Mischief.

You've got to love North Korea.

• Their head of state is dead, and hasn't been replaced in a decade.
• They're being run by his son, who's insane. Very insane.
• Half their populace is involve in the armed forces.
• They're economically fucked.
• And they successfully test their first nuclear weapon the day South Korea's foreign minister, Something something Moon, is to be instated as UN Secretary General.

So to some up: they're insane, but very, very ballsy.

In other news: congratulations George W. Bush for making the world safer. You go, girl.

The world turns.

Well, I'm 25, which is the new thing - same as the old thing.

It was one of my more enjoyable birthdays, actually, as I had taken the entire preceding week off, and had reached a state of full relaxation. Which was nice.

It also neatly coincided with the Xbox 360 launch. So, being a current (former) Xbox user, I upgraded. It's shiny and works on the HD LCD tv, which is shiny. Hopefully much fun will be had by all, though I've yet to get a fighting game (a prerequisite of consoles) as I'm not the hugest Dead or Alive fan. But hey, whatever. Indeed, my father was rather horrified by my first game purchase for the 360: a tennis game. Which is shiny.

What can I say? I like sports games - they're naturally competitive. They're learning experiences. And they very simply replayable. My favourite games will always be the likes of Knights of the old Republic, Full Throttle, Deus Ex (homg) and far cry, but they're much less entertaining to play through the second time. Sports games can be good on and on.

The other game related thing is that I transfered my main World of Warcraft character to a server where they have a very sizable (200+) South African guild. That plays at "human" hours. Good for me.

Anyway, Loeries has come and gone. It was still held in "sunny" Margate. There was still too much (hah) drinking. And I still won nothing. Many tears and all that. Though the weather was Cape-Town-winter-esque, which was...damp.

I think the entire Margate experience wore a little thin - the newness had gone, and the whole thing felt very slick. I have a suspicion that the Loeries would do well to attract as many people back next year.

I've also watched a crap load of tv (on pc) - see above regarding me taking a week off. I watched Deadwood season 1 (So much swearin', so many whores, so much facial hair), How I met your mother season 1 (fun), finished Angel (yeah, no, well...sad to ended, glad it's gone), and wrapped up BSG season 2 (one year WTF).

Luckily, there's still more tv to consume - but if anyone has any clever suggestions, pony up (and not anime, anime is never clever).

Final news of the day: I'm finally caught up on George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. It kicks ass. Seriously. Like, fwoah. But now I'm considering trying to run a game in it's setting using something like Riddle of Steel. I say I'm considering, but I imagine my phobia of deep, hurtful pain will help me avoid it.

Movies-That-Should-Not-Be

The world cup has stolen my posting...well, the world cup and my mac's "back" macro. It's is evilly similar to my "change tab" macro.

So, in lieu of the impressive, insight and life changing post that was almost finished before being snatched by the ether, here are some links:

• Yes, it's happing: Cthulu, the movie. It's in post-production, but the sanity sapping thing about the movie is that Tori Spelling is in the cast.
• The Singapore Spaceport ... in planning. It's nice to know there capitalists all ready to drive us forward.
• Good news everyone. A new series of Futurama in 2008. Only 13 episodes, but still, better than a rat gnawing off your testicles. (Should the reader be female, then it's better than a mad scientist implanting testicles on your forehead, and then a friednly mouse gnawing them off.)
• And in a similar vein: Buffy, Season 8. In comic book form. Being published by Dark Horse. Bizarrely, Joss Whedon seems to have had a half ton of comics published, including an ongoing run of X-men, credited as the "mutant cure" inspiration for X-men 3.

That's all for now, the football calls. Join me "just now" for ranting and insight.

It's too late now...

Here is a super depressing article about 2004 US election fraud from the Rolling Stone magazine. There's not much else to say about it, except to lament the continuing presence of Dubya as "King of the World".

In other news: 7 days to the world cup.

It's an update.

Nothing of significant interest has occured that would have driven me to post, so this has been a sad, lonely blog for a while. But do not despair, for through sheer force of inertia I have returned to dazzle you, the devoted readers, with my nonsense.

First though, by way of an excuse, I've been pulling my hair out (in a metaphorical way) due to the total crap internet I've been dealing with of late. Nevermind my work internet - I can't tell you how fast it is, as fast is a word that has no relation to it. No, I'm whining about ADSL. I know: surprise - a South African complaining about broadband delivery - but it's been too disruptive as to make writing a blog entry more difficult that it's worth.

