Warlach’s World

So, yeah, I’ve started updating the site again. For some unknown reason people had visited when there was no new content and I found I’d been tagged. Fiona had thrown a small, pale small mammal in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha – a White Rabbit, if you want to use the common term.

Well, as an impetus to return to the world of spewing forth regular inanity as a text and visual soup for the internets to feast upon, I present my contribution to this meme. I’m writing this at work to get it done right away because, as my little friend on the right there knows, time has a way of getting away from the best of us…

The rules:
1- Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2 - People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3 - At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4 - Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

8 Random Things

1. When I was little I had an imaginary friend called Damus. No idea where I pulled the name from, but I can tell you right now that I neve actually saw him. Damus was a purely a construct – I had seen that kids with imaginary friends sometimes got extra dessert, lollies etc for the friend and could use this overly cute device to manipulate adults. Damus, supposedly, looked just like me, making him the perfect scapegoat for whenever I was in trouble. I just wish this technique still worked…
2. Another odd tale from my childhood: I used to do ballet, mainly because it was next to my mum’s work and I had time to kill after school. It all ended, soap opera story arch style, with a recital. My piece, King’s and Fairies (yes, I even had a the lead role) went well, but when a younger girl got stage fright during a solo piece the teacher locked her on the stage saying she wasn’t allowed off until she’d danced. With the lights pointed at her all this girl could see was a dark void and the locked door behind her and she started screaming. It was horrible and I never went back.
3. When I was about 10, some kids at the National Folk Festival in Canberr, used folk festival bumper stickers to write FUCK OFF in blocky letters on the office windows at the top of the grandstand. My friend and I jumped the fence and moved the top of the C to the U so it spelt FOLK OFF, because that’s just the kind of uncool hippy kid I was. Halfway through we were caught by the guards who thought we’d done the whole thing, but managed to escape. Good times.
4. During my time at UTS I was arrested twice for carrying toy guns. One time saw 50 cops stake out the university housing I was living at, and embarrassingly enough the elected representative of, while the second saw the TRG (Tactical Response Group, Australia’s version of the SWAT) storm the UTS tower during our prohibition themed ball. No charges were ever pressed, but due to the bullet proof shields, attack dogs and semi-automatics, the latter was a little fricken scary. The cause? The first was a little cap gun, the second, a year later, was due to shot guns that were part of my gangster costume.
5. Due to a condition known as microphthalmia I am totally blind in my right eye:
   
   “Micro-ophthalmia, microphthalmia, and microphthalmos are all words that literally mean “little eye”. It is a rare congenital (present at birth) eye condition. The small eye is usually totally blind because it did not develop a healthy cornea, lens, retina or optic nerve. There is no treatment for this condition.”
   From http://www.netwellness.uc.edu/
   
   Exciting huh? So I wear prosthesis, and most people can’t tell or think my eye is just lazy. I’m fairly self conscious about this and spent most of my childhood in sunglasses to hide my eyes. I’m still uptight about it, as I think so many people, even if only subliminally, associate unusual eyes negatively with someone’s character. The result is, I can’t see depth, I can’t enjoy 3D movies, and my girlfriend will often stop and I’ll keep walking and talking not realising she’s not there anymore.
6. On a lighter note, when I was little my dream was to be a LEGO Designer. I figured it would be a magical place, where orders would come through for new models. “Lachlan, we need a new medieval castle, and increase the number of skeletons and trap doors!” Unfortunately, it looks like this won’t happen, and I know I’d probably be disappointed by the realities of the job, but the LEGO Digital Designer, and upcoming MMO based on the similar concept, still get me really excited.
7. Some favourite foods off the top of my head, in no particular order: blood oranges, thick juicy pork spare ribs, apple cider, V, pad thai, massaman curry, inari sushi, Miso soup, takoyaki, black pudding, chicken burgers, spinach, tofu, the Darbar Chat from the Indian restaurant of the same name in Glebe, soft cheeses, hard cheeses, scotch and dry ginger ale, corn, potato and roast dinners (lamb, pork or beef, I’m easy…).
8. Finally, I did Latin in high school. After years of talking about it the school finally did an excursion to Italy and England, the year after I left. Me and two friends still went, as ‘ex-student leaders’, despite me being partially responsible for getting my school banned from Latin Camp in year 8 (but that’s a story for another day.) The trip was pretty successful, and I got to flaunt my fluency in a dead language by translating The Wombles Theme Song into Latin. ‘Wombling’ defied translation and was eventually changed to our custom Latin verb meaning ‘to Womble’, Vomblere’

So, I guess I’ll tag (and yes, most I know through Twitter, but what the hell, I’m grabbing these from my RSS subscription list and they’re the people who’s blogs I read):

• Paul Jenkins
• Will Hughes
• Nathanael Boehm
• Brad Kellett
• Monnie
• Ryan North (Why not, I like his blog. Doubt he’ll respond though)
• Tegan Lyons
• Cassie Britland

Enjoy!

