On the Meaning of Life

Syn posted an intriguing piece a day or two ago.

Go and read it.

See? Neat.

People used to do this all the time.

Walkabout. Sabatical. Sweat-hut. Vision quest. Djemma. Peregrination. Hadj. Pilgrimage.

Restoring of the spirit by going somewhere; largely only for the sake of going.

Us modern people are above all that; we have road movies and anti-depressants.

I don't think Syn is being ridiculous; she DOES have something to complain about!

For some of us, our soul/spirit/totem/whatever has started to discover that modern ciivilization leaves a lot missing. We feel lacking of center, balance, harmony. The others who haven't had this feeling really scare me.

Syn lives with one of the most centered people I know - to say Bear is down-to-earth is almost tautology, he is the very definition of it, and I greatly admire him for it. I think perhaps this has a lot to do with Bear's "Nope, no adults here" view of life.

Having spent most of last night at work (security guard? no. surgeon? no. astronomer? I wish. architect.) I could really do with a hadj-TARDIS. Though Syn's idea that it takes life off the end means I wouldn't have much left. We would have to pay for it somehow though, otherwise the universe would become unbalanced.

I remember reading somewhere (Red Dwarf rings a bell...) that someone beleived that somewhere in the Multiverse a civilization had developed a method of translocating all their shit, fears, sadness, anxiety, and just all general bad juju onto us humans, a lot like the way we just flush the toilet or throw out the garbage. Which is a scary though, maybe it is actually us doing it to ourselves? That's pretty much how market-driven western "democracies" are run - if you have plenty of money you can pay people to take shit for you; if you don't, you get shit.

The previous paragraph is a classic case of Newtonian thinking, I just noticed. Action-reaction. Cause-effect. These days it seems that the Multiverse might not actually run that way; it is likely to be somewhat more 'quantum' than what we perceive. Schrodinger's Cat might not just be alive, it might also be a frog. Follow this line of thinking and you quickly end up with a God/Gods. Stephen Hawking called this 'knowing the mind of God', which I think most people interpret as meaning omniscient/omnipotent. I wonder if he meant "knowing your center", "being at peace with one's self and the Multiverse". Yuck. That all sounds terribly New-Age, but there you go. Dammit, I'm an architect, not a poet. (Syn however might be - "scrambled eggs from the chicken of life" is sheer genius. I keep trying to think of what the Chicken of Life would look like. Large. Round. Feathered.) That other great philosopher of our time, Buckaroo Banzai put it so perfectly: "No matter where you go... there you are."

I feel somewhat comforted to get this rather random train of thought down into bits, though I wish I cold type as fast as I think. My thinks are usually long gone before I have a chance to get near pen, paper or keyboard.

Ok, everyone, back on your heads.

What Was Meant To Be (or, My Head's Leaking)

Sometimes this happens:

I get an idea.

For a few mintues it totally engages me; it is a damn good idea, it means something and it is important.

By the time work finishes / I wake up / I get near a pen and paper it is gone, vanished, and no ammount of wishing brings it back. It's like the tune of a wonderful song that you can't remember only 30 seconds after you have heard it.

Then I see the idea in someone else's article / blog / tv show / film, and I wonder if I had seen it subliminally, or I told someone about it, or that I am not very original.

Well, it has happened again.

I have a few PS2 games that I bought because they seemed so arty, let alone fun. ICO is one of them - a surreal Japanese adventure game. Rez is another - trippy visuallised musical arcade floaty-trance thingy. A third is Fluid - (PS One) using a dolphin swimming through wierd oceans to make music.

So as my mind wanders further from my job & career during the day, a Google for Rez & ICO finds this.

Which is something that has been running around my head for quite some time - gamez are art, people haven't realised it yet. Games like Torment and Final Fantasy 7 or 11 are going to be the Van Goghs and Monets of the next century, because of how they stepped away from what people accepted as art. There, you can see how badly I express my ideas, which is why most stay locked away.

I have no idea how to reconcile what I have just typed with me being a professional registered architect.

Well, this explains *a lot*

You were born under the Faz Arc, during the Hierarchy Cycle, Year of the Zoq, the Fot, and the Pik

"ZoqFotPik love comfort and luxury. They are quite content to let life pass them by just as long as they can wallow in their favourite place, decorated with the impeccable taste that ZoqFotPik are born with. In fact, most of the ZoqFotPik life is taken up with working as hard as possible to attain that very goal. They are not afraid of the hardships of life that are necessary to win the security and comfort they desire.

