There is something to be said about the "good old days" when people had perzines instead of blogs. Reading someone's blog online is not the same as receiving something in the post that you can actually hold in your hands. If you wanted a perzine you actually had to type it up on real paper, paste it up by hand (later the computer took over this part), take it to the copy shop for printing, stuff it into envelopes and mail it out. You could also swap it for other perzines and fanzines. Then you waited for responses and letters of comment or "LOCs" as they were called. Often a large part of your perzine consisted of printing these LOCs along with your response. Here, I intend to keep this tradition alive. If you have any comments please feel free to email me and I will print the more interesting emails right here.

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9th November, 2007

In New York City there's this restaurant called Serendipity 3, that has a chocolate sundae on its menu with the price tag of US$25,000. Apparently it's a Guinness world record for the most expensive dessert ... should be a record for the most obnoxious display of flamboyant extravagance of all time. I mean, come on! $25,000 for a fucking ice cream!

When I first saw this presented as a fluff end-piece on one of the TV news shows I thought that it was some kind of joke or perhaps a publicity stunt. After Googling "most expensive chocolate sundae" I found a whole bunch of articles from various publications (including The New York Times) confirming its reality. I would still like to think it's a joke, but I have a feeling that someone with more money than sense will actually go there and order this golden sundae. I just hope he or she chokes on it.

27th October, 2007

"I'll 'ave the Spam Spam Spam Spam Eggs Spam an' Spam!"

Well, at least that was funny. Spam email is not. We all get it and we all hate it. Seems the spam-bots and other web-critters have found this site and are grabbing my email. Lucky me. Now I'm getting email offering me cheap Viagra, get rich quick scams, penis enlargement gizmos, Russian brides ... you get the idea. Putting my email address on every page was pretty naive I guess. I'm still a newbie as far as web-design goes and part of the reason for putting this site together in the first place was so that I could keep in contact with my friends and others who were interested in what I was doing.

Why spammers do this I have no idea. Do they really believe that flooding my mailbox is going to make me go to their site or buy any of the crap they are trying to peddle? Not fucking likely.

Today I had to spend a couple of hours going through every page on my site and removing my email in text form completely. Instead of the text I had to resort to making a graphic of my email in Photoshop and adding a Contact page that is now linked to the rest of this site. You live and learn I suppose.

12th October, 2007

Horror novelist boils girlfriend's flesh!

This was the headline in today's THE AGE newspaper. Not front page or second or even third page news. I usually avoid reading newspapers but a friend emailed a link to the online version of THE AGE article.

Some dude in Mexico named Jose Luis Calva was keeping parts of his dead girlfriend in his fridge. Gotta keep her somewhere I suppose.

"Calva told police he was a writer and poet -- officers found the draft of a novel titled Cannibalistic Instincts, the spokesman said. Investigators are trying to determine if chunks of fried meat found in a pan in the apartment were human, the spokesman said. Police came to Calva's apartment on Monday after neighbours reported a fetid smell. They discovered the dismembered body of his girlfriend Alejandra Galeana in a closet, the spokesman said. A leg and pieces of an arm were in a refrigerator and there were bones inside a cereal box. ... Calva is being investigated in the killings of two other women, including an ex-girlfriend, also a pharmacy worker, whose dismembered body was found in 2004, and an unidentified prostitute who was killed earlier this year." (AP -- THE AGE, 12 October 2007)

Seems that leaving your boyfriend in Mexico, especially if he's an aspiring horror writer, could cost you an arm and a leg ... and a head ... and the other arm ... and the other leg ...

9th October, 2007

Crackpotology page added to site.

One of the beauties -- and curses -- of the internet is that anyone can have a webpage. The majority of the internet is pretty mundane, mostly corporate sites, pornography, businesses, governments, etc. The rest is comprised mostly of personal sites, fan sites, and sites dedicated to promoting some cause or other. Then there are a few sites that are completely unique, that defy any classification whatsoever.

Crackpots of all kinds have always fascinated me. The crackpot has always been with us, alone, often ostracized, but always with a "cause" or "message" that he or she must get out to the rest of humanity. The internet has allowed these "crackpots" a forum, a global soapbox, from where they can shout their message for all to hear.

I came up with the term Crackpotology to describe the study of this phenomena. As has often happened with me whenever I think of some cool word or term I find that someone else had also come up with it before me. Oh well, this just proves that great minds do really think alike.

