quantum theory or: how i learned to stop thinking and love the unknown

I just got back from seeing the movie What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? and can totally recommend it to anyone in the mood for a break from the American summer "Blockbuster". It's a movie/documentary that deals with quantum theory and spirituality, and presents a whole bunch of ideas about uncertainty and reality that is really refreshing. They had a whole host of people, from theoretical physicists, to neuropsychologists to mystics, all with their own concepts of consciousness and reality that totally made me look at the world through different eyes.
Those who know me even slightly will know that's no mean feat. I'm a card carrying atheist, and god help those who try and convince me otherwise, but when added to the reading I've done recently about quantum mechanics and free will, it does get the old brain matter into overtime.
Hehe, I read about quantum mechanics. What a dork.

Verdict: Too revolutionary for Christians, but good for anyone with an open mind... or stoners.

one national icon, medium rare

and a side salad please.

Kanagroo meat has just been made available at our local supermarket. It's almost totally fat free and cheaper than beef steaks. There's also the satisfaction of knowing that you're munching down on a 100%, true blue, fair dinkum Australian Icon™. It's the equivalent of taking a bite out of New Zealand's Kiwi, America's Bald Eagle, or France's Eiffel Tower.
The problem with roo being low in fat, means it dries out easily. Lucky I like my meat very rare so last night's effort was a great one. Shame you have to let it sit for 5 minutes after cooking it.

Verdict: Like revenge - cold and bloody

batman... and ninjas

So, Hollywood has managed to surprise me. I thought being this old and jaded, I would be harder to impress than some really hard piece of hardened metal, but Batman Begins was actually a pretty cool movie.
Well, as cool as a movie can get when the main character flies around wearing black tights and a Halloween mask :)
The special effects aren't over the top, with the CGI effects blending in really well. The Batmobile is believable, it doesn't have big wobbly rubber wings and fins on it like the last few movies. It's also much shorter than the traditional Batmobile, which would make parallel parking a WHOLE lot easier. Especially when it doesn't have (bat)wing mirrors to look in.

I've read some people's reviews, saying that it's trying to take Batman away from the children, by giving it a dark side. Have you ever seen the comics? They're not drawn with fingerpaint and glitter, they're pretty damn dark themselves! Not exactly bedtime reading for the youngsters. I think people confuse Batman with that confused character that Adam West played back in the 60s. The way I see it, kids these days have everything handed to them, what with their Playstations and their fast food. Damn the kids and lets have some grown up action movies again. It's not like the little buggers pay for their Batman branded McDonalds happy meal THEMSELVES, so who gives a shit if the movie isn't suitable for them? They'd just run around the theatre anyway, or cry or poo in their nappies (as is my understanding of young people).
Kids have plenty to keep them occupied with movies like Spongebob Squarepants without making Batman into the 6th Mighty Morphin Power Ranger.

Verdict: Katie Holmes has very perky nipples. And there's ninjas.

aural anguish

I'm not a huge contemporary music buff, mainly because I don't listen to Top 40 radio. I can't tell N-Sync from the Backstreet Boys. I couldn't tell Hilary Duff and Kelly Clarkson apart if they were wearing name tags. When a Britney Spears song plays on the radio I'm never sure if it's her, or the radio just needs to be tuned in properly. The top 40 in Australia at the moment includes a song by Jesse McCartney called "She's No You". That kid is so young, the woman he's singing about must be his mother, and what girlfriend could posibly live up to the woman who breastfed you until last month!?

But! The Top 40 radio station is not as low as you can go. If you scratch away the burnt offerings on the bottom of that cauldron of crud, you'll find a whole NEW world of nausea awaiting: The "Easy Listening" station.

From what I can figure out, they take the Top 40 songs from 5 months ago, remove 30 of those songs and replace them with 7 songs from the 80s. After adding a track or two from Melbourne's own Anthony "knee high to a grasshopper" Callea, you're left with the aural equivalent of being slowly drowned in a trough of warm elephant poop.

