transfer_protocol

For the record- Steve Jobs 1955-2011

2011-10-06T10:18:00.002+08:00

Godwin's law and Obama

2010-07-16T10:29:00.004+08:00

I came across this while reading something in a completely unassociated context:Godwin's law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin's law of Nazi Analogies) is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990 which has become an Internet adage. It states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches." Put another

Art Theft

2010-06-05T08:30:00.003+08:00

I have become the victim of art theft. Does this make me a famous artist?My friend, Duncan Wales, who lives in Accra, Ghana, snapped this pic; the jeep was one of the images from my exhibition in KL in 2009.

fortyfuckinthree

2010-05-21T12:08:00.001+08:00

Another year has gone by. 43 and all washed up.

Recurring nightmare #2

2010-05-09T13:14:00.001+08:00

I'm at the psychiatrist. I tell him that I am being pursued by monsters.He looks away and says: "You mean like this..."When he turns back, he is one of them.

Recurring nightmare #1

2010-05-09T13:08:00.002+08:00

I'm in some industrial place - think the deck of cargo ship, or something similar - it's never the same place twice, but always the same in spirit. People unknown are shooting at me. I cannot shoot back; I have no weapon.Andrew appears and informs me that he has a vehicle secreted nearby, on which we may make good our escape. We go there; sometimes it's a scooter, sometimes a car.Anyway, a chase

2010-05-04T12:23:00.001+08:00

And the nightmares are back.

Singapore transit

2010-03-23T23:36:00.003+08:00

Ther's a certain civiliz-ed-ness (where the last there syllables are pronounced in an old fashioned manner, by way of emphasising the point).I'm here at the sunflower garden of Changi Airport (T2) for those who whish more detail - for a snoke and a beer (or two). I can see stars above - not sonmething one sees in KL very often.On top of all of this, the airport is impeccably clean. Unbelievably

yesterday was...Pi day

2010-03-15T15:52:00.001+08:00

2009-12-31T19:30:00.003+08:00

No tuk tuk, no sunrise at the temple, no sunset, no postcards, no guide books, no maps, no silly little fucking charms, no cold drinks, no massage. After several days in Siem Reap the milk of human kindness has curdled somewhat. At the temples one is beset by children peddling all manner of crap. They're all over you like rats. One is tempted to swat them off like so many blowflies.The entire

Down in Cambo...

2009-12-26T12:43:00.003+08:00

And so now the list of places I thought I'd never get to visit is complete. Cambodia.Siem Reap, to be exact, in the shadow of the great uncle wat - which I shall visit once Chomaine joins me on the morrow. I'm here with 25 pounds of camera equipment and an open mind. Yesterday I ate something made from pickled fish - a dipping kind of thing - into which I deposited lemon grass, chillies and

test

2009-04-14T19:53:00.001+08:00

Fat people and wide screen TVs

2008-07-16T19:26:00.001+08:00

I've just noticed something unfortunate. Wide-screen TVs stretch the image right? It's not a good thing for fat people.

Internet Balloon Race

2008-06-17T17:57:00.002+08:00

Help my balloon.

Meritocarcy is a dirty word

2008-06-11T18:41:00.003+08:00

There is a culture in this part of the world that views competition as evil, rather than boosting standards and quality. Words like "meritocracy" are debated in parliament, and ultimately swept under the carpet just in time for lunch.An example here in Malaysia was when the powers that be realised that Malaysian Universities rated badly in comparison to those in other countries around the world,

More from the interior

2008-06-04T19:17:00.000+08:00

The madness

2008-06-02T19:47:00.001+08:00

This should give you an idea of ho busy it is in Hanoi. Madness.

37 centigrade

2008-06-02T19:42:00.003+08:00

Here's one of my favourite shots from the trip. I was sitting at a little hole in the wall drinking local beer. The little old lady didn't know I was snapping her.

Viet Nam continued

2008-05-27T19:32:00.000+08:00

Sunday 25 MayThe vehicle was military green. Tick. It was a 4x4. Tick. It was a Toyota Landcruiser from the old skool. Tick. The driver smoked War Horse Brand. Two ticks. That’s where the ticks end.My quest for inner peace took me through the industrial outskirts of Hanoi. Whe3re I might add, the road manners are no better than the old quarter. A journey of 150kms took all of 4 hours. Anyway,

Ha Noi

2008-05-27T19:07:00.001+08:00

Friday 23 MayGood god. First impressions of Vietnam: madness. The journey from the airport to my hotel (if one can call it that – US$20 a night) was like being a passenger in a dodgem car. Motorcycles are everywhere. And I mean everywhere. There seems to be no sense of self preservation among the riders. The hotel itself is a quaint affair. The foyer looks like a 1950s movie. A ballustraded

Bangkok

2008-05-23T15:12:00.000+08:00

It’s raining like a bugger. Chubby, malevolent, monsoon-practised drops with floods on their evil little minds. The kind of raindrops the Matrix creators could only dream of. I mention this simply because I’m due to leave Bangkok for Hanoi in about 5 hours, and at this rate not even Buddha himself is going anywhere.Here in the dining room of the Woraburi Resort/hotel (a type of outdoor, lanai

Gritpype replies

2008-05-11T12:34:00.001+08:00

Hello DukeThe matter you speak of sounds a little bit too good to be true. After all, as we say here, there is no such thing as a free lunch. However, you have piqued my interest. Before I start to send my particulars to someone unknown, and to parts unknown, I like to understand a bit more about this transaction. And of course, I don't actually know you personally, so I am understandably

Further adventures in Scambaiting: the rise of Gritpype Thinne

2008-05-11T12:14:00.005+08:00

My previous posts detailed some rather feeble attempts by the scam scum to separate me from my money. More recently I received another one of these. Here below:Dear FriendWith all due respect, I am Duke Ani, aged 21 years,a Citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I got your contact in my search for an honest person abroad who can assist me in investing my inheritance wisely and my instinct

Buzzfuse has taken over my blogs

2008-04-25T17:13:00.002+08:00

Argh! Since I installed the Buzzfuse widget, it has begun a very thorough process of posting everything I have ever written. I some ways this is quite amusing. But on the other hand, it's posting all sorts of crap from the past 3 years. I think you can safely ignore most of it.

The Pope: Rock star or Bin Laden of the West?

2008-04-21T16:33:00.001+08:00

I’ve been watching with some amusement the news coverage of the Pope’s visit to America. It seems pretty transparent to me that “W” is leveraging His Holiness as a moral rallying point not only for Catholics, but for everyone else who doesn’t stand behind Bin Laden.So now we two opposing (and some would say imposing) figureheads, each on opposite sides of a quite arbitrary paradigmatic divide,

There is an alternative to cybernetic totalism

2008-04-16T14:12:00.000+08:00

Jaron Lanier coined the phrase cybernetic totalism in an article entitled One Half Of A Manifesto to describe what he perceived as society's idolisation of technology to the point where our relationship with the technology itself becomes the only measure of our humanity - the idea that "...evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, Moore's Law fetishizing, and the rest of the package, will

The one buck wee

2008-03-24T14:00:00.000+08:00

Malaysians have a strange love/hate relationship with 2 things: food and public toilets (I suppose there is a sort of progressive logic there somewhere if you look hard enough). On the food front, missing a meal is seen as the closest thing to blasphemy after disparaging Islam; however, the philosophy is the cheaper the better. The price of a roti canai goes up from 80 sen to 1 Ringitt and

Thalydomide golf

2007-10-03T18:49:00.000+08:00

If you're at all politically correct then best you surf elsewhere.For years I have been taking the piss out of life by referring to the thalidomide golf championships. Ok, so I don't really mean it. OK. But the interesting this is that I've just seen a report on CNN which featured a golfer with no arms - like short ones - like uh huh - thalidomide pills for morning sickness short arms . I kid you

This is weird

2007-07-02T17:47:00.000+08:00

...er, physics was never my strong suit

2007-04-05T15:03:00.000+08:00

It has come to my attention that acceleration, and not velocity, was what I should have been talking about in my previous post.

