Poor sports

You know, I'm sad that the Socceroos have been eliminated from the World Cup, but I am appalled by the amount of bitching and moaning about the Ref. Every time we have played, I have heard time and time again "oh the ref was against us", "blah blah dodgey call", "they are OBVIOUSLY biased towards the better teams" and so forth. God, in the game against Croatia they even stooped to blaming our own goalee, one person took me aside an "explained" that he was of "croatian descent" and therefore obviously tried to lose us the game!

This morning I awoke to hear them raving on about how it was the refs fault that we lost, presumably our players had nothing to do with it? Or the italian players? Nah, it was ALL the refs fault for a single call! Meanwhile, they couldn't even manage enough reporting to even say which italian had scored.

Australians love their sport its true, but often I feel that we take it too far, and in a situation like this I just get embarrassed for our country, for being such poor sports. I just wish we could lose a game without having to cast around for someone to blame.

SOLD!

Well, I have been sitting on this news for about a week now, but we finally sold our house. The exchange of contracts went through on Friday, but it hasn't been official since today as the buyers had some trouble getting thier deposit bond sorted out (as opposed to a deposit cheque, so they are either borrowing 100% of the purchase price, or they are using bridging finance like we did).

Anyway, short story long we had a call out of the blue last Wednesday with someone who desperately wanted to go through the house. They had looked through it on the second open day, and then gone overseas. Well, they came back to find the place still on the market with the price recently dropped (it had been up long enough without interest, it needed to be done), and that was enough for them to want another look. It turns out that they have been looking for 7ish months so I guess they were finally ready to commit to something. In the end, we got exactly what we were hoping for, so it has worked out really well.

Just a bit over two weeks before our new place is officially ours, with a 3 and a bit week overlap until the old place is officially not. That gives us plenty of time to fix up anything that needs doing (there is a BRIGHT pink room to be painted) and move without being under any pressure, and that suits me just fine!

I decided to go down to the pub tonight for trivia, but had a few things to take care of first so I didn't get out to the bus stop until after 8. After oh... 15-20 minutes of waiting for the bus (in the sodding rain, naturally), I thought to double check the timetable. It turns out I had read the saturday morning timetable, and the bus I was waiting for stopped running at 8pm. So Stupid!

Howling at the moon

Well, last night I got killed out of my first proper Werewolf game. I had "played" once before, but got killed out at the end of Night 1 so never really got a chance to join in the fun.

What is werewolf I hear you ask? Well, it is a mind game of suspicion and intrigue played on a forum thread. You get the "village" together with the majority players being normal villagers, two or three werewolves, and sometimes a few other special characters on both good and evil sides.

The werewolves know who each other are, and are allowed to communicate outside of the forum. Everyone else is blind, and are only permitted to communicate via posts on the game thread (its an honour system). Each "day", the villagers gang together and vote for who they suspect is evil and pick someone to "lynch". If you are lynched, you are dead. Then, assuming that at least one wolf is left, the wolves pick someone to kill during the "night" and then the next day begins. And so on until either all the wolves are dead, or the number of evil characters equals the number of good characters (at which point, the wolves have nothing left to fear and rise up to slaughter the remaining villagers).

The person controlling the game keeps a tally of votes, and during the day there is much discussion, accusations, vote analysis and general bullshitting to decide who gets lynched. The wolves participate in this process themselves (pretending to be good), so the idea is that you find the wolves based on what they say and who they vote for.

In the game we just played, I was killed during the night by the one remaining wolf (the other wolf was lynched in a fluke on the first day). The first victim of the wolves was also raised as zombie, and became evil. He knew who the wolf was, and the wolf knows who he was, but they cannot communicate. So one of the goodies went over to the darkside, and has been working to put suspicion on everyone else.

I had a great time playing, and almost made it to the end. I didn't have a fantastic track record, helping to lynch several innocents that I thought were evil, but at the end of the day I had fun and that's what counts. Hopefully we will continue on with a new game once this one is over (should end tonight, with the wolf looking to be in a good position).

The house of sausage

Well, I don't know if anyone in my non-existant audience watches Australian Big Brother, but has anyone else noticed that having boobs greatly increases your chances of being voted out?

