Hic Sunt Dracones

It’s around one in the morning on a Thursday, and I’m for some reason not sleepy, so lets recap.

Nic invaded a castle. Or a church, or something. He did it very slowly. He in fact walked across Spain (the country) this may count as some kind of proof. So, he gets the Hard Core walking across Spain award for the week. It was a close won race, but yeah, he seems to have pulled it out of the bag. His prize appears to be a 15Km beach. Not what I’d organised, but probably a better option.

Just last week I watched some of Heat, and then all of Top Gun and as well as thinking what big hair the 80s had, I thought, what’s Val Kilmer done for us lately? The answer came to me in a dream.

Did I link this before? It’s Muppets + WOW nerdism. And the ending proves comic genius.

Internets Celebrities are holding a press conference right now in front of McDonald’s to let McDonald’s know… Fuck you McDonald’s, we’re tired of your shit.

Well, I laughed at them there Internets Celebrities but then it didn’t really live up to my hopes. Some of their stuff is pretty good.

Kottke, who rules the A list with a velvet glove sent us flocking to Baarle-Hertog and verily, that place is messed up. And awesome. I’m putting it on my list of places to visit… So far it is #1, but it is a short list. And a work in progress. (So far it’s three places) From Baarle-Hertog we got even cooler, with the Sovereign Military Order of Malta!

Holy Crap! An order, created for crusading good times (1050 AD), and being all sovereign over Rhodes and then Malta till Napoleon kicked them out and took away their “is a state” ticket has managed to survive (for over 200 years) as a sovereign organisation without any (well much) terriroty. That is rocking.

So. I have a plan, and I’d say we have 42 years to pull it off. OK actually the 1000 year party really is irrelevant to the plan, just seemed like a good bookend. Anyway, so the whole becoming a Law Lord scheme isn’t working out well at the moment. What without me having a law degree to start with, but, I digress. Knight of Magistral Grace! Yeah. Now that is HOT. Hot like Fire. And that’s the bottom rank for these dudes.

The Third Class consists of lay members who do not profess religious vows or the Promise, but who live according to the principles of the Church and the Order.

Right, so that sounds doable. Someone start a letter writing campaign.

PS. Are you pondering what I’m pondering? (Was it this?)

So it’s Wednesday night and I’m getting changed out of wannabe corporate getup into wannabe rock star sports God getup. I should have plenty of time and a leisurely trip on a tram from the CBD to Albert Park. But! No shorts. Suck.

Touch isn’t till 7.20 but it’s 6.20 now. Shit. Run to the train station, watch train depart as I hustle through the turnstile (not actually a turnstile, but that will do) wait for next train. Sigh, next train is an express. No! Wait, it randomly isn’t. Jump on next train, cruise back to North Richmond Station (as seen in the Adventures of Nic, the bearded). Run home, It’s 6.40 now and I’m trying to work out if I could bike there in time. I might be able to, but I’d be exhausted. Call a taxi to come and collect me. Find shorts, get changed and run back downstairs for the taxi, which had arrived in sub two minutes.

Jump in taxi. “Home to Bel Air!” “??” “Er, the Gun Island, Albert Park” “??” Albert Park!” “Can you direct me?” “To Albert Park? Er, sure.” And off we go. Albert Park is big, it’s 2.25 km² (Hagley is 1.61 km²), it’s where the F1 is held, and it is in the middle of a suburb called Albert Park. How does the taxi driver not know where it is? I hate taxis. On to Punt Road and the driver demonstrates he really didn’t know where it was, not being sure if he should turn left or right. And hang on! How am I on $4.7 already, we have literally driven 500m (according to the Goog) Me thinks this dude screwed me for some kind of “waiting” time or something. Note to punters look at the fare immediately, not 15 seconds down the road. I hate taxis.

Onto the gridlocked horror that is Hoddle / Punt Rd for many hours of the day. It’s three lanes in both directions and for a lot of the day, it’s three lanes full of cars in both directions. We crawl down the road. On the inside lane I spot a bus. What the? That buss should be well gone by now! I roughly know the bus schedule for it is my traditional “getting to Touch bus” and it must be running very late. Ah good… I see it is making up for it by powering down the inside lane at a significantly faster rate than my taxi. I hate taxis.

Follow that bus! The bus gradually pulls away for us as I sit and fume. And game time edges closer. And the fare counter ticks over. I hate taxis. It was somewhere around Swan Street, three “short” blocks of gridlocked traffic from home, with the fare already sitting above $15 that I realise I’d made a rookie mistake. I should have just found a shop somewhere and bought new shorts, and then taken the easy tram to touch. The cost might have been more, (who can tell what this taxi will cost in the end), but at the end of the day (heh, touch RUGBY sporting cliché!) I would have had a new pair of shorts that I could I don’t know, use again? As opposed to simply getting to Touch, possibly on time, possibly not. But no. Didn’t think of that did I? And now, it is too late.