...will self destruct in 5 seconds...

2007-04-03T21:08:00.000+08:00

Perhaps it's an indication of the increasingly increasing (velocity = meters per second per second)speed of our reality; even secret messages have a shorter half life these days.I was watching Mission impossible III the other night and I noticed that Ethan's message went poof in 5 seconds as opposed to the original 30. Jeez man. What happens if you get distracted. "Hey, what was the middle bit

We accept all major credit cards and currencies

2007-01-31T13:46:00.000+08:00

Good god. The free wi-fi at Hong Kong airport is an absolute fuck-up. In typical fashion, the "you don't have to actually deliver; if you pay lip service, that's good enough" policy obviously applies. Anyway, after an hour of fighting with the invisible chi of the Internet here, I have finally managed to connect.Hong Kong is an expensive place. Either that, or KL is just cheap and I don't get

Saddam is dead. Long live Saddam.

2006-12-30T13:20:00.000+08:00

I didn't really know how I felt about America's intervention in Iraq until now. I've always said that I'd rather have the pax Americana than the alternative, and I stand by that. But...It sucks, actually.

Me? Time person of the year?

2006-12-24T09:06:00.000+08:00

What bollocks. What shameless overeditorialising. What rediculocity. Time Magazine has clearly gone pearshaped. It's named me / you / anyone who looks at the latest cover (there's a foiled, mirror type, reflective panel), including my cats, person of the year.Here are a couple of cycnical interpretations:(1) It adds 23 extra pages to the edition in question(2) More space = more advertising

Dear Father Christmas

2006-12-12T23:08:00.000+08:00

What I really want for Christmas is a day off from work.

Starbuckster

2006-11-07T10:23:00.000+08:00

I'm sitting at a coffee shop calling itself Friendster. The place first came to my attention due to the fact that their logo resembled that of Starbucks. In fact I thought it was a Starbucks at first.Anyway, I've only now taken a picture of their logo, which I see they have now changed. It used to be green, exactly like Starbuck's. Shameless.

Malaysia by bike ep.#1

2006-10-24T21:06:00.000+08:00

The first thing I noticed when planning my ride to Malacca/Melaka/Malaka was that there doesn't seem to be any consistent spelling of the name. That being said, there are consistencies between the city named M and many other of its South East Asian counterparts. Congested , dirty, sprawling, poluted, disorganised, and without a single pair of synchronised trafffic lights.The food, however, is

?

2006-10-22T13:34:00.000+08:00

If we had more fingers, would pianos have more keys?

I've seen the future of air travel and I'm afraid

2006-09-08T17:03:00.000+08:00

Low cost carriers are not new. But the thrend toward "no frills" is being taken to ever more horrible lows. The newest addition to this kind of travel is known as the Low Cost Carrier Terminal.My god.The purpose of these things - the experts tell us - is to move passengers through, up, down, around, in, out faster than is possible in the enormous terminal buildings national flag carriers are so

Sights, sounds and smells

2006-08-25T09:58:00.000+08:00

One of the groovier things about riding a motorcycle is that as one passes, one experiences first hand the natural efluviance of the environment. The smell of flowers, freshly cut grass, curries slowly simemring in giant copper pots. It's luvly.And then you get behind a garbage truck.

