Archives, eh
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# It burns!!
I am stunned. My mind is spinning.
My child, hereafter referred to as The Wild Monkey, or tWM:
tWM had an assignment due in late August/early September.
We wrote her a note to get an extension because it was due on the day that we got back from a weekend in Bundaberg.
We then made sure the assignment was finished. We were on her back constantly to ensure the assignment was finished. I read the assignment with her after it was done to make sure it was written in English, and then read it again after she did re-write it in English.
She then emailed it to the teacher as per the agreement with said teacher.
Couple of weeks later, she prints off the assignment. Tells D “The teacher lost it and wants it handed in again.” D tells her “I want to see the report back from the teacher as soon as you get it and there better not be lost marks for lateness.”...”No no no, there won’t be” says tWM
D just got a call from the teacher…assignment was never handed in. Also, a note was forged to explain that the assignment was late because the printer was broken.
How can the kid be so dumb as to do 99% of it, all the hard stuff, and then not do the easiest 1% of the whole job, the giving to teacher part? How? I would have said it was unpossible, and yet…
I am waiting the terrifying confirmation that the note – the one explaining that the printer was broken – was printed.
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# Links for 2008-10-09
Take On Me: Literal Video Version
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# Links for 2008-10-08
Browse the Artifacts of Geek History in Jay Walker’s Library
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# Links for 2008-09-26
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# Links for 2008-09-25
The Star Wars Culture | Abduzeedo – graphic design | design inspiration | design tutorials
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# Anonymity
Back in the days when USENET was fun and alt.fan.eddings had a pulse, the one thing that would annoy me was the Dear John post. The post in which the writer would signal their intention to leave. Now. As soon as this last post is finished. And here’s why. A transparent means of garnering as much last minute attention as possible before flouncing off into a period of lurking to see if anyone rent their shirt and wept for a return, we’re sorry, we’ll be more deferential from now on.
I have only just now had to stop myself from depositing an equivalent comment in a blog thread elsewhere. The blog has, in the last twenty-four hours, decided to enforce registration by commenters due to a handful of persistent trolls. Initially I was neutral to the idea. It’s their blog, they can do what they like and I already have a profile to use – it is a Wordpress blog and I have left comments on other WP blogs that required registration.
This morning I thought again. I decided that I don’t like requiring registration to comment. I had been in the midst of vandalising Franklin’s aphorism on Liberty and Security, substituting those with Anonymity and Civility, in response to a supportive comment on the annoucement post when it struck me that I didn’t actually what I was about to post was all that banal. I don’t like enforcing a forgoing anonymity in a futile effort to guarantee a level of civility. I decide to supply information, but I shouldn’t have to if I decide I want to remain dark. The authors of the blog are well aware they are engaging in a futile act; they could not be blind to the complete failure of required registration to maintain any civility on a peer of their own blog.
Whether I cared enough was in question briefly. I could have just gone along. Then D mentioned that she was having a caramelatte,which reminded me that last night I had spotted an empty cup from Gloria Jeans in the kitchen bin. I don’t really mind terribly much if she goes there. I’d prefer she didn’t but it’s her choice. I won’t though. At the risk of banality, if I can’t be bothered keeping to principles as simple as not handing over money to death cults and shunning anonymity-unfriendly websites, particularly when the stakes are so very low, what is the point of having the principles in the first place. I already feel enough like an empty vessel as is.
The bargain I made with myself when I started writing this post rather than commenting on the (now) registration-required blog was that if I could actually complete a post it would mean that it was important enough an issue to me. So many times I start writing a post here and decide halfway through that I have nothing to say, can’t speak cogently enough on the idea, or don’t feel strongly enough to actually put together thoughts on the idea. If I completed this post it meant I did feel strongly enough and should do something about it. So I will. Nothing as childish as actually going through with posting a comment on that other blog. I decided I just won’t comment or post at blogs that require registration. I’ll just lurk. I can’t actually delete the WP profile, but I can do the next best thing; I can change the email address to something bogus – gilmae@seeking.privacy.org will do nicely – and flail wildly at the keyboard in GEdit to generate an unguessable password and paste that into both Change Password dialogs.
And then, immediately after, I am going to have ‘principal/principle’ tattooed on my arm next to ‘they’re/there/their’ and ‘bought/brought’.
I should of course point out that any such Dear John comment from me on any blog in all of the internets would, at best, engender a muted ‘Who?’
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# Finals
I get asked, as men are at this time of the year1 when other men are around and there is a degree of unfamiliarity, I get asked What team I go for. Who is my team? Is my team in the finals? If not, which team will I lend my grudging and temporary support? Who’s going to win.
Yeah, that’s right. It’s a sports post. I figured it was time since I had selfishly not blogged the State of Origin games. I had this pointed out to me a couple of months ago. Never before have I felt the burdens of my readership of -10 people – I need a natural 20 just to be read! – so keenly as I did then when I realised I had let the side down so by not babbling for 7 ½ paragraphs about the magnificence that was seeing The Grub, Paul Gallen, give Queensland so many gift penalties. What a shithead.
