I'm Back! With More Slowly Updated Posts For My Audience Of Two!

Over 10 days ago, I deleted the Orange Juice Snobbery blog. A community service, I felt, a clearing of cyberspeace, if indeed it were actually 'space' of a whole lot of gabble which was hardly ever read and even if it was, was pretty useless. I suppose I could have deleted most of the Mormon sites if that really was my aim, but I didn't want to go through the pain of actually trying to locate them.

When I told a couple of friends I'd done that, two of them acted pretty shocked. My friend Drax elegantly and supportively said "What did you do that for, you idiot?" (or something similar). the Winmeister exclaimed "What?" and gasped in what seemed like horror, but I think that was aimed at her boyfriend who was driving at the time.

At any rate, in face of such urging, I had no choice but to cobble up the blog again. Here, audience of two, I offer you Orange Juice Snobbery, yet again.

Slowly updated, not very interesting, and better than ever!

A Beginners' Survival Guide To Sam And The City

Blogger Lexicon Harlot sprayed orange juice over her keyboard at the reading of it, and I say that enough's enough. Anything that causes a waste of orange juice is worth a protest over. The Sam And The City blog on the Sydney Morning Herald website, darn it.

'Lexi caused a dangerous juice spill, stumbled and fell, simply by reading about 'chivalry' and the 'biological clock' - but that's tame to a seasoned blog patron of SATC. Read Lexicon's post here.

Bloggers' Guide To SATC

1. Do not know the meaning of, but be prepared to recognise, the words 'intone', 'opine', and 'hilarious'. These are used frequently, discretely, indiscriminately, and out of context.

2. Be prepared to play blog poker. That means something along the lines of using the 6-digit security code provided by SMH each time you post, and announcing it as part of your post, and cheering if you got doubles or triples of any number. This, many bloggers who consider themselves highly intelligent, think of as very witty.

3. Announce whenever you get 999999 as your security code as proof that whatever you post must be correct, or that you are going to have good luck that do, or whatever you feel like. This is also considered very witty, despite the fact that 999999 must be one of the most common computer generated security codes to get.

4. Try to be the first person to post on a blog topic. Don't say anything relevant, write "first post?" or "Hey, first post, too bad I don't have anything to rite! hehehehee!"
Since the blog takes a while to update, this ensures that there will be a string of about six posts like that on each blog before anything on topic is written. It's also pretty good to write "No you didn't get first post" in answer, to string this out a little, ensuring that anyone reading the blog will have to scroll down about two screens before they actually start reading anything relevant. Again, many posters consider this extremely witty. Even though this ritual has been going on for over one year, approximately 5 days per week.

5. There are several posters who love stirring and criticising others, quite personally, but puerilely attack you for the same. Expect to read a lot of "I know you are but what am I"s or attempting-to-be-witty-sarcastic-put-downs.

6. Don't tell anything to a blog-poster you can't risk being posted - especially if you've met them at a blogmeet and they drink way too much. The "what goes on off the blog, stays off the blog" doesn't always stick, especially when people are angry - or drunk.

7. If anyone asks you your astrological sign ... oh, this applies to how you'd deal with anyone asking you your astrological sign in person. Sorry.

The Logic Of A Garbage Rat

Someone threw out my precious magazine a few days ago. I didn't notice it for several days, but it was precious just the same, because it had a GLOSSY cover, and it came in the post, BY MAIL (instead of being thrown in the gutter by an inept paper-person - gender niceties preserved - or being inserted into the weekend newspaper by a furniture company.)

And any magazine which falls into this category counts as precious to me.

I was outraged, and insulted, so much so that when I noticed it at 1am, a time when I was scruffling about for reading material, I took a torch and searched for it in the big recycling bin.

There's a huge number of ants crawling about there, and decomposing newspapers and tissue boxes. Still, I ploughed on.

If I found the magazine, I probably would have thrown up on it, and it wouldn't have been fit to bring inside the house unless I'd wrapped myself in a plastic sheath for the hygiene safety of other house-dwellers, and I would have contracted leprosy, and had to throw the magazine out again soon after. Still, the search for the LOST MAGAZINE became more and more frantic.

The more it stinks, the more I scramble after it. There's a metaphor for life in there somewhere.

9 is not WINning

For some reason, in the heart of the city, you can receive the regional Channel 9 station, WIN, more clearly than Channel 9 itself, which comes out rather fuzzily, and makes you see double in some places.

I attempted to tune into "Temptation" just the other night to see fellow blogger Lexicon Harlot, and also to claim that I know someone who has a popular blog and is a TV star, two things I don't have. Woo hoo! (She now also has lots of things I don't have, like a plasma TV, a DVD player, a telescope and some Alannah Hill clothing, and fame for outing herself as a Bert Newton fan on national TV. But I digress.)

WIN clearly advertised "Temptation" for 7pm, and then proceeded to show the news all the while it promised to show 'Lexi being tempted with prizes and reminding us all that the answers are 'Cupid' and 'personal computer' even though I've forgotten the questions. So I ended up watching a rather fuzzy version of her on 9, and seeing bits of "Temptation" in double, not that this is a bad thing.

Anyway, I would like to say now - what was so newsworthy - what COULD be so newsworthy in regional NSW that it would interrupt the joys of showing our blogger Lexicon Harlot on TV? I think it's a travesty. I cancelled my nostril-picking session just for this, and this is the thanks I receive?

Click! No photos included in this post

I really do not like my camera phone today. In fact I think I didn't like it when I bought it and I won't like it later because it's unlikely to change its manners and mechanisms very soon.

Why, oh why must a phone be so manufactured that when you push the button for taking photos, what I call the "Click!" button, it is very easy, in fact almost impossible not to, push the button for turning off the phone at the same time?

*Murphy's Law, or the Misery Guts Law, states that the only way to take a photo with your camera-phone is to point it at something boring/disgusting and attempt to turn off your phone. This will usually mean an inbuilt mechanism in your phone will MMS that photo to everyone in your address book, and charge you for it. It will also be out-of-focus.

A Sneaky Ploy by the White Australia Movement

While flicking through the subtitles alternatives on a DVD just recently, Mr Coffee made this startling observation.

"Region 4 [for Australia] DVDs never have Chinese or Japanese subtitles. I've see Danish and even Icelandic subtitles, but never, never Chinese or Japanese. You'd think with all the Chinese people in Australia ..."

Now after pacifying Mr Coffee, who is a capable reader and speaker of Cantonese, unlike myself (except for my mastery of "Kung Hei Fat Choy" some time ago, of which I am very proud, and practise over and over every now and again, in case some time impromptu I'm called upon to greet someone with a Happy Chinese New Year) I mulled over the situation.

Of course this was possibly inconvenient to some hapless Asians in Australia, but were we not all supposed to be speaking English (or, perhaps, Danish or Icelandic?) under this proud flag of ours? Perhaps it were all for the better. After al, myself, being monolingual at the moment, it would be just as simple to pick up Icelandic as it would be Cantonese, as I'm equally ignorant of both, except for not knowing how to wish people a Happy Icelandic New Year.

It just looks like discrimination all over again - if you're Chinese, you have to learn English, if you're Icelandic, you don't. I bet you those Great Danes and Icelanders are laughing at their triumph over Region 4 DVD-land.

*If you'd like to protest and suggest languages that you believe have been too long marginalised, to become compulsorily subtitled on Region 4 DVDs instead, forcing us all to not understand a word of what's going on, and wipe those grins off everyone's faces in the name of equality of disappointment, please comment below. Aramaic subtitles, anyone?

A Knife makes a desperate plea for help

The cutlery at Max Brenner's pleas for help. Please give generously, with all your heart - or paper napkin, and dishwashing liquid and soapy water, and sponge.

Thank You.