The agony of choice

2006-08-05T18:01:00.000+08:00

Two firsts have just occured: I've managed to use the phrase "the agoney of choice" in a sentence; and I now have to choose between watching the rugga (Springboks v Wallabies) on the telly and the kaioshung leg of the San Miguel Asion 9-ball tournament. The latter is the result of having satellite - I've never had the luxury before. Oh for a simpler better time when all we had to amuse ourselves

Zippo

2006-07-30T09:25:00.000+08:00

Through the looking glass

2006-07-25T13:48:00.000+08:00

I see taxis in my future

2006-07-08T10:52:00.000+08:00

The groovy thing about riding a motorcycle is that you're constantly in a tug-of-war with Newton. Steering the thing requires overcoming intertia; just staying upright is a mystery. I sort of understand how a gyroscope works, but all these things remain a beyond the scope of my full understanding.And so it was only a matter of time before a deceptively flat patch of road got the better of

The case of the 12 and a half mil

2006-06-01T17:53:00.000+08:00

The 419-ers apparently arrived in the country On Tuesday morning carrying a steamer trunk containing US$12.5. I knw this, because I received a phone call on my cell. They must have phoned my work number (I gave it to them) and gotten hold of my mobile number from the company secretary. Needless to say I was surprised.I cannot figure out whetehr someone had actually travelled all the way from The

Scam scum

2006-05-19T12:34:00.000+08:00

My latest scam baiting effort is yielding some really amusing results. The mind boggles. My next trick is to try to get them to send me the actual paperwork. So far, however, they're not biting.

What else did you bring?

2006-05-04T10:54:00.000+08:00

I just want to say one thing about the situation with miners trapped underground in Australia. They've been there for 8 days (approximately) and what do the resuers offer them to eat? Egg sandwiches. For god's sake. Where's the pizza? The cheeseburgers? The tubes of amberfrosty? Egg sandwiches? In a confined space?Haven't they suffered enough?

Beans, bean, the musical fruit...

2006-04-26T11:13:00.000+08:00

Is this the end of an era? According to the BBC's news website, scientists in Venezuela have invented fart-free beans. What's the point, I ask, if you can't let rip with a "loud but proud," or a "silent but violent," or a "slinky but stinky?"See the article here

PLaying the 419 game

2006-03-23T18:41:00.000+08:00

Ther have been people with a lot more patience than me, who have baited these 419-ers. One person even claims to have got US$3 out of one of them.Very amusing. Check out the link by clicking --->here<---

I just had to post this

2006-03-23T17:13:00.000+08:00

I was surfing the web, trying my hardest not to do any work - as you do - and I came across something really groovy. Rolex has released an anniversary edition Submariner.It's green.Which is ubelievably groovy in my opinion.

Do you think it might be fake

2006-03-21T11:00:00.000+08:00

Seems like Nwinyer has given up since I asked him to send me an airticket - as a matter of good faith, you understand. But he was getting boring anyway. What appeared in my inbox this morning, on the other hand...well why don't you just see for yourself.From Engr Zeid.Hello friend.Engr Zeid Al-hajahmad is my name 48 years from Jordan but in Africa,I am a business partner to late president Eyadema

Nwinyer again

2006-03-17T11:16:00.002+08:00

Here is round 2 from Nwinyer dear.Stuart Godwinfrankly speaking my heart is filled with excitment while reading your email ok. I want you to understand that i dont know anybody that will faithfuly abide with me in this transaction after my late father's blood relatives humiliated me by selling all my father's acquired properties.It was because of that their wicked act that made me to swear for

The only child of late Dr.Solomon Williams

2006-03-16T11:10:00.000+08:00

This morning my inbox contained 2 emails of the kind that assumes one is a complete cretin. I decided to play along, and have included the transcript of the email below. I'll keep you posted on how things pan out.Dear,Good day. I know that this mail might be a surpriseing to you but do consider it as an emergency. In a nut shell, My name Nwinyer Williams, from the republic of Sierria-Leone in

200 year old constitution, 200 year old thinking

2006-03-08T11:59:00.000+08:00

A friend of mine recently pointed out to me that the USA has one of the oldest constitutions in the world (if not the oldest). And while other countries seem to rewrite their's on a regular basis following various revolutions, that of the USA remains intact, with only amendments. Good point, I guess.So it surprises me that Americans are still arguing about the right to abortiion, when the

What does the shade smell like over there?

