Exotic beverage review: Red Eye Plus

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Yellow, much like its label.

It's astonishingly yellow. Not to put to fine a point on it, it looks like pee. It's got the traditional Red Eye trait of instantly losing all carbonation as soon as the bottle is opened, also.

It smells quite refreshing, actually. There's a vague aroma I can only describe as "dairy", and a hint of vitamin B.

It's not unpleasant. If it were possible to have managed to get energy drinks right, I'd have to say Red Eye are the ones who've succeeded at it. You can taste the unmaskable vitamin B, which shares a flavour with rotten celery, and the dairy smell somehow manifests itself in a taste which is actually kind of chocolate-like.

There's a noticable aftertaste of vitamin B, although it's more of a chemical flavour than the aforementioned tang of rotten celery.

Again, it's not unpleasant. It's not great, all energy drinks that make a big deal out of including vitamin B either suffer from a deplorable taste of rotten celery or from being overly fruity to try to mask the horrid vitamin. This one's kind of a half-way house between the two flavours.

Exotic beverage review: Recharge by Sprite

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It's turquoise! It's, um, turquoise. I was not expecting turquoise. I've had this stuff before, and all I can recall is that it tasted pretty horrible, so seeing it outside the can was something of a surprise. Recharge by Sprite bottles are coated, head-to-toe, in opaque labels, so even the glass containers provide no hint as to the blue-ness hiding inside. It remains carbonated for a great length of time, also.

Also worth noting is that the Recharge by Sprite cans are exorbitantly lengthy, containing an extra inch of aquamarine goodness. I postulate that a further inch is required to provide the same amount of fluid as in a regular shaped can.

It does not have a strong odour. It vaguely stinks of medicine and vitamins, which is odd as it does not seem to contain the usual myriad vitamins these drinks boast.

It tastes quite medicinal. There's a good portion of earthy vitamin flavours hiding behind it, and there's a zing of something slightly anaesthetic, possibly mint.

The anaesthetic taste/sensation continues, leaving an aftertaste of nothing but medication. I have a suspicion someone switched the vats of genuine Recharge by Sprite with Listerine while the Coca Cola folk weren't looking, because quite frankly, it tastes like mouthwash.

It's blue, tastes like mouthwash and remains fizzy for great lengths of time. Other than that, it's pretty morbid stuff.

Exotic beverage review: Red Bull

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It's both Red AND Bull. It should be noted before going into depth about this particular beverage that it's pasteurised. This is the process they put milk through in order to remove the bits of random cow bacteria that they figure won't be compatible with bits of random human bacteria it's likely to encounter. There's much more to it. But that's still enough to make me wonder what the sweet Christ is in Red Bull (or moreso is no longer in Red Bull) that required a massive dairy-based process to remove.

It looks like beer, albeit a bit browner. It fizzes tremendously upon being opened, and forms a brief head atop the beverage.

It smells like Combantrin worming medication. So, rest assured that while Red Bull may not give you wings, per-se, it'll quite likely rid you of worms. Seriously, though, this stuff smells vaguely toxic.

It's (literally) bilious.

It tastes like vomit. Chefelf described it as bile, which is much of a muchness when it comes to internal fluids ejected orally. But yes. It's sickening. It tastes like a heavily carbonated combination of worming medicine and vomit. The reason this stuff initiates a gag reflex in me is, I fear, not due to its taste, but due to my body going "Hey, I know this flavour, it goes outward, not in!"

The illusion of consuming spew continues in the aftertaste, which cannot be described more efficiently than "it tastes like you just blew chunks". And possibly attempted to wash your mouth out with worming medicine to remove the taste of expelled bile.

It tastes like puke. With bubbles. And for some reason, I bought a four-pack of it.

Exotic beverage review: Red Eye Gold

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Brown. My general opinion is that the Red Eye energy drink company tends to make the best energy drinks on the market. This review proves the exception to the rule, as Red Eye Gold is hideously unpleasant. Read on.

It looks like cola. It's a little bit yellower and much less carbonated. Again, as in all Red Eye drinks, the carbonation vanishes once the cap is removed.

It smells vile. It smells like the aroma you get inside an Asian candy store, but where all the candy has spoiled. And mixed together. And it has a strong stink of medicine.

It's ghastly. First sensation is a strong taste of berries, which continues in the aftertaste. On top of the berries are about fourteen layers of shit, including what tastes like I assume bathroom disinfectant would taste like, a strong dusty sensation and the usual vitamin B sensation, which is somewhat odd as this drink contains less vitamin B than the others, according to the label.. It made me cough, also. I was unable to take large sips, as the strength and horridness is quite overpowering. There's an odd medicinal sensation that goes straight up your nose when you drink it.

Still brown.

Strong chemical aftertase. The odd medicinal scent/flavour that goes up your nose remains for an extraordinary length of time. Flavour of rotten celery from the B vitamins also remains. Oddly the initial flavour of the drink is completely gone within seconds.

It tastes like apple and blackcurrant juice with a quart of Dettol in it, sprinkled with rotten celery. It's fucking unpleasant.

Exotic beverage review: Red Eye Extreme

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It does indeed feature a large red eye. It looks like cheap champagne. It's tinged slightly yellow, which is actually surprising as in traditional energy drink style it comes housed in a green glass bottle to mask its true appearance.

The beverage is "lightly carbonated", which manifests itself as several squillion tiny bubbles clinging to the inside of the glass, as shown in the next photograph. It should be noted that the stuff loses its carbonation at a rate of knots, and leaving it in the glass for any more than a few minutes renders it flat as a tack.

