Happy Christmas!

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to wish you all a happy christmas for 2006. Thanks to everyone who reads this blog regularly and leaves their comments; I love blogging, but the comments make it even more enjoyable. Thanks, too, for many hours of interesting reading provided by your posts on your own blogs. I'm stuck without regular internet access at the moment, but I'll be back posting regularly in the new year.

Keep digging, fools

Kevin Rudd is doing what it takes to win the next election. But just because Mark Latham lost a huge amount of support in Tasmania at the last election because of his forestry policy doesn't mean that Labor got it wrong. The rednecks got it wrong. Mark Latham offered them a hand out of the hole they were digging themselves into and rather than take it they beat him to death with their spades and kept on digging. They're stupid and short-sighted, and ignoring the blame due to the shitty, unsupportive, back-stabbing team Mark Latham took into the last election, it's in no small part due to Tassie's healthy population of hicks that we've had to endure another term of John Howard as Prime Minister.

Kevin Rudd knows he has to appease these morons and distance himself from Latham's policies if he's going to succeed in Tasmania. He says he'll work with the Tasmanian state government. Both sides of the state government in Tassie are in the pocket of Gunns. There's not a whisper of the other G-word from the new Labor team. They're doing what they have to do in order to win. That doesn't mean they're doing the right thing.

James Treloar: racist, liar

Surprise surprise, it turns out Tamworth Mayor James Treloar lied when he claimed that 8 out of 12 Sudanese people in Tamworth had been before the courts "for everything from dangerous driving to rape".

Tamworth police have reportedly denied any Sudanese people have been charged over a matter of a sexual nature.

[...]

The Reverend Ken Fenton of St Peter's Anglican Church in Tamworth said he knew of at least one family of six that had had no problems with the law, "so how [Cr Treloar] got eight out of 12, I don't know".

I hope Treloar gets nailed for this.

Black olive paste or tapenade

The reason for so many food posts today is because every christmas my mind turns to planning christmas lunch; that and the fact that we'll be cooking in Kempsey so I'll need my recipes online. I made the tapenade this evening, however, because it stores incredibly well (the first batch I ever made sat at the back of the fridge for 6 months before I realised it was still there, and it was as good as the day I made it). It strikes me something as being something my family will be naturally wary of, seeing as they're not huge fans of olives, but I'm confident it will win them over. I think the addition of anchovies and capers would be just a bit too scary for them, so technically this is the 'olive paste' version of the recipe rather than the tapenade.

The recipe, as usual, is from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion. The second edition costs twice as much as the first version (which I have), but I can thoroughly recommend getting hold of a copy of either edition. I doubt many are available second hand; I know I'm holding onto this one until I die. It's that good!

I couldn't get pitted spanish black olives at coles, so I had to spend half an hour pitting an enormous jar of olives before I could put it all in the food processor... frankly, by the time I'd finished I couldn't be bothered chopping them as recommended in the book. It turned out ok anyway. If you have a half decent food processor I wouldn't worry about chopping the olives. This time I substituted fresh oregano for thyme, for the simple reason we have a great oregano plant but have never successfully managed to grow thyme. Damn thyme always dies on me...

The recipe:

1 cup spanish black olives
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
½ cup freshly chopped continental (flat-leaf) parsley
2 large sprigs rosemary, leaves stripped and finely chopped
2 large sprigs thyme, leaves stripped
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
freshly ground black pepper

In a food processor blend all ingredients until fairly smooth. Taste for pepper and pack into a small container. Cover with some more extra-virgin olive oil before storing in the fridge.

Tapenade: add a couple of anchovy fillets, ¼ cup capers (rinsed) and some lemon juice.

Peter Foster: cockroach

Said to be fiercely intelligent...

...charming, witty, entertaining and with a self-deprecating sense of humour...

Foster has been linked to a long line of beautiful women... *swoon*

When conman Peter Foster was given 'house arrest' so he could stay in a cushy hotel instead of in jail along with Fijian prisoners, I wondered what made it "too squalid" for him yet alright for the rest of them.

That question hasn't been answered, but now the bastard has skipped out and is on the run. The judge who allowed him house arrest now looks as stupid as the moron who gave Christopher Skase back his passport.

By the way, check out the Wikipedia entry on Peter Foster. Did he write that himself or what? Consensus on the talk page is that he wrote it himself; apparently the IP for some of the editing can be traced to Suva, Fiji.

Stay out of our bedrooms!

Quite often, I'm happy to see catholics offended if what they're taking offense at is the right for other people not to adhere to catholic standards of morality. Same goes for anyone of any religious persuasion, really.

Congratulations to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and her government for making the morning after pill available free at state hospitals for girls aged 14 and over, in the face of howls of outrage from Catholic nutjobs all over the country. Frankly guys, if you don't like the morning after pill, don't have one!

And a pat on the back to Hell Pizzas of New Zealand who as a gimmick included a free condom in a promotional mail-out. Condoms are a great invention; no-one who received one is being forced to use it! How come the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that Hell breached 'standards of decency and social responsibility' when it's ok for religious folks to go promoting abstinence instead of a sound sex education? If I decided to complain about the torrent of brochures from various religious groups flooding my mailbox of late (and no, I honestly don't mind, although it's more recycling), which government body would side with me? When are they going to get rapped on the knuckles for breaching standards of social responsibility?

Terry White Toowong: service to make you sick

Today I ducked into the Terry White chemist in Toowong Village shopping centre to buy Gam some contact lens solution. I went to the counter and stood behind an old man who was leaving a prescription to be filled. After serving him, the lady at the counter went and started doing something else, without even making eye contact. Another guy queued up behind me. Then another staff member came out, looked in our direction, and proceeded to pore over some boxes. "It's Christmas", I thought. "They're probably a bit busier than usual".

Another staff member came out; she looked as if she was already helping someone else out on the floor of the store. A young woman joined the queue, followed by a middle-aged man. Probably 5 minutes had passed since I stood at the counter. The two staff members supposedly manning the counter studiously ignored the growing queue. Another staff member came out and talked to the one doing the boxes, and went back inside the staff-only area.

