for "what would Jesus do". The message was kinda good I suppose. It reminds you what you should do in sticky situation like:

• You see a bag containing 5 million bucks and don't know what to do. (grab it and make a run for the hills or the casino s or an electrical store or wherever people like to spend their money these days. Or grab the bag and walk into a police station)
• You got slapped in the face and not sure how to react. (run away, turn the other cheek to get slapped at or go on the slap the other person back and while you're at it, punch him in the jaw too?)
• You really want to bash that annoying guy on the train. (do you have enough muscle to go on such a campaign?). Or
• You really want to have unprotected sex with a stranger on the street.

Yes, Jesus can guide you in such situations even though common sense is way faster and a lot less complicated.

So I got the WWJD wristband and most of the time when I wore it, I pretended that WWJD stood for "we want jelly doughnuts". That message is cool too, isn't it? There are other messages and PUSH was one of those. The enthusiastic Christian couldn't remember what PUSH stood for so I didn't get that one and hence PUSH remains a mystery to me until yesterday.

Discovering what PUSH stands for is really a mind blowing experience for me. Previously I thought it meant one of these things:

• Push if you want to get ahead in life [which is quite true on some levels]
• If you push people the right way you'll get what you want.
• Push if you want that baby to get out of your uterus [this is induced by watching too many policemen having to play midwives on those cop shows]

No, PUSH doesn't have anything to do with the verb "push". PUSH stands for "pray until something happen". Oh, god. What that is one hell of an abbreviation. Pray until something happen? I reckon pray until anything happen is easier. What if nothing happens? What if you pray and pray and pray and pray and nothing happen? This is kinda like waiting for an answer for a rhetorical question. A scenario springs to my mind:

You keep praying and praying and praying and a hundred years later you're all but a skeleton in some corner of a church somewhere new generations walk pass your remains and wondering what happen to that guy. And there, in the corner, a message is carved in a stone. "Here kneels the remains of [insert a name] who had enough courage to PUSH. Too bad nothing happened"

I reckon they should sell those PUSH wristband with a big red warning: don't hold your breath while you PUSH.

the longest pee-pee of all vertabrates

bookshops have all the excitement in the world, especially Borders. The self-help section for example. Just go there one day and you'll see what I mean. No wonder kids have all the ideas about sex these days.
Anyway, take a look at this picture of an Argentine Lake Duck (Oxyura vittata). It looks normal right? Wait till you see what is under the surface.

The pee-pee of the Argentine Lake Duck (Oxyura vittata) is said to be the longest pee-pee of all vertabrates in relation to its body length. Of course it can't beat the pee-pee of a whale which can measure up to 16 feet if I remember right.

It is said that the extraordinary length of the penis of this duck is the result of competitive pressure. The penis is that size because in this species it is used to scrape (literally) the sperm, of previous matings between the female duck with other males, from the female duck. Some competition huh?

attack of the malware

My laptop had a random attack by malware yesterday. The result was devastating. I couldn't log on to anything except blogger and it wasn't funny. Probably it's karma for having aquired my firewall program through not-so-legal means.
Everything still isn't fixed at the moment which means pop-up is everywhere on my screen and I have to use the classic approach to pop-up fighting ie. closing every pop-up window manually and it's a pain in the ass.
Damn, I probably have to stop this, pop-ups seems to be appearing at the speed of light now.

Shit happens

Me, C. and A. went to the poster sale @ Melbourne uni this afternoon. The highlight of the sale, for me is this poster.

Funny isn't it? And it's true too.
If you can't read that, follow this link. Or read below:

TAOISM - if you understand shit, it isn't shit.

HINDUISM - this shit happened before.

CONFUCIONISM - confucious says "shit happens."

BUDDHISM - shit will happen to you again.

ZEN - what is the sound of shit happening?

ISLAM - if shit happens, it is the will of allah.

SIKHISM - leave our shit alone.

JEHOVA'S WITNESS - knock knock. shit happens.

ATHEISM - i don't believe this shit.

AGNOSTICISM - can you prove that shit happens?

CATHOLICISM - if shit happens, you deserve it.

PROTESTANTISM - shit happens, amen to that.

