recepticle=Saturday, March 29, 2003
it's been a long while / getting from there to here
when i was watching star trek: enterprise, i thought it was really good, and that it pissed all over deep space nine or voyager. but it fell down at one very crucial stage, where the other two rose triumphantly above it; the theme music. carrying forward with the precedent set by the next generation, the brilliant short classical compositions that started tng, ds9 and voyager gave you a sense of hope for the future. unfortunately, the intro music to enterprise gives you a sense of def leppard.
but that's not what i wanted to tell you about. i did want to tell you about some punk-ass journalist who had stated publically that all webloggers have too much time on their hands, and have poor social skills, and that i decided to have him about it. i wrote this long rambling email, saying that if "someone publically defined every columnist/journalist as an anally retentive, self-worshipping twister of the truth who has a clearly overblown concept of their own importance", he probably wouldn't dig on it too much. oh, and by the way, did he know that not all black people are criminals?
well, he responded with "will satire be banned outright, in this Brave New World? i grow fearful... ;-)" and gave me a url to an article he posted where he said he liked someone's blog.
*claps. slowly.*
i'm not sure i mentioned anything about setting up a new society (unless he's somehow found my top secret plans for lawrieland), but... you know, well done anyway. owned me.
also, i'd like to point out that tokyoplastic is absolutely magical monster. that's a new term. use it.
- posted by lawrie at 2:16 PM ~ comments
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
chinese, japanese, portuguese? break your knees
for approximately 20 minutes yesterday, this site was being redirected to some kind of spanish/portuguese portal. i ran a whois on it, and it turns out they're hosted on the same server as me. this does not bode particularly well for the security of my site. originally i was thinking hopefully that it might have been a dsl screw-up by my hosts, but that fact that it only targetted index2.html on a subdirectory of gaijindesign, and not index.html, or even the root domain, leads me to believe that something fishy was going on.
and due to overwhelming demand...
*cough*
here's another video possibly proving that saddam is still alive and well. right click it and "save as", otherwise you 56k'ers are in for a bit of a wait. ya boo sucks to you, mr. bush.
- posted by lawrie at 3:00 PM ~ comments
Saturday, March 22, 2003
lawrie: approximately eleven times more accurate than cnn
bilal the toking muslim sent me a text message this morning say that the daily star decided to relegate it's coverage of the war to page four so that it could dedicate pages two and three to giant pictures of rod stewart's new girlfriend. my only question is this: who reads the daily fucking star? is it even possible to read?
as news emerges that dictator saddam hussein is quite possibly dead or wounded, i managed to find a piece of footage that suggest this may not be the case (right-click and choose "save as" - you'll need div-x). there was also a possible out-take recorded only minutes before. some have said this may just be another of his body doubles, but i think you'll have to decided for yourself.
- posted by lawrie at 6:07 PM ~ comments
music school for retards!
well, everyone has gone home, emily is in spain, and lawrie is fucking bored. so, while updating my wishlist (it told me to add that fifteen thousand dollar tv; i didn't have a choice. amazon thought i would want it. and i do), i saw that there was a special link; 'click here for amazon's music store!'. so that's what i did. and this is what i got. who wants to start a band with me?
also, commiserations to jon, who was well and truly hacked yesterday. that sucks. he was amazingly blasé about it all; when it happened to me, i went ballistic and shut my site down, only to have it fronted by a robot. and you know the problems i've had keeping robots in bed. with magnets!
- posted by lawrie at 1:02 AM ~ comments
Thursday, March 20, 2003
it'll be lonely this weekend... without you to hold
you gotta love that old mud classic. mumfy is leaving for spain tomorrow and won't be back until monday. i'll miss her like crazy, but as soon as she gets back i've got her all to myself for five weeks.
but in the meantime, since i'll be all lonely and sad on my own this weekend, feed me your pity. buy me stuff.
- posted by lawrie at 3:39 AM ~ comments
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
"gentleman, 'the big issue' - it keeps your mind off the females."
a couple of times i've been asked why i don't have a tagboard on my site. well, there are a couple of reasons; a) i think they're a faddy gimmick (sorry to everyone who has one), and b) they encourage anonymous posting, and c) they stop people from making any effort to contact you.
i have my comments, and i have my email form.comments are nice for feedback on any one particular post, or if someone just wants to say; mostly it's the former rather than the latter. my email form saves anyone from having to log in to their email to send me a message. however, this does not necessarily stop people from leaving anonymous feedback. and what is the one constant, the one k that binds all anonymous feedback in the universe together? it's almost always negative.
i've only mentioned this to a couple of people, and it's come to mind recently after an email exchange with a nice lady called jen. here's a tip for all you would-be anonymous nay-sayers; if you've got something negatory to say, at least have the balls to fight for it. let's take a look at example a:
name: Jon-Petter
subject: Jall
email: kan du gi faan i
phone: fuck deg
comments: this site sucks... i can do better... shape up, and impress me with something that is great...
