February 27, 2002, 3:26pm. Too sexy for words (listen to the sound file for the full sensual experience).

3:16pm. Bad pun headline of the week award goes to the Age for ‘KFC bosses aren’t chicken, but they sure are tender‘, leading a story about KFC managers burnt their feet trying a fire-walking exercise “In all, 11 ambulances responded to the emergency at 1.40pm when the resort reported about 30 people suffering burns to their feet as a result of a fire-walking exercise over the ashes of burnt timber”.

2:07pm. What a day. Yesterday I was told my contract wasn’t going to be renewed and today would be my last day. Today I was told I have another month, but until I have it in writing, I don’t believe it. Meanwhile, I’m sick as a dog and all I want to do it lie in bed and moan.

Anyway, some tidbits: Lygon Street touts to go: “council officers recently launched an undercover operation to try to eradicate touting in the strip that has long irritated local businesses, patrons and tourists“. Britney should count herself lucky she doesn’t live in Turkey: “Turkey lifts controversial virginity tests“. The mistakes of John Howard, part 734,566 of a series of 1,000,000: Governor-General Peter Hollingworth could be barred from the nation’s public schools because of his statements on child sexual abuse.

February 26, 2002, 9:15pm. Went to Luxembourg for the weekend. It’s a tiny country, about the size of the ACT (if you’re Australian) or Greater London (if you’re English). It was really beautiful. Photos when I finish the roll.

I came back to spam in my mailbox, from “Patty Walters internet cunsultant”. An almost Freudian typo?

Playmate of the month, through the ages.

Soppy Sept 11 poem reveals truth about flying – “I was on four of those planes, in every seat, with every prayer“. No wonder you can never get the bulkhead seats, no matter how early you check in – god’s taken them all, the omnipotent bastard.

February 22, 2002, 12:42pm. “The former defence minister, Peter Reith, is continuing to defend himself over the “children overboard” affair, saying he had poor mobile telephone reception when he received contradictory advice on the incident.” I can imagine it now, “I’ve got some static, did you say ‘propaganda war’ or ‘panda whore’?”

The most horrific thing about the refugees overboard scandal is obvious if you look at the picture in this article – their faces washed off in the sea! Why hasn’t the Australian public demanded an inquiry?

9:13am. It’s disappointing, if a woman is married, that she would want
to go and see another man like that,” she said.

February 21, 2002, 11:06am. According to news.com.au, “STEPHEN BRADBURY, winner of the Olympic 1000 metres short track title after each of his four rivals fell, has qualified for the 1500m semi-finals while sitting on the ice and facing the wrong way.”

9:33am. Pentagon plans propaganda war: “United States defence officials are examining the possibility of planting propaganda and even misleading stories in international media as part of George Bush’s war on terrorism.”, but the ‘other good guys’ aren’t happy. “Washington’s Western allies are concerned about a new Pentagon department of propaganda that aims to plant false information in the media of friends of the US as well as its enemies”.

If they thought about it, they’d realise it was already happening. I remember thinking that the US wouldn’t start bombing when they did because of propaganda information they’d spread around the Western press.

‘Gay’ site features Melbourne’s finest: “The site contains unauthorised images, believed to have been taken in 1999, of students from Melbourne Grammar, Xavier College and Wesley College involved in a variety of activities such as rowing and playing football.”

So of course I wanted to see the pictures. A google search for “all photographs are taken in public places” took me straight to http://www.magnatude.com/faq.htm but it looks like a server-side redirect takes you to yahoo.com.

February 20, 2002, 1:15pm. Dubya is doing his best to make John Howard look competent. From the New York Times, “Standing atop a sandbag bunker and protected by bulletproof glass, President Bush peered through binoculars at North Korea Wednesday and bluntly called it “evil.””.

Direct from Reuters, “The axes that were used to slaughter two U.S. soldiers are in the peace museum,” Bush said. “No wonder I think they’re evil.”.

Is having a museum evil, or calling it a peace museum instead of a war museum the problem? Do we need to explain to him that just because war museums point ouf the folly of war, it doesn’t mean that peace museums point out the folly of peace.

In the same article, Bush says, “We must not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most dangerous weapons”. So, it’s ok when he thinks it about a bunch of foreigners, but not ok when a bunch of foreigners think it about him?

The Opinion Journal, from the Wall Street Journal, has an interesting article about Bush’s use of ‘evil’ and there’s also this summary of responses to Bush.

On a lighter note, Reuters says: “Philippine karaoke parlors have been removing “My Way” from play lists because fights frequently broke out — for unfathomable reasons — when the song was sung”.

11:48am.Nice article on doctype.

9:32am. I knew photos were doubtful, PM admits. This should be the scandal that topples the Howard government, but it probably won’t be. It’s horrible that John Howard will probably get away with lying to the Australian public to win the election. 11 per cent of respondents to a NewsPoll said they “would have voted differently had they known the truth during the election campaign”, and 51 per cent “felt the government had acted ‘dishonourably’ in the affair”.