I find that question uncomfortable to answer. Not necessarily because I have to confess to supporting a team that is irredeemably crap – say, Souths – or because I am supporting a team that is traditionally disliked, but because I am not a True Fan. That is, I am not someone who bleeds the colours of a particular team. I do not have team flags, team jerseys2, know the names of the top 25 players in both first and reserve grades, have children named after members of the team’s All Star roster, or any of that. I just don’t have that intensity of passion. I have too many eyes. What I do have is a surplus of middling support which I dole out to a number of teams. Six in fact. Out of fifteen.
Obviously I support all three Queensland-based teams. That’s just common sense. You have to support fellow Queenslanders as they enter the field of battle, competing against the hardest, toughest, least sentimental, and greates cheats in the entire world. I refer, of course, to the National Rugby League organisation. A cartel of NSW ex-players and officials, resentful of the fearsome natural talent of Queensland’s teams who set out each year to ensure that eye-gougers from Sydney get off scotfree while a congratulatory handshake from a Queensland-based player will earn him three weeks on the sideline.
And since I am going for Queenslanders, I might as well go for Melbourne as well, since they are practically a Queensland team anyway. Their best players play for Queensland, their feeder clubs are Queensland-based. They are another target of whinging, moaning and maligning accusations from the moral midgets at the farrago of duplicity and lies otherwise known as the Daily Telegraph, NRL judiciary and Sydney-base clubs.
I support Wests Tigers because, well, technically they are the local team. They play three of their thirteen home games in Campbelltown; I live in the Campbelltown area. There’s a latin phrasem I’d like to use here – because it’d make me look clever – that translates to “Support your local team because you look like an arsehole if you don’t”, but unfortunately such a phrase doesn’t exist. Or at least it hasn’t come down the ages to us in the pages of Tacitus or Livy. What a shame; it’d be quite useful to round off this paragraph, an amusing way to disguise the lack of ironic one-eyed victimhood.
And finally, there is Easts. I like to tell people I’ve been going for Easts since before there was a Queensland team in the national comp; before there was even a national competition, back in the day when it was the NSWRL. That would be a lie. I didn’t really even follow the league until after the first Queensland teams entered the competition. No, the real story is that…I betrayed Queensland by disliking the Brisbane Broncos. I know; the dangers I am undertaking, admitting it here in the face of the threat of legal remonstration. I think though that the statue of limitations has passed so I am safe. Also, I think my reasoning would, now that time has passed and passions have ebbed, would get me off even if I was dragged before a court of equity. I couldn’t support Brisbane after what they done to King Wally. So I had to pick another team. Easts were, at the time, captained by a New Zealander, so I figured I could support them and assuage my guilt by telling myself that they weren’t completely tainted by NSWishness. And after he left? Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions; or in my case, Kiwi halfbacks.
To offset my overflowing cup of support, I have another aspect to my sporting character; every game has one team that everybody but their fans hates. The New England Patriots, for example, in the NFL. In the NRL it is the Manly Sea Eagles. Well, yeah, I hate them as well. I hate them for all the right reasons, none of which are even remotely relevant to reality at any time after 1986. They’re arrogant. They’re the rich silvertails. They swoop in with their sense of entitlement and steal away the cram of the playing crop. I seethe with unbridled contempt for them and cheer when they lose. I just also feel the same way about St George as well. And Parramatta.
And the Bulldogs.
My dislike of Cronulla is different though. While I may dislike certain players in the aforementioned Four Teams of the Apocalypse – Mark Gasnier, Brett Stewart, Jarred Hayne…I’m sure there is someone at Belmore – there aren’t really any players I would cheer to see hurt. I would cheer, loudly, to see Paul Gallen and Greg Bird of the Cronulla Sharks hurt. One is merely a grub on the field. The other is a grub off the field and seems to have just enough good timing to get his big hits in a split second before they are deemed late and fouls.
It is the semi-finals this week. Manly and Cronulla are playing in separate games, against Auckland and Melbourne respectively. It is my opinion that they will end up playing the Grand Final against each other. And thus, I am torn. There will be two teams I hate playing for the premiership. Who do I support? I have to support someone or else what is the point of watching? I can’t just support the game because no matter what happens, one of those teams will be lifting the trophy at the end of the game and thus clearly, rugby league is the loser regardless of whose thuggish mitts are lofting it skyward. I think, on the balance of things, it is going to have to be Manly who I grudgingly direct my lukewarm cheers towards. Because at least I can look forward to a week of wailing and sobbing and hate from Cronulla because even when they get to the grand finals, they still can’t win a premiership. Forty-two More Years should be the rallying call for everyone on this side of the Captain Cook Bridge.
Also, go the Cats. I’m obligated to say that because all of my co-workers, the ones I talk to every day anyway, support Hawthorn.
1 In March as well.
2 I do have one jumper in team colours, but it is a jumper, not a replica jersey3.
3 The exception is Queensland, of course. I have a Queensland origin jersey that gets worn precisely three times a year and has never in eight years been washed. Queensland is the exception though, they are a rep team and it is mandatory for Queenslanders to support them rabidly. It’s the law.
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# Links for 2008-09-18
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# What?!?
Trying to open GMail in Google Chrome.
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# Links for 2008-09-14
75 (Really) Useful JavaScript Techniques | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine
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