i received this today via the company web site. unless he is jon petter, renowned saxophonist with the tinpots band, i've not had too much luck googling him down. and that, perhaps, was his intention. "i could do better" he states boldly, yet offers nothing for comparison. "impress me with something that is great" he challenges, yet offers no email address for us to contact him, should we have anything 'great' to show. besides which, it's all a crock of bullshit; one man's strawberry pie is another man's shit sandwich. i think gandhi said that. 'jon petter' would deride anything that we were to produce, and his lack of producing anything comparable means that he has got a site, but he blatantly built it with geocities pagebuilder. version 0.5b. and it's full of dancing "cool spot" gifs and java applets.
example b:
from jrodmc[at]boxfrog.com on Tuesday, March 11, 2003 at 20:51:12
message: sxe... Do you pronounce that "sexie"? And what's wrong exactly with
being a third rate Jehovah's witness? Are YOU going to inherit you're
own planet for "looking after yourself"? (By the way, before you get
all "cheeky", I happen to think Jehovah's are wanker wannabes.) No
wonder you morons can't win a war by yourselves anymore... Give Ireland back
to the Irish ya lame fuck!! Besides how smart can you be, you don't
even use capitalization. Thanks for the Jedi Quiz, you can go die now...
i don't even know where to begin, although, rather stupidly, he left his email address. this is because my email form requires a valid address, or it's no email for you. i get the impression that he makes those quotation marks with his fingers when he talks ('before you get all "cheeky"...' you can so see him doing it)... and then BAM! all of a sudden we're talking about devolutionary politics. doubleyou tee eff? also, i'm guessing he's american, and "you can't win a war by yourselves anymore" makes some kind of allusions to world war two, and probably the current situation with iraq. well, heads up buster, we didn't start either of them. and if i'm not mistaken, it was george wtf. bush who started the whole shit and shinola we find ourselves in right now.
"woohoo! i'm president with 48% of the vote! G7 summit? no thanks! middle east peace talks? not fucking likely! war with anyone who isn't white? you bet your ass!"
- posted by lawrie at 4:14 PM ~ comments
Friday, March 14, 2003
save russian jews! win valuable prizes!
i have nothing of interest to note, really... apart from jon and i walking through the shopping mall the other day, where people are now setting up stalls and desperately trying to accost anyone passing to buy their credit card/club membership/bling-bling watches/home-crafted belts and dogs/iraqi real estate/support for george w. bush, the most dangerous and loathsome fucker on the planet who is selfishly using semi-fresh oxygen that i could be breathing.
this woman was obviously going for the hard sell, trying to get us to sign up for some shitpot club that had just opened. my opinion is; if you need to try and sell it, it's not worth buying. so we walk on, trying to ignore her, but she follows us, all the while shouting (i mean, literally shouting) about the great benefits of paying extortionate membership fees, which we could only jhope to recoup by drinking ourselves to death within a month. so, i turned around and had it out with her:
me: look, i'm straightedge. i don't drink.
annoying woman: (looks momentarily stunned)...what, ever?
me: not even at christmas.
aw: but... but it's two for one on all drinks!
me: yeah... i still don't drink. (i turn around to leave)
aw: so, what? you don't go out ever? don't socialise? don't have any friends?
now, this may just be my opinion, but if she wants to sell me her boolsheet membership, making fun of my life choice by engaging in an argument of implied semantics is perhaps not the best way of going about it.
me: (sarcasm mode: ON) no, not ever. i live in a small, damp cave in the highlands, and my only for of social interaction and entertainment is my small band of elves; we dance and sing the night away (i do a small jig to demonstrate).
aw: (to jon) he's a comedian, ain't he? a right joker!
but we had already started to walk away. suffice to say, she did not get the power-up and win the game.
- posted by lawrie at 1:11 AM ~ comments
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
if my eyes are opened any wider, they'll just fall out
me, yen, jon and annabel (seriously, fuck you guys - i hate writing out href tags) went to see 'bowling for columbine' yesterday evening. if you haven't seen it, then... well, fucking... do see it. the fact that michael moore could open my eyes to fifty years worth of u.s.-funded murder in thirty seconds is... damning. i still can't really get my head round it, which is why i'm downloading the whole documentary right now.
in slightly more upbeat news, go and check out electrotank and their absolutely mathtastic game of isometric mini golf. it's fucking brilliant.
also, does anyone know of any genetic engineering firms that might be trying to produce a real-life stitch? i want to get one for mumfy, but ssshhh - it's a secret.
// edit
it seems blogsnob may have shat it's pants. any ideas?
- posted by lawrie at 2:43 PM ~ comments
Sunday, March 09, 2003
bobby dazzler
well, competition is over, and goddamn, y'all suck. from the real (bill clinton and franklin d. roosevelt were both suggested) to the surreal (gay ellen from that show, 'ellen'; i quote "robot president of the lesbian united states"), no one actually got the real answer. i mean, don't you people learn anything from history? is history even taught in schools anymore?
very well, the answer: the first robot president of the united states of america was optimus prime.
although i would have also accepted the vice president of his administration, metal mickey.