I think so far there has been nine evictions, and seven of them have been women! The most recent evictee is Katy, who I had actually thought was going to win the whole thing. She reminded me of Reggie in many ways, a bit insane and wildly popular with the viewers. I guess Katy pissed a few too many people off in the past week, she basically got really shitty at being nominated for the first time, which I am sure didn't go over too well with either her housemates or the viewers.

Meh. I find big brother to be mildly interesting at best, I really just like to see who gets voted off and the adults only special (because I'm a perv). I watch a few of the daily shows, but could care less if I miss a week or two. I don't know what they could do to increase the appeal of the show, but I would guess putting some INTERESTING PEOPLE in for a change couldn't hurt. I hate seeing the horny young singles getting put in every year, this has been more shameless in 2006 than ever, I think there was only one person over 30 this time around, pathetic!

Oooo sometime this week though they are putting in three new intruders, which at least promises to provide some interesting reactions from the remaining housemates. I bet there are at least 2 women, perhaps even all three to make up some of the numbers.

It's not called Gym-nice-tics

Last night, we headed over to Chatswood to see "Stick It", the latest film from the writer of Bring it On. It is the story of Haley, a former world-class gymnast who walked out on her team-mates at the end of the world tournaments. I am not sure exactly how old Haley was supposed to be, but it was obviously supposed to be less than 18 since she was threatened with being sent to juvenile detention.

So as you would expect, Haley falls foul of the law, and ends up getting sent to a Gymnastics training academy. Wait, what? Ah I don't know! It is an incredibly flimsy plot device, but the end result is that she is taken under the wing of Bert Vickerman (Jeff Bridges) who doesn't have a good reputation either. There are a team of girls at the academy, but the focus is on Wei Wei (actress with a dance background), Mina (an actual gymnast), Joanne (stone cold fox and the movies bitch) and Haley herself. Needless to say, Haley goes from being an unwilling captive of the academy to someone who actually seems to care about the team, and I think the development was done in a very subtle and intelligent way. The interaction between Haley's two male friends and the other gymnasts (particularly Joanne) was hilarious.

It was a touching movie, one that I really enjoyed. It wasn't as punchy or as funny as Bring It On, but it was a warm and amusing movie with a good solid cast and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone. Check it out, just don't expect it to win any oscars!

Poor puppy

We think we fed the dog some dodgy chicken last night. After eating his dinner he started whining and moping around, alternating between getting ready to throw up in his bed and trying to sneak upstairs while noone was looking. He doesn't like throwing up (who does?) so he trys to hide when he is doing it... and sadly that usually means sneaking into our bedroom or under our coffee table etc.

Eventually he got the idea that we would prefer it if he was sick outside, and this morning we found a mass of vomit on the deck (around now I suppose you are asking yourself why you are actually reading this, right? I have no answers for you) and he was a bit better. We tried to give him a bit of extra dry food but he was uncharacteristically uninterested in it, poor little fella.

He seems better at least, no more whining although he is obviously still feeling a bit under the weather. He will probably just spend the day sleeping today, and hopefully if he needs to throw up again he will go outside rather than just doing it on the upstairs carpet!

Cthulhu, neck pain and many purchases

Well, over the long weekend (longer for me thanks to a Scheduled Day Off on Tuesday, man I love working for the Uni) Suzy and I were determined to get off our bums and actually do something. Saturdays are a bit of a write-off thanks to having to have an open house, but on Sunday we went into the city for a bit of shopping.

It was nice and cold (I'm told some people prefer the heat, but I just don't get it) and we headed up to pitt street to start our trek at Myer. They are having a "huge stocktake sale" at the moment, and while Suzy managed to pick up a few tops, I found that the savin's didn't extend to Myer's underloved computer section, where full price reigned supreme.

Moving on, we headed up to DJs where I insisted that Suzy spend some time roaming the aisles looking for makeup. Eventually (it seemed like years later) she finally convinced me that it was time to leave, and while I protested she insisted that we head directly over to Galaxy Bookshop. Ahh, Nerd Heaven, I love this shop. More nerd-books than you can shake a stick at, lots of wierd expensive action figures that noone is ever going to buy (I hope, anyway!) and it is even below ground to get that parents-basement feel! I was hunting for the fourth and final book in Ian Irvines the View from the Mirror series. He is an Australian author that I recently started reading, and this first series is exceptional. The world he has created is rich and complex, the story has been gripping throughout and he has a refreshingly different narrative style which I have found very enjoyable. If you are looking for some quality fantasy, give him a try (the first book is called A Shadow on the Glass).