JUDAISM - why does shit always happen to us?

ORTHADOX JUDAISM - so shit happens, already.

TELEVANGELISM - send us money or shit will happen to you.

RASTAFARIANISM - let's smoke this shit.

HARE KRISHNA - shit happens rama rama.

NATION OF ISLAM - don't take no shit.

NEW AGE - visualize shit happening.

SHINTOISM - you inherit the shit of your ancestors.

HEDONISM - i love it when shit happens.

SATANISM - sneppah tihs.

CAPITALISM - this is my shit.

FEMINISM - men are shit.

EXISTENSIALISM - what is shit anyway?

SCIENTOLOGY - if shit happens, see dianetics p.137.

MORMONISM - excrement happens(don't say shit).

BAPTISM - we'll wash the shit right off you.

MYSTICISM - this is really wierd shit.

VOODOO - shit doesn't just happen, we made it happen.

DISNEYISM - bad shit doesn't happen here.

SURREALISM - fish happens.

CYNICISM - we are all full of shit.

TANTRISM - fuck this shit.

HIP-HOP - motherfuck this shiznat beeatch.

STATISTICIAN - shit is 84.7% likely to happen.

AMERICANISM - who gives a shit.

ENVIRONMENTALISM - shit is biodegradable.

FATALISM - oh shit, it's going to happen.

VEGETARIANISM - if it happens to shit, don't eat it.

MATERIALISM - whoever dies with the most shit wins.

FAMILY GATHERING - relatives are shit.

EINSTEIN - shit is relative.

POLITICALLY CORRECT - internally proccessed,

NUTRITIONAL - drained biological output happens.

DOG - i just shit in your shoe.

CAT - dogs are shit.

MOUSE - oh shit, a cat!

ACUPUNCTUARIST - hold still or this will hurt like shit.

LAWYERS - for enough money i can get you out of shit.

FREUD - shit is a phallic symbol.

DESCARTES - i shit therefore i am.

SHAKESPEAREAN - to shit or not to shit, that is the question.

TREKISM - to boldly shit where no-one has shit before.

OPTIMISM - shit won't happen to me.

SUICIDAL - i've had enough of this shit.

AMISH - modern shit is useless.

DARWINISM - survival of the shittiest.

PSYCHO-ANYLYSIS - tell me about your shit.

CONSPIRACY THEORISM - THEY shit on us!

MARXISM - you have nothing to lose but your shit.

COMMUNISM - let's share the shit.

WICCA - you can make shit happen but shit will happen to you three times.

Yahoo! mail beta

Last month I did a post on the beta tests Yahoo and Hotmail are having for their new web mail clients. Today I have finally received the "invite" sort of from Yahoo to switch my mailbox to the new Yahoo beta mail. And I jumped to do it.
The new mail box was good looking enough. It looks like an off-line email client like Outlook express or Thunderbird. But it is different. There's an option for you to subscribe to RSS feeds for people addicted to reading blogs like me. That is actually what I've always wanted. Of course I've heard of Bloglines and the like but that means I have to log on at another site to read my RSS feeds and then log on at my normal mailbox to read my mails. So that is very convenient.
However, there's a down side to all this. I have dial-up at home and sadly the new Yahoo mailbox doesn't exactly agree with my bandwidth, or lack thereof. I couldn't load the mailbox and had to switch back to the old Yahoo mailbox. Damn.
I didn't have this problem with Gmail. Gmail is the best. If only they can integrate the RSS feeds into the mailbox too instead of leaving it at the personalised google page.
About Hotmail Kahuna. I'm still waiting for the invite. Hopefully it'll be less of a disaster on dial-up connections.

playlist

I'm an organised person, sort of. I hate it when I have to browse around my 2000 plus songs on my ipod to get to a song I like. The answer the this problem is create a playlist. Some people just don't even know how to use the playlist feature on the ipod. They jump from song to song and that's bad. It's killing your ipod big time.