My Crackpotology page was put together as a bit of fun where I could collate and share some of the more interesting crackpots I come across. I have used the definition very loosely and have pretty much included whatever grabs my attention or I find amusing. Check it out.

8th October, 2007

It has been a while since my last Blog entry. I have a good excuse though as I've been working on putting together an addition to this site documenting the history of Bloodsongs magazine. It is by no means complete and will be an ongoing project which I will be adding to as I prepare new information. I only have copies of Issues 1 through 8 and my scanner is not working. Most of the information is there though. Once I get my scanner going I will add more images. I will also be preparing similar sections for EOD, Shoggoth and Misanthrope. So check out the new Bloodsongs addition.

"Up, up, and ... awaaayy!!!"

21st September, 2007

There's been a sighting in Romania of a flying man-shaped object wearing a cape and shiny blue suit just like Superman.

Seems the man in blue was seen by some twenty people. The village is Gemeni, which is situated in the Mehedinti part of Romania. Then again, this is the same place where they still believe in vampires and in the evil eye.

Local resident Constantin Toader, 41, said: "He looked like Superman and was flying slowly at about 100 yards from the ground in a standing position. He didn't make any smoke or sound. Just cruising around."

Wonder how many phone booths are in Gemeni? Hope there's no Kryptonite around.

18th September, 2007

I have been looking for a job that I can do at home to earn a bit of extra money. Apparently there are a lot of jobs you can do online like data entry, proofreading, filling out questionnaires and other stuff. I'm not after anything special, just a legitimate job where you do the work and you get paid accordingly. What's so hard about that? Seems plenty.

First thing I did was to do a Google search for online jobs that can be done at home. After spending about an hour sorting through all the get-rich-quick scams, Multi-Level-Marketing pyramid bullshit and other online cons I was about to give up in frustration.

Then I came across a couple of sites that talked about offering genuine job opportunities. I figured it was probably another scam but in case it wasn't I input my details in the online form provided. A few days passed and my phone rang. On the other end was this very excited gentleman in Queensland who, after asking me a few questions, told me he had this wonderful opportunity where I could make $100,000 a month! By this time my bullshit meter was going off the scale. My immediate reaction was to ask how much this "wonderful opportunity" was going to cost me. After he dodged the question I tried to pin him down on what exactly was involved and where all this money was supposed to come from. He just kept talking but neglected to answer my question and kept telling about all this money I was about to make. By this time my patience was wearing thin and I said, "if it's Herbalife or some other Multi-Level-Pyramid scam I'm not interested, find another sucker." He said that it wasn't Herbalife but a genuine and proven business opportunity. I told him to get to the point or I was going to hang up. After another five minutes of getting the run around I was told that for the measly sum of $9,600 that I could be rolling in money. In the end I found out it was some scam where you get this computer loaded with software that connects to some database that has all the latest statistics on all the race horses and using this data can predict with 90% accuracy which three or four horses are most likely to win the race. I'm not kidding. What a joke. One would have to be completely braindead to believe this would actually work.

Instead of hanging up I thought I would put him to the test.

"So this is guaranteed?" I asked.

He replied that it was a proven system.

At this point I said, "well, in that case I presume you would be interested in making even more money?"

He replied of that of course he would be.

"Okay then," I continued, "let me make you an offer. Send me the computer and software and not only will I send you the first $9,600 that I make using it, but I will continue to send you fifty percent of everything I make from then on. That's an extra $50,000 a month you could be earning for doing absolutely nothing."

Naturally he declined. His excuse was that it just didn't work that way.

I kept pushing it. "But you said yourself it's 90% accurate!"

He declined again.

By this stage I had enough and told him that either he was a scam artist or some sucker who had fallen for this con and was trying to sell it to others to recoup his money. Either way I wasn't interested. At least I got to amuse myself and wasted a good fifteen minutes of his time.

By the way I'm still looking for that job.

17th September, 2007

I have been blessed with the flu for the last couple of days. I hate being sick. Hopefully I'm over the worst of it. I have been coughing constantly, getting cold and hot flashes and I feel like a steamroller has run over me and then come back for seconds. Apart from that I feel fine.

There's a federal election looming in the near future in Australia. As voting here is compulsory we get to have a choice in which party we allow to stuff up the country some more.

