Today was a two-really-stupid-mistakes-at-work day. Thankfully, none of them are wrong-font-discovered-at-print-burn level of stupid, and merely caused copious swearing, not seppuku.

I also got called a bitch by the boss and accused of an evil plan to see myself in print before him. I like my boss.

I keep running into people I know, just randomly on the streets. Considering how many people I know in Melbourne as a fraction of the overall population, this is a phenomenal achievement on the part of either myself or the universe. (Though considering the size of this phenomenon as a fraction of the entire universe, not that phenomenal, I suppose, if it's the latter.)

By narky anti-social side - which I assure you I do have, though I hide it so well (stop laughing) - says this is just what you get when you "get out" and "meet new people". Against this argument is the fact that the people I have run into thus far are people I've known for at least a year and a half. For this argument is the fact that when I've run into them, I've been on my way to "meet [relatively] new people".

Tough call: is the universe trying to tell me something, through the medium of my narky anti-social side? Or am I just desperate for something pseudo-witty to blog?

I got a due notice from the library at 2:08am.

That's more devotion to duty than I was really expecting from the library, I must admit.

Why is there a man in a bear suit toting an electric guitar at the corner of Flinders Lane and Elizabeth?

Or is this another one of those questions that I don't really want answered?

(In other perplexing questions, why must fantasy writers who include homosexuality in their worlds create worlds where everyone is gay?)

Calling all gaming/computer geeks: HELP.

We just patched our Diablo II expansion up to version 1.10, and we are molto unimpressed. Players 8 no longer works, with the result that my char (already overpowered at level 28 at the end of chapter 2) will never level again, and now everything moves a shitload faster and deals a metric gigashit more damage, with the result that I'm dying in a squeal of anguish every five minutes and my hireling got wasted by a couple of puny Unravellers. WTF?

We wish our favourite game defucked RIGHT NOW.

Basically, does anyone know any way I can convert the game back to version 1.09 without having to uninstall, reinstall and patch up?

Once upon a time, I had a sort of enforced mini Angelia Jolie marathon, watching Beyond Borders back to back with Taking Lives. (Good thing was, it was on the in-house movie channel, which meant I could switch off the latter movie before the last reel, thus avoiding the stupid tacked-on-ness of the ending. W00t!)

Anyway, the point of this is that the song "Should I stay or should I go" featured prominently in the first half hour of both movies. Does the fact that I find this worthy of note display my ridiculous movie geekness?

In other news: finally a quiz that's hilariously funny.


Which Horrible Affliction are you?
A Rum and Monkey disease.

I don't know where the lead singer of New Order is getting his honey, but he's being ripped off.

In less random observances, we're on the new host, which means all sorts of shiny things, but I seem to have lost all my innate host-that-does-stuff knowledge, so I'm puddling through a bit at a time. If you see something that's upgefucked, let me know. I hope I've got the comments working, but if not, I do have the email working, so you know where I live.

I also find it hard to believe that Bowie's never been to Oxford Town. But I could be wrong.

(PS: I also, as I've just discovered courtesy of Kezza, have the ability to host/offer email addies to folks. Way cool!)

If you're reading this, we're on the new servers. I hope. *squints*

The first steps of host-changing have been taken. Keep your hands and arms inside the blog, folks, but hopefully all will be completed with a minimum of bumping about.

Look, I really do like your version better, but I have to tell you that it's "the answer" and not "my pants" which is blowing in the wind.

Fnord. This post does not exist.

In desperate need of last-minute caffiene and sugar before my editing class, I swung through the cafe in a languid arc, snatching the vanilla coke from the fridge and waving my money at the girl.

"Wait," she said, "the vanilla coke just went in. It's not cold."

"The diet's been in there all day," her boss advised.

I can't believe it. I'm reduced to diet vanilla coke. What is this? It tastes weird. Not as cokey. Funny, that.

And then I flipped over the lid and looked at the blue underside. There's a number on it. I turn it around so I can read it.

23.

Should have fucking known. Bloody Illuminati bastards, making me drink diet coke.

Maccas chick: (filling my order) "Leaving two Quarters!"
Me: "Isn't that a half, then?"
Him: "You are so overqualified to work here."

Funniest thing I saw today yesterday: "Dealing with Centrelink is working for the dole. Discuss."

My fingers are big fat red sausages and they hurt. All over, like they've been dipped in something horrifically caustic. All I did was walk the two blocks back from the shops carrying the shopping with fingerless gloves on.

Why am I living in this fucking climate again?

At least I'm not at the stage where the idea of getting out of bed in the morning literally makes me burst into tears. I'm sure that was happening by about this time last year. So I'm getting better at it. Right?

Turns out that band - The Calling - seems to be a reasonable facsimile of Matchbox 20, at least to my untutored ear. Not really my kinda shit. Draco's voice isn't bad, though, for someone who I hear is 21. Baby boy sings like a growed up. (And is very blond and sleek and shiny and pretty. Hey, I might prefer my men dark and a little scruffy, but I'm not DEAD.)

Of all the obscure reasons you could get interested in a band, the lead singer looking rather a lot like a growed-up Draco Malfoy is probably right up there with the stupidest. Or at least the shallowest.

The problem is, for all my good shallow intentions, I'm having trouble finding out if The Calling (with lead singer Alex Band aka Draco Malfoy circa age 21) is actually any good.

I do like the fact that his name is Alex Band, though. Tell me that's a pseud.

Me: If I make hot chocolate based on milk, will it kill Jono?
Mish: *cackles evilly*
Me: I assume that was "Yes, but do so anyway"?

How is menstruating like Christmas?

My usual feminine product of choice not being stocked by my supermarket, I went with something else. This one has little pearls of questionable wisdom printed on the packaging, presumably so you can do something while in the loo other than cursing God for making you female.

"If the population of China walked past you in single file the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction."

Except that if they're walking past you in single file they're hardly in any sort of position (pardon the pun) to be reproducing, are they? But one doesn't really get anywhere arguing with that sort of facile hygienic wisdom. It's like pointing out that the jokes in Christmas crackers really aren't funny.

Him: What are you doing?
Me: Watching the sugar writhe.

* * *

This is my 2000th blog post, or so the stats at Blogger tell me. I couldn't just waste it on the usual blather, could I?

I started blogging on the 1st of June, 2000. Check the archives. Actually, don't. My first post was ridiculous and stupid and contrived and self-conscious. In fact, the whole first week was a write-off.

I've had plenty of time to learn. Back then I was still masquerading under a personality - simply X - and the thing was still called "The World According To Carp". I have long since discarded internet pseudonyms to the point where, recently required to sign up for some message boards, I completely failed to think of a username more interesting than "Dee".

If this website, and blogging, has taught me anything, it's that the internet truly is the place to be yourself, as hard as you can, and that all the personas I assumed for so many years were only aspects of myself, never the whole truth.

Have I learned honesty? Pfft. What sort of Gemini do you take me for?

I was watching the sugar writhe, though.

Dee: *flails in the middle of the office*
Ione: What's up with you?
Dee: I was doing four processes at once on two different computers and three different applications, and then the phone rang and now I'm lost. No, wait, I was PSing this, and PDFing that, and--
Phone: *rings*
Dee: *screams*
Ione: *laughs*

"To be perfectly honest, I've never understood what's so insulting about that term anyway. Yeah, sure, it's a little bit of an affront to the dignity of the average heterosexual male, but if we were prone to worrying about the pride of the average heterosexual male, we'd never get anything done around here."

I wonder what work would be like without me screaming "Bastard!" at the top of my lungs at least once a day.

Could be worse. I could be shouting "Motherfucking bitch-bastard". I only do that once a week, tops, and then only when the boss isn't in the office.

Coming soon from Brolga Publishing, Zen and the Art of Swearing Your Head Off.

(Help, help, one of my characters is turning into Jack Sparrow!)

“No, wait!” the ragged man flailed. There was a tattoo, Dacia noticed, on the arm that Gen didn’t have his hand wrapped around. This fellow was from the provinces, as well as being lower-class; only the regional peasants still tattooed their children. “Wait a bit will you, fish-for-brains? Keron sent me.”

Gen paused in his eviction, though he’d obviously heard this protestation before.

“You mean the Minister for Jel-Adaan,” Ina said, disapproving.

“No, I mean bloody Keron, about this high,” he waved his tattooed hand a few inches about his head, “pretty hair, walks like a one-man parade, no head for drink.”
Dacia didn’t know whether to laugh out loud at the flavourful, but quite fitting, description of Keron, or be aghast. “You’re the Beadmaker,” she realised.

I have "C is for Cookie" stuck in my head.

In other news, I had a dream that The Lord of the Rings was commissioned by some dodgy Egyptian literary agent and not actually written by Tolkien at all. It was just decided that he'd make a more saleable figurehead. Y'know, Oxford Don, pipe, check out the sex appeal on that one.

Welcome to my subconscious.

New in the spam files...
Subject: Clarendon
Content: chortle,the black potato,chortle,the black potato,chortle,the black potato.chortle,the black potato,chortle,the black potato.

I'm so very tempted to accuse Jono.