Pre-fab Neighbourhoods

I stole this from one of my own comments on someone else's blog. Shh, don't tell anyone (not that anyone reads this thing, anyway). It was a reply to a post on translating street names into English.

In Australia we're getting a lot of what I call "pre-fab neighbourhoods".

Someone just ups-and-buys a wide stretch of bushland where the wallabies roam, the kites have their nests in the trees, the plovers have their nests on the ground and the various skinks, snakes and goannas run free... Then they bulldoze the lot and turn it into these tiny blocks of land on these torturous "streets" where people who should have more sense build houses that are a) ugly and b) too big.

There are many things about these pre-fabricated neighbourhoods that annoy me. One is the fact that they are often built in known flood plains, but the body corporate bi-laws insist that all houses in these estates be low-block. There's a reason why the classic "Queenslander" style house is raised, you morons. Pay attention.

Another is the way they give the streets cutsey and entirely inappropriate names. 'Riverside Boulevard', for a street that isn't a boulevard. 'Hampton Circuit' for something that is clearly a Crescent. And, oh! The number of streets calling themselves "parades" or "avenues", when they are clearly just plain, old fashioned streets.

Heck, they don't even bother to plant trees along the avenues. That's completely missing the point.

Also, most of these street-like things just turn back in on themselves in a sinuous, sinister manner designed to squeeze more houses into a small area, rendering most of these estates impenetrable rabbit warrens - and some how they keep building "streets" that are too narrow for a fire truck to get past any car that might be parked on the side of the road.

I swear, this sort of thing shouldn't be legal. Heck, it probably isn't (it's amazing the way enough money can make laws 'go away').

Anyway, I guess my point is, sometimes the English speaking countries shouldn't be allowed to name their own streets. No one else should be expected to get them right under these circumstances.

Ummm.....

Came across this ad at the bottom of a web-page today:

"Killer White Teeth"
The Secrets Dentists don’t want you to know about Teeth Whitening!

I think (although I'm not sure, because I was too afraid to click on it) that this is an ad for some sort of teeth-whitening service or product, trying to use the serpent-under-the-apple-tree method for making you want it ("Dentists don't really have your teeth's best interests at heart - they just want to keep all the knowledge and power to themselves").

And yet...

I'm sorry, but it reads like on of those "Current Affairs" type gloom and doom stories. What are the secrets dentists don't want you to know, and how will that lead to your whitened teeth being "killers"? Is there some sort of toxic substance in all teeth-whitening procedures? Are we doomed to suffer some strange and fatal condition as a result of wanting unnaturally white teeth?

Thank goodness I never touch the stuff. I figure as long as my teeth aren't yellow or black I'm doing okay. Who needs their teeth to be as white as bleached paper?

For that matter, who needs their paper to be as white as bleached paper? Come on, people, that just ain't natural.

Cake Wreck

Okay,

This is now, officially, my favourite blog in the whole wide world:

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

You have no idea how much of my day has been spent laughing at cake...

Banana flavoured Chupa Chups

Taste really, really weird. Whose idea was that, anyway?

New Look

Someone left me sitting in front of a computer for too long.

Was feeling in a slightly corn-flower mood...

.

Idiots in need of slapping

Ah, Bucky. Sometimes I agree with him entirely, and I don't know if that should scare me...

Been thinking about idiots lately - particularly of the smoking variety.

It amazes me that we haven't yet made the cultural shift to thinking of smokers as disgusting morons. They still have some sort of stubborn pride in themselves and a reluctant respect from the rest of society.

The cultural zeitgeist concerning smokers at present is: "I disagree with what you do, but I suppose you have a right to do it to yourself. Just don't do it while standing next to my kids."

Think about it, folks, this is a behaviour that is both stupid and disgusting - not to mention very unpleasant. Someone who smokes is kind of like someone who scratches themselves until they bleed, and then picks at the scabs in public.

Sure, on one level the most harm is done to the idiot engaged in that activity, but there are known health risks for the rest of us, and it's just not nice to be in the same room with that sort of thing.

I know people who smoke. I get along reasonably well with them, but in the back of my mind I know I don't really respect them. It doesn't matter how nice and intelligent you may seem when you're talking to me, the minute you light up a cigarette you show me that you are, in fact, unpleasant and stupid.

We need to get this mind-set into popular culture. As long as our approach to smoking is "you know, you really shouldn't do that", we'll still have idiot kids taking up the habit at 14 and idiot adults smoking right next to the "no smoking" signs.

If, instead, our approach was "Eeewww - that's just disgusting, you jerk", well, then maybe more people would realise that smoking isn't just a bad habit - it's obnoxious and unacceptable behaviour.

Jamie Gillis, Lois Lane and Superman

I hate it when this happens:

I was trying to find information on Jamie Gillis, a short lived character from the Superman Family comics in the early 1980s, and most of the hits I could find by putting the character's name into a search engine came back with an actor in the... Well, it's a certain film industry I don't care to name because I want this post to come up in any search that has the most obvious terms for that industry NOT-ed out.

Not helpful for augmenting information.

Anyway, in the spirit of sharing useful information about the subject in which I was interested, here is what I know about Jamie Gillis, the Superman character:

Jamie Gillis was a photographer working in the Daily Planet. Primarily, she was a kind of female Jimmy Olsen - going with Lois Lane to cover stories. She pretty much only appeared in stories where Lois was the main character, although she also appeared in some Supergirl comics as well. She had a sort of "will-they-won't-they" relationship with Mark Spencer, who also worked at the Planet.

She made her first appearance at the beginning of 1980, and she was very much a late '70s/early '80s character. She tended to wear jeans and a button-up blouse but with a photgrapher's vest. You'd usually see her perched on the edge of someone's desk while talking to them.

She reminded me a bit of Trixie Beldon - especially the book-covers from the late '70s. Her hair was short and curly/wavy, and she had freckles in some stories. She also had a tendency to react first and think later. You might say she was a bit flaky.

The way she 'moved' was also kind of '70s/'80s, although it's hard to explain why - kind of like she was always on the verge of skipping or dancing, but in an innocent, barn-dance kind of way. A lot of the female characters from the last ten years or so also look like they're about to start dancing, but with more of a pole dance than a barn-dance.

I've read at least three stories featuring her, and she stuck out for me (possibly because of the Trixie Beldon similarities, possibly because she looked like she was about to start skipping at any point - or possibly because she struck me as the character I could play in the movie, if I lost a bit of weight).

She never made it past the early '80s. Heck, she was out of the picture before Crisis, and she didn't survive into the new continuity. No one seems to have missed her, but I think she'd have a lot of potential if she was brought back.

How's this for a new game:

Superman characters from before Crisis who could be brought back into the current continuity?

Jamie Gillis and Mark Spencer are my nominations, what are yours?

Eglantine's End

I finally got around to putting up the last "chapter" of Eglantine over on my Siege Works blog.

Does it end happily? Does Hal survive the monsters and dragons? Does Eglantine get to stay pretty? Does anyone truly care if she doesn't? And, if Eglantine comes back, what will happen to Ruby?

To find the answers to these questions (and more), check out Part 7 of Eglantine. It's shorter than some of the other chapters, but that just makes it quicker to read...

Handle-bar moustache

Here at the university, we have a few men adorning their faces with natural fuzz for Movember - a rather peculiar charity concept in which men grow moustaches for sponsorship dollars in order to support mens' health issues, particularly depression.

As someone who has always felt that modern men are boring and need to do more entertaining things with their facial hair, I thoroughly encourage this bizarre event on principle...

However, I've been seeing a number guys wandering around the place wearing singlets and handle-bar moustaches. Now, in North Queensland it is quite common to see people who believe an athletic singlet is perfectly acceptable outerwear. There is nothing at all unusual about that. But team it with a handle-bar moustache and it just looks weird.

Not a "hey, that's kind of unusual" weird, either. More of a "that guy looks like some sort of creep" weird.

I'd never really thought about it before, but apparently on a certain, unconscious level there is an understanding that men who have particular patterns of facial hair also need to dress appropriately. A handle-bar moustache requires an actual shirt. Something that adequately covers arms and torso and bears no resemblance to underwear.

So does a set of really fuzzy mutton chops. There's one guy who comes in on the weekends occasionally who has the fuzziest face you've seen outside of an actual beard who often turns up dressed in nothing but a singlet and a pair of shorts. He just looks wrong, somehow. He's not dressed any differently from a lot of our other "guests", and yet it seems like he's only half-dressed... and inexplicably unkempt.

Side burns and a soul patch could probably work with a singlet without creepiness, but I think singlet wearers should probably remain clean-shaven (or with a designer stubble, if they've got the figure to pull it off).

Well there you go - I'm an idiot

Have you ever taken years to work out something that was blindingly obvious?

I finally "got" the logo for the Strand today. For years, I thought it was one of the stupidest design I've ever seen because the sqiggly things looked like they should be a "t" and an "s" (for "The Strand"), but they were all wrong.

Then today, I finally realised I should have been looking at the white space all along. The logo is an "s" (for "Strand") running between the blue of the sea and the yellow of the beach.

Now that I've "seen" it, it seems so obvious. Not that great, but obvious. Ah, negative spaces. They can be flummoxing at times, can they not?

Of course, part of the really embarrassing side of this all is the fact that I've designed a few logos myself over the years, and I used to work for a sign-writer on and off during the "Wilderness Year", so I should be used to noticing white space and it's effect on the over-all image.

Ah, well. I guess I'm just not that bright.

Don't tell me I did a good job

I delivered a presentation today.

It was about Second Life. Last week, I knew next to nothing about Second Life. Three days ago I new a little bit more, but still not very much.

Today, I delivered a presentation with no notes, no real experience and next to no preparation (the only time I had to prepare was spent madly trying to figure out how to walk in a straight line in SL and read up on what other people new).

I couldn't have been more inept if I tried. In fact, I kind of did try to be inept. I made a point of joking about how bad and unsuitable I was for such a presentation (someone else was supposed to do it but they couldn't make it).

And yet, during lunch, everyone kept telling me I did a great job. I didn't. I know I didn't and they should know I didn't. It annoys me that they seemed to genuinely appreciate the incompetent effort I made. I know I could have done a lot better. Even in the time I was given, I could have put more thought into it - I could have had a slide show, for example, instead of a handful of links to sites that didn't even work. I could have at least thought about a beginning, middle and end for what I was going to say.

Instead, I made them laugh. Years of working in front of crowds and talking to groups have taught me that the best way to get an audience on side is to make them laugh. Crack a few jokes, make a few sarcastic comments and they'll happily let you stand in front of them regardless of what you're talking about (I once did an impromptu speech on cacti for a performance).

But, the thing was, I wasn't there to entertain them. I was there to present information, and I did a very poor job of that. In fact, it was one of the worst "public appearances" I've ever made. I'm annoyed with myself for doing such a lousy job when I know I could have and should have done better. I'm annoyed with everyone else who told me it was good when really it was just amusing.

Getting away with doing a bad job just encourages me to think I can get away with it again next time. Not good.