It smells like...those powdery candy bananas everyone used to eat as a child. The ones that are made from the same substance as musk sticks, but taste of banana instead. It also has a mild aroma of some undefined chemical, although it's an energy drink, so this is to be expected. Removing the cap from the bottle produces a fairly large rush of carbonation to the surface of the drink, probably during which the majority of the carbon dioxide escapes, thus beginning the end of the bubbles as mentioned above.

You can't smell them from where you're sitting, but I swear there are tiny bananas.

It actually tastes like candy bananas. It's quite pleasant, and not overpowering with any of the usual energy drink flavours (i.e. vegetables, medicine, wee). It loses its flavour quite speedily as the product loses its chill, however, so it's best to either drink it in its entirety while it's still as cold as possible, or refrigerate it and ration it into speedily consumed glasses. A lot of effort, perhaps, but a pleasant tasting energy drink is a rarity at best.

The aftertaste is quite mild. It's basically just a residue of whatever produced the slight chemical odour that was present in the sniffing stage, and it fades quite quickly. The only unpleasance is a slight sugary coating it leaves on the lips and teeth.

Without a doubt the most pleasant energy drink available. Tastes basically like an odd-flavoured soft drink. As for its energy inducing powers, I've not felt anything out of the ordinary. Although having sampled it, I don't feel I need to retch. Perhaps that is out of the ordinary after all.

Exotic beverage: Go Fast

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This photo does not do this beverage justice. "Not recommended for children; and pregnant or lactating women or caffeine sensitive persons." Warning that's noticably absent is the one stating "Do not drink if your tastes buds work, because you may wish they did not".

"Maximum recommended intake: 1 can per day." Good luck with that. A teaspoon of this stuff should do the trick. You'll have all the energy in the world, and you'll be putting it to good use getting yourself the hell away from the can.

It's slightly darker than beer, and not very fizzy. It's also kind of thick, I think. It seems thick, anyway.

It smells like that horrid mix of really cheap, slightly melted candy you always wind up with just after Christmas. A combination of all the sweets no one ever chooses first, the ones that wind up rotting away at the bottom of the Christmas stocking, eventually finding their own way out of their wrappings and mating with other sweeties to produce horrific, Godzilla-like sweetie creatures. This drink smells like a Godzilla-sweetie.

OH SWEET JESUS CHRIST

It's horrible.

I mean, just.. It's indescribable.

However, I'm going to give it a shot.

The only flavour other than "GENGKnrwjlgbuigYFYTneCRYHJ!#798" that I can discern is that medicinal flavour that kind of tastes like plastic smells when it's been left in the sun until it's gone brittle and powdery. The rest of the drink (and I use the word "drink" with some hesitance) tastes entirely of rotting lawn clippings.

Look! Chemical warfare!

I propose a recipe:

2kg rotting lawn clippings 1L home brand cough medicine 500mL motor oil Sprinkling of powdered, aged plastic Carbonated water to taste

Yum!

This stuff is rancid.

The only good thing I can find about this shit is that the flavour leaves you pretty quickly. Possibly because it's speedily replaced by the flavour of your stomach contents.

 

Exotic beverage review: Live Wire

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Blurry-ass camera phone photo. This review is a bit awkward. Actually, it's a lot awkward. I've dug up the text of the review from a file on my hard drive. Unfortunately, I can't find any pictures to go with it apart from the crappy camera phone paparazzi shot you see to the right. I'm sorry. On the up side, it's a clone of Red Bull, so the review was bound to be boring anyway.

It's stock-standard energy drink yellow. Perhaps a little more saturated. It's remarkably carbonated, though. Most energy drinks don't retain their carbonation very long, once the can is opened.

It smells pretty much exactly like Red Bull, and it tastes like a super-tart version of Red Bull. It's Red Bull with the flavour of (more) noxious chemicals. It's quite potent, but not entirely unpleasant.

It's quite fragrant, but leaves your mouth feeling exceptionally oily. It's not exactly nice.

Overall, it's an incredibly overpowering version of Red Bull. All things considered, it's not bad. It certainly tastes as though it's giving you energy. If any energy drink is going to give you uncontrollable tremors and destroy your internal organs, it'll probably be this one.

Worst energy drink ever: Jugular

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Clearly this is the most alarming blend of ingredients yet encountered. I'm particularly alarmed by the "rare earth blend" of minerals, which makes me suspect the drink contains some kind of powderised powerful magnets, and the totally bizarre "clustered water technology". The can suggests shaking gently prior to opening, which leads me to believe it's probably got some kind of horrible sediment on the bottom that will require some mixing in. Here are some of the awesome ingredients in this crap:

Eleuthorococcus Senticosus root and leaf: This is the botanical name for what we know as Siberian Ginseng, which, according to Wikipedia, cannot be called "Siberian Ginseng" in the US because it isn't the correct genus to be considered a kind of ginseng. Or something.

Aralia Manshurica: It's Russian, and it protects mice from radiation. I shit you not.

Rhaponticum Carthanoides: Animal research has apparently discovered it prevents tumours and enhances brain power. It also contains a lot of syllables.

Rhodiola Rosea: Another Russian ingredient, this one supposedly enhances memory, enhances the immune system, and is used in treating depression, nervous palpitations, erectile dysfunction and infertility in women. Also used for fatigue and insomnia (simultaneously?) as well as altitude sickness.

Schisandra: Despite sounding like an antagonist from an Anne Rice novel, this stuff is also known as Wu Wei Zi berries, and is allegedly a solution to all manner of medical conditions, including Parkinson's disease, depression, adult ADHD and asthma (when mixed with licorice). I quote a wonderful line from the previously linked document, as I'm unable to paraphrase it in a more amusing fashion: "Traditionally, this herb is used to astringe a leaky jing gate (urinary incontinence, leucorrhea, diarrhea, and spermatorrhea) and to reduce excessive sweating." Leaky. Jing. Gate. Wow.