As they desire that security so much, they tend to become obssessed with its trappings. ZoqFotPik enjoy good food to an almost unhealthy state, and their lavishness when spending on creature comforts can be frightening to watch.

ZoqFotPik also tend to be very honest. Some might even say blunt. This comes from their desire for knowledge. ZoqFotPik adore gathering information and wisdom from any source, and have a deep love of culture.

Inside every ZoqFotPik are three voices, all warring with each other. One represents the giving nature of the ZoqFotPik, and also the taciturnity with which he or she deals with life. One represents the materialism and love of knowledge and culture. The last represents the honesty of the ZoqFotPik, but also the anger and wrath. For ZoqFotPik, despite their inbuilt dislike for anything uncivilised or illegal, can have a fiery wrath unlike anything before seen.

Essentially ZoqFotPik are honest gluttons who will work hard for a comfortable life.

ZoqFotPik tend to get on very well with Earthlings, except for their aggressiveness. Slylandro and Pkunk can provide great companions as well. Avoid Supox as their boastful nature doesn't go down well with you."

I would also think avoiding Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah would probably also be a good idea.

My 'Inner Sign'? What else but:

Orz.

"There's something a little strange about Orz. They can be at times all fire and bursting with motion, and then the next, they are calm and sensual. Whichever they are at any one moment, Orz are warm people, and tend to be friendly and open in any circumstance.

Orz love beauty and art. They are usually skilled with their hands, and they are good with money. er, good at spending it I assume In this sense, they are materialistic, but the materials they hoard and covet are the finest that can be found. Orz are seduced by the beautiful, be it music, sculpture, or the opposite sex. Orz love the good life, and once they find somewhere good to sit and smell the roses, they'll do whatever it takes to stay there.

Sudden change is one thing Orz are not very good at coping with. They like to do things in their own time, or to have things ready at just the right moment. Their natural intractability and stubborn attitude makes them good at adjusting to routine - making them great shift workers - but atrocious at handling immediate flexibility.

Despite their obvious earthy nature, Orz tend to be quite intelligent, and rely on their brains to get them out of difficulty. They respect wisdom and intelligent thought, and their grasp of practical logic is almost sublime. Yet, they still suffer from two of the seven deadly sins, for all their smarts. Jealousy and gluttony are monkeys Orz find it difficult to shake from their backs. They have great patience, but any hint of another's advantage at their loss and they begin suspecting everyone in their envy. And, with their love of beauty and the finer things, Orz tend to throw measure to the winds and gorge themselves on whatever it is they enjoy."

All of the above pieces are from Terrorpin's Star Control Astrology. This astonishing work actually combines Eastern & Western Astrology and links it into the wonderful universe of Star Control 2. StarCon2 is, on the surface, a simple game; play the full adventure and you discover it's true depth. Twelve individual alien races with discernable personalities provided the link into Astrology; it seems likely that astrology formed the basis for the game's conceptual design.

Launch Fighters!

More Dragons in the Sky

It seems to be the season for seeing dragons in the sky. Here are two having fun on Saturn, complete with sparkly-bally-thing.

What happens when you let pinheads run a country

Our Story:
For those who came in late, or at least aren't part of a certain F1 tipping competition, here is a little rant I spat out this morning, on hearing the official news that there will be an F1 car driving around the Harbour Bridge on Sunday morning, but due to a massive attack of beaurocracy, no-one will get to actually see it. Thank you, the litigious scum that make up most of Australia's popuation. Anyway, on with the rant before this turns into another...

For those in Sydney, we all get to sleep in Sunday morning thanks to typical Australian ingenuity and know-how. Or should that be no-how?

The bridge is closed for Mark Webber to drive his Williams across it, and you would expect the pedestrian walkway to be packed out, right? No. That's closed, because it is DANGEROUS. Mark's car will be limited to lightly touching the clutch in 1st gear - 90km/h, because it's DANGEROUS.

Anyone who has walked across the Bridge will have noticed that trucks seem to barrel across the Cahill at or around 90km/h? No-one closes the bridge because they are DANGEROUS, especially when over-loaded, poorly maintained and driven by gorillas smashed out of their skulls on effedrine. Not even the security guard would be able to help you there. There's a point - if the Bridge is closed to all people, that means the security guards won't be there! The Bridge is WIDE OPEN to TERROR ATTACKS! DON'T PANIC! DON'T PANIC!
Some other mighty-pissed-off punter phoned the radio this morning to point out that a similar event in London took place through streets packed with spectators, seperated from these DANGEROUS machines by a rope. Not steel fences, rope. While Britain might be being run by a Government that is a tad screwed in the head, at least they aren't being run by LAWYERS.

