Damn this Facebook!

What is it about Facebook that makes the undisciplined jabber so much? I'm on it all the time, with very little of real consequence to say (and you're just as bad, you FacebookWHORE!) (you know who you are), whilst others clearly log on either fortnightly or monthly.

I've just got back from a week in Melbourne, where I had limited internet access. Yet somehow I still managed to provide Facebook status updates - about visiting two strip clubs and a brothel no less! I will blog about those experiences, because there's obviously more to it than that (no, I wasn't visiting my Mum, thankyouverymuch), but I can't help but wonder if I should just STFU a lot more these days...

Kurt Is Dead - Long Live The New Kurt!

Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) died today in 1994. Or he died tomorrow, if you're a Northern Hemisphere reader.

Anyway.

It's always a bummer when someone dies, ESPECIALLY IF THEY KILL THEMSELF! Cobain shot himself because ... who knows? He's dead, we can't ask him. Evidently he was sick of the back pain (it was serious) and the drug treadmill he couldn't escape. And the fans - which is kinda ironic.

Cobain once said "I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not". Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, idolized him and he hated it. He knew that with all his flaws and problems, he was no idol. He wrote songs expressing his contempt for the people who raved about his music but didn't understand it, and didn't understand him. [source]

I don't know the guy and never bought one of his records, so I can take comfort in knowing I wasn't responsible for his death. (Pssst - it was Courtney. She shot him!) That doesn't mean I didn't like some of his music. And this is a song I loved. Evidently Cobain came to hate it, because it was so successful and brought him an audience he didn't want.

Oh - so maybe I am partly responsible for his death. Oh well, I love this song, so fuck him...

A Bus Driver Tried To Kill Me

I was almost run down by a bus today. Me and at least a dozen others. In broad daylight. The driver just plowed through the intersection of Queen and Victoria Streets, even though he had a red light and we had the Green Man. And not just any Green Man either, it was one of those new fangled animated green men that walks and gives you a countdown on how many seconds you have left to cross.

Not that the Bus Driver cared. He had a schedule to keep, so fuck y'all, get out of my way, cos I'm driving a big fucking bus.

Seriously, there was no way he couldn't have known what he was doing. He wasn't going through an orange light and then it went red. It must have been red because we had the pedestrian signal telling us to Cross Now, and many of us had stepped out.

It was one of those rare moments when a Human Mass acted as One. We were all gathered outside Whitcoulls and we all saw the Green Man and we all stepped forward together. Then we all saw the bus barrelling across the intersection and we all realised it was coming for us. There was a collective gasp, and we all jumped or ran back to the footpath. There was another audible collective "Whoah!" as the bus raced past, followed by knowing looks to the stranger beside us as we all realised we'd just dodged a bullet.

Everyone was kind of stunned, but I had a camera phone and raced up the street to snap this picture and collar the driver. He had deigned to stop at the Red Lights at Lorne Street but before I could get to his window it went Green and he was off again. But not before the number of his bus was burned into my memory. 1410. The irony of the advertisement on the bus was not lost on me either. 

At 1.45pm on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2009 the driver of Bus #1410 ran a red light and almost killed or injured some pedestrians. It's not the first time it's happened, nor the second, and it won't be the last. The Bus Company doesn't really care, and nor do the Enforcement Agencies. It's happening all too frequently.

Maybe Police Minister Judith Collins should crush a few buses to get the message across.

Recession? What Recession?

The front section of today's NZ Herald (Friday, March 27, 2009) is 28 pages thick. Of those 28 pages:

There are 9 Full Page ads
There are 8 Half Page ads

Which means 13 pages of the 28 are advertising. That of course does not mean 15 pages of news, since there are a whole bunch of one third and quarter page ads I couldn't be bothered aggregating.

What does this mean?

I dunno. Maybe it means retail are going great guns because they can afford full page full colour ads in Section A of the NZ Herald. Maybe it means that the Herald are discounting the cost of advertising in order to maintain revenue.

I really don't know. What I do know is that when little fluffy bunnies fart they smell like perfume...

The New Facebook Layout

The new Facebook layout means that whatever you write on someone's wall is not between just you and them, it's also between you and all your friends because it appears on their Home page too. Example:

Jonathan Surfing - its just suffering with less letters! Especially when the sun is shining, the surf is up and NO VEHICLE to get me there. Help!
Posted about an hour ago · Comment

Shannon >>(Jonathan) I work with Nick Tansleys soon to be wife - very small world.
Posted about an hour ago · See Wall-to-Wall

Jonathan >>(Shannon) ah ha! well it's meant to be is'nt it! Cosmic co-incidence gateway... Fancy looking at surfboards in your lunchbreak today? (if you get one!)
Posted about an hour ago · See Wall-to-Wall

Shannon sorry no can do today - but friday lunchtime maybe?
Posted about an hour ago · Comment · Like

The above is just an innocent example, but I've seen plenty of others from my many Facebook friends that have made me cringe (and laugh) thinking "WTF have I said that I thought was private, but wasn't?"

So now you know, if you want it private, use the email function on Facebook - not The Wall.

Oh yes, and the other thing that is not private is the Quiz you took. Nothing wrong with taking a Quiz, but when you do 10 in a row and all your results are posted to our Home Pages ... well, I hope you're not doing it at work because your Boss will find out. Just because your workplace hasn't blocked access to TradeMe and Facebook doesn't mean the I.T. department isn't tracking individual useage and seeing who's on at lunch time (okay) and who's on during work time (not okay)...

Nevermind The Credit Crisis - Who Will Pay For The Iraq Debacle?

Nick joined the group 10,000,000 For the Prosecution of Bush and Cheney for War Crimes.

Yes. Yes I did. Do I think it will happen? No. But (as one of my Facebook friends pointed out) I didn't think the US would elect a Black Man as President either.

It's easy to forget about Iraq now that Obama has set a date for pulling the US troops out, but we shouldn't forget. Here's a reminder of just how sick it is:



And why they failed to win 'hearts and minds':

Cheap Sex Photo's On Facebook - The Dilemma Continues

The following is a cut 'n' paste from a discussion on Facebook. I'm interested in what you think. Do you deserve what you get? Are you going to be the next Pauline Hanson?:

Peter McLennan [posts a link to NZ Herald story, and makes this comment on his wall]:
Kiwi has his photo stolen from Facebook and used in ad. Maybe time to delete all your photos from FB?
10:08am · Comment · Like

Nick D'Angelo at 12:39pm March 17
Yeah, bin wondering the same thing re Cheap Sex photos...

Jo Schmidt at 2:24pm March 17
Doesn't making them only accessible to your friends resolve this issue? (I do this with the ones of my baby, and I don't want his pics getting into the hands of weirdos.)

Nick D'Angelo at 2:29pm March 17
yeah, but CheapSex has 150+ friends - are they all still as cool as they were 10+ years ago? It's a tricky dilemma...

Jo Schmidt at 3:59pm March 17
Hmmm ... don't put photos of naked babies on the site?

Nick D'Angelo at 6:04pm March 17
nevermind naked babies ... it's the semi-naked ppl dancing on the bar at Squid who are now married with children ....
LOL

Jo Schmidt at 7:32pm March 17
Well, they just deserve what they get. (Luckily I know that group doesn't include me. I think.)

Ryan Ashton at 10:14pm March 17
You can't delete your photos can you thats the thing - read the T&C's they own everything you put in here and it's for sale....