I decided to count to 30 and if by that time no-one had so much as said "I'll be with you in a minute" I would leave.

I got to 30 and neither of them had so much as made eye contact.

I left the box of lens solution on the counter and left.

I got Gam from the EB Games store next door and explained why I hadn't bought the lens solution and that I wanted to buy it at the 'Discount Drug Store' across the road.

We got to the store, and the staff members were quickly and efficiently serving the waiting customers. There were more customers than there had been in the Terry White chemist before I got there, yet somehow we were served after waiting probably 30-40 seconds. The staff were friendly and polite.

The lens solution cost $2 more than at Terry White, but at least I didn't have to be kept waiting on the whim of a bunch of thin-lipped middle aged women who thought they were too good to serve customers.

The service is usually adequate to crappy at Terry White Toowong, but this time it was so bad I've resolved from now on to shop at DDS or the uni pharmacy, which was recently bought by a very nice lady. Both are more expensive, but I'd rather our money went to someone who didn't jerk me around.

And yes, this is a long rant over a bottle of lens solution... but they deserve it!

Cyclists want to get home safely too, thanks

I've no idea where they think we fit the airbags...

If there's one thing I'd like car drivers to bear in mind at all times, it's that cyclists are soft, squishy and almost devoid of protection from the big metal box that the driver is barreling around in.

That goes for the silly woman who ignored the green light for cyclists and pedestrians on the bike path between St Lucia and Toowong today and parked across the bike path in an effort to illegally enter the traffic stream on Benson St. If I hadn't already slowed down to avoid a pedestrian walking on the cyclists' side of the path I may not have slowed down in time to avoid hitting her.

RIP Scott Peoples.

Chocolate: mum's red devil's cake

Photograph of the genuine article still to come...

This is the recipe that inspired me to set the goal of putting all my favourite recipes on this blog. Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion is without doubt the best and most useful cookbook I've ever had the good fortune to get my hands on, but its enormous size means it's not something I can take with me when I travel. I've accessed my baked chocolate pudding recipe from Botswana and Kempsey. When we were in Kempsey in July I wanted to use the recipe below to bake Gam a birthday cake but couldn't for the life of me remember the amounts of various ingredients. I had to improvise upon a recipe I found online.

I detest searching for recipes online for a number of reasons. The first is that most of them are American. Such recipes too often call for 'a packet of [insert name of store-bought cake/biscuit/crud mixture here]'. That's not cooking. Americans also have a penchant for putting cream cheese in places where it doesn't belong. As far as I'm concerned, baked cheesecake and perhaps the occasional dip are the limit for use of cream cheese. There may be exceptions, but cream cheese does not go with everything! One more thing: Crisco is not a food. It might be used as a component in a formula to create a product that is eaten, but that doesn't make it a food.

I also hate having to convert measures to ounces and pounds. It's frigging ridiculous.

Now, the recipe for Stephanie Alexander's Mum's Red Devil's Cake. Rather than attempting to butter and flour a tin, just use You'll Love Coles non-stick baking paper (rave 2 posts ago). I amended the method as such.

125g butter
200g brown sugar (I use dark brown)
2 eggs, separated (buy free range!)
½ cup milk
250g plain flour
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 tbsp warm water

Chocolate mixture:
150g bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I just use Cadbury Old Gold)
150 brown sugar
½ cup milk
few drops of pure vanilla
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 180°C and [line a 24cm diameter springform or square cake tin with YLC baking paper].

To make the chocolate mixture, gently melt chocolate with sugar, milk and vanilla in a saucepan. When smooth, add egg yolk and cook over gentle heat until mixture thickens slightly [Note: from experience, waiting for the mixture to thicken is not necessary; merely ensure it is homogeneous]. Pour through a strainer into a large mixing bowl and allow to cool. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat egg yolks lightly and mix with milk, then add to creamed butter alternately with flour. Once mixed, stir in the cooled chocolate mixture until it is well combined. Return the mixture to a large mixing bowl.

Dissolve the bicarb soda in the warm water and stir it into the cake mixture. Whisk the egg whites until creamy, then fold into mixture.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 1 hour or until the cake tests clean with a sharp knife or skewer.

Cool the cake completely before cutting.

Costello's vision

Peter Costello's response to Kevin Rudd's assertion that the collective $13 billion HECS debt for Australian university students has spiralled out of control consists of nothing more than "Look how much worse it could be!"

Such constructive and forward thinking from this man Costello who aims to be a future leader of Australia. If Australia based all its policies on 'look how much worse it could be' we'd have a standard of living somewhere between Azerbaijan and Zambia.

As for the tired old line that "Students pay only 25 per cent of the cost, while taxpayers pick up 75 per cent.", exactly what do they think students become after obtaining their degree? Dole-bludgers?

Triple ginger biscuits

Proper photo will have to come later...

I have a bad habit of throwing away interesting recipes. This one was in the Brisbane News a couple of months ago and I thought I'd thrown it out. Thank goodness I hadn't because these biscuits are delicious. I added chunks of dark chocolate to mine (Cadbury Old Gold is good for cooking). The original recipe calls for unsalted butter and also half a teaspoon of salt. Don't bother: just use ordinary butter. The original recipe also calls for molasses; I substituted treacle because I always have it in the cupboard. I also used Buderim 'naked ginger' instead of crystallised ginger.

The recipe also states to refrigerate the dough overnight. I'm impatient, so I always ignore this step when it's called for in a biscuit recipe; I suspect it's to make the dough more manageable (it's initially fairly sticky). I baked a batch from the freshly made dough and refrigerated the rest to bake the next day. The ones from the freshly made dough rose a little more than the ones made from refrigerated dough, and were very slightly more airy, but both lots were delicious.