Rant over, nothing to see here, these aren't the droids you are looking for, you can go about your business, move along, move along.

空气龙 - Or Silly Westerner Stares At Clouds

I saw three dragons on the way home today.

The first was from the bus, to the east over the harbour. It was large, probably a few kilometres long.

The second two were from Crows Nest, to the south-west and smaller and higher.

They were not the unwieldy Western dragons that religious figures kill to prove Mankind's mastery over nature and heathens; they were the graceful dancing dragons of the East. The first one was all by itself, without even the sparky-flaming ball thingy. The second two were flying together, having fun. I guess all three were having fun.

Not being an expert on such things, I think they were 空气龙 (or kongqi-long for those without Eastern fonts), which is my own translation and probably very wide of the mark.

Of course, they were clouds that looked a lot like dragons. It got me thinking though that I was most likely the only one to see them, due to the angles of late afternoon sunlight - they would have looked different from other directions - and the odds of other people staring aimlessly into the sky and trying to see shapes in clouds. I think these days, in Sydney, the odds of that are about 1 in 10^6 given a population of about 3x10^6 - I know of only two other people likely to do such frivolous things.

I would expect these days there are not lessons in lying on your back staring at clouds, unless it was to spot useful things like Share Transaction Statements, All-Wheel-Drive-Soft-Roaders, or the latest info on the property market. It's probably the kind of passtime that will get you labled as 'terrorist' or 'illegal foreigner', and likely to get you locked up and ignored or tortured for six months.

So from spotting dragons we get to the state of contemporary Sydney lifestyles.

Sydney - 2 : Corinoco - 1 (one point for seeing dragons)

The Cuddly Menace

The Cuddly Menace

We are under attack.

Be vigilant.

They are everywhere.

Tetsuya's - The Drawings

As mentioned, last weekend Syn, Bear & I had dinner at Tetsuya's on the occasion of Syn becoming older than she was on the previous day.

It was Syn's intention to take photos of the meal, but due to reluctance of Bear to photograph High Art, and my usual forgetfulness (brought on by my horribly shabby Pulsar's doors being opened by a squad of tuxedo-wearing ninjas) we didn't take photos of the meal. When we got home, we were however inspired to draw the meal. We didn't draw all the dishes, and I cannot remember the exact wording or ingredients of some of them either. The missing dish is Slow Roasted De-Boned Rack of Lamb with White Miso & Smoked Eggplant, which was our least favourite dish. Mind you, just this dish alone would still qualify as Top Nosh anywhere else; it was our least favourite of the ten courses.

The other missing dish is the Strawberry Shortcake Desert that you drink out of a shotglass.

Enough talk.

Hors d'oeuvres (bloody hell that was hard to spell check! Horse Devour? Thanks, Word!) The small ramekin contains truffle & cheese butter, composed of Tetsuya's Truffle Salsa; this is actually more addictive than crack cocaine. The small round thing with dots was a Blessed Caviar & Egg Sandwich Of Disproportionate Taste-To-Size Ratio +5.


Carpaccio of Beetroot with Tonburi & Caviar


Gazpacho with Spiced Tomato Sorbet, Tuna Sashimi and Something Else


Marinated NZ Scampi with Foie Gras & Walnut (I swooned with this one)


Confit of Petuna Tasmanian Ocean Trout with Konbu, Daikon & Rocket


Spatchcock on Soybeans (has a better name, which I have forgotten)


Ravioli of Lobster with Scallop and Tarragon Mousse, Tomato & Basil


Cherries, that I wouldn't normally eat but did this time because they were so yummy (again, I have forgotten the full name, and I don't usually eat cherries due to repressed trauma)


Chocolate Terrine with Mascarpone and Cognac Anglaise (we thought this was the strongest chocolate ever until the next dish turned up)


From L to R: World's Most Evil Chocolate Sorbet, some other sorbet cowering in fear, World's Most Chocolate Flourless Cake, a Candle for Suyin's Birthday (inedible)


The result - Bear managed to smuggle out some treaties for Kimi & Linus, making them now the Official World's Best-Fed Ratties. rumor has it they now demand truffles and M.Cluziel chocolate for dinner.



