What is your perfect major?

Major Mistake, truth be told. But according to the helpful people at QuizFarm:

You scored as Biology. You should be a Biology major! You are passionate about the sciences, and you enjoy studying cell growth and evolutionary concepts which enable living organisms to survive. Pursue that! Biology 100% Philosophy 100% Psychology 100% Sociology 100% Theater 92% Linguistics 92% English 92% Anthropology 83% Mathematics 83% Engineering 75% Dance 67% Journalism 67% Chemistry 42% Art 33% What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3) created with QuizFarm.com

I got in a four way tie-breaker and had to chose before it'd display the results. So I chose the fish. Natch.

Actually I'm a bit surprised to find sociology up there: as an academic pursuit it's like having your brain flogged to death with dental floss..

(props to Krimsonlake)

fishboy's year recap (late as always)

Instead of rounding up my achievements for 2005 (which, let's face it, wouldn't make for a very long post) I'm going to list the things I've managed not to do in the last year:

• I managed not to die skydiving. I'll be giving the grim reaper another chance this month hopefully... Geronimo!

• I haven't gotten a job I like, but on the plus side I managed to not kill anyone I work with all year. Despite grievous provocation...
• I didn't bash any wogs.
• Nor did I pay to use the cross-city tunnel.
• I wasn't arrested on sedition charges for calling John Howard a lying spineless manipulative cunt. I'll keep trying on that one, maybe if I painted it on the Sydney Opera House...
• I triumphed at not growing any tomato plants (if this were an achievement list I'd add that I succeeded in growing a garden full of healthy happy snails and lush weeds)
• I didn't break any body parts at karate all year, not for lack of effort by certain 4th Dan black belts.
• I didn't manage to see very many movies I liked, and didn't manage to like many of the movies I saw this year.
• I didn't win the struggle to bring my book-buying compulsion under control.. I also didn't manage to buy enough bookcases for all the new acquisitions.
• I didn't get pulled over by the police during the (lengthy) time I didn't have a valid drivers' license. Come to think of it, I still don't have a drivers' license..
• I didn't get eaten by sharks on the Great Barrier Reef.
• I'm a winner in the not-getting-any-more-exercise-than-I'm-forced-to stakes. And the not-using-my-gym-membership-since-the-first-month game too.
• I was a thumping success at not blogging very much.
• Similarly I've been an absolute master at not sending email or letters.

There are too damn many things I've not done this year.

I'd better stop there before I get morose at how crap I am and end up not posting this.

Addendum: So far this year I've been superb at not actually publishing the posts I've written. Will try harder to hit the right button in future.

2006

Happy New Year everyone.

I would write more but it's 45 degrees today..

Send icebergs! Please!

merry christmas? screw you..

Bah bloody humbug..

Actually my Christmas shopping (as always at the very last minute: I can't shop without a deadline) went relatively well this year. Well, I think so now; but the recipients of the presents will probably furnish me with a bewildered "thanks...?" and a 'what-the-fuck?' look. That's what Christmas is all about to me: wasting money on useless crap. God bless us, one and all.

Anyway, props to my girl-friday Eroica for getting me through the horror of shopping today. Cheers babe, next year I might even buy something for you!

Anyway, here are a few Xmas themed links:

D's London shopping expedition.

Those Catalonians are a bunch of freaky weirdos.

Pornolize your favourite felching xmas carol. Asslicker.

And a Scaryduck Christmas Tale. Although there's probably going to be a trouser-soilingly funny story up there tomorrow anyway.

Right, I'm off to bed: need to be well rested for all the eating and drinking I've got planned for tomorrow. I'll recap my NZ visit and all the babies I managed to avoid holding at a later date.

the Christmas spirit

In New Zealand. Having fun. Drinking too much. Will blog more later.

Meanwhile: Vote Chris Christmas Rodriguez to replace Santa!

bollocks to this:

I'm off to New Zealand.

Adios amigos!

Or in the native parlance: spot ya later bro.

workin' hard for the man..

