A funny thing happened on the way to reading three books in three weeks…

That funny thing was God of War II and it seriously drained all of my free time.  I had read what an awesome game it was but I really wasn’t prepared for how awesome.

So it may put the reading challenge back a little.  Not too bad but I’m not confident on getting the third book done by the end of next weekend.  Especially if I accidentally start on God of War one.

I’m also developing some stuff with our good friend Memphis over at Crypt Hunter that I expect to show its face come May 1st.

Discovered last night that I haven’t actually watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire so will have to rectify that some time this week (missed the start on TV)!!  But I am catching up on Torchwood and the show gets cooler every episode.

Overheard in our room today:

Tracey: Should I get a primer or a sunscreen?
Me: Unless that’s got Optimus in front of it I have no idea what you’re talking about.

I wonder why she married me somedays.

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Reading challenge

Tracey and I have a problem, it’s not that I like to eat cookies in bed and get crumbs all over the blankets although if that was the case it would indeed be a problem. No the problem we have is that we buy books, DVDs and CDs compulsively. It’s like a sickness. If we feel a bit miserable (and that’s been the case a lot recently) or even bored (I guess) we’ll pick up something along these lines.

In fairness though we have very few vices and we don’t purchase beyond our means so when I say it’s a problem it is probably a little harsh. But I must say when people tell me they have a large collection of either DVDs or Books I do tend to laugh as I’m fairly sure I can give them a run for their money (removal guys love our heavy book boxes).

Anyway Thursday we were out, a little disappointed over a couple of houses that we wasted our time on and the book store had 20% off. Time to grab a couple of Star Trek books. Tracey has written about the number of books you’re able to read in a lifetime in an old post: Beauty in the World

So with some of that in mind and feeling a little guilty over adding to the immense library here I’ve set myself the task of reading three books in three weeks. I generally don’t find the time to read which really irritates me because I’ve always been a big reader.

The first book I’m going to read is Resistance by J.M. Dillard, I don’t mind Dillard’s books usually and this one is set after the events of Nemesis which really does interest me. I got two other Trek books as I mentioned and they may not be the other two I wind up reading, then again they may be too.

I did start reading Hidden Empire by Kevin Anderson (I think that’s his name) but I’m damned if I can work out where I left the bloody thing. If I do find it in the next couple of weeks I’ll probably add it to the rotation again.

I’ll keep everyone up to date on my progress and if you think you could use some more reading in your life then why not set yourself a challenge over the next three weeks and post about it or let us know here in the comments!

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Freedom of speech violation and why I’m not fighting it

I’ve had a pretty shit (look there is simply no other way to put that) week this past week; hate mail; other stuff and yesterday I received an email threatening legal action in regards to an individual who will remain nameless as per their request.

I’m not going into any great detail but the guy is essentially pissed because this site ranks highest on a search under his name in Google and thought that if he threatens me with legal action then I’ll run off into the hills.

Honestly if the guy had actually written to me politely and explained why he would appreciate it if I removed his name from this site I would have not hesitated.  But he threatened legal action and after the week I had it was the cherry on top.

I even offered a compromise that would have been beneficial to him and helped clean up his name online.  But again he chose to threaten legal action.  He has no legal standing for such a thing, as quite frankly I was actually quite fair and open in the final post regarding him.

But I’m tired.  I’m tired and I really don’t care.  I don’t care about his rubbish, I don’t need the grief and have removed his name and his “brother’s” name and if anyone does mention it from now on I will remove said names.

One of the conditions of this is that he not attempt to contact me again, this is the last I wish to even hear his name, if he does I will take it further.   I doubt he’ll contact anyone who’s page doesn’t register higher than his on the Google search results but if he does it is your decision whether or not you want to argue with him about it or not.

Me I don’t think it’s worth it.

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Smackdat14 is a tool

Well this evening I was treated to a comment that I had to ridicule share with you all because it is hilarious and hopefully written as a joke because if it’s not then I feel kind of bad for the kid, being challenged and all. This was in response to the Bruce Campbell in Burn Notice post.

TO LEE (BIGEST DICK ON PLANET EARTH)
YOU AND THE REST OF THIS BUNCH OF SHIT DONT KNOW A THING ABOUT THESE TYPES OF PROGRAMS. WHAT TYPE OF A** ****ING FOUR EYED C**** DO YOU THINK YOU ARE .YOU ALL HAVE NO ****ING RIGHT TO CRITISISE THIS TYPE OF A PROGRAMS, I MEAN WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE ,KOREANS .EVEN THOE YOU MAY BE ADULTS ,WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO MAKE A WEBSITE ON SOMEONES HARD WORK. OH AND GO AHEAD BE A PUSSY AND DELETE THIS COMENT I DONT GIVE A ****ING CRAP
F*** YOU ALL TO HELL…….. AND BACK AGAIN

Oh my god. I don’t even know where to start!? I could simply dismiss this child as some whiny, spoilt little illiterate. But here at Quit Your Day Job we are always trying to put back into the community so I thought I might try and help our challenged special little friend.