2006-02-23T16:11:00.000+08:00

Here it smells damp. Not soggy-dog damp, but kinda cold damp. It's as though the small change in ambient temerature between the sunny bits and the shady bits is enough to literally squeeze molecules of water out of the air and up your nose.I noticed this for the first time a couple of days ago when I was riding along on my motorcycle. The highway I was travelling along splits into a double decker

Phi Phi

2005-12-29T19:09:00.000+08:00

SO here I am on Phi Phi, trying to look like I know what I'm doing. There is a lot of info to absorb. Already I have done 2 courses - rescue and emergency response. Damn, there's a lot to get into my head.Yesterday I ate chicken feet for the first time...not bad. Don't ask how that happened. They were actually quite good. Check out TransportCaff for a recipe of sorts.Anotehr thing. This keyboard

A-41 (collected)

2005-12-22T13:36:00.000+08:00

Episode 2 of the Visa saga saw me returning to the Royal Thai Consulate to collect my passport, which now contained the royal chop. That only took 2 minutes.But that's not what I wanted to talk about.What I do want to yammer on about is the amount of space the visas end up taking in one's passport. You can get 10 or so chops on a page under normal circumstances, but a visa requires an entire leaf

Das Fingentypenconfusen

2005-12-22T13:17:00.000+08:00

The mind boggles. Here's a keyboard that doesn't have any letter on it. The inventors claim that it turns you into a superduper fast typist because you don't have to think about the letters. Check out the Das website here.

Number A-41

2005-12-20T14:10:00.000+08:00

If you ever want to remind yourself of your place in the universe, all you have to is wait in one of those diabolical queueing systems for your number to come up. There were 20 people in front of me at the Royal Thai Consulate this morning, and I waited over 2 hours before I could hand ion my Visa application. When my turn finally came, my request was processed in under 3 minutes. Sign. Pay.

There's a lizard living in my motorcycle

2005-12-14T11:08:00.000+08:00

I kid you not. This morning as I was thundering along, I espeyed a small lizard clinging to the fairing of my bike. At first I thought a piece of grass had become lodged there, but on closer inpection it was indeed a lizard. The poor bugger was clinging on for dear life in the 80km/h headwinds. As I stopped at a traffic light, he found better footing below the rim of the fairing, and then managed

Open sauce

2005-12-07T13:16:00.000+08:00

Frankly I couldn't give 2 shits about the browser wars. Back in the day I used Netscape 3 - simply becasue IE 3 was dodgy. But from IE 4 onwards, Bill's browser was better. What I dug most about the good ol' days was that there were a zillion little useless apps that you could plug in. Firefox has returned us to those heady days. My browser now sports the ability to have coloured tabs, close

Sony Baloney

2005-11-22T11:34:00.000+08:00

Well, it seems that music distributor SonyBMG has included malware on several CDs that installs itself into the root of your computer for the express purposes of disallowing the copying of aforementioned CDs.Naughty, naughty, naughty. Already the state of Texas has brung themselves a lawsuit on Sony. And it seems that lawyers elsewhere in the US of A are considering whether the case has enought

Blogwatch

2005-10-25T10:55:00.000+08:00

A new and pernicious form of blogger is emerging in the blogospere; a spam tout who couches his / her evil message in complimentary tones, but who is quite clearly on the hunt for extra click throughs to his / her site.Again, I invite the hackers of the world to unite and bring down these miserable bastards with large Denial Of Service apps.See the comment on the post below to see what I'm on

Singapore

2005-10-24T14:58:00.000+08:00

I can't think what else to title this post other than "Singapore."Every time a visit Singapore, I tell myself that that's where I want to end up; for a while anyway. It feels so familiar. All the things that I really like, but can't find here in Malaysia are to be had in Singapore in buckets - right down to the finest Pizza I've had in years.Even the airport is something else. With about 45

Asterix and the great Firewall of China

2005-09-22T13:28:00.000+08:00

And the plane landed safely.

