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Today was rich in incident. The sun shone, gilding the faded, autumnal sky. Terry Pratchett’s latest novel turned up in my letterbox. Oh joy, a Vimes adventure to be savoured on a sun-kissed verandah, with a cigar and a non-alcoholic drink to hand.
Customer service from my phone company was revealed to be even more dickish than originally feared. Not so good, that one.
Orac slapped down some of the more deadly nonsense being spouted by Robert Eau Young (the magical alkaline water merchant). Things are getting better.
The branch of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that felt impelled to occupy the financial centre of Brisbane was revealed to be gloriously inept on all fronts. They set up a webcam live stream, which was almost immediately hogged by an anti-vaccine nutter, with added birther and truther lunacy for those stubborn traces of reality that just won’t brainwash out. The rationalists following this event promptly sent out alerts. The whole thing went viral on Twitter. Of course, it didn’t help that all of those who sat in front of the webcam appeared to be stoned. Maybe they were just extremely tired, which is quite likely, but in that case you get some sleep, you don’t do a live stream visible to the entire world. They seemed incapable of stating their objectives: it was all general protesting (against what?), going with the zeitgeist (+1 WTF point), solidarity (with whom?) and… look, you guys, what do you actually hope to achieve with this? Ah, they want to attract more people to the movement before formulating any, like, you know, specific demands (+3 WTF). In the meantime, they were forming committees and having meetings. I think we’ve found the remaining descendants of the passengers on that Golgafrincham ship, everybody. Unfortunately, the actions of these clowns may well be used in attempts to discredit more serious protests on a major economic and financial problem worldwide.
I despair at the protest-savvy of students these days. At one point, they were trying to cadge free WiFi off one of the banks they were picketing. No, I am not pulling it. When last I saw them, they were all staggering off to sleep in their tents, while a loudspeaker blared some rambling nonsense about the Illuminati and conspiracy theories. All on live stream. +10 WTF there, I reckon. Easy.
I do not think they will find it easy to be taken seriously. UPDATE: A blogpost from someone who was there and another who followed the live stream.
And so, desperate for something to cheer me up, I turned to Youtube. What are today’s recommendations for my viewing delight? Out of the stuff I haven’t already watched… Oh dear. Dominic Howard singing while wearing a waistcoat even I wouldn’t be seen dead in? Um, I like the guy, but no. Definitely no. A NASA Lunar Lander Module made out of paper clips? Pass. A collection of TV adverts from around the world? An 10-minute gym class? Who programmes this page?
Ah, this looks more like it. The Periodic Table of Videos team has done it again. Contains explosive hair, chemistry, wallabies and an echidna. 100% win with a high SQUEE! quotient. No fart jokes, totally SFW. Intelligent, easy to understand and full of Cute.
The only remaining problem is: if wallabies replace cows, how are we going to get milk from them? If we breed them for huge teats, they’ll just fall over. I suppose we could GM them to produce flavoured milk and market it as milkshake fresh from the farm… (wanders off to the lab, muttering about breeding programmes and bioengineered chocolate).
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- Pratchett’s Snuff: a rural/nautical tale of drawing-room gentility, racism, and justice (boingboing.net)
