1. I am 36, which in base-6 notation is 100
2. I still can’t grow a decent goddamn beard
3. I get disproportionately angry about:
• television commercials for youth oriented SMS based services
• creationists, especially potentially influential ones like Ray Comfort (whose proud ignorance knows no bounds)
• young male voice-over artists who seem to be hired specifically for their blokey douche-bag tones (sometimes for aforementioned TV commercials)
• software that takes longer to shutdown than it does to start up (frikkin MS Visual Studio)
• newspaper based "blogs"
4. I weigh 97.5 kg— too much for my height, which is about 5′11"
5. My attention span is getting shorter every year
6. I don’t like wine
7. I am impossible to buy for
8. I lean very much to the left, but am not a socialist (except by American standards)
9. I thought Ratatouille was the best of the Pixar movies
10. I have not finished a book in a very, very long time

This ugly powerpoint slide is part of an official military presentation designed to show how we can prevent USAF personnel from topping themselves by accepting God into their lives. Note that Darwin (as in Charles) is inexplicably listed as a leader of the former Soviet Union.

(Full presentation can be viewed here.)

I’ve actually been living here for about a month now, and it is just one of the reasons I have been so abysmal at updating lately (ie moving tends to disrupt everything). It’s a very nice free-standing wooden house, with polished floors and such. Very homey, gets quite a lot of light and the deck looks onto a pokey private yard full of overgrown trees. For the first time in years I have a separate study, so I have no really good excuse to not be very productive anymore. When I first moved in it was unfurnished, and my plan was to just get the bare essentials, but that plan pretty much flew out the window within the first week… so now I own a new bed, washing machine, dryer, HD TV, PS3, fridge, lounge suite etc— more "stuff" than I’ve ever owned before. Almost everything was bought via TradeMe, the extremely popular NZ version of eBay (which until now I haven’t made much use of) so although I spent a fair bit most of it was only a fraction of what it would have cost to buy new.

I did end up getting Little Big Planet, and although it is quite lovely I fear I just don’t have the attention to dedicate to console games. More interesting to me is trying to work out a decent media center setup… currently I am playing stuff from my iMac on the PS3 with the help of Nullsoft’s Medialink server, although it is a little light on features and doesn’t do transcoding (PS3 is surprisingly picky about codec support).

After the US elections I think I ran out of steam a little (like a lot of people)… it was such a relief but now the race is finally over I suddenly seem to have less to read about/post about. Probably a good thing to get away from politics for a while anyway. Sadly we just voted in a conservative government in NZ so that was a bit of a let-down after the world-wide euphoria of Obama’s win. At least our conservatives aren’t as fucked up as those in the US… I don’t think any of them are even rapture-ready ;)

So now the end of the year is fast approaching, as are some nasty deadlines at work, and I am really really looking forward to a break. My energy levels are just so damn low at the moment, I never feel like I’ve had enough sleep.

Although I like the idea of an Obamalanch, I predict, based on no real knowledge or expertise, that Dems will take exactly the 311 electoral votes estimated here. It doesn’t seem so hard to believe they will win if even after every single "toss-up" state is given to McCain they still have the numbers.

After McCain loses I think it would be nice for him to reclaim some dignity by apologizing for running such a slimy turd of a campaign, but something tells me he won’t. There’ll be lots of whining on the Repooplican side about how the liberal media didn’t let them get their message out (but strangely they had plenty of opportunity to talk about Ayers and ACORN) and then they will commence to tear each other to pieces, which will be a true joy to behold.

I hope they decide to nominate Palin in 2012 too, because it would confirm my suspicions that they are morally bankrupt and stupid enough to retreat into their fanatically xenophobic Christian God-fearin’ base.

The whole world wants you to vote Obama, and if you do they will love you for it. Seriously we are wanting to like the US again, but the last 8 years has rather strained the relationship. If you’re one of those I-won’t-listen-to-foreigners-because-no-one-tells-Americans-what-to-do kind of people then you’re probably exactly the sort of shithead who would vote for McCain anyway, so what I say will make no difference.

Californians, go vote NO on Proposition 8 while you’re at it :)

Funny, I haven’t seen too many rallies where Obama encourages derision for his opposition. What better than to see McCain fuck up while pandering to those remaining parochial assholes who still support him.

(alternative title for this post: Michael Scott for president!)

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