Next stop was JB HiFi, where Suzy and I picked up some new series on sale. We grabbed the third series of Northen Exposure, the first series of American Dad (we love Family Guy, and this is essentially more of the same which is definitely a good thing) and since it was going very cheaply I grabbed the first series of Smallville. I have heard a lot of good things about the show, but I've been waiting until I could get it cheaply on DVD before watching it. I'm a few episodes in and so far, so good (especially since I know from what I've heard about it that it picks up the pace about half way through series 1 as the writers begin to develop the characters and story more confidently).

And last but not least, we stopped off at Games Paradise to see if we could find an interesting board game for 2 players that Suzy would enjoy. We considered Monsters Menace America (who DOESN'T want to rampage across the states as a giant lobster?) but settled on Arkham Horror, a co-operative game based on Lovecraft Mythos. We have played three games so far, and while the rules are fairly complex and take a while to get the hang of, it has been a lot of fun and best of all Suzy has really been enjoying it. It is refreshing to play something with more depth than Risk or Monopoly, and there are even some expansions on the horizon which will introduce new aspects to the game. One includes a whole new board, while the other is a smaller pack with extra cards etc.

So apart from cheerleading movies (which Suzy and I watched again on Saturday), shopping and open houses, there was one thing that dominated my weekend. My neck! On Friday at work I was getting twinges in my neck, and by Saturday morning I was in serious pain. I have no idea what I did, but I woke up on Saturday barely able to move my head, and even after it had been stretched out a bit I was still in quite a lot of pain that never really went away. The same story on Sunday, and thankfully by Monday it was starting to show some improvement. Now it's thursday and I am almost back to normal, but it is still not completely better.

I also got some Blood Bowl in on Tuesday with Geoff Kerr, where we basically swapped humiliating defeats (I thrashed him then he turned around and thrashed me). He brought along Betrayal at the House on the Hill which is another boardgame where you are adventurers exploring the house (which is built up randomly while you explore). At a random point in time, one of the players is chosen as the traitor, and one of the 50ish scenarios commences. At that point, you go from everyone exploring the house to one person vs the rest. We played two games (both fairly quick) before breaking for dinner. Suzy ended up being the tratior in both, first off commanding a zombie legion and the second being a cannibal freak, and both times she proceeded to whup us in very short order.

Tomorrow I am going to see Stick It! with Nick (same writer as Bring It On and the reason why we were prompted to have a mini-marathon last weekend). I am expecting it to be craptastically good, but I'll settle for being so bad that it's funny. My mini-review shall follow.

Ready? OK!

Good Nick came over last night and we had a little movie marathon. The highlight was Bring It On, a spectacular cheerleader comedy from 2000. I know that sounds stupid, but it is up on my list of favorite movies, and seeing Kirsten Dunst running around in a load of skimpy costumes including cheerleading outfits is enough to recommend the movie by itself if you ask me. Nothing will prepare you for Sparky Polastri, the choreographer who introduces us to the concept of Spirit Fingers. And Spirit Fingers are gold.

If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and rent it out ASAP (funnily enough it is on Channel 9 tonight, what were the chances of that??).

We also watched the lackluster straight to video sequel, Bring It On Again. Needless to say, there are zero returning actors from the original, and in general is inferior in every way. But it isn't totally without hope, and while nowhere near the brilliance of the original is still mildly amusing.

The best part is that a third movie is on the way in August (also straight to video), Bring It On: All or Nothing. Glee!

Kicking some ass at the world cup!

In anticipation of our inevitable defeat in the world cup, lastchance.com.au has put out a game to give our team a little helping hand.

Very amusing, and sound is a must to hear the commentors while you are playing. I managed a bit over 10'000 points after three games, although the top score overall is lightyears above that, since some people have nothing better to do than get absurdly good at stupid internet flash games.

Check it out here, I have a feeling there is a chance to win a TV or something if you play, but I suspect you will be signing up for junk emails at the same time if you submit your email.

All quiet on the western front

Well, Suzy is off tonight seeing Split Endz with her folks. Given that I would rather poke out my own eyes with toothpicks and eat them than see the band (hehe not really... it's just not my kind of music) I find myself home alone.