Clustered Water Technology: The official website for Clustered Water Technology(R) appears to have gone the way of the dodo since this review was written, which is unfortunate, as it contained approximately no information whatsoever on what the hell Clustered Water Technology(R) is. This website (which may or may not still exist, but certainly doesn't want to load) contains some more information, and lots more animated .gifs and background images, which exist solely to make the internet awesome. In short, clustered water is a form of hydrogenated water with molecules that group together and become able to traverse between cell walls, decreasing dehydration. Apparently the water is treated with electromagnetic energy and becomes clustered water. I think they created a similar substance in the depths of Chernobyl.

Ugh.

It's pinkish, greyish red. And it's as flat as a tack; it fizzed ferociously when opened, possibly due to the gentle shaking the can insisted upon, then it settled to a totally still red beverage. It's also not transparent, it's vaguely -- and disturbingly -- milky. You cannot see through a glass of Jugular.

It smells absolutely vile. I can draw a comparison with cherry-flavoured medication, but it's not accurate enough. It smells like horribly, horribly bad cherry-flavoured candy, with a hint of aniseed and ridiculous quantities of vitamin-B.

Ugh ugh.

Strangely, it's not as offensive as I would have thought. That's not to say it's pleasant, however. It tastes like cherry-flavoured candy that's been boiled into a liquid and left to ferment in the company of vitamin-B. It's actually quite sweet, but it becomes quickly apparent that the sweetness is a result of artificial sweetening, as it speedily takes on the soapy aftertaste of phenylalanine (or something similar, as said chemical is not listed in the product's ingredients). It becomes slightly more carbonated upon reaching your mouth, so perhaps it's not entirely flat as I'd originally thought. It's n enigma wrapped up in a mystery wrapped up in a can of ghastly, ghastly liquid.

I'm unsure of what taste to expect from "clustered water", as I can taste neither clusters, nor water. This would actually taste alright if it had sugar in it, I think. It suffers from artificial sweetening, and it feels wrong to drink once you've read the ingredients. I'm not able to finish a can of this.

Absolutely no flavour remains after you've sipped, but it does reek horribly of artificial sweetener, leaving you to feel like you've just sucked on a bar of soap for a while.

Totally dubious ingredients. Totally horrendous can artwork. Reasonably unpleasant taste. Overall, it's not unpleasant, but the texture is horrific, and I find it difficult to enjoy a drink that contains sweepings from the underbrush of a rainforest and whatever the hell this clustered water codswallop may be. I believe it's witchcraft, and you're not changing my mind any time soon.

Exotic Beverage Review: Fanta Spider

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What has eight legs and tastes like filmy milk? For those unfamiliar, a "spider" is a combination of soft drink (soda) and ice cream, forming a kind of carbonated thickshake. I've always been really opposed to the idea, due to my belief that soda and dairy deserve to be well separated at all times. This stuff is called "choc orange", which I assume means it's meant to represent orange Fanta mixed with chocolate ice-cream, although the colour of the beverage doesn't represent that at all. Orange fanta and chocolate ice cream would produce something that looked like shit and would sell few beverages.

It's kind of apricot in colour and vaguely milky. Somehow, I was expecting it to be thicker, but it's the same consistency as every other soft drink. It's also not especially bubbly.

It tastes like Jaffas. Precisely like Jaffas. The smell of carbonation is the only thing that makes it smell like anything other than a handful of small red balls that taste like orange.

I was really hesitant to taste this stuff. Like I said above, I have some reservations about the whole "spider" concept. Anyhow, taste I did. It's...really odd. I wouldn't actually call it pleasant, to be honest. It's got a number of layers to it. I shall explain, in the order in which they hit you:

It's almost opaque, but it's not thick.

1. Weird consistancy. It kind of feels like there's a skin of ice over the surface of the drink, even though there isn't. I think this could be to do with the fact that it smells completely different to how it tastes, so as you sip it, your brain switches from smell receptors to taste receptors, or something.

2. Milk. It tastes like milk. Not specifically chocolate milk, though. Just..dairy in general.

3. Cheap chocolate. About a nanosecond after the milk flavour appears, the beverage remembers it's supposed to be chocolate flavoured and begins to produce the taste of really cheap chocolate, like those crappy lil solid chocolate Easter eggs everyone gets squillions of. It's not really pleasant, but it's definitely chocolate.

4. Orange. Hiding beneath all of this is the Fanta itself, which kind of breaks through as soon as the bubbles leave your tongue. And it's also not incredibly pleasant. I don't like this drink.

Okay, so the aftertaste has been pretty effectively nailed. If you erased my memory for the past five minutes, I could be easily convinced that I just sat down to a meal of Easter eggs and washed them down with a quart of Fanta. Usually with bizarre drinks, the taste is tolerable and the aftertaste is thoroughly unpalatable, but in this case, it's the reverse.

It's not totally unpleasant, I guess, but I just don't like it. That said, it is everything that it claims to be.

Exotic beverage review: Red Eye Classic

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Red Eye Classic. It's similar in colour to V. Dark yellow, lightly carbonated. As in all Red Eye drinks, once the bottle is opened, the carbonation lasts about a nanosecond.

It smells fresh, but decidedly medicinal. It's kinda fruity, but there's a strong smell of vitamin B, which is rarely a good sign.

It's quite pleasant. There's surprisingly little taste of vitamin B, and the fruitiness is strong but not completely overpowering. It tastes a bit like V, really.

After a moment, the vitamin B makes an appearance. A strong herbal aftertaste, but altogether not too unpleasant.

Strong, fruity, and actually not too bad.

Brisbane: The Musical

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Here's a somewhat vague travelogue of my trip to Brisbane, and the three days during which I met Positronbob and Yahtzee. Click on the pictures for bigger ones. (Update, 2013: I've edited this a bit, largely because I feel I can write significantly better these days, and because some elements of the story are now either awkward or more embarrassing than I previously thought.) DAY ONE (Sunday)

Having determined where Positronbob was to be found, went and collected him. Drove to Kingston railway station, deposited car in car park. Took the train into the city, after bumming train fare from Positronbob. Can't remember if I ever paid him back. Probably should do something about that. Karma's a bitch, and all. Spent most of the duration of the train trip discussing online activities on the Home of the Underdogs Forum, a discussion arena attached to the old Home of the Underdogs abandonware website, which kind of disappeared from existance, but kind of reappeared in 2012, but it's so far removed from what it used to be that it doesn't bear thinking about.

Arrived in the city to discover that at some point between Kingston and Brisbane it had become very hot. Wandered out of South Bank station, where we were stopped in our tracks by the stultifying stupidity of this sign:

But...how...do...they...

Although on later reflection we realised the sign is probably there for the benefit of commuters passing on the road to the right.

On further reflection on the above realisation, we again noticed that even if the sign is for motorists, there's still the issue of how the blind people know where to cross.

It hurts my brain to think about it.

We ate at a small cafe near the Energex Arbour. The Energex Arbour is a massive winding footpath covered in with a hideous metal framework with weeds growing all over it. Eventually, I postulate, it will form an impenetrable forest of thorned and vicious plantlife, to be traversed only by warriors dressed in khaki and weilding machetes. As it stands, it's a poor attempt at even blocking out the sun.

We waited under the Suncorp Piazza for Yahtzee to show. We kind of realised that we knew nothing about his appearance apart from some really old online photos, which lead us to wonder whether the photos were even of him at all. Perhaps he just typed a random name into Google Image Search and used whatever photos popped up.

To cut a long story, uh, less long, we found him. And then we stood about. Awkwardly. For quite a while.

Then we ate. Again. Yahtzee ordered chips. We fed several of them to a hideously unattractive bird that was hovering about the table. Then her husband told us to stop. (Do you see what I did there?)

Brisbane is a complete arse of a city when it comes to things to do. Basically, once you cross the border from New South Wales into Queensland, the passtime of "do things" mutates into the passtime of "do not a jot". People in Queensland spend 99% of their available time doing nothing, and the remaining percent considering the option of doing nothing.  Having come to no conclusions whatsoever about what to do to pass the afternoon, we headed vaguely towards the city. I proposed this idea, as I recalled visiting the museum a few years earlier on the suggestion of a friend who informed me that there's a button on the wall that replicates the sound of a whale farting. The move was unanimous.

Brisbane Museum does not suffer from over organisation. There's no system to it whatsoever. One second you're staring at a dinosaur's femur, the next you're examining a tandem-bicycle-powered-fire-engine and wondering why these two exhibits share a room.

I believe the siren plays the theme to "Steptoe & Son".

Alongside the fire truck stood an array of cardboard cutouts.

IT'S A MIRROR IMAGE

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On the top level of the museum stood the beginnings of the "How To Make A Monster" display, which was to deal with animatronics and special effects. Sadly, it wasn't open yet. We asked a kind tourist to take a photograph or two for us. We didn't realise at the time that said tourist didn't speak a word of English. I was somewhat concerned when she started gibbering in some Asian language, and I hoped dearly that she did not think we were handing out complimentary cameras.

(I got my camera back, for the record.)

Moving away from the animatronics exhibit, we found....more animatronics. Around the corner was a stuffed leopard mounted atop a papier-mache rock. Unassuming, you may think, until you realise (under close scrutiny) that the cat has a half-eaten sausage roll jammed up its jacksy.

You're doing it wrong: Sausage rolls are generally to be consumed orally

But wait, there's more! (Animatronics. Not anal pastry.)

The next room featured a warning sign in a large font, reading something to the effect of "PARENTS: THE NEXT EXHIBIT FEATURES A VERY REALISTIC LIZARD WHICH MAY FRIGHTEN CHILDREN". And behold:

Murrr. Shudder. Thud. Crunch.

The sign did not lie. The creature was terrifying. It shuddered to life with none of the realism you'd expect from a battery-powered toy, hissing with pneumatics and hydraulics. It looks so natural tucked up against the ductwork, too. Yet more disturbing, though, is the rest of the exhibit. Surrounding the giant lizard is a large papier-mache dinosaur corpse with several Tasmanian devils feeding on it. One of them tugs back and forth on a chunk of rubber intestine, while another appears to perform oral sex on the dead reptile.

The rest of the museum paled in comparison. Several rooms containing spiders in jars. Several rooms containing randomly scattered fibreglass animal replicas. If nothing else, thanks to the marine-themed room, a new anthem emerged:

Dugong man, Dugong man Does whatever a dugong can Which is basically nothing As dugongs are large and stupid

CRAPPY SIGHT GAG

Additional kudos should be served to Brisbane Museum for featuring an entire wing dedicated to nothing but roadkill. I'm particularly enamoured by the realistic potato chips in the following photograph.

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And that, in short, sums up the Brisbane Museum. Here's one last photo, just to give you the entire Brisbane experience in a nutshell.

Sign reads "Please be patient while we get our new exhibits up and running". AND THEY PROVIDE A COUCH FOR YOU TO WAIT ON.

Having wandered aimlessly through the entirety of the poorly organised Brisbane Museum, we headed next door, to the Brisbane Art Gallery. Their official website is here, and it's actually fairly informative.

After surrendering our bags to the cloakroom nazis, and receiving a lecture on proper camera usage within the gallery (i.e., don't), we moved on. The entranceway consists of a staircase leading down to a white boardwalk surrounding a pool of somewhat greenish water with several billion silver balls bobbing in it.

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Now, this is an art gallery, so the purpose of everything within it is a matter of interpretation. HOWEVER. I think the idea here is that the balls are "powered" by the fact that people cannot resist manipulating and tossing them about, so they kind of swill in a vague spiralling motion about their pond. Closer examination revealed several points in said pond where the balls would form eddies, suggesting pumps beneath the surface were egging the spheres on. To be honest, I don't really care. It's art. And it looks expensive.

"I dare you to toss a ball!", whispered I. "Eh, okay." grunted Rhubarb. Ball ahoy.

The next room comprised a white passageway with a large square pillar amid, projected onto which was a large anatomical animation of a woman being dissected by a CT scan. We stared at it, giggled at her breasts and moved on.

Around the corner we were ambushed by a museum staff person armed with an array of battery operated cats.

Yahtzee gets friendly with a digital feline.

I had hopes that the cats were going to be of similar quality to the AIBO dogs from Sony that I'd seen a few years prior at Fox Studios in Sydney, but they appeared to be standard children's toys purchased at K-Mart. We attempted to get two cats to mate.

Oo-er.

Unfortunately, the cats "switch off" whenever their noses touch something, so their courtship was short-lived. I discovered that repeatedly stabbing at the button on the tip of the cats' noses causes them to meow in an increasingly angry fashion.

Behind the "Battery Cattery" (Jesus Christ) we found a series of fairly inane exhibits featuring telephones, which provided audio cues to the artwork. One of these exhibits, which appeared to be a piece of pipe plucked out of an air conditioner, featured a soundbyte of someone burping loudly. Genius.

In further extension of the household pets theme, we found a small cinema behind a wall at the back of the building. Six screens at odd angles had onto them projected footage that appeared to alternate between a camera strapped to a dog's head, and a car hurtling down a road in the snow. Once again, it's art. It's not supposed to make sense. Unless you're on drugs, or something. (Hey, it's Queensland!)

The rest of the gallery was fairly lacklustre. I'd like to know how one goes about getting the job of being one of the people who wanders about the museum shouting "DON'T TOUCH THAT" whenever someone gets closer than fifteen metres to a sculpture. The item in question was a massive chunk of welded metal that appeared to consist of former typewriter parts. It's welded. The best one could hope to do is to push it off its pedestal and perhaps break the floor.

Along one of the walls, in an innocuous looking darkened doorway, we found a small cinema, onto the wall of which was projected a film. At first, we had no clue what it was, apart from a small placard outside which read "One Minute Sculptures". I really have neither the want nor the need to further describe this phenomenon, as anything I add will only pale in comparison to Yahtzee's essay on the subject. Needless to say, our lives were enriched a millionfold, and will never be the same again.

Yahtzee attempts to fondle Erwin's bottom.

DAY TWO (Tuesday. Where did Monday go? No-one knows!)

I spent most of the morning in Surfers Paradise. There are a lot of reasons I dislike Surfers Paradise. One of them is grammatical. Y'see, it's missing a possessive apostrophe. It's something to do with naming conventions, in that suburb titles should not contain punctuation marks. Stupid naming conventions.

So. Surfer(')s Paradise. 9AM. Nothing is open. I guess the surfy culture doesn't wake up prior to midday.

Got back from the Gold Coast around lunch time. Went to collect Positronbob, with the plan being to go Christmas shopping at the Logan Hyperdome.

This evening we went bowling. Dan won the first round, I won the second. I can't remember who wound up with the scorecards, so you'll have to take my word for it. Truth be told, no one cares anyway. It's bowling. It's such an impractical sport to get good at. The only times I've ever bowled, the entire purpose of the game has been to see who can make the largest fool of themselves, and/or break a limb. DAY THREE (Wednesday.)

We basically started today with no clue whatsoever what we were doing. This is not at all unusual. I drove around most of the morning trying to figure out where Positronbob was, due to missing one pissy little side street and thusly becoming lost. This happens. Often.

I found him, eventually. Arranged to meet with Yahtzee in the city. Decided, in a rare moment of braveness, to actually drive into the city. The guy I was staying with suggested a spot for parking, and having glanced at a map I figured it was a fairly simple place to get to. So off we went. Found ample parking. Everything going well. This usually doesn't happen.

Met Yahtzee in the same location again, figuring that it worked quite well the previous time. Minced about looking confused and sounding unconversational. This is becoming a routine.

Everything's better with Wang.

While snacking at one of the small cafes along the Energex Arbour, we also happened upon a freak occurance -- Santa Claus on his lunch break -- snacking merrily on a parcel of hot chips. It's nice to know it's Queensland fried foods that keep Jolly ol' St. Nick's arteries so joyously blocked.

Ho, ho, ho. Also, Lt. Uhura spots someone she knows.

And here's a brief summary of the rest of the evening, due to the fact that this all occured a month ago and I don't recall specifics:

Fireworks. Sat on grass. Watched someone in Brisbane desperately try to signal for Batman, but fail due to forgetting to put the bat-shaped mask over the spotlight. Nonetheless giving it a valiant effort with not one, but four spotlights waving about the sky. Presumably under the assumption that Batman, not seeing his signature bat-shaped-silhouette, may respond to a very adamant display of non-bat silhouettes. BATMAN. God damn you.

Wandered back to the car park under the impression that it closed about two hours prior, not overjoyed by the prospect of leaving my car buried beneath Brisbane until 6AM the following morning. Arrived at the vehicle to see this was indeed not so. Relieved.

Bid farewell to Yahtzee in a now predictably awkward fashion.

Returned to car again. Somehow managed to get out of extremely crowded car park without causing any personal harm or property damage. Took everyone home. Ran a red light. Scared the shit out of someone called Spock. All's well that ends well.

The Gargantuan Gimmick of Glerty McGlee

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The Gargantuan Gimmick Of Glerty McGlee the gargantuan gimmick of glerty mcglee was the most gregarious gimmick you’re likely to see it featured a graceful and garrolous trot akin to a gander atop something hot

for no one could garner the gardener’s gauge or to stand near the gambler’s gelatinous stage the fire in the gantry and gables and gear was to a lonely traveller’s gangrenous ear

like a gallow dry squeaking and gale blowing near to the hollows of gordon, who glerty would fear like a grinding and garbling grand fascination with loosing the geese from a lone trepidation

glowing like nonsense and frosting the glazing the fire grew ardent while quietly raising the brow of the guard stood outside of the cordon of forest defining the hollows of gordon

named for the grumpy and godfearing son of a man who fell grey from the din of the gun which was fired not in anger but only to mimic the incoming outcome of glerty’s own gimmick

a gimmick so bold and in golden raised lettering printed in blood and a generous smattering of apology rife with the grim innuendo inherent to something implying the end of

a story so guarded and gilded with tripe told by guards and by gamblers and into the night resolving to garner the ears of the masses to tattle to fellows and titter to lasses

to speak unto god and to blame him our future is to open a wound and to bury the suture the tale told before this and many times after is ought to provoke some to tears, to provoke some to laughter

take from this a lesson in garbled fine prose disguised as the thorns from a withering rose the gibberish mentioned to be interpreted free as was stated the will of young glerty mcglee

Beautifully designed creatures.

in ,

Humans. Not much thought went into our design. (In fact, no thought went into our design. We were not designed. We evolved from earlier life forms through natural selection. But I'm sure you knew that.) I wrote this update in my head at about 3AM this morning, and in due process of sleeping, I've forgotten pretty much all of the funny bits. So I shall attempt to salvage something of it. Humans. Pathetic creatures. Allow me to explore this.

Teeth. Teeth are designed with chewing in mind. They're designed to crush, kill, destroy things so as they might easily be contended with by the remainder of the digestive tract. Teeth are unaccustomed to the company of sugar, which makes their steely exterior whither and squeal, before disappearing like a young bride's petticoat on her wedding night. Which is probably purely accidental. The sugar aversion, not the disappearing undergarments. I mean, how could the alleged "Creator Of Everything" ever have figured that EVERY FUCKING SINGLE THING WE EAT CONTAINS SOME FORM OF SUGAR?

And furthermore, just to add COSMIC INSULT to injury, our teeth are the only parts of our frail bodies that have no capacity for self-repair whatsoever (citation needed). Get a cavity in one of your teeth and all it can do is become a larger, more ferocious cavity. Until it cavitates your entire head, and you become a walking ugly wound. With bits of broccoli in.

So yes. Poorly designed, these munchers are. Particularly as, evolutionarily, they - as in all animals - are built with the forethought that the beings who's heads they're wedged in will eventually develop dentistry, lest they struggle through their meagre existances IN ETERNAL AGONY because they ate one too many licorice straps when they were eleven.

Bollocks on the outside. I mean, COME ON.

Fingernails, toenails. Oh, the vicious legacy our nails share. Once they were to glisten on sharpened edge as they served as violent talons of destruction on the very fingertips of a primordial human ancestor as he stabbed and clawed his way through the flesh of a mammoth. Or a dormouse. Or whatever took his prehistoric fancy.

Now, they're little more than an irritation. Puny, pathetic things we must keep trim lest we be accused of being girly. Weak, pathetic shards of crap designed to split, shred and fall away when not constantly moisturised and kept in pristine condition. Also numbering among the single most succeptible body parts for aiding paper cuts and other minor but exceedingly painful injuries.

I mean, hangnails? The "Creator of Everything" clearly skipped breakfast before focusing his attention to the hands of the human being. Tsk, tsk.

Bollocks. On the OUTSIDE. I'm just gonna milk this one for all it's worth.

Lack of body hair. Truly the weakest species on the great planet of Earth would have to be the only one thereon that must MANUFACTURE its own protection from the elements.

I'm not saying I'd like to see human beings develop an uncontrollable rash of fur -- my taste in women shrieks that should that be the case, stocks in Gilette will suddenly skyrocket -- but surely it was more than a caveman slipping the skin of a murdered yak over himself that triggered every follicle on the human form to flop off into the tundra.

Still, it broaches another subject I daren't start unnannounced:

Pubic hair. ..why do we even have the stuff? It's awkward, it promotes odours (yay, now I can be fed even more inappropriate advertisements!), it gets caught in things (..er..like zippers. And undergarments. And oo-er what were YOU thinking?) and it's just generally icky. I shall digress speedily before I start chanting playground rhymes and giggling.

Nose hair. For some reason, when every other strand of fur decided to make a mass exodus to some place less maloderous, General Nostril Follicle and his band of swarthy followers stood their ground and remained fast at their posts. To this day, they remain in hiding, only to appear and silently ambush their intended victims on or around his 60th birthday, at which point human physiology suddenly decides to kick in a few extra hormones and present its owner with a pristine bush of bristling nose blossoms. "What," wonders the human, "is to become of me that only great clods of nose hair can save me from?"

And now a few courteous replies, specifically to the likes of Dan, Rev, and Nicki:

Bollocks on the outside. IN A SMALL SACHEL.

Ear hair. Along with odd nasal foliage around the age of senility, the human body also decides to kick a few hormones into the aural cavities and covers the innards of the ear with a pelty layer of totally superfluous fur. Nothing can explain the need for this, although it's possibly conducive to loss of hearing in the elderly. They're not deaf, their ears are full of hair.

