I'd like to post something worthwhile, but I can't be bothered. So I'll just post this elephant seal and his bucket. So happy... and then, so... outraged!

Bah, I feel like poop at the moment. So I'll just post something that at least I find moderately amusing - Introducing... The many faces of Saltman.





This is Saltman in his finest hour. Happy. Oblivious to the pains of the world. Oh, how I envy you... you happy, salty bastard.

Ah, here we have the sad Saltman. The pressure has got to him. He's not happy. Actually, I believe he might be feeling a little suicidal. Poor Saltman.
 
Here we find a furious Saltman. Obviously someone has been pissing in his salt, so to speak... or perhaps he's just been drinking a little too much. Lighten up, would ya? Perhaps it's time to lay off the sodium, my friend.

Saltman has definitely hit rock bottom in this instance... A long night binging on sugar will do you no good, especially when you're comprised of 60% salt and 40% pepper. In fact, Saltman lost his life in a horrible, violent scattering just minutes after this final pic was taken. 

RIP Saltman, we barely knew ye.

He's in a better place now. The place where all good crystalline minerals go when they pass on.

I saw this on Letterman a while ago and have been wanting to grab their album ever since. These people amaze me. Make sure you skip past Letterman's intro a little to get to the Spanish-guitar-goodness. 

I wish I could do that. I'll just have to take solace in the fact that I can play drums better than they can.

First up, Steve's birthday was goodness. Glad you had fun Steve!

Secondly - I submitted a story to the young writer's awards on Friday and just recieved my entry reciept. There's a $2000 prize available, so wish me luck. Not that I expect to achieve anything, really, but it'd be nice and surprising if I did. I'd imagine they're probably looking for something a little more friendly and palatable than what I offered up, but hey, maybe there's someone on the judging board that likes the dark stuff. I'll find out I guess.

Thirdly - Went to see Live Free or Die Hard tonight. It was a mixed bag for me. Of course it didn't live up to the original films, which I grew up watching. For one, the villain was WEAK as piss. Timothy Olyphant is a cinematic turd-on-a-stick compared to the great Alan Rickman, Bill Sadler and Jeremy Irons. Definitely hard acts to follow, and he didn't really deliver at all. I guess one could blame the script which was, for the most part, fairly retarded. It makes you appreciate how clever the first Die Hard really was. And Len Wiseman is such a boring director. It was all by-the-book and uninspired in that department. That said, the movie managed to pick up a little in the second half and almost felt like a real Die Hard movie.

I still can't believe it was PG-13. He couldn't even say "yippee kay yay motherfucker" without it being blocked out by a gunshot. Cheap money grubbing bastards at Fox. To be honest, the whole John McClane character was wrong. He was too much of a "superhero". His weaknesses and reluctances were what made the guy so appealing in the first place. Anyway, it was kinda nice to see Bruce "freshly-circumcised-penis-head-man" Willis blowing away terrorists again, even if they all appeared to be freakish aliens that bled dust.

And lastly, I'm gonna post something here that stunned me. It's been around for many, many years, but I hadn't seen it before yesterday:

It's such a tragic little story. Poor Od. It gets me right *here*. You live your life as a circus midget, then you die in a bizarre way with people applauding your passage into the nether regions of a giant creature. So sad - and poetic in a way. I think this article really says a lot about the fickleness of life... even if it isn't true.

Current Mood: recumbent

How does it feel being a walking cliche? We're all so unoriginal. With Earth's population approaching (or exceeding) 7 billion, how is it possible to be an "original" individual anymore? Any emotion, thought, feeling, idea or theory you could fathom has almost certainly been experienced by someone before you.

Any issues or problems you may have in your life are in no way unique - you're just another cookie-cutter human being. In fact, you probably have some doppelgänger - your complete mirror image - wandering around on the other side of the earth... and you'll never even know it. That's scary.

It's excruciatingly hard to break out of the mould in so, so many respects. You have to do something very special to be noticed. As evidenced by the news our wonderful media sees fit to report, the best way to make yourself known to the world is by doing something evil. Kill as many people as you can, and you'll no doubt be remembered.

How difficult is it to do something good, and have people sit up and take notice? Almost impossible really. You have to get really, really lucky... or, of course, know someone with lots and lots of money.

And how difficult is it to do something that NO-ONE else has ever done in some form before? Impossible!

How hard is it to come up with an idea no-one else has ever touched upon?

How hard is it to FEEL something no-one else has ever felt?

What is left for us that hasn't already been claimed by thousands of previous generations?

I guess if I really want to do something important... I'll have to cure cancer.

Or maybe it's time for us all to be wiped out completely. A new start. A fresh slate. It happened to the dinosaurs, and it's inevitably going to happen to us. Yay for evolution!

So, we've all passed through the temporal gateway that is the first day of a new month. August. I can't believe it's already August. Where has 2007 gone, exactly? It's days are limited and disappearing quickly - spiralling down the drains of time like the sands of a fractured hourglass.

I can remember when Christmas, or birthdays seemed so far away. It was as if those special events were hiding on the other side of a seemingly eternal horizon, torturously keeping their goodies and surprises from my young hands. But now, I wish those days would arrive in a less swift fashion. It seems like it was January only a few months ago. Where is my life going?

Why exactly does time seem to speed up as you get older? Is this a common phenomenon, or is it just me? Am I simply getting better at passing the time away? Is it something deep in our minds that triggers as we age? Is the fabric of space-time stretching and speeding up? Is there a horde of ravenous time-goblins, swallowing up the remains of yesterday at an increasingly greedy tempo? Or perhaps there's a temporal God existing out there somewhere, operating under an urgent agenda - fashioning the ribbons of time faster and faster into an extravagant piece of ethereal artwork, all the while chuckling at our brief, pathetic existence?