3/4 cup butter
1 cup dark brown sugar
¼ cup treacle
1 egg (buy free range!)
2¼ cups plain flour
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp baking soda
1½ tbs fresh ginger, finely chopped
½ cup crystallised ginger, finely chopped
2 or 3 rows of dark chocolate, roughly chopped

Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Beat in the treacle and then the egg. Sift the flour, ground ginger and baking soda together. Stir the dry ingredients into the butter base. Add the remaining ginger and stir until well combined (add chocolate chunks here if you're including them). Refrigerate the dough overnight (optional). The next day, bring the dough to room temperature and roll small balls of dough into 2cm diameter rounds (whatever! I prefer small biscuits, Gam prefers large ones... no need to be pedantic about the size).

Place the biscuits on a baking tray covered with 'You'll Love Coles' non-stick baking paper, or an equivalent product. Not that I want to plug a brand name, but that baking paper is awesome. No need to grease, just tear off a sheet and away you go. You can also reuse the sheet for subsequent batches of biscuits. Great stuff.

The biscuits will expand a fair bit, so try and leave a few centimetres between each biscuit. Bake at ~180°C for 10 minutes or until they become lightly browned.

Sucuk

Our lovely little neighbourhood deli has been out of shankleesh for a couple of weeks now. I'd been buying it every week since I first tried it. The guy who runs the deli (along with his wife) asked me if he should get some more in, which made me think I was the only one buying it, and I said yes. After several fruitless visits he's discovered that he can't source the same kind of shankleesh as before, and offered to get some of another kind in and sell it to me at cost; we told him not to jump through any hoops on our account, but I do hope he manages to get hold of some. I was hoping to take some to Kempsey for christmas for my family to try, but at the very least I'd like some for myself because I'm hooked on the stuff!

On our shankleesh-less expedition yesterday, Gam impulse-bought an interesting looking sausage called sucuk. The guy (Rami, I think his name is) said you can eat it with all sorts of things, so Gam fried his up and tried it with pasta, which didn't really work. Because it's a partially dried as well as fermented sausage it has a smell reminiscent of biltong. It smelled to me like it needed to have the crap fried out of it, so that's what I did (kind of like what Patrick suggests doing with salami). I dry-fried thin slices in a non-stick pan was left with some extremely tasty crispy-chewy sucuk and a pan full of fat; if sucuk is anything like salami it's probably about 40% fat, most of it saturated, so frying it like this makes it much healthier, particularly if you drain the fried slices on some paper towel afterwards.

I tore up the fried sucuk and sprinkled it over some wholemeal pita bread spread with fresh hummus and cracked black pepper, then added some fresh basil leaves, halloumi, sliced cucumber and sliced green capsicum.

It was so nice I had the same thing again for dinner along with some shortbread I made for dessert using the recipe from the back of a McKenzies rice flour packet (which worked perfectly, if anyone has a mind to try it).

Filling stage 1: hummus, black pepper, basil leaves, sucuk and fresh halloumi.

Filling stage 2: chopped green capsicum and cucumber

I'll have what he's having

Got hard time for helping MS sufferers.

From the BBC:

Three people have been found guilty of supplying thousands of cannabis-laced chocolate bars to multiple sclerosis sufferers for pain relief.

[...]

All three told the court they believed they had a defence of medical necessity in supplying the cannabis-laced bars, but this was rejected by the jury.

After the hearing Lezley Gibson said: "The maximum sentence for what we've been found guilty of is 14 years in jail. If you were a child pervert your maximum sentence is only 12.

They should have ordered the Pete Doherty Special.

Got help for helping himself to hard drugs.

Singapore: sweet democracy

Remember the recent coup in Thailand where the military imposed martial law? Western media and governments were jumping up and down and squealing about how public gatherings of more than five people were banned, etc etc.

I couldn't help thinking that Singapore is like that all the time.

Singapore bans public gatherings of more than four people without a police permit. Public speaking is also prohibited unless the speaker has been licensed by the government.

[The Singapore government has] also filed defamation law suits against foreign media, most recently the Far Eastern Economic Review, while legal suits launched against opposition politicians have bankrupted Chee and veteran opposition leader JB Jeyaretnam.

Under Singapore's laws, bankrupts cannot contest elections.

Chee, one of Singapore's most vocal opposition politicians, is also facing a defamation suit launched by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father Lee Kuan Yew over an article in the SDP's newsletter.

He has been jailed five times since 1999 for speaking in public without a permit, and for questioning the independence of Singapore's judiciary.

Barbarians

Angel Diaz was a convicted murderer executed by lethal injection in Florida a couple of days ago, needing a second dose of drugs and taking 34 minutes to die.

The Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger and Governor Jeb Bush excused the horrific incident as being due to Diaz having liver disease. That was news to Diaz' family.

Plessinger said Diaz had liver disease, which had made the second dose necessary. However, she did not believe he felt any pain.

"It was not unanticipated," Ms Plessinger said. "The metabolism of the drugs to the liver isslowed."

Diaz's cousin Maria Otero said the family was not aware he suffered from liver disease. "Why a stupid second dose?" Ms Otero asked.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush said the Department of Corrections followed all proper procedures. "A pre-existing medical condition of the inmate was the reason tonight's procedure took longer than recent procedures carried out this year," he said.

Well, it turns out the reason the liver disease was news to Diaz' family was because the story was bullshit.

The real reason for the man's prolonged death is because the injection of the lethal cocktail went through the vein and into the soft tissue.

Diaz appeared to be moving 24 minutes after the first injection, grimacing, blinking, licking his lips, blowing and appearing to mouth words.

As a result of the chemicals going into Diaz's arms around the elbow, he had an 12-inch chemical burn on his right arm and an 11-inch chemical burn on his left arm [the medical examiner] said.

Patrick!

I can't post comments on your blog! First the wordart for word verification wasn't displaying, and now it displays but won't let me log in to comment (even though I'm already logged in). It says something along the lines of 'could not log you in, please try again later'.

Any ideas?