2005-09-22T11:42:00.000+08:00

The first thing I saw this morning when I turned on the TV during my morning ritual of espresso was the image of an aeroplane bouncing around my screen under the high magnification of a telephoto lens. "This aughta be good," I thought, "obviously some fundamentalist group of exploding-shoe wearing maniacs have threatened to do a Kruschev."Sadly this wasn't the case. Turns out the Airbus A320

Free at last (well, almost)

2005-09-07T13:23:00.000+08:00

It is with a not undue sense of relief that I write this report today.This a.m. I sat for the written part of my motorcycle license here in Malaysia. It's been almost 3 months since I paid my money and joined the seemingly interminable bureacratic queue. The real issue, of course, was that my residential address and my business address differed. How silly of me.I thought that I would have to

My blog has been spammed

2005-08-15T10:48:00.000+08:00

I'm not sure how to feel about what just happened. Someone called meghanhc59jfdenton has posted a spam comment on my blog. Of course, this miserable fuck's name leads nowhere, so I can't even reply in kind.If there are any hackers reading this, please find the organisation in question and mailbomb it.

This wasn't in the brochure

2005-08-11T13:33:00.000+08:00

For the 4th day in a row now KL is blanketed under a layer of smoke so thick I can barely see across the road. Visibility is down to under 100m in some places. Schools have closed. The fish are going belly-up in the fish farms for lack of oxygen. Hell, the air even smells like a good old fashioned highveld grassfire.In typical fashion the authorities are telling us as little as possible. What we

And speaking of stealing ideas...

2005-08-02T14:24:00.000+08:00

Here's one of this year's Cannes winners from Jupiter Drawing Room in South Africa.And here's an ad I came across from Lurzer' Archive, Vol.3-2002. Hmmmmmmmm...

Sum of yesterday

2005-08-02T13:52:00.000+08:00

Some stuff lasts and some doesn't. I've been going through the annuals trying to find an idea to steal and something struck me. No matter how technology infulences this profession, a good idea is timeless. It doesn't fade. It doesn't crack. It doesn't go out of fashion. It's never the wrong colour for the season. Not even Greenpeace can find something wrong with a good idea. It's never superceded

TIME Magazine logo now in the public domain?

2005-07-25T13:50:00.000+08:00

When I first saw the cover of the Time magazine shown here, I was amused by ironic symbolism of the Chairman sporting the Louis Vuitton logo. For me it neatly summed up my rather naive understanding of China Today. However I think that I viewed it somewhat differently to how it was meant; Time Magazine, I'm sure, wanted to draw attention to the bourgeoning spending power of the rising borgeouise

Gems

2005-06-24T13:34:00.000+08:00

I've long been a fan of Zapiro's political cartoons in the Mail And Guardian newspaper. Every now and then, though, there's one that is just so insightful and African, that it deserves a shouting gallery.Here is one such.

The China Syndrome

2005-06-16T17:44:00.000+08:00

I'm sitting at a recording studio somewhere in the Far East thinking about China's latest attack on freedom. They're clamping down on ISPs, requiring anybody who has anything to do with the Internet to register with the state. Companies running blog sites (such as MSN's "Spaces") are now required to filter out words such as "freedom" and "democracy." Those not willing to play ball will have to

June has gone pear shaped

2005-06-10T18:01:00.000+08:00

It's been an odd month so far (and it's only the tenth). For my own part I feel like I'm fighting the world. Things move too slowly, or they don't work, or something else just simply goes awry.Two of my colleagues have had to go to hospital for various ailments. My cats are misbehaving to such an extent that they risk being turned into broth. China is flooding. What the hell is going on.Maybe

Ok, so they lied

2005-05-24T13:55:00.000+08:00

A short while ago I posted a piece entitled "trust. but verify." In it I suggested that the proposed pullout of Syrian troops from Lebabnon was too good to be true (actually, I asked if a man's bond was no longer his word).It seems that the aforsaid Syrians have in fact NOT gone, despite having promised to do so.Will the middle east never wake up and smell the democracy? Even as the Bush wife

Blame the media, why don'tcha

2005-05-18T10:45:00.000+08:00

According to some or other Pentagon / US Gov official, the newsweek article mentioned previously is responsible for bringing down the reputation of the US in the Middle east region.Hmmm. I'm glad that's been cleared up. I thought it may have had something to do with the war. Or the endless bombing and doublespeak. And ill-treatment of POWs. An lies and propaganda.

