Tuesday, May 29, 2007

A Serious Topic

I've been swamped this week with people asking why I haven't posted anything for a few days. The answer is simple...NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE COMMENT. You don't need to sign up to comment, just write your name and post your thoughts...it doesn't really have to be about the topic I wrote about. As long as it's random, it's all good. Another reason why I haven't posted for a while: economics. If I post all the time, some of my less fanatic fans will lose interest fast. If I limit my entries to 1 or 2 a week, I'll keep them hanging for each and every post.

I was going to write my opinion on this week's upcoming All Blacks/France game to increase my popularity. There's also the World Series and the spelling bee to comment on.. But I can't let my loyal fans down by writing about specific topics too often. So instead, I'll talk about Addo Baddo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addo_Baddo). This is a controversial topic which could result in alot of replies and personal attacks on people. Please no hate, only love.

If you're too lazy to click on the link, Addo Baddo is a family custom where two families agree to marry their daughters to boys of other clans when they are children. Of course it's illegal for them to get married until they're 16, but they're 'promised' to each other before then.

I know many of you will say things like "that's not right," "they're being forced to do something against their will."

I'm inclined to agree with that, but I'm sure many others would disagree. We are not there, we do not know their circumstances so we cannot pass judgement on this issue. Some parents make us do things we don't think is right. If we get caught smoking, our parents may make us smoke a whole packet of cigs against our will.

What do you think? I wish I knew more about the situation but I don't. Most of us are not in a position to help these people..the only thing we can do is welcome them into our country if they think the situation is bad and want to escape it.

Sorry for the serious topic. My next post will be a music review to hopefully lighten this blog up a bit.



Monday, May 28, 2007

My Chemical Romance

Craccum, the auckland uni. magazine has come up with some informative 'how to' articles in the past. The most notable for me was the 'how to rob a bank' article. It actually got me thinking that a real bank robber contributed to the mag to make that article. It was very well written.

This week, there was conveniently an article entitled "11 ways to cheat in your exams." I thought alot of you would be interested in this so I decided to post it up here in case you can't get hold of a copy. Beside each tip, I've put my rating out of 10 for effectiveness and maybe a comment in brackets.

1 Sit at the back, in the middle. The exam supervisors are selected from retirement homes and many cannot see more than 10 feet or so. If one falls victim to stroke or infarction, it's even easier (7, funny but probably true. loses marks because if someone had a stroke the exam would probably be cancelled).

2 The obvious toilet visit. Make sure notes are on non-crinkly paper, i.e. no noise, on the inside of your thigh where it's difficult for them to check. Eat wind-producing foods, like beans and onions, to mask activities with your arse-shouting. This may also induce the examiner's retreat.
(9, a classic which always works. bonus marks for the non-crinkly paper tip).

3 Pre-prepare the room with your stuff. Write it into the desk at 7:00AM in the morning, and make sure you get that desk. Or do multiple desks. Chinese characters can easily be mistaken for graffiti. (6, not that great advice because of it's limitations and you need to get up early).

4 Cheat smart - formulas, or quotes complete with line numbers always impress markers. Do it for stuff you find difficult to take away stress. (3, depends on the subject but it's a load of bull).

5 Conceal a receiver in your ear under your long hair. Have someone transmit the necessary information that you have problems remembering. (8, old school showed us you don't need long hair to pull this off).

6 Team cheating. Some of the group should distract the grannies with sexually aggressive flirting, or other misbehaviours, and then others blatantly swap answers. Then it's your turn. Don't get carried away and actually seduce the examiners - as a post-graduate, you will still have to walk around this place. (6, this would work, but remember supervisors aren't under the 'can't have sex with students,' clause that lecturers are).

7 Tattoo the answers onto your skin along with a few skulls and cobwebs. The supervisors will think you've been in jail and will stay well away in case you go on a P-fuelled rampage. (5, that's alot of effort to go to for one exam. at least you wont forget the subject as soon as you leave the exam room).