Verdict: So far the best meal I have eaten. Ever.
"You mean we're not dead?"
"Dead, Sir? No, Sir. Sir is most evidently alive, otherwise I would not attempt to serve Sir. If you would care to take drinks in the bar, and then I will accompany you to your table, and afterwards the Universe will explode for your pleasure."
"Wow, what sort of drinks do you serve here?"
"Ah, I think perhaps Sir has misunderstood me."
"Oh, I hope not!"

The drinks in question actually were Pan-Galactic-Gargle-Blasters, well at about $2,500 a bottle I hoped they were. Surprisingly though, the Universe did explode for our pleasure; shortly after tasting the Chocolate Sorbet.

Cricket Hurt / Tetsuya's Not Here

I played cricket today. I have never actually played in a organised game of cricket with proper equipment (like real cricket balls, and thus full pads, etc) in my life. I have seen plenty of them before though, so how hard could it be?

I have a new apppreciation for test level players who do this for five days. OK, well two-and-a-half days if they are Australian or facing Australia.


The other bit of news is that last week I had dinner at Tetsuya's; I was asked by Bear & Syn to celebrate Syn's most recent birthday. Lucky the cricket was a week after; it was a seriously good meal, and I really could only sit down on Sunday and wonder in awe at the lingering tastes.

Syn wanted to take photos os the meal; Bear was a bit wary of such an idea. I was neutral, so I brought my camera. Which we left in the car. As it turned out, the table next to us brought their camera and had their photos taken (most likely with big smiles on their faces) so it would not have been a problem. Anyway, when we got back to my place, we all drew pictures of the courses. I scanned them, and I was meant to put them on the web today, but I am too sore from cricket to do it. Only my fingers will move, and only enough to type this post.

Tetsuya's drawings tomorrow, I promise.

'Zero intelligence' trading closely mimics stock market

"A model that assumes stock market traders have zero intelligence has been found to mimic the behaviour of the London Stock Exchange very closely."

Yes, I know, this is ever-so-slightly out of context. I couldn't resist it though; it sums up my views of the so-called 'science' of Economics quite nicely. No wonder Astrology is so useful for predicting economics. I should also think chicken entrails, tossing coins, hacking off your feet with a blunt axe, and wearing business suits are all about as useful too.

No wonder I want to sell these people Audiophile-Grade Organic Vibration Differential Cross-Modulators!

Internet dating hits a dead end

TwinCities.com 06/30/2003 Part 4: Internet dating hits a dead end

Heh. This article dates from mid-2003, about a year after the last time I used an online dating service. Over 9 months on it at the time, I had ONE person show interest. We went out for a couple of months, but as soon as I mentioned the 'R'-word (Relationship) she declared she was a lesbian and vanished. I heard from her a few months later, she phoned up wanting to be 'friends', having now married a a rich German guy and bought a house in French's Forest.

Having just spent nearly $100 on joining a few dating sites a few few weeks ago (wow, they are expensive nowadays) and discovered that for about $5 a message you can expect NO replies, I typed 'internet dating is dead' into Google and the above article was the first hit.

I have a couple of theories:

1. Lie like a trooper. Especially about your height it seems. If like me you are cursed with being a male of less than 1.6m height, don't expect any matches. Ever. 90% of women want you to be 'between 5' 9" and 7' 11" ' which means you are most likely a basketballer or pace bowler.

2. The links without photos? Stooges. How can you use a dating service and expect anything without a photo? There simply cannot be that many people out there totally embarrassed by their looks. What is there to stop sites 'padding' their lists? A voluntary code of ethics? Considering they make money out of me every time I try to send a message, it would be worth their while to fake as many as possible. The maths involved is probably the same as poker-machine luring techniques, ie very well researched. It's easy enough to fake entries - it seems no-one replies to messages anyway, so how could you tell?

3. Do a search for women, then do the same search for men. About 20 links to women, about 200(!) links to men. Sorry, I thought the media said there were hordes of single women out there. Maybe they are all in the bars & pubs then. A shame I have given up alcohol, and Sydney pubs & bars have the music up so loud they make my ears bleed. I think it is a Legal(tm) requirement to stop people talking/thinking/conspiring against The Economy(tm).

4. Like the article says, include 'likes moonlight walks along the beach' - in Sydney? Right? I keep odd hours sometimes, and I do not see dizzy lovers out on moonlight walks! I mean, sure you can take it as read that I like moonlight walks along the beach - when I am in the Whitsunday Islands, or Thailand!. I thought people might be interested in more useful descriptions, such as "I like dolphins, Lego and chocolate, but not all at once." I suppose I should just join with the masses and say that I like "moonlight walks along the beach, sleeping in and a bit of a boogie on the dance floor". Truth in advertising - there is none.