I work with a woman who has been with the company so long that her first office computer was a pigeon, and she refers to horses as "public transport". Now, the first problem is she likes the drivel that comes out of the tinny little radio on her desk. As she's been a fixture at (company name removed - Ed) for longer than living memory, and the management aren't keen to piss her off, in case she has some high reaching connections that no one knows about. This means the radio stays. The second problem is that Mix 101.1 is the ONLY DAMN STATION THAT IT CAN PICK UP!! There's some kind of weird architectural anomoly that blocks out all frequencies in my building except for 101100kHz! It's like the girders are spaced so precisely that any other frequency is effectively jammed.
This story as yet has no happy ending, so if anyone has ideas on how to fix the above problems, please send your answers on the back of a postcard.

hair part deux

So I went back to the hairdresser's this morning to get my Paul McCartney/carved pumpkin haircut fixed. I felt totally vindicated when the salon owner saw what had happened, and quickly ushered me into the chair. Within 15 minutes, he had not only covered up the hash job from the previous evening, but given me the best head massage I've had since Camden Palace.

Sleep calleth

ever had a bad hair day?

I got my haircut tonight. I've rarely had a haircut that I've been totally happy with. Occasionally I get home from the hairdresser's thinking "Hmm. If I fill it with wax and mess it up, maybe it'll last me for 6 or 7 weeks".
Today was not one of those haircuts. I think it's on a par with the perm horror stories that you hear girls talk about (although I guess that shows my age a little). Maybe because I turned up with my hair overgrown and scruffy, the salon thought as long as I left with it shorter than when I arrived, I wasn't going to notice.
The hairdresser, I discovered, had recently immigrated from Sri Lanka. So recently that her belongings hadn't arrived yet! Now, I don't know what the high street fashion is like in Colombo, but I'm sure that they don't walk around with CHUNKS missing out of their hair. I look like a f**king lego man, with a straight fringe and round head, with... with... goddamned pieces missing out of the sides!!
I'm going to take the morning off work to get this sorted out, so hopefully by this time tomorrow, I'll either have a decent haircut, or a shaved head.

guts

Gizmodo had an item today about Toyota's new dual airbag system. Apparantly the two bags distribute the impact to the side of your face, instead of popping your nose like a rotten strawberry. I'm all for that. I mean, I too prefer my nose unflattened (or as the French say: non-squishé), but I can't see the significance of someone that's crashed so hard their lungs have been flung out of their mouth!

this is harder than it looks

Have you ever noticed how easy it is for your brain to wander off when you're trying to work? You can be in the middle of a progress report for someone higher up the food chain, when you come to realise that you haven't typed a damn thing for the last five minutes. Instead of making colourful and meaningless pie charts in Excel™, you've been fantasising about what you're going to say to your collegue when she comes out with another one of her stories about her damn sisters wedding. Maybe in your head, you were walking around the supermarket, planning your next grocery shop (which reminds me, I think we're out of margarine).

Have you also noticed that when you sit down a few hours later, at home, in your own time, your brain feels like half of it never came back from it's earlier wandering, and the other half has pooled to the bottom of your skull? The old grey matter has totally clogged up the creative pathways that should be supplying your hands with whatever they need to either write, draw or play music.

That may sound stupid, but why else haven't I drawn, written or played music for the last five years? I'm still too young to accept a total lack of talent, so it has to be some kind of outside source, and what better scapegoat than the office? The total banality of my job, means my brain has to entertain itself during the day when it's not in use. By the time I get home, it's had enough and just wants me to feed it bourbon.
One of these days I'm going to teach it who's boss

Just not today

what's brown and sticky?

A stick. Also this guy:

I love the wildlife in this country...

mic check one two

I forget things. I have plenty of memories from when I was 3. I can picture family holidays from my childhood like they were yesterday, but I still have to be told that I've had a cup of tea brewing in the kitchen for the last 90 minutes.
To counteract this swiss cheese memory, and to tidy up what's still in my head I've decided to start a weblog. Since I have no real political stance, or any strong opinions in general, it's probably going to take the form of a diary. If it ever gets off the ground in any real way, I might use it instead of email (after removing all the defamatory posts about potential readers of course) Those who know (knew) me can testify that I don't keep in touch very well, so this will hopefully help.

Now all I need is a more interesting life...