8 you've discovered that the paper doesn't have the options that you studied. Go out to the toilet and let someone waiting know that the fire-alarm must be pulled immediately. Or light a fire under your desk. The new paper will surely be easier (8, I'm sure this has been done effectively in the past)

9 Use UV sensitive ink and shine a tiny UV LED mounted in a pen onto your arm or hand to see your answers. Ink is available in home security anti-burglary kits. Making the pen would cost time and about $30. (7, loses marks for time and $30).

10 Use another person who has a brain and/or motivation. Make a new student ID with their photo and teach them your signature. This used to be done commonly, especially by asian students who are the most onto-it with this stuff (7, good, but the result is taken out of your hands).

11 Enter the Academic Registry computer system by various means, and award yourself the degree. 75% of hacking is done by password theft. Password security is not a priority with many IT staff who prefer to paste them onto their monitors. (4, I don't like this approach, you need to know your computer stuff well).

12 Learn Braille, and create scabs on your arms and lets. That way you don't have to look - they'll think you're just having a sly rub. (8, two birds with one stone).

13 Print replacement water bottle labels and put the answers on the inside. Hey, even put vodka inside and have a good time, after all, you're going to pass anyway. (10, I've thought of doing this before. bonus marks for the vodka tip.

So that's it. I hope these tips have helped. What I want to know is have any of you cheated before? From cheating on your 3rd grade spelling test to lying in a job interview? I will tell of my experience if I hear from others.

For all you wiki-nuts out there, here is the link so you can master your cheating technique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dishonesty

On another side note, I got picked for jury duty. This time it's at the high-court for a 5-week trial. Could it be murder? I don't think murder trials take that long so it could be something exciting. Hopefully I wont get picked and can take the $50 for an hours work.

Now I can get onto today's main topic, Huntsman Corp. There is not much to say, so in the spirit of this article, I'll just copy and paste what it says on wikipedia:

Huntsman Corporation NYSE: HUN is one of the world's largest chemical companies. It was founded in 1982 by Jon Huntsman and remained a private company controlled by the Huntsman family until going public on the New York Stock Exchange with the symbol "HUN" in February of 2005. Huntsman has annual revenues of approximately $11.5 billion, more than 14,000 employees and facilities in more than 24 countries.

I know I could've just given you the link, but plagiarising is better. This article begs the question...what exactly do chemical companies do to make so much money? They obviously aren't involved in the chemical weapons business because they don't make that much, but they surely don't just remove chemicals from factories and what not. They probably just make detergents and other stuff like BAM www.easyoffbam.com This would be a kind of pointless thing to write about because you'll never apply this information to real life. Except maybe if a someone says they'll pick up the next round in a bar. You can then say "speaking of money, did you know Huntsman Corporation, a chemical company had revenues of US$11.5billion last year?" You'll be the talk of the night!

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Pink Panties

This entry is R16. I thought of making it R15 after I heard the news this week that teenagers now are having sex earlier than their parents were. But the law is still the law so if you're under 16, you have to read this with a parent or guardian. You probably don't want to do that so you should just stop reading here, if you actually made it this far without getting bored.

Sadly this isn't about sex. I've experienced that too few times to proficiently write about that. This is about wet dreams. How many of you remember what happens in them? For some reason I only remember a couple of specific parts, and it's not the parts you'd expect. From last nights dream I remember I was taking off pink-panties..a g-string for those who want to graphically imagine the scenario. I've heard only a minority of people actually dream in colour, so I don't remember if they were actually pink in the dream or my brain wanted them to be pink..who will ever know?

So is this just another dream, or does it have some deeper meaning? In the past I have forgotten such dreams, but then again I didn't have a blog to record my thoughts. I think from now on if I see any woman in a pink g-string I will be fascinated by them. If I get married one day, hopefully my wife will wear them on her wedding day.

Sorry this entry isn't up to its normal standards. It's probably because it wasn't a random topic. I brought up a random wikipedia article anyway in the hopes it would bring up something related to the topic. Instead it brought up information on the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynton_and_Barnstaple_Railway). The only way this post would be related to that is if I had met the woman in my dreams there..or had sex there.

Here's the link to today's article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_dream
A wet dream is better known as nocturnal emission. The article doesn't have much info worth reading about...how it might be linked to masturbation, what religions think about it, and some links. There seems to be alot of references at the end, so if you're ever stuck on what to write your thesis on, nocturnal emissions might be worth a thought.