Since I went to a bit of effort this time to even make sure my profiles were proof-read, this all adds up to being very depressing. I was pretty much truthful in my profiles, and now I feel I have revealed way too much - and that what I have revealed must be a huge turn-off. And I'm too short.

Self esteem? Yeah, I had some a while back...

HHGTTG: The Film

Fry hitches ride as Guide - Film - www.smh.com.au: "'like having your birthday on Christmas Day, discovering a winning lottery ticket in your stocking and having chocolate poured all over you'."

- Stephen Fry on being chosen as the Voice of The Guide

Medieval Italian Hill Fortress

Many people (well, actually one person) asked "what is a Medieval Italian Hill Fortress?"

The above picture provides the answer. When I think Palm Beach, I think Medieval Italian Hill Fortress!

The design is a work-in-progress, modelled in Autodesk (blerk! swut! turlingdrome! belgium!) Revit (Yay! Gotta love them corporate takeovers).

UK braces for black Monday 24th | The Register

At long last, someone belting the damn Black Dog over the nose with a good hard rolled-up slab of science.

Well, something close enough to science to appeal to me, anyway.

Great T-Shirt Slogans of 1989

SOGGY
BOYS
DON'T
CRY;
THEY
JUST
LIKE
WATER

Seen on T-shirt owned by Fiona Smith, 1st year Architecture UNSW 1989.

I am not sure why my memory dredged that up here and now, but I assume it must be relevant to something.

'Slayers' or Googling for Anime Dolphins

You are most like:
Deep Sea Dolphin



You have a mysterious nature that makes others distrust you. You also tend to be aclectic in nature, and possibly slighly missing some screws. You're passionate about some things, but retreat at others. You tend not to make friends easily, and others view you as odd.


Actually I am like something else from Slayers, and the text appears to written at Internet Standard Age Level* of 1.

What this does underline is the dearth of anime dolphins out there. Ok, yes there is Marine Boy, and there was a dolphin in Inspector Gadget once (but it does not count as anime. close though), but apart from that... nothing. You will find plenty of hamsters, cats & dogs a plenty, even lizards get a good airing. No dolphins though. Pity. They are a bit difficult to draw anime style, mainly due to their lack of frontal binocular vision - a crucial component of anime style drawing.

My answers did not result in that selection, but since I did a Google Image search for 'anime dolphins' that is what I got back. Link number one (shown below), the thought of which is terribly cute, does not count, they have to be real dolphins, not inflatable.



Bear's Brother, a notorious Slayers fan, may be able to explain all this.

Though on thinking about it, maybe not.

*I have just invented the Internet Standard Age Level. It is 12, as in 12-year-old. Thus an ISAL of 1 means written by twelve-year old (or appears to have been written by a twelve year old). I have an ISAL of 0.3529

New Jobs and Torment

I started my new job last week.

After 10 years of bouncing from job to job, getting either sacked for reporting a client to the Police for arson, or getting retrenched when the company directors had a bit of a tish, or just plain working myself to nearly death (literally) for the joy of being told I was 'not working hard enough', I finally seem to have landed a job at a nice small firm, that does quite interesting houses with fairly distinct character.

I would love to tell you where and whom, but I can't as most of our clients are stratospherically rich and don't like people knowing where they live unless it makes the cover of Domain on the SMH. That does give me pause for concern as traditionally I don't get on very well with people like that. We shall see.

Anyway, what does this have to do with Torment?

The Torment to which I refer is of course the best ever computer game*, Planescape: Torment. Based on the AD&D 'Planescape' setting, PS:T was made by Black Isle as an offshoot to the extremely popular Baldur's Gate series. PS:T used the same graphics engine to create one of the most stunningly well-crafted recreational computer games ever. It had plot; bucket-loads of it. You are immortal, but cannot remember who you are, expect that as the game progresses you find that you aren't... well, you're not what you think! It had characters; individuals so well written you didn't care if they sort of liked to set fire to things a lot, or had no body, or had thousands of bodies, or in fact were just living incarnations of the letter "O". Of the soundtrack, one piece stands out as one of the most hauntingly beautiful 1m 30s of music you will ever hear. The rest is still top-notch, if you like big doses of weird with your reality.