Well, alright, maybe not. But seriously, who knows? Sometimes, I wish I could jam a wrench into the cogs of time, just to slow down the good periods in an attempt to prevent them from escaping too quickly. Similarly, I wish I could brandish a pair of time-scissors and take big snips out of the bad periods. There's definitely occasions where a few chunks of time-shit float to the surface and just beg to be flushed.

All we can do, I guess, is try to enjoy things while we can... try to reach the goals we set and experience the feelings we desire. Because sadly, before long we'll be decorating the insides of a coffin - or, if you prefer cremation - being swept along by the wind in a cloud of dust and debris. In the grand scheme of things, our lives are short. In the not too far future, everything we know and love will be history - so it's high time for us to make the best of it.

Current Mood: weird

It was inevitable. There was no avoiding it. I had to get sick at some point this year. Really, I can't believe how lucky I've been up until this point... those little pathogenic bastards had to have their way eventually and now they're running rampant in my respiratory system. It's like a party in there and every bacteria's been invited.

My throat feels like I've been chugging napalm. At least it's a little better now that I'm pumping in the anti-biotics. Ah, glorious medicine. Where would we be as a race without pills to make us feel good? 

If I may get philosophical about it for a brief period, I really think this sickness is a physical manifestation of all the crap that's been running through my mind over the past week. The globs of sick, green refuse I've been periodically coughing up (yes, sorry for the lovely mental image) represents all the negative feelings and emotions I've been harboring lately. It feels good to finally get it all out. 

Maybe I shouldn't be angry at the friend who gifted me with the cold - even though he laughed about passing it on and even gestured towards me rudely (as he tends to do) while mocking my sore-throat related whinings... Maybe he did me a favour by infecting me with such a fascinating example of microbial evolution. 

Or then again, maybe not. I feel like crap. But I'll feel better soon, with a positive attitude and some good sleep. Thanks to the people who made me smile this past week, I really appreciate it.

Current Mood: sick

Don't ask me why, but I just thought I'd cut and paste some certain lyrics that have been echoing through my head for days. And I know that when I lie down, they're going to continue echoing around in there until I fall asleep... I really like the new Devin Townsend album.

Did you know that time... is not a straight line?
Everything that you learned, now it’s gone, gone away.
You take your time, 
If you choose, you’ll burn...
Everything that you were,
Now it’s gone, gone away.
Gone... And the world is gone!
And we find there's no-one that's waiting for the light to come,
And we're on our own,
And we find there's no-one that’s waiting for the light to call.
Now you’re on your own,
And you find there's no-one that’s waiting for the light to call.

Current Mood: drained

I don't care how drunk I am. I'm gonna post a message. It may be crap. It might be great. But whatever it is, it'll be a triumph cause I can barely see my fingers bashing the keyboard. If I manage to post something without making any spelling errors, I'm quite obviously a hero of some sort.

So what have I got to say? Not much, apart from how CRAP telemarketing is. Can't a man watch commercial television at 4am without being subjected to such awful garbage? I feel like strangling P-Diddy. I feel like shooting Jessica Simpson. SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR GODDAMN ACNE YOU USELESS, TALENTLESS, SHIT EATING MOTHERFUCKERS! Even if I DID have ACNE, I wouldn't buy your goddamn turd product, because I HATE YOU  and everything you stand for. DIE! You are everything that is wrong with the world and I hope you fucking drown in your own rot!

*ahem*

*turns tv off*

Current Mood: angry

Yes, my first entry on LiveJournal. A wonderful and exciting event, isn't it?

Why I'm typing it at such a cold, ridiculous and obscure time of the morning is anyone's guess. Perhaps it's for my own amusement? Perhaps it's to keep my fingers from freezing in this rather frisky weather? Perhaps it's just out of necessity, considering I signed up for something, and I feel an obligation to use it's functions at least once. And taking into account the fact that there's only ONE potential reader in my audience at the moment sends chills down my spine. It's a wannabe writer's worst nightmare. Just lucky for this particular wannabe, his potential audience is such a bright, attractive, friendly and charming one. 

It's a great generation that I find myself a part of - we're one that insists on keeping lists of everything - including friends and acquaintances. Who knows, perhaps I'll end up adding other people to my "list of friends" on this site. There could be a theoretical group of people out there somewhere who might one day be priveliged enough to  skim over these pointless ramblings in a far-flung future where we're all proud owners of flying cars and high-tech holographic mobile phones which can also double as a form of birth control. You just never know. Perhaps I'll be a LiveJournal leper, and no-one will ever want to add me. That would really hurt my feelings and I'd prefer not to think about that, but it's always a possibility. You have to keep an eye on that balance between optimism and pessimism or the whole system will fall apart. Fall apart, I tells ya!

So, what sort of things would I write about in future entries on LiveJournal? Who knows? Obviously, first I'd like to tackle the heavyweight subjects... the meaning of life, the existence/non-existence of god, afterlife, evolution, the death of literacy in the modern world... Or then again, maybe not. I really don't know what I'd write on here to be brutally honest. Probably nothing of real worth. I don't think the events of my day to day life are interesting enough to hold a reader's attention. I don't have the energy to fill page upon page with my cynical thoughts about the state of the world. I don't even have any crackpot conspiracy theories I want to share with people. I really don't know. I'm a poor excuse for a LiveJournalist.

The thing I do know is that I hope anyone who has taken the time to read this slice of textual effluence is smiling and having a good day. The universe knows we all need more of those, and really, it's all that matters in the end.

Current Mood: groggy