October 30, 2001. Cool online video of crazy Dutch children's tv shows.
October 29, 2001. Antwerp was ace, really beautiful and the bars are great.
October 24, 2001. Freudian slips, Microsoft style.
October 23, 2001. I was having trouble getting motivated to do work, so I spent some time fucking up the trend on Am I Hot or Not? I gave high scores to people who looked nice, regardless of how classically 'pretty' they were, and low scores to smug-looking 'attractive' people. Then I went through the over-40 age group to make sure I got the people who probably needed it most.
Looking through the site is actually quite interesting. It seems that the level of confidence you express in your photo is more important than your actual looks or whether you look happy/smiley or interesting.
The scariest thing was the number of (to my mind) highly unattractive All-American boys with round faces who scored highly.
From the world of Easily Amused: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" is "Sneeuwwitje en de Zeven Dwergen" in Dutch.
October 22, 2001. Stories and photos from my trip to Paris are online, but still in draft form.
October 21, 2001. From the world of the Easily Amused: Fraser thought that "Charles and Camilla in a field of spinach" was a possible answer for the blanked out headline "_________ Spinach".
October 19, 2001. Finally, something else to talk about. Someone else's relationship and someone else's desolate world view. Maybe it's not desolate, and it's all in my head.
October 18, 2001.Oh, poor Johnny! After all he's done... You know this would happen though, right?
Little fanfare in US over Australian decision
"Australia's decision to send troops to Afghanistan has received little fanfare in the United States and has been virtually ignored by the US media."
This article mistakenly says that the New York Times doesn't mention Australia's offer of colonial cannon fodder: it did, but the headline implied that they'd got John Howard mixed up with a 'Premier'.
The Age's piece led me to dig this out, from a column in the Seattle Times:
"More predictably but no less gratefully America once again gets from Australia just about everything it asks. Say what you want about Prime Minister John Howard: he's not an Asia enthusiast, he's dull as dishwater, whatever."
October 17, 2001. On the lighter side, there are some textbook examples of how marketing campaigns can go bad.
Suspect powder was crushed incense
UTRECHT - A Utrecht company has admitted it sent letters to 3,608 companies containing incense cones, some of which had been crushed into a powdery dust.
One of those envelopes was sent to a US business in Almelo, leading to fears of anthrax infections following a spate of such cases in the US after the 11 September terrorist attacks.
The US company was evacuated out of safety considerations on Monday.
From the Sunday Times: "hundreds of people in Britain received a mailshot that included a small plastic bag containing fine particles. Some called the police fearing it was a biological threat. The substance turned out to be grains of sand sent by a company advertising holidays"
October 17, 2001. PM announces troop deployment and Australia makes biggest commitment since Vietnam. John Howard must be as happy as a pig in muck - not only does he get to be a war-time Prime Minister, but the big kids are paying him attention. Sure, he has to send Australian ground troops in where no-one else wants to send ground troops, but if it means that the US and the UK deign to talk to him, it's worth it. It doesn't hurt his election chances, either.
I don't know if the headline is true, and I certainly hope it's not, and while no-one ever deserves to be the target of terrorist action, I'm not sure I know how we can justify military action that bypasses the UN.
Worth reading just for this quote: "'America is undermining the role of the UN (United Nations) and the international community by taking the law into its own hands and creating a new world disorder,' [the chairman of the Australian Arabic Council (AAC)] said."
Australia a terrorist target: Arabic council
October 15, 2001. Even if I really want to, I can't believe [the company I'm working for] is going to make it. I'm not going to actively start looking for work, but I'm about the only one who isn't, and that's just going to speed up the process. (But at least the burn-rate will decrease). Time to update the resume. I'm sick to death of xml anyway.
October 12, 2001. I can't believe the Punters Club is really closing. I've been going there for more than ten years (which makes me an old slapper, I guess, but I did start going there to see bands when I was still in high school). So much of my life has happened there. I've hung out there and had moments with most of my significant and insignificant ex's there, I've had heaps of great nights or lazy Sundays with friends there. Even Gordon's wake was held there.