Apart from the reality-shaking philosophy behind PS:T, one of the things that I enjoyed was the art. The backgrounds are all beautiful mixtures of hand illustration and computer rendering, but what really stood out for me was the architecture of Sigil, the rather odd city where most of the action takes place. Sigil's buildings all take their design cues from the enigmatic being that seems to rule the city in an entirely nihilistic way - the Lady of Pain - who is described as a floating woman in a kimono with a head-dress made of knives. Nice. Hence Sigil's architecture is no place for birds to happily roost, as most buildings design is best described as 'sharp'.

Way way back in the day, when I was at uni I had a bit of a fancy for buildings that had a bit of danger and shall we say, aggressiveness to their design. My wildest designs were always curtailed or somewhat blunted before being submitted, though a few crept through. One was an Environmental Education Centre - that happened to look a lot like a B2 'Spirit' Stealth Bomber carrying a load of kitchen knives into battle. The second major 'sharp' design I did was my final project, an aircraft museum. Parts of the museum were made out of airliner tailfins and tailwings, and the large curving roofs had ribbed structures with big pointy eaves. More knives. So I sort of like knives on buildings, which must say something extremely important about me from a psychological point of view.

Torment, being full of buildings that I would have been proud to design, helped me keep the idea of deadly buildings alive.

The new job allows me design freedom. Quite a bit of design freedom. Nothing says 'beach house for stupidly rich client' to me quite like 'KNIVES' does. The first design I am working on is fairly quirky already, being one of the most expensive blocks of land in The Leviathan, overlooking one of the more expensive beaches on the planet, let alone the Antipodes, so of course the clients want "a medieval Italian hill-fortress". They have the money, I have the mouse, so off we go!

Just how many knives will work their way into this first design I am not sure, but don't worry, they will be there...

* Don't flame me too much, my list of 'Best ever...' also includes GPL, UT, Elite (C64), Gyruss (arcade), Beyond Good and Evil, Gran Turismo, GTA:VC and Gridrunner++, all of which are equal first. If I had to choose one though, it would be PS:T. And Elite.

An Attempt at Not Ranting.

I rant too much. I think I shall rant about this.

No! Every time I get to this situation I end up ranting. I think ranting is bad, as most people simply ignore it. Sure, I get extremely emotional about things, which is apparently bad, but there you go. Some people are great stockbroker, some people are artists. I rant. Such is life.


Take for instance Saturday night. I was watching 'Return of the King' on DVD, and a few things Gandalf said to Merry struck a chord with me. I fully intended to have a really good rant about that here, but by the time the film ended I had drunk 4 Gin & Tonics, 1 cup of Tea, 3 Baileys and eaten three very large chunks of Toblerone (thanks to Syn & Bear) so I was not in any state to rant.

When I woke up 12 hours later feeling somewhat rough at the edges, I could not remember what the rant was about, which really scared me. Is everything I get emotional about really so meaningless that 12 hours later I cannot remember what it was?

Answer? Well, yes, it appears so.

I cannot even think of anything to write after that statement, I have tried about six different sentences, all of which are glib, obvious, attention seeking drivel. This sentence bears a lot of the later.

What a pointless post that was / this is.

Note to smileys - don't think you have got away from a full broadside; I am just loading more grapeshot into the cannons of seething hatred I am readying for you.

Who makes this crap?

I want to do something simple enough right? Make some actually real scenery of Norfolk Island for Flight Simulator 2004, because the version supplied is crap (not even close to correct), and the various ones available online are also crap or made by people who have never been there.

So searching on Google gives me....the link above. WHAT CRAP! This map appears everywhere as the 'official' map of Norfolk Island. Even the CIA thinks this is what it looks like. OK Government & Military of the United States of America here is a REALLY BIG CLUE. Try looking for Osama on Norfolk Island - it is the perfect hiding place because you have NO IDEA what it even looks like! Do you have ANY IDEA what 'Cascades' actually IS? It must be the biggest joke on the island. GO THERE and have a look, or do some research, I'm not going to tell.

This is nearly as bad as smileys, which will be the topic of my next rant.

How to waste time.

64.28571428571429% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

This costs The Economy MONEY you know! You are not out there being EXTREEEEEME and Productive! Every second you sit there dreaming of clouds, or early steam engines you are wasting precious MONEY! Why aren't you checking your stocks? Is your bank account getting the best interest rate today? Is your accountant busy thinking of ways to write off your entire LifeStyle(tm) as a tax claim? Buy! Spend! ACQUIRE! ACQUIRE! ACQUIRE!

Hmm. Yes.

Notes for People Who Have Nothing Better To Do Than Check Other People's Spelling: "extreeeeeme" is deliberately spelt that way for effect. It is not the correct way to spell "extreme".