Eyebrows. Eyebrows are useful. They do actually keep things like sweat from draining straight down the slope of our elegant non-neanderthalish foreheads and into our eyesockets. However, as Rev points out, there really is no need for eyebrows with dimensions bordering on elderly ear-hair sizes. I mean, Eugene Levy is not normal, man.

Menstruation. Surely there could have been easier ways to dispose of the unused lining of the uterus. Just think, if The Creator Of Everything had invented the zip-lock bag before he whipped up the uterus, maybe it could have just plopped out at an appropriate moment pre-sealed inside a small plastic pouch.

Thanks to all and sundry who have contributed to this little article, such as it is. Thank you to the reader, also, for perusing it as a piece of comedy and not a serious document on the plausibility of the existence of a creator. Just sayin'.

Shopping advice

in

This is for the benefit of anyone who's ever used a supermarket. Friendly advice, even, inspired by the behaviour of an entire extended family operating in some kind of evil alliance at checkout number six this evening. WHEN YOU REACH THE CHECKOUT, STOP SHOPPING.

The usual strategy when shopping for groceries is to enter the store, obtain either a trolley (cart) or a basket, put stuff you want in it, then proceed to a checkout and pay for it.

The family I encountered this evening had a different tack. FAMILY MEMBER ONE, who I shall call MRS. SHOPPERNAZI proceeded immediately to checkout six with her innocuous two items of purchase, trailed haphazardly behind by her small herd of children, brothers, sisters, grandparents and other bewildered brainwashees. I step into line. Gosh! thought I! A short queue! I can leave the supermarket in blistering time!

Nein.

Mrs. Shoppernazi then proceeds to COMPLETELY OCCUPY the checkout, while her HORDES OF MINIONS are scurried about the place collecting foodstuffs she requests and depositing them on the conveyor. All the while I'm stood back a good six paces behind the checkout to allow room for the fucking armies to mass in and out of the space between the checkout and the barrier thing that's designed to provide room for only one person-width to leave the store through that thoroughfare.

Which leaves me in the awkward position of NOT LOOKING LIKE I'M ACTUALLY IN LINE. So while Mrs. Shoppernazi is waging war on the supermarket with her evil squadron of MiniShoppernazis, I'm fending off a border assault from assorted scalliwags who've concluded that since I'm stood back a distance from the checkout, I'm not really waiting to be served.

AND, the great wonderous being that Mrs. Shoppernazi gloriously presumes to be somehow manages to only purchase items that have no shelf price, which forms a third onslaught of troops on the checkout as various store officials pander back and forth relaying prices for the absurd shit this woman apparently cannot live without.

If her teller card hadn't worked, I'd have killed her.

League of Extraordinary Guff

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leagueofextraordinarygentlemenI wanted to like this movie. Seriously. However, the following things prevented me from doing so. Stupid-looking explosion.

Kenya. Connery and British Dude stand around while, quite obviously, the director yells "bang" in place of a craptacular special effect. Connery and British Dude pivot around unremarkably to see the building behind them burst ineffectually into RED FLAMES that look like they were tooled on with Paint Shop Pro. BRILLIANT START TO THE FILM.

Hyde.

Having watched the DVD special features and what-have-you, I'm willing to marvel at the technological wizardry involved in creating the Hyde suit. However, as great as it is, it still looks like Mr. Flemyng is wearing half a Silly Sumo suit.

The car.

I'll grant you, for entertainment purposes, for the sake of suspension-of-belief, that an internal combustion engine could have been invented in 1899. Also, I'll even go as far as to say it's not totally ridiculous that it could have been put into a four wheeled vehicle. Sure. Why not.

However, having spent a moment contemplating the Nemomobile, one cannot help but realise that on top of the internal combustion engine -- a supercharged V-8 engine, no less -- Nemo and his cronies also somehow managed to invent (and apparently perfect) the building of a chassis, suspension systems, steering -- four wheel, no less, more on this shortly -- a gearing system, air-filled rubber tyres, an ignition system presumably utilising a startermotor and alternator which then powers the lights (which if I recall correctly wasn't invented til near half-way through the next century, as almost all early cars had crank-starts) AND obviously, as Sawyer crashed the thing and survived, some kind of safety systems such as crumple zones and presumably some kind of laminated glass in the windows. Which, apparently, were rigged with winding mechanisms just like 20th century cars.

ALSO, as the producers pointed out in the special features, it'd be completely and utterly impossible to make a four-wheel-steer car complete a 180-degree turn, or, indeed, negotiate the narrow streets and cornering of Venice. ON COBBLED STREETS.

AND FURTHERMORE, Mr. Sawyer executes this maneuvre after approximately four seconds of experience driving the vehicle. Which doesn't sound so bad now, but hey. He wouldn't have even known the thing on the floor is what makes it go faster.

GPS tracking from a submarine!

And what's more, Nemo's ridiculous submarine can apparently track the position of the car in question! With what? GPS? Radar? Yay!

Sean Connery's Titanium Feet.

Connery leaps from the car, moving at about..oh..a hundred miles an hour, onto cobblestones, flat-footed, and walks away. Okay, then.

3D Dominos!

Venice is collapsing, so Nemo -- wisest of the wise -- suggests destroying an upcoming link, a building, in the chain of collapsing buildings to save the city. Which would work wonderfully IF THE CITY WAS ONE STRAIGHT LINE OF BUILDINGS. But it's not, obviously. In order for this to work, one would need to destroy an entire RING of buildings around the epicentre of the collapse. Yes.

Really Obvious Bombs.

Wouldn't some overzealous little crewmember aboard the Nautilus have perhaps spotted a dozen SUITCASE-SIZED bombs with AUDIBLY TICKING TIMERS on them? Particularly when they're just "hidden" along walls and behind occasional pipes?