So, we putter over the river and start heading up the (Punt?) hill. At this stage I’ve started looking through the Taxi driver’s Melway for guidance on how best to actually get to the field. The fields lie opposite the F1’s Pit Lane (used in the 10 months of the year when it isn’t an F1 track for indoor Netball and Soccer) but getting into Albert Park from the east seems somewhat complicated for cars (normally I’m on foot, so somewhat oblivious to these concerns), which is why I’d named a pub to the taxi driver. It’s a known location by me that should be easy for a taxi to get to, and is over the back fence of the fields. But with time running out, I’m looking for plans with more cunning. I figure out what I think we should do, and point it out to the driver, (who has plenty of time to look at the map, did I mention the gridlock?) and he suddenly seems to know where we’re going. He suggests we go around the other side of the park as that will be much quicker. Sure! Why not? He seems to know what he’s talking about (must have misplaced Albert Park on his mind map) and it doesn’t seem any worse than what I was thinking of, so we bust out of Punt Rd and head down Toorak Rd. Sneak through Queens Way (no apostrophes in street names. It’s not my fault) nip through Kings Way and onto Albert Park road, and suddenly the traffic it is clearing! And then we’re in, and onto the F1 circuit. Putter putter putter goes my taxi slowly navigating the corners.

Hurrah! We arrive, and I still have an entire minute to pay the man and get to the game. $28 BOO! Mental note – don’t forget your shorts. Play the game, with a collection of roped in players as we’re missing a few of our own. Grab ninja intercept. Fail to score. Draw game 5-5.

There is a little epilogue to the tale of sadness: Opponents complained about our roped in players not wearing the correct uniform. So we defaulted the game as a 5-0 loss. Bah, I hate taxis.

At a little after one this morning it was 01:23:45 on the 6/7/8! Do you know where you were? I was at the beach, rediscovering how difficult writing in sand is when it isn’t wet / densely packed sand. But I was there, and that was a cool time / date thingyawhatsit. $1 to everyone who didn’t sleep through it. (Pick up only, offer not valid in Guam)

Not sure if I’ve linked American Teen (not a werewolf, and not in Paris). I like it, and I noticed at the end of the trailer that the link wasn’t to americanteenthemovie.com, although that would be correct, but rather to facebook.com/americanteen. Which is interesting, for you know, set levels of interest.

Hancock is not getting the critic love. But that did not dissuade me. Instead the 90 minute running time did. So off to Get Smart I went. And I laughed.

Maxwell Smart: Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
The Chief: I don’t know. Were you thinking, “Holy shit, holy shit, a sword fish almost went through my head”? If so, then yes.

I’m going to tighten up on my movie watching practices. I’ve seen a lot less films recently than I probably should have, eg I haven’t seen Indy yet (wtf), but then I go off and see comedies. Comedies do not explode when sunlight hits them, and they don’t lose as much on the small screen. Which is why I’m saving all my love for Batman and Wanted. Which will dominate a big screen. Yes.

And now, lets whore some metafilter link ups:

• Simply noise, a site for all your streaming white noise needs. Which led me off to Wiki land to investigate the existence of other colours of noise. And yup, there are some. So that should come in handy some day… Red/Brown noise does sound like the stuff you end up with a lot of on low quality video recordings. Or I could be mental.
• The 4468 Mallard holds the record for the fastest steam train. Which isn’t really too exciting. And neither is this video… But it does show you the serious business of Virtual Steam Train Re-enactment via Microsoft Train Sim? For all your train simulation needs. Which I guess some people have. Dan, I’m looking in your direction.
• Also, in honour of their 4th of July celebrations someone linked some Animaniac youtuberies, I have the capitals one on MP3 and it’s pretty cool, but I hadn’t heard/seen the Nations of the World. And I certainly hadn’t seen the voice of Yakko doing the whole thing by rote, presumably some decent time after needing it for the show. (I hope to end up like this guy.)

Because I’m all about the comments, and because Mel commented on a post about four or five (who can keep up with this hectic pace? NOT BEN) thingies ago, and obviously because you all love to have your name up in lights, I give to you, “recent comment widgit what I’ve added to the sidebar. Nice one new word press goodness.”

If I don’t post my story about Canberra by this time next week, I need to book a ticket on the fail boat.

And finally, Boba Fett + Flashdance. An (awesome) lesson in patience.

PS Mel, that youtube link got shutdown.

7:07:09 p.m. Wost: What you need to be doing, right, is youtubing the robot song from FOTC and painstakingly noting down the binary sequence EXACTLY as sung.
7:07:20 p.m. Wost: And then do the same with the bit from Futurama
7:07:27 p.m. Wost: And then compare the two
7:08:00 p.m. Wost: And then draw fanart where you are a black panter and leela is a mountain lion
7:08:09 p.m. Wost: and you are expressing your love for each other
7:08:23 p.m. Wost: oh yes and you are prominently pregnant
7:08:31 p.m. Wost: and leela has 3 boobs
7:08:34 p.m. Wost: no 4
7:09:02 p.m. Wost: and upload it to deviantart
7:09:08 p.m. Wost: then comes the slash fiction
7:09:15 p.m. Wost: you fry and kirk
7:09:31 p.m. Wost: i only want to hear about the binary codes though
7:09:34 p.m. Wost: got all that?
7:10:19 p.m. Wost: off to tescos, back soon for an update
7:25:21 p.m.: Wost is now Away (was Online)
7:36:49 p.m.: Wost is now Online (was Away)
7:44:53 p.m. Wost: tell me about the claws