OMG

oooooooo Threadless sale! (down from US$17 to US$10 per t-shirt).Time to stock up peoples. You have until June 3rd. The above t-shirt is called the communist party! I am so buying it. Winter is upon me, so I might buy a hoody too. Even though I am so very very poor. I blame that roof.

Got Roof?

Well we just got our roof painted. And damn nice it looks too. It was a necessary job before winter really set in as the roof was showing its age. (47 apparently)
The colour is "New Denim Blue" which is a dark blue/gray. It looks spiffy.

The paint job was pretty good, but after the consultant guy came back to have a look he reckons it needs a little finishing. So the team (Rob and Rob) will be back soon to finish off.

I suppose I could post photos, but alas it is dark!

Urgh its dark by 6pm. How horribly depressing.

Anyway speaking of tradesmen, if you have need of one or have used one recently (for whatever purpose) you should visit No Cowboys. Its New Zealand based website where you can rate and review tradesmen from around the country. Its not all ranting and raving either, there are some real great trades people out there with a heap of five star reviews. Check it out bros!

Equality now

Just because you and I can choose who we date without any repercussions (apart from the occasional "OMG you didn't" from friends) doesn't mean that all women are free. Well duh. I guess we all know honor killings are still going on all over the world and women are often stoned to death for what we see as very basic freedoms. Freedom of association I guess.

The latest killing to be publicised on CNN is all the more awful as several perpetrators decided that this was an event that needed to be immortalised for all time. So while her family were stoning her to death some of her male cousins whipped out their cellphones and began recording. Yes more than one, so you can see her beg for her life from many different angles.

So I'm sick of the PC respect other peoples culture garbage. Beating women to death is not culture. Handing your sister a gun and say kill yourself or you family will kill you (now happening in turkey, honor suicides. touching. not) is not culture.

Anyway our favourite little red haired TV gnome has written a post about women and equality.
Lets all read it together.

No HPV Vaccine for New Zealand. Not until at least 2010.

No money in the budget for a vaccine proven effective against 4 strains of HPV (those 4 strains are responsible for 70% of all cervical cancers and 90% of genital warts by the way).


You can still buy it for yourself, but it will cost you $450

This decision strikes me as bizzare to say the least. I have been reading about the development of this vaccine for years and I was damn excited when medsafe approved its use in New Zealand. Its not much of a stretch to call this a cancer vaccine.

Its like we are living in a third world country sometimes.
Actually a lot of the time

Yet again, womens health care is not a priority for the government. Remember herceptin? The life saving exspensive cancer drug you could only get if you were already dying? Well now you can get a 9 week dose before you get to the terminal stage, it only took women to die, protests and ceremonial coffin burning to get Pharmac to change their minds and review the drug. What will it take this time?

My Top Five Web Comics..... in no particular order... maybe not even my top five. Five webcomics okay!

Sometimes you need to waste time on the internet, be it the half hour before lunch at work or after work when you should be doing housework of some kind the internet is always there to entertain you. Here are some of my favourite time-waster web comic sites.

Toothpaste for dinner

Simple one panel comics drawn with little artistic skill but masterful depictions of expression. Lots of nerd humour and I hate my job humour. One of my favourites.

The Perry Bible Fellowship

This ones pretty surreal and wacky. Mostly tasteless too. Nice for when you are in a strange head place anyway.


Hyper Death Babies

Black black humour. Really. Some of it is actually just awful. But it has its moments of pure comedy brilliance.



xkcd

I'd forgotten about this till a friend sent me this one in the mail (email that is). Its nice and nerdy. With lots of math I don't understand, (but i think I still get the jokes I think).

Concerned

Even if you've never played half life, (as long as you've played some kind of first person shooter) this is the ultimate in gamer nerd comics. My old boss used to be a dick about paying overtime too.

Armageddon - Bring it on!!!!! well maybe.

This years Line up for the ever popular pop culture expo seems a little lack luster. (Though it might interest you to know that our little Auckland event is known to outshine anything they've put on in Sydney) This year there is an extreme lack of Science fiction TV stars, writers or movie stars.

Adam West will be there and I give him kudos for his brilliant voice work over the last few years. Especially in Family Guy where he plays an exaggerated version of himself.


The other guest I'd be intereseted in seeing is Billy West, voice of Fry, Zoidberg and Zap Brannigan in Futurama. He'll be signing things for FREE and thats unheard of at these events. By far the best ever accent has to be Zoidberg's and I'll be there just to see him say "brrrrrrrrrlllllrrrlrlrlrlrlrlr" in person.
And the witty dialog made more so by that accent.

Dr. Zoidberg: "Now I'm not saying Professor Farnsworth is old, but if you consider his age he's likely to die soon."

So far I'm more interested in the animation guests. Sadly some 1/2 developed character from Harry Potter and two stars from the 1960 version of batman do little to satisfy my lust for sci fi tv stars to meet and greet. Which is a shame because the last few years have been brilliant. The focus seems to be drifting more towards comics and animation (oh god and not to mention the ever unbelievably popular wrestling.) Definitely only worth buying a single day pass this event.

Women in advertising

Killing us softly 3

This links to google video so you can watch the documentary online for free. Its not that long and quite engrossing without being overly intellectual (by that I mean its not filled with boring long words and numbers, its real life examples we can all related to.)
We all like to think we are immune to advertising, but since there is no avoiding it how he can we claim that none of its messages have entered our psyche and become a part of who we think we should be. When you consider that most people spend more time watching TV than interacting with other people on a face to face basis the idea of advertising and its insidious messages influencing us is not so unbelievable.

Good books

Online book shop
FREE DELIVERY
all profits to oxfam

Goodbooksnz.co.nz


what more needs be said?