- posted by lawrie at 10:00 PM ~ comments
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
it's like saturday morning, but wednesday night
i have a headache and i'm tired, but this does not stop me from being the most fun-ass person on the whole internet. so i've got a competition for you. i know that last time i unloaded that little word puzzle on you all, but offered no incentive for anyone to actually get it right (and for those who did guess; you all failed), but this time i am offering a real, true-to-life-and-able-to-hold-in-your-hands prize. the prize is a 3-track cd by a real english emo band from my local town called 'pictures paint words'. and they do truely sucketh. i mean, they are pretty fucking dire, even by the standards of the busker by the escalator to get to the northern line on the tube, who can't actually play guitar, but just strums it open anyway and sings random words while dancing. with no shirt on.
so, if you answer the question correctly and use the contact button below to mail it to me, i will send you this glorious musical experience, and even pay the postage. the first person to email me with the correct answer, i will reply and get your postal address. i promise i won't post it on 'baldmidgetstalkers-bbs.com'.
so, after all of that; the question:
what was the name of the first robot president of the united states of america?
rock school.
- posted by lawrie at 11:43 PM ~ comments
Monday, March 03, 2003
stupid motherfuckers and their worthless lives
for my next trick, i will throw five completely inapproriate adjectives (well, four and one noun) into my blog. can you spot them?
so i was making the journey back from colchester yesterday. i was almost convinced that it was early summer, based on how light the sky was, and how the temperature was so yellow. there was a bus service going from colchester to marks tey because some train had knocked out an overhead power line on friday, which is the exact reason that i was later than usual getting to colchester. is boolsheet if you ask me.
i get to london and, i don't know how much any of you know about london (that is, assuming you're not from this country, or planet, possibly), but the easiest way to get from anywhere to anywhere is the tube. there's this massive network of tubes under the city, and people just stand under them, get picked up, and fly to wherever they're headed. it's really ecclesiastical.
only joking. ha. ha. so how does a city the size of london get by when they shut down half of the operating tube lines half the fucking time? has the transport commission gone nounal? it's absolutely predatory.
anyway, i finally get on a train headed back to leicester, and about ten minutes into the journey, a guy comes and sits behind me with his two irritating little kids. i was soon to discover that this man's entire existence was far more irritating than his kids could ever dream of being. in fact, within a very short space of time, i was desperately wishing that they could have a new father.
for a start, he had possibly the most annoying fucking ringtone on his mobile phone ever created. and that's saying something. not only that, but he had apparently set the volume to level eleven, and we're sitting in the mobile-free coach, for fucks sake. most of the time, i don't mind other people using their mobiles in that coach - everyone does it, and most have the decency to at least lower the volume... but when, every three minutes, i hear
blip bip-blip bip! bleeep blipblip blip beep blip blip!
right in my ear, it tends to grate just a teensy bit. i really had no choice but to overhear what he was saying... and frankly, it disturbed me.
he had driven from... wherever the fuck he's from, to somewhere pretty far south of london, to meet someone he didn't really know. he didn't even know their name. and he took his kids. after the meeting, he went to drive back, and, to quote "there was something wrong with the gearbox. don't know what, so i just ditched it." he couldn't get his car started, so he just ditched it. and he's got his kids with him. then he somehow hiked it up to london, and got on the first train leaving, which happened to go to sheffield. he then rang his wife, and asked her to check online to see if there was one particular woman he knew that happened to live in sheffield, and see if he and his kids could stay with her.
a little later, his kids asked him if he could read one of their story books for them, a tale about snap the crocodile. he said he would, but apparently he couldn't. i've never heard such a mumbled, let's-read-this-as-fast-as-i-fucking-can-but-i-can't-actually-seem-to-read-or-be-bothered, garbled account of snap and his friends. after skipping through the book in a record thirty seconds, and then announcing sarcastically that it was a great story, and very interesting, his kids begged him to read another story book. i'm sitting their thinking "oh for fucks sake, kids... you're dad sucks ass at telling stories. get a clue. get a panda."
anyway, he lamely tries to pick his way through another story, only to trail off and give up entirely as we reach leicester. here's a little aside; recently, midland mainline finally made all of their trains completely non-smoking. there used to be coach 'a' on the end, which was reserved for smoking passengers, but not any more. thank christ for small favours. so back to the story; as we're getting into leicester and i'm putting my books in my bag, i hear him say "let's wait until the strain stops, then we'll go right to the very end of the train and we can have a cigarette.". we? we? you've taken your kids on some fucked up magical mystery tour of england, which doesn't even look close to being over, and it's not enough that you have to expose them to your own blithe ignorance in an attempt to drag them down to the primordial cess-pool that is your 'intelligence', but you also want to see if you can passively give them lung cancer before they're even old enough to buy their own packet of death sticks.
i came very close to telling him that there are no longer smoking coaches on mainline trains, but i knew that two things would happen; he would look up at me moronically, possibly say "oh, really?" and then, after i debarked, he would have gone looking anyway. and i preferred the idea of another passenger balking when he lit up, and gave him a roasting in front of his kids. shit like that makes me feel incongruous.
- posted by lawrie at 3:40 PM ~ comments