Anyway, here's my current playlist. Why I post it? To show you how cool I am, since I listen to all these cool rock band? (nah, just kidding)

 

Good Charlotte - The World is Black

Good Charlotte - Predictable

Good Charlotte - Mountain

Green Day - wake me when september ends

Green Day - boulevard of broken dreams

The Living End - Wake Up

The Offspring - Spare Me The Details

Simple Plan - Perfect World

Simple Plan - Me Against The World

Simple Plan - Welcome To My Life

sum 41 - no reason

sum 41 - we're all to blame

sum 41 - pieces

sum 41 - 88

Sum 41 - over my head (better off dead)

Sum 41 - still waiting

Sum 41 - the hell song

Sum 41 - pain for pleasure

Wheatus - Teenage Dirtbag

Yellowcard - Lights And Sounds

Yellowcard - Ocean Avenue

Athlete - Wires

The Cranberries - Zombie

The Dandy Warhols - You Were The Last High

Dave Matthews Band - American Baby

Foo Fighters - Best Of You

Moby - Love Should

Nine Inch Nails - Hurt

Nine Inch Nails - Head like a hole

Nine Inch Nails - The day the world went away

Placebo - Every You Every Me

Chocolate Starfish - You're So Vain

Coldplay - The Scientist

Garbage - Why Do You Love Me

Garbage - Bleed Like Me

Garbage - Metal Heart

Garbage - Happy Home

Gary Jules - Mad World

Grinspoon - Hard Act To Follow

Grinspoon - Better Off Alone

Youth Group - Forever Young

Blink 182 - Anthem part two

Blink 182 - online songs

Blink 182 - everytime I look for you

Blink 182 - what went wrong

Blink 182 - adam's song

Blink 182 - Dammit

Blink 182 - Always

Blink 182 - story of a lonely guy

Blink 182 - stay together for the kids

Blink 182 - roller coaster

Blink 182 - give me one good reason

Blink 182 - shut up

Blink 182 - don't leave me

Blink 182 - what's my age again?

Blink 182 - all the small things

Blink 182 - the party song

Blink 182 - Degenerate

Blink 182 - All of This

Blink 182 - Obvious

Blink 182 - I'm Lost Without You

Blink 182 - Easy Target

Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out

The Killers - Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine

The Killers - Andy, Your'e A Star

Motor Ace - Not So Blue

Placebo - Haemoglobin

Placebo - Blue American

Nine Inch Nails - All The Love In The World

Nine Inch Nails - You Know What You Are?

Nine Inch Nails - The Hand That Feeds

Nine Inch Nails - Every Day Is Exactly The Same

Nine Inch Nails - Only

Nine Inch Nails - Beside You In Time

Nine Inch Nails - Right Where It Belongs

Garbage - It's All Over But The Crying

Garbage - nobody loves you

Garbage - til the day I die

Nine Inch Nails - the great below

Nine Inch Nails - Starfuckers Inc. (Version 2)

Nine Inch Nails - the day the world went away

Nine Inch Nails - Metal

Nine Inch Nails - 10 Miles High (Version)

Nine Inch Nails - Mr Self Destruct

Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

Nine Inch Nails - Sin

Korn - Coming Undone

Papa Roach - Not Listening

Papa Roach - Last Resort

Papa Roach - Between Angels And Insects

Papa Roach - Blood Brothers

Korn - freak on a leash

Korn - counting on me

Papa Roach - Infest

Mudvayne - Happy?

System Of A Down - Chop Suey!

System Of A Down - Atwa

Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood

Gorillaz - last living souls

Gorillaz - feel good inc

Gorillaz - el maana

Gorillaz - white light

Korn - Right now

Hole - celebrity skin

Placebo - Meds (Feat. Vv Of The Kills)

Placebo - Post Blue

Placebo - Song To Say Goodbye

more da vinci madness

I know i've been posting A LOT about this hype even though I don't even like it. But hey, all I can think about at the moment is how ridiculous this whole hype is about. If people really want to diss the Catholic church, there are definitely more creative ways to do so than just rushing to the bookshop/library to grab a copy of this book or rushing to the cinema to see this movie.

Having said that I don't actually like this book. I am still going to see this movie. Don't get me wrong. It's not because I can't resist the damn hype. The main reason why I even go to see this catastrophe of a book is the main actress. I love Audrey Tautou. I love Amelie and hence I'm gonna go see her in just another movie.