TO LEE (BIGEST DICK ON PLANET EARTH)
Straight away I’m going to stop you and point out that it’s rude and bad etiquette to use all caps. Plus you probably shouldn’t use brackets in your greeting, I don’t know if this is a hard and fast rule but I think it only makes sense. You did misspell biggest too, try and spell check your prose if the school system has let you down in spelling.

YOU AND THE REST OF THIS BUNCH OF SHIT DONT KNOW A THING ABOUT THESE TYPES OF PROGRAMS.
Punctuation, my dear child! The word don’t has an apostrophe. Also your statement doesn’t make sense as my readers and I probably do know something about these types of program, I’m assuming you are referring to Burn Notice and not the Old Spice ads.

WHAT TYPE OF A** ****ING FOUR EYED C**** DO YOU THINK YOU ARE .
Whoa! I’ve had glasses for less than a week and already with the four-eyes insult!? That’s cold. Oh and we don’t use the C word in polite conversation my dear, it reveals that you are of low class and of bad breeding. Your sentence is poorly put together and I think you’re missing a question mark at the end.

YOU ALL HAVE NO ****ING RIGHT TO CRITISISE THIS TYPE OF A PROGRAMS, I MEAN WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE ,KOREANS .
Just can’t get a break with these question marks can you? Actually you’ll find that I have every right to criticise what I choose as I live in a free country. The point though that you are missing is that I was actually praising the show especially considering it has Bruce Campbell in it. Aww that’s a shame you went and got all ignorant and racist.

EVEN THOE YOU MAY BE ADULTS ,WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO MAKE A WEBSITE ON SOMEONES HARD WORK.
Though is the word I think you are aiming for, got to invest in that spell checker. You may also want to watch the punctuation as you’ve missed the apostrophe again in someone’s. The sentence once again misses the actual content of the post again and what did we leave off the end again? That’s right, it’s free to use question marks so go wild and throw some in there!

OH AND GO AHEAD BE A PUSSY AND DELETE THIS COMENT I DONT GIVE A ****ING CRAP
Hang on a second! You sound like a troll. That’s the type of thing trolls say. You’re not a troll are you? Punctuation again, no full stop and you could probably use a comma or two.

F*** YOU ALL TO HELL…….. AND BACK AGAIN
Yours Sincerely? Yours Truly? Best Regards? That’s three sign-offs you could have used, really are you putting your best foot forward here? I do however enjoy the very dramatic use of the ellipsis and if you were going to stick with the way you’ve written it you could have gotten away with an exclamation point.

So what do you think guys?

Feel free to add any advice you’ve got for Smackdat14 (whom I have the IP address of I might add). Also if you actually do own that email address and it isn’t you who left this pile of drivel you may want to leave a comment letting us know that some troll is hijacking your email address and is in violation of Hotmail terms of use.

Of course you could always just apologise.

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Guest post: John on Hellboy

Lee’s note: The following guest post is taken from an email from John of Matterings whom I occasionally exchange long emails regarding the nature of the universe (I say occasionally simply because I quite often take more than my time responding). Over at Matterings John is also collaborating with another friend of Quit Your Day Job Becca from No Smoking in the Skullcave and I urge you all to visit!

Oh and while I’m at it - I forgot to mention that I’ve done a guest post over at Aussie Bloggers about an Australian connection to the X-Men.

I’ve heard people react with mixed feelings to Hellboy.

The first time I showed it to my mother (who’s actually a very cool person to watch movies with) she wasn’t at all sure. After watching it a couple more times on my own (after a healthy pause) and really deciding I liked it, I showed it to her again one evening - and she really liked it the second time.

I don’t know how much difference it makes not having read the comic (which is referenced in the movie anyway, so that a kid meeting him on the roof immediately recognises him from his comics)… but parts of the film felt very much like reading a comic, thanks to the way the shots were framed - the sequence where Hellboy is looking down at the professor’s funeral procession being a prime example.

I guess I’ve grown a fascination with Guillermo Del Toro’s work (especially his fascination with clockwork and mechanisms and stuff - which appears in Hellboy, in Mimic and in the little bit of Kronos I have actually seen, and seems from the trailer to feature in the Hellboy sequel)… I liked his sense of the otherworldly. Although I had mixed feelings (again with the mixed feelings) the first time I saw Mimic, I thought the scene where the heroine confronts a figure in a subway station, only for it to sprout wings, reveal its insect nature, fly down the passage and carry it down the tunnel, was brilliant.