The pages of the holy books: soft, strong and thoroughly absorbent

2005-05-17T11:19:00.000+08:00

Is there no end to the wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of clothing?The question refers, of course, to the Newsweek report alleging that the Quran was flushed. In my humble opinion the whole thing has been blown out of proportion. There will always be those who are just spoiling for a fight and for whom the slightest excuse is good enough.My suggestion is that all the holy books should be

paraskevidekatriaphobia

2005-05-13T12:43:00.000+08:00

Fear of friday the 13th.The unluckiest thing here is that the word for "fear of Friday the 13th" has 4 more syllables than the sentence itself.Now is that sensible?

Trust. But verify

2005-04-27T12:30:00.000+08:00

Ya gotta love the intelligence establishment. As the Syrians rolled out of Lebanon with the promise to nosepoke no longer, and to take their apparatus of espionage with them, Lebanese officials were were being advised to believe that they would do just that. with the caveat - just check and make sure they don't double back or leave exploding cellphones.Is a man's word no longer his bond? Guess

Now all we need is Bill Gates' email address and we're sorted

2005-04-22T16:21:00.000+08:00

benedictxvi@vatican.va

xin zhong

2005-04-22T13:37:00.000+08:00

Look at this window; it is nothing but a hole in the wall, but because of it the whole room is full of light.So when the faculties are empty, the heart is full of light.Being full of light it becomes an influence by which others are secretly transformed...The Tao gathers in emptiness alone.Emptiness is the fasting of the heart

Prophet Muhammad's Birthday

2005-04-21T15:49:00.000+08:00

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Muhammad, happy birthday to you.Heh, heh. That should put the wind up George W and his buddies.

Eggs Benedict XVI

2005-04-20T14:48:00.000+08:00

No surprises this time round. Our man in V-Town (the good cardinal Rat Josephsfinger) had even been given odds of 7-2 by the bookies. Is there a papal tote?What it means of course, is that the Catholic Church remains firmly mired in its own backward bullshit. And by this I mean that the interpretation of the "Word of God" is unlikely to change in the near future. Our only saving grace (pun

An African Pope?

2005-04-12T11:24:00.000+08:00

Ha! Lets get real. The Catholic establishment doesn't even pretend to be liberal, let alone pay the kind of lip service that many other institutions do, while remaining ultimately conservative.Nosireebob. This is a church that has so far refused to acknowledge the fact that we are living in the 3rd millennium; even the initiation of female priests causes the Cardinals to shake at their gartered

Someone agrees

2005-04-06T12:37:00.000+08:00

This is just weird

2005-04-05T16:59:00.000+08:00

I was reading Krisjan Lemmer in the online version of The mail & Guardian when I came across this article:Lemmer is the first to admit that he’s a sucker for urban legends about subliminal images hidden in logos. So Oom can understand why the Zimbabwean secret police would be taking a look at the new logo of the Zimbabwean Cricket Union, as was reported this week. The manne were divided as to

And the choir played on

2005-04-04T13:24:00.000+08:00

Well, the old bugger finally popped his clogs. It's been mighty interesting to get the usual slew of "useful" information via the media re the death of the pope. As revolutionary as he was, and as beloved to all as he was, I feel that he fell short in several important areas; his stance on things like AIDS, contraception, same sex marriages and women in the clergy were old fashioned at best. Some

Corrupt News Network (CNN)