I've had an impressively slack day today.

I was over an hour late for work (not that anyone noticed) and it wasn't long after I'd settled in to sending email to friends and reading the newspaper that we had the Christmas lunch for our team (go Team Death!). This involved much scarfing down of junk food and general slacking around for an hour or so.

A brief interlude of work then punctuated the general slothfulness.

But fortunately I had to go out for lunch with the IT boys, or The Disciples, as we call them (there are 12 of them but that's where the similarity breaks down - I didn't say it was a *good* nickname did I?). Which involved a kickarse Thai chicken salad and a few well-earned G&Ts. Ok, I didn't earn them today but I'm sure at some point in the past I'd accrued enough G&T-in-lieu points to redeem them on such a beautiful sunny day.

An hour & a half or so later we wandered merrily (considerably more merry in a few cases) back to work. Where, in a frenzy of gin and Protestant work ethic guilt fueled activity, I actually achieved a few things.

Fortunately I didn't have to sustain the level of intensity for long before it was time for afternoon tea put on by one of the agencies. Which involved some more slothing around eating expensive foods and generally wasting company time.

After that was siesta time: drooped at my desk trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to keep my eyes open or at least not drool on the keyboard. Not for the first time am I glad I've got an office to myself in one of the less populated areas of the building.

Tomorrow I'm taking a blanket and a pillow.

Before anyone calls my professionalism into account, and to illustrate what an abominably easy job I do, in the very little time I actually spent working today I still managed to fulfill my 'quota' and answer several dozen inane questions from my workmates. Yes, I am a legend.

hot enough for ya?

Work is closed today due to a 'chemical reaction' (I've no idea - will investigate).

Yay! Paid day off!

Downside: it's 38 degrees right now and I don't have air conditioning.

I'm melllltiiiinngggg....

danger danger

This fucking country is trying to kill me. I swear it.

It seems that everything here wants to eat me. And not in the good way.

The other night, whist performing my regular karma-leveling rodent rescue (or feline fun deprivation as Griffin would have it) I was viciously attacked by a caterpillar. That's right: a fucking caterpillar!

The sonofabitch lept out of a tree onto my neck and tried to sink his gummy little fangs into me. Bastard. So I used up the cosmic brownie-points gained in the mouse-catch-and-release program by squishing the little larval bastard's ass..

Not before the damage was done, however: I have the worst itchy, stinging neck where he rasped his poisonous hairy belly over me.

Don't come to Australia: it'll try to kill ya. If the sharks, crocs, spiders, snakes, scorpions, spiders, jellyfish, dingos, and spiders don't get you the evil butterfly spawn will.

But the spiders will probably get you.

Did I mention the spiders?

bomb the bass

I've always been a huge fan of the bass. Even back when I had adolescent daydreams about being in a band it was always the bass I was playing. Not just that I'm not a front-man kinda guy, I just love the bass sounds. Of course I never learnt to play - that would require having some musical talent in my poor clumsy fingers. I love the music though: twanging deep notes, slide swoops, thrumming grooves.. to me it's the instrument that holds the heart of the song: not in the pounding chest-thumping way drums do, but the throbbing flow like blood through the arteries.

Anyway, I'll not bore you with my adoration of Les Claypool and wanting to have his monstrously weird, polydactylian, genius children. Have a read of this Stylus round-up of 50 best basslines (always a subjective thing, but I agree with many of their choices if not entirely the ranking).

Choice excerpts:

"...a nasty wallet stealing bastard of a bassline..." - 'Hallelujah', Happy Mondays
"...the man most likely to play everything in a slapthafuckouttait style." - about Flea (of course)
"...a prowling, unstoppable slither of mystery and horror." - 'Would?', Alice In Chains
"...giving room for Fred Thomas' sublimely simple, impossibly earth-shattering four-note bassline to pour pure liquid pleasure into your brittle, brittle bones." - 'Make It Funky', James Brown
"So magic that even Vanilla Ice couldn't fuck it up." - do I need to tell you which song?