Palm Islanders screwed by DPP

A decades-old glamour photograph of the DPP, Leanne Clare

It seems that expecting justice is a fruitless exercise when you're an aboriginal person in Queensland. Even Mal Brough is calling for an independent review of the death of Mulrunji two years ago, after the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions decided that the Deputy Coroner's finding that the man's death was due to injuries inflicted upon him by Snr Sergeant Chris Hurley was bunk, and reverted to the old 'he fell down the stairs' excuse.

Come on. This stinks to high heaven. At the very least it demands an independent review. A 36 year old man who perhaps should not have even been arrested wound up dead. Young people don't just fall down stairs and die.

Of course, the Queensland government has already ruled out an inquiry, using the lame excuse that to do so would constitute political interference in the judicial process.

Rednecks on the blue water

The freaks who massacred a bunch of seals on Wilsons Promontory back in August have been sentenced.

To a frigging slap on the wrist!

These guys had been drinking, they had high powered rifles, and were laughing and cheering as they used them to illegally shoot 40 Australian fur seals. There were uni students camping on the island while conducting research on the seals; they reported the incident to police.

[One of the culprits' lawyers] said Goodwin was extremely remorseful for his actions and horrified to discover there were people on the island and that he had impacted on their research project.

Yeah. Horrified to know that he'd been caught, the bastard. I'm sure if the uni students hadn't been there to dob him in he'd have been so filled with remorse and sorrow at his actions that he would have dobbed himself in. Yeah fucking right.

What's with the 'six-month intensive correction order' that makes up part of the sentence? How about banning the arsehole from owning a gun or operating a boat for his entire life? It's not like he didn't know what he was doing was against the law, he just thought he'd get away with it.

And he pretty much has. The fine should at least have been big enough to force him to sell his boat.

When someone you know is on a porn site...

So here is your challenge Aussie reader - go to the site and see if you can find anyone you went to school with.... if you need better clarity with the pics, you can view the free preview videos.

Wouldn't you DIE if you saw the jock from High School getting ram rodded in his special no no hole? Would it be wrong to then email it to everyone?

I've always thought it would be hilarious to find someone you knew on a porn site, but it's not something you actually expect to see. So I had a look at the one called Seduced Straight Guys on Tom Gaylord's blog for a bit of a lark. And... there is a guy on there who I am 99.9% sure I went to high school with. Not to mention had a serious crush on at the time!

He wasn't getting rammed in his 'special no no hole' (fantastic turn of phrase, that one), but that doesn't make this find anything other than pure gold.

The internet's a difficult place to hide a skeleton, that's for sure. I guess the only people you really don't want seeing your nude photos are your parents, and if they happen to click the 'I am over 18' button they can't say they didn't have at least some idea of what they were getting into!

Tom also tried to achieve with his 'shaved pussy cunt' what I tried to do a while back with Barley Legal. Barley legal didn't succeed on Google, but maybe 'shaved pussy cunt' will.

Shaved pussy cunt

The US FTA: now they want your blood

The health of Australians should not be put at risk just to satisfy the US' desire to let its companies make a buck off Australian blood under the terms of the US-Australia free trade agreement. We have standards that determine who can donate, and the people who donate here aren't looking to just earn a little pocket money.

Screwing our farmers is bad enough. Screwing with our health? That's not on.

Tamworth: the K-K-Kountry Music Capital

Not only is the mayor of Tamworth a massive bigot and racist, he's also a fucking moron.

Tamworth City Council voted this week to spurn an offer by the Department of Immigration to resettle the families for fear it could lead to a repetition of the Cronulla riots, said the Mayor, James Treloar.

Cr Treloar told the Herald people were worried that allowing the families to move to Tamworth "could lead to a Cronulla riots-type situation. Ask the people at Cronulla if they want more refugees."

I can't believe how naive I am for thinking that surely there would be nobody in this country stupid enough to think that

a) the Cronulla riots were motivated by hatred of refugees

and

b) that the settlement of five Sudanese refugee families will cause the people of Tamworth to riot in the streets, attack police and ambulance officers and anyone whose skin tone suggests a drop of non-anglo blood.

Given the sheer moronic nature of the above claim, it's hard to take seriously his claim that

"of the 12 Sudanese people who live in Tamworth, eight have been before the courts for everything from dangerous driving to rape. These people don't respect authority … they come from countries where there are outbreaks of TB [tuberculosis] and polio. How can we trust the department to screen those things?"

I guess you can't insure against the kind of stupidity that emanates from a redneck being dropped on his head as a baby. Leaving aside that it'll take a whole bowl full of salt to be able to swallow the crime figures he gives without confirming with a reputable source, there are two things left to say:

Firstly, Australian children are still vaccinated against polio. Second, a quick perusal of the worldwide case reporting for polio to date in 2006 reveals not a single case of polio recorded in Sudan.

Mayor James Treloar obviously went to the Pauline Hanson school of stupid.

Thankfully Tamworth has some council members who have the decency to be ashamed of the man.

NY Times Random Wankers

A very low wank factor in the NY Times fashion section today. Only one wanker, in the article on conflict diamonds (seems most people are only becoming aware of the issue because a Hollywood movie has been made about it).

Some jewelers don’t consider it their job to know the origin of their stones. “I’m not here to save the world,” said Raymond Moutran, a jeweler for 27 years in the Los Angeles jewelry district. “I’m here to make life beautiful.”

“One guy wanted to know if the diamond was from Africa and whether it was from an area where people are tortured,” Mr. Moutran said. “I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He didn’t buy. I don’t need to lie to make a living.”

Even better news?

I got an email from my academic advisor today saying that I might be able to finish my degree in one semester next year instead of two if I take on 5 subjects instead of 4 next semester.

I'll hold off sobbing with happiness until I see her tomorrow to find out whether it's really possible... but my fingers are tightly crossed!

Update: That didn't last long- I have *one* compulsory subject that is only offered in 2nd semester next year. Bugger!

Good news

It was nice to wake up to the news that a recount of three Victorian state senate seats had delivered the Greens an extra seat and taken one from the DLP, rather than delivering the Bracks government a majority.

What was scary was knowing that 3 districts were wrongly counted and hearing that the count was off by several thousand votes in each case.

Killer Road!

Some dickhead motorcyclist speeds along a stretch of road near Brisbane and kills himself.

Another dickhead in a car (on his L-plates, no less) is caught doing 193km/h on the same road a few hours later.

Who is at fault in these incidents?

The Killer Road!

Beans

A dessicated dwarf bean plant with the empty pods still attached

Drink drank drunk: life on alcohol farm

This article in the Guardian tackles the question of whether different types of alcoholic drinks will produce different effects on a person.

Tequila makes me violent and vodka sneaks up on me like an evil assassin of drunkenness. Gin, on the other hand, turns me mean. We are convinced that different drinks produce different effects yet, so far, science has failed to prove this.

[...]

Says Moore, "I strongly refute the idea that port gives you worse hangovers. Think about it: when do you drink port except after a four-course meal and about 10 bottles of wine? And then everyone blames the last drink."

From personal experience, different drinks do give different effects. Not in terms of 'drink X makes me happy, drink Y makes me depressed', but a lot of drinks just make me feel plainly unwell.

I've puked while drunk on 3 different occasions (all of them when I was 18) and had a proper hangover twice in my life (both times also when I was 18). The first time was from drinking cheap vodka, and far too much of it. Basically, I felt like I poisoned myself. Definitely one of the worst experiences of my life, even without taking into account the embarrassing fact I puked in a friend's bathroom and had to phone my parents to pick me up because I was worried I would pass out. Oh the shame!

The second time was shortly after ingesting some nasty blackberry flavoured liqueur; if I recall correctly it was some kind of dare. Again, I had drunk too much prior to ingesting said liqueur and it was highly embarrassing. No hangover that time, though. The stuff simply wasn't in my stomach for long enough.

The third time was at the college ball. 'Free' alcohol was included in the price of the ticket. The 'free' alcohol was what I call 'goon in a bottle'- really cheap white wine. It smelled really funny and after drinking just enough to get nicely tipsy (only about 3 or 4 small glasses) I was throwing my guts up in the bushes and being carried out of a taxi and cleaned up and put to bed by Gam (if there ever was a deal breaker in a relationship that would have been it!). Killer hangover. I felt like I'd been poisoned and come close to death.

Usually I'm extremely picky about what I drink. I know what I like and stick to it. Back in the days when we lived more like proper students I could hold my alcohol quite well. Now, because I probably average about 1 drink a month, I'm an extremely cheap drunk. But the only occasions on which I've actually felt ill have been when I ingested cheap and nasty alcoholic drinks.

Another one that comes to mind is bourbon. I've never actually drunk bourbon, because the smell alone makes me want to be sick.

The last time I noted this was when I finished my exams this semester and went for a couple of social beers with some friends from my class and a couple of the lab technicians who had decided to quit after being told by the uni that they had to reapply for their jobs at lower rates of pay. I had two, maybe three glasses of Heineken (there's not all that much choice at the Red Room...). Enough to make me slightly tipsy. A couple of hours later (somewhere around 2pm) I felt like I had a really mild hangover. I felt slightly off-colour for the rest of the day.

This doesn't just occur with drinks I don't enjoy, like cheap white wine or Heineken. Even the nice-tasting alcoholic (3.5%) ginger beer we bought when we had a barbeque recently made me feel a bit off. I could tell I didn't want to drink another after I'd finished my first. Instead I got nicely wasted on freshly made cosmopolitans, and felt great the next day. My habit of drinking large quantities of water before bed probably helps too, but for me it's the cheap and nasty alcohol that produces the ill-effects.

Obviously cheap wine and beer can't affect everyone as badly as they affect me, or hardly anyone would buy them. My Mum is a connoisseur of goon (she insists there are some good ones. Ha!), and my brother is able to drink almost anything (although he's probably lost count of the hangovers he's had). I've heard friends and acquaintances rave about drinking sessions where they threw up but then kept drinking- and conclude that it was a great night! The only times I've ever thrown up I felt like I'd been poisoned, and wouldn't have dreamed of touching anything except a glass of water and a toothbrush before hitting the sack.

"The effects of alcohol are similar, whichever form they come in," says Dr Guy Ratcliffe, medical director of the Medical Council on Alcohol. "Any difference is dependent on the rate at which it is drunk and the amount. Alcohol is a simple molecule that is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. So if you drink a few shorts - spirits are generally 40% ABV [alcohol by volume] - quickly, you'll get a rapid increase in your blood alcohol level."

In the end, all alcohols might be equal on a molecular level, sure, but some alcohols are more equal than others. I trust my stomach.

Introducing the Apple tam-Pod

Lenman's owner Rach explains why the tam-Pod would be the perfect stocking stuffer for the pre-menopausal woman in your life.

'Young drivers most unpopular'

Please note: spoiler size is inversely proportional to penis size.

There's a reason why people hate young drivers. Particularly young, male drivers.

It's because so many of them drive like dickheads.

Almost without exception I am able to determine whether the driver of a particular vehicle is a young male because many of them speed even in suburban side-streets and seem to think the existence of the brake pedal is some kind of urban legend. They also drive like they don't give a shit about other road users (drivers, cyclists and pedestrians alike), but in that respect they're no different to about 90% of other drivers.

Truck drivers are up there on my list too. In part their behaviour is a product of the pressure they're put under to perform to expectations unrealistic for any human being. On the other hand, there's no excuse for speeding and aggressive driving in a vehicle capable of turning a highway into a slaughterhouse in the blink of an eye. Human life is worth more than any excuse that can be made for such an incident.

Old people, not so much. We've all heard stories in the news of that remind us of a scene from South Park.
However, many elderly drivers are meticulous about following the road rules and are probably the most careful drivers around. My Grandma was an exception, but she was a crappy driver her entire life to the point where my brother and I were never allowed to be passengers in her car. The world's a safer place now that Grandma doesn't have a licence!

What did surprise me about the results of the survey was that 60% of people said they would not stop and help a young driver stranded by the side of the road. That's just plain nasty. Unless the young driver had almost run them off the road a couple of kilometres back and they figure it's karma... but that wasn't in the question.