2005-04-01T14:38:00.000+08:00

It's been a great years for the media. First we waved (pun intended) goodbye to half of Sumatra. Even the war in Iraq had to be put on the bck burner for a while, while this happened. The the Schiavo case leapt into the public eye. Now the pope seems to be heading towards the light. No wonder we have things like the Olympic Games and World Cups and tennis matches. If it weren't for these rallying

The raspberry is dead. Long live the raspberry

2005-04-01T12:33:00.000+08:00

So Terry Shiavo finally died, 13 days after the machines that go ping had pung their last.When I first heard that big W had flown from his ranch for the express purpose of enacting a bill that would allow Terry's parents to fight yet another round in the battle for her life, I certainly didn't expect the story to get so big.As the thing unfolded I found it hard to know which side to take. In the

Of mice and removal men

2005-03-30T11:25:00.000+08:00

It's D-Day -1 for the big office move. The soon to be ex-office is a shambles. A zillion boxes clutter what used to be a relatively comfortable and neat working area. The kitchen has been completely dismantled; hence no coffee. And I am informed that my desk has been sold and must move my computer temporarily to another one. I duly take my computer apart and pick my way through the maze. A empty

Malaysian F1 GP

2005-03-28T19:37:00.000+08:00

Damn, the sound is something else. I had forgotten just how ferociously loud these fire breathing super-souped, V10, 3,5 litre, 1100bhp engines actually were. Luckily I never go racing without earplugs.As I walked into the circuit from the car park, I could hear, but not see, the cars. Gordon bennet, it was groovy. HAd goose pimples for 5 minutes.Then, to my delight I found that I had a seat

Sometimes the comments are better than the posts

2005-03-19T19:48:00.000+08:00

Read the comment on the fire post.

Fire

2005-03-17T14:14:00.000+08:00

Yesterday evening, as I was attempting to get a taxi, a car caught fire. Amazing. White smoke began to pour from the car, followed by the driver and his passenger. Very soon, the white smoke had become black smoke, and flames could be seen. Next thing there was a wooshing sound and fire emitted from under the car in long streaks. It was at this juncture that I decided to move away from the car

More on Million Dollar Baby

2005-03-11T10:28:00.000+08:00

What's it really about?Critics slated the film, saying that it misrepresented itself (being not about boxing, but rather about the right to life). In the build up to the Oscars, the puritanical establishment that passes for public opinion in the US whinged on and on about whether the film's content was suitable for public consumption.Watching Million Dollar Baby, one is struck by how skillful

Go ahead Oscar, make my day

2005-03-10T15:34:00.000+08:00

I began to think about what I would say about Clint Eastwood a few days before the Oscars. This was primarily due to the amount of airtime the Awards were getting. Programmes, documentaries, interviews, predictions, trailers, looks behind the scenes, publicity stunts and philosophical debates rages on into the night. One was spoilt for choice.Anyway, as the whole world knew and has probably

Man eating shark

2005-03-04T12:47:00.000+08:00

Haflway between Barstow and the desert

2005-02-21T15:41:00.000+08:00

Hunter S Thompson apparently killed himself some time today or yesterday. You can read the official report by clicking on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4282865.stmI always wanted to write like HST. The idea that the journalist, or writer of the news could be more important than the very news he was reporting on struck me as a groovy thing. Of course, the case of Hunter S Thompson's

I eat sharks

2005-02-18T19:47:00.000+08:00

Had shark fin soup again for lunch today. I know, I know. But the fuckers eat us at the slightest opportunity, don't they. Greenpeace, if you're reading this, it was like that when I got there - promise.Anyway, I thought I'd do some research in the mysteries of this culinary delight - you never know what shit you'll dig on the web (this blog for example).So here's a recipe taken from a website

McStuff McLinks

2005-02-17T08:50:00.000+08:00

For more on the McLibel case follow these links (I don't know how long they will be valid, but they are part of BBC's news archive, so, maybe forever):http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4266209.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4266741.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4269913.stm