Ideology when applied to politics becomes idiotology. As you may have guessed by now I don't think much of political ideologies. I find them all limited. To me people that label themselves things like "conservative", "liberal", "right-wing", "left-wing", or whatever are just limiting themselves to a faulty ideology. To believe that just a single political ideology has all the answers is just plain stupid. The way I see it is that the right and left wing have one thing in common: they are both proverbially flapped by the same bird brain.

Elections are a joke. Democracy has become dumbocracy. Elections in Australia and most likely, everywhere else, are an illusion that we have some say in the way things are run. Basically it comes down to a choice between Asshole One and Asshole Two.

Politicians are only good at being politicians. The political system has the inherent flaw in the sense that anyone with any integrity just cannot advance and quickly either becomes disillusioned and leaves or is forced to leave his or her integrity behind.

KISS SOMEONE YOU LOVE WHEN YOU GET THIS LETTER AND MAKE MAGIC

THIS PAPER HAS BEEN SENT TO YOU FOR GOOD LUCK. THE ORIGINAL COPY IS IN NEW ENGLAND. IT HAS BEEN AROUND THE WORLD NINE TIME. The luck has now been SENT TO YOU. YOU WILL RECEIVE GOOD LUCK WITHIN FOUR DAYS OF RECEIVING THIS LETTER, PROVIDED YOU IN TURN SEND IT BACK OUT.
SEND COPIES TO PEOPLE YOU THINK NEED GOOD LUCK. DON'T SEND MONEY, AS FATE HAS NO PRICE. DO NOT KEEP THIS LETTER. IT MUST LEAVE YOUR HANDS WITHIN 96 HOURS. AN A.F.P. OFFICE RECEIVED $70,000. JOE ELLIOT RECEIVED $40,000. HE LOST IT BECAUSE HE BROKE THE CHAIN. WHILE IN THE PHILLIPINES GENE WELCH LOST HIS WIFE SIX DAYS AFTER RECEIVING THIS LETTER. HOWEVER, BEFORE HER DEATH, HE RECEIVED $1,755.

PLEASE SEND 10 COPIES OF THIS LETTER AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS IN FOUR DAYS. THE CHAIN COMES FROM VENEZUELA AND WAS WRITTEN BY SAUL ANTHONY DEGROOT, A MILLIONAIRE FROM SOUTH AMERICA. AFTER A FEW DAYS YOU WILL GET A SURPRISE. THIS IS TRUE. EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT SUPERSTITIOUS.

SO NOTE THE FOLLOWING:

CONSTANTINE DIAZ RECEIVED THE CHAIN IN 1953. HE ASKED HIS SECRETARY TO MAKE 20 COPIES AND SEND THEM OUT. A FEW DAYS LATER HE WON A LOTTERY OF TWO MILLION DOLLARS. CARLA DAIOIN, AN OFFICE EMPLOYEE, RECEIVED THE LETTER AND FORGOT IT HAD TO LEAVE HER HAND WITHIN 96 HOURS. SHE LOST HER JOB. LATER, AFTER FINDING THE LETTER AGAIN, SHE MAILED 20 COPIES. A FEW DAYS LATER SHE GOT A BETTER JOB. SUNIN FAIRCHILD RECEIVED THE LETTER AND NOT BELIEVING, THREW IT AWAY. NINE DAYS LATER HE DIED.

REMEMBER! SEND NO MONEY. PLEASE DON'T IGNORE THIS. IT WORKS!

I've heard of the Holy Ghost.
But Holy Post?
Gimme a break!

15th September, 2007

Remember those nutty chain letters that sometimes arrive in the mailbox? The ones that imply that all sorts of nasty stuff will happen to you if you don't make a bunch of copies and mail them out? At the same time they promise good luck if you do mail out copies. I find them hilarious.

To your left you will see a scan of a chain letter that I received about fourteen or fifteen years ago. I've got a whole collection of them. It's pretty hard to read so I have also reproduced the text.

This is just so stupid on so many levels!

A few questions: If the original copy is in New England and it has been around the world nine times then how can this information be written on the actual letter? Does it re-write itself every time it gets sent around the world? Amazing! Also, if all this good and bad luck happened to the people described in the letter how is it possible that this is in the actual letter? It just doesn't make any sense.

What I find amazing is that some people actually fall for this crap.

Speaking of nuts there's a bunch of morons that believe they see the Virgin Mary's image in a fence post at Coogee Beach near Sydney. Apparently if you look at the post and squint your eyes at a certain time of day it looks like the Virgin Mary. The fact that no-one has any idea what the Virgin Mary actually looked like -- I think it quite likely that such a person never even existed -- never occurred to these idiots.

