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About this blog

Thoughts and things that happen

Entries in this blog

Election in Australia

So Australia has an election today (Saturday 21st August 2010) and our senate has 42 candidates. Our electoral system is a preferential system, so if no candidate gets 50% the vote is allocated to the next person in line on your ballot paper, or something like that. (Hey, I'm Australian and it's our patriotic duty to be apathetic. So I have spent all night looking up the policies of each main group of candidates and just to make sure everyone knows I am a left wing anarchist with progressive l

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Blackout.

So we had a storm tonight. It blew over a tree somewhere, and rain was released in a deluge that lasted long enough to dump nearly an inch of water. Lightning lit the sky somewhere over the Antarctic and evidently struck havoc on the power lines to my neighbourhood -right as I was making a post about Windows 7. The computer died and the lights went out. The room was black, cold and very, very dark. I couldn't see a thing. I dismissed the idea I had died in a hurry. Perhaps I should rephrase th

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Pin the Quotes (1)

I thought I would quote some of my replies I post to newspaper sites and blogs, and stuff. Hopefully they will make sense without referencing the article, which I won't do because I do not mean this to be a reference report, just a place to list my comments that perhaps might have a general relevance to other communities or situations. A kind of pin the quote -tail, on the (blindfolded) asinine news of the day, and let it fall where it may in the readers' realm. .

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Life's Journey

I wonder if I should blog about all my worries? No, I better not, I could start a panic. Shall I put on a happy face and pretend that I am gay? Is it possible to pretend to be something that you actually are? I could pretend to be straight, but I doubt if anyone here would believe me. I'm sure I could fool the locals into thinking that I am straight, after all they have fooled themselves into thinking they aren't gay. Some of them even went and married a girl to prove it. Seems a bit drast

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Stupidity

Hello, hello, is this thing working? I don't know what is wrong but the date for the blog entries are stuck in 2009, there is no 2010. How stupid is that? It was the same with my last entry, but I set it for the December 31 2009 and it posted as January 1 2010. How crazy mixed up is that? I wonder what will happen this time? I've had a great idea for writing a story. I will write the first paragraph and post it as being December 31 2009. Then when it changes to January 1 2010, I will find

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Happy New What?

Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to have a happy new year when the rest of the world seems to have gone stark raving mad? Perhaps it is just me, perhaps I have caught some dreaded mental malady that makes me think the rest of the world is bonkers when it is really me that has gone psycho in January. I can tell you I wasn't too happy about Uganda passing laws to execute homosexuals, and my straight friends weren't impressed that if straight people know a gay person, then they have to

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Serving the Enemy

So we have a complaint of too little blogging. I agree we need more blogging. I think also, we succumb to the depressing times in which we live and no one feels like writing when they are feeling down. On the other hand, what better time to pen a light-hearted look at the misery that surrounds us? Like General Custer we are circled by promises of our doom and the arrows of outrageous misfortune to be living in these most irrational new dark ages. If we circle the wagons against the enemy we w

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Feeding Desire.

Have you ever noticed the seeming preoccupation French movies have with sex and food? Every time a new French movie comes into the video store, we get heaps of questions about if there is food in it? You'll notice no one asks, "Is there sex in it?" Well it's French so of course there is sex in it, seems to be taken for granted. But it's the movies with sex and food that seem to do the best business. Now I don't mean to single out the French, but it does seem their movies are the most likely to

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Finding A Good Movie

Ah Winter! Yes I have another bout of flu like symptoms. :cough, cough: Oh I'm sorry did I spray my nose juice all over you when I sneezed? Let me wipe it off you with this used tissue. Really, I am so sick of this bug. Another thing I am sick of is the new video rental program we had to buy for the shop. It is preferable to the others we tried, but we still have had to work out what all these extra things are, that it does. Like, tell us how much tax we need to pay and what the cash should

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Find and Mount, Undeletes Memories

What can you do when you lose your data on your computer? Here is an answer to such a disaster which embarrassingly, befell me recently. I was setting up a new computer for my video store when I was overtaken by frustration, fatigue and fear that I would never finish the task. So to liven things up, what other excuse could I possibly have, I went to my own computer opened the windows disk manager and deleted what I thought was a left over partition from when I had the Acronis backup softwa

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The Doctor Gets a Specimen

So I have been laid up with the flu. Was it Swine Flu? Well it wasn't all that pleasant. I still have a cough, but if it was the swine flu I least had something in common with Harry Potter actor, Rupert Grint. He seems to have got on top of it and I seem to have done the same, though I like the idea that either he or I got on top. As I say I still have a cough, but mainly my voice is husky; husky as in hoarse, not as in horse which if I got on top of, might mean I was in the play, Equus, whic

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Creativity, artists and copyright.

As many of you who follow my posts...there are some of you who do follow my posts? Anyway as you might know, I am very interested in creativity and the boundaries that copyright imposes on artists. I have posted some of these links before but I wanted to bring them together as resource, because I think it is extremely relevant and important. These links centre around the work of Professor Lawrence Lessig and his books on freedom of expression in creativity. See his books at this site. Additi

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Winter Complaints.