It is indeed a mad world. Today, in a tribute to Ira Glass and the amazing brilliant This American Life podcast, I present three acts on the theme of madness:

Act 1 – Known Unknown

Since long before The Matrix I have questioned the reality that we see presented to us every day. While I accept the cooler, science fiction possibilities – that we are merely programs in a simulation or that, taking into account neoteny, that death is merely our next step as part of evolution – I find it more interesting that I am not of sound mind.

The other day a friend laughed at a particularly bad joke, showing a meek, small smile, and immediately I thought that perhaps weeks (months?) earlier I had been in a horrible accident, left childlike and brain damaged to the world around me, while reality, as I see it, is my brain trying to compensate and make sense of broken stimuli. Has my girlfriend, sitting opposite in the restaurant at the time, become my carer? Instead of a bad joke had I merely mumbled “cheese!” and drooled on myself?

Perhaps this blog is me writing in faeces on the carpet, who can know, although I find it hard to believe I’d imagine myself using a Dell. Does everyone who is nice to, or talks to, me merely pity the shell of who I was?

This is what keeps me up at night.

Act 2 – Unknown Known

My second thought is of a less life altering nature.

Being a man I am compelled, if not required, to use urinals in order to relieve understandable body functions. However, it is towards the end of the process that I find myself in a bind.

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Kramer realises he doesn’t know how to shower quickly and eventually goes to a public shower to get hints? This is along the same lines.

At what point do you get taught how to ’shake the snake’? Toilet training was decades ago and while I’m sure some basics may have been imparted, just like with driving, bad habits are bound to creep in. It’s an act men do every day without any guidance: there is no way for men to discuss and improve the technique, no ability, for example, to say that using the ol’ Konami code has been helpful:

Don’t ask about the B and A buttons…

Just to be clear, I have no problems in this area, I don’t think I’m lacking, just that it bothers me that I could, perhaps, be better at something I do so often. What do other men know that I don’t?

This is what occupies my mind while I try to work.

Act 3 – Beyond Knowing

The final act today concerns issues beyond my own private psyche: have you head about the Moose toys, called Bindeez, that contain Fantasy (GHB)?

In an age where the world is up in arms over lead paint in Mattel’s toys, this seems like an ever so slightly larger oversight, especially now that it’s put children in hospital.

Either this was an oversight, in which case it’s gross negligence, or it was, as some are reporting is a possibility, a deliberate act, in which case it’s horrific.

Something that Keith from Keith and the Girl is often heard to say is that people – doctors, lawyers, toy makers, whoever – are just people. Every profession or group will contain the inherent quota of incompetence and bad people. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see which type of person caused this.

I still don’t know what to think of this last piece, so, when talking about recalled toys, I leave you with this:

Well, this will be a short and to the point post as I’m planning on heading to bed very shortly, but there are a couple of things I thought I’d mention:

1) Well, as my Twitter bio states: “Level 60 Cultural Investigator, currently grinding his Journalist skill set.” Yeah, I’m a nerd, and a cultural studies one at that, currently working as a journalist writing about property. It’s the last thing that bothers me. I don’t hate the job - it pays well and the people are cool - but I have zero interest in commercial property, equity, square meters or yields. I just sort of fell into the work after finishing Honours.

Late last night I found out that I had been successful in an application to write for another publication. It’s entry level, naturally, but concerns writing news and reviews about video games, specifically those played in territories that use PAL region coding. I’ll leave it that ambiguous for now but will link when my first story gets published. Shouldn’t be too hard to guess the site anyway.

Grand point is that, while I won’t be quiting my current job to concentrate on this new publication any time soon (it’s essentially freelancing) I’m finally getting a chance to write about something that interests me, to an audience that cares. This makes me very happy.

2) Yeah, Wednesday came and went with no Webcomic Wednesday No. 2. Nor were there any other posts in between. I’m working on one longer piece but it’s been a very long and busy week. The new Webcomic Wednesday is nearly done and should be up tomorrow.

3) And finally, how the hell did I miss the Dumbledore is gay news? I don’t really think it changes anything a whole lot. Either we were supposed to pick it up in the text or it wasn’t relevant enough to warrant inclusion. I have to admit i thought the Dumbledore/Grindelwald friendship as described in Deathly Hallows was vaguely homoerotic, I’m not going to go back and pore over the books looking for passages which contain hidden references to Dumbledore’s ‘preference for wands’, so to speak.

That said, I’m looking forward to a Potter themed Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras next year. Perhaps it could be expanded to include an alternate relationship between Harry and Ron. I’m sure the fan fiction for such a thing is rife, and Hermione would make a great fag-hag.

Technorati Tags: webcomics, Harry Potter, Dumbledore, gay, work, career

Hey all,

My brother, Fulltimecasual, has given me the kick of the arse I apparently needed to actually set up a number of sites that I’d been talking about but not doing. This, clearly, is one of them: a personal blog, straight from my mind to you.

I’m sure that sounds fascinating to the world in general, but I hope it will get more interesting as I post more than the bleeding obvious, such as that this is just another blog on the intertubes.

For now, I’ll leave you with this spoiler: