Thursday 8 February 2007

We decide who comes into this country

Fox Sports have been showing “World Series Cricket Classics” in the lunch breaks of their other cricket coverage for the past few weeks. It’s quality viewing - where else could you see my second favourite player of all time Tim Zoehrer (come on, he was a wicketkeeper that bowled) lining up against India at the MCG in 1987? No fecking where.

But there was an interesting set of banners in the crowd for the India game. The ninth wicket went down and somebody in the crowd unfurls a huge sign saying “STICK THAT UP YOUR TURBAN”. Somewhat offensive in a modern context but you can see how people would have gotten away with it in the less tolerant 80’s. Then the last batsman goes, the crowd goes wild and it gets turned around to reveal the frankly offensive slogan “GO HOME YOU CURRY MUNCHERS”

At what point did that become offensive? 1989? 1992? 8.05pm on September 7th, 1995? And what tipped it over the edge?

Friday 2 February 2007

MS-Slops

What do you suppose the people who rush out to by Windows Vista 30 seconds after it’s released do with the rest of their time? What are the percentage chances of an operating system drastically enhancing your lifestyle? I’d say under 5%. Sure Windows 95 was a big leap ahead from Windows 3.1, and that was supposedly better than DOS (though I’ll never believe it. Give me a dir/s/w/p/o:s any day of the week) which was infinately better than the turtle that wandered around doing fuck all on an Apple IIE but look at how these things moved from 1990-1995 then look at 2001-2006. A golden era for MP3 players but give XP and Vista to somebody living on a Bolivian mountain and they probably couldn’t tell the difference.

How is Vista going to solve world hunger and/or make Melbourne win a premiership? Answer - it’s not. So bollocks to it. Now, I’m sure it does things that make computer afficionados blow their strides clear across the Pacific Ocean but show me how it affects me and we’ll start talking.

Do you know what’s really sad. I still don’t know how to change the extension of a file in Windows. After all these years I still go back to the DOS window and do a ren *.tmp *.wmv when I’m unhiding my European arthouse movies.

(P.S - Feel free to talk about Linux and/or Macs in the comments. I won’t have any interest in what you say but go ahead and play anyway)

Train In Vain

Everyone’s whinging about the trains. Fair point too I suppose, when I used to try and go from Balaclava to the city you’d be lucky if only one train got cancelled. So when I walked into Spencer Street/Southern Cross station today trying to get to Camberwell I expected the worst. Then five minutes later a half empty train showed up, went round the loop and then express directly to Camberwell. Lovely stuff. If I worked for Newspoll I’d declare that meant the trains were actually quite good.

The people I really feel sorry for are the ones who work in the Connex call-centre. Ringing up and spazzing out at somebody who has absolutely nothing to do with the problem is a national sport in this country and I can imagine that there’s hundreds of idiots doing it. The problem is that as with everything else (Schapelle Corby, Van Nguyen, *insert cause of the week*) people read it in the paper, decide they “have to make a difference” despite being as powerless as anyone else and direct random abuse to try and make themselves feel better about being nothing more than a cog. Imagine the poor crunts who are standing on the barriers at stations? They’re akin to greeters at a casino but they’ve probably got every man and their dog hanging shit on them because the train doesn’t work properly. What does it achieve? Absolutely fuck all.

I don’t know. Buy a bike or something. Even better give up your job and live on a remote island where you can be at one with nature and talk to a volleyball all day.