I sneezed. So I have been sniffling with an inflamed throat, and headache. I don't think it is swine flu or bird flew, but who knows? I'm not going to the doctor either, because if it is swine flu and he catches it from me then who will I consult if I get the Elbo virus? Hmmm wait a minute, that's the Ebola virus. Silly me, my elbow can't get a virus can it? Can it? The worst thing about a cold, I'm sure that's all I have, is sitting around waiting until you to feel better so you can then go

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Sick phone with a Head Job

So there I was sitting quietly minding my own business when the phone squawked. It didn't ring, it squawked like a duck with the flu. Which flu? How the hell do I know? There are so many hideous diseases getting around and I'm only a poor hypochondriac, not a doctor. Speaking of the doctor, I showed him my leg last Tuesday. He said he wasn't impressed. "No, no," I told him, "look there," and I pointed at the scaly red mark just below my knee. "Is it skin cancer?" "Tell me," asked the doct

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Hopeless

Pecman posed a (perhaps rhetorical) question in the News and Views Forum on the loss of two young people through suicide. I have no argument with Pecman's post, but I did not want to make the following statement in the News and Views Forum because it might be taken that I was chastising Pecman, which I certainly am not. What I do have to say is somewhat a personal statement, but one I would like to share with you from the relative safety of posting it as an opinion in my blog. Of course you may

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The Old Age Penisor.

It's good news. Centrelink, the government agency that handles Aussie welfare rang me today and told me that my claim for the age pension has been granted. A very nice sympathetic woman told me that I would enjoy a full pension rate until July 1st when my "marriage like" relationship would be recognised and they would then pay me less. (How nice.) The lovely lady inspired me with confidence in the system as she informed me that my special senior's card would be posted soon and I would be

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The Good Ol' Days.

I don't get the local newspaper anymore, I stopped its delivery 14 years ago, (1995). The milkman used to deliver the milk, from his horse-drawn milk-van, but he stopped ages ago. The horse would move down the street and stop at the customer's houses without any direction from the milkman. The bread used to be delivered daily when I was a kid, and a big truck used to stop outside our house on Thursdays, selling fruit and vegetables. I can even remember the ice man delivering blocks of ice for t

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The Inner Sanctum

Announcing: New category in my blog: Deeper thoughts of an Orangutan. I am thinking I might like to write some thoughts, essays or viewpoints on various subjects that are perhaps a little abstract, maybe nonsensical or even politically incorrect. I might even write an address to the people of Earth, once I am certain the mother-ship is on the way to pick me and take me home. Anyway I have created a category in my blog for subjects that are somewhat more outsopken. If I can ever get time, I may

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Sleeping through the Crisis

I don't understand all this fuss about a financial crisis. I've been in a financial crisis for over ten years. Every time we use up the limit on the credit we just get the bank to extend the limit. Sexual deficiency is the only real crisis worth worrying about. So far I reckon we have another 12 months before we run out of money again, but wait, I will soon have the pension money coming in and that will have to help. So I reckon the banks should extend everyone's credit limit and then we wouldn

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My new Short Story: Abducted For a Reason

SO what do you do when you have an embarrassing, cute idea for a story and you just know it is going to be full of clich?s, and breaks a whole pile of rules about writing? Why of course, you go ahead and write it. So without further ado, I announce my latest short story Abducted For a Reason for your reading pleasure right here on AwesomeDude. Hope you enjoy it.

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International Relations in the Video Store

Like all good video stores we have members who insist on showing us how well they can scratch the DVDs. I have wondered if the opposition actually pays people to borrow from us and use the discs as Frisbees for the dog. Off course it is likely in our rich area (where the shop is, not where we live, we live in the slums on the other side of town; (of course, we are poor white gay males in case you hadn't guessed)), anyway as I was saying, it is likely that these rich folk don't even know what a

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Poetry Readings Delayed in Adelaide

It's been an awkward year for me and I hadn't been able to get to the local poetry reading group for about 8 months (I think.) Anyway, the stars aligned with Jupiter and the moon was in the seventh house, etc., and I had the night free to attend the local poets reading their poems. Most of them of course read descriptions of 'things' as if they were shopping lists delivered like a telegram, but hey, people were attempting to be creative, so who cares? The first shock was that the admission had

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Oscar Winner Makes Me Dizzy

Slumdog Millionaire has won the Best Picture Oscar and I had to walk out after 20 minutes. Why? Why did it win, or why did I walk out? I can't begin to guess why it won except to reward new wave filming for by-passing tried and proven techniques of movie making. Why did I leave the screening? Because the handheld camera and sloppy filming interfered with my being able to relate to the image. The smart-ass cinematography and editing got in the way of the story for me. And when the hand-held

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Advance Warning of Word Cruelty.

It's still hot, so is the weather. I am devoting my time to my new forthcoming story which I just know is not going to be everyone's cup of tea or coffee or soda. I suppose I could have included beer and wine, but would anyone read my stories while drunk? Would anyone read one of my stories while sober, is probably more to the point. But hey, someone has to write this stuff, right? I have long tried to avoid writing an "Aussie" story, being more interested in the universal subjects that affec

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