Since the post title is "more da vinci madness" here's what I'm talking about. Found this in the Target catalogue this week. Even interests in Da Vinci himself rises with this book. Damn. 

This next picture isn't very new. Last Friday, mX, a free Melbourne newspaper, devoted 4 pages to the Da Vinci Code movie. A bit over the top actually.

And I forgot to mention, for the people who hates reading books, there's an alternative to all the unauthorised guides on the Da Vinci code. Behold, the da-vinci-related DVDs

God. I promise I will not say anything more about the Da Vinci or Dan Brown or about any code anymore. I'm sick of typing Da Vinci all the time.

 

unbiased

This post is again, related to "the Da Vinci Code". Why do I keep writing abot stuff related to the damn book? I don't know, it's all people wants to read/know these days, just getting my share of the hype I guess.
Anyhow, I went googling for "the da vinci code". There were some very interesting results from the search. Do you know there's a "the da vinci code quest" running by Google? That was news to me. However, the most interesting result for my search was this page from catholic.com. The page gave a new meaning to "unbiased". And the article is called "cracking the da vinci code". That sounds awefully like one of the book I saw somewhere some time ago. Anyway, here's an excerpt of the page.

Why should a Catholic be concerned about the
novel?

Although a work of fiction, the book claims to be meticulously
researched, and it goes to great lengths to convey the impression that it is
based on fact. It even has a "fact" page at the front of the book underscoring
the claim of factuality for particular ideas within the book. As a result, many
readers-both Catholic and non-Catholic-are taking the book's ideas
seriously.

The problem is that many of the ideas that the book promotes
are anything but fact, and they go directly to the heart of the Catholic faith.
For example, the book promotes these ideas:

• Jesus is not God; he was only a man.
• Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.
• She is to be worshiped as a goddess.
• Jesus got her pregnant, and the two had a daughter.
• That daughter gave rise to a prominent family line that is still present in
  Europe today.
• The Bible was put together by a pagan Roman emperor.
• Jesus was viewed as a man and not as God until the fourth century, when he
  was deified by the emperor Constantine.
• The Gospels have been edited to support the claims of later Christians.
• In the original Gospels, Mary Magdalene rather than Peter was directed to
  establish the Church.
• There is a secret society known as the Priory of Sion that still worships
  Mary Magdalene as a goddess and is trying to keep the truth alive.
• The Catholic Church is aware of all this and has been fighting for centuries
  to keep it suppressed. It often has committed murder to do so.
• The Catholic Church is willing to and often has assassinated the descendents
  of Christ to keep his bloodline from growing.

Catholics should be
concerned about the book because it not only misrepresents their Church as a
murderous institution but also implies that the Christian faith itself is
utterly false.

Should other Christians be concerned about the
book?

Definitely. Only some of the offensive claims of The Da
Vinci Code pertain directly to the Catholic Church. The remainder strike at
the Christian faith itself. If the book's claims were true, then all forms of
Christianity would be false (except perhaps for Gnostic/feminist versions
focusing on Mary Magdalene instead of Jesus).

After reading this I was thinking. Dan Brown is a lucky guy. He's getting off on the wrong foot with the Catholic Church, not some Islamic organisation. At least Catholics don't believe in killing people for blasphemy against their God.
So THAT was interesting. What I saw next was even more intriguing, in the library section of catholic.com there is a page on gay marriage. Now, what did I know about the stance of the catholic church on the issue of gay marriage? Well, I thought they don't approve of it. After having read the above mentioned page, I was none the wiser. The page quoted numerous quotes from biblical texts, (unbiased? who?) and basically said that the catholic do not approve of gay marriage. However, they're not homophobic. The church disapproves of gay marriage because it only approve heterosexual marriages.

