Pat’s Point of View

This guy is my hero…

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Don’t you just love the clever names people come up with for their businesses? I have taken note of some real beauties lately, including:

• Like Hart Spa – spa and beauty salon in Leichhardt
• Dough – pizza joint in Abbotsford
• Hair to Toe – beauty salon in Drummoyne
• Curl Up And Dye – another salon (can you see a pattern?), this time in Castle Hill
• Of course there’s the classic Dial-a-Dump, which I was surprised to learn is only a rubbish removal service :)
• Shu-Fiks – shoe repair store in Rhodes
• Free Stuff – additive free mini-mart in Five Dock

I’ve even thought of a few myself:

• Suds’n'Surf – combined laundromat and internet cafe
• KalashniCafe – even revolutionaries need good coffee. Note: it helps if you pronounce Cafe as “kaf” (like the Brits do) rather than “kafay”

Now that I’ve mentioned it you’ll probably notice them everywhere. It’s almost as infectious as ‘reading’ car license plates (eg IAM-26C = “I am too sexy”)…once you start you can’t not notice (but that’s a whole other story :)

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Surely this is the bestest title for a paper:

"What a f-ing system! Send ’em all to the same place and then expect us to stop ’em hitting": Making Technology Work in Air Traffic Control

Sounds like one of those juicy quotes you get from staff interviews :)

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Received in a recent email, surely written by an Englishman.

Merry Christmas

Symptom	Fault	Action
Feet cold and wet.	Glass being held at incorrect angle.	Rotate glass so that open end points toward ceiling.
Feet warm and wet.	Improper bladder control.	Stand next to nearest dog, complain about house training.
Drink unusually pale and tasteless.	Glass empty.	Get someone to buy you another drink.
Opposite wall covered with fluorescent lights.	You have fallen over backward.	Have yourself lashed to bar.
Mouth contains cigarette butts.	You have fallen forward.	See above.
Alcohol tasteless, front of your shirt is wet.	Mouth not open, or glass applied to wrong part of face.	Retire to restroom, practice in mirror.
Floor blurred.	You are looking through bottom of empty glass.	Get someone to buy you another drink.
Floor moving.	You are being carried out.	Find out if you are being taken to another bar.
Room seems unusually dark.	Bar has closed.	Confirm home address with bartender.
Taxi suddenly takes on colourful aspect and textures.	Alcohol consumption has exceeded personal limitations.	Cover mouth.
Everyone looks up to you and smiles.	You are dancing on the table.	Fall on somebody cushy-looking.
Drink is crystal-clear.	It’s water. Somebody is trying to sober you up.	Punch him.
Hands hurt, nose hurts, mind unusually clear.	You have been in a fight.	Apologize to everyone you see, just in case it was them.
Don’t recognize anyone, don’t recognize the room you’re in.	You’ve wandered into the wrong party.	See if they have free alcohol.
Your singing sounds distorted.	The drink is too weak.	Have more alcohol until your voice improves.
Don’t remember the words to the song.	Drink is just right.	Play air guitar.

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I spotted this voodoo knife holder in a store on Parramatta Rd the other day. It would make the perfect gift for that phsycho male-bashing woman that you just don’t know what to get for Chirstmas.

There’s even a well placed knife spot in the guts!

$200 might be a bit much though, considering it won’t even hold a decent sized cleaver :)

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You know Mark Hurst’s Good Experience (if you don’t I recommend you subscribe), well I was going over some old editions and at the end of one, where the funny stuff is listed, I came cross this link: www.zefrank.com/psbi/

At least some Americans have a sense of humour.

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Ahh memories. The definitive shit list was one of the first things I ever published to the web (on my very first website, at the Programmer’s Society of UTS). Still makes me laugh. My favourite is the Spinal Tap.

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The tribes which George Lackoff described as having a category of words for fire, women and dangerous things (in his book by the same name) were surely mistaken.

Women are the dangerous things!

Case in point, my wife, who in a temporary state of hormone-driven perplexity, thought she had the ability to bend the space-time continuum. Whilst I did not report this terrifying incident to the police, had I done so, their report would have read as follows (refer to diagram):

1. 5:15pm Suspect and victim driving along quite happily, along usual route taken to the city (indicated on map by green line). This route is used several times a week.
2. 5:16pm Suspect suddenly demands that the victim proceed straight ahead because it’s quicker!. The red line on the map indicates the route taken. Victim attempts to explain this route is longer but his actions are met with stedfast denial and not a little vicious hostility.
3. 5:19pm Victim pleads with suspect as to why they’re going this way. Suspect goes apeshit (it’s a psychological term). Tirade continues for several minutes.
4. 5:23pm Suspect realises this is the wrong way. The long, wrong way.
5. 5:28pm Victim and suspect re-join usual route. Suspect apologises, citing emotional instability.

Gotta watch out for those volatile emotions.

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It’s taken a while but I have finally played around with some of the new bits in iLife’06, specifically Photo Booth. That’s some weird ass shit! They should have a parental guidance warning on that, just look at the scary stuff it can produce!

It’s so scary my wife refuses to look at this photo.

See what people are blogging about: iLife, Photo Booth

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I was recently reading a post regarding typewriter art, the grand-daddy of ASCII art. If you thought it was arduous in a word processor, imagine the patience you’d need to do that on a typewriter? That’s monk level dedication, either that or you’d die from liquid paper fumes.

This reminded me of my previous post on chalk art and some other unconventional media for art. Perhaps my most favourite is ‘fantasy art’: the hallmark or cheesy fantasy/action movies, heavy metal album covers and Sandman panel vans.

Continue reading ‘I don’t know if it’s art, but I like it’

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