I first heard about the holy post a couple of years ago when I saw a news story about it. There were actually hundreds of idiots flocking to Coogee Beach to "experience" this "miracle".

If you look below left you can see a picture of this piece of wood and decide for yourself. To me it looks like any other picket fence post.

14th September, 2007

I put the latest -- that's the third -- version of this site up today. This time I did the whole thing myself. Two weeks ago I had never put a website together, now I'm beginning to fiddle with html code, tables and CSS style sheets and even having a lot of fun learning it all. Luckily I've got Janet, who actually understands all the coding and has designed some really cool websites over the years, to answer any of my questions. The whole site was put together in Dreamweaver which I'm getting to know pretty well now. Photoshop, which I used for all the graphics, I have been using for years and know quite well.

12th September, 2007

I have purged my computer of the latest version of Microsoft Orifice and have installed Office 2003. Now it's back to using the Microsoft Word I am familiar and with which I have spent all morning customizing to my needs. This means removing nearly all of Word's automated features -- like where it changes stuff as you type -- and most of the other things it does that seem to be there for no other reason but to annoy me as I try to write.

Another thing I did was to disable most of the crap Word embeds into your document that shows up as gibberish on web text.

The only automated feature that I like and left is the auto-spellchecker. This one is actually useful in helping me locate and correct typos. The other thing I did was to remove from the toolbar all the buttons that I rarely use, if ever, and added a few that I do use quite often, such as the "close document" and the line spacing buttons.

Hmm ... now that I think about it I have no idea why I installed all of Office 2003 since Word is the only program I ever use from it. Well, I'll know what to delete when my hard drive begins running out of space.

The new-look Microshit Turd.

10th September, 2007

Today I'm going to gripe about a couple of things.

One thing that really annoys me are people who say something along the lines of "I don't really know anything about this, but I think ..." then go on to offer their thoughts or opinion on something they have no idea about. My usual reaction to this is "if you don't know anything about it shut the fuck up!"

It's okay not to know something, there are many subjects I know very little about. Where I'm different is that if I don't have much knowledge about a subject I just say something along the lines of "I have no knowledge about this so I can't really comment or offer an opinion." What's so hard about that?

I just don't get it. Why do people insist on inflicting their moron opinions on subjects they know nothing about? Stupidity really is the second most common element.

This is for all you software designers at Microsoft. Why have you fucked up Microsoft Word? I now call it Microshit Turd! I just got this new computer and it came with the latest version of Microsoft Office (more like Microshit Orifice!). When I started up Word I was in for one big surprise: it's all different! Not a little different, a lot different. Like the whole user interface has been changed. Using the new Word is like learning a new program altogether.

We writers get used to things being one way and we get comfortable with them. The word processor that we use to write is very special to us. We become comfortable with it, we learn all of its little quirks and we learn how do things in a certain way. To me my word processor is like a familiar tool, a good friend. And frankly speaking the new version of Word is a piece of crap. Too many buttons. Too much crap on it.

For example, while creating this site, I used the new Word to assemble and edit all the text that would go on my site. I created a new folder for my website documents then I went through my files and cut and pasted what I wanted to put on my site. I spent a good two days doing this. I then fired up Dreamweaver and Photoshop and began to construct the site. Another two days fly by. The site is now near completion and ready to upload. Everything looks great. I fire up my FTP program and upload the files. Woohoo! I finally have my own website! I call Janet and tell her that I have just uploaded my site then I start my browser to see how it looks. All looks fine until I begin to read the text! Seems that superturd Word has embedded all this crap into even the rtf files that I used to paste the text into my site from. Every quotation mark, hyphen, ellipses, apostrophe, colon, and a few other things came out as gibberish! Thanks a fucking lot Word! Janet, who designs websites for a living, then tells me that this is one of the reasons she doesn't use Microshit Turd. I then had to spend another two days cleaning up the text! I am now looking for another word processor. Microshit Turd can go take a flying fuck!

9th September, 2007

I have often wondered what some parents were thinking when naming their kids. Example: when I was in high school there was this kid with the name of Philip Myers; naturally he insisted on being caledl Philip instead of Phil. If your surname is Talia and you have a daughter, a quick word of advice, I wouldn't name her Jennifer. If you have two boys I wouldn't name them Conrad and Dominic. If you are Mr. and Mrs. Schon do not name your son Eric. You get the idea.