I guess I’d like to see Pan’s Labyrinth (I keep seeing it in some catalogues I get sent and meaning to order it, so I probably will), which everyone says is a very intense film… and he’s just released an intriguing-looking ghost/horror tale (forgot the title, but I saw the poster).

Not seen more than bits of Kronos, but I know it’s been critically acclaimed… So maybe for me there’s a sense of going on a journey into this director’s imagination and seeing what happens when it spends some time with my own.

To be honest, I hadn’t been aware of Del Toro as a particular filmic entity when I first saw Hellboy, that connection has grown stronger since then, but maybe that’s what draws me to the film (as a writer, I often rework stuff, develop it, re-edit, develop it… and so that sense of developing things, watching them grow and change, very much informs how I look at stuff… I think it’s something comics can do particularly well, in a way that the filmic media has only relatively recently cottoned on to).

Also, I love moments in Hellboy, like the scene with the kid on the roof, and the lovely scene where he tells the demons in the Hell dimension to let his girl go… “because for her I’d come over, and then you’ll be sorry.” (plus, I’m a sucker for a big, tentacled monster - especially when fighting them is fun, rather than laden with a hopeless sense of Lovecraftian doom)

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Wordpress 2.5

So I couldn’t wait, everyone was concerned over the screenshots floating around for the next install of Wordpress and as soon as I found the candidate release I figured why not install and see what all the fuss is about.

So far I actually quite like the admin which is probably the most obvious change.  Of course with change there is pain and you may notice the embedded videos in a few posts have disappeared because my embedded video plugin is not compatible and the big one which I only just installed along with this theme was the popularity plugin.  I hope it isn’t too long before we see an update for that!

So if anything quirky happens over the next couple of days you’ll know why!

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That’s it MyBlogLog

For the forth time now Mybloglog has logged me out and I can’t remember the stupid Yahoo ID thingy that they forced onto me when they sold themselves to Yahoo. I never wanted another login somewhere, I certainly didn’t want one which is so bloody hard to get my password from that it causes me to finally say that this is it - I’m uninstalling the plugin and will no longer visit the place.

See I have a vague idea what my username is but both passwords that I suspect I’ve used don’t work. So I’ve gone in and tried to get them to send me my password.

‘Oh I’m sorry some of your credentials must be wrong’

If I knew what the bloody credentials were I wouldn’t need to be trying to get the password!!?? Why can’t it be like every other site that sends you your password to the registered email address!?!?!?

So now I’m moving completely to BlogCatalog even though it seems to have issues with my feed and doesn’t update my listing. At least I can log into it!!!

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Podcasting, Juno and getting Arjan’s blog name wrong

Obviously I feel I’ve got too much bandwidth (or only a couple of visitors!) because I’m taking another shot at podcasting. Listen to me say umm several thousand times, mess up Arjan’s blog name completely (well not completely but half messed up at the very least), lump anti-abortionists with people who are anti-teenage pregnacy (??? I’m not recording it again to fix me tripping over my random thoughts) and of course share my thoughts on Juno.
[display_podcast]

• http://kimyadawson.com/
• Soundtracks of WHATEVER

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Lee Beads, Lee! Lee! Lee!

The title of this post needs to be chanted Jerry Springer style, well it doesn’t have to be but it makes more sense and is in context. Fine. Don’t chant Jerry style, see if I care?

*pout*

Anyway it’s a new year and I’ve moved URLs for here from the old blog.sarge.com.au one and as a result a lot of people’s links to QYDJ may be wrong or even worse non existent!

*gasp*

I know it’s shocking. I know you’re thinking of all the times you’ve mentioned QYDJ in a post and find it hard to believe that other people haven’t done the same (if I don’t do one of Becca’s memes soon I’m pretty certain she’s going to cut me off!!!). So I thought I might take a leaf out of the Springer book and have midget rednecks wrestle here more often. To be fair and honest to everyone who just sat bolt upright in anticipation I don’t really know any midget rednecks, and certainly none that would be happy to wrestle here. So Plan B is to rip off pay homage to the infamous Jerry beads.

For those of you who are educated, lucky or heavily sheltered and have yet to actually see Springer there was a time when if someone was to lift their shirt and expose themselves they would earn Jerry beads. I hear 350 virtual eyebrows lift in suspicion. No I will not be featuring topless photos here, I’ve heard that there are other websites on the interweb that cater to that type of shenanigans.

I have in my possession a limited number of (and by limited I mean I may have to go out to the shops and buy more) shiny shiny Lee beads made of genuine coloured plastic. Every expense has been spared.

Now I know I’ve got your attention and you want to know how to get your mitts on these low priced Lee beads. It couldn’t be easier. All I want you to do is mention me and link to quityourdayjob.com.au in a post maybe use the word shenanigans. Once I’ve confirmed such a link I will send you an email requesting your postal address or convenient drain that I can get one of my associates to leave the beads in and then you will have your own Lee beads. It doesn’t end there though. You send me a photo of the beads, preferable you or a more attractive friend of yours wearing them and I will devote a post to you with much link love.