Someone returned my wallet!

Just as the Scenes of Crime chick predicted, the dickhead who stole my wallet tossed it into some bushes in the backyard of some units across the road. Some maintenance or gardening guy found it and returned it. I was in the shower at the time so I missed a chance to thank him profusely, but Gam did so on my behalf. I phoned the police to let them know so they could update their report (the SOC woman said to do that if someone handed it in, otherwise I might not have bothered. I'm sure the cops don't have their knickers in a knot over a break-in this inconsequential).

Only the $8.10 was missing; all the cards were still there. That saves me having to fork out for a new driver's licence, student card and wallet, at least. Oddly, the cards were kind of bent, as if someone had tried to bend the wallet. Gam said they were probably pissed off about the tiny amount of money they got for their efforts. I'll still have to wait on the arrival of a new keycard and credit card after cancelling the ones in my wallet, which is a pest.

Still, I got off lightly. Have been fastidiously locking all the doors at night and locking Feifei out if he asks to go to the toilet. He'll probably break his 4am habit when he gets tired of being locked on the balcony for 3 hours.

$8.10. Enough for a meal at McDonalds and that's about it. Heh.

Epidural lowers chance of successful breast-feeding

This is just awesome. Can you imagine this happening in an Australian election campaign?

I am pretty sure it was already well known that having an epidural and/or an elective caesarean reduced the chance of a mother being able to successfully breast-feed her baby, but researchers from the University of Sydney are in the news for their large study of 1300 women who gave birth in 1997, adding to the available evidence.

[75%] of those who had no analgesia were breastfeeding at 24 weeks, compared with 53% who received pethidine or epidurals.

It's no longer just about weighing up the unsavoury prospect of a needle in your spine vs. the excruciating pain of childbirth. The baby's health and lifetime risk of allergies, obesity (and associated non-communicable diseases) also have to be taken into account; failure to breastfeed increases the risk for all of these.

The researchers are quoted in The Australian as saying that the impact of the epidural (or individual drugs used in the epidural) on breastfeeding should be classified as an adverse drug reaction. They are absolutely correct.

Like you didn't see this coming...

Lucky he got Aussie Jesus and not American Jesus.

From this to this... and now this.

Not even one week has passed since The Australian splashed anti-muslim screeds across its pages over the 'desecration' of a bible by a couple of boys at an islamic school in Melbourne. Nonetheless, the paper has succeeded in luring the crazies out of the woodwork, with one of the school officials being approached in the school grounds and bashed by a man who said he was 'Jesus'.

'A man come up and grabbed me, punching me in the face saying, 'I'm Jesus, I am going to kill you'," Mr Mohandis said.

"He said: 'I am Jesus. What did you do to my Bible? You burned my Bible."'

According to a school report of the incident, the man, who had alcohol on his breath, pushed Mr Mohandis into a room full of other teachers and yelled: "You are the people who come to Australia and do these filthy things and burnt the Bible."

The man later pulled what appeared to be a revolver from his trousers and pointed it towards teachers.

Well done, guys, well done. I'm sure that firing up hatred of muslims in the community was an entirely unforeseeable consequence of the provocative language used in the articles on that particular event.

See here and here for previous posts.

Fun with Wikipedia

Wikipedia: the only place where you can leap from lingonberry jam to lutefisk to Finnish cuisine and finish up at the filmography of a Finnish porn star.

More tomatoes!

It's not like I did anything other than plant a couple of seeds and cart a watering can out to the balcony every couple of days, but I'm still chuffed that I managed to grow tomatoes. Plus, even though they're probably just the same cultivar sold in supermarkets (you can't expect much for $1.10 a packet) they taste incredible just by virtue of being ripened on the vine in the sun instead of being picked green and gassed with ethylene before being put on the shelves.

Lindt Mint: not that intense

When I saw Lindt 'Mint Intense' on the shelves of the local Coles, I thought Lindt must have received complaints from lovers of mint chocolate about their limp-wristed 'mint' flavoured milk chocolate and those pathetically weak (but expensive) 'limited edition' mint balls that came out a few years ago and developed a product to suit lovers of real mint chocolate.

Apparently not. Lindt 'Mint Intense' is a decent dark chocolate with a mild to moderate minty flavour. The promise of intense mint flavour wasn't something it lived up to. I was envisaging something like the flavour of Red Tulip After Dinner Mints (which was actually what I was craving at the time, but local Coles doesn't sell them any more). If I'd known how much of a letdown this product would be, I would have saved myself $0.50 and bought a packet of my trusty favourite Lindt 70%.

Hmph. Try again, Lindt.

Dickhead of the day

Someone broke into our place last night, or rather early this morning.

I got up sometime between 4-4:30am when Feifei stuck his whiskers in my face to wake me up because he wanted to go to the toilet. I unlocked the door to our front balcony to let him out to use his litter tray and didn't bother locking it again; the sun was rising and I knew we'd be up in a couple of hours.

When I got up at 7:30am I noticed the sliding screen door on the balcony was wide open. I shut it, figuring it must have been really windy in the last couple of hours, because occasionally it will blow open if there is an extremely strong wind. I didn't stop and think that whenever we even have a moderately strong wind the balcony chairs blow over and make a loud noise. The chairs remained upright.

Then I couldn't find Feifei. He wasn't on the bed when I got up, he wasn't on the balcony, he wasn't on his tower or on one of our chairs in the study. I started to figure he'd fallen off the balcony again, but I called him, and saw him poking his head out of the study. He looked around nervously before doing a 'belly crawl' over to me and proceeded to skulk around, sniffing the floor and looking terrified.

That's absolutely not normal for Feifei, unless there is a stranger in the place. I decided to check for my wallet. I'd left my wallet on the kitchen bench after we went to Coles yesterday evening. It wasn't there. Given that I'm sometimes a little forgetful I decided to look in all the places I might have left it. Not in any of those places either.

I woke Gam and explained that I was probably being paranoid, but...