Part of the problem is dealing with that hell company's lovely support staff. First you have sit on hold for some amount of time between (record low) 5 minutes and the more usual 30 minutes. When you're finally knocked out of your slumber by some bored voice, you have to convince them that, yes, you actually have a problem. No, it's not the alignment of the planets temporarily knocking your mojo out of whack, it is a Hellkom problem.

The reason this is so hair-pullingly hard, is that our connection is intermittently down. This confuses the hell out of our router, which then requires we restart it. Rinse repeat. Of course, at the moment you phone those bastards, it'll be working fine - so you have to go through the whole "take my word for it" dance, not to mention the "do you know what intermittent means" jig.

In the end the problem is "fixed" and then about two days later they phone you and ask how the problem is: to which you can only reply that it's working now - and quickly got through another intermittent jig.

I hate it.

Anyway, work has been dull. Technically I've spent the last week doing a music search for an unshot tv commerical. This involves listening to music all day. Luckily, being the negative bastard that I am, I can find the dark cloud: my laptop has shit speakers, so I listen to these songs on my headphones - which means after 3 hours your ears are in pain.

Poor me. (Imagine a winking smiley here. I've taken a vow to stop using them in polite company).

I was amused to see a story on the front page of The Star about a panel of experts getting together (A doctor of philosophy, genetics and a poultry farmer, would you believe?) They were charged with answering that old chestnut: What came first, the chicken or the egg? And, lo, the answer was egg.

The reasoning being that due to evolution only occuring between generations, at some point what is a chicken today was a proto-missing-link-but-not-a-baboon-chicken. The pmlbnabc then laid an egg that contained today's chicken. Hence the egg came first.

Those damn kids.

I'll admit I've never been particularly "hip" to these young whippersnapper's fashions, but this latest thing (and by a latest, I mean at least two years old) really throws me.

Flesh tunnels.

For those that don't know, this involves piercing your earlobes, and putting increasingly large nuts into the hole, stretching it. Very African, though I'm fairly certain that's not the point.

My problem, is I don't get the why. It's self-mutilation, without the "art" or sentimentality of tattoos. They're hygene bombs (the nuts don't come out very often, and ears aren't known for their cleanliness to start with). And they're permenant.

When they take the stupid disk/nut/thing out, the hole droops. That means you have to wear the bloody things for the rest of your life. For a fashion!

I just don't know.

In other news, my (no doubt years behind the time) "discovery" of the day is The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.

It's awful.

Why I shouldn't be given the power to explode heads.

I hate*.

I recently revealed that I hate stupid people, which is not the entire truth. The truth is that I hate everyone and everything. It is not always a righteous hate, nor only a jealous hate, nor merely vindictive – no, there is hate for every occasion. And in every occasion, hate is there.

I hate people. I hate stupid, violent people. I hate quiet, passive people. I hate people who are happy. I hate people who mope about. I hate being surrounded by people, while I hate being alone.

I hate being bored. I hate that I have to work. I hate that I sold my soul but didn’t read the small type. I hate anything I create is on someone else’s terms. I hate my bosses and I hate my underlings. I hate the useless people who have no point.

I hate whiny geeks. I hate pretty boys. I hate plain stupid people, and I hate pretentiously clever people. I hate that they’re not as clever as me. I hate that I’m that conceited. I hate myself. I hate that I do. I hate being single, and I hated it when I wasn’t. I hate that I find no-one interesting. I hate that no-one is interested in me.

I hate the fact that I must escape into stories, while I hate the brilliant stories, as I know they must end. I hate the things that give me joy, as they remind me of the things that don’t. I hate football - it’s just a game. I hate people who dismiss other’s hobbies as just a game.

I hate that nothing is just a game. I hate politics. I hate people who ignore politics. I hate politicians. I hate George W. Bush. I hate Osama bin Laden. I hate war. I hate war. I hate people.

I hate the sequence of events that compel me to write this. I hate that anyone will be reading it. I hate you.

I hate men. I hate women. I hate children, I hate dogs. I hate cars. I hate the rich. I hate the poor. I hate my enemies as I hate my friends. I hate that I have to worry about offending people. I hate my family. I hate that they love me. I hate that I love them.

And I hate that I hate.

*Hate – verb – loathe, detest, despise, dislike, abhor, execrate, be repelled by, be unable to bear/stand, find intolerable, recoil from, shrink from; formal abominate. ANTONYM love.**
**I hate that I now own three different Thesauri due to my work.***
***I hate footnotes.