untitled

I've just installed another of the statistic code on my blog last week just to check out the service. Anyhow, I went on and found out that I've been having a lot of visits from the US. My first thought: "cool, people's reading my blog finally" and it's a good thing too. Anyway, I checked the stats anyhow and a lot of hits has been from my posts on "the Da Vinci code". Ironic, anyone? I've been dissing  "the Da Vinci Code" if you haven't notice. But then I suppose "the Da Vinci code" has helped to get more visitors to my blog. Um..., should I stop dissing it?
I'm writing this from Melbourne Uni, on a fabulous Macintosh computer. I've just realised that my blog looks good on a Mac browser. Don't really know why. Probably everything looks good on a Mac. Anyway, I was at Melbourne Uni yesterday, in the basement of the library. Yes, there is a basement, it's pretty warm down there (please don't attach any sexually meanings to this because I mean it the non-sexual way). Anyhow, I was in the basement, I needed to use the toilet. Found the toilet. Went in. One cubicle was taken. I thought, "cool, I have the choice of the 4 cubicles that aren't occipied". So I chose one and went in. As I was going in, two voices coming out from the occupied cubicle. TWO! TWO! I thought "how is that possible? How?". Even though my mind was plagued with that nagging question, I didn't wait around to find out how is that possible. In I went to my own cubicle. ALONE.
By the way, the two people in the other cubicle were speaking in Chinese so I don't know what the heck they were talking about. However, I know enough Chinese, Mandarin, to know that none of them utter the phrase "I love you". Satisfied?
I would also want to state the fact that I have absolutely nothing against homosexual people. Some of them are actually nicer than some straight. My philosophy is if you're happy with whatever, stick with it.

the hype continues

I suppose now everyone knows what's gonna come out on May 18th. Yes, "the Da Vinci Code". If someone hasn't heard of that damn book by now, he/she must be living in a hole for the last 2 years. I'm not a very big Da Vinci fan myself. True I read the book. I was curious why on earth everyone on the train carried a copy of that book so I read. It was intriguing enough, the book I mean. Made the Catholic church look bad and all. However, the hype for the up coming movie is just too big. It's getting annoying. First there was the posters, then the annoying trailers since Christmas. And now, bookshops are plagued with The-Da-Vinci-Code-related books. Take a look at all these books I encoutered in Borders last week.

Firstly, there's the unauthorised biography of Dan Brown. What the hell? Why would someone bother writing a biography of someone else and not be authorised to write it?

And then there's the controversial "Holy blood and the Holy Grail book". If you haven't been living in a hole for the past year, you'll know what I'm talking about. And all sort of unauthorised Da Vinci code breaker or whatever.

And this is not a very new thing. The Da Vinci Code board game. What's next? the Da Vinci Code guide to great sex?

And then there's the The-Da-Vinci-Code-ish books.

I mean come on! Everyone's gonna be sick of this conspiracy theory by Christmas. I suppose I should hurry up and write my own the-da-vinci-code-ish book I talked about last week too. Before the end of this hype.

mission impossible 3: truly impossible to comprehend

A few things that defy comprehension:

• How the voice change gadget works when it's just a bandage size sticker and how do they upload files to that bandage-sized thing when it is so tiny?
• what kind of a sensible secret agent would marry when he is still in service? (well, apart from Arnold in True Lie)
• What kind of a sensible secret agent would bring their spouse to their work place ie: the office of a top secret government agency?
• And last but not least, what the hell is the rabbit foot?

There are more wrong things in this movie but the above list is what I truly don't understand. Hell, the movie was bad as far as spy movies go. I was hooked from the start because I want to find out what is this "rabbit foot" weapon. In the end I don't know what it is. I suspect the writer or writers or producers or director of this movie don't know either. They probably have run out of ideas for weapon of mass destruction. I suspect they were counting on George Bush finding some in Iraq and then just steal the name and put it on film. Too bad George didn't find any.
What else is wrong with this movie? I don't know, the plot? It's the trademark convoluted plot of MI but this time the whole plot was lost on me. Maybe I am just slow. But the producers should have taken into account people who are slow to understand convoluted plots like me.
So as far as I am concerned, this movie is a total disaster. I'll give it 0.5/5. Don't really know where the 0.5 is from but I am too nice to give it a big fat 0.
I had a good time, no thanks to this movie though. I saw the trailer for "Pirates of the Caribbean" before the movie was shown. I'd seen the teaser before but that was the first time I was the full trailer. The movie looks good (I mean Pirates not MI) too bad it's out in July.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead man's chest

Is there any Pirates of the Caribbean fans in the house?
Never mind, I'll just rattle on anyway.
I'm a fan of course. How exciting is it that there's gonna be 2 more Pirates movies coming out? The 2nd one's coming out very soon in the US but not so very soon in Australia [sad].
So here's a few pics of the movie if you haven't already seen it anywhere else.