Normally we go out to the pub on a thursday night for trivia, but I feel less than 100% motivated to go right now, for no particular reason. So me and my puppy are being bachelors tonight, huzzah!

Bizzare Pop-culture references

I recently picked up Mega Man Powered Up, the remake of the original Mega Man game for the PSP. It's good fun, especially if you never played the original (I was always a Sega fanboy in my youth, and reviled Nintendo in all its myriad ways. The first example of my long history of backing the loser). That is however, not what this post is about.

In my efforts to defeat this game from nearly two decades ago, I have resorted to searching for hints on the interweb. I wasn't searching for cheats, just pointers on getting past Fireman, may he burn in hell.

What I found instead, was a list of every Master robot from the Mega Man series. The author of the website, Syd Lexia, runs through each of the boss robots from Mega Man 1-7, and rates them on Arbitrary Coolness Rating. For those who don't know, mega man robots have names like "Ice Man" who fires ice, or "Bubble Man" who fires bubbles. You get the idea. Needless to say, with 6-8 bosses per game, and 7 games, they started running low on idea. And so you get people like "Junk Man", "Centaur Man" and "Yamoto Man". Does Yamoto Man fire 4th Century Japanese warlords? Find out that and more at the above link!

So after having a good laugh at this list, I went on to see what other stuff was on this website. The very next thing that caught my eye was the most recent article, the Girls of the NES. He has picked 23 "hot babes" from NES games and ranked them on their hotness, inner beauty plus a random extra scale. It is a cracker, this guy is great! Mrs Beakley (pictured above) was an inspired choice... "Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I don't find obese elderly anthropomorphic ducks to be attractive. Even if I did, I don't think it's a good idea to fall in love with a housekeeper, especially if she's YOUR housekeeper. Once you start banging her, she's not going to clean your house anymore but she'll charge you anyway. Then you won't have a housekeeper so much as you do a prostitute."

Other good reads include a list of the Fatalaties from Mortal Kombat, including pictures of them all! His "review" of Pepsi Free, a 23 year old bottle of discontinued pepsi he bought of eBay and perhaps most disturbingly of all his review of the arcade game Michael Jackson's Moonwalker... a game I embarrassingly used to own on the Sega Genesis! Check out the animated gifs of Michael turning into a giant robot killing machine, and using dance magic on his enemies!

There is plenty of good stuff on this website, well worth a trawl through in an idle moment. Enjoy!

Con-artist hurrah

First off I'll apologise for the long winded, boring, meandering and generally absurdly long last post. I looked back at it and realised how long and boring it was. Go me!

In other news, Suzy and I went to see X3 the other day. I've seen both positive and negative reviews of it, and as an x-men fan I can say that I enjoyed it but not to the same level as the first two movies by any stretch of the imagination. These movies, and the game X-Men Legends 2 on the PSP have renewed my interest in X-Men the comics, and I have gone back to the start with the Marvel Essential Range. They are cheaply made and B&W to cut costs, but when you get several years of comics in a single book for about $20 its worth it for me.

As with many things I do, Suzy is unsurprisingly mortified :)

Now, on to our headline story! I was contacted today as part of a scam at work! And what a clever scam too... For those that don't know, by day I am the mild mannered admissions coordinator for a university faculty and one aspect of that is reviewing applicants english qualifications (yeah, I'm a real hit at parties).

So today, I get my second email from someone calling herself "Angie Browne" telling me she is from the Cambridge IELTS centre (the most common and well known english test) and asking to confirm if we use their verification service on a regular basis "to update their records". The warning bells start to ring when I looked at the email address to see that it came from a chinese hotmail account, and generally the english standard of the email was poor. The first email came a few days ago, when she was an "IELTS Administer" and again today when the story was that their database crashed and she was an "Systems Administrator".

Obviously this is fake, and they are trying to scope out whether it is worth risking a fake english result sheet on the off chance that we don't check them properly. It would be tempting, as the tests need to be booked months in advance so people who want to start study now might consider submitting a counterfeit copy.

So I send her an email back today saying that yes we do use the system (not actually true) and report all irregularities to the relevant authorities. I actually hope she does go ahead and try and put one past me, that would be great to see how good/bad a job they do (based on their actual english level, I'm guessing it would be bad).