Defence staff ‘were ordered to doctor details on photos’. Makes me proud to be an Australian. I wonder if it’s too late to return my passport.

In related news, Labor is finally getting the web, launching a site http://www.truthoverboard.com/.

Hicks sues United States for the same legal rights as American Taliban John Walker Lindh.

Fluffy link: cartoon.

General Dutch phrases, including the all important ‘dat hangt er van af’ (that depends), ‘het kan me niet schelen’ (I don’t mind) and ‘Ik denk het’ (I suppose so). And just for me, the ‘be understood‘ section, including ‘Ik ben het woord vergeten voor…’ (I have forgotten the word for…).

February 18, 2002, 4:45pm. I stumble across a link to the internet anagram server, but can’t remember why I wanted it. I can’t help but feel my Dutch class is going to go really well tonight, after a tedious day debugging old code.

Did you know that ‘Celine Dion alien’ is an anagram for ‘alien Celine Dion’?

3:05pm. Interesting commentary and background on the ice-skating controversy. I don’t know why I care, except that it seems unfair that the Canadians pouted and whinged and were given a big sop. That wouldn’t have happened if it was the other way around, and the Russians came second.

10:35am. I saw Tombraider on the weekend, it was only just ok as braindead entertainment. They really bent over backwards to keep to Hollywood’s ‘female characters can’t kill real people’ rule, but even that doesn’t explain why it was so lacklustre. I also saw Ginger Snaps, which was quite good but much more gruesome than I thought it would be.

It was really weird seeing Noah Taylor playing a Brit with bad teeth. In honour of the fact that it can be difficult to remember which is Noah Taylor and which is Ben Mendelsohn, I’m proposing a new collective noun to describe them: ‘Boah’. So the next time you see either one of them in a movie, you can say with confidence, ‘look, it’s Boah’. Much better than ‘it’s that guy’.

9:30am. First ever Winter Olympics gold for the Southern Hemisphere.

Canadians whinge and get a shared gold medal in paired figure skating. The NY Times article is as good as any, except for the reporter bias slipped in at the end, minke.com continued facetiously.

Bush Administration Poised to Eliminate Family Planning Funds – ‘Family planning foes in the House are urging the Bush administration to defund UNFPA’ (United Nations Population Fund).

More hate mail! It’s about Celine, of course. You have to wonder why they’re so concerned about anyone saying she’s an alien.

February 15, 2002, 15:09. Powell, on MTV, urges condom use, Bush supporters angry. According to the article, Bush and ‘other administration officials’ want to deliver the message that ‘abstinence from unmarried sex is the principal weapon against the spread of the deadly human immunodeficiency virus’. I’m stunned that such an ignorant, unrealistic and frankly dangerous belief could be held by the man who would be leader of the free world.

I’m trying to find evidence that the current US government is using humanitarian aid to push its own right-wing anti-abortion goals. A Salon article states that “The U.S. government is already using humanitarian aid as a key tool for achieving its foreign policy objectives.” but the examples don’t relate specifically to anti-choice policies.

There’s also the NY Times on a recent ‘backdoor effort to expand legal protections for fetuses and restrict reproductive rights of women‘, but that relates to internal legislation.

Btw, John Howard is a lying weasel, but you already knew that.

Read The Banality of the Radical but don’t fall into the trap of congratulating yourself because you recognise it.

10:25am. NY Times article on wizz-bang features offered by high-end phones still doesn’t include sms.

Excellent analysis of the doctored pictures that swept email and newsgroups after September 11.

9:45am.According to popbitch, ‘Ryan Adams stopped a gig in Melbourne last week, and
had all the lights turned on – because someone in the
audience shouted out “sing Summer of 69”.’. Go Melbournites! (While I’m ripping off popbitch, you can’t this out of your head.)

New hate mail!

A Texas man is facing up to 20 years in prison for shooting his girlfriend because he thought she was about to say “New Jersey”.

Some background on the Tampa/refugees.

February 13, 2002, 15:22am. Damn, I mean 3:22pm. I never thought I’d get used to 24 hour time, yet here I am. Anyway, how goddamn cute is the Amsterdam police site? E-cards, a webcam, their own site of photos from the Royal Wedding. (Except the police themselves weren’t so cute when they were chasing animal rights protestors from Leidsestraat on Saturday.)

Ace, accessible art site. Check out the custom tours.

February 13, 2002, 10:59am. $NZ337.50 penalty for being an arrogant bastard

NY heroes die saving fat chick:
But right next to where the officers’ bodies were discovered, the recovery crews found another victim: an obese woman who was still strapped into a rescue chair the officers had apparently been using to try to get her out.

February 12, 2002, 11:17am.PHPDoc – as the name suggests, it’s Javadoc for PHP.

Tourism drive drops ‘ocker’ image, thank god.

February 12, 2002, 9:44am. Dinosaur vomit discovered in quarry

Surely this arrest counts as an un-American activity.