more fun than an eye full of piss' Journal

11:43am: What has fucking insensed me this morning, is an aside comment in a Guardian article about a bill to penalise American companies profiting from aiding repressive governments in censoring the internet.

Mentioning that this bill was blocked a few years ago by the Bush administration "with the former president's advisers arguing that laws governing corporate ethics were not beneficial to American prosperity."

!!!

I cant fucking believe a governing body would even suggest this! It makes me so angry my brain just sees red noise and I'm reduced to spitting incoherence!

No wonder most of the world hates The West. When we're capable of acting on rationales like that, I fucking hate us. :(

11:34am: Ebay are twats
Aaaargh!

Ebay piss me off so much!

You may have noticed that there are a lot of "Free p&p" listings on Ebay recently. This is because Ebay have enforced compulsory free p&p on a number of categories, including books, games, dvds, clothing, accessories, etc.. (Funnily enough, a large number of very busy categories with a low item values relative to the cost of postage.)

The first frustrating thing is that they announced it to the sellers as an 'offer', saying they'd reduce your final value fees by a tiny fraction if you listed an item in these categories with free p&p.

"Fuck that!" thought I, not being the sort of dullard that would sign up to get sodomised by a pole just because it had a red star with Special offer! gaffa-taped to the end.

Since I last popped out to the post office, which we do alot in our line of work, Royal Mail aren't currently offering any services for the 12p Ebay aparrently think is about what it costs to magic an item from point A to point B. (This is how much their offer would give us.)

So when this "offer" started, we spent hours trying to work out why the listings were throwing up postage errors. "Surely its not compulsory" - we thought. "Look, there's even a ticky box to tick to say we want to offer free p&p. What kind of imbecile would add one of those if it was suddenly compulsory?"

Aparrently the kind of imbecile that was trying very hard to make the sodomy-pole more attractive by insinuating that you'd consented to this rude and unencouraged buggery.

The following day, when we still couldn't list items because of what we thought was a free p&p bug, I phoned Ebay to report the error, to be nervously informed that it wasn't an error! Hadn't I read last months announcements, which told me about the offer? "I did." said I. "However, this isn't a fucking offer is it - an offer is a proposal, this is a subjection!"

After railing at the poor person for some time, while wearing out an angry strip of my carpet, he told me to add the postage costs on to the value of the item.

Why is that fucking free postage? Its just a stealth-tax by Ebay, allowing them to finally get to charge us a fee on postage costs. While at the same time, forcing us to insultingly patronise our customers, claiming to pay for the postage out of the kindness of our hearts.

Twats.

3:38pm: I NEED one! D:
Click for cutest squirrel story evah!

disclaimer

Video starts as soon as the page loads.

Watching video may result in squirrel acquisition.

9:10am: For Spotifiers
As its Friday, here's a short mixtape of the sounds of my college years.

http://open.spotify.com/user/jacoby_swift/playlist/0uPDqYyitMFVMYduqRLgrX

Ahhh, classics. Although I'm disappointed they didn't have the Wedding Present Ukranian album. *snicker*

9:15pm: I've just made the best tasting meal I've had in months and months!

Steak with mushrooms in a garlic, butter and peppered boursin sauce and mustard mash (with carrots :P ). *dribble*

And I was just saying this afternoon that I didn't know why I was craving steak, because I was always disappointed

"Pfft, yeah ok, its a big bit of meat."

Overrated, unimaginative, and unversatile. I'm sure I only occasionally crave it because that was what my dad used to have as a treat.

And yeah, the steak was ok, (tossed in well seasoned cornflour and pan-fried,) but it would have just been a hunk of meat without the fantastically peppery, creamy, garlicy, orgasmicy mushrooms, and mustard-tanged mash. *melt*

And I cooked two portions of veg so I can have the same again tomorrow! *cackle*

3:13pm: If you're bored and visciously frittering away your employers time on the internet this afternoon, in retaliation for him forcing you to come to work on such a wonderfully sunny day, this Charlie Brooker comment article from a few weeks ago on Gordon Brown is hilarious.

