Innage

I doubt many people would have noticed, but we were forced off the internets for most of the last two weeks.

After the first twelve hours outage (and replugging everything, and turning it all off and on again,) I rang Virgin, our current, but soon to be no longer, provider, and of course they asked me to turn everything off then on again, as expected. No dice. Then after examining some chicken entrails, the phone support guy determined that we needed a new cable modem. Fair enough, I thought, the one we’ve got isn’t doing the trick. Three to five working days, I’m told; again, fair enough (sort of.)
Five working days pass, we call again, “where’s the modem?” “What modem? Oh, that modem… that’ll be ten days.” Steam pressure builds in customer – luckily the modem arrived in two. Was plugged in, turned on: nothing. Ring Virgin. “Ah. We’ll have a technician look at that. Give us a couple of days. Later that afternoon, a phone message: “Um, we’re terribly sorry [yeah, right], but that will take 5 days.”

This suddenly becomes too much for Linda, who promptly rang and served them, with extreme prejudice. Some guy at the other end of the line says internet outage? Here you go, all fixed.” And it was.

One bloody button press from ‘turn subscriber’s service off’ to ‘turn subscriber’s service on’ solved the problem, after wasting ten days of our time (and money – we do pay for this ’service’.

Hello, some other ISP. Virgin, you are truly fucked.

Hmm, a Quote

From someone who knew a thing or two about the topic:

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

Benito Mussolini.

I don’t really feel the need to editorialise about this. It just struck me as funny, in a bitter, ironic way.

technofun

How cool is this machine?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAX_3Bgel7M
http://www.juliusvonbismarck.com/fulgurator/

Imagine the culture-jamming potential of projecting images of acne at the Oscars, for example! Not, however, that they’d let a device that looks like this within cooee of anywhere paranoid about security. A makeover to look more mainstream couldn’t be too hard.

I believe the inventor is patenting it as fast as humanly possible to try to stem the obvious possible misuses of it.

It’s kind of a shame it wasn’t invented when most people were shooting film, though.

Ol’ Tripey

In case any of you our dear friends hadn’t noticed, we’re in old Blighty. Which is famous for tripe. Built on tripe. Tripe and onions, tripe and… um. And you may have noticed we like to explore the fun (and now exotic) bits of the eating experience, willing to do our bit for the nose to tail, so of course tripe it must be in all its forms! And so to Borough Markets, the first stop for any foodie in London. Bloody hell this place is marvellous, in fact the best food market we’ve ever seen, and boy have we seen some beauts – Bangkok – wowzer!; Adelaide – swoon; Prahran – yummy; farmers’ markets at Fox Studios in Sydney – aww (oh how I miss you Toby’s Estate)! Now where was I? Oh yes, heading to the best market in the country for the arguably signaturey dish of the country – after all isn’t tripe and onions why most of you have never even ventured near a piece of delicious cosy stomachio? Even though you’ve never even seen one, let alone tasted it?

But what did we find dear readery friend? NO TRIPE. That’s right. None. In the middle of the most populous city in the most populous country in the UK – no tripe.

I shall elaborate on my theory for this astonishing lack in the next post. Now I’m too weak from lack of innards to do so.

Scaly! And moist!

Sir God David Attenborough has a new series about reptiles – the last of the Life of… ones and he’s so cool that he’s figured out the best way to get it to useless lazy people like me. Watch it on your computer. I was going to add something about you perps in the Antipodes having to wait for it, but if movie release dates are anything to go by you saw this 2 months ago. I heart The Att! We lived close to his brother’s house (I heart de Richatt!) for a couple of months. So we’re famous.

Crocodiles blow bubbles at each other during courtship. And many other gems. As usual.

Next year, being the bicentenary of Darwin doing something, possibly being born, God David is making a series about evolution. Yay!

Things to which I am listening

In response to Mr Intepid’s most recent blog entry* I am going to bore you with the podcasts I listen to regularly. And then you can tell me yours because that’ll be fun.

Funny - Get This. Tony Martin of D Generation fame’s now defunct radio show which was on Triple M until November last year, when it was axed because it was too popular (yes really). It is, by the way, the only time I have listened to commercial radio intentionally in my life. The podcast is marvellous because it has no crappy music and no ads (well only at the start and end so you can skip them). The best and funniest radio show I’ve ever heard – I recommend downloading the whole two years’ worth and starting from the beginning. Soon you too will know why I randomly yell “Assault, Assault!” and know quite a lot about Steven Seagal’s straight-to-dvd releases.

Finding out about newsy stuff – Harry Shearer’s Le Show. Harry has had a weekly radio show for more than twenty years now – not only can you be brought up to date on what’s going on in the world, but you can chuckle and scoff as well! What more could you ask for? Silly tunes perhaps? You get them too.

Nostalgia – NPR’s Playback. Archival stuff from 25 years ago – remember what was going on in 1983. Way cool.

Flims – Movietime on ABC radio. Hosted by Julie Rigg, who knows her stuff and has a marvellous voice. I even met her once because she is the mother of a friend of mine. So much better than anything they have over here in the mother country – Jonathan Ross is all about celebrity and silliness. I still rely on Movietime to find out what is actually happening in the flim world.

Honourable mention – This American Life. As Mark has already written about it in his blog I won’t say much – it’s bloody marvellous! The only gripe I have with it is that there are lots of repeats. They also have a telly program now which I haven’t yet illegally downloaded.

Enough for now!

*damn no fairy torture!

S A D

Ah so that’s what’s wrong with me! Although the carbohydrates and sweet food cravings manifest as cheese and wine in my case. Much more civilised I think.

More newness

New resolutions to be more precise – I have decided that in order to traverse the desert of unemployment that I find myself in I need structure. So I am going to post a blog entry every day. I am so unused to writing that I’m sure it will be tedious in the extreme – yet I’m inflicting it upon you anyway!

So here is entry number one – a recording from my lovely Zoomy recorder of something lying around the house. If you can guess what it is you win a prize (well no you don’t really).

MYSTERY SOUND

Heehee!