Cyclopean Columns

So, it's been nearly four years since I've posted to this blog. Despite this, my little clustr-maps thingy tells me that I've had a whopping 49 visitors in the past 15 months.

Wow!

I can only assume that 48 of them were accidental, or people wanting the domain name or something. The 49th would have been me.

Might post again in another olympiad.

Just happened across this little image whilst desperately trying to find what Channel 10 did to "Journeyman". Apparently they've not axed the show, exactly, just moved it to their HD channel.

Bollocks.

I've been in a couple of independent films that have been written and directed by a couple of my good mates. This is the first one to get published on YouTube. Funk on!

There has been much excitement here in Oz over the past couple of weeks over a very bright comet that has been doing the rounds around sunset. I mostly missed the buzz, having just come back to work from Christmas leave and concentrating on getting ready to move to my new job (a promotion...), but on Saturday night I got a call from my friend Ant. He was in Sydney and could see the McNaught comet clearly through the smog, so he figured that us schmo's in Canberra should have a great view.

My back yard is surrounded by trees and hills, so I didn't like my chances. However, when I wandered onto my back porch, there it was, bright as Venus and visible through the trees! I rushed inside and grabbed the camera, and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing out on an embankment at the front of my house, managed to snap this shot.

I think what blows my mind more than anything else is that this is a non-periodic comet. That means this sucker is never coming back again - if you didn't see it this time, you'll never see it. It's on its way out of the solar system as we speak, never to return. A true once-in-a-lifetime event. Have I made my point?!

I think the other important thing to note here is that the comet was discovered as part of a systematic scan of the skies looking for asteroids, comets and other solar system bodies that might intersect with the Earth's orbit. This is bloody important work, because if anything is going to kill of humanity other than humanity itself, it's likely to be an impact from a near-earth asteroid.

For more info, check out this brief article in the Australian, or have a look at Wikipedia or even check out Robert McNaught's own homepage.

I got my prize for winning the Cities map contest. Basically, it's a small stone idol which teleports you to the heart of R'lyeh when you examine it. Funky. In the game, R'lyeh is an extra-dimensional space which is accessed from an island in the middle of the southern ocean. Funny thing is, you have to sail in a circle to arrive there! Me, I just look at the idol...

For the record, I am currently waiting for the Gorgan to appear in the palace on the Isle of the Gorgan. If I can kill it, I get its head, which I can use to turn monsters to stone or I can ferment with milk to make Gorgon-zola cheese. Yummy.

Oh, and I've done a picture of my character, who wears a badge which says "Looks like Godzilla wearing an octopus hat", a loving reference to The Real Ghostbusters.

Labels: Cities, Cthulhu, The Real Ghostbusters

I am SO stoked right now. There was a competition in the online game I play, Cities, to draw a map of the known world. I won!

Now I have to choose a boon as a prize. Given the name of my character and most of my online personae (Cthu1hu) Capital_Mum suggested that an Octopus Hat might be just the thing. I was thinking I might also ask the 'King to raise an island in the Southern Ocean for me, called R'lyeh...

Seriously folks, if you're not playing Cities yet - why not?! It's brilliant!

Tonight I went with my wife and daughter to go see Clash in the Capital VII, a local pro-wrestling event, and the first event of Professional Wrestling Alliance (PWA) Canberra, formerly Capital Pro Wrestling (CPW). We know several of the wrestlers, one who is a good friend, and had an absolute ball.

I only became a fan of pro-wrestling recently, seduced into it by my wife's love of the sport since she was a teenager when she used to watch Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant with her brothers. I now join the multitude of fans who scoff when the uninitiated say it's "Fake" - these guys are real athletes doing really dangerous stuff, who cares if the winner was decided beforehand? You get a great combination of soap opera and pantomime, along with an outlet for all that bloodlust. After all, it's not a good pay-per-view unless there's a bit of claret spilt.

Anyhow, tonight we got to see great tag-team action, throws, death-defying leaps and some great theatre. The final match was a "Hard Core" match and featured wrestlers being smashed over the head with street signs, garbage bins, chairs, a keyboard and even a baking tray. The climax of the match included a cricket bat wrapped in barbed wire, a barbed wire table, three smashed tables, a 10' ladder and (last but not least) a generous sprinkling of thumb tacks across the ring. Mick Foley would have been proud.

In all it was spectacular, it was fun, and it certainly wasn't fake! The barbed wire left very real cuts on these guys, as did the thumbtacks. They really do throw each other from the top rope halfway across the ring and 5 feet down onto the canvas. I would never do it myself, but it is a wonderful escape and worthy of a look.

Strange and varied are the things that we humans do when bored. I found myself at a loose end on Friday night, and for reasons I have yet to fully understand, I turned to my digital camera.

"What interesting things can I take photographs of?" I wondered.

Not being drunk or on a dare, I'm not sure why this ended with me thinking;

"I know!!! I'll get my kit off and do some nude self-portraiture!"

...but it did.

I had no idea how difficult it would be to properly arrange oneself modestly and artistically within the time limit of the camera's self-timer. There were mistakes. Some of the pictures were less than flattering. Some of them revealed a part of myself that I'm just not going to share on the internet. Frankly, some of them sucked because I was off-centre in the frame or they were blurry.

But a couple of them had promise. So today I did a bit of editing, some photoshop magic, a little crop here and there... and came up with something I felt I could share with the rest of the online community. I'm not going to make it too easy for folks to see this - you'll need a dA login as it is categorised as "Mature Content" (tee hee hee!) - but if you follow this link you'll get to see at least a little more of me than many have before. And I promise, no weenie or even nipples!