It couldn’t be simpler. Well it could, but really there would be no fun in that. If you are worried that I won’t see the post or my server doesn’t report the mention then just use the contact form and let me know!

Also as always if you have me in your blogroll and I haven’t reciprocated just let me know and I’ll fix the situation or at least get my flying monkeys on to it.  Occasionally I clean out or break the blogroll and so your name may have dropped off, don’t think I don’t love you.

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Interview with the other Veda

On January 22nd 2007 at 5.18 pm (my time) I got my first comment from a young lady named Veda (apparently she is the other Veda, I’m not really sure who the original Veda is and now that I write this I wish I had asked!). She said some very nice things which made my day and she has continued to do so ever since.

I don’t comment nearly half the amount that I wish over at The Other Veda, it’s not that I’m stingy with my comments, I love commenting on other people’s blogs but am often at a loss of words. I worry a lot about leaving the ‘oh yeah I agree’ comments even though I’m sure they are still welcomed. Take one of her posts: One Good Turn it is a piece of short fiction that is very well written and stole me away from work for ten minutes whilst I read it and then thought about it. The first thing which came into my mind was simply ‘that’s cool’ and it mentions The Good the Bad and the Ugly which is doubly cool. But I don’t want to comment because I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed this peek into the creative mind of Veda without sounding lame. I’m suspecting I should just get over this though LOL.

Veda lives in Mumbai India and I have to admit that I know very little about Mumbai (I will wikipedia it), Veda works in advertising, has issues about having ‘real’ hair that doesn’t act like hair does in the commercials and has an ongoing (well hopefully ongoing as I thoroughly enjoyed the latest) dialog with her internal mini-me.

I recently asked Veda ten questions in the hope of forcing her to take sides in the Batman/Superman debate:

1. Why did you start blogging?
   I’m a copywriter by profession, but funnily enough, these days most copywriters barely get to write anything much. It’s all about conceptualising and ideation and perhaps the odd headline now and then. So I suppose I started blogging to get out all the words that were cut on the editing table.

2. Best or worst experience resulting from something you’ve written on your blog?
   I don’t really know. I’ve met some fairly interesting people in the blogosphere, read loads of good writing and discovered a lot about myself in the process. I can’t really put down a good or bad experience per se, but its gratifying to know that all kinds of people (including, disturbingly enough, my bosses) visit my blog and like what they find there.

3. I find when I read through your blog that I’m struck by certain cultural differences. Do you find the same thing when you read people from other countries blogs?
   Sometimes. Actually, thanks to cable TV we’re pretty much in sync with Western culture. By which I mean that I have some kind of idea what life outside India is like and sort of take it for granted. But every now and then I come across something totally unexpected. I guess that’s half the fun of reading other blogs.

4. What music are you listening to currently?
   Usually, I tend to listen to all kinds of music from hard rock to Indian classical. So at any given point in time I’m listening to all kinds of tracks from various genres. Right now though, my colleagues play ‘Fix You’ by Coldplay on their speakers, so it’s kind of playing in my head too.

5. What are you currently reading?
   I just finished Stephen Fry’s The Liar. Next on my list is Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. It promises to be an interesting read because apparently the writer has done all kinds of cool experiments with the narrative form.

6. What food/meal do you cook/prepare the best?
   Apart from coffee you mean? I make a mean ‘soul curry’ - that’s a spicy-tangy coconut milk drink made in the kitchens of the west coast of India. It’s usually had with or after a meal of fish. I make a passably good bacon-and-eggs breakfast too.

7. Favourite character from anything?
   Ok, this is difficult so I’m going to give you options. Elizabeth Bennet from Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Chandler Bing from F*R*I*E*ND*S, Matthew Albie from Studio 60… it’s a never-ending list really.
8. Your favourite post written by you on your blog?
   I’d have to say the one on nice girls. I think that was the first time I wrote straight from the heart and I guess it shows.

9. Batman or Superman?
   Batman, hands down, no questions, Batman. A superhero with no superpowers except his intelligence and courage? Someone who is rich and protects people? Hell yeah. Also, I suppose Batman’s dark side appeals to me because it makes him more real, more human somehow. Superman doesn’t have a grey side, which makes him a one-dimensional and unreal character for me. So yes, basically I vote for Batman.

10. One thing you wish everyone knew about you but they probably don’t?
    I can’t function in really loud, discordant noise. It’s called auditory stress or something, but I can’t think straight in the middle of blaring car-horns or really loud music or whatever. Most people seem to handle it ok and they expect the same of me but really, I’m completely handicapped in a noisy environment. Makes me a hell of a party person, I tell ya

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