October 10, 2001. From the Department of Americans Aren't All Stupid, But... This quote is from the Culture magazine of the Sunday Times:
...Bridget Jones's creator [Helen Fielding] recalled seeing someone being asked: "What is the title of the fictional diary by Helen Fielding?" in the US version of The Weakest Link. "The Diary of Anne Frank?" was the plaintive reply.
October 10, 2001. Noticed this while checking my yahoo account today. It's like, *so* insensitive in the light of recent events.
October 9, 2001. According to the BBC, UK subs fired 50 Tomahawk missiles during the first attack on Afghanistan. At £UK 700,000 each, that's £UK 35,000,000 for the missiles alone. That's $US 51,422,000, $AU 102,041,671, NLG 123,095,324. or 244,221,250,000.00 Afghanistan Afghani.
October 9, 2001. Found it! I think he was getting confused (read the rest of the transcript to see how often that happens), and was thinking of the phrase "women of colo(u)r". Who knows? Anyway, the quote is "women of cover, Arab American women" at http://www.usembassy.org.uk/bush90.html.
He uses the term 'folks' five times in this speech alone. "I'm proud of the fact that the Secretary of State and the able team here at the State Department is a results-oriented group of folks. ... the folks in Afghanistan". Maybe we should start a fund to send him a thesaurus.
October 9, 2001. JHIAI. If you're reading from the top, you won't know what this means, but I've decided that it's an acronym we all need, so read down.
Apparently John Howard referred to the Australian aid workers held by the Taliban for allegedly promoting Christianity as "people who were doing nothing but preaching Christianity". Is he so stupid that he doesn't realise that this could appear as confirmation of the charges against them?
After all that fuss, the Americans decided to call their attack on Afghanistan "Operation Enduring Freedom"?
I'm still searching for a direct citation of this quote:
Speaking at the State Department, Bush took pains to do the politically correct thing, referring to Muslim women who wear traditional face-, head- and body-concealing clothing as "women of cover."
I have found Bush quaintly referring to the hijab as 'cover', as in "wearing cover" but not that exact quote. Maybe it's too good to be true.
October 8, 2001. Paris was beautiful, hopefully I'll have my travel diary and photos written by next weekend.
John Howard is an idiot. Maybe I should just abbreviate it to JHIAI as I say it so much, but that looks like an obscure terrorist group.
So, anyway, John is quoted as saying, "we are part of the free world and we owe a lot to the Americans in past history and this is the time to stand beside them.". You mean changing our laws to fulfil their requests in return for support in earlier wars wasn't enough? Prohibition of heroin was just one request from the American government, and look how how that helped our fellow Australians - just ask the victims of burglary by junkies, or the family and friends of junkies that didn't need to die.
October 5, 2001. I went to Centraal yesterday to buy a ticket to Paris for this afternoon. I said, "I'd like a return ticket to Paris" and she said, "for tonight?". It made my day, cos it's all so easy. All the hassle of leaving Australia and getting residency and work permits seems so worth it.
Otoh, I went out to the offices of the Alien (Foreign) Police last night, at the appointed slot: 6 to 9pm, and they were closed. That's the second wasted trip this week and I still haven't got my card.
October 3, 2001. There's a big debate at work about whether we should redevelop the existing application in asp or jsp. But now that I know that Melanie Griffith's own site uses php, I think we've found a winner.
October 2, 2001. I cannot believe that they're not going to learn from history. According to The Age, "President George W. Bush approved a plan to fund and arm an array of opposition forces in Afghanistan to help unseat the Taliban.".
The CIA trained bin Laden and other Islamic militants back in '79 and the 80s so they would get the Russians out of Afghanistan for them, and bin Laden used that against them this year. Can we expect American-trained Afghans to pop up again in twenty years?
A case of Life Imitates Onion?
October 1, 2001. How much do job agencies suck? I received email from one last week asking for details of my nationality so they could process my application. Sure, I've been working for a month already, but maybe they had a good reason for taking so long. The address didn't ring a bell, so I search back through archived mail to see what I'd sent them. Turns out I'd emailed them on June 25th - thirteen weeks, or three months ago. Surely I would have starved or gone home by now if I was still waiting for a response from them?