"Assailed from all directions, stumbling, bumbling, droning, punch-drunk, hapless, hopeless, and aching with palpable misery, he increasingly resembles a depressed elephant, slowly being felled by a thousand pin-sized arrows fired into his hide by a million tiny natives, still somehow moving forward, trudging wearily toward its allotted graveyard-slot with morose resignation."

*cackle* Genius.

10:40am: Does anyone have any insight into the North Korean mentality?

I'm inclined to think there must be more than the impression of them we get consistently from all angles of the press. That of a delinquent, occasionally rabid child.

But their actions/reactions do always seem to fit this description. Or is this just a convenient stereotype for the media to stick to? (People do usually like their news to reinforce their views rather than challenge them. They want olds not news as Terry Pratchet observed. ;P )

Anyone know of any internet based material I could read offering an alternative perspective?

9:34am: Reading this article in the Guardian about the ridiculous caricature of an Italian Prime Minister, who has for all intents and purposes been declared guilty of some serious financial corruption, but has in this term introduced a new law preventing himself from being prosecuted. Something they briefly mention is that the British Lawyer David Mills who has just been found guilty of accepting a more than a third of a million quid bribe from him, is married to the British Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell.

This David Mills bloke, aside from being found guilty of accepting the £387,000 bribe, for in his words keeping "Mr B out of a great deal of trouble he would have been in had I said all I knew". His role for Berlusconi was to set up a web of offshore companies, one of whose purposes was to launder and funnel illegal party contributions to Berlusconi.

So, the Olympics is coming to London. There will be a massive pot of money, millions and millions of pounds of contracts to distribute among many private companies. The flow of which will be influenced, if not directed by Tessa Jowell, the wife of this Lawyer who has just been found guilty of facilitating money laundering in politics.

As the phrase goes - you just couldn't make it up!

10:44am: Reading an article in todays Independent about the recent Indian election, it included a quote from a political scientist from Jawaharlal Nehru University. :/

You'd think being a University there'd be someone there capable of googling the meaning of science.

2:35pm: Virtual 3D by head tracking
Take a look at this latest video from a clever chap called Johnny Chung Lee, who amongst many other innovative projects, does amazing things with the Wii Remote.

In this video, he shows how you can use the wii remote and wii sensor bar (or a couple of infra red LED's) to turn your screen into a proper 3D virtual display!



We need gameses! D:

1:49pm: ( Probably the cutest picture of a Megaleledone setebos you'll see today! )

9:30am: I'm glad to see the Lib Dem expenses abuse seems to be considerably less than the other two parties. Although I'm sure it'll get worse over the next few days.

I never thought I'd be saying this, but I decided a few months ago that I'll be voting Lib Dem this time. For quite a while, it has just seemed that whenever I'm pissed off with a political decision, or a response is requested from the parties, its always only the Lib Dem representative thats speaking any sense.

I'm not sure why I'm so reluctant to let myself like the Lib Dems though. *chuckle* I think its because I'm a child of the Spitting Image era, so I've had it ingrained into me that they'll be ineffective. But they do seem to be the only polititians with any integrity. (Perhaps it comes from resignedly going into politics with the knowledge that you'll probably never win.)

What has reinforced this for me this morning, is that one of the expenses claims that have been raised, was Lembit Opic, who was charged £40 for a court summons for non-payment of council tax. *cackle* I've had that fine! Although mine was the original Poll Tax. I'm just loving the mental image of his response to the bill of "Oh yeah? Ya fuckers, pay it yourself!" I know this is not very well thought through, and in fact it was us who paid that summons for him, but frankly, I'm more than happy to have done so. There are plenty of ridiculous ways our tax dollah are disposed of, a few of them being employed to rebel against unfair taxes is a more noble way to waste them.