Coming soon: unrandom music reviews, with links!

Friday, May 25, 2007

Survivor

I'm glad survivor fiji has finally finished. I like reality tv just as much as the next person, but they really need a break in between seasons. It gets dumb when they have the new season start 2weeks after the old one finishes. Now prison break can continue.

This post isn't about survivor, I just started thinking about it when I did my random article search on wikipedia. It's late, so writing about a magazine called 'the new criterion' wasn't going to cut it. (if you're interested in poetry, politics or whatever you should check it out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Criterion)

No, it's actually about rock n' roll jeopardy. Amazingly, it lasted for 3 years in America. Probably not because of it's original concept, but because Jeff Probst was the host. He makes survivor good to watch, with his commentary on challenges.

Then again, I didn't watch face the music when I was younger because of Simon Barnett. I enjoyed trying to guess what the songs playing were. We will never know how good rock n' roll jeopardy was...


there's a picture I thought I should throw in. I'd like to put links to youtube videos on here, but I don't know how and I'm too tired now to try and figure it out. Can someone tell me?

The song I'm listening to right now is "tell me lies." Just in case you felt like downloading a good song. I have good taste in music don't I?

Just an update, Kasuni was the closest with the stop sign challenge. The bottom one wasn't France, but Canada (very tricky so I'll take France). The top sign in case you wanted to know was Brazil. I probably would've taken Portugal too but no one knew. I guess I'm $5 richer!

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The 4th commandment

Hi everybody. I was thinking of changing the title of this blog from randomness to rant about bad things that happen to me. Today at uni. I wanted to print out my assignment, so I sent it to the printer and left the computer, knowing that I would never get another one for the whole day. I swear every subject must've had an assignment due because there were people waiting for a computer in every single computer room I went to, but I'll get to that in a minute...
The printer wasn't working. No problem, I'll just go up to the next floor...of course that wasn't working. I later found out the only printer in the building that was working was the colour printer which costs 50c a page. I didn't mind paying the extra money since it was my assignment, but it turned out I didn't have enough on my card and there was no way to find a computer to transfer my quota! It took me an hour to finally get a copy printed out. After going to all the computer places I know, I decided to go and put more money on my account rather than just transferring some. (i should've thought of that earlier!)

Sorry about that, I'll get back to the topic at hand; Cathedral High School in Los Angeles. http://cathedralhs.ca.campusgrid.net/home

It's senior exam week at Cathedral High..good luck to all of those sitting your exams! After that hell you'll be on summer break!!

For all of you that don't know, Cathedral High is a school for Christian boys. While their classrooms are nothing to look at they have a huge ground and a seperate football field (I assume for american football, not rugby). I searched their website, hoping to find a picture of their cathedral to put up, but I couldn't find one. Perhaps one of my fans that go to this school could email me a picture and I'll put it up in my next blog. If you're a fan who just happens to live in that area, I'll put up a picture you take as well...

Everyone at uni. now is in the same boat as the senior boys at Cathedral High...exams!! Good luck to us all and for those of you with no exams...wish us luck. We'll need it.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Poker night

Tonight's the FA cup final and the buildup is occupied with a poker league game. There are exactly 2 weeks until the WSOP starts and since none of us can actually go to it this is our equivalent of the WSOP main event. I will approach the game as such tonight and leave nothing to chance.

As for the soccer, I think one of the teams should withdraw and let Arsenal take their place. This way we will be guaranteed and game with beautiful football played.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Leave a comment people!

I just finished playing poker with 2 of my friends. I'm not keeping a diary here so I wont go into the result. What this blog is is an account of random things I come across during my day. The most random thing I can think of today was me eating some octopus from the sushi place, hence I will talk about octagons...

I remember at school in standard 2 (i guess that's year5 or so?) when I was 9 or 10, the teacher bet us $5 that we couldn't draw a shape with 2 sides. About 10 of us students tried to do it, all of the attempts attempted drawing one line with another straight line coming out from the first one. (I'll put up a pic later). Now that I think about it, it can be done...if only I drew a straight line and then a semi circle like the basketball 3 point line, I would be $5 richer today...actually more with the compounding interest...doesn't that suck?