So Orlando and Kiera are still normal looking.

Mr. Depp, on the other hand, isn't

imagine

Now, imagine yourself as a doctor. I know some of you don't even want to consider yourself as a doctor, I know some of you would despise being a doctor. Whatever, just imagine yourself as a doctor. If you have no imagination, I can't help you with that.
Ok, ready? So you've imagined yourself as a doctor. You're sitting in you examination room with white coat and looking extremely well educated and all, along came a kid and his parents. So far so good? Alright! The problem is the kid is obese how do you tell the parents since the parents think that the obese kid is sooo cute with his tummy sticking out of his plus size jeans and the way he huff and puff, like that wolf in the stories with the 3 little pigs, after climbing 4 stairs is adorable?
Yeah, that's the problem. You can't just tell them that their bundle of joy is too fat. You can't say that the "normal" weight for a child that age is such and such because the parents will think that their "little" bundle of joy is abnormal. And you definitely can't say that their child is too thin. What can you say? The magic word is "ideal". That word's gonna make the parents feel that their child is only a little bit away from the "ideal" weight (even though a little bit in this case means about 25 kg). All the while you just want to ask the parents what the hell they're feeding this bundle of fat.
I know I'm a bit extreme and not very tolerable towards weight-challenged people but seriously, you can't expect me to be neutral when I was crushed, squashed, suffocated or nearly so a few times on the train by some not-so-skinny people last year. And I know it is now the past but I have an excellent ability to hold a grudge.

my own blockbuster novel

With all the current hype about "The Da Vinci code" I suppose I'll write a similar book with a completely different plot. How about this: my book's gonna be called "the Michelangelo sudoku book of magic". This book's gonna get all the hype from the Da Vinci code, the Sudoku phenomenon and Harry Potter (hence "magic"). The main twist of this book is, should I give you the main twist? Well, hell, I'll just give you the main twist anyway, in the book, Jesus isn't a married man, he's gay.
There there, I know I'm committing blasphemy but I'm an atheist for god's sake. I'm allowed to do whatever I want as long as it's not unlawful. Now, if there is a god and he happens to be the Catholic God I suppose I'll see Dan Brown and all the atheists and all the gay people in the Catholic Hell. Too bad I don't believe any of that stuff.

Scratch pad

Cretin

one whose physical and mental development has been retarded or arrested due to thyroid deficiency
www.southalabama.edu/alliedhealth/cls/Ravine/glossary_of_pathology_and_%20medical_terms.htm

idiot: a person of subnormal intelligence
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Cretinism is a congenital form of deficiency of thyroid hormones, retarding mental and physical growth.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretin

adult underachievement

I was at my local library last week, browsing for fantasy books. Yeah I know, someone's asking if I ever browse for any other genre except fantasy. I do, I read thriller too you know. Anyway, I was browsing at the fantasy shelf then I saw this book "Your own worst enemy" by Kenneth Christian. The title was intriguing so I picked it up. The front page read: "Are you... Stucki in a job you don't love? Always putting off decisions? Reluctant to challenge yourself? If so, you may be... YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY". After one look at the front page I was thinking to myself: "oh my god, I am my own worst enemy. And I was thinking my own worst enemy was another human being with name of [I won't mention it]"
So after I have determined who my worst enemy is by looking at the front page I read on the blurb of the book at the back. It read: "Do any of the following sound familiar to you? Procrastination. Wide swings of mood and self-esteem. Ambivalence in making decision. Paralyzing fear of disappointment. Dreaming big but never following through." Some of those things sound very familiar to me so in the book went to my borrowing basket.
As it turned out, I have a habit of adult underachievement. The book was good for pointing out that to me. It isn't much good for curing me of the habit though. The book was big on making plans and stick to them which is what I can't do. So after speed read the book in half an hour, I came to a conclusion: this book isn't much help.
At least I know what the hell is wrong with me.