Oh, dear.

Finding true love --

in , ,

-- with the by-line, "Give Up Now". Last night, I was thinking about the popular ideal (or once popular idea, it seems to have gone the way of the dodo of late) that each person has but one true love, and the amazing probability mechanics inherant thereto.

The most basic equasion is thus: The world has a population of 6.3 billion people. Therefore, you've got a: one in 6.3 billion

..chance of meeting your true love.

This figure assumes the most arrogant assumption possible: That your true love exists. Y'know, we could really screw with the arithmetic and include the possibility of life on other planets, or interspecies love. I hear some people go for that kind of thing.

Might as well give up now, eh? Nah, let's be optimistic. Let's throw a few probability curveballs:

Gender.

For the sake of argument, we'll assume you're looking for someone of the opposite gender. Heck, considering roughly half the population is of either gender, we can safely say that you can pursue people of your own gender and have the same odds. If you're bisexual, you can skip the rest of today's lesson and quit looking entirely.

Our odds are now: one in 3.15 billion

Obviously, this figure omits hermaphrodites and people born with ambiguous genitalia. Sting, for example. It also doesn't take into account the celibate, the sexually inert, the post-menopausal, etc.

Age.

We'll assume you're looking for someone within your own age group, or within an age group you see preferrable. In the roughest maths ever, lets divide the population by eight to come up with eight 10-year age blocks, thus:

Our odds are now: one in 394 million

This barbarically assumes everyone lives precisely 80 years, and drops off the twig on their 81st birthday. It also assumes no one dies prior to that. It also assumes you're not a pedophile, in which case you're probably not looking for your true love anyway, which makes the argument moot. And disgusting.

Location, and chances of meeting.

Say you meet 20 new people every day. I'll define "meet" as "make eye contact with, and be able to recognise at a later time". This could be walking down the street, in a supermarket, etc. Leaving aside the issue of forgetting who you've met, and forgetting about the existance or non-existance of love at first sight, we're left with the following mess of mathematics:

20 people per day, for

365 days, for

80 years, or

584,000 people.

Divided into our previous total, gives us a necessary:

674 LIFETIMES required to lay our eyes on all of the potential candidates.

Obviously, as touched on in the next paragraph, you're not likely to meet your true love if she lives in Siberia and you're in Sydney. Additionally, there's the NASA-equivalent math involved in calculating your chances of meeting if they too are looking for you at the same time, and the possibility that they're not looking at all. Maybe they're a hermit.

Which brings me to another issue: What are you doing right now? Go ahead, triple the figure we just came up with. Sitting at a computer will not find you love. Despite what the banner ads tell you.

Furthermore, this equasion doesn't take into account the fact you'd need to cross continents and literally visit every corner of the planet (all the while still accomplishing your 'glimpse 20 people every day' goal) in order to even stand a chance. This is mostly because all of this is statistical crap and I couldn't be buggered researching the populations for all of the continents and applying the required math. It's too late at night.

The whole thing gets even more complicated once you take into account that in order for the whole ordeal to be worthwhile, not only do you need to find your one true love, but they need to find theirs -- in you. At which point the odds go from infinitesimal to astronomically infinitesimal, and you should concede that you've got no hope and go home and wank or something.

Anyhow, happy loving.

Christmas. Impending.

in

I hate Christmas. That in itself isn't so strange. What really makes me think is that I've always hated Christmas. Even when I was a kid. I'm tremendously annoyed by the overt commercialism of the whole thing. I want to know at which point someone decided "THE ALLEGED BIRTH OF THE SON OF GOD MEANS WE SHOULD ALL BUY EACH OTHER EXPENSIVE THINGS AND LINE THE POCKETS OF THE LEADERS OF THIS COMMERCIALIST EMPIRE WE CALL THE FINANCIAL WORLD". Somehow, I doubt it's what the Virgin Mary had in mind while the Almighty was fiddling with her loins. "Hey," she thought. "I could make money out of this."

It also irks me immensely that very few Christmas "traditions" have any basis in, well, anything. Like the Christmas Tree. As far as I can research, the entire reason we even have Christmas trees is because - get this - Christmas occurs in winter. Although there's a kind of pleasant detachment to this; at least one key part of what we now consider Christmas isn't in any real way connected with the religious significance of the event.

I guess this kind of divides the Christmas crowds. On one (fairly small, I'd wager) side, you have the religious Christmas folk, believing in angels and the son of God and mangers and hippies in Jerusalem. On the other side, you've got the commercialist Christmas people, believing in dollar signs, plastic trees and K-Mart dockets. This division's kind of relieving, but it still doesn't give any apology or reason for the centuries we've utterly retarded the original "spirit of Christmas".

Being from the southern hemisphere myself, I have to say that the "Christmas trees are because it's winter" ideal doesn't hold a lot of water. Our Christmas is usually around 109°F, humid, and spent sitting as close as possible to an air conditioning unit in a crass attempt at at least spending Christmas a degree or so below body temperature. Somehow, having a lump of slowly melting plastic disguised as a tree, coated with white shit out of a can disguised as snow and draped in ten-year-old balding tinsel is a fairly poor impersonation of winter. But hey, who am I to disagree with "tradition".

I don't believe in a whole lot about Christianity. Or any religion, for that matter. The limit of my involvement with religion is "It helps people get through their lives, then good for them". Which I think is fair enough, and you're welcome to it. However, I'm constantly stuck with this slightly comedic vision of Jesus returning - as he's so eloquently promised - only to be handed a red and white candied cane and a gift-wrapped toy with a large "MACY'S" tag on, and a crowd of gaping Christians waiting for him to be impressed.