This isn't about 2 sided shapes though, it's about 8 sided shapes called octagons......Did you know stop signs are octagon shaped? Probably, but I bet you don't know why!





Neither do I, but here are a couple of signs anyway to get the left side of your brain working.$5 if you can tell me which countries these stop signs are from. Leave a comment and I will seriously give the 1st person to answer correctly $5. Only one person has commented on my blog so far so I'm starting to feel like no one loves me...

I'm totally bored out of my mind from writing this. If you actually read all this and are still awake, there might be something wrong with you...Good night.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

A bad day

I got pissed off today when I saw toilet paper on the stairway in the library. Can you believe it!? It's bad enough that it's all on the ground along with piss because people can't aim or clean it up. I try my best to avoid public toilets as a rule, but if I'm going to see toilet paper running out the door, it's going to become a phobia..I think it's called toilet phobia and it covers all the phobias to do with the toilets. I wonder if the women's toilets are the same? Probably not.

My alarm didn't go off this morning and my bag broke so I didn't have a great day. To let off steam, I'll write my thoughts about a random wikipedia topic...it's came up with 'Moncler' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moncler
I was actually rooting for Moncler to come up because I really wanted to tell you about my ski pants that I wore last year when I went to the mountain. They were really warm and waterproof as any ski pants should be. But I had got them from the warehouse, so of course they ripped on the 2nd to last day. That meant no more falling on my ass because the rip had exposed the inner layer from my ass all the way down past my knee. Of course I fell over a few times the next day because there was a jump I wanted to do. I got wet but it wasn't so cold. I've got a picture of an attempt:


The jump is actually bigger than it looks in the picture and most of the time I fell the other way but that's the only picture I have. Does this have anything to do with Moncler? It actually does. If I had some Moncler pants for that trip, they wouldn't have ripped. I wouldn't have written about this and instead would've praised Moncler on how warm, waterproof and how great the quality of their pants are. I probably would've put a picture of them up, like this:

I couldn't find a picture of pants, but this will do. Can you believe this jacket costs $823? And that's probably US$ too.
So if you ever need ski pants, a good jacket or have $2000 you don't know what to do with, buy something from Moncler. And say that I referred you. They may give me commission.
And if you dare go into a public toilet, please keep it clean.
One last thing. I can't be bothered editing this so ignore all the bad grammer and spelleng.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Idiocy is relative

Most people would have been called an idiot by someone in their life...Your parents call you an idiot when you go out drinking instead of studying...your friends call you an idiot for throwing up in the taxi you're sharing home after you've had 10 tequila shots mixed with a bottle of red wine...the hot girl in the bar calls you an idiot when you try to pick her up with some lame pick up line in front of her boyfriend, who happens to be 20cm taller than you and was having arm wrestling matches for money...

Don't feel bad when someone calls you an idiot because chances are, so are they. The girl in the bar is probably an idiot for dating that guy, your friends' are idiots for getting in the taxi after letting you drink all that booze. And let's not go into the parents....

Everyone is an idiot relative to someone else. You might not think that Albert Einstein was an idiot, but Issac Newton might have. And maybe God thought Issac Newton was an idiot, who knows? You could make an idiot tree if you wanted and have a supreme being like God at the top, then go down to some smart people like Newton and Einstein. You can keep going down until you reach the bottom, where there is 1 person, and you can't find anyone more of an idiot than them. It could be Paris Hilton, some dumb robber on the tv show who gives his drivers' license to prove he's old enough to steal alcohol, or that guy you know who pissed on the electric fence.

What's my point? Maybe I don't really have one but if someone calls you an idiot, you can rightfully reply 'look who's talking!' and you'd be right. But if you say that to the bodybuilder in the bar, sorry, you're at the bottom of the tree.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

WOW! Another blog!!!

I've decided to keep a blog on the internet so I can become famous and maybe one day make a million dollars by just typing random stuff everyday. I'll probably write about soccer, poker and other random things that come into my mind while I'm typing. Feel free to comment on how Man Utd sux, the bad beats you take in a tournament or how I've wasted 5 minutes of your life making you read something that has no real point. Enjoy...