;P

12:45am: Pictures like this recent photograph of the mane of the Hosehead nebula just make the back of my neck tingle with how absolutely incredible stuff is.

( photo by David Malin )
The mane is a cloud of Hydrogen that's fluorescing red.

1:25am: Hahaha I love writing, and then deleting late night inadvisable LJ posts.

*cackle*

Reading them back to myself reminds me what an Emo nerd I can be when my brain is left to its own devices.

Ahhhh, thats the wonder of the written word. I'm glad the Intenet has strangely been the catalyst for a billion otherwise unwritten diarys.

Thoughts seem to have to stand up against far more stringent checks and measures when caligraphated all over something.

The number of times I've thought and felt something with every vibration of my essence, typed it out, only to notice that actually, its not really that important and that I should stop being such a whiney girl and focus on things that matter in life.
(And yes, I'm talking about posts I've deleted, not the ones that are still there. Think how bad some of them must have been considering the ones I let through!! Although I do let the odd introspective whimper through the net for some reason. *chuckle* Finger hovvering over the delete button, then visciously not deleting. I'm sure its a form of digital self-harm.)

Assuming I'm not an alien, and other people encounter this phenomenon when they've typed an anguish out and they read them back and realise "Oh my god, I'm such a twat!"

Think of the number of posts made a day.
And so the number of those where the writer must have realised the things that were weighing most heavily on their mind were so inconsequential. So lacking in the very real substance of so many of lifes legitimate concerns. Like sustenance, security, stability...

Its amazing that LJ is doing this. This ridiculous podium, most frequently used to broadcast to the world which Thundercats character you are most like, or whether you're feeling melancholy or cheeky!, is probably the saviour of much Karma, worldwide!

Who'd have thought the internet, such a potential eroder of braincells, could so casually do so much good, by making idiots like me more aware of themselves?!

2:37pm: Hair is destroying our planet!!
Stood in my shower today, still being entertained by the small but thought provoking changes my recent hair cut has made to my life.

(Like the phenomenon that the flow of water now instantly goes over my face, where previously there would be a few seconds delay while my hair became waterlogged, and even following that most water would still be channelled away from my face. So amongst other things, hair is the faces eyelashes.)

And being disappointed at the brevity of my shower, as its the location of so many of my favourite peculiar insights, I've suddenly realised that the impact of my haircut is a global one!

As I now spend less than half the time in the shower I need to heat half the ammount of water I did previously! Thats a massive ammount of energy saved for a relatively minor change in the scheme of things. I then realised that not only did I previously heat up twice as much water for a shower as I now do, getting out of the shower I would then use the hairdryer. Following that I would then use straighteners! Three massively energy gussling actions.

How much of our carbon footprints are a direct result of hair?!

Our hair is destroying the planet!!

D:

11:52am: meandering update
Hey peeps. I'm back from Whitby, and wont be reading back through my millions of LJ posts, so please tell me if there's anything important I should know about.

I do seem to say this every time, but that was my best Whitby yet! Fantastic fun!

It really does make a completely different weekend now we're trading in the Leisure center. No more getting up early every morning to set the stall up, and taking it down again at the end of the night. I can happily and with a clear conscience leave the stall to Jo, and just man it for the odd hour while she goes off for lunch. I'm so terribly bad at that kind of thing, I just stand around looking awkward, whereas Jo is absolutely in her element and even seems to know every other person anyway! *cackle* That woman is a social machine!

Business was our best Whitby yet as well, taking more than we would at an Infest, which is usually our busiest stall. But then that seems to be the case across the board for our business with everything growing and growing. Its a great feeling as we've been working our asses off for about the last 8 months, working long hours and 6 or 7 day weeks. We did get to a point about a month or so ago, where we were both utterly exhausted and burnt out, and sat down and had a giggle about how very little money we pay ourselves for such long and hard hours. *chuckle* But the company is in a teething stage at the moment, where its very hungry for cash, and needs massive ammounts of time devoted to promotion. Which has combined with the constant sales growth we've had over the last 6 months, meaning we've been working harder and harder each month.

But I've given myself a few days off to recover from Whitby, lounge around in my pj's and play on my computer. Hence the time to update. :) w00t!

Oh, thats what I meant to update with, before I went off on a work-based ramble... we've cut all my hair off! :D Most of you may know from Facebook, but a week ago on Friday, me and scarletkitti were having a tea break and discussing hair, and on a whim decided to shave my head. It's amazing how fast it grows, and I'm still playing with styles at the moment, deciding how I want to keep it for a while. Currenty I have a short red stripe going to a point over each ear, and a short, wide mohecanny stripe over the top. I think I'm going to take it down to the skin for a few weeks, as the bare scalp is such a novelty to me. Then I'll get to the business of growing in a style I want to keep for a bit. I'm thinking a short mohecan strip of dreadlocks, but who knows. I'm sure my mind will change a dozen times between now and 3 weeks time. >.<

( This is what it looks like now )
So, how have you been?

7:09pm: Gah! Having a small business is like having a fucking baby!

***insert pithy metaphore here***

And you can't unload a truck of them with a pitchfork!

Or something! Oh pith. :P

7:47pm: I'm really loving Spotify.

Music on demand, and they've got a massive library. And for advert driven internet radio there are hardly any adverts. When I'm able to paymyself more, I may have to subscribe to advert free anyway, to show my support for them if nothing else. This is the future of electronic music distribution.

When its slightly more popular, hopefully they'll be able to target the advertising a little better as well. *chuckle* And stop spamming me with this one advert for fecking Justin Timberlake.

10:35pm: Ahoy there friends on the internet!!

Look! I'm not dead! Neither am I in a coma. Nor trapped in a cabinet.

Three things I am very pleased about, among the many many other things that also please me.

So whats new in your worlds?

Not much new at this end. The business is going great! Although we're just coming to the end of a few months of much promotional work, which has left just enough time for orders, but not time for much else on the business improvement side. As our accountant was saying the other day, spending all my time working for the business, and not enough working on the business. How fucked up is that?! I have a fucking accountant! *cackle*

And now I'm off to read about ninjas on the internet, because its good like that.

moochies

11:24pm: Tonights top three
a.) WH last night was the best WH I've had in a long time.

2.) I appear to have become addicted to Pombears and have eaten an entire multipack since Friday (with token assistance from scarletkitti).

iii.] I have taken tomorrow off work, but have nothing planned apart from some work I need/want to get done. - aaargh! Someone please ctrlaltdelete my life.

6:13pm: WTF?

Is this a drunk driving news story sponsored by the beer the bloke was caught drinking?

I was going to add a cynical observation, but I'm actually speechless!

2:56pm: ethical ponderances
This hypothetical situation is really bothering me today for some reason.

Which of these are illegal? And out of interest, which of these would you consider unethical?

Is it illegal for me to buy a book, and lend it to someone else to read?

Is it illegal for me to read a book aloud and make a recording of myself reading?

Is it illegal for me to put that recording on the internet where other people can listen to it, but not download it?

Is it illegal for me to make the file of me reading a book available for downloading?

10:19pm: I'm joining the Gothic Royalty lj community.

Touch me! Some of the cool may rub off! ;)


Oh, and here's the valentines I sent to a friend in Australia. (I first saw her dressed as Mary Poppins. >.< )

3:19pm: geekness
Anyone up for some L4D this weekend?

Perhaps try and get 2 teams together to play versus mode on Saturday afternoon?

Fallout3 has decided to stop responding despite installing mods, fixes, and a complete uninstall and reinstall (the twat!) so I think I'll be pitted against the zombies most of the weekend. :)

10:01am: l2seduce dude!
Seduction? I'm doin it wrong! ;P