Onto another topic: I have had an interest in the paranormal all of my life. I am basically a skeptic and have a very finely tuned and inbuilt bullshit detector. Having an open mind on the subject is a good thing, but as a friend of mine cleverly put, not so open that your brain falls out. I try to follow this rule when examining claims of the paranormal. Carnacki's Rule is also a must: that is one should first rule out the possibility of a natural explanation before looking to the supernatural. It is true that many things are possible I agree. It is also true that although many things may be within the realm of possibility, some are likely, others unlikely, and quite a few are so unlikely as to pretty much rule them out altogether. Example: it is within the realm of possibility that if you assigned Morse Code to the wagging of a dog's tail that it will spell out the exact lyrics to Stairway To Heaven, but I would bet everything I own that it aint gonna happen.

8th September, 2007

Well the second version of my website is now finally up. I actually did all of the work on this one myself. This is my first attempt at designing and putting up a website. It was all done using Dreamweaver and Photoshop. I still know nothing about code. Luckilly I had Janet to answer any questions. I'm sure there are a few mistakes here and there that I will fix as I find them. I'll also be adding more links and other stuff as the site progresses.

There's this cool picture floating around of George II talking on CNN. If you look behind our beloved Emperor you can see what appears to be the head and shoulders of a grey alien. [See pics to the left.]

Speaking of George II, a couple of local TV comedians from the show "Chaser's War On Everything" did a great prank where one of them dressed up as Osama Bin Laden and along with a fake motorcade almost got into where the Emperor was speaking. He got through the first two of the three checkpoints only to be stopped when he got out of the black limousine dressed in fake beard and white gown. The Police Commissioner, TV news commentators and radio talk jocks were all suitably unimpressed and did a lot of frowning and talking in deep serious voices. Me? I thought it was hilarious!

6th September, 2007

George Bush Jnr. -- or as I prefer to call him, Emperor George II -- arrived in Australia yesterday with an entourage of over 750 people. When Air Force One landed shortly before midnight ol? George seemed to need the biggest security operation ever seen in this country to protect him. Let's see here ... travelling with the Emperor were a hoard of "SS" bodyguards, five personal chefs, some fifty White House political aides, 200 other "specialists from other government departments" -- I?m sure there's even a partridge in a pear tree there somewhere -- and an assortment of other yes-men and hangers on ... oh yeah, and something called a Condoleeza (did I spell that right ... who cares?) Rice (pudding). George II and Conda-whatsername are both here to attend some meeting of big-shots called the Asia Pacific E-CON-omic Co-operation, or "APEC" (all these ?big-shots? love acronyms). All this resulted in Sydney almost being held under martial law. You see George II is one real popular guy (NOT!). Protesters, and there were a lot of them, were hoarded and not allowed anywhere near where the Emperor was to be or even pass by. I read that even "five young students have been served with banning orders meaning they are not allowed into the CBD until after the meeting is over" in the news media. Our prime minister and Bush-lap-dog, John Howard, hung off George II's every word. All-in-all it was a wonderful display of mutual back-patting when the two met. This fiasco all cost the Australian tax-payers well over $70 million -- enough to build a new hospital! It makes me feel so good to see that our government has its priorities in the right place. And they call us the "Lucky Country"!

The TV media gave it all a big spin as they showed us footage of George II ?meeting the people? of Australia. A few ?lucky? ones even got to shake the Emperor?s hand. All this of course was watched carefully by his entourage of armed SS-men, Australian Police both Federal and State, and other Security. There were even helicopters and an Air Force jet flying overhead. All this for our beloved Emperor.

5th September, 2007

Welcome to my blog.

In the mid 1990s I published a perzine named Corpus Infernus. Now I'm back with this blog. Every now and then I will reprint one of my rants from Corpus Infernus. The first will be one that I wrote about my thoughts on Conspiracy Theories. Click HERE to read it.

This is the first time I have had my own website of any kind. My girlfriend Janet (feel free to check her site www.anniemation.com) helped me a lot in putting this together. I have no idea about the technical side of putting a website together; in fact any sort of coding tends to put me to sleep. I laid out how I wanted the site to look in Pagemager, then Janet did the actual coding. She has been really great and didn't even complain when I kept changing the content and design of it a few times before settling on a look that I was happy with. Janet I really thank you and appreciate all of the work you put into this.

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