So Gam helped me look for my wallet. Our laptop was still in the study, but to get to the study someone would have had to walk past our open bedroom door. We looked everywhere. In the bins, in every drawer, every bag, every cupboard in the place. Still no wallet. I was hoping that I'd just put it somewhere stupid and we'd find it. Sure I'd never live it down, but at least I wouldn't have lost my keycard, credit card, driver licence, medicare card, student ID, centrelink health care card (which, stupidly, contains my customer reference number)... basically every bit of access to my money and identity.

Yesterday was one month to the day that our neighbours across the road were broken into. Unfortunately for them, it was right in the middle of exams, and a wallet and a laptop were stolen.

After talking to our residential managers and looking through the entire place one more time I cancelled the credit card and keycard, and called the police to report a break-in. It seemed a bit excessive to bother reporting it to the police given how little was stolen and it was my fault for not locking the door, but I need a police report to be able to replace my student ID without charge, and there might have been other break-ins in the area, making this one relevant to their investigations.

The police came over, took down the relevant information and had a look around. Best of all they didn't make me feel like I was wasting their time with a trivial matter. They said we may get a call from their crime scenes team if they wanted to take fingerprints, but I doubt it will be worth their while. As an aside (I may have said it before) let me just say I think our local cops must be the best looking police in Australia. All the police I've ever seen in our local area are fit (no doughnut bellies), clean-cut and incredibly good looking (the women and the men). They look like they ought to be on brochures advertising a career in the police force. Spiffy.

I'd also like to say to the creepy, horrible person who broke into our place:

sucked in!

You got $8.10 and a bunch of useless cards for your efforts, along with my undying bad will. That's what you get for robbing someone who's probably poorer than you, dickhead.

I'm going to have to fork out $65 to replace my licence and go to a fair bit of trouble to replace all those cards and notify the companies who direct debit our various bills from the credit card that we will have a different card number, but I do get a sense of satisfaction out of knowing the moron won't even be able to buy a packet of cigarettes for his efforts.

The weird part about this is that if Feifei hadn't reacted in the way he did I'd have had no reason to check for my wallet, and wouldn't have noticed it missing until we next had to do some shopping.

====================================================

Gamprint

Paper used for print

UPDATE: A lovely lady from 'scenes of crime' did give us a call and came around to dust for fingerprints. She didn't find anything useful on the balcony railing except for one I'd already noticed and presumed was Gam's. She took his print on a piece of paper just in case (and confirmed it was his), and was nice enough to let us keep it afterwards. The balcony door was a mass of fingerprints, none of them really useful, and the person who broke in wouldn't have had any need to touch the flat surface on the door frame anyway.

It wasn't at all like CSI, but I'm betting if she has kids they must think she has the coolest job in the world. Would have loved to get a photo of her at work (unidentifiable, obviously), but it would have been a particularly odd request for the victim of a B&E to make, so I thought better of it.

Baby Cheney has two mommies

How funny is it to think of the panty-twisting that must be going on with the nutbag right wingers in the US at the news that Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter and her partner are having a baby?

Heh. The only thing scary about this pregnancy is the fact that the baby will contain some of Dick Cheney's DNA.

*shudder*

Land of the Free

This is Maher Arar. He is a Canadian citizen. While transiting through the US the US govt. kidnapped him, held him unlawfully, tortured him and then illegally sent him to Syria where he was tortured for almost a year. He has no association with any terrorists or terrorist groups. The US govt. continues to rant and rave about Syria not being a democracy and wrings its hands over their terrible human rights record. Perhaps not too loudly though. After all, who would carry out the beatings and torture needed to safeguard 'freedom' if Bashar al Assad were removed from power?

[Transcript of Mr Arar's statement]

Mimic Octopus

This amazing photo of an Indo-Malayan Mimic Octopus by photographer Michael Aw won him the prize for Underwater World in Wildlife Photographer of the Year. I haven't seen the other photos his was up against, but that's just such a top-notch piece of photography; the octopus is probably quite a shy creature, but here it looks imposing and powerful. I'd say Aw's win was well-deserved.

Gam's kidney stone

Around midday today Gam suddenly developed acute pain on the right side of his lower abdomen. We managed to get him an appointment with one of the uni doctors; she tested a urine sample and noted it had a large amount of blood but no increased white cell count, so she said it was probably a kidney stone. He has to go for x-rays and ultrasound.

He feels a lot better now. After we got home I made him pee through a tea strainer (one I use for catching mozzie larvae for our fish, not for straining tea!) and sure enough, a little kidney stone came out. It's only about 1.5mm in diameter, but it's all spiky and crystalline, so no wonder it hurt. The doc said sometimes there's a big stone and little bits break off and travel down the ureter, so we're hoping it's not one of those. Gam has an important test on Monday; the last thing he needs is to be felled by kidney stones.

What's funny about this is that I read this post in the blog of an american urologist last weekend, and pointed it out to Gam. I'm always at him to drink more water. I drink at least 4L a day (probably quite a bit more, noting that I have to refill our ~9L water filter container every 24 hours), while Gam usually drinks less than half that, and he's twice my bodyweight. It's a bit of a worry, but I didn't really think he'd get kidney stones at his age. Given that we had our first really hot weather a bit over a week ago, and Gam plays social football every saturday for a couple of hours without a break (refusing to drink plenty of water beforehand claiming it gives him a stitch), I gave him a meaningful poke in the ribs when I pointed out the 'stone season' post, and he promised to try and drink more water.

He did increase his water intake to around 2L a day, but today he hadn't consumed any liquid except his morning coffee, so he was definitely dehydrated. We bought some water at the pharmacy where we bought some painkillers, and he's consumed 1.5L since we arrived home at 2pm. He's complaining bitterly about having to pee 'all the time'!

Fingers crossed that there are no more stones. I'm going to try and photograph the one we 'caught', but I'm not sure how that will go, given how small it is. Gam kindly allowed me to discuss his kidney stone on my blog, despite regularly accusing me of taking an unnatural interest in peoples' medical conditions ('mediporn', he calls it). Thanks Gam, I love you and I hope you're better soon :)

No more Question Time!

Yawn.

Thank heavens Parliament is out for the year and the pollies have a long holiday. I'm sick of sprinting for the radio remote every morning (an hour earlier now, thanks to daylight saving time in NSW) in order to avoid listening to that crap.

This morning was particularly galling: there was a very interesting item on how researchers from the University of Auckland had found some item for babies (I think it was car seats) was responsible for causing the blood oxygen levels of the babies to drop, and in some cases lose consciousness.

The announcer was interviewing one of the authors of the study, when all of a sudden he cut the guy off, saying it was time for... Question Time! I'm sure anxious parents hanging on to find out the details of the study understood that the ability of the Australian people to listen to a bunch of tossers yelling and calling each other names while someone yells 'order!' is much more important than something that might affect the health of their kids. [Update: it's in The Australian today].

I'm of the opinion Question Time should have its own channel. That way the freaks who actually want to listen (sorry Mikey, it's just not natural!) can tune in, while the freaks who like to listen to the news all day aren't assaulted with the vile outpourings of our Federal politicians.

NY Times Random Wankers

It's starting to look like this might be a regular feature. There are just too many outrageous tossers featured every thursday and saturday for me to let them all pass by. It's been a gold mine over the past couple of weeks! A selection from today's articles:

The dogs look embarrassed.
The owners look like wankers.

Flaunted as fashion statements, pint-sized canines are, to some minds, the fur-bearing equivalent of a pair of Louboutin pumps or other accessory. “I think of them as a handbag with a heartbeat,”said Robin Bowden, a vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, a real estate company in Manhattan.

[...]

Muffin, a 3-year-old Yorkie, is a weekend regular at the Cafe Orlin on St. Marks Place in Manhattan. “I like to take her to brunch,” said Alex Revana, her mistress. Ms. Revana, a freelance fashion stylist, has provided Muffin with her own doggie garment rack with miniature hangers to hold knitted, fleece and quilted cover-ups.

Paige, Ms. Lewis’s dog, owns 40 outfits, among them an Hermès coat. Part of Ms. Lewis’s closet is designated for the dog. Like her mistress, she likes to make a fashion statement. “With the two of us it’s an equal opportunity thing,” Ms. Lewis said. “I sit up at wee hours of the night online to find that one store in, like, Canada or Switzerland, so Paige can have that one sweater that no New Yorker will ever have.”

At night they curl up in the bag to sleep.

On New York women who develop health problems from carrying too much shit in unnecessarily large bags:

Ms. Ehrlich recommends weekly massages for the pain. Gentle stretching and warm baths with Epsom salts can help bag abusers, too, she said. But she would never tell a client to ditch her Mulberry Elgin tote.

“It’s like telling a woman, ‘You cannot wear Manolo Blahniks,’ ” she said. “It’s just not realistic.”

[...]

This year all locations are reporting an increase in massage clients with bag-induced back pain. To them, Bliss recommends its 75-minute deep tissue treatment at $150, which is an intense sports massage.

[...]

“I’ve suffered major back, neck and shoulder pain from carrying heavy bags,” said Kimberly Whalen, 37, a literary agent in New York who recently bought the ubiquitous black Chanel carryall, which more than one fashion Web site has compared to a trash bag. “I’ve even had M.R.I.’s and cortisone treatments to help alleviate the problem.”

Sasha Charnin Morrison, 42, the fashion director at US Weekly, admitted that her bags are so large that she often gets stuck in revolving doors. “They may not be practical, but so what?” she said. “When it comes to fashion, being practical is a huge bore.”

Yeah, being a laughing stock is a lot more exciting. For the people who get to laugh at you!

Pollies gorge on taxpayer largesse

Mmm, yesss, give me some more of your tax dollarssss...

Flying economy class is a real bitch. Unless you're allowed to bring a large drink bottle onto the plane, you have to make do with the medicine-glass-sized cups the airline gives to passengers. If you drink enough to avoid getting dehydrated and aren't fortunate enough to be sitting in the aisle seat then you have to ask the one or two adults in the seats next to you to kindly leave their seats so you can go and pee. It's worse when it's dark and said adults are sound asleep. After visiting the horrid little toilet you then have to ask them to get up again so you can return to your seat. All that bullshit the airlines say about getting up to stretch your legs (to reduce risk of DVT) really is just bullshit because it's impossible. Long flights are painful, uncomfortable, noisy, dry, the meals suck, the toilets smell and if you fly Qantass the staff treat you like crap.

Nonetheless, if I was an MP, I would fly economy and stay in 3 star hotels or pay the difference out of my own pocket to avoid looking like a fucking leech.

Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile, while still trade minister, spent more than $375,000 on travel in the six months to June 30.

This included $89,000 on a five-day trip for an OECD meeting in Paris in May – a rate of $17,800 a day.

Mr Vaile also spent $106,000 on a nine-day visit to the US and UK in March for a review of the US-Australia free trade agreement and World Trade Organisation meetings.

Let me just say though, despite Senator Ross Lightfoot being a denialist right wing nutbag, he did only claim $6,468.07 for his 10 day 'study tour' of Iraq. Liberal MP Peter Lindsay also got good value for his $10,154.68, managing to visit French Polynesia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, USA, UK, Gibraltar, Iceland, Turkey, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Nepal.

Why on earth were the other bastards so greedy then?

Woop-dee-doo, he demoted a woman

Why is the media manufacturing outrage over Kevin Rudd's decision to drop (gasp!) a woman from the front bench? Senator Hurley is a 'new' senator, only arriving in the job in 2005. Apparently she hasn't performed too well in her portfolio (which might not be a huge surprise given her lack of experience and the fact that she was only promoted to the front bench because she was a woman).

I think Labor's efforts to increase the number of female candidates and ministers are admirable, but winning the next election is of primary importance. Besides, would it have been any better if Rudd had told her something along the lines of "